The Mirror Maze

by James P. Hogan

  CHAPTER 21

  Two hundred and fifty miles above the Earth’s surface, the XDS-6 orbital defense platform swept southward on its processing circumpolar orbit, which on this pass would carry it down over the western Pacific. It was the fourth in a series of military satellites to be equipped with full-scale experimental beam weapons to test the ballistic-missile space defense concept first promulgated in the early 1980s in what began as the Strategic Defense Initiative. The tests of microwave and laser devices operating over various frequency ranges that had been conducted with the three previous satellites had proved encouraging. (The first had been designated XDS-2, mainly to cause hostile intelligence agencies such as the KGB to lose some sleep fretting over the secrets of the hitherto unsuspected XDS-1. XDS-5 had been skipped for the same reason.) Now, XDS-6, in addition to carrying a scaled-up version of the laser system carried by XDS-3, also mounted a high-power, narrow-beam projector capable of pinpointing and destroying conventional aircraft in flight. Confidential CIA reports indicated that the Soviets had constructed at least two such systems in orbit within the previous eighteen months, and a third was believed to be imminent.

  As the satellite came within range of a tracking station on Wake Island, a team of military technicians and contractors’ engineers prepared to commence the series of firing trials that had been scheduled to take place on that pass, code-named “Mustard.” Voices called from around the control room as console indicators flashed and things started happening on readout screens.

  “Ranging is good. Correct slew for point-five degrees negative.”

  “Point-five negative, Roger.”

  “Sampling on groups five through nineteen. All muxes are synched. Do we have computers?”

  “Computers are running.”

  “How are we on the uplink?”

  “Steady on twenty-oh-two-five.”

  “Echo Nancy on-line and holding.”

  “Attitude correction effected. We’ve commenced response testing, Phase One.”

  “How’s it looking?” the voice of the general supervising the tests inquired over the link to Ops Command in Hawaii.

  “It’s looking good. Ground check on pilot laser reads clear.”

  “Keep us posted.”

  “Wilco.”

  The satellite communicated with ground control via a very tight beam, which was one among a variety of measures taken to render it unresponsive to, and therefore insensitive to interference from, any other signals originating from outside a narrow radius. Its target-tracking radar, however, necessarily scanned a far wider area. As the first of the unmanned target aircraft being used in the trials entered the designated firing zone, a burst of electromagnetic energy was beamed at it from an unimposing, battered-looking fishing boat of Singapore registration, which just happened to be in the vicinity at the time. The reflections from the aircraft’s skin bounced off in all directions and some found their way to the sensitive detectors aboard the XDS-6 satellite. The radiation was not at one of the satellite’s command-channel frequencies, which were secured by hardware protection devices and software encryption, but at the frequency of its targeting radar. Normally, information coming in through those circuits would be treated as pure data, incapable of affecting the operation of the programs in the system’s on-board computers. In this instance, however, a routine that shouldn’t have been there responded to the pattern carried by the reflected signal, and fired the craft’s hydrazine thrusters to redirect its antennae in the wrong direction.

  “Hey, what’s going on? We’re losing it.”

  “The beam’s gone. We’ve lost it! We’ve lost the beam!”

  SYS3 ABORT SYS5 ABORT SYS16 ABORT

  AUTO OVERRIDE EXECUTED—OUT OF LIMITS. REVERTED TO MANUAL

  GROUP CHECK NEGATIVE

  “Negative function on transponders. They’re dead.”

  “Secondary loop has cut out. That’s it. Nothing. Zilch. Now what?”

  “What’s happened?” the general’s voice demanded from Ops Command.

  “I’m not sure, sir. We’ve lost tracking. The beam seems to have shifted completely off, or it’s shut down.”

  “What, on all bands? Standby too? It can’t have. You’re sure it’s still up there?”

  “Guam and Hawaii still have it on radar.”

  “Give me another check on…”

  Mustard was hurriedly rescheduled to be tried again on the satellite’s next pass. By the time XDS-6 came around again, contact had been reestablished. This time the trials went without a hitch. Nobody had any explanation to offer for the freak occurrence. All that could be done was to order a thorough analysis of all the data collected during the incident.

  • • •

  Dr. Hermann Oberwald turned away from the diagram that he had drawn on the wallboard in the study and faced the two men who had been listening to his explanation.

  Of Austrian descent from parents who had fled from Europe during the thirties because of his mother’s Jewish ancestry, he was a big man in his fifties, with thick black hair, parted conventionally and clipped unfashionably short at the back and above the ears, hollow cheeks, dark eyes, and broad shoulders that would have cut a better figure had it not been for his tendency to a slight stoop. He had studied nuclear physics at MIT and Princeton, worked at Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and the Argonne Laboratories, and before assuming his current Washington-based position of defense and energy adviser, had spent several years in Europe liaising with other member NATO nations on nuclear policies and technology.

  He had a strongly conservative public image and toured the university lecture circuit extensively, receiving standing ovations on some campuses, while being burned in effigy on another. When accused of helping bring about global nuclear destruction by his contribution to nurturing the bomb, he replied simply, “What destruction? The world is still out there, if you look.” His position, simply stated, was that having come from a background in which he had seen more war firsthand than most Americans, he detested war. The object of bigger and nastier bombs was precisely to put any thought of it out of the mind of a would-be aggressor. It worked, and that was what mattered.

  This was not to deny that politically the world was in a mess, which in Oberwald’s view was hardly surprising, given the feeble intellects that had ended up running most of it. He attributed this primarily to misguided notions of democracy that allowed the opinions of two morons to outweigh one mind of any worth. What had been happening in the West was the inevitable outcome of allowing the children of the family an equal say in running the household. There was a natural ordering of any social structure which was futile to try and idealize against. And the modern, industrial, technological world would be far better off under the benign direction of people able to plan rationally, who comprehended the organizational relationships and functional dynamics of complex systems—scientists like himself, for example.

  “In summary, the demonstration proves that we can now override the fire-command system and deactivate the Western space-defense satellites at will,” Jordan Vandelmayne said from a leather armchair by the window.

  “Precisely as was intended,” Oberwald confirmed.

  The third man present in the room, sitting with one knee crossed over the other on an upright chair from where he had been listening, was squat and heavily built, with a balding head and wispy mustache. His name was Wilson Clines, and he was also a financier, closely connected to the Vandelmayne-Myer group. “Very well, so the satellites can be neutralized,” he said. “What happens then?”

  “That’s the point at which the Soviet end of the operation comes in,” Oberwald replied. “Have you ever heard of an SA-37?”

  Clines shook his head. “No.”

  “It’s a supersonic air-to-ground cruise missile, with ideal performance characteristics for what has been proposed.”

  Cline’s eyes widened. “Missile? Good God, what are you trying to do—start a war?”

  “It won’t come to that,” Va
ndelmayne assured him. “But you know as well as I do what’s at stake. We were promised that the Constitutionals would be wiped out at the ballot box, and they weren’t. Now it’s time to claim on our insurance. It won’t do any good going just for the heads—it’ll grow ten more for every one you lop off, like a Hydra. We have to destroy the whole organism. And there’s one place at which, very soon, all of them who matter will be together at the same time…”

  CHAPTER 22

  Mel and Stephanie arrived back at the Embassy Hotel the first thing next morning as agreed. George answered the phone when Mel called the suite from the lobby, and told them to come on up. They found two waiters from the hotel staff there, preparing a table for breakfast to be served in private. Larry had gone to the airport to collect whomever was coming to talk to them. Assuming that if George wanted them to know who it was he would have told them, they suppressed their curiosity and confined themselves to small talk until a call from downstairs announced that Larry and his party had arrived.

  The half dozen or so aides who entered the suite first when George opened the door a couple of minutes later made no particular impression, apart from looking like what could have been clean-cut executives from any corporation or government department. But the figure who followed after them brought Mel and Stephanie to their feet in astonishment. With his broad frame, craggy but easy-natured features, and thick head of silver hair—early for his years—that had become the kind of nationwide symbol that political cartoonists love, he would have been recognized by anyone who hadn’t been marooned on a desert island for the last year. Mel had seen him only once before, from a distance, when he had come to speak in Boston.

  “Good morning,” he said, in his familiar voice, firm and a shade gravelly, which enhanced the no-nonsense image that so many found inspiring. “Thank you both for staying to hear us. I’m sorry for the misunderstanding yesterday, but I think you’ll find that what we have to say is sufficiently interesting to make up for it.”

  It was Henry Newell, president-elect of the United States, the next occupant of the Oval Office.

  • • •

  Newell was one of those men who possessed what is described as a “presence”—that intangible quality that sets apart “naturals”: entrepreneurs of business, captains of ships, generals of armies, and leaders of popular movements. It was that kind of quality which is at work whenever a freely interacting group of people, whether it be the occupants of a barrack room, the staff of an office, the guests at a cocktail party, or a bunch of guys out on the town, spontaneously acknowledge one individual as the final decision maker, arbiter, and collective conscience for all. Some just have it and others haven’t, and nobody really knows what it is, though everyone recognizes it.

  In Newell’s case, certainly, it had nothing to do with brute-force assertiveness; rather—and more appropriate to a democratic setting—it was an ability to elicit the willing acceptance of all concerned. Indeed, one of the first things to strike Mel in his first opportunity to observe at close hand the man who had been figuring so prominently in the public eye, was Newell’s disarming soft-spokenness. He didn’t belabor his listeners, so much as persuade them. His manner credited them with a capacity of their own to reason, to choose, to agree or disagree, and they responded. His style was akin to that of the skillful orator who, instead of thundering out the concluding words as he reaches his crescendo, drops his voice suddenly, compelling a moment of focused attention at the crucial point, lest it be missed. Mel felt as if he had gone back two centuries in time. It was like being privy to the thoughts of one of the minds that had founded the nation.

  Since the mistake had been theirs, Newell and his people accepted the onus of opening after they all sat down to eat. Much of the talking here was by Warren Landis, a vigorous, bearded, and bespectacled man with a high brow and balding dome, who had apparently flown overnight from Washington to attend. Mel thought that his face seemed vaguely familiar, possibly from the background groups seen with Newell during coverage of the election and the campaign that had preceded it. Mel was astounded to learn that Landis knew of him and his past relationship with Eva, and that the two agents staking out the cemetery had recognized him as a possible lead back to her. Following the confusion at Devil’s Slide, Landis had also deduced that the girl found dead in Denver—whom they also knew about—was not Stephanie, but Eva. This, Mel and Stephanie were able to confirm.

  Mel and Stephanie, in their turn, met frankness with frankness. They explained about Brett’s Soviet connection, the suspicious circumstances of his death, and their conclusion that Eva had been killed in mistake for Stephanie. Newell expressed sympathy for Stephanie’s loss and understood her present consternation. He was confused, however, about her reasons for having acted in the way she had.

  “And you haven’t been in touch with your company at all since you left Denver?” he asked from one end of the table, laden with breakfast plates and dishes. The others were still seated where they had eaten, apart from two men that Mel assumed were security guards, one of whom had positioned himself in an armchair between the table and the door, and the other at a side table by the window.

  “No,” Stephanie answered.

  “What are your intentions?”

  “I’m not really sure,” Stephanie replied. “Officially I’m dead. If there are people out there who went to those lengths, they probably wouldn’t hesitate to try again. So we figured it would be best for me to stay dead for the time being… until we come up with some ideas of what to do.”

  “I would have thought that the obvious thing would be to go to the authorities,” Newell said. “Why haven’t you done that?”

  Stephanie and Mel glanced at each other guardedly in the same automatic reaction. But then each read the same on the other’s face: If it wasn’t safe to be straight with the next president of the country, then everything was as good as over, anyway. Mel looked back at Newell and took a long breath. “We’re not sure which authorities we can trust. If what we suspect is correct, it was a prominent public figure, with close government connections, who was responsible for recruiting Brett.”

  Newell pursed his lips for a moment. “Who?” he asked.

  There could be no backing down now that they had gone this far. Mel raised his eyebrows at Stephanie and then looked back at Newell. “Dr. Hermann Oberwald,” he said.

  There were some shufflings and exchangings of looks among the others at the table. Mel tried to read whether the information had come as a surprise to them, but their expressions were impenetrable. Newell cast an eye around to invite comment. “Can you substantiate this?” Landis asked Mel.

  “It’s a complicated story,” Mel warned. “It could take a while.”

  “Perhaps you could go through it with them in detail later, Warren,” Newell suggested.

  “Yes, I’d like to,” Landis said, sounding intrigued. “I’d like to very much.”

  One of the aides refilled everyone’s coffee cup’s. Then Stephanie said, “We’ve told you as much as we can about what we think happened to my sister, and why. They mistook her for me. You mistook me for her. What we don’t know is why you were looking for her.”

  There was a short silence. “We appreciate that it could be none of our business,” Mel said. “But then if that were the case, we’d hardly all be sitting here right now.”

  Newell stared at them for what began to seem like a long time. When at last he spoke, he seemed for a while to have gone off on a completely new tangent. “This nation is about to enter the twenty-first century filled with optimism and expectations of changes for the better. And there’s nothing wrong with that. We intend that those expectations will—perhaps after some reversals and disappointments, and a few lessons of the land that can only be learned by mistakes—be met. But the issues that concern most people are relatively superficial. Of course the majority of people like the idea of lower taxes, increased opportunity, and less official meddling in their lives. Those things f
ollow from the principles that we built our platform upon; in themselves, however, they are not the essence of our goals, but consequences of them. They form the icing that any democratic cake has to have to be accepted—the things we had to stress to gain the necessary popular appeal.” He held up a hand as if anticipating an objection. “Yes, we will keep our promises. But they on their own do not represent what the Constitutional movement is really all about.

  “The conventional left-right political spectrum that people think in terms of is, in most meaningful senses, a myth. After all, if virtually every facet of the individual’s life is controlled by government; if he can make his living only with the permission of others, and keep only so much of what he has made as they allow him; if he can be compelled to work for causes that don’t concern him; and if his private life and even his thoughts are subject to somebody else’s approval—then what does it matter to him if you call the system communism or fascism, Stalinism or Hitlerism, or Caesarism, Pharaohism, Maoism, or anything else you like? As far as the individual is concerned, the differences are rather academic. The only spectrum, that really means anything, I would submit, is one that extends from ‘Total Government’ at one end to ‘No Government’ at the other—in other words, complete anarchy, which is the only system that kills more human beings than totalitarianism does.”

  Newell paused and looked questioningly from Mel to Stephanie. He evidently wanted this to be a two-way exchange. “And you would place the Constitutional party where, on that spectrum?” Mel responded. He already knew the answer, but it would be interesting to hear it from Newell himself.