THE KOSTROMA SAGA by Michel Poulin - HTML preview

CHAPTER 43 – A NEW LIFE

 

09:10 (East Africa Time)

Tuesday, November 09, 2320

Todonyang Refugee Camp, Northwestern Kenya

Near the borders with Sudan and Ethiopia, Africa

Nelson Onyango, who was about to enter the small prefabricated shelter he would use for his work, looked again around him at the sprawling refugee camp, with its hundreds of tents packed like sardines within the protective perimeter fence of the camp. The fence was there to protect the refugees from the depredations of passing thieves and looters, not to hold prisoner the 49,000 refugees living inside it, if you could call that ‘living’. Only nine kilometers away to the Northeast was the border with Ethiopia, from where most of the refugees living in the camp came. There were also a few thousand refugees from the South Sudan, which bordered Kenya to the Northwest. A few kilometers to the East of the camp, across some semi-arid terrain, were the waters of Lake Turkana. Nelson, a professional aid worker and human resources specialist, knew well the region, being a native of Northern Kenya, and he spoke fluently five of the languages and dialects used in this region of Africa. Today, with luck, he was going to be able to help a few of those unfortunate refugees escape this miserable camp.

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Entering the air-conditioned shelter, Nelson smiled and bowed his head to the young Kenyan woman who would assist him in his interviews by finding and guiding to this shelter the refugees on his list of candidates for resettlement.

‘’Good morning, Miss Obando!’’

‘’Good morning, Mister Onyango. I have the list of refugees who claim to satisfy the basic requirements of your employer. It is however quite long. How do you wish to proceed?’’

‘’Let’s concentrate first on family groups of between three and seven persons with experience in farm work, cattle raising or work in hydroponic gardens. Another category that has a high priority in my mind is that of single mothers with one or two small children or infants. On the other hand, my employer is not keen on getting single, unaccompanied men and teenagers, unless they have advanced education and some special skills.’’

‘’Do you know why your employer doesn’t want single men, Mister Onyango? And who is your employer, if I may ask? This whole thing seems to be of a quite sensitive nature, judging from the discretion about it.’’

Nelson stared for a short moment at the young Aid For Africa, or AFA, worker before answering her.

‘’The reason why my visit has been kept discreet is that my employer, who is a member of the Spacers League Council, is afraid that agitators, ex-combatants or covert agents of the Southern Federation could try to get selected for resettlement, in which case they could cause troubles or inflame old hatreds among the refugees we will select for resettlement. Families with young children are much less likely to be such possible agitators or covert agents, and so do single mothers with children.’’

‘’I see! And if the candidates ask me where they could end up being resettled, what do I tell them? This is another information that has been kept vague, sir.’’

‘’I intend to show later on to the refugees who will be selected a video explaining where they will live. You will of course be welcome to watch it then. For the moment, tell them that they will go live off this Earth, on a Spacers settlement.’’

‘’You are really killing me with the suspense, Mister Onyango.’’

‘’Sorry about that, but the instructions from my employer were quite strict. And please, simply call me ‘Nelson’.’’

‘’Only if you call me ‘Winnie’.’’

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‘’Deal! So, according to the priority criteria I gave you, who am I going to interview first, Winnie?’’

The young woman looked for a moment at the screen of her laptop computer before answering him.

‘’I have the Gebre, an Ethiopian family consisting of a couple in their late twenties and early thirties with three preteen children.’’

‘’Sounds good! Who would be next after that?’’

‘’Then, I have for you the Belay, another Ethiopian family. The parents are aged respectively 35 and 32 and they have a total of four children with ages between seven and thirteen.’’

‘’Perfect! You can go get them while I set up my kit here. Once I start my interviews, go fetch a new family on your list every time one family comes out.’’

‘’Understood, Nelson!’’

As Winnie Obando walked out of the shelter, Nelson, a 44-year-old tall and thin black man who wore a short, well-trimmed beard, put his briefcase on the desk he was going to use and started taking out his equipment in order to set it up. First out was his laptop, followed by a small camera on tripod and a fingerprint recognition pad, both of which he plugged to his laptop. A small charger and UPS unit was next, which he plugged to one of the shelter’s power outlet. Powering up his laptop, Nelson opened a couple of specialized programs which he was going to use during his interviews, then opened a copy of the list of candidates Winnie had read from. He couldn’t help shake his head slowly on reviewing the very long list: it represented in reality years of suffering and misery endured by thousands of people through no fault of their own. If it would have been solely his decision at play, he would have simply signed up all of those people on the spot. However, New Haven’s infrastructures and services, while growing fast, were still limited and could only accommodate a finite number of refugees at this time. He and the other human resources specialists and aid workers hired by Tina Forster had been given a two-day tour of New Haven before returning to Earth yesterday, so he was very conscious of what the present limits were. What he could do, however, was to work fast and not waste time during his interviews, in order to meet as many candidates per day as he could.

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A few soft knocks on the door made Nelson look up from his computer some six minutes later.

‘’Come in!’’

Winnie pushed the door open and entered, then invited in two adults and three preteen children, all dressed in clean but well-worn robes and sandals. Nelson then addressed the family in English, not because he couldn’t or wouldn’t speak their language, but to gauge their true level of proficiency in English. That criteria was in fact one of the most important ones listed by Tina Forster and Nelson completely understood why: when you were literally building a new world from scratch, you didn’t want to waste precious time and resources by having to put everybody through an accelerated language program. In this case, a basic working knowledge of English would be sufficient. While that fact pained Nelson, many of the original languages and dialects originally spoken around Africa had disappeared or faded away during the last three centuries, as more common and widespread languages, like English, French and Arabic, became official languages taught in African schools in the place of traditional languages.

‘’Please, sit down, my good people.’’

‘’Thank you, sir!’’ replied the father, a man in his early thirties. Nelson waited until the two adults and three children had sat on the row of chairs facing his desk, then looked at the man.

‘’I will now ask you to present yourselves individually, so that I could gauge the level of English proficiency of each of you. Are you comfortable with talking in English, or would you prefer to use Amharic instead?’’

In a way, that question was a trick one: if the family’s English proved too poor to be used during this interview, then it would be one strike against their case. To Nelson’s relief, all five of them nodded their heads and accepted to use English, each speaking a few English words in the process. The father then presented himself first.

‘’My name is Solomon Gebre. I am 33 years old and I came from Awasa, in Ethiopia, where I was working in a hydroponic garden facility, preparing the seeds and mixing the fertilizer solutions.’’

On a look from her husband, the mother then spoke next.

‘’My name is Saba Teferi and I am 28 years old. I mostly stayed home to care for our children but I also raised a few chickens which helped supplement our diet with eggs and meat.’’

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Nelson nodded his head as he typed that information in his laptop computer: he knew that, in Ethiopia, people didn’t use a ‘family’ name. Instead, everybody had a personal first name, followed by the first name of their father, a so-called patronymic. Sometimes, the first name of the person’s grandfather would also be added as a middle name. Nelson next smiled to the oldest of the three children, a boy close to ten.

‘’And you, my boy?’’

To Nelson’s satisfaction, the boy’s English proved the best of the lot to date, probably thanks to his schooling, which was now made entirely in English in Ethiopia.

‘’My name is Dawit Gebre. I am nine. I was studying at a primary school in Awasa, until the drought came and forced us out.’’

The next one was a young and shy girl who would have been truly pretty if not for her scarily thin body and emaciated face. In fact, the whole family looked seriously undernourished.

‘’I’m Beza. I am seven.’’

The last one was a toddler boy sitting in the lap of his mother.

‘’I’m Amare.’’ said the boy before holding up three fingers. Nelson smiled at that and typed that information, then looked at the family in general.

‘’Can you tell me how long you have been in this camp and the detailed reasons about what forced you out of your old home?’’

As he had expected, the father, as the patriarch of the family, answered him.

‘’We arrived here nearly two years ago with nothing but the clothes on our backs. The situation had already been bad for years in Awasa, due to the scarcity of water. Then, the last drought hit and the town’s lake completely dried up. The government did nothing to help, while waves of refugees from the East, where the drought had been going on for years, washed over Awasa, looting and taking the little food and water left in town. We tried to resist and protect our homes, but there were too many of them, with many of the looters being armed as well. We had to flee our house just before it was ransacked, then walked for nearly three weeks before arriving here.’’ Nelson gave the man a sympathetic look: many more people could tell a similar story, as Ethiopia, a member state of the African Union and of the Southern Federation, contrary to Kenya, which was a neutral state, had been all but officially a failed state for decades. The Makambo Regime had done nothing to help the little people of Ethiopia through a series of devastating droughts and famines, stealing instead much of the international aid sent to the country and stashing away the money from their sales into foreign bank

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accounts. Now, much of the country, which had always been quite arid, was turning into a permanent desert, condemning Ethiopia to a bleak future and sending millions of people into exile in more fortunate countries. Kenya, as a well administered country with a truly democratic government, had received more than its fair share of refugees and was struggling to cope with that burden. The discreet offer to help from Tina Forster had thus been received warmly in Nairobi, with the Kenyan government promising to support the resettlement campaign as much as it could.

‘’I see! Mister Solomon, you said that you worked in a hydroponic garden facility. Did you learn your job as you went, or did you follow formal courses in hydroponics?’’

‘’I held an official professional certificate in hydroponics from the Awasa Agrarian Institute, sir. Unfortunately, my certificate was lost when our house was looted.’’

‘’And for how long did you actually work in a hydroponic garden, Mister Solomon?’’

‘’I worked at the Awasa Farms for fourteen years, sir, and had risen to the post of shift supervisor.’’

That last information finally decided Nelson and he selected a new program while smiling to the Ethiopian man.

‘’Well, Mister Solomon, you and your family appear to fill nicely the requirement set by the corporation which hired me to interview and select refugees from this camp. There is however one last, crucial point I want to clarify.’’

‘’Yes?’’ said Solomon, anxious, while his wife tensed up with nervousness.

‘’If your family is hired and resettled in another place, it will end up living among a very mixed human community, with people coming from either Spacers League worlds or from other countries on Earth. You may even meet people from the Somali Region, the same region from which the people who looted your house came. My question to you and all of your family is this: can you honestly tell me that you will be able to forget any past hatreds and prejudices which you may have held or are still holding? Please understand as well that, where you would resettle, the laws state that there is a complete equality of the sexes and that discrimination on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation is strictly forbidden. Are you ready to accept those laws and live under them?’’

‘’We are! The only thing I want is to be able to give a new, meaningful life to my family and to do honest work.’’

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‘’Then, I believe that your family fully satisfies the requirements of our resettlement program, Mister Solomon. I will now take your individual pictures, along with your fingerprints, in order to sign you up. Before you ask, know that this program involves your resettlement on a new Spacers world, another planet which has been recently discovered. You and your family will thus be able to start a brand-new life on a new, virgin world. Congratulations!’’

The whole family erupted into cheers at Nelson’s last words and nearly danced together in joy, watched by a moved Nelson. This was by far the part of his job that he liked the most: to help give back hope to others.

19:51 (East Africa Time)

Landing pad of the Todonyang Refugee Camp

Northwest Kenya

A crowd of 138 men, women and children were waiting near the improvised landing pad of the refugee camp, set outside the fenced perimeter, when a large passenger shuttle emerged from the obscurity of the evening sky and landed nearly silently on the pad, its navigation lights blinking in the darkness. As soon as its aft access ramp was lowered, a handful of aid workers and staff from the camp gently encouraged the refugees towards it, with a few Kenyan soldiers present to provide security to the shuttle and the departing refugees. Saba Teferi, her three-year-old son Amare in her arms, hesitated a bit as she was approaching the space shuttle, stopping and turning her head to look towards the Northeast. Her husband Gebre, who was carrying the little possessions they had been given after arriving at the camp, also stopped near her and saw tears in Saba’s eyes.

‘’What’s the matter, Saba? We are finally leaving this camp for a better life.’’

‘’Yes, but will this mean that we will never see again our country of birth?’’ Nelson Onyango, who was close enough to hear her words, hurried to the couple and spoke softly to Saba.

‘’Don’t be afraid about that: while you will be living on another planet far from here, there will be a regular liaison between New Haven and Earth. You will be able to return for visits or vacation in the future, when you will feel like it. I was told that there will even be daily video news and entertainment programs from Earth, which will be

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recorded in advance and then brought by ship with only a day or two of delay. That way, you will be able to stay informed about how things are going in and around Ethiopia.’’

‘’They will allow us to come back for visits?’’ asked Saba, having difficulty believing that. Nelson gave her his best reassuring smile.

‘’Of course they will! I met Captain Tina Forster, who owns New Haven, and I can tell you that you won’t find a more generous or compassionate person around. Come, I will accompany you and your family inside the shuttle.’’

Somewhat reassured by Nelson’s presence, Saba walked to the access ramp, little Amare still in her arms, followed by her husband and her two oldest children. They were met at the entrance by a young woman dressed in an apple green adjusted coverall with a few patches sewn on it.

‘’Welcome aboard! May I ask you to each put in succession one thumb on this fingerprint recognition pad?’’

The five Ethiopians did so in turn, with the crewmember then nodding her head and smiling to them.

‘’Thank you very much! Here are your boarding passes. You will have to present them later on, after our arrival on New Haven.’’

‘’Will the trip be very long, miss?’’ Asked Gebre.

‘’The trip between the two solar systems will actually be nearly instantaneous, sir. However, climbing to Earth orbit and then descending from orbit once in the Wolf 1061 System will take about one hour. If you will now step forward, my colleague will show you to your seats.’’

‘’Well, this is where we have to part, I guess.’’ said Nelson Onyango. ‘’I wish you a good trip and a nice new life on New Haven.’’

‘’Thank you!’’ replied Gebre while shaking Nelson’s hand. ‘’You were most kind with my family.’’

‘’It was a pleasure, sir.’’

Nelson then walked back down the ramp to go speak with another family who was lining to board the shuttle. Himself feeling a pang of the heart, Gebre then led his family inside the passenger cabin proper and was quickly met along the aisle by another female crewmember.

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‘’Could I please see your boarding passes, please?... Thank you! Your seats will be in Row 23, four rows ahead, and are the three seats on the right side of this aisle, plus two of the seats on the center section.’’

Following her indications, the family was soon in its assigned seats, with seven-year-old Beza sitting next to the right-side window. Saba, who sat next to her, then saw that the ‘window’ was actually a large 3D holoscreen. Similar but smaller holoscreens were in fact installed on the back of each seat, allowing all the passengers to have their own view of the outside of the shuttle. Some six minutes later, the images on the seat viewing screens changed to show one of the flight attendants they had met, speaking in English.

‘’Good evening and welcome aboard the shuttle MERCURY, of the New Haven Star Lines. We will be departing for New Haven shortly. If I could have your attention for a minute, I will explain to you the safety procedures for this flight, as well as describe to you the facilities on this shuttle.’’

The members of the family, none of whom had flown in any kind of craft before, listened religiously as the flight attendant spoke, buckling their seat belts when told to. The Gebre children, like nearly all the other children aboard and many of the adults, shouted excited exclamations when their shuttle started rising from the ground. Those shouts however quickly subsided as they gained altitude and started seeing the curvature of the Earth and the African continent under them, the view from above mesmerizing the passengers. Some twenty minutes after takeoff, as they had passed Earth’s low orbit, a brief orange flash surprised the ex-refugees. Saba, who then looked at the lateral view screen of her row, nearly choked with astonishment at the sight of a nearby red star.

‘’GEBRE, THE SUN HAS CHANGED COLORS! IT IS NOW RED!’’ All the passengers crowded at once at the viewing screens on the right side of the cabin. The voice of a pilot then came out of the cabin’s overhead speakers.

‘’Ladies and gentlemen, we are now in the Wolf 1061 System. This system is centered around what is called a red dwarf star, a star smaller than our Sun and also cooler. The system counts three planets, an asteroid belt and a total of four moons. You will soon see on our right side the second planet of the system, which is now known as ‘New Shouria’ and which is the new home world of the Koorivars, who were themselves made refugees after their planet was pulverized by a wandering brown dwarf

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planet some 361 years ago. New Haven, our destination, is the first and biggest of three moons orbiting New Shouria. We should land there in about 45 minutes.’’ Gebre, like his wife and children, was nearly hypnotized by the view of New Shouria they soon got: the planet was half covered with blue seas and numerous lakes of various sizes dotted its continents, which were definitely quite different from those on Earth. Many white clouds also floated around the skies of the planet, making it look like a perfect haven for life. Their attention soon shifted to a big moon they approached after turning half around the planet. As the shuttle got closer to it, Gebre was struck by how big it appeared to be. Its surface also looked a lot like Africa: a place of savannahs, lakes and mountain ranges. Somehow, that helped partly reassure Gebre about their new home world.

‘’Look, my children: there is our new home.’’

As they avidly examined New Haven from orbit, their seat viewing screens also showed the moon, while the voice of a flight attendant came out of the cabin’s speakers.

‘’Ladies and gentlemen, we are now arriving in orbit of New Haven, the first moon of New Shouria and your new home. New Haven is slightly smaller than Earth and has a mass equivalent to eighty percent of the mass of Earth. The felt gravity is inferior to that on Earth, at 0.89 G and its atmosphere is also slightly thinner than Earth’s atmosphere, with a bit less oxygen in it. For those of you who were living on high plateaus above an altitude of 2,000 meters, New Haven will thus feel to you much like home. Its climate is also quite similar to that of Northern Africa. Being tidally locked to New Shouria, New Haven always presents the same face to its parent planet, like the Moon does with Earth. It and New Shouria complete an orbit around the central red star in a bit less than eighteen of our days. Because of this and of the small light level differences between the local ‘days’ and ‘nights’, it was decided to keep using both the time system and calendar in use on Earth. We are thus still officially on Tuesday, November ninth of 2320 and the time, set on Greenwich Universal Time plus two hours for your time zone, is 21:18 in the evening. If you look at the bottom right corner of your seat viewing screens, you will see the precise Universal Time displayed, so that you could change the time on your watches and wrist videophones. Our final destination is the village of ‘New Hope’, your new home town, situated on the shores of Lake Avalon and some seven kilometers northeast of Camelot, the administrative center of New Haven. The mayor of New Hope, Alice Zedong, will be greeting you on arrival and will have assistants ready to bring you to your respective homes after a preliminary briefing

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on local conditions and general rules. The temperature in New Hope is presently 27 degrees Celsius and the sky is mostly clear, with a few dispersed clouds and with a nine kilometer per hour wind from the East.’’

Gebre and Saba exchanged pleased looks then: that sounded a lot like a typical day in Ethiopia. The fact that they would live on the shores of a lake would also remind them of their past, happy days in Awasa. Young Dawit, their nine-year-old son, suddenly pointed an excited finger at an orbiting object now visible on the screens.

‘’Hey, a spaceship!’’

Gebre and Saba concentrated their attention on that object on hearing Dawit. That object, which the shuttle was approaching, soon revealed itself to be huge, attracting a comment from Saba.

‘’My god, that ship is as big as a mountain.’’

Gebre, fascinated by the big ship, could only agree with his wife.

‘’I didn’t believe that such big ships existed, or were even possible.’’ One flight attendant passing by on the aisle, temporarily stopped and smiled to them.

‘’This is the KOSTROMA, the armed cargo ship belonging to Captain Forster, who is also the owner and CEO of New Haven.’’

As the attendant continued down the aisle, Gebre and Saba exchanged knowing looks.

‘’So, this is the infamous KOSTROMA our government was so vilifying.’’

‘’Yes, but all that was probably just propaganda, Saba. How could someone offering us a new life be as evil as our government made that Captain Forster to be?’’ The couple then fell silent and stared at the viewing screens as the shuttle flew by the huge ship, something that took many seconds, enough to deeply impress them.

‘’It certainly deserves the qualifier of ‘mighty’. Hopefully, Captain Foster will prove as benevolent and generous as we hope her to be, Saba.’’

‘’I am also hoping for that, Gebre. Our family’s future is depending on it.’’

Their shuttle soon entered the atmosphere of New Haven, producing a somewhat terrifying show of flames and howling hypersonic winds as they went down towards the surface. However, their flight soon became more normal as their speed went down. The surface they were now overflying proved to be covered mostly with savannah-like fields of dispersed trees and long grass, with a number of small lakes and streams, the latter flowing down from the numerous hills and mountain ranges dotting

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the surface of the moon. They then started to overfly at medium altitude the blue surface of a big lake, with that view exciting Saba.

‘’Look at that splendid lake, kids! It appears even bigger than Lake Turkana and is way bigger than Lake Awasa. Living on the shores of such a large lake should make life quite pleasant. For one thing, we will have plenty of water available.’’ As the shuttle was approaching what looked like a small town on the northwest shores of the lake, Saba saw another shuttle fly by them, apparently climbing back to orbit after taking off from the town.

‘’You saw that other shuttle, Gebre? Maybe other refugees were just dropped off in our new town.’’

‘’Probably, Saba. Everything we saw and heard up to now seems to point to a large-scale resettlement program centered on this New Haven. I would be very surprised if we would be the only refugees to have been transported here. However, the mayor of our new town is supposed to brief us on arrival, so let’s just watch and wait for the moment.’’

After another minute of flying their shuttle finally landed at the vertical on a landing pad set at the southern extremity of the village, which had maybe 300 houses and various buildings in it. Ten of those buildings, grouped to the west of the town, were huge, measuring about 300 meters long by fifty meters wide and counting six levels. Gebre smiled as he recognized those ten big buildings, with their transparent walls and roofs.

‘’Hydroponic garden buildings…big ones! There will be plenty of work for me here, Saba…and also plenty of food for our family.’’

‘’Thank God! Just being able to eat to our content would make it worth leaving Earth. Hopefully, the food distribution system here will prove more equitable than in our old country.’’

Gebre made a sour smile at those words: too often, while they lived in Awasa, they saw the bulk of the agricultural produces being carried away towards Addis Ababa, where government bureaucrats and leaders lived, often leaving not enough foodstuff to feed properly the population of Awasa, something that had pushed the inhabitants into cultivating their own private gardens as much as possible. The voice of a pilot then came out of the cabin’s speakers.

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‘’Ladies and gentlemen, we have now landed at our destination, the village of New Hope. You may now leave your seats, recuperate your luggage and go out by the aft access ramp.’’

Getting up from his seat and recuperating the one duffel bag containing all that his family still owned, Gebre then led his wife and kids down the aisle and out of the shuttle. On emerging in the open, he felt an immediate change to his body.

‘’Hey, I feel less heavy!’’

‘’Well, they did say that the gravity in this place is less than on Earth. I actually find that quite pleasant. The air is also like in Awasa, thinner than around Lake Turkana.’’

Saba then noticed the large group of persons, which themselves looked like refugees, waiting off one side of the landing pad, with a number of persons apparently controlling their group.

‘’It seems that I was right about other refugees than us being relocated here, Gebre.’’

‘’We will soon enough see how true this is, Saba. Let’s walk away from that pad and follow that man over there giving directives: our shuttle will probably be leaving in a short while.’’

Their shuttle indeed lifted off as soon as the 138 Ethiopians and Sudanese refugees were off the landing pad. A Caucasian man in his late twenties then started shouting directives in English to their group.

‘’If you will please follow us, ladies and gentlemen, we will now walk to the village’s central park, where dignitaries will greet you on New Haven.’’ The Gebre, who had walked hundreds of kilometers to reach the safety of their refugee camp in Kenya, didn’t mind the 600-meter walk between the landing pad and the central park, which was covered by a transparent dome protecting its visitors from the occasional rains. That walk in fact gave a chance to the family to look at the various buildings and facilities in the village, while their guide described in English what they went by. That included an open-air sports stadium with an oval race track and an inner soccer field, something that pleased young Dawit.

‘’They have a soccer field! I will be able to play soccer again!’’ Gebre, also pleased by that, had by now noticed that the guides accompanying the other refugees which had arrived prior to him were speaking to their flocks in two other

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languages, one of them Arabic, while the other one was some kind of Asiatic language he couldn’t identify.

On arrival at the central park, which was bordered by a few trees Gebre of a type he had never seen on Earth, the crowd of some 350 ex-refugees was made to sit down on a series of folding benches set in a semi-circle in front of a small platform with a large viewing screen behind it. Four women and three men were waiting for them, standing on the platform. As soon as the crowd had sat down, one of the women on the platform, a tall brunette in her thirties, started speaking in English in a microphone which amplified her voice. Simultaneously, another tall woman of stunning beauty translated her words in Arabic and in the other language Gebre had heard to date, helped by the frequent pauses made by the brunette.

‘’Good evening and welcome on New Haven, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Tina Forster and I am the owner and CEO of the New Haven Planetary Corporation, to which this moon belongs. To my right, translating my words in Arabic and in Vietnamese, is Eve Silisca, the Deputy Chief Administrator and Sciences and Technology Administrator of New Haven. Behind me, starting from my left, are Personnel and Immigration Administrator Wei Zang, Chief of Public Safety Bill Morrison, Chief Administrator of New Haven Piotr Romanski, Alice Zedong, Mayor of New Hope, and Thomas Brown, Principal Assistant to Mayor Zedong. Many of you may be wondering why I selected you and others to settle on this new world. Some around Earth even claimed that I was collecting you as slave laborers in order to develop this moon for my ultimate profit. Nothing could be further from the truth, ladies and gentlemen. After receiving this moon as a gift from the Koorivars, as a thank you for rescuing two of their wandering refugee ships, I decided to develop New Haven for the benefit of unfortunate people like you, decent people who lost their homes and everything else through no fault of their own and who simply want to be able to do honest work and raise their families away from wars, droughts, famines and other calamities. As a Spacer who lives on a highly advances spaceship, I also wanted to create a place where Spacers avid of open air spaces and destitute people like you could live a simple life close to nature in a world untouched by pollution and overexploitation. I thus made plans to turn New Haven into a simple agrarian and pastoral world, where heavy industries will be both limited to the minimum and severely controlled to avoid pollution. New Haven will basically be a food production center and also a tourism center for Spacers wanting to experience being

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close to nature again. What this moon will need in terms of industrial products, technological items, chemicals and polymers will be imported from the Solar System, so that we won’t risk polluting this pristine world by having to build our own industrial and chemical plants. While the facilities you see around you are modern and comfortable, the emphasis was put on simplicity in their designs and use, as I wish all of us to be able to enjoy a life close to nature. As for your legal status as residents of New Haven, you are now considered both employees of the New Haven Planetary Corporation and citizens of the Spacers League. This may sound strange to you and some may call this an undemocratic system, but this kind of corporate entity government is common around the Spacers League, like the Ceres Corporation or the Sverdlovsk Group on Hygiea. As citizens of the Spacers League, your rights will be protected under the constitution and charter of human rights of the League, so forget any fears you had about ending up under some kind of despotic tyrant. For me, my reward will be to see you live a happy life with your families on New Haven. With all this said, I must tell you that, with the infrastructure program having started only one month ago on New Haven, much is still left to be done. We planted thousands of fruit trees imported from Earth and started seeding the fish growing ponds of our fish farms, but they will need at least two years to start becoming truly productive. However, that doesn’t mean that you will be starving during those few first years, on the contrary. We imported large herds of herbivores from Earth and settled them in the savannahs of this moon, plus we seeded the local lakes with a number of fish species, while our hydroponic gardens will start massively producing foodstuff in a mere few weeks. Whatever will be missing in the meantime will be imported at my expense. This brings me to how you will be paid and what you will have to pay for. Simply put, all your basic needs, meaning food, lodging, basic clothing, education and health care will be provided for free. You need to replenish your house’s pantry and refrigerator? Simply go to the local food market and pick up what you need. However, excessive consumption and wastage of food will be highly discouraged. As for your wages, each working person will get a basic salary based on their level of skills and competences, with extras added for the number of persons in their charge. You will be able to sell any surplus foodstuff you may produce in your private gardens and animal coops, but remember that those private gardens and coops are meant to help supplement the diet of your families. The goal on New Haven will not be to become rich, but simply to live comfortably while staying close to nature. The food surplus which New Haven will eventually produce in the coming years will be exported to the Solar System

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and to other settled systems and sold, with priority given to providing low cost foodstuff to parts of Earth most in need.’’

A wave of approving whispers and head nods greeted Tina’s last part of her speech. She then switched places with Alice Zedong, a small Chinese woman in her early fifties, while Eve stayed at her microphone to continue translating.

‘’My good people, I realize that you had a long, emotional day, so I won’t take much of your time before you could be led to your respective residences. More detailed briefings will follow tomorrow morning, here at the central park and at the town hall, visible to your right. I only wish to tell you this: we are all here to live in peace and harmony with nature, away from wars, natural disasters, famines and ethnic strife. You can see already that the ethnic diversity in your present group is quite high. In fact, this ethnic diversity will only grow in the days to come, as more ex-refugees arrive on New Haven, coming from many different places. You will consciously be mixed thoroughly around New Hope and the rest of the moon, with the goal of preventing the formation of closed-rank ethnic groups, something which could eventually lead into the reappearance of old ethnic, racial or religious hatreds. The last thing we want here would be to import Earth’s old problems to New Haven. I will thus urge you all to forget any past prejudices or hostilities you felt and to embrace openness and tolerance. If any of you still decide to encourage discord or strife, that someone will then be expelled from New Haven and returned to Earth. We will be very severe about this. You will enjoy freedom of expression here, but not if it is used to encourage violence, hatred or discrimination. That is all for me for tonight. My principal assistant, Thomas Brown, will now organize you in small groups which will then be led to their new residences by our staff members. Don’t worry about food at this time, as the pantries and refrigerators of your new houses have been stocked up before your arrival. Thomas?’’

Thomas Brown, a tall African-American with a short black beard, then stepped to the microphone and started showing on the giant viewing screen behind him a list of the newcomers, split into small groups according to which street they were going to live in, with the names of the staffers which were going to guide each of the groups.

Gebre and his family soon ended as part of a group of 39 Ethiopians and Sudanese under the guidance of a Japanese woman named Yoko Teno. After double-checking with the list on her electronic notepad that all her charges were present around

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her, Yoko started walking on a pedestrian paved trail, past a large dome structure with two lateral wings.

‘’To your left, you will see the village’s food market and food court, where you will be able to get fresh food or to eat at its restaurants and food counters. The foodstuff selection, while presently limited in its variety, will quickly grow in the coming weeks as our hydroponic gardens start producing fresh produces. We will soon pass by the leather shop and the wood shop, where the hides of animals butchered for their meat and the wood from cut trees will be transformed into leather footwear, leather clothing and upholstery and into wooden furniture and decorative pieces. Then, once at the rabbit and poultry farms, we will turn left onto Farmers’ Lane, the street you will live in.’’

‘’Uh, I have seen only pedestrian lanes and trails up to now and no streets for cars. How come?’’ asked one of the Sudanese ex-refugees, making Yoko nod once.

‘’Because there will be no ground vehicles in the village, mister. Any trip involving a mechanical vehicle will use air cars or air trucks, which fly around and land vertically. The village itself is quite small and compact, being 1,200 meter-long at the most, and walking around will be encouraged. That will save us from ruining hundreds of hectares of good land just to pave them over with either asphalt or concrete. All the settlements on New Haven will follow the same construction and urban planning philosophy, with nature to be respected and preserved as much as possible.’’ Gebre was truly impressed and pleased by that: he himself was all for living in harmony with nature. To live in an unpolluted and eco-friendly environment could only be a good thing.

After another 200 meters of walking, the group turned left on a long pedestrian lane bordered by a double row of dome-like houses, with a series of animal farms and enclosures visible some fifty meters behind the right-side row of houses. The houses themselves were all basically identical in size and shape, having only small variations in color between them. Each house, looking a bit like a flying saucer, had a diameter of about thirteen meters and a top height of about nine meters. Numerous windows dotted the surfaces of the houses on two levels, with much of the outer surfaces covered by solar energy panels. Behind each house, a fenced-up yard measuring some 25 meters by 25 meters contained one or two local trees, a small greenhouse and a small animal coop annex. Yoko stopped in front of the first house on the right side of Farmers’ Lane and spoke up while pointing at it.

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‘’This house, Number One Farmers’ Lane, is for the moment kept unoccupied and used as a demonstration model. Basically, all the private houses in the village are built following the same design, with small internal variations meant to better accommodate specific types of families. There are houses equipped for office workers and technicians, without private backyards and greenhouses but with a work office, and houses with private backyards, greenhouses and animal coops meant to lodge residents working in the various farms and gardens of the village. Those latter types of houses in turn vary between models made for families with between three to five members and slightly larger models made for bigger families of up to nine persons. We will now visit this house, which is part of the models made for families of up to five persons.’’

The excited group eagerly followed Yoko inside the dome house, entering it via a main entrance opening at ground level, where the bulk of the house overhang the ground level floor. Before climbing the wide steps leading up to the main floor of the house, Yoko pointed in succession the four separated rooms distributed around the central steel pillar and four curved columns supporting the structure of the house on a five-meter diameter flat circular base.

‘’The ground floor here contains a general storage room, a storage room for bicycles, which use is highly encouraged here, a water and waste management room and a batteries and electrical systems room connected to the multiple solar panels covering the outside walls of this house. I will now lead you up to the main floor, where the family living spaces and main bedroom are situated.’’ Gebre smiled to Saba as they climbed the one-meter-wide staircase behind Yoko: the house’s construction, while not of luxurious design or finish, seemed both modern and solid, with a good quality finish. Their smiles turned to grin once they were able to look around while standing on the main floor near the staircase: the dome design of the house provided for a surprising amount of open internal space, with excellent illumination and ventilation provided by the numerous windows. Some three meters above the main floor surface, the upper floor occupied only about two thirds of the upper internal circumference, providing a big section of the main floor with a high ceiling which made the place look even bigger. Young Beza then made a comment that struck her parents.

‘’Hey, I feel heavier here, like I was on Earth.’’

Yoko, on hearing the preteen girl, smiled in response.

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‘’That is because the floors of all the buildings on New Haven are equipped with artificial gravity grids set to Earth’s standard gravity. This way, while you will feel a 0.89 G gravity while walking around outside in the open air, your bodies will stay accustomed to Earth’s gravity via your times at home or work. That way, your muscles will not lose strength and you will be able to visit Earth in the future without feeling adverse effects from the gravity.’’

Saba nodded her head at that, having just been given an extra assurance that they would be able to visit Earth in the future if they wished so. Yoko then led her group in a slow tour of the main floor, showing to the ex-refugees a well equipped kitchen, an outer patio/balcony with a BBQ grill in one corner, a large, high-ceiling dining and living room area, a private study/office corner, a main bedroom with a big double bed and private bathroom, a secondary washroom and a laundry room. Already quite impressed, the Gebre family and the others then followed Yoko upstairs via a curved staircase, finding on the upper floor of the house a complete bathroom, a small bedroom with a single bed and a larger bedroom with a double bunk bed and a private washroom for that bedroom. The feature that however excited the most the children of the group was the upper floor emergency fire exit. Unlocking and opening a small door in the outer wall, near the staircase well, Yoko showed to her group a long stainless-steel slide going down to the ground level and encased inside a large diameter plastic tube.

‘’This is the upper floor emergency evacuation slide, to be used if a fire blocks the lower exits. You then just unlock and open this door, then slide down to safety. Actually, nothing would stop your children from also using it to play and have fun. I will need one adult volunteer to go down first, so that he or she can then safely remove children from the path of other, incoming children.’’

‘’I will go first, miss.’’ said Gebre. With Yoko stepping aside, he then sat on the ledge of the slide and slid down. The curved, Teflon-coated stainless-steel slide proved to be a very fast one and he had genuine fun sliding down it, emerging from the tube at high speed and then landing in a long sand square. Quickly picking himself up, he stood on one side of the sand square, in time to grab an elated Beza when she shot out of the slide tube.

‘’THIS WAS FUN, FATHER! COULD WE DO IT AGAIN?’’

‘’Uh, later, Beza, when we will be inside our own home.’’

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Once everyone but Yoko had slid down to the ground level, and with Yoko closing and locking back the emergency exit door before going down via the staircases, the group started slowly walking up Farmers’ Lane. Periodically stopping in front of a particular house, Yoko then called up the family destined to live in it and made them register their fingerprints on the entrance door’s fingerprint recognition pad, allowing them in and then continuing up the lane. The Gebre’s family ended up being assigned to house number twelve and was told to be at the village’s central park by nine o’clock tomorrow morning. Gebre felt immense joy and also relief once inside his new home: the future of his family now looked quite bright indeed. Saba, whose first move was to go to the kitchen and check the content of the pantry and refrigerator, found both to be well stocked up with fresh and frozen meats, fish, fresh milk, vegetables, fruits and fruit juices, plus an assortment of bread loaves, flat bread, cereals and other food items. She even found tea and coffee in the pantry, while the sink of the kitchen provided clean water when she turned the faucet. Bordering on tears, Saba went to hug her husband.

‘’The nightmare is over for us, Gebre. I couldn’t be happier than right now.’’

‘’Me too. Let’s organize ourselves for the night: tomorrow may be a busy day.’’

08:06 (Central Africa Time)

Monday, November 22, 2320

Kinshasa International Airport

Kinshasa, Congo, African Union

Southern Federation

Mamadou Kajeje, waiting with General Odierno and the other members of the African delegation heading to Shanghai for the meeting with representatives of the Northern Alliance and of the Spacers League, couldn’t help feel envy as the advanced space shuttle painted the colors of the Northern Alliance landed at the vertical some forty meters from his limousine. Due to the past hostilities with the Spacers League and Northern Alliance and to the dilapidated state of his Federation’s economy, he didn’t have a shuttle of his own for his official use. Thankfully, President Claudia d’Arcy had saved him from potential public embarrassment by offering to give him and his delegation a ride to Shanghai in her own shuttle. The side door of the shuttle then opened, with an access staircase deploying from under the door, and he soon saw

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Claudia d’Arcy appear in the door and wave him in. Mamadou turned his head to smile at General Odierno.

‘’Well, here we are on the big day, General. Let’s board and be on our way to Shanghai.’’

‘’With pleasure, Mister President!’’

On a signal from Mamadou, the members of the delegation walked to the waiting shuttle, pulling on their small wheels a large collection of suitcases. D’Arcy, still waiting just inside the access door, greeted Mamadou with a smile and a handshake.

‘’Welcome aboard my shuttle, President Kajeje. I will show you to your seat.’’ With the two flight attendants of the shuttle taking care of greeting and directing the other African delegates, Claudia guided Mamadou to a pair of well-padded sofas facing each other across a table, showing to him and Odierno one of the sofas.

‘’If you will please sit, we will take off in a minute.’’

‘’With pleasure, my dear Claudia.’’ replied Mamadou.

The access stairs retracted and the side door closed soon afterwards. With its navigational lights flashing, the shuttle started rising slowly at first from the ground, watched by the drivers and bodyguards who had come in the convoy of limousines and cars. The head of the presidential bodyguards suddenly caught in a flash a fast movement to his left and snapped his head in that direction. Before he could react further, something hit squarely the shuttle and exploded in a tremendous blast. The shuttle in turn erupted into a ball of flames and crashed down on the tarmac of the airport. The head bodyguard was projected back by the blast wave and was also wounded by multiple shrapnel fragments. Picking himself up with difficulty, with his ears ringing and with burning pain from his wounds, the security man looked with alarm at the shuttle, now opened up like a can and burning fiercely on the ground: only some kind of heavy missile could have done this. As for finding survivors inside the shuttle, the chances for that appeared to be close to non-existent. He still keyed the microphone of his mini-radio and spoke urgently in it.

‘’THE PRESIDENTIAL SHUTTLE HAS BEEN HIT BY A MISSILE. I WANT THE FIREFIGHTERS AND AMBULANCES HERE AT ONCE! ALSO, CORDON AND

SEARCH THE WESTERN DISTRICTS NEXT TO THE AIRPORT AND FIND THAT DAMN SHOOTER! I WANT HIM ALIVE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE.’’

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09:30 (Central African Time)

Command bridge of the A.M.S. KOSTROMA

In low Earth orbit

Tina was reviewing with Dana Durning the schedules of her various ship’s shuttles due back aboard with fresh loads of ex-refugees when Patricia O’Neil turned her head to look at her, her face ashen.

‘’Tina, a flash news is being emitted worldwide right now: there was a terrorist attack on the shuttle of President d’Arcy, as it was picking up President Kajeje of the Southern Federation at Kinshasa Airport. According to the latest news, there are no survivors from the shuttle, which was destroyed by a heavy missile. President d’Arcy, President Kajeje and General Odierno have been declared dead, along with their two entire delegations.’’

Tina suddenly felt dizzy, as blood rushed to her brain, and she had to sit down in her command chair.

‘’My God! Peace was so close at hand. Now, this! Only the Devil knows what will happen next.’’