Chapter 8:Ultimatum

There I was flat on my back at 20,000 miles altitude, flanked by a pair of black panthers at shoulder level. A pair of cheetahs were draped across my legs. A tiger had her head on my chest. There was another cat nuzzling my ear, a Russian Blue named Gunga Troll. When the rabbit nipped my ear I knew I was supposed to get up and go back to work.

“AI, next appointment please.”

Five minutes!

“Excuse me, ladies,” I shifted out from under close to a ton of cats—and a bunny rabbit. It dawned on me that Mrs. Wigglenose was among people who ate her kind, yet she was in no danger. She was family. “I’ve got to jump into my next adventure.”

Svetlana (the tiger) yawned, rolled on her back and groaned. The panthers cuddled each other. The cheetahs both got up and staggered out of the room.

I stepped into the sleep learner for a quick clean-up. Too bad that most Confederacy humans don’t delve into the documentation package on their sleep learner. That machine has limited medical pod functions—with ability to reprogram the nanites we Confederacy humans rely upon. The sleep learner also acts as a massage studio, a really effective shower, and if you happen to crap all over yourself during sleep learning it will clean up the mess. When the Capacity, Aptitude and Potential test is administered we humans may void our bladders in terror. Imagine your worst nightmares. Or don’t. In the CAP test you reveal your inner self. You confront your own limitations.

I finished my quick clean-up and was dressed in the Earth Defense Uniform. Elapsed time was 150 seconds. Using the internal transporter pads put me in Conference Room Eight within a few seconds of my show time. A moment later my image was projected in the Security Council room along with my personal AI, Ricardo Corleone.

“My purpose before the Security Council is to have 57 of your officers stripped of official United Nations status. If they’re officers of the United Nation, the Confederacy regards their actions as the United Nation’s actions. These 57 people have made war on the Confederacy. They’ve been tried and found guilty. As long as they’re officers in the United Nations their execution is suspended,” I sighed and raised my voice, “but if they are not fired in 72 hours from this minute, the Confederacy will consider that the United Nations is making war on the Confederacy.”

“So what?” The speaker demanded. “What are you going to do?”

“How about if I show you what Colonel Lawrence has done,” Ricardo suggested. Behind him my operation to retrieve the Pyramids of Giza. The images showed the massive and ancient structures dissolve. “These were reconstructed on the Moon in a storage facility. It took him only 100 hours to remove those objects and then replace them with a city. Understand this: Tom Lawrence is reluctant to destroy because what he does cannot be undone. In 72 hours the 57 people on this list will either be dismissed from the United Nations or you’ve been warned—but you only need to fire them. They can stay on as guests of the United Nations. You can offer them sanctuary. As long as they remain within one hundred meters of this building, their execution is suspended. As long as they stay within ten meters of another human being, execution suspended.”

“What about if they’re in the same vessel?” I asked. “It’s possible for the heat of spontaneous combustion to torch off an airplane and cause it to crash. If they stow away aboard a ship, their fiery end can still hurt innocents.”

“What are you asking, Tom?” Ricardo inquired.

“Give them the full story. If the walking corpses will become human torches at the end of a bus, they need to know.” For an instant I imagined Johnny Dorman being shoved out of the back of a United Nations Anatov and after a short drop going FLAME ON! “They have a right to make a fully-informed decision. Merely being cut off from Confederacy tech—that’s bad enough. This Security Council has to know the full consequences of their decision. The positive and the negative—all of it.”

“We AI trust you, Tom,” Ricardo said. “I’ll explain it to the Security Council. You have the power to torch those 57 people right now. Your ‘yes, if’ is persuasive logic.”

Thank you, Harrison ‘Buzz’ Price--’yes if’ works far better than ‘hell no!’

“Colonel Dorman is right,” another unidentified Security Council officer snarled. “You’re just a perfect little Mary Sue!”

“His value to me is in Tom-cat’s imperfection,” Lilith said from behind me. “Imperfect people can improve. Imperfect men can make progress. Perfect people cannot.

“I am a perfect being,” Lilith continued. “Females are the perfect gender. We goddesses are also pansexual. Tom-cat has a lot of room for improvement. In the short time he’s been my ward Tom-cat has made more progress than expected. In a few years Tom-cat will be vulnerable to the Sa’arm gestalt. Look where he was just a few minutes ago.”

I glanced at myself sleeping naked with several big cats.

“The don’t like each other,” Lilith purred, “but they tolerate each other because they love Thomas E. Lawrence. Do you see the rabbit? She’s safe among those carnivores because she’s one of Tom’s ladies. It something that every other human has the potential for—it’s empathy. Tom imagines himself in their skins and accepts them on their terms.”

Lilith described how two groups of Sa’arm meet. If one group is smaller, the smaller group is immediately overpowered psychically. When there’s approximate equality in numbers, a psychic battle occurs until one side has been absorbed. The larger the groups, the longer the battle. As Lilith described the way that Sa’arm gestalts united, my mind wandered—I saw opportunities!