Oberheim (Voices) Part 16

THE STAGE IS SET FOR CONFRONTATION:

1) P-K4*

*Chess moves. For greater understanding, may be read in conjunction with a chess board.

The Belgian-Swiss Alliance had entered the movement on the side of the Cantons. Indeed, they had taken it over. Those of broader vision had suspected such a move was possible. That Cantos, a single planet-colony of sixty million inhabitants, could hope to make more than minor gains in that newly settled quadrant was somewhat doubtful.

The known galaxy was expanding, and the Cantons themselves had been little more than blind, eager puppets, fed and encouraged from outside, closely watched to see how far they could bend (or simply ignore) the precepts of International Law. Though the damage they did was all too real.

P-K4

As the inhabited regions of s.p.a.ce spread out and became more remote, so the rules and niceties which had guided earlier colonization grew thin and wore away. It was merely a question of how much aggression the reigning superpowers would allow. The Four were still a force to be reckoned with.

2) N-KB3

In the current balance the United Commonwealth held the greatest sway, its advanced technology and more plentiful resources always keeping it one step ahead of Soviet s.p.a.ce. The Americans had been the first to colonize, and first in deep-s.p.a.ce exploration, the advantages of which were still paying off.

N-QB3

The New j.a.panese Republic---Empire, in everything but name---was strong, but surprisingly benevolent. For the first time in its modern history this serious, hard-working nation had the room and resources to keep its naturally overachieving peoples busy and content. There was no longer any reason for the underlying brutality of earlier j.a.panese culture, and in truth many of the more aggressive social and political stances had begun to lose favor among the ma.s.ses. How long this relative inner calm would last none could say, and few thought to cross them. In romanticized histories of the second World War the saying, "Let sleeping dragons lie," had been used to refer to the United States. It now applied with equal and ironic aptness to the j.a.panese.

3) B-N5

But the fastest growing, and to many the most frightening of the s.p.a.ce giants, was the metal-churning monster known simply as 'The German States'. Their technology and industrial determination once more bringing them to the fore of the political arena, this born-again superpower, in the eyes of many, was the card on which the growing instability would turn. And the Germans themselves, for reasons not entirely clear, seemed to savor this new role, and to do everything possible to enhance it. Most had believed (not without cause) that it was they who encouraged the Cantons, and therefore they who would soon be making their presence felt in the outlying sectors. But when the time for such a move had come---the ruthless destruction by mercenaries of half the Canton fleet at Centaurus (so read the propaganda line)---they had shown no such inclination, choosing instead to remain neutral. True, their moneys and weapons were sometimes involved; but by all legitimate intelligence not a single German squadron or military adviser had been seen within the whole of Andersen sector during the dispute. There could be no denying, however, that their geological fleets had moved in quietly after the destruction of the Laurian ore-planet, recovering valuable mineral wastes that the Cantons could not. The mysterious 'gravity station' had also disappeared.

P-Q3

Historians and sociologists who studied the German peoples had found themselves in sudden demand among the politicians and media of the smaller, more skittish nations; and their separate conclusions had been nothing if not ambiguous. The general consensus among the most respected, however, had been that history's "romantic Huns" were as mysterious and unreadable a people as G.o.d ever put on the Earth. No one could know what the Germans were capable of, for good or ill, until they did it. In World War II they had played the part of heinous villains (and done so with terrifying cruelty); in the reshaping of Europe after the collapse of the Communist Bloc, they had acted as generous unifiers, and staunch defenders of the lesser democracies.

That this latter posture had finally and decisively cut the political binds and military restrictions imposed by the Allies after the fall of the Third Reich, was a fact that some (though not all) tended to overlook. The one consistency throughout had been an aggressive and self-righteous pursuit of nationalistic goals, based partly, but not solely, on a continuing discomfort with Western humanitarian ideals.

"The Germans don't want freedom," the 20th Century author had declared.

"They don't understand it. What they want is a strong leader, and a cause worth fighting for." But here again, words could never quite capture the stubborn fiber of the German spirit.

And, of course, those who did not fit the negative stereotype---there were many---were human beings just like any other, complete with their share of artists, dissidents, dreamers, idealists and alternative politicians. That those in power continued to be for the most part conservative, flag waving nationalists (as indeed had become the case in the United Commonwealth) did not mean that the Germans had no heart.

Many quiet, everyday working people secretly hoped for the emergence of a more moderate geopolitical stance; and few would deny that a truly good German was as unselfish and compa.s.sionate an individual as one could ever hope to find. Unfortunately, fierce nationalism remained, and the end result was always the same: subtle but continuous expansionism.

4) P-Q4

But by all appearances this was not to be a (directly) German war.

B-Q2

Yet the shadow of her past, and continued arms build-up, bred little trust among her neighbors.

5) N-B3

There was nothing particularly unique about the Belgian-Swiss Alliance---the most integral of the 'intermediate' powers involved---although to themselves it seemed a thing of great importance, occupying countless hours of thought and preparation.

Formed out of mutual colonial interest scarcely a dozen years before, it had since made substantial (if in the eyes of the affluent, still modest) gains in and around the Berlioz Quadrant, and was currently exploring the regions that lay beyond---the limits of man's domain in that direction.

Left behind by the sweeping, mechanized changes of the past two centuries, these proud and businesslike peoples, not wholly dissimilar, now seemed resolutely determined to improve their lot, to gain respectability, and to leave their mark on future histories of the era.

Whatever that might mean.

P x P

The Belgian Empire of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had long since past into dust like the ruins of Ozymandias, leaving it a diminutive, unimportant nation of temporal and unstable affluence, subject to the whims and power-plays of its larger, more industrialized neighbors. Like the Germans of the late 1930's, their aggression began with a legitimate (if distorted) complaint. Glorious, upright Mother Belgium had been raped again and again. That these feelings of injury and lost wealth has survived for so many generations, provided a rather grim example of the dangers inherent in an inbred culture which shuts out change, clinging instead to a proud and cla.s.s-conscious society.

In fairness, the pattern of outside domination and disrespect had continued until the all too recent past. Their bitterness was not wholly unjustified. That their own oppression of the Africans during the days of the ivory trade had been a major source of their one-time wealth, was not (like the skeletons in so many national closets) something they tended to weigh into the balance.

6) N x P

The descendants of Switzerland had reasons and motives that were more subtle, if equally implacable. Europe's perennial pacifist and bastion of neutrality had been left behind for purely economic reasons. Its stable and rigidly controlled economy was no longer needed by the rich and powerful as a safe deposit box for (often unscrupulously) acc.u.mulated wealth. Concurrently, its self-contained, standoffish political posture had become obsolete, almost laughable in the face of the growing opportunities of s.p.a.ce. Like so many other nations without an early s.p.a.ce program, the inhabitable and exploitable regions close at hand had been divided up without them. The modern-day Swiss accepted the consequences of this flux without bitterness, outwardly at least, but were now inexorably committed to improving upon Fate.

Still, the Swiss view of the coming campaign was somewhat different than their ally's, less zealous, and their actual dislike of their enemies and desire for battle were much less vehement. In their view the Belgians were to provide the fire, they the cool edge of professionalism. Between them they formed a somewhat inexperienced, but sullenly determined foe, not to be taken lightly by the smaller, or similarly stationed powers of the region.

THUS THE ATTACKERS, AND THOSE WHO WERE TO REMAIN NEUTRAL, IN THE DRAMA ABOUT TO BE PLAYED. HERE NOW THE DEFENDERS.

P-KN3

The former Eastern Bloc nations of Europe had remained closely linked economically after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and surprisingly, as often as not, politically allied with their former oppressor.

The great "Decade of Change" which shook the Kremlin in the late twentieth century had forever changed the face of Marxism, and for nearly half a century the Russians had abandoned all thought of communism. But decades of poverty, organized crime and ever dwindling national importance, had brought about a socialist resurgence---non-violently, through elections this time---and the creation of the new Soviet States.

With the dismantling of the Eastern bloc, conditional at first, then with fewer and fewer strings, many had predicted a defiant break with the grim, iron-fisted oppressor---a label which unfortunately contained a good deal of truth---and a wild swing back to the West.

But in large part it had not occurred. Possible explanations for this 'non-schism' ranged from political and cultural isolation during the Cold War, to the eventual success of numbing Marxist propaganda. Even East Germany, which reunified with the West, had since divided into two groups, its easternmost peoples falling back on the old alliances.

For if there was a common thread in the weave of East Europeans, it was a quiet dedication to hard work, and a genuine, even natural unselfishness---a combination of qualities not highly valued in the Americanized west. And though to brand one half of a continent more concerned with the common good than the other is preposterous, there could be no denying that the two sides of the now extinct Iron Curtain remained stiffly uncomfortable with one another's professed doctrines and system of values. Fifty years under vastly divergent philosophies and spheres of influence could not be broken down in the years immediately following. And with the subsequent exodus into s.p.a.ce, learning to live with and understand each other had become largely unnecessary. In the purest sense of the a.n.a.logy, Eastern Europe had taken one road, and the West another. The distances that separated their lives were now literal.

The nations and alliances resulting from the East-West split remained estranged, if no longer sharply opposed. And in a war that like so many others seemed to be drawing boundaries along lines of ideology, the possibility loomed of their coming together again not with overtures of peace and understanding, but on the battlefield.

AND FINALLY, THE WATCHERS ON THE MARGINS.

7) B-K3

The two major superpowers, still militarily head and shoulders above the rest, hardly added to the stability of the situation.

The politics of the United Commonwealth, formerly the United States of America, remained the politics of a child. The 'new Americans'

continued to claim G.o.d, family, and self-righteous free enterprise (to their Republicans a G.o.d in itself) as the sole and irreproachable motive for all their actions. Thus everything they did in the realm of foreign affairs, usually only half understanding it themselves, must (in their eyes) inevitably be right, and for the good of all who followed the true path of capitalism and democracy---in that order.

Soviet s.p.a.ce, meanwhile, had become equally intransigent. The Soviets, in their turn, hailed as their banner the liberation, equality, and self-rule of the working cla.s.ses. These, so the Party line claimed, had built civilization, but been denied the fruits of their achievement by the corrupt upper cla.s.ses, who, like Narcissus, were blind and self-serving, inherently evil and doomed to fail, but not before sucking the blood of true humanity and preventing the dreams of Marx and Trotsky..... And so on, disturbingly similar to the old communist propaganda. And of course they made no mention of Stalin, the purges, and the brutal repression of the KGB.

B-N2

That these two irreconcilably opposed powers, directly or indirectly, held the lives of countless millions in their hands (whether through action or non-action) was disheartening, but not at all atypical.

Contending governments and heads of state had managed to keep their peoples at odds, away from any sense of shared humanity and mutual need, from the beginning of history. In this sense at least, those who knew something of the nature of war could prepare themselves, if only for the worst.

"For as you lean," spoke the prophet, "so shall you fall."

8) Q-Q2