Four days. I think about of the things I have seen and the nightmares I still have; the dreams I once nurtured and how they were destroyed. It all comes down to the events of four fateful days, and I remember those days more vividly than anything else in my long life; more clearly than I recall my Mother's face and more powerfully than I remember the circle of my family. I close my eyes and I see Earth receding into space, but when I sleep I am haunted by four days.
Some called it The Union of the Worlds; others called it The Occupation. When the Imperial Army first came to Earth many welcomed it as a stabilising force and a strong defence in uncertain times. It soon became clear, even I think to the human members of the Union Government, where true power had come to reside.
Perhaps the problems would not have reached the level they did had the Empire made use of only human constituted forces. But there were never enough collaborators, and the situation became critical within a few short months of the deployment of the so-called Drezzi Peace Battalions.
There are numerous sentient races in known space but there was always something different, something dangerous in the relationship between the humans and the drezzi. As the drezzi presence grew on Earth resentment, anger and incidents of violence increased rapidly. The drezzi made no secret of their contempt for humankind; it was clear that for them the humans were no more than a conquered race, certainly not the "members of the Imperial family" that official propaganda might have suggested. It would be unfair to ignore the fact that many humans took against the drezzi long before their soldiery had given real cause for fear and hatred.
Of course I was only a little boy when the drezzi came to Earth. I was hardly aware of what the grown-ups meant when they discussed the latest policies of the drezzi regional governor, and in fact I had hardly seen more of the drezzi than their small transports passing overhead.
We lived in a huge building, one of eight monstrous blocks in our neighbourhood on the edge of London. It was rough; weapons were a part of everyday life there. It is all rubble and rats now.
The day the Peace Battalion came to pacify the neighbourhood I was with my Mother. Well, I shall put it this way: there were three women there and although I cannot recall her clearly, when I think of one of them in particular I remember love and I feel loss.
The firing started shortly after the transports came. Many more transports than usual and all landing in the open areas between the great hulks of flats.
The women stayed low on the floor and I remember being held. One of them went to the window because there had been an explosion in another building; she had to look. We were some floors above the ground but the firing sounded nearer all the time. The woman who held me, my Mother perhaps, sobbed a little; her face was wet against my cheek.
'This is no raid' the woman at the window cried in a tone even I recognised as hysterical. 'They're shooting at everyone.'
'It's pacification' my Mother yelled as someone on or near our level returned fire on the drezzi below. The women knew that our situation had just become much more dangerous and in moments I was being carried, and they were running at break-neck pace down long corridors and dingy stairwells. I remember terrified people and the smell of smoke. I could hear screaming and sporadic sounds of battle.
I must have been a heavy burden for the women. I was passed around and often swung from shoulder to shoulder as we went. I wondered why there were people sleeping on the ground until I saw a man whose face was missing, ripped from his skull, and then I understood that they were all dead.
An age later we burst out into the sunlight. It was searingly hot and bright, there were no clouds, only columns of black smoke; the smells of burning plastics and searing flesh.
Moments later I was falling towards the ground and the woman who had been carrying me was tumbling away; her torso was shattered and her head was missing. As I landed I looked down and I was covered in her blood. I don't know whether that was her, but I have no recollection of seeing my Mother again after that.
I ran, not knowing where I was going. I was soon lost amongst the ruins and the uncountable bodies. I really remember only smoke, coughing and wondering if I would ever find anyone alive ever again.
The drezzi could not kill us all. There were still billions of us on Earth even then. People found ways off Earth and soon the system was full of refugees crowded into whatever spaceworthy and not so spaceworthy vessels they could find.
After the day of the attack on my home I remember nothing until being shown Earth receding into space. I lived only by the kindness of strangers; many of us did.
'We have endured. Our loss has been great but we have endured.' I was nearly twenty when I heard Ray Holland make that speech.
Refugees live where and how they can and it was like that for the millions, maybe hundreds of millions who fled The Occupation. I knew kindness and cruelty. There were moments of plenty separated by long times of hunger and want. We wanted for good food, for homes, for clothes, but most of all we wanted for hope. Hope can be impossible to come by when you live under a pale alien sun and many people died for lack of it.
'We have endured and we have struggled.' Ray was a born orator, on his lips a nursery rhyme might have moved people to action. 'The day will come when we will see Earth again, and when that beautiful place, the Sun and the sea, will be our's again. The day will come when we will eat the fruits of the Earth and when we will work with our hands the riches of the Earth. The day will come!' The crowd cheered and the blue and green flags of the Free Earth Movement waved. There had been many rallies before but none had seemed before so rich with the possibility of change.
'Although we are scattered in many systems, and although we still face great challenges, we do have hope. That hope is our dogged refusal to accept defeat; our determination to stand together and demand the freedom to return to our homes and to govern ourselves as we see fit.' People who had had nothing on Old Earth, people who could hardly remember the Blue Planet, and youngsters born in exile all cheered. We had one vision and it kept us human.
The long running FEM campaign had involved tactics including guerilla warfare, sabotage, protest and lobbying. Under FEM leadership we had made the Human Question an issue that successive Imperial administrations could not ignore. The FEM had won no great battles; it had no great fleet, but human rebels, corsairs, activists and agitators had not been eradicated; two decades of the diaspora had not broken the resistance.
'I must tell you that Imperial negotiators are now in contact with FEM delegates in a dozen systems.' Cheers. 'There are discussions underway that could see us realise our greatest ambitions.' Cheers. 'We are closer now to victory than we have ever been and we have done this together.' Deafening, thunderous, unquenchable cheers. What a day that was.
Of course Ray and the moderate leadership of the FEM were doomed to failure. They laid down their arms and surrendered their little ships; they walked out of Imperial prisons and made speeches each of which echoed Ray's. We did not get back to Earth.
The Empire was vast, unwieldy and enormously powerful, but it was riven with internal divisions that made the Human Question seem simple by comparison. Another two decades of bloody struggle, not so much for Earth but for revenge, did end with some dramatic advances. Whether these advances were due to the battles we fought or to the gradual crumbling of the Imperial system is beyond me to tell.
What I do know is that by the time I was in my forties The Confederation, a largely human polity risen in place of Imperial authority across twenty systems, was ready to assume full independence. We had come as refugees and had become the masters.
'I would like to thank everybody who has worked in my campaign' I said in the statesmanlike tones I had been practising for months. 'Also, thank you to everyone who came out and voted today. I understand that the turnout has been very high and I consider this a vote of confidence in itself for our new Confederation.'
There were cameras everywhere, and a crowd that pressed forwards to the stage from the very back of the huge hall. I had not always believed that electoral politics was the best way forward for the people of human space, but I admit I was carried along that night on the euphoric tide of the representative myth. I was their man and they were my people.
'Representative' a journalist called out. It took me a few moments to realise that the young woman was speaking to me. 'What is your view on the minority question? How should The Confederation deal with discontent amongst the non-humans of its worlds?'
I found myself spellbound. I was the centre of attention. The journalist was smartly dressed, pretty and glamorous; her hair shone in the bright lights and her green eyes held mine fast. Somehow I managed to concentrate long enough to say 'Non-humans are as much entitled to citizenship of The Confederation as are you and I. The Confederation must be inclusive.' It was the party line. How I enjoyed those first moments as a Representative.
I have never forgotten her face although I never saw her again. I have never forgotten winning that election although if I had my time again I would not stand. I have never forgotten arriving back in the quiet of my office and finding there my agent waiting for me. 'Congratulations' he said, 'you deserve it.' He shook my hand and smelled of whiskey as if he had been celebrating alone. He did not smile, 'We lost' he added.
Peace, even under a government composed of one's opponents, is a wonderful thing. We all found time to fall in love, to play and to live what we supposed to be normal lives. There was still the issue of Earth, but health, housing and prosperity on the many worlds of The Confederation tended on a day-to-day basis to obscure the Old Cause. The problem was that from the basement of the new human mansion a stench was rising and it had very nearly reached the street.
'The police are moving into The District' my daughter said as she rushed into my study. 'We have to do something. There's going to be a massacre.'
Slowly, feeling all of my seven decades, I stood up. 'Who told you' I asked ' that they are going in today? I thought the situation had calmed down.'
She looked at me with surprise, shocked that her old man was losing touch. 'Dad' she said, exasperated, 'the drezzi marched the other day demanding equal rights! We were there. Remember?' I nodded and frowned, still not seeing her point. 'The Governor' she went on, 'has said that the drezzi overstepped the bounds of acceptable behaviour and that The District is to be cleared. They won't go Dad. You know the drezzi. They won't go.'
Now what she said was true. I had come to know the drezzi very well; more than that I had come to like them and to write books about them. Their days as Imperial shock troops were long gone. I liked the drezzi a whole lot more than I liked the Governor which is why, I suppose, I paid so little attention to his pronouncements.
'We must go down there and try to stop this madness' I said feeling either very confused or twenty years younger I am not sure which. I wish I had never gone, but perhaps not being there to bear witness would have been even worse.
We arrived far too late for negotiations. We would have done no good had we been there earlier. The police, an army of occupation in all but name in The District, were moving in determined to end the drezzi problem on our world for good. We heard later that the operation was repeated at the same time in all of the ghettoes.
Transports went in and the firing started. The pitiful structures that housed the drezzi were already in flames, even collapsing as we reached the edge of their neighbourhood. When drezzi scream the very air shudders with the volume and the pitch of it; the noise of their terror and their dying that day almost drowned out the small arms fire from the humans who were killing them.
We did not see much, one or two drezzi, running with their powerful rolling gait, gunned down as they fled. Soon we attracted the attention of a police sergeant who threatened us with arrest. I pushed him and told him that he better shoot me too, but my daughter pulled me away back to our little ground car.
As she drove I sat and I wept until I shook. I had never cried before. 'I have lived to see it come full circle' I said. The city was darkened by smoke from the burning streets of The District. 'Where are all the people who might stop it?' I asked her.
'They either voted for it or they're hiding from it' she said grimly.
'Where are we going?' I asked when I realised that we were not heading home.
'I have some friends with contacts in the Drezzi Movement' she said without taking her eyes from the road, 'perhaps we can help in some way.'
And that is how, at my age, I find myself a refugee again. I am an exile with several adopted drezzi children. They are a riotous bunch with that bizarre drezzi smell; they speak English with a rotten drezzi accent but I love them as if they were my own. I hope they live to see better times.
