Quiet Invasion(45)

Then you saw it was not level with the ground, that the ring was, in fact, sitting well above ground level, and that the “ridges” might be supports of some kind.

He couldn’t be sure, of course. The only way to be sure would be to fly one of Derek’s prize camera drones in there, shine a laser over the thing, and make a holograph of it. But close study of anything on Venera involved other people—assistants and their supervisors, Derek as the drone keeper; Helen, who had to know what was going on at all times. Ben did not want anyone, anyone, else involved in this yet. Anyone on Venera anyway.

What Ben knew currently was that this object was approximately 1.3 kilometers across and that it had been there somewhere between 40 and 170 years. The Magellan probe sent up in the 1990s hadn’t seen it, but the Francis Drake had, and the Francis Drake went up just as the first plates of Venera were being bolted together.

So never mind where the Discovery with its three little holes in the ground came from. Where did this…thing come from?

But no one was looking at it, except him. Derek’s complete nonrecognition had told him that. If someone else had been checking out this spot or this object, Derek would have confirmed it. Everyone else was looking in the ground for more holes. No one had looked up.

Ben’s first thought had been to rush to Helen with this, but he’d hesitated. He told himself that it was just because he wanted to be sure. He didn’t want to speak before he had the facts.

But that wasn’t it, and even as he was rationalizing his actions at three in the morning, he knew that.

Ben slumped backward and ran his hand over his scalp, scrubbing the gray bristles that were all that was left of his hair. Male-pattern baldness he’d never bothered to get corrected. He hated med-trips when they were necessary, never mind the idea of getting stuck in one of the capsules for cosmetic touch-ups.

He’d had a full head of chestnut hair at Bradbury. He’d been so young. Ben chuckled to himself. God, when did twenty-seven get to be young?

He’d taken his own sweet time getting through college. Some of his friends joked he was in on the “eternity program.” Ben replied he was just looking for something to get excited about. Comparative planetology, with its possibilities for exploration and discovery, had come close to filling the bill.

Then he went to Bradbury for his post-doc work and he found the real thing.

Theodore Fuller was just picking up steam when Ben arrived. No one on Earth took him seriously, but in the colony itself, that was another story. The stream was full of his words and of people talking about them.

Ben had arrived at Arestech, Inc., to set up shop in their lab and run their surveyors with every intention of ignoring Fuller’s message. But he couldn’t help hearing. To his surprise, Fuller didn’t talk about the good old days of the nation states, like most people who had grief with the U.N. did. He didn’t talk about the past at all. Instead he talked with enthusiasm and delight about the present—how modern technology had finally made possible a truly free flow of information, information available to each and every human being no matter who they were, no matter where they were. Information made it possible for everyone to control their own lives completely in a way that had never been possible before. It could bring them into contact with whomever and whatever they needed. They could pick and choose what their lives held. There was no more need for middlemen or for central government.

After all, what did governments do? Provide security? There were no more nations to wage war on each other. Personal security could be provided by electronics or a private company, depending on the needs and desires of the individual. The government regulated commerce? Why? The market, like nature, could take care of itself and had for a long time now. When was the last real economic collapse? Late twenty-first century, wasn’t it? Before the stream was truly established.

How about rule of law? Employment for lawyers and bureaucrats mostly. A person who felt unjustly treated could seek satisfaction in courts run on the same principles as any other business. The ones in which the arbitration and settlement procedures were seen as just and fair would have the most subscribers and work with the greatest number of private security companies. Those who didn’t like the justice of one system could subscribe to another which they read about and evaluated in-stream.

The central government did not need to exist. It was an idea from previous centuries. It was like the great North American weed called kudzu. It had invaded so long ago no one remembered where it came from. They just knew it was there, and they spent a lot of time, effort, and money dealing with it because no one knew how to get rid of it. No, because no one was ready to do what was necessary to get rid of it.