The Immortality Option Part 24

Yak.u.mo's hands waved briefly in the foreground on the screen. "How can they know which centers to go for when it's as much as we can do to identify them with all our equipment? The only thing the Taloids could do is attack everything indiscriminately. But that would destroy the environment that also supports them." Yak.u.mo looked out of the screen, waiting for a few seconds, but there was nothing more Zambendorf could add. Yak.u.mo went on. "Inciting the Taloids into provoking the Asterians to retaliate would probably be the fastest way to make sure that the Taloids do get wiped out. But if we leave, then there's the possibility that they and the Asterians will find their own balance of compromise."

"As master and slave," Zambendorf said. "Exactly what we were trying to save them from."

Yak.u.mo gave a barely perceptible shrug. "Maybe. But better than being exterminated. Slaves may one day be freed. I am sorry, Herr Zambendorf. I understand your sentiments, and I share them. But my duty is clear. The order stands. Evacuation of the surface must be completed in five days."

Zambendorf stared down at his hands, hesitating for a moment, then looked back up at the screen.

"Just one more thing. I talked about this with my team, and we came to the conclusion that the governments on Earth would see one last option. Forget all the sophisticated computers and mission scheduling: stage a last-fling, seat-of-the-pants bid using theOrion. Load it up with all the nuclear weapons it can carry, send it back to take out everything on t.i.tan, and just hope that the Asterians don't come after us before it gets here. Is that what this evacuation is really all about? Is it what they've decided?"

Yak.u.mo remained expressionless. "I only know my orders, Herr Zambendorf," he replied. "Of course, I must agree that the authorities are unlikely not to have considered such an option."

Zambendorf left the communications section and made his way leadenly back to the mess area, where the rest of the team was gathered. His expression left no need for anyone to ask the outcome. But they had all expected as much.

"They're going to do it if they can," Zambendorf said, sinking down onto one of the benches. "An all-out strike from theOrion. Total obliteration of everything on the surface."

"Everything?" Abaquaan repeated. "You mean the Taloids as well? Genoa, Arthur and his guys, all of them?"

"Where else are they gonna be?" Clarissa said laconically.

Thelma shook her head in a way that said it was too much to accept. "How can they?" she whispered. "This whole thing here that's been evolving for a million years . . . an entire machinebiosphere that has culminated in intelligent life."

"Not just intelligent life. Friends," Abaquaan put in.

Thelma nodded. "And it's unique. Nothing like it will ever happen again. How can we just . . . blow it out of existence?"

"Go and say it to Yak.u.mo," Zambendorf replied. "I just tried. He already knows all that. It doesn't make any difference."

"It's the way they have to think," Joe Fellburg said. "It's survival. If the Asterians get out, it could all happen the other way around."

Drew West pinched his lips dubiously. "Couldn't they give some kind of ultimatum first-if theOrion did manage to get here before the Asterians had built any s.h.i.+ps? Couldn't they tune into the system again and say something like, 'Look, we're up here with all these bombs, and we can take you out. So let's talk and figure out some way of making this work for all of us'?" He looked around the group and gestured appealingly. "h.e.l.l, we're talking about the whole solar system, guys. It's not as if we're short on room."

"Our people wouldn't buy it," Fellburg said. "You've seen the Asterians' ideas of a deal. n.o.body's gonna trust 'em now."

"Just flatten the whole works and be safe," Thelma concluded cynically.

Clarissa raised her eyebrows resignedly behind her b.u.t.terfly spectacles. "That's how they're gonna see it."

"That's the business they're in," Fellburg said.

A long silence dragged while they all pondered how to raise the one obvious thing remaining that was weighing on all their minds. Finally Drew West voiced it. "We can't just go," he said, looking around. "Somehow we have to break it to Arthur." Everyone looked at everyone else searchingly.

n.o.body immediately volunteered, but neither did anyone attempt any reason for dropping out.

"h.e.l.l, we'll all go," Zambendorf said. Which decided the issue.

He called O'Flynn in vehicles maintenance. "Mike, it's Karl here. Six of us want to go over to Arthur's. How are you fixed?"

"Ah, not too bad," the Irish voice replied. "It'll be murder tomorrow, when they start s.h.i.+pping everything and its brother from the remote sites, but we're all right for now. I can give you a small personnel transporter. Crew might be more of a problem, though, since Harold's got everyone on ch.o.r.es around the base. Could you drive it yourselves this time?"

Zambendorf looked inquiringly at Clarissa, the jet pilot. She returned a nod. "No problem, Mike,"

Zambendorf reported.

"Okay, I'll have one ready for you in an hour, say. And six suits."

"That would be fine," Zambendorf said.

They met Arthur with the two Taloid brothers, Galileo and Moses, in the same ice chamber, with its odd pseudovegetable shapes and plastic and metal wall designs, that Zambendorf had come to with his previous message of rea.s.surance. The difference was that this time he had nothing rea.s.suring to say.

He explained-as best he could in view of the translation difficulties and the Taloids' lack of any concept of what went on inside their own heads or any other kind of computer-that "spirit beings" from afar had invaded t.i.tan's forests and were taking over the reproductive machinery to create bodies in which they intended to a.s.sume a physical form.

The humans were using one of Weinerbaum's new, improved translator boxes that produced output in the form of transmissions to their suit radios. A visual indicator on the box showed that Moses was speaking. "Explains death-quiet that has come. Spirits rule forests. I no longer hear forests' songs."

Zambendorf frowned questioningly behind his faceplate, looking like a ghostly apparition in the light from a flashlamp on minimum beam, which to the Taloids was still like a floodlight."The radio sources," Thelma reminded him over the local intercom frequency. "The Asterians blocked them after they got rid of GENIUS."

"Oh, of course." Zambendorf nodded and continued what he had been saying. The s.h.i.+p from Earth with its military expedition would not be coming, he said. A conflict over t.i.tan's resources would not be to the Taloids' benefit. So the Terrans were returning to Earth. The spirits were the true creators of the life that inhabited t.i.tan. They and the Taloids belonged there naturally and would learn to live together.

The Terrans did not. It was an essentially true account, even if sweetened a little to be palatable. There was a long pause before Arthur's response came through.

"All Terrans will leave t.i.tan?"

Zambendorf swallowed and nodded his head. "Yes."

"And not return. Other s.h.i.+p will not come back, not even without soldiers?"

Zambendorf didn't even want to think about that. "Maybe in the future," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely.

"There is much uncertainty." Several of the Terran figures s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably.

"Will we meet Zambendorf and his friends again?" Arthur asked.

"It is very unlikely."

The translator showed a different symbol to indicate that Galileo was speaking. "What of learning and the sciences? We had just begun."

"You will continue to learn," Zambendorf said. He couldn't bring himself to tell them any more.

After all, there was a chance that things would work out as he was saying. The Asterians and the Taloids might manage to get along tolerably. Somight Terrans and Asterians, for that matter. It wasn't untrue to say that s.h.i.+ps from Earthcould return some day. Yak.u.mo hadn't actuallysaid that an all-out nuclear strike was being planned. It was pure conjecture on Zambendorf and the team's part. Although the number of times he was right in divining the intentions of others-especially when it came to logical, predictable minds like those of scientists, the military, and officialdom-was something that he didn't want to think about. And even if it was planned, that didn't mean that it would succeed or that there would still be any point to it three months from now, which was the time theOrion would need to make t.i.tan even if it departed immediately.

"That's all it needs, Karl." West's voice said on a local channel. "You don't have to spell out any more."

"Yeah, what's the point?" Fellburg asked.

"It's not your decision, Karl," Clarissa came in. "We've paid our respects, which was what we came for. There's nothing more we can do."

Kleippur had tried to follow the Wearer's explanation, but he was at a loss to understand why the Lumians seemed unable to combat these "spirits." It seemed all the more strange now that the Lumians who had wanted to reinstate Eskenderom had been thwarted once more, Kroaxia was solidly for Nogarech again, and all the nations of Robia were set to follow.

"What manner of spirits are these that the Lumians who fly from other worlds should flee without contest and abandon everything they have striven for?" he asked his companions in a worried voice.

"They appear in the forests yet are immaterial? I have never before heard Lumian language the likes of this."

"Nor I," Thirg replied. "Methinks we are due soon to find out." It had troubled him, too. This latest Lumian talk sounded more like the Lifemaker creed of old than the sciences of reasoned knowledge they had always advocated. Yet the friends he had believed and relied on now seemed powerless to oppose this new force and were leaving. The future seemed suddenly very bleak.

Groork could only look forward in dread to the prospect of a future without the Lumians. Twice now he had been saved from what had seemed an inescapable end, first by the Lumians and then by the "voice" that had called itself GENIUS. On both occasions he had been a witness to power that was effortlessly able to confound all that had once terrified him, and he had felt secure. But now GENIUS and the other voices had been silenced, and the Lumians were leaving-it seemed-in ignominy. Whatform of unknown, hostile new power, then, was this, able to vanquish both, that the robeings were being left to face alone?

Kleippur maintained his usual calm resolve. "We faced adversity alone before the Lumians came,"

he declared. "And if it is necessary, we shall do so again."

"Perhaps this new adversity shall prove the force needed to unite all of Robia," Thirg said, looking for a hopeful note. He turned to the Lumian translating plant. "One day maybe Robian s.h.i.+ps will come to Lumia. If we are not destined to meet again, perhaps our descendants shall."

In response to this, the Lumians were strangely reticent.

They all bade their farewells individually. Then the three Taloids escorted the visitors to a larger vault outside, where other Taloids were gathered whom the Terrans had gotten to know or had dealt with in one way or another. Arthur's advisers and scientists were there, including Em from military intelligence; Lancelot and his knights, who had brought Galileo out of Padua at the time of theOrion's arrival; Galileo's naturalist friend, Linnaeus, who had returned with him; and Leonardo, another of Galileo's fellow scientists from Padua. The Terrans exchanged farewells once again. Arthur made a speech that the translator delivered haltingly, and Zambendorf mustered a choking response, as short as he dared make it without the risk of sounding terse, which probably translated semicomprehensibly.

Then it was time to go.

Preceded by Fellburg lighting the way with the flash-lamp, the somber procession of six figures in their bulky, dome-headed suits, their escorts looking like huge upright insects in the shadows, wound its way through gloomy caverns and canyonlike pa.s.sageways to emerge finally in the forecourt where Clarissa had parked the transporter. The Terrans grouped by the door, and the Taloids closed around with final waved salutes and clumsy hand shakings between geniculated steel fingers and gauntleted hands.

And then an extraordinary thing happened. In the middle of the group of Taloids, Moses went suddenly rigid. He threw his head back and extended both arms upward to the heavens. The other Taloids moved back in alarm.

"Groork, what is it?" Arthur called across to him worriedly. "What ails thee thus?" But Groork made no response.

"Brother, what is it that you hear?" Thirg asked, recognizing the signs.

"The voices!" Groork exclaimed rapturously. "I hear the songs! The forests are singing again!"

From the translator box his announcement came through as "Machine surface song back." But it was enough. The Terrans looked at each other, startled.

"Tell me this can't mean what I think it means," Thelma whispered.

Abaquaan's mustache was quivering inside his helmet. "It's gone?" he said. "Whatever was blocking the radio sources has gone?"

"Gone?" Drew West repeated.

And then another voice came through to all of them on their a.s.signed emergency frequency from Genoa Base. "h.e.l.lo, base calling Zambendorf. Anybody there? Do you read?"

"Zambendorf here. I read," he answered.

"Got a call coming in for you, priority, from Weinerbaum at ES3. Relaying it through."

Weinerbaum's voice switched in straightaway. "Karl?"

"Yes?"

"The most amazing thing has just happened!" Weinerbaum's voice was excited, exuberant. It could mean only one thing.

Zambendorf's face creased into a smile behind his faceplate. "I know, Werner. Things are returning to normal, right? The Asterians are losing their hold."

"What?" Weinerbaum sounded mystified. "How could you possibly know that? We've only just worked it out here ourselves, with all the equipment at the monitoring center. How-""Oh, Werner, don't you understandyet ?" Zambendorf scoffed, forcing a despairing tone. "I have no need of such crude methods."

Weinerbaum's sigh came over the connection audibly. "Karl, for once cut out that clowning. Get yourself out here as quickly as you can. I've asked base for a flyer. Mick's getting one readied for you right now."

44.

O'Flynn had the flyer waiting by the time the transporter arrived back at Genoa Base. Zambendorf and all his team piled in, along with Crookes, and the flyer took off straightaway. At ES3 they joined Weinerbaum and his scientists in the monitoring center. By then Weinerbaum was able to confirm that the situation was as it had seemed when he had called Zambendorf: apart from the physical damage caused in the course of the alien software war, conditions everywhere were returning to normal. All traces of the Asterians had vanished.

"Ironically, I think Cyril was absolutely right in what he said about the power of evolutionary systems," Weinerbaum told them while they were still finding room for themselves amid the crush of equipment and other bodies. "This whole living, machine surface of t.i.tan is an evolutionary system. Ever since the first factory-robot organisms, or whatever first started it all, began spreading a million years ago, one of the most important functions they would have to learn would be to recognize their own kind and protect it from all that was foreign."

"Like regular biological antibodies," Thelma put in.

Weinerbaum nodded. "Precisely so. And if what I'm thinking is correct, as these organisms grew together into the present, surface-wide ecosystem, their self-protection codes evolved into complex electronic immune systems."

Zambendorf's mouth opened in a silent "Ah!" as he suddenly saw the point Weinerbaum was coming to. "Yes. I think I know what you're going to say."

Weinerbaum looked a little piqued. "Please, Karl, thisis serious. I thought we'd agreed to cut all that out."

Zambendorf frowned in surprise and then shook his head in a protest of innocence. "No, I was being straight . . . honestly. You were going to say that the business between GENIUS and the Asterians triggered the defenses somehow."

Weinerbaum nodded. "Yes. The crescendo of alien codings at war with one another everywhere caused the system to mobilize antibody codes of its own to go out and hunt down anything that didn't belong."

"Which meant anything alien," Fellburg said. "It attacked the Asterians."

Weinerbaum nodded once again. "The ultimate irony was Cyril's telling us how design could never subst.i.tute for the inherent ruggedness that evolution confers. Because the codes the Asterians created to transport themselves were just that: designed, not evolved. And they were unable to withstand the defenses that had resulted from the million years of high-pressure evolution that occurred here on t.i.tan."

There was a short silence while the new arrivals absorbed the full meaning of it. Their faces showed the elation that was to be expected yet at the same time uncertainty. Finally Abaquaan asked for all of them, "So . . . is that it, now? Is there any chance that they can come back?"

Weinerbaum shook his head. "No, I don't think so, Otto." He indicated the surroundings briefly with a wave. "We've got lines into what were some of the most active centers. The codes haven't just been inactivated-they're destroyed. 'Digested,' if you will. That's what antibodies do. Nothing is going to restore them again. It would be like trying to put cows back together from cheese."

Zambendorf glanced cautiously around the room, as if just checking one last time to make sure he had gotten it right. "You're saying that's it? It's over?" The scientists nodded back with encouraging grinsin a way that said he'd better believe it.

"Apart from having one h.e.l.l of a mess to be sorted out on Earth, yes, it would appear so,"

Weinerbaum confirmed.

Zambendorf's people looked at one another with dazed expressions. Everything appeared to have worked out. The Asterian threat was gone, it seemed, permanently. The designs of the neocolonialists to turn t.i.tan into a manufacturing plantation had been foiled. Arthur would be free to continue developing his new republic without exploitation and interference. The evacuation of t.i.tan could be called off, and with the alien stranglehold gone, a regular exchange of traffic with Earth could resume when theOrion became operable.

"Say, well, waddya know!" Fellburg exclaimed as it all finally sank in. He held up an open palm.

"Right on!" Abaquaan slapped a hand into it enthusiastically.