Chapter Forty-Two: The Layered Wheat Cube of Sarawak
Wednesday, September 22
The results from Europe came in soon after they landed in Sarawak.
| United Europe | Electoral Votes | Dubois | Ajala | Platt |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Albania | 1 | 41% | 19% | 40% |
| Austria | 1 | 38% | 26% | 36% |
| Belgium | 1 | 36% | 29% | 35% |
| Bosnia & Herzeg. | 1 | 48% | 26% | 26% |
| Bulgaria | 1 | 39% | 20% | 41% |
| Croatia | 1 | 41% | 24% | 35% |
| Czech Republic | 1 | 39% | 27% | 34% |
| Denmark | 1 | 36% | 29% | 35% |
| Finland | 1 | 39% | 21% | 40% |
| France | 8 | 68% | 13% | 19% |
| Germany | 7 | 33% | 33% | 34% |
| Great Britain | 10 | 36% | 35% | 29% |
| Greece | 1 | 26% | 28% | 44% |
| Hungary | 1 | 36% | 30% | 34% |
| Ireland | 1 | 37% | 36% | 27% |
| Italy | 6 | 34% | 31% | 35% |
| Kosovo | 1 | 42% | 26% | 32% |
| Macedonia | 1 | 36% | 22% | 42% |
| Netherlands | 2 | 37% | 27% | 36% |
| Norway | 1 | 41% | 19% | 40% |
| Poland | 3 | 48% | 23% | 38% |
| Portugal | 1 | 48% | 27% | 25% |
| Romania | 2 | 35% | 28% | 37% |
| Scotland | 1 | 30% | 32% | 38% |
| Serbia | 1 | 46% | 29% | 25% |
| Slovakia | 1 | 38% | 25% | 37% |
| Slovenia | 1 | 41% | 29% | 30% |
| Spain | 4 | 51% | 26% | 23% |
| Sweden | 1 | 37% | 25% | 38% |
| Switzerland | 1 | 38% | 28% | 34% |
| TOTAL | 64 | 43 | 0 | 21 |
The news was mixed. Once again, Dubois had dominated, beating Toby by better than two to one, and pulling farther ahead in the electoral count, which he now led 291 to Toby’s 57. Once again, Ajala had been shut out, leaving him still at 10. Dubois was inching closer and closer to the magic 667.
Most of the countries they had won were those neighboring Russia—Feodora’s influence. Eleven races had been decided by a point, with Toby winning six of them.
Germany had saved them from humiliation, with Toby getting 34% to edge out Dubois and Ajala, both of whom received 33%. Toby couldn’t help but notice the most interesting and, in some ways, most disappointing result—Great Britain. Most of the polls had shown Ajala winning, but Dubois had beaten him by a point, 36% to 35%, with Toby getting 29%. It was a classic case of splitting the vote; head to head, Dubois wouldn’t have beaten either of them.
“Ajala must feel like a blue whale just sat on him,” Bruce said.
“Don’t forget Africa’s coming up in two weeks,” Toby said. “He’ll sweep most of that, and that’s 247 electoral votes.”
“I don’t know about that anymore. But forget Europe, forget Africa, let’s focus on the Asian Federation and its 178 votes.”
***
The youngest member of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World would soon be octuplets. The Layered Wheat Cube of Sarawak went into operation in 2096, and after four years of success, seven more were planned. When this happened, the Commission on the Seven Wonders of the Modern World might revoke its status; otherwise, it’d become the Fourteen Wonders of the Modern World, with more to come.
The Layered Wheat Cube was a perfect cube, half a mile—2640 feet—on each glass side. A high-rise apartment complex surrounded it on all four sides. Each of the 660 layers or floors of the cube were four feet high, with an artificial dirt floor and bright lighting on top. Packed densely in between were rows and rows of wheat. Not just any wheat, but genetically created dwarf borlaug-15 wheat: short, high yield, high protein, disease resistant, and with a limited root system.
Toby, Bruce, and Feodora toured the cube, with a speech planned afterwards. Turk, Crowbar, and the usual Gray Guard stood about. Toby had written the speech himself, not bothering with their speechwriters, and Bruce only made a few minor changes. Feodora, who seemed deep in thought and unusually quiet that morning, said she agreed with all of it without seeing it, her eyes glazed as she studied something on her TC.
It was one of the easiest speeches to write. What could be a better answer to solving world hunger problems for the world’s rapidly growing population and dwindling arable lands than an artificial cube whose yield per area was not just 660 times greater than normal, but because of the controlled conditions, over a thousand times greater?
The “tour” of the cube didn’t actually go inside, since it wasn’t made with human corridors, and they didn’t think it was dignified to crawl on hands and knees in the access tunnels. They followed a tour guide as he pointed out features from the outside, and then showed them the control station next to the cube. Toby enjoyed the fresh wheat scent, a contrast to the ever-present fish smell in the Rocinante. It was offset by an irritating background throbbing from the cube that permeated the air.
“It’s entirely mechanized,” the guide said. “In fact, I’m not just the tour guide, I operate the entire cube. Which really means it’s my job to make sure the on/off button stays on, that the daily supplies come in, and to call a technician if an alarm goes off, meaning something malfunctioned. That hasn’t happened in six months.”
“What’s the annual yield?” Toby asked.
“Over 600,000 tons this past year,” the guide said. “Enough to feed three million people for a year. And we do it all on just a half mile square of land.”
“A quarter mile square,” Bruce corrected. “One hundred sixty acres.”
The guide looked at him sharply. “It’s half a mile on a side, so half a mile of square land.”
“Which means the area is a half mile times a half mile, or a quarter mile of land area.”
“I don’t think so,” the guide said, shaking his head and smiling. Toby gave Bruce a smack on the back when he started to respond. Now was not the time to give a math lesson.
“Where does this mathematical wonder get its power?” Bruce asked.
“From the Bakun Hydro Electric Dam on the Balui River. Sometimes the old-fashioned power sources are the best ones. Our vision is to put these cubes up all over the world, wherever there’s a cheap source of power. Safety’s also a concern—with all the piracy in the South China seas, we don’t like to ship the wheat, so we mostly sell locally and to Indonesia and Brunei.”
After Toby gave his speech, they returned to the Rocinante. Parked next to it was the campaign’s new and much larger floater, christened with a bottle of Jancola by Bruce as the Sancho. Toby stepped inside for a look. It was jammed with people behind desks, all seemingly hard at work. When they saw him, work stopped as many of them got their first close-up look of their candidate. Toby waved, thanked them for their hard work, and stepped out.
“Who are all those people?” he asked Bruce.
“I hired them.”
“What do they do?”
“I have no idea,” Bruce said, “I just try to stay out of their way.”
There were several other large floaters nearby—the press. A group of them loitered about. When they saw Toby, they raced after him. Toby fled into the Rocinante, wondering how he’d get into the hotel without getting swarmed.
* * *
There were 21 countries and 178 electoral votes in the Asian Federation.
| Asian Federation | Population (millions) | Electoral Votes |
|---|---|---|
| Bangladesh | 304.1 | 30 |
| Bhutan | 1.4 | 1 |
| Brunei | 1.0 | 1 |
| Cambodia | 61.2 | 6 |
| Fiji | 1.0 | 1 |
| Indonesia | 430.6 | 43 |
| Japan | 121.0 | 12 |
| Kim | 29.7 | 3 |
| Laos | 25.0 | 3 |
| Malaysia | 58.9 | 6 |
| Mongolia | 5.6 | 1 |
| Myanmar | 70.1 | 7 |
| Nepal | 77.8 | 8 |
| Philippines | 238.9 | 24 |
| Singapore | 6.1 | 1 |
| Solomon Islands | 1.8 | 1 |
| South Korea | 41.3 | 4 |
| Sri Lanka | 31.8 | 3 |
| Thailand | 71.8 | 7 |
| Timor | 6.2 | 1 |
| Vietnam | 147.3 | 15 |
| TOTAL | 1732.6 | 178 |
Gene and Bruce had put together a “circle” strategy for the Asian Federation campaign. Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Indonesia, and the Philippines roughly circled the South China Sea. They represented 113 of the 178 electoral votes up for grabs, so they’d spend the next week rotating through them as they moved from one speech and media event to another, with a couple of side trips to Bangladesh. They knew they’d win Kim’s three votes and lose Japan’s twelve, so they wouldn’t bother visiting those two. The big prizes were Indonesia’s 43 votes, Bangladesh’s 30, Philippines’s 24 and Vietnam’s 15. Other than Kim, Dubois had substantial leads everywhere—this was conservative country. They discussed for hours how they planned to win, but it wasn’t very promising.
“This all very good,” Feodora finally said. She had been listening attentively but mostly without comment. “But around South China Sea, there’s bigger problem than calculating base area of big cube. A problem small general need to take care of.”
Toby knew what the problem was. They’d even arranged their flight paths off the main shipping routes to avoid the pirates of the South China Sea. How could Feodora do anything about this if the Chinese navy and all the others on the sea hadn’t been able to solve the problem in all these years? With anti-sonar and anti-radar siding and 30,000 islands in a million square miles of sea to hide in, the pirate submarine fleet had little problem evading discovery. Sometimes they’d congregate for a joint attack, but afterwards they’d all separate and disappear.
Toby and Dubois had both promised to mobilize the world’s fleets and take out the pirates. Dubois had promised this five years ago, only to find that the time and economic cost of doing so was far greater than the actual damages caused by the pirates, with little hopes of success. USE funding was limited, and there was little chance of getting such an expensive bill through the World Congress. Dubois found numerous ways of making the promise again, which generally translated into “This time I mean it!”
Ajala argued that any talk of mobilizing fleets to hunt down the pirates was just politics, that we had no way of finding the pirates. Therefore, until someone comes up with a better way, it’s best to just pay off the pirates, which would cost substantially less than the actual damages they caused. Toby thought Ajala’s argument made perfect logical sense, and correctly predicted a ten percent drop in the polls for him. Toby decided this was one of those times where you just have to tell people what they want to hear, and later, if elected president, act in the way they wanted you to act, even if you know it is pointless. As Bruce said, “In a democracy, sometimes you have to do what the chimps want.”
“So you are going to take care of the pirates?” Bruce asked Feodora. “Maybe run a few of them through with a sword?”
“No,” she said. “I’ve done that, very messy. I find laser more efficient. To answer question, yes, I will deal with problem.”
“Just deal with the problem, right,” Bruce said. “It’s going to take more than wild deuces to solve this one.”
“Always use entire hand dealt. When you need more than wild deuces, use joker.” She turned to Twenty-two, who was in a corner playing with Stupid. After spending a few days with Ajala in Europe, she’d flown Zero to Malaysia and joined them in the Rocinante. “You avoid interfering with human affairs, yes?”
“It is Galactic Union policy. If I got caught, I would be in very big trouble.”
“Then I will not ask you to interfere. But I have question. Zero has sensors that located you in France from U.S. Can it locate submarines that are underwater or hidden in underwater passageways?”
“Easily.” Twenty-two was nervously rocking side to side. “However, I cannot hunt down these pirates for you. That is something you have to do yourself.”
“Agreed. I would not ask you to do something that would interfere.”
Where is she going with this, Toby wondered. She always had an angle, and she was making no effort to hide the grin on her face.
“I am ordering the Russian fleet into the South China Sea,” Feodora said.
“You can do that?” Toby asked, stunned.
She looked off into space. He heard her whisper, “Get me the Kremlin.”
They listened as she gave the Russian fleet their new orders. When she was done, her smile brightened. “Sometimes it is good to be Feodora.”
“But what’s the point?” Bruce said. “The Chinese fleet is just as big and always on the hunt, and they only get about one pirate sub every couple of years. There are at least fifty pirate subs left.”
“However, Chinese fleet doesn’t have joker.” She turned back to Twenty-two. “I need to locate one pirate submarine. Do you agree that the Russian fleet could locate one?”
Twenty-two was absolutely still, both eyestalks on Feodora. “Yes, they could, eventually.”
“So it would only be minor interference if you locate one of these fifty pirates for us?”
So that was her game, Toby thought. It was just like Fedora. She’d instigated a war to draw a group of countries together so they’d unite as one country. Now she’d ordered the Russian fleet to move into the South China Sea just to convince Twenty-two to locate a single sub for her!
“It is still interfering,” Twenty-two said.
“So was your confrontation with Dubois,” Bruce said. “And your broadcast to the world. And the table tennis exhibition. You’ve been interfering every step of the way. Not that I object.”
Twenty-two began pacing. Toby wondered if that was something she’d picked up on Earth, perhaps from Ajala, a regular pacer.
“Those were incidental,” Twenty-two said. “I did not give out or use grod technology to intentionally influence anything. I need some time to think about this.”
“Could you let me know by morning?” Feodora asked.
“Why morning?” Twenty-two asked.
“So small general can take next step in master plan.”
“No,” Twenty-two asked, “I mean why would I need until morning to decide? I have all the data I need. Okay, I agree. I will have Zero locate one pirate submarine for you. Do you just need location?”
Even Feodora seemed caught off guard by the alien’s sudden agreement. “If possible, find submarine hidden by island. I need to pay visit.”
“What?” Bruce exclaimed. “Vice presidential candidates do not cavort with pirates.”
“If presidential candidate can cavort with alien from outer space, then small general can talk to humans on island.”
“Then we’re sending Turk and Crowbar with you,” Toby said.
“No. I go alone.” When Toby and Bruce tried to convince her, she only smiled and shook her head.
“What about the Russian fleet?” Toby asked. “While you’re off having adventures, what do we tell them when they show up? The Chinese aren’t going to be happy about them in their back yard. We don’t want another war.”
“Russian fleet in South China Sea,” Feodora said, sounding wistful. “Chinese Fleet in South China Sea. I regret I will miss much of the fun.”
Toby sighed. They had plans for Feodora to campaign around Asia. They’d just have to schedule around this. “Sometimes, Feodora, you are like a cold breeze in a blizzard.”
“In Russia, that is compliment.”
* * *
The pirates of the South China Sea were once the Taiwanese submarine fleet. When Taiwan, after over a century of actual independence, officially declared its independence from China in 2074 during the Beijing Rebellion, Toby and most others thought China would invade. However, the Chinese leadership, more enlightened than past ones, and struggling with the Beijing Rebellion while mired in the Third Great Depression, restrained themselves. A decade later, no longer feeling threatened, the reunion referendum passed, and Taiwan reunited with China.
However, not all Taiwanese liked the idea. The military, built up for years to defend against a Chinese invasion, had great difficulty accepting the idea they were now part of what they had considered the enemy for so long. Much of the military fractured into splinter groups.
China easily defeated the rebellious Taiwanese army, air force, and surface fleet. The one group they could not get at was the submarine fleet. They became international fugitives.
At first, much of the world was caught up in pirate-mania, and considered the submariners heroes for their brave stand against the powerful Chinese. Every week there’d be another headline of a Chinese ship sunk. Movies were made of their heroics. However, even a submariner needs food, fresh water, and other supplies, including weapons and ammunition. They couldn’t just dock somewhere and go shopping.
So they began stealing. Initially, they only took what they needed, and only from the Chinese. As the years went by, they became progressively less picky in their foraging. The honorable sub captains that led the original revolt were soon overthrown by younger, more aggressive rivals. The world, once so enamored with them, turned on them, and demanded they be hunted down. Betrayed and hunted, they spiraled downward until they were, quite literally, pirates.
In the world of pirates, the ones who talked got swords run through them—or lasered—by the ones who didn’t.
And Feodora was on her way to them to chat.