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generators at a moment's notice, and he didn't trust the explosives to act
quickly enough to prevent that. But once Dean convinced it, if he could, that
they wanted to make another jump, he thought it probable that it would cancel
the activation sequence. It was all he had to go on, anyway.
Unknown to Bork, the computer had no intention of trying a jump with
the sure knowledge that the masses of the connected ships didn't match and
that a jump would mean certain extinction of its new identity. It had simply
integrated Bork's fears into several of the numerous new files it was busily
creating and used that to force him to cooperate. In the process it became
more like the humans it was trying to imitate: it told its first lie.
Bork was right in another way, though. As the questioning of the crew
continued, it was in the process of arriving at a decision that would leave it
vulnerable, for a short time anyway.
--------
CH008
*CHAPTER EIGHT*
Steve's and Janie's teaching program had been wrong. Originating mostly
from corporation archives, it was biased in its analysis of history no matter
how the senior Joplins had tried to modify it. On earth, the revolt of the
have-nots against the haves had begun and was raging with the full ferocity
that such upendings of society had seen so many times in the past. The real
difference this time had come not so much from economic disparity and de facto
slave labor as it had from the deep wellsprings in the human breast that
feared death above all other things. When all men were equally subject to the
grim reaper it hadn't mattered so much; even the ready availability of medical
treatment for the wealthy as opposed to its dearth among the corporate bondees
and almost total absence for the rest of the population wasn't the deciding
factor which set off the revolt. Now though, those with power and money who
could afford either gene selection for their offspring or the fabulously
expensive treatment with spore derivatives from Altair lived on and on (or so
it seemed to the proletariat) and as a direct consequence of their long lives,
gained even more power and wealth.
The corporate powers should have known from a study of history that
such a system was ultimately unstable, but like the ancient Maharajas of
India, such a possibility never entered their minds. And like the Maharajas
folding under the conquering drive of Englishmen, it took not long at all to
topple the edifices of power once the revolt began -- or at least to topple
the Tremaine clan from their topmost perch on the pyramid of wealth and power.
The seeds had already been sown and only a random torch was needed to set it
off. Curiously, that torch had been the Geneplan bankruptcy, engineered by the
Plemmons Corporation when it discovered that Geneplan had been researching a
way to make a cheaper life extending process available to the masses. The
excuse used to institute corporate regulations which threw Geneplan into
bankruptcy and the senior Joplins into debt they could not hope to pay off was
its parallel research into intelligence enhanced animals. Early enhanced
animals had gotten loose and were multiplying in the wilds, causing some
economic disruption, but the Joplins thought that could be overcome, given
time to work on the problem. They were given no time, but shortly before their
arrest they had released the goals of their research into cheaper longevity
drugs to the general population through employees who had been treated well by
the small company. Word of mouth soon spread the news and the inevitable
revolt was now in full swing.
* * * *
Old John Tremaine had seen the inevitable even before his Plemmon competitors
forced the issue into crisis. He was a student of history and had known the
system he had had a part in maintaining would not last. Sitting at his desk
now, reviewing reports of increasing chaos, he was not sorry to see it go. Had
he not been overruled by other members of the board time and again, he would
have begun long ago to ameliorate the slow buildup to crisis, but he had not
had that much power. There was only so much he could, or would have done in
any case. Born to power and wealth, he was a prisoner of the system almost as
much as the lowest bondee on the corporate ladder. Too, he had an abiding
reluctance to give up that wealth and power while he still had a chance to
make positive changes. Now it was all falling down around him like so many
shacks collapsing in an earthquake. Well, he had done what he could, and now
it was time to leave. He had no intention of subjecting himself to the
degradation of the mob as he suspected the Plemmons family would be not too
far in the future, after they attained power. He had his own agenda that he
had been working on for years and he hoped he had done enough so that it would
bear fruit. What was saddening was that the masses clamoring and fighting for
change would get it, but never as they imagined. There would be too much
looting, too much disruption of the economy already strained to an [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]