Captain

by Rick Shelley

  When the shuttle doors opened, the honor guard came to attention. A group of civilians also was present. At the center of this group was a man identified as the minister of defense, Desmond Lanch. There were several other dignitaries with him.

  "The prime minister will greet you at his office, Colonel," Lanch told Flowers. "We have cars waiting to take you and your people there." Except for the shuttle's crew.

  The cars were limousines, their dark blue exteriors polished as brightly as any military dress-uniform brass, their windows darkly tinted to give total privacy. The chauffeurs wore fancy uniforms—clearly not military. The vehicles had been parked inside the hangar, waiting. Five were needed to transport the dignitaries and the new arrivals.

  The car bearing the minister of defense, the two colonels, and Major Esterling led the procession. Lon was in the second vehicle with Captain Orlis and two of the lesser officials who had been present to meet them.

  "It will take about fifteen minutes to get to Government House," one of the civilians told Lon and Orlis. "There is scarcely any traffic at this time of day."

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  Lon nodded politely, while Captain Orlis made small talk with the civilians. Lon was more interested in looking out the side window. He knew from his study of the file on Aldrin that Landfall had more than two million inhabitants—one of the three or four largest cities anywhere off Earth. It had been built to showcase the government buildings at its center.

  Around that hub, marked by a circular avenue fifty yards wide, six main thoroughfares radiated out through commercial and residential districts. Broad greenbelts gave Landfall almost the feel of a collection of small towns, separate from their neighbors.

  Traveling the nearly deserted streets an hour before dawn, Lon saw how the residents kept their city clean. There appeared to be a considerable fleet of small street-cleaning automatons collecting refuse along the way, adroitly maneuvering around obstructions too large for their collector vacuums.

  "We're coming up on Government Center now," one of the civilians announced about eight minutes after the motorcade had left the airport. "There in front of us."

  Lon dutifully looked out the front, and he was impressed. Although he had read about mis, and seen photographs, the reality was startling. The government district was a mile in diameter, and the architects had subscribed wholeheartedly to the monumental style of public buildings. A low stone wall, three feet high, was the only visible "security" around the district. There were no serious barricades, no visible guardians patrolling the perimeter. A

  series of winding drives worked their way through the district, offering carefully staged views of the buildings and the landscaping that separated them.

  Almost makes Corps Headquarters look like a lean-to, Lon thought. This would stand up to comparison with any of the old national capitals on Earth.

  * 'Landfall was a planned city,'' one of the civilians said with obvious pride. "Our original settlement was a dozen miles north of here. We built the new capital on the site of the first landings. Of course, it was not built all at once. What you see represents the fulfilling of the original blue-CAPTAIN

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  print over more than two hundred years, as finances and other needs permitted. Just across Colony Boulevard from Government Center we have our opera house, national theater, and three museums, one dedicated to works of art that were brought from Earth."

  "A remarkable achievement," Captain Orlis said. "A work of art as much as anything else."

  Both civilians seemed to beam at that.

  The motorcade slowed down severely when it entered the governmental district. It was not, Lon thought, solely because the streets were narrow and winding. Their hosts wanted to make sure that the visitors had time to be suitably impressed.

  Government House stood in the exact center of the district. It was three stories high, built of some lustrous white stone that glinted as the headlights of the limousines caught it. The cavalcade came to a halt on a circular drive at the front of the building, below a flight of stairs that was twenty yards across and rose thirty feet to the ceremonial entrance.

  But the Dirigenters were not taken up those stairs. The secrecy again, Lon thought as they were led around to the left side of the stairway. Double doors opened into an anteroom below the stone stairs. There the prime minister of Aldrin East, Edmund McGrath, waited to greet his visitors.

  The formalities were brief, introductions and McGrath's statement that he hoped their discussions would be fruitful. "I know you must be tired, Colonel," he said then. "And while I am eager to start our talks, I would not impose so heavily on you. Guest quarters have been arranged for you and your people, and you will have whatever time you need to rest and refresh yourselves. If you and your officers would do me the honor of sharing breakfast first...?"

  There was, of course, no chance that Colonel Flowers would decline that invitation.

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  By the time Lon reached the guest room that had been assigned to him, he was so bleary that he was almost ready to fall asleep on his feet. He had not slept in twenty-four hours. I've got six hours now. Let's not waste any of it, he told himself, heading directly for the large and comfortable-looking bed. Five and a half to sleep, thirty minutes to get presentable afterward. Breakfast had been, thankfully, brief. Prime Minister McGrath had contented himself with a minimum of talk. Lon accepted that the food had been excellent, though he had been in no condition to appreciate the niceties. Stifling yawns had been his primary focus; shoveling food in as quickly as he could without appearing to have the table manners of a hog came second. And his mind had been unable to cope with three demands on it.

  Lon stripped to his underwear after checking to make sure that the duffel bag with his two changes of clothing had actually been delivered to the room. Everything had been unpacked and put in drawers or hung in the closet. Better than they deserve, Lon thought, staring at the bat-tledress uniforms hung in perfect order. Battledress was disposable, recycled rather than cleaned ... when possible. Not knowing how long the visit to Landfall might be, Lon folded the uniform he took off. He might need to wear it again before they returned to fresh stocks. He set the folded uniform on a chair next to the dresser. Perhaps someone would collect it and clean it while he slept.

  The bed was so soft that it seemed to swallow Lon. He felt an instant of subconscious panic

  as he sank into the mattress, but he was asleep before he could even fully recognize the sensation. Exhaustion brought the void, sleep so profound that no dream had a chance.

  Lon's time sense did not fail him. He woke almost precisely at the time he had set for himself. He was still tired, but bearably so. He allowed himself a few minutes to lie in bed, warm and comfortable. But duty would not let him remain abed too long. / need time to shower and shave, he reminded himself, wasting a few more seconds CAPTAIN

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  with that. Eventually, and still with time enough so he would not have to rush, he stretched and sat up, yawning to help clear the sleep from his brain.

  Standing next to the bed, he did a few very quick and sloppy exercises, still cranking himself up toward full alertness. He stopped when he noticed that the dirty uniform had been removed. He had not heard anyone come into the room. / guess I was really dead, he thought. Normally, even the slightest noise was enough to wake him. Especially on contract, when noise might mean that danger was too close to avoid.

  The bathroom attached to his bedroom was larger than his combined office and bedroom in the barracks on Di-rigent. It was fully furnished with everything he might possibly want, including a few items that he wasn't certain how they were meant to be used. There was a variety of scents, colognes and perfumes. After his shower, Lon sniffed at each and finally chose the least intrusive, and even then dabbed it on very sparingly. Wouldn 't be proper to smell like I'd just come from one of the private rooms at the Dragon
Lady, he thought with a smile. He shook his head. / guess my visits there are over anyway.

  That led to thoughts of Sara, and Lon was whistling under his breath by the time he finished dressing. He was ready to face the world when a soft knock sounded on the door.

  "Come in," Lon called, his voice almost cheerful.

  A servant dressed in what would have passed for formal wear on Dirigent came in. "Excuse me, sir. I was sent to tell you dial your commander and the others are gathering."

  "Thank you," Lon said. "I'm ready."

  "Very good, sir. I shall show you the way." The servant bowed Lon out of the room ahead of him, then closed fee door behind them and started down the corridor— Which was fifteen feet wide. They entered a lift tube, went down one floor, then walked back in the direction from Which they had come. Office space had been found for lfc& Dirigenters. Everyone but Colonel Black and Captain

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  Orlis had arrived. Several of the enlisted men were seated at complinks, working at something or other.

  "You look rested, Nolan," Colonel Flowers said while the servant who had led Lon to the room bowed his way back out.

  "A little sleep does wonders, Colonel. I could get used to this soft life."

  "Don't get used to it too quickly. With any luck at all, we won't be here long. To get this thing settled, we'll have to go back west, and convince the other side to go along with whatever arrangements we can come up with here."

  / doubt West will give us this level of VIP treatment, Lon thought.

  "We'll be meeting with the prime minister and several other members of the government in twenty minutes," Flowers said. "I'll listen to Prime Minister McGrath's position statement, then probably offer a few ideas of my own. Then we'll see where we go from there. I may have work for you later, but for now, I just want you to pay attention. If you have any insights, give them to me afterward."

  "Yes, sir. Listen hard and keep my mouth shut."

  Flowers grinned. "We'll all be doing a fair share of that, lad. The idea is to find out just where East stands."

  Prime Minister Edmund McGrath and his defense minister, Desmond Lanch, each had a

  deputy with him—mostly to serve as surrogate memories, Lon guessed. Major Esterling sat at the end of the table, symbolically a middleman between his government and the mercenaries. There were two other Eastmen present, but sitting back from the table in the cabinet's meeting room. For the Corps, the four officers sat at the table. The two colonels were in the center, with Lon at Colonel Flowers' left and Captain Orlis at Colonel Black's right. Lead Sergeant Osier hovered behind them, ready to go back and forth from the cabinet room to the office below if necessary, and one clerk was present with a complink ready for anything he might be called on to do.

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  Prime Minister McGrath's opening statement was everything that Lon expected. McGrath spoke of deploring the fighting, and pointing out that Aldrin East had been ready, eager, to accept the Corps' offer of mediation and peacekeeping in months past. He pointed out that his government had not ordered die steps leading toward their abortive invasion of West until after West had refused that offer. "It was the counsel of desperation that ruled. Since West declined any peaceful settlement, we felt that we were left with no viable alternative."

  He spoke briefly of the population pressures that both colonies were feeling, but went to some pains to stress that West had never indicated any plans to use the disputed territory in the south and that East had stepped into a vacuum. ' 'That territory had never been occupied or even—so far as we can determine—visited by anyone from Aldrin West. They had no valid claim to it."

  For Lon, there was nothing at all new in what Colonel Flowers said in response. The Dirigent Mercenary Corps preferred to see a peaceful solution to the dispute between the two governments on Aldrin and offered itself as mediator and guarantor of the peace during the interim. A world that was not unified was at a distinct disadvantage, subject to pressures and dangers that could be alleviated, if not eliminated, by unification. The Corps was willing to put pressure on Aldrin West to accept a just settlement of the current disputes, if suitable agreement with East was found. And so forth.

  McGrath spoke again then of the population pressures. "If there were peace between the two governments, and perhaps—hopefully—talks directed toward planetary government, men there would be no reason why both sides could not avail themselves of the land in the south. And both sides would be able to more effectively utilize ttfc land on either side of the continental divide mat sep-us—if we were free of the threat of military inter-by West, for example. Aldrin could conceivably a population three times as great as it does today, 188

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  without any serious decline in the quality of life, if we could all use all of the available and acceptable lands."

  Lon received his only surprise of the day when Colonel Flowers spoke again. "We know that a world can support many times the population that some think possible. Lieutenant Nolan here was born and raised on Earth, which has managed to support as many as six billion people. True, Earth has several times the available land that Al-drin does, but by analogy one must suspect that Aldrin could support a population of a billion without running into the debilitating stresses that Earth has encountered over the past several centuries. Lon, perhaps you could explain some of the ways that Earth has successfully dealt with the intense population pressures she has felt?"

  "Yes, sir," Lon said, thinking, It's time to put the freak, the outsider, on display again. He took a few seconds to try to sort out where he could begin, what he could say. He had been given absolutely no warning about this. The colonel is playing things by ear, Lon realized. He probably didn't guess himself that this might come up.

  "I do have a rough idea of the populations here on Aldrin, and the available land areas," Lon started, speaking slowly, trying to feel his way into the topic. "Earth has long since been forced to utilize every available bit of land, even areas that you on Aldrin would consider

  submarginal. For instance, humans on Earth have always heavily used tropical zones. The evidence is that humanity arose in tropical savanna, very like the area where the settlement of Hope is. That is, most likely, mankind's 'natural' habitat. On Earth, only the most extreme parts of the polar zones do not have permanent civilian inhabitants, and even those areas have often been utilized for long-term research projects. The mountainous regions of Europe and the Americas have been intensely settled for centuries, in some cases dating back to before the intense population pressures forced people to live anywhere that they could produce any agricultural products to feed themselves. The development of molecular replicators, nano-CAPTAIN

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  technology, in the twenty-first century in large measure reduced our dependence on arable land. Of course, Earth did not move toward dealing scientifically with population pressure until that pressure was almost overwhelming, until the planet was crowded almost to a Malthusian limit. On Aldrin, as on all colony worlds, those questions either do not arise or are dealt with early enough that the more extreme measures of... adjustment need never arise."

  It was not an elegant speech. Forced to talk extemporaneously, Lon often slowed down, searching for words, for direction, wondering how long Colonel Flowers expected him to divert the people from Aldrin East—and what the colonel expected his rambling discourse to produce. Other than boredom. "There are some rather extreme theories, mostly dating back several centuries and only modestly supported by available evidence, that claim that all war can be traced directly to population pressures, ignoring the clear facts that religion and differing political systems have caused some of the bloodiest and most bitter conflicts. It took Earth a long time to escape the destruction of war, but there has not been a major conflict on the world in centuries, despite the continuing stresses of intense population.

  Emigration to other worlds has never managed to a
lleviate, even temporarily, those stresses. It simply is not possible to move enough people off-world fast enough for that."

  Eventually, after nearly forty-five minutes, Lon wore to a stop. He glanced at Colonel Flowers, who nodded his satisfaction.

  "A very impressive tale, Lieutenant," Prime Minister McGrath said. "We have had very little direct contact with Earth in generations, though, naturally, we attempt to follow what happens there with some interest. You have given us much to think about. Colonel Flowers, if you would care to submit specific proposals for our consideration . .. ?"

  "Of course, Prime Minister. I can have them for you Hi an hour, perhaps less."

  McGrath nodded. "I think we've made a good begin-

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  ning today, gentlemen. If there is no objection, we might consider adjourning until tomorrow morning. That will give us time to go over the proposals of the Dirigent Mercenary Corps in detail."

  In less than twenty-four hours, the government of Aldrin East and Colonel Flowers came to agreement on a set of proposals. Prime Minister McGrath asked for only two minor, cosmetic, changes in the language of Flowers' written suggestions. It took even less time to agree on how they would attempt to persuade Aldrin West to go along.

  "We'll return to Hope tonight," Colonel Black said. 'Tit return to my headquarters in the north.

  I'll transmit the peace proposals to the government in Syracuse as coming from the government of Aldrin East, and put the Dirigent Mercenary Corps on record as favoring mis solution as it stands. We'll do everything humanly possible to persuade West to accept the proposals as not only the best that can be obtained but also as the best prospect for the world as a whole and its people. If everything else fails, I'll threaten to void our contract with West and accept employment with East."

  No one at the table in McGrath's cabinet room showed any emotion at Flowers' statements, but Lon virtually held his breath. Voiding a contract and switching sides was almost unprecedented in the annals of the DMC. The honor of the Corps demanded that such a