04. Birth of Flux and Anchor (41 page)

Van Haas nodded. "Agreed. At least it doesn't lock us in forever. We just don't know about the future."

Cockburn stared at him. "Van, tell me straight. You're not one of those folks who wants to try to negotiate with 'em, are you? Even after all they've done so far?"

"I honestly don't know," he answered truthfully. It was a fact that several of the scientific leaders and even a majority of the board was urging just that. He, himself, had more direct concerns with what was happening to his colony. They had nothing left to do but consider scientific advances and the big picture. Of course, they were also all scared shitless, just as he was. All of them had run worst-case scenarios through their computers at one point or another just as he had and had come up with very little. There simply wasn't enough known about this new science of Flux to predict what some civilization would do that
did
have all the knowledge and experience. All military and computer projections were based on the supposition that the alien force had to do things in generally the same way as humans did. Nothing had contradicted that so far, but, then, the aliens hadn't
had
to contradict it. No one to this point, however, had ever sealed against the aliens. There was really no way of knowing if it would work, or whether a force sufficiently confident to assault another race's worlds and win didn't have a way around such eventualities.

Such problems could not concern Cockburn; he could not defend against weaponry and technology far beyond our own. Such problems concerned the scientists very much. No one who worked with the new physics of Flux could be certain of anything.

For the moment he would remain content to do what he could to minimize damage here and also minimize future damage in case they could be sealed off and find themselves under military control. As much as he would love to see and contact an alien race capable of this level of intelligence and technology, the fact was that he wasn't crazy. The way they had cold-bloodedly attacked and then sealed off those worlds was nothing he wanted to experience.

The Soviets had almost three months to prepare for the enemy, and managed to evacuate close to a hundred thousand people and many vital records as well as deploy in a logic nearly identical to that proposed for New Eden. When word came down the line that six of the seven Soviet Gates were reporting incoming, the colony seemed to halt, even though there was nothing more they could do. It still took almost ten days to get a message down the line from the Soviet position to New Eden. By the time the first messages had arrived, the issue had probably already been decided. There was nothing really to do but await the slow-breaking news.

14

OF PAST AND FUTURE

The messages were strictly in encoded text form. They included no pictures or support of any kind, but because of the time and distance involved, there was simply no way to ask questions and request verifications without leaving things open for an enemy.

The first ship that came to the Soviet colony was one of the Soviet ships that had been sent to help out the Chinese. The aliens had not only returned the ship, they had also brought back, alive, some of the Soviets on board. Although wary, the defenders had taken their people back in while the aliens remained out of view.

The Chinese, they were told, had put up a ferocious fight, and totally refused to negotiate. There had been some early communications problems, and the aliens had found themselves in a full-scale war before anything could be done. The Soviets, there primarily as not fully trusted observers anyway, had attempted independent contact and finally located the means by which the aliens were trying to talk to the Chinese. The aliens were not at all human, but the products of a very different evolution, and even when mediation was attempted the Chinese called them "demons" and "devils" and fought all the harder. In fact, it had taken aid from the aliens just to protect the bulk of the Soviets from the Chinese commanders,
and some were in fact slain and one ship damaged and now, repaired. They now were being sent back with an alien advance guard to make certain such bloody misunderstandings would not happen again. Rather than fear them, it was said, it was the
aliens
who needed reassurance and demonstrations of cooperation and trust that humans were not all animallike mad dogs.

Best yet. the alien culture was as pure and perfect a form of communism as could be dreamed of, and their culture would transform and finally realize the ultimate dream of human perfection. They would teach us, as they learned about us, for although they had been riding the strings of the Flux universe for centuries and had discovered other higher life forms, they had never before discovered one as advanced and expanding as ours. We were, in fact, the only one to discover on its own the Flux universe and the matter-energy transfer process. In the end we would have reached their stage on our own. They now would lift us through centuries of discovery and pain to perfection in one easy step.

For the next few months the civilized Soviets would be instructed in the ways of perfection and taken into the community. They, with the aliens, would then come inbound, the Soviets like gods, it was promised, and provide this to the rest of humanity. There was nothing to fear. We had lucked into greatness.

The process would take a while, and while it did the Gates outbound would be closed to traffic and messages. When the communion of the two races was complete, though, they would send a message of peaceful intent and follow exactly five standard days later. This was necessary to mate and adjust their computer network to the alien standard.

With joy and salutations the messages ceased.

"Can you
believe
this shit?" Brenda Coydt snorted after going through it. "They had a chance to really take them on, a chance maybe to win, and they up and
surrender,
the assholes!"

Cockburn turned to Ryan. "You agree with the sentiments?"

"Pretty much. It's not verifiable, and we have to assume they have the standard message codes for Flux travel. They'd have 'em from the Hispanic conquest. I cannot more believe that the Chinese, among the most civilized and adaptable people humanity ever grew, would fight to the last man rather than try an accommodation at least, when it was clear that they were outgunned and outclassed. Not when two Soviet survey ships could tune them in and make nice with them as easy as calling the next office. It just doesn't ring true somehow."

"Still," the admiral noted, "there was ample provision for emergency messages to fly, considering they had ships sitting in six of the seven Gates, and even for whole ships to come inbound. There clearly was no fighting."

"Trojan horse," General Ngomo noted. "When they took the Chinese, they wound up with an unexpected bonus—two ships full of folks from the next objective."

"Hmmm . . . And they were taken into Flux chambers and turned around to be alien stooges? Possible. Evidence though? I have some of the scientists and bureaucrats on my back already over this, even though we worked very hard to keep a tight lid on the account."

"The initial battle reports we had from the Chinese action came from the Soviet observer ships," Ngomo noted. "Nothing was said about contact or even attempting contact, and they sent pictures as long as they could. No, I think it's pretty clear that the enemy knew that word and picture had gone down and they also had already surveyed and discovered only one open Gate at the next target—not enough firepower to do things efficiently. So, as you say, they turned around a bunch of captured Soviets, sent them back in their own ship, and made them willing traitors and at the same time freed up a second Gate for their own use. They'll be nice and polite and even do a few miracles for the local savages until equipment can be brought in to remove the blocked ships and get a sufficient alien force in place to take over."

"If they have to," Coydt noted. "If they hook into and gain control of an entire cluster's master computers and the interfaces involved, they might not need more forces. There's no doubt they've been at it longer than we have and know a lot more about the process and, with all those records, about us here and humans in general. They sure got sophisticated in a hurry, you'll note. A society of pure ideal Communists, my , ass!"

"Well, the board seems to want to swallow this wholesale. They want us to roll out the red carpet and the trumpeters and embrace the slimy bastards. That's another thing—I don't even know yet if they're slimy or what."

"Even Watanabe?" Coydt asked.

"Especially Watanabe. The old loony believes that our technology has been some sort of divine spoon-feeding, eventually to raise us all to the angelic state. She thinks these— things—have already reached that point and she can skip the next ten incarnations or whatever. Some of the others are naive, others are just plain scared and grasping at straws. Only van Haas has any guts among 'em, and he's been vacillating on the whole thing up to now. This has given him an excuse to side with his own people. Frankly, the old boy's getting a bit loony himself. Carrying that heavy burden all those years is finally telling. The bottom line with Van is that he's scared of the aliens, yes, and I doubt if he trusts them, but for some reason he's even more scared of
us.
So scared, in fact, he'll take the very slight chance on the aliens rather than leave this world to us."

They all nodded gravely. These were four of a kind, in a sense. Career military in spite of different cultural and national origins, they tended to look at the world the same way.

"The board," Ngomo pointed out, "no longer has any authority."

"No, not legally, but they still command the loyalties of a great many scientists and technicians. You all know that even after thousands of years civilians still don't look upon the military as other human beings. They mistake discipline for dictatorship and have no understanding of our sense of duty and our grave responsibilities."

Ryan seemed to look directly at Coydt. "But can we close the Gates against the will of these people? Don't we need them to do the job? We don't have much of a staff, and I'm not sure we could count on the loyalties of the Anchor Guards if they were called on to shoot their own. I'm not sure that we could get control of Gate Three at all. I just can't see us being able to put that one over on Watanabe."

"I can handle Watanabe," Coydt assured him.

Cockburn's bushy white eyebrows rose. "Indeed? Van Haas intimated as much, and it set him off to paranoia over you."

"Watanabe has continued to have regular sessions, even something of a relationship, with her old psychiatrist, who is also in charge of Special Projects, if you remember. The old girl is incredible with her computers, but she's human all the same. Like almost all the high-tech types, she believes what her computers tell her and she believes she's made herself invulnerable to any outside coercion. We wanted her to think that. In actual fact, we preprogrammed the Gate Three computers before she arrived and took over. Every single thing that Watanabe has discovered, every single thing Watanabe has found out, and every single plot and plan she has are in her when she's interfacing, and she communes with her beloved machines a lot. All of that is then sorted, coded, classified, interpreted, and spit out in Special Projects."

That shocked them all, but particularly Cockburn, who'd known nothing of this. "Who gave you the authority to do such a thing?"

"I interpreted it. I had specific orders to leave her alone, no matter how batty she was, because she was doing enormously valuable research. She was and is doing just that. But everyone was happy to let a woman who knew everything that human beings can know about these monster computers have a free hand, and look the other way when she got some brilliant minds and turned them into devoted cult members who thought her way. Everyone knew she was doing it—and it didn't take much extra brains to figure out she'd managed it on the security people there and she'd managed to get control through her computer of all the monitoring and recording devices as well. Dr. Suzuki saw all this coming back at Site Y, and she strongly urged that if Watanabe was ever given access to a 7800, we do just this. I felt it my duty to do it. If she'd gone ahead and learned how to seize control of and reprogram every damned computer in the network and changed us all into her vision of what the world should be, we'd all be helpless and I would be responsible. That's been her aim all along, you know."

There was no arguing with that sort of logic. Still, Cockburn, said, "I just wish you would have told me. It not only would have eased my mind, but it would relieve me of this nagging question of what else all three of you haven't bothered to tell me."

"Begging your pardon, sir, but one leak anywhere would have done it in. She'd have been tipped and spared no brainpower to locate and remove those programs and she might well be the only one here who could. She fooled you all with those copies of herself she made out of some of her assistants. With all due respect, sir, a commander can't be told
everything.
That's what you pay me for. You trust me to do the job and replace me if I don't."

"All right, all right. Point taken. Now—do we agree that we should reject this message and any subsequent messages as a fraud? That we should proceed to close and seal this world anyway?"

There were three other nods.

"Very well. Yes, it can be done. I've already invoked a host of military programs none of them even knew existed, and there are some more that would give us control of the computers. Ryan, your Signals boys can pretty well guard the Gates themselves and control access along the matter transmission lines. I have enough totally loyal and efficient technicians to do what has to be done if they can get physically inside each administrative headquarters and interfaced at the main computer centers. Ngomo, I think you can find enough trusted personnel to maintain a military guard over this, with the help of Coydt's permanent parties."