Getting Real

To his surprise, Kyriades had an answer when he asked that out loud. “I’ll tell you what,” the other cop said. “They’re gonna show that the Army is just as fucking stupid as the Air Force.”

Nothing Razmara had imagined came as close to making sense as that did. He nodded mournfully. A little later on, the tanks’ cannons boomed, one after another. Razmara supposed the blams that followed hard on the heels of the booms were cannon shells ricocheting off the lid.

There were no noises that put him in mind of a million tons of breaking glass. The lid wouldn’t really be made of Pyrex. It probably wasn’t really there at all—except that it kept out things like missiles and fighter planes and cannon shells. Oh, yeah, and electricity some kind of way.

How? He had no idea. The wild tribesmen who charged white men’s machine guns way back when wouldn’t have known how those worked, either. Which didn’t keep those poor bastards from dying by carload lots. And also didn’t keep the shoe from being on the other foot now.

He nudged Kyriades. “How’s it feel to be a wog, Stas?”

“Huh?” Stas didn’t get it. Well, he would. Pretty soon, the whole country would.

* * * *

Wang Zemin nodded to Hu Zhiaoxing. “Here comes the Americans’ boat, Minister.”

“Yes, I see it,” Hu said. The boat came up from the southeast, from Laguna Beach: the closest port that hadn’t gone under the Chinese lid. Now that the Americans were asking for terms, they had to come to him.

The boat flew a large white flag and a much smaller Stars and Stripes. A breeze from the ocean ruffled Hu’s hair, just a little, as he waited for the boat to tie up in Avalon and for the dignitaries to climb the gangplank and come up onto the pier. The Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of the DEA all hung their heads. They’d just got their noses rubbed in a nasty truth. No matter how mighty their nation had been in the old days, no matter how glorious its history, it couldn’t compete any more.

“Why are you here, gentlemen?” Third Minister Hu made himself sound like a stern master dressing down naughty schoolboys.

None of the Americans wanted to come out with it. The Secretary of State was the senior man, so the unpalatable duty fell to him. Unpalatable indeed—Jackson spoke as if each word tasted bad: “We want to know what we have to do so you’ll end the war.”

“The war the United States started.” Hu folded his arms and waited.

Miserably, Jackson nodded. “The war the United States started,” he choked out.

Hu Zhiaoxing could have taken them to a conference room and sat down with them and talked things over. Instead, he gestured to his aide. Wang Zemin quickly fetched him a chair. He sat down, and left the three Americans standing in front of him. “First, the United States will place no further restrictions on Chinese distribution, by sale or gift, of the entertainment known as getting Real. All criminal and civil penalties against it will also be declared null and void.”

“Entertainment?” Kojima exploded. “That horrible, vicious, corrupting, addictive shit? We ought to—”

“We accept,” Berkowitz broke in. Jackson nodded again. The Secretaries of State and Defense could at least recognize things when they got hit over the head. The Secretary of the DEA didn’t seem to need to get Real to be delusional.

“Very good,” Hu said. “Next, China will take a ninety-nine year lease on the ports of San Pedro and Long Beach, to the borders indicated on this map”—he handed the Americans a printout—”the payment for the lease to be one dollar a year.” In other words, nothing: the smallest U.S. coin was a little aluminum piece worth ten dollars. But the humiliation was a lesson in itself.

Jackson spluttered: “These are our busiest West Coast ports! Some of the busiest ports in the world!”

“I know.” Minister Hu smiled politely. “Would you rather we go on with the war?”

“We accept,” Berkowitz repeated. No, he wasn’t altogether blind.

“Excellent. I hoped you would,” Hu said. “Third, there shall be no tariff barriers on exports from this new territory to the United States. China reserves the right to impose duties on products imported from the United States to the new territory.”

“You’re screwing us coming and going!” Berkowitz blurted.

“We did not start the war. You did,” Hu reminded him. “And, because you did, China imposes on the United States an indemnity of twenty trillion dollars, to be paid in gold or petroleum or uranium or a hard currency to be agreed upon, said indemnity to be completely discharged within ten years.”

“We haven’t got it,” Jackson said bleakly.

“In that case, you will get it.” Hu prided himself on his command of idiomatic English. “Failure to pay will result in more territorial or economic sanctions.” He could also be remorselessly precise.

“This is a very harsh peace, and a most unjust one,” Secretary of State Jackson said.