Quiet Invasion (16 page)

How about rule of law? Employment for lawyers and bureaucrats mostly. A person who felt unjustly treated could seek satisfaction in courts run on the same principles as any other business. The ones in which the arbitration and settlement procedures were seen as just and fair would have the most subscribers and work with the greatest number of private security companies. Those who didn’t like the justice of one system could subscribe to another which they read about and evaluated in-stream.

The central government did not need to exist. It was an idea from previous centuries. It was like the great North American weed called kudzu. It had invaded so long ago no one remembered where it came from. They just knew it was there, and they spent a lot of time, effort, and money dealing with it because no one knew how to get rid of it. No, because no one was ready to do what was necessary to get rid of it.

Well, the good news was that dealing with the U.N. was a lot easier than dealing with kudzu. All you had to do to get rid of government was say no. Simple. Direct. Say no, show the bureaucrats the nearest ship out, and get on with your life. Your life, your money, your future. Yours. No one to say who could and could not build on the planets, no endless rounds of licensing for ships and shipping, no one to hedge or ban scientific research that frightened them, no one to ever again supervise bloodbaths like the U.S. Disarmament.

Ben had had no blaze-of-light revelation. He’d started reading because he almost couldn’t help himself. Fuller and Fuller’s ideas were all anybody talked about. He had to find out for himself whether they would work or not.

The answer shocked and scared him. It could work. The free flow of information was the key, just as Fuller said. The U.N. had been, in some ways, a necessary stage to eliminate the barriers imposed by nation states and national currency. But now that it had nothing external to fight against, it had turned around, like all powerful governments had throughout history, and started to feed on its own, and people put up with it because they couldn’t see any way past it.

Bradbury and its people could show them. Bradbury could push the U.N. out the door and thrive. When they did, the rest of the worlds would see that it could be done, and done safely and quickly. It would start with Mars, out on the frontier, but it would spread all the way back down to Mother Earth herself.

It should have worked, but they moved too fast. Fuller got bad advice, or maybe he just got overconfident, but they overestimated the number of their followers in Bradbury. Too many people just stood around and did nothing. Too many other people actively tried to undermine the revolution and were judged dangerous to the implementation of the new system. Transporting all the dissenters back to Earth turned out to be a bigger problem than had been anticipated. During the process of transportation, someone got sloppy and didn’t run safety checks on all the ships that carried the dissenters away.

Then there were the ones who misunderstood what was happening and decided to take charge in their own way before the security systems could be established. Revenge had overwhelmed the fragile court corporations.

None of that changed the basic principles. Fuller’s ideas still held. But twenty years had passed and no one else had found the time or the place to put them into practice.

Until now.

Ben stared at the clouds displayed on his view screen. They billowed and boiled, filling the world outside. Even after so long, they could still be awe inspiring.

When he’d first stood inside the Discovery, his thoughts had tumbled over each other, almost too fast for him to follow. Awe, fear, wonder, humility, and then, slowly, almost shamefully, came the idea that he might be able to use this great thing that had happened. This might be the catalyst for the shift in thinking that would be needed to finish what Ted Fuller had started.

The more he thought, the more he saw and uncovered on his own, the more certain he became. This was it. It just had to be managed, that was all. Not suppressed, not lied about, just managed. Everything could be made to work out for the best for all the worlds, including Venus, if they just moved carefully.

Well?
He tapped his fingers restlessly against his thigh.
If you’re going to do it, do it. If not, put your file away and go get dressed up for the yewners.

Ben leaned forward and jacked the case into the table. He set up a quick search code, attached his best encryption to it, and dropped it into the queue for the next com burst to Earth. Then he got up to shave and change for the reception.

One of the features of the stream that few people bothered to take notice of was that if you constructed your packet correctly, you did not actually have to store your information anywhere. So many different, completely untended machines were constantly receiving and rerouting data that it was possible to keep a packet bouncing between them. Ben had several packets that had been flying from relay to relay for twenty years now. He’d lost three to badly timed hardware upgrades that he’d failed to get wind of, but other than that, his most secret information bounced happily around the solar system, untraceable, not only because of its encryptions, but because it seldom landed anywhere long enough for any one machine to make a complete record of its contents.

The disadvantage of this was that it took awhile to find the packet, once you did go looking for it.

Ben returned to his case, clean shaven and dressed in tunic and trousers of a suitably conservative blue-gray. A matching cap with black beading covered his head. He checked the screen display.

Success.

His searcher had recovered the packet in one of the repeater relays between Earth and the Moon and had rerouted it back to Venus. Ben accessed his four-tier decryption key and added the password.

The packet opened to display the face of an aging man with dark hair, pale skin, a suggestion of a beard, and mud-brown eyes under heavy brows. His name was Paul Mabrey. He had assorted degrees from assorted universities. He worked as a risk assessor for various small companies, spending his time traveling from colony to colony, mostly on Mars, looking at new market niches and good suppliers. He took med-trips and vacations back on Mother Earth regularly but not excessively. He had been in Bradbury during the rebellion, and while it was felt that he had some sympathies toward Fuller’s faction, surveillance on him had been turned off over fifteen years ago because he never did anything remotely suspicious.

He was, in fact, the man Ben used to be.

Once upon a time, Ben, then called Paul Mabrey, had been dismissed by the yewners who had taken over Bradbury as being of little consequence. They did, however, post automatic surveillance over him, as they did every rebel, just in case. For three years, Paul behaved himself meekly, like a good defeated puppy. He watched his friends jailed, watched Fuller hauled back to Earth for trial and incarceration. He watched the yewners take up posts on every street corner and randomly search the passersby. He watched the taxes go up and the licenses go down and travel get restricted. He sat in his apartment at night and hated himself because there was nothing he could do, not now, not ever again, because the yewners would never really take their eyes off him. The free flow of information that Fuller had touted as the route to the future would make it impossible for him to hide.

He had one thing left to him. The yewners had not quite uncovered the extent of what Paul had done for Fuller. He’d specialized in helping make clip-outs—in-stream ghosts of people who wound up on various payrolls and mailing lists and who, eventually, wound up with various levels of access and permission to various segments of the communications networks. When the uprising came, those clip-outs gave the software corruption teams that Paul was a part of a handle on the U.N. networks, which he used to shut them down.

Minor stuff, really, a low-level hacker trick.

But what he labored over at night, almost every night, was not. It was researched and tested, a little bit here, a little bit there. It was years of learning under Fuller’s best, a few minor bribes, a couple of slow, painful system break-ins, and a whole lot of patience.

Then, Paul received notice that his surveillance period was up and he was declared rehabilitated. Good luck to you, Mr. Mabrey.

Paul, grimly satisfied, had closed the letter and gone in-stream to request permission politely to travel to Giant Leap on business. The yewner bureaucrat on the other end was in a benevolent mood that day and let him go.

Two weeks later, Paul Mabrey left for Luna. He arrived at Giant Leap and stayed for three months, working on various consulting jobs and contracts. Then—according to all available records, anyway—Paul Mabrey went home.

That same day, a man named Bennet Godwin, who had—according to all available records—arrived in Giant Leap on Luna from the Republic of Manhattan space port, got a job as a geologist for Dorson Mines, Inc.

No one knew how many clip-outs floated around the stream. Usually they were used by people wishing to perpetrate some kind of fraud. They were vague constructs, tied to a few vital records and easily torn apart or scared away by semidetermined scrutiny.

A very few were like Paul, who sat in-stream and stared at Ben out of eyes that could have been his own. Paul had been nurtured and cared for. He had aged as Ben had aged. He had subscriptions to the major news services and joined in-stream discussions on various items of interest. He had credit accounts, and he used them. He drew pay from companies he consulted for. He vacationed, theatered, and kept apartments in Giant Leap and Burroughs. He even had personal contact codes, which a simulation would answer and alert Ben when they were used.

Now, it was time for Paul to come back to life. Paul was going to get hold of some very interesting information and pass it along to a few old associates. Paul still had a few tricks up his sleeve to keep the yewners from noticing he’d revived some acquaintances that were still, after all those years, under surveillance and travel restrictions.

Paul still had a chance to prove he was not useless.

Ben, heedless of the time, hunched over his briefcase and started typing.

“…with mutual cooperation and free exchange of ideas we will together unravel this, the greatest of human mysteries.”

Vee applauded politely, along with the rest of the gathering. Dr. Failia smiled and stepped out from behind the podium, shifting immediately from solemn speech-giver to smiling greeter-of-friends-and-strangers. Vee found herself grinning. The speeches had been well delivered and short, the food was good, and the view…the view was stunning.

Vee hadn’t stood in Venera’s observation hall for eight years. She had forgotten the impact of being surrounded by the huge, constantly shifting landscapes of gray, white, and gold created by the clouds. Observation Hall was ringed, from the white floor to domed ceiling, with a seamless window of industrial quartz, so it was possible to stand and stare until you felt as if you were alone and exposed in the midst of that boiling alien mist.

Not that that’s going to happen tonight.
Vee felt her mouth quirk up.
The place is way too full.

A couple of hundred Venerans plus the investigative team circulated around tables loaded with appropriate predinner snacks and beverages. Stykos and Wray, camera bands firmly in place, flanked the tall dark woman who Vee vaguely remembered was head of meteorology. Lindi Manzur stood in front of the window, a little too close to Troy Peachman, who was gesturing grandly as he expounded about something. Vee smiled softly and turned away from their private moment.

Everyone in the gathering had made an effort to show some gold or silk. Vee herself had been torn between wanting to put on a good show for the cameras and not wanting to break the conservative veneer she’d been carefully cultivating during the entire week-and-a-half flight up here.

In the end, she’d selected a green-and-gold paneled skirt, with a green jacket trimmed with gold piping and an abbreviated gold turban with a green veil falling down behind to cover her unbound hair. It looked good enough to make the story cut, but not so outrageous as to offend academic sensibility.

Apparently, however, she was not circulating enough. Out of the corner of her eye, Vee saw Dr. Failia making a beeline for her.

“Good evening, Dr. Hatch. Thank you for coming.”

Vee shook her hand. “I’m sorry I’m late, Dr. Failia. I’d forgotten just how big Venera is.”

“After a week on a ship, it can take some getting used to, yes.” Dr. Failia nodded sympathetically. “Tell me, did you have a chance to review the visuals we’ve taken of the Discovery?”

“Yes, in between learning how not to get squashed and burned when we go down.” Vee smiled to let Dr. Failia know she was kidding.

Dr. Failia laughed once, politely. “And did you form any initial plans as to how to proceed?”

“Yes. The first thing we need is a spectrographic analysis, to find out what kind of laser we’re dealing with.” Vee warmed as she talked, excited about the possibilities her research might open. “Then, I think…” Vee’s gaze strayed over Dr. Failia’s shoulder. Michael Lum, the security chief, waited two steps behind her.

Dr. Failia followed her gaze. “Excuse me, Dr. Hatch,” she said hastily. “Please, help yourself to the buffet.”

Dr. Failia crossed quickly to Lum, who murmured something in her ear. They both looked up at the entranceway, just as Bennet Godwin walked through. Failia frowned and strode over to the latecomer.

Uh-oh
, Vee turned away and skirted the conversational knots as she made her way to the food tables.
Somebody’s getting demerits for tardiness.

The buffet was a good spread, with the Western traditional cheese and crackers, but also with couscous, falafel, and various flat breads, triangles of toast with what looked like mushroom pate, miniature empenadas, and some blue pastry things that Vee, with all her experience of artsy receptions, couldn’t put a name to. Glasses of wine flanked bowls of ginger and fruit punches, as well as silver samovars of tea and coffee.