Polity 2 - Hilldiggers by Asher Neal

Author:Asher, Neal
Language: eng
Format: epub

11

In the century before the War we were growing wealthy and most of that wealth lay in the hands of industrialists and agriculturalists. They used this wealth, and consequent power, to form their own 'parties' and thus gain representation in the Planetary Council. The old parties were pushed aside till the largest proportion of representatives belonged to powerful corporations—their voting strength coming from workers who had signed up to the corporate parties out of fear of losing their jobs or of losing the protection afforded by their corporation's security force. There were also other forms of coercion: “If you leave, remember that our fire service won't be able to help you should your house inadvertently burn down. If you leave, you'll have to find a school for your children and the best schools are those funded by the corporation. And if you decide to join another corporation, well, think again about that fire risk,” Though we can criticise this unfairly coercive society now, it's well to remember it created the wealth to take us back into space. It was also this wealth that built the spaceship called The Outstretched Hand. And it was also the drive to acquire more such wealth that equipped it, and that worded the secret orders to its crew.

—Uskaron

McCrooger

I woke up suffering pain even worse than during the brief while I spent slung over Slog's shoulder. My mind seemed to be replaying a random selection of memories as if to entertain itself while I had been unconscious. Someone had enclosed my body in a lead suit and dropped it down into the dark hold of a Spatterjay sailing ship, where the motion made me nauseous—that, and the snakes writhing inside the suit along with me. A dark place loomed and I knew I just needed to relax into it and everything would go away, but every time I started to do that, something jerked me out, like that rasping snore which snaps one out of a doze.

“You are dying,” someone said matter-of-factly. “The best analogy I can give is that the cold war inside you between the two viral forms has now turned hot. They are eating up your physical resources in order to destroy each other.”

“Thanks for that,” I slurred, my mouth sticky and foul, since a rat seemed to have crawled into it and died.

“Sprine seems to be the only answer.”

I considered that often an answer that older hoopers retained as an option, but one they spent their very long lives avoiding. For some reason I remembered my mother calling up viral codon repair options on our house computer, since I was then of an age to decide whether I wanted to suffer the old genetic throwbacks of acne rosacea and asthma, to which I was prone. Of course I chose to be perfect—don't we all.

“Don't really want to die just yet,” I muttered.

“Then sprine it will have to be.”

I tried to yell then, but it came out as a whimper. I tried to fight free of my lead suit, but to no avail.

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