Spin the Sky (13 page)

Their orders for pillows and sheets and enormous togas kept the Satsuma Silk Colony afloat in the early days. Vegan Vineyard Colony could have sold Hedonia every drop they made and they would still need more wine. This sort of indulgence is not to my own tastes, but before the War there were many interesting experimental societies built around various concepts of nirvana. To my knowledge, Rasta Nation is the only one to have survived with its original precepts intact.

Not surprisingly, the Hedonians didn’t make it through the War. Until it was recolonized, most Spacers assumed Earther military had, at some point, attacked Hedonia and killed all the inhabitants. The new Hedonia colonists found that, in fact, an EMP bomb hit the orbital’s hull. The original colonists either drank themselves to death or died in their own filth after their robots broke down.

During the war, China and America had launched millions of the EMP bombs to disrupt Spacers’ electrical devices in much the same way land mines are sown in the soil of Earth.

Even today, an unsuspected shuttle will run into one or an old EMP bomb will drift into the side of an orbital and go off. Then they’ll be lucky if they don’t lose lives or at least significant portions of their non-essential electric systems. Fortunately, most orbitals are equipped with life support systems hardened against the radiation of space, but no one wants to take a chance that radiation hardening will fail to protect them from an EMP bomb. This is one reason is why the junker ships and their endless cleansing sweeps of the Spacer’s spheres are vital.

One of the jobs we had on New Hedonia was cleaning up the over-indulged dead. However, I quickly negotiated a place for us with the hunters on the Ag Level. It seemed that a parting gift from the original epicureans were roaming packs of tigers, lions and bears.

We never did find out why they wanted to keep predators. The EMP bomb wiped any logs the departed sensualists might have left, if they even bothered. Most of the new colonists thought the dead Hedonians fought the animals against each other to bet on the winner.

I assumed they took a perverse pleasure in eating the creatures. On hunts, the Captain liked to sing a nonsense rhyme about “Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!” He never would explain the obvious amusement he derived from that song.

Hunter duty was one of the better positions for grunts on New Hedonia. Grunts who answered the call for workers were housed in the lowest of accommodations and fed discarded yeast vat growth while the new colonists brought the food manuvats back online. It was not palatable.

However, on hunter duty in the Ag level, you regularly walked through treasure troves of delicacies no longer available on Earth.

While I do not subscribe to overeating and I highly recommend that you avoid it as well, I could spend a lifetime among their mushroom farms. The fungus had run wild and crossbred. The delights I used to be able to scoop up with one hand were truly succulent. And the smell of the jasmine fields alone were enough to transport you to a higher plane of existence.

Whatever other degradations and misfortunes we suffered there, a part of me yearns to return to that idyllic pasture and drink tea among the wild fungus and hear again the growls of carnivores thirsting for my heart’s blood.

Within two months, we had distinguished ourselves as being capable people who were best used to the fullest of our capabilities. This is why you must find friends and a partner as you travel the skies, young man. Life is infinitely easier if you band together with others who are as smart and capable as yourself. It is very important, however, to choose your companions wisely. Only allow those who lift you up to attach themselves to you.

You will forgive my impertinence, but you have your father’s spark. It is immediately apparent. People will be drawn to you. They will see your ability and your success and seek to bind you to them, to use you for their own benefit. You must be very careful to choose those who do not drain your energies but instead replenish them.

As your father often said, “If you got their back, make sure they got yours or you’ll get your ass shot off.”

At any rate, your father caught the eye of Seersee herself and she elevated him to chief engineer of the life support systems. Captain immediately named me his second-in-command over her vehement objections.

I assumed it was the typical Caucasian fear of Asians. If you have studied your history, you know that China won the Economy War over a hundred years ago. Although the Worlder Wars and then the Spacer War largely negated the victory, the fear still persists. I do not take it personally, even when they make it a personal attack.

We were comfortable and making a more than adequate amount of money. Captain and I had enough knowledge of Spacer life support systems to get this one running at optimal conditions quite quickly. We were lucky that the original Hedonians had spared themselves no expense on the construction of this vessel.

It was obvious from the design that they wanted a system that needed very little management. Thus, life support and the Ag Level had continued to run relatively smoothly for the years the orbital lay devoid of human life.

We did very well there for several months. Seersee continued to esteem your father and give him access to luxuries that the rest of the colonists did not see. It was not until almost too late that I perceived her interest was more than just professional respect.

I was using my off-work hours to engage in a leisurely perusal of the Hedonia genetic database. I’ve always been interested in charting transposon drift in closed genetic pools. I believe I have an algorithm to accurately map the effects, but that is just my little hobby.

Your father came to me and said, “Asia, we’ve got to blow this joint.”

One of the things I’ve always appreciated in a man is the ability to come to a succinct point. As I had not spoken to him in a few weeks, I was unclear whether he desired to leave or to demolish the orbital with explosives.

I awaited an explanation.

“These religious colonists are barking mad,” said Captain, scanning our surroundings for those who might overhear us.

Then he looked embarrassed and muttered, “And it turns out their great leader, Seersee, seems to have the hots for me and I’m running out of ways to put her off.”

I nodded.

I observed previously that the Captain has, on occasion, attracted the notice of women who see him as a potential sexual conquest. I do not pretend to know whether your father was sexually faithful to your mother. Captain certainly had many opportunities for extramarital conjugal interactions. If he did not feel he would be allowed to return to your family, I cannot imagine what would keep him from seeking comfort of that kind, if he so chose. Unless, of course, he loved your mother enough to remain faithful to her despite the probability that he would never see her again. That is the sort of wildly illogical thing Captain would do, on occasion.

I do know that he did not wish to become intimate with this Seersee woman.

“She’s totally insane and not in the fun way,” Captain hissed. “I wouldn’t let anything I wanted to keep near her nethers. I’m pretty sure hers has teeth.”

Those were, I believe, his exact words.

I took his point immediately. In the past few weeks, it was easy to see that the social harmony of New Hedonia was amiss and not a fertile ground for enlightened self-interest. Also, all the women I had met were rather aggressively heterosexual and that was not to my tastes either. Thus I was happy to leave.

We had accumulated enough wealth to purchase a shuttle ticket off New Hedonia and live fairly comfortably for a few months if we were not excessive. Originally, Captain wanted to have something a bit more substantial before returning to Ithaca, but by then he was so sick with longing for his home that he was ready to pull on a voidsuit and swim for it, if that’s what it took.

The difficulty was that the shuttles did not come to New Hedonia anymore. All outbound flights stopped a few weeks prior. We heard conflicting stories as to why.

The New Hedonians said there was a problem with the shuttle company and they needed all outbound ships for important colony transport. The grunts said it was because they weren’t letting anybody out.

I acted as an unofficial medical advisor to the grunts on New Hedonia since the leaders of the colony did not feel grunts merited access to medical attention, any more than they deserved access to clean water, warm living quarters or fresh food. Thus, the other grunts kept me apprised of conditions throughout the colony.

While we lived fairly well, we were apparently among the few that did. Seersee was very persistent in her attempts to convert all those on New Hedonia to her religion. Those that did not were treated even more poorly than those that did.

There were many who had joined the Temperance cult that also wanted to leave. They had been promised a Utopia of simple living. Instead, they received long work hours and cramped quarters while Seersee and her friends frolicked among the truffle fields and swam in the river of chocolate. It was the typical abuse of power seen during the unraveling of personality cults.

If you have not studied such social dynamics, let me simply recommend that if you should find yourself in a similar situation, try to get out quickly. You don’t want to be around for the downfall of a religious figure. However brief the bloodbath, it is best to be absent when the bullets start flying.

Once I explained to the Captain the current situation within the colony, he set his jaw and got that steely look in his eye. I had seen that look before.

“We have to get out,” he said.

“Exactly.”

“We can put together a ship easily enough if we bribe a few people to look the other way while we get it together and leave,” Captain said.

“The bribes have already been paid.”

“We cannot leave these people here to suffer at the hands of that tyrant woman.”

“Wait, what?” By my tally, the number of people wanting to leave this vessel was probably in the realm of four hundred. To sneak ourselves out would be the work of a few days. A mass exodus would be impossible and probably get us killed.

“We can’t sneak that many out,” I told him.

Captain held a hand up, majestically silencing all objections. “We cannot leave these people here to slowly starve to death in the cold, watching their children sicken without care. They came looking for a better life. The Earth may have no pity, but Spacers must be better than that. We need to find a way to get them out.”

Perhaps I am paraphrasing. It has been many years. Now, it is in times like these that it is very important to have a thorough understanding of who you are, my child.

Your father was a brilliant man and a leader, but the flawless execution of a truly clever plan has always been my specialty and my passion. I am the type of person who gets things done. Your father was the type of person who decided what needed to be done. Accordingly, I followed your father.

Captain decided we needed to get four hundred grunts and ourselves off an orbital full of hostile religious fanatics?

My job was to get it done.

I explained my plan to Captain and the grunts.

It took me three days.

“The gods are punishing the arrogance of Seersee,” screamed the grunts on the first day as a dozen tiny tornados ripped through the jasmine fields, splattering the delicate blossoms across the
foie gras
geese before ripping their cages apart and sending them whirling into the walls.

“God is punishing us for our lack of faith. We must let Cesar and his unbeliever grunts go and return to the true faith,” cried the New Hedonia followers of Seersee on the second day, when a scorching heat destroyed the lotus blossoms before they could be stuffed with cheese and fried in truffle oil. It was a main food source for the believers.

“If you don’t stop messing with the weather, I will personally rip your fingernails out,” Seersee fumed at me on the third day, when rain washed away the chocolate river.

I fell to my knees in front of her and the hidden video filming the entire incident and broadcast it instantly to the rest of New Hedonia and the nearby colonies. Winning a revolution is all about media coverage, child.

“As God is my witness, I know not where these troubles come from. Please let the grunts go so that God will return his favor to New Hedonia. I fear for all of us if the unbelievers stay.”

I’d converted to the Temperance cult the minute they asked me. It was my eighteenth religious conversion. When I get to twenty, I’m going to throw myself a party.

Seersee only scowled at me and swept out, giving Captain an evil look as he stood in the doorway, doing his best bewildered and hurt expression.

“On the bright side,” he commented after she’d left and I’d rebroadcast the recording on all the local channels and uploaded it to the Ether. “She’s stopped flirting with me.”

He gave me a thumbs-up before trailing after her to apologize for all the fuss and suggest again that we should go, leaving her and her believers to the creation of her Utopian Temperance. I’ve seen many Utopias here in the orbitals and I don’t recommend them. They are nearly always a disappointment.

At the end of the third day, the shuttles showed up, empty and ready to take us all. People sympathetic to our cause were manning the docking bay. They welcomed the pilots enthusiastically. The pilots said they’d been forbidden to dock by Seersee, but they’d seen our posts on the Ether. All the Spacers were talking about our plight, so they decided to try again.

By the time Seersee and her men came raging to the docks, two shuttles full of grunts had already left and the other two would be full in less than half an hour.

It was tense.

Seersee’s men opened fire into the crowd and there were injuries. The Captain roared and flung himself in front of the guns. That stopped them. Seersee glared at us all for a long minute as he walked slowly towards her with his palms raised in submission. Captain leaned close to her and whispered something in her ear. Seersee looked at him sharply, thought for a moment and then nodded once. She and her men retreated.