Click-click status on the ComLink signal. Jael leased Todd’s best techs to handle their political broadcasts.
The newsman’s voice was mellifluous, almost as persuasive as Pat’s. Kirshon’s Slavic accent didn’t matter. ComLink’s translator-splitter instantly converted his words into a thousand tongues and dialects. One world, one language, with a little help from Ward Saunder’s patents and ComLink’s satellites.
Alien messenger, listening to us out there at thirty A.U., what will you make of Pat’s speech, once the signal crosses the gulf and reaches you? And what will your response be?
Maybe the next response would include that all-important key that would help them break down the remaining mysteries in the alien’s signal. Convert it all to real language, not blips and patterned static, testing each other’s ability to riddle out spectra or numerical sequences.
Todd glanced at the satellite’s watchdog monitors. Little orbiting cameras provided an exterior view of Geosynch HQ, Todd’s home in space. The satellite was a silly-looking structure, by planetside standards. Gravity didn’t matter here, nor did neatly rounded corners or roofs over warehouses. The orbiter’s offices, shuttleport, living quarters, and maintenance facilities bulged with knobby extensions, spindly girders, and connecting tunnels sticking out at odd angles. Robot teleoperators crept over the satellite’s skin, repairing or adding onto the original massive structure. Annexes held clusters of com and power sats, ready for placement in various orbits. Old sats, brought in for repair or recycling, rode in the collection shack “ahead” of the main body of Geosynch HQ. Five spacecraft rode in parking orbit. Access tunnels and electronic umbilici tethered them to docking. Todd’s private ship, an interorbital shuttle he share-leased with Mariette, waited first in line to depart.
In a couple of hours, Gib Owens and I will ride her up to Goddard. And if Pat kicks Mari with this speech, I’ll walk into a million-megaton explosion.
Thirty-two thousand kilometers away, close-up techs wearing miniaturized chest pack cameras doubled as crowd control around the podium, focusing on various guests and committee members. The screen divided, showing an assortment of group and individual portraits to Earth and space. The media theater of Protectors of Earth had been designed to showcase the organization’s triumphs in just this way. Three decades of wars and disasters had stimulated P.O.E.’s rise to near-absolute global authority. World leaders scrambled to join its ranks, and many of them had gathered in the theater for this occasion. CNAU President Galbraith was there, even though the aging politician was a puppet without much real power. His nation provided the land for P.O.E.’s facilities and he showed up at all its functions, reliving the days when his office had genuine clout. P.O.E. Chairman Li Chu presided over the famous guests and committeemen. She was retiring after her present term and had already named Patrick her political heir. Cynically, Todd wondered if Jael had bought the woman off to gain that favor. The Chairmanship of Protectors of Earth was now, in effect, the command post for Earth, and in a few months that post would belong to Patrick Saunder.
All the power-wielders and would-be rulers who hoped to bask in Pat’s reflected glory were there. So were the military, the P.O.E. enforcement officers. Todd stared at the uniformed group, wishing he could read their minds. Were these men and women going to go along with whatever the committee had worked out at the secret conferences? That was crucial, if there was ever to be peace. Dawes, Ubaldi, Chen Chang . . . the old generals, covered with medals, warriors who had survived the worst the Death Years could throw at them. The only public comments anyone heard from them were totally predictable. “Defense posture.” “A strong protective force is the best peace treaty.” They weren’t likely to be conciliatory. It was the young officers who would carry out the terms—if they were willing to cooperate. Todd looked along the row, assessing. His eyes were drawn to one particular black face. General Ames, Dawes’s second in command. Todd sought his memories but didn’t recall ever reading or hearing any statement from the man, not for the public. Yet the analysts pictured Ames as a potential power behind the throne, thanks to his rapport with the troops. He had come up from the same sort of hell on Earth many of the soldiers had. What was he thinking? Right now, Ames was watching Pat narrowly, his stare never wavering. The intensity of the young general’s gaze unsettled Todd, but he couldn’t read the emotions behind that stare. Ames wore a ghetto mask, hiding his true feelings.
His fellow committeemen crowded around Pat, hoping his glamour would rub off on their own election campaigns. Despite seeming modesty, Pat was aware of his assets. His dark good looks and dominating height and voice he had inherited from his father. The political talent was his own. He had used the combination to climb very high, very fast, but was wise enough not to flaunt those gifts. The Earth First Party candidate ran his hand through his hair in a seemingly absentminded gesture which was pure calculation. Todd smiled, remembering how often he and Mariette had watched Pat rehearse that trick when they were kids, calling Pat a vid ham. Pat had laughed as loudly as they. And be kept on practicing. He found he could call attention to his unusual wavy black hair with its red glints. He found out, too, how to use his sharp, strong features, tall body, and theatrical flair. Most of all, he discovered his voice, honing and polishing it to perfection.
But he wasn’t a kid any more. The tricks were second nature now. The adolescent who had once postured for his siblings could now command billions with his stage presence. Crises and wounds in humanity’s collective psyche had created a demand for answers, and Patrick Saunder promised he would find them. Attractive, likable, and rich, he gave the audience what they wanted and became someone they trusted to show them the way out of the mess.
Techs panned the V.I.P. guests in the theater audience. Carissa gazed adoringly at Pat, on stage as much as he was. Not even Todd’s staff was immune to Carissa’s sweet, blond prettiness. He heard several sighs from the duty stations. Dian cocked her curly head, studying Carissa’s picture. “Is she okay? She looks terribly thin and bleached out.”
“I didn’t notice anything wrong the last time I saw her, a week ago. She’s always seemed kind of delicate. I’m sure Pat wouldn’t let her continue this campaign tour if she were ill.” Guilt nagged at Todd. Carissa did look exceptionally pale and shaky. Had he been so callous he hadn’t noticed those changes last week?
Jael sat almost out of camera frame, next to Carissa. She didn’t edge in or try to hog the lens. Jael preferred the shadows. She was eyeing Carissa sidelong. The lenses caught the distinctive white streaks in Jael’s auburn hair, drawing the eye. Todd watched his mother while Jael looked at Carissa. Jael’s expression was strangely possessive, making Todd squirm, unsure why he felt so uneasy.
Behind his mother and sister-in-law, rival candidates Fairchild and Dabrowski did everything but wave flags and make faces to attract attention. Pat’s competitors wanted to piggyback on Carissa’s photogenic beauty. They knew ComLink would feature her for color shots and must have taken the chairs behind her with exactly that purpose in mind. Even though Fairchild’s Third Millennium Movement and Dabrowski’s World Expansionists were Spacers, Todd was disgusted by their behavior. If only the Spacers had someone as popular as Pat . . .!
Someone who could defeat his anti-Spacer brother in the campaign.
Family treason. No wonder Jael had given him a tongue-lashing a week ago when he dared suggest that maybe Pat’s campaign platform wasn’t in the best interests of Earth, the Saunders, or humanity in general.
Beth Isaacs sensed a windup in the intro. “Ready in case of trouble. Let’s go.” On-duty techs notched their chairs forward, guaranteeing clear-voice countermands if they had to talk to the systems. A sensible precaution, but one that had never been needed. ComLink was overloaded with redundancies and safeguards.
A storm of applause greeted the committee as the newsman recited the last member’s name. The loudest cheers were for Pat, but he graciously included his co-members in the acknowledgment.
The others formed a semi-circle behind him on the stage, smiling triumphantly. When the clapping abated, Pat began quietly. “Listeners, Citizens of Earth . . .”
Sound choked off throughout the theater at that key phrase, Patrick Saunder’s trademark speech opener. The hush seemed startling after the tumult.
“Listeners,” Patrick repeated, “we know you have been waiting a long time for the results of our arbitration. We appreciate your patience. Protectors of Earth is very happy to tell you we have succeeded. After intense negotiations, the Nippon-Malaysia Alliance and the Maui-Andean Populist Democracies have agreed to a total and unconditional armistice, effective immediately.”
One of the military pilots, a Malaysian, whooped in joy. Techs and other pilots joined his celebration. Then they turned quiet, eager to hear more good news.
“. . . terrible conflict has hurt us all,” Pat was saying, “not merely those in the war zones. The neo-smallpox mutation, the loss of the Galapagos Geothermal Seabed Installation, the crop failures caused by blockades along the iceberg tow routes, extinction of marine and land animal life, pollution from toxic fallout and nuclear strikes—these affect every man, woman, and child on Earth. Those in the Trans-Pacific have suffered most of all.”
Pat paused for dramatic effect while ComLink’s campaign programmers inserted corroborating images, framing the main screen. Blood, plague, ravaged cities, and lifeless croplands and ocean beds. The viewers had seen it all before, but somehow the ugliness gained fresh impact if they watched while Pat described it. His words flowed, each syllable and hesitation planned. SE’s patented translator carried him into cosmopolitan towers and primitive villages. Instant interpretation. They were hearing him, not a machine voice. In their own languages, Pat came across warm and sincere, all his personality intact. ComLink’s competitors hadn’t yet fully mastered Ward Saunder’s technique. It would be years before they could duplicate that global voice power.
“The killing is over, Listeners. The Trans-Pacific region is at peace. After twelve years, no missiles are being launched, no viral pestilence released from the labs, no wholesale executions. P.O.E. truce teams are stationed now throughout Nippon-Malaysia and the Maui-Andean Democracies to enforce the armistice. The truce is being honored faithfully. Hostilities are over, at last.”
That mesmerizing voice shook with emotion. Pat’s eyes looked teary, and he communicated a profound sense of weary pride and thanksgiving to an entire world. Beth Isaacs sniffled and bowed her head, murmuring prayerfully. “Thank you . . .” Neither Dian nor Todd was a convert to the new mysticism, but they knew what the woman was feeling. Dian pressed Beth’s arm. The black woman was fighting her own flood of tears. Todd’s throat felt thick. He wished he were on Earth at this moment, facing Pat directly, not through a vid signal. He wanted to clasp Pat in a bearhug and share the triumph of peace.
Let it be true. No political fast ones this time, big brother. No deals behind the scenes.
Peace! An ocean, a billion people, exhausted lands and countries—accepting peace, accepting the committee’s arbitration, under Pat’s guidance.
Todd stared at Pat’s image, emotions overwhelming him. He had never loved that face, that person, so much. Nothing thus far compared. Pat helping Jael pull them out of potential financial disaster when Ward died so suddenly and tragically. Pat rescuing Todd from drowning. Pat sweeping Mari up and running like hell ahead of a rioting mob near the crater towns west of Chicago, saving himself and her through superhuman effort.
Now he had saved not only the war zone but the rest of the planet that could have, would have, been destroyed if the war had spread, as it had threatened to do. There were no words. Todd sat helplessly, too moved to weep, the happy shouts and fervent prayers ringing around him throughout the great orbiting viewing room.
CHAPTER THREE
ooooooooo
Compromises
AGAINST his will, the moment was escaping. Apprehension overrode hope. The tenseness in his shoulders crept back as Todd looked at the screen. Pat’s pale-eyed stare never wavered. His eyes were so like Ward’s and Mari’s, an unusual, very light blue that could reach out, grab the person seeing them, and hold their fascinated victim. Pat used no prompter, not even an out-of-frame holo-mode cue that could easily be hidden from both the global audience and the V.I.P.’s assembled in the theater. But Todd knew Pat was taking in the instant feedback response from the techs’ monitor directly in front of the podium. If the response from the voters was steady, Pat would plow ahead. If it wavered, he would cut and trim his words without telltale hesitation, suiting his speech to the audience’s mood. He made it work, making their viewpoint his own, convincing them he was leading them, not the opposite.
He began spelling out the peace treaty’s terms. Mostly standard form. P.O.E. was accumulating a good arbitration record. By now its committees had the science of truce-making worked out. Opposing rulers would usually concede this and argue about that. Give here, compromise there . . .
“. . . no further missile launches. All missiles on site have been disarmed by P.O.E. enforcement teams. Five: Full stop on all chemico-viral experiments. Total destruction of all lethal materials currently on hand. Total ban on any further stockpiling.”
The world shuddered on hearing that. Mutations stimulated by man’s scientific experiments had already escaped the labs and outrun their creators’ intentions. The viruses had mutated numerous times and the planned protective measures proved useless against the new strains. Pandemics swept the Earth. Mankind had conquered smallpox, once. The Trans-Pacific conflict and earlier wars and their experimentations had let loose a similar but more ruthless killer to fill smallpox’s vacant niche in the biological chain. Millions died in those plagues and the ones caused by the neo-anthrax virus.
“Six: All military units will disarm. They will place themselves under the command of P.O.E. enforcement troops and be dispersed to their respective home countries.”
Fairchild and Dabrowski began squirming as the audience-reaction lenses panned the theater. How could they or any of Patrick’s rivals rebut this speech? Who could take a stand against peace? Even the combatants were glad to be out of it. The arbitration team had given the region’s rulers a way out of disaster and helped them save face. Todd sympathized with the Spacer candidates’ dilemma. Yet his own doubts grew. What would be the price of this wonderful news? He read Pat’s face. Something unpleasant was coming. Pat was leading up to it very skillfully. Some of the peace terms must be hard to swallow. There was a giveaway look in those eyes. Todd leaned forward, intent on the screen.
“Both groups have signed a mutual confinement pact. To facilitate the move toward peace, all convicted war criminals and rebellious factors on either side will be taken into custody at once by P.O.E. forces. These will be transported and confined in Saunder Enterprises Antarctic Enclave Cryogenic Preservement chambers.”
Patrick made no mention of trials. The “convictions” were a foregone conclusion. Guilty, guilty, guilty. Nippon-Malaysia and the Maui-Andeans each had expendable “war criminals” and would-be usurpers in their ranks. The arbitration committee had given them a chance to swap and get rid of the human problems, under the guise of a peace treaty. The P.O.E. not only had brought order to their war-ravaged countries but provided them with a convenient hole in which to drop genuine military mass murderers, political embarrassments, and all future rivals for the surviving generals and premiers. Peace accomplished through merciless amputation and a Saunder Enterprises enclave.
A print crawl had started up the sides of the screen while Pat explained the details of the confinement. The lettering moved rapidly, faster than normal scan speed. The names of the war criminals and rebels zipped upward and disappeared. Since most of the global audience was functionally illiterate, they would never be able to read that crawl. The highly trained ComLink techs and the pilots watching in Geosynch HQ could read the names, however. Elation turned to fury. The Malaysian pilot who had been so glee
ful moments before pointed to a name being sucked off the top of the screen. “Djailolo?” he cried out. “He’s no war criminal! Halmahera and Takeda just want him out of the way. They’ll starve off the rest of Djailolo’s people and crush the outer islands! Damn them! Damn those fucking Earth Firsters!” His companions tried to calm him, even though they, too, were bitter. Protests were futile. The peace pact had already been agreed to. By now the condemned were probably in their icy coffins in Antarctica, beyond hope of rescue by their adherents or relatives. The world desperately wanted peace, enough to sacrifice these victims to cryogenic sleep.
“We wish to stress that the transportees accepted their sentences voluntarily,” Pat explained. Most of the world would believe him, because it wanted to, and because doing so was easier than thinking about the dark implications behind this aspect of the truce.
Todd swallowed nausea. Voluntary? What choice did the condemned have? None. Such things had happened before, were happening more and more frequently as Earth’s governments became used to the convenience of the polar Enclave. They had learned it wasn’t wise to make martyrs out of their enemies, so they didn’t execute them nowadays; instead they ran through mock trials and shipped the convicts off to limbo. In the past ten years, ever since the initial successful revival of a volunteer Cryogenic Preservement, the facility had become the world’s most popular prison as well as a refuge for the wealthy and beloved of every nation. Ward Saunder had planned the Antarctic enclave as a hedge against death for artists, religious leaders, altruistic scientists, and public servants who would otherwise be lost to disease, age, or accident. Of course, there were also the wealthy ill and elderly, who could pay handsomely for their cubicles in the Enclave.
Tomorrow’s Heritage Page 4
