Emprise (15 page)

Rashuri nodded unhappily. “The lack of progress concerns every member of the Inner Circle. The envoy ship is the heart of what we do. It is the one task that must be completed. The other work we do amounts to little more than straightening our tie and brushing the lint from our jacket. But what can be done?”

“We can begin to prepare for the possibility that we will not be able to meet them in deep space.. We can prepare to protect ourselves here,” said Tai Chen. “Don’t you agree that that must become our new first priority?”

“If I knew how it could be done, perhaps I would.”

“We know their objective. We know they must slow as they enter our system. There is where we can stop them. We must surround Earth with a shield of fire.”

“If we can’t build an envoy ship in time, how can we hope to build warships?”

“Then build fortresses with weapons which can carry our power across the void. We have already built three great platforms to do nothing but carry endless chatter around the globe. Build more platforms and arm them, and place them where they may defend us.”

Rashuri said nothing.

“I have explored this with other members of the Far East Cooperative Sphere,” said Tai Chen. “They feel as strongly as I that this must be done and done now. We would prefer to act through the Consortium. But that is not our only option.”

“You would build them yourselves?”

“If we must. I am afraid that we would be forced to close the Shuang-ch’eng-tzu facilities to the Consortium, and to reduce our contributions to its work. But this is a matter of the first priority.”

The price of acquiescence would be high, Rashuri knew. But the price of obstinacy would be higher. “I agree completely. Tomorrow I will call Dr. Driscoll and instruct him to prepare a proposal for our review.”

“There, look!” cried Tai Chen delightedly, pointing toward the east. Rashuri craned his head quickly enough to see the last few instants of a meteor’s brilliant death. “What is your view on omens, Devaraja?”

“Skeptical, good premier.”

“I am told your name means god-king. You do not take it prophetically, then?”

“No.”

“That is very properly modem of you, Devaraja.” Her whole demeanor had changed in the span of a minute.

Before his accession she had been somber and earnest. At that moment her mood had lightened dramatically. Did she perhaps believe in omens? Or did she simply enjoy victory? “I believe this is the first time I have seen you detectably happy.”

“Our kind is not permitted happiness,” she said in a more serious tone. “The most we are allowed is pleasure—and that but infrequently.”

“True enough,” Rashuri said unguardedly. “Then let us take ear pleasure when we can,” she said, to Rashuri’s surprise. She stood and extended her hand for his.

Rashuri sat a moment with hands clasped on his lap, looking up at her. Her offer was more subtly couched than he would have predicted, and he gave it due consideration. “I am persuaded that Chinese females are like Indian females in one respect,” he said finally.

Tai Chen brought tier hands back to her hips. “And what way is that?” He smiled. “Both are more beautiful as women than as girls.”

She smiled back and again offered her hand. “We are alike in other ways, as I will show you.” Helping him to his feet, she led him below deck and to her bed.

To Rashuri’s relief, he awoke alone, spared what would have been an extremely uncomfortable morning-after. A few minutes after he stirred, a soft-spoken valet appeared to attend him as he washed and dressed. He emerged from the bath to find the bed made and breakfast awaiting him. One of the plates bore not food but a folded message slip.

“That arrived during the night,” explained the valet.

“Why wasn’t it brought to me then?” demanded Rashuri, unfolding the paper.

The man stared wide-eyed. “That would not have been proper,” he said in a horrified tone.

Rashuri grunted and read the slip. Then he pushed his chair back from the table and stood. “I’m going ashore. See that my launch is ready.”

Once in his office, he did what the message insisted and he had intended to do in any event: he called Driscoll. “Where the hell were you last night?” were Driscoll’s first words.

Rashuri ignored the question. “What’s happened?”

“What’s happened is that the Sender ship has stopped accelerating. She topped out at 61.4 percent of lightspeed after running 1,200 days under power. I wish on the Great Galaxy that I had even a hint what kind of drive was capable of that performance.”

A sudden chill ran through Rashuri. “Have you calculated an arrival date?”

“I’m just old, not stupid. She’s more than halfway here—we’ve got just a dozen years. Unless we do something that changes its flight plan, the Sender ship will arrive in 2027. The exact date depends on how good our measurement of the distance to Mu Cassiopeia is.”

“And where does the envoy ship program stand?”

Driscoll sighed. “The drive affects every other aspect of mission design—the type of intercept, the length of the mission, what we do after we reach them, how much equipment can be sent, how much power for auxiliary functions, the amount of consumables needed or recycling possible. The drive is the pacing item now. But we have to go ahead on other elements, plan around it. Not the best situation.”

“And how are you dealing with it?”

“We’re going to a modular design so that we can bundle or unbundle different elements, depending on what we end up using for a drive. Module A is the minimal mission—one man, basic supplies, communications and ship controls. Module B will contain the basic science package and additional stores, plus quarters for three more crew, another pilot and two scientists. Module C will have a section for exercise and recreation, and room for eight science specialists and their gear. Module D is the drive itself. It should be possible to integrate the various modules in a variety of configurations.”

“It sounds as if you are making progress.”

“Oh, sure. All we want is a jaunt of 60,000 AU when our fastest ship has only covered 60 since it was launched last century. All we want is a power plant that can harness more energy than the whole Earth’s energy grid can generate. All we want is a speed four orders of magnitude greater than we’ve ever achieved before with anything heavier than a helium nucleus.

“We’re working simultaneously on five systems: hydrogen-fluorine, gas-core fission, pellet fusion, light sailing, and ion-electric. Right now the best prospect will let me send one man with a box lunch to the region of the comets—if I had fifty years to get him there.”

“I was hoping for better news,” said Rashuri sadly.

“Hoping isn’t helping, unfortunately.”

“Most unfortunately not.” He told him of his promise to Tai Chen. “Why the hell did you agree to something like that?” Driscoll said, exasperated. “Because I was out of alternatives. Before the week is out, I want to know the least costly and time-consuming way we can meet her requirements.”

“We can’t meet her requirements with any amount of time or money,” Driscoll said angrily. “Doesn’t that stone-faced bitch realize the power these beings have harnessed just to make the voyage? We couldn’t manage that trip in less than ten thousand years. How are we supposed to stand up against them?”

“All we need do is convince Tai Chen that we’re ready to try. Just as our true aims do not lie on Earth, her true aims may not lie in space.”

In the end, Tai Chen settled for a trio of sun-synchronous defense platforms armed with an array of missiles and energy weapons. The platforms were to be arrayed at 120-degree intervals around the Senders’ flight path at a distance of thirty AU. Driscoll persuaded her that the Senders could not change course to avoid them; the laws of physics dictated that their ship must pass through the triangle defined by the platforms’ positions.

“They will have to run the gauntlet,” Tai Chen agreed after reviewing the plan. “If they refuse our order to stop, all will be able to bring their fire to bear.”

Later, Rashuri quietly directed Driscoll to see that the platforms were built serially rather than simultaneously, in the hope that one or more might never need to be built. Still, it would mean a rapid doubling of on-orbit operations and the delivery of thousands of tonnes of finished materials there for the construction.

To soften the impact on the Consortium’s resources, Rashuri sought a change, effective the first of the new year, in the terms of the financial agreement for associate members. From the start, voting weight in the Pangaean Assembly had been indexed by a nation’s verified GNP.

That had accomplished two things. It made the rebuilding effort simpler by encouraging nations to increase the availability of approved goods and services in exchange for more influence in the Assembly. It also enabled Tai Chen, working through the relatively affluent nations of the Far East Cooperative Sphere, to block any Assembly proposal which threatened to impede Rashuri’s freedom to act.

But the associate members’ contributions had been a flat sum each year, set low so as to not exclude smaller or poorer nations. With Tai Chen’s behind-the-scenes assistance, a proposal was introduced to provide that those contributions also be indexed to verified GNP. Despite grumbling from some of the majors not under Chinese control, the measure was adopted.

Rashuri had to credit Tai Chen for her thoroughness. Minutes after the vote, the representative of Japan, which faced one of the sharpest increases, publicly presented the Assembly President with a draft for the Ml amount of the increase. Consequently, a budding “rent strike” organized as a protest by the Australians died aborning.

The defense platform project, dubbed Gauntlet, was brought under the same umbrella of secrecy which covered Star Rise, the envoy ship project, since there was no explaining it short of revealing the existence of the Sender ship as well. As the new assessments made up for all but a fraction of what was being diverted to the cause of Tai Chen’s paranoia, Rashuri felt cautiously optimistic that the Consortium’s house was again in order.

But as the days of 2016 changed one by one from dates to memories, a series of disquieting events took place—all independent of each other, and yet in a deeper sense, seemingly related.

There was a gradual decline in applications for Assembly voting weight reassessment, with Australia the most conspicuous example of a nation that was eligible but not interested. Three smaller nations dropped out entirely.

The central PANCOMNET receiver in Conakry, Guinea, which fed the Consortium’s programming to the local broadcast system, was destroyed with either the complicity or the passive approval of the Guinean government. Smaller acts of vandalism against Consortium facilities reached a rate of one a day.

Absenteeism was on the rise in Germany, and a unionism movement had surfaced in central England. PANCOMNET viewership was slipping in several nations which had revived their own television networks, hi the few nations which belonged to the Consortium and permitted free newspapers, those papers increasingly questioned both the cost and the value of membership.

And, for the first time in eleven years, war broke out—in this case, a border clash between Palestine and New Persia. None of this was entirely unexpected. For example, Rashuri had anticipated that weapons and ammunition would be among the products of a resurgent world economy. Consequently, key Consortium facilities were secure against every sort of terrorist attack Jawaharlal Moraji’s fertile mind could imagine, and movements of key personnel were treated as state secrets.

But there was still cause for concern and for vigilance. Rashuri noted each incident, weighed it, and waited. As the Consortium’s fifth anniversary neared, he determined that he had waited long enough.

On the walls of the chamber where the crisis conference was held hung a dozen large and colorful world maps. Each defined one aspect of the human condition on a global and seemingly impersonal scale. The largest map marked the spread of the Consortium: the three charter members in Consortium blue, the sixty-one associate members in meadow green, the one hundred thirty independents in pristine white.

Of the rest, some told stones that set parameters on the problem to be solved: a population distribution map portraying 2.4 billion humans as 24,000 black dots; a plot of forest resources and key minerals; a depiction of the world’s arable land.

Others marked the twin measures of wealth: per capita consumption of energy and protein, with nations which had achieved Consortium goals marked with a yellow wheat stalk or sun sign.

To the eleven who sat around the large teak conference table, all the maps spoke of unfinished business.

“We’re victims of our own success,” said Weddell. “We’ve succeeded in raising the sights and expectations of the people. Now it’s time to deliver—and we’re not ready.”

“We would be ready if it weren’t for what we waste on Tai Chen’s paranoia,” Driscoll retorted.

Gu Qingfen stiffened slightly, but looked to Rashuri rather than Driscoll. “It is our considered view that a more wise allocation of our resources would eliminate much of this problem. With all considered respect to Mr. Weddell and his department, we get nothing back from the Caapirangas for our investment there.”

“The benefit isn’t to us, it’s to the villagers,” Weddell pro tested. “Exactly. And that is why the costs should also fall on them.”

“You know that a lot of members couldn’t afford our services if we worked on that basis,” said Weddell. “Then they should wait until they can. To make a gift of our services devalues their worth.”

Rashuri toyed with a pencil. “PANCOMNET is the only service being offered everywhere, and it serves our purposes to do so. Move on to other issues.”

Montpelier, the chief economic analyst, jumped at the invitation. “World GNP is up twenty-eight percent in the last four years. Zaire, Colombia, and New Persia are among the members that have benefited most from that. They joined because they needed us and left because they felt that was no longer true.”

“Is it?” asked Rashuri.

“So far. Perhaps only the Consortium and not its individual members should be permitted to deal with the independent nations. Otherwise we ran into conflicts between local interests and our own.”