The Forge of God (18 page)

Rotterjack appeared stunned. Since he was clearly unwilling to speak first, Arthur faced the middle Shmoo and said, "We have a problem."

"Yes."

"In our country, there is a device similar to your own, disguised as a volcanic cinder cone. A biological being has emerged from this device." He related the subsequent events concisely, marveling at his own apparent equanimity. "Clearly, this being's story contradicts your own. Would you please explain these contradictions to us?"

"They make no sense whatsoever," the middle robot said. Arthur controlled a sudden urge to flinch and run; the machine's tone was smooth, in complete control, somehow superior. "Are you certain of your facts?"

"As certain as we can be," Arthur said, his urge to flee replaced by irritation, then anger.
They're actually going to stonewall. God damn!

"This is very puzzling. Do you have pictures of these events, or any recorded information we can examine?"

"Yes." Arthur lifted his briefcase onto the table and produced a folio of color prints. He spread the pictures before the Shmoos, who made no apparent move to examine them.

"We have recorded your evidence," the central robot said. "We are still puzzled. Is this perhaps attributable to some friction between your nations?"

"As Mr. Bent has said, our nations are allies. There is very little friction between us."

The room was quiet for several seconds. Then Rotterjack said, "We believe that both of these devices—yours and the cinder cone object in California—are controlled by the same—people, group. Can you prove to us that we are incorrect?"

"Group? You imply that the other, if it exists, is controlled by us?"

"Yes," Arthur said. Rotterjack nodded.

"This makes no sense. Our mission here is clear. We have told all of your investigators that we wish to gently and efficiently introduce humans to the cultures and technologies of other intelligences. We have made no threatening gestures."

"Indeed, you have not," Bent said placatingly. "Is it possible there are factions among your kind that oppose your actions? Someone perhaps trying to sabotage your work?"

"This is not likely."

"Can you offer any other explanation?" Bent asked, clearly frustrated.

"No explanations are apparent to us. Our craft is not equipped to dismantle worlds."

Arthur produced another packet of photos and spread them before the robots. "Half a year ago, a moon of the planet we call Jupiter—are you familiar with Jupiter?"

"Yes."

"The sixth moon, Europa, disappeared. We haven't been able to locate it since. Can you explain this to us?"

"No, we cannot. We are not responsible for any such large-scale phenomenon."

"Can you help us solve these mysteries?" Bent asked, a hint of desperation coming into his voice. He was clearly experiencing the same sense of dread that had long since come over all associated with the Furnace bogey. Things were not adding up. Lack of explanations at this stage could be tantamount to provocation…

"We have no explanations for any of these events." Then, in a conciliatory tone, "They are puzzling."

Bent glanced at Arthur:
We're getting nowhere.
"Perhaps we should begin with our regular schedule of discussions for the day."

The robot did not speak for several seconds. Visibly unnerved, Bent tensed his clasped hands on the desk.

"Possibly there is a problem of communication," it said. "Perhaps all of these difficulties can be overcome. Today's session is not important. We will cancel this meeting and meet again later."

With no further word, ignoring the polite objections of Quentin Bent, the Shmoos rose, backed away from the table, and passed through the hatchway. Desert heat once again beat in on the men in the trailer before the hatch closed.

Stunned by the sudden end of the interview, they simply stared at each other. Bent was on the edge of tears.

"All right," he said, standing. He glanced at the TV monitor perched high in one corner. Cameras conveyed the Shmoos' return to the Rock. "We'll see…"

A sharp crack and a roar rocked the trailer. Arthur fell from his chair in seeming slow motion, bumping into Rotterjack's chair, thinking on the way down,
It's begun.
He landed on hands and butt and quickly got to his feet, pulling on a table leg. Bent pointed to the monitor, still functioning though vibrating in its mount. The Shmoos were gone.

"They blew up," he said. "I saw it. Did anybody else see it—on the screen? They just exploded!"

"Jesus," Rotterjack said.

"Is somebody shelling them?" Forbes asked, looking sharply at Rotterjack and Arthur.

"God knows," Bent said. They scrambled outside the trailer and followed a raggedly organized team of scientists and soldiers down the path to where the Shmoos had last been seen. Fifty meters down the path to the Rock, three craters had been gouged in the dirt, each about two meters in diameter. The robots had left no sign—neither fragments nor burn marks.

Quentin Bent stood hunched over with hands on his knees, sobbing and cursing as he looked up across the blinding noonday plain at the Rock. "What happened? What in bloody hell happened?"

"There's nothing left," Forbes said. French nodded vigorously, his face beet red. Both kept glancing at the Americans: their fault.

"Do you know?" Bent asked loudly, turning on him. "Is this some goddamned American thing?"

"No," Arthur said.

"Airplanes, rockets…" Bent was almost incoherent.

"We didn't hear any aircraft…" French said.

"They destroyed themselves," Arthur said quietly, walking around the craters, careful not to disturb anything.

"That's bloody impossible!" Bent screamed.

"Not at all." Arthur felt deeply chilled, as if he had swallowed a lump of dry ice. "Have you read Liddell Hart?"

"What in God's name are you talking about?" Bent shouted, fists clenched, approaching Arthur and then backing away, without apparent aim. Rotterjack stayed clear of the men and the craters.

"Sir Basil Liddell Hart's
Strategy
."

"I've read it," Rotterjack said.

"You're crazy," French said. "You're all bleeding crazy!"

"We have the incident on tape," Forbes said, holding up his hands to calm his colleagues. "We must review it. We can see if any projectile or weapon struck them."

Arthur knew very well he was not crazy. It was making sense to him now. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'll explain when everybody's in a better frame of mind."

"
Fuck
that!" Bent said, regaining some composure. "I want the physics group out here immediately. I want a message sent to the Rock now. If there's a war beginning here, let's not give the impression we started it."

"We've never sent or received transmissions from the Rock," Forbes said, shaking his head.

"I do not care. Send transmissions, as many frequencies as we can handle.
This
message: 'Not responsible for destruction of envoys.' Got that?"

Forbes nodded and returned to the trailer to relay the orders.

"Mr. Gordon, I'll try very hard to put myself in a suitable frame of mind. What the hell has strategy to do with this?" Bent asked, standing on the opposite side of the three craters.

"The indirect approach," Arthur said.

"Meaning?"

"Never come at your adversary from an expected direction, or with your goals clear."

Bent, whatever his state of mind, caught on quickly. "You're saying this has all been a ruse?"

"I think so."

"But then your Guest is a ruse, too. Why would they tell us they're going to destroy the planet, and then make that seem like a sham… tell us they're going to save us, and that's a sham, too?"

"I don't know," Arthur said. "To confuse us."

"Goddammit, man, they're powerful beyond our wildest dreams! They build mountains overnight, travel across space in huge ships, and if what you say is true, they dismantle whole worlds—why bother to deceive us? Do we send greetings to bleeding ants' nests before we trample them?"

Arthur could not answer this. He shook his head and held up his hands. The heat made him dizzy. Oddly—or not so oddly—what worried him most now was how the President would react when he learned what had happened here.

"We have to talk to Hicks first," he told Rotterjack as they climbed aboard a truck to be taken back to the outer perimeter.

"Why? Aren't we all in enough trouble already?"

"Hicks… might be able to explain things to the President. In a way he'll listen to."

Rotterjack lowered his voice to a whisper in the back of the vehicle. "All hell's going to break loose. McClennan and Schwartz and I will have a real fight… Whose side are you on?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Are you voting for Armageddon, or do we have a chance?"

Arthur started to reply, then shut his mouth and shook his head.

"Crockerman's going to flip when he hears about this," Rotterjack said.

Arthur called Oregon from Adelaide's airport while waiting for the Army limo to pick up the United States group. He was exhausted from the day and the long flight back. It was early in the morning in Oregon and Francine answered with a voice full of sleep.

"Sorry to wake you," Arthur said. "I'm not going to be able to call for a couple of days."

"It's lovely to hear from you. I love you."

"Miss you both desperately. I feel like a man cut loose. Nothing is real anymore."

"What can you tell me?"

"Nothing," Arthur said, pinching his cheek lightly.

"Well, then, I've got something to tell you. Guess who called?"

"Oh, I don't know. Who? Not—"

"You guessed it. Chris Riley. He told me to write it down. 'Two new unusual objects the size of asteroids have been discovered, each about two hundred kilometers in diameter. They have the albedo of fresh ice—almost pure white. They are traveling in highly unusual orbits—both hyperbolic. They may or may not be huge, very young comets.' Does this make any sense to you? He said it might."

"Fragments of Europa?"

"Isn't this romantic?" Francine asked, still sleepy. "He said you might think that."

"Go on," Arthur said, his sensation of unreality increasing.

She continued to read the message. "'If they are fragments of Europa, they are traveling along virtually impossible paths, widely separated. One of them will rendezvous with Venus next year, when Venus is at…' Just a second. Got another page here…'at superior conjunction. The other will rendezvous with Mars in late 1997.' Got that?"

"I think so," Arthur said.

"Marty's asleep, but he told me to tell you that Gauge will now sit and heel at his command. He's very proud of that. Also, he's finished all the Tarzan books."

"Attaboy." His eyes closed for a moment and he experienced a small blackout. "Sweetheart, I'm dead on my feet. I'm going to fall over if I don't get to sleep shortly."

"We both hope you're home soon. I've gotten used to having you around the house. It seems empty now."

"I love you," Arthur said, eyes still closed, trying to visualize her face.

"Love you, too."

He climbed into the limo beside Warren and Rotterjack. "What have you heard about two ice asteroids?" he asked them.

They shook their heads.

"One will probably resurface Venus, and the other will wreak havoc on Mars, both next year."

Warren, despite his exhaustion, gaped. Rotterjack seemed puzzled. "What's that have to do with us?" he asked.

"I don't know," Arthur replied.

"Funny damned coincidence," Warren said, shaking his head.

"They're going to hit Venus and Mars?" Rotterjack asked, the implications sinking in slowly.

"Next year," Arthur said.

The presidential science advisor drew his lips together and nodded, staring out the window at passing traffic, light this late hour of the evening. "That can't be coincidence," he said. "What in the name of Christ is going on?"

November 1, Eastern Pacific Time (November 2, (USA)

Walt Samshow moved with a long-accustomed grace on the ladders of the Glomar
Discoverer,
sliding his hands along the rails as his feet pumped in a blur down the steps, stuffing his chin into his clavicle to remove his leather-brown, freckled, and sun-spotted bald pate from the path of passing bulkheads. Whatever effects of age dogged him on shore vanished; he was more spry at sea than on land. Samshow, a long-legged, narrow-faced beanpole of a man, had spent more than two thirds of his seventy-one years at sea, serving ten years in the Navy from 1942 to 1952, and then moving on to forty years of research in physical oceanography.

Deep in the ship's hold, spaced across an otherwise empty cargo bay, were his present crop of children: three upright, man-high, steel-gray cylindrical gravimeters measuring the gravity gradients of the trench ten thousand meters below. The
Discoverer
was on its sixth pass over the Ramapo Deep. The sea outside the hull was almost glassy, and the ship moved forward at a steady ten knots, as stable as bedrock, ideal for this kind of work. They could probably get accuracy to within plus or minus two milligals over the average of all six runs.

Samshow descended into the hold, his feet hitting the cork-covered steel deck lightly. His much younger partner, David Sand, smiled at him, face a corpselike green and purple in the glow of the color monitor. Samshow presented the covered aluminum plate he had carried down from the mess.

"What's the bill of fare?" Sand asked. He was half Samshow's age and almost half again his weight, strong and wide-faced, with eyes pale blue, a tiny Scots button of a nose, and a full head of wiry auburn hair. Samshow removed the plate's cover. Deep in the elder oceanographer's thoughts, Sand had become one of many sons; he treated younger assistants with the tough-minded affection he would have bestowed on his own child. Sand knew this, and appreciated it; in his entire career, he would probably have no better teacher, partner, or friend than Walt Samshow.

"Fried sole, spinach pie, and beets," Samshow said. The ship's Filipino cook took pride in his special Western meals, served twice a week.