Executive

by Piers Anthony

  I pondered, ill at ease. “It would also be a lie,” I said. “Covert activity is one thing; a lie is another. I want my administration to be based on the truth.”

  “The truth is that the Premier of Ganymede tipped us off,” Spirit reminded me. “Do you want to put that out as news?”

  “No. To preserve a confidence is not to lie. We must find a way to act without violating either the confidence or the truth.”

  She shook her head as if in frustration. Then she took hold of me and kissed me. “My brother, you are my conscience. Without you I would be lost.”

  I was halfway dazed by the compliment. My sister does not speak often in that manner. But even in my distraction of the moment I noticed Coral exchanging a glance with Shelia and nodding. Apparently the guideline that was obvious to me was not as clear to the others until enunciated.

  Spirit regrouped. “Well, Saturn now knows that we had a sub in there. Would it be fair to say that we had a suspicion about their ship, that we now feel is confirmed?”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “But we can’t say what our suspicion is.”

  “Suppose we accuse them of renewed arms smuggling? That’s not exactly what they’re doing, but it is something Jupiter has always been sensitive about. After that business with the impounded ship ...”

  She meant the ploy Tocsin had used to discredit Ganymede and void our exchange of ambassadors. That had been aimed primarily at my candidacy, because I had been the first ambassador to Ganymede after President Kenson reestablished diplomatic relations. I had acted to expose that ruse, but certainly it had heightened Jupiter awareness of that particular issue. It could account for our increased surveillance of Ganymede.

  Where was the line between diplomacy and duplicity? What means were justified for what ends? I remained disquieted, finding this philosophical territory murky, but saw no better alternative. “Do it,” I said.

  So it went out to the media: our accusation that Ganymede was violating the covenant and shipping arms again. An alert went out to the Jupiter Navy, and our ships changed course and made for Ganymede. Of course, it would be days before the majority of them were in position, but the order was dramatic enough.

  “Sir,” Shelia said.

  “Have I mentioned that I plan to have you keel-hauled without a helmet, just to keep you quiet, girl?”

  “After the crisis,” she agreed. “A Saturn defector wishes to see you personally. He seems to have information.”

  “He has been checked by our personnel?”

  “Now in progress. They are impressed.”

  “Information relevant to the present situation?”

  “They think so, sir.”

  “Then move him on through and bring him in.”

  She returned to her equipment, relaying the order. Within the hour the Premier of Ganymede was on the screen. “Señor Tyrant, we are not guilty of this thing! We are shipping no arms!”

  I scowled impressively. “We sent a sub in to intercept your freighter from Saturn. It did not even wait for our challenge. It torpedoed our sub! What greater evidence of guilt can there be than that?”

  “That ship contained no arms!” he protested. It took about three and a half seconds for the signal to travel at light speed, each way, so there was a necessary pause that we accepted as a matter of course. “It acted only to protect itself!”

  “Then what was its cargo?” I demanded. We both knew what it was, but it was necessary to put the mystery on the record.

  “Why did you send a sub into Ganymede space?” he countered. “We offered no provocation! You tried to attack a routine supply ship!”

  “That was no supply ship!” I exclaimed angrily.

  He gazed at me cannily. “How can you say that, Señor? Do you accuse me of falsification?”

  Of course, he was guilty of just that, but his code was not mine, and this declaration was necessary to clear him of the particular suspicion that counted.

  I formed a smile with obvious difficulty. “Of course not, Premier. If you are giving me your word that that ship carried no arms, I must accept that.” I hoped I did not look as if I accepted it. The agents of Saturn would be analyzing my every nuance of expression, trying to determine exactly how much I knew or suspected.

  “Thank you, Señor Tyrant. Now about that sub in our space—”

  “Sir,” Shelia said.

  “I’m on screen at the moment,” I reminded her, nettled. She knew this was not the time for an interruption.

  “This may be relevant, sir.”

  I caught her tone. I heeded it. “Premier, if you will pardon me one moment ...” I said quickly in Spanish.

  Seven seconds later the Premier made a gesture of unconcern. But I was already inspecting the intruder. He was a man of about thirty, wearing ill-fitting Navy fatigues that had evidently been borrowed recently. Probably his own clothing had been taken by my security crew, to be quite sure he had nothing that could harm me.

  “Admiral, I am from North Saturn,” he said in Russian.

  I looked suitably baffled, though, as it happens, I do speak the language. It was not at that time a talent I wanted to advertise. “English,” I said. “Can you speak English? ¿Espanol?”

  “I—from Saturn,” he said haltingly in English. “Infor—information. Interest you.”

  “Perhaps,” I agreed guardedly. “But right now I’m in the middle of a call.”

  “About cargo—ship.” I could tell that he believed that what he had to tell me was vitally important, and I knew that my personnel, including Shelia, had shunted him on up to me as rapidly as possible.

  “The ship?” I asked, my pulse quickening. “The one now approaching Ganymede?”

  “Think—so,” he agreed. “I—technician on special equipment. Control brain—distance. Very new.”

  “Mind control—without drugs?” I asked, beginning to see the relevance. “Take over people without touching them?”

  He nodded vigorously. “Experimental—but effective. Sent to Ganymede.”

  With new surmise I returned my gaze to the screen. “Premier, if not arms, what about experimental equipment?” I demanded. “To subvert our agents without leaving any telltale drug traces or brain-wave distortions?”

  “Absolutely not, Señor!” he exclaimed indignantly. “How can you believe a defector? He would say anything to gain a rich reward from Jupiter!”

  “Or the locks at Tanamo,” I said, as if just tuning in on something new. “Presently coded to our personnel, though under Ganymedan suzerainty. If those personnel could be subverted by such a device without our knowledge—” My expression abruptly hardened. “Premier, what the hell are you pulling?”

  “All a mistake!” the Premier exclaimed. “A lie, to sully Ganymede!”

  “Then you won’t object to allowing our personnel to board and inspect that Saturn ship before it docks,” I said. “To verify that what you say is true, Señor Premier.”

  “It is a Saturn ship!” he protested. “Only the Saturn authorities can permit that! But I’m sure that if you apply to them, they will be happy to assuage your doubt.”

  “Señor, I mean to inspect that ship before it docks!” I said. “Will you deny docking clearance until this is accomplished?”

  “I cannot do that!” he countered desperately. “Saturn is the ally of Ganymede! But I assure you, Señor—”

  I cut him off with a Spanish expletive that related to the manner in which he pained my genital member. I returned to the defector. “What details can you provide?”

  He provided what he could. Soon I was satisfied that Saturn was doing research of the nature described and did plan to use it to corrupt the agents of other planets. Whether this was the equipment actually on the present ship was uncertain, but it did provide us with what we vitally needed: the alternate source of information right at the critical moment. Now we could act without implicating the Premier of Ganymede. Indeed, on the record, the Premier had done his best to conceal the informa
tion from us.

  Later I learned that QYV had been responsible for producing the defector at the critical moment. I was glad I had put Reba in charge; she had really helped me that time.

  We spirited the defector away to a safe and comfortable hiding place and contacted Saturn. Naturally their bureaucracy stalled. They didn’t deny our demand, they merely ran it through their labyrinthine channels. It was obvious that nothing would be accomplished within the day’s time required for the ship to arrive and dock.

  I cut that short by putting through a hotline call directly to the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Saturn, Comrade Karzhinov. Any call to Saturn, under optimum conditions, requires a minimum of half an hour, because the orbit of that planet is more than four astronomical units from the orbit of Jupiter, and, of course, one astronomical unit is the archaic measure of Earth’s distance from the sun, or about eight and a third light minutes. Normally Saturn is farther from Jupiter than that, depending on the planets’ positions within those orbits; at its worst, the separation can be about fifteen astronomical units, or over two hours’ one-way signal time. It has been claimed that this slowness of communication is responsible for the deteriorating relations between the two, but I regard that as nonsense. After all, Uranus is never closer than fourteen astronomical units to Jupiter, yet our relations with that planet generally have been good. No, it is political, not spatial, relations that generate the problem.

  But while we were expending the hours required to contact Karzhinov directly, that Saturn ship was still proceeding to Ganymede. I’m not sure what the Saturn day-night cycle was at that time relative to ours or how long it took the North Saturn leader to read my message and formulate his reply. Probably he took time to consult his advisers. Thus it was about ten hours before I heard from him. I did not stand on one foot waiting; I retired and slept and handled the onrushing routine.

  Then, when the ship was within twelve hours of Ganymede, I received Karzhinov’s response. It was terse and to the point: The ship was a Saturn freighter, not subject to our interference, and we would respect its integrity or pay the price.

  Spirit and I exchanged a glance. “He’s toughing it out,” she said. “He knows that by the time we exchange many more messages, the ship will have docked.”

  “He thinks I am made of putty,” I said. Putty is a concept derived from the nature of a substance once used to caulk windows; it deforms readily under pressure.

  “Saturn does not respect putty,” she said.

  “Then let’s up the ante. We have time for one more exchange, at this rate, before that ship docks. What can we do to dispel the putty image?”

  “We can put the Navy on Full Alert.”

  I pursed my lips. There have been various procedures over the centuries for the preparation for action, with various names and codes. At present Alert meant that the Navy would be marshaling for possible battle. It did not signal war, but it was not a thing that was done without reason. We had invoked a partial Alert when we oriented on Ganymede; a Full Alert would involve all our ships disposed around the Solar System, including those in Saturn Space. That could be construed as menacing. Certainly it would signal the seriousness with which we viewed the present situation.

  “Do it,” I said.

  Shelia made the call. Within a minute Emerald’s dark face was on the main screen. “You sure, Tyrant?” she demanded.

  “Full Alert,” I repeated.

  “Done. It will take a while for it to be effective in the farther reaches. To what extent do we grant local autonomy?”

  Because when it required four hours to send a signal to a ship in the Neptune region, the admiral in charge there could not necessarily afford to wait eight hours for the answer to any query.

  “Limited,” I said. “I don’t want some fool starting SWIII on his own itch.”

  “Just see that he doesn’t start it right here,” she replied, smiling grimly as she faded out.

  I smiled in return, though the screen was now blank. Emerald had called on a private beam, but we both knew that the transmission would be intercepted, recorded, and decoded by Saturn agents. She knew I was making a gesture for Saturn to interpret, in the game of hints and signals that interplanetary relations was. Her informality suggested that we did not know we would be tapped, and her remark about the possibility of accidentally launching Solar System War Three suggested that I had that potential. It would not be a comfortable interpretation for the Saturn experts—and that was good. I wanted them to become uncertain. How well Emerald still understood me!

  “So much for the indirect message to Saturn,” Spirit said. “Now for the direct one. What tone do we assume?”

  “A reasonable one,” I decided. “We have information that that ship is transporting equipment that threatens the security of Jupiter, and we can’t allow it to dock. They must turn it back to Saturn or suffer the consequence.”

  “And our closest ships will simultaneously orient for firing on that ship,” she agreed. “We remain out of range, but we can make quite a show.”

  “Do it,” I agreed.

  This time the Saturn response came in four hours: To fire on that ship would be an act of war, and Saturn would not be responsible for the consequence.

  “They’re still toughing it out,” Spirit said. “They are sure you’ll back down.”

  “Do you think they’ll go to war over one ship?” I asked.

  “I doubt it. They don’t want war, they want the critical advantage that a converted Tanamo base would provide.”

  “Then let’s fire on that ship.”

  She frowned. “Um, let’s keep within protocol. We have time for one more exchange of messages before it docks. We can send an ultimatum, and if they don’t respond by the deadline, then we shall be justified in taking action. In that time our ships will get that much closer, and their fire correspondingly more accurate. We might be able to take the ship out.”

  We did it. Knowing that a difficult period was coming up, I took a nap. This might seem strange, but I had been in combat and knew the importance of being properly rested. I had learned decades ago to sleep when I needed to. I would have done so that first night after I assumed power, had Coral not forced the issue. But it had been more comfortable letting her handle it, as I am sure any man would agree.

  The response from Karzhinov came just two hours before the docking, and it was blunt indeed. It translated: “Do not interfere with ship. Saturn will retaliate.”

  Spirit sighed. “They simply won’t take us seriously! We have no alternative but to do it.”

  “Remember when we delivered ultimatums to pirates?” I asked her. For though I regarded pirates as the scum of the System and hated the entire breed ever since they had slain our father, I had tried to be fair. This was not so much for their benefit, as for my own: I needed to believe in the justness of my cause and the rightness of my actions. Just as I did now.

  “We did have to kill a number of them,” she reminded me.

  It was my turn to sigh. I have never liked killing, but I have done it when necessary. I was prepared to do it again.

  We contacted Emerald and gave the order. The Navy ships opened fire.

  The attack failed; the range was still too great. But there was a virtual explosion nevertheless.

  First there was a call from the Premier of Ganymede. “Tyrant Hubris, you are attacking Ganymede territory!” he protested.

  “Correction,” I said. “We are firing on a Saturn ship that our intelligence informs us is a threat to Jupiter. Its location at the moment is coincidental.”

  “You are violating Ganymede space! I demand that you desist instantly!”

  “Turn over that Saturn ship and we’ll desist,” I replied.

  “But I have no authority over a Saturn vessel!”

  “Then deny it clearance to dock. It will have to return to Saturn.”

  He looked truly pained, though, of course, this was what he most wanted to do. That ship represe
nted disaster for him as well as for Jupiter. But he could not express his true sentiment. “Saturn is Ganymede’s ally and benefactor! I cannot insult Saturn in this manner!”

  My expression hardened. “I had thought that relations between Jupiter and Ganymede were improving. We maintain embassies. We buy your sugar. Now I learn that you have deceived me, Premier. You have tried to bring in technicians to make Tanamo an enemy military base. This is a dagger at Jupiter’s heart and a betrayal of my personal trust.”

  His protest was already coming in, crossing with my harangue. I overrode it, lapsing into Spanish in my supposed rage. “I arranged the transfer of that base!” I roared. “I trusted your sincerity! And how do you repay my trust, you dog’s penis? You try to convert it to a Saturn missile base! You try to destroy me, just as I come into power in Jupiter!”

  “... only supplies, I swear!” he was saying in English. “No arms, no special equipment, only food and tools for our agriculture!”

  Then, as I paused, my Spanish outburst caught up to him. He changed to Spanish himself. “You eater of sweet rolls!” he cried, reddening in the face. I should clarify that in the Gany dialect of Spanish, a certain type of food becomes the vernacular for the female genital and is not spoken as a compliment. “You fire into my space, violating interplanetary protocol, and dare to accuse me of bad faith? You look for a pretext to invade our planet and make it a Jupiter colony! But do you know what will happen if you do that, Señor animal fornicator? Twenty thousand gringos will die!”

  I cut off the contact, then settled back, laughing. “He understands, all right,” I said.

  “He had better,” Spirit said. “We’re going to have to invade Ganymede, you know.”

  “With about twenty thousand troops,” I agreed. “But with lasers set at stun only.”

  “The Saturn forces there won’t set theirs at stun,” she said.

  “He’ll keep them clear. Ganymede is not our worry. Saturn is.”

  “Saturn is,” she agreed. “If Karzhinov doesn’t bluff, we really will be in Ess-Doubleyou-Three.”

  That sobered me. “We have to risk it, though.”