A small belligerent-looking woman was currently addressing a crowd of about fifty. She shot a glance at the proctor and Alex, then returned her attention to her audience.
‘We have a heavy machine gun directed at the main entrance,’ she said, ‘but that access is not going to be our chief problem. The assault force is using vacuum-warfare penetration locks, so effectively can come in through the endcaps, or wherever the soil is thin enough in the main Arboretum section, or here in the dividing section. So we have to stay mobile – we can’t dig in at any one place yet. Hydroponics is as secure as we can make it, because we have closed all the bulkhead doors and we know which way they’ll come if they come in through there.’
‘Unless they use explosives,’ said a tall bald-headed man holding an assault rifle protectively across his stomach.
‘Unless they use explosives,’ the woman agreed.
‘We’ve got cams covering the outside of the cylinder,’ said the same man.
‘But they may not last very long,’ the woman replied. ‘We’re now a main target because we have the Gene Bank samples here.’
‘And, as a main target,’ the man noted, ‘we’re heavily defended.’
Alex understood the implication. Once the assault force got past the station’s troops immediately outside, it was probably all over for them.
‘Even so,’ said the woman, ‘we have to do whatever we can. We all know what surrendering or being captured will lead to.’ She paused to survey all the faces around her. ‘You all have your particular areas to cover. So keep communications open and be ready to move if or when necessary. Any questions?’ None of them seemed inclined to say anything, so she finished with, ‘Let’s get to our positions.’
The crowd began to break up into groups, and only now did Alex see that there were some more proctors present. The woman picked up a light sniper rifle from where it leaned against the wall behind her, beckoned a stooped and elderly-looking man over to her side, then they approached.
‘This is him?’ she asked, flicking a worried look at the proctor before she gazed at Alex. He realized he wasn’t the only one who felt the sheer impact, the presence of this creature.
‘It certainly is him, Jenny Task,’ the proctor replied.
‘I don’t see how he’s going to be any use to us,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t it be better just to stick him in a cell.’
Alex glanced at the old man. He was carrying a sniper rifle too, and a pack of ammunition, and was gazing distractedly back towards those currently departing. Alex considered grabbing the rifle and getting out of here. No, the proctor would be on him in a second. He had to bide his time.
‘Charlie,’ the woman addressed the old man, ‘he’s with you, apparently.’
The old guy swung round and recognition struck like a blow. Alex gasped and jerked back, both his feet actually coming away from the floor. The proctor reached out with one hand and caught him by the shoulder, dragging him back down.
‘I’ve built a hide in the big walnut tree,’ explained Charlie. ‘From there we should be able to cover most of the thin-soil areas.’
His face was different, of course, but it was the same one that Alexandra had found. Moreover, Alex recognized him on some deeper visceral level. Here stood Alessandro Messina, or at least what that man had now become. Here in front of him stood the very reason for Alex’s existence.
The woman reached out and patted the Chairman’s shoulder. ‘Charlie here has turned out to be quite useful,’ she said. ‘Though he’s forgotten a lot of his past, his inborn abilities and early training in the Inspectorate military have not been erased. Apparently Charlie once used to be a sniper.’
Alex knew everything it was possible to know about Messina, had treasured that knowledge. The man had indeed been a sniper in the military, eighty years ago, before promotion to command and then promotion out of fatigues into a suit and onto the first rungs of the Executive. A natural ability? Of course, it was one Alex himself possessed.
‘But remember, Charlie,’ said the woman, ‘wait until they are out of the penetration locks. A stray shot inside might result in an atmosphere breach.’
‘Sure,’ said the erstwhile Messina, looking very serious. ‘These bastards are going to be good for my plants – they’re not going to kill them.’
‘Attaboy,’ she said.
‘Good for your plants?’ Alex repeated numbly.
The mind-wiped Alessandro Messina peered at him carefully. ‘Yeah, we turn them into fertilizer.’ He reached out a hand to the woman. ‘Need to get moving now.’
The woman gazed at the proctor, who gave her a nearly imperceptible nod. She shrugged off the strap of the rifle she was carrying and handed it over. Messina swung it round and held it out to Alex. ‘I hear that you should be a good shot, too.’
Alex just stood there dumbfounded. All that was left of his Chairman, his Alessandro Messina, stood before him right now, quite adamantly stating that he would be fighting the Scourge’s assault force. Two contrary views were so at war inside Alex that they caused a physical pain in his torso.
‘If the assault force soldiers manage to get in,’ said the proctor, ‘their prime aim will be to get hold of the Gene Bank samples. They will kill anyone who stands in their way.’
It was a statement that Alex could not deny. In the end the answer was quite simple: he would fight beside his Chairman and do everything he could to prevent him being killed. He would obey his Chairman because that was what he had been programmed to do. Nothing outside of these facts was relevant. He took hold of the rifle.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I am a good shot.’
Earth
It was time to assess broadly how things stood with Earth and to make some plans for the future. To this end Serene began running a computer model of the entire economy and environment of Earth. This particular model was the best available, with its ability to predict about four days into the future – before a butterfly flapped its wings somewhere and the whole thing went tits-up. However, she wasn’t interested in predictions but in the neat and easily digestible way the present and the past were displayed.
Despite everything she was throwing into orbit, and Professor Calder’s massive spend, Earth’s resources were at a hundred-year high. This was simple mathematics really: production itself was mainly robotized and only limited by materials and energy supply, so it had been little damaged by the massive reduction in population. And while Saul’s attack on the Committee had damaged production to a certain extent, it had also benefited it by causing a reduction in political control. Consumption, on the other hand, had been vastly reduced. Running some further calculations, Serene found that Calder’s spend accounted for less than ten per cent of the gain made from reduced consumption.
Economically, Earth was looking good. Environmentally it was also better, but the gain was a questionable one. While wilderness areas were on the increase, there didn’t seem to be much yet that could grow wild in them. Reviewing extinction and environmental-destruction statistics, and specific stories related to them, Serene began to unearth some disconcerting realities, all expressed in a rather neat little graph.
It seemed that, while the extinction and biosphere destruction rate had been steadily increasing in line with the rise in population, that rise had not been as deadly as was claimed at the start of the previous century. Certainly there had been some big, newsworthy extinctions – like those of the tiger, the lion, the elephant and the grey whale – but they were not the kind that could result in the death of Earth’s biosphere. The dangerous stuff had come later; in fact it had ramped up markedly under Committee rule, and one of the stories before her illustrated why.