Manna

by Lee Correy

  I found I couldn’t really argue with her, so I didn’t try. I already respected her and now I was beginning to like her. “Tsaya, I had you figured all wrong,” I told her.

  “Oh? What did you formerly think of me and what caused you to change your mind?”

  “You emerged that night at Karederu Center as a shy, introverted wallflower, then faded into the background until the place went up in flames,” I reminded her. “You were frightened of me to the extent you had your iklawa pricking me.”

  “But I didn’t know you then.”

  “Obviously, neither did I.”

  “I’m getting to know you better.”

  “So am I.”

  “I like you, Sandy.”

  “The feeling’s mutual, moapa.”

  Tsaya bristled. “Don’t you dare use that word! Do you know what it means?”

  I was taken aback. “It’s a term of affection and friendship. That’s the way I’ve heard it used.”

  “You know nothing of the implications of that word! You’re just a boorish, barbaric, well-intentioned but ignorant American outlander! It’ll be a long time before you’re privileged to use that term with me! The fact that we happen to like one another well enough to eat together does not mean you have my trust and confidence as a moapa!”

  “Look, look, I apologize! No insult or hurt intended, Tsaya!”

  Tsaya sighed deeply and brought herself under control. “My apologies, too. I forget you’re still a stranger among us. I’ll try to compensate for it. But be careful; others might not.”

  I’d made an etiquette blunder of major proportions and it aborted our tete-a-tete. I was going to have to learn it was not proper to eat with my knife, wipe my hands on the table linen, and make messes on the living room carpet. I was going to have to become civilized according to them.

  And I was going to have to damned careful about using terms I didn’t understand as well as misinterpreting Commonwealth customs I was just beginning to learn. I kept fitting these Commonwealth people in the molds of American stereotypes, and they wouldn’t and didn’t fit.

  I would have been a lousy embassy aerospace attache. Probably would have ended up persona non grata. But if I wasn’t careful among these people, I might end up persona non vita.

  Over the next few weeks, nothing happened that Landlimo Corporation hadn’t anticipated.

  Real life never proceeds the way it does in fiction. “Cut to the chase!” may be a dictum for writers, but living is a lot like flying: long periods in which nothing happens separated by moments of frenetic activity. Most people relish the periods of inactivity and then hit the panic switch when everything turns to slime. A survival type uses inactive periods to prepare for the next time it hits the impeller. I’m a survival type.

  Part of my training was taken over by Ursila Peri. A strong-willed young woman, she was different from Omar Astrabadi in ways other than physical. She drilled into me the procedures and techniques of deep space intra-orbital commercial piloting. This is mostly procedural, doing the right things at the right time to keep the various military forces in space from getting antsy. Sometimes it involved rather complex trajectories that needed a lot of computer power.

  It helps to have computers to take over the details of making a ship go where you want, but software can get screwed-up even when it’s debugged. In spite of their large array of gates far exceeding the number of neuronal connections in the human brain and their speeds many orders of magnitude faster than the human nervous system, the human pilot still had the upper hand. Computers might have been able to do it all, but nobody in his right mind wanted to trust human life in space exclusively to computers.

  Besides, a computer doesn’t have the human concept of “fun.”

  The fun of space travel was more than just getting from A to B successfully. Any computer could do that. “Fun” being an alogical emotion, it was strictly a human activity. It was hanging things out a little bit, daring the universe, and taking a risk.

  Omer tended to ignore the computers and take great, big, juicy risks of the sort that scared hell out of me.

  On the other hand, Ursila used computers as tools. She monitored them and let them do things she could have done just as well.

  I fell somewhere in between Ursila and Omer. I used computers, but I never trusted them.

  As far as I was concerned, there’s always the possibility of the so-called “three-sigma deviation,” the occurrence that falls outside the 3-sigma limit of probability computers were designed to handle. It kept sports from becoming cut-and-dried exhibitions of physical prowess. There’s always the guy who isn’t where he’s supposed to be when he’s supposed to be there, and there’s always someone who fumbles the ball. This same principle kept human space pilots from becoming obsolete.

  It also kept cyborgs from taking over because, being highly specialized, their use rate had to be kept high. Cyborgs, being partly human, needed rest, too. They couldn’t perform 24 hours a day, 365 days a year like a machine. They were, to put it bluntly, technologically possible but economically unprofitable.

  I liked Ursila. She was an attractive, provocative, highly competent woman who had the strange ability to shift from being cooly all business to warmly sociable like Tsaya. In some ways, she was very British and in other ways American.

  During a flight with her, I remarked, “Ursila, you needle me about my American ways. Not that I mind; I probably deserve it because I’m provincial and naive. Were you once an American?”

  “If we weren’t both North Americans whose families have lived alongside each other for more than two hundred years, I’d feel insulted,” Ursila replied without rancor. “I’m Canadian.”

  “Sorry, I should have known. I’ve worked alongside a lot of RCAF types,” I said and observed, “There seem to be a lot of Canadians in space in ratio to the Canadian population. I’m curious why.”

  Ursila leaned back, checked a display, and looked levelly at me. “You Yanks aren’t the only ones with a frontier heritage. Ever been on the Canadian Shield?”

  I hadn’t. I’d been instructed not to punch out over the Shield because there was littlechance of survival.

  “That’s still our frontier. We’ve had a constant coming and going from the wilds to the settled areas. It’s almost a rhythm in Canadian life,” Ursila explained. “Does that answer your question?”

  It did. And it gave me another important clue to the deep relationship between Ursila and Ali. If Ali hadn’t gotten there first…But it was too late to think about that. If she and Ali hadn’t had it going 100% between them, I would have become extremely interested because I wasn’t having much success with Tsaya Stoak.

  Tsaya and I became close friends…period. To be sure, our friendship grew and expanded as I spent time with her talking to The General and taking our few moments of free time together. But our relationship didn’t progress to the physical point. Perhaps Tsaya was truly an introverted person who was working hard to overcome it. Since we didn’t share the same background, it was impossible for me to make any sort of reasonable assessment of the situation.

  Otherwise, I was very busy. The Commonwealth had extensive facilities and operations in the Earth-Moon system. At that point in the development of space industrialization, most of the risk capital still came from Earth. It was the early period of this frontier, but activities of a space-to-space nature were gaining momentum and importance.

  The big multinationals were still involved—Exxo-Krupp, Atoshi & Kalidasha, Canlntel, Am Arab General, and Embra Punto, among others. The various Commonwealth corporations dealt with them all and usually supplied essential services including drayage, factoring, exchange, arbitrage, proctoring, brokering, and the many commercial activities that go on below the surface of trade and exchange. Although some Commonwealth firms were involved directly in space industry, they were careful not to become competition to the biggies.

  The Commonwealth seemed to be happy to hold a small percent
age of a market or take just a smidgen off the top, nothing more than a minor business expense that wouldn’t justify the time and effort to bypass the percentage or to eliminate the minor competition.

  The Commonwealth space entrepeneurs were following their classical earthside policies: maintain a low profile, don’t present a target worthy of justifiable attack, keep the percentages low enough to make it uneconomical to cheat, and build economic and financial strength quietly. The free market Commonwealth was doing well by doing good, following The General’s philosophy that this was a system of plenty with enough to go around.

  I began to understand The General’s strategy.

  A century or so ago, the legendary South Sea Islands were a tropical paradise where there was so much for everyone that all they had to do was reach up and pick it off the trees.

  Now the whole Earth was trending in that direction. It was the turning point between a system of scarcity and a system of plenty. The General had the Commonwealth already working with the system of plenty while at the same time preparing itself to handle those who still operated with the well-understood world of scarcity.

  That was the true weapon of the Commonwealth.

  But there were others, too. Omer wanted me to see the latest “toy.” He took me to a remote hangar bay at the far end of the ComSpat module where maintenance and repair of ships was done—inside pressurized bays if possible but outside in vacuum if the ship was big. Inside the bay rested a small black ship. Ursila was inspecting it when we arrived.

  “The latest toy” was about the same size as the Aerospace Force SF-16 “Viper” but had six-degree-of-freedom maneuvering engines in addition to a reasonably large main engine. It had thick arrow wings and both radar and lidar stealth shape. Mounted in a forward location aligned with the ship’s longitudinal axis was a 25-millimeter Rota-Rock.

  “Looks like a highly modified Embrastrel Preto Passaro,” I said as I viewed its fascinating lines. “But that ship wasn’t designed for deep space work and was obsolete ten years ago.”

  Omer smiled. “It is what you think it is. We bought a dozen at a very good price from the Forca Estrella Natalia. Sriharikota reengined them to our specs. Then the Pitoika Dry dock and Ship Company put in the finishing touches. Now we have a squadron of twelve operational skalavans,” he said proudly.

  “Plus spares,” Ursila added.

  “So? What’s a skalavan?” I asked.

  “Sandy, what did they teach you about space tactics at Colorado Springs?” Omer replied. “Tell me how you think this ship might be used.”

  I looked it over for a few more minutes, then ventured, “It’s a small single-pilot craft with tremendous delta-vee reserve. It could be flown across the atmospheric interface. But the aerodynamics and structures are archaic! Okay, it’s got tuck-wings to improve the ell-over-dee, but its skin will never withstand an entry at more than Vee-sub-ee. These little spikes on the leading surfaces would go bye-bye right away!”

  “I didn’t suspect you’d notice,” Ursila remarked, fingering one of the blunted spikes that were arrayed on the front of the fuselage and wings. “I discovered data that had initially been buried under security wraps at the old Wright-Patterson Aerospace Base since 1965 and then forgotten in the U.S. National Archives. These are electroaerodynamic ionodes.”

  “Electroaerodynamic what?”

  “Ionodes,” Ursula repeated. “By putting an electrostatic charge on the space craft body and creating a charge sheath around it, the air flow can be tailored even at hypersonic speeds.” When I looked dubious, she went on, “Want to see the equations? We can use this excellent subsonic and supersonic airframe in the hypersonic regime: Mach fifteen at sea level.”

  I thought about all this for a moment, then asked them, “You’re not really serious about using this as a good old science-fiction space fighter, are you?”

  “Why not? Nobody else has one. If we get into a shooting war, a skalavan squadron can raise hell in space and earthside. It’s a predator,” Ursila stated.

  Omer grinned. “It’s fun to drive this at Mach fifteen only a hundred meters off the deck! The shock wave carpet uproots trees! And I’ve got the Roto-Rock Twenty-five if I want to shoot.”

  “Know why the Aerospace Force opted out of these little birds?” I asked. “Space laserbattle stations can burn them out of the sky, that’s why. Space fighters and even space cruisers are scouts, and scouts are expendable. And expensive when they’re manned.”

  “You’re missing something,” Ursila pointed out. “These are knobby with verniers.”

  “So?”

  “What’re the biggest problems faced by space laser battle stations?”

  “That’s a simple question, Ursila. Detection and targeting. Then it takes a second or two to slew, aim, and fire.”

  “A skalavan can survive in the directed energy weapon environment because it has tracking sensors and can zang out of the way before the laser can be fired. It has the ultimate defense against a hell beam: Be where it ain’t.”

  “Nice theory,” I told her.

  “Want proof? Omer, help me strap him in, then I’ll take the Shontu and you strap on the Taibu. Time to have a little fun! Sandy, just try to hit either of us with boresight laser!”

  The next hour of hard maneuvering trying to pin my practice laser on either ship and trying to shake both of them off my tail was enough to convince me. The Commonwealth indeed had the first effective space fighter which they’d named after the old fast and maneuverable Malagasay sailing vessel. It was such a hot item that I knew Omer was right when he told me I wouldn’t qualify to fly it in combat. “You and Ursila do not have fast reflexes,” he told me. “I do. I flew with Frontovaia Aviatsiya Mach five on the deck.”

  But it worried me that Omer had scattered the squadron—four at Ell-Five, four at Vamori Free Space Port, and four more in deep hangars at Criswell Station in the walls of the lunar crater Ley. “We’re rather quiet about them,” Ursila told me. “They’re a weapon of last resort, so to speak. If things get really dicey, we’ll use them for couriers and emergency packets to get people and limited equipment through any blockade. Each of them will take another hundred kilos without degrading performance too badly…”

  I was glad to know the skalavans were available but I hoped we’d never need them.

  But then again, we might. We watched and waited, and a strange thing began to happen: The activity at Vamori Free Sport Port went down to 64% of the pre-embargo level, then began to increase.

  During our daily staff telecon, I questioned this data. “Why?”

  Wahak went through his usual ritual of checking the hard copy data on the table in front of him, then reported, “Kevin Graham at the League says it’s because of the imposed duties at the other space ports. All ships belonging to members of the League of Free Traders are registered in the Commonwealth because our fees are low to cover only the computer time for logging, and nearly all the League ships are now using Vamori-Free. We’re starting to handle ships registered in countries such as Annam, Sri Lanka, Liberia, Echebar, and Surinam. Even some Chinese manifests have gone through Vamori-Free. As long as we keep it open to space, we’ll get tonnage, especially from those who want to avoid the Santa Fe tariffs.”

  “This can’t go on,” I pointed out.”Why, Sandy?” Vaivan asked.

  “Someone will try to plug the leak before it gets worse. Wahak, run a projection forecast. How long before we can expect one-hundred percent at Vamori-Free again, based on the trend of the data you now have?” I asked him.

  He turned to his keypad. The answer didn’t take long. “At present rate, sixty-two days.”

  “The traffic’s going to increase on a cubic curve,” I advised him.

  “That can’t be justified,” Wahak replied.

  “Yes it can,” Alichin put in beside me. “The cubic curve’s a standard projection, Wahak.”

  “It’s outrageous.”

  “So’s the rest of the universe that ope
rates with it,” Ali fired back. He called up Wahak’s computer display on our own VDT, then punched in a correction on our keypad. “Let’s see what the cubic forecast says…Well!”

  “Twenty-two days to reach a hundred-percent level at Vamori-Free,” Vaivan observed.

  “I don’t believe it,” Wahak stated flatly.

  “Tell me that in three weeks,” Ali said.

  “That will probably be too late,” I added.

  “Too late?”

  “Wahak, look,” I told him, “we aren’t the only ones with access to this data. Tripartite comptrollers and planners have it, too. There’s some delay in their system because they’ll have to convince their superiors. I’ll give them three days to do that, plus four days for Tripartite leaders to make up their minds what to do, and two days for them to act. Be ready for something to happen in a week or so, just to be on the safe side.”

  “Any ideas what it might be?” Ali asked us all.

  There was silence among the Landlimo Corporation’s executive planning group and its military advisor.

  “Blockade?” Wahak suggested.

  “Too many treaties and trade agreements prevent it, and it’s an act of war,” Alichin reminded him.

  “Expect traffic delays from STC,” Vaivan said. “There might even be some clearance refusals on the pretext of military necessity.”

  “Can’t do that. No military emergency,” Ali objected.

  “They’ll make one,” I said.

  Ali didn’t agree. “There may be some delays in Space Traffic Control centers, but they’ll cite equipment breakdowns or traffic overloads due to the activity shift caused by the Santa Fe tariffs at various hubs. They can’t shut down space operations any more than they can stop air commerce.”

  “We’re secure,” Vaivan reported. “Short of open warfare, Vamori Free Space Port can’t be shut down. Traffic originating or terminating at Commonwealth facilities can’t be touched. Insofar as open warfare goes, the Commonwealth impys are on alert, and there’s been no military buildups or activity beyond our borders.”