Stories From The Quiet War

by Paul McAuley

  "That's . . . remarkable."

  "Oh yes. Remarkable. Astonishing. Amazing. What do you think you would call out, if you were put to the question, Professor-Doctor Graves?"

  "I'm sure I don't —"

  "Nobody knows," Dev Veeder said, "until the moment. But I'm sure you'd call for your mother, eh?" His smile was a thing of muscles and teeth, with only cold calculation behind it. "Was Marisa Bassi a great man? His people think so, and perhaps that's enough."

  I said, eager to grasp this thread, "He lost his war. Great men are usually remembered because they won."

  "It goes deeper than winning or losing," Dev Veeder said. "The important thing is that Bassi took responsibility for his actions. He was captured; he escaped and returned at once to the fight. Technology makes most men remote from the war they create. At the end of the Second World War, which was, as you know, the first truly modern war, neither the crew of the American aircraft Enola Gay nor most of the technicians and scientists who built the atomic bomb, nor even the politicians who ordered its use, none of them felt any guilt over what they did. Why not? The answer is simple: the destruction was remote from them. In the Quiet War, most people were killed by technicians millions of kilometres away. Technicians who fought the war in eight hour shifts and then went home to their spouses and children. Remoteness and division of labour induces both a diminished sense of responsibility and moral tunnel vision, so that men see the task of killing only in terms of efficiency and meeting operation parameters. In my line of work it is different, of course. That is why I am despised by so many, but I believe that I am a more moral man than they for at least I know exactly what I do. I see the fear in my victims' eyes; I smell their sweat and their voided bladders and guts; I get blood on my hands. And I am often the last person they see, so I do not stint my sympathy for their plight."

  I said, "It must make breaking their bones difficult."

  "Not at all. I do it with a clear conscience because they are the enemy, because it is necessary. But at no time do I reduce them to ciphers or quotients or statistics. They are not targets or casualties or collateral damage. They are men and women in the glory of their final agony. People hate me, yes, But while they think they hate me because of what I do, in fact they hate me because they see in me what they know is lacking in them. Nietzsche had it right: the weak mass always despises the strong individual."

  I was sure that Nietzsche had said no such thing, and told Dev Veeder, "Nietzsche tried to erase moral responsibility and went mad doing it. On the morning when they finally had to haul him off to the asylum, he rushed out of his lodgings, still wearing his landlord's nightcap, and tearfully embraced a carthorse. The amoral philosophy which the Nazis would adopt as their own in the Second World War, the creed which would shatter Europe, had already shattered his mind."

  "Do you fear me, Professor-Doctor?"

  "Fear? What a question!"

  "Because, you know, you should. This place, where you play-act the role of conqueror of the world, it will have to go. It endangers security. I will see to it," Dev Veeder said, and stood up and bowed and loped away.

  I knew that Cris DeHon had betrayed me, but when I returned from my research in the ruins of the city and confronted him, the neuter denied it with an uncomfortable laugh.

  "Why should I spoil all the fun?"

  "Fun?"

  "The plot. The play. The unfolding mysteries of the human heart."

  "You have no right to talk of such things, DeHon. You opted out of all that."

  DeHon clutched its breast dramatically. "A cruel cut, Graves. I may be desexed, but I'm still human, and part of life's great comedy. If nothing else, I can still watch. And I do like to watch."

  "Nevertheless, you told him."

  "I won't deny that our gallant love-struck colonel asked me if I knew where his sweetheart had been while I was talking with him at that party. You still owe me for that, by the way."

  "Not if you told him."

  "Perhaps I did let a little something slip. Please, don't look at me that way! I didn't mean to, but our colonel is very persistent. It is his job, after all."

  The small, bright-eyed smile with which this admission was delivered let me know that DeHon had deliberately revealed something about the assignation to Dev Veeder. I said, "It was innocent. Quite innocent."

  "I do not believe," DeHon said, "that Demi Lacombe is as innocent as she likes people to think she is."

  This was at a reception held by the Pacific Community's trade association. Several of its companies had just won the contract to rebuild Dione's organic refineries. Most of us were there. Dev Veeder was standing to one side of a group of biochemists who were talking with Demi Lacombe. He saw me looking at him, and raised his bulb of wine in an ironic salute.

  When I had returned to the plaza that afternoon, I had found that Dev Veeder had been true to his word. The café was gone, its mismatched chairs and tables and the shell of the half-ruined guardhouse cleared away. Later, I discovered that the old man and woman who had run it had been sent to work in the vacuum organism fields, a virtual death sentence for people their age, but I did not need to know that to understand that Dev Veeder had made his point, and I managed to have a brief word with Demi at the buffet of sushi, seaweed, and twenty varieties of bananas stewed and fried and stuffed – exotic food shipped from Earth at God knows what expense for our delectation.

  As I transferred morsels I would not eat from the prongs of their serving plates to the prongs of my bowl, I told Demi, "He knows."

  "He doesn't know. If he did, he would have done something."

  "He has done something," I said, and told her about the café. Had I known then about the fate of its proprietors I would not have dared to even speak with her.

  She said, "I'm going again tomorrow. If you are too scared to help me, Professor-Doctor Graves, I will find my own way across the city."

  With a pang of jealousy, I thought of the way that Yagi Hakaiopulos's fingers had caressed her face. The two of them sharing secrets while I waited outside like a court eunuch. I said, "Colonel Veeder will be watching you."

  "He has to make a presentation about security to company representatives, and I've told him that I will be working in diplomatic quarter's parkland." She touched her temple. "If his men do try to follow me in there, and so far they have not, I'll see them long before they see me. And I know you won't tell him, Fredo. But we shouldn't talk any more, or at least, not here. I think Dev is getting suspicious."

  "He is more than suspicious," I said. My cheeks were burning like those of a foolish adolescent. "And that is why, I am afraid, I can no longer help you."

  I did not go into the city the next day, for if I did I knew that I would have to go back to that ruined park and wait for Demi to emerge from the cliff, like Athena stepping new-born from the brow of Zeus. If nothing else, I still had my pride. She will need my help, I thought, and I was wounded when, of course, she did not seek me out.

  The day passed, and the next, and still she did not come. I discounted the third day because she was taken out into the city by Dev Veeder; but on the morning of fourth, hollow, anxious, defeated, I summoned Lavet Corso and ordered him to fly me straight to the ruined park.

  He knew what I was about, of course; I made no pretence about it. We landed on the black slime of the lawn, and I saw a rill of water falling from the cleft in the black basalt cliff and felt my heart harden.

  "Take me back," I told Corso.

  "Sure, boss, but I'll have to wind the prop first."

  While he worked, I said, "You knew all along, didn't you?"

  "A woman like that coming down to the warrens, well, she's hard to miss, boss."

  "I suppose that she is talking with that gene wizard. With Yagi Hakaiopulos."

  "I don't like it either, boss."

  "You were right about her, Mr. Corso. She uses men. Even old fools like me and your Mr. Hakaiopulos. There was a school of thought in the late Twentieth Century th
at men – even great men – were ruled by their genitals. They couldn't help themselves, and as a result they either treated all women like prostitutes, or the women who were involved in their lives had an undue influence on them. It's long been discredited, but I wonder if there isn't some truth to it. We can never really know what is in the hearts of men, for after all, most refuse to admit it to themselves. At least your own great man, Marisa Bassi, was not troubled by women. The sector where he went looking for sex . . ."

  "The Battery?"

  "Yes, you took me there. One must admire, I suppose, the meticulousness of city planners who would design a neighbourhood where men can go to find other men, free of class, driven only by desire."

  "It wasn't really designed, boss. It sort of grew up. And it wasn't just gay men who went there."

  "Do you think he went there while he was organising the resistance to the siege?"

  "I wouldn't know, boss."

  "No, of course not. You did not know him, as you keep reminding me, and you are a family man. But I expect that he did. Leaders of men are almost always highly sexed. We can't condemn such impulses."

  Corso locked the crank of the prop and stood back, dusting his hands. "You're not just talking about Marisa Bassi now, are you?"

  "No. No, I suppose not. It's all part of the human comedy . . . or tragedy."

  "We can go now, boss. It's all wound up and waiting."

  "Of course. Then take me back to the quarter, Mr. Corso. I think I must tell Colonel Veeder about this security problem."

  Corso paused, halfway through swinging into the pilot's sling. One hand was raised, grasping a support strut of the airframe's wide canary yellow wings, and half his face was in shadow. He gave me a level, appraising look and said, "Are you sure you want to do that?"

  "The security of the diplomatic quarter is at risk. It's not only Demi Lacombe who could be using that way in and out of the parklands." When Corso did not reply, I bent and touched the bulge of the blazer, holstered at my calf. "Get me back, Mr. Corso. I insist."

  "You will get more people than her into trouble, boss."

  "I will tell Colonel Veeder that your part in this was blameless. That you were under my orders."

  "I'm not just thinking of myself."

  "Yagi Hakaiopulos will have to take his chance. I shudder to think what Demi must have done, to gain his secrets."

  "I think it's more a question of what she did to him," Corso said.

  "I have had enough of your impertinence, Mr. Corso. Look sharp, now. I want to get this whole unfortunate business over with."

  "I don't think so, boss."

  "What?"

  He let go of the strut and stepped back and said flatly, "It won't take you long to walk back, even if you have to use the stairs to climb up to the quarter. And as you always like to remind me, you have your blazer to protect you."

  "Corso! Damn you Corso, come back here!"

  But he did not look back as he walked away across the blackened ruins of the lawn, even when I drew the blazer and blew a dead tree to splinters. I hoped that the shot might attract one of the killing machines that patrolled the city, but although I waited a full ten minutes, nothing stirred. At last, I climbed out of the airframe and began the long walk home.

  7.

  Dev Veeder took my revelation more calmly than I had thought he would, even though I had taken the precaution of having arranged to meet with him in the presence of Colm Wardsmead, the nominal director of the diplomatic quarter and, therefore, of the entire city. Wardsmead was a shifty, self-satisfied man; although he liked to think of himself as a Medici prince, the effectiveness of his native cunning was limited by his laziness and contempt for others. I knew that Dev Veeder despised Wardsmead, but also knew that he would not dare lose control of his temper in the director's presence.

  "This is all very awkward," Wardsmead said, when I was done. "Perhaps you would care to make a recommendation, Colonel Veeder. I am sure that you would want this matter handled discreetly."

  During my exposition, Dev Veeder had stood with his back to the egg-shaped room, looking out of the huge window towards the shaggy treetops of the parkland. Without turning around, he said, "She's supposed to be doing research out there. It would be the best place for an arrest."

  "Away from the excitable gaze of the diplomatic community," Wardsmead said. "I quite understand, Colonel."

  He was unable to hide his satisfaction at Dev Veeder's discomfort. Veeder was a war hero and so difficult to discipline, but now Wardsmead believed that he had a stick with which to beat him.

  Perhaps Veeder heard something he did not like in Wardsmead's tone. He turned and gave the man a hard stare and said, "I always do what is best, Mr. Wardsmead, not what is convenient. My men are tracking her as she makes her way back across the main dome. They will allow her to enter the back door to the quarter's parkland, and I will arrest her when she arrives."

  Wardsmead swung to and fro in the cradle of his chair, hands folded across his ample stomach, and said, "I suppose the question is, once you have arrested her, has she done anything wrong?"

  "Consorting with the enemy without permission is a crime," Dev Veeder said promptly. "Failing to reveal a weakness in the security of the diplomatic quarter is also a crime. Both are betrayals of trust."

  "Well, there we have it," Wardsmead said.

  "There will have to be a trial," Dev Veeder told him.

  "Oh, now, that would be an unnecessary embarrassment, don't you think? One of the shuttles is due to leave in a couple of days. We can ship her off —"

  "There will be a trial," Dev Veeder said. "It is a security matter, and the crime was committed outside the diplomatic quarter, so it falls under martial law. She will be tried, and so will the old man."

  I said, "You have arrested Yagi Hakaiopulos?"

  For the first time, Dev Veeder looked directly at me. I confess that I flinched. He said, "The old man was not at the hospital, but there are only so many places he can hide. Your guide, the man Corso, has also vanished. I must assume that he is also part of the plot."

  I said, "Yagi Hakaiopulos was simply helping Demi understand how the parklands and wilderness had been put together. Surely that's not a crime?"

  Using her first name was a mistake. Dev Veeder said coldly, "You have admitted, Professor-Doctor Graves, that you did not know what they talked about. I have not arrested you only because stupidity is not a crime under either civil or martial law."

  Wardsmead said, "I don't much care what happens to the two tweaks, but even if I allow you your trial, Colonel Veeder, I want an assurance that Dr. Lacombe will be deported at the end of it."

  Despite his amiable tone, his forehead was greasy with sweat. He scented a scandal, and did not want its taint to sully his career.

  Dev Veeder said, "That depends on what I discover during my interrogation. And I can assure you, gentlemen, that it will be a very thorough interrogation. You will come with me, Professor-Doctor Graves."

  "I have already told you —"

  "You will come with me," Dev Veeder said again.

  He wanted his revenge to be complete.

  8.

  Camelot, Mimas fell; Baghdad, Enceladus fell; Athens and Spartica on Tethys surrendered within days of each other, blasted into submission by singleship attacks; the vacuum organism farms of Iapetus's carbonaceous plains were destroyed by viral infection; Phoebe, settled by the Redeemers, and the habitats which had remained in orbit around Titan, had all declared neutrality at the beginning of the war, and were under martial law.

  Within two months of the arrival of the expeditionary force from Earth, the war was almost over. Only Paris, Dione remained defiant to the end. Singleships had taken out most of the city's peripheral installations. Its vacuum organism farms were dying. And now new stars flared in its sky as troop ships took up their eccentric orbits. The emergency committee of Paris voted to surrender, and the same night were assassinated by Marisa Bassi's followers. Bassi r
allied the citizens, organised the barricades and the block captains, killed a party of negotiators in a fit of fury and killed his hostages too.

  It was an unforgivable act, a terrible war crime, yet for Marisa Bassi and the citizens of Paris it was deeply necessary. It was an affirmation of their isolation and their outlaw status. It united them against the rest of humanity.

  I believe that Bassi was tired of waiting, tired of the slow attrition of the blockade. He was bringing the war right into the heart of his city and, like the people he led, was eager to embrace it.

  Imagine that last day, as lights streaked across the sky as the troop ships launched their drop capsules. A battery of industrial X-ray lasers tried and failed to target them; a troop ship came over the horizon, pinpointed the battery, and destroyed it with a single low yield fission missile, stamping a new crater a kilometre wide on Remus crater's floor.

  Marisa Bassi felt the shock wave of that strike as a low rumbling that seemed to pass far beneath the ground, like a subway train. He was in the street, organising the people who manned one of the barricades. It was mid-morning. He had been awake for more than forty-eight hours. His throat was sore and his lips were cracked. His eyes ached in their dry sockets and there was a low burning in his belly; he had drunk far too much coffee.

  The scow had gone, and those citizens too old or too young to fight had been moved into the tunnels of the original colony. There was nothing left to do now but fight. The people knew this and seemed to be in good heart. They still believed that the Three Powers Alliance would not dare destroy their beautiful city, the jewel of the outer system, and perhaps Marisa Bassi believed it too. He felt that he carried the whole city in his heart, its chestnut trees and cafés, trams and parklands, the theatre and the Bourse and the lovely glass cathedral, and he had never loved his adopted home as fiercely as he loved it now, in its last hours.