"Gahh," Yolande said.
Maybe I should have been following
public affairs more carefully.
"Bad biology, too," the professor said. "The hive insects haven't changed an iota in seventy million years."
Karl laughed sourly. "Precisely Gayner's definition of success.
Not surprisin'; the icebitch's never had an original idea of her own, anyways."
"But we live in a more challenging environment than insects do," Snappdove mused. "And… intelligence doesn't necessarily imply a self-conscious individual mind, y'know. Let the Militants get in control for three, four generations, and it'd be a positive disadvantage, even for the Race. We'd end up as empty of selfhood as ants."
"Lola on ice," Yolande said, alarmed. "I have been out of touch. Well, off Earth an' busy. Don't tell me the electorate is buyin' this?"
"Not directly, but then the Militant inner circle aren't spellin'
it out in those terms," Eric said. "And it appeals to our national love of unchanging stasis, and the basic Draka emotion."
Yolande looked a question. "Fear."
"Oh, come now, Uncle—"
"Why else would we have backed ourselves into this social cul-de-sac?" He rolled the liqueur glass between his hands. "Ever since the Landtaking, we've been in the position of a man runnin'
downhill on a slope too steep to stop; got to keep going, or we fall on our face an' break our necks. Individual relationships aside, don't delude yo'self that the serfs as a group like us as a group.
They don't. Why should they? We enslave them, drive them like cattle; because if we did any different, they'd overrun and butcher us."
Yolande looked from side to side, not a conventional gesture but genuine alarm.
"Don't worry," her uncle said dryly. "This place is swept daily by technicians personally loyal to me. It works, or I'd be dead."
"Well…" Yolande gathered her thoughts. "It's true, some aspects of the way serfs are treated is… unfortunate." She remembered deeds of her own. "I gathah yo'd like to increase the scope of those reforms yo've introduced, the serf tribunals an'
such?"
Eric nodded. "Yes; but those are strictly limited.
Administrative measures, really. They regularize the way serfs treat serfs… perhaps not so minor a mattah, since we use serfs fo'
most of our supervisory work. It's certainly improved morale and efficiency, among the Literates… and they
still
provide the Headhunters with the most of they work. An ex-slave in America once said that a badly-treated slave longed fo' a good master, and a slave with a good master longed to be free… Not
entirely
true thank Baldur the Good, or even mostly, but often enough to be worrisome. No, the
long-term
solution is to eliminate or reduce the fear. Do that, make the Citizen caste absolutely sure they're not in danger from the serfs, an' genuine reform becomes possible."
"Yo' see," he continued, leaning forward with hands on knees.
The dim glowlight outlined the craggy bones of his face. "Yo' see, an outright slave society like ours is a high-tension solution to a social problem. Extreme social forms are inherently unstable; ours is as unviable as actual democracy, because it's as unnatural. It's too far up the entropy gradient. We have to push, continually, to keep it there. Remove the motive of fear and necessity, an' the inherent human tendency to take the path of least resistance will modify it. Eventually—perhaps in a thousand years—we'd have… oh, a caste society, certainly. An authoritarian one, perhaps. But somethin' mo' livable fo'
everybody than this wolf-sheep relationship we have now. A better way out than Gayner's beehive, fo' certain. That's almost as bad as annihilation."
"Leavin' us Citizens as sheepdogs instead?" Karl asked rhetorically.
Eric grinned at his son. "Don't quote me back at mahself, boy.
But yes, the human race will always need warriors and explorers, leaders even."
Yolande paused, picked up a brandied chocolate truffle and nibbled on it. "Uncle, with all due respect, Ah don't see how yo'
could remove the necessity fo' strict control. It's been… well, the root of everythin'. Except by turnin' the serfs into machinery o'
ghouloons."
Eric's grin became almost boyish. "We use
go-with
, on the Militants," he said. Yolande frowned in puzzlement; that was an unarmed-combat term, a deception-ploy which used an opponent's weight and strength against themselves.
"Yo've been in contact with the Eugenics people, fo' your daughter?" She nodded.
"The Militants thought they'd fought through a favorable compromise, a first step. We suckered them. Look—what are the biocontrollers removin' from the serf population? It'll take centuries more than the changes they're making in the Race, but what? Not intelligence; they're
increasin
that, by eliminatin' the subnormal. Not creativity; Lola's tits, we don't know what causes that an' I suspects we never will, same as we'll never have a computer that does mo' than mimic consciousness. We're just removin'… that extra edge of aggressiveness that makes a warrior, from the subject races. We all know serfs that be no menace however free we let them run, right?"
"And Draka who aren't much mo' dangerous," Karl laughed.
Eric acknowledged it with a nod. "So, eventually… no fear. Not that the serfs would be without bargainin' power; they'll still outnumber us by eighty to one, and we'll still be dependent on them… but we could let the balance shift
without bein terrified
it'd shift all the way
. And think of what we could do if we didn't have to keep such tight clamps on their education an' such!"
Snappdove made a vigorous gesture of assent. "Better evolutionary strategy than Gayner's," he said. "More flexible.
Couldn't count the number of species that've hit extinction by being overspecialized. Not that specialization's altogether bad; have to strike a balance."
She sipped at the drink again. Silence stretched into minutes.
"Uncle Eric… Senator… yo've always been good to me, and honest with me. I'll be honest with yo'; it sounds good, and mo' or less what I've been thinkin', though I haven't articulated it. I've Gwen's future to think of, and my other children. But on foreign policy, as I understand it, the Militants stand fo' absolute, well,
militancy
. And that's my position, too, I… have reasons." She stopped, feeling her own fragility.
"Oh, so do we," Karl said.
"Absolutely. Political equations don't figure as long as the Alliance is in it," Snappdove rumbled, combing his beard with his fingers. "Adds too much tension and anxiety."
"Yes, I'm afraid so," Eric sighed. "I wish… well, we live as we must, and do what is necessary. Our prim'ry obligation is to our descendants, aftah all. As to the Yankees… well probably have to kill most of them." He set his glass down. "Gods, how sick I am of killin'!"
"I'm not," Yolande said grimly. To herself:
Is there anything I
value more than that revenge? Gwen,
perhaps
… A ghost opened green eyes at the back of her mind and whispered.
Don't borrow
trouble, 'Landa-sweet. Or torment yourself with decisions you
don't need to make.
"Which brings us to the secondary mattah of Task Force Telmark IV," Eric said. "Incidently, Arch-Strategos Welber is one of us."
Us, Yolande thought.
So we make
irrevocable decisions
,
without a spot you could stop and say—"Here.
Here I did it
."
She shivered slightly; the trip to Archona had been difficult enough when only an Appointment Board was at stake. Now she had joined a political cabal, and Draka politics was a game played by only one rule: rule or die.
"We—the inner circle of the Conservatives, that is—want to win the Protracted Struggle very, very badly. In the interim, we've got to be seen to
wage
it effectively; one hint of softness an'
the Militants will be over us like flies on horse-shit. This is an impo'tant mission. I think you can handle it. Wouldn't have recommended yo' fo' it, otherwise."
A wolfs expression. "Doesn't hurt that yo' a von Shrakenberg relation, from the Landholder class… and have been seen extensively in my company these past days. Politically profitable glory fo' all. If yo' win, that is. Fail, and it's a setback fo' me."
And
a disaster for you, girl,
went unspoken between them.
"M-ha," Snappdove said. "Very important. If that object's what we think, our materials problems in the Earth-Moon area will be solved for the better part of a decade,
without
having to cut back on anything. By which time the outer-system projects will be on-line. Finally."
"We were over-hasty," Karl agreed. "Whole space effort has been. Those early scramjets, they were deathtraps." He shook his head. "Both sides. The Yankees kept trying to model the airflows with inadequate computers, and we, we built a gigawatt of nuclear power stations, used the whole Dniester for cooling, to get that damned Mach-18 quarter-scale windtunnel. And we
still
had disasters."
Snappdove spread his hands. The gesture triggered something in Yolande's memory, and suddenly she could place the overtone to his accent. East European; his family must be one of the rare elite given Citizen status after the conquest. Scientists, mostly; that would explain a good deal.
"We needed the lift capacity, if we were to develop near-space in time," he said ruthlessly. "The only other way to orbit was rockets, and they are toys. Even those first scram-jets could carry six tonnes to orbit; now they're up to fifty."
"The early pulsedrives were almost as bad," Yolande said. "We lost a lot of brave people, using them in the outer system."
Snappdove smiled at her, and to her astonishment began quoting poetry. Hers:
The Lament for the
Fallen who Fall
Forever
, part of the
Colder Than the Moon collection.
It had used a literary conceit, a fantasy, that the quick-frozen bodies retained a trickle of consciousness in their supercooled brains:
"And those graveless dead drift restless, In the emptiness of space
Who died so far from love and home
And the blue world's warm embrace…
"But now those problems are largely solved," he continued.
"What remains is engineering. Wonderful engineering, though!"
He warmed, eyes lighting. "Perhaps that is why we of Technical Section support the good senator… Did you know we have funding for the first Beanstalk project, now?"
"Ah?" Yolande said. That
was
news. "Where?"
"Titan!" He made the spreading-hands gesture again at her raised eyebrows. That was a cutting-edge project, lowering a cable from geosynchronous orbit and using it to run elevators to the surface. Daring, to put it on one of the moons of Saturn…
"Logical," the professor insisted. "The gravity there, that is nothing, only .14G, but the atmosphere is thicker than Earth's, and the problems of operating on the surface horrendous, lasers or mass-drivers out of the question. But a Beanstalk, that gives us even cheaper transit, and once we do—nitrogen, methane, ethane, hydrogen cyanide, all types of organic condensates! It will take nearly a decade, but even so, once completed we can pump any desired quantity of materials downhill to sunward.
Better we had concentrated on Saturn's moons in any case; the distance is greater but the environment less troublesome than Jupiter." The giant planet had radiation belts that were ferociously difficult even with superconductor-magnetic shielding.
"Energy would be a problem, wouldn't it?" Yolande speculated.
This is part of the bait,
she thought without resentment, looking at her uncle sidelong.
They know my
dreams.
That was politics, and the dream was shared.
"Well," Eric said easily, "there we've taken a tip from the Yankees. Here, look at this."
He slid a folder of glossy prints across the table to her. She flicked through them rapidly. They were schematic prints for some large construction; zero-G, or it would have collapsed.
Circular, with two… large railguns? at either side.
"What is it?" she said.
"Somethin' the Yankees fondly believe is secret," Eric said, then glanced at his son. "Need to know," he added.
The younger man rose. "Goodnight, all," he said cheerfully.
"I've got company waitin', anyhows. Less intellectual but mo'
entertainin'."
Eric waited, then continued. "Example of how it's easier to do things in space," he said. "We
still
haven't got a workin' fusion reactor here on Earth. This is one—in a sense. Big empty sphere with heat exchangers an' superconductor coils in the shell.
Throw two pellets of isotopic hydrogen in through the railguns, splat. Beam-heat at the same time. Hai, wingo, fusion."
"Ahmmm," Yolande said thoughtfully. "Sounds like what we're plannin' fo' the next-generation pulsedrive." A pause.
"Crude, though, as a power source. Mo' like what we'd do. And why do they need nonsolar power sources in the Belt?"
"Yes," Snappdove said. "Patented brute-force-and-massive-ignorance method, very Draka… but it will work. Even useful for industry—the sun is fainter out there, microwave relay stations for the power… also typical of our methods. Here." He pulled out another of the prints, showing a long rectangle of some thin sheet floating against the stars. "And what our sources in the Belt say is being subcontracted for."
She read the list. "Superconductor coils… wire… tungsten."
"Linear accelerators," Snappdove said. "Not for mass-driving, not for research. Antimatter production."
Yolande blinked. "Is it possible?" she said. "I thought… wasn't there an accident, a whiles back?"
"Tech Sec facility in the Urals." Eric nodded. "Equivalent of a megatonne sunbomb. Discouraged us no end. Engineerin'
problems in laser coolin' and magnetic confinement, but antimatter is an old discovery on a laboratory scale, back as far as the 1930s. Mo' sensible to do it in space, though. Question is, why so secret?"