Vigilant (novel)

Vigilant is a science fiction novel written by the Canadian author James Alan Gardner, published in 1999 by HarperCollins Publishers under its various imprints.^[1] The book is the third volume in Gardner's "League of Peoples" series, after Expendable (1997) and Commitment Hour (1998).^[2]

Backstory

Vigilant relies on the same conceptual background and backstory as all of the novels in the series. By the middle of the 25th century, humanity is integrated into a pan-galactic civilization called the League of Peoples, dominated by species of intelligent life evolved far beyond the human level. The benefits of this association are major advanced technologies, including effective interstellar travel, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and terraforming; the price is that humanity obey the League's one cardinal rule, to refrain from fatal violence against other sentient beings. Most of humanity has accepted this bargain: a society calling itself the Technocracy, based on a terraformed New Earth and operating through a navy-like space organization called the Outward Fleet, has spread over a range of planets and star systems.

In a prefatory note titled "The Structure of the Technocracy," Gardner specifies that the Technocracy consists of:

• "Sixty-three planets with full membership (called the Core or mainstream worlds);"
• "Ninety-two planets with 'affiliate' status (usually called the Fringe Worlds);"
• "Several hundred colony worlds founded by people who espouse some degree of loyalty to the Technocracy. Colonies range from small scientific outposts of a half-dozen researchers, to settlements of a few hundred thousand inhabitants."

Synopsis

Faye Smallwood is an inhabitant of a colony planet named Demoth. The vast majority of the inhabitants of Demoth belong to a race or species called the Oolom; they are a genetically-engineered offshoot of the Divians, an alien species that features in several novels in the series. The Oolom were engineered to function like the flying squirrels of Earth: with lightweight bodies and long flaps of skin descending from their arms, they can glide through the air and rise on warm thermal currents. Demoth is also occupied by about half a million humans, who have settled on the planet over the previous five decades to run the mining operations. (The air-loving Oolom react negatively to underground environments, and the ore deposits are now too diffuse for robot mining.)

When Faye Smallwood was fifteen years old, the Oolom population was devastated by a contagious disease called pteromic paralysis; the majority of the population died lingering deaths, before a cure was discovered by Dr. Henry Smallwood, Faye's father. A hero to the Oolom, Dr. Smallwood lived to enjoy that status for only a year, before he died in a mining accident. His daughter had to grow up through a troubled adolescence, which she eventually overcame by entering into a group marriage with seven other people.

By the time she turns forty, Faye decides to fulfill a drive left over from her girlhood during the plague: she becomes a member of the Vigil, a planetary organization of ombudsmen who supervise the activities of the Demoth government on all levels, from the local to the global. After seven years of training, she undergoes the mushor, which entails the implantation of a neurological "link seed" in her brain. (It's called a link seed because it sprouts tendrils that wind through the brain like roots, linking the subject's mind to a global computer array called the world soul.) Faye's first assignment as a proctor of the Vigil, in the year 2454, is a modest job overseeing local administration in a coastal city; but the assignment suddenly turns serious when android assassins inexplicably begin murdering members of the Vigil. Faye's partner is killed, and Faye survives only through the incomprehensible intervention of a swirl of light and energy that protects her, and her alone.

Faye is suddenly a focus of attention for many interested parties — including members of the Outward Fleet of the Technocracy, who have recognized the swirling energies around Faye as a version of the "pocket universe" technology that allows their ships to evade the light-speed barrier in interstellar travel. Faye's personal pocket universe behaves in ways that appear to violate the laws of physics as understood in the Technocracy; two ruthless members of the Fleet are determined to understand the phenomenon, and are even ready to pull Faye's mind apart to do so. The Fleet's involvement also draws the attention of Admiral Festina Ramos, the heroine of Expendable and the continuing character in the League of Peoples series.

With a new ally in Admiral Ramos as well as formidable new enemies, Faye has to unravel the mystery of the proctors' murders and the energy swirling around her. The search takes her deep underground where the Ooloms never go, and three thousand years back into her planet's long-forgotten and violent history, among some very exotic alien species. She learns that the pteromic paralysis that devastated the Ooloms a generation earlier was an artificial nanotechnology-based bio-weapon, which has now evolved to attack both Divians and humans. If it escapes, the disease will devastate whole populations before a cure can be found. Faye and Festina are stuck with the dangerous job of preventing the catastrophe.

Gardner utilizes the advantage that all science fiction writers enjoy, though not all exploit: he creates alien species and alien beings who are more intelligent and more interesting than humans. Faye Smallwood, the human protagonist of the book, pales in comparison to her Oolom colleague Tic. He is smarter and more eloquent than she is ("I should be asymptotic to apothesis"), and he is both funny and sharp-witted. "But don't mind me — us old codgers always use sexual harassment to put women at their ease. People think it's so adorable, we can get away with murder. And speaking of murder, what did you say that got Chappalar killed?"

Footnotes