"No and I don't care, eit'er."
"Yes, you do." Siegel closed his eyes, dredging up the memory. "I read:"
"I loved you, and so I took these tides of men
Into my hands and wrote my will
Upon the sky in stars… "
"Lawrence of Arabia, Top. And the CO had it specially marked."
"T'e cook, Siegel. Coffee."
McNamara watched Siegel make his exit, then made a notation on one file and shoved it aside. He reached for another.
Opening it, the sergeant major saw that this file was for a former BDC officer who had been in command of a company during the '47 invasion. For whatever reason, Fernandez had marked it "Politically Necessary." The officer, a Major Manuel Rocaberti, was a graduate of the Federated States Military Academy at River Watch, Class of 438. The file had not been signed off on by Jimenez. This was odd.
River Watch? This, with Fernandez's notation, was enough for the sergeant major. He had dozens more files to check out tonight. The Balboan officer, Manuel Rocaberti, was assigned to an important billet in the Ia, the operations office.
Office of the President of the Republic of Balboa, 4/10/459 AC
President Rocaberti made a few last minute notes on the speech he would give the people of Balboa telling them that their country had decided to pledge itself-sort of, in an only semi-official, nongovernmental way-to the war against the terrorists. Ultimately, what had decided him to cease resistance and to cooperate was not Parilla's or Carrera's persuasion, nor even the gutless capitulation of the Cabinet and Legislative Council. Instead, Rocaberti had been persuaded by the very attractive prospect of getting the old guard of the BDC out of the country for a while. Given a bit of time, and relief from pressure by the radicals of Pina's old political party and their BDC minions, Rocaberti thought he would have a much better chance of bringing a lasting democracy-which he defined as an oligarchy of the upper classes-to Balboa. It was the silver lining in this very dark cloud.
The president looked up from his note making. It was time to address the nation.
At the signal from the television man the president began.
"People of Balboa, eleven days ago our country was attacked. We were attacked brutally, suddenly, without warning and with no provocation on our part. We did nothing to provoke this attack in which hundreds of our people were murdered. The targets of that attack were not our country's defenders of the Civil Force, but inoffensive civilians going about their daily lives, innocent children, and our women.
"Even now a great army of vengeance and justice is being assembled from all over the world to resist and reverse this aggression, to free the peaceful people of the world from the threat of terror. Free peoples from every corner of the globe have pledged themselves to this worthy and noble task.
"In this desperate hour, the Republic of Balboa cannot shirk its responsibility to the rest of the world. Last night, in a late night session which was attended by myself, my Cabinet, the National Legislative Council, and those men of the Civil Force whose job it will be to carry the fight to come, the government of the Republic of Balboa, by an overwhelming majority, voted to facilitate the sending of an expeditionary force to assist the other democracies to end this plague.
"The patriotic and brave soldiers of the Civil Force will be the vanguard and center of our part of this armada. However, because they are few and the enemy many, because we need to secure our homeland as well as carry the fight to the enemies of civilization, the Legislative Council has authorized only that one thousand and fifty men of the Military Police companies of the Civil Force, exactly one quarter their strength, may transfer to the new. Any men recently retired may also volunteer without cost to their pensions.
"Still, the new organization will need several thousand volunteers to bring its units to the size needed for this operation. I call upon the young men of the Republic to give of themselves by volunteering for this enterprise."
Like hundreds of thousands across Balboa, Ricardo Cruz, aged seventeen, sat among family and friend in front of the snowy screen of the family television. (For while satellite television was in theory available, the premium tacked on by the Rocaberti family that controlled it made it prohibitively expensive for simple farmers.) Cruz contemplated his immediate plans. Tomorrow I will go down to the police station and sign up.
He thought of Cara and her feelings on the subject. She is so sweet… so pretty too. But she'll never understand that I have to go.
Manuel Rocaberti, too, watched his uncle's speech. His feelings on the subject were far different from Cruz's, however. Only that morning he had spoken to his Uncle, the president.
"Shut up, Manuel. You owe this to the family," the president had commanded.
Manuel pleaded, "But, Tio Guillermo, I'm no good. I've tried and I just don't have it. I've no business being a soldier."
"You're not going there to be a soldier, boy. You're going there to be a spy, my spy. I don't trust Parilla and I trust his pet gringo with the electric eyes even less. Those bastards forced this fucking under- the-table rearmament down my throat. I don't like it."
"So what can I do about it? Jesu Cristo, Tio, I'm not going as anything or anyone important."
"Watch, report, impede if possible. It isn't likely that they'll really be able to raise this force, not from scratch. Parilla's never been in command of a real army. And this gringo of his was-what?-a lieutenant colonel? All of that? Even you were a major," the president sneered. "But I want you there to make it as unlikely as possible, even so."
Interlude
29 July, 2067, United Nations Starship Kofi Annan
The ship on-screen bore a name in English letters, though that name was Chinese.
The Cheng Ho drifted slowly in high orbit around the planet people back home were already calling Terra Nova, or something similar in their own languages. In Arabic, for example, it was " al Donya al Jedida," in Chinese, " Xing She Jie," though the Chinese were as likely to say, " Xing Zhong Guo " which meant "New Middle Kingdom." Then again, for the Chinese, very little could be even of conceptual importance that was not China and Chinese.
The Cheng Ho hadn't sent word to Earth in six years, despite having carried several dozen messenger-bots capable of, and intended to, carry news from the ship homeward.
Like the earlier robotic probe, the Cristobal Colon, the Cheng Ho had taken off, in 2060, propelled by Sol's rays and laser stations positioned on planets, planetoids and in space. The laser stations had, by that year, grown much more numerous and powerful, cutting the time of flight to the rift nearly in half.
There had been much celebration on Earth when the ship had begun its long journey to the stars. Every country, every ethnicity, and nearly every interest group had a reason to be proud. Indeed, each had a stake in the voyage, on an emotional level at least, as the passengers had been carefully handpicked to be the best and the brightest representatives of their respective ascriptive, ethnic, cultural or national groups. As a matter of fact, not only were they the best and the brightest, much care had been taken to ensure they were also the most forward thinking, the least intolerant, persons available from those groups.
The crew members were not quite as diverse, being largely American, English, Chinese, Japanese, Indian and Brazilian with only token members from other nations. But the passengers?
There were three hundred and sixty-four Moslems, one hundred and eighty-one non-Moslem Europeans, a like number of Americans, roughly three hundred each Indians and Chinese, and about eight hundred passengers from other groups and nations. The average IQ was over one hundred and forty and the average adult educational level the Ph. D.