A Desert Called Peace

by Tom Kratman

  Bowman considered that as the two walked. After a few contemplative moments he agreed.

  First Landing, Hudson, FSC, 27/9/459 AC

  Lourdes had passed on the news when Carrera had called in to the Casa Linda from his hotel in Phoenix Rising. He was shocked, at first. Then, secretly, he was pleased. That made him feel terribly guilty. Still, try as he might, he had not been able to shake the pleasure of Eugene's most timely demise. His shame grew with that failure, warring with his joy.

  I am a low-down, no good, bastard. I should be ashamed, he thought, and I am. But even so, I am glad the piece of shit is out of the way.

  Having flown up for the funeral, Pat had listened patiently to the Jewish branch of the family's rabbi droning on and on about Eugene's many virtues; his love of animals, his support for equal rights, his staunch activism. All true enough, I suppose, provided you add in "eager support to terrorist organizations."

  Now, standing in bright winter sunshine at the graveside, with Eugene's heart-broken mother weeping into her third husband's arms . . . Aunt Sarah was always good to me. Always. Too bad she has to suffer. She deserves better.

  Cousin Annie, smelling more than a little of strong drink, leaned against Pat Hennessey for support. His arm helped her stand as she shook with great shuddering sobs. She whispered, over and over, "Poor Eugene. Oh, the terrible things I've said to him."

  As the funeral began to break up, Pat half carried Annie to Aunt Sarah's side. The two women fell upon each other with weeping. Pat and Sarah's current husband held back.

  Finally, Annie backed off and Pat took Sarah in his arms, cradling her aged head with one hand. "I am sorry," he whispered to her. "For you, I am sorry. I know what it's like."

  Excursus

  From: Legio del Cid: to Build an Army (reprinted here with permission of the Army War College, Army of the Federated States of Columbia, Slaughter Ravine, Plains, FSC)

  If there were any attribute that perhaps could be applied to all Moslems, and especially the more radical Salafis, everywhere, it would have to be their exquisite sense of timing.

  True, of course, self-deception was nearly universal—witness their continuing, and apparently groundless, belief that they could somehow defeat the Zion Defense Force and drive the Jews into the sea. Witness, too, the steady frequency with which the Jews drove the Moslems farther into the desert instead. Yet many Moslems knew better. Indeed, it was precisely those who did know better who made some of the most fertile ground for terrorist recruiting and joined the Salafi Ikhwan.

  Bombast, too, was something of a cultural characteristic, one closely related to self-deception. And even among the terrorist crew, those who had given up on victory through real strength, bombast was quite unremarkable. Yet, even here, there were exceptions.

  But the sense of timing, that inner light that tells one the precisely wrong time to take an action—if not all Moslems enjoyed it, then certainly the culture was pervaded with it, they all received the dubious benefits of it . . . and in a sense, all had come to expect it.

  Has a young Federated States just ended a war with a great maritime power? Obviously this was the best of all possible times to begin piratical attacks on FSC shipping. Was an older and much more powerful Federated States about to show a little more evenhandedness in Zionic-Moslem relations? That was the surest sign possible that a planeload of handicapped orphans on their way to a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Fantasy World was about to be blown from the sky. Has Zion's prime minister announced he is willing to trade a modicum of security for some chance at peace? Pay that man's life insurance premium because as certain as daylight he'll be dead at Salafi hands before the month is over. Is the Federated States about to engage in a great military enterprise to free one Moslem state from another oppressing it? Be certain that both the Moslem adversary and its friends will do everything possible to insure that the timing of their predictable defeat is perfect . . . for the Federated States. It was as if an entire culture was locked onto one of those decision-making diagrams, one where every block is labeled, "make serious mistake here," and that culture must always, always, always choose the "yes" arrow . . . and at the worst possible time.

  So it happened that in the Republic of Balboa in the fall of 459 . . .

  The first sign of the attack came at a pumping station in El Toro, Balboa. An oil tanker was being refilled with crude from the McKinley oil fields when, suddenly, the station ceased pumping oil and began to spurt air. The puzzled pumping crew immediately called the sending point at the small oil port, Puerto Armados, on the northern side and was informed that pressure was down all along the system.

  No one was injured directly by the explosion of the pipeline. Several hours later a small family of sharecroppers downhill by several miles drowned—husband, wife, and two small children—in a flood of silently moving McKinley crude.

  The next attack, coming only minutes later, was much more noticeable. A parade celebrating the adoption of Balboa's first constitution passed by a step van loaded with several tons of ammonium nitrate based fertilizer, soaked with fuel, and containing also a number of propane tanks. The thin, sheet-metal walls of the van had been reinforced with thick glass originally intended for one of Ciudad Balboa's newest high rises. As it happened the nearest object to the van was a float carrying a bevy of young high school girls. When the bomb detonated, the glass shattered into shards and flew outward. Without warning the little flock of dark-eyed Balboan beauties was turned into a red paste obscenity in the blink of an eye. Hundreds of bystanders were killed or injured.

  Within seconds, another explosion rocked the city, this one in the busy shopping district of Via Hispanica. Windows to small shops and exclusive boutiques were driven inward to tear and rend shoppers and store clerks alike. Several dozen people, those in the immediate vicinity of the blast, simply ceased to exist, blown to atoms. Among these were some numbers of children as well.

  Unlike the first two, the third and fourth attacks in the city were suicide bombs. The third detonated at the very peak of the stately Bridge of the Columbias. Twenty-one cars were blown completely off of the bridge on both sides. Some dozens more were destroyed or damaged depending on both distance from the blast and luck. The pavement was blasted entirely through at the spot where the bomb detonated. The enormous steel arches holding up the bridge, however, withstood the blast fairly well.

  The last bomb was crashed into the presidential palace, a lightly guarded mansion. It being a national holiday, the president was at home.

  Her body was never found.

  PART II

  Chapter Nine

  Cui Bono (who benefits)?

  —Cicero

  UEPF Spirit of Peace, 27 April, 2511

  The trip back from Atlantis Base had not been uneventful. One hundred and sixty-seven kilometers out from the docking bay a short had developed. Robinson had been the first to notice the distinctive stink in the recycled air. He'd wondered, later, if that had been because the flight crew had simply grown used to such smells.

  In any case, it had been he who had first noticed and sounded the alarm. It was a damned good thing he had, too. A short in the lights was one thing, and likely survivable. A short in life support that turned into a fire was something else again.

  The pilot, copilot and high admiral managed to scramble into EV suits in time. Sadly, the steward, while even quicker, had a faulty suit and suffocated before Robinson's eyes as the cabin filled with smoke and the pilot broke seal to cut off the fire.

  It was that, the image of a man dying slowly and miserably in front of him, far more than the fanatical glare in Mustafa's eyes, that decided Robinson to think further on the wild Salafi's scheme.

  To start a war, the high admiral mused back in his cabin aboard the Spirit of Peace. He laughed slightly at the thought. That wasn't exactly in my portfolio, now was it?

  On the other hand, he reasoned, there wasn't anything in my orders about not starting a war. And there was that sectio
n about securing the blessings of peace for the Earth. I can hardly do that with my fleet crumbling around me, now can I?

  Robinson turned his bolted-down swivel chair towards his desk, laying his two elbows down and leaning forward to rest his nose lightly on his two middle fingers.

  Difficult, difficult. I'll have to keep it almost all to myself, do it almost all myself. Some of the things Mustafa had in mind? My crews would balk, most of them, and I can hardly afford a mutiny in the fleet.

  But the benefits? If we can break the FSC, who on Terra Nova could resist a rising progressive tide? The TU? They're the model for progressivism on that planet. The other, continental, supranationals? They aspire to become like the TU. Bharat? Nationalist in some ways, yes, but such a hodgepodge of ethnicities they could be broken up with little more than a nudge to some of the separatist groups. Zhong Guo? Almost as badly mixed as Bharat. They could be handled.

  Then, too, this could be exciting and I'm bloody bored.

  "Computer?" Robinson demanded of the Earth-tech model sitting atop his desk.

  "Yes, High Admiral."

  "Create a file. Label it . . . mmm . . . 'Pax 2511.' Restrict it to my voice only, both additions and access."

  "Done, High Admiral."

  Robinson paused, organizing his thoughts.

  "Computer, add to the file all that is known to us about the Terra Novan World League and the Tauran Union. In particular I want profiles of all the major players. Then I want you to find whatever is known about the Salafi Ikhwan. Get me everything available on the subjects of guerilla warfare and terrorism. Lastly, for now, I want an economic analysis of the Federated States of Columbia, Terra Nova. Emphasis is on vulnerabilities. After you are done, erase all traces of your search, except for what remains in the file, Pax 2511. Work."

  "Working, High Admiral."

  UEPF Spirit of Peace, 28 May, 2511

  "Mustafa hasn't the slightest idea of what he's about," said Robinson aloud in the privacy of his quarters. His eyes had grown a bit tired from reading the material he had had collected and which was on display on the Novan-built view sceen mounted on the wall. He looked away, resting them on a painting he had kept for himself out of the recently auctioned Vatican collection.

  "He really thinks this god of his—which does not and cannot exist—will do all the heavy thinking and lifting. He really believes that if he and his followers will only sacrifice and fight, then everything else will work out by divine will. Do I really want to entrust the future of my fleet, my planet and my class to a lunatic like that? I think not," the high admiral scoffed.

  For over a month Robinson had been studying the problem. In that month he had come no nearer to a solution than he had been when he had last visited Atlantis Base. The FSC, with its three hundred million people, its industry and economy that dominated the planet, its matchless armed forces, was simply too tough to break under the limited attacks Mustafa had in mind. Add in that it was quite capable, albeit at a terrible cost, of swatting the Peace Fleet from space and . . .

  "Not a chance," Robinson said to himself. "And not a chance I will give him the nukes to make his attacks more effective. Simple analysis would tell the Feds where they had come from; they've already got plenty of material to compare them to from the remains of the two cities we leveled in their Great Global War. And they would retaliate; there's no question about that. They couldn't then, with no way to loft a warhead into space, but now they could and they would.

  "Tough problem."

  He stood and began to pace.

  "Should I have the bio people transfer some form of disease to Mustafa? No . . . no, I don't think so. There are some things that even I can't contemplate doing. Bio war is one of them."

  Robinson turned his eyes back to his view screen and continued reading.

  UEPF Spirit of Peace, 29 May, 2511

  The conference room had been paneled in rare, iridescent Terra Novan silverwood by one of Robinson's predecessors. It lent the room a warmth that was sadly lacking in most of the ship's areas. The table was likewise from below, as were the chairs that now held some nine members of Robinson's staff.

  There'd been nothing for it but to bring some of his staff in for some small parts. Not that Robinson had told them anything important or ever intended to; far from it. But there were questions he didn't have time to answer and which the computer was simply unable to bring the required creativity of thought to bear upon. He needed human help.

  "First question," Robinson began. "What can we consider to be progressive forces and organizations on Terra Nova?"

  "Assuming by 'progressive' you mean the kind of forces which brought peace to Earth and prominence to our ancestors," answered his sociology officer, Lieutenant Commander Khan, a very white and blonde atheist who happened to have one prominent and progressive ancestor from old Pakistan, "then the answer is fairly simple. Progressive forces include the supranationals like the World League and the Tauran Union, the entertainment industry, the news industry, the humanitarian industry, the legal industry—especially that part of it devoted to international law—and those elements of the economy, like Oak Tree Computing, that are detached from any given nation state and benefit from the global economy the Terra Novans have developed in the last ten or twelve years."

  "Humanitarian industry?" queried Robinson.

  "It's an industry like any other," answered Khan evenly. "What they manufacture is guilt and good feelings. The good feelings they sell at a high premium to those who need to feel good about themselves. They're no different from a company that makes cold remedies, except they are dealing with the relief of guilty emotions rather than sniffles. That, and that those who manufacture cold remedies are not also in the business of making colds."

  "I'd always thought of those as existing to do good," the high admiral objected.

  Khan, the realist, smiled. "They manage to do pretty well by doing good, Admiral. And it is highly questionable whether they do any real good, at least of the kinds they claim and probably even think they do. Do they feed the hungry? Surely. And they will keep feeding the hungry, as long as the hungry look pitiable enough to collect money for doing so. But the net result of feeding the hungry tends to be the destruction of local agriculture, which ensures a continuing supply of the hungry, a continuing supply of poster children, and a continuing supply of donations to assuage guilt.

  "Then, too," Khan continued, "they can afford to pay for the best local housing wherever they go, and that drives the price of local housing beyond the reach of all but a very few locals. Do they educate people? Indeed they do, and thereby ensure that the most capable people get enough education to leave the place of their birth and go where the money and living are better. Alternatively, they will tend to hire highly educated people in these undeveloped hellholes they inflict themselves upon and use them for highly skilled work . . . like driving around and translating for the humanitarian aid workers. Oh, yeah, that's value added."

  The fleet's Druidic chaplain interjected, "I remind you, Ms. Khan, that it was precisely those kind of groups that helped our ancestors bring Earth to peace and stability at last."

  "The admiral asked me for analysis, Your Wisdom," answered Khan respectfully. Atheist or not one had to respect the power of Earth's official clergy of which the Druids were a part. "I make no moral judgments. What I have told him is the effective operating method of the local international humanitarian aid community, as it was for our own planet's. They are a plague to whatever place they visit, but they are equally a boon to the cause of international progressivism."

  "What Sosh has said is true, Admiral," added the staff communications officer. "But it could not be true unless the news media and entertainment industries of which she spoke were willing to accentuate the positive and cover up the negative."

  Khan nodded her head in agreement.

  Robinson tapped his fingers against his face, thinking. "How long," he asked, "before the Novans can achieve interstellar t
ravel?"

  Estimates ranged wildly from "Fifty years" to "Centuries."

  Engineering disagreed. "Twenty years, Admiral. Possibly as few as fifteen."

  That was a shock.

  "Explain that estimate," the high admiral ordered.

  "The state of their technology right now is about where Earth was in the early twenty-first century. But that's only in general. They're already ahead of where we were in some areas—the Federated States of Columbia is, in any case—because a), they know a lot more of what is possible than our ancestors did and b) the FSC has been fanatical about space research ever since your predecessor nuked two of their cities."

  "That doesn't mean they will though," Ms. Khan objected. It really was a frightening thought, the barbarians of Terra Nova loose in space.

  "No," Engineering agreed. "But they could and that is what the High Admiral asked."

  "Could we prevent them from doing so short of war?" Robinson asked.

  "No." Everyone agreed. "No."

  Khan added, "Though the kind of war might make a difference."

  Atlantis Base, Earth Year 14 June, 2511

  They met in Robinson's ashore quarters, a spacious house set apart from all other buildings by a high wall and broad, green lawn. Lit naturally by tall, narrow windows, the apartment was furnished in the best of Earth and Novan styles, kept spotless by a crew of dimwitted proles. The tables were gleaming wood; the couches and chairs supple leather. Thick rugs covered the porcelain tiles of the floors and rare art hung on the walls.