“That tells us nothing meaningful. Your side finds the entire bomb project despicable.”
“Let me make it simple,” interjected Gilberto. “Destroying a city is wrong. But your plan is to destroy more than one, which crosses the line between wrong and evil.”
“We’ll not redo the vote today,” said Yakub. “The Alliance made its decision. We will attack. And as for Neema’s feelings, she was a voice against the bomb, a voice which carried influence, so we had every right to preserve the secrecy of the project.” He looked up. “Piedad, good to see you. Come in.” Piedad entered the tent and sat down. She was around the same age as Hana, younger than Gediminas but a senior to the others. “Meet Gilberto Rezende and Hana Te Ngaru, and this gentleman is Gilberto’s secretary, whose name I’m sorry to forget.”
Piedad took the bowl of soup she was offered and opened her mouth to provide her update on the preparations for the test, but was interrupted by the unfinished discussion.
“Neema would never have betrayed us.” Gilberto’s voice was on the verge of breaking into a sob.
Yakub offered his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “Then let’s be glad she didn’t, and let’s move on.”
The silence quickly made Piedad uncomfortable. Wishing desperately to change to a less heated topic of conversation, she turned to Hana. “Forgive my curiosity,” she asked in Danish. “Is Te Ngaru a common surname among your people?”
Hana welcomed the tangent. “The answer to that is rather long.”
“That’s fine with me.”
“All right. First of all, the tribes of Aotearoa don’t really use surnames the way Europeans understand them. I took the name Te Ngaru from my mother’s side of the family.”
Piedad mulled it over. “So you don’t have a surname?”
“Legally speaking, I should. Not that I can use it, anyway. My father’s Norwegian, but I’m barred from claiming his lineage, his lands, or his coat of arms, which I can’t fathom what I’d do with.”
“Why can’t you take your father’s surname?”
“Canutic law requires people of mixed race to add some permanent identifier to their legal names so we can’t try to pass ourselves off as Europeans. In the colony of New Sjælland, that identifier is Ngati Pākehā. In all my legal papers,” she paused, taking a deep breath that Piedad heard as signaling lifelong exhaustion, “I have the surname Ngati Pākehā.”
“Is that a word in your language?”
“It’s not even from my people’s language, but we’re under the same governor as the Māori, so the whole colony follows the same laws. Why do you ask?”
“Maybe it’s a silly coincidence. I attended the meeting when the Alliance voted to develop the bomb, and I remember the Moriori delegate who voted against it. Your face reminds me of him, and I was wondering whether you two might be related. He introduced himself as Lars Te Ngaru.”
“Ah. I… yes.”
“I overheard him having an argument after we’d voted. I’m not going to say he convinced me, but he made some powerful points. Do you know him?”
Hana drew her face closer to Piedad’s. “That was me. I used to be known by that name. I mean, my Canutic papers still say that name, but I no longer use it for Alliance business.”
“Oh…” Piedad stood motionless for an embarrassingly long time. “Is that something people of the Pacific do?”
Hana almost laughed. “It’s something people—period—do.” She continued eating without waiting for Piedad to say more.
Gediminas said to Yakub, “I’d like to know how the bombing targets were selected.”
“Exact retribution,” he explained. “The empires have destroyed the sacred sites of the nations they’ve conquered, so we’re going to destroy their sacred sites.”
“Such as Rome,” whispered the old man.
“It’s the quickest way,” said Piedad, shooting a glance of reproach at Yakub. “It’ll make them realize we’re stronger than their god. It’ll force them to negotiate.”
Gilberto asked Piedad, “And the other targets? Rome only matters to the Iberians. What will make the other empires care?”
“The idea was to ask you to wait until after the test, but I see Yakub has already ruined part of the surprise.”
Hana said in fast Danish, “Organize this ugly affair any way you want, but don’t treat the deaths of thousands like news of a baby’s name.”
Piedad looked hurt by the remark. The translator whispered in Gilberto’s ear and he glanced at Hana, unsure that she’d intended that effect, but her face was unreadable. Then Piedad said in a less confident voice, “Look, I don’t presume to know how many we’ll kill or how many we’ll save, and I’m not convinced that numbers decide the matter.”
“A number of votes already did,” said Hana, “so don’t pretend to feel conflicted. There’s a quick solution for when you don’t agree with what you’re doing, and it’s to not do it.”
None of them dared to break the silence that followed. They continued eating except Yakub. He noticed a swift exchange of looks between Gilberto and his secretary, and the unpleasant suspicion that he wasn’t getting the full picture moved him to try and know this old man. “How are things in Spain? What’s life like in the capital of the world?”
Gediminas shuddered and looked at Gilberto again.
“What’s the matter with you two?” asked Yakub. “Can’t he speak without your permission? What kind of liberation movement are we running here?”
Gilberto nodded at the old man, and he considered his reply carefully. “The most salient news that comes to mind is from the realm of letters. People are tired of reading the same boastful tales about the war and the victory over the Protestants. Now they want to read about the colonies. Sons of rich families will travel abroad for a year and return home to speak ill of the empire. From time to time, a copy of one of those books finds its way around censors and into the hands of an idealistic youngster. That small circumstance may… push a life in a risky direction. The effect accumulates with each new reader. On the surface, people flaunt their wealth, but those who pay attention can detect an unconfessed sense of repulsion.”
“Repulsion for what?” asked Piedad.
“Citizens of the empire are starting to feel uncomfortable about the source of their prosperity.”
“Oh, they’re growing a conscience now?” asked Yakub.
“No, it’s not a thing of now,” said Gediminas. “There have always been voices against the colonial system. Since the beginning. But they’re growing louder. Criticism of imperial policy is not as unthinkable as it used to be. Inquisitors have opened a new division for investigating,” he paused as he searched for the right word, “anomalous political opinions.”
“What do those books say?” asked Hana.
“Let me remember… I saw a book, don’t ask me how I obtained it, that bore the title The Nine Conquests of Peru. It’s rather repetitive; every once in a while some band made up from descendants of Spaniards rises up with the help of a Native army and declares a republic, and every time the king sends airships to bomb them back into submission. The tale emulates the flavor of a classical epic, but the king doesn’t end up looking good.”
Gilberto couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “That was written by a Spaniard?”
“You have fewer enemies than it looks from here. But the pleasures of chocolate, and potatoes, and peanuts, and coca tea, and alpaca wool, all in abundance without having to work for them… to renounce that takes a stronger soul than most have.”
“Nothing new there,” said Yakub. “We know the souls of our enemies.”
“I wonder how much of our souls we’ll keep after we follow your plan,” said Gilberto.
What Yakub was going to say was forgotten when his secretary poked his head inside the tent and announced that the bomb was all but ready.
They stepped back to the sun-scorched sand and Yakub handed them thick gray eyeglasses. “A weapon like this has never been fired, but our experts predict it will get shiny.” They followed him to the observation site. “You should be safe at this distance,” he explained, “but that means we couldn’t bring enough wire to detonate the bomb from here. The builders tell me they’re going to try a new method. They’re going to use the air as a wire.”
“Is that possible?” asked Gilberto. “We haven’t heard of that in Likasi.”
“The work that began in Likasi is being multiplied in colonies that find a way to study in secret. This particular trick was discovered at the Puerto Rico school. They were studying thunderstorms and stumbled on wireless transmission. So far it’s only workable for small amounts of energy, but we’re living in promising times.” Yakub’s gaze was still on the horizon, but the corner of his eye confirmed that Gilberto looked as discouraged as he’d intended. “Now we wait, although I don’t know what else they need to adjust.”