“I defer,” Crucelle said, a bitter edge to his words. “I defer to the Coordinator.”
“But,” protested Locatio, virtually simultaneously. “Even thinking about that … now … without overt violence. I’ve got a headache, and some of my team’s already non-functional from what you’ve done, Ecktor.”
“I understand,” I admitted. If Locatio or the Consensus knew what I were planning, more than a few would be non-functional, and Locatio had been one of the more aggressive ones. That was why Coordinators were necessary. “But—protecting people is part of the Construct, and so long as the evacuations are by the bullet lines, and not visible, that won’t violate the Construct by encouraging cyb violence. They can’t be encouraged by what they can’t see.”
“The receiving areas will be cramped.”
“Very cramped,” I agreed. “Most people would rather be cramped than dead. Wouldn’t you? I’m sorry. That wasn’t appropriate,” I said, realizing that a significant fraction of the Consensus would probably die under the backlash, and that I could be one of them. So could Locatio.
“The Coordinator has called for a conference,” added K’gaio. “That seems reasonable. We have little time; so let us not quibble. Please keep us informed, Coordinator.” She left the net with a crisp click, making her point.
“Crucelle, if you would join me? Arielle?”
Then I left the net. Secure as I felt the net was, some things were best left undone in public.
“Keiko, see if the cybs will send two people down here to discuss this monstrosity, but don’t call it that. Tell them we’re convening a conference and will reply within the deadline.”
“Two?”
“I want Subcommander Kemra, and Officer Mylera.”
“Mylera?”
“She’s actually a construct that represents organic subjective input to the cyb fleet’s net systems. I’m not supposed to know that. You can also say that Commander Gorum would be welcome, but I’m sure they’ll say he’s not available.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Very sure.” I paused. “Have a groundshuttle waiting for the subcommander—that’s if they agree to send her. We won’t have much time.”
“You’re sure of that, too?”
“Yes.” I was even more certain that we were running out of time.
XXXII
“The demi Coordinator asked for the nav? And you let her go?” asked Ideomineo.
“No.” Gibreal laughed, and ice pellets flicked across the net. “I ordered her to go, with Majer Henslom and another marcyb detachment for her protection.”
“You calculated that she may have developed some reciprocal attraction to the demi?” responded the Executive Officer. “What about Henslom?”
“Henslom? He has already been discredited by the demi, and his usefulness is limited. He either redeems himself or he doesn’t.”
“I suppose you feel the same way about Majer Ysslop?” Ideomineo’s tone blew like a dry wind across the private link.
“I respect Majer Ysslop, unlike Henslom. I respect her so much that I have given her a most difficult assignment.”
“So … the most senior women in the fleet are on Old Earth? In the case of Ysslop, you fear her, and in the case of Kemra you’re angry that she spurned you for the demi.”
“His physical attraction to her is minimal, if existent, but he is extremely persuasive, and I’ve been troubled by the direction of her recent observations.”
“You fear contamination.”
“Hardly. But there’s no reason to protect it. This way, the demis will feel they are shielded during their so-called conference. They will not agree, and they are attempting to stall matters while readying their defenses. So we will strike before they expect it.”
“That analysis is flawed,” announced MYL-ERA. “Observations reveal no statistically significant changes in energy flows or activities of any installations.”
“So much the better,” laughed Gibreal. “Fewer will escape.”
XXXIII
I glanced out the window, noting that the groups of people heading for the admin building were relatively evenly spaced. Some hunched down against the wind. A tall dark youngster smiled broadly and waved up at the building, although the angle of the sunlight on the windows probably precluded him from seeing me clearly. Two girls looked furtively toward the heavens, and one shook her head. If I strained, I could hear a dull murmuring from the lower floors.
Still waiting for Crucelle and Arielle, I used the net to review the locial status, including the performance of the bullet shuttles to the evacuation/receiving areas, and how the locial hardening was coming. Then I linked to the Deseret receiving area.
“Seborne? This is Coordinator Ecktor. What’s your status?”
“We’re at about thirty percent already.”
I’d hoped for more, but that wasn’t bad. “Good. Any problems?”
“Not yet.”
After that, I uplinked to Ell Prime.
“Yes, Ecktor?” Elanstan sounded exhausted, even over the net.
“How are things going?”
“All the inlink nodes are operational; Delta is operating, but at about ninety percent efficiency. We can bring everything on line in less than five standard minutes.”
“That’s about what you’ll have. I’d estimate that the cybs will begin whatever they have in mind in no less than one stan, and no more than three.”
“Frig … .” came Rhetoral’s mutter. “You couldn’t get them to see?”
“Rhetoral,” Elanstan added, “they couldn’t see after they destroyed most of Old Earth the first time. Why would they see now?”
“The Construct?” asked Rhetoral.
“I’ve bent the Construct to the point that some members of the Consensus committee are experiencing ethic-backlash. I’ve ordered dissemination of locial evacuation requests.”
“Are the draffs listening?” asked Elanstan.
“There’s already steady traffic here. So far there hasn’t been any problem with the bullet shuttles.”
“No substitute for technology in a crisis,” said Rhetoral ironically. “Wouldn’t the cybs be surprised to hear that?”
“They don’t think much of our technology, or that we have much besides a superior net capability.” I paused. “I’ll let you know.”
“Stet, Ecktor,” Elanstan closed, adding sardonically, “Coordinator Ecktor.”
A rap on the door alerted me.
“Come in.”
Both Arielle and Crucelle stepped inside. Both looked haggard, and both had dark circles under their eyes.
“Do you really need us?” asked Arielle.
“Not for long.” I gestured to the chairs. “Sit down.” I dropped onto the couch.
Arielle paced to the window; Crucelle slumped into the green chair nearest the desk. Then Arielle turned.“Go on.”
“It’s simple. First, what have I missed?”
“You called us here for that?”
“You wanted me to ask that on an open net? Even uppernet?”
“The man has a point, darkangel.” Crucelle gave a tired grin. “I can’t think of anything major. We’ll have cybs to clean up on the ground, and that could get messy unless you issue heavy arms to the restraint squads.”
I hadn’t thought of that, and I pulsed that request to Keiko for her to implement in my name.
“That’s going to shock a few souls,” she pulsed back.
“Everything I do is shocking people.”
“You’d better alert Elanstan and Rhetoral to the possibility of a suicide translation,” suggested Arielle. “That’s only a five percent probability, and it won’t work unless the cybs try it on full power at the beginning. Elanstan should focus on the acceleration. It would take flexing the whole net to stop that much adiamante.”
I winced.
“It’s a low probability, but you asked,” she pointed out, waiting as I went uppernet again.
“Already?” asked Elanstan. “We’re—”
“No. Not yet,” I pulsed calmly. “Arielle made a point about the cybs,” I explained.
“We can run a series and have Fynert monitor it,” Elanstan said. “I hope they don’t try it.”
“It’s very low probability, but …” I paused. “That’s it.” After breaking off, I looked at Arielle. She was still at the window, looking at us half the time, and half the time out at the continuing, if thinning, lines of draffs.
Keiko knocked on the door that wasn’t quite closed and edged her head inside, breaking the silence. “Neither Officer Mylera nor Commander Gorum are available, but the cybs are sending Subcommander Kemra. She’s expendable, obviously,” Keiko announced from the door to the Coordinator’s office. “Why did you ask for her?”
“I had to ask for someone to give the illusion that we were considering their terms. That way, when they launch a ‘surprise’ attack—”
“You know, Coordinator, you would have made a good cyb. You’re about as devious as possible for a demi. Every day, I see why the Consensus picked you.” She laughed, flashing those white teeth. “I can also see that you’ll deserve every year of comptime you get. It’ll take that long to straighten you out.”
There was another reason why I’d asked for either Kemra or the construct Mylera. If we survived the confrontation, we needed someone comparatively objective to take back the message to the Vereal Union, but I didn’t mention that to Keiko. She just would have accused me of greater deviousness.
“I like you, too, Keiko. Do we have a timetable for their landing?”
“Fynert just netflashed an estimate of less than an hour. Three of those landers left their fleet.”
“They’ll be loaded with marcybs—and weapons.”
“If you could prove that they—”
“Who’s the devious one now?” I asked. “Don’t answer that. Oh, everyone will scream, but inform all the locial reps that final emergency evacuation—that means them and everyone who’s left—could come at any time, and that I expect them to be monitoring the net continually for the next twenty-four hours.”
“Only twenty-four?”
“I’d guess about two stans,” I said bluntly, glad I hadn’t put that on the net.
“You are an optimist.” She pursed her lips. “I’d better get busy. Some of them are hard to get—even now.” She closed the door and left me standing by the wide desk.
From the green chair, Crucelle laughed once, softly. “You do have a way with people, Ecktor.”
“He’s too directly truthful,” said Arielle from the west end of the south window where she had been studying the steady lines of draffs heading to the building. “Even after all these generations …” Her eyes focused on me. “There’s probably something else we’ve all missed. There usually is. I can’t calculate it.”
“All right,” I conceded. “You two had better head out to the command center. You’re coordinating the ground-side links to the system, aren’t you?”
“Crucelle is. I help.”
“If we get there before the cybs strike,” Crucelle said tiredly, using his arms to pull himself out of the chair. “Right now, Liseal is on the links.” He paused. “Did you really need us here?”
I shrugged. “I was glad for Arielle’s suggestions, and she might have come up with something even more critical. Also, I really wouldn’t have wanted Arielle’s observations open-net. There’s still the possibility that they’ve cracked the systems.”
“Even if they had,” Arielle retorted, following Crucelle toward the door, “they’re too arrogant to listen.”
“I’m sorry. You’re probably right. Even Coordinators make mistakes.” I thought for a moment. “Especially Coordinators.”
“You’re allowed a few,” Crucelle said.
“You’ll leapfrog the links with Liseal?”
Arielle nodded as if that were obvious. “And we’ll have the center up for you.”
“It’s been on standby, one red, since the day before yesterday,” I added.
“You have been busy.” Then with a warm parting smile, one that included the green eyes that cared too much, he added, “Take care, Ecktor.”
“You, too.”
After they left, I paced to the wide southern window and looked out over the park. In the southwest corner, two children in heavy brown coats ran ahead of their parents, going in circles around two cedars until they both flopped on the brown grass on their backs, laughing. Their mother and father gestured, and the four walked up the pathway to the admin building, to the bullet shuttles that waited well below ground level.
Parwon had twenty stations, and I only hoped I’d acted soon enough, because it would take a minimum of one and a half stans to clear the locial, although I doubted that everyone would heed the evacuation request. We didn’t command, even in matters of life and death, and there are always those people who know better.
Everything was working, smoothly, and that bothered me. No one was linking in, and all systems were functioning. I shouldn’t have even thought that, because the net crackled.
“Ecktor!” whined Locatio. “There’s a cyb lander setting down here.”
“Are they unloading anything, or using weapons?”
“Not yet.”
“Good. Let me or Keiko and K’gaio know if they do. The minute they do, in the present situation, that’s enough to go to emergency final evacuation and complete hardening. You don’t need me for that—but let me know if you can.”
“I certainly will.”
I knew he would.
“There are three cyb landers down,” Keiko announced through the net. “One at Ellay and two here.”
“One of those here will have the cyb subcommander, and all of them will be packed with troops.” I took a deep breath.
“Majer Henslom was waiting for them.”
“Have they unloaded anyone?”
“No one except the subcommander. She’s in the groundcraft on her way here. Henslom’s on one of their shuttles.”
“Good. The moment anything that looks like a weapon appears, flash me.”
“Yes, ser.”
While I waited, trying to figure out what I had missed—and there was sure to be something—I linked to the defense net node. The electroneural shock shivered through me, and I almost had to put out a hand to the window to keep from losing my balance.
“This is the defense node. Please withdraw until notified.”
I withdrew and looked back down at the park and the walkway. The number of draffs entering the building had slowed to a few scattered handfuls.
“The groundshuttle is outside, Coordinator,” Keiko informed me.
“Thank you.” After a last look at the piñons and the single bare cottonwood, I walked toward the door.
It opened before I reached it, and Kemra strode into the Coordinator’s office.
“Greetings,” I offered.
“You’ve sealed my death, as well as your own,” snapped the subcommander. “Why did you need me? No fancy words, if you please, honored planetary Coordinator.”
“To give the impression that we’re buying time and to obtain you as a witness.”
“A witness?”
I shrugged. “Your career and perhaps your life were already forfeit. That happened the minute you began to believe that something strange was going on here on Old Earth. Your compatriots don’t want to believe you—or me. It’s something like, ‘Don’t disturb my convictions with your facts.’” I gestured to the cyb Agreement that still lay on the desk, untouched since I’d read it earlier in the day. “Do you have any idea what those provisions say?”
Kemra looked at me. “Not exactly.”
“Read it.”
“Now?”
“Now. I’ll know as soon as Henslom starts to move the troops.”
She gave me a strange glance. “You don’t seem worried.”
“I am worried. Everyone on Old Earth is worried. Woul
dn’t you be? Go ahead and read it.”
She picked up the Agreement and began to read. After the first paragraph, she frowned, and the frown deepened. Finally, she looked up. “The sterilization seems excessive.”
“The whole document seems excessive,” I answered with a forced laugh.
“What did you expect? You demis have taken over our ancient home with a form of tyranny, and you want us to just visit and leave you alone?”
“Using tyranny seems like another exaggeration,” I pointed out. My guts were tightening as the time passed. I couldn’t move or order a final evacuation if something didn’t happen—and if it didn’t happen soon, people would begin to stress out. Yet I knew it had to happen. I took a deep breath.
“No tyranny is so oppressive as a society truly based on innate ability,” said Kemra, “and still you do not see that. Even your draffs have seen that.”
“It doesn’t work that way. Not in any society. Someone is always in control. That control may be direct or indirect, strong or weak. It may be dictatorial or representative or both, or some of each mixed with anarchy, but there will always be some form of elite. Your choices generally range from an elite based on heredity, physical strength, cunning, luck, or intelligence. What you’re saying is that when it becomes clear to the less able members of a society that they will never be part of the elite, they feel oppressed, and they equate that feeling of oppression with tyranny. Here … there is an elite, and there’s a high price for belonging to that elite. That price doesn’t fall equally on every generation or even every century, but even the everyday prices are high. That’s one reason for comptime.”
“With all your abilities,” Kemra pushed into the conversation as though she hadn’t wanted to hear what I had said, “you demis believe you are the peak of human perfection—true demigods. What if there is more to human intelligence and ability than what your skills can measure?”
“That’s a strange argument coming from a cyb-sense culture which bases power, position, and control of resources almost solely on the possession or demonstration of primarily mental skills.”
“Coordinator! Majer Henslom has the four hundred cybs and a dozen officers from the landers marshalled up. They’re armed and headed toward the locial center. One of the force leaders is marshalling those at the south residential block.”
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