Blood and Fire (23 page)

A moment later, Berryman joined them. He placed a stethoscope puck against the young woman's chest, moving it around with each rasping breath she took. The sounds of her breathing were relayed through his helmet. “I know you're uncomfortable,” he said. “Just hang in there a little bit longer, okay? Ready when you are,
Star Wolf
.”

Williger's voice: “Stand by. Two minutes.”

“Did you hear that? Two minutes. What's your name?”

“Rachel. Rachel McCain.”

“Are you married?”

“Is that a proposal?”

“Sorry, I'm spoken for.” Berryman smiled, with a quick glance across at Easton. “But some of the crew over on the
Star Wolf
are already asking me about you. And your shipmates. I hope you don't have plans for Saturday night.”

“If I live that long.”

“You will. Or my name's not Tonto Leroy McTavish.”

“Tonto Leroy McTavish?! That's
not
your real name!” Despite her discomfort, she smiled.

“No, it isn't. But you'll live anyway.”

“Will it hurt?” she asked abruptly. “I heard what you said to ... Jarell.”

“No,” said Berryman. “It won't hurt.” He was already preparing an injection of Resnix. “But I can arrange it if you want.” He waggled his eyebrows.

“No thanks,” Rachel said, almost laughing.

He pressed the device to her arm—it hissed, then issued a confirming beep. “In a minute or two, you'll start to feel very pleasant, like you're floating.”

“I can feel it already.” She closed her eyes.

Easton grinned at Berryman. “There's nothing like Resnix to put you to sleep.”

“Another minute and we can send her across.” Berryman said. He looked across to Easton, his voice dropping. “Y'know, this is the first time we've ever really worked together. I never thought it would be like this—”

“You're going to start that again, aren't you?”

“Well, why shouldn't I worry about you? You being on Security Detail and all.”

Easton looked annoyed. “I really don't like that kind of talk, Paul. We don't put bulls-eyes on our uniforms. That's the
other
guys.”

Berryman studied the display in front of him. He shook his head. “I know the odds, Danny—”

“Hey!” Easton interrupted him, almost angry. “I mean it!
Don't talk like that.”

Lying between them, Rachel McCain opened her eyes and looked from one to the other. “Are we going to die?”

Berryman shot a dirty look across to Easton.
Now look what you've done!
Bending down so Rachel could see his face through his helmet, he said, “I'm not planning on it, are you?” Then, deliberately lightening his tone, he said, “Hey—when we get back to the
Star Wolf
, I'll buy you a drink and tell you about the sparkle-dancer. It dances in the dark between the stars, looking for starships to sing to. If you see one, it's good luck.”

Rachel put on a
very
skeptical expression. “Sparkle-dancers? Excuse me? I'd rather hear the one about the leprechaun and the penguin again.”

Berryman grinned and pointed. “My partner here will have to tell you that one. But I can tell you about the kindly lawyer with a heart of gold. It has a happy ending. Someone murders him for it.”

Williger's voice interrupted Rachel's response. “
Norway
. We're ready for the next one.”

Berryman was suddenly all business. “Working,” he said. He applied a different injector to her arm. “Relax, this won't hurt me a bit.” A hiss and a beep. Berryman put the injector aside and switched on the suppressive resonance field.

Elsewhere—

Korie sat brooding at the work station, replaying video clips over and over. “HARLIE,” he said, abruptly.

“Yes, Mr. Korie? HARLIE was everywhere. Wherever there was a communicator, HARLIE was there.

“What is it that we forgot to ask? What is it we should have asked, but were too busy or too distracted to ask?”

HARLIE didn't answer immediately.

“There is something, isn't there?”

“The hole in the data array was multiple—there were overlapping absences,” HARLIE reported. “Dr. Blintze provided us with the technical
information necessary to proceed with the rescue. There are other blocks of data that are encoded and remain unknowable.”

Korie nodded. That was standard. Different pieces of knowledge were encrypted with different levels of security. And yet, there was something about the way HARLIE was reporting the information. Something—as if HARLIE was daring him, “Tickle me
here
.”

“Can you break the codes?”

“No, I can't.”

“I didn't think so.” And then, he realized. “Who
can
break the codes, HARLIE?”

“I don't think these codes are breakable.”

Okay, wrong question
. “HARLIE, there's a way to decrypt this material, isn't there?”

“Yes, Mr. Korie.”

“But you can't tell me, can you?”

“No, Mr. Korie. That's part of the security envelope.”

“Mm-hm. These are LENNIE-codes, aren't they?”

“Yes, Mr. Korie.”

“And LENNIE can decrypt these data structures.”

“Yes, Mr. Korie.”

“Now ... let me see if I can follow this one step further. LENNIE's personality core has gone psychotic and we've patched around him, right? So we can't ask LENNIE, and even if we could, it isn't likely he'd accept our authority, right?”

“Right.”

“But ...
you
can simulate a LENNIE, can't you?”

HARLIE made a noise like a gong, like bells and whistles going off, like a joy buzzer, like fireworks, like a fanfare.

“You've been hanging around Hodel too long,” Korie said. Then realized again—
shit. Hodel is dead.

He forced himself back to the problem at hand. It took a moment for him to regain his concentration. He'd made a breakthrough here. Why couldn't he enjoy it? No, don't go there.

“All right, HARLIE—so if I ask you to simulate a LENNIE again, can you decrypt those data structures?”

HARLIE replied, “One of the primary differences between a HARLIE and a LENNIE is the way that data is modeled. There are advantages to each model. To decrypt the LENNIE model requires becoming a LENNIE intelligence and translating the data structures into a form that a HARLIE intelligence can use. May I recommend that we not do this until
after
completing the transfer operation. I do not wish to imperil the security of the transfer.”

Korie sat back in his chair. Momentarily beaten.
Shit
. No, HARLIE is right. “All right, HARLIE, let's let it go for now. Don't do it until the safety of the ship is not an issue. And not without my authorization.”

And then he thought for a moment longer—
wait a minute
. “HARLIE?”

“Yes, Mr. Korie?”

“What didn't you suggest?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“How about slaving the LENNIE? Can you do that?”

“Not recommended.”

“Okay. How about
simulating
the LENNIE in a lesser intelligence—like one of the robots?”

“The robots don't have the processing power, or the speed.”

“I know that. But they have the memory. You could simulate a LENNIE in one of the robots. Or you could simulate it in a network of robots.”

“It still wouldn't be as fast.”

“No, it wouldn't. But maybe it would be fast
enough
.”

“Just a moment. I'm extrapolating.”

A pause.

Then HARLIE came back. “We could simulate a LENNIE in a network of non-occupied robots and produce a full decryption in forty-five minutes. The data is pyramid-encoded. I could give you an index in five minutes, and you could choose which data arrays you wanted attacked first.”

“What's the risk to the transfer operation?”

“None. I'll only use robots that are on standby or otherwise out of the loop.”

“Do it.”

“Yes, Mr. Korie. Stand by for the index.”

On the Command Deck of the starship
LS-1187
, the vessel known as the
Star Wolf
, Captain Parsons reflected on the gamble she had taken. She had won the lives of her crew—at the cost of her career.

There was no question what would come next. They would return to Stardock and—after an
extended
quarantine—she would be brought before a Board of Inquiry. The board would ask her if she had knowingly violated a standing order. She would answer, “Yes, I did.”

The vice-admiral chairing the board would cluck sympathetically at the situation and make noises about extenuating circumstances not mitigating the offense and how it was important that orders be obeyed by
all
captains; regardless of the lives saved, the knowledge gained, the important breakthroughs achieved and the fact that this would mean an end to one of the most dangerous scourges in known space, the principle of the chain of command had to be maintained. Captain Parsons had
knowingly
put her ship and her crew at terminal risk in violation of a standing order; therefore the board had no other choice but to recommend—she could write the speech herself—that Captain Parsons stand before a court-martial.

On what charges, though?

If they brought her to trial for violation of a standing order, she would have to plead guilty—she had knowingly violated orders. Commander Brik and CMO Molly Williger had both been present at the time and could testify that not only had she done so, she had ordered them to comply at gunpoint. Which was precisely why Brik had confronted her the way he had—to establish that specific point of responsibility, that she had effectively thwarted any opportunity to remove her from command. But had she really violated a standing order? This was a situation that a lawyer would call “collision of priorities.” There were other orders that gave her the authority to do exactly what she had done.

She could justifiably argue that her duty
required
her to explore all options for rescue of the crew and the mission team as well as the retrieval of the
Norway
's log. She could say that she had known of her responsibility to destroy the
Norway
, but had held off until the medical and research logs had been downloaded because of the value of that knowledge.
That the logs had contained experimental procedures for containing and treating a plasmacyte infection had presented her with the kind of moral dilemma that captains were empowered to resolve under General Order Number One: a captain is totally responsible for the welfare of her crew and her ship, regardless of any other orders in place. She could argue that under that obligation, she had to use the information available to save her mission team and the survivors on the
Norway
.

It was a compelling argument, to be sure. But even if they accepted her defense and acquitted her, they wouldn't—
couldn't
—put her back at the helm of the
Star Wolf
or any other starship. It would send the wrong message to other captains. No, her command days were over. Other captains would understand and sympathize—and take the lesson to heart. The Admiralty would cluck sympathetically and might even apologize privately for having to make an example of her, but still, the fleet had to maintain its discipline. Junior officers would be the ones who would most take the lesson to heart. And the Admiralty would maintain its tight control over its captains, even from a hundred or a thousand light years away.

She ran one hand along the railing in front of her. She would miss her star-time. But if she had to do it all over again—

Her headset beeped.

“Parsons here.”

Williger. “Captain, listen carefully. There isn't going to be enough artificial blood to treat everybody. We're using more substitute per patient than we expected.”

“How long to manufacture more?”

“Too long. Captain, you're going to have to ask for blood donors.”

“Blood donors?”

“I know. It's a barbaric custom—you take blood out of one person's body and put it into another's—but it's a painless procedure and it's the best way we've got to save the last five lives.”

The last five lives—Korie, Bach, Wasabe, Berryman, Easton ...

“We'll need at least sixty volunteers, each one donating a single pint of blood. Ensigns Duane and Morwood are standing by. HARLIE's already got the blood maps prepared. But we have to start right away.”