The Chosen

by S. M. Stirling

  Karl nodded thoughtfully, running a finger along his heavy jawline. "I will raise the matter in the next staff meeting," he said. "The Air Council must be informed, of course." Looking down at the folder: "Johan has done good service here."

  He was frowning, nonetheless. Gerta noted the expression and looked quickly away. Not completely comfortable with it, she thought. Didn't expect Johnny ever to be false to a cause, even for the Chosen. She agreed, for completely different reasons, but again, it wasn't the time to mention it.

  "Sir, the next item is the Far Western Islands appropriation."

  Karl nodded and opened the file. "It seems clearcut," he said. "The islands have a climate that is, if anything, more difficult than the Land; the distance is extreme"—over eight thousand miles—"and the value of the minerals barely more than the cost of extraction."

  Gerta licked her lips. "Sir, with respect, I would strongly advise against abandoning the base there at present."

  Karl's eyebrows rose. "Why? It scarcely seems cost-effective, now that the Empire is ours."

  "Sir, the Empire is poor in minerals, particularly energy sources. Our processing industries here in the Land will be expanding dramatically and the petroleum in the Islands may come in very useful. Besides, I just don't like giving up territory we've spent lives in taking."

  He nodded slowly. "Perhaps. I will take the matter under advisement. Next, we have the report on our agents in the Union del Est." He smiled bleakly. "The Republic of Santander is not the only party who can play the game of stirring up trouble on the borders."

  * * *

  "Fuck it!"

  Jeffrey Farr swore into the sudden ringing silence within the tank. The only sound was a dying clatter as something beat itself into oblivion against something equally metallic and unyielding.

  He pushed up the greasy goggles and stuck his head out of the top deck. Black oily smoke was pouring up out of the grillwork over the rear deck; luckily there was a stiff breeze from the east, carrying most of it away. The rest of the four-man crew bailed out with a haste bred of several months' experience with Dirty Gerty and her foibles, standing at a respectful distance with their football-style leather helmets in their hands.

  Jeffrey climbed down himself, conscious that he was thirty-one years old, not the late teens of the other crewmen. Not that he wasn't as agile, it just hurt a little more; and he was tired, mortally tired.

  "Filter again?" said the head mechanic of Pokips Motors, the civilian contractors.

  "I think," Jeffrey replied, spitting the smell of burning gasoline and lubricating oil out of his mouth and taking a swig from the canteen someone offered. "Then that tore a fuel line or broke the oil reservoir."

  The military reservation they were using was on the southern edge of the Santander River valley, two hundred miles west of the capital. A stretch of flatland, then some tree-covered loess hills leading down to the floodplain, ten thousand acres or so. A holdover from days before land prices rose so high; this was prime corn-and-hog country—cattle, too—all around. Most of this section was now torn up by the jointed-metal tracks of Gerty and her kindred, and by the huge wheels of the steam traction engines that winched them home when they broke down, which was incessantly. Gerty was the latest model: a riveted steel box on tracks, about twenty feet long and eight wide, with a stationary round pillbox on top meant to represent a turret. The engineers were still working on the turret ring and traversing mechanism, and hopefully close to finishing them.

  "Th' prollem is," the mechanic said, "yer overstrainin' the engines somethin' fierce. Got enough horsepower, right enough—two seventy-five-horsepower saloon-car engines, right enough. But the torque loads more'n they wuz designed to stand."

  "Well, we'll have to redesign them, won't we?"

  Jeffrey kept his voice neutral. The man was trying his best to do his job; it wasn't his fault that engineering talent was so much thinner on the ground here in the western provinces of Santander. It was yeoman-and-squire country here, and always had been. Outside the eastern uplands, manufacturing was mostly limited to the port cities and focused on maritime trade and textiles. The problem was that this was prime tank country; the provincial militias here were actually interested in the prospect of armored warfare. Nobody but a few dinosaurs like General McWriter thought much of the prospects of horsed cavalry anymore, not after what had happened in the Empire.

  Jeffrey felt his skin roughen. The machine guns flickered in his mind, and the long rows of horsemen collapsed in kicking, screaming chaos . . .

  "Transmission," he said. "We need a more robust transmission."

  "What've yer got in mind?"

  Jeffrey pulled out a diagram. "Friction plate," he said. "It's not elegant, but I think it won't keep breaking like this chain drive setup. Like you say, these tanks just have too much inertia for a system designed for three-ton touring cars."

  "Hmmmm." The mechanic studied the diagram. "Interestin'."

  He looked up at Gerty. A couple of his men had gotten the engine grille up and were spraying water on the flames flickering there.

  "How'd them Chosen bastids keep theirs going?" he asked. "Heavier'n this, I hears."

  "They use steam engines and mostly they don't keep going," Jeffrey said. "We need something reliable enough to do exploitation as well as breakthrough."

  The mechanic looked down at the diagram again. "Need some fancy machinin' fer this."

  "Hosten Engineering can do you up a model, and jigs," Jeffrey said. "They've got the plans."

  * * *

  John Hosten leaned back in the chair and sipped his lemonade. Oathtaking was hot, as usual, and sticky-humid, as usual, and the air was thick with coal smoke. The hotel was close by the docks; they'd extended hugely since his last visit, new berths extending further into what had been coastal forest reserve and farmland. In fact, he could see one freighter unloading now from this fourth-floor veranda. It was a smallish ship of fifteen hundred tons, swinging sacks of grain ashore with its own booms and steam winches. As he watched the net fell the last four feet to the granite paving blocks of the wharf. Half the bottom layer split, spraying wheat across the stone and into the harbor. Screams and curses rang faintly as the cable paid out limply on top of the heap. Stevedores scurried about, overseers lashing with their rubber truncheons. Eventually a line formed, trotting off with the undamaged sacks on their backs. Others started sweeping up the remainder with brooms and dumping it in a collection of boxes and barrels.

  God, I'm glad I don't have to eat that, he thought silently. In this heat and humidity, they'd be lucky not to get ergot all over it.

  He nodded towards the dock. "You'd get less spoilage if you moved to bulk-handling facilities," he said mildly. "Elevators, screw-tube systems, that sort of thing."

  Gerta Hosten raised her eyes from the diagrams before her. "We're not short of labor," she said, with a smile that didn't reach the cold, dark eyes.

  Meaning they are short of the type of labor that bulk transport would need, Raj said thoughtfully.

  An image drew itself at the back of John's consciousness: short, dark-skinned men with iron collars around their necks loading a train—an unbelievably primitive train, with an engine like something out of a museum, an open platform and a tall, thin smokestack topped with sheet-metal petals. Each staggered sweating under a bundle of dried fish secured in netting, heaving it painfully onto the flatcars. Other men watched them, soldiers with single-shot rifles mounted on giant dogs. Occasionally a dog would snap its great jaws with a door-slamming sound and the laborers would shuffle a little faster.

  Who needs wheelbarrows when you've got enough slaves? Raj said with ironic distaste. We got over that, eventually. Thanks to Center.

  and to you, raj whitehall, Center replied.

  John reached into the inner pocket of his light cotton jacket and took out his cigarette case. From what he'd described, the centralized god-king autocracy Raj Whitehall had been born into had been almost as nasty as the
Chosen—more desirable only because Center and Raj could put their own man on the throne and use that as the fulcrum to move society off dead center. There seem to be more wrong paths than right, he thought.

  correct. high-coercion societies locked in stasis alternating with barbarism are the maximum probability for postneolithic humanity, Center observed dispassionately. the original breakthrough to modernity on earth was the result of multiple low-probability historical accidents, observe—

  Later we may have time for lectures, Raj observed. Meanwhile, John has a job of work to do.

  Gerta looked up again, stacking the reports neatly on the hotel room's table, and took a long drink of water.

  "This . . . Whippet?"

  "It's a type of racing dog," John said helpfully.

  "This Whippet looks like a very useful panzer, if you . . . if the Santies can get it working," she observed.

  "True enough," John said. "There's a lot of controversy. The western provinces are pushing it, but the easterners want more effort to go into aircraft. And they have most of the internal-combustion manufacturing capacity."

  "Yes, I read the speech of this . . . Senator Damian? The representative from Ensburg, in any case—you thoughtfully supplied it with the latest reports. 'I put my faith in our mountains'; a very colorful phrase."

  Her strong, calloused fingers turned the sheaf of papers over. "Now, this, this Land-Cruiser, it's going to give the Army Council's engineers hives."

  The blueprints on the table showed a massive boxy machine, mounting a six-inch gun on its centerline, a two-inch quick-firer in a turret above, and six machine-guns in sponsons on either side.

  "What a monstrosity," she went on. "If the Santies are having trouble making the Whippet go, how do they expect this . . . this thing to move?"

  John leaned forward. A lot of work, mostly Center's, had gone into the Land-Cruiser. It was no easy task to design something beyond Visager's current technological level, but just beyond, close enough that competent engineers would be kept busy on the tantalizing quest for this particular Holy Grail. Disinformation was much more than simple lying.

  "Each bogie has its own engine," he pointed out.

  The huge machine rested on four bogies on either side, each riding on a pivot with bell-crank springs. "See, there's a drive train run through this flexible shaft coupling, and then through meshed gears to the toothed sprocket here between the load-bearing wheels."

  "Porschmidt will love this. Unfortunately."

  At John's glance she went on: "The new head of Technical Development. He's brilliant, but he keeps trying to make bad designs good instead of junking them—he'd rather design three force pumps and an auxiliary circulation system into an engine rather than just turn a part over to keep it from leaking. You should see what he did to the heavy field gun. It's enough to make a Test of Life examiner cry. He's the sort who gives engineering a bad name; convinced that just because its his, his shit doesn't stink."

  "Well, if the Republic's wasting its time, so much the better," John said with a smile.

  "Ya. Only, is the Republic wasting its time, or are you wasting ours?"

  John kept the expression on his face genial, as his testicles tried to climb back into his abdomen. It was impossible to have a cold sweat in Oathtaking's climate, but you could feel clammy-nauseated.

  "Gerta, min soester, do you think so little of me?"

  "Johan, min brueder, I think very highly of you. I think somehow you're fucking Military Intelligence up the butt and making them like it." She grinned, and this time the expression went all the way through. "But you're giving us so much real information to sweeten the pot that I can't convince anyone of it . . . yet."

  She sighed, relaxed, and put the documents away in her attaché case, spinning the combination lock. Then she poured some banana gin from the carafe into her water, and a dollop into his lemonade. "Now I'm officially off-duty."

  He sipped; the oily-sweet kick of the distillate seemed to match the surroundings, somehow. And one wouldn't affect his judgement noticeably.

  "So, I hear you've adopted a child," Gerta said.

  "Yes. See, I am practicing Chosen custom, as far as I can." They both laughed. "How's your youngest?'

  "A shapeless lump of protoplasm, the way they all are at that age," Gerta said.

  She pulled a picture from her uniform tunic. A baby looked out, with one chubby hand stuffed in its mouth; the fuzzy background was probably a Protégé wetnurse, from the linen bodice.

  "Young Sigvard. That's four, now; I think I've done my duty by the Chosen, don't you? It's an interesting experience, pregnancy, but I wouldn't want to overindulge."

  "And the adoptees?"

  "Good children, every one," Gerta said. "The one good thing about desk duty is that I get to see more of them; they've been practically living in Father's house most of the time, the last two years, what with the war."

  John produced a snapshot of Pia and Maurice junior; Gerta looked at it critically. "Sound enough stock," she said . . . which was a high compliment, by the standards of the Land.

  "I hear Heinrich made brigadier?"

  "Ya, same dispatch-and-notice list that bumped me to full colonel," Gerta said, leaning back and stretching. "They added another six divisions to the regular roster, lots of new hats to go around. Especially with all the demotions and such after the Campaign Study."

  John nodded. The General Staff had high standards; there had been a lot of shaking up after the campaign in the Empire. Mere success wasn't good enough . . .

  Mark of a good army, lad, Raj said. Anyone can learn from his mistakes. It takes sound doctrine to be able to learn from winning.

  "Enough other compensations to go around, I suppose," he said aloud.

  Gerta chuckled. "Well, the Council has been handing out estates fairly liberally. Mostly in the west, around Corona, to start with. Too much unrest for it to be safe for us to scatter ourselves around widely, just yet." A shrug. "We'll deal with that in due course."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  "Christ, how do I git myself inta these things?" one of the Marines behind him in the longboat muttered.

  John smiled in the darkness. That was Barrjen. The stocky Marine had managed to volunteer—unofficially, the whole mission was highly off the record—despite his loud relief at making it home last time. In fact, the ones who'd been with him from Ciano to Salini had all volunteered, even Smith with his gimp foot. Some of them had been pretty shamefaced about it, as if they were mentally kicking themselves, but they'd all done it.

  It was a moonless night and overcast, typical weather for winter in the Gut. The whaleboat glided silently over the dark water; they might as well have been rowing in a closet, for all that he could see. Water purled under the muffled oars, breath smoked. Only the radium dial of his compass guided them, that and . . .

  "Down!" he hissed quietly.

  The dozen men in the boat shipped oars and turned their cork-blackened faces downward in the same motion. A few seconds later the quiet thumping of a marine steam engine came over the water. A searchlight stabbed out into the darkness, blinding bright, the arc light flicking over the waves. Behind it was a gaggle of other boats. Fishing boats; the Chosen couldn't shut down the Gut fishery, it was too important to the economy, and too many of the important pelagic species were best caught in darkness. They did send out a gunboat to make sure nobody tried to make a break for the Santander or Union shores, and probably kept the families of the fishermen hostage, too.

  The light flicked past them. Weaker lights were breaking out among the fishing boats, lure lanterns strung out over bows and sides. John waited tensely until they were surrounded by the other boats, several dozen of them spread out widely.

  "Wait for it . . ."

  A thrashing of whitewater as something big broached and snapped for the dangling lantern of a boat, something with a long head full of white teeth. Yells drifted over the water, and he could see a man poised with a harpoon, backlit
against the oil lamp. He struck, and a monstrous three-lobed tail came up out of the water. Other boats were closing in, to help with the first catch and wait for the others that would be drawn by the commotion and the blood in the waters.

  "Now! Stroke, stroke!"

  The Land gunboat was out further in the Gut, hooting its steam whistle and scanning with the searchlight . . . but it was guarding against attempts to get away, not looking for boats making for the ex-Imperial shore. John kept his right hand on the whaleboat's tiller, flicking an occasional glance down at the compass in his left. That was mostly for show; Center kept a ghostly vector arrow floating before his gaze.

  there are now echoes from cliffs of the configuration indicated, the machine said. distance one thousand meters and closing.

  Thump. John's head whipped around. That was the gunboat's cannon . . . ah. "Just a big 'un," he whispered to the crew.

  You got an occasional one of those, even in the shallow waters of the Gut. Nothing like the monsters that made sailing the outer seas hazardous, but too much for a harpooner to handle. There had been very little life on land when humans arrived on Visager, but the oceans more than made up for it. The Chosen officer on the gunboat probably thought of it as sport, something to break the dull routine of night escort work. And very good cover for John.

  "We'll be coming up on the cliffs soon," he said quietly. "Half-stroke . . . half-stroke . . ."

  The oars shortened their pace, scarcely dipping into the water. He could hear the slow boom of surf now, thudding and hissing on rock. John held up his signal lantern and carefully pressed the shutter: two long, two short, one long.

  A flicker answered him, two shorts, repeated—all that they dared use, with the light pointing out to the Gut.

  "Yarely now," the lead Marine in the head of the boat said. There was a quiet plop as he swung the lead. "By the mark, six. Six. Five. Six. Four. Four."

  Rock loomed up on either hand, just visible as the waves broke and snake-hissed over it. A river broke the cliff near here, cutting a pathway that men or goats could use.