Blood-Dimmed Tide, Chapter III

We slingshot Luna and head inward toward a sling of the Sun, boosting at a punishing five gees. One Coast Guard cutter tracks us but loses us when we go dark on the far side of the moon. Radio traffic indicates that Luna Traffic control was alerted too late to get a fix on us: we brushed atmosphere on the sling but not low enough to heat. I unbuckle and reload the hellwhip magazines, then head up to the flight deck, overhanding the ladder and letting my boots float along behind me.

"About time," Thull's voice comes from speakers on the bulkheads, "You get lost down there?"

"Reloading," I say, hooking a boot into a holdme and watching his eyes flicker behind his closed eyelids. He's pale from a month underground, and in freefall his legs drift like tendrils on some plump form of sealife. "Never hurts to take care of that sort of thing ASAP."

"That reminds me, could you take a look at thruster nine? Bottle needs aligning."

I just sigh. "Later. I've been on the road for three days, sleeping in the saddle. Let me get some coffee in me and then I'll take a look at it." I brush a fingertip across an access point and hear whispery voices in my left ear; the CG cutter has abandoned pursuit and Deep Space security has been alerted. We've about a 1 in 4 chance of being hit by a random deep-radar sweep, but I'm not particularly worried. As a wise man once said, it's a bigass sky.

"I know you have a coffeemaker in the dash of that little thing, so why are you going to tell me you need coffee?"

"Because I also don't like pissing down a tube. Just tell me where it's at, huh?"

"Same place as last time. You know that as well as I do."

Yeah. Space pilots tend to keep stuff in the same place all of the time. Cuts down on panic when the vacuum alarm sounds if you don't have to try to remember where you left your pressure suit. I eel into the galley an put a bulb on. I'm just about to head back out when the LED lights beneath the camera on the bulkhead. "Nah, don't bother." His voice is tinny on the single cheap speaker in here, all exposed wire and globs of sticktite hanging it on the wall "I've a correction or two to make with the tops, then I'll join you. May as well strap in."

"Sure." I slide into the small but well-padded seat and pull on a belt. My stomach tries to keep a constant azimuth as the ship rotates about its center of mass: it's been awhile since I've seen spacetime. Good job I haven't had any coffee yet; I watch as tidal forces slosh it up the walls of the bulb and feel slightly queasy. The single porthole polarizes until the Sun is visible ahead and the stars are not, then there's a slight sideways pressusre that seems to last a long time.. He's teasing the ship sideways by playing the gyros against each other to avoid leaving an ion trail; sometimes the old tricks are the best. We settle back in to freefall and I hear the small noises of a man unplugging from the deck.

I pull him a bulb as he's coming in the door, black. I personally like lots of complex sugars and bovine products in mine, so it takes a bit longer. While I'm going through this ritual and shaking the bulb to get the perfect super-saturated solution, he toehooks a holdme and streches out the kinks, slides the bulb from the table's magstripe. He sips and grimaces, sucking air through his teeth to cool his mouth. "I could really use a fucking steak, you know? It's been recycled protein bars every day for me."

"I've got some in the trunk, since I knew you'd feel that way. The real deal, too, so be fucking grateful. No," I say, watching the naked, predatory lust come over his face, "I am not cooking them in this ship. You want me to microwave twenty-dollar-a-pound filet mignon? This is not going to happen. I'll grill them dirtside."

He sighs. "Worth the wait, I suppose."

"Also vegetables."

"What, the green things? That rabbits eat?"

"No, the green things without which you get scurvy. Be a shame to lose all your teeth to the bane of sailors four hundred years ago. I will cook them, and you will eat them." I slurped coffee off the end of the bulb, mingling it with air to explode the flavor. I sounds ridiculous, but it is the only way to enjoy coffee from a bulb. Otherwise, you may as well be drinking tea or some other such hideous substance.

"'Okay, sure Dad,'" he says chirpily. It's an old joke, but close to true. Each of us is really the closest thing to family the other has. And we each know the other's darkest secret. Just like family.

But he's doing it just to annoy me, so I make the next slurp slightly louder, because it annoys him. And I'm gratified to see a flash of irritation.

Just like family.

"Anyway," I say, putting the bulb firmly on the magstripe and slouching back into my chair, hearing it whir to accomodate this new position, "Tell me again what we're doing?"

He finishes his coffee, and begins.

The optimistically named New Utopia was chosen for its proximity to its sun and lack of highly evolved animal and plantlife. It had been settled over the course of 20 years by pioneering types; terraformers, biologists, engineers, farmers. It was within the limits of human habitation, but unpleasant at first. The air contained mere sips of oxygen, and though it was not tilted on its axis, its eccentric orbit took it far enough from its sun that winter was a full terran year of hip- or head-deep snow. The first settlers hunkered down in artic basecamps of flowform quonset huts and laser-dug underground tunnels, to set about the serious business of making the place over.

Great strides were made early. Analysis of the soil showed that some soil additives would be necessary for some crops, but not many, and not often. Farmers in small oxymasks worked as soon as the snow began melting. The first growing season, though distressingly cool for most earth crops, was long enough that the plants matured. The first harvest was a bountiful one: despite the distance, the sun was in some respects better for Earthlife than Sol, radiating cheerfully in the ultraviolet. Several local varieties of tuber were discovered which were edible, though its meat was tough and very rich in iron. However, it was also a good source of fatty oils. Settlement dieticians gave it the thumbs up. As land was cleared it joined the earthcrops and began to be utilized in much the same way as taro. Much of the first harvest was freeze-dried and stockpiled in anticipation of the coming winter of Year Two.

After a frenetic first winter of trips to the far points of a new globe, genetic engineers modified a species of mountain pine and seeded the equator with it, by the simple expedient of dropping the tiny seeds from a lifter. A certain twisting of the genes ensured that that it produced a tailored greenhouse gas as well as O2. They also added a vulnerability to Dutch Elm Disease, by which none of the local plantlife would be affected. It was going to be rapacious in its infiltartion of the biosphere, and they wanted a way to thin it eventually. By the end of the growing season, the firs had established themselves well, though they would make no appreciable difference unless they proliferated successfully. Firs had been chosen because they did not depend on pollinating insects, of which New Utopia was ignorant; there were no native flowering plants. Also, its genetic stock was noted for its light seeds, which were spread well by wind.

Five NUyears later, the addition of a very dark species of moss to trap heat from the sun made the nickname inevitable. During the winter, the fifteen degrees surrounding the equator on every landmass was spotchily discernable even from space, and the Bonsai Belt was doing its job well. Average temperatures had risen three degrees, short trips outside could be made without an oxymask, and ocean levels had risen very slightly as the icecaps began to recede. One earth commentator, upon viewing videos sent back on FTL droids, said that the Bonsai Belt was rainforest as interpreted by Zen gardeners, and he wasn't far wrong. Watching snowmelt trickling off the vast pads of moss, carving tiny rivers between the roots of thin stands of eleven-year-old trees, was a sight to inspire contemplation.

Nine NUyears into the project, a narrow band of permanent habitation was possible on both sides of the equator. Some decendents of the original Bonsai Belt seed stock proved resistant to Dutch Elm Disease, but as they were already being logged, most thought it hardly mattered. Resident meteorologists claimed indications were that with the Belt's current rate of growth and prevailing winds, the climate was entering a phase of stability, despite several violent storms which began as coastal warm fronts along the Belt and roared inland, dropping hail the size of goose eggs and in some cases as large as melons on early-sprouting crops. These were dismissed as "climate corrections," and for once meteorologists appeared to actually be correct; the following year was the balmiest yet, with temperatures reaching a high of 23º C. And winter in most places was no worse than one in the Protectorate of Alaska, aside from the icecaps, which of course would always be substantially larger than their Terran equivalents. The New Utopia story was one of unmitigated success, and the Representatives Republica voted to open the planet to general settlement a fortnight after the motion was entered.

It is at this point that story becomes murky. Rumors of a bloody coup on New Utopia vied in the Net with stories of a planetwide climatological disaster. Some said that most of the population had revealed themselves as members of the outlawed Conscientious Objection party. A significant portion of the Aramada Republica was dispatched at STL speeds to the colony. They wouldn't reach orbit for seven years, and once they did no word came back on FTL droids. Once they returned, fifteen years later, the crews debunked any stories of a planetwide disaster, but did say that they had provided logistical support and intelligence while a military governor had been installed. There had not been a lot of fighting, but what fighting had occurred had been protracted and bloody, with nearly seven percent of the Armada forces lost in skirmishes with guerillas operating from bases in the icecaps. Despite their lack of military training and ragtag equipment, their superior knowledge of the planet had proven a serious tactical advantage.

In the years since then, there has been little contact with the colony on New Utopia, and news releases to the public have contained little more than bland generalities. Many of the settlers had few ties to Earth, but those with relatives in the early waves of settlement have petitioned in vain for information. The news services had carried many tearful images of photos clutched in trembling hands, but eventually the ratings just weren't there. Eventually, the populus had forgotten about New Utopia, and it was assumed that it went on, the matter of general settlement postponed until it reached a level of political stability which made such endeavor possible.

I looked at him for a long time. I reached for my bulb of coffee and found it cold and bitter. "It seems to me," I said slowly, turning to the spigot, "that I've heard this story before."

He didn't respond, so I looked at him. His eyes seemed filmed and though they were poiinted at me, he wasn't seeing me. He was looking a twisting columns of flame, three thousand feet high. He seemd to notice my silence, for he shook himself and said, "What?"

"I said, I've heard this story before."

He barked derisively. "Of course you have; it's just like Ghizhou. It's always the same sad, tired story. Some problem that requires that the Republic stick their exquisitely sorry, painfully polite noses into some colony's business, and always for its own good, Always after it's self-sustaining, always after it's a success."

He banged the table, which would have been more impressive if it hadn't been solid plasteel, and bolted to the deck. It didn't even rattle the coffee bulbs. "And the sheep always swallow it, the same way they swallow marketing and the lottery and the Republic games and luxury cars and all the other sad bread-and-circuses that gets thrown their way to distract them from the fact that any freedom they have is illusory.

"But I know what happened there, because someone made it out. He stowed away on an FTL droid and managed to survive the passage back to earth, shortcircuited the thing to crashland off the coast of Greenland, and then looked me up. I'm surprised he found me, but he had connections within the Battalion, and they got word to me in a dropbox I have in New Jersey."

"So," I said, getting a little impatient, "what's the real story, then?"