“Sit,” said the leader.
“You damaged my property!”
Martin laid a hand on Carlos and pushed him into his seat before anything worse could happen.
The leader nodded to Martin, then read the boat’s identification papers. “We don’t need a warrant. We received a report of drug smuggling, which makes this a counter-terrorism matter.”
Carlos was saying, “Look at a map, you—”
“Shut up,” said Martin. The gears were starting to turn in his head. He did not want negative publicity, not at this stage. “Sorry, sir. If you can tell me more, I’ll be happy to help.”
“Two suspects were arrested in Virginia this weekend with cocaine, and explained to the local police that they’d been to your ‘research station’. Do you know anything about the production, transport or use of drugs there?”
“This is news to me. Rest assured, I’ll look into it as soon as I get back.”
The leader looked the boat over, finding nooks that his men had missed, but there was no contraband. “See that you do. Sorry to bother you.” He put the confiscated knife back in Hispaniola’s locker and departed with a salute. Martin returned the gesture, feeling like an idiot.
Carlos hissed like a fuse for ten seconds as the Coast Guard boat left them, then launched into a fit of curses against Martin, Castor, his boat, the US, the UN and druggies. Martin listened, metaphorically warming his hands by the fire.
Garrett ran to meet him by the dock, looking pale as bleached coral. “Seven hells, man, what happened?”
“I want you to stop having disasters while I’m away.”
Carlos blurted, “The damn Yankees thought we were drug runners!”
“They were doing their job,” said Martin.
“Off my coast?” said Carlos.
“Yeah, they do that.”
The party of divers looked terrified, listening to the exchange. Garrett took charge while Martin was considering how to pacify Carlos: “Welcome, everyone. I don’t know what the problem is out there, but here we’ll show you a good time.” He offered his hand and managed to coax the guests aboard.
Martin and Garrett sat in the deckhouse. They’d brief Phillip, Zephyr and Tess in the morning. Martin suddenly felt the weight of his fatigue after the evening’s excitement, and yawned.
Martin said, “We got caught up in the Cuba dance.”
The liberation of Cuba had led to a movement in the US to annex the place and make it a new state. The trouble was, nobody was sure how its people would vote if they became citizens, and the Senate hung in the balance. To hear pundits tell it, whether Cuba joined the Union could decide permanent control of Congress and the Supreme Court for one faction or the other. For the last year there’d been ongoing passive-aggressive courtship of Cuba, which now meant US Coast Guard troops being used as pawns to harass the seastead. Garrett had heard that Texas went through the same kind of trouble, shortly before war broke out.
Garrett said, “All that effort, and we’ve got no engineers to replace Tess next year. I don’t blame you, understand. I’ve been asking around too. Our Net fan club hasn’t yet turned up anyone qualified who’d work for the pittance we can pay.”
Martin nodded. “’Go fish’ on the engineers, but I’ve got a pair of restauranteurs.” He explained his encounter at the convention.
“A restaurant? But we haven’t got the people to support that.”
“So get more. In the meantime, they can cater to the tourist crowd.”
“We haven’t got a crowd either.”
Martin grinned. “Get one. Also, these guys will be available as workers. We can expand the farm area.”
They looked over various reports, with neither man eager to deal with the real problem. “We did nothing wrong,” said Garrett eventually. “Not with the drug situation. If they had cocaine, that wasn’t our doing.”
“We should have had a policy.”
“I did. I posted rules saying that people were forbidden to hurt each other or damage this station. Everything else was allowed by default.”
“Was that a deliberate choice, though, or laziness on our parts?”
“Are you testing me again?”
“No, the world is.”
“It was a choice on my part, then. I’m an engineer. I don’t do public policy.”
“’I send the rockets up; where they come down is not my concern’, eh?”
“I’m not designing missiles for the Nazis, I’m growing seaweed! Why can’t I be left alone with my toys?”
Martin eyed him calmly. “Now I will test you. You’ve told me about your encounter with your uncle, at your father’s funeral. How did you feel when he asked you about building this place?”
“Haskell was pushing me into it,” said Garrett, obviously resenting being reminded.
“But he wasn’t threatening you, right?”
Garrett squeezed his eyes shut. “He demanded that I answer. He was holding the idea out and making me look at it. In a way it made me angry. It was like once I knew it was possible to live something other than a mediocre life — to have a new kind of freedom, I guess — I could never be happy again with what I’d been doing.” Garrett looked away, swiping tears from his eyes. “He didn’t force anything on me. But he convinced me I could change my life, and for a little while I hated him for it.”
Martin nodded and put a map of the world on the table between them. He pointed. “An example that goads people to better themselves.”
“That situation has happened before,” said Martin, with his finger on America. He moved his focus a little south. “And it’s starting again, here.”
16. Garrett
He tugged at his clothes, the most expensive and least comfortable he owned. “I don’t see why this has to be live video.”
The topdeck was crowded; everyone was up there with him, and the video feed put far more people here in spirit. Samuel was among the virtual crowd, with his voice in Garrett’s head. “Pageantry, baby.”
Martin, present in person, heard it too. “Exactly. It has to be your face presenting the authentic pioneer spirit.”
“How are this shirt and tie ‘authentic’?”
Martin said, “They were worn by you. Today. Buffalo Bill used to make ‘authentic’ cowboy outfits the same way.”
“I feel like a fraud.”
“So don’t be.”
It felt scarier to stand under the clear sky and talk than it had been to ride beneath the hurricane. Garrett would have been happy to keep his head down and focus on the physical, technical problems or even the finances. Let’s get this over with, he thought, checking his notes yet again.
Tess gave him a thumbs-up and a radioed, “Kick ass.”
Garrett cleared his throat, fighting a desire to slink away. “Thanks, everyone. I’ve decided to speak because, as you’ve heard, Castor had a run-in with the United States Coast Guard. No resident was arrested or hurt, and the Guardsmen acted responsibly. The people who were arrested were our guests, who had brought marijuana onboard from elsewhere. To clear up any confusion, they were actually arrested for cocaine possession in the mainland US, and we have no reason to think they got the stuff here.”
He felt boredom seeping over him from his own words, and from the carefully arranged policy statement Martin had written. “There is no good solution for a group of our size faced with criminal activity condemned by the world community.” Say ‘community’ a lot, Martin had advised. Buzzwords soothe. “We lack the resources to enforce the complexities of international law, though of course—”