With eleven bounces, Sherman was home. His final bounce was extremely precise (with calculations handled by his convert portion) and landed him, with a small attitude correction, on a small pad extended from the side of his and Dahlia’s spire. Even though it was more of a tower, Sherman still thought of it as “the house.”
Sherman lived on the thirty-third to the thirty-fifth floors. The truth was, he confined himself to a couple of rooms on floor thirty-four. Sherman had spent the last ten years as a bachelor, and every year he seemed to require less personal space. But, on Triton, every citizen of a certain standing was required to keep up a garden. What had once been civic duty had become a pleasure to Sherman, thanks to his friendship with Andre Sud, who had been tending Sherman’s garden until he’d gone on sabbatical over a year ago. Sherman’s garden was on the first five floors, and it was considered one of the prime gardens on Triton—at least it had been when Andre was the gardener. Lately it had been going to seed. The priest whom Andre had gotten to replace himself, while a nice woman, just didn’t have Andre’s genius.
A small airlock was in place between the house and the landing pad. Sherman entered the e-mix of his home, went to the kitchen, and poured himself a glass of Merlot.
He took a sip, considered the glass. He finished off the rest of the wine in one gulp, then shunted into the virtuality.
Tonight was the New Miranda Town Meet—called into emergency session by the mayor. Sherman had a hell of a report to deliver.
They weren’t going to like it.
The New Miranda Town Meet occurred nightly—that is, every Tritonian night, which lasted two and three-quarter e-days. The mayor and chief recorder were the only people who must be physically present in some form, and the rest, like Sherman, attended in the virtuality. The virtuality was crowded and smoke-filled. There was an air of tension owing to the emergency nature of tonight’s session, but this did not keep the local politicians from their usual pleasantries and rituals. Somehow this provided a bit of comfort to Sherman. No matter what happened, he could never imagine these undisciplined outer-system democrats turning into the toadies who served Amés’s Interlocking Directorate.
He had timed his entrance to avoid some of the preliminaries, and he popped in just as the discussion was turning toward external affairs—and the coming confrontation with the Met. He was on the right-hand side of the Free Integrationist section, in his customary hard-backed chair.
“I might add,” continued the current speaker, “that there are good reasons to pay the information tariffs, even if they are not just, at the base.”
Sherman leaned so that he could look around the tall man who sat in front of him and saw that the speaker in the well was Shelet Den, a member of the Motoserra Club. The Club members could all trace their ancestry back to Uranus’s Miranda, and some of them went back to the original Argentine commune whence the Miranda settlement had originally come.
A chorus of disapproval rose from the Free Integrationists, and others, but Den bulled onward.
“Those of us who have been around these parts a bit longer, those who have more of a stake in this fair moon, are able to realize that there are times when you have to go along to get along. The Met buys our goods and, I might argue, selling them power and semi-ore is, in a way, a tax upon them. After all, no one truly has a right to the bounty of nature. It should be enjoyed by all.”
What an amazing cookery of logic, Sherman reflected. He hadn’t imagined that Motoserra aristocratic communalism might be used to justify a fifty-five percent tax on all prime-rated merci events and shows.
“Why don’t we just give them our lovers, too!” shouted a Free Integrationist wag. “Give ’em your wife, Shelet! Share and share alike.”
“I am merely saying—” But a bell sounded, and Den’s time was, mercifully, up. Someone passed Sherman a cigar, and he dutifully fired it up.
The next speaker was a Free Integrationist, and Sherman felt a glimmer of hope—which, upon seeing who the speaker was, quickly died. Mallarmé de Ronsard was F.I., true, but he was also a cross member of the local tribe of Neo-Flare poets, the Eighth Chakra. Although most people choose to represent themselves in the virtuality with the same face they had in actuality, one could, of course, choose anything. De Ronsard manifested himself as a burst of shining golden light outlined with a red corona. In the center of the light was a black hole in the shape of a heart.
“I should like to begin tonight with a poem I wrote expressing our solidarity with our free-convert brothers and sisters and against the tyranny of a law that keeps them enchained. Ahem.”
De Ronsard proceeded to recite a poem:
“Freedom, writhing like the tendrils of the dawn
Burns this pale coating of skin,
This rubber of concealment,
From our frame of reason, and we stand
Revealed.
Under the skin we are one,
And we shall rise with the dawn
Of new hope, new light, together,
And shall, hand in hand,
Show the very sun a thing or two
About brightness.
And blind those—”
Here, de Ronsard became more agitated and the golden light turned bright yellow.
“—Blind those who oppress our choice by the rays of light,
The particles of hope,
Bursting forth from our own eyes.
Bursting with this new dawn
Of freedom!”
De Ronsard paused, and Sherman fought an urge to sneeze. All that talk of the sun, perhaps, combined with de Ronsard’s iconic presence.
“Freedom is the destiny of every sentient being,” de Ronsard continued. “Be they flesh. Or be they algorithmic. Be they anything that lives and breathes.”
He’s just insulted every free convert in the room, Sherman thought. Sherman happened to know that one of the free-convert colloquialisms for a bodily aspect was a “breather.” But a quick check showed that de Ronsard was actually speaking in the Arts dialect of Basis, so the fault might lie with the translating grist, and the insult be unintentional.
“When it comes to freedom, there can be no compromise. When the bully is confronted, he shall back down. When right is right, might cannot prevail!”
Oh yeah? thought Sherman. Maybe somebody should have told that to Genghis Khan. Would have stopped him in his tracks.
“How much freedom will you take for a pound of tomatoes?” cried someone in the back of the hall.
“I’ll double it!” yelled another.
De Ronsard glared defiantly in the direction of the first voice. “I’ll have you know this, Melanga—shout all you want. Anything is better than those dung pies you call poems! You are incapable of the expression of a dog, much less a sentient being of refined sentiment, you son of a yak, you—”
“Bow wow wow!” shouted Melanga.
“You two take it outside,” said the mayor, cutting in. De Ronsard and Melanga continued screaming at one another until the mayor nodded to the recorder, and both poets were summarily tuned out of the proceedings. Instantly, the well was empty.
The Neo-Flare tribe modeled themselves on the poet Beat Myers, who had perished in the sun centuries before. Every once in a while, some group of them or another would get together and plunge in themselves, completely missing the point that the last thing Myers wanted was to take that dive. But poets weren’t exactly known for their logical ability.
Thoreau Delgado rose among the Free Integrationists, and the mayor recognized him. Delgado was known as the Thin Man, both for his name and for his size, which was entirely Triton-adapted. If tall Thoreau Delgado ever visited Earth—which was highly unlikely since he had never been off Triton, except in the virtuality—he would have immediately crumpled like a crushed balsawood construction. Delgado was the leader of the Free I
ntegrationists on Triton.
“I would like to apologize for some of the excesses of my colleague,” Delgado said. “For, though excess in the cause of freedom may be no vice, it certainly has the virtue of halting all other discussion and calling a lot of goddamn attention to itself.”
Some one in the Clinical section hissed at Delgado’s use of the word goddamn, but the hall quieted down.
“The issue before us is a simple one,” Delgado continued. “It is whether or not to pay a portion of a tax that his been placed on us by a government to which we have, in the past, subscribed and whose benefits we have undoubtedly enjoyed. The question before us is this: Have those benefits begun to be outweighed by this burden? Indeed, have—as I believe—those benefits altered themselves or ceased altogether? In other words, are we getting what we’re paying for out of the Met?
“Some have cast this as a moral conflict. It is the slaveholders of the inner system against us, the champions of liberty. While I have a great deal of sympathy for this position—”
Here there was a low chorus of “boos” from the right side of the hall, but it did not grow louder than a murmur.
“—while I sympathize, I cannot, as yet, cast the problem in that light. The situation of the free converts of the Met is a complicated one. Some are, indeed, held in conditions of intolerable servitude, and this must end.”
Cheers from the F.I. section, joined by an assortment of others across the Meet Hall.
“But I am still of the hope, perhaps forlorn, that change can be brought about by a reform of the system, and not by its dissolution. I would say to you that a vote for the resolution that is before us would be a message containing that fervent hope and desire. To the Interlocking Directorate, we would be saying: Hear us out. We have a problem. But it is a problem we wish to discuss. The resolution is not worded as an ultimatum. On the contrary, it is a request for clarification, a suggestion for compromise. I, myself, am a great believer in compromise, when it is in the cause of justice. Half a pie is, very often, better than no pie at all.”
After Delgado spoke, there was a vote. Sherman voted “aye,” along with most of the other Free Integrationists, and the latest in a string of antitax initiatives went down in the law books of Triton.
Next, there were a series of sector reports, and when the time came for Weather, Sherman rose to speak. He felt a calm readiness to say what must be said.
“What I can tell you,” he said in his usual gravelly tone (it would be amplified), “is that current conditions are good. We’ve got sufficient heat production to meet our needs and then some. All export quotas should be met within the next week or so. We’ve noticed a few radioactivity fluctuations on the planet surface, but this is nothing to be worried overly about. It falls within standard deviation parameters, and shouldn’t have any chaotic effects on the Eye’s rotation rate or wind speeds.” Sherman ended with his customary locution: “The Blue Eye is open for business, ladies and gentlemen.”
These were the words of the first engineer, old Janry Craig, when she flipped the switch that first set the Mill to spinning, nine years ago.
The report was accepted, and a question and answer period followed. The only question came from the mayor himself. Frank Chan was short and squat. Despite his almost pure Chinese ancestry, he managed to look like a cigar-chomping wise guy from some ancient gangster show. His eyes were two perfect almonds with preternaturally tiny pupils, as if he were perpetually caught in bright light. His thin hair was parted near the top of his round head, and his ears stuck out on either side like handles. Chan had one of the most perceptive minds on Triton, though, and this bodily aspect was merely the front man for a LAP. Chan had told Sherman he was going to ask the “big question” tonight.
“I would like to draw on the other side of your expertise, Colonel,” Chan said, emphasizing Sherman’s honorific. “We’ve all seen reports on the merci of the Department of Immunity Enforcement Division ships that are on their way to Ganymede. I would like to hear your assessment of the current, er, security situation on Triton.”
“Well, sir,” said Sherman. “That is a question that I’m trying to answer even as we speak. I don’t want to go into specifics—” And broadcast the exact fortifications of Triton across the merci, Sherman thought. “—but I can say that preparations are being made to protect our interests. Extensive preparations.”
“That is exactly what I was hoping to hear,” Chan replied. “And can you, without going into lengthy explanations which would be far too technical for me, at least, characterize what sort of threat we might face? That is, should our current negotiation, which I have every hope for, not succeed, or should it be taken the wrong way . . . since such things do happen on occasion.”
This was Chan’s signal that the time had come for a little plain talking. It was as direct a question as Sherman had ever heard the man utter.
“There are several ways to attack Triton with a military force,” Sherman said. He heard the intake of breath across the room. The words had been uttered. Military. Attack. The words Chan had been afraid to say—hell, the words everybody rightly blanched from. But the truth, nonetheless. “The most obvious move would be to set up some kind of blockade or embargo. But that would be a difficult thing to do in the long run, and I don’t expect it, to tell you the truth. That is much more likely in the Jovian local system.”
“Why not here?” Chan sat back and took a drag on his smoke. The mayor was back in his own element, now that the difficult political subject had been broached and the Meet was discussing the technical details of it.
“Two reasons. The first is the problem of information. There’s no way to blockade information, what with the merci and the Army’s knit. And it is a truism back at the Point—West Point, I mean—that where information can flow, ordnance and goods can eventually follow. My other reason is a bit more subjective. It’s Director Amés himself. I’ve given the man a bit of study. A blockade is not his style.”
“Style? In an attack?”
“Oh yes,” Sherman replied.
“So what do you expect Director Amés to do, should it come to it?”
Sherman fingered the bone of his chin. He was always clean-shaven in virtual. “I don’t know,” he said. “He might go after the Mill.”
The Meet gave a collective gasp.
“But he wouldn’t want to destroy it, not if he didn’t have to. The Mill is why you would want to take Triton in the first place. That and the location.”
“But we’re practically on the edge of the solar system.”
“And what lies on the real edge of the system?” Sherman asked. “Or, I should say, who?”
“The cloudships. That is the cloudships’ domain.”
“If you want to rule the outer system,” Sherman said, “you have to bring the cloudships to their knees.”
“But that’s—”
“Impossible? Tell that to Amés.”
Chan took his cigar from his mouth and carefully ashed it. He put a good two inches into the ashtray. The man knows how to smoke a cigar, Sherman thought, even if it’s only a virtual representation of a stogie.
“You’re talking about a general war, sir,” Chan finally said.
So. Here was the moment. It was all he’d been thinking about since he’d discovered that the Met was willing to use its military to enforce its insane tax requirements.
It was the overarching concern that shaped all of Sherman’s preparations.
But when the time came to say the words, Sherman hesitated for a moment. In a way, even though they were just words, saying them made something real.
Ah, hell, I don’t believe in magic, Sherman thought. Words are just words until there are actions to back them up.
“Systemwide total war,” he said.
“Surely . . .”
“It’s not my job to comment on su
ch a thing’s likelihood, only to consider the possibility and plan for it.”
“But what can we do, if . . . he . . . the Director wants one? What can Triton do?”
“We can start by protecting ourselves. That’s our first duty, as a matter of fact. My first duty, and that of my soldiers. That is a difficult enough task. And if we succeed with that . . . well, then, we work outward.”
“Colonel Sherman!” A strong, clear voice from the middle of the Meet Hall. It was Kali Mfud, the leader of the Trade Economists, and the de facto representative of most of Triton’s middle-management types.
“Chair recognizes Dr. Mfud,” said Chan.
“Colonel Sherman,” Mfud continued smoothly, “surely there is no cause for such extreme rhetoric in these chambers. Perhaps you would do better to confine yourself to the weather. That is your role in this body, after all.”
“I was merely answering a question,” Sherman replied.
“The colonel is correct,” Chan said. “It was I who asked him to comment on these matters.”
“But you did not ask the colonel for a call to arms, sir,” said Mfud. “And that is what I believe I have just heard.”
Sherman swore under his breath, but maintained a calm demeanor. He might dislike Mfud, but the man was not some sputtering poet. He represented legitimate interests.
Sherman slowly stood up. Met war ships were on the way to the outer system. The facts seemed so plain and clear. There was nothing to do but lay them on the table.
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