Kard glared. ‘We all have something to gain. Xera, you Commissaries are responsible for maintaining the unity of mankind; the common principles, common purpose, the belief that has driven the Expansion so far. But isn’t it obvious that you are failing? Look at this place.’ He waved a Virtual hand through Doel’s hair; the woman flinched, and the hand broke up into drifting pixels. ‘This woman is a mother, apparently some kind of matriarch to her extended family.’ He pronounced those words with loathing. ‘They don’t even live in their Coalition-provided Conurbation domes. It’s as if Hama Druz never existed!
‘And if the Druz Doctrines were to collapse, the Commission would have no purpose. Think of the good you do, for you know so much better than the mass of mankind how they should think, feel, live and die. Your project is actually humanitarian! It has to continue. But if it is to prevail mankind needs purification. An ideological cleansing. And that’s what the bright fire of war will give us.’
I could see that his arguments, aimed at the Commissary’s vanity and self-interest, were leaving a mark. I got a sense of the great agencies of the Coalition as shadowy independent empires, engaging in obscure and shifting alliances. And now each agency would contemplate the possibility of a war as an opportunity to gain political capital. It was queasy listening. But there’s a lot I didn’t want to know about how the Coalition is run. Still don’t, in fact.
They had forgotten the Academician. But Tilo was still trying to speak. He showed me more bits of evidence he had assembled on his data desk – me, because I was the only one still listening. ‘But I think I know now why the volcanism started here, Lieutenant. Forget the star: this planet has an unusually high dark-matter concentration in its core. Under such densities the dark matter annihilates with ordinary matter and creates heat.’
I listened absently. ‘Which creates the geological upheaval.’
He closed his eyes, thinking. ‘Here’s a scenario. The Xeelee have been driving dark-matter creatures out of the frozen star – and, fleeing, they have lodged here – and that’s what set off the volcanism. It was all inadvertent. The Xeelee are trying to save stars, not harm planets. They probably don’t even know humans are here … The damage to the planet is entirely coincidental.’
But nobody paid any attention to that. For, I realised, we had already reached a point where evidence didn’t matter.
Kard ignored the Academician; he had what he wanted. He turned to the people of the village, muddy, exhausted, huddled together on their rooftop. ‘What of you? You are the citizens of the Expansion. There are reformers who say you have had enough of colonisation and conflict, that there are enough people in the sky, we should seek stability and peace. Well, you have heard what we have had to say, and you have seen our mighty ships. Will you live out your lives on this drifting rock, helpless before a river of mud – or will you transcend your birth and die for an epic cause? War makes everything new. War is the wildest poetry. Will you join me?’
Those ragged-ass, dirt-scratching, orthodoxy-busting farmers hesitated for a heartbeat. You couldn’t have found a less likely bunch of soldiers for the Expansion. But, would you believe, they started cheering the Admiraclass="underline" every one of them, even the kids. Lethe, it brought a tear to my eye.
Even Xera seemed coldly excited.
Kard closed his Eyes; metals seams pushed his eyelids into ridges. ‘We are just a handful of people in this desolate, remote place. And yet here a new epoch is born. They are listening to us, you know – listening in the halls of history. And we will be remembered for ever.’
Tilo’s expression was complex. He clapped his hands, and the data desk disappeared in a cloud of pixels, leaving his work unfinished.
We mere fleshy types had to stay on that rooftop through the night. We could do nothing but cling to each other as the muddy tide rose slowly around us, and the kids cried from hunger.
When the sunsats returned to the sky, the valley was transformed. The channels had been gouged sharp and deep by the lahar, and the farms had been smothered by lifeless grey mud, from which only occasional trees and buildings protruded. But the lahar was flowing only sluggishly now.
Lian cautiously climbed to the edge of the roof and probed at the mud with her booted foot. ‘It’s very dense.’
Tilo said, ‘Probably the water has drained out of it.’
Lian couldn’t stand on the mud, but if she lay on it she didn’t sink. She flapped her arms and kicked, and she skidded over the surface. Her face grey with the dirt, she laughed like a child. ‘Sir, look at me! It’s a lot easier than trying to swim or wade…’
So it was, when I tried it myself.
And that was how we got the villagers across the flooded valley, one by one, to the larger Conurbation – not that much was left of that by now – where the big transport waited to take us off. In the end we lost only one of the villagers, the young woman who had been overwhelmed by the surge. I tried to accept that I’d done my best to fulfil my contradictory mission objectives – and that, in the end, was the most important outcome for me.
As we lifted, Mount Perfect loosed another eruption.
Tilo, cocooned in a med cloak, stood beside me in an observation blister, watching the planet’s mindless fury. He said, ‘You know, you can’t stop a lahar. It just goes the way it wants to go. Like this war, it seems.’
‘I guess.’
‘We humans understand so little. We see so little. But when you add us together we combine into huge historical forces that none of us can deflect, any more than you can dam or divert a mighty lahar ...’
And so on. I made an excuse and left him there.
I went down to the sick bay, and watched Lian tending to the young from the village. I had relieved her of her regular duties, as she was one of the few faces on board that was familiar to the traumatised kids, so she was useful here. With the children now she was patient, competent, calm. I felt proud of that young marine; she had grown up a lot during our time on Shade.
And as I watched her simple humanity, I imagined a trillion such acts, linking past and future, history and destiny, a great tapestry of hard work and goodwill that united mankind into a mighty host that would some day rule a Galaxy.
To tell the truth I was bored with Tilo and his niggling. War! It was magnificent. It was inevitable. I didn’t understand what had happened down on Shade, and I didn’t care. What did it matter how the war had started, in truth or lies? We would soon forget about dark matter and the Xeelee’s obscure, immense projects, just as we had before; we humans didn’t think in such terms. All that mattered was that the war was here, at last.
The oddest thing was that none of it had anything to do with the Xeelee themselves. We needed a war. Any enemy would have served our purposes just as well.
I began to wonder what it would mean for me. I felt my heart beat faster, like a drumbeat.
We flew into a rising cloud of ash, and bits of rock clattered against our hull, frightening the children.
Yes, war was inevitable. Too many wanted it too badly. But it did strike me as ironic that the triggering incident was a Xeelee action concerned with a different war entirely, a war in which we were always bystanders – a war which would one day overwhelm all of us.