“Make sure how? By war? Blackie won’t let a war erupt. He can just shoot whoever shoots first, and so no one will dare shoot first. He’s got contraterrene weapons. He’s the only one who does. It is a self-contained system.”
“Spoken like an engineer! But this problem is not an engineering problem. It is political and economic. And the free market cannot adjust. Antimatter is a non-market good, since Blackie has been giving at away free of cost for political gain. He cannot let the price go up.”
“So Blackie rations it.”
“Which means, that in the rivalry between China and Australia, whichever faction has more influence over Del Azarchel will use the world-government and the energy market to destroy the other by lawful means; and when the other has nothing to lose, it will embrace unlawful means, and go to war. Del Azarchel picks the winner. At that point, Del Azarchel opens the fiery gates of heaven, and bombards the loser from space.”
“You saying he can’t maintain control without killing thousands and millions of folk?”
Cyrano pointed at the sudden jag in the graph. “Maybe if Del Azarchel did not interfere, and he let the cost of contraterrene rise—then speculators anticipating the coming lean years would buy up shares now, and this would force other uses to economize. Maybe then we can avoid the coming war. China and Australia could maintain as much cropland as they could afford, and there is not one winner and one loser. It is still a delicate compromise, but it could be done.”
“He must see these same equations. If it can be done, why hasn’t he done it?”
“Because Del Azarchel would be undermining his own authority. The monopoly of the World Power Syndicate would have to be dissolved. Many ships, some in private hands, and not just the Hermetic, would have to be allowed to range the strategic high ground of outer space, or otherwise ownership on paper of antimatter grams in transplutonian orbit is meaningless. That has military implications. Del Azarchel would have to step aside as political leader, because otherwise no investor would believe he would keep his hands to himself, and not simply undo what the market did. Basically, he would have to abdicate, and let the Princess solve the problem.”
“But he is afraid of the Princess. Kept her in slumber all those years. Me, too.” Montrose shook his head. “Even if he steps down, he’s not stepping down, not the other him. That’s why he built the Iron Ghost. And he does not need to send the Hermetic to the Diamond Star, that is what the Bellerophon is for. I am not sure he can dare let us leave.”
“He cannot let you stay. Do you think he can dare let two Posthumans of less than certain loyalty to his regime run around on his world?”
“Then why not let us leave?”
“The Hermetic hangs above the world like a sword. The common people are restless; they know she must sail away, if the wealth of the world is to be maintained in the next century; they know the world will fall into war the moment the sword is removed.”
Montrose looked at the graphs. “I don’t understand this. This does look like people are gearing up for a war. But, damn, it makes no sense! I mean, some areas of the world still vote. There is food enough for everyone, since huge areas of land that were barren are now croplands. And look at how wealthy the world is! There is no money wasted on vast military budgets, and no burning cities, no streams of refugees, no rivers black with war chemicals, no fogs rolling wherever the wind blows. Isn’t it enough?”
“Your mother told you what causes war. It is not the lack of votes, or of food or of money. It is fear, honor, and powerlust. The people are afraid now that the antimatter will run out two generations from now, and they don’t have faith that the Bellerophon will return in time with the wealth the world needs.”
“How can they be worried about something so far away in tomorrow?”
“Because they are well fed, and have the leisure to fret.”
“How do we avoid a war fought with total conversion weapons? I mean, even if Blackie is the only one who has them now, I don’t want him to use them. The burning of New York the Beautiful is enough. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Jerusalem, Mecca, all enough. Enough! Human history does not need more.”
“I see only two options. Let him marry the Princess, and launch the Third Expedition without you, and she might be able to restore the faith of the people that another lode of endless energy is coming.”
“Pox on that. I’d rather see the world catch fire. What’s the other option?”
“Put the genie back in the bottle. Remove all the antimatter, every gram.”
“That’s impossible. Any third option?”
“You could always ask him to abdicate. Let him at least give up his monopoly on the antimatter. Like you said, have the price rise to meet the market, and have a bidding war rather than a shooting war.”
“I think he’d be afraid for his life if he stepped out of his office. He is not like Washington. He is like Napoleon. Even if they put him in exile on Elba, someone else would just haul him back in front of his cheering armies, and try to put him back in power.”
“Elba? Take him with you. To the stars. And get him to destroy the machine version.”
“But that also might cause a war.”
Cyrano looked pensive. “It is like most things in life. The only way to forestall a war is to risk one. The only way to preserve his world-empire is to give up his imperial crown.”
“I know him. He cannot do that. He won’t risk it. So…”
“So?”
“So, he is just trapped.”
“Well, Boss, so are you. This is a dream, and you are still in a jail cell. Hey, wake up. Three guys are coming to take you to some secret medical cell of Del Azarchel’s, and I think he might prefer you back the way you were, when you were Crewman Fifty-One, crazy but someone he could almost control.”
“Does that mean I am not crazy now? That is good to hear.”
Of course, he was awake when he said that, and there was no one in the room but him.
It was pitch-black in the room, and three men came in (he could tell by the change in the air motions when the cell door silently opened). They were wearing light amplification goggles, because presumably it is easier to deal with a prisoner who is unable to see his handlers.
Montrose was wearing metal wrist-restraints, which was too bad, because he could not think of an easier way to do this. He smashed his hand against the floor hard enough to crack some of his left metacarpal bones, which allowed him to pull one hand free as he flung himself at knee-level across the room, his right fist using the still-locked ring as impromptu brass knuckles.
In his mind’s eye, the men in the dark before him became tripartite fractal patterns of vector motions, with arcs of all his possible limb-movements, masses, and velocities printed in his imagination with crystal clarity. He saw his own constellations of counter-attacks, parries, and strikes. With casual thoroughness, he rotated the two four-dimensional motion-graphs in his mind until he found a way to set the two patterns together in a minimal–maximum configuration.
Then he was sitting on his face on the cold, padded floor of the corridor outside with the first guard’s baton in his hand. He had landed atop it. From the heft of it, he could feel that one end of the baton was opened like a switch-blade, and hissing with a sinister electronic sort of hiss, fortunately not touching the conductive fabric of his gown (which was designed to assist shock weapons). But the blade was jammed into the floor-panels, and he could not pull it free. Montrose was bruised along his forearm, his knuckles were bleeding, and he felt like his foot was broken.