Greg Bear - [Eon Trilogy 1] - Eon (rescan) (v1.0)

by Neal Asher

  "I'd think so, wouldn't you?"

  She turned the page. "How long do I have?"

  "I'm leaving tomorrow for Earth. You'll be going to the first circuit the day after."

  "Two days."

  He nodded.

  "I'll be staying here?"

  "If you find it acceptable. There's an office behind the stacks outfitted as a sleeping area, with food and hot plate. Porta-potty. The guards will check on you every couple of hours. You're not to tell any of them what you're reading. But if you feel any sort of distress, let them know immediately. Any sort of distress. Even just getting sick to your stomach. Understand?"

  "Yes."

  "I'll stay here with you this first time." He squeezed her shoulder gently. "Take a break with me in a couple of hours, okay?"

  "Sure," she said.

  She watched him settle into a cubicle seat. He took a slate out of his pocket and quietly typed on it.

  She turned the page on the first chapter and began. She did not read in a linear fashion, instead skipping from the middle of the book to the beginning, then to the end, looking for pages where the major events were synopsized, or conclusions were drawn.

  Page 15

  In the last years of the 1980s, it became apparent to the Soviet Union and its client states that the Western world was winning—or would soon win—the war of technology and therefore ideology both on Earth and in space, with consequences unforeseen for the future of their nations and their system. They contemplated several ways of overcoming this technological superiority; none seemed practical. In the late 1980s, with the deployment of the first United States space-based defense systems, the Soviet states stepped up their efforts to obtain technological "fixes" through espionage and importing of embargoed goods—computers and other high-technology equipment but this was soon shown to be inadequate. In 1991, the space-based defense systems they themselves had deployed were shown to be inferior in design and ability, and it became obvious to the Soviet leadership that what had been predicted for years was in fact happening; the Soviet Union could not compete with the free world in technology.

  Most Soviet computer systems were centralized; privately owned or noncentralized systems were illegal (with a few exceptions—namely, the Agatha experiments), and the laws were rigorously enforced. Young Soviet citizens could not match the technological "savvy" of their counterparts in the Western bloc nations. The Soviet Union was soon going to suffocate under the weight of its own tyranny, remaining a twentieth- (or nineteenth-) century nation in a twenty-first-century world. They had no choice but to attempt, in the football (q.v.) terminology of the time, an "end run." They had to test the courage and resolve of the Western bloc nations. If the Soviets failed, then by the turn of the century, they would be far weaker than their adversaries. The Little Death was inevitable.

  Patricia took a deep breath. She hadn't seen reports of the Little Death handled from quite so distant—so historical—a perspective. She remembered nightmares as a girl, after living through the incredible tension and fear, and then seeing the results on television. She had learned to cope since, but these cold, critical evaluations—ingested in such an authoritative environment—brought back the shivers all too effectively.

  Page 20

  By comparison, the Little Death of 1993 was a low-technology bungle. A minor contretemps causing embarrassment as much as horror, it resulted in an insincere international resolve that resembled the mocking promises of young children. Afraid of their weapons, during that first conflict, the Western bloc and Soviet forces constantly "pulled their

  punches," relying on the tactics and technology of past decades. When the engagements became nuclear—as all in command knew in their hearts they would—the space-based defense systems, still young and unproven, showed themselves to be remarkably effective. They could not, however, stop the near-shore submarine launches of the three missiles which destroyed Atlanta, Brighton and part of the coast of Brittany. The Russians could not protect their city of Kiev. The nuclear exchange was limited, and the Soviets and Western bloc countries capitulated almost simultaneously. But the rehearsal had already been conducted, and the Soviets had emerged with less "hits" than their adversaries. They had gained nothing but a deadly resolve: that they would not be defeated under any circumstances, nor would history overtake their outmoded system.

  The Death, when it came, was completely earnest and open. Every weapon was used as it had been designed to be used. There seemed to be no compunction about consequences.

  Page 35

  In retrospect, it seems completely logical that once a weapon is invented, it will be used. But we forget the blindness and obfuscation of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, when the most destructive weapons were regarded as walls of protection, and when the horror of Armageddon was seen as a deterrent no sane society would

  risk. But the nations were not sane—rational, composed, aware, but not sane. In each nation, the arsenal included potent distrust and even hatred...

  Page 3

  The Little Death resulted in 4 million casualties, most in Western Europe and England. The Death resulted in approximately 2 1/2 billion casualties, and the numbers will always be uncertain, for by the time the body counts were "completed," it is possible that as many bodies had rotted as had been counted. And, of course, as many more had been completely vaporized.

  Patricia wiped her eyes. "This is awful," she murmured.

  "You can take a break if you want," Lanier said solicitously.

  "No ... not yet." She continued skimming, back and forth...

  Page345

  In summation, the naval battles were hideous jokes of technology. During the Little Death, submarines were hunted (and in some cases, sunk) up to and even after the capitulation, but the great fleets only skirmished. In the major conflict, once the war began in earnest, about two hours after the first hostile actions, the navies of East and West went "in harm's way." In the Persian Gulf, the Northwestern Pacific, the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean (Libya had provided the Soviets with a Mediterranean base in 1997) the battles were fierce and quick. There were few victors. Sea battles during the Death lasted an average of half an hour, and many took less than five minutes. On the first day, while strategic intentions were being tested and before the large-scale escalations, the navies of the Eastern and Western blocs destroyed each other. They were the last great navies allowed on the oceans of the Earth, and their radioactive scrap still pollutes the waters, 130 years later.

  Page 400

  A peculiar phenomenon of the latter half of the twentieth century was the increase in "retreatists." These people—usually in groups of fifty or less—staked out isolated country tracts as their territory, expecting a disaster of major proportions to destroy civilization, resulting in anarchy. With their stores of food and weapons and their "strictly survival" attitude—a willingness to isolate themselves morally as well as physically—they embodied the worst aspects of what Orson Hamill has called "the conservative sickness of the twentieth century." There is no room here to analyze the causes of this sickness, where individual power and survival counted above all other moral considerations and where the ability to destroy was emphasized over any nobility of spirit, but the ironies of the outcome are rich.

  The "retreatists" were right—and wrong. The catastrophe did come, and much of the world was destroyed, but even in the Long Winter that followed, civilization did not crumble into complete anarchy. Indeed, within a year, highly cooperative societies emerged. The lives of one's fellows became almost infinitely precious—and all of the Death's survivors became fellows. Love and support of neighboring groups were essential, for no single group had the means or the stamina to survive long without aid. The retreatist enclaves—heavily armed and

  viciously indiscriminate about how they defended themselves or whom they killed—soon became targets of hatred and fear, the sole exceptions to this new perception of brotherhood.

  Within
five years after the end of the Death, most of the retreatist enclaves had been sought out and their half-crazed members killed or captured. (Unfortunately, many isolated "survivalist" [q.v.] communities were also included in the sweep. The distinction made between these branches with similar inclinations is a historical one, and was ignored by the authorities of that time.) Many of the retreatists were put on trial for crimes against humanity—specifically, for refusing to participate in the recovery of civilization. In time, these purges extended to all who advocated the right to bear weapons, and even, in some communities, to all who favored high technologies.

  Those military personnel who had survived were forced to undergo social reconditioning.

  The landmark trial of 2015—where high-ranking politicians and military officers of both the Eastern and Western blocs were accused of crimes against humanity—capped this grim but not-unexpected reaction against the horrors of the Death.

  It didn't seem real. She closed her book and shut her eyes. Here she was, reading a book about events that hadn't taken place yet—and had happened in another universe.

  She swallowed the lump in her throat. If it was real, and if it was going to happen, then something should be done. She leafed through the appendices.

  On page 567, she found what she was looking for. Every city in the world that had been bombed was listed in the next two hundred pages, with approximate casualties and deaths. She searched for California and found it: twenty-five cities, each receiving from two to twenty-three warheads. Los Angeles, twenty-three, spaced over a two-week period.

  ("Spasm," an asterisked footnote commented.) Santa Barbara, two. San Francisco—including Oakland, San Jose and Sunnyvale—twenty over a three-day period. San Diego, fifteen. Long Beach, ten. Sacramento, one, Fresno, one. Vandenherg Space Operations Center, twelve evenly spaced along the coastal strip.

  Air bases hit in or near the cities, including civilian airports which could be used for military purposes: fifty-three. All space centers around the world had been destroyed, even in noncombatant countries (again the footnote: "Spasm").

  Patricia felt dizzy. The book seemed to recede from her. There was no tunnel vision, no loss of sensation, just a kind of isolation. She was Patricia Luisa Vasquez, twenty-four, and because she was young she would have a long time to live. Her parents, because she had known them all her life, would not die for a very long time—an inconceivably long time. And Paul—because they had just begun knowing each other, because he was the one man she had met who had even tried to know what she was about—Paul would be safe, too.

  And all of them lived in zones that would be (might be) vaporized from the face of the Earth.

  It was simple, really. She would take this book with her when she left, which would be soon, days perhaps. She would take it back to Earth and show people. (Perhaps something like that had already been done.)

  And if the universes were close enough that a similarity in immediate futures was possible, then people would be forced to act. Faced with the prospect of nuclear war, people would start disarming, start apologizing, Jesus, I'm sorry we came so close; let's take this as a blessing and—

  "Oh, CHRIST!" She closed the book and stood.

  Lanier walked with her through the decrepit park near the library. She cried for five minutes, then pulled herself together. The questions she wanted to ask were so difficult to express in words. And if she knew the answers, she might go mad...

  "Has anyone made comparisons? I mean, between their history and our own?" she asked.

  "Yes," Lanier said.. "I have, and so has Takahashi."

  "He knows as much as we do?"

  Lanier nodded.

  "What did you find? I mean, are the universes similar?"

  "The differences in the history records are small enough that they can be interpreted as differences of fact between two sources. No major differences. Until the Stone."

  "And the situations these books describe they sound like what's happening on Earth, now, don't they?"

  "Yes."

  "The Little Death didn't teach anybody a thing?"

  "Perhaps not."

  She sat beneath a dead tree, on a concrete planter wall. "Do they know, down on Earth?"

  "Eleven people know, here and there."

  "What are they doing about it?"

  "All that they can," Lanier said.

  "But the Stone can change things. It's the crucial difference. Isn't it?"

  "We hope so. In the next few weeks, we'll need all the answers we can get to questions about alternate time-lines, universes, where the Stone came from. Can you help?"

  "You need to know why the Stone is here, and how similar the universes might be, to decide whether we're going to have a war on Earth?"

  Lanier nodded. "Very important."

  "I don't see how any results I get can be detailed enough."

  "Hoffman believes that if anyone can tell us, you can."

  Patricia nodded and looked away. "Okay. Can I make conditions?"

  "What sort of conditions?"

  "I want my family evacuated. I want some friends taken into the countryside, put under protection. Put where the generals and politicians will be."

  "No." He walked around the tree slowly. "I'm not angry with you for asking, but no. None of us has asked for anything like that. Thought about it, certainly."

  "Do you have family?"

  "A brother and a sister. My parents are dead."

  "Wife? No. You're single. A girlfriend, fiance?"

  "No major attachments."

  "So you can be more objective than I can," Patricia said angrily.

  "You know that has nothing to do with it."

  "I'm going to work up here, for you people, and wait until my parents, my boyfriend, my sister, all the people I love die in a disaster I already know about?"

  Lanier stopped before her. "Think it through, Patricia."

  "I know, I know. There are hundreds of people aboard the Stone. If we all know and ask, things go haywire. That's why the libraries are off limits."

  "That's one reason," Lanier said.

  "And to keep the Russians from knowing?"

  "That too."

  "How smart." Her voice was soft, just the opposite of what he had expected. She sounded rational and if not calm, not terribly upset, either. "What happens when I get mail from home?" she asked. "What if I don't write back?"

  "It won't matter much, will it? The dates are only a few weeks away."

  "How will I feel, getting letters? How will I be able to work?"

  "You'll work," Lanier said, "knowing that if we get the answer soon enough, we might be able to do something about it."

  She stared hard at the ground with its dry, yellow grass. "They said shuttle landing areas were bombed. In that book."

  "Yes."

  "If it happens, we'll be stuck up here, won't we?"

  "Yes. Most of us. We won't want to go back soon, anyway."

  "That's why you've started farming. We won't get anything from Earth for ... how long?"

  "If there's a war, and it's as described, perhaps thirty years."

  "I ... I can't go into the library now. Is that all right, if I stay out here for a while?"

  "Sure. Let's return to the first chamber and have dinner. And remember—I've had to live with this information for some time now. There's no reason you can't, as well."

  She got to her feet without responding. Her legs and hands were steady. She was in amazingly good shape, considering. "Let's go," she said.

  *11*

  The travelers gathered by the truck two hours into the morning shift, looking like nothing so much as a bunch of backpackers about to set off on a hike. The truck was very full after loading.

  Patricia sat between Takahashi and a brawny mohawked marine named Reynolds. Reynolds was armed with an Apple and a compact machine pistol. Carrolson sat beside the driver, American navy lieutenant Jerry Lake, a tall outdoorsy-looking fellow with sand-colored hair. Lake gl
anced over the back of his seat to see that everything was in order, nodded to Takahashi and smiled at Patricia. "My men have orders to protect Miss Vasquez at all costs. So don't run away without permission."

  "Yes, sir," Patricia said quietly. Takahashi—short, half Japanese, well muscled, with close-cropped black hair and large self-assured green eyes, returned Lake's nod. Takahashi was the only one wearing Earthside clothes—a cotton shirt, windbreaker and denim pants. "Dispensation," he had explained back by the tent. "I'm allergic to the dye in the overalls."