Stephen Baxter: Resplendent

For many, it went hard. There hadn’t been farmers on Earth for centuries, and the people of the Conurbation had all been office workers. Some fell ill, some died. But as the survivors’ hands hardened, so did their spirit, it seemed to Rala.

The crops began to grow. But the vegetables were sparse and thin. Rala thought she understood why – the poisoning of the soil was a legacy of the Qax – but nobody seemed to have any idea what to do about it.

The staple food continued to be the pale yellow ration tablets from the food holes. But just as under the old regime there was never enough to eat.

In the rest times they would gather, swapping bits of information.

Pash said, ‘The Coalition’s Green Army really does seem to be putting down the warlords.’ He seemed fascinated by developments, apparently forgetting he was one of those ‘warlords’ himself. ‘Of course having a Spline ship is a big help. But those clowns who follow Cilo around aren’t Army but another agency called the Green Guard. Amateurs, with a mission to cement the revolution.’

Rala whispered, ‘What this “revolution” comes down to is scratching at the dirt for food.’

‘We can’t use Qax technology any more,’ Ingre said. ‘It would be counter-progressive.’ Ingre was always mouthing phrases like this. She seemed to welcome the latest ideology. Rala wondered if she had been through too many shocks to be able to resist.

‘It’s not going to work,’ Rala said softly. ‘The Extirpation was pretty thorough. The Qax planted replicators in the soil, to make it lifeless.’ Their ultimate goal had been to wipe off the native ecology, to make the Earth uninhabited save for humans and the blue-green algae of the oceans, which would become great tanks of nutrient to feed their living Spline ships. ‘No amount of scraping with hoes is going to make the dirt green in a hurry.’

‘We have to support the Coalition,’ said Ingre. ‘It’s the way forward for mankind.’

Pash wasn’t listening to either of them. He said, ‘You’d never get in the Army, but those Green Guards are the gang to join. Most of them are pretty dumb; you can see that. A smart operator could rise pretty fast.’

They spoke like this only in brief snatches. There was always a collaborator about, always a spy ready to sell a story to the Guards for a bit of food.

The cuts began.

It was as if the Coalition believed that starvation would motivate the new shock troops of its uninterrupted revolution. Or perhaps they simply weren’t managing the food stocks competently. Soon the first signs of malnutrition appeared, swollen bellies among the children.

Rala had always kept her handful of replicator dust, from her old cell in the Conurbation. Now she found a hidden corner by the Conurbation walls, where she dug out the earth and sprinkled in a little of her dust. Still nothing happened.

One day Pash caught her doing experiments like this. By now he had fulfilled his ambition to become a Green Guard. The former trader had donned the green armband of his enemies with shameless ease.

She said, ‘Will you turn me in?’

‘Why should I?’

‘Because I’m trying to use Qax technology. This action is doctrinally invalid.’

He shrugged. ‘You saved my life.’

‘Anyhow,’ she said, ‘it’s not working.’

He frowned and poked at the dirt. ‘Do you know anything about this kind of technology? We used a human version in the Port Sol ’s life support – cruder than this, of course. Nanotech manipulates matter at the molecular or atomic levels.’

‘It turns waste into food.’

‘Yes. But people seem to think it’s a magic dust, that you just throw at a heap of garbage to turn it into diamonds and steak.’

‘Diamonds? Steak?’

‘Never mind. There is nothing magic about this stuff. Nanotech is like biology. To “grow”, a nanotech product needs nutrients, and energy. On Sol we used a nutrient bath. This Qax stuff is more robust, and can draw what it needs from the environment, if it gets a chance.’

She thought about that. ‘You mean I have to feed it, like a plant.’

‘There is a lot of chemical energy stored in the environment. You can tap it slowly but efficiently, like plants or bacteria, or burn it rapidly but inefficiently, like a fire. This Qax technology is smart stuff; it releases energy more swiftly than biological cells but more efficiently than a fire. In principle a nano-sown field ought to do better than a biologically planted crop…’

She failed to understand many of the words he was using. Though she pressed him to explain further, to help her, he was too busy.

Meanwhile Ingre, Rala’s cadre sibling, became a problem.

Despite her ideological earnestness she was weak and ineffectual, and hated the work in the fields. A drone supervisor, a collaborator, one of her own people, punished Ingre more efficiently than any Guard would have done. And when that didn’t work in motivating Ingre to work better, she cut off Ingre’s food ration.

After that Ingre just lay on her bunk. At first she complained, or railed, or cried. But she grew weaker, and lay silent. Rala tried to share her own food. But there wasn’t enough; she was going hungry herself.

Rala grew desperate. She realised that the Guards, in their brutal incompetence, were actually going to allow Ingre to die, as they had many others. She could think of only one way of getting more food.

She wasn’t sexually inexperienced; even the Qax hadn’t been able to extirpate that . Pash was easy to seduce.

The sex wasn’t unpleasant, and Pash did nothing to hurt her. The oddest thing was the spacegoer’s exoskeleton he wore, even during sex; it was a web of silvery thread that lay over his skin. But she felt no affection for him, or – she suspected – he for her. Unspoken, they both knew that it was his power over her that excited him, not her body.

Still, she waited for several nights before she asked him for the extra food she needed to keep Ingre alive.

Meanwhile, in the Conurbation, things got worse. Despite the maintenance rotas the stairwells and corridors became filthy. The air circulation broke down. The inner cells became uninhabitable, and crowding increased. Then there was the violence. Rumours spread of food thefts, even a rape. Rala learned to hide her food when she walked the darker corridors, scuttling past walls marked with bright green tetrahedral sigils, the most common graffito.

The Conurbation was dying, Rala realised with slow amazement. It was as if the sky itself was falling. People spoke even more longingly of the Qax Occupation, and the security it had brought.

One day Pash came to her, excited. ‘Listen. There’s trouble. Factional infighting among the Green Guards.’

She closed her eyes. ‘You’re leaving, aren’t you?’

‘There’s a battle at a Conurbation a couple of days from here. There are great opportunities out there, kid.’

Rala felt sick; the world briefly swam. They had never discussed the child growing inside her, but Pash knew it existed, of course. It was a mistake; it hadn’t even occurred to her that the contraceptive chemistry which had circulated with the Conurbation’s water supply might have failed.

She hated herself for begging. ‘Don’t leave.’

He kissed her forehead. ‘I’ll come back.’

Of course he never did.

The brief factional war was won by a group of Green Guards called the Million Heroes. They wore a different kind of armband, had a different ranking system, and so forth. But day to day, under their third set of bosses since the Qax, little changed for the drones of Conurbation 2473; one set of rulers, it was turning out, was much the same as another.