Now the solid citizens of the ring were going to come down the skyhooks to the surface of Zanshaa, millions every day, each with a bag of possessions and a built-in requirement for food and shelter. If they weren’t poor and needy now, they would be soon.
The brilliant minds of the Logistics Consolidation Executive were put to work on the problem. “Nearly three million every day for a month!” cried Sula’s Lai-own boss. “Impossible!”
“Perhaps we could just chuck them off the ring and let them get down on their own,” Sula suggested.
The Lai-own glared. “I would preferuseful suggestions, if you please,” he chided.
Sula shrugged. She had found that when she began work on the problem that the evacuation actually made things simpler. The only things going up to the ring were critical personnel leaving Zanshaa, these and engineers getting ready to blow the ring apart. Once the ring was stripped of all the useful cargo and supplies, the giant cars that normally contained cargo could be converted to carry personnel. If enough acceleration couches couldn’t be manufactured in time—and it looked as if they couldn’t—the passengers could be sandwiched between narrow, heavily padded partitions.
It wouldn’t be pleasant, and they’d bounce around a bit, but it could be done.
“How are we going to find places for them once they’re here?” the Lai-own cried.
“We’ve got three billion people on the planet as it is,” Sula said. “Eighty million more is just a drop in the bucket.”
She began to work on the problem, buoyed somewhat by this evidence that the administration had adopted her plan for evacuating the government and the Fleet and then blowing the ring to bits. It would have been nice, she thought, if someone in authority had acknowledged her contribution. Another medal would have been welcome. Even “thank you” would have been nice.
No thank-you came. She wondered if Martinez, that bastard, had pinched her share of the credit.
Her self-destructive impulses had not survived the night she’d heard the derivoo. Homicidal impulses were entertained briefly, then dismissed as unworthy.
Nothing important, after all, had changed. A man Sula hated had married a woman she barely knew—and why should that matter to her? Her own position was barely altered: she had the same rank, the same distinctions, and lived with the same knowledge of her own danger as she had a month ago. Nothing fundamental had altered.
All this she argued to herself successfully, and only doubted these truths at night, alone in the giant Sevigny bed, when rage and loneliness and her own desperation stormed through her.
She was thankful for work, and delighted her chief by the long-burning hours she worked on the evacuation. She was even more thankful when a call for volunteers was broadcast through the Fleet. Hazardous duty, the announcement said, and a chance for glory and promotion while upholding the Praxis.
Sula reckoned she knew what the call was for. The plan that Martinez submitted to the Control Board called for an army to hold Zanshaa City against the Naxids. It was getting a little late to raise an army, but she supposed late was better than never.
She considered her situation—she knew that the entire Logistics Consolidation Executive was scheduled for evacuation in ten days. She could spend the rest of the war in her niche, shuttling supplies around, and let others concern themselves with victory.
That would not give Sula patronage, of course—she’d lost that chance with Martinez. She had her medals and her lieutenancy and a degree of celebrity, but that wouldn’t guarantee further promotion.
The best chance of earning her next step would be to hazard her life against the Naxids. It made sense to claw out of the war as many chances for advancement as she could.
The possibility of death was not a significant consideration. She was good at argument, but hadn’t yet managed to construct for herself a convincing reason why her own life was worth preserving.
Or anyone else’s, for that matter.
Besides, ever since she’d heard the news of Martinez’s engagement she’d felt like killing something.
Sula submitted an application, then was called for an interview before a Daimong elcap. Since some of the questions had to do with her experience with firearms and explosives, she decided that her guess as to the nature of the duty was correct. But since her answers to those questions were “basic proficiency” and “none at all,” it wasn’t clear whether she’d be suitable for the duty or not, and she returned to the Logistics Executive, where she was assigned to the problem of feeding and clothing the eighty million refugees from the ring.
It took only a brief glance at the data to assure her that feeding the strays wasn’t going to be a problem. The planet of Zanshaa, in accordance with the dictates of the Praxis, was self-sufficient in basic foodstuffs.
But it wasn’t self-sufficient inall foodstuffs. There were climactic and soil conditions, as well as economies of scale, that made Zanshaa less efficient at producing certain crops, and turned it into an importer of some and an exporter of others. Zanshaa’s old, stable, relatively flat continents produced ideal grazing for herd animals, and Zanshaa exported beef, portschen, fristigo, lamb, and dairy products. But its tropical areas lacked certain nutrients in the soil, and this made it a net importer of other foodstuffs.
High-quality cocoa came only from off-planet. So did coffee.
So did tobacco.
Shit in a bucket, Sula thought.Tobacco.
Sula loathed tobacco, but a determined minority of the human race and even some Torminel and Daimong were devoted to it. Sula remembered from school that there had once been health problems associated with the weed, but medicine had solved those, and now tobacco was merely another minor air pollutant. The Shaa had disapproved of tobacco, just as they’d disapproved of alcohol or betel nut or hashish, but they’d never actually banned any of these substances, just made certain that the products were regulated and taxed and turned to the profit of the government.
She dived into a frenzy of research on commodities pricing, interrupted only when a courier came with her orders. She’d been accepted, with remarkable speed, into the still uncertain duty for which she’d volunteered, and was ordered to report in two days to the Villa Fosca, an establishment near Edernay a couple hours from Zanshaa City by train.
On her noon break Sula raced to her bank. Her previous advisor, Mr. Weckman, had left, gone off to Hy-Oso, and his replacement directed her toward the commodities desk. The prices for off-world cocoa, coffee, and tobacco had risen slightly, but the markets didn’t know that the ring was going to be destroyed and that nothing would be coming cheaply from orbit for years. Sula considered futures contracts, but realized that when the Naxids came, it might be difficult for someone on their Shoot on Sight list to collect on her speculation, and decided it would be better to have the actual products under her control. With a certain amount of amazement at her own daring, she used half her fortune to purchase goods that were still in orbit, on the ring.
Once back at her desk at the Logistics Consolidation Executive, Sula issued orders for those very same cargoes to be sent down the skyhook in the next few days, and to be sent to warehouses in Zanshaa Lower Town.
Having accomplished this, she sat back at her desk with an unfamiliar sense of wonder and pride. She felt more than just a profiteer.