Free Starfishers Volume 2: Starfishers by Glen Cook Page B

it’s nonsense. But I’ve had a couple of high-powered corporate executive types in and they say the Services are smoke screening, that there’s something going on out there. A lot of heavy ships moving through here lately, too. All of them moving from out The Arm in toward the March.”
    “It’s all news to me, Max. I haven’t had the holo on since I got back. I’m so far behind I’ll probably never catch up. These Hamburg . . . The notes all over the page. What are they?”
    “Jimmy Eagle did that. Right after I picked up the collection. Lot of them are forgeries. The cancellations. Most of the stamps are good. He marked the reprints. You haven’t heard any news at all?”
    “Max, by the time I got back from Illwind I was so sick I couldn’t see. I didn’t care. I don’t know why we’ve got an embassy on that hole, anyway. Or why they sent me there. The only natives I ever saw were two burglars we caught trying to blow up the Ambassador’s safe. They need a military assistance mission like Old Earth needs another Joshua Ja. Their methods of killing each other are adequate already.”
    “Then you haven’t even heard that Ja is done for?”
    “Hey? What happened? This I got to hear about.”
    Joshua Ja was one of Old Earth’s more noxious public figures. The holonet newscasters had dubbed him the Clown Prince of Senegal. The nets followed his threats and posturing faithfully, using him as humorous leavening for their otherwise grim newscasts.
    The self-proclaimed Emperor of Equatorial Africa was no joke to his subjects and neighbors. His scatterbrained projects and edicts invariably cost lives.
    “He invaded the Mauritanian Hegemony while you were gone.”
    Perchevski laughed. “Sounds like one gang of inmates trying to break into another’s asylum.”
    Old Earth was a nonvoting member of Confederation. Both Confederation itself and the World Government refrained from interfering in local affairs. World Government held off because it had no power. Confederation did so because the costs of straightening out the home-world were considered prohibitive.
    Earth was one of the few Confederation worlds supporting multiple national states. And the only one boasting an incredible one hundred twenty-nine.
    World Government’s writ ran only in those countries deigning to go along with its decrees.
    Centuries earlier there had been but two states on Earth, World Commonweal and United Asia. United Asia had remained impotent throughout its brief, turbulent history. World Commonweal might have created a planetary state, but had collapsed at Fail Point, so called because at that point in time agro-industrial protein production capacity had fallen below the population’s absolute minimum survival demand.
    “You missed the best part of it, Walter. During the first week the Mauritanians shot down half of their own air force. And the Empire lost a whole armored brigade in a swamp because Ja ordered them to march in a straight line all the way to Timbuktu. The holonets had a field day. That’s the lilac brown shade there. We’ve got a Foundation certificate for it.”
    Perchevski lifted the stamp and examined its reverse. “I already have a copy. I’m just looking.”
    “Anyway, the Mauritanians have been less klutzy than the Imperials. They’re closing in on Dakar.”
    “What’s the Council doing?”
    “Laughing a lot. They’re going to let him go down. The word’s out that other countries shouldn’t accept refugees from the Empire. Ja and his gang have done too much damage to Old Earth’s image.”
    “Old Josh? You’re kidding. How do you lower something that’s already at the bottom?”
    “You see anything you want?”
    “You, my love.”
    “Smart ass.”
    “Wednesday night?”
    “What’ve you got in mind?”
    “A cribbage game.”
    “I’ll call you. If it does any good. If you’re not off to some weird place with a name like Toilet Bowl.”
    “Actually, I was thinking about going to the