Someday, there will be nowhere else to run.  Some will want to come.  Others will only be here because there’s nowhere else.  They will come here because it is the only place to go.

— Erich Quizibian, c. 5074 PD

3 Decem, 5249 PD

There were three children, two teenagers, and five adults, one a grandfatherly figure that for some reason reminded her vaguely of Freder.  They’d been seated around a table, a steaming kettle of tea sitting at the center of it, a loaf of bread settled in a basket, already sliced and still warm, homemade jam and sweet butter in bowls set near it with a pile of small plates and butter knives arrayed with the cups, spoons, honey and honey for the tea nearby.  Lindsay studied these ten for another moment before smiling at the youngest, a boy of about ten, who sat looking hungrily at the bread and jam so near to him.

“Here,” she said, picking up a slice and laying it on a plate.  She spooned a dollop of the jam onto the bread and slid the plate to him with a knife to spread out his jam.  The boy’s eyes lit up and he smiled shyly at her.  She smiled back, then let her gaze drift over to the adults.  “It’s not much, but I thought you might be hungry.”  She started pouring the tea and handing it out slowly.

“Thank you,” one of the men, young, in his thirties, maybe, said to her finally, smiling faintly.  “It’s very kind of you to see to us like this.”

Lindsay smiled wryly.  “I wish I could say it was for nothing.  I wanted to talk to all of you.”  She’d already been introduced as a member of the world’s governing council.  They knew that much about her.  A few had seemed surprised, largely due to her apparent youth.

She poured herself a cup of the tea and spooned in a little honey, taking a long, slow sip before setting the cup down again.  “The people from Mission Systems said they found you adrift over the Whispers.  Was that where you were trying to go?”

“Only to refuel,” the older man, the one who reminded her of Freder, said.  “We were on our way here, to E-557.”  He glanced at one of the teenagers, who stared down into her mug.  He shook his head a little.  “We heard it was safe for psychics here.  Like Mimir used to be.”

Psychics.  Lindsay hadn’t read them yet.  She wet her lips, rested her hands on the table, and extended her senses.  Of course.  Two of the children, both teenagers, and three out of the five adults were all psychic to varying degrees.  She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.  “I thought the Commonwealth protected psychics, too.”

“By law,” the old man said.  “They’re protected by law, but that can’t stop what happens on the streets at night, or in back alleys during daylight hours, or what happens in the most paranoid of small communities.  All it takes is one misstep, making the wrong person angry.  That’s all.  That’s all it takes.  You incur the wrath of one powerful person and everyone else who was even vaguely uncomfortable with your presence suddenly looks the other way, doesn’t care what happens to you.  Doesn’t care what the law says.  You are the Other, the outsider, the one that’s different, and different is wrong and cannot be tolerated.”

Lindsay sucked in a breath.  “You worked for the Commonwealth.”

The old man smiled weakly.  “For my whole life,” he said softly.  “I worked with the Inspector General’s office from the time I was an intern until six months ago, when I started planning this.”

Lindsay tilted her head slightly.  “This?”

“Our escape,” the old man said simply.  He smiled again at Lindsay and took a piece of bread, spreading a touch of jam over it and taking a bite, chewing and swallowing before he spoke again.  “The Commonwealth is very quickly becoming less and less safe, more and more unstable.  And there’s nothing any of us have been able to do to change that.  It’s been a slippery slope since the wars ended.  Everyone keeps jockeying for power even if they’re not shooting at each other anymore.  Sometimes I think it was better when everyone was shooting at each other.”  He shook his head sadly.  “I’m sorry.  I’m spouting all of this and I haven’t even told you my name.”  He extended his hand to her, smiling faintly.  “Carson Taylor-Monroe.”

Lindsay took his hand in her gloved one, shaking it with a faint smile.  The old man still wore a wedding ring on his left hand, silver polished bright but with tarnish buried deep in the knot-worked design.  “Lindsay Farragut.  Call me Lindsay.  No need to stand on ceremony in here.”  She squeezed his hand before she released it.  “Were there more coming?”

The old man took a breath and exhaled slowly.  “Another set in a couple weeks.  With my daughter.”

Lindsay nodded slightly.  “We’ll keep an eye out for them.  Do you think the bombing of the Whispers might change their plans?”

“I don’t know,” Carson said softly.  “I really don’t know.”

“It won’t,” the young man who’d thanked her said quietly.  “They’ll leave come hell or high water.  Ashley’s too terrified to stay, I know that for a fact.”

“My nephew, Paul Baylef,” Carson murmured quietly.  “The little boy is his brother, Peter.”

Lindsay smiled a little.  “It’s nice to meet you.  It’s nice to meet all of you.  Did you all know each other on New Earth?”

“Connected through a web of blood ties and friendship, but some of us had never met before we got on that ship and left.”  Paul wrapped both hands around his mug.  “You’re not going to send us back, are you?”

Lindsay blinked at him.  “Why would I do that?”

He shrugged slightly.  “There are some rumors that E-557 is closed to people who hadn’t been a part of the Foundation or the Psychean Guard.  I imagine that’s what keeps some refugees away.”

“No,” she shook her head slightly.  “We’re not closed to outsiders.”  Lindsay smiled.  “We just don’t take people who aren’t willing to adapt to our way of life here.  The sustainability clauses in the colony’s charter are gospel.  This planet won’t die the same death every other human inhabited planet is dying.  As long as you’re willing to abide by those clauses, everyone’s welcome here.”  She slowly sat back down in her chair.  “And the clauses aren’t nearly as hard to abide by as some might think, and we do have quite a few modern conveniences.  We just try to live as much with the land as we live on the land.”  Is it really so hard for us to do that?  Or is it that I’ve done it for so long it’s simply second nature for me?  “We try to be low impact.  It’s impossible to be no impact, but we try to maintain the land and its resources as best we can without living in tents and eating nuts and berries.”

“Then it’s like Quizibian wrote about?  In the codicil to Roots of Disaster?”  The blonde woman’s voice came softly as she looked up from her mug to Lindsay, pale eyes filled with a mixture of fear and hope.  “That the Foundation, for all its idealism, was simply an effort to live in balance with the natural world surrounding them?”

Lindsay nodded slightly.  “That’s exactly it.  Our forebears, the first Foundation colonists to come here, worked very hard to make sure that this planet was going to be a good home to humans but also to all of the species that were brought here to populate this planet.  Species that don’t exist anywhere else in the galaxy.  That’s part of their great legacy that they’ve left to us, that all the people who’ve come to E-557 and stayed here are the guardians of.  We’re the custodians of Old Earth’s wonders of evolution that without the Foundation and the Psychean Guard before them would have been lost forever.”

Little Peter’s eyes grew big and round.  “You mean like bears and lions and tigers and horses and deer and all the animals in Uncle Carson’s big books?  The things that are only in the virtual zoos anymore?”

I’d forgotten how much can’t live back in the Commonwealth proper anymore.  Lindsay smiled faintly and nodded.  “Yeah, we’ve got all those things.  There’s a pack of wolves that live in the woods up near my house.  They hunt the deer in the forest.  Sometimes in the winter, we see them down near the stream, waiting to see if any deer are going to come to drink.”

The boy’s voice was full of a hushed awe.  “Wow.”

The wonder in his voice brought a smile to her face.  “I’ll make sure you can see them sometime.  I promise.”

“It sounds as if this world is anything but sterile,” one of the other women said softly.  “It sounds amazing.  Looking at this place, though, you can tell that it’s anything but rustic, too.”

Lindsay shrugged a little.  “A lot of this was built before I came here.  I wasn’t born here, either—I was a refugee, too, when I was a little girl.  My aunt and I came here from Mimir.”

“You’re Guard stock?”

She nodded.  “Just like the three Marshals—the military commanders here—and a lot of other people.  There are thousands of psychics here and all over the world, and there are thousands and thousands of non-psychics.  Some of them are descendants of the Foundation, others are Psychean Guard refugees and descendants.  There’s a lot of people here living with the land and making lives that are in balance with the land and the rest of our society.”  Lindsay took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.  “Everyone helps each other where they can, supports each other.  Without that, everything would come apart.  We live according to the precepts set down by the founders and as egalitarian and self-sustainably as possible.”  She smiled faintly.  “Everyone supports everyone else.  We trade back and forth for what we need.  It all works out fairly equal in the end.”

“And you can support more people?”

“Of course.  We adapt, like everyone else does.  We just try to do it in ways that won’t eventually destroy us all.”  She looked toward Carson, brow furrowing slightly.  “You said things were getting bad on New Earth.  What’s going on?  I’ve only heard rumors and I’m not sure I can trust all that I’ve heard.”

Carson laughed weakly and shook his head.  “The conglomerates are growing in power and influence over the Commonwealth parliament.  Institutions that used to be sacrosanct are losing power and ability to carry out their appointed duties.  It’s only a matter of time before the Commonwealth is some sort of useless appendage with a flag.  A cardboard cutout.  It’s been a paper tiger for years, but no one challenged it for a long time because the peace the Commonwealth brokered benefited everyone.  It gave them a chance to lick their wounds and restore their internal power.  Now that they’re strong again, I imagine most of the larger conglomerates are thinking they don’t need the Commonwealth anymore.  All it is to them is a giant ball of red tape.”

“Some of the congloms have sent representatives before the parliament to complain about restrictions on their activities,” Paul added.  “They want more control in the areas where they have the strongest presences.  The Commonwealth hasn’t caved in to their demands yet, but it’s only a matter of time.”  He looked at the woman next to him, about the same age as he, with dark hair cut very short.  “Tell her about what’s going on in the Colonial Office, Kori.”

Kori took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.  “I was working in the Colonial Office main branch in Telanovus.  We’ve been seeing a lot of overlapping claims being filed with the Office by some of the larger and more powerful congloms.  Once upon a time, they would have just been quashed, completely rejected and thrown out, but now they’re starting to get past the clerks on the lower level and get up to the mid-level checkers.  I’ve heard rumors that some of them have even got past the mids and up to the final checkers before the claims go to the Office bigwigs.  It’s like we don’t matter anymore.”  She bit her lip.  “Three separate entities filed claims for the Whispers in the past two months.  They got quashed at the mid levels.  They shouldn’t have ever gotten that far.  They’ve tried to fire some of the clerks at the low levels that are pushing the claims through to the mid levels, but they always seem to find their way back onto the roster.  We don’t know what’s going on.”

Lindsay frowned.  If the Colonial Office is losing its ability to protect the claims made by organizations to worlds and systems, that could spell big trouble for all of the smaller congloms.  And us.  Thanks be to the powers that be that Uncle Adam’s getting us those warships from Mission Systems that the Guard commissioned before Mimir died.  “That doesn’t sound good.”

“No,” Kori said softly.  “Not at all.  Everyone’s pretty afraid.  It’s only a matter of time before none of us can do anything about it.  If Chinasia and the Compact and Idesalli get their way, the Colonial Office is just going to become one big rubber stamp for their claims and to hell with everyone else.”  She shook her head slightly.  “There’s people inside of the Office fighting it, but I think we’re all starting to realize that we’re losing ground.  Fast.”

D’Arcy didn’t tell us any of this.  Not about the psychics, not about the Colonial Office.  I refuse to believe he didn’t know.  “And the areas between Commonwealth and conglom territory?”

“They’re a mess,” Paul said quietly.  “Congloms are tightening their control over border regions and taking control of areas that they never held, taking over whole communities.  Sometimes the people are displaced, sometimes they’re just…absorbed.  A few escape when that happens, but it’s never many.  Never that many at all.  Some of the people just disappear and no one ever sees them again.”

Matches up with everything I’ve ever heard about the Compact and Chinasia, that’s for sure.  She took a deep breath an exhaled slowly.  This is bad.  Worse than I thought it was going to get this quickly.  At least they haven’t hit us here.  Not yet, anyway.  It was coming, though.  She could feel it.  “Well, I don’t foresee any of you having to worry about that here.”  She smiled a little.  “We’ll get you set up with somewhere to sleep the next few nights while you talk to Consul Watson and a few others about your futures here in the colony.  I’ll be around, of course, if you need to talk to someone.”

“Our futures in the colony,” one of the teenagers said, a question in his voice.  “I thought you said we could stay.”

Lindsay smiled weakly.  “I don’t see a reason Amelda would send you back, especially in light of what you’ve told me.  It’s mostly a discussion of where your strengths lie, what you’d like to do now that you’re here, that sort of thing.”  She shook her head.  “There are lots of things refugees end up doing, but a lot of their descendants—and some of the younger refugees—end up doing stints in our military.  It’s small, but it’s done the job so far.  Probably going to be expanding soon.”

“Did you?”

“Do what?  Do a stint in the defense forces?  No.”  Lindsay laughed a little.  “I’m not cut out for it.  My husband trains pilots.  He used to be a combat pilot from Chinasia before he came here.”

Kori’s eyes widened fractionally.  “You accept refugees from Chinasia?”

I’m shocked that’s so surprising.  It shouldn’t be the fact that we accept them is the surprising one, but the fact that anyone escaped to make it here in the first place.  “Brendan’s the only one so far.  He was a kid, probably about your age.”  She gestured toward the teenager who’d spoken.  “He was the only survivor of a landing here, off the coast.  The tides have erased pretty much all sign of it by now, though.  It was a long time ago.”  And he was the only survivor because Alana led the response team and had finished off almost all the others.

Carson smiled faintly at Lindsay.  “There’s quite a bit more to that story than you’re telling.”

Lindsay blushed.  “Maybe someday I’ll tell you.”  The door behind her opened, soft footsteps eased inside.  She glanced back to see Ezra easing the door closed behind him quietly.  He offered her a faint smile and she smiled back before she turned back to the refugees.  “Eat, drink, please.  I can’t imagine that it’ll be very long before we have a place for you to spend the night that’s more comfortable than those chairs.”  She stepped away from the table and walked over to Ezra, brow furrowing.

“Is something wrong?”

He shook his head quickly.  “No, no, nothing’s wrong.  Lots of injured, but Tiana’s got all of that well in hand.  She brought a couple of the interns she’s been working with along and they’ve been a huge help.” Ezra paused and smiled a little.  “Did you want to take Brendan home tonight?”

She started to laugh.  “You have to ask?”  Of course I’d like to take him home tonight.  I have no idea what we’ll eat, but I’d love to have him home.

“No,” Ezra admitted, smiling wryly.  “But I thought I’d make sure you weren’t tied up in something up here before I just…sent him home.”

She shook her head.  “No, it’s fine.  I’ll come pick him up on the way home.”

Ezra nodded.  “I’ll let you finish up.  I’ve got to get some of the injured prepped to move to the clinic.”

“Thanks, Ezra.”

He nodded again and slipped back out.  She turned back to the refugees and smiled, walking back toward the table.  They had begun to eat, now, though their nervousness hadn’t quite faded.

I’m thinking that won’t go away until Amelda’s seen to them.  She smiled at them anyway, reaching for one of the spare mugs of tea.  “Welcome to E-557.  Welcome home.”