Space Eater (25 page)

Twenty-Three

For a while then life came in thin slices. Instead of the slow grind of boredom we were being run off our feet with events, conversations, congratulations, postmortems on the war everybody reckoned must be over.

In the embassy cell, now more an open prison than a maximum-security block, I tried to sluice away the foul aftertaste of Pallas “champagne,” and mentioned to Rossa: “Hey, did you notice old encyclopedia Keeb’s got his human spots after all? Even if they’re not very big ones.”

“Don’t be so
silly
, Ken. Everybody has a human side, although in military circles it tends to be not so much a side as an underneath. Some people simply bury it deeper than others ... the good general, for example.”

“Why him? He acts friendly enough when it’s not a matter of security and suchlike.”

“Quite.” Suddenly she danced forward and gave me a quick hug. “You’re so uncomplicated, Ken.

Don’t worry about me—some of my experiences with our very own military, in CommAux, you know, have made me a little too ready to ... to see people’s human sides as being very deeply buried indeed.

Some people.”

In a private chat, the general still seemed friendly. “Very pleased with all this,” he told us. “Can’t see anything going wrong at this stage, anything at all. So-called New African President will be handing out a statement later today, and the word is, there’s only one thing he can say.”

Rossa said, “Assuming that he says it, can we hope your scientists will accept the importance of cutting off anomalous-physics research? It would be a friendly gesture—Earth has done you the favor of winning your war...”

“Not too eagerly, as I remember it.” Lowenstein sounded crustier now.

“We had our orders,” I reminded him.

“Acknowledge that. Not been very frank in certain areas, mind you.”

Rossa tried again. “A favor for a favor, General. The favor we ask is that you make it known as widely as possible that AP work really has to cease.”

“Do what I can,” said the general, who seemed to be calculating something. “If the war’s over I’ve less influence now—into the rubbish bin of history, and all that. Had to classify you as a military secret to keep the scientists off --
they’d
have torn you apart for this faster-than-light engine you’re so cagey about. Harder to keep them off as things stand now. I’ll try.”

I decided that maybe the general was going to play us straight and maybe he wasn’t, but either way he wanted to be Mr. Nice Guy.

“He’s good at delegating the nastier jobs,” Rossa said afterward. “You noticed that when we were forced into that filthy questioning, he carefully made it seem that StraProgCom was acting against his will...”

“Maybe they were,” I whispered back.

“And, bearing in mind that Lowenstein chairs that committee, maybe they weren’t.”

In the War Room again, they were patching the New Africa broadcast through to the wide screen. A thicker crowd than before, and whole trolleyloads of the dark bottles, and even more of the party feel. I noticed the smaller consoles were still blinking away, with lower-grade techs at the little screens—a reminder that officially the fighting wasn’t over yet, and
Machiavelli
was waiting offstage with umpteen thousand defense installations on its strings. Funny, the names people slapped on programs and projects

... Tunnel lived in a tunnel and put you through a nasty sort of tunnel. Chicane, they’d told me, is trickery, and Colophon is a finishing stroke. But, of course, you could throw up smokescreens, and I remembered a project Apocalypse that was a study of economies in Force catering expenses. DEVOURER, then ...?

A round-faced man was looking across the War Room from the screen. He was smooth in the Admin/politics way, and balding; he was dark enough to look the part of president, or maybe ex-president now, of somewhere called Africa—though the racial mix was much the same over there as in this room.
President Robert Weston
, said the caption that faded in and out over his chest. He was trying the high style—

“Citizens of Pallas: we have been engaged in a most terrible war. It is useless to repeat the reasons for the conflict. It is useless to debate once again the injustice whereby New Africa’s precious oil was squandered in just the manner of the evil days on Earth. Ironically, our own war effort in the attempt to win self-determination for New Africa has itself absorbed huge volumes of resources ... but that is by the way. Now, by chance or design, a cruel blow has been dealt to our defenses. We are satisfied that the letter of the protocol has not been violated, though to some of us it seems that in a stratagem of war, this calamity must violate its spirit. It still lies within our power to be heroic, to prolong the war until what may be our inevitable defeat; however, with the odds so far unbalanced, we believe there is no profit in further strife. New Africa could still inflict long and bloody damage before being overwhelmed; we have chosen to spare lives on both sides; we ask that as victors the Archipelago should likewise show mercy. It may be that with certain adjustments, the independence of this continent might be maintained, and that New Africa and the Archipelago might coexist in perpetual goodwill. I offer you my country’s surrender. I ask that you accept it with magnanimity. I ask for peace with honor. Thank you.”

There were a lot of laughs as Weston faded out, and a slow handclap from some of the ones who’d been making an early start on the celebrations. Lowenstein called for order and made a quick speech himself as StraProgCom chairman. He pulled a few laughs; he didn’t sound as impressive as Weston had.

Corks were popping from bottles of the pink fizz, and this time the stuff came around in glasses. Another speech was due from the official Archipelago boss, who was called planetary governor and had taken a back seat while the military were running things.

Keeb was looking happier, and he explained how the quick-colonization kit they’d packed through the stargate to Pallas hadn’t had any grapes, and for wine the people who liked that kind of thing had hunted out some foul local fruit. “I do recommend the vodka and the apple schnapps,” Keeb said as if we weren’t going to have to talk about fighting ever again. In the War Room some people were singing in a corner, and whole tracts of floor were crunchy underfoot where some fools had dropped glasses.

“When I study this gracious acceptance of victory and then think back to the speech, I can’t help preferring President Weston,” Rossa said in a low voice.

“Ah, you mustn’t trust these smooth talkers,” Keeb said, swaying a little. “The general always said he was an evil old tyrant.” The smell of Pallas fizz on his breath would have made a great terminal defense system if he’d been mounted topside—I could see the brain missiles dissolving as he exhaled on them.

“Let’s go,” I said. “Let’s skip the rest.” This was no part of war that I knew about. I could take the clean kill, like the nullbomb’s takeout, but all this falling around and laughing at a straight-sounding surrender didn’t seem right. I caught Rossa’s eye and for once could see what she was thinking, which was what I was thinking. OK, the war’s over, bury the damn thing quickly now ... When we slipped out, the console lights were still blinking watchfully.

The next scene I remember was in Lowenstein’s office. He looked bleary, and his eyes were even pinker than the booze. When we’d been brought in he poked his recessed desk console, and a panel slid up in the blank wall to the left. There was another video screen behind it.

“Thought you might be interested in
this
transmission,” he said. “This is one that hasn’t gone out over the network, but a couple of hours ago your damned craft tried to broadcast it to the planet—“

“Tried?” I said. If they’d vaporized the station to shut it up...

Lowenstein flipped a hand impatiently. “Succeeded, I suppose. Except it didn’t go onto the network—no authorization—so only parts of the Archipelago picked it up. Listen.” He pushed a button.

The screen went from dead gray to live gray without any picture coming up. A title: RECORDING

FROM EARTH ENVOY CRAFT 19:33 34:03:95. A voice-over, the scrambled, guttural voice of our own comp system, if we could call it our own...

ATTENTION ATTENTION ATTENTION. EARTH EXPEDITIONARY CRAFT
AMBASSADOR

CALLING BETA CORVI II. THIS IS A PLANETARY BROADCAST. PLEASE RELAY. A MASSIVE ENERGY RELEASE AND CHARACTERISTIC AP PHENOMENA HAVE BEEN

DETECTED BY THIS AUTOMATIC SYSTEM. THIS IS IDENTIFIED AS A “NULLBOMB,”

ONE OF THE LEAST REPEAT LEAST HAZARDOUS POSSIBLE RESULTS OF UNWARY AP

EXPERIMENTATION. YOU ARE WARNED: DO NOT CONDUCT FURTHER SUCH

EXPERIMENTS. THE PURPOSE OF THIS EXPEDITION IS TO WARN AGAINST AP

RESEARCH—DANGERS ARE INCALCULABLE—RESEARCH THREATENS ALL LIFE BOTH

LOCALLY AND ON EARTH. YOU ARE AGAIN WARNED. IF THIS ACTIVITY PERSISTS

OUR GOVERNMENT MAY RELUCTANTLY BE COMPELLED TO TAKE MEASURES. END

MESSAGE.

Lowenstein cocked an eyebrow at me. “Can see from your faces you weren’t expecting that one, maybe?” We nodded cautiously, in turn. “Don’t appreciate the threats, even in a supposedly good cause.

When we allow you back,
if
we allow you back, we’ll be asking you to let your masters know Pallas can’t be threatened with their damned ‘measures.’ Don’t have internal conflicts any more—and we do have a new
advantage
.”

Rossa: “The nullbomb?”

A smile from the general. “StraProgCom have tentatively agreed to call it the Lowenstein effect...”

There didn’t seem to be anything worth saying. He eyed us a while, and then softened slightly with what looked to be an immense effort. “Sorry. Got a mite uptight. Run along and have a drink or something.”

He watched us expressionlessly as we went out.

In the suite, Rossa spent a longish session performing on her bracelet and I locked myself in particularly painful yoga positions to shift my mind away from the agony she was sending out. We’d agreed it might have been nice to ditch Earth entirely; but for the time being their interests and ours seemed to run together ... Maybe it would help to scream out the way Rossa said she used to, scream with the pulses, in Morse code.

“The general,” she said when she’d finished, “is already looking for new worlds to conquer.”

Whatever plans Lowenstein might be pushing back and forth on his desk, the feeling of sublevel 6 had changed. The place seemed sloppier now, not what you’d call sloppy anywhere else, but not with the operating theater shine it had had while the tension was on. There was a faint pink splash on the corridor wall not far from the officers’ mess where we ate now; it must date back to the victory parties, and it stayed around for days. Sniffing hard, you could persuade yourself that there must be a puddle of stale liquor somewhere way down the air conditioning ducts, stale liquor with cigar ends floating in it.

So when the next change came it wasn’t hard to spot. Security came down tighter and tighter as if someone was slowly turning a screw, people marched along the glacier-white corridors with eyes locked in the dead-ahead position, the pink stain vanished from the wall, and not even Keeb ate with us next time we went to the mess hall. I could extrapolate the curve in my mind: what was coming was meals back in our rooms, and then a guard on the door, and then the door was going to be locked with two guards outside. But I couldn’t guess why.

“No. I can’t imagine what can be happening now,” Rossa said when I asked. I’d been sort of counting on her to guess better than me.

“All right, then let’s try asking.”

“Do you really think that’s wise ...?”

“We’re bloody heroes, remember—even if Lowenstein’s making sure he’s the one who gets into the history books, we’ve still got some clout now...” We even had cute little medals, the Great Island Star or some such nonsense. I’d been proud of the Force decorations I’d won, even if I didn’t wear them, but now it all seemed silly. I don’t know how we’d have sorted out the problem of asking Lowenstein without an invitation; we were being ignored a lot, again, like rats in the old high-rise buildings, and there just aren’t any channels for a couple of rats to go through when they want the general. A letter did get drafted, “Delegates Jacklin and Corman request permission for private interview with Gen. Lowenstein,”

but we bogged down on delivery: stick it under his door? Give it to the first guard you met in the corridor? Before we could do either, Lowenstein decided he wanted more words with us.

Keeb was with him. Keeb licked his lips from time to time, and Lowenstein’s face was white. “Listen to
this
,” he snapped, and there was the screen in the wall again. The speaker hissed and crackled; blizzards came blowing across the screen with someone’s face flickering in the middle of it all: it wasn’t until I heard the soundtrack through its hailstorms of distortion that something clicked into focus so the face was obviously a woman’s. You needed the same focus trick with your ears to lock onto what she was saying, maybe to guess she was reading from a sheet of paper...

“...unsanctioned by government. This is a unilateral declaration from Hawking Center ... use of AP

disruption bomb undoubtedly violates ... we believe ... atrocity ... continental government has no ...

possession of
full
records from destroyed orbital laboratory. We are in possession of disruption bombs manufactured from specs transmitted by this lab ... integrity of an independent New Africa ... more honorable than ... will fully observe the protocol ... president to withdraw his surrender, and we require the Archipelago government to respect New Africa’s independence ... national honor ... liberty or death

... not met, a disruption bomb will be detonated in” (a name I didn’t catch) “swamp. Further devices ...

intervals to be stated. No compromise ... destruction ... central oil field if necessary. We think that if the Archipelago can’t trade fairly ... Africa’s better off without it. We call on President Weston to resign and Planetary Governor Dorey to make ... new country’s to be destroyed
we’ll
do it ... assure you we will rather than let Weston sell us out ... right to nominate ... reestablishment of orbital network. The disruption bomb’s been used as a terrible ... let the threat of its use help build the peace...”