Spinneret (29 page)

Msuya was the first one to speak. “You're bluffing.”

Meredith shook his head. “They'll come if we ask them to,” he said calmly. “The last thing you're equipped for is full-scale combat.”

“I could kill you and your fellow scorpions first,” he spat.

“You could,” Meredith acknowledged. “But you'd be killing three of the five people who have access to the Spinneret control room. If something should happen to the others you'd be locked out forever.”

For a long moment Msuya sat there, frozen. Then, slowly, he stood up and gestured to his guards, who put their weapons away. “As I said once before, Colonel,” he said, his voice quiet as a graveyard, “you can throw me off Astra now … but you
will
live to regret it. The goods shipment you've contracted for with the Rooshrike will not leave Earth; the UN and the Ctencri will see to that. The embargo against you will be vacuum-tight, and will not be lifted until Astra starves to death or you're brought to New York in chains. Think about that when you're reduced to eating sand.”

Turning, he strode to the door, yanked it open, and disappeared into the night air, followed by his guards. Allerton stood up and nodded, his face carefully neutral. “I'm sure, Colonel, that you haven't heard the last of this,” he said quietly. “But—unofficially, of course—I wish you luck.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned and left.

“Well,” Hafner breathed as the Secret Service men closed the door behind them. “He must still be in shock.”

Perez pushed his chair back and let his own straight-backed posture dissolve into a tired slouch. “Not at all,” he said with a sigh. “Allerton's delighted at the way things have turned out. By declaring independence we've gotten him off the hook with the UN—he's not responsible for our actions, so Saleh can't legitimately stick the U.S. with a trade embargo or whatever.”

“So we get hit by it instead,” Carmen murmured.

“We were going to get embargoed anyway,” Perez shrugged. “At least this way the U.S. doesn't suffer.”

Meredith cocked an eyebrow at him. “I was under the impression you didn't think much of the U.S.,” he said.

“Not liking the government but caring about the people aren't incompatible attitudes,” Perez replied.

“You just like the UN less?”

“I like the idea of UN control of Astra less,” he corrected. “Like you, I believe all of us here can do a better job of administering the Spinneret than any big government. And with the Ctencri trade locked up, the UN is fast becoming a form of big government.” Wearily, he got to his feet. “Colonel, if you don't need us anymore, I'd like to get back to bed.”

“Of course,” Meredith nodded. “You might as well all go. I'll need you alert by midmorning when I announce our new independence. I've got a feeling it's not going to go over very well.”

“Don't worry, Colonel,” Hafner said, yawning prodigiously as he levered himself out of his chair. “We'll probably even have a national anthem written by dinnertime.”

Meredith sat quietly for a few moments after they were gone, his own eyelids feeling like stone tablets.
National anthem, indeed,
he thought.
You can tell right away how much experience he's had working with people.

His phone buzzed: Major Brown. “The UN shuttle's ready to lift, Colonel,” he reported. “Shall I let 'em go?”

“Sure.” He paused, waiting. A moment later the roar of repulsers filled the room, oddly deadened by the soundproofing they'd packed into the walls. The sound faded slowly, finally reaching the point where normal conversation was possible. “Major? You still there?”

“Yes, sir,” Brown growled. “Damn dizzy yahoo took it low and slow; probably trying to wake up as many people in Unie as he could.”

“More likely trying to pick out the Spinneret entrance. Msuya's not going to give up that easily.” He thought for a moment. “You still have a connection through to the Rooshrike?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I want you to invite Beaeki nul Dies na down here for a meeting the day after tomorrow—well, tomorrow, actually, since it's already Thursday morning. Then contact all the other aliens with the same message. Set it for, oh, sixteen hundred hours.”

“Friday at sixteen hundred; right,” Brown said. “What do I give as the purpose of the meeting?”

“To discuss our marketing plans for the Spinneret cable … and to settle on a security arrangement for Astra.”

Brown was silent for a moment. “You don't seriously think Saleh would send troops here, do you?”

“I don't know, but if I were him I'd take some kind of action pretty damn fast. You see, as a sovereign nation, we can make trade deals with other countries without going through the UN bureaucracy—and if that trade includes Rooshrike-supplied technology, we'll be bypassing the UN's monopoly. Saleh'll go from master of the universe back to chief referee at the world's biggest nursery school, and I can guarantee he's not going to go quietly. “

“Mm. So you're meeting the aliens here to keep Msuya from eavesdropping?”

“More or less. Also to underline our new independence—I doubt that the aliens much care where we talk, but it's a symbol of authority on Earth to have people come to you instead of vice versa.”

“If you don't mind my saying so, Colonel, I think we have more important things to worry about than taking symbolic pot shots at Msuya's backside. How in the world are you going to sell this to the troops and civilians, good U.S. citizens all?”

“I don't know,” Meredith said frankly. “I'm sure we would have come to this point eventually—we couldn't stay UN territory forever—so it's not like the idea will be totally unimaginable. It is going to be a mess, though. I just hope we can keep people from going off half-cocked one way or the other before they've thought about all the pros and cons.”

“We'll have to keep an eye on the troops, especially,” Brown pointed out. “Leading a ‘loyalist coup' might be some ambitious lieutenant's idea of a shortcut to captain.”

“A lieutenant or someone higher,” Meredith grimaced. “Maybe you'd better try and sound out the other area commanders before the announcement. Barner, I think, will be okay, but Gregory and Dunlop could conceivably be trouble.”

“Especially Dunlop, given all the friction you've had,” Brown said. “Maybe we'll be lucky and he'll decide to go back to Earth.”

“Don't I wish,” Meredith said sourly. “But chances are he'll stay. After all the pride he had to swallow to keep his Ceres post we probably couldn't get him out of there without a crowbar. “Um. Well, maybe we can persuade him he's too patriotic to continue breathing this freshly sullied Astran air.” Brown snorted. “Sorry—he still gets to me sometimes. One other thing I thought of, Colonel: do you think we should ask the Rooshrike to jam any attempts at broadcast communication from the UN ship?”

“Keep our propaganda unsullied by theirs?”

“Well-l-l… I know it sounds totalitarian, but I still think it would be a good idea. At least until you've had a chance to present our case.”

“I don't really like it … but go ahead. Besides, Astra can't possibly qualify as a dictatorship as long as Perez is running around loose.”

Brown chuckled. “He'd be almost funny if he wasn't so good at charming the brains out of people.”

“Well, for once that talent's going to come in handy. Perez helped dig us into this position, and he's damn well going to help us sell it.”

“I hope he can do it. Frankly, I don't know myself whether or not we're making too much of a fuss over the Spinneret.”

Meredith smiled wanly.
Right again, Carmen; it
does
make a difference.
“Remind me to take you down to the Spinner cavern some day, Major. You'll see we've got something worth fighting over—and I'd just as soon keep the battles confined to words.”

“Yeah.” Brown paused. “Colonel, did you read how the Rooshrike went about testing their Spinneret cable's strength?”

Meredith frowned. “No, I never got to that section of their report. Why?—is it important?”

“Oh, not really. They attached a couple of five-ton asteroids to the ends and started the whole thing spinning. They had it going nearly twelve turns a minute when the gee forces tore the asteroids apart. It just occurred to me that if that's how they do their science, I don't think I'd care to see their approach to warfare.”

And the Rooshrike are supposed to be technologically behind the other races,
Meredith reminded himself. “Me, too,” he told Brown. “Let's hope we can avoid a private demonstration. Get those messages off; I'll talk to you again after I've had some sleep.”

“Yes, sir. Pleasant dreams.”

T
HE ROAR OF DESCENDING
alien shuttles had long since faded away by the time Perez brought his motorboat to a stop by the Martello Base dock. “Cristobal Perez; Council member,” he identified himself to the two soldiers guarding the boats. Like those at the Unie docks, they looked skeptical; but, also like the others, they called in for instructions, and a minute later Perez was walking toward the conference room.
Only forty hours since Astra became its own master
—
at least on paper,
he thought, his head aching with too little sleep and too much conversation.
Feels more like a week.

Meredith had made his broadcast at ten o'clock that first morning; and while he hadn't done a bad job of describing Astra's new status, he'd left out the answers to several popular questions, and Perez had spent a great deal of the time since then giving those selfsame answers to various individuals and small groups. The worries generally revolved around the Astrans' status with the U.S. or the possible reprisals that could be taken against families and friends back on Earth. It was those conversations that lay behind most of his headache. The rest had come from the project that had kept him up most of the night.

The guards at the conference room door were a bit more stubborn, but in the end they too passed him through … and though Perez knew what to expect, the scene was still something of a shock. He'd seen photos of all five alien races, but there was nothing like seeing them up close and in person to drive home how alien they really were. The Ctencri, with his loose skin and batwing head crest, sat stiffly in his chair, his darting head movements vaguely reminiscent of a chicken pecking. The Whist beside him, by contrast, looked almost Buddha-like in its motionlessness … at least, insofar as a creature shaped like a fat mushroom with lobster claws and antennae
could
look Buddha-like. The M'zarch, resplendent in what looked like formal-wear body armor, was a hulking nightmare out of the Middle Ages, his physical presence matched only by the bear-sized Orsphis sitting across from him. Their rivalry, Perez had heard, was ancient and intense, and even without knowing either race's body language, he could sense the tension between them. He shivered involuntarily, glad he wouldn't have to approach either one of
them.
The space-suited Rooshrike was seated next to a large, torpedo-shaped tank; focusing on the latter, Perez was startled to see a tentacled dolphin floating behind the dark glass. Meredith's announcement hadn't mentioned that a Pom would be coming to the meeting; apparently they'd decided their physical representation here was worth the cost of running a water-filled shuttle down and back up.
How in the world do they launch even a shuttle-sized ship?
he wondered abruptly.
Water is
heavy.

Meredith and Carmen, seated together at the head of the table, had apparently just finished their presentation, and the air was filled with quiet chirps, hisses, and grunts as the aliens conferred with each other. Sidling around the chairs, Perez exchanged polite nods with Meredith and leaned over Carmen's shoulder. “How's it going?” he whispered, glancing over the papers scattered on the table in front of her.

“Fine, so far,” she replied. “Everyone seems happy with our proposed cable price, and they're now apparently discussing whether or not Colonel Meredith's security plan is acceptable.”

“And that is … ?”

“We'll allow two warships each by the Whissst and Orspham to stay in geosynch orbit, which will also be the normal parking orbit for unarmed trading ships. The Poms and Rooshrike can patrol further out, and of course will keep an eye on the approaches through their respective territories.”

“The M'zarch and Ctencri don't get in on this?”

“Not for now. The M'zarch are being punished for their earlier takeover try; the Ctencri apparently don't even like admitting they
have
warships, let alone showing them around. “

“Um. So if the Orspham or Whist—”

“Whissst. Longer S-sound for plural.”

“Excuse me. If the Orspham or Whissst try to grab something and run they've got the whole Rooshrike space force to get through on the way out. And if anyone else gets cute, we get enough warning while they're fighting to do … something. Any idea what?”

“I think we're still working on that.”

“Ah.” Perez glanced down the table as the Rooshrike rose to his feet. “It is acceptable,” his translator box said.

“Good,” Meredith nodded, also standing. “Then—”

He was interrupted by a squelch sound from the direction of the Pom's tank. “It is acceptable,” a more resonant voice said.

This time Meredith just nodded and waited. One by one, the M'zarch, Orsphis, Whist, and Ctencri rose to voice agreement of their own. “Thank you for your time and cooperation,” Meredith said when all but the Pom were standing. “As before, all trade questions or orders should be addressed to the human Carmen Olivero, using the channels already discussed.” He paused, glancing at the silent aliens. “This meeting is now over.”