The Disinherited (8 page)

Aelanni, on the other hand, still spoke with a liquid accent which should have kept the asperity out of her voice but didn't. "What kind of lunatic asylum do you come from, anyway?" she demanded. "And how did the inmates ever manage to get into interplanetary space?"

DiFalco felt himself flush. Criticism from outside the family never makes comfortable listening, even—especially!—when one agrees with it. "Things were better a generation ago," he insisted, a little defensively. "That was when we started to get into space in a big way. But there were a lot of problems left over from the last century . . . ."
Shit! I'm starting to sound like Liz Hadley!
"The simple fact is, our system of public education had stopped educating the public. It was possible to get a first-rate education . . . but it was also possible to become a certified graduate without having learned anything except the right ideological slogans to parrot." He smiled sadly. "Standards had been lowered to the lowest common denominator in the name of 'equality'; but the end result was rigid social stratification, with an educated minority—including the people who took us into space—sitting precariously on top of a vast majority that was, by any meaningful definition, illiterate."

"By now," Kurganov added, "the literate minority has become so small as to be politically and culturally ignorable. And it is about to cease to exist altogether. The Social Justice party is pledged to eradicate all non-public alternatives in education. 'Equality' requires that illiteracy become universal!"

Aelanni shook her shining reddish-black head. "Incredible!"

"Not really," Miralann disagreed. "Something of the sort very nearly happened to our society between the Second and Third Global Wars, during the Trelalieuhiv ascendancy . . . ."

Varien waved him to silence. "This is all very interesting, I'm sure. But the immediate problem is this: we came seeking help from an advanced society which, it turns out, is busily reconverting itself into a primitive one." He clasped his hands behind him and began pacing. "And now, if I understand correctly, you are accepting my offer on behalf of your Project, without reference to the governments that sponsor it and whose uniforms you both wear." He paused and gave them a long look with those dark, dark eyes. And all at once, without any tricks of technological wizardry, he was no longer just a supercilious old fart.

"It goes without saying," he resumed, "that those governments would regard your actions as treasonous. But I am more concerned with how
you
will regard them. Will you be able to act wholeheartedly against all your training, all your conditioned loyalties? I must know, before we proceed one step further!"

DiFalco and Kurganov looked at each other for a moment, and then the former spoke. "I don't think there is a conflict, Varien. I still consider myself loyal to the United States of America—at least to what it
was
, and what the memory of it still means to anyone who believes that individual human beings have the right, and the responsibility, to rule themselves. As for our nations . . . well, all of us out here are about to become outcasts to them, by their own decision. But we'll be defending them, without their knowledge, against a threat they never dreamed existed. And we mean to return to them, one day. Whether they're prepared to welcome us then, only time will tell."

Kurganov spoke slowly. "Colonel DiFalco is right—probably even more right than he knows—about what his country once meant to everyone on our world who longed for what its people had but took for granted. That they have betrayed that memory does not in any way diminish it." He flashed his wry smile. "Any more than the
rodina
is diminished by all the tyrannies it has submitted to in the past, as it is about to submit once again. And as for me, personally . . ." He sighed. "In two months, my tour of duty here is over, and Colonel DiFalco assumes military command of RAMP. I will return to Earth and become director of the Russian branch of the Project's administrative structure. From there I will be able to expedite the supplying of whatever is needed to prepare for the departure. I will also be able to safeguard the secret. I will not, however, be able to depart with the fleet myself." DiFalco's eyes lowered. He had not yet cared to face up to this, though he had known it intellectually all along.

"You can be sure, however," the Russian continued quietly, "that the secret will continue to be kept." He and DiFalco exchanged a quick look; neither of them spoke, or needed to.

"Yes!" Varien resumed his pacing, oblivious to what had just passed. "With Colonel DiFalco in command here, and you so strategically positioned on Earth, it might just possibly work—especially if, as you say, practically everyone in this asteroid belt is as alienated from your rulers as you yourselves are. And I myself have—ahem!—some small experience in the art of bureaucratic concealment. Yes! I actually believe we can do it! At least," he added, brow furrowing with sudden worry, "we can do it in the two years you say your Project still has left. How can you be sure that this 'United States' won't withdraw its support before then?"

"The current administration, and the Libertarian Party that still controls the White House—the executive branch—have too much of a stake in it," DiFalco explained. "They'll continue to back it to the hilt. You see, the 'launch window' for Phoenix—the time we
have
to move it out of its orbit and start it on the parabolic transfer orbit that will intersect with Mars—happens to occur just before the next American general election. The administration is hoping that event will give it a political shot in the arm; they'll give us whatever we need to meet the deadline without too many questions asked, which is what makes the whole thing possible."

"You know best about these matters, of course," Varien said with a rather offhand graciousness. "But the greatest problem will be the melding of our technologies in those systems—notably the various applications of artificial gravity—that require components beyond your current ability to fabricate. Fortunately, I anticipated this when equipping this expedition. Our superconductors, for example—" He stopped abruptly, realizing he was rambling. "But there's no time to waste! We can begin at once to form an initial impression of what will be required. Aelanni, show Colonel DiFalco our engineering spaces while I discuss specifics with General Kurganov."

DiFalco emerged from the engineering hatch, drew a deep and shaken breath, and leaned on the railing below the wide viewport of transparent plastic that was nearly as strong as the molecularly aligned crystalline alloy of the hull.

"I trust you are favorably impressed, Eric," Aelanni said with a slight smile as she exited the hatch behind him. He reminded himself that the use of the given name alone did not carry an implication of familiarity for the Raehaniv; it was simply the usual way of addressing people. But her smile seemed genuine, and her voice held a warmth that the musical accent alone could not entirely account for. It somehow went with her coloring—against the backdrop of space, her hair seemed a warmer blackness . . . . He forced his mind back to practicalities.

"Yes, you might say that," he acknowledged. "This kind of fusion drive is only a theoretical possibility for us. The system we're building on Phoenix is a crude, brute-force approach—essentially an ongoing series of laser-detonated fusion explosions. So far, controlled fusion power has only been possible in huge installations; even our larger spacecraft still have fission powerplants. Earth itself mostly uses orbital-collected solar power." He paused with a preoccupied frown as he recalled what lay in store for Earth's space effort and, by extension, its civilization.

Aelanni sensed it. She spoke formally. "I wish to apologize for what I said earlier about your world, Eric. As an outsider, I have no right . . ."

He grimaced. "Oh, no. You were right on target. Which reminds me of something I've been wondering about. What do you Raehaniv use for a government?"

"Ever since the end of the Global Wars, we've had a world state presided over by what I believe you would call a constitutional monarch. The world was turning its back on change, and people were looking for continuiuty, for a sense of permanence. All our nations but one, Tranaethein, had expelled their old royal houses by then; but the Arathrain, or king, of Tranaethein, was related to all the principal old dynasties and had some sort of claim to many vacant . . . thrones? And he was a remarkable individual, after a series of nonentities his family had produced—'natural constitutional monarchs' someone unkindly called them. He was a charismatic leader of the move toward global unity, and one nation after another decided to restore its monarchy and declare him the heir to it. This became the legal basis for the unification. The actual legislating is done by the assembly of . . . well, the name would mean nothing to you. It's not an elected body in your sense, but a nominated one." She stepped to a nearby computer terminal, moving with unselfconscious grace in her skintight shipsuit (it was a light green now; he had seen her change it to other colors with a touch of a finger to a certain spot). She spoke a lilting sentence, and the liquid crystal screen displayed a deep-blue hexagon divided by golden lines into six triangular segments, each containing a stylized representation in gold of a different object or group of objects.

"We don't use 'flags' like yours," Aelanni explained. "But this is the emblem of the Raehaniv state. It shows the symbols of the six principal national dynasties that the first world-Arathrain succeeded to." She pointed. "Like the eight-pointed star of Tranaethein, and . . ." She saw the look on his face and stopped. "What is it, Eric?"

He pointed an unsteady finger at one of the heraldic symbols. "That," he stated positively, "is a horse."

"A . . . yes, I believe that is what you call a
rhylieu
." She gazed thoughtfully at the rearing quadruped surmounted by a kind of coronet. "I see what is troubling you. But," she shrugged, "there are humans on both worlds, so why not . . . horses, as well? Impossibility, like infinity, cannot be multiplied."

"Granted. But what the hell is
that
?" He pointed at a crouching beast that looked more reptilian than anything else but really looked like nothing ever seen or even imagined on Earth. An oddly shaped sword lay under its forepaws.

"The
mneisafv
of Trelalieu. Why?" She gave DiFalco a sharp look. He seemed more shaken than she had ever seen him.

"Is the
mneisafv
a mythical animal?" He spoke slowly and deliberately, each word like a footstep into a minefield.

"No. Much rarer than they used to be . . . they almost became extinct. But . . ." She paused. "So you don't have them on your world? Well, then, not all species on Raehan are duplicated on Earth. But we already knew from your broadcasts that you have some animals we don't."

"But," DiFalco persisted, "unless I'm going blind, that sucker's got
six legs
!"

"Why, yes. So do all its relatives, and certain other families of animals, such as the . . ."

"Don't you get it?" He stopped and took a deep breath. "Look, Aelanni"—might as well follow the local conventions; "Ms. zho'Morna" didn't even make sense in Raehaniv—"I'm no biologist, but I know that
all
vertebrates on Earth have four limbs, even though it's less obvious when one pair of them are specialized—for flying, as with the birds, or for tool-using in the case of humans. I also know there's a reason for this. We've fantasized about worlds where species have all different numbers of legs and arms—remind me to tell you about Edgar Rice Burroughs sometime. But it's evolutionary nonsense. All the higher animals on Raehan should have six limbs like this
mneisafv
, or else they should all have four like you!"

Aelanni looked with fresh eyes at the . . . Americahiv? No, "American." It was so hard to know what to make of him. He was undeniably attractive—about average height and very solidly built on Raehaniv standards (this "Earth" had a stronger gravity than Raehan's), his features and coloring exotic but somehow not as much so as most of his fellows. Likewise, his eye color (the Landaeniv word was "hazel," she reminded herself) was unusual but not beyond the Raehaniv pale. No, the problem wasn't his appearance. Partly it was the sense that here was someone who lived the way people had in the days of the Third Global War—barely above the transistor-electronics level!—and actually survived such conditions. (Had people really been tougher then, as writers of historical fiction insisted?) But mostly it was the way he acted, always so careful to conceal, except in moments of excitement like this one, the trenchant native intelligence that had cut through in an instant to the heart of one of the classic paradoxes of Raehaniv science. Was it the culture into which he had been born? However much he might consciously reject its egalitarianism fetish and its anti-intellectualism, he could not escape the guilts they had programmed into him, making him need to act like a—she searched her memory before recalling the Landaeniv word "roughneck"—except in unguarded moments.

"Yes," she finally replied. "Of course we've thought of it. The fact of evolution became inescapable long ago . . . even before the First Global War. But we've never been able to fit ourselves, and many other Raehaniv species, into it! The fossil record cannot be denied: there is no evidence of four-limbed animals on Raehan before"—she paused and spoke a sentence in Raehaniv, and her eyes seemed to focus on a point a few inches in front of her; DiFalco recalled Varien's offhand comments about data displayed directly through the optic nerves by an implanted micro-computer communicating with more sophisticated computers—"about thirty-two thousand of your years ago. None of our clever attempts to account for this have held up."

DiFalco felt a prickling at the nape of his neck. "But
homo sapiens
was already around on Earth by then! Do you realize what this means? Humanity, and all those quadrupedal animals, must have evolved on Earth! They can't be native to Raehan!"

"But how did they get to Raehan?" she challenged. "Is there any evidence of a space-travelling civilization on Earth in that era?"