The Foreign Minister of Chad was signaling to speak.
“On ne me connait pas comme homme soupçonneux,” he said, rising. “I am not known as a suspicious man. If I were, I would wonder whether this stirring tale we have been told has one shred of truth. I would note that I have served my nation for more years than the man on whose judgment we are relying has lived. I would contemplate what motives a nation well known for its historical imperialism might have in arguing so eloquently that we would benefit from falling in line with its directives.
“I am not, of course, a suspicious man. But the struggle to keep my small, peace-loving nation safe from more predatory powers has made me a cautious one. I have a question for you to contemplate, King William. You have presented this news with no apparent doubt that your mysterious aliens can be trusted to deal with us honorably. Perhaps it is because your country has for so long enjoyed the more powerful position in its dealings that you do not see the other possibilities. Many conquerors first present themselves as friends.”
There were several shouts of agreement as the translator finished.
“I’d like to answer that,” Aikens whispered to William, cupping his hand over the microphone. William nodded, but before he had a chance to regain the floor the Swiss moderator had recognized the Chinese delegation. A young earnest-faced auxiliary looked once around the table before beginning.
“The Unified People’s Republic of China wishes to express its gratitude to the United Kingdom of Great Britain for extending an invitation to participate in this conference. It is with deep regret that the Unified People’s Republic of China withdraws from further participation,” he read from a slip of paper. “I yield the floor to the honorable delegate from Japan.”
“Here we go,” said one of William’s aides ominously.
The delegate from Japan read a statement identical except for the names and yielded to the Republic of Indonesia, which yielded in turn to the Philippine Free Democratic Republic. Then all four delegations stood en masse and began to leave the room, led by the diminutive androgynous figure of Tai Chen.
“And there they go,” said the same voice. “Bloody hell. Damned slants. Bloody, bloody hell.”
William’s face was flushed. “Tai Chen!” he shouted. ‘Tai Chen!”
“No, no, no, let her go, Your Highness,” implored Weddell. “No scenes—we can put this back together.”
William shook off Weddell’s restraining touch angrily, then stalked off through the gallery to one of the chamber’s many side doors and out of the room.
For a stunned moment, the room was quiet. Then Weddell tapped Aikens on the shoulder and pointed at the microphone. “There’s a question on the table from Chad. Answer it.”
“But—”
“We’ll keep things rolling for a while and then ask for an adjournment,” Weddell said grimly. “We have to try to salvage something. It’s too important for us to quit now.”
Chapter 9
* * *
The Back Room Summit
Aikens was working his way slowly and with little pleasure through a plate of veal and vegetables when the message reached him that the King wished to see him. It was not a difficult decision to push the plate away and follow Jeremiah, William’s personal secretary, to the royal suite.
They found William in the large and dimly lit study, taking tea and, by all appearances, brooding. “Come in, Doctor. Sit down. Jeremiah will get you some tea if you’d like.”
“Nothing, thank you.”
Jeremiah bowed slightly and left the room. William studied Aikens over the edge of his teacup, sipped, and set the china gently on the side table. “I wasn’t being naive this morning,” William said finally.
“I haven’t—” Aikens said.
“You have and you have reason to. But I want you to know why I tried it this way—why I chose to think better of them than they probably deserve. You see, Doctor—”
“Marc. Please.”
“Marc. I chose to appeal to a quality I had no reason to think they had inside them, but every reason to hope. We’ve had campaigns before to wipe out hunger or to end war or to redistribute wealth or eradicate disease. Our reasons to be selfish were always stronger, in time, than our reasons to be magnanimous. If we can’t break that pattern, then there’s no point in a reconstruction. The Senders will come cm us like the headmaster finding two of his boys scrapping in the dirt. We’ll be hauled up, roundly spanked, and put on report until we prove ourselves capable of better.”
“I share that fear,” Aikens said. “You had to try it this way.”
“I thank you for the small comfort that comes from hearing you say that.” As he spoke, his secretary entered silently. “Yes, Jeremiah?”
“Excuse me, sir. Devaraja Rashuri has come to ask for a private meeting with you. He would also like Dr. Aikens to be present. He expresses no urgency but under the circumstances—”
“Yes, you’re quite right.”
“Then when would it suit you to see him?”
William stroked his jawline with his thumb thoughtfully. “Did Rashuri have anything to say this morning after I left?” he asked Aikens.
“No. Nothing.”
“Interesting.” He gestured to Jeremiah. “We’ll see him now. Show him in.”
Devaraja Rashuri was a sallow-skinned, dark-eyed man of forty-three who moved with an ease and precision that acted on a subconscious level to suggest competence and control. His bow to King William was minimal though proper, and he acknowledged Aikens with a nod.
“I wish to come to England,” he said without preamble.
“To view our research station?” asked Aikens.
“That and other things. I have been there before, of course. I was educated abroad at the insistence of my father.” He poured himself a cup of tea and settled on the divan. “Though I resisted it at the time, it enabled me to escape the provincialism and narrow-minded nationalism that afflicts so many in every nation.”
“You spoke of ‘other things.’ ”
“Yes. I thought that it might be of some value to you to have a sufficiently ambiguous agreement with India to avoid returning from this conference empty-handed.“ ‘
“The conference isn’t over yet. There’s another session scheduled for tomorrow morning,” William said. “When you see who is there you’ll know that the conference is indeed over. Tai Chen has not stopped at withdrawing her own bloc. All afternoon she has been visiting other delegations and persuading them to withdraw and to repudiate the contents of your briefing book, which she seems to be interested in collecting in quantity.”
The monarch nodded. “I’ve heard that, too. In any event, there is no need of any face-saving agreements. All those who know the real purpose of the conference are here with us and can be trusted. And we have no inquisitive free press to answer to.”
“There are other—”
Their attention was drawn by a commotion outside the study. The door opened partway and Jeremiah appeared, looking apologetic.
“Sir, I’m sorry for—”
At that moment the door was thrown open, and Tai Chen entered, followed by what, judging by his size and demeanor, could only have been her bodyguard. Tai Chen squalled something in Chinese.
“This conference was a mistake,” her bodyguard translated. ‘Too many ears. The damage must be repaired. No one who does not understand the danger can be allowed to have this knowledge. This must not become the specie of the rumormongers. Swift and silent action is required.”
“Good Lord,” Aikens exclaimed. “They didn’t walk out because they didn’t believe—they walked out because they did.”
“This is correct,” said the translator. “It was necessary to discredit the proceedings.”
“What do you mean by ‘swift action’?” asked William.
The translator echoed his words to Tai Chen, then listened to her barked answer.
“The protection of our world against these intruders. T
he fool scientists of the United Nations have disarmed us. We are vulnerable. We must rearm and regain the capacity to meet this threat.”
“There is no threat,” William said angrily. “There’s no way to control or profit from a colony at a distance of—” He looked to Aikens.
“One hundred fifty trillion miles.”
“Of one hundred fifty trillion miles,” William finished.
Tai Chen’s features grew rigid. The translator echoed for her: “We did not realize you had exhaustive knowledge about their capacities and motivations.”
The King looked to Aikens for help.
“What do you think we could do to stop them?” Aikens asked.
“Trust no promises. Accept no guarantees,” Tai Chen’s translator said. “Build space warships. Go out and see that the Senders are stopped well away from Earth.”
“Space warships?” Aikens said scornfully. “We couldn’t hope to build a ship that even approaches their capabilities in time to meet them at any appreciable distance. And the physics of such an intercept are horrible. Once you’re there, you can’t just turn around—all you’ll end up doing is flying backward. The energy requirements to dump velocity and change course one hundred eighty degrees are fantastic.”
“Nevertheless, if there is a way it can be done, it must be done,” said Rashuri. “I’m afraid Tai Chen is quite correct. They cannot be allowed to come here.”
Both William and Aikens looked at Rashuri in surprise.
“Is that what you came here to talk about?” William asked.
“In part. It’s all well and good to assume that they are advanced and therefore benevolent,” said Rashuri. “But there are some sobering lessons in our own history about ‘first contacts.’ Exploration is followed by exploitation and expropriation. The native population is decimated and the surviving fraction forced to convert to the friendly power’s lifestyle and religion.”
He stood and went to the tea cart for a refill. “The Tasmanians thought they were alone in the world but were friendly to your English settlers,” he said, stirring. “They were wiped out in one generation, used for target practice and tracked down by hunting parties wearing pink jackets. The last two hundred were removed to another island for protection, where they lost the will to live and died.
“The Yahgan of Tierra del Fuego died of typhoid and pneumonia within two generations of their first contact with Europeans. That was unintentional, but elsewhere natives were given gifts infected with smallpox—or given clothing but not taught to wash it or take it off when wet, ending up stricken by diseases they had never known before.”
“We could talk a long time about the misadventures of the British East India Company,” Aikens interjected. “I would rather not,” Rashuri said with a slight chill. “I myself expect better from these strangers. But if they find us to be, by their standards, primitive, even their earnest assistance could destroy us.”
“Then the ships we would send would serve as a buffer,” William said slowly.
“Yes. We can’t delude ourselves. We can neither hide from them nor stop them. The best we can hope for is to slow them while we prepare our people for the inevitable contact.”
“They have a right to know it all,” Aikens protested.
“And we have an obligation to assure that they can deal with it. They must be properly prepared, and that will take time—time that we can gain by going out to meet them partway.”
Tai Chen was frowning, as though her interpreter were having trouble keeping up.
“We protect,” she said haltingly, waving a fist in the air. “We protect.” She lapsed back into Chinese and her interpreter took over. “It is good to know that India is wise enough to see the danger. We will help others see. And we will contribute to the building of the warships, or act ourselves if others falter. We must show our strength and prepare our defense. All else is foolishness.”
“India will join your effort,” Rashuri assured Tai Chen. “She doesn’t realize what she’s asking for,” Aikens complained.
“It is our hope that the great Kingdom of Britain will follow the same course,” said the interpreter. ‘Tai Chen thanks you for your courtesy.” Tai Chen nodded and, looking somewhat mollified, exited the room.
Rashuri followed her out the door with his eyes. “That one will be trouble before this is through,” he said matter-of-factly, retaking his seat facing the King. “You are surprised that I sided with Tai Chen.”
“In a word, yes.”
“Then let me see if I can surprise you some more. I believe that we must also do what you this morning challenged us to do. When we meet the Senders, we will need self-respect more than we will need weapons.”
Rashuri spoke calmly, confidently. “We must do everything you said and more. No single nation is strong enough to answer this call. We must divert the world’s hoarded resources to the task—energy, raw materials, labor. We must enlist others—either the present powers in the crucial countries or new ones who are more tractable. We must forge a new order, shaped by this single purpose—by whatever means necessary. It is time to lead, not represent.
“We must avoid the disease of terrorism. We must avoid the waste of youthful rebellion. We must be prepared to sacrifice some measure of our comforts and profits. If we succeed, there will be profits enough for all. We will control the knowledge the Senders have to offer. We will use that to reward those who help us.
“By the time we meet them, Earth must speak with a single voice.”
“Yours?” Aikens asked cuttingly.
“If the Master wills. But do not mistake my motives. In my own way, I am as much an idealist as your king. If I seem less so, perhaps it is because I have learned that to achieve the ends of an idealist one must employ the calculating means of a realist. I believe this must be done. I believe that I see how it might be done. I believe that I could be the agent by which it will be done. Nothing more is needed. Knowledge can carry its own imperative to act.” Rashuri set his cup and saucer down gently and stood. “It has been a long day and a full one. I’ll take my leave now, and we can discuss the arrangements for my visit tomorrow.”
He stopped in the doorway. “No reply or acknowledgement has been sent to these creatures, I trust?”
“No. But we have discussed it,” said Aikens.
“See that none is sent.”
When he was gone, William and Aikens exchanged glances.
“Do you think he planned being here when Tai Chen showed up?” Aikens asked. The King leaned back in his chair. “Planned with her? I doubt it. Planned on his own? I certainly hope so.”
In the morning, Weddell warned that just two of the original sixteen accredited delegations could be expected to appear if the morning session were held—Greece and the host Swiss. William accepted his recommendation to cancel the session and circulate a notice that the conference, “having accomplished its goal of stimulating thought on crucial contemporary world issues,” was now adjourned.
That done, Weddell and the King sat down with Rashuri to establish the basis for cooperation between their countries. Aikens was not asked to participate, but he was one of the first to see the draft agreement produced by the five-hour session. It provided that in a fortnight, Rashuri would bring with him to London for revision and possible signing a proposed charter for the Pangaean Consortium.
Each nation would transfer at the outset some £500 million in funds or facilities for the work of the Consortium, of which Rashuri would be the first director. The charter would provide for two classes of membership: charter, for those who agree to make ongoing, tangible contributions, and associate, for those who agree to cooperate with the Consortium and give it preferential treatment within their boundaries. It would be up to Rashuri to translate the Consortium’s resources into the leverage needed to achieve the project’s real aims. Much would turn on his skills.
“This puts the whole thing in Rashuri’s hands,” Aikens protested to Weddell. “We’ll make sure
there are some checks in the Consortium’s charter,” Weddell promised. “The best check would be to make someone else director.”
“Ah, but that’s where we’re caught by the short and curlies. What we don’t give by choice to Rashuri, we’ll give by default to Tai Chen,” Weddell replied. “The man deserves a chance to succeed.”
Aikens knew that Weddell was right, and did his best to still his misgivings. All the same, he spent the flight back to London that evening wondering whether a thing done for the wrong reason was better than it not being done at all.
Journal—22 September 2011
There is no knowing what a man like Rashuri holds in his heart—what truly moves him. But there is also no doubt that I do not have the knowledge or temperament to achieve what he has set for himself, and if I quail about the passing of the initiative from my hands to his, there is also a sense of a burden lifted, that I have run my leg and passed the torch to another, stronger runner.
This is a bold emprise he has set us on, broader and braver than what I had envisioned. I wonder where he will find the resources we need. Where are the minerals and the fuels in this scavenged planet, and if they exist, how can they be begged or borrowed or, knowing Rashuri, stolen? But such tangible assets may be the least of his problems—can 1 so glibly call them his problems, now? There is one resource that I fear we may be short of, one that cannot be stolen, one that even when we possessed it we seemed to think so little of. Have we the engineers, the scientists, the free-thinkers, the tinkerers? Or, in the tumult of the last decades, did we swing an axe at our own collective head? Have we the brainpower? Or did we squander it?
But we must try. We must begin climbing again, on a different slope perhaps but with the same summit in sight. If we wish to have a voice in our future, we had best begin practicing our speech. We must become one world, though there is little enough in our history to offer encouragement. 1 ask myself, what will hold us together?
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