“Stupid! idiot! And a military-industrial parasite on top of that!”
I had never hit a woman before in my life. The slap echoed through the little ship—outside, the vessel was docking, though I did not consciously notice it at the time—as did my voice a second later when she let me have a small, high-velocity fist in the pit of the stomach.
We stood, toe-to-toe, panting, speechless. Curiously, desire for her raced through my system. I could see it on her face, too, along with the embarrassment that such spiritual nakedness leaves in its wake.
“All right, then,” Lucille broke the spell. “That settles our account, Corporal O’Thraight. Next time we run into one another, don’t bother to speak. I guarantee that you’ll never hear another word from me.”
The floor rose beneath us, carrying us into the Tom Paine Maru.
So much for our holiday excursion.
-2-
The Lieutenant was not home when I went looking. I could not have said exactly why I did it, except that, suddenly, I felt that I had misjudged him. It was always like this: when things were not going well with Lucille, I grew homesick, overly forgiving, overcome by nostalgia. I was ashamed of letting interest in a woman (a woman like Lucille, at that) distract me from loyalty to my friends, duty to my country. Returning to my stateroom, I found the man waiting in the corridor.
“Corporal!” It was a hoarse noise, trying to be a shouted whisper, or a whispered shout, all at once. He pranced nervously, wrung his hands, spread them, shook them, then went back to wringing them as I approached.
“I have been looking all over for you! I have finally discovered the truth about this ship! It is the most startling information you possibly—”
“Sir?” Somehow, the Lieutenant’s face was deathly pale, while the veins stood out on his broad forehead as if he were about to have a stroke.
“Let us go inside ... ” He craned his neck to make sure we were not being overheard, “ ... where there is less chance of being spied upon.”
I could have told him there was more chance of that inside, but he was the Lieutenant. Also, I was suddenly very tired. I wanted to lie down. Entering, he threw himself onto the bed, wiping a hand across his forehead. I sat down in a chair, listening through my personal depression.
“I have been speaking with that Nahuatl ... person this morning. You know him better than I do. Do you think that he is inclined to lie?”
“I think he is less inclined than anybody else aboard this ship. Why?”
“Because if he tells the truth, Corporal, we are in deep, deep trouble. Are you aware that he is half-computer? That he possesses a sophisticated electronic implant within his skull—or it possesses him—that provides most of his intellect. That when we speak to him, we are actually speaking to a device, instead of an intelligent organism?”
“Well, sir, I—” What I wondered myself was what difference it made.
His eyes bulged with agitation. “The truth is that they are all like that! Every one! They are nothing but walking computers: whales, chimpanzees, gorillas—even human beings! They are all controlled by computers stitched in amongst their very brains! Corporal, we are doomed!”
“Sir?” I was not feeling very articulate all of a sudden.
“Oh, I was offered a hasty explanation by the creature himself, to the effect that everybody carries a wholly independent multi-gigabyte computer in his head, and that there is no master machine, no overall program. It was laughable! What society would miss such a chance for control?”
Vespucci would not. I pondered the question for a moment. “On the other hand, would the Confederates, with their fanatic devotion to individual liberty, tolerate such a thing? I find it highly confusing, sir.”
He said, “Not at all, Corporal. You see, their desire for freedom, their freedom itself, is no more than a cybernetic illusion foisted on them to maintain their tranquillity. Now that I know the secret—now that we know—they are certain to do us in! This society must have been taken over by an artificial intelligence during a period not much more greatly advanced than our own. They are the prisoners of their own machines! They will kill us before we let their secret out, I know it!”
-3-
Notes from the Asperance Expedition
Armorer/Corporal YD-038 recording
Page Five:
Quarks may be removed from atomic nuclei, substituted for any or all electrons, thereby vastly altering the character of any element. An early example, “catalytic” fusion at room temperatures, used quark-electron shells less resistant to being squashed together than is natural.
But quarkotopics goes further than “mere” catalytic fusion. Now, instead of permutations of 100-plus natural elements, they have unlimited possibilities based on the number of electron positions in any given element, on whether they choose to leave them alone or alter them.
The door said, “Corporal O’Thraight?”
I put my notebook away. The Lieutenant had departed earlier on some unnamed errand. I saw Edwina Olson-Bear, as the door cleared, standing outside, her suit a plain, pale green. Noticing something in my movements that told her I had been busy, she began, “I’m sorry to disturb—”
“That is all right, I was just finishing up. Please come in, er, Chief Praxeol—Doctor Olson-Bear.” I gestured clumsily, embarrassed by what I had been doing, but moreso by not knowing how to address her.
I was turning out to be a lousy spy.
As pretty as her sister in her own quiet way, she leaned on the frame. “Edwina. I came to ask if you want to see the first of our operations on Hoand. It’ll only be another ... ” She rolled her eyes, looked at me again, “ ... twenty-three minutes. We’ve just time to get there.”
“Where?”
“You’ll see. It’s something that I want to watch in person, rather than by telecom. It’s a pet project of mine, really. You see, Hoand has been steeped in warfare for something like three thousand years. There’s only one way to end it. All the organizing and demonstrating in the universe never did a lick of good, as long as taxation and conscription—”
“People like war,” I defended with a cynicism grown hard inside me. “They will do anything, sacrifice anything. It is instinctive with them.”
“Nonsense, Corporal. War is the health of the state, and of nobody else. Put an end to the machinery of war, government, and you put an end to war. Simple, but most Kilroys are blind to it because, as much as they desire peace, they want to keep the state around for other reasons.”
I strapped on my gunbelt, then joined her in the hall. After a longer than usual transport patch ride, we were crossing a medium-sized park when the sky overhead went abruptly from blue to starry black.
Edwina stopped because I was gawking. “This isn’t what I meant, but it’ll be quite a show, I promise. Let’s stay a moment. We’ll watch it.”
Hoand’s outermost satellite was a worthless cinder a few hundred klicks in diameter, reminiscent of everything that circled the sun of Vespucci.
Including Vespucci.
Hoandians had reached their other moons by way of clumsy rockets, planted flags, made speeches, returned home when air or courage ran low. They had not yet come this far. Markers on the sky-display showed where camera-landers sat in meteoric dust, one or two still operating. An orbiter relayed signals to the planet, five or six light-seconds away.
Motion in the park came to a halt. Confederates standing around, sitting on benches, going places, as we were, or simply lying in the grass became statues as Koko’s amplified voice rang throughout the ship.
“Five, four, three, two, one, commence firing!”
From the broad underside of the mighty vessel came a blast twelve kilometers in diameter, a beam so intense that it looked like pieces might be cut off to build new starships. On the surface of the target moon, an explosion to end all explosions endowed that barren sphere—temporarily—with an atmosphere. Smoke cleared into the airless void, revealing a churning lava pool twic
e the size of Tom Paine Maru.
The beam winked off. Folks breathed again. There was a pause, then suddenly a cheer went up, thundering through the ship, buffeting my ears.
“We’ll give the leaders about an hour,” said Edwina, resuming her purposeful stride, “to hear from their tame scientists. This spot isn’t directly visible from the planet. You need access to telemetered data.”
I confess that I did not care. I wanted badly to ask about her sister, anything to help me understand. I did not know how to begin. Howell had said Lucille’s period of stasis had been intermittent, interrupted frequently for courses of experimental treatment. Complete “regeneration” (whatever that tantalizing phrase meant) had been prevented for years by a genetic disorder inherited from her father. Finally cured, she emerged from her nightmarish ordeal a changed personality.
I started to speak, but we entered a room at the edge of the park. Koko, Howell, a few familiar others waited. It was difficult to tell, as half of the place was darkened. Lucille was there. The other half, separated from us by a transparency, contained four comfortable chairs, one of them occupied by Geoffrey Couper, freshly shaven from the blunt prow of his massive chin to the polished crest of his great cranium.
The big man’s smartsuit was adjusted to metallic reflectivity, its collar turned up high, fastened with a crisp, military appearance—the man would look military in pajamas—I wondered if Lucille ever criticized him for that. On his feet were matching silver boots. A pair of silver gauntlets rested in his lap. He turned toward the partition, which Edwina said was a mirror on his side. “You people ready?”
A pause I thought I was beginning to understand, then: “Fifteen seconds, Geoff,” said Koko. “They’re having trouble lining up on the Premiere.”
“Okay. Sure wish I could have a smoke, but it would spoil the effect.”
All the way across the darkened room, I somehow, unexpectedly caught Lucille’s eye. She shot a dire glare at her sister, then gave me a rueful, appealing look. I was never going to figure the woman out.
A warning ping. A blinding, brilliant blue at their wire-fine perimeters, broach-openings appeared over the unoccupied chairs, widened, then deposited three human figures in varying attitudes of astonishment.
The first individual was neatly dressed for business. Like Couper, he was a big man. He had been caught, fork in hand, chewing something. He looked up, his eyes widened. He looked down at the fork in his hand, changed his grip to make it a weapon. Then he glanced at Couper, whose rig included a plasma pistol, laid the fork on the arm of the chair.
At the same instant, there was a shout as a fat man in a garish night shirt awoke in a sitting position in the next chair. He rubbed his eyes, snarling in a language that I could not understand. Then he started to get up, but he could not. The chair was holding him fast. He slumped, staring about him like a trapped animal. He did not seem to notice Couper. He had eyes only for the big man in the business suit.
“Get those hamblasted translators on line, stat!” Couper barked. In the back of the darkened half of the room, someone scurried to comply.
The third man—the Premiere of Uxos, my companion told me—was naked, a roll of toilet paper in his hand, the most surprised expression of the three upon his face. Couper tossed him a blanket, then waited for them all to overcome their astonishment enough to listen.
“What we have here, gentlebeings,” Couper lectured as he waited, to an unseen audience behind the transparency, “are the three most politically powerful individuals on the planet Hoand. Not terribly prepossessing, are they?” At mention of their planet’s name—apparently the only word they understood—all three looked up at Couper.
Edwina whispered: “You’re about to see what we call the old Galactic Police gag. I wish he’d stop clowning, he could mess up the whole—”
Clowning?
“Greetings,” Couper said suddenly, “from the Galactic Confederacy. As you may have noticed, my speech is being translated into each of your respective languages. I need not introduce you to each other, nor apologize for the abruptness of the summons. The continued existence of your world, and of all the people living on it, hinges on this event.”
“What is the meaning of this outrage?” demanded the blanket-covered Premiere. The head of Obohalu, the fellow in the night shirt, nodded belligerent agreement with his erstwhile enemy, glaring now at Couper.
When the others had finished their expostulations, the Houttian Chancellor quietly said, “I would like very much to know how this was accomplished, sir. The lunar explosion was spectacular, yet somehow comprehensible. This is nothing short of magnificent. Will you tell me?”
“In due course, sir, that is but the smallest fraction of our available powers. For now, we have other matters to discuss. Are you prepared?”
“Provided,” he said, “the Premiere and the President are likewise prepared.”
“Gentlemen? Your attention? We are perfectly willing to confer with members of your opposition, if necessary. Or go directly to the public.”
More grudging assent I have not seen concentrated in a single room, before or since. The Chancellor alone seemed collected. The only sign that he was alive was an occasional blinking of his cool gray eyes.
“Very well. Your sun system, while well within our boundaries, was only recently discovered to be inhabited. I welcome you into the Confederacy, and advise that you are in violation—unknowingly, I’m sure—of certain statutes.” He pointed to a stack beside his knee, three massively-thick aluminum-bound books, the first I had seen aboard ship. “This must be repaired. These step-by-step instructions, carefully tailored for your individual nations, will tell you how to begin ... ”
-4-
Yes, of course, I was back together with Lucille by that evening. We had dinner with Couper’s team after the Hoandian bigwigs were sent home with promises this time, not threats, that if they ran into any trouble with heir political opposition, that those folks would be treated to the Galactic Police gag, too, in order to insure their cooperation.
The aluminum-covered books were check-lists, nothing more, for winding government down to its total abolition. Taxes and conscription feed the machinery of war and must be shut off. In one country, the first step was surrendering money-production to private banks. In another, it was opening the arsenals to the people. It all hinged on local conditions, the exact steps, their number, the order they must be carried out in, requiring years of calculation by praxeologists. The people of the planet might never know we had been there. Promising to let word out of an alien invasion had been Couper’s last, best lever.
Lucille and I made love again that night, the same violent, soul-shattering act that never failed to frighten us both, that made us irresistible to one another. By morning—also of course—we had another screaming fight. As I wrenched out through the door of her stateroom, she shouted after me, “This time, it’s for keeps!” I got back to my own compartment just in time to receive a wall-message from Howell:
“Whitey!” The coyote’s fur was bristling in the display, “Get over here as quickly as you can! I’m in your Lieutenant’s quarters! He’s collapsed! It’s brain embolism, they’re telling me! In any event, he’s comatose. And unless you act immediately, he’ll be dead within twenty minutes!”
accountants of the soul
BLAAAMM!!
The Dardick bucked in my hand. The repulsive smelly thing that had attacked me dissolved, but another was right behind, fangs dripping saliva.
BLAM! BLAM! The rotor whirled; ivory-colored tround-casings littered the ground at my feet. Claws extended, the monster lumbered closer ...
“Too bad, Whitey,” said a disembodied voice, “That one ate you.”
Tom Paine Maru - Special Author's Edition Page 23
