Monday, January 27, 2183
The alarm that any offworlder must have felt at the election of Alexander Monroe, and the broad gains in the Terran parliament by his Born to the Earth party, had only intensified in the eleven weeks since election day. If anyone thought that his anti-Colonial rhetoric was just a means to election and would subside afterward, the transition period had dispelled that illusion.
All across the offworld Colonies, screens were tuned to newsnet coverage of the inauguration. In previous elections, viewership would have been high among partisans of the winning candidate, low among others. It’s unlikely there was a single Born to the Earth voter offworld, but this time the data would show almost every person in the Colonies old enough to understand watched the ceremony. In the offworld factories, in break rooms and offices, in schools and in restaurants and in shops, a silence fell as Monroe took the oath of office and then called on an aide to bring the prepared executive order to the podium.
The commentator for the Aurora News Net— the only major newsnet based offworld— tried to sound impartial while narrating the proceedings.
“As he promised on the campaign, and again during the transition period, President Monroe is not going to delay even long enough to deliver an inaugural address before signing his order to cease all supply shipments to the offworld colonies. While it represents a breach of tradition for any President to take executive action on Inauguration Day itself— and even before the ceremony is fully completed— there is nothing illegal about it. Alexander Monroe became President of the Terran Federation, with full legal authority, the moment he took the oath of office.
“We can see now the outgoing Federation Marshal, highest law enforcement officer in the government until his successor is sworn in next week, stepping forward to verify the connection between the podium screen and the executive net. For the executive order to take legal effect, the screen must have a valid and secure connection, so that the document the President approves is indeed the one registered with the executive branch. This is a rarely seen procedure, not normally needed, since the screens in the President’s office have a permanent verified connection. However then-President-elect Monroe, in planning today’s ceremony, refused even to allow the small delay it would take to complete the inauguration ceremony and then move to the office. He had no access to the executive net until moments ago and, as noted before, he promised to sign this order even before giving his inaugural address.
“Some have criticized the needless haste with which President Monroe has approached this matter, saying it gives the appearance of childish vindictiveness against the Colonies, but Monroe has never wavered from his intentions.
“It now appears the Marshal has completed verification, and you can now see President Monroe applying his thumbprint to the screen. There’s a loud cheer from the assembled crowd, consisting predominantly of Born to the Earth partisans. President Monroe is now waving to the crowd, and we expect that as soon as the applause subsides he will being his inaugural address.”
The commentator fell silent, and the newsnet screens showed the new President waving to his supporters for a long, slow minute. Applause morphed into some sort of chanted cheer which continued for some time, though it was hard to make out what the crowd was saying. Finally Monroe waved for silence and, after several more seconds, finally got it.
“With this order, I begin my administration as I promised I would,” he said. “As of this moment, the drain on our green planet’s precious biological resources to feed the parasites of the offworld sky palaces has ceased!”
Fresh cheers and applause which continued for another aching interval.
“And I promise the suffering people of the Earth that this is only the beginning. Those resources already stolen from the Earth will be returned. The platform of Born to the Earth, and my own personal vow during my campaign, was to end the offworld presence entirely and I will not rest until I have achieved that. Over the past weeks we have heard from certain Continental Presidents claiming the Federation Government lacks the legal authority to end their activities with the sky palaces, which they evasively call ‘Colonies.’ These corrupt voices, determined to go on lining their pockets with the profits of the offworld criminal regime, have forced me to settle for this half-measure today, depriving the sky palaces of their supply of Earth’s lifeblood but leaving what they’ve already hoarded untouched. We may hope that this measure alone, ending the ongoing robbery that has sustained the offworld parasites, will eventually starve them out and force them to abandon their Sky Palaces and return to Mother Earth. But that will not happen quickly enough. While this is an important first step, and one we can all be proud of having achieved, it is only the first step. We must do more.
“In the first one hundred days of my administration, with the help of the Terran Parliament and its new Born to the Earth members— who have their seats thanks to you, the loyal citizens willing to fight for the survival of our planet! —in the first hundred days, we will pass and enact legislation that will force the return of all stolen resources from the Sky Palaces back to the Earth, and eventually the closure of these robbers’ dens once and for all!”
Once again the crowd erupted with cheers, and this time the chanting could be heard clearly: Down with the Sky Palaces! Down with the Sky Palaces!
“And to the Offworld Parasites themselves, I say this: your days are numbered! For decades you have fattened yourselves on the lifeblood of our green planet, destroying its ecosystems, condemning its people to poverty, all so you can live in luxury in your Sky Palaces. But your shadow will fall across the Earth no longer. You, and the corrupt and greedy of Earth who have thought to profit alongside you, will soon pay for your crimes!”
# # #
It was Eric Ivanov’s day off from his job at Star City Power. He watched the inauguration from home, while an undrunk cup of coffee slowly went cold in his hands.
He looked around his one-room apartment and thought, Sky Palaces. Right.
He sighed wearily. He had enough personal problems to deal with, without worrying about Monroe. He’d never found any explanation for the disappearing coworker. Michaels. Had he ever really been there? Eric had stopped asking when people started to look at him funny.
And that wasn’t all. Ever since the Hiccup he hadn’t been able to shake his recurring nightmare. The Sun at its darkest point in the event, a black shadow surrounded by red light. Every night it seemed the image startled him awake.
Maybe he really was going crazy.
# # #
On the campus of Star City University, a crowd gathered in the student center to watch the inauguration. Everyone had screens in their rooms and their own handscreens besides, but something seemed to draw everyone to watch the event together.
Like attending a funeral.
When the planetside crowd roared its approval of Monroe’s speech, there were halfhearted attempts at jeering responses from the students in the center, but they faltered and faded. What was happening on Earth was too serious, too frightening for that.
“Who is he kidding?” Frank Lewis sputtered. “Industry was moved offworld to prevent ecological damage. Even if it was true that supporting the Colonies had an effect on Earth’s lifesystems, moving everything back onto the planet would be worse.”
David Rose glanced at him. “You think scientific reasoning has any part in that?” He waved vaguely at the large display screen across the room.
Jenny Terrel twirled her hair nervously. “If they close down the Colonies, what happens to the University? I suppose all the faculty will also have to go back to Earth, will they set up in some planetside buildings or what? Should we send out some applications to transfer to a school on Earth for our senior year?”
“Do you think any Terran school would accept us?” Frank asked. “We’re the offworld parasites from the Sky Palaces.”
“Not everyone thinks that way, just the Born to the Earth crazies.”
“Of whom there are enough that they elected Monroe president,” Frank pointed out. “I’ve heard a rumor going around that the Earthers are setting up ‘refugee camps’ for the offworld population— just like Germany during the Eurowar.”
Linda Ryder looked up from her handscreen. “That’s ridiculous. It’s not the twentieth century, human beings don’t act that way any more.”
“Don’t they?” Frank looked back at the screen. Monroe was now shouting and gesturing wildly, his face twisted with righteous fury as the planetside crowd cheered every rant.
Linda shook her head and looked back at her screen. She listened to the conversation with half her attention, the other half on her latest simulation. None of her attempts had successfully matched the data yet, but even so she was sure that the Sun’s energy loss during the Hiccup fit with Marshenko’s hyperspace theory.
Intuition wasn’t good enough. She could see it, but unless she could put that insight into formal math and show that it worked, that meant nothing. Her other classwork had suffered in the weeks since the Hiccup. Solving this problem had become almost an obsession, beside which even Alexander Monroe seemed like a small matter.
# # #
Star City’s local government had its own schedule, and Charles Safreth had been sworn in as governor two weeks after election day. He and his staff watched the Presidential Inauguration from the governor’s office, in a silence that grew heavier, and more shocked, as Monroe’s speech grew louder, more angry, more threatening.
“This isn’t an inaugural address,” Arthur Norris finally said. “He’s still on his stump speech.”
Carol Tolbert shook her head. “No, this tone is a serious escalation even over the worst of his campaign rhetoric. It’s beyond demagoguery, he doesn’t even sound rational. Could he have suffered some kind of breakdown? The Born to the Earth party has never had a governing agenda other than attacking us. For the last eleven weeks he’s had a transition team confronting him with what the presidency really requires, and he’s snapped.”
Charles frowned. “Be nice to think so, wouldn’t it? Sometime tomorrow the doctors escort him out of the executive mansion, the cabinet exercises whatever rule covers the president-is-disabled scenario, and the world wakes up from this nightmare.” He shook his head slowly. “We’re not so lucky. Listen to that crowd. He’s playing to his supporters exactly the way they want him to.”
“We’ve all been thinking that as time passed since the Hiccup, the hysteria would subside and things would get better,” Arthur said. “It hasn’t. It keeps getting worse. Monroe and his Earthers keep stirring it up more and more, and it’s working.”
Abruptly Charles tapped his desk screen and blanked the large display on the wall. “Enough of that, we won’t learn any more from his ranting. Call a meeting tomorrow— senior department heads from Colony Engineering. Let’s start working out how we keep our lifesystems going without that ‘lifeblood’ we’ve been stealing from the Earth.” He paused for a few seconds and then added, “And right after that, put together a legal team. I want everything we can find on ways to refuse an evacuation order.”
TO BE CONTINUED
