Nancy Kress - Crossfire 02 (15 page)

“What should I say?” Ashraf asked her. Sweat beaded his upper lip, although the day was cool and the thick-walled Mausoleum even cooler.

“Just say what happened!” Alex said, more harshly than she intended.

Once he’d risen, Ashraf seemed more definite. He gave the facts quickly and dryly, then let Guy Davenport take the floor.

The security chief looked odd, somehow. It took Alex a moment to realize why; he carried a heavy gun on his right hip.

Security had never carried guns in Mira City, not in Alex’s memory. The armory was reasonably well stocked since Julian had increased defenses, but everyone knew there would be warning of a Fur attack from the orbital probes. Security would arm then. For its usual patrols, security carried tanglefoam and small microwave stunners. That was enough to subdue any small group of rowdy kids or light-fingered thieves.

Guy’s gun was a Nimrod, with both laser and projectile capability.

“What the mayor said is exactiy what happened,” he told the silent crowd. “My force is questioning people now, in Mira City and at the bigger research stations and at Hope of Heaven.”

The last three words startled Alex. Guy almost spat them. She looked at his usually genial middle-aged face, now contorted into— what?

Hatred.

Someone, Alex couldn’t see whom, called from the back of the room, “Have you arrested anybody?”

“Not yet,” Guy said.

Savannah Cutler stood. “What about security at the solar array?” Belatedly she added, “And other important facilities?”

Guy ran his hand through his thinning hair. “I don’t have the people to cover everything, Savannah, and also find the bastards who did this. You have to remember, Greentrees hasn’t ever—”

A babble of voices broke out, rising higher as no one listened to anyone else. Ashraf took an uncertain step forward. Then a voice in the crowd, loud and furious, said, “I don’t propose to let everything I’ve worked for be burned down or chewed up by some murderous shitholes! We need someone here who understands this sort of thing. Where’s Julian Martin?”

“Yes! Martin!”

“Julian Martin! He knew how to defend us last time!”

“Julian!”

And there he was, standing up in the back, taller than the Greenies. Alex was surprised to see that he wore his Terran uniform, black and gold. Was he emphasizing his difference from them?

Julian strode to the front of the room, which quieted. He waited a long moment before speaking.

“Guy Davenport’s security force is doing a wonderful job on this criminal investigation.”

The room erupted again, until Julian held up his hand. He looked gravely at Guy. “But as you yourself say, Captain Davenport, you don’t have the personnel to pursue both the investigation and increased security. I stand ready to serve in whatever capacity you like, and under your command.”

Guy looked a bit overwhelmed at the idea of commanding Julian. Tall, muscled, glittering Julian, who had controlled an alliance of whole nations on Terra, and potbellied, inexperienced Guy… Alex understood Guy’s hesitation. But Guy pulled himself together, and said, almost gratefully, “If you could take over the security patrols, with a force you organize …”

“Yes,” Julian said. And to the audience, “If you will each submit to me the names of men and women from your sections as candidates to be deputized, my crew and I will interview and assign them.”

Ragged clapping broke out, growing louder and nearly unanimous. Julian’s eyes swept the room. Alex knew suddenly that he was noting who did not clap.

Julian stepped back, his eyes signaling to Ashraf to again take the floor. The mayor said, “Lau-Wah’s family has asked that there be no public funeral, and of course we respect their wishes. Now, anyone else wants to say anything …”

Several people stood. They yielded courteously to each other, but not all of them were courteous in their speeches, which all had the same theme: they loved Greentrees and Mira City. Their families had prospered here. No rebel group was going to destroy that. There was no reason for anyone on Greentrees not to prosper if they worked hard. No one should be permitted to destroy the work of others. They loved Greentrees and Mira City…

Alex stopped listening, longing for it to be over.

Rain started somewhere after midnight. Alex couldn’t sleep. She made herself a cup of bennilin tea, which calmed her not at all. In what had once been her bedroom, Jake snored. Alex couldn’t remember why she had been so desperate to talk to Jake right after she’d heard about Lau-Wah. He had only added to her fear.

“I never thought we could change human nature,” he’d said, his sadness clear through the slurred words and helpless drool. “Neither did your aunt Gail. But we hoped that in a new setting, with enough resources to go around, with no hunger or real poverty, we’d hoped…” The easy tears of the old filled his eyes, a sight so unlike Jake that Alex had been almost glad to go to the meeting, almost glad Jake was asleep now. He’d spent the evening in praise of Julian’s plans for increased security, which Julian had discussed with him in apparently exhaustive detail.

Alex set down her half-drunk tea and stared at the rain streaking the window.

Julian.

Why had he chosen to wear his Terran uniform to the meeting? Had he known they would ask him to take over Mira City security?

Yes. Probably. But he had waited, courteously, to be asked, standing unnoticed in the back of the room.

Or had that been in order to make a more dramatic entrance when he was asked?

She was confusing Julian with Duncan, now deep into preparations for something called “Macbeth.”

Julian, in his black-and-gold uniform …

Alex rested her forehead against the cool plastic window. All at once she thought of Karim Mahjoub and Lucy Lasky, whom she had never met, gone nearly forty years from Greentrees on a mission to render Furs harmless by poisoning them. A mission that might or might not have made all Julian’s war preparation unnecessary.

Except that the war now seemed to be within Greentrees’ own people.

Abruptly Alex flung on her hooded coat and went out into the rain. Water flew off the coat’s soft plastic, so fast was she walking. A voice called, “Halt!”

“What? Who’s that?”

A figure emerged from the wet gloom. “Security. State your name and business … oh, it’s you, Alex. Okay.”

Alex stepped closer and recognized another of her young cousins from the huge, tangled Cutler clan. Eileen Langholtz, whom Alex had never liked. Eileen was self-important; when she’d been a kid, Alex had often seen her bully other children.

“After this, Alex, you’ll need to show me your ident.”

“My what?”

“An identity card to be issued shortly,” Eileen said with the smugness of superior knowledge. “Everyone will carry them and security will check to see that you do.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Eileen seemed to be surprised by the question. She blinked rain off her eyelids. “Well, because… because Julian says so.”

“Ah,” Alex said. “Good night, Eileen.”

“Wait—where are you going?”

Alex turned slowly. She looked Eileen over very carefully, from her hooded head to her booted feet. There was a slight bulge on her right hip. Alex walked off without answering. Whatever Eileen called after her was whipped away by wind and rain.

Alex pounded on Julian’s door, which was locked. He opened it and stood aside wordlessly.

She had seen the apartment only once, and then it had been full of Duncan’s things, vast messy heaps of fantastic garments bewildering in their colors, fabrics, and musty age. Now the tiny place was nearly sterile, the bedroom door closed, the table holding only a soft screen of a type Alex had never seen before.

“Why will Greentrees citizens carry identity cards and have their business questioned by security?”

He showed no surprise at her damp anger. “Because I need to know who has legitimate movements so I can determine who doesn’t.”

“We’re not used to this sort of… of…”

“The term you’re looking for is ’invasion of privacy.’ And you’re not used to terrorism, either. The former is necessary to control the latter.”

“Julian— ”

“Alex, let me ask you something before you yell at me again. Why is this terrorist situation happening at all on Greentrees? The root cause?”

He had touched her basic bewilderment. “Lau-Wah said—”

“No, not what Lau-Wah said. What you think.”

“I don’t know.”

“I do. It’s the same reason there should have been a large public funeral for Lau-Wah Mah.”

“A funeral?” She was caught off guard. “What does a funeral—”

“And also the same reason your schools are deficient.”

She said crossly, “I’m wet and tired and angry, Julian, and I’m not in the mood for riddles!”

“Of course you’re not.” Unexpectedly, he moved to her side and peeled off her coat, careful to not get rain on her wrap. He pulled out a chair for her, took the one opposite, and folded up his screen. His face looking up at her was so humble, so beseeching, that she was confused all over again. It felt silly to be standing. She sat.

“So what is the root cause of this … terrorism and no funeral and our bad schools?”

Silently Julian looked down at his own hands, spread palms down on the empty table. His fingers, she saw, were long and strong, the nails cut very short, and on his right hand he wore a simple gold ring set with a small chip of green stone.

When he looked up at her, his voice was gentler than she’d ever heard from him. “Forgive me, Alex. I have no right to come here and criticize the methods that have already built a colony more successful than anything has been on Earth for over two centuries. My only excuse is that in the short time I’ve been here, I’ve come to love Greentrees. It’s everything Terra could have been and was not, to our own shame. I didn’t expect to ever again feel that passionate attachment to a place that my people call homewardness. A completely inadequate word.”

She saw, with a small shock, that he meant every word. Her anger drained away. She, too, loved Greentrees. And he’d said “ever again” about a passionate attachment to a place. That implied he’d loved some other place before, and lost it.

She said softly, “What did you mean, the same root cause for Lau-Wah’s killing and no funeral for him and our schools?”

“You have forgotten your Terran past, all of you on this wonderful planet. You don’t think it’s important… but it
is.
It’s everything, because only the past can provide enough pride and tenacity and strength for sacrifice to defeat a real enemy. A comfortable present is fine for getting people to cooperate, and building things together can fuel a shared future, but they aren’t tough enough to power genuine war.”

“I don’t understand,” Alex said.

“Then listen, and weigh each statement I make against your own experience.” A gust of wind blew the rain against the window in a sudden sharp drumming. Julian didn’t raise his voice, and Alex had to lean forward slightly to hear him.

“A man named Sallust wrote this, almost two and a half thousand years ago, when his city of Rome was at war: ’The division of the Roman state into warring factions originated some years before, as a result of peace and of that material prosperity which men regard as the greatest blessing.’ Does that sound familiar?”

“Why, it’s what Lau-Wah said. And Jake, too.”

“Yes. Mira is such an easy planet, Alex. So rich and lush. Everyone from Earth, all those basically moral and fearful people who risked coming here, just wallowed in delight in the planet. But your generation was born here and doesn’t know much about Earth, and the one after yours, Yat-Shing Wong’s, knows even less. And doesn’t care. You teach almost no history in your schools, no tradition, no patriotism.”

She said, “There’s so many practical subjects to take up the time—”

“I know. And the young aren’t innately interested in old things. So you have almost no public rites. No elaborate parades, patriotic marches, public funerals for public figures. Those things aren’t frivolous, Alex. They build cohesion among disparate groups of people, and that’s necessary because your groups on Greentrees are naturally very disparate. Quakers, Arabs, Chinese—”

“Yes. But a dead past—”

“Can be put in the service of the living. You’re fighting the strongest force known, Alex. Evolution.”

“Evolution?” Once again she was confused.

“Human beings evolved to cooperate in groups
because
cooperation gives a group an edge over other groups. With that edge, you can get a bigger share of resources, better defend your dens, better survive. Animals cooperate in order to compete. Whenever there’s competition, there are winners and losers. Some of those will be sore losers. It’s built into the biology.

“So to get many different groups to cooperate, you can’t just show them that their interests are similar, because sooner or later their interests will diverge when some one or two groups get more. To forge cohesion, you have to foster something shared that’s larger than present interests. That something is a shared past, with all the history and pride and pomp that implies.”

These were new ideas to Alex. She sat pondering them. It made sense, but…

“It sounds dangerous,” she said.

“It is. Pride and history can be misused. But they’re not as dangerous as ignorance.” Julian’s tone was grim. “Or war.”

“We’re supposed to be at war with Furs, not each other!”

“Yes. The highest good is to avoid war completely. A good leader does what he can to protect lives. If war can’t be avoided, the next good is to minimize it, doing whatever is necessary to make it as small scale and quickly over as possible.”

“I can see that,” Alex said. All at once she felt shy. He knew so much, had experienced so much, and she was just what he’d implied about Greentrees: ignorant. She looked away, out the rainy window.

“During the First Punic War,” Julian said quietly, “isolationists convinced the Roman Senate that only the nobility, not the common people, wanted war. As a result, Rome didn’t act early enough. When she did finally act, the only recourse was total war. Much of Italy was destroyed. I don’t want that to happen on Greentrees, not by Furs or rebels. Not here. Alex, do you know what Mayor Shan was thinking at that meeting?”

“Ashraf? Not really.”

“Captain Davenport? Amelie Lincoln? Selson Childers? Ismail Shanab? Yi Zhang?”

She knew all their names, their families, their resource-allocation requisitions. But what they were thinking? Alex shook her head.

“You should. You must. An effective leader knows what every single person at every single meeting is thinking, all the time.”