Prisoners of Tomorrow (96 page)

Nobody talked any more about annexing Franklin. Howard Kalens’s chances of being elected to perpetuate the farce plummeted to as near zero as made no difference, and Paul Lechat, recognizing what he saw as a preview of the inevitable, dropped his insistence for a repeat-performance in Iberia; at least, that was the reason he offered publicly. Ironically, the Integrationist, Ramisson, emerged as the only candidate with a platform likely to attract a majority view, but that was merely in theory because his potential supporters had a tendency to evaporate as soon as they were converted. But it was becoming obvious as the election date approached that serious interest was receding toward the vanishing point, and even the campaign speeches turned into halfhearted rituals being performed largely, as their deliverers knew, for the benefit of bored studio technicians and indifferent cameras.

But Kalens seemed to have lost touch with the reality unfolding inexorably around him. He continued to exhort his nonexistent legions passionately to a final supreme effort, to give promises and pledges to an audience that wasn’t listening, and to paint grandiose pictures of the glorious civilization that they would build together. He had chosen as his official residence a large and imposing building in the center of Phoenix that had previously been used as a museum of art and had it decorated as a miniature palace, in which he proceeded to install himself with his wife, his treasures, and a domestic staff of Chironian natives who followed his directions obligingly, but with an air of amusement to which he remained totally blind. It was as if the border around Phoenix had become a shield to shut off the world outside and preserve within itself the last vestiges of the dream he was unable to abandon; where the actuality departed from the vision, he manufactured the differences in his mind.

He still retained some staunch adherents, mainly among those who had nowhere else to turn and had drawn together for protection. Among them were a sizable segment of the commercial and financial fraternity who were unable to come to terms with an acceptance that their way of life was finished; the
Mayflower II
’s bishop, presiding over a flock of faithful who recoiled from abandoning themselves to the evil ways of Chiron; many from every sector of society whose natures would keep them hanging on to the end regardless. Above all there remained Borftein, who had nowhere else to attach a loyalty that his life had made compulsive. Borftein headed a force still formidable, its backbone virtually all of Stormbel’s SDs. Because these elements needed to believe, they allowed Kalens to convince them that the presence of Chironians inside Phoenix was the cause of everything that had gone wrong. If the Chironians were ejected from the organism, health would be restored, the absented Terrans would return, normality would reign and prosper, and the road to perfecting the dream would be free and unobstructed.

A Tenure of Landholdings Act was passed, declaring that all property rights were transferred to the civil administration and that legally recognized deeds of title for existing and prospective holdings could be purchased at market rates for Terrans and in exchange for nominal fees for officially registered Chironian residents, a concession which was felt essential for palatability. Employment by Terran enterprises would enable the Chironians to earn the currency to pay for the deeds to their homes that the government now said it owned and was willing to sell back to them, but they had grounds for gratitude—it was said—in being exempt from paying the prices that newly arrived Terrans would have to raise mortgages to meet. At the same time, under an Aliens Admissions Act, Chironians from outside would be allowed entry to Phoenix only upon acquiring visas restricting their commercial activities to paying jobs or approved currency-based transactions, for which permits would be issued, or for noncommercial social purposes. Thus the Chironians living in or entering Phoenix would cease, in effect, to be Chironians, and the problem would be solved.

Violators of visa privileges would face permanent exclusion. Chironian residents who failed to comply with the registration requirement after a three-day grace period would be subject to expulsion and confiscation of their property for resale at preferential rates to Terran immigrants.

Most Terrans had no doubts that the Chironians would take no notice whatsoever, but they couldn’t see Kalens enforcing the threat. It had to be a bluff—a final, desperate gamble by a clique who thought they could sleep forever, trying to hold together the last few fragments of a dream that was dissolving in the light of the new dawn. “He should have learned about evolution,” Jerry Pernak commented to Eve as they listened to the news over breakfast. “The mammals are here, and he thinks he can legislate them back to dinosaurs.”

Bernard Fallows leaned alongside the sliding glass door in the living room and stared out at the lawn behind the apartment while he wondered to himself when he would be free to begin his new career at Port Norday. He had broached the subject to Kath, as he now knew she had guessed he would, and she had told him simply that the people there who had met him were looking forward to working with him. But he had agreed with Pernak and Lechat that a nucleus of people capable of taking rational control of events would have to remain available until the last possibility of extreme threats to the Chironians went away, and that Ramisson’s Integrationist platform, to which Lechat had now allied himself, needed support to allow the old order to extinguish itself via its own processes.

Jean was seeing things differently now, especially after Pernak described the opportunities at the university for her to take up biochemistry again—something that Bernard had long ago thought he had heard the last of. He turned his head to look into the room at where she was sitting on the sofa below the wall screen, introducing Marie to the mysteries of protein transcription—diagrams courtesy of Jeeves—and grinned to himself; she was becoming even more impatient than he was. Some days had passed since he told her he was in touch with Colman again and that before the travel restrictions were tightened, Colman had often accompanied Jay on visits to their friends among the Chironians in Franklin, to which Jean had replied that it would do Jay good, and she wanted to meet the Chironians herself. Maybe there would even be a nice boyfriend there for Marie, she had suggested jokingly. “A
nice
one,” she had added in response to Bernard’s astonished look. “Not one of those teenage Casanovas they’ve got running around. The line stays right there.”

Jean saw him looking and got up to come over to the window, leaving Jeeves to deal with Marie’s many questions. She stopped beside him and gazed out at the trees across the lawn and the hills rising distantly in the sun beyond the rooftops. “It’s going to be such a beautiful world,” she said. “I’m not sure I can stand much more of this waiting around. Surely it has to be as good as over.”

Bernard looked out again and shook his head. “Not until that ship up there is disarmed somehow.” After a pause he turned to face her again. “So it doesn’t scare you anymore, huh?”

“I don’t think it ever did. What I was afraid of was in my own head. None of it was out there.” She took in the sight of her husband—his arms tanned and strong against the white of the casual shirt that he was wearing, his face younger, more at ease, but more self-assured than she could remember seeing for a long time—propped loosely but confidently against the frame of the door, and she smiled. “Kalens may have to hide himself away in a shell,” she said. “I don’t need mine anymore.”

“So you’re happy you can handle it,” Bernard said.

“We
can handle anything that comes,” she told him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Celia Kalens straightened the kimono-styled black-silk top over her gold lamé evening dress, then sat back while a white-jacketed steward cleared the dinner dishes from the table. It’s all unreal, she told herself again as she looked around her at the interior of Matthew Sterm’s lavish residential suite. Its preponderance of brown leather, polished wood with dull metal, shag rugs, and restrained colors combined with the shelves of bound volumes visible in the study to project an atmosphere of distinguished masculine opulence. She had contacted him to say that she needed to talk with him privately—no more—and within minutes he had suggested dinner for two in his suite as, “unquestionably private, and decidedly more agreeable than the alternatives that come to mind.” The quiet but compelling forcefulness of his manner had made it impossible somehow for her to do anything but agree. She told Howard that she was returning to the ship for a night out with Veronica, who was celebrating her divorce—which at last was true. Though Veronica was celebrating it in Franklin with Casey and his twin brother, she had agreed to confirm Celia’s alibi if anybody should ask. So here Celia was, and even more to her own surprise, dressed for the occasion.

Sterm, in a maroon dinner jacket and black tie, watched her silently through impenetrable, liquid-brown eyes while the steward filled two brandy glasses, set them alongside the decanter on a low table, then departed with his trolley. Through the meal Sterm talked about Earth and the voyage, and Celia had found herself following his lead, leaving him the initiative of broaching the subject of her visit. Finally, he stood, came around the table, and moved her chair back for her to rise. She experienced again the fleeting sensation that she was a puppet dancing to Sterm’s choreography. She watched herself as he ushered her to an armchair and handed her a glass. Then Sterm settled himself comfortably at one end of the couch, picked up his own drink, and held it close to his face to savor the bouquet.

“To your approval, I trust,” he said. Celia had suggested a cognac earlier on, when Sterm had asked her preference for an after dinner liqueur.

She took a sip. It was smooth, warm, and mellowing. “It’s excellent,” she replied.

“I keep a small stock reserved,” Sterm informed her. “It is from Earth—the Grande Champagne region of the Charante. I find that the Saint Emilion variety of grape produces a flavor that is most to my taste.” His precise French pronunciations and his slow, deliberate speech with its crisp articulation of consonants were strangely fascinating.

“The white makes the best brandies, I believe,” Celia said. “And isn’t the amount of limestone in the soil very important?”

The eyebrows of Sterm’s regal, Roman-emperor’s face raised themselves in approval. “I see the subject is not unfamiliar to you. My compliments. Regrettably, rareness of quality is not confined to grapes.”

Celia smiled over her glass. “Thank you. It’s rare to find such appreciation.”

Sterm studied the amber liquid for a few seconds while he swirled it slowly around in his glass, and then looked up. “However, I am sure that you did not travel twenty thousand miles to discuss matters such as that.”

Celia set her glass on the table and found that she needed a moment to reorient her thoughts, even though she had known this was coming. “I’m concerned over this latest threat to evict Chironians from Phoenix. It’s not the bluff that many people think. Howard is serious.”

Sterm did not appear surprised. “They have merely to comply with the law to avoid such consequences.”

“Everyone knows they won’t. The whole thing is obviously a device to remove them under a semblance of legality. It’s a thinly disguised deportation order.”

Sterm shrugged. “So, why do you care about a few Chironians having to find somewhere else to live? They have an entire planet, most of which is empty. They will hardly starve.”

It wasn’t quite the answer that Celia had been prepared for. She frowned for a second, then reached for her glass. “The reaction that it might provoke worries me. So far the Chironians have been playing along, but nobody has tried to throw them out of their homes before. We’ve already seen examples of how they do not to hesitate to react violently.”

“That frightens you?”

“Shouldn’t it?”

“Hardly. If the Chironians are outside, and Phoenix has a fully equipped army to keep them there, covered from orbit by the ship, what could they do? Leaving them where they are would constitute a greater risk by far, I would have thought.”

“True, once they’re separated,” Celia agreed. “But how many more killings would we have to see before that was achieved?”

“And that bothers you?”

“Well—of course.”

“Really?” Sterm’s one word conveyed all the disbelief necessary; its undertone suggested that she reconsider whether she believed her answer either. “Come now, Celia, the realities of life are no strangers to either of us. We can be frank without fear of risking offense. The people live their lives and serve their purpose, and a few more or less will make no difference that matters. Now tell me again, who are you really worried about?”

Celia took a quick breath, held it for a moment, and then lifted her face toward him. “Very well. I’ve seen what happened to the corporal and to Padawski. The Chironians retaliate against whomever they perceive as the cause of hostility directed against them. If the evictions are enforced . . . well, it’s not difficult to see who the next target would be, is it.”

“You want me to prevail upon Howard to prevent his destroying himself.”

“If you want to put it that way.”

“What makes you imagine that I could?”

“You could talk to him. I know he listens to what you say. We’ve talked about things.”

“I see.” Sterm studied her face for what seemed like a long time. At last he asked in a strangely curious voice, “And if I did, what then, Celia?”

Celia was unable to reply. The answer lay behind a trapdoor in her mind that she had refused to open. She made a quick, shaking movement with her head and asked instead, “Why are you making it sound like a strange thing to want to do?”

“Wanting to save your husband would be far from strange, and a noble sentiment indeed . . . if it were true. But is it true?”

Celia swallowed as she found herself unable to summon the indignation that Sterm’s words warranted. “What makes you think it isn’t?” She avoided his eyes. “Why else would I be here?”