A Desert Called Peace (2 page)

Anti-Decay Accelerating Factor, or ADAF, drugs had been available, at least to Earth's elite, for centuries. As a Class One, the highest of Earth's six castes, the high admiral was very elite indeed.

Yet neither the apparent age nor the real age had helped one whit to spare Robinson the misery of transition. One moment he had been fine, if a bit nervous. The next had seen his mind temporarily erased as his body disassembled and reassembled in an imperceptible instant. With the next he was on all fours on the deck of his cabin, projectile vomiting, moaning, and cursing.

It was in this position, vile smelling puke forming a puddle beneath him, washing over his hands in a flood and spreading to stain the knees of the black uniform trousers, that the captain of the
Spirit of Peace
found her admiral and the incoming system and fleet commander.

The captain of the ship, Marguerite Wallenstein, accompanied by two of the voiceless proles that handled janitorial services for the largely middle to upper-caste crew, hurried to kneel at the admiral's side and help him regain his chair. The proles set immediately on hands and knees to cleaning up the vomit while Wallenstein went to a nearby cabinet and took from it an amber bottle and two glasses. She poured herself and the admiral a drink.

Color was just returning to Robinson's drained face as he gratefully accepted the glass from Wallenstein.

"I was warned what to expect but nothing—," the admiral began.

"Nothing prepares you for it," Wallenstein finished. "I know. It gets better—a bit, anyway—after you've done it a few times."

"How many times have you . . . ?"

"This is my fifth transition," Wallenstein said, "and hopefully my next to last."

Younger than the admiral by some fifty years, Wallenstein looked to be the same age. A leggy, slender and svelte Scandinavian, she was a Class Two, ranking just below the admiral in the hereditary order of United Earth. Like him, she received full benefit of all the ADAF therapy and might, with luck, live to see five hundred. Not precisely beautiful—nose a bit too large and eyes a bit too small, she still exuded much of the earthy sexuality the application of which had seen her through difficult times in her rise within the hierarchy of the UEPF. What low shipboard gravity did for her breasts didn't hurt, either.

A competent officer, Wallenstein had ambitions. Chief among these was to be raised to class one, followed by promotion to admiral, even high admiral, and then to take what she considered her rightful place among the ruling caste. It would be a rare honor and achievement. She also knew that without a powerful sponsor it would never come to pass.

The proles finished their odiferous task and, bowing deeply and respectfully to the captain and the admiral, made a quiet exit from the suite. Neither of the upper-caste officers bothered to return the bows, even symbolically. They forgot about the proles as soon as they, and the smell of vomit, had left. Who knew or cared what proles thought, after all?

"You should have waited in freeze, Martin," Wallenstein said reproachfully, once they were alone.

The admiral shrugged, already half recovered. "It seems to pass quickly. And I
did
want to experience the transition,
once
anyway. Speaking of freeze, though, what of our passengers?"

"No malfunctions, if that's what you mean," Wallenstein answered. "They'll stay in freeze until a few days before we assume orbit. We haven't the stores to feed and water them without recourse to Atlantis Base, anyway."

Robinson nodded his understanding and agreement. Moreover, it would be months before the ship would be able to take orbit around the target world. He had great respect for the position—or at least for the
power—
of the clergy of Earth, but really didn't want them for company for all that time. The representative of the caliph of Rome, in particular, grew tiresome very quickly, despite the body she would share gleefully and for the asking.

And on that not entirely happy thought, Robinson considered inviting the captain, once again, to his bed.

It would be a long braking maneuver before the ship assumed orbit and, while he could, by right and tradition, bed any female of the crew he wished, he had found the captain's technique most agreeable, especially in low gravity. Wallenstein would make
Peace
's long descent to the planet something other than a trial.

Peace
was one of thirty-three ships now in system. Four of these were of the same,
Spirit,
class. Another twenty-three were of one of the older but similar classes. The Spirits were slightly larger than the rest, but only slightly. They were ovoid, at just under two hundred meters across and three hundred long. Their silvery skin shone when the sun was just right. Only on closer inspection could one see that the apparently smooth surfaces were pocked with the marks of hundreds, or in some cases thousands, of strikes by astral debris.

Still, at a distance the ships—all twenty-seven that could be seen from below by the locals if the locals used powerful telescopes, as some did—seemed pristine, powerful and invulnerable.

Only one of the petty states that infested the surface of the planet below had made any effort to match the power of the majestic and apparently invulnerable fleet. Just how successful that attempt had been was a matter of considerable conjecture, both above and below.

All of the ships, newer and older, were said to be armed to the teeth. Those arms, specifically
Peace
's arms, had been used exactly twice since the once invulnerable fleet had been established. It was too risky to do so now, though. Having seen two of its cities destroyed by nuclear fire from the fleet, the state so victimized had moved Heaven and Earth to eliminate the fleet's invulnerability.

That state, the locals called it the "Federated States of Columbia," had made the effort in a spirit of revenge as much as survival. "Once burned; twice shy" was the common saying. Having seen two of its cities burned off the map toward the close of the great war that had convulsed the planet decades before, their equivalent saying had become, "Twice burned; a third time and we nuke you until you glow." The Fed bastards had actually had the effrontery to demonstrate that the threat was not idle, tracking, intercepting and destroying a robotic courier ship to prove their point. An armed and decidedly hostile standoff had ensued with more than a thousand (the exact number was deep-classified) of FSC nuclear-tipped and hypervelocity missiles pointed into space, and a like number of Peace Fleet warheads aimed expressly at the FSC. Moreover, it was widely believed that the FSC maintained, in addition to its nuclear missiles, some hundreds of mobile railguns and charged particle beam weapons capable of reaching into space either to defend against incoming UEPF warheads or, if those weapons were as good as they might be, even reaching out to touch the ships of the fleet.

The Peace Fleet might have destroyed the FSC, damn the retaliation, then, except that at the same time the FSC had demonstrated the ability to deluge Atlantis Island, the Peace Fleet base on planet, with too much nuclear fire to intercept. Since the families of the crews were on that base . . . 

Besides the twenty-seven ships locked in geosynchronous orbit, six more were held farther back, one behind each of the planet's three moons—in order of size: Hecate, Eris and Bellona—and three more guarding the rift point. These six were of varying types but, while having some defense capability, were designed generally for the support of the "tooth" elements of the fleet. This was longstanding practice, not a reaction to the FSC's threat. Indeed, insofar as Earth itself was concerned, there had been
no
reaction to the threats. Earth no longer understood threats, it had been so long.

The blue-green planet turned slowly and majestically below, its day-side pastels interrupted only by concentrations of white clouds. The right quarter of the planet was plunged in night. Cities came into view as bright sparks and thick lines, especially along the planet's southern hemisphere.

Watching the scene on the wall-mounted view screen that hung in his sleeping cabin, High Admiral Robinson shook his head in something between dismay and disgust.
So many people, twelve times or more what we have on Old Earth. And so uncivilized. Before I left home I was briefed that they were a potential threat, but only when you see the size of their cities, so much brighter than our own now, do you realize just how many of the barbarians there are, just how much potential for violence they have.

The picture on the sleeping cabin view screen was better than the one in his main cabin. For all that, it was still flawed. Multicolored lines flickered across it from right to left. Sometimes they were wide, sometimes quite narrow. They were always an annoyance and they never went completely away.

It had been a long braking before
Spirit of Peace
assumed orbit over the new world.
Give Wallenstein her due, she's as competent a skipper as she is a bedmate. She's brought her command in flawlessly. Now if she would only stop hinting that she wants me to back her for a rise in caste.

The Spirits—
Spirit of Peace, Spirit of Unity, Spirit of Harmony
and
Spirit of Brotherhood—
were the newest ships in the fleet, the most recent having been launched just over one hundred and twenty Earth years ago. The others were much older. One of the others, the UEPF
Kofi Annan
, was nearly four centuries old. Earth could not build another. Even the ancient
Annan
was beyond her ability to recreate.

And that was the problem. The new world, Terra Nova, could not build them or their like either, yet.
Yet
was the operative word. The day was soon coming when the natives
could
build starships. The day was coming when the natives
could
come up looking. Worse, the day was probably coming when they
would.

And Earth couldn't resist them now,
thought the still youthful high admiral of the fleet, watching the screen and lying in his extra wide bunk next to the peacefully snoring Wallenstein,
not if they manage to get off-planet and out of the system. Barbarians.

Robinson looked over at the captain and considered giving it another go. Why not? Despite his centuries of age, the ADAF therapy had given him the vigor of a young man, along with the skill and grace of a much older one. Anti-agathics were one of the truly remarkable breakthroughs of Earth's medical science. It was no mean achievement and had contributed much to the peace, order and stability of Old Earth that its critically important leadership actually had the time now to truly run things. Indeed, no one given the full treatments had yet died of any natural cause. Perhaps, if Robinson lived to see his third or fourth century, further breakthroughs might extend his life indefinitely. On the other hand, it
had
been a century since the last DAF gene advance. At least, he could not think of another since. He wasn't actually sure that anyone was even trying. Very few of even the very few progeny of the elites seemed much interested in science anymore. They were fewer even that chose to serve in the United Earth Peace Fleet and those were few enough.

Hands clasped behind his head, High Admiral Robinson turned his attention to the dull gray ceiling, thinking back on the Earth he had left so regretfully almost a dozen months before. Earth was such a paradise compared to the hellhole below, teeming with about twelve times more people than a world that size could indefinitely support. And most of those were poor, sometimes starving, and afflicted with more disease than one could find at home outside of a laboratory.

Earth was peaceful, as well, and had been for more than three centuries. The structure ensured peace, with the half million or so Class Ones supervising perhaps three million Class Twos, who in turn supervised twenty or so million Class Threes, the entirety lording it over the half billion proles of Classes Four through Six. The proles didn't really matter, of course. They were nonpolitical now, living in peace, growing the food and obtaining what raw materials could not be gotten from recycling. They did the limited manufacturing still permitted and possible. They knew their place.

Barring a few malcontents like Wallenstein, everyone on Earth knew his or her place now.
We're not so foolish anymore as to leave decisions to the ignorant or the ambitious. Especially do we keep the proles out of things. What would they have to offer, anyway?

Indeed, there was hardly any such thing as ambition anymore. One was born into a caste and stayed there. Only within the Peace Force was social mobility still seen as desirable, and even there it was highly constrained. The highly pneumatic Captain Wallenstein was unlikely ever to see Class One, for all the time she had spent in a long life servicing her betters.

Whatever the drawbacks of the system, and Robinson knew them better than most, at least it was generally peaceful.

The same could not be said for Terra Nova, which had become one huge slugfest, periods of peace intermittent, at best, between bouts of war, reprisal, massacre and genocide. Robinson shook his head with disgust.

There was a knock on the door. "Come in," Robinson commanded, rising and throwing on a robe, walking to the main cabin, and ordering the door to his sleeping chamber to close.

"Maintenance crew, Your Excellency," said the Class Three technician. "Got the replacement screen for your cabin. New stuff, Your Excellency, just brought up from Atlantis Base by shuttle. Be only a few minutes to install it."

"Be at it, then," Robinson ordered. Then, since the installation was likely to prove noisy and bothersome, he retired back to his sleeping cabin and the captain. On the way he happened to notice the box the view screen came packaged in.
Kurosawa Vision Solutions, 101 Imperial Way, Kamakura, Yamato, Terra Nova.
Fragile: take special care when moving,
the carton said.