A Just Farewell Read Online Free PDF

“I do
not. I assure you, Governor Chen, Earth is forever lost. It was
lost a long time ago. We can only do our best now to insure that
the zealotry responsible for destroying those great works or
architecture and art never reaches the stars.”
     
    “And we do that by employing the ultimate
answer?”
     
    “We do. One world will be lost, but consider
how many other worlds might be saved.”
     
    Kelly’s fingers tapped her seat’s armrest.
How did she arrive at this moment? What decision had she ever made
that placed such responsibility in her hands? She had aspired to be
a great gardener of the castles. She had only hoped to make her
family and neighbors proud by doing all she could to insure that
their gardens orbiting the remains of the old world thrived so that
the population that escaped the savages didn’t starve. She had only
wanted to play a part in the research that would discover the means
to transplant tomatoes and potatoes into alien soil, how to
increase protein yield so that settlers could thrive on moons and
planets very different from their native Earth. Yet somewhere along
the way, she had become a governor. Something strange, and
horrible, happened so that she sat in the front row of her beloved
cinema and decided whether or not she would destroy an entire
world.
     
    “Is it guaranteed?” Kelly turned to the
general. “I have to know that without a doubt that nothing about
those savages will survive. Your proposal must be failsafe, because
there won’t be anything else left to us if we fail to destroy so
much fear and hate.”
     
    General Harrison paused. “I don’t think a
perfect guarantee exists anywhere in this cosmos. But I know that,
sooner or later, that the tribes, or their zealotry, will reach our
castles and pull them down. I believe those savages will burn even
our colony worlds if we fail to extinguish them when we can. I
believe the ultimate answer gives us the power to do just
that.”
     
    “I want you to show me again how it will
work.”
     
    “I thought you would,” and General Harrison
peeked over his shoulder, as if checking to make sure no savage hid
in the heavy shadows. “Remember that what I’m about to show you
remains classified. Don’t forget the oath you shared with your
fellow governors that no one would mention anything regarding this
plan.”
     
    General Harrison removed a small hard drive
from an inner pocket of his crisp uniform jacket. Governor Chen
quickly opened a panel on her arm rest and inserted the drive. The
projector winked once as it accepted the information upon that
drive and waited for Kelly to command it to play the general’s
proposal upon the screen.
     
    General Harrison nodded. “The objective of
the ultimate answer is the complete obliteration of the
tribes.”
     
    Kelly sighed. “At the expense of our
Earth.”
     
    “I say again, Governor, we lost the Earth a
long time ago.”
     
    Kelly tapped her armrest and the projector
whirled. A glowing image of Earth floated upon the center of the
screen. The Earth diminished as if the camera retreated from the
blue planet as icons representing all fifty-one space station
castles blinked into the display. The tram lines and conduits that
linked those castles together retracted into the space stations as
each castle drifted into a precise location to surround Earth like
terminals in an otherwise invisible cage. A soothing, feminine
voice suddenly arrived to explain how the positioning of those
castles represented the final preparation the remnants of a
civilized humanity would need to take before the ultimate answer
would save them from the scourge of the savage tribes that
conquered the old world below. The voice explained how all of the
castles’ non-essential systems would momentarily divert power so
that beams of light would knit the space stations together and
encase Earth within a deadly spider web. The voice didn’t waste the
effort to attempt to explain the science behind the