The white walls and pressure arches stood out against the ochre and red all around, a beacon for assault. The entire town was a target. But that kind of warfare had long since ceased. Now, soldiers could be invisible, and destruction carried out by machines like termites from within, not bombs from without. Warbeiters, Jack had called them. A horribly awkward and unpleasant name.
All seemed deserted, which was expected. During an emergency, red rabbits clustered close to water and oxygen sources. A Martian station seldom looks inhabited from the outside, anyway. And the Republic’s new capital had not yet received its full population of bureaucrats, cabinet members, jurists, governors and representatives.
Point One had established its command at Many Hills some weeks before. Overseeing guards for the President and Vice President, assembling the early stages of Martian intelligence and internal security, Point One had taken on a carefully observed life of its own with surprising speed. Now I was grateful to see men and women I recognized at the depot, carrying weapons, wearing pressure suits, waiting for the train with somber but professional faces.
We disembarked in an underground area, away from possible bombardment, and I was immediately taken by armored truck to fresh tunnels east of the capitol construction.
Dandy and Jack met with their superior, Tarekh Firkazzie, in the rear of the truck. A slim blond man from Boreum, Firkazzie had been appointed head of overall security the month before.
Two women stripped my reactive armor and carefully packaged it for disposal. “You’re brave, traveling for a day with this stuff, Madam Vice President,” one said.
Jack came forward, grinding his teeth audibly, thrusting his lower jaw as it mocking a heroic male. Then I saw that his expression, however absurd, was genuine; he was grieving.
“Madam Vice President, I’ve been appointed… we chose by lots… to bring you bad news. You have a much heavier burden now. Ti Sandra Erzul and her crew have been involved in a shuttle mishap. It may have been an accident, but we’re not sure. We haven’t confirmed the location of the crash, and we won’t be able to for some time. Emergency beacon reports rescue arbeiters have not located anybody alive in the wreckage. We’re bringing in a magistrate from the court tunnels. We’ll have you sworn in as President as soon as possible, perhaps in the next few minutes. I’m sorry.”
For a moment, I did not know whether this was the faked death Ti Sandra had warned me about, or a real accident. I had to assume it was the former. I would become acting President.
I felt nothing then. I had become an arbeiter working for a political machine with its own rules, inevitable and soulless.
Point One had played its role as protector of the chain of command during my flight by train engine from Sinai. The interim Speaker of the House of Governors had been flown in from Amazonis by shuttle; the speaker for the House of the People had been at Many Hills to begin with. The interim congress had been caught campaigning, scattered across Mars, except for three governors and two candidate representatives. They were in a deep tunnel guarded by what defense arbeiters and personnel the Point One folks could assemble.
Point One had assumed control of all the available links. The ex net was down, but some private nets strung through local optics were up on manual and portable narrowband, keeping us informed about conditions at stations around Schiaparelli Basin . In effect, there were communications, but at less than one-tenth of one percent normal.
We still could not talk with the Olympians. I did not expect any further messages from Ti Sandra for days, perhaps longer.
All rules were being ignored, all bets were off.
Led by Dandy Breaker, five guards and two arbeiters escorted me into the narrow emergency tunnel two hundred meters below the congress, just above the new and expanded wellhead for Many Hills. There, I faced the dismayed band of seven legislators. For a moment, nobody spoke, and then all gathered in a circle around me, shaking my hands, asking questions.
I held up my arms, sidestepped a governor who seemed about to hug me, and called out, as clearly as possible without shouting, “We are the only ones who can act as a lawful government for the Republic! We must have order!”
The Speaker of the House of Governors, Henry Smith of Amazonis, a stocky man with a close-trimmed beard and piggish discerning eyes, used his stentorian voice to call the meeting to order. “Obviously,” he added, in an aside to me, “we do not have a quorum, but this is an emergency session.”
I agreed. “All of our intelligence, assembled by the Point One people — thanks to all of them for their extraordinary work — ”
“They did not avert this catastrophe!” shouted the representative from Argyre.
“They are not intended for military defense!” responded Henry Smith, raising a tight-fisted hand, his chin lowered as if he were a bull about to charge. Argyre clapped his mouth shut, eyes wide. They were all very frightened men and women.
“Please let me say what needs to be said,” I continued.
“Without interruptions,” Henry Smith insisted.
“The President may be dead.”
Some of the legislators and even a few of the guards who had not heard seemed to wilt, their faces as blank as those of shocked children. “My God,” Henry Smith said.
“I will take the oath of office soon, unless we can establish that Ti Sandra Erzul is still alive. We have heard that her shuttle crashed. I assume it was destroyed by some sort of aggressive action.”
“Who? Who, in God’s name, has done this to us?” cried Representative Rudia Ely from Icaria .
“I’ve been told that we will be negotiating with people from Cailetet, representing Earth. Earth seems to have decreed that all our thinkers and computers be shut down by activated evolvons.”
“We swept them!” someone shouted. “There were guarantees!”
“Quiet!” Henry Smith yelled.
I asked Lieh Walker, the head of the Point One Com and Surveillance team, to give us a status report. Her words provided no comfort. We knew conditions around most of Schiaparelli, and there were bursts of information from places as far away as Milankovic and Promethei Terra, but no complete picture. “Communications with other parts of Mars are severely restricted,” she said. “Even if we had the data, we could not assemble it into anything coherent. Our interpreters are down. Everything’s badly polluted except our slates and a few personal computers with CPUs made on Mars.”
When she finished, I spoke again. “Our position may be untenable for the time being. Not only is Mars paralyzed, but it seems the Terries have laced parts of the planet with locusts.”
Not all the legislators understood the term. Martians have always been known for a tight domestic focus. I explained briefly. “Is that possible?” one asked.
Henry Smith glanced at me as if for moral support. “I’ve had some briefings on it,” he said. “It’s a little buried cesspool of tech. Nobody much admits to that sort of thing.”
“Then we’re dead,” said Argyre.
“Don’t settle for anything so final,” I said sharply. “Some options are still open.”
Dandy Breaker entered the chamber and told me that the negotiators from Cailetet had arrived by shuttle at the depot. “They’re clean and well-dressed,” he said contemptuously. “Their stuff seems to work.”
I glanced at Lieh Walker for an explanation. She dropped the edges of her lips, eyes flashing anger. “Cailetet has been removed from our net links,” she said. “They may not be affected, but they are lying low. There is nothing from their regions coming through Point One com.”
I studied the legislators. I would need a witness and some support for my negotiations. I had to pick wisely from a group I knew only in passing; the interim government had never quite integrated. Ti Sandra had conducted a lot of business personally with these people, but I had met only a few, very briefly.