ROB CHILSON

THIS SIDE OF INDEPENDENCE

THEY WERE TAKING UP Kansas in big bites.

Geelie hovered above, detached, observing Stark night cloaked the world under a shrunken sun, save for the pit, where hell glared. Magma glowed in the darkness where the rock, hectares wide, crumbled in the gravitor beam. Shards of the world upreared, uproared, black edged with glowing red, and lofted into the groaning air, pieces of a broken pot. The bloody light spattered on the swag-bellied ships that hung above--crows tearing at the carcass with a loud continuous clamor. Pieces of the planet fell back and splashed in thunder and liquid fire, yellow and scarlet. Old Earth shuddered for kilometers around. The glare, the heat, the tumult filled the world. But from a distance, Geelie saw, it was reduced to a cheerful cherry glow and a murmur of sound, lost in the endless night. In her long view, Kansas was a vest sunken plain of contorted rock, dusted with silent snow under a shaded sun.

"Aung Charah in Tigerclaw to Goblong Seven," Geelie's speaker said.

"Goblong Seven to Aung Charah," she said.

"Geelie, take a swing around the south side of the working pit and look at the terraces there. I think the magma is flowing up on them."

"Hearing and obedience."

Kansas was a hole walled with stairsteps of cooled lava, terraced for kilometers down to the pit of hell. As fast as the rock froze, it was tom off in hectare-sized chips, to feed the hungry space colonies.

Geelie swung her goblong and swooped down and around the work site. She peered intently in dimness, blinded by the contrast. The magma was definitely crawling up on the lower terrace of cooled rock.

"It's slow as yet, " she reported, sending the teleview to Aung Charah.

"We'll have to watch it, however, or we'll have another volcano. Check on it frequently," he told her.

"Hearing and obedience," Geelie said. She leaned forward to peer up through the windscreen.

The Sun was a flickering red candle, the cherry color of the magma. As she watched, it brightened; brightened; brightened again, to a dazzling orange. Then it faded, paused, recovered--briefly showed a gleam of brilliance that glimpsed the black rock below, streaked with snow. Then it faded, faded further, almost vanished.

The Sun was a candle seen through a haze of smoke. But each drifting mote was a space colony with solar panels extended, jostling in their billions jealously to seize the Sun. One by one, the planets of old Sol had been eaten by the colonies, till only Earth was left, passed into the shades of an eternal night. And now the Old World's historical value had been overridden by the economic value of its water, air, and rock. Also, its vast gravity well was a major obstacle to space traffic.

Noon, planetary time, Geelie thought.

She took her goblong in a long sweep around the work site, occasionally touching the visual recorder's button. Her Colony, Kinabatangan, was a member of The Obstacle-Leaping Consortium; she was part of Kinabatangan's observer team. A gleam of light caught her eye, and she looked sharply aside. Ease, she realized. Puzzled, she looped the goblong back again more slowly and sought for the gleam. She found it, but it immediately winked out.

That was odd, she thought. A bright light, yellow or even white--surely artificial--on the highlands to the east. That was disputed land, it was not yet being worked. Perhaps, she thought, observers had set up a camp on the planet. She called Aung Charah and reported, got permission to check it out. "If I can find it," she said. "The light is gone again; door closed, perhaps."

"I'm having Communications call; I'll keep you informed," Aung Charah said. She acknowledged and cruised as nearly straight as she could along the beam she'd seen. Presently the land mounted in broken scarps before her, vaguely seen in the wan bloody light of the Sun. Vast masses of shattered rock, covered with snow or capped with ice, tumbled down from the highlands. Missouri, that was what its uncouth name had been, Geelie saw, keying up her map. At this point there'd been a great sprawling city, Kansas City by name, more populous than a dozen colonies. The parts which had straggled over the border had been mined and the once vertical scarp had collapsed. East of the line, everything this side of Independence on her map had fallen into the hole that was Kansas.

"Aung Charah in Tigerclaw to Geelie in Goblong Seven," said her speaker.

"Communications reports no contact. We have no report of anyone in that area. Behinders?" Dubiously.

"Unlikely. However, I am checking. Goblong Seven out." It was three hundred years since stay-behind planetarians had been found on the mother world. Considering how bleak it now was, Geelie considered them extremely unlikely, as by his tone did Aung Charah.

She cruised slowly over the tumbled mounds of snow-covered rubble that marked the old city. Kilometers it extended, and somehow Geelie found that more oppressive even than the vast expanse of riven rock behind her. She could not imagine the torrents of people who must have lived on this deck. The average Colony had only a hundred thousand.

She peered into the dimness. The rubble showed as black pocks in the blood-lit snow. Presently she came to hover and pondered.

Possibly she'd seen a transitory gleam off a sheet of transpex or polished rock or metal in the old city, she thought. But the color was wrong. No. She'd seen a light. Perhaps there were commercial observers here from a different consortium

--not necessarily spying on The Obstacle-Leaping Consortium. There might be many reasons why commercial observers would want to keep secret. Infra-red, she thought. The oblong wasn't equipped with IR viewers, but Aung Charah had given her a pair of binox. She unharnessed and slipped into the back for them. And a few minutes later she saw a plume of light against the chill background.

It leaked in two dozen points from a hill of rubble a kilometer away. Geelie got its coordinates and called Aung Charah to report.

"I'm going to go down and request permission to land."

"Of course this `Missouri' is not part of our grant," Aung Charah said. "They --whoever they are --will probably have a right to refuse. Do nothing to involve us legally."

"Hearing and obedience."

Geelie sloped the oblong down, circled the mound, presently found a trampled place in the thin snow and kicked on her lights. Aiming them down, she saw footprints and a door in an ancient wall made of clay brick, a wall patched with shards of concrete glued together. The mound was a warren, a tumble of broken buildings run together, with forgotten doors and unlighted windows peering from odd angles under a lumpy, snow-covered roof.

She sent back a teleview, saying, "I wonder if this is an observers' nest after all."

"Any answer on the universal freqs?"

"One moment." She called, got no answer. "I'm going to lend without formal permission and bang on the door."

"Very well."

Geelie landed the oblong, leaving its lights on, and slipped into the back. She pulled her parka hood forward, drew on her gloves, and opened the door. A breath of bitter cold air entered, making her gasp. Ducking out, she started for the door.

Movement caught her eye and she looked up, to see a heavily bundled figure standing atop a pile of rubble by the wall.

"Hello!" she called.

"Hello," came a man's voice. He was not twice as thick as a normal human, she saw --he was simply wearing many layers of cloth against the biting cold. Geelie exhaled a cloud of vapor, calming herself. So crudely dressed a man had to be a behinder --and who knew how he would react?

"I-I am Geelie of Kinabatangan Colony, a member of The Obstacle-Leaping Consortium. Permission to land?"

"What? Oh, granted. That would be you, working over there in Kansas?" His tone was neutral, if guarded. His accent was harsh, rasping, but not unintelligible.

"Yes."

"What brings you here? Will you now begin on Missourah?"

"No," she said. "missourah," carefully pronouncing it as he had, "is disputed by a number of consortiums and wrecking companies. It will be years before they have settled that dispute."

"That's good to hear," said the other, and moved. With a dangerous seeming scramble, he slid down from the rubble pile.

Confronting her, he was a head taller than she, and very pale, a pure caucasoid type, in the light from her oblong. He even had the deep blue eyes once confined to caucasoids, and his beard was yellow.

"Name's Clayborn," he said, proffering his hand. "Enos Clayborn." She squeezed and shook it in the european fashion. "Pleased to meet you, U -er, Mr. Clayborn."

"Won't you come in out of the cold?" he asked, gesturing toward the door.

"Thank you." She followed him gratefully. The bleakness more than the cold chilled her.

The door opened, emitting a waft of warm air that condensed into fog. Geelie stepped in, inhaling humidity and the smell of many people, with an undertone of green plants. It was like, yet unlike, the air of a Colony; more people, less plants, she thought; not so pure an air. She was standing in a vestibule with wooden walls covered with peeling white paint; overhead a single square electrolumer gave a dim yellowish light.

Clayborn fastened the door behind her and stepped past her to open the other door, gesturing her through it. Pushing her hood back, Geelie opened her parka as she entered a room full of tubs of snow, slowly melting; piles of wooden boards; piles of scrap metal; shelves full of things obviously salvaged from the ruins; an assortment of tools. Beyond this was yet another door, opening into a large, brightly lit room full of furniture and people.

"Enos is ba --Enos has brought someone!" "Enos has brought a stranger!" "A strange woman!" The exclamations ran through the room quickly, and a couple of people slipped out. Moments later, they and several others returned.

"Folks, this is Geelie of --of --?" Clayborn fumed to her.

"Kinabatangan Colony," Geelie said. Old people, she thought. "Observer of The Obstacle-Leaping Consortium."

"Those are the ones mining Kansas, " Clayborn said. "Geelie tells me that they won't start mining Missouri" (pronouncing it differently, she noticed) "for quite a few years yet."

Clayborn in his mid-twenties was the youngest person in the room, she saw. The next youngest were four or five hale middle-aged sorts with gray in their hair, perhaps twice his age, and ranging up from there to a frail ancient on a couch, big pale eyes fumed toward her and a thin wisp of cottony hair on a pillow. A dozen and a half at most.

"How long have you been here?" she asked, marveling.

"Forever," said one of the white-haired oldsters drily. "We never been anywheres else."

Geelie smiled back at their smiles. "I am awed that you have survived," she said simply, removing her parka and gloves.

"This is our leader, Alden," said Clayborn pulling up a chair for her.

"The last hundred years was the worst," said Alden.

The behinders, having overcome their shyness, now crowded forward and Clayborn introduced them. Geelie bowed and spoke to all, shook with the bolder ones. When she seated herself, one of the women handed her a cup on a european saucer. She looked at them with awe, reflecting that they must be a thousand years old.

"Brown," she heard them murmur. "Brown. Beautiful --such a nice young woman. Such beautiful black hair."

She sipped a mild coffee brew and nodded her thanks. "The last hundred years?" she said to Alden. "Yes, it must have been."

For over nine hundred years Earth had been in partial shadow and permanent glaciation, but the Sun still shone. Then the greedy colonies broke their agreements and moved massively into the space between the Old World and the Sun. Earth passed into the shadows, and shortly thereafter they began to disassemble it.

"'Course, our ancestors laid in a good supply of power cells and everything else we'd need, way back when Earth was abandoned by everybody else," Alden said. "No problems there. But how much longer will the air last?"

"Oh, maybe another hundred years," she said, startled. "Freezing it for transport is a slow process."

"And the glaciers? They came down this way back when the Sun shone bright." Geelie smiled, shook her head. "It's so cold now that even the oceans are freezing over, so the glaciers can't grow by snowfall. Also, frankly, the glaciers were the first to be mined; that much fresh water was worth plenty. Of course the oceans are valuable too, and they have been heavily mined also."

"The snowfall gets thinner every year," said Clayborn "We have to go farther and farther to Bet enough. Soon we'll be reduced to thawing the soil for water." Geelie's response was interrupted by the discreet beeping of her wrist radio. She keyed it on. "sung Charah in Tigerclaw to Geelie in Goblong Seven," it said in a tiny voice, relayed from the "oblong.

"Geelie to Aung Charah," she said into it. "I have received permission to land and am with a group of native Earthers."

"Behinders," said Alden drily.

She flashed him a smile and said, "Behinders, they call themselves."

"Er --yes," said Aung Charah, sounding startled. "Er --carry on. Aung Charah out."

"Hearing and obedience. Geelie out."

"Carry on?" Alden asked.

Geelie sobered. She had been excited and amazed at meeting these people and had not thought ahead. "Well," she said. "He represents the Consortium and dares not commit it. You are not his problem."

"We never thought of ourselves as anybody's problem," said Alden mildly. "More coffee?"

Geelie bowed to Lyou Ye, who stood to respond, then reseated herself behind her desk and frowned.

"Behinders," she said. "They must be the very last. It's been what, three hundred years since any have been found, that lot in Africa." She looked sharply at Geelie." "sung Charah is right, they're not our problem. They live in

`Missouri,' however it's pronounced, outside our grant. They're the problem of the Missouri Compact."

"But those people won't settle their disputes for years, possibly decades," said Geelie. "We can't just let these behinders die."

Lyou Ye glanced aside, frowning, and tapped her finger. She'd come a long way, Geelie knew, in a short time. A very beautiful woman, ten years older than Geelie, with waving masses of dark red hair and the popular tiger-green eyes contributed by gene-splicing, she was commonly called Ma Kyaw, "Miss Smooth." But she was intelligent and fully aware of the power of public opinion.

"Very well, if you can find a Colony willing to sponsor them, I'll authorize shipping to lift them out, " Lyou Ye said abruptly. "It won't take much, fortunately, by your description. Declining population ever since the Sun was shaded, I take it, with only this Ènosclayborn' in the last generation. They'd have ended soon enough. You found them just in time for him," she added. "He's probably still a virgin."

"I'd personally like to thank Geelie for all the time and trouble she's put in for us, her and all her folks," said Alden.

Geelie flushed with pleasure as they applauded her.

"Now, I'll just ask for a show of hands," Alden continued. "All them that's in favor of flyin' off into space to a colony, raise your hand." Geelie leaned forward eagerly.

There was a long pause. The behinders fumed their faces to each other, Geelie heard a whisper or two, someone cleared a throat. But no one looked at her. Alden stood looking around, waited a bit, then finally said, "Don't look like there's anybody in favor of the city of Independence movie' into a colony. But that don't mean nobody can go. Anybody that wants to is naturally free to leave. Just speak to me, or to Miss Geelie here."

Shocked, horrified, Geelie looked at them. Someone coughed. Still no one looked at her. She fumed a stricken gaze on Enos Clayborn. He looked thoughtful but unsurprised. And he had not raised his hand.

So silent was the room that the purring of a mother cat, entering at the far side with a squirming kitten in her mouth, seemed loud.

Alden fumed to her. "New ideas, like flyin' space, sometimes is hard to take in,

" he said kindly. "We had since yesterday to talk it over, but still it's a new idea. Enos, you might take the little lady back to Gretchen's nest and give them kittens a little attention."

Enos smiled at her, and faces were fumed from the cat to her, smiling in-relief.

"She's bringing her kittens out," Geelie heard them murmur. "They're old enough for her to introduce them around."

Numbly she followed the tall young man back through the warren of abandoned passages to the warm storage room where the cat had her nest.

When he evidently intended merely to play with the kittens, she said, "Enos, why

--why didn't they vote to go?"

"Well, we're used to it here. As Alden said, it takes time to get used to new ideas." He handed her a kitten. "This is the runt --the last born of the litter. We named her Omega --we'll give them all shots in another month or two; she'll be the last cat born on Earth."

Absently she took the purring kitten, a tiny squirming handful of fur. "But you'll all die if you don't go!"

"Well, we'll all die anyway," he said mildly. "Ever notice most of us are old folks? A lot aren't so far from dying now. They'd just as soon die in a place they know. We've been here a long time, you know."

"But --but --you're not old! And your parents, and Alden's daughter Aina, and Camden--"

"I wouldn't know how to act, anywhere but here," he said mildly. He smiled down at the proudly purring mother cat.

GEELIE, LYOU YE, and Aung Charah sat in the small conference room. Lyou Ye grimaced. "So that was their reaction? I'll admit it wasn't one I'd foreseen. All the other behinders in history agreed to go. Some of them signaled to us."

Geelie shifted her position uneasily, cross-legged on a pillow, and nodded unhappily. "I even offered to send them to a european Colony, so they'd be among familiar-seeming people, but that didn't help."

Aung Charah shook his head. "We're Betting a lot of publicity on this," he said.

"The newsmedia are not hostile yet. But what will they say when the behinders'

refusal becomes known?"

Lyou Ye frowned. "They'll blame us, depend upon it. Have any of them interviewed the behinders?"

Aung Charah shook his head. "They have to get permission from the Missouri Compact, which is very cautious. These planetarians have rights too. Invasion of their privacy...." He shook his head again.

"If we leave them here to die, we'll certainly be blamed," said Lyou Ye. "I'm tempted to order Consortium Police in to evacuate them forcibly." Geelie sipped her tea, looking at "Ma Kyaw." That's your sort of solution, she thought. Direct, uncompromising, get it done, get it over with. And somebody else can pick up the pieces, clean up the mess.

"Alden would certainly complain if that were done," she said, speaking up reluctantly. "The media attention would be far worse. Violation of planetary rights...they may even have some claim to the old city of Independence. The Missouri Compact may legally have to wait for them all to die to mine that part of its grant."

Lyou Ye grimaced again. "I suppose you're right."

Aung Charah set his cup down. "Media criticism won't hurt the Consortium if we leave them here. The criticism we'd get if we violate their rights might affect us adversely. Investors--"

Lyou Ye was a "careerman." She nodded, frowning, lips pursed. Geelie looked around the room, so unlike the comfortably cluttered warren in which Enos lived. In one wall, a niche with an arrangement of flowers, signifying This too shall pass; the woven screen against another wall, with its conventional pattern of crows over tiny fields curving up in the distance; the parquet floor with its fine rich grain; the subtle, not quite random leaf pattern of ivory and cream on the walls; the bronze samovar and the fantastically contorted porcelain dragon teapot, the only ornate thing in the room.

Enos was right, she thought. He would not know how to live in a place like this. She thought of the world that was all he had ever known, a place of snow-powdered rock and brooding, perpetual night, a red-eyed Sun blown in the wind. A bare, harsh, bleak place without a future. For him, in the end, it could only mean tending the old "folks" as one by one they died, and then the penultimate generation, the generation of his parents, as they also grew old. At last he would be left alone to struggle against the darkness and the cold until he too lay dying, years of solitude and then a lonely death.

"There's no help for it," said Lyou Ye broodingly. She looked at Geelie. "You'll have to seduce Enosclayborn."

Geelie swept snow from a rock onto a dustpan, dumped it into a bucket.

"Don't get it on your gloves," Enos said. "It's a lot corder then it looks."

"How much do you have to bring in each day?"

"Not much; I usually overdo it. I enjoy being outside. The air is clean and cold, and I can see so far."

Geelie shivered, looking around the lands of eternal night. "Doesn't the shaded sun bother you?"

"It's always been like that." He looked around at the dim, tumbled landscape, emptying his bucket into the tub. "It's always been like this. Okay, that should be enough. Take the other handle and we'll carry it in."

In the vestibule they put the tub of snow in the row of tubs, and shed their parkas. Despite the slowly melting snow here, it seemed warm and steamy after the sharp cold air outside. Still, remembering the bleak world without, Geelie shuddered. She would have moved close to Enos even if she had not planned to do so. He put an arm around her, not seeming particularly surprised.

"You'll soon get used to it yourself," he said tolerantly.

"Never," she said, meaning it, cuddling close, her arms around him. She lifted her face for a kiss, nuzzling her breasts against his chest.

Enos put his palm on her cheek and pushed her gently aside. "Let's not start something we can't finish," he said.

Geelie blinked up at him, uncomprehending. "In your room --or the kittens' room

--out in the passages--" Independence was a maze of warm, unused, and private passages.

He cupped her face with both hands and looked fondly at her. "Thank you very much, Geelie, for your offer. I will treasure it all the days of my life. But your place is in Kinabatangan, and mine is here, and we should not start something we cannot finish."

The pain of rejection was like a child's pain --the heavy feeling in the chest, the sharp unshed tears. Then came a more poignant grief --grief for all that she could not give him, that he would not take from her.

"Enos!-Enos!" she said, and then her sobs stopped her speech.

"O Geelie, Geelie, " he said, his voice trembling. He held her close and stroked her hair.

ALDEN CAME AND SAT beside her in the cozy common room of Independence, where she sat watching Jackson Clayborn and Aina Alden play checkers. "You look a little peaked," he said quietly.

She slid her chair back and spoke as quietly. "I suppose so."

"Enos will be back soon enough. He's lookin' through his things for something to fix that pump in the hydro room. Enos'd druther fix things and tinker around than play games like that." But he was looking inquiringly at her.

"Well, someone has to keep things going," she said wanly.

"Ye-ah." Alden drawled the word out, a skeptical affirmative. "Someone does, though we got a few hands here can still tend to things." Abruptly he said, "By your face and your attitudes, these last few days, I reckon you ain't persuaded Enos to go with you?"

Geelie looked sharply at him. "No," she said shortly.

"I was afraid of that," he said, low. Startled, Geelie leaned toward him. "Did you think I was fightin' you? No, I was hopin' you'd persuade him. God knows you got persuasions none of us can offer. We can't offer him nothing. " Passionately she whispered, "Then why won't he come with us? All he says is that his place is here --and after that he won't say anything! Why? " Alden's response was slow in coming. "I suppose he can't say why because he don't know how. Why he should feel his place is here, I don't know. My place is here; I'm an old man. But he don't listen to me any more than he does to you." He shook his head. "If he stays, what'll he have? All he'll have is Independence, as long as he lives --the man from the Missouri Compact explained that. That's all. I guess," slowly, "for him, that's enough." The kitten, Omega, jumped from Geelie's arms and began to investigate the room, not having sense enough to stay away from Lyou Ye. She was "Miss Smooth" no longer, stalking about the room and visibly trying to contain her anger.

"A flat refusal! I can't believe he refused you. Do you realize there've been over seven thousand Colonies offering them a place to live --over five thousand offering to take the whole group. And we can't get even the young one to leave Earth! What is wrong with him?"

"He says his place is there," said Geelie, nervously watching the kitten prowl.

"He's been brainwashed by those old people," Lyou Ye said.

"Not intentionally," Geelie said. "I discussed it with them, and they prefer to stay, but they would be happy to see Enos go. They know there's no future for him there."

"And for some uncommunicable reason, he thinks there's no future for him with us," said Lyou Ye, more calmly. She shook her head, ran her hands through her mass of auburn hair. "I suppose he's been unconsciously brainwashed from birth, knowing that he was the last one, that he was going to take care of them and die alone, and he's accepted that. It won't be easy to break that kind of life-long conditioning. Well." She shook Omega away from her ankle and fumed to Geelie.

"Your tour as Observer is almost up. Would it be worthwhile to extend it and give you more time to work on him?"

Geelie put her hand to her chest. "No," she said, and cleared her throat. "No, it would not be worthwhile. I...can do nothing with him."

"We'll send somebody else, but I don't have much hope. These cold-hearted euros can be so inscrutable." Lyou Ye sat and examined Geelie. "You're right. It's time we got you away from Earth," she said gently.

The weather in Kinabatangan was clear and calm when Geelie resumed from Earth. She pulled herself to the bubble at the axis and looked down at the tiny, idyllic fields and villages below, past the terraces climbing the domed end of the vast cylinder. She could have walked down the stairs, but took instead the elevator. At Deck level she was met by her cousins and siblings, the younger of whom rushed her and engulfed her in a mass hug, all laughing and babbling at once, a torrent of brown faces.

Half-floating in a golden mist of warmth, brilliant sunshine from the Chandelier, and love, Geelie let them lead her between the tiny fields and over the little bridges. She breathed deep of her ancient home, air redolent of the cycle of birth and death. They came presently to her small house in the edges of Lahad Datu. Frangipani grew by its door and squirrels ran nervously across its roof. A flight of harsh black crows pounded heavily up and away from the yard, where the tables were.

They'd spread a feast for her, and she ate with them and listened while they told her of the minute but important changes that had occurred in her absence. As she floated in this supporting bubble of light and warmth, Kinabatangan came back to her. All was as if she had never been away.

Her lover had found another, in the easy way of Kinabatangan, and that night Geelie slept alone. And in sleep she remembered again the bleak black plains of righted Earth, and the man who inhabited them, who had chosen to wander alone forever under a frozen Sun.

She awoke and had difficulty remembering whether she was in Kinabatangan, dreaming of Independence, the half-seen land of Missouri stretching stark around it --or in Tigerclaw dreaming of Kinabatangan. She looked around the tiny room with its paper walls, its mats, the scent of frangipani in the air --she was in Kinabatangan, in her own little house, on her own mattress on the floor, and it was over. All over.

Omega yawned, a tiny pink cavern floored with a delicately rough pink tongue. The kitten was curled on the other pillow. Geelie reached for her.

"Oh! You little devil," she cried, flinging the kitten aside. Startled, Omega had bitten her hand, and now stood in the middle of the room, looking at her with slit eyes.

Furious, Geelie leaped from her bed. But she could not stand, all the strength went out of her legs and she sank to the floor, sobbing. "Omega, Omega, I'm sorry, s-sorry." Grief as great as for a planet tore at her. Omega crept cautiously over and sat staring up at her, watching Geelie weep.