A Ruby Beam of Light

by Tom DeMarco

  Palomar will fire on the right side of the approaching fleet, by that I mean fire on the rightmost of the vessels, only the rightmost. Columbia will fire on the leftmost, only the leftmost. That way, we should be able to keep track of which Hard Body bursts are called in by which of us. Kelly has suggested that the left side spotters use female voices, and the right side use male voices, but remember that my male voice will come from the left. Candace, you and Clarence will have women only manning the voice channel, if that is the proper English way to say that.” They both nodded, unsmilingly.

  “Now here is the most critical thing of all. You’ve all heard it before. We will fight this entire battle facing away from the other fleet. I know that is going to seem crazy at the time. Your every inclination will be to turn toward the enemy, but the pacing of the battle depends on us not closing at all after they get in range. That means we have to sail away from them while we fire, to maintain separation. If they get among us, we won’t be able to use SHIELA at all, for fear of hitting our own people. The second rank captains understand this, but I will be reminding everyone as the time of battle approaches.

  “When we pick up the approaching fleet on radar, we will turn immediately and heave to while they continue toward us. We will start our jammers then to make sure they have no further communication among themselves or back to their base. I will give the signal for the jamming to commence. I’m going to wait until I have seven positive traces on the radar before I do. When the other side is in range, I will give a fleet command to begin sailing away from them. We will proceed upwind all on the same tack. If it becomes necessary for Edward to separate onto the other tack, then Zanzibar and Celestine will follow his instructions rather than mine until I give explicit instructions to the contrary. Half of the second rank vessels will cover Edward and follow his orders. We will then refer to Edward and the eight vessels under his command as the Palomar squadron. The others are the Columbia squadron. The second rank captains all understand that. What have I left out?” He looked around at the five captains and Proctor Pinkham. No one had a word to add or a question. There was no sign of disagreement. He realized they were all impatient to get started. “Let’s go,” he said.

  Loren led the way up the companionway ladder. The others were immediately behind him. He climbed over the rail, with reasonable grace this time, and took the oars while the Proctor eased himself gingerly over the side into the punt.

  As he pulled around Palomar to head back to Columbia, he could hear low musical notes. The song was one he recognized from years-ago English classes as My Darlin’ Clementine. The music came closer as he approached Columbia. It was Kelly, seated against the mast with a pocket harmonica. She took no notice as he rowed past her to the cockpit.

  Homer was seated again on the fantail, staring back east toward the sunrise. He was still muttering about the Cross Universe Death Differential: “In the worst of these other universes, there is no life on earth at all,” Loren heard him say, “People are all dead. And among them is a dead Homer Layton…dead, but blameless.”

  24

  PAX SHIELA

  The great sea battles of the twentieth century were characterized as much by their frustrations as their fighting. The battle of Jutland in May of 1916 is a classic example. More than two hundred capital ships of the German and British fleets stumbled about in the fog and darkness off the Danish coast of the North Sea, rarely even getting off a shot. By the time the Germans withdrew, few participants on either side had even caught sight of the enemy. Twenty six years later at Midway the Japanese and American fleets did engage, but significant portions of both sides failed to find the battle. Admiral Yamamoto, for example, the senior Japanese officer, saw none of the action himself. His battleship Yamato and the main force of the Japanese First Fleet might as well have stayed in port. By the end of the engagement, Yamamoto was still wondering just exactly where the fighting had taken place.

  Nineteenth century sea battles were an entirely different affair. The rival fleets would array themselves at a distance of a hundred meters or less and have at each other until one side was destroyed. What had changed by the modern era was that the range of firepower had increased dramatically, far exceeding the range of vision. So battles took place at the edge of firing range, each side sensing the other’s presence by the rumbling of its guns or the direction of approach of its planes.

  The battle of the Bahama Channel, the first naval engagement of the post-Effector age, was back to the model of the nineteenth century. The use of SHIELA gave one side technically an enormous range, far beyond its vision. But SHIELA’s laser weapons were, by design, extremely narrowly focused. A laser beam that was a few meters off its target would do no damage whatsoever. So the weapon was only of use when the target was close enough to be spotted precisely. The battle had to take place with the participants in close visual range.

  By a little after 8:30 in the morning, Loren could see displayed on Columbia’s radar scope seven distinct traces approaching from the northwest. He signaled the fleet about. They would heave to and maintain relative position. He knew that their own presence would be equally evident on the enemy radar. The jamming stations were on the second rank boats Sirrus and Celestine. They had been switched on at the moment of the fleet turn. Loren confirmed this himself by switching the AM and FM channels on briefly. He stood by the radar at the chart table now, watching the enemy approach. Kendra Browne was in her position at the radar controls. Kelly was moving about behind him in the galley. Everyone else was on deck.

  “Our only worry now is that they might separate their fleet,” he said to Kendra. “So you watch for that. Let me know immediately if they do anything other than proceed directly toward us.”

  “OK. I mean, yes sir, Loren.” She looked up to him from her seated position. She was just a teenager. He was going into war with teenage girls.

  Kelly was heating water on the stove. “This is dumb, I know,” she said. “We are about to go into a battle and I feel sleepy. I thought I’d make some coffee. My reputation will be made if I fall asleep in the middle of the action.”

  “Different people get different symptoms from nerves, I guess. You’ll be OK.” When he had set out for Palomar in the little punt with Proctor Pinkham, he’d been glad that there was no space to bring Kelly along to the meeting too. But now he had begun to regret her absence. “Kelly, I want to tell you exactly what I’m planning, and let you critique it for me. Tell me just anything you can think of that might help. The others just accepted what I said as a given. They were so much in a hurry to get on with it, that I don’t think they gave a second thought to the plan of battle. Or maybe I just presented it with so much more confidence than I felt that they had no inclination to pick it apart. I want you to pick it apart.”

  “Picky Kelly. Famous for picky. So tell me.”

  He put his markers down on the dining table and gave her the same presentation he’d given the first rank captains. She heard him through without interrupting. At the end, she continued to stare down at the markers. Finally she said, “Loren, it’s blowing harder than ever up there. Part of the reason I wanted something hot for people to drink is that the hard damp wind goes right through you. I was chilled. With so much wind, everything is going to happen a lot faster than we might want.”

  “I know. I’ve been thinking about that too. It’s blowing eighteen knots.”

  She poured hot water into a conical coffee filter over a glass pot. “Our real exposure is if we allow the other fleet to close too fast. We have to keep sailing away. Well, you know that. If even one of our fleet turns, we’re in trouble. I think you have to be ready to continue using SHIELA even if the target is among our own boats. Hitting one of our own is less of a disaster than letting one of theirs get through. Only you have to harden yourself to that before it happens. Otherwise, you won’t be able to do it at the time.”

  Loren nodded.

  Kelly’s level gaze, the little smile: “What role are y
ou planning for yourself, if I could ask?”

  “I thought I’d handle the SHIELA terminal for the first few shots, just to get the feel of it.” It was meant half as a joke, but only half.

  “Oh that’s excellent. Give the other side a sporting chance by having our most fumbly-fingered typist on the keyboard.”

  “I can type.”

  “Right. I’ve seen you type. It’s painful. And you’ll have to stay seated to handle the keyboard, so in addition to having your hands and mind all tied up with SHIELA, you won’t be able to see. I think that idea sucks, Loren.”

  “OK, OK, you take the keyboard. Just like in practice. I won’t have anything to do with SHIELA.”

  “The best thing would be if you stayed out of spotting and calling shots too. Danny can do that, as he has in practice. You must avoid second-guessing him, Loren. Someone has to be in charge of the whole battle, and that should be you. Otherwise, it’s every captain for himself, or herself. You have to manage the fleet so that our position is always optimal. If we keep a sensible and orderly upwind position, then we can’t lose. Unless, I guess, they have got as big a surprise for us as our SHIELA surprise will be for them.”

  “Right.”

  “If you put Homer on the wheel in place of the Proctor, then we’ve got a slightly better seaman handling Columbia, and we’ve also freed up Ted to keep an eye on the big picture. I’m impressed with him. I feel pretty foolish about my original view of the man.”

  “Me too. I’ll explain the change to Homer and to Ted.”

  “And a last thing, Loren. Have you thought of what you’ll do if there is no left and right side to their line?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Suppose they approach us in a perfect file, lined up perpendicular to our line as they are now.” She gestured with her head toward the image on the radar screen.

  “Jesus. I hadn’t thought of that, Kelly. I’ll have to tell Edward to hold off firing until we can drive them apart.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “Or we could let Palomar fire on the rear of their line.”

  “Even better.”

  “And then switch back to firing on the right side when they do break apart.” He was itchy to get in touch with Edward now, to alert him to this latest wrinkle. Loren headed up to the cockpit where the light-wave radio unit had been moved.

  Kelly reached out for his arm as he passed. “Good luck, Loren. You’re going to have a splendid victory.” She brushed her lips against his cheek.

  Homer sat at the helm with his back to the approaching enemy, now clearly in sight. He seemed oblivious to the presence of the other fleet. He had not even turned to look. “Now, the lower animals…” he was saying. “The lower animals must have a totally different view of what has happened. They, of course, never had great use for the internal combustion engine or any of the other luxuries that no longer exist since I went into tinkering with Effectors and such. No, for the animals, the new order of things must be hunky-dory. They prosper more or less inversely to how much the humans prosper, so a bad turn for the human race is just terrific for the animals. The name of Layton is spoken with great respect among raccoons, for example, though not among humans.”

  “Homer,” said Kelly gently, “this is quiet time, now. To let Loren think. To let everybody concentrate on what we have to do.”

  “Oh yes. Quiet time. Sorry. Time for me to think quietly while everybody else does the real work. I will contemplate in silence about the way things are viewed by raccoons.”

  “Please.”

  Loren stood on the transom with his binoculars. Danny McCree was calling out the diminishing distance to the lead yawl. As Kelly had predicted, the other fleet was approaching in a perfect line to leeward so that the six boats following the lead were barely visible behind its sails. The precision of their sailing was admirable. Loren wished he had stretched out his own fleet with more distance between the two parts of the front rank. That would have given a better firing angle on the yawls.

  “Two hundred fifty meters,” Danny said.

  When Loren put down his binoculars, he was surprised at how close the first yawl looked, and how fast it was closing. He looked back toward the wind gauge mounted under the cockpit coaming.”

  “Twenty knots of wind,” Kelly read it for him.

  “Thank you.” Loren spoke into the light-wave radio: “All vessels proceed on port tack away from the enemy. First rank boats spill some wind until they are within our optimal range.” He turned around to watch as the fleet performed the maneuver, flawlessly. As Columbia gathered way, he was surprised at the violence of the wind sounds. Even luffing her jib, Columbia was heeled well over to starboard. Somehow he had envisioned the entire battle taking place with the decks level underneath him. The sea on all sides was a mass of whitecaps.

  Danny spoke up again from the transom, “Two hundred meters, Loren.”

  “Columbia will commence firing on the front of the line. Palomar hold your fire.” He intended to let Kelly fire a few times before the added confusion of Palomar entering the fray. Over his earphone he could hear Kiruna and Rondolet calling in coordinates to Kelly. The voice speaking for Rondolet seemed to be Melissa Blake.

  The first blue bolt came down wide of the approaching yawls. Watching through his glasses, Loren didn’t even see it, though he heard its distinctive crack. There were corrections called in from the two spotters.

  “Left 90 meters,” said Melissa’s voice.

  “No it’s right,” said the other.

  “Right 90 meters,” said Danny.

  Kelly looked up in annoyance. She pulled one earphone to the side to be able to hear better what McCree was saying. “What the hell does that mean, Danny? Was I too far right by 90, or do I correct by 90 toward the right?”

  “Sorry. Correct to the right. They’re still closing, Loren. I have them at one hundred sixty meters.

  “All vessels trim for speed,” Loren said into the mike. He repeated the order for Columbia’s midships crew. They hardened up the genoa jib, causing Columbia to heel further and to gain speed slowly.

  “Firing now,” Kelly said.

  Loren watched the blue streak come down, slightly behind and still to the left. There were corrections being called in over the radio. Kelly interjected her own orders for how coordinates were to be specified. For all their practice, there was still some confusion. The third bolt was a lot closer, but still a miss.

  “Raccoons, of course, are an independent lot,” Homer said, “but there are lots of animals that have been dependent on man. They too need to be figured into the equation. They can’t be ignored, the cows and dogs and burros. There’s no ignoring them.”

  “Still closing,” said Dan. “Under one hundred meters.”

  “Palomar, commence firing on the rear of the line.”

  There were now seven voices on radio channel including Loren’s own. He tried to listen only to the female voices.

  “Columbia firing again,” said Kelly.

  Homer was leaned over to leeward, looking up under the mainsail to judge the trim of the jib. On the Kenyon, speed over the water was more than nine knots. The lee rail was under water, there was a creamy wake spilling out from Columbia’s beams. The noise of wind and churning water was deafening. Homer had to raise his voice to be heard. “For the dependent animals, of course, the Effector has brought no good news. They need to be fed or watered by man, using up scarce resources. Or they need to be milked, but the milking machines don’t run anymore. Or the animals are just getting slaughtered faster, because the meat spoils almost right away.”

  “Correct right, maybe ten meters and back by ten.”

  “Columbia firing now.”

  Loren looked back to be sure that the second rank had kept its distance. It hadn’t. “Sail for speed,” he shouted into the mike. “All foresails hardened up. Don’t drop back anymore.”

  By the time he turned back toward the yawls they had begun to tur
n onto the opposite tack. He’d been expecting the move, and had decided not to cover. With the other fleet sailing on starboard tack, they were arrayed as a more manageable line of targets. It suited his own purpose to carry on for a bit on his current course. “Palomar continue firing on the end of the line, now on your right side.”

  “Palomar confirms.”

  “Columbia firing now.”

  There was a ragged cheer from the watchers amidships. The second yawl had seemed to leap into the air, sliced exactly by the sizzling blue beam. A split second later there was the loud crackling sound of its impact.

  “Again, Kelly. Same again.”

  Kelly hit the repeat key twice in quick succession calling two more bolts down into the wreckage. The third white yawl hauled its wind in some confusion and was abruptly in irons. Loren could hear coordinates of this new target being called in by the cool voices of Rondolet and Kiruna.

  “Fleet maneuver, ready about. Turn now onto starboard tack.”

  He turned to watch. The second rank had lost still more ground. They were barely twenty five meters ahead. There was another cheer suddenly audible over the wind. He looked back. Palomar has scored a hit on the aftermost yawl. Its headsails were gone along with part of its bow. The boat tacked quickly and bore off for speed. Edward kept after it with three more shots, each missing. Then the next two bolts were direct hits. The yawl bucked wildly on the first and simply shattered when hit again. Loren could see wood and human bodies flung into the air.

  “Of course, the fish are just hands down better off,” Homer said. “For fish, turning on the Effector was simply splendid. I am a hero among fish. Fish and whales. Just think about the whales. I have personally saved oodles of whales. Who can harpoon a whale these days? I expect to win the GreenPeace award for service to Whaledom.”