Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

system, and so forth. But day to day, under their
third set of bosses since the Qax, little changed for the drones of
Conurbation 2473; one set of rulers, it was turning out, was much the
same as another.
    By now most of the Conurbation’s systems had ceased functioning,
and its inner core was dark and uninhabitable. Everybody worked in
the fields, and some were even putting up crude shelters closer to
where they worked, scavenging rock from the Conurbation’s walls.
    Still Rala went hungry, and she increasingly worried about the
child, and how she would cope with the work later in her
pregnancy.
    She remembered how Pash had said, or hinted, that the nano dust
was like a plant. So she dug it up again and planted it away from the
shade of the wall, in the sunlight.
    Still, for days, nothing happened. But then she started to noticed
pale yellow specks, embedded in the dirt. If you washed a handful of
soil you could pick out particles of food. They tasted just as if
they had come from a food hole. She improvised a sieve from a bit of
cloth, to make the extraction more efficient.
    That was when Ingre, for whose life Rala had prostituted herself,
turned her in to the new authority.
    Ingre, standing with one of the Million Heroes over the nano
patch, seemed on the point of tears. ’I had to do it,’ she said.
    ’It’s all right,’ said Rala tiredly.
    ’At least I can put an end to this irregularity.’ The Hero raised
his weapon at the nano patch. He was perhaps seventeen years old.
    Rala forced herself to stand before the weapon’s ugly snout.
’Don’t destroy it.’
    ’It’s anti-doctrinal.’
    ’We can’t eat doctrine.’
    ’That’s not the point,’ snapped the Hero.
    Rala spread her hands. ’Look around you. The Qax did a good job of
making our world uninhabitable. They even levelled mountains. But
this bit of Qax technology is reversing the process. Look at it this
way. Perhaps we can use their own weapons against the Qax. Or is that
against your doctrine?’
    ’I don’t know. I’d have to ask my political officer.’ The Hero let
the weapon drop. ’I’m not changing my decision. I’m just postponing
its implementation.’
    Rala nodded sagely.
     
    After that, as the weeks passed, she saw that the patch she had
cultivated was spreading, a stain of a richer dark seeping through
the ground. Her replicators were now turning soil and sunlight not
just into food but into copies of themselves, and so spreading
further, slowly, doggedly. The food she got from the ground became
handfuls a day, almost enough to stave off the hunger that nagged at
her constantly.
    Ingre said to her, ’You have a child. I knew they wouldn’t hurt
you because of that.’
    ’It’s OK, Ingre.’
    ’Although betraying you was doctrinally the correct thing to
do.’
    ’I said it’s OK.’
    ’The children are the future.’
    Yes, thought Rala. But what future? We are insane, she thought, an
insane species. As soon as the Qax get out of the way we start to rip
each other apart. We rule each other with armbands, bits of rag. And
now the Million Heroes are prepared to starve us all - they might
still do it - for the sake of an abstract doctrine. Maybe we really
were better off under the Qax.
    But Ingre seemed eager for forgiveness. She worked in the dirt
beside her cadre sibling, gazing earnestly at her.
    So Rala forced a smile. ’Yes,’ she said, and patted her belly.
’Yes, the children are the future. Now here, help me with this
sieve.’
    Under their fingers, the alien nano seeds spread through the dirt
of Earth.
     
    During the churning of the post-Qax era, we undying, our actions
during the Occupation misunderstood, were forced to flee.
    The Interim Coalition of Governance consolidated its power, as
such agencies do, and proved itself to be rather less than
interim.
    But from the ranks of the Coalition’s stultifying bureaucracy
emerged one man whose strange genius would shape human history for
twenty thousand years.

 
REALITY DUST
AD 5408
     
     
    An explosion of light: the moment of her birth.
    She cried out.
    A sense of self flooded through her body. She had arms, legs; her
limbs were flailing. She was falling, and glaring light wheeled about
her.
    … But she remembered another place: a black sky, a world - no, a
moon - a face before her, smiling gently. This won’t hurt. Close your
eyes.
    A name. Callisto.
    But the memories were dissipating. ’No!’
    She landed hard, face down, and was suffused by