Princess of the Aerie by John Barnes

Author:John Barnes [Barnes, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-5697-6
Publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Published: 2013-10-09T23:23:00+00:00

11

Start Chopping the Parsley

WHILE THEY WAITED FOR the longshore capsules to come around to the cargo bay, Jak had his purse review his Solar System Ethnography notes; he was finding it harder and harder to pretend that this stuff was useless. Probably Uncle Sib was right, and the conspiracy of the entire rest of the universe was winning.

Mercury is the densest planet in the solar system, and the density is caused by its very high percentage of metal; it resembles the stripped core of a big planet, with just a thin crust and mantle. Its atmosphere is thinner than any vacuum you can make in a laboratory and it races through its short orbit, down close to the sun, faster than any other planet. That much was physics.

Physics dictates economics. Mercury had more metal and power to smelt it, more powerful sunlight for solar sails, better conditions for gravity assists, and more windows for them per unit time, than any other planet, by far. Quick to get to, quick to come from, available more often, and made out of valuable cargo, Mercury was the merchanters’ best friend. The saying was that there was always gold in Mercury.

Economics, in turn, dictates politics. Jak, Dujuv, and Shadow were going to Mercury’s second-largest city, but it was doubtful that anyone other than a Mercurial would call it a city rather than a shantytown, or perhaps just a warren. There was gold in Mercury but not for Mercurials.

Mercury was to the solar system what the Netherlands, Persian Gulf, or geosynchronous orbit had been to medieval Earth: a place so valuable that no one could be allowed to control it. A League of Polities treaty disallowed permanent claims and pledged the big powers to prevent anyone’s gaining permanent control over Mercury. Custom interpreted this to include any local government, which was fiercely choked back by treaty officials. Bigpile, a city of millions, had a police and emergency force of about two hundred and a municipal bureaucracy of three dozen. Law enforcement extended only as far as the line of sight of the nearest pokheet, if that. Officially it was believed that Bigpile collected one percent of taxes due; unofficially no official believed the number was that high. About two hundred corporations headquartered there, with perhaps a thousand branch offices of offworld corporations, and in every office bodyguards were about as numerous as workers, and it was a treasured employee benefit to be given sleeping space inside the corporate keep.

Nothing dictates culture but everything shapes it. The fierce conditions, unfavorable economics, prohibition against an effective state, sanctioned lawlessness, absentee ownership—and Mercury’s role as de facto dustbin for the prison-sweepings of the whole solar system—had created fierce loyalties to the quaccos, which were in various ways like a clan, an employee-owned company, an extended family with many adoptees, and an infantry company, but mostly were just like a quacco. The text had spent a long time on that; the one thing that Jak gathered, most clearly, was

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