Dark Ararat - Brian Stableford [34]
That, Matthew guessed—in spite of Konstantin Milyukov’s assurance that guesswork would not be enough—was why everybody kept telling him that things were not as simple as he had been ready to assume, and why an armed guard had been stationed outside his room, and why the people in the corridor had acted so quickly to ensure that no one could pollute his mind before the captain had briefed him. Perhaps it also accounted for the fact that the ship seemed to be in such a poor state of repair. Shen and his “gang of saboteurs” were not merely in hiding. They were in active opposition. If the shooting had not already started, it soon would—unless a compromise could be attained, and a treaty made.
Matthew felt a sudden wave of despair sweep through his weakened body. Hope had been intended to escape all of the curses that had brought Earth to the brink of destruction, not to reproduce them with further savage twists. What hope could there possibly be for the future of humankind, if Hope itself were now embroiled by an orgy of internal strife that could very easily lead to the mutual destruction of all involved? Even Gaea had proved so fragile as to have avoided destruction by a fluke; the ecosphere-in-miniature that was her pale shadow here could not tolerate a similar strain.
Vince Solari must have been mulling over the same awkward possibilities and dire anxieties, but his approach was as practical as ever. “So who, exactly, am I supposed to be working for now?” the policeman demanded. “You?” His voice was not disdainful, but it was certainly skeptical.
“For the human race,” Captain Milyukov told him, without a trace of irony. “For the truth. For justice. For all the future generations whose fate will depend on what we can accomplish in the years to come.”
“In other words, for you,” Solari repeated, making no attempt to keep his own voice free of sarcasm.
“No,” Milyukov said, making the contradiction seem effortless although his manner was still aggressively insistent. “I am the captain of Hope. My responsibility begins and ends in the microworld. Your future will be spent on the surface, within whatever society is eventually established there. If your people want to make Shen Chin Che—or anyone else—the owner of the planet, or the emperor of its human colony, that is entirely their affair. If your people want to design and implement their own political system, they are entirely free to do so. But they must realize and accept that we have the same right, and that we will exercise it. Hope does not belong to the colonists, and they have no power of command over her.
“It would obviously be best for everyone if your people and mine could work together, in full agreement as to our goals, our methods and our timetable—but if we cannot agree by mutual consent, agreement will certainly not be coerced by Shen Chin Che or anyone else. If we cannot agree, then we shall have to be content to disagree. When I say that you are working for the human race, for truth, for justice and for future generations, I mean exactly what I say. Perhaps such formulations seem vague or pompous to you—I cannot pretend to understand how the men of the distant past reacted to ideas and situations—but they are taken very seriously aboard Hope.”
Vince Solari looked sideways at Matthew. The policeman did not know how to react to this strangely strident declaration, and Matthew could not blame him.
“When Hope was under construction,” Matthew said, treading very carefully, “the assumption was that all of its resources would be devoted to the support of any colony it succeeded in establishing. Although it could never land, the intention was that it would remain in orbit around the colony world, an integral part of of the endeavor.”
“We shall, of course, provide the colony with the support it needs to become self-sufficient,” Milyukov said. “But our ultimate purpose and manifest destiny is to go on toward the center of the galaxy, spreading the seed of humanity as widely as we can.”
“But you’re only carrying so much