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By Matthew Jarpe
Originally published March 2002 by Asimov's Science Fiction. Copyright © 2002 by Matthew Jarpe.

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.

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."

"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."

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 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.

"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."

"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.

"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.

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."

"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.’"

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