And nothing else catastrophic had happened to humans down there. That was the very point on Concord, wasn’t it? That was the very point, after ages of watching and waiting for another runaway to break loose—nothing happened. Hospitals could remediate eighty percent of the most serious mistakes individuals made down on Blunt, absolutely clean bad bugs out of a human body. The other twenty percent, well, those that survived, were under close watch, and didn’t spread their problem, and weren’t self-modifying or transmissible—nothing they’d found, ever, had been on that level, nothing like First Movement nanoceles at all.
Certainly somelevel heads in the Inner Worlds saw all those facts in operation and recognized a state of affairs that contradicted near-religious dogma back on Earth: the Restorationists had been a flourishing party that actually talked about relaxing the Purity Laws in the Inner Worlds. The problem was, the majority on Earth were scared—had been taught to be scared and were kept scared by precautions like Mr. Gide’s. And in the last ten years the Restorationist Party had unhappily suffered murders and scandal on its staff, and was now being outlawed by Earth’s legislatures, in region after region, with whispers that such behavior was what one got for bedding down with such thinkers.
A slight cynic—and Reaux had long counted himself in that camp—suspected covert sabotage and planted evidence. A politically savvy cynic could wonder if a more restrictive regime was gaining a foothold on Earth, taking advantage of the Restorationist scandal. A paranoid cynic might even ask if this visitor that had come here to Concord so conspicuously making demands might represent those interests. Gide might be looking to stir up a cause célèbre in the very place Earth feared most.
And that could not be good news for the governor.
Damn it all, remediation itself wasgenetic change. Remediation was the whole basis for the human- ondattreaty he was supposed to be administering out here, out of one side of his mouth, and now he had to avoid saying anything or doing anything that indicated that was the case.
Sometimes, with a certain periodicity, the universe just went crazy. Maybe there was such a thing as too long a history for a species—or too much recorded knowledge of where they’d been for any human mind ever to absorb it all. Fashions recycled. Political movements did. Ideas did.
But fear of the ondatwould surely protect Concord from the greatest insanity. It had a way of reminding fools, in the breach of basic rules. And a clever governor could survive out here, independent of the madness at the heart of the system, because ultimately, nobody dared interfere here.
One thing Reaux did take as an article of faith, what he called his own rule: that if two parties followed rigid party lines long enough, the political parties would actually switch positions on some essential issue and each of them end up defending the position the other side had used to defend. Political migration, he called it. The opposition consequently picked other issues, until the other party moved onto that ground, too—because as public consciousness advanced, political parties usually took on the very behaviors and alliances they had once most loudly decried—perhaps because those were the issues they had most passionately focused on and most thoroughly understood.
It was why he resolved he had to talk to Brazis honestly about this situation, and if Brazis was halfway reasonable, it might force him to make common cause with Brazis regarding this Mr. Gide, before Mr. Gide did something incredibly stupid in the service of some political party on distant Earth.
Dangerous. Dangerous in the extreme to approach Brazis. The ambassador’s ship had presented credentials electronically. Beyond a doubt the ship was from Earth, not the Inner Worlds, and beyond a doubt it was authorized at highest levels. Gide’s credentials were therefore solid.
And a governor, however right, couldn’t just out and say, twice, as he’d tried to do, Excuse me, do you really realize the repercussions of what you’re doing? Do you realize your stupid foreign prejudices are leading you to insane conclusions about perfectly ordinary situations?
He couldn’t say, even once: No, sorry, you’re patently out of line and I’m not going to let you do what you’ve come hundreds of light-years to do at the behest of your remote, stupid, and abysmally ignorant party leadership.
Politicians. Scientists. And guns, assuming that ship was prepared to enforce its opinions. Gide had raised certain legitimate questions about planetary security, given a certain loosening of laws about replication techniques that meant, yes, if they weren’t careful with that technology, some fool someday could attempt to replicate First Movement tech—but they were careful. The Refuge didn’t let technical information off the planet, and certainly the requisite underground laboratory to create a threat didn’t fit in a shopping bag. So where on Concord did they think an illicit operation resided?
In the taps, of course: Earth wanted to be suspicious, so it had to find a focus for its suspicion. Of coursesome tap was taking notes so voluminous they’d mean a sizable bundle of storage and getting them past the room monitors. Of coursesomeone had bodged a replication apparatus designed to fractally reproduce, say, a pot the size of one’s head, into one capable of producing an item so small and exacting that the creator couldn’t even find it without a labful of equipment unrelated to the replicators.
On the other hand, maybe someone on that ship was educated in the actual technology, and after a cursory glance and a romp through station records, would have to find that there was no basis in actuality for those suspicions. Maybe Mr. Gide would ultimately be forced to listen to his own experts—if anyone on the mission dared advance any truth to the contrary of Mr. Gide’s party’s foregone conclusions of what it was going to find.
But once he called Brazis in for conference, as Gide himself requested, then ultimately Gide and his party wouldbe forced to listen to the Outsider Chairman. Brazis had the right, the Treaty-mandated right to tell Mr. Gide, sorry, no, you aren’t talking to one of my people.
And if the ambassador persisted or tried to bully the Chairman, Brazis was the man who would tell Mr. Gide to present his credentials in hell. Brazis had a notorious temper, and he had an armed and independent government to back him. It might be a new experience in the universe for Mr. Gide, to be told that Earth’s rule didn’t extend to the PO.
What the ondatwould decide was going on, meanwhile, with this ship arriving and Mr. Gide throwing his weight around was another worry, and one that couldn’t wait for events to make the matter a crisis. He had to figure how to tell Kekellen in advance of any question that they were on his side regarding any disturbance the ambassador or that ship produced…without inciting the likes of Lyle Nazrani and his friends to charge that there was any chancy politics going on in that message-flow. No intent to sabotage Mr. Gide. Oh, never.
God, what a situation.
Being an honest Earther, he didn’t have a personal tap. He did have a coded-relay phone in his pocket, and he flipped it open as he reached the safe interior of the lift. Storage blinked, jammed with fifty-six messages, as the scroll informed him. Small wonder: every department on the station wanted information. Ernst, however, was doing his job and, when he pressed the button for a breakdown of those messages, only four had actually gotten through the sieve and into the for-your-eyes basket.
He checked them as the lift made its sideways trip to its destination. Judy and Kathy—sorry, Mignette—were having another round. The Trade Board had inquired, complaining of an outrageously low opening bid on a new plastics synth. Dortland sent a report up from Blunt, and, yes, the Southern Crosshad indeed invaded a sensitive area with a probe and just blitzed an expensive and delicate system with the finesse of a solar hiccup. Technical people were on it, repairing the damage.