Island Worlds (19 page)

"Impossible!" somebody said.

"We certainly hope the Earthies think so," Saburo commented. "But I've double-checked our figures. There's no way to get an accurate count, of course, but it must be somewhere near that figure. It's only that we are so widely scattered that makes our population seem so slight."

"What has Shaw been up to while we were out looking for support?" Thor asked.

"He's kept very busy. All manner of young fools have been joining his movement." Saburo looked glum, "Along with others old enough to know better." Thor hoped that didn't mean what it sounded like. He hadn't yet had time to ask about Caterina. When he had left for his mission, she had been sent out to shut down family operations until the situation was clarified. He hadn't seen
Sisyphus
when he'd landed, but it might have been at the other pole or moored out of sight somewhere.

The meeting broke up with a spirit of tightly guarded optimism. The situation was far from ideal, but it didn't seem as hopeless as many had assumed. Sousa's reassurances were comforting, and the stunning news of the huge invisible population put things in a different light. Most of them had been oppressed by their smallness and weakness compared to huge, populous Earth. True, ten million only made a small-sized nation by Earth standards, but the island worlds had no bulk of idle, welfare-supported do-nothings to act as a drag on its economy or, if need be, its military capability. Nearly every adult was a vital, functioning part of society, although Thor held his doubts about the ever-praying monks.

Saburo stopped Thor as he was about to leave the room. "Thor, I'm afraid I have some bad news for you. It looks as if Caterina has thrown in with Shaw." Thor's heart sank. He didn't need this, not now. "She's here in Avalon someplace," Saburo went on. "Try to find her and talk to her. You might be able to make her see sense. She regards you highly, and you two are near the same age. She thinks that Tomás and I, and most of the family elders, are timid and ineffectual plodders. Shaw's call to action is seductive."

"If she regards me highly," Thor said, "she's hidden it from me pretty thoroughly. I'll do what I can, but I don't think I'll make much progress. Maybe it isn't Shaw's personal magnetism that attracts her and the others. It may be because Shaw's way, brutal as it is, is the only one that has a chance of working."

"Not you, too," Saburo said, wearily.

Thor took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. "No, but my experiences these last few months have been enough to strain my belief in our chances of living through this."

"We'll have to convince people otherwise," Saburo said. "The mass rally starts in ten days. We have to declare independence and form a government, one that people will have confidence in. Shaw may promise action, but there is a great deal more to running a nation than killing foreigners. And we have Sálamis."

He found her in a spacer's R&R center called The Rockhounder. It was situated near the south polar dock and in recent months had become a well-known center for Shaw's followers. One of the rooms, formerly a hiring office for transient spacers, had been converted to a nerve center for Shaw's movement. That was where he found her, sitting at a console and issuing orders to a small band of young people, mostly teenagers. There was nothing that could be called a uniform, but all wore Shaw's black-and-red armband.

"Hello, Cat." She looked up and her expression changed slightly. He couldn't interpret it. The youngsters drew slightly together and he could feel the tension in the air. He wasn't wearing an armband. He was an outsider, possibly hostile.

"Good to see you, Thor. I hear you've been busy, drumming up support for Eos."

"Eos?" said one of the youngsters with infinite adolescent contempt. "This one's an Earthie-lover? You want us to chuck him out, Cat?"

"I doubt if you could. He's pretty good in a rough-and-tumble. I've seen him at work myself. Martin trained him." She smiled slightly. So far, so good.

"Oh, you're a friend of Cat and the Chief?" the boy said. "Sorry, Earthie-lover."

"We need to talk," Thor said.

"I think we should." She turned to her loyal little band. "You all know your jobs. Get to it and report back at 2200." The youths drifted away in the slight gravity.

"What is this?" Thor asked when they were gone. "The Children's Crusade?"

"They have enthusiasm," she said, "and they have guts and they don't know what defeat means."

"Those are the virtues of ignorance," Thor said.

"In case you hadn't noticed," she said, unsnapping herself from her chair, "that's who fight wars, not old businessmen who can't do anything but negotiate."

"Negotiation is a part of war, too," Thor said. "If you do it right, sometimes you don't have to fight at all."

She shook her head as they passed into a huge lounge that was crowded with spacers talking excitedly. With the shutdown of most operations, there were many spacers at loose ends. "Ever the optimist," she said. "It'll be war. Martin expects the first overtly hostile acts within the week. They'll certainly try something during the big rally. Maybe sabotage. Their spies must have informed them in plenty of time to mount an Earth-based attack, if they want something spectacular."

"Then we'd better hope that the Sálamids have their defenses in place by then," Thor said. He accepted a beer from a robot server and Caterina took a bulb of tea. They stood close together because of the noise. There were no sitting facilities in the lounge because of the low gravity.

"And the first thing you'll do if Eos comes out in control of the new government," she said hotly, "will be to order us disbanded and have Martin arrested!"

"Disbanding, yes," Thor said. "We can't have two fighting forces in competition and we can't have another party making military and foreign policy in opposition to the government. As for Martin, if he avoids doing anything foolish, such as pulling off an attack on his own, there'll be no reason to arrest him."

He shrugged, an Earth habit he still had. The Spaceborn didn't have the gesture. "It won't be up to me anyway. I'll probably be out of a job. I'll still be a Party member, but my position is purely temporary. As soon as a new government is formed I'll most likely be dismissed. I won't be sorry to go, either."

"What will you do?" she said. "You're pretty good in a tight place, why not come over to us? Even you can't believe that Eos is going to lead us into anything but disaster."

He shook his head. "I won't be a party to mass murder. I'm considering accepting a direct commission in a Sálamid ship. In a non-command capacity, of course."

"You'd serve in a warship?' she said with reluctant respect. "If Sálamis tries to take on the Earth fleet, your life expectancy won't be long."

"Colonel Moore tells me he's putting together a reconnaissance squadron. Small crews, like in
Sisyphus
. I can serve as executive officer while I'm learning the trade."

"You won't have time to learn anything," she insisted. "You'll be dead. We can't be fighting space battles with Earth! And we can't sit here waiting for them to attack, either. We'll have to take the war to them."

"And wipe out huge noncombatant populations!" The remark was overheard and drew hostile looks. He reminded himself where he was and lowered his voice. Red-and-black armbands were everywhere. "No population in the history of war has ever been bombed into submission," he added. He had been studying. "It just stiffens resistance and makes them more determined to win."

"Nobody's ever had anything as devastating as our ice and rock bombs," she pointed out. "They'll come from nowhere and the Earthies will see no enemy to strike back at. Their morale will crack. After all, it's not as if we've been invading and occupying their planet. They'll see they've been duped, throw out Earth First and sue for peace."

"You're working hard to convince yourself," he said. "But it's easy for you because you've never been to Earth. To you they're not actual people down there. I was born there. To me, those are real cities we'd be wiping out. Do you want us to found our republic on the biggest bloodbath in history?"

"Nobody wants that," she said, "but they're forcing us to it, can't you see that?"

"Everybody tries to shift responsibility to the other side," he pointed out. "You attack and say 'They made me do it!' It doesn't work that way. If they come out here and we fight them here, there's no doubt who the aggressor is."

"What are you worried about, the history books? Those are written by the winning side. That's sure to be the case in this war, since there'll be none of us left to set down our own version when it's over. The Earthies will create their own version of events, just as they're doing right now!"

"Didn't I hear Shaw say something like that just recently? Besides, there's more to it than the opinion of posterity. I agree that the verdict of history shouldn't concern us just now. What should concern us is keeping opinion split on Earth. Earth First grabbed power by some slick political maneuvering and very clever propagandizing. It's not the kind of thing that makes for a solid and stable power base. There must be plenty of opposition wanting to grab power back.

"If we drop rock bombs on Earth, the opposition won't dare open their mouths for fear of being considered traitors to Earth. But if the Earth government draws them into a long and costly war with no end in sight, that support will fade away. Public hysteria just doesn't have the lasting power to sustain that kind of effort."

"That could take years, even if we can survive the attacks, which I doubt. You think Earth is disunited? There isn't a chance that we could hold together through years of fighting. A quick offensive against Earth is the only possible answer."

He wasn't making much headway. "Look, Cat, everybody who ever went to war, especially amateurs who'd never seen war before, started out with a foolproof, elegant plan that was going to win a quick victory and everybody goes home by Christmas. It never works out that way. For one thing, they always depend on the enemy to go along and act according to plan. That never happens, either. If you think Earth will roll over and play dead because of a few rock attacks, you're underestimating them. If you think we don't have the stomach for a long war when our lives and our independence are at stake, you're underestimating us, too."

"What makes you an expert on our spirit?" she said. "You're just a transplanted Earthie yourself."

"I was wondering when you were going to get around to that," he barked. "Like the rest of the Spaceborn, you think you belong to some kind of natural aristocracy!"

"Hey," said a scar-faced man standing nearby, "your well-reasoned political discussion is degenerating into a lover's quarrel. What do you say you carry it outside?" Mortified, Thor saw that nearly everyone in the room was looking at them with great interest. Fortunately, the armband-wearers didn't seem inclined to lecture him with violence. As yet, few of the Spaceborn had the instinct for mob action.

Sheepishly, the two made their inglorious exit. In the closed and crowded world of shipborne and asteroid-dwelling life, engaging in a private argument in public was a serious breach of etiquette.

"I have to get back to my post," she said when they were in the outer hall. "We're not accomplishing anything with all this talk."

"You'd be surprised at what you can accomplish with talk. Martin knows that. He was a theoretician, a journalist, a publisher and propagandist, all before he took up smuggling and a life of derring-do."

"Do you think I'd follow a man who wasn't good at both?" she said. "But there are words with a purpose and there's meaningless babble, which is what you and Eos are dealing in. And you've put too much faith in Sálamis. What do you really expect from a bunch of cashiered officers who couldn't cut it in the Earth forces and came out here to play soldier?"

"More than you'll get from half-educated kids with guns and explosives. Have you got them planting bombs yet?"

"This is getting us nowhere," she said. "We're just going to have to see how people decide in ten days. Goodbye, Thor." She turned and glided away in a low-g stalk. Thor tried to think of something to say but he was uncomfortable with addressing a back. The first to turn had an unfair advantage.

Thor caught a tube train and returned to HMK.

NINE

"We couldn't crack it, Thor." The head of Avalon DataSystems handed the pile of sheets back. "We ran it through our computers a dozen times, applied every program and key we have, and turned up nothing. This code uses some kind of personal key and we have no way of figuring out what it is. About all we can make out is that it probably isn't a message. The groupings of figures and symbols make it look more like a formula of some kind. It has the look of a mathematical calculation. Sorry we couldn't help."

"You did your best." He was thankful that they hadn't been able to break the code, now that he had some suspicion of what it might be. He sealed it into a plastic envelope and left the office.

HMK was packed with people, more than he had ever seen in one place since leaving Earth. Most were here for the convention that would thrash out a government for the previously ungoverned island worlds. Banners were hung everywhere and dozens of minor political parties had been formed. The colonists were taking to this new form of entertainment like spacers reaching a resort rock after a long voyage. Most of the parties were small and represented narrow interests and limited constituencies. Only Eos and Shaw's Defiance party had broad-based appeal.

There were representatives from many of the asteroid colonies, especially those near Avalon. Others would be voting by remote. There was an air of excitement compounded of a consciousness of being present at one of history's turning points and a welcome break from the hard routine of spacer life. Thor wondered how long the holiday atmosphere would last. No longer than the first attack by Earth forces, most likely.

He descended to the warehouse level, which was quiet and sparsely populated. In the uncertain times, few enterprises were outfitting and merchants stood forlornly by their stacks of wares, commiserating on the poor business prospects. There were several small bars and restaurants opening off the main cavern and he entered one with the name "Bat Cave" carved into the stone above its ragged entrance.

The light inside was dim, revealing a small gallery from an old mining operation. The walls still showed the clean but uneven cuts of shortbeam laser cutters. There were a few occupants and a holo screen on one wall displayed the scene in HMK above. As Thor's eyes adjusted to the dimness, he spotted a wild-bearded old man standing at one of the small, spindly tables. As he walked over, the old man fixed glaring, crazy eyes on him.

"Are you Roseberry?" Thor asked.

"That I am. You Taggart?"

"Yes." They clasped hands. Roseberry was the oldest specimen Thor had seen since leaving Earth. Between good medical treatment and the beneficial effects of low gravity, a spacer lucky enough to survive accident and violence could reasonably expect to be healthy and active past the age of a century. Thor estimated Roseberry to be one hundred twenty, at least. His ancient, stained coverall bore on its breast the sigil of the South Polar Port Authority. Hjalmar's men had located him working at the facility as a maintenance specialist—a polite title for janitor.

"Thank you for letting me run up a tab at your expense, Mr. Taggart," Roseberry said, "but I'm a little curious as to what kind of business you have in mind." He snatched up the concoction delivered by the little rolling robot and drained it. He exhaled loudly and an expression of contentment crossed his withered face.

"I need information first of all. If the information turns out to be what I'm looking for, I may have a longer-term job to offer you, at generous pay."

A comically crafty expression took over Roseberry's face. "Nothing too illegal, I hope? And I don't rat on my friends." The crafty look was replaced by one of extreme nobility.

"Nothing illegal," Thor said. "Yet," he amended. "I need to know some things about Ugo Ciano. I understand you worked for him in his last years."

"Ugo was a great man. Great man. Greatest man that ever spaced, by God! I helped him in the lab. He never let nobody else go into the place, not even the family." He swelled his chest with pride and took another drink from the robot.

Thor sipped at his beer. "Just what was this drive he was working on when he died?"

"Why you asking?"

"I have reason to believe that Ugo wanted one of us—one of his descendants or Sam Taggart's, to have the secret of that engine."

"That so? What proof have you got?"

Thor let the packet of coded sheets fall slowly to the table. "Ugo gave these to his son Robert and Robert sent them on to me before he died. I can't crack the code, but I think it has something to do with that drive. Whatever the secret is, we may need it desperately before this war is over."

Roseberry canted his skinny neck a bit and squinted down his long nose to study the top sheet. "That's Ugo's code, all right. Don't prove nothing by itself, but that does." He placed a dirty, yellow-nailed finger on an especially complicated symbol that looked like a Mayan glyph.

"What does it mean?" Thor asked.

"It's a personal message to me. Says I'm to cooperate with you. I remember when old Ugo put these sheets together. He always hoped it'd be his boy Bob who'd come out with them, but they never licked that heart condition. Most folks don't know it, but Ugo sunk billions into heart research. Probly a hunnerd million people walking or floating around today that'd be dead if it wasn't for Ugo's heart research. Didn't do young Bob no good, though." A tear rolled slowly to the end of his nose and he brushed it off. "Anyways, this sign means I can take you to his lab.''

"Lab?" Thor said. "Brunhilde said it was a deserted rock."

"That deserted rock never was anything else. He kept the real location of the lab secret from everybody, even Hildy. Before he tried out his drive, he gave me the ephemeris and said not to give them to anybody else until somebody showed up with them sheets."

"He was taking a big chance," Thor said. "You might have died in the meantime, or these sheets might have fallen into the wrong hands."

"He always had backups. I'spect the ephemeris are in there somewhere, but you'd have to be as smart as Ugo to figure it out. I think that was what he really wanted, to pass it on to someone that was like him."

"Do you have any idea what it was?" Thor asked.

Roseberry leaned close and whispered conspiratori-ally: "It was the antimatter drive!"

A wave of disappointment washed over Thor. The antimatter drive was one of the great chimeras of pseudo-science. Reputable scientists had discarded the notion for nearly a century. There was nothing wrong with the basic premise: The most efficient way to produce energy, for a given mass of fuel, is to convert it totally to energy. This can be accomplished by combining equal quantities of matter and antimatter. By comparison, the fusion of hydrogen atoms to helium, the process responsible for the H-bomb and harnessing the energy of the Sun, converts less than 1 percent of the mass of hydrogen into energy and is relatively inefficient.

Antimatter was created in laboratories but the quantity thus produced was minuscule. Toward the end of the twentieth century, antiprotons were produced primarily through the use of gigantic particle accelerators. The production capacity was severely limited and the storage of antiprotons in significant quantity presented a serious engineering problem, one analogous to the ancient conundrum about inventing the universal solvent: if it will dissolve anything, what do you store it in? Reputable scientists had tended to consign the matter-antimatter energy process to the same oblivion as the perpetual motion machine.

"It can't exist, Roseberry," Thor said, sadly. "It's been proven."

"Proven!" Roseberry sputtered. "You think that'd stop Ugo? You know what he used to say? 'History consists principally of an unbroken chain of experts who have been proven dead wrong.' That's what he used to say." The old man nodded furiously. "Besides, just what do you think he blew hisself up with, if he blew hisself up at all? That flash was recorded all the way to Mars! You think he did that with gunpowder?"

The old man had a point. Thor had looked up records of the incident. Whatever had caused the flash had been a process unknown to science of the time. It had all been disregarded as another of Ciano's mad experiments, this one fatal. He had had many narrow escapes and had taken insane risks after the death of his wife. "Whatever it is, I want to find out about it. Don't talk about this to anybody. I'll arrange for a ship. How long a voyage is it?"

" 'bout a two-day haul from here. He wanted to keep it close to Avalon because the family set up here. No particular efforts to hide it. It's just a dinky little chunk of rock nobody'd pay any attention to. People've landed there from time to time and took core samples and never found the lab. I know where the entrance is and I got the code."

"I know of a two-man prospector ship we can use. I'll call your boss and tell him I need your services for a few days. Stay where I can get in contact with you and be ready to leave at any time in the next few days. Here," he passed across several slips of Avalon's gold-backed currency, "this is a down-payment. If we find something really important, there's a big bonus in it for you."

"Well, I'm really doing this for Ugo," he took the money, "but a man's got to provide for his old age. 'Course," he said reflectively, "I probly ain't got much old age left to provide for." He walked away just as three men entered the bar. One of them was Shaw and the three walked to Thor's little table.

"Good to see you, Thor," Shaw said, extending his hand.

Thor took it. "Same here." He was surprised to realize that he meant it. Despite the politics, despite Caterina's clear rejection of him for Shaw, Thor was truly glad to see him. Mike was with him and another man Thor didn't recognize; an elegant, dark-skinned man with shiny black hair and a look that made him vaguely uncomfortable.

"Thor, you know Mike. This is Thierry Ruiz." They clasped hands. Shaw hadn't said what Ruiz was and Thor decided not to ask. "What were you and old Crazy Roseberry talking about?"

It wasn't like Shaw to ask such a question, but things had changed. Had Caterina told him about the coded sheets Rob had sent? "He used to work for Ugo Ciano. I wanted to hear about it."

"He's one of the real pioneers," Shaw said. "Helped build Armstrong and the first L5 colony. He must be one of the last of that generation. Has some interesting stories, for an old lush."

"What brings you down here?" Thor asked. "The warehouse level is enduring a depression. I'd expect you to be up politicking in HMK."

"I wanted to talk to you. Some of my people reported seeing you down here."

"We're getting to be like Earthies, aren't we?" Thor said. "Living in each other's pockets, keeping tabs on each other, establishing domestic spy systems—"

Shaw favored him with a thin-lipped smile. "It's the times. You know damn well if you wanted to find me you'd go to your cousin Hjalmar and his watchdogs would tell you where I was and what I had for breakfast."

"Here's to the times," Thor said, raising his glass.

"Happy as I am to see you again," Shaw said, "this isn't an entirely social visit."

"I presumed as much," Thor said. "What's on your mind?"

"Thierry, here, is the media specialist for Defiance," Shaw began. Thor translated it as Minister of Propaganda. "He's been keeping track of our image in the Earth news services. Tell Thor how things stand, Thierry."

"Needless to say, we are all portrayed in a bad light," Thierry said. "Defiance is the primary target. Mr. Shaw is routinely depicted as a mad-dog fanatic who would annihilate Earth if he could only get his hands on the weaponry."

"How ever did they get that idea?" Thor said. "Mere mass murder doesn't constitute annihilation." Shaw looked annoyed but said only: "Wait'll you hear the next part."

"Eos comes in for almost the same amount of vilification, and you are now a fiend of only slightly less notoriety than Mr. Shaw."

"Me?" Thor was stunned. "What have I done and why am I so important?"

"You've been out recruiting for the cause, that's what," Shaw said.

"There is, of course, far more to it than that," Ruiz went on. "Your early activities among the colonies made you the most visible of Eos members. You were the first that Earth intelligence people could put a name to. Also, it's a well-known name, and a single, recognizable villain has far more emotional appeal than a faceless consortium. Since you lack, shall we say, Mr. Shaw's flair for violent rhetoric, you are instead depicted as a lurking, Machiavellian schemer, slyly drawing your evil designs against the people of Earth."

"That means that you and I are both targets, Thor," Shaw said.

"Come off it, Martin," Thor said. "They won't try to assassinate me after they've gone to so much trouble to make me a symbol of evil. If you think you're going to scare me into some kind of alliance with this, you're wrong."

Ruiz inclined his head, slightly but respectfully. "You are getting good at this game, Mr. Taggart. But the conclusion you should be drawing from all this is that your party's soft line toward Earth is gaining you no friends there. They can't afford to allow any separatist movement to have any prestige or favor at all. If we lose, we'll all be executed indiscriminately."

"If we lose," Thor said, "there won't be many of us left to execute. Eos is just as determined to fight this out as Defiance. We differ on
how
to fight."

"I think you'll change your mind once hostilities start," Shaw said. "It's always a new game when that happens. Presumed assumptions and untried theories kind of go into the mass converter then. By the way," he placed a fingertip on the pile of coded sheets on the table, "I heard you got some encoded data a while back. Maybe my crypto people can help you crack it."

Thor's spine tightened. So that was it. "Just some private correspondence. Your spooks have more important work to do."

"Don't try to sit on something that might be crucial to us all, Thor," Shaw said. His tone was dead serious and Thor wondered if he could handle all three of them. Not a chance.

"Thor!" It was a bellow from the doorway. Hjalmar Taggart swaggered in. He was a huge, bullet-headed man and he towered over the rest of them. Outside, behind him, Thor could make out at least six of Hjalmar's men. He let out a relieved breath. "I was wondering where you were. We need you for a family conference. Hello, Martin. How's the criminal activities going? Now I know Mike, but who's this? Why, this must be Thierry Ruiz, who was in Military Intelligence back when I was a frigate captain. What was it they cashiered you for, Thierry? Blackmailing your superiors, wasn't it?"