by Timothy Zahn
Meredith’s eyes gazed unblinkingly into his. He’s figured it out, Hafner thought, I was right, then: it does make sense. God help them … and us. “I would retreat,” the colonel said quietly. “Or else try and camouflage myself. Is that it?”
“No,” Carmen whispered. “You don’t mean—they built the sphere to make themselves look like a red giant star system?”
Hafner nodded. “It fits, doesn’t it? The superconducting shell to spread the heat out evenly; the missing spectral lines you mentioned undoubtedly corresponding to those of a real red giant. The hard edge wouldn’t be noticed at any real distance, even if they thought to look for it.”
Perez stirred. “And the lack of completion. …” He left the sentence unfinished. “The holes aren’t entrance ports, then, are they?”
“Blast damage,” Meredith murmured. “Whoever they were afraid of found them too soon.”
For a long moment there was silence. The edge of the sphere was slowly receding, and looking ahead Hafner thought he could see a small dot of reflected light a few degrees from the sun. Spinnerhome, undoubtedly. He wondered how much of the devastation of that long-past war would be visible from orbit. He wasn’t looking forward to finding out.
“But why?” Loretta finally voiced the question Hafner knew they were all thinking. “Why did they sit here and let themselves get blown up? Surely they knew these enemies were coming—they had to be centuries building this thing. Why didn’t they use the time to build up their armaments, or even just pick up and leave?”
“Maybe they had nowhere else they could go,” Carmen said. “Their star drive only allows them limited choices, remember. “
“What about Astra?” Loretta countered. “It must have been habitable before they drained all the metals out of it.”
“I think Carmen’s essentially correct,” Hafner said, “except that it may not have been a matter of conscious choice. I think they were so tied to their own world that they simply couldn’t relocate elsewhere.”
“Ridiculous,” Loretta snorted.
“You’re forgetting the Spinner cavern,” Meredith said, shaking his head slowly. “You’re right, Dr. Williams; they could have lived on the surface while building and operating the Spinneret. But they chose instead to spend enormous time and effort in duplicating their home planet’s environment, from the sunlight down to even the proper odors. If they could take the time from the defense of their race to do that, I can well believe they considered it something they couldn’t live without. You shake your head; but remember we’re not talking about human beings but about aliens. They’re under no obligation to think and react like we do.”
“Or vice versa?” Perez’s smile was bitter. “You’re too kind to our species, Colonel. How many wars have been fought, do you suppose, because two groups of people each considered the same little plot of land to be theirs? How many people have died in battle or withered in refugee camps because they would not move over to a new place that was often every bit as good as the one their ancestors had lived on? You have an affluent, mobile American’s view of land, I think. The rest of the world differs from the Spinners more in degree than in substance.”
“Point,” Meredith admitted. “But you’re too kind in turn to modern Americans. I might not be willing to die for any given acre of land, but I would do so for my country as a whole. And when my car was stolen once I genuinely wanted to machine-gun the guy who did it.” He looked out at the sphere.
“You see what that means, of course,” Hafner said, the words trying to stick in his throat. “We can’t allow humanity to get stuck in a single spot like the Spinners did.” He looked at Carmen. “You remember—once—I said the Spinneret cable might have been used to make a giant cage for something. I was right; but it was a cage for their whole race.” He shook his head. “And the only way to make sure that doesn’t happen to us is to open immigration to Astra.”
The others all looked at him. “You mean that?” Perez asked, frowning. “You’re changing sides?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Hafner snapped. “I still think bringing a bunch of people into what’s essentially a make-work situation is stupid. But putting our eggs in two baskets is at least a little better than leaving them in one. So go ahead: bring in your spies and parasites. I don’t care anymore.”
“I care,” Perez shot back, glancing once at Loretta. “I was the one who originally worried about spies stealing our secrets, remember. And I don’t want to bring people to Astra just for the sole purpose of having warm bodies lying around. If we can’t get useful jobs for them—”
“Ease up, both of you,” Meredith interrupted. “You’ll wind up adopting each other’s basic politics in a minute. I brought you here to end this battle, not to start it over again backward.”
Perez cocked a suspicious eyebrow. “I thought we came to learn about the Spinners and the cable.”
“We did; but since all the information I wanted probably got blown up with the rest of the planet, I’m going to have to try something else. Let’s start with the problem and go from there.”
Briefly, he outlined how possession of the Gorgon’s Head security code opened up the possibility for terrorist attack. Hafner felt a shiver climb his spine; he hadn’t realized they were that close to solving the code, and he certainly hadn’t thought through all the implications. “As long as we don’t know how to correct any sabotage that gets done to the control settings, we’re extremely vulnerable to a Dunlop-style attack,” Meredith concluded. “And the stronger the political tensions on Astra, the more likely that kind of operation becomes. What we have to do is drastically tone down the disharmony, at least past the election and probably a year or so beyond; and what that means is eliminating these budding political parties.”
“And how do you intend to do that?” Perez asked. “A ban by royal decree?”
“No, I’m simply going to knock the props out from under them. Since they’re both single-issue groups, all we need is for their leaders to publicly come out for a compromise. That’ll take the wind out of everyone’s rhetoric, at least until the new Council is elected.”
Perez snorted. “So you dragged us all the way out here to talk about a compromise? We could have done all this back in your office.”
Meredith gazed at him. “No,” he said quietly. “I brought you here to tell you that you will accept a compromise—either mine or whatever else we can all come up with. One way or another, we’re going to be in agreement before we leave this ship.”
“Or else?” Perez prompted coolly.
“Or else you, Perez, will be arrested for treason. It was your actions that brought Dr. Williams and her fellow spies from Earth and ultimately resulted in Dunlop’s coup attempt—and, yes, I can prove all of that in court. I think even your most avid supporters would fade back into the woodwork at that point.”
“Blackmail,” Perez nodded. “Do you have something similar to hold over Hafner’s head, or am I a special case?”
“Dr. Hafner doesn’t have your talent for influencing crowds,” the colonel said. “Besides, I expect him to be reasonable on this.”
Perez sighed. “You know, it gets very tiring after a while to always be misunderstood,” he said, shaking his head. “Did it never occur to you that I might jump at the opportunity to find some middle ground; that I might possibly prefer to lose half of my wish list in exchange for not making a long-term enemy?”
“It did,” Meredith nodded. “But I didn’t want to rely on it. You’re very good at getting things done your way; this time, we’re damn well going to do things my way. So you want to be a statesman? Here’s your chance to get in some practice.”
And with that he began to outline his plan.
The discussion lasted the better part of that day and the next, and through it all Perez indeed proved himself able to compromise. By the time the boat went into orbit around Spinnerhome and clicked itself back to manual control, most of the details had been satisfactorily
worked out, leaving all aboard free to perform what studies they could on the shattered world below them.
It was as depressing a sight as Meredith had ever seen. Even after thousands of years the huge icecaps that must have formed after the saturation bombing still covered nearly a quarter of the planet. Elsewhere, a few patches of green and yellow could be seen through the clouds, but most of the land seemed to be desert hues of brown and gray-red. Nothing but solar noise existed on any band the radio could pick up; nowhere were any lights visible. By the fifth orbit Meredith called it quits. “Whoever they were, they were apparently very thorough,” he said grimly. “If any of the Spinners had survived, they should have been able to recover at least some of their technology by now.”
“That could be us someday,” Carmen said with a shudder.
“Maybe we’ve got a chance to avoid it now,” Perez said. “At least total extermination. …” He looked at Meredith. “Have we seen enough? It seems to me we ought to be getting back.” Meredith nodded, doing a rapid calculation. Four Spinner days each way, another one in orbit at Spinnerhome—eleven Earth days total. Plenty of time for Msuya to have made the necessary arrangements with Saleh and made it back to Astra. “Yes,” he nodded. “Let’s go home.”
The return trip was uneventful but subdued. Meredith spent a great deal of time with the lifeboat’s operating manual, taking advantage of the rare leisure time to learn as much as he could about the craft and the Spinner language generally. The others, too, seemed to keep to themselves, as if each needed to sort out privately the revelations of the past few days. At times Meredith found himself staring out a side viewport at the Spinner’s grand failure, wondering if his own plans would crumble as theirs had, and wishing he could discuss them with someone. But he resisted the temptation. It was too late to change anything now, and there was no point in everyone else losing sleep as well.
And at last the twin black holes appeared on their screen; and when the nausea of the jump had passed and the viewports cleared again, they were indeed home. Astra, marginally closer to the jump point than when they’d left, was a bright spot with an almost discernible disk. Surrounding it were smaller flecks of light that resolved in the telescope as spaceships.
A lot of spaceships.
“Wonder what’s happening,” Carmen said uneasily as Perez sat at the telescope counting the ships for a third time.
Meredith, in the seat beside her, adjusted the radio to what he hoped was the right frequency. “If I’ve read Msuya right,” he said, “what we’re seeing is a UN military attack.”
“What?” Carmen gasped. “But—”
“The security code,” Hafner said abruptly. “The other spies—he’s got the code to make new supervisors, doesn’t he?” He snapped his fingers. “That’s why you wanted to take this trip right away, isn’t it? To get the lifeboat out of his reach.”
“You mean you deliberately left Astra open to that—” Perez began.
Holding up his hand for silence, Meredith mentally crossed his fingers and flipped the Send switch. “This is Colonel Meredith,” he said into his mike. “Please patch me through to Major Barner.”
Chapter 34
SECRETARY-GENERAL SALEH WAS seated alone at the far end of the conference room table when Meredith and Carmen entered. Passing up his usual seat at the table’s head, the colonel moved down to sit directly across from their visitor. The usual unspoken conventions of position and relative power could be ignored in such an informal meeting. “Good day, Mr. Saleh,” he nodded as Carmen sat down beside him. “May I present Miss Carmen Olivero, head of the Astran Council.”
Saleh nodded with tight-lipped courtesy and looked back at Meredith. “Before we go any farther, Colonel, I must officially insist that the bodies of the UN commando squad be returned to us.”
“You’re not in much of a bargaining position, but we have every intention of sending the bodies back. Whether or not the Rooshrike will let you leave the system is, of course, another matter entirely.”
“Indeed. Their spokesman informs me that decision is up to you.”
“Ah,” Meredith nodded. He’d already heard that from Beaeki nul Dies na, but he’d wanted to make sure Saleh knew it, too. “Well, you can’t blame them for being touchy. As our supply partners and sort-of sales agents, they have a vested interest in making sure the Spinneret stays in Astran hands. You, on the other hand, are seen as allies of the Ctencri, whom they have no special affection for.”
“You need not spell out all the details,” Saleh said coldly. “I’m quite aware Msuya’s attempted raid has stirred up a great deal of antagonism toward Earth.”
Msuya’s raid, Meredith thought. The phrase was as subtle as a public hand washing—and almost certainly proclaimed Msuya’s political demise. Goal one; check. “All right, then. The races that provide the wonderful gadgets on which your power is based are mad at you. How would you like it if I broke your stranglehold on Earth for good?”
Saleh’s face remained impassive. “How would you do that?”
“By opening up direct trade with individual nations, of course. After this fiasco the Ctencri couldn’t lift a finger to protect their monopoly with you, and with our cable income we could undercut any price you or they could offer. In no time you’d be back to being the overgrown debating society you were a couple of years ago. I presume you would find that distasteful?”
“Of course—as would you,” Saleh said. “Surely you recognize from history that Earth has a better chance for international peace under the sort of economic empire the UN now represents.” He waved a hand. “You didn’t ask me down here simply to gloat over my impending destruction, Colonel; you’re not the sort of man who does. I conclude you wish to make a deal. May we get down to it?”
“Fine. Basically, we want to open up Astra for immediate immigration.”
“I see. And the prospective settlers will come predominantly from North America, I expect.”
“You expect wrong. We want mostly poor and dispossessed from the Third World countries.”
For just a second Saleh’s impassive expression cracked with surprise before settling into place again. “The people you speak of are mostly farmers,” he pointed out. “What would they do here?”
“Work their butts off, for starters. Don’t misunderstand me—I don’t want Bangladesh or whoever dumping its street bums and criminals on us. We want people who haven’t got much chance where they are but still have the ambition and hope to grab a new opportunity when it presents itself.” He leveled a finger at Saleh. “That’ll be your job: to make sure this offer gets to those people and to provide information to us for screening purposes. Miss Olivero has a file with all the details.”
Beside him, Carmen pulled a cassette from her shoulder pouch and handed it over. Saleh hesitated a fraction of a second before taking it. He fingered it for a moment, frowning as if he suspected it might explode. “I … appreciate what I believe you’re trying to do,” he said at last, looking up at Meredith. “But do you think you can truly give vast numbers of people a better life here?”
“No—but most of them won’t actually be here for long. Once their education and training are completed they’ll be sent out to the neighboring empires to monitor the installation and use of Spinneret cables.”
Saleh frowned. “They’ll what?”
“Don’t look so surprised. One of the major worries we’ve had all along has been the ease with which the cables can be applied to warfare. I don’t want the stuff used that way, and neither do any of the races I’ve talked to—or at least that’s what they say. So okay; from now on each cable is going to be accompanied by a small group of monitors, who’ll go with it to the installation site and certify it winds up doing what it was supposed to. Other teams will routinely look at old installations, both to make sure the cable hasn’t been moved and to perform long-term studies of strength degradation and such. Sure, there won’t be all that much to do for now, but it’ll take a while to tra
in the monitors anyway. And we do plan to sell lots of cables.”
Slowly, Saleh nodded. “It may work—for a limited number, at least. Very well; you may count on my complete cooperation in this project.” He hesitated. “In fact, you would have had my help even without resorting to threats. It appears your vision for Astra is not so different from mine, after all.”
“Glad to hear it.” Goal two; check. “Then there’s just one more thing.” Meredith let his gaze harden. “Do you know how your commandos died?”
Saleh grimaced slightly. “I understand they were electrocuted by your Gorgon’s Head machines in the Spinner cavern control tower. I don’t know how Major Barner managed it.”
“Major Barner didn’t do a thing. One of the commandos, keying in what he thought was the sequence for authorizing new supervisors, actually typed something that translates roughly as ‘supervisor in danger.’ The rest followed automatically.” He paused, but Saleh remained silent. “I’m sure you see what that means, but I’ll spell it out anyway. With the best transmission equipment and most elaborate scramblers the Ctencri could provide your spies, we still could not only monitor their communication with Msuya, but could even inject our own information into their data transfers. That first of all means you can’t trust anything Ermakov and company gave you; and it second of all means you’ll be wasting your time if you try this sort of trick again. Clear?”
“Clear.” Saleh’s voice was calm. “Will the scientists be executed?”
“I’m tempted; but no. Instead, I’ll trade them to you for Dr. Loretta Williams’s two children, whom you’ve got in protective custody somewhere. Dr. Williams is staying with us, and it would be nice if her family could be here with her.”
A dozen questions flickered across Saleh’s face, but he merely nodded. “They’ll be brought here as soon as possible.”
