63 - You Are Ever My Index!

The seed in his head seemed to be encapsulated, as if it had a shell protecting it from the surrounding code.

Terence lay on the river bank, his coat rolled up under his head, his cravat undone and his hat tilted over his eyes, fingers laced together over his stomach, booted feet crossed.  A fishing rod dangled a line down into the water, drifting downstream.  “Well, well, look who is the picture of idleness!”

Terry raised one hand to shove his hat slightly higher up on his forehead to clear his eyes but didn’t otherwise move.   

“Gerald.  I didn’t expect you.  Especially after the stinging rebuke you sent me at work.” Gerald stood just at the water’s edge with his unnecessary riding crop idly slapping his leg.  The robotic horse he’d ridden went through the motions of grazing just outside the green canopy of the neowillow they were under.  “You have a new toy.”

Terry, with his fishing rod and creel, had walked out to the His Lordship's watercourse that morning, himself.  Their family was fortunate that a First Classer had his estate right next door and had graciously allowed the second class boys to fish in his water.

“Yes.  The only real horses we can afford are my two racers... that gene line nearly bankrupted me, until they started winning.  But I can't afford a real horse, just for riding.”  He sat down next to his brother and dropped his hat and gloves on the crop in the grass.  “You know I had to spout the exact, pompous line, little brother, especially in my position as manager for the lab.”

“You did it well enough to fool me.” Terry couldn’t keep the sourness out of his tone.

“Sorry.  If it worked, then good. I had to do my best.  Look, little brother, something isn’t right with the Old Archive... if you get my chapter and verse.”

Terry blinked.  “Really?  I mean...” A kingfisher flew into the undercanopy of the tree, settled on a branch over the water. 

“-- May the Font of All Knowledge continue in his robust good health!” His brain-seed blinked at that then went quiescent again.

“Of a surety!” They were both very heartily loud in their protestations.  “Brother mine, I am so glad that my letter brought you back without forcing you to write lines!”

“Older brother, you are ever my index against all wrongdoing, my backup should I stray!”  Terry thought the words in his mouth would choke him.  They even tasted wrong as if the orthodox teaching they’d grown up with would have to be vomited up and scrubbed out from between the teeth after speaking.  “I’m so glad His Lordship renewed his gracious permission for us to fish his water.”

Here, so close to the centre of the continent, the fish in any river was perfectly edible, farmed and husbanded by the First Class who owned and maintained every surface watercourse. The kingfisher twisted its head to cast a baleful stare at the two men, flipped its wings once or twice, made a ratcheting noise and launched off its branch to follow the stream. The two men watched its flight until it was clearly out of immediate surveillance range.

“Dammit, Terry, the old paper-fart has driven off his first Heir right off the planet and is fighting as nastily with his second son!  The watchers are all over the place!  It’s as if he’s somehow convinced that there’s assassins under his unenlightened pillow!”

Terry nodded slowly, sat up, dusting off his hat with one forearm.  “So everyone is jumpy.  What’s set him off?”

“Just before he shut off the water, he had a visit from a person representing PharmaCorp.”

“Isn’t that... his major buyer?”

“For both raz’r and the lifeweeds and kickem and a dozen other native plants that we sell in thousands of bales, for enough galactic cash to keep the Fart of All Knowledge’s life as he wants it.” Terry blinked at his older brother.  When had he devolved to such crudity?

“Why would that set him off?”  Terry set his hat down and checked to make sure the kingfisher, or any recorder like it had not drifted into range without their noticing.  “Your new toy doesn’t have any jamming capabilities?”

“Of course not!  They wouldn’t sell something like that to Second Class citizens.  We might get ideas.” Gerry ran both hands through his longish hair, pulling it free from the knot at the nape of his neck.  “There’s something he’s not telling us about it all, and he shut the water down, that was going to make oceans on this planet.  Oceans and surface water year round and enough water to feed the biomats and biomass that locks all the toxic shit under good Earthan soil!”

“Hmmm.  He’s feeling threatened by something, that’s for sure.  Gerry... thanks for playing the stuffy prig.”

“Anytime, Terr.  Now... since you’re playing all nice, nice and being a good boy, I can bring the family from town.”

“It’s been a bit lonely, with just the Illiterates for company.”

“Terrance.” Gerald pulled his hair back into its queue, preparing to become publicly respectable once more.  “There’s something else.”

“Hmmm?”

“There have been assassins under the Font’s pillow.  I’m having to work with the Immoderates.”

“Oh shit.”  The Immoderates were the old man's fanatically loyal secret police.

“And it’s me that has to work with them because my lab has come up with a way to reprogram both people’s loyalty and -- as a byproduct -- their intelligence.” Gerald had been working as a lab tech for years, gradually working up to subhead of the facility, since that was the highest his class could aspire to.  A research laboratory for First Class Lord Rogers, who was Head of the Font’s entire scientific wing.

Terry sat, staring up at Gerald’s grim face, feeling as if his stomach was about to crawl up his gullet and spew itself into the grass.  “In a way that holds?  It doesn’t break down? Tell me you're joking, Gerry.”

His brother shook his head sharply. “It holds.” He looked almost skeletal in the dappled light of the riverbank.  “I think the old man is thinking of reprogramming everyone, so he doesn’t need to worry about us not keeping our place.  If this works out long term then PharmaCorp isn’t going to care about a bunch of weeds we can grow.”

“My unenlightened Page,” was all that Terry could choke out of his constricted throat.