Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

- ’
    ’You only have to glance at the propaganda they’ve been
broadcasting since their ships started to orbit over us. They’ll
break up our farms and use our land to feed their Expansion. And
we’ll be taken to work in their factories, our children sent to
worlds a thousand light years away.’
    ’We’re all in this together,’ Dano said. ’The Third Expansion is a
shared enterprise of all humanity. You can’t hide, madam, not even
here.’
    Pala said, ’Anyhow it may not be like that. We’re Missionaries,
not the draft. We’re here to find out about you. And if your culture
has something distinctive to offer the Third Expansion, why then -
’
    ’You’ll spare us?’ Bicansa snapped.
    ’Perhaps,’ said Dano. He reached for his cup, but his gloved
fingers passed through its substance. ’Though it will take more than
a few bits of pottery.’
    Sool listened to this, a deep tiredness in his sunken eyes. Pala
perceived that he saw the situation just as clearly as Bicansa did,
but while she was grandstanding, Sool was absorbing the pain, seeking
to find a way to save his way of life.
    Pala, despite all her training, couldn’t help but feel a deep
empathy for him. ’We’re here to save you,’ she insisted, longing to
be reassuring. It didn’t seem to work.
    They were all relieved when Sool stood. ’Come,’ he said. ’You
should see the heart of our community, the Lake of Light.’
     
    The Lake was another car journey away. The vehicle was small and
crowded, and Dano, uncomplaining, sat with one Virtual arm embedded
in the substance of the wall.
    They travelled perhaps thirty kilometres inwards from the port
area to the centre of the lens-shaped colony. Pala peered out at
villages and farms. Mirror-masts towered over the buildings. It was
as if they were driving through a forest of skeletal trees,
impossibly tall, crowned by light.
    ’You see we are comfortable,’ Sool said anxiously. ’Stable. We are
at peace here, growing what we need, raising our children. This is
how humans are meant to live. And there is room here, room for
billions more.’ That was true; Pala knew that the sphere’s surface
would have accommodated ten thousand Earths, more. Sool smiled at
them. ’Isn’t that a reason for studying us, visiting us,
understanding us - for letting us be?’
    ’But you are static,’ Dano said coolly. ’You have achieved
nothing. You’ve sat here in the dome built by your forefathers five
thousand years ago. And so have your neighbours, in the other
colonies strung out along this star’s equator.’
    ’We haven’t needed any more than this,’ Sool said. ’Must one
expand?’ But his smile was weak.
    Bicansa, sitting before Pala, said nothing throughout the journey.
Her neck was narrow, elegant, her hair finely brushed. Pala wished
she could talk to this woman alone, but that was of course
impossible.
    As they approached the Lake there was a brighter glow directly
ahead, like a sun rising through trees. They broke through the last
line of mirror towers.
    The car stopped, and they walked. Under their feet, as they neared
the Lake itself, the compacted comet dirt thinned and scattered. At
last Pala found herself standing on a cool, steel-grey surface - the
substance of the sphere itself, the shell that enclosed a sun. It was
utterly lifeless, disturbingly blank.
    Dano, more practical, kneeled down and thrust his Virtual hand
through the surface. Images flickered before his face, sensor
readings rapidly interpreted.
    ’Come,’ Sool said to Pala, smiling. ’You haven’t seen it yet.’
    Pala walked forward to the Lake of Light itself.
    The universal floor was a thin skin here, and a white glow poured
out of the ground to drench the dusty air. Scattered clouds shone in
the light from the ground, bright against a dark sky.
    As far ahead as she could see the Lake stretched away, shining. It
was an extraordinary, unsettling sight, a flood of light rising up
from the ground, baffling for a human sensorium evolved for landscape
and sun, as if the world had been inverted. But the light was being
harvested, scattered from one great mirrored dish to another, so that
its life-giving glow was spread across the colony.
    Sool walked forward, onto the glowing surface. ’Don’t worry,’ he
said to Pala. ’It’s hot, but not so bad here at the edge; the real
heat is towards the Lake’s centre. But even that is only a fraction
of the star’s output, of course. The sphere keeps the