F Paul Wilson - LaNague 02 (26 page)

           
Old Pete
understood and held her until his arms ached. Then he pushed her to arm’s
length.

           
“Can we be
friends now?”

           
Jo nodded,
smiled, then began to laugh. Old Pete joined her and only the return of Larry
and his bed prevented them from breaking into tears.

           
“What’s so
funny?” he asked. His voice sounded stronger than before. “And what are you
doing here, Pete?”

           
Jo waited
until the bed had moved back into its old position, then sat on it next to
Larry.

           
“He came to
see if we needed any help,” she said with a smile.

           
“Well, we
do. We’ve got to put some distance between Proska and us–”

           
“No,” she
said. “He’s dead. The Vanek killed him.” She then went on to tell Larry and Old
Pete about Proska’s blackmail scheme against deBloise.

           
“What a
totally vile, amoral character!” Old Pete said when she was finished.

           
“Almost as
bad as deBloise,” Jo replied coldly. “He sent Proska to Danzer, then used my
dead father’s name to further his filthy career.”

           
She
realized she still thought of Junior Finch as her father, and no doubt always
would. And someday, she would explain it all to Larry. But now was certainly
not the time.

           
“But, Jo,”
Larry said. “A Vanek committed the actual murder.”

           
“He did the
right thing.” Her voice was soft now. “I’d want the same for myself… you don’t
know what it was like. The Vanek did the right thing for Proska, too. But the
deBloise account stays open.”

           
“He’s not
even on Jebinose,” Old Pete said. “Left for Fed Central yesterday. I heard it
on the vid while I was getting dressed earlier.”

           
“DeBloise
is finished already,” Larry said. “At least he is if what Proska told you about
the recording is true.”

           
“It’s true.
There was no reason for him to lie to me. He said the original would go to the
Federation ethics committee if ‘anything suspicious’ happened to him. When the
news of his death is released, I’m sure the person to whom he entrusted the
recording will find the circumstances sufficiently suspicious to warrant its
forwarding to the committee.” Her smile was grim. “It should arrive within the
next standard day. And that should put an end to deBloise’s career.”

           
“Well,
that’s fine,” Old Pete observed testily, “and it’s well deserved, and it’s
about time. But it doesn’t do anything for the purpose for which we all became
involved in this mess. What’s there to keep the rest of the Restructurists from
carrying through with the Haas plan, whatever it is?”

           
“That may
not be a problem any more,” Jo said, her smile brightening. “I’ll know for sure
after I make a single call.”

           
She went to
the vidphone by the bed and asked to be connected with the Jebinose brokerage
house, galactic stocks division.

           
“At this
hour of the morning?” Larry asked.

           
Old Pete
explained: “The Galactic Board never closes, Larry; and on a sparsely populated
planet like Jebinose, there’s usually only one office dealing with galactic
stocks. So, to take orders from all over the planet, they have to stay open
’round the clock. The younger brokers usually get stuck with the night watch.”

           
“But what’s
all this got to do with deBloise and Haas?”

           
“I haven’t
the faintest idea,” Old Pete said with a shrug.

           
“You will,”
Jo said as she waited for a connection. “I’ll explain it all just as soon as I
get a few quotes.”

           
A youngish
male face appeared on the screen. “Galactic stocks division,” he muttered
wearily.

           
“Good
morning,” Jo said with as much pleasantness as she could muster. “I’ve decided
to buy stock in a couple of companies and would like to know the current
selling price.”

           
“Surely.
Which ones are you interested in?”

           
“Fairleigh
and Opsal.”

           
The
broker’s hand had been reaching for the computer terminal built into his
desktop with the intention of punching in the company names. Jo’s words
arrested the motion. He smiled wanly. “You and everybody else.”

           
“What do
you mean?”

           
“I mean
that it seems like half of Occupied Space wants to buy shares in those two
companies. I’ve been trying to beam in a bid all night and I can’t even get
through!”

           
“Why the
sudden interest?”

           
“It started
as an unsubstantiated report by one of the news services that Fairleigh had
tapped a lode of natural Leason crystals and that Opsal would soon be coming
out with the most revolutionary antibiotic since penicillin. When the companies
confirmed, the Galactic Board began to go crazy. Everybody wants to get in on
the ground floor. Let’s face it, Fairleigh will be able to cut its production
costs by a half – it’s going to have the peristellar drive field pretty much to
itself for a while. And Opsal’s new product is going to make hundreds of other
antibiotics obsolete.”

           
“May I
leave a buy order with you?”

           
“Yes,” he
sighed, “but I don’t think I’ll be able to do anything for you until the stocks
split – which I expect to happen any minute.”

           
“How about
Teblinko?”

           
“Down. Way
down.”

           
“And
Stardrive?”

           
“Same
story. A lot of people are trying to dump their Stardrive and Teblinko for
Fairleigh and Opsal. As a matter of fact, the whole
Star
Ways
family is being hurt by this. Now, how many
shares did you want to–”

           
“Thank
you,” Jo interjected with a pleased smile. “You’ve been most helpful.” She
abruptly broke the connection and the broker’s startled visage faded from the
screen.

           
“What was
that all about?” Larry asked.

           
Old Pete
shook his head in admiration. “My boy, you’ve just seen the largest
conglomerate in Occupied Space knocked on its ear! And your lady friend here is
the one responsible for the whole thing!”

           
“I had a
lot of help from Andy… couldn’t have done it without him, in fact.”

           
Larry
struggled to a sitting position. “Now wait a minute! Why does everybody seem to
know what’s going on here except me? And how did Andy get involved?”

           
Jo slipped
into the chair next to the vidphone. “I said I’d explain, so let’s start with
the Restructurists. The main thrust of all their activities and all their
rhetoric is to get the Federation into the free market and start exercising
some controls on the interstellar economy – that’s where real power lies. But
the LaNague Charter prevents the Federation from doing anything of the sort.
So, the Restructurists must find a way to nullify the charter, and the only way
to do that is to activate the emergency clause.”

           
“If you
remember your Federation history, Larry,” Old Pete added, “that’s the clause
that temporarily voids the entire charter and thus all the limits on the
Federation as a government. LaNague disowned it, even though it was designed to
be activated only in times of threat to the Fed and its member planets; he
wanted no emergency powers at all and fought tooth and nail against the clause.
But he was ignored and it was tacked on against his protests.”

           
“I vaguely
remember learning something about that once,” Larry said, “but it’s not exactly
recent history.”

           
“Maybe
not,” Jo replied, “but it’s very important history to the Restructurists. They’ve
had their eyes on the emergency clause for a long time – it’s the one weak spot
in the charter. And this time they figured they’d found the way to get to it.
The Haas warp gate was going to be the trigger to activate the emergency
clause.”

           
She leaned
forward and alternated her gaze between Larry and Old Pete. “Now comes the
tricky part. DeBloise and his circle were pouring enormous amounts of money
into the warp gate and pushing Haas to market it prematurely – before the final
improvements which would have made it a truly revolutionary product. No
intelligent investor would do such a thing; it was financial suicide. And since
deBloise is anything but a fool, I could interpret the situation only one way:
the Restructurists wanted the gate to be a tremendous commercial failure.

           
“Why would
they want to do that? It baffled me until two things clicked: Haas’s statement
about military contracts and Old Pete’s joking reference to the Tarks. That’s
when I knew what deBloise was up to.”

           
“I think
I’m beginning to see,” said Old Pete with a slow smile.

           
“I’m not!”
Larry snapped. “What have Tarks and warp gates got to do with the Federation
charter?”

           
“The Tarks
are on their way to becoming a big problem,” Jo explained. “There are numerous
areas of conflict between Terran and Tarkan interests, and the list lengthens
each year. Keeping that in mind, and considering the potential military uses of
the gate in a wartime situation, you can see what a perfect lever it could be
against the emergency clause.

           
“Let me
give you the scenario as I believe it was planned. DeBloise and the other
Restructurists involved were going to push the gate onto the market prematurely
and wait for the inevitable:
Star Ways
would drop the price on its warp unit and suck off most of Haas’s potential
customers. When the Haas company collapsed, SW would make a nice offer to lease
production rights to the gate – an offer that would make Haas richer than he’d
ever dreamed. But Denver Haas, like a spoiled child, would take his ball and go
home.

           
“That’s
when the deBloise circle would leap into action. They’d rush before the various
defense committees and claim that continued sale and development of the warp
gate was an essential preparation against the inevitable day when the
Federation clashes violently with the Tarkan Empire.

           
They’d
claim that unregulated competition was depriving the Federation of the gate and
would demand invocation of the emergency clause in order to intervene against
SW and save the gate.

           
“It would
be difficult to oppose them if they managed to generate enough fear. Not only
would they be screaming ‘security,’ but they’d be painting the emotional
picture of a huge conglomerate destroying a tiny company and the entire
Federation suffering as a result of it. I’m sure they’d have got some sort of
economic control out of it.”

           
“And that
would have been the beginning of the end,” Old Pete said.

           
“Right. So
I took aim at the one variable they figured to be a constant –
Star
Ways
. Conglomerates are less susceptible to
changes in the market, but they’re by no means immune. With Andy Tella’s help,
I was able to put a few dents in two of SW’s major subsidiaries. There’s no way
it can wage a successful price war against Haas now.”

           
“That’s all
fine and good,” Larry mused, “but without you the gate would have been lost.
That doesn’t say much for the free market.”

           
“It says
that the market deplores stupidity!” Old Pete replied in a loud voice. “It
would be damn stupid for anyone to push the gate onto the market before the
final refinements were perfected. Anyone with the idea of profiting from an
investment would have waited. You forget – deBloise wanted the gate to flop;
his profit was to be political, not financial.

           
“But enough
of this talk. It’s all worked out for the best. The Federation charter is safe,
the warp gate will be on the market when we need it, and a certain murderer has
received a long-delayed sentence. I think we should celebrate!”

           
“Not yet,”
Jo said, her facial muscles tightening and her eyes going crystalline. “Not until
I’ve personally seen Elson deBloise thrown out of the Federation.”

           
“You’re not
going without me!” Old Pete said.

           
THEY
ARRIVED AT FED CENTRAL just in time. The ethics committee had not delayed a
moment after receiving Proska’s package of damning proof. Its members
confronted deBloise with the evidence that he was directly responsible for the
murder of another man in order to further his own political career.

           
DeBloise,
of course, denied everything, calling it a plot instigated by the various
anti-Restructurist factions within the Federation. The ethics committee was
unmoved and decided that the evidence would be presented to the entire General
Council at its next session. DeBloise asked, and was granted, permission to
address the Council before the charges and evidence were presented.

           
Jo and Old
Pete arrived in time to catch the tail end of his speech:

           
“…that this
is not government! We have tried to demonstrate this fact to you, but all in
vain. We have tried for years, for centuries, to open your eyes, but you refuse
to see. You refuse to see the chaos of the non-system of non-government in
which you dwell. We have tried to bring order to this near-anarchy but you have
repeatedly refused it.

           
“And now…”

           
He let
those two words hang in the air. He was using his considerable oratory talents
to the fullest, knowing his performance was being recorded, knowing it would be
played and replayed on vid news all over Occupied Space.

           
“And now
you have stooped to smearing my reputation! Do you really believe that the
other progressive members of this body would accept the trumped-up charges
against me as true? They are not fools! They recognize a cynical plot when they
see one! We have caucused for days, we of the Restructurist movement, and after
much soul searching and heated debate, after innumerable subspace messages to
the planets we represent, a decision has been reached.”

           
Again, he
paused for full effect, then:

           
“The worlds
that stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the Restructurist movement have decided that
they can no longer be a party to this insane chaos you call a Federation!

           
“Be it
known,” he said into the rising tumult from the floor, “that we are seceding
from the Federation – seceding from anarchy into order. Travel in the trade
lanes through our sectors is here now restricted to ships of those companies
that seek and receive prior approval from the new Restructurist Union.
Unauthorized craft infringing upon our territories will be seized. We shall
fire on sight at any craft bearing the emblem of the LaNague Federation. From
this day on, we govern our own!”

           
With a
dramatic swirl of his cape, Elson deBloise descended from the podium and
strode down the central aisle of the General Council assembly hail. As he
moved, other Restructurists, Philo Barth and Doyl Catera among them, rose and
followed him. The rest of the Council watched in stunned silence.

           
Jo and Old
Pete were standing by the main door to the assembly hall as deBloise passed. He
glanced at Jo as he strode by but paid her no more attention than he did any
other spectator. With the collapse of Teblinko and Star Drive on the stock
exchange, his scheme to use the Haas gate against the Federation charter was
voided; and with the delivery of Proska’s blackmail package to the ethics committee,
his personal freedom, as well as his public career, were about to suffer a
similar fate. A Restructurist-Federation split was the only way to salvage
anything.

           
And so he
passed within a half-meter of Josephine Finch, never realizing that this
tame-looking female had blasted all his plans, all his lifetime dreams of power
to ruins. She was just another tourist and his glance flicked away as he went
by.

           
A vid
reporter was scrambling around the antechamber to the assembly hall looking for
reactions to this startling, historic announcement. He spied Jo and Old Pete
and approached at a trot.

           
“Pardon
me,” he said breathlessly, “but I’d like to know what you think about the
Restructurist secession.” He pointed the vid recorder plate at Old Pete. “Do
you think there’s a chance of war?”

           
“Hardly,”
Old Pete replied slowly. “It’s a bold move, all right – certainly a surprising
one – but to talk of ‘war’ is a little melodramatic. Oh, I’m sure there’ll be
skirmishes over resource planets. But these will no doubt be referred to as
‘battles.’ I foresee nothing on a large scale.”

           
“Yes. Well,
uh...thank you, sir,” the reporter said, obviously displeased. Calm, rational
answers were of no value to a good vid newscast – they slowed up the pace. He
turned to Jo in the hope of finding a little feminine hysteria.

           
“How about
you, miss? Do you think there was really a plot to assassinate Elson deBloise’s
character?”

           
Jo’s mouth
twisted mischievously as she spoke in a solemn tone. “Wheels within wheels,
bendreth.”

           
Then she
linked her arm with Old Pete’s and together they walked toward the exit,
laughing.

           
It is given that the Tarkan Empire would
never have initiated the Terran-Tarkan War if it had not been tempted by the
inflamed rhetoric and spectacle of a civil war between the Federation and the
Restructurist Union.

           
It is also given that the Restructurist
secession from the Federation was precipitated when serious criminal charges
were brought against Elson deBloise, the movement’s most prominent member at
that time. Restructurist apologists today say that the charges were false and
never proven; other students of the period think otherwise. Both camps,
however, agree on this: after the secession, the packet of evidence against
deBloise was forwarded to Jebinose but mysteriously disappeared on the way.

           
One thing is certain: the contents of that
packet significantly altered the course of human history.

           
from
Stars for
Sale
:

           
An Economic History
of Occupied Space

           
by Emmerz Fent