Timothy Zahn - Spinneret

"Oh? I would've thought tawdry mercantile matters beneath him."

She flushed. "He's less interested in profits than he is in making Astra an escape hatch for Earth's poor. He sees the Spinneret as the cornucopia that'll make that possible."

"He would," Meredith grumbled. "Perez is a grade-ten idealist."

"Perhaps," she said noncommittally. "But you're now talking about a similar course of action … and either way I'm worried about what we'll do here with a sudden influx of wealth. I'd hate to see all of us sit back and loaf while the Spinneret pays the bills for us."

Meredith nibbed his chin. "I doubt that it'll come to that extreme. The cable may be strong as hell, but what can you really do with something shaped like cosmic spaghetti?"

"I don't know. But the Spinners apparently did."

"Yeah." For a moment Meredith stared past Carmen. An entire planet-worth of metal … quintillions of tons of it … all made into six-centimeter cable? Why!

"You'd better go back to your office and get busy with your preparations," he said, instinctively pulling back from what could only be futile speculation. "I'd like to get Beaeki's people down here tomorrow morning for a preliminary meeting."

She nodded and stood up. "I can be ready."

"Good. I'll let you know the time after I talk with the Rooshrike."

He glared at the desktop for a minute after she'd gone. So he and Perez were both thinking along the same lines for once, were they? An annoying thought, in some ways; but if handled properly it might enable him to take some of the wind out of the Hispanic's rhetoric. Even a brief respite would be helpful; between Perez, the UN, and the collection of alien ships overhead, Meredith was facing too many opponents as it was.

Hitching his chair closer to the terminal, the colonel keyed for the job file and began to type: SEARCH ALL AVAILABLE ALIEN LITERATURE FOR HISTORICAL

RECORDS, LEGENDS, OR MYTHS RELATING TO OTHER RACES, GODLIKE BEINGS, ETC. EMPHASIS ON ROOSHRIKE AND POM

TERRITORIES. FULL ANALYSIS REQUESTED, INCLUDING

CORRELATIONS AND COMPOSITES WHERE POSSIBLE.

Know thy enemy, the ancient dictum went … and if the Spinners had left any other trace of their passage behind, Meredith wanted to know about it.

The report was short and maddeningly uninformative, and Secretary-General Saleh slapped the last page onto his desk with a snort. "I don't suppose," he said sarcastically, "that you have any idea what these meetings with the Rooshrike are about?"

Ashur Msuya shook his head. Judging from his expression his own mood wasn't much better than Saleh's, but he knew better than to snap back at his superior.

"Nothing positive. There's been nothing like a general announcement about changes in defense arrangements or anything. It's possible they're working on a trade agreement, but the shipments that the Rooshrike landed there could equally well have been in return for the cable they made off with after the M'zarch attack."

Saleh snorted. "Oh, it's a trade agreement, all right— Allerton is moving to open up an independent pipeline to the alien marketplace."

"Or Colonel Meredith is," Msuya offered, shaking his head. "I'm not really sure whose side Meredith is on these days."

"Forget your doubts. He's an American soldier on American-claimed soil. Any rifts that appear are purely for show."

"Perhaps. But either way I submit that it's high time the UN made a move to assert its rights on Astra."

"Your economic embargo of the colony, I presume?"

Msuya nodded. "Whatever agreement Meredith—or Allerton—is setting up, the Rooshrike can't deliver food that we don't let off the Earth."

"The Americans have their own starships—"

"Which now use Ctencri drives and are supplied from the ground by Ctencri shuttles. We can cut off the flow of spare parts and fuel cylinders any time we want. It would take months or longer for them to get their older shuttle fleet back in service."

Saleh pondered. He hadn't liked this idea much when Msuya first proposed it, and he didn't like it any better now. To deliberately put his hands to the throat of a colony he himself had helped set up … but, then, it undoubtedly wouldn't come to that. The Americans would back down before they'd let their people starve.

"You're sure their own crops won't be adequate?"

"Positive. Even after harvest, crop yield analysis can be done very accurately."

"And if the Rooshrike open up a shipping route to Earth … ?" Saleh smiled and answered his own question. "We don't let them, of course. Earth is technically within Ctencri borders, and we could simply ask them to keep Rooshrike traders out. Very well; I'll put the matter before Allerton this afternoon, give him a chance to back off on his Rooshrike deal."

"Why bother? You'll just give him that much more time to prepare for the embargo."

"Because if we proceed with so drastic an action," Saleh said coldly, "I want the world community to have no doubt that it was fully justified."

And whether it actually was or not was almost incidental. That much, at least, every politician knew.

Secretary of State Joshua Purvis looked about as surprised as Allerton had ever seen him. "What Rooshrike treaties?" he asked.

Allerton shrugged helplessly. "I gather it's something Meredith has initiated on his own, for whatever reasons. We won't know for sure for at least another week, until the Pathfinder comes in. Possibly not even then."

"So what'd you tell the Lord High Secretary-General?"

"I tried to stall, of course—told him that I couldn't take any action or make any statements until I had Astra's own report on what was going on out there."

"He buy it?"

"Not really. He offered to fly a U.S. representative out in one of their new Ctencri ships to assess the situation and give any appropriate orders." Allerton paused, then picked up a piece of paper from in front of him and handed it across the desk.

"Complicating matters, I'm sure, a Ctencri ship arrived only half an hour ago and delivered this to Saleh's people. I don't suppose it improved his patience any."

Purvis scanned the paper briefly. "This is, what, the results of the Rooshrike tests on their Spinneret cable? … Holy mullah." He looked at Allerton. "This has to be a misprint, John. A billion pounds per square inch?"

"Check the footnote—that's a minimum tensile strength. Apparently even the Rooshrike weren't able to break it."

"But a billion pounds per square inch?" Purvis fumbled with his calculator. "That means … one of those cables could lift over two million tons. That's half a fully loaded supertanker."

"And don't forget it's less dense even than water, let alone normal metals,"

Allerton pointed out. "Now remember that superglue coating and its unique superconducting properties, and consider that Saleh thinks we're trying to keep all of it for ourselves."

Purvis studied the paper for another few seconds, then put it back on the President's desk. "I think," he said quietly, "that we'd better figure out right away exactly what our policy position here is—and then make sure Meredith is operating in line with it." He hesitated. "Whether we're willing to go on being unpopular with the rest of the world because of Astra is your decision, of course.

But I think that stand could use a little reevaluation."

"In other words, you think we should knuckle under to Saleh and just hand over Astra and the Spinneret to the UN?"

"I didn't say that." Purvis shrugged. "But an embargo of food to Astra would be hard if not disastrous for them, and it's only the tip of the iceberg as far as Saleh's options go. Legally, we may have some mandate rights to the Spinneret cable, but in practice as long as Saleh's got the Ctencri in his pocket he can keep us from getting a single strand of the stuff. In any real confrontation the Aurora and Pathfinder might as well be space-going tuna boats."