Be in my office at 0900 hours tomorrow. W. Bernhardt.
No request, no please. Just the flat order. There was a sudden knot in her throat, and her hands turned sweaty. She had thought she had done her part, that she could let everyone else worry about it.
A lot she knew. Again.
chapter 13: Carrot and Stick
“Is the Multisystem all one creature? A complex ecology of interdependent forms? Something in between, like a huge coral reef of tiny beings making up a greater whole? Or is the question utterly meaningless? Is there no analog or pattern available to the human mind that would provide a useful understanding of what a Charonian is?
”All we can know for certain is that the Charonians had once been very different, and then came to be what they are. Coming into the Universe leaves a scar or two, and change is never complete. The same is true of humanity: our navels are the scars of umbilicals we lost, and the white blood cells that swim in our veins are the descendants of parasitic amoebae that survived by turning from foe to friend. In the process of remaking themselves, the Charonians surely kept some mark of their old selves—and their old weaknesses—behind.
“No matter how well we think we know them, those residuals, those bits of heritage from their unknown past, will at time cause wholly unexpected behaviour.”
Larry Chao, An Essay on the Charonians (unpublished), 2427
DSI Headquarters
New York City
EARTH
Night had fallen long before, but Wolf Bernhardt was still at work, preparing his cables, carefully composing the messages. He had to get the phrasing right, exactly right, if he was to be sure of NaPurHab and the Terra Nova cooperating in their own salvation.
Well, actually, NaPurHab shouldn’t be any great challenge. We’re sending you lots of free supplies. Please take them. It wouldn’t take much more than that. The Terra Nova would be the real challenge.
But NaPurHab had already been a fight, here on the ground. It had been tremendously hard to get the backing he needed to provide those supplies, to do a full-scale resupply operation. Thank God he had won through.
It was frustrating to be the only one who understood that the Naked Purple Habitat was itself important, above and beyond the lives of the people on board. It was a vital, irreplaceable observation post. And if the Breeding Binge went as badly it might, NaPurHab might well be the largest surviving human population. It might well be that the survivors on Earth would be begging NaPurHab to rescue them in the none-too-distant future. Earth needed NaPurHab. In the grand scheme of things, who cared who operated it, or if the occupants were a nuisance at times?
But now, events were suddenly moving. He would use the latest data about the SCOREs, and this new information from that Colette girl, to throw a scare and a bit of excitement at the finance committee. It would cement the commitment for a massive and immediate resupply mission to NaPurHab, enough gear and supplies to maintain them for years longer, maybe decades if need be.
But the Terra Nova. Would the Colette girl’s ideas be enough to tempt Steiger away from the suicidal Highwayman mission? Or was Steiger bound and determined to attempt boarding a CORE again?
Supplies. Supplies were the answer. Lift cargo earmarked for the Terra Nova to NaPurHab. Give them another reason to break off.
But how to phrase it? What sort of message would tempt Steiger into coming in? Don’t forget she was not the only one on board that ship. Get MacDougal interested in resupply, and in the Lone World, and Steiger could be goaded into action.
If he played this thing right, there were all sorts of possibilities. It was all cold-blooded, yes. It was using crisis and fear and hope to manipulate people and events. Parts of Wolf could see that, and did not like what they saw.
But those parts were in the minority. The rest of him, the larger part of him, saw his complicated, manipulative schemes and saw they might be the catalyst for all sorts of progress against the enemy. Unless, of course, his urge to do something, anything, now that it seemed he finally had the tools in hand, was the catalyst for getting them all killed.
Wolf forced that thought from his mind. No. Forward. The only way out was forward. For the one thing he was absolutely sure of was what the evidence of the other Captive Worlds told them: doing nothing was a sure way to get them all killed.
He got back to work.
Terra Nova
Deep Space
Captain Dianne Steiger stared at the message printout, trying to think it through. Even the simplest communication from Earth was likely to have four or five layers of hidden meaning. This one was chock full of news, that was for certain. Enough news that she could, with no little relief, cancel the flight of the Highwayman.
But Wolf Bernhardt was a wily old campaigner. It never paid to take him strictly at face value. She could do with some advice. “ArtInt. Locate the first officer, give him the captain’s compliments, and ask if he could come to my quarters.”
“One moment,” an artificial voice said. “Message relayed. The first officer is on his way.”
Good. Good. She was eager to see what Gerald would make of all this. She went back to the top of the message and started reading again.
She had just finished it when the doortone sounded. Dianne stood up from behind her desk, crossed and opened the door, still holding the message printout.
“Hi, boss,” Gerald said. “What’s up?”
“You tell me.” She gestured for him to come in and handed the message page to him as she shut the door. “Read it,” she told him, handing him the printout.
He stood there, reading, as she went over to flop down on the couch. She was tired. She was very, very tired. The job was wearing her down. She shut her eyes and rubbed her face with both hands.
Flying the ship was simple. But it was damned hard to keep morale high on a ship wherein the crew had realised long ago that most of them were likely to spend the rest of their lives on board, were likely to die on board, likely never to get off this ship, even after death.
No poetic burials in space on the Terra Nova. No. The ship’s ecosystem could not afford to waste that much organic material. Not counting the Hijacker disaster, there had been three suicides and two accidental deaths since the TN departed Earth, and all of them had been “buried” in the tertiary nutrient development facility, a rather polite way of saying they had been recycled.
That was what they had to look forward to, in lieu of hope. And the death of the Hijacker hadn’t helped matters.
Was that all that was left to them? To wander in space, waiting for death to take them all, one by one? Maybe not. Maybe the message from Earth actually meant something. If they had really found Charon Central… She folded her hands on her stomach and stared at the overhead bulkhead. “What do you think, Gerald?” she asked, trying hard to sound blasé about it.
“If it’s true, it’s wonderful,” Gerald said. “If this Lone World place is Charon Central, we finally have something to work for, a goal.”
Dianne looked up at him, and saw the excited expression on his face. She felt something like a touch of envy to see his enthusiasm. Why couldn’t she feel that way? When had she turned into such a jaded cynic that even a breakthrough like this left her cold? Or was it just her sense of caution, her determination to keep the ship safe? “What do you mean, a goal?” she asked. “You’re not suggesting we head for this Lone World, are you? It’s got to be the most heavily protected point in the whole system. It’s the damned Sphere’s brain, after all. Must be swarming with COREs. We’d never get within a million klicks of the place.”
“No, we don’t go for it now—but eventually, yes. It says here they expect to start reading message traffic off it soon. They hope to be able to decode them against their existing Charonian language sets. If we could find the command for ‘don’t smash incoming ships,’ we could go there.” Gerald shrugged. “Maybe we can’t do it now, but it is a goal we can set our sights on.”
“You’re ahead
of Bernhardt on that one,” Dianne said, sitting up on the couch. “Even he doesn’t make that suggestion. In fact, there’s not any of the usual ‘suggestions’ in that message.”
The Terra Nova was, of course, nominally under Bernhardt’s personal control, in his capacity as head of the DSL. But Dianne had made it clear from the outset that her ship was too precious an asset to be trifled with. It was the only ship in deep space that Earth had or was likely to have. The TN was the only means Earth had of operating outside the cordon set up by the COREs. Dianne had made it clear quite some time ago that the TN would not be exposed to needless risk. Dianne was determined to refuse any order she regarded as too dangerous.
What with the harebrained ideas that Bernhardt had been forced to pass along over the years, pretty much all of the orders from Earth involved undue risk. Bernhardt knew that as well as Dianne did, and so he almost always sent “requests” or “advisories” instead of commands, thus keeping the Earthside powers-that-be happy while providing Dianne with an out. That was one good thing about commanding a ship in deep space—no committees of second-guessers looking over your shoulder.
But no vague requests on the resupply signal. No code words to keep Bernhardt’s “advisers” happy. Dianne suddenly realised what that meant. “Give me that message again for a second,” she said, standing up. Gerald handed over the printout, and she checked it again. Yes, she had it right. He had sent it just a few hours after first hearing of this Colette person’s theory—and after working hours in New York. And there was something a bit Teutonic about the phrasing, come to think of it.
“You know,” Dianne said, “I think old Wolf Bernhardt drafted this himself, and sent it after hours. On the rush. Plus there’s nothing about ‘acting upon the advice of experts in the field’ or anything like that. He didn’t consult with the usual advisory teams.”
“Maybe he wanted to get it to us fast,” Gerald said.
“And I can guess his reason for it. This,” she said, waving the printout, “is all the excuse I need to cancel the Highwayman.”
“I won’t pretend to be disappointed,” Gerald said.
“But you were bound and determined to go,” Dianne said, perching on one corner of her desk.
“If anyone was going to go. The Highwayman would have been destroyed the same way as Hijacker. I couldn’t have asked anyone else to go.”
“So in spite of all your brave words to the contrary, you thought it was a suicide mission.”
“We both know it was a desperation mission,” he said. “It was the only hope we had of accomplishing anything. But suddenly we’re not desperate anymore.”
“The voice of optimism,” Dianne said. “But there’s bad news too.” She took a second printout off her desk and handed it to Gerald. “That’s a somewhat more official message. It more or less confirms all those SCORE things are headed for Earth space. MRI definitely thinks what we think: it’s a Breeding Binge.”
“My God,” Gerald said. He took the second printout, and looked at it without reading it.
“Yeah,” Dianne said. She crossed the room and lay back down on her couch. “Not good. Bernhardt isn’t sure they’ll be able to fight them off. He’s sending supplies to NaPurHab, for us and for them. Another temptation to break off our next attempt on the CORE.”
“Hmmmm. Beat us with the stick and tempt us with the carrot. Not too subtle. And neither are the orders.” Gerald read out loud from the second printout. “ ‘In light of this new and important information, you are ordered to break off contact with the CORE, return to near-Earth space and prepare to rendezvous with NaPurHab.’ ”
“Well, what do you think?” Dianne asked.
“I think it’s been a long time since Bernhardt gave us a direct order,” Gerald replied.
“That’s because it’s been a longer time since we obeyed a direct order. Maybe that’s a hint that he really wants us to do it this time.”
“Sounds like you think we ought to comply,” Gerald said.
Dianne propped herself up on her elbows and looked to Gerald, nodding thoughtfully. “Sounds like I do,” she agreed.
“There’s one other thing,” Gerald said. “One I don’t like much. Maybe we should send back a request that they send us some people.”
“People?” Dianne asked.
“Experts,” Gerald said. “We’ve got some good techs on board here—but if we ever do go for the Lone World, I’d like some of the real experts with us.”
“How would they get here?”
“On the cargo flights to NaPurHab. We’d collect them the same time as the cargo.”
“Do you have any idea how risky a flight that is?”
Gerald nodded, his eyes on the floor. “Yes I do,” he said. “But if there is a Breeding Binge on the way, the risks in staying home aren’t much lower. We may never get another chance for new personnel again. And a few of the people who tracked down this Lone World might make all the difference later on.”
“What’s your latest estimate on how bad a Breeding Binge could be?” Dianne asked.
“If Earth manages to kill off the first wave and the Charonians give up after that, maybe about as bad as a small nuclear war. If the Charonians don’t give up, maybe the collapse of civilisation,” Gerald said. “Maybe a mass extinction.”
Dianne did not speak for a moment. There was nothing that could be said to that. But Gerald might be right about having some of those experts on board. If Earth fell, and the Terra Nova had to fight on alone, Dianne would want all the expertise she could get.
“All right,” she said. “Send in that request, and sign both our names to it. Then start passing boost orders. Start to secure for main-engine firing, and compute the standard spread of possible course options. Calculate minimum time, minimum fuel, and intermediates, and bring me the results in six hours. Eight hours until boost.”
Gerald nodded. He stood there a moment, as if he were trying to think of something to say himself. But he left it to a simple “Yes ma’am.”
He turned and left, closing the hatch behind him.
Captain Dianne Steiger shut her eyes and rolled over on her side. Sleep. If the ship was going to get under way in a few hours, she needed to get some sleep. She really ought to get off the couch and get into bed.
But underneath her calm, underneath her exhaustion, there was something more.
There in the fear, mixed in with the horror of the news, with the terrible thought of a Breeding Binge, there was a thrill of excitement as well.
At last, she thought. At last.
The call to arms had come.
chapter 14: Garbage In
“If you look into the background of how the Abduction happened, it is at least possible it could have been avoided altogether, if a senior scientist had been willing to listen to a subordinate.”
—Dr. Wolf Bernhardt, address on the occasion of dedicating the Hijacker Memorial, June 4, 2436
DSI Headquarters
New York City
EARTH
The Sunstar was high in the east as Sianna stepped into Bernhardt’s office. Normally, Sianna was not that aware of the sun’s position when she was in an office, but then most offices had opaque walls.
Wolf Bernhardt’s New York office was not anywhere near as far aboveground as the MRI main level was below, but it seemed that way. It was in a twenty-third-century monstrosity of a NeoGoth tower on Columbus Avenue, about twenty-five blocks south of Columbia. The office itself was huge, a big, sparsely furnished space. The floor was gleaming hardwood, and the walls plain white. Bernhardt’s desk, easily the size of Sianna’s whole office, was an immaculate slab of polished white wood.
There were no pictures on the wall, no shelves, no decoration. It was a room perfect for a man given over to neatness. But insofar as Sianna was interested, the key fact was that the door into the room was on the north side of the room, and the south wall, behind Bernhardt’s desk, was a single huge pane of non-reflective glass, affordin
g a completely unobstructed view that took in the whole Manhattan skyline from a hundred meters up. The spires and towers of the city gleamed in the morning light, framed by a perfect blue sky beyond.
Every fear Sianna had ever had of enclosed spaces vanished, at least for the moment, to be replaced instantly by acute agoraphobia, before she settled down. It was all right. It was all right. Just a spectacular view. Nothing to be afraid of. After a moment’s hesitation, she stepped through the door into the room. At first her eyes were fixed on the emptiness, and the glorious city beyond, where a wall was supposed to be. But then she tore her eyes away and looked around the room.
Wally and Sakalov were already there, sitting in two of the visitor’s chairs. Wally had a pocket computer out, and seemed ready to read something off the screen. But of course, it would have been more remarkable if he didn’t have some sort of hardware with him. Sakalov had a notepack as well, the sort that was mostly used to show flat images.
A tray full of coffee things, pastries and fruit and breads, sat on Bernhardt’s desk, and all three men had been helping themselves. That in and of itself was incredible.
For a man like that to be in this celebratory a mood was amazing. For Wolf Bernhardt to put out coffee and danish, exposing his immaculate office to the risk of crumbs and coffee spills, was right up there with the Pope leading a conga line. But be that as it may, all three men were quite plainly happy and relaxed, leaning back in their chairs.
She realised that she had her arms folded up tight in front of her chest. She forced her arms to her sides.
“Ah, Miss Colette,” Bernhardt said, his voice buoyant and expansive. He did not take his feet down off the desk, let alone stand up to greet her. Instead, he kept his comfortable position and waved her toward the chair closest to the window. “You’re just in time. Mr. Sturgis and Dr. Sakalov were just expounding a bit on your idea about the Earth being held in a sort of stasis orbit for those missing thirty-seven minutes. Sit, sit. Have some coffee.”
Hunted Earth Omnibus Page 63
