As another lightning bolt crashed down, flashing the clouds with a moment of brightness, he sighed and turned away, leaving the shutter open. Walking down the length of his on-board quarters to the mirror over his private vanity, he ran his hand along the sink counter, admitting to himself, Nice perks in this work. I almost hate to give it all up.
The ambassador stared into the mirror, searching for something in his reflection. All he saw was the same solidly chiseled face, strong, thick-boned shoulders, and slightly graying hair he had grown used to over the decades. There was weariness around his blue-gray eyes, though, that had not been there years ago—a sad, tiring weight that had been dragging at him for far too long.
Reaching across the counter, he touched his forefinger to the water control, automatically indexing the flow rate and temperature level he desired without having to think about it. Reaching under the spout, he cupped his palms until they were full and then splashed his face with the tepid water—once, twice. Indexing for it to halt, he took down a towel and dried his face and hands, and then went back to his seat, pausing only to turn down the lights along the way.
He sat back firmly in his chair so as to lever out its hidden hassock. Then, with his feet up and his eyes closed, Hawkes reached out unerringly and snagged his drink. Taking another sip, he nestled the glass on his chest and reviewed the choices he had remaining, wondering if he had any.
Well, a voice sounded in the back of his mind, you could always get a job rigging on the Skyhook.
"Not in a million years," he muttered, wondering how even his most cynical self could come up with such a thought. Always the diplomat, however, he admitted, "And that's not my own personal distaste for them coming through. It's a new world out there, Bennie. And nobody in it needs the likes of a Benton Hawkes anymore.
The ambassador rubbed at his tired eyes, wondering if he was actually right. He could remember his father talking about how so much had changed during his lifetime. He wondered what the gruff old rancher would have thought if he had lived long enough to see the changes in his son's.
Benton Hawkes had been born in 2013, the same year the world pooled its resources to begin the Great Diversion. At least the old man had seen that much, the ambassador thought, and sighed—eight nations pulling together to send a single ship to the asteroid belt. Before he was gone, they had even intercepted their target—a miles-wide hunk of ore the scientists had said held the key to the future—attached their explosives in the right places, and blown it out of orbit and onto a trajectory that would bring it within a radically close half million miles of the Earth.
He had not lived to see the erection of Lunar City, though, or the expedition of its fleet to intercept the meteor. None of the discoveries that the countless tons of ore brought his world helped him—neither the universal conductor, nor the permanent filament. These new materials built the Skyhook, took mankind to Mars, allowed the red planet to be colonized and worked—allowed the asteroids to be mined.
One move by bold men and women that had changed the destiny of the Earth forever. Absolutely forever.
Yeah—it's just a great big new world out there, his cynical side reminded him. So forgive and forget. Get a job on the Skyhook. Space—that's the career for you.
"Never," he said quietly. He took a sip from his drink, and placed the tumbler back on his chest, though the sweet taste on his lips was not enough to cover the rising bile in his throat. He opened his eyes but could still see the picture he wished to avoid—could still remember every detail of his father's death more than forty years earlier. He could see the burning wreckage of the ore lifter, remembered his screams, old Ed keeping him back from the flames—back from his father . . .
"No," the ambassador said with finality. "No, I don't think so."
Clean Mountain had been a much younger company then. When they had been granted the government contract to gather ore for use in building Lunar City, they had been little more than wildcatters. The deal they made with Hawkes's father had been for mining rights throughout much of his property. Then, before all the proper documents could be completed, the ambitious young company had sent one of their processors out to the Hawkes ranch to get a head start.
An eager executive, a rash pilot, an old ship that had been jury-rigged and patched too many times, and suddenly an eleven-year-old Benton was an orphan. His father's foreman stayed on, ran the farm in his friend's name, raised his son. The contract with Clean Mountain was never completed. Old Ed and young Benton were so adamant, they were never even allowed back on the property to clear the crash site. And now, because of that ancient wreckage and paperwork left unfinished nearly a half century, CM Enterprises' lawyers thought they had a legitimate claim to not only the ranch, but to almost two hundred square miles around it.
"You know, Dad," he said quietly to the air, "this is not the way things were supposed to work out."
Hawkes had entered the military at eighteen, a compensatory donation of time to the government to repay their "beneficence" in allowing him to keep his own property after his father's death. At the age of twenty-two, he had gone directly into the diplomatic corps, encouraged by Val Hensen, his commanding officer, to make the move straight out of his military tour.
He scored a number of remarkable coups in his time, most of them in his youth. Sent from one violent field post to another, he had crafted honest, carefully deliberated judgments between warring factions, carving out a name for himself as a trustworthy man of high morals.
Right, his cynical side chided. And you've spent the rest of your life since then trying to live up to it.
You know the only reason they kept sending you from one trouble spot to another, came another level of his brain. They just kept hoping you'd get yourself killed.
Holding his drink on high, his tone filled with bitterness, Hawkes growled, "Well, here's to me. I sure showed them, didn't I?"
After a while, the people above the ambassador finally learned their lesson. Seeing he was too stubborn to be cowed or bribed or in any other way turned to playing their game, they put him outside of it. He had gained too much notoriety to be simply dismissed, so from then on, Hawkes was posted only in tranquil positions, ones where he could not harm the ambitions of those above him.
In 2067, however, circumstances forced a dispute between the governments of Australia and Deutcher Chocolate, International, formerly known as the country of New Zealand. Back in the early forties, Deutcher had gone through all the proper legal negotiations to buy out the at-the-time struggling country's controlling interests in itself. Its citizens were offered jobs, certain health and security benefits, etc., and after the United Nations had handed in its usual rubber-stamped approval, Deutcher went from being simply an international corporate power to being one with its own post office, treasury bonds, and yearly military-buildup allotment.
That was all well and good. But twenty-five years later, Deutcher ran out of arable land of its own to turn over to cocoa farming. They offered to buy or lease vast tracts of Australia, but their offers were all rejected. Then an invasion was hinted at, and the two countries' shared coasts found themselves hosts to massing troops and their equipment.
After that, a clever legal attache somewhere in the bowels of the Deutcher chain of command came across a near-century-old economic agreement. It was a showpiece kind of thing, one made between New Zealand and Australia for the benefit of an American president with foreign aid to grant, and who needed political points in return. Everyone knew it was a worthless document, meant only as a justifier and nothing more.
"What is it everyone knows and no one can prove?" Hawkes asked the air in a quiet whisper. ' 'Oh, I remember now, that would be . . . the truth."
The lawyers who got their hands on the old agreement decided it gave them every right to seize lands in Australia, and presented it to the Americans for their opinion. Or, more specifically, to the majority leader of the United States Senate, one Michael Carri. Carri was a twenty-three
-year man whose war trunk contained hefty contributions from scores of buyers seeking to own their part of the American government.
"And," Hawkes muttered to himself, "Deutcher's helped buy all your elections since the beginning—right, Mick? And so you made the offer to send down an American mediator. One who would come with express instructions to make sure the tide turned in favor of your boys. Whether they had the slightest right to what they wanted or not."
When the situation had first grown explosive, Senator Carri had stepped forward and offered to send an American to be the case's supreme arbitrator. The U.N. backed the idea at once. Deutcher had agreed instantly.
The Australians, seeing everyone lining up against them, sensed their disadvantage. They refused the offer, then threatened to boycott the conference and prepare only for war. When the U.N. asked what it would take to get them to the conference table, they had demanded the right to name the appointee.
Everyone agreed. Hawkes was the one chosen to accept the appointment. It was not what anyone else involved wanted, but they had no choice other than to accept. Deutcher sputtered, but they could offer no reasonable objection to Hawkes. Realizing they could not block the ambassador's appointment simply because he was honest, the corporation put on its most pleasant face and agreed.
Hawkes had been pulled from his assignment at the time—a post he actually had learned to enjoy, one for which he had worked long and hard—and was sent to the highly touted peace conference to evaluate the situation.
Yes, he thought cynically, draining his tumbler, as always—go in, calm everyone down, see what's going on, hear all the demands, look everything over, judge all the evidence impartially and fairly, and then render the verdict you were told to in the first place.
Finishing his drink, he banged his glass back on the tabletop. As he did there was another lightning flash at the shutter, one that coincided with a cannonade of thunder. The plane rocked violently. Hawkes's papers and his tumbler were all thrown to the floor. Sighing, he pushed himself up out of his chair to attend to the mess.
At the same time, a knock came at his door. His call for whoever it was to enter brought him one of the plane's air force crew. She was an attractive officer, with intelligent eyes and a pleasing smile. Highly trained, she was capable of flying fighters or commanding deep-space missions. Yet because of her looks, she had been given the title of security chief and slotted for high-level transport missions, serving more as eye candy for VIPs than anything else.
Apologetically, as if she had some power to change things, the woman told him, "Sorry, Ambassador. The word is it's going to be a rough trip the rest of the way in."
"That's all right, Major," he assured her.
As he fumbled with his scattered papers, she went down on one knee to pick up his tumbler, which had rolled almost all the way to the door. She stretched out and snagged it from under the table, then crossed the room again to return it. As Hawkes accepted it, she asked, "I know it's late, Ambassador . . . but if I could just say one thing?"
With over thirty years of training there to keep him from showing how he truly felt, he answered, "Of course . . . ," looking as charming as always, as if he had just awakened from a full night's rest and could not think of anything he wanted more than to hear what she had to tell him.
"Sir, there're a lot of people who were awfully surprised at how the conference went."
"Yes," he said, keeping all but a hint of irony out of his smile. "I imagine there were."
"I mean, most people really thought the country was going to sack the Aussies. The press, the White House, everything you saw on the vid or in the nets—private ones, public . . . it didn't matter—it just looked as if everyone was on the side of the damn chocolate Nazis . . ."
"Chocolate Nazis?" Hawkes interjected with amusement.
"Oh, I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize," he told her honestly. "If I don't hear what people really think, then . . . well, then I don't know what they're really thinking, do I?"
"No, sir." The major, feeling as if she had overstepped her bounds, took several backward steps toward the door. As her hand hovered above the green release panel, she found the courage to intrude upon the great man for a moment longer and said, "It's just . . . I wanted to say how grateful so many people are that you didn't just play the game down there."
And then, before he could comment, she had indexed the panel and slipped out the door. It slid shut as soon as she was through, sealing itself quietly. Hawkes set the papers back down on the table. Then he returned to his vanity with the tumbler in hand.
As he rinsed it out, he looked up at a photo he had wedged in place in the upper corner of the mirror. It was a picture of his dog, Disraeli, a large, black Labrador he had not seen in almost eight months.
"You know, Dizzy," he said to the picture, and his own reflection, "ten years ago, an attractive blond telling me my honesty was necessary to the world might have been enough to get me to change my mind."
The thunder came again. It banged against the outer walls of the jet in a blasting series of explosions that promised more would be following. Hawkes washed away the residue of his drink, dumped the cloudy water, then rinsed his glass again, saying, "Hell—five years ago. Five months ago, even. But, no . . . not now."
His mind reviewed the constant barrage of screaming communications between himself and Carri over the past eight months—the insulting orders, the veiled threats— all of it working to force him to side with Deutcher. Hitting the proper panel, he dropped the water's temperature down to near freezing. Then, filling his glass, he lifted it in a toast toward the picture of his dog and said, "Not now. I'm coming home, Disraeli, old boy. This time I'm coming home for good."
Nodding his head to the dog, he tilted it back and took a long drink, the intensely chilled water washing the taste of his last drink from his mouth.
Outside, lightning flew unabated, lighting the sky and blasting the land below. At the same time, the thunder lived up to its promise, violently rocking the jet as it blew the heavens apart.
2
"HE'S IN TOWN? HERE IN TWENTY MINUTES?" THE large man behind the desk confirmed what he had heard. "Thank you. No, no—no stalls—no. I'll be ready for him."
Damn, he thought. Who in hell shows up early for anything in this town? Let alone a ball-ripping ass-chewing?
Someone trying to catch you off guard, a separate voice in his head told him. Someone who isn't a part of this town's establishment.
Yes, he thought. And that would certainly describe Hawkes, all right.
He cradled the phone receiver, distracted for a moment by the information he had just received. Hoping to pull him back on track, one of the people waiting in his office asked, "Senator Carri, could we pick up where we left off this morning . . . your approach to the debate the opposition has scheduled for this afternoon? When the contents of the package bill are revealed to the public . . ."
"What?" asked Carri, slightly stunned. Caught off guard, he answered in a louder-than-normal voice, "The public? What's the public care about anything?"
The senator's voice was as large as his frame. When he wanted to use it to his own advantage, he could make grown men wince with its power.
"Sir, you're looking to have the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution repealed. That's sure to draw some attention."
"Peterson, get with the program. "The people' didn't have anything but praise for us when we struck down the Second Amendment eight years ago. "The people' are a passel of gutless cattle. As long as we keep enough of them on the federal payroll, they'll moo just the way we tell them to."
The younger man moved uneasily in his chair. He began moving his hand as a prelude to giving a verbal answer. Before he could, however, the senator leaned forward over his desk. Giving his chief of office operations a subtle signal only she would notice, he continued talking to the freshman congressman, telling him, "Don't worry, I know where you want to go next. You want to tell me that w
e're not going to be dealing with just the man in the street when we strike the Tenth. You're thinking that if we move to eliminate the blocks between federal and state power that we'll end up fighting our own kind. Right?"
"Ah, well . . ."
"Sure you are. The masses we can trick, but fellow politicians, they'll see what we're up to."
"It is possible . . . yes, Senator."
"Mayors and governors, all with their own police forces and militias. They might not stand for it. Might threaten to fight, or secede." Carri sat back in his chair, shaking his head sadly. "The Civil War was a long time ago, son. It's been two hundred years since anyone's thought about trying to leave the Union or use force on Washington."
"But, sir," countered the younger man, "I was thinking more that voter resistance might be their line of attack. Forcing out incumbents."
"A sensible thought, Peterson—worth the time you've taken. But we've been at this game a long time. Trust me, it's already covered. Pomeroy's got the bill scheduled for committee now, which means we'll vote in less than six months. It'll all be in the bag long before anyone can even start trying to organize any of the voters, much less lever any of us out of office. I appreciate your watching out for the old man, son. . . ."
"As you've said yourself, sir, you are the meal ticket."
Waving his hand to encompass everyone in the room, Senator Carri turned his head as he moved, then added jokingly, "And don't any of you forget it."
As everyone chuckled appreciatively, the committee chairman brushed a wild strand of hair back off his forehead. A year earlier, as he approached sixty-five, he had asked his barber to do something to make people forget the fact. She had started cultivating a wild lock for him to give him a more boyish look. Over the year it had grown to where he could simply turn his head and flip it down into his eye. It would have looked affected for many other men his age, but so far Michael Carri had been able to maintain his weight and health and looks. To most people he looked no older than forty-five.
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