FairServ
The earliest form of nationalism — one that I have called Creole nationalism — arose out of the vast expansion of some of these empires overseas, often, but not always, very far away. Such Creole nationalisms are still very much alive, and one could say are even spreading….A second form of nationalism…official nationalism…arose historically as a reactionary response to popular nationalisms from below, directed against rulers, aristocrats and imperial centres. The most famous example is provided by Imperial Russia, where the Tsars ruled over hundreds of ethnic groups and many religious communities, and in their own circles spoke French—a sign of their civilized difference from their subjects… But as popular nationalisms spread through the empire in the nineteenth century…, the Tsars finally decided they were national Russians after all, and embarked on a fatal policy of russification of their subjects. In the same way, London tried to anglicize Ireland (with substantial success), Imperial Germany tried to germanify its share of Poland…, Imperial France imposed French on Italian-speaking Corsica (partial success) and the Ottoman Empire Turkish on the Arab world (with no success). In every case,…there was a major effort to stretch the short, tight skin of the nation over the vast body of the old empire.
—Benedict Anderson
Hand Glacier Civil Spaceport, Maxroy’s Purchase
What makes a thing worth doing? An unpleasant thing; a thing of minimal import, a thing hardly guaranteed of success? Asach began the trip to New Utah with profoundly mixed feelings as always. Trepidation. Excitement. Ennui. At Hand Glacier Civil spaceport, FairServ's operations had already become nearly routine. The jump point still had not opened, but the True Church’s no-longer-secret spaceport actually had long experience in shuttling dubious personnel to rendezvous with New-Utah-bound small craft in near orbit. On the other hand, FairServ had long experience with working alongside the Empire in getting various non-governmental humanitarian missions into and out of Outie worlds. The single TC ship was on station, under Imperial supervision, loaded with medical supplies, awaiting the imminent opening of the transient Alderson tramline that would provide near-instantaneous connection between systems. So it was a natural that, meanwhile, FairServ would set up what was jokingly referred to as the trudgeline.
Approaching the routine. There was still a funny little pre-check stand outside, with a young clerk and clipboard verifying names. She locked in long and serious negotiation with a missionary manager in sweat-stained suit, his Dutch sibilants excoriating poor communications between the back office and this operations shed. He has paid. No, he has not. Yes he has, and he can prove it. Sir, that is no receipt. It is a receipt, or what should pass for one. No. Yes.
On and on this droned, a bizarre riff on a muzak background hum. Coffee being off the menu, Asach sipped decaf tea and contemplated the meager selection of snack foods: they were a crossroads mix of stale imports from around the Empire. Asach passed on Asian salted fish and plums; contemplated Levantine—were they cheese?—puffs; settled for salty, sun-baked veggie crisps.
They passed the red dwarfs and rock ball with the predictable tedium, but without incident. Asach spent most of the trip semi-comatose, there being absolutely nothing to see but black space and the red suns. Then the yellow one. Then the rock ball. When they fell out of orbit HG threw up. The Librarian blanched. Asach sucked a salt crisp, pinched one wrist, and stared straight down the wing, in a straight line through the center of a corkscrew.
It was a tactical landing, done to hold the craft within the safe airspace of Saint George’s only functioning airfield and minimize susceptibility to ground-based small arms fire—a fact lost on HG, but noted wryly by Asach. The Lynx 3000 wheeled left, in a deft spiral anchored along its left wing tip. Like a gull, a large cheeky seagull, eyeing a tourist’s sandwich and oblivious to its own acrobatic feats, it flashed over ruined tabernacles; water gardens turned turquoise by a bloom of blue-green algae; oblong fields stretching fanwise from the river; heliports; tent cities; graveled lots shimmering white in the summer heat; green slashes of reed cane choking disused canals; bomb craters; tank traps; rows of defunct militarized aircraft, ranks of rusting armored vehicles; passing cross-wise to the runway in a blur of screaming rocket motors that suddenly stopped with a soft pop, leaving the gull to bank, glide and drop deftly onto the taxiway.
Asach stopped, the first out the door and onto the ground transport pick-up point. Friedlander security stood out a mile, khaki ballistic body armor stuffed slick with Protector Plates riding high on their chests, ‘tooth seeds stuffed into their ears, bleeping invisible signals into a mystery of electronics buried within the sandwich-board protection zone of half-inch-thick hardened Plate.
Designed to flatten any projectile up to and including a high-velocity round fired at point-blank range, Plate was to executive body armor what double-boxed bubble wrap was to a padded mailer. If shot while wearing Plate, a man might well be slammed fore or aft with the full kinetic energy of that explosive slug, heated red by the friction of its passage through the air at Mach whatever, with a force equivalent to being struck full-on by a battering ram. Like as not, the hit might stop his breathing; his ribs might crack; certainly his pleural sac and every internal organ would be bruised by slamming with equal force into the interior of his rib cage first when he was hit, then again when he hit the ground. But the Plate would instantaneously spread the force over its entire surface, and redirect much of the shock laterally, out its edges. With luck and an iron constitution, he’d stand and breathe again.
Rather less protection was provided by their wrap-around shades, raked-backwards caps, and scowls of grim determination. Their desert-weight pants bulged in enough places to suggest entire concealed arsenals, in addition to the bristling array of personal side arms brashly unconcealed in external holsters. They were the very poster children of “personal security,” and as such appeared to confer upon their various besuited charges a confident air of relaxed machismo; of dangerous operations well-in-hand.
They stood out a mile, and that scared the crap out of Asach. They had “target” painted all over them. Asach presumed that anything sufficiently armed and hostile as to require Plate as a defense was likely to view these characters as bountied prey at the peak of hunting season. Asach sidled as far away from them as was possible on the narrow platform. A cleaner slid past, muttering apology. Asach gave him a small tip.
Saint George, New Utah
Harlan’s eyes rested briefly on the odd character at the end of the platform. He could not quite make it out. It belonged—nowhere really. Anywhere. Dutch, maybe. A Dutch trader, maybe. Or a Missionary. But not. All the wrong mannerisms. More—fluid than most Eurasians. There, but not there. Not jutting forward, pulling rank by just being there, the way most Imperials did. But not shrinking back, either. Not embarrassed for living. Nor nervous, for all of the shifting away down the platform. No idle, chatty, over-bright conversation. No shoulder sporting a hefty chip.
Preparation was mostly letting go. Draining. Draining away ambition; draining away desire; draining away intent. Letting go of any thought of who you were or who you had wanted to be. No false imagining of joining first families or making fortunes. No heartfelt sense of failure at what you’d taken for granted as achievement, and harsh reality of achievement unmet. No expectations. Only planning.
Planning was a different thing. Planning meant living in the now. Now you were a set of eyes, and a set of ears. Now you watched, and watched, and listened, and listened. You watched and listened to everything, and planned how to get from the now here, to the now there, without ever once, even for a moment, letting your mind or eyes or ears leave the now that was now—right here, right now.