Which meant the True Church could use its legitimate revenue to rebuild.

As could Bonneville.

The Elder was intrigued, but suspicious, still. “And what do they want in return?”

Enheduanna answered, personally, with one word. “Citizenship.”

The Elder looked blank.

“We want the same rights as humans.”

His eyes narrowed.

“And we want Sargon appointed Defender of Ar for all of New Utah.” Anticipating the next objection, Enheduanna interjected: “We care nothing for your Church.”

The Mayor of Saint George spoke up. “Ladies and Gentlemen, on behalf of the Mayors of the Eight Cities,” she paused a moment for that number to sink in, “I’d like to circulate a draft Constitution.”

17

Intellectual Property

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me— nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

—William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act II, scene 2

Saint George, New Utah

“I don’t understand. Why can’t we just use the Lynx?” The voice was gruff; querulous.

There were six groups clumped around Lillith Van Zandt’s conference table, with one from each more-or-less shoved to the fore. What had been her conference table, now moved to another room. It was early. Frost still lay on the valley, spread far below.

At the head was Sargon himself, with old Lagash, Farmer John, a Doctor, the senior Keeper of the Storehouses, and a knot of Miners arrayed behind him. Two warriors stood as Sergeants-at-Arms.

To Sargon’s right was a cluster of religious heads representing the assorted patriarchs, elders, bishops, presbyters, pastors, imams, and rabbis of the various Christian, Muslim, and Jewish denominations. Only Laurel Courter and the New Utah True Church Elder were pushed up to the table. Next to them was seated the Chair of the Board of Physiology of the New Utah College of Nurses, Physicians, and Allied Healing Arts.

To Sargon’s left sat Asach, and beyond Asach was a knot of civil servants, including the Mayors of Saint George and Bonneville, departmental chiefs of the utility and transportation authorities, and Michael Van Zandt, along with Zia and a senior TCM warehouse accountant. They were more-or-less clumped behind Aloysius Geery,  chair of Zion University’s College of Technical Science, Engineering, and Urban Planning, along with the senior research librarian and the college’s lone astrophysicist, a mostly self-taught junior Fellow. Oblivious to any potential issues of protocol or propriety, the engineering operations chiefs of OLaM, SunRail, SunFish, DAZ-E, FLIVRBahn, and the Saint George spaceport were sprawled in various elbow-leaning, leg-bouncing attitudes in the conference chairs, messing with the on-table graphics and passing e-notes back-and-forth to their field staffs, even as they argued.

At the foot of the table were the Imperial Observers, in the persons of HG, Colchis Barthes, and the ITA representative. Barthes smiled inwardly. HG was clearly annoyed. He’d only just returned, and still suffered from the delusion that Asach was his personal aide-de-camp. That Asach was not fulfilling that role was annoying enough, but Asach’s privileged seat at the table next to Sargon’s gripping hand was likely to turn HG apoplectic before the meeting was over. It was the Librarian’s self-appointed private responsibility to remind HG that he was there in an official capacity, and keep him sitting on his hands.

The spaceport ops officer repeated the question. “The Lynx? Why can’t we just use that?”

“Because it’s not ours. It’s FairServ’s. We didn’t design it. We didn’t develop it. We didn’t build it. It’s not based on indigenous New Utah technology.”

“Well, an ITA landing craft. Or Nauvoo Vision. That’s what they came in on, right?” with a hike of the thumb in HG’s direction.

“Same logic.”

“OK, a True Church shuttle, if we have to!”

“And there’s the rub, again. It’s theirs. Maxroy’s Purchase’s. That makes us an MP colony, not an independent Classified world. Haven’t you been listening? You must grasp this! The Empire of Man will not recognize space flight unless we develop it ourselves. We can’t just buy it.”

“This is ridiculous. We may not be industrial giants, but we are a fully developed world! We’ve masses of indigenous technology. Masses of indigenous aircraft.”

“Like?”

“FLIVRs, strictly speaking. SunFish hoppers.”

“I won’t comment on FLIVRs. And the SunFish is a powered glider.”

“A solar-powered glider, capable of round-the world hops.”

“And used, I might add, for planetary tax-collection.”

“By you lot of the TCM, while you were still under MP control, which is not really the precedent we want to reinforce, eh?

“But not, sadly, for orbital flight. It’s an air-breather. No air, no flight. Or should I say, in air, no spaceflight.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Mining flingers, then. Pushed to the max, they deliver payload on an extra-atmospheric ballistic trajectory. You can’t claim we bought those!”

“Well, I wouldn’t bray about ‘em too loudly. Any child with a ruler, six magnets, and a handful of ball bearings can make a coil gun.”

“Not one that uses solar power to shove a ton of payload over mountain ranges! Go try it yourself, you people mover.”

“Again, sub-orbital. And anyway, incapable of carrying a living passenger, rock pusher.”

“But we had no reason to invest in independent spacecraft development, let alone launch capacity! We could have done. For God’s sake, after the First Empire collapsed, Aldrich Saxe sketched designs for a manned, orbital Flinger in 2699. The story is not apocryphal. He was half-drunk one night, and did it on a bet, on the back of a cocktail napkin, within twenty minutes! I’ve seen it! But there was no point in developing it, because there’s nothing to mine up there! We’ve one rocky scrap of an asteroid moon, and that’s it. We’re a small place. We have small, dispersed settlements. We built to appropriate scale. Space vehicles sufficient to our needs were already here! They did not need re-inventing. We concentrated on developing efficient solar technology that we could use. You might as well say that Sparta isn’t an independent developer!”

“But they could be. They have the infrastructure. They have the University. They have the Library. The knowledge is already there.”

“The knowledge was already here!”

“But we can’t prove that.”

“We can’t prove that, because Lillith Van Zandt”—murderous glare toward Michael— “burned down the Scriptorium!”

“In which case, the knowledge was lost. The space technology available to New Utah is built, maintained, and launched from offworld, specifically from Maxroy’s Purchase.”

“That’s insane. You think that bunch of god-bothering, seed-spitting Snow Ghost hunters pulled a spaceport out of their agricultural communes and genealogy charts? They bought the whole damned thing, kit and caboodle. And a beat-up pile of space junk it is to boot, from what I’ve heard.”

“That’s different.” HG had that adolescent trump-card look about him again.