Minutegirls

by George Phillies

  "That is an interesting matter," Rohan answered. "My attention has been focused elsewhere. I allow you have documented the timing?" He had not noticed the coincidence, not at all.

  "On your desk, my Admiral. And no other place," she answered.

  "Very good." Rohan felt alarm. There were enough political challenges without the President, the Chancellor, or their circles of close advisors getting the idea that a war might almost have arisen. Even if Starfleet had no role in it, they might decide that heads should roll to prevent a repetition. His head, in particular. "We should look at this most closely," he said. "I am grateful both that you called it to my attention, and that you did not waste anyone else's time with it--I don't count telling Beyerlein as wasting time. Perhaps the Q should be asked at the right time for an interpretation." The Q had been the diplomatic service for centuries. And release of these facts was going to be very carefully controlled to be someone else's fault. Someone he did not like. There was a list.

  "Of the events you have had pass near you in the past few weeks, I thought that this one was particularly sensitive if it became misunderstood," she said.

  "Indeed. Perhaps we should discuss this more privately. The Chateau Gloire has private dining rooms. This evening? Or do you have plans with your good friend?" Rohan asked.

  Genevieve beamed. The Chateau was one of the most expensive dining establishments in Paris. "Hercule and I are now only friends. And I had no other plans before those saying I must be at the bakery at the appointed hour tomorrow morning, or my Admiral will starve. So a more private conversation would indeed be highly appreciated. However, Beyerlein is waiting, and you need something to warm you up this afternoon."

  "We shall need to ensure that I do not starve or freeze," Rohan answered, "with dinner as a start."

  OFFICE OF THE HIGH ADMIRAL, STARFLEET EUROPA

  PARIS, FRANCE, FEDERAL EUROPEAN UNION

  1410 HOURS ET 29 NOVEMBER 2174

  "I finally had an opportunity to talk privately with my close friend in the Felifer detachment," Wilhelm Beyerlein explained. "It required some cleverness, but has now been done."

  "And how did you manage this?" Rohan asked. He shifted into a slightly more comfortable position on the couch and sipped at the chocolate. The tang of brandy was evident, but no more than enough to warm him slightly.

  "It turns out that despite superficial similarities we digest the same alcohols and aldehydes the same way, and have at most somewhat different notions of smell and taste," Beyerlein answered. "So I introduced them to a proper beer, the medicians having finally agreed that this was safe, and the translators having confirmed that our social customs on this topic are adequately similar. And they introduced me to something I cannot pronounce, which appears to have been a mixture between a single malt whiskey and honey-flavored ice cream."

  "The sacrifices one makes for the Union," Rohan said. It sounded like a concoction an American would drink.

  "I fear we each had the same response to the other's choice of beverage, namely that it was drinkable, but differed a bit from our customs. And then we discussed politics."

  "I allow you were both adequately sober to remember this," Rohan said.

  "I think, Admiral, that we both understood that we would readily return with detailed descriptions of what the other fellow drinks, enough to regale our fellows, descriptions needing only a few drops to confirm. And then we settled down to business," Beyerlein answered.

  "I understand. What did you learn?" Rohan asked.

  "Many details of the Alliance and its further members, versus many details of our planetary politics. There is a detailed report. My good friend thought world politics were not quite as complex as the Alliance's, but close. And then a description of a battle," Beyerlein said. "A battle involving a Gisbures strike force, a substantial Felifer contingent, and an unspecified opponent. The opponent did very well, while the Gisbures and Felifers did very poorly. My good friend made very clear that he had not told me where or when the battle occurred, but was very interested in what we knew of American technology and national resources. He had a description of a single, unreasonably large even by American standards, warship. And then he changed topic, and noted that the Gisbures plan to liberate Alpha Centauri has hit some snags. They will be delayed by a year or more. Part of the delay is that, for no reason that my good friend thought could be explained coherently to a member of another species, in particular not to a Gisbures, the Felifer evaluation of the Alpha Centauri opponent has been upgraded from Identifiable Opponent to Opponent Worthy of Significant Respect, and therefore the Felifers wish to leave the Gisbures to handle the dispute. Opponent Worthy of Significant Respect is a higher estimation than the Felifers place on two members of the Line of Rotation. Incidentally, they think the Line of Rotation has six members. There will undoubtedly be a polite Felifer explanation for their unwillingness to help the Gisbures, an explanation referring to Line of Rotation activities closer to the Felifer sphere of influence rather than to lack of Felifer interest in fighting Americans."

  "I infer that our friends went to Alpha Centauri, stuck their noses into the door, and had them bloodied," Rohan said. "And decided to withdraw rather than following through."

  "I gather, Admiral, though Alpha Centauri was not mentioned in the battle description, that the door was slammed through their face. Our allies' forces mostly withdrew in small pieces in a spherical direction. It would appear that the Felifers are leaving the Gisbures in the dark about the details, or perhaps that the Gisbures are not about to listen to an ally claiming that a Gisbures force was not totally victorious. The Gisbures suffer doubters of Gisbures invincibility poorly," Beyerlein said. "This is all if I am correct that the battle happened at Alpha Centauri, and not three continua away, of which I am not absolutely certain. Felifer allegorical referents can be obscure even after study."

  "This unnamed battle. Might it have happened on the night that the Americans woke me up with their unscheduled mobilization drill?" Rohan asked.

  "The time was mentioned. If my interpretation of allegorical referents is correct, the attack began perhaps an hour earlier than the American peculiar behavior. However, I must credit Captain Dumont--the only other person to have heard my tale--for this observation," Beyerlein answered.

  "An hour? That would appear to be a bizarre coincidence, unless the Americans have found the secret that has so far evaded both the Alliance and the Line of Rotation, namely a functional gravitational scalar wave communicator," Rohan said skeptically. Interesting, he thought. Villiers asked me about precisely the same issue.

  "I prefer coincidence. Besides, the few physicists interested in the question all seem to doubt that gravity actually has a scalar component," Beyerlein said.

  "As she knew, I gather you have been able to work closely and successfully with Captain Dumont?" Rohan said. To do what he wanted, the intelligence center needed to be led by people at entirely loyal to the StarFleet, and very closemouthed about what Starfleet Europa was doing. Did Dumont live up to expectations?

  "She is a remarkable woman in all respects, and has taken well to a position that requires much independence. And we have carefully generated the most highly rational reason explaining why I am regularly seen with her. I must be most discrete about not being seen near the Center," he answered. "Actually, most careful about not being seen near either of them, because I have set up a parallel center on a smaller scale, hidden, but not so hidden that the Q and others will not find it first. The other center privately checks Dumont's analysis, is officially doing a study of American Fleet strengths--and is the decoy drawing attention away from her work. It actually is doing that other study, too, just not very quickly," Beyerlein said.

  "I do not recall another mention of this other center in your reports," Rohan said.

  "That is because there has been absolutely no such mention," Beyerlein answered. "I know, and you know, but it is absolutely critical that Captain Dumont and Captain Villiers do not
know--they were classmates, and what one knows the other will soon mysteriously guess. I do not want Dumont to know, lest she thinks I do not trust her, and I do not want Villiers to know, for obvious reasons..."

  "I see," Rohan answered. "Then you don't trust Dumont?" And now I have a back channel to keep an eye on the highly estimable Captain Dumont.

  "Actually I do trust her. Implicitly. However, her staff is another question, and the only way to watch them without their putting up their guards is to watch them covertly, and see that their work makes sense. If she finds the second center, that check is less reliable. But if she finds the second center, she will soon find my letter to her, written well in advance, explaining all and promising that I trust her," Beyerlein said. "I must, however, hope that she will believe me."

  "I see," Rohan answered. "Two parallel centers." Actually, I suspect, three or four. I know how your mind works, and how concerned you are that spending so often ends up on unfavorable paths.

  "However, my confidential information was on the Felifers, not on spy centers, and if I stay longer I will wreak havoc on your schedule," Beyerlein said.

  "You are, alas, correct," Rohan answered. "I must now be back to work."

  JOSE INDRA D'ANGELO HALL

  THE CAPITOL

  ABRAHAM, LINCOLN, ALPHA CENTAURI

  November 29, 2174, 7:00 PM EST

  "Are all members of the SubCommittee for Long-Range Considerations present?" Molitor asked. "Thorne? Caravelle? Fuller? Steinmetz? Sugiyama? The serviles say we are in order...I suppose I should ask if a member of the public is present?" He laughed at his own joke. Every seat in the gallery was filled, with standees behind the final rows of seats. The media, intelligence corporations, fellow Senators...even a few members of the actual general public had managed to obtain tickets. "Are we reasonably happy with my proposed agenda? I agree that in 'Who are we at war with, and what should we do about it?' that the second question is legitimate even if we cannot answer the first. May we try informal speaking order? Senator Sugiyama?"

  Molitor leaned back in his seat. There was nothing like a friendly intimate conversation between five people, with 20 million people in the listening audience, and another 600 million, less babes in arms, potentially watching via tape delay. The rules for composing this Committee were a bit odd, too. Chairman Meyer was not even allowed to attend its meetings. Each Party had the privilege of proposing a candidate, subject to rejection by the remainder of the Committee. The Constitutional Restorationists had chosen Caravelle, whose reputation for remembering unpleasant details preceded her, and not one of their own members.

  "Hector, I would really like to hear Senator Thorne on her trip to Earth first, if no one minds," Sugiyama answered. Senator John Brown Crispus Attucks Sugiyama was the most junior member of the Committee, but he had been brought up in a family whose political dynasty was built on competence and honesty.

  "Yes," Becky Steinmetz whispered. There were following nods from the rest of the Committee.

  "Elspeth?" Molitor asked.

  "Very well. And thank you, John, for being interested. I hope I am not too disappointing in what I have to report," Elspeth Thorne said. "I shall try to be factual. In short, I made the trip to New Washington, asked questions, and got mostly questions back. The Europeans are denying that they have any plans to attack us here, and want only peaceful resolution of differences, though they do claim to own the warp gate volume out to, oh, 200,000 leagues from dead center. Of course, we can't go to the Azores and tell them that they attacked us last week, not until late next year, not without giving away that we have Pontefract tubes. So our delegates have to sit in the Azores and listen to FEU tales. As far as they know, we need a year or so to get word between here and Sol, and we are not going to disabuse their ignorance. We already came very close when the Solar Navy went to full alert; that's become controversial.

  "I was emphatically asked why I thought the Europeans were the attackers. Who do they think is attacking us? The Holy Empire of North Bougaineville? Admittedly, we did not see a single old-style FEU ship in that attack, but we saw plenty of their new ones, those dodecahedra. Who else could it be? I was received by the Senate Committee on War, the President and his Cabinet, and had a fine evening with Professor Morbius and his friends. There is no consensus as to what is happening. There is a lot of interest in determining who the French mystery ally is, the people who biosculpted someone into a cat. Satellite reconnaissance has found more biosculpts in a large closed park near Paris. The park apparently exists to amuse well-to-do people with extremely eccentric tastes in gender relations; its other denizens are odder than the cat. The small or big ships have never entered the Solar system, not unless the FEU has found an undetectable warp point and effective invisibility. There is absolutely no record suggesting experiments with unconventional fusactors. The high power xrasers we encountered have very different firing ports from FEU norms. The FEU is not visibly re-equipping old ships with new xrasers.

  "You could say that the FEU is maintaining deniability, but where will that get them? Inevitably, possibly when salvage operations are complete, we'll have incontrovertible proof that the attackers were from the FEU. And then we may well have another general war. I tried to convince the Federal Senate that if war is inevitable they should start mobilizing. I failed. By the way, a substantial group says the strange ships are FEU allies, not FEU, because the FEU is clearly not preparing for a war. The notion that the FEU has lots of extrasolar colonies and a civil war is getting lots of attention. However, it's hard to believe a splinter colony could become so advanced so quickly as to be able to deploy new ships with totally new technologies.

  "In summary, the people back at Sol have no idea who attacked us. They can't work through their ignorance to agree that we should take precautions. They view the Clarksburg Gate event as being another Battle of Charon, a local event that will go no farther. Next in line after the FEU as a suspect is Peking, but the Pekingese don't have the resources or research base to build those ships. Once upon a time, before the Incursion, we'd have had demagogues pounding the table for war with the current demon, whether they were the right target or not. If we had that, we'd have war with Peking now over the State of Harbin border issue."

  "That private park," Senator Caravelle said, "I take it it's getting very careful attention?" Thorne nodded. Caravelle made a note to herself.

  "Perhaps we should run this backwards?" Sugiyama proposed. "Someone just lost 20 million tons of warship, 600 ships, 20,000 crew or a multiple thereof, all in one fell swoop. Those were ultramodern ships, too, perhaps 20 trillion dollars of them. Our intercepts of their news programs are weak, of the nature of the beast. However. Who is shrieking in pain? Who at least moans a lot? Those losses can be hidden for a piece, but in most places will finally leak with state funerals, mourning mobs, or the like. For smaller places, the expense was not trivial, either. Aren't we hearing at least a few teeth gnashing?"

  "John, you are absolutely right," Fuller answered, "We should. We don't."

  "I want to prove the FEU and allies are doing this," Steinmetz said. "It's a really backhanded tactic--war without getting caught. I would be delighted to vote for a Declaration of War, something to put our attackers in their place. There's this problem. . We need proof of who they are. Opening a Declaration of War "To Whom It May Concern:" is, oh, I don't know...."

  "Lacking in Senatorial Dignity?" Molitor interpolated. His walk to work had been interrupted by demonstrators, people picketing in favor of a Declaration of War. They had been equally uncertain about who Lincoln was at war with, but entirely certain nonetheless that it should be declared.

  Steinmetz giggled. "Precisely. Not to mention that the Postal Corporations would decline delivery. Besides, there's no direct evidence. Some people want to fight another Incursion War, just on suspicion, or because they think frightening foreigners would be good pour encourager les autres as was said of Admiral Bing. I think one Incursion was bad enough. Also,
if we do have a war with the FEU, inevitably it will spread to Sol, and the ASN is not mobilizing appreciably."

  "I'm bothered by the disconnects," Caravelle said. "The folks at Sol on both sides are sitting there as though nothing is happening out here. OK, the Solar Navy has run up preparedness but not called out more crews. The FEU is just sitting there, not pulling ships out of their ordinary, not accelerating their building programs, not even copying their better ship designs. They're Europeans, yes, but total idiots? Could they not know that their new ships are better?"

  "I spent time asking questions, Donna," Thorne said, "And I'd like to thank each of you for asking your friends to listen to me. Even if we are sometimes divided on other issues. The Solar Navy mobilization level is a back and forth between the Senate and the President. I think the Federal Senate has a majority for mobilization, their match for Teal or Sunflower, but not enough to override a Presidential Veto. Schuykill can't send legislation to Congress, can't command anything larger that the boats in his bathtub, but he can veto bills, and he is doing that. However, the ASN has cranked readiness training up, and simulators do a lot. Finally, Donna, absolutely no one thinks they understand the FEU military posture."

  "It is difficult to believe," Molitor said, "that we will simply see repeated attacks at the Clarksburg warp gate, each on the same scale as the last one. That would make no sense. It would be as pointless as the Battles of the Isonzo. Either there will be no attack, or it will be made in much larger force than the last one. Either there is no need for preparation, or there is need for preparation on a very large scale, for which we may not have the time."