by Larry Niven
“Yeah, she waved at us too,” said Loomis.
Almost certainly worth clarifying later.
XXIX
Ye may kill for yourselves and your mates
And your cubs as they need, and ye can,
But kill not for pleasure of killing,
And seven times never kill Man!
—RUDYARD KIPLING
The Rukh was pulling up from its acceleration dive. To get to launch altitude, which was too high for even hypersonic ramjets to breathe, and to get back down to cruising level, it was now using the LOX it had made but hadn’t pumped into the Firebird. A Rukh had a considerably better glide ratio than anything designed by a committee of politicians, but deadstick flight was for kamikazes.
The sound of air along the fuselage gradually faded to nothing.
It suddenly struck Toby: “You know, this is the craziest thing I’ve done in my life.”
Yellowhorse spoke up for the first time in a while. “Oh, I don’t know. What about running naked over the hood of a police cruiser and making a getaway through a biker bar?”
The seats would still swivel as long as the engine wasn’t lit. He turned to stare at Yellowhorse, and became aware as he did so that both women were staring at him. “I never did any such thing!”
Yellowhorse gave him a blank look. Then he looked sharply at May, gave Toby a look of comprehension, and looked at May again. “Right. —I’m thinking of someone else,” he told May firmly. He followed this with a glance toward Toby, and a microscopic nod.
As the torch lit and his seat automatically swung to face forward again, Toby was inarticulate.
No comment from May; despite what she’d said, when she was being a pilot, she was all business.
Alice, on the other hand, displayed a remarkable ability to laugh extensively under high thrust.
* * *
Goddamn, this bird was hot! May leveled off the Firebird at a million feet. They’d have to wait most of an orbit for the next burn to get them to the … huh, it wasn’t really a rock anymore, was it?
Come to think of it, what they were heading toward was First Contact with an alien spacecraft. Nanomachines were a nonhuman intelligence, and the ones that were up there had decidedly not been “born” on Earth.
Make that just plain born, no quotation marks. They were alive by any definition that made sense to May.
“Yellowhorse,” she said, “you may be the biggest smart-ass I’ve ever even heard of, but you sure know how to build a rocket.”
“Praise from Caesar is praise indeed,” he said.
“Firebird, this is Cosmos,” she heard. “We have sighted another launch vehicle headed toward the Equator. Origin Cape Canaveral,” said PdC Traffic Control. “It handles as if it is much heavier than your flight. We have options. Over.”
“Roger that, Cosmos. —NASA’s got their bird up, and the cargo bay’s full,” she told the others, primarily Yellowhorse. “Both Ground and I doubt it’s beads and blankets. Ground can shoot ’em down if we want.”
“We don’t,” Yellowhorse said immediately. “A human who knowingly starts a space war dies memorably. Trust me on this.”
“Cosmos, this is Firebird. Leave ’em alone, we’re good. —How memorably?”
“You know what a test pilot looks like after a bad mistake?”
“Jesus,” said May.
“More like Joan of Arc, actually. —Anyhow, this is worse. Briefly. On the bright side, there’s not much to clean up.”
“How the hell can nanos do that?” Toby said.
“I’m not going to tell you.”
“He’s not,” Alice said.
“I know,” Toby said. “He’s said that to me before.”
“Oh, of course.”
“I just can’t imagine how nanos could do something like that. —I refuse to believe you’ve got them set up for fusion.”
The sound and thrust of the Firebird’s rocket sagged to nothing. They were falling.
Everyone was looking at Yellowhorse.
“You have time to paint each other’s suits now,” Yellowhorse said.
“We are not opening paint containers in free fall,” May said. “Not on my watch.”
“Dang. You’re right. I should have put it into markers,” said Yellowhorse.
“How would that be fun?” Alice said.
May saw Toby shake his head once, sharply. She grinned as he said, “Right. —Mycroft, how did you get your nanos into Wade Curtis?”
“BB gun,” said Yellowhorse. “Quit staring at me. I’ve been murdered. It was a lot worse than this.”
“You shot him?”
“I was pressed for time. He’s not a man who accepts things without hard evidence, even if he likes the premise, and I needed to hurry so I could get myself arrested. I wanted to do that before those monsters killed again. All things considered, I think he’ll forgive me … assuming he hasn’t figured it out already. He’s awfully smart. —With Leslie Reynolds, now, I just explained things and gave her a trace of blood in some soup, same as the convicts later. She just got the virus-eater and network back then. Not as advanced as what the convicts got, but she was hardly about to go tormenting people. She’s got the upgrade now, like you. Bacterial breakdown, gene repair, cell reconstruction, vitamin synthesis, mineral reclamation, the works. Handshake. She’s still got some waiting to do.” He sounded gloomy.
“What happens to old bots when the new ones show up?” Toby said.
“They’re ignored, unless you’ve got the upgrade. Then they’re stripped for parts.”
“And the network can recognize the act of starting a war?” Toby said, sounding alarmed.
“It can. Relax, doing something that forces someone else to act is a more basic concept than you realize.”
“Bullying,” said May.
Toby spoke slowly: “Isn’t that what a baby does when he cries?”
“I should have said ‘deliberately,’” Yellowhorse said. “No doubt there are babies who do it when they’re just bored, to see the commotion, but nowadays I reckon those’ll get tired of it pretty quick. Most cry because they’re genuinely unhappy about something. Toby, relax, I mean it. The network in your body has enormous scope but very little depth. Three connectors per bot.”
“That’s it?”
“I wanted to improve humanity, not replace it.”
XXX
For another, better thing than a fight required of duty
Exists not for a warrior.
—THE BHAGAVAD GITA
1
The inhabitants of Foundry watched with interest as two spaceplanes began working their way outward to meet them. Both were similar to a design they had expected, but neither matched it exactly. One handled clumsily, but had boosters attached. The other had a hotter drive, but aside from that was unarmed.
When it became clear that the one with weapons aboard was trying to catch the unarmed one, there was some discussion of what to do. It would take a while for the leading ship to be caught. There was time to decide.
2
Sam Quinn hailed the JNAIT ship as soon as it was clear they were going to be able to catch it. “Attention unidentified craft. This is the NASA spaceplane Envoy. You appear to be shaping course toward the property of the United States. You will desist and stand by for further instructions. Over.”
A woman’s voice replied. “Good morning, Envoy. As you are perfectly aware, this is the Joint Negotiating Alliance of Indian Tribes vessel Firebird, and what we are approaching is private property. The U.S. is signatory to several treaties which establish, among other things, that eminent domain does not extend beyond the atmosphere. They also establish that we are in international territory. Therefore any attempt to interfere with us will be regarded as piracy. And not just by JNAIT. —Incidentally, you are in a spaceship which I designed. You might at least make an effort to fly the thing right. Firebird out.”
Edmundson spoke up. “Shall I check the cargo, General?”
/>
“No. Commander Tillery, you and Dr. Bernstein do that. Commodore Loomis and Major Edmundson, carry on as before.” He switched over his mike and began talking with the Cape. Stephen frowned over his monitor, Charley smiled over his, and Jack and Marty unstrapped and went aft down the ladders on the ceiling.
The lock between cabin and cargo was big enough for both of them, and since the cargo bay had already had its air removed, their suit heaters switched on as the air in the lock was condensed out. Less power than a NASA lock, and it saved more atmosphere. Also faster, so Jack didn’t have time to brood over it.
The cargo was more than enough to brood over.
After they’d gotten down to the aft bulkhead and done an overview of the larger boxes, Marty said, “Well, at least there isn’t a nuke.”
“Yeah, Bob Foster’s not stupid enough to repeat what happened to China,” Jack replied, opening a smaller crate. “Not quite.”
“Hey, that’s my commander in chief you’re talking about,” Marty said.
“What do you want, pity?”
“Nah, save that for when the monster jumps out and gets us.”
“Huh?”
“You know. The minority characters die heroically and the WASPs save the day. Don’t you watch movies?”
Jack snorted. “More than I ever wanted. —And it’s the black guy that gets to die heroically. The Jew is the one who antagonizes the monster in the first place, when it just wanted peaceful coexistence.”
Marty shrugged. “For that matter, Steve’s a Social Humanist.”
“Right, I forgot. That makes him the hero. Sacrificing himself for the sake of humanity.”
“To nanomachines? I don’t see him allowing something to take over his brain.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” Jack looked unhappily at the target-seeker he’d just revealed. “All this shit is for use on human beings,” he said.
“Oh, get serious. All weapons are for use on human beings,” Marty said. “What did you expect, little teeny bullets? It’s reasonable that the nanomachines would armor the computer. It’s their brain, it needs a skull. This stuff is to punch through it.”
“This warhead is shrapnel. You’re Navy. Is there some point in attacking a battleship with shotguns? Shaped-charge shells would make sense. Twenty consecutive shaped charges would drill into Cheyenne Mountain, and leave room in this hold for a brass band. Instead—” He gestured at the crates. “She’s right, we’ve been sent up here to be pirates.”
Marty shook his head. “Quinn wouldn’t do it.”
“Edmundson would.”
“So we watch him.”
“And what, shoot him?” Jack turned to look at Marty.
Marty looked thoughtful. “Well … maybe not. I was raised to avoid self-indulgence. —There should be something nonlethal amongst all this. Pirates do take hostages and hold them for ransom.”
They went on looking. After a while Jack chuckled and said, “If this were a movie you’d be a Moslem.”
“If this were a movie, you’d be Daughenbaugh, and we’d be back here making out. Focus on the job, will you? I’m in a bad enough mood without getting depressed too.”
XXXI
God does not play dice with the Universe.
—ALBERT EINSTEIN
Stop telling God what to do!
—NIELS BOHR
Time had been passing, conversation had wandered, and Mycroft had been holding forth.
He did that.
“—What they overlook is that relativity is a model. It’s a really good model, but a time machine that uses relativity theory to work is a Hieronymus device.”
“Whisky Tango Foxtrot?” said Alice.
“Sorry. It’s something that attempts to affect reality by manipulating symbols.”
“Like the Federal Reserve?” she said.
She sounded like she might be kidding, but Mycroft said, “Don’t do that, it’s spooky. That’s the example I was about to use. —The trouble is, nobody nowadays is in a position to notice, because nobody’s done any physics since 1987. A supernova was seen then, fifty thousand parsecs away, and the neutrino pulse arrived before the light, but the Global Warming cult insisted on the three-neutrino hypothesis getting all the grant money, and for that to be right, neutrinos have to have mass.”
Alice objected, “But nobody believes in Global Warming now.”
“Your phrasing implies that they believed in it then. Check the records. Everyone who claimed to be concerned about it was involved in causes with an agenda of increasing control over private life. They took over basic research, and their political heirs still control it. —Matter of fact, Wade Curtis had already done a disturbingly good story series about politicians taking over the world that way.”
Toby had read most of it. “Disturbingly good” said it pretty well. He had experience getting William Connors back on track: “So, assuming some kind of time machine you can use without leaving Earth, what’s your target?”
“Zurich, 1916,” Mycroft said at once. “Frame Lenin for bank robbery. He never gets out, the Russian Army doesn’t have its supply lines sabotaged, Kerensky’s Republic isn’t overthrown and doesn’t surrender, the War is prosecuted until Germany is crushed, Wilson is dead of another stroke by then and can’t taint the treaty, the German Empire is broken back up into multiple states, von Ludendorff goes off to write ponderous memoirs and never founds the National Socialists, Adolf Hitler ends up in used cars or real estate or something that makes use of his one talent, the German banking system is never unified enough to collapse in 1927, the Bubble of 1929 isn’t as severe and leaves the U.S. better off than the rest of the world, Charles Curtis is elected in 1932 and cuts taxes, the physicists of Europe come to the U.S. and the first reactor is built around 1936, no Holocaust, no Cold War, and no free guns given to millions of maniacs in the Middle East because nobody needs the oil that bad. Mind you, China would Balkanize after Sun-Yat-Sen’s dictatorship failed for lack of Russian support, and the neofeudalists in Japan would be grabbing off chunks, which would lead to war between Japan and England, but I think I could deal with that as it arose. I wouldn’t remake Goat Flu until Wilson was dead. You?”
He’d clearly been thinking about it for some time. At a huge disadvantage, and wishing he hadn’t suggested the game, Toby said, “Woodstock.”
“Oh, good one! Smooch a lot of girls, spread the bots through the leftist population, and Congress never sabotages the space program because anyone who proposes it drops dead of a stroke. I like it. Who goes next?”
“Cut off John Wilkes Booth’s big toes so he can’t climb a flight of stairs,” said May.
“Huh!” said Mycroft. “In the Minimalist event we might just have a gold. Unless you’ve got one, Alice?”
“Go back to be your girlfriend in high school,” she said. “I’d just like to see what you’d have done if you were healthy.”
“I’m declaring a winner,” said Toby.
May said, “We’ll reach the rock in an hour and ten minutes. Brake first, of course.”
Toby asked, “How are you doing, Mycroft?”
“Fine. You? Alice? You never know until you’re there.”
“Good,” said Alice, and Toby said, “I was born falling.”
They fell.
Mycroft said, “I got through customs once by asking the guy how many people a year thought they were making an original joke, and didn’t know the difference between ‘declare’ and ‘declaim.’ He just laughed and waved me past.”
“What was in your luggage?” Toby said.
“Underwear.”
“Well, don’t go making it sound like you pulled a fast one,” Toby said.
“It was his wife’s.”
All three listeners said, “What?”
“Okay, I made that part up. —I just didn’t want the hassle.”
Alice began laughing helplessly. May said, “He’s like this all the time, isn’t he?”
“Pretty muc
h. I’d hate to tell you what happened at my aunt’s funeral,” said Toby.
“Hey!” Mycroft said, indignant. Then he laughed. “Okay, you got me.”
“Stop, I can’t wipe my eyes in this thing,” Alice said, still laughing.
“Screen on the left forearm,” Mycroft said. “Scroll down to blue, zoom the face, and fingermouse. Red is scratching. Green is blowing your nose.”
May gaped at him, then looked at Alice. “My God. Even Heinlein didn’t think of that one.”
“I wouldn’t care to bet,” Mycroft said. “All we know is he didn’t put it in a story. And it might have been in an unmutilated version of Have Spacesuit—Will Travel.”
“I could just beat the crap out of that editor he had, when I think what’s been lost,” Alice said. When they all looked at her, she said, “I may not be a diehard sci-fi fan, but I’m not illiterate.”
“She’s long dead,” Mycroft told her. “The dogs’ll get her.”
“Dogs?”
“In Hell, people who destroy treasure for a feeling of power are put in a bleak forest where they’re chased and torn apart by dogs,” Mycroft said. “Dante Alighieri.”
“Lot of mothers there,” she said.
“He didn’t say.”
“I wasn’t asking.”
“I wasn’t arguing.”
Toby’s mother had been a warm, gentle woman, whose one vice was grafting new slips onto what had ultimately become an extremely strange-looking apple tree, and he really didn’t want to hear any more on this topic. He supposed his reaction was akin to survivor’s guilt, but he still changed the subject. “You got an attachment for gum on these suits?” he said.
“Damn,” Mycroft said. “Let me make a note for the next model.” They were all silent for a while. Then Mycroft said, “Done.”
“You’re actually doing it?”
“Gum is very comforting. Great idea.”
“Uh-oh. They’re matching course with us. Crap,” May said. Then she swung her arm around without looking, to point unerringly at Mycroft. “Say it and I hit your ejector switch.”
