The Sword and the Plough Read online

  * * *

  Lars switched on the power. The cooling fans came back on. The hover motors lifted the little machine into the air. He lowered the repaired ploughshare into position, ever careful to ensure the share was angled downward. A laser-share fired horizontally could devastate everything in its path for upward of 100 metres. Such accidents were always catastrophic, but fortunately few.

  “Well, here goes,” Lars murmured pulling back on the controlcolumn and squeezing the trigger. “Crunch time!”

  The plough shuddered – a plume of dark smoke erupted. A white-hot beam bleached a four-metre long ellipse in the black rock field ahead of him. The rock glowed red and began to crack and shift – shattering, crumbling – disintegrating into soil.

  Lars waved triumphantly at the far-away rock plough shimmering atop a lake like mirage on the stygian landscape.

  “She’s fixed, Helen. I’m back in action.”

  “Okay. That’s a relief. We can’t afford any more workshop repair bills,” his sister responded, then queried, “Lars, are you calling for a break?” Her voice sounded tired.

  Lars grinned. “Why, Sis, is the heat getting to you?”

  “I can go on as long as you can,” his sister retorted sharply. “But while you’ve been sitting admiring your handiwork I’ve been working in this abominable heat.”

  Lars nodded. “Okay,” he answered. “A rest break is definitely in order. I’ll come over.”

  “I can keep going,” Helen’s voice was defiant now. “You don’t need to baby me.”

  “Helen!” Lars spoke this time as an older brother. “I was only kidding. I need a rest even if you don’t. If I keep going much longer in this heat, I’ll drop. Meet you at the trailer.”

  * * *

  The trailer was a cheerful canary yellow in colour, with a green awning down one side shading a table and two chairs. Towed by plough to each new field site, the trailer sat awaiting its owners, its refrigerator humming over its contents of food and drink, a haven from the punishing heat.

  Inside, two long bunks ran its length, beneath which medical supplies, clothing, and extra spares for the ploughs were stowed.

  As well, Lars and Helen often made use of the trailer to sleep over and make an early start. Each new field that came under their ploughs was farther from the Kelmutt homestead than the one before. A sea of green fields, with borders of young trees, already extended from the homestead centre for nearly a kilometre radius.

  * * *

  “To the queen!” Lars raised his glass of ice-cold orange juice in obeisance to their monarch.

  “To the queen!” his sister echoed raising her own glass.

  Lars, and his sister, Helen, were second generation Trionians, but their loyalty to Earth’s monarchy was never in question.

  They were relaxing in loungers in the green shade of the trailer’s awning, the colours of their little oasis in stark contrast to the black lava plains beyond. Here and there, hundreds of metres apart, small volcanic cones jutted upward, incongruous elements in an otherwise flat terrain.

  Helen, at just 16, was nearly four years her brother’s junior, but at 1.78 metres, almost as tall. Her brown hair, the ends blonded by the sun, and the radiant blue eyes, which matched her brother’s, left no one in doubt they were looking at siblings.

  “Does that make you feel better?” Lars asked, watching his sister gulp down her juice. A broad grin lit his face.

  Helen leaned across as if to cuff her brother – but relented.

  “Don’t try and tell me you didn’t need a break any less than I did,” she said, and then sighed. “Yes, better, much better,” she admitted.

  She leaned back in the lounger and closed her eyes. “Don’t mind me,” she murmured. “I’m just going to doze off for a moment.”

  Lars smiled. “Go ahead, Sis, I think I might join you. Despite the breakdown, we’re well ahead of schedule. We’ve got all the time in the cosmos.”

  High above them, a peregrine falcon floated on high in her world, wings outstretched over the blue deep of the sky. The small dark eyes surveyed the green and black land beneath for the giveaway signs of life that would focus the cruel curve of beak and talons in a plummeting testament of death.

  The bird and her soaring grace were perfection. To her, it mattered not that her ancestors had evolved on another world, in another star system, across a galaxy’s timeless depths. She would be forever unaware that man, remembering Noah, had brought her kind, along with hundreds of other species, to help repopulate the black planet.

  Helen sat up suddenly. “Lars, wake up. I’ve been thinking.”

  Lars opened his eyes reluctantly.

  “Have you ever thought of doing something else? I mean – like leaving Trion and going to one of the other Commonwealth planets or maybe even Earth, herself?”

  She paused, her sapphire eyes suddenly gleaming. “Now that’d be something, wouldn’t it,” she continued excitedly, her thoughts accelerating rapidly as she spoke. “We’d have the money if we sold the farm. We could change our whole lives, become two different people, not Lars and Helen Kelmutt – dirt farmers, but people who travel – people who have time to stand for hours to catch a glimpse of the queen. We could visit the royal court. I know all about that. The deputy governor came and spoke to us about the history of the royals last year at the school prize-giving.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “He told us about the later 21st century on Earth. How it was divided up into nations; how politically corrupt it had become, and the way it went from one economic disaster to another. How civil war had become rife throughout the globe.

  “He explained how the most important positions of power on Earth in those days were controlled by people who knew nothing of government – had no real commitment. Power went to those who were rich or backed by the rich; people who could articulate ideas and make promises, even if they didn’t intend or even know how to keep them.” She shook her head. “And others just stole power through war and rebellion.”

  Lars nodded. “I remember. We had the same speech.”

  “But do you know your dates?” his sister asked, her tone all at once challenging.

  “Yep! 2081, the peoples of the Earth rebelled against their leaders. No such world revolution had ever happened before.”

  Helen nodded. “Right! But in what month?”

  “August.”

  “Day?”

  Lars shook his head. “Sorry, can’t remember.”

  “The 17th – starting in Australasia and rippling like ah – um – Mexican Wave right round the globe.”

  “What’s a Mexican Wave?”

  Helen shook her head. “I have no idea.”

  “Okay – the 17th. I’ll take your word for it.”

  “But Lars, more importantly, what was the reason?”

  Her brother’s eyes squeezed into a thoughtful squint for an instant before he answered.

  “Hmm! I know this one. The threat of another world war. There had been two already and many other conflicts almost as critical. A third would have destroyed the planet.”

  “Good answer! Who took control of the Earth then?”

  “The media,” Lars replied promptly. “They united the peoples of the Earth through global satellite television and the various social media of the day, and warned them of the perils of continuing to live as separate nations.

  “They organized the World Debate, with all the most famous journalists and political commentators from around the planet putting forward their ideas about which form of world government would be the best.”

  “What regime did they eventually choose?”

  “Well that’s obvious, isn’t it? The monarchy!”

  “Right! But why did they choose it?”

  Lars frowned. “Hmm, not so easy, don’t forget I had this speech some years ago now.”

  “Give up?”

  “No – never!”

  Lars studied the new fields about them as
if they might somehow hold the answer. In places, the black soil was still smoking.

  “Ah, they chose the monarchy,” he said at last, “because ah…it had a heritage of training, and ah… a tradition of personal sacrifice.”

  His thoughts began to quicken and the words raced to his tongue.

  “And royalty were born and bred to rule – had generations of rule in their blood. Personal wealth, power and acclaim were already theirs. The one ambition left was to govern and to govern well.”

  Helen clapped her hands. “Star stuff, Lars, well done. I could almost hear the deputy-governor speaking.”

  Lars grinned. “Yep, it’s all coming back. I had to learn it off by heart at the time.”

  Helen’s gaze narrowed. “But now answer this. To what Earth nation does our monarchy owe its beginnings?”

  Lars opened his mouth to speak, but no words came.

  “Give up?”

  He smiled. “Yes Helen, this time I give up.”

  Helen gave a smirk of triumph. “Well, I know the answer,” she said. “It was…” she started, then broke off, a perplexed look on her face.

  She began to laugh. “Well, I don’t remember the name of the nation, but the monarch at the time was Elizabeth III.”

  “Who were Elizabeth I and II?” Lars queried.

  “I don’t know. The deputy-governor didn’t say. But the main point is that Elizabeth III managed to unite all the nations of the Earth into one people. And of course we celebrate it now, every year, with Renaissance Day.”

  “I suppose I have to ask how she achieved such unity,” Lars teased.

  “By the promotion of space exploration,” Helen replied smartly.

  “Took the population’s collective mind off the problems at home, eh?”

  Helen nodded. “Yes – and then later she encouraged hundreds of thousands of pioneers to venture out to the newly discovered Goldilocks* worlds to take the population pressure of the Earth and provide respite for the home planet’s rapidly dwindling resources.”

  “Wow, you seem to know the deputy-governor’s speech off by heart like a teacher robot,” Lars observed, grinning broadly.

  “He provided an electronic handout,” Helen explained. “Anyway,” she continued, “that’s where we come in or at least our grandparents, or maybe our great grandparents.”

  “But that wasn’t under Elizabeth III,” Lars objected.

  “Oh, I know that. It would have been under Elizabeth IV, or maybe a George or a William – it took generations. For every planet that could sustain life, hundreds were barren.”

  * * *

  By the third year of Elizabeth III’s reign, the first interstellar spaceships had successfully returned from their voyages of exploration.

  Continuing sophistication of quantum physics* experiments in the middle years of the 21st century had resulted in the development of the photon engine. Light drawn into the engine was accelerated many times faster than standard light speed (SLS) via a photon accelerator powered by dark energy*, powering the spaceship forward on a beam of light.

  Although the speeds of military craft were usually kept secret, freighters and other such craft could reach speeds up to SLS x 7.

  However, all spacecraft travelling above light speeds required a mass compensator, which used the properties of antimatter* to safeguard the vessel from disintegrating at light speeds and above; opposite physics derived from an opposite world.

  There were, however, distinct limitations and dangers to this device, and it was therefore always heavily shielded and centred in the bowels of the ship as an added safeguard; it was as precarious and hazardous as the powder magazines of old.

  The laws of physics can sometimes be bent, but are broken at our peril.

  Nevertheless, even at such speeds the galaxy is so vast, travel to other planetary systems would not have been achievable had it not been for the discovery of a series of wormholes* at the edge of the solar system in the latter part of the 21st century. The wormholes allowed short cuts to other parts of the galaxy and the discovery of more remote Goldilocks worlds. However, to date, no known spacecraft has journeyed beyond the Orion Spur *.

  * * *

  A puff of air rippled the green bringing with it the scent of distant fields already under growth, and, on the air, the faint roar of a faraway laser-share as another farmer’s plough exploded the black rock into soil.

  For a while, brother and sister sat in silence, gazing out at the black soil vista that was their world. Here and there, spurts of green proclaimed the presumption of weeds in the new fields. They too had clandestinely made the long voyage to find a home in this new world.

  * * *

  “Elizabeth V,” Helen said abruptly.

  “What about our magnanimous queen?” Lars enquired.

  “I was just thinking – day dreaming really – what it must be like to have a number after your name; to be loved and respected by millions – to be royal.”

  Lars grinned and made a sweeping bow as best he could from his lounger.

  “Helen the First,” he exclaimed in his most sonorous tones. “Our most glorious and sovereign majesty.”

  “Yes, and Lars the Last, if you’re not careful,” his sister countered. “But just think,” she went on, “Earth, Megran, New Terra, Lumai, Theti, Trion, all belonging to you; the whole Commonwealth of Planets to do what you like with.”

  Lars scooped up a handful of the black soil and let it sieve through his fingers. Its quality and texture swelled his farmer’s pride.

  “I don’t think the Royal Family would think like that,” he mused. “They’re born to it – it’s their job, like ours is ploughing fields and planting. It’s just the way things are.”

  Helen shrugged. “Maybe, but they do have everything.” She gazed out at the black fields. “Just think what it would be like to live in a big city – a city with a population larger than all of Trion’s people put together…” Her voice had taken on a faraway timbre. “Elizabeth V – oh, how I should love to meet her – see her crown, her jewels, her palace…”

  * * *

  The Royal Family had won the hearts and minds of Earth’s peoples right from the start.

  Elizabeth III had been the perfect choice to begin the new dynasty. Tall, blue-eyed, raven-haired, and with a film star’s fortunate combination of features, she was ‘every inch a queen’ – as tabloids around the world had gushed. The sudden swell of popular interest in the idea of monarchy – a notion that had been redundant for some time – persuaded the new world officials of the wisdom to restore a connection with the past and manufacture a folklore that bound the global population to the new proposals.

  They called in historians to look back to the first Elizabeth. Everything about the ancient queen came under scrutiny, and many of the trappings from her era were uplifted to the new regime.

  The new queen called upon her nearest relatives to support her, distant relatives at home and abroad were reinstated, ancient names and lineages from other nations were resurrected, and a broad ranging modern aristocracy came into being to assist the new world administration.

  If the petty national type-castings and hatreds steadily declined under the new one planet concept, so too did the host of ancient faiths and doctrines. Humanism became the new conviction – such were the expectations and aspirations the new world regime represented.

  * * *

  Lars leaned back, his hands clasped behind his head, and considered his sister as she spoke on about the queen and her riches.

  Helen had untied her ponytail and shaken loose her hair so that it framed her smooth-skinned oval face. Despite the rigours of her field hand tasks, her home made creams and lotions had kept her skin soft and feminine. However, she had not been able to stop the black dust from griming her hands and fingernails.

  She looked older somehow, with her hair down, and once more Lars reminded himself that his sister was no longer the skinny little kid with the yellow ponytail who worked as
hard as he did in the new fields every day. Rather, she was a young woman with an independent future of her own. Again, he felt the responsibility he bore as her older brother and the only family that she had.

  Her words faded from his consciousness as his mind drifted. Five years earlier, their parents, Hannah and Sven Kelmutt, had died in a shuttlecraft crash on the eve of their long dreamed of holiday departure for the home planet they had never seen – Earth. Since then, brother and sister had worked as equals on the new farm. The only inequality had occurred when Lars insisted that Helen continue with her education. Despite her protests, insisting she was his equal, Lars had seen to it that Helen attended the school in the nearby town of Vegar at least once a week.

  * * *

  Lars must have closed his eyes briefly, for suddenly he was aware of his sister’s voice as shrill as a banshee in his ear.

  “Lars, you’re asleep!” Her look had assumed a fierce scowl. “Is that how you listen to me?”

  Then, at once, she was laughing as he groped for an answer.

  “I was going on a bit – I know.” She gave an exaggerated sigh. “Just girlish dreams.” Her sapphire eyes looked at him shrewdly. “By the way, what were you thinking about?”

  “When?”

  “Just now.”

  “I was thinking what an attractive sister I have,” Lars answered truthfully.

  “Liar!” she growled in fake anger. Then quizzically, her head cocked to one side. “What else about me?”

  Lars shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know – remembering mostly, I guess. Remembering when we were young and our parents were still alive and how much I miss them. What dreams and hopes they would have had for us. And how, here we are now, working from dawn to dusk at the ploughs.” He paused, all at once somewhat sheepish. “I’m sorry; I suppose you often think of them too.” He shook his head. “How different everything was then.”