Chapter Eight: If You wanted to Make it Up to Me

Eight

If You Wanted to Make it Up to Me

 

Dorsey couldn’t sleep.  Bouncing Vardon from the school, being shown up by Dominic Spackle and thoughts of the opening passages from Tomas Witt’s newly acquired journal caromed through his mind.

Morning brought a comm from Tomas Witt, interrupting Dorsey’s search for bits of breakfast which might spare him a trip to the mess.

“What do you think of the material?” Witt’s voice rattled out of the speaker that badly needed refinements on Dorsey’s comms console.

“How do you know I even started?”

“Placed a tracer on the copy I sent you.  I know exactly how far you’ve read.”

“In that case,” Dorsey raised his voice, turning from the empty cabinet in his kitchen toward the v-box across the room, sure to be heard, “it’s as fake as they come!  An embarrassment for you!"

As Witt laughed from his end of the conversation, Dorsey shouted, “End-Trans,” bringing the conversation to a close.

Only a moment or two of silence passed before another call came through.

“Reject” Dorsey said forcefully to the call (and each of the five that followed).

Finally, the quick, triple-chirp which annoyingly signaled a coming announcement over the facility-wide address system pierced Dorsey’s quarters.  Equally obnoxious was the voice of Dominic Spackle that followed:  “Dorsey Jefferson to Director Sklar’s office immediately.  Repeat:  Dorsey Jefferson to Director Sklar’s office.”

 

V          V          V          V

 

            “You’re not under any expectation to fulfill his request and I understand why you wouldn’t want to,” Sklar said to Dorsey minutes later as they began the short to a set of fully furnished rooms which served as a de facto prison cell when Sykes found it necessary to confine an individual.

            “It’s okay.”

            “Between you and I, the cooperation is appreciated.  Vardon is asking for all sorts of things.  I agreed to grant him one in exchange for his silence.  This seemed like the most reasonable.”

            They had Vardon set up in a fairly comfortable room.  No worse than his quarters in the student sector had been, for sure.  A larger than average bunk, soft-end chairs which immediately stoked Dorsey’s envy and a round table where the remnants of Vardon’s most recent meal remained.  Someone would come and get the dishes -- better service than any faculty received.

            “Thanks for coming, professor, because I really wasn’t sure you would,” Vardon said, sitting up from his position reclined on the bunk.

            Sklar excused himself:  “Our man around the corner will lock the door when you’re finished.”

            “What’s it all about?” Dorsey asked the Vardon.

            “Yeah, you know, I never had a class with you, but I bet I’d have liked it.”

            “Vardon?”

            “Uh-huh.”

            “You know I can’t reverse my vote, don’t you?”

            “Sure.”

            “So…”

            “Oh, I don’t blame you for any of that.  I took a chance.  That’s how it goes.”

            “I still don’t see – ”

            “Professor, they’re going to send me off to one of these plephs.  Do you know about them?”

            “A little.  Pleph isn’t really the right term anymore.  They’re relocation cen -- ”

            “I know, but everybody still calls them plephs.”

            “You’re worried?”

            Vardon tilted his head slightly, as if perplexed by the question.

            “Why would I be worried?”

            “It’s a lot of uncertainty to deal with.”

            “Are you kidding?  Uncertainty is the best thing there is.  Opportunity comes from uncertainty.”

            Dorsey recoiled a bit at Vardon’s enthusiasm.  The younger man was either the ultimate adapter or prime for destruction.

            “I’m glad you’re embracing it so well.”

            “Right.  Yeah.  But there’s only one problem.”

            “And what’s that?”

            “Opportunity from uncertainty comes a lot easier when you’ve got a little currency to help exploit it.”

            “Are you asking me -- ”

            “Not a lot.  Just to seed my plans.”

            Dorsey didn’t know how to react.

            “I figured that if you were feeling bad about your vote with the committee.  You know, if you wanted to make it up to me.” Vardon said with a straight face.

            Dorsey’s refusal went easily with Vardon who shook Dorsey’s hand, wished him the best and then climbed back on his bunk, bothered not one bit about the fruitless end to their conversation.

 

V          V          V          V

 

22 February 2163

 

We reached our final destination six days ago. The planet is referred to only as FTC-45 and I am a one man medical staff. Many other Britons here, some Americans and a few Spanish.

 

Two years ago I never would have suspected I’d find myself in this situation: A refugee from the planet Earth. My family, circle of friends and frequent acquaintances (most everyone I know, in fact) received years and years of assurances that relocation would end long before we would ever be considered candidates for migration. We were a part of Earth’s bright future, they said.  The alarmist talk going ‘round of expanded forced migration was simply a rumor.

 

I chose to believe this sunny proposition even as friends of friends were receiving migration orders.  After all, I was a doctor.  Precisely the sort of person Earth would keep.  If I’d stopped to realize that more and more of my patients were being sent away, I might have understood a fundamental fact:  I was no longer needed.  A physician with no one left to treat certainly fits the definition of obsolete.

 

I also find it hard to avoid the shame that comes from the memories of my father -- may God rest his soul -- singing the praises of forced migration:  countries and cultures fundamentally unable to provide for themselves, removed from being a drain on the rest of the world population.  That speech, as I recall, took place when I was a boy of perhaps ten.  Even during my years in medical school, as our own countrymen began to be selected for relocation, father’s view didn’t change much.  They were the dregs of British society being removed (criminals, the perpetually unemployed and uneducated -- forever on the dole).

 

The decision makers on Earth now seem to believe that the original goal of reducing the world population to three billion is no longer enough.  They’re after a lower, yet to be publicly defined, target number. 

 

One of the administrators on FTC-45, a balding mess of a man called Scowbrenn, comes to see me frequently with a stomach complaint which I can only remedy for brief periods.  He’s uninterested in long-term solutions or even finding out what the true cause of his misery might be.  He writes it off to bad food and seems content with that answer.

 

Scowbrenn’s latest notion about handling new arrivals at this settlement where he has been stationed for nearly a year is that “welcomers” ought to be brought in to help smooth things along.  Being unfamiliar with the concept of welcomers, Scowbrenn filled me in:  Welcomers are men, women and even children who can provide “friendship” and an easy transition for those suffering from the extreme shock at being thrust into such a completely foreign environment.  It is a learned profession (part actor, part psychologist), they don’t come cheap and will only stay for a relatively brief period, working the new arrivals into a routine that helps calm them.  Scowbrenn couldn’t answer my concern that welcomers who initially presented themselves as friends would suddenly disappear one day, leaving the subjects of their assistance to adapt anew.

 

On his most recent visit, Scowbrenn complained of not only nausea, but also joint pain.  It provided an opportunity for him to enlighten me with how he would have handled the massive migration program from the beginning:

 

“The thing to do,” he told me, “was to make it seem like it was a privilege to relocate to one of the colonies.  Just a question of using psychology.  So your average Earther of poor breeding and limited resources says to himself, ‘What an opportunity!  If only I could get in on that.’  Of course, you’d have to present colonization as being limited -- only a few will qualify.  I tell you, the weak-minded would have lined up and begged for a chance.”

 

How difficult it was for me to keep from telling Scowbrenn that he must come from poorer stock than all those only now arriving.  He was removed from Earth before they were.  The fact that he has a position of minimal authority (doling out punishments for violations committed by lower level employees) makes him a slightly more indulged prisoner of the system which has landed us all here in oblivion.

 

The unfortunate reality for all of us is that we assumed we’d be safe until it was too late to alter our fortunes.  As I write this, there must be men and women on Earth without worry, without the vision to see the writing on the wall.

 

V         V         V         V

 

            The writing on the wall.

            Dorsey repeated the phrase aloud upon completing the second entry in the journal.

            "Without the vision to see the writing on the wall." Odd, he thought.  It took him a moment to retrieve the memory of where he'd heard it before:  an old Earth text.  Something he'd come across sorting through the data pilfered by his Dirty Water bosses from a settlement that they'd thrown over for fun and profit.  Never ones to leave any opportunity unexplored, Dorsey was tasked with sifting the information (records, accounting files and other random collections of text) acquired with the rest of the ill-gotten gains.

            "Lighting?  Was it that lighting thing?" Dorsey asked himself, trying to remember details of the hours he spent trying to chase down any assets that might have been hidden in the jumble of words and numbers.  He seemed to recall that it was a settlement devoted to crafting lighting.  The sort that bathed Sykes' promenade in EarthLight.

            Among the material to sift through was a piece of fiction from Earth.  Such fugitive bits of home planet culture were not very common, but they weren't as rare as plant or animal life that people continued to attempt smuggling into U-Space, either.  Dorsey had read several (one called Oliver Twist and another something to do with an artist as a young man -- both very confusing). 

            The one that came back to him from the 'writing on the wall' phrase told the story of a mid-20th century American man, primed to commit suicide in the face of a meaningless existence.  One portion of the story in particular featured the man sitting in an open wilderness area referred to as a park.  It bothered Dorsey immensely.  There in the fresh air and sunlight, amid trees and other vegetation, this troubled main character watched children play, resolved that life was pointless and began to mentally assemble a suicide "note" (whatever the hell that was).

            Asshole.  What Earther in the natural light of the sun had the right to contemplate taking his own life?

            There had been a reference to writing on the wall as the man neared complete desperation  Dorsey struggled with the phrase.  Did it refer to a comms method?  The journal helped to clarify it somewhat more.

            And what of the population levels on Earth?  What were they likely to be at the current moment?  How long did it all go on?  It would have meant, Dorsey imagined, the expulsion of billions from their home planet.  How would Earth go about doing that?

            One thing Dorsey did know:  there was no telling how many existed in U-Space.  Every attempt at a census had been unsuccessful.  Too many people afraid to answer, afraid to let their presence be known in the event that it was all an attempt to take advantage of them.  Company settlements didn't want the true number of their residents/employees to be known, lest they be targets for upstart enterprises to lure labor away.  And then there were more -- many more -- opposed to being counted for far less innocent reasons.  Such was the nature of U-Space.