Come the Revolution: Chapter Six

    We passed through a security station manned by Munies and into the chambers of the Good-Soul Counseling House. Counseling on Varoki worlds was generally what we called lawyering, although the services offered were a bit broader and usually included legislative lobbying, mediation, financial planning, and astrology.

    Varoki astrology was different from the terrestrial version, but most civilizations that start out as agricultural societies — like us and the Varoki — end up pretty interested in the seasons, moon phases, calendars, all that stuff. Early religions get built around the movement of the stars, and when more sophisticated religions displace them, the older ones turn into superstition. Superstition waxes and wanes in popularity, as near as I can tell depending upon how shitty life is. For the last dozen years it had been pretty bad for a lot of folks, and it seemed to be getting worse. The Varoki were on top of the heap and hadn’t felt the hard times right away, but they were beginning to. Trade, commerce, all that stuff just wasn’t ticking along quite as well as it used to, and it seemed like every economist had a different theory as to why it was happening and what to do about it. Some of them had two theories. I suppose that explained why astrology was a growth industry again, along with charismatic motivationalists like Gaant. It explained it psychologically, anyway. It didn’t make it any less stupid.

    The meeting room’s south wall was floor-to-ceiling composite windows overlooking the Wanu River, about twenty meters down. The water was nearly a kilometer wide here. The south wall of the arcology was almost right on the river, with just a walking path between the building foundations and the bank. A mix of commercial barge traffic and small, fast-looking private boats drew long, fading white lines of wake on the dark river surface.

    A smart surface covered the office wall opposite the river windows, with open floor space in front for holographic displays, either for presentations or remote conferencing. The smart surface was a neutral warm gray today, though. This meeting was strictly skin-time.

    <Marr, you hear me?> I sub-vocalized on my embedded commlink.

    Yes. Are you there?

    <Yeah. Nice view of the river. Not as high up as our place, though. Gaant’s full of surprises today.>

    We weren’t expecting Gaant. Does that mean trouble? She asked.

    <Probably.>

    Silence for a long moment.

    Be careful, she transmitted.

    Careful? I figured I’d already blown that by not getting back into the autopod.

    The polished stone surface of a long table down the center of the room reflected the afternoon sun just starting to emerge from rainclouds and overcast. Twelve chairs lined each side. The side nearest the dormant smart wall already held eleven expensively-dressed Varoki males, most of whom I recognized by sight even though I’d only met two of them. Three wore the ceremonial gray robes of an uBakai wattaak, while most of the rest wore colorful and expensive business suits, most of them made of shimmering metallic fabric. Our folks were, by contrast, dressed conservatively, almost austerely, in solid-color suits, gray for Gaisaana-la and The’On wearing the dark green of the field service uniform of the Executive Council’s Corps of Counselors.

    I saw Vandray e-Bomaan, the second governor of AZ Simki-Traak, whom I’d stood five feet from at several corporate functions without him ever giving an indication he recognized my existence. I was surprised to see someone that high up in the official hierarchy. Bringing him in meant they were either confident or desperate, and I had no idea which.

    A second long table backed it up with administrative staffers, also mostly male, lining it. On our side The’On and Gaisaana-la sat across from the opposition, the other ten chairs empty. Ah-Quan and I stood behind them, our backs to the giant windows. Ah-Quan and I were also the only non-Varoki in the place. The set-up, with all those bodies packing their side of the room, was clearly meant to intimidate us, show us how much combined power and expertise we were up against.

    Gaant sat down in the remaining open chair on the opposition side of the table and a Varoki seated at the head of the table spoke.

    “Ah, I am Councilor Rimcant, vice-governor of the Good-Soul Counseling House, and I have been, ah, asked by the Group of Interest to preside over this meeting. I thank all of you for agreeing to attend. I now advise everyone to power down your embedded commlinks. This is a, ah, private negotiating session and the house communication jammers will activate in thirty seconds.” He sat back and waited.

    <Jammers coming up,> I commed to Marrissa. <Have to power down.>

    I love you, she answered.

    And then I was alone with the faint background hum of the comm jammers. Jamming meant that no one would be able to communicate, of course, and also would be unable to access their float memory. Everyone had hand readers or viewers with onboard memory, loaded with whatever data they needed for the meeting. But the purpose wasn’t to limit access to information, it was to keep it private and unrecorded.

    “Mister Naradnyo, would you and your, ah, associate care to sit?” Counselor Rimcaant asked. “There are many empty chairs on your side of the table.”

    “I did not come here to sit across from a criminal,” e-Bomaan, the AZ Simki-Traak second governor, said, his ears folding back against his head. The Varoki to his left, lead counsel for the firm representing the other heirs of the e-Traak family, nodded in agreement.

    “Mister Naradnyo is not a criminal,” Gaisanaa-la said with steel in her voice, but e-Bomaan did not even glance at her.

    “That’s all right,” I said. “I’d prefer to stand.”

    “What did you come here for?” The’On asked.

    Governor e-Bomaan leaned back in his chair and made a vague hand gesture. “We came to negotiate a compromise.” I noticed he didn’t look around for approval to speak, so The’On had pegged the head guy right out of the gate, and by making it a conversation between the two of them, he’d turned this whole room-full of other folks meant to intimidate us into a bunch of spectators. He was good at this.

    “Compromise?” The’On said. “Compromise of what? Of Tweezaa e-Traak-Lotonna’s legal rights?”

    “You mean you are not willing to negotiate?” e-Bomaan shot back.

    “Please,” Mr. Rimcaant said from the head of the table, making calming gestures with his hands. “Let us, ah, proceed in a polite and orderly manner. I am sure all of us here want the same thing.”

    I looked at him and about half the heads in the room turned as well, all thinking: Want the same thing? Was he crazy? He must have noticed the reaction.

    “All of you want an end to the violence, do you not?” he said. “Whatever your goals, they were not advanced by the, ah, disturbances yesterday. Sakkatto City is not only the capital city of Bakaa, but also the economic hub of our homeworld, and the Varoki homeworld is the, ah, epicenter, yes the epicenter of all major economic activity in explored space. The Cottohazz holds its breath, waiting to see what will happen here next.”

    Well, that was a bit dramatic, I thought. Given the speed of travel and communication, even the closest other planets of the Cottohazz wouldn’t hear about this dust-up for a week, and it might be a month or more before the news spread all the way to backwaters like Earth. Then maybe people would hold their breath, but whatever was going to happen would probably be over by then. Nobody contradicted Rimcaant though, and after a pause he went on.

    “Interstellar commerce has been weakening for over five years. Capital formation has withered for three years. The continuing, ah, difficulties on K’Tok have contributed to Cottohazz-wide uncertainties. To that end, I am sure I speak for everyone here in thanking the Honorable e-Lotnaa for his fine work on K’Tok for the Cottohazz executive council.”

    The’On nodded in acknowledgement but e-Bomaan, the Simki-Traak governor, made a disgusted sound.

    “If the secret of the K’Tok and Peezgtaan ecoforms had not been revealed to the Humans,” he said, “we would have no trouble on K’Tok today.”

    The’On tilted his head to the side and spread his hands. “Secrets are revealed,” he said. “Wishing it were otherwise accomplishes nothing. Revelation is the destiny of all secrets.”

    “Not all secrets,” e-Bomaan said and exchanged a glance with the senior representative from AZ Kagataan, Simki-Traak’s biggest rival. The Kagataan governor narrowed his eyes and his ears tightened, as if in silent reproach. E-Bomaan colored slightly and shut up, leaning back in his chair.

    Now that was pretty interesting. Those two trading houses were more powerful than most governments, and they did not play well together. Two years ago they had fought a war by proxy on K’Tok, a war Tweezaa, Marr, The’On and I had been caught in the middle of. AZ Kagataan came out a big loser. But they and Simki-Traak Trans-Stellar apparently still shared a secret, and if the shellacking Kagataan took in the war hadn’t been enough to make them want to spill the beans out of spite, it must be a real corker. Marr was a Simki-Traak governor, at least nominally, but I wondered if even she knew what that was all about.

    “Capital formation,” Elaamu Gaant said from the other end of the table, making it sound like a curse. Everyone turned to him. “We formed the Group of Interest, this alliance of uneasy partners, to accomplish a goal of great ideological import, and now we talk of capital formation. What of the principles we share? Do we abandon them because of numbers posted in some money changer’s office?”

    A stir ran through the Varoki on his side of the table, surprise turning to irritation, then hostility.

    “We appreciate the assistance you provided as the, ah, go-between assembling the Group of Interest, Mister Gaant–” Counselor Rimcaant began, but e-Bomaan cut him off.

    “I knew it was a mistake allowing you to attend this meeting, Gaant,” he said. “Everything you planned has collapsed. You failed, do you understand? This is over your head now, and it is time to let those of us who understand what is at stake here make the best of the situation.”

    Gaant laughed and stood up from his chair, but not in anger. e-Bomaan had just told him he had no further say in what went on, but Gaant looked to me like a guy who still had an ace up his sleeve.

    “You have forgotten what is really at stake,” he answered, and then he turned to face me. “Sasha Naradnyo, the Honorable e-Bomaan called you a criminal earlier. All of them think of you that way. Do you have a criminal record?”

    I looked at him for a moment, now completely confused as to what this had to do with anything. “Not exactly.”

    E-Bomaan laughed, a nasty little bark, but Gaant ignored him. “What does that mean, please?”

    “I was arrested for burglary but the charge was expunged when I volunteered for a hitch with the Co-Gozhak.”

    “You fought in the Nishtaaka campaign, is that so?” Gaant asked, and when I nodded he went on. “So you have no criminal record, and according to the law itself you have met all your obligations to it. But these gentlemen all still consider you a criminal and I sense you do as well. Why?”

    “Well, I guess it has something to do with once having made my living by stealing,” I answered, but Gaant cocked his head slightly to the side and smiled.

    “I do not think so. The Honorable e-Bomaan and these others all steal, one way or another.”

    I saw a number of Varoki shift in their chairs and ears twitch over that, anger or confusion flashing across their faces and skins.

    “What does this have to do with these negotiations?” e-Bomaan demanded. The voice of Simki-Traak Trans-stellar now took on a harder edge.

    “Everything,” Gaant answered, and then he turned back to me. “You see, Sasha, these honorables have a philosophy,” he said, gesturing to e-Bomaan and the others along his side of the table, “a philosophy which assures them that they are bound by no standard of conduct except gain, and of course following the strict letter of the law. Morality and ethics are irrelevant, so long as they follow the law.

    “Their philosophy also tells them the best thing they can do for everyone on the planet is to devote their resources to removing any legal restraint on their actions, provided they follow the law as they do so. This they do by their support for wattaaks, such as the three you see here today, men who share their philosophy and work to implement it.

    “They utilize the reduced restraints to extract more money from their customers, from their workers, and from the Cottohazz itself in the form of subsidies and reduced taxes. Their philosophy tells them the satisfaction of their unbridled greed is the means for everyone in the Cottohazz to prosper, even as they systematically impoverish them.

    “Sasha, you are not a criminal because you stole. You are a criminal because you did not have a philosophy.”

    “What is the meaning of this, Gaant?” e-Bomaan demanded, rising to his feet. I was wondering the same thing, not that I was complaining “We did not come here to be insulted, or to listen to you flatter this murdering drug dealer.”

    “No,” Gaant said, “you came here to reach an arrangement with the murdering drug dealer. In order to safeguard your own profits, you came here to trade away a part of the heritage which belongs to the entire Varokiim.

    “For three hundred years you have stolen from the other races, and done so in the name of the Varokiim, and you could have done so for all eternity. Instead you stole so much from the others that they are bled dry, but the treasure must still flow, and so now you steal from the Varokiim themselves. When I was a child there were no slums between the arcs. Now you cannot see the ground for them, and most of the denizens of that place without hope are Varoki, not the other races. That is your legacy! But that stops here. It stops today.”

    “What are you blathering. . .?” e-Bomaan started but then faltered. Everyone in the room froze for a moment. Gaant had made a signal to someone, a slight raising of his hand, and suddenly the soft background hum of the local jammer was gone from my ears. I immediately squinted up the access to our local float nexus in Prahaa-Riz and set up a full-feed recording of my audio and visual input, and locked a coded channel. I snapped to it before the bandwidth got swamped once everyone else in the room figured out what was happening. I must have beaten most of them to the draw because I got my channel up and running. From here on everything that I saw and heard would be out there on the float memory, and as far as I knew nobody was good enough to hunt down all those threads and erase them.

    Since that was all done with eye movement and pressure, my mind and eyes weren’t on the room. As I looked up Gaant gestured again and the wide double doors to the conference room opened. First the jammers, then the door. Whatever cult Gaant was peddling with himself as a leader, obviously someone at the counseling house was on board.

    The crowd we saw earlier in the atrium started shuffling in — hundreds of them, silent but curious. Some craned their necks, taking in the occupants of the room and the rich, elegant simplicity of its fixtures. Most of them watched Gaant the way I imagined people look at their messiah.