Fire with Fire, Second Edition

by Charles E Gannon

  “Touché.” Caine could hear the smile that accompanied Lemuel’s interjection. He also saw Alnduul’s holographic mouth half-twist about its axis.

  “He’s trying not to laugh,” supplied Elena.

  But the Arat Kur were not finished. “We have another question. You categorize the Confederation’s governmental structure as ‘modified bicameral.’ Please explain.”

  “Well, bicameral means—”

  “Two houses of representation, now common among many of your nations. This we understand. We are interested in how this has been ‘modified.’”

  Caine looked at Visser—who was clearly nervous. Yeah, I think this is where they try to put us in the bag. “The first house of representation—called the ‘Forum’—is the one in which all nations have equal representation: it is a ‘one state, one vote’ system.

  “The second house—called the ‘Assembly’—is the one in which national representation is proportional to a metric which balances population against productivity.”

  “This is what we noted with interest. As we understand it, nations with lower per capita productivity suffer a reduction in their total votes.”

  “That is correct.”

  “In other words, their populations are deemed less worthy of equal representation. Which, as a simple matter of mathematics, means that their citizens have a proportionally smaller number of votes representing their interests. This makes them, in your language, ‘second class’ citizens.”

  “I would not agree with that categorization.”

  “Perhaps not. But the fact remains that their representation in the Confederation’s Assembly is not proportionate to their numbers.”

  Visser was shaking her head. Caine raised a—hopefully—stilling palm. “That is true.”

  “So the structure of the Confederation actually contradicts its claims to legitimacy: it does not provide equal and full representation.”

  “With respect, Speaker-to-Nestless, that is not what the Confederation claims. You cited the key passage yourself just minutes ago: the Confederation is—” he checked the paper that Visser had pushed into his hand—“the means whereby the ‘will of humankind is solicited, represented, and made manifest.’ There is no promise made regarding precisely equal representation.”

  “Your terms are misleading.”

  “Our terms are precise in what they claim and in what they do not.” Visser made a motion to stand alongside Caine: he nodded.

  She leaned inward. “Honored delegates, pardon my intrusion. I am Ambassador Visser. As one of those who helped craft our Confederation, allow me to assure you that the language was not intended to be misleading. We could not claim equal representation at the global level because we cannot ensure it at the national level. Many nations have different limitations upon voting: age, sex, cognitive competency, group affiliation. If the political voice of each state is therefore created by excluding and including different segments of their society, how could we claim that the Confederation offered uniformly equal representation? Our objective was to produce the most representative, and yet workable, government that we could, with minimal intrusions upon each nation’s sovereignty. I thank you.”

  Alnduul cycled his lids once, slowly. “Thank you, Ambassador Visser.” They waited for a similarly polite response from the Arat Kur. After a second, Elena—eyes no longer rounded but oddly angular—shook her head: “Don’t wait; they’re not going to acknowledge her.”

  When the Arat Kur resumed, the simulated voice was slower, more cautious. “We are curious: was there a world organization before your current Confederation?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what became of it?”

  Caine looked around the gallery; there were frowns on the faces of Visser, Downing, Durniak, and Elena. They see where this could go. Visser shook a hand at Thandla: she waited until he had cut the connection. “I think we must decline to answer.”

  Elena spoke before Caine could open his mouth. “Madame Ambassador, I do not think that is wise. They are clearly seeking to indict our credibility and integrity.”

  “So we must not allow them to by discussing this matter any further. We must convince them that we are worthy of their vote.”

  “With respect, Ms. Visser, their vote no longer matters.”

  “What?”

  Caine nodded. “The Arat Kur have already decided against us. So our strategy must focus on how our actions make us look to the other member states.”

  Visser narrowed her eyes, nodded, gestured toward Thandla.

  Caine resumed. “Our apologies for the brief silence. The organization which preceded the World Confederation was called the United Nations. We are currently in the process of shifting most of its responsibilities and activities to the Confederation.”

  “So the United Nations elected to willingly transfer its authority to the World Confederation?”

  Damn. The Arat Kur had smelled the blood of human political discord and were on the scent—but how? Their questions were not just precise and penetrating—they were too precise, too penetrating, almost as if—

  Visser had once again instructed Thandla to cut the connection. “This is over. We should never have agreed to respond to this line of questioning.”

  Caine looked at where the Arat Kur’s blinking yellow quatrefoil had been. “No—we’re fine.”

  “How can you say that? If we continue to answer their questions, they will soon be claiming that the United Nations was illegally sidestepped. They will thus decide that the World Confederation is illegitimate, and that Earth is too politically factious to be a member state.”

  Caine shook his head. “No: the Arat Kur are already well past that point.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that we’ve been wrong about the Arat Kur. Their questions aren’t an attempt to acquire knowledge about us, or even to discover flaws or contradictions in our dossier.”

  “Then why are they asking these questions?”

  “Because they already know the answers and hope that when pressed, we’ll lie. Somehow, the Arat Kur already know about the uproar over how the Confederation usurped the power and prerogatives of the UN.”

  “How could they know?”

  Downing had moved toward the center of the gallery. “It’s impossible to know how they got the information. But we do know that it’s illegal for them to have it. And that’s a weapon we can use against them. We can expose them in front of the whole—”

  “No.” Visser’s voice was unusually calm. Arms folded tightly, she was completely still, eyes closed.

  “With all due respect, Ambassador, you said it yourself: we have to stop this line of questioning. I put it to you that this is the only way to really put an end to it. If we—”

  “No. I am no longer concerned with ending this line of questioning.” She opened her eyes. “The Arat Kur have laid a deeper trap.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  ODYSSEUS

  Downing blinked. “A deeper trap?”

  Visser nodded. “They know we will realize that their questions arise from illegally acquired knowledge.”

  “And that is precisely why we must expose them.”

  “Mr. Downing, they want us to expose them.”

  Durniak forgot her composure and her English in the same instant: “Shto?”

  Visser shrugged. “It is the only reasonable conclusion. They knew we would figure this out. And they must logically presume that we will then expose their violations. But if they foresee this course of events, then it follows that they must welcome it.”

  “But why? What could they achieve?”

  Elena’s response to Durniak was slow but certain. “Discord.”

  Visser was nodding again. “Ja. Discord. This Accord is not so stable, I think.”

  Caine found himself nodding, too. “During our first contact, Alnduul mentioned the possibility of ‘specious’ actions by other member states. And then there was his reaction to ou
r question about what would happen if we were declined membership: his gills snapped shut with a sound like a popgun going off.”

  Downing chimed in. “And then there’s the anxiety over us blundering into someone else’s ‘pathway of expansion.’ That should merely be awkward, not a crisis.”

  Visser furnished the deductive capstone. “If the Accord was politically coherent, then this entire candidacy process would simply have been a pro forma exercise. No: the Arat Kur’s line of questioning is an attempt to use us to widen the rifts already present in the organization.”

  “And to put our candidacy in the trashcan.” Elena was looking directly at Caine as she said it.

  Caine forced himself not to be distracted by her eyes and pressed on. “What we really need are answers about why the Arat Kur are trying to spoil the party.”

  Lemuel rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure—but what the hell do we do about the Arat Kur? If we let them keep asking questions, they uncover Earth’s dirty laundry for everyone else to see. And if we tell them we’re on to them, they call us liars and everyone goes home angry. Or, we can simply lie about the UN. Then they’ll expose our lies, we’ll expose theirs—and we all go to hell together, anyway. So with choices like those—hey, Riordan; what’re you doing?”

  Caine had moved to the very end of the gallery, the tip of the teardrop’s sharp tail. He touched the canopy. “Dr. Thandla, the Dornaani gave us the opacity for privacy. Do we have an override?”

  “Er . . . yes, we do.”

  “Please restore the transparency.”

  “Wha—?” Visser gasped. Wasserman brayed a counterorder, but it was too late: the opalescent curve above them faded away.

  Caine looked down at the Dornaani delegation. They were all—all—facing toward the human gallery. Eyes unblinking. Caine nodded at Alnduul, who made no movement in return.

  Visser cleared her throat behind him. “Mr. Riordan—Caine—”

  Caine felt all the Dornaani eyes looking directly at him, kept looking back at them as he spoke: “Here’s what we do: we tell the Arat Kur—and the Accord—the truth. Everything. We deny them nothing. Give them every sordid detail they want to pursue.”

  “And when it becomes obvious that the Arat Kur have illegal advance knowledge?”

  “We let someone else point it out. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the Dornaani already know what’s going on.”

  “What? How—?”

  “They monitor us—legally. So they know about recent events on Earth, too: how else did they know about Nolan? So they already know that the Arat Kur have illegal access to information. But the Dornaani aren’t pointing fingers, so I’m thinking that they’d like this to play out nice and calm. Which means that right now—oddly enough—the fate of the Accord and their Custodianship could be in our hands. Whether we publicly prove the Arat Kur, or ourselves, to be liars, is equally harmful to the Dornaani: both outcomes indicate that they have failed as Custodians, and it weakens the Accord.”

  Trevor was nodding. “Yup. That’s how it would play out, for them. So they’d be happiest if we play dumb and go along with the charade.”

  “And thereby keep the peace.”

  Downing shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Risky business, giving the Arat Kur any info they want.”

  Caine shrugged. “Except, if we’re right, the Arat Kur came here expecting to cause an incident, not actually gather intel. So if they try to interrogate us without a prior investigatory game plan, we’re likely to learn more from them than they will from us.”

  Downing’s eyebrows went up. “Yes, that’s probably true.”

  Visser was looking back and forth between them. “I do not understand.”

  “Caine is quite right, Ambassador. If we do not tip our hand—if we ‘play dumb’—then the Arat Kur will want to keep asking more questions. But each one of their questions tells us a great deal about what they already know about us—and what they don’t. With some careful analysis, we might even be able to reconstruct what sources of information on Earth they had access to—or at least those they didn’t. The more questions they improvise today, the more we learn about them and their intelligence operations.”

  Caine nodded. “And it puts the ball back in the Arat Kur court: they’ll damn themselves with their own actions.”

  Durniak nodded. “Da. And if the Arat Kur act like brutes, the undecided powers should be more likely to side with the Dornaani. But I wonder: are the Arat Kur alone in this?”

  Caine rubbed his chin. “Maybe, but it’s also possible that they’re the patsies of one of the other two powers.”

  Trevor looked up. “What about the Slaasriithi? I find it pretty suspicious that they refuse to show themselves.”

  “Yeah, but so far, they’ve been affable, even if they’re shy and cautious. It could all be an act, I suppose, but they seem pretty temperate: not as likely to be the movers and shakers in this club.”

  “And the Ktor? What about them?”

  Caine looked across the amphitheater at the wheeled water tanks. “What about them, indeed. The wild cards.”

  “And what about them?”

  “Who?”

  Hwang pointed to the left. “The other new kids on the block.” Caine turned, looked into the now-transparent gallery that had been assigned to the other candidate-race.

  Rough brown-gray fur covered most of their pebbly hides. They were upright but digitigrade, standing at least two meters tall even without raising up on their long rear legs. A thick, round, pointed tail sent a faint line of lighter fur up the spine. It thickened into a crest where it divided the blocky haunches, mounted the barrel-shaped back between arrestingly large shoulders, and then ran along the ventral ridge of a neck that was the shape and thickness of a small pony’s. As Caine’s inspection reached the head, he heard Durniak gasp and Trevor mutter, “Christ.”

  The head was hardly a separate object; it was a seamless, curved continuation of the neck, which ended in three pronounced nostrils arrayed as the vertices of an equilateral triangle. On either side of that nose, two glinting obsidian eyes were mounted under bony ridges that flared out from whatever skull might be extant beneath the sheath of flesh and muscle that blended back into the neck. The rounded “head” was long, rather like a cross between that of a sloth and an anteater, but the underslung jaw was vaguely reminiscent of a sperm whale’s. The spinal fur was heavier and thicker on the head, rising into a high, tufted crest. Caine’s eyes met those of the—creature? It was hard to think of it as a person, just yet.

  “Do you think they’re part of the Arat Kur plot?” pressed Hwang.

  Trevor exhaled emphatically. “Good God, I hope not,” he said, staring at the short, wide swords that swung from each one’s back-slung baldric.

  Caine stayed silent, surveyed the group’s reactions: Durniak seemed to be having the most profoundly xenophobic reaction—odd since her xenophobia index had been one of the lowest. But tests and reality are two very different things. Hwang and Thandla evinced almost spiritual detachment, whereas Wasserman seemed too contentious and self-involved to be affected. Elena looked captivated, not terrified. Visser seemed rigid, but was still coping. And Trevor’s outburst struck Caine more like a means of purging anxiety rather than a declaration of it. All in all, the delegation was doing pretty well handling the sight of such profoundly different—and potentially ominous—exosapients.

  The one who was looking at Caine raised a four-fingered hand—a thumb on either side of the palm—in what seemed a gesture of greeting, or maybe threat, or even warding. Caine raised his hand in response—

  —just as the privacy screen reasserted. Caine turned; Visser had given the signal to Thandla. “We must resume our conversation with the Arat Kur; they are waiting.”

  Caine nodded to Thandla, then cleared his throat. “My apologies, Zirsoo. There was some debate as to how much detail we should use when respond
ing to your question regarding the relationship between the World Confederation and the United Nations.”

  “You have finished your deliberations?”

  “Yes. Please feel free to ask any question you wish.”

  And so began the dull recitation of the sad facts—which, in retrospect, read like the decline and fall—of the United Nations: its lack of efficacy; the interminable deadlocks in the Security Council; the self-interested posturing and dickering in the General Assembly; its successes in the areas of social welfare and education; and its dismal failures at ensuring, or even increasing, peace, security, and economic parity. As the questions became more specific, Visser and Durniak had to intervene more frequently to provide precise data. After receiving Durniak’s long—and to Caine, baffling—answer regarding the accounting procedures used in the calculation of each nation’s per capita productivity, the questions stopped. Everyone waited.

  The yellow quatrefoil pulsed steadily, but no further queries came forth.

  “Are there further queries regarding the legitimacy or authority of the government represented by the human delegation?” Alnduul folded his hands, waited. “Very well. If any delegation wishes to formally contest the legitimacy of the World Confederation of Earth, they must do so at this time.”

  A brief pause, then Zirsoo’s simulated voice: “The Arat Kur delegation must contest the human government’s legitimacy. The covering dossier claims that it enjoys the approval of seventy-eight percent of the human population and that its leading nations control ninety-two percent of all global productivity. However, the approval percentages were not generated by universal one-person/one-vote polling, but by extremely disparate national surveys and referendums. Furthermore, we are concerned that the human delegation has not shared all the relevant facts regarding the legal creation of the World Confederation.”