“That’s different.” HG had that adolescent trump-card look about him again.
“Why?!”
Barthes cut him off before he could blurt out something childish, like ‘because I said so.’ “Because on Maxroy’s Purchase the Navy was presented with a done deal. The MP economy—trade system, technology exchange, the whole lot— was already integrated with New Caledonia. The genie was already out of the bottle.”
“Well, so was ours, until the embargo. The economy, I mean.”
“Should have joined up when you had the chance.” There was no end to HG’s smugness.
“What chance was that? As a Maxroy’s Purchase colony? You’ve seen enough by now to know that would have meant civil war. We did our best to avoid that, and bloody well did, in spite of Lillith Van Zandt’s best efforts.”
“And so, we are back to no planetary government.”
“Well then how the hell did we get labeled as a bunch of dangerous, piratical, space-faring Outies if we’re so backward and primitive that we can’t even be Classified?”
“That’s rather the point, isn’t it? The bottom line is: when the Navy pops through that door, if they don’t see developed, orbital technology, they become rather determined to keep things that way. Lest you become a threat to the Empire.”
Sargon grew increasingly bored with this. He Spoke.
Asach thought long and hard, then interpreted. Not translated—there was no simple string of literal words that could convey the concepts involved—but interpreted, as best possible.
“There is planetary government now. Anyone who disagrees may leave.” Asach paused briefly. No-one stirred. Asach posed the question on Sargon’s behalf. “If there is no spaceflight, what becomes of the ar? The land? What becomes of the productivity of the land?”
“You lose control of it.”
“This we will never allow.”
HG exercised usual tact. “You’ll ‘allow’ it, or the Navy will fry the planet.”
Sargon was horrified. “They would do this? These Imperials? They would destroy ar?”
Asach answered, softly, for the benefit of the room, “They would destroy everything that lives.” That stopped the chatter, even among the engineers.
Sargon swept three hands backward impatiently. “I do not mean the living. I mean the ar. The potential. The potential of the land to produce life.”
Now Barthes answered. “If they thought the threat great enough, they would turn the soil to glass.”
Sargon’s response was involuntary. Although it involved no movement, every being in the room felt a tremor; a temblor; a wrenching, eerie wrongness in the bones, not unlike the feeling during a jump. It was the feeling that accompanies a near-strike of lightning, or rolling thunder, or the eerie noises that echo through deep caves. All shivered, or squinted their eyes, dimly aware that their bodies and brains had heard something that their ears had not.
Then Sargon Spoke. Again, Asach interpreted.
“Then you will cease arguing. You will make a solution. You will begin the work with all due haste.”
The humans looked about, confused by this. Now, the Miners began earnest conversation among themselves. Enheduanna barked orders. Farmer John had already motioned to a Runner before Asach explained.
“The Protector has just placed the entire means of this planet at your disposal. He has authorized you to procure whatever, or whomever, you need to accomplish this task. Unto death, if necessary—which I should explain is something that The Protector does not entertain lightly.”
“Just like that? Wave our hands and, voila, a solution?“
“Consider it a vote of confidence. For him, the decision is simple. The ar of this planet is threatened, and Sargon is the defender of the ar. Anything you can imagine—wealth, power, life, sanctity, even just plain getting laid—is summed up in that word. Without ar, nothing else matters. Nothing else exists.”
“Well, rationally speaking, there could of course be some level of compensation, not to mention personal preservation, that would—” The ITA representative stopped abruptly as the eldritch feeling passed through everyone again.
“Excellency, I believe The Protector feels that this is not a good time for philosophical discussion.”
“Right,” said Geery. “Down to business. What are the rules. What’s the minimum we can get away with?”
“Ah, there’s the rub. We aren’t allowed to read the rules. We have to get there on our own.”
“Oh, please.”
“Regarding the minimum necessary, there is a precedent that we could invoke.”
Heads and bodies swiveled. The astrophysicist had finally weighed in.
“Prince Samual’s World. About thirty years ago. Just after Maxroy’s Purchase joined the Empire. Around the time of first contact with the Mote. Maybe just before that. Twenty years before the first Jackson delegation arrived, anyway.”
“Care to explain, for the benefit of those of us who weren’t exactly tuned in at the time?”
The astrophysicist sighed. “I’m afraid I don’t really know the details. Before my time. I was just a kid. I just remember people talking about it—how this industrial world achieved space flight before they had even developed aircraft. ”
“Well then, a good thing you included at least one octogenarian on this panel.” The Himmists were shocked at this interjection, and showed it. They’d expected no cooperation from the True Church Elder whatsoever, let alone support.
“Call it an old man’s pride,” the Elder continued, “but I see no point in denying common knowledge, even if it isn’t common to anyone in this room but me. And anyway, it’s a matter of public record, and I’m getting pretty tired of all this Imperial bureaucratic grandstanding, as if we were a bunch of apes. ” With this he glared at the row behind Sargon. The row ignored him.
“Prince Samual’s World. Iron and steel industrial. Navy stumbled across its threshold, and the Sammies got wind somehow”—at this, a glance toward Asach—“that if they didn’t have spaceflight, a bunch of aristos would be granted colonial concessions, and they’d not be admitted as a Classified world. So they upended a big salad bowl, mounted a chain cannon in it, and plopped a tin can on top. Stuffed in a girl and a bunch of artillery shells and gyroscopes. Not in that order. Fired artillery shells non-stop into the bowl. The blasts drove everything up. Damned near killed her, but she made it to orbit.”
“What about re-entry!”
“No need. Put out a distress call when she got up there, and the Navy obligingly picked her up.”
“And that got them a Classification?”
“The main thing was, nobody could—or, anyway, nobody said they could—prove that the design had come from offworld.”
“Did it?”
“Well, there were rumors. One was, they found it in a Temple archive on Makassar.” Another rheumy glance toward Asach, who again did not respond.
“Makassar? Why Makassar?”
With an uncharacteristic but perhaps understandable lack of reserve, Colchis Barthes interrupted. “Why anywhere? I’m always amazed that people are shocked to find things in archives. That’s what they’re for.”
“Well, yes, amen to that, but I was really referring to the fact that she wound up exiled there.”
“On Makassar?”
“Yep.”
“How do you know that?” Barthes marveled silently at HG’s capacity to greet any new bit of information as a personal affront.