Things Fall Apart: Chapter 74

Humanity's Hold, 4053.11.04 CE

22 megaseconds since the catastrophe

Humanity's Hold was not like other human habitations, past or present. It was not a single place, in truth. It was everywhere humanity—true Humanity—resided and held sway. Until very recently, that had been a single vast cavern network, some of it natural, some of it excavated over the centuries. Even so, the urge to subdivide and name those subdivisions had been avoided, possibly actively suppressed. The truth of that was largely lost to history.

Now, the Hold also included a station neatly tucked into a Lagrange point. True humanity was finally reaching out to the stars again, but it was taking its time about it. A single station, more a construction platform than habitation; a handful of ships, built to resemble alien craft of various kinds; and the few operatives those ships had carried outward made up the bulk of the Hold's presence. Well, those, and the transceiver stations.

None of that changed the alienation Morris Baker felt as the shuttle took him up to the Lagrange platform. Like everyone of his generation, he had grown up with rock and metal as his whole world. There were plants, of course, whole green spaces underground, kept alive much as the aliens did, with clever lighting tricks and a great deal of effort. But Baker's world, the Hold, was a place of stone.

Baker was enough of a student of history, and had sufficient imagination, to understand that his distant ancestors found the Hold itself alien, when first circumstances had led them first to sojourn, and then to settle there. He also had always understood that the Council's plans would mean true humanity adjusting to alien places, possibly even becoming alien themselves.

Alien, maybe, but not betrayers.

He had been instrumental in forming those plans, as a young councilor, backing his slightly senior colleague, Neal Carson. Carson's energy, his genius, had conceived and driven the plan. It was time, Carson had said poetically, to stop hiding and start striding, to assert true humanity's survival and its rightful place.

Now, Carson was laying on his deathbed, and Baker found himself reluctantly stepping into the role of first among equals, the oldest surviving originator of the plan. It was in this role that he found himself rising to orbit, to the platform.

The message had arrived buried in otherwise meaningless digital noise, carefully steganographed and tight-beamed to limit interception. Urgent update. Agent inbound. The agent had already been on their way downwell, of course, when they'd sent the message. One didn't wait for confirmation with almost 18 hours of lag from the heliopause. The agents all knew the risks and made their judgments. Baker might disagree, but he would not criticize unless this agent's update turned out not to be all that urgent.

The shuttle jolted a bit as it docked with the platform, shaking Baker out of his reverie. He stood, carefully, checked his magshoes, and walked to the airlock. There was no real hurry—the agent's best estimated arrival time was still several hours out. It could be days. He begrudged the time away from the caverns, especially with his old friend dying in hospital, but impatience would not speed physics.

So, he allowed the citizen who greeted him at the lock to guide him to a utilitarian suite that would serve as his quarters and his office, and settled in to get what work he could do, done, while wondering what could be so urgent as to send an agent homeward.

In the event, it was four days' wait before the agent's ship arrived. There were no signs of it having been pursued. Their agents and taps in the aliens' systems provided no reason to believe the ship had even been noticed.

So far, so good.

Baker weighed his real consequence as functional leader of the council against the need to avoid seeming too haughty, and chose to meet his "guest" at the dock. Citizens who tried to place themselves too far above others tended to "fall" down holes and never be found, after all, and wouldn't that be an ignominious end to his career.

The person who emerged through the lock was female-bodied—but until they introduced themselves, Baker would not presume more than that. They were taller than true human average, with a look Baker associated with a low-gravity upbringing. Baker assumed that's why they'd been chosen, although they were young enough that it was possible that they were actually a second-generation agent.

That had always been the riskiest part of whole scheme. Deep cover agents would likely form connections, have families. Some of those children would be deliberately nurtured as future agents themselves. There was always the risk of divided loyalties, and procedures were in place to deal with those.

Not for the first time, Baker questioned his claim to be a member of true humanity. So many of the things he had sanctioned against aliens were not all that humane.

There was a ritual to be observed, part of establishing bona fides, until which there would be no handshakes, no proximity. They—she?—seemed to understand this. They stopped just past the hatch, allowing it to close behind them, while Baker remained near the hatch that led further into the station—this being as far apart as they could stand. Another citizen—a young member of the Citizens' Security Subcommittee named James Hunter—stood near him as witness and guard. It was a risk, but less of one than meeting alone.

After a moment, finally, Baker said, "Do you bring news?" This was a trap. If she treated it literally, he would treat her as false, and she would discover entirely new definitions of pain.

But she provided the countersign. "I seek guidance to the truth."

"Does truth exist?" he continued.

"Are we not True?"

Well enough, so far. "I am Morris Baker. I represent the council."

"I am Hester Pearson. My grandfather was George Pearson."

Baker took this at face value for the moment. "Welcome home, Hester. This citizen," he indicated Hunter next to him, "will guide you to a place where we can verify certain details about you in the name of security and caution. May I ask your pronouns?"

"I identify female, citizen, but thank you for asking."

"Of course. I return the favor by clarifying that I identify male, or at least, male enough to answer to 'he'. Citizen James, do me the favor of guiding Hester to the security room, as we discussed."

"Of course! Hester, please come with me."

Baker could see that she was impatient, fairly bursting to share whatever it was she had come to share. He could also see her accept what training had taught her. Her grandfather, or parents, were to be commended.

Aloud, she said, "So I shall, and thank you, citizen." Her accent, of course, was odd. If she was home to stay, she might need to consider a sleep-course to amend it to help her integrate better with the Hold. On the other hand, Baker considered the value of someone who already had an alien accent. Space was big; she could easily be sent somewhere else than wherever she'd come in from.

Baker stood well clear of the door to let the two precede him out of the reception area. After a few minutes, he finally left himself, returning to his office.

By the time Hester had been thoroughly vetted by members of the Citizens Security Subcommittee, Baker had researched a bit on George Pearson. The name had sounded familiar, but Baker admitted to himself that he was not getting any younger, and his memory, while pretty good, was not infallible.

Pearson had been one of their first agents sent up and out. He had, in fact, been their canary, and a canny canary he'd been. He'd used what they'd gleaned from all the broadcast comm traffic that wafted past them, heedless, and determined he could, if he was careful in his navigation, arrive at the anchorage station at the edge of the system and present himself as having come in from some completely different, distant place. Neither the anchorage, nor the somewhat nearer junction station further downwell, took any notice of what happened so very deep in the well. Their concerns were all entirely local, or else outward, like all aliens.

So, they'd crafted a ship, a fake registration that nobody would likely bother to check, even a plausible cargo, all to allow this one man to slip into the anchorage population and, from there, out into the alien diaspora, none of them the wiser.

His success had enabled all the rest. The aliens were so unused to the idea of having a real adversary that their security was quite lax. A person who caused no trouble, even without any real papers, could apply for entry and be accepted. Their record at one place could net them easy access to another, but the absence of that record only made it slightly harder. There were exceptions, where physical differences or cultural barriers required more effort to infiltrate, but most of the aliens were quite trusting.

Pearson had eventually found his way into the Tau Ceti Organization network of stations. Then, as planned, he mostly vanished from view. They knew that he, and other operatives, survived because they saw some of the effects of their orders being carried out, but return communications were deliberately very few and far between. Occasionally, a message appeared buried much as this one had, slipped into the time-compression network or a courier ship's general payload of news.

Recently, however, all news and traffic out from that quarter had gotten scarce. A large part of the plan had depended upon the disruption of the TCTO. While not really a coherent nation, they had come the closest of any diaspora polity to older human dreams of a galactic republic or empire. Shaking up their network would, by itself, provide a monumental distraction; combined with the other measures in place, it would give true humanity space to move openly onto the stage to claim their due.

That disruption had been triggered some time ago now, but it should not have led to quite so thorough a blackout of news. The council had hesitated, wondering if their hand had been discovered, if the blackout represented efforts to disrupt the disruptors.

On that thought, there was a chime. Citizen James' voice came through the intercom, with news that he had Citizen Hester Pearson to see him. According her the title "Citizen" was more than commonplace in this case. It was the key phrase that told him the Security Subcommittee was satisfied.

Just then his mailbox chimed with the Subcommittee's report. He opened it quickly, and saw at the top that she was cleared as genuine. The rest could wait.

He pressed a button to admit them, thanked Citizen James for his service, and offered Citizen Hester a seat. If she had found her time with the Subcommittee irksome, it didn't show. She was still clearly bursting with a story to tell, but otherwise smoothly professional.

"Some refreshment, Citizen?"

"Some water, if you would...Citizen." It did not come easily to her lips, that word, but then, it wouldn't. That was not quite how they talked out in the TCTO.

He rose and got her a glass, then on second thought, poured himself one as well, and returned to the desk. "So, much as I'd love a chance to get to know you, you came a very long and risky way to deliver urgent news. I invite you now to deliver it."

She did. She was methodical, detailed, and at first glance quite unemotional. Second glance showed she was not unaffected by what she was telling him. She had lost people to their miscalculation, he thought. The risk of generational deep cover. Attachment.

He stopped himself, then—not that she saw it, he hoped. He was trying hard to keep his own face smooth, but knew full well the blood had drained from his face when she'd first presented her summary. These were aliens, and the plan had always entailed the possibility, even probability, that many of them would die.

The calculation, however, had been intended to leave the impression that each incident might have been mishap and not conspiracy. It was a software bug. It was a mutation of a natural virus. Nanotech had failed. Fungi happen. It was intended to delay the day when people put the pieces together, and reduce the possibility of retaliation in force.

When she was done, and he had asked clarifying questions which she answered quite cogently where she knew, and admitted without embarrassment when she didn't, he placed a call and asked Citizen James to return and kindly escort her to quarters and see her comfortable.

When the door closed behind them, he stood, and turned toward the viewport. They had given him a vista of the planet, burned, scarred, abused as it was. In truth, as unlovely as the view was, it was still home, and usually, he treasured it.

Now, he stood grimly watching the features of long-ruined Earth go by.