The Long Mars

by Pratchett, Terry; Baxter, Stephen

  She said, ‘But I never anticipated facing this situation, Ed, you and your damn nuke.’

  Mac growled, ‘And what’s the overwhelming threat that requires us to consider this option? A bunch of smart-ass kids?’

  ‘Who broke out of the high-grade military facility they were confined in, Doctor.’ Cutler shook his head. ‘Who took down a USN ship. Who are a new kind of being walking among us, of unknown capability. They are clearly a “potentially existential threat” within the meaning of my orders. And this place, Happy Landings, is some kind of locus, a source. A nest, if you like. We were sent here—’

  Mac snapped, ‘To study the place! To speak to the people! We’ve gondolas stuffed with ethnologists, anthropologists, geneticists, linguists, to achieve this. Those were our orders.’

  ‘All that was just cover,’ Cutler said dismissively.

  ‘Hmm,’ Maggie replied. ‘And in your note you say that you’ve already implanted the nuke. Even before telling me about its existence.’

  ‘Again, orders, Captain Kauffman.’ He tapped the briefcase. ‘Now all you have to do is make your decision. From this unit you can disable the weapon, we can retrieve it, take it away. Or—’

  ‘OK, Ed, you’ve said your piece. Get out of here.’

  He stood up, smug, smooth, neatly groomed. ‘I’ve fulfilled my own orders. But if you need any more input from me—’

  ‘I won’t.’

  When he’d gone at last, she reached under the desk. ‘Now I need that drink. Fetch the glasses, Mac. Christ. As if I didn’t have enough to deal with concerning the fall-out from the mission.’

  Mac just nodded sympathetically. Their long journey had left a loose end. On the way back they’d been able to retrieve the party Maggie had left to study the crab civilization of Earth West 17,297,031. But earlier, at the moon-Earth, West 247,830,855, there’d been no trace of the equivalent science party. Given the state of the ships’ supplies it hadn’t been possible to stay long to investigate, and Maggie was reluctant to strand anybody else, any search party, given the uncertainty about when if ever a new mission might be sent out here. So they’d come home, leaving behind supplies, beacons, messages – Stepper boxes – in case the missing crew found their way back to the rendezvous point. Maggie hated to lose people. On her return she’d thrown herself into the work of contacting the families, before Davidson had called her in for a fresh assignment, and sent her out once more – to this.

  And now, here she was sitting on a nuclear weapon like an unhappy hen.

  ‘That guy Cutler,’ she grumbled as she poured Mac his whisky. ‘Never known a guy who fit his role in life so well.’

  Mac grunted. ‘And wouldn’t fit anywhere else. Whereas you are a bit more amorphous. Which is why he reports to you, Maggie, and not the other way around. Our senior commanders aren’t entirely idiots, not all of them.’

  ‘A ringing endorsement. But, you know, there was scuttlebutt about Cutler and his role in the mission even before we left the Datum in the first place. I remember Nathan Boss coming to me with below-decks rumours about Cutler having some kind of special assignment from Davidson.’

  But Mac was dismissive. ‘So what? Look, Ed Cutler doesn’t matter any more. He’s done his job. All that matters is how you use that switch on the desk before you.’

  ‘I feel like smashing the thing, Mac. That’s the truth. I’m being asked to consider, not just the fate of these few “Next”, whatever the hell they are, but everybody else in this community too. This is a nuclear weapon we’re talking about. There’ll be collateral damage—’

  ‘But you can’t just push this choice away.’

  ‘No, I can’t. I need to take this seriously.’

  ‘A career-defining moment?’

  ‘More than that, Mac. Life-defining. Whatever I decide I’m going to have to live with it for the rest of my days.’ She massaged her temples. ‘One thing’s for sure. Sitting in here staring into my own conscience won’t be enough. I need to open this out. Take some advice.’

  ‘Hold a hearing,’ Mac said.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Get a couple of advocates. One to argue each position, to nuke or not to nuke. They don’t have to be proponents of the position they defend. Just logical about it.’

  ‘That’s not a bad idea.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘Guess what? You just volunteered.’

  He sipped the single malt. ‘I thought that might happen. It’ll be a pleasure.’

  ‘I’m afraid it won’t be.’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘I can’t call on some swivel-eyed bigot to argue the case for a nuke. Ed Cutler, for instance? I need somebody sane. You, Mac.’

  ‘Hold on a minute. You need me to argue for the nuking?’

  ‘You just said the advocates don’t have to be proponents of their cases, personally—’

  ‘I’m a doctor, for Christ’s sake. How can I possibly argue for mass slaughter?’

  ‘By setting your conscience aside, and appealing to logic. Just as you said. You’re a doctor but you’re also a military man. Look at it this way, Mac. If the logic you come up with is compelling, then the argument will have been won.’

  ‘You spoke about needing to live with this action for the rest of your life, one way or another. If I was to win the argument – I couldn’t forgive myself. Not even a priest could pardon that.’

  ‘I appreciate what this will cost you, Mac. Will you help me?’

  ‘Is it an order?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘The hell with it. The hell with you.’ He drained his glass, and stood up. ‘When?’

  She considered. ‘The nuke is concealed, but it won’t stay that way. Twenty-four hours, Mac. Back here.’

  ‘Christ, Christ.’ He made for the door. ‘Who will you get to argue the case against?’

  ‘I don’t know. I need to think about it.’

  ‘Christ.’ He slammed the door on the way out.

  Maggie sat back, sighed, considered another whisky, decided against it.

  Shi-mi slid out of wherever she’d been hiding and leapt on to the desk. She sniffed the briefcase, electronic eyes gleaming with suspicion. ‘I did tell you that Cutler was aboard as a weapon, Captain,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘My intuition was good. But even I didn’t imagine it would be quite so literally true as this.’

  ‘OK, smartass. The question is, how we go forward from here.’

  ‘You have a choice to make,’ Shi-mi said. ‘This idea of a hearing is a good one. But as Mac asked, who should argue to save the Next?’

  ‘One of them, I guess.’

  ‘No. It can’t be one of the Next.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Consider the logic,’ Shi-mi said. ‘The whole point of the case against them is that these Next are not human. They’re a new species. That’s precisely why they’re a threat to humanity. As a consequence this is a human decision to make. It can’t be made, even in part, by the Next themselves. You need a human to argue their case for survival, a case based on the interests of mankind, not the interests of the Next. Of course that advocate can gather evidence from whoever he wants.’

  ‘Why do you say “he”? Who are you thinking of?’

  ‘Joshua Valienté.’

  ‘The super-stepper guy? You know him?’

  ‘He’s an old friend.’

  ‘Why aren’t I surprised? And he’s here? How would you know that? . . . Ah, the hell with it. Of course you’d know. Can you find him, ask him to come in?’

  ‘Leave it to me.’ The cat jumped down from the desk.

  44

  AS SHE PREPARED for the ‘hearing’ with Mac and Valienté, Maggie had time to wonder why it was her who happened to be in this particular hot seat in the first place.

  Admiral Davidson must have been under intense pressure, from the White House on down, to have authorized the loading of covert weapons of mass destruction on to ships that were supposed to
be Lewis-and-Clark explorer vessels in the first place, and then more so to mandate the deployment of a nuke against Happy Landings, a civilian settlement within the US Aegis. But Maggie had known Davidson a long time. And he’d proved in the Valhalla rebellion back in ’40, for example, that his instincts were not to fire first. Maybe handing this poisoned chalice to Maggie was Davidson’s way of ensuring that it never got spilled.

  But all that was irrelevant, Maggie thought now. However she had ended up with this responsibility, she was on the spot. And as had been pressed on her since the moment she got the command of the Benjamin Franklin, let alone the Armstrong, as a Navy twain Captain she had the autonomy to act as she saw fit, whatever the circumstances. Cutler was right. Hers was the choice to make, not Davidson’s or anybody else’s, no matter how she had got here.

  Before she knew it, it was time.

  Almost exactly twenty-four hours after that meeting with Mac and Ed Cutler, Joshua Valienté was shown into Maggie’s sea cabin by Ensign Snowy, Maggie’s beagle crewman. Mac was already here, in full uniform for once, with a tablet full of notes on the desk before him, looking as grumpy as hell. He stood when Joshua entered, and he acknowledged Snowy curtly.

  Before he left, the beagle leaned forward and sniffed Joshua’s face. Maggie knew by now that this was close to a beagle’s way of shaking hands, toned down in some physical details for human society.

  ‘Joss-shua. How is-ss you-hrr back?’

  ‘Not even a scar.’

  ‘And the hh-and?’

  Joshua flexed his artificial fingers. ‘Better than the original. No hard feelings.’

  ‘Good to hav-vve ss-seen you again, Joss-shua.’

  ‘You too, Krypto.’

  After Snowy left, Joshua sat down, and Maggie ran through a quick round of introductions. An orderly pushed in a trolley laden with water, coffee, soft drinks. Maggie herself got up to pour the drinks, water for Mac and herself, but Joshua asked for coffee – that was an authentic detail, she’d never known a pioneer type turn down the chance of good coffee.

  Joshua Valienté wore patched jeans, a practical-looking jacket over a denim shirt, and an Indiana Jones hat he hung on the back of his chair. He looked the part, a Long Earth pioneer, and Maggie wondered if he’d dressed down for the occasion to make the point. Probably not, she tentatively decided. This was the authentic Valienté. But he looked as uncomfortable as did Mac, in his own way.

  Once they were set with their drinks, Maggie locked the door.

  ‘OK, gentlemen, this is it. Bathroom is through the other door, over there. Otherwise nobody comes in or out until we’ve – sorry, I’ve – made a decision here. It’s entirely up to us. We are being recorded, however, for the court-martial that’s probably coming my way later.’

  Joshua looked surprised.

  ‘That’s life in the military, Mr Valienté.’

  ‘Call me Joshua.’

  ‘Thank you. But you two are both in the clear. I took some advice on that, my XO did some legal research, and I logged his recommendations and my interpretation. You’re simply advisers. Including you, Mac.’

  Mac shrugged. ‘I’m probably going to quit the service anyhow after this.’

  ‘Sure you are. And you, Joshua – thank you for coming in. I appreciate you putting yourself through this; you didn’t have to. By the way, I didn’t know you’d met Snowy.’

  ‘He saved my life once. Or at least spared it. I guess that counts as the basis of a friendship.’ Joshua grinned. ‘Cats and dogs, eh, Captain?’

  She glanced at Mac, who was paying no attention. Maggie concluded Joshua knew nothing of the role Mac had played in the subsequent calamity to befall the beagles. ‘You said it, Joshua.’

  ‘Look, Captain, I don’t fully understand why you chose me for this – what do we call it, a hearing?’

  ‘You could call it that,’ Mac growled. ‘A group of people are on trial for their lives. Or a whole new species faces extermination. Depending on how you look at it.’

  ‘So why me?’

  Maggie thought back over what Shi-mi had advised her, what she knew of this man Valienté. ‘Because you too have been an outsider, back in the early days of stepping. You were different. You know how that feels. And because, despite all that, you have proved yourself to be a decent human being, with sound instincts. Your public record shows it. Also, records from Pearl show that you befriended one of these Next.’ She glanced at her own notes. ‘Paul Spencer Wagoner? So you’re in a position to understand the issues.’

  ‘I’m not sure I feel like any kind of human being, sitting here in judgement like this.’

  Mac grinned, a cold, humourless expression. ‘You want to switch seats?’

  Maggie said, ‘The decision will be mine, not yours, Mac. The responsibility is all mine.’

  Joshua nodded, though still clearly unhappy. ‘I didn’t do any research. I wouldn’t know where to start, what to look up.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Maggie said. ‘Go with your heart. Well. Here we are. I have no fixed agenda in mind, no format, no time limit. Mac, you want to go first?’

  ‘Sure.’ Mac glanced at his tablet one last time, then spread his hands on the table. ‘To begin with, let’s be clear what we’re talking about here. We’d be taking a Hiroshima-scale nuclear weapon – more powerful than the one that took out Madison, by the way, Joshua, and I know you saw the consequences of that – and setting said nuke off, without warning, in the middle of this township. Of course it has to be without warning if we’re to catch ’em all. I might note there will be the usual knock-on collateral consequences. Last weather forecast I saw for the region from the ship’s meteorologists said the fallout plume would head south-east of here. Other communities will be harmed – many of them having had nothing to do with this business of the Next, as far as we know. That’s the nature of the operation. But Happy Landings itself would be obliterated, along with every living creature in the area aside from the cockroaches – human, Next, troll, whatever.’

  Maggie nodded. ‘The military objective is to eliminate what’s considered to be the source of this new phenomenon, the Next.’

  ‘Correct,’ Mac said. ‘So now we agree what the cost of fulfilling that objective will be, let me give you the single most compelling reason why we should do this now. Because we can.

  ‘We may not get another chance like this. We suspect there are other Next centres and we’re busy tracking them down, but we’re pretty confident from the genetics that this place has been the primary source so far. This surely won’t kill all the Next, but it will be a massive blow, and would give us time to hunt down and eliminate the rest at our leisure. But if we hesitate—’ He studied Maggie. ‘Right now they’re super-smart, but they’re numerically few, and weak, physically, economically. They don’t have any super-weapons or whatnot – in that regard they are no stronger than we are, for now. But that may not last.

  ‘I’ve seen the linguistics results, the cognitive tests. Our laughable attempts to measure the IQs of these creatures. They are smarter than us. Qualitatively. As we are smarter than the chimps. Just as a chimp can’t imagine the nature of the airplane flying over his tree top, or even less the global technological civilization of which it’s a part, so we won’t be able to understand, even imagine what the Next will do, say, or produce. Any more than a Neanderthal could have imagined that nuclear weapon down on the ground there in Happy Landings. We should strike now while we still can – while they can’t stop us.’

  Maggie said, ‘I can imagine that kind of line being rehearsed in the war rooms. We should rise up and hit them the way the Native Americans should have hammered the Conquistadors when they got off their sailing ships.’

  Mac smiled grimly. ‘Or, a better analogy in this particular case, those Neanderthals I mentioned should have picked up their big ugly clubs and smashed in the flat faces of the first Homo sapiens who came wandering into Europe.’

  Joshua said, ‘Am I allowed to speak here?’<
br />
  ‘Whenever you like,’ Maggie said. ‘No rules.’

  ‘In both those cases you referred to, that kind of resistance would only have bought time against the invaders. More Europeans would have followed Columbus and Cortés and Pizarro.’

  ‘True,’ Mac said. ‘But we can use that time. We ain’t superhuman geniuses like these Next, but we ain’t patsies either. We’re not as weak as the Indians, or the Neanderthals. And we outnumber them hugely. With more time we can organize, keep hunting, run them down. Their DNA is distinctive, remember; you can’t hide that. And there are billions of us, only a handful of them.’ He looked uncomfortable. ‘Also many of them were chipped, in detention in Hawaii. That would help.’

  Maggie said, ‘But, Mac, you’re arguing for murder. Cold-blooded, calculated murder. Can you justify that?’

  To his credit, Mac kept up his momentum. ‘Maggie – it’s not murder. Not if you buy the argument that this is a separate species, that these Next aren’t human at all. It may be cruel if I shoot down a horse, but it isn’t murder, because the horse isn’t a member of my species. All our laws and customs reinforce that view. Throughout history – hell, throughout prehistory probably – we have put human interests before the interests of the animal. We killed the leopard that chased us across the African savannah, we wiped out the wolves that preyed on our children in the forests of Europe. We still inflict extinction if we need to. Viruses, bacteria—’

  ‘The Next are in a different category from viruses,’ Joshua said sharply. ‘And we don’t always eliminate, just because we can. We protected the trolls.’ He glanced at Maggie. ‘You were involved in that campaign, Captain. Hell, the example of you bringing trolls into your crew—’

  Mac shook his head. ‘The trolls are protected as if they are human, in US law anyhow. They aren’t regarded as fully human, or even equivalent to human. Anyhow the practicalities are different. A troll has never been proved to harm a human save by accident, or under provocation of some kind. It’s always been a human’s fault. The trolls pose no threat. The Next, so it’s feared, may one day pose not just a threat to individual humans, but an existential threat, a threat to us all, just as Cutler says. They may drive us to extinction altogether.’