There Will Be War Volume III

by Jerry Pournelle

  A man jumped off the roof of the burning building. There was no one below to catch him, and he sprawled on the steps like a broken doll. Blood poured from his mouth, a bright-red splash against the pink marble steps. Another building shot flames skyward. More police arrived and set up electrified barriers around the crowd.

  A Civilian, his bright clothing a contrast with the dull police blue, got out of a cruiser and stood atop it as police held their shields in front of him. He began to shout through a bull horn:

  “I READ YOU THE ACT OF 1991 AS AMENDED. WHENEVER THERE SHALL BE AN ASSEMBLY LIKELY TO ENDANGER PUBLIC OR PRIVATE PROPERTY OR THE LIVES OF CITIZENS AND TAXPAYERS, THE LAWFUL MAGISTRATES SHALL COMMAND ALL PERSONS ASSEMBLED TO DISPERSE AND SHALL WARN THEM THAT FAILURE TO DISPERSE SHALL BE CONSIDERED A DECLARATION OF REBELLION THE MAGISTRATES SHALL GIVE SUFFICIENT TIME…”

  Mark knew the act. He’d heard it discussed in school. It was time to get away. The local mayor would soon have more than enough authority to deal with this mad scene. He could even call on the military, US or CoDominium for help. The barriers were up around two sides of the green, but the cops hadn’t closed off all the buildings. There was a doorway ahead, and Mark pulled Shirley toward it. “Come on!”

  Shirley wouldn’t come. She stood defiant, grinning wildly, shaking her fist at the police, shouting curses at them. Then she turned to Mark. “If you’re scared, just go on, baby. Bug off.”

  Someone handed a bottle around. Shirley drank and gave it to Mark. He raised it to his lips but didn’t drink any. His head pounded, and he was afraid. I should run, he thought. I should run like hell. The mayor’s finished reading the act…

  “EQUALITY NOW! EQUALITY NOW!” The chant was contagious. Half the crowd was shouting.

  The police waited impassively. An officer glanced at his watch from time to time. Then the officer nodded, and the police advanced. Four technicians took hoses from one of the cruisers and directed streams of foam above the heads of the advancing blue line. The slimy liquid fell in a spray around Mark.

  Mark fell. He tried to stand and couldn’t. Everyone around him fell. Whatever the liquid touched became so slippery that no one could hold onto it. It didn’t seem to affect the police.

  Instant banana peel, Mark thought. He’d seen it used on tri-v. Everyone laughed when they saw it used on tri-v. Now it didn’t seem so funny. A couple of attempts showed Mark that he couldn’t get away; he could barely crawl. The police moved rapidly toward him. Rocks and bottles clanged against their shields.

  The black-jacketed Lampburners took spray cans from their pockets. They sprayed their shoes and hands and then got up. They began to move away through the helpless crowd, away from the police, toward an empty building.

  The police line reached the group around Mark. The cops fondled their nightsticks. They spoke in low tones, too low to be heard any distance away. “Stick time,” one said. “Yeah. Our turn,” his partner answered.

  “Does anyone here claim taxpayer status?” The cop eyed the group coldly. “Speak up.”

  “Yes. Here.” One boy tried to get up. He fell again, but he held up his ID card. “Here.” Mark reached for his own.

  “Fink!” Shirley shouted. She threw something at the other boy. “Hypocrite! Pig! Fink!” Others were shouting as well. Mark saw Shirley’s look of hatred and put his card back into his pocket. There’d be time later.

  Two police grabbed him. One lifted his feet, the other lifted his shoulders. When he was a couple of feet off the ground, the one holding his shoulders let go. The last thing Mark heard as his head hit the pavement was the mocking laughter of the cop.

  The bailiff was grotesque, with mustaches like Wyatt Earp and an enormous paunch that hung over his equipment belt. In a bored voice he read, “Case 457-984. People against Mark Fuller. Rebellion, aggravated assault, resisting arrest.”

  The judge looked down from the bench. “How do you plead?”

  “Guilty, Your Honor,” Mark’s lawyer said. His name was Zower, and he wasn’t expensive. Mark’s father couldn’t afford an expensive lawyer.

  But I didn’t, Mark thought. I didn’t. When he’d said that earlier, though, the attorney had been contemptuous. “Shut up or you’ll make it worse,” the lawyer had said. “I had trouble enough getting the conspiracy charges dropped. Just stand there looking innocent and don’t say a goddamn thing.”

  The judge nodded. “Have you anything to say in mitigation?”

  Zower put his hand on Mark’s shoulder. “My client throws himself on the mercy of the court,” he said. “Mark has never been in trouble before. He acted under the influence of evil companions and intoxicants. There was no real intent to commit crimes. Just very bad judgment.”

  The judge didn’t look impressed. “What have the people to say about this?”

  “Your Honor,” the prosecutor began. “The people have had more than enough of these student riots. This was no high-jinks stunt by young taxpayers. This was a deliberate rebellion, planned in advance.

  “We have recordings of this hoodlum striking a police officer. That officer subsequently suffered a severe beating with three fractures, a ruptured kidney, and other personal injuries. It is a wonder the officer is alive. We can also show that after the mayor’s proclamation, the accused made no attempt to leave. If the defense disputes these facts…”

  “No, no.” Zower spoke hastily. “We stipulate, Your Honor.” He muttered to himself, just loud enough that Mark could hear. “Can’t let them run those pix. That’d get the judge really upset.”

  Zower stood. “Your Honor, we stipulate Mark’s bad judgment, but remember, he was intoxicated. He was with new friends, friends he didn’t know very well. His father is a respected taxpayer, manager of General Foods in Santa Maria. Mark has never been arrested before. I’m sure he’s learned a lesson from all this.”

  And where is Shirley? Mark wondered. Somehow her politician father had kept her from even being charged.

  The judge was nodding. Zower smiled and whispered to Mark, “I stroked him pretty good in chambers. We’ll get probation.”

  “Mister Fuller, what have you to say for yourself?” the judge demanded.

  Mark stood eagerly. He wasn’t sure what he was going to say.

  Plead? Beg for mercy? Tell him to stick it? Not that. Mark breathed hard. I’m scared, he thought. He walked nervously toward the bench.

  The judge’s face exploded in a cloud of red. There was wild laughter in the court. Another balloon of red ink sailed across the courtroom to burst on the high bench. Mark laughed hysterically, completely out of control, as the spectators shouted.

  “EQUALITY NOW!” Eight voices speaking in unison cut through the babble. “JUSTICE! EQUALITY! CITIZEN JUDGES, NOT TAXPAYERS! EQUALITY NOW! EQUALITY NOW! EQUALITY NOW! ALL POWER TO THE LIBERATION PARTY!”

  The last stung like a blow. The judge’s face turned even redder. He stood in fury. The fat bailiff and his companions moved decisively through the crowd. Two of the demonstrators escaped, but the bailiff was much faster than his bulk made him look. After a time the court was silent.

  The judge stood, ink dripping from his face and robes. He was not smiling. “This amused you?” he demanded.

  “NO,” Mark said. “It was none of my doing!”

  “I do not believe the outlawed Liberation Party would trouble itself for anyone not one of their own. Mark Fuller, you have pleaded guilty to serious crimes. We would normally send a taxpayer’s son to rehabilitation school, but you and your friends have demanded equality. Very well. You shall have it.

  “Mark Fuller, I sentence you to three years at hard labor. Since you have renounced your allegiance to the United States by participating in a deliberate act of rebellion, such participation stipulated by your attorney’s admission that you made no move to depart after the reading of the act, you have no claim upon the United States. The United States therefore renounces you. It is hereby ordered that you be delivered to the CoDominium authorities to serve yo
ur sentence wherever they shall find convenient.”

  The gavel fell to the bench. It didn’t sound very loud at all.

  II

  The low gravity of Luna Base was better than the endless nightmare of the flight up. He’d been trapped in a narrow compartment with berths so close together that the sagging bunk above his pressed against him at high acceleration. The ship had stunk with the putrid smell of vomit and stale wine.

  Now he stood under glaring lights in a bare concrete room. The concrete was the gray-green color of moon rock. They hadn’t been given an outside view, and except for gravity, he might have been in a basement on Earth. There were a thousand others standing with him under the glaring bright fluorescent lights. Most of them had the dull look of terror. A few glared defiantly, but they kept their opinions to themselves.

  Gray-coveralled trusties with bell-mouthed sonic stunners patroled the room. It wouldn’t have been worthwhile trying to take one of the weapons from the trusties, though; at each entrance was a knot of CoDominium Marines in blue and scarlet. The Marines leaned idly on weapons which were not harmless at all.

  “Segregate us,” Mark’s companion said. “Divide and rule.”

  Mark nodded. Bill Halpern was the only person Mark knew. Halpern had been the technocrat spokesman in the meeting on campus.

  “Divide and rule,” Halpern said again. It was true enough. The prisoners had been sorted by sex, race, and language, so that everyone around Mark was white male and either North American or from some other English-speaking place. “What the hell are we waiting for?” Halpern wondered. There was no possible answer, and they stood for what seemed like hours.

  Then the doors opened and a small group came in. Three CoDominium Navy petty officers, and a midshipman. The middie was no more than seventeen, younger than Mark. He used a bullhorn to speak to the assembled group. “Volunteers for the Navy?”

  There were several shouts, and some of the prisoners stepped forward.

  “Traitors,” Halpern said.

  Mark nodded agreement. Although he had meant it in a different way from Halpern, Mark’s father had always said the same thing. “Traitors!” he’d thundered. “Dupes of the goddamn Soviets. One of these days that Navy will take over this country and hand us to the Kremlin.”

  Mark’s teachers at school had different ideas. The Navy wasn’t needed at all. Nor was the CD. Men no longer made war, at least not on Earth. Colony squabbles were of no interest to the people of Earth anyway. Military services, they’d told him, were a wasteful joke.

  His new friends at college said the purpose of the CoDominium was to keep the United States and the Soviet Union rich while suppressing everyone else. Then they’d begun using the CD fleet and Marines to shore up their domestic governments. The whole CD was nothing more than a part of the machinery of oppression.

  And yet—on tri-v the CD Navy was glamorous. It fought pirates (only Mark knew there were no real space pirates) and restored order in the colonies (only his college friends told him that wasn’t restoring order, it was oppression of free people). The spacers wore uniforms and explored new planets.

  The CD midshipman walked along the line of prisoners. Two older petty officers followed. They walked proudly—contemptuously, even. They saw the prisoners as another race, not as fellow humans at all.

  A convict not far from Mark stepped out of line. “Mister Blaine,” the man said. “Please, sir.”

  The midshipman stopped. “Yes?”

  “Don’t you know me, Mister Blaine? Able Spacer Johnson, sir. In Mister Leary’s division in Magog.”

  The middie nodded with the gravity of a seventeen-year-old who has important duties and knows it. “I recall you, Johnson.”

  “Let me back in, sir. Six years I served, never up for defaulters.”

  The midshipman took papers from his clipboard and ran his finger down a list. “Drunk and disorderly, assault on a taxpayer, armed robbery, third conviction. Mandatory transportation. I shouldn’t wonder that you prefer the Navy, Johnson.”

  “Not like that at all, sir. I shouldn’t ever have took my musterin’-out pay. Shouldn’t have left the Fleet, sir. Couldn’t find my place with civilians, sir. God knows I drank too much, but I was never drunk on duty, sir, you look up my records–

  “Kiss the middie’s bum, you whining asshole,” Halpern said.

  One of the petty officers glanced up. “Silence in the ranks.” He put his hand on his nightstick and glared at Halpern.

  The midshipman thought for a moment. “All right, Johnson. You’ll come in as ordinary. Have to work for the stripe.”

  “Yes, sir, sure thing, sir.” Johnson strode toward the area reserved for recruits. His manner changed with each step he took. He began in a cringing walk, but by the time he reached the end of the room, he had straightened and walked tall.

  The midshipman went on down the line. Twenty men volunteered, but he took only three.

  An hour later a CoDominium Marine sergeant came looking for men. “No rebels and no degenerates!” he said. He took six young men sentenced for street rioting, arson, mayhem, resisting arrest, assault on police, and numerous other crimes.

  “Street gang,” Halpern said. “Perfect for Marines.”

  Eventually they were herded back into a detention pen and left to themselves. “You really hate the CD, don’t you?” Mark asked his companion.

  “I hate what they do.”

  Mark nodded, but Halpern only sneered. “You don’t know anything at all,” Halpern said. “Oppression? Shooting rioters? Sure, that’s part of what the CD does, but it’s not the worst part. Symptom, not cause. The cause is their goddamn so-called intelligence service. Suppression of scientific research. Censorship of technical journals. They’ve stopped even the pretense of basic research. When was the last time a licensed physicist had a decent idea?”

  Mark shrugged. He knew nothing about physics.

  Halpern grinned. There was no warmth in the expression. His voice had a bitter edge. “Keeping the peace, they say. Only discourage new weapons, new military technology. Bullshit, they’ve stopped everything for fear somebody somewhere will come up with–”

  “Shut the fuck up.” The man was big, hairy like a bear, with a big paunch jutting out over the belt of his coveralls. “If I hear that goddamn whining once more, I’ll stomp your goddamn head in.”

  “Hey, easy,” Halpern said. “We’re all in this together. We have to join against the class enemy–”

  The big men’s hand swung up without warning. He hit Halpern on the mouth. Halpern staggered and fell. His head struck the concrete floor. “Told you to shut up.” He turned to Mark. “You got anything to say?”

  Mark was terrified. I ought to do something, he thought. Say something. Anything. He tried to speak, but no words came out.

  The big man grinned at him, then deliberately kicked Halpern in the ribs. “Didn’t think so. Hey, you’re not bad lookin’, kid. Six months we’ll be on that goddamn ship, with no women. Want to be my bunkmate? I’ll take good care of you. See nobody hurts you. You’ll like that.”

  “Leave the kid alone.” Mark couldn’t see who spoke. “I said, let go of him.”

  “Who says so?” The hairy man shoved Mark against the wall and turned to the newcomer.

  “I do.” The newcomer didn’t look like much, Mark thought. At least forty, and slim. Not thin though, Mark realized. The man stood with his hands thrust into the pockets of his coveralls. “Let him be, Karper.”

  Karper grinned and charged at the newcomer. As he rushed forward, his opponent pivoted and sent a kick to Karper’s head. As Karper reeled back, two more kicks slammed his head against the wall. Then the newcomer moved forward and deliberately kneed Karper in the kidney. The big man went down and rolled beside Halpern.

  “Come on, kid, it stinks over here.” He grinned at Mark.

  “But my buddy–”

  “Forget him.” The man pointed. Five trusties were coming into the pen. They lifted Ha
lpern and Karper and carried them away. One of the trusties winked as they went past Mark and the other man. “See? Maybe you’ll see your friend again, maybe not. They don’t like troublemakers.”

  “Bill’s not a troublemaker! That other man started it! It’s not fair!”

  “Kid, you better forget that word ‘fair.’ It could cause you no end of problems. Got any smokes?” He accepted Mark’s cigarette with a glance at the label. “Thanks. Name?”

  “Mark Fuller.”

  “Dugan. Call me Biff.”

  “Thanks, Biff. I guess I needed some help.”

  “That you did. Hell, it was fun. Karper was gettin’ on my nerves anyway. How old are you, kid?”

  “Twenty.” And what does he want? Lord God, is he looking for a bunkmate too?

  “You don’t look twenty. Taxpayer, aren’t you?”

  “Yes—how did you know?”

  “It shows. What’s a taxpayer kid doing here?”

  Mark told him. “It wasn’t fair,” he finished.

  “There’s that word again. You were in college, eh? Can you read?”

  “Well, sure, everyone can read.”

  Dugan laughed. “I can’t. Not very well. And I bet you’re the only one in this pen who ever read a whole book. Where’d you learn?”

  “Well—in school. Maybe a little at home.”

  Dugan blew a careful smoke ring. It hung in the air between them. “Me, I never saw a book until they dragged me off to school, and nobody gave a shit whether we looked at ’em or not. Had to pick up some of it, but—look, maybe you know things I don’t. Want to stick with me a while?”

  Mark eyed him suspiciously. Dugan laughed. “Hell, I don’t bugger kids. Not until I’ve been locked up a lot longer than this, anyway. Man needs a buddy, though, and you just lost yours.”

  “Yeah. Okay. Want another cigarette?”

  “We better save ‘em. We’ll need all you got.”

  A petty officer opened the door to the pen. “Classification,” he shouted. “Move out this door.”