“In peace, this is tolerable. It is even preferable to the other way we have come to know, the rule of soldiers, who not only steal money but steal freedom as well. In peace, I would — and you would — one hundred times over prefer the corruption of a Mercedes to the corrupt tyranny of a Noriega.”
Suarez still spoke softly confidently, but a tone of scorn and disgust crept into his voice. “That, however, is for peace. We have no peace.”
Pointing his nose at a pair of armed guards standing in the back of the hall, Suarez ordered, “Bring in the prisoner.” He continued to speak while the guards turned and left, leaving the double door open behind them. “We have no peace. We want no tyranny. We can stand no more corruption, treachery and cowardice such as the Mercedes regime showed in full measure. What are we to do?” he mused. “What are we to do?”
The colonel went silent for a moment as the guards returned and marched William Young Boyd down the central aisle. Boyd’s hands were cuffed in front of him, though his legs were free. He wore no uniform, but rather an open-necked guayabera, an embroidered, short-sleeve dress shirt that served sweltering Panama in lieu of suits and ties.
The guards turned Boyd around to face the legislature, then assumed the position of parade rest to either side of him. Boyd looked unworried, but he did not look at all happy.
“We are Latins,” Suarez said. “That means that our heritage comes from Spain, and through Spain from Rome. The Romans knew what to do in circumstances like ours. We must have a dictator. We must have one now. There is no time to waste. We must choose one poor bastard, and inflict on him all the power of the presidency, all the power of the judges, all your own power, too.
“There is no time to waste,” Suarez repeated. “All the spare time we had was wasted by the late president. No… ‘wasted’ is too light a term. Instead of being wasted, it was sold to our enemies, the ones who want to eat our children… your children, and the ones who wanted to aid them in doing that. No time to waste… no time for debate… time only to choose, to choose whether our children live or die.
“I thought long and hard on this question: how do we ensure that our children live rather than die? I thought hard on who we might trust with the responsibility. He ought to be a man and — with apologies to the ladies, we are Latins still; our leader must be a man — he ought to be a man who is experienced in war. He ought to be a man who loves his country with acts, rather than with words alone. He ought to be a man who is rich enough he need not steal and honest enough that he will not.
“He is going to have enormous political power, so he too ought be a man who has always disdained political power, a man — like the original Cincinnatus — who will dump that power like a hot potato the second it is no longer needed…”
At this point Boyd’s eyes widened. Shaking off his guards he turned around and shouted, “Suarez, you bastard, I won’t do it!”
“Shut up, prisoner. You will do it. And the reason you will do it is that, if you won’t, I must. And I lack your virtues. Guards, turn him back around.
“So,” Suarez concluded, “That is what you are here for: to vote all the power there is to have in this country to one man for a period of… six months, shall we say? To save your children, and all the children.
“No debate. Now vote.”
“What’s SOUTHCOM’s reaction been to the coup?” McNair asked.
“Absolute silence,” the XO answered. “We asked what to do, tried to, rather, and never a word.”
Only Daisy, aboard ship anyway, knew that the reason Southern Command had never answered the ships’ calls for instruction was that she, she and her sister, had made sure no calls went out and none were allowed in. She had been afraid that SOUTHCOM’s commanding general might order the ships to wait for instructions while he consulted with Washington. And there hadn’t been time.
“Never a word?” McNair queried. “Daisy?”
“Forgiveness is easier to obtain than permission,” she answered, not without a certain rebellious pride in her voice.
Everyone present turned to look at the avatar. “Well, it is,” she insisted.
“Please restore communication when this meeting is finished, Daisy,” McNair ordered, without heat.
“Yes, sir,” she answered meekly.
“There is one other thing,” McNair said, pulling the Darhel’s AID from his pocket. “We have this, but I don’t know what to do with it. It has been completely uncooperative.”
Daisy appeared to look closely at the black box. “It won’t let me examine it either, Captain.”
An image of a Darhel, dressed in the costume of litigation, appeared. “That’s right, bitch. There’s nothing you can do.”
“So?” Daisy questioned. “I wonder. Really I do. Chief Davis, do we still have the shipping box in which I came?”
“Yes, Miss Daisy, down in storage. Take a few minutes to find it and bring it here.”
“Do so, then, if you would, Chief.”
“You are a bastard, Suarez,” Boyd said unhappily but with no real anger.
Colonel Suarez — no, Magister Equitum or Master of the Horse Suarez, one of the legislators had remembered that part of the office of dictator — answered, “I do what I must, Dictator, as do all good men.”
“So what do I do now?” Boyd asked. “How many more people do I have to have shot?”
“Not a one,” Suarez answered, “unless you see the need. I’ve already had all those that really needed it sent to the wall. Made sure of that before you were appointed dictator.”
“Before you had me drafted into being dictator,” Boyd corrected.
“Someone had to.”
“Fine, I don’t need to shoot anyone at the moment. What do I need to do?”
“Withdraw unilaterally from all the silly assed treaties that cripple our war effort,” Suarez began. “Restructure the chain of command to get rid of the incompetents. Make kissy face with the United States so they continue to support us. And we need a plan for the next stage.”
“All right, I can see that,” Boyd answered. “The second and the last are your job. I’ll issue the proclamation on the laws of war and do whatever it takes to make up with the gringos.”
The humans clustered around the Darhel’s shyster-AID where it lay on the map and Plexiglas covered plotting table. They looked intently it at and at the GalPlas case Chief Davis laid down just before picking up the device.
“What do you think you are doing, human filth?” the late Rinn Fain’s AID asked of Davis. “Put me down.”
“You heard the honorable AID, Chief Davis,” Daisy said, “put him down.”
McNair held up a hand. “Wait a minute, Chief. Daisy, what is the point of putting this AID in your old shipping case?”
“We AIDs think much faster than do you colloidal intelligences, sir. We also have a need for continuous data input. That box will not let any input through. It is horrible for an AID, as I have reason to know.”
“Will this one become… like you?”
“No, sir. I was a new and immature AID when I was left on in my box. This one is fully formed. It will merely suffer.”
Even knowing as little as he did, still McNair had ample reason to dislike and distrust the Darhel and, Daisy and Sally excepted, their artificial intelligences. But even so; torture?