Karl suddenly jumped up and waved to his mother, pointing at the bank. Rosemary saw the tarnished silver pillar with its hexagonal
sign on top. It was stuck in the soil five metres above the water. Vines with big purple flowers had already climbed halfway
up it.
She gave the horn a triumphant hoot. “End of the line,” she sang out. “This is Aberdale. Last stop.”
“All right,” Powel said, holding up his hands for silence. He was standing on a barrel to address the assembled colonists
on the foredeck. “You've seen what can be done with a little bit of determination and hard work, and you've also seen how
easy it is to fail. Which road you go down is entirely up to you. I'm here to help you for eighteen months, which is the period
your future will be settled in. That's the make or break time. Now, tell me, are you going to make a go of it?”
He received a throaty cheer, and smiled round. “Fine. Our first job is going to be building a jetty so that Captain Lam-bourne
and the other two river-boats can dock. That way we can unload your gear properly, without getting it wet. Now a jetty is
an important part of any village on this river. It tells a visitor straight away what sort of community you want to carve
out for yourselves. You'll notice our good captain wasn't too eager to stop at Schuster. Not surprising, is it? A good jetty
is one that the boats are always going to stop at, even out here. It's a statement that you want to take part in what the
planet has to offer. It says you want to trade and grow rich. It says that there are opportunities here for clever captains.
It makes you a part of civilization. So I think it would be a good idea if we start off as we mean to go on, and build ourselves
a solid decent jetty that's going to last out your grandchildren. That's what I think. Am I right?”
The chorus of “Yes!” was deafening.
He clapped his hands together, and hopped down off the barrel. “Quinn?” He beckoned to the lad, who was in the group of quiet
Ivets standing in the shade of the superstructure.
Quinn trotted forward. “Yes, sir?”
The respectful tone didn't fool Powel for a second. “The captain is holding station against the current for now. But it's
costing her power, so we have to secure the
Swithland
if we want her to stay for any length of time. I want you to ferry a cable out to the shore, and tie it onto a tree large
enough to take the strain. Think you can manage that?”
Quinn looked from Powel to the mass of dark green vegetation on the bank then back to Powel. “How do I get over there?”
“Swim, boy! And don't try telling me you can't. It's only thirty-five metres.”
Karl came over, uncoiling a rope. “Once you've secured it, we'll haul the
Swithland
into the shallows, and rig a proper mooring,” the boy said. “Everyone else can wade ashore from there.”
“Great,” Quinn said sourly. He took his shoes off, then started to shrug out of his jump suit. Vorix nosed around the two
shoes, sniffing eagerly.
Quinn left his shorts on, and sat on the decking to put his shoes back on. “Can Vorix come with me, please?” he asked.
The dog looked round, long tongue hanging out of the side of its big jaw.
“What the hell do you want him with you for?” Powel asked.
Quinn gestured to the jungle with its barrage of animal sounds. “To take care of any wild sayce.”
“Get in the water, Quinn, and stop whingeing. There aren't any wild sayce around here.” Powel watched as the lad eased himself
over the side of the deck and into the river. Jackson Gael lay flat on the deck, and handed the rope down.
Quinn started swimming for the shore with a powerful sidestroke, dragging the rope behind him.
“The kroclions ate all the sayce,” Powel yelled after him; then, laughing heartily, went aft to get the jetty-building team
organized.
Tranquillity: a polyp cylinder with hemispherical endcaps, its shell the colour of fired unglazed clay, sixty-five kilometres
long, seventeen kilometres in diameter, the largest of all bitek habitats ever to be germinated within the Confederation.
It was drab and uninviting in appearance, and difficult to see from a distance; what little sunlight eventually reached it
from the F3 primary one-point-seven billion kilometres away seemed to be repulsed, preferring to flow around the curving shell
rather than strike the surface. It was the only human settlement in the star system, orbiting seven thousand kilometres above
the Ruin Ring. The shattered remnants of those very remote xenoc cousins were its sole companions. A permanent reminder that
for all its size and power, it was terribly mortal. Lonely, isolated, and politically impotent, there should be few people
who would choose to live in such a place.
And yet…
Starships and scavenger vessels on an approach trajectory could discern a stippled haze of light hovering around the endcap
orientated to galactic north. A cluster of industrial stations floated in attendance. Owned by some of the largest astroengineering
companies in the Confederation, they were permanently busy serving the constant stream of starships arriving and departing.
Cargo tugs, fuel tankers, personnel carriers, and multipurpose service vehicles shuttled around them, their reaction drives
pulsing out a smog of hot blue ions.
A three-kilometre spindle connected Tranquillity’s northern endcap to a non-rotating spaceport: a disc of metal girders, four
and a half kilometres in diameter, with a confusing jumble of support facilities, tanks, and docking bays arrayed across its
surface, resembling a gigantic metal cobweb that had snagged a swarm of fantastic cybernetic insects. It was as busy as any
Edenist habitat, with Adamist starships loading and unloading their cargoes, taking on fuel, embarking passengers.
Behind the tarnished silver-white disc, three circular ledges stood out proud from the endcap: havens for the bitek starships
which came and went with quick, graceful agility. Their geometrical diversity fascinated the entire spaceport, and most of
the habitat’s population; observation lounges overlooking the ledges were popular among the young and not-so-young. Mirchusko
was where the blackhawks mated and died and gestated. Tranquillity offered itself as one of their few legitimate home bases.
Their eggs could be bought here, changing hands for upwards of twenty million fuseodollars and absolutely no questions.
Around the rim of the endcap hundreds of organic conductor cables stretched out into space; subject to constant dust abrasion
and particle impact, they were extruded on a permanent basis by specialist glands to compensate for the near-daily breakages.
The habitat’s rotation kept the cables perfectly straight, radiating away from the shell like the leaden-grey spokes of some
cosmic bicycle wheel. They sliced through the flux lines of Mirchusko’s prodigious magnetosphere, generating a gigantic electrical
current which powered the biological processes of Tranquillity’s mitosis layer as well as the axial light-tube and the domestic
demands of its inhabitants. Tranquillity ingested thousands of tonnes of asteroidal minerals each year to regenerate its own
polyp structure and invigorate the biosphere, but chemical reactions alone could never produce a fraction of the energy it
needed to nurture its human occupants.
Beyond the endcap and the induction cables, exactly halfway down the cylinder, there was a city, home to over three million
people: a band of starscrapers wrapped around the median equator, five-hundred-metre-long towers projecting out of the shell,
studded with long, curving transparencies that radiated warm yellow light out into space. The view from the luxurious apartments
inside was breath-taking; stars alternated with the storm-wracked gas giant and its little empire of rings and moons, eternal
yet ever-changing as the cylinder rotated to provide an Earth-standard gravity at the base of the towers. Here, Adamists were
granted the sight which was every Edenist’s birthright.
Small wonder, then, that Tranquillity, with its liberal banking laws, low income tax, the availability of black-hawks to charter,
and an impartial habitat-personality which policed the interior to ensure a crime-free environment (essential for the peace
of mind of the millionaires and billionaires who resided within), had prospered, becoming one of the Confederation’s premier
independent trading and finance centres.
But it hadn’t been designed as a tax haven, not at first; that came later, born out of desperate necessity. Tranquillity was
germinated in 2428, on the order of the then Crown Prince of Kulu, Michael Saldana, as a modified version of an Edenist habitat,
with a number of unique attributes the Prince himself requested. He intended it to act as a base from which the cream of Kulu’s
xenoc specialists could study the Laymil, and determine what fate had befallen them. It was an action which brought down the
considerable wrath of his entire family.
Kulu was a Christian-ethnic culture, and very devout. The King of Kulu was the principal guardian of that faith throughout
the kingdom; and because of bitek’s synonymous association with Edenists, Adamists (especially good Christian ones) had virtually
abandoned that particular branch of technology. Possibly Prince Michael could have got away with bringing Tranquillity into
existence; a self-sustaining bitek habitat was a logical solution for an isolated academic research project, and astute propaganda
could have smoothed over the scandal. Royalty is no stranger to controversy, if anything it adds to its mystique, especially
when relatively harmless.
But the whitewash option never arose; having germinated the habitat, Prince Michael went and compounded his original “crime”
(in the eyes of the Church, and more importantly the Privy Council) by having neuron symbionts implanted enabling him to establish
an affinity bond with the young Tranquillity.
His final act of defiance, condemned as heretical by Kulu’s conclave of bishops, came in 2432, the year his father, King James,
died. Michael had a modified affinity gene spliced into his first son, Maurice, so that he too might commune with the kingdom’s
newest, and most unusual, subject.
Both were excommunicated (Maurice was a three-month-old embryo residing in an exowomb at the time). Michael abdicated before
his coronation in favour of his brother, Prince Lukas. And father and son were unceremoniously exiled to Tranquillity, which
was granted to them in perpetuity as a duchy.
One of the most ambitious xenoc research projects ever mounted, the unravelling of an entire species from its chromosomes
to whatever pinnacles of culture it achieved, virtually collapsed overnight as its royal treasury funds were withdrawn and
staff recalled.
And as for Michael: from being the rightful monarch of the seven wealthiest star systems in the Confederation, he became the
de facto owner of a half-grown bitek habitat. From commanding a navy of seven hundred warships, the third most powerful military
force in existence, he had at his disposal five ex-navy transports, all over twenty-five years old. From having the absolute
power of life and death over a population of one and three-quarter billion loyal human subjects, he became an administrator
of seventeen thousand abandoned, shit-listed technicians and their families, resentful at their circumstances. From being
First Lord of the Treasury dealing in trillion-pound budgets, he was left to write a tax-haven constitution in the hope of
attracting the idle rich so he could live off their surplus.
For time evermore, Michael Saldana was known as the Lord of Ruin.
“I am bid three hundred thousand fuseodollars for this excellent plant. Really, ladies and gentlemen, this is a remarkable
specimen. There are over five intact leaves, and it is of a type never seen before, completely unclassified.” The plant sat
in a glass vacuum bubble on the auctioneer’s table: a dusty grey stalk, sprouting five long drooping fern-like leaves with
frayed edges. The audience gazed at it in unap-preciative silence. “Come along now, that protuberance at the top may well
be a flower bud. Its cloning will be such a simple matter, and the genome patent will remain exclusively in your hands, an
incalculable font of wealth.”
Someone datavised another ten thousand fuseodollars.
Joshua Calvert didn’t try to see who. This crowd were experts, facial expressions like poker players running downer programs.
And they were all here today, packing the room, there wasn’t a spare chair to be had. People stood four deep around the walls,
spilling down the aisles; the casuals, billionaires looking for a spark of excitement, the serious collectors, consortium
bidders, even some industrial company reps hoping for technological templates.
Here because of me.
Barrington Grier’s outfit wasn’t the largest auction house in Tranquillity, and it dealt in art as much as Laymil artefacts,
but it was a tight, polished operation. And Barrington Grier had treated a nineteen-year-old Joshua Calvert who had just returned
from his first scavenging flight as an equal, as a professional. With respect. He had used the house ever since.
The bidding room was on the fiftieth floor of the StMary’s starscraper, its polyp walls overlaid by dark oak panelling, with
velvet burgundy curtains on either side of the entrance arches and thick royal-blue carpets. Elaborate crystal lights cast
a bright glow on the proceedings. Joshua could almost imagine himself in some Victorian London establishment. Barrington Grier
had told him once that was the effect he wanted, quiet and dignified, fostering an atmosphere of confidence. The broad window
behind the auctioneer spoilt the period effect somewhat; stars spun lazily outside, while Falsia, Mirchusko’s sixth moon,
slowly traversed the panorama, a sliver of aquamarine.
“Three hundred and fifty thousand, once.”
Falsia was eclipsed by the auctioneer’s chest.
“Three hundred and fifty thousand, twice.” The antique wooden gavel was raised. Falsia reappeared, peeping out over the man’s
shoulder.
“Final time.”
There was a smack as the gavel came down. “Sold to Ms Melissa Strandberg.”