Visions of Liberty

by James P. Hogan

Records from the colony’s founding years stated that the town of Ferrydock had grown from an early base established near the river mouth, where a motorized pontoon raft had provided the crossing to the peninsula. With its rocky prominences, dunes, and beaches, the peninsula—later named Strandside—was an attractive place for walks and swims or just lazing around to get away from the routine of the settlement for a while. Later, it acquired some stores, a bar, restaurant, and a small hotel to become one of the more popular recreation spots. Although Ferrydock was now a fair-size town, and a low, sleek bridge of concrete spans with a raisable center section— sitting on incongruously ornate steel piers reminiscent of nineteenth-century ideas of aesthetics—crossed the river, a ferry still ran alongside. Not everybody was in enough of a hurry to need the road, one of the locals had explained to Duggan and another official with the mission sent from Earth to reestablish relations with Tharle. And besides, the kids liked the water ride. Notions of cost effectiveness didn’t seem to count for much here—and that fitted with the other bizarre notions of economics that had taken root here, which the theorists up in the orbiting mother ship Barnet had already decided were probably the major factor responsible for the planet’s evident regression in many ways from the levels of technological and political capability possessed by the founders.

Duggan stood in the square at the heart of Ferrydock’s central district—an open space really too irregular to justify its name geometrically, bordered by narrow, erratic streets and buildings of the peculiarly curved architectural style reveling in orange-brick walls and green- or blue-tiled roofs that brought back childhood memories of an illustrated edition of Oz. The Tharleans seemed to delight in turrets and towers too, which was also odd, since there was no history of militancy or defense needs to have inspired them. Simply another of their odd whims and fancies expressing itself, Duggan supposed.

It was apparently market day. The stalls around the square were heaped with assortments of unfamiliar fruits, vegetable-like offerings, and other plant forms that grew under the purple-tinted sky. There were refrigerated racks of strange fish, joints of meat, tanks of live fish, and cages containing furry and feathered animals of various kinds, whether intended for food or as pets, Duggan didn’t know. And there were tables displaying tools and other hardware, ornaments, art works, kitchenware, haberdashery, household goods, and clothing—much the same as market places anywhere, anytime. Duggan watched a tall, weathered-looking man in a gray shirt and loose blue jacket examining a pair of ceramic sculptures in the form of elongated feminine heads with a suggestion of styled Oriental features.

“How much for these?” he asked the graying-haired lady in charge of the stall. She was sitting in a folding alloy-frame chair, a many-colored, open-weave blanket pulled around her shoulders. A shaggy, yellow-haired creature with a huge-eyed, owl-like face studied the man alertly from the top of an upturned box next to her.

“Ten draks,” the woman replied.

The dialect had drifted to a degree that now sounded quaint; or was it that English as spoken on Earth had progressed? Schooling in Tharlean pronunciations, usage, and idioms had been required of all the delegates on the contact mission, and after a few days on the surface Duggan found he was experiencing few problems.

The man turned one of the sculptures over in his hands again and pursed his lips. “I’ll give you fifteen.”

The woman smiled in the kind of way that said it was a good try. “What do you think I am, destitute or dysfunctional or something? They’re not worth that.”

“Hey, come on, gimme a break and let me help you out a little. We’ve all got our pride.”

“Eleven, then.”

The man shook his head. “I can manage more than that. How about fourteen?”

They eventually settled on twelve. Duggan turned away, mystified, and shook his head. The two armed troopers that regulations required escort him when away from the surface lander at Base 1 beyond the far edge of the town looked back at him unhelpfully. “A strange way of playing poker,” Duggan commented.

“They’re all crazy,” one of the troopers offered.

Then Duggan noticed the woman in a shirt of leafy design on white and bright red shorts, standing a few yards away in front of a mixed, chattering group of people but apparently not with them. Farther back, others among the crowd had stopped and were staring at Duggan and his escorts unabashedly. The woman was perhaps in her mid thirties if Earth standards were anything to judge by, with wiry, shoulder-length hair that varied between being auburn and orange depending how it caught the light, and the bronzed skin with a hint of metallic sheen that the blue-shifted light from Xylon-B evoked among Tharleans generally. Her body was slim and lithe, her face tapering to a pointy chin, with a straight nose, dimpled cheeks, and a mouth that was hovering on the edge of wanting to smile but at the same time hesitant, as if she were unsure how it might be taken. Instead, she let her eyes interrogate him silently. They were deep, brown, intelligent, and mirthful, the kind that could arouse immediate interest in possibilities and prospects—especially in a new and strange, yet-to-be-explored place, after an excruciatingly uneventful voyage dominated by routine and officiousness. Duggan’s features softened. He let his mouth pucker in the way of one of two people unsure of their ground offering to meet halfway.

“I didn’t mean to gape,” the woman said. “But I haven’t seen anyone from the Earth ship this close before. I was just curious.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about it,” Duggan answered. “I’ve seen plenty of people from Tharle. The only trouble is, I haven’t managed to talk to too many of them.”

“They’re curious too, but trying to mind their own business. It’s considered good manners…. Some of them are worried about what the soldiers are doing here, too.”

“So what makes you different?”

She shrugged. “I just wanted to see for myself what you were like—try to talk to some of you. I hear what other people say, but I never know whether to believe it.”

“What do they say?” Duggan asked.

The woman thought for a few seconds, her mouth twisting wryly in the way of someone searching for a safe answer. “They call you Pinkies,” she said finally.

He stared at her, then laughed. The barrier of tension they had both been reacting to revealed itself as an illusion and came tumbling down. “Paul Duggan,” he said.

“My name’s Tawna.”

“So… hi.”

“Hi.”

The feelings coming back at him were good. She was looking at him directly and openly with an expectant expression, fears allayed, eager to learn more. Duggan turned his head and lowered his tone to mouth at the escorts. “Why don’t you guys get lost for a half hour? Take a walk around; get yourselves a coffee or something.”

“Can’t. Orders,” one of the troopers replied woodenly.

Duggan sighed and turned back to Tawna. “I’m with what the mission calls its Office of Exorelations. That means we’re the ones who are supposed to deal with whoever’s in charge of things here. But we’re not having much luck finding anyone. That’s why I decided to come out and walk around the town. Nothing we got over the communications channels made any sense.”

Tawna looked puzzled. “I can’t see why that should be a problem. There are people in charge of things everywhere.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, it depends what you’re looking for. In charge of what, specifically? The Waterfront Agency looks after the harbor installations and the docks. The Power Company produces power. The highway companies consolidated into the Road Services League because tolls got to be such a hassle….”

Duggan waved a hand. “But above those—the works, all of it. Who runs the whole system?” Tawna seemed to want to be helpful, but she appeared honestly not to know what he meant.

“The laws,” he said. “Who makes the laws here?”

“Laws?” she repeated, as if hearing a new word in the language for the first time.

“What you can do, what you can’t. How you’re allowed to treat each other. Who tells you the rules?”

“Tells us?… Nobody…. Why would they?”

“Then where do they come from?”

Tawna showed a hand helplessly. “They don’t come from anywhere. They’re just… there. Who tells you rules