John Barnes - Mother of Storms

Then it cuts to some kind of undersea remote sensing. Long white streaks arrow into the seabed missiles, so fast that it’s as if the lines of superheated steam plunging into the Arctic Ocean appear all at once, like the particle paths in a cloud chamber. Where the missile was, at the head of each streak, there’s a bright white ball.

The view jumps back to Rivera. He nods, as if to say, Powerful, eh? Frightening? There is no trace of a smile.

He licks his lips once before he speaks. “An attempted launch of the seabed missiles was detected by our monitors a bit under a second before impact. Authorized UN datatrace reveals that signal’s origin to be the Commandant’s palace in Novokuznetsk, Siberia. On the basis of this evidence, I am issuing an interdict and arrest order, effective now, for the seizure of Commandant Abdulkashim and fifty-one other Siberian officials. They are to be taken into UN detention for examination and trial. All armed forces around the world are reminded that armed resistance to UN arrest—or taking military advantage of any situation caused by a UN arrest—is a capital offense at all levels.”

The SecGen’s eyes suddenly seem harrowed and frightened. When Rivera speaks again, it is very softly. “This has not been an easy decision, but so far as I have vision it has been a just, measured, and appropriate one. Let us all hope it brings us nearer global peace and justice. Good day to you all.”

The blue and white flag billowing in a soft breeze flashes on the screen, and then the UNIC logo. The screen pops back to a replay of I Love Lucy. There’s an uproar in the room about what to watch next. Jesse gave up on TV back when they stopped making new shows.

At least ten people are shouting above the crowd, announcing various meetings to support, protest, or discuss the SecGen’s actions.

Naomi leans back and breathes in his ear. “Oh mighty engineer, this uninitiated one craves to ken your technical wisdom, for damn all if she can understand what just happened. Besides, if there’s any meeting or rally I ought to make, I can find out and join up later. Can we go be alone?”

Her arm slides around him and he feels the heavy, soft push of her breast against his elbow as he pulls his own arm out to drape over her shoulder.

It still takes ten minutes to get out of the Student Center, because anyone as active as Naomi has at least twenty people to say hello to. Jesse does as well, but for once he’s glad that most of her friends think he’s a big dumb piece of attractive meat, because that means his part of the ritual can be confined to exchanges of head nods and saying each other’s names. Naomi has to go through a comparison of analyses with everyone.

Right now she’s explaining it to Gwendy, the girlfriend that Jesse has always privately thought of as “a blonde mop with protruding hardware.” Naomi’s getting very serious, and the tone of passion is drawing more people toward her. This doesn’t look good for an escape.

“The thing we can’t lose sight of,” Naomi is saying, delicate little hands churning and chopping at the air in front of her, “is that whether Rivera had any options in the situation, or not, isn’t relevant. It’s not our job to make him have options, after all. The point is that of course he had to get rid of the missiles and of course it was wrong to blow them up. They’re just trying to confuse the issue when they ask what else he could have done about it. If he had been doing his job, he would have had a better option. That’s what it’s all about. If he’s willing to live in a situation with only unacceptable options and then willing to take one, well, then, there you have it. We need to get some feelings expressed about all this.”

Inwardly Jesse groans. Feelings are seldom properly expressed until there’s been a march and a conference at least.

She goes on, and by now Sibby (who tends to agree with both Gwendy and Naomi about everything, especially when they disagree with each other) is listening intently as well, and clearly the conversation can’t end till she has a chance to agree. The apartment and the homework are looking farther and farther away every minute.

Gwendy’s guy, a tall skinny bad case of acne whom Jesse normally would remember the name of, tries to get an objection in, but Naomi mows it down before he can open his mouth. “No, listen, ” she says. “The point is, people have to take charge of wherever life puts them, and I don’t care if he is the SecGen, he’s still responsible. If you allow your situation to be one where there are no moral options, and then you go and choose between them, you’re still choosing to do something wrong. I mean, otherwise there’s nobody to blame.”

Sibby tentatively ventures that maybe this applies, too, to Abdulkashim.

“Oh, sure, right,” Gwendy barks, turning on Sibby. “Blame a guy whose country just lost most of its weapons, a guy who’s probably being thrown into jail right now if the UN cops haven’t already killed him, like he really wanted to have all this happen. That is so simplistic.” Gwendy’s jaw is sticking far enough forward to protrude beyond the heavy blonde curtains of her hair, she’s glaring into Sibby’s eyes (as much as anyone can tell from the side), and she’s doing what old guys like Jesse’s dad call “invading personal space”—standing close to Sibby and moving closer.

All this is putting a nasty want-to-fight gleam in Naomi’s eye. Jesse knows many people find her obnoxious when she’s like this, but it’s also exactly what gets him horny.

The first thing he noticed about her in Values and Self class, the one required course at the U of the Az, was that gleam when she started picking on the three bewildered Afropean guys for not being feminist-ecoconscious.

The second thing was that under all the baggy clothing she had a wonderful body.

Jesse’s roommate Brian, who moved out when it became clear that Jesse was getting serious about her, had rather casually suggested that since what turned Jesse on was all that fury wrapped up in that male-fantasy body, maybe he should “just rape her and get over it, Jess, wouldn’t that be simpler? It would confirm everything she thinks about you and you’d still get to find out what it’s like.”

Jesse had been shocked. The next several times he had sex with Naomi he couldn’t stop fantasizing that he was raping her. If there was a Diem Act for fantasies like there is for wedges, he’d be facing the death penalty.

Does he really like her? He doesn’t know—it seems irrelevant.

He’s not listening, which is probably just as well, but Gwendy and Sibby are both in tears and Gwendy’s guy seems to be trying to get them pulled out of there. They beat some kind of retreat, and by now anyone who was waiting to talk to Naomi seems to have vanished, so Jesse has her outside almost at once. They walk together quietly in the cool desert dark before Jesse ventures to speak. “Listen,” he says, “don’t give me a speech about it, but I’d really like to take the Lectrajeep out into the desert tonight. We could sit back and look at the stars and I’d listen to whatever you want to talk about.”

He knows this is likely to start a fight. She doesn’t like the Lectrajeep. Deepers don’t want to disturb the wilderness, so they get it on XV instead. Never mind that with the big soft balloon tires and the QuaDirecDrive, the Lectrajeep doesn’t leave as much track as a hiker in lightweight boots; Naomi’s parents have filled her full of horror stories about what the old four-wheelers of fifty years before did, and that’s what she sees when she looks at Jesse’s Lectrajeep.

The one time he tried taking her out into the desert, she didn’t know her way around without the XV team there. In XV, the body you ride on is some highly trained athlete, so that you move easily through the wild country, and you have constant back-of-the-mind contact with a wilderness poet, a naturalist, an activist, and a shaman. Without them there to whisper into her mind, she didn’t know what the plants were, she had no phrases to remember or key into the experience with, she didn’t know what the major threats to this part of the ecosystem were or who was responsible for them, and there wasn’t any spiritual significance to anything. Worse yet, she got sweaty and dirty—she’d never gone more than a day unshowered in her life, probably.