by Tim Andersen
Friedman left.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“Your new girlfriend works for Smith,” she said. “She may know more than you.”
“She’s not a doubleagent, mom,” I said.
“I never said she was,” she said.
Friedman entered with Lika. Lika gave me a small smile.
“Sit down, Lika,” she said.
Lika pulled up a chair from the corner and sat down. She looked from my mom to me and back to my mom.
“I understand that you’ve been working with Mr. Smith for about two years,” mom said.
“That’s right,” Lika said.
“When did you find out about the secret communications from the Amidans?”
“Tolan asked me to decode them about five months ago,” she said.
“And did you know that they were not official communications?”
“Er, not until I translated them.”
“But then you knew?”
“Yes.”
“And why did you not immediately inform somebody when you discovered that your boss was breaking the law?”
“I think that’s a bit harsh,” said Lika. “Tolan was only trying to do a bit of good and if you people---”
“Please,” mom said, “I don’t want to argue about it. I’m willing to believe that you had a good reason. Just answer the question.”
“Well, Tolan said that we couldn’t trust anybody. Anyone could be a traitor, and we had to trust the Amidans instead.”
“Why trust the Amidans? What’s so special about them?”
“Tolan just knows these things.”
“That’s all. There’s no other reason?”
“No.”
My mother looked at me. Her face was impassive. She turned back to Lika. “Your pilot, Lars Crispin, returned to Earth alone. Were you aware of that?”
Lika looked nervous. She did not know that Crispin had been killed before he could betray us. I had left it out of my story. “Yes.”
“Why was that?”
“Because he’s a filthy liar and a traitor if you ask me,” she said.
“You didn’t like him?”
“No, he went crazy paranoid. I think he had some mental health problem.”
“Indeed, his ship, your ship, was destroyed immediately upon completing his Pipe. There was no apparent cause.”
“Oh?” she said. “Serves him right if the Trolls got him.”
“There’s no evidence that the Trolls were involved. In fact, the attack had not even started at that point.”
“What are you getting at mom?” I asked.
“Hush, Goshan,” she said. “Do you know what caused the ship to explode, Lika?”
“I don’t know what you mean. How would I know?”
“Let me phrase it like this. Did you plant a bomb on the ship or otherwise engineer the explosion to prevent Crispin from reporting something? Did you knowingly cause his death?”
“Mom!” I said. “She did no such thing. I was there.”
“Thank you, Goshan, let the girl answer.”
Tears started to stream down Lika’s face. “No, no, I don’t know what happened to him. This is the first I’ve even heard that he was dead.”
“Mom, Lika did not kill Crispin. She’s not a cold blooded murderer.”
My mother stared at me for a moment then turned back to Lika. “Alright,” she said, “I’ll believe you didn’t kill him, but you are hiding something. You want something, and you’re using Goshan to get it.”
“I’m not, I swear,” she said. “I only wanted to help. I asked Goshan to contact you so that I could help negotiate with the Trolls.”
“I’m sorry but your services are not required,” my mom said.
“But you need me,” she said. “Goshan, tell her.”
“She deserves the chance to help, mom,” I said.
“No, you don’t understand. You are not required because there is no negotiation.”
“No negotiations?” she said. “Are they stalled? Won’t the Trolls talk to us?”
“I don’t know,” my mom said, “and I don’t care. We—my father made the mistake of negotiating with them before. Now there is only one solution.”
“And the Prime Minister agrees with this?” I asked.
“He’s considering it,” she said. “The Trolls are a universal menace, and eliminating them would be a service to all peaceful worlds.”
“It’s genocide,” I said.
“It’s us or them, Goshan,” she said. “They’ll never let us alone if we don’t get rid of them all.”
“You can’t do it! I won’t let you!” I yelled. I heard Friedman open the door.
“You will do nothing, Goshan. When the burden of public office is placed on you, you might understand. Right now I can’t let either of you out in public.”
“You’re keeping us prisoner?” said Lika.
“I’m not as heartless as that,” she said. “I’m sending you both back to Amida in a warship. I want you to find Smith and bring him back here---by force if necessary. Perhaps, with his magical intuition, he can shed some light on whatever’s going on in the State Ministry. Mary will take you to the spaceport.”
“Mary, take her mobile and don’t let them talk to anyone,” my mom said.
Friedman held out her hand, and Lika grudgingly gave her the device. “This way,” said Friedman, and she led the way out the door.
I took one last look at my mother, and I could not help it. “If granddad could see you now . . .” I said, but I did not finish the sentence.
She took another swig from her whisky glass, draining it. “He was an idealist, Goshan, like you. Aliens and humans living together in harmony. That’s just a pipe dream.”
I shut the door in disgust.
Chapter 8 – The Conspiracy
As we walked back along the faceless, nameless corridors, a couple of soldiers joined up behind us while Friedman walked in front. I felt like I was being marched to my own execution.
“Lovely to have met the family,” said Lika, quietly.
“I can’t believe it,” I said. “How could she---”
“Quiet back there!” shouted Friedman, then in a softer voice. “Save it for when we’re alone.”
I realized that, even in this most secret of secret bases, probably only a handful of people knew what the top leadership was planning. I wasn’t sure why my mother even told us. Besides which, anyone could be a traitor.
Eventually, we came to a pressure hatch. I thought it was the hatch to the submarine bay, but it was a different one. It led to a Metro-capsule-like contraption.
Friedman gestured, and we sat down. I noticed that she was now carrying several weapons: a new disruptor, a sidearm, and grenades. I could see that they were not taking any chances. The soldiers did not join us in the capsule but stood guard by the hatch.
Once the hatch was closed and the capsule started to move through some kind of mine shaft, I continued, “I don’t understand how she could have come to the conclusion that, after only one day of fighting and no negotiation, we suddenly have to obliterate the enemy in a rain of ISBMs.” I was not even sure if Friedman knew about it. From her lack of surprise, I could see that she did. “She doesn’t know what she’s doing,” I said to her.
“Look at you,” she said. “You’re just a kid. Your mom knows ten times more than you about stuff like this. She knows what she’s doing.”
“How can you say that? Any sane person would see that it’s irrational to destroy another species simply because they pose a threat to you.”
She shook her head. “Your mom’s the sanest person in this loony-bin,” said Friedman. “Trollies have bitten off more than they could chew this time, is all. Time for them to go.”
I considered bursting into a fresh string of counter-arguments but stopped. Friedman was not going to be swayed. As far as she was concerned, my mother was infallible. I was still angry though, so I turned t
o Lika, “what were you doing in there, Lika?”
“What? Me?” she said.
“Don’t play innocent. What was all this huggy-huggy ‘you could say that, Silvana’, i.e. ‘I’m your son’s woman’ crap?”
“I was trying to get on her good side, so she would let me help.”
I rolled my eyes. “You should have asked me first. Now she thinks you’re using me.”
“Oh, well, it’s worked before,” she said.
“I don’t even want to know about it,” I said. “You are nothing but trouble, you know that? My mom has been suspicious of my girlfriends since junior high, and here she thought you were an enemy agent beforehand. I can’t even believe that she didn’t throw us both in prison.”
Friedman started to tsk. “You don’t know your mom very well,” she said.
“Oh, I bet you know her better?”
“You bet I do. I’ve seen more of her in the last two months than you have in two years. On top of that, I’m a mom too. Don’t you think it rends her heart to see you even involved? My son’s on the line every day, and every day I think about him and wonder if he’s safe, if he’s happy, if he misses me. He can’t see me more than once a year. You’ve been around, but you don’t come and visit her, don’t let her know what you’ve been doing. I hear her talk about you. You’re her baby, and you have the gall to wonder why she didn’t throw you in jail?”
I was speechless for a moment, but I was too upset to feel guilty. “That doesn’t make what she’s doing any more right,” I said.
“Well, when this is all over, I hope you can forgive her, Goshan. I know she’ll have a hard time forgiving herself.” She settled back into silence.
The capsule was ascending now. There were no windows so I could not tell where we were. Slowly, it came to a stop. “Now hush,” said Friedman, as she reached for a button, and the hatch opened. We were in a dark room so large it could probably accommodate several thousand. It resembled a great train station with a line of tracks and platforms.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Union Station,” she said.
I did not think that she was going to tell me. “You get to the most secret base in the world from a defunct railroad station?” Union Station had been closed for a couple of decades as a rail station. At present, most of it was an urban shopping mall.
“There’s more than one entrance. This is the main one.” She led us to an old fire door. Opening it, we stepped out into the shopping mall. Looking back I could see that the door was painted to resemble the wall and had no handle.
“Keep close,” said Friedman.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see some people, dressed casually, that appeared to be eyeing us. Afraid of more potential assassins, I pointed them out.
“No, no,” said Friedman, as she proceeded to the main doors, “just a little extra protection.”
Outside Friedman hustled the both of us into an official car. Two more cars of similar design were parked in front and behind. Ground cars were rare in the District because of the huge congestion fee. Only the wealthy could afford to drive here.
The cars accelerated us away from the Station and headed for the freeway to Dulles Spaceport.
Having attacked both my companions already, I fumed quietly. I kept shaking my head. There was something that I did not understand. My mother’s official opinion on aliens had always been moderate: “we leave them alone, they leave us alone.” That was the point of diplomacy with them. There were always a few crazies who insisted on things like trade agreements, technology transfer, even personnel exchanges, but all of these were infeasible. The Xenological Society was said to conduct secret research on alien worlds under cloak but had never made public any of their findings. Other than that we really did leave them alone.
As far as I knew, the Trolls were the only ones who had broken their non-aggression pact with us. Our string of missile silos in the Kuiper Belt had been built to deal with their aggression, to say, “look, if you don’t leave us alone, we’ll blow you to kingdom come.” Everyone thought the Trolls had taken the message to heart. Everyone also believed that the Trolls had a similar string of missile silos, although no official confirmation of them had ever been reported. If war ever broke out again, people took it for granted that the missiles would not be used unless the Trolls were threatening to use theirs or actually did use them. A pre-emptive strike seemed not only like suicide but uncharacteristic of the current administration, which had always been moderate.
Then I said it. “She must be bluffing.”
“What?” said Lika.
I turned to her. “She can’t seriously be considering it. She must have been lying.”
“Why would she lie about it?”
“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. I lapsed into silence, trying to puzzle it out. “But she must be. She can’t be considering it.”
Friedman was sitting up in the front seat. I was sure that she could hear what we were saying but smoked glass prevented me from seeing if she was listening.
“Look Goshan, you’re in denial,” said Lika. “You can’t believe your mom would participate in a brutal slaughter, and you’re trying to find a way out. I know. I’ve felt the same way.”
“I’m not in denial. I really think that she wouldn’t do it. It doesn’t make sense. Anyway, how would you know how I feel?”
“My Dad is a business man, right?” she said.
“Yeah, so what? Did he kill a whole bunch of people with the stock market?”
“No, but he did hurt people. Sometimes he’d ok a merger. Thousands of people would lose their jobs. Sometimes it would make the news. One time my Dad bailed out on a transaction during a recession and fifty thousand people were suddenly out of work, some of them for years. Once a man who’d worked at the company came to the door. Only my mom and I were home. He said my dad had ruined his life. I told him my dad wasn’t there. Then he pulled out a gun. I thought he was going to kill us. But he just said ‘tell Pontius Townsend he has blood on his hands’ and shot himself. He bled to death on our front step.”
“I’m sorry but what does that have to do with genocide?” I said.
“My point is, Goshan, that just because you love your mom, doesn’t mean she can’t hurt people, even a lot of people. After that, my Dad invested in some attack robots but never considered himself to be responsible for that man’s life, always referred to him as that ‘crazy guy who came to the door’. My Dad never questioned the deals he made based on whether they hurt people, only on whether they made a profit. He’s rich because of that.”
“Well, your Dad may be heartless, but I know my mom,” I said. “She would never destroy another race. She would never endanger ours with this mad plan. It’s part of some plot she’s brewing. I can feel it.”
“Feel away, Goshan,” she said. “I’m counting on Tolan and the Amidans to get us out of this one.”
“Pah, the Amidans! You have too much faith.”
“Still think they’re boys with toys, Goshan?” she said.
“More than ever. They could stop our war with the flick of their little fingers.”
“I think that it takes more than a flick. I know they have a plan.”
“Sure, let us all get blown to pieces while they preach peace and love and harmony.” I shook my head. “I just wish—if only the Amidans had told us—I wish I could have told my mom who the mole was.”
“Mole?”
“In State, she said there was a mole in the State Ministry but that Minister Domo would block any investigation.”
“Hmmm, mole in State, total annihilation,” she said, pretending to weigh them. “Which one should we make a priority?”
“Shut up. They’re related. I know they are,” I said. I just wished I knew how.
It was hard to believe that I had only been on Earth for a day, and now I was leaving again. This time I was leaving a deeply changed world, filled with fear at what was to come. It was time
s like this that I wanted to have faith in something, whether it was the God my mother had unsuccessfully tried to drill into me as a child, or Smith and the Amidans. Instead of faith, I felt an overwhelming sense of dread.
I watched the planet disappear below me, wondering if I would see it again whole. Perhaps I would not even be able to return if the inevitable Trollish response to our bombardment succeeded. I would live out the remainder of my days with the Amida, Lika and Smith as my constant companions, wondering if there was something I could have done.
Lika patted my back tentatively. She was seated next to me on the shuttle, which was empty save a couple of guards. I also spied what appeared to be an escort of Pegasus drones out the window. These were robotic air/space combat vehicles. The attack dogs of the fleet. My mother was not taking any chances. She knew as well as I did that whoever tried to kill us on the roadside was also probably the person or group that had engineered the destruction of the Seeker that had killed Crispin. He had probably not even been the main target, as all of us were expected to be on the ship upon its return. That showed that they could reach us on the ground and in space, and two assassination attempts invited a third.
Friedman had left us once we were secured on the shuttle. She would never leave my mother in her hour of need. That gave me some small comfort.
Lika removed her hand suddenly and I sat up. I looked over at her and she was looking at my side. I realized that she had felt the gun under my jacket. “Goshan, what are you still doing with that? Didn’t you get into enough trouble before?”
I felt the gun in the holster. It was so powerful but so useless to solve any real problems. It kept creating more instead. “My mother insisted,” I said.
“Oh,” she said. “And does she know where you got it?” Lika seemed upset about it still.
I rounded on her. I was through lying. “I got it from Trexel, okay? When I got to the shelter, he was there. He made me tell him everything, and then he gave it to me. Alright?” I sat there, expecting her to shout at me or find another seat or maybe just slap me, but she did not.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she said.