Exile-and Glory

by Jerry Pournelle

  She took a sheaf of papers from her briefcase. "The crop phasing's pretty delicate," she told him. "Right now they're in the high export value pattern. Harvesting dry beans and cotton, planting winter wheat and potatoes behind the harvesters. This pattern uses the least water, but the government wants them to switch to a high-calorie system for exports to Rondidi."

  "Yeah, I know," Adams said. His voice was harsh. "They call it foreign aid. I call it Danegeld. That's why we're here."

  Adams climbed down from the executive jet and mopped his brow immediately. Heat shimmers rose from the cement runway. "My God, it's hot here!" he said to the man waiting below the ramp. "Excuse me, Father . . . ."

  Father George Percy grinned. "If you want to tell the Almighty something that must be quite obvious to Him, that's your affair." Father Percy was a short, heavy man with no trace of fat but broad shoulders and thick arms. He wore white trousers and shirt with clerical collar, a small gold cross on a chain around his neck, and his accent was the heavy modified British of South Africa. "Have a good flight?"

  "Good enough." Adams mopped his brow again. The handkerchief was soaked.

  "It's best we get inside," the priest told him. "Aren't your people coming?" He led the way to a waiting Jeep and held the door for Adams.

  "There's just the one, and she wants to look at the phosphorus plant," Adams said. "I let Courtney run around these places on her own. She might find out something. Let's go, I want to see Jeff."

  "He's in his office. Lot of work for the Station Chief. I told him I'd meet your plane." The priest studied Adams closely. He'd only met this sandy-haired American once before. It wouldn't do to get Mr. Franklin in more trouble than he was in, Jefferson was a good man.

  "Quit worrying," Adams said, reading his thoughts. "There are standing orders all through the Company that station chiefs aren't to meet my plane. You're not very familiar with Nuclear General, are you, Father?"

  "No. When the Mission Society put me here as their representative I tried to get out. I'm only a missionary, Mr. Adams. I don't belong on something as technical as this."

  They were driving across the shimmering runway toward a group of concrete and fiberglass buildings at its edge. The big domes of the nuclear reactors towered over the administration buildings, and beyond them were barracks for the four thousand natives and five hundred foreign technicians living at Otjiwar Station. Next year there would be more than forty thousand people here—if the Station survived, Adams added to himself. It seemed problematical.

  Even through dark glasses and white pith helmet his eyeballs and head felt baked. Wouldn't they ever get to the air-conditioned buildings? The Station was big, they'd been driving for several minutes now. "How do you like it here, Father?"

  "I've been in worse places. We even have air conditioning in the church and some of the houses. But I fear it's a waste of power, and I really shouldn't use mine."

  "Trivial waste, Father," Adams said. "Giving the farm workers air conditioning increases production, cuts down on their water consumption. Besides, we pipe the heat from the air conditioning units into the solar evaporators, so we don't lose much." Except to envy, he added to himself. And that might be the biggest loss of all . . . .

  The Jeep pulled up at the glaring white Administration building. The native driver leaped from his seat to open the doors for Adams and the priest, another uniformed guard examined their identification before waving them to the elevators.

  They went to the top of the four-story building, past a miniskirted European secretary to Jefferson Franklin's office. The Station Chief was in shirtsleeves, his collar open. Franklin stood at a draftsman's table across the room from his desk. His black skin glistened with sweat, and his face contorted with emotion as he shouted at a white man. "I don't care what the Prime Minister says! I can't switch crops. It takes almost 200 gallons of water a day to grow food for one man with this crop pattern, and I can't afford the water for the high-calorie system. So stop bothering me about it, Mr. Bloomfort!"

  "The desalinization equipment works splendidly, I've seen it," Bloomfort replied. He was a short, dumpy man with beads of sweat standing out above his small brown mustache. Both men looked as if they were out in the plant area, not in an air-conditioned office. "The foreman says you won't give him enough power to operate at full capacity."

  "Damn right I won't. I can't, I have the phosphate production to keep up! The fresh water plant runs at full capacity when the sun's up. We never intended to run it full time at peak." He glanced up. "Hi, Bill. Mr. Bloomfort, this is Bill Adams, Special Assistant to the Chairman of Nuclear General. Bill, Anton Bloomfort, Undersecretary of the Interior."

  As Adams and the politician shook hands, Franklin continued, "Maybe you can talk some sense into him, Bill. I can't. He wants us to change to ten-crop or high-calorie so they'll have something to give Ifnoka."

  "We must give him food," Bloomfort said. "He has an army and threatens to invade. Their sabotage has cost us much already."

  Adams nodded grimly. "That's why I'm here. Tell me about this Ifnoka."

  "He is Chairman of the African People's Union," Bloomfort replied. "Although Premier Tsandi does not care for him, Ifnoka controls the army in Rondidi, and his party is strong in Botswana. He has followers in the Republic of South Africa, and some here."

  "And what's he want?" Adams prompted.

  "He says food for Rondidi. Ultimately . . ." The politician's half smile melted to a grim mask.

  "Ultimately, he wants Otjiwar!" Jeff Franklin said.

  "I've heard." Adams nodded and turned to Bloomfort and the priest. "I've only just arrived, give me a few hours, will you?" Humph, he thought. Only a half hour and I'm already picking up that clipped British speech pattern. "Father, can you take Mr. Bloomfort wherever he wants to go?"

  Father Percy smiled. "What you're saying is can we get out of the way so you can talk to your Station Chief in private. Of course. I'll see you later, Mr. Adams. Dinner with the Bishop and me perhaps?"

  "Thank you, yes . . . ." Adams waited until the others had left the room. "OK, Jeff, give it to me straight."

  "It's simple enough," Franklin told him. He ran stubby black fingers through close-cropped tangled hair. "I can't handle it. I thought I could, Bill, I really did, but I can't. OK, so you wanted a black man as Station Chief here. Looked like a good idea at the time. But that's what you're here for, isn't it? To yank me?"

  "Crap." Franklin looked up, surprised. "You think we put you in here because you're black? If I'd had a better white man I'd have put him here. MacRae's on Tonga, Martinez is a sea farmer, Horton's—the hell with it, I'm not running through the list. Mr. Lewis put you here because I thought you were the best man for the job, so stop feeling sorry for yourself and tell me what you can't handle."

  "Yes, sir." Franklin looked at Adams quizzically. Adams grinned.

  "I'll also fire you the instant I think you can't handle it."

  "Yeah." Franklin turned to the draftsman's table. "Technically we're pretty good despite the sabotage. Only minor stuff anyway, tractors, some pumps and water lines, nothing we can't fix. They don't want to hurt the Station, they want it intact." He pointed to the blueprints. "Farms are laid out, getting a crop from eighty thousand acres. Not as good yields as we'll get later, it takes time to condition soil as poor as this, and the workers are only learning how it's done—Bill, they don't know anything! If it wasn't for the Mission schools, we'd be in real trouble. Our schools are set up to take people at a little higher level than we've got."

  Adams nodded. "I'll tell Courtney we need some of those Sesame Street-type TV tapes. Got TV in all the family quarters yet? Make sure you do."

  Franklin made a note on a scratch pad. "Computer's got the usual bugs," he said. "Had to plug some problems through Santa Barbara—our communications satellite came in handy. Weather's held good, hotter than we expected so we get plenty of evaporation. Portland cement and magnesium production are up twenty percent over predicte
d . . . ."

  "How'd the harbor work? Captain Anderson was worried."

  "Rollo always worries that he's put one of those bergs a millimeter off. No sweat, and she's melting fine in this sun. If I had four more I wouldn't have a water shortage. Bill, if it wasn't for the sabotage and government pressure I'd be fine."

  Adams shook his head. "Finances are close, Jeff. Which puts Meissner and some of the other backers in a mood to cut their losses. The riots in Nigeria aren't helping them decide to sink more money in Africa either. They may bail on us, Jeff."

  Franklin whistled. "What happens then?"

  Adams shook his head again. "Bad. The Old Man can't finance this deal alone, it's too big. We'll come out all right if we get the plutonium production up, but the whole integrated agro-industrial concept is on trial here. You know what happens if you're on your own better than I do . . . ."

  They were interrupted by a knock. Courtney Graves came into the room, her long blonde hair in a tangled swirl, her white blouse soaked. "It's hot out there. Hello, Mr. Franklin."

  "Hi, Courtney . . . . Look, Bill, if Farbenwerke and Krupp bail on us, we're dead. It takes about a grand an acre to develop the farms, and sure, some of that's fixed cost we've already hacked, but it's still about $750 an acre from here to the end."

  "A hundred and sixty million dollars," Courtney said quickly before Adams could take out his calculator. He never could do figures in his head. "But that's not the real problem, is it, Mr. Franklin?"

  Jefferson Franklin shook his head. "No. The chemical works, fertilizer production, electrolyzers—everything was built modular, and we're just about to capacity with what we've got. We need the new units the backers were sending in. I'm not even sure Nuclear General can recover the investment if we can't finish the project . . . . It all depended on the integration, power and heat and water and everything phased in just right, and it takes a damn big scale for it to be economical . . . ."

  "Instant industrialization," Courtney finished. "The only industry in this country. It's just got to work! These people have nothing without us . . . ."

  "This is not a venture in altruism," Adams reminded her.

  "It is for the World Mission Society," she retorted.

  "We're trying," Franklin said. "When the World Court made South Africa turn Namibia loose, the SAs were pretty generous by their lights. Gave Namibia twenty-four million bucks, that's about forty dollars a head, just about the annual income. Loaned them another ten million on a long-term low-interest deal. And that's all these people have got. They sunk every penny in Otjiwar, no wonder they worry about Ifnoka. And look, even in the fertile parts of this country it takes fifty, a hundred, sometimes two hundred acres to feed a man."

  "How're you doing here?" Adams asked.

  "Current production, we can feed ten people an acre. That's using two thousand gallons of water per acre a day. We've also got enough power to make the fertilizers, and some chemicals and cement for construction and export. I can feed the whole population of Namibia and still have surplus cash crops to sell Israel . . . I could before this mess started, anyway."

  Adams found the coffee pot behind the drafting table's console. "Tell me about this refugee situation."

  "Over a hundred thousand have come in. Ifnoka encourages them, tells them they'll get jobs, the good life, money—and we can't give it to them. They stream into the cities and make trouble for the government. Even though they get more here than where they came from, it's not enough . . . ."

  "Yeah." Adams was grim. "That's when people usually riot, when they're getting more but not as much as they expected." He poured coffee.

  "Where do they come from?" Courtney asked.

  "God knows," Jeff told her. "The Republic. Botswana. Rondidi. All over Africa, I think. Jesus, Bill. I don't know what to do, and Father Percy's no help. He says feed them, never mind the cost."

  "You can't solve famine by feeding people," Adams intoned. "First principle of ecology. If you can't make people self-sufficient, your relief does more harm than good. OK, that's about ten thousand acres, another ten million bucks investment to expand—can you do it?"

  Franklin went to his desk and moved a lever. A console pivoted up from the desk top, and he punched at its buttons for a moment. "Won't take ten million," he said. "I can expand another ten thousand acres for about seven. Costs us up to three percent of our chemical export capacity, though, and there'll be no reserve power left at all. And what good is it, Bill? There'll just be more of 'em. Ifnoka makes it sound like this is paradise."

  "Leave that to me," Adams said. "OK, I want to look at the figures and digest your reports. Loan me an office, I need a console and a phone—Oh. Invite Ifnoka and what's his name, Premier Tsandi of Rondidi, to the conference."

  "They won't come," Franklin said.

  "They'll come. Ifnoka asked to come. I got the message relayed from Santa Barbara. Tsandi's scared to let Ifnoka make deals without him. They'll be here."

  The conference room was crowded. In addition to a dozen men at the long table, more sat in chairs or stood at the end of the paneled room. Bill Adams took his place at the head of the table and nodded to the group.

  It was quite an assembly. Harrison of Allis-Chalmers, Feldstein from General Foods, Meissner of the Bayer Kartel, von Alten of I. G. Farbenwerke . . . Over in one corner Father Percy sat with a small greying man in black clerical clothing. The Bishop of Exeter, representing the World Mission Society. The orthodox church sponsors included both the Romans and Anglicans, as well as Coptics and Byzantines, and among them they'd raised two hundred million dollars, making their investment second only to Nuclear General's.

  Ifnoka sat at the other end of the table. He was a tall man, brown rather than black, and wore green robes trimmed with gold. The garb made Courtney smile, but carefully. Ifnoka had been born Henry Carter of Canton, Ohio, educated in the U.S.A., took advantage of the Emigrant Act of '92. Two thousand dollars and a one-way ticket anywhere you wanted, just renounce your U.S. citizenship and residency rights forever . . . . Handsome enough man, she thought. Tall, slim . . . but cold, staring at Bill Adams with hatred. The man next to Ifnoka was dressed in western business clothes. Francis Tsandi, Premier of Rondidi. His Freedom Party ruled that country. But Ifnoka's African People's Union controlled the army and most of the weapons. China wanted a foothold in Rondidi, but so far Tsandi had resisted them as thoroughly as he'd resisted the western bloc. Couldn't possibly last long, Courtney thought. But she noted that Adams greeted Tsandi warmly although he had only a perfunctory handshake for Ifnoka. Now just what did the boss have in mind?

  Adams cleared his throat. "Let's skip formalities and start at the beginning. When this consortium first planned the agro-industrial complex, we'd intended to put it on either the west coast of Australia or the Rann of Kutch. It looked like maximum profits in those areas."

  "And I still say we should have gone to Australia," an Oxford-accented voice said from the left side of the table. "There wouldn't have been any political problems. British Overseas Investments—"

  "Argued very well for a Commonwealth site, Sir James," Adams finished for him. "But the limiting factor was money, and the price of money is up to fourteen percent. When Southwest Africa and the Mission Society made their offers, you all agreed."

  "Ja, ja, we agreed, it is not time for what might have been," von Alten said. He didn't look at all like a Prussian aristocrat, in fact reminded Courtney of a sausage shopkeeper. The appearance was deceiving; von Alten held nearly the same position with Farbenwerke as Adams did with Nuclear General, and spoke for most of the Common Market investors. "While we are discussing trivia, you will please tell us why we must hold this meeting in Otjiwar? You have brought us here for what that we cannot do in Geneva?"

  "I think it's well to see the stations, Herr von Alten," Adams said smoothly. "Gives the investors a chance to see what our people are faced with firsthand."

  "What your people are faced with I do not know," the Ger
man said. "But we are faced with losing a lot of money. We have contracts to deliver phosphates and potassium, and if we do not get them here we must buy on the world market."

  Adams nodded.

  "And I do not understand why it is that when only a small percent of the power of this station is diverted to agriculture my chemicals production falls by thirty-five percent!"

  "If you're hearing complaints, General Foods is getting shorted on cereal deliveries," Feldstein said quickly. "And we have contracts with Israel . . . Do you know the problems involved in trying to arrange transport through U.S. ports? We have the wheat, but the dockworkers—"