Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

fire.
    The sun was hot, the air dry, and insects buzzed. These were city
folk; they didn’t like being out here. There were even children; the
new rulers of the Conurbation had closed down the schools, which even
the traders had kept running.
    A woman stood on a platform before them. She wore a green uniform,
clean but shabby, and she had the green sigil tattooed on her
forehead - the symbol, as Rala had now learned, of free humanity. At
her side were soldiers, not in uniform, though they all wore green
armbands, and had the sigil marked on their faces.
    ’My name is Cilo Mora,’ said the woman. ’The Green Army has
restored order to the Earth, overthrowing the bandit traders. But the
Qax may return - or if not them, another foe. We must always be
prepared. You are the advance troops of a moral revolution. The work
you will begin today will fortify your will and clarify your vision.
But remember - now you are all free!’
    One man near the front raised his hoe dubiously. ’Free to scrape
at the dirt?’
    One of the green-armbands clubbed him to the ground.
    Nobody else moved. Cilo Mora smiled, as if the unpleasantness had
never happened. The man in the dirt lay where he had fallen,
unattended.
    Fields were marked out using rubble from fallen Conurbation domes.
Seeds were supplied, from precious stores preserved off-world. All
around the city people toiled in the dirt, but there were machines
too, hastily adapted and improvised.
    For many, it went hard. There hadn’t been farmers on Earth for
centuries, and the people of the Conurbation had all been office
workers. Some fell ill, some died. But as the survivors’ hands
hardened, so did their spirit, it seemed to Rala.
    The crops began to grow. But the vegetables were sparse and thin.
Rala thought she understood why - the poisoning of the soil was a
legacy of the Qax - but nobody seemed to have any idea what to do
about it.
    The staple food continued to be the pale yellow ration tablets
from the food holes. But just as under the old regime there was never
enough to eat.
    In the rest times they would gather, swapping bits of
information.
    Pash said, ’The Coalition’s Green Army really does seem to be
putting down the warlords.’ He seemed fascinated by developments,
apparently forgetting he was one of those ’warlords’ himself. ’Of
course having a Spline ship is a big help. But those clowns who
follow Cilo around aren’t Army but another agency called the Green
Guard. Amateurs, with a mission to cement the revolution.’
    Rala whispered, ’What this >revolution< comes down to is
scratching at the dirt for food.’
    ’We can’t use Qax technology any more,’ Ingre said. ’It would be
counter-progressive.’ Ingre was always mouthing phrases like this.
She seemed to welcome the latest ideology. Rala wondered if she had
been through too many shocks to be able to resist.
    ’It’s not going to work,’ Rala said softly. ’The Extirpation was
pretty thorough. The Qax planted replicators in the soil, to make it
lifeless.’ Their ultimate goal had been to wipe off the native
ecology, to make the Earth uninhabited save for humans and the
blue-green algae of the oceans, which would become great tanks of
nutrient to feed their living Spline ships. ’No amount of scraping
with hoes is going to make the dirt green in a hurry.’
    ’We have to support the Coalition,’ said Ingre. ’It’s the way
forward for mankind.’
    Pash wasn’t listening to either of them. He said, ’You’d never get
in the Army, but those Green Guards are the gang to join. Most of
them are pretty dumb; you can see that. A smart operator could rise
pretty fast.’
    They spoke like this only in brief snatches. There was always a
collaborator about, always a spy ready to sell a story to the Guards
for a bit of food.
     
    The cuts began.
    It was as if the Coalition believed that starvation would motivate
the new shock troops of its uninterrupted revolution. Or perhaps they
simply weren’t managing the food stocks competently. Soon the first
signs of malnutrition appeared, swollen bellies among the
children.
    Rala had always kept her handful of replicator dust, from her old
cell in the Conurbation. Now she found a hidden corner by the
Conurbation walls, where she dug out the earth and sprinkled in a
little of her dust. Still nothing happened.
    One day Pash caught her doing experiments like this. By now he had
fulfilled his ambition to become a Green Guard. The former trader