Fear the Future (The Fear Saga Book 3) (34 page)

Chapter 35: Tidal Unity

The nods came as Neal had hoped, acquiescence filling the room’s collective minds. There was a healthy amount of dissent as well. Germany, Poland, and Ukraine leading the way this time. Some strongly voiced opposition. And, for effect, some from himself as well. This, then, was a victory for the Chinese and Russians, and the ever-thorny bed they still shared.

Though his opposition to the bill to make the new Representative Mind the permanent head of worldwide communications had been a falsehood, Neal did not have to fake the very real frustration that showed on his face as the voting was validated and the decision announced at last. Oh well, he thought. So he still had to placate two of the largest countries on earth. That was hardly unreasonable, given what had preceded it.

And in the end, it all helped with the public image of the Representatives of Earth. The meeting hall was filled with a voting party from every recognized sovereign nation on the planet, each with a voting power based on their total population, Gross Domestic Product, and, most importantly, the relative scale of their contributions to TASC in the previous governing period.

The governing periods lasted thirty days. The Representatives met three times in each period, with the last meeting of each month concluding with a pledge to continue support, and the first meeting of the next month including an agreement on voting rights accrued from the previous month’s relative contributions.

There was no chairperson, not even Neal. The only concession to TASC’s unique place in the group was that its vote was fixed. Regardless of population or income, TASC itself got a one percent share in the voting pool. That meant Neal had the tenth largest voting power in the room, matched with several members of the former European Union, but everyone knew, of course, that Neal’s real power did not stem from that vote anyway.

He had allies, many of them, and in the end he held the steering wheel. They could tell him where they wanted him to drive the seven-billion-person party-bus they were all now on, but few in the know were under any real doubt as to whether he would actually veer too far from the path he really wanted to be on.

This, then, was a tool. They knew it, and Neal knew it. But to say the representatives that filled it still wielded very real and far-reaching influence would be a gross understatement. In this room the world got to see what was being done to save humanity. In this room the world watched as a united war machine of unparalleled scale churned and rolled forward. And every member of this group knew they would be remembered by historians as the people who saved humanity, because the alternative was that there would be no more history at all.

“A good session, in the end,” said Neal, as he stepped out of the room, and out of view of the countless cameras dotted throughout the hall. “How long until the Indonesian cutover review?”

Jim was silent a moment as he checked on the Chinese delegation’s status. Though the review was of the extensive production facilities across a swathe of the Indonesian archipelago, those islands were all now leased to the People’s Republic of China, and the meeting would be with representatives of the Chinese government, with only a sparse Indonesian contingent present.

“They say they should be ready in about ten minutes,” said Jim, his eyes refocusing.

“Good, good,” replied Neal, as they walked along a back corridor and boarded a small, unmanned cart. It whirred off without word, instructed to do so, no doubt, by one of Jim’s many minions.

“And you, Jim, how are you?” said Neal, glancing across at the man seated opposite him, in the cart’s small cabin.

“Good. I am still concerned with the Macapá SpacePort dredging operation. They simply did not spec that work correctly. We have lost …”

Jim went to call up a number of days the SpacePort’s sea-lane had been effectively closed to large-scale shipping from his mind, but Neal interrupted him. “Do you need me to have a word with the Brazilian delegate?”

Jim shuddered ever so slightly, not that he feared Neal meant anything more than just having a word with the woman. He was overly sensitive, Jim knew that, to what he knew Neal was really capable of. But that was not this Neal. Not the politician. And anyway, Jim had pushed the Brazilian issue as far as he needed to. He had even sent a friend down there, a most capable one.

“No, I don’t think that will be necessary,” said Jim with a genuine smile. “I’ve asked Quavoce, or rather Major Garrincha, to go down there and help supervise work directly.”

Neal smiled as well. He knew this already, not through any asset of Ayala’s, but through a shared acquaintance. “Yes, Jim, and you have gotten me in some trouble because of it.”

Jim looked askew at Neal, maybe even with a hint of fear, and Neal was caught off guard by the reaction. Had things really gotten so bad that Jim would be afraid of him?

“Banu told me,” said Neal, and saw that Jim, though he tried to hide it, relaxed a little. “She was none to happy that her father had to go away on business.”

Jim tried to move past his faux pas, raising his eyebrows as he said, “Well, to be honest, you could always let her go with him.”

Neal balked instinctively at the thought. Banu. His little warrior. Sent off into the Amazon rainforest. No, he thought. But as he considered it more, he started to see Jim’s point.

“Yes, I suppose she isn’t the lone little warrior-princess she once was, is she?” he smiled. It was a smile laden with simple and very genuine fondness, and Jim was reminded of why he had followed Neal in the first place. Why he had trusted him. He was a good man, at heart.

But that did not forgive his actions, Jim then reminded himself, steeling himself against a potential wave of regret at what he had started with Madeline and Amadeu and others.

Still smiling, Jim agreed with Neal, saying, “We have other pilots that can take the reins of the Skalm should it be needed. Others that have been training for just such an opportunity. And in a matter of days, when we finish retooling the Dome facilities at District Two, we will start production on the next Skalm, the first of many to join Banu’s lone destroyer.”

Neal nodded. His little Banu. Nearly ten years old now. She called him Uncle Neal. He probably took more pride from that simple gesture of respect and affection than he did from any of the titles and power his life was now saddled with.

“Shall I let Quavoce know she can … go along?” said Jim, hesitantly. “That she can leave District One?”

Neal looked at the man, a little vacantly at first, and then with more clarity. “Yes, Jim, you can send her with him. She will like that. Though she should probably go under a pseudonym, and …”

“Don’t worry, Neal. I’ll have my team see to it she remains safe. And then there is always the matter of Quavoce.”

They shared a moment of genuine shared amusement. Woe betide anyone who threatened Banu on Quavoce’s watch. No, thought Neal, she will be fine. It will do her good to get out and see the world, to try to forget all of the fighting and killing for a while.

“We’re here,” said Jim, suddenly, as they came to a halt by another door, in another part of the growing representative’s complex on Sao Tome.

Neal was confused a moment, then nodded. “Good. Let’s get on with it then.”

- - -

Ayala:
‘¿how did it go with the indonesian transition discussion? ¿do they still insist on partial commercial capacity?’

Neal:
‘they do. but i think we can allow a small percentage, if only because not all of the facilities there are at standard for fleet production anyway.’

Ayala:
‘¿no, they aren’t all up to standard, are they? ¿a coincidence?’

Neal shook his head and snorted derisively, both in the ether and in real life, seated now in his office. Jennifer looked a question at him and he shook his head again now, though this time to say ‘not to worry.’

Neal:
‘you give our chinese allies too much credit. or maybe i give them too little. either way, we have gotten from them as much as we could reasonably have expected. more even. better that we give them this small victory, so they can fulfill their larger contracts. it helps them, and it helps the public get their hands on more little goodies from our laboratories. austerity makes no one happy, no matter how patriotic. this will help us overall.’

On this topic, Neal knew, Ayala and he most certainly did not agree. She was not one for compromise, and she did not see the argument for appeasement, either of the Chinese, or the world’s populace at large. So they all wanted access to the virtual world, to spinal interfaces, to hypersonic and exo-atmospheric travel, to AI driven robots that could bring home the bacon and cook it up in a pan, and, she had heard, even help with the last part of that saying, too, for the right price.

But Ayala saw no need for any of this. Not given the greater threat they faced. People needed to knuckle down and get it done, no matter what they were forced to endure.

They needed to endure, as she had, and, if necessary, they needed to suffer, as she had.

But seven billion people did not rally to a banner easily, not even one as powerful as the threat of extinction. The Armada was still a long way away, farther than most people could comprehend. Such abstruse concepts suffered in the space between the mind and the heart.

History was filled with such mass delusions, from a cowed Europe refusing to see the true threat of a rising Third Reich, even as it steamrolled Poland’s borders, to the ensuing struggle to bring a distant United States into the fray years after the fighting had already started.

But while Ayala may be uncannily capable of forcing people into line, Neal needed to influence humanity on a far vaster scale than Ayala and her methods could.

You couldn’t manage everyone in the way Ayala now wrangled some of the world’s more troublesome leaders. And Neal wouldn’t want to even if they could. It pained him whenever he thought about it, what they had done to their dissenters in Iran, and Russia, and Egypt, and others, Neal knew, more than Ayala had told him about, more than he wanted to know, no doubt.

No. Wherever possible, Neal tried to win people’s hearts as well as their minds. And, Neal thought, not just the hearts of the masses, but of the few, the ones he would have to trust as he worked toward final victory.

And as he thought about that, he considered who he did trust. And he came back to an old topic with the woman whose voice was even now in his head.

Neal:
‘i spoke to jim today about banu.’

Ayala:
‘¿really? ¿what did he say?’

He wondered if Ayala really didn’t know. If she wasn’t watching him just as much as he knew she was watching so many others. But that was the price. And Neal knew she was trustworthy for a very specific reason: she could be trusted to do what it would take to survive. Whatever it would take.

Neal:
‘Jim pointed out that she is not, really, such a person of interest anymore, not now that we have the first of the pilot cadets trained and ready.’

Ayala:
‘¿he did, did he? interesting. ¿and what did he recommend you do with this information?’

Neal:
‘he recommended i let her accompany quavoce on his trip to brazil to supervise the reopening of the silted channel there.’

Ayala did not reply for a second. Neal assumed she was checking facts, maybe calling up the conversation in question for review, maybe asking Saul or one if his team of analysts for a dossier.

Ayala:
‘so you let her go, i see. i have a request, neal, if you don’t mind. in the future, please check with me before letting a major asset of ours go off campus.’

Neal fought back the bitter taste he got from hearing Banu reduced to nothing more than an ‘asset.’ He appreciated Ayala’s paranoia, he relied on it, in fact. He knew she was the only reason he was still alive, and probably the real reason he was still at the head of earth’s preparations for the coming war. But there were moments when her methods became less palatable.

Neal:
‘banu is nearly ten, she has served the effort for long enough, given her age, and we have many who can fly the skalm nearly as well as her, and several that are even better.’

Ayala:
‘true, neal. ¿but our enemies don’t have such resources, do they? ¿what if they have plans to take control of the skalm, or of one of the future ones planned for production? ¿what would they be willing to do to gain access to one of the best and certainly the most experienced pilots we have?’

Neal went silent. He had, indeed, not considered this. They had caught whiff of several moves to try and wrestle control of the Skalm, and its planned siblings, away from TASC, both covert and via political channels. Ayala had quashed them each as they arose, using the many tools at her disposal, but who knew if they had uncovered them all.

Neal:
‘you’re right, of course. i had not considered that. i’ll contact quavoce. tell him to change …’

Ayala:
‘no, no. she can go. i’m not totally heartless, neal. but i will work with minnie to get at least a phase eight out there with them. between that and quavoce himself, she should be safe.’