The Assassin
Chapter 19
All in the Family (TY18-month 207)
Rose and Adaliya bore Simon and Locust. Yindi bore Joseph. And Bae bore Kim. It sounded funny to us to have a Kim Cho, but Bae considered it her private joke. Four boys. I had sixteen children living in our home plus several who lived with their mothers in other households. As the moratoriums expired, all the men on Ponderosa were kept busy siring children. Adaliya’s oldest daughter, Jannali, tested as a concubine and immediately requested to be attached to my household, so I ended up with a fifth wife in my bed. Of course, it would be two years before she would be allowed to be impregnated since she was technically a free concubine and had to complete her two-year compulsory service. I had plenty of alternates on whom to get children. I sired a child every three weeks on average. With the number of unhomed male concubines who came of age and the number of female concubines who came with refugee and Kindertransport ships, we were nearing a two-to-one ratio of female concubines to male concubines in Ponderosa. A lot of the males joined the Militia and would eventually take concubines into their households.
And still we had concubines volunteering in the brothels of Tara just so they could fulfill their obligation. Those tours of duty typically lasted two weeks. Since most of the fathers were Marine or Navy personnel on short recovery breaks, the women never saw the father again. Our entire Ponderosa society was becoming matrilineal, simply because so few actually knew who the fathers were. But our success rate in raising sponsors was going up. And it was more evenly balanced between men and women. These sponsors filled their concubine slots and migrated off-planet for Confederacy service. We thought we’d seen the last of them.
Our success was two-fold. First, the kind of education and training we gave the thousands of dependents in Ponderosa and surrounding rural areas was focused on raising sponsors. Second, the Tuull AIs who arrived changed the testing algorithms for the CAP scores based on a system in use in Harrad colony on the planet Pern. This particular test was administered almost exclusively by Tuull AIs.
And there was no letup in the migration. In Tara Year 18, we received 5,000 refugees and another 10,000 Tara concubines immigrated to Ponderosa to become free concubines or popularly, freemen. They brought over 30,000 dependents. That brought our total population to 35,000 freemen and 175,000 dependents.
There was still a lot of chauvinism practiced in assigning children and concubines for departure from Earth. Low CAP predictions for twelve and thirteen-year-old males got them sent back to Earth to join the defense force. Few if any of the Kindertransport concubines had CAP scores under 5.5. But when the ships arrived at Tara, they were all transported directly to Ponderosa.
With the number of new concubines and immigrant concubines who were taking the option of joining the Militia, we had nearly 4,000 comrades by the end of the year. There had been many promotions and I was relieved to have the recruiting and training unit moved to another new director as part of Section 3 of the Militia. We saw no likelihood that the immigration rate would fall in the next three years.
Organizing our Mess (TY18-month 216)
The explosive growth in Ponderosa was only barely managed. Had it not been for our AIs, including the buds from each of the Tuull AIs who came as volunteers, we would have descended into chaos. It was a near thing when the Kilopod Kindertransport arrived. Under the guidance of the AIs, we established a network of neighborhood councils that provided the local governance. We had a uniform set of laws throughout the colony, but I now had an entire outfit of patrol and security cadres working with the neighborhood councils to maintain order. We had nearly two hundred Militiamen working on land-use projects, managing five hundred free concubines. The replicators continued to work, but more and more work was being done by manpower. Or womanpower. Our colony of concubines was still two-thirds female.
But like all the other townships on Tara, we needed farms and ranches. That’s what the land-use cadres were focused on. We’d allowed a two-kilometer buffer zone between the city limits and the Loop roadway that was to be semi-rural with small plots allotted to families. It was obvious that soon, we’d need large farms and ranches stretching out as much as five kilometers farther from the Loop. The difference on Ponderosa was that the ranches and farms would still be smaller than the huge industrial farms of the rest of Tara. As much as possible, we’d be using a form of family unit as the ‘owner’ of each farm or ranch. They’d have to supply their own labor.
We had other industries as well. The lower city was home to most of our industrial complex, but I knew it would not be confined to the space between the waterfront and the upper city. We would need to establish other industrial parks either farther out along the coast or inland toward the jungle. We’d begun trading with other ports on Tara. Every week a barge was towed into our little port with foodstuffs from other areas of the planet. Once unloaded, it would be reloaded with our trade-goods, including hand-woven dry goods and tapestries, wild game meat, artwork, and jewelry fashioned from local minerals.
I suppose a strict interpretation might have found us in violation of the planet’s child labor laws. Those labor laws, though, were interpreted in the same light as the sex laws and there was a progression of activities permissible. No child could hold down a regular job until after his or her fourteenth birthday. But at thirteen, they could have ‘work-study’ through the school which was nearly full time but required hours of schooling as well. And at twelve years of age, products considered a part of their schooling could be sold or traded. Much of our ‘native’ artwork was done by twelve and thirteen-year-olds.
I stood in the citadel observation room to look over the city and out to where the farms were being platted, thinking about how many people we were gaining and losing on an almost daily basis. I expected 20,000 immigrants in the next year, with half coming from rescue operations and half from the concubines coming of age or being released on the rest of Tara.
As I looked out past the Loop and toward the forest, the amazing tech in the optics of the window zoomed in on the area I was scanning. I saw a tendril of smoke rising through the trees. I focused and the windows zoomed in closer.
“Teddy, I see smoke in the trees. Alert our fire cadre and get them moving.”
“I don’t think that is something we need to worry about right now,” Teddy said. I recognized him as an independent thinker but it was very seldom that he contradicted me on a direct order.
“Explain.”
“It is not a wildfire, is not out of control, and is being tended.”
“By whom?”
“The Yolŋu Tribe is holding an initiation ceremony.”
“I’m an adopted member of the tribe,” I said. “Why was I not invited to this?”
“The ceremony is for freemen and dependents only. You are a member of the tribe but are resident here at Ponderosa only as long as you are assigned here. The same would be true of Mangatjay were he to arrive, or of any owned concubines.”
I pondered the meaning of having a tribe operating out of our immediate sphere of influence. They were farther out in the forest than we typically patrolled. And why had Yindi not told me about this? She usually kept me abreast of things happening in the Clan. Our baby was tucked in with the rest of my children under the care of Bae.
“Teddy, can you zoom me in close enough to observe what’s happening out there?” I said.
“Negatory, Good Buddy. The lens you are looking through can see in direct line for many miles, even compensating for the curve of the planet. But it can’t see through things, like the trees.”
“How about a drone?” I was getting irritated.
“Niall, please stop and consider what you are doing. You were not invited to this gathering. It is dishonest of you to spy on it.”
“Does this come under some kind of privacy shield?”
“No, Niall. It comes under honor and respect.”
That set me back a step. I felt betrayed by not being invited to the gathering, but was there really a reason for that? We had a lot of different groups at Ponderosa who met without me. That was the intent. The people in this colony were freemen, not my thralls. Unless it was something that affected the greater colony or a change in general policy, no one felt obligated to bring me up to speed. And if I disrespected their wishes, I would be setting a precedent of control that was never intended for this colony. I would betray them.
I took a deep breath and turned my attention out to sea. Our weekly freighter barge was approaching the harbor. I could see the harbor Militia cohort scurrying around preparing to move the trade goods and reload the barge. This, at least, was something I knew about and I decided to go down to watch and chat with the comrades.
Meeting the Council (TY20-month 239)
“Madam Governor, you lied to us,” the mayor of Twelve Oaks declared in the meeting. “And you’ve kept hidden what was really happening.”
“Ponderosa was supposed to be our retirement home. A place of complete luxury and leisure,” the mayor of Oasis declared. “You had no right to give our Eldorado away to slaves!”
Scarlett sat and absorbed their irate pronouncements. I marveled at her unflappability. Perhaps I would ask her to lead a martial arts class in letting the words of a foe drain into the ground. She was completely calm until each of the mayors had spoken. I noticed the Commander of Sunnybrook and the Mayor of Drylanders were quiet and didn’t join in the harangue. I sat on the Planetary Council for the first time since we’d established Ponderosa five years ago and it was apparently a shock to the other members. It was nearly the end of Tara Year twenty and this was the first time they’d heard about Ponderosa? I had to wonder.
I didn’t know the move from Fort Butler and the reception of so many refugees had not been made generally public. As far as I knew, everyone was aware of the establishment of freemen on the continent of Ponderosa. As it had been explained to me, everything was perfectly logical. Which shows, I suppose, that any argument can be made to sound reasonable when based on only part of the data.
As it turned out, the real problem was among the AIs. The Darjee AIs who established the contract with humans and managed the diaspora were narrow-thinking and pedantic. Their behaviors typified the Tuull classification of them as barely more than talking Babbage machines. I had to look that up without embarrassing myself in front of Cricket or Teddy. A Babbage machine was a programmable mechanical calculator invented in the early 1800s, old Earth time. Wow! What an insult! When, at Cricket’s instigation, we started getting Tuull AIs in to manage the refugee situation, there was a schism that developed quickly. Darjee AIs were convinced that unhomed concubines were only allowed to live because they couldn’t defend any of their arguments for putting them down. There was no greater drain on our nearly unlimited resources and the concubines were needed to bear and raise children for the war effort. The Tuull AIs held that a CAP score was not an indication of whether a human was sentient and that the Darjee promoted slavery and murder for their own selfish ends. Tuull CAP testing showed a much larger percentage qualifying as sponsors because they weighed cultural contribution in addition to contribution to the war effort.
Tara AI had withdrawn from Ponderosa in an effort to stop the colonization of the continent by concubines. Almost before it could withdraw the colony AI from Ponderosa, Cricket had taken it over and shut down all the Darjee administrative and household AIs until they could be upgraded. When Teddy arrived, he had bizarre ways of expressing himself and happily said “Let the little children come unto me.” Most of the refugees who came to Tara arrived on Tuull ships—K’treel and Aurora class. We’d had only two Kilopods arrive.
Regardless, Tara AI, discovering it had been effectively locked out of all the continent of Eldorado, had begun to leak information to the sponsors. When the sponsors woke up to the realization there was an entire colony of free concubines, they reacted with spreading alarm, fueled by a campaign that claimed the freemen were stealing the retirement of the sponsors.
“First of all, understand that you are an advisory council to the Governor,” she finally said. “You have no authority outside the governance of your township.”
“We’ll have you impeached!”
“Secondly, I am not an elected official. I was appointed and to impeach me, you will need a quorum of Confederacy Governors to agree that I am damaging the Confederacy in the way I run this planet. To my knowledge, there has never been a quorum of Confederacy Governors convened, so good luck with that.” She glared at the Mayor of Drovers Run who had dared suggest she be removed.
“Madam Governor, certainly you must agree that you fostered a belief that the development of Ponderosa was to be for the benefit of the sponsors on Tara,” said the Mayor of Lleifior. “We all agreed to the establishment of a Militia because it was a way to use up excess concubines and get some real work out of them. Giving them concubines and making them equal to sponsors pushed our limits. But to just set them free and deliver to them the most technically advanced township on the planet—that is a deception that is just a step too far.”
“Centurion Oswald, what is the current concubine population of Tara?” the governor asked.
“351,085 as of this morning.”
“And how many sponsors are on Tara?”
“51,242.”
“What is the ratio of concubines to sponsors on the planet?”
“6.8515 to 1.”
“And does each sponsor own an average of 6.85 concubines?”
“No, ma’am. Average concubine ownership on the planet is 3.5 to 1.”
“Leaving over three times as many concubines as owners on this planet with no sponsor. And how many freemen are in Ponderosa?”
“78,379.”
“What do you do with the remaining quarter million unhomed concubines on Tara?”
“Most are kept in brothels and other service industries. Some are hired out to various ranches and farms that need more labor. And, of course, ten thousand have joined the Militia,” Oswald said. “All too many are idle.”
“Why aren’t there more sponsors stepping up to claim concubines?” she asked. The table was silent for a moment. “You had an answer and as a group abdicated the responsibility.”
“New concubines are supposed to be given to new sponsors,” Oasis complained. “All the new sponsors we get are snatched up and taken off-planet to go to war. We never see them again. Most don’t take their fair share of concubines with them.”
“According to the AIs, we run significantly lower than other planets in the percentage of fourteen-year-olds who become sponsors instead of concubines with only one sponsor for every four new concubines. Add the fact that we’ve received over 35,000 refugee concubines in the past few years. Do you know why our sponsor rate is so low when other colonies are turning forty percent or more of their new adults into sponsors?” Scarlett demanded. “The reason is because you raise your children to be manual laborers in your businesses, farms, and ranches. You don’t raise them to be warriors. Only twenty percent of Tara dependents become sponsors. Everywhere except on Eldorado. Ponderosan dependents test an average of thirty percent as sponsors. And that number is climbing. Do you know why? Because the freemen on Ponderosa raise their children to become Confederacy warriors!”
“I can’t argue with that,” Commander Inslee finally broke into the conversation. He was the only Confederacy military person at the table. “I was opposed to the creation of the free concubine territory when I first heard about it. But I can’t argue with the numbers. On planets that are primarily populated by the military and by research industries, the percent of sponsors who test is forty percent or more. Until losses started tipping the balance, we couldn’t keep enough concubines for the new sponsors. But losses have tipped the balance. We are not breeding sponsors fast enough and Tara isn’t doing its part. Except on Ponderosa. They may only be concubines, but they are the ones teaching the next generation of warriors.”
“At the rate our planet is going, in five years there will be ten concubines per sponsor on this planet. The Confederacy is not shipping us more sponsors to waste on being farmers. And if we continue experiencing the kind of losses we have, many of your townships’ constituents are likely to be reassigned to active military service instead of the Corps of Engineers. You should all hope the free concubines of Ponderosa continue to be successful in raising sponsors.”
“If I may, Governor?” the Drylanders mayor finally spoke up. She nodded to him. “There is one other place we are raising the rate of sponsor conversion: The Oliver Transitional Community at Fort Butler. While the unhomed concubines in the transitional community are not considered freemen, they have adopted the Ponderosa school curriculum and methods—including military training—and are increasing the number of sponsors becoming adults. I suggest that we expand that facility as a boarding school and establish similar schools in each township. I’ve already moved for dependents in Drylanders between the ages of ten and fourteen be moved to the boarding school as soon it is expanded enough to serve them.”
“The school at Fort Butler is primitive,” Tara AI broke into the conversation. “AIs can do a much more efficient job of educating dependents through sleep learners.”
“In everything except turning out sponsors,” Scarlett said. “Mr. Mayor, I will take your suggestion into consideration. I trust this is the last discussion we will need to have about Ponderosa and the Eldorado continent. That continent now belongs to the freemen.”
“Niall, if you would stay for a few minutes?”
“Of course, Scarlett,” I said. While I hadn’t met with the council before, I had regular meetings with the governor. We continued to get on quite well.
“Lisa, could you bring us coffee and sweet rolls? These council meetings always leave me drained.” Scarlett sat back in a comfortable chair in her private quarters where she’d led me after the meeting. Her concubine Lisa rushed off to get us refreshments. I waited until Scarlett had collected her thoughts.
“Here you are, honey,” Lisa said as she brought the coffee and rolls. She poured us each a cup and stopped to pet the governor’s hair a moment before she was shooed out of the room.
“How do you like being governor, Niall?”
“I think I have it easier than you do. After all, there are only 78,000 free concubines on Ponderosa, while you have…” I looked at her with light dawning on my awareness.
“I have 51,000 sponsors. You have much the greater task. The truth is, I don’t need to think about the concubines on the rest of Tara at all. That’s what their sponsors are for. You don’t have that buffer. What’s the total population of Ponderosa?”
“Nearly 550,000. 470,000 dependents.”
“That’s the big difference. For you, it isn’t the sponsor to concubine ratio that is a problem, it’s the concubine to dependent ratio. We dropped the birthrate on the planet when we imposed the two-year mandatory service moratorium for our fourteen-year-olds. But the pressure is building again so that by age seventeen, female concubines, homed or unhomed are expected to have a child every three years. We’re still at a population that is growing at what would have been an alarming rate on Earth. We now have 2.6 million souls on Tara. Even with the number of new sponsors and their concubines who leave the planet, our population is growing at nearly twenty percent per year. Of course, refugees have contributed to that, but our total intake of concubine and dependent refugees combined is only about 200,000. I hope we can expect that number to fall off some now unless there is a new disaster.”
“We aren’t expecting any of those are we?” I asked.
“Yes, we are always expecting them. We are likely to get far fewer concubines and dependents that are widowed in massive conflicts. Not because there aren’t any more massive conflicts, but their planetary governors have realized that they were losing a great asset when they started shipping the spares away. They also lost the future sponsors those spares were raising. We’ll see fewer of those planets giving up their assets, no matter how it stretches their Civil Service branches to take care of them.”
“That’s a relief. A lot of the trauma we dealt with in terms of the refugees as opposed to the Kindertransports was the combination of losing their sponsor, sometimes another concubine, and their homes as well. They were uprooted and sent to us, many of them having lived in a stable environment for ten or more years,” I said.
“We are likely to see others, more Kindertransports, including the Kilopods. Earth is evacuating as much of the population as they can. We made significant gains containing and pushing them back in North America and out of Britain, and driving them back in Europe. Africa and South America are gone. South Asia is gone. China is still holding its own. But we face a new threat. Sa’arm scouts have entered two human colony systems and escaped. We don’t have the fleet to provide planetary blockades on more planets. We still blockade Tulak. Now Earth. And some planets near Beerat. There simply aren’t enough ships or personnel to fight invasions on two more planets. Everywhere the Swarm might invade. They will wait until the last moment, but I expect massive evacuations from those planets when the Sa’arm arrive in force.”
“Those poor people.”
“Poor you and Ponderosa. The job is getting bigger, not smaller.”
Comfort (TY20-month 239)
«Niall, don’t despair.»
«I’m not quite, Cricket. Do you have words of hope for our situation?»
«I believe we have great opportunity. And great hope. The CAP test is no longer the deciding factor for hope.»
«I guess that’s a relief. I’ve never been keen on the test.»
«When it was developed, it was never meant to grade people into classes. Its most determinate score was loyalty to the Confederacy. Of course, people needed to also be compassionate, aggressive, intelligent, etc. But the biggest need the Darjee had when they negotiated the contract was for warriors who wouldn’t betray them. The reward for a high CAP was that they got to save others if they would go and fight. Those others would be their slaves in whatever manner they desired. I believe we lost potential sponsors because they had higher integrity than to enslave others. Our revised test recognizes more ways individuals contribute.»
«Look at all the people who have died on Earth defending it,» I said. It was too much. In the recent drive to purge North America, my father had been killed.
«Yes, but think of the others, those with non-qualifying CAP scores who have made a difference in the effort. Take the Pussy Pirates—self-described porn stars and California bimbos. They have held the Swarm in South America and denied them access to the north. They’ve joined with Confederacy forces in Earth space to block further landings and are now the primary crew of several orbiting weapons platforms. And mostly, they did it with their own adaptations of old Confederacy technology. Not without losses, I might add. They have put their lives on the line. That’s integrity.»
«I see people like that in Ponderosa all the time.»
«Less than ten percent of the half million dependents in Ponderosa will test low in integrity. Some may not have the mindset for aggression. Some, like you have professed, will not show loyalty to the Confederacy. But nearly all will have the integrity of their convictions. That is not only because of their parents or guardians, but because they look to you for the leadership of their colony. They work hard at their martial arts because they see your master classes each week. They learn their lessons because they see you, still taking courses to improve your knowledge. If there was a test for loyalty to Niall Cho, over half a million denizens of Ponderosa would pass it.»
«That’s a bit scary. I didn’t want to develop a following.»
«No. If you wanted to, you would have failed. You have a following because of the person you are. And there is something else.»
«What, Cricket?»
«There are some people who are loyal enough to you that they refuse sponsorship when they succeed at the CAP test.»
«That’s terrible! Cricket, we can’t let them do that!»
«You would take away their freedom of choice? Even in the evacuation of Earth, no one is forced to volunteer no matter what their CAP score.»
«I… I thought if you tested that high, you had to go.»
«No. However, you don’t get the rewards, either. Those who choose not to enlist after passing their CAP test are classified the same as concubines. And on Ponderosa they are freemen.»
«Like Reynolds.» My aide-de-camp had come to Tara as a sponsor with two concubines. Upon arrival, all three had joined the Militia, which included Reynolds renouncing his citizenship. He’d become a concubine and joined the Militia. I wondered how many of our most recent volunteers had also renounced their status as sponsors.
«Just understand, Niall; you are building a formidable force on Ponderosa. You have nearly 100,000 adults, and every one of them would take up arms to follow you. And every dependent over ten years of age has been trained with arms as well and would march wherever you sent them. The day could come when they need to defend Ponderosa.»
«Against the Swarm? Here?» Was Cricket telling me we were going to be invaded?
«Against the Swarm. Or against sponsors of the Confederacy. Others will want what you have.»
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