Seeds of Earth (4 page)

'I shall be making my widecast address to the colony in a couple of hours, after making a statement in the Assembly,' the president said. 'There will be no mention of anything that I've related here, of course, except for whatever generalities came in the ambassador's messages. But I wanted to tell you this in person now, since even our most secure communications may cease to be so in days to come.'

'Is it possible that the Earth ambassador will have one of these AIs with him?' asked Pyatkov.

'It might be wise to assume that he has,' Sundstrom said. 'Which may lead to umbrage on his part come FV Day, but we'll paper over that crack when we come to it.' He spread his hands. 'That is all for the time being, my friends. Continue with your preparations, maintain your colleagues lists, and expect new codewords by tomorrow night.'

As Theo rose with the others, Sundstrom beckoned him back. 'Theodor, if you could wait behind a moment.'

Once the rest had made their farewells and left, Pyatkov looking grim as he did so, the president manoeuvred his wheelchair out from behind the cissl and over to a stolidly designed drinks cabinet. He poured himself a small glass of something dark red with out offering one to Theo, knocked it back and gave a throaty sigh of satisfaction.

'I'm very glad that you agreed to join my little conspiracy, Theodor,' he said. 'Even though you still associate with various rogues and misfits, those Diehards of yours.'

'Ah, merely a group of friends from my army days, family friends . . .' He shrugged, smiling. 'Like-minded folk.'

Sundstrom's smile was knowing. 'In any case, I still value your experience and military insight, even your dissenter's viewpoint. But there's something else yon bring to our clandestine scheming, something that could prove crucial.'

Theo laughed. 'Somehow I don't think you're refer ring to my charm and boyish good looks.'

Sundstrom gave him a sidelong look.

T believe that you and your old friends from the Corps call it "the assets".'

Still standing, Theo almost froze but made himself relax. 'The assets?'

'A substantial quantity of arms and ammunition went missing after the Winter Coup, along with explosives, tech gear, and some vehicles. Now, assuming that this materiel has been stored at various locations in the vicinity of the colony townships, it's entirely possible that such hideaways may have come to the attention of some intel-gathering arm of government. In which case that data could be sitting in files that will shortly become, as I've already indicated, somewhat less than secure. Of course, if these stores turned out to be empty then such files could be closed and erased without delay.' He smiled. 'I don't know why you held on to it perhaps you harboured long-term ambitions, or maybe you kept it so that it wouldn't fall into other hands. Either way, I'm glad that you did.'

Theo smiled blandly. 'Holger, I am at a loss to know how to reply to all that,' he said. 'But I shall give it careful consideration.'

'That's all I ask.'

'There is one small favour you might do for me,' he said.

'Which is?'

Theo smiled. 'From your communications with the Earth ship, were you told anything about the
Forrestal
and the
TenebrosaV

'That was one of my first questions,' Sundstrom said. 'But it seems that they have not been found - the distinction of first contact is ours.'

'After which we will come under the microscope, no doubt.'

'Why is that?'

'To find out how our experiment in cultural admixture turned out,' Theo said. 'The original colonial project back on Earth computer-modelled a wide variety of national-cultural combinations, with the aim of finding those most likely to be able to survive conditions on alien worlds. And to build a worthwhile society.'

Sundstrom gave a rueful grin. 'Scandinavians, Russians and Scots - what were they thinking?'

A moment later the female assistant entered with Theo's overcoat. He donned it, shook the president s hand and moments later found himself outside the villa again. It was darker and colder now and he felt a distinct nip in the air as he left the villa grounds by
I
tree-shrouded pair of gates designed to look like the entrance of an adjacent property. The spinnercab he had ordered earlier was waiting at the side of the road, and took him downhill towards the city. Hammergard was spread along a narrow isthmus which separated Loch Morwen from the Korzybski Sea and the ocean beyond, both bodies of water glimmering with reflections of the night sky's starmist hues. But Theo was dwelling on Sundstrom's closing remarks about the Diehards, not to mention the assets, which was something of an unsettling surprise. And yet the president had decided to tell Theo that the assets were vulnerable, a revelation that could have only a limited number of implications, all of which spelled trouble.

He had the driver let him out on the Loch Morwen shore road in the city's Northvale district. With the hum of the spinnercab fading as it returned to the city centre, Theo took out his comm as he headed up the sideroad that led home. It was an older, larger model, its sangwood case scored and darkened from use, but the exterior belied its customised, upgraded components. A few thumbpresses later the blue oval screen read 'Welcome To The Crypt', and when he raised it to his ear he heard jaunty bagpipe music for a moment or two before someone answered.

'Aye, whit is it now}''

Theo cleared his throat. 'Rory, it's me.'

Silence for a moment.
'Ach, sorry about that, Major I just had Stef on the line from Tangenberg bitching about the trainin' rota because he wants tae watch the Earth ambassador arriving on the vee and I thought that wiz him again—'

'That's okay, never mind,' Theo said. Rory McGrain was his deputy, quartermaster and researcher all rolled into one. 'Listen, we'll need to roust out some loaders and crews tonight.'

'Won't be easy, chief. What's it for}'

'Sundstrom knows about the assets.'

'Aw, naw . . .'

'Or more accurately, he knows that government intel knows about them, so we have to move them all tonight.'

'Hell's fire, chief - are we gonna have to shoot our way out}'

Theo slowed as he reached the leaf-wreathed stairway leading up to his hab.

'That's the funny part, Rory -1 don't think there'll be anyone watching the caches, never mind getting ready to jump us. Listen, I'm at my house right now. Have Ivanov or Janssen pick me up in fifteen. And one more thing - see what you can find out about a special forces guy called Donny.' He gave a brief description iron memory.

'That must have been some meeting ye had up at the palace,'
Rory said.
'Am I right in thinking that this ambassador's meet 'n' greet isna all it seems}'

'Rory, you don't know the half of it.'

And as he hurried up the wooden steps, he thought
And I don't think I do either.

LEGION

It was a contract survey ship called
Segmenter
that found the planet Darien while studying the perilous gulfs of the Huvuun Deepzone.

Through tangled swirls and curtains of interstellar dust and debris,
Segmenter
had painstakingly (and clandestinely) plotted and scanned and measured for several long weeks before stumbling over an uncharted star system, complete with four planets, one of which was habitable. Since this part of the Huvuun was currently claimed by two antagonistic civilisations, the Brolturans and the Imisil, there then followed a tense hour or more during which the system was scanned for any other ships, beacons, probes or sensor nets. Once it was clear that there were no such hazards in the area,
Segmenter
moved in closer while its crew set to work.

Data soon began arriving: a variant-three habitable world, with a cluster of medium-tecli-level settlements and also a large habitable moon. The planet's sentients were confirmed as Human, and their rudimentary information network revealed a population of approximately 2.75 million. The moon was inhabited by an indigenous biped sentient species called the Uvovo, who coexisted with an extensive forest ecology . . .

A full report was compiled by one of
Segmenter's
scanners, then passed up to the captain. He saw at once that the Human element made it too important for his remit and had the report encrypted and dispatched via Tier 2 hyperspace comnet to the headquarters of the Suneye Combine, the huge interstellar corpora tic
1
which had contracted
Segmenter's
services. From there it flashed to the Office of External Measures on Iseri, the supreme homeworld of the Sendruka Hegemony. Six hours after leaving
Segmenter,
the report's contents were being discussed by the highest Hegemony figures and their AIs, and policy formulation was well under way.

But the
Segmenter's,
captain was not above trying to sell the same goods twice and had quickly found a customer at the rogue port of Blacknest. Pleased with his new acquisition, the datadealer deposited a tidy sum in a secure account, then streamed the data directly to a number of patrons with standing orders for information on new planets.

One patron was a Kiskashin line-pirate on Yndyeri Duvo, a 2nd-echelon world in the Erdindeso Autarky. His reputation for selling anything to anyone had
gained
him a string of customers for whom the word 'eccentric' was merely a starting point. And amongst the most taciturn was one he had named Lord Mysterious. Lord Mysterious had appeared nearly twenty years ago with a solid tap of Piraseri credit and a terse description of his information requirements tagged with a secure, localnet address on Duvo's sister world, Yndyeri Tetro, The Kiskashin was a phlegmatic merchant, and as long as a customer's credit held up he had no interest in finding out much more about them. So as soon as the Darien report blinked into his portable dataspace (while he was haggling with a tekmarker over the cost of band-depth for the coming hexad) he recognised this as the kind of thing Lord Mysterious had specified in his gatherer profile. But rather than sending it on immediately, he abstracted it and pondered the contents: a long-lost Human colony discovered in the middle of the Huvuun Deepzone with the Imisil in one corner, the Brolturans in the other, and the Hegemony looming over it all - hmm, a risky place to be, without a doubt, and fascinating. The Kiskashin did not know any Humans, but if any contacted him with a lucrative proposal in mind he would certainly-be open-minded about it.

And just in case some of his other clients might be interested in this little morsel, he slotted the report into one of the slower outgoing queues. That would give him time to examine it later and assess its resale potential. After all, business is business.

4

CHEL

Every time he stepped aboard a Human vehicle, Chel found himself having to learn forbearance anew. They were hard, hollow things, completely lacking in the vitality of organic life yet endowed with cunning engines that drove them along their way. When the government zeplin set down at Port Gagarin, Chel breathed more easily as he hurried down the gantry to the hard ground of the sunken landing bay. It was difficult to trust to a thing that neither breathed nor had a beating heart, a thing that had no lifesong.

Yet we must have been very different in the long-distant past,
he thought, gazing back up at the dirigible.
Once, the Uvovo worked with cold, dead stone and built places like the temple on Waonwir. What kind of people were we then?

The short nightflight from Waonwir, which the Humans called Giant's Shoulder, to Port Gagarin was only the first stage of his journey. He was met at the landing bay exit by a breathless, harried-looking young Human female who introduced herself as Oxana as she quickly guided him along enclosed walkways to one of the big loading bays. There they boarded a large, ponderous freighter named
Skidhbladnir,
its appearance so battered and grimy as to make the government zeplin seem pristine by comparison.

Once inside, Oxana apologised for the rush, blaming incompetent couriers, and gave him his tickets for the rest of the journey.

'It should not take more than six or seven hours, and there are five stops along the way before you reach Invergault, where you will be met by someone from Ibsenskog. When you are ready to return, simply send us a message from the monitor office in the town.'

'I shall remember, Oxana,' Chel said. 'My thanks.'

'Think nothing of it, Scholar,' she said. 'Safe journey.'

After she was gone, Chel sought out the padded shelf that was his accommodation while the thuds and shouts of loading continued down in the main hold. A short while later the hold door was finally raised and the cargo zeplin lurched as its moorings were uncoupled. Engines droned and the shelf vibrated faintly beneath him, then a swaying sensation told him that they were aloft and under way.

However, Oxana's six or seven hours turned into nearly nine. As the freighter flew through the night and on into the morning, Chel managed to doze for a span, once he had grown accustomed to the dead hollowness of the Human craft. He almost grew used to the rattle of the hawser drums, the cries of the hefter crews, and the sounds of cargo being shifted. But by the time the
Skidhbladnir
arrived at Invergault it was an undeniable relief to clamber down to the zeplin station's small platform, with the cargo dirigible hanging overhead, creaking on taut cables.

Invergault was a small town sitting upslope from i pebbly cove near the end of a steep-sided sea loch. Like most of the Eastern Towns, it was a meeting point and marketplace for hunters, fishers and trappers. As he descended from the platform, he noticed that almost all roofs now carried windspinners, as well as large
afftcg
roots affixed to their chimneys and flues, absorbing the ash and fumes from hearth and cooking fires, channelling heat into other uses rather than letting it escape Chel knew from his teachers that, before the Humans sent their craft up to the home of Segrana, the colonists had been enthusiastic over-exploiters of natural resources and had scarcely practised any kind of wardenship. After the Accord of Friendship, the Uvovo were able to help the Humans to give up certain wasteful, destructive habits by showing them how to cultivate and use the many kinds of sifter root. This opened the way to the establishment of the seven daughter-forests, from which a change in cultural attitudes slowly percolated through the Humans' society. Wardenship of the natural world gradually became part of their custom and tradition.