by Robin Craig
Miriam complied. She couldn’t avoid a few cuts on her own skin but knew she would be able to free herself within a few minutes. Tagarin held up is hand for her to stop.
“That will do. The physical evidence here and on your wrists will now match your story. James, finish the job for her, will you?”
Miriam stood massaging her wrists for the second time this day.
“OK Ms Hunter, I guess this is goodbye. Give us a few minutes. When you hear our jet lift off you can escape without risk to us. You are a good person, Miriam. You could almost change my opinion of the law. I wish you good fortune and a long life.” He bowed to her formally.
Miriam noticed that his habitual air of bitterness was gone. For the first time it was replaced by a relaxed eagerness even though he was flying off into unknown danger. He looked years younger. He looked happy. She smiled at the transformation as much as at him.
Katlyn had James put her down and ran over to Miriam to give her a final hug. “Goodbye Miriam. I second the motion. All happiness to you.” Miriam hugged her back. “You too, my friend.”
Katlyn blinked at her. Then James picked her up and they walked quickly down the corridor as Miriam watched them go. As they turned the corner, Katlyn looked back at her and waved a final goodbye. They both silently wondered if they would ever meet again.
~~~
They trotted along the corridor, occasionally exchanging glances, half afraid at what might still go wrong even now. Nobody felt like talking. In a minute they emerged into the hangar and saw the gleaming jet waiting, breathing vapor like a steed anxious to run. They looked at each other again and walked up the waiting steps, then the door sealed behind them to lock out the rest of the world.
James deposited Katlyn in a seat and fastened her belt. There were a few other people on board but they were in the rear section of the aircraft. James and the pilot had both opted to bring their families along: they didn’t know what kind of revenge GenInt or their own government might inflict on them if they had to come back, or on their families if they left them behind. That had caused no difficulties: James’ family lived on site anyway, his wife helping with various tasks around the estate; and the pilot with his family had already been brought in as Tagarin’s guests as part of his preparations for escape. The adults were all a bit nervous about the prospect of Capital, but they respected their boss enough to help him in his mad scheme and to cast their lot in with him. The kids just thought it was an adventure.
“OK, time to go,” Tagarin said to the pilot. Outside lit up as remote controlled weaponry opened up on the circling helicopters and the encircling police. Or appeared to. The rounds were for show rather than effect, but the pilots got the message and got out. Anyone on the ground brave enough to keep watch would be unable to see much among the pattern of bright flashes or hear anything among the loud booms.
The doors of the hangar opened and most of the glasshouse panels blew out as the plane rose on its jets; then the pilot swiveled them to give some forward thrust and the plane slowly floated out, accelerating as it went. As soon as it was clear, the pilot shifted to maximum power and increased the angle of the jets. In seconds the plane had reached enough airspeed to fly using its wings alone, and the pilot swung the jets to horizontal at an attitude of 35 degrees. The plane rocketed away into the sky. Nothing the police or GenInt could throw at it now could stop it.
~~~
Miriam stood still, looking down the corridor. After a few minutes she heard the roar of the VTOL takeoff jets, followed shortly after by a rapidly diminishing note as it accelerated into the sky. Then that too was gone. “Goodbye people,” she whispered to the ether. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
Chapter 53 – Capital
The country of Capital had an unlikely birth.
It started life as an oil company. The father of the company’s current president had founded it decades ago in South America when his country was still a democracy, and by a combination of good luck and even better judgment had built it into a rich and powerful corporation.
Then like many countries before it, the democracy had succumbed to the blandishments of a strong and charismatic leader, who had moved quickly to discredit or eliminate his competitors and then consolidated his power into a dictatorship. The particular brand of dictatorship he inflicted on his country was the kind that approved of private enterprise, so long as an enterprise proved it deserved its privacy by contributing handsomely to the public good. In the dictator’s view this was the best of all possible worlds. The enterprise took all the risks and the country benefited whether it failed – in which case it was taken over and gutted for what value remained – or it succeeded, in which case the country took its fair share of the profits. A cynical observer may have noted how much of the country’s benefit was manifested in grand public buildings to the glory of the dictator or in large country estates for the pleasure of him and his clique. But cynical observers were discouraged in his country, often permanently.
The company founder had grown up in a democracy and did not approve of this turn of events. But he realized that the dictator was likely to reward criticism in the same way he rewarded cynical observation and other exercises of free speech. So he always gave the dictator the respect and obeisance that was manifestly his due, and worked hard to leave a legacy for the dynasty he had always wanted to found. In his view no dictatorship would last forever and his country would eventually return to sanity. If he could do anything to hasten that process he would, but his efforts were limited to some rather creative accounting of his international holdings. There may also have been anonymous gifts, through untraceable donors, to some extremely private enterprises in his country: enterprises whose members the dictator would have dearly liked to have gotten to know much better, if for a very brief but painful time.
The founder had three children, whom he had educated in far lands. He did not want them used as bargaining chips by either the dictator or his enemies. He was a traditional man, who wished his firstborn son to succeed him as president of the company: he was sent to school in the United States of America, which the father thought of as a shining if flawed example of a moral republic. But if the father was traditional he was also wise: his other son and daughter were educated in a similar manner, in the hope that at least one of the three would have the talent and inclination to take over the reins when the time came.
If the father chafed under the rule of a dictator, the son seethed. Unlike his father but like many of the young, his idealism exceeded his practicality. And he was not merely a democrat like his father. He had come under the influence of the more libertarian wing of US politics and had read avidly the works of the free enterprise economists and the pro-freedom philosophers. His father, wisely, kept him away from his home country until he could learn to temper his fiery idealism with a more patient wisdom and restrained tongue. It was not that the father disapproved of the son’s beliefs. He just believed that a man could only do so much, and reasonable goals in a reasonable timeframe were the route to contentment and, in his home country, life itself.
The son, if anything, was even more astute than his father. He waited, and thought, and planned. He did his apprenticeship for his future position by working in numerous positions in various international subsidiaries of the parent company. This, his father had decreed, would give him the operational understanding he needed to run the company when his time came. His father did not approve of the dynasties he had seen in which heirs were plucked straight out of school and placed in a high office, served by a bevy of assistants and protectors, and far removed from what the company actually did. No, he thought, any heir worth the name must be worthy of the name. The son, it seemed, turned his considerable energies from political idealism to the intellectual and physical challenges his father had set him. He performed superlatively. His father was extremely proud.
Peak oil was coming, as it had been coming for decades. But peak oil or no, father and son agreed that prudence
demanded diversity. If their company was to last for generations it needed flexibility as much as it needed strength. They agreed that the father would continue to do what he did best, running the company; and what only he could do, dealing with the dictator without attempting regicide – or insecticide, as the son would put it. Meanwhile the son applied his youthful creativity and energy toward diversifying the company into new forms of energy.
While investigating geothermal energy, the son learned of a cluster of seamounts just within the territorial waters claimed by his country. Had they remained for a few more millennia over the geological hotspot that had formed them, they might have grown into another group of islands like Hawaii, inhabited by proud descendants of Polynesian seafarers. As it was their crests remained under the waves, and though they were close enough to the surface to cause ships grief at low tide they were of little interest to anyone: except to mark on the charts and avoid, or for the more adventurous species of diver to visit.
Though the seamounts had moved on from their nursery, their hearts remained a furnace of magma and incandescent rock. Such things took a long time to cool once cocooned in solid rock. To the son this looked interesting. The geologists assured him there was no chance of volcanic eruptions, as the magma plume that had driven their formation was now distant in time and space. But the amount and level of heat trapped in their cores was enough, potentially, to drive immense geothermal electricity generation for centuries. And while they were far too distant from shore to be an economical source of power for now, the son knew that technology had a habit of turning yesterday’s impossible into tomorrow’s commonplace.
The father and son talked. The son anchored pillars on the highest point of the highest seamount and added a platform above the waves, upon which he built the nucleus of a geothermal research facility. The father bought the seamounts and the ocean around them to a distance of 100 kilometers, under private title free and clear. The dictator looked at this deal somewhat suspiciously, as he looked at all deals where somebody else got something. But like many of his kind the long term meant little to him and the price paid was generous. And the father had pointed out the many advantages to the dictator beyond mere cash. It was a shining example of the forward-thinking nature of his regime, in a world where alternative energy had been an underperforming ideal for decades: his country could become a world leader in this field. And while the seamounts were worth nothing at present, if this succeeded it would be worth a fortune to the country. Even if it didn’t, the investment would bring many jobs and many technical experts to the country. And besides, the dictator was in an expansive mood. He was enjoying his new estate high in the hills above the bay, a generous donation by this very oil company: proving yet again his farsighted wisdom in supporting private enterprise.
But the dictator, like most of his species, was rarely content. He looked upon the resources of his neighbors with an avaricious eye, encouraged by a somewhat inaccurate view of the history of who had discovered what when, and whose territory properly ended where. He began to cause trouble for his neighbors.
His neighbors, who bordered his land to the east, north and south, had their own view of history. Indeed, in their eyes their respective proper territories met at a point that left no room for his country at all. An objective historian may have objected that the ebb and flow of migration and invasion could prove anything, so the fairest division of countries was generally the current one. Not because it was necessarily fairest, but because the previous ones were no fairer and the present one had the advantage of currency. However an objective historian would not have said this to the dictator, because an objective historian would have learned from history. And there would have been no point telling it to his neighbors. They had been perfectly happy to leave well enough alone: like most countries, their people were too busy making a living to want to get mired in war. But they were getting very tired of this dictator and had been dusting off their own history books.
Some diseases are sufficiently rare that there is no cure. In some cases, if someone found a cure they might decide to leave well enough alone. The disease of dictators, especially those who had risen to spectacular success early; had surrounded themselves with advisors whose advice was always remarkably similar to their own opinions; and had managed to hit on a formula which did not totally destroy their country from under them: is thinking they are better than they are. He must be a genius, for who else could have done so well?
This dictator had a relatively well off country, though if asked with immunity much of the population might have expressed a lower opinion. And to be fair, he had done one function of government with gusto. He had a large standing army, with a core of loyal supporters fired with the loyalty only money could buy. A much larger body of troops served him because it was the easiest way to keep themselves and their families alive: whether through their slightly higher than average pay, or their slightly lower than average chance of nocturnal visits by the secret police. These men gave their noble leader the respect traditional among the lower ranks of armies everywhere when their leader was, in their unexpressed opinion, an ass.
But his people loved him. Or at least, they earnestly desired to please him. So he saw only the crisp ranks and crisper salutes of his elite troops. He saw the gleaming rows of their rifles. He multiplied that by the total size of his army. He was invincible.
There were gold mines in the recently disputed territory to the north, close to the border. By coincidence his northerly neighbor was the weakest. The dictator pondered these two facts. He closeted with this advisors and strategists. One pointed out that the mines were in a mountainous region, hard to attack and hard to supply. Another noted that a much easier approach was to skirt the border mountains and sweep back up from deeper in enemy territory; and while this would certainly provoke the neighbor even more than liberating the mining region, their army was obviously far superior and could do it. His political advisor opined that their neighbor to the north was not very popular with the other neighbors. It too was ruled by a dictator, though a more liberal, that is a weaker, man than His Excellency; while the others were democracies. A second military adviser pointed out on a map, purely for his Excellency’s information, their army’s best route for reattaching the mountains to the country where they belonged. That route came quite close to the capital city of the country that had stolen them.
His Excellency was not a man to hesitate to accept the blessing of Destiny. Why take just mines, rugged mountains with no other value, when rich agricultural lands also beckoned? Why merely restore the ancient borders, when given the chance to expand his country to unprecedented greatness? Was that not the course taken by all the great men of history, men whose names were still spoken with awe thousands of years after their time?
The plan was set. They would liberate their northern neighbor while assuring the others of his peaceful intentions towards them; then consider what further glory might be possible to a man, to a country, of Vision. A prudent advisor might have named some other facts and counseled caution; but a prudent advisor would have known when to keep his mouth shut.
The country went quiet. Its neighbors looked on with some trepidation, not trusting this new peaceable nature. The dictator sent emissaries with offers of treaties of eternal peace and cooperation. The troop movements were just exercises. It was whispered by agents that this was a lie: they were an implied threat to encourage concessions in the negotiations.
Suddenly his armies swept north. As predicted, the defenders were overmatched and within days their beleaguered capital faced a ring of steel to their front and the sea to their rear. The dictator was ecstatic.
But his neighbors were treacherous. They had signed a secret agreement of mutual defense, almost as if they did not trust him. Armies attacked from two directions and drove deep into his country. Divisions had to be pulled back to meet this new threat. The northern country’s army rallied and began driving the remaining army back. Many of his troo
ps then decided that on sober reflection, their beloved leader did not deserve their help, let alone their lives: and whole platoons began to desert.
The dictator cursed the perfidy of his neighbors and the cowardice of his troops, had a few advisors shot, and railed in general against the injustice of reality, which unlike the advisors didn’t care. He launched all he had against the invaders.
Over the years, the son of the oil magnate had, at an expense out of all proportion to the apparent benefit, built up one of his seamounts with rock so his facility now stood, not on a platform above the sea, but on newly created dry land. He chose this moment to send a notice to the dictator, formally seceding from the country, citing its political instability and that it was led by “a complete prat”. The dictator was furious. Only a fool would have thought he would allow such an outrage. The son was not a fool.
The dictator could do little, being now in the middle of a war for his own survival, but being the man he was could not do nothing. He consulted with his remaining advisors on how much of his dwindling forces he could spare to punish the upstarts, and one gunship and two precious attack helicopters were dispatched to retake the island or raze it. One helicopter fell in flaming debris into the sea and the ship sank into the depths, both victims of guided missiles not part of the usual inventory of a research station. The second helicopter landed but its commandos soon realized they were outnumbered, surrounded and doomed unless they surrendered. That they quickly did, thus beginning brief second careers as prisoners of war along with the survivors from the boat.
The dictator was even more furious but could spare no more materiel, and he wisely decreed that vengeance would await his victory in the more pressing war at home. It was a short wait but not for victory. Within days the dictator no longer cared. Nor did his country. It had ceased to exist along with its leader: the ancestral borders of his neighbors, at least as understood by them, had been restored.
