Island Worlds (17 page)

"This is my home," Brunhilde said. "It's a separate complex from the Kuroda mansion next door. This whole level and several below it are occupied by the founding families. They're interconnected into a single warren, but that's mainly for defensive purposes. The corridor between my place and the Kurodas' is open now mainly because of the meeting, so we can all get back and forth without attracting attention." She waved at a pair of low couches. "Get comfortable. What do you drink?"

"Would you have any beer?" he asked.

"I hope so. I own a brewery." A little robot came in and delivered their drinks. Brunhilde took a glass of ruby wine. It looked like a genuine Earth wineglass.

"If you don't mind my asking," Thor said, "why am I suddenly part of the family?"

"You've passed. We've been keeping an eye on you since you reached Armstrong. We don't accept just anybody, no matter what the name."

"I've done pretty well on my own," Thor said, nettled. "I don't really need the family."

"If you'd needed us, we'd have had no use for you. Bearing the name doesn't cut it. Let me tell you what Father used to lecture us about. He had only a limited faith in genetic inheritance of his own qualities, which were superlative by his own admission. 'You want the Cianos to stay a family of superior people,' he used to say, 'then find people with the qualities you want, then marry 'em and make 'em Cianos! Support no dead-wood.' That was Ugo. The asteroid-based families have largely followed his advice. The Taggarts mostly went into the military, of course, a profession that has its own weeding-out process. They're mainly Luna-based anyway, and there haven't been as many Taggarts as there have Cianos and Kurodas. We've maintained close ties, though.

"Anyway, you've survived two years on Caterina's ship. She's a difficult young woman, but a good skipper. You seem to have come through with mind and body intact," she eyed the still-fresh scar, "well, mostly intact anyway. I can't say about your heart, though. You have the look of a young man who finds it easy to fall in love with women of strong character."

Thor was taken aback at this unflinching assessment of his character. "Nothing easy about it," he said. "You're right, but don't tell her. She already has enough leverage on me."

Brunhilde laughed unaffectedly. "You think she doesn't know? I said she was difficult. One of the difficulties is that she'll settle for nothing but the best in men. That means she has to put them through a very rigorous ordeal first. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has passed yet."

"It doesn't surprise me," Thor said ruefully. He was amazed at how easy it was to relax with this woman. It was a relief to let down the guard that always had to be maintained in the tight, hard world of the ships and mines. "You're right about my taste for women of character. I grew up with a portrait of your mother in the house. I think Fred Schuster was always my ideal woman."

"An ideal few women could live up to," Brunhilde acknowledged. "Caterina just might. Don't let her be the only one doing the testing." She put her glass aside. "I'll have a room fixed up for you here. The meeting will probably run on late into the night. I know you'd like a bath and a change of clothes, but I think it's time you met Ugo,"

"I guess I didn't hear you right," Thor said. "I could have sworn I heard you say that it was time I met Ugo."

"That's exactly what I said. Come along." He followed in a bemused daze. Things were just happening too fast. She led him to a door upon which was hung a pirate's black skull-and-bones flag. "This is Father's office. Go on in."

Mystified, Thor complied. It was dim inside and Thor started when the door shut behind him. The lights came up slightly and Thor felt a prickly sensation on the back of his neck when he saw the man seated on a chair in the center of the room. The man's hair and beard formed a white, swirling cloud and he stared at the chair opposite him with a sort of barely-suppressed ferocity. It was Ugo Ciano. What had Shaw's book said about the rumors that Ciano had never died?

Ciano pointed to the chair he faced. "Siddown!" he ordered. Thor complied with a great sense of relief. Some indefinable quality of the voice told him that this was a holographic image. "The fact you're here," Ciano said, "means two things: One, you're one of me and Fred's descendents, or one of Sam and Laine's. Two, I'm dead. That's a depressing thought, so don't expect no happy greetings, understand?" The Brooklynese dialect was so grossly abrasive that it was almost a burlesque.

"You got this far, which is good," Ugo continued. "Don't let it go to your head." Abruptly, Ugo got up and began to pace. Even sitting, Thor was taller. "By the way, don't mess with my stuff or handle my papers." He waved around the room, which was indescribably cluttered and messy. Thor couldn't imagine how his worst efforts could possibly do any damage. "Now, pay attention, I'm telling you the important stuff here."

The tiny man fretted and waved his arms wildly, as if his diminutive body simply could not cope with all the energy it contained. "As a Ciano or a Taggart, you got a duty to humanity. Granted, most of humanity ain't much to feel a duty for, but maybe it'll get better. Most of the clowns who come out here wanna get rich quick. Mostly they get dead quick and serves 'em right. They're doing their bit as pioneers, but you gotta have more important things on your mind. Primarily, you gotta see to it that humanity has a future in space. You ought to be able to hold up your end of the job. After all, you got a good genetic inheritance. If you feel you ain't up to the task, marry somebody smarter than you and try to breed somebody who can. With enough generations, somebody like me has to come along sooner or later."

Ugo had his back to Thor, but now whirled around to face him. Although Ugo must have been in space for several decades when the holo was made, he had nothing like the grace of the Spaceborn. All his movements were excessively forceful and he was always having to check his follow-through. "In order to guarantee that future in space, I've set several projects in motion. For one, me'n Sam, God rest his soul, have bankrolled a bunch of cashiered officers to set up a military academy in a rock called Sálamis. I never had much use for a military myself, but Sam convinced me how important it was for the colonies. Give them your help and support. They'll save your butt some day.

"Second, I'm working on a new kind of engine. You see, it ain't enough to run around pulverizing rocks here in the solar system. That's as dead a dead end as Earth is. We gotta go out there!" He waved a stubby arm at a picture-hung rock wall. "Interstellar space! New stars! We get out and settle around a bunch of them, then maybe we got a future. That brings me to this engine. I'll be testing it soon. It may not work quite like I planned. Come to think of it, maybe that's why I'm dead. What the hell, life ain't been much fun since Fred died. Anyway, by way of precaution, I've left some of the specs with my boy Bob down on Earth. He'll never be as brilliant as me, but he's a good kid and takes after me and Fred. Knocks back Wild Turkey like a champ, too. Anyways, what it may come down to is, someday there may be nothing for the colonies to do but escape. By then, you gotta have that engine perfected, because it's the only way you're going to get away. Work on it."

Ugo returned to his chair. "That's about it. Do your best, help make us a star-spanning species. If you don't, what the hell, somebody else probly will. Don't disgrace me. Now get outta here and send the next one in." The image froze.

Thor rose from his chair. So that was Ugo Ciano. It was quite an experience, and he felt a new respect for Sam Taggart and Ian McNaughton. Brunhilde was waiting outside for him. "Was he always like that?" Thor asked.

"In his milder moods, which were few and far between. Mother kept him in line most of the time, but after she died he reverted to type. Come on, I've had dinner laid out." She led the way back into the foyer.

"What was that business about an engine?" He remembered the coded pages Bob had sent him but decided not to mention them just yet.

"That was how he died, if he died." She reclined at a small table and Thor took the opposite couch. The food was mostly extravagant concoctions of textured vegetable proteins, along with the usual fish and shrimp dishes.

"What do you mean, 'if'? I keep hearing hints of some mystery surrounding his death."

"One day," she speared a shrimp in lemon sauce on her fork, "Ugo left his lab—that's a deserted rock now—and got into a ship named
ad astra
. She was a little military shuttle he'd equipped with his mysterious engine. The only one with him that day was his lab assistant, a half-crazy old coot named Roseberry. Roseberry stayed in the lab while Ugo ran the engine through its tests. Then he tried the final testing stage—ignition."

She refilled her glass. "I'd like to say that his final words were something noble, poetic and inspiring, but that wouldn't have been like him. First he said, 'You ready, Fred?'—he'd taken to talking to Mother a lot in those last years. Then he said, 'Let's fire this bitch up and see what happens.'

"There was a tremendous flash that burned out half the sensors in this part of the Belt and was recorded as far away as Mars. That was the last of him. It was Roseberry who insisted that he wasn't dead, and still will, if you buy him a drink. But, after all, there was no evidence whatever left behind, so maybe he really is still out there somewhere, heading for the stars."

Thor raised his glass. "To Ugo Ciano, wherever he is." She clinked her glass against his.

EIGHT

The great hall of the Kuroda stronghold was a long gallery left over from an early mining operation. The floor was polished smooth but the walls had been left rough, with the marks of the miners' tools still visible. Aside from the straw mats upon which the assembled family spokesmen were seated, the only furnishing in the room was a rack of swords, ancestral treasures of the Kurodas.

Perhaps a hundred men and women sat in a double line facing one another. At one end of the double row was Saburo Kuroda, patriarch of the clan. Near him was Brunhilde and several others Thor recognized. Some he had met, others he knew by reputation. Caterina signaled for him to sit next to her, far down the line. A few late arrivals took their seats and Saburo nodded to the doorkeeper. The young man ceremoniously shut and bolted the door.

"By now," Saburo began, "you are all aware that we face a crisis. It is one we should have seen coming long ago, but did not. For this I blame myself. I am entrusted with the security of the family, and I paid too little attention to the trends on Earth and to warnings sent me by colleagues there, including our late cousin, Robert Ciano. The damage is done. It remains for us now to assess our situation and take steps to protect ourselves. As always, we shall formulate our policy as a unit and pursue our goals in the same fashion. Representatives of all the founding families are now here. Tomás Sousa will now bring us up to date on the most recent developments."

Sousa had a gray beard and a strong, ugly face of perfect serenity. His mutilated hands were encased in delicate servos to give him some limited power of manipulation. "I will not waste your time by detailing the various actions taken against the outerworlds over the last few years. By now, you've all studied that. The important things are these: Over the last six months, the President of the United States and the heads of state of a number of nations have taken to referring to the Outerworlds as "the enemy," something unheard of in peacetime. These are not slips of the tongue. This trend represents policy. Literary and holographic references to the outerworlds have become uniformly negative. In nearly all nations, any expression sympathetic to the outerworlds is a punishable offense. The United States has virtually suspended freedom of speech and the press in this matter, another measure never before taken in peacetime.

"Yesterday, the U.N. passed a resolution condemning the outerworlds for practicing what they call 'economic warfare' against the Earth. A unanimous vote in the Security Council empowered the U.N. to levy a virtually unlimited military budget from the member nations. It is also empowered it to draft young men and women from the member nations into the U.N. military forces for the first time in history. They are preparing for war."

A babble broke out as dozens tried to be heard. Henryk Van Doom's voice boomed above the others. "They speak of 'the outerworlds' as if there were such an entity, and there is not! There are only multitudes of independent and semi-independent colonies. The nearest thing to a city-state we have is Avalon, which is little more than a functioning anarchy."

"Quite true," Sousa said. "In order to have a war you need an enemy, and they have created one."

"But why?" shouted a woman Thor did not recognize. "Granted that they depend on us for vital resources. Nobody likes that. But it's a wide leap from resentment to war. What can they gain? We have to sell our products to them at ruinously low prices as it is, ever since the U.N. Economic Council has started controlling the market, entirely ignoring the forces of the free market. Even if they could take over all our operations, it would be many years, if ever, before they could run our operations as efficiently as we do."

"It's greed!" said Hjalmar Taggart. "Everybody knows that McNaughton is behind all this. Murdo McNaughton wants a monopoly on space commerce. They've been losing business out here for years." He glared at Reiko McNaughton, who sat across from him. Reiko was the head of the Spaceborn McNaughtons.

"We broke with Murdo and the Earth family decades ago!" Reiko said, furiously. She gripped a folded fan in a white-knuckled fist. "Murdo is just a catspaw for the Earth Firsters and the national leaders are going along because their ruinous social policies have bankrupted the whole planet! A war will take peoples' minds off their misery."

"There are elements of truth in all these things," Sousa said. "But what we are seeing is the result of a plan many years old and of very great scope."

Things he had experienced and things he had found in Shaw's writing came together in Thor's mind. The chaotic situation on Earth began to have sense and shape. He leaned forward and spoke. "They're trying to forge a world-state."

His quiet voice cut through the babble and Sousa turned to look at him. "That is a most perceptive comment, young man. I do not believe we have met."

"I'm Thor Taggart, grandson of Sam and Laine. I immigrated a little over two years ago and I've been crewing aboard the
Sisyphus
. This is my first time here."

"Welcome among us," Saburo said. "Robert Ciano spoke well of you in his messages."

"He said you were a callow young punk but capable of learning," Brunhilde amended.

"Ahm," Saburo murmured, "Robert and his sister have always shared their fathers bluntness."

"He sent us a copy of the study you and young Chih' Chin Fu put together, the one about the change in attitude of the popular holographic entertainments," Sousa said. "Its scholarship was sloppy and casual, but it was full of important material and gave me much matter for thought. He mentioned that you have met both President Jameson and Anthony Carstairs, head of the Earth First Party." Thor was dumbfounded. He had never dreamed that these people were even aware of him.

"You mean," said Hjalmar Taggart, "that you had them both in one place and you didn't shoot them?"

"It was at one of Murdo's parties," Thor said, "and—"

"All three of them?" Hjalmar said.

"Let him speak, Hjalmar," Saburo chided.

"Murdo we know all too well," Sousa said. "Please give us your impressions of the other two."

"Jameson is a smooth political hack," Thor said. "I doubt if he has a firmly-held principle in his head. He wanted to be President and he made it. He also wants to be Secretary General and I'm sure he'll get that, too. It looks as if he's going to make sure that the Secretary-General is virtual planetary dictator by the time he steps into the office. But he's a front, a media-created image for others to manipulate."

"That tallies with all I have been able to find out about the man," Sousa said. "What of Carstairs?"

"A different proposition entirely. He's a convinced ideologue and he means every word he says. He's an enormously impressive man in person but he doesn't have the kind of slick style you need to run for elective office these days. And I got the distinct impression that he'd never met Murdo before. I don't think he was faking it. He's smart and tough and I think he'd be a dangerous opponent. Let me put it this way: If he were a philosopher, he'd be Nietzche. If he were a political theorist, he'd be Marx. If he were a general, he'd be Napoleon. He has that kind of personal force. But it wouldn't come across on holovision and he can't run for office."

"But if he had not met with Murdo before," Sousa said, "then he was not the original architect of this trend."

"I don't believe so," Thor said. "I think Murdo, but more likely a consortium of business and political people, hatched this plan years ago. Murdo was able to exert his influence through his sponsorship of a great deal of programming. At about the same time, they began cultivating Earth First, which had been an obscure, lunatic-fringe party up to that time. When they saw that Jameson was the man to watch in U.S. politics, they seduced him away from the Constitutionalists to Earth First. It may just be chance that Carstairs was running Earth First. If they think they're going to manipulate him, they're wrong."

"Thank you," Sousa said. "Many things fall into place now. We face a triumvirate, but more likely a cabal, fronted by Jameson. But Carstairs is the one to watch. The others may be motivated by profit and power, but he sounds like a classic visionary. I don't doubt that he acts from the noblest motives, by his own lights. History is full of such men: Cromwell, Robespierre, Lenin, they are the most dangerous specimens of humanity. He probably sees a worldwide dictatorship as the only way to save Earth. He could well be right. But the only sufficient unifying force is an external enemy. We have been elected to fill that role."

"They have the enemy," Brunhilde said, "now they need a face and a name. You can't focus hate on a faceless population. They'll want a bogeyman to scare the children with."

"They have one," Van Doom said. "Martin Shaw. That rabble-rouser is already stirring people up to who knows what kind of violence."

"Martin's not a rabble-rouser!" Caterina said hotly. "He's our first and maybe only patriot. He's out there urging unity while we sit here like an inner circle of the chosen. He knows there's a fight coming and he wants to be ready for it. He's for action, not talk!"

"Calm yourself, granddaughter," Saburo said with steely gentleness. "We, too, shall take action. We formulate family policy here."

"You all know," Sousa said, "that I owe my life, and more importantly my freedom, to Martin Shaw. But I cannot allow my personal affection and gratitude to cloud my judgment. He is a brilliant political thinker and a great leader of men, but he could ruin us all. He wants to use force and he wants to use it unrestrainedly. He will call for us to strike at Earth first and hit hard. He is a terrorist at heart. I know that he has looked into the possibility of reviving Nekrasov's Tunguska bombs." There was shocked silence.

"Barbaric!" Reiko said. "The man should be arrested."

"It's worse than barbaric, it's dumb." Hjalmar said contemptuously. "It's the first thing they'll think of. Ever since the Djakarta incident they've built a whole battery of weapons to destroy rocks or ice headed for Earth."

"Never properly tested and never intended to seek rock or ice bombs equipped with screening devices," Saburo said. "He could just pull it off. We have to keep an eye on him."

"In the meantime," Brunhilde said, "he serves a valuable purpose. While the Earth holos are putting horns and a tail on Martin, maybe we can operate without attracting the wrong kind of attention. It's time to decide on our course of action."

"Martin Shaw is correct in one thing," Saburo said. "We must become a unified nation. Our carefree anarchy must end. To that purpose, I appoint Tomás to draw up a constitution for us that will be agreeable to the greatest number of the island worlds. This we must publicize as widely and as soon as possible. Then we'll have to set up a constitutional convention to ratify it. Distasteful as it is to us all, this will call for a political party and an administrative bureaucracy. To handle these positions we shall appoint temporary heads from among those present here. As soon as feasible, most of these positions will have to be handed over to non-family members. Otherwise, we'll be accused, justly, of running a nation as a family operation."

"Do we have a name for this party?" Brunhilde asked.

"If it is agreeable," Sousa said, "I have chosen Eos. It means 'dawn' in Attic Greek, and we are at the dawn of a new age for mankind. Best of all, it is short, easy to remember and difficult to misspell."

"Sounds catchy," Brunhilde said. "I nominate Tomás Sousa as boss or chairman or whatever of the Eos party." The vote was unanimous.

"Hjalmar," Saburo said, "you've had extensive military experience. Put together a security force. It will be the nucleus of our own military force, should the Sálamids not join us."

"They'll come in with us," Hjalmar assured him. "For one thing, Sálamis is full of Taggarts. Just what kind of security will we be needing?"

"First of all," Saburo said, "there will be spies to catch. I know this because a man came to me a few days ago saying that he had been sent by the European Intelligence Agency to spy and report on Kuroda activities. He wanted to know if I would pay him to act as a double agent. We can be sure that many more have been sent disguised as emigrants, and that some of them will be more conscientious than this one. We can expect sabotage as well. Cooperate with Shaw in this, Hjalmar."

"We'll catch them," he promised.

"We need a diplomatic branch," Sousa said. "And it must begin work immediately. The task will be a daunting one. Our spokesmen must persuade the most cantankerously individualistic people in history to join a nation. Young Thor, that sounds like a natural position for you. You're comfortable with people in all walks or perhaps floats of life. You have an engaging manner and an impressive sincerity. Will you become our first diplomat?"

"I've never had any experience in diplomacy," Thor said, "but if you trust me I'll give it a try."

"Don't be dismayed by your lack of experience," Saburo said. "Nobody else out here has ever had any experience, either. You'll start with Sálamis. As soon as we appoint a treasurer, you'll be given a budget to work on and a ship will be detached from the family fleet for your use."

"What do I tell them we want them to join?" Thor asked. "A nation needs a name."

"Tell them that our new nation is the Confederacy of Island Worlds," Saburo said.

General Maas pushed back from his desk. At near Earth-normal gravity, some effort was involved. Sálamis was given a high rate of spin and all personnel had to spend a minimum number of days under heavy gravity to keep them in top physical condition. Thor found it exhausting. How had he ever lived like this?

"Get your constitution ratified," Maas said, "and you've got a military arm. We've prepared for this for years, ever since General Taggart and Ciano set us up. Of course, this setup looks weighted in favor of the founding families, but if, as you promise, wider representation is forthcoming, then we'll have no objection to placing ourselves under the command of the Confederacy. I've talked it over with my staff and we have one proviso: We want it spelled out in the Constitution that Sálamis, under the direction of a civilian Secretary of Defense, runs the sole military establishment of the Confederacy. Politicians are forever trying to set up independent paramilitary organizations and it's deadly. No uniformed thugs, no privateers, no mercenaries. And no political commissars to ensure our loyalty. If you don't trust our honor there can be no morale."