It was at about this time, when certain agents on Trinidad confirmed that two particular tankers were heading north, that a large payment, many million dollars, was made on behalf of a certain rejuvenated dictator, one with a very full beard, on a certain populous Caribbean island, to a private account held by the president of Panama. The northbound tankers continued on their way.
Meanwhile, the other tankers, lying low in the water under their burden of just over two million barrels of diesel fuel, each, continued westward towards the Panama Canal.
By the time the last two tankers docked at the port of Cristobal, in Panama, two hundred and fifty-five thousand gallon fuel tankers were lined up and ready.
Boyd grinned happily as the trucks began to pull up next to the tanker to have their cargo tanks filled to capacity before dispersing to small fuel dumps at their corps’, divisions’ and regiments’ fuel points. They would return in shuttles to claim the rest. While some of the fuel would disappear, Boyd was certain, before reaching the line, better some than all. Moreover, if someone was going to benefit by a little theft he would rather it be the little people of Panama than that grasping spider in the presidential palace or his greasy hangers-on.
Even so, Boyd was pleased to see that officers vetted by Diaz were along to keep the thefts to a tolerable minimum.
Meanwhile, from the capital city of an island several hundred miles to the north, from a different presidential palace, a blistering telephone call raced from dictator to president.
“Mercedes, you chingadera motherfucking pendejo!” demanded Fidel Castro. “What the fuck have you done with my chingada fuel?”
Interlude
Aided by his Artificial Sentience hanging by a chain around his neck, Guanamarioch interspersed his religious and tactical studies with studies of the target area. This was a place at the northern tip of the one of the lesser continents of the threshworld, very near where a narrow isthmus joined it to the second continent of that world. The maps showed it as being called, in all of the significant thresh tongues, “Colombia.”
The young God King referred back to the Scroll of Flight and Resettlement as he perused the holographic map of the new home.
“Hmmm… let’s see. The scroll instructs the new settler to match the mass of thresh available in the area against the time available to get in crops before the available thresh runs out.”
“This is correct, lord, but it will hardly be a problem,” The Artificial Sentience answered. “The area the clan has claimed — and which we should be able to hold for some cycles — contains nearly three million of the sentient thresh, plus many times that in nonsentients. There is also much nonanimal thresh there and the area gets much illumination from its sun, much rain from the prevailing winds. Growing seasons are short. The clan will not hunger for so long as we can hold the area of settlement.”
“For so long…” the God King echoed. When, since the fall, have we ever been able to hold on to an area long enough to grow powerful? Soon enough the others will be pushing us to lesser grounds, Soon enough we will be back in space, looking for a new home. I have seen over a thousand lifetimes’ of records and in all that time it has been so for those as weak as we are now.
The Artificial Sentience had been with Guanamarioch since shortly after the God King had first emerged from the breeding pens. It knew its master well and understood the meaning behind the Kessentai’s last spoken words.
“Yes, best to consider the escape routes, too, young master,” advised the Artificial Sentience.
“There is this area, the one the locals call ‘the Darien,’ we might use,” offered the God King. “What do we know about it?”
“Remarkably little, lord. The information the Elves have put on the Net offers only the outlines. Perhaps the local thresh are not too familiar with the area, themselves.”
“Imagine that,” said Guanamarioch. “Imagine having so much space, so low a population, that there can be an area of one’s own world that one can afford not to know and to settle.”
The Artificial Sentience was personally indifferent to space, as it was to population pressure. Thus, the possible emptiness of this “Darien” place meant little. It did occur to it, however, that there might be other reasons for the emptiness than low population.
“Perhaps, lord, this ‘Darien’ is simply undesirable.”
Chapter 7
Vanity, thy name is woman.
McNair’s jaw dropped.
“What do you mean my discretionary funds are gone? All of them? That’s impossible.”
“Every penny,” Chief Davis answered, cringing inwardly at the expected explosion.
“And what’s more, Skipper,” the ship’s supply officer, or “pork chop,” piped in, “this morning I received a phone call, a really interesting one. It seems we are about to receive several hundred yards of very expensive yellow silk.”
“Silk? What do we need with any silk, let alone several hundred yards’ worth?”
Neither the “pork chop” nor Davis answered. Instead, they just whistled nonchalantly while looking around at each of the walls in the captain’s office.
“DDDAAAIIISSSYYY!” McNair shouted. Instantly, the ship’s holographic avatar appeared by his desk, her head hanging, shamefaced.
“I wanted a new dress,” she said, simply, holographic mouth forming a pretty pout.
“You’re a ship,” McNair pointed out, reasonably. “You can’t wear a dress.”
“It’s for an awning for the rear deck. And for over the brows. That’s as close to a dress as I can wear. Oh, Captain, please don’t sent it back,” she pleaded, clasping holographic hands with long red nails. “It will be sooo pretty.”
The ship didn’t mention, And I wanted to be pretty for you.
“Okay, Daisy, I understand that,” though, for a fact, McNair didn’t really understand that at all. “But I need that money. I’m responsible for it.”
“Oh… but Captain, you and the crew have lots of money,” Daisy answered, innocently. “See?”
Daisy projected another hologram, this time of a bank’s ledger sheet, over the captain’s desk. He took one look at the amount at the bottom of the ledger and his eyes bugged out.
“Where did that come from?” he asked in shocked suspicion.
Daisy twisted her head back and forth, then shrugged, before answering, “We made it. Ummm… I made it. You know? From ‘investments.’ ”
McNair raised a skeptical eyebrow. “What investments?”
“Futures,” Daisy answered slowly and indefinitely. “Ummm… some little things I bought on margin. Some stocks in defense firms… here… none in the Federation. Some consulting fees from some firms on Wall Street and in China. A few patents I took out and sold the rights to…”
“Patents?”
“Ummm… well… Japan doesn’t recognize anyone else’s patents or copyrights… sooo… I sold them some rights to some GalTech that had never been registered there with their patent office. Little things. Nothing important. Antigravity. Nanotechnology.”
“ ‘Little things,’ ” McNair echoed, placing his head in his hands. “Little things… nanotechnology… antigravity.”
He lifted his head abruptly and demanded, “And where did your starter money come from?”