Apocalypse Interregnum

By Harvey Beach

The Earth has moved on and fundamentally changed. The Enclaves have waited. The Horde rampages have abated. Famine and pestilence have run their course, leaving only a few broken, degraded, and backward primitive clusters of survivors grovelling and scrabbling in desperate straits. But the biosphere has re-stabilised. The Enclavers, having waited out the great dying back of humanity, have emerged to begin the great project of restoring humanity along sustainable lines, using renewable resources and technology.

Now this new elite are well into the latter phases of the projects ambition of 100 percent sustainable resettlement. But now cracks are appearing. When achieved, how best is it to maintain it? As philosophical schisms appear and politics interferes along with the greedy and jealous seeing threats to their self-interest, the emerged Science Elite Society is under threat. But few of them understand exactly how much and how terrible the consequences could be. Can the schism be resolved before it spirals out of control and into tragedy?

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jul 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524637446

Harvey Beach

In a world where everyone has gone to war, not choosing sides is not an option. Lord Simon Montcalm goes to war in 1066 not just because he must be true to his oath to his overlord Duke William of Normandy upon threat of destitution or death for refusal, but because there is great profit to be had. Huge lands and properties in England - the richest kingdom in Christendom. But great profit means great risk in the gaining it and the forces of England are terrible. Being the only male of his noble line, with no male heir himself, Lord Montcalm must win through the politics of his own side and the hazard of bloody battle to earn the promised glory for his name and riches for his family - or die, leaving not just him dead but his whole noble line extinct.

Book preview

APOCALYPSE

INTERREGNUM

HARVEY BEACH

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AuthorHouse™ UK

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403USA

www.authorhouse.co.uk

Phone: [phone]

© 2016 Harvey Beach. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse07/21/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5246-3743-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-3745-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-3744-6 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Part Two

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Part Three

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Time-line for Emergence resettlement of Australian Subcontinent post-Emergence of Elite:

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PART ONE

Chapter One

Elite Teacher to Pupil: This is a course on Sociological History, not rocket science. If I was teaching rocket science, I’d be using diagrams and equations. So shut up and listen!

Mel, or to give him his full title of Melcroft Armitage Gibbens, Alpha Minus and Managing Director of the Lake Torrens Water Management Facility, was tired but happy. He was sweating a little less than his horse as it stood atop Grimble Mount giving him an uninterrupted panorama of his fiefdom, to use that archaic expression. He was fond of archaic expressions, just as he was fond of these horse journeys. As an Alpha Minus, he was allowed the little eccentricities of great rank and authority. Being only fifty-one years old having achieved it he also, unlike most of his Grade, had the wind and limb to take advantage of the informal concessions. Yes, his backside was a little sore from the leisurely day and a half ride from the stable-stud at Blinman. That only made him all the more grateful at being freed from the desk and transpod seat slavery of his usual daily grind.

He stretched in the rancher’s saddle as he sucked in the late summer arid air, and reached a gnarled fist down for the skin hanging down from it by the rope and carbine. His sixteen and a half stones of knotted muscles and bone cracked under his cotton shirt and thick denim trousers, protected by traditional but largely decorative chaps. He’d come by the easy, if less direct, riding routes, not through the thick and deadly thorn-scrubs and bramble of the local farms. The heavy, dense, knotted wood was highly valuable material, but tended to make the hectares no-go areas except for reptiles and rabbits. He was very proud of his physique, that had come from his formative years as an engineering officer aboard a European merchant marine transport ship. Five years rebuilding vessel’s infrastructure to carry gleaned materials from the cities of Europe being recycled – Genoa, Marseille, Montpelier, Livorno, Tirane, Salerno, Split, Toulon. He’d seen the intense industrial squalor of the European cities first-hand. Or at least the ports. The inner cities were even worse, apparently, but he’d never had to venture inland. He’d not seen the cramped apartment slums, the squalid brothels and gaming houses where the workers desperately abandoned themselves to hedonism to wipe out the memory of their filthy, grinding, dangerous, brutally disciplined working days. He’d never had his hair and skin saturated with the northern giant recycling Hubs greasy smoke. He’d never witnessed the hospitals where the Pestilence resurgence victims died in agony or the Wilding raid victims from the hinterland – in Occidental Europe, sixty per cent still unexamined – were patched up or put out of their misery. Nevertheless the substance abuse, brawls, lawlessness and general violence of the inner city workers on leave at the ports had informed his opinion. Europe was Hell on Earth.

He’d managed to get a promotion out into duties in the Antipodean Engineering Division. He was a fully paid up member of the Applied Science Elite, or to use the modern jargon, Applite, with the leathery hide and scars to prove it. He’d worked himself up through the ranks from leaving full-time education at thirteen to begin the hands-on training and not looked back. Theory was fine, but it was nothing to actually building something and watch it work. To physically weld the internal bulkheads of a new fuel transport and watch it be filled up with reprocessed plasti-fuel and set sail to add to the international trade effort. It hardened your body as much as sharpened your applied physics, maths and dynamics. He despised those of his grade that seemed to make it a point of pride to run to fat. The conspicuous allowing of oneself to run to fat and seed to show you now were so important you didn’t need to be able to lift a hammer or blowtorch any longer was a revolting concept to him.

He despised even more those that had raised that tendency to an art-form, the Theoretical Sciences Elite, or Thlite. They seemed to be of the opinion that as long as the mind was sharp, the body was irrelevant. He was firmly of the opinion, like most other Applite, that the two were symbiotic and a soft and weak body was indicative of a soft and weak mind. For the same reason, he instinctively frowned on the trend of avoiding the sun or going out only in high-strength U.V. block to cultivate a pasty, whey-sallow ‘library’ skin. It was a snub to their Applite equals, implying those whose work took them out into the sun and involve themselves in the real-world application of scientific knowledge made them somehow inferior despite their gradings. He was proud of his tanned, fit, strong and healthy body, the envy, at his fifty-one years, of many men two decades younger. He also felt a surge of ego caused by the come-to-bed eyes of the females and the envious looks of the men as he walked or rode past and honest with himself now to admit the small vanity.

Having slaked his thirst, he cast his eyes across the view. Below the Mount, he could see the sprawl of his charge. To the left and right were the vast stilted piers reaching out into the vast hollow of the now dry Lake Torrens, awaiting the rains. Each of them, a dozen in all on the East bank (the West couldn’t be seen for the heat haze), stretched two kilometres out into the lake bed. They thrust out transways and walkways like mathematically calculated trees, the system interspersed with nodes of warehouses and sheds and Managed Population accommodation. When the Rains came and filled the lake and underground basins over three hectic weeks, Managed Population, Handlers and Elite would up sticks from their land-lubber labours and occupy the structures. Although duties rotated, the Lake Torrens Farming Collective - a subset of organisation in the area that drew workforce from all the Provincial resources - would have a total of fourteen thousand people on those piers in an ad hoc town of occasional labour at any time. Fishermen, farmers, managers, harvest processors, fertiliser pulpers, smokers, packagers, harvesters and God knows what would set up shop. Crops would be planted in the lake environs, fry and fertilised eggs released, water-hungry tubers and squashes and fruits planted in the artificial swamp margins, crustaceans and amphibians left to breed in the pens and so on. The harvests would be reaped, waste reprocessed and uses found for the by-products. Then, as the months passed, the feeder rivers would run dry and the lake would be replenished from the great Basins beneath them, filled with the initial flood. So the farming and fishing would continue. The flood may only come once every three years or so - the timing was notoriously inexact - but with the Basins a good fourteen to seventeen months of production could be coaxed from the Lake. But that wasn’t Mel’s problem, it was the Collective’s. His work was the water and the structures.

Once the Basins emptied, starting with the margins, followed by the crop land and crustacean pens, then finally the deeper fish farms, the temporary town would die. The entire workforce would thin and slowly leave, returning to their dry season occupations. The dry lake bed and Basins around and below it would be left barren and dessicated. Then in would return Mel’s people. Elite engineers with their Managed Populations to check over the structures, carry out maintenance and refit the whole gargantuan site. Every square metre inspected and brought back up to spec after the intensive months of use. Structures, perhaps whole piers, stressed below safe tolerances by unforeseen torrents or intensive weather, stripped out for recycling and rebuilt from scratch to new and improved specifications. With new and improved materials. They’d check all the comm systems, logistics, boats. They’d replenish the tool-sheds and strip down the cranes and hoists and net-reels. Every bit of machinery and nook and cranny would be examined, repaired, lubricated, refilled, restocked and put back in order. They’d re-fertilize and re-seed the lake bed after digging it over. And they’d inspect the Basins, check all the valve-work, pumping equipment, test every last control circuit and when the Rains came again the barren desolation of wood, metal, plastic and dirt could once again be filled with growing, swimming and crawling life. Life to be farmed and harvested and fill men’s bellies. The Lake artificial structure was a living thing, refitted and upgraded bit by bit as it wore out to be replaced with new, improved technology and materials. At least, with his overview, that’s how Mel had come to see it, as an inorganic but symbiotic augmentation to the natural Lake. But then again, he’d been accused of being a romantic before - not a compliment in Elite circles. He’d been waxing lyrical in a bar one night and some Thlite snot had said something snide. He belted the guy, he recalls, but had been excused at Adjudication because of provocation.

Not only was the thirteen million yerslas of economic output (the mean of the last eight floods, a period considered representative of economic expectation) of the Lake Collective thus his indirect responsibility. There were the outlying activities. Once the waters started flowing into the Lake, they filled the Basins first and then the lake itself, before flowing onward to the Wilmington and Iron Knob Provinces. The agricultural output of those two Provinces, comprising eight Parishes each, were not very seasonal. In fact, although rated only Delta sustainable, they were generally self-sufficient food-wise. But the extra water flow was crucial to a large part of their developmental economy - the economic surplus used to obtain goods and services to create and develop a wider culture and facilities to improve general social self-sufficiency. In fact, at the last annual assessment, Iron Knob Province had been granted Delta Plus, missing out on Gamma by a whisker (something about educational provision lacking variety which most people reckoned was bullshit). So the new Basin due to come on line in the far south-west corner had been so controversial until the meeting Mel had just completed in Parndana on Kangaroo Island. This new Basin, having been granted Regional approval, was planned to be six hundred metres long by a two hundred and fifty wide and eighty deep. Taking another twelve million cubic metres of water at first flood at the prime growing season and using it for the Lake, thus depriving the downstream Provinces of it’s benefit, had been seen by Iron Knob and Wilmington as basically taking the piss - almost literally. But the agreement he’d reached with the Chairmen of both Provinces on behalf of the Lake Torres Water Management Facility and - by virtue of the Regional Secretary for Economic Balance - the Lake Torrens Farming Collective meant the political shit was over.

It was the ‘political shit’ that always dragged him down regarding his otherwise perfect occupation. Thlite objecting to aspects of technological theory being trained into his Managed Population on one hand. Applite arguing over what use regenerated land or brown-field unsuccessful sites should be put to on the other. Handlers getting into scraps about ‘promotions’ and ‘demotions’ between work allocations. Crazy. Handling Managed Population was exactly the bloody same and you were still just a Handler, a more clever and slightly better rewarded Managed Populant, regardless if you were overseeing an Elite domestic building’s construction or a gang digging out a farming Collective’s outdoor latrines. But playground-cock-of-the-walk ego is a universal human trait, whether Managed, Handler or Elite. No matter how much you hated it. In many ways, Mel thought, evolution’s biggest mistake when it came up with humans was giving them a self-preservation instinct. Thinking of yourself first, not the group good, wasted so much time and energy. Take out sleeping, eating and other natural functions, humans were a low work yield animal compared to insects, arachnids or fish to begin with. Add socialising, in-fighting and skiving and you’ve not got much time of the day left. Probably why the Managed Population, despite the occasional contretemps, succeeded in doing more actual graft in a week than an equal number of Applite apprentices could manage in a month. If two M.P.’ve got a problem over who gets to use the shovel first, a Handler comes along and settles it on the spot, assuming one hasn’t already punched the other one out by the time they get there. Apprentices will invoke their right to call an Intercession Meeting and hold an open debate, culminating in a vote, on who has dibs. With meal and sanitary breaks thrown in.

As he scanned the panorama before him he was amazed how much manpower had gone into what he saw. The extent of the dry lake bed he could see had three of the access piers. Each were two hundred meters wide. Under each, he knew, was a Basin. The pier system was little more than a superstructure for which the Basins formed the foundations. A vast cavern system of ceramic-lined concrete reservoirs with pumping houses and one-way valve pipework. Each new Basin was the same construction and would be the same until there was no more room for Basins or the piers they sprouted. When the lake dried up, the heavy machinery went in and bit a vast chunk out of side of the lake and then started digging down. Foundations were laid, columns of stone inside the boundaries built, and the pumping rooms dug in around it. Hydrogen power generation rooms were built. All below ground level - Enclave technology. The Basin and it’s supporting machinery were then landscaped back into the same shape of the lake-shore so as not to compromise the natural water flow system. On the surface of the sealed (apart from personnel and machine access points) Basin, a solid foundation provided a leap-off point for the production piers that emerged from it out into the lake bed on stilts. The vast shrimp and mollusc beds and eel/fish farms between the vast network of piers extended out from this foundation in an artificial lattice that was quite astonishing in it’s variety and complexity. Each basin’s shore lattice extended into the next one, and now, in New Year 1832, two thirds of the lake shore was ringed by the Basins with their farms, beds and shore margins and crop land.

Mel could see in his mind’s eye the newly completed (but untested) Basin on the far shore. The initial digging had twice been set back by unseasonal rains - digging out dry dirt’s easier than mud. The laying of the Basin foundations had been flawed by the discovery of a different quality of underlying strata than anticipated. Laying in the hydrogen extractors was slowed by dozens of petty niggles in the power distribution infrastructure, mainly to do with how fast they could radiate heat away from the cooling units. But the Basin was built, the pumping and power grids bedded in, the operating populations’ accommodations finished and the terraforming of it’s re-integration into the shoreline of the lake completed. Only the hydraulic mechanisms and control systems needed to be tested - and they could only be tested when the Basin started to flood full.

Very soon. And failure meant catastrophe for him professionally. Although he’d overseen three Basin constructions successfully, in Elite circles you’re only as good as your last success - or as bad as your last failure. If the Basin hadn’t been terraformed correctly and the Lake haemorrhaged water, the lake would dry out early and the Collective lose hideously valuable days of aquacultural output. If the pumping systems didn’t work and the lake dried out while millions of cubic metres lay fallow in a ceramic-lined tomb, the result would be almost as bad. He would be both ruined and humiliated. He’d lose his Alpha Minus status for incompetence - probably regraded as a Gamma and posted to a plasti-fuel processing station - and become a dead-end laughing stock. His family would be disrupted, his children denied advantages and all his political connections would turn their backs on the ‘failure’. And he dare not think about what would happen to his economic privileges.

But he hadn’t become an Alpha Minus without being relentlessly competent. He’d checked the specs, driven the labour force ruthlessly, checked and re-checked every aspect of the new Basin with an expert eye. His people were the best aqua- and agricultural terraformers in the world now, he was of no doubt. They’d made huge sacrifices to earn their work global renown, including blood, not just sweat. Each Basin had used dangerous state-of-the-art technology which had been proof-tested on site in live simulations until they worked. He was well aware that on average each of the five Basins he’d overseen had cost thirty-one lives in the course of their construction and left eighty-four crippled. Their names were on a large memorial at the approach to each of the entrances to the Collective facilities built on the Basin’s foundation and stretching out into the Lake. No-one, Elite, Handler or Worker, could get into the Collective facilities without knowing the blood price of the riches they were harvesting. This Basin was no exception and he could still, as he sat on his horse looking out to the lake, see the faces of some of the corpses of workers whose lives had been lost in the process of building the latest Basin. Crushed under excavation collapse, fried in a power surge, carved up by a machine accident, they were there. Those who had given their lives to build Humanity a sustainable future. Managed Population, Handler and Elite, the sacrificial lambs for the Elite ideal, all equal in death.

He shook the grim thoughts and momentary shadow of doubt from his mind and kicked his horse alive under him. The rains were only a month - ish - away and they promised to be big. And he knew that was big. The weather centre had said the Pacific fronts expected would have trailed slow over the ocean that was 0.4 degrees warmer than the century average this year. The air would be groaning with evaporated water just waiting to hit land. Then the combination of different temperature fluctuation from the ocean and land masses to push vapour higher and into colder altitudes would lead to vast, richly laden clouds to cascade their wealth down onto the land. Into the natural land contours it’d all flow, straight into the seasonal rivers to flood the lakes.

And fill the ready Basins. And his new Basin would work perfectly, he’d be celebrated as a genius once again and he’d take another step forward to becoming a full Alpha.

Mina, full name Mina Olga Chavez, was waiting for her husband Mel to get home. Also an Applite officially, although at fifty years old still only a Gamma Plus, she had long ago turned her back on her career. Twenty-eight years ago, to be precise, when she’d met and fallen in love with the slightly older Melcroft Gibbens at a post-graduate’s inter-university ball. She’d always been a pragmatic woman, even at a young age, and seen in the tall, powerfully built young man an inner drive and intelligence that told her he was a man that was going to make a mark. She was well aware of her own technical short-comings and knew on her own she would probably languish in the mediocre ranks and she wanted more. She nailed her colours firmly to his mast instead, giving him the back-up, social support and manoeuvred political connections to back up his technical brilliance, vision and energy. She’d also furnished him with four children. Firstly, the eldest male twins, now twenty-eight, Morten and Adrian. At twenty-six, Adrian had taken after his father and had worked up to Beta Minus rank, where he got a transfer to a massive hydroponic facility in the Canadian Region. The other was more of a worry to his mother. He was still only a Delta Minus, working in transport infrastructure in Indonesia. He lacked the brutal drive and ruthless deviousness necessary to forge much further ahead in his career. The next eldest was her daughter Christina, an Epsilon Plus in Kabul Synthetic Organs Facility, following her vocation as a biotechnician. She was only twenty-one, so doing well. The youngest, helping her unpack the shopping, was fifteen year old Esmerelda. She was a little vixen, a determined operator at all levels and very conscious of her social position and what was required to maintain it. She was also getting exemplary appraisals at the University where she was just about to take her second year’s exams for an advanced apprenticeship in aquanautics. She’d a more than passing interest in a career in ocean factory shipping. Operating a deep-sea rare elements extraction vessel was her current ambition.

Still no fermented soy then? Esmerelda asked her mother.

No, honey, and not likely to be for months unless we make our own, Mina answered ruefully. Not at twenty-five daslas for a fifth of a kilo. We got the star anise, though.

I still think we got a lousy deal at the last Economic Balancing Round, said Esmerelda. She glanced at a packet before doing a double take. Forty-one nine for a quarter kilo of sapphron? Edgebury! Anyone would’ve thought the Salt Valley glass-houses’d never been built. She grumpily handed it over to one of the kitchen maids to store in the spice pantry. Mind you don’t spill any of that or it’s your hide! she snapped at the girl as she scurried away.

Mina suppressed a smile. Esme, as she was nick-named (and hated it), had always had a shrewd eye for a horsla and this moaning about prices was a monthly ritual after the serious shopping. Never mind the fermented soy, we can always change the menu to something just as impressive this weekend, she said encouragingly to her daughter. No need to throw money away to keep our image up when a bit of culinary imagination will suffice. You can have a free hand with the curries.

Esme perked up. Really?

Yes, sweet-heart, the first of the chutneys will be ready, she said encouragingly. We need to try them out. We’ll have a Subcontinent theme to the Rains Feast.

Goodie, Esme squeaked in an unusually little-girl voice. I can try out those exotic bread recipes Aunt Casea got for me, she added, and turned her attention to the next box of provisions.

What we can’t do, though, is brew the Estate beer without malt and there’s heavy demand for short supply, Mina went on. I agree that the last Balancing was badly conducted. It’s left the whole of Pacifica on short cereals rations. Malted barley’s just broken the munsla a sack barrier.

Mel, who’d arrived in time to hear most of this conversation, entered the kitchen. Well, that answers the question about the newly reclaimed north fields. I can very well do without a horse stud but I’m damned if I’m going without a beer, he said loudly as he walked in, sweeping Mina up in a huge hug. We’ll plant under barley, he said, then kissed her as Esmerelda looked pointedly away and made rather unsubtle gagging noises.

Poo, you stink, giggled Mina. After he’d put her down, Mel asked, So what are the Capitol Maltings doing then? If there’s a barley shortage? He knew Mina would have been nosing around. Esme reluctantly gave him a hug as his wife responded.

Cleared out and being refitted. Another Balancing consequence. It’s being converted into a Smokery. For fish as well as flesh. Plus dry curing on the side. There’s going to be a surfeit, most likely, of swine. And with the new Basin completed and the Flood coming, the fish harvest should be even larger than last year and there was a hell of a push to get the produce preserved last Flood. The two thousand kilos of prime that went straight to fertiliser is a scandal that the Collective don’t want repeated. Especially since Connie was regraded and shipped out to South America, she said.

Hummmm, was all the comment Mel made, noting the hint of crowing in his wife’s voice. Connie was an old enemy of his wife, a Beta Plus who’d made no secret of her contempt for a woman who’d - in her eyes - abandoned her career to become a ‘home-maker’. There had been a host of petty spites over the years and even the ‘obligatory’ invitations had usually been snubbed. Elite etiquette meant every Elite household held about four functions a year along ‘business’ lines. The Gibbens were slightly unusual but they did Flood, Water’s End and Summer High, but only a fourth, a huge hoolie, at the completion of a Basin. This year they were combining Flood and Completion together and the party was going to be spectacular. Because of the glut of invitations, though, there were always far more by several factors than any family could be expected to accept. People therefore had to be choosy which they attended. The ‘quality’ of whom attended whose functions had become a critical acid test of those waxing and those on the wane.

Well, at least you won’t have to put up with her patronising smile this time, Mel said over his shoulder as he walked off to shower.

In the night after work all the Hetmen of the Managed Population of the Estate gathered in the communal barn for the Moot. There was an atmosphere of tension. All eight of them, representing each of the dormitories, were here for this – no deputies or heralds. The lamps shone pseudo-daylight as the gloom gathered outside the doors and through the windows. They sat on the grain sacks and talked among themselves as they waited for the Chief to arrive. He would be last because his work duty that day had been the furthest away. As was usual with the Moot, no-one would eat that evening until the matter had been settled once and for all. But this matter was deeper than most, not just some tiff between families or rivalries over lovers. This could rock the whole Estate.

No, cut that. Rip the Estate apart.

Carnack, the Chief Hetman for the last twelve seasons, thought that Master Gibbens had made some strategic blunders in his time, but his inertia on this matter could prove catastrophic. He clearly, like most Masters, had only the vaguest idea of the forces that seethed under the orderly surface of his holdings. As he entered the barn and shut the door, ritually barring it so as to prevent any disturbance (though no Worker would be that stupid anyway), he gathered his thoughts. The chatter among the other Hetmen had subsided to a respectful silence. The Chief Hetman would be standing down soon. None stood for more than twelve seasons in the post regardless of the continuing support of the council and he didn’t want his until now venerable tenure remembered for overseeing the Estate burning down in religious warfare.

Friends, he started, his voice gravelly with age and experience. At forty, he was the oldest of the Managed Population on the Estate by three years. We are gathered to resolve the matter of Lisa Cutter and Danial Sawyer, he went on. The were murmurs of approval. This matter is now coming to a head and must be settled. Today one of the Managers was furious. Distractions and fights among the workers in the East Fields has disrupted production and she had to report a five per cent shortfall from the mill to the Master. He was deeply angered by this and she visited this rage down on us. Five disruptive workers are to be sold to the desert photoelectric combines.

There was a mumble of concern. This was grim news and a nasty precedent. Labour in the photoelectric companies was notoriously brutal. Out in the desert, unlike here, there was little scope or opportunity for Masters to make additional revenues to pay for their comforts in addition to their usual grade rewards. Those posts, therefore, were filled with Elite that were unpopular, second-rate, usually despised by the other Masters. There was no spare revenue to take proper care of the workforce who often suffered skin cancer from over-exposure unprotected in the desert sun. Sun-stroke insanity was a very real risk and Workers who went heat-mad or sun-blind were simply recycled without a moment’s hesitation. As the Masters viewed these postings as only one step up from a penal Facility, they treated the Managed Population accordingly, venting their own spleens upon them. Life there was harsh and short.

Carnack went on. So you see the matter is escalating. Danial and Lisa have stated openly they are determined to splice. Both families are of the opinion that the other family’s child is the seducer and both have the backing of their religious factions. You all know that both sides see leaving their respective faiths as a mortal sin, punishable by death. Yet they both fiercely protect converts from other faiths. Murdering anyone who converts one of the faithful to another faith is considered praiseworthy – in fact a religious duty – on both sides. If Danial and Lisa splice, one will have to renounce their faith. That will mean the faction to have been deserted will try to kill them and the other kill to protect them.

Hetman Five, a huge, barrel-chested man in his late twenties, rumbled, That would start a war. Without doubt. This splicing must be stopped. Many muttered agreement.

Carnack shook his head. Their own families have failed to prevent it. They’re young and in love, Farris. And they are of the new generation who fail to understand the depth of feeling they will provoke.

Hetman Two, a slim thirty-four, spoke. Then they must be split up. Persuade the Master to trade them. It will have to be both and to different facilities. He’ll not want to provoke a crisis by favouring one faction, he stated.

Hetman Six said, That could simply provoke acrimony in both factions.

Acrimony that will be quickly suppressed if it starts getting out of hand. If efficiency is further impaired, who knows what the Master will do? His reputation is at stake. Trading to the photo-power companies could only be the start of a new common practice of punishments. Who here remembers an execution? I, myself, cannot recall one. We barely get twenty floggings a year! Do we want to risk a return to last century and the knout? Carnack snapped. He satisfied himself that all heads were shaking.

Hetman Seven spoke. Perhaps, if they announce their intention to splice, the Master will trade them to an atheist facility - there are still plenty of Masters that maintain that tradition, he piped up.

And we all know how they enforce it! exclaimed Hetman Three. Flaying of religious tattoos and markings, tongue slitting for preaching, branding, salting a hundred cuts, the slow gallows….

Yes, said Carnack thoughtfully, but if these two youngsters were to be told that would be the consequence of splicing….. He let the thought hang.

"The problem is they are youngsters. They don’t remember anything like those old days, said Hetman Six. Even their parents have forgotten. They’re second generation on this farm. They never knew the inside of a breeding stud because they weren’t born in one! There’s no scars on their backs. That’s why they’re a threat to all of us. An example of how far tolerance can go must be made. And if we don’t make it and the Estate, and the Master’s prosperity and professional reputation and career suffer…… There were murmurs of assent. I say they either renounce this splicing or they’ll have to face the consequences - away from here. Perhaps in an atheist hell-hole! Anyway, they’ll soon get over each other and find someone new. They’re only seventeen and nineteen…."

Carnack gestured for silence as rumblings of Grown up soft, Spoilt and selfish and Don’t know their luck broke out. Friends, he spoke firmly, can we agree? That if they declare, we will persuade the Masters to trade them to an atheist facility where their religion will not be an issue? And if they renounce their splicing and seek other partners, they can be traded to separate facilities so as to alleviate the inter-sect stresses here? There were nods of approval.

The Master brings many of these problems upon himself, muttered Hetman Two. "If he is to allow religion, he must make it clear whether fraternisation is to be allowed or banned, one way or the other. Everyone will know where they stand then. It’s this lack of clear policy that makes for these stupid situations. It’s the same as with the Thlite Disclosure Amendment - he hasn’t made it plain if he’s going to vote for or against that, yet. He procrastinates decisions and then the Managers have to handle the crisis."

Carnack suppressed a smile of agreement. It’s not our place to criticise policy - or the lack of it. But I agree that fence sitting only leads to a sore arse. It is for the Managers to try to press him on matters like that. But I will raise the matter with them at the next Steering Group. In the meantime, can you all go back to your Dormatories and pass the word around of what will become of the couple if they go ahead - and the likely consequences of any religious stupidity related to what comes about. It’s in no faction’s interest for the Master to declare the Estate atheist. And the first ones that’ll be out of the pastures and down the fungus mines know who they are.

Or out to the Sturt Desert, muttered Hetman Six, shuddering.

Indeed, Carnack concluded. We’ll see what the dawn brings.

Edgar Trieste swirled his wine, held up between his eye level and the fire burning brightly in the grate. He gazed approvingly through the pale green of the apple liquor as it wound around it’s crystal prison. He lowered the vessel, sighed, and took a sip. Then, with a voice still firm but scratchy with age, took up the thread of the conversation once more with his nephew. Reluctantly, or at least begrudgingly, like the gardener picking up the rake in the autumn to divest the lawn once again of the leaf-fall and wondering yet again how many more times he’s going to have to rake over the same ground…….

"Yanov, you’re forgetting once again that the Elite are not a homogeneous whole. We are now, in effect if not in theory, two political houses semi-detached by a common belief. Both claim that they wish to carry out the Great Work," he almost sighed. He often felt like sighing when his nephew came asking for advice. The boy - no, man, he corrected himself, for he was forty-three - seemed to be almost dessicated of the water of political acumen.

Of course we all do, huffed the younger but very much portlier man, aggrieved. The re-integration of mankind into balanced cooperation with all other aspects of the natural order, using sustainable technology based on renewable resources.

Well said, straight out of Guru’s Handbook For Dummies, Edgar replied, taking another sip of wine and sighing in contentment. But there the path diverges. The Thlite, or Theoretical Sciences Elite, for I can’t abide the sloppiness in today’s youth with words, believe it is also their birthright to control the technology their forefathers safeguarded in the Enclaves for generations and passed on to them. And, incidentally, further developed and refined. And with that monopoly, enjoy a privileged and lavish lifestyle supplied by the slave caste they hold in techno-economic thrall. Which is why they argue against the efforts of the Applied Sciences Elite to teach the Managed Population ever more complex techniques and give them ever increasing education.

Of course we do! Yanov protested. The Applite are fools. If we continue the way we’re going, soon the Manpop will know enough to continue without further aid. With this Disclosure Amendment there will be nothing to prevent the Applite vomiting all the Elite knowledge, and power, straight into the Manpop! We will lose our power base and control. They’ll consider us an expensive burden to be shunted off! And when they do, the Manpop will breed totally irresponsibly, there will be a collapse of a sustainable world plan and the whole resettlement will become another pathetic, unsustainable catastrophe in the making!

Did you say ‘Manpop?’ goggled Edgar. "Good grief, what next? Sounds like a very badly chosen name for a new adult soft drink. No, listen. The Applied Science Elite argument cuts straight through all that nonsense. They point out it’s in Elite interest to increase the Managed Populations knowledge. The more they can do without supervision for themselves, the more efficient they become and the more wealth they produce - of which the Elite will have a disproportionate generosity, considering we divvy out the goodies. We are the ones making the advances, we are the ones staying ahead, doing the research. We can teach them to recycle iron and steel by rote - but they don’t know the underlying principles that allow it to happen without degrading the quality of the metal over time. As long as we know why, what does it matter if the Managed Population know how?. He refilled Yanov’s now empty glass as the younger man sat in glum silence. Besides, a semi-ignorant Managed Population is unsustainable, as you know. There aren’t enough Elite to go round as it is. Even with Handlers, we’re only half a million to govern eight hundred and fifty million Managed Population and the ratio deteriorates daily. And with a third of the Elite being Thlite, sat in their ivory towers contributing nothing to the daily management of the planet."

All the more reason to keep key technologies in our hands, Yanov snorted. With that numerical disparity we’d never be able to control the Manpop any other way. Besides, they’re still only a couple of score generations up from bestial primitivism as it is. They still have those bloody ridiculous belief systems - Militant Buddhism, Foundation Islam, The Church of the Holy Rebirth, Vegan Mohammedism, Latterday Sikh Brotherhood, Hashishyuns Reborn, the Thuggee Sect of the Kali Sisterhood, the Nuns of Nihilism……It’s no wonder the Applite and Handlers have to use brutal methods so often. Without firm handling they’d be back to cannibalism in a decade.

Edgar smiled indulgently. Those barbaric religions were the only social glue that held most of the marginally sustainable groups together through the Wars, Famines and Pestilences until Emergence. A necessary psychological adaptation to weld cohesion to fight off the Hordes and maintain social order in desperate times. And only the strongest and most ruthless survived. They’re not going to abandon such inbred proven survivalist dogmas just because we’ve come out of the ground and started saying, O.K, chaps, all over now, come here and we’ll show you how to build a greenhouse. And you’re forgetting something. We, the Elite, created our own religion to endure the Enclaves.

Yanov nearly choked. How dare you say…. he began.

Edgar was suddenly not an old, softly spoken man any longer. His eyes grew bright and voice suddenly adopted a sharp, incisive tone. ….such heresy? Was that what you were going to say? How amusing. He leaned forward and jabbed a bony finger to the now silent younger man. Don’t you forget who you’re talking to, boy. Then he sat back.

Oh, officially we’re all scientists, aren’t we? No time for that petty-fogging mysticism. Except we’ve created the first Church of Humanism. The dogma of the Reintegration. The almighty ideal of Sustainability. The hallowed Renewable Resources. They worship at an altar, we at an Edgebury Station. We even have cults with our own Saints! You, boy, are a fully paid up member of the Cult of Mathematico-Physics. You have Saint Einstein, Saint Oppenheimer, Saint Asari and the Archangel himself, Edgebury. He gave a scoffing laugh. And all the cults are held together by the worship of the Great Belief, the Resettlement, along the lines dictated by our Apostles, the Gurus of the Enclaves. Based on principles laid down by our founding Fathers, the Circle. And you dare to say we have no religion?

He got up to throw another couple of faggots on the fire and poke it around as his nephew sulked. He only continued to speak after he’d subsided back in his chair. But even our Gurus couldn’t agree on the exact method. Their recommendations or guidelines are often mutually contradictory, or downright vague, which is why we have the Arbitration Council. You do still remember from your school days, before you became Theoretical Science Elite and left practical concerns behind, the now popularly named First Mantra?

Yanov tried not to bridle at the mild insult, unsuccessfully. Of course. The Elite’s mistakes will be made when instead of allowing the sustainable path to emerge over the course of time, we try to impose an unfitting path of our own preference. Perhaps from over-familiarity or laziness. A path unfitted to the socio-economic environment of the particular instance. You don’t try to build a tarmac road over quicksand - you use mats.

Exactly - if a rather trite analogy, said Edgar with a good-humoured grin. Note the use of ‘will be made’, by the way. Not ‘could’ or ‘might’ - mistakes ‘will’ be made. But who will make the decision about when the right path has shown itself? And what that path is to be?

Well, obviously the Elite, Yanov replied, quietly suppressing the urge to add a ‘you old fool’.

But whom, said Edgar with exaggerated patience, in the Elite? Who decides who knows best? The independently above-the-battle Theoreticals watching the regenerating Humanity from their cloisters and libraries, with no feel or connection with the aspirations and capabilities of those that carry out the work? Or perhaps the Applieds, with their hands dirty with soil and industry and grime, with a hundred petty concerns daily and intrinsic prejudice to their particular field of expertise? I would say neither.

Who, then? said Yanov, throwing it out plaintively as a challenge, the way a little puppy would yip at a grown dog when it’s been barked at for a reason it doesn’t understand.

Edgar smiled smugly. Well, everyone and no-one. By that I mean there will be no controlled Reintegration of Mankind into Nature to live a Sustainable Existence. Human society will evolve the way it has always - by subconscious reaction to the natural forces of population, human subconscious motives and resource availability at any one point. Mankind has never, and will never, be master of it’s own fate. Only the victim of it’s own lusts. And the primary lust of all at the moment is technology. The Theoretical Elite and a minority of the Applied Elite are hoarding knowledge to maintain the personal power and privilege of their professional and familial networks. When they’re not one and both the same, of course. A majority of the Applieds desire the knowledge be openly available to all Humans, chiefly because they know they’ve been excluded from the club and are becoming second class citizens. But they are both equally powerful factions. Then there’s a third faction, which has yet to enter the game.

Who are you talking about now? said Yanov, exasperated.

The slave caste. Or, to use your delightful phrase, ‘Manpops’. He smiled at Yanov’s discomfiture. When their hundreds of millions around the planet realise what is up for grabs and how shoddily they’ve been dealt with by the Elite to date, they’ll have something to say about it. Or, he said, finishing his glass, "more worrying for the Elite, especially the Theoreticals and their Applieds collaborators, do about it."

I still don’t see how that helps my original question of what to do about the Disclosure Vote in three days, Yanov sulked.

You’re position is precarious. If you go on record as supporting disclosure, you place yourself in the majority Applied camp and the Theoreticals and their allies won’t forget it. If you vote to withhold, the majority Applieds won’t forget it. And if you abstain, neither will forget it and brand you an enemy by inclination but a coward in action, said Edgar, reaching for his cigar box and lighter.

Thanks for nothing! spluttered Yanov.

A brief silence, broken only by Edgar puffing his cigar back to immolative life and Yanov refilling his glass once again, ensued for the next two minutes. Then Yanov had a thought.

All right, let me change the question, he said. "What would you do in my position?"

Edgar smiled. Maybe there was hope for his nephew yet. Perhaps that poor woman Floranda won’t be tied to a hopeless sap for the rest of her natural. I would get up early tomorrow and start mixing in the Galleries with the Committee Prefects early, preferably over breakfast when they’re guard is down. And hang around the Communal Data Interchanges listening to the gossip. And the most notorious discreet vice dens in the evenings. Bump into people. Have a very large amount of short conversations with as many as possible from all sides of the debate and feel the wind. Be as subtle as you can, but not so subtle they don’t realise you’re sampling the political flow. Then vote with the majority view as you detect it, he said calmly.

That’s hardly principled behaviour. I could lose friends - and allies - over this! he said.

Precisely. You don’t need friends and allies now. Not if they’re going to turn out to be on the losing side of what will be a very nasty political battle. Did I say battle? That’s wrong. This is going to be nothing more or less than a full-blown political Elite civil war. What you will get instead is a reputation as a self-serving shyster for sale. And there will be a lot of close votes in the near future coming up, especially among the Disclosure Committee, of which you are a First Chamber member. Edgar hardened his voice again. Voting with your conscience will make no difference to how this dogmatic schism is eventually settled. Believe me. You can have no influence at all upon what is going to be the end result any which way it pans out. But you can, if you’re ruthless enough to do it, sell your influence to the highest bidders and make serious career progress out of this. And, above all, be on the winning side – which is all that matters. Remember that. This is a matter of practicality, not philosophy. And pragmatism starts with yourself.

The fresher faggots were now fully ablaze in the grate and one of them punctuated the pronouncement with a hearty pop. Yanov was silent for a minute. Then he whispered, Hardly the honourable way I was brought up to believe in.

I know, but your mother was always an idealist and couldn’t see when fighting a battle wouldn’t make any difference. Edgar’s voice had softened again. "And when things start getting politically nasty, as they’re about to, forget about doing what you think is right, do what you think is best - for you, Floranda and my great-nieces and nephew. They won’t thank you for winding up regraded to a data management clerk lamda minus and living in a ninth floor flat in Helvensroum."

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Chapter Two

From the Second Epistle of Guru Adebayo Merrin, to Guru Isha Benedict the Tragic. She had sought his advice regarding the Pacifica Enclave Council debating culling 10% of the