The Anguished Dawn Read online

  "Lan is one of those complicated people, Sariena," she answered. "If he thinks something needs changing in the world—and something always does—he gets restless if he doesn't feel he's putting his share into doing something about it. You know yourself how many enemies he made among Earth's scientific élite when he didn't agree with them."

  "But look at the friends he made here," Sariena answered.

  "Yes, he came out ahead in the end. But then he always does. . . . Yet some of the things I hear from him worry me."

  "What kind of things?"

  "Things that he says are happening among the Terrans. Not all of them are happy with the way things run here. . . . Ask yourself: What kinds of people would be the most likely to get themselves places on the last ships out when the old world was ending?"

  Sariena nodded that there was no need to spell it out. "The kind who created the world that Lan ended up spending most of his time back there fighting."

  "Exactly. And now he finds them organizing again on Kronia, recruiting a following."

  "Have they approached Lan?"

  "Not with anything direct—yet. But he thinks they're sounding him out."

  "What are they saying to him?"

  "That the way Kronia is run will have to change. This way of doing things might have worked when the colony was small and consisted of true believers. But as it grows, conflicts are going to emerge that will call for different methods."

  Sariena smiled faintly. "And of course, the methods they have in mind are the ones they just happen to be experienced in. I wonder who they would like to see taking charge of things, if the truth were known."

  Vicki glanced sideways as they walked. "Somehow I don't really think this is news to you," she said.

  "I hear this and that," Sariena replied vaguely. Then she shook her head in a suddenly decisive way. "But no. There will be no changes. Such people have nothing to offer that we want." Which was about as scathing a remark as was likely to be heard, even in private conversation. What use are you to anyone? was the ultimate Kronian insult.

  Vicki bit her lip, hesitating for a moment. Then she said, "But sometimes I can't help wondering if they might have a point. Maybe Kronia's priorities are guided too much by ideals instead of practicalities. Can this system continue to work as the colony continues to get bigger? Or must some quantitative way of allocating resources become necessary eventually?"

  "You mean a monetary system?"

  "Something like one, anyway."

  Sariena touched Vicki's shoulder briefly. "Look, I know you're only saying what seems to make sense. But try to bear in mind that you weren't raised a Kronian. Terrans have only known that way of seeing things, and the mindset that it produces." Sariena's voice had taken on an uncharacteristically hard note. Vicki had evidently touched on something that ran deep.

  "Kronia's only experience has been as a small colony of devotees," she pointed out.

  "And you think our principles aren't strong enough to survive against harsh reality?" Sariena shook her head. "Don't underestimate us, Vicki. Those who only understand the kind of power that ruled Earth will never prevail here. Nobody is conditioned to hear their message. The kind of wealth that can be hoarded and controlled to buy services and servitude doesn't exist on Kronia. And without wealth that they can control, where is their power?"

  Vicki hoped so. She had heard Sariena's arguments before. But she also knew what the people they were talking about were capable of, and that they didn't give up easily. Kronian science might have liberated itself from the ties that had made Earth's a servant of militarism and money, but Vicki had seen for herself how deplorably the Kronian delegation had fared at trying to match Terran political infighting. She just hoped that the Kronians were not miscalculating again, and that here at least, in a system of values that was of their own making, they were judging their opposition accurately.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  On Earth, Kurt Zeigler had been a military liaison official with Eurospace and an inside contact there of General Valcroix, for whom he had supplied much valuable information—an impressive position for his relative youth of thirty-four years. He had been one of the few close associates who had escaped from Algeria with Valcroix while the general's own aide remained behind, valiantly leading a force to hold off troops who were trying to prevent the seized orbital lifter from leaving the pad. Zeigler had always been ambitious for power, which, simply put, meant being in a position where others did what you wanted. If it didn't come naturally with birth or wealth, the road to acquiring, he had found, was to become a trusted tool of those who possessed it, camouflaging one's own needs behind an appearance of serving theirs. And as his career up to its untimely termination had shown, he had proved remarkably adept at following this principle. That was why he was here, still enjoying the confidence of those who had arranged his ticket out, while the general's aide, if alive at all—a high statistical improbability—staggered and groped to exist from one lightless day to the next beneath the cloud and smoke canopy covering the cauldron that Earth had become.

  He crossed the underground pedestrian precinct in the center of Foundation, Titan's first settlement after the establishment of Kropotkin on Dione, situated a quarter of the way around the moon from Essen. As Titan consolidated to become the center of the Kronian culture, Foundation had been made the seat of the governing congress. Before Athena, the intention had been to move the administration to Mondel-Waltz City on the far side of Titan, named after two of the principal founders, which had been designed and built to accommodate it. But the new capital—fortunately housing no more than an initial skeleton population at the time—had been wiped out by a major impact, and the Kronian Congress would be occupying its old quarters now for as far ahead in time as it was possible to see.

  Zeigler arrived at the steps leading up to the Terrarama, a museum and exhibition dedicated to preserving scenes and relics of Earth, and went inside. The entry hall was darkened and contained rows of rectangular holo-tanks showing images of New York City, San Francisco, London, Paris, Tokyo, Moscow, and other metropolises that were no more. Their glows highlighted the faces of school groups, parents standing with their awed children, and individuals silently immersed in thoughts of their own. The next hall contained scenes of landscapes and life, from cabins in the Canadian Rockies and a desert oasis, to crowded Australian beaches and a waterfall panorama in the upper reaches of the Amazon. Again, everything was in the form of electronic imagery; the pitifully few samples of physical remains actually salvaged from Earth were carefully preserved elsewhere. A major objective of the return missions that had been planned and then postponed had been a Noah's Ark program to bring a variety of Terran animal and plant life back to Kronia.

  Zeigler entered a side gallery devoted to selections of local life-styles, costume, and color, and spotted Kelm's tall, blond-haired figure at the far end, contemplating one of the displays. As he drew nearer, he saw that it was a scene of the Miami ocean-front hotel strip and highway—a visitor could call from a practically limitless library of stored images. There was no one else around. Zeigler approached behind Kelm's shoulder and shared the view of glass-paneled buildings and streaming automobiles in silence for a while.

  "Everywhere, it was the same," he commented finally. "If you lived south, something needed doing north. If you lived north, you had to be south. Everyone always in a rush to be somewhere else."

  The young Kronian turned his head. He looked officer material even out of uniform: trim and athletically muscular, shaped by Security Arm training, features handsome but with a haughty set, artificially tanned. He didn't smile. "The same, everywhere? So many cars?"

  "Every city in the world. Millions every day."

  "Where did they find enough pilots?"

  "Pilots?"

  "Whatever the word should be: professionals with the skills to execute such maneuvers. Earth didn't have processors that advanced. . . . I'm not sure that we have anything in Kronia today that
could do it. Where did they get all the pilots to take people where they wanted to go?"

  It took Zeigler a moment to realize what Kelm meant. "It wasn't a specialized profession," he said. "Everyone drove their own."

  Kelm's brow creased. "You mean ordinary people? Even students? The elderly?"

  "Everyone."

  "I'm amazed. It doesn't seem possible that it could work."

  Zeigler shrugged. "Humans are amazing creatures. I guess you've never known big open spaces. Did you ever visit Earth?"

  "Never. I was born out here—on Dione."

  Zeigler nodded and looked at the image for a few seconds longer. Somehow a part of him still didn't want to accept that it could all be gone, never to be returned to. Then he shook the thought away. There was nothing to be gained from such feelings. They had no bearing on the future that faced him now. "The reason I contacted you is that I think we might be able to help you," he said.

  "We?" Kelm repeated guardedly.

  "The group that I represent."

  "Terrans?"

  "They're going to be a powerful force here one day, Kelm. Make no mistake about that. Kronia will need what we know, to become what it must."

  "What makes you think I need help with anything?" Kelm asked.

  Zeigler moved a pace closer to stand alongside him, facing the display. Having eyes and ears out and about, keeping in touch with rumor and who was saying what, were part of the things he made it his business to cultivate. "Why the Security Arm?" he asked, answering obliquely.

  "Everyone contributes something. It's where my skills are." Kelm's tone was that of someone stating the obvious.

  "And are you satisfied with your lot there, Kelm? The future it holds? The rewards it will bring?"

  Kelm shrugged. "It's what I do. One can't always choose."

  Zeigler glanced around. His voice fell to a more confidential note. "Perhaps you have more choices than you think. Your natural skills are military. But Kronia has little use for them and doesn't acknowledge your true worth. We would value them highly. Eventually, the controlling power here will be decided by strength. It has always been that way. Your talents make you a natural ally of the strong. Use them where they will be most appreciated and rewarded the most."

  "You really believe you can change things? You who are so few?"

  "It isn't how many we are that matters. It is what we know and can do." Zeigler made an open-handed gesture. "Why should your aptitudes be valued any less than those of people who, at the bottom of it all, are just technicians? Nobody has to accept second-class existence as some kind of obligation, Kelm—just because some idealists in the early days stacked the deck in a way that suited them. Eventually things have to change." He nodded to indicate the traffic on the Miami boulevard. "You said it yourself. Without order and discipline, that would be chaos. Unmanageable. But it worked because people imposed rules. The greater human society is no different in the long run. You could be way ahead of the game, Kelm. The ones who help us now will be the ones who will command later. Why be a ranker in a police force whose days are numbered, when you could be a general in the army that will one day rule?"

  As he spoke, Zeigler watched Kelm more closely than he let show. While maintaining an outwardly dubious expression—a plus-point testifying to good judgment and control—Kelm's eyes had been flickering over Zeigler searchingly, as if probing for validity indicators. His shoulders had been turned toward Zeigler, as if unconsciously screening off the outside world. He was interested. That was as much as could reasonably be wished for the present. Kelm's mouth turned downward briefly at the corners—but that was controlled consciously and didn't mean anything.

  "I don't know. It's something I'd need to think about," Kelm said. "If I decide I want to know more, should I contact you the same way?"

  Zeigler had hoped to finish on a more positive note. After thinking for a moment, he said, "I believe you were stationed at the training base on Rhea, before it was destroyed. Is that correct?"

  "Yes. I was there." Kelm nodded.

  "Then you are familiar with the layout and the locations of the various facilities," Zeigler said.

  "There isn't very much left. From what I hear, anything that can be salvaged is being stripped out and brought to Titan. The only things left will be what's buried under the rubble."

  "All the same, that is precisely the kind of information that some people are very interested in," Zeigler said. Kelm looked puzzled but didn't pursue the matter. Zeigler nodded at him meaningfully. "And they could be very generous when it comes to rewarding whoever can bring it to them. Think it over very carefully," he urged.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Rakki had no word for the number of people who lived in the caves. They were more than the fingers on his hands, fewer than the feathers on the caw-birds, which they sometimes caught in nets tied from vines. Their names meant nothing to Rakki; he couldn't remember them, and so gave them his own names. While he sat chipping an edge along a flake of hardstone in the way he had been told, he watched Fire Keeper scraping the last scraps of meat from the bones of a long-haired horn-head, cracking open the ones with marrow, and separating the sinews for bowstrings and thongs. The sight produced an aching to eat deep in Rakki's stomach. He had vague memories of the times of darkness, when food had been the only thought and people fought over a sprig of weed carrying berries, fungus found in a rock crevice, worms dug out of the mud, flesh from corpses—anything that could be eaten. Now there was light, and more things were starting to grow. But still the hunger was always there.

  The Cavers had ways of making traps for animals that the Swamp People didn't know. Ones like bush-pigs and horn-heads that they didn't kill immediately, they kept captive inside a walled pen built from rocks at one end of the space behind the rampart enclosing the caves. A female that Rakki called Pig Woman brought grass for them and collected the dung to be dried by the fire for fuel. There was also a cleared area outside the rampart that they had crossed the day before when Rakki was brought in, where there seemed to be some kind of attempt being made to induce food plants to grow. All the food that was prepared or collected went into Fire Keeper's stock, which was kept in a guarded recess behind the cooking area. The law against stealing was strict. The Screecher—thus named permanently by now—had told Rakki gleefully of how the last one to be caught pilfering from the common stock had been impaled on a stake by Mistameg's order, and the body hacked into pieces for the dogs.

  Mistameg—the Oldworlders called him Meggs—was the Cavers' chief. He was large, even for an Oldworlder, and immensely strong, with eyes and teeth shining white against his face and a mane of hair hanging to his shoulders, tied in a braided leather band. He was fierce, violent, and allowed no questioning of his decisions. Rakki was impressed. He could learn much about power and controlling others to do one's will from such a man. Three of the few Oldworld women were Mistameg's. One that Rakki had dubbed Yellow Hair was pink of face like the man he had thought of as Lightskin yesterday, but knew now was called Bo and held place as Mistameg's second. Although Bo seemed to have a choice of Neffer females, he didn't like Mistameg owning Yellow Hair. Rakki could see it in his eyes and read it in his body talk. But Bo was not enough of a warrior to challenge Mistameg, and so he took out his anger on others beneath him in the order. Yellow Hair might have had other children also for all Rakki knew, but one was a Neffer girl with the same hair and light skin. Rakki called her Shell Eyes, since they were the color of a reed-nester's eggs, unlike anything he'd seen before. The vision conjured itself up in his mind of him one day killing Mistameg and taking Shell Eyes for his female. Then Bo would hate him too, and he'd kill Bo. Then he would be worthy to become a chief. The thought was sweet and helped him forget his hunger.

  "The way to become a great warrior is not to let your thoughts show," a voice said. Rakki turned toward White Head, who had to be the oldest among the Oldworlders. Rakki didn't understand all the words that White Head used, but he spoke in a ton
gue that was closer to the Swamp People's than the one most of the Cavers used. He was sitting on a mat of reeds among the rocks at the cliff base, trying one of the stone edges on a piece of root wood from a fangleaf bush. There were several larger pieces of a firmer, straighter-grained wood than scrub roots in the cave behind him, but they had come from afar and were kept for cutting shapes needed for special purposes. Before the Long Night, so it was said, bushes with stems as wide as the span of a man's arms and as straight as a taut vine had grown higher than a bow could shoot. Dead pieces of them sometimes turned up buried in mud or washed up among rocks, and were highly valued. Rakki sometimes saw images in his mind of huge green growths and the sky lit by a brilliant light, but he didn't know if they were from things he had seen once or just imagination. Far to the north there was supposed to be a land where such things remained, but he had always doubted the story . . . until White Head showed him the round wooden rocks in the cave where he worked. Rakki's edged club of Oldworld metal had aroused great excitement when Screecher presented it on their arrival, and Rakki hadn't seen it since. After being questioned by Mistameg, he wasn't of a mind to protest.