“Power won’t run out for a hundred years. Blackie knows that.”

“Even so, there are world leaders who are alert enough to think in those time scales. The power might last a century, but even now the globe knows it cannot maintain a free-energy regime. The world, now that it is addicted to free energy, has to be switched to a rationed-energy regime. The question is, when does the switch come? And who does the rationing?”

Cyrano showed him a simple but chilling set of propositions from game-theory. The decision of two prisoners both accused of a crime, when clemency was offered to whomever would first rat out the other, either to trust each other and remain silent or to betray each other was described with a few gamelike rules: if they both trusted, both would break even; if both betrayed, both lost; if one trusted and the other betrayed, the betrayer would win big.

It could be shown mathematically that the winning strategy in a game of repeated moves was to betray only in retaliation to betrayal, and otherwise to trust. But when there was a time limit, a final move, both players had a powerful incentive to betray, because the final move was one that by definition invited no possible retaliation. But each player, knowing the other was under an incentive to betray him on the final move, therefore had an incentive to betray on the penultimate move. Likewise, each player, knowing the other was under an incentive to betray him on the penultimate move, therefore had an incentive to betray on the antepenultimate move; and so on.

This remorseless logic operated for any game of a known and finite number of moves, even if the number of moves was immense.

In this case, even if the switch from a free-energy regime to a rationed-energy regime was not to happen for a hundred years, the incentive to betray future potential rivals before they became rivals operated now.

Montrose was not convinced. “When the switch does come, the free market will adjust. The price goes up as the goods get scarce. So then they go back to burning wood, coal, and oil, like God intended. Big deal.”

“And they go back to the barter system.”

“What?”

“Snow grams edged out other currencies as the store of value. They use certificates representing measured masses of anticarbon for their money.”

Montrose checked the graphs, and checked the math behind them. “So the money gets expensive, too, and the interest rate goes up. Big deal. Why should that cause a war?”

“Because politics is not driven by free-market rules. Your mother, Mrs. Montrose, told you what rules drive politics. Phobos, doxa, and kerdos. Fear, fame, and gain. I’ll rephrase the question. Both the deserts in China and the deserts in Australia have been turned, by a ridiculous and profligate public works project, into farmlands and fruit-tree groves. Now imagine you are one of them. The newly-fertile croplands opened an internal frontier, allowing both for wages to rise and population. As this century’s breadbasket, you have political clout and world attention, because you control the food supply. Sure, there might be more contraterrene coming in one hundred years, but there might be a delay. Watering the desert is not something you can just turn on again after you turn it off. Five years, or three, or one, is too great a hiatus. If the greenery dies, it will stay dead, and the desert ecology will re-assert itself. The land will no longer support the population figures you currently enjoy. You are China. Australia is your hated rival. Or vice versa. What do you do? You cannot keep melting the glaciers to water the deserts if you run out of antimatter. You have to make sure the antimatter that they might get years from now for their irrigation will come to you instead.”

“Make sure how? By war? Blackie won’t let a war erupt. He can just shoot whoever shoots first, and so no one will dare shoot first. He’s got contraterrene weapons. He’s the only one who does. It is a self-contained system.”

“Spoken like an engineer! But this problem is not an engineering problem. It is political and economic. And the free market cannot adjust. Antimatter is a non-market good, since Blackie has been giving at away free of cost for political gain. He cannot let the price go up.”

“So Blackie rations it.”

“Which means, that in the rivalry between China and Australia, whichever faction has more influence over Del Azarchel will use the world-government and the energy market to destroy the other by lawful means; and when the other has nothing to lose, it will embrace unlawful means, and go to war. Del Azarchel picks the winner. At that point, Del Azarchel opens the fiery gates of heaven, and bombards the loser from space.”

“You saying he can’t maintain control without killing thousands and millions of folk?”

Cyrano pointed at the sudden jag in the graph. “Maybe if Del Azarchel did not interfere, and he let the cost of contraterrene rise—then speculators anticipating the coming lean years would buy up shares now, and this would force other uses to economize. Maybe then we can avoid the coming war. China and Australia could maintain as much cropland as they could afford, and there is not one winner and one loser. It is still a delicate compromise, but it could be done.”

“He must see these same equations. If it can be done, why hasn’t he done it?”

“Because Del Azarchel would be undermining his own authority. The monopoly of the World Power Syndicate would have to be dissolved. Many ships, some in private hands, and not just the Hermetic, would have to be allowed to range the strategic high ground of outer space, or otherwise ownership on paper of antimatter grams in transplutonian orbit is meaningless. That has military implications. Del Azarchel would have to step aside as political leader, because otherwise no investor would believe he would keep his hands to himself, and not simply undo what the market did. Basically, he would have to abdicate, and let the Princess solve the problem.”

“But he is afraid of the Princess. Kept her in slumber all those years. Me, too.” Montrose shook his head. “Even if he steps down, he’s not stepping down, not the other him. That’s why he built the Iron Ghost. And he does not need to send the Hermetic to the Diamond Star, that is what the Bellerophon is for. I am not sure he can dare let us leave.”

“He cannot let you stay. Do you think he can dare let two Posthumans of less than certain loyalty to his regime run around on his world?”

“Then why not let us leave?”

“The Hermetic hangs above the world like a sword. The common people are restless; they know she must sail away, if the wealth of the world is to be maintained in the next century; they know the world will fall into war the moment the sword is removed.”

Montrose looked at the graphs. “I don’t understand this. This does look like people are gearing up for a war. But, damn, it makes no sense! I mean, some areas of the world still vote. There is food enough for everyone, since huge areas of land that were barren are now croplands. And look at how wealthy the world is! There is no money wasted on vast military budgets, and no burning cities, no streams of refugees, no rivers black with war chemicals, no fogs rolling wherever the wind blows. Isn’t it enough?”

“Your mother told you what causes war. It is not the lack of votes, or of food or of money. It is fear, honor, and powerlust. The people are afraid now that the antimatter will run out two generations from now, and they don’t have faith that the Bellerophon will return in time with the wealth the world needs.”

“How can they be worried about something so far away in tomorrow?”

“Because they are well fed, and have the leisure to fret.”

“How do we avoid a war fought with total conversion weapons? I mean, even if Blackie is the only one who has them now, I don’t want him to use them. The burning of New York the Beautiful is enough. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Jerusalem, Mecca, all enough. Enough! Human history does not need more.”