The Credulity Nexus

by Graham Storrs

  “This is Partway Control.” A different voice. An angry voice. “What the hell are you doing? You can't just manoeuvre like that. You're putting lives in danger. Do you hear me, Captain Campos?”

  Lanham smiled sadly. Poor old Campos would end a fine career in disgrace and ignominy. His name would go into the history books as that of a murderer and madman, but it was the best solution, under the circumstances. He turned on the viewscreen, and the angry space traffic controller sprang into view.

  “This is Campos,” he said in the man's Texan drawl. “Partway, you should give up trying to stop me. You can't do it, and you'll only be wasting your time. This is the only way. I can't go back now.”

  True, of course, since that idiotic young woman Celestina sent had failed to capture the virus, and failed even to die blowing up the town. He should not have relied on Celestina. The woman was deranged. But what else could he have done?

  “Campos! I'll have your license for this. I'm calling the cops. Do you hear?”

  “Demons and monsters have taken over the city,” Lanham said, trying to sound as crazy as he could. “That's why they have it under quarantine. That's why I have to do this terrible thing.”

  “Campos, what the hell are you–”

  Lanham cut the connection. That's all they needed. It was thin, but it would have to do.

  The ship was drifting slowly downward. Fifty-six thousand kilometres below, the town of Heinlein was in turmoil as its citizens tried to flee the virus Cordell had unleashed. Lanham could not let a single one escape. The town had to be burnt to ashes. A nuke would have done it, but, failing that, a spaceship massing over one hundred thousand kilogrammes diving into it, at a velocity of thirteen thousand metres per second, would do just as well. Lanham had already done the calculations in his head. The kinetic energy of his impact would be about equivalent to a four megaton nuclear explosion.

  He gave the engines a kick and the ship dropped faster. To get the right attitude, velocity and trajectory for a dive into the city, the ship would need to do one full orbit of the Moon. In about two hours, Heinlein would be gone. So little time left for Lanham – or whoever he was – to live.

  He tuned out his anxiety. This was no time to be a slave to human survival instincts. Lanham must do what was necessary for the survival of Omega Point and transhumans everywhere. If the humans didn't buy his impromptu ploy and a war ensued, so be it. The risk was better than the certainty of destruction if Cordell could manipulate the credulity nexus to his ends.

  Partway Station moved past above him, a knot of lights on the bundle of tethers leading up from the grey moon below to the giant platform above. Two hours, and the future course of his people would be changed forever.

  Chapter 42

  “What do you mean, it's broken orbit?”

  Rik, Freymann and Burleigh were in a police pod, being driven to UNPF headquarters. Considering that they had just saved the city, their treatment, under the instructions of Major Herez, had not been what Rik had hoped for.

  Burleigh held up a hand, still listening to a report on his cogplus. “The Phenomenon of Man changed its orbit. At least an hour ago. Ground radar is tracking it. It went to a lower orbit, and it didn't have a flight plan.”

  “Why on Earth–”

  “Captain Campos made a brief statement, it seems.” He touched Rik's and Freymann's hands and played back the captain's last words.

  Rik couldn't make sense of it. He'd met Campos just a few times but his impression of the man had been one of stability and down-to-Earth good sense. “He's not some kind of deranged nutcase,” he said. “He's...” He's pretending to be a deranged nutcase, he realised. But why?

  “It's because they didn't have another fallback plan,” Freymann said. “They're having to improvise.”

  There was a silence as they all considered what that might mean.

  “I thought you said they weren’t fanatical enough to sacrifice their own lives?” Burleigh said.

  “Who knows? Maybe they are.” Rik remembered the scary Celestina and the cool, calculating Lanham. It wasn't a big sample to judge them by, but neither, in their own way, was quite sane. Perhaps that's what happened to a human mind if you locked it away in a metal box and sent it into space. Or maybe it just took that kind of mind to want to live forever. He reached into his pocket and touched the small cylinder there.

  “How long before the ship comes round again?”

  “Less than an hour,” Burleigh said.

  “We need to get to the surface right now.”

  “We'll be no safer up there.” Burleigh's voice was full of defeat.

  “Just get me to the surface and we'll see.”

  The lieutenant looked ready to argue, but he didn't. A weariness seemed to have settled over the big cop, as if he'd used up all his resistance getting them this far and now he was ready to accept his fate. Rik wondered if it was something Major Herez had said to him in their recent exchange. Something had depressed the big guy.

  “Everything we've done up till now will be for nothing if you don't help us,” Freymann said. She placed a hand on the lieutenant's arm and looked at him with a deep intensity. It took Rik a moment to realise that she was pleading his case with no other reason than that she trusted him.

  Burleigh sighed. “There are shafts,” he said. “Part of an emergency transportation system.” He caught Rik's puzzled frown and said, “They're secret. The idea is that security crews can travel around the surface and drop down into Heinlein at key points. You've seen how slow it is trying to get around down here. We need something faster. It's not finished yet, but there's a shaft near here that goes all the way up.”

  They set off immediately, and Burleigh took them into a nondescript building with no markings and a fancy security system. Inside were racks of pressure suits, all with UNPF logos.

  “I hope you don't actually want to walk on the surface, Rik,” Burleigh said, striding past them. “Because they're all pure oxygen suits and there isn't time to go through the depressurisation cycle.”

  “Just get me up there.”

  “OK.”

  They entered an airlock big enough to take a squad of soldiers in full battle dress, with doors big enough to drive an armoured car through, and cycled through into another room. A spiral ramp led up into darkness.

  “It's not quite finished yet, else we could take a buggy up the ramp. For now, that's the only way up.” He pointed to a narrow ladder set into the wall. It disappeared through a hole in the ceiling.

  “How far down are we?” Freymann asked. Rik had noticed that she had been limping since the brawl at The Harsh Mistress. His own left arm and shoulder hurt pretty badly. He wondered if either of them could make a long climb.

  “We're four levels down. The top level is only a couple of hundred metres below the surface, but we could easily be half a kilometre below ground here.”

  Rik felt his body protest. It had been through a lot lately and a half-kilometre vertical climb was not going to help. “Let's get started,” he said. Even if it killed him, he had to get up that shaft to the surface. If he didn't, everyone in Heinlein would die.

  Burleigh set off up the ladder without another word.

  “I'll go last,” Freymann said. “It'll be quicker.”

  “You don't have to come at all, Fariba. Either this will work, or it won't. You might as well stay here and rest.”

  She shook her head and smiled. “Save it for a damsel in distress, Rik. I'm coming. Now stop wasting time.”

  He smiled back at her and, on a sudden impulse, stepped forward and kissed her. She kissed him back and, for a moment, he forgot all about the spaceship powering its way down towards them.

  Then he remembered again.

  He stepped back. “I'll see you at the top,” he said, and started to climb.

  -oOo-

  Lanham felt the acceleration ease and then stop. The engines had fired for almost six minutes, dumping the ship's orbital velocity, at fir
st gently and then with increasing ferocity, until The Phenomenon of Man was falling like a stone, following a steep parabolic descent towards the doomed city below. He checked the proximity radar. His rate of approach was increasing, the slight lunar gravity was feeble at this altitude, but that would gradually change.

  For a while, there had been the sounds of shouting and commotion in the corridor outside the bridge. The human members of the crew had not been briefed on this contingency. Eventually, the sounds of stunners discharging had brought silence. All the uploads on the ship would already have sent an incremental update of their minds by tightbeam back to Omega Point. There, the data would be integrated with copies taken before the ship set off. They would die here, yet live again back home. If there ever was a war with the humans, and it might be inevitable now, Lanham's people would have many advantages. Hopefully, they would be sufficient.

  “Captain Campos?”

  Lanham heard Rik's voice directly inside his head. If it had not been Drew, or one of a handful of others, the ship would not have allowed the signal through.

  “Mr. Drew. What could you possibly want?” He wondered idly how a nobody like Drew had persuaded the authorities to allow him to communicate with the ship. Perhaps Drew had been spending some of the money to which Lanham had given him access. Perhaps the Heinlein Administration was simply desperate, and letting anyone have a go.

  “I want you to change course, Captain. I want you to go back into orbit and let these people live. I know you're following Lanham's orders, but Lanham is wrong. There is no retrovirus down here. No infection. There might not even be such a thing as the credulity nexus, for all I know. Cordell couldn't make it work. He was just using the idea of the virus to make you guys do something stupid. Like destroying Heinlein.”

  The man was panting as he spoke, undergoing some very strenuous exercise. Lanham imagined him running, trying to get to the spaceport to make his escape. Lanham considered revealing himself, just to torment Drew further, but he had to keep up his silly captain-gone-mad pretence for whoever else might be eavesdropping.

  “You sound like a demon to me, Mr. Drew, spreading lies, trying to confuse me.”

  “Stop pissing about, Campos. Lanham's going to kill all these people for nothing. Do you really want that on your conscience? Can you really do that? You're not a monster like Lanham. There's still a decent, human side to your nature. For God's sake man, think about what you're doing!”

  Lanham smiled, pleased with himself. He had made the right decision substituting his mind for Campos'. The captain might well have been too squeamish to do what he had to, especially with people like Drew appealing to his humanity.

  It occurred to Lanham that, if more humans were like Rik Drew, then none of this would have been necessary. If the rest of them could be so open-minded and intelligent, instead of blindly prejudiced. If they could accept that transhumans were just people too – better in so many ways, of course, but still basically the same – then this pointless conflict would never have arisen. It was a shame that one of the few sensible humans he'd met in decades had to die with the rest.

  He blocked all signals. There was really nothing else he wanted to hear from any of them. They had made their case, such as it was. In the end it came down to this: Lanham did not believe that Cordell could have been so devious and smart as to have faked the whole credulity nexus affair. The retrovirus must therefore be real. The city of Heinlein must therefore be infected. Lanham had just one chance left to cauterise the infection, and this was it. It had to be taken.

  He glanced again at the rate of descent display, pleased to see how much it had climbed.

  Chapter 43

  “What do you plan to do up there?” Freymann shouted up to him.

  Rik looked down at her. She was falling farther behind all the time. He couldn't be sure, but she seemed to be climbing with only one leg now, letting the other hang loosely beneath her. The strain on her arms must be enormous, but she kept coming.

  “I had a fallback plan of my own,” he said, taking a moment to rest and lower his left arm. The pain in his shoulder had gone beyond burning agony, to the point where it seemed more like an incandescent numbness in his mind. But the arm was still working, and that was all that mattered.

  They had been climbing with very few pauses for over twenty minutes now, and Rik estimated that they were just a little past the halfway mark. That they could keep on at that rate for another twenty minutes seemed impossible. He was drenched with sweat, and his arms and legs were trembling. In Earth's gravity such a climb would have been impossible. Even on the Moon, it was far worse than he had imagined it could be.

  He brought his arm back up and started moving again. An electric spike of pain drove itself into his shoulder. He gasped and hung onto the rungs as his head swam. This would be a very bad time to lose consciousness, even for a moment.

  “The only good thing about this damned climb,” he shouted, through clenched teeth, “is that it's made my headache seem like a dear old friend. How I long for the time when that was all I had to worry about.”

  “Just shut up and climb,” Burleigh shouted.

  The big cop had barely spoken and was well ahead of Rik, but his breathing was ragged and clearly audible down the long, echoing tube they were in. Rik hoped the big guy didn't fall off. He was pretty sure he didn't have the strength to catch him, and that meant just getting out of the way as he went past.

  “Rik?” It was Freymann again.

  Something in her voice made him stop again and look down. She wasn't climbing any more, just hanging on to the ladder with an arm looped around one rung.

  “I'm not going to make it to the top, Rik. I can barely hold on, my arms are so weak.”

  “I'm coming down.”

  “No! Don't you dare.”

  Rik had started back but now he stopped again. What could he do, anyway? He couldn't carry her. He barely had the strength to keep going himself. Could he perhaps help tie her to the ladder so she could rest for a while? He began the descent, but again she shouted up.

  “If you take one more step down here, I swear to God I'll shoot you.” He stopped and she went on in a softer tone. “Just get up there and do whatever the hell you're planning to do. I'll be fine. I'll see you on the way down.”

  He stared down at her, trying to be sure she was telling the truth and she was really OK. But the light in the shaft was dim, and he couldn't be certain. Reluctantly, he turned away and began to climb again. Above him, he could only just make out Burleigh's dark shape, but the slow, regular clang of the man's boots on the rungs and the heavy wheeze of his breathing were clear and steady.

  Rik lowered his head and reached up, quickly settling into his own laboured pace.

  -oOo-

  By the time he reached the top of the shaft, Rik was shattered. He crawled out through a hatchway into a large, low-ceilinged shed, barely glancing around at it before rolling onto his back on the concrete floor. The floor against his back was wonderfully cold, although he supposed that would soon turn into yet another source of discomfort. His clothes were soaked with sweat, and each breath he drew was a new pain. His heart hammered so hard it felt like it would shake itself loose. His lungs just weren't big enough, it seemed. They stretched themselves to their limits, but they just couldn't find enough air to satisfy his exhausted, quivering body.

  “Are you there?” he asked between breaths, so tired he couldn't turn his head to look for the lieutenant.

  “Yeah, I'm here. Take it easy. The ship is still ten thousand klicks up.” Burleigh sounded bone weary, too.

  Rik lay still and let his breathing slow down to a heavy pant. When he finally made the effort to sit up, he cried out as the pain from his legs and arms hit him.

  The shed was big. Big enough for a large number of troops to muster. There were electric carts lined up along the walls, on charge, and racks of weapons and riot gear. The entrance to the ramp was cordoned off, and in the wall opposite
were two vehicle-sized airlocks. Near them was a traditional, hexagonal viewing dome set into one corner of the thick concrete wall. There was another in the opposite corner of the rectangular building so that between them, they gave a view right around at the dusty grey terrain outside. Banks of controls within each cupola would allow someone to operate remote vehicles and equipment outside the building. If Rik was to get a signal out, it would be best to be inside one of the cupolas.

  He pushed himself off the ground and onto his feet. For a while he stood, swaying, not daring to move because he knew his trembling legs wouldn't hold him if he tried walking. But time was running out. Destruction was coming down out of the sky towards him, and there was only one way to stop it.

  “Where do you think you're going?” Burleigh asked.

  Something in the man's tone made Rik look around sharply. The big cop was sitting on a crate, not five metres away. His expression was grim, and the gun he had aimed at Rik's chest was a Colt .45.

  Rik was too tired to work out what was happening. For a moment, he just stood and watched the lieutenant and his long-barrelled revolver. His mind just couldn't take in the sudden shift in reality, so he set off for the cupola again.

  A shot ricocheted off the concrete near Rik's feet.

  Rik whirled to face Burleigh, suddenly furious, angry not just at the lieutenant for doing whatever the hell he was doing, but at the whole cursed universe that had put him into this damned situation, and then thrown every outrageous obstacle it could find at him to stop him getting out of it.

  His legs gave way and he fell to the ground. Pain shot through his left shoulder, which until that moment had been blessedly numb. His useless legs, the pain in his shoulder, even the gritty floor that stung his knees – all of them added to his anger.

  “What the fucking hell do you think you're doing, you fucking moron?” he bellowed. “Don't you know what's going on, here?”

  Burleigh shook his head; his eyes would not meet Rik's.