A Desert Called Peace-ARC Read online

  "Señor?"

  "Yes, Lucinda?" he asked.

  The woman was older, from a poor family, and never terribly pretty. Nonetheless, her family had been in service to Linda's for generations. This explained why she had taken a job even at the wretched salary earned by a domestic in the undeveloped and unindustrialized parts of Terra Nova. Hennessey tried to treat her kindly and, had she been asked, the maid likely would have voiced no ground of complaint.

  "Señor, there are two men here to see you. One is from the Fuerza Civil; a Major Jimenez. The other is General Parilla. You know, sir, the old dictator?"

  "Xavier? Here? Great! And Parilla? Wonderful, Lucinda." Hennessey rousted himself from his chair and walked briskly to greet his old friends and former enemy.

  He reentered by the back office door, then walked briskly across the cobble-stoned way that led through the courtyard. In the open courtyard Hennessey stopped briefly to study the clouds gathering overhead. To himself he muttered, "Storm again, from the west, it seems. Oh, well, I've always liked the rain."

  The door leading from the courtyard to the foyer was open, befittingly so in country so warm. Hennessey passed through it without pause and saw two men, rising politely from the overstuffed chairs in the iridescent bluegum-paneled foyer.

  Rank had its privileges. He thrust out a welcoming hand first to retired (forcibly retired) General Raul Parilla; short, dark, gone a little fat now with his years of service behind him. Most of the general's still abundant hair had gone to gray.

  The general returned the clasp warmly. "Patricio, it is good to see you again after all these years."

  "Sir . . . you too, sir." Hennessey meant it. Cut off, as he was, from his old army, he valued the contact even with a foreign one. Though it would be pushing things, really, to call Balboa's Civil Force an army.

  Smile broadening at his other guest, Hennessey greeted a friend of much longer standing and even deeper feeling. Indeed, so close were he and Xavier Jimenez that neither of them much minded that they had once fought each other nearly to the death . . . and had fought to the deaths of many of their followers.

  Where Parilla had grown a bit rotund with the years, Jimenez remained whippet thin, a lean, black hunter and racer.

  No words passed between Jimenez and Hennessey. With friends so close, none were needed.

  "Lucinda," Hennessey called. "Please bring a bucket with ice, a bottle of rum, some coke and some scotch to my library. And three glasses, as well, please. Gentlemen?"

  With that, Hennessey led the way back across the courtyard. Parilla and Jimenez stopped to admire a statue of Linda Hennessey that stood at one end.

  "She hates that thing," Hennessey said, "but it helps me when she's gone."

  "It's a beautiful piece of work, though," Parilla commented.

  "So's Linda," said Jimenez.

  First Landing, Hudson, Federated States of Columbia, 10/7/459 AC

  There was a screeching of tires followed by curses and the tinkling of broken glass as Linda began to walk across the street to the restaurant where she was to meet with her husband's cousin, Annie. She scrunched her neck down, looking somehow guilty, and proceeded to cross.

  For some women the word "breathtaking" was only bare justice. Linda Hennessey was one of them. Though she would never have claimed to be so, she was beautiful; simply beautiful, the kind of woman who can stop traffic on a busy downtown street just by being there. Hennessey had seen her do just that, more than once. It didn't usually cause a traffic accident, though. Still . . . that happened, too, sometimes.

  On the other side there was a man leaving the restaurant in company with a woman. He walked into a lamppost. Linda tried not to notice.

  She had to repeat herself three times to the maitre d' before he actually heard a word she said, and he was plainly gay. That wasn't caused by her accent. A wave of awed silence washed across the restaurant floor as she was led to the table where Annie awaited. Conversation didn't resume until she was seated and, for the most part, out of sight.

  Dark complected, she had a high cheekboned, heart-shaped face set off by large, liquid brown eyes. She also had a classic 90-60-90 centimeter figure and though for modesty's sake she wore a bra, she didn't need one. Her breasts stood out and up on their own, as if she'd won the war with gravity and dictated her own terms. She had perfect teeth, even, straight and white like newly polished ivory. Her midnight black, wavy hair gathered light and cast it about her face like an angel's halo.

  Unusually enough, her looks meant little to her. They were a gift to share with her husband, yes, as well as a gift to pass on to her children. But she hadn't earned any of that perfection; she'd been born with it. She didn't even have to work at it. Even though she valued those looks less than someone who did have to work at it might have, she knew they usually had an effect on people, and generally a very positive effect.

  Thus, she didn't understand, she could never understand, just why her husband's family loathed her so. She was sweet to them, as she was sweet to everybody. She dressed well. She carried herself with a bearing that was aristocratic, true, but never arrogant. She never condescended. She spoke well, both in the Spanish they seemed to refuse to admit was a civilized language and in rather cultured, if accented, English, as well.

  It was surprising, then, that neither her looks nor her character did any good at all with her husband's family.

  Linda sighed. Patricio's family has never liked or accepted me. I suppose they never will. No, that's not quite fair, she amended. With the exception of this one cousin, they despise me. But Annie is always friendly. These trips would be a lot more difficult than they are but for her. Linda smiled at her husband's cousin, seated opposite her in the crowded First Landing restaurant.

  Annie was taller than Linda by almost half a foot. Where Linda was dark with midnight hair, Annie was pale white and dark blond. Not as pretty – well, few were – she was still quite an attractive, and exceptionally well built, woman in her own right. She felt none of the common jealousy at Linda's uncommon looks.

  Linda sighed again. "Why don't they like me?" she asked.

  "Like you?" Annie asked. "Honey, everyone likes you . . . oh, you mean the family. Well . . . they're just assholes." Leaning forward across the table to be heard over the hubbub of the crowd, Annie said, "The thing is, Linda, dear, that you make them feel inferior. After all, what is my family but a bunch of broken down farmers who grafted themselves onto some down and out families of WASPs? Well, and a few well-to-do Jews, too, of course.

  "But you on the other hand? When the first major colonization ship to this part of the world made its final approach orbit you had ancestors to wave to it from below. When they put up their first building, you had ancestors that said, "There goes the neighborhood." You even come from old money. Oh, not so much as we have, I know – not nearly – but it's older. And that counts, my dear.

  "You make Uncle Bob's skin crawl, because everything he has clawed his way to, everything his father and his grandfather and his great-grandfather clawed their way up from, you came by naturally."

  Annie stopped speaking and sawed and speared a bit of steak from her plate for emphasis.

  "Is that why he insists on seeing myself and the children at his office? Surrounded by his tokens and triumphs?" Linda asked.

  "That . . . .yes," Annie responded, slowly. "Other things too. You see, our family has been in decline for more than forty years. Not in money, but in people. We lost about half when the UEPF bombed Botulph. After that, few of the women wanted children. Of those few, some couldn't have any. Bob's wife never had any, for example. And when you subtract the couple of gay boys and the occasional girl who will never have children . . . nope, we are in decline."

  Annie paused and leaned back in her chair, remembering back across the veil of years. "When I was a little girl I remember everyone setting so much store by Pat. It used to kill me the way he was doted on. Yes, even us girl cousins . . . we all spoiled him rotte
n. He seemed to have something the rest of us had lost; a certain, oh, spark, I guess. Uncle Bob in particular expected him to grow up to take over the business."

  Linda snorted. "Patricio? Business? He despises business."

  "Oh, I know," Annie agreed. "He always did. Me, too. So I don't do it; I just live off the trust fund."

  Annie sipped at her drink, sipped again . . . again. "I always understood him better than the others did. If I had been a man, I'd have joined the Army too, to make my own escape."

  She continued, "So, anyway, when he ran off to join the Army at age eighteen, it just infuriated Bob. And enlisting rather than going to one of the military academies? Well, we haven't had an enlisted man in our family since Great-great-great-uncle Bill with the 12th Wichita Infantry in the Formation War. Then, when Pat insisted on staying in the Army . . . well . . . it took the heart right out of Uncle Bob at first. That was when he cut Pat off, you know. It wasn't anything to do with you."

  "Well, here I have one son and two daughters," Linda said. "They carry the name, they've even got your family's color rather than mine. And the women of my family insist on having children . . . lots of them. Speaking of which . . . "

  "Yes?" Annie asked, expectantly.

  Linda just smiled and held up three fingers, then slowly raised her little finger to make a fourth.

  Cochea, 10/7/459 AC

  As Linda and Annie dined in First Landing, in the Federated States, Hennessey, Parilla and Jimenez poured over maps from the Federated States invasion of Balboa, in 447, called "Operation Green Fork." Hennessey was working on a history of that invasion – something neutral and objective to balance the often propaganda-distorted works already in print. He had to work on something to keep busy and to feel useful, not having a job to call his own anymore. Indeed, he had several projects going at any given time. One of them was a translation into Balboan Spanish of a novel by an Old Earth writer he knew only as R.A.H.

  Jimenez pointed a long, thin finger at the map. "Right there, Patricio. Right on that damned corner was where the war started."

  Hennessey straightened up from the maps. "Tell me about it, Xavier."

  As Jimenez spoke, Hennessey went to his computer and began to type, fingers blurring over the keyboard.

  Zabol, Pashtia, 10/7/459 AC

  Some miles from the center of the city of Zabol a bearded man hunched over a keyboard. Very slender and tall, as were most of his people, the man had to hunch deeply, uncomfortably, to perform his task. In the dim light the glow of the computer monitor illuminated his face to the semblance of a demon, though in daylight his face was quite decent and even handsome. Distantly, an electrical generator groaned, the sound traveling down damp, narrow hallways. The generator brought light and heat, and powered the fans that brought fresh air to this elaborate complex of caves and tunnels painstakingly carved and blasted from the living rock. The complex was one of several, not all of them in Pashtia.

  Abdul Aziz Ibn Kalb brought up a free email service, Firestarter, and then typed a sign-in name – "islandsrfrdude" – and a password. The screen changed to reveal an account with nothing but spam in the inbox, and no messages sent. He began to compose a meaningless message.

  Composition completed, Aziz attached a photo as a jpeg file. The photo, properly processed, contained a message, simply, "CA39, Desperation Bay, Execute, 11/7."

  Aziz saved the message to his Draft folder, which was actually physically located on a server far, far away. He then closed the account. When it was opened later in the day, in Yithrab, it would be copied to a different account and saved into yet another draft folder and server. From there it would be opened in Lancaster in Anglia and copied yet again to a different account. Finally, when opened in the rebuilt City of Botulph, in the Federated States, it would never actually have been sent. There would be no easy trace to Zabol or to Abdul Aziz.

  That task completed, Aziz typed into the computer, "Wahoo.sig."

  Botulph, Federated States, 10/7/459 AC

  "The orders are received. We go tomorrow."

  "Allahu akbar. Allahu akbar," the swarthy men congratulated each other, shaking hands and slapping backs in unconstrained joy. God is great; God is great. Now, finally, they were chosen to strike a great blow against their greatest enemy. Now, at last, they would bring home to the Great Demon the meaning of war. Could there be any doubt of their coming success, their cause being just and the Most High being on their side?

  "Shall we rehearse again?" asked the youngest member of the team.

  The leader smiled indulgently and answered, "No need, Samadi. We have rehearsed so many times any one of us could cut a throat in our sleep. Go out. Have a good time. Just be asleep before midnight and remember that tomorrow night you will be feasting among the houris of Paradise."

  Samadi simply shook his head in the negative and went to his room to study his flight manuals.

  Yusef, the convert, likewise didn't go out. Instead he pulled out the guitar that he loved and began to play and sing something of his own composition:

  "I've been dreamin' fait'f'ly

  Dreamin' about the jihad to come . . . "

  Interlude

  21 January, 2037 to 14 March, 2040

  . . . to emerge, unknown to Mission Control, somewhere . . . .else.

  The robot didn't know where it was; the star and constellations matched nothing in the catalogue. It didn't know how it got there. Most disconcertingly, it had lost touch with Mission Control. It blared out a distress signal. It blared in vain.

  This was where good programming came in. While this precise turn of events had definitely not been foreseen – no one on Earth remotely suspected the existence of such a flaw in space – other emergencies which might have required a certain amount of independent judgment on the part of the ship had.

  The robot did know it was still functioning. It did know there was a star ahead. It could sense that planets orbited that star. It knew that it had a mission. And it had a star map of the stars as it emerged in the new system, which map was updated over. With this, and what could be gleaned of the solar system in which it found itself, the robot got to work.

  Having a star ahead was important, for without photons to brake its flight the robot-ship had little choice but to continue on to wherever the solar winds or inertia might take it. Its own maneuvering capability was quite limited.

  Accordingly, the ship began furling the sail, pumping out the gas that held it erect and reeling in the filaments that connected it to the ship. When this was done, the entire assembly was rotated using some of the small amount of conventional fuel carried, to where the robot decided the sail was best suited to braking. It was then unfurled. The light from the sun was not sufficient to fully brake, however, if the ship followed a purely straight path. The robot began calculating an orbital path that would allow it to come very close to the light and heat of the foreign sun, thereby chopping its velocity to something it could work with.

  This took several months, months well spent in analyzing the system. It found, for example, that the fourth world was in the right range to support life. It found further that the other five planets spinning about the local sun were not, being either far too hot or far too cold. There was no asteroid belt.

  The fourth world, further, showed an oxygen nitrogen atmosphere, had an albedo indicating that it was about seventy percent covered in water and thirty percent in land, and had polar icecaps and some seasonal variation, though less than Earth's. It had small moons, three of them, which were certain to produced tides, though of lesser intensity than did Earth's sole companion, Luna. Spectral analysis showed plant life in profusion and limited volcanic activity. The closer the robot-ship came to the world its programming had settled on, the more it saw weather, as well.

  The robot-ship was never designed to land upon any world, whether of its origin, its intended target, or this new and unknown place. It was equipped to explore, nonetheless, if a found world had an atmosphere. In the las
t half of its cylinder, carefully cradled, rested two parachute landers and two high altitude gliders. It released one of each over the fourth world as it passed close by.

  The glider was never intended to come to a rest and did not. Released from the ship at low velocity relative to its target and with wings folded, it simply went ballistic until reaching the first thin traces of gas in the fourth planet's troposphere. At that point it deployed its wings. Solar powered itself, with a small propeller for propulsion and control surfaces for minor adjustments, it fought for control against the wind that threatened to rip it apart and the gravity that sought it in a deadly embrace. It was touch and go for a while but – to give NASA's executives their due; when they take a bribe to buy a Japanese-built gliding drone for interstellar exploration work, they at least make sure the drone can do the work before cashing the check – the glider skipped along, its microminiaturized camera and radar mapping the surface.