Fallen Stars, Bitter Waters

by Gilbert, Morris

  Africa, the largest and richest continent on the face of the earth, practically disappeared—not the land mass, of course, but the concept of African nationalism. Devoted missionaries of Islamic radicalization had taken Northern Africa. Only the collapse of OPEC had kept them from taking the entire continent.

  The countries of Southern Africa, so hopeful and fiercely independent in the previous century, had succumbed not to another imperialist expansion, but to a much deadlier enemy. At the beginning of the century, AIDS had infected one-third of the people of Zambia, with comparable infection rates in the other less-developed countries such as Botswana and Malawi. The infection rate of the economically strongest countries—South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda—was between 10 and 25 percent. The drugs to combat the disease were much too expensive for even the wealthiest South Africans. By 2010, most of them had died, and their children, 98 percent of whom were infected, were already dead or had an even shorter life expectancy than their parents. The numbers increased geometrically, and the strains of the disease increased in complexity. By 2015, Count Gerade von Eisenhalt and the Germanic Union of Nation-States had mercifully come to the aid of South Africa in all ways—loans, medical supplies, teams of physicians and hundreds of clinics, food, water purification plants—and the Joint Forces of the Germanic Union as benevolent peacekeepers.

  Germany owned Southern Africa by 2017.

  The story was much the same in Tropical Africa. The land area of more than twenty countries had well and truly earned the name the Dark Continent. The Muslims had crept down the eastern side. Vast countries such as Kenya, Uganda, and Somalia still existed, but they had continuous civil wars with the Muslims and the tribal natives who were mostly animists. The state of Eritrea had long disappeared, swallowed by Arabic Confederation member Ethiopia. Djibouti was gone; either African Somalia or Arabic Ethiopia had it, depending upon the status of the border wars at any given point in time. The populations of Tropical Africa, too— especially the central countries of Zaire, Congo, Angola, and Tanzania—had been cruelly reduced by the AIDS scourge. Complete figures and statistics for remotest interior Africa were scanty; it had returned to a pre-nineteenth-century closed continent.

  News rarely came out of those impenetrable jungles. Germany had some forces stationed along the coasts, but they hugged the coastline, keeping well in sight of their naval fleet. Even the valiant Goths didn’t like to venture into the darkness of central Africa.

  However, other countries of the world needed armies, too. Since the beginning of time, some countries have needed help to cope with larger, more aggressive neighbors. Though Americans had chosen to ignore it, strength was not measured in terms of economics only. In some parts of the world, it was still measured by a more primitive form: military might. And that was how most of the other great nations melded their spheres of influence.

  Germany used a combination of the two to dominate all of Europe; Western Europe had been allied to it, the second-richest country in the world, through the European Union. Eastern Europe had been won over by military force (though not by wars); Russia, after reannexing Chechnya, had started making noises at the other breakaway republics. But the Joint Forces of the Germanic Union of Nation-States had formed a mutual defense alliance, thumbing its nose at NATO, which was powerless without America. Accordingly all of the Eastern European countries that could see the giant rumbling to their east ran straight into Germany’s arms.

  For Russia, it was a feint. Russians were not like Americans, speaking only a different language, as had been thought in those heady years after the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and their wall in Berlin, fell.

  The Russians were a downtrodden and splintered people who had no notion of self-governance or self-reliance. Russia had quickly degenerated into a nation of petty criminals run by a few very powerful criminals, and it had stayed hungry and cold and dark. It had no strength at all, except its behemoth size and the world’s perception that it could put four million men into a war. The big thieves were stripping the country of the big things—the weapons, the imported moneys from natural resources such as oil and industrial diamonds and titanium—while the millions of little thieves were practicing graft and corruption on a smaller scale, cheating on the weights of bread and watering down the soup and using substandard wool to knit the gloves and rotten leather to sole the shoes.

  The only way that Russia commanded attention from the world was a sort of sly blackmail—it needed grain for the starving poor, it needed IMF loans for the broken banks, it needed technological aid for the antiquated industrial complex, and it needed medical supplies and pharmaceuticals for the sick millions. If Russia could not keep the population well and fed and happy, how could it possibly maintain the military-industrial complex, which safeguarded the nuclear arms and materials?

  With this sly blackmail, the rest of the world gave Russia an arm’s-length respect, while the World Bank gave it loans and America gave it grain (bought from Australia) and medicines (bought from Japan). On paper Russia had 2.8 million in the active forces, and 2 million in the reserves. Even if the figures were accurate, the quality of the soldiers would be highly suspect. Yet millions of men—from Attila’s to Napoleon’s to Hitler’s—were buried in the snowy steppes, and the world could not afford to let the Great Bear roar, no matter how old or decrepit he was.

  The only countries that were considered by some to be the last frontiers (and seen by others as backward renegades) were the countries of the Pacific that had, from creation, been set apart from the rest of the world. Australia and New Zealand had stubbornly stayed stuck in the twentieth century, with their strict criminal laws, their disdain for the Man and Biosphere Project, their antiquated social mores. In Australia they still called partners a husband and a wife. Australia and New Zealand had the lowest abortion rates in the world and the largest number of intact families.

  They also had robust and noisy democracies, and in 2015, Indonesia signed a mutual trade pact with them that effectively made Oceania a large, influential, and unruly member of the Eight Spheres of Influence. Together they ruled the Pacific shipping lanes. The countries of Europe—particularly England—hated the odd confederation, for they considered it a betrayal of Australia’s and New Zealand’s historic cultural ties. China and the Far Eastern Sphere hated it because they considered Indonesia a traitor to what they still called the barbaric West. Oceania didn’t care. Its countries were prosperous, they had millions of miles of land, they had control of the largest (and most beautiful) ocean, and they minded their own affairs. While they were at it, they formed an Oceanic Task Force to keep everyone else minding his own business, too, and that military was third (in standing army) only to the Germanic Union’s Joint Task Forces and China’s military.

  The pie of the world was split up into eight great juicy pieces: (1) America (with her spheres, Canada and Israel); (2) Europe (dominated by Germany); (3) the Far Eastern Sphere (mostly China, which had not literally conquered anyone but overshadowed Japan, North and South Korea, Southeast Asia, Mongolia, and the Philippines); (4) Russia, the wounded Great Bear, all alone but mighty in sheer size; (5) the Arabic Confederation, as splintered and downtrodden as the conquered and overrun Ottoman Empire had been; (6) India, which warred with, and easily overran, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka; (7) Latin America, which included Mexico; and (8) happy Oceania.

  So it was with the representatives from these Eight Spheres of Influence that Tor met personally and showed them that he would own the world.

  In 1942 it had been the Reichsbank; in 2000 it had been the German Foreign Ministry; in 2010 it was the German Offices of the Eurobank; in 2022 it became the Germanic Union Headquarters of the World Bank. It was the same building, however, that Hitler had approved, and his banker, Hjalmar Schacht, had had the same office that, until recently, Count Gerade von Eisenhalt had occupied as chief finance officer of the World Bank. Now Count Tor von Eisenhalt had that same office and that same
title.

  But the new count did not meet with the twenty-three representatives from the Eight Spheres of Influence in that office or in any of the great meeting rooms with their soaring ceilings and friezes and classical statuettes. He met with them in a cold anteroom in the basement, in a spartan room with only chairs and a long plain table and harsh lighting and no windows. Behind a plain lectern hung dull red velvet drapes from floor to ceiling.

  Tor’s speech was short and to the point. He disdained the podium; he used no electrical sound equipment; he wore his military uniform with no apology. No sound was made by anyone or anything as he spoke.

  “America is in chaos. But as you see, here at my right hand, the president of the United States is safe; and so also, by my hand, will America be held safe.” He paused a moment to let this statement settle in, and some of the esteemed high persons glanced meaningfully at one another and at Luca Therion. It had been two months since the blackout of the United States, and no one in the world had been able to learn exactly what had happened or why. No one had been sure that Luca Therion was still alive.

  Tor waited until everyone was perfectly still and everyone’s gaze was fixed solely on him again. “I know that the economies of many of your countries have suffered in the past two months. I know that some of you face severe panics, depressions, inflations, or other market convulsions.”

  His voice grew deeper, louder, and the assembled men and women, powerful and influential though they were, felt small and inadequate. “But I say to you that this is merely imagination, false visions, nameless fears, ladies and gentlemen. You think, and therefore the people of your nations think, that because America has fallen, you will fall. You think that because the New York Stock Exchange hasn’t been open, you will not have food to eat. You think that because you can’t get the latest quote on the NASDAQ Exchange, your roof will not shield you from the heat of the sun or keep the rain from falling on you. You think that because the ineffectual eunuchs of the UN General Assembly are lost in the darkness of New York, your country will disappear.”

  He waited, eyeing each of the twenty-three men and women with something like disdain. The four women, and many of the men, flushed with shame. Some others grew pale with dread, for Tor von Eisenhalt’s derision could be intimidating, indeed.

  Tor continued in a mocking tone, “I say again, these are just a child’s fears. You think your life’s blood is in stocks, bonds, derivatives, market shares, trade levels . . . but I am a soldier, and I know that your life’s blood has nothing to do with these bits of paper and these electronic impulses that travel over electrical lines that can fail.

  “What do you want? What does each of you really want? Corporate records that say you own shares? Pieces of paper that are supposed to represent a piece of wealth? Meaningless numbers attributed to you in Cyclops ether space? I think not. I think what you want, what you need, and what your nations need is real wealth. True wealth. Measurable, tangible, physical wealth. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the worth of the world. And so, my friends . . . I give you the world.”

  He stood, nodded to Luca, bowed and clicked his heels, and left.

  The assembly was so taken aback that everyone sat motionless, in silence, for a long time.

  Then Luca Therion rose and pulled back the heavy red velvet drapes behind him.

  It was gold. It was tons of gold, mountains of gold, worlds of gold, stacked to the ceiling, extending as far back as the eye could see. Hundreds of thousands of bars of gleaming gold, so bright that it made the eye squint, so pure looking and clean looking that it made one almost cry. There was even a distinctive, heavy metallic scent in the air. The harsh lights looked dim and dreary; the gold shone as bright as the sun.

  Luca stood at the podium; no one had spoken a word. The people were so amazed and bemused at the sight of this unfathomable wealth that many of them had stopped breathing.

  In a calm voice Luca said, “Count von Eisenhalt has named me second minister of the World Trade Organization and second minister of the World Bank. I’m sure you will confirm these appointments. At present, by his authority I am to assure each of you that your country will be more than insulated against any real losses incurred by the temporary cessation of the American stock exchange. This . . .”—he gestured lightly to the unbelievable wealth behind him—“is Count Tor von Eisenhalt and the Germanic Union of Nation-States’ insurance policy for you.”

  The Chinese prime minister recovered more quickly than anyone. “But—but—none of us have been on the gold standard for many decades! Our reserves are in U.S. Treasury bonds!”

  Luca shrugged. If he had not been so cold looking, his expression might have been akin to a smile. “Germany now has the largest gold reserve the world has ever known. Here, in this building, is enough gold to back all the currencies of all the nations in this room one and one-half times. Germany will buy your U.S. bonds either with gold or with German Treasury bonds.”

  England’s prime minister said slowly, “But—but you mean, switch the benchmark currency from dollars to euromarks?”

  “Deutsche marks,” Luca corrected him mildly, using the common term for the Germanic-based currency that had slowly dominated the ill-fated eurodollar.

  The finance minister from Japan blinked rapidly. “But—but— this is—Mr. President, we cannot just pretend that the largest consumer on earth has disappeared, and it makes no difference!”

  Luca, whose chiseled face had darkened to malevolence at the beginning of the young man’s outburst, suddenly laughed. “Mr. Finance Minister, I assure you that America is still there. And within four months, Count von Eisenhalt will bring her to life again. Within the next year, America will rejoin the world. But Count von Eisenhalt realizes—as do we all—that interim emergency measures must be taken. And be aware, Mr. Finance Minister, that Tor von Eisenhalt is not a simpleton, and to suggest— to even think such a thing—may be a very serious mistake for you to make. Now, we are all intelligent people here. Surely you see that solid gold backing your currency will stabilize your economies admirably.

  “Now, for the second phase of Count von Eisenhalt’s emergency market measures. The World Finance team of the Global Union of Nation-States has devised a model flow of actual, physical goods that we can use to feed us and clothe us and give us all the luxuries—and the model shows that we can actually prosper.”

  Another astounded silence met this declaration.

  At length the prime minister of Australia, a plump, robust young man, could contain his incredulity no longer. “Do you mean to say, Mr. President, that those German money wonks have actually figured flows of goods for the whole kit? Grains, foods, ice, shoes, Tyvek, pickles, oil, apples, sapphires, natural gas, kumquats, glass beads . . . They counted all of everything that exists and apportioned it to us?”

  Luca did not look amused. “Yes,” he answered curtly. “That’s exactly what I mean. And it will work. It is the only plan that will save you.”

  Another of the long, uncomfortable silences ensued. No one looked directly at anyone else; there was a lot of staring blankly into space and looking down at twisting hands.

  Finally India’s prime minister, a shrewd older woman, asked quietly, with a show of subservience, “And this gold, Mr. President? It is America’s, is it not?”

  “Most of it was America’s,” Luca said quietly, “but it now belongs to the Global Union of Nation-States—formerly the Germanic Union. America has allied herself with this union, and consequently the name has been changed to reflect its global membership. As a member of the Global Union of Nation-States, America has pledged her gold as currency reserves for distribution to the member-states as the first minister dictates.”

  They digested this information, and being the intelligent people that they were, they knew exactly what Luca meant: if they were to stabilize their economies, they would have to join the Global Union of Nation-States, with Count Tor von Eisenhalt as the first minister of the Global Union, the comma
nding general of the Joint Task Forces, the first minister of the World Bank, and the secretary-general of the World Trade Organization.

  Tor would own them all. He would, in fact, own the world.

  TWELVE

  SO BY TOMORROW I will have a one-page summary of the military postures of the Eight Spheres as I see it. From there we will go on to devise our overall strategy in the Mideast.” Tor von Eisenhalt sipped appreciatively from a finely made crystal goblet containing his favorite liquor, mead. His cold blue eyes raked the two men sitting in front of his desk in the spacious study at Waldleiningen.

  Oberstleutnant Rand von Drachstedt and Oberleutnant Jager Dorn exchanged uneasy glances. Both men were already uncomfortable enough in the imposing study of the Waldleiningen jagdschloss—and not only because Tor’s father, Gerade von Eisenhalt, had died in mysterious circumstances in this room.

  The twenty-foot ceiling seemed nonexistent, it was so high. The room’s combination of German Gothic and neoclassic English was heavily masculine. A massive fireplace of neo-Gothic design loomed to their left. For some reason it reminded Jager Dorn of a childhood fairy tale about ogres pitching children through a huge portal into a dark, scary nightmare place where they were lost forever. The fireplace never failed to raise goose bumps along the back of his neck when he managed to look at it.

  Tor was watching the two men with something akin to amusement. Jager Dorn, the young first lieutenant, was obviously uncomfortable. His handsome face was unnaturally pale, and he kept running his fingers through his thick black hair and fidgeting with his silver pen. Colonel Rand von Drachstedt seemed a little more at ease, though his craggy, stern face showed some tension.

  “Is there something . . . wrong, gentlemen?” Tor finally asked lightly.

  “Um, sir . . . ,” Dorn began, tugging at the tight uniform collar at his neck, “it was my understanding—that is, I was unaware—”