TWO
Anthony Carstairs relaxed, as much as he ever could be said to relax, in his office overlooking a park in Greenwich. It had been for the park that he had chosen Greenwich instead of nearby London. The park had been landscaped by Louis XIV's gardener. It amused him that the Sun King's gardener designed his view. Visitors never understood his choice of locale, and that amused him as well. My own little Versailles, he thought, only without all the courtiers and parasites.
Carstairs was Coordinating Director for United Nations Services and Activities. The title was deliberately meaningless. What he was in reality was all but absolute ruler of Earth, and had been for the better part of four decades. During that time, he had wielded power behind a series of figurehead Secretaries General. Every few years he changed his title to something else equally obfuscatory. He was little known to the great masses of Earth's people, but that suited his personal style. Everyone who counted knew him for what he was. Far more important than his U.N. title was his Party title. Anthony Carstairs was General Secretary of the Earth First Party. For a generation, the Earth had been ruled by a one-party government and Earth First was that party. They made a pretense of parliamentary democracy, but it was a sham and everyone knew it. Fortunately, the planet's population had grown so passive that there was little serious protest.
He was a squat, bullet-headed fireplug of a man who looked like the dockworker he had been in his youth, following his father and grandfather. He had gone from gang boss to union chief to Party secretary to virtual dictator by a combination of intelligence, brute force, astute political maneuvering and ruthlessness.
He opened a desk drawer and took out a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale, twisting off the old-fashioned cap with fingers still powerful despite his years, which were nearing the century mark. Advances in medicine kept his appearance and health those of a man in his mid-fifties. As he emptied the bottle, he thought of the long road that had brought him to this desk on this day.
The early years had been brutal: the street-fighting it had taken to establish Earth First, the years of conniving with loathsome pseudo-capitalists who only wanted monopolies and protection from competition. There had been the opportunistic politicians who had scented a powerful new bandwagon, and corrupt military officers eager to trade favors for future promotion. Carstairs had used them all, and most of them he had, eventually, imprisoned or executed. He had never persecuted anyone for personal reasons, nor from spite. All had been done in accordance with his personal vision for the salvation of the planet. He was absolutely certain that, had it not been for him, the planet would have lapsed into utter barbarism decades before.
It was a lonely job being dictator. Even as the thought came to him, he smiled thinly at the silliness of the platitude. A man who wanted to have friends had no business seeking power. It was an irony of his life that most of the few people he had liked had been enemies—Thor Taggart, Sieglinde Kornfeld, even old Martin Shaw, whose name still gave him the shudders after all these years. They had been people of character and force, not like the sheep he led or the hyenas who wielded power for him.
He nursed the brown ale along, putting off his next appointment. It was uncharacteristic of him to put any-thing off. Ordinarily he tackled each problem immediately and got it behind him. He knew that procrastination was the greatest sin of the statesman. The man in the outer office was Mehmet Shevket, Deputy Chief of Staff of the U.N. Armed Forces.
Face it, Tony, Carstairs thought, he scares you. In all these years, he's the first human being since Martin Shaw to throw a real scare into you. And why? He's a bloody savage, but you've dealt with them before, used them and discarded them. This one is different, though, he told himself. He's brilliant, he's just like me, only he has no morals or scruples whatsoever. I want to save a planet and he just wants to rule it. Kill him, then. But he's the only military man I have who's worth two hairs on a rat's arse. I may need him soon. And, admit it, he has a private power base. Killing him could be your own death warrant.
And I'm getting old. Twenty years ago, I'd have squashed him like the Turkish bug he is. Now, I'm not so sure. Yes, Tony, old age is a terrible thing. Now quit feeling sorry for yourself and see what he wants.
Carstairs addressed the empty air above his desk. "Send him in."
Mehmet Shevket had been born in the sprawling slums of Istanbul, the child of parents he had never known. Growing up in the streets, with minimal state schooling, he had become a ruthless, prominent gang leader by the age of fifteen. A local politician who had made use of his services took him on as protégé and sponsored young Mehmet for admission into a U.N. military school.
From the first, the young man's military career had been remarkable, both for his brilliance and for his stunning capacity for violence. He had been commissioned into the World Peace Force, a much-hated body dedicated to putting down insurrections worldwide. His successes were noted and he was marked for better things. From one post to another, he was renowned for his capability and brutality. After holding the position of Chief of Military Intelligence, he had stepped into the Earth's number-two military slot. Effectively, he was generalissimo, because the number-one slot was largely ceremonial.
Anyone who, from his name and history, expected to see a classical Turkish bandit would have been surprised to see the man who walked confidently into Carstairs' office. Mehmet Shevket was a tall, powerful man with the physique of a competition bodybuilder. He was as handsome as a holostar, with wavy blond hair and ice-blue eyes. At forty-five, he looked ten years younger, not much changed from the Olympic boxer and gymnast he had been during his military academy days. A slight beefiness of neck and jaw were the only signs of age and dissipation visible. If half the stories about him were true, Carstairs thought, the man had the best degeneracy-hiding system since Dorian Gray.
Shevket saluted smartly. "Mr. Secretary, good of you to see me on such short notice."
"Have a chair, General. What's on your mind?" As if I didn't know, he thought.
Shevket sat and crossed his elegantly booted legs. Since modern warfare was largely vehicular or space-borne, the drab camouflage uniforms of the twentieth century had given way to handsome garb designed by the best couturiers. Shevket's was his own design—severe black pseudo-leather with white facings. He wore no insignia of rank and the only trace of color was the hilt of the jambiya dagger at his belt. It was carved from a single piece of blood-red coral. It was the only weapon he bore, unless one counted the three-strand horsewhip of knotted leather that dangled from his black-gloved wrist.
"I won't waste your time, Mr. Secretary. Military Intelligence has picked up a report from the Confederacy. He said the word as if it were a unique blasphemy. "It seems that an alien artifact has at last been found."
"Been hearing that one all my life," Carstairs said. "It's never panned out so far." His own spy network had reported the finding the day before, and he suspected that Shevket's personal sources had kept him informed likewise.
"This one seems to be authentic. We have no word as to the exact nature of the find, but it seems that it is no mere passive evidence, writing or the like, but something of a new principle and possibly of vast importance, both militarily and politically."
"Bloody hell," Carstairs said. Neither man gave the slightest thought to the philosophical implications of the find. "We have to get our hands on it, then, or at least learn everything about it that they do." The Island Worlders were the bane of Carstairs' existence. They had been siphoning off Earth's most adventurous spirits and best scientific brainpower for three generations.
"The find was made by one Derek Kuroda," Shevket said, "apparently quite by accident."
"Kuroda!" Carstairs spat. "Every time there's trouble from those buggers, it's a Kuroda, a Ciano, a da Sousa or a bloody Taggart! All their talk of freedom and democracy and they're just a pack of primitive clans."
"I agree," Shevket said. "And it is time we did something about them."
"It's not time for another war, General," Carstairs said.
"There are those who disagree," said the Turk. Idly he flicked his horsewhip, snapping the lashes against the side of his chair. "Some think it is high time we had a war against somebody other than petty rebels. This time, we must not settle for a humiliating peace."
"Oh?" The comment was dangerously bland. "As I recall it, the Confederates submitted to a demonstration of overwhelming force." The face-saving charade had fooled few people, but it was unwise to point that out to Carstairs.
"So it may be. The fact is, the new generation has not tasted war, and that means they have never known defeat. Now is the time, before they grow jaded and defeatist."
"Bloody convenient, isn't it?" Carstairs said. "Every twenty years or so, a bunch of dumb kids grow to military age thirsting for blood. By the time they find out what it's really like, it's too late. No, General, we wait. The Confederacy's never been anything more than a loose-knit coalition facing a common enemy. Now their commercial interests are pulling them apart. Another few years and they'll be ripe for picking."
"You have been saying that for a good many years now," said Shevket. "Yet we are no closer to resuming hostilities. I have forged our armed forces into a superb instrument of conquest, but the finest weapon grows dull with disuse. Bismarck said, 'The problem with a bayonet is that you can do anything with one except sit on it.' You can't sit on our armed forces for much longer, Mr. Secretary."
"They'll stab me arse if I do, eh?" Carstairs grinned mirthlessly. "Well, we'd better make no move until we know what this alien whatsit is. Might be the ultimate weapon, and then we'd look pretty silly, wouldn't we?"
"Therefore, we must have it," Shevket said. "With your permission, sir, I shall send a team to locate it."
You already have, you deceitful bugger, he thought. "By all means, General. Report to me the moment you find anything of value."
"I shall take my leave, then." Shevket rose, saluted and left. Carstairs watched the broad, leather-clad back pass through the door.
"Bloody butcher," he muttered. Then, to the air above his desk, "Get me Valentina Ambartsumian."
Valentina was on the Moon when she got the summons. She lay amid the elegant luxury of the Mondberg development. To build it an entire mountain had been hollowed, its interior devoted to services, its exterior to housing for the very rich. All the dwellings had exterior windows facing onto the Lunar landscape. Status was differentiated by altitude and the quality of view of the Earth.
The bed where she lay was in a penthouse apartment on the very peak of the berg, with windows facing both east and west. All its appointments and services were so modern that to someone living just twenty years previously, they would have seemed like magic. Even in this age, even on Luna, even in the Mondberg, there were few who could afford such luxuries.
The man who lay in the bed next to her was such a person. He was the head of six major corporations. On the Moon, that was not meaningless, as it had become on Earth. He was also suspected of backing several national separation movements on the motherworld. It was Valentina's task to stay close to him. Orders to terminate might come at any time.
She winced when her implanted summoner went off, a hand going involuntarily to her ear.
"What is it, my dear" said the man who dozed next to her.
"I pulled a neck muscle playing mercuryball this morning," she said. "Nothing to concern yourself about. I think I'd better pay a visit to the pharmacy, though."
He waved a hand toward an alcove curtained with a sheet of shimmering red light. "Be my guest. I'm sure I have something to soothe your pains."
She glided from the bed and made her way gracefully to the alcove. She had a lean, muscular, athletic build, because that was the fashion on Luna at this time. Plasticity of physique was one of her specialties. Any native Lunaire would have thought her a native as well, so perfect was her mimicry.
Safely inside the light barrier, she muttered, "What is it?" Her voice was almost inaudible.
"Return to head office immediately." There was no identification or priority, nor was any needed. Valentina had only one superior, and only one transmitter could reach her summoner. All orders from that source were absolute.
"Present subject," she said, "terminate?"
"Negative. Contact may prove valuable in future. Neutral status meantime. Out." Neutral status meant left alive. Suspended death sentence.
Early the next morning she made hasty excuses to her wealthy lover/victim and arranged for a descent to Heathrow Complex. His personal conveyance (moon-buggy was entirely too prosaic a word) deposited her at the VIP lounge of the Armstrong space facility. In the lounge she sipped an Irish coffee as a cat crawled into her lap to be petted. The lunar breed were long and ferret-like, with short legs to negotiate the narrow passages and tunnels that riddled the Lunar settlements.
She felt no disappointment that her months of preparation, of arranging introductions and working herself into the magnate's trust and finally his bed, had ended inconclusively. She knew that some of her colleagues thirsted for the kill, but not Valentina. If a termination had been ordered, she would have executed it. As it was, she had done her job and done it well. Now she would see what new task Carstairs had for her.
She had been chosen for her work at the age of ten, after a complex series of physical and psychological tests. Her scores had lifted her from the squalor in which nearly ninety-nine percent of Earth's population wallowed and propelled her into higher State schooling. Her schooling was quite different from that of ordinary children or of the children of high Party members. Besides an intensive course of conventional education, with emphasis on languages, she took years of ballet, acting, computers and security systems, armed and unarmed combat, codes, extraterrestrial anthropology, sabotage and a score of other subjects even more arcane.
When her schooling was finished, she was picked for Carstairs' personal security team. She had seldom met any of the others. Most of his people preferred to work solo. The fewer people on a given assignment, the less opportunity for betrayal. Also, it made for less difficulty should it become necessary to assign one of the team to terminate another.
She was beautiful today, as she usually was. She was black-haired and green-eyed because that was what her lover/victim liked. Her skin was perfectly white, because that was true of most Caucasian Lunaires. She could look like anything she wanted, even a man. But she had found that beauty seldom hindered an operation and usually got her more cooperation than ugliness.
As she waited, she reflexively fended off the polite advances of male travelers. It was not difficult in the VIP lounge. The very rich are seldom crude. Simultaneously, she kept her acute hearing occupied eavesdropping on nearby conversations. Important people usually talked about money, business and politics. She caught, from three different places in the large, luxurious chamber, a new subject: alien artifact. It was out of place here. She had been hearing it all her life. From the dawn of the space era, the popular media had been full of unsubstantiated reports of alien visitation and artifacts. None had ever panned out. Anyplace else, she would have tuned out all such talk. Not here.
When she reached Heathrow she took a tube car to Greenwich. After a long stay on Luna, she always found London depressing, and this way she avoided it. The city had changed little since Victoria's day, except to grow shabbier and more dilapidated. The hideous council housing of the previous century still stood, each unit now holding five or six times as many inhabitants as originally intended. With unemployment nearing seventy percent, most people spent most of their time on the streets. For the average citizen, participation in government was practically nil. Holovision, gang fighting and soccer riots provided the major pastimes.
The truly sad part, Valentina thought as the tube car sped toward Greenwich, was that London was one of the most prosperous cities on Earth. The wretchedness of what had once been called the Third World was simply beyond human comprehension. For generations, the resources of the planet had been squandered to provide for the growing, unproductive surplus population. The long-promised development of the Third World with its attendant employment opportunities never occurred.
Catastrophe might have been averted had population been controlled. It had been assumed that education and growing sophistication would take care of the problem. In the late twentieth century, a sudden, unforeseen resurgence of primitive religion had changed everything. The priests, mullahs, imams, evangelists and whatnot condemned birth control as unnatural. Alarmed at the booming population of Third World countries and afraid of being swamped, First World nations encouraged larger families, while decrying everybody else's lack of restraint.
After several nightmare decades during which even a modest, conventional war could kill hundreds of millions without putting a significant dent in the birth rate, the iron-fisted rule of Earth First had descended, slowing the deterioration without stopping it. There had been a sort of recovery during the Space War years, but the war had ended inconclusively. It was significant that those slightly less miserable years were being looked back on with nostalgic longing.
Carstairs glanced up as she entered his Greenwich office. As usual, he wasted no time. "Evening, Val. Special assignment this time—maybe the most important you've ever had."
"Alien artifact?"
His eyes widened slightly. In all of known space, she was one of the few people who could still surprise him. "Christ, you haven't been idling, have you now?"
"I heard some talk about it before I left Armstrong. Serious talk from people who don't fall for con games. You don't have many agents who can work in the Belt."
"Right you are, love. Have a seat." He took a bottle of Glenfiddich from his desk and poured two gills. "Official word reached here two days ago. The U.N. Academy was informed that something strange as all hell was found on Rhea. It's being studied. They promise to share all data with us. The trick is, they have the bloody thing and we don't, so do we trust them to tell us everything they find?"
"Have we any choice?" She let the smoky taste of the Scotch roll over her tongue.
"That's where you come in. I'm sending you out there. I want you to get close to whoever's analyzing the thing and report back to me. It's more complicated than it sounds, but we'll get to that in a minute."
Her stomach tightened. An assignment in the Belt! She had smuggled herself out to the Confederate asteroids on two occasions, but only to train and learn how to pass as a native. She had never had an assignment there.
"Our esteemed Secretary General made a brief statement to the media this morning," Carstairs went on. "Made a bloody fool of himself by calling Rhea one of Jupiter's moons, but who notices these days? Now Secretary Larsen's in the act. This came across about an hour ago." He waved a hand and a wall of the room ran a holo display. From his office in the Geneva Complex, Secretary for Planetary Security Aage Larsen was addressing a flock of unseen reporters. Like Shevket, the Dane was the opposite in appearance from what one would guess. He was a small, dapper man with shiny black hair and a dark-complected face dominated by enormous brown eyes. His small mouth made a prim line below a pencil-thin mustache.
Valentina heard Carstairs chuckle. "Bastard's had those basset-hound eyes surgically enlarged. Thinks it makes him look more compassionate and humanitarian." Valentina said nothing. Surgical alteration to fit a role made perfect sense to her.
"Today," Larsen began, "we received notification from the Confederacy of Island Worlds that an artifact of extraterrestrial origin has been discovered. There seems no reason to doubt the truth of the find. The scanty data we have been provided thus far, if accurate, indicate that the Confederates are in possession of a secret of cosmic significance. If Object X, as it is being called, is not surrendered to us, it could endanger all of us here on Earth. This afternoon, I intend to place a motion before the U.N. demanding that Object X be brought to Earth for study. A refusal to comply from the Confederates must be considered an act of hostility." Before the questions could begin, Carstairs cut off the holo.
Valentina was puzzled. "He's making war talk. Is the situation so serious?"
He shook his head. "No, but Security and Military have been in bed together lately. Larsen and Shevket want to start a war. In wartime you can do all sorts of things and get away with them, like shunt aside the Party old guard in favor of ambitious younger men. Good time to get rid of the political enemies, too. Lots of treason charges and summary executions with nobody looking into them too closely. Shevket would handle the butchery while Larsen spouted his humanitarian poppycock for the public."
"They'd start a war to do that?" She was interested, not shocked.
"Too right. Takes people's minds off their problems for a while as well. A big war is always a tempting short-range fix for your problems. I should know." His wry grimace vanished as a yellow globe of light flashed above his desk.
"Well, I've finally gotten through. Sit where you are and say nothing, Valentina. This will be the Confed Ambassador. I've been trying to reach him for hours. You should see this anyway." He arranged his transmitter so that she would be invisible.
The man who appeared from nowhere by holographic exchange was sprawled on a couch. The massive discomfort of the spaceborn when subjected to Earth gravity was evident in his features. The strain added years to his apparent mid-forties. He looked vaguely Hawaiian.
"Mr. Ambassador," Carstairs said, "good of you to spare me some time from the reporters."
The ambassador mopped his forehead with a damp towel. "God, anything but more reporters! Keep me as long as you want. I notice that this is a secure line, though. I have orders from my government not to engage in any secret talks while I'm here."
"Show this to anyone at your own discretion," Carstairs said. "I just don't want anyone eavesdropping right now."
"Fire away."
"To begin with, just what is this buggering thing?"
The ambassador made a hand gesture that was equivalent to a shrug. "I'll send you exactly what I was sent."
A near-translucent, glassy ellipsoid appeared above Carstairs' desk. A complicated readout appeared below it. "Not very damned impressive, is it?" he mused. "Looks like a paperweight.'5
"It's on Aeaea now. This thing is so odd they're having trouble just figuring out how to test it."
"You've heard Mr. Larsen's comments by now," Carstairs said. "How do you propose to respond?"
"We are not trying to keep it to ourselves," the ambassador insisted. "Send out all the scientists you want; they'll be welcome to study it firsthand. ''
Carstairs snorted. "Except that our scientists are not allowed to leave trans-lunar orbit."
"It was Earth First's law," said the ambassador. "You wrote it yourself, I believe."
"I'll have to see what I can do about that," Carstairs said. "So why don't you bring it here?"
"Aeaea has the most advanced scientific research facilities in the solar system. Besides, as you know well, Aeaea is the only really neutral territory between us."
Taking Carstairs' silence as consent, the ambassador continued. "Look at the readout, Mr. Secretary."
Carstairs shrugged. "Means nothing to me. I never passed my O levels."
"The figure refers to mass, not size. Object X masses better than a ton per cubic centimeter at the opaque core. It may not be as large as a football, but it's as massive as an elephant."
"Bloody hell," Carstairs said, impressed. "Physics isn't my field, but a thing like that could be useful, couldn't it?:
"The technology could open up the stars to us. Now think of the race that could develop such technology."
"Right." Carstairs thought for a moment. "Is Sieglinde Taggart studying it?"
"Who knows where that woman is? She's been notified, but she hadn't showed at the time of my last communication. Nobody controls her movements, but she must be far away to miss something like this."
Carstairs knew her habits better than most. Once, when his intelligence service had her located in Jovian orbit, she had walked into his maximum-security office in Geneva. "Thank you for your time, Mr. Ambassador. Please keep me informed of future developments."
"I'll keep the whole world informed, Mr. Carstairs. This could be the beginning of a new age for humanity." The hologram faded.
He shook his head. "Bastards still talk like that. Rough as it is out there, I don't know why they haven't had the optimism kicked out of them yet."
Valentina shrugged and finished her Scotch. "Pioneer spirit, I would imagine. You want me to find out what they really know about Object X?"
"Exactly. It won't be easy, because you'll not only have Confed security to contend with, but another U.N. team or two on the same mission. Also, Larsen and Shevket will send someone as well. That's where the real danger will be. Whatever this thing means, I don't want it in the hands of those two."