Carnifex

Turtle Bay, New York, 18 November, 2105

The news had come in from Terra Nova and that news was grim: substantial parts of the new world torn apart in rebellion and the former secretary general's great-great-grandson, Kotek Annan, butchered by barbarians. Hardly an eye was dry, at UN Headquarters, with the thought of that brilliant boy done to death—without the slightest provocation; it could not be doubted—by regressives. The Secretary General, Eduoard Simoua, was beside himself with grief.

Unfortunately, though Simoua wanted to make the gesture of sending yet another Annan to govern the new world, none were suitable. This was the judgment of the clan's patriarch, and to that judgment Simoua had to bow.

Briefly, Simoua thought about sending one of the retired officers from the various national armed forces that worked for the Department of Peacekeeping out to take charge. But no, none of those with the requisite experience and ability is really to be trusted. Most certainly, are they not to be trusted unsupervised.

Well, in a sense it's a disarmament problem. Why don't we send off one of those people? They've all got the right attitude. And they can be relied upon. But who, specifically?

* * *

"Bernard Chanet is here to see you Mr. Secretary."

"Send him right in, Irene," said Simoua, rising from his seat to warmly greet his proposed new governor for the world of Terra Nova.

Warm and fulsome greeting or not, Chanet seemed, at best, disinterested. Rather, his interest was made manifest when he asked, "What's in it for me and mine?"

Oh, so that's how it's going to be, thought Simoua, with a mental shrug. No problem.

"What do you want?"

Oh, so they want a patsy that desperately, do they? Thought Chanet. Things there are worse than I thought. My price just went up.

"Amnesty?"

"Amnesty for what? What have you done?" Simoua asked.

"No, no," Chanet said, explaining, "I want you to have my son put in charge of Amnesty, Interplanetary."

"But they're . . . "

Chanet's uplifted eyebrow stopped Simoua before he could say "independent." Not that the organization was a wholly owned or wholly funded subsidiary of the United Nations, but since the UN was much better funded now, what with direct levies of tax coming from the citizen of the United States . . .

"We have . . . influence," Simoua conceded. "This could be arranged . . . "

"For life," Chanet amended. "With right to select his successor."

"That's impossible! Why, in the last thirty years since I took over as Secretary General, we've only made appointments like that twice. And both of those were special cases."

"More special than a war being waged against our control of those portions of Terra Nova that aren't under the governance of major powers here?" Chanet asked.

"Perhaps not," Simoua conceded. "Note, though, that the major powers here do not govern Terra Nova; they dump there."

Chanet nodded his head at the correction, then went silent, leaving the Secretary General to think.

If there were some clamor to take this job, Simoua thought, I'd tell this arrogant upstart to stick it. Sadly, the line for the posting isn't even one deep, outside of the fascist ex-officers in the Peacekeeping Department. It will be expensive though. Why, I'll have to bribe all nine members of the Interplanetary Executive Committee, including the Treasurer. Doable? Yes.

"Fine," Simoua told Chanet. "You leave in four weeks as a Special Representative of the Secretary General with plenipotentiary powers. Your specific instructions will follow, along with the forces we will allocate to you. And your son has the chair of Amnesty. Later, we can meld the chair and the secretary generalship. As for making those permanent, let's let him keep them for so long that no one remembers when it was even possible for someone else to have them. Legalities can follow the custom, once established."