Chapter Seven
~ Garrett ~
The trouble began with a smell. Garrett was poring over Castor’s financial books in more detail than he’d ever done before. After that rebuke about the Pilgrims’ contract, he didn’t want to be caught ignorant again. He had to pay attention to the legalese and numbers that scrolled past his bleary eyes. Castor was as much a conceptual structure as a physical one, and both aspects needed maintenance.
When he sighed, head on hands, a sweet scent reached him. He jumped out of his chair and sniffed around the room, tracing it to an air duct.
“Hell.” He pulled on a headset and said on a private channel. “Noah, where are you?”
“Dockside.”
“Meet me upstairs. I may need you.”
What is it? Noah said, taking advantage of the silent-talking feature of their headsets.
Marijuana. Some idiot brought it aboard, probably the tourists.
A young couple had shown up at Castor in a boat of their own, and offered the going rate for a rented room. They weren’t even divers. By now Garrett had dealt with plenty of scuba fans and a few other tourists, but having visitors arrive on their own was a novelty.
Garrett let Lark and Phillip know what was happening in case there was more trouble. He and Noah went down to the tourists’ door and knocked.
“Occupied.”
“Wrong answer,” said Garrett. “Let us in.”
There was bickering from inside, a giggle, then the creak of the door opening. The tourist man leaned against the door, high, with the pot smell wafting from a joint on a table. “Hey, Cap’n, can’t we get some privacy?” His underdressed fiancée sat on the bed and tried to find a good spot to hide the joint.
Garrett swore. “What do you think you’re doing? I can’t have drugs on this station!”
“Lighten up,” said the man. “We’re doing our thing, not hurting anybody.”
“Dumbass,” Noah muttered.
“Your fumes are getting into the vent system,” Garrett told them.
The man wheeled to look at the air duct. “Oh, oh, I’m sorry, man. I’ve got a towel. You got some duct tape?”
“Yeah.” Garrett reached for a vest pocket, but stopped. “Wait. No. I can’t let you do drugs.”
“Why not?” asked the woman. “You’ve got no rule about it.”
This was true. No killing, no stealing, and no destroying stuff, plus the occasional joke someone scrawled on the posted list, didn’t rule out being a fool and hurting yourself. Garrett sub-voiced to Noah, It’s not against the official rules. I can’t bust them.
“Sure you can,” said Noah out loud. “You’re the law around here.”
The tourists were watching. Garrett was within his rights to punish them, wasn’t he? Still he hesitated, thinking. Am I an administrator, or a tyrant who changes the rules on a whim?
“You’re not,” Noah said.
Had he voiced that? “I can’t rightly punish you, this time, but I think this is check-out day.”
“Can we get lunch first?” they said.
Garrett sighed; at least their money was good. “Noah, would you mind being these people’s ‘tour guide’ until they leave in the next hour or two?”
“Fine.” But he added in a sub-voice, I don’t like this, Captain.
“We’ll talk later.” Garrett asked the tourists. “Where did you get that, anyway?”
“A friend on Bermuda.”
Garrett relaxed; he’d feared a secret greenhouse. “Don’t do this again.”
So, he mused later in his office, the matter had been resolved. He wasn’t at all confident it’d stay that way. Even with those two gone, the next bunch might have crack or something. In his limited understanding, some of the new drugs weren’t physically addictive, but they were just as illegal.
Come to think of it, he hadn’t yet caught anyone using tobacco. Since Castor was a workplace, it was illegal to smoke within a hundred feet of the station under American law. But Garrett was already breaking any number of workplace rules, some of which were physically impossible to obey here. And he’d not registered Lark, he didn’t carry all the required insurance, he was operating a de facto hotel without a license, and he was suspicious of the corporate structure tangled in Martin’s records. He was pacing, hands behind his back, when Phillip and Tess arrived for a meeting.
Garrett said to Tess. “You’ve got Lark listening, right? Good.” He went on. “I’d like to bring Martin in on this, but he’s away, and it’s not something to discuss over a public channel. We just had drug users on the station. The larger problem is, I don’t think we could obey U.S. law if we wanted to.” He explained the situation.
“That’s stupid,” said Tess. “We don’t have to follow foreign laws, except maybe Bermuda’s.”
“Foreign.” Garrett pondered the word. “We’re American. We could be jailed if we disobey.”
“No way. Nobody could arrest us while we’re offshore.”
Phillip broke in. “I am fairly sure they could. The question is whether they would.”
“We can keep this incident quiet, but it’s sure to happen again,” Garrett said. “I’d like your thoughts on what to do.”
“You were the one who refused even a common-sense set of moral laws,” said Phillip.
“No, I agreed to the common-sense ones.” Garrett stopped himself from getting into that argument again. “Look, I still have no police force.”
“Why don’t you use your robot to watch visitors for trouble?”
An answer came from a nearby computer and from Tess. “No.”
“Bah. If the robot won’t enforce the law, then, and we humans can’t, what does that leave? Anarchy?”
“It’s not that we can’t enforce any law at all,” said Garrett. “It’s that we don’t have the resources or the authority to do more than boot people back to Bermuda. And we’re breaking U.S. law, like it or not.”
Phillip sat and thought. “What if we seceded?”
“Huh?” questioned Tess.
“What if I, Captain Fox and Martin were to rid ourselves of the whole mess by renouncing our citizenship?”
“Absolutely not!” said Garrett. “What are you thinking? That I should give up what I am because it’s too annoying to comply with the rules my elected government has imposed?”
“All right, Captain. Where shall we put the differently-abled car parking spaces? How about the passenger-only elevator? We need to monitor our employees’ diet and exercise habits; how shall we do that? Are we spending the required share of our profits on minority-owned businesses within a ten-mile radius of the workplace?”
“We’ll get exceptions for those things. I’m saying–”
“You’d rather be a criminal and a weasel than say, as the girl has put it, that these rules are stupid?”
Garrett faced Phillip down. “I’m not here for some grand moral purpose. I’m here to make an honest living, and I’ll figure out a way to do that.”
“Fine highfalutin theory, Captain. Now on the drug issue alone, how do we prevent people from getting high?”
“We can’t. We can only say it’s not allowed here, and if we catch you we’ll throw you off. Not literally.”
Tess looked puzzled. “But we can’t let people just do what they want. We have to make sure they stay within the rules in advance, right? But then, I don’t want us to be in everyone’s faces. Gah, I don’t know! Why do we have to decide this at all?”
Garrett sighed. “I suspect that if we don’t, others will. Thanks for your input, everyone. It’s a lot to think about.”
* * * *
Garrett found Tess among the Pilgrims, feeding fish. “Come with me tonight to the Hidden Pirate Cave.”
“I, uh, all right!” Tess sputtered. “Sure!”
Hidden Pirate Cave was the leveled-up version of the dinky plastic dome Tess had installed underwater. This one was anchored to the seabed and cabled to the main platform. Garrett and Tess dived at sunset when things were getting quiet. By now Garrett was good enough to wear diving gear as easily as a shirt and wise enough to know his limits. He swam slowly with Tess, chatting along the way. “How is Squeaky?”
“We’ve gotten some use out of her, inspecting that broken cage. If my mad science department had the equipment we’d do even cooler stuff.”
Garrett was quiet as they entered the depths. The white geodesic dome was only about ten meters down, but it felt like another world. When his head reached the airspace inside the dome, there was no sound but the water sloshing beneath the trapped air.
He cranked the lighting system with Tess and they sprawled on the dome’s broad inner ledge, dripping. Tess pulled out towels and some pretzels and bottled water. Garrett cranked more charge into the lights and sat there, drying off, knowing he couldn’t stay long.
“What if we gave ourselves nitrogen-scrubbers in the blood, so we could stay longer at this pressure?” asked Tess.
“I guess it’ll be possible someday. That, and crocodile hemoglobin for breath-holding.” Diving was limited more by physiology than by technology; stuffing more air into a tank wouldn’t help if your body chemistry couldn’t handle it.
“Someday,” said Tess with a sigh. “Who’s gonna do it, though?”
“Maybe us.” Garrett eyed her, trying to relax but failing. “Are we actually private down here? Has nobody got access to us? Lark included?”
“They don’t. We’re private.”
“Good. I’ve been wanting a little time away.”
Tess twisted the towel in her hands. “Oh?”
Garrett watched the light ripple over the water. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but what’s going on between you and Lark?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Garrett looked at her until she gave in. “We took some intelligence tests. I’m smart. Lark is pretty bright. Together we’re a genius.”
“When you work with him, you mean.”
“It’s more than that. We’re almost always together. We share thoughts and memories. I’ve told him things.”
“Even...?”
“That, yeah.” Tess had once been groped by a school priest, and kicked him in the crotch and fled to the cops. It’d soured her on both religion and school, and Garrett had thought he was the only friend who knew. “We have a kind of friendship going that I’m not sure is even possible between humans.”
“I bet there are things he can’t do for you,” Garrett groused.
Tess blushed.
Immediately Garrett regretted it. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t tease you.”
“You’re jealous of us, aren’t you?”
Garrett slumped against the dome’s wall. “I guess I am. I want you to be happy, but since Alexis. Since the hurricane, I’ve been kind of alone. I feel upstaged by Robo-Casanova. Please, for the love of God, don’t repeat that.”
Tess smirked, but turned serious again. “I might not be able to help it. When you’re subvocalizing a commentary on everything you see, everything you think, things slip out. I sound crazy with all the jingles, obscenities and other nonsense that goes through my head.”
Garrett’s jaw hung slightly open. “I’ve never heard someone else say that.”
“You too? It’s not just me and Val?”
Garrett gave a wan smile and tapped his head. “It’s a jungle in here. What do you mean about Val?”
“Lark used to do a simpler version of our chatter with his maker, sometimes. They were close.”
“Close.”
“Yeah. Imagine how he feels at being simultaneously kicked out and kept at home to be mind-raped by his creator.”
Garrett thought back to the lobotomized AI that had come with the new body. Deleting that one hadn’t felt like killing. “He’s not plotting revenge or anything, is he?”
“He’s not like that. I’d know.”
“You’d tell me if there were some problem with him? I’m not comfortable with knowing that he’s listening everywhere.”
“That? That’s why we’re down here? I thought...” She wouldn’t look at him.
“What?”
Tess mumbled, “Captain Fox, I thought you might kiss me.”
Garrett sat there for a moment. “Do you want me to?” She nodded, and hesitantly he pulled her close. Their lips met for only a few moments before both of them were too embarrassed to go on. He was wrapped around her with her hair tickling his cheek. “Someday, maybe.” At her age she didn’t know what she wanted yet. He had to give her room to grow.
She nodded, not needing to speak. There was a closeness here that made Garrett want to have her all to himself. But that was wrong. He didn’t want a relationship except by everyone’s free choice.
“What will you do when you go back?” The fall school semester was ending, and Tess had promised to be home by Christmas. That didn’t leave much time.
“I guess I can put up with the spring term.” She moved to look him in the eyes. “But then I want to come back here! I don’t need college!”
“What? When did you decide that?”
“Now. I’ve found something worthwhile to do, where I can be respected for being useful instead of some BS about having self-esteem for no reason. I can do stuff here. And you’re going to stay, right?”
Garrett started to feel gloomy, as he’d felt on the day of his departure. The lights of Baltimore, the old Constellation at anchor–I’ll never see them again. But that was crazy, a baseless fear.
“Right?” said Tess.
Garrett was still a young man. He could declare Castor a success, sell out his share, and go do something else. He felt like he was on autopilot, continuing because he had no plan to do otherwise. Make stuff and sell it.
“Tess, what does this place mean to you?”
“I don’t know.”
“‘I don’t know’ is for the walking dead.” A favorite saying of his father. “I need a better answer.”
“It’s unique,” she said. “It’s a place where we can play at being pioneers. Explorers. I sound silly, I know.”
“You don’t. I like it.”
* * * *
The weekend didn’t mean much on Castor, except that the Pilgrims were especially tiresome on Sunday. It was Monday night when the radio crackled. “Sea Venture to Castor Station.”
Garrett heard Martin’s tired voice and answered. “Castor Station. Hey, Martin. You’re riding back with the dive shop’s boat?”
“Yeah. Got another party of visitors. Have you seen any fast boats in the area? There’s something odd nearby.” He gave coordinates.
“Any trouble?” Garrett scribbled down the numbers. “We haven’t seen anything but the odd sailboat today.”
Martin didn’t answer.
Garrett said, “Come in, Sea Venture. Don’t screw around.”
Static.
Garrett cursed.
* * * *
~ Martin ~
Martin shivered when the radio fuzzed out. He exchanged a glance with Jimmy the dive shop owner, who sat, clutching the boat’s wheel.
“What do we do?” asked Jimmy. The unknown boat was approaching, though its red and black hull was barely visible.
Martin tried to sound confident. “Full speed ahead to Castor.”
Their dinky dive boat, a rigid inflatable, surged through dark water with the engine thrashing. It felt fast. The divers sat in the back, fingering rented scuba gear.
“It’s probably a coincidence, with the radio,” one said.
“I wouldn’t bet my life on that,” said Martin. “People, have you got dive knives?” The divers shook their heads, and of course Martin had left his back on the station.
“I’ve got one.” Jimmy nodded towards a locker, unwilling to pry his hands off the wheel.
Martin pulled out a diamond knife that glittered beautifully. There was something primal about holding the heavy, sharp thing, as inadequate as it would be in this context.
Jimmy looked at the oncoming vessel. “We’re not going to make it.” Castor was a barely visible block.
Martin tried to hail Castor again, then decided to challenge the other boat. “Sea Venture to unidentified craft approaching us,” he said on a range of channels. “We’d feel a lot better if we knew who you are.”
No one answered, and Martin couldn’t get anything on the radio but static. The boat drew closer with a hum of water jets, until what looked like a machine gun became visible with a man behind it.
The hailing, when it came, was raw sound instead of radio, rippling at them in a focused beam. “This is the United States Coast Guard. Stop immediately and put your hands on your heads!”
Jimmy’s hands were already in the air. Martin looked at the other boat in disbelief, then reached for the neglected controls, shut them down, and put the knife away. The other boat was in charge.
It had four men visible. There was a USCG flag, but the men seemed dressed for a fight. “What’s this about?” said Martin, hands on his head as three attackers boarded.
“Let’s see some ID. You have passports? Registration?”
Martin relaxed a little; they were probably legit if they cared about the paperwork. Good old bureaucracy.
“Who’s the captain?” the Guardsmen said.
Jimmy was too scared to answer. Martin pointed. “He’s taking us to Castor Station, of which I’m the leading officer here.” He slowly handed over his passport.
“You, then,” said the leader. “Do you have any weapons on board, sir?”
“A knife, over there.”
The leader took it. “Any drugs?”
“Drugs! I certainly don’t. Any of you?” Martin looked at the frightened faces, wanting to throttle anyone who did. No one answered. The leader nodded to his men, who began searching the luggage, one with a chemsniffer. The other saw a bulging seat cushion and slashed it, finding only stuffing. Thank God, thought Martin.
“Hey!” said Jimmy, leaping from his seat to protest, though being held at gunpoint had left him mute. “What are you doing? Where’s your warrant!”
“Sit,” said the leader.
“You damaged my property!”
Martin laid a hand on Jimmy and pushed him into his seat before anything worse could happen.
The leader nodded to Martin, then read the boat’s identification papers. “We don’t need a warrant. We received a report of drug smuggling, which makes this a counter-terrorism matter.”
“Look at a map, you–”
“Shut up, Jimmy,” said Martin. The gears were starting to turn in his head. He didn’t want negative publicity, not at this stage. “Sorry, sir. If you can tell me more, I’ll be happy to help.”
“Two suspects were arrested on Bermuda this weekend with a felony amount of marijuana, and explained to the local police that they’d been to your research station. Do you know anything about the production, transport or use of drugs there?”
“This is news to me. Rest assured, I’ll look into it as soon as I get back.”
The leader looked the boat over, finding nooks his men had missed, but there was no contraband. “See that you do. Sorry to bother you.” He put the confiscated knife back in Sea Venture’s locker and departed with a salute. Martin returned the gesture, feeling humiliated.
Jimmy hissed like a fuse for ten seconds as the Coast Guard boat left them, then launched into an Australian-quality fit of curses against Martin, Castor, his boat, the U.S., the U.N. and druggies. Martin listened, warming his hands by a metaphorical fire.
* * * *
Garrett ran to meet him by the dock, looking white as bleached coral. “Seven hells, man, what happened?”
“I want you to stop having disasters while I’m away.”
“The damn Yankees thought we were drug runners!” Jimmy blurted.
“They were doing their job,” said Martin.
“Off my coast?” said Jimmy.
“Yeah, they do that.”
The party of divers looked terrified, listening to the exchange. Garrett took charge while Martin was considering how to pacify Jimmy. “Welcome, everyone. I don’t know what the problem is out there, but here we’ll show you a good time.” He offered his hand and managed to coax the guests aboard.
* * * *
Martin and Garrett sat in the deckhouse. They’d brief Phillip, Lark and Tess in the morning. Martin suddenly felt the weight of his fatigue after the evening’s excitement, and yawned.
“All that, and no engineers to replace Tess next year,” said Garrett. “Understand that I don’t blame you. I’ve been asking around, too. Our Net fan club hasn’t yet turned up anyone qualified who’d work for the pittance we can pay.”
Martin nodded. “‘Go fish’ on the engineers, but I’ve got a pair of restaurateurs.”
“A restaurant? But we haven’t got the people.”
“So get more. In the meantime, they’ll be available as workers. We can expand the farm area.”
They looked over various reports, with neither man eager to deal with the real problem. “We did nothing wrong,” said Garrett eventually. “Not with the drug situation.”
“We should have had a policy.”
“I did. I posted rules saying that people were forbidden to hurt each other or damage this station. Everything else was allowed by default.”
“Was that a deliberate choice, though, or laziness on our parts?”
“Are you testing me again?”
“No, the world is.”
“It was a choice on my part, then. I’m an engineer. I don’t do public policy.”
“‘I send the rockets up; where they come down is not my concern’, eh?”
“I’m not designing missiles for the Nazis, I’m growing seaweed! Why can’t I be left alone with my toys?”
Martin eyed him calmly. “Now I will test you. You’ve told me about encountering your uncle, at your father’s funeral. How did you feel when he asked you about building this place?”
“He was pushing me into it,” said Garrett, obviously resenting being reminded. Uncle Haskell was far-traveled, sun-burned, and had tried to make him happy even at a funeral. You’re still above ground; act like it! Come to think of it, all of his friends had pushed him. And then they’d read the will and seen his father’s wish for him. Do something great.
“But he wasn’t threatening you, right?”
Garrett squeezed his eyes shut. “He demanded that I answer. He brought up my university work and made me look at the sea-farm idea again, even though I’d ruled it out as impractical, just a project on paper. It made me angry. It was like once I knew it was possible to go out there and do something amazing, to have a new kind of freedom, I guess. I could never be happy again with what I’d been doing.” Garrett looked away, swiping tears from his eyes. “He didn’t force anything on me. But he convinced me I could change my life, and for a little while I hated him for it.”
Martin nodded and put a map of the world on the table between them. “An example that goads people to better themselves. That situation has happened before.” Martin put his finger on America. Then he moved his focus a little east. “And it’s starting again, here.”
* * * *
~ Garrett ~
He tugged at his clothes, the most expensive and least comfortable he owned. “I don’t see why this has to be live video.”
The topdeck was crowded; everyone was up there with him, and the video feed put far more people here in spirit. A reporter was among the virtual crowd, with his voice in Garrett’s head. “Pageantry, baby.”
Martin, present in person, heard it too. “Exactly. It has to be your face presenting the authentic pioneer spirit.”
“How are this shirt and tie ‘authentic?’”
“They were worn by you,” Martin said. “Today. Buffalo Bill used to make ‘authentic’ cowboy outfits the same way.”
“I feel like a fraud.”
“So don’t be.”
It felt scarier to stand under the clear sky and do this than it had been to ride beneath the hurricane. Garrett would have been happy to keep his head down and focus on the physical, technical problems or even the finances. Time to get this over with. He checked his notes yet again.
Tess gave him a thumbs-up. “Kick ass.”
Garrett cleared his throat, fighting a desire to slink away. “Thanks, everyone. I’ve decided to speak because, as you’ve heard, Castor had a run-in with the United States Coast Guard. No resident was arrested or hurt, and the Guardsmen acted responsibly. The people who were arrested were our guests, who had brought drugs onboard from elsewhere.”
He felt boredom seeping over him from his own words, and from the carefully arranged policy statement Martin had written. “There is no good solution for a group of our size faced with criminal activity condemned by the world community.” Say ‘community’ a lot, Martin had advised. Buzzwords soothe. “We lack the resources to enforce the complexities of international law, though of course...”
He couldn’t make himself say, of course we seek to coordinate in multilateral globalized community. Besides being a tongue-twister, it made him wince. The plan was to be as ambiguous as possible. They’d offer enough cooperation with law enforcement agencies to keep them from raiding Castor, while avoiding submission to so many laws that they’d go out of business. It was a bureaucratic, weaseling, dishonest position, and his mouth wouldn’t form the words. His father, his uncle, nobody he cared for would have approved, and he’d be breaking the law even if he pretended meekness. It meant living in constant guilt.
“Listen up!” he said. The plain speech made his voice feel deep and clear. “I personally don’t like drinking and drugs. Hell, even hookers and gambling. But I’m trying to run a business and make money, so as long as you’re not actually hurting anybody, you’ll get no trouble from me. I’ve got better things to do than be your nanny.”
Garrett saw his local audience sitting there stunned. It felt good to speak so openly. “We’ve got some space out here. Want to join us?”
* * * *
“We’re so screwed,” said Tess and Lark.
The Net broadcast was over, and Martin and Phillip had stormed up to him.
“This is an interesting decision, Captain,” Phillip said. “It would have been nice to have known of it.”
“Why did you throw away my speech?” asked Martin.
Garrett felt rising panic. How could words alone cause so much trouble? “I said what you were thinking. We need money, and we can’t operate as an official national outpost.”
Now Phillip exploded. “That doesn’t mean ‘bring on the hookers!’”
“Unfortunately, it does.” Martin ignored a glare from Phillip. “Our rules allow nearly anything, and we’re in international waters, EEZ or no. There’s a matter of principle here. Are we able to do what we want, where no country has a claim of territory?”
“I’ve found,” said Phillip. “That whenever people say they’re acting on principle, their real motive is money.”
“I don’t care about the money. It’s, I guess, a way of keeping score.” Garrett realized that was wrong. “It’s the fuel that lets us be here.”
“This is about power, which we lack, and morality, which we apparently also lack,” Phillip countered. “If we aren’t willing to police ourselves, others will.”
“I didn’t say we wouldn’t. We’ll still work out something against actual crime.”
Tess looked confused. “Actual crime?”
“Stuff that violates people’s rights.”
“But that means all kinds of things. What about the right to education, housing, and all that?”
It was talk like this that reminded Garrett he was too old for Tess, but really the difference was more in education than between generations. He’d been raised not to demand much from people, which made him different even from some of his classmates.
“We need to retreat and accept responsibility,” said Phillip.
“I accept responsibility,” said Garrett. “Not conformity.”
Phillip fumed. “Martin, where do you stand?”
“This isn’t what I wanted, not at this stage. But it’s too late to go back.”
“Well and good! I suppose you’ll have no trouble replacing my Confederacy, then. Best of luck to you.”
Garrett smiled toothily, recalling what he’d been reading of Castor’s documents. “All right. We’ll keep your equipment, in which you’ve invested so heavily, per the terms of our contract.”
“And how do you propose to enforce that?”
“I honored our deal when we had our first little dispute. Will you do the same?”
“Honor won’t save you, Captain, if that smirk is the only thing protecting you from enforcers with guns.” Phillip stared darkly into the sea. “Why did you really do it?”
Garrett thought. “I was being asked to live in fear, based on what other people think instead of what’s right. I didn’t want to live that way. People should be allowed to live their lives, and I can help myself by offering one place in the world where they can do that.” Martin was appraising him again, damn it, but Garrett meant what he said.
“Is that what you stand for, then?” asked Phillip. “The petty freedom to get laid and get high?”
“No, look.” Garrett grasped for an example. “Doctor Alexander Fleming was a slob. He had the habit of leaving used petri dishes lying around in his bio-lab to see what would grow. One day a colleague was working with mold under a faulty vacuum hood, and Fleming glanced at a dish he was going to trash, which led him to discover penicillin.”
Tess piped up. “We studied that. Dumb luck.”
“No! It happened only because he’d set himself up to use good luck, and because he lived in a culture where a good idea could take root. So that’s what I think we should work towards. Making a place where breakthroughs can happen, by creating the conditions where people can get lucky.”
“Hence the brothels?” Tess asked.
“Whatever. And Phillip, you’ll have the chance to play missionary! Think of finding downtrodden visitors and winning their souls for the South.”
“The Gospel of Lee isn’t a regional message.”
“I repeat, whatever. There’s potential benefit for all of us.”
“And as for the getting-arrested part?” Phillip asked.
Martin looked out to sea. “It’s a game of chicken. Do politicians have the, ah, fortitude to strike us down? I suspect not. But since playing meek and quiet has failed us, what we need is enough media attention to win us sympathy and make a secretive police raid difficult.”
Phillip ran hands through his hair in agitation. “Gentlemen, it seems we must all hang together, or we will all hang separately.”
* * * *
Castor had a respectable Net presence between the official site, their store and the public forum. Several hundred people and even a few AIs had already commented on the speech. Garrett and the others browsed the discussion.
“You secessionists make me sick. Die in a fire.”
“Sign me up for a time-share!”
“It seems to me that you’re wrecking the original purpose of Castor as a farming station. I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“This was bound to happen. You guys need more than farming to profit.”
“You’re being irresponsible, trying to fob your duties off on others.”
“Right on, Fox!”
Garrett smiled at the last comment but saw some truth in the one before it. He would need a security plan if they were going to expand.
Tess had been busy with the publicity work, consulting with her friends on the Net and all the people they knew. She approached Garrett with a sparkle in her eyes. “We’ve got an idea! We can rent birds to buy energy and win goodwill!”
“Um.”
“You know the SeaSheet situation?”
He shrugged. “I only know Sally sells them by the seashore.”
“Maybe Martin forgot to tell you. There’s a new version of our ‘suncloth’ solar panels, but the company isn’t willing to make them without a big order.”
“We’re okay on energy already.”
“But people will be coming, right? So what we can do is make little mechs like our bird and dolphin, and let people remote-control ‘em. Only it’s like one mech is yours, long-term, because you’ve invested in helping us buy enough SeaSheet stuff to power it, and then some.”
Garrett tried to picture this arrangement. “So you, a stranger, give us money, and you get a semi-permanent robot presence on Castor, powered by big solar panels you buy to cover all our walls with?”
“Not the walls, the waves. The stuff floats and crinkles to absorb wave energy too, and we’ll feed the power back here.”
“On the water? You’d need a lot of it for significant power.”
Tess shrugged. “A few acres’ worth.”
“Acres!” Garrett grabbed pen and paper and did estimates. That was kilowatts, significant extra energy for a tiny platform. They certainly needed more wavebreaks too. But he forgot the numbers when another thought struck him. “So, this stuff would be a huge crumpled sheet, with patterns of electricity flowing through it?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
Garrett couldn’t speak for a moment. “My God, it’s like a brain.”
* * * *
The sharks came quickly.
“YOU HAVE BEEN SUED IN COURT. IF YOU DO NOT RESPOND YOU MAY LOSE IMPORTANT RIGHTS. TAKE THIS PAPER TO YOUR LAWYER IMMEDIATELY.”
“National Coalition for Fair Economic Management, Gaian Defense League, Planeteer Youth, and Hands Off Our Sea; Plaintiffs...”
“Defendant refuses to be operated in a responsible manner. Defendant violates its duty of care to the eco-social market economy. Plaintiffs continue to suffer irreparable harm. WHEREFORE Plaintiffs seek judgment...”
Garrett tasted acid; he wanted to vomit. “I was taught that lawyers are like prostitutes. Both are best avoided, and for money they’ll assume any position.”
“We’ll see that soon, too,” said Tess.
He looked up from the documents. “You keep harping on that.”
“It’s wrong. We shouldn’t be allowing brothels. It’ll be awful having them around.”
“I’m not happy about it either, but it could be the difference between loss and profit.”
“But you said you didn’t care about money.”
“Loss means I fail.”
“But maybe we could get help, you know, from the government. There’s got to be a grant program we can wedge into if we play it clean.”
“I don’t want to do any wedging. We’ll end up as a government project. You saw the original plans; we couldn’t do this at all if we had to operate within the regulations. We’d have been stopped before we even started by lawsuits like these.” He sighed and waved the computer in his hands. “I don’t even know what half this stuff means! It’s like a fifty-page death threat in Latin. Couldn’t these people have put a horse head on my pillow instead?”
Martin came downstairs. Garrett greeted him wearily. “How about this reply? ‘Attention concerned citizens: Get bent.’“
Lack of sleep was taking its toll on Martin too. “It was inevitable that we’d get sued for existing.”
“What does your psycho-historical plan say about getting out of it?”
“Shut it,” Martin snapped. “You’re the one who decided to play arch-capitalist before we had any political clout to back it up.”
“I don’t give a damn about capitalism. I want to do my job in peace, not be robbed and jailed for it.”
“Same thing.” Martin spread his hands. “You’re an actor, Fox. What’s your role?”
“Huh?”
“You’re a public figure. What do you stand for? Look at these lawsuits and the media coverage. You’re being made out as a criminal against God, nature and society and you crouch here saying, ‘Nuh-uh’. If you don’t take some kind of stand, you’ll be portrayed as others want to portray you.”
“I did take a stand. That’s why we’re in hot water.”
“No, you said you abdicated responsibility, because you couldn’t be bothered to live up to ‘modern’ moral standards. Pick a stronger role, Fox, or get assigned one you’ll hate. Possibly with a prison-orange costume.”
Tess cleared her throat. “While you boys were arguing, we found a law firm willing to defend us for free.”