Destination Alpha Four - Chapter 6

6. The Parable of the Talents

The respirator Ant was wearing was public emergency issue. Most Kumm-Ree citizens seemed to carry their own respirators around with them - many women decorated theirs with flowers and butterflies, and were hugely amused at the sight of Tamora and Vladlena wearing plain orange respirators that frankly might as well have been worn by men. Ant was wearing the respirator, and its matching, fetching orange coveralls, because he was outside in the dioxide monsoon, carrying out the grim task of looking for Kumm-Ree citizens still unaccounted for on roll call. The coveralls were well insulated, and had high necks to protect against the cold, but Ant's teeth were still chattering in the gale.
The dioxide monsoon was the fiercest, coldest wind Ant had ever felt. He was bent double under the pressure of it, taking refuge in bomb craters to duck out of it, hardly able to talk over it as his words were snatched away and delivered to someone half a mile downwind.
"LOOKS LIKE", he gasped, "ANOTHER STERNEKINDER ATTACK." He pointed to Tau Boötis 3's only large military vessel, the corvette Ma-Dok, shot to pieces on its landing pad, the wind whistling through the thousands of holes in its hull like breath through a complicated brass instrument.
"NOT NECESSARILY", yelled Glenn Bob from ten metres away. He disappeared into a crater and came up holding a string of metal beads threaded through a small half-melted tin plate in the shape of a zodiac wheel.
"WHAT'S THAT?"
"UNITED STATES OF THE ZODIAC DOG TAGS", said Glenn Bob, leaning closer in the face-burning wind. "FOLKS WHO FOUGHT ON ALPHA FOUR, AND GOT CAPTURED BY THE YANKEES. THE YANKEES LIKE TO PUT THE DOG TAGS INSIDE EXPLOSIVES, TO REMIND THE US ZEE OF HOW THEY STILL GET THOSE GUYS IN THE CAMPS OVER ON ALPHA AN WE CAN COME TRY AN GET EM BACK ANY TIME WE LIKE."
"ANYONE YOU KNOW?"
Glenn Bob read the name in the middle of the wheel. "NOPE. MUST BE A THOUSAND US ZEE P.O.W.'S CALLED JUAREZ J. PROBABLY FROM NUEVA CALIFORNIA."
He pocketed the dog tags, took out a small metal container, and shovelled up a handful of earth into it, packing the earth down inside it with his hand.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” said Ant.
“MEMENTO. MY GREAT-GRANDADDY FOUGHT HIS WAY ACROSS YURP THERE.”
“YURP?”
“THE CONTINENT OF YURP? THAT YOU USED TO LIVE IN? ANZIO, NORMANDY , BERLIN? ANTHONY, I SWEAR TO HECK, AT TIMES, YOU ARE NEUTRONIUM-DENSE. GREAT GRANDADDY USED TO KEEP A BIT OF SOIL FROM EACH BATTLEFIELD HE FOUGHT ON IN THAT SECOND WORLD WAR THERE. ME, I KEEP A BIT OF SOIL FROM EACH WORLD I LAND ON.”
Glenn Bob and Ant fought their way to the lee side of the wrecked fuel tender where Vladlena, Jochen and Tamora were sheltering.
"SO THIS WAS AN AMERICAN ATTACK", shouted Ant.
Glenn Bob shrugged. "MIGHT HAVE BEEN. MIGHT BE WE WAS SPOSED TO THINK IT WAS."
Tamora was shivering in the cold, holding her shoulders. "THERE'S SUPPOSED TO BE AN AMERICAN CARRIER ON THE LOOSE IN OUR SPACE. THE RICHARD M. NIXON."
Ant shook his head. "STERNEKINDER DID THIS. TRYING TO START A WAR. THIS WAS AN UNPROVOKED ATTACK ON A CIVILIAN INSTALLATION. AMERICANS WOULDN'T DO THAT."
Glenn Bob turned and looked at Ant disparagingly through the snorkel of his coveralls. "I USED TO BE AN AMERICAN, AND I DISPUTE THAT STATEMENT, ANTHONY."
"ALL THE MINES ON THIS PLANET ARE ABOUT TO CLOSE DOWN", said Tamora. "THEY'RE ALL OWNED BY THE SAME TRIBAL COOPERATIVE, AND THE CO-OP CAN'T KEEP THEM OPEN. THE LAST THREE FULLERENE CARRIERS THAT SET OUT FROM HERE NEVER GOT BACK TO LAPUTA, AND THE SHIPPING CO-OP BACK ON LAPUTA WON'T SEND OUT MORE IN CASE THEY LOSE THOSE TOO. SOMETHING IS OUT HERE. SOMETHING THAT'S INTERCEPTING SHIPPING."
"THEY NEED FULLERENE SHIPMENTS GOING OUT TO PAY FOR FOOD SHIPMENTS COMING IN", said Glenn Bob. "THEY CAN PROBABLY FEED THEIRSELVES WITH THEIR HYDRO LABS HERE, BUT LIFE'S GONNA BE BLEAKEREN A COLD DAMP PAIR OF PANTS."
"YAMERICANS TRY TO STARVE THEM OUT", said Vladlena. Somehow, even in the heavy carbon dioxide atmosphere, she had managed to light a cigarette, and was puffing into her cupped hand. Ant looked closer, and saw that she was holding an emergency oxygen cylinder under the cigarette, at great risk of her own face exploding.
"MORE LIKELY TRYIN TO LURE THE ZODIAC FLEET OUT TO FIGHT A YANKEE SUPERCARRIER", said Glenn Bob. "AGAINST A FLIGHT OF AURORAS, OUR OLD GLADIATORS WOULDN'T LAST LONGEREN A SPITBALL IN HELL. ASSUMIN", he added, "IT'S A YANKEE CARRIER AT ALL THERE. IT MIGHT BE STERNEKINDER PRETENDING TO BE YANKEES, AN THEN WE'LL HAVE A REAL FIGHT ON OUR HANDS."
"WE NEED TO FIND OUT FOR SURE WHO THE BAD GUYS ARE", said Ant, "AND THERE'S ONLY ONE WAY TO DO THAT."
“WHAT’S THAT?” said Glenn Bob, who had in fact already worked out what it was, but wished he hadn’t.
Ant grinned. “WE GET THE BAD GUYS TO COME TO US.”
***
Cleo wished she were outside, in the constant howling wind that had found every fresh shell hole in the Kumm-Ree control centre and was blowing on every one of them like a child with a milk bottle. Indoors, technicians rushed back and forth, pushing handcarts full of meteor patches. Cleo wondered if the entire settlement had enough patches to cope with the damage. She wanted to help with the repairs. Failing that, she wanted to be with Ant and Glenn Bob, looking for signs that the attack had been carried out by Sternekinder. What she definitely didn’t want to be doing was standing starchily in a choirgirl’s surplice that had clearly once been part of a landing parachute while Father Serafino proclaimed the Good News of Jesus to an entirely deserted briefing room.
Almost entirely deserted, that was. One small boy was sitting on the edge of a table, chewing gum as he watched Father Serafino preach the Parable of the Talents, his legs kicking the legs of the table idly. And noisily.
The briefing room was tiny, even with its folding metal tables and chairs sided away. Cleo had the feeling it was the smallest possible space the Kumm-Ree had felt able to find for Father Serafino without giving obvious offence.
The boy had a broad, tanned Native American face and wore wampum belts as part of his uniform. Cleo had learned that wampum was made of shell laced together into complex patterns. When they had come to Teer-Newith-a-Draa-Eeg-Gock, the Kumm-Ree had discovered vast, tragic fossil beds telling of life forms that had once existed here, only to be freeze-dried into extinction in some great cataclysm long in the planet’s past. The boy’s wampum belt was made of fossil shell, beautiful and irreplaceable.
“And LO! The man’s arms opened in joy”, said Father Serafino, “and he said: Well done, thou good and faithful servant -“
The boy’s hand went up. He blew a pink bubble with his bubble gum as he raised it.
“Yes?” Father Serafino, looking down in evident annoyance as if he would have rather preferred the room to be completely empty.
“So the first servant went out and invested his talent of silver in business”, said the Kumm-Ree child.
“Yes”, said Father Serafino. “He made his money work for him, you see.”
“And the second one just went and buried his talent underground.”
“Yes”, said Father Serafino. “He wasted his talent by failing to use it.”
The boy frowned and pondered. “But doesn’t that only apply in a bull market? Investment in securities only provides returns while there’s growth in the economy. In a bear market, gold and silver provide a safe haven while securities are unstable at best.”
Father Serafino blinked at the boy.
“It was not a bear market”, he said. “The economy was growing healthily.”
“What was the rate of inflation?” said the boy.
Cleo looked up at Charity on the other side of the room, at exactly the same moment that Charity looked up at her. Both girls valiantly attempted to swallow their own faces to stop themselves laughing.
“IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT THE RATE OF INFLATION WAS”, said Father Serafino. “It is a PARABLE of OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST.”
“If you ask me”, said the boy, “I’m sure he’s mysterious and jealous and all the things you say, but he’s hardly delivering sound economic advice.”
Father Serafino stared at the boy in exasperation, his lip quivering.
“Here endeth the lesson”, he said.
“Okay”, said the boy, and flopped off the table onto the floor. “I only came in here to skip Ka-Meen-Sank-Tiah-Eethe anyway.”
“Ka-Meen-Sank-Tiah-Eethe”, repeated Father Serafino.
“Yeah”, said the boy. “It’s a real boring age-old tradition of our ancestors. You have to sit for hours and watch -“
“I know what it is”, said Father Serafino. “I just did not know it was scheduled for now.”
“Oh, sure”, said the boy. “The Tribal Council, they made sure your festival thing happened at the same time as Ka-Meen-Sank-Tiah-Eethe.” He searched Father Serafino’s expression. “Oh, wow. You didn’t know that, did you.”
“No”, said Father Serafino, his teeth set. “I didn’t.”
“Okay”, said the boy. “I’ll be getting on now. I can see you have some deep-seated anger between yourself and the Tribal Council to work out. You should really think about tweaking that parable thing of yours to cope with a shrinking market.”
Then he was gone, and the harvest festival without a congregation.
“Ka-Meen-Sank-Tiah-Eethe”, repeated Father Serafino angrily. “At exactly the same time as my own ceremony. Oh well. I suppose the Blessed Saints Augustine and Columba had to put up with worse.”
“What is Ka-Meen-Sank-Tiah-Eethe, Father?” said Charity.
Father Serafino sighed wearily. “I looked it up. It’s some ghastly pagan ritual. Their great god, ‘Dee-oo’, defeats death by allowing mankind to nail him to a totem pole. It’s followed by a form of ritual cannibalism where everyone eats the flesh of the dead god.”
Cleo looked at Charity. As one, they wrinkled their noses. “Euuuwwww.”
“As I said, it’s only a ritual. They don’t have any actual dead god flesh lying around.” Father Serafino sat himself down, heavily, next to Plastic Bread Jesus. “No doubt terrible idolatry is involved, however.” He pulled off one of Jesus’s fingers and munched on it thoughtfully.
“I thought our Jesus was all plastic”, said Cleo, mortified. “I thought you couldn’t make real bread on Gondolin.”
“Mmmish ish a shponge finger”, munched Father Serafino. “We can manage a shponge finger.” He offered Cleo another of Jesus’s fingers. “The boggy of Chrisht?” Cleo made a face and shook her head.
“It’s just bread that never rises properly”, said Charity. “We think it might be some sort of fungus in the air.”
“You shee”, said Father Serafino, “mmish a tesht, a trial shent by heaven to prove our faith -“
A klaxon sounded, nearly making him leap out of his surplice. The sound was so loud that flakes of paint were shaking off the ceiling.
“Fire drill?” said Cleo hopefully. Father Serafino shook his head.
“Alarm sounds are standardized throughout the US Zed. That’s a UXB siren.”
He jumped up and ran from the room.
***
As Father Serafino ran, tools were coming out of his pockets into his fingers - a dentist’s mirror on a steel rod, a stethoscope, and, bizarrely, a can of Silly String. He kept cannoning into people running in the opposite direction. A Kumm-Ree man in a Sergeant’s uniform put a hand in his chest to stop him. Father Serafino yelled over the klaxon: “UXB TRAINED! LET ME THROUGH! AND THEN GET OUT OF THE AREA!”
Rather than arguing, the Sergeant shrugged, turned and pointed down the corridor the crowd was running from. Cleo and Charity shrank into a side passage to let the Sergeant pass without seeing them, then continued on after Father Serafino. They were pelting down a concrete corridor toward a door marked with a red winged serpent.
“That’s their national animal”, said Charity. “Whatever that room is, it’s important.”
They arrived in the doorway just after Father Serafino. It looked into a large, colourfully-decorated meeting area the size of Gondolin’s town hall. The room was hung with plaid blankets in a vivid variety of colours, along with wooden carvings of winged serpents and other terrifying creatures, piled up totem poles like stackable gods. A wind was whistling through the room, causing the drapes to flap and some of the totem poles to lift from their moorings like automata in a haunted house.
Father Serafino ran into the centre of the room’s earth floor, which was as red as brick dust, filled with tiny fossil shells. The shells were a peculiar ocarina shape, with multiple openings that also hissed fiercely in the wind.
“Singing sand”, muttered Cleo to Charity.
The room was already fiercely cold in the gale, which Cleo knew had to be coming from a new hole in the building. They were currently breathing in Teer-Newith-a-Draa-Eeg-Gock atmosphere, and the last time this had happened, all of them had nearly died.
She looked up. There was a massive, gaping hole in the roof. Ice was already forming inside it.
“This is native soil”, whispered Charity. “Indoors”, she added wonderingly. Fossil wampum swirled around their feet in the icy breeze, rattling like dice.
Father Serafino was now standing talking to a Kumm-Ree lady in the centre of the room. The lady was a grown woman, but slim like most of the Kumm-Ree girls. Her face was lined with the beginnings of age, though it still had an effortless exotic Kumm-Ree beauty that Cleo envied. She was oddly dressed in a brown synthetic fur trouser-and-jerkin combination, and her hair was bound up in bunches of fossil wampum, but she wore a heavy tool belt hung with stethoscopes and mirrors of her own. She was bent over a finned metal cylinder poking from a crater in the floor.
“You must leave the area right now”, she said to Father Serafino.
“I will do no such thing. I am as UXB-trained as you are. That looks like an M893528377B Area Denial Munition, and believe me, they are tricky devils. If anything, we should both be leaving.”
“I will not leave this place”, said the Kumm-Ree lady. “No bomb is going to go off here.”
“Then let me help you.”
Charity looked at Cleo in concern.
“UXB means -“ she said in a whisper.
Cleo nodded, looking at the steel cylinder in deep discomfort. “Unexploded Bomb.”
***
The Kumm-Ree lady looked Father Serafino over as if he were more dangerous than the device she was crouched over.
“That’s an accent and a half. Where do you come from, soldier?”
“A place where we’ve seen a lot more of those things than you have, and too recently for comfort. Gondolin.”
The lady frowned, but was evidently impressed. Grudgingly, she said:
“All right. I’ve popped the fuse cap and taken a look inside, which was dumb of me, but I got away with it. I think this is a 77C, not a B. The trembler model.”
The blood drained from Father Serafino’s face.
“We were all in here celebrating Ka-Meen-Sank-Tiah-Eethe”, said the Kumm-Ree woman, “when it blew in clean through the ceiling. Three people were very badly hurt.”
Father Serafino nodded. “Probably fell into a storeroom on a higher floor, nobody would ever have known it was there till it shifted further downwards. Type C’s are like shrapnel and the Word of our Good Lord Jesus Christ. You never notice them till they work their way in to your heart.”
“Are those two with you?” said the Kumm-Ree woman.
Father Serafino turned and looked at Cleo and Charity in the doorway as if seeing them for the very first time.
“Oh lordy”, he said. “The CO’s daughter. If I blow her up, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
“You’ll never hear anything at all”, said the Kumm-Ree lady. “You’ll be dead. This thing has a lethal burst radius of -“
“- one hundred metres”, finished Father Serafino.
“They have to leave”, said the lady. “You have to leave”, she said to Cleo and Charity.
“Not so sure about that”, said Father Serafino. “It’s a C model. Footsteps can set it off.”
“But it didn’t go off when it fell in through the ceiling”, protested Charity.
“It’s designed to fall through ceilings”, said Serafino. “It’s made to drop steadily, floor by floor, through a large building, doing as much damage as it can on each floor before proceeding to the next. The enemy know our settlements have many storeys and are largely underground. One of these bombs will drop, fall clean through the first storey, wait fifteen minutes, go off punching a second bomb through to the second storey, which waits fifteen minutes in turn, goes off again, and so on.”
Cleo stared at the bomb in horror. “Why would it wait fifteen minutes?”
“Because”, said the Kumm-Ree woman grimly, “statistics tell the bomb makers that it takes around twenty minutes for a technician to disarm a bomb. By setting the fuse to fifteen minutes, they make sure they get the bomb disposal technician as well.”
“Unfortunately, the trembler model, the type C, is even more sophisticated”, said Serafino. “It doesn’t just wait fifteen minutes. It makes up its mind that it’s being worked on by a bomb disposal team. It listens. It looks. It has photoelectric sensors that tell it whether its casing’s been opened. Some of the newer ones even have carbon dioxide sensors so they know whether a human being is breathing over them. The algorithms they use to decide whether a UXB technician is there are complex and very difficult to fool.”
“Which means”, said the Kumm-Ree woman, “that you must both be quiet as mice from now on.”
“Not necessarily”, said Serafino. “I feel it is time for me to use my own special tool for breaking into type C’s, which I like to call ‘Mr. Thumpy’.” He pulled his special tool from his surplice. Cleo instantly recognized it as a lump hammer. The lump hammer had a happy face drawn on it. With hammer in one hand, and a huge pair of tinner’s snips in the other, Father Serafino began beating the bomb violently, knocking it about hard in the hole.
“WHAT IN THE NAME OF DEE-OO ARE YOU -“
“IT’S FOR ITS OWN GOOD”, shouted Father Serafino, continuing to smack the bomb about while cutting into it with his other hand with a pair of tinner’s snips. “SPARE THE ROD, SPOIL THE BOMB. OW! Hit my thumb there.”
Through some incredible stroke of luck, the bomb had not gone off. The Kumm-Ree woman grabbed at Serafino’s arm, trying to stop him, but he threw her away and continued to beat at the bomb casing. He had now snipped away a spiral of metal round the device, and was levering it away with his big metal-cutting scissors. He whacked the bomb hard again for good measure, then peered inside it, switched his tinner’s snips for a pair of long-nosed pliers, and with the deftness of a jeweller, reached inside the casing and flicked out four silicon chips that dropped into the pink sand. Then he exhaled, looked up at Cleo, Charity and the Kumm-Ree lady and said:
“That’s it sorted now.”
He looked back at the bomb again.
“Unless, that is, they’ve come up with a Type D. Best get out of here and wait for someone to winch it out of the crater, take it outside and take it to bits.”
“Not blow it up?” said Cleo.
“Heavens no. This thing’s packed with advanced explosives and electronics. We need as much of that stuff as we can pull out of bombs.”
“I hope”, said the Kumm-Ree lady, her arms folded, frowning severely, “that you’re proud of yourself.”
“I am, actually.” Father Serafino slotted his tools back into the belt under his surplice. “It was me who came up with that method of dealing with Type C’s. We lost four bomb disposal workers to them. Good men and women. You see”, he said, rising to his feet, “the Type C is designed to be soooo tricksy, waiting till bomb disposal crews are tip-toeing around it ever so carefully, being as quiet as mice. But it’s also designed to fall repeatedly through concrete floors, and sometimes a floor it falls onto will give way without it needing to explode to punch its way through. So its designers made it clever enough not to go off and waste an explosive charge if the floor just helpfully collapses underneath it.” He held up Mr. Thumpy proudly. “So I did everything to make it think the floor was collapsing underneath it.”
The Kumm-Ree woman’s mouth shut like a trap.
“You may congratulate me”, said Father Serafino. “I’ve done ten like that so far. The trick is not to try it with a Type B. If you do, you’ll be a fine pink film on the landscape. You can tell the difference -“
“- by the serial numbers”, said the Kumm-Ree woman. “There was a bulletin circulated on the subject a few weeks ago by an -“
“- Anthony Serafino”, said Father Serafino, smiling serenely.
“Uh”, said Cleo. “I’m Cleopatra, and this is Charity. We’re from Gondolin too.”
“Do you have a name?” said Father Serafino.
“You will be unable to pronounce it”, said the woman. “It is Bloh-Deh-Ee-Weth. It means Flower Face.” She looked back to Charity and Cleo. “That’s Captain Flower Face to you.”
“But how did you know defusing a bomb like that was going to work, Father”, said Charity, aghast, “the first time you tried it?”
Father Serafino shrugged. “It seemed logical. Although”, he added, smirking at Cleo and Charity, “you have to have faith.”
He whipped off his surplice and wandered out of the meeting hall, swiping at the air with Mr. Thumpy, whistling If I Had A Hammer.
Cleo looked at Charity.
“Truly”, said Charity, “that man was the Son of God.”
“Charity, that’s blasphemy”, said Cleo. “And Jesus was never that pleased with himself.”
“He has very firm thighs”, said Captain Flower Face, with the air of a farmer assessing a prize bull. “Is he married?”
“Only to God and astronavigation”, said Charity.
“Hmm”, said Captain Flower Face. She looked down at the bomb. “We have been lucky today. But luck will only take us so far. The rest of the journey we do ourselves, on foot.”
She tapped a control device at her belt, and the distant klaxon died. Almost immediately, men and women began pouring into the chamber talking excitedly in Kumm-Ree and clapping Captain Flower Face on the back. She smiled thinly and shook her head, and spoke back, repeating the words ‘Gon-Dolyn’ and ‘Se-Ra-Ffuno’. She mimed the action of smacking the bomb hard with a hammer. The Kumm-Ree braves gawped at the bomb; they looked across at Charity and Cleo in amazement. One man was scratching his head. Another was opening his mouth to speak.
“I feel Tony Serafino is about to pass into Kumm-Ree folklore”, said Charity to Cleo. “Let’s keep ourselves out of it. I can do without having my deeds immortalized in song.”
Cleo was not listening. She was, instead, looking up at the roof in shock.
“What is it?” said Charity.
Cleo pointed. Set into the ceiling, evidently transported here as one block of rock from who knew how far, was a great red-winged fire-breathing serpent.
It had fossilized perfectly - even details of the scales were visible. The wings looked as if they had originally been fins or paddles, arranged in two groups of four on either side of a marine organism. The tail bore a single mighty fluke. The mouth looked like the mouth of no creature known on Earth, a complex, intricate assembly of slicing, interlocking structures. The most incredible thing about the fossil, however, besides its massive size, was the fact that certain parts of it, and only certain parts, had fossilized with a rust-red colour, particularly the wings and a small part of the mandible that extended from the mouth proper, making it look as if a flying serpent was indeed breathing fire.
“Mighty Dee-Oo”, breathed Cleo. “No wonder she wouldn’t leave. This is the fossil they found when they arrived, their -“
“- special tribal animal”, finished Charity. “This room must be the centre of their heritage.”
Cleo shook her head to bring herself down to earth. “We should be getting back to the EVA lock. The others will have found some proof of who was behind all this by now. I briefed them on every type of ground attack weapon I know the Sternekinder have. They’ll find evidence the attack wasn’t carried out by the Americans.”
***
“The attack was carried out by the Americans.”
The words fell like a hammerblow, all the more heavily because it was Glenn Bob, an American, delivering them.
Father Serafino’s voice came back happily out of the dark. “Jolly good. Knew it would turn out to be Washington.”
Sitting next to Father Serafino was a man with a face as worn and battered as a granite carving. He was sitting cross-legged, long braided white hair hanging down over his ceremonial towel. The towel had a red-winged serpent on it. His expression did not move as he spoke. “The British have attacked Gondolin. Now their American allies are sniffing around Boötes. There is sense in it.”
Opposite the man, an old woman with one lazy eye that Cleo could not stop looking at - possibly because it was unlikely to look back - said: “What we are supposed to do if the veho attack us is invoke the Morgan Doctrine. The veho are supposed to fear the Doctrine. They are supposed to fear directly attacking us, in case we land a saucer in Washington and tell the veho people their leaders have been concealing the existence of colonies in space from them all these years.”
A nervous voice spoke up from the dark behind Ant and Cleo. “But they seem not to fear the Doctrine at all. They showed no fear in attacking Gondolin. Now they attack our shipping and bomb our homes. And they have cobalt bombs in reserve. We can do nothing about cobalt bombs. President Morgan built none. He believed the Doctrine would protect us.”
“And if we invoke the Doctrine”, said Flower Face, who was sitting beside Cleo, “we have no more cards to play.”
“That’s what the veho are counting on”, grumbled Granite Face. “They think we will not dare to go so far as to use the Doctrine.”
The room was a public Sweat Lodge, a Kumm-Ree version of a sauna. Like most things Kumm-Ree, however, it also had deep cultural and spiritual significance. Cleo was, by now, glad of the time she had to herself in the Draa-Eeg-Gock toilets, as they seemed to be the only installations in the settlement that had no cultural significance whatsoever. In Kumm-Ree villages on Earth, it had been explained to Cleo, sweat lodges had been warmed by rocks heated in fires outside. In the centre of this sweat lodge, chunks of haematite - rocks of a sort - had been warmed to red heat by induction coils. They illuminated the faces of Glenn Bob, Father Serafino, Ant, Cleo, Tamora, Jochen and Vladlena, who were all wearing towels. Everyone had been warned that the towels were ceremonial, and that whipping each other around the changing rooms with them would be frowned upon. The Kumm-Ree considered the Sweat Lodge a good place to make decisions, and the many Kumm-Ree sitting around Ant and Cleo right now in nothing but big white flannels were members of the Tribal Council. The cadets and Father Serafino, being honoured guests, had been allowed to sit in on a Council meeting. Out of deference to the visitors, the meeting was being conducted in English.
The heat in the room was like solid matter, forcing everyone to sit absolutely still. Flower Face, who was sitting bolt upright on the edge of the circular bench that surrounded the room, had her eyes closed in meditation.
“Please, sir”, said Cleo, raising a hand. “May I speak?”
The granite-faced Kumm-Ree, whose name was Ghost Wind, turned round to Cleo. It was the first time any part of him had moved in many minutes.
“I’m not a chief”, he said. “Chief is a word the veho use. I am correctly referred to as a Speaker. What would you like to say?”
Cleo chose her words carefully. “Uh...Mr. Speaker...the Sternekinder want nothing more than to provoke unnecessary war between ourselves and the, uh...”
“Veho”, finished the lazy-eyed lady kindly. “On Earth, on the reservations, it was our Navaho neighbours’ word for Americans. We have adopted it here as the Americans in the US Zee are our friends, whilst the Americans on Earth certainly are not. So we use the word veho to refer to those Americans”, she explained. “Because it means spiders”, she added.
“You were saying something”, said Ghost Wind to Cleo.
“What I mean to say is that I still think that the Sternekinder are behind this”, finished Cleo.
Ghost Wind looked down meaningfully at the tangle of old half-melted Alpha Centaurian dog tags sitting on the tiles by the haematite chunks, and glowered at Cleo. Cleo said nothing more.
“It is possible that the Stern-y-kind-y could have gained access to American dog tags”, said the lazy-eyed lady. “Every possibility should be explored if it does not lead to war.”
“There is a way they could have done that”, said Glenn Bob.
The room cadets shifted uncomfortably on their benches. Everyone knew exactly how the Sternekinder could have done it, but nobody had wanted to mention it in Glenn Bob’s hearing.
“New Dixie”, said Glenn Bob uncomfortably. “When they done took my folks an everyone else on New Dixie, they woulda hauled in enough dog tags to melt down an make a statue of the mayor there.” He thought a moment, then added: “Mayor Congreve, even. An he was real fat.”
Ghost Wind sat and digested this.
“It is possible”, he said. “But that still leaves us with alternatives.”
“We need more data”, agreed the lazy-eyed lady, “to come to a conclusion.”
“We have a suggestion for that”, said Ant.
The room fell silent.
“Uh - Father Serafino has a suggestion”, said Ant.
Father Serafino cleared his throat. “Ahem. The problem seems to be that we currently have no way of knowing whether the attacking vessels were, ah, veho or Sternekinder. Both American and Sternekinder fighters are known to be invisible to radar, after all, just like the ships that attacked this settlement. Which is good, in a way, because it narrows down the field of suspects to those two nations.”
Ghost Wind glowered back at Serafino. “What do you suggest?”
“Uh, well”, said Father Serafino, looking nervously at Ant, who the suggestion had originated with, “we send out a ship which we can afford to lose. A vessel destined for the breaker’s yard, on its last legs. A ship on automatic pilot, with no human beings aboard. And we tail that vessel with Gladiator fighters. As soon as the enemy break cover to attack the ship, we can positively identify them.”
The lazy-eyed lady looked doubtful. “How are we to identify something that cannot even be seen on radar?”
“They can be seen visually”, said Ant. “Like any fast-moving massive object, they leave a trail when they pass through a gas or dust cloud. Our ship should take off and almost immediately report being hit by a meteor in its deuterium tanks, then stop accelerating immediately for repairs. That will stop the enemy becoming suspicious when they see it’s venting a plume of gas all around it. As soon as the enemy enter that gas cloud to attack, they’ll be as visible as chimney sweeps at a millers’ convention.”
Ghost Wind remained silent for many seconds.
Eventually, he said:
“Chimney sweeps.”
Ant was ready for this. “Technicians of an archaic Earth room-warming technology”, he explained. “They wear black.”
Ghost Wind nodded. “Millers”, he added.
“People who take Earth vegetation”, said Ant, “and grind it to a powder, between enormous stones.”
“Ah”, said Ghost Wind. “They do this why?”
“They do crazy stuff on Earth”, said the lazy-eyed lady.
Ghost Wind nodded gravely.
“The point is”, said Ant, “they wear white. Because white powder gets all over them.”
“Ah”, nodded Ghost Wind. “You mean we will be able to see the enemy ships as soon as they enter the gas cloud.”
“Erm. Yes”, said Ant.
“Why didn’t you just say so?” said Ghost Wind. “It is a good idea. We will do it.”
“Reconnaissance Gladiators might just be able to outpace an Aurora”, said Father Serafino. “I think I’ve seen a couple in your hangars.”
Ghost Wind narrowed his eyes to slits narrow as machine gun ports in concrete. “Would you volunteer to fly one of those Gladiators?”
“We have another idea to help the reconnaissance ships get away”, said Ant. “It will be best if as few people know about it as possible.”
“In case any of us here are Blue Space Nazis”, said Ghost Wind.
“We think President Ortega is making up the Blue Space Nazis to get rid of her political enemies”, said the lazy-eyed lady. “They say she is making arrests up on Krell. People are being pulled in off the streets just because someone accused them of being Stern-y-kind-y.”
“Nobody voted for President Ortega here”, said Ghost Wind.
“She turned up in her campaign ship dressed as Sacajawea”, said a voice from the back of the room.
“Her campaign marketing team had made real sure she got the Sacajawea costume absolutely right”, said the lazy-eyed lady grudgingly.
“The thing is”, said Ghost Wind, “Sacajawea was a Shoshone. When we were on Earth, we hated the goddamned Shoshone.”
“Those goddamned Shoshone”, murmured a voice.
“Always with their goddamned teepees”, said another.
“Always with the worshipping of the Great Wolf Spirit”, said a third.
“Anyone with half a mind can see that the Great Wolf Spirit is a primitive superstition”, said a fourth. “It is plain to see that the universe was created by mighty Dee-Oo”.
“Is that so?” pounced Father Serafino. “Maybe we are not so different as you think -”
“Mighty Dee-Oo looks like a tree on fire”, cautioned Ghost Wind.
“Ah”, said Father Serafino.
“One of our medicine men saw his ass once”, said someone else. “Everyone else beheld every part of him, and was blinded. But the medicine man only saw his ass, and was made holy.”
“I see”, said Father Serafino.
“We really have no idea how a tree can have an ass”, said Ghost Wind. “That’s dogma for you, I guess.”
“I agree with you about President Ortega”, said Ant. “But I have seen Blue Space Nazis with my own eyes. And so have Jochen, Glenn Bob, Vladlena, and, uh, Cleo and Charity.”
“I used to be one”, said Charity sweetly.
“So did I”, said Cleo. “I’m better now”, she added.
Ghost Wind looked at Cleo and Charity for a very long time, then back to the lazy-eyed lady. “We have that old Stargosy class fullerene hauler. The Ben-De-Ge-Yit-Bran.”
The lady snorted in derision. “Her Flange is so damaged that her fission fuel is becoming more radioactive as time goes on. Maintenance crews won’t even board her any more.”
“We might convince a crew to rig an autopilot in the interests of national security”, said Flower Face.
“I volunteer to rig the autopilot”, said Father Serafino.
“We will need an advanced computer brain to act as autopilot”, said Flower Face. “And cutting edge electronics are difficult to obtain up here. Arcade games don’t smuggle themselves up from Earth, you know.”
“I believe”, said Father Serafino confidently, “that we have that very thing.”