War World Discovery Read online

  EDITED BY

  JOHN F. CARR

  WAR WORLD VOLUMES

  CREATED & EDITED BY

  JOHN F. CARR AND JERRY POURNELLE

  WAR WORLD I: The Burning Eye

  WAR WORLD II: Death’s Head Rebellion

  WAR WORLD III: Sauron Dominion

  WAR WORLD IV: Invasion!

  CoDominium I: Revolt on War World

  WAR WORLD VOLUMES

  EDITED BY JOHN F. CARR

  WAR WORLD: Discovery

  WAR WORLD: CoDominium Take-over (Forthcoming)

  WAR WORLD NOVELS

  Blood Feuds

  Blood Vengeance

  The Battle of Sauron

  WAR WORLD: DISCOVERY

  Printing History

  One story from this anthology first appeared in WAR WORLD: The Coming of the Eye, edited by Jerry E. Pournelle and John F. Carr published by Baen Books in 1989 and four stories first appeared in CODOMINIUM: Revolt on War World, edited by Jerry E. Pournelle and John F. Carr, published by Baen Books in 1992. The other stories nine stories were written especially for this volume and appear here for the first time.

  For more information on War World, visit: www.warworldcentral.com

  All Rights Reserved

  Copyright © 2010 by John F. Carr

  Original Cover Art—Copyright © 2010 by Alan Gutierrez

  This book may not be reproduced or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, scanning, recording, or any information storage or electronic retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the authors and Pequod Press.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing 2010

  V 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN - 978-0-937912-09-6

  DEDICATION

  To Victoria, my loving wife and inspiration.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  First, thanks go to Jerry Pournelle for allowing me to expand and create new stories in the War World/Empire of Man universe. Secondly, I’d like to thank Don Hawthorne for all his support and enthusiasm for the series.

  I would also like to give special thanks to Larry King, who also maintains a great CoDominium website, for keeping the CoDominium Time Line and for his continuity work on this volume. And, to Dennis Frank, Archivist at St. Bonaventure University, who keeps the records and is a big part of the copyediting team.

  A big thank you goes to Alan Gutierrez who, as always, did a wonderful job on the cover art.

  The Haven map art was provided by Don Hawthorne, who produced and did all the design work on the original War World maps.

  CODOMINIUM CHRONOLOGY

  1969

  Neil Armstrong sets foot on Earth’s moon

  1990-2000

  Series of treaties between the United States and the Soviet Union creates the CoDominium. Military research and development outlawed.

  1995

  Nationalist movements intensify

  1996

  French Foreign Legion forms the basic element of the CoDominium Armed Services.

  1998

  The Church of New Universal Harmony founded.

  2004

  Charles Castell is born.

  2010-2100

  CoDominium Intelligence Services engage in serious effort to suppress all research into technologies with military applications. They are aided by zero-growth organizations.

  2010

  Habitable planets discovered in other star systems. Commercial exploitation of new worlds begins.

  2020

  First interstellar colonies are founded. The CoDominium Space Navy and Marines are created, absorbing the original CoDominium Armed Services.

  2020

  Great Exodus period of colonization begins. First colonists are dissidents, malcontents and voluntary adventurers.

  2028

  Creation the Humanity League. Sponsored by the ACLU, Sierra Club and Zero Population groups.

  2032

  Haven is discovered.

  2040

  CoDominium Population Control under the aegis of the Bureau of Relocation and Bureau of Corrections begins mass out system shipments of involuntary colonists.

  2043

  John Christian Falkenberg, III is born in Rome.

  2043

  The 26th Marines, Company C, Third Battalion is dispatched to Haven to stop the criminal gangs from taking over the colony.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  DEDICATION

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  CODOMINIUM CHRONOLOGY

  - 1 - THE LOST AND THE FOUNDER, E R Stewart

  - 2 - DISCOVERY, Jerry Pournelle

  - 3 - THE GARDEN SPOT, Don Hawthorne

  - 4 - IN CONCERT, E R Stewart

  - 5 - THE SHIMMER STONE SCAM, John F. Carr

  - 6 - NOTHING IN COMMON, Leslie Fish

  - 7 - HELL’S-A-COMIN’, John F. Carr

  - 8 - COUNTERPOINT, A. Brown

  - 9 - ASTRONOMY LESSON, Steve Shervais

  - 10 - ON JORDAN’S STORMY BANKS, A. Brown

  - 11 - JANESFORT WAR, Frank Gasperik & Leslie Fish

  - 12 - LAST CHANCE, Stephen Shervais

  - 13 - STEPPE STONE, William F. Wu

  - 14 - DOWN THE RABID HOLE, Charles E. Gannon

  — 1 —

  THE LOST AND THE FOUNDER

  E R Stewart

  1998 A.D., Earth

  “Call me Bill,” Garner Castell said as the cop lifted him off his duff and chucked him into the paddy wagon, which in this case was an ancient Ford Econoline 150 with no seats at all in the back and a wall of metal mesh separating prisoners from the driver and his shotgun-rider. Garner “Bill” Castell told everyone to call him Bill, and often added, “I’m a walking list of debts.”

  He clunked down on the corrugated steel floor and slid toward the front of the van. He slid toward the back when it accelerated. The charge was vagrancy, but Castell enjoyed the ride, his first in weeks. The van had been converted to electric so it was a quiet ride, and he was able to think.

  Tall, with bushy brown hair, bushy white eyebrows, piercing gray eyes, an ice-breaker of a nose, stern lips, and a strong, cleft chin, Garner “Bill” Castell, when he stood straight and inflated his chest and widened his eyes and boomed his big, resonant voice, could intimidate. When the cop yanked him down from the van, Castell went into what he called his Posture Act, which was nothing less than a graduate-level crash course in body language and public speaking. “How dare you, officer?” he boomed.

  The cop actually jumped back for an instant, startled by the transformation. A second ago this guy had been a quiet little vagrant. Now here was this strutting, command-voiced evangelist. Anger surged in the cop, as it so often does, and he grabbed Castell’s nearest bicep with renewed strength.

  Castell ignored the grip and scanned the crowd of passersby who had paused on the sidewalk outside Austin’s downtown police station to watch some of the fun. To each and every one of the members of that crowd, who were mostly young people from the colleges around town, Castell said, “They create bad feelings the way a bad singer can ruin the hymns of a fine choir. They persecute those who, like myself, wish only to get along and be left alone. Having sought no trouble, I am beset by troublers.”

  Someone called out, and although Castell showed no signs of having heard, he said, “Yes, exactly, we must learn to harmonize, we must become notes of the grand song called life, existence.”

  The cop holding Castell’s arm shoved him. At once cries of protest rose from the crowd. Some scuffling broke out, and the van’s driver tried to help his partner hustle the rabble-rouser into the station house. Their way was blocked.

  “I’ve never resisted au
thority, when it deserved its due,” Castell said. “And yet they resist my very existence, even in this mild, pleasant climate, where a soul can live simply and at peace, in harmony with gentle surroundings.”

  At the word “gentle” a few college boys came forward and tried to pry loose the cops’ grips. This caused profanity and elbowing, and before anyone knew it Castell was loose, but headed up the station house stairs on his own power.

  And power was the word, because he fairly bounded to the top. “I shall pay their penalty for simply being here, and then I shall go. In three days, if you care, please meet me here, please show them that we can gather and part peaceably, in harmony.”

  And then he turned and entered the station house, where he was incarcerated for three days on a self-confessed charge of vagrancy.

  When Castell came out of the cell, his life had changed, and he knew it. He signed for his few belongings, thanked the sergeant on duty for his force’s hospitality, and then walked out between the swinging doors to the cheers of a friendly, happy crowd of supporters.

  “That simple,” one of the police officers said, snapping his finger in front of his partner’s face. His partner said, “Bull, nothing’s that simple,” and was soon proven right.

  Garner “Bill” Castell walked with the celebrating kids, who grabbed at his release as an excuse for revelry just as they grabbed at virtually any other excuse. He walked downtown, let them buy him a simple meal of chile con carne and beer (an Austin college kid’s staple, be it noted), then followed them back to the campus of the University of Texas. There he lived for a few days, but soon he moved into the hills surrounding Austin, and groups of young people trekked out to find and talk with him almost every day. Some never went back and soon those kind multiplied in every possible way, including live births.

  The sight of gentle, well-spoken Harmonies seeking alms became common around Austin and surrounding towns and cities. And they were not beggars because they always did helpful things before accepting any money, such as wash windows, paint houses, clear streets of trash and that sort of thing. Soon they were taking in huge amounts of money from a populace generally glad to see them, generally glad to take advantage of their bargain prices and cheerful work habits.

  When youths were reported lost, they most often turned out to have joined the Harmonies in the Hills. This led to the kids being called, even by themselves for a while, The Lost.

  Meanwhile Garner “Bill” Castell refined his ideas around the central concept of Seeking Harmony with All, and his rhetorical abilities grew with his wealth and influence. Strangely to some, he paid taxes on all income, which was recorded scrupulously, and sought no exceptions from any secular rule or law on religious or other grounds. He simply harmonized.

  Eventually he bought land, then more land, and more. Soon he controlled several thousand acres of the scrub-pine hills outside Austin, and he began designing buildings. He always had them approved by reputable local architectural firms, to whom he paid generous fees.

  Questions about his past Castell answered with shrugs and laughs, jokes and dares. “Find out if you can,” he told one reporter who, seeking a human interest story if not an exposé of a new guru, had come all the way from New York City itself. The televised interview only served to bolster Castell’s standing and increase his popularity.

  He married a young woman of American Indian and Mexican heritage who’d been brought to him by some of The Lost. They’d found her beaten and abandoned in a clump of creosote bushes by a dirt road, and it was said that Castell never once asked her about her past, either. They were apparently a monogamous, contented couple. Castell abused neither his position. nor his power to evoke enthusiasm.

  He argued, swore, smoked occasional cigars, drank moonshine, played poker and could plug the selected eyeball of a sidewinder at a hundred paces at dusk with a handgun. He displayed several accents in the course of even a single sentence, and spoke at least rudiments of English, Spanish and German. He also kept his word, and earned respect daily.

  The Church of New Universal Harmony was incorporated, but continued voluntarily to pay taxes and fees from which religions were officially exempt. He rendered unto Caesar, and Caesar liked that just fine. The business deals, connections and the virtuosity displayed by Castell’s structuring of the Church’s finances, holdings and such led many to believe that their founder had once been a hugely successful businessman who had suffered a crisis of conscience. He had, they thought, wandered for a few years, until he understood about Harmony, and then he started organizing things again, this time along Harmonic principles.

  Castell died from a stress-induced cardiac infarction during the negotiations for the license and actual purchase of colonizing rights to a new world, which he called Haven. Many rumors at the time linked him with CoDominium Intelligence, but such rumors never specified whether he was supposed to have been a member or simply talked to them as he’d talked to so many other groups of self-interested authorities. Certainly selective harmonizing, or Choosing the Right Song, as he called it, would be a likely route for him to have chosen in such a bitter battle to secure a new place for his Harmonies. Except for his jailhouse epiphany, he always tried to sing along with the loudest.

  He left behind him a son, Charles, who proved a reluctant but eventually very able leader of a Church that has withstood the test of time despite many transformations.

  — 2 —

  DISCOVERY

  By Jerry E. Pournelle

  2032 A.D., Deep Space

  CDSS Ranger was not a happy ship. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with her. Ranger wasn’t new, far from it—she’d been one of the first exploratory ships built after the discovery of the Alderson Drive made star flight possible—but she was well maintained. Captain Jed Byers saw to that. No, Allan Wu thought, that wasn’t the problem. It wasn’t even the food. That was getting pretty monotonous after ten months in space, but Allan had been brought up on rice and whatever could be found to cook with it. He didn’t need variety, he simply wanted enough to eat, and Ranger provided that, even if the rest of the crew made jokes about Purina Monkey Chow.

  It wasn’t the ship. It wasn’t even the crew, not really. The problem was that they weren’t accomplishing anything. No one was going to get rich on Ranger’s discoveries, least of all Allan Wu, and Allan needed the money.

  It was Captain Byers’ fault. Byers was fine at running a ship, but he didn’t know beans about negotiating with the Bofors Company and the CoDominium. None of the systems he’d been given the right to explore had inhabitable planets. That was to be expected, habitable planets were rare, but the systems hadn’t anything else either. One did have an asteroid belt with plenty of carbon, and even water ice—but no inhabitable planets, and no gas giant in the whole system. No place for merchantmen to get cheap hydrogen fuel. Belters could live without planets, but they couldn’t live without some trade with Earth. Byers could file claims, but Bofors wasn’t going to pay any bonuses for that find.

  Probably not for the one coming up, either. Allan frowned and stared at the computer screen. It didn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know. A G2 star four light-years away and some twenty parsecs, over sixty light years from Earth. Not that the distance mattered so much. There were two star systems nearby that could be reached by two Alderson Jumps. Not this one. “It’s a bear to get to, and there’s nothing when you get there.”

  “You can’t know that,” Linda said. “We know there are planets—”

  “At least one planet,” Allan agreed. “Maybe more. Pity the bloody telescope fritzed or we’d know more about that planet. I think it’s a big one.”

  “A gas giant and a Belt,” Linda mused. “And a habitable planet, green, about—what? Point 7 A.U. out—?”

  “That would do it,” Allan said. “Riches in plenty. But it’s pipe dreams.”

  “We still have to go look,” Linda said. “And maybe we’ll get lucky.” She grinned, and Allan caught his bre
ath as he always did when she smiled. He wondered if he’d ever get over that, and hoped he wouldn’t.

  “Read the contract lately?” she asked.

  “Which one? Mine, yours, or ours?”

  “Ours.” She patted her stomach. “Just in time, too. Mother will be pleased…”

  “HEAR THIS. PREPARE FOR ALDERSON JUMP.

  SECURE FOR ALDERSON JUMP.”

  Linda shuddered and began strapping herself into the seat in front of her console.

  “I saw that,” Allan said. “Still worried about Jumps?”

  “Well, some. Aren’t you?”

  He nodded slowly. No one had any information on the effects of the Alderson Drive on pregnant women or their unborn children. “Damn, I wish we weren’t going on with—”

  “Don’t be silly,” Linda said. “Two more Jumps can’t matter.”

  “Sure,” he said, but he didn’t believe it. Alderson Jumps had unpredictably unpleasant effects on healthy adults. They couldn’t be good for fetuses. Allan didn’t care about their child, or at least could convince himself that he didn’t, but the thought of something happening to Linda turned him to jelly.

  “ALDERSON JUMP PLOTTED. INITIATING COUNTDOWN.”

  Allan checked his straps, then looked to be sure Linda’s were properly fastened. All correct.

  “STATION CHECK. BIOLOGICAL SECTION REPORT READY FOR JUMP.”

  “BIOLOGY READY AYE AYE.”

  “Biology,” Allan snorted.

  “Sounds nicer than waste disposal.”

  “ENGINEERING REPORT READY FOR JUMP.”

  “ENGINEERING READY AYE AYE.”

  “SCIENCE SECTION REPORT READY FOR JUMP.”