The Ethos Effect, page 34
“A retired RSF commodore?” Van took a last spoonful of the soup.
“I would judge that as a retired black Taran RSF commodore you are probably in a far better position with IIS than you would be remaining in the Republic.”
“You think that... the acceptance of diversity... within the Republic...?” Van left the question open-ended on purpose.
“The Republic has pushed a great deal of resources into expanding the RSF, and that has taken a toll on the economy. Economic unrest translates into social unrest—” Marti stopped as the server appeared and removed the soups, replacing them with the main course—and a new wineglass filled with an almost colorless vintage for Marti and a fresh pale ale for Van, although he had drunk less than half of the first glass.
Neither man spoke for several minutes, and Van did enjoy the pringhorn, a taste similar to veal, but delicately smokier, with hints of scores of other flavors, perhaps because of the marinade.
“What do you know of Director Desoll?” asked Marti.
“He looks like, acts like, and admits that he was a former Coalition commander. He has kept his word scrupulously in any dealing I’ve observed, and that has been reinforced by observations, records, and by the statements of dozens of others.”
“His honesty is unquestioned. He is also an excellent pilot, perhaps better than any living pilot in the Arm.”
“That is saying a great deal,” Van pointed out.
“It is.” Marti frowned. “His honesty troubles me greatly— that is, the degree of his honesty. Only saints or madmen are so honest, and I cannot believe he is a saint. That is perhaps because there have been a number of unexplained disappearances of Revenant vessels, almost always when his ship has been in that quadrant.” The general shrugged. “Sheer coincidence, I must say.”
“What else could one say?” Van agreed. “But he certainly doesn’t act like a madman.”
“Such ones do not.” Marti paused. “There is another problem. The Coalition retirement records go back over a century— those that are open to the public. There is no record of a Trystin Desoll. Yet he is clearly a military pilot. One cannot mistake it.”
Van could see where Marti was going. “So... if he is telling the truth, he wasn’t a Coalition pilot, or he was a pilot more than a hundred years ago? Or he’s not telling the truth?”
“I fear he is telling the truth.”
“You think he’s one of the handful of immortals?” Van had always thought that tales of such individuals were rumors, or wild speculation.
“Who knows?” Marti shrugged, then laughed. “If I said that, who would believe it? Besides, you must make your own judgments, and you, my friend, have very good judgment.”
Van wasn’t so sure of that.
“You must try the flan. There is nothing like it anywhere else.”
Van did try the flan, and it was excellent. He wasn’t sure it was that unique.
Marti offered more witty sayings, good wishes, and observations about Neuquen, but nothing more about Trystin Desoll or IIS. Or the RSF.
After leaving the general outside The View, as Van walked back to the maintenance lock that held the Joyau, Van had the definite impression that the general had conveyed what he had intended. What Van didn’t know was why. Marti had not seemed to think that Desoll posed a threat to the Argenti, and his actions seemed to convey a tacit support for IIS.
Still, Van would ask Eri to double-check the shield generators once again—and everything around them. And he had to write a report for Trystin on everything he’d observed in the various systems. He wouldn’t mention what happened—just the Revenant presence and military and economic actions.
Chapter 55
The Elsin was waiting beyond the orbit of Dhannar—the eighth planet of the Kush system—when the Joyau flashed out of jump. It was a good hour later before the two locked together, and Trystin joined Van in the commander’s stateroom of the Joyau.
Recalling Marti’s speculations, Van couldn’t help but study the older man closely as he seated himself in the armchair. Trystin looked perhaps ten years older than Van, certainly not forty or fifty years older, and his carriage was that of a young man.
“I’m here.” Trystin smiled. “Knowing you, you wouldn’t have asked for the meeting unless you were very concerned.”
“I am. It started on Korvel. Sherren Myller... she’d requested a visit.”
“I recall. I handed that off to you.”
“She was worried about a unique problem, and one she didn’t want to spell out in a message that anyone else could read. There was a tremendous influx of credits...” Van went on to detail what he had found and done in Korvel, Islyn, and Beldora systems. “... I wrote up what we observed, but not what we did.” He extended the datacard. “It’s all there.”
Taking the datacard, Trystin nodded slowly, as if he had expected what Van had told him.
“You’re not that surprised,” Van said.
“I am, and I’m not. I’d like to hear what you think, first.”
Van looked at Trystin. “I can see what’s happening. It’s painfully obvious. The Revs have forsaken outright military conquest in favor of a sort of borderline military action. To begin with, they weaken a system—one way or another— then flood the local economy with credit and set up new businesses or take over old ones. They often take huge losses to gain market share. They begin an effort to undermine the local political structure. I’d guess, but I don’t know, that they use their church as an example of a pillar of stability, and they probably do all sorts of good and humanitarian works... and appeal to people’s need for simplicity in an unsettled time—even when they’re creating the unsettling...”
“That’s a fairly accurate analysis,” Trystin conceded. “They’ve been operating that way for years.”
“And you’re trying to use IIS to slow or stop them?”
“IIS wasn’t created as a quasi-military force to oppose the Revenants.”
“Not military, but isn’t opposing them a large part of what we’re doing? We’re trying to strengthen the local multis competing against the Rev-backed takeovers.”
“IIS was designed to use economics, information, and systems expertise to strengthen local economic institutions and to guide them into patterns for long-term success.” Trystin shifted his weight in the chair. “Long-term is a vital part of what we do. Human beings are still genetically programmed or patterned to look at life in economic terms. Everything we do has economic overtones, and yet most people still want to deny that I’m oversimplifying enormously, but there are essentially two economic outlooks, again dating from our ancient roots. One is the ‘big kill’ view, and the other is the ‘gatherer’ view. The big kill literally comes from that kind of hunting outlook. You kill the biggest game animals possible, and then you use everything from that kill for as long as you can. Some ancient humans went after enormous animals— mastodons, bison—creatures that could destroy a single individual. Others were more gatherers, and later, farmers, gleaning bit by bit, planning. Of course, in some cultures, farmers again went after the big kill in terms of a massive harvest of a single profitable crop—monoculture in the extreme. What does this have to do with us—and IIS? The big kill philosophy doesn’t work over time. It doesn’t work socially or economically. Steady managed returns work far better, and economic organizations that can develop that kind of approach actually produce higher profits and better products over time. They also instill more personal discipline. But they almost never produce huge windfalls, and there’s always someone out there who tries to convince people that the big kill is better.” Trystin laughed. “It is better—for the head hunter, if you will, and for a few of those just under the head-hunter. But not for most people and most societies.”
Van could understand that, but he wondered. “Where do the Revs fit into your analysis?”
“Oh ... that’s simple, if you think about organized belief systems in economic terms. The Revs are the religious equivalent of the ‘big kill’ approach. You believe in this one oversimplified system, do what the headhunter—the deity—and his mortal high hunters say, and you will be rewarded with the big kill—paradise in the afterlife, and for those especially privileged in the here and now. The other aspect of this approach is that it also thrives on chaos. The more disrupted things get, the more humans want security and simple answers, and the big kill offers that. No, you don’t have to discipline yourself. You don’t have to sort out the moral ambiguities of life, the cases where things don’t fit in neat little cubes. You don’t have to work hard at all the little things along the way. All you have to do is believe and follow directions, and security and paradise are yours.” He snorted.
Van hadn’t quite thought of it that way.
“The Revenants have always had a habit of portraying themselves as a family-oriented, God-fearing, and moral people,” Trystin went on, “even while using every technique that they can get away with to expand their territory and economic power. They bow to superior force, claiming morality and ethics, and then subvert or annex as many independent systems as possible. Those efforts have gone on for years. The larger political entities—the Coalition, the Argenti Commonocracy, the Hyndji Commonality—have looked the other way most of the time, because they didn’t want a repeat of economic and social costs of the Eco-Tech-Revenant War. This has encouraged the Revenants to keep expanding, especially in more recent years. IIS has done what it can to discourage that sort of thing, but we don’t have the resources, even leveraging them through economic efforts, to do more than slow things down, and really only where the systems themselves need and want assistance. Some systems don’t have enough integrity to resist. And there’s always the danger that other systems will see the apparent short-term success of the Revenants and decide to follow that path as well. That’s at least as big a danger as the Revenant expansion.”
Unfortunately, what Trystin said made sense to Van, perhaps too much sense. “So the Revs are creating economic and social chaos, and you’re using IIS to create order to stop them? And to offer an alternative to other systems?”
“The alternative, yes. But as for stopping them...” Trystin shook his head, sadly. “It isn’t working that way. We’ve been trying to create islands of order to give examples to people, to show them in practice that true virtue, if you will, has practical and economic rewards.”
“And we’re not above giving true virtue a little hand with a few torps now and then?”
“In the ancient days some marshal once remarked that virtue was on the side with the biggest battalions. Virtue doesn’t have a chance among humans if it’s without defenses. Most of us have great difficulty resisting the allure of the big kill. Throughout history, humans have succumbed to that— wasting billions on lotteries where but one person out of hundreds of millions could win, arming themselves abruptly for massive conflicts, then disarming as quickly and losing the peace.” Trystin stood and stretched. “IIS does what it can. That’s why we’re a foundation and not a multi.”
“You make it sound...”
“Almost hopeless?” An ironic smile crossed the face of the older man. “No. It’s far from hopeless. Look at how many systems have adopted the steady gatherer approach. It just seems hopeless at times, I think, because you can’t quantify our successes in the way you can a big kill success. They can trumpet a big kill, while the most we can do is to set up organizations and institutions that spread the ethical approach through economic and political success.”
“And destroying Revenant warships isn’t a big kill?” questioned Van.
“No. We don’t tell anyone, and that means no bragging rights. When we can, and it isn’t that often, we remove forces that would instill the big kill in more system cultures.”
“I hope we’re not secretly building a planet-sized dreadnought somewhere to destroy some larger aspect of that big kill,” Van said dryly.
“No dreadnoughts.” Trystin laughed. “They’d be a terrible waste of resources.” After a pause, he added, “In the end, though, it’s a matter of personal ethics. If you don’t chart a course based on ethics, then you’re for sale to the highest bidder—or the most insistent one. That goes for me, and it goes for you.” He smiled. “I make it easy. I demand you act ethically and pay you for it. Except it doesn’t really work that way. You can’t demand ethical behavior from people who have to exercise initiative. You can only reward it, or punish them for its absence. That’s true of cultures as well. They can be punished, except most other cultures avoid it, which is often regrettable.”
“Speaking of cultures... can we do anything more about Beldora?” Van asked, trying to change the subject. Although he tried to act as he thought ethics required, talking about the subject disturbed him.
“You handled that well,” Trystin said.
“The Revenants will be back. They may be back already. Unless that coded message brings in Hyndji ships. I made a copy for you to look at I couldn’t break the encryption.”
“IIS Cambria can, but it’s doubtless a plea for aid from the Hyndjis. The Coalition won’t do anything. Beldora’s out of the way. It might be considered a jumping-off point toward the inward edge of Hyndji territory.”
“Do you think the Hyndjis will respond?”
Trystin shrugged. “I don’t know. They’re almost as reluctant as the Eco-Techs. They’d rather avoid conflict. They might look into it if Beldora would accept a protectorate or something.”
“Would the Beldorans accept that kind of arrangement?”
“Given the alternatives?” Trystin looked hard at Van.
Van gave a wry smile. After a moment, he added, “We blew the secondary shield generator in Beldora, and overstrained the primary. I had them replaced at Neuquen orbit control. General Marti was there. He’s now a deputy commander of the region. He sent us cruiser generators— unasked for.”
“He knows IIS. It’s easier on them to make sure we’ve got good equipment.”
“He knows you as well. He said you were the best pilot in the Arm. And the oldest.” Van grinned. “It sounds like he knows you well—or about you.”
“About, I’d judge. I can’t recall meeting the man, but it’s no secret that Argenti intelligence has been tracking IIS for years.” Trystin laughed. “Most of them would like to do more of what we’ve done to the Revenants, but the Montaje doesn’t want a shooting war. Not one out in the open, anyway.”
Van decided against pressing that issue too hard. Not yet, anyway. “So what am I supposed to do? Keep trying to expand IIS operations where we can? Close down operations and get out as much in assets as I can in places like Islyn?”
“That’s what we’ve done for years. Do you have a better idea? We can’t build a fleet, you know?”
“Not any bigger than we have now,” Van countered. “I still have the feeling that the Revenants are undoing more than we’re doing—more than all the rest of the Arm is doing.”
“At the moment, it looks that way,” Trystin admitted. “But things will change.”
Van wasn’t sure about that, but Trystin had been at it far longer than Van had. “Did you ever get any more information on what caused the Scandyan mess—and are they still leaning toward the Revs?”
“There really hasn’t been anything new since you took over the Joyau. The credits and the clones went back to the Revenants. They denied it, and there was no real way to prove it was more than the excess of a single diplomat.” The older man’s tone was highly ironic.
“The excess of a single diplomat? And everyone accepts that?”
“Publicly. If they don’t, they either have to start a war or admit that they’ll let the Revenants take over anything that doesn’t belong to major powers. That would make independent systems and lesser powers very uneasy.”
“Like the Keltyr and the Republic? They already know that.”
“Of course. That was one reason why they retired you.”
One reason? “What were the others?”
“You have been effective, when most RSF officers were not, and you are not a holo-perfect RSF officer, and your skin is darker than they’d like. You probably were on the edge of discovering something else, or they thought you were, and, because you weren’t one of those being groomed for higher office, they had to find an honorable way to get rid of you.”
“Honorable? Murder is honorable?”
“Nonsense. You would have suffered a heart attack, brought on by your injuries, and you would have had a most honorable funeral and memorial service.”
Van laughed, not humorously. “What was I about to discover?”
“I have no idea. You do realize, however, that you are the sole survivor of the Fergus and that encounter off Scandya?”
Van had realized that, but what significance did that have? Were his nightmares trying to tell him something? What?
“You won’t find out unless you find a way to look into RSF headquarters, and going into the Republic could still be dangerous. Very dangerous.”
“I could use the Argenti registration and the identity as Viano Alberto,” Van suggested.
“You could. Think about it for a while. If you want to, you might visit some of the outlying IIS offices in the Republic first, places like Weathe, Korkenny, Wexland.”
There was something about Weathe. Van tried to recall why Weathe would mean something particular to him, but couldn’t recall what that might be. “The RSF doesn’t know I’m working for IIS.”
“Probably not. If you use the alternate identity for the Joyau, and don’t hit New Oisin until later, the local RSF commanders may report the visits as routine, if they bother at all.”
“You could...”
“I couldn’t. First, I don’t know the culture as well as you do. Second, I’m involved in this energy transfer technology project, and I can’t leave it for long right now. The timing is getting critical.”
