Dark Ararat

Milyukov didn’t seem to be at all disturbed by the full-frontal assault. “It is in everyone’s best interests that the colony succeed,” he said, mildly. “If it were to fail, that would be a catastrophe from everyone’s point of view. There is a faction on the surface that claims that it is impossible for humans to remain on the surface without precipitating an ecocatastrophe more devastating than the one that was threatening Earth when you and your companions decided to leave it behind—and that the possibility that the planet is inhabited by intelligent humanoids makes that doubly unacceptable. It is my belief that Bernal Delgado was killed because he believed that he had discovered something vital to the settlement of this debate. I believe the crude pretense that he was killed by an alien was intended to favor the cause of those who want to abandon the colony—a cause that he did not support.”

“Are you certain of that?” Solari asked.

“I have no reason to think otherwise,” Milyukov said, blithely ignoring the fact that it was not at all the same thing. “Delgado certainly intended to travel downriver, but he never gave any vocal support to those of his colleagues who looked on the expedition as a straightforward attempt to prove the continued existence of the humanoids. If they do exist, of course, I want to find them as badly as anyone—but I want the matter settled. I need you to put a stop to this ridiculous pretence that Delgado might have been killed by an alien, inspector.”

“And why, exactly,” Matthew put in, “do you need me?”

Milyukov’s eyes were not quite as green as Leitz’s or Riddell’s, but their relative dullness did not make their gaze seem less penetrative.

“For exactly the same reason, professor,” the captain said. “To discover the truth—if you can. I’ve studied your background, just as I’ve studied the inspector’s, but I don’t hold your reputation against you. I’ve seen tapes of your TV performances, but I know that you began your career as an entirely reputable scientist.”

Matthew had been damned with faint praise before, but this seemed a trifle unwarranted. He had always been an entirely reputable scientist, and his TV presence had never compromised his scientific integrity.

“Bernal Delgado was my friend,” Matthew observed. “I’ll do my very best to take up where he left off.”

“And you will also want to see justice done in the matter of your friend’s murder,” Milyukov said. There was no overt trace of sarcasm in the captain’s voice, but Matthew was reasonably sure that the man was completely insincere. Matthew could not believe that he had been brought back from frozen sleep because the captain believed that he was a potential ally. His acquaintance with Shen Chin Che was probably sufficient to make him a potential enemy, in the captain’s eyes. There was a diplomatic game in progress, and his awakening must surely have been a concession to the people on the ground who had demanded that Bernal must be replaced, in order that his work might continue.

Matthew decided that it was time to follow Solari’s example and try to cut through the crap. “Where’s Shen Chin Che?” he asked.

Milyukov was ready for him; the glaucous gaze did not waver. “Somewhere on the microworld,” he said, calmly. “I don’t know where, exactly. It isa microworld now, of course, although the recently awakened habitually refer to it as a ship. If Hopereally were a mere ship, a man could hardly contrive to hide for long, but her i

“Shen’s in hiding?” Matthew said, incredulously. “Why?” He already knew why, of course. Shen had built the Ark. Shen had ownedthe Ark. Shen must have come out of SusAn believing that he still owned the Ark, and that he had the final voice in any adventure undertaken by the Ark. The crew had obviously taken a different view—but they had been unable to persuade Shen to align his view with theirs, and they had been unable to hold on to him when he had decided to go his own way.

“Because he laid claim to an authority that was no longer his,” was Milyukov’s version, “and because he resorted to violence in a hopeless attempt to reclaim it. He, more than anyone else, is responsible for the deterioration of the relationship between crew and colonists, and for the factional divisions that have subsequently arisen.”

“He was one of the prime movers in the construction of the four Arks,” Matthew pointed out. “Second in importance only to Narcisse himself. Hopewas his personal contribution to the great quest. You can hardly blame him for harboring proprietorial sentiments.”

“Shen Chin Che did not build the original Hope,” Milyukov retorted, flatly. “He did not shape a single hull-plate, nor did he drive home a single rivet. He merely directed the flow of finance, and the money that he regarded as his was, in fact, the product of long-term dishonest manipulation of markets and financial institutions. Perhaps, within the corrupt economic and political system that then embraced Earth and the extraplanetary extensions of Earthly society, that was sufficient to establish ownership to the original vessel, but even if that claim were justified, Hopeis a very different structure now. We—the crew—were the builders of the new Hope, in a perfectly literal sense. We pla

“Are you telling me there’s been a mutiny?” Matthew said, knowing well enough what Milyukov’s counterclaim would be but wanting to hear it formally stated.

“What I’m telling you, Professor Fleury,” the captain retorted, coldly, “is that there has been a revolution. Hope’s crew and cargo have been liberated from the crude restraints imposed by the obsolete political and economic system that was temporarily in force when the original Hopewas constructed.”

Matthew did not want to reply too swiftly to this news. He knew perfectly well that 700 years was a long time in the evolution of a human society, even one that was probably no more than a few hundred strong. It was not difficult to imagine that successive generations of crewmen could have come to a notion of their role in the scheme of things quite different from that imagined by their original employers. It might have been stranger had they contrived to avoid coming to the conclusion, by slow degrees, that the ship they were reshaping again and again was theirsand ought to remain theirs.

Solari was not as shy as Matthew. “A revolution,” he repeated, guardedly. “A socialistrevolution, you mean?”

“It’s not a word we use,” the captain informed him, “but labels are unimportant. What matters is that we, the makers and inhabitants of the new Hope, have set aside all the claims made by the original Hope’s so-called owners, on the grounds that they have no proper moral foundation.”

“But what kind of new society are we talking about?” Solari demanded. “A democracy, or an autocracy? Are you telling us that yourun everything now, or do we still get a vote?”

“It’s not as simple as that,” Milyukov said, as Matthew had expected him to.

“You must always have known that the Chosen wouldn’t play ball,” Solari went on, recklessly. “So you decided to get rid of them at the earliest opportunity. They were promised an Earth-clone, and they don’t think this world qualifies—but you don’t care. You want to maroon them here, whether they have a real chance of survival or not. You’ve turned pirate.”

“Absolutely not,” was Milyukov’s unsurprising judgment of that allegation. “It is, in fact, the crew who are, and always have been, intent on fulfilling their manifest destiny: the role in human affairs that they, and perhaps they alone at present, are capable of fulfilling. Everything we have done in reshaping Hopehas been devoted to that end. They only pirates aboard Hopeare Shen Chin Che and his gang of saboteurs.”