A Desert Called Peace-ARC

by Tom Kratman

  Wiglan stiffened under the insult. Robinson made a moue. He asked, "What "means?" And what is this Ikhwan of which you are . . . the leader?"

  "The Ikhwan is the Brotherhood, the Brotherhood of true believers," Mustafa answered. "What we need are nuclear weapons. Give me a dozen such and I will break the FSC."

  "That, I am afraid," Robinson answered, "will never happen. Our weapons are identifiable as ours. And, while we could – and did – use them on the FSC in past days, those days are long past."

  "Then help me in other ways."

  Interlude

  21 January, 2037, 51.716 AUs out from Sol

  The trickiest part had been the sail. It had to resist tearing, or be self repairing, or be otherwise repairable, while also avoiding becoming overly charged, electrically. It had also to be very lightweight and highly reflective; the amount of propulsion provided by photons from the Sun and other sources striking the sail being very low except in the aggregate.

  In the end, and after frightful expenditures, it was decided that self repairing was too hard. The nanites which did effect repairs on the sail were not, strictly speaking, a part of it. They worked though, even in the vacuum of space and even while under bombardment by the sun's unfiltered rays. The sail was quite porous, the diameter of the pores being less than the wavelength of the light which forced the sails forward.

  The mechanism for setting the sail was simplicity itself. Instead of a complex mechanical operation to raise and lower it, a series of gastight tubes were sewn around the exterior and connected to the main ship by much thinner tubes. Gas was pumped into the tubes to set the sail, pumped out while thin filaments were retracted to furl it. Heating elements within the tubes kept the gas from freezing and collapsing in the cold of deep space.

  Other problems, microminiaturized electronics and an extremely lightweight spacecraft body, had been easier. Indeed, they had been almost natural outflows of ongoing, purely terrestrially oriented, research. It was a short step from nanotube body armor for soldiers to a nanotube spacecraft body, for example. The programming had been even easier if not precisely simpler.

  Not to say that the ship was cheap. It had eaten up almost all of the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration's somewhat constrained budget for the better part of two decades. The less said about the scandals, the overruns, the bribes from various foreign subcontractors, however, the better.

  The ship, if one could call a robot a ship, was named the Cristobal Colon. Many had held out for a different, generally more culturally sensitive and less eurocentric, name. These ranged from Saint Brendan and Leif Eriksson (obvious nonstarters) to Sinbad to Cheng Ho. Since the Americans were footing the bill, however, they got to choose. Moreover, they were, at the time, going through one of their periodic bouts of extreme nationalism. "Cristobal Colon" seemed good to them and the rest of the world could lump it.

  The robot, or ship, was just under two meters in diameter and approximately nine long. Various projections – a radio telescope here, an antenna there – were attached to the outside. The computer which controlled it was deep inside, or as deep inside as one can get with a cylinder two meters across. The sail dwarfed the robot ship though the sail massed very little and the ship several tons.

  The ship was very fast, as men reckoned such things. Boosted by lasers fixed to the moon and floating in space, by the time the ship reached the point it was at it was going a very appreciable fraction of c. Everything was operating normally, though there was a bit of trouble in the Number Thirty-three vent. There were nearly a hundred such, however, which allowed Mission Control or the robot to steer the thing a bit. Even with one such operating at sub-optimal efficiency, there was no danger.

  Imagine the consternation at Mission Control, then, when the robot and sail seemed to wink out of existence completely . . .

  Chapter Two

  I loved you

  And so I took the tides of men into my hands

  And wrote my will across the sky in stars . . .

  * * *

  Cochea, Provincia del Valle de las Lunas, Republica de Balboa, Terra Nova, 10/7/459 AC

  Art, precious metals and the occasional young slave were not the only in-demand product of Earth. Music, too, was popular, in particular the wild and violent sounds of the 20th Century. Earth literature also had its place on the new world. Both had been brought by the original immigrants in the form of computer discs. Much had been lost, of course, but much had survived the days from when the old computers wore out. Indeed, developing new machines capable of reading the old discs had given Terra Nova a leg up in artificial intelligence, generally.

  As with many immigrant tongues on Old Earth – American English, Quebecois French and South African Dutch, for example – many of the languages of Terra Nova retained many features that had been lost to their mother tongues. Indeed, a man or woman of the 20th Century would likely have found the English of the Federated States more comprehensible than that commonly used by the Anglic-speaking proles of Old Earth. In any case, this made much of the older music of Old Earth quite in tune with Terra Novan listeners.

  Of course, Latin hadn't changed in millennia. It was Latin – Satanic flavored Latin at that – which flowed from the speakers in the book-stuffed library:

  O Fortuna

  Velat Luna . . .

  High on one wall of the library hung an ornate, embossed certificate, in Spanish, signifying a high decoration for valor from the Republic of San Vicente. The gilt name emblazoned on the award was Patricio Hennessey de Carrera. Posted beneath the certificate, framed with obvious pride, hung a letter of reprimand – in English – from a general officer of the Army of the Federated States of Columbia. It was addressed merely to "CPT Patrick Hennessey". Both certificates described the same series of events, though in rather different terms.

  The library was large, with bookcases covering three of the substantial room's four walls. Against the fourth, under the certificate and the letter of reprimand, stood a desk and chair, each made in the main of dark-finished Lempiran mahogany, hand crafted and richly carved. A man approaching middle age, just beginning to go gray at the temples and with a face weathered beyond its years with the wear of sun and rain, sat at the desk, eyes fixed on a book.

  The book was one of many. Reaching floor to ceiling, the volume-packed shelves of the library held the essence of a lifetime's interest and study, more than seven thousand volumes in all. Even over the broad, deep desk more bookshelf space was stacked and – like the others – filled to overflowing. Still more reference material resided on computer micro-discs inside cases stuffed to the brim.

  Despite appearances, there was an order and a theme to the volumes. The library was, in the main, about war. If there was a book on the plastic arts – and there were several – the owner had studied them because he knew that art had propaganda value in war. If there was a book on music – and there were dozens – that was because music, too, was both a weapon of war and a remarkably subtle yet powerful tool for training for war. If there were books on the Marxism that had made its reappearance under the Volgan Czar during the Great Global War – and there were some few – it was because the reader believed in knowing one's enemy.

  There was even a copy of the Koran.

  However, most of the library was more obviously military. The collection covered, as nearly and completely as possible on Terra Nova, every human age and culture as it pertained to armed conflict. An English translation of Vegetius rested next to another copy in the original Latin. Apparently not as confident in his Greek as in his Latin, the reader kept most of Xenophon in bilingual texts – Greek and English alternating pages. Plato, Rousseau, Machiavelli, Aristotle, Hitler, Lenin, Mao, Annan, Nussbaum, Harris, Steyn, Fallacci, Yen, Peng and Rostov . . . war was about philosophy and politics, too, and so the reader studied those as well.

  Eyes fixing upon the Nussbaum work, a gift from his parents many years prior, the reader thought, Amazing that that
line of thought should have succeeded in contaminating not one but two worlds. What utter nonsense!

  A stranger, given time to realize the single minded purposefulness of the library, might eventually have concluded that the reader considered war his art; perhaps all he cared about.

  The stranger would have been wrong. War was not all the reader cared about, nor even what he cared most about. It had been a job and was still a hobby; it was not a life.

  The reader, one Patrick Hennessey, late of the Army of the Federated States of Columbia, put down the book he had been studying and closed his eyes, deep in thought.

  Decision Cycle Theory, the Observation-Orientation-Decision-Action loop, plainly was working against Nagumo at Midway on Old Earth. How and why is combat on the ground different? Friction? Scale and scope? The vulnerability of large single targets like aircraft and aircraft carriers compared with the endurance and ability to soak up punishment of ground forces composed of many small units and separate individuals? Nagumo's pure frigging bad luck?

  Hennessey's aquiline face frowned in concentration. Pale blue eyes, normally slightly too large for the size of that face, narrowed. A viewer would not have been able to see the darker circles around the irises that typically gave those eyes their frighteningly penetrating quality. "The eyes of a madman," said some, not always jokingly.

  Have to think on this one. Hennessey resumed his reading.

  The satanic sounding Latin piece ended, to be replaced by:

  "I see a red door and I want it painted black

  No colors anymore I want them to turn black . . . "

  To Hennessey the music was a drug, a way of purging the unwelcome feelings and emotions, most of them dark, that otherwise might have taken possession of him. Between that, his calming scotch, cigars and cigarettes, and – most especially – his wife, he kept the surge of feelings under control or, at least, at bay.

  A cigarette burned in the ashtray on the maple inlayed into the mahogany desk, smoke curling up about twelve inches before being sucked outside by a ventilation fan. The fan dispersed it to a courtyard surrounded on all sides by the house Hennessey and his wife, Linda, had had built following his departure from the F.S. Army.

  * * *

  The cigarette was interesting, or, rather, the tobacco in it was. Despite many disapproving clucks from progressives back on Old Earth, a number of the early colonists had made sure to bring tobacco seeds. Once planted on Terra Nova, the tobacco had come under attack from a virus unknown on Old Earth. Whether this virus was native to Terra Nova, or a mutation from the earlier transplanting by the Noahs, or something unmodified and native to Old Earth that had either died out or never been identified; no one knew. The subject was hotly debated.

  The effect of the virus, though, was to remove nearly all of the carcinogens from the tobacco. It remained addictive and was still rather unhealthy. It remained highly profitable to sell, the more so as it was considerably safer than Old Earth tobacco.

  Of course, the sale and use of tobacco had come under even more virulent attack as Terra Nova developed its own brand of "progressive." Couching their arguments in terms of health, what these truly objected to was the profitability of the commodity. Progressives hated profit.

  They hate profit, Hennessey thought, unless it's their own.

  Hennessey knew about progressives. Especially did he know about Cosmopolitan Progressives, or Kosmos. He should have; he'd been raised to be one. The lessons had never quite taken.

  * * *

  Hennessey's library was in the very back of the house and reached from inner courtyard to rear windows. By turning his chair towards the rear Hennessey could see the one hundred and twenty-five foot waterfall that had made his wife, Linda, fall in love with this particular piece of land. The waterfall had its memories, memories that brought a smile to his face. There by the swimming hole, under the screened bohio . . . when the kids were all asleep . . . Oh, my . . .

  The smile disappeared when Hennessey looked at his hand as it picked up the cigarette. He took an satisfyingly deep drag and pulled the cigarette away. Dainty disgusting thing, he thought, holding his hand out. Sickening for a soldier to have such small, miserable, soft hands. Oh well, the rest isn't so bad. And it isn't like I'm a soldier anymore, anyway.

  "Not so bad," was it. He was never going to win any beauty contests but . . .

  Hennessey was somewhat slight of build and regular featured, with extraordinarily intense blue eyes. A reasonably well formed chest topped slim hips, themselves atop legs unusually massive, the result of many, many miles of heavy-pack forced marching in his younger years. They were infantry legs, plain and simple. Even several years of relative idleness had not robbed them of their strength. He was developing a slight paunch, something he made some effort to combat.

  Turning his attention away from his utterly unsatisfactory hands and fingers, Hennessey's eyes wandered over the bookcases containing his library. He put the cigarette down, replacing it in that hand with the iced whiskey. The cubes made a tinkling sound as he sipped while continuing to peruse the library's shelves.

  Hennessey's eyes came to rest on a simple metal-framed picture of Linda, his wife, now visiting his – mostly estranged – relatives in the Federated States.

  He looked at the picture and glowed with love, thinking, I am one lucky son of a bitch.

  Twelve years now they had been husband and wife; twelve years and three children. And still she looked like the eighteen year old girl he had married. If anything, so her husband thought, she was more lovely now than when he had married her.

  Next to the one portrait was another, that of Linda with their son and two daughters. We do damned good work, don't we, hon? Miss you.

  Hennessey looked up from his family portraits. He thought about waterfalls, then left the library to take the short walk down to the one behind the house. There was a small bohio, or shed, there, along with some garden furniture. He sat down in one of the padded chairs losing himself in the sight and sound of the splashing water.

  God, I love this place, he thought. He didn't mean merely the waterfall, nor even the entire property. He meant Balboa, possibly the only country in which he had ever felt truly at home.

  Odd thing, that. But what's not to love . . . outside of, maybe, the government here? The people are bright, hardworking and friendly. The men are brave; the women loyal and lovely. The land is . . . well, "beautiful" hardly does it justice. He watched Linda's multi-colored pet "trixie," Jinfeng, sail across the waterfall. It came to rest on the branch of a large mango tree and began to eat the fruit it found there.

  Just beautiful.

  * * *

  Balboa, being largely jungle and also somewhat sparsely settled, retained more than the usual amount of pre-settlement flora and fauna. Jinfeng was one example. But mixed in with the green of the jungle around the waterfall were some other species, bluegums and tranzitrees, the latter so named because their bright green-skinned fruit was intensely appetizing to look upon, and the mouthwatering red pulp inside intensely poisonous for man to eat.

  Lower animals could eat tranzitree fruit without ill effect. It was conjectured in some circles that tranzitrees had been developed and placed on Terra Nova by the Noahs – the beings who had seeded the planet with life untold eons ago – expressly to prevent the rise of intelligence. Certainly the tranzitrees had been artificially created, as had bolshiberry bushes and progressivines. The latter two were, likewise, poisonous to intelligent life but harmless to lower forms. Their complex toxins did build up in some food animals, were they allowed to eat of them, rendering those animals equally toxic. This, too, would have tended to limit the development of civilization, even had early intelligent life managed to survive the tranzitrees, bolshiberries, and progressivines, by limiting the food supply.

  The tranzitrees had no real use but aesthetics. The bluegums, on the other hand, were cultivated locally for their edible nuts, high grade lumber for cabinetry and furniture, and the
refinable resin – a rubber-like compound – which gave them their name. All were blue, as were the trees' leaves. The leaves were used to make a rather good dye.

  * * *

  Of course, there's no law in this place. It's all who you are related to, who you know, who are your friends, what bribes can you pay, and how much clout do you have. A well-connected man can get away with murder – some of my in-laws have – manslaughter, anyway.

  Want to set up a new business? "Well, my brother-in-law is at the planning commission. I am sure he could help you if you made it worth his while." Need to buy a chunk of land? "My cousin, the procurator, could probably help but he doesn't come cheap." That's all fine for me; I'm connected through Linda's clan. But what about the average Joses? They're screwed, unless, that is, they know somebody.

  Add a little law, a little integrity, to the government and this place could be perfection.

  The maid, Lucinda, found him under the bohio, lost in thought.