Jarpe/Captains …

Jarpe/Captains                                                                               1




                                   Captains of Industry

                                       Matthew Jarpe

                                        (4780 words)


                                              1

         The Capitalist was the fastest spaceship ever made by humans, and it didn't go

anywhere. It orbited an unusually empty bubble of space around a black hole light years

from any useful resource. Yet many considered it to be the center of the Universe.

         To an outside observer, the ship was shaped like a coin, less than a meter thick.

At least that's what it would look like if an outside observer could see it. If you looked at

the schematic diagram you'd see some weird twisted shape that could never hold together

in flat space, but in the intensely curved spacetime around the black hole, the crazy

topology protected the structure from powerful tidal forces. To the privileged

industrialists living on board, the Capitalist was a cylinder, a few kilometers long and a

few hundred meters across. The ship moved as close to the speed of light as anything

made of matter ever could hope. And, again, it didn't go anywhere. That wasn't the

point.
Jarpe/Captains                                                                               2


        Sloan Lerner, who counted his years in the old earth way at thirty-three, was by

far the youngest CEO to have the privilege of locating his home office on the Capitalist.

But, of course, he was born there. His father had just stepped off the merry-go-round to

take up with a new wife and had left Sloan to look after the business and his mother, and,

yes, in that order, while Lerner senior sprawled on some tropical beach somewhere and

drew down the corporate account until his new time frame moved him out of the picture

for good.

        His fellow bosses like to joke about Sloan behind his back. Silver spoon, wet

behind the ears, that sort of crap. They liked to, but they didn't get much opportunity,

because he was a hell of a lot better at running the company than his father had been.

Lerner Interstellar was the fastest growing company headquartered on the Capitalist. He

had grown and diversified the shipping business to include mining, bioengineering,

manufacturing, and agriculture. He employed sixty million people on eight planets and

fifty-odd space stations. The stock chart looked like an exponential function. Not much

material to joke about. Now he was even getting nods of respect from the others as he

walked down the wood paneled hallway towards his office suite.

        Millicent Danvers of Tri-Cluster smiled at him as she left her own office. "I hear

you're going up against Seth," she said.

        "Or he's going up against me," Sloan answered. He had no idea what she was

talking about. He had learned a few lessons in business from his father, and the first was

that you never let anyone know you weren't on top of things.

        "You got guts, kid." Danvers shook her head and walked away.
Jarpe/Captains                                                                                3


        Sloan didn't like to hear rumors flying around in these hallways. Things outside

the ship happened too fast. It took good information and a steady nerve to run a business

in this relativistic time frame. Sloan stepped up his pace, berating himself for not

bringing his phone along for the fifteen minute walk to his office. Every step meant

things were happening on the outside that he had no control over.

        The accelerated time frame was more than just a nuisance, it was the whole idea

behind the Capitalist. Physicists long ago had found that time was part of space, and that

the two could not be separated. Businessmen had found out an equally important

relationship, that time was money. Put those two laws together and you get the picture.

Because to make money at the business of interstellar trade, you had to wait years,

sometimes hundreds of years, to do a simple deal. You might have to wait generations to

make any money. And the people who went into business were, not to put too fine a

point on it, not interested in delayed gratification.

        Back in the days of Sloan's grandfather, the bosses of interstellar businesses used

to have themselves frozen and thawed out every, say, ten years or so to check on the

status of their companies. Problem was two problems: one, the whole freeze thaw thing

was bad on the organs, the brain in particular. Each time it took longer and longer to get

up to speed, until it eventually became clear to the boss and everyone else that the grey

matter was turning to bean dip in there. Two, with the CEO in deep freeze, what was to

stop the help from making some creative financial arrangements? Even the computers

got in on the grab. Jesus Christ, when you can't even trust a robot not to embezzle, best

not to take the long sleep.
Jarpe/Captains                                                                               4


        So the physicists, of all people, had a solution. When you hang out deep inside a

steep gravity well, you get to watch time go by in the rest of the Universe a lot faster.

You have your agents buy a load of ammonia somewhere out near Altair, ship it to an

aggy planet around Tau Ceti, pick up some grain and schlep that back to the hive colonies

of Sol. That's thirty-six years of crawling along at an agonizing pace of 250,000

kilometers per second, but only a long lunch on the Capitalist.

        The first generation of CEO's to take offices on the Capitalist, Sloan's father

among them, loved to watch their empires grow from this godlike vantage point. But,

unlike the gods, they couldn't always keep up with everything the little people were up

to. Sloan sometimes wished he could leave the ship for a little while, just to catch up on

the details, but the logistics of getting on and off a near lightspeed satellite were daunting.

His office was just around the next corner. Tony Arbequest moved to block his path.

"What's this deal between you and Seth?"

        "Too early to say," Sloan said, and neatly sidestepped. Arbequest was on his way

out. He couldn't pay the rent, and would have to go back on the clock unless he could

come up with a decent cash flow position. Sloan could afford to ignore him. But this

rumor was bothering him. He didn't want to tangle with Seth Leibowitz, not now, not

ever. His father and Seth had been working together, and his father had ended up with

Seth's knife in his back. He dodged another CEO with what looked like a question on his

mind, and ducked into his office.

        Danny sat behind the ops desk to his right. He gave Sloan a worried look but said

nothing. Margie stood up from behind the reception desk and smiled.
Jarpe/Captains                                                                                  5


        "Good morning, Mr. Lerner. There's an urgent message from C&P. It's the first

one on your monitor. Is there anything..."

        "Nothing, thanks, Margie. Morning, Danny." Sloan didn't wait to hear the

answer. He closed the door to his office behind him. First message, Colonization &

Personnel, Planet HE-47/J, the one with the petroleum. Something about the deed, right

of colonization, and a prior lien. What prior lien?

        He slowed down and read the message more carefully. Information Services had

uncovered a flight pattern that put a transport en route to Planet HE-47/J, said transport

leased to The Sculptor Group. Seth Leibowitz, in other words. His transport papers

claimed a right to colonize the planet, and the space transit authorities had let it through.

Legal had checked the deed and had confirmed that there was in fact a lien on the planet,

a leftover from the ruined deal between Lerner Interstellar and Sculptor, under the tenure

of Lerner senior. There had been a civil trial in lower court, then an appeal in Interstellar

Court that had overturned one of the two claims of the suit. As it stood, after two years

of legal wrangling, both companies had equally valid right of colonization of the planet.

This had all happened since Sloan had left his apartment on his way to the office. It

would have to happen on the day he forgot his phone.

        Sloan checked the time frame in standard binary. The days on his display flipped

by at a speed of one per second, as always. C & P had sent a colony ship to HE-47/J and

it was supposed to arrive in just seventy years. Sculptor's flight plan showed their ship

arriving just a year later. His people would just have time to unpack the colony and fire

up the factories in that amount of time.
Jarpe/Captains                                                                                 6


        HE-47/J was a dead world, no life left on the surface but a lot of complex organic

stuff in the ground. Easy to build on, but tough to survive. A hot, sandy, windy planet.

Tough enough to get things going without another colony competing for resources.

        Sloan called up his deal-tracker program, the one that could keep straight the

calculations of time and distance and all of the other complications that came with the

running of an interstellar business. HE-47/J was about fifty light years away from the

Capitalist, give or take. If he sent the message in the next couple of hours, it would reach

the transport ship just in time for him to tell it to turn around. But he couldn't afford to

give up that petroleum. Seth Leibowitz had the same window, give or take a few

minutes, but he probably wouldn't back down either. What would these people do once

they ran into each other? If he couldn't convince Seth to call off his ship, he'd soon find

out.



        "Sloan, Seth Liebowitz here. Hey, kid, it looks like our legal departments have

been busy on the clock this morning. You got time to sit down?"

        No way. There was no way Sloan was meeting with Seth in person at this point.

He was still trying to get all the information, and his off-the-clock legal team was

slogging through years of trial transcripts that were still uploading. "Kind of busy, old

man, how's..." he pretended to check his calendar... "never?"

        "Aw, hell, Sloan, lets cut the crap. We've got two colonies about to land on one

goddamned planet. You know that can't work. There ain't enough water on that

dustbowl for one. We've got to work something out."
Jarpe/Captains                                                                               7


        "OK, how about you tell your people to turn around and we put this whole thing

behind us?"

        "Now kid, you know that isn't going to happen. Your old man used that planet as

collateral in a legally binding arrangement, and he defaulted. I'm not just going to walk

away from forty trillion barrels of crude oil. Look, now this is not a threat, it's just a

simple statement of fact. Lives are going to be lost over this."

        "What the hell are you talking about?"

        "I'm talking about war, young man. Something you, obviously, know nothing

about. My people are not going to tolerate the presence of your people on that planet.

Your employees are going to have a serious problem on their hands. Remember, this is

not a threat. This is going to happen. I'm just telling you straight out."

        "My people are ready to handle that contingency," Sloan said. As he said it, he

pulled up the company manual and had it search out the S.O.P for self defense.

        "What do you got on that transport, kid? Bunch of Drabs? It is Drabs, isn't it?

You cheap bastards. You know who I got to colonize that sand dune? Bedouins. You

heard of Bedouins? They're war-like people, indigenous to Earth's Sahara. They're

tough, and they're bred to survive in just the sort of conditions we got down there on,

what is it, HE-47/J? What the hell kind of a name is that for a planet? You people got no

imagination."

        And Seth, for all of his faults, did. That was something everyone knew. While

Lerner Interstellar populated every planet it owned with a quiet and sturdy people that

was made up of every race of old Earth blended together, Sculptor went out of its way to

match the people with the terrain. If they had a snowball, they found some Inuits to live
Jarpe/Captains                                                                                8


there. If it was a tropical jungle, they scoured the Amazon rain forest for the few

remaining tribes and offered them a trip to the stars and a great benefits package.

        But Sculptor was already a huge company, and Seth could afford to do things in

style. Lerner Interstellar's mission statement was to create a large, multi-functional

corporation without becoming distracted by extravagance. And the Drabs fit right into

that business model. They had a strong work ethic, they weren't very excitable and

rarely caused trouble. And they loved their company.

        "You'd be surprised at what my people are capable of, Seth. Don't consider the

outcome of a war to be a foregone conclusion."

        "Bullshit, Sloan. You and I know that your Drabs won't last five weeks in a fight

against my Bedouins. They can't even take a shit without consulting the company

manual."

        Speaking of the manual, Sloan found the chapter on self defense and his heart

sank as he read the instructions. They were technically workable. Everything you would

want to know from how to target an enemy bunker to how to prepare a unit of field

rations was covered. In fact, it was the degree of detail that concerned him. The Drab

soldiers would stand exactly where the company manual told them to stand while the

Bedouins ran circles around them. And no one had thought to send an innovator along

with the colony. They'd be on their own. He had to find another way to bluff his way

out of this one.

        "I see two ways this can go, Seth. Either we just let these people land on the

planet and fight it out. See who wins, see who's liable for all those deaths on both sides,

see what the courts have to say about a company who sends warriors to a planet without
Jarpe/Captains                                                                              9


clear right of colonization, knowing there's a legitimate colony on the way. Or, second

choice, you can call your people and tell them to turn back before anyone gets hurt. I'd

even be glad to compensate you for agreeing to settle this out of court. I'll send you a list

of assets I think are quite generous in exchange for what is, at best, a dubious claim of

right of colonization. Look it over. You have two hours. Your choice, Seth. Now, if

you'll excuse me, I have a staff meeting."




                                                 2

        The company manual was uncharacteristically vague on the topic of war. Sub-

director Bodansky could find everything he needed to know about preparing for war,

from the proper methods of training an army to the access codes that would order the

robot factories to make an impressive collection of lethal weapons. What was unclear

was the objective. "When a colony is threatened with violent attack, it may be necessary

to conduct war as an advanced means of defense."

        Bodansky had already gone through the early protocols. He had armed the

frontier, formed a militia, sent out patrols, and created defensive earthworks with artillery

support. And still the Bedouins killed his people. He had lost over three thousand FTE's

since his Colonization Team had landed on Planet HE-47/J. His team had not met his

objective to build and operate one hundred oil wells, and had certainly not managed to

meet the export quota handed down from the home offices of Lerner Interstellar. His

project was failing, and now even the company manual was no help.
Jarpe/Captains                                                                          10


        What was the objective? The problem was, he knew how to start the war. The

manual told him that. But once you start, how do you stop?




        "I thought we had agreed on a campaign of war," Team Leader Miller said. She

looked around at the other team leaders as if to request backup. "Isn't the company

manual fairly explicit on this?"

        "The company manual tells us how to go about starting a war, yes," Sub-director

Bodansky answered. "But I'm still unclear on the objective. I've gone to supplementary

materials to try and clear it up."

        "Supplementary materials?" Miller was incredulous. "What do you think you

are, an innovator?"

        That remark stung. Bodansky had risen to the position of Sub-Director as a result

of years of hard work and loyal service. His creativity had never been officially

recognized, because he had never let it show. When he had an imaginative solution to a

problem, he held it in check and went with standard operating procedure. That had got

him this far in the company, but deep down he knew he could have done better. Could

have been doing better all along. He had ideas. He was an innovator, only no one knew

it. And Team Leader Miller was treating the very idea as though it were a joke.

        "We weren't budgeted an innovator for this colonization project," Bodansky

answered. "But this situation clearly calls for something beyond what the company

manual can provide."
Jarpe/Captains                                                                             11


        "I'm with Miller on this, Bodansky," Team Leader Markos said. "Trying to turn

yourself into an innovator is ill advised. You just weren't trained for it. We should stick

to the manual and go make war with these people."

        "The objective is fairly obvious," Miller added.

        "Then state it for me," Bodansky demanded. "Just tell me this, as simply as you

can: How do you know when you're finished?"

        "When you kill the enemy. Of course. Bodansky, that's the whole point."

        "How many do we have to kill? All of them?"

        "Well..."

        "The babies?"

        "Oh, no, of course..."

        "The children? What if they grow up and want to fight? Or tell me this, do we

kill the support personnel? The factory workers?"

        "I shouldn't think that would be necessary," Miller said, clearly uncomfortable by

this point. "I think the point is to get them to surrender."

        "Do you know when to surrender? The manual is actually quite clear that we

should surrender when we are clearly outmatched. But the Bedouins got to this planet

only a year or so after we did, we both have the same number of people, the same

technology, roughly. We can't be sure we can win until the last one of us kills the last

one of them. This project is open ended. Without a focused objective, the war could go

on until we're all dead and there's no one left to bury us. I don't know anything about

making war, but I do know that you never start a project without a clear idea in mind of

how to stop it."
Jarpe/Captains                                                                            12


        Miller grimaced and nodded her head. "You're right, Bodansky. We can't start a

project without an exit strategy. We've been going at this all wrong. What were you

saying about supplementary materials?"

        The other team leaders exchanged nervous looks. Their grandmothers and

grandfathers had seen distant worlds, had crossed the gulf of interstellar space, had built a

mighty company with hard work and good leadership. But they had never done what this

team was about to do. Beyond the company manual was a scary landscape of ideas and

imagination, and this was where the gateway to that land opened. Bodansky studied their

faces, and he saw fear mixed with the barest hint of understanding. He knew that his own

face had gone through that transition days ago, and he knew now that they were about to

realize the same things he had. He was silent while they thought it over. He had led

them this far, but they had to take the next steps on their own.

        Markos stared down at his company manual, a display showing a standard

advance column for infantry with armor support. He looked up and switched the screen

off. "All right," he said. "Tell us what you've found."

        "I've found a great deal of supplementary information on the history of war on

old Earth," Bodansky told them. "It's too much for me to read, so I'd like to assign sub-

committees to cover each of the basic areas."

        Team Leader Miller picked up the packet of information Bodansky pushed in

front of her. "The Hundred Year's War? That sounds terribly inefficient."



        "Diplomacy? There's nothing about diplomacy in the company manual."

Director Brennerman frowned down at the proposal on the desk in front of him. "Your
Jarpe/Captains                                                                              13


goals statement said you were going to pursue a campaign of warfare. What happened to

that?"

         "I saw a better way," Bodansky told him. "I reasoned that..."

         "Wait a minute, you reasoned?"

         "Just listen to my argument. The war can still be initiated. We haven't lost any

time. But listen first."

         "All right, go ahead." The director was starting to get that worried look he had

seen on the faces of the team leaders. It went away as Bodansky spoke, just like it always

did. His people did have imagination, they could use their minds if they had to. It hadn't

been lost. The company called them Drabs, presumably because of their mud-colored

skin, but also because of the way they thought. But Bodansky had seen the intelligence

in those olive skinned faces, and the spark of imagination behind those dull brown eyes.

         "The objective of war in the company manual is not clear. The team leaders and I

delved into supplementary material, history lessons, mostly, to gain a clearer

understanding of the goals. What we found was that war was a means to force your

enemy to listen to diplomacy. Once you make them realize that fighting is costly, you

can convince them that it is in their best interests and yours to pursue a peaceful

alternative."

         "But we've already tried talking to them," the director said. "They won't listen."

         "We've approached them on business terms, as if we were negotiating a contract.

The problem is, we had nothing to offer them. Now we do."

         "And what is that? We still have nothing they want."

         "They want peace," Bodansky said.
Jarpe/Captains                                                                              14


        "No they don't. If they wanted peace they wouldn't be attacking us."

        Bodansky smiled. "Rather, I should say, they will want peace once they hear

what I have to say. You see, our people are not a war-like race. We're good workers and

we get the job done, but we don't like fighting. When we take on an unpleasant task we

accomplish our objectives as efficiently as possible. Our company manual gives us

access codes to get our factories to make weapons. According to the manual, we are to

make the weapons in a certain order, from least destructive to most, as they are needed.

I'm sure the Bedouins have a similar set of guidelines. But they like to fight one-on-one,

so they like the small weapons. We don't like this fighting, and we don't see this as the

most efficient way to proceed. We feel that it would best achieve the objectives if we just

made the most destructive weapon first, use it to eliminate the enemy once and for all,

and continue with the work we were sent here to do."

        "And suppose they also make their most destructive weapon?" the director asked.

        "Then we all die and nobody gets any work done."

        Bodansky could tell that the director was paging through the company manual on

his desktop reader. He couldn't see it on the other side of the desk, but he knew the

pattern of a man desperately searching the index for the answers to unanswerable

questions.

        "And you and your team came up with this idea from supplementary materials,

you say?"

        "There's nothing about this in the manual, sir."
Jarpe/Captains                                                                              15


        "If it's such a good idea, then why wouldn't it be in there? This manual was

written by smarter people than us." The director glanced nervously up at Bodansky, then

quickly back to the screen, still stubbornly silent on the topic of enforceable peace.

        "The manual can't foresee every situation, Director Brennerman. Sometimes we

have to revise it as we go."

        The director looked up from the screen at Bodansky, then hung his head in

resignation. Bodansky knew exactly how he felt. The company manual had never let

them down before. Only the innovators were trained to think outside the box, to revise

the text as needed, to create instructions out of thin air. And there was no innovator on

planet HE-47/J.

        "Try it, Bodansky, but keep the factories ready anyway. We may need those big

weapons, after all." As he stood to leave, Bodansky saw the director paging through the

index again. The frantic clicking steeled his resolve. He would show Brennerman and

even the home office that even though this project had not been budgeted an innovator, it

had gotten one anyway.
Jarpe/Captains                                                                              16


                                                  3

        "Message from HE-47/J," Danny said as Sloan walked through the office on his

way back to his apartment. It had been a long day. Legal had still not sorted out the

mess of rulings and counter rulings. C & P had no idea how the Drabs would fare in a

war with the Bedouins. And Seth had not blinked. He had not been interested in the list

of space stations and mining operations that Sloan had tried to entice him with, had in

fact sent a similar insulting list to Sloan for the same purpose, and he had not sent the

message in time to turn back his colony ship. Neither had Sloan. He could take grim

satisfaction that in the ages old battle between youth and experience, between growth and

value, Sloan Lerner had not let his side down. He had not surrendered. Little good that

would do to the employees whose lives would be lost, knowing nothing of the meaning

behind their sacrifice.

        "They've arrived? They colony has landed on the planet?" Of course, the

message was delayed by the speed of radio waves, and so the ship had actually landed a

long time ago, but Danny knew what he meant.

        "Yes, the feed is spooling through now. They've encountered the Sculptor

colony."

        "The Bedouins."

        "Yes, they've been attacked, they attempted defensive measures but were not

successful."

        The fact that all of this had happened fifty years ago did nothing to lessen the

tension. The events of the years following the colony landing were spooled out in the

continuous status feed from the real time world in minutes.
Jarpe/Captains                                                                              17


        Sloan rounded the desk and began reading the feed for himself. Campaign of

warfare, Sub Director Bodansky in charge..."Wait a minute, diplomacy? Back that up,

Danny."

        Let's see, supplemental materials, history of war, blah blah blah. Now here:

"Sub Director Bodansky has determined that a campaign of warfare is inefficient and

counterproductive. He has requested the factory robots to construct thermonuclear

warheads, cruise missiles, and mobile launch vehicles. He has informed the Sculptor

colony of his plans, and has urged them to reconsider their attacks."

        Now here was the diplomacy part: "The Bedouin tribe, seeing the danger of a

nuclear conflict to all parties concerned, has agreed to a joint colonization effort. The

colony is requesting retroactive approval for the establishment of a spin off corporation

comprised of personnel from the Sculptor Group and Lerner Interstellar. The purpose of

the new corporation is to provide environmental support for the Sculptor and Lerner

Interstellar drilling operations. With resources thus pooled, both colonies have surpassed

projected productivity milestones."

        "I'll be damned," Sloan muttered. "Get Seth on the phone." Things had worked

out in spite of the leadership on the Capitalist. It was a humbling experience. What he

and Seth Leibowitz had been unable to do, this Bodansky had done. It would have been

appropriate to reward him, but he'd already be long since dead by the time the message

got to planet.

        "Sloan," Seth's voice said on the speaker phone. "I imagine you're seeing the

same news I am. It looks like we're in business together."
Jarpe/Captains                                                                              18


        "Keep your pants on, Seth, this little spin off company is barely big enough to get

a line in our earnings report. I've got desk blotters that are worth more to me."

        Seth laughed. "You got a lot to learn, kid. Hell, I suspect we all do. We like to

play at being gods here, but without our little people scurrying around out there in the

real world, we've got nothing. Our loyal minions on planet HE-47/J found a way to get

their heads together. Next time, I hope you take a page from this Bodansky fellow of

yours. And did you notice, they've agreed to rename the planet? We're supposed to call

it Sadiq-amal from now on."

        "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

        "It's Arabic, kid. Means something like `friendly co-workers.'"