by Mark Kalina
"Actually, I think we'd be glad to take you up on it," Aran said quickly. "So long as it's OK for us to ask questions."
"Questions are fine," Bernie replied happily.
"Well, here's one, if you don't mind" Ulla said, giving Aran a slightly annoyed look. "Why did you pick us up at the taxi stand? You're not a taxi driver."
Bernie laughed. "We don't have taxi drivers... not like back in Krakow, anyway. A taxi stand is just a place where it's clear you're hoping for a ride. Anyone can stop and offer you a ride. You agree on the pay and off you go. There are some people with cars who try to make full-time job of it, but it's not a great way to make a living."
"What about the gun?" Ulla asked. "Does the Defense Force require you to be armed all the time? Even when you're on leave?"
"Well, it's a good idea. Lots of people carry personal weapons. But we're not that formal, in the Defense Force. I have a car of my own, so my commander sends me to play courier sometimes, and lets me take along a zipper out of stores. If I have to drive into territory near any of the refugee camps, the gun can be a very good idea, and close-in, you can't beat a zipper."
Ulla looked shocked, but before Aran could change the topic she went on.
"Why do you treat those poor refugees so cruelly? Your government massacred them in '61, and it seems you're still after them."
Bernadette blinked and said nothing for a moment, though her pale skin (how did she avoid being sun-burned to a crisp, Aran wondered irrelevantly) flushed.
"I think," the red-head said, "you have the wrong idea about the refugees. Really, really wrong."
"Would you tell us about it?" Aran interjected, in as soothing a tone as he thought he could get away with.
Bernie heaved a sigh.
"Sure, why not," she said. "Even if you don't believe me. I can only imagine what sort of line you were fed back on Earth. OK, look; a lot of the refugees are really in need. But do you know who feeds most of them? Arcadian charities. The United Christian Alliance supplied over 40% of the camps last year. And the Secular Salvation League is almost as big as the UCA. And there's lots of little outfits too. I contribute to the UCA myself.
"But the camps are run by armed gangs. You have to get that straight. They run the camps like some sort of warlords. Actually, not like; they are warlords, just like you hear about from Earth... in Africa or Central Asia... that sort. And if it weren't for the UEN, the whole mess wouldn't even be here."
"The UEN sent those people here in the hopes of a better life, though," Ulla said.
"Everyone who came here wanted a better life. Some of us worked hard and made one for ourselves," Bernie said, her tone no longer quite friendly. "The UEN sent the refugees here, starting in 2057, promised them free shelter and food, and started confiscating people's property to feed them. Not even any compensation or anything. Just taking people's stuff; food, water filters, solar arrays, anything they wanted. Stuff we were working hard to make. We were a sovereign nation by then, and not a member of the UEN, but no one could stop them.
"The UEN never, ah, accepted your claims of sovereignty, you know," Aran said.
"So what? Who asked them?" Bernie shot back.
"As for the refugees," she went on, "no one makes them stay in those camps. Well, at least we don't. If not for the gang-lords, they could leave whenever they wanted to. Or they could rig their own irrigation and power and filters and grow their own food. But they don't. Not that I can blame 'em, since the gangs would just take it all. But we don't try to keep them there.
"And some do get away and make decent lives for themselves. I've got a guy in my platoon who was born in the camps, and if you think I'm hard on the refugees, you should talk to him!"
"I'd like to, if I could," Aran said, which made Bernie blink and then nod with an expression that held a bit more respect.
"And if we tried to clear out the gangsters," she went on, "the UEN would scream 'massacre' again and shut down our gate access to Earth. We control the activation station, but it takes both sides to actually let someone through.
"And as for the 'massacre' of '61, that was a little before I got to Arcadia, but I've heard of it. Refugee gangs used to raid towns and settlements. They'd ride into a little town in 'commandeered' UEN vehicles and shoot the place up, steal everything they could, kill, rape, take people for ransom. And it kept happening. People would fight back, but the raiders always chose the time and place, and they had numbers. And if we tried to chase them back to their camps —pretty well fortified camps, mind you, if you've never seen them— then the UEN would step in the 'control the violence.' Funny how the UEN was never on hand to stop the raids, though.
"The refugees are why we created the Defense Force. Had to, unless we wanted to just huddle in fear of the poor refugees the UEN had shipped in. At first the Defense Force was just irregular troops with whatever weapons we could gather. Not too different from the gangs, except we had discipline and motivation. And we didn't raid or rape people.
"And what do you think happened then?" Bernie went on, her voice getting more and more strident.
"Let me tell you what happened," she said, not pausing. "The UEN stepped in to disarm the Defense Force. That was when we realized we'd have to fight the UEN. Have to, unless we wanted to be perpetually helpless victims.
"So we started bringing in real weapons, bit by bit. And made a real army, right under the UEN's noses. The big fight at Hope Springs in '61 was the first time we used it. Smashed a big raid from an alliance of 'warlords' from the biggest camps, then went in and cleaned them out. Took out the bandits, let the actual refugees go.
"Turned out not all of them wanted to go, though. Some are still in those camps, with a new generation of gangsters to rule them. The UEN went ape-shit, of course, but we finally had more firepower on planet than they did, so their attempts to 'disarm' us went nowhere."
"You expect us to believe that?" Ulla asked, sounding none too calm herself.
"I can't make you believe anything. But what I'm telling you is true. Period."
"There's usually two sides to the 'truth,' though," Aran said.
"Sure," Bernie replied. "But our side is true. No, wait, you know, there's two sides to the story, but not two sides the truth. The refugees aren't helpless victims... well, some of them are, but we're not the ones victimizing them, and we'd kill the gangsters if the UEN didn't threaten to shut us off from contact with Earth."
"And I suppose," Aran said," that your... success... in '61 set up the war with the UEN in 2070?"
"Damn straight it did," the redhead said. "The UEN started to reinforce its forces. So did we, though we had to do a lot of smuggling. Actually," she added, looking at Aran, "your Pacific Alliance helped us out a lot doing it. And then the UEN moved the gate generator to this side, and started pouring in troops and refugees. At that point we realized that if they controlled the gate, we were going to be swamped.
"So we took it," Bernie finished, her voice clearly full of pride.
The interview with the biotech executive was only somewhat less dramatic than the conversation with Bernie had been. At first, Ulla asked technical questions that Aran wasn't qualified to evaluate. The facility, though, was interesting to him. It was... minimalist, he thought, but well organized and clean. There was no security presence, no visible cameras, no slogans at the work-stations. It made the place look alien, and a perhaps a bit illegitimate, though the lack of grunge and decay mitigated against that feeling.
The biotech executive, though, was an interesting example of Arcadian society himself, which gave Aran a reason to pay attention.
"Actually," the man said, smiling at Ulla, "our initial competitive advantage over Earth-based companies, back in the late '50s, was purely regulatory. We could do experiments that our rivals on Earth couldn't, and even more, when we had positive results, we could move forward with them right away, without worrying about funding-process oversight or waiting for regulatory approval."
The bio
tech executive looked to be a fit man of late middle age, tanned, well-toned, but silver-haired. Like most Arcadians, he wore colorful, informal clothes well suited to warm weather. Only his prefect haircut and his expensive, cutting-edge Japanese wrist-phone hinted at his status.
"Now, of course," he went on, "we have a whole generation of young people with a tradition of cutting edge research and top-notch academic preparation; a lot of our first biotech people are the ones teaching the current generation. So biotech has become our point of pride, here on Arcadia.
"Don't get me wrong; we have some good people working in other fields; in info-tech, for instance, but it's nothing like what you see on Earth, in Bangalore, say, or in Zhongguancun, 'Silicon City,' in China. But biotech, well, that's different. I'd say we pretty much lead the human race, there."
"But what about the bioethics?" Ulla asked. "Don't you have problems with unethical activity, without regulatory oversight?"
"What sort of ethics?" the executive asked in turn. "If you mean fraud, falsified results, then no, we don't have a problem; at least not for long. Some outfits tried that sort of thing at first, but we pretty quickly worked out a system. Any new result, product, what have you, is tested by almost all the other biotech outfits. Anyone who cheats, either by falsifying a result or by sabotaging a test of a rival's results... well, that'll get reported by the Office of Standards and we'll just never deal with that outfit again. And pretty much no one else will, either. After a couple of outfits went down the tubes that way, everybody else plays nice."
"What about experimental ethics?" Ulla asked. "Or medical ethics, for that matter? You don't even license medical practitioners!"
"Well, we do have laws, you know. Any deliberate or negligent harm caused to anyone will bring in the Office of Justice. As for licensing, what for? We have the Office of Standards to call out any proven fraud, and people in the medical industry live by their reputations even more than the biotech business does. Anyone unqualified or incompetent won't last long. Won't even manage to get started, is the truth of it. No one goes to a medical practitioner without recommendations."
"But there are stories, reliable, credible stories," Ulla replied, "of experimentation on gravely ill individuals."
"And?"
"That's... that's not ethical! It's taking advantage of people who are desperate!"
"How so? Those people do need help desperately, and the experimental treatments have a chance of helping them. Of course it doesn't always work. No medical treatment always works. But it gives people a chance where they otherwise wouldn't have any. How can that be worse than just putting the gravely ill in 'medical holding centers' and letting them die because they've exceeded some government-mandated health-care ration?"
Aran frowned slightly at the direction the conversation was taking, but Ulla was a good enough reporter not to get into a fight with her interview source. Or at least not to get into a head-on fight.
"What about the allocation of your profits?" she asked. "Your government claims to have almost no taxation, but isn't it true that you, your whole industry, I mean, gives a large portion of your profits —we're speaking of very large amounts here, I understand— to the government, on a supposedly voluntary basis?"
"If you mean our contributions to the Defense Force," the executive replied, "then yes, we certainly do, and we're proud of it. First off, we'd be crazy not to; how long would we even have an industry without the Defense Force? We'd be under UEN 'oversight' and regulated out of existence in no time flat. Besides which, the Defense Force isn't some outside organization begging for our cash. It's us. I served, and so have all of my colleagues. Some of us still volunteer in reserve units. I don't, anymore though; let me tell you, the time commitments aren't easy to juggle. But for that matter, my son is in the service right now, driving a tank."
Ulla left the interview in no great mood, though she seemed happy for Aran's company. "One more interview, in three days, and then I can't get away from this place soon enough," she said.
The two of them were on their own for a while. Bernie had taken the time to go shopping, and told them she'd meet them three hours later, which gave them enough time for the interview and an early dinner after. Ulla, at least, seemed relieved not to have to share a meal with the redhead.
Aran and Ulla talked over dinner at a nearby restaurant, located in the same indoor mall. Many of the best restaurants, it turned out, were inside indoor malls, to allow people to avoid dealing with the heat of the outdoors; even the Arcadians had their limits, it seemed.
The mall itself was interesting. Much of the interior architecture, walls, columns, doors, was made of high-strength glass made from various sorts of mineralized Arcadian sands. The interior space was lavishly decorated with sculptures and flowers, and not at all cramped. It reminded Aran of indoor spaces in places like Dubai, a bit, though the aesthetic was less garish and utterly different in details of style and cultural influence.
"Do you believe her?" Ulla asked Aran, as they ate. The food was a fusion of sorts, a mix of styles and ingredients that was new to Aran, though similar in concept to the Australian-Indonesian food he'd eaten as a child.
"About the refugees, I mean. The Sergeant, do you believe her?" she added, seeing that Aran wasn't following her question.
"I believe she thinks she's telling the truth," he answered after a while. "And I'd bet that there's more truth to her version that either one of us would like to believe. I've heard about the UEN shipping in prison populations to the refugee camps before. Not just on Arcadia, either. People on Mars and Elysium had similar stories to tell. Not that I could even publish that, of course."
Ulla looked disturbed. "But..." she said and then trailed off.
"The UEN does lots of things that are less than savory," Aran said.
"I know that," Ulla replied, annoyed. "No one intelligent really thinks the UEN is prefect. But the UEN system works. There's been no major wars on Earth since the UEN took over from the old UN system, and under the UEN system, everyone has access to a fair share of the world's resources; medicine, shelter, education. And everyone has rights.
"Here, though, it seems like no one has any rights. You could be sick and starving to death on the street here, and unless one of those private charities took pity on you, or you allowed some biotech company to experiment on you, no one would help. It's insane.
"I'll grant you this place looks OK to us, but Aran, you have to remember that we're only getting to see the nice side. I mean, I could show you Frankfurt like this... or Berlin, or Munich... going to the high-tech company offices, the museums, the nice parts of town... and it would look like a utopia. So long as I was careful not to drive into the Turkish districts, say, or the Siedlungen, the public housing areas. And I bet you could show me the same in Jakarta, or anywhere in Australia. But the dark sides would still be there; the Aboriginal residence zones, or the Papuan or Timorese communities in Indonesia. Except in all those places, the refugees aren't shot on sight by the army.
"And these Arcadians sound proud of the fact that they have what amounts to a military dictatorship; you have to serve in the military to even have political rights. I bet that if we talked to people who didn't want to serve in their military, or who their 'charities' didn't approve of, we'd hear a different story about this place."
Aran nodded, but said nothing, and Ulla smiled, looking a touch embarrassed; her tone had become rather intense. But Aran only smiled back at her, reassuring, and she reached out and put her hand on his.
"I mean, look, I understand that the Arcadian colonists weren't happy with UEN policy," Ulla went on, "but that can't be an excuse for violence. And there has to be a better way. If these people had worked with the UEN in the first place, instead of pretending to be independent..."
"Remember who the colonists were, though," Aran said.
"Right. Extremists. People who couldn't fit in to modern society," Ulla said.
"Maybe so," Aran said, and let the
matter drop.
11.
The embarkation was proceeding almost on schedule, which was, General Bannerman thought, something close to a miracle. The man standing next to him, Colonel Martin Mbala, looked pleased while the troops from his native Cameroon were embarking; less pleased when the Russian contingent began their embarkation. He also looked like he wanted to say something, and Bannerman nodded his permission.
"Sir, with all due respect," the Colonel began, "I have to question your refusal to use drone combat vehicles in the mission plan. The entire operation would be simpler if we reduced the number of people needed. It’s a way to avoid altogether the use of contingents that are... less than reliable. With the accepted doctrine of three drone-vehicles to one manned vehicle, we could cut our total required personnel in half without reducing infantry forces. And we could cut even more if we increase the number of indigenous fighters and assign some of them to infantry duties."
At Bannerman's side, Major Hafez raised an eyebrow and looked at his general. Bannerman shook his head slightly. Hafez had the bureaucratic know-how to make Mbala go away, reassigned to something menial and useless, like border patrol in the Arabian peninsula. But Bannerman needed Mbala... or at least someone just like him.
An operation like this one would normally have seen Bannerman in charge of several subordinate brigadier generals, but instead he had pulled strings, many strings, to put senior colonels, like Mbala, into those positions of authority. Having no one within a single rank grade of his own rank would be vital to ensuring that none of his subordinates were in a position to back-stab him. Or at least it made it harder for them to back-stab him, Bannerman thought. Either way, though, Colonel Mbala was currently useful.
So Bannerman refrained from observing that the day of embarkation was a bit late to bring this point up. Likewise he didn't round on the man and accuse him of wanting to cut the numbers of embarked infantry in order to engage in the age-old practice of selling their allotted rations on the bulk-food markets of Central Africa, a practice that Bannerman was certain Colonel Mbala was very familiar with.