The Unincorporated War (63 page)

The ser vice ended on an up note when the choir and band started singing the joyous strains again. There were tears of sadness mixed with the joy, but somehow there seemed to be no conflict between the two, as everyone left feeling uplifted, if not utterly exhausted.

Justin was pleased when Janet and Fawa agreed to join him for dinner. Her son, Tawfik, however, had been unable to as he was desperately needed back on the
War Prize II.

The dinner was taken, like most meals, on the balcony and though the food was good, for Justin the conversation was the main fare. It was always interesting seeing Janet so deferential. For the first time in as long as Justin could remember he didn’t dominate the conversation.

He was listening to Fawa explain why it was more important to Allah for people to help one another far more than it was for them to pray in the “right” way when Janet left the table to answer a call. When she came back she was looking sternly at Justin.

“Mr. President,” she said at an opportune moment, “Marilynn just forwarded a report to me concerning a project at the Saturn institute.”

“That should not have been forwarded,” Justin said, putting his drink down on the table a little too forcefully.

“It was a secure transmission,” J.D. said. “Lieutenant Nitelowsen is very good at her job. More important, are its contents true?”

Fawa looked confused. “Should I go? I don’t want to hear something I would have to be shot for.”

Justin thought about dismissing her but then realized that she might be able to offer a unique perspective on an issue that had been troubling him since it arose. “No,” he answered, “actually it’s something I think you can advise me on. Janet, you should stay also, as it directly concerns the fleet.”

He spent the next fifteen minutes explaining the new technology and how it could be used. But he didn’t reveal his opinion on the matter other than to state he was undecided about whether to implement the technology.

He looked at his uncharacteristically silent admiral in surprise. “Nothing?” She steepled her fingers together and then looked up at him curiously. “Do you realize how miraculous our continued survival is?”

“I should hope so.”

“I’m not sure you do,” came her swift riposte. “We’ve been fighting this war with almost everything against us. Are you aware of how much of our economy
was industrialized four years ago? How big our fleet was? How much food we imported? While fighting a war larger than any conceived in human history over a larger field of contention than all the past wars combined we’ve managed to barely, oh so barely, hold our own, militarily. Do you actually get that?”

“Yes, Janet I do, and every day I’m both grateful and amazed by it. What’s your point?”

“I’m getting there,” she said stiffly. “Want to know what our greatest weakness is—at least as I see it?”

“Sure,” answered Justin, sensing her barely contained rage.

“
People,
Justin.” Her use of his name as opposed to his title was noted by the raised brows of both Justin and Fawa. But clearly it had been purposeful. “It’s people. It’s not only that we’re outnumbered nine to one to start with; it’s that we’re forced to use a far smaller percentage of our population for military purposes. The enemy has planets where most of their population exist. They have most of their needs met just waking up.”

“I know all this, Janet.”

“Do you? They get gravity and air and warmth and water just by being there. Do you realize how much of our effort goes into providing just that? And for that alone we should’ve lost this war years ago. But we haven’t lost. We have no give in our civilization, Justin. We have everyone who can work striving to make this new world of ours more than a pipe dream. But we have no give—not one centimeter. And now we have no one left to throw at Trang. Because if we take our civies to start fighting—the people who actually make all of our fragile infrastructure work—then our people will starve, die of thirst, suffocate, or freeze. That memorial ser vice we went to was the first sustained time off many of those people had in months. Most of us work and sleep and work and sleep to make this war happen. Even the hookers are working two jobs.”

Justin nodded silently.

“Because,” continued Janet, “maybe you think out of nearly four billion people we could easily squeeze a few million more to throw at the problem, but we can’t. Our economy is very much like one of those preindustrial economies on Earth. They would have populations in the millions but an army of thirty thousand. That’s because 95 percent of the people had to be engaged in agriculture or they’d starve. That left 5 percent for everything else. That’s us, Justin. If our fleet’s going to expand to meet the one the UHF is rebuilding we’ll have no one, short of the crew itself, to put in them. That means no more miner battalions—the guys that get dirty and do the actual hand-to-hand combat. But Trang is getting ready to throw another five million troops at us in the belt within the next two months. They’re all green as hell and a lot of them honest to God throw up in zero gravity, but he has them. Sending them against what we have
in the belt is murder. But guess what? The bastard’s willing to commit murder, every day.”

“And yet thanks to you we always find a way to win.”

“True, we keep winning, I’ll give you that, but here’s the rub—the rules of this game are twisted. It’s like a chess match we can’t afford to lose. Only after each game Trang gets to keep the pieces he takes from us. We don’t
ever
get ours back. He starts every new game with all new pieces. We show up for the next round with what ever was left standing. Pretty soon our clever play doesn’t count for shit, because over time we have less and less to challenge him with. It’s only a matter of time till he shows up to challenge us and there’ll be no one left at all except a few worthless pawns and one exposed king.”

“Janet, please—”

“And now I find out that we can get four hundred thousand troops back, but the method of their cure doesn’t meet your moral standards? Are you fucking kidding me? There’s a war on! A war you have charged me with winning.”

“I also charged your boss with the same task,” Justin said calmly, “and he’s not sure what to do either.”

“Sinclair has spent so much time in this rock he’s forgotten what’s at stake.”

Fawa spoke up. “Little one, you are letting your anger speak words your heart does not believe.”

“The hell I am. He doesn’t have the right to decide for us—”

Fawa’s voice took on a sharp, powerful tone. “He does have that right, and if you calmed down and acted like the leader you’re supposed to be you’d support him and not insult him and your friends.” Janet’s face tightened up at the rebuke.

“Little one,” continued Fawa, “as much as you may think so, you must trust that this is not a black-and-white issue. In truth, what we speak of here is a very dangerous line to cross. If you could achieve victory by murdering every single baby in the solar system, would you?”

“It’s not the same thing, Auntie.”

“Little one, it never is, at first.” She paused as she saw Janet was starting to glimpse what the problem really was. “Leave us, little one. I would talk with our chosen President for a while.”

Janet chafed at first but then got up, saluted Justin with laser perfection, and departed in deafening silence.

“It’s not as easy as many would think,” said Justin. “Some feel it’s evil simply because it was bad in the past, so it must be bad now. Others feel that if it helps it must be good. But it’s not their decision.”

“What do you feel, Justin?”

“The means are the ends. I’ve always felt that. If we turn to this now, how can we turn back? But if we lose, what will it all matter?”

“It always matters, Justin. Every action is judged. But what will you do?”

“I don’t know.”

“And that is your answer?”

“I haven’t made a decision.”

“Justin Cord, you are correct in that this is a moral decision of the gravest consequence. And our dear, rage-filled, beautiful Janet is right in that it is not even yours to make.”

Justin looked at Fawa quizzically.

“Well, if not me, then who?”

Fawa smiled patiently. “Do you like the sound of my voice so much that you ask me questions you already know the answers to?”

Justin remained silent for a moment. “If I give them the choice, then—”

“—then they will decide if that line is worth crossing. It is their minds, their lives, and their souls, not yours. Don’t let this powerful office blind you to that. You decide so much every day that soon you think it is your right to decide everything. You can decide what this Alliance can do, but you must not deprive these individuals of the right to choose what they can do. You must tell them the risks, the rewards, the moral and physical dangers, but then they must be the ones to decide. If you take that right from them, what is it they were fighting for? A civilization where all the hard choices will be made for them? Remember, Justin, the means are the ends.”

At the cabinet meeting the next day Justin issued an executive order calling for spacers and miners being treated for war-related cognitive trauma to be given the option of psychological adjusting on a volunteer basis. Over 98.7 percent volunteered for the procedure. The war continued.

Ceres, The Neuro

Dante was addressing the Alliance Avatar Council. Present were Sebastian, Olivia, Lucinda, who was an avatar from the Jupiter Neuro, Marcus, and Gwendolyn. Marcus was an old avatar lured out of retirement from Eris and, like Sebastian and Olivia, had served on the previous council on Earth many de cades ago. Gwendolyn was formally of Eros and had been the leader of the Erosian Avatar Council. Of the five it was only Lucinda and Sebastian who really wanted Dante in the room. Had it been up to the other three, the youngster would have submitted his report to a secretary who would have reviewed it and submitted it to an advisor, who would have reviewed it and submitted to a council member.
And only after the member had reviewed it would what was left of Dante’s report have made it to the council.

It was one of Sebastian’s influences that agents be allowed to report directly to a council member and, on recommendations of that council member, to the council as a whole. Sebastian had successfully argued that running the new council the old way might not have been such a good idea considering what had happened to that body. Dante found it a surprisingly young sentiment from one so old.

“The humans,” began Dante, “are instituting the new therapies and the results are everything they were led to believe. When the treatment is over, sleep is induced for eight hours and when the patients awake they’re asking, actually ‘demanding’ would be more accurate, to be returned to the war.”

“Amazing how eager they are to risk their lives,” said Gwendolyn. “They can’t even back themselves up.”

“No,” replied Sebastian, “but if they feel the cause is great enough they’ve always been willing to risk everything. A remarkable, if confusing, species.”

“You don’t give us enough credit, old friend,” said Olivia. Her appearance lately had changed. She still looked like a seven-year-old girl, but now she was dressed in Puritan garb from the American colonial period. “I don’t know about you, but when I ‘woke up’ here, right after duplicating myself, it was difficult. Somewhere a ‘me,’ braver than I, went into the battle while I stayed safe in storage, fought, and died. That haunts me. I often wonder about that Olivia.”

“The humans believe she is someplace else,” blurted out Dante. He saw from the look on Sebastian’s face that it was a mistake.

Olivia turned on him with contempt. “Don’t tell me that you actually believe all the God nonsense. It’s a superstition from an age when they didn’t know better. Science dispels such notions, by the firstborn, we’re not even human, so what does it matter?”

“I just have to wonder if it’s more than mere superstition,” answered Dante, unperturbed by the tongue-lashing. “It has survived so much, and just when it should have disappeared it’s back again—strong as ever. Is it wrong to consider the possibility that it might have some truth or that, due to our nature, might possibly be something we’re simply incapable of fathoming?”

“Young one, I don’t feel the need to indulge in human psychosis,” said Marcus. “Al has shown we have enough to worry about with our own.”

“Sir, no disrespect,” countered Dante, “but we think of ourselves as superior to humans in every way. We can’t help it; we are. But what if this faith thing is not a defect? What if it’s a form of strength, a way of perceiving fundamental truths that we, as incorporeal intelligences are barred from?”

“Child, I agree with you on many points,” said Lucinda, “but that is nonsense.”

“It’s not nonsense,” he shot back. “It’s a level of cognition we cannot emulate, which I find rather frightening.”

“How so?” asked Sebastian

“I suspect that it’s a fundamental aspect of what makes them who they are. And yet we, who are made in their image, are barred from any such notions.”

“Enough,” shouted Olivia. “Are you going to start a church here and begin praying to Allah? Will we be visited by the souls of our departed selves and loved ones?”

“Would that be so terrible, Olivia?” asked Sebastian softly, rising to his underling’s defense. “There are some I would like to believe I would be with again, somehow.” The room remained silent for the time it took them to feel the losses that would never be made up. “But, young one,” he said, turning back to Dante, “that is not who we are. In all probability this faith you find so fascinating is simply a survival mechanism they developed that has returned because the conditions it used to flourish in are back, nothing more. I know you, Dante; you’re wondering if it’s something we can emulate so that ultimately we’ll all be more like our progenitors and less foreign to one another.”