The Sword and the Plough (5 page)

* * *

The Royal Family had won the hearts and
minds of Earth’s peoples right from the start.

Elizabeth III had been the perfect choice
to begin the new dynasty. Tall, blue-eyed, raven-haired, and with a
film star’s fortunate combination of features, she was ‘every inch
a queen’
– as tabloids
around the world had gushed. The sudden swell of popular interest
in the
idea
of
monarchy – a notion that had been redundant for some time –
persuaded the new world officials of the wisdom to restore a
connection with the past and manufacture a folklore that bound the
global population to the new proposals.

They called in historians to look back to the
first Elizabeth. Everything about the ancient queen came under
scrutiny, and many of the trappings from her era were uplifted to
the new regime.

The new queen called upon her nearest
relatives to support her, distant relatives at home and abroad were
reinstated, ancient names and lineages from other nations were
resurrected, and a broad ranging modern aristocracy came into being
to assist the new world administration.

If the petty national type-castings and
hatreds steadily declined under the new one planet concept, so too
did the host of ancient faiths and doctrines. Humanism became the
new conviction – such were the expectations and aspirations the new
world regime represented.

* * *

Lars leaned back, his hands clasped behind
his head, and considered his sister as she spoke on about the queen
and her riches.

Helen had untied her ponytail and shaken
loose her hair so that it framed her smooth-skinned oval face.
Despite the rigours of her field hand tasks, her home made creams
and lotions had kept her skin soft and feminine. However, she had
not been able to stop the black dust from griming her hands and
fingernails.

She looked older somehow, with her hair down,
and once more Lars reminded himself that his sister was no longer
the skinny little kid with the yellow ponytail who worked as hard
as he did in the new fields every day. Rather, she was a young
woman with an independent future of her own. Again, he felt the
responsibility he bore as her older brother and the only family
that she had.

Her words faded from his consciousness as
his mind drifted. Five years earlier, their parents, Hannah and
Sven Kelmutt, had died in a shuttlecraft crash on the eve of their
long dreamed of holiday departure for the home planet they had
never seen – Earth. Since then, brother and sister had worked as
equals on the new farm. The only inequality had occurred when Lars
insisted that Helen continue with her education. Despite her
protests, insisting she was his equal, Lars had seen to it that
Helen attended the school in the nearby town of Vegar at least once
a week.

* * *

Lars must have closed his eyes briefly, for
suddenly he was aware of his sister’s voice as shrill as a banshee
in his ear.

“Lars, you’re asleep!” Her look had assumed a
fierce scowl. “Is that how you listen to me?”

Then, at once, she was laughing as he groped
for an answer.

“
I was going on a bit – I know.” She gave
an exaggerated sigh. “Just girlish dreams.” Her sapphire eyes
looked at him shrewdly. “By the way, what were you thinking
about?”

“When?”

“Just now.”

“I was thinking what an attractive sister I
have,” Lars answered truthfully.

“Liar!” she growled in fake anger. Then
quizzically, her head cocked to one side. “What else about me?”

Lars shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know –
remembering mostly, I guess. Remembering when we were young and our
parents were still alive and how much I miss them. What dreams and
hopes they would have had for us. And how, here we are now, working
from dawn to dusk at the ploughs.” He paused, all at once somewhat
sheepish. “I’m sorry; I suppose you often think of them too.” He
shook his head. “How different everything was then.”

Helen returned a gentle smile. “You remember
them better than I do, because you’re older,” she said softly. “To
me, our parents sometimes seem unreal, as though I’d read about
them somewhere, or seen them in an old movie.

“
Oh, I don’t mean that, exactly,” she said,
smiling at his bemused look. “But the truth is, you and I have
worked this farm for five years now – nearly a half of my
remembered lifetime – and most of what it is now…” she swept a hand
across the vista of black fields around them, “is what you and I
have sweated into it. I guess it just seems to me it’s always been
that way.”

“I know,” Lars said, trading his frown for a
smile. “Sometimes the shortness of my memory worries me a little
too. We are all the family that they had, so when we forget them… ”
He left the thought hanging.

“I remember you were their pride and joy,”
Helen declared. “Their clever boy who was off to an Earth
university to become a famous scientist.” She smiled, her blue eyes
twinkling with sudden mischief. “I wonder if I was ever jealous,”
she mused.

“And I recall you were their darling little
girl who would never wear any of those frilly dresses they bought
for you.”

“Ouch! Don’t remind me. You know I can’t
abide any of that silly female stuff.”

All at once, Helen leaned forward in a
conspiratorial way, changing the subject.

“You know Amanda is keen on you, don’t you?”
she said in stage whisper from behind her hand.

“Amanda?”

“Yes, Amanda.” A skeptical look flickered
across her face. “Oh, don’t pretend you aren’t aware of the most
attractive and intelligent young woman in all of Vegar or Trion for
that matter. Not to mention being the only child of Ben Kassada,
owner of the Vegar Bank.” She cocked her head to one side. “Or are
you just confused as to which one of your many admirers she
is?”

Lars laughed. “No, I know who Amanda is. I
don’t think there’s a male, young or old, within a hundred
kilometre radius of Vegar who doesn’t, but I didn’t think she’d
remember me. We haven’t met on more than a couple of occasions
since school.”

“
As the sister of the most eligible young
bachelor in the Vegar district,” Helen went on. “I am often sought
out by nubile young women for the most serious of
tete-a-tetes
. Not
about
you
, of
course,” she added with a snicker. “But you sure manage to come
into the conversation a lot.”

Two bright blue eyes sparked mischief at him,
and she began to wring her hands and speak in a plaintive tone, her
voice quavering.

“
Oh sir, are you going to get married and
leave me a poor orphan? Or worse – make me live with some cruel
sister-in-law?” She hung her head and pretended to sob, wiping away
imaginary tears. “Oh, unkind sir!” she wailed. “Oh, wretched
me!”

Lars stifled his laughter and assumed his
most stony-faced look.

“Young lady,” he began, in the deepest tone
he could muster.

“
Oh, sir speaks – I swoon…”

Lars endeavoured to frown sternly as his part
of the act, but his sister was at her thespian best, and he could
not.

“
Young lady,” he began again with a grin.
“I have been thinking seriously about your future and I have made
my decision. When I get married, you will be enrolled in Miss
Higginbottom’s
Finishing School for Young
Gentlewomen
. There you will
be instructed in all the womanly arts, such as scrubbing floors,
washing dishes, darning socks, et cetera, until you be forty-two,
whereupon, if you fail the domestic duties exam, you will need to
repeat the course again.”

“
Oh, sir!” Helen cried, taking one of his
hands in both of hers. “You are too kind. A true gentleman, from
the soles of your feet to the top of your head – the latter of
which I am about to
knock
right off your shoulders.”

Suddenly, her look was dangerous. “Lars,
if you ever expect to
survive
your nuptials, you will kindly inform your new
wife or wives, if that be your fancy, that I, Helen the First, hold
number one place in the Kelmutt household.”

They both laughed then, carefree and at ease,
satisfied with the moment.

* * *

The afternoon sun beat down on the black
soil of the
new fields
. Beyond the green shade of the trailer’s awning the
landscape shimmered in the burning heat, the thin line between
earth and sky dissolving into silvery waves.

Lars let his gaze wander. To the east, he
saw the green splinters of young grass burgeoning in a field of
black soil, which had been solid rock two months before. He was
feeling again that satisfaction of a job well done, the pride in
another
new field
in growth. Then, even as he saw it, he heard Helen’s
startled cry as she witnessed it too. To the north, billowing pall
upon pall, thick black smoke was forming into a tall dark column
above where they knew the town of Vegar lay. And even as they
watched, two more columns began roiling angrily, ascending thick
and ominous into the cloudless sky.

Planet TRION
– ‘The Garden Party’

Greenwich date: January 30,
2175
– 12:47
hours

Meanwhile, while Lars and Helen had been
toiling at their rock ploughs in the heat, others had been
suffering no less in their own way a few kilometres to the
north.

“Another garden party, eh? An afternoon of
fun and games for them, and an afternoon of bleeding boredom for
us,” a gravelly voice grizzled. “And this bloody heat ain’t helping
things none.”

A gruff grunt acknowledged this
complaint.

The remark was from one of two sentries clad
in the queen’s red. The men were both in their early twenties,
spruce and clean-shaven. The burnished silver of their helmets and
buttons glinted brightly, reflecting the intense light of Trion’s
binary sun.

They were standing guard on the white marble
terrace overlooking the gardens at the governor’s mansion. Below
them, the garden party was in full swing; a painter’s palette of
bright coloured dresses and scarlet uniforms. The tangled sounds of
music, voices and laughter floated up to the two young sentries,
along with the delicious aromas of the food-laden tables.

“There must be over two hundred people down
there,” the first speaker continued. “My Earth, but my mouth’s
beginning to water at the smell of all that food. You know, you’d
think someone’d notice us standing up here and invite us down for a
bite.”

The man’s companion gave a sardonic laugh.
“They can’t even see us, mate. We’re just part of the scenery.”

The first speaker glanced down at his
uniform. “You mean they can’t see the queen’s red?” he queried, his
eyes wide in mock disbelief. He shook his head. “And to think I
went to all that trouble ironin’ and polishin’ for nothing.
My
comb morion
alone took me almost an hour, the damn heavy
thing.”

He pushed back his silvered helmet and wiped
the sweat from his brow.

The
comb morion
– the ancient helmet style with its brim
curved up front and back, like a boat’s bow and stern, and its
crest or comb – was another design link with the ancient royal,
Elizabeth I. However, the contemporary model was lighter and
plasarm
coated. Plasarm
was the latest in flexible plastic-metal amalgams. The latter had
many uses, including armour. Soldiers also wore a plasarm-coated
cuirass in combat situations.

“Just think, if I’d known that,” the first
speaker went on. “I could have come along in my weekend civvies and
mixed in.”

His comrade sneered. “Yeah? You ain’t never
gonna make it down onto that lawn. You need to be born there or
have enough money to pay someone to say you was born there.”

The first soldier grinned. “Oh well, I can
dream, can’t I?” He mopped his brow again and glanced up at the
sky. “By the bones of the ancients, but those bloody two suns are
killers, ain’t they?”

A crusty grumble acknowledged.

To the south, the direction in which they
were facing, they could just see the dark tops of the old fort’s
parapets – the present base for the Vegar garrison. The fort had
been the first structure built on Trion one hundred years earlier.
Some few kilometres farther to the south, they knew, lay Vegar
itself, chief town and seat of government on Trion.

“Hey up, look you there!” The first speaker
was leaning forward in his eagerness to see something. “Whew! Makes
your mouth water just to look at her, don’t it?”

A young woman, with regal bearing, was making
her way toward the governor’s shade tent. She was dressed in a
full-length gown that shimmered in the midday suns like gold. Her
auburn hair cascaded to her shoulders in lustrous waves. On her
head, she wore a tiara that sparkled with a wealth of diamonds. The
crowd parted for her like the Red Sea for Moses.

“
Wow, look at her. Now, that’s an
aristocrat if ever I saw one.” He cast a sideways wink at his
fellow sentry, at the same time uttering a low whistle. “And look
at that yella dress,” he continued. “I sure wouldn’t mind a squeeze
of what that’s holding. She’s some beauty ain’t she? Look at that
figure! Be worth a month’s pay and then some, eh, to cuddle up
with
her
?” The
young sentry’s words tumbled out almost incoherently in his
eagerness.