04. Birth of Flux and Anchor (39 page)

She knew the likelihood of that in the foreseeable future. The leaders were scared of the big programs. All twenty-eight would have to be coordinated and run at once to get the proper balance, and the remaining Flux might be insufficient to supply what the top echelons needed or wanted. They wouldn't terraform completely until the population of Anchors was knee-deep. Still, it was a disappointment. She had grown up, like Toby, on an island surrounded by ocean—hers much smaller than his, to be sure, but the sea was in their blood.

So godhood was not absolute but rather subject to bureaucratic and budgetary considerations. It was a little bit of a letdown, although not much.

"Seventeen—all of the people here with kids who had those kids after developing this interfacing sensitivity have found that their children also seem to have this. Is that inherited?"

"It is. Of necessity, the minor modifications were made in master maintenance. As physiological changes, they are inheritable, although unlike you this sensitivity can be changed, enhanced, or eliminated by program call."

"You mean—nobody can take away Toby's and my sensitivity to this, but someone could take away Christine's?"

"Yes. Becasue the program is hidden and not subject to external analysis, it could not be removed by direct computer manipulation alone. However, if someone who also possessed this program and was more skilled in it, or stronger in it than the other, a command to remove would work."

"Is there any way to make a sensitive's program permanent without the emotional rush that means lack of control?"

"Any program may be countermanded or rewritten by someone who has more sensitivity or far better training and control or both. The computer receiving the two would resolve the contradiction in favor of the stronger, since the weaker signal would be perceived as spurious—perhaps an echo of another operation far away. The same would apply to an imposed program versus resistance to it. You could, however, impose a program on yourself that could not be changed or altered. To do this you would write the program and make the command calls normally, but add a set of nulls in a random pattern and then establish a mathematical tapeworm which would erase those nulls upon completion of 'run.' You would be unable then to change your own program. Someone with more strength and control, however, could still read the program, and while they could not alter it, not having the proper sequence of nulls, they could transfer it to themselves by command using the same procedure."

"The locals already call our direct programs spells. I suppose
that
would be a curse, then."

"Not really, for it would have to be self-imposed or voluntarily reimposed on the one removing it. A curse is a program with a negative or undesirable effect. This sort of program is neutral in that respect, and is useful in stabilizing direct energy to matter transfers such as the land you spoke about, so they would remain relatively stable even if you were away."

She had been maintaining a handwritten book which she had playfully labeled her "Grimoire." In it she had sketched out lengthy mathematical models of various types of programs and classified them under the old terms. There were "Miracles," "White Magic," "Black Magic," "Curses," and other such headings. The ancient magics had been basically psychology, trickery, illusion, misdirection, conditioning, and the like, but this was the real thing. Toby had long ago noted that it seemed that the fate of science and learning was to make sorcery respectable.

And in a world where magic seemed to work, sorcery was fun only if you were a sorceress.

The Soviet ship came in unannounced from Colony Sixteen up the line, which was only slightly unusual, but their request to talk to someone high up in New Eden was quite new, and the fact that the ship was full of people heading inward, toward Earth, was unprecedented.

When they heard what the Soviet spokesman had to say, they arranged very quickly to put him on via satellite to all seven directors and all area commanders.

It had started as far up the line as humanity currently went, at the still undeveloped and prototypical Nueva Hispaniola colony at position Twenty-one. Supply and personnel ships came through at least once a month, passing through each position including New Eden's, the Soviets at Sixteen, and the Chinese at Nineteen. The Chinese had encountered a problem with the last Hispanic shipload; its upline gate had refused to send the ship, stating that it was receiving signals that all three Hispanic Gates were occupied. The Hispanics always had one ship on their end for inbound, one ship for outbound from Earth, and a third Gate kept clear in case of problems.

At first the Chinese thought there was a malfunction and did a thorough check of all their computers and Gate equipment. When it all checked out, they sent a dummy probe outbound with a command to report at each station. At Twenty it reported no problems. At Twenty-one Nueva Hispaniola, it reported all Gates currently occupied. Undaunted, the Chinese had ordered it to try to get through, although if all three were occupied, as reported, the probe would be hung up in the Flux universe in digitized form and could not back up or return until at least one of the Gates ahead was clear. It left—and there was no further report.

They sent a second probe to Twenty, basically an orbiting Gate network that was totally automated, brought it into space, and placed it in orbit near the station as a monitor. When, after several weeks, sensors indicated a freed-up Gate, everyone gave a sigh of relief that the Hispanic Union had fixed whatever was wrong. The relief did not last long. A single message probe came back from the first probe sent.

"Am under attack by powerful forces, origin unknown, nature unknown, in full control of Gate computers. No human life forms sensed. Control allows this one outgoing probe, but power is insufficient to digitize whole unit. Believe emergency situation exists here with high potential threat to inbound colonies. Am sending this now to make certain it gets out. Will send updates as warranted or possible."

That was the one and only message ever received.

The Chinese relayed this down the line to the Soviets and to their own authorities back on Earth, but did not notify every colony. They requested sufficient armament be sent up to reach the Twenty position and not only close the Gates but blow them up. For several reasons, this was denied. The Chinese and Hispanics were in a delicate stage of negotiations on a variety of things and the Hispanics insisted that their people not be abandoned. Later, computer simulations told them that the action would be futile. In the scenario postulating an attack on Nueva Hispaniola by a hostile alien life form that was obviously not native to the well-surveyed Hispanic system, the only way theoretically known that such a thing could happen would be if the astronomical odds had been breached and another Flux universe traveling species, using essentially the same physics and means, accidentally intersected one of our permanent strings and followed it to Neuva Hispaniola. Either that, or the Hispanic colony
was
the point of intersection. It was still not understood why the gravity attraction was stronger at these points.

In this case, blowing the Gates at Twenty would simply delay matters a bit until this alien force, following the still existing string, reached the same gravity point where the Gates had been and punched through themselves. Humans had emergency equipment capable of doing so in both directions in a matter of weeks. It had to be assumed that this alien force was at least as capable, and there was little that could be sent in so short a time to make a difference.

The Chinese elected to make a fight of it, fearing that if they sealed their world, isolating themselves indefinitely, they would risk a punch straight through their system, perhaps destroying their world. Because they didn't have enough ships to block most of the Gates and didn't know how much time they might have to get them, they swallowed their pride and their national enmity and requested the Soviets send two of theirs. The Soviets, like New Eden, had seven Gates, but unlike New Eden, they had three ships always in. They sent two, brimming with armaments, battle computers, and exobiologists. With the two Chinese ships they then effectively blocked all but a single Gate of the Chinese's own choosing and waited.

The enemy had learned from Nueva Hispaniola. It came through, sat there for a couple of hours ignoring everything and everyone. The Chinese got impatient, started unloading all their best armaments on the thing, which was not the same size or shape as our ships but which could use our Gate. Pictures sent down showed a smaller ship than any of ours, a bit cockeyed in the dish-shaped Gate, looking like an old-fashioned flying saucer with a minaretlike tower.

The thing clearly seized control of the Gate somehow right away. They had wasted no time in learning the standardized Gate mechanism and controls from Nueva Hispaniola's. The force field was transparent but impenetrable by anything thrown at it. It traveled not only outward, seemingly building and expanding every minute, but also down the download tunnel, through the linkage transmission lines to the Anchors, and seized and cut the master computers. From there they tapped the network, seized the grid, and all contact ceased.

The Soviets wasted little time. They were even now using their lone remaining ship to evacuate who they could while stopping at each point and requesting any available ships be sent forward. Learning what they could from the Chinese, they directed a vacuum purge of the tunnel be maintained at all times from the dish itself. This would turn to Flux anything that tried making its way down the tube—even energy itself. This would deny the invaders easy access to the Anchors and their master computers and force them to come out overland. The computers indicated that the invader's ships contained only sufficient Flux transformers to build, maintain, and expand the force field from the Gate. The Chinese Anchors had been taken from within because there was no way to direct sufficient power along the transmission lines. Their power would be limited to what they could siphon off as surplus from the single Gate. It should not be sufficient to expand through all four quadrants, and in no case could it influence Anchors.

The bastards would have to come out and fight.

The Soviet computers indicated that the only way to seal off their seven Gates, all exposed, was complex. It would involve manually setting all seven to outgoing and then send-ing tapeworms—memory-specific erasure programs—into the master, Gate computers to erase their automatic switching functions. To be sure, they had to erase all knowledge of how to open or close those Gates and any curiosity about doing so.

The Soviets were now as set as they could be for a fight and yet hoping for allies and for as much evacuation as possible. They had no idea how long they would have, but these bastards moved
fast.

This had already been sent to Earth and to all inbound destinations in digested form. The Soviets made it a personal point to stop at New Eden because, after them, the Westrex moon was the next habitable colony.

New Eden was thrown into an instant panic, all else forgotten. While the news was kept for a time from the public, it began to leak out all over the place and get magnified so badly that they finally issued clear statements outlining the true situation.

As the most budget-conscious and poorest of the projects.

New Eden had mothballed its fleet for the most part and made do with just two ships on regular runs. One was currently inbound, the other was still in port back in the home solar system. It was started forward immediately, and the other was turned around almost instantly. It would take months to get the others in decent shape, but work was started on them. Many had been cannibalized for spare parts, and none had an operational master computer system.

The Soviets repeatedly attempted contact up the line while continuing a serious debate among themselves over what to do. Considering the swift, brutal takeovers of the Hispanic and Chinese colonies, they felt they had to fight even to the last human being, but they also knew that they were too far up the line with too few ships and too little defense and knowledge of the attackers to hope to succeed. It was now revealed for the first time that they had been having major technical problems in their colony, that they had attempted too much terraforming too quickly, that that sealing themselves in was not considered a viable long-term alternative. They could only wait, and prepare as best they could, and evacuate as many people as practical with the few ships that could make it up the line.

The first New Eden ship to arrive contained technical experts and also a great many orders. The colony itself had ceased everything but worrying and preparing for their defenses, and all the master computers were thrown directly into solving the problem, if it could be solved. The major problem was simple: clearly the enemy now knew them, if it hadn't known them before, and it was clearly technologically superior. We, on the other hand, knew next to nothing about them.

Admiral Cockburn studied his own communiques and then called the board and the military commanders, not waiting to get them together.

"I have received a number of directives," he told them. "First and foremost, I am a flag officer in the Royal New Zealand Navy, which has primary jurisdiction here because the corporate headquarters are in Auckland. Upon emergency act of Parliament, I have been given broad discretionary powers. My charter is virtually unlimited, and the Ministry of Defense, under this act and various cooperative agreements with Westrex, has assumed direct control and responsibility.

"Pursuant to these orders, company authority on New Eden is herein suspended. Civil authority as well as military authority is now assumed by the military command, and the entire colony is placed under the laws and constitution of New Zealand. All officers and enlisted personnel, no matter what their country of origin, will accept this authority and receive new commissions or ratings in the armed forces of the Commonwealth of New Zealand or they will resign. I am happy to report that no one has chosen the latter path.