Turn back your starships
Give us back to ourselves
Several of them were carrying hologram panes on long poles, blazing with anti-Z-B slogans. A couple of bored police officers were standing fifteen meters away, watching over them. They catcalled and jeered anyone walking up and down the broad stone stairs to the entrance of the big headquarters building. Z-B personnel scurrying in and out studiously ignored them.
When Lawrence started up the stairs they directed several insults at him. He smiled and waved cheerfully, knowing how much that always annoyed their type. His gaze found a girl in the middle of the group, more attractive than any of her cause sisters, with compact dainty features amplifying her intent expression. She was wrapped up in an old-fashioned navy-blue duffel coat with wooden toggles, its hood down to show off raven hair that had been frizzled into a thick mass of short curls. Their eyes met, and he broadened his grin to a male-ape invitation. He laughed heartily at the angry scowl she fired back at him.
Minority-cause fascists, no sense of humor.
Three receptionists sat behind a curving teak desk in the vast, empty lobby. One of them gave him directions to the officer college, in an annex of its own at the rear of the main building. "What are they here for?" he asked, pointing out through the tall glass doors at the protesters.
"Regressors," she said. "They want for us to go away and stop influencing 'their' lives with 'our' policies."
"Why?"
The receptionist gave him a pitying look. "We're not democratic."
"But anyone can buy a stake in Z-B."
"Tell them."
The officer college was a modern glass cube connected to the headquarters building by a couple of bridges on the third and sixth floors. Lawrence walked across the lower one, trying to damp down his trepidation. If all went well he'd be spending the next three years here learning everything from life support engineering to astrogration. Although quite why the flattest country in the world had been chosen as the training ground for starships was a question that his downloaded briefing had never covered. Someone somewhere in the company must have had a strong sense of irony.
He reported in to the corporal in the foyer, saluting sharply. The man gave a disinterested wave back and entered Lawrence into the administration AS.
"Turn up at oh-seven-fifteen hours tomorrow," the corporal said. "You will receive your introduction to the assessment week. This is your accommodation warrant." He handed over a small card. "You're staying at the Holiday Inn. This entitles you to a single bedroom, along with breakfast and dinner. Don't try ordering room service or beer with it You have your lunch here in the mess. You're in group epsilon three. Don't be late." The corporal returned to the pane displays on his desk.
"Thanks. Uh, how many others in the group?"
"Thirty."
"And how many places are we competing for?"
The corporal gave him a tired look. "We process one group per week. And the annual intake is one hundred officer cadets. Work the odds out for yourself."
Lawrence made his way back through the main building. On average they'd take two from each group. A one-in-fifteen chance. No, he corrected himself. Nothing here is down to chance. I'm going to make it.
When he walked into the Holiday Inn half of the people in the lobby were from Z-B, and several of them were obviously in town for their officer assessment. He could spot them from a long way off. In their early twenties, fit, serious expressions, well-cut clothes, trying to hide fluttering nerves. He guessed they could spot him just as easily.
That afternoon he went down to the basement pool and swam a mile. As always, his fitness had suffered on the star-ship back from Quation, and the last week hadn't exactly been dedicated to healthy living. He climbed out, reasonably pleased with his time. The exercise gave him that extra degree of confidence for tomorrow: thanks to their own training, Z-B had kept him in top shape for the last five years.
Lawrence couldn't stand the idea of having his supper in the hotel restaurant. The place would be full of all the other candidates, forcing themselves to be polite to each other. So he set off on a short walk through the old city as dusk fell. Amsterdam's heart had been beautifully preserved, with marvelous old houses lining the canals, each with its own hoist on the top. The antique mechanisms still worked, hauling furniture up so it could be brought in through the windows. Houseboats were tied up on the still black water between the arched stone bridges, ranging from tiny cruisers to barges with double decks and roof gardens. Berths had become so valuable that the city hadn't issued a new houseboat license for over two centuries; his briefing had mentioned that some had stayed in the same families for over eight generations now.
The bar he eventually found on Rembrandtplein served a decent menu of hot food, and beer that claimed to replicate the recipe of an original Dutch lager. It wasn't the classiest place in town, but it had a lively atmosphere, and a hologram pane was showing a sport feed. He sat at a table near the back and ran through the menu. It took him a moment to work out that the last ten items on the sheet were narcotics, three of which were quite hard. There was an option to have some of the lighter ones as garnish on your food.
His waiter took the order and delivered some of the supposed original-tasting lager. Lawrence settled back and took a look around. The big pane on the far wall was showing Manchester United versus Monaco. He chuckled and took another sip of his lager.
The girl from the protest group was sitting up at the bar, giving him a cool stare. He did a double take, then smiled and raised his glass in salute. She looked away hurriedly.
Too bad, he thought. She was with a couple of other girls, no male companion in sight. Her duffel coat was slung over the back of her stool. She was wearing a thin scarlet rollneck sweater, with an unpractically long scarf wound loosely round her neck, and baggy olive-green trousers held up with a broad rainbow bead belt. With those clothes, and an age he estimated at three or four years younger than himself, she had to be a student. Philosophy, no doubt, he decided, that or sociology. Something utterly useless for the real world.
His food arrived. Pasta with a three-cheese sauce and smoked ham. A side order of garlic dough balls. Sprinkling of ground pepper. Hold the hashish.
He wound the first strands around his fork.
"Killed anyone today?"
He glanced up. The girl was standing by his table.
Just like Roselyn, appearing out of nowhere to talk to me.
Somehow, he thought the motive would be different "Not today, nor any day," he answered, politely casual. Her nose was too broad to make her a classic beauty, but she had what people called a fierce intelligence lighting her eyes, analyzing and judging everything she saw. It made her very appealing: that and the raw hostility. Getting her into bed would be quite a challenge.
"You're one of the cybersoldiers," she said. "I can see the blood valves on your neck."
She had an accent he couldn't quite place. "And you're a welfare princess. I saw you standing in the Dam square while everyone else was working for a living."
Her cheeks darkened in anger. "I devote my time to achieving something worthwhile: your downfall."
"Had any success?" Lawrence had heard of opposites attracting, but this was ridiculous. He was sure she was about to throw her drink over him. Except her glass was back on the bar. She couldn't be carrying a weapon. Could she?
"We will," she said.
"So who do you plan to control our factories and revitalization projects once you've driven us out of your country? Yourself and your friends, perhaps?"
"We'll close down your factories. We don't want that kind of society."
"Ah, green anarchy. Interesting ideology. Good luck convincing everyone to adopt it."
"I'm wasting my time. You're not allowed to think: you just recite company dogma. Next you'll tell me to buy a stake if I want to change the way things are."
Lawrence closed his mouth before he said, Well, yes, actually.
"Are your career and your stake worth so much that you have to build them up on the destruction of others?"
She looked so damn earnest when she asked him. It was the worst kind of student politics: we can change the whole world if we can just open a dialogue. Try opening a dialogue to a mob flinging Molotovs at you. "I've never destroyed anyone," he said lightly.
"You've taken part in the campaigns to pillage other worlds. If that's not destruction, I don't know what is."
"Nothing is destroyed. And our campaigns help fund the greatest human endeavor there is."
"What's that?"
"Establishing colonies on new worlds."
"My God, you're worse than a cybersoldier, you're an ecocide advocate."