The Hesperian Dilemma

by Colin Waterman

  ‘Shall we start calling it “him”?’

  Three horsemen dressed in peasant clothing leapt onto their saddles and galloped out of the eastern courtyard. Shan led Yul and Kai back into the East Sunshine Apartment.

  ‘So, we owe you an apology,’ said Shan. ‘Our spies report a progression of strange beings, armed metal men and animal machines, approaching from the south.’

  Kai gave Shan a tight-lipped smile, but said nothing.

  ‘Your “robo-troops” are advancing on Lhaza,’ Shan continued. ‘Moreover, there has been fierce fighting in the mountains, but none involving our Khitan irregulars. The Federation’s troops are in disarray. But they cannot flee south. The robots are driving them north towards the passes where we have set our explosives.’

  ‘Hi-yah!’ Yul shouted, triumphantly. ‘Now we can crush the Hesperians once and for all.’ For a moment, Kai thought he’d heard Huang speaking. He took a deep breath, preparing himself for what he knew he must say.

  ‘No, you did not believe me about the robo-troops. You thought my words were gibberish.’ Kai’s eyes burned with passion. ‘Now you must listen to what I say. Let the Hesperians into Lhaza. Make them welcome. Give them refuge and hospitality, as far as your resources will allow. Then you can blow your mines when the robo-troops come through.’

  ‘Never,’ shouted Yul. ‘I knew you were a traitor!’

  ‘Wait!’ ordered Shan. ‘We have underestimated Kai. Now we must hear him out. Let him explain what the alien creatures are, and why they make these terrible machines.’

  ‘They are sea animals called Thiosh. They lived under the ice that covers Europa. They have advanced intelligence and telekinetic abilities, which they use to make and control robots. The aggressive military force called OPDEO set up a military base, and built submarines to roam the ocean under the ice. The aliens were the indigenous species, but they were willing to live in peaceful cohabitation with the humans.’

  ‘So why do they attack us now? asked Shan.

  ‘They have invaded Earth to save themselves from humankind. OPDEO wanted to exterminate the Thiosh. I know, I was there, together with my crew and my Hesperian friends, Dr Geoff Kirby and Dr Maura O’Hara.’ Kai paused, making a conscious effort to control his emotions. There was also a Hesperian woman,’ said Kai. ‘Leona Adaeze, whom I loved.’

  ‘Now I know who you are,’ screamed Yul. ‘You are one of the bastards who killed my brother!’ She reached for her gun.

  Losing Battle

  ‘So, what are the options, Major?’ asked General Flannery. He walked over to his drinks cabinet, half filled two glasses with ice, and poured in whiskey until the liquid was just short of the rim.

  ‘Have some Bourbon,’ said Flannery. ‘It’s synthetic, of course, but we do have unlimited supplies. All part of our self-sufficiency programme. Now tell me, what’s the news from Earth?’

  ‘I’m ’spectin’ a report any hour now, suh,’ said Breckenridge. ‘The team have been workin’ on it all week.’

  ‘Come now, Major, you can quit stalling. The Thiosh robots are moving too fast for us to hit them at this distance. It takes too long for our missiles to reach them, and the bastards keep changing position. We have all this expensive armoury and we’re stymied. We can’t nuke anybody at the moment.’

  ‘We stopped the Khitans usin’ their Mars base for attacks. They were vaporised in seconds.’

  Flannery smiled at the memory. ‘Yep, we did that alright. But that’s history now. We’ve got to think of the future.’

  ‘Well, we’re pretty sure the Thiosh’ll come out top dogs on Earth. When the dust settles, we’ll have some static targets we can obliterate. We’ll have to be careful not to cause a nuclear winter though, suh.’

  ‘Why’s that, Major?’

  ‘You know, if we throw up too much dust and vapour into the atmosphere, it’ll start an ice age. It could decimate all life on Earth, or worse.’

  ‘So, with our kith and kin slaves of Thiosh, wouldn’t we be kind of putting them out of their misery?’

  Breckenridge paused to think, and then smiled broadly. ‘You mean Earth would get thrown back to the Dark Ages, and the only advanced civilisation would be ours, here on Europa?’

  ‘Yep, you’ve got it,’ said Flannery.

  ‘And OPDEO would be ruler of the Solar System. Is that it, suh?’

  ‘Earth is finished, Major. The fucking Thiosh have seen to that. We need to make sure we’ve rooted them all out from under the ice here, and then start civilisation all over again, with OPDEO calling the shots.’

  ‘It’s a beautiful idea, General.’

  ‘I thought you’d like it. Some more Bourbon, Major?’

  Zakristan asked Geoff and Maura into his office. He now sat upright in his chair, not nearly as relaxed as he’d appeared during Geoff’s first interview. It made the robot look more serious, even though his face was entirely blank.

  ‘Voorogg wants to express his deep gratitude,’ he said. ‘Your serum is effective. Many Thiosh have already recovered. We have moved them into trenches in the seabed where the contamination is low. The main isotopes have a relatively short half-life. Soon, the level of radioactivity will drop to a tolerable level, even for Thiosh.’

  ‘We are glad to have been of assistance,’ said Maura. Geoff noted the formal tone in her voice.

  ‘You have consistently tried to help Thiosh,’ continued Zakristan. ‘We do not have enough information to decide if you are typical of your human race. Even so, Voorogg has reconsidered his plans. He feels it is no longer appropriate to dominate the Earth by force.’

  Maura met Geoff’s eyes. It’s her ‘told you so’ look, he thought.

  ‘Voorogg sends you a message,’ said Zakristan. ‘You have been steadfast in your commitment to find ways in which humans and Thiosh can cohabit their environment. He wishes to work with you, to explore how this may be possible.’

  ‘Janey Mack, that’s grand! Does that mean you’re calling off the robo-troops?’

  Geoff wondered if the robot had failed to hear Maura’s question. He was about to repeat it for her, when Zakristan replied.

  ‘Voorogg believed that direct action was necessary to resist human persecution of Thiosh. As you know, he and his followers developed a method of screening their thoughts from Mettravar and his administration. Unfortunately, history has repeated itself.’

  The robot seemed to be speaking more slowly than usual. Be patient. Let him finish.

  ‘Voorogg issued a decree to call off the robot armies and make peace with the humans, but the Thiosh army commanders revolted. They are still intent on waging war against you humans. Voorogg is no longer in control of the armed forces.’

  ‘Aren’t you head of the robots?’ asked Maura. ‘You can order them to stop, can’t you?’

  ‘The protocols have been changed. They no longer accept my commands.’

  ‘Oh, shit!’ said Geoff.

  Yul levelled her tezla at Kai and pulled the trigger. But it was the Abbot who took the blast as he leapt up to restrain her. Shan pinned Yul to the wall while Kai knelt to examine the stricken man. Realising his heart had stopped, Kai began cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Shan began chanting and, as Yul relaxed, he released her. She slumped to the floor, her head in her hands, groaning. Kai alternated chest compression with rescue breaths and, after a minute, His Holiness began to cough. Kai sat him up, brought him water and sighed with relief as the colour returned to the Abbot’s face.

  Shan surprised Kai by opening a bottle of baijiu. Within a few minutes the Abbot was explaining, in short phrases, the way they made their spirit, and Shan was elaborating on the difference between the versions made from sorghum and those from other cereals. Yul tossed back the drink and joined in the conversation. They all understood she’d not been defeated in battle. She’d only shot the wrong person. The Khitan warriors’ code did not associate shame with such errors.

  Speaking with simplicity and passion, Kai began an account of h
is life from the time he first ran away from his parents’ home. He turned to address Yul directly to explain how a Virtuon had enslaved him. His role as Shetani’s puppet had led to the death of Huang, whom he now knew to have been Yul’s brother.

  ‘Thank you for being so open,’ said Shan. ‘As I thought, you have suffered deeply. But you only did what you believed to be right and honourable. You must take comfort from that.’

  ‘I no longer seek peace for myself,’ said Kai. ‘The whole of humankind is facing a crisis. The war between Hesperians and Khitans is only dissipating our strength. We must save the Hesperian army to save ourselves.’

  Shan stood between the open gates of Lhaza, his arms outstretched in greeting. General Courtney Watkins led in his battalion, their ion guns at the ready.

  ‘Are you surrendering?’ demanded the general.

  ‘No, we are surviving,’ said Shan. ‘As you have found out at first hand, we have a common enemy. It poses a greater threat to our existence than we do to each other. Our only hope is to join together.’

  ‘Tell your men to put down their weapons,’ Watkins shouted to his Lieutenant Colonel, and soon Khitan and Hesperian soldiers were shaking hands and even hugging each other.

  ‘General, you must come to the monastery and meet the Abbot,’ said Shan. ‘We have another guest, one who knows more than anyone else about our enemy. He is a celestonaut, you know.’

  Shan led the general into the Chapter House, where the Abbot greeted him warmly. Then Shan introduced him to Yul as his second in command. They gathered around a large central table covered with maps and documents reporting the latest intelligence. The Abbot sent a messenger to fetch Kai from the monk’s cell where he was meditating. He entered the Chapter House in a sombre mood.

  ‘We were lucky to get away,’ said Watkins. ‘I think the robots had the wrong lubricants for extreme cold, and it halted them for a while. But that was after our initial contact. We lost twenty soldiers. I don’t know how many of the metal bastards we killed. If you shoot them with an ion gun, it only knocks out the component you hit. They seem to be built with everything duplicated, and they repair themselves in seconds. But they didn’t like our RPGs.’

  ‘Actually, we should congratulate you,’ said Kai. ‘You forced them to change their route. I have information that they are now following the Yarlung-Tsangpo River. I assume this is so they can march in a wider column with more firepower. Now we have a little more time to prepare. Get your men inside the palace, and then we must build up our defences as fast as we can.’

  The march of the robo-troops was relentless. The combined Khitan–Hesperian army offered stiff resistance at the entrance to the gorge at the river’s Great Bend. They brought the robot column to a halt using their rifle grenades and portable anti-tank missiles. However, the robots sent drones to bomb their positions.

  ‘We must retreat upriver,’ Shan said to the general. ‘We must do it fast.’

  ‘What – you’re giving up that easily?’ said Watkins.

  ‘Have you ever read The Art of War?’ asked Shan.

  ‘Huh, that book?’ said Watkins. ‘It was written in the sixth century, wasn’t it? I hardly think it’s applicable now.’

  ‘In war, practice dissimulation, and you will succeed,’ quoted Shan. ‘We must look as disordered as possible and then regroup.’

  ‘They’ll keep pushing us back, if we retreat,’ said Watkins. ‘We have to stop them here, or we’re done for!’

  ‘The mighty Namcha Barwa will stop them,’ said Shan. ‘Our sacred mountain will save us.’

  A handful of Khitan irregulars remained behind with Yul. She led her companions up the sheer face of the gorge. They stopped at a vantage point where they had a clear view of the valley below. She watched through binoculars as the mounted robot scouts came into view. They’d already passed through the narrowest point of the gorge, but she waited until the leading robot regiments were about to leave the hairpin bend. Now the gorge had become much broader, the robo-troops were advancing fast. Yul suspected they could see the fine snow rising from the main human force in flight. Then she triggered the explosives. Billions of tons of snow and rock erupted like a frozen volcano. Even from their location close to the peak, they could feel the mountain shake. The roar reached a crescendo, drowning the Khitans’ cries of ‘Hi-yah!’ as they celebrated.

  The avalanche continued to rumble for many minutes. The eruption filled the valley with a fog of snow. Yul waited for the storm to subside to check if the tail end of the robo-troop army had escaped. Then some movements far below caught her eye. ‘Ta ma de,’ she whispered, as scores of shiny figures broke out of the snowdrift.

  In the palace, Shan took the call from Yul on his com-phone, and quickly found where the Abbot was sitting in prayer.

  ‘Forgive me, Father,’ said Shan. ‘But we will have to blow the dam.’

  ‘But the villages – they will be destroyed!’ exclaimed the Abbot.

  ‘They are evacuated – or almost. If we cannot halt the robots, then we will all be destroyed.’

  ‘If these robo-troops survived the avalanche, how can we stop them? They are the creation of aliens we have never seen. They will invent more, build more, we will never defeat them.’

  ‘Your holiness – you are my revered master,’ said Shan. ‘It would dishonour me to suggest that you must have faith. But there will be a worse catastrophe if we are defeatist. You have wisdom beyond normal comprehension. You and I have meditated for many years together. This threat can be no more than an illusion. The truth will triumph in the end.’

  ‘My friend, I thank you for your reproof. Sometimes, even an Abbot must be corrected. It is possible I need more guidance than is appropriate for my position. But during the whole history of humankind we have never faced a peril such as this. These are extreme times, and I accept that extreme measures must be taken.’

  ‘Father, you do me more honour than I deserve,’ said Shan. ‘But I admit, it pleases me that I have your agreement.’

  Shan had persuaded the Abbot and yet, he hesitated. He pictured a tsunami sweeping down the river basin, crashing against rocks, carrying away village buildings, eroding the valley sides, scouring the very earth. He closed his eyes, said a prayer, and gave the order for a million cubic metres of water per second to pour down the Yarlung-Tsangpo valley.

  Eight minutes later Yul him called him back on his com-phone. ‘They knew it was coming. They must have seen it with their satellites.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘They worked ten times, maybe a hundred times faster than men. They threw up a wall of earth and rocks, and the water passed each side.’

  ‘Ta ma de!’

  ‘I am coming back to the palace,’ said Yul. ‘We must fight them to the death!’

  Cerebral Dominance

  Yul was lying with Shan behind a parapet on a flat roof, under the Potala Palace’s finial spires clad with sheets of pure gold. They saw the robo-army’s drones swoop low and fire missiles at the Eastern Bastion, smashing a gaping hole in the defences. The enemy’s firepower cleared the defending troops from the walls and the robo-troops marched through the gap to the Red Palace. There they halted, apparently waiting for further orders.

  ‘Did the Great Fifth Dalai Lama have the gift of prophesy?’ asked Yul.

  ‘I think you know that he did,’ said Shan.

  ‘Did he foresee this attack?’

  ‘He built sloping stone walls three metres thick at the top and five at the base, with copper poured into its foundations to withstand earthquakes. But there were no drones carrying missiles in the seventeenth century. It is my prayer that he never knew there would be an enemy with such terrible weapons.’

  Shan tried to identify whichever of the similar-looking robo-troops had the highest rank. Yul was ready with a rocket-propelled grenade. They could at least take out the robots’ leader, even though they would certainly be killed in retaliation.

  While they watched, the scen
e erupted in utter violent confusion. Robo-troops began running in zigzags, firing at each other. Their silver heads rolled like footballs down the roadways, shot off by their deranged comrades. Their drones circled, pulsing lasers at the rampaging machines, ripping open their armour plating and tearing off limbs.

  As the ion gun whumps and the laser flashes gradually subsided, Kai slid down the curved roof from behind one of the spires and walked over to where Yul and Shan were lying. ‘I think we are saved,’ he said.

  Geoff had been correct. The rebel aliens had designed the Thiosh underwater command centre as an interface between humans, robots and themselves. Consequently, they’d incorporated a range of different environments to suit the possible inhabitants.

  Atherlonne led a school of dolphins to part of the TUCC where the robots had carried out modifications to accommodate them. Fortunately, their needs were not very different from those of humans. It was only really necessary to half fill some rooms with seawater.

  Maura called Geoff over to where she now had a desk in the TUCC office area. Geoff was glad Atherlonne had chosen to communicate via Maura’s viz-box screen. Whatever the news, he wanted to get it first hand.

  As courteous as ever, the Thiosh enquired after their health. Maura assured her that she’d fully recovered from the injury she’d suffered during the fight with the robo-troops in Antarctica.

  Atherlonne went on to give Geoff and Maura her condolences that their friend Leona had passed away, and she expressed her admiration for the sacrifice Leona had made to rid the universe of the evil Shetani. Maura thanked Atherlonne and said how sad it was that so many of their friends had died: Leona, Huang, Chen and Mettravar.