Poul Anderson - Shield

by Shield (Lit)

  When he had finished, more than an hour later, and answered more excited questions than he wished to count, Koskinen was hoarse. He sat down and gulped the coffee offered him. Trembecki, who had said little, remained on his feet. One by one the council members ended their examination of the generator and went back to their own chairs. Cigarette smoke hazed the air.

  Gannoway, at the head of the table, broke the silence. "The uses of this thing are obvious, especially after some further development work has been done," he said. "And I'll bet we find plenty more uses as we go along. Given material shielding against laser beams, even this little gadget is invulnerable to almost anything short of an atomic bomb; and a bigger one——! With that kind of equipment, you wouldn't need but a small army, some thousands of men, to take over the country."

  "Wait a minute," Trembecki said. "Pete and I haven't yet agreed to anything. Especially not to a revolution."

  "What had you in mind?" challenged Washburn.

  Trembecki outlined Abrams's plans.

  "Very pretty," Lanphier snorted. "Now tell me something that might work."

  "Why shouldn't this?"

  "To begin with, the risk scares me spitless. Supposing you have the President's full cooperation, and that's a big if by itself, do you believe Hugh Marcus will sit still for that kind of treatment? Even on a strictly legal plane—and we've no reason to believe he'll confine himself to that—he has his own lobby in Washington and his own propaganda machine. He can argue that the shield effect can't be kept secret forever, any more than the atomic bomb could be, if foreigners are allowed to do research on it. Therefore, he can say, MS needs more power than before, not less."

  "He'd be arguing against public heroes, though," Trembecki said, "the men, notably Pete, who've presented this design to the United States."

  "Huh! Heroes can get tarnished mighty quick."

  "Not necessarily. Remember, legitimate charges can be brought against MS, of exceeding its authority and even attempting murder."

  "To which it will be replied that Mr. Koskinen is a liar, or at least that he misunderstood the situation and panicked. That his shipmates were taken into custody to protect them from the Chinese—which is partly true, considering the fact that Captain Twain actually was murdered. That they were PI'd as an unavoidable measure, since in this emergency MS had to have total information fast." Lanphier shrugged. "Oh, Marcus might have to sacrifice a few scrapegoats, agents he can say got too rough on their own initiative, without his knowledge. But he can keep his own skin whole, all right."

  "With the President gunning for him?"

  "Yes, even then. You underestimate the hold that MS has on the 'public imagination. The American people have come to take it for granted that the Norris Doctrine is the only alternative to thermo-nuclear war. And the Norris Doctrine does logically require that there be an MS.''

  "You see," Gannoway put in, "no matter how well your scheme works out, it does not much alter the Protectorate. Does it, now?"

  "Not overnight," Trembecki admitted. "But under all circumstances, the United States will have exclusive possession of the shields for a number of years. Remember, an entire new concept of physics underlies the effect, based largely on extraterrestrial ideas that don't come easily to the human mind. It'll take quite a while for any foreign worker to duplicate, unaided by the Martians.

  "So there will be a decade or better in which this country is not only supreme but safe. The fear will ease off. Reason will have a chance to operate again. You Egalitarians will be heard with respect. I think I can promise that my boss will throw his influence behind your political campaigns. And that amounts to a lot more than his personal fortune. Quite a few powerful men have a high regard for Nathan Abrams's opinions."

  "Considering what you've seen and done in your own life," Gannoway said, "I'm astonished at how high you rate human rationality."

  Trembecki's laugh held scant humor. "I rate it lower than you, I suspect. But as for rationality per se, yes, I do have a high opinion of it, and I believe it should be encouraged whenever there's a chance. This is such a chance. No more than that; events could go completely awry; but who was ever guaranteed anything in this life?"

  The councillors looked at each other. Finally Gannoway lit a fresh cigarette, drew deeply on it, and trickled smoke between his lips as he answered:

  "You're right, any course of action is hazardous. The problem is how to minimize the hazard. As you ought to know, Jan, one way is to reduce the number of unknowns you have to deal with. Now I have a pretty fair understanding of myself and of my friends here, and you two fellows, and Nat. But I've never met the President, and you're no intimate of his yourself. Nor have we met the thousands of Congressmen, bureaucrats, military officers, business and labor officials, and so on, who constitute the power structure in this country. We certainly have not met every one of a quarter billion Americans, whose hopes and fears and hates and loves and beliefs and prejudices form the general environment within which the power structure must operate. Put so many unknowns together, let them interact freely, and we can't possibly predict what will happen. Yet that's what you propose to do—merely hoping for the best!"

  Trembecki gave him a squint-eyed stare. "You're arguing that force is the only predictable factor," he said.

  ''Yes," Gannoway replied. "Isn't it? If I asked a stranger to do something for me, he might or might not. But if I pulled a gun on him, I'd know damn well he would.''

  "Mm, I could name you some exceptions. But let that go. Precisely how do you want us to act?"

  "I can't give you any details. We've had no time to think them out. But I do say we should keep the shield in our own hands, where we can know how it's going to be used. Proceed with development work and production of improved models——''

  "Wait a minute," Koskinen objected. "That'll take a long time. What about my shipmates?"

  "There's that," Gannoway agreed. "Also, Nat won't stand for his boy being kept locked away indefinitely, and he'll have to be persuaded not to contact the President. . . . Okay. Given a few shields of the present model—they could be turned out rather fast, couldn't they?—we can spring our friends. Including some Equals now in MS jails, too."

  "Get them out by actual attack?" Washburn asked. He doubled a fist. "Sure, I see how. A shield unit protecting a small, armed flitter, or something like that. First we nab some MS men and PI out of them where the prisoners are being held. Then we hit."

  "When we have our improved shields," Gannoway said, "we proceed to the next phase: the neutralization of MS."

  "By shooting up its agents and establishments?" Trembecki said.

  "Sometimes. More often, though, we'd simply stand them off while we carried out other operations."

  "MS is an agency of the United States government. You're preaching insurrection."

  "All right, I am."

  "What do you expect other agencies will do meanwhile? Will the Army stay passive? Will Congress or the President make approving noises?"

  "No."

  "Or the people, even?"

  "We'll be waging an intensive propaganda campaign, of course."

  "Insufficient, when you're bearing arms against the United States. The Constitution defines that as treason."

  "George Washington was called a traitor too, in his revolution."

  "I'm not using loaded words. I'm just pointing out that when you've said A you have got to say B." Trembecki's forefinger stabbed at the men around the table. "Come on, admit it. Your aim is and always has been the violent overthrow of the United States government."

  "So be it," Ricoletti said fiercely. "There's no other way."

  "That means that a paramilitary junta will seize power and rule by fiat. It also means that the lid will be taken off the world. What do you expect will happen then?"

  "Nothing very alarming," Gannoway said. "This is one problem we have studied in detail. We aren't bearded anarchists huddling in some dank cellar, Jan. We know as much about war
games, strategic analysis, and political anthropology as they do at West Point. And we've used such techniques for years to help us plan.

  "The military garrisons abroad won't be recalled. Even with MS gone, they'll be able to keep control for quite some time. A large-scale revolt can't be organized and equipped overnight, you know. Meanwhile the Equal regime will be acting—fast. That is one very real advantage a junta has over a republican government or a bureaucracy, provided it knows what it wants: speed and decisiveness. As soon as internal order has been restored, we'll call an international conference. We already know who most of the delegates will be. We'll present them with Quarles's world authority scheme, get that ratified, staff the necessary organizations—then bring home the American troops, resign our own powers, and sit back to enjoy a world we've made fit to live in!"

  XV

  It was very late, approaching sunrise, when Koskinen and Trembecki returned to their suite. But neither felt able to sleep.

  Koskinen put the generator down on the floor, seated himself, jumped up again, got a drink of water, stared out the window at the darkling city, ground a fist into his palm and swore. Trembecki lit a cigar. His broad face had gone altogether hard.

  "What should we do, Jan?" Koskinen asked finally.

  "Get out of here," Trembecki said at once. "I'm not sure where to, though. By now MS probably has every one of Nat's places staked out."

  Koskinen turned around to see him. "Do you mean that? About our leaving?"

  "Uh-huh. If we stay here, we have to go along with the Equals. I see no way of talking them into a moderate course.''

  "They... they could be right, you know."

  Trembecki grunted.

  "I mean, well, they're so obviously sincere," Koskinen said.

  "Most overrated virtue in the universe, sincerity."

  "I don't know. I mean ... look, when I signed on the Boas I took an oath to support the Constitution. It may sound schoolboyish, but I still take that oath pretty seriously. Now the Equals are asking me to violate it."

  "So they are."

  "But at the same tune—there have been justified revolutions in the past.''

  "I doubt that."

  ' 'How about our own?''

  "That was a different breed of cat. Remember, it started as an attempt merely to get certain traditional rights the colonists were entitled to as Englishmen. It became a national breakaway because this really was a nation, at least in embryo. The colonists had already ceased to be Englishmen. A revolt against foreign oppression is easy to justify. But an internal revolution, no."

  "Even against domestic oppression? How about the French Revolution?"

  "You should go back and re-read your history texts. The French Revolution proper did not deliberately employ violence. It didn't even abolish the monarchy. It simply used political pressure to bring about a number of long overdue reforms. But then the extremists, of right and left, got the bit between their teeth, and that's what led to the Reign of Terror and Napoleon. The original Russian Revolution was quite analogous. The Duma made the Czar abdicate, again by perfectly legal means. The Bolsheviks overthrew by force a functioning republic. I could give you a good many other examples."

  "There must be cases, though——"

  "Yes, some. Various people have shot their way out from under a tyrant, now and then. But by definition, almost, they became the next despots, possibly benevolent, but still despots. And benevolent despotism is not the best form of government. It's stultifying.

  "Once in a very great while, such a dictator has worked to bring freedom, by patiently overhauling the social structure. Kemal Ataturk is the most famous of the few who did. Now that's what you might call a righteous revolutionary. But you'll note he did his job slowly and carefully, and without holding a gun at people's heads."

  "Skip your ancient history," Koskinen snapped. "We're here and now. Why shouldn't the Equals be like Ataturk? Is there any other way than theirs to get a world federation?"

  "There might well be, assuming that it really is desirable, a matter which you haven't taken the time to probe very deeply. Myself, I doubt that establishing it by orders from above, the way Gannoway proposes, would work. There'd be too few people used to thinking in such terms to man its organizations. Things like that can't be built in a day, they have to grow."

  "When will the chance to grow be given? Honestly, Jan, I'm not fueled about a Glorious Vision of the Future or any such nonsense. I'm trying with everything I've got to decide what's right. I don't see how you can argue with what Quarles said, that the unavoidable necessities of Pax Americana really are eroding away the spirit of the Constitution, making a dead letter of it. Isn't a radical breakthrough to different conditions the only chance of preserving what it stands for?"

  Trembecki's cigar end glowed and dulled, glowed and dulled. "That may be true," he said. "Probably is, in fact. But there are many sorts of radicalism. The kind which would force itself on people, whether they want it or not, is the kind that I want no part of. Nor do you, if you'll stop to think about it.

  "Look, Pete, what they glossed over down in that room was the fact that we have not yet exhausted our peaceful resources. Our backs are not quite to the wall. Marcus is not the omnipresent demon they make him out to be, nor is the President the feeble bungler which is the best they're willing to admit he might be. They talked about public support for MS and completely ignored the public opposition which also exists—as witness the above-board part of the Egalitarian movement, among many other things. They're fanatics, and that type has always ignored—been congenitally unable to see—any facts that won't fit their own preconceptions. That's Marcus's . trouble too, you know. He's not so much hungry for personal power, though of course that element does operate in him, as he is saddled by a religious conviction that foreigners are evil and he alone knows how to save civilization. Do you want to trade one Marcus for another?"

  "But Gannoway said," Koskinen stumbled, "he said the junta would resign as soon as—"

  "The world has heard that song before, my boy. If the Equals ever did seize the wheel, their dictatorship would be no more 'transitional' than that of any other revolutionary group. They'd have to stay on top for a while, simply to assure themselves their world arrangement was working out okay. And of course it wouldn't—new institutions always go off on unforeseen tangents—so they'd shoot some people and tinker with the machinery and wait again. Meanwhile it'd be necessary to proceed against those of their fellow citizens who couldn't stomach dictatorship. This implies a secret police a good deal stronger than MS is right now. And such an organization soon becomes a power in its own right; look at the history of every repressive government for proof. No, when you try to force the whole world, beginning with your own country, into the rigid framework of an ideology, you have to be an utterly ruthless tyrant. There's no other way."

  "Quarles wouldn't let them!"

  "What'd he have to say about it? He's only a well-meaning theorist. If he saw the truth and protested to Gannoway, they'd simply play the Grand Inquisitor scene over again.

  "I don't know why I'm talking so abstractly, though," Trembecki finished. "You need only ask yourself how far anybody can be trusted who's willing to achieve his ends by the means Gannoway spelled out to us."

  Stillness fell on the room. Koskinen sat down and stared at his generator. Why did I bring it back? he wondered. Why was I born?

  A noise recalled him to awareness. Vivienne's bedroom door had slid open. She came out in nightgown and robe. The light gleamed on her tousled hair.

  "I thought I heard you talking," she said.

  "When'd you get in?" Trembecki asked.

  "Around midnight. I couldn't take any more. Besides, I'd learned as much as I probably would be able to."

  "Like what?"

  She took a cigarette from a box on the table and lit it before saying tonelessly: "I played the part of a gang boss, or rather the female partner of a gang boss, come here for some gambling and
so forth —and, on the side, to make discreet inquiries about possible business deals. A very natural thing; every place like this has underworld connections, and with Zigger gone, others will want to take over his territories. I got companionable with one or two of the girls who have been here long enough to know quite a bit. And frankly, I flirted with the night manager, with an implication that we might get still friendlier if he obliged me. What it boils down to is that I found out who really owns the Zodiac."

  "Well?"

  "An unregistered corporation of which the major stockholder, under a different name, is one Carson Gannoway.''

  "What?" Koskinen leaped to his feet.

  Trembecki was not surprised. "I rather thought so," he said. "This place is laid out and operated so very conveniently for the Equals. Obviously, they don't want it so much for a headquarters as a source of funds. Financing is the big problem of every revolutionary organization."

  "Oh, no, no, no," Koskinen shuddered.

  Decision sprang up in him, tight and cold. "We're leaving," he said. "Get dressed, Vee."

  "Are you that shocked?" she asked.

  "No, this only clinches the matter for him," Trembecki said. "Go on, make yourself ready. I'll explain meanwhile."

  He did so, curtly. Koskinen paced the floor, back and forth, his palms and armpits chill with sweat. Where to go? What to do? Was it possible to get back to Abrams's home? Trembecki believed not, and he should know. Besides, to compromise Leah was unthinkable.

  Wait... hadn't Vee once mentioned an upstate hideaway of Zigger's? Yes, he remembered now. It should serve for a while, at least, give a breathing spell in which they could think of something better. He .told Trembecki about it, and the Pole agreed: "We can probably get a cab yet, even if the alarm is out. If we take a zigzag route, changing pretty often, I'd say we have a fair chance of making it. Are you ready, Vee?"

  "Right now." She emerged from her room in the dress she had worn here, purse clipped to the belt. "Think it'd help to wear masks?"

  "Only till we're out of the building. Then they're too conspicuous. Where'd I put mine?"