Manna

by Lee Correy

  I hated to play with words when my friends were hurting. If this was war, it wasn’t the sort this warrior liked to fight. I had to submerge emotions and feelings; there was no other choice except to give in to these bastards. And I wasn’t about to do that.

  I knew The General and others were watching in Vershatets. They wouldn’t let this atrocity go unpunished.

  “It will have to be done through intermediaries,” Dok remarked. “We cannot leave now.”

  He was probably right. None of them could leave Topawa because they were directing operations of their coup. Their situation wouldn’t improve. Their treatment of prisoners would motivate the impys to fight without quarter.

  “I’ll talk with an intermediary, but only on neutral ground.”

  “Zurich?”

  That was one of the bastions of world power groups. Switzerland, Bahrain, and other places had interesting banking rules that made it possible to stash the loot.

  “I want truly neutral ground, Dok,” I was relying on the fact that people still thought of space in terms of distances rather than energies. “I’ll meet you halfway: GEO Base Zero.”

  “Sorry. You have Rutledge and RIO in your pocket.”

  “All right, then GEO Base One.”

  “Why that one?”

  “It’s the old powersat construction base. Hasn’t been used for twenty years,” I explained.

  “It’s parked at GEO Spot One-Eighty over mid-Pacific. It was last visited by a RIO Spot Inspection Team about a year ago, and the portlock module had pressure. I’ll meet your intermediary there in twenty-four hours, unarmed. There’ll be two of us, myself with Omer Astrabadi as my pilot. Who will you send?”

  “I’ll call you in an hour.”

  “In the meantime, start treating your prisoners according to the Hague and Geneva conventions.”

  “We won’t kill them.”

  That left a lot of leeway, but I knew he wouldn’t kill them…yet.

  Ali had calmed down a bit by the time I broke the circuit. He was still breathing hard.

  “Let me go with you,” he pleaded.

  “Not only no, but hell no! I couldn’t keep you under control, Ali. Their intermediary wouldn’t be safe. You’d try to kill him.”

  “But I’ve got to do something!”

  “You can find out where they’re holding the prisoners.”

  “It’s obvious. That dungeon is under the old fortress on the plaza of Topawa Centrum. The building’s our natural museum. We restored the dungeons to remind people of the horror of our past and warn them of what could happen with a breakdown of civilized behavior. Dok and von Undine took the old prison museum and put it back to use!”

  The lasercom to Vershatets demanded our attention. It was The General.

  “We saw. We know. The Landlmpy and the Citlmpy indunos are taking what action they can,” the old man said with obvious sadness and grief on his face and in his voice. “It’s worse than the atrocities of Colonel Chase…but we won’t let this trio escape. Sendi, I can’t provide effective leadership now. I’m much too disturbed by what’s happened to my family. Will you take over, please?”

  “Yes, I will, General.” Suddenly with those four words, the whole future of the Commonwealth depended on me.

  “Grandfather, I want to wash my iklawa in the blood of Kariander Dok,” Alichin broke in with a firm, resolute voice.

  “No, Alichin. We will not revert to savagery to avenge savagery,” The General told him.

  “Their case will be handled under the law.”

  “But our family’s being harmed! Our family honor requires revenge!”

  “Alichin, you’re behaving like your ancestors. We no longer live in a world of want, and we must never go back to its principles, regardless of the behavior of others. And don’t confuse the custom of going about armed with an iklawa with the principle of defending honor. A family doesn’t demand honor or revenge; a family exists with and because of love and mercy. And our nation doesn’t demand honor or revenge; it requires respect and therefore justice…and gives both.”

  “Grandfather, don’t tell me that my strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure!”

  “But it is, Ali. Now call upon that strength. I’ve had to. How do you think I felt watching more than fifty years of my life shattered by outlander barbarians with a credo of greed which is no longer necessary?”

  When your friends and loved ones are being tortured, it’s hard to be logical and rational. It took all of my professional training to put down the emotions that surged inside me, a mere outlander who’d been a citizen of this new thing in human affairs, the United Mitanni Commonwealth, for less than half a year.

  But Ali couldn’t control his emotions. This made him ineffectual as a negotiator or military leader. The same was true of The General, but he knew it. In fact, the rest of the truncated Defense Commission—Landlmpy Induno Pahtu, Coastlmpy Induno Shokutu, and Citlmpy Induno Moti—were probably also running on considerable emotional charge right then. I had to play the role of the cool, rational leader.

  It was now my show, and I couldn’t blow it.

  Nor could I become another Colonel Chase.

  I had to be General Anegam Vamori standing before Oidak on that long-ago Christmas Day leading 20,000 untrained warriors bearing only assault rifles, grenades, mortars, assegai, and iklawas facing a mercenary horde of 50,000 trained, experienced soldiers of fortune and professional looters armed with rockets, tacair, heavy machine guns, and artillery firing vapor explosives and seeker ammunition.

  I wanted the other side to get emotional and to make mistakes because of biased or poor judgement.

  And I wasn’t just a mercenary hireling; I was a former outlander who was now a citizen warrior for the new prophet of plenty.

  What a hell of an unsuspected spot for a former space jockey to find himself!

  And the twisty way I got there was a subject for much personal reflection for years afterward.

  While I was waiting for the triumvirate’s reply, I conferred by lasercom with Indunos Pahtu, Shokutu, and Moti in Vershatets, further refining the plans and working out the details.

  For the GEO Base One mission, I’d wear a full elastic pressure suit under my flight suit and a bubble helmet with an open microphone. If there was foul play or I bought the farm, the strategic plans would move ahead without me. But I’d be ready for foul play.

  I’d go unarmed as promised—that is to say, I wouldn’t be carrying anything that was obviously a weapon. It didn’t mean I’d be defenseless.

  The message from the triumvirate came was hard copy. “They’re doing a good job down there,” Jeri reported as he handed it to me. “The countermeasures and jamming from Vershatets are blocking almost everything. This came through on low-frequency narrow-band digital pulse code from Topawa.”

  “250450 1435Z

  BALDWIN L5 FROM COMMONWEALTH PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT TOPAWA

  CONFIRMED MEETING GEO BASE ONE 1200Z 260450

  GOVERNMENT AMBASSADOR PLENIPOTENTIARY PHILIP DUBOIS WOLF IS AUTHORIZED FULL POWER OF NEGOTIATION

  ARRIVING YACHT PROXINOS GREEK REGISTRY BEACON CODE 6067

  VON UNDINE FOREIGN MINISTER COMMONWEALTH PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT TOPAWA

  END MESSAGE END MESSAGE END MESSAGE

  250450 1437Z”

  “Who’s this guy Wolf?” I asked Jeri.

  “He’s listed in the ‘Who’s Who’ data bank as Vice President of the Bahrain Eurasian Investment Bank,” Jeri said. “Guess you’ll be rubbing shoulders with a micro-part of the Tripartite, sort of a Grand Exhalted Big Dipper of the Persian Gulf Lodge.”

  “I won’t even be meeting with someone from the Commonwealth, just an outlander! Okay, let’s get this over with,” I told Omer and started toward the portlock hatch.

  “Not yet, Yankee,” the Mad Russian Space Jockey brought me up short. “You still look like typical space jockey.”

  “So?”

  “You are now In
duno Sendi Boldwon, Marshall of All Commonwealth Impys.”

  “If you put it that way, I guess I must be.”

  “So you must look like it.”

  “Why bother?”

  “Is old Kazakh saying: a circus must have elephants.”

  “Okay, I get it. Is old Yankee saying: don’t do a vast thing in a half-vast way.”

  “You got it now. So you get these. Stand still.” Omer pinned the three golden triangles of a full Commonwealth induna on my collar tabs and added the crossed iklawa-and-assegai badge of the Impy forces on my left breast pocket. Then he embraced me Kazahk style.

  “By rights, Tsaya or Vaivan ought to do that. Why couldn’t you have been born a beautiful woman?” I asked him.

  We had no trouble with STC. We filed for a full diplomatic priority clearance and got it…along with the best service we ever had. STC even kept us informed of the progress of the Proxinos as the Greek-registry yacht bearing Philip DuBois Wolf also closed on GEO Base One simultaneously. It was as though STC had choreographed a ballet for two ships approaching an abandoned space facility in unison.

  They opened communication with us first. “Tomahok, this is Proxinos. Do not—repeat, do not—dock with GEO Base One. Rendezvous and station-keep one hundred meters outside the station orbit. We will station-keep one hundred meters inside the orbit. Send your representative to the Base on a scoot or by eeveeay. Acknowledge.”

  “Proxinos, this is Tomahok. This is hardly diplomatic protocol,” I objected.

  “This meeting relates to an internal Commonwealth matter and has no diplomatic status.”

  “But I’m meeting with a representative who’s not a citizen of the Commonwealth,” I told them.

  “I take it I’m talking to Captain Baldwin? This is Philip DuBois Wolf, and I’m a citizen by proclamation of the Provisional Government. If you want the parley you demanded, get over to the portlock now.” Philip Dubois Wolf had an accent that said he’d grown up in the prepschools of the American Northeast. It was slowly paced and he used broadened vowel sounds, a far cry from the Good Old Boy Down Home Folksy Drawl of an aerospace pilot and certainly considerably different from the highly inflected Commonwealth English with its shifted vowel sounds that my ears had grown accustomed to.

  I told Omer, “Hide in the structure of the Base with the sky junk in case someone decides to take a shot at you while I’m gone. You’re my ticket home, Russkie.”

  “You are a distrustful, sneaky person, Yankee. So are they. Keep your mike open,” Omer reminded me needlessly. “If you get into trouble, I will attack the Proxinos.”’

  “Did you bring an AR-3?”

  “No, I will ram him.”

  I knew the Mad Russian Space Jockey would.

  I hadn’t been EVA for over a year, but it’s like riding a bicycle: Once you learn, you never forget. Omer had stopped a hundred meters from the end of the hexagonal inspection module. I didn’t need a line for that short distance, so I pushed off. There was plenty of Base structure around to grab if my push was misdirected. But I didn’t need it. Less than a minute later my boot soles smacked the old metallic plates of the hex module.

  Wolf came over on a scoot.

  Neither of us said a word to the other. I reached down and opened the portlock hatch.

  Once inside and sealed, I discovered enough residual pressure on the Base side of the lock to repressurize and let us use the module for a helmets-off conference. Although the photovoltaic cells on the module’s external panels were about fifty years old, they had enough poop left to give us internal lighting and fans. I opened my face plate but I didn’t turn off my transmitter.

  Wolf did and didn’t comment that I hadn’t. I knew then he wasn’t a spaceman. He’d probably learned how to handle a scoot and a pressure suit for sport or recreation in space as had many wealthy people in high-tech countries.

  We were surrounded by metal walls that didn’t block radio transmissions because they’d been designed and built with plastic-filled slots in every external wall. These acted as slot antennas to retransmit UHF signals in and out, eliminating the need to put an external antenna on every module.

  Omer in the Tomahok only a few hundred meters away could pick up my suit radio easily. He’d relay it to L-5 and Vershatets.

  When Wolf removed the helmet from his old style full-pressure suit and strapped it around a nearby conduit to keep it from floating away, I saw the features of a man who had the bland, undistinguished, forgettable visage of a bank clerk, advertising executive, insurance salesman, or telenewscast actor. To this day, I really don’t remember what Philip DuBois Wolf looked like. He wasn’t an individual; he was an automatic piece in a bigger game.

  I suspected he’d cultivated his unnoteworthy appearance because, as a minor member of the Tripartite, it was to his advantage to be obscure and forgettable. He was one of the faceless people who ran the world.

  Wolf didn’t bother to be civil and introduce himself. He merely opened a sealedcannister—a space briefcase, as it were—and extracted some hard copies. “Captain Baldwin,” he began, deliberately using my former Aerospace Force rank rather than my appointed Commonwealth rank, “do you have the authority to surrender the Commonwealth space facilities and personnel to the Provisional Government?”

  “Would I be here if I didn’t?” I snapped.

  “A procedural question. Are you prepared to surrender them?”

  “I’m prepared to discuss it.”

  “There’s nothing to discuss, only the formalities to complete.”

  “That’s not why I’m here,” I reminded him. “There’s a question of assurances concerning the treatment and release of Commonwealth citizens now being held hostage in Topawa.”

  “Oh, yes, the enemies of the Provisional Government seized at Karederu,” Wolf muttered absently. “There can be no question of their release. They’d jeopardize the security of the new regime if they had the freedom they enjoyed when they ruled the Commonwealth.”

  “I was assured that the hostages would be released unharmed and remain unharmed.” I bluffed.

  “Replay the tape of that conversation. No such assurances were given.” Wolf called my bluff.

  “Then there’s nothing further to discuss, and you can return to report the failure of your mission.”

  “Then we both will have failed because the Provisional Government will still hold the prisoners. And the price may go up.”

  “I don’t believe there’s a question of price, Wolf, unless you admit to bargaining for power with human lives.”

  “This is getting nowhere. I can assure you of the identity and condition of the prisoners and of their proposed disposition under the new regime. In exchange for the solemn promises and high agreements of the Provisional Government, you are to surrender all of the space stations, space factories, space vehicles, and powersats controlled and operated by corporations and other business entities chartered by the former Commonwealth government, and all personnel involved therewith.” It sounded like he was reading it from the hard copy.

  “And I came to find out if there was any basis for trust in your principals. At the moment, I have none, and you’ve certainly not created any. Furthermore, I’d expected to meet with a high level official, not a lackey called in and given rump authority so Dok and his cohorts wouldn’t be exposed to equal risk with me.”

  “You’ve received my bona fides. I hardly think your insulting attitude is justified.” Wolf was a rude snob. I knew his type. I’d tangled with his buddies, some of whom had found positions in the American government as civilians in charge of military men. Raised by a nanny, sent off to a prep school, graduated from an ivy-covered university with a degree in literature or communications, and working with an investment or publishing firm even though the trust fund meant they didn’t need to work at all, I understood now that they were the storm troopers of the power groups The General had taught me about.”Your Tripartite bosses need the Commonwealth’s space wealth and I be
lieve I believe they’ll do anything to get it. So how do I know I won’t be signing death warrants not only for myself, but also for the hostages?” I asked.

  “Sir, you have my word!” Wolf exclaimed.

  I snorted a rude expletive. “Every time I’ve had to deal with a banker like you, it’s never been a matter of a man’s word, only the hard realities of legal tender and collateral. As far as I’m concerned, I’m returning the favor. Trust you? Hell no! You represent Dok, von Undine, and Kokat who’ve proved they can’t be trusted. We’ll deal either in the hard realities of agreements with teeth in them or in the equally hard realities of war. Take your choice.”

  Wolf shrugged noncomittally. “Surrender, or these people die. If you didn’t believe the video transmissions, here are hard-copy full-color insta-photos that are impossible to fake.”

  He held out a sheaf of photos.

  I looked and wished I hadn’t. The photos showed bruises, welts, cuts, and other external injuries. Wolf knew this would raise emotions within me that were useful for his purposes. I couldn’t afford to let it warp my judgement in this critical encounter.

  “You’ll have to account for the injuries these people suffered,” I did manage to say.

  “There was a struggle when they resisted at Karederu.”

  That didn’t explain every injury I saw.

  “What are your terms, Wolf?”

  “Total surrender of all Commonwealth people and property off-planet.”

  “And…?”

  “You will be treated well.”

  I shook my head. “Not good enough, Wolf.”

  “What more do you want?”

  “A written guarantee published worldwide giving assurances that your provisional government and any other government that may grow out of it, if you should win, will observe the strictest adherance to the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the 2001 Manila Agreements relating to the treatment of the wounded and sick, the protection of civilians, and the treatment of prisoners of war. Furthermore, the Helsinki and Bombay human and civil rights standards and provisions must be strictly observed and applied to all Commonwealth citizens, past, present and future. Everyone who surrenders, including those you’ve already taken prisoner, must be treated according to those international standards and accords.”