Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [33]
“The crew have decided that this is the first in a potentially infinite series of seedings,” he told Solari. “They do want to set up a successful colony here, and they’re probably becoming desperate in their attempt to believe that it’s an attainable goal, but their long-term goal is to repeat the exercise again and again. Some of the would-be colonists are realistic enough to settle for delaying Hope’s departure for as long as possible, but the rest are holding out for a better Earth-clone. The captain is obviously a reasonable man, so he’s willing to come to an agreement with the former group, but he wants Shen Chin Che out of his hair and down on the surface. He’s trying to persuade us that we should see things his way, by necessity if not by choice.”
“So where does Delgado’s murder fit into the argument?” Solari asked, pointedly addressing the question to Matthew rather than to their host.
“He doesn’t know,” Matthew guessed. “But he daren’t neglect the possibility that if he can’t find a way to use it, someone else will. Bernal’s testimony as to the long-term prospects of the colony might well have been vital to whichever cause he decided to support, not just because he was a leading expert in ecological genomics back on Earth but because of the reputation he brought with him as a prophet and a persuader.”
“I must repeat,” Milyukov said, finally letting his irritation show, “that the situation is more complicated than you can possibly guess. You bring to it an understanding that is seven hundred years out of date. Earth has changed out of all recognition since you went into SusAn, just as Hope has, and all the assumptions you brought with you are quite obsolete now.”
Matthew had to restrain himself from expressing aloud the opinion that this was nonsense. The political and economic systems now in place within Earth’s solar system were of no particular relevance to Hope’s situation, but the ideologies and ambitions that the would-be colonists had brought into SusAn were very relevant indeed. Whether or not there were still Hardinists on Earth, there was an abundance of them among Shen Chin Che’s Chosen People, and not one of them was likely to accept that his or her politics were now “obsolete” simply because the crew had decided to stage a takeover bid. Earth—a planet apparently still occupied by billions, even after a near-terminal ecocatastrophe—had surely had time for a dozen revolutions, counterrevolutions, and counter-counterrevolutions of its own, and its inhabitants would doubtless react to news of Hope’s discovery as they saw fit, but how could that make an iota of difference to the reactions of the awakened colonists? Perhaps the machines ruled Earth now, as some of his rival prophets had warned, operating the Ultimate Autocracy, or perhaps the anarchists had finally contrived a rule of law without corruptible leaders, but here in the new world’s system, all the popular shades of twenty-first century Hardinism, all the nuances of Green Conservatism and all the factions of Gray Libertarianism were alive. Some of them might still be frozen down, but those that were not would be kicking.
Shen Chin Che, whom many had considered to be the boldest of all the pharaohs of Earthly Capitalism, had awakened to find himself a stranger in a society that had reshaped itself in his absence, but it was absurd to imagine that he could ever have accepted a new status quo meekly. Shen had gone to his long sleep not merely a builder and an owner but a hero and a messiah. If he had woken up to find himself an overthrown dictator, fit only for ritual humiliation as the representative of an obsolete order, he would instantly have transformed himself into a revolutionary: a zealot bent on the restitution of the old order. How could Milyukov’s people have failed to anticipate that? By the same token, Matthew thought, how could Shen not have anticipated the possibility of exactly such a revolution as Milyukov’s ancestors had carried out? He must have. Might he actually have expected it to happen? Perhaps. And if he