Analog Science Fiction and Fact - Aprli 2014

by Penny Publications

  Reluctantly, Toby complied. He couldn't help himself and spared a glance back at the lot where he'd left Corva and Orpheus. All was dark there, just a confusion of moving shapes as the people from the tower belatedly realized they'd been set free.

  The bot who'd accompanied the off icer moved to step into the aircar, but the man put his hand on its chest. "Wait here a second," he told it. Then he slid past it and into the car.

  "Sir, I—" the bot began, moving forward.

  The officer reached up and yanked down the aircar's clamshell door, banging the bot on the head and knocking it aside.

  "Lift Lift!" He practically screamed the word as he slammed into the seat next to Toby. The aircar surged upward, but the officer was already reaching for the manual override. As he took control they slewed sideways and then dropped. Toby was suddenly weightless and he shouted as he braced his hands on the canopy. Black cut-out shapes of trees shot past, and suddenly the sky was full of laser light.

  Some part of Toby's mind was registering that real laser shots didn't look anything like the movies and games he'd seen—they were diffuse, tremulous and wavering, full of sparkles as the beams exploded stray motes of dust. But the tree next to them exploded in orange flame as one caught it, and then they were clear—

  —For just a second before something slammed into the canopy, making Toby shout again. They took another hit, then another and a quick fusilade: bangbang bang! —with the last one cracking the windshield.

  "Damned drones," muttered the officer as he steered the aircar around the apartment building. Toby glanced back in time to see a sumptuous living room explode in fire as more laser shots tried to cut through the building.

  "Don't worry, they're not trying to kill us."

  Toby reared back, staring at the man. "How can you tell?"

  "If they were, we'd already be dead. But if they think they're actually going to lose us, they might get serious." He dove at the ground and, scant meters above the road surface, they dodged through the streets. Everywhere around them, vehicles and drones were rising into the sky. There were more laser flashes, only... "Hey, they're shooting at each other!"

  "Some of us are loyal," said the off icer. "Some would die for your sister even after learning how she's betrayed you."

  "Ah." A tumble of emotions flew through Toby then: fury that this man had been an ally all along and that Orpheus had died for no reason; relief that Corva was out of danger; and over it all, a savage sense of triumph at the carnage playing out across the cityscape. Bots were fighting bots, aircars and drones weaving around one another while people ran to and fro in the streets. Divided loyalty was shattering Evayne's ranks, just as Toby had planned.

  All his good intentions had evaporated but he didn't care anymore if people got hurt. He laughed bitterly. The officer glanced over and something in Toby's eye made him say, "I'm so sorry if—"

  "Carry on," snapped Toby. "This is perfect."

  They shot between trees that passed so close that branches whipped the side windows. Yellow blossoms of fire erupted behind them and Toby's stomach flipped over repeatedly as they maneuvered.

  It's nothing you haven't seen in Consensus, he told himself—or tried: none of the virtual battles he'd fought with Peter had included actual g-forces and vertigo. He gritted his teeth and tried to remember what a commander was supposed to do in situations like this.

  "Where are we going?" He was glad to hear his voice wasn't quavering or squeaking. The officer grunted, but had to pull some extreme banks and turns before he answered.

  "We've been in contact with your people for years," he said as they entered a slot between tall towers, and he opened the throttle. "Almost since we arrived."

  "My people? What are you talking about?"

  "Your army," said the off icer. "The one we'll be taking to Destrier."

  Toby slumped back in the seat, shaking his head. "Halen." He hadn't known for sure, but had figured that all the while he was dodging Evayne's forces, he was evading Halen's as well. The cult of the Emperor of Time would surely have their own denners and non-McGonigal beds. Just like the Thisbe defense forces, they could skip a certain number of people through time on their own frequency. Toby hadn't known how many of the recent fire-fights and ambushes had been engineered by the defense force and how many had been Halen's cult; he hadn't really cared. The one possibility he hadn't considered was that some of Evayne's own people would be highly motivated to find out.

  "How many of you are there?"

  The percussive sounds of battle were fading behind them. The officer sat back too, grinning now. "We've had to be very careful about recruiting. Our core is over a hundred men, but at least half of the soldiers may take their orders from your sister only because they think she's acting on your behalf. They've been spinning their heads around trying to reconcile the Great Lady's actions with that loyalty. If you'd declared yourself before, you could have had sixty-five ships and almost five thousand men at your command... instantly. When you do declare yourself I'm sure most of the others will come around."

  "Declare myself?"

  "I mean, announce your true identity and your intention to march on Destrier."

  "Oh, that," said Toby.

  "Everything's going to change after tonight," the officer went on excitedly. "Her forces will crumble away; they'll all defect! Then we'll have her and you can fulfill your purpose."

  Toby decided not to ask the officer what he thought Toby's "purpose" was.

  "What about my brother? Isn't this just part of the lockstep army?"

  The officer shrugged. "They'll try to defend Destrier. I mean, the total lockstep army is seven million men and women, and hundreds of thousands of ships; nobody knows how many bots there are. But the same thing is going to happen then as is happening now. They'll come around."

  But not without a fight. Toby's angry satisfaction was draining away, replaced by dread. This is Halen's plan. Just as surely as he knew that, he knew it had been M'boto and Ammond's plan as well—with the tiny difference that they had intended to be the puppeteers pulling Toby's strings.

  Of course, you didn't need to neuroshackle somebody to make them your puppet. All you needed was to know that person's currency. To have leverage over them...

  Corva. He'd left her behind—and where would she go now? Back to her family.

  "Crap." He twisted in his seat to look back. The city appeared absurdly festive, but the fireworks were going off strangely close to ground-level. There was no returning there, at least not tonight. "Crap crap crap."

  "Sir? What's wrong?"

  "Nothing. Stay on course. I need to think."

  It was all unraveling. He didn't know how many of Evayne's human forces were awake, but she could concentrate all her bots here while they awoke. For his part, Toby would have to depend on whoever on his side was awake at the moment—and it sounded like it was the cultists. He could start thawing the rest of the defense force, but it would take more than a day for them to become operational. By that time everything would probably have been decided, one way or the other. It didn't seem like he had much choice.

  "Fly lower. I need an internet signal."

  The officer barked a humorless laugh. "We're about as low as we can go without slowing down. There's still drones on our tail."

  "See what you can do."

  His glasses signaled intermittent connection to the net. Thisbe wasn't set up to provide global high-data coverage while wintering-over; typically the repeaters and antennae went into hibernation like everything else. They'd have to get lucky enough to find an industrial unit that was coordinating the slow harvesters. If he could stay in contact with it long enough to issue some commands, the whole mesh could wake itself—and the army.

  The trouble was, they were being herded past the city outskirts. An occasional bullet or laser shot past, and the officer had to keep them almost at ground level, while bots fought bots in the air above and behind them.

  A hill loomed ah
ead, and they were up and over it in seconds. Spread out before them was the black plain of a wintering world—except that far off near the horizon, other city lights glittered.

  "What's that?" He shook his head and blinked, looked at it again. "I didn't wake that city."

  "It's Lockstep 180/1, sir. They share Thisbe with ours."

  "Can we get there?"

  He looked shocked. "We can't involve them in a civil war. The treaties—"

  "I didn't sign any treaties. Besides, they can't turn away refugees, can they?"

  "What are you saying? You want to go in there alone?"

  "You were thinking I was going to take our army in there? Defend ourselves with one-eighty as a shield?" Toby shook his head. "Of course not. So, yes, I aim to go in there alone."

  "With respect, sir, for you to stay they'll demand you winter over on their frequency. All your sister has to do is post a guard to prevent you leaving. Once you're bottled up and living on a different frequency, you're no threat to her."

  "... And bottling me up would work great for her, if the rest of Thisbe let her do it. This is how we win or lose: you get me a signal long enough for me to wake the rest of the army, and then we head straight for one-eighty. Got it?"

  "Yes sir!"

  They swept in a tight turn around one of the city's last towers, and began to hunt for a repeater tower while bots and aircraft converged on them from every direction.

  A week later, Toby stood with the officer, whose name was Ourobon, and the administrators of the city of Equinoct. They watched as a small group of human figures passed through the new checkpoint that one-eighty's own defense forces had set up on the edge of town.

  One-eighty spoke a different language and all of its customs and culture were different. Thousands of years separated them from three-sixty, and they had no guides to make them conform. Toby had used the meager information in his glasses to negotiate with them, but even now he wasn't sure what their intentions were for him.

  So much less did he know how they'd treat these new visitors. Nobody stopped him, though, when we strode out to meet them. Their backdrop was fields of green dotted with troop transports and tents: the ragged remnants of a once-great military force. Way off in the sky, speckling the white clouds like a flock of distant birds, a much larger force approached. Everybody involved knew what that meant.

  The new arrivals had been disarmed; as soon as they passed the checkpoint they were officially in Lockstep one-eighty, foreign soil for anyone from Thisbe's dominant culture. One-eighty might not be large or extensive, but they had their own army and fleets; and no McGonigal had the power to drag them into a purely internal conflict. Anybody carrying weapons across the invisible line at the checkpoint would feel the full force of their wrath—and so would three-sixty. Nobody knew how many other locksteps would join one-eighty if they decided to punish Peter's empire.

  So it was that Evayne approached Toby weaponless, and with her hands out. "Brother!"

  He suppressed a sarcastic laugh. So, now I'm your brother? Yet he really did want to see her, and so it was with undisguised eagerness that he stepped forward, took her hands, and then threw caution to the winds and hugged her.

  Her whole body went rigid, then after a moment she relaxed a bit—just enough for her to gently take his arms, and disengage herself. "I don't deserve that," she said quietly.

  "You're the only sister I've got," he said. "And we're kind of in this together, even if you don't think so."

  She glanced back at the forces massing in the sky. "I do not think so."

  Toby thought of that distant squadron as Halen's new army, though he was sure Corva's brother had little power in it. A mixture of Thisbe defense forces, native Toby cultists, and turncoats from Evayne's forces, it was rapidly taking control of the planet. In doing so it was eating up vast resources; a lockstep like three-sixty lived lightly on the land, and had few stockpiles. The whole planet would be going back to sleep soon, to awake on its normal schedule as Toby had commanded. Big changes would be waiting for those citizens who'd slept through the last few years.

  "That," said Toby, nodding at the approaching force, "doesn't obey me. It obeys the mythical Emperor of Time, who's got an agenda."

  Evayne made a skeptical noise, crossing her arms. Right now she looked so much like their mother that Toby was astonished. "You can't tell me it isn't your agenda too," she said. "Next stop: Destrier. Right?"

  "It doesn't have to be now," he said.

  "But every day you wait, the bigger they become." She jabbed a thumb at the new army.

  Toby shrugged. "What's your point? Evie, it's over. You had your run as Pope, but now you gotta step aside. I don't care how we spin it, but one way or another the Universe is going to find out that I'm not a god. They're going to have to deal with it."

  She shook her head. "Toby, I know you think Peter and I have been totally corrupted by power. But it's not like that. I wasn't lying when I said the myth took on a life of its own. There's nothing for me in promoting it—Peter and I are already the most powerful people in history. Hyper-rich and immortal—well, it can't get much better than that, can it? But we're as trapped by your myth as you are.

  "There is no easy way to end this, and you know it. You're going to arrive on Destrier carrying fourteen thousand years' worth of baggage. Whatever you do, there'll be social upheavals on countless worlds."

  "So all you want to do is keep a lid on it?"

  "Keep a lid on potentially limitless levels of religious violence, yes."

  He snorted. "As you can see, it's too late for that. —Not my fault, by the way. I was trying to keep this between you and me. You forced my hand."

  "And you're about to force mine," she snapped. "I told you before, this isn't a game anymore. The stakes are too high to turn back now."

  "Uh, Evie, last I saw I was the one who had your troops surrounded. You had me trapped here for a while, but unless you want to drag one-eighty into this too, you can't touch me. And as soon as my army gets here, you're my prisoner. Unless you head for orbit and leave Thisbe with your tail between your legs. And in that case, you're letting me go."

  "No! There's another choice. Your only real choice, Toby. You have to renounce your identity. Declare yourself an impostor. We'll come up with a plausible story about how you controlled the cicada beds here on Thisbe. You become just another Toby impostor, the latest in a long line. You never interfere with the lockstep frequencies again, you never command a McGonigal bot to do so much as sweep the floor—and this all dies down. We go back to the way it was."

  "You've got to be kidding!"

  "Come on, you know it makes sense. It's the only way."

  "And what's going to happen to me? Haven't you executed all the other impostors?"

  "Well, most of them took their own lives in the end..."

  "And if you don't do it, some Toby cultist fanatic will come after me sooner or later. You're telling me to make myself a marked man forever—and you're saying we never wake Mom up! Is that your plan?"

  "Toby, at this point, letting her sleep is the lesser of two evils."

  She gave him a sad look, then shook her head and started to walk back to the checkpoint. "You think we only have two options: let her sleep or wake her up. But there's a third, and if you don't do as I say, I'll have to do it."

  A queasy feeling of horror was welling up in Toby's throat. "What do you mean? Evie, what you are talking about?"

  She paused at the checkpoint. "I've got about an hour to get off-world before your little army makes it impossible. So I'm leaving. You come with me now, Toby, or else when you get to Destrier, you'll find that our Mother can't be woken up." She saw his expression, and sneered. "You can't possibly believe that Peter and I never discussed this? That we wouldn't have built a switch into her bed that would make it look like she's hibernating, long after there's nothing left to revive?

  "You've got an hour to grow up, Toby. I'll wait as long as I can, but you made this d
eadline, not me."

  She turned and crossed the line into her own camp, and ignored everything that Toby shouted after her.

  Only after she disappeared behind a tent did Toby cough and sink to his knees. He nearly retched, and only Ourobon's hand on his shoulder kept him from sinking all the way onto the grass.

  Thisbe's artificial sun chose that moment to change color, from solar yellow to blood red. Toby stared at his hands in this light, shaking his head.

  "Sir! What did she say?"

  "She... she's leaving, Ourobon."

  "We can keep her here," said Ourobon. "It'll be hard, but—"

  "You'll have to shoot her down. You'll probably kill her. Anyway, it doesn't matter. If she thinks we're going to stop her, she might give the order from here."

  "We're jamming her."

  "And you can guarantee you'll be successful?" Toby brushed off Ourobon's help and stood up. "No—let her go. She's not going to do it until she absolutely has to."

  "Do what, sir?"

  "Never mind." At the far end of Evayne's camp, her remaining flying bots were rising up and arrowing in the direction of the incoming squadrons. There was going to be a bit of a dogfight before Evayne got out, but she had enough firepower left to get at least one lander back to orbit, where her ships waited.

  "Ourobon, whose side are you on?"

  The ex-officer in Evayne's army looked startled. "Why, yours, sir."

  "Then I need you to gather some people you trust. People who'll do what I say, not what the leaders of that army want me to say."

  Ourobon nodded slowly. There had been spotty communication in and out of one-eighty; Evayne's jamming transmitters fought with Thisbe's, but there was little she could do to stop point-to-point laser comms. So Toby knew that Corva Keishion's whereabouts were "currently unaccounted for." He knew what that meant: she'd gone back to her family, and Halen or one of his friends had been waiting for her. Once Evayne was gone and her local forces mopped up, Toby would be able to walk through that checkpoint a conquering hero—or so it would appear. There was that little matter of leverage, though, if Halen's people had Corva. If they threatened her... he had no illusions that he would be able to resist.