Destiny's Road Part 49

CARAVAN*GENEOLOGY*Twerdahl T0~~ restricted material. Access code?

CARAVAN*GENEOLOGY*Tail Town restricted material. Access code?

Somebody somewhere was keeping genealogical records, and keeping them hidden.

He'd seen an ominous degree of continuity in the families that held the wagons. He remembered three generations in ibn-Rushd wagon. Outsiders not welcome? How could he learn?

AVALON.

restricted material. Access code?

s.p.a.cE*SHUTTLE.

Designs, vidtapes, test results, wow!

Six crashes in fifty-one years. No deaths mentioned. A vivid description of the tenth flight by the first humans to orbit. Say what?

He'd read it and failed to believe it. He had to go back for it- The shuttle didn't have a pilot on board.

It was flown by onboard programs and a pilot on the ground. A box of varied design but rigidly exact size fit into the shuttle's rectangular cargo s.p.a.ce. One such box was a cabin for two pa.s.sengers and an array of tools.

Pa.s.sengers had flown twice. That first pair of women went up to repair a satellite. The second pair. . . something political.

Jeremy felt ma.s.sive disappointment. Had Mustafa ever said that he'd gone into s.p.a.ce personally? He couldn't remember. But he'd daydreamed, from time to time, of persuading Mustafa to help him stow away aboard a shuttle. The s.p.a.ce wasn't even there.

Harlow's words didn't make sense together. Maybe he'd remembered wrong.

Try it anyway: HYDRAULIC*EMPIRF.

A political ent.i.ty that controls its citizens h~ controlling the flow 0f wafer.

'Tuck my bird.'

"What?"

"Sorry."

It was no trivial thing. Thousands of years of Eastern despotisms had been of that nature. Water was life. Dig a ca.n.a.l system, guard the ca.n.a.ls. If a town opposes the government, block the ca.n.a.ls, dam or pollute the river, confiscate the wheat or rice.

Two towns in a drought? Strip one of food, send it all to the second. Gain the second town's support; make deadly enemies of the first, but it won't matter, they will die.

Hydraulic empires never died. No matter how far they slid into decadence, they lived on until destroyed by barbarians beyond the border.

Hydraulic empires grew with the rising level of communications and transport. On Earth a moment came at which one government could rule the world, forever. Afterward the United Nations controlled not just water, but communications via comsats, electric power from sunpower satellites, and every resource that could be labeled "lim ited." The United Nations in its last days had launched the Avalon expedition- Last days?

He skimmed, picking it up little by little.

Ah. They'd grown their own barbarians. They'd been brought down by a coalition of populations throughout the solar system, each as great or greater than the population of Destiny. There followed two hundred years of stagnation before one civilization stretched from Sol to the far comets, one empire with a stranglehold on. . . what?

Reading between the lines- Everything. The Web controlled everything that flowed. Water, hydrogen, information, diet supplements, placement of orbitting habitats, and kinetic energy. Especially kinetic energy. What moved through interplanetary s.p.a.ce averaged twenty klicks per second. Fusion explosions were nothing compared to that. Every habitat in motion within Sol system was a.s.signed its...o...b..t. Keep to it or be treated as a meteor.

In a spasm of creativity the Web had launched Argos and a third expedition- restricted material. Access code?

The thrust of the lecture was that Sol system had become one vast resource-control empire, sluggish, but able to make long plans. There weren't any barbarians because there was no outside. A million years from now it would still he in place.

Outsiders and their barbaric ideas would not be welcome in Sol system.

There was no home to return to.

'Jeremy."

He looked up. "Rita! Karen's itching like crazy. Did you take her off Novabliss?'

"I cut the dose as per your suggestion."

'Right, and it's great to hear her making plans again, but now she's itching-"

"I'll go see her. Come along.'

Rita's tendency was to outrun him, and what the h.e.l.l, he knew the way. But she glanced back and then waited. "How's the leg?"

"I did eight blocks last night."

"I guess we can take the cast off after we see Karen."

"I've been reading about hydraulic empires."

Silence: she was fishing through her head. "Sol system? That old tenthyear lecture? It's a reason why we can't go back, but that's just mind games, Jeremy. Anyone can think of reasons why we shouldn't do what we can't do anyway."

"Suppose a government didn't control water. Just speckles."

A disgusted look; then Rita Nogales walked away from him. She held the lift. They descended in silence. She walked away from him again, outside, in, another lift, and he reached Karen's room a good ten minutes behind her.

It was too active. Something was wrong. Four doctors crowded the room, and one left at a half-run. Jeremy backed against the corridor wall and, resting on his crutches, waited.

Rita Nogales noticed him and came out. "Jeremy, did Karen have trouble controlling her weight?"

"No.~~ "d.a.m.n."

"After all, we live at Wave Rider. She just eats a lot of Destiny sea life if she needs to lose a few kilos. So do I."

"Was she doing that a week ago?"

"I don't know.''

"All right. Right now Karen's getting all the attention she can stand, right? The whole d.a.m.n hospital's worrying about her. They don't need a twitchy husband on crutches getting in their way," she said, and walked away fast. Over her shoulder she added, "Go eat. Go home. Go read, but don't block any doctors."

Now there were two doctors in there with Karen. One saw Jeremy still there, and came out. His label said Malcolm Evans. He was having trouble keeping his smile on.

"Don't let all this . . . activity worry you," he said. "Karen is rejecting superskin, that's all, but it's not supposed to happen. Maybe this batch threw off a sport. Clinics keep batches of superskin all over Destiny Town and on up the Road. Nogales is off to get a different batch for, uh, Karen, and Waither is phoning patients who got superskin from Batch One, so you can s-" Evans caught a gesture from the other doctor and turned away without finishing the sentence.

CONTROL*EXPERIMENT.

Jeremy couldn't concentrate. He had to read it twice, though the idea wasn't complicated.

A population to be experimented upon would be split. The control experiment was the group to which n.o.body did anything. These were the rats that didn't ingest carcinogens, didn't have to run mazes with traps in them, weren't bothered by flashing lights or loud noises. The patients who got placebos instead of medicine. You watched for differences between the control group and the experimental group.

CONTROL*EXPERIMENT*Base One The lives we're trying to carve from th~5 wilderness would be a risk even ~f Argos had not deserted us!

Base One is thriving, they tell us. They're living according to the guidelines laid down for Argos Project in S~l system. Isolated on a peninsula with the Neck blocked, they're safe from whatever Destiny life might throw at them, with one horrifying exception.

Fatum mortem parnelli is our prison. We must live within range 0f the planet's only known pota.s.sium source, inside a maze 0f twisty little Destiny ecologies, all different. Granted that nothing has come after us yet: the lesson 0f Avalon seems clear enough. Trust nothing in an unfamiliar environment.

I propose to designate Base One as a control experiment, where the primary experiment is Terminus. Establish an Overview Bureau. Give it authority over the Crab: Base One and Haunted Bay and whatever communities arise elsewhere. Whatever risks we take here, the larger population will survive provided that we can secure the Crab's speckles supply. .

-w~1l Coffey, Hydroponics Idiot. How could he conceivably expect to do that? The caravan system-Coffey's proposal-was only as good as the Windfarm and Terminus.

If either failed- Terminus hadn't failed; it had fissioned. Destiny Town was thriving. But what of Spiral Town?

A couple of generations of a control experiment might have made sense. Two and a half centuries later, why on Earth would they still need a control experiment?

He'd come to the library looking for distraction and found this!

OVERVIEW BUREAU.

-was two doors up from Medical. They still had charge of the Crab, Spiral Town, the Road towns, Haunted Bay and Otterfolk and all. He could walk there, but why bother?

A government bureau was not likely to give up its authority over anything. From Destiny Town's viewpoint, bringing Spiral Town into civilization would only risk the flow of Begley cloth, clocks, and handicrafts down the Road.

Destiny Town hadn't failed. The Windfarm would!

Twenty-seven years ago Andrew Dowd would have killed all the prisoners and left n.o.body to harvest the speckles. Dolores Nogales had wanted to shoot up the toolshed. There would be other revolts, other escapes When the speckles flow stopped, it wouldn't be Destiny Town that went speckles-shy.

Jeremy made his way to Karen's room.

Only Rita Nogales was on duty. Karen was asleep. Her burns were covered with new patches of superskin.

Jeremy took the bus back to Harlow's.

*31*

Lies Whatever risks we take, the larger population will survive, provided that we can secure Base One's speckles supply. .

-Will Coffey, Hydroponics It was an invitation to disaster, cooking a dinner in someone else's kitchen. It worked partly because he had Harlow to tell him where the tools were kept.

There was that one moment of disorientation when Harlow began taking vegetables, bacon, and a calf's liver out of half-invisible envelopes all the same size. He lurched over to study the things.

"These come out of a machine that used to be mounted in Cavorite,"

Harlow said, laughing at his astonishment. "Thousands a day. We feed it sand. We feed the bags back in too. Don't you have. . ." She trailed off.

He said, "Speckles pouches. Merchants sell speckles in these. I never saw them used for anything else."

She nodded. Then she showed him how to make meringue sh.e.l.ls. They cut fruit into the sh.e.l.ls.

"Men lie to their wives," Harlow said. "Women lie to their husbands." She sipped at her brandy.

Brandy wasn't familiar to Jeremy, and he thought he was being cautious with it. He said, "I've gone through this in my head. Scripted it, my lines, her lines. I'm not who she thought I was. I'm a Crab shy, right. I killed a man and had to run, right. I was in prison, right, but never convicted of anything. I didn't hurt anyone getting out except Andrew Dowd. I can say all that, but, Harlow, how can I tell Karen that I knew her sister?"

"What? Oh, Barda."

"Barda was a trusty when I got to the Windfarm."

"I never met Barda."

"We escaped together. Brenda must have told you the rest, we helped her run the Swan-"

"Barda told you about us? You already knew us? Karen?"

They were dining by firelight and an awesome variety of candles.

Harlow was mostly shadow. He couldn't make out her face. "Not you. You were a shock. Harold, though, and her mother, Espania Winslow, and Karen as a little girl. Harlow, when I last saw Barda she was all right. I never told Karen that. When did Karen last see her?"

"At the trial, when they took her away. It was just Karen and Barry and Espania. Harold didn't go. Did Barda tell you what she did?"

"No."

"Poison. The whole second cla.s.s at Wide Wade's. Two students died."

"The proles had to know that," Jeremy realized. "The Parole Board decides who does the cooking. That's why they made her a trusty!"

"You think that's funny?And you knew what happened to Barda and never told Karen? Jeremy, you. . ." She trailed off.

He said, "Barda got as far as the Swan, but after that. . . and the longer I waited, the harder it was to say anything. Now it's twenty-seven years. Harlow, I'll lose her."

"Leave it out. Tell Karen you escaped from the Windfarm. Don't tell her who came along." She watched him absorb that.

"No Barda?"

"No Barda. So how did you get to the inn?"

"Let's see. If Barda didn't tell me about Wave Rider. . ." He played it through his mind. "I didn't know it was there. I was. . .

running home? Back across the Neck. If I meet a caravan, I'm dead. Here's an inn. I can cook. Merchants don't notice a chef. A week later I've heard too much. n.o.body hut a merchant gets across the Neck alive."

"At least it doesn't sound so . . . premeditated," Harlow said.