Venturi

by S J MacDonald

  He looked around, with an apologetic grimace. ‘Bear with me,’ he said, ‘if we go back to the Urr. Yes, sorry, it’s the Urr again…’ he grinned, as there were groans and yuck noises from around the ship. ‘Thought experiment,’ Alex requested. ‘Homeworld scenario again, situation as before, billions of stinky little Urr have arrived and deposited themselves on an outer planet, buzzing about the system and trying to come visit so they can give you lots of lovely sticky poo-squirty hugs…’ He laughed as the crew responded suitably to that. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you have established quarantine procedures, you’ve got a cordon around their planet – and let’s face it, you’re never going to want to go there again, not even if they left – but you’ve got a cordon in place and you’ve established rules. And these, remember, are the rules which we agreed were entirely reasonable in the circumstances. Their ships are contained, they are not allowed to buzz about the system and if they get past the cordon and ignore all warnings, are heading into the atmosphere of your homeworld, as a last resort, we would shoot them down. So, you’ve got the situation contained, everything is now under control, quarantine is holding. All good. Take a breath.’ He gave an exaggerated sigh of relief himself and the Venturi’s crew laughed appreciatively.

  ‘But…’ said Alex and there were mutters of ah and here we go… ‘But…’ Alex said again. ‘Now you have the time to actually stop and look at the Urr as more than a loathsome mass coming at you. You don’t, you really don’t, want to get into examining their personal habits too closely – remembering that nine out of ten of their kids will die before adulthood and that they are in the habit of eating their dead, do you really want to start watching their daily lives in any kind of detail? But you are there, in the cordon, looking down at their colony and you can’t help noticing some of the things that are going on. And one of the things you notice is that what appeared to be a homogenous mass to you when they first arrived is actually a lot of different colonies set up around high posts they’ve put up and clustered themselves around. And it isn’t long before you realise that these groups are, in fact, in competitive and even conflictual relationships. As you watch, you see one group get themselves all worked up into a frenzy of poo-squirting, at which they all rush over to another group and beat seven bells out of them. Some groups have more resources than others, too – one, you see, has control of nearly all the ships, while others are stockpiling food. And one group, you can see, is starving. They are actually starving, down there, dying right in front of you. Given that they can’t eat our food, what are you going to do? Seriously, now. Think about it. You have two choices. You can say it isn’t your problem, not your planet any more, they’ve occupied it, so even though its technically within your system it is not your responsibility, the Urr will just have to sort things out for themselves. And anyway, its only Urr, they die like flies in any case. Or – or – you can attempt an intervention, persuade them to share resources more fairly and tell them they have to stop doing the mass-murder attacks on their neighbours. Hands up, anyone, for watching them starve and slaughter one another?’ He looked around and smiled wryly. ‘No,’ he acknowledged. ‘We just can’t do it, can we? As a species, we are innately interfering. There have been massive complaints, you know, about wildlife programs made from the footage we sent back from Quarus, showing predators attacking prey – people call in, millions of them, demanding to know why we, the people there watching, didn’t try to stop it. And that’s just fish. When it comes to sentient species, what we might broadly term ‘other people’, we consider that we have a right, even a duty, to interfere if they’re behaving in any way we consider unacceptable. And let’s move this on, now, to a real world example…’ he put an image on the screen and nodded at the immediate recognition.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Sixships. And it is a valid comparison. From our point of view the six colonies which all claim to have sovereignty at Sixships are all as bad as one another. They are all extremists in their various ways, completely uncompromising, unwilling to concede even that anyone else even has a valid point of view if it is conflictual with theirs. And they are, of course, extremely aggressive, too and mutually hostile. The war had been going on there a century or more before we arrived and they had, by then, already got to the stage of firing missiles at one another’s cities. The decision we had to make at the time was whether that was our responsibility – the planet they settled was outside our borders at the time, it was an unauthorised settlement made without the support or even the knowledge of the League’s authorities, only discovered by a mining ship which called in to do a survey. We could have left them to it – legally, the Senate decided, they could have no claim on us. But morally, of course, is another matter. We sent in a peacekeeping force and they are there still, the military arm trying to keep them from slaughtering one another while the diplomats try to build some accord. We have been keeping the peace there for a century now and barring a miracle I don’t see us being able to pull out of there any time soon. Before we could withdraw we’d have to see a stable, long term situation established in which we were satisfied that they were now able to govern themselves, peacefully and responsibly.’

  He nodded as many of those in the auditorium were looking back at the chart of the Marfikian Empire he’d left up on the screen.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You’re getting it. From the Marek point of view, when they emerged from their quarantine it was to find a situation just the same, to them, as the Urr scenario, or Sixships. So…’ he tapped the diagram. ‘Let’s just take a moment to take a very much simplified glance at the situation the Marfikians saw as they moved from world to world. This is a conflict diagram. It’s very simple, the lines between each world show the degree to which they are in conflict, on a positive scale of zero to ten, with zero being neutral and ten a strong sistering, say, like Chartsey and Flancer. Those lines, when they appear, will be in green. If the relationship is conflictual, it will be in the red, negative index ranging from neg-one, cautious mistrust, to neg-ten, implacable hatred. Neg-seven is the point at which the Diplomatic Corps considers that diplomatic relationships have broken down beyond any short-term ability to repair, the point into which they move into what they call ‘the long game’. Bear that in mind, as we look at this, the situation as it was at the point just before the Marfikians emerged.’

  It was not a pretty picture. Red lines predominated. There were very few greens – fewer than the grey-hashed lines which indicated that worlds were not, at that stage, in contact with one another. All of the lines leading to Samart were hashed grey, nobody as yet having got that far in their explorations.

  ‘I am going,’ Alex said, ‘to add in a ship – just here. This represents the League and the relationship each of these worlds had with us.’ He smiled as there were pleased and quite surprised murmurs at the green lines which sprang up from the worlds and threaded up to the ship Alex had positioned centrally above them. ‘Yes, weren’t we doing well?’ Alex said, drily. ‘Though to be fair, this was still very much the honeymoon period in terms of contact and development. Worlds which had been contacted by a mighty star-spanning civilisation and offered all the freebies, superlight travel, system infrastructure, their own ships, modern hospitals, universities teaching all the advanced sciences, industrial development, new materials, new energy sources, oh, yes, they were in a very positive index. We had the odd blip when we wouldn’t let them kick seven bells out of one another, but generally, the freebies on offer were sufficient compensation for our controlling interference. Anyway, there we are, that is the situation the Marfikians saw when they emerged. At this point, I am going to pull the League away, since that is what happened, we withdrew and withdrew so entirely we no longer had contact with any of these worlds.’ The ship on the diagram vanished.

  ‘It would,’ he said and there was no grin now, ‘be wonderful to be able to report that the effect of being abandoned in a time of adversity was to cause all these worlds to set aside their differences a
nd unite against their common enemy. It didn’t, though. And in that, the critical point, the defining moment, was between Prisos and Arak.

  ‘We are talking now, just a few months after the evacuation of League personnel,’ he said. ‘The Marfikians arrived at Prisos and laid down their ultimatum. Prisos attempted to fight and lost a city, Surenam. Population, 4.3 million. With their system defences destroyed and missiles aimed at the next target city, Prisos capitulated. But they went down, they said, with honour, they went down fighting, they did not just give in. Arak did just give in, surrendered the instant the Marfikians arrived, not a shot fired, which was undoubtedly the more sensible option, but is one they are still pretty sensitive about. Anyway, as is their way, the Marfikians were in port for only as long as it took to secure capitulation – five days at Prisos, about three hours at Arak. As always in this phase, the conditions they laid down were entirely based on quarantine. Initially, all intersystem traffic was suspended. Later, they began setting up controlled routes. The routes they set were indicative of their mindset and of their complete lack of understanding of what they were dealing with. I mean, if we were setting up controlled shipping routes in a sector like this, the first thing we’d be looking at would be primary trade routes, population centres, relationships, logistics. The Marfikians simply told everyone that they could travel only to the three worlds nearest to them. Logical, a mathematical networking solution. But not reasonable, taking no account either of logistics or relationships. In many cases, as we can see, neighbouring worlds were just not on the terms where they’d want to be visiting one another. And that system is still in force, of course, ships can only go that far, cargo and people wanting to go further have to be transferred, passed along the network, ship to ship.

  ‘So – look at that, specifically, in relation to Prisos and Arak. They were attacked almost simultaneously, within a couple of weeks of one another. Arak didn’t suffer one casualty, Prisos lost Surenam. Both were told that they could go to Junter’s Drift, which the Marfikians were evidently counting as a system for the purposes of the network. So, what do we think happened at this point? Did they - A, meet at Junters’ Drift in a summit to overcome their differences and forge an alliance? B, continue to share the mining facilities there that the League had abandoned? Or C, seize this as an opportunity to shove the other out and grab Junter’s Drift for themselves?

  ‘Yes,’ he sighed, ‘C, of course it was C. To this day, they both accuse the other of attempting that seizure. And while it was true, technically, that Arak’s seizure force got there first, that was only because they were closer. Prisos had an even bigger armed force on the way at the same time. The result, inevitably, was a pitched battle. And that was it – the keynote event, the two most powerful worlds in the sector, there, setting the tone for the post-invasion era. And while you might think, well, that was eight hundred years ago, do be aware that the Junter’s Drift dispute is still on the list of reasons why neither Prisosan nor Araki ambassadors will even be in the same building together, let alone sit down at the same table. You think I’m joking?’ He shook his head as there was some uncertain laughter at that.

  ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘The Diplomatic Corps has an embassy at Lundane, which we’ll get to in a moment. They have spent centuries trying to build relationships with Prisos and with Arak. One of the ways diplomats work towards bringing people together is to go from separate meetings to simultaneous meetings in different locations, then to simultaneous meetings but held in the same building and then, finally, to a highly planned, negotiated meeting in the same room. They have never been able to get as far as Prisos and Arak agreeing to meet with them at the same time in the Embassy. Neither will budge on a list of absolute requirements before they’ll make that move. One of them is Junter’s Drift. The Prisosans want an apology for what they call the terrorist hijacking of Ooral, which is what they call Junter’s Drift, and the Araki demand an apology for what they call the Massacre of Patret. And it isn’t long, when they start on that, before the Prisosans are calling the Araki cowards and the Araki are calling the Prisosans imperialist butchers and it’ll be a toss-up, then, between which of them walks out of their respective meetings with the Diplomatic Corps first. But I am, there, getting ahead of myself… let’s just go back to the diagram for a moment. I’m going to bring it forward to when we come back on the scene.

  ‘And here, now, I’m going to bring in Lundane.’

  He tapped a system buried in a drift of nebula which lay between League space and what was now Marfikian territory.

  ‘Strange world,’ he said. ‘A kind of unintentional colony. Excorps used it initially as a supply drop and then as a base for further exploration. It became one of their major bases, with a spacedocks and thousands of staff employed there. Then a corporation set up siliplas production there and built a refinery, with housing for the thousands of staff they took in. With other corporations using it as a transit hub as they shipped things out to this sector it became a trading post too, bringing in freighters. But it was never officially designated as a colony, its status was vague. And there was no Fleet base there, no port admiral, Fleet ships might call in for supplies but they went straight on to Prisos. When the League withdrew, they abandoned Lundane, too, deciding it was more important to concentrate our forces in protecting Cherque.

  ‘So, there was Lundane. And something strange happened. As the Marfikians were taking over the region they gave this world, Terris, Lundane as one of the three worlds they were allowed to visit. But then they never went to Lundane itself. So there it is, terminus, end point on the network. And ships, of course, can go to Lundane from our side of the border too. The Marfikians have never attempted to stop them. We’ve never really understood why, though there have been plenty of theories. But now we do understand why – if you look at their border you’ll see that it doesn’t quite go as far either as Cherque or Lundane. We believe that’s because these are the port entry worlds, the porches where people were to leave their own ships and be approved as clean enough to be taken on to the guest worlds inside. So while they used them, the Marek did not consider these worlds to be theirs in the same way and they have left Lundane, at least, alone. But they have allowed that one transit corridor. So, four hundred and fifty six years ago, the League sent an Embassy to Lundane. They knew that they weren’t going to get the warmest of receptions, but…’

  He activated lines and red lines went from every world in the Marfikian Empire to the League ship parked at Lundane.

  ‘You can’t blame them,’ Alex said. ‘Really can’t. We promised them our friendship and protection and when the chips were down we ran and left them to their fate. Turning up three hundred years later with any ‘hi, guys, everything okay?’ was never going to go well. Many worlds out there hate us more than they do the Marfikians and that is something we do just have to take on the chin and understand, they have no reason whatsoever to trust us and every reason not to. But I will, here, just point out the thread from Prisos to Samart. It is as this point that Prisos is making strong efforts to reach Samart and we have a dual line, here. It is green from Prisos to Samart, because they have huge respect for what they’ve heard about them, but it is red from Samart to Prisos because they are in total lockdown and firing on any ships which violate their borders.

  ‘You will also note, I’m sure, that many of the red line relationships there were before have now intensified. This is due to the Marfikians’ change of strategy, which we believe began to emerge about a hundred and twenty years after the conquest of Prisos. Prisos was experiencing a famine at the time – hard to imagine on a modern industrial world, but their population had outstripped their food production capacity and they’d already become dependent on imports at the time of the Marfikian invasion. There had been a failure of some kind, we don’t know exactly what, but there was a famine. And suddenly, cargo pods of nutrient began being delivered, sent by other worlds under Marfikian direction. Later, Prisos was told to send ores
to Arak. This has been a pattern ever since, worlds told to send food to Prisos, or metal ores to Arak. Worlds which do this do not get paid for it, they do it under threat of having their cities destroyed if they don’t. All the worlds along the route are also compelled to handle the cargo and transport it onwards at their own expense. And this, obviously, makes them resentful of those worlds, even seeing them in some way as collaborators with the Marfikians and benefiting from the tyranny. Which is not true, absolutely isn’t. Prisos has tried three times to liberate themselves, building up defences and fighting when the Marfikian ship turned up. And they have the scars on their planet to prove it. But I expect you can see, now, with reference to our thought-experiment about the Urr, what the Marfikians are doing – directing essential resources to where they are needed.’

  There were murmurs at that, with notes of surprise.

  ‘Do not,’ Alex said, ‘mistake this for any kind of compassion, or aid for those in need. It is simply a matter of logic. When Prisos found their people starving they weren’t going to just sit there and let it happen, naturally not, so they were sending ships to their neighbours and demanding food from them and they just did not have that much surplus to give, not long term, so they just as naturally defended what they had and there was fighting, warships destroyed, Prisos threatening to send in an occupation force if they didn’t get what they needed. The Marfikians turned up, assessed the situation and recognised that unless Prisos was supplied with the food they required desperation would cause them to attack other worlds. This, in turn, would involve them building ever-more powerful warships, so it was logical to ensure that they had the food required to keep them compliant. Similarly with Arak, deprived of the resources of Junters’ Drift, sending warships in an attempt to regain it because they needed the ores for their duralloy manufacturing industries. And other worlds, too, needed the duralloy. How much the Marfikians understand about the nature of trade and intersystem dependency we have no idea, but it is apparent that when worlds become so desperate that they start attacking others for the things they need, the Marfikians will tell other worlds to send it to them.