by M.A. Harris
A Meeting (Friday Oct 1st)
The sleek titanium and composite dart of a business jet smoothly fell behind the shock wave it had been riding for the last three hours. The world was blue on blue all around except for a few white and green splotches far below and the green loom of the jet’s destination on the horizon. Wordless communication between the aircraft’s autopilot and the local air traffic control, mediated by a low flying satellite, ensured a peaceful reception from the local military’s famously trigger-happy air defense battalion.
“Mr. Aristide, gentlemen, we will be landing at Mindow city in twenty minutes, please get ready, I will be turning on the seatbelt warning in ten minutes.” The pilot’s voice was phlegmatic.
Ben glanced over at Richard Aristide. The big old man was safely belted in and peacefully asleep in the big leather recliner. Howard Conrad got out of his seat opposite the CEO and moved around to a seat with a direct view out of one of the few small windows. Ben was happy enough with the display panel on the front wall that showed an image of the outside along with a moving map display of their location, currently zoomed in to show the coast of the big island and the position of the airport’s runways in relation to the city it served.
They were ten hours out of New York; the trip had been physically smooth and comfortable, as were most trips in the supersonic GT. But the psychic trip had been rough on all of them. Things were falling apart fast for Aristide Industries, falling apart faster than Ben had anticipated. The drain on the coffers had been worse than he had expected, money was flowing out in ways that Aristide and Conrad would not explain, and the plans for obfuscating the effects of the drain had either not been implemented well or had failed to impress the intended audiences. Several suppliers had stopped deliveries pending back payment. They had lost two big construction competitions in the Middle East recently. The local government in Africa was investigating a big oil production contract. Now the US Federal and State governments were investigating the Primus Canal project’s finances.
Ben’s current projection was that they had only another month or so left. Their bankers in London and New York had called him on the carpet a couple of times already and he had a big meeting scheduled in Tokyo in a week’s time. Over the past several months he’d told Aristide several times what was happening, that Conrad’s now flagrant robbery was going to bring them down but Richard had simply fobbed Ben off.
During the first part of the trip Ben had gone through the numbers again with both of them. He had ended up with a slide that emphasized the money draining into the Luna Haven program and a couple of other ‘special projects.’ The striking thing was that the other project’s outflows had come to dwarf those of the Luna Haven project.
Aristide had looked at the numbers and at Conrad, “Howard, how did you let this become so obvious?”
Howard had shrugged, “It appears that my financial people are not as good as Ben.”
Richard had settled back, looking contemplative, “Is any of this obvious to the Board or our bankers Ben?”
“We’ve hidden it but they are hearing rumors, if they begin to dig it will be impossible to hide and then all we’ll be able to do is stonewall, for maybe a few weeks, a month at most. But Richard, you knew about this, this robbery?”
A frown had passed over the dark brows, “Not robbery Ben, redirection rather, in the end most of these people will be paid back, with interest. It’s all in a good cause.”
Howard, standing behind Aristide, had a glint of amusement in his eyes, but had stood silent. He had remained silent as Ben tried to convince Richard once more that if they stopped now, and put all their energy into mending things they might be able to save AI. But Aristide had been as unmoved as Conrad; in his own mind he had already sacrificed the child of his youth in the name of his dream of undying fame among the stars.
Ben knew he’d gone far beyond a safe line with his arguments and cajolery. Conrad’s face had grown cold at Ben’s flaying appraisal of his performance and plans, though Ben had never quite been able to make himself accuse Conrad of having plans of his own in front of Richard. Aristide had not relented and Ben had been left with nothing. Nothing except the realization that he was going to be left to face the venom of the cuckolded investors and customers that Conrad and Aristide would leave in their wake.
Looking at the image on the display, Ben watched as the green mass of the island resolved into a tapestry of forests and farms. Ahead a big bay opened up, surrounded by a city with a few high rises and a sprawling muddle of shantytowns. At the tip of the bay the airport, with its single large runway appeared and then lined up with their course. As the GT slowed and descended Ben felt like he was being dragged down into the abyss that lay hidden under the sparking blue of the bay below.
-o-
The vast cavern of a hallway echoed with their steps, the hard mosaic stone of the floor kicking up sound to be amplified by the polished stone walls and ceiling. Light suffused the space from big windows inset in the sides of the tall arched ceiling.
Richard was in the lead with Conrad following and Ben in trail. Their guide was a slim local woman in a beautiful silk wrap. The hallway had big doors leading off the side but all of them had been closed. Ahead was a massive double leaved door, one leaf of which was standing open.
The woman stopped at the door and turned to them, her hand invited them to pass her into the room. Ben glanced at her face as he passed, the lips smiled but the face was untouched by warmth. Her eyes caught Ben’s for a moment then flicked away. He wondered what thoughts circulated behind those dark eyes as he stepped into the room.
He almost stumbled; the floor was no longer stone, now it was carpet. The room was huge but somehow claustrophobic, apparently windowless with massive pillars holding up a vaulted ceiling that seemed low for all its twenty-foot peaks, furniture filled the space except immediately around the door. Heavy tapestry hung from the walls, from the vaults and mounded on the floor between and under the furniture. The final touch of barbaric splendor was the vast blazing fireplace against the far wall, a fireplace in which huge logs blazed. To the side of the fireplace, half turned to it, half to the door a massive chair resided, in front of it, his hands clasped behind him, head slightly bowed, stood Joseph Mindow, Admiral General M.
“I like what you’ve done with your palace, your Excellency.” Howard had moved up next to Richard, his voice was laconic.
The small figure near the fire turned with a smile, “Indeed Mr. North, I am so glad. I thought you’d especially like this room; it’s decorated in a style I think of as Arabian gothic.”
Richard chuckled, “Quite right your Excellency, it’s nice to see your sense of humor is unaffected by the worries of state.”
A lift of the eyebrows, “Sense of humor Richard? No, no this is a flight of fancy not of humor.”
Aristide, who for all his exotic dreams was personally abstentious, smiled woodenly but didn’t say any more. Conrad walked up to the edge of the slightly raised area around the fire and held up his hand, “Amazing, it looks real enough, but I can feel no heat at all?”
A chuckle, “It’s a wonderful illusion, is it not?” A wave of the hand and the fire was gone, along with the carved mantelpiece, replaced by what looked like a satellite mosaic of the Pacific, centered on Palalo Sadong. Ben stood back next to one of the columns and shivered, the fire had at least given this air-conditioned mausoleum the illusion of warmth.
Richard nodded, “A wonderful system, how old is the photograph?
“The latest stripe was laid down a few hours ago, an over flight by a commercial multi-spectral sensor.” A wave of the hand and the map shifted, the slightly larger island to the west of Palalo Sadong was centered now. The image zoomed in on a big harbor; a row of ship shapes came into sharp focus. “Our erstwhile rulers on Sunatra Island are entertaining visitors from Europe, Australia and the US. My spies tell me that they are discussing my overthrow and indictment for
crimes against humanity. Not that one needs spies to find that out.”
“The Chinese sent a delegation to Sunatra Day this year, your Excellency.” Richard’s voice was heavy.
“Our sponsors find me a little headstrong Richard; they have wanted me to slow down on my redistribution program since it is upsetting a lot of western intellectuals and beginning to focus unwanted attention on this part of the world.”
“And since there is likely to be a famine in the cities and towns this year that could be very inconvenient, even for you Admiral General.” Howard’s voice was chiding.
The small man smiled and shrugged, “I’ve already had people start looking for alternative sources of food. And farm production is beginning to turn around again, the grains and legumes are going to take a while but we should get through the hard times. I have some contingency plans as well.”
“Piracy your Excellency?” Howard’s voice was sarcastic. Ben wanted to cringe; he couldn’t believe the Englishman’s cavalier attitude towards a man with such a hideous reputation.
A snort, “An Englishman protests against a little high seas robbery?”
“This ain’t the sixteenth century Admiral General.”
“It won’t come to that and you know it Howard, the world is awash with grain and cheese because of European and American subsidies, I am already buying and importing in significant quantities through middlemen.”
Ben noted Howard’s faint nod, he’d already known.
Richard had listened calmly to this repartee, shook his head, “Admiral General you requested this meeting for rather vague reasons, can you be more specific now. I must be on my way by this evening if at all possible.”
“Always the businessman Richard, it is so wearying to watch you bustle sometimes.” The little man on the dais sighed. Then he beckoned them forward, waving towards chairs arrayed facing his mini throne and gods eye display, “Have a seat gentlemen, don’t be afraid Ben, we’re all compatriots here.” He turned and strolled back over to his chair. The calm, even friendly words to him made Ben’s stomach flip-flop even more.
“It does in fact revolve around our Chinese friends, having gotten what they wanted out of me for now they are being much more hardnosed about funding. With the political campaign to secure the island and the noisy protests of the westerners our industrial exports have all but dried up, and as you already noted our agricultural output is down to subsistence levels. I am afraid that I am going to have to ask that we renegotiate the resource contracts we have for the gold and the oil Aristide Industries is extracting from my land.”
There was a deathly silence. The Admiral General studied his fingernails, “And that property that you built your little town on, I feel that I am going to have to request a lease and lease payments.”
Richard spoke quietly, “Your Excellency we had an agreement, you know very well that we have done far more for you than your Chinese, ah, sponsor, ever paid for, and the new town will bring you a lot of profit in the long run, but it is impossible for us to pay any significant lease on it right now.”
No change in the small man’s expression, or the direction of his eyes, “An agreement. Yes, we had such a thing, but you know, one of the advantages of being a sovereign state is your ability to ‘renegotiate’ agreements if you feel it is necessary, even abrogate them.”
Conrad sighed, “Admiral General, with due respect you cannot do that to us. We have been a supporter for a long time. The gold and oil from Palalo Sadong currently supports AI, if you take that flow of hard currency away you will destroy the, ah, goose that laid the golden egg, as it were.”
The map rippled and suddenly a little harbor was centered in the image, a big artificial breakwater provided a comfortable anchorage, an airfield with hangars and a terminal was on one side of the bay, a row of low slung buildings filled the ground near the waterfront and roads radiated out to small buildings in the ground that rose up around the bay, it looked pretty, pristine, unused.
“Again, one of the wonderful things about being a sovereign is I can, if I want, do almost anything.” There was a silence and then he continued. “Have you ever considered the advantages of being a sovereign nation Richard? Conrad? It really is quite fun. You can tell the rest of the world to go do themselves and make it stick as long as you have the balls to back it up.”
“Ah.” Richard seemed at a loss at this shocking turn of events. The Admiral General lifted his eyes and his hand, “No Richard, why don’t you hear me out, I’ve had this soliloquy on my mind for some time you know and I’d like to get it said and done with.”
Richard settled back.
The image of the village shifted and rolled, suddenly they were looking down on the bay as if from an aircraft, “Three large warehouses, four big general purpose industrial buildings, a micro refinery and a brewery, a water treatment plant, all heavily protected. Apartment buildings and small chalets for the managers, all designed to withstand typhoons and at least light bombardment. A ring of larger chalets in the highlands, heavily reinforced. An airfield wide enough to make closing it difficult, with fuel bunkers buried and dispersed to make them hard to damage, reveted aircraft shelters and reinforced air traffic control complex, a fortress Richard, a fortress on my soil.”
He waved for silence as Richard moved restlessly, “But, but most interesting of all, these.” The image rolled again, zooming in on the airport, then a little beyond, the first row of protected hangars. The image froze showing two tall, hollow, truncated pyramids, hidden from the sea by a ridge and partially shielded from everywhere else by trees. Two sides of the structures didn’t quite meet, providing a wide entrance, “these revetments, big, deep, openings only big enough for trucks? They look like missile stands, perhaps for large, long range, anti-aircraft missiles, but they are too big, too deep, and why the sun shades?” A second image appeared with tenting covering the pyramid’s upper openings.
“You know that I’ve been keeping an eye on you and your company for some time Richard. I know you’re in trouble. I’ve also followed you, searched for what it was that made you tick; I know that you have no love for me or my methods, or for our mutual sponsors. A decade ago you nearly pulled your company out of Sunatra when the old regime cracked down on the local Hindi and Chinese minorities for their resistance to the home rule laws.”
Richard shifted uncomfortably again, the Admiral General nodded, “Yes, I know about that, I also know what makes you tick. Space makes you tick, the stars in general and specifically Luna, our moon. My spies tell me interesting rumors coming out of Utah these days. And then my people, on several consecutive nights, see, or at least hear something, several something’s, coming out of the sky and then ascending back into the sky, something that’s no aircraft, no rocket, no balloon. I think about this deeply and I connect it to those rumors and the money I know you have sunk into apparently crazy projects….And I remember that every moon probe in the last couple of years has failed for one reason or another…Then I come up with a sum that is much, much greater than the parts.” An image of the moon appeared.
Silence, “I have other sources you know, one of which let me have this.” An overhead image of Luna Haven, several months old, appeared. Conrad swore under his breath at that evidence of treachery.
Other than that sibilant oath silence stretched, the Admiral General didn’t seem bothered, “Have you considered what advantages you would have if your settlement were a part of Greater Palalo Sadong? You know the provenance of that name? It means Great Island, so, Greater Great Island. It is interesting, but I find that I am not a signatory to the UN Space Treaty, so I can, in fact in good conscience, go ahead and legally settle Luna, claim part or all of it for Palalo Sadong. I would not demand much, you have already made my country your ground base, and you must have expected to reach some accommodation with me eventually. You will be providing access to space for the world, access to the planets and you will funnel
it through my country and I will skim off the taxes and service charges. You can make sure no one breaks my monopoly and you can also provide me with space surveillance and the like. You Richard could become the Vice President of Palalo Sadong and you Conrad the first Admiral of the PPS Space Service, even our quiet Benjamin could have a title, he is very good with the numbers, and I’d like to have him as my finance minister.”
There was a cruel lilt in the small man’s voice as he hammered home his knowledge and his demand.
Richard sighed, “Your Excellency, I am sorry that I didn’t tell you before. We had not intended to start using the air base quite so soon but we’ve had some demands that made basing back in the continental US impractical.”
“I do understand, you have been very busy, you are busy and I am offering a quick and easy accommodation, say yes and we are done.” The unstated threat of what might happen if Richard said no hung in the air.
Aristide shrugged, “Can I consider your suggestion your Excellency? You are right, I had not thought through some of the advantages of going at this a slightly different way. I assure you we had always planned on making sure that we did well by Palalo Sadong.” He hesitated, frowning, “I would like to take some time to consider your offer.” He held up a placating hand, “It is a tempting offer but I want to make sure that neither of us overlook something in the rush to complete a deal.”
Conrad spoke softly, “Admiral General you have us in a very sensitive position, you in the end control the fate of Aristide Industries, the gold mine and the oil platforms are critical to the company’s continued survival for the next few weeks. You can be assured that we will give your suggestion full consideration, and if we should find a problem we will come back with an offer at least as attractive.”
The Admiral General stood up, as did his guests. The wall did its disconcerting shift again, becoming a picture of the Earth from space. The short dark haired man stood in front of it, once more rolling on the balls of his feet, his hands locked behind his back. At last he spoke, “I suppose I can trust you, you have far more at stake here than do I, in the end.” He looked around, his face cold and enigmatic.
Richard and Conrad both bowed, Ben hurriedly and clumsily copied them. The Admiral General relaxed, “Fine then.” He turned aside, “Girl, bring in refreshments for us, please.”
Ben grabbed a glass and a plate when they arrived and retreated to the side watching the three men out of the side of his eye. After a while Aristide drifted off to examine artifacts around the room.
He had almost begun to relax when he glanced over at Howard and the Admiral General. The small man was showing the Englishman something on a piece of paper; Howard at first seemed almost irritated, shaking his head. Then the smaller man folded the sheet back with a flourish and after an instant the sandy eyebrows flew up and then his eyes seemed drawn to Richard who was standing with his back to them contemplating the image of the Earth. The expression on the COO’s face was a mixture of astonishment, and deliberation with a hint of dark humor. Howard caught Ben watching him and the expression that crossed the normally bland face made the accountant’s knees go weak.
The rest of the day was not exactly fun but it was mostly business like, even better Conrad and Mindow weren’t there much of the time. After sunset there was a long and languid dinner, or feast rather, that Ben only picked at, it was outside and even with the fans it was muggy and the perfume of the exotic flowers all around the Admiral General’s palace came near to gagging Ben, but at least he was out of the cold, dead air inside.
It was getting on for midnight local time as the supercruiser zoomed for altitude. Lying back in his deep and comfortable leather seat Ben realized that fear was a poor substitute for a sleeping pill, he might feel as wrung out and as tired as he had ever felt, but his nerves were hopping as if he had drunk a dozen cups of coffee instead of ice water.
Howard was checking his messages over a secure terminal; he had been in a chipper mood all day and seemed relaxed. A priority chirp changed that, he swore as foully as Ben had ever heard him. “…idiots, Arkan should have kept them on a shorter leash. God damn it to hell.”
Richard looked over his face concerned, “What’s the matter Howard, something go wrong at Luna Haven?”
A shake of the head to this last, “The MoonBeam’s down in the ‘Stan. Shot up in an ambush by a local warlord when she was setting down to unload a cargo for a rival. The ambushers are all dead but that doesn’t do us much good. The ship took hits in the engine room and they won’t be able to get her up before sunrise. She’s pretty well hidden and they got camouflage nets out, but that’s only going to help for a while. The Yanks are nearby and are bound to hear about something like this and come nosing around in a day or less.”
Richard closed his eyes and took a deep breath, “Get the best technical people on one of the other ships and over to her as soon as possible. You have a backup plan if things are unsalveable?”
“Yeah, though I’d hate to lose our best technical people if we have to activate it.”
“Don’t let it get that bad then.”
