Dark Foundations (33 page)

Merral gazed across the bay where the haze of the sky met the silvery sea. “Vero, I have mixed feelings about them. Clemant is uneasy. And the prebendant too.”

“That goes without saying, Merral. I try to avoid Delastro. But look—what's the alternative? Take the southern islands. There are a lot of people down there. Can you cover them all?”

“No.”

“Or even the main towns of Menaya?”

Merral sighed. “No.”

“There we are. And it's good for morale. The public will see the irregs and think they are being protected, which they may be.”

“I thought the irregulars were secret?”

“You can't hide training people with weapons and explosives.”

“I suppose not.”

Vero took a drink. “And your own plans. How are they progressing?”

“Well enough, I suppose. But how can I say when I have nothing to measure them against? The new cutter guns seem to be well liked—more power, less weight. But can we trust them?” He hesitated.

“I don't think we can rely on cutter guns either. We are issuing chemical fuses for explosives to the irregs.” He gestured to where Lloyd stood at the helm of the yacht. “I see that connoisseur of weapons Lloyd is carrying an XQ gun in his bag.”

“I hadn't noticed. I've given up looking inside. It scares me.”

“I think he's a success.”

“Vero, he is definitely one of your very best ideas. I'm just made uneasy by the way he experiments with bits of weaponry. And his reading material is violent. And those ancient films . . .”

“Oh,
those
.” Vero sounded embarrassed.

“He says they were your idea. I watched bits and what I saw was either absurd or violent.”

“They are odd, aren't they? I just thought he might find them, well, useful. Get some hints. That sort of thing. My friend, I think he'll be useful.”

“I wish I thought you were wrong.”

There was silence and then Vero spoke again. “These XQ guns—are you pleased with them?”

“Yes. No electronics, just rocket-propelled bullets. An early twenty-first century design we found in the Library. It's the best thing we have. The rounds are tungsten-tipped and will go through a wall. We've ordered ten thousand.”

Vero raised an eyebrow. “You don't sound enthusiastic.”

“Vero, they raise issues typical of all the problems we face. For a start, we don't know if they'll work against Krallen. We know those things have angled hard surfaces so our bullets may just glance off them. But in the last few days, we've found a second problem.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Anya has been simulating Krallen attacks. We'd been thinking of head-on attacks. But she raised the question of what would happen when some Krallen forced their way into a unit of soldiers.” Merral pushed the fingers of his right hand deep into his left palm. “As happened at the lake. If the soldiers keep firing at them, they will soon be pumping ricocheting armor-piercing rounds into each other. In close-quarter fighting, weapons like that may be worse than useless.”

“I see.” Vero's brow furrowed. “I hadn't thought of that.”

“Nor had we.” Merral thumped his hand against the hull. “You see, Vero, we are so naive. We don't know about our enemies, and we don't know how to fight. At times . . .” He paused, trying to recover his composure. “At times, I don't think we can do it.”

Vero rubbed his head. “We must pray and trust, my friend. But you—
we
—are making progress. I watch and I hear. . . . The long-barreled sniper's rifle for instance. Are the rumors true?”

“Yes. The women are taking that up. They like it. All the regiments will have female sniper units.” Merral stared out to sea. “Amazing, isn't it, how we can discuss weapons so easily now, eh, Vero? I had a conversation the other day with a materials engineer about the new blades that will replace the bush knives. ‘We can molecularly tune the edges to cut better against flesh,' he said. What a world we live in.”

A long silence followed in which only the creak of the boat and the gentle lapping of the waves against the hull could be heard.

“My friend, we need better weapons on a large scale.” Vero's voice was thick with worry.

“Yes. We examined the two vortex blasters we have in orbit. They were built to give planners and foresters a last-resort capability to sterilize large tracts of land. I can't remember when they were last used. Anyway, they might be effective against large concentrations of enemy, but . . .”

“There is always a ‘but' these days.”

“Indeed. But they're slow to aim and each have only five firing charges. There are no replacement charges. We have ten shots, maybe. And I okayed the production of thirty artillery cannons that can fire shells a dozen kilometers.”

“Will they be ready?”

“We don't know. And finally we have a handful of fliers that were designed for low-speed dispersal of plant seeds and fertilizer. We're modifying them to carry weaponloads of bombs and flares.”

“Well, I suppose the good point is that we're not tempted to put our trust in our weapons.”

“A limited consolation.”

“What we need is to stop them up there before they land,” Vero said, gesturing skyward. “That's where they are vulnerable. Any progress there?”

“Vero, in a word, no. I talked to Gerry—always an enjoyable experience. She's pursuing her work on space weapons, but all I saw were formulas, graphs, and speculations. ‘Not enough time,' she said. ‘Not enough resources.' She has taken a hint from the envoy's words and is broadening her vision ‘to look at bold and brave ideas.'”

“Such as?”

“She was vague. Or I didn't understand the physics. But she's been talking about using a Below-Space delivery system to deliver a polyvalent fusion bomb. When I saw her last, she got quite animated. ‘There are some extraordinary possibilities for doing
really
serious harm. We could fry them all.'”

“I can hear her voice.”

“It's great, but it's all theory in almost every area.”

“By the way,” Vero asked, “how's Zak doing? I hear stories.”

Merral read caution in his friend's eyes. “Ah, Zak. Vero, I'm very ambivalent about Colonel Zachary Larraine. He's undeniably a very gifted organizer and a talented strategist with an extraordinary flair for military matters. But his attitude to discipline borders on the brutal.”

“Really?”

“There was one case where Zak apparently pushed a soldier out of a hovering rotorcraft. The guy broke a leg. There was another where he is alleged to have denied medical treatment to heat-exhausted soldiers. I talked to him about them.”

“What did he say?”

“He was defiant. He always is. ‘Sir, I figured we don't need cowards or weaklings.' So I warned him. But Clemant backs him. ‘Perhaps his toughness balances your tenderness.' That was his comment.”

Vero looked thoughtful. “Actually, there may be something in that.”

“You really think so?”

“Maybe.”

Just then Lloyd yelled, “I feel a breeze!”

The sails filled and the boat sawed swiftly through the water.

“Better take us back, Lloyd, I've a lot to do!” Merral called out.

He turned to his friend. “Vero, what else is happening? What do you see that I might have missed?”

Vero shook his head. “Our world continues to change. Farholme society is unraveling.” He pulled his diary off his belt. “Let me tell you what's happened these last few days. In Kanamusa, there was a riot at a concert when a band failed to turn up. Hutertooth College—ah yes; two students cheated on their exams. Lewi Island: reports of gambling. In Marinoff Town the warden has refused to stand down at the end of his term of office. Numerous fistfights. Sound familiar?”

“Depressingly so. I saw a man the other day angrily protesting that all the military pilots were women and demanding to know why he couldn't undergo flight training.”

“I heard about that. But look at this.” Vero tapped the diary screen and handed it to Merral. The image was that of another poster advertising a meeting. At the top of the sheet, written in a large and angry black font, were two phrases:

Ruling Farholme after the Gate has gone.

Toward a better way!

“This was found on the High Street in Clanmannera yesterday,” Vero said.

“I don't understand its significance. Is it all that alarming?”

“Oh yes,” Vero said with a wag of a finger. “You see, Farholme has now got politics.”

The subtle changes taking place across Farholme made Merral's task even worse. The universal and automatic trust that he had always taken for granted seemed to be fading away. Increasingly, he wondered at people's motives and even questioned their judgment.

Corradon was a case in point. The representative was increasingly valued as an inspirational speaker and a general soother of frayed nerves in troubled times and seemed to view this as his main role. He took to giving a weekly state-of-the-world address in which he spoke with eloquence, dignity, and confidence. The broadcasts soon acquired a large following and Merral was fascinated to hear how often people would later quote something he had said. And between these Corradon continued his habit of visiting major towns to speak publicly, shake hands, listen solicitously, and generally be seen. And every time he spoke, the feedback from the hearers was always the same: “We are reassured by his confidence and encouraged by his hope.” Yet Merral sensed that Corradon found the speaking an excuse to avoid the hard issues resulting from the crisis. Although he had been given overall charge of affairs by the Council of Representatives his supervision seemed perfunctory.

Whenever Merral met with Corradon to get forms signed, he would generally find the representative either fine-tuning a speech or tending his plants. They would sit down together and Corradon would ask some questions about “how things were going.” He seemed to listen with apparent care, sometimes jotting down facts or a phrase that might be useful for a speech, before losing interest and gazing out of the window. Eventually, Merral would hand him the relevant forms and he would stare at the paper, grimace, and then, with a despairing shake of his head, sign them with his florid signature. Merral wondered how outrageous his requests would have to be before they were rejected.

But it wasn't just Corradon's inattentiveness that worried Merral.

“Merral,” the representative said one day as he signed an order for more weapons, “I have to be optimistic, but I really don't know whether we can win against another attack by the intruders. Can you reassure me?”

Merral, seeing the worry etched in Corradon's eyes, agonized for a moment. “No,” he said. “I can't. Not honestly.”

“So what do I
do
?”

“Do what you can to reassure the people. Maintain a tone of cautious optimism. Encourage them to put their hope in the Lord of the Assembly.”

“Fine words,” Corradon said, massaging his nose. “Very fine words. But I begin to worry if I can carry this off. Some of these people—perhaps many of them—are going to die. Aren't I lying?”

Merral didn't immediately answer, but eventually said, “I don't think so. You have to give them hope.”

He left the representative's office with troubling questions ringing in his mind:
How long can Corradon maintain this act? And what happens when it fails?

Clemant, with whom Merral had dealings with on almost a daily basis, was very different, but no less worrying. With Corradon's frequent absences and increasing detachment, the advisor made most of the day-to-day decisions in Planetary Administration. He never seemed to leave his austere office and relentlessly scrutinized the details of every order or initiative. Merral soon found Clemant's desire to know exactly what was happening and manage it both irritating and perturbing.