had been shipped, but half of the things they most needed here had not. Instead of the required soil biota, furnaces and replacement injectors for the fusion reactor, they’d received two shrink-wrapped shepherds and a tonne of aero-fan spindles. This had been ascribed to the usual bureaucratic fudge which could be corrected with the next delivery, but, no, it seemed things were already winding down even then. This was how projects got abandoned: increasing screw-ups as each government department involved withdrew, until the inevitable announcement of restructuring, reallocation or, in this case, ‘We’re going to leave you to die now, sorry and all that.’
‘Bitch!’ Var repeated, then her attention strayed to a com light blinking on the console. ‘Miska?’ she queried. Still no response via the coded channel they had been using, so perhaps something had gone wrong with that and he was now trying to talk to her through the crawler’s com. She hit the respond pad, but it wasn’t Miska’s face that appeared on the screen.
‘Ah, at last,’ said Ricard. ‘Miska shut down your com channel, and has been reluctant to provide me with the code.’ Ricard turned to look down to his right. ‘Haven’t you, Miska?’
Var heard Miska’s voice followed by a fleshy thump – probably an enforcer’s boot going in. Ricard swung his gaze back to Var.
‘You killed Gisender,’ was all she could say.
‘It was necessary to neutralize Gisender until certain protocols were in place.’ He paused, shrugged. ‘Hard decisions have to be made, Var. With your expertise, this is something you must understand.’
Var let that go for the moment and instead asked, ‘So you didn’t think we needed to know Le Blanc’s last message?’
‘As I suspected, you’ve seen it. That’s unfortunate.’
‘How long, exactly, did you think you could keep it from us?’ Var asked.
‘As long as necessary. Such an announcement might have led to incorrect behaviour, and even disorder.’
‘Incorrect behaviour,’ Var repeated woodenly. ‘We could all die here and you’re still fretting about
‘And disorder, Var,’ he said gravely. ‘Disorder could lead to the destruction of government property – property it has cost billions to transport here. It is my remit to ensure this base remains functional and staffed, ready for when the supply route is re-established.’
‘You
Ricard continued obliviously, ‘Certainly, some downsizing will be required and the assigned status of present personnel will have to be re-evaluated.’
‘There are no Travellers coming, Ricard. We’ve been left here to die!’
He nodded mildly. ‘The old Travellers are presently being recycled through the Argus bubblemetal plants, but new vessels should be available in between fifteen and twenty years.’
Var sat back hard, as if he’d punched her. Only now, as she really thought about it, did she realize what Ricard was implying. They all knew that, with present resources, the 163 people here – now 162 – could survive unsupplied for only about five years. But it seemed Ricard had received private orders, and had made his own calculations.
But if he thought their time here could be extended to ten or fifteen years, using such methods, he was still seriously mistaken, or had been seriously misled. Doubtless some Committee apparatchik had told him that a small complement of personnel could survive here, and when that small complement started to die, as they inevitably would, they would use up fewer resources and be less likely to damage any of that government property he had mentioned. The Committee clearly wanted to keep the Mars foothold open, the Mars base available. Staff weren’t so important, since replacements could be selected from a pool of billions.
‘Surely you know you’re being lied to,’ she said. ‘If we have any chance of survival here it’s with
‘Don’t you see?’ he said. ‘Incorrect thought already, and yet you are an intelligent person who has only just viewed Le Blanc’s communication.’
Var stared at him for a long moment before saying, ‘So I’m guessing my status has just been downgraded.’
Ricard smiled cheerfully. ‘Certainly not! You are a valued member of the Antares Base staff, whose knowledge will be essential over the coming years.’
‘But Gisender wasn’t,’ she spat.
He shook his head, his expression mournful. ‘Merely a computer and power-systems technician – the kind of person who was useful while resources were abundant, but who would soon have become surplus to requirements.’
That really brought home to Var his cluelessness. He simply had no real idea about the necessities of survival here. Gisender had been exactly the sort of person they needed, someone who could actually repair things rather than merely head down to Stores for another plug-in replacement. Var also had no doubt that Ricard considered himself and his executives and enforcers to be utterly essential, even though they were people with skills generally limited to micromanaging and bullying.
‘So,’ he continued, ‘I want you to return here to Hex Three, without informing anyone of your . . . discovery. To that end I’ve sent someone to bring you in.’
Even then she saw it, striding out from behind Shankil’s Butte and heading towards her, kicking up little puffs of dust each time its two-toed feet thumped down on the peneplain. It seemed Ricard or his men possessed more technical skill than she gave them credit for, because one or more of them had assembled a shepherd and, in some ultimate expression of reality imitating art, a machine like something out of H. G. Wells’s
Earth
In the terms of the society in which Saul found himself, he was a sociopath, though perhaps that might be considered a normal condition in a society that so easily eliminated its innocent citizens. But then who was
