Geosynchron (26 page)

Chandler led the three of them to an outcropping on the edge of
the roof. He reached into the pocket of his coat and withdrew what
looked like a pair of ancient spectacles. The Islander put them to his
eyes momentarily and gazed off into the distance, then handed them
to Jara. "Here, take a look. Follow the beacon between the third and
fourth towers and all the way to the horizon."

Jara put the lenses to her face gingerly, careful not to let her fingers touch the glass. Of course, she thought. Not spectacles-a telescope. In
connectible lands, where you could activate a thousand telescopic and
remote camera programs with a thought, such devices were only a
curiosity. But here in the Islands ... Jara tried to call up one of those
programs now and discovered that it had been banned by Dogmatic
Opposition. So she squinted through the glass where Chandler
directed her and found herself looking offshore to the east.

At a cluster of Defense and Wellness Council hoverbirds hovering
in the mist.

"Now follow the arc around to your left, there's five more beacons
there," said Chandler. Jara did, swiveling the view around tube trains,
puzzle piece buildings, and industrial cargo ships to find the digital
beacons. She saw five more clumps of ghostly white hovercraft, floating
inertly over the water perhaps a kilometer from shore.

"Borda's?" asked Jara.

"Those are Len Borda's," replied Chandler. "And those"-he turned
in place and pointed about thirty degrees clockwise-"are Magan Kai
Lee's."

Jara handed the glasses to Benyamin, who gazed at the horizon
with visibly mounting anger before passing them to Robby. The channeler stared, drew in a breath, and whistled.

"You're going to have to explain this to me," fumed Benyamin.
"We're not in fucking colonial times here. Why does the Defense and
Wellness Council care what happens in the Islands? Sure, sometimes
you people launch attacks against the connectibles, and I understand deterrence. But why would either Borda or Lee want to invade? No
offense-but the Council pretty much has you boxed in here as it is."

Bali Chandler was leaning back on the railing on his elbows, enjoying
the early evening breeze blowing through his frizzy hair. "You'd be surprised," he said. "Did you know that Borda's been trying to block the
import of permasteel into the Islands for about a decade now?"

The young apprentice shook his head, not quite seeing the point.

"Requires tungsten to make it, and there's no tungsten out here in
the Pacific Islands. So Borda thought he could stifle us by setting up
blockades to keep the permasteel out. Can't build stuff like this
without it." Chandler rapped his knuckles on the cold metal of the
railing. "You'd think it'd be impossible to get huge tankers of permasteel through a Council blockade, right? And yet"-the Islander representative swept his hand towards the six other towers ringing City
Center, all reflecting that unique permasteel glow-"it hasn't even
slowed us down."

Jara studied the outcropping on which they stood and noticed that
the entire thing was composed of a single sheet of metal, only centimeters thick. She shook her head. They lived at the zenith of an information age, yet so much of geopolitics still revolved around the movements of ponderous cargo ships and rusty tankers.

"So where do you get your permasteel from?" asked Robby.

"Ah," said Chandler with a toothy grin. "Ain't telling. State secret."

Robby seemed to appreciate the Islanders' resourcefulness, but
Benyamin was not placated. "Smuggling permasteel is one thing," he
said. "Standing up against Council armies is another."

"Is it?" The Islander representative turned and leaned on the
railing with a prideful gaze out onto the city. "As I said before-you'd
be surprised. Borda hasn't been nearly as successful boxing us in as you
think. They've got to write an entirely different kind of black code to
deal with us, because the normal stuff won't work. And it's hard to
write black code to disable the enemy's OCHREs when you're not even sure what OCHREs the enemy's got. But ..." Chandler stretched his
arms up over his head, cracked his neck idly, then turned to face the
fiefcorpers again. "In the end, you're right, Benyamin. We couldn't
stand up to a full assault by the Council. That's no state secret. All we
can do is make it prohibitively expensive for them to try. So the only
thing Len Borda's done up to this point is harass us. Check our growth.
Try to stop our permasteel shipments."

"What's changed?" said Jara.

"Magan."

Jara shook her head. "Maybe I'm just stupid. What does Magan
have to do with the Islands? Why does his rebellion change anything
out here?"

Chandler flicked his tongue over his lips and scratched once more
at his stubble as he gathered his thoughts. The Islanders have two armies
camped offshore ready to invade, thought Jara impatiently, and their parliamentary representative here is so relaxed he's almost embalmed.

"Sun Tzu," said the Islander after a moment, shifting conversational tracks. "The Art of War. Any of you read it?"

The fiefcorp master had a brief flashback to the hive. Interminable
lessons, boring ancient texts. "I've read pieces of it."

"Not a word," said Ben.

"Read the whole thing at least five times," put in Robby cheerfully,
still scanning the horizon with the telescopic spectacles.

"Then you know, Mr. Robby, that Sun Tzu's main principle still
applies. Know thy enemy. Difference is that today, you need to know a
lot more about the enemy than you used to. You need to know where
they are, how they're armed, how they're defended." Chandler ticked
these items off on the wrinkled fingers of his right hand. "How do you
get that information on a battlefield? In ancient times you could track
your opponent via satellite, but we've got so many ways of faking out
satellites nowadays that they're next to useless for military purposes.
Same thing with remote cameras, spy drones, long-distance electro magnetic scans. For every surveillance technology there's a more effective countersurveillance technology-except for one."

"Multi," said Jara.

Bali Chandler laughed. "Businesswoman and battlefield tactician
too, huh?"

"Hardly. But I've seen a thousand war dramas in my day."

"Ah, dramas! All right, you've seen the dramas. Tell me how you
use multi on the battlefield."

Jara knew that writers and directors often employed pretzel logic
in the scripting of their dramas, but some scenarios were common
enough that she figured there had to be some underlying truth to
them. She described her vision of how modern battle was conducted,
as informed by the dramas of Jeannie Q. Christina and Bill Rixx.
Before the first shots were fired, you sent a barrage of multi projections
into enemy territory-hundreds, sometimes thousands of them-to
scope out the opposing camp. As your multi projections streamed out
past the line of battle, multi disruptor cannons were gunning full-bore
at the enemy's incoming projections. If you deployed your multi forces
effectively, enough would get through to give an adequate picture of
the enemy's defenses.

"Terrific!" said the Islander with a comic burst of applause. "A
little sensationalized, but basically accurate. So tell me what would
happen if you could totally block incoming multi projections from
crossing into your camp?"

"You'd have a huge advantage, I guess," said Jara.

Benyamin sliced his hand through the air in objection. "Maybe you
don't understand the politics of the multi network," he said. "The network administrators, they've always refused to cooperate with the
Council. It's like a cardinal rule. We won't have our technology politicized,
they say. The network is the network, and not even the high executive himself
gets special treatment. "

Chandler nodded. "Ah, but you're forgetting something. There's one place where the network administrators have agreed to block multi
connections. There's one place where they do give special treatment."

"What place is that?"

The Islander extended his open palm over the edge of the railing.

"So the Council isn't trying to take over the Islands at all," said Jara.

The four of them had decamped back to the tranquil lounge with
the painting of the musketed soldiers. Jara finally poured herself that
tumbler of rum she had been craving and sat down at one end of the
conference table. Chandler sat down at the other, while Benyamin and
Robby took seats along the sides. Jara felt like doing nothing but
retreating back to the tube and sending Horvil a Confidential Whisper,
but clearly the briefing was not over.

"Take over the Islands?" replied Chandler. "No. Wouldn't be any
point. Len Borda and Magan Kai Lee are quietly building up their
forces on the perimeter for another reason. They want to use the Islands
as a base to attack each other."

"I can see some of the benefits to putting your army behind the
unconnectible curtain," said Jara. "But isn't there a significant downside as well? Aren't they going to have a heck of a time running
bio/logic weapons systems back here?"

"A few," the Islander admitted. "But it's negligible compared to
what they'd gain."

Benyamin suddenly looked ill. "So they're both going to ...
invade?"

"Invade?" Chandler snorted with good humor. "Invasions are a last
resort, my friend. You start with persuasion, then you move on to
leverage. After that comes bribery, then deception, and then force." The
Islander let out a cackle that might have been the most disturbing
thing Jara had heard the entire conversation. "Listen, the three of you are arriving on the tail end of all this. We've been dealing with the
Council for two months now. Manila's literally crawling with spies and
diplomats trying to persuade the parliament to let in one side or the
other. I'm telling you, it's been fun times here in Manila."

Jara downed the rest of her rum in a single gulp.

"So who's winning?" said Robby.

"Glad you asked." The Islander reached under the lip of the table,
which Jara suddenly noticed was filled with multiple sets of recessed
buttons. He tapped a few of the buttons, causing a holographic pie
chart to appear over the table. "There's forty-eight districts in the Free
Republic. And right now, here's the tally, as close as we can make it
out...." Bali Chandler gestured at the pie chart, which the fiefcorpers
read with grim concentration.

Magan Kai Lee -9
Len Borda 8
Resistance4
Undecided 27

"`Resistance'?" said Benyamin.

"We fight all comers," said Chandler, putting his fists up in sarcastic imitation of a boxer's stance.

Jara shivered involuntarily. Knowing Quell, she did not doubt the
bravery or tenacity of the Islanders. But knowing Len Borda, she
wouldn't lay great odds on the Free Republic surviving an armed confrontation with both of the Council's two feuding executives. They'd
be crushed as if they'd come between the hammer and the anvil.

The fiefcorp master rubbed her temples and looked longingly at
the wet bar again. "What you're saying is that it's anyone's guess what
the parliament is going to decide."

Chandler shook his head. "No. What I'm saying is that the stage
is set for a certain charismatic young representative to make his big debut." He splayed his hands in the air as if framing a scene for an
imaginary camera. "Our man steps into the spotlight. He declares his
heritage and his ownership of MultiReal. He releases a compelling
manifesto and sways the balance of the parliament to vote his way."

"Wait a second, back up," snapped Benyamin. "Ownership of
MultiR-"

The realization seemed to slap each of the fiefcorpers in the face
simultaneously. Josiah Surina, son and heir of Margaret Surina,
Islander representative, statesman, and now-thanks to the recent testimony of his father in a courtroom in Andra Pradesh-legal owner of
MultiReal technology. By working to put MultiReal in the hands of
the Surina family, Quell had really put it into his own.

"That sly bastard!" said Robby with a chuckle. "That sly, sly
bastard!"

Jara could suddenly see the logic behind so much that had gone on
in the past two weeks. Quell, trying to keep the secret of his son's identity concealed from Len Borda as long as possible. Magan Kai Lee,
moving whatever levers he needed to move behind the scenes to ensure
that the Surina family won its court case. "So Quell believes the
Islanders should side with Magan Kai Lee," said Jara.

"I suppose," replied Chandler, reaching under the table to dispel
the pie chart back to holographic limbo. "Though I'm not sure that
Josiah feels the same way. I assume that's the counsel Quell wanted you
to provide. Helping convince him of the right path to take. Oh, and
let me add one more wrinkle."

"What's that?" asked Robby.

"I said that you arrived at the tail end of all this. Well, I meant it.
Len Borda's tired of talking and playing spy games. He realizes that his
chances of getting what he wants through negotiation are slim and
getting slimmer. So our scouts say that he's preparing for an invasion.
In the next forty-eight hours."