“…the Ainu.”
“…the Moken.”
“…the Roma.”
“…the Siksiká.”
“…the Harari.”
“…the Arrernte.”
“…the Kannadigas.”
“…the Yoruba.”
“…the Mayans.”
“…the Guaraní.”
“…the Kazaks.”
“…the Hakka.”
“…the Tapirapé.”
“…the Samoans.”
“…the Ojibwe.”
“…the Bororo.”
“…the Mosuo.”
“…the Chukchis.”
Neema felt a responsibility to not be numbed by the sheer volume of testimonies that kept coming one after another. Volumes could be filled with the barrage of denunciations. A casual listener to that first session of the Alliance of Survivor Peoples could easily conclude that the great powers of the world had convened on abuse and mistreatment as a routine of life. The more Neema heard of what other regions endured, the harder it was for her to stay committed to her stance against collective revenge.
“The delegate from the Chukchis has finished. Speaking slots are complete for the morning and this assembly goes into recess. Meals will be served in the adjoining hall. We’re capable of accommodating halal, sattvika, ahimsa, jhatka, sarbloh, tapu, bigu, zhaijiao, and kosher requirements. Feel free to let your waiter know about your people’s diet. For ease of interaction, seats in the dinner hall are grouped in three zones by working language: Iberian tongues, Nordic tongues, and Chinese tongues. Please do not lose sight of your assigned translator. This assembly will gather again at one in the afternoon.”
Neema waited until Gilberto showed up and helped her to her feet. “Where were you?” she asked him.
“I was just talking to a group of Hutterites. We have their support.”
She nodded with satisfaction. “Those are the easy ones. We have many more to convince.” Her hand grabbed his arm as she started walking toward the dinner hall. “Were the Druze able to come?”
“Things have become complex in that region. I just received news that the Canutic Empire negotiated peace meetings between the Ottomans and the Chinese. Both sides gave up their claims to Jerusalem, and the entire region has been placed under Swedish control.”
“Maybe we’ll be able to bring them next time. Are the Piaroa here?”
“Yes, but I haven’t had a chance to speak to them. I’m sorry. Translators are working a tight schedule.”
“Don’t worry. Take me to eat. Maybe I can get a word with them.”
But before she could look for the delegates she had in mind, she was called by name from a table in the Nordic section. She turned toward the voice and saw a woman walking excitedly in her direction. She introduced herself as the delegate from the Tunumiit, a tribe that lived in the Canutic colony of Greenland, and invited her to join a discussion taking place between representatives of circumpolar communities living under each of the three big empires.
After thinking it over, Neema decided she could use a moment to calm her nerves. She ordered Gilberto to do the rest of the networking they’d planned to do, and agreed to sit at the Nordic table.
“I was telling the gentleman from Kuye,” began the Tunumiu delegate, “about the submarine patrols along the route from Denmark to China. Their observations on their end appear to confirm our own: as the polar ice has melted, Denmark has relied less and less on their favorite weapon.”
The man she was referring to nodded and introduced himself to Neema as the delegate from the Ulta. She sensed the group was midway through a longer exposition. “We’ve been in a lucky position to witness the change. Ever since the spark of the Sinic Heresy, the Great Ming has strived to be perceived as destined to save the world. So, when the war began, they adopted a policy of not suspending trade with their enemies. They wanted to appear as friendly partners even as they sent their steel cars all over Asia. On our island, for example, they built a trading post, both to hide a garrison that would monitor the Iberian colony of Japan and to avoid giving the Danes an excuse to bring their ships all the way to the Chinese mainland. During all this, we stayed in contact with our sister tribe, the Ulch, who live in the mainland. We found ways to exchange news and supplies all through the war. Their revolts against the Danes were to no avaiclass="underline" there was simply no way to stop the burning operation. And those forests still burn! It’s ridiculous. No one can breathe in peace. It’s gotten so bad that now the Danes have taken to the habit of sentencing their petty thieves to man the trade stations along the coast because no one else will work there.”
“All that melted ice must have gone somewhere,” said the Tunumiu.
Neema said, “I imagine in Greenland the effect of losing the glaciers has been more exposed land, but elsewhere we’ve heard of problems on coastal areas. Each hurricane season is more intense than the last. Bombaim gets flooded all the time; so do Alexandria and Cartagena. The entire Sundarban forest is gone. Maybe you’ve never heard the names of Rotterdam or Venice, but they used to be crucial to the European economy. Last night I was reading an internal report about this meeting, and it says that many island tribes in the Pacific weren’t able to appoint delegates to the Alliance because their territories have vanished.”
The Ulta nodded. “When I was a child, my grandparents showed me how far our shoreline used to go.”
“We’ve seen it firsthand,” agreed the Tunumiu. “Without the weight of glaciers, the earth is readjusting. Volcanoes are making Iceland uninhabitable.”
“Well,” said the Ulta, “it took some time, but the Danes got what they wanted: the Arctic has no ice left. And thus they no longer need to navigate beneath it. My family works loading the trading ships that arrive in our island, and we keep the memory of how, year after year, Canutic ships have shifted toward a more conventional shape.”
“I wasn’t aware of a change in ship design,” said Neema. “In the rest of the world, the Canutic Empire still uses submarines.”
“Of course they do. Look at what the Pope did: he let the Danes keep a few of their prewar possessions, but he was smart enough to scatter them in distant corners of the world. So their navy is stretched thin. Did you know they’ve instituted compulsory military service? They didn’t even do that during the war. They need to station patrols around every coast because the colonies can’t assist in each other’s defense. To be honest, the only reason why the Pope didn’t touch the continent at the South Pole was that the Catholics didn’t know it was there, and now it’s where you’ll find the strongest defense perimeter. Submarines are excellent for that job, and with the polar ice gone, they’re no longer needed for trade.”
Another woman weighed in. “I find it interesting how the Danes have taken the example of the Dutch and are trying to present themselves as being primarily a merchant nation.” Neema recognized her from previous conversations. She came from the Tlingits, a tribe living at the northern end of the Californian Empire, their ancient territory badly divided by the Novadanian border. “And they’re turning into aggressive sellers. This year, they lowered the price of their chicken meat below its shipping cost so the Californians wouldn’t buy it from the Prairie Confederacy.”
The Tunumiu woman replied, “They’re jealous of everyone. We live closer to Vinland than to Europe, and still the Danes use their submarines to block all shipments of Novadanian fruit.”
“If I may add to the list,” said the Ulta, “Canutic companies are buying crude oil from Kuye, processing it in their own factories, and selling it back to us as lamp fuel.”
“I see,” said Neema. She was briefly distracted by the odd way the Tunumiu was nodding in rhythm with the Ulta’s sentence, but she went back to her own chain of thought. “The pattern that seems to emerge from this behavior is that the Danes understood they couldn’t dominate the world by arms anymore, so they’ve resorted to snatching the world’s money.”