Timothy Zahn - Spinneret

"In such a case, Mr. Perez," Meredith said, his voice deadly, "neither would I."

"Of course," Perez said. "And you would win … but only temporarily. Because signs of civil strife down here could very possibly persuade one or more of the aliens out there that we needed some strong, neutral hand on us—strictly for our own good, of course—and take the appropriate action."

The room was very quiet. Meredith never flinched or broke eye contact with Perez, but Carmen sensed his frosty silence was a simple lack of any answer to that. After a few seconds Perez pulled a thick folder from the stack of papers in front of him and added to it a copy of the Council's resolution. Standing, he stepped over to Meredith and offered him the bundle. "I think you'll find, Colonel," he said, "that above all else we must present a united front if we're going to survive here."

Tight-lipped, Meredith got to his feet and accepted the papers. "We'll see," he said shortly. With a single glance at Carmen he turned and left the room.

Carmen licked her lips. "This meeting is adjourned," she said, banging her makeshift gavel with rather more force than necessary and immediately turning her full attention to loading her briefcase. The others took the hint and began packing their own paraphernalia without protest and with a minimum of quiet conversation. She waited until the last sounds of footsteps were cut off by the closing door before permitting her chosen expletive to come out.

"Agreed. And I apologize."

She looked up, startled, to find Perez sitting quietly in the chair Meredith had recently vacated. "I thought you'd slithered out with the others," she snarled.

He shrugged. "I wanted to make sure you were all right. And that you understood why I'm doing what I am."

"I'm fine," she bit out, getting to her feet. "And you don't need to explain the finer points of blackmail technique to me, thank you."

She tried to step past him, but he rose and took her arm, and before she knew it he had steered her back to the table and seated her again. "You're angry because you don't agree with my methods," he said, sitting down next to her. "But I'm afraid it's a simple fact of history that the only way a ruling class is ever persuaded to share power is through violence—either actual or threatened."

"So why don't you just go ahead and ally yourself with one of those aliens out there and do the job right?" she said bitterly.

He sighed. "I'd hoped you would grow to understand what I stand for better than that. Don't you see?—I'm not trying to exchange one inequity for another. Astra can be this century's version of the Americas, a place where people can come to escape the foolish rigidity of Earth politics. But that can't happen as long as we're simply a transplanted chunk of the U.S."

"And what are you going to feed all these tired, huddling masses when they get here?" she shot back. "We can't even grow enough to feed the ten thousand people we've got."

"We can feed them anything they want—up to and including imported caviar. Or haven't you considered what our Spinneret cables might sell for?"

She shook her head. "Your ideas of marketing show the same shallow thinking your politics do. If the cable turns out to be really useful it's not going to be ours much longer, not with all those warships circling overhead."

"We can handle them," he assured her. "Playing big powers off against each other is a skill the Third World is well acquainted with."

She laughed, a short, derisive bark. "Oh, terrific. You scramble to get us free of American politics and instead turn us into a transplanted Yugoslavia spending all of our energy juggling the local superpowers. What a great improvement."

She had the satisfaction of seeing him struggle to fight down his own anger. "The position the Spinneret has put us in isn't my fault, Carmen. I don't like it better than you do, but sitting around wishing things were different won't change anything." He paused. "I'm sorry, though, that you can't slough off that middleclass upbringing long enough to see things from the point of view of the less fortunate. I see I've been wasting my time with you."

So all of it had been deliberate. She'd wondered about that, ever since his message to Meredith through her had started this whole Council mess. "You flatter yourself," she said, again getting to her feet. "It's you and your methods, not any sort of upbringing, that's soured me on your planned Utopia."

"Carmen—"

She shrugged off his hand. "And as long as you've got all the answers, consider what all your huddling masses are going to do for a living once they get here. Or are you just going to distribute the Spinneret income evenly and let people sit around all day like overgrown parasites? If that's your idea of a satisfying existence, you're more foolish than I thought." With that she turned and strode out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

She was outside the building and halfway back to the admin complex before her anger cleared enough for her to think straight again. She slowed down, looking at the dull adobe buildings around her as she walked. After living in modem military bases, Astra had always seemed almost like a throw-back to the 1800s to her …

but never until now had she noticed its complete vulnerability, both to external and internal attack. What, she thought miserably, am I going to do?

On one level the question was trivial; on another, impossible. She would certainly go and see Colonel Meredith immediately, offering whatever assistance she could to block Perez's power grab. How that end could be accomplished, though, was another matter entirely.

The quiet burp of a distant sonic boom penetrated her thoughts, and she looked westward in time to see a shuttle drop toward Martello Base. An alien delegation?

It could be nothing else; it would still be a couple of weeks before any kind of reaction to the M'zarch attack could arrive from Earth. Quickening her step, Carmen changed direction to head for Unie's docks. The colonel would almost certainly have gone to the base to greet the visitors, and she saw no particular point in sitting around his office until he came back. Besides, which—it suddenly occurred to her—as moderator of the Council her visible support of Meredith in any discussions might help short-circuit Perez's scheme to promote disunity.

The armed guard waiting at the docks was a surprising but welcome addition to the scenery; apparently, Meredith was taking Perez's threats seriously. Carmen half expected to be denied access to the boats, but her military ID proved acceptable, and soon she was guiding a roaring motorboat up Splayfoot Bay toward Martello.

There were ten of them in all, and the names on their identification papers were as prestigious as any on the UNESCO listing. They sat quietly, for the most part, some of them gazing out the window at the Martello landing area or the hills of the mainland to the east.

The four UN officials accompanying them had equally prominent names, but not anything like the scientists' patience as Meredith went through their credentials one by one. Possibly, he thought, they felt insulted that he'd chosen to meet them in Major Brown's office instead of ferrying them to Unie and his own. Perhaps he should have; the trip would've given him that much more time to think.

Finally, he could stall no longer. "I must say, first of all, that Astra is honored by your presence," he said to the scientists as he returned their papers. "Under other circumstances you would be most welcome … but I'm very much afraid you may have made this trip for nothing."

"Would you care to explain. Colonel?" Ashur Msuya said, his voice cold.

Meredith had never before met the man, but his virulent anti-West oratory had for years been one of the main rallying points for what little unity the African Bloc was ever able to muster. He'd been merely the head of the Mozambique delegation when Meredith had left for Astra, but his credentials were now identifying him as Assistant Undersecretary for Trusteeship and Non-Self-Governing Territories—a change in position Meredith found more than a little suspicious.