Prisoners of Tomorrow (83 page)

He started to grin automatically. “That’s a nice thought, ma’am, but we’re under orders and have to stay here. We appreciate it though.” And then he frowned. It was happening again. She knew damn well they had to stay there.

Her eyes rested momentarily on his chevrons. “Are you Sergeant Colman—the one who’s interested in engineering?”

Colman stared hard at her in surprise. “Yes, I am. How—”

“I’ve heard about you.” It could only have been from the Chironians he had talked with earlier. Why would they mention his name to her? Who was she? She came nearer and smiled. “My name is Kath. I have some connection with the technical aspects of what goes on here. From what I’ve heard, I’d imagine you’d find this an interesting place. Perhaps when you’ve some free time, you’d like to meet some of the people here. If you like, I could mention it to them.”

Colman was nonplussed. He shook his head as if to clear it. “What—What exactly do you do around here?”

Kath’s smile became impish, as if she were amused by his confusion. “Oh, you’d be surprised.”

Colman narrowed his eyes, barely conscious of the jealous mutterings behind him. “Well . . . sure,” he said cautiously. “If it wouldn’t be any trouble to anyone. You must have talked to the two guys who were here earlier.”

Kath nodded. “Wally and Sam. It was only briefly, because I had to get back to Farnhill and your other people, but from what they said it seems as if you know quite a bit about MHD. Where did you study?”

“Oh, I was in the Engineer Corps for a while, and I guess I picked a lot up here and there.” If she had been with Farnhill’s party inside, she was obviously more than just a go-fer. Why in hell did she come out to the parking lot to be nice to the troops?

“How many other engineers do you have here?” she inquired lightly, looking around the rest of the squad. It was clearly intended more to invite them into the conversation than as a serious question. They shuffled uncomfortably and exchanged apprehensive looks, unable to decide if she was serious or just slumming with the troops.

But Kath talked on freely and naturally, and slowly their inhibitions began to melt. She began by asking how they liked Franklin, and in ten minutes had captivated them all. Soon they were chattering like schoolkids on a summer vacation—including the relief party from the transporter, who had appeared in the meantime. The detail due for a break seemed to have forgotten about it. Something very strange was going on, Colman told himself again.

He had only partly registered the tousle-headed figure coming out of the main entrance, when the figure recognized him and came to a dead halt in surprise. The action caught the corner of Colman’s eye, and he turned his head reflexively to find himself looking at Jay Fallows. Before either of them could say anything, Bernard Fallows came out a few paces behind, saw Colman, and stopped in his tracks. It was too late for him to go back in, and impossible to walk on by. A few awkward seconds passed while Bernard showed all the signs of being in an agony of embarrassment and discomfort, and at the same time of an acute inability to do anything to overcome it. Colman didn’t feel he had any prerogative to make a first move. Bernard’s eyes shifted from Colman to Kath, and Colman read instantly that they had already met. Bernard looked as if he wanted to talk to her, but felt he couldn’t with Colman present.

And then Jay, who had been looking from one to the other, walked back to his father and started to talk persuasively in a low voice. Bernard hesitated, looked across at Colman again, and then took a deep breath and came haltingly across with Jay beside him. “It’s been a long time,” he mumbled. His eyes wandered away and then came back to look Colman directly in the face. “Look, Steve, about that time up on the ship in the pump bay. I, er . . . I—”

“Forget it,” Colman interrupted. “It happens to everyone. Let’s leave it with all the other stuff that’s best left up there.”

Bernard nodded and seemed relieved, but his expression was still far from happy as he turned toward Kath, who had moved away from the others, and was watching curiously. Bernard seemed to want to say something that he didn’t know how to begin.

Jay was evidently developing a feel for Chironian directness. “We’re kind of curious about the people inside,” he said. “Especially my dad. It’s funny that he wasn’t told anything about it.”

Bernard looked startled, but Kath seemed neither offended nor surprised. “I thought you might be,” she said, nodding half to herself. “Nanook told me about that.” She looked at Bernard. “We don’t have a lot of time for secrets,” she told him. “Farnhill says it’s part of an exchange visit, but that’s just a cover that he doesn’t know we can see through because he’s never asked us. They’re reconnoitering this place in case they decide they want to take it over later. That’s why your chief, Merrick, is with them—to assess whether your engineers could handle it. He’s picked Walters and Hoskins to put in here if the Directorate goes ahead with the idea.”

Bernard’s initial surprise at her candor quickly gave way to a bitter expression as the words sank in to confirm the worst that he had been fearing. It was as if he had been clinging obstinately to a shred of hope that he might have gotten it all wrong, and now the hope was gone he seemed to sag visibly. Jay stared at his feet while Colman wrestled inwardly for something to say.

Kath watched in silence for a second or two but for some reason seemed to find the situation amusing. Bernard stared with a mixture of uncertainty and resentment. “I think I know what’s going through your mind,” she told him. “But don’t worry about it. We don’t take orders from Farnhill or Merrick here. Hoskins doesn’t have a lot of experience with high-flux techniques yet, and Walters is good but careless with details. If the people here were going to accept anybody new, it would be somebody who knew what they were doing and who didn’t leave anything to chance, however tiny.”

“Just . . . what are you getting at?” Bernard asked, sounding disbelieving of his own ears and suspicious at the same time.

Kath switched on her impish smile again. “That’s all I’m prepared to say,” she replied. “For now, anyway. I just thought you’d like to hear it.” She turned to Jay to change the subject. “Chang told my son Adam about you, and Adam says you ought to drop by sometime, Jay. He lives in Franklin, so it wouldn’t be far. Why don’t you do that?”

“Sounds great. I will. How do I get directions—from the net?”

“You’ve got it.” Kath smiled.

Jay glanced at Colman, then looked at Bernard. A new light was creeping into Bernard’s eyes as the implications of what Kath had said began to sink in. Jay hesitated, then decided that his father was in the right mood. “You know, this is a bit of a risky place, Dad,” he said in an ominous voice. “People getting shot all over the place and stuff like that. I could run into all kinds of trouble on my own. I’m sure you’d feel a lot happier if I had some professional protection.”

Bernard looked at him suspiciously. “Just what are you up to now?”

Jay grinned, just a trifle sheepishly. “Er . . . would you get mad if I asked Steve to come along too?”

“I’m sure Adam would be more than happy,” Kath interjected. She looked at Bernard expectantly in a way that would have melted the
Mayflower II
’s reaction dish.

Bernard looked from Kath, to Colman, to Jay, and then back to Colman. He was beaten, and he knew it. But after Kath’s cryptic statement, he wasn’t inclined to argue too much. “Hell, it’s not so bad. He doesn’t need anyone to stop him from getting shot,” he replied. Beside him, Jay’s face dropped. Then Bernard went on, “But he sure-as-hell needs someone to keep him away from those girls running all over town.” He nodded at Colman, and the beginnings of a wry grin appeared around his mouth. “Keep a good eye on him, Steve. He’s crafty.” He turned his head and stared resignedly at his son. “And you,” he grunted. “Get home on time, and don’t say anything about this to your mother.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

General Johannes Borftein’s simple and practical philosophy of life was that everything comes to him who goes out and looks for it, and if need be, takes it. Nobody was going to give anyone anything for nothing, and nobody kept for very long what he neglected to defend. The name of the game was Survival. He hadn’t made up the rules; they had been written into Nature long before he existed.

Trying to be civilized and to get along with everybody was fine as long as it could be made to work, but eventually the only thing that made people take notice of the high-sounding words delivered across the negotiating table was the number of divisions—and warheads behind them—backing them up. And if, when all else failed, the only way left for a nation to look after its interests was to defend them by force, then the best chance for survival lay with promoting the cause totally and using every expedient that came at hand; half measures were fatal.

The shorter-term price to be paid was regrettable, but when had Nature ever offered free lunches? And in the longer term, what did it mean anyway? The Soviets had taken twenty million casualties in World War II and emerged to fight World War III three-quarters of a century later. And in that conflict the U.S. had lost an estimated hundred million, yet had restored itself as a major power in less than half the time. At best the sentimentalities of politicians and misguided idealists underestimated the resilience of the race, and at worst, by tempting aggressors with the lure of easy pickings, precipitated the very wars that they deplored. Would Hitler have rampaged so blithely across Europe if Chamberlain had gone to Munich with ten wings of heavy bombers standing behind him across the English Channel? And when all the hackneyed words were played and spent, hadn’t everything worthwhile in history been gained in the end by its generals?

Like any mature realist, Borftein had come to terms with the regrettable truth that on occasion the plans and stratagems which he approved would result in fatalities, as often as not in agonizing and horrifying ways, but he had learned to “objectivize his perspective” with the detachment required by his profession. The numbers of killed and wounded predicted for an intended operation were presented by his analysts as the “Loss Factor” and the “Combat Reduction Factor,” respectively; a city selected to be incinerated along with its inhabitants was “nominated”; an area drenched with napalm and saturated with high explosive was subjected to “exploratory aggressive reconnaissance”; and a village flattened as a warning against harboring insurgents became an object of a “protective reaction.” Such were the rules.

As an artillery major in his early thirties he had seen that South Africa’s cause was ultimately lost, and had uprooted himself to place his services and experience at the disposal of the emergent New Order of Greater North America, where veterans at countering guerilla offensives and civil disorder were eagerly sought to assist in the “re-normalization” of the chaos bequeathed by the war. Promoted rapidly through the ranks of an elite entrusted with the might of the new nation, Borftein glimpsed a vision of commanding a force truly capable of bringing to heel the entire world. But the vision had been short-lived. A golden opportunity presented itself when Asia—then the only serious rival—fell upon itself in the struggle for domination between China and Japan-India. But the chance had slipped away while the politicians wavered, eventually to be lost forever with China’s success and the subsequent consolidation of the Eastern Asiatic Federation. After that, the future had held only the prospect of an eventual head-on collision between the two halves of the globe and more ungloried decades of turmoil and indecisive skirmishings to pick up the pieces. Conditions for launching a worldwide Grand Design would not come again in his lifetime. And so he had left to seek a more rewarding destiny with the
Mayflower II.
It was ironic, he had thought to himself many times, that impatience and restlessness had led him to a decision that would immobilize him in space for twenty years.

His impatience was asserting itself again now, as Borftein sat in the chambers of Judge William Fulmire, the
Mayflower II
’s Supreme Justice, listening to Howard Kalens and Marcia Quarrey argue over the finer points of the Mission’s constitution, while on the surface the troops were fraternizing openly with what could become the enemy, and two years away in space the EAF starship daily drew nearer. The news from Earth told of a three-cornered conflict sweeping through eastern Africa, black nations clashing against Arabs in the north and whites in the south, Australian forces landing in Malagasay, and the Europeans maneuvering desperately to quell the flames while the EAF fanned them gleefully. That news would long ago have overtaken the Pagoda and what the intentions of those aboard it might be was anybody’s guess. It wasn’t a time to be fussing over ambiguous syntax and legal niceties.

Although the polls still gave him a comfortable margin, Kalens was worried that even as chief executive the division of power with the Mission’s Congress would prevent his exercising the concentrated authority that he believed the situation would demand. Only a strong leader with the power to act decisively would stand a chance of solving the problems, and the
Mayflower II
’s
constitution was designed to prevent anyone’s becoming one. Its spirit was an anachronism inherited from antiquity when a newly founded Federation had sought to guard itself against a renewed colonialism, and the governing system embodied that spirit quite effectively. That was the problem.

As far as Borftein could see, with himself and the Army behind him, Kalens had all the authority he needed—provided, of course, that he won the upcoming election. But after talking to Sterm about it, Kalens had accepted that an attempt to impose authority over Chiron overtly would risk alienating the Mission’s population. A more subtle approach was called for. “Ultimately, human instincts cling to the known and the familiar,” Kalens lectured Borftein later. “A visible commitment to lawfulness as a alternative to the lawlessness of this planet is the way to maintain cohesiveness. We can’t afford to jeopardize that.” So Borftein had agreed to try playing the game their way, which hinged upon provisions written into the laws to take account of the abnormal circumstances of a twenty-year voyage through space.