Caliban’s War

Chapter Five: Avasarala

Chrisjen Avasarala, assistant to the undersecretary of executive administration, sat near the end of the table. Her sari was orange, the only splash of color in the otherwise military blue-and-gray of the meeting. The seven others with seats at the table were the heads of their respective branches of the United Nations military forces, all of them men. She knew their names, their career paths and psychological profiles, pay rates and political alliances and who they were sleeping with. Against the back wall, personal assistants and staff pages stood in uncomfortable stillness, like the shy teenagers at a dance. Avasarala snuck a pistachio out of her purse, cracked the shell discreetly, and popped the salted nut into her mouth.

“Any meeting with Martian command is going to have to wait until after the situation on Ganymede is stabilized. Official diplomatic talks before then are only going to make it seem like we’ve accepted the new status quo.” That was Admiral Nguyen, youngest of the men present. Hawkish. Impressed with himself in the way that successful young men tended to be.

General Adiki-Sandoval nodded his bull-wide head.

“Agreed. It’s not just Mars we need to think about here. If we start looking weak to the Outer Planets Alliance, you can count on a spike in terrorist activity.”

Mikel Agee, from the diplomatic corps, leaned back on his chair and licked his lips anxiously. His slicked-back hair and pinched face made him look like an anthropomorphic rat.

“Gentlemen, I have to disagree—”

“Of course you do,” General Nettleford said dryly. Agee ignored him.

“Meeting with Mars at this point is a necessary first step. If we start throwing around preconditions and obstacles, not only is this process going to take longer, but the chances for renewed hostilities go up. If we can take the pressure off, blow off some steam—”

Admiral Nguyen nodded, his face expressionless. When he spoke, his tone was conversational.

“You guys over at Dip have any metaphors more recent than the steam engine?”

Avasarala chuckled with the others. She didn’t think much of Agee either.

“Mars has already escalated,” General Nettleford said. “Seems to me our best move at this point is to pull the Seventh back from Ceres Station. Get them burning. Put a ticking clock on the wall, then see if the Martians want to stand back on Ganymede.”

“Are you talking about moving them to the Jovian system?” Nguyen asked. “Or are you taking them in toward Mars?”

“Taking something in toward Earth looks a lot like taking it in toward Mars,” Nettleford said.

Avasarala cleared her throat.

“Do you have anything new on the initial attacker?” she asked.

“The tech guys are working on it,” Nettleford said. “But that makes my point. If Mars is testing out new technologies on Ganymede, we can’t afford to let them control the tempo. We have to get a threat of our own on the board.”

“It was the protomolecule, though?” Agee asked. “I mean, it was whatever was on Eros when it went down?”

“Working on that,” Nettleford said again, biting at the words a little. “There are some gross similarities, but there’s some basic differences too. It didn’t spread the way it did on Eros. Ganymede isn’t changing the way the population of Eros did. From the satellite imagery we’ve got, it looks like it went to Martian territory and either self-destructed or was disposed of by their side. If it’s related to Eros at all, it’s been refined.”

“So Mars got a sample and weaponized it,” Admiral Souther said. He didn’t talk much. Avasarala always forgot how high his voice was.

“One possibility,” Nettleford said. “One very strong possibility.”

“Look,” Nguyen said with a self-satisfied little smile, like a child who knew he was going to get his way. “I know we’ve taken first strike off the table here, but we need to talk about what the limits are on immediate response. If this was a dry run for something bigger, waiting may be as good as walking out an airlock.”

“We should take the meeting with Mars,” Avasarala said.

The room went quiet. Nguyen’s face darkened.

“Is that…” he said, but never finished the sentence. Avasarala watched the men look at each other. She took another pistachio from her purse, ate the meat, and tucked the shells away. Agee tried not to look pleased. She really did need to find out who had pulled strings to have him represent the diplomatic corps. He was a terrible choice.

“Security’s going to be a problem,” Nettleford said. “We’re not letting any of their ships inside our effective defense perimeter.”

“Well, we can’t have it on their terms. If we’re going to do this, we want them here, where we control the ground.”

“Park them a safe distance away, and have our transports pick them up?”

“They’ll never agree to that.”

“So let’s find out what they will agree to.”

Avasarala quietly stood up and headed for the door. Her personal assistant—a European boy named Soren Cottwald—detached himself from the back wall and followed her. The generals pretended not to notice her exit, or maybe they were so wrapped up in the new set of problems she’d handed them, they really didn’t. Either way, she was sure they were as pleased to have her out as she was to leave.

The hallways of the United Nations complex in the Hague were clean and wide, the décor a soft style that made everything look like a museum diorama of Portuguese colonies in the 1940s. She paused at an organics recycling unit and started digging the shells out of her bag.

“What’s next?” she asked.

“Debriefing with Mr. Errinwright.”

“After that?”

“Meeston Gravis about the Afghanistan problem.”

“Cancel it.”

“What should I tell him?”

Avasarala dusted her hands over the waste container, then turned, walking briskly toward the central commons and the elevators.

“Fuck him,” she said. “Tell him the Afghanis have been resisting external rule since before my ancestors were kicking out the British. As soon as I figure out how to change that, I’ll let him know.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I also need an updated summary paper on Venus. The latest. And I don’t have time to get another PhD to read it, so if it’s not in clear, concise language, fire the sonofabitch and get someone who knows how to write.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The elevator that rose from the common lobby and meeting rooms up to the offices glittered like spun diamond set in steel and was big enough to seat dinner for four. It recognized them as they stepped in, and began its careful rise through the levels. Outside the windows of the common areas, the Binnenhof seemed to sink and the huge anthill of buildings that was the Hague spread out under a perfect blue sky. It was springtime, and the snow that had touched the city since December was finally gone. The pigeons swirled up from the streets far below. There were thirty billion people on the planet, but they would never crowd out the pigeons.

“They’re all fucking men,” she said.

“Excuse me?” Soren said.

“The generals. They’re all fucking men.”

“I thought Souther was the only—”

“I don’t mean that they all fuck men. I mean they’re all men, the fuckers. How long has it been since a woman was in charge of the armed forces? Not since I came here. So instead, we wind up with another example of what happens to policy when there’s too much testosterone in the room. That reminds me: Get in touch with Annette Rabbir in infrastructure. I don’t trust Nguyen. If traffic starts going up between him and anyone in the general assembly, I want to know it.”

Soren cleared his throat.

“Excuse me, ma’am. Did you just instruct me to spy on Admiral Nguyen?”

“No, I just asked for a comprehensive audit of all network traffic, and I don’t give a fuck about any results besides Nguyen’s office.”

“Of course. My mistake.”

The elevator rose past the windows, past the view of the city, and into the dark shaft of the private-office levels. Avasarala cracked her knuckles.

“Just in case, though,” she said, “do it on your own initiative.”

“Yes, ma’am. That was my thought too.”

To those who knew Avasarala only by reputation, her office was deceptively unassuming. It was on the east side of the building, where the lower-ranked officials usually started out. She had a window looking out over the city, but not a corner. The video screen that took up most of the southern wall was left off when it wasn’t in active use, leaving it matte black. The other walls were scuffed bamboo paneling. The carpet was industrially short and patterned to hide stains. The only decorations were a small shrine with a clay sculpture of the Gautama Buddha beside the desk, and a cut crystal vase with the flowers that her husband, Arjun, sent every Thursday. The place smelled like fresh blooms and old pipe smoke, though Avasarala had never smoked there and didn’t know anyone who had. She walked to the window. Beneath her, the city spread out in vast concrete and ancient stone.

In the darkening sky, Venus burned.

In the twelve years she had been at this desk, in this room, everything had changed. The alliance between Earth and its upstart brother had been an eternal, unshakable thing once. The Belt had been an annoyance and a haven for tiny cells of renegades and troublemakers as likely to die of a ship malfunction as to be called to justice. Humanity had been alone in the universe.

And then the secret discovery that Phoebe, idiosyncratic moon of Saturn, had been an alien weapon, launched at earth when life here was hardly more than an interesting idea wrapped in a lipid bilayer. How could anything be the same after that?

And yet it was. Yes, Earth and Mars were still unsure whether they were permanent allies or deadly enemies. Yes, the OPA, Hezbollah of the vacuum, was on its way to being a real political force in the outer planets. Yes, the thing that had been meant to reshape the primitive biosphere of Earth had instead ridden a rogue asteroid down into the clouds of Venus and started doing no one knew what.

But the spring still came. The election cycle still rose and fell. The evening star still lit the indigo heavens, outshining even the greatest cities of Earth.

Other days, she found that reassuring.

“Mr. Errinwright,” Soren said.

Avasarala turned to the dead screen on her wall as it came to life. Sadavir Errinwright was darker skinned than she was, his face round and soft. It would have been in place anywhere in the Punjab, but his voice affected the cool, analytic amusement of Britain. He wore a dark suit and a smart, narrow tie. Wherever he was, it was bright daylight behind him. The link kept fluttering, trying to balance the bright with the dark, leaving him a shadow in a government office or else a man haloed by light.

“Your meeting went well, I hope?”

“It was fine,” she said. “We’re moving ahead with the Martian summit. They’re working out the security arrangements now.”

“That was the consensus?”

“Once I told them it was, yes. The Martians are sending their top men to a meeting with officials of the United Nations to personally deliver their apology and discuss how to normalize relations and return Ganymede to blah blah blah. Yes?”

Errinwright scratched his chin.

“I’m not sure that’s how our opposites on Mars see it,” he said.

“Then they can protest. We’ll send out dueling press releases and threaten to cancel the meeting right up to the last minute. High drama is wonderful. It’s better than wonderful; it’s distracting. Just don’t let the bobble-head talk about Venus or Eros.”

His flinch was almost subliminal.

“Please, can we not refer to the secretary-general as ‘the bobble-head’?”

“Why not? He knows I do. I say it to his face, and he doesn’t mind.”

“He thinks you’re joking.”

“That’s because he’s a fucking bobble-head. Don’t let him talk about Venus.”

“And the footage?”

It was a fair question. Whatever had made its attack on Ganymede, it had started in the area held by the United Nations. If the back-channel chatter was to be trusted—and it wasn’t—Mars had a lone marine’s suit camera. Avasarala had seven minutes of high-definition video from forty different cameras of the thing slaughtering the best people Earth had standing for it. Even if the Martians could be convinced to keep it quiet, this was going to be hard to bury.

“Give me until the meeting,” Avasarala said. “Let me see what they say and how they say it. Then I’ll know what to do. If it’s a Martian weapon, they’ll show it by what they bring to the table.”

“I see,” Errinwright said slowly. Meaning he didn’t.

“Sir, with all respect,” she said, “for the time being, this needs to be something between Earth and Mars.”

“High drama between the two major military forces in the system is what we want? How exactly do you see that?”

“I got an alert from Michael-Jon de Uturbé about increased activity on Venus at the same time the shooting started on Ganymede. It wasn’t a big spike, but it was there. And Venus getting restless just when something happens that looks a damn lot like the protomolecule showed up on Ganymede? That’s a problem.”

She let that sink in for a moment before she went on. Errinwright’s eyes shifted, like he was reading in the air. It was something he did when he was thinking hard.

“Saber rattling we’ve done before,” she said. “We’ve survived it. It’s a known quantity. I have a binder with nine hundred pages of analysis and contingency plans for conflict with Mars, including fourteen different scenarios about what we do if they develop an unexpected new technology. The binder for what we do if something comes up from Venus? It’s three pages long, and it begins Step One: Find God.”

Errinwright looked sober. She could hear Soren behind her, a different and more anxious silence than he usually carried. She’d laid her fear out on the table.

“Three options,” she said softly. “One: Mars made it. That’s just war. We can handle that. Two: Someone else made it. Unpleasant and dangerous, but solvable. Three: It made itself. And we don’t have anything.”

“You’re going to put more pages in your thin binder?” Errinwright said. He sounded flippant. He wasn’t.

“No, sir. I’m going to find out which of the three we’re looking at. If it’s one of the first two, I’ll solve the problem.”

“And if the third?”

“Retire,” she said. “Let you put some other idiot in charge.”

Errinwright had known her long enough to hear the joke in her voice. He smiled and tugged absently at his tie. It was a tell of his. He was as anxious as she was. No one who didn’t know him would have seen it.

“That’s a tightrope. We can’t let the conflict on Ganymede become too heated.”

“I’ll keep it a sideshow,” Avasarala said. “No one starts a war unless I say they can.”

“You mean unless the secretary-general issues the executive decision and the general assembly casts an affirming vote.”

“And I’ll tell him when he can do that,” she said. “But you can give him the news. Hearing it from an old grandma like me makes his dick shrink.”

“Well, we can’t have that, certainly. Let me know what you find. I’ll speak with the speech-writing staff and make certain that the text of his announcement doesn’t color outside the lines.”

“And anyone who leaks the video of the attack answers to me,” she said.

“Anyone who leaks it is guilty of treason and will be tried before a legitimate tribunal and sent to the Lunar Penal Colony for life.”

“Close enough.”

“Don’t be a stranger, Chrisjen. We’re in difficult times. The fewer surprises, the better.”

“Yes, sir,” she said. The link died. The screen went dark. She could see herself in it as a smudge of orange topped by the gray of her hair. Soren was a blur of khaki and white.

“You need more work?”

“No, ma’am.”

“So get the fuck out.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She heard his footsteps retreating behind her.

“Soren!”

“Ma’am?”

“Get me a list of everyone who testified at the Eros incident hearings. And run what they said in testimony past the neuropsych analysts if it hasn’t already been.”

“Would you like the transcripts?”

“Yes, that too.”

“I’ll have them to you as soon as possible.”

The door closed behind him, and Avasarala sank into her chair. Her feet hurt, and the presentiment of a headache that had haunted her since morning was stepping forward, clearing its throat. The Buddha smiled serenely, and she chuckled at him, as if sharing a private joke. She wanted to go home, to sit on her porch and listen to Arjun practice his piano.

And instead…

She used her hand terminal rather than the office system to call Arjun. It was a superstitious urge that made her want to keep them separate, even in ways as small as this. He picked up the connection at once. His face was angular, the close-cut beard almost entirely white now. The merriness in his eyes was always there, even when he wept. Just looking at him, she felt something in her breast relax.

“I’m going to be late coming home,” she said, immediately regretting the matter-of-fact tone. Arjun nodded.

“I am shocked beyond words,” he said. Even the man’s sarcasm was gentle. “The mask is heavy today?”

The mask, he called it. As if the person she was when she faced the world was the false one, and the one who spoke to him or played painting games with her granddaughters was authentic. She thought he was wrong, but the fiction was so comforting she had always played along.

“Today, very heavy. What are you doing now, love?”

“Reading Kukurri’s thesis draft. It needs work.”

“Are you in your office?”

“Yes.”

“You should go to the garden,” she said.

“Because that’s where you want to be? We can go together when you’re home.”

She sighed.

“I may be very late,” she said.

“Wake me, and we can go then.”

She touched the screen, and he grinned as if he’d felt the caress. She cut the connection. By long habit, they didn’t tell each other goodbye. It was one of a thousand small personal idioms that grew from decades of marriage.

Avasarala turned to her desk system, pulling up the tactical analysis of the battle on Ganymede, the intelligence profiles of the major military figures within Mars, and the master schedule for the meeting, already half filled in by the generals in the time since her conference. She took a pistachio from her purse, cracked its shell, and let the raw information wash over her, her mind dancing through it. In the window behind her, other stars struggled through the light pollution of the Hague, but Venus was still the brightest.