"When is the time right? Why is this injustice allowed to continue?"
"It continues because of politics. The Polity takes control of Line worlds, subsumes them, by consent of eighty per cent of the planetary population — or in cases when there has been a complete breakdown of control and they have been asked for help. If ECS came in here with a shitload of warships and blew the Theocracy to hell, that would cause fear on many other Out-Polity worlds, and that fear might prove a uniting force. Last time ECS got that heavy-handed, it upset the balance on a world that had joined the Polity only a few months before. That world then seceded from what was described there as 'the rule of AI autocrats', its government was subverted by Separatists, and the entire planetary population forced into a war they did not want, against their nearest Polity neighbour. So you see; we have to be very careful."
"What happened… to the two worlds at war?" Eldene asked.
"Well, ECS had to defend the Polity world. That's the charter."
"The other world?"
"It's still habitable at the poles."
Eldene chewed that over: there had always been a deep streak of cynicism in her — probably induced by her early reading — which was perhaps why Fethan had shown such interest in her. She'd never really believed his stories about the Human Polity, precisely because she wanted so badly for them to be true. Even so, she had taken in much of what he had told her and it was her understanding that the Polity would only have to learn of the injustice here for it to unleash ECS on the Theocracy.
"When will ECS come?" she asked eventually.
"When eighty per cent of the population has voted for such or when there has been a complete breakdown of political control and help is asked for," Fethan replied obdurately.
"How in the name of God are we supposed to vote?" Eldene asked.
Fethan glanced at her. "Do you want the Polity in control here? Would you pledge allegiance to the AIs that run the Human Polity?"
"Damned right I would. Anything has to be better than the Theocracy!"
Fethan halted and turned, gripping her by the shoulder. "Say to me your name and tell me what you want."
Eldene stared back at the man and tried to figure out what he meant. "I'm… I'm Eldene and I want the… Human Polity running this world. I want to be free. I want…"
Fethan released her. "You have just made your deposition. You've just voted for Polity control here." He tilted his head slightly, as if listening to something. "So far that's just over sixty-eight per cent of the population."
"I don't understand."
"The ballots run a limited physiological probe, to make sure the ballotee is not under duress. But because I am what I am, I can collect depositions without it." He gestured behind with his thumb. "Back there I collected fifty-three depositions, which you may be glad to know include Dent's and Cathol's. You were next on my list before circumstances… changed."
"Ballots?"
"The Polity has had machines here collecting votes for thirty-eight years, but never managed to get that eighty per cent vote. Your vote, because of your age, has a life of fifty years calculated from average spans here. It's the only way it can work."
"But Dent and Cathol are dead."
"I didn't say the system was perfect, girl."
"I've never seen these ballots," said Eldene, still confused.
"They're machines — they'll be in a ring, an amulet, the button on someone's shirt. Even so, you understand how difficult it would be to get someone to say what you have just said, with proctors and Theocracy cameras watching them at every turn. Most of that sixty-eight per cent is the Underground vote."
Fethan moved on.
"Then how much longer?" Eldene asked.
Fethan was silent for a moment before replying. "I don't think it's gonna be done by vote, girl. I think that the Theocracy will be destabilized. Sometime soon, Earth Central will send certain individuals here, and things will change very quickly."
"Tell me more," said Eldene, excitement twisting her stomach. And Fethan told her much more.
6
"And thus it was that with God's guidance Brother Goodman came at last to the land of the gabbleduck. Hereabouts were trails worn through the grass and the scatterings of the bones of those who had failed the test," the woman told her boy, raising an eyebrow at the picture displayed in the book showing a veritable charnel house.
"The babbleguck, the babbleguck," said the boy impatiently — she had given up trying to get him to pronounce the name correctly and assumed this story would become part of his own personal mythology when he grew up. Scrolling the text down moved the scene along to soon reveal the creature itself: it squatted in the grasses like some monstrously insectile hybrid of Buddha and Kali, with a definite splash of Argus in the ocular region.
"Gabbleduck," said the boy, and the woman looked at him with suspicion before continuing.
"In his right hand Brother Goodman carried the word of God and in his left hand he carried the wisdom of Zelda Smythe. He brought no weapons to the abode of the monster other than these and his Faith. 'Ask me a riddle! he cried, holding up both books."
At this point, the gabbleduck, with its multiple arms folded on its triple-keeled chest, turned its array of green eyes upon the pious brother.
" 'Scubble leather bobble fuck, said the duck, and in reply Brother Goodman smote the creature with the word, 'Ung? "
The woman started giggling as the picture book now showed the enormous creature stooping down and opening its large bill to expose an interior lined with something like white holly leaves.
"Then guess… what… happened?" she managed.
Giggling as well, though not sure why, the boy did not manage a reply. The book showed them both anyway.
The Occam Razor was a dark and disturbing ship, made more so because despite its large crew and resident population, it always seemed empty — any crew member possibly being, at any one time, as much as a couple of kilometres away, and that was a disturbing thought. His cabin was large, comfortable, had all the facilities of a plush hotel, and was like a room in an empty house. Standing at the wide screen that served as a window, Cormac sipped a whisky with cubes of normal ice in it, unlike the one he had been poured by Dreyden — whisky with cips ice was a lethal combination — and watched Elysium, and the huge sun it orbited, dwindle into invisibility. He felt the need now to be about his business, but there were months yet of ship time to get through before the Occam Razor reached its destination. Unable to contain his impatience any longer he swallowed the last of his drink, placed the glass back in the wall dispenser and headed for the door.
The ship was not quiet, yet it had an air of quietude. The sounds Cormac could hear in the corridor were distant and echoey, and as of someone working on things far off: the crackle of a welder, the clang of something dropped, the stutter of a laser drill. He checked the time and, seeing that only an hour had passed since their departure from Elysium, he decided not to bother Mika yet — she would hardly have had time to settle in her cabin, let alone establish herself in the ship's forensic laboratory in Medical. He decided he needed to think, and he always thought best while he was walking. There was plenty of room to walk here, so he chose a direction and set off.
In a few minutes it was evident he had left the accommodation area. The walkway soon lost its carpeting — bare gravity plates exposed — then its partition walls, exposing the inner structure of the ship. All around him was an ordered forest of wires and optic cables, ducts and foamed metal beams, and plasma tubes, often intersecting at some bulky wasps' nest of a machine. For a couple of minutes he had a view of something far below him that looked like the Sydney Opera House, but it was soon obscured as some huge deck slid slowly over it. He had been walking for ten minutes when a drone flew waveringly towards him. This particular machine had the smooth shape of an arrowhead with no visible manipulators, and he wondered just what purpose it could possibly serve.