by Janet Morris
"There's always a Plan B," Remson said flatly. "And if this simulation is as complete as it looks, there must be another set of options your people brought forward, in nearly the same state of readiness."
"There may be, but this is the single recommendation we're sending up to the SecGen, at his request," the general responded, "when you've seen the rest of it, and by then, I hope, with your concurrence. You can nonconcur, of course; that's your privilege. But we have a good consensus building for this plan, and it reveals no classified capabilities to the aliens."
So that was it. Remson sighed and said, "Sir, I really want to give Mickey the whole picture. You know as well as I that he hasn't the time to sit through this whole briefing."
"I wouldn't have taken the time to walk you through it myself, Mr. Remson, if I didn't know that. Now, can we get on with this?" The general's eyes flickered to the simulation in a holding mode, to the clock on the wall, and back to Remson. "I've got a number of people waiting to find out whether we're go or no-go on this. If the wheels are going to come off this thing, I'd rather have them come off now than later."
The challenge hung in the air between them: if Remson pushed his demands for Plan B, no cooperation was going to be forthcoming from ConSpaceCom Logistics Agency anytime soon, if that cooperation included delivering a Plan B that included revealing classified assets to the Unity aliens.
Remson put up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Okay, General, let's go through the rest of this. Convince me that I can get the job done with your 'tried-and-true' hardware at hand, and I'll take this up to the SecGen myself."
A slight smile played at the corner of the general's mouth. His icy eyes grew warmer than Remson had thought possible. He touched a control on his notepad and the spacetime hologram began moving once again.
Sometimes you had to know when you were on trial, when to push, and when to give way. In the final analysis, the success or failure of the Threshold move rested squarely on this man's shoulders. Countless lives, and the future of the Stalk itself, lay in his stubby, pale hands. And the general was letting Remson know that with responsibility must come power, or ConSpaceCom was going to fight the Secretariat every step of the way.
Maybe there was a Plan B, but the price to the Secretariat for evaluating it was too high. Way too high.
Remson was going to let the general have his way, no matter what the rest of the operational scenario showed him. There wasn't another choice that wouldn't make him—and this enterprise—an enemy that the Secretariat just couldn't afford.
CHAPTER 17
In-Laws
"Our kids have found Paradise without having to die first."
Cummings said bluntly to the imam of the UNE's most powerful Muslim member.
The Mullah Beni Forat, religious leader of Medina and the planet's President for life, scowled at Richard Cummings from behind his scraggly, waist-long beard "Sacrilege." Forat replied just as bluntly, as the two men strolled alone along the grassy talking path that wound through the Blue Mid atrium, their retainers following behind at a respectful distance in long, black groundcars restricted to the central magnetic roadway. "Only an infidel of your hopeless sort could even mouth such sacrilege." Forat paced Cummings, head bowed, determinedly watching his slippers bend the grass underfoot as if motion, not discussion, were the order of the day. "Alive in Paradise, with an infidel husband, having broken so many of God's laws? It is impossible. Or if it is not impossible, it is evil. Satan's work. You have been tricked by devils. Mr. Cummings, either in your mind or incarnate. And so has my daughter."
Somewhere in the trees to either side of the grassy walking path which lined the magnetic roadway, a songbird sang, and a lonely peacock answered with a baby's cry. The atrium was a bell way of tubing around Blue Mid, built to celebrate Threshold's bicentennial. NAMECorp had been the prime contractor during the long project, which included bringing from Earth, under carefully controlled conservancy-policed conditions, representative flora and fauna from each of the UNE's three-hundred member states.
Cummings thought carefully as he framed his reply. Mustn't be condescending, patronizing, or overly bold. Forat must be allowed to change his mind without losing face, recanting faith, or falling from grace with his people. Cummings understood the problem, but he was not a diplomat, or a student of Muslim theology. The daunting task of constructing the atrium so that each UNE member state could have direct access from their Blue Mid administrative centers to a little piece of their ancestral homelands had been easier.
After a thoughtful silence, Cummings said, "Mullah Forat, love between human beings created everything we see here, and more: the societies that you and I represent, humankind in all its diversity, the power of the United Nations of Earth to keep Earth sacred and grow strong among the stars. None of it would exist if particular human beings had not, throughout the centuries, found their mates and dared even death itself to join together. Whatever we are as a culture, as a race, as a species, when taken as a whole, has been created by our instinctive need to reach across forbidden boundaries for love. To have children who in each succeeding generation surpass the accomplishments of the last, people must be allowed to marry for love. Love is nature's way of assuring genetic dispersion. Love is God's way of guiding humanity's destiny. Love is the movement of genetic traits across group and geographic boundaries— across societal and religious lines, if necessary—to promote diversity, a mixing of superlative traits, and to let genius come forth among us. Through a mechanism known only to God, specific human beings recognize in others the most desirable, irreproducible combination of genetic strengths for reproduction. Love produced Mohammed, as well as Bach, Copernicus, Einstein, and every accomplishment of man that allowed Medina to be settled and your great society to flourish. So how can we, parents but not seers, argue with the will of God as it is expressed in love—and in our children's determination to love one another even under threat of death?"
It had been a long speech; Cummings had no idea where it had come from. It was not the speech that Cummings had come prepared to give. Although he had articulated every word, it was as if someone else had spoken. He wasn't even sure he believed what he'd said. But he was responsible for the results. If his words were perceived by the Mullah Forat as pompous, immaterial, abstract, or manipulative, then all hope of cooperation between them was lost beyond repair. On the other hand, if the mullah had listened with both his head and his heart, then perhaps this new framework in which to view the behavior of their children might save the day. Ideas were more powerful than men, both Aristotle and Mohammed had known that. What Forat knew was an open question.
The mullah walked in silence with Cummings for a long time before he responded. "Love is man's way of finding God, perhaps this is so. But love is also passion, and foolishness, and ungovernable lust. We do not think of women as you do, Mr. Cummings, but we are not savages. We understand custom and ritual, and the benefit of discipline, the organizational power of religion—apart from any question of belief. Our society is organized to a different standard, and that standard is very old and very powerful. And yet," the mullah paused ruminatively before continuing, "I am the father of a daughter, and I have no sons."
Cummings glanced sidelong at Forat and kept silent, hoping that the mullah would continue. He could not guess where this was leading; he could only walk along and wait. He kept mirroring the mullah's body language, hoping to increase rapport by moving and breathing as the other man did. Heads down, arms clasped behind their backs, the two men walked on, their entourages following behind.
"When you say to me," the mullah sighed at last, "that my daughter has found Paradise whilst yet she lives, my heart quickens, then is filled with fear. If mine were the son and yours the daughter, this would be an easier matter to resolve."
Ball in Cummings court, but what was he to say to that? The Medinans were a last, great bastion of sexist ideology glorified as religious tradition. If the Muslims were still waiting for
their long-prophesied savior, then so were the children of every other fundamentalist sect still thriving among the UNE's colonies. If that savior had to be a man to meet some ancient template, then this time the Medinans were shit out of luck.
"I don't know as much as I wish to about your religious traditions, or the words of your Prophet. I do know that you and I have the great honor to be the fathers of children who will bring humanity peace in our lifetime, riches of the spirit and the flesh beyond measure, and open a door to a whole new chapter of human history. We should be proud of them. We should not persecute them. Of all people, we should recognize greatness among us, especially when it has sprung from our loins."
The mullah stopped. Cummings stopped, too. Above the grizzled beard, Beni Forat's face looked old and wan. In the simulated sunlight of an English countryside springtime, his eye sockets and cheeks resembled hard-used leather, deeply lined and much older than Forat's fifty-five years.
"All great prophets have been persecuted in their lifetimes," Forat said mildly. "If God has singled out our children for greatness, then we will not be able to interfere, no matter how we try."
"That's just what I'm trying to say," Cummings chattered clumsily, blundering in his excitement. He stopped. Forat's watery eyes still fixed him with a zealot's stare—or the calculating one of a consummate politician. Cummings pressed on. "We cannot continue persecuting our son and daughter, you in your way, me in mine. They are beyond our reach in ways I am only beginning to understand."
"No one is beyond the reach of God's justice," said the mullah.
"Precisely so. But man's idea of God's justice may be flawed, don't you agree?"
"Of course. Man is essentially flawed." The mullah put his head down and started forward again, as if disappointed in Cummings' ability to hold up his end of a theological debate.
"Man may be flawed, but humankind is on the verge of a great discovery, and our children have led the way. What use is it to call for their deaths? To commend them to impotent assassins? To put a price on young heads that the entire United Nations of Earth will soon be crowning with laurel? I wish a truce with you, in the name of my son, my daughter-in-law, and our joint future. We are both fathers-in-law of destiny." This time Cummings stopped and prayed that the mullah would join him, not continue on alone.
Beni Forat took one step more and turned to face Cummings. "You are more articulate that I had expected."
"And you are more reasonable," Cummings responded.
"You are saying, why give an order that cannot be obeyed? Why lose face when face can be gained? But you don't know my people."
"And you don't know what I've seen when I visited the children at their new home."
"You visited them? You saw them, touched them?" A sudden eagerness came over Forat. Pain, hunger, helplessness, and loneliness glittered in his eyes.
"I saw them. I touched them. They live in a true Paradise, I assure you. A world of wonders beyond measure. And they will not come back here so long as we represent a threat to their happiness. But we can go to them. They offer gifts beyond price. They have found a home among a community of beings whose knowledge and wisdom is far beyond our own."
"Beings?" Forat's forehead rumpled.
"It's another ... way to live. Maybe it's the only way we've ever lived—or the only way we were meant to live. Everything we've half forgotten, every truth that all religions have served to keep alive in our hearts, every intuition of godhead that all the races of man have independently experienced—all of that makes perfect sense where Rick and Dini live. I'm telling you, all your faith is true, and real, and your daughter has led the way. I can't help you come to terms with what's happening in any other words."
"Beings are not ... what our religion is about."
"I'm not saying that the ancient words of any religion will be proved true verbatim. I'm saying we must not persecute our children, who have found their way to what mankind has always been seeking but couldn't quantify."
"Blasphemer, hypocrite, fool," Forat told Cummings to his face. "Your sophomoric attempts to frame temporal events in spiritual terms disgust me." Yet the mullah did not look angry, only tired. "You wish a truce, for the sake of your son, your material greed, and your famous dynasty. If you will promise me not to characterize as spiritual what has happened—what you have seen, wherever you went, what you think you know about the race they have encountered, if not discovered—then I will find a way to lift the death sentence from their heads. But only if you keep silent with your maunderings and your infidel's dreams of Paradise in life. If you do not keep silent but spin your mercantilist's tales to all and sundry, hoping to capitalize on your son's discovery, and to use my daughter for your own greedy ends, then only evil will come of it, and we will mount a jihad against you and yours such as the universe has never seen. Do you agree to my terms?"
Terms? Threats and promises, more like. But Cummings said, "I agree to hold back from judgments as long as you do. I agree to stop futile efforts to break up the marriage of my son and your daughter. I agree to treat you as a member of my family, with respect and honor. And I agree to maintain this special relationship with you and with all your people until and unless we hear that you have begun once again to persecute your daughter." The mullah could change his mind tomorrow and declare a holy war, try the kids and declare them guilty of religious crimes, and levy another round of death sentences, threats, and rewards for their assassination. Forat had already proved that much to Cummings. But some agreement must be consummated. Now. Before the move to an orbit beyond Pluto's began. "So, since I have met your conditions, we have a truce. A treaty. And good reason to celebrate!" Cummings held out his hand to Forat.
Forat ignored the gesture. "We have a truce. You may tell my daughter that she and her husband have nothing to fear from Medina."
Before Cummings could offer hospitality, the imam brushed by him and strode away, back to his waiting car, idling at a respectful distance.
Cummings waited until the mullah was in his car and it had pulled away. Then he signaled his own waiting limo forward. He had accomplished something, if not all that he had hoped. If he'd been wrong to try to talk to the Medinan in terms of spiritual benefit, then he stood corrected. But the material benefit awaiting well-positioned humans through relations with the Unity aliens was clearly of interest to the mullah. Cummings should have realized. You didn't become a leader—whether of a secular corporate empire or a religious star-flung state, without bringing benefits to the people who followed you.
The next time Cummings met with Forat, he'd bring spreadsheets. Now, he'd send Forat a few gifts and bide his time. He'd won the day for the kids, and for himself: he didn't want them to be afraid for their lives every time they entered UNE territory; if that was the case, he'd never see them again.
And he couldn't bear that.
As grueling as this meeting with Forat had been, he'd come away with what he wanted more than anything right now. He could tell the kids it was safe to come home—to come to his home, for a visit, for as long as they liked.
You couldn't build a trading empire if your key people were living in exile. NAMECorp had proprietary rights to Unity opportunities, as far as Cummings was concerned. He'd told Mickey Croft so in no uncertain terms.
Now he could tell Croft that he, Richard Cummings, had done what the Secretariat could not do: he'd negotiated a truce with Medina. As he slid into his limo, he was already reaching for the phone.
Mickey Croft might be preoccupied with sad-eyed, conical-crowned diplomats, but Cummings had his eye on the real plum: trade with a multiracial culture never before contacted by humanity. All those things he'd said to Forat about spiritual destiny. ... Well, they might be true. He'd seen something during his visit to Rick and Dini's new home that stirred him deeply. He was businessman enough to know that if a hardened case such as he could be moved by the beauty and tranquility of a Unity world, then he could sell access to that world, and everything from
it, to every soul in the UNE who could afford his price.
He'd bring Croft into line with less effort than it took to convince Old Man Forat, but then, Croft wasn't interested in killing children for reasons based in the need to maintain personal power. Croft just wanted to do the right thing for the UNE.
And Cummings, more than any other single individual, knew what the right thing for the UNE was. It was trade, multicultural stimulation, and expansion. Richard Cummings wouldn't give his son's life for it, but he'd have given almost anything else. He'd been ready to explain to the Mullah Forat how difficult life was going to be for the Medivan Empire without access to NAMECorp shipping, NAMECorp technical and spare parts support, and NAMECorp allies as trading partners.
He was glad he hadn't needed to threaten the aging cleric with an embargo. He'd done just right. He'd put it in terms the old man could understand. Damned if he knew where all that spiritual drivel had come from. Except for the moment when Forat wouldn't shake his hand, everything had gone just swimmingly. He could still see, in his mind's eye, his outthrust hand and Forat's unwillingness to clasp it. It bothered him more than it should, this unwillingness to touch flesh to flesh, to use an ancient Earth custom that surely wasn't foreign to the Medinan. He wished he could have touched the Mullah, physically communicated some of his newfound zeal for all things Unity.
But the lack of a handshake didn't mean anything, not between consenting adults. So why did he have this nagging sense that an opportunity had been lost?
No matter. Croft's office symbol came up on the videophone screen in Cummings' limo, followed in good time by Mickey Croft's big-eared, sunken-jawed face.
"Hello, Mickey. I've got good news. I've just come out of a meeting with Beni Forat...."
That got Croft's full attention. Cummings enjoyed mightily the feeling of being unilaterally in control of information that the Secretariat would consider critical. So he would take his time telling Croft what had transpired with Forat, and put a spin on the story that would best suit NAMECorp’s needs.