Cauldron of Ghosts

by David Weber

  Why? Victor had pondered the problem when he first encountered it. Nothing he had seen or learned about the still-mysterious Alignment led him to think they were at all sloppy or haphazard in their planning or actions. So why would they have tolerated, all these centuries, such an obvious chink in their armor?

  Eventually, he’d concluded that their seeming-carelessness stemmed from two factors. The first was the awkwardness—for them—of Mesa’s political structure. The planet’s regime was not a police state in the normal, so-called “totalitarian” sense of the term. (Victor always added so-called to the term because such societies were anything but “totalitarian” in the long run—as the Pierre-Saint-Just regime on Haven had just proven again. They rarely lasted more than one or two centuries and often collapsed in mere decades or even a few years.)

  Mesa was a hybrid. For a very large minority of its population, the full citizens, it was fairly democratic, egalitarian and ruled by law. True, it had a corporate political structure rather than that of a republic like Haven or a constitutional monarchy like the Star Empire—but so did Beowulf and any number of star nations which no one considered authoritarian or repressive. Moreover, however constrained the political power of the citizenry might be, their personal liberties were generally respected.

  Not so for the seccies, of course, much less the outright slaves. The slaves could be controlled directly by their own masters. There were twice as many slaves as there were free citizens on Mesa, but that ratio was not historically unusual for slave-based societies. The ratio between Spartans and helots had been considerably worse, almost eight-to-one, and the ratio of slaves to owners and overseers on Caribbean plantations had been even more extreme. But the advantages of better organization and communication and an effective monopoly on weapons—at least, beyond the level of blades and clubs—made their rule quite secure.

  There was the occasional example of successful slave revolts, like the one on ancient Haiti. But such revolts were few and far between. In their great majority, throughout history, slave revolts had been mercilessly crushed.

  But what did they do with seccies, who constituted a full ten percent of the population? Seccies had no direct and immediate owners to oversee them, which meant the authorities would have to do it. Such a responsibility, however, quickly becomes impossible for normal-sized police and regulatory agencies. Law-enforcement has to be self-enforced to be workable, in most societies. The great majority of people obey the laws not because they fear punishment but because they acquiesce. They usually agree with the laws—most of them, anyway—and see them as being in their own interests. The first line of enforcement is their personal conscience and the second line is not a policeman’s citation or an arrest, it is the social disapproval of friends, family and neighbors.

  Which carried the problem back full circle. The only way to really control the seccies would have been to set up a full-blown police state—but that would have brought all the problems of such a regime. Time after time, since the rise of literate and industrial civilization, “totalitarian” states had proven themselves to be extremely brittle, however hard and impervious they might appear at any one time. Would the people who’d created the Alignment—people who were not only shrewd and intelligent but also thought in terms of centuries—have chosen that option?

  Victor thought not. The more he chewed on the problem, the more he concluded that the Alignment had made . . . perhaps not the “right” choice, but certainly the best available one.

  And he also thought the choice had been made easier for them because of a second factor. Anton had convinced him that the Alignment was withdrawing from Mesa. And given their track record, the obvious corollary was that they had always planned to abandon Mesa at some point.

  Which meant . . .

  Ultimately, they simply didn’t care what grief the seccies could visit on their betters if they ever decided to rise up en masse and turn their all-but-unregulated gigantic dwellings into the worst fighting terrain any ground-based military force had probably ever encountered in galactic history.

  By then, the Alignment would be long gone. Well . . . more likely, short gone. But gone, nonetheless.

  Would an organization that had been willing to subject tens of millions of their fellow human beings to slavery over a period of centuries simply to further their long-term goals flinch for an instant at letting their Mesan dupes and stooges reap the whirlwind they’d sown?

  Victor was actually laughing at the thought—softly; there was no boisterous hilarity involved—when he was finally ushered into Jurgen Dusek’s innermost sanctum.

  More likely, Victor thought, one of several innermost sanctums. The man who, for more than three decades, had been Neue Rostock’s effective political leader in addition to his more respectable role of head gangster, would have a long-term way of thinking, too.

  Chapter 49

  As soon as the introductory pleasantries were concluded, Victor pointed to the door behind him with his thumb and said, “I don’t know what he claimed to be, but that fellow who just left is a police agent. I ran into him the last time I was here on Mesa. I wasn’t sure of his identity at the time, though, so I let him go. I’d say I ‘unfortunately’ let him go, but it was actually quite fortunate, as it turns out. I put a tracking device on him this time so I’ll be able to reel him in and find out what he knows.”

  Jurgen Dusek and Triêu Chuanli stared at him.

  Dusek was sitting behind a large desk and Chuanli had a chair positioned just to its right. One guard stood behind them and two more were positioned at the door Victor and Cary had entered through.

  Cary stared at Victor too. The statements he’d just made . . . had not been part of the plan they’d discussed.

  “You’ve been here on Mesa before, Mr. Watson?” asked Dusek. “I hadn’t been aware of that.”

  “Yes. We’ve met, in fact. Well . . .” Victor nodded at Chuanli. “I only met in person with him. On several occasions. But I assumed at the time that he was keeping you up-to-date on the progress of our negotiations and was probably showing you at least some of the recordings he would have made.”

  Chuanli was now frowning. “What negotia—I’m sorry, but I don’t remember you at all.”

  Victor ignored that. “I’m quite sure he made a recording—and showed it to you afterward, Mr. Dusek—of that understandable if slightly ridiculous test you gave me to check my credentials. So to speak.”

  “What test?” That came from Dusek himself.

  “Oh, you must remember. You sicced three goons on me at the Rhodesian Rendezvous to see if I could handle myself the way one of Oscar Saint-Just’s top agents should be able to. I was with a very attractive female partner at the time—blonde, tall, went by the name of Yana. The goons hit on her as their way of getting the fight started. It didn’t last long and went badly for them.”

  Chuanli was now wide-eyed. Cary’s eyes were even wider. None of this had been part of their plan. Had no remote connection to their plan. Didn’t bear any more resemblance to their plan than an air car did to the very startled bird that her mind had turned into. Squawking and flapping all over the place.

  Cary Condor had just been initiated into the Hey-look-Victor’s-improvising club.

  After a moment, Chuanli sucked in a breath. “Chaz, Rick, Giselle—draw out your weapons. Easy—don’t shoot him. Don’t point them at him, even. But be ready to take him down instantly.”

  By then, all three guards had their pistols pointed at Victor. Well, not quite at Victor—they were off target by maybe five centimeters.

  “This guy is really, really dangerous,” Chuanli added.

  Throughout, Dusek’s expression hadn’t changed at all. He’d just studied Victor carefully, almost the way a scientist would study data.

  “Everybody relax,” he said firmly. “Mr.—Whozzit—is not planning any rough stuff. He wouldn’t have said any of this if he was.”

  Victor nodded. “Quite right.”

/>   “Since the subject is on the floor,” Dusek continued, “what is your real name? It’s clearly not Philip Watson. The last time you went by . . .”

  He turned his head toward Chuanli but didn’t take his eyes off Victor. “What was it, Triêu?”

  By now, Chuanli had regained his composure. “McRae. Daniel McRae. Said he’d been in Haven’s State Security.”

  “The last part’s true,” said Victor. “My name is Victor Cachat. I was in fact one of Saint-Just’s trouble-shooters, although I wasn’t as close to him as I intimated at the time to Mr. Chuanli. Actually, I was part of the opposition that eventually overthrew Saint-Just. The real reason I came here last time, with my partner Anton Zilwicki—he’s a Manticoran agent, by the by—was to investigate Mesa. We’d come to suspect and have since confirmed that Mesa’s government, Manpower, Inc.—the whole setup in this star system—is a fake. Well, maybe not a fake so much as a host organisim constructed specifically to support a parasite hiding inside it. As nearly as we can tell, the system government as a whole is exactly what it appears to be, but there’s a secret organization called the Mesan Alignment that’s actually been manipulating that government—and everything else in the damned system—for the last several centuries. The reason I came back—with Anton again, never mind where he is at the moment—was because Manticore and Haven are now in an alliance against the Solarian League and wanted more information about the Alignment. We have, to put it as mildly as I possibly can, got a grudge against the Alignment. Seeing as it has also now been established that the Alignment engineered the war between our two nations that has resulted in the death of millions of people, had assassinated or caused to be assassinated several of our leaders, and was responsible for the recent Yawata Strike that murdered still more millions of Manticorans.”

  He cleared his throat. “You have tested my mettle, and should know what it is by now. Trust me when I tell you that the havoc that will soon be visited upon Mesa will turn this planet into a large scale replica of what happened in the Rhodesian Rendezvous. You have two choices, Mr. Dusek. Either pretend none of this is happening and try to keep being a successful criminal boss, or rise to the occasion. This first option will succeed for a short time and then end disastrously. The second has a chance of ending disastrously in the very near future but, I think, an even better chance of elevating your status considerably in the long run.”

  “Elevate it to what?”

  Victor shrugged. “The future is hard to predict. But I can with some confidence make the following . . . what to call them? Prognostications, let’s say. First, sooner or later—more likely sooner than later—Manticore or Haven, or both, will come calling on Mesa. At a guess, I think it’ll most likely be Manticore alone, initially. The Star Empire is better positioned, in astrographic terms, and has more in the way of expedition-ready forces right now than my nation. But be assured that Haven will be coming hard on their heels. We lost about two million people in the Battle of Manticore, each and every one of those lives we are now holding the Alignment accountable for. The Mesan Alignment, I will remind you.

  “Secondly, my Manticoran partner and I—mostly him—have established that the Alignment is withdrawing all of its people from Mesa. By now, most of them will have already gone. In order to cover that disappearance, they’ve been carrying out staged so-called ‘Ballroom terrorist actions’ which will likely culminate when they start detonating nuclear charges on Mesa.”

  For the first time, Dusek seemed startled. “For God’s sake, why?”

  “The detonations will serve several purposes. It will cover up those who disappeared by . . . disintegrating their memory, so to speak. Second, it will plunge the planet into chaos, which will further help cover the disappearances. Mesa’s police and military forces are also being duped, and they’re certain to respond by running amok in the seccy quarters. That’s because the third function of the explosions will be to serve the propaganda campaign the Alignment is certain to launch—has already launched, rather—by pointing to the detonations as the dastardly work of the Audubon Ballroom and the seccy revolutionary bands to whom they are allied and who are providing them with shelter.”

  He pointed to Cary with a thumb. “That would be her, and her two surviving comrades, one of whom was so badly injured that they thought they would have to sell her body parts after she died.”

  Dusek gave Cary a quick glance. “I take it that’s no longer true?”

  “No. One of the pieces of equipment I brought with me was a regeneration chamber. A portable one, of course, so it has its limits. But the woman’s no longer in danger of losing her life. Well, not at least as a result of previous injuries. There is a real chance of new ones now, of course.”

  For her part, Cary was frozen stiff. She was now discovering that the Hey-look-Victor’s-improvising club was not a fan club. At one time or another—this very moment, in her case—every member of that club had wanted to strangle the lunatic.

  “Keep going,” said Dusek. He now had his elbows propped on the desk and his fingers laced together in front of his chin. “This is getting interesting.”

  Chuanli seemed to choke a little.

  “To go back a little, once the Alignment starts setting off the charges, you know as well as I do how the authorities will react. They’ll start butchering people in the seccy quarters, wildly and indiscriminately. They’ll claim to be combatting terrorism, of course.”

  He stopped, and looked back and forth between Dusek and Chuanli. “Or do you think their reaction might be more reasoned and judicious?” he asked, in a mild tone of voice.

  Chuanli grimaced. Dusek sucked his teeth.

  Victor waited for them to think through the logic for themselves. It took some time. Not, he was sure, because either of them was slow-witted. Probably not even—not much, anyway—because they really doubted him. But just because he was forcing them to think in very unfamiliar channels.

  “You’re leading up to something,” Dusek finally said. “What is it?”

  “As I said, rise to the occasion. Prepare ahead of time. You control this entire district and you can quickly make contact with the other main bosses in other districts.” Victor spread his hands—slowly—in a gesture which indicated the surroundings. “Have you ever considered how hard it would be to reduce a tower like this one if it was being held by an armed and determined force? Especially one that has access—which I’m sure you do—to the subterranean passages of the city?”

  “You said yourself they’d be using nukes.”

  Victor shrugged. “Yes, but the group using the nukes is the one busy pulling its people out of Mesa under cover of a terrorist campaign. The group which would be trying to take Neue Rostock away from you would be the established, legal government—such as it is and what there is of it—not the Alignment. Its weapons choice is unlikely to run in the same direction. Frankly, KEWs would be a lot more likely in their case, not that there’s all that much difference between those and nukes from a ground-zero perspective. But even KEWs—and nukes—have their limits. I’ve personally seen the buildings in Nouveau Paris that surrounded McQueen’s headquarters when Saint-Just set off the bomb he’d planted inside it. All of them were still standing. In fact, they were still standing solidly enough that repairing the damage—and there was a lot of it, don’t misunderstand me—turned out to be far cheaper than trying to demolish them. The work’s well underway, as a matter of fact. Once it’s done—and once they finish decontaminating them—the plan is to put them back to use.

  “If the Mesans use nukes or KEWs at all, which isn’t likely to begin with, they wouldn’t go beyond kiloton-range levels. But the truth is that kiloton-sized bombs won’t do that much to a structure like this one, and they’d have hardly any effect on the underground areas. And if they try to escalate the size used, they’ll get resistance—to say the least—from their own citizenry.”

  Dusek was silent for a moment, then looked at Chuanli.

  “What do
you think, Triêu?”

  His lieutenant hesitated, glancing at Victor.

  “Oh, hell, forget he’s here and just talk openly,” Dusek said, sounding a bit irritated—not at Chuanli, but at the universe in general. “He’s either telling the truth or we’ll see to it he vanishes himself.”

  “Well, first, we already have plans for a fighting retreat and an evacuation. We’d have to adapt them some, because we were thinking in terms of being attacked by a coalition of the other gangs, not the government. But not really all that much, I don’t think.”

  Chuanli nodded at Victor. “He’s right about what it would be like fighting in this kind of building. It’s the main reason—we’ve talked about it—that the big bosses don’t think of seriously going at each other. If the police or even the military forces attack us, we can certainly hold them off long enough to withdraw into the tunnels. From there . . .”

  His eyes got a little vacant, as he did some estimates and calculations. “Well, they’d wipe us out in the end, probably. They could use poison gas, stuff like that, and eventually get to us. But they couldn’t do it quickly, unless . . .”

  “Unless what?”

  He looked at Victor. “I’m not so sure they wouldn’t just evacuate all the citizens from the city and then bring down some big kinetic strikes. I’m not saying they’d like the idea, but it would be one way to finish things quickly.”

  “Which would be in clear—rather massive, in fact—violation of the Eridani Edict,” Victor pointed out.

  Chuanli leaned back, a slight sneer on his face. “As if they’d care about that! For that matter, it wouldn’t violate the Edict, as far as I can see. I’m not an experienced interstellar secret agent, and no seccy’s ever served in the Mesan military, but as I understand it, the Eridani Edict only applies to acts of war, and this would be a ‘police action’ or the suppression of domestic unrest or a rebellion. Seems to me I’ve read more than one account of system governments doing just that, and unless they lost the civil war afterward, none of them ever got the chop for it. So there’s no way in hell the Sollies would try to enforce the Edict here!”