I have brought someone with me who suffers far more than either of us.
So I see.she moved forward and gave a slight bow. “Welcome to Romulus, General Hiltch.”
It was the moment Ralph had dreaded most of all, passing over the threshold. If there was no forgiveness here he would never find any within this universe. He couldn’t even bring himself to smile at the stately old woman whose face contained so much genuine concern. “I have no army to command any more, Athene. I resigned my commission.”
“Tell me why you have come, Ralph.”
“I came out of guilt. I ordered so many Edenists to their death. The Liberation ruined what it was supposed to save. It existed for vanity and pride, not honour. And it was all my idea. I need to say I’m sorry.”
“We’d like to hear you, Ralph. Take as long as you want.”
“Will you accept me as one of you?”
She gave him a compassionate smile. “You wish to become an Edenist?”
“Yes, though it’s a selfish wish. I was told an Edenist can relieve his burden by sharing it with every other Edenist. My guilt has turned to pure grief.”
“That’s not selfish, Ralph. You’re offering to share yourself, to contribute.”
“Will it end? Will I be able to live with what I’ve done?”
“I’ve brought up a great many Edenist children in my house, Ralph.” She put her arm in his, and started walking him towards the exit. “And I’ve never had a serpent yet.”
It took several weeks for all the mundane functions of government to return to normal after the Confederation was transferred out of the galaxy. People realized that their circumstances would change, in many ways quite profoundly. Religions strove to incorporate or explain away the singularity’s gospel of the universe. Joshua didn’t mind that: as he told Louise, conviction in one’s God nearly always equated to a conviction in self. Time might well see an end to the undue influence religion had on the way people approached life. Then again, knowing the perversity of humans, maybe not.
Starflight was also altering. Travel between stars never more than half a light-year apart was incredibly quick, and cheap.
Every reporter who interviewed Joshua asked why he hadn’t taken the Confederation stars back again. Quite infuriatingly, he just smiled and said he liked the view from out here.
Governments weren’t so fond of it. There could never be any outward expansion again, unless new propulsion methods were developed. Funds for wormhole research were quietly increased.
There would be no more antimatter to terrorise planetary populations. The stars where the production stations orbited were all left behind in the galaxy (though Joshua had teleported their crews out). Politicians turned their eyes to the defence budget, seeing how funds could be shifted towards more voter-friendly spending sprees.
The Kiint provider technology was regarded with fascination by the general public as it worked its miracles on the Returned worlds. Everybody wanted one of those for Christmas.
Earth’s population was almost schizophrenic over the new stage-one planets available. On the one hand, their own climate had been reset to normal, making the arcology domes redundant. But Earth’s surface would take a generation to restore. And if it was restored with forests, meadows, jungles, and prairies, there would be a diaspora from the arcologies which would ruin everything. However, if the population was spread around the new planets (less than a billion each), all of them would have a natural environment, allowing them to keep their present level of consumerist industrialisation and not totally screw up the atmospheres with waste heat. Assuming that many people could be moved economically—say if you used those nifty little Kiint craft, or something came out of all that new superdrive research.
Small, subtle changes were manifesting in all aspects of Confederation life. They would merge and build on each other. And eventually, Joshua hoped, transformation would become irresistible.
But in the meantime, the methods of governance remained the same. Income had to be earned. Taxes still had to be paid. And laws had to be enforced. Backlogs of court cases worked through.
Traslov was one world where changes would be a long time coming. A terracompatible planet in the last stages of an ice age, it was one of five Confederation penal colonies. Joshua had included them, too. Much to the relief of various governments, Avon included. Traslov was where the criminals which the Confederation Navy brought in were sent.
Prison ship flights resumed after three weeks.
Andrй Duchamp was led into the drop capsule by one of the guards, who fastened him in one of the eight acceleration couches. Once the straps were in place, holding Andrй’s arms and legs against the thin padding, his restraint collar was taken off.
“Behave yourself,” the guard said curtly, and air swam out through the hatch to fetch the next prisoner.
With supreme self control, Andrй sat quiet. His flesh was still slightly tender where the medical nanonics had been removed. And he was sure those bastard
“Hello there.”
Andrй glared at the badly overweight, balding, middle-aged man in the couch next to him.
“Guess we ought to introduce ourselves, seeing as how we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together. I’m Mixi Penrice, and this is my wife, Imelda.”
Andrй’s face cracked in mortification as a timid woman, also fat and middle aged, waved at him hopefully from the couch beside her husband.
“So pleased to meet you,” she said.
“Guard!” Andrй yelled frantically.
There was never any contact between the Confederation at large and Traslov, in that every flight was strictly one way: down. The theory was simple enough. Prisoners, voluntarily accompanied by their family, were shot down into the equatorial band of continent not covered by glaciers. Sociologists, hired by participating governments to reassure civil rights organizations, claimed that if enough people were brought together then they’d inevitably form a stable community. After a hundred years, or a million people, whichever came first, the flights would be stopped. The communities would expand in the wake of the retreating glaciers. And in another hundred years a self-sustaining agrarian civilization would emerge with a modest industrial capacity, at which point they’d be allowed to join the Confederation and develop like a normal colony. As yet, no one had found out if an ex-penal colony would want to join a society which had exiled every one of their ancestors.
Andrй’s drop capsule fired down through the atmosphere, hitting seven gees at the top of its deceleration peak. It plummeted through the low cloud layer and deployed its parachute five hundred metres from the ground. Two metres from the ground, retrorockets fired in a half-second burst, killing the capsule’s final velocity as the chute jettisoned.
The capsule crashed into the scorched earth with a bone-numbing impact. Andrй gasped in shock at the pain transmitted along his spine. Even so, he was the first to recover, and flipped his strap catches open. The hatch was a crude affair, like everything else in the capsule. A wonder they ever got down alive. He pulled the release handle.
They’d landed in a broad valley with gently sloping sides and a fast stone-bed stream running along the bottom. The local grass-analogue was an insipid grey green, its monotony broken by a few wizened dwarf bushes. A cold wind blew against the capsule, carrying tiny grains of white ice. Andrй shivered violently; the chill factor took it well below freezing. He had thought to simply collect his share of the survival equipment from the baggage lockers ringing the base of the capsule and hike away from his fellow exiles. That action would have to be reconsidered now.
When he looked along the other end of the valley, he was amazed to see the distinct globular shape of starship life support capsules embedded in the soil. He could see at least forty of them. A definitive count would
