Uranium Fist | Page 6

face when he got going. With David, a recorder was essential - no journalist's shorthand was ever designed to keep up with him in full flow.
Today he was not so expressive. His conversation with Nkruma was low and half-hearted. They all seemed reticent to talk. The atmosphere around the table was subdued as they all explored memories, some joyful, others they preferred to forget. Seeing me to talk about their experiences was difficult. I appreciated their pain, but I don't think I ever really told them how grateful I was that they agreed to see me.
Their presence in that quiet little cafe in Mars Central was a testimony to the inner strength that took them through a difficult period. That same strength enabled them to face the memories, and share them.
Some of them - David and Angela for instance - I knew from my time on Greyermede. That helped them to take me into their confidence. Others I'd met while researching this book, but they extended the same trust as the others. To look at, they didn't seem like people who once shook the stars to their cores, or gripped by the throat a system that had wrought the iron chains of capitalism across interstellar distances. They look like ordinary people, because that's exactly what they are.
Ordinary people, however, that have seen - and sometimes participated in - terrible things. None of them were keen to talk about what they have seen and done. In that, they share something in common with soldiers down the ages. A kind of modesty, perhaps, or a reluctance to dwell on things that the human mind was never truly built to comprehend.
I found plenty of boasters while researching this book. Or more accurately, they found me. They'd been there, done that, seen this. But there was nothing very convincing about their ebullience, and it quickly became apparent that these people were just living a dream, some fantasy to bolster their own inconsequential lives. Eventually, I could spot these time wasters before they even opened their mouths.
The people in the cafe were different. It took me months to gain their trust.
When it all started, I was another jobbing hack, earning my keep by writing about the strange and the unusual on the colonies. I was a planet-hopper, moving from one world to the next in search of a story. I worked for the liberal Martian Chronicle, a vaguely left-leaning publication that had a reputation for pissing off the rich and powerful. Like most reputations, it was overblown, but its pages had room for the radical. It made it a good home for my work, and I owe it a lot.
Not least, I owe it for sending me to Greyermede when the story really exploded and nobody could fail to hear about a world that was once an unheard of backwater outside of the trade papers.
I went as a reporter, excited by a great story - a career maker for sure - but no more. I left with much more. For one thing, I was no longer that distant hack, aloof and unconcerned about the lives I touched. The people and the events I went to witness as a passive bystander moved me more than anything else I ever witnessed. The drama drew me in, until I became one with the hopes and aspirations of the human race. No longer was I the wandering dilettante. I found a metaphorical home.
It's a hard lesson for a reporter to learn; that we touch and affect the lives that we record. To say we are not involved is a cop out. We are involved. Our capacity to shape perceptions is powerful, and we bear a terrible duty to dig out the truth. This is our self-proclaimed conviction, our honour and our prestige. We have made the truth our raison d'tre - but how many of us really practice what we preach?
Truth is not a neutral force. Objectivity and a lack of bias mean dealing with the truth, sifting out those trails and following them wherever they lead. Once we reach that goal, or as close to it as we can possibly get, as objective reporters we have a duty to report it, to share it, to spread the word. Truth takes sides. To stand aside as an 'objective' observer is to stand aside from the truth.
I knew all this, and yet I knew nothing. On Greyermede, I was taught this lesson anew. The message was rammed home, and it changed me forever. My life would never be the same again, just as those who struggled around me would also never be the same.
The people sat around this table helped me to find myself, even as they struggled to find themselves. Every one of them had risen together to transform