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14

Rudi bit off a piece of a chocolate-peanut snack bar, chewed moodily for a while, then downed a swig of reconstituted fruit juice and looked at the others around the table in the Juggernaut's central compartment. He was disgruntled over what he saw as too ready a surrender to bluster. "I mean, seriously, what could they do at the end of it all?" he asked, singling out Kieran with his gaze. "Drag us all outside and shoot us? Surely overt violence against an undefended minority wouldn't be tolerated. Things can't work that way."

"Is that how it works anywhere, Rudi?" Kieran asked from where he was lounging by the forward doorway into the driver's cabin. He shook his head. "People looking to start trouble don't immediately resort to armed force. They provoke and escalate until it becomes appropriate. Situations like that get ugly and distressing for everyone involved. We all want to avoid that."

"I thought that people here were supposed to have a way of acting together when something threatens their common interest," Rudi said.

"The common interest could be best served by respecting first claims," Trevany reminded him. "Don't assume that everyone would be sympathetic to our position. Creating a fuss might not be the way to go."

Rudi looked indignant. "But . . . but we're talking crass commercialism versus knowledge that could be invaluable. I mean, what's there to argue with? You've only—"

Trevany cut him off with a shake of his head. "Most people wouldn't see it that way. They're interested in what relates to them. Rights of use do. Academic claims to privilege don't."

"I'm not asking for privileges," Rudi insisted. "Just some recognition of fundamental values."

"But that's how they'd see it."

Juanita, who had been following, commented, "The system here is based on tenacious defense of—how would you put it?—things you know are yours."

"Property ownership rights," Trevany supplied.

"Yes. That doesn't mean just being allowed to hold a technical title to something, that someone else can grant or take away. It means you possess a monopoly on deciding how the property gets used, sold, exchanged, or whatever." She shrugged. "That's what Zorken is doing. And if pushed to decide, Mars would probably side with their right to do it."

Rudi made a face and waved a hand. "Yes, but can't this kind of thing be worked out by reasonable compromise? It's the using of coercion that I'm objecting to." The others stared at him, then looked at Kieran to take it.

"When you talk about monopoly, you're implying an ability at the bottom of it all to enforce it," he said. "When a dispute arises that agreeable compromise can't settle, and arbitration fails, then people will resort to fighting it out until some view or other is able to prevail." He nodded at Juanita to endorse the point she had made. "In other words, until monopoly privileges are reasserted. And territory is the most fundamental property right of all, from the space occupied by your body, through the wider domains of personal living space, homes, towns, nations. . . . Exercising a monopoly on territory means securing it from rival claims. That means being able to bring sufficient force to bear to defend it."

"All right, I take your point," Rudi said. "But at the same time, I think you're making mine. You own your house and the belongings in it because nobody else has an equal right to walk in and camp down with impunity, yes? But what gives you that right is the recognition of your monopoly under one system of law which exercises the force. Shared ownership of territory—or jurisdiction by competing defensive agencies, which amounts to the same thing—isn't a workable arrangement. Stable households exist when there's one head that the others are prepared to acknowledge. Otherwise the community fights or fragments. And the same happens with larger territories too. When national group marriages break down, the solutions are division of living space, divorce, or murder in the form of migration, revolution, or war until territorial monopolies of some kind stabilize. But that isn't what you've got here."

"You're right," Kieran agreed. "It hasn't happened yet on Mars. Too much room; too few people. But when the boundaries start running up against each other, then it'll all start to shake itself out."

"Yes, and in the meantime we've got this situation where the only alternatives seem to be either to find our own private army, or be run off like poachers."

Kieran pursed his lips and responded with one of his enigmatic smiles. "Oh, I wouldn't jump to conclusions too hastily, Rudi," he said. "There are always other ways. Why else do you think we've all been so busy?"

Harry, who had been watching the communications panel in the driver's compartment, appeared in the doorway. "It looks like they're here," he announced. "Two blips on radar coming in from the northeast. An outgoing message from the Mule to Asgard confirms their backup is on approach now."

* * *

The force consisted of a "Venning" troop carrier with rated capacity of twenty men plus equipment, mounting support artillery in the form of a multiple munitions delivery turret behind the cockpit and underslung automatic cannon, accompanied by a command/scout flyer carrying missiles and laser pods. They landed where Kieran had predicted, between the two camps but closer to the Mule. Deployment was brisk and businesslike. A detachment in armored combat gear emerged from the troop carrier to cordon off the archeologists' cabin and vehicles and secure the perimeter around the Mule, while another went down to clear and post guards in the Hole workings. While this was going on, officers from the command flyer entered the Mule to report to Banks and confer, as Kieran and the others were able to follow via the bugs planted there. There were no great surprises. Shortly afterward, Banks came through on local band inside the Juggernaut to issue his ultimatum: the team had four hours to complete its wrapping up and depart. If they were not gone from the shelf by that time, they would be forcibly removed.

Hamil and Walter went across to the Mule to plead their case again and demand that they be permitted to talk directly with the top management at Asgard who were responsible for the Tharsis project. It was a token protest, probably expected, urged by Kieran for appearance's sake. And, as expected, it was refused. Banks was delegated full authority, and his decision stood. They now had three and a half hours.

Chas and his crew deflated the three-room cabin and packed it into its trailer, stowed the remaining items, and a little before the deadline, a procession consisting of the Juggernaut and two trailers with their hauling vehicles alternated forward and back on the sloping road sections to descend the mesa side below the shelf. They drove away across the valley floor and halted at a spot between two and three miles away, outside the boundary that Zorken had demarcated.

Back at the Troy site, Gottfried had been left to provide mobile eyes and sensors from a vantage point high on the slopes above, not far below the Citadel rock. The tap on the Mule's communications line brought Banks's report back to Asgard that the operation had been carried out successfully, on time, and without trouble. The ensuing message traffic expressed satisfaction and revived plans for a more comprehensive survey of the minerals potential under the plateau—which had been the original objective of Banks's mission. It also brought Banks's boss, Thornton Velte, responding to the Keziah Turle stunt, since Gilder himself was preoccupied with preparations for his daughter Marissa's wedding, guests for which were assembling at the Oasis hotel before being transported up from Lowell as Asgard approached. While Velte dismissed it all as nonsense, Turle's apparently authentic background had impressed Gilder. But there had been no thought of reconsidering—not that Kieran had expected any at this point. Gilder was still focused fully on business. He hadn't made any connection with the Higher Powers which in another compartment of his mind he believed governed the workings of the universe.

"So we'll just have to help him make the connection," Kieran said when Harry replayed the latest snippets relayed from the Mule. He told Dennis to go ahead and transmit a set of the codes supplied by Pierre, which would activate groups of the protein synthesizers now present in the bodies of the Mule's occupants. Some of the selected cell types were dermal, while others lay in the digestive tract.

"So what if it does cause Gilder to do some thinking," Rudi said. "I can't see the military people being very impressed. They're our main problem now."

"I know the psychology of the rank and file," Kieran told him. "They're like mercenary military anywhere, rootless and insecure underneath all the imagery. It makes them suggestible and superstitious—like old-time sailors."

Rudi eyed him dubiously. "And you think you can exploit something like that to our advantage?"

"You'd be surprised," Kieran said, and smiled gaily.

 

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Framed