Sulu was plotting a mutiny.
There was no other way to define it. I felt both exhilaration and terror at the idea.
The Snow Gardens, which were now closed for the season, was where we reconnected. There wasn't any snow on the ground and the trees had no frost or ice to speak of---they were completely barren. However, the chilly air bit at our lungs and burned our nostrils. Walking through a grove of dead trees, we noticed the cracking and snapping of the dead, withered leaves and branches underneath our boots.
When we were far into the woods, Sulu said that "a lot of people desire to escape the ship."
"Where are they supposed to be going?" I inquired sarcastically. "Out through the air lock?
Sulu frowned at me. "When we get to Antioch. Know what I'm saying?"
"Do you mean temporarily or permanently?"
"Permanently."
"It might be uninhabitable."
"It probably is, though, isn't it?"
"Yes," I conceded. "But even if it is habitable, we have really no idea what we're going to find."
"It doesn't make a difference. These people will seek to abandon the ship under any and all conditions. Join people who are already there if we locate anyone or create their own village if the place is vacant. They won't mind the difficulties; they'll just accept them as the price for getting off this accursed ship. Forever!"
"Downsiders," I said.
Sulu nodded.
We walked on in silence for a while, our breaths like disintegrating smoke. The Snow Gardens appeared to go on for kilometers when they were in season and there was snow everywhere, the ground blanketed and the densely leaved trees heavy with snow and ice. But now the boundaries were visible---the gray walls enclosing the gardens, which were in need of basic maintenance; the dark ceiling high above us, pitted and cracked, appearing nothing at all like the vast and open sky it was in season with chaotic cloud images moving across its surface.
We neared a wall and changed direction. Directly ahead of us was a half-burnt tree, its branches and trunk charred and broken.
"There would need to be a vote," I said to him at last.
Sulu snorted. "Yeah, but what kind? None of the downsiders would be voting."
"I know," I said. "On the other hand, the vote wouldn't be taken by the Executive Council, but by the full Planning Committee."
"Either one, we know how that vote would go."
"It depends on the circumstances."
"Crap," Sulu said with disgust. "They'd never agree to let people leave. Especially not downsiders. They need them to do the grunt work---cleaning and maintenance, all the manual labor this ship needs, and needing more all the time. Not to mention providing the servants for you all."
He as right, of course. Over the years the issue had come up several times in Executive Council sessions as well as in other informal discussions. With few exceptions, no one wanted to allow the downsiders to leave, unless the upper-level residents were to also leave the ship, which was as unlikely as finding anyone alive in this solar system. Those in the upper levels were afraid to leave the Enterprise after all these centuries; they were scared they would lose the power and control they had over the downsiders. They were right to be afraid.
"We can help each other," Sulu eventually said.
"You said that once before."
"And I mean it now as much as I did then."
I wasn't sure what he was after, or what he could offer in return, so I finally asked him.
"You have shipwide access," he said, "full authority over all systems."
"Not all," I corrected. "I cannot launch weapons on my own. I cannot shut down life support. I cannot change or set course...."
Sulu shook his head in dismissal. "You have access to everything we need."
He said we. So he was with them, which I had already suspected. But I wondered if his we was meant to include me as well.
"Landing ships, supplies, all of that," he went on. "We have people who can run the loaders and navigate the shuttles. But we'll need access codes for the shuttles, ship's stores, fuel allocation, launch coordinates....." He shook his head. "Too much we can't do on our own." He stopped and leaned against the charred tree trunk; a violet-and-indigo butterflies rose from a scarred branch and fluttered away. Sulu looked up at me. "We can't do it without you."
"Why should I?"
Sulu stared at me. "Because it's the right thing to do," he finally said. "We all have rights, every person on this ship. Or we should. Downsiders have no rights. We should have the right to make this decision ourselves, to leave the ship or stay, as we choose. But we don't."
"Why should I risk helping you?" I asked.
He snorted then. "You mean, how would it be to your advantage?"
"I suppose so." I didn't like it put so crudely, but I couldn't argue his point.
Sulu nodded; not in agreement, it seemed to me, but rather as if he'd expected as much.
"Your captain is in trouble. If he goes down, you go down with him. And he's almost certainly going down, no matter what we find. This is your way out."
"How?"
"You go with us."
"And if I don't want to leave?"
"Will you really want to stay when the captain has been deposed? The way everyone on the Planning Committee and Executive Council, in fact nearly everyone in the upper levels, despises you?"
"Despises? Isn't that a little harsh?"
"Harsh?" And here Sulu smiled. "Yes, but it's accurate. You must know that. You'll have no power, no influence, and my guess is that all access will be cut off, all authority canceled. You'll be nothing." He pushed off from the tree and walked away. "Think about it," he said without turning back.
I watched him walk deeper into the skeletal woods, watched my own breath form and dissipate over and over. Yes, I would think about his proposal. I had no choice.
The downsiders did all the grunt work on the ship, just as Sulu said. Although most of the ship's systems were automated, and most of the machinery was self-maintaining and self-repairing, nothing was completely goof-proof, and much manual labor was needed to keep everything running. Cleaning, servicing, and other kinds of maintenance. Also to run the manufacturing and fabrication equipment, the ag rooms, and countless other jobs. And more needed to be done each year as systems gradually faltered and broke down.
LaForge and his staff were in charge of production and schedules, coordinating all the downsider work crews. I'd never been interested in the details, but I knew that much of the labor was exhausting and some of it dangerous. People were occasionally killed. But someone had to do it. I did not make judgments one way or the other.
According to the ship's history, as recorded by Kirk and his predecessors, there had been periodic attempts by downsiders to change the ways things were done. I had even heard vague stories of a massive revolt, called the Repudiation, associated with some kind of disease epidemic three or four centuries earlier. Such efforts had never been successful. I had been through one attempted insurrection myself, six years earlier. It didn't last long.
At that time, the downsiders began negotiating reasonably enough---they asked that all the work be shared equally by those on all levels. This request was of course refused. So the downsiders threatened to cease all work. In response, we (and I'm afraid this includes me, whether or not I agreed with the actions taken; I was a part of the upper-level society, no matter how much of an outsider I was to most of them) simply cut off all the food and water conduits to the lower levels, secured the ag rooms so they could not get at our food, and shut down their recycling systems.
They held out for six days. Malcolm Croyle tried to restore all the lifelines for them, and when he was unsuccessful he tried to cut off all of ours. That, too, failed. When the insurrection was over, Malcolm was banished for life to the lower levels.
So I understood why the downsiders would want to leave, and I understood why the upper levels would never agree. And Sulu was asking me to risk sharing Malcolm Croyle's fate. He was asking too much.
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