Free Alien Earth by Megan Lindholm

simply this. We’re dying. All of us. They can terminate me tomorrow, or I can die two hundred years from now. It makes little difference to me. But whether or not you listen to me will make a big difference. Basically, we’re offering you the chance to save our species. And yourself.”
    John forced himself to sit quietly, to unclench his fists under the table. How much could they know for certain about him? How careless had he ever been? Not very careless. Not ever. Earth Affirmed might suspect but they’d never be able to prove much. So what was the worst the Conservancy would do to him? They wouldn’t terminate him. No. At most, they’d adjust him. Adjustment wasn’t so bad. People went through Adjustment all the time. John tried to think of someone he knew who’d gone through Adjustment. Unfortunately, he knew very few people. They tended to die or get very oldwhile he was gone. Of the other Mariners he knew, he couldn’t recall any who had gone through Adjustment.
    Except Chester. And he wasn’t marinering anymore.
    But that didn’t mean anything; people who had been adjusted almost always took a career change afterward. He could be adjusted, and survive it, and go on to do something else. Something else that meant no more Waitsleep. Not that tough. Just wake up every single morning, and live every single day, one at a time, knowing that death crept closer with every passing hour, every passing minute. He was sweating. He wanted, more than anything, to be back inside Evangeline, safe in a womb, outbound to anywhere. Deckenson’s insistent voice sounded strangely gentle.
    “John, you’ve been brought up to believe in the Stewardship of the Conservancy; to think that those in charge of our destiny had the essential sweep of vision necessary to plan wisely. Now, I have to tell you, in a few short hours, that you’ve been misled. That the Conservancy has placed the ecology of Castor and Pollux above the survival of Humanity. Wait, no, that’s not quite fair. It’s placed a premium on Humanity making no impact on that ecology. To that end, they’ve altered us. Altered us possibly past the point of no return. In their efforts to make us the perfect guests on these planets, they’ve made us totally temporary. None of the structures, on Castor or Pollux are regarded as permanent. Take away the Humans, and they biodegrade back to nothing in just a few years.”
    He paused, and looked at John measuringly. “As you well know, not even information is stored permanently. It has been constantly recopied onto biologically harmonious material. They can say that nothing ‘essential’ has been lost or changed, but only a fool would believe them. And look at how much knowledge has been declared obsolete and deliberately destroyed. We have only a smattering of the Greek and Roman classics in public repository. The last information purge declared excess most of the fictional writing prior to the nineteenth century. The battle to keep the records of the flora and fauna on Earth is gradually being lost. With strict limits on the use of plastics, and ‘hoarding of superfluous information,’ an offense that carries horrendous fines and Readjustment sentences, the old records are being crowded out ofrepositories. There are supposed to be permanent master copies somewhere, but access to them is strictly limited. So when the present public records of it begin to biodegrade, it won’t be recopied. Earth Affirmed has managed to surreptitiously copy some of it; it’s labeled as mining transactions. But we can’t hope to save it all, and when it’s gone, it’s gone.”
    Deckenson’s voice trailed off and he stared past John, brow wrinkled as if staring after a departing dream. John was silent for a long time. He could hear his own heart beating, one thud after another, counting out the moments of his existence. His throat was dry, and his voice came out raspy. “No.”
    Deckenson looked startled. “No what?”
    “I’m