Earth maintains strict immigration control over its space. Its large military establishment, partly robotic, enforces the Quarantine Laws.

Earth appoints governors for all stations, except Apex. Earth made the Treaty that ended the Gene Wars, and Earth continues to enforce Treaty Law.

It does not permit immigration and does not trade in material goods.

The Inner Worlds

From roughly twelve lights of Earth outward to a distance of twenty lights: three successfully colonized worlds and fourteen stations in the area are administered by Earth governors. They are much more Earthlike than Outsider in philosophy and law, and impose purity laws nearly as stringent as Earth’s.

Outsiders

Comprising the bulk of the human species, Outsiders remain nominally under Earth government, as regards Treaty Law, but govern themselves and trade freely.

Apex

Apex Station, the military and governmental center of Outsider culture, orbits an Earthlike planet, Apex Prime, which has been successfully, though sparsely, colonized.

The Apex High Council elects the Chairman General, the chief executive over Outsider Space. The High Council, called the Apex Council everywhere but on Apex, appoints the Supreme Judiciary as well as the twenty-odd chairmen who serve as Outsider executive authority on stations throughout Outsider Space. These chairmen share civil power with Earth-appointed governors on various stations, and have authority over Outsider citizens, whether in trade or civil law.

The Ruined Worlds

Four sites, including Aldestra and Luzan, inhabited worlds, once subject to ill-advised terraforming, and carefully monitored from orbit. Direct contact is not permitted. Aldestra possesses a seasonally nomadic culture. Luzan’s population clings to life.

Other Outsider Stations

Orb, Arc, Serine, Momus, and the other Outsider stations all have a bilevel government. Earth-born governors serve as the station executive, overseeing maintenance, heavy manufacturing, and trade, and ruling over a separate society of Earthborn and Earth-affiliated citizens, who are generally financiers, traders, industrialists, technicians, occasional religionists, and providers of specialized services—all well-educated, generally well-monied individuals. Earthers are relatively few in number on the stations they govern—a layer of technical administration serving to keep the station mechanicals working and guaranteeing stability. Like gravity on a planet, it costs relatively little, has assured a firm footing for a long time, and no one is particularly interested in challenging it.

More numerous, Outsiders reside usually on a separate deck, with their own trading associations, hospitals, social services, and mercantile endeavors, their political factions, and their labs—that essentially defining item of Outsider culture. Outsider trade and use of biotech nanisms make Earthers very reluctant to mingle with the darker elements of Outsider communities. This guarantees that real law enforcement rests with the Outsider Council and the local chairman.

Concord Station

Marak’s World might be counted as a fifth Ruined World, except for the extensive remediation efforts that are an ongoing basis of Earth-Outsider-ondat cooperation, on which the all-important Treaty rests, and no one ever suggests failure. Its solar system, of which it is now the sole life-bearing planet, lies within that region of unintended overlap between ondatand human space.

Concord Station is an important trade partner of Apex, Arc, and Orb. It speaks a language ages-vanished, and all incoming media have to be translated for the majority of its citizenry.

Concord’s governor is, as elsewhere, Earth-appointed. Its Outsider chairman is Apex-appointed. No one understands how the ondatobserver is chosen…but one exists here, making Concord unique among stations: ondatships visit here, another anomaly. The total ondatpopulation at Concord is fewer than five—humans think. No one asks or knows what their power structure may be, how long they stay, or what they report to their distant authority. No one has ever gotten a clear view of an ondat,though shadowy images are in classified files.

The Planetary Office installation, whose director is appointed by the Apex Council and who reports to that body, is unique to Concord. The PO, as it is called, constitutes an Outsider authority independent of ordinary station administration, one specifically charged with overseeing remediation efforts on Marak’s World.

That three nations and two species can coexist here argues that an ondat-human peace, like planetary life, is evolving slowly. There seems to be progress.

But remediation, and therefore the peace itself, is still in doubt.

Forge of Heaven

1

GROZNY WAS WHERE LEBEAU Street mingled with the Style, where the low haunts of Blunt Street flowed into the Trend and rubbed shoulders with the rich and carefree.

Heart of the Trend on Concord Station, Grozny Street, where the Style walked side by side with gray-suited, slumming Earthers from exclusive upper levels, the ruling class making their own statement in shades of pearl and charcoal. Flashing newsboards warred, streaming stock and futures tickers under cosmetic adverts and the dockside news. A ship from Earth was coming in. Thatwas major news, rare and interesting, but it didn’t immediately affect the Trend, and it didn’t affect Procyon, né Jeremy Stafford, walking home from dinner, an easy stroll through the neon and the crowds.

There was Jonah’s Place, and The Ox, there was Right Ascension, Farah’s, and La Lune Noir, there was The Body Shop and the Blue Lounge—and the Health Connection, which cleaned up the Body Shop’s done-on-a-whims. There was Tia Juana’s, the Ethiopia, and the high-toned Astral Plane…not to mention the exclusive little shops that sold everything from designer genes to boots—and there was The Upper Crust, that very nice little pastry shop that Procyon did his best to stay out of.

The whole station came to Grozny to relax—well, except those solid citizens content with the quiet little establishments in their own zones, or with the output of their own kitchens. Most daytimersto Grozny took the lift system into the Trend. Very few citizens had the cachet or the funds to live here.