“Accordingly the government of our ally, the Arab Republic of Egypt, is preparing an armored column to cross the desert and drive the invaders off their soil. Furthermore, the president of the Arab Republic of Egypt has called upon the United States to comply with existing treaties by aiding in the military effort to drive them out.
“You will understand that I have no option but to comply with this demand. Accordingly, I have ordered the sixth, twelfth, fourteenth, and eighteenth air forces to destroy the alien encampment.” He permitted himself a slight smile. “Under most circumstances that would be a highly classified decision, but I feel that showing the actual forces that have been brought to bear on the aggressors will help convince these alien invaders that they must immediately cease their provocative activities and declare their intention to depart Egyptian territory.”
The president turned to look at his own screen, just in time for the scene on the screens in the rest of the world to show the reality of what the president had promised. From all directions warplanes, arranged in precise flights and Vs, were heading in toward a single target, the Qattara Depression. Ranjit recognized some of them—supersonic flying wings; immense old B-52s, originally deployed in the Vietnam War and still going strong; the tiny, fast stealth fighter-bombers—Ranjit counted at least a dozen different types of aircraft, all heading to the same point on the map—
And then, suddenly and without warning, they weren’t.
To Ranjit it looked like nothing as much as one of those radio dog fences, where the animal gets a shock from buried wiring any time he tries to pass a certain point in his run. The planes did the same thing. As they reached a certain point along the perimeter of a circle drawn with the Qattara Depression as its center, the orderly patterns of Vs faltered, ceased to be coherent, one by one lost power. Nothing exploded. There were no flames, and no sign of enemy action. All that happened was that the mighty air fleet no longer displayed the torches of flame that were their jet exhausts. Those had winked out.
Lacking thrust, the planes did their best to glide to the ground, but their best was very poor. Within a matter of minutes the screens were displaying five or six hundred funeral pyres, each marking the point at which a member of the mighty striking force had hit the ground, the fuel that remained in its tanks immediately exploding.
And within the perimeter of the invaders’ camp, the various bits of busy machinery, paying no attention at all, kept right on with their arcane tasks.
For the One Point Fives themselves the Qattara Depression was pure heaven.
They particularly loved the brackish water of the oasis. It was purer than any water they had seen for generations on their own planet. Oh, sure, there were a few chemicals that had to be filtered out. But there were hardly any radioactive contaminants, and no positron emitters at all!
And the air! You could very nearly breathe it without a filter! True, it was on the warmish side—around 45°C, or perhaps 110°F, in the several confusing ways the human population had of measuring temperatures—but once they had finished digging their tunnel from the depression to the sea, there would be plenty of cooling Mediterranean waters to make the climate livable.
They were, in fact, about as happy as an enslaved race of largely prosthetic beings can be, except for one annoying thing.
As usual it was the Nine-Limbeds who were making trouble. The Nine-Limbeds had agreed to the destruction of the attacking aircraft because no actual local sentients’ lives were endangered, all of the war planes being of course remotely controlled. But, infuriatingly, the attack had destroyed some human life anyway.
A party of oil prospectors had had the bad luck to be setting up their seismometers just where one of the American bombers crashed. True, only eleven human beings had been killed, less than 0.0000001 percent of the human race. By any rational count that was hardly enough to worry about.
But the Nine-Limbeds kept caterwauling about it. Human ideas of justice and reparations were not the same as their own, as they knew from eavesdropping on every major human activity and a good many minor ones. Finally the council of the One Point Fives gave in. “What can we do to heal the situation?” they asked. “That is, other than leaving this extraordinarily inviting place to go back to our own planet, which we are not going to do.”
“Reparations,” said the experts of the Nine-Limbeds at once. “You must pay them. Through our eavesdropping program we have ascertained that nearly anything that goes wrong in the affairs of these human beings can be repaired by paying reparations, in the form of money. Would you be willing to do that?”
It didn’t take the One Point Fives long to answer that question. “Of course we will,” their leaders said at once. “What is ‘money’?”
44
INTERNATIONAL DISAGREEMENTS
A day later and quite a distance from Qattara, the Subramanian family was finishing breakfast. Natasha and Robert were already in their swimsuits, just waiting out the statutory, and mother-enforced, period of thirty minutes of delay after a meal before they could head for the beach. Ranjit, a cooling cup of tea in his hand, was frowning at the screen. What it showed was the bustling One Point Five colony as seen from one of the few still-human-controlled satellites, and Ranjit had been frowning at it for some time.
When Myra thought about it at all, she did wonder what her husband found so absorbing on the screen, though her mind was mostly on the morning’s assortment of incoming texts. She held one up for a better look and called to Ranjit. “Harvard wants to know if you’re interested in doing their commencement address again. Oh, and here’s one from Joris. He says they keep getting threatening messages, but if there actually are any satanists planning to really attack Skyhook, they’re not within twenty kilometers of the base. And—Wait! What’s that?”
What stopped Myra right there was a startled “Huh!” from her husband, and when she looked up, she saw why. The aerial view was gone, the satellite had been preempted again by the aliens for their own purposes, and a familiar figure was taking shape on the screen. Behind Myra her daughter snapped, “Oh, hell! It’s me again!”
It was. Or at least it was that indestructible not-Natasha, little curl hanging over her left ear, that had been displayed so frequently since the world had begun to fall apart. Myra sighed. “I do wish you’d had a little more clothes on,” she offered, and was spared her daughter’s withering reply as the figure began to speak.
“I am bringing you a message from the persons identified as the One Point Fives, currently located in what is called the Qattara Depression on the planet you call Earth. The message is as follows:
“‘We are deeply regretting loss of human life in defense against attack. We will pay reparations up to one thousand metric tons of ninety-nine and five nines pure metallic gold, but require ninety days for processing metal from seawater. Please inform that offer is accepted.’ This ends their message.”
The figure disappeared, the shiny structures of the colony popped up, and Ranjit turned around to gaze at his wife and children. He said incredulously, “I guess they’ve really made a sort of stock copy of Tashy they can use to make their announcements.”
Myra was diffidently smiling. “I don’t know, but did you hear what they said? It almost sounds good. If they’re willing to try to make up for what happened, there’s some hope.”
Ranjit nodded thoughtfully. “You know,” he said in wonder, “it’s been so long since there was any good news that I don’t know how to celebrate it. A drink all around?”
“It’s too early,” Natasha said at once. “Anyway, Robert doesn’t drink and neither do I, much. You people do what you want. He and I are going to the beach.”
“And I think I’ll call the office. I wonder what Davoodbhoy thinks about it,” Ranjit said, kissing his wife’s hand.
“Go, then, all of you,” Myra said. She sat silently thoughtful for a moment. Then she sighed, poured herself some fresh tea, and allowed herself to relapse into what was beginning to loo
k like a once-again normal world.
Thoughts of destruction and disaster had not entirely vanished from her mind. They were bearable now, though, no more distracting than the occasional twinge in a molar that reminds you to make an appointment with the dentist—oh, not for next month, necessarily, but maybe the month after. So Myra went back to the morning’s texts. There was one from her niece Ada Labrooy to say hopefully that this “machine-stored” state the alien creatures talked about sounded a lot like something resembling the artificial intelligence she herself had been working on for what seemed like her whole life, and did Natasha have any possible way, any way at all, of asking them for details? A dozen texts from other people, all sharing the delusion that the real Natasha might somehow be able to get a message to the aliens. And, worryingly, a text from the Trincomalee temple, reporting that the old monk, Surash, had come through his most recent surgery well enough but that the long-range outlook was doubtful at best.
Lips pursed in concern, Myra reread the saddening words. Surash himself had called to tell them that he would have to have another procedure, but he had made it sound like the approximate equivalent of a tonsillectomy. This text sounded a good deal more serious. She sighed and turned to the next one—
And scowled. This one was addressed to Ranjit personally. It came from Orion Bledsoe, and what it said was, “This is to remind you of the obligations under the Uniform Military Service Act of 2014 of the American citizen Natasha de Soyza Subramanian. She may report to any U.S. army installation for the purpose of evaluation. This must be done within the next eight days or penalties will be incurred.”
It was too late to catch Natasha to tell her about this new proposal for her life’s career. Ranjit, however, was within shouting range, and when Myra had got him off the phone and handed him the message, he said, “Huh!” And then, to clarify his meaning, “Hell!”
So now the Subramanian family had a new and totally unexpected set of worries. It had never occurred to either Ranjit or Myra that the geographic fact of their daughter’s birth on American soil had ever given America any right to commandeer her services. There was one clear step to be taken, and they took it.
When Ranjit urgently sought help from Gamini Bandara, his old friend put him on hold for a moment, and then, with apologies, for a much longer period.
When he came back, though, he sounded less worried. “Ranjit?” he said. “You’re still there. Good. Well, I’ve spoken to my father and he’s already on the phone with his legal people. He wants you to come down here.” He paused for a moment, and when he went on, he sounded almost embarrassed. “The problem is that slimeball Bledsoe. We need to talk about him, Ranj. Dad’ll send a plane for you. Bring Myra. And Natasha. And, oh, hell, Robert, for that matter. We’ll be waiting.”
The plane that arrived for them that evening wasn’t anywhere nearly as big as the one that had rescued Ranjit from rendition. It had only one stewardess, and she was nowhere near as pretty as the others, but it did have something unexpected, though. It had an old friend, standing in the doorway to welcome them. Myra looked at him twice, and then broke into a smile. “Dr. De Saram, what a nice surprise!”
Nigel De Saram, the man who had once been Ranjit’s lawyer, now President Bandara’s secretary of state, submitted to a hug, and then waved everyone to the seats that surrounded a long table. “We’ll talk on the way,” he said, strapping himself in. While the plane was racing down the takeoff strip, he read the text Myra had brought for him, and by the time they were approaching cruising altitude, he was ready. He turned to Natasha. “I believe what must be done is clear; I accessed all the U.S. law and court decisions that bear on this matter while I was on the way down. The first thing for you to do is renounce American citizenship; the papers should be drawn up by my office by the time we arrive. It would be better if you’d done it years ago, of course,” he added. “My fault for not making sure you did.”
“Then that’s all we have to do to settle this?” Ranjit asked incredulously. If the mightiest power on Earth was trying to put his daughter into its uniform, he was not prepared to take chances.
The old lawyer looked shocked. “Of course not! It just means the whole matter gets fought out in the American courts. But that will take years, and—I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention—there’s a presidential election coming up in America. It looks like the present administration isn’t likely to win. I’m hoping the next one won’t have quite the same policies. Meanwhile, you should stay out of America, please.”
Natasha threw her arms around him. “Thank you,” she breathed.
Her father, sounding embarrassed, echoed the thanks and added, “I guess we didn’t need to drag you down here.”
“Ah,” the lawyer said, “that’s another question, isn’t it? President Bandara wants to talk to you about the American ex-marine named Orion Bledsoe.”
That was when Myra came in. “He’s the one who cooked up the idea of drafting Tashy.”
The lawyer shook his head. “It’s unclear whether it was his idea or if it came from higher up. What I do know is that he’s the one who is now in Brussels to talk to people at the World Bank.”
Myra looked more worried. “What about?” she asked.
“He’s giving them their orders from the Americans,” the lawyer said grimly. “They’re preparing a statement to release tomorrow morning and it’s going to say that such an influx of gold can’t be permitted because it would unbalance the world’s financial structure.”
Ranjit frowned, pursing his lips. “It might at that,” he conceded. “That would amount to an overnight injection of—what? Trillions of dollars of new capital. There would be serious repercussions. Not to mention what it would do to the price of gold on the world markets.” Then he shrugged. “I don’t envy you, sir. I don’t see how to deal with that kind of problem.”
But the lawyer was shaking his head. “I think the president would not agree. At least he hopes that you can help—all of you. He’ll be joining you shortly, and he wants to hear all about this Bledsoe person. Then he wants to try to work out some solutions.”
The president of Sri Lanka was not the only world leader to convene a sort of brain trust. All over the planet some of the world’s smartest and best-informed people were wrestling with the same questions. Pax per Fidem had convened gatherings of their own, and their headquarters was working what satellites it could command to collect these best and brightest voices….
And, who knows, they might have succeeded, if the Americans had not had one more monkey wrench to throw into the works. It was an announcement, presented as routine by the administration’s usual spokesperson, but not routine at all in its effect on the situation:
“The president would like it understood,” the spokesperson said, smiling into the camera the girl-next-door smile that had served her through a hundred unpalatable announcements, “that America, too, has a valid claim for reparations due to the unnecessarily severe damage inflicted on its peacekeeping aircraft.”
45
SEARCHING FOR A SOLUTION
When Nigel De Saram escorted the Subramanian family into the presidential offices, what struck Ranjit first was how much Dhatusena Bandara had aged. That wasn’t entirely unexpected. The president had to be pushing ninety. But now he seemed a good deal more fragile than the last time Ranjit had been in a room with him, at his inaugural. Though, when he welcomed them, his voice was clear and strong. He kissed both Myra and Natasha and gave an impressively youthful handshake to both Ranjit and Robert—a performance followed by his son, with the difference that Gamini gave both of the male Subramanians hugs instead of handshakes. “Thanks for coming,” Gamini said. “We’ve got tea coming for the grown-ups”—he winked at Natasha, who returned an appreciative smile for her promotion—“and fruit juice for Robert. And if Robert gets tired of hearing us talk, there’s a game machine by the window.”
“That will be fine,” Myra told him. “He likes to play 3-D chess again
st the machine.”
“Good, then. Did Nigel straighten out your problems with the draft?”
“I think so. Hope so, anyway,” Ranjit said.
“Then let’s get down to business. Old Orion Bledsoe is giving us a lot of trouble. Let’s start, please, with hearing what he’s doing with you.”
Nigel De Saram answered that one, quickly and concisely. Gamini bobbed his head and addressed the Subramanians. “Did you happen to notice where his message came from?”
Myra shook her head. Ranjit frowned. “Actually, I did notice something. It wasn’t from Washington. Wasn’t from his California office, either. I think it might’ve been someplace in Europe.”
Gamini glanced at his father, who nodded soberly. “It was Brussels,” the president said. “Because of American pressure, the World Bank has ordered the Egyptians to refuse the gold offer, and it was Colonel Bledsoe who applied the pressure.”
Gamini Bandara spoke up. “That whole thing is my fault,” he said. “Bledsoe looked like the man I could use to get you the clearance you needed to join us at Pax per Fidem. That whole clearance thing was the American government’s doing, of course: They didn’t want anybody involved with Silent Thunder who didn’t have maximum security clearance, and Bledsoe looked like somebody who could get it for you.” He shook his head gloomily. “Bad decision. I should’ve gone a different way. He’s been trouble ever since.”
His father said, “There’s no point talking about blame. The thing is, what can be done? Egypt really needs money.”
Myra was frowning. “Why do they have to listen to the World Bank? Why not just accept the space people’s offer?”
“Ah, my dear Myra,” the president said ruefully, “if only they could. The bank would have to retaliate—canceling funds it has the power to cancel, withholding grants it can withhold, and just slowing down everything else.” He shook his head. “Sadly, the Americans are not wrong about the effects of such an infusion of new capital; it would cause terrible problems in the international markets. It would bankrupt us here.”