“… you need help? We had our comm messed up for a while. Some think maybe we were near one of those boggle things people are talking about. What a coincidence!
“Anyway, Courier Four, our telltales show you’re all right. Please confirm.”
Crat swallowed. It took some effort to relearn how to speak. “I’m … okay.” He looked around quickly and found the cargo—only a few meters away. Crat picked it up, shaking off more muck. “Want me to start back on course?”
The voice at the other end interrupted. “Good attitude, Courier Four. But no. We’re sending a sub that way anyway with some bigwigs to inaugurate Site Six. It’ll pick you up shortly. Just stand by.”
So he was going to get there after all … and Crat found that now he didn’t care a bit. Standing there waiting, more than ever he wished his fingers could pass through the glass faceplate as they had briefly penetrated that shining boundary. For those few moments, his hands had sought and found his life’s first real solace. Now he’d settle for just the memory of that gift, and a chance to wipe his streaming eyes.
I sometimes wonder what animals think of the phenomenon of humanity—and especially of human babies. For no creature on the planet must seem anywhere near so obnoxious.
A baby screams and squalls. It urinates and defecates in all directions. It complains incessantly, filling the air with demanding cries. How human parents stand it is their own concern. But to great hunters, like lions and bears, our infants must be horrible indeed. They must seem to taunt them, at full volume.
“Yoo-hoo, beasties!” babies seem to cry. “Here’s a toothsome morsel, utterly helpless, soft and tender. But I needn’t keep quiet like the young of other species. I don’t crouch silently and blend in with the grass. You can track me by my noise or smell alone, but you don’t dare!
“Because my mom and dad are the toughest, meanest sumbitches ever seen, and if you come near, they’ll have your hide for a rug.”
All day they scream, all night they cry. Surely if animals ever held a poll, they’d call human Infants the most odious of creatures. In comparison, human adults are merely very, very scary.
—Jen Wolling, from The Earth Mother Blues, Globe Books, 2032. [ hyper access 7-tEAT-687-56-1237-65p.]
• CORE
The Maori guards wouldn’t let Alex go to Hanga Roa town to meet the stratojet, so he waited outside the resonator building. The afternoon was windy and he paced nervously.
At one point, before the incoming flight was delayed yet again, Teresa came by to help him pass the time. “Why is Spivey using a courier?” she asked. “Doesn’t he trust his secure channels anymore?”
“Would you? Those channels go through the same sky everyone else uses. They were secure only because the military paid top dollar and kept a low profile. These days, though?” He shrugged, his point obvious without further elaboration. If this messenger carried the news he expected, it would be worth any wait.
Teresa gave his shoulder an affectionate shove. “Well, I’ll bet you’re glad who the courier is.”
Teresa’s friendship was a fine thing. She understood him. Knew how to tease him out of his frequent dour moods. Alex grinned. “And what about you, Rip? Didn’t I see you eyeing that big fellow Auntie sent to cook for us.”
“Oh, him.” She blushed briefly. “Only for a minute or two. Come on, Alex. I told you how picky I am.”
Indeed, he kept learning new levels to her complexity. Last night, for instance, they had spent hours talking as he handed her tools and she wriggled behind Atlantis’s panels. If things went as expected, they’d be off to Reykjavik tomorrow or the next day, to testify before the special tribunal everyone was talking about. Alex thought it only fair to give her a hand tidying up the old shuttle before that.
Back in the caves of New Zealand, it had been concentration on something external—survival—that first eased the tensions between them. Even now, Teresa found it easier to talk while straining to tighten a bolt or giving some old instrument its first taste of power in forty years. So for the first time, last night, Alex heard the full story of her prior acquaintance with June Morgan, his part-time lover. It made him feel awkward—and yet Teresa said she liked June now. She seemed glad the other woman was coming back, for Alex’s sake.
And happier still because of what everyone assumed June would be carrying with her—Colonel Spivey’s surrender.
It had been hinted in George Hutton’s latest communiqué and confirmed in action. Since Alex’s demonstration yesterday—blasting a mountain of ice all the way to the moon—there had been a sudden drop in aggressive activity by other gazer systems worldwide. The Nihonese still pulsed at low “research” levels, and there were brief glimmers from other locations. But the big new NATO-ANZAC-ASEAN resonators were silent, mothballed, and the original four now obeyed Alex’s steady program unperturbed—pushing Beta gradually out of the boundary zone, where those intricate, superconducting threads flickered so mysteriously.
The number of pulses could be reduced now, and each beam targeted more carefully. Few additional civilian losses were expected, and diplomatic tension had been falling off for hours. Even the hysteria on the Net had abated a bit, as word went out about the new tribunal.
Maybe people are going to be sensible after all, Alex thought as he paced in front of the lab. After staying with him for a while, Teresa left again to resume her chores aboard Atlantis. Alex could have worked, too. But for once he was content just to look across grassy slopes toward the little, crashing baylet of Vaihu and a rank of Easter Island’s famed, forbidding monoliths. Beyond the restored statues, cirrus clouds streaked high over the South Pacific, like banners shredded by stratospheric winds.
This place had affected him, all right. Here earlier men and women had also struggled bitterly against the consequences of their own mistakes. But Alex’s education on Rapa Nui went beyond mere historical comparisons. Because of the nature of the battle he had waged here, he now knew far better than before how those winds and clouds out there were influenced by sunlight and the sea, and by other forces generated deep below. Each was part of a natural web only hinted at by what you saw with your eyes.
Jen was right, he thought. Everything is interwoven.
One didn’t have to be mystical about the interconnectedness. It just was. Science only made the fact more vivid and clear, the more you learned.
A touch of sound wafted from the direction of Rano Kao’s stern cliffs—first the whine of a hydrogen auto engine and then the complaint of rubber tires turning on gravel. He turned to see a car approach the Hine-marama cordon, where big, brown men paced with drawn weapons. After questioning both driver and passenger, they waved the vehicle through. Its fuel cells whistled louder as it climbed the hill and finally pulled up near the front door.
June Morgan bounded out, the wind whipping her hair and bright blue skirt. He met her halfway as she ran to throw her arms around him. “Kiss me quick, you troublemaker, you.” He obliged with some pleasure, though Alex sensed a tremor of tension as he held her. Well, that was understandable of course.
“You put on some show, hombre!” she said, pulling away. “Here Glenn and his people spend weeks studying gazer-based launching, and you yank the rug right out from under him! I laughed so hard … after leaving the room of course.”
Alex smiled. “Did you bring his answer?”
“Now what other reason would I have to come all this way?” She winked and patted her briefcase. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
Alex asked the driver to go fetch Teresa as June took his arm and pulled him toward the entrance. There, however, the way was barred by a massive dark man with crossed arms. “Sorry, doctor,” he told June. “I must inspect your valise.”
Alex sighed. “Joey, your men sniffed her luggage at the airport. She’s not carrying a bomb, for heaven’s sake.”
“All the same, tohunga, I have orders. Especially after last time.”
Alex frowned. The first sabotage attemp
t still had them perplexed. Spivey vehemently denied involvement, and the saboteur himself seemed to have no links at all to NATO or ANZAC.”
“That’s all right.” June laid the briefcase flat in the arms of one big guard and flipped it open. Inside were several pouched datacubes, two reading plaques, and a few slim sheets of paper in a folder. Auntie Kapur’s men ran humming instruments over the contents while June chattered animatedly. “You should have seen George Hutton’s face when he heard Manella had shown up here! He started out both angry and delighted, and finally settled on plain confusion. And you know how George hates that!”
“Indeed I do, madam.”
June and Alex turned as a figure approached from within. Nearly as tall as the Maori guards, and much heavier, Pedro Manella came into the sunlight holding out his hand. “Hello, Doctor Morgan. You bring good tidings, I assume?”
“Of course,” she replied. “And aren’t you a sight, Pedro! Wherever you’ve been hiding yourself, you’ve certainly eaten well.”
The second guard returned June’s valise. Alex said, “Let’s go to my office and play the message.”
“Why such privacy?” June pulled the other way. “We’ll use my old station. Everyone should hear this.”
The huge perovskite cylinder looked like some giant artillery piece, delicately balanced on its perfect bearings. It towered over what had once been June’s console—back when a dozen or so fatigued workers first set up here on the flank of a rocky, weather-beaten isle, searching desperately for a way to beard a monster in its den. The tech who had been working at that post cheerfully made room.
“Here it is,” June said, pulling a cube from its pouch and tossing it to Alex playfully. She insisted he take the seat. A semicircle of watchers gathered as he slotted the cube. Someone from the kitchen handed out cups of coffee, and when everyone was settled, Alex touched the PLAY toggle.
A man in uniform appeared before them, seated at a desk. His hair had grown out, softening somewhat those harsh, scarred features. Glenn Spivey looked out at them as if in real time. He even seemed to track his audience with his eyes.
“Well, Lustig,” the colonel began. “It seems people keep underestimating you. I’ll never do it again.” He lifted both hands. “You win. No more delays. The president met with our alliance partners. Tonight they hand over control of all resonators to the new tribunal—”
The technicians behind Alex clapped and sighed in relief. After all these wearing months, a heavy weight seemed lifted.
”—gathering in Iceland, headed by Professor Jaime Jordelian. I think you know him.”
Alex nodded. As a physicist, Jordelian was stodgy and overly meticulous. But those could be good traits in such a role.
“The committee hasn’t formally met, but Jordelian urgently asked that you attend the opening session. He wants you in operational charge of all resonators for an initial period of six months or so. They also want you center stage for the first news conference. If you’ve been watching the Net, you know what an all-day session that will be! The hypersonic packet that brought Dr. Morgan has orders to wait at Hanga Roa for your convenience.”
“Lucky bastard,” one of the Kiwis muttered in mock envy. “Iceland in winter. Dress warm, tohunga.” Alex broke into a grin. “Hey, what about me?” June complained. “You take my transport and I’m stuck here!” The others made sounds of mock sympathy.
Spivey’s image paused. He cleared his throat and leaned forward a little.
“I won’t pretend we haven’t been surprised by events these last few weeks, doctor. I thought we could finish our experiments long before word leaked out. But things didn’t go according to plan.
“It wasn’t just your little demonstration, yesterday, which nearly everyone in the Western Hemisphere got to witness by naked eye. Even neglecting that, there were just too many bright people out there with their own instruments and souped-up ferret programs.” He shrugged. “I guess we should have known better.
“What really disturbs me, though, is what I hear people saying about our intentions. Despite all the innuendo, you must believe I’m no screaming jingoist. I mean, honestly, could I have persuaded so many decent men and women—not just Yanks and Canadians, but Kiwis and Indonesians and others—to take part if our sole purpose was to invent some sort of super doomsday weapon? The idea’s absurd.
“I now see I should have confided in you. My mistake, taking you for a narrowly focused intellectual. Instead, I found myself outfought by a warrior, in the larger sense of the word.” He smiled ruefully. “So much for the accuracy of our dossiers.”
Alex sensed the others’ silent regard. Eyes flicked in his direction. He felt unnerved by all this talk centering on him personally.
“So, you might ask, what was our motive?” Spivey sighed. “What could any honest person’s goal be, these days? What else could ever matter as much as saving the world?
“Surely you’ve seen those economic-ecological projections everyone plays with on the Net? Well, Washington’s had a really excellent trends-analysis program for two decades now, but the results were just too appalling to release. We even managed to discredit the inevitable leaks, to prevent widespread discouragement and nihilism.
“Put simply, calculations show our present stable situation lasting maybe another generation, tops. Then we all go straight to hell. Oblivion. The only way out seemed to demand drastic sacrifice … draconian population control measures combined with major and immediate cuts in standard of living And psych profiles showed the voters utterly rejecting such measures, especially if the outcome would at best only help their great-grandkids.
“Then you came along, Lustig, to show that our projection missed some critical information … like the little item that our world is under attack by aliens!
“More important, you showed how new, completely unexpected levers might be applied to the physical world. New ways of exerting energy. New dangers to frighten us and new possibilities to dazzle. In another age, these powers would have been seized by bold men and used for better or worse, like TwenCen’s flirtation with the atom.
“But we’re growing up … that’s the popular phrase, isn’t it? We know new technologies must be watched carefully. I’m not totally against the science tribunals. Who could be?
“Tell me, though, Lustig, what do you think the new committee will do when they take authority over the new science of gazerdynamics?”
Obviously, the question was rhetorical. Alex already saw the colonel’s point.
“Except for one or two small research sites, they’ll slap on a complete ban, with fierce inspections to make sure nobody else emits even a single graviton! They’ll let you keep vigil on Beta, but outlaw any other gazer use that hasn’t already been tested to death. Oh sure, that’ll prevent chaos. I agree the technology has to be monitored. But can you see why we wanted to delay it for a while?”
Spivey pressed both hands on his desk.
“We hoped to finish developing gazer based launch systems, first! If they were already proven safe and effective, the tribunes couldn’t ban them entirely. We’d save something precious and wonderful … perhaps even a way out of the doomsday trap.”
Alex exhaled a sigh. Teresa should hear this. She despised Spivey. And yet he turned out to be as much a believer as she. Apparently the infection went all the way to the pinnacles of power.
“Our projections say resource depletion is going to kill human civilization deader than triceratops—this poor planet’s gifts have been so badly squandered. But everything changes if you include space! Melt down just one of the millions of small asteroids out there, and you get all the world’s steel needs for an entire decade, plus enough gold, silver, and platinum to finance rebuilding a dozen cities!
“It’s all out there, Lustig, but we’re stuck here at the bottom of Earth’s gravity well. It’s so expensive to haul out the tools needed to begin harnessing those assets.…
“Then came your gazer thing.… Good God, Lu
stig, have you any idea what you did yesterday? Throwing megatons of ice to the moon?” A vein pulsed in Spivey’s temple. “If you’d landed that berg just ten percent slower, there’d have been water enough to feed and bathe and make productive a colony of hundreds! We could be mining lunar titanium and helium-3 inside a year! We could …”
Spivey paused for breath.
“A few years ago I talked several space powers into backing cavitronics research in orbit, to look for something like what you found by goddam accident! But we were thinking millions of times too small. Please forgive my obvious jealousy …”
Someone behind Alex muttered, “Jesus Christ!” He turned to see Teresa Tikhana standing behind him. Her face was pale, and Alex thought he knew why. So her husband hadn’t worked on weapons research after all. He had just been trying, in his own way, to help save the world.
There would be some poignant satisfaction for her in that, but also bitterness, and the memory that they had not parted in harmony. Alex reached back and took her hand, which trembled, then squeezed his tightly in return.
“… I guess what I’m asking is that you use your influence with the tribunal—and it will be substantial—to keep some effort going into launch systems. At least get them to let you throw more ice!”
Spivey leaned even closer to the camera.
“After all, it’s not enough just to neutralize some paranoid aliens’ damned berserker device. What’s the point, if it all goes into a toxic-dumpit anyway?
“But this thing could be the key to saving everything, the ecology …”
Alex was rapt, mesmerized by the man’s unexpected intensity, and he felt Teresa’s flushed emotion as well. So they both flinched in reflex surprise when somebody behind them let out a blood-chilling scream.
“Give that back!”
Everyone turned, and Alex blinked to see June Morgan waging an uneven struggle with … Pedro Manella! The blonde woman hauled at her briefcase, which the Aztlan reporter clutched in one meaty hand, fending her off with the other. When she kicked him, Pedro winced but gave no ground. Meanwhile, Colonel Spivey droned on.