Page 92 of Aftershocks (Colonization 3)

“They’ll take you,” he answered.

That wasn’t quite the same thing, but it would do. “Thank you!” she said. “Oh, thank you!” She kissed him. If he’d wanted something more, she probably would have gone up to her room with him right that minute. But all he did was grin wider than ever. Dear God in heaven, she thought. I have my life back again. Now what do I do with it?

Atvar was studying the daily news reports when he came upon something of a new and different sort. He called in his adjutant for a look. “Here is something you will not see every day, Pshing,” he said.

“What is it, Exalted Fleetlord?” Pshing asked.

“Turn an eye turret this way,” Atvar answered. “Photographs-necessarily, long-distance, highly magnified photographs-of a major meteoric impact on the worthless fourth planet.”

“It looks as if a large explosive-metal bomb had hit there,” Pshing said.

“From what the astronomers say, the impact was a good deal more energetic than that,” Atvar said.

“Tosev’s solar system is an untidy place, especially compared to the one in which Home orbits,” Pshing said. “Imagine if such a rock had struck Tosev 3 instead of the worthless Tosev 4. It would have been most unfortunate, especially in or near a populated area.”

“Such bombardment is a fact of life in this solar system,” Atvar said. “Look at any of the bodies here. The only one without immediately obvious evidence of these impacts is Tosev 3, and that because it is so geologically active.”

“The atmosphere must protect this world to some degree,” Pshing said.

“No doubt. But one that size would have got through,” the fleetlord said. “And, as you remarked, the results would have been unfortunate.”

“Indeed.” Pshing made the affirmative gesture. “And now, Exalted Fleetlord, if you will excuse me…” He went back to his own desk.

After one last look at the new crater on Tosev 4, Atvar went on to other matters his staff thought worthy of his notice. Northern India was facing more and more riots as plants from Home spread through the fields there. That subregion’s climate was ideal for their propagation, and they were cutting into the Big Uglies’ food supplies-which, in that part of Tosev 3, were no better than marginal at the best of times.

It is of course necessary to make Tosev 3 as Homelike as possible, an ecologist wrote. In doing so, however, we may cause as many casualties among the Big Uglies from environmental change as we did in the course of the fighting. This is unfortunate, but appears unavoidable.

Atvar sighed. If the conquest did finally succeed, he feared historians would not look kindly upon him. If he didn’t get a sobriquet like Atvar the Brutal, he would be surprised. But he didn’t know what to do about the Tosevites in India, past suppressing their riots. He couldn’t get rid of the plants from Home now even if he wanted to. They would flourish in that subregion; it was reasonably warm and reasonably dry, and they had no natural enemies there. The local ecosystem would be transformed, and not to the Tosevites’ advantage.

He wondered if he could move some of the Big Uglies from the affected areas to those where Tosevite ecologies remained more or less intact. But no sooner had the thought crossed his mind than certain difficulties became obvious. The Tosevites of northern India might not want to be moved; Big Uglies were reactionary that way. Wherever he moved them, the current inhabitants were all too likely to prove less than welcoming. They might not have excess food, either; Tosevite agriculture was at best imperfectly efficient. And ecological change would come to many more areas of the planet, even if it hadn’t yet.

He sighed again. Some problems simply had no neat, tidy solutions. That would have been an unacceptable notion back on Home. A hundred thousand years of unified imperial history argued that the Race could solve anything. But the Big Uglies and their world presented challenges different from, and worse than, any the Race had known since the days of its ancientest history-and maybe worse than any it had known then, too.

The fleetlord went on to the next item in the daily briefing. It made him hiss in alarm. Superstitious fanatics from the main continental mass had traveled to the lesser continental mass and mounted an attack on the fortress where that maniac of a Khomeini was imprisoned.

“By the Emperor!” Atvar exclaimed, and let out yet another sigh, this one of relief, when he discovered the attack had failed. “Would that not have been a disaster-Khomeini on the loose again!” There would surely have been uprisings throughout the areas were the Muslim superstition predominated… including Cairo itself. Atvar had seen enough such disturbances-too many, in fact.

I commend the males who prevented Khomeini’s escape, he wrote. I also commend the Tosevite constabulary officials who fought side by side with our males. And I particularly commend the individual who thought to incarcerate Khomeini in a region inhabited by Big Uglies of a superstition different from his. That helped to insure the loyalty of local protective officials.

Next on the agenda was a note that, with two spaceships in the belt of minor planets, the American Tosevites were spreading rapidly and were busy at so many sites that the Race’s surveillance probes could not keep track of everything they were doing. Shall we let them continue unobserved, being more or less sure they can find no way to harm us from such a distance? the head of the surveillance effort asked. Or shall we expend the resources to continue keeping an eye turret turned in their direction?

Atvar did not hesitate. If we need more probes, we must send more probes, he wrote. The Americans sacrificed a city in preference to withdrawing from space. It follows that they expect to reap some benefit from their continued presence among these minor planets. Perhaps that benefit will be only economic. Perhaps it will be military, or they think it will. We dare not take the chance that they will prove mistaken.

His tailstump quivered with agitation he could not hide. The commission he’d appointed to study Earl Warren’s motivation had concluded that the Big Ugly had known exactly what he was doing, and had just had the misfortune-from his point of view, though not from the Race’s-to get caught. That was what Atvar had least wanted to hear. He would much rather have believed the Tosevite leader addled. That would have made Warren less dangerous. But the evidence, Atvar had to admit, was on the commission’s side.

He read on, and found more complaints from occupation officials in the Reich that the Deutsche were not turning in their surviving weapons, but were doing their best to conceal arms against a possible future uprising. That made his tailstump quiver again, this time from raw fury.

Still in the grip of that fury, he wrote, Convey to their not-emperor that their cities remain hostage to their good behavior. If they refuse to turn over weapons as they promised on their surrender, one of those cities shall cease to be as abruptly as did Indianapolis. If that fails to gain their attention, another city shall vanish. They have already hit us too hard and too often. They shall get no further chances.

An order like that would get him remembered as Atvar the Brutal, too. Back on Home, it would have been impossible. Anyone who tried to issue such an order there would be reckoned a bloodthirsty barbarian, and immediately sacked. Here on Tosev 3… Atvar didn’t even feel guilty, not a

fter everything the Deutsche had done to the Race. Here on Tosev 3, the order was simply common sense.

Only a couple of items remained. He hoped they’d prove inconsequential. A forlorn hope, he knew. Inconsequential items were dealt with at levels far lower than his. For the most part, he never found out about them. What reached him was what his subordinates, for whatever reason, felt they couldn’t handle themselves.

Sure enough, the next report had to do with China. Not least because of its long border with the SSSR and the zealots who shared the independent not-empire’s political doctrines, that subregion refused to stay pacified. The latest rumors had those zealots plotting another uprising. Whenever they tried to rise, the Race crushed them. They did not seem to believe they couldn’t win. Every so often, they would have another go at it.

Atvar was tempted to order the use of explosive-metal weapons there, too. With a certain amount of reluctance, he refrained. That would anger the SSSR, and he’d had enough trouble with the Tosevite not-empire lately. And now the Nipponese Empire had explosive-metal weapons, too, and had to be treated more circumspectly. Conventional means had sufficed to hold the lid on China thus far. They would probably keep doing so a while longer.

Before he could check the last item in the day’s briefing, Pshing called, “Exalted Fleetlord, I have Fleetlord Reffet on the telephone.”

“Tell him I am shedding my skin and cannot be disturbed,” Atvar said, but then, having mercy on his adjutant, he relented: “Put him through.” When the fleetlord of the colonization fleet appeared on the monitor, he did his best to be polite. “I greet you, Reffet. What can I do for you today?”

Politeness proved wasted. Without preamble, Reffet said, “You are surely the most arrogant, high-handed male in the history of the Race. How dare you-how dare you-unilaterally order a Soldiers’ Time and commence preparations for conscripting members of the colonization fleet into the military?”

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