Carrearranis (Fourth Fleet Irregulars Book 5)

by S MacDonald

  ‘Good point, fair point,’ Tan conceded. ‘But it is alarming – more than a century of effort has gone into building that relationship to the point where we have a diplomatic relationship and a cultural exchange, and now, pow, just like that, overnight, they’re gone. It might be, of course, that only the ones on Chartsey have left, but…’ he saw Alex’s lifted eyebrow and sighed. ‘I know. Wishful thinking. If the Embassy on Chartsey has pulled out, they’ll all be leaving as fast as they get the message. And how much would we love to know how they did get that message.’ He sighed. ‘Maybe one day. But you’re right, of course – there is nothing we can do but wait and see, and no point stressing over it.’

  The mission moved on. The Carrearranians were predictably more relieved than concerned when they were told that the Solarans had left the League’s capital world, apparently in some distress.

  ‘Good,’ said Arak, frankly. ‘They’re not good people to have visiting.’ Then, relegating this to the level of unimportance it deserved, he went straight on to the matter which was being discussed with great interest across the planet. ‘Explain to me again about economic imperialism.’

  Alex obliged. They had already had long discussions about the impact of both recognising that Carrearranis was a human world, and dropping quarantine. Already, people at Oreol were raging against the authorities preventing them from following the Fourth’s route through to Border Station and beyond it to Carrearranis itself. Their right to do so had been tenuous right from the start, keeping that route military classified and justifying that, first on the basis that it was an exodiplomacy mission and then on the need for absolute quarantine. Once those excuses were out of the way, League authorities had no further grounds on which to prevent their citizens exercising their constitutional right to the free use of space. The free use of space for trade purposes was, indeed, one of the founding principles enshrined in the League’s constitution. There were already, by then, court cases going on over the unconstitutional barriers being imposed by the Fleet and SDF at Oreol, under the orders of the infamous von Strada. It wouldn’t be long – weeks, only – before the storm arrived. And in that, heading up the charge, would be all manner of representatives from industries and corporations keen to grab a foothold on this newly discovered market.

  Davie North was one of them, and keen to lay a package deal down for the Carrearranian people. He had held back from doing so because it would be unethical to take unfair advantage of his presence on scene in diplomatic role, but he clearly did have an advantage in that he was far more fully informed than the executives clustering at Oreol, and already known to the Carrearranians, too. When the time came for laying down offers of investment, his was almost certain to win.

  ‘It really is an excellent package,’ Tan assured Alex, as they were having breakfast – a habit they’d formed of having a working breakfast to discuss sensitive issues in private. ‘The infrastructure offer is superb – two space stations, one for system control with all the necessary comms and traffic control networks, and one with all the facilities you could ask for both for the Carrearranians and for visitors. Groundside infrastructure is excellent, too – a spaceport, of course, global air traffic control and a global public transport network. I love that he’s been so culturally and environmentally sensitive with that – no airbuses, using boats instead, silent running and small enough not to overwhelm. But it’s the tourism aspect that really sells it for me – entirely obvious of course that tourism is the only thing the Carrearranians do have to offer right now in an intersystem economy, but horrible, unthinkable, for their world to be swamped with uncontrolled development of hotels and leisure complexes. Davie, in my view, has got that balance absolutely right, with just one island, the spaceport, designated for hotels. And the use of oceanic liners, well,’ he grinned, ‘genius. Gives tourists the high class experience they’ll be fighting one another to pay for, and at the same time restricts impact as the liners only pay brief ports-of-call visits to islands which are happy to have them. It’s the lightest touch possible for the maximum economic benefit – the best deal, I think, which could be put on the table.’

  Alex was silent. He knew with his head that Tan was right, and he knew too that development on Carrearranis was inevitable. It was just that they hadn’t even set foot on the planet, yet, and they were already discussing building hotels there. It felt wrong, though Alex was aware that his own anti-corporate views were playing a role in his feelings. Alex was glad that it was not a call that he would have to make, as advising them on economic development was firmly in Tan’s ballpark. He was rather surprised that Tan had brought this up, though, since he had to know that Alex’s only answer to matters economic would be that he did not feel himself to be qualified to offer an opinion.

  ‘The difficulty is,’ said Tan, spearing a tiny, bright green tomato, ‘that it will be like a war zone here, with hundreds, yes, hundreds of competing entrepreneurs, from the major corporate players right down to individuals trying to sell them bits of rubbish tech in return for a slice of paradise. As Ambassador, I won’t be able to protect the Carrearranians from that, only advise them. But I’m afraid it’s going to be overwhelming. And I am very much afraid that in their naivety and friendliness they may well end up making very ill advised decisions, selling chunks of their world off to people who certainly will not respect either their Rules of Life or way of life.’

  Alex nodded, a heavy gloom on him even at the thought of it.

  ‘If they’re made a Protectorate…’ he said, which had also been something discussed, and again, a matter that would be in Tan’s hands once Alex handed over to him from the initial phase of contact.

  ‘Yes, exactly, if,’ said Tan. ‘And I’m not at all sure, you know, that they will be. There won’t, of course, be any difficulty at all about defining them as a world in crisis for the purpose of providing humanitarian aid – that’s a given, with the lack of sanitation, healthcare and education, all of which we as a government are committed to provide for any world regardless of whether it’s a League world or not. But beyond that, the provision of infrastructure and economic investment is and always has been the role of corporate industry. And nothing wrong in that, in principle – the League itself, remember, was founded by corporate industry, it is primarily a trading association and it is absolutely constitutional, good and right that our industries should invest in worlds which clearly stand in need of that development. The difficulty here is that this is not a colony which was founded from the start with the aid of corporate investment, and nor is it a situation like the one at Sixships. Even there, you know, the fact that it was made and remains a Protectorate is still hotly disputed in certain quarters and brought up for review in the Senate on a regular basis.’

  Alex nodded again, with the wry look so many people acquired at the mention of Sixships. It had never been a League colony at all, but had been settled, disastrously, by six different incompatible extremist groups each of which had claimed the system as their own. By the time the League realised what was going on there and sent a Fleet ship to investigate, the long war had already started. Within a year, diplomatic efforts had moved into applying to the Senate to declare the world a Protectorate of the League, enabling them to move peacekeeping troops in and assume a measure of authority. Alex knew well enough that it was still considered a controversial decision – he’d come in for even more than the usual level of howling protest after the Fourth’s brief but spectacular operations there.

  ‘Sixships,’ said Tan, ‘is actually the benchmark which will be used by the Senate when they’re considering whether to make Carrearranis a Protectorate or not. In the case of Sixships it was held to be justified by the fact that their nations were at war and lives were being lost. That is not the case at Carrearranis. The only honest grounds we have to apply for a Protectorate here are to prevent the people of the League exercising their constitutional right to come here and offer trade and business deals. I don’t see the Senate g
oing for that, Alex, I really don’t.’

  ‘But,’ Alex protested, ‘they’re so vulnerable! They don’t know anything about economics or industry, they don’t even trade amongst themselves, just give stuff away! And surely, if they themselves recognise that they’re out of their depth and ask for a Protectorate…’

  ‘Hmmn,’ said Tan, and ate another tomato, thoughtfully. ‘In an ideal galaxy,’ he said, ‘in which the sovereign wishes of the people of Carrearranis are held to be paramount, yes, that would be their call to make. But you have to appreciate that it is a great deal more complex than that, Alex, with massive pressure there not just from all the corporate interests fighting the corner of constitutional freedoms, but from the sheer weight of our history. In the two thousand years of our history, I should point out, the League has never even contemplated making a planet a Protectorate in order to protect it from ourselves. And asking the government to do so in order to protect it from potential ravages by industry is, well… it gives me the cold horrors just thinking about how that would go down. I will make the case, of course, for a phased and managed exposure to the challenges of economic development, but as things stand, I know that we are at the very least in for one hell of a fight and I’m not at all sure we can win. For one thing, you know, the obvious rebuttal there is that we have already recognised the people of Carrearranis as an intelligent people, capable of self-determination and with no rights-abusing practices which would justify us taking them over. The very fact that we put such a high emphasis on respect for their sovereign rights undermines our case if we then turn round and say they’re not capable of handling business matters for themselves. So, you know, I have a terrible feeling that the Senate will cry havoc and let slip the dogs of commerce.’

  That should have raised a grin, but it didn’t. Alex was looking at him, fully alert to the significance there of Tan’s use of we.

  ‘As things stand…?’ he prompted.

  ‘Well, there are possibilities,’ said Tan, deliberately vague. ‘First and foremost, I feel it is vital to inform the Carrearranians about the storm it will unleash on them once we set foot there. And that will be the catalyst, Alex, as you know very well, once reports get out that we’ve first footed and quarantine is down…’ he gestured, ‘the storm front already at Oreol will be on us in a matter of days.’

  Alex felt an icy finger brush his spine… not the ghost of Cabin Fifteen, this time, but a genuine horror.

  ‘We have to warn them,’ he said, and as he realised the significance of that, ‘I have to warn them.’

  Which was why he was then having conversations with Arak about economic imperialism, culture bombing and the wiping out of indigenous ways of life. It was a controversial thing for the League Envoy to do and would certainly have a good many people back home spluttering, ‘You told them what?’ But it was, Alex decreed, essential that the Carrearranians were fully and honestly informed so as to be able to make those decisions for themselves.

  As Tan had anticipated, though, they just could not get their heads around such weird ideas. Even when Alex did his best to frame explanations in ways that they could understand, such as using islands as analogies, the explanation fell down on fundamental lack of understanding. With no concepts of trade or of theft, how could they possibly grasp the idea of exploitation? The only conclusion they could come to, after days of extensive discussion, was that this stuff was impossible and the offworlders were mad.

  ‘Can’t you just stop them?’ Arak asked, having grasped, at least, the idea that some of the people who’d be turning up at Carrearranis were of the ‘not good people to have visiting’ kind.

  ‘Not as such,’ said Tan, who had been brought into this conference call, and in doing so, eased into his first advisory role. It truly was a conference call, too, with sixty eight other island chiefs listening in. Alex had suggested, and introduced, Tan as someone who understood more about this issue than he did himself, and the Carrearranians had accepted him as such. ‘We can,’ said Tan, ‘at your request, prevent League shipping from entering your territorial space, which means they can’t come any closer than the Heron is right now. We can also, again at your request, help you to set up automatic call and mail response systems so you won’t have to deal with calls from people on the ships. We can also, and will, advise you on offers which are being made to you. Our Trade and Industry Attaché will have a team available around the clock to discuss any offers which are being made, and our Legal Attaché, too, will advise on what the contracts being offered to you actually mean. But we can’t stop people coming here and we can’t stop them trying to do things like offer you technology in return for permission to build hotels on your islands.’

  There was an immediate outcry. The Carrearranians might not understand the concepts of trade or exploitation, but they had understood very quickly what a hotel was. Even if they made the building of it conditional upon not a single tree being felled, there were plenty of open spaces on any island where hotel complexes could be constructed – massive complexes, ten times the size of the village and with ten guests there for every villager, too, and that would be just one hotel. The Carrearranians had also seen pictures and listened to descriptions of the kind of floating hotel that might be used to get around the tree-felling law, great monstrous carbuncles which would sprawl across lagoons and loom over the island.

  ‘We do not want hotels,’ Arak said emphatically, and there was noisy, inchoate agreement from the others. And then, just as emphatically and evidently speaking for them all, ‘These are your people – you have to deal with it.’

  Tan Ganhauser, in fact, did have a plan. He waited a couple of days before he shared it with Alex, waiting until it was absolutely certain that they had a mandate from the population of Carrearranis to act in order to protect their world from being overwhelmed. Then, in their usual breakfast next morning, he waited again until the time was absolutely right.

  ‘It is,’ he said, taking a leisurely sip of his tea, ‘a pity that we can’t try the Mimos Solution.’

  He had timed it perfectly. Alex had been swallowing coffee. At the very word of Mimos he choked on it, gagged, coughed and sprayed coffee all over his breakfast.

  Tan regarded this with quiet satisfaction. He would be able to boast, for the rest of his life, that he had shocked Alexis von Strada.

  And he had, too. Alex was speechless. Even after he’d managed to breathe and mopped at the coffee on his uniform, even as mini-bots were rushing in to deal with the splatter of coffee, Alex still sat there, thunderstruck. Then, seeing that Tan really was actually serious, that that comment had not been a sick joke, he got unsteadily to his feet.

  ‘’scuse…’ he managed, and retreated into his sleeping cabin.

  When he returned a couple of minutes later, showered and in a cleaned uniform, it was to find Tan still sitting there placidly finishing breakfast. The remnants of Alex’s own coffee-splattered meal had been cleared away, but Tan had provided a replacement coffee, for which Alex gave a nod of thanks as he resumed his seat.

  ‘All right,’ he acknowledged. ‘You got me. But you can not be serious, Tan. And if you are, my God…’

  He looked at Tan with eyes that searched like the kind of lasers employed to drill geological bore holes. It had occurred to him while he was in the shower that if Tan could even entertain the thought of something so appallingly rights-abusive and exploitative, perhaps his easy-going agreement with the Fourth’s own policy here had been nothing more than keeping them sweet. It was just possible, after all, that he had very different orders from the government for when he took over.

  ‘Please…’ Tan lifted a hand. ‘I am not advocating invasion, demolition, enforced relocation of the population to slum estates and the wholesale destruction of their biosphere through mining and industrial agriculture. All I am saying is that, considered aside from the wholly unacceptable manner in which it was carried out, and the highly regrettable consequences, the actual Solution, if it had
been correctly managed, could have been of real benefit to the people of Mimos both in the short and long term.’

  Alex reined in an instinct to cry out ‘How can you even say that?’

  He had been eleven years old when he’d first become aware of Mimos, hearing his parents discuss it. It was so unusual for them to take any interest in any offworld news that Lex, as he was known then, had been intrigued, and asked questions. It turned out that the Senate had asked all League member worlds for an additional contribution for aid on Mimos, over and above that already designated from central funding and being given by member worlds voluntarily. Alex’s father had been firmly against the idea – they’d all, he said, and Alex could remember him saying it, been pouring money into that pit for more than long enough, and it was more than time that something was done to sort it out. His mother, a healthcare worker, had been more compassionate; You can’t just leave children to suffer. Alex had asked what they were talking about and had received a partial, biased and largely inaccurate account of how the League had found Mimos in a state of utter barbarity – people living in swamps eating frogs, for pity’s sake – and how they’d done their best to help, moving in an aid mission, building them decent modern housing and providing them with all the amenities. But they just, his father said, would not work – a more lazy, feckless, ungrateful people had yet to be found on the face of the galaxy.

  Alex had learned the other side of that in citizenship classes, in his final year of high school. There, Mimos was used as a case study for an ethics debate in which the students had to argue out their views on what had been done. Feelings could run high in such debates, as adolescents wrestled with concepts of justice and rights. The teacher facilitating the debate, indeed, had made a special note to be mindful of Lex von Strada’s impassioned views on any issue of injustice. She was firmly of the view, herself, that he would grow up to be either a civil rights lawyer or one of those hairy protestors who spent their lives yelling about injustice and unfairness in society. Even so, the cold rage with which he had unleashed his views about the rights-abusive violation of a sovereign world and the desecration of its environment had been such that nobody, not even the teacher, had dared argue with him. It had, incidentally, come as a great shock to her when she heard a couple of years later that the boy she’d considered so fervently anti-establishment had actually joined the Fleet, itself the military face of that establishment. She had said at the time that he wouldn’t last a year.