Harvest of Stars (6 page)

It was decent of him to apologize, Kyra thought. “Not your fault, jefe. You can’t store everything in … your personal database.”

If he were hooked to his main hypercomputer, she
thought, he could summon anything in Fireball’s files, including detailed recollections of his direct experiences. He’d need less computer capability than that to project a face of his own into a multi, a human play of expressions, instead of having to speak from within a blank box.

“Thanks,” he said. After another silence: “Close-knit family, eh? I daresay you’ve spent a lot of your Earthside time in Russia with them.”

“Yes. And otherwise, oh, sightseeing, vacationing around the globe. Hardly ever in the Union, except Hawaii.” Mountain, forest, strand, surf, reef, ocean, remnants of a past that had been wonderfully alive; a hula, a luau, done for the tourists but still remnants of a past that had been wonderfully human; the Keiki Moana, graceful, wistful, remnants of a future that had failed. “Otherwise this country is depressing.” How sour that word tasted. “Not that I’ve been much on Earth at all since getting my captain’s rating. I’ve had some long hauls.”

“Really? Where?”

“Asteroid and cometary prospecting tours, as far as the Kuiper Belt. Outer planets, ferrying for the scientific stations. Once on Taurid work, emergency call.”

Muy bien, she was bragging, and quite aware of Lee’s awed stare. But the idea was less to impress Guthrie than to give him an estimate of her potentials.

“Whew!” exclaimed the artificial voice. “You’ve put yourself in my everyday memory for certain, Pilot Davis, and when I consult your file, that’ll also go permanently into this can. God damn, in the old days I’d’ve met you personally and congratulated you. In my flesh days I’d’ve given you a big wet kiss as well. Fireball’s gotten too mucking huge.”

Virtually a nation in its own right, Kyra’s mother had remarked once. It
is
a nation, her father replied, more so than most that bear the name nowadays.

Oh, yes, he added for the benefit of the child who was listening (as she understood later), legally it’s nothing but a privately held corporation, chartered in Ecuador, carrying on a variety of enterprises across Earth and throughout
the Solar System. Their importance gives it nothing but enormous wealth and influence—legally. In fact, though, it provides most of its people with most of what they need, from homes and schools and medical care to help against the governments that claim them. If we choose to swear full fidelity to it, Fireball will pledge us the same; and then we are no longer just employees, we are consortes. That’s no mere contract, that’s a constitution. And think about our customs, generations-old traditions, everything we share, far over and beyond any material treasures—A nation, I tell you.

That wasn’t quite correct, Dad, Kyra now thought. The nation, that’s us, and our sovereign territory is all of space.

Yet through his computers and his communication lines, a single ghost was still able to rule it, keep it together, stave off its foes, set it reaching for the stars. How much longer could he? Already his grip was loose—No, wrong. He had always left the members as independent as possible. That was the real wellspring of Fireball’s strength.

Guthrie recalled her mind to him. “Okay,” he asked, “what brought you to Earth this time? Vacation?”

“Not really,” Kyra said. “I was in L-5 while my ship got a routine overhaul. A special cargo was going to North America, organic cryocells. That meant regulations called for a human pilot. The usual man had taken an accidental radiation dose and was in DNA therapy. I offered to substitute and they agreed.” Why not, given a person of her qualifications, humdrum though the flight was? “Turn-around time would be about three days, because unloading that stuff is finicky. It’d allow me to visit my parents or maybe get in some surfing.”

“In short, you arrived by pure happenstance, and if the cops play back the log, that’s what they’ll confirm. Your family’s dossier might raise eyebrows, but I doubt they’ll check that. When you don’t report back for liftoff, they may wonder. On the other hand, they’ll have a lot else on their minds. Besides, once the clampdown on the company has been announced, it’ll seem perfectly natural for you to sit tight wherever you are.”

“I’m safely anonymous?” Excitement fluttered. “I can walk right out of this place?”

“Um-m, maybe not that easy. Let’s double check. How’d you travel here?”

Led by sharp questions, Kyra described her itinerary. With dismay she remembered the bubbletrike, locked in a time-expired rack and traceable through her thumbprint.

“What about the rental period?” Guthrie demanded.

“I entered that I might return today or it might be tomorrow. I didn’t know which, you see.”

“Smart girl. Well, if you can’t spring the vehicle tomorrow, I don’t suppose anybody will notice the unpaid meter right away, and then the matter will be for city maintenance, not the cops—at first, anyhow.”

“You can do better than that,” Lee proposed. “Call on a public line once you’re outside, tell the agency you had to go elsewhere because of an emergency and they should send somebody to pick up the trike. It’ll carry their code, which the lock will open for. Charge the extra expense to your credit. I daresay that sort of thing happens every once in a while, and they’ll think little or nothing of it.”

“Hey, Bob, you have the makings of a pretty slick desperado,” Guthrie said.

“Bueno, then,” Kyra said gladly, “I can leave you in a safe place, sir, and convey in person whatever message you want to send Dr. Packer. Or someone else?”

She heard grimness revive. No, she realized, it had been there all the while, under the surface.

“Unfortunately, we can’t lay that straight a course. For openers, I wonder if I have any safe place left me, anywhere in this country. The more I think about it, the more I suspect who’s behind the whole halloo. The worst enemy I could have.”

The breath hissed between Lee’s teeth. Had he guessed? Kyra could merely whisper, in sudden cold, “Who?”

“Myself.”

“What?”

“My duplicate. My
Doppelgänger
. The copy of me that went to Alpha Centauri.”

Memory stormed back. How old was she when the
Juliana Guthrie
came home? Seven, eight? Yes, seven. The event was not a triumphal entry. After all, the data had been beamcast ahead, received long in advance. The samples being brought were necessarily few and small, their molecular structures already analyzed, mere trophies. Nevertheless, that arrival was oddly muted, and everything about it dropped out of the news, out of public attention, with a speed that in retrospect seemed equally peculiar. She had half forgotten it.

Guthrie went on. His matter-of-factness was more frightening than any dramatics. “We downloaded into each other, he and I. I had more experience to enter, of course. He was inoperative for a lot of years in empty space, outbound and returning. Else he’d’ve gone bananas from boredom. But the idea had been that I would be on the trip, and yet not miss out on everything that happened to me at home. While he was gone, things changed in the Solar System. I never wanted to stay in charge forever, but I decided that under present conditions Fireball had better have a backup. So I arranged to keep his return as inconspicuous as possible. By agreement, after he was brought up to date we deactivated him and I had him tucked away against a day of need.”

And when that second Guthrie was awakened again, Kyra thought, it would be as if no time whatsoever had passed for him.

Momentarily she wondered which of the two she confronted physically, the original or the double. Then she saw that it made no difference.

“In North America,” she foreknew.

“Yeah. A silly choice, with the Avantists in power? Shouldn’t we have stashed him someplace really secure? Well, a judgment call. When Fireball built new headquarters for this country, I had secret crypts and capabilities put in. I’d seen the Renewal and the Jihad and a slew of lesser disasters, and Avantism was then on the horizon. Be prepared. It seemed to me he could be as safely hidden there as anywhere on Earth, more safely than in most
locations. Off Earth, this one of me ought to have ample protection.

“The Synod was making the Union government heavier-handed every day, and our conflicts with it were getting worse, but I never expected it’d dare violate our contractual rights the way it’s done. I smelled too many weaknesses under the preaching and the swaggering. I knew the Kayos in embryo, as an organized resistance, already then. Nothing that happened since, till very lately, caused me to change my opinion. Someday in the not too distant future, all hell was going to let out for noon in North America. At that time, it might well be important to have another me on the spot, taking charge locally. That might save quite a lot of lives and property.”

The part of Kyra that stood aside wondered whether this was conceit bordering on megalomania. No, she decided. Guthrie had proved himself too often, and he was too realistic to be modest. The plain truth was that he, hooked into a net, could steer Fireball, or a cut-off section of Fireball, through a crisis better than any junta of humans or any purely artificial intelligence. The power sprang from more than experience, knowledge, innate generalship. It was authority. Divine right, almost; something that could call on men to die, and be heeded, because it spoke for that which gave meaning to their lives. He was the founder, the master, the presence. He was Fireball.

But leaders could fail and their causes perish.

Kyra heard a sigh. Wryness recognized that Guthrie had shaped it without lungs, as he shaped every word he uttered. “When the troops occupied that building, I was caught flat-footed,” he said. “Suddenly there was no way to reach my double, let alone brief him. The best thing I could think of to do was have myself sneaked to Earth and into the Union.”

A bold move, Kyra thought, but it had worked well until now. Instead of being paralyzed, dependent on communication with a center which the Sepo now oversaw, the company’s North American subdivisions acted shrewdly, on their own, in the Fireball tradition. Their directors
protested and negotiated. Meanwhile a shipment of isotopically pure titanium ordered by a government plant in the Union somehow went to Québec, which somehow chose to keep this treasure despite the indignation of its powerful neighbor. Meanwhile the company’s Southwestern energy receiver central regretted that for technical reasons it could no longer feed surplus megawatts into the national grid. Meanwhile guardsats reported mysterious small objects arcing over the ocean between California and Hawaii, and a Guatemalan delegate to the World Federation Assembly called for the Peace Authority to investigate what might be a North American violation—

“I hoped we could force a settlement that’d give us back our status and leave the Synod weakened,” Guthrie continued. “Again I’ve been surprised. The big crackdown’s begun, and we three are on the lam.” (Kyra guessed that that meant they’d perforce gone hyperbolic.) “Why? Are they so hard up they’ll court a retaliation that could ruin them? None of the intelligence I’ve collected suggests that. They’re in a bad enough way that they’re willing to take risks, but they aren’t kamikaze yet. They must think they have a pretty fair chance of coming out ahead of the game.

“How? Each minute of the past few hours, I’ve gotten more convinced that they’ve clapped hands on my other self.”

Concentrating on the background of events, Kyra had not seen what that implied. Awareness came like a blow to the belly.

“But they didn’t know where he was,” Lee protested, as if trying to fend off the fact.

“Somehow the Sepo learned,” Guthrie replied. “With hindsight, I can make a guess. Three persons besides me knew. I won’t name names, even to you, but they were close associates of mine. Two still are, off Earth. One, a North American, was visiting here several months ago when he was killed in an accident. Or so the world was informed, in the usual way, with the usual material, including the body. I was sorry, but I’ve said goodbye to many friends. … Now I recall how such things can be
faked, if you have very good technicians and a very well-organized operation. Including a synthesized corpse. It wouldn’t need to pass close inspection, only to fool his relatives. It was cremated according to his wishes.

“I suspect he was kidnapped and deep-quizzed. Probably with no specific object in mind, just to get a lead on anything that might be helpful against us. Sayre is capable of arranging any outrage. He’s also a bright son of a bitch, who must know that if his government doesn’t soon do something drastic, it’s doomed. If I’m right, he learned about my twin.”

“What really became of your friend?” Lee asked low.

“Dead, after they finished with him,” Guthrie answered flatly. “I hope. For his sake.”

Kyra shuddered.

“If the Synod knew my double was hidden in our HQ, it could invent a pretext and seize the building,” Guthrie proceeded. “Then the government would stall, make a fuss, claim it wanted to compromise, but drag matters out, while it—” the machine voice barely stumbled—“reprogrammed its prize. Now it has me on its side, knowing most of what I know.”

“Surely not!” Kyra cried.

“Not everything, but enough,” said remorselessness. “Everything that was in his personal memory, which means more or less everything a human would retain, including the locations of my old-established hideaways. News of the last two decades, easily downloaded into him. Ample information about the company, from the discs they’ve seized—nothing top secret, of course, but Fireball doesn’t have many top secrets.

“Mainly, he knows how I think. He knows I’ve entered the country, because he’d’ve done the same, because he is me. He’ll make some almighty shrewd estimates of what I’ll do next.”

Kyra kicked out against the nightmare, like Lee. “Are you sure of this? It sounds awfully far-fetched.”

“If you can suggest a hypothesis that fits the facts better, I’d be delighted to hear it.”

“But could they really … change him … and not destroy him, make him useless? How?”