It's time for the nominal start of the week, so of course I have another Space Guys installment that's pretty much all gratuitous world-building. By the way, these are all real place names. As usual, the table of contents is at the end.
The voyage went on as Jupiter grew larger in the porthole. Jason struggled less with his own engagement than with the sudden marriage of Anastasia and Donald. Within a week, they could be seen openly displaying their affection in the recreation area around the captain’s cabin. Much of that admittedly consisted of Anastasia talking while he pawed at her. Alek made a point of teasing him. “See, he is a man’s man,” she said. “He grabs and takes. Why do you no do that to me? Am I not no good enough woman for you?”
Jason ignored her and joined the group. They passed a computer game console, consisting of a circular flat panel screen the size and configuration of a game table with two sets of controls on opposite sides. Currently, Jax and Yukio, the Edonian engineer, were using it to play Go. Surprisingly, Jax was in the process of winning. By Anastasia was playing one of the electromechanical games, a rudimentary simulator where the player controlled a descending model lander. When Donald sidled up behind her, she finally swore and hissed at him.
Jason chose an electromechanical target game, based on King Kong. Through a vision block, he could see a miniature ape atop a stylized spire, holding a wildly out-of-scale woman. The spire and the figures rotated as the crosshairs moved back and forth, in a fair simulation of a circling aircraft. Alex leaned in to look. The window was wide enough for one or two onlookers to see what was happening, but little of what illusion there was carried over when viewed from the side. He waited for the mechanical ape to set down the woman, then fired. He got the required number of hits on the second try, then allowed Alek to look as the flailing ape dropped out of sight. He then allowed her to take his free turn. Within bare moments, there was a crude but effective wail as she fired early, causing the ape to drop the woman and end the game. He suppressed a flinch when he found Moxon leaning against the next cabinet. “Say,” he said, “can I try?”
They
took turns through three rounds each. He outscored Moxon twice. The officer
took it in evident good humor. By then, Alek had started into boasting about
their partnership. “I am an enlightened man, and you know, he is a very
enlightened man,” she said. “That is why we are waiting to get married. He
takes care of me, I take care of him, we don’t need to rush.”
That got a scowl from Anastasia. “Oh, please,” she said. “You two are so traditional the Motherworld press think you are already married.”
Jason
managed to cut in. “Well, we’ve both been wanting to ask,” he said. “You
getting married was, well, fast. I’ve known you a long time, I never thought
you were the marrying kind. There’s definitely no way you would do it just to
stay out of trouble.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Anastasia said. “We were seeing each other. We just weren’t exclusive. There wasn’t anyone else I was going long-term for.”
Don put an arm around her. “Hey, it’s not like I’m the compromise candidate,” he said. “I’m smart, I’m cool, I’m fun. I can make her laugh. I can make her do more than laugh.” He reached down to her waist. She firmly moved his hand back to her shoulder.
By then, Jax had won his game. As he shook hands with the Edonian, Moxon sidled in. “I can play the next game,” he said.
“Nah,”
Jax said. “I want to try the geography game again.” He punched a control, and a
map of Gaia appeared. Moxon leaned over with interest.
“I can tell you about geography,” he said. Nobody opposed him as he took the Edonian’s seat, though there were glances of concern when he raised his trench knife.
The game consisted of prompts to select a country. Jax moved the crosshairs around the map with a pair of knobs. Moxon simply jabbed the screen with the still-sheathed knife. “Here’s where you farmboys are from,” he said, tapping the middle of the North American continent. “Good old US of A. Now part of the Pan-Atlantic Union, of course. The closest thing there is to a capitol is down here; Mexico City. Chances are your parents left through the Merida spaceport here.” He tapped the Yucatan Peninsula to the east.
Jax
moved the crosshairs to the islands of England across the Atlantic. “Aren’t
they in the Union?” Jason said.
“Actually, no,” Moxon said. Jax nodded. “You could say they’re a member in all but name, but officially, they’re a neutral state. They backed out because of Ireland, among other things.” He tapped the island to the west. “They did join the Union, free and clear, but the damage was done.”
They went through France and more Union countries on the continent, then the central states of Deutschland. Moxon nodded toward the captain. “Deutschland tried to get it all in the Last War,” he said. “You know how that turned out. After the Great Peace, all the armies that fought against them withdrew on the condition that they would remain neutral in a war between the other powers. Now, it’s a matter of pride that they don’t have an army. Of course, if they ever need one, there will already be another Great War going.”
He traced the vast territory of the Federation, stretching from Slovakia to Upper Korea, plus satellites as far-flung as Cuba and Lower East Indochina. “The Federation was the Soviet Union, of course,” he said. “After the Reforms, they became the Trans-Eurasian Federation of Socialist Republics. Their Republics got a choice between staying with equal representation in the Party or becoming satellite states, and the satellites were allowed to stay or agree to neutrality. Most of them stayed.”
He jabbed at New Edo and Shen and the allied lands of Lower Korea and Upper East Indochina. “Then, of course, there’s the Alliance of Heaven, really, that’s their name,” he said. “Right before the end of the War, the Emperor of Old Tokyo made a peace treaty with the Leader of the Ruling Party of Shenzhou. Only back then, the Party wasn’t ruling anything, except the lands on the border with Russka. The Emperor said it was atonement for the wrongs of the war. It was really just lighting a fire in the attic while they ran out the back door. The damnedest thing was, they followed through with it.”
They came back to Dalmatia, which drew a chuckle from Moxon. “Dalmatia exists because the Hrvatskis took the wrong side in the Last War,” he said. “When the Jugoslav Union reformed, the southern part was carved out as a new Republic.” He traced an erratic line across the peninsula. “The Adriatic Federation bit was aspirational. They hoped they could get Greece, even Italy. All they got was Albania and Romania. The rest mostly went to the Alignment.” He outlined a swath of territory that went from Greece through Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan, plus the outliers of Siam and Israel.
The officer waved vaguely at the converging island chains of Indo-Malaya. “The Indo-Malay Federation was another start-up that didn’t get anywhere, though they at least got a lot of nothing to show for it. It’s a whole bunch of little islands full of people who speak almost the same language, pray to practically the same gods and all hate each other. No offense.” He looked in the direction of Aisi. “They finally got to act important when somebody convinced them to stick their noses in West Indochina.” He jabbed at a comma-like swath on the inner edge of the eastern peninsula.
He pointed to the swath between Iran and Siam that was Greater Hindustan, and the belt of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa across the oceans to the south. “This is the Indo-Oceanian Federation,” he said. “It’s the other reason England didn’t get into the Union. There was a deal to let the colonies in the Subcontinent go their own way, and straight to Hell for all anyone cared. But England convinced the non-Hindu provinces to accept peacekeepers from the other colonies, which was how the Federation started. I spent a lot of time there. In the Second Intervention, I saved a temple of the Jains in Karachi. The priests made me a Brahmin.”
Jax
spoke up. “Wait a minute,” he said, “I know that one. It was 27 years ago. How
the Hell old are you?”
Moxon turned his head and smiled. “How old do I look?” Jax said no more.
Moxon leaned back. “So that’s good old Gaia,” he said. “It’s a nice enough place, really. We have world peace, peace enough anyway. That beats the alternative. Just in case, we have the UN and the Strato-Corps. You could say we’re the world’s fire department, putting out little fires before they get big. You know, there was a time I did that, too.” As he spoke, he drove the blade through a partition.
As the game wound down, Donald happily took over the console. He started a game called Interceptor that was clearly intended to simulate a missile exchange. Each incoming projectile was represented by a curving line that could be blocked with another. The trick was that there was a lag between the lines on the screen and the input from the controls that grew as the game went on. Alek joined in, laughing as she stopped one attack after another and drove her own offensive home. In the midst of it, Jason and Anastasia exchanged glances. They both made their way to the rear, where the ludicrous prefabricated bathroom filled the rear escape pod. She stretched out in the tub. He sat on top of the lowered lid of the toilet. She said without turning, “It was your fault, you know.”
“What
do you mean?” Jason said. There was already a note of wounded innocence in his
voice.
“I
had to marry Don,” Anastasia said. “After what happened with Vasily and Jackie,
I got called in to see the captain. He laid out everything. Sure, it was
for what I did, and maybe I deserved it. But it was still because of you and
the little supergenius!”
“I don’t understand,” Jason said, quite honestly. “We didn’t do anything wrong, at least by what goes back home. Even what you did wouldn’t be a big deal. What does Command on Gaia care?”
Anastasia started to snarl, but moderated into a sigh. “You don’t know what it’s like,” she said. “Remember those silly old shows that always had a man and woman in separate beds even if they were supposed to be married? The Federation State networks still won’t show a man and woman in one bed unless it’s designated for `health and education’. Or did you notice all the times they talk about how the Union outgrew segregation? There are Union stations that wouldn’t air interviews with Jill Lightower without hiding that she’s a morena. Now just try to imagine what it’s like dealing with sponsors in Outer Hindustan and the Arab League. So can you guess the one thing that’s got everyone up in arms? That Shen reporter filmed you and Alek in bed with her top off, while your partition was wide open!”
“What?”
Jason said. “We always… wait… oh. Jax must have forgotten about it. Well, what
are they going to do about it? The ship has sailed, literally.”
“They can send us home,” Anastasia said. “All of us. That’s why we aren’t going full speed. Of course, the official explanation is that it lets a rescue ship meet up with us if we had an accident or a medical emergency. But as far as Gaia Command is concerned, we aren’t just an unproven experiment, we’re a liability. When they see us living life our own way, they don’t want to see people who don’t know what the rules are supposed to be. They see superhumans who think we’re too good for their morality. If we won’t follow their rules, who’s to say we won’t stop following their orders? They wouldn’t send back the actual supergenius, oh no, they need her. They might let you stay if it kept her happy. But the rest of us… totally replaceable.”
She
sighed for real. “The captain told me, it is essential to the program that the
public sees a Martian in a stable domestic relationship,” she said. “He didn’t
say anything else. He didn’t have to.”
Jason shook his head. “No way,” he said. “That’s not you. They might as well tell a full-blooded wolf to sit, roll over and fetch.”
Anastasia sighed again. This time, she smiled. “I had thought about it, really,” she said. “Even a woman like me thinks about settling down sooner or later. I was never getting there with Jackie. I should have cut Vasily off already. But Donald… I suppose he could have gotten here on his own eventually. Probably would have. He’s that kind of person.”
“Does
he know?” Jason asked pointedly.
“Of
course,” Ana said. “Well, he knows enough. He still thinks that makes him
Number One, at everything. That’s why he treats me the way he does. It’s
fine, really. Trying to change him wouldn’t be any better than trying to change
me. If anybody could dig deep enough to do it, I wouldn’t want what would be
left.”
She
turned her head to meet Jason’s steady gaze. “Damn,” he said. “You’re in love,
aren’t you?”
“Well, you’re an idiot,” she said, without hiding a blush. They were still sitting in silence when there came a banging at the door.
“Jason!”
Alek said. “I know you’re in there! Ana, I know you’re in there too! Are you
cheating with my fiancée?”
Jason
and Anastasia looked at each other. “No,” Ana said with a lilting accent.
There
was a moment of silence. “Well, why not?” Jason got up to leave.
Table of contents
Part 7: Alternate universe pop culture!
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