These other aircraft came from the same cities as the news reporters. Their mission, however, was not to observe. It was to inform. Every one of them was equipped with powerful loudspeakers, and each loudspeaker was manned by a former North Korean refugee. Each of them circled over the towns and neighborhoods they had come from, and each speaker introduced himself by name as he repeated his (or her) four-part message:
“The reign of the so-called Adorable Leader is over. He will be tried for the crimes of betraying, mistreating, and starving a whole generation of our people.
“The North Korean army is now disbanded. It serves no useful purpose. No one is going to attack you. And all soldiers are now free to return to their homes and resume their peacetime occupations.
“Ample supplies of food and other necessities are on their way to you right now. Every one of you, from this day forward, is guaranteed, for life, a diet adequate for health and growth.
“Finally, you now will have the right to choose by secret ballot who will govern you.”
And to that, many of the broadcasters added, often with tears running down their cheeks, “And I am coming home!”
27
PAX PER FIDEM
Gamini didn’t keep his colleagues waiting for clarification. Not more than thirty-six hours, anyway, and for that particular length of time they—like the rest of the world—had plenty to keep them occupied. It wasn’t work that obsessed them. It was the media, with their unending scenes of outside forces pouring in, unopposed and nearly unarmed, too, unless you counted their noisemakers and shock-givers, moving in on the previously impregnable fortress that had been the Adorable Leader’s North Korea. Add to that the still more endless chatter of guess and supposition and bafflement that every commentator had to offer.
Then at last something appeared on the screen that at least promised to give some answers.
It was after dinner, and also after Myra had taken her turn at putting the baby to bed, that Ranjit again snapped on the TV. A moment later he gave a yelp of surprise that brought her back into the room. “Look,” he said. “Maybe we’re going to get some real information.”
What the TV was displaying was an Asian-looking man who stood before a lectern. No one introduced him. He simply began to speak. “Hello,” he said, voice educated and quite unflustered at being before the cameras. “My name is Aritsune Meyuda, and at one time I was Japan’s ambassador to the United Nations. Now I am what I think you would call the personnel director for what we have been calling Pax per Fidem. That’s short for Pax in Orbe Terrarum per Fidem, or World Peace Through Transparency. We are the ones who are responsible for the events on the Korean peninsula.
“Because that operation had to be conducted in secrecy, there has been much speculation about it, and about what has gone on there since. We can now supply some answers for you. To explain how those events came about, and what they mean, the person who made them all possible will speak.”
Meyuda’s face disappeared from the screen, replaced by the image of a tall, bronzed, and aged but strongly built figure, the sight of whom produced a gasp from Myra. “Oh my God,” she said. “That’s—That’s—”
But before she got it out, Meyuda was already introducing him. “I give you,” he said, “the secretary-general of the United Nations, Mr. Ro’onui Tearii.”
Ro’onui Tearii troubled no more with prefacing remarks than had Meyuda. “Let me begin,” he said, “by giving every one of you my assurance that nothing improper has occurred in Korea. This was not a war of conquest. It was a necessary police action, approved by a secret, but unanimous, vote of the United Nations Security Council.
“To explain how this came about I would like to clear up a matter that dates from a few years ago. Many of you will remember that at that time there was much discussion about the way in which the three most powerful nations in the world—that is, Russia, China, and the United States—were attempting to arrange a superpower conference, with the laudable stated aim of finding a solution to the many little wars that were breaking out all around the world. Many commentators thought that what then happened was ludicrous, even shameful, because of a story that was given out. The rumor was that their plan fell apart because the three nations could not agree on the city in which to hold the conference.
“In truth, however, I must now tell you that that whole episode was a deception. That was done at my request. It was needed to conceal the fact that the three presidents were actually conducting highly secret meetings on a subject of transcendental importance.
“Their subject was simply how—and when, and indeed whether—to employ a new nonlethal, but powerfully destructive, weapon, the one which we all now know by the name Silent Thunder.
“What caused them to take this exceptional action was that each of them had learned, through their quite effective intelligence services, that both of the other states had developed a Silent Thunder–like weapon and were rushing to make it operational. And all three of the presidents had advisers who were urging them to be the first to complete the development of the weapon, and then to use it to destroy the economies of their two adversaries and thus become the world’s only superpower again.
“To their everlasting credit, they all rejected that plan. In their secret meetings they agreed to turn Silent Thunder over to the United Nations.” He was somberly silent for a moment—a big and imposing man, said once to have been the strongest man on Maruputi, the tiny French Polynesian island where he had been born. Then he smiled. “And they did,” he announced, “and so the world was spared a terrible conflict, with unguessable results.”
By then Myra and Ranjit were giving each other startled looks almost as much as they were watching the screen. That was not the end of it. There was a great deal more, and, sleep deferred, indeed forgotten, they kept on listening. For nearly an hour, actually—for all the time Secretary-General Tearii was speaking, and then for the much longer time when all the world’s political commentators went over every word of it in their own debates. And by the time Ranjit and Myra were preparing for bed, they were still trying to make sense of it.
“So what Tearii did,” Ranjit called while brushing his teeth, “was to organize this Pax per Fidem thing, with its people from twenty different countries—”
“And all of them neutral ones,” Myra pointed out from where she was fluffing up the pillows on their bed. “And not only that but they were all island nations that weren’t big enough to be a threat to anybody else anyway.”
Ranjit thoughtfully rinsed his mouth. “Actually,” he said, drying his face, “when you look at the results, all of that doesn’t sound all that bad, does it?”
“Not really,” Myra conceded. “It’s true that North Korea has always seemed to be a threat to world peace.”
Ranjit stared at his reflection in the mirror. “Ah, well,” he said at last. “If Gamini’s coming, I wish he’d get here.”
When Gamini did get there, he bore flowers for Myra, a giant Chinese rattle for the baby, a bottle of Korean whiskey for Ranjit, and a full load of apologies. “Sorry I took so long,” he said, kissing Myra chastely on the cheek and sparing a hug for Ranjit. “I didn’t mean to leave you hanging, but I was in Pyongyang with my father, just checking to see that it was all going all right, and then we had to make a quick trip to Washington. The president’s mad at us.”
Ranjit looked immediately concerned. “Mad how? Are you saying he didn’t want you people to attack?”
“Oh, of course not. Nothing like that. The thing was that right along the border, at one stretch that was kind of kinky because of the terrain, there happened to be a couple of hectares of U.S. and South Korean defense matériel that got just as wiped out as the North’s stuff.” He shrugged. “We couldn’t help it, you know. Old Adorable had a lot of his meanest armaments right on his side of the line, and it’s a pretty narrow line. We had to make sure we got it all. The president knows that, of course, but somebody made the mistake of guaranteeing h
im that nothing American would be touched. Meanwhile there’s about fourteen billion dollars’ worth of America’s deadliest high-tech that doesn’t work anymore. And, Ranj, are you ever going to open that bottle?”
Ranjit, who had been regarding his boyhood chum with unalloyed wonder, obeyed, while Myra collected glasses. As he poured, Ranjit said, “Does that mean trouble?”
“Oh, not enough to worry about. He’ll get over it. And, listen, while he’s what we’re talking about, he gave me something to hand to you.”
That something was an envelope embossed with the White House official seal. When they had all been served and Ranjit had taken his first sip—and made a face—he opened the letter. It said:
Dear Mr. Subramanian:
On behalf of the people of the United States I thank you for your service. I must now relieve you of your present post, however, and ask you to take on an even more important one, which, I am afraid, entails even more secrecy.
“He signed it with his own hand, too,” Gamini said proudly. “Didn’t use one of those machines. I saw him do it.”
Ranjit set down the unfinished part of his drink, the part that was going to remain unfinished forever, and said, “Gamini, how much of this show are you personally running?”
Gamini laughed. “Me? Hardly any. I’m an errand boy for my father. He tells me what to do, and I do it. Like helping recruit the Nepalese.”
“Which I’ve been wanting to ask you about,” Myra said, tactfully sniffing the whiskey’s bouquet without actually tasting any of it. “Why Nepalese?”
“Well, two reasons. First, their great-grandfathers used to serve in the British army—they were called the Gurkhas—and they were about the toughest and smartest soldiers they had. And, the most important part, just look at them. Nepalese don’t look a bit like Americans, or Chinese, or Russians, so everybody in North Korea wasn’t trained from birth to hate them.” He sniffed his whiskey, sighed, and put it down. “They’re like you and me, Ranj,” he added. “One reason we can be so useful to Pax per Fidem. So what about it? Can I sign you up tonight?”
“Tell us more,” Myra said quickly, before Ranjit had a chance to speak. “What would you want Ranjit to do?”
Gamini grinned. “Well, not what we were going to offer you way back when. What I was thinking of then was that you could help me be an assistant to my father, but you weren’t famous then.”
“But now?” Myra prompted.
“Actually, we’ll have to work that out,” Gamini confessed. “You’d go to work for the council and they would probably have some requests to make of you—speak for them at press conferences, sell the idea of Pax per Fidem to the world—”
Ranjit gave his friend a mock-frown that was not entirely imitation. “Wouldn’t I have to know more about it to do that?”
Gamini sighed. “Good old Ranjit,” he said. “I was hoping you’d see the light and sign up right away, but, yes, I suppose that, you being you, you certainly would need to know more. So I brought some reading for you.”
He reached into his briefcase and pulled out an envelope of papers. “Let’s call this your homework, Ranj. I guess the best thing would be for you to read it—both of you—and talk it over tonight, and then tomorrow I’ll come by to take you to breakfast, and then I’ll ask you the big question.”
“And what question is that?” Ranjit asked.
“Why, whether you want to help us save the world. What did you think?”
Natasha got a little less playtime that night than she was used to. She gave her parents a few little wails to show that she had noticed the lack, but two minutes later she was asleep and Myra and Ranjit could go back to studying their homework.
There were two sets of papers. One seemed to be a sort of proposed constitution for (they supposed) the land that had formerly been the North Korea of one dictator or another. Both Ranjit and Myra read it attentively, of course, but most of it was procedural stuff—like the American constitution that both had read in school. Not entirely like the American, though. There were several paragraphs unlike anything in that document. One stated that the country would never go to war under any circumstances—that sounded more like the post–World War II Japanese constitution the Americans had written for them. Another wasn’t in any constitution they had ever heard of before; it described some rather unusual methods of selecting their officeholders that involved heavy usage of computers. And a third pledged that every institution in the country—including not just their government legislatures at all levels, but educational, scientific, and even religious institutions—had to permit access of observers at all of their functions. (“I guess that’s the ‘transparency’ Gamini was talking about,” Ranjit observed.)
The other document was about more tangible things. It described how the secretary-general, with maximum secrecy, had set about creating his twenty-member independent council to run Pax per Fidem. It listed the members, ranging from the Bahamas, Brunei, and Cuba to Tonga and Vanuatu (with Sri Lanka tucked in just before). And it was a little more specific about the concept of transparency. In the interests of this “transparency” Pax per Fidem was charged to create an independent inspectorate for which the organization was pledged to offer that same transparency. “I guess that ‘inspectorate’ would be where you would go,” Myra said as they turned the light out.
Ranjit yawned. “Maybe so, but I’m going to need a clearer picture of what I’d be supposed to do before I say I’ll do it.”
The next morning Gamini did his best to answer all their questions. “I talked to my father a little bit about how much freedom you’d have. It’s a lot, Ranj. He’s sure that you could go anywhere in Pax per Fidem and see anything we’re doing, with the single exception of anything to do with Silent Thunder: You won’t know how many of the weapons we have or what we’d like to do with them, because nobody below the council itself will. But anything else, sure. You can sit in on most council meetings, and if you’ve seen anything that you think is wrong, you can report it to them.”
“And just suppose,” Myra said, “that he did see something wrong and the council didn’t do anything to fix it.”
“Then he would be free to tell the world’s press about it,” Gamini said promptly. “That’s what transparency is all about. So what do you say? Any other questions before you say if you’ll join us?”
“A few,” Ranjit said mildly. “This council. They meet, right? And what do they talk about when they do?”
“Well,” Gamini said, “it’s mostly planning for every contingency. You don’t do a regime change without making sure the population has a viable society left after the change; we learned that from Germany after 1918 and Iraq after 2003. And it’s not just making sure the population has its food, and as soon as possible its electrical power, and its working police force to prevent looting and so on; it’s giving them a chance at forming their own government. And, of course, there’s the future. There are plenty of brushfire wars and threats of war going on, and the council keeps an eye on all of them.”
“Wait a minute,” Myra said. “Are you talking about doing that Silent Thunder thing in other parts of the world?”
Gamini gave her a fond smile. “Dear Myra,” he said, “whatever made you think we were going to stop with North Korea?”
Then, taking notice of the expressions on their faces, he sounded hurt. “What’s the matter? You aren’t saying you don’t trust us, are you?”
It was Myra who answered—or, more exactly, responded, because it certainly was not a specific answer to Gamini’s specific question. “Gamini, did you ever happen to read the book 1984? It was published in England around the middle of the last century, by a man named George Orwell.”
Gamini looked offended. “Of course I read it. My father was a big Orwell fan. Are you trying to suggest we sound like Big Brother? Because, don’t forget, the secretary-general had the unanimous approval of the Security Council for everything we did!”
“That’s not what
I mean, dear Gamini. What I’m thinking about is the way Orwell had the world divided in his book. There were only three powers, because they’d conquered everything else. Oceania, by which Orwell meant mostly America; Eurasia—that was Russia, then still the Soviet Union; and Eastasia. China.”
Now Gamini was visibly annoyed. “Now, really, Myra! You don’t think that the countries that created Pax per Fidem are going to try to divide the world among them, do you?”
And again Myra replied with a question of her own. “What any of them are planning I don’t know, Gamini. I hope that’s not it. But if they were, what could stop them?”
And when Gamini was gone—still a friend, a very dear friend, but now a friend they would not be seeing very often—Ranjit turned to his wife. “So,” he said, “what do we do now? The president has fired me from the job here. I’ve turned down the job he—and Gamini—wanted me to take.” He frowned at a thought. “His father wanted me to take it, too,” he added. “I imagine he’s not happy that I turned it down. I wonder if that offer of a job at the university is still open.”
28
MAKING A LIFE
Well, the job was. Whatever faults Dr. Dhatusena Bandara might be charged with, vindictiveness was not among them. The university would be delighted to welcome Dr. (if only honorary) Ranjit Subramanian to the faculty as a full and tenured professor, with his employment (and thus his pay) to begin at once, actual work to start when the professor found it quite convenient. More than that, the university would be pleased to find a faculty position for Dr. (this time not honorary but fully earned) Myra de Soyza Subramanian as well. Of course, it went without saying, her title wouldn’t be as elevated as her husband’s, and neither would her pay scale. But still…
But still, they were going back to Sri Lanka!
If the president of the United States objected to Ranjit’s walking out on the job offer, he didn’t say anything about it. Neither did anyone else. Ranjit cleared out his few personal belongings at the office; true, there was a maintenance man, who happened also to be a security man, to help him pack everything up. True, he was required to turn in his passes and badges and IDs. But no one bothered them in their apartment, or at the air terminal, or on the planes they took. And Natasha rode in her cradle-seat between the two of them without a whimper.