Neal Asher - The Departure

Hannah winced.

And well she might. A glimpse into Arcoplex One revealed that the digesters had yet to be put to use. Chairman Messina, accompanied by forty-one delegates and a further twenty bodyguards, had pushed his way to the head of the queue and entered first. They had then occupied a conference hall and were currently debating the agenda, having thus far merely drawn up a list of important subjects to be considered – such as the assignment of living quarters, a resources survey, their negotiating position and who would chair the escape-assessment working group. No one had yet got round to mentioning the corpses, of which only a few had been found so far, the majority occupying private quarters or piled up at the far end of the arcoplex. The situation seemed beyond satire, and Saul wondered how long it would take before this ‘hard-headed organizational approach to extreme circumstances’ completely fell apart.

‘Most of them are guilty of murder,’ Hannah suggested.

‘Every single Committee delegate has been responsible, to some extent, for mass murder. They’re also ultimately responsible for every other atrocity the Inspectorate has committed.’

She turned to look at him. ‘Nuremberg?’

‘We don’t have the resources.’

‘I have to think more about this.’

She bowed her head and Saul thought she looked ashamed. He decided then that he would burden her with no further decisions of life and death. He caught hold of her shoulder and directed her across the control room, towards the door through into Le Roque’s former quarters. As they walked, he summoned the spidergun in behind him.

‘You must sleep on it,’ he said, as she went through the door ahead of him, then he turned to see Le Roque eyeing him curiously. ‘We’re not to be disturbed,’ Saul declared, before closing the door behind them. He watched through the spidergun’s sensors, whilst Hannah moved over to the hammock and pulled herself down on to it, its fabric adhesion clinging to her suit. By the time the multi-limbed robot had squatted down outside the door, and raised two of its weapon-bearing limbs warningly, Hannah was already fast asleep.

Saul soon joined her, but some time still passed before he descended to a level of humanity where sleep again became possible for him.

22

Your Vote Counts

Democracy is a luxury enjoyed by simple low-population societies, though wealth can maintain it for longer than its natural span. However, societies grow in population and complexity, the technological apparatus of control improves, individual freedoms impinge upon others until they demand ‘action’ from government that is generally eager to comply and accrue more power to itself, and democracy gradually sickens and dies. This is what happened on Earth, but out in space democracy dies a different death. On ancient Earth all the necessities of life were free to every potential user: air, food and water, the materials from which to build a shelter or craft the tools of survival. As we built more complex societies, more and more items on this list fell under the control of others, and ceding such control is the way we forge our own chains. Out in space, every single item on such a list has to be either transported there or produced there at great cost, under the control of small specialist groups, or the regime which put the project up in vacuum. Also in space, where decisions about survival must often be made quickly, there is rarely time for full debate, for a vote. In space, meritocracy is the nearest to democracy you can hope to get, and neither of them are rugged survivors.

A long grassy slope curved ever downwards away from her, and as she ran it grew steadily steeper. Eventually she would fall, but she knew all she required in order to fly was an effort of will. Shortly the slope disappeared from beneath her . . . but at that moment she knew she could only fly in her dreams, and so she fell. When dream slid into reality, the sensation of falling did not leave her even as she opened her eyes.

‘How long was I asleep?’ she asked.

Saul was naked, towelling himself down vigorously after using the shower. Hannah could not help but notice how he showed no sign of sensitivity when rubbing the area where he had been stabbed, which meant the wound must have continued healing at the same speed she had witnessed while she had been operating on him. She sat up, licking her tongue round a dry mouth. She felt grotty and was momentarily tempted to lie back and go to sleep again, but instead her guts tightened and a familiar feeling of panic arose. She closed her eyes and tried to calm herself.

‘You okay?’ Saul asked.

‘Panic attack,’ she explained, and saying it out loud seemed to help her get a handle on it and suppress it. And even as the weight of the decision he expected from her descended again, she managed to stave it off. It was time to do something about those people in Arcoplex One. They weren’t entitled to cause her such grief.

‘They’re not all guilty,’ she remarked.

He didn’t even ask who she referred to, his mind operating so fast. ‘Defne guilt.’

‘I believe it is no more than can be attributed to many others on this station.’ She stood and took off her VC suit and underclothes, then headed for the shower. ‘Messina is as guilty as hell, as are also his core delegates and whatever staff implemented their decisions. But there must be members of staff, bodyguards, wives, husbands and children who are no more guilty than anyone else you’ll find out there.’ She pointed to the door leading to the control centre, before propelling herself into the shower booth.

The spray was good and hot, as she washed away the grime, clouding the water with soap till she seemed to be floating in a pool of milk. As she came out of the shower, she found Saul standing motionless, his gaze distant.

‘Forty-one delegates, plus Messina himself, have been involved in the decisions about sectoring, and the euthanizing of dissidents. All of those have blood on their hands, as do most of their staff and some of their family members. Most of the Executive present here are killers, too. However,’ he now focused his gaze on her, ‘how exactly do we measure guilt? They are all of them the product of a society where the only route to power and wealth was a career in government, and it was impossible to rise high anywhere in this regime without getting blood on your hands. Bucking the trend in any way would be suicidal, and altruism a fast route to poverty – and quite possibly to readjustment in an Inspectorate cell.’

‘Then the buck stops with Messina and his forty-one delegates,’ decided Hannah. ‘And anyone else who has directly ordered or committed an act of murder.’

Saul blinked. ‘That means thirty-eight more, then, according to their records.’

A tightness returned to Hannah’s stomach, but this time it wasn’t panic but a strange species of excitement – and awe. While just standing there, he must be processing hundreds of personnel files, running searches, decoding govspeak and assessing every one of all those people currently confined in Arcoplex One.

‘The others must be allowed to leave the arcoplex,’ she declared.

‘What do I do with them?’ he shot back.

‘Assign them quarters and find them work to do throughout the station. Give them a chance to redeem themselves.’

Saul gave a doubtful sneer. ‘Generally, their skills aren’t of the kind the station requires. These people are bureaucrats now deprived of their natural environment of endless micromanagement and interference.’

‘Then they must be retrained on the basis of whatever other skills they possess.’

‘Very well.’ Saul headed for the door. ‘But you still haven’t told me what you want done with the remaining seventy-nine.’