Tom Paine Maru - Special Author's Edition (38 page)

Mav puffed on his inhaler. It smelled like lighter fluid. “Are you actually capable of swallowing the entire
Onwodetsa
in a gulp like that?”

Rogers waited a while before speaking, consulting the computer in his head. “
Tom Paine Maru
is a little under ten of your
fymon
in diameter. It’s a hemispheric section, perhaps a quarter of that height.”

“My word. Very well, then, I shall try my own idea.”

With that, he stepped out on the balcony, raised three hands in salutation.

One of the soldiers at ground level picked up a rifle, threw it to what served as his shoulder. There was a report, smoke. A huge bullet spanged off the stone over the detective’s head. Somebody else grabbed the gun, thumped the shooter across the jaws with it, then threw it down.

Except for a throb of idling airship motors, silence fell over the island.

“My friends and gaolers,” Mav began.

The crowd below stirred a little, grew silent again.

“It is time at last for leavetaking. I know that you believe you have a duty to prevent this, although I contemplate harm to no living being.”

He paused, then went on. “I am here with you because I endeavored to stop a conflagration that rages even now around our globe. That it was in concert with similarly-minded Podfettians proved intolerable to Their Majesties, who hold it their right to choose our enemies for us.”

He laid two hands on the balcony, gestured with the middle one, “I tell now that you we must choose our own enemies—and allies. Our commerce with others must be solely on the basis of unanimous consent. No nation, no king, no group of any composition whatever is entitled to do anything that any individual among their number objects to. That constitutes the sum of what my friends and enemies alike are calling ‘Mavism’.”

At the same time that I was horrified by the alien philosopher’s words, I was fascinated by them. It was as if this Agot Edmoot Mav had been a Confederate all his life. Somehow—apparently all by himself—he had “detected”, or reinvented everything Confederates had taken hundreds of years to learn. I came closer in that moment than any before to wondering if there might really be something in it, after all.

He was going on: “Rather than prodigious bodies of law, the only value necessary for all of us to share proposes that no one may obtain his satisfaction by initiating violence against another. Our new acquaintances from the stars—for that is who they be—having made this discovery independently, call it ‘Non-Aggression’. In terms of our evolutionary history, we are both predator-species. This Principle is the only way that predators may relate with one another sanely and safely.”

There was murmuring below at that, though whether in approval or disapproval, I could not tell. The idea of evolution had its obstinate resistors back home on Vespucci. That may have been the problem here, too.

“I have heard it argued,” Mav said, “that unanimous consent, which is a positive expression of this Non-Aggression Principle, engenders inaction at best or a bland mediocrity. I assert this can only occur in the opposite circumstance, where no individual may act without the group’s consent. This is the threadbare ‘reform’ that brought us from a state of absolute monarchy to absolute majoritarianism. It is no improvement.”

More mutters. I wondered why it all sounded better coming from an alien.

Mav went on. “Unanimous consent does not require that everyone be constrained to a mindless uniformity, or that nothing ever may be accomplished, simply that no individual be forced against his will to participate. No more natural, decent, lamviinitarian system may be devised.”

“In history, his system’s first expression was economic, the free market that made Great Foddu the mighty empire it became. But there are parallel social forms whose absence point us all, even now, toward disaster. Social order and cooperation arise neither from politicians nor princes, nor from advances in the technology of communication, but out of the whole aggregate of voluntary exchanges, whose driving-force consists of a no more than desire to better oneself. Elementary greed, dear listeners. There exists no ”invisible hand“—that was always an unfortunate turn of phrase—but billions of highly visible fingers, doing, purely for personal gain, what others will freely barter for, with the sole object of improving their lives and those of their children.”

The soldiers below were silent now, looking at one another.

“We defy the ordinances of nature at our peril. Taxation, no less than conscription, as both are in contravention to the Non-Aggression Principle, are the very fuel of war. It is obvious in the case of conscription, perhaps less so in the case of taxation. However, no one who favors taxation, whatever intent he claims, can help to end the tragic institution of war, however pious his claims to a desire for peace.”

Taxation is the fuel of war.
It had a certain ring to it, I thought.

“Are we become so uncertain of our prowess that we must steal, or force what we create upon others at swordpoint? Yet that is the nature of law, which I depart now to combat. I beg you, release me, refrain from injury to others, from bringing injury on yourselves. Destructive engines are about to be employed which will end life upon our little planet.”

He paused, then: “In the name of decency, pray help me to prevent that.”

Lucille wept openly, as did Couper, to my astonishment. Mymy’s fur drooped, a lamviin equivalent, perhaps, of tears. Without opposition, the
Onwodetsa
lowered rher guide-ropes, was pulled down to a mooring on the island by the Fodduans. Somebody thought to throw a bucket of sand over the still-smoldering fuse of the phony bomb. Rhe disgorged rher passengers who began mingling indiscriminately with their former enemies.

Mav turned to us: “I think that we should be about our business, friends. There is a war to stop. Tell me, does this broach contrivance hurt?”

the prime directive

Lieutenant Enson Sermander relaxed on the bed in his stateroom, sipping nutrient fluid through a plastic tube from a small-waisted green-tinted glass bottle he held in his free hand. His other hand was busy. The disgusting-looking dark brown liquid fizzed as it was shaken.

A very good month, the waiter had said, what seemed like years ago.

“Whitey!” Sermander shouted at me as I entered, “Come in, come in!”

“Lieutenant,” I said. “Doctor.”

My own minor injuries had just had time to stiffen. Back aboard
Tom Paine Maru,
I was attending to a pair errands at once, visiting a sick friend, seeing the doctor myself, while he was handy. There was not much time: things were shaping up “downstairs” for a final, deadly battle.

Sermander’s voice jiggled in time as he rhythmically squeezed the resilient plastic ball the doctor had given him. “Corporal, it is my understanding that I have you to thank for my rapidly-returning health!”

At the moment, he wore the bottom half of a smartsuit. The rest of the garment lay draped neatly across the foot of the bed. A small round bandage—more of a sticking-plaster, really—was visible at his left temple. Giving my gunbelt’s heavy wire buckle a half-twist, I swung it, with its double burden, from around my waist, tossed it into a chair, sagged wearily into another at the Lieutenant’s one-handed gesture.

The Healer Francis Pololo released Sermander’s other wrist—how strange it was to see a physician taking someone’s pulse with his eyes closed—folded up a plastic kit of more sophisticated instruments that he apparently did not trust as much as his own native talents, then turned to his patient. He his wiped broad hands down his pale green tunic. There was a circled red cross embroidered on its left shoulder.

“Your bad shoulder’s bad no longer, Enson. It’ll take several days to get used to your new implant, and several weeks more to master it completely.”

The gorilla removed his wire-rimmed glasses, thoughtfully polished them on his tunic skirt, then arranged them atop his flat black muzzle again.

“In the meantime, take it easy. Don’t overdo things. Get lots of rest.”

“Ha! You medical people are all alike,” the Lieutenant laughed heartily. “Are they not, Corporal? Very well, sir, I shall give your good advice the conscientious attention it merits. Now, will you not see to my loyal associate before you go? He appears a bit out of sorts.”

The gorilla examined the indicators on my suit-sleeve, unzipped the seam to finger the painful, slowly spreading bruise across my chest.

“Blue today, black tonight,” he muttered as if delivering an incantation. “Green tomorrow, yellow the day after that. You’ll live, Whitey. But please have your suit looked at—it absorbed a lot of punishment.

“Gee, thanks a trillion, doc, I will try taking better care of it.”

“Don’t mention it, I’ll bill you. Have a nice day.” He gave us a big-fanged gorilla smile. “And next time someone shoots at you—duck! I’ve already had a report from Howell, he says you saved his little girl’s life a couple of times. Are you a hero, or just accident prone?—don’t answer, we need all the help we can collect on Sodde Lydfe.”

Lighting one of his small brown cigars, Pololo left the apartment.

The occasion appeared to call for a change of subject: “How are you feeling, sir?” He certainly did not look like somebody who had just come out of surgery. His color was excellent, his movements were energetic. There was a light in his eyes that I had never seen there before.

“Much better—almost by the passing minute.” He frowned briefly, then smiled. “There are no words for how I feel, Whitey. This is just amazing! It’s virtually a religious experience. I wish I had realized before ... look, if I want to know what time it is, almost before I consciously wonder about it, I see a display in my mind, superimposed over the visual field, that tells me. Likewise, if I wish to know where the bathroom is, I feel a sort of tug in that direction, or a voice whispers in my ear, or words appear, scrolling across the bottom of—”

He tossed the little plastic ball through the doorway, striking the bathroom sink precisely, then laughed again. “I do not know how to say it properly, but you get my meaning, do you not?” He was ecstatic—feverishly so—exactly like somebody full of drugs. All of my earlier misgivings flared to full life. What had I let them do to my Lieutenant?

“Yes, sir, I believe so. Sir?”

“Yes, Whitey?” He rose from the bed, put his feet on the floor, picked up the smartsuit top to shove his arms into the sleeves. His voice was benevolent, even friendly. This was not the Lieutenant I knew!

“Sir, I have to ask you a question ... ”

Sealing the suitseam, he replied, “Well, in Alexander Hamilton’s blessed name, ask away! If I can possibly answer it, my dear boy, I will.”

I needed to know: “Uh, how do you feel about the Confederacy now, sir? I mean, about the fact that it is likely to attempt influencing Vespucci the same way that we have seen it influence the other planets we’ve—”

He burst into deep-throated laughter. “There is nothing to worry about, Whitey, I know these people now. They will do no mischief on Vespucci.”

He stood.

“Sir?” It was exactly what I had been afraid of. The Lieutenant had been taken over by the implant they had placed on his brain—with my consent. I was all alone, now, against a mighty interstellar empire.

“That is right, Corporal, because we will not permit them to.” He took a few paces, bent his knees, flexed his arms, his fists. “They have made a serious mistake, giving me this device. Every secret of this starship is open to me, every facet of their history.” He looked straight at me: “I now know enough to stop them, whatever they have in mind.”

“Sir?” Confusion, embarrassment, dawning hope, where despair had been.

He thrust his hands deep into his pockets. “Has anyone ever told you, Corporal O’Thraight, that you are an extremely monotonous conversationalist?”

“Uh, no sir—I mean, yes sir—that is, I—”

“Nor a particularly intelligible one, it would appear. I fear that your little—how shall I put this?—that little
convenience
of yours has already had a distressing effect upon the workings of your mind.”

Red heat rushed into my face. “Sir, I—”

“Do not look at me like that, Corporal! It is perfectly natural and normal. That is why the Navy gives hygiene lectures, after all.” The pistol belt lying in the other chair caught his eye. “By the way, I believe I will have one of those pistols now—no, do not bother with the holster. I will just carry the thing in a pocket of my own devising.”

I got up from my chair, unsnapped the flap of one of the holsters, handed him the weapon, which he tucked away somewhere under his arm. I started to ask him if he wanted a spare cartridge loader, but he spoke first:

“At that, she looks like a palatable little receptacle. Is she any good? Never fear, I do not begrudge you. We shall simply acquire one like her for me, before we leave the ship. Do keep an eye out for a likely one, will you? Dear me, look at the time. Sixteen hundred hours already. We must get moving, Whitey, or you could be compelled to perform an enlisted-man’s unpleasant duty. It must be the implant. I am feeling the first animal stirrings I have had for a long, long time.”

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