Shukra heard this impassively, but Kiran could see from the bunching of his eyebrows that he was interested. “What can you do?” he said to Kiran.
“Construction, retail, janitorial, bookkeeping,” Kiran said. “And I can learn fast.”
“You’ll need to,” Shukra said. “I’ve got jobs that need doing, so we’ll get you into something.”
“Oh,” Swan said, “and he needs papers.”
“Ah,” Shukra said. Swan met his gaze without flinching. Now she was going to owe him, Kiran saw. “If you say so,” he said at last. “You are my black swan. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks,” Swan said.
After that she needed to get out to the spaceport to catch her flight. She took Kiran aside and briefly hugged him. “I’ll see you again.”
“I hope so!” Kiran said.
“It will happen. I get around.” She smiled briefly. “Anyway, we’ll always have New Jersey.”
“Lima,” he said. “We’ll always have Lima.”
She laughed. “I thought it was Stockholm.” And gave him a kiss on the cheek and was gone.
Extracts (6)
The economic model of the space settlements developed in part from their origins as scientific stations. In this early model, life in space was not a market economy; once you were in space, your housing and food were provided in an allotment system, as in Antarctic scientific stations. What markets existed tended to be private unregulated individual enterprises in nonessential goods. Capitalism was in effect relegated to the margin, and the necessities of life were a shared commons exchange between Earth and individual space colonies was on a national or treaty-association basis, thus a kind of colonial model, with the colonies producing metals and volatiles, knowledge useful for Earth management, and later on, food once the space elevators were in place (first at Quito, 2076) traffic between Earth and space increased by a factor of a hundred million. At that point the solar system became accessible. It was too big to inhabit rapidly, but the increasing speed of space travel meant that over the course of the twenty-second century the entire solar system came within easy reach. It is not a coincidence that the second half of this century saw the beginning of the Accelerando the space diaspora occurred as late capitalism writhed in its internal decision concerning whether to destroy Earth’s biosphere or change its rules. Many argued for the destruction of the biosphere, as being the lesser of two evils one of the most influential forms of economic change had ancient origins in Mondragon, Euskadi, a small Basque town that ran an economic system of nested co-ops organized for mutual support. A growing network of space settlements used Mondragon as a model for adapting beyond their scientific station origins to a larger economic system. Cooperating as if in a diffuse Mondragon, the individual space settlements, widely scattered, associated for mutual support and supercomputers and artificial intelligence made it possible to fully coordinate a non-market economy, in effect mathematicizing the Mondragon. Needs were determined year to year in precise demographic detail, and production then directed to fill the predicted needs. All economic transactions-from energy creation and extraction of raw materials, through manufacturing and distribution, to consumption and waste recycling-were accounted for in a single computer program. Once policy questions were answered-meaning desires articulated in a sharply contested political struggle-the total annual economy of the solar system could be called out on a quantum computer in less than a second. The resulting qube-programmed Mondragon, sometimes called the Albert-Hahnel model, or the Spuffordized Soviet cybernetic model, could be if everyone had been working in a programmed Mondragon, all would have been well; but it was only one of several competing economies on Earth, all decisively under the thumb of late capitalism, still in control of more than half of Earth’s capital and production, and with its every transaction tenaciously reaffirming ownership and capital accumulation. This concentration of power had not gone away but only liquefied for a while and then jelled elsewhere, much of it on Mars, as Gini figures for the era clearly reveal in residual- emergent models, any given economic system or historical moment is an unstable mix of past and future systems. Capitalism therefore was the combination or battleground of its residual element, feudalism, and its emergent element-what? with the success of the Martian revolution and the emergence of its single planetwide social- democratic system, the gates were opened for the rest of the solar system to follow. Many space settlements remained colonies of Terran nations and combines, however, so the ultimate result was a patchwork of systems somewhat resembling anarchy. Much of the space economy came to be dominated by a league of settlements called the Mondragon Accord. The Accord was renewed at a conference every five years, and annually the Accord’s AIs called out its economy, thereafter correcting it frequently (several times a second) the longer the Mondragon Accord went on, the more robust it got. Confident in the Accord’s support of the necessities, individual settlements’ enterprise markets made more and more side deals, the so-called above and beyonds, all working on the margin. If not for Mars and its as feudalism is the residual on Earth, capitalism is the residual on Mars the margin itself grows with prosperity, resulting in increasing sophistication and culture the existence of the marginal economy, semiautonomous, semi-unregulated, resembling anarchy, filled with fraud, double-dealing, and crime, delighted all free marketeers, libertarians, anarchists, and many others, some enjoying the bonobo barter and others the machismo of a wild west and wealth beyond need marginal capitalism is a tough-guy sport like rugby or tackle football, suitable mostly for people slightly overdosed on testosterone. On the other hand, with some rule and attitude changes, it has proven it can be an interesting game, even beautiful, like baseball or volleyball. It is a valid project at the margin, a form of self-actualization, not to be applied to the necessities, but on the margin a nice hobby, even perhaps an art form confining capitalism to the margin was the great Martian achievement, like defeating the mob or any other protection racket
WAHRAM AND SWAN
Wahram was back in Terminator before Swan returned from Earth. At that point the city was sliding over the immense plain of Beethoven Crater, and Wahram screwed his courage to the sticking point and when she got into town, asked Swan if she wanted to go out with him to a facility in the west wall of Beethoven, to hear a concert and catch up on things. As he made the call, he was, he had to admit, nervous. Her quicksilver manner left him uncertain what to expect; he could not even predict whether he would be going out to Beethoven with her or with Pauline. On the other hand, he liked Pauline; so hopefully it would be all right either way. And with luck Swan would no longer be so intent to learn all there was to know about Alex’s plans concerning the qubes. That, Inspector Genette had made very clear, they had to keep from her.
In any case, the chance to hear some Beethoven was enough to spur him on. He made the call; and Swan agreed to go.
After that Wahram looked up the program for the performance they were to attend, and was excited to see it was a triple bill of rarely played transcriptions: first a wind ensemble playing a transcription of the Appassionata piano sonata; then Beethoven’s opus 134, which was his own transcription for two pianos of his Grosse Fugue for string quartet, opus 133. Lastly a string quartet was to play a transcription of their own for the Hammerklavier sonata.
Brilliant programming, Wahram felt, and he joined Swan at the south lock of Terminator with an anticipation so strong that it overwhelmed the uneasiness he felt both about her and about being outside Terminator, on the surface of Mercury. Necessary movement westward-well, this was always true in some sense, he told himself, and focused his thoughts on the concert. Maybe there was no real reason for concern. It was interesting to think that he might be irrationally afraid of the sun.
At the little museum in the west wall of Beethoven, he was astonished to see that they were almost the only people in the audience, aside from the musicians not playing, who sat in the front rows to listen. The facility had an empty main room that would have held a few thousand people, but happily this concert was in a side hall with just a couple hundred seats, arced around a small stage in Greek theater style. Acoustics were excellent.
The wind ensemble, slightly outnumbering its audience, rollicked its way through the finale of the Appassionata in a way that made it one of the greatest wind pieces Wahram had ever heard, fast to the point of effervescence. The transcription to winds made it a new thing in the same way that Ravel had made Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition a new thing.
