Visions of Liberty (10 page)

Konski the former was helpful. "Oh, it's just Lysander. My brother refuses to call the planet by its proper name."

"More drinks!" suggested Bretygne. "Make them doubles."

"Triples," amended Palmer.

Ambassador Konski started to touch the servo-mech but it shied away from him. With one last suck of its suction tentacle, it removed the final remains of the fallen cigar and fled. Ashes to ashes, and thence to the garbage recycler.

"It doesn't like you," said Part Two.

Konski shrugged. "Nonsense, a robot can neither like nor dislike anything. Fortunately it has departed before you can violate my private property."

"Ha! You cannot own a self-aware being."

"You can't make a contract with a household appliance."

By this point, the twins were face to face, cigar to cigar. There seemed nothing in heaven or Luna that could stop them.

"Even if they could make contracts," complained Part Two, "such agreements would be null and void, for they cannot sell their primary property which is themselves."

Konski's new cigar quivered with indignation. "Oh, yeah? If you can't sell aspects of your primary property then how can we have the most beloved trade of all true lovers of liberty, namely the fine social work performed by prostitutes throughout the ages?"

"Your area of expertise, eh? Hookers can get away from you but not these poor servo-mechs."

"They don't need liberty any more than your damned cigar needs to escape your incisors!"

"How do you know? Maybe they only lack initiative. I'm fighting for their honor which is more than they ever did."

It went on like that for another five minutes until the Lady Bretygne Lamarr found deep inside her soul the power of two words almost equal to the power of
laissez faire
.

"
Shut up!
" she explained.

She was so loud that her voice was heard throughout the entire ballroom. Dead silence fell over the throng and brought all revelry to a grinding halt. Then someone in the crowd finally realized that underneath the grease paint mustaches and wild hair lurked at least one guest of honor.

The crowd surged forward. A beautiful young girl of twenty-nine was first to speak as children are wont to do. "Rockets away! Seeing two of you is pure lox. May I have dual autographs?"

"Only I am the true ambassador," said Konski.

"But my autograph is more valuable," said Part Two. "It doesn't come free, by the way."

"Mine costs the same!" piped in Konski.

The autographs kept the two of them out of trouble for a while while Palmer, Bretygne and Astaroth discovered a heretofore-unrealized capacity for cocktails. Finally a servo-mech floated above the multitude and announced that dinner was about to be served.

Alas, Part Two heard the announcement. "Will we be violating animal rights tonight?" he wanted to know. "Or perhaps vegetable rights?"

Palmer was starting to feel his fifth drink of the evening. That played no small role in his responding to the terrible twin. "I know for a fact, Mister Brother of the Anarchist Ambassador, that all our food tonight is completely synthetic. The only violation of rights has been on the molecular level."

"Don't ask this one what he thought of the Nano War," pleaded Bretygne in his ear.

"You used the 'n' word," he chided.

Somehow the unwieldy mass of well-dressed and undressed humanity wandered over to the dining area. Part Two went with them. As for Ambassador Konski, he grabbed Lady Lamarr by the arm and announced, "This is our chance. Follow me!"

"Why are you grabbing me by the arm?" asked Bretygne, but not really resisting. "Isn't that a violation of my elbow rights or something?"

"I'll make restitution," he grinned. "Besides, this way I know your boyfriends will follow."

They all went through a service entrance where a space cadet limo was waiting. They piled in and Konski ordered the robot driver to take them out into the lunar night.

Konski's tone of voice lost its strident quality. He sounded like a different person when he said, "Tonight reminded me of an observation by the twenty-first century philosopher Garmon. He said that the truth of all technological societies lies in the manner by which we come to resemble our tools. But I don't want to look like a silver egg with tentacles! I don't want to belong to any labor force that would have me as a member."

Bretygne suddenly felt relaxed for the first time that evening. "You know, Palmer thinks I'm a spoiled brat."

"I've never said that!" he protested.

"But it's true," she said, and not a single man in the limo asked her if she meant it was true that she was spoiled or that it was true that Palmer thought so.

The professor sounded happy, too. "Freedom is learning to balance responsibility along with being spoiled. Both are essential."

Konski nodded. "The human race seems to be on a bell curve. Those who can handle freedom and responsibly are at one end. Those who would be the masters and dictators are on the other end. The vast mass is the bell of the bell curve. They want a little freedom and a little slavery. They play the role of master and slave interchangeably even though they don't want either condition to be permanent."

Palmer couldn't believe what he'd just heard. "That's a surprisingly mature remark to come from a man who just turned in that performance back at the dome."

Konski laughed and started rubbing off his mustache with a bright red handkerchief. "They wanted to see anarchists tonight, didn't they? My brother and I worship a handful of twentieth century movie stars, the ones who had talent. The early, funny ones."

They were sitting in a comfortable semicircle in the back. The guest of honor started acting as if he deserved the title. He patted Palmer on the shoulder. "Enough of the show. Let's get down to brass tacks. Lysander has precious raw materials that are needed to power starships. It would be cheaper to mine them than to produce them artificially. That's also considering the distances involved and the time factors. But we need the United States of Earth to believe that we have a military capacity to defend ourselves."

"You don't!" all three of his critics spoke at once.

"Exactly. But we learned from the loss of a continent that our defense agencies have certain limitations. We know how to live together now, but that doesn't mean we have the organization to withstand an invasion by Earth forces! The bastards on the home world are capable of anything. They think we're all children on Lysander so none of us have rights. We must convince them we are children who can bite!"

The Earth hung above their conversation like a blue and green goblin, threatening the gray expanse of a free Luna. Palmer leaned back in his seat and exhaled slowly. He'd been expecting the moment of decision for some time. Now that it had arrived it was as if a shadow moved across his vision, taking with it all of his worries.

In his whole life, he'd never heard the word freedom used as often as he'd heard it today. The word wouldn't leave him alone. It had gotten inside him. Freedom. Liberty. A light to penetrate his personal darkness.

Looking at Bretygne, he seemed to see her for the first time. He felt something new. He didn't want to have sex with her or to compete with her or to prove anything. He simply felt affection.

Taking her by the hand he smiled. She smiled back. For a brief wonderful moment they were alone in the universe and not even gigantic egos like Konski and Astaroth could intrude.

"I can fix it," said Palmer. "Actually, the three of us can definitely arrange things for you, Mr. Ambassador. But you already know that. We can fool the United States of Earth into believing you have a significant military force. The destruction of the continent on Lysander is proof of your capacity, after all. No one in Berlin would ever believe the real reasons for that disaster."

Konski reached into a compartment and pulled out a small statuette. "This is a replica of the Statue of Liberty."

"Oh, my," said Bretygne. "The one that was destroyed."

"In the Welfare War," Astaroth finished for her.

Konski cradled his trophy. "This is a perfect copy except the inscription on the bottom has been changed. It speaks to what we need now on Lysander. And what we will require as we open new worlds. You three have spent enough time on Earth, don't you think?"

Palmer took the small statue and held it close. He read the inscription out loud:

This time, just send us your children!

Father Flynn closed his eyes for a moment and luxuriated in the heat from the reflected sunlight coming up off the lake's silver surface. A gentle breeze provided a hint of a swell to rock the boat, but better was the insistent slap of wavelets against the aluminum hull. While Apogea's orbit around its single sun was a bit too distant to make the world quite warm enough, its largely unspoiled beauty more than compensated for the slight chill.

He opened his blue eyes again and smiled at the woman in the other end of the boat. "I'm thinking, Rina, this is about the closest to Paradise I'll be getting before a discussion with Saint Peter."

The woman laughed lightly and easily, and the youthful tone of her laughter further concealed her age. Flynn knew they were both in their fifties—him solidly, and she just starting—but she hid it well. Still lean, with bright hazel eyes and black hair without a hint of white, she seemed yet as youthful as she had when he first met her on the station. The years had used him a bit harder than they had her, and the resilience that had let her recover from tragedy had been long in evidence throughout his visit.

"Well, Dennis, I hope for your sake that you are incorrect. Apogea
is
very beautiful however." She gave him a very warm smile. "And, despite our lack of luck so far today, it does have the fattest troutganisms I've seen this side of Earth."

"Oh, I believe you, and I'm not in the least disappointed." He winked at her. "After all, it's called fishing, not
catching
, for a reason."

The small lake on which they were drifting lay in a forested hilly basin. The crystal waters were so pure that they just dipped a cup if they were thirsty. Trees resembling pines and maples dotted the hillsides, with Apogea's evolutionary equivalent of cattails lining the shores. Off to the northeast he could see the white crescent of beach they'd set out from, and the cabin hidden a bit farther on, just the edge of the woods.

"It feels as if we're all alone here."

Arina Gadja nodded. "We are. Barring an emergency, accident, seriously poor navigating or someone incredibly rude, we won't see anyone else unless we chose to invite them or accept an invite."

Flynn tapped the chronometer on his left wrist. "But we're not really alone, are we, since we're being monitored all the time."

"Just for safety's sake. If your heart were to seize up, someone would be along to get you to sick bay."

Flynn shook his head. "You know, I'm still surprised you agreed to come here and live on Apogea. You spent your adult life working security on Qian space stations, enforcing one law over countless individuals who came from a legion of legal traditions. Law and order were so much the fabric of your life, and yet you retire to a world with no government."

Arina started to slowly reel her line in. "Surprised me, too. Given that all that had happened, it seemed like a good choice. Grants to live here are rare, so I could not pass up the chance."

"I know. It's an honor to be given one and I'm thinking I'm grateful you invited me to visit."

"And I'm grateful you came. The only thing Apogea doesn't provide is old friends. Everything else is taken care of, however, and that's how it works. If you think about it, Dennis, governments serve to guarantee security, both in terms of protecting the material we possess, and to see to it that our needs are met."

"Needs save those in the spiritual realm."

She smiled. "True enough, and I know the lack of churches here would be troubling to you, but churches also become a place where power can be concentrated and wielded in favor of one person over another. Here we operate by the golden rule, as overseen by Covenant."

Flynn knew she wasn't using the word Covenant in any religious or legal sense. Covenant was the name given to the vast computer network that administered the world of Apogea. When the creation of the exclusive colony was first proposed, it was agreed that those who wished to live there would put their assets into blind trusts and would come to live on the world forever—barring trips off world necessitated by family emergencies. Their assets and their needs would be taken care of through Covenant, which would monitor wants, whims, and necessitudes, blending desires and providing what people wanted primarily by knowing them as well or better than they knew themselves.

Creating a monastery world with resort trappings for the rich would have been simple, save that hedonistic pursuits precluded complete isolation. Some people bought their way into Apogea. Others, like Arina, earned a grant for service to society—and her grant had been paid for with heroism and blood. Yet others were contract residents. They were heavily screened and brought to Apogea to perform specific services for a year, with contracts renewed if desired. Because needs were met on the world, the generous salaries these people were paid were saved, with hefty performance bonuses being racked up along the way to guarantee good behavior.

On top of that, Covenant practiced random interval reinforcement. The Qian programmers had managed to look at desires and project, into the future, intersection points with external trends. Items and information related to these interests would arrive for the residents at various and unpredictable intervals. It was as if everyone was entered into a lottery on an hourly basis where they might win something they didn't know they wanted, but would please them the moment they got it. These gifts, many quite banal and innocuous, provided excitement and promoted good behavior.

"Oh, Arina, I'm thinking Apogea is quite clever, no doubt about it. When I told Father Ruxton I would be coming to visit, she was rather adamant in warning me about the seductive evil of this place. She said it had been modeled on the trick the Assassins used to play on recruits during the Crusades. They'd drug them and bring them to a magnificent palace where their every need was met. They'd be told they were in Heaven, then after three days, they'd be drugged again and returned to the real world. They'd had their taste of Heaven, so they'd go out and fight against Christendom, knowing the reward they'd have when they were killed."