Into the Maelstrom Page 6

  Allenson prompted Linsye.

  “Why don’t you try it and give me your opinion.”

  His sister-in-law displayed the expression of a woman going to the stake. Nevertheless, she tasted the contents as was proper for a guest enjoying hospitality. She rolled it around her mouth and then drank deeply.

  Allenson awaited her verdict. His sister-in-law was familiar with the very best vintages from the Home Worlds. She often expressed herself robustly on the subject.

  Linsye gave her judgment.

  “At least it’s not a concoction of fruit juice, alcohol and sugar. I taste a light crisp flavor reminiscent of an acceptable white table wine, albeit a young vintage. It’s not going to win any awards, of course, but it is palatable. I believe I will have another glass.”

  Praise indeed. Allenson started to signal Bentley but the majordomo was already off the starting blocks, bottle at the ready.

  Todd downed his glass in three drafts.

  “Mother’s a little harsh. This’s actually very refreshing.”

  Bentley shot around the table to refill his glass as well.

  “I’m glad you like it.” Allenson said. “I will have a case loaded on your carriage when you depart.”

  “Thank you, Uncle.” Todd inclined his head politely. “I’ve brought a small gift for you back from Brasilia. This seems an appropriate moment to present it.”

  He handed Allenson a small wooden box that lay lightly on the hand. Inside were three slides, carefully stowed in slits in the velvet lined interior, and a modern black plastic cube. Allenson gently pulled out one. It was archaic, mineral stained by its time underground, and chipped on one corner.

  “Are these originals?” Allenson asked in wonder.

  “Absolutely,” Todd replied. “They turn up every so often. A friend of mine was looking through an unsorted collection for his thesis and found these. I knew of your interest in the Third Civilization and thought you would like them.”

  Allenson held the slide up to the light.

  “Very much, I like them very much indeed. Thank you, Nephew, can they be read?”

  Todd pointed to the black cube.

  “I included a decoder in the box as I wasn’t sure you would have the right tool to hand.”

  Allenson replaced the slide and examined the black cube.

  “Thank you, Third Civilization records are stored in such a strange way. All dots and dashes don’t you know.”

  “Indeed,” Todd said. “The slide you looked at is particularly interesting, a collection of fine resolution video stills of ordinary Third Civilization life by some ancient called Paul Weimer. Some are only document records.”

  “A delightful gift,” Allenson said, wondering what he had done to earn it.

  Todd waved a hand languidly, brushing aside the praise as if it were cobwebs.

  “I would have thought that someone would have produced suitable vine strains to grow wine grapes in the Stream by now,” Todd said, changing the subject.

  “It wouldn’t be impossible,” Linsye agreed, “but the genosurgery is apparently tricky. We don’t have sufficient technical infrastructure to spare so the work would have to be done in Brasilia.”

  Allenson grimaced. “Where’s the incentive? Why should a Brasilian wine merchant set up competition? Much more profitable to flog us the finished product at a hefty mark up.”

  The appetizer plate vanished under Allenson’s left arm to be replaced by a dish containing soup. Left to his own devices Bentley would have paraded around the table with a bowl ladling out soup to each guest individually. Allenson killed that notion. He wasn’t all that bothered what was in his soup but he did like it hot and the host got served last.

  Linsye dipped her spoon, holding it just clear of the plate to cool.

  “I could tolerate the mark up if one was sure of getting what was on the label.”

  Trina stirred her soup.

  “Surely wine labelling is tightly controlled?”

  Linsye sighed.

  “In theory, but half the time the vintage is substituted for something cheaper.”

  She waved her spoon for emphasis.

  “The Carinas served Pinot Chaasuar last time I dined at their demesne. It may have been a Pinot but it had never been closer to the Chaasuar than the nearest chemical laboratory.”

  Todd winced.

  “Did you feel the need to point that out to them?”

  “Well, obviously,” Linsye replied, clearly wondering why he asked such a stupid question. “They needed to know that they had been cheated.”

  Todd looked sorrowfully at Allenson.

  “Generally, I only escort Mother somewhere twice—the second time to apologize.”

  Even Linsye laughed.

  The dinner progressed with the usual small talk. When Allenson was young he had considered such conversation to be a waste of time. Experience and Trina taught him how useful gossip could be. People revealed details in dinner conversations. Details that when put together provided invaluable information about the shifting political and commercial alliances within the Stream—insofar as the two could be separated.

  Bentley presented the platter of the main dish to Trina for her approval, which was duly given. Allenson forced down the urge to scream. Wine to him, meat to Trina, what an utter waste of time? His life used to be so much simpler when he was young.

  “Wildfowel in jaffa sauce,” Linsye exclaimed in delight. “One of my favorite dishes.”

  Trina smiled: the choice of menu was always tailored to the tastes of the honored guest. One had to be careful praising a dish too highly in company or you could find yourself served it at every dinner party for the next year or so.

  “The jaffa fruit is from your own demesne,” Trina said. “Your estate manager flew a crate over last harvest.”

  Jaffa was a Streamer crop in demand in Brasilia where it fetched ridiculous prices. Home World farms grew the crop but wealthy aficionados declared the taste inferior to imports from the Cutter Stream.

  “I hope the wine is real?” Allenson asked. “It cost me enough.”

  Trina frowned at him. Bentley’s expression went professionally blank. It was not done to discuss the cost of such things over dinner.

  Linsye rolled it around her glass and inhaled the bouquet before tasting.

  “Quite genuine,” she pronounced. “Perhaps a little past its best but we can forgive that as the bottle has traveled far to grace our table.”

  “Oh good,” Allenson said. “I won’t have to shoot my supplier.”

  Todd looked at his uncle quizzically as if trying to work out whether he was joking or not.

  “Ignore him, Nephew,” said Trina, shooting Allenson an exasperated look. “My husband has a peculiar sense of humor. He wouldn’t really shoot his wine merchant.”

  Linsye said, “Quite right, sister-in-law.”

  She tapped her finger on the table for emphasis.

  “Shooting is too good for a wine fraudster.”

  She definitely wasn’t joking.

  They applied themselves to the meal.

  “Tell me, Linsye?” asked Allenson between courses. “Were you not tempted to join your brother and go back to Brasilia?”

  Linsye cocked her head to look at him.

  “I thought we covered this a long time ago on Paragon. In my opinion there is no future for my children and grandchildren back in Brasilia. That is why I chose a marriage alliance with a promising local family even if they were social inferiors.”

  Todd coughed into his hand at this point. Linsye ignored him.

  “My children do not carry the Destry name. Even if they did, there is nothing more pathetic than impoverished relatives living off the charity of other members of a Great House. Their gens association would be a curse, not a benefit.”

  Trina asked, “You think Royman has made the wrong decision?”

  Linsye hesitated.

  “My brother must do what he feels is best for his situatio
n,” she replied delicately.

  “You refer to Sarai?” Trina asked, pushing the conversation to the edge of what was acceptable.

  Linsye half nodded before canceling the gesture.

  “Not entirely, Royman does not, I think, possess the appropriate skills and interests for life across the Bight but as this is a private family gathering then, yes, I refer to his marriage.”

  Of course, there were servants present as well. Linsye like most Manzanitans of “the better sort” tended to regard them as part of the house fittings, forgetting that they were furniture with tongues.

  Allenson tried to remember where he had heard that expression. It may have come from the slave economies of Old Earth. The destroyed bureaucratic Third Civilization had left such copious records in so many different formats that vast amounts of data about their doomed world was extant. Much of it had never been properly collated and put into context even to this day. However, enough was known to outline their history and culture. Such a bold and self-confident society—and so blind.

  His train of thought drew an uneasy comparison between the indentured servants of Brasilia and the slave economies. The comparison, he assured himself, was not apt. Indentured servants were not slaves. They were people with legal rights albeit restricted ones. Their contracts could be bought and sold but the people were not property. They could hope to buy out or work off their debt. An irritatingly rebellious component of his mind reminded him that even the old slave economies had the concept of Freedmen.

  There was no doubt though that the indentured servant system used by Brasilia to dump its unwanted population on the colonies displayed all the wastefulness and inefficiency of a slave society. Not that Brasilia’s colonial problems were unique. The harsh realities of Terran society ensured an excess of convict labor making their colonies just as shambolic.

  Trina deftly changed the subject. She engaged Linsye on the subject of a play she had seen in Manzanita City by a promising new avant-garde playwright.

  Linsye asked, “How did you find the work, Allen?”

  Trina had insisted on her husband escorting her to the theatre.

  “Most, ah, stimulating,” Allenson replied.

  Trina cut in. “Really, I thought you dozed off.”

  “Just resting my eyes to concentrate on the dialogue,” Allenson replied.

  “I see,” Trina raised an eyebrow. “Are you aware that you have developed the habit of snoring when resting your eyes to concentrate?”

  “I sympathize, my dear,” Linsye said. “His brother was just the same. Todd declared that the word culture always made him want to reach for a laserrifle.”

  Wasn’t that another quote from some ancient philosopher, Allenson wondered? No, it couldn’t have been. Their strange superstitions about the physical nature of the universe precluded them developing the technology for laserrifles.

  Allenson turned to Todd to include him in the conversation. “How did you find school and college on Brasilia?”

  “Oh it had its ups and downs but I fitted in tolerably well,” Todd replied.

  “You weren’t bullied at all because of your colonial background?”

  “There’s always a degree of good natured banter, Uncle,” Todd said without further elaboration.

  Allenson struggled on.

  “How did your studies go? Let me see, you read . . .”

  Allenson’s memory balked at divulging the necessary information.

  “Politics, history and anthropology.”

  Todd deftly lifted Allenson out of the hole he’d dug for himself.

  “I took a degree but barely scraped a third. I regret that I’m not academic material unlike Uncle Royman.”

  “Much good it did him,” Linsye remarked somewhat sourly.

  “It did all of us a great deal of good against Terra,” Allenson said, perhaps rather more tartly than he had intended, but Royman had stood his ground with his comrades. “Indeed, Royman’s contribution as intelligence officer made him possibly the one indispensable man in our army.”

  Todd said, “Praise indeed especially coming from you, Uncle. Most people have suggested to me that you were the indispensable man.”

  “Most people are ignorant,” Allenson replied, without heat.

  Todd raised his glass.

  “Well then let’s drink to Uncle Royman’s new life in Brasilia.”

  So they did, which neatly changed the mood at the table. Trina conferred a smile of approval on her nephew’s tact.

  Allenson put down his glass and examined him.

  “You look rather well on university life.”

  And he did. Todd was not particularly tall but wiry without a gram of excess fat on his body.

  “I won a racing dark blue,” Todd said.

  Blue Horizon athletic teams wore dark blue uniforms.

  Allenson was impressed.

  “Indeed?”

  Todd added diffidently, “I rowed power wheel on the University Eight against the light blues.”

  Blue Horizon’s main rival were the light blues. These, the two oldest and most prestigious colleges of Freelanding University on Brasilia, held an annual frame race. As most of the ruling families were educated at one or other of these institutions the race received media attention more suited to a major sports event. The whole world watched. A great deal of money and prestige depended on the result. Competition for a seat on one of the two frames was accordingly intense. You either had to be well connected or very, very athletic—preferably both.

  Allenson asked, “How did your team do?”

  “Not too badly, uncle,” Todd replied.

  Linsye said with a mother’s pride, “They beat the light blues by five lengths.”

  “I see, congratulations,” Allenson said, raising his glass once more but in Todd’s direction. “What do you intend to do now?”

  Todd opened his mouth but Linsye cut into the conversation before he could speak.

  “I thought he could be your aide.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Pounce Predators

  Allenson sat in his office and pondered. So now he had an aide. Well what could he do? Linsye had ambushed him well and truly and the lad was family. Allenson, as paterfamilias of the Allenson gens such as it was, was expected, indeed obliged, to further the career of his relatives, but he had not intended to appoint an aide, let alone one from Brasilia.

  He had severe doubts about Todd’s suitability. The lad seemed bright enough, well educated and with the necessary coating of sophistication. Blue Horizon College had seen to that. He was physically fit, but did he have the right attitude? Todd looked so much like Royman. Superficially at least, he behaved just like him at that age—like a young Brasilian gentleman. Royman was a decent chap but his temperament hardly made him aide material. Ah well, time would tell; it usually did.

  Thoughts of Todd made him try out the slide reader and the slide Todd recommended. He juggled the interface between the decoder and his desk a little until they had contact. He couldn’t locate an index so he picked a still at random and projected it up as a sold hologram.

  The result was a mess. He wondered whether the slide was too badly degraded to read. These objects normally had a near infinite life span. Resistant to chemical weathering, even cracking didn’t necessarily destroy their records beyond retrieval.

  Inspiration dawned. He was looking at a two-dimensional image in three dimensions. He flattened the hologram and Weimar’s picture snapped into focus.

  It showed a night scene, or at least a twilight scene. The sky was still pale blue. A faint orange glow backlit towers clustered together in a concrete coppice. Rows of lighted dots of windows gave the huge and brutalistic towers scale. In contrast, artificial light bathed the tops in gold and amber as if rejecting the darkening sky. In its way the artwork was a metaphor for the doomed civilization.

  Weimar’s picture summed up the power, the confidence and the sheer naked aggression of the Third Civilization at its height.
Here we stand and here we stay the towers proclaimed; nothing can touch us. It didn’t last of course. Entropy always has the last word.

  The Third Civilization followed the First—The Monument Builders, and the Second—The Priest Kings of the Bronze Palaces, down into oblivion. At each stage human society climbed higher, becoming more complex, with greater technology and an exponentially larger population. Each time the resulting crash plunged deeper, the death toll worse, the destruction more complete and the recovery slower.

  “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair,” Allenson said softly.

  The biowars marked the last spasm of the Third Civilization like the final ejaculation of a dying man. That particular folly nearly erased humanity. The human genome still carried the scars. That was something Allenson didn’t want to think about. It was too close to home. His brother, Todd, wasted away from a genetic problem beyond the ability of Brasilia’s best genosurgeons to cure.

  The high technology of the Home Worlds of the Fourth Civilization did not trump that of the Third in every regard. The modern age ruthlessly suppressed research into bioweapons for good reason.

  The logistics of Continuum travel made it impossible for one Home World to conquer another. An invasion fleet arriving unpredictably as a dribble of frames could never hope to defeat a Home World’s defenses. Interior lines made it so easy to concentrate overwhelming defensive force at any point on the planet.

  Invasion was out, but destroying a Home World’s population was easy. Just one invader with a bioweapon in a flask could decimate a continent. A lone saboteur riding a single-man frame onto a world or hitching a lift in a ship was unstoppable.

  Mass destruction is a useless strategic weapon, of course. Retaliation is so easy that everyone loses. A technological civilization with competing powers in possession of such weapons has but two options. The first is for everybody to be similarly armed and rely on MAD, mutually assured destruction. The logic is that no one starts a war they can’t win.