The Lotus Eaters

engaged her clicker.'

Chu gave the order, 'Ensure the clicker's off. Sailing stations. Boys, let's go link up with Orca at the rendezvous point.'

Fort Muddville, Balboa, Terra Nova

Surcouf stood in front of a wall-mounted map on which the course of the Charlemagne battle group was plotted. There was another plot, too, on the map. This was the plot of the second Balboan submarine which had sortied the night prior. The second plot was on an intercept course with the first. Still a third plot showed the course of the Gallic Navy frigate, the Michael Ney. Ney was shadowing the sub at a considerable distance. Then again, because of the sub's apparently appalling internal workings, shadowing at a distance was easy.

'Why did you sortie the frigate for this?' de Villepin asked. 'I thought you said . . .'

'Yes, sir,' Surcouf interrupted. 'I did. But this one'—he tapped the map—'this one is heading for the battle group. I figured that sending the frigate out now would not be suspicious, since we would want to escort the Charlemagne in, anyway. But I am suspicious. I think they intend to try to get through the screen.'

'If they try and we intercept, won't that alert them that they're noisy.'

Surcouf looked worried. 'Yes, sir, it would. I'm still thinking about how to warn them off without letting them know they're so easy to track.'

De Villepin thought about that briefly, then asked, 'How common would it be for the submarine escorting Charlemagne to separate itself from the battle group and then try to penetrate the screen?'

Surcouf rocked his head a bit from side to side, thinking. He finally answered, 'Not uncommon. Though the submarine with a battle group usually takes point by as much as fifty kilometers, they do—situation permitting— sometimes test their own defenses. Good practice for the submariners, too.'

'How hard to vector that escort sub close enough to the Balboan that active sonar would pick both up?'

'Only a little more difficult. A submarine would almost never use active sonar. Surface ships do . . . at least for some purposes and under some circumstances. Diamant is Charlemagne's escort. If they're hunting her, they might well use active . . .'

De Villepin caught Surcouf's hesitation. 'Yes?'

'We also sometimes go to active targeting sonar in the wake of an attack.'

De Villepin looked appalled. 'I didn't mean we should have the escort sub actually fire on the carrier.'

'No, no, sir. We do simulated firings, basically we shoot a blast of water and air out the torpedo tubes.'

'Let's try that, then.'

'There is a problem, though, sir,' Surcouf mentioned.

'What's that?'

'Well, sir, pinging a submarine with sonar on firing mode, rather than a general search, is rarely done except by prior arrangement. It's almost an act of war. It's certainly considered a threat. Submariners start filling torpedo tubes and calculating firing solutions when they get pinged by targeting sonar from a ship or another submarine. They've been known to open fire, even in times of peace, though that is never officially admitted to by the parties concerned. Never.'

SdL Megalodon, Shimmering Sea, Terra Nova

Sonar heard it even though no one else did. He pressed a button and waited for the computer to do the analysis. When that was done, a matter of a few seconds, he announced in a soft voice, 'Captain, Orca's passing two hundred meters above us and twelve hundred meters off of our starboard bow.'

'Put it on screen,' Chu ordered. Immediately the large plasma screen that was mounted a half dozen meters in front of Chu's command chair lit up with generated images of the Meg, centered, and the Orca, some distance off. Numbers arrayed around the images gave information on depth, course and speed. The whole effect of the screen was keystoned, as if to display the ocean not from above but from an angle.

'Helm, follow her once she's eight thousand meters ahead. Maintain this depth.'

Chapter Twenty-four

What, then, would be a proper test of civic virtue? Perhaps better said, what range of tests would be proper?

At a bare minimum, such a set of tests must be undertaken voluntarily, at least in practice. It would, presumably, be appropriate to inform the people that there is such a battery of tests. This could be in the form of a draft notice, provided that it is only form and there are no other legal or social costs—not even so much as implied—to failure to report.

The tests, themselves, should have the following characteristics, if we are to deny the voting franchise to those who lack civic virtue:

They must be dangerous, difficult, and dirty; enough so, at least, to dissuade enough of those who lack civic virtue from undertaking them. They should be useful to society. Lastly, they must train those who have demonstrated sufficient civic virtue to sufficient skill in violence to be able to maintain their rule, for the good of