“Money, of course. Now the terraforming project no longer absorbs every single fuseodollar earned by our state industries, there is more cash starting to seep into the economy. The younger generation adore their imported AV blocks and MF albums and clothes, they are placing so much value on these status symbols, ignoring our own nation’s products purely for the sake of difference, which they see as originality. And they have a whole planet to range over; some of us actually worry that they might walk off into the countryside and reject us totally. Who knows? Not that I’d mind if they do discard our tenets. After all, it is their world. We built it so they could know its freedom. Trying to impose the old restrictions on them would be the purest folly. Social evolution is vital if any ethnic-nationhood is to survive; and five centuries is a long time to remain static.”
“So if people did claim land for themselves, you wouldn’t try to confiscate it back?”
“Confiscate? You say that with some malice. Is that what the Communists on your world say they’re going to do?”
“Yes, they want to redistribute Norfolk’s wealth fairly.”
“Well, tell them from me, it won’t work. All they’ll ever do is cause more strife if they try and change things now. You cannot impose ideologies on people who do not embrace it wholeheartedly. The Lunar nation functions because it was planned that way from the moment the cities gained independence from the companies. It’s the same concept as Norfolk, the difference being your founders chose to write a pastoral constitution. Communism works here because everybody supports it, and the net allowed us to eliminate most forms of corruption within the civil service and local governing councils that plagued most earlier attempts. If people don’t like it, they leave rather than try and wreck it for everyone else. Isn’t that what happens on Norfolk?”
Louise thought back to what Carmitha had said. “It’s difficult for the Land Union people. Starflight is expensive.”
“I suppose so. We’re lucky here, the O’Neill Halo takes all our malcontents, some asteroids have entire low-gee levels populated by Lunar йmigrйs. Our government will even pay your ticket for you. Perhaps you should try that on Norfolk. The whole point of the Confederation’s diversity is that it provides every kind of ethnic culture possible. There’s no real need for internal conflict.”
“That’s a nice idea. I ought to mention it to Daddy when I get back. I’m sure a one-way starship ticket would be cheaper than keeping someone at the arctic work camps.”
“Why tell your father? Why not campaign for it yourself?”
“Nobody would listen to me.”
“You won’t be your age forever.”
“I meant, because I’m a girl.”
Endron gave her a mystified frown. “I see. Perhaps that would be a better issue to campaign about. You’d have half of the population on your side from day one.”
Louise managed an uncomfortable smile. She didn’t like having to defend her homeworld from sarcasm, people should show more courtesy. The trouble was, she found it hard to defend some of Norfolk’s customs.
Endron took them to one of the lowest habitation levels, a broad service corridor which led away from the biosphere cavern, deep into the asteroid’s interior. It was bare rock, with one wall made up from stacked layers of cable and piping. The floor was slightly concave, and very smooth. Louise wondered how old it must be for people’s feet to have worn it down.
They reached a wide olive-green metal door, and Endron datavised a code at its processor. Nothing happened. He had to datavise the code another two times before it opened. Louise didn’t dare risk a glance at Fletcher.
Inside was a cathedral-sized hall filled with three rows of high voltage electrical transformers. Great loops of thick black cabling emerged from holes high up in the walls, stretching over the aisles in a complicated weave that linked them to the fat grey ribbed cylinders. There was a strong tang of ozone in the air.
A flight of metal stairs pinned against the rear wall led up to a small maintenance manager’s office cut into the rock. Two narrow windows looked down on the central aisle as they walked towards it, the outline of a man just visible inside. Fletcher’s alarm at the power humming savagely all around them was clear in the sweat on his forehead and hands, his small, precisely controlled steps.
The office had a large desk with a computer terminal nearly as primitive as the models Louise used on Norfolk. A large screen took up most of the back wall, its lucidly coloured symbols displaying the settlement’s power grid.
There was a Martian waiting for them inside; a man with very long snow-white hair brushed back neatly and a bright orange silk suit worn in conjunction with a midnight-black shirt. He carried a slim, featureless grey case in his left hand.
Faurax didn’t know what to make of his three new clients at all; if they hadn’t been with Endron he wouldn’t even have let them into the office. These were not the times to dabble in his usual sidelines. Thanks to the current Confederation crisis, the Phobos police were becoming quite unreasonable about security procedures.
“If you don’t mind me asking,” he said after Endron had introduced everybody. “Why haven’t you got your own passports?”
“We had to leave Norfolk very quickly,” Louise said. “The possessed were sweeping through the city. There was no time to apply to the Foreign Office for passports. Although there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have been issued with them, we don’t have criminal records or anything like that.”
It even sounded reasonable. And Faurax could guess the kind of financial package which the
“You must understand,” he said, “I had to undertake a considerable amount of research to obtain the Norfolk government’s authentication codes.”
“How much?” Louise asked.
“Five thousand fuseodollars. Each.”
“Very well.”
She didn’t even sound surprised, let alone shocked. Which tweaked Faurax’s curiosity; he would have dearly liked to ask Endron who she was. The call he’d got from Tilia setting up the meeting had been very sparse on detail.
“Good,” he said, and put his case on the desk, datavising a code at it. The upper surface flowed apart, revealing a couple of processor blocks and several fleks. He picked up one of the fleks, which was embossed with a gold lion: Norfolk’s national symbol. “Here we are. I loaded in all the information Tilia gave me; name, where you live, age, that kind of thing. All we need now is an image and a full body biolectric scan.”
“What do we have to do?” Louise asked.
“First, I’m afraid, is the money.”
She gave a hollow laugh and took a Jovian Bank credit disk from her small shoulder bag. Once the money had been shunted over to Faurax’s disk, he said: “Remember not to wear these clothes when you go through the Halo’s immigration. These images were supposedly taken on Norfolk before you left, and the clothes are new. In fact, I’d advise dumping them altogether.”
“We’ll do that,” Louise said.
“Okay.” He slotted the first flek into his processor block and read the screen. “Genevieve Kavanagh?”
The little girl smiled brightly.
“Stand over there, dear, away from the door.”
She did as he asked, giving the sensor lens a solemn stare. After he’d got the visual image filed, he used the second processor block to sweep her so he could record her biolectric pattern. Both files were loaded into her passport, encrypted with Norfolk’s authentication code. “Don’t lose it,” he said and dropped the flek into her hand.
Louise was next. Faurax found himself wishing she were a Martian girl. She had a beautiful face, it was just her body which was so alien.
Fletcher’s image went straight into his passport flek. Then Faurax ran the biolectric sensor over him. Frowned at the display. Ran a second scan. It took a long time for his chilly disquiet to give way into full blown consternation. He gagged, head jerking up from the block to stare at Fletcher. “You’re a—” His neural nanonics crashed, preventing him from datavising any alarm. The air solidified in front of his eyes; he actually saw it flowing like a dense heat shiver, contracting into a ten centimetre sphere. It hit him full in the face. He heard the bone in
