New Planetary Blues

 

SEVENTEEN

 

Harvest Gleam hadn't been fooled for a second by Wheatgerm Thatch's air of reasonableness after the last HoloCorp board meeting; he knew, as he went about pretending to help his Chairman during the following few days, that a small inner coterie was plotting, eavesdropping and keeping suspect board members like himself and Woodcraft Falcon in the dark. Occasionally, out of pure mischievousness, Gleam would drop in unannounced on Thatch at the latter's private quarters and, finding his Chairman there with a little huddle of co-conspirators, would affect to be embarrassed at having forgotten that a meeting had been scheduled, and settle himself comfortably in an armchair as if eager to be informed of any service he might usefully provide in their combined effort to protect HoloCorp from the repercussions of recent events.

On one such occasion, however, about a week after the board meeting involving Father Pringle and Mayflower Breeze, Gleam had more than mischief in mind as he made one of these unscheduled visits to his Chairman. As he strode purposefully into Thatch's spartan apartment, he smiled guilelessly at the assembled company – Thatch, a harassed-looking Dimity Heather, a fussily nervous Counterpane Thistle – and noted the presence, on the desk console, of the Planet Literature contingent: Diamond Glimmer and his Overseer, Seasalt Chive.

'You really shouldn't try and shield me from the trouble you're obviously having, Chairman,' Gleam said reprovingly. 'I'm keen to help in any way I can. Please don't stop on my account.' He took a vacant chair and beamed expectantly round at the assembled company. 'What's going on?'

Thatch, ignoring the unconcealed hostility of Heather, who was practically spitting venom in her attempts to persuade him to eject Gleam, and placing a placatory hand on the indignant Thistle's arm, appealed for calm. 'Please, please! I can see no harm, given that we're all friends here' – a sharp glance at Heather silenced her scornful laugh at this – 'in drawing on all our resources, employing all our various skills and energies, to try to deal with the current, ah, situation. There's no reason why a loyal and long-serving HoloCorp servant like Gleam here shouldn't be kept, ah, abreast of developments.'

'There's every reason for keeping him out of the loop, and you know it,' Heather interjected scornfully. 'He and Falcon are obviously in cahoots with the subversive elements attempting to undermine HoloCorp's authority, and lily-livered liberals like that appalling Breeze creature, Raiment Panoply, and even Simon Bland seem to be going out of their way to help them.'

Thatch looked genuinely pained at her outspokenness. 'Allowing a little self-expression to a few poets and permitting the odd singer to record might require a slight modification to our –'

Slight?' Heather hissed, her face a mask of contemptuous indignation. 'It goes against the whole corporate ethos to allow the people' – she practically spat the word – 'to think they're entitled to go around doing and thinking whatever they like. Why do you think our ancestors bothered to strike off down the path that led to Adepts? Because humanity as it was on Old Earth was incapable of surviving, that's why. And why was that? Because they allowed any nut with a headful of stupid ideas to infect everybody around them. Free speech! Self-expression! In the three hundred years we've been living in the New Planetary Confederation, have we had any wars? No. Have we had any famines? No. Has there been any major outbreak of civil unrest? No. And that's not only because weapons have always been banned, or because resources aren't scarce any more, or because we have unlimited access to energy and space – though these have obviously helped – no, it's because we've kept the people subdued. I make no apology for saying that: I'm fed up of listening to your stupid euphemisms. You know as well as I do that a population, once it's achieved a certain level of comfort, so that it doesn't have to worry about survival, needs to be continually amused and entertained, so that it doesn't get restless, start thinking about nonsensical abstractions like political freedom, human rights and religious truth. If everyone could agree what these things were, OK, it might make sense to encourage people to think about them, but you know as well as I do that they won't agree, that everyone has their own views about all of these things. So we keep them happy with holograms, give them what they want, keep them in line by threatening to give them a dose of exposure to the bogeymen so beloved of maniacs like Father Pringle, and the result is a functioning society of humans and an elite of Adepts, who, let's face it, are the only ones capable of doing the real work: keeping the whole system going.' Heather, her cheeks becomingly reddened by the passion with which she had delivered her lengthy speech, sat back in her chair and looked round the room, daring anyone to contradict her.

Gleam was the first to break the silence that followed her outburst. 'I agree with a great deal of what you say, Heather. No one could study the history of Old Earth, as I have, and tell you you're absolutely wrong. I disagree, though, with your dismissal of resources as a major factor in keeping people content. I think we've achieved a fantastic level of equilibrium here now, thanks to our ability to exploit the unlimited resources available to us, thanks to our ability to travel wherever we want whenever we feel like it, and that, as a result, we could relax a little now, let the people bat a few ideas around, write the odd novel, compose the occasional song and have it heard by their peers.'

'At our last board meeting, you agreed to increased surveillance of our Sleeper pair, though,' Thatch pointed out.

'Only to check for outright subversion,' Gleam replied. 'What have you found over the past week or so? Have they been going around fomenting dissent, encouraging the masses to overthrow their rulers? I doubt it, somehow.'

'This is precisely what we were discussing before you arrived, Gleam,' said Thatch, gesturing towards the desk console. 'Glimmer went back to Planet Literature to help Chive monitor our friends James Malcolm and Jane Riley. Mr Chive? You were just about to give us a report, weren't you?'

Gleam turned his attention to the console. He didn't know Chive very well, but the overseer's appearance shocked him. Surely those wildly staring eyes, dishevelled hair and twitching mouth weren't part of his normal look. He remembered Chive as a somewhat nondescript, unassuming man, quietly confident, even self-assured when allowed to expatiate on his favoured topics, literature and music. The man in the console looked haunted, even slightly unhinged. This was worrying: Adepts simply did not allow themselves to become agitated, let alone unhinged. Serenity was bred into them; reason and calm were their watchwords. True, in pursuit of what they considered to be important truths, they could become animated, as Heather had just demonstrated so vividly, but animation was one thing, this derangement quite another.

'Mr Chairman, I ...' Chive faltered, his mind clearly wandering out of his control. He cleared his throat, began again. 'Nothing seems connected, somehow. I'd like to, er ... I'd like ...' He stared out, lost, into the room. He looked as if he might burst into tears at any moment.

'Mr Chive, if you're not feeling well, we could postpone this until you've recovered,' said Thatch, showing more kindness and patience than he felt.

'I think we ought to hear Chive now, while it's all still fresh in his mind, Mr Chairman,' said Glimmer unexpectedly. 'I was with him when the, er, problem occurred, though I wasn't farsensing myself, so I don't know exactly what happened. I did see its effects, though, and I think you ought to –'

'Can we actually be told what happened, in chronological order, please?' Heather snapped. 'All you had to do, after all, was monitor the movements of two Sleepers, Jane Riley and James Malcolm, for a short period. Are you telling me you weren't able to do this?' She stared malevolently at the screen on Thatch's desk.

'Oh, I did it,' said Chive gloomily. 'Some of the time, anyway, until ...' He paused, clearly seized by more horror and confusion.

'Well?' Thatch was becoming as impatient as Heather.

'It was just impossible to hold on when ... when it started.' Chive's eyes beseeched his listeners to spare him the ordeal of detailing his experiences.

'Oh, this is hopeless!' Heather was quivering in her seat with frustration and impotent rage. 'Just tell us what happened!'

Chive sighed deeply, looked at Glimmer, who nodded kindly at him, then resumed his attempt to explain himself. 'The first day of Malcolm's visit was mostly all right,' he began, then, encouraged by his ability to get this out, went on with slightly more confidence: 'They only smoked some grass that day. From Lily Dale's compost heap, you know –'

'Can we please be spared the intrusion of the ridiculous fictional characters that infest your world?' Heather was now positively seething with impatience.

'Let him tell this at his own pace. It'll be easier in the long run,' said Thistle suddenly. The rarity of his utterances gave them gravitas, so there was a respectful silence while the assembled Adepts waited for Chive to compose himself once more.

'OK, I think I can tell you about it now.' Chive looked up at Glimmer again and, receiving another encouraging nod, resumed his story. 'The grass threw me off my farsensing for about five minutes, as usual. It's strong, that Lil— that homegrown variety, apparently; I can't monitor people just after its effects hit them. It's just too confusing. I did get back, though, as their minds settled down, and so did my co-farsenser. They didn't do very much that day: just attended a poetry reading, then went out to some holobars in the evening. Not the upmarket ones, either; they went to the tourist ones.'

'Hypocrites,' murmured Heather under her breath. Thatch flashed her a warning look.

'They spent the night together.' As Chive said this, he blushed furiously, and he began to chew his lower lip with his small, neat teeth.

'Er, let me get this straight. Are you saying that Mr Malcolm and Ms Riley had sex?' Thatch could also, to his considerable irritation, feel his colour rising.

'Yes, Mr Chairman. I withdrew, of course, when they, er, started ...'

Gleam guffawed. 'Oh, Sigmund Freud, where are you? I knew we should have tried harder to conquer our distaste for the physical. How do you think the people reproduce themselves? They don't have BioClone Betas, you know.'

'Are you telling us that Jane Riley and James Malcolm want to have children?Ô Heather now looked as perplexed as she was irritated.

'Er, I'm not sure we should be getting into what might turn out to be a lengthy – and probably largely fruitless – discussion,' Thatch hurried to point out. 'Let's just draw a veil over the Sleepers' nocturnal activities and get on with what we are, after all, here to discuss: their ability, apparently, to shake off farsensers for a considerable period.'

Gleam became extremely alert at this point, though he tried not to show it, disguising his increased interest by getting up and moving slowly round the room until he stood in front of Thatch's biofax machine. 'Just stretching my legs,' he said as his Chairman looked reprovingly at him.

Chive resumed his narrative. 'The following day, I asked Glimmer here to join me in my farsensing, so I was linked with Malcolm and he with Jane Riley when ... when it happened.' No one interrupted him at this pause, conscious that he might never finish his story unless allowed to proceed unhindered. 'I've never felt anything remotely like it. My brain felt as if it was boiling, seething with unconnected thoughts, thousands of them, all jumbled up: memories, fantasies, even desires –' Chive blushed again, and it seemed as if he might not be able to continue, but he regained his composure with a visible effort and resumed: 'I think they took some sort of drug, but it wasn't like the grass, which is actually quite pleasant in its latter stages. This was, well, different. I hung on as long as I could, but it was just impossible. The chaos! I –'

'Did you manage to hang on?' Thatch asked Glimmer.

Glimmer looked momentarily horrified at the thought. 'Oh no. It's just as Chive says: the minds of these people are filled with the most appalling jumble, like a sea of junk, unsorted, unfiltered by any sense of decency or –'

'Oh come, come!' Gleam interjected. 'You must both have read their literature. Some of their greatest writers have let their minds overflow on to the page. Think of Molly Bloom or Mrs Dalloway. Are you telling us that after reading that sort of thing you were shocked at the way the Sleepers' minds worked?'

'They didn't seem to be working at all: that was the point,' Glimmer said. 'It was mostly just fear, apprehension, a great, almost metaphysical restlessness. I'm telling you, it was just unbearable! We did keep trying to get back, didn't we, Chive?' Now it was Glimmer looking to his subordinate for support.

'We did, Mr Chairman, we did,' said Chive fervently. 'It was just impossible. I don't even like thinking back to it, quite frankly. It sort of repeats, comes back into your mind. I can feel the panic now.'

'Oh, really!' Heather snorted. 'How much more of this nonsense are we expected to listen to? When are they arriving here? Didn't you say they'd left already?'

'Yes, they left earlier today, Heather,' said Glimmer meekly.

'Right, I'm going to take over their surveillance when they get here. Let's see if they can get round me.'

There was a brief pause while everyone looked at the sleek-haired figure. Gleam was disconcerted at her suggestion, conscious that if his plan were to work, both Heather and Thatch needed to be safely in the Pool together while James and Jane were operating their part of it. To object now, though, might encourage both Thatch and Heather to examine his motives for doing so. He kept quiet, but used the distraction to slip Thatch's DNA-matched receiving disk from his biofax booth, replacing it with a diverter-disk, which – if it worked properly – would block the reception of Thatch when he attempted to fax himself back to his apartment the next time he left the Pool, and divert his disassembled body to whichever receptacle had been furnished with the receiving disk. As soon as he had this disk safely in the pocket of his robe, Gleam ambled slowly back to his seat. At this very moment, if their plan was going as smoothly as they'd hoped, Falcon should be performing a similar clandestine swap in Heather's apartment, entrance to which was easily gained, Heather apparently confident enough in her natural powers of intimidation to disdain the use of the security system that protected Thatch's premises.

'So when are they due at the spaceport? I think we should both meet them, show them we're on to them.' Heather smiled confidently at Thatch. 'Thistle and I can handle the surveillance, can't we, Thistle?'

Thistle jumped like a startled rabbit. 'Ah, yes, of course. Delighted.'

'Well I'm going to spend some time recharging my mental batteries in the Pool,' said Gleam, rising to leave. 'Chairman? I think you could do worse than join me, you know. You look utterly exhausted.'

'Not just yet, Gleam,' said Thatch, glancing uneasily at Heather and Thistle. 'I've got things to discuss first, arrangements to make. Tomorrow, though, definitely.'

Gleam had counted on Thatch's near-addiction to the delights of the Pool to work in his favour. If he could think of some way of getting Heather to join them instead of monitoring James and Jane, then their plan might work perfectly. It was certainly going well so far.

As he left Thatch's apartment, he glanced back to see three Adept heads close together, deep in discussion.

 

 

© Chris Parker 2006