The Immortality Option Part 15

All rivalries and differences among the varied Terran interests on t.i.tan disappeared. The obvious rallying point for them to regroup was thes.h.i.+rasagi, orbiting above the cloud canopy. The Asterians had penetrated t.i.tan's general surface network, and obviously nothing at Genoa Base could be considered secure, since they had invaded the Earthnet by seizing the link beam transmitted from there.

Thes.h.i.+rasagi, however, had its own independent link back to j.a.panese satellites in Earth orbit, and the mission controllers in Osaka had had the presence of mind to isolate their end as soon as the eastern Asian sector of the Earthnet had begun misbehaving. This should have stopped the alien influence from being propagated back out to t.i.tan via thes.h.i.+rasagi 'sbeam. Moreover, thes.h.i.+rasagi had been engaging in conventional communications only with Genoa Base, without any high-capacity data connection. Hence, there was good reason to hope that thes.h.i.+rasagi 's system was "clean."

A final point was that the chief of the j.a.panese mission, Yak.u.mo, was a full-fledged mission director, appointed to his post by a national government. The existing organization on t.i.tan, by contrast, operated under the divided command of a temporary administrative head a.s.signed by NASO and a military contingent under separate orders, both of which depended on guidance from Earth that could disappear at any moment.

All factors pointed to the same conclusion. All agreed to consolidate under Yak.u.mo's direction as emergency head of the entire Terran presence on t.i.tan. A conference was called shortly afterward aboard thes.h.i.+rasagi to a.s.sess the situation and review whatever options anyone had to offer for doing something about it.

31.

It had been a long time since Zambendorf had seen real stars.

He and his team were a.s.signed two places at the conference aboard thes.h.i.+rasagi. He took Abaquaan with him. A NASO surface shuttle carried them up from Genoa Base along with deputations from the various other groups that had remained on t.i.tan after theOrion 's departure. Mackeson and a half dozen of his officers represented NASO, while Weinerbaum and three colleagues went on behalf ofthe professional scientists. Dave Crookes and John Webster were elected as spokesmen for the mix of engineers, technicians, and others from the various private laboratories and corporations. Colonel Short attended as senior officer of the military force, along with the commanders of the British and French detachments subordinate to him.

n.o.body in charge, of course, thought to include the Taloids, whose home the war was being fought over and whose habitat was at that moment being seized. Zambendorf suggested it but was told it was impracticable because Taloids couldn't be accommodated inside thes.h.i.+rasagi. When he pointed out that they could partic.i.p.ate remotely via a communications link into Camelot-a device he had used himself more than once-the answer came back that there would be no point, since it was all technical and the Taloids wouldn't understand what was going on.

Like theOrion, thes.h.i.+rasagi used pulsed inertial fusion propulsion reacting on magnetic fields generated in an open-frame thrust chamber. The rest of the vessel forward of the radiation s.h.i.+eld consisted of a number of modules interconnected by tubular and lattice beams, none of which contained a single area of regular living s.p.a.ce large enough to house the gathering comfortably. Therefore, the conference took place in a hastily adapted cargo hold that had been freed up by the transfer of supplies and materiel down to the base the j.a.panese were building at Padua City.

Yak.u.mo, tall and broad-shouldered, sporting a droopy Pancho Villa-style mustache and wearing the indigo blue of the j.a.panese s.p.a.ce Arm, sat in the center of a panel of his officers and staff on a slightly raised dais. The delegates from the surface installation filled the rest of the s.p.a.ce, using an a.s.sortment of tables and chairs. A mild spin superimposed on thes.h.i.+rasagi 's freefall trajectory separated "up" from "down" and afforded a modic.u.m of dignity appropriate to the occasion.

Yak.u.mo opened with a short welcoming speech and introductions, followed by a reminder-as if any were needed-of what had brought them all together. Then Harold Mackeson a.s.sumed the task of summarizing to the a.s.sembly the events that had brought about the current situation, as well as anyone could reconstruct them. He did this partly to give the audience the benefit of his nonspecialist vantage point, partly in acknowledgment of his own overall technical responsibility, and partly to spare Weinerbaum the embarra.s.sment of having the proceedings turned into a private confessional.

Yak.u.mo listened expressionlessly until the Englishman was through. Then, when Mackeson finally set aside his notes and looked up, Yak.u.mo slapped the tabletop in front of him in a slow, soundless motion and laid it all to rest with the simple rejoinder "So." It was his way of endorsing Mackeson's unspoken decision that recriminations and blame could wait until later. They were all in enough trouble as things were without letting strife among themselves add to the burden.

Yak.u.mo repeated the main point that had emerged from it all. "The original belief was that these aliens were merely cooperating in delaying theOrion launch in order to frustrate the military operation. It is now clear that we were deceived and that their true aims were much more all along. Dr. Weinerbaum?"

"So it would appear," Weinerbaum agreed miserably.

A woman sitting beside Yak.u.mo elaborated. "Instead, they've injected a self-propagating code into the Earthnet to bring downall systems."

"With what objective?" Colonel Short asked.

The scientist made a face and showed her palms. "It can only be to reduce Earth to a primitive condition comparable to that of the prenetwork era. It will make Earth incapable of projecting any influence beyond its own vicinity, let alone as far away as t.i.tan."

Yak.u.mo leaned back and surveyed the room. "It seems that Earth has become the victim of the strangest form of attack ever," he concluded. "An alien software virus that infects the planetary electronic organism in the same way a molecular virus invades the corporal chemical organism . . ." He paused for a moment to let the suggestion register, then asked, "For what purpose?" He looked around invitingly.

There were no responses. "Dr. Weinerbaum?"

Weinerbaum just shook his head.

"Apparently n.o.body knows," the woman scientist observed.Another of the j.a.panese spoke up. "Well, obviously to be left on their own and in full control here.

The aliens want control of t.i.tan's capabilities themselves."

"Well, maybe, but they won't be left quite on their own, will they?" Harold Mackeson reminded everybody. "We'restill here. Where does everybody up in this s.h.i.+p and down on the surface figure in these aliens' plans?"

"We don't," somebody answered simply.

"Any more than the Taloids," another voice added.

"We are currently evaluating the logistics of getting everybody back to Earth," the chief engineering officer of thes.h.i.+rasagi said. "It should be possible by a comfortable margin, and we can recompute a return course without help from Osaka."

"And then what?" Colonel Short asked.

The engineering chief looked taken by surprise. "I'm not sure I understand the question. I said I'm confident that we can get you all back to Earth, Colonel."

Short nodded. "I know you did. And I said, 'Then what?' " He glanced around briefly, then explained. "Okay, so we go home. And, like somebody just said, we leave them in monopoly control of everything out here at t.i.tan." He shrugged as if the rest were too obvious. "How long until they come after us? And with what? There's enough down there for them to turn this whole moon into a production line for weapons we probably can't even imagine. h.e.l.l, isn't that what the whole thing was supposed to be in the first place, before it got all screwed up? And like somebody else just said, they've already put us back in the Stone Age to the point where Earth couldn't defend itself against an attack of school buses. So, like I said, after we're all back home and they've had time to get their act together and come after us . . . then what?"

It was the first time most of those present had fully realized what it all added up to.

People looked at each other with strained faces, muttering and shaking their heads. As the initial reactions subsided, Yak.u.mo's gaze scanned the room, finally singling out Zambendorf and Abaquaan.

"We have two gentlemen here of very different talents from most of the people present," he said.

Zambendorf blinked and stared back in surprise-privately he had been amazed even to have been invited up there at all. Yak.u.mo went on. "You seem to possess a remarkable instinct for understanding alien minds and how to get through to them, Herr Zambendorf." The room fell silent with curiosity.

"I have had some success," Zambendorf replied. Normally he would have capitalized on the moment somehow and seized the opportunity to buff up his image a little, but this just wasn't the time.

"At the time of the landings from theOrion, I believe it was you who first established meaningful communication with the Taloids," Yak.u.mo said.

"I . . . played a lucky hunch or two," Zambendorf suggested.

"But it was before the experts managed to achieve anything," Yak.u.mo went on. "Do I take it that their hunches were not so lucky?"

"Er, everyone has their off days, I suppose."

"Well, a lot of people seem to have been having some serious off days lately," Yak.u.mo said. In the front row facing him, Weinerbaum looked ill. Yak.u.mo briefly raised some papers he had picked up from the table. "But it was yourself again, Herr Zambendorf, who not only deduced the existence of these latest aliens while being denied access to all the pertinent information but saw through their true designs before the experts so much as suspected them."

"Um, yes. Yes, I guess we-my colleagues all contributed . . . I guess we did," Zambendorf agreed slowly.

"So, another lucky hunch? Extraordinary."

The silence seemed to drag. "Perhaps alien natures aren't so different from human nature when you get to the bottom of it. And understanding human nature is my business," Zambendorf offered.

"Exactly."Zambendorf became aware of Yak.u.mo's eyes fixed on him pointedly. He glanced quickly from side to side, unsure if he might have missed something. "I'm sorry," he said, looking back at the mission chief. "What more do you want me to say?"

"Say?" Yak.u.mo repeated. "I don't want you tosay anything. Twice now, when it comes to dealing with aliens, you have shown an amazing ability to come up with the right answers when the experts have got it wrong. And this time the experts have screwed up royally. What I'm waiting for, Herr Zambendorf, is to know what you're going todo. "

But all that Zambendorf could do-just at that moment, anyway-was stare back, gla.s.sy-eyed.

For once in his life he found himself truly baffled.

32.

Sarvik had thought he'd seen everything that naive trust had to offer. But the ease with which Weinerbaum had bought the fellow-seekers-after-truth line, and his readiness to give access to the Earthnet, had surpa.s.sed all of it. Earth was now quarantined for a comfortably long time and could be dealt with at leisure. Meanwhile, the Borijans were free to concentrate on getting t.i.tan organized.

At first the other Borijans had been skeptical of Sarvik's accounts to them of his initial conversations with the Terrans. n.o.body could be that credulous, they had said, which had led them to suspect that Sarvik was setting them up for something. But they believed him later, when they got a chance to use the interface themselves.

Their suspicions made Sarvik despair. Back on Turle it had been no more than healthily prudent to be suspicious of another's motives. But among the last dozen of their kind a million years after their civilization had ended, with a new world to build and enormous shared problems to overcome, he'd hoped that more constructive att.i.tudes might have prevailed. Perhaps he had erred in his judgment of who had been worthy to bring with him.

He left that line of thought to be picked up again another time as his consciousness expanded to accommodate more incoming data channels, and the difficulties of trying to integrate his multiple simultaneous perceptions intensified. The area of surface geography that had become "him" now covered about four acres and contained an electronics a.s.sembly and wiring line that he "saw" from monitor cameras mounted at different vantage points, "felt" through a variety of position and motion sensors distributed through the machines and transfer operations, and "read" from the outputs of subprocessors controlling the manufacturing process. All this had become his new sensory system.

It had been obvious that the Terrans would retaliate when they discovered that the whole Earthnet was going down. So, by the time Weinerbaum threatened to contain the Borijans by isolating the hardware that was hosting them, Sarvik and the others had already escaped into the general t.i.tanwide network, leaving copies of themselves behind to occupy the Terrans. Since then, Sarvik had been learning to function in the strange new environment of the surface. He had pretty much gotten the knack of fusing the mosaic of scattered input impressions into a coherent whole and was learning to manipulate the machines and processes that for the present const.i.tuted his being. The next step would be to clear away some of the chaotically evolved jungle and reorganize it to producing purpose-designed bodies along the lines that had been envisaged on Turle.

But in addition to Sarvik's computing know-how, that project would need the Farworlds people's expertise in laying out manufacturing lines and Robocon's knowledge of detailed machine design. Getting very much further would therefore require reestablis.h.i.+ng contact with the others. To do that, he would have to learn how to explore his surroundings and move around.

The electronics line fed into an area where the circuit a.s.semblies were fitted into racks; the racks were mounted in metal frames that then went into cabinets. The cabinets and racking came from a metalworking facility in the opposite direction from the electronics line. One type of mounting frame made here came with four drilled holes, one at each corner of a facing f.l.a.n.g.e. Sarvik concentrated hisawareness on the drilling operation and experienced the curious sensation of reading the head-positioning digitizers, feeling the speed and pressure feedbacks, and watching the process through an imager, all as parts of a single, unified perception. Out of curiosity he tried moving the drill head by an effort of will to a normally blank area of metal halfway along one side of the f.l.a.n.g.e. The system responded, and he discovered a distinct satisfaction in making it drill two additional holes.

A small beginning, Sarvik told himself. But a beginning.

Sarvik soon found that he could move his center point of attention within his domain of awareness, somewhat like the focal point of a visual field. After some experimenting, he began concentrating on the external signals arriving at the periphery, learning to discern form and meaning in the patterns generated by the things going on around him. As his consciousness adapted more to its new, extended realm, it learned to construct visual mappings of the ent.i.ties and processes making up the surrounding electronic landscape.

It was a mysterious landscape of geometric shapes in colored light appearing and vanis.h.i.+ng, program trees pulsing in changing configurations against hillsides of permanent command structures standing solid and dark. Data streams merged and looped in sparkling torrents to join slowly moving tides, and message packets sailed over like birds, carrying snippets of information from somewhere afar or reports being logged to some distant destination. And there were stranger forms, too, that moved purposefully among it all, able to combine together on occasions and then to separate again, preserving their integrity and ident.i.ties. Sarvik perceived them as strange animal forms upon the landscape. There was as much life, he realized, inhabiting the invisible software networks of t.i.tan's forests as there were freely mobile forms roaming it physically.

He found that by concentrating his faculties at a point on his containing boundary, he could extend it in that direction; at the same time, he lost a part of his awareness from the opposite side. In effect, he had moved himself a short distance. With practice, he developed this knack into an ability to "flow" at will within the net, sometimes in a gradual progression, sometimes in leaps, depending on the nature of the electronic terrain. Thus, he was able to explore and move himself about t.i.tan's surface-and to do so, he discovered, with astonis.h.i.+ng speed.

It didn't take him too long after that to find another of his kind, which had been his objective. He saw it coming toward him along a ravine of flickering orange and blue latticed sides and a floor of rectangular pools sitting among low pink walls that went in all directions like a maze. At intervals, wide, green trunklike cylinders rose vertically and converged toward infinity far overhead. The figure was on a kind of raft being carried along on a swiftly moving stream of colors that followed the middle of the ravine.

Sarvik didn't know for sure what, in the peculiar transform s.p.a.ce he was now living in, a data set representing a Borijan ought to look like. But this ent.i.ty was more complex than any of the autonomous living forms he'd seen previously, and it resembled the parts of his own extension that appeared within his field of view, being formed from wire-frame sections connected by filaments, the whole vaguely suggesting an aggregation of cylinders connected by spheres. What else could it be?

The creature had also evidently seen him. It stepped off the raft, which promptly dissolved away into the stream, and approached. Sarvik slackened his pace as he drew nearer. The two of them went into a slow, circling motion around each other, keeping their distance, moving between the pink walls in a wide s.p.a.ce among the green trunks. Sarvik had never tried communicating in his new form, since there had been n.o.body to communicate with after his exit from Weinerbaum's lab. He concentrated on directing the same faculty of projection that enabled him to move himself and endeavored to impress upon it the thought "Borijan?" And immediately he knew, as when one heard one's own voice, that somehow it worked.

"Yes," came the reply.

The two figures ceased circling one another and relaxed visibly. Sarvik stepped forward; the other moved to meet him."The unsuspected world within a world of t.i.tan," the other said.

"It's . . . a strange place," Sarvik replied.

"Takes some getting used to."

"I have to be impolite," Sarvik said. "I don't know how to recognize anyone in this form yet, probably any more than you do. Who are you?"

"Sarvik," the figure replied.

Sarvik froze, a composite of wire frames half-raised in a gesture of greeting. "That's not possible.I'm Sarv-"

And then he saw suddenly that it was very possible. Of course, fromhis point of view, it would have beenhe who had escaped from the lab and a copy who had been left there. And all the other copies that had been written out into the net as a precaution would think the same thing. Did that meanhe was a copy? He wasn't even sure if the term meant anything anymore.

"Oh. I see. I must be the first one you've b.u.mped into," the other Sarvik said.

"Er . . . yes."

"So you haven't talked with any of the others at all?"

"How could I? I've just told you that you're the first one of us I've met in here."

Sarvik Two gestured to indicate the stream rus.h.i.+ng along the middle of the ravine. "You can tap into the long-range communications channels. It's a bit more tricky than coordinating local functions but not so bad when you get used to it. It sounds as if you've been out of things. We're spread out all over t.i.tan. The plans are moving right along to get sites cleared for proper factories to make bodies. There's another tentative design worked out, and the Indrigons have already reprogrammed some of the native machines to produce parts."

All that already? It didn't seem possible. And then Sarvik One caught Sarvik Two's use of the plural. "What do you mean, Indrigons?" he queried. "Who is spread out all over t.i.tan? How many of us are you talking about?"

"Sixty-eight at the last count, but more keep turning up-like you," Sarvik Two told him. "There's five of us-six now-along with four Kalazins, half a dozen Indrigons . . . I'm not sure offhand how many of each of the rest. We'll have to get you into one of the design groups. Everybody will be getting together somewhere for a review conference shortly. Distance is no object, as you've probably found out."

Sarvik One listened in a daze. When the novelty wore off, the compulsive Borijan antagonism that had shown itself briefly when they had first been reactivated would come to the surface again. Only, instead of just one of each of them for the others to conspire against, there would be dozens!

33.

Mordran couldn't understand it. He had lived in this part of Kroaxia for almost two hundred brights, and he didn't know how many times he had taken this route into Perga.s.sos. He knew every machining center, welding line, and a.s.sembly station along the way as well as he knew the hydrocarbon fractionaters in his own kitchen garden. And yet on this trip he was continually getting lost. Time and again he would stop, puzzled, to stand rubbing his carbon-blacked chin and radiating a frown from his facial thermal patterns while he surveyed the way ahead and then announce, "No. This in't a b.l.o.o.d.y right, either. Some guide I turned out ter be, din't I? We'll 'ave ter go back a bit an' try it another way. I don't know what's 'appenin'. I've never seen owt like this before."

Whole parts of the forest seemed to be changing. The forest was always changing itself, of course, but the changes had always been scattered and gradual. As one expression of life was dying here, another grew there, but always with an overall continuity that the robeing sense of time, progressing naturally from bright to bright, could a.s.similate.But what was happening now was different. In one place they'd come to, the trail ended at a wall of uprooted pylons, crushed girders, piled-up casings, and debris of every kind, where a whole swath had been leveled and everything in it just torn up and pushed aside. In another, death had descended everywhere. Everything, even the river, stood silent and idle, with only screw extractors and rivet shavers buzzing in the undergrowth to break the stillness. Mordran had never before seen whole areas affected in that way.

They came to an a.s.sembly and testing plant, modest in scale, where Mordran said smaller-size animals of various kinds had been coming to life for as long as he could remember. But now all that had ceased, leaving partly completed animals lying discarded in heaps all over the place. Around the plant, squads of retoolers and refitters scurried and chattered, modifying the a.s.sembly machines to new configurations. At the same time, ferocious-looking lunge drills and laser spitters patrolled the boundary to keep inquisitive forest dwellers at bay. They were intimidating enough to keep Rex and Duke- stalwart companions by this time-well back.

"Never in all my twelve-brights of studying the world of nature have I seen machines of the likes that are starting to take shape there, Thirg," Brongyd said as they stood watching from a safe distance.

"The strangeness is not simply that they are new machines. But their whole layouts and growth sequences are of a kind unknown to me. It is as if they are of another world-conceived by the mind of a different Lifemaker."

"A right caper this is turnin' out t' be," Mordran declared. "Now I'm beginnin' ter wonder if I'll be able ter find me own way back."

Eventually the trail they had been following came out of a spray-painting ravine to join the road into Perga.s.sos. But instead of the deserted track Mordran had promised, they found the way filled with a slow procession of frightened-looking Kroaxians heading toward the city. They had as much of their possessions as they could bring with them, some riding in loaded wagons, others pus.h.i.+ng carts or leading pack animals, many just carrying bundles.

Thirg stopped a worob in a wheelskin bonnet and wire shawl, one of a group following a heavily laden wagon. "Where are you from?" he asked her.

"Kirtenzhal. The village back fifteen leagues yon."

"Why is everybody leaving?"

She looked at him with the hostility that fear, fatigue, and resentfulness that another's security instilled. "Leaving? Leaving where? The village isn't there anymore."

"Why? What happened?"