Old Earth. And so uncivilized. Before I left home I was briefed that they were a potential threat, but only when you see the size of their cities, so much brighter than our own now, do you realize just how many of the barbarians there are, just how much potential for violence they have.
The picture on the sleeping cabin view screen was better than the one in his main cabin. For all that, it was still flawed. Multicolored lines flickered across it from right to left. Sometimes they were wide, sometimes quite narrow. They were always an annoyance and they never went completely away.
It had been a long braking before Spirit of Peace assumed orbit over the new world. Give Wallenstein her due, she's as competent a skipper as she is a bedmate. She's brought her command in flawlessly. Now if she would only stop hinting that she wants me to back her for a rise in caste.
The Spirits- Spirit of Peace, Spirit of Unity, Spirit of Harmony and Spirit of Brotherhood- were the newest ships in the fleet, the most recent having been launched just over one hundred and twenty Earth years ago. The others were much older. One of the others, the UEPF Kofi Annan, was nearly four centuries old. Earth could not build another. Even the ancient Annan was beyond her ability to recreate.
And that was the problem. The new world, Terra Nova, could not build them or their like either, yet. Yet was the operative word. The day was soon coming when the natives could build starships. The day was coming when the natives could come up looking. Worse, the day was probably coming when they would.
And Earth couldn't resist them now, thought the still youthful high admiral of the fleet, watching the screen and lying in his extra wide bunk next to the peacefully snoring Wallenstein, not if they manage to get off-planet and out of the system. Barbarians.
Robinson looked over at the captain and considered giving it another go. Why not? Despite his centuries of age, the ADAF therapy had given him the vigor of a young man, along with the skill and grace of a much older one. Anti-agathics were one of the truly remarkable breakthroughs of Earth's medical science. It was no mean achievement and had contributed much to the peace, order and stability of Old Earth that its critically important leadership actually had the time now to truly run things. Indeed, no one given the full treatments had yet died of any natural cause. Perhaps, if Robinson lived to see his third or fourth century, further breakthroughs might extend his life indefinitely. On the other hand, it had been a century since the last DAF gene advance. At least, he could not think of another since. He wasn't actually sure that anyone was even trying. Very few of even the very few progeny of the elites seemed much interested in science anymore. They were fewer even that chose to serve in the United Earth Peace Fleet and those were few enough.
Hands clasped behind his head, High Admiral Robinson turned his attention to the dull gray ceiling, thinking back on the Earth he had left so regretfully almost a dozen months before. Earth was such a paradise compared to the hellhole below, teeming with about twelve times more people than a world that size could indefinitely support. And most of those were poor, sometimes starving, and afflicted with more disease than one could find at home outside of a laboratory.
Earth was peaceful, as well, and had been for more than three centuries. The structure ensured peace, with the half million or so Class Ones supervising perhaps three million Class Twos, who in turn supervised twenty or so million Class Threes, the entirety lording it over the half billion proles of Classes Four through Six. The proles didn't really matter, of course. They were nonpolitical now, living in peace, growing the food and obtaining what raw materials could not be gotten from recycling. They did the limited manufacturing still permitted and possible. They knew their place.
Barring a few malcontents like Wallenstein, everyone on Earth knew his or her place now. We're not so foolish anymore as to leave decisions to the ignorant or the ambitious. Especially do we keep the proles out of things. What would they have to offer, anyway?
Indeed, there was hardly any such thing as ambition anymore. One was born into a caste and stayed there. Only within the Peace Force was social mobility still seen as desirable, and even there it was highly constrained. The highly pneumatic Captain Wallenstein was unlikely ever to see Class One, for all the time she had spent in a long life servicing her betters.
Whatever the drawbacks of the system, and Robinson knew them better than most, at least it was generally peaceful.
The same could not be said for Terra Nova, which had become one huge slugfest, periods of peace intermittent, at best, between bouts of war, reprisal, massacre and genocide. Robinson shook his head with disgust.
There was a knock on the door. 'Come in,' Robinson commanded, rising and throwing on a robe, walking to the main cabin, and ordering the door to his sleeping chamber to close.
'Maintenance crew, Your Excellency,' said the Class Three technician. 'Got the replacement screen for your cabin. New stuff, Your Excellency, just brought up from Atlantis Base by shuttle. Be only a few minutes to install it.'
'Be at it, then,' Robinson ordered. Then, since the installation was likely to prove noisy and bothersome, he retired back to his sleeping cabin and the captain. On the way he happened to notice the box the view screen came packaged in. Kurosawa Vision Solutions, 101 Imperial Way, Kamakura, Yamato, Terra Nova. Fragile: take special care when moving, the carton said.
Kurosawa always took extra special care of the products it sold to the fleet.
Special care or not, too much of the fleet is operating that way now. Earth sends so little, and the ships are growing so old.
Indeed, of the twenty-seven ships in geosynchronous orbit around the planet, two of them were little more than husks with rotating skeleton crews aboard. The meat of the things had been cannibalized to keep up the rest of the fleet.
And how many more will I have to order cannibalized to keep the fleet going? Robinson wondered, as he lay back down on his bunk. And how much can we continue to buy from below without arousing suspicions about our real status? Wouldn't those bastards in the FSC like to know they could nuke half my fleet now with impunity?
Buying from the Terra Novans had its problems. For one thing, the fleet had little to offer in exchange. Food was impractical to export over interstellar distances despite the rift, which made personal travel in cryogenic suspension reasonable. Besides, the Novans who could pay for food didn't need to. Indeed, the fleet purchased all its food locally, along with the petrochemical fuel for the shuttles. This was explained to the Novans as simple economics; cheaper to buy locally than to import. This wouldn't have hurt Robinson so deeply if it had been the only reason. The fact was that Earth could not send food or petrochemicals even if the Consensus wanted to.
There were only four worthwhile and practical things to trade to the Novans to keep the fleet running. Technology was one, but it was under ban by the Council and had been for centuries. Besides, what Earth had wasn't all that far ahead of what the Novans were capable of making for themselves now. Gold? Half the gold of Earth was already on Terra Nova; same for the silver, platinum, palladium and rhodium. There were plenty of proles to trade as slaves, but the Novans, most of them, had little use for slaves. And the Moslems, and especially the Salafis, who did have use for slaves, only wanted pretty young girls and boys. Since there was a strong market for those on Earth as well, saleable slaves were a tight commodity. Moreover, you never really could tell what the proles knew. If they were questioned, and the Novans realized what Earth had become, it could be a disaster for the fleet as well as the Earth.
Art, Robinson sighed. I am reduced to selling Earth's artistic patrimony to keep in being the fleet that keeps Earth from being overrun in a hundred years or less and looted of, among other things, its art.
Ah well, I should be grateful I was able to talk the caliph into turning over to me so much of the contents of the Vatican's cellars. Fortunate, too, that he valued them so little. Then again, with even the followers of Islam so few, and most of those barbarians in the reverted areas back home who could care less about the caliph, I suppose he needed the credit as well.
Robinson closed his eyes and dozed fitfully. He was awakened, sometime later, by the same technician who had come to install the new view screen. 'We're done, Your Excellency. Also, your aide, Baron Fiske, said to tell you the shuttle is ready to take you to Atlantis Base whenever you're ready.'
The shuttle itself was the same silvery color as the Peace Fleet ships. As the shuttle door split, it also split the blue and white symbol of United Earth. This was a map of the Earth, from the northern hemisphere with the southern hemisphere distorted out of scale, on which had been superimposed marks for longitude and latitude, the whole being almost surrounded by a laurel wreath. There was symbolism in that, with the poor south exaggerated in apparent importance but the white and European north still in the commanding center.
