HONESTY, SECRECY
2414 CE
Miriam was devastated. She couldn’t sleep. John had been so good to her. She stared from her blacked-out apartment into a night of run-on silences punctuated by flashes and booms, and lighted only by a few scattered lamps here and there. As she gazed at one lamp, it flickered, flashed, and went out.
The next day, Allan didn’t say a word to her; when she came in, he took her in his arms, closed the door, and walked with her to the sofa.
“John‘s dead.”
He sat down with her. She buried her face against his thin shoulder and stayed there for a long time.
Finally she sat up and rubbed her eyes. “Allan, I’m so sorry. I should never have–“
“Sshh. This is not your fault.” He held her close.
“Allan. Tell me more about these invitations we got.”
“Do you want to talk about this right now.”
“Yes. Before I back out again. Please.”
He sat back, his arm still around her. “What puzzles me is: where did all this come from, so fast? A year ago, nobody knew we were building starships. Now they’re issuing engraved invitations to take a cruise. Something big is going on, and I want to know what it is.”
“Well, I’m mostly concerned with us,” Miriam said, taking his hands in both of hers. His hands were thin and always cold, even on hot days; she warmed them now by pressing them together. “If you really want to go, let me think about it. My folks would be horrified. After all, they just lost Edward.”
Allan stared reflectively at the painting on his wall, a green dawn dotted with day-bright stars on some imagined planet. “You’ve got a week,” he said. “That’s what the invitation gave each of us, counting from today.”
“Oh, Allan, I need more time than that.” She agonized. As much as she hated the horrors of the streets, at least she knew what the horrors were. And her friends from med school were here: Elena, Warren, Harriet, Norman, Jing. And how would she tell her mother, who so much enjoyed following Miriam‘s career and her life?
“I wish we had more time,” Allan said.
“I can’t do this. Not this fast.” She patted his hand. “It just seems too quick, as if they’re trying to pressure everybody. Maybe it’s just a scam.”
“No, Miri, it isn’t. I checked. Hau Ren‘s local office confirmed it. They’re huge, and they’ve got no reason to lie to anybody.”
She knew he was right. Hau Ren had grown over the last two hundred years from a humble Chinese communications space station venture into the monster Sinese ‘space government’ that now operated all interplanetary passenger, freight, mining and manufacturing from Mars to Neptune, and even to the probes that now sat in the Oort Cloud in far solar space.
The owners of Hau Ren were themselves Sinese. They spoke, wrote and lived in a mighty blend of the Chinese, Tibetan, Japanese and Korean languages and cultures, and owned wealth beyond the dreams of most on Earth. Secretive, wise, always looking to the longer term, they had outplanned and outmaneuvered their rich counterparts from other continents and societies to become the leaders of the expansion of humankind into space.
Miriam reflected. To consider Hau Ren as dishonest in any way was unthinkable. They did withhold information, almost as a matter of course, but no one complained about their services and accomplishments. Those who worked for them, and many non-Sinese did, were all well-paid, well-treated and loyal. Except, of course, for those in their privately-run prisons; many governments had come to pay Hau Ren to house their inmates, no questions asked.
It took her every minute of the week to decide to go.
