Paper or Plastic

by Mackey Chandler

  "How… how did they rule on that case?"

  "His opinion, which decided the issue two to one, was that while the President of the Forest Products company made a very persuasive argument for the law not to apply, because changes had made the original intent of the law obsolete, the Regulator had nevertheless shown that the law was still active and clear in its language. So the President of the company should petition the Council of Executives to change the law when they met."

  "So, did they ever?"

  "Nah, he was old. He died before the next Council meeting and I don't think his successor ever brought it up."

  "And to back up just a bit - Ten days a year, takes care of all your heavy legal questions?"

  "Well, if there's nothing scheduled they can always post a notice on the government site, that there won't be any hearings," Ri pointed out. "There are always old retired guys who get a kick out of attending and it would be rude not to let them know."

  Roger just shook his head. "And if the local authorities turn down a legal petition, can you then appeal it to a Trishan court of law?"

  "I don't know. Maybe you can find it in all those records Martee downloaded. I know one thing. If you do so, all the local executives will make it their hobby, to make your life hell. They don't like Trishans and the way Trishans do things or they and their forefathers would have never come out here on the frontier to get away from them. I'd think in terms of being persuasive and winning your case here, or it just might be easier to move on to another world," Ri suggested.

  * * *

  "This is the passage I want to make sure we understand correctly," Roger said, highlighting the section in the original charter for the planet. This says that anyone improving a section of land must post a notice, or deposit a document at the corners of any such land, after some improvements have been made. They list a lot of things that are improvements, including clearing vegetation, digging minerals, mining water – what we'd call digging a well and building a shelter. "Now this is the key phrase. It says the colony authorities shall issue a charter for a section of land that meets those criteria, upon being petitioned. It also says nobody shall interfere with the occupation or continued improvement of such land, while such status is being sought. It doesn't say after the request is filed. It implies while the activities are being done that qualifies the land for a charter. Am I right? Do I understand the word I’m translating shall correctly? It's not may?"

  Ri and Martee both sat and studied it intensely and compared it to other documents. Todu was a very stable language with a very rigid grammar. "Yes," they agreed, "that's what it says and what it means."

  "What I don't understand," said Ri, "is why did they stop doing it that way, after being on the planet three hundred years?"

  "The answer must be in here," Martee insisted. "Let's keep looking for it."

  * * *

  It took three more market days before they understood. A plague had caught the colony three hundred years after its founding. The survivors were only about a third of the original population and so busy staying alive they hadn't generated many records for an entire generation. The errors and bad file names and misplaced records, suggested the experts in using the computers had all died. The plague sounded very much to Roger like the Spanish Flu, or the more recent Chinese Flu on Earth. Even very rural areas were seldom spared.

  When the plague was run out, many of the richest outlying farms and ranches were ownerless and the current capitol, at the time the only city on the planet, had had so many people leave there weren't enough people to maintain services. People were afraid to come back into the city and population was slowly dropping instead of increasing. Apparently other star systems suffered the same plague, because there were only two ships landed in the next hundred years and one of those was run off because one of the crewmen appeared to be sick.

  Worried the colony would die out; they passed a temporary measure suspending the acquisition of land rights for the next hundred years, or until the colony had a one fifth increase in population. Everyone was pulled back into the city. Outlander populations were allowed only for specifically chartered projects necessary for survival, such as growing grain, which had never been very successful near the city.

  After the terms of the measure had passed, nobody apparently looked at the files again. When the terms expired all the original authors had been long dead and the way they were doing things became custom, with the force of law.

  "The question is, if we bring this to light, will they revert to the original charter, or will they change the law to make the customary form legal and permanent?" Ri asked.

  "Is the idea of having something 'grandfathered' in your law?" Rog asked.

  After much discussion, the answer was yes. Trishan law forbade, ex-post-facto law.

  "Then let's take no chances. Let's mark off the land we want and do some improvements. Then Ri and we two, will file our petitions to be granted a charter. Even if they change the law, our petition will have been filed before they change the law and they must grant it under the terms of the old law, reinstituted under terms of the emergency measure."

  "I'm for it," Ri agreed, "but let’s file our claims and then pass a printed paper on this out to every farmer and outland squatter who lives beyond city limits. Some of them may rush in and file before they can change the law and we are going to be very unpopular people if we grab our own land and don't even say anything to the others to give them a shot at it."

  "Maybe seeing too much land being grabbed may encourage the council to change the law," Roger speculated.

  "And maybe seeing a mob demanding their rights, will persuade the council that it's too dangerous politically to deny all these people." Ri said.

  "But either way we should be OK. Let’s do it," Martee urged.

  * * *

  Their claim was a tapered rectangle. It was a kilometer and a half wide, on the forward slope of a steep ridge, overlooking town. It ran away from town for six kilometers, across a wild valley and the three kilometer back edge included a slope, that would make a nice ski trail, if it were cut and groomed. The season would be short but the altitude helped them there. They would build a lodge and hotel on the short end of the property, overlooking town.

  They sank fence posts deep in concrete with attached bronze plaques as corner markers. Their claim was stamped in deep characters and a tin was attached with copies of their claim printed, for anyone who wanted a copy. Each was in thick woods and of colors that blended with the area. As far as they knew nobody ever saw one of their claim markers until they filed the papers and people went out looking for them.

  Roger paid hefty sums to three different parties, who had little better than hobo camps to move off of his claim area. With no explanation and with more money than they had seen in a long time, they all agreed and thought him a fool.

  One even volunteered to move again, if Roger should ever wish it and had the cash handy to pay as much. He made them sign quit-claims.

  The filing was made, just a week before the usual day of hearing legal petitions. They included a lengthy explanation of their research and the history they had uncovered, citing all the records and how to find them. They noted at the end Martee was a recognized authority on Trishan colonial history and well qualified to cite such documents and interpret any changes in language and writing. Six petitions of claim were filed the next day and over a hundred similar claims were filed by the public, the last day of that week.

  The public uproar was so great they stayed home the last market day, before their claim was heard.

  The council noted the law was valid, the original reason and conditions of the overriding temporary measure having passed. They approved two hundred and twenty-eight filings for land charters, in less than a twentieth-day of hearing, before going on to other business. Most of the time was spent reading off the names of petitioners before saying "Granted." Then the real land rush started.

  Chapter 30

 
In a darkened room in Northern Virginia, a pair of NRO image analysts manipulated the data from the last satellite pass, on a huge wall monitor. The bird had dipped so low to get a good look, that it had had to expend a great deal of propellant to overcome the atmospheric drag and climb back into a stable orbit.

  "What the devil is that thing?" the senior of the two, James Cotton, asked in irritation. The other younger fellow, Dan Bolgrin, didn't respond. They had all been asking variations on that same question for several months, so he didn't really expect an answer.

  They had been wondering what was going on ever since the perimeter on the Canaf 2 complex had been expanded and a huge area inside the new fence cleared. The base was so secret most Israeli citizens didn't know its location.

  The US analysts inferred what it was from satellite data, not because their ally shared the secret with them. First, a massive cradle had been built. It was an open lattice of bare steel beams, on a plain ferroconcrete pad. None of the utilities bridged the gap to the cradle. Early on a number of analysts insisted it was for a massive airship dock. Fully four hundred meters long with a rectangular cross section and tapered on both ends.

  Then a shed top appeared over the whole thing, hiding it from overhead eyes. Only the vague shape of a hull bottom was visible at a great distance, if the sat peeked in at an extreme angle. However too much of the material flowing in could be proved to be conventional steel and other alloy too heavy for an airship. Also it did not appear to be mostly hollow. Equipment and supplies kept arriving and disappearing inside, so it was being filled and equipped with something. One Pentagon pundit had anonymously suggested that it was an ark, being constructed by a modern day Noah.

  "Look at these six covered trailers in line, that they have been working on the last few days," the junior analyst pointed out with his cursor. "They lifted one of the subassemblies that they have kept under cover, into the gap and the last pass caught them with it on the crane, before they covered it with a big tarp again. I think they had some trouble rigging the lift and it took too long. You can figure that's what is under the other three covers here, here and here," he said, outlining them with a roll of the mouse. He isolated that shot and blew it up until it started to get fuzzy.

  "It looks like some kind of double docking collar. Maybe it’s for secure transfer in a NCB environment? A helicopter could have a matching hatch on its belly and land on this and seal to it."

  "Maybe," said Bolgrin. He didn't really feel free to say what it looked like to him. It was too crazy. When his boss wasn't looking over his shoulder, he'd do a search for the image he had in mind and compare it. Damned if it didn't look like the docking collar on the International Space Station to him.

  * * *

  "No, General," the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff insisted, "the President absolutely will not entertain the idea. Especially with our nominal ally who has done nothing provocative, to justify such action. No atmospheric over-flights, no matter how stealthy you swear they are. May I remind you these are the people who sold us most of the tech for our best drones? And there should be no discussion of how it might be neutralized. Just the existence of contingency plans of that sort, always looks damning when they get leaked to the press. We will bring some political pressure to bear on the matter however."

  * * *

  "What should we tell them?" The Israeli Defense Minister asked the Prime Minister. "They are threatening to rethink the whole spectrum of aid and beyond that I sense there is an actual hostile undercurrent."

  "When this is done we won't need their aid. How long now before the minimum of systems and supplies are in place, ready to function?"

  "Three days. Next Wednesday we'll have all the basic systems done."

  "No way will they ever realize the need to act so quickly. String them along. Tell them some of the truth and it will confuse them. Tell them it's a closed environmental lab, to test isolating a substantial community from biological warfare, or environmental disaster in the ocean. That should hold them for three days."

  * * *

  "An environmental isolation lab? In a cradle above ground?" he asked skeptically. That explanation didn’t hold Cotton for three minutes.

  "It might be a simulator," Bolgrin admitted. "I have an idea on that, but it's so crazy I want to just run it past you privately and have you promise not to link my name to the idea. It could be a career killer if it got out."

  "OK," his boss agreed, "just between us, what kind of simulator?"

  "Remember this?" He brought up the file showing the round port with a flange recessed face. "Now compare it to this file." He split the screen and showed a similar smaller docking port. The image was cropped so it didn't show the surrounding area. The scale was set and marked in the corner of each image the same, so the difference in size was obvious. The new mystery machinery, was substantially larger.

  "Yes, they are superficially similar. Are those controls inside the edge of the recess? This is a bad angle to see them. Where'd you get this?"

  "This is the newest docking collar on the International Space Station. They've had three revisions and this is the latest that mates with the new Soyuz and the Falcon II transporter."

  "So you think this is a mock up of a space station?" Cotton asked incredulous.

  "I know. I think it's crazy too. They can put small satellites up, but to put a substantial one in geostationary orbit, the Israelis still contract them out. But that's what it looks like to me. A mockup for a huge space station – far beyond their ability – hell, far beyond anybody's ability today, to lift that much material to orbit and assemble it. I mean, they haven't even done a manned launch yet, unless they've kept it secret. And that would be impossible to do in the Middle East.

  "They'd have to do one out to sea somewhere. They'd need more lift capacity that the rest of the world combined for this and it would still take years, decades probably, to lift enough to assemble something this big. It makes no economic sense to make a mock-up, for something that would be so many years off. For one thing, a current design would be obsolete by the time they had the capacity to actually build one. I can't explain it, but that's what it looks like to me."

  "Send the pix there to NASA and ask them for a comment," said Cotton. "Make no judgments or suggestions. Just give them the file with the scale, but no dates or map data. And we'll see what they have to say. And don't worry, I'll keep my mouth shut on this for both of us. Some of it would splatter on me too. No matter how we disavowed the idea later, if it gets attached to you, the department could suffer for proposing any connection at all. For sure don't talk about it outside the shop even off the record."

  Bolgrin agreed emphatically.

  * * *

  "This doesn't make sense. I'm seeing rail transport delivering new plate and other materials that had to be used to fabricate a hull. So why would they need all this material? They have almost twelve acres with this stuff arranged in neat rows. You hear anything back from NASA on that image you sent them yesterday?"

  "No, but I didn't give them any deadline. If I'd expressed any urgency, they might have started asking questions about exactly how important it is and what we expect them to find. Next thing you know, our bosses could be asking us why we didn't tell them we had some possibility, before asking another agency for help. I'll give them a casual call tomorrow. That monster isn't going anywhere."

  * * *

  "Joshua? This is Haim. You wanted to know when we are going public. Well, in about three hours we're going public in a big way. The offer still stands if you want to be a civilian witness, along with the press and some of the academics invited. No? Well, as agreed you are clear to visibly use your patents yourself, once we are not in a secret mode anymore. Yes, just turn on CNN and you'll see for yourself. Of course we tried it out without the cameras rolling, just enough to make sure we don't embarrass ourselves. It's even been pressure tested. We're very confident. We have a media crew who agreed to be held in isolation until the story bre
aks. And Joshua? – thank you. Not for the nation, but from me personally."

  "You are most welcome, Haim. You wanted to know if we'd be lifting anything from here again. Well..."

  * * *

  "Pick it up Cotton, pick it up," Bolgrin muttered to the ringing phone. He was half dressed, still getting ready for work. "James? Turn CNN on. I already have a recorder running for us. You want to see this."

  CNN – Breaking News – Israel, declared the banner scrolling across the bottom of the screen repeatedly. The vessel looked a lot bigger with the camera angled up at it from the ground, than from ninety miles overhead. It was relatively crude. You could see the weld joints of the plates like an oceangoing freighter.

  In the foreground was the Prime Minister, at a simple lectern with a single big, foam-covered mike. There was only one news crew covering this and they had arrived in a windowless van, after being searched for any GPS equipment.

  There were about twenty officials in an arc behind the Prime Minister, some in uniform, some in civilian attire. A few were clearly happy and a few visibly angry. The angry ones had been suddenly asked this morning to attend this important function without any prior knowledge. A couple kept looking over their shoulders at the massive black vessel looming above them.

  The camera zoomed in for a head and shoulders shot of the PM and cut off the crowd behind him. The out-of-focus black hull behind him was a sinister backdrop.

  "Good afternoon. It's my pleasure to announce the christening of a new vessel in the service of the State of Israel. There have been a number of questions directed to us over the last several months, about the construction of the Doron. We intend to answer them now. Today we launch our new addition and begin a period of testing. Also further work will continue, with personnel and materials carried to her on auxiliary vessels. For reasons that will soon be apparent we have a mixed crew, that draws upon the talents of both naval and air force officers."