Man O' War, стр. 11

Carri sat back in his chair, not commenting. His face glazed over in a cold, hard set.

"It was a corpor/national wanting to start a war—itching to kill people in the name of securing a better third quarter. I couldn't let it happen."

The senator continued to sit back, doing nothing but staring forward. Frustrated, Hawkes added, "Damn it, Mick, I told you not to send me. I told you what would happen."

"Oh, now there's a good excuse. 'I didn't want to do my job the way I was supposed to. I told you I wouldn't.' What do you want from me, Ben?" asked Carri, taking another bite of his sandwich. Still chewing, he said, "The people said, 'Send Hawkes.' And they said it loud enough that for once we had to give them what they wanted. I'm not an idiot. I knew what you were going to do. But I didn't have a choice. So I sent you and then threatened and fought with you on a regular basis to try and keep you in line. When they come to grill my ass black and bleeding, you will attest to the fact that I did try, won't you?"

Hawkes thought back over the blistering arguments he and Carri had had during the conference. He had been kept under constant pressure, every day, and most nights, hounded by the senator and his people to relent and throw the game to Deutcher.

"Oh, yes, you tried."

"Yes. Tried and lost. For then. But this is now. I won't ask if you have anything you want to say in your own defense, because frankly, I don't give a damn."

All right, thought the ambassador, actually relaxing somewhat now that Carri was getting to whatever he had planned on getting to all along. Here it comes.

"Oh. . . yes?"

"And don't take that tone with me. Damn it, Ben, you like honesty, okay, fine . . . I'll give you honesty," the senator lied carefully. Letting his true anger come forth, he growled, "I swear to you right now, if I could afford to have you cut up into fish bait and dropped in the river, you'd be there before dinner." Carri used a free finger to press together crumbs that had fallen from his sandwich. Licking them off his finger, he said, "But, you miserable fuck—I can't."

Hawkes sat forward, his mind racing. What was his opponent playing at? So far the senator had been wearing the mask of a hurt friend. He had even bothered to drag in the truth. But the ambassador had been certain it was all just a buildup toward his dismissal.

What's going on? he wondered. What in God's name could you want from me now, Mick?

Without any further hesitation, the senator told him.

4

"WE'VE GOT BIG TROUBLES, BEN," CARRI STARTED.

Sucking his anger back down, he laid out his problem to Hawkes.

"From what I've gathered so far, there's a potential for riots brewing, illegal strikes. I have rumors of people being killed, children pressed into forced labor, contracts broken. We're looking at threatened disruption of the world's food supplies—possible work stoppage on the processing of a hundred different alloys, rare earths, and the such that would cripple a thousand different industries."

"Wait a minute, Mick," said Hawkes, afraid of the direction he thought the senator was taking. "What are you talking about?"

"We need you to negotiate a settlement in a spot so hot that no one's even going to come to the table unless everybody thinks they've got someone in the middle they can trust."

"Who is this everybody?"

"The upper management, officers, staffers, and workers of Red Planet, Inc." As Benton Hawkes's eyes grew wide, Mick Carri reached for his apple.

"That's right," he said, holding the dark scarlet piece of fruit a few inches from his mouth. "We want you to assume the governorship of Mars."

"What?" Hawkes's voice sank to a whisper. He could not have been more surprised if the senator had suddenly melted down into a pool of jelly or sprouted flowers from the ends of his fingers. As the ambassador stared in dumbfounded amazement, Carri went on: "We need you to head out to Mars as soon as possible. We don't know what to expect for sure, but we know there's going to be trouble—probably bloodshed—if we don't move fast to cork it."

"Now wait a minute . . ."

"Don't worry," the senator growled. "You'll have complete autonomy. We've got no time to play politics with this one. It's too big."

"That's not what I meant," answered the ambassador. "I don't want to go to Mars."

"Who does?" countered Carri. "But that's not the point, is it? That's where you're needed, so that's where you're being sent."

"No, you don't understand," explained Hawkes, dancing his way through the minefield the senator was laying out. "I refuse to go. The grand race to get to the stars is what killed my father. I swore decades ago I'd never set foot off-planet."

Carri returned to the tactic of folding his arms across his chest and silently staring, forcing Hawkes to keep talking. The ambassador had no difficulty in continuing.

"Everyone in the corps knows that. You know that, Mick. You know it. You can punish me any way you like—go ahead. Go ahead. But I'm not going to Mars."

The senator maintained his silent stare. Hawkes kept on rolling.

"I'm not. Strip my power, take my job, take my pension, do whatever you want. I'm not going. And you don't have anything in your stockpile of fast answers that's going to change my mind."

"You don't mind if I try, do you, Ben?"

"Of course I do. I don't want to be convinced. You've got a thousand other people you could send to Mars."

"Not like you," answered Carri. His smile grew wide. "Not like Benton Hawkes, the man who turns against the wishes of his own government to side with the little guy . . . the man who always tells it like it is . . . who averts world wars for