First Contact (19 page)

G
IVEN THE GLOBAL IMPORTANCE
of the mission against Rigel-Rigel, the President desired that a multinational crew be assembled for the voyage. Trouble was, few other nations supported the undertaking. The Germans, Mexicans, Russians, Lithuanians, Canadians, Bulgarians, Australians, Peruvians, Norwegians, Swedish, Danish, Spanish, Chinese, Burmese, Senegalese, and Dutch, among many others, all declined the invitation to participate in what the President termed an “intergalactic peacekeeping mission.”

The prime minister of Tuvalu, a nation of nine coral atolls and a population of 9,700, asked the President how this could be called a peacekeeping mission, given that the aliens had neither attacked Earth nor threatened to attack Earth.

“Sometimes you need to attack first in order to prevent a war,” the President explained.

“I don’t follow,” the Tuvalese prime minister said. “Though I wish your people safe voyage.”

Other national leaders were not so polite. The prime minister of the archipelago nation of Seychelles protested vigorously. “This is not an appropriate military action,” he said. “By all accounts, these are a kind and generous people. They brought the most extraordinary cake when they visited. I have not had such a fine Bundt since my uni days at Oxford.”

The president of the mountain nation of Andorra, population 64,000, went a step further still, suggesting the mission was an unjustified act of violence against not only the people of Rigel-Rigel but also the people of Earth. “The Rigelians have explained very clearly their principle of self-defense,” he said. “They respond to violence with equivalent counterforce. You are bringing harm upon the people of our planet.” The president of France, who co-governs Andorra with Spain’s Bishop of Urgel, was on the conference call. He said, “You murder your steak with ketchup so why should this be any different?”

It was in fact true the President liked ketchup on his steak.

In total, the leaders of 173 nations rejected the President’s invitation to join the intergalactic peacekeeping mission. In addition, as noted, most of the President’s staff opposed the idea. One might think the unanimous and passionate rejection of his planned attack would have dissuaded the President of the United States from his mission. To the contrary, the opposition, particularly of the French, only solidified his confidence. The President was a true believer in this cause of his own creation. After consultation, he was convinced, more firmly than ever, that attacking Rigel-Rigel was the right thing to do.

So the mission went on, although the resulting coalition was a bit on the smallish side. The Intergalactic Peacekeeping Force consisted of the following nations, ranked by population:

It should be noted, though, in point of fact neither Nauru nor Balta actually supported the mission.

T
HE
P
ACIFIC ISLAND NATION
of Nauru, formerly known as Pleasant Island and independent since 1968, is home to ten thousand people, making it the least populous member of the United Nations. Nauru’s economy revolves almost entirely around the mining of phosphorous. Unfortunately the phosphorous is running out and a century of mining has degraded the environment of the tiny island. Life on Nauru is tough. Monsoons pelt the island four months a year. Humidity is almost always near one hundred percent. Yet, ironically, the Naurese have little fresh water. They depend almost entirely on an antiquated desalination plant. The Naurese national motto is “God’s Will First.”

In the late 1990s, the United States made Nauru an offer it could not refuse. America was looking at the time for a place to store its strategic petroleum jelly reserve. In exchange for use of the island, the United States offered to relocate the Naurese when their resources ran out once and for all. Specifically, the Americans proposed to relocate the Naurese to Kalaupapa, a stunning peninsula on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. Kalaupapa is currently home to a colony of lepers, but with leprosy under control, most of the former residents have left to lead normal lives. The remaining population of lepers is aging and expected to die out with splendid timing to accommodate the Naurese, who eagerly accepted the American offer. Over the following years, they came to speak of Kalaupapa in mystical terms, as if it were a Shangri-La, and looked forward to their collective retirement.

When the President called his Naurese counterpart to ask whether he might be interested in participating in the intergalactic peacekeeping mission, the Naurese president politely said no. It was at this point the President mentioned that several offers had been made for Kalaupapa, including one from a Japanese consortium that wanted to develop a golf course and condominiums on the peninsula. Resisting these lucrative deals would be difficult and politically feasible only to aid a close ally. One way of demonstrating the strength of the relationship between Nauru and the United States would be to participate in the peacekeeping mission.

The Naurese president asked, “If these real estate offers are accepted, to where will you relocate my people?”

“Fairbanks,” said the President.

It thus seems fair to say by way of summary that the participation of the Naurese involved a bit of arm-twisting.

B
Y CONTRAST, THE
M
EDITERRANEAN
island nation of Balta, population 362,000, joined the coalition because of a football bet. The bet was placed by the chancellor of the exchequer, who had a bit of gambling problem. This was the scandalous dirty secret of the Baltese central government. It was whispered about at the right kind of cocktail parties but by and large unknown to the masses until his Right Excellency staked the entirety of the national reserve on the 2005 Super Bowl. Unfortunately, he bet on the Philadelphia Eagles. Had he bet on the New England Patriots he would have been praised for producing a hundred-percent annual return on national investment.

Now, losing the entire national currency reserve on a wager can do bad things for an economy. Not the least of these was that the government was unable to meet its foreign obligations, including a substantial debt to the United States, and to pay government employees. So Balta did what any good nation does when things get tight: it printed money.

Printing money paid the bills, but inflation in Balta began to creep up. Specifically, it crept up 800 percent per hour. To put this into perspective, the price of a gallon of milk on the morning of February 6, 2005, was $2.79. By the end of the business day it was $29,371.33. People quickly grew tired of this hyperinflation, though not because of the rapidly increasing price of milk. The government and businesses increased salaries to keep pace with inflation. The real problem was one needed a wheelbarrow of money in order to buy a gallon of milk. Even this wouldn’t have bothered the Baltese so much, but for the shortage of wheelbarrows, the price of which really got out of control. One needed thirty or so wheelbarrows full of money to buy a wheelbarrow. So you can see the problem.

After a week or so, the United States came to the rescue. The Americans offered to forgive the national debt. In exchange, the U.S. asked for the exclusive license to export wheelbarrows to Balta, and the unspoken understanding that amnesty for the debt was a chit that the President could, and in this time of great international need did, call in.

N
AURU HAD NO SPACE
program of which to speak. Hence its designee to the intergalactic peacekeeping mission was chosen randomly by a national draw of straws.

Balta had a small space program, consisting of four toy rockets owned as a hobby by a tile grouter in Balleta, the capital city. On alternate Sundays, he launched the rockets in Independence Park, and thereby became something of a Pied Piper celebrity to the ten-year-old boys who gathered in the park to watch the launches. Because of his expertise in rocketeering, he became the Baltese designee to the mission.

B
ALTA IS A FICTITIOUS
place. I made it up. Of course, I made up everything here, except the true things. What I mean by this is that I made it up and not the President. Within the context of the book it would be entirely plausible for the President to have created a fictitious ally, but this is not the case. In the President’s world, Balta is as real as Wisconsin.

Truth is, I could just as easily have used the real island nation of Malta. Malta is also in the Mediterranean (just south of Sicily) and also has a population of 362,000. Both Balta and Malta gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1964. Malta is similar in every respect to Balta with two notable exceptions. One, no movie called the
Baltese Falcon
was ever produced. This is a sore spot with the Baltese government, which offered substantial tax incentives to both Bogart and the movie’s producers. Two, if you were to take a flight to Balta, you would end up getting quite wet.

So why not just use Malta? Sometimes writers create a slightly altered reality in order to make a point about real life. This is called allegory, and it is a powerful literary device. I do not happen to have any point to make about Malta or any Mediterranean island, but if I did, inventing the neighboring island of Balta would be an effective and subtle way of getting that point across.

Nauru, on the other hand, is a real place with rapidly diminishing phosphate reserves.

S
O THE PRINCIPALS ON
the multinational intergalactic peacekeeping mission were: Armando Tanzarian, mission commander, twenty-year NASA officer and veteran of four space shuttle flights; Tex McBain, an Air Force major, decorated veteran of three foreign wars
and a nuclear ballistics expert; Hanukapi Puli, a Naurese phosphorous miner and amateur pool player, nicknamed Minnesota because of his resemblance—in body shape only—to the famous pool player; and toy-missile enthusiast Sinclair Lewis, a Baltese tile grouter.

T
HE MISSION GOT OFF
to a good start.
Earth’s Hope
launched without a hitch, broke free from Earth’s gravity, and set off on its course to the wormhole. This seamless start was something of a surprise to NASA, which rushed the spaceship onto the launching pad at the behest of the military. NASA felt the ship was years away from being ready.

The trouble started four days later when the toilet clogged.
Earth’s Hope
wasn’t all that big and when the ventilation system blew, the resulting stench was overwhelming. Remonstrations abounded aboard the ship, which soon became an interstellar tinder box. The situation was rendered all the more incendiary because of the preexisting tension among the international crew. In the case of Tanzarian and McBain, this stemmed from a jingoistic mistrust of foreigners. In the case of Puli and Lewis, it stemmed from the fact that they didn’t want to be there in the first place.

Most of the finger-pointing focused on Puli, in large part because on the first day of the voyage he ate the entire supply of Chocodiles, which were supposed to last for three months. This would make even a child with the sweetest of sweet tooths sick, and Puli spent several hours on the toilet. The crew also insultingly (and incorrectly) presumed they did not have plumbing on the island of Nauru and that Puli didn’t know how to use the latrine properly. None of this would have mattered, but for the fact that in the haste to get the mission under way, NASA had forgotten to pack a plunger.

As the stink worsened, pressure mounted to return home to collect proper plumbing supplies. Halfway around the sun, the ship was out of radio contact with Earth. The decision thus fell to Commander Tanzarian. Given the unique nature of the mission and the risks involved, Tanzarian decided it would be appropriate to poll the crew as to whether the mission should continue. Applying his knowledge of parliamentary procedure, Lewis called for a roll call ballot. Hanukapi Puli was designated secretary of the meeting and the votes were recorded as follows:

Aye (Continue Mission)

McBain

Tanzarian

Nay (Suspend Mission)

Lewis

Puli

Whereupon ensued a discussion of the consequence of a tie ballot. Commander Tanzarian argued that in the absence of a majority, the proper course of action was to pursue the status quo. Sinclair Lewis argued this invested the status quo with a false authority. For example, he asked what if a mighty intergalactic wind had begun blowing
Earth’s Hope
in the direction of home. Then, according to Tanzarian’s reasoning, the 2-to-2 vote should mean that the ship continue to Earth. Or what if they had quite reasonably stopped the ship while the vote was taken? Then what would a tie vote mean? Would the ship then drift aimlessly in space until a majority could be formed, even though this was no voter’s preference? Tanzarian disagreed, but acknowledged Lewis had a fine argument, and agreed to put to a vote the significance of a tie vote. Once again, Lewis demanded a roll call. The questions were presented and votes were recorded as follows:

Aye (Tie Suggests Status Quo Be Preserved and Hence Mission Continued)

McBain

Tanzarian

Nay (Status Quo Is of No Consequence and Burden Should Be on Party Proposing to Continue Voyage Through Space with Faulty Toilet)

Lewis

Puli

Whereupon ensued a discussion of the consequence of a tie vote on this corollary question. The heated discussion continued for several hours, with no progress toward a final solution. Finally, Commander Tanzarian exercised his authority and unilaterally declared the mission would go on. He had only modest confidence in his chosen course of action, but firm conviction that democracy cannot function with an even number of people.

O
F COURSE, MOST SPACESHIPS
do not have flush toilets. I would like to tell you
Earth’s Hope
represented a substantial advance in interplanetary travel or that I invented the space toilet to serve some storytelling purpose, but in fact the reason was greed. Loomis Loos, a leading manufacturer of commodes, had a well-placed mole inside the Department of Defense. When the company learned about the mission, the board decided it would be good for business to have a Loomis Loo aboard the ship that saved Earth. Thereafter, Loomis’s lobbyist took the DoD procurement officer out for a night on the town during which the lobbyist explained how enthusiastic Loomis would be about having one of its toilets aboard the ship. It would be an avant-garde product placement. The Department of Defense representative explained the difficulty of operating a toilet in space, but saw the light after the evening’s entertainment.