Manna

by Lee Correy

  I gave the Commonwealth’s defense directorate the same basic pitch as I’d presented extemporaneously to the C-Cubed meeting. This time, I plugged some of the loopholes.

  “I don’t know your defense plans, although I’ve been told that some of my scenarios have come close to the mark,” I concluded. “You undoubtedly know far more about the Commonwealth’s vulnerabilities than I do. However, I would strongly urge you to study these vulnerabilities very carefully with an eye toward someone creating an incident for which the Commonwealth can be blamed.”

  “Sounds like something for your Landlmpy, Nenana,” Commissioner Abiku remarked to Induno Pahtu.

  Induno Pahtu was one of those non-feminine women who’re hard as nails and look it.

  She wore her greying hair close-cropped for a woman, and her attitude was one of total professionalism. In her gravelly alto voice with just a hint of coarseness to it, she replied, “Staff Study Ganto Oro. My staff made a thorough investigation of our vulnerabilities to land offensives. Call up the synopsis on your VDT.”

  “Put it on the screen, Nenana,” the Commissioner told her.

  A topo map of the Commonwealth formed on the screen behind me. I stepped to one side and looked.

  “The classic historical avenues of attack are primarily along the coastal Toak Plains,” Induno Pahtu explained as two arrows appeared on the map. “Easy to sweep into the Commonwealth this way. No great geographical barriers. Crossings of the Liupp River can be forced at several places. From the south, the Lipuputu River border is more difficult to cross because of its banks. The Dilkon Range offers several passes which could be penetrated…”

  “Excuse me,” I interrupted. I don’t usually interrupt generals during their briefings, but I felt I could get away with it here. I did. “I wasn’t speaking of overt invasions, Induno Pahtu. Nazi Germany started World War II with an invasion of Poland justified on the basis of a supposed Polish attack on a German border outpost. It was actually carried out with German soldiers in Polish uniforms fighting their own people. The Germans used it as a provocation to justify their invasion which followed within hours. That was the sort of thing I had in mind.”

  Induno Pahtu shook her head. “There’s no way it can happen. All of my troop concentrations are well back from our borders except where the Lipuputu River borders the Chibka Socialistic Republic. Actually, I don’t have many Landlmpy troops stationed at either border because I could move them rapidly by road and rail to prepared positions on the rivers. At Outpost Eight up on the abandoned rail line into the Ilkan Empire, there’s a minimum garrison just to send a message to the Ilkans that we’re ready if they should try to sweep southward toward Liupp. But they don’t have the capability. The country’s in a sad state.”

  “Induno, the terrorist who tried to kill me at Topawa Airport three months ago was Ilkan,” Ali reminded her. “And Ilkans burned Karederu Center. They’ve apparently got thewherewithal to conduct terrorist operations in the Commonwealth.”

  “Internal counter-terrorist activity isn’t my responsibility,” Pahtu said testily.

  “Induno Pahtu, with all due respect for the abilities of your staff,” I put in, “both of the potential trouble points you’ve mentioned suffer from two problems.”

  “And they would be?” Induno Pahtu asked with a great deal of doubt in her voice.

  “One: they’re obvious. Two: they are not strategically important to anyone.”

  “They are certainly strategically important to me!”

  “I agree. You’re charged with the land defense of the Commonwealth. They’re important to you. But not to the Ilkans or the Chibkas! Why would we attack either of them? According to the map, there’s nothing the Ilkans have that we want, and your forces would have to cross more than a hundred kilometers of desert to capture their capital city. Why fight for possession of that village of hovels? The same logic rules the Chibka front. South of the Lipuputa River, the Chibkas don’t have any land or resources that would be useful, just coastal swampland and tropical jungle. They haven’t converted it to farmland the way the Commonwealth did with the Toak Plains.” I looked up at the display. “But there’s a region that’s bothered me ever since I first studied a Commonwealth map from a military viewpoint. What’s up there in the northwest corner of the Commonwealth?”

  “Lake Nyira and the provincial capital of Kulala,” Induno Pahtu told me. “It’s well garrisoned, and the Sayhuto Pass through the Dilkon Range is well defended, too.”

  “I’m sorry, but you’re missing my point,” I replied. I was crashing and burning this session of Briefing 301 in the real world. But I was talking to people who’d been living with the maps and the plans for years. “A major transportation route cuts across the northwest corner of the Commonwealth and goes through Kulala: the Rhodes Cape-to-Cairo Railway. I’ll bet the Ilkans and the Emirate of Kalihol don’t like it.”

  “You have a point, Sandy,” Commissioner Abiku admitted. “That corner isn’t ours by choice. It was part of the old Republic of Liupp that resulted from a Geneva conference when this part of the world came out from under colonial rule seventy years ago. But we don’t detain any rail traffic through there and we don’t make customs inspections or charge duties; it’s an open railway. It’s important to us because our railway through Sayhuto Pass to Kulala connects to it, making it our major rail link to the interior.”

  “Do you think something will take place there, Induno Baldwin?” Citlmpy Induno Moti asked me. She seemed to be interested in what I was saying.

  “Seems logical.”

  “The map is not the territory,” Pahtu remarked. “If you think the region’s critically important, why don’t you go for a look? I think you’re wrong now, but I’ll listen to your analysis of the Kulala situation once you’ve been there. You might see something we haven’t.”

  I hesitated. I should get back to L-5, I told myself. If the balloon went up, my best position was in space because that’s where I knew how to fight best. “Ali?” I asked.

  Ali shrugged. “They brought us down at a critical time, but I’m in touch with Peter. We can’t return immediately, so two days won’t make much difference. Go do it. Pahtu’s right: you might discover something everyone else has missed.”

  “I’ll take him by rail,” Induno Moti offered. “The trip’s spectacular.”

  “I’m not here to sightsee, Induno.”

  “True, but consider it part of your education in the military realities of the Commonwealth,” she told me. “I believe you’ve spotted a weak point, Baldwin. But you need to see it to be certain. With your background, I think your analysis could even include a recommendation that might sway even Induno Pahtu. How about it, Nenana?”

  Induno Pahtu merely said, “I told you I’d listen, Kivalina.”

  “Good! May I use your railcar?”

  Chapter 12

  The Other Side of the Mountain

  There were only four of us aboard Induno Pahtu’s Henschel rail car—myself; Citlmpy Induno Kivalina Moti; her aide, ComExec Elwok Bylar Oraibu; and the white-turbaned, sport-shirted Sikh driver, Kirpal Sandhu Singh.

  Singh was proud of his steed. The fittings had been polished and even the coal bunker was wetted down. The steam plant was compact, using fluid-bed dual combustion and a 20-atmosphere fire-tube boiler. A heat exchanger condensed the used steam to conserve feed water. There was no vibration from the opposed four-cylinder steam engine tucked underneath the front of the twenty-meter car. In accordance with custom, two metal plates above the shovel nose and another inside above the windscreen announced Engineman Singh had named it Allakaket Mountain.

  “It’s a fine machine,” he explained proudly as we descended Dekhar Gorge. “It will take fifty tonnes over the pass to Kulala. But my normal run is Topawa-Oidak express passenger service.”

  “Isn’t this Induno Pahtu’s railcar?” I asked.

  “The car’s leased from ComTrans,” Moti said from where she sat in the left seat, viewing th
e rails sweeping in front of us down the Gorge. “We also lease railway right-of-passage.”

  “I don’t understand two things, Induno Moti,” I remarked.

  “Call me Kivalina. What are they, Sandy?”

  It didn’t bother me to be on first name basis; she was old enough to be my mother. “Why bother with rail? Aerodynes go anywhere and don’t depend on right-of-way.”

  “It’s a tactical mistake at any time to depend on one form of transportation.” She pointed to the clouds scudding along the 3500-meter peaks alongside the Gorge. “We have two heavy weather seasons when air ops are difficult. Can’t move troops or equipment by air or road in foul weather. Railways run in any weather.”

  “Provided you maintain security and repair damage quickly,” I pointed out.

  “That’s always a problem and an advantage,” Kivalina admitted. “But railways can be easily and quickly repaired. And for hauling big loads of great weight, flanged wheels on rails can’t be beat.”

  I knew the military role railways had played for two centuries in a world that never stopped fighting. “Sorry, I’m still using high-tech thinking.”

  “You’re doing quite well, considering the length of time you’ve been here. Now, what’s your second problem?”

  “I can’t figure out the Defense Commission.”

  “It’s just a government subsidiary service corporation.”

  “How can the Commonwealth run the armed forces like a service corporation?” I wondered.

  “We got the idea from your country.”

  “Come on, Kivalina! The Departmen of Defense is one of the most inefficient tax-supported government organizations in the world!”

  “I wasn’t referring to DoD,” Kivalina replied. “The United States has excellent, efficient, low-cost security systems that protect people, facilities, shipments, all the things armed forces should do. You’ve heard of Pinkerton’s or Brinks’? Our Defense Commission is patterned after them. It doesn’t have to make a profit, but it must be cost-effective. After all, it’s a government business.”

  “A business? A government exists to create business entities, not to be one itself.”

  “Sandy, have you read our Constitution?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you’ve got it backwards. A government provides definite services to both individuals and corporations. Ours is a non-distributive corporation, and every citizen or domestic company is a stockholder/member. The annual membership charge for an individual is ridiculously low. That for a business is based on a small percentage of its capitalization. It’s not costly enough for anybody to spend time and effort to avoid. One of the things the government handles is the common defense. It’s the old protection racket, but we know it. And there’s no other common way to do it.”

  I shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense. A government performs social functions in addition to defense.”

  “Name ten ‘government functions’ that can’t be done out better by a private operation,” she challenged me. “If something’s necessary and people are willing to pay for it, someone will risk capital and effort to do it.”

  “How about not-for-profit organizations?”

  “Are there such things?”

  “Sure. Service clubs and civic associations and the like.”

  “Oh, my, Sandy,” Kivalina said with a frustrated tone in her voice. “An organization can’t spend more than it gets. It must charge for value delivered. There has to be profit.”

  “The non-profit organizations I’m talking about don’t distribute any monetary dividends to their members,” I explained.

  Kivalina brightened. “Those are non-distributive corporations. Singh’s Engineman Sodality is one. He contributes regularly to it and it provides him with salary protection, medical care, and old-age benefits.”

  “That’s a union.”

  “A sodality isn’t a union. Individuals retain their own bargaining rights in a sodality.”

  “But that leads to worker exploitation!”

  Kivalina advised me, “Stop thinking in scarcity-economics terms, Sandy. Any organization that mistreats its workers can’t stay in business. A disgruntled employee can form another company to do the same thing and treat its workers properly. Soon the original firm won’t be able to compete because it won’t have good workers. The same holds true for our defense forces. The Citlmpy would be an ineffectual back-up force if I depended on police action or other physical coercion. And we wouldn’t have the sense of pride and tradition that’s absolutely necessary to keep the Citlmpy from becoming a revolutionary mob.”

  “We’ve tried to get a militarily-trained citizenry for almost three hundred years in the United States,” I pointed out. “How’d you manage?”

  Kivalina smiled. “Universal military training.”

  “Universal military service is something Americans won’t buy.”

  “I said ‘training,’ not ‘service.’ At eighteen years of age, everyone undergoes nine months of the basic military training necessary to defend the Commonwealth. This includes the handicapped because there are lots of jobs they can do in the impys. Each new citizen receives a registered assault rifle and is expected to use it if required. That citizen is responsible for its maintenance, use, and mis-use. Defense of the social organization doesn’t conflict with freedom. We believe it’s the duty of all members of a free institution to defend it and the duty of the institution to compel it. If you don’t like it, you’re free to find another one.”

  “Suppose I’m a young Commonwealther who refuses to participate?”

  “You’d never become a citizen. You couldn’t do things reserved for citizens. You couldn’t vote. You couldn’t join a sodality. You couldn’t become a director or officer of any Commonwealth corporation. You couldn’t open and maintain a bank account. You’d be legally a child. In other words, you’d be treated as a non-responsible individual.” She looked like a wistful grandmother for a moment, then went on, “We remember childhood as a beautiful, wonderful period in our lives and forget that the last part of it, adolescence, is miserable. A child is a young animal upon whom the thin veneer of civilization must be placed by parents. I have four grown offspring of my own.” She looked directly at me. “You think you came from a free country? Sandy, you’re going to find out what freedom really means! Can you accept total responsibility for yourself and your actions? Some outlanders can’t.”Singh maintained 150 kilometers per hour down the winding Dekhar Gorge. We came through mountain forests of lianas and heaths and skirted the northern marge of a Lake Oidak past the SPS rectenna. Two hours out of Vicrik, we entered Oidak, the Queen City of the Toak Plains.

  Oraibu brought aboard food and additional drinking water for the galley while Singh topped coal and water. “It is five-hundred-seventy kilometers to Kulala over steep grades,” Singh explained, “I must re-water at Sayhuto Pass although the Allakaket Mountain reuses her feed water ten times.”

  We ate lunch as Allakaket Mountain sped northward along the Oidak River. The Toak Plains, once a savannah nutured only by twice-yearly rains, were a carpet of irrigated farmland. We raced past kilometers of hypergrain wheat, millet, soybean, and cotton fields.

  As we left the river valley and paralleled the Dilkon Range, the land became grassy steppe.

  The railway turned westward toward the Dilkons and we started to gain altitude.

  Twice we took sidings on word from Singh’s comm. Unit coal trains rumbled past southbound. We went “in the hole” for a tourist special returning from the Sayhuto Pass recreational areas.

  It seemed impossible that a railway could breach the mountains ahead, their flanks dappled with green-blue vegetation and wispy clouds. The grade became steeper and Allakaket Mountain slowed from the 250 kilometers per hour Singh had maintained out of Oidak to a creeping 100 km/hr as the railway climbed the gorge and hung on the side of the cliffs over the churning white water of the Sayhuto River below. Into the clouds we went, then out into bright mo
untain sunlight. Tunnel, bridge, fill, cut—the Sayhuto Pass Railway had to be one of the great engineering feats on Earth, unrivalled since the days of the Colorado narrow-gauge. It would have been impractical, if not impossible, to put a standard 1.44-meter railway across these mountains; the gradients and curvatures taxed even the Commonwealth 1.07-meter gauge.

  A narrow two-lane road paved with the Commonwealth’s coal-slag ersatz macadam twisted through the gorge with the railway. It wouldn’t be rated better than a tertiary road in high-tech America. Commonwealthers had put their capital and effort into the railway instead of a road at the mercy of weather.

  And weather there was. At about 2500 meters, it began to snow lightly, coating the heaths and fern trees with a dusting of white. But Allakaket Mountain whined ahead, the rails guiding it through the snow.

  It was below zero Celsius at the top of Sayhuto Pass, but there was no snow on the ground. The tops of the Dilkons poked out of the cloud deck, turning the peaks into islands in a sea of white. The trees looked like pines but weren’t; some were stunted by the cold.

  The fern trees were also smaller with a dried, brown, dessicated look.

  Singh stopped in a small railway yard with locomotive re-watering facilities near a cold-looking village of less than a hundred people. Kivalina stayed in the warmth of the railcar. I quickly got chilled in the high mountain air and went back inside, leaving Singh to oversee rewatering.

  “This is one of four passes through the Dilkons,” Kivalina remarked and pointed out the window toward the tree-covered mountainside. “It’s heavily fortified.”

  I looked where she pointed but didn’t see anything unusual. “A good camouflage job,” I complimented her.”Nothing I-R couldn’t spot, but sometimes you have to get a visual to discriminate a target out of clutter. Rocket and artillery batteries sweep both the railway and the highway. You wouldn’t believe the antipersonnel booby traps out there. The terrain’s impassable except to mountain ranger troops—and neither the Ilkans or the Kalihols have them.”