“You think you know the right way? Since when have you become an expert on Eleroian psychology? Brodsky, I’m warning you, let me handle this.”
“Be my guest,” Brodsky said, opening the lock. “Come on in, Tony.”
Tony entered, followed by two men. Brodsky knew even before being introduced that these were the lord of the planet and his right-hand man.
And anyhow, there were no introductions. Aftenby, the lord of the planet, said, “So you’re the aliens? I understand that you have a flying machine. Please take me aloft so I can show you what damage your visit has brought about.”
XIV.
From the air, you could see that the green fields of the Eleroi had turned brown overnight. Rivers that had been green and swift-moving just the previous night had now dried up. A scorching wind blew from all directions. For as far as the eye could see, the desolation was complete.
“I regret this very much,” Anna said when they had returned to the ship. “I don’t know what happened to cause all that destruction. But it surely was a natural catastrophe of some sort, and no fault of ours, though we will certainly be willing to help you put matters straight again.”
“Very kind of you, I’m sure,” Aftenby said bitterly. “Come here and wreck our planet, then offer to tidy up afterward. No, thank you very much, please just go away, and we’ll do our own tidying.”
Anna looked uncertain. She wasn’t sure what to do. And she was starting to get flashes of a court-martial ahead if this whole thing weren’t handled carefully.
“Brodsky,” she said, “what do you think?”
Brodsky looked surprised. “You want my recommendations?”
“If you don’t mind.”
Brodsky walked across the cabin and stood in front of Aftenby, Denton, and Tony. They looked at him with grave, grief-stricken faces. Brodsky began to laugh.
“All right,” he said. “You can turn it off now.”
“What are you talking about?” Denton said. “Turn what off?”
“I am referring to the psycho-physio-biological interface you Eleroi have with your planet and with all its energetic systems. I’m talking about your ability to control every process on this planet.”
“You think we did this ourselves?” Denton asked.
“Of course. It’s obvious to me that you Eleroi have not cultivated defense in the accepted meaning of the term. You have cued your body chemistry into that of the plant life. When you feel bad, the whole planet feels bad. Crops fail. Water pollutes. The air turns foul. The invader at last leaves in disgust. That’s the scenario. No doubt it’s worked in the past. But it’s not going to work this time.”
“How did you know about us?” Aftenby asked in a low voice.
“I was able to infer it because I’m just like you. Too clever for my own good, but not particularly skilled at anything.”
“You are like us,” Denton said. “I suppose you know that all life is founded in contradiction but one does the best one can. But there’s no escaping the inner flaw. Intelligence works to minimalize the occurrence of conditions that would activate the destructive mechanisms which the flaw represents. Or am I going too fast for you?”
“Not at all,” Brodsky said. “You’re saying that no matter how smart you are, it takes a little luck. And you Eleroi have been lucky so far. But how you do in the future is going to depend on the choice you make right now.”
“Still trying to make us join your beastly Alliance?” Aftenby muttered.
“No, I’m not,” Brodsky said. “My colleague and I will leave the choice up to you. If you decide not to join, we’ll go away and leave you alone. Whether the Khalia and their friends will do likewise, I can’t say. But I can promise for us. Can’t I, Anna?”
Anna looked puzzled. She’d never thought Brodsky could take charge like this. So definite, so sure of himself. She decided that his commanding officer had assigned him to the exploration program for reasons a little better than just getting rid of him.
“Yes, I’ll abide by their, decision,” Anna said.
“Well, that’s very nice of you,” Aftenby said. “Sporting, very sporting. We’ll think about all the things you’ve said, and give the matter our best attention. But for the present, why don’t you nice people just go away, and we’ll get back to you as soon as we’ve invented transspatial communication.”
“Aftenby, stop talking for a moment,” Denton said. “Can’t you see he’s laughing at you? The alien knows something we don’t know!”
Brodsky nodded and turned to Denton. “You’re so clever, Mr. Prime Minister. Surely you’ve inferred already what I’m laughing about?”
“I know, I know!” Tony said, jumping up and down.
Denton said, with dignity, “What, pray tell, are you laughing about? What do you know?”
Brodsky said, “I know what you Eleroi are really afraid of.”
“Yes, yes,” said Tony, who loved to out-infer grown-ups and was very good at it. “Tell them, Brodsky! But begin at the beginning!”
“Right,” Brodsky said. “But the beginning was so far back that probably even you Eleroi don’t remember when it began. So let’s pick an arbitrary time, maybe a million or so years ago, when you Eleroi discovered that you could live peaceably with each other. I bet none of you even knows when you had your last war. You are the only intelligent cooperative society I’ve ever heard of. How did you do it?”
“Some of it was luck,” Denton said. “We had the good fortune to be smart enough to decide to make several key modifications in the genetic engineering of our race. We opted for biological altruism within a game-playing frame.”
“You opted for stagnation. You froze your development. Maybe you picked the perfect point at which to stop growing, but stop you did. You turned your back on the universe, pretended it wasn’t there, but unfortunately for you the universe hasn’t forgotten you. Fellow Eleroi—for I count myself one of you—it’s time to try another tactic.”
“Join your Alliance, you mean?” Aftenby said. “That’s what it comes down to, doesn’t it, all your specious argumentation?”
“Of course. But it isn’t specious. I could be wrong. But it’s what I feel would be best for you. I also feel that you agree with me but are looking for a graceful way of claiming the idea as your own.”
“Well, damn it all,” Aftenby said. “If you’re going to put it that way, what can we say? Eh, Denton?”
“Yes, I suppose it’s time,” Denton said.
Anna couldn’t stand it any longer. “You’re actually going to join the Alliance? Just because he advised you to?”
“Actually, Brodsky had very little to do with it,” Denton said. “Historical necessity throws up its mouthpieces when and as they are required. Not to take anything away from you, old man. But it was inevitable that a race of our intelligence would figure out the next step for itself. Join the Alliance. Yes. I have only one slight remaining fear about that ...”
“Set your mind at rest,” Brodsky said. “I can assure you that what you fear will never happen.”
“Will you all stop being so goddamned clever and tell me what you are talking about?” Anna cried. “What do you fear, Denton? And Brodsky, how can you be so sure it’ll never happen? What is it?”
Denton smiled the peevish smile of a man-child too clever by half. “No sense even discussing it,” he said. “Perhaps you could tell me how one joins this Alliance of yours. Are there forms to fill out? Does it matter that we don’t have any spaceships? And could I possibly bother you for a cup of tea?”
“I’ll get it,” Brodsky said.
“No, I’ll get it,” Anna said and went past him into the galley. She put up the water, fuming. Those Eleroi were really insufferable. And so was that smart aleck, Brodsky. Trouble was, she was beginning to get used to him. She decided, quite spontaneously, to make him a re
ally nice curry dinner that night. But what was it that the Eleroi feared?
XV.
“I’m back,” Leo Huue the Watcher called out as he approached the hut of Ottoline Guaschi. “Where’s your daughter?”
“Hah!” cried Guaschi, coming out the door with a revolver leveled at Leo. “You fool! There is no daughter, only miserable death which awaits you on this windswept hillside.” He leveled the revolver.
Leo wasn’t really convinced, but he closed his eyes because if he was going to be shot, he didn’t want to watch it happening.
“No, I was just kidding,” Guaschi said, putting the revolver down on a rock. “Come out, Chloe!”
From his hut came a small, delectable bright-eyed girl with strawberry curls and a smile that could melt granite.
Leo took one look at her and knew that they were going to be very happy together. And he also knew, or at least inferred, that she had set up this whole thing herself, since the girls of Eleroi did this sort of thing, going in for fantastical forms of courtship once they decided on who the lucky man was going to be. But he also knew, or was pretty sure, that there was one thing she didn’t know.
“We can get married whenever you like,” he said, “but perhaps it ought to be soon because I’ve joined the expeditionary force, and there’s no telling when we’ll have to leave.”
“What expeditionary force is that?” Chloe asked.
“The one that we’re going to send to the Alliance. We’ve joined the Alliance, you know. Don’t you listen to the tree reports?”
“I don’t understand,” Chloe said. “Why are we sending men? What can we Eleroi do? There’s not a man on the planet who even knows how to fix a washing machine.”
Leo exchanged looks with Ottoline Guaschi. Ottoline understood. It was a masculine thing, perhaps.
“We’ll give them what help we can,” Leo said quietly.
He and Ottoline both knew that this could be the beginning of the end, for the Eleroi were so superior to other creatures that the other leaders would inevitably put them in charge of the war effort. And that was the Eleroi’s secret fear—that someone would discover their superiority some day and ask them to take over the leadership of everything and everybody. That would be a dilemma, because the Eleroi had a built-in problem about leadership. Their biochemical altruistic programming defaults wouldn’t let them refuse; their intelligence wouldn’t allow them to accept. A choice like that could be Armageddon for a race like the Eleroi.
But they had Brodsky’s word that it would never happen. In fact, Brodsky had been very definite about it.
“Are you kidding? The presidents and generals of the most advanced civilizations in the galaxy turning over control of their destinies to you simply because you’re more intelligent and capable than they are? Forget it,” Brodsky had told them. “You don’t know how it works. Believe me, it’ll never happen.”
The Eleroi had to be content with that. It was a relief to know that they wouldn’t be given too much responsibility in Alliance affairs too soon. But it was also a little irksome to know that they’d never even be asked. For after all, who was more suited to running things than the Eleroi?
Too bad it would never happen.
Or would it?
It occurred to the entire Eleroi race more or less simultaneously that there might, in fact, be a way for them to take over control of the Alliance, then the Fleet, and, finally, the universe.
Such thoughts occur to semitelepathic races who have mastered the bioenergetic interfaces that confer control over environment.
It was an interesting option. The Eleroi would look into it later.
THE IMAGE of Hawk Talon, his gauss rifle smoking, freezes and then is replaced by the almost equally familiar visage of Herb, the spokesman for Telemax. Nearly all of the omni stations in the Alliance are dependent on advertising revenues. Telemax and fewer than twenty other multiplanetary megacorps supplied over half of this advertising. Perhaps that is why the tens of thousands of Independent Merchants are invariably presented on the omni as fast-talking opportunists.
Then again this prejudice may be due to the awkward fact that most of the Indies actually are fast-talking opportunists.
“IDEALLY YOU SHOULD have two months, maybe three,” Sein had said when he was briefed for this task. “But you managed to pass once before, and we’ll just have to say our prayers. Because no one knows how long anyone stays in the Rat.”
That had pleased him at the time. He had had visions of the Rat, the Indie central nexus, as a place full of mystery. After all, according to his father the admiral, the independent merchants were little better than pirates. According to his mother the admiral, pirates were more honorable. So he had expected something like the cantina scene in Carmen, with dancing girls and jewel-encrusted goblets kept full of wine, a brooding pirate-king overseeing the division of the spoils, and long afternoons spent under the Chola-range lamps being seduced by the legendary Chola priestesses.
So far only the Chola-range lamps had been true, and that was because the Rat had managed to get particularly favorable prices. Otherwise life as an Indie was not very much different than his experience on the Tobishi lines, and in the seven union halls he had seen since going under cover. At least not on the surface.
“It wasn’t just the rateri,” Sein had gone on in the briefing, in a room that wasn’t very different from the simple Indie registration office. “Although that helped. We followed the lead Jurgen gave us, and more and more it begins to look as if there’s something untoward, to say the least, about the Indie business. At least some of the business, especially on the edges of the empire. Since they don’t pay taxes and don’t report income, we have no idea how well-off they really are, but captures in recent years indicate better ships and the latest technology. Sometimes things that the Fleet is only using in prototype. What do you think?”
“According to the news, the Indies are legal. On the edge sometimes, but basically independent entrepreneurs. I admire people like that. If they’re pirates, though, that’s a different story,” Diego answered.
Sein had shaken his head so that the shaggy thick hair flew into his eyes. “Most of them are legal because we don’t know what else they’re doing. The information you brought back indicates that they may not even be aware that they have been selling Khalian goods to honest colonies. After all, they deal through the free traders, and if one has a consignment and the fee is high enough, they’ll take it.”
“But what can the Khalians produce that anyone’d buy?” Diego wondered aloud. “I mean, they’re getting their equipment from somewhere, but from what I’ve heard about Weasel technology, they’re lucky if they can produce toothpicks on their own.”
Sein snorted impatiently. “The point isn’t what they can produce, it’s where they’re getting what they’ve got. Officially, of course, it’s assumed that there’s some advanced species that’s been conquered by the Khalians and is supplying their technical know-how. Personally, I have an open mind.”
“And you want me to see if the Indies have anything to do with this technology transfer, sir.” There was no need to make it a question.
It wasn’t good enough to rate a smile from Sein, but he did get a curt nod. “Precisely. We don’t know exactly what is going on there, but I have a hunch. And in this business we take our hunches very seriously.”
Diego had licked his lips in that briefing room. To penetrate the Indie Rat, sealed as tight as a pharaoh’s tomb, that would definitely be worth something in his personnel file. To say nothing of seriously impressing his parents. They hadn’t been exactly overjoyed when he passed up the opportunity to join the Fast Attack Wing and stayed with Intel. Diego didn’t particularly cherish the memory of the elegant family dinner when he had made his announcement.
“Of all the idiotic, self-destructive things to do,” his father had yelled so loudly that
his mother’s heirloom Waterford wineglasses had shaken. She hadn’t yelled, but then Diego couldn’t remember her raising her voice in his entire life. Generally he wished she would.
“Obviously you have decided to shame us in front of all our colleagues,” she said, her tone cold and bitter, turning what had been a tempting meal into a nightmare. “Intelligence is worse than becoming a civilian. I assume you are doing this to assert your independence. As the youngest, I suppose you think that sabotaging your career will gain you our attention. I expect you to return to your senses when you find that this humiliation has not gained you anything at all.”
He couldn’t possibly explain to them—both of them admirals in the Fleet, children of admirals in the Fleet—why he found undercover work so important. When he had been tapped the first time he had found himself making decisions pivotal to the future of humanity as a whole. For the first time Diego Bach had taken full responsibility and had won his own victories. And suffered for it as well.
Besides, Sein had pointed out, not unkindly, that the career in question was his own. “And in Intel,” his superior had continued, “cracking this assignment will make you a name player. Marked for the big time, if you want to take it all the way. Intel has its own career service, you know, and our people don’t do badly.”
That was an understatement. There was more than one admiral, more than one division head, who had come up through the shadow services. Those on the inside knew, and those outside were kept carefully ignorant. Diego was not so innocent that he didn’t recognize that that very factor was part of what enticed him to stay. In the Fast Attack Wing there was nothing at all he could do to keep every minute of every day from his parents’ scrutiny, should they so desire to exercise it.
But so far the Rat had been very tame. No public orgies, no drug dens, no ecstasy suicide bands, no executions in Colonial Hall, commonly known as the Hole. At least not yet.
The Fleet Book Three: Break Through Page 19