Chapter 21
Admiral's Bridge, CVS-12 “USS Shiloh”, Elpis System.
"Admiral, Commander Niemczyk here. SEAL Team Two are back in the MOL. It's grim Sir, it looks like they've been chemically lobotomized. They're having to work their hardest just to stay awake. We had to take their guns away from them, too much risk of an accidental discharge."
"That can't have been easy Commander."
"That's what's so scary Admiral, it was. Their reaction time is measured in minutes. We just took them out of their hands. We've got them in the sick bay now. Doctor Gan is running a full panel on them, blood everything, to see if we can find what's happened. Sir, there's SEAL Teams Four and Six down there, they seem to be fine at the moment but we've got to get them up out of there. Problem is, we're a small facility and we're full. We can't cope with anybody more. And Sir, the Colonists? Any word on them."
"We've established contact with the aliens. For want of anything better to call them, we’ve dubbed them the Nutkins. You’ll see why when we send you pictures. We're trying to build a language bank up so we can talk. As soon as we can communicate properly, we'll try and find out. We're feeling our way out here, the last thing we want to do is put another foot wrong."
"Speaking as the commander of a defenseless, unprotected scientific station staffed by unarmed civilians and stuffed full of casualties, Sir, I commend that approach. MOL Out."
"Cheeky bastard. " Theodore growled, a little theatrically. In fact, the MOL commander was facing an impossible situation and coping with it magnificently. The trouble was the fleet couldn't get any help to him; if what had hit the SEALs and the Colonists was anything contagious, the MOL would have to remain in quarantine. "Patch me through to Phaedra. Thank you, Mollins, how are you getting along with establishing contact?"
There was a buzz, then the reply came though. "Very well Sir, we've got a common vocabulary now and our computers can translate as long as everybody keeps it simple. Use an unknown word and everything falls apart until we sort out what was meant. Keeping it simple really is essential though."
"What's your feel for the Nutkins?"
"They're intelligent, obviously. I think they're being reasonably honest in the sense they're not telling us anything untrue, not yet anyway. Of course, there's a lot they're not saying just as we're keeping a lot of things wrapped up."
"Very good. You have the experience, your team can continue to be the contact point. Have we advanced enough to find out what has happened to our colonists?"
"I think so Sir. And, Sir, I think we should consider unmasking the rest of our ships. It could be considered bad faith or cowardice, any number of wrong impressions, to keep them hidden."
"I'll take that under advisement. Hint that there are more of us here, see what the reaction is. If it’s positive, we'll come out."
"Very good Sir."
EC-12D Snarler Electronic Warfare Craft "Phaedra', Drifting, Elpis Star System
"Right here we go." Mollins seated himself before the webcam again. Now the system was hooked up to transmit speech as well, the words being run through a computer and translated. Mollins had understated the need for simplicity, it was very necessary to speak carefully to avoid breaking the translation program. Even simple phrases took time to get over, punctuated by anguished bleeps as the computer screamed for help. "My commander spoke."
"On the big ship behind the fifth planet?" The Nutkin's voice was amused and his expression more so. It didn’t need the computer to translate the delighted "Got You" grin on his face.
"Yes. How did you see it?"
"We did not. Our mother ship did. Was difficult. You good at not being seen. They saw, warned us."
"Is your mother ship coming?"
"Yes. Will not arrive for…" There was an embarrassed silence as the computers tried to translate. Everybody waited patiently; the events of the last few hours had shown that some communication was better than none. "Some time. We must agree to measure time. More important thing to talk on. Need help."
"What can we do?"
"Big number your people my ship. More than two hundreds. All very sick some are hurt all are…." There was another pause while the computer tried to cope. "….they eat things to make them wrong."
"Poisoned. They ate things on the planet that poisoned them?"
"Thank you. Poisoned. We are treating them as we can. My ship is a scout ship only it is small. Too many of your people. Number too big for us. Can your big ship take them in? If not, we do what we can until our mother ship comes. Big ship your mother ship?"
"We call it an aircraft carrier." That threw the computer into hysterics and it ground to a halt completely. While it tried to sort itself out with the aid of the tech staffs on both ships, a thought struck Mollins. "Since we are to talk together, your name is?"
The face on the screen beamed broadly, still, Mollins noted, keeping the teeth firmly covered. "My name is Sharisma. My mother's name is Ashalash. I command this ship so I am Commander Sharisma."
"Thank you. My name is Dirk family name is Mollins. Your families are named after mothers?"
"Of course, all female knows she is mother, male only think he is the father."
"Our families named after father."
Commander Sharisma repeated the remark and Phaedra's crew heard laughter in the background. Sharisma turned back to the screen, his large eyes merry. "Female one of crew say you very trusting species. Is this why you like to stay not seen?"
Phaedra's crew cracked up laughing. "Perhaps. I will speak to my commander, ask him about taking our people."
Mollins leaned back in his seat and sighed. It was a strain speaking like this, having to watch every word that was said. The Nutkins didn't make it any easier, they looked and acted very friendly and he had to remind himself that he didn't really know anything about them. It was far too easy to be taken in by surface appearances. It was beginning to look like that was what had happened down on Armstrong. The Nutkins weren't what they appeared to be, that was obvious. When he had first switched to audio transmission, he'd expected them to have high, squeaky, chittering voices like a cartoon squirrel. In fact, their voices were pitched low and deep. It made sense of course, if they were man-sized but squirrel proportioned, their chests would be larger and their necks thicker than a human. Size made for lower frequency, which would explain why they used low-frequency radio. An area mostly abandoned by humans centuries ago.
"Put me through to Shiloh, don't bother about making it a secure link. CAG? Mollins here Sir. The Nutkins know you're there, I suggest we drop the caution and come out into the open."
"How did that ship spot us? Did they give any hint?" Lazaruski's voice was concerned. If the Nutkins had spotted a ship behind a planet and in full EMCON, they had sensors that were generations beyond anything that Earth could match.
"They didn't, Sir, their mother ship did. She must be outside the system and she's not due to arrive for some time. I guess they have a view the scout ship here doesn't. Sir, important thing. They have our colonists on board, they say they're very sick and need treatment and don't have the facilities to do the job properly. They want to know if we can take them back."
There was a minute or two's silence. Mollins could sense the conversations going on in the background. Eventually, Lazaruski's voice returned. "We don't leave our people behind, ever. We're clearing our sickbays now. Tell the Nutkins the dimensions of our flight deck and the elevators and ask them if their shuttles can land there. Or we can send shuttles over to them if they prefer. And, Mollins, tell them that we are very grateful for their rescue of our people."
Hangar Deck, CVS-12 “USS Shiloh”, Elpis System.
Form followed function, an invariable rule. One that the shuttle on Shiloh's hangar deck amply demonstrated. Science fiction films tended to have spacecraft shaped in strange unusual ways, like giant fish perhaps or in other ways that mimicked some aspect of animal life. The problems that such shapes would cause were left unmentioned of course. The Nutkin shuttle didn't look terribly unlike the Human ones parked on the hangar deck. It was different of course, the Nutkins seemed to use wider radius curves than the Earth designers and the shape of the nose was subtly different, more chisel-shaped as opposed to the screwdriver profile preferred by humans. The Nutkins went for vertical fins mounted on the sides of the rear fuselage and swept wings rather than the deltas with upswept tips that featured on human ships. Yet, the cumulative effect was of the same ship designed by somebody else rather than something completely alien.
The Nutkin shuttle pilot was completely alien. He (Lazaruski assumed it was a he) bounded down the ramp from the cockpit with what could only be described as glee, excited and looking around to see as much as possible. It took Lazaruski back to his long-lost youth when he'd been visiting a large city for the first time. Suddenly he realized that, different species, different galaxies, untold distance apart, he knew this pilot. A long, long time ago, he'd been him. A young pilot, full of enthusiasm and life, ready to seize the world and all that it contained.
"Welcome on board." Lazaruski spoke, then there was a pause while the computer on his belt translated and repeated the words in a fair approximation of Lazaruski's voice and accent. The alien replied and there was another brief delay while the belt computer translated. Both Lazaruski and the Nutkin found themselves staring at the box as if that would make it work faster. The capabilities of the computer translation were expanding exponentially as the systems absorbed equivalent words from both languages.
"Thank you for allowing us to visit your home." Was that an accurate translation Lazaruski wondered? He noticed the Nutkin was blinking uncomfortable. The reason clicked in and he cursed himself for stupidity and discourtesy. Large eyes meant adaption to low light conditions, probably the Nutkins were nocturnal, in part at least. The hangar was brilliantly lit for work on the craft it contained. He snapped out a series of orders and a Lieutenant ran off to deal with the matter.
"Warning, hangar lights dimming now." The alert boomed around the deck as the lights dropped down to half intensity. That made the area softly lit and any serious work would be left to later.
"Thank you. That was most ….." there was a hesitation while the translation box failed for a moment and the Nutkin tried other words. Eventually the computer came out with a "good act" in the end.
"I am sorry, I should have thought of it earlier."
The Nutkin beamed, as always with the closed-mouth grin that was quickly becoming a Nutkin trademark. "Not a problem. I am Pilot Khalshimar let us get your people to your doctors. We have done the best we can but they are very sick."
"Pilot Lazaruski." No time to pull rank Lazaruski thought. And I'm not lying, above everything else I am a fighter pilot.
Khalshimar spoke into a transceiver and the tail ramp on the Nutkin shuttle dropped. That was like Earth ships as well and their doctors wore white coats. Even the gurneys carrying the patients were similar to the earth design, differently proportioned and laid out but function had decided form again. Even the IV bags looked similar. Over to one side Doctor Stens and his medical crew moved quickly forward to look at the Colonists. One of the Nutkins in the back of the shuttle was obviously their doctor and he leapt down the ramp followed by what were obviously his assistants. He and Doctor Stens made straight for each other and started exchanging gestures and clipboards. It had always been assumed that certain specialties had a private understanding that transcended mere language. Now it appeared that the same private understanding transcended species barriers as well.
"Very sure of themselves doctors yes." Khalshimar's voice was slightly scornful.
"Too sure of themselves." Lazaruski agreed, it never occurring to either of them that people said the same things about fighter pilots.
Khalshimar looked around the hangar deck that was filling with people as the casualties were unloaded. "Your up-down system is very clever when we land we must evacuate the whole hangar." He thought for a second. "You have six of these, twenty five ships in each bay?"
Lazaruski nodded. "We divide things up so that if there is an accident in one, we will not lose all."
The Nutkin nodded, then his eyes lit up. "And those are more of your ships." He looked at the four Wildcats parked at one end of the bay with longing in his eyes. Lazaruski knew that look as well, he could imagine it on his own face when he'd first seen one of the huge American bombers centuries before. He couldn't be discourteous, not to a fellow-pilot.
"Those are a type we call Wildcats." The translation computer bleeped on Wildcat and Lazaruski pressed the override that told the box to transit without translating the word. "Would you like to sit in one?"
"Yes very much." Khalshimar's voice was awed. Lazaruski lead him down the hangar to where the fighters were parked. One already had its cockpit open and a set of steps by the cockpit. The Nutkin glanced at Lazaruski then climbed up the steps. Climbing was easy for them, Lazaruski noted, the arms might be short and puny but the back legs were powerful. I know how your species fights my boy, Lazaruski thought to himself, Hang on with the arms and bring that back leg up in a disemboweling sweep. Bet you your strategy is the same when fighting with whole armies.
The Nutkin was already in the cockpit, looking around with interest. "Seat is uncomfortable for us, when you come to visit our home we shall have do something. Single seat, small, this is a hunter ship?"
"We call them fighters." The guy was sharp and Lazaruski was glad the cockpit displays were turned off. There wasn't anything significant he could learn without them.
"Ah thank you. Rear vision is not good. Ours is better there. What you do if somebody comes at you from behind?"
“We have tail sensors to warn us. If he's coming in fast, I would slow down using retros and turn tightly, one side or the other. He cannot follow me because of gee. Then I would reverse my turn and blast him with a deflection shot as he went past." As he spoke Lazaruski made the time-honored motions with his hands showing how he would execute the scissors. The computer beeped several times with words it did not understand but the two pilots ignored it. They understood each other perfectly.
"Interesting. I would make a barrel roll and come onto his tail that way. " Again, with the hand gestures and again the two pilots understood each other perfectly without needing the computer. Lazaruski saw Khalshimar's hands close up for the first time. They were almost humanlike but not quite. Smaller, with three central fingers and two thumbs, one either side of the finger group. As Khalshimar ran his hands over the controls, it was obvious his hands were at least as agile as a humans and probably a lot more so. Having two thumbs made for some very flexible grips.
"Please, you must visit our mother ship and you can sit in one of our fighters."
"Thank you, I would enjoy that."
Down on the deck, the crew chief looked up at the two pilots talking, their hands weaving in the mysterious gestures that described their trade. Fighter pilots, he thought, stuck-up arrogant SOBs all of them.
Nutkin Medical Shuttle, Hangar Deck, CVS-12 “USS Shiloh”, Elpis System.
"We brought 30 of your people this flight. We will bring the rest over as quickly as we can. These are the sicks the ones who need your help the most. Your youngers are stronger they will recover given time but your olders are not so strong. They will need help. We have put them on IVs to wash the poisons out of their systems. We found some IVs in the clinic on the planet and used them. Also we analyzed them, they are identical to ours, so when we ran out of yours we used ours. Not good but the best we could do.
"Doctor Rashamaron, we are all profoundly grateful for the efforts you and your staff have made for our people. If your efforts have left you short of supplies, can we offer to share ours with you? It is the least we can do. Perhaps you would like to see my facilities here?"
"We are short of IV fluid so your help there would be valued. Using your bags was no problem, the picture instructions were very clear. I think perhaps we may copy them. I would like to see your facilities yes but another time perhaps? When the transfer of patients is complete."
"Any time. Just tell me when. Have you any idea what caused this?"
That stopped the Nutkin Doctor dead in his tracks. "These people were poisoned by the…." Their translation computer broke down completely. It took a few minutes to get sorted out but eventually, with aid of a pad, pencils, and much handwaving, the translation was accomplished. "…. Sleepytree fruit. Do you not know how dangerous that planet is?"
Stens shook his head. "We knew the sleepytree fruit was a hallucinogenic narcotic of course, but our people avoid them. They wouldn't have eaten any."
"They did not have to. The local plant-eaters eat the fruit and most have evolved a defense against the poison. They can separate it and store it in the fatty tissue of their body. There it is safe until it is excreted. But if they are forced to take exercise…"
“Their bodies use the fat for energy, break it down and release a surge of the narcotic into their bodies." Stens voice was triumphant.
"That is so. Have you seen how slowly and carefully the animals move down there. They know if they use too much energy, they will go to sleep. Planteater meat is safe to eat only if every piece of fat is removed from it first. If somebody eats the fat of an animal down there, this" he gestured at the human patients "is what happens to them."
Stens looked at the emaciated, comatose settlers and shuddered. "Do you have problems telling your crew to avoid fat in their diets?"
Doctor Rashamaron sighed theatrically, sounding entirely human as he did so. "Of course. And do they ever listen? No, they prefer to have their blood turned to jelly and forced through pipes almost blocked." The two doctors laughed. Then Doctor Rashamaron nudged Stens and pointed to one of the gurneys where two nurses, one human, one Nutkin were working on a patient who was showing signs of distress. "Left to ourselves, we professionals can work together perfectly well. Is this not so."
Stens laughed again. It was already getting around that the Nutkins had a sharp sense of humor. "It is. And I hope very much that we can be friends."
"So do I Doctor Stens." Doctor Rashamaron spoke with transparent sincerity. "I very much hope our people will be very good friends."
2545 - Intersteller Highway - Not Finished
Re: 2545 - Intersteller Highway
Chapter 22
National Security Council Building, Washington DC
Naamah running was a sight rare enough to grab immediate attention. The sensible got out of the way immediately and the more cynical opened an office pool on which prominent personality was about to develop a strange, lingering, and ultimately fatal disease. She rounded a corner at full tilt, dodged a sandwich cart, and pushed through the door to The Seer's office. Lillith was standing by a filing cabinet, downloading information into it. She half-turned, one eyebrow raised at the rarity of the situation.
"Television. Now." Naamah barked as she shot past Lillith's desk. Sometimes the habits bred as a Canaanite Queen and then as a Byzantine court princess surfaced. She opened the inner door and half-entered, half-fell into The Seer's office. He looked up, anger at the intrusion fading as he realized who it was who had so unceremoniously barged into his inner sanctum. There were very few people who had that privilege and Naamah was one of them.
"Seer, get your television on. Channel Nine, right away." The Seer reached down and thumbed the controls built into the undersurface edge of his desk. High on the wall, what appeared to be a painting of a B-36 sitting on a runway with a B-70 taking off over it transformed itself into a television news studio feed.
"with rain overnight. And now, back to our main news item this afternoon. The Swedish astronomer and radical scientist, Bergmar Hellstrom, has claimed that humanity has made its first contact with intelligent life from another world – and that the news is not good. He claims to have received unimpeachable evidence that the aliens are highly aggressive and have already massacred an entire Colonization team deployed on a recently-discovered planet. He also claims that a SEAL team has been wiped out by the aliens, two more Teams are missing and that a naval task force is engaged in a desperate battle against the aliens. Apparently, local space stations are packed with the dead and wounded and are unable to keep up with the flow of casualties. Doctor Hellstrom, these are radical claims indeed. Can you support them?"
"Well, Greta, we have to understand that radio communications are not possible over the distances in question. Messages have to come back by courier and, of course, the Americans control all such communications. However, there are public-spirited people on the ships coming back from the war zone who are telling us what has happened……."
The Seer leaned forward and thumbed the communications button. "Lillith, honey, get me a list of all space ships that have landed on earth in the last 24 hours."
"………. can put together a picture of what has happened. I believe the colonists were wiped out by a powerful neutron beam radiation weapon that obliterated them from orbit. They landed teams who ambushed and wiped out our SEAL team…."
The interviewer's voice was incredulous "They ambushed a SEAL team?"
"Obviously their infantry have cloaking technology that masked their position. They probably have force shields as well to protect them from bullets, But that isn't the worst of it. This whole incident forces us to reinvestigate the Mossberg incident in which primitive, peaceful people were wiped out from space. Given the recent behavior of the aliens we have contacted, we must assume that they are the responsible party."
"Got that list boss. It's short, four SAC birds, three freighters, one liner. None went anywhere near Interstellar 88. Dido's holding the bag out there with everything basing out of Tai Ceti."
"Thanks, honey."
"……disputed."
"Yes it is Greta but I expect this news proves that those who doubted my assertions have some apologies to make. I proved quite conclusively that the missiles that destroyed Mossberg came through the portal and their evidence if we can call it that, that the asteroids were from 18 Scorpii's own asteroid belt was just a feeble effort to conceal the truth. Well, the people know now don't they."
"So you say Doctor. Thank you. And with that alarming news, we now move to local stories. Traffic on the beltway….
The red phone on The Seer's desk rang. "Seer here…. Yes, Mister Vice President. Already got it, Sir. Transmitting now." He pressed the paper Lillith had brought on to his telephone's screen and pressed 'transmit'. "There you are, sir. No, no truth at all. One of our people is head of administration of Tau Ceti with some of the rest of us there as well. Last we heard, everything was under control. Yes, a settler team has been hit but the preliminaries are that it was natural causes. Risk of the job. No Sir, absolutely not. If anything quite the reverse, we may owe them some serious favors."
"They've seen it up and the White House?"
"Of course honey. I really wish politicians wouldn't watch television. Or read newspapers come to that. The problem is, this story could run. It’s the old 'here there be monsters' bit. In the old days, the edges of the map were out of touch and people could tell strange stories and be believed. Modern communications ended all that. Now, we've got it back again. We're running a week behind the story here due to transit times." The Seer drummed his fingers. "I ought to get out there."
"No boss." Lillith and Naamah spoke in unison and then looked at each other with surprise. There was a second's backing and filling then Naamah took over. "Dido's just getting her feet on the ground out there and realizing she can do this job. You go out there, you'll cut her self-confidence out from under her. Let her get on with it."
"Nammie's right boss. Dido can cope, she's the only one who doesn't know it. Just send Iggie to her with the information she’ll need."
The Seer nodded. "Nevertheless, this story could gain traction. We need to start limiting the damage it can do."
Sick Bay 5, CVS-12 “USS Shiloh”, Elpis System.
He was weak, dizzy, sick. He was also dead, or at least he thought he was. He'd been killed, he remembered it. Only this didn't look like any sort of afterlife he'd ever heard described. As his eyes slowly focused and he began to process information properly, he realized it looked uncommonly like a warship sick bay. A big one on a big warship. Complete with a nurse who was looking down on him.
"Colonization Team Leader Shane. So how are we feeling?"
The words did not compute. "I'm dead. "
"Not if we have something to do with it. One of our Doctors wants to speak with you. Do you feel strong enough?"
Shane nodded. "Thirsty though. Water?"
"Of course, you need to drink as much water as you can. We'll get you something to eat as well."
Shane suddenly grabbed her arm, cursing his weakness as he did so. The nurse could easily have avoided it, so slow were his movements, but she chose not so. "My team, they killed my team. Even the kids."
"Everybody's safe, you're all on Shiloh. The Doctor is here now."
Shane relaxed back into his bed. The truth was, he was having a job staying awake. His eyes closed for a second , then re-opened. The doctor was taking instrument readings from beside the bed.
"Team Leader, you're awake again. That's good. Do you feel well enough to tell me what you remember?"
Shane shuddered, the memories of the massacre were all too vivid. He described the scene, the red-shirted security people landing all around Alice Summer, their panic-ridden behavior, and their lack of discipline or training. Then the wild fire that had slaughtered his people. "They shot two of the kids first, a couple I'd recruited. I shot their leader then somebody else killed me. After that, they just started firing at everybody."
"Wait a moment Shane, they killed you and then you describe what happened afterward. Isn't that a bit odd?"
It was, now Shane thought about it. "They must have just wounded me."
"Hmmm. What happened to other people who were shot?"
"They glowed and vanished." Shane stopped in confusion. "But…"
"This is very common with dreams and hallucinations. They seem very logical and believable until you speak about them with somebody else. Then the fundamental illogicality comes through. You can't have seen what was happening at your settlement because you were killed in the early seconds weren't you?" Shane nodded. "And how could you know what the aliens were thinking or why they were reacting the way they were? Anyway please carry on with your story as you remember it."
Shane continued the account, the images seared into his brain. He got to the part about him trying to open a hole in the ring of aliens with a big-game rifle when he stopped in confusion. "A .700 Nitro Express? There's no such weapon in the Colony. We had shotguns, that’s all. Nothing like that. I'd always wanted one though."
The Doctor made more notes on his pad. "Team Leader, let me tell you what we found. Your settlement is undamaged, there is no sign of any gunfire or fighting. There are aliens here, a people we've named the Nutkins for reasons you'll find out. They found your group unconscious and rescued them. Took you all in and looked after you until they could transfer you to us."
"But I remember it. I know the aliens attacked us."
"Think hard for a moment. Aren't the images and scenes you're describing rather familiar?"
Shane did run the images back in his mind. Come to think of it there was something very familiar about all of them. "You heard about the alien ship arriving? And what it looked like."
"We did. We told the SEALs about it when they came in from one of their patrols. We had a Barbie to welcome them. The SEAL unit, are they, where are they?"
"On the MOL, as sick as you are. We've been speaking with them as they recover and the rest of your team members as well. Or as many as can talk. We've put together a picture of what happened. We know that you consumed a large quantity of sleepy tree toxin. We've got samples of that stuff and we’ve cracked its chemical structure. It’s vicious, a long-chain protein that combines some of the effects of methamphetamine, some of opiates, and some of LSD. It's very stable, it doesn't degrade naturally and body processes only break it down slowly. We think that the news of the alien ship set your mind along a set path. Once the sleepy tree poison kicked in, your subconscious pulled memories and popular images from your mind. Familiar ones, the ones we all take for granted because we grew up with them. The alien ship is vaguely similar to the ships in an old, pre-Dark Ages television series. We think that created a mindset and your subconscious pulled up images from that series. If the Nutkin ship had been huge, white, and triangular, I believe you would have seen helmeted men in heavy white armor suits surrounding you. In fact, the reports from the SEAL team are of just that. We think their preference for old films is a bit different from yours.
"The scenes you described are a montage of images from that show, from a few others. Your mind tried to make a logical sequence out of them and the faults in the sequences are only obvious when you talk about them with somebody else. Added in, of course, are our own cultural prejudices. You recruited two of the younger members of the team, you promised the father of the girl you'd look after them. In your hallucinations, you failed to do that so in your mind you punished yourself by being killed. Only that created a logical fault in the sequence. As a society we are paranoid. We assume that strangers will attack us and are always on our guard. We are seriously prejudiced against pacifists and people who believe in dictatorial governments. We don't trust people who are not competent to handle weapons. So you made the aliens cowardly but aggressive authoritarians who couldn’t even handle their weapons competently. Which fitted in with the television series by the way. You've always wanted a nitro express so having one became very important in your visions."
"Wait a minute mate. We're not stupid. We knew the sleepy tree fruit was dangerous. Nobody touched it. We kept right away from those trees."
"You said you had a Barbie to welcome the SEALs. What did you cook, how did you prepare it?"
"We had a lot of earth food, we were still eating mostly that. We had barbied sprinter legs. We'd killed the sprinters, Butchered them of course. We cut the legs into steaks, peeled the skin off, you have to do that, there's a thick layer of fat under the skin and the medicos, no offense doc, don’t like that. We made sprinter burgers for the Yanks, usual way, we minced up the meat, made it into burgers and grilled them. Did it right too, standard proportions, 85 percent lean, 15 percent fat. We do good burgers."
The Doctor nodded invisibly to himself. So that was what had happened. The colonists had tried to be friendly, done their absolute best to make the SEALs welcome. What was it about the road to hell being paved with good intentions?
Admiral's Briefing Room, CVS-12 “USS Shiloh”, Elpis System.
"So, that's what happened. The younger colonists ate mostly the burgers. Once the sleepy tree poison kicked in, they went down first. The adults saw them passing out, ran to them and the effort kicked the poison in for them too. Everything else is a matter of folk images, memories, and legends, all scrambled up and mixed together. With their brains trying to make sense of it all. I think that there are flashes of reality in there as well but distorted out of all recognition. My guess is that the ‘flashes’ of alien gunfire are actually pupil response checks and the colonists 'vanishing' are really them being picked up by the Nutkins and taken for treatment. We'll never know that for certain of course. The SEAL team probably went down very early. They'd been on field rations for a long time and I guess they found freshly-cooked hot food irresistible. That and the exercise of their move must have taken them down soon after they left camp. They're lucky to be alive, from what I understand predators were closing in on them as it was. By the way, that’s why Teams Four and Six are unaffected, they lived on concentrated ration packs all the time."
"What I don't understand is why the colonists fell for it. They're supposed to recognize threats from the environment and deal with them. What went wrong?"
"Three things Admiral. One is that it is a beautiful planet and they let their guard down. Secondly, the planet's atmosphere is richer in inert gas. There's some evidence that tends to make people euphoric and careless. Thirdly, the planet is sucker bait, nothing is what it seems down there.
"You see when we think of a dominant species, we think of a predator of some sort. That's what we look for. A predator and, probably, an intelligent one. Only that's not true down there. The dominant species on Armstrong is the sleepy tree and the trees have modified the whole environment in their favor."
"Intelligent trees?" Admiral Theodore's voice was scathing.
Doctor Stens wasn't intimidated. "Of course not. That's where we went wrong. We assume that modifying the environment in favor of a given species requires intelligence. The sleepytrees managed it without that. Their fruit is a hallucinogenic narcotic. The herbivores consume it, go to sleep, and are killed by carnivores. The waste from the predators and the residue from the herbivores fertilizes the tree and makes it grow faster. The sleepytrees overgrow the ground, cut out all the light and other vegetation dies off. The Herbivores are left with nothing else to eat, they have to eat the fruit or they starve. Of course, under those conditions’ evolution saw the herbivores and predators evolve defenses against the sleepy tree toxin. Herbivores produce an enzyme that bonds with the toxin and allows it to be absorbed into fatty tissue where it stays. Carnivores are a bit better off, they've evolved an element to their digestive system that neutralizes the poison. Only, both systems only work against limited doses. A sudden surge of toxin overwhelms them. Everybody on the planet remarks how lethargic all the animals are? Of course they are, energetic animals go to sleep and die. The predators don't hunt, they don't have to. They know that if they wait long enough their prey will go to sleep. But if they hunt or fight, they'll go to sleep as well – and get eaten.
"My guess is that the North-South rule applies. If we go south from the original settlement, we'll find the sleepytrees get denser and denser until there is nothing else. There will be just sleepytrees and the animals around them, eating the fruit because there's nothing else and petrified of moving in case they go to sleep. It’s a pretty fair definition of hell when we think about it."
"The casualties, the settlers, the SEALs, what can they expect?"
"The Nutkins started off right, the first thing is constant IV to wash the poisons out of their bodies. Eventually, they'll recover although I suspect it'll take months for the older ones. This stuff is pretty rough, its made a hell of a mess of our people. They need lots of rest, good food and somewhere safe to say. I wouldn't be surprised if they had flashbacks and other long-term effects from this. We'll need to watch them. Also, we don't know whether the sleepy tree poison is addictive or not. We'll be feeling our way on this."
"Which leaves us one more question. What do we do about the planet. It seems a shame to leave it. And we have the Nutkins to think about as well. They have a claim, probably a better one than ours. Whatever we decide, we should talk it over with them first. So, what do we do?"
Paul Lazaruski leaned back in his seat, his fingers nested in front of him. "Get some more SAC birds out here, take one of the offshore islands and clean it off. Then use that as a base and methodically sweep the rest of the place clear."
"Using what?"
"Cryo-napalm?"
"That will do nicely."
National Security Council Building, Washington DC
Naamah running was a sight rare enough to grab immediate attention. The sensible got out of the way immediately and the more cynical opened an office pool on which prominent personality was about to develop a strange, lingering, and ultimately fatal disease. She rounded a corner at full tilt, dodged a sandwich cart, and pushed through the door to The Seer's office. Lillith was standing by a filing cabinet, downloading information into it. She half-turned, one eyebrow raised at the rarity of the situation.
"Television. Now." Naamah barked as she shot past Lillith's desk. Sometimes the habits bred as a Canaanite Queen and then as a Byzantine court princess surfaced. She opened the inner door and half-entered, half-fell into The Seer's office. He looked up, anger at the intrusion fading as he realized who it was who had so unceremoniously barged into his inner sanctum. There were very few people who had that privilege and Naamah was one of them.
"Seer, get your television on. Channel Nine, right away." The Seer reached down and thumbed the controls built into the undersurface edge of his desk. High on the wall, what appeared to be a painting of a B-36 sitting on a runway with a B-70 taking off over it transformed itself into a television news studio feed.
"with rain overnight. And now, back to our main news item this afternoon. The Swedish astronomer and radical scientist, Bergmar Hellstrom, has claimed that humanity has made its first contact with intelligent life from another world – and that the news is not good. He claims to have received unimpeachable evidence that the aliens are highly aggressive and have already massacred an entire Colonization team deployed on a recently-discovered planet. He also claims that a SEAL team has been wiped out by the aliens, two more Teams are missing and that a naval task force is engaged in a desperate battle against the aliens. Apparently, local space stations are packed with the dead and wounded and are unable to keep up with the flow of casualties. Doctor Hellstrom, these are radical claims indeed. Can you support them?"
"Well, Greta, we have to understand that radio communications are not possible over the distances in question. Messages have to come back by courier and, of course, the Americans control all such communications. However, there are public-spirited people on the ships coming back from the war zone who are telling us what has happened……."
The Seer leaned forward and thumbed the communications button. "Lillith, honey, get me a list of all space ships that have landed on earth in the last 24 hours."
"………. can put together a picture of what has happened. I believe the colonists were wiped out by a powerful neutron beam radiation weapon that obliterated them from orbit. They landed teams who ambushed and wiped out our SEAL team…."
The interviewer's voice was incredulous "They ambushed a SEAL team?"
"Obviously their infantry have cloaking technology that masked their position. They probably have force shields as well to protect them from bullets, But that isn't the worst of it. This whole incident forces us to reinvestigate the Mossberg incident in which primitive, peaceful people were wiped out from space. Given the recent behavior of the aliens we have contacted, we must assume that they are the responsible party."
"Got that list boss. It's short, four SAC birds, three freighters, one liner. None went anywhere near Interstellar 88. Dido's holding the bag out there with everything basing out of Tai Ceti."
"Thanks, honey."
"……disputed."
"Yes it is Greta but I expect this news proves that those who doubted my assertions have some apologies to make. I proved quite conclusively that the missiles that destroyed Mossberg came through the portal and their evidence if we can call it that, that the asteroids were from 18 Scorpii's own asteroid belt was just a feeble effort to conceal the truth. Well, the people know now don't they."
"So you say Doctor. Thank you. And with that alarming news, we now move to local stories. Traffic on the beltway….
The red phone on The Seer's desk rang. "Seer here…. Yes, Mister Vice President. Already got it, Sir. Transmitting now." He pressed the paper Lillith had brought on to his telephone's screen and pressed 'transmit'. "There you are, sir. No, no truth at all. One of our people is head of administration of Tau Ceti with some of the rest of us there as well. Last we heard, everything was under control. Yes, a settler team has been hit but the preliminaries are that it was natural causes. Risk of the job. No Sir, absolutely not. If anything quite the reverse, we may owe them some serious favors."
"They've seen it up and the White House?"
"Of course honey. I really wish politicians wouldn't watch television. Or read newspapers come to that. The problem is, this story could run. It’s the old 'here there be monsters' bit. In the old days, the edges of the map were out of touch and people could tell strange stories and be believed. Modern communications ended all that. Now, we've got it back again. We're running a week behind the story here due to transit times." The Seer drummed his fingers. "I ought to get out there."
"No boss." Lillith and Naamah spoke in unison and then looked at each other with surprise. There was a second's backing and filling then Naamah took over. "Dido's just getting her feet on the ground out there and realizing she can do this job. You go out there, you'll cut her self-confidence out from under her. Let her get on with it."
"Nammie's right boss. Dido can cope, she's the only one who doesn't know it. Just send Iggie to her with the information she’ll need."
The Seer nodded. "Nevertheless, this story could gain traction. We need to start limiting the damage it can do."
Sick Bay 5, CVS-12 “USS Shiloh”, Elpis System.
He was weak, dizzy, sick. He was also dead, or at least he thought he was. He'd been killed, he remembered it. Only this didn't look like any sort of afterlife he'd ever heard described. As his eyes slowly focused and he began to process information properly, he realized it looked uncommonly like a warship sick bay. A big one on a big warship. Complete with a nurse who was looking down on him.
"Colonization Team Leader Shane. So how are we feeling?"
The words did not compute. "I'm dead. "
"Not if we have something to do with it. One of our Doctors wants to speak with you. Do you feel strong enough?"
Shane nodded. "Thirsty though. Water?"
"Of course, you need to drink as much water as you can. We'll get you something to eat as well."
Shane suddenly grabbed her arm, cursing his weakness as he did so. The nurse could easily have avoided it, so slow were his movements, but she chose not so. "My team, they killed my team. Even the kids."
"Everybody's safe, you're all on Shiloh. The Doctor is here now."
Shane relaxed back into his bed. The truth was, he was having a job staying awake. His eyes closed for a second , then re-opened. The doctor was taking instrument readings from beside the bed.
"Team Leader, you're awake again. That's good. Do you feel well enough to tell me what you remember?"
Shane shuddered, the memories of the massacre were all too vivid. He described the scene, the red-shirted security people landing all around Alice Summer, their panic-ridden behavior, and their lack of discipline or training. Then the wild fire that had slaughtered his people. "They shot two of the kids first, a couple I'd recruited. I shot their leader then somebody else killed me. After that, they just started firing at everybody."
"Wait a moment Shane, they killed you and then you describe what happened afterward. Isn't that a bit odd?"
It was, now Shane thought about it. "They must have just wounded me."
"Hmmm. What happened to other people who were shot?"
"They glowed and vanished." Shane stopped in confusion. "But…"
"This is very common with dreams and hallucinations. They seem very logical and believable until you speak about them with somebody else. Then the fundamental illogicality comes through. You can't have seen what was happening at your settlement because you were killed in the early seconds weren't you?" Shane nodded. "And how could you know what the aliens were thinking or why they were reacting the way they were? Anyway please carry on with your story as you remember it."
Shane continued the account, the images seared into his brain. He got to the part about him trying to open a hole in the ring of aliens with a big-game rifle when he stopped in confusion. "A .700 Nitro Express? There's no such weapon in the Colony. We had shotguns, that’s all. Nothing like that. I'd always wanted one though."
The Doctor made more notes on his pad. "Team Leader, let me tell you what we found. Your settlement is undamaged, there is no sign of any gunfire or fighting. There are aliens here, a people we've named the Nutkins for reasons you'll find out. They found your group unconscious and rescued them. Took you all in and looked after you until they could transfer you to us."
"But I remember it. I know the aliens attacked us."
"Think hard for a moment. Aren't the images and scenes you're describing rather familiar?"
Shane did run the images back in his mind. Come to think of it there was something very familiar about all of them. "You heard about the alien ship arriving? And what it looked like."
"We did. We told the SEALs about it when they came in from one of their patrols. We had a Barbie to welcome them. The SEAL unit, are they, where are they?"
"On the MOL, as sick as you are. We've been speaking with them as they recover and the rest of your team members as well. Or as many as can talk. We've put together a picture of what happened. We know that you consumed a large quantity of sleepy tree toxin. We've got samples of that stuff and we’ve cracked its chemical structure. It’s vicious, a long-chain protein that combines some of the effects of methamphetamine, some of opiates, and some of LSD. It's very stable, it doesn't degrade naturally and body processes only break it down slowly. We think that the news of the alien ship set your mind along a set path. Once the sleepy tree poison kicked in, your subconscious pulled memories and popular images from your mind. Familiar ones, the ones we all take for granted because we grew up with them. The alien ship is vaguely similar to the ships in an old, pre-Dark Ages television series. We think that created a mindset and your subconscious pulled up images from that series. If the Nutkin ship had been huge, white, and triangular, I believe you would have seen helmeted men in heavy white armor suits surrounding you. In fact, the reports from the SEAL team are of just that. We think their preference for old films is a bit different from yours.
"The scenes you described are a montage of images from that show, from a few others. Your mind tried to make a logical sequence out of them and the faults in the sequences are only obvious when you talk about them with somebody else. Added in, of course, are our own cultural prejudices. You recruited two of the younger members of the team, you promised the father of the girl you'd look after them. In your hallucinations, you failed to do that so in your mind you punished yourself by being killed. Only that created a logical fault in the sequence. As a society we are paranoid. We assume that strangers will attack us and are always on our guard. We are seriously prejudiced against pacifists and people who believe in dictatorial governments. We don't trust people who are not competent to handle weapons. So you made the aliens cowardly but aggressive authoritarians who couldn’t even handle their weapons competently. Which fitted in with the television series by the way. You've always wanted a nitro express so having one became very important in your visions."
"Wait a minute mate. We're not stupid. We knew the sleepy tree fruit was dangerous. Nobody touched it. We kept right away from those trees."
"You said you had a Barbie to welcome the SEALs. What did you cook, how did you prepare it?"
"We had a lot of earth food, we were still eating mostly that. We had barbied sprinter legs. We'd killed the sprinters, Butchered them of course. We cut the legs into steaks, peeled the skin off, you have to do that, there's a thick layer of fat under the skin and the medicos, no offense doc, don’t like that. We made sprinter burgers for the Yanks, usual way, we minced up the meat, made it into burgers and grilled them. Did it right too, standard proportions, 85 percent lean, 15 percent fat. We do good burgers."
The Doctor nodded invisibly to himself. So that was what had happened. The colonists had tried to be friendly, done their absolute best to make the SEALs welcome. What was it about the road to hell being paved with good intentions?
Admiral's Briefing Room, CVS-12 “USS Shiloh”, Elpis System.
"So, that's what happened. The younger colonists ate mostly the burgers. Once the sleepy tree poison kicked in, they went down first. The adults saw them passing out, ran to them and the effort kicked the poison in for them too. Everything else is a matter of folk images, memories, and legends, all scrambled up and mixed together. With their brains trying to make sense of it all. I think that there are flashes of reality in there as well but distorted out of all recognition. My guess is that the ‘flashes’ of alien gunfire are actually pupil response checks and the colonists 'vanishing' are really them being picked up by the Nutkins and taken for treatment. We'll never know that for certain of course. The SEAL team probably went down very early. They'd been on field rations for a long time and I guess they found freshly-cooked hot food irresistible. That and the exercise of their move must have taken them down soon after they left camp. They're lucky to be alive, from what I understand predators were closing in on them as it was. By the way, that’s why Teams Four and Six are unaffected, they lived on concentrated ration packs all the time."
"What I don't understand is why the colonists fell for it. They're supposed to recognize threats from the environment and deal with them. What went wrong?"
"Three things Admiral. One is that it is a beautiful planet and they let their guard down. Secondly, the planet's atmosphere is richer in inert gas. There's some evidence that tends to make people euphoric and careless. Thirdly, the planet is sucker bait, nothing is what it seems down there.
"You see when we think of a dominant species, we think of a predator of some sort. That's what we look for. A predator and, probably, an intelligent one. Only that's not true down there. The dominant species on Armstrong is the sleepy tree and the trees have modified the whole environment in their favor."
"Intelligent trees?" Admiral Theodore's voice was scathing.
Doctor Stens wasn't intimidated. "Of course not. That's where we went wrong. We assume that modifying the environment in favor of a given species requires intelligence. The sleepytrees managed it without that. Their fruit is a hallucinogenic narcotic. The herbivores consume it, go to sleep, and are killed by carnivores. The waste from the predators and the residue from the herbivores fertilizes the tree and makes it grow faster. The sleepytrees overgrow the ground, cut out all the light and other vegetation dies off. The Herbivores are left with nothing else to eat, they have to eat the fruit or they starve. Of course, under those conditions’ evolution saw the herbivores and predators evolve defenses against the sleepy tree toxin. Herbivores produce an enzyme that bonds with the toxin and allows it to be absorbed into fatty tissue where it stays. Carnivores are a bit better off, they've evolved an element to their digestive system that neutralizes the poison. Only, both systems only work against limited doses. A sudden surge of toxin overwhelms them. Everybody on the planet remarks how lethargic all the animals are? Of course they are, energetic animals go to sleep and die. The predators don't hunt, they don't have to. They know that if they wait long enough their prey will go to sleep. But if they hunt or fight, they'll go to sleep as well – and get eaten.
"My guess is that the North-South rule applies. If we go south from the original settlement, we'll find the sleepytrees get denser and denser until there is nothing else. There will be just sleepytrees and the animals around them, eating the fruit because there's nothing else and petrified of moving in case they go to sleep. It’s a pretty fair definition of hell when we think about it."
"The casualties, the settlers, the SEALs, what can they expect?"
"The Nutkins started off right, the first thing is constant IV to wash the poisons out of their bodies. Eventually, they'll recover although I suspect it'll take months for the older ones. This stuff is pretty rough, its made a hell of a mess of our people. They need lots of rest, good food and somewhere safe to say. I wouldn't be surprised if they had flashbacks and other long-term effects from this. We'll need to watch them. Also, we don't know whether the sleepy tree poison is addictive or not. We'll be feeling our way on this."
"Which leaves us one more question. What do we do about the planet. It seems a shame to leave it. And we have the Nutkins to think about as well. They have a claim, probably a better one than ours. Whatever we decide, we should talk it over with them first. So, what do we do?"
Paul Lazaruski leaned back in his seat, his fingers nested in front of him. "Get some more SAC birds out here, take one of the offshore islands and clean it off. Then use that as a base and methodically sweep the rest of the place clear."
"Using what?"
"Cryo-napalm?"
"That will do nicely."
Re: 2545 - Intersteller Highway
Chapter 23
Sick Bay 5, CVS-12 “USS Shiloh”, Elpis System.
"Joseph?" The weak, shaking voice cut through the fog that was shrouding his mind. Joseph Vaisie tried to think but thoughts wouldn't come together, they kept forming into strange, disturbing patterns. He forced his eyes open, trying to make sense of what surrounded him.
Trish was sitting in a wheelchair, her hair hanging down, lank and straggling, looking as if it hadn't been washed for a month. The skin on her face was blotched with ulcers in the corners of her mouth and around her nose, ulcers that were beginning to scab over and looked all the worse for that. Her nose itself was red and unhealthy and there were large black shadows under her eyes. She looked fifty at least, and a fifty-year-old who'd had a hard life. She could see the shock on Joseph's face when he saw her. "Please don't send me away Joseph." Her voice was plaintive, beseeching. He looked at her and tried to get out of bed to hold her.
"Hey, none of that. We must stay in bed until we're fit enough to walk mustn't we." The nurse's voice was boisterous and overbearing. One that brooked no argument. "Now, you lie back and rest young man. Your wife can stay with you but you need to rest."
"Nurse, will we get…. I mean how long will it……We will get better won't we." Trish's voice was shaking, not just with weakness but with very real distress. He real question was "Am I going to stay looking like this?" But she couldn't bring herself to frame the words because framing them might tell her the answer she didn’t want to hear. The nurse looked at her with sympathy.
"You need to get lots of rest, to eat good food and drink lots of water. You're both dehydrated and suffering the effects of chemical poisoning. I won't lie to you, you're in for a long slow recovery but you will both recover. In six months, you'll both be back to your old selves. Mostly at any rate. There's some signs of permanent joint damage, could mean you'll have trouble with rheumatism or arthritis later on. Worry about that later though. Now, what's the last thing you remember, Tricia?"
"I was working in the clinic and went home to make Joseph something for his lunch. Nothing unusual, same every day. Then the aliens landed and started shooting everybody."
"OK, Joseph?"
"We had an experimental program in the fields and I was working on that. I broke off for lunch when the alien ships came over and started strafing us."
"Joseph, Tricia, you were found between the cooking pits and your hut. It looks like you were walking back home after the party and passed out on the way. There were a couple of people near you, we think they saw you go collapse and went to help, then passed out themselves. We've been collecting information from people as they recovered and it seems as if they all have some common factors in their memories. It seems like they had very precise, but none the less imaginary, recollections about going on with their daily lives. It also seems as if you were all at least partly conscious of what was happening around you. Everybody remembers the alien ships landing, some remember the aliens opening fire, and others don’t know what happened. We haven't had a ship strafing you before. Do you remember the party?"
"Sure, one of the SEAL teams came in. The cooks made burgers for them out of sprinter meat. They were talking about the alien ship coming in, we showed them the pictures the long-range scanners on some of the ships had made. After the party, they left and we all got back to work. Until the aliens attacked us. Why did they shoot us up like that?"
"They didn't Joseph, they rescued you. Apparently, they'd visited the system earlier and lost people down on Armstrong. Same as you only they weren't so lucky. Anyway, as they left, they saw us arriving and tried to warn us. We picked up the warnings but nobody could understand what they were. Anyway, the Nutkins, that's the aliens by the way, turned their mother ship around to come back and sent a scout ship ahead to try and warn us of the danger. By the time they got here, you were down on the planet and already in trouble. So they picked you up and looked after you until we could take you in."
Joseph closed his mouth grimly, he didn't believe what he'd heard. His own memories were too clear, too vivid. They couldn't be illusions surely? "I know what I saw."
The nurse kept her bright professional smile in place only with great effort. They all said that, they were convinced their drug-induced hallucinations were reality. Until they went through them, scene by scene, and the flaws in the chain of events became obvious. "A doctor will be in soon to talk to you. He'll make everything right. Now just lie back and rest, the more you do that, the sooner you'll be back to normal."
The nurse left and headed off down the passageway to the medical laboratory. Inside, Doctor Stens and Doctor Rashamaron were stretched out on medical couches, their arms positioned carefully on the rest. The Nutkin's forearm had been shaved and there were a series of red spots on the skin. Stens' arm had an equivalent series of spots. Allergy tests.
"How are you two gentlemen feeling?" The nurse had switched her box on and the translation came out smoothly. The belt mounted computer translator was working much better than expected; it had the advantage that both human and Nutkin speech were audible so the speaker could address a mixed group. It worked very well, as long as only one person at a time was speaking.
"I think we're clear. I've had no adverse reactions to some standard Nutkin products. Doctor Rashamaron?"
"The same I think. It has been 30 minutes now and I have no reactions. This is very good news."
The nurse struggled with herself for a few seconds then gave in. She had to ask. "Doctor Rashamaron, I know this is presumptuous, but could I touch your fur please?"
The Nutkin gave the customary closed-lip smile. "Of course. You are not the first to ask today. " The nurse reached out and touched the fur on the alien's forearm. It was fine, soft, silky to feel. "You know, we could not believe it when we saw you for the first time. You look so strange without fur. That's why we call you…" The translation computer struggled for a second. "….baldies. And you call us Nutkins? Where does this come from?"
This is going to take care thought Stens to himself. "On our planet, we have a small wild animal called a squirrel that looks a bit like you. They live in trees and around houses and people are very fond of them. Most put out food in the winter so the squirrels will have enough to eat. There are a series of picture books for very young children called the Squirrel Nutkin stories. They are about a young boy and his squirrel friend Nutkin who get up on adventures together. For example, the boy's mother was very upset because she'd lost something important to her under their house. The humans were too big to get down there and find it so Nutkin went under the floor to get it back for them. Simple stories for young children intended to teach them how people can work together to solve problems. So when we saw you, we called you Nutkins."
"Ahhh, thank you. We have the results of our blood work I think. Interesting. To be so similar and yet be so different."
"I noticed that. Our bodies seem to do the same things in more or less the same ways yet the actual chemistry is quite different."
"Doctors," The nurse's voice was hurried, she being desperate to dive in before the two drifted away into one of their abstruse specialist conversations. "You've been working here all morning. Doctor Stens, can I get you something to eat? Some mid-rats perhaps?"
"Mid-rats?" Doctor Rashamaron's voice was confused.
"Mid-watch rations. The ship's cooks prepare food for a set number of meals each day but there are always people coming off duty at odd times who have missed meals or just need a snack. So the cooks put out trays of food for them to take as they want. I'd be happy to invite you to try some, but we really should do more tests before we make the experiment."
"Yes, but we have to try each other's food sometime. Here, we have medical teams from both our species and as good a hospital as any. We might as well try now. I don't think it will be dangerous, I think that we will find we can eat each other's food, but we will only use its value at a low level of efficiency."
"Perhaps Doctor Rashamaron, but don't you think that the …….." Oh dear, thought the nurse, they're off again. She went over to the intercom and asked an orderly to bring up a tray of sandwiches. By the time they arrived, the two Doctors were still discussing the chemistry of their respective digestive systems.
"Mid-rats gentlemen. Enjoy."
Doctor Rashamaron reached out and picked up a sandwich. He looked at it thoughtfully then took a bite. In doing so the humans saw his teeth for the first time, not long but short, flat and immensely strong. Then his face changed into an expression of utter delight. "This is wonderful, marvelous taste. What is this called?"
Doctor Stens looked at the plate "Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We call them PBJs for short. A very common quick food for us."
"They are very good. Much too soft for adults but our babies and young will love them. We prefer our food to be very hard. In fact, it must be for our teeth to grow all the time and if there is nothing to wear them down, they become very painful. So we like very hard food we can grind and crush. His comment was highlighted as he took another bite of the sandwich, again exposing the massively powerful teeth.
"Your species doesn't do oral sex does it." The nurse's voice was fascinated.
Doctor Rashamaron looked highly confused. "I am sorry, I don't understand. It is like everything else, our species reproduce the same way but how we do it is very different. Our reproductive systems do not match up. Something that I think will upset the young adults of our crews."
"Oh, I don't know about that." Doctor Stens voice was amused if muffled by PBJ. "If your young adults are anything like ours, they'll find a way. Won't be productive of course, our basic chemistry is far too different."
"We knew that early, when we picked your people up we thought we may have to give blood transfusions. There was only a limited amount of baldy blood from the clinic on the planet so we tried some with our supply. Instant coagulation. Completely incompatible." They drifted off again into an arcane medical discussion, this time over blood groups and blood composition.
Government Administration Office, Planet Jorden, Tau Ceti
"Dido, when we went into the Arena, our lanistae told us to go out and win. He didn't tell us how to do it, just what we had to do. Usually, it was an ordinarii, that was a matched pair of two gladiators fighting. Sometimes we were in catervarii where there were groups fighting. Whatever it was, we were the experts, they left it up to us to decide how to win."
Dido looked up at Achillea sitting in the corner of her office. "You think I'm interfering too much." Her voice was questioning and uncertain of itself.
"You're micromanaging. You've got good people here, you've assigned them to jobs they are superbly suited to doing. So let them get on with their work. Let them know you trust them and will back them up when they make decisions." In the other corner of the room, Igrat nodded emphatically.
"How do I know they'll make the right ones?"
"You don't. But if you keep checking upon them, they'll get into the habit of bouncing every decision up to you and that'll be a disaster for everybody. The reason why the short-lifers trust us is because they know we've got the experience to make decisions on our own. So let everybody do their job."
Dido sighed. "The last time I did that, I got stabbed in the back by a treacherous self-centered moron."
"Who is now dead and has been dust for several thousand years. Aeneas is dead and gone, pretty certain of that, he hasn't shown up anywhere. Forget him. You know everybody here, we've been together for centuries, you know who you can trust and who you can't. Take Nell, you found her yourself, took her in, taught her who and what she was."
Dido snuffled with laughter. "Nell's never made a secret of what she was. We were riding out of court in her carriage once and some local rioters threw stones at us shouting 'Go back to France, you Catholic whore.' She stuck her head out and replied 'Stop it, good people, I'm a Protestant whore.' And they cheered her and escorted our carriage through the streets.
"There you are then. Nell knows what she's doing; she's supporting her principal very well." And stopping him making any foolish mistakes Achillea thought. "So what's the problem?"
"It's just, oh I don't know, it’s always seems easier to do something myself than find somebody to do it for me. How do the Seer and Snake manage it?"
"The Seer is a cold-blooded, stone-hearted manipulative bastard who maneuvers people the way he used to maneuver armies.”
“Hey, that’s not true.” Igrat had been sitting quietly having brought her data delivery out and placed it in Dido’s hands. It was strange, once her services had been invaluable as a specialized courier but the job had been made obsolete by electronic technology. She’d spent all too many years drifting aimlessly from role to role, never quite happy or feeling she had a place in the world. Then, the opening of space and the discovery of the wormholes that left radio signals far behind them had made couriers essential again. Now, she was happy and had her place in the world back at last. Even so, she wasn’t going to let her adoptive father be insulted.
Achillea was quite unrepentant. “Snake is the same, even worse if anything, and she'd got the edge that she doesn't look the part. But they both delegate things and only do what they have to. You'll have to do the same. You know that so I'll say it again. What's the problem?"
Dido's mouth curled slightly in resentment at the rebuke, then the expression turned to a wry smile. "Iggie brought me a tape from Earth. It appears some moron down there, a fool called Bergmar Hellstrom, is putting it around that the first interstellar war has already broken out. Listen to this," She started the television system and watched the image of Hellstrom's face form on the surface of her desk.
"I have been informed by my friends in the secret government circles that the aliens have succeeded in destroying all three dozen American spy and early warning satellites in orbit around the new planet at the end of the Long Jump. Even worse, they used a satellite in planetary orbit to fire a neutron-particle beam to wipe out a secret human base nearing operational status on the planet. They have quickly deployed their own military bases on that planet, to form the second leg of their space triad and have installed seven extremely powerful charged-particle beam weapons and three support bases to prevent us retaking the planet.
"With these developments, humanity has lost control of the other end of The Long Jump. We can expect alien space ships to enter our territory from their new bases any time now. The Americans are already building up a major force in Tau Ceti to contest the attack with Strategic Air Command, Planetary Defense and Navy units moving into the area. In addition, they have deployed some of our most advanced weapons for the battle. Friends, what can these obsolete weapons do against an enemy whose particle beams and cosmospheres are so many centuries in advance of anything we have?"
Dido flipped the transmission off. "It’s all utter nonsense of course; there's just enough truth mixed up in it to make the idiocy plausible. This is an Earth matter though, I'll ask The Seer to deal with it."
Igrat looked at her steadily. "Who sent you the disk I brought out?"
"The Seer did."
"Then I would say it’s pretty obvious he wants you to handle it. I'd also say this is one of his little tests to see whether you've got the situation out here in hand. Bounce this back to him and you've admitted failure. Now, put this into context. Think logically, the way the Seer or Snake would. Just how dangerous is this idiot?"
Dido thought carefully, running the possibilities through her mind. "He's not dangerous, not yet anyway. He's a crank and a conspiracy freak. Nobody really believes him. The danger is his constant repetition of his message will create an atmosphere of paranoia. So when we do announce the first contact, people will panic."
"So?" Igrat’s voice was a monument of restrained impatience.
"So we have to head him off at the pass. Make the announcement that we've met an alien species, stress that they're friendly, helpful and non-aggressive. And that they've done us a great kindness and we owe them. Show pictures, the Nutkins are quite cute to look at, that'll help. Are the latest messages from Armstrong in that package?"
Igrat handed them over. Dido read the text and snorted with laughter. "Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? That'll go down well won't it. All right Igrat, I'll put together a course of action, get the CEO to approve it then tell The Seer what I'm doing. Not ask him for comment or advice, just tell him. Which leaves just one problem. Presentation, do we get one of us or a short-lifer to make the pitch?"
Achillea pushed her way back into the conversation before everybody forgot she was present. "I'd recommend one of us, people trust us to handle a situation. Not The Seer though, he gets up, everybody will assume we're at war."
"True. Look this guy Hellstrom is a clown, what we need is a clown to counter him."
Dido, Igrat and Achillea looked at each other, then in perfect unison, their voices merged melodically. "Loki!"
Sick Bay 5, CVS-12 “USS Shiloh”, Elpis System.
"Joseph?" The weak, shaking voice cut through the fog that was shrouding his mind. Joseph Vaisie tried to think but thoughts wouldn't come together, they kept forming into strange, disturbing patterns. He forced his eyes open, trying to make sense of what surrounded him.
Trish was sitting in a wheelchair, her hair hanging down, lank and straggling, looking as if it hadn't been washed for a month. The skin on her face was blotched with ulcers in the corners of her mouth and around her nose, ulcers that were beginning to scab over and looked all the worse for that. Her nose itself was red and unhealthy and there were large black shadows under her eyes. She looked fifty at least, and a fifty-year-old who'd had a hard life. She could see the shock on Joseph's face when he saw her. "Please don't send me away Joseph." Her voice was plaintive, beseeching. He looked at her and tried to get out of bed to hold her.
"Hey, none of that. We must stay in bed until we're fit enough to walk mustn't we." The nurse's voice was boisterous and overbearing. One that brooked no argument. "Now, you lie back and rest young man. Your wife can stay with you but you need to rest."
"Nurse, will we get…. I mean how long will it……We will get better won't we." Trish's voice was shaking, not just with weakness but with very real distress. He real question was "Am I going to stay looking like this?" But she couldn't bring herself to frame the words because framing them might tell her the answer she didn’t want to hear. The nurse looked at her with sympathy.
"You need to get lots of rest, to eat good food and drink lots of water. You're both dehydrated and suffering the effects of chemical poisoning. I won't lie to you, you're in for a long slow recovery but you will both recover. In six months, you'll both be back to your old selves. Mostly at any rate. There's some signs of permanent joint damage, could mean you'll have trouble with rheumatism or arthritis later on. Worry about that later though. Now, what's the last thing you remember, Tricia?"
"I was working in the clinic and went home to make Joseph something for his lunch. Nothing unusual, same every day. Then the aliens landed and started shooting everybody."
"OK, Joseph?"
"We had an experimental program in the fields and I was working on that. I broke off for lunch when the alien ships came over and started strafing us."
"Joseph, Tricia, you were found between the cooking pits and your hut. It looks like you were walking back home after the party and passed out on the way. There were a couple of people near you, we think they saw you go collapse and went to help, then passed out themselves. We've been collecting information from people as they recovered and it seems as if they all have some common factors in their memories. It seems like they had very precise, but none the less imaginary, recollections about going on with their daily lives. It also seems as if you were all at least partly conscious of what was happening around you. Everybody remembers the alien ships landing, some remember the aliens opening fire, and others don’t know what happened. We haven't had a ship strafing you before. Do you remember the party?"
"Sure, one of the SEAL teams came in. The cooks made burgers for them out of sprinter meat. They were talking about the alien ship coming in, we showed them the pictures the long-range scanners on some of the ships had made. After the party, they left and we all got back to work. Until the aliens attacked us. Why did they shoot us up like that?"
"They didn't Joseph, they rescued you. Apparently, they'd visited the system earlier and lost people down on Armstrong. Same as you only they weren't so lucky. Anyway, as they left, they saw us arriving and tried to warn us. We picked up the warnings but nobody could understand what they were. Anyway, the Nutkins, that's the aliens by the way, turned their mother ship around to come back and sent a scout ship ahead to try and warn us of the danger. By the time they got here, you were down on the planet and already in trouble. So they picked you up and looked after you until we could take you in."
Joseph closed his mouth grimly, he didn't believe what he'd heard. His own memories were too clear, too vivid. They couldn't be illusions surely? "I know what I saw."
The nurse kept her bright professional smile in place only with great effort. They all said that, they were convinced their drug-induced hallucinations were reality. Until they went through them, scene by scene, and the flaws in the chain of events became obvious. "A doctor will be in soon to talk to you. He'll make everything right. Now just lie back and rest, the more you do that, the sooner you'll be back to normal."
The nurse left and headed off down the passageway to the medical laboratory. Inside, Doctor Stens and Doctor Rashamaron were stretched out on medical couches, their arms positioned carefully on the rest. The Nutkin's forearm had been shaved and there were a series of red spots on the skin. Stens' arm had an equivalent series of spots. Allergy tests.
"How are you two gentlemen feeling?" The nurse had switched her box on and the translation came out smoothly. The belt mounted computer translator was working much better than expected; it had the advantage that both human and Nutkin speech were audible so the speaker could address a mixed group. It worked very well, as long as only one person at a time was speaking.
"I think we're clear. I've had no adverse reactions to some standard Nutkin products. Doctor Rashamaron?"
"The same I think. It has been 30 minutes now and I have no reactions. This is very good news."
The nurse struggled with herself for a few seconds then gave in. She had to ask. "Doctor Rashamaron, I know this is presumptuous, but could I touch your fur please?"
The Nutkin gave the customary closed-lip smile. "Of course. You are not the first to ask today. " The nurse reached out and touched the fur on the alien's forearm. It was fine, soft, silky to feel. "You know, we could not believe it when we saw you for the first time. You look so strange without fur. That's why we call you…" The translation computer struggled for a second. "….baldies. And you call us Nutkins? Where does this come from?"
This is going to take care thought Stens to himself. "On our planet, we have a small wild animal called a squirrel that looks a bit like you. They live in trees and around houses and people are very fond of them. Most put out food in the winter so the squirrels will have enough to eat. There are a series of picture books for very young children called the Squirrel Nutkin stories. They are about a young boy and his squirrel friend Nutkin who get up on adventures together. For example, the boy's mother was very upset because she'd lost something important to her under their house. The humans were too big to get down there and find it so Nutkin went under the floor to get it back for them. Simple stories for young children intended to teach them how people can work together to solve problems. So when we saw you, we called you Nutkins."
"Ahhh, thank you. We have the results of our blood work I think. Interesting. To be so similar and yet be so different."
"I noticed that. Our bodies seem to do the same things in more or less the same ways yet the actual chemistry is quite different."
"Doctors," The nurse's voice was hurried, she being desperate to dive in before the two drifted away into one of their abstruse specialist conversations. "You've been working here all morning. Doctor Stens, can I get you something to eat? Some mid-rats perhaps?"
"Mid-rats?" Doctor Rashamaron's voice was confused.
"Mid-watch rations. The ship's cooks prepare food for a set number of meals each day but there are always people coming off duty at odd times who have missed meals or just need a snack. So the cooks put out trays of food for them to take as they want. I'd be happy to invite you to try some, but we really should do more tests before we make the experiment."
"Yes, but we have to try each other's food sometime. Here, we have medical teams from both our species and as good a hospital as any. We might as well try now. I don't think it will be dangerous, I think that we will find we can eat each other's food, but we will only use its value at a low level of efficiency."
"Perhaps Doctor Rashamaron, but don't you think that the …….." Oh dear, thought the nurse, they're off again. She went over to the intercom and asked an orderly to bring up a tray of sandwiches. By the time they arrived, the two Doctors were still discussing the chemistry of their respective digestive systems.
"Mid-rats gentlemen. Enjoy."
Doctor Rashamaron reached out and picked up a sandwich. He looked at it thoughtfully then took a bite. In doing so the humans saw his teeth for the first time, not long but short, flat and immensely strong. Then his face changed into an expression of utter delight. "This is wonderful, marvelous taste. What is this called?"
Doctor Stens looked at the plate "Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We call them PBJs for short. A very common quick food for us."
"They are very good. Much too soft for adults but our babies and young will love them. We prefer our food to be very hard. In fact, it must be for our teeth to grow all the time and if there is nothing to wear them down, they become very painful. So we like very hard food we can grind and crush. His comment was highlighted as he took another bite of the sandwich, again exposing the massively powerful teeth.
"Your species doesn't do oral sex does it." The nurse's voice was fascinated.
Doctor Rashamaron looked highly confused. "I am sorry, I don't understand. It is like everything else, our species reproduce the same way but how we do it is very different. Our reproductive systems do not match up. Something that I think will upset the young adults of our crews."
"Oh, I don't know about that." Doctor Stens voice was amused if muffled by PBJ. "If your young adults are anything like ours, they'll find a way. Won't be productive of course, our basic chemistry is far too different."
"We knew that early, when we picked your people up we thought we may have to give blood transfusions. There was only a limited amount of baldy blood from the clinic on the planet so we tried some with our supply. Instant coagulation. Completely incompatible." They drifted off again into an arcane medical discussion, this time over blood groups and blood composition.
Government Administration Office, Planet Jorden, Tau Ceti
"Dido, when we went into the Arena, our lanistae told us to go out and win. He didn't tell us how to do it, just what we had to do. Usually, it was an ordinarii, that was a matched pair of two gladiators fighting. Sometimes we were in catervarii where there were groups fighting. Whatever it was, we were the experts, they left it up to us to decide how to win."
Dido looked up at Achillea sitting in the corner of her office. "You think I'm interfering too much." Her voice was questioning and uncertain of itself.
"You're micromanaging. You've got good people here, you've assigned them to jobs they are superbly suited to doing. So let them get on with their work. Let them know you trust them and will back them up when they make decisions." In the other corner of the room, Igrat nodded emphatically.
"How do I know they'll make the right ones?"
"You don't. But if you keep checking upon them, they'll get into the habit of bouncing every decision up to you and that'll be a disaster for everybody. The reason why the short-lifers trust us is because they know we've got the experience to make decisions on our own. So let everybody do their job."
Dido sighed. "The last time I did that, I got stabbed in the back by a treacherous self-centered moron."
"Who is now dead and has been dust for several thousand years. Aeneas is dead and gone, pretty certain of that, he hasn't shown up anywhere. Forget him. You know everybody here, we've been together for centuries, you know who you can trust and who you can't. Take Nell, you found her yourself, took her in, taught her who and what she was."
Dido snuffled with laughter. "Nell's never made a secret of what she was. We were riding out of court in her carriage once and some local rioters threw stones at us shouting 'Go back to France, you Catholic whore.' She stuck her head out and replied 'Stop it, good people, I'm a Protestant whore.' And they cheered her and escorted our carriage through the streets.
"There you are then. Nell knows what she's doing; she's supporting her principal very well." And stopping him making any foolish mistakes Achillea thought. "So what's the problem?"
"It's just, oh I don't know, it’s always seems easier to do something myself than find somebody to do it for me. How do the Seer and Snake manage it?"
"The Seer is a cold-blooded, stone-hearted manipulative bastard who maneuvers people the way he used to maneuver armies.”
“Hey, that’s not true.” Igrat had been sitting quietly having brought her data delivery out and placed it in Dido’s hands. It was strange, once her services had been invaluable as a specialized courier but the job had been made obsolete by electronic technology. She’d spent all too many years drifting aimlessly from role to role, never quite happy or feeling she had a place in the world. Then, the opening of space and the discovery of the wormholes that left radio signals far behind them had made couriers essential again. Now, she was happy and had her place in the world back at last. Even so, she wasn’t going to let her adoptive father be insulted.
Achillea was quite unrepentant. “Snake is the same, even worse if anything, and she'd got the edge that she doesn't look the part. But they both delegate things and only do what they have to. You'll have to do the same. You know that so I'll say it again. What's the problem?"
Dido's mouth curled slightly in resentment at the rebuke, then the expression turned to a wry smile. "Iggie brought me a tape from Earth. It appears some moron down there, a fool called Bergmar Hellstrom, is putting it around that the first interstellar war has already broken out. Listen to this," She started the television system and watched the image of Hellstrom's face form on the surface of her desk.
"I have been informed by my friends in the secret government circles that the aliens have succeeded in destroying all three dozen American spy and early warning satellites in orbit around the new planet at the end of the Long Jump. Even worse, they used a satellite in planetary orbit to fire a neutron-particle beam to wipe out a secret human base nearing operational status on the planet. They have quickly deployed their own military bases on that planet, to form the second leg of their space triad and have installed seven extremely powerful charged-particle beam weapons and three support bases to prevent us retaking the planet.
"With these developments, humanity has lost control of the other end of The Long Jump. We can expect alien space ships to enter our territory from their new bases any time now. The Americans are already building up a major force in Tau Ceti to contest the attack with Strategic Air Command, Planetary Defense and Navy units moving into the area. In addition, they have deployed some of our most advanced weapons for the battle. Friends, what can these obsolete weapons do against an enemy whose particle beams and cosmospheres are so many centuries in advance of anything we have?"
Dido flipped the transmission off. "It’s all utter nonsense of course; there's just enough truth mixed up in it to make the idiocy plausible. This is an Earth matter though, I'll ask The Seer to deal with it."
Igrat looked at her steadily. "Who sent you the disk I brought out?"
"The Seer did."
"Then I would say it’s pretty obvious he wants you to handle it. I'd also say this is one of his little tests to see whether you've got the situation out here in hand. Bounce this back to him and you've admitted failure. Now, put this into context. Think logically, the way the Seer or Snake would. Just how dangerous is this idiot?"
Dido thought carefully, running the possibilities through her mind. "He's not dangerous, not yet anyway. He's a crank and a conspiracy freak. Nobody really believes him. The danger is his constant repetition of his message will create an atmosphere of paranoia. So when we do announce the first contact, people will panic."
"So?" Igrat’s voice was a monument of restrained impatience.
"So we have to head him off at the pass. Make the announcement that we've met an alien species, stress that they're friendly, helpful and non-aggressive. And that they've done us a great kindness and we owe them. Show pictures, the Nutkins are quite cute to look at, that'll help. Are the latest messages from Armstrong in that package?"
Igrat handed them over. Dido read the text and snorted with laughter. "Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? That'll go down well won't it. All right Igrat, I'll put together a course of action, get the CEO to approve it then tell The Seer what I'm doing. Not ask him for comment or advice, just tell him. Which leaves just one problem. Presentation, do we get one of us or a short-lifer to make the pitch?"
Achillea pushed her way back into the conversation before everybody forgot she was present. "I'd recommend one of us, people trust us to handle a situation. Not The Seer though, he gets up, everybody will assume we're at war."
"True. Look this guy Hellstrom is a clown, what we need is a clown to counter him."
Dido, Igrat and Achillea looked at each other, then in perfect unison, their voices merged melodically. "Loki!"
Re: 2545 - Intersteller Highway
Chapter 24
Cockpit, DSB-36 “Showgirl” Between Sixth and Seventh Planets, Elpis Star System
"By the Holy Half-Chewed Cigar of Saint Curtis, will you look at the size of that thing!" Tony Williams took a nervous half-glance at the fold-down seat in one corner of the flight deck. He didn't really think Saint Curtis would suddenly materialize there and breathe fire over him but one never knew.
"It's miles across, miles. It's as large as the Lagrange stations back home." Soo's voice was awed by the spectacle. "Just how many people live down there?"
Williams was measuring the Nutkin mother ship using Showgirl's electro-optical cameras. "The wheel is a little bit over twelve miles across and two and a half deep. The hub's twelve miles long and about two miles in diameter. If you're counting, there are sixteen spokes joining hub to wheel. I'd guess that people live in the ring and the hub is the processing, machinery and industrial center. It's spinning at 0.3 revs per minute so gravity at the rim must be fairly close to earth-normal.
"It's a multi-generation ship, it's got to be. How long do you reckon they've been flying for? Years? Decades? Centuries? Could be any of those."
"Stars here are closer than they are back home, three to ten light years seems the average. But that thing must be old."
"Commander Sharisma." Captain Newman's voice cut through the awed chatter in the cockpit. "We've sighted your mother ship. She's incredible."
"Yes Captain, we are very proud of our home." The voice on the comms system sounded like it. Proud and also relieved to be back. "It is indeed good to be back home again. Will you be visiting us while you are here?"
"If it is possible, yes, we would enjoy that. I think our SAC bombers will be too big to land though, perhaps when our aircraft carrier joins us, we can use her shuttles? If I may ask, Commander, how many of your people live on your home?"
"Just over five hundred thousand, Captain."
"Must be crowded over there." Soo's voice was quiet as she surveyed the wheel rotating slowly in front of them.
"Not really Yelina. Assuming everybody lives on the rim and the central hub is a commute destination, the population densities no greater than an urbanized New England county. And that's assuming the rim has only a single deck, could easily be more, that thing is so big that a second or third deck in the rim won't make much difference in terms of gravity. Even in the hub, the gravity will be comparable to the moon, on the hub shell at least. That ship must be almost like a self-propelled world. Commander Sharisma, how many ships like that do your people have?"
"We think there are twelve for that is how many we started with. We only meet rarely and then by accident as we go from star to star. We have not heard of losing any though. The plan was for us to find a world we could inhabit and put our home in orbit around it. Then send out messages to the others to join us. So far we have found no suitable planet and heard no messages. So we continue to wander. We had thought the planet here would suit us but it is not so."
"Perhaps we might be able to change that if we work together. Do you ever contact your home planet?"
"No, there is nothing there for us to contact. Something terrible happened there and our mother ships are all that are left."
"Asteroid impact?"
There was a long silence on the comms system, then Sharisma's voice returned, very subdued. "No, we did it to ourselves. Why do you first think of asteroid impacts?"
"One of the planets we found we also thought was going to be good for colonization but it had been left uninhabitable by multiple asteroid impacts. We have been thinking about what happened there. We found cave paintings there, given time intelligent life may have evolved on that planet. It never got the chance though."
"Sad. Intelligent life is so rare. Your home planet, it still exists?"
"Yes, it is a long way from here. We had a bad time as well but we survived it."
"You are most fortunate. Perhaps we can visit it one day, it would be good to walk on a real home planet again. Now if you do not mind, I must concentrate on docking my ship.
Soo watched as the big Nutkin scout ship peeled away from the two SAC bombers and approached the giant mothership. She hovered over the spokes, matching speed so that she was in one place, then turned through 90 degrees and started to settle down. As she did so, Soo could see the reason for the flat, pancake-like design. The scout ship settled smoothly into a series of recesses, the forward elliptical section matching an indent in the selected spoke, the sponson-mounted engines hanging over the edge of that docking area. Soo noted, several other scout ships were similarly docked on the spokes of the wheel. "Neat bit of design – and very superior ship handling."
"Not surprising, Yelina, they knew they were contacting an intelligent species, I guess they sent the best they had."
Over Southern Continent, Planet Armstrong
They'd known form the recon pictures that the southern landmasses of the planet were huge, continuous forests. The implications hadn't been clear then but they were now, and humans weren't prepared to be considerate any more. They were going to hit one of those forests and find out what went on under the canopy of sleepytrees.
"Watch out guys, an Avenger is making its run."
The shuttle rocked slightly as an Avenger dived in from orbit and leveled off a few miles away. It held altitude for a second, then climbed away in a six-gee pull-up. As it did, a long cylindrical object detached from its belly and arced through the air. A perfect toss-bomb delivery that sent the 2,000 pound bomb arching into a chosen patch of forest. Viewed from above, there was a brief pause as a silvery cloud of ethylene oxide formed, then it erupted into a roiling red-brown cloud as the igniter fired. The immense pressure wave from the fuel-air explosion raced through the trees, blasting them to one side, flattening them, destroying them and in the process clearing a landing zone more than 600 yards across.
Above the devastated circle, the assault landing craft switched from forward motion to hover, its four turboscram rockets pivoting around to point directly at the ground. The pilot cut back on power, throttling down to let the craft settle on the bare ground underneath, ground that was exposed to the sun for the first time in centuries if not longer. The assault craft touched the ground, the stern ramp dropped and the team inside debussed.
These weren't SEALS, they were Marines and being unobtrusive wasn't in the dictionary. The first group secured the landing zone, spreading out under the cover of the turret mounted gun on their assault craft. Their perimeter secured, a second assault craft came in, touching down and debussing with the same uncompromising purpose. They formed a skirmish line and headed for the trees. This time around, the humans weren't taking chances, weren't letting themselves be lulled into a false sense of security by apparent peace. This planet had come close to wiping out a group of settlers and three SEAL teams so the humans weren't going to give it another chance. The Marines were in full environmental protection suits, sealed off from the planet and its atmosphere and they were armed against any threat they could imagine. This time around, they had used their imaginations to the full.
The guess had been right; fertilized by the animals living underneath, the sleepytrees had grown to the point where they had shut out the light for all lower-tier vegetation. The ground was clear, bare, populated only by the animals that lolled around hopelessly under the trunks. Even as the Marines watched, one of them, thin, starved, emaciated and shaking with fear started to eat the fruit that lay on the ground. Around it, predators picked up interest and started to watch for the first signs of chemically-induced collapse.
"Will you look at that Gunny." The words over the radio were an uneasy combination of awe and disgust. "They're terrified of eating in case the fruit pushes them over the edge and sends them to sleep. But they have to eat the fruit because there's nothing else. So every time they eat, they shake with fear."
SEALs could have watched the scene in progress without disturbance but the herbivore saw the Marines approaching. Its eyes were pleading, desperate not to be forced to make a run for it, not to be forced to burn the fat reserve that would release a flood of toxin into its body. In the end, fear of the strangers overcame its fear of sleep and it turned to run. It made a few yards, only a few, then it staggered and started to collapse. It tried to get up but already the narcotics being released into its body were too strong, and it was too late. It collapsed into a coma and the predators eased forward, ready to eat their fill. Only the lead predator never made it. There was a sharp crack, it spun around and died, the hole blown by the rifle round clearly visible.
"It wouldn't have run if it hadn't been for us Gunny. Had to make it right."
The Gunny nodded, his face a mask of disgust. "Nothing on this planet's right Marine. Nothing." He looked around at the tall sleepytrees, the groups of enslaved animals cowering beneath them. "Ain't nothing right at all."
Admiral's Briefing Room, CVS-12 “USS Shiloh”, Elpis Star System.
"We've got the best part of a Marine company down there now Sir, all reporting in. Pretty much the same picture overall, they've sent up film but it all shows similar scenes. Once we get well south, the Sleepytrees have pretty much dominated the landscape and eased out all their competition. It's not complete, areas of the planet that are too dry are clear or only partially infested. Go well north or well south and it seems too cold for them. They're a temperate and tropical band tree. They don’t like altitude either, above about 9,000 feet, they thin out and vanish. But, within those limits, they've pretty much squeezed everything else out."
"It's sickening, animals shouldn't be enslaved to plants like that. They'd be better off dead than living in terror. Look at them, scared to move, scared to eat, scared to breath almost. Any word from back home?"
"Not yet Sir. I guess people are still discussing what to do. In some ways, the Nutkins are a complication. If they hadn't shown up, we'd write this planet off, either try to nose around this part of space or pull back to our own. We can't do that now. They're pinning us here as effectively as those trees have pinned the animals down on Armstrong. Anyway, if we exclude those trees, it is a nice planet. If we can clean it out, it would make a good meeting place for us and the Nutkins. Somewhere we can both use."
"They need it more than we do. We could make a start cleaning it out for them, do it as a joint project. There's no doubt we owe them for getting our people out in time. Have they said what happened to their own planet Sir?"
"Not yet Paul, just that it was terrible and they did it to themselves. That's pretty ominous."
"The Drake Equation." Lazaruski's voice was contemplative.
"Eh?"
"Back before the Dark Ages, a scientist called Drake invented an equation that purported to show how many intelligent civilizations could be expected to evolve in the galaxy. It's a bit meaningless really because it strings together a lot of guesses and multiples them. Garbage in, garbage out really. The problem is, all the estimates gave answers that seemed very high and raised the question why we couldn't find any evidence of those civilizations. As we've gone into space, we've found that the guesses used in earlier calculations were far too pessimistic which made the paradox even worse. The only way out has been to assume that the "life" of a technologically-advanced civilization is very short, that they destroy themselves very quickly once they gain the technology to do so. It may well be that escaping self-inflicted destruction, the way we and the Nutkins did, is very, very rare which means we need to keep in contact with them. Only, they travel between the stars the long, hard way but they decide where they're going to go. We can hop between stars almost at will but we can only go where the Interstellar Highway takes us. If we part here, we may never see them again."
"Paul, given a free hand, what would you do?"
Lazaruski stared at the hologram of Armstrong and played with the controls. The image changed so that it showed the distribution and density of sleepytree infestation. "First, I'd get the Seer and his team out here. Let them think through the implications of what we've learned." He reached out and tapped one of the offshore islands. "Then we'd start with this one. It’s completely infested, nothing there but sleepytrees and their slaves. Clean it off, burn it to the ground and sterilize the soil. Plant it with our plants, stock it with our animals. Invite the Nutkins to share it with us and bring their own stuff as well. Use it as a base and clean the rest of the planet out. Sir, We, the Russians and Americans weren't always friends, allies. It took fighting side by side against a terrible enemy to make us that way. Taking Armstrong back from the sleepytrees could do the same for us and the Nutkins. Turn a friendly start into an alliance that can last."
"Completely remove the exiting biosphere and replace it? Ambitious and controversial. There'll be objections to that."
"Why? There's nothing down there worth keeping. Perhaps we can fence a few areas off or leave some islands populated by sleepytrees but that's a detail. As for ambitious, we can take our time. Do it step by step. In fact, having the Nutkins along will be good for both of us. That mother ship of theirs will make a great orbital base, save us from building one. By the way, looking at the film of the thing. I'd say Nutkin engineering is quite a bit ahead of ours. I don't think we could build a ship that big.
"If I understand them right, it originally was a space station, an orbital one. When their planet went, the only survivors were in space and they converted their space stations into multi-generation ships. If that's right, they are good engineers, very good. I'm sending a courier ship back to Tau Ceti and then to Earth, I'll include your recommendations with them. For what it’s worth I agree with you." Admiral Theodore looked at the film images of the animals cowering around the trunks of the sleepytrees. "I know it isn't rational, but that's wrong. The very sight of it offends me."
Government Administration Office, Planet Jorden, Tau Ceti
Loki said "Why me Dido? Why not get the Seer to do it? You look to him, not to me."
"Because if he starts to speak on the issue, everybody will guess we're at war. Anyway, this isn't a question of strategy or planning a war. It’s a question of removing somebody whose activities could cause us a serious problem and by us, I don't mean us, I mean all of humanity. We're a part of it remember?"
"If its removing somebody, get Naamah to do it, she'd done it before, often enough. One of her little 'cups of wine' perhaps. Or get Achillea to stick a knife in him."
"And if we do that, we turn him into a martyr. All that nonsense he's spouting will become credible. No, we have to discredit the man and his message, not destroy him. Turn him into a laughing stock. Anyway, we can't go around killing people who threaten us anymore. We could get away with it when we lived in the shadows because that's what we were and where we lived. Even then, we didn't kill more than we had to."
"Three words. John Druitt Montague."
"Picky. Alright, I'll give you that one but Nell and Naamah got him before he could do any more damage. And we were still in the shadows then. We're not now and we're as answerable for what we do as anybody else. Ask Naamah, the Greek government tried to have a warrant put out for her arrest after she revealed what had really happened to Alexander. So whacking Hellstrom is out. It’s a character and idea assassination we need."
Loki nodded, he saw the point Dido was getting at. In fact, he'd seen it all along but he didn't see any reason why he should make things easier for somebody in The Seer's circle. Especially one who was setting up her own group in space, an area Loki had begun to believe was his domain. "I still don't see why The Seer can't do this. Everybody knows he has no sense of humor, if he says something, people believe it."
Dido heroically restrained herself. "I've already told you one reason. Here's another. The Seer's admired, respected, loved even, but he isn't actually liked very much. Not by the population at large. He's too cold, he lacks the touch. Do you know what a strain it is to be with somebody who has a reasonably accurate knowledge of what you're going to say and do before you do? And he's isolated himself from the consequences of his decisions for so long that he can't change it now. He told me once that once he'd seen what a phalanx did to the people who tried to stop it, he knew he had to discipline his mind. We all know if he started to count his dead, he'd never stop. But he doesn't connect to people, or rather people don't connect to him. They connect to you, you’re the human face of the Daimones. You've got humor, you're sympathetic, people do connect to you. Some of your jokes have gone down into history. You're exactly the right person to handle this."
"Trivialize it you mean."
Dido looked at him steadily. "Exactly; having the Seer do the debunking will make Hellstrom's nonsense seem important, strategically significant. It'll gain in importance by the association. Having you make Hellstrom look like an idiot will put things in their proper perspective. Of course, you'll be announcing First Contact as well and that is really important, one that'll put your name in the books forever. Anyway, if you don't want to help out with this, no matter. I'll get Tommy Blood to do it."
"Tommy Blood! You've got to be joking. He'll steal the papers or sell Hellstrom into slavery or something. Anyway, he doesn't carry any credibility, people know his history. Anybody but him!"
"So you'll do it then." Dido's voice was sweetly triumphant.
Loki gave up. "Yes, I'll do this. I'll need a complete list of everything Hellstrom's published ever since he got onto this thing. And I need to know about these aliens. What do they look like?"
Dido handed over a file of photographs. Loki started to leaf through them, chuckling to himself. "They look like squirrels. Big ones. Cute though, that makes things much easier. And they saved our people from certain death. Peanut butter and jelly?"
"The crew on Shiloh introduced the Nutkins to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They've changed the recipe a bit, they make them using crispbreads rather than normal bread because the Nutkins like hard things they can grind up but the idea is the same. Nutkins really took to them. They give the ones made with soft bread to their young."
Loki leaned back in his seat, his mind racing ahead. The images were good, he could work with those. This wouldn't need much distortion, the truth was quite good enough to stand on its own feet. He just needed to eliminate the idiocy Hellstrom had been pumping out. Suddenly a wonderful idea started to form in his mind and he knew he had found the perfect way to handle this whole business.
"OK Dido, I'll look after this. But I will need Tommy's help after all."
Cockpit, DSB-36 “Showgirl” Between Sixth and Seventh Planets, Elpis Star System
"By the Holy Half-Chewed Cigar of Saint Curtis, will you look at the size of that thing!" Tony Williams took a nervous half-glance at the fold-down seat in one corner of the flight deck. He didn't really think Saint Curtis would suddenly materialize there and breathe fire over him but one never knew.
"It's miles across, miles. It's as large as the Lagrange stations back home." Soo's voice was awed by the spectacle. "Just how many people live down there?"
Williams was measuring the Nutkin mother ship using Showgirl's electro-optical cameras. "The wheel is a little bit over twelve miles across and two and a half deep. The hub's twelve miles long and about two miles in diameter. If you're counting, there are sixteen spokes joining hub to wheel. I'd guess that people live in the ring and the hub is the processing, machinery and industrial center. It's spinning at 0.3 revs per minute so gravity at the rim must be fairly close to earth-normal.
"It's a multi-generation ship, it's got to be. How long do you reckon they've been flying for? Years? Decades? Centuries? Could be any of those."
"Stars here are closer than they are back home, three to ten light years seems the average. But that thing must be old."
"Commander Sharisma." Captain Newman's voice cut through the awed chatter in the cockpit. "We've sighted your mother ship. She's incredible."
"Yes Captain, we are very proud of our home." The voice on the comms system sounded like it. Proud and also relieved to be back. "It is indeed good to be back home again. Will you be visiting us while you are here?"
"If it is possible, yes, we would enjoy that. I think our SAC bombers will be too big to land though, perhaps when our aircraft carrier joins us, we can use her shuttles? If I may ask, Commander, how many of your people live on your home?"
"Just over five hundred thousand, Captain."
"Must be crowded over there." Soo's voice was quiet as she surveyed the wheel rotating slowly in front of them.
"Not really Yelina. Assuming everybody lives on the rim and the central hub is a commute destination, the population densities no greater than an urbanized New England county. And that's assuming the rim has only a single deck, could easily be more, that thing is so big that a second or third deck in the rim won't make much difference in terms of gravity. Even in the hub, the gravity will be comparable to the moon, on the hub shell at least. That ship must be almost like a self-propelled world. Commander Sharisma, how many ships like that do your people have?"
"We think there are twelve for that is how many we started with. We only meet rarely and then by accident as we go from star to star. We have not heard of losing any though. The plan was for us to find a world we could inhabit and put our home in orbit around it. Then send out messages to the others to join us. So far we have found no suitable planet and heard no messages. So we continue to wander. We had thought the planet here would suit us but it is not so."
"Perhaps we might be able to change that if we work together. Do you ever contact your home planet?"
"No, there is nothing there for us to contact. Something terrible happened there and our mother ships are all that are left."
"Asteroid impact?"
There was a long silence on the comms system, then Sharisma's voice returned, very subdued. "No, we did it to ourselves. Why do you first think of asteroid impacts?"
"One of the planets we found we also thought was going to be good for colonization but it had been left uninhabitable by multiple asteroid impacts. We have been thinking about what happened there. We found cave paintings there, given time intelligent life may have evolved on that planet. It never got the chance though."
"Sad. Intelligent life is so rare. Your home planet, it still exists?"
"Yes, it is a long way from here. We had a bad time as well but we survived it."
"You are most fortunate. Perhaps we can visit it one day, it would be good to walk on a real home planet again. Now if you do not mind, I must concentrate on docking my ship.
Soo watched as the big Nutkin scout ship peeled away from the two SAC bombers and approached the giant mothership. She hovered over the spokes, matching speed so that she was in one place, then turned through 90 degrees and started to settle down. As she did so, Soo could see the reason for the flat, pancake-like design. The scout ship settled smoothly into a series of recesses, the forward elliptical section matching an indent in the selected spoke, the sponson-mounted engines hanging over the edge of that docking area. Soo noted, several other scout ships were similarly docked on the spokes of the wheel. "Neat bit of design – and very superior ship handling."
"Not surprising, Yelina, they knew they were contacting an intelligent species, I guess they sent the best they had."
Over Southern Continent, Planet Armstrong
They'd known form the recon pictures that the southern landmasses of the planet were huge, continuous forests. The implications hadn't been clear then but they were now, and humans weren't prepared to be considerate any more. They were going to hit one of those forests and find out what went on under the canopy of sleepytrees.
"Watch out guys, an Avenger is making its run."
The shuttle rocked slightly as an Avenger dived in from orbit and leveled off a few miles away. It held altitude for a second, then climbed away in a six-gee pull-up. As it did, a long cylindrical object detached from its belly and arced through the air. A perfect toss-bomb delivery that sent the 2,000 pound bomb arching into a chosen patch of forest. Viewed from above, there was a brief pause as a silvery cloud of ethylene oxide formed, then it erupted into a roiling red-brown cloud as the igniter fired. The immense pressure wave from the fuel-air explosion raced through the trees, blasting them to one side, flattening them, destroying them and in the process clearing a landing zone more than 600 yards across.
Above the devastated circle, the assault landing craft switched from forward motion to hover, its four turboscram rockets pivoting around to point directly at the ground. The pilot cut back on power, throttling down to let the craft settle on the bare ground underneath, ground that was exposed to the sun for the first time in centuries if not longer. The assault craft touched the ground, the stern ramp dropped and the team inside debussed.
These weren't SEALS, they were Marines and being unobtrusive wasn't in the dictionary. The first group secured the landing zone, spreading out under the cover of the turret mounted gun on their assault craft. Their perimeter secured, a second assault craft came in, touching down and debussing with the same uncompromising purpose. They formed a skirmish line and headed for the trees. This time around, the humans weren't taking chances, weren't letting themselves be lulled into a false sense of security by apparent peace. This planet had come close to wiping out a group of settlers and three SEAL teams so the humans weren't going to give it another chance. The Marines were in full environmental protection suits, sealed off from the planet and its atmosphere and they were armed against any threat they could imagine. This time around, they had used their imaginations to the full.
The guess had been right; fertilized by the animals living underneath, the sleepytrees had grown to the point where they had shut out the light for all lower-tier vegetation. The ground was clear, bare, populated only by the animals that lolled around hopelessly under the trunks. Even as the Marines watched, one of them, thin, starved, emaciated and shaking with fear started to eat the fruit that lay on the ground. Around it, predators picked up interest and started to watch for the first signs of chemically-induced collapse.
"Will you look at that Gunny." The words over the radio were an uneasy combination of awe and disgust. "They're terrified of eating in case the fruit pushes them over the edge and sends them to sleep. But they have to eat the fruit because there's nothing else. So every time they eat, they shake with fear."
SEALs could have watched the scene in progress without disturbance but the herbivore saw the Marines approaching. Its eyes were pleading, desperate not to be forced to make a run for it, not to be forced to burn the fat reserve that would release a flood of toxin into its body. In the end, fear of the strangers overcame its fear of sleep and it turned to run. It made a few yards, only a few, then it staggered and started to collapse. It tried to get up but already the narcotics being released into its body were too strong, and it was too late. It collapsed into a coma and the predators eased forward, ready to eat their fill. Only the lead predator never made it. There was a sharp crack, it spun around and died, the hole blown by the rifle round clearly visible.
"It wouldn't have run if it hadn't been for us Gunny. Had to make it right."
The Gunny nodded, his face a mask of disgust. "Nothing on this planet's right Marine. Nothing." He looked around at the tall sleepytrees, the groups of enslaved animals cowering beneath them. "Ain't nothing right at all."
Admiral's Briefing Room, CVS-12 “USS Shiloh”, Elpis Star System.
"We've got the best part of a Marine company down there now Sir, all reporting in. Pretty much the same picture overall, they've sent up film but it all shows similar scenes. Once we get well south, the Sleepytrees have pretty much dominated the landscape and eased out all their competition. It's not complete, areas of the planet that are too dry are clear or only partially infested. Go well north or well south and it seems too cold for them. They're a temperate and tropical band tree. They don’t like altitude either, above about 9,000 feet, they thin out and vanish. But, within those limits, they've pretty much squeezed everything else out."
"It's sickening, animals shouldn't be enslaved to plants like that. They'd be better off dead than living in terror. Look at them, scared to move, scared to eat, scared to breath almost. Any word from back home?"
"Not yet Sir. I guess people are still discussing what to do. In some ways, the Nutkins are a complication. If they hadn't shown up, we'd write this planet off, either try to nose around this part of space or pull back to our own. We can't do that now. They're pinning us here as effectively as those trees have pinned the animals down on Armstrong. Anyway, if we exclude those trees, it is a nice planet. If we can clean it out, it would make a good meeting place for us and the Nutkins. Somewhere we can both use."
"They need it more than we do. We could make a start cleaning it out for them, do it as a joint project. There's no doubt we owe them for getting our people out in time. Have they said what happened to their own planet Sir?"
"Not yet Paul, just that it was terrible and they did it to themselves. That's pretty ominous."
"The Drake Equation." Lazaruski's voice was contemplative.
"Eh?"
"Back before the Dark Ages, a scientist called Drake invented an equation that purported to show how many intelligent civilizations could be expected to evolve in the galaxy. It's a bit meaningless really because it strings together a lot of guesses and multiples them. Garbage in, garbage out really. The problem is, all the estimates gave answers that seemed very high and raised the question why we couldn't find any evidence of those civilizations. As we've gone into space, we've found that the guesses used in earlier calculations were far too pessimistic which made the paradox even worse. The only way out has been to assume that the "life" of a technologically-advanced civilization is very short, that they destroy themselves very quickly once they gain the technology to do so. It may well be that escaping self-inflicted destruction, the way we and the Nutkins did, is very, very rare which means we need to keep in contact with them. Only, they travel between the stars the long, hard way but they decide where they're going to go. We can hop between stars almost at will but we can only go where the Interstellar Highway takes us. If we part here, we may never see them again."
"Paul, given a free hand, what would you do?"
Lazaruski stared at the hologram of Armstrong and played with the controls. The image changed so that it showed the distribution and density of sleepytree infestation. "First, I'd get the Seer and his team out here. Let them think through the implications of what we've learned." He reached out and tapped one of the offshore islands. "Then we'd start with this one. It’s completely infested, nothing there but sleepytrees and their slaves. Clean it off, burn it to the ground and sterilize the soil. Plant it with our plants, stock it with our animals. Invite the Nutkins to share it with us and bring their own stuff as well. Use it as a base and clean the rest of the planet out. Sir, We, the Russians and Americans weren't always friends, allies. It took fighting side by side against a terrible enemy to make us that way. Taking Armstrong back from the sleepytrees could do the same for us and the Nutkins. Turn a friendly start into an alliance that can last."
"Completely remove the exiting biosphere and replace it? Ambitious and controversial. There'll be objections to that."
"Why? There's nothing down there worth keeping. Perhaps we can fence a few areas off or leave some islands populated by sleepytrees but that's a detail. As for ambitious, we can take our time. Do it step by step. In fact, having the Nutkins along will be good for both of us. That mother ship of theirs will make a great orbital base, save us from building one. By the way, looking at the film of the thing. I'd say Nutkin engineering is quite a bit ahead of ours. I don't think we could build a ship that big.
"If I understand them right, it originally was a space station, an orbital one. When their planet went, the only survivors were in space and they converted their space stations into multi-generation ships. If that's right, they are good engineers, very good. I'm sending a courier ship back to Tau Ceti and then to Earth, I'll include your recommendations with them. For what it’s worth I agree with you." Admiral Theodore looked at the film images of the animals cowering around the trunks of the sleepytrees. "I know it isn't rational, but that's wrong. The very sight of it offends me."
Government Administration Office, Planet Jorden, Tau Ceti
Loki said "Why me Dido? Why not get the Seer to do it? You look to him, not to me."
"Because if he starts to speak on the issue, everybody will guess we're at war. Anyway, this isn't a question of strategy or planning a war. It’s a question of removing somebody whose activities could cause us a serious problem and by us, I don't mean us, I mean all of humanity. We're a part of it remember?"
"If its removing somebody, get Naamah to do it, she'd done it before, often enough. One of her little 'cups of wine' perhaps. Or get Achillea to stick a knife in him."
"And if we do that, we turn him into a martyr. All that nonsense he's spouting will become credible. No, we have to discredit the man and his message, not destroy him. Turn him into a laughing stock. Anyway, we can't go around killing people who threaten us anymore. We could get away with it when we lived in the shadows because that's what we were and where we lived. Even then, we didn't kill more than we had to."
"Three words. John Druitt Montague."
"Picky. Alright, I'll give you that one but Nell and Naamah got him before he could do any more damage. And we were still in the shadows then. We're not now and we're as answerable for what we do as anybody else. Ask Naamah, the Greek government tried to have a warrant put out for her arrest after she revealed what had really happened to Alexander. So whacking Hellstrom is out. It’s a character and idea assassination we need."
Loki nodded, he saw the point Dido was getting at. In fact, he'd seen it all along but he didn't see any reason why he should make things easier for somebody in The Seer's circle. Especially one who was setting up her own group in space, an area Loki had begun to believe was his domain. "I still don't see why The Seer can't do this. Everybody knows he has no sense of humor, if he says something, people believe it."
Dido heroically restrained herself. "I've already told you one reason. Here's another. The Seer's admired, respected, loved even, but he isn't actually liked very much. Not by the population at large. He's too cold, he lacks the touch. Do you know what a strain it is to be with somebody who has a reasonably accurate knowledge of what you're going to say and do before you do? And he's isolated himself from the consequences of his decisions for so long that he can't change it now. He told me once that once he'd seen what a phalanx did to the people who tried to stop it, he knew he had to discipline his mind. We all know if he started to count his dead, he'd never stop. But he doesn't connect to people, or rather people don't connect to him. They connect to you, you’re the human face of the Daimones. You've got humor, you're sympathetic, people do connect to you. Some of your jokes have gone down into history. You're exactly the right person to handle this."
"Trivialize it you mean."
Dido looked at him steadily. "Exactly; having the Seer do the debunking will make Hellstrom's nonsense seem important, strategically significant. It'll gain in importance by the association. Having you make Hellstrom look like an idiot will put things in their proper perspective. Of course, you'll be announcing First Contact as well and that is really important, one that'll put your name in the books forever. Anyway, if you don't want to help out with this, no matter. I'll get Tommy Blood to do it."
"Tommy Blood! You've got to be joking. He'll steal the papers or sell Hellstrom into slavery or something. Anyway, he doesn't carry any credibility, people know his history. Anybody but him!"
"So you'll do it then." Dido's voice was sweetly triumphant.
Loki gave up. "Yes, I'll do this. I'll need a complete list of everything Hellstrom's published ever since he got onto this thing. And I need to know about these aliens. What do they look like?"
Dido handed over a file of photographs. Loki started to leaf through them, chuckling to himself. "They look like squirrels. Big ones. Cute though, that makes things much easier. And they saved our people from certain death. Peanut butter and jelly?"
"The crew on Shiloh introduced the Nutkins to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. They've changed the recipe a bit, they make them using crispbreads rather than normal bread because the Nutkins like hard things they can grind up but the idea is the same. Nutkins really took to them. They give the ones made with soft bread to their young."
Loki leaned back in his seat, his mind racing ahead. The images were good, he could work with those. This wouldn't need much distortion, the truth was quite good enough to stand on its own feet. He just needed to eliminate the idiocy Hellstrom had been pumping out. Suddenly a wonderful idea started to form in his mind and he knew he had found the perfect way to handle this whole business.
"OK Dido, I'll look after this. But I will need Tommy's help after all."
Re: 2545 - Intersteller Highway
Chapter 25
VC12D-4 Shuttle "Angie" Final Approach, Nutkin Mother Ship. Elpis Star System
"It's no different to putting down on an angled deck. We just have to match the rate of turn as well as the approach speed. This way has a slight advantage over ours, we won't have to match roll rates as well but that's a minor consideration. It's no problem, Admiral, Sir, " The undercarriage of the carried on-board delivery transport touched the deck underneath. There was a squeal of protest from the tires and a lurch sideways that the pilot caught quickly. "Well, Sir, not much of a problem anyway. Sorry about that."
The COD bird taxied along the deck into the opening that marked the hangar of the Nutkin mother ship. The metal expanse around them seemed huge compared with Shiloh and the aircraft carrier herself had been considered big. Until they'd seen the mother ship of course. Behind them, the shutters that closed off the landing bay slid sideways across the entrance. The light in the bay was dim to eyes used to the brilliant illumination preferred by humans on their hangar decks but it did show the follow-me lights on the deck in high relief. Angie followed the flashing beacon into one of the parking bays and a second set of doors closed behind it. Figures surrounded the ship, moving up the steps and gantries that surrounded any ship that had just landed from space.
"Putting the landing bay on the outside of the hub is an interesting approach as well. Means they have gravity on the deck, something we don’t get with our axial flight deck."
"Yes Sir, but our elevator airlock system is neater and more economic than theirs. They must pump clear the whole hangar deck and then pump the atmosphere back when the bays are closed. That's wasteful and an accident waiting to happen. I wonder how often they've started to evacuate a bay and found there's somebody left behind?" There were certain privileges involved in flying the Admiral's Barge and chatting to the Admiral himself was one of them. Of course, it was a privilege that brought with it a requirement to be circumspect.
"Welcome to our Home, Admiral Theodore." It wasn't actually the Nutkin speaking of course, but the translation boxes were improving hourly. Their vocabulary was increasing and the translation programs were getting more accurate. The latest development had been a choice of voices, the computer matched the sounds it heard to a near-equivalent in its memory and used that. The flat monotone of the earlier versions had gone at last. “I have some transportation here to take you to see our mother’s section.” The translation box gave the distressed ‘wheep’ it used when the artificial intelligence believed that something had been translated wrongly or out of context. There was a quick huddled conference, then the Nutkin tried again. "To our leader's section. If your pilot would like to look at some of our ships on the hangar deck, we will be happy to show him."
"Off you go, Charles. Try not to break anything." Admiral Theodore set off down the tail ramp to where the Nutkins were waiting for him. Meeting them was a bit of a surprise, he hadn't seen a Nutkin in person and images of the undersized arms had lead him to expect the Nutkins to be small and delicate. They weren't, they were the same height as humans but more heavily built, especially around the hips where the powerful back legs joined their bodies. Size for size, he guessed, they outweighed humans.
"Admiral, I am Commander Gennarahith of the Measrathal family. You have brought your staff with you I see."
That had been a decision, thought Theodore, a lot of cultures based their estimation of somebody's importance on the number of staff they went around with. On the other hand too many might be intimidating or threatening. In the end, he'd settled for two, Lazaruski in case he needed assistance in planning strikes and the commander of the Marine detachment, Colonel Schoerner. Suddenly, he got a picture of the strain his people had been working under for the last few days, wanting to do the right thing with their new friends and constantly trying to weigh every word, every decision for its possible problems. He hadn't given them enough credit for the effort they'd put in, not nearly enough. In a flash of insight, he realized the Nutkin personnel had, for a rock hard certainty, been working under the same strain.
"I brought a few to help us, yes. I think we owe both our crews a great deal of thanks for the efforts they have made to make sure the meeting between our peoples has gone smoothly."
"Yes and as usual we will get all the credit and their efforts will be forgotten. Still when they get the promotions they deserve, they will be able to get the credit due to others as well." Gennarahith's cynical speech was offset by the dancing humor in his eyes. Or her eyes? One of the things humans had learned about Nutkins was that there were very few external differences between the sexes. "This is our transport here. Admiral perhaps you would ride in the front with me and your assistants in the back?"
To Theodore's surprise, the transport car had two types of seats, one obviously designed for Nutkins. A long horizontal portion with a shorter back and two arms high up that had small controls mounted on them. However, the other seats were proportioned and scaled for humans. "You made these for us?"
"We copied the ones we saw on Shiloh for you. Our seats would be most uncomfortable. Gennarahith closed the doors and eased into the driving seat. With the familiarity of long experience, his feet reached out for the controls and pressed down on the accelerator. Theodore looked down; to his surprise, it seemed that steering was a foot control function as well. As the car moved forward they passed what appeared to be construction work in one corner of the bay. Gennarahith waved at it. "We were most impressed with your elevator and air lock design so we have copied it. That is a trial system to see if it will work for the way we design things. Just beyond it are some of our hunter ships. Pilot Lazaruski, the commander of our hunter squadron would be honored if you could visit him after this meeting is over. We are about to enter a spoke tunnel now."
The car entered what appeared to be a vertical shaft and started to 'drop'. It was an illusion of course, the car was firmly attached to a series of conveyor belt bands that ran through the tunnel. Theodore could feel the cab accelerating as Gennarahith shifted it from the slower-moving bands on the edges to the fastest moving one in the center. Then, a few minutes later, there was a proportional deceleration as they shifted back. As they left the slowest band, the little cab came to a halt.
"Very impressive Commander Gennarahith. It reminds me of the systems described in some of our books. We considered such designs for transport but very few were built. Are all the spokes equipped like that?"
"They are. The tracks are just part of the system that moves everything we need from the production centers in the hub to the rim where we live. Admiral, I have purposely ended this drive a little short so you can walk through a small part of where we live on our rim before meeting our leader. I think you will enjoy this."
The way out of the stopping point was marked by a door, one that slid smoothly sideways as they approached. Theodore stepped through and stopped dead. He'd expected to see a conventional ship, perhaps differently designed, but of the same basic characteristics. Instead, he saw what looked like a park. A reddish-green coating on the ground, he looked a little more closely, it wasn't quite grass, more like a fibrous matting. Intertwined threads splitting, entwining and rejoining to make a thick, springy carpet. At intervals, clustered around some low, hemispherical mounds were tree- or bush-like plants came out of the carpet to shade the area. Yet, it was above that was stunning, the upper half of the rim was transparent and gave a spectacular view of the huge central hub and the spokes that lead out from it. Beyond them, the stars could be seen, apparently rotating as the disk span. The green park-like area seemed to go off indefinitely, Theodore had to remind himself that the rim was two and a half miles wide. Behind him, the park eventually ended in what appeared to be a building that transected the rim. There was another one in front, about a hundred yards away from them.
"The domes are where we live with our families." Gennarahith's voice oozed with the pride of somebody who knew his home had impressed his guests. "They are the entry and top areas, there is more underground. The big building in front of us is where we must go. It is one of our leadership buildings."
"This is incredibly beautiful. This mat is a plant? We have something similar called grass. What a wonderful place to live."
"Thank you, we are very proud of our home. The ground is covered by a plant yes. It is called shalia. We have many plants here to help maintain our air. So since we had to have them, we might as well use them to make this as much like our planet as we could. The plants we are walking on covered many areas of our planet."
The sort-of-grass-but-not-quite called shalia was pleasant to walk on although its thickness threatened to give the humans a turned ankle. It was indeed an enjoyable walk though, especially for people who had been surrounded by navy gray steel for so many weeks. As the party neared the administration block, there was a chattering noise, one much more like the humans had originally expected to hear from the Nutkins. It came from a group of small Nutkins, obviously young. They watched the humans with curiosity mixed with caution until some adults, their mothers? came to round them up. Even so, one of the young managed to overcome the approaching adults and its own nerves to run out and grab Theodore's hand. It was looking curiously at the bare skin, its middle finger pushing tentatively at the sparse coating of hair. An apologetic adult ran up to seize the infant. Theodore gave it the Nutkin closed-lip smile.
"If I may say so, a beautiful child, my lady. Our children behave the same way when something strange arrives. They watch until the bravest investigates to find out what is happening. I hope our children can play together soon."
The Nutkin looked both proud and embarrassed as she carried her young out of the way. "I hope I didn't say anything wrong?" Theodore was nervous, he didn’t like interacting with civilians at the best of times. So unpredictable.
"Admiral, you said exactly the right thing. For us, every parent hopes to hear that their children are brave. The access lift is in front of you. Just wait until a floor panel emerges, then step on it and turn around. Step off at the sixth floor up. I will go first and wait for you."
And demonstrate how to do it then make sure we don't miss the floor Theodore thought. The elevator was a continuous band, a vertical conveyor belt with wide steps that moved upwards at a slick speed. Theodore waited until one of the horizontal steps emerged from the floor and took a pace forward onto it. There was plenty of space but no handholds or guard rails. He couldn't help thinking that the health and safety people back on Earth would go berserk if they saw this design. It was a neat and efficient elevator though. Obviously, it ran over rollers at the top and the other side of the loop provided the down service. Nutkins seemed to like conveyor belt designs and used them very efficiently. He came to the correct floor and stepped forward. The system was easy to use once one got used to it. If somebody managed to hurt themselves, it was probably just evolution in action.
The corridor on the sixth floor and the conference room it lead to could have been in any Earth office block, even down to the cheap synthetic carpet on the floor and the cheesy artwork on the walls. The only real difference were the seats, some differently proportioned for the Nutkins, others reassuringly familiar for the humans. The room was occupied by the first older Nutkin the humans had met, the hair around the nose and eyes was speckled with silvery gray. It hadn't occurred to them before that the Nutkins they'd met to date had been young adults.
"Admiral, I would like you to meet Leader Annaheash. Leader Annaheash is the head of the ??." The translation box stopped for a second "?? ruling council of our Home. Leader Annaheash, this is Admiral Theodore of the Baldy ship Shiloh and his staff."
Theodore took a deep breath and pressed the 'pause' button on his translation box. Then he carefully repeated the Nutkin greetings he'd heard used. The Nutkins listened carefully and their faces filled with delight. Then Annaheash did the same with her translation box. "And we welcome you to our Home, Admiral." Then she released the button and the box took over again. "We hope that this will be the first of many such visits."
The meeting sat down, Theodore with obvious relief on his face. Gennarahith leaned over "You were nervous about speaking our language?"
"Very much so. Some languages on our planet are tonal, how you say words changes what they mean. It is easy to make a mistake in such languages."
"I can imagine, but our language is not like that. And you did very well indeed."
Theodore sighed with relief. Time to get started. "Leader Annaheash, may I start by saying, on a formal basis, how grateful we are for all the efforts you have made to rescue our people from the great danger they faced on the planet. We were quite unaware of the hazards down there and we could have lost many of our crews had it not been for your generosity and compassion. We are greatly in your debt. My people have already said this to yours on a private and informal level but now I do so speaking for all our people both here and elsewhere."
"Admiral, your thanks are received and understood but we did no more than we felt was right. But we are curious on one thing. How did you get here? We have no trace of your ships arriving, they just seemed to appear in this system. We have seen your ships are heavily armed, do they also have a means of avoiding detection while traveling between the stars?"
Theodore took another deep breath. He'd known the question would be asked and he'd thought out a reply. "Leader Annaheash, our ships do not travel between the stars, they travel directly from one to the next without crossing the space between. When we arrived we picked up trace signals we could not understand. We now think they were the warning messages from your ship but we did not know that then."
There was a stir, the Nutkins leaning forward with interest. "You jump directly from star to star? How? We cannot do that, we must travel slowly through space. It takes us many years to get from one star to the next. That is why our search for a new home has taken so long. The planet here was only the third we have found and the first that looked suitable. If it wasn't for those trees, it would have been perfect for us. Can you help us search?"
"We can and will but there is a problem. We go from star to star by jumps but these use natural holes in space we call portals. We do not know where each portal will lead until we dive through it and find out. We will gladly take your people along as we explore the portals and if we find a new planet you think suitable, help you reach it. But bringing your mothership, that would be difficult. It would have to follow under its own power. Also, since we do not control where the portals lead, if we part company here, it is probable we would not be able to meet again. Leader, may I make a suggestion?"
"Please Admiral, we would value anything you suggest."
"You say this planet is perfect for you, except for those trees. Suppose we remove the trees? Clear the land of them, sterilize the soil so no seeds survive, then you can bring down your own plants - as can we - and we can make this planet a base for the contact between our peoples. We clear an island together, occupy it together, settle it together. Then, depending on how that works, we can either continue to live together in mixed colonies or have some Baldy colonies, some Nutkin colonies living side by side. We'll see what works. But the planet would be yours, your new home, and we would be the guests there."
"You would give us a planet?" The Nutkin leader's voice was surprised and a little skeptical.
"Certainly, you need it more than we do. The way we travel in space makes it easy for us to find satisfactory planets so we can find another. Anyway, we owe you. And this way, you can put your Home into orbit and it saves us from building an orbital base. This way, we have a permanent base we can use to build the friendship between us."
"So you will do this." The Leader's voice was thoughtful. "Can you do this? Make war on a whole planet, clear it of those vile trees?"
"Oh yes. Paul, can you make your pitch please? Leader Annaheash, this is Paul Lazaruski, the commander of the air group on Shiloh. He will explain what we can do."
"Leader, Admiral." Lazaruski flipped on a display board, the images forming over the pad he'd brought. "This is a map we've made of the planet, showing the density of sleepytree infestation. We've identified the following major zones. Zone One have less than one percent sleepytree coverage. These are very cold areas, ice-caps and tundra." The translation box squeaked in outrage. "Sorry, tundra is frozen ground where the climate is very cold but not permanently ice-covered. These are areas where we can eliminate what infestation exists by hand, kill each tree individually. Zone One also includes elevations above 10,000 feet. Sleepytrees don't like cold or high altitude.
"Zone Two has below twenty percent sleepytree coverage. These areas support a diverse and balanced population of local life but the trees are spreading and endanger that. There, we can go in, kill the sleepytrees, individually where we can, wholesale where we can't. The rest of the environment and the natural life we leave untouched. Essentially, we're saving them from the sleepytrees.
"Zone Three has twenty to fifty percent sleepytree coverage. These are areas that are sliding under sleepytree domination. Our settlement, Alice Summer, was in a Zone Three area. Here, the animals and other plant life is already being brought under sleepytree control and there are large areas under complete sleepytree domination. We'll have to take those out. Hard work and messy, we'll have to use some fairly vicious weapons to do it.
"Zone Four. Fifty to ninety percent coverage. Sleepytree dominated with the animal life enslaved, other plant life well on the way to extermination. Retaking those areas will be a long-term project but we can do it.
"Zone Five. Hundred percent sleepytree coverage. The sleepytrees have eliminated everything but themselves and the animals they've enslaved. We can blast and burn those areas at will, there's nothing worth saving down there." Lazaruski took a deep breath, this was the bit that turned his stomach. "Within Zone Five there are areas where only sleepytrees survive. Even the animals have died out. Where the sleepytrees have exterminated everything but themselves. We call these areas 'the badlands'. I would suggest that destroying such areas is a duty."
"Thank you Paul. Before we propose a plan, I would like to add something. Our biologists believe that Zones Two to Five are transitional stages and that eventually the whole planet except Zone One will be badlands. Our biologists also believe that this is not a stable situation, that eventually a disease or something else will strike the sleepytrees and wipe them out. Leaving the planet with nothing. What we do will only accelerate that end and also preserve what non-sleepytree life exists down there. Paul?"
"Admiral. We have identified a suitable island for our bridgehead. This one here. It’s badlands, hundred percent sleepytree coverage, no other surviving life of any kind. A great free-fire zone. We can burn it, clear and settle it. It’s close enough to one of the continents for Rotodyne flights there and back, large enough for a base and to support a large, healthy colony, small enough for us to secure with a reasonable garrison. We can also use it to explore the seas, we know almost nothing about what lives there and whether they have survived those trees. We’ve asked for two merchant ships loaded with cryo-napalm to be sent out. Once they arrive, we’ve got the strike all planned out. SAC do the area strikes, burn out the infestation. Then we send in carrier birds, Avengers, to take out any small patches they miss. Land Marines and sweep the area to get what's left. Plough in the ash and replant. We'll have to sort out with what. We'll support the colony from space until we're sure it’s safe down there. Having this Home in orbit will be a godsend for us. Your industrial facilities here are very impressive, it'll help enormously. In fact, I doubt if we could do this without your help. By the way, if you wish, once we've started getting the planet under control, we can try and find the other Homes and tell them that this planet exists if they wish to come here."
Leader Annaheash was listening with amazement. "You can do this." This time it was a statement, not a question. "You would help us clear this planet for our home. For all of us."
"Leader, that's what friends are for. If somebody loses their home, their friends shelter them until they are on their feet again and then they help them build a replacement home. It's what friends do."
VC12D-4 Shuttle "Angie" Final Approach, Nutkin Mother Ship. Elpis Star System
"It's no different to putting down on an angled deck. We just have to match the rate of turn as well as the approach speed. This way has a slight advantage over ours, we won't have to match roll rates as well but that's a minor consideration. It's no problem, Admiral, Sir, " The undercarriage of the carried on-board delivery transport touched the deck underneath. There was a squeal of protest from the tires and a lurch sideways that the pilot caught quickly. "Well, Sir, not much of a problem anyway. Sorry about that."
The COD bird taxied along the deck into the opening that marked the hangar of the Nutkin mother ship. The metal expanse around them seemed huge compared with Shiloh and the aircraft carrier herself had been considered big. Until they'd seen the mother ship of course. Behind them, the shutters that closed off the landing bay slid sideways across the entrance. The light in the bay was dim to eyes used to the brilliant illumination preferred by humans on their hangar decks but it did show the follow-me lights on the deck in high relief. Angie followed the flashing beacon into one of the parking bays and a second set of doors closed behind it. Figures surrounded the ship, moving up the steps and gantries that surrounded any ship that had just landed from space.
"Putting the landing bay on the outside of the hub is an interesting approach as well. Means they have gravity on the deck, something we don’t get with our axial flight deck."
"Yes Sir, but our elevator airlock system is neater and more economic than theirs. They must pump clear the whole hangar deck and then pump the atmosphere back when the bays are closed. That's wasteful and an accident waiting to happen. I wonder how often they've started to evacuate a bay and found there's somebody left behind?" There were certain privileges involved in flying the Admiral's Barge and chatting to the Admiral himself was one of them. Of course, it was a privilege that brought with it a requirement to be circumspect.
"Welcome to our Home, Admiral Theodore." It wasn't actually the Nutkin speaking of course, but the translation boxes were improving hourly. Their vocabulary was increasing and the translation programs were getting more accurate. The latest development had been a choice of voices, the computer matched the sounds it heard to a near-equivalent in its memory and used that. The flat monotone of the earlier versions had gone at last. “I have some transportation here to take you to see our mother’s section.” The translation box gave the distressed ‘wheep’ it used when the artificial intelligence believed that something had been translated wrongly or out of context. There was a quick huddled conference, then the Nutkin tried again. "To our leader's section. If your pilot would like to look at some of our ships on the hangar deck, we will be happy to show him."
"Off you go, Charles. Try not to break anything." Admiral Theodore set off down the tail ramp to where the Nutkins were waiting for him. Meeting them was a bit of a surprise, he hadn't seen a Nutkin in person and images of the undersized arms had lead him to expect the Nutkins to be small and delicate. They weren't, they were the same height as humans but more heavily built, especially around the hips where the powerful back legs joined their bodies. Size for size, he guessed, they outweighed humans.
"Admiral, I am Commander Gennarahith of the Measrathal family. You have brought your staff with you I see."
That had been a decision, thought Theodore, a lot of cultures based their estimation of somebody's importance on the number of staff they went around with. On the other hand too many might be intimidating or threatening. In the end, he'd settled for two, Lazaruski in case he needed assistance in planning strikes and the commander of the Marine detachment, Colonel Schoerner. Suddenly, he got a picture of the strain his people had been working under for the last few days, wanting to do the right thing with their new friends and constantly trying to weigh every word, every decision for its possible problems. He hadn't given them enough credit for the effort they'd put in, not nearly enough. In a flash of insight, he realized the Nutkin personnel had, for a rock hard certainty, been working under the same strain.
"I brought a few to help us, yes. I think we owe both our crews a great deal of thanks for the efforts they have made to make sure the meeting between our peoples has gone smoothly."
"Yes and as usual we will get all the credit and their efforts will be forgotten. Still when they get the promotions they deserve, they will be able to get the credit due to others as well." Gennarahith's cynical speech was offset by the dancing humor in his eyes. Or her eyes? One of the things humans had learned about Nutkins was that there were very few external differences between the sexes. "This is our transport here. Admiral perhaps you would ride in the front with me and your assistants in the back?"
To Theodore's surprise, the transport car had two types of seats, one obviously designed for Nutkins. A long horizontal portion with a shorter back and two arms high up that had small controls mounted on them. However, the other seats were proportioned and scaled for humans. "You made these for us?"
"We copied the ones we saw on Shiloh for you. Our seats would be most uncomfortable. Gennarahith closed the doors and eased into the driving seat. With the familiarity of long experience, his feet reached out for the controls and pressed down on the accelerator. Theodore looked down; to his surprise, it seemed that steering was a foot control function as well. As the car moved forward they passed what appeared to be construction work in one corner of the bay. Gennarahith waved at it. "We were most impressed with your elevator and air lock design so we have copied it. That is a trial system to see if it will work for the way we design things. Just beyond it are some of our hunter ships. Pilot Lazaruski, the commander of our hunter squadron would be honored if you could visit him after this meeting is over. We are about to enter a spoke tunnel now."
The car entered what appeared to be a vertical shaft and started to 'drop'. It was an illusion of course, the car was firmly attached to a series of conveyor belt bands that ran through the tunnel. Theodore could feel the cab accelerating as Gennarahith shifted it from the slower-moving bands on the edges to the fastest moving one in the center. Then, a few minutes later, there was a proportional deceleration as they shifted back. As they left the slowest band, the little cab came to a halt.
"Very impressive Commander Gennarahith. It reminds me of the systems described in some of our books. We considered such designs for transport but very few were built. Are all the spokes equipped like that?"
"They are. The tracks are just part of the system that moves everything we need from the production centers in the hub to the rim where we live. Admiral, I have purposely ended this drive a little short so you can walk through a small part of where we live on our rim before meeting our leader. I think you will enjoy this."
The way out of the stopping point was marked by a door, one that slid smoothly sideways as they approached. Theodore stepped through and stopped dead. He'd expected to see a conventional ship, perhaps differently designed, but of the same basic characteristics. Instead, he saw what looked like a park. A reddish-green coating on the ground, he looked a little more closely, it wasn't quite grass, more like a fibrous matting. Intertwined threads splitting, entwining and rejoining to make a thick, springy carpet. At intervals, clustered around some low, hemispherical mounds were tree- or bush-like plants came out of the carpet to shade the area. Yet, it was above that was stunning, the upper half of the rim was transparent and gave a spectacular view of the huge central hub and the spokes that lead out from it. Beyond them, the stars could be seen, apparently rotating as the disk span. The green park-like area seemed to go off indefinitely, Theodore had to remind himself that the rim was two and a half miles wide. Behind him, the park eventually ended in what appeared to be a building that transected the rim. There was another one in front, about a hundred yards away from them.
"The domes are where we live with our families." Gennarahith's voice oozed with the pride of somebody who knew his home had impressed his guests. "They are the entry and top areas, there is more underground. The big building in front of us is where we must go. It is one of our leadership buildings."
"This is incredibly beautiful. This mat is a plant? We have something similar called grass. What a wonderful place to live."
"Thank you, we are very proud of our home. The ground is covered by a plant yes. It is called shalia. We have many plants here to help maintain our air. So since we had to have them, we might as well use them to make this as much like our planet as we could. The plants we are walking on covered many areas of our planet."
The sort-of-grass-but-not-quite called shalia was pleasant to walk on although its thickness threatened to give the humans a turned ankle. It was indeed an enjoyable walk though, especially for people who had been surrounded by navy gray steel for so many weeks. As the party neared the administration block, there was a chattering noise, one much more like the humans had originally expected to hear from the Nutkins. It came from a group of small Nutkins, obviously young. They watched the humans with curiosity mixed with caution until some adults, their mothers? came to round them up. Even so, one of the young managed to overcome the approaching adults and its own nerves to run out and grab Theodore's hand. It was looking curiously at the bare skin, its middle finger pushing tentatively at the sparse coating of hair. An apologetic adult ran up to seize the infant. Theodore gave it the Nutkin closed-lip smile.
"If I may say so, a beautiful child, my lady. Our children behave the same way when something strange arrives. They watch until the bravest investigates to find out what is happening. I hope our children can play together soon."
The Nutkin looked both proud and embarrassed as she carried her young out of the way. "I hope I didn't say anything wrong?" Theodore was nervous, he didn’t like interacting with civilians at the best of times. So unpredictable.
"Admiral, you said exactly the right thing. For us, every parent hopes to hear that their children are brave. The access lift is in front of you. Just wait until a floor panel emerges, then step on it and turn around. Step off at the sixth floor up. I will go first and wait for you."
And demonstrate how to do it then make sure we don't miss the floor Theodore thought. The elevator was a continuous band, a vertical conveyor belt with wide steps that moved upwards at a slick speed. Theodore waited until one of the horizontal steps emerged from the floor and took a pace forward onto it. There was plenty of space but no handholds or guard rails. He couldn't help thinking that the health and safety people back on Earth would go berserk if they saw this design. It was a neat and efficient elevator though. Obviously, it ran over rollers at the top and the other side of the loop provided the down service. Nutkins seemed to like conveyor belt designs and used them very efficiently. He came to the correct floor and stepped forward. The system was easy to use once one got used to it. If somebody managed to hurt themselves, it was probably just evolution in action.
The corridor on the sixth floor and the conference room it lead to could have been in any Earth office block, even down to the cheap synthetic carpet on the floor and the cheesy artwork on the walls. The only real difference were the seats, some differently proportioned for the Nutkins, others reassuringly familiar for the humans. The room was occupied by the first older Nutkin the humans had met, the hair around the nose and eyes was speckled with silvery gray. It hadn't occurred to them before that the Nutkins they'd met to date had been young adults.
"Admiral, I would like you to meet Leader Annaheash. Leader Annaheash is the head of the ??." The translation box stopped for a second "?? ruling council of our Home. Leader Annaheash, this is Admiral Theodore of the Baldy ship Shiloh and his staff."
Theodore took a deep breath and pressed the 'pause' button on his translation box. Then he carefully repeated the Nutkin greetings he'd heard used. The Nutkins listened carefully and their faces filled with delight. Then Annaheash did the same with her translation box. "And we welcome you to our Home, Admiral." Then she released the button and the box took over again. "We hope that this will be the first of many such visits."
The meeting sat down, Theodore with obvious relief on his face. Gennarahith leaned over "You were nervous about speaking our language?"
"Very much so. Some languages on our planet are tonal, how you say words changes what they mean. It is easy to make a mistake in such languages."
"I can imagine, but our language is not like that. And you did very well indeed."
Theodore sighed with relief. Time to get started. "Leader Annaheash, may I start by saying, on a formal basis, how grateful we are for all the efforts you have made to rescue our people from the great danger they faced on the planet. We were quite unaware of the hazards down there and we could have lost many of our crews had it not been for your generosity and compassion. We are greatly in your debt. My people have already said this to yours on a private and informal level but now I do so speaking for all our people both here and elsewhere."
"Admiral, your thanks are received and understood but we did no more than we felt was right. But we are curious on one thing. How did you get here? We have no trace of your ships arriving, they just seemed to appear in this system. We have seen your ships are heavily armed, do they also have a means of avoiding detection while traveling between the stars?"
Theodore took another deep breath. He'd known the question would be asked and he'd thought out a reply. "Leader Annaheash, our ships do not travel between the stars, they travel directly from one to the next without crossing the space between. When we arrived we picked up trace signals we could not understand. We now think they were the warning messages from your ship but we did not know that then."
There was a stir, the Nutkins leaning forward with interest. "You jump directly from star to star? How? We cannot do that, we must travel slowly through space. It takes us many years to get from one star to the next. That is why our search for a new home has taken so long. The planet here was only the third we have found and the first that looked suitable. If it wasn't for those trees, it would have been perfect for us. Can you help us search?"
"We can and will but there is a problem. We go from star to star by jumps but these use natural holes in space we call portals. We do not know where each portal will lead until we dive through it and find out. We will gladly take your people along as we explore the portals and if we find a new planet you think suitable, help you reach it. But bringing your mothership, that would be difficult. It would have to follow under its own power. Also, since we do not control where the portals lead, if we part company here, it is probable we would not be able to meet again. Leader, may I make a suggestion?"
"Please Admiral, we would value anything you suggest."
"You say this planet is perfect for you, except for those trees. Suppose we remove the trees? Clear the land of them, sterilize the soil so no seeds survive, then you can bring down your own plants - as can we - and we can make this planet a base for the contact between our peoples. We clear an island together, occupy it together, settle it together. Then, depending on how that works, we can either continue to live together in mixed colonies or have some Baldy colonies, some Nutkin colonies living side by side. We'll see what works. But the planet would be yours, your new home, and we would be the guests there."
"You would give us a planet?" The Nutkin leader's voice was surprised and a little skeptical.
"Certainly, you need it more than we do. The way we travel in space makes it easy for us to find satisfactory planets so we can find another. Anyway, we owe you. And this way, you can put your Home into orbit and it saves us from building an orbital base. This way, we have a permanent base we can use to build the friendship between us."
"So you will do this." The Leader's voice was thoughtful. "Can you do this? Make war on a whole planet, clear it of those vile trees?"
"Oh yes. Paul, can you make your pitch please? Leader Annaheash, this is Paul Lazaruski, the commander of the air group on Shiloh. He will explain what we can do."
"Leader, Admiral." Lazaruski flipped on a display board, the images forming over the pad he'd brought. "This is a map we've made of the planet, showing the density of sleepytree infestation. We've identified the following major zones. Zone One have less than one percent sleepytree coverage. These are very cold areas, ice-caps and tundra." The translation box squeaked in outrage. "Sorry, tundra is frozen ground where the climate is very cold but not permanently ice-covered. These are areas where we can eliminate what infestation exists by hand, kill each tree individually. Zone One also includes elevations above 10,000 feet. Sleepytrees don't like cold or high altitude.
"Zone Two has below twenty percent sleepytree coverage. These areas support a diverse and balanced population of local life but the trees are spreading and endanger that. There, we can go in, kill the sleepytrees, individually where we can, wholesale where we can't. The rest of the environment and the natural life we leave untouched. Essentially, we're saving them from the sleepytrees.
"Zone Three has twenty to fifty percent sleepytree coverage. These are areas that are sliding under sleepytree domination. Our settlement, Alice Summer, was in a Zone Three area. Here, the animals and other plant life is already being brought under sleepytree control and there are large areas under complete sleepytree domination. We'll have to take those out. Hard work and messy, we'll have to use some fairly vicious weapons to do it.
"Zone Four. Fifty to ninety percent coverage. Sleepytree dominated with the animal life enslaved, other plant life well on the way to extermination. Retaking those areas will be a long-term project but we can do it.
"Zone Five. Hundred percent sleepytree coverage. The sleepytrees have eliminated everything but themselves and the animals they've enslaved. We can blast and burn those areas at will, there's nothing worth saving down there." Lazaruski took a deep breath, this was the bit that turned his stomach. "Within Zone Five there are areas where only sleepytrees survive. Even the animals have died out. Where the sleepytrees have exterminated everything but themselves. We call these areas 'the badlands'. I would suggest that destroying such areas is a duty."
"Thank you Paul. Before we propose a plan, I would like to add something. Our biologists believe that Zones Two to Five are transitional stages and that eventually the whole planet except Zone One will be badlands. Our biologists also believe that this is not a stable situation, that eventually a disease or something else will strike the sleepytrees and wipe them out. Leaving the planet with nothing. What we do will only accelerate that end and also preserve what non-sleepytree life exists down there. Paul?"
"Admiral. We have identified a suitable island for our bridgehead. This one here. It’s badlands, hundred percent sleepytree coverage, no other surviving life of any kind. A great free-fire zone. We can burn it, clear and settle it. It’s close enough to one of the continents for Rotodyne flights there and back, large enough for a base and to support a large, healthy colony, small enough for us to secure with a reasonable garrison. We can also use it to explore the seas, we know almost nothing about what lives there and whether they have survived those trees. We’ve asked for two merchant ships loaded with cryo-napalm to be sent out. Once they arrive, we’ve got the strike all planned out. SAC do the area strikes, burn out the infestation. Then we send in carrier birds, Avengers, to take out any small patches they miss. Land Marines and sweep the area to get what's left. Plough in the ash and replant. We'll have to sort out with what. We'll support the colony from space until we're sure it’s safe down there. Having this Home in orbit will be a godsend for us. Your industrial facilities here are very impressive, it'll help enormously. In fact, I doubt if we could do this without your help. By the way, if you wish, once we've started getting the planet under control, we can try and find the other Homes and tell them that this planet exists if they wish to come here."
Leader Annaheash was listening with amazement. "You can do this." This time it was a statement, not a question. "You would help us clear this planet for our home. For all of us."
"Leader, that's what friends are for. If somebody loses their home, their friends shelter them until they are on their feet again and then they help them build a replacement home. It's what friends do."
Re: 2545 - Intersteller Highway
Chapter 26
Convalescent Facility, Hospital Ship "Repose" Elpis Star System
"You're looking better." Yelina Soo's voice was much more confident and assertive than she actually felt. To some extent, the comment was true, but only when the original base-line was considered. The patients did look better but that was a matter of comparison. They looked filled-out, good hospital food had seen to that, and the enforced rest had taken the desperate exhaustion from them. Yet, looking at Trish, Yelina could see that the effects of Planet Armstrong were still with her. There were lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth that would never go away and, when she moved, it showed that her joints still hurt. She, like all the patients here, did indeed look better but all that highlighted was how bad she'd originally been and how far her recovery still had to go. Looking closely, Yelina could see that the sleepytrees had taken something else as well, Trish was seventeen years old, would be 18 in a few months but the bouncing vivacity appropriate to that age had gone. Trish had grown up, matured into an adult and that meant she'd missed out on the experiences that lay between adolescence and adulthood. Yelina pitied her for that.
"Yelina! It's good to see you. Joseph, look who's here." Trish's voice sounded better than her appearance might suggest. Steadier, yet the life and merriment were back. Although the kids didn't know it, Yelina had been checking on their condition ever since the disaster had hit Alice Summer settlement. She'd seen the pictures when they'd arrived from the Nutkin ship and been horrified at what had happened to her friends. Horrified and guilt-stricken, she couldn't help feeling that if she hadn't interfered, this wouldn't have happened to them.
Joseph Vaisie turned in his seat, then jumped up, wincing as he did so. "Yelina, welcome to the Alice Summer Veterans Association! Early morning aches, hearty appetites and detestation of anything that looks like a tree all highly favored. What have you been up to?"
"Oh, we've been meeting strange aliens and getting ourselves sorted out with them and planning the total destruction of the sleepytree forests on Planet Armstrong. That isn't a joke by the way, Showgirl is hooked up to a munitions transport while we speak. We're offloading our nukes and filling the weapons bay with cryo-napalm tanks. There’re two whole bomb groups, the 100th out of Kozlowski and the 35th out of McGill, moving in to back up us strategic recon birds. The trees that did this to you are going to fry." There was a fierce satisfaction in Yelina's voice. "Let's grab some seats and I'll tell you all about it."
There was a quick dance as the three took one of the couches and tables, Yelina being amused to note that Trish managed to make sure she was sitting between her and Joseph. Friends they might be but traditional human women were always wary of their Wolfen rivals. "Yelina. You've met the Nutkins? We've seen pictures, they're so cute."
"Uh-huh. Don't be too taken in by those, they're cute, yes, but they're also pretty sharp. You've seen pictures of their Home? That's way beyond anything we can build. Do you remember much about what happened down on the planet?"
Joseph thought for a second. "Not now, no. When we first came around, it was all vivid, detailed, it was hard to believe it wasn't real. We didn't believe it at first, it was only after we went through the dreams with the psychologists here that we realized how wrong they were. They didn't make sense and they were just mixtures of isolated scenes, memories of films and stories. As soon as we realized that, they started to fade away, like any other bad dream I suppose. Getting de-hooked was the final straw I guess. Nothing strikes home faster than realizing we were addicts."
"Addicts? " Yelina was shaken. "How much of the stuff down there did you eat?"
It was Trish who answered, she'd been working as a scrub-nurse and found nursing was a vocation. Now she was studying to be a real colonization team nurse. "Not much, it doesn't take much. I was talking to Doctor Stens about it. He said the sleepyfruit toxin has a methamphetamine-like component to it, makes it very addictive. We've got some Thai specialists here, helping us detox. They say that if its anything like earth methamphetamine, we can get hooked after a single dose. And it burns out its victims, that's why we look the way we do. "Trish's voice shook slightly at that.
"You look great Trish, really." Joseph's voice was comforting and he put his arm around her, drawing her close to him. "We'll get better, it’s just a matter of patience. You heard what the doctors told us."
"Excuse me disturbing your privacy, Lieutenant, Joe, Trish. Might I intrude for a few moments of your time?" Yelina looked up, Colonization Team Leader Shane had joined them and that really shocked her. The man had aged a decade since they last met and the burly muscles had melted away. He was walking with a stick and that just didn’t look right.
"We would be honored by your company, Team Leader. Please, take a seat." Yelina was genuinely worried, the team leader looked frail. The youngsters were bouncing back relatively fast, they'd lost a little youth perhaps but they were recovering. But the older colonists, they'd been hit much harder. She found herself doubting if they would ever recover properly.
"Thank you, Lieutenant?"
"Yelina."
Shane smiled in acknowledgement. "Yelina, thank you. Is it true we're going back down to the planet? How long do I have to get my people ready?"
"I can't answer that, it depends how long it takes us to clear our initial base area. We're waiting for a prolonged spell of dry weather over the target area, we want those forests to burn. We want a firestorm down there, one hot enough to destroy the trees, their seeds and the toxins they make. After that? As soon as the ground cools I guess. But we're going in mob-handed on this one; there's no idea of keeping the colony self-sustaining. It's going to be more like Mars or Luna, a colony we support from outside while we make the planet livable on our terms." A thought occurred to Yelina. "You do know we're giving the planet to the Nutkins don't you?"
"So I'd heard. We'll be sharing it though?"
"As their guests yes. But it will be their planet. We're just helping our new friends get settled in. And helping them weed their new garden. As for settlement, we're shipping in machinery and equipment to clean up and build. If it means stripping that planet to bedrock, that's what we'll do. Won't come to that though, our strike plans suggest there's a lot of areas we can preserve as is. Just cut down the sleepytrees and burn them. We don't even want to take the chance of using the wood." That, Yelina thought, was probably taking things a bit far but she couldn't blame the people making the decisions. There had been a bad mistake on Armstrong, the virulence of the sleepytree toxin had been completely underestimated and nobody had realized that it accumulated in the fat content of animals that ate the fruit. How and why that mistake had been made was the subject of investigations right now. At the end, people would be blamed, careers ended and procedures changed. In the meantime, nobody was taking any chances.
"If that's what it takes. Going to use nukes?" Shane's voice was thoughtful.
"Cryo-napalm, at first anyway. But we're bringing out nukes and we could use them later on the tropical forests. I guess the powers that be want to see how things go. You want to take your people back down there?"
"Of course Yelina. No way we're going to let a planet beat us. Never live it down we would."
Television Studio, Worldlink News Network Nine, Geneva, Earth
"My friends, with each day the news from the secret war being waged in space gets worse. My sources, deep in the recesses of the World Government, have confirmed that yet another massive defeat has been inflicted upon human forces desperately fighting to prevent the aliens pouring through the portal into our home space." Bergmar Hellstrom raised his hands in mock shock and rolled his eyes. "Why would anybody want to keep such things secret now extermination at the hands of these brutal aggressors is all but imminent? I have been told that an entire SAC bomb group has been wiped out in a desperate last-ditch attempt to destroy the alien headquarters ship?"
The voice trailed away as the interviewer turned away from the images on the screen in the studio to the guest sitting across the table from her. A contrasting picture, the dark, petite Indian interviewer and the tall fair-haired interviewee. There was an age differential as well. This was an important interview, one that had been the subject of much competition and not a little skullduggery between the senior editorial staff of Worldlink. Noon Arkan had won the political infighting and regarded this opportunity as a just reward for her long service to the network. Only she found herself being intimidated by the age of the person facing her, more than two orders of magnitude greater than her own thirty years. She tried to compensate for that instinctive deference by starting off on the attack.
"Loki, these are serious allegations indeed. How could the government, both here and on the colonies hide a conflict of this size?"
"Well, Noor, obviously even if a world government existed, it couldn't. Hellstrom's claims are quite absurd. One can only think that he's been watching too many old films. However, there is a germ of truth in what he's been saying, and it’s a piece of news that will make this broadcast of historic importance. I've been authorized by the Governments of the United States, Russia, the Triple Alliance and all their associated powers to reveal that humanity had indeed finally made contact with another intelligence race. Not only have we made contact, but that contact has been on the friendliest possible terms and our two peoples are already establishing a firm, friendly and mutually rewarding relationship. Far from shooting at each other, we're trading goods and ideas and we're welcome guests on each other's spaceships."
Loki pressed a switch on his side of the table and Hellstrom's image was replaced by a picture of a Nutkin crewmember speaking with a human counterpart on the hangar deck of Shiloh It didn't look like it, but the picture had been carefully posed. For the last few days, Loki had had the unrestricted use of the fastest transport ship SAC could rustle up, a camera crew he trusted and unlimited access to the developments in the Elpis star system. The result had been a wealth of carefully-composed pictures, showing humans and Nutkins working and living together. Even across the television airwaves, he could hear people across the world catching their breath.
"We call our new friends Nutkins. They call us Baldies by the way. Noor, how we met is a fascinating story that really deserves to be told in full." Loki launched into a long account of how Planet Armstrong had been found, explored and the settlers landed. How the dangers of the planet had been overlooked with potentially tragic results. A natural story-teller, he wove his word-pictures with skill, creating an entrancing picture of the settlers innocently heading for a catastrophe while the Nutkins frantically tried to warn the humans of the impending disaster, but how incompatible communications equipment had confounded their efforts. How, desperate to save others, the Nutkins had turned their huge, multi-generation spaceship around and sent a rescue mission to save the colonists. How that rescue mission had arrived just in time and the colonists had been picked up before they could come to lasting harm. All that interspaced with pictures of the Nutkins, their spaceships, their spectacular home. And of the colonists recovering from their ordeal, thanking their rescuers. Loki had used the skills acquired during a Daimones lifetime to create the saga. It had helped that the story was, to all intents and purposes true but that wasn't essential. It was essential that the story rang true in a way that Hellstrom's breathless presentations did not.
"So where do we go from here?" Noor's voice was small, awed by the impact of what had been revealed. She'd been expecting a routine government denial of Hellstrom's tirades, a repudiation that would keep the controversy going even though any thinking person would see through the nonsense. Instead, she was present at a story that would last for ages. Suddenly, she was aware that her participation in this announcement would give her an immortality that even a Daimones might envy.
"Well, Noor, we've got a good working relationship with the Nutkins now and the first thing we're going to do is to take the planet back from those trees and settle it. We've agreed with the Nutkins that we'll share the planet, we'll build the first settlement for joint occupation and then expand to cover the rest of the world. We really do get on well with the Nutkins, they're enough like us to make mixing easy, different enough to make mixing interesting. And they have a wonderful sense of humor, playful sometimes, cynical sometimes."
"How can we be sure they're not hiding something? Even you admit that Armstrong held dangers that weren't immediately obvious. "
"We can't, obviously. Equally obviously, it's reasonable to assume that they're not telling us everything about themselves just as we're not telling them everything about us. Remember I said they had a cynical sense of humor? Well, they joke about just that; they tell us everything we want to know as soon as we know what questions to ask. But there is a lot we can see. Their mother ship, the one they call Home, is big, very beautiful, superbly designed and completely self-sufficient. Only, it’s also very vulnerable and very lightly armed. They have some fighters and scout ships on board but that's it. We outgun them by a very wide margin. Our professional soldiers don't think the Nutkins are very good in that department either, individually they're brave, going down onto Armstrong to rescue our people proved that. Individually, they're good fighters but as a military force, they've got a lot to learn.
"Another thing, they've survived in space despite being very lightly armed and vulnerable, that implies they haven't run into anything that can be described as dangerous opposition yet. It seems as if intelligent life in the universe is very rare indeed; in fact we are the only ones they have ever met. Finally, they can't use the Interstellar Highway, their Home is too big and their other ships lack the strength to cope with the gravity gradients. So even if they were hiding terrible things, they can't threaten us. To be honest though, I don't think they would want to. I think they're relieved to find us." Why that was, Loki thought, is something we'll deal with later.
"So, Loki, how can people learn more about these Nutkins?"
"Noor, the government of Tau Ceti is putting together a presentation on them, on how they live and what they're like. They're also putting out a language learning course so we can speak with them directly. The Executive Assistant to the CEO of Tau Ceti, Dido Carthagina, is writing an introduction to that package herself."
"Thank you Loki, if I may get back to you in a moment. Doctor Bergmar Hellstrom, after hearing this news tonight, what have you to say?"
"Friends, the propagandist for the government is still trying to hide the truth. All this talk of friendship and trust is but a thin disguise for the bitter battles that are being fought in space. They are nothing but a cover for the inevitable defeat of humanity and our enslavement at the hands of these aliens."
"But, Doctor Hellstrom, the evidence we have seen tonight?."
"Is forged, all of it, How can we trust that Daimones, he's lying just as they have always done. . ."
The rest of Hellstrom's words were drowned out by the cat-calls and boos from the studio audience and production crews at both ends of the link. His image blotched and faded, either because the producer at the other end refused to allow the broadcast to continue or, more likely, the anger of his studio audience was disrupting his program.
"Have you any last comment before we break for our commercial messages Loki?"
"Just this Noor, one last photograph. You asked about our relationships with the Nutkins. Well, this picture summarized everything better than any words can do." The screen changed to a picture of a Nutkin holding an infant in her arms, her face filled with the pride of a mother in her new offspring. Loki zoomed in on the baby. Its hands were grasping an object that the baby was chewing, its eyes closed tight and its face an epitome of delight. A further zoom showed the object being consumed with such pleasure was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. "How can we not get along with a species that reveres us for inventing the PB&J?"
Main Conference Room, National Security Council Building, Washington DC
"You can hear the 'Ahhhhhh' going up all over the Solar System. And will from the rest of the inhabited worlds when they get the disk carried out to them." Lillith's eyes were shining dull red in the subdued light of the conference room.
"I know. How does he do it?"
"It's the flip side of being a practical joker boss. To know what makes a good joke, he has to know what makes people tick. Loki isn't perfect, he scores about four out of ten usually. This time, he had a lot of help and time to think out all the angles. Dido made a really good choice on this."
"I know, I'm going to send Igrat out with a message asking her just what the devil she thought she was doing, involving Loki in our business. A very irate message."
Lillith looked at The Seer quizzically, not quite understanding what he'd said. "Why so, Parmenio?" Then she chuckled at the inadvertent rhyme.
"Because when she gets it, she'll get outraged or Igrat will make sure she does. And she'll send me a return nastygram telling me to keep my nose out of her business and pointing out that this worked marvelously well. Which I will then, with much ill-tempered grumbling, admit and concede that she was right. Which will confirm her judgment, and build her up in her own eyes and the eyes of her people out there."
"Got you. Tau Ceti is doing pretty well by all accounts. Perhaps we ought to take a holiday out there some day?"
"I'd prefer to take one out in Elpis so we can meet the Nutkins. I've just had a thought, I wonder if there are any Nutkins like us?"
"Like us?" Naamah's voice echoed in the room as she closed the door behind her. "Did you see Loki at work just now?"
"Yes." The Seers voice was slightly irritated then he regained control. "We were just speculating on whether the Nutkins have Daimones like us. If they're spaceships really all are multi-generation, it would work out well for them. Before we discovered the Interstellar Highway, I thought we'd explore space using multi-generation ships and that our long lives meant we'd be doing most of it. Naamah, how would you fancy taking a holiday?"
"What are holidays? I don't think we've ever taken one."
"The things where we just laze around doing nothing except enjoy ourselves. Like we used to do when I was Lord of the Manor of Avebury."
Lillith gave an outraged sneeze. "You mean you laze around doing nothing while the rest of us look after you?"
"Yes, that's it. I always enjoyed that and you liked being Lady of the Manor. But, seriously, why not? Take a trip out into space, see the new planets and end up meeting the Nutkins. We need a break; I've been doing this job for so long its time somebody else took over. I'm tired, I want to wander for a while.
"Parmenio joins the walkers." Naamah's voice was wondering. "I never thought I'd hear that. Something to think about isn't it."
Outside Television Studio, Worldlink News Network Nine, Stockholm, Earth
It was raining outside the studio, something that suited Bergmar Hellstrom's mood perfectly. The evening had been a disaster. He'd assumed that he would be able to put out his imaginary accounts of the space war and the Government denials would just give him credibility with his supporters. Allow him to soak them for some more subscriptions to his 'newsletters'. Only that blasted Daimones had revealed there really had been a First Contact, a friendly one. Well, he could change that, he could make out that it was all a Government plot, that they'd been defeated and the stories of friendly space squirrels were just a cover for the conspiracy by which they would rule over humans.
Hellstrom's mind raced ahead, constructing the campaign by which he could convince his true believers that the evil space squirrels really had conquered humanity. A catchphrase jumped into his mind the Daimones, for one, welcome our new squirrel overlords. It would even give him a chance to smear and denigrate the Daimones. Hellstrom welcomed that; he hated them with an intensity that gave him stomach cramps. Why should they live for centuries and I can’t? He was so intent on piecing the story together, he never noticed Colonel Thomas Blood and a pair of his supporters closing in from the shadows behind him.
Convalescent Facility, Hospital Ship "Repose" Elpis Star System
"You're looking better." Yelina Soo's voice was much more confident and assertive than she actually felt. To some extent, the comment was true, but only when the original base-line was considered. The patients did look better but that was a matter of comparison. They looked filled-out, good hospital food had seen to that, and the enforced rest had taken the desperate exhaustion from them. Yet, looking at Trish, Yelina could see that the effects of Planet Armstrong were still with her. There were lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth that would never go away and, when she moved, it showed that her joints still hurt. She, like all the patients here, did indeed look better but all that highlighted was how bad she'd originally been and how far her recovery still had to go. Looking closely, Yelina could see that the sleepytrees had taken something else as well, Trish was seventeen years old, would be 18 in a few months but the bouncing vivacity appropriate to that age had gone. Trish had grown up, matured into an adult and that meant she'd missed out on the experiences that lay between adolescence and adulthood. Yelina pitied her for that.
"Yelina! It's good to see you. Joseph, look who's here." Trish's voice sounded better than her appearance might suggest. Steadier, yet the life and merriment were back. Although the kids didn't know it, Yelina had been checking on their condition ever since the disaster had hit Alice Summer settlement. She'd seen the pictures when they'd arrived from the Nutkin ship and been horrified at what had happened to her friends. Horrified and guilt-stricken, she couldn't help feeling that if she hadn't interfered, this wouldn't have happened to them.
Joseph Vaisie turned in his seat, then jumped up, wincing as he did so. "Yelina, welcome to the Alice Summer Veterans Association! Early morning aches, hearty appetites and detestation of anything that looks like a tree all highly favored. What have you been up to?"
"Oh, we've been meeting strange aliens and getting ourselves sorted out with them and planning the total destruction of the sleepytree forests on Planet Armstrong. That isn't a joke by the way, Showgirl is hooked up to a munitions transport while we speak. We're offloading our nukes and filling the weapons bay with cryo-napalm tanks. There’re two whole bomb groups, the 100th out of Kozlowski and the 35th out of McGill, moving in to back up us strategic recon birds. The trees that did this to you are going to fry." There was a fierce satisfaction in Yelina's voice. "Let's grab some seats and I'll tell you all about it."
There was a quick dance as the three took one of the couches and tables, Yelina being amused to note that Trish managed to make sure she was sitting between her and Joseph. Friends they might be but traditional human women were always wary of their Wolfen rivals. "Yelina. You've met the Nutkins? We've seen pictures, they're so cute."
"Uh-huh. Don't be too taken in by those, they're cute, yes, but they're also pretty sharp. You've seen pictures of their Home? That's way beyond anything we can build. Do you remember much about what happened down on the planet?"
Joseph thought for a second. "Not now, no. When we first came around, it was all vivid, detailed, it was hard to believe it wasn't real. We didn't believe it at first, it was only after we went through the dreams with the psychologists here that we realized how wrong they were. They didn't make sense and they were just mixtures of isolated scenes, memories of films and stories. As soon as we realized that, they started to fade away, like any other bad dream I suppose. Getting de-hooked was the final straw I guess. Nothing strikes home faster than realizing we were addicts."
"Addicts? " Yelina was shaken. "How much of the stuff down there did you eat?"
It was Trish who answered, she'd been working as a scrub-nurse and found nursing was a vocation. Now she was studying to be a real colonization team nurse. "Not much, it doesn't take much. I was talking to Doctor Stens about it. He said the sleepyfruit toxin has a methamphetamine-like component to it, makes it very addictive. We've got some Thai specialists here, helping us detox. They say that if its anything like earth methamphetamine, we can get hooked after a single dose. And it burns out its victims, that's why we look the way we do. "Trish's voice shook slightly at that.
"You look great Trish, really." Joseph's voice was comforting and he put his arm around her, drawing her close to him. "We'll get better, it’s just a matter of patience. You heard what the doctors told us."
"Excuse me disturbing your privacy, Lieutenant, Joe, Trish. Might I intrude for a few moments of your time?" Yelina looked up, Colonization Team Leader Shane had joined them and that really shocked her. The man had aged a decade since they last met and the burly muscles had melted away. He was walking with a stick and that just didn’t look right.
"We would be honored by your company, Team Leader. Please, take a seat." Yelina was genuinely worried, the team leader looked frail. The youngsters were bouncing back relatively fast, they'd lost a little youth perhaps but they were recovering. But the older colonists, they'd been hit much harder. She found herself doubting if they would ever recover properly.
"Thank you, Lieutenant?"
"Yelina."
Shane smiled in acknowledgement. "Yelina, thank you. Is it true we're going back down to the planet? How long do I have to get my people ready?"
"I can't answer that, it depends how long it takes us to clear our initial base area. We're waiting for a prolonged spell of dry weather over the target area, we want those forests to burn. We want a firestorm down there, one hot enough to destroy the trees, their seeds and the toxins they make. After that? As soon as the ground cools I guess. But we're going in mob-handed on this one; there's no idea of keeping the colony self-sustaining. It's going to be more like Mars or Luna, a colony we support from outside while we make the planet livable on our terms." A thought occurred to Yelina. "You do know we're giving the planet to the Nutkins don't you?"
"So I'd heard. We'll be sharing it though?"
"As their guests yes. But it will be their planet. We're just helping our new friends get settled in. And helping them weed their new garden. As for settlement, we're shipping in machinery and equipment to clean up and build. If it means stripping that planet to bedrock, that's what we'll do. Won't come to that though, our strike plans suggest there's a lot of areas we can preserve as is. Just cut down the sleepytrees and burn them. We don't even want to take the chance of using the wood." That, Yelina thought, was probably taking things a bit far but she couldn't blame the people making the decisions. There had been a bad mistake on Armstrong, the virulence of the sleepytree toxin had been completely underestimated and nobody had realized that it accumulated in the fat content of animals that ate the fruit. How and why that mistake had been made was the subject of investigations right now. At the end, people would be blamed, careers ended and procedures changed. In the meantime, nobody was taking any chances.
"If that's what it takes. Going to use nukes?" Shane's voice was thoughtful.
"Cryo-napalm, at first anyway. But we're bringing out nukes and we could use them later on the tropical forests. I guess the powers that be want to see how things go. You want to take your people back down there?"
"Of course Yelina. No way we're going to let a planet beat us. Never live it down we would."
Television Studio, Worldlink News Network Nine, Geneva, Earth
"My friends, with each day the news from the secret war being waged in space gets worse. My sources, deep in the recesses of the World Government, have confirmed that yet another massive defeat has been inflicted upon human forces desperately fighting to prevent the aliens pouring through the portal into our home space." Bergmar Hellstrom raised his hands in mock shock and rolled his eyes. "Why would anybody want to keep such things secret now extermination at the hands of these brutal aggressors is all but imminent? I have been told that an entire SAC bomb group has been wiped out in a desperate last-ditch attempt to destroy the alien headquarters ship?"
The voice trailed away as the interviewer turned away from the images on the screen in the studio to the guest sitting across the table from her. A contrasting picture, the dark, petite Indian interviewer and the tall fair-haired interviewee. There was an age differential as well. This was an important interview, one that had been the subject of much competition and not a little skullduggery between the senior editorial staff of Worldlink. Noon Arkan had won the political infighting and regarded this opportunity as a just reward for her long service to the network. Only she found herself being intimidated by the age of the person facing her, more than two orders of magnitude greater than her own thirty years. She tried to compensate for that instinctive deference by starting off on the attack.
"Loki, these are serious allegations indeed. How could the government, both here and on the colonies hide a conflict of this size?"
"Well, Noor, obviously even if a world government existed, it couldn't. Hellstrom's claims are quite absurd. One can only think that he's been watching too many old films. However, there is a germ of truth in what he's been saying, and it’s a piece of news that will make this broadcast of historic importance. I've been authorized by the Governments of the United States, Russia, the Triple Alliance and all their associated powers to reveal that humanity had indeed finally made contact with another intelligence race. Not only have we made contact, but that contact has been on the friendliest possible terms and our two peoples are already establishing a firm, friendly and mutually rewarding relationship. Far from shooting at each other, we're trading goods and ideas and we're welcome guests on each other's spaceships."
Loki pressed a switch on his side of the table and Hellstrom's image was replaced by a picture of a Nutkin crewmember speaking with a human counterpart on the hangar deck of Shiloh It didn't look like it, but the picture had been carefully posed. For the last few days, Loki had had the unrestricted use of the fastest transport ship SAC could rustle up, a camera crew he trusted and unlimited access to the developments in the Elpis star system. The result had been a wealth of carefully-composed pictures, showing humans and Nutkins working and living together. Even across the television airwaves, he could hear people across the world catching their breath.
"We call our new friends Nutkins. They call us Baldies by the way. Noor, how we met is a fascinating story that really deserves to be told in full." Loki launched into a long account of how Planet Armstrong had been found, explored and the settlers landed. How the dangers of the planet had been overlooked with potentially tragic results. A natural story-teller, he wove his word-pictures with skill, creating an entrancing picture of the settlers innocently heading for a catastrophe while the Nutkins frantically tried to warn the humans of the impending disaster, but how incompatible communications equipment had confounded their efforts. How, desperate to save others, the Nutkins had turned their huge, multi-generation spaceship around and sent a rescue mission to save the colonists. How that rescue mission had arrived just in time and the colonists had been picked up before they could come to lasting harm. All that interspaced with pictures of the Nutkins, their spaceships, their spectacular home. And of the colonists recovering from their ordeal, thanking their rescuers. Loki had used the skills acquired during a Daimones lifetime to create the saga. It had helped that the story was, to all intents and purposes true but that wasn't essential. It was essential that the story rang true in a way that Hellstrom's breathless presentations did not.
"So where do we go from here?" Noor's voice was small, awed by the impact of what had been revealed. She'd been expecting a routine government denial of Hellstrom's tirades, a repudiation that would keep the controversy going even though any thinking person would see through the nonsense. Instead, she was present at a story that would last for ages. Suddenly, she was aware that her participation in this announcement would give her an immortality that even a Daimones might envy.
"Well, Noor, we've got a good working relationship with the Nutkins now and the first thing we're going to do is to take the planet back from those trees and settle it. We've agreed with the Nutkins that we'll share the planet, we'll build the first settlement for joint occupation and then expand to cover the rest of the world. We really do get on well with the Nutkins, they're enough like us to make mixing easy, different enough to make mixing interesting. And they have a wonderful sense of humor, playful sometimes, cynical sometimes."
"How can we be sure they're not hiding something? Even you admit that Armstrong held dangers that weren't immediately obvious. "
"We can't, obviously. Equally obviously, it's reasonable to assume that they're not telling us everything about themselves just as we're not telling them everything about us. Remember I said they had a cynical sense of humor? Well, they joke about just that; they tell us everything we want to know as soon as we know what questions to ask. But there is a lot we can see. Their mother ship, the one they call Home, is big, very beautiful, superbly designed and completely self-sufficient. Only, it’s also very vulnerable and very lightly armed. They have some fighters and scout ships on board but that's it. We outgun them by a very wide margin. Our professional soldiers don't think the Nutkins are very good in that department either, individually they're brave, going down onto Armstrong to rescue our people proved that. Individually, they're good fighters but as a military force, they've got a lot to learn.
"Another thing, they've survived in space despite being very lightly armed and vulnerable, that implies they haven't run into anything that can be described as dangerous opposition yet. It seems as if intelligent life in the universe is very rare indeed; in fact we are the only ones they have ever met. Finally, they can't use the Interstellar Highway, their Home is too big and their other ships lack the strength to cope with the gravity gradients. So even if they were hiding terrible things, they can't threaten us. To be honest though, I don't think they would want to. I think they're relieved to find us." Why that was, Loki thought, is something we'll deal with later.
"So, Loki, how can people learn more about these Nutkins?"
"Noor, the government of Tau Ceti is putting together a presentation on them, on how they live and what they're like. They're also putting out a language learning course so we can speak with them directly. The Executive Assistant to the CEO of Tau Ceti, Dido Carthagina, is writing an introduction to that package herself."
"Thank you Loki, if I may get back to you in a moment. Doctor Bergmar Hellstrom, after hearing this news tonight, what have you to say?"
"Friends, the propagandist for the government is still trying to hide the truth. All this talk of friendship and trust is but a thin disguise for the bitter battles that are being fought in space. They are nothing but a cover for the inevitable defeat of humanity and our enslavement at the hands of these aliens."
"But, Doctor Hellstrom, the evidence we have seen tonight?."
"Is forged, all of it, How can we trust that Daimones, he's lying just as they have always done. . ."
The rest of Hellstrom's words were drowned out by the cat-calls and boos from the studio audience and production crews at both ends of the link. His image blotched and faded, either because the producer at the other end refused to allow the broadcast to continue or, more likely, the anger of his studio audience was disrupting his program.
"Have you any last comment before we break for our commercial messages Loki?"
"Just this Noor, one last photograph. You asked about our relationships with the Nutkins. Well, this picture summarized everything better than any words can do." The screen changed to a picture of a Nutkin holding an infant in her arms, her face filled with the pride of a mother in her new offspring. Loki zoomed in on the baby. Its hands were grasping an object that the baby was chewing, its eyes closed tight and its face an epitome of delight. A further zoom showed the object being consumed with such pleasure was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. "How can we not get along with a species that reveres us for inventing the PB&J?"
Main Conference Room, National Security Council Building, Washington DC
"You can hear the 'Ahhhhhh' going up all over the Solar System. And will from the rest of the inhabited worlds when they get the disk carried out to them." Lillith's eyes were shining dull red in the subdued light of the conference room.
"I know. How does he do it?"
"It's the flip side of being a practical joker boss. To know what makes a good joke, he has to know what makes people tick. Loki isn't perfect, he scores about four out of ten usually. This time, he had a lot of help and time to think out all the angles. Dido made a really good choice on this."
"I know, I'm going to send Igrat out with a message asking her just what the devil she thought she was doing, involving Loki in our business. A very irate message."
Lillith looked at The Seer quizzically, not quite understanding what he'd said. "Why so, Parmenio?" Then she chuckled at the inadvertent rhyme.
"Because when she gets it, she'll get outraged or Igrat will make sure she does. And she'll send me a return nastygram telling me to keep my nose out of her business and pointing out that this worked marvelously well. Which I will then, with much ill-tempered grumbling, admit and concede that she was right. Which will confirm her judgment, and build her up in her own eyes and the eyes of her people out there."
"Got you. Tau Ceti is doing pretty well by all accounts. Perhaps we ought to take a holiday out there some day?"
"I'd prefer to take one out in Elpis so we can meet the Nutkins. I've just had a thought, I wonder if there are any Nutkins like us?"
"Like us?" Naamah's voice echoed in the room as she closed the door behind her. "Did you see Loki at work just now?"
"Yes." The Seers voice was slightly irritated then he regained control. "We were just speculating on whether the Nutkins have Daimones like us. If they're spaceships really all are multi-generation, it would work out well for them. Before we discovered the Interstellar Highway, I thought we'd explore space using multi-generation ships and that our long lives meant we'd be doing most of it. Naamah, how would you fancy taking a holiday?"
"What are holidays? I don't think we've ever taken one."
"The things where we just laze around doing nothing except enjoy ourselves. Like we used to do when I was Lord of the Manor of Avebury."
Lillith gave an outraged sneeze. "You mean you laze around doing nothing while the rest of us look after you?"
"Yes, that's it. I always enjoyed that and you liked being Lady of the Manor. But, seriously, why not? Take a trip out into space, see the new planets and end up meeting the Nutkins. We need a break; I've been doing this job for so long its time somebody else took over. I'm tired, I want to wander for a while.
"Parmenio joins the walkers." Naamah's voice was wondering. "I never thought I'd hear that. Something to think about isn't it."
Outside Television Studio, Worldlink News Network Nine, Stockholm, Earth
It was raining outside the studio, something that suited Bergmar Hellstrom's mood perfectly. The evening had been a disaster. He'd assumed that he would be able to put out his imaginary accounts of the space war and the Government denials would just give him credibility with his supporters. Allow him to soak them for some more subscriptions to his 'newsletters'. Only that blasted Daimones had revealed there really had been a First Contact, a friendly one. Well, he could change that, he could make out that it was all a Government plot, that they'd been defeated and the stories of friendly space squirrels were just a cover for the conspiracy by which they would rule over humans.
Hellstrom's mind raced ahead, constructing the campaign by which he could convince his true believers that the evil space squirrels really had conquered humanity. A catchphrase jumped into his mind the Daimones, for one, welcome our new squirrel overlords. It would even give him a chance to smear and denigrate the Daimones. Hellstrom welcomed that; he hated them with an intensity that gave him stomach cramps. Why should they live for centuries and I can’t? He was so intent on piecing the story together, he never noticed Colonel Thomas Blood and a pair of his supporters closing in from the shadows behind him.
Re: 2545 - Intersteller Highway
Chapter 27
Cockpit, DSB-36 “Showgirl” Over Planet Armstrong, Elpis Star System
The Strategic Recon birds would go in first, as was right, proper and traditional. The 305th's Showgirl, Belladonna, Cara Mia and Dark Angel were orbiting, waiting for the command and control bird circling far below to send up the target coordinates for the first run. Once the 305th birds had made their drop, the first four heavy bombers would follow up. There were some illustrious names up there, waiting to make their drops.
"I hate waiting like this." Showgirl's voice was petulant. Nobody could blame her, dropping bombs on hostile targets was what she and her kind had been built for, yet they had never had the chance to do. Exploration was all very well, but it wasn't a bomber's destiny. On the other hand, if the DSB-36s designers had known the circumstances under which their brainchild would be making its operational debut, they'd have been shaken to their core.
"This is Cabmaster here. Showgirl, you will be making the first run. Target coordinates coming up now. Drop two tanks of cryo-napalm then rejoin Cabrank for your next drop point. Belladonna will follow you. Remember to break right after your drop, under no circumstances are you to break left."
"Acknowledged." Williams looked down at his offensive systems console. "Coordinates received."
The Nav-Attack system crunched the numbers and produced the correct attack pattern. If this had been a nuclear attack run, it would have started with a screaming high-speed dive through the atmosphere. Showgirl's engines would have been thundering as they forced the bomber through the thickening air. This one was different, a gentle dive, the specified two cryo-napalm tanks being released from nearly horizontal, subsonic flight, a few hundred feet up. Williams reached out and selected the rearmost of the sixteen tanks in Showgirl's bomb bay. There was a debate about the order of release in situations like this, some preferred to drop the foremost tanks first, others the rearmost. Williams believed in the latter, if there was a weapons release malfunction , he didn't want the affected tank bouncing across the others still aboard.
"Taking her down. Course and descent nominal."
"Confirm. All instrument readings in normal range." Soo's voice was an unnatural monotone, its normal lilt and inflexion missing. Her eyes were scanning the displays from the damage control systems, taking skin temperature readings, pressure data, watching the flow of the heat management system. Showgirl's outer skin was a steel-ceramic alloy whose thermal conductivity was as close to zero as anybody could get. Yet, with the ferocious heat of a high-speed diving re-entry, the difference between close to zero and zero was still a furnace-like heat transfer. That was where the active temperature management system came in, it would circulate coolant to the heated areas, drawing off the ferocious heat and transferring it to where it could do no harm. Soo was watching the display of the outer skin temperature with eyes that missed no details, would pick up the start of a temperature rise as soon as it manifested itself,. Then, she would redirect the active cooling system to that area, buying time to prevent the heat build-up blowing Showgirl apart. That was why she held this post, her fast reactions could make the difference between a successful dive and fiery destruction.
It wouldn't be necessary this time, but she watched anyway. The long slow re-entry was expensive on fuel but it kept the skin temperature down to inconsequential levels. Below them, the target island was shaped like a key, a large irregular round blob with long downstroke hanging from it. The plans for the base envisaged a major airbase on the downstroke with the top area occupied by the colony proper. First, of course, the island had to be stripped clean of the sleepytrees. That was starting today and Showgirl was dropping the first load in that campaign. On the extreme bottom end of the downstroke, right hand corner. Belladonna would be dropping to her left, and that was why they had to break right, to go left would take Showgirl right across Belladonna's nose.
They were skimming over the sea now, the blue green mass of sleepytree forest up ahead of them, a bright red diamond on the flight deck windscreen marking the specified aiming point. Below it, a red cross with a line above it marked the computed impact points of their load. The line didn't quite coincide with the diamond and Soo felt Showgirl bank slightly as Williams corrected the course. When she leveled out, the line was exactly superimposed over the diamond. The cross approached the diamond, ever more quickly as the range closed. Under them, they could feel the vibration as Showgirl's bomb bay doors opened. Then, with almost stunning speed, the cross started to traverse the diamond and, when the arms of the cross touched the corners of the diamond, Williams squeezed the bomb release. As he did so, Soo flipped one of her displays to the electro-optical surveillance system.
The two pearly-gray tanks were tumbling end-over-end towards the jungle surface as Showgirl broke right and started to climb away, the stabilization system on the optics eliminating all sense of movement. The tumbling tanks vanished into the trees and, for a brief second, she thought they had failed to ignite. Then a boiling mass of orange-red fire topped with oily black smoke erupted from the treeline. She knew what was happening, the tanks were breaking up spewing their jellied fuel along the tops of the trees, the napalm sticking to everything and outlining it in red fire. She also knew what was about to happen and found herself counting aloud.
"One. . . . . . Two . . . . . . . . Three . . . . . . .. . . Four."
With the last word, the fire below changed. Just as the orange-red fireball of napalm started to redden and shrink, it suddenly exploded outwards, its area doubling, tripling, quadrupling. Its color changed from dull orange-red to a blinding, agonizing, brilliant white as the micro-encapsulated liquid oxygen dispersed throughout the napalm fuel broke free of containment and fed the fury of the fires. Cryo-napalm, napalm laced with cryogenic, encapsulated oxygen. Soo knew the temperature inside that fireball would be soaring as the hydrocarbon-fed, oxygen boosted inferno fed upon itself and everything it could swallow. Nothing organic could survive inside that incinerating nightmare, the sleepytrees, their strange toxins, everything would be burned to elemental carbon and beyond.
The white glare was fading now, its fury finally spent as there was nothing left for it to burn. If there had been steel structures down there, all that would have been left of them would have been puddles of molten metal. There weren't, all that had been there were trees and they were gone. When the glare had finally passed, Soo could see the bare ground, burned clean of everything living. Probably the first time that ground had seen the sun in centuries or millennia. And, beside the bleached, burned ground cleared by Showgirl's first drop, Soo saw the orange-red eruptions as Belladonna's load continued the process of destroying the sleepytree forest.
Cockpit, CC-13F Cabmaster “Roxanne” Over Planet Armstrong, Elpis Star System
"Commander Gennarahith, have you been injured?" The Nutkin commander was hunched over in his seat, holding his eyes. He straightened up, blinking and rubbing the corners with his hands.
"No, thank you. I was not expecting the glare of the explosions to be so bright. It startled me."
"My apologies, I should have warned you." Lazaruski cursed himself. He'd forgotten that the large eyes of the Nutkins, proportionally almost four times as large as human eyes, made them sensitive to bright light.
"There is no harm done." Gennarahith gave a restrained and slightly nervous laugh. "When you baldies set things on fire, you most certainly do the job properly."
"We do our best." Lazaruski's voice was suave and Gennarahith broke out into more laughter, remembering to cover his eyes and duck as another cargo load of cryo-napalm was added to the growing inferno beneath them. "These first loads are creating a cleared area at the base of the island peninsula. As soon as it’s clear, we'll call the heavy bombers in, they'll dump their loads of normal napalm into the treeline we've created and start that burning. What we want to do is create a fire line that we can turn into a firestorm. Have you ever seen a firestorm?"
Gennarahith shook his head. Lazaruski reflected, it was strange how to dissimilar species could have evolved such similar body language. Shaking a head for no, nodding for yes. "The fire causes the air to get heated and rise and that draws more air in to replace it. That air is heated and rises also and the fire gets hotter sucking the winds in faster. Eventually, the winds reach a critical point and their speed drives the fire before it, consuming everything in its path. We'll keep dumping cryo-napalm into the firestorm to make sure its temperature stays up while the firestorm sweeps up the island. Our scientists have determined the temperature needed to destroy the sleepytree poisons and we'll be measuring the temperature of the fire, making sure it stays above that point."
The command and control craft bounced and shook suddenly. Lazaruski took the controls and swept away from the fires below. "That's a sign the firestorm is starting. Turbulent air rising over the fires and causing us to bounce. When the storm is at its full fury, we'll be able to feel that turbulence 30,000 feet up." Below them the white balls of the cryo-napalm strikes were fading. Even as he watched, the edge of the cleared area erupted into a mass of orange explosions as the heavy bombers started their saturation bombing of the trees. The dance was starting, the heavy bombers were starting the fires, the strategic recon birds would keep them stoked. Then, there was another series of thumps, more of them, more violent, as the turbulence hit them again. In the co-pilot's seat Gennarahith was looking ill and he was drooling slightly from one corner of his mouth. "Paper bags in the pouch beside you; don't feel bad about it. A lot of people get sick in this sort of turbulence."
The radio buzzed, the heavy bombers were calling in. "Texan Lady Nine here. First bombing run completed. It’s a hot time in the old town tonight."
"Acknowledged. Call the next section in and get ready for your second run. We want a nice even fireline heading up the island if we can get it."
Gennarahith was looking a bit better and tucking his paper bag out of sight. "You give all your ... aircraft … names?"
"Mostly we do. To us an aircraft or a ship is more than just a piece of machinery. Most of us talk to our aircraft and quite a few of us are convinced our aircraft talk back."
Gennarahith looked highly skeptical. "You Baldies believe in some very strange things I think."
Lazaruski happened to be looking over his shoulder and he saw one of the other Nutkins on board, the hunter pilot he'd met earlier, look down at his lap and smile guiltily when the subject of talking to one's aircraft - and the aircraft talking back - was raised. So Nutkin birds spoke to their crews as well?
Gennarahith was still speaking . "How long before we can go down?"
"To the target? Once the fires have burned out, it'll be a week before the ground's cooled enough. Then we'll send in people in environmental suits to check the place is safe before we send the ground teams in. We're not going to make the same mistake twice."
Disneyworld, Cuba
"Good evening viewers, this is Greta van Owen from Worldlink News Special Reports reporting to you from Disneyworld here in the sunny island paradise of Cuba. Last night, our news crew received a tip-off that an unidentified group of pranksters, reputedly students from a local university, were about to launch one of their famous practical jokes. Our crew were in time to film the preparation of the stunt. We have been unable to identify the organizers of course, if we had we would feel it our duty to provide the information to the police and Disneyworld authorities. The organizers of this episode have been to great lengths to make it clear that Disneyworld and its parents or subsidiaries have no connection or knowledge of what is about to happen. Viewers, have a look at what our camera crews filmed last night.
The images were greenish in hue, obviously shot through a night vision scope. A truck, a plain white van, the sort of thing seen on every road every day, pulled up, the sound of its engine muted in the warm night. Some hooded figures jumped out, the lack of definition on the optics and their movement confusing the issue further. By a strange chance, the registration tags on the van were also invisible, either the camera angles were wrong or when they were in frame, somebody or something just happened to be in the way. Bad luck that. Anyway, a figure was being carried out of the van, easily recognizable as Doctor Bergmar Hellstrom. The victim was unconscious, obviously heavily sedated. Over the flickering green image, one of the camera crew started a voice-over.
"It appears that the unidentified pranksters have Doctor Bergmar Hellstrom with them. There is no evidence we can see to suggest that Doctor Hellstrom is not a willing participant in this event. Most viewers will be aware that Doctor Hellstrom recently made a series of highly speculative and alarmist broadcasts alleging that a secret war was going on in space and that the government was denying people any knowledge of its progress. Well, it turns out that those stories didn't have any foundation so perhaps Doctor Hellstrom has agreed to this event to rebuilt his tarnished reputation." In the background, the camera crews could be heard laughing at this disingenuous 'description' of what had obviously been a carefully-planned abduction. "Now, it appears that the participants in this episode of street theater have a costume of some sort that Doctor Hellstrom is putting on." Actually, being poured into would have been a better description. He was maneuvered inside and a headpiece put on. At that point the recorded coverage shut off.
Over on the bench, Bergmar Hellstrom was waking up, his mind still sleepy and confused. He remembered that terrible interview clearly, the news of the aliens being discovered destroying his carefully-made plans. Then being grabbed from behind and everything going black. Only it wasn't black now, it was bright, brilliant, the glare of the early morning sun in the tropics. Not the soft gray light of Sweden. Where was he? He looked around, suddenly becoming aware that he wasn't wearing human clothes, some sort of costume. A furry costume? Whatever it was, it had eye holes so he could see. Then, into his field of view came what appeared to be a man-sized gray rabbit, with white marks and enormously-exaggerated ears. Not to mention an insane grin.
"What's up doc?" The voice was nasal in the extreme, to the point where it was a caricature of itself. Hellstrom started to panic, what was going on? Why was this happening. Then his question got answered, albeit from an unexpected quarter. Hellstrom swung around as an another voice cut in, this one from what appeared to be a cartoon mouse, one with large eyes, a pink face and two circular black ears perched on top of his head.
"Somebody's come to visit us Bugs. Who can it be?"
"Why, it’s a Nutkin." The speaker was a duck wearing a hat? "Look everybody, a Nutkin's come to visit us!"
There was a blast of cheering. For the first time, Hellstrom became aware that this was a public area and that a crowd of people, mostly children had assembled. He couldn't make out much of the barrage of words, but, somehow, one man's voice cut across the rest.
"Disney didn't waste any time, did they. We only found out about our new friends a couple of days ago."
A couple of days? Inside his costume, Hellstrom cringed, that meeting had only been the previous night, hadn't it?
"Say, Mister Nutkin, why don't you say hello to our visitors?" The rabbit was standing just behind Hellstrom, just right for a covert administration of an over-voltage cattle prod.
"Owww-aarrgghhh oooooh." Hellstrom couldn't help it, the shock was, well, shocking.
"Hey Children, that must be Nutkin for 'hello'." The mouse was speaking now. "Shouldn't we say hello back?"
"Ow-argh-oh" The chorus from the audience lacked Hellstrom's fervor, but in fairness, nobody had used a cattle prod on them. Most the children waved to accompany their 'greeting.' Hellstrom tried to make a break for it but one of the costumed figures around him seized his arm and turned him around. Hellstrom tried to push clear but his arms were restrained by the costume that mimicked the puny forearms of the real Nutkins. Another character caught his other arm and swung him around again. To the watching cameras, it appeared as if the Hellstrom/Nutkin was dancing with the cartoon characters that surrounded him. Every so often, the cameras cut to pan across the rapidly-increasing crowds that were gathering to watch the impromptu display. A very happy, very merry crowd, watching something that was quite unprecedented on more levels than they could possibly realize.
Main Conference Room, National Security Council Building, Washington DC
The Seer was sprawled back in his seat, coughing with the laughter consuming him. Beside him, Lillith was bent over the conference room table, her head resting on her forearms, her shoulders shaking with glee. Naamah was dabbing at her eyes where tears of laughter were threatening to destroy her make-up. Nefertiti had given up that battle, she was giggling hysterically, while the wreckage of her elaborate eye makeup was running down her cheeks. Up on the screen, the figures were continuing to gambol around in a circus-like pageant that was bringing roars of applause from the ecstatic crowd..
"Oh boss, its brilliant." Naamah's voice was choked slightly as she tried to speak and laugh at the same time.
"It's more than brilliant, it's inspired." The Seer was shaking his head with appreciation. "Inspired on more levels than are obvious. Loki hasn't just discredited Hellstrom, made him look ridiculous, he's also associated the Nutkins with some of the best-loved characters in our culture. He's made them part of our consciousness, part of the way we take our surroundings for granted. It’s what we needed, ever since the Biowars, we’ve been a paranoid people, looking for threats to pre-empt. This’ll help put a bit of balance back. Where is Loki by the way?"
"He's in his old offices in Geneva. Be there for a day or two." Lillith's eyes were back on the screen again. Hellstrom had lost the head-piece to his suit now so the display was ending while he was maneuvered into 'taking a bow'. The applause was rapturous.
"Thanks, honey, can you patch me through to him?"
Lillith nodded. Her fingers danced over the touch-screen on the telephone and Branwen's imaged appeared. "Branwen, Parmenio would like to talk to Loki if he's got a minute?"
Branwen's eyebrows rose in surprise. "Sure, I'll put you through."
"Loki? Parmenio here. We've just been watching it on the videocast. I thought you'd like to know your efforts brought the whole NSC to a standstill. You've done a fabulous job. More than that. You've done everybody, humans and otherwise an incredibly valuable service with this, it'll help enormously in getting everything settled down. Thank you very much for all your efforts."
Loki's picture looked pleased, an artist whose work was publicly applauded. "Thank's Parmy. I appreciate that." There was a long pause. "Parmenio, I never thanked you for saving my people when the plagues started. When Snake slammed the door on us, I thought we were all dead over here. If you hadn't done what you did.... Well, thank you, I should have said that a long time ago."
"Wasn't Snake's fault Loki, she had limited space in those undersea colonies and very little time; distance meant we were removed from the main source of plague but she and hers were right in the middle of it, she couldn't hold back any longer than she did. Anyway, it all worked out in the end. Thank's for the comment though and have a good trip back to Mars." The connection broke.
"So the Seer talks about going walkies and now reconciles with Loki. The world is ending." Nefertiti had come out of the rest room, her intricate eye makeup immaculate again.
"We're not reconciled, we'll be back on each other's cases in a week or two. Just watch. It's inevitable."
"You really going to go walkies boss? Last time you did that, we didn't see you for four hundred years." Lillith's voice was concerned.
"I'm leaving this job yes. Naamah and I talked it over last night. Really, we need to hand things over to a younger generation, our time here is over. There's a lot of tension building up, we're basically autocrats and the youngsters don't like that. We've done our job, time for them to take over. I've picked my successor for this office. Now Naamah and I are going to going to grab a spaceship and wander around, see what the universe holds. Apollo's offered to act as pilot for us, he's already asked Gusoyn to come along. Anybody else who wants to is welcome to join us."
"Count me in boss." Lillith's voice didn't hesitate.
"And me" Nefertiti was almost as quick. "I think most of our inner circle will want to come along Parmenio. Except Dido, Achillea and Henry of course, they're having too much fun on Tau Ceti. And Anne's getting her group set up to work on Eridani. Rest of the gang will want to come along though. Plan on a couple of dozen."
"I was hoping for that. Really, we're reverting to type. It'll be like Jamestown or Avebury again. I liked Avebury, I wonder what it's like now? Perhaps we ought to have a look."
"Don't, Boss." Naamah's voice was serious. "We've got happy memories of Avebury, whatever is there now will spoil them. You know that though, you said it yourself. Going back is a bad idea. Let the past stay there."
Cockpit, DSB-36 “Showgirl” Over Planet Armstrong, Elpis Star System
The Strategic Recon birds would go in first, as was right, proper and traditional. The 305th's Showgirl, Belladonna, Cara Mia and Dark Angel were orbiting, waiting for the command and control bird circling far below to send up the target coordinates for the first run. Once the 305th birds had made their drop, the first four heavy bombers would follow up. There were some illustrious names up there, waiting to make their drops.
"I hate waiting like this." Showgirl's voice was petulant. Nobody could blame her, dropping bombs on hostile targets was what she and her kind had been built for, yet they had never had the chance to do. Exploration was all very well, but it wasn't a bomber's destiny. On the other hand, if the DSB-36s designers had known the circumstances under which their brainchild would be making its operational debut, they'd have been shaken to their core.
"This is Cabmaster here. Showgirl, you will be making the first run. Target coordinates coming up now. Drop two tanks of cryo-napalm then rejoin Cabrank for your next drop point. Belladonna will follow you. Remember to break right after your drop, under no circumstances are you to break left."
"Acknowledged." Williams looked down at his offensive systems console. "Coordinates received."
The Nav-Attack system crunched the numbers and produced the correct attack pattern. If this had been a nuclear attack run, it would have started with a screaming high-speed dive through the atmosphere. Showgirl's engines would have been thundering as they forced the bomber through the thickening air. This one was different, a gentle dive, the specified two cryo-napalm tanks being released from nearly horizontal, subsonic flight, a few hundred feet up. Williams reached out and selected the rearmost of the sixteen tanks in Showgirl's bomb bay. There was a debate about the order of release in situations like this, some preferred to drop the foremost tanks first, others the rearmost. Williams believed in the latter, if there was a weapons release malfunction , he didn't want the affected tank bouncing across the others still aboard.
"Taking her down. Course and descent nominal."
"Confirm. All instrument readings in normal range." Soo's voice was an unnatural monotone, its normal lilt and inflexion missing. Her eyes were scanning the displays from the damage control systems, taking skin temperature readings, pressure data, watching the flow of the heat management system. Showgirl's outer skin was a steel-ceramic alloy whose thermal conductivity was as close to zero as anybody could get. Yet, with the ferocious heat of a high-speed diving re-entry, the difference between close to zero and zero was still a furnace-like heat transfer. That was where the active temperature management system came in, it would circulate coolant to the heated areas, drawing off the ferocious heat and transferring it to where it could do no harm. Soo was watching the display of the outer skin temperature with eyes that missed no details, would pick up the start of a temperature rise as soon as it manifested itself,. Then, she would redirect the active cooling system to that area, buying time to prevent the heat build-up blowing Showgirl apart. That was why she held this post, her fast reactions could make the difference between a successful dive and fiery destruction.
It wouldn't be necessary this time, but she watched anyway. The long slow re-entry was expensive on fuel but it kept the skin temperature down to inconsequential levels. Below them, the target island was shaped like a key, a large irregular round blob with long downstroke hanging from it. The plans for the base envisaged a major airbase on the downstroke with the top area occupied by the colony proper. First, of course, the island had to be stripped clean of the sleepytrees. That was starting today and Showgirl was dropping the first load in that campaign. On the extreme bottom end of the downstroke, right hand corner. Belladonna would be dropping to her left, and that was why they had to break right, to go left would take Showgirl right across Belladonna's nose.
They were skimming over the sea now, the blue green mass of sleepytree forest up ahead of them, a bright red diamond on the flight deck windscreen marking the specified aiming point. Below it, a red cross with a line above it marked the computed impact points of their load. The line didn't quite coincide with the diamond and Soo felt Showgirl bank slightly as Williams corrected the course. When she leveled out, the line was exactly superimposed over the diamond. The cross approached the diamond, ever more quickly as the range closed. Under them, they could feel the vibration as Showgirl's bomb bay doors opened. Then, with almost stunning speed, the cross started to traverse the diamond and, when the arms of the cross touched the corners of the diamond, Williams squeezed the bomb release. As he did so, Soo flipped one of her displays to the electro-optical surveillance system.
The two pearly-gray tanks were tumbling end-over-end towards the jungle surface as Showgirl broke right and started to climb away, the stabilization system on the optics eliminating all sense of movement. The tumbling tanks vanished into the trees and, for a brief second, she thought they had failed to ignite. Then a boiling mass of orange-red fire topped with oily black smoke erupted from the treeline. She knew what was happening, the tanks were breaking up spewing their jellied fuel along the tops of the trees, the napalm sticking to everything and outlining it in red fire. She also knew what was about to happen and found herself counting aloud.
"One. . . . . . Two . . . . . . . . Three . . . . . . .. . . Four."
With the last word, the fire below changed. Just as the orange-red fireball of napalm started to redden and shrink, it suddenly exploded outwards, its area doubling, tripling, quadrupling. Its color changed from dull orange-red to a blinding, agonizing, brilliant white as the micro-encapsulated liquid oxygen dispersed throughout the napalm fuel broke free of containment and fed the fury of the fires. Cryo-napalm, napalm laced with cryogenic, encapsulated oxygen. Soo knew the temperature inside that fireball would be soaring as the hydrocarbon-fed, oxygen boosted inferno fed upon itself and everything it could swallow. Nothing organic could survive inside that incinerating nightmare, the sleepytrees, their strange toxins, everything would be burned to elemental carbon and beyond.
The white glare was fading now, its fury finally spent as there was nothing left for it to burn. If there had been steel structures down there, all that would have been left of them would have been puddles of molten metal. There weren't, all that had been there were trees and they were gone. When the glare had finally passed, Soo could see the bare ground, burned clean of everything living. Probably the first time that ground had seen the sun in centuries or millennia. And, beside the bleached, burned ground cleared by Showgirl's first drop, Soo saw the orange-red eruptions as Belladonna's load continued the process of destroying the sleepytree forest.
Cockpit, CC-13F Cabmaster “Roxanne” Over Planet Armstrong, Elpis Star System
"Commander Gennarahith, have you been injured?" The Nutkin commander was hunched over in his seat, holding his eyes. He straightened up, blinking and rubbing the corners with his hands.
"No, thank you. I was not expecting the glare of the explosions to be so bright. It startled me."
"My apologies, I should have warned you." Lazaruski cursed himself. He'd forgotten that the large eyes of the Nutkins, proportionally almost four times as large as human eyes, made them sensitive to bright light.
"There is no harm done." Gennarahith gave a restrained and slightly nervous laugh. "When you baldies set things on fire, you most certainly do the job properly."
"We do our best." Lazaruski's voice was suave and Gennarahith broke out into more laughter, remembering to cover his eyes and duck as another cargo load of cryo-napalm was added to the growing inferno beneath them. "These first loads are creating a cleared area at the base of the island peninsula. As soon as it’s clear, we'll call the heavy bombers in, they'll dump their loads of normal napalm into the treeline we've created and start that burning. What we want to do is create a fire line that we can turn into a firestorm. Have you ever seen a firestorm?"
Gennarahith shook his head. Lazaruski reflected, it was strange how to dissimilar species could have evolved such similar body language. Shaking a head for no, nodding for yes. "The fire causes the air to get heated and rise and that draws more air in to replace it. That air is heated and rises also and the fire gets hotter sucking the winds in faster. Eventually, the winds reach a critical point and their speed drives the fire before it, consuming everything in its path. We'll keep dumping cryo-napalm into the firestorm to make sure its temperature stays up while the firestorm sweeps up the island. Our scientists have determined the temperature needed to destroy the sleepytree poisons and we'll be measuring the temperature of the fire, making sure it stays above that point."
The command and control craft bounced and shook suddenly. Lazaruski took the controls and swept away from the fires below. "That's a sign the firestorm is starting. Turbulent air rising over the fires and causing us to bounce. When the storm is at its full fury, we'll be able to feel that turbulence 30,000 feet up." Below them the white balls of the cryo-napalm strikes were fading. Even as he watched, the edge of the cleared area erupted into a mass of orange explosions as the heavy bombers started their saturation bombing of the trees. The dance was starting, the heavy bombers were starting the fires, the strategic recon birds would keep them stoked. Then, there was another series of thumps, more of them, more violent, as the turbulence hit them again. In the co-pilot's seat Gennarahith was looking ill and he was drooling slightly from one corner of his mouth. "Paper bags in the pouch beside you; don't feel bad about it. A lot of people get sick in this sort of turbulence."
The radio buzzed, the heavy bombers were calling in. "Texan Lady Nine here. First bombing run completed. It’s a hot time in the old town tonight."
"Acknowledged. Call the next section in and get ready for your second run. We want a nice even fireline heading up the island if we can get it."
Gennarahith was looking a bit better and tucking his paper bag out of sight. "You give all your ... aircraft … names?"
"Mostly we do. To us an aircraft or a ship is more than just a piece of machinery. Most of us talk to our aircraft and quite a few of us are convinced our aircraft talk back."
Gennarahith looked highly skeptical. "You Baldies believe in some very strange things I think."
Lazaruski happened to be looking over his shoulder and he saw one of the other Nutkins on board, the hunter pilot he'd met earlier, look down at his lap and smile guiltily when the subject of talking to one's aircraft - and the aircraft talking back - was raised. So Nutkin birds spoke to their crews as well?
Gennarahith was still speaking . "How long before we can go down?"
"To the target? Once the fires have burned out, it'll be a week before the ground's cooled enough. Then we'll send in people in environmental suits to check the place is safe before we send the ground teams in. We're not going to make the same mistake twice."
Disneyworld, Cuba
"Good evening viewers, this is Greta van Owen from Worldlink News Special Reports reporting to you from Disneyworld here in the sunny island paradise of Cuba. Last night, our news crew received a tip-off that an unidentified group of pranksters, reputedly students from a local university, were about to launch one of their famous practical jokes. Our crew were in time to film the preparation of the stunt. We have been unable to identify the organizers of course, if we had we would feel it our duty to provide the information to the police and Disneyworld authorities. The organizers of this episode have been to great lengths to make it clear that Disneyworld and its parents or subsidiaries have no connection or knowledge of what is about to happen. Viewers, have a look at what our camera crews filmed last night.
The images were greenish in hue, obviously shot through a night vision scope. A truck, a plain white van, the sort of thing seen on every road every day, pulled up, the sound of its engine muted in the warm night. Some hooded figures jumped out, the lack of definition on the optics and their movement confusing the issue further. By a strange chance, the registration tags on the van were also invisible, either the camera angles were wrong or when they were in frame, somebody or something just happened to be in the way. Bad luck that. Anyway, a figure was being carried out of the van, easily recognizable as Doctor Bergmar Hellstrom. The victim was unconscious, obviously heavily sedated. Over the flickering green image, one of the camera crew started a voice-over.
"It appears that the unidentified pranksters have Doctor Bergmar Hellstrom with them. There is no evidence we can see to suggest that Doctor Hellstrom is not a willing participant in this event. Most viewers will be aware that Doctor Hellstrom recently made a series of highly speculative and alarmist broadcasts alleging that a secret war was going on in space and that the government was denying people any knowledge of its progress. Well, it turns out that those stories didn't have any foundation so perhaps Doctor Hellstrom has agreed to this event to rebuilt his tarnished reputation." In the background, the camera crews could be heard laughing at this disingenuous 'description' of what had obviously been a carefully-planned abduction. "Now, it appears that the participants in this episode of street theater have a costume of some sort that Doctor Hellstrom is putting on." Actually, being poured into would have been a better description. He was maneuvered inside and a headpiece put on. At that point the recorded coverage shut off.
Over on the bench, Bergmar Hellstrom was waking up, his mind still sleepy and confused. He remembered that terrible interview clearly, the news of the aliens being discovered destroying his carefully-made plans. Then being grabbed from behind and everything going black. Only it wasn't black now, it was bright, brilliant, the glare of the early morning sun in the tropics. Not the soft gray light of Sweden. Where was he? He looked around, suddenly becoming aware that he wasn't wearing human clothes, some sort of costume. A furry costume? Whatever it was, it had eye holes so he could see. Then, into his field of view came what appeared to be a man-sized gray rabbit, with white marks and enormously-exaggerated ears. Not to mention an insane grin.
"What's up doc?" The voice was nasal in the extreme, to the point where it was a caricature of itself. Hellstrom started to panic, what was going on? Why was this happening. Then his question got answered, albeit from an unexpected quarter. Hellstrom swung around as an another voice cut in, this one from what appeared to be a cartoon mouse, one with large eyes, a pink face and two circular black ears perched on top of his head.
"Somebody's come to visit us Bugs. Who can it be?"
"Why, it’s a Nutkin." The speaker was a duck wearing a hat? "Look everybody, a Nutkin's come to visit us!"
There was a blast of cheering. For the first time, Hellstrom became aware that this was a public area and that a crowd of people, mostly children had assembled. He couldn't make out much of the barrage of words, but, somehow, one man's voice cut across the rest.
"Disney didn't waste any time, did they. We only found out about our new friends a couple of days ago."
A couple of days? Inside his costume, Hellstrom cringed, that meeting had only been the previous night, hadn't it?
"Say, Mister Nutkin, why don't you say hello to our visitors?" The rabbit was standing just behind Hellstrom, just right for a covert administration of an over-voltage cattle prod.
"Owww-aarrgghhh oooooh." Hellstrom couldn't help it, the shock was, well, shocking.
"Hey Children, that must be Nutkin for 'hello'." The mouse was speaking now. "Shouldn't we say hello back?"
"Ow-argh-oh" The chorus from the audience lacked Hellstrom's fervor, but in fairness, nobody had used a cattle prod on them. Most the children waved to accompany their 'greeting.' Hellstrom tried to make a break for it but one of the costumed figures around him seized his arm and turned him around. Hellstrom tried to push clear but his arms were restrained by the costume that mimicked the puny forearms of the real Nutkins. Another character caught his other arm and swung him around again. To the watching cameras, it appeared as if the Hellstrom/Nutkin was dancing with the cartoon characters that surrounded him. Every so often, the cameras cut to pan across the rapidly-increasing crowds that were gathering to watch the impromptu display. A very happy, very merry crowd, watching something that was quite unprecedented on more levels than they could possibly realize.
Main Conference Room, National Security Council Building, Washington DC
The Seer was sprawled back in his seat, coughing with the laughter consuming him. Beside him, Lillith was bent over the conference room table, her head resting on her forearms, her shoulders shaking with glee. Naamah was dabbing at her eyes where tears of laughter were threatening to destroy her make-up. Nefertiti had given up that battle, she was giggling hysterically, while the wreckage of her elaborate eye makeup was running down her cheeks. Up on the screen, the figures were continuing to gambol around in a circus-like pageant that was bringing roars of applause from the ecstatic crowd..
"Oh boss, its brilliant." Naamah's voice was choked slightly as she tried to speak and laugh at the same time.
"It's more than brilliant, it's inspired." The Seer was shaking his head with appreciation. "Inspired on more levels than are obvious. Loki hasn't just discredited Hellstrom, made him look ridiculous, he's also associated the Nutkins with some of the best-loved characters in our culture. He's made them part of our consciousness, part of the way we take our surroundings for granted. It’s what we needed, ever since the Biowars, we’ve been a paranoid people, looking for threats to pre-empt. This’ll help put a bit of balance back. Where is Loki by the way?"
"He's in his old offices in Geneva. Be there for a day or two." Lillith's eyes were back on the screen again. Hellstrom had lost the head-piece to his suit now so the display was ending while he was maneuvered into 'taking a bow'. The applause was rapturous.
"Thanks, honey, can you patch me through to him?"
Lillith nodded. Her fingers danced over the touch-screen on the telephone and Branwen's imaged appeared. "Branwen, Parmenio would like to talk to Loki if he's got a minute?"
Branwen's eyebrows rose in surprise. "Sure, I'll put you through."
"Loki? Parmenio here. We've just been watching it on the videocast. I thought you'd like to know your efforts brought the whole NSC to a standstill. You've done a fabulous job. More than that. You've done everybody, humans and otherwise an incredibly valuable service with this, it'll help enormously in getting everything settled down. Thank you very much for all your efforts."
Loki's picture looked pleased, an artist whose work was publicly applauded. "Thank's Parmy. I appreciate that." There was a long pause. "Parmenio, I never thanked you for saving my people when the plagues started. When Snake slammed the door on us, I thought we were all dead over here. If you hadn't done what you did.... Well, thank you, I should have said that a long time ago."
"Wasn't Snake's fault Loki, she had limited space in those undersea colonies and very little time; distance meant we were removed from the main source of plague but she and hers were right in the middle of it, she couldn't hold back any longer than she did. Anyway, it all worked out in the end. Thank's for the comment though and have a good trip back to Mars." The connection broke.
"So the Seer talks about going walkies and now reconciles with Loki. The world is ending." Nefertiti had come out of the rest room, her intricate eye makeup immaculate again.
"We're not reconciled, we'll be back on each other's cases in a week or two. Just watch. It's inevitable."
"You really going to go walkies boss? Last time you did that, we didn't see you for four hundred years." Lillith's voice was concerned.
"I'm leaving this job yes. Naamah and I talked it over last night. Really, we need to hand things over to a younger generation, our time here is over. There's a lot of tension building up, we're basically autocrats and the youngsters don't like that. We've done our job, time for them to take over. I've picked my successor for this office. Now Naamah and I are going to going to grab a spaceship and wander around, see what the universe holds. Apollo's offered to act as pilot for us, he's already asked Gusoyn to come along. Anybody else who wants to is welcome to join us."
"Count me in boss." Lillith's voice didn't hesitate.
"And me" Nefertiti was almost as quick. "I think most of our inner circle will want to come along Parmenio. Except Dido, Achillea and Henry of course, they're having too much fun on Tau Ceti. And Anne's getting her group set up to work on Eridani. Rest of the gang will want to come along though. Plan on a couple of dozen."
"I was hoping for that. Really, we're reverting to type. It'll be like Jamestown or Avebury again. I liked Avebury, I wonder what it's like now? Perhaps we ought to have a look."
"Don't, Boss." Naamah's voice was serious. "We've got happy memories of Avebury, whatever is there now will spoil them. You know that though, you said it yourself. Going back is a bad idea. Let the past stay there."
Re: 2545 - Intersteller Highway
Chapter 28
Planet Armstrong, Elpis Star System
The ground was black with the ash of what had once been the trees that had covered the island, the same trees that had choked out every other form of life. They'd done quite well those trees, until they made a mistake. They'd tangled with humans and now they were black ash, already being plowed into the ground. That work had already started. The first assault transports had landed with engineering and construction equipment. First, build a runway for the big transports and land more and better equipment, then build the base around the runway, then build the settlement around the base. It had all started, here on the southern peninsula, where the ground had cooled enough.
The rest of the island would have to wait for a while. The fires had burned for three days, destroying everything in their paths. Three days that had baked the ground so hot that it had been sterilized. Baked it so hard that it took heavy equipment to break it up and make it workable. Pumps were spraying seawater onto the bare ground to soften it and make it easier to handle but that had a problem; it also created a black mud that was getting everywhere and into everything. The mud wasn't just filthy, it was the epitome of stench, a foul concoction of fire, of ash and of the petroleum products that had been used to stoke the blaze. The whole island stank of that. Up north it was even worse, the ground there was so hot that, after it had rained for a day, the water had steamed, creating a dense fog. But the machines and the men would get there too. In the meantime, the human and the Nutkin walking around the construction site were getting caked with mud. The Nutkin was coping with it better, his powerful back legs were more suited to the sticky, cloying conditions. On the other hand, the human wasn't suffering from mud-saturated fur.
"You baldies are really angry with the sleepytrees." Commander Gennarahith stated the obvious mildly and without much discernable irony. His eyes scanned the desolation with professional approval. "Our first transport with machinery will be landing in a few minutes. There was a traffic conflict that has delayed its landing."
Traffic conflicts, that was a new experience for Planet Armstrong. After centuries, millennia of silence as the sleepytrees had slowly strangled every other form of life on the planet, they'd met their match. The skies were full enough to make air traffic control a problem. SAC bombers and strategic recon craft making attack runs, recon birds surveying the planet, transports bringing in supplies and equipment. High overhead, there was an example of that. Four silvery-white streaks across the sky, heading east. A few seconds after their passing, the sonic booms of their passage shook the mud. They were DSB-36s making another attack run on an island about a hundred miles away.
"They offend us, yes, on a level that we can't easily explain. A lot of it is the way they enslaved everything else and then exterminated them. As a people, we believe in freedom, and the sight of what the sleepytrees created down here struck right at the heart of that. But there's more to it than that. This planet, what has happened to it, is wrong. It shouldn't be like this."
"We revere freedom also." Gennarahith's voice was reflective, the computer translator picking up the intonation perfectly. Ironically, just as the boxes were being perfected, they were being used less and less. Both Nutkins and Humans were speaking each other's languages with growing ease and familiarity, switching from one to the other in mid-sentence. "But we forgot that once and by the time we remembered that we revered it, we had almost lost it completely. The fight to get it back destroyed our world." The silvery streaks overhead dipped towards the target island and Commander Gennarahith could imagine the blinding white balls of fire expanding over the forests there. "We're hitting two islands at once? Isn't that beyond our resources?"
"We're not taking over Three yet. We're just prepping it. We call it shaping the battlefield. The biologists on the MOL have come up with an idea. They say that if we can burn off the tree cover in areas, the other plants will spread in faster than the trees and do some of the refoliation work for us. If it works, it'll save us doing there what we did here. If it doesn't, we can go back and burn the island bare anyway. But you're right, we've enough on our plate here in One and up on Two." Two was an island in the north, too cold and dry for the semi-tropical sleepytrees. In some ways, it was a better base than One, there was far less work involved in securing it. It wasn't as suitable from an engineering point of view, it was rocky, mountainous and building a runway there would be hard work. On the other hand, it had a good port. Using it alone would be ducking the issue though. The purpose of this enterprise wasn't to avoid the sleepytrees, it was to take the planet back from them. 'Sleepytrees Delenda Est' Lazaruski thought grimly.
"Is there word on the seeds from the MOL yet?" Gennarahith stopped for a second and listened to his earpiece. Nutkin radios were better than human equivalents, smaller and neater. They had started making them in the shorter wavelengths that humans preferred, just as humans had received a shipment of their radios modified to receive the Nutkin's favored long wave frequencies. "Our shuttle is coming in now."
"They have the seeds and are screening them very carefully. The initial cultivations have been successful and the plants are being examined for potential threats. If they're not sleepy-tree related, we'll put them on the safe list. It'll be weeks before we have the first plantation mixes though. Ideally, we can reseed this island with a vegetation mix that's pretty much what this planet had before the sleepytrees destroyed everything. Bring in a cross-section of animals, perhaps breed them ourselves so their tissues aren't contaminated, and repopulate with them. Put this planet back the way it should be."
Gennarahith nodded. By mutual agreement, all the materials brought up from Armstrong went to the MOL only, reducing the risk of contaminating the human ships or the Nutkin's Home. It hadn't taken much of an "agreement", the MOL was already home to Nutkin scientists and a new module was being built in the Nutkin Home to expand the MOLs biological facilities. "Have you heard the stories about the seed collection?"
Lazaruski shook his head, his eyes fixed on the dot that was the Nutkin shuttle making its landing run.
"The big birds, the ones up there that eat the fish, they were giving your Marines a hard time. Diving on them, attacking them as they tried to make the seed collections. Only, the Marines ran across a clump of sleepytrees and started to cut it down and burn them. As soon as the birds saw that, they stopped the attacks. Now they leave our people alone."
Gennarahith and Lazaruski looked at each other in shock. Commander Gennarahith's reference to the human Marines as "our people" had been quite unconscious, quite unrehearsed. An indicator of just how comfortable with each other the two races had become. Another was the shuttle landing a few hundred yards away. Nobody on the ground was paying much attention; the humans were treating it with the same lack of interest as they treated their own craft. As if a TWA spaceplane was landing on an airfield where Pan American was more common.
"You know, Paul, I have been thinking about the sleepytrees." Gennarahith's voice was reflective again. "The way they appeared, the way they spread over the planet, choking out everything in their path. When you said they were wrong, I believe you were more correct than you perhaps realized. They are wrong in a moral sense yes. But they are wrong in other ways as well. Does it not seem odd to you that they just appeared the way they did? They are unique here, there are no bushes, no other plants that produce the poisons they do. If they had evolved here, would there not be other plants that were similar?"
"Some of our biologists have said the same. The sleepytrees stand alone, they don't seem to have any relatives." Lazaruski didn't notice that he'd said 'our biologists' or that the term had included the Nutkin scientists up on the MOL as well as the humans.
"And that should not be. Everything is descended form something else, everything is part of a whole. Except the sleepytrees here on this planet. They are on their own, they relate to nothing. Paul, that is not just wrong, it is unnatural. And if the situation is unnatural does it not follow that the sleepytrees are also? If that is correct, then how did they get here?"
"And why" Lazaruski meditated carefully on the implications of that question because it posed another yet unasked. If the sleepytrees were unnatural and did not belong here, why were they here was one good question. Who had put them here was a much better one.
On Board CVS-12 “USS Shiloh”, Elpis System.
“YOU, you horrible, moronic, brainless, imbecilic incompetent dolts of DEMOCRATS. Are you trying to get yourselves killed? You want to put our poor Captain, overworked as he is, through the toil of completing unnecessary paperwork because you worthless excrescences decided to plague him with your unnecessary deaths? If you are determined to drain the shallow end of the gene pool by removing your benighted inconsequential DEMOCRAT contributions, there are ways that inconvenience your shipmates less."
The six enlisted crewmen stood shivering around the open access panel while The Senior Chief's words ricocheted around the compartment. The work was simple, a lighting sub-circuit had blown and a relay needed to be replaced before the fluorescent panels were replaced. A simple enough job and, like so many in space, lethal if not done properly.
"Just what do you think you are doing?"
The crewmen looked at each other, willing somebody else to take the plunge first. Eventually one stepped forward. The Senior Chief glanced down at his name tag. Carstairs. He might be worth watching, if he was prepared to step forward in the face of the blast, he might be promotion material. "Sir?"
"WHAT!!!!!" Carstairs blanched at the blast greeting his faux pas but kept going bravely.
"Senior Chief, We have turned the switches for this lighting circuit off so it’s safe to work on."
"Really? You turned the switch off. I suppose it never crept into your useless DEMOCRAT brains that if the switch shorts or malfunctions, the circuit is live again? with your hands deep inside it?" There was an uneasy exchange of glances. Time, the Senior Chief thought, to drop the blasting and start to teach.
"Look, how often have you flipped a switch, only it hasn't quite gone all the way ? and its dropped back? Or the switch hasn't done what it’s supposed to? Or the circuit itself has shorted out? Too often, right? I was on a ship once where a seaman was working on a circuit in the heads. He'd turned the switch off as well, only the ship lurched unexpectedly and he dropped a capstan wrench into water. The water splashed, completed a circuit and he got the lot. Didn't just kill him, it killed his mate as well. His partner saw him going down and he tried to pull him out. Both dead because it was too much trouble to pull the circuit breakers. So what is the first thing you do before touching this circuit?"
"Pull the circuit breakers Senior Chief."
"Wrong. First thing we do is look at the circuit diagrams for this compartment. Where are they?" The crewman looked around guiltily "You didn't get them. The first thing you do when working in a compartment is look at the plans. If you're doing electrical work, look at the circuit diagrams. It just so happens, purely by chance, I have them here. This is the circuit you're working on right?" There was a unanimous nodding. "But look what we have here. Another circuit running down the same conduit that isn't isolated by that circuit breaker. It will still be live and if there's a short somewhere, so will the one you think you've isolated. So we have to find both breakers and pull them. Then we switch off and get to work."
There was a brief scramble as the correct breakers were located and pulled. Then, a consultation of plans as the work crew confirmed the circuitry they'd be working on was truly isolated from the ship's power supply. Finally, the defective relay was replaced, the faulty lighting panel removed and a new one substituted. Once they got to work, the Senior Chief had to admit they did a smart, efficient job. Then, the power was restored, the new panel flaring into life.
"Well done. Just remember, take your time over safety, the Navy can fix most things but even an Admiral can't bring the dead back to life. And if anybody tells you to skimp safety precautions, you tell them to get lost. Nobody will blame you for that. Carry on."
Nobody moved. Once again, it was Carstairs who stepped forward. "Umm Senior Chief, permission to ask a question?"
"Only dumb questions are the ones nobody asked. Go ahead Carstairs."
"Senior Chief. What's a Democrat?"
For the first time in centuries, the Senior Chief was struck dumb. For only a second though. "Say WHAT Carstairs?"
"Senior, we've got Federalists and Unionists here of course, and Smitty there is from Kansas and he's still a Republican. But what's a Democrat?"
"You really don't know do you?" Carstairs shook his head. He'd heard vaguely, that there had once been a political party of that name but who they were? High school history didn’t really say. "Don't worry about it. I want you all to read up on electrical maintenance safety procedures tonight. Tomorrow, we'll have a practical demonstration of correct maintenance procedures down in engineering."
The Senior Chief wandered down off, his head filled with what he'd just heard. Then, squaring his shoulders, he headed for officer's country. And, in particular, Admiral Theodore's offices. His doggie was in the outer office.
"Request permission to see the Admiral Sir." The salute was exemplary
"Wait one Senior Chief. I'll see if he's available." The doggie knocked on the door and let himself into Theodore's compartment.
"Admiral Sir, the Senior Chief wishes to speak with you."
"A Senior Chief? What does he want?"
"Not a Senior Chief, Sir, THE Senior Chief."
"You'd better send him in then."
The Senior Chief entered the sanctum, cap in hand, and snapped into perfect attention.
"Senior, take a seat. You wanted to see me?"
"Sir, with the greatest respect Sir, do I have any markers I can call in?"
"Senior, every Admiral in the fleet owes you more markers than he can count. What can I do for you?"
"Sir, I understand that naming Base One down on the planet will be our privilege. The Nutkins will name Base Two. And that the name for Base One has not yet been selected."
"That's right Senior."
"Admiral, may I most respectfully urge that the new base be named in honor of Seaman Robert MacDonald Sir."
"Who is he Senior?"
"An old Shipmate Sir, died bravely in action, it’s an honorable name, I promise you that. And I made him a promise a long time ago."
Theodore stared at the Senior Chief, noting that his hands were twisting on his cap. Just how long ago, he wondered, had that promise been made?
"Very well Senior Chief. Base One will, from now on be the Robert MacDonald Naval Facility. That makes the air base attached to it MacDonald AFB." Theodore made some notes on a paper, one that made the name official.
"Thank You Sir."
As the Senior Chief left the Admiral's quarters, he felt a weight lifting off his soul, a weight that had been with him so long he'd almost forgotten that it was there. It had taken time, but, at this end of the Interstellar Highway, he'd kept his promise at last.
Anderson Holding, Northern Continent, Tau Ceti Colony.
There were eight riders, not six. The six everybody expected were there, five men and a woman, all in the long brown Missouri Dusters and slouch hats that marked them as Regulators. The other two were a young couple.
"Thank you for doing us the honor of allowing us ride with you Achillea. It's been a privilege."
"Our privilege Sir, Ma'am. I'll pass your regards to Henry when we get back." The six Regulators spurred their horses and moved off, one of the roving patrols that kept a check on the law enforcement of the colony. Achillea had been sick of sitting behind a desk so she'd bullied Henry McCarty into letting her take this patrol out. Probably, that had disappointed the youngsters who'd been looking forward to boasting that they'd ridden with Billy the Kid.
Joseph Vaisie grinned at his wife, glanced to make sure the riders were out of earshot and whispered "Better luck next time!" Trish Vaisie giggled. They were both looking better now, the black shadows had gone and they'd filled out to replace the weight the sleepytree toxin had burned off them. Trish's hair was back to its previous self, shining instead of lank, thick instead of straggled. They would have looked their ages, almost, were it not for the wariness deep in their eyes.
"My parents come up here every Sunday to get our land marked out. Looks like they've started work too, the path in has been laid. With a little luck, we'll catch them."
They did. The Andersons were measuring out a patch of quiet ground, one that would soon be a herb garden. They looked around when they heard the horses approaching, guarded, hands dropping to guns. Jorden was a peaceful planet but there was something about a frontier that made people cautious. Or should.
"Trish! Joe! You're back!."
Trish slid off her horse and fell into her mother’s arms. They hugged, then Hannah grabbed her daughter's forearms and held her back a little, looking fiercely at her. "Why Tricia Anderson, you're all grown up!"
Meaning, I look older thought Trish, still sensitive over the havoc wrought by the sleepytrees. "It's Tricia Vaisie Mom. It’s all formal now. Married by the Captain of an aircraft carrier no less."
The two women drifted away exchanging confidences that they didn’t want their menfolk to hear. Howard and Joseph looked at each other, the father a little doubtfully, in the age-old fashion of a man looking at the person who had taken his daughter away.
"I heard all about Armstrong Joe. Rough deal, the way we got the story."
"Bad as it gets sir. It's the first time a colonization team has been taken down like that, and to get a SEAL team hammered as well, its shaken us all up. If it hadn't been for the Nutkins?."
"You've met them? The Nutkins? Are they really like the videocasts say?"
"They're great Sir, really. They're fun, they like jokes but they're as smart as they come and as hard as nails under the good humor. They've got this incredible space station ship, they can't use the portals so they go the long way. Look, we'll tell you all about them later, there's so much to say. How's things going here?"
"We've got the access road built now, and we're measuring up for our house. The components will be arriving soon, then we'll be having our home-raising." Howard Anderson's face showed his anticipation. The house would be delivered as pre-fabricated components with a work team to assemble it. While the workers put the house up, all the neighbors would gather around and sweep the new homestead for yellowbellies. Inch by inch. Sometimes a Regulator Patrol would turn up to help in the fun. Then, in the evening, when the ranch was up and the ground cleared, there would be a dinner and dance that would go on until the early hours of the morning. "You and Trish going to stay for a while? You're both welcome, needn't say that I guess."
"We thought we'd stay and help you get this place set up. We won't be going back to Armstrong for six months or more, Trish and I aren't so bad but some of the others got hit a lot worse. Anyway, the military are in charge there now. When we go back we'll have two groups of SAC bombers and a division of Marines riding guard on us. With what Trish and I have learned, we can help you a lot.
"Are you planning to go back to see your parents Joe?" Joseph shook his head. "Don't blame you. You're a better man than I thought, after what happened, I'd want to look him up. Not in a friendly way either."
"Sir."
"Howard, Joe, or Howie."
"Howard, thank you. No point in confronting him. That doesn't get anybody anywhere. Nobody ever got ahead by getting even. That's what my father did wrong, he's spent his life looking for ways of getting even with people he thinks did him wrong and all that time he could have been spending on getting himself ahead. He can go his way, I'll go mine."
Howard looked proudly at his son-in-law. His daughter had picked well, she'd seen something in this young man that others had missed. Certainly something his father had missed. "Joe, I like the way you think. Have you seen the latest plans for the homestead, the ones Shane had drawn up for us? I'll show you where we are and what we've got started. I reckon the Anderson Holding has a big future ahead of it.
Planet Armstrong, Elpis Star System
The ground was black with the ash of what had once been the trees that had covered the island, the same trees that had choked out every other form of life. They'd done quite well those trees, until they made a mistake. They'd tangled with humans and now they were black ash, already being plowed into the ground. That work had already started. The first assault transports had landed with engineering and construction equipment. First, build a runway for the big transports and land more and better equipment, then build the base around the runway, then build the settlement around the base. It had all started, here on the southern peninsula, where the ground had cooled enough.
The rest of the island would have to wait for a while. The fires had burned for three days, destroying everything in their paths. Three days that had baked the ground so hot that it had been sterilized. Baked it so hard that it took heavy equipment to break it up and make it workable. Pumps were spraying seawater onto the bare ground to soften it and make it easier to handle but that had a problem; it also created a black mud that was getting everywhere and into everything. The mud wasn't just filthy, it was the epitome of stench, a foul concoction of fire, of ash and of the petroleum products that had been used to stoke the blaze. The whole island stank of that. Up north it was even worse, the ground there was so hot that, after it had rained for a day, the water had steamed, creating a dense fog. But the machines and the men would get there too. In the meantime, the human and the Nutkin walking around the construction site were getting caked with mud. The Nutkin was coping with it better, his powerful back legs were more suited to the sticky, cloying conditions. On the other hand, the human wasn't suffering from mud-saturated fur.
"You baldies are really angry with the sleepytrees." Commander Gennarahith stated the obvious mildly and without much discernable irony. His eyes scanned the desolation with professional approval. "Our first transport with machinery will be landing in a few minutes. There was a traffic conflict that has delayed its landing."
Traffic conflicts, that was a new experience for Planet Armstrong. After centuries, millennia of silence as the sleepytrees had slowly strangled every other form of life on the planet, they'd met their match. The skies were full enough to make air traffic control a problem. SAC bombers and strategic recon craft making attack runs, recon birds surveying the planet, transports bringing in supplies and equipment. High overhead, there was an example of that. Four silvery-white streaks across the sky, heading east. A few seconds after their passing, the sonic booms of their passage shook the mud. They were DSB-36s making another attack run on an island about a hundred miles away.
"They offend us, yes, on a level that we can't easily explain. A lot of it is the way they enslaved everything else and then exterminated them. As a people, we believe in freedom, and the sight of what the sleepytrees created down here struck right at the heart of that. But there's more to it than that. This planet, what has happened to it, is wrong. It shouldn't be like this."
"We revere freedom also." Gennarahith's voice was reflective, the computer translator picking up the intonation perfectly. Ironically, just as the boxes were being perfected, they were being used less and less. Both Nutkins and Humans were speaking each other's languages with growing ease and familiarity, switching from one to the other in mid-sentence. "But we forgot that once and by the time we remembered that we revered it, we had almost lost it completely. The fight to get it back destroyed our world." The silvery streaks overhead dipped towards the target island and Commander Gennarahith could imagine the blinding white balls of fire expanding over the forests there. "We're hitting two islands at once? Isn't that beyond our resources?"
"We're not taking over Three yet. We're just prepping it. We call it shaping the battlefield. The biologists on the MOL have come up with an idea. They say that if we can burn off the tree cover in areas, the other plants will spread in faster than the trees and do some of the refoliation work for us. If it works, it'll save us doing there what we did here. If it doesn't, we can go back and burn the island bare anyway. But you're right, we've enough on our plate here in One and up on Two." Two was an island in the north, too cold and dry for the semi-tropical sleepytrees. In some ways, it was a better base than One, there was far less work involved in securing it. It wasn't as suitable from an engineering point of view, it was rocky, mountainous and building a runway there would be hard work. On the other hand, it had a good port. Using it alone would be ducking the issue though. The purpose of this enterprise wasn't to avoid the sleepytrees, it was to take the planet back from them. 'Sleepytrees Delenda Est' Lazaruski thought grimly.
"Is there word on the seeds from the MOL yet?" Gennarahith stopped for a second and listened to his earpiece. Nutkin radios were better than human equivalents, smaller and neater. They had started making them in the shorter wavelengths that humans preferred, just as humans had received a shipment of their radios modified to receive the Nutkin's favored long wave frequencies. "Our shuttle is coming in now."
"They have the seeds and are screening them very carefully. The initial cultivations have been successful and the plants are being examined for potential threats. If they're not sleepy-tree related, we'll put them on the safe list. It'll be weeks before we have the first plantation mixes though. Ideally, we can reseed this island with a vegetation mix that's pretty much what this planet had before the sleepytrees destroyed everything. Bring in a cross-section of animals, perhaps breed them ourselves so their tissues aren't contaminated, and repopulate with them. Put this planet back the way it should be."
Gennarahith nodded. By mutual agreement, all the materials brought up from Armstrong went to the MOL only, reducing the risk of contaminating the human ships or the Nutkin's Home. It hadn't taken much of an "agreement", the MOL was already home to Nutkin scientists and a new module was being built in the Nutkin Home to expand the MOLs biological facilities. "Have you heard the stories about the seed collection?"
Lazaruski shook his head, his eyes fixed on the dot that was the Nutkin shuttle making its landing run.
"The big birds, the ones up there that eat the fish, they were giving your Marines a hard time. Diving on them, attacking them as they tried to make the seed collections. Only, the Marines ran across a clump of sleepytrees and started to cut it down and burn them. As soon as the birds saw that, they stopped the attacks. Now they leave our people alone."
Gennarahith and Lazaruski looked at each other in shock. Commander Gennarahith's reference to the human Marines as "our people" had been quite unconscious, quite unrehearsed. An indicator of just how comfortable with each other the two races had become. Another was the shuttle landing a few hundred yards away. Nobody on the ground was paying much attention; the humans were treating it with the same lack of interest as they treated their own craft. As if a TWA spaceplane was landing on an airfield where Pan American was more common.
"You know, Paul, I have been thinking about the sleepytrees." Gennarahith's voice was reflective again. "The way they appeared, the way they spread over the planet, choking out everything in their path. When you said they were wrong, I believe you were more correct than you perhaps realized. They are wrong in a moral sense yes. But they are wrong in other ways as well. Does it not seem odd to you that they just appeared the way they did? They are unique here, there are no bushes, no other plants that produce the poisons they do. If they had evolved here, would there not be other plants that were similar?"
"Some of our biologists have said the same. The sleepytrees stand alone, they don't seem to have any relatives." Lazaruski didn't notice that he'd said 'our biologists' or that the term had included the Nutkin scientists up on the MOL as well as the humans.
"And that should not be. Everything is descended form something else, everything is part of a whole. Except the sleepytrees here on this planet. They are on their own, they relate to nothing. Paul, that is not just wrong, it is unnatural. And if the situation is unnatural does it not follow that the sleepytrees are also? If that is correct, then how did they get here?"
"And why" Lazaruski meditated carefully on the implications of that question because it posed another yet unasked. If the sleepytrees were unnatural and did not belong here, why were they here was one good question. Who had put them here was a much better one.
On Board CVS-12 “USS Shiloh”, Elpis System.
“YOU, you horrible, moronic, brainless, imbecilic incompetent dolts of DEMOCRATS. Are you trying to get yourselves killed? You want to put our poor Captain, overworked as he is, through the toil of completing unnecessary paperwork because you worthless excrescences decided to plague him with your unnecessary deaths? If you are determined to drain the shallow end of the gene pool by removing your benighted inconsequential DEMOCRAT contributions, there are ways that inconvenience your shipmates less."
The six enlisted crewmen stood shivering around the open access panel while The Senior Chief's words ricocheted around the compartment. The work was simple, a lighting sub-circuit had blown and a relay needed to be replaced before the fluorescent panels were replaced. A simple enough job and, like so many in space, lethal if not done properly.
"Just what do you think you are doing?"
The crewmen looked at each other, willing somebody else to take the plunge first. Eventually one stepped forward. The Senior Chief glanced down at his name tag. Carstairs. He might be worth watching, if he was prepared to step forward in the face of the blast, he might be promotion material. "Sir?"
"WHAT!!!!!" Carstairs blanched at the blast greeting his faux pas but kept going bravely.
"Senior Chief, We have turned the switches for this lighting circuit off so it’s safe to work on."
"Really? You turned the switch off. I suppose it never crept into your useless DEMOCRAT brains that if the switch shorts or malfunctions, the circuit is live again? with your hands deep inside it?" There was an uneasy exchange of glances. Time, the Senior Chief thought, to drop the blasting and start to teach.
"Look, how often have you flipped a switch, only it hasn't quite gone all the way ? and its dropped back? Or the switch hasn't done what it’s supposed to? Or the circuit itself has shorted out? Too often, right? I was on a ship once where a seaman was working on a circuit in the heads. He'd turned the switch off as well, only the ship lurched unexpectedly and he dropped a capstan wrench into water. The water splashed, completed a circuit and he got the lot. Didn't just kill him, it killed his mate as well. His partner saw him going down and he tried to pull him out. Both dead because it was too much trouble to pull the circuit breakers. So what is the first thing you do before touching this circuit?"
"Pull the circuit breakers Senior Chief."
"Wrong. First thing we do is look at the circuit diagrams for this compartment. Where are they?" The crewman looked around guiltily "You didn't get them. The first thing you do when working in a compartment is look at the plans. If you're doing electrical work, look at the circuit diagrams. It just so happens, purely by chance, I have them here. This is the circuit you're working on right?" There was a unanimous nodding. "But look what we have here. Another circuit running down the same conduit that isn't isolated by that circuit breaker. It will still be live and if there's a short somewhere, so will the one you think you've isolated. So we have to find both breakers and pull them. Then we switch off and get to work."
There was a brief scramble as the correct breakers were located and pulled. Then, a consultation of plans as the work crew confirmed the circuitry they'd be working on was truly isolated from the ship's power supply. Finally, the defective relay was replaced, the faulty lighting panel removed and a new one substituted. Once they got to work, the Senior Chief had to admit they did a smart, efficient job. Then, the power was restored, the new panel flaring into life.
"Well done. Just remember, take your time over safety, the Navy can fix most things but even an Admiral can't bring the dead back to life. And if anybody tells you to skimp safety precautions, you tell them to get lost. Nobody will blame you for that. Carry on."
Nobody moved. Once again, it was Carstairs who stepped forward. "Umm Senior Chief, permission to ask a question?"
"Only dumb questions are the ones nobody asked. Go ahead Carstairs."
"Senior Chief. What's a Democrat?"
For the first time in centuries, the Senior Chief was struck dumb. For only a second though. "Say WHAT Carstairs?"
"Senior, we've got Federalists and Unionists here of course, and Smitty there is from Kansas and he's still a Republican. But what's a Democrat?"
"You really don't know do you?" Carstairs shook his head. He'd heard vaguely, that there had once been a political party of that name but who they were? High school history didn’t really say. "Don't worry about it. I want you all to read up on electrical maintenance safety procedures tonight. Tomorrow, we'll have a practical demonstration of correct maintenance procedures down in engineering."
The Senior Chief wandered down off, his head filled with what he'd just heard. Then, squaring his shoulders, he headed for officer's country. And, in particular, Admiral Theodore's offices. His doggie was in the outer office.
"Request permission to see the Admiral Sir." The salute was exemplary
"Wait one Senior Chief. I'll see if he's available." The doggie knocked on the door and let himself into Theodore's compartment.
"Admiral Sir, the Senior Chief wishes to speak with you."
"A Senior Chief? What does he want?"
"Not a Senior Chief, Sir, THE Senior Chief."
"You'd better send him in then."
The Senior Chief entered the sanctum, cap in hand, and snapped into perfect attention.
"Senior, take a seat. You wanted to see me?"
"Sir, with the greatest respect Sir, do I have any markers I can call in?"
"Senior, every Admiral in the fleet owes you more markers than he can count. What can I do for you?"
"Sir, I understand that naming Base One down on the planet will be our privilege. The Nutkins will name Base Two. And that the name for Base One has not yet been selected."
"That's right Senior."
"Admiral, may I most respectfully urge that the new base be named in honor of Seaman Robert MacDonald Sir."
"Who is he Senior?"
"An old Shipmate Sir, died bravely in action, it’s an honorable name, I promise you that. And I made him a promise a long time ago."
Theodore stared at the Senior Chief, noting that his hands were twisting on his cap. Just how long ago, he wondered, had that promise been made?
"Very well Senior Chief. Base One will, from now on be the Robert MacDonald Naval Facility. That makes the air base attached to it MacDonald AFB." Theodore made some notes on a paper, one that made the name official.
"Thank You Sir."
As the Senior Chief left the Admiral's quarters, he felt a weight lifting off his soul, a weight that had been with him so long he'd almost forgotten that it was there. It had taken time, but, at this end of the Interstellar Highway, he'd kept his promise at last.
Anderson Holding, Northern Continent, Tau Ceti Colony.
There were eight riders, not six. The six everybody expected were there, five men and a woman, all in the long brown Missouri Dusters and slouch hats that marked them as Regulators. The other two were a young couple.
"Thank you for doing us the honor of allowing us ride with you Achillea. It's been a privilege."
"Our privilege Sir, Ma'am. I'll pass your regards to Henry when we get back." The six Regulators spurred their horses and moved off, one of the roving patrols that kept a check on the law enforcement of the colony. Achillea had been sick of sitting behind a desk so she'd bullied Henry McCarty into letting her take this patrol out. Probably, that had disappointed the youngsters who'd been looking forward to boasting that they'd ridden with Billy the Kid.
Joseph Vaisie grinned at his wife, glanced to make sure the riders were out of earshot and whispered "Better luck next time!" Trish Vaisie giggled. They were both looking better now, the black shadows had gone and they'd filled out to replace the weight the sleepytree toxin had burned off them. Trish's hair was back to its previous self, shining instead of lank, thick instead of straggled. They would have looked their ages, almost, were it not for the wariness deep in their eyes.
"My parents come up here every Sunday to get our land marked out. Looks like they've started work too, the path in has been laid. With a little luck, we'll catch them."
They did. The Andersons were measuring out a patch of quiet ground, one that would soon be a herb garden. They looked around when they heard the horses approaching, guarded, hands dropping to guns. Jorden was a peaceful planet but there was something about a frontier that made people cautious. Or should.
"Trish! Joe! You're back!."
Trish slid off her horse and fell into her mother’s arms. They hugged, then Hannah grabbed her daughter's forearms and held her back a little, looking fiercely at her. "Why Tricia Anderson, you're all grown up!"
Meaning, I look older thought Trish, still sensitive over the havoc wrought by the sleepytrees. "It's Tricia Vaisie Mom. It’s all formal now. Married by the Captain of an aircraft carrier no less."
The two women drifted away exchanging confidences that they didn’t want their menfolk to hear. Howard and Joseph looked at each other, the father a little doubtfully, in the age-old fashion of a man looking at the person who had taken his daughter away.
"I heard all about Armstrong Joe. Rough deal, the way we got the story."
"Bad as it gets sir. It's the first time a colonization team has been taken down like that, and to get a SEAL team hammered as well, its shaken us all up. If it hadn't been for the Nutkins?."
"You've met them? The Nutkins? Are they really like the videocasts say?"
"They're great Sir, really. They're fun, they like jokes but they're as smart as they come and as hard as nails under the good humor. They've got this incredible space station ship, they can't use the portals so they go the long way. Look, we'll tell you all about them later, there's so much to say. How's things going here?"
"We've got the access road built now, and we're measuring up for our house. The components will be arriving soon, then we'll be having our home-raising." Howard Anderson's face showed his anticipation. The house would be delivered as pre-fabricated components with a work team to assemble it. While the workers put the house up, all the neighbors would gather around and sweep the new homestead for yellowbellies. Inch by inch. Sometimes a Regulator Patrol would turn up to help in the fun. Then, in the evening, when the ranch was up and the ground cleared, there would be a dinner and dance that would go on until the early hours of the morning. "You and Trish going to stay for a while? You're both welcome, needn't say that I guess."
"We thought we'd stay and help you get this place set up. We won't be going back to Armstrong for six months or more, Trish and I aren't so bad but some of the others got hit a lot worse. Anyway, the military are in charge there now. When we go back we'll have two groups of SAC bombers and a division of Marines riding guard on us. With what Trish and I have learned, we can help you a lot.
"Are you planning to go back to see your parents Joe?" Joseph shook his head. "Don't blame you. You're a better man than I thought, after what happened, I'd want to look him up. Not in a friendly way either."
"Sir."
"Howard, Joe, or Howie."
"Howard, thank you. No point in confronting him. That doesn't get anybody anywhere. Nobody ever got ahead by getting even. That's what my father did wrong, he's spent his life looking for ways of getting even with people he thinks did him wrong and all that time he could have been spending on getting himself ahead. He can go his way, I'll go mine."
Howard looked proudly at his son-in-law. His daughter had picked well, she'd seen something in this young man that others had missed. Certainly something his father had missed. "Joe, I like the way you think. Have you seen the latest plans for the homestead, the ones Shane had drawn up for us? I'll show you where we are and what we've got started. I reckon the Anderson Holding has a big future ahead of it.
Re: 2545 - Intersteller Highway
Chapter 29
Final Approach, Carswell Air Force Base, Earth
"Microburst up ahead."
Yelina Soo nodded absently, her eyes riveted on the screen ahead of her. Showgirl was shuddering with the turbulence, the force of the storm shaking even her size and weight. When they'd started this landing run, the storm line had been relatively mild but it had picked up force faster than anybody could have dreamed. Now, it was dangerous, the sort of storm that aircrew took their time to avoid. Her hands moved, adding power and bringing the nose up slightly, enough to anticipate the downward force of the microburst. When it hit, she'd already compensated for its violence but Showgirl still lurched down and started to yaw as the air currents seized her.
"Lucky we don't have a Nutkin on board, they'd have repainted the cockpit by now." William's voice was tense. As Showgirl's primary pilot he hated riding as passenger but the unexpected storm had left no choice. Anticipating its turbulence put a premium on Soo's fast reactions and her ability to respond instantly. So she was flying the aircraft down and Williams had to watch. He was right on this, though, the susceptibility of the Nutkins to airsickness was already becoming a legend, one of the unexpected effects of living in the tranquil environment of a multi-generational starship.
"It's not funny, it takes days to get rid of the smell after somebody throws up in me." Showgirl sounded aggrieved. She definitely preferred the serenity of space to the violence of flying through the atmosphere.
Soo barely heard the exchange, she had the sensitivity of the powered controls turned up to the maximum so she could feel every vibration and lurch as she piloted the bomber through the storm. That was absorbing every last part of her concentration. Although her eyes were fixed on the sheet of rain pounding on the screen, that wasn't where she was getting the information she needed from. In fact, it might as well not be there for all the good it was doing. The wiping system had been deployed from its heat-protected container and was sweeping across the transparency but it wasn't doing any good, the water was coming down too fast for that.
"We're below the cloud cover now?" Newman's voice was also stressed. Landing in a fully-fledged thunderstorm was a procedure best avoided.
"Think so. Hard to tell." Soo's eyes suddenly widened and she slammed the throttles forward, hauling the controls back. A split second later, Showgirl shook from nose to tail as a hammer-like blow struck her upper surfaces. She dipped despite the extra power , her big delta wings and flat-topped fuselage made her vulnerable to the wrath of a microburst and this one made the use of the term 'micro' highly questionable. In the old days, microbursts had taken aircraft and hurled them into the ground. Now, radar gave warnings of their fury but they were a menace even so. Soo took her eyes from the screen for a second and checked the radar display, at least three more microbursts were being detected, none in her flight path but that could change.
"Tony, flip the nav radar readout onto the head-up display please." Her mouth twisted as she made the request. She didn't like a cluttered screen, she believed the more information was presented the more important things got overlooked. A nice balance to be struck between what was needed and what confused the issue, but in a storm like that she needed the navigation radar information. "Thank you. We're on flight and descent paths, a little high to allow for any more microbursts but on track. Unless we lose an engine, we should be landing in a few minutes." Losing an engine was a very real possibility, Showgirl's four engines were on top of her fuselage where they were catching the worst of the downpour. They didn’t show any signs of faltering under the mass of water they were ingesting but that could change fast.
"I can see lights ahead." Nobody else could but Soo had picked up a glimmer of the runway lights through the cascade of rain down Showgirl's sloping nose. "Undercarriage down, flaps 15." Her hands moved again, getting ready to add power and pull the nose up in case another microburst struck. Sure enough it did, slamming Showgirl down towards the ground, now dangerously close beneath them. Soo couldn't take chances, she rammed the throttles forward and yanked the controls back, even as the ground proximity warning system started blasting. Showgirl leapt upwards, forcing herself against the downward pressure, fighting and beating it. Beside her, Williams glanced to one side, for a brief second he thought he'd seen a figure sitting in the jump seat, a figure in an old-fashioned khaki uniform with face set in a scowl and a half-chewed cigar clenched in his mouth. Then, Soo pushed her down again, heading for the runway and safety. There was a crunch that shook the whole airframe as the DSB-36 slammed into the end of the runway. Then she was running down it, bleeding off speed.
"We blew a tire, at least one. I can feel it." Soo was struggling to keep the nose aligned to the runway as the bomber tried to veer off. "Bang the chutes, I don't want to hit the brakes, they won't do much good anyway. This is a river, not a runway."
Slowly, Showgirl came to a halt, the cockpit reverberating with the thunder of the rain beating on her topside. Ahead of them, a jeep with a yellow sign 'Follow-Me" appeared. It had to be close, the rain was so dense now that it was more like a liquid fog than anything else. Still, it was visible and Soo started to taxi after it. Showgirl was vibrating, she had blown at least one tire as Soo had thought. Then, finally, the screen cleared and the thundering stopped. They were inside Carswell's Oh-my-God hangar.
Soo was slumped in her seat, half-collapsed from nervous exhaustion after the fight to bring Showgirl in. Williams took over the controls, spooling down the engines and turning down the systems. "Great landing Yelina." She nodded weakly, appreciating the compliment. The way the storm had escalated, they hadn't had a chance to abort the landing or divert to another field. Anyway, if they had, they'd only have had to make a shuttle hop later. Showgirl had to come to Carswell.
By the time the crew had shut the aircraft down and got outside, Showgirl was surrounded by her retinue of ground staff and engineers. She was sagging slightly to one side, two of the eight tires had blown on the port undercarriage leg and one on the nosewheel. That runway impact had been a hard one. Water was still sluicing off her and the hangar resounded with the sound of the storm still raging outside.
"Right, Sirs, we'll take her from here. We'll add an undercarriage check to the list but I don't think any harm's done." The crew chief held out a clipboard. Captain Newman signed it, now Showgirl officially 'belonged' to the ground staff. She would be going in for a major overhaul and systems upgrade, one that would take almost two months. At least part of the work would be upgrading the communications suite with new radios that could use the long-wave Nutkin frequencies. That, and modifications to her electronic warfare suite to cover those same frequencies. The Nutkins were friends but who knew whether they would stay that way. And, the ones they had befriended probably weren't the only Nutkins out there.
"Got any plans Yelina?" The crew had two weeks leave before going off on a series of training courses.
"I thought I would go to Vegas, try my luck there." Only the very innocent would have thought that she meant using the gambling facilities. "You, Tony?"
"Just going back to my home village, visit my folks, kick back for a while. Go to the local pub and tell the regulars a lot of yarns about the Interstellar Highway while swilling the local scrumpy. After weeks away somewhere in the universe, it'll be good to get back to my roots."
The Oval Office, The White House, Washington DC.
"So this makes it formal." President Mantoya looked at the simple white envelope with reluctance, as if recognizing it would make it final.
"Yes Sir. I'll be resigning as National Security Advisor effective as of the end of this month."
"Now that is a problem." The Treasury Secretary sighed theatrically. "When President Johnson set up the Social Security system, he didn't know about you and your people. We've been working out your pension benefits. At a first approximation, paying your group's accumulated benefits will just about bankrupt the Government."
"Just about?" Mantoya snorted. "It would be cheaper to give them the keys to Fort Knox."
"I doubt it Sir. I know these people, if we do that, they'll have the place emptied by dusk."
The Seer looked outraged. "That's an injustice Sir, a gross injustice. It wouldn't take us until dusk."
"Perhaps not. That still leaves us with the problem that we can't let you retire. Your pension commitments don't just equal the national debt, as far as we can make out, they are the national debt. We hoped we could get it back via income tax but the IRS has been looking at your returns and it appears that they may owe you money as well. Seer, what do you plan to do when you're retired?"
"Just wander Sir. I've been here for six hundred years, more if you count my pre-Government service residence. I want to look around a bit. We've opened space up now, I want to see what's up there. Most of the Washington group feel the same way, we've been here a long time and it’s time to move. We're not leaving you flat, we've trained successors who can take over. They've got all the experience they need, they've got practice and they're fitting into a system that works. Also, Earth doesn't face a problem now, or, rather the ones it does face are controllable.
"You see, Sir, we never used to get involved in governments. We'd find an agreeable place to live and stay there until it wasn't agreeable any more. Then we'd move on. We'd tried being in government, or controlling governments and it really hadn't worked very well. Oh, individually, we've got some people who can rule well but there aren't enough of us and the way we look at things, it doesn't work very well. So we just stayed out of sight and lived comfortably. Only, we started to realize we couldn't do that anymore. We were running out of places to wander to. I guess it was the American Civil War that got us wondering. You see, it was there that technology really started to outrun our ability to control it, to use it properly.
"I remember talking to Sam Grant after Spotsylvania about that. He'd realized who we were and that night he got drunk enough to let it slip. There were worse bloodbaths than the Bloody Angle but Bloody Angle was the first although I suppose Picketts Charge was a curtain-raiser. People were trying to fight breech-loading rifles with Napoleonic tactics and the end result was Cold Harbor. We all got drunk after that one. Then came the First World War and people trying to fight machine guns and artillery with tactics a century out of date. In the Civil War, they were one step behind technology, in World War One two or three steps behind? at least. We could see where it was going, and we knew it was all going to end in tears.
"In 1921, we all held a meeting, a huge one. Biggest assembly of Daimones there has ever been. Nothing like it before or since. We could see that technology was running out of control and threatening the short-lifers very existence. If they went, we went too. We didn't know what the disaster was going to be but we could all see it coming. So the three main groups adopted different policies. Princess Suriyothai was already effectively running her country from behind the scenes, a very activist policy. Loki believed we should carry on as before, that everything would work out in the end, a very passive policy. We tried to strike a middle course, not run things but acts as moderators, middle-men, use our experience, our longevity, as a safety catch if you like.
"At first, when I learned that atomic weapons were being developed, I thought that they were the impending disaster. Curt and I talked it over while we were putting plans together. Curt hated war Sir, he despised it, loathed it. Thought it was an obscenity that should be banished from human thought. When war started, he wanted it over as quickly as possible. I wanted a massive demonstration of power, one that would shock people into realizing how dangerous these new weapons were. That's why we worked together to get The Big One set up. For our different reasons, it was what we both saw as essential. And it worked, only it turned out that nuclear weapons weren't the threat we'd foreseen, biologicals were. All of us Daimones, we'd all seen plague, uncontrolled disease, running rampant and we knew the only defense was isolation. We all know what happened then.
"The Dark Ages have solved the problem sir. For four hundred years, science and technology have virtually stood still while we've continued to grow up. Now, technology and our ability to control it are in balance again. Humanity's survived, we've spread out and we've dispersed. We're not sitting on a single target any more. The last threat I thought we faced was meeting another intelligent species and that's worked out well. So our job's done, we can go back to doing what we always wanted to. Living quietly and keeping in the shadows."
"But you don't have to live in the shadows, people know about you, you're accepted now. Respected, even admired."
"True, a benefit indeed. You've no idea how annoying it was to have to change identities every few decades. That's one of the things I'm going to do. 'The Seer' will vanish when I give up being NSA and I'll be Parmenio, again. For the first time in a very long time, I'll be myself."
President Mantoya shook his head. "Have you ever thought about writing your biography."
Parmenio laughed. "Nobody would believe it. And it would make quite a few people cry. Look what happened when we let a little light in on a few mysteries."
"So you think there's no real threat to us, to humans, short-lifers, Daimones, Wolfen, even Nutkins I suppose, now?"
There was something in President Mantoya's voice that alerted Parmenio, the same intonation that he'd heard before in his long life. One that meant somebody was trying to blindside him.
"Not that I know of Sir. Why?"
"Perhaps you had better read this."
It was a file, a large one, thick and full of data. It took Parmenio time to read it while the President and Secretary of the Treasury discussed some other matters. Eventually, Parmenio closed the file, reluctantly and very thoughtfully.
"So the sleepytrees aren't natural."
"So it would appear, yes. According to Fort Dettrick, the trees do not belong on Armstrong at all, they bear little genetic relationship to any other plant life we've found there. They're not native to the planet and they're probably not natural at all. The consensus is that they're genetically engineered."
Parmenio leaned back, the various options running through his mind. "A very odd way of doing things. They're not a weapon as we would understand it. If they were intended to seize and displace, they would have to work a lot faster and they don't. Evidence is that those trees have been there for tens of thousands of years." Then he started to nod slowly. "An area denial weapon. Has to be. They're not designed to seize and hold, they're designed to make the surface of the planet uninhabitable. At a guess, they were designed to lace whole biospheres with their poison so that anybody who set up on the surface would be killed. They're a defense, not an offense. Only, the designers didn't think through the implications properly and didn’t realize that the trees would eventually wipe out all the natural life."
"Why would anybody want to do that?"
"Oh several reasons. One is that Armstrong is inhabited, just not on the surface. Under the sea perhaps or underground. Or that the original inhabitants were wiped out by the trees they created for some other reason. Or perhaps there's another species out there that can't live on earth-like planets but doesn't want life-forms like us living there either. Perhaps they like gas giants. We don't know enough to speculate." Then a thought struck Parmenio. "Did the scientists ever decide what took out Mossberg?"
"Not according to the latest word, no. Still undecided."
"You know, if somebody had used sleepytrees to deny a planetary surface, pounding the planet with rocks might be a very good way of clearing them."
President Mantoya smiled smugly to himself. The trap was sprung. Give The Seer a strategy problem and he'd chew away at it until it was solved. "Parmenio, do you still want to resign as NSA? In view of this threat hanging over us?"
"Mister President, that's another reason why I should. There's too much faith being put in us old-timers. We need to hand the job on to our successors."
Ah well, Mantoya thought. Time for Plan C. Plan B had failed and there hadn't been a Plan A, there was no point in creating Plan As, they never worked.
"In which case, I'd like to offer you a new Government post, one that suits both of us. I wanted to call it the Secretary for Heavenly Inter-relations and Trade but the Justice Department spotted the acronym and vetoed it. Its now the Secretary for Interstellar Relations. Essentially, you and your team would have a wandering remit to circulate amongst the human colonies and act as advisors, consultants, whatever is needed. Just to put your experience at the disposal of those colonies so they have somebody to call on when they need it. If they've got a problem, they call on you and you give them advice. You've got your people out there already so you've got the foundation of the organization, just as the targeteers were the foundation of the NSC. When we meet alien species, your job will be to guide the contact."
"That's needed, we were lucky with the Nutkins. That could very easily have gone wrong."
"So you'll take the job?"
"Let me talk it over with my people. If we do take it, do we still get the keys to Fort Knox?"
"NO!"
Parmenio's Apartment, Georgetown, Washington DC.
"So what do you think?" Messalina stopped playing her harp and looked at the group.
"Its attractive. We get to wander and move around, see things yet still remain in a position to influence events if we have to. We need something like that out there, Snake won't leave Earth, Loki's so swept up with the romance of space and the manifest destiny of humanity, he'll mess things up again. This way we're on tap, living at Government expense yet we can still write our own ticket more or less."
"You know the problem of course." Lillith was skeptical. "People will wait until a situation is at crisis point before calling us then blame us for everything that goes wrong. We do all the work, get all the blame."
"Not necessarily, remember most of the administrations on the colonies are run by our people. We'll have a handle on what's going on in advance. There is another advantage, we settled here in America because we were running out of places to go. Now we have a whole new selection to see. If we want to, we could vanish again."
Naamah wrinkled her nose slightly at the thought of another vanishing act. "Hey, Lillith, perhaps we could set ourselves up as another Oracle."
"There's another advantage of this plan. It gives us a purpose. Parmenio's idea of wandering around sounds all very well but it’s going to get old pretty quickly. We've got used to doing something more than just surviving. This way we achieve something as well." Nefertiti stretched out a hand and admired the carefully-painted fingernails. Each was a work of art, a miniature abstract painting.
"If we go for this, first thing we do is head for Armstrong and the Nutkins. That's a situation I don't feel easy about. There's a lot more there than we know about."
There was a companionable silence as people mulled over the ideas and their future. Eventually Nefertiti broke the quiet. "So we're all agreed then?" The nods went around the room. "Poor Parmenio's escape attempt has failed. We take the Government offer and let them pay for a joyride on the Interstellar Highway."
Final Approach, Carswell Air Force Base, Earth
"Microburst up ahead."
Yelina Soo nodded absently, her eyes riveted on the screen ahead of her. Showgirl was shuddering with the turbulence, the force of the storm shaking even her size and weight. When they'd started this landing run, the storm line had been relatively mild but it had picked up force faster than anybody could have dreamed. Now, it was dangerous, the sort of storm that aircrew took their time to avoid. Her hands moved, adding power and bringing the nose up slightly, enough to anticipate the downward force of the microburst. When it hit, she'd already compensated for its violence but Showgirl still lurched down and started to yaw as the air currents seized her.
"Lucky we don't have a Nutkin on board, they'd have repainted the cockpit by now." William's voice was tense. As Showgirl's primary pilot he hated riding as passenger but the unexpected storm had left no choice. Anticipating its turbulence put a premium on Soo's fast reactions and her ability to respond instantly. So she was flying the aircraft down and Williams had to watch. He was right on this, though, the susceptibility of the Nutkins to airsickness was already becoming a legend, one of the unexpected effects of living in the tranquil environment of a multi-generational starship.
"It's not funny, it takes days to get rid of the smell after somebody throws up in me." Showgirl sounded aggrieved. She definitely preferred the serenity of space to the violence of flying through the atmosphere.
Soo barely heard the exchange, she had the sensitivity of the powered controls turned up to the maximum so she could feel every vibration and lurch as she piloted the bomber through the storm. That was absorbing every last part of her concentration. Although her eyes were fixed on the sheet of rain pounding on the screen, that wasn't where she was getting the information she needed from. In fact, it might as well not be there for all the good it was doing. The wiping system had been deployed from its heat-protected container and was sweeping across the transparency but it wasn't doing any good, the water was coming down too fast for that.
"We're below the cloud cover now?" Newman's voice was also stressed. Landing in a fully-fledged thunderstorm was a procedure best avoided.
"Think so. Hard to tell." Soo's eyes suddenly widened and she slammed the throttles forward, hauling the controls back. A split second later, Showgirl shook from nose to tail as a hammer-like blow struck her upper surfaces. She dipped despite the extra power , her big delta wings and flat-topped fuselage made her vulnerable to the wrath of a microburst and this one made the use of the term 'micro' highly questionable. In the old days, microbursts had taken aircraft and hurled them into the ground. Now, radar gave warnings of their fury but they were a menace even so. Soo took her eyes from the screen for a second and checked the radar display, at least three more microbursts were being detected, none in her flight path but that could change.
"Tony, flip the nav radar readout onto the head-up display please." Her mouth twisted as she made the request. She didn't like a cluttered screen, she believed the more information was presented the more important things got overlooked. A nice balance to be struck between what was needed and what confused the issue, but in a storm like that she needed the navigation radar information. "Thank you. We're on flight and descent paths, a little high to allow for any more microbursts but on track. Unless we lose an engine, we should be landing in a few minutes." Losing an engine was a very real possibility, Showgirl's four engines were on top of her fuselage where they were catching the worst of the downpour. They didn’t show any signs of faltering under the mass of water they were ingesting but that could change fast.
"I can see lights ahead." Nobody else could but Soo had picked up a glimmer of the runway lights through the cascade of rain down Showgirl's sloping nose. "Undercarriage down, flaps 15." Her hands moved again, getting ready to add power and pull the nose up in case another microburst struck. Sure enough it did, slamming Showgirl down towards the ground, now dangerously close beneath them. Soo couldn't take chances, she rammed the throttles forward and yanked the controls back, even as the ground proximity warning system started blasting. Showgirl leapt upwards, forcing herself against the downward pressure, fighting and beating it. Beside her, Williams glanced to one side, for a brief second he thought he'd seen a figure sitting in the jump seat, a figure in an old-fashioned khaki uniform with face set in a scowl and a half-chewed cigar clenched in his mouth. Then, Soo pushed her down again, heading for the runway and safety. There was a crunch that shook the whole airframe as the DSB-36 slammed into the end of the runway. Then she was running down it, bleeding off speed.
"We blew a tire, at least one. I can feel it." Soo was struggling to keep the nose aligned to the runway as the bomber tried to veer off. "Bang the chutes, I don't want to hit the brakes, they won't do much good anyway. This is a river, not a runway."
Slowly, Showgirl came to a halt, the cockpit reverberating with the thunder of the rain beating on her topside. Ahead of them, a jeep with a yellow sign 'Follow-Me" appeared. It had to be close, the rain was so dense now that it was more like a liquid fog than anything else. Still, it was visible and Soo started to taxi after it. Showgirl was vibrating, she had blown at least one tire as Soo had thought. Then, finally, the screen cleared and the thundering stopped. They were inside Carswell's Oh-my-God hangar.
Soo was slumped in her seat, half-collapsed from nervous exhaustion after the fight to bring Showgirl in. Williams took over the controls, spooling down the engines and turning down the systems. "Great landing Yelina." She nodded weakly, appreciating the compliment. The way the storm had escalated, they hadn't had a chance to abort the landing or divert to another field. Anyway, if they had, they'd only have had to make a shuttle hop later. Showgirl had to come to Carswell.
By the time the crew had shut the aircraft down and got outside, Showgirl was surrounded by her retinue of ground staff and engineers. She was sagging slightly to one side, two of the eight tires had blown on the port undercarriage leg and one on the nosewheel. That runway impact had been a hard one. Water was still sluicing off her and the hangar resounded with the sound of the storm still raging outside.
"Right, Sirs, we'll take her from here. We'll add an undercarriage check to the list but I don't think any harm's done." The crew chief held out a clipboard. Captain Newman signed it, now Showgirl officially 'belonged' to the ground staff. She would be going in for a major overhaul and systems upgrade, one that would take almost two months. At least part of the work would be upgrading the communications suite with new radios that could use the long-wave Nutkin frequencies. That, and modifications to her electronic warfare suite to cover those same frequencies. The Nutkins were friends but who knew whether they would stay that way. And, the ones they had befriended probably weren't the only Nutkins out there.
"Got any plans Yelina?" The crew had two weeks leave before going off on a series of training courses.
"I thought I would go to Vegas, try my luck there." Only the very innocent would have thought that she meant using the gambling facilities. "You, Tony?"
"Just going back to my home village, visit my folks, kick back for a while. Go to the local pub and tell the regulars a lot of yarns about the Interstellar Highway while swilling the local scrumpy. After weeks away somewhere in the universe, it'll be good to get back to my roots."
The Oval Office, The White House, Washington DC.
"So this makes it formal." President Mantoya looked at the simple white envelope with reluctance, as if recognizing it would make it final.
"Yes Sir. I'll be resigning as National Security Advisor effective as of the end of this month."
"Now that is a problem." The Treasury Secretary sighed theatrically. "When President Johnson set up the Social Security system, he didn't know about you and your people. We've been working out your pension benefits. At a first approximation, paying your group's accumulated benefits will just about bankrupt the Government."
"Just about?" Mantoya snorted. "It would be cheaper to give them the keys to Fort Knox."
"I doubt it Sir. I know these people, if we do that, they'll have the place emptied by dusk."
The Seer looked outraged. "That's an injustice Sir, a gross injustice. It wouldn't take us until dusk."
"Perhaps not. That still leaves us with the problem that we can't let you retire. Your pension commitments don't just equal the national debt, as far as we can make out, they are the national debt. We hoped we could get it back via income tax but the IRS has been looking at your returns and it appears that they may owe you money as well. Seer, what do you plan to do when you're retired?"
"Just wander Sir. I've been here for six hundred years, more if you count my pre-Government service residence. I want to look around a bit. We've opened space up now, I want to see what's up there. Most of the Washington group feel the same way, we've been here a long time and it’s time to move. We're not leaving you flat, we've trained successors who can take over. They've got all the experience they need, they've got practice and they're fitting into a system that works. Also, Earth doesn't face a problem now, or, rather the ones it does face are controllable.
"You see, Sir, we never used to get involved in governments. We'd find an agreeable place to live and stay there until it wasn't agreeable any more. Then we'd move on. We'd tried being in government, or controlling governments and it really hadn't worked very well. Oh, individually, we've got some people who can rule well but there aren't enough of us and the way we look at things, it doesn't work very well. So we just stayed out of sight and lived comfortably. Only, we started to realize we couldn't do that anymore. We were running out of places to wander to. I guess it was the American Civil War that got us wondering. You see, it was there that technology really started to outrun our ability to control it, to use it properly.
"I remember talking to Sam Grant after Spotsylvania about that. He'd realized who we were and that night he got drunk enough to let it slip. There were worse bloodbaths than the Bloody Angle but Bloody Angle was the first although I suppose Picketts Charge was a curtain-raiser. People were trying to fight breech-loading rifles with Napoleonic tactics and the end result was Cold Harbor. We all got drunk after that one. Then came the First World War and people trying to fight machine guns and artillery with tactics a century out of date. In the Civil War, they were one step behind technology, in World War One two or three steps behind? at least. We could see where it was going, and we knew it was all going to end in tears.
"In 1921, we all held a meeting, a huge one. Biggest assembly of Daimones there has ever been. Nothing like it before or since. We could see that technology was running out of control and threatening the short-lifers very existence. If they went, we went too. We didn't know what the disaster was going to be but we could all see it coming. So the three main groups adopted different policies. Princess Suriyothai was already effectively running her country from behind the scenes, a very activist policy. Loki believed we should carry on as before, that everything would work out in the end, a very passive policy. We tried to strike a middle course, not run things but acts as moderators, middle-men, use our experience, our longevity, as a safety catch if you like.
"At first, when I learned that atomic weapons were being developed, I thought that they were the impending disaster. Curt and I talked it over while we were putting plans together. Curt hated war Sir, he despised it, loathed it. Thought it was an obscenity that should be banished from human thought. When war started, he wanted it over as quickly as possible. I wanted a massive demonstration of power, one that would shock people into realizing how dangerous these new weapons were. That's why we worked together to get The Big One set up. For our different reasons, it was what we both saw as essential. And it worked, only it turned out that nuclear weapons weren't the threat we'd foreseen, biologicals were. All of us Daimones, we'd all seen plague, uncontrolled disease, running rampant and we knew the only defense was isolation. We all know what happened then.
"The Dark Ages have solved the problem sir. For four hundred years, science and technology have virtually stood still while we've continued to grow up. Now, technology and our ability to control it are in balance again. Humanity's survived, we've spread out and we've dispersed. We're not sitting on a single target any more. The last threat I thought we faced was meeting another intelligent species and that's worked out well. So our job's done, we can go back to doing what we always wanted to. Living quietly and keeping in the shadows."
"But you don't have to live in the shadows, people know about you, you're accepted now. Respected, even admired."
"True, a benefit indeed. You've no idea how annoying it was to have to change identities every few decades. That's one of the things I'm going to do. 'The Seer' will vanish when I give up being NSA and I'll be Parmenio, again. For the first time in a very long time, I'll be myself."
President Mantoya shook his head. "Have you ever thought about writing your biography."
Parmenio laughed. "Nobody would believe it. And it would make quite a few people cry. Look what happened when we let a little light in on a few mysteries."
"So you think there's no real threat to us, to humans, short-lifers, Daimones, Wolfen, even Nutkins I suppose, now?"
There was something in President Mantoya's voice that alerted Parmenio, the same intonation that he'd heard before in his long life. One that meant somebody was trying to blindside him.
"Not that I know of Sir. Why?"
"Perhaps you had better read this."
It was a file, a large one, thick and full of data. It took Parmenio time to read it while the President and Secretary of the Treasury discussed some other matters. Eventually, Parmenio closed the file, reluctantly and very thoughtfully.
"So the sleepytrees aren't natural."
"So it would appear, yes. According to Fort Dettrick, the trees do not belong on Armstrong at all, they bear little genetic relationship to any other plant life we've found there. They're not native to the planet and they're probably not natural at all. The consensus is that they're genetically engineered."
Parmenio leaned back, the various options running through his mind. "A very odd way of doing things. They're not a weapon as we would understand it. If they were intended to seize and displace, they would have to work a lot faster and they don't. Evidence is that those trees have been there for tens of thousands of years." Then he started to nod slowly. "An area denial weapon. Has to be. They're not designed to seize and hold, they're designed to make the surface of the planet uninhabitable. At a guess, they were designed to lace whole biospheres with their poison so that anybody who set up on the surface would be killed. They're a defense, not an offense. Only, the designers didn't think through the implications properly and didn’t realize that the trees would eventually wipe out all the natural life."
"Why would anybody want to do that?"
"Oh several reasons. One is that Armstrong is inhabited, just not on the surface. Under the sea perhaps or underground. Or that the original inhabitants were wiped out by the trees they created for some other reason. Or perhaps there's another species out there that can't live on earth-like planets but doesn't want life-forms like us living there either. Perhaps they like gas giants. We don't know enough to speculate." Then a thought struck Parmenio. "Did the scientists ever decide what took out Mossberg?"
"Not according to the latest word, no. Still undecided."
"You know, if somebody had used sleepytrees to deny a planetary surface, pounding the planet with rocks might be a very good way of clearing them."
President Mantoya smiled smugly to himself. The trap was sprung. Give The Seer a strategy problem and he'd chew away at it until it was solved. "Parmenio, do you still want to resign as NSA? In view of this threat hanging over us?"
"Mister President, that's another reason why I should. There's too much faith being put in us old-timers. We need to hand the job on to our successors."
Ah well, Mantoya thought. Time for Plan C. Plan B had failed and there hadn't been a Plan A, there was no point in creating Plan As, they never worked.
"In which case, I'd like to offer you a new Government post, one that suits both of us. I wanted to call it the Secretary for Heavenly Inter-relations and Trade but the Justice Department spotted the acronym and vetoed it. Its now the Secretary for Interstellar Relations. Essentially, you and your team would have a wandering remit to circulate amongst the human colonies and act as advisors, consultants, whatever is needed. Just to put your experience at the disposal of those colonies so they have somebody to call on when they need it. If they've got a problem, they call on you and you give them advice. You've got your people out there already so you've got the foundation of the organization, just as the targeteers were the foundation of the NSC. When we meet alien species, your job will be to guide the contact."
"That's needed, we were lucky with the Nutkins. That could very easily have gone wrong."
"So you'll take the job?"
"Let me talk it over with my people. If we do take it, do we still get the keys to Fort Knox?"
"NO!"
Parmenio's Apartment, Georgetown, Washington DC.
"So what do you think?" Messalina stopped playing her harp and looked at the group.
"Its attractive. We get to wander and move around, see things yet still remain in a position to influence events if we have to. We need something like that out there, Snake won't leave Earth, Loki's so swept up with the romance of space and the manifest destiny of humanity, he'll mess things up again. This way we're on tap, living at Government expense yet we can still write our own ticket more or less."
"You know the problem of course." Lillith was skeptical. "People will wait until a situation is at crisis point before calling us then blame us for everything that goes wrong. We do all the work, get all the blame."
"Not necessarily, remember most of the administrations on the colonies are run by our people. We'll have a handle on what's going on in advance. There is another advantage, we settled here in America because we were running out of places to go. Now we have a whole new selection to see. If we want to, we could vanish again."
Naamah wrinkled her nose slightly at the thought of another vanishing act. "Hey, Lillith, perhaps we could set ourselves up as another Oracle."
"There's another advantage of this plan. It gives us a purpose. Parmenio's idea of wandering around sounds all very well but it’s going to get old pretty quickly. We've got used to doing something more than just surviving. This way we achieve something as well." Nefertiti stretched out a hand and admired the carefully-painted fingernails. Each was a work of art, a miniature abstract painting.
"If we go for this, first thing we do is head for Armstrong and the Nutkins. That's a situation I don't feel easy about. There's a lot more there than we know about."
There was a companionable silence as people mulled over the ideas and their future. Eventually Nefertiti broke the quiet. "So we're all agreed then?" The nods went around the room. "Poor Parmenio's escape attempt has failed. We take the Government offer and let them pay for a joyride on the Interstellar Highway."
Re: 2545 - Intersteller Highway
Chapter 30
Main Conference Room, White House, Washington DC
"Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the National Security Briefing, better known as the Friday Follies. Many of you will know that this is the last of these briefings that I will be presenting; as from tomorrow, the post of National Security Advisor will be held by my successor. Parmenio looked around the room at the assembled representatives of the U.S. Government. In some ways, he was going to miss this ritual yet it already felt as if it was part of the past. Presenting this Briefing and then introducing the new National Security Advisor was just underlining the end of a phase of his life. One that had been rather fun now he was in a position to look back on it. Grimly, he wondered what Alexander would have thought of the power this government wielded - and what he would have done with it. Nothing useful probably. Alexander’s influence had never extended much beyond the footsteps of his Army; even the much-maligned generals who had succeeded him had done more work of lasting value. Before Parmenio had methodically wiped them out.
"We'll look at our home planet first. I'll be brief here since I have no doubt it’s the news from space that's the primary interest. As far as we can determine there are no serious threats to stability or security at this time. In Europe the French reunification movement has been actively pursuing its campaign to re-absorb Brittany and Languedoc into France. There was some minor rioting earlier in the week between Reunification and Nationalist groups but that appears to have died down. It never amounted to much anyway, probably more high-spirited students than anything else. There is some unrest in Northern India and reports there may be secret Moslem cells operating up there. If true, that would be rather interesting. They could be surviving groups from pre-Dark Ages who have kept their heads down or rebel groups who have “recreated” Islamic doctrine as a basis for their activities. It wouldn’t be the first time either of those has happened.
"Some good news with the start of the hurricane season. We've monitored the first of the tropical storm movements off the coast of Africa and I'm pleased to be able to confirm that there are no new or unidentified pathogens in the samples we've collected and the levels of radiological contamination continue to decline." That was a relief indeed, early in the Dark Ages, pathogens carried in the mid-Atlantic tropical storm systems had caused epidemics in Florida and on the East Coast. "The news is equally good from the southern borders of Russia; monitoring there has shown that contamination levels are now entirely within acceptable limits. The same applies to the areas of Indonesia now being tentatively investigated. It is the consensus of the scientists monitoring these areas that we can start to reclaim some of regions on the margins of the Abandoned Areas. The core of the Abandoned Areas, the plague pits, sadly appear still to be inaccessible.
"The Russians are preparing to take advantage of the improvements; they're getting ready to send people south into what used to be their Moslem provinces once winter sets in. As always where plague is concerned, winter is the best ally we have and nobody uses it better than the Russians. It looks like we will be reclaiming those areas of the Earth for a long time to come though.
"Some bad news to go with the weather news. The violence and unpredictability of the storms at this time of year are continuing to get worse. A couple of nights ago, what appeared to be a rain line turned into a violent thunderstorm with very little warning. One of our SAC DSB-36s was caught in that storm while trying to land and only just made it in. This is a continuation of a trend that's been going on for some decades now. Each hurricane season, the storms get worse and get less predictable. The climatologists believe we're entering a transitional stage that's leading into a new ice age. At this point, I must say that in my life, I've been told that the earth is warming up, cooling down, staying the same, stabilizing and destabilizing. The changes have been attributed to burning too much fuel, too little fuel, driving too many cars, flying too high and/or too low and a whole host of other things that suite somebody or other's personal agenda. Not to mention failing to sacrifice a sheep at the full moon which suited everybody's agenda but the sheep's. But, the storms are getting worse."
"Are we heading for a new Ice Age? And if so, what effects will it have." President Mantoya didn't seem unduly concerned, but he was already in his second term. A new ice age would be a problem for one of his successors.
"First answer is I don't know. If, however, an Ice Age does return, we'll have to make quite a few changes. The Siberian oil fields will probably become unusable but they're becoming depleted anyway and are not so essential any more. We can compensate by building extra refineries on the moon and stepping up the exploitation of Ice reserves in the asteroid belt and gas giant moons. I would recommend that we start building extra refining capacity on the moon anyway, it’s a good investment. Big thing is that if the world goes icy, it'll speed up recovering the Abandoned Areas. Where plague is concerned, cold is good for us.
"Leaving Earth behind us, there is little of any interest happening in near-space. We have discovered a portal leading from Eta Pegasi to Alpha Mensae. Alpha Mensae appears to be a very promising system with an earth-like planet included. It goes without saying that we will be taking that one very, very carefully. After what happened on Armstrong, we don't want to be caught again. The new planet looks very promising. It already has one great advantage to its favor. No Sleepytrees.” There was a ripple of laughter around the room.
"The new administrative system on Jorden, the American Express-financed colony on Tau Ceti, has settled in nicely and we will be using its structure as a model for other colonies that look to us for administrative tasks. The administrative team we have out there is treating the problems of administering the settled areas of the planet as being similar to the United States in the 1870s to 1890s and adopting similar solutions. Worked for us, should work for them. American Express are very pleased with the way things are going.” Which meant they were making a lot of money, thought Parmenio with a certain element of satisfaction. American Express had financed the colony, paid the Australian Colonization Team to crack it open, paid for the settlers to go out there. Now, they were making their money back by selling land grants, goods and services. They’d also made a point of giving generous land grants to their Earthside customers as part of their rewards points systems and that had been a big hit. People had found the option of turning somewhat nebulous “customer reward points” into solid acres of land on one of the exotic new worlds irresistible. American Express had been beating the living daylights out of Visa and Mastercard since they’d introduced that system.
"And that brings us to the real subject of this afternoon's briefings. Armstrong, the Long Jump and the Nutkins. That's really three subjects but they're so closely linked that really they're all facets of the same problem.
"The Long Jump first. At present we still have no idea where this really leads. Or, to be more accurate, we have no idea where the Elpis star system is. We have suggestions, but they are all tentative. All we do know is that it is a very, very long way away. We have not found any similar jump so far. Also, we have found no parallel jump or alternative route; if something happens to the Long Jump, then everything we have the other side will be irredeemably lost, isolated, somewhere in the Universe. We could make a case for pulling back from Elpis if we hadn’t met the Nutkins there but having met them, we’re pinned. We’ve got to stay there or lose contact with the only race of intelligent non-humans we’ve found. That means we have to understand what the Long Jump is.
“This leads to quite a few speculations. It may be that the Long Jump is simply the extreme end of a bell-curve distribution of jump distances in which case it might well be unique. However, if we start discovering more jumps of this type, we'll have to rethink that. Either the bell curve will be an entirely different shape from we supposed or we will be looking at a quite different phenomena.
"In that respect, we will be starting exploration of portals leading out of the Elpis system shortly. If any of those turn out to be Long Jumps, then we will have to question the whole nature of the portal phenomena. At the moment, we are assuming they are natural occurrences, an explanation that has the support of most of the scientific community. "
"Does that include Doctor Bergmar Hellstrom? The voice from the meeting was unidentified but Parmenio strongly suspected SecDef. The laughter ran around the room. The Disneyland performance had topped the bestselling videodisc lists ever since its release.
"Poor Doctor Hellstrom. I believe he's suffering from nervous exhaustion.” There was more laughter around the room, none of it sympathetic to the victim of Loki’s latest and greatest practical joke. “Returning to the Portals, if it turns out there is a connected series of Long Jumps with a network of short ones at their nodes, we're going to have to seriously ask whether they are a natural phenomena. That layout would make them look painfully like an artificial system, a deliberate construct.
"Speaking about artificial creations, we are now reasonably certain that Armstrong's sleepytrees are not natural to that environment and are probably genetically engineered. Almost certainly are in fact. At the moment, operations on Armstrong are going well. Our first base, the Robert Macdonald Naval Facility, is up and running, the airstrip is under construction along with jetties and support facilities. The area the colonists will occupy is also being prepared ready for their use. We'll be sending the same colonization team that originally landed on Armstrong back there and they'll be joined by an equal number of Nutkins.”
“Why is that Seer? Haven’t they suffered enough from those damned trees?”
“They wouldn’t have it any other way Sir. They refuse to admit the trees got the better of them and they’re demanding they be the ones to go back. Anybody want to argue the toss with 200 veteran Australian colonists?” There was an urgent shaking of heads and Executive Assistants busied themselves ensuring their principals had unbreakable appointments to be anywhere else should such a confrontation occur. “I thought not. But it does make sense. They’ve already learned a lot about the planet and its various hazards - which are not restricted to the Sleepytrees. As a simple example, we are finding the atmosphere with its high inert gas content seems to make people careless so we have to do things like keep working hours short and reduce things like speed limits.
“We're watching the regrowth of plant life very carefully, so far our processes seem to be successful and there is no sign of the sleepytrees returning in the areas we are reseeding. Our second colony is also proceeding well and will be up and running shortly. The Nutkins will be prime on that one. We've agreed it’s their planet, they need it more than we do."
"If it’s going to be their planet, why are we doing so much of the work in reclaiming it?"
"Several reasons. One is that seems likely we will run into the sleepytrees again. They're not natural to Armstrong so somebody put them there. That means they probably put them other places as well. We're developing tactics and technologies for clearing them so we can use them on other planets that will be ours. If you like, Armstrong is a testing ground for future fights against the Sleepytrees. Another is that it will do us no harm to gain a reputation as being a people who generously and unstintingly pay their debts. Yet another is that we will be working with the Nutkins elsewhere and it will help establish that relationship to work with them here. It's only a question of time before the Nutkins start coming to Earth.
"But the most important reason is the Nutkins themselves. We need to know much more about them. Our knowledge of them is limited, in fact, when we put it together, its startling what we don’t know about them. Just as examples, we don't know where they came from, we don't know what happened to their planet – they claim they had to leave when they destroyed it themselves but that could easily be them trying to hide their homeworld from us. A lot more. They’re not hiding anything, every time we ask a question we get an answer, and our people are convinced that the answers are truthful - in as far as they go. But they don’t help us ask questions that lead places they don’t want to go. We are doing the same of course, for exactly the same reasons. It’s not that our two peoples are wary of each other, it’s that we both understand that things must be taken carefully and that too much information is as destabilizing as too little.
"They're more advanced than we are in many ways, they're better engineers than us, their medical capabilities are a bit better, they're better biologists, better astronomers. In fact, they're a century or two ahead of us in everything – except everything that matters. Militarily, we're far in advance of them, so far that there is no real comparison. It's not just equipment although their engineering skills haven't been directed that way. Our military equipment is better than theirs, our carriers have more firepower than they’d dreamed possible and they’d never dreamed of anything like our SAC bombers. It's more than that though, it’s how to fight, the psychology of fighting if you like. Their definition of fighting is undisciplined, they have no real idea of teamwork in a military sense. They have no real sense of strategy or operational art. This comes out in all sorts of unexpected places. They like our games for example, they’re great at playing craps and roulette but they’re dreadful poker players and their ability to play chess is ... well let’s say one of our average teenagers can do better. One on one they can take most humans, even Wolfen, in wrestling or other contact sports but in football or team games? They lose.
"The clue is in their eyes. They have their eyes at the side of their heads. That's significant, it’s a defining characteristic of a prey species. It gives them warning of the advance of a predator. Our eyes are at the front of our heads, they give us a precise and accurate range-to-target. It’s a defining characteristic of a predator. We shoot much better than they do, we’ve already found that. On the other hand, the SEALs are very impressed with Nutkin scouts. One of the things we know about the Nutkins is their evolutionary background. They evolved from a forest-dwelling, tree-living, scavenger; their visual similarity to the squirrel is a good case of parallel evolution. When their forests shrunk, they moved into the plains, they evolved increased size and musculature and switched to a partially-meat diet. They survived as scavengers by becoming useful to predators, by establishing mutually beneficial partnerships with them. That’s why they like hard things to eat; their dentition evolved to crack open leftover bones from predator’s kills.
“We believe the Nutkins evolved as predator-partners, selecting a dominant predator species and making an alliance with it. Making themselves useful to those predators in a variety of ways so they were first tolerated and then became real partners. An extreme case of the relationship between humans and dogs I suppose. Forming and keeping those relationships put a premium on evolving intelligence, to identify dominant species, to form strategies for becoming accepted as partners and for maintaining that partnership. That might be why they’re ability to formulate military-style strategies is so limited; we have that ability because we fight, the Nutkins don’t because they support others who do the fighting. That’s speculation though, I stress, there’s a lot about the Nutkins we don’t understand.
"The Nutkins have adopted the same approach with us, we're predators, they partnered with us rather than fight with us. We believe that they will be valuable and trustworthy allies, as long as we hold up our end of the partnership and we are the strongest, most capable predators on the block. We believe that if we run into a demonstrably more powerful and capable predator, the Nutkins will abandon us and partner with them. So it’s very much in our interest to demonstrate how capable we are at destroying things. Recovering Armstrong is a good way of doing that. It's a non-threatening, indeed friendly, way of showing we are very good at demolishing things.
"Another point. We are friends, allies, with this group of Nutkins. That doesn't necessarily apply to any other groups we run across. We believe there are at least eleven more Nutkin groups out there somewhere. They may be similar to the ones we met, they may be quite different, or have evolved into different cultures. We do not know what their attitude to us will be. There is a pretty good chance we will meet them; the Nutkins are likely to call those other ships and tell them they have found a new home world and a new planet. It will do us no harm if our friendly Nutkins also tell others of their kind 'These Humans are our very good friends, look at everything they have done for us, but see also they could be the worst enemy you can imagine.' Remember, we don't know whether our Nutkins are typical or atypical.
"And that brings me to the last part of today's presentation. I and most of my friends will be leaving soon, to go to Elpis and help manage the growth of relations between Humans and Nutkins. As from tomorrow, you will have a new National Security Advisor. This post is, by long-standing agreement, one that is within the remit of the contractors hired to run the National Security Council. We considered a large number of potential candidates, most of whom were born in the years immediately before the Dark Ages and are therefore representative of a different generation from us. Although we did consider many candidates, one stood out and there was very little doubt as to whom we would finally select.
“Your new NSA was born in 1954 and was originally recruited by us in the mid-1980s as a member of our short-lifer staff. At the time we did not realize that our latest recruit was one of us but we soon realized that this was the case and were able to help our new colleague go through transition to become one our number. Since that time your new National Security Advisor has held a number of posts within the National Security Council and has established an exemplary record for skill, patience and perceptive analysis of complex and troubling issues.
"Therefore, for my last act as America's National Security Advisor, I would like to introduce you to my successor, Doctor Condoleezza Rice."
Main Conference Room, White House, Washington DC
"Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the National Security Briefing, better known as the Friday Follies. Many of you will know that this is the last of these briefings that I will be presenting; as from tomorrow, the post of National Security Advisor will be held by my successor. Parmenio looked around the room at the assembled representatives of the U.S. Government. In some ways, he was going to miss this ritual yet it already felt as if it was part of the past. Presenting this Briefing and then introducing the new National Security Advisor was just underlining the end of a phase of his life. One that had been rather fun now he was in a position to look back on it. Grimly, he wondered what Alexander would have thought of the power this government wielded - and what he would have done with it. Nothing useful probably. Alexander’s influence had never extended much beyond the footsteps of his Army; even the much-maligned generals who had succeeded him had done more work of lasting value. Before Parmenio had methodically wiped them out.
"We'll look at our home planet first. I'll be brief here since I have no doubt it’s the news from space that's the primary interest. As far as we can determine there are no serious threats to stability or security at this time. In Europe the French reunification movement has been actively pursuing its campaign to re-absorb Brittany and Languedoc into France. There was some minor rioting earlier in the week between Reunification and Nationalist groups but that appears to have died down. It never amounted to much anyway, probably more high-spirited students than anything else. There is some unrest in Northern India and reports there may be secret Moslem cells operating up there. If true, that would be rather interesting. They could be surviving groups from pre-Dark Ages who have kept their heads down or rebel groups who have “recreated” Islamic doctrine as a basis for their activities. It wouldn’t be the first time either of those has happened.
"Some good news with the start of the hurricane season. We've monitored the first of the tropical storm movements off the coast of Africa and I'm pleased to be able to confirm that there are no new or unidentified pathogens in the samples we've collected and the levels of radiological contamination continue to decline." That was a relief indeed, early in the Dark Ages, pathogens carried in the mid-Atlantic tropical storm systems had caused epidemics in Florida and on the East Coast. "The news is equally good from the southern borders of Russia; monitoring there has shown that contamination levels are now entirely within acceptable limits. The same applies to the areas of Indonesia now being tentatively investigated. It is the consensus of the scientists monitoring these areas that we can start to reclaim some of regions on the margins of the Abandoned Areas. The core of the Abandoned Areas, the plague pits, sadly appear still to be inaccessible.
"The Russians are preparing to take advantage of the improvements; they're getting ready to send people south into what used to be their Moslem provinces once winter sets in. As always where plague is concerned, winter is the best ally we have and nobody uses it better than the Russians. It looks like we will be reclaiming those areas of the Earth for a long time to come though.
"Some bad news to go with the weather news. The violence and unpredictability of the storms at this time of year are continuing to get worse. A couple of nights ago, what appeared to be a rain line turned into a violent thunderstorm with very little warning. One of our SAC DSB-36s was caught in that storm while trying to land and only just made it in. This is a continuation of a trend that's been going on for some decades now. Each hurricane season, the storms get worse and get less predictable. The climatologists believe we're entering a transitional stage that's leading into a new ice age. At this point, I must say that in my life, I've been told that the earth is warming up, cooling down, staying the same, stabilizing and destabilizing. The changes have been attributed to burning too much fuel, too little fuel, driving too many cars, flying too high and/or too low and a whole host of other things that suite somebody or other's personal agenda. Not to mention failing to sacrifice a sheep at the full moon which suited everybody's agenda but the sheep's. But, the storms are getting worse."
"Are we heading for a new Ice Age? And if so, what effects will it have." President Mantoya didn't seem unduly concerned, but he was already in his second term. A new ice age would be a problem for one of his successors.
"First answer is I don't know. If, however, an Ice Age does return, we'll have to make quite a few changes. The Siberian oil fields will probably become unusable but they're becoming depleted anyway and are not so essential any more. We can compensate by building extra refineries on the moon and stepping up the exploitation of Ice reserves in the asteroid belt and gas giant moons. I would recommend that we start building extra refining capacity on the moon anyway, it’s a good investment. Big thing is that if the world goes icy, it'll speed up recovering the Abandoned Areas. Where plague is concerned, cold is good for us.
"Leaving Earth behind us, there is little of any interest happening in near-space. We have discovered a portal leading from Eta Pegasi to Alpha Mensae. Alpha Mensae appears to be a very promising system with an earth-like planet included. It goes without saying that we will be taking that one very, very carefully. After what happened on Armstrong, we don't want to be caught again. The new planet looks very promising. It already has one great advantage to its favor. No Sleepytrees.” There was a ripple of laughter around the room.
"The new administrative system on Jorden, the American Express-financed colony on Tau Ceti, has settled in nicely and we will be using its structure as a model for other colonies that look to us for administrative tasks. The administrative team we have out there is treating the problems of administering the settled areas of the planet as being similar to the United States in the 1870s to 1890s and adopting similar solutions. Worked for us, should work for them. American Express are very pleased with the way things are going.” Which meant they were making a lot of money, thought Parmenio with a certain element of satisfaction. American Express had financed the colony, paid the Australian Colonization Team to crack it open, paid for the settlers to go out there. Now, they were making their money back by selling land grants, goods and services. They’d also made a point of giving generous land grants to their Earthside customers as part of their rewards points systems and that had been a big hit. People had found the option of turning somewhat nebulous “customer reward points” into solid acres of land on one of the exotic new worlds irresistible. American Express had been beating the living daylights out of Visa and Mastercard since they’d introduced that system.
"And that brings us to the real subject of this afternoon's briefings. Armstrong, the Long Jump and the Nutkins. That's really three subjects but they're so closely linked that really they're all facets of the same problem.
"The Long Jump first. At present we still have no idea where this really leads. Or, to be more accurate, we have no idea where the Elpis star system is. We have suggestions, but they are all tentative. All we do know is that it is a very, very long way away. We have not found any similar jump so far. Also, we have found no parallel jump or alternative route; if something happens to the Long Jump, then everything we have the other side will be irredeemably lost, isolated, somewhere in the Universe. We could make a case for pulling back from Elpis if we hadn’t met the Nutkins there but having met them, we’re pinned. We’ve got to stay there or lose contact with the only race of intelligent non-humans we’ve found. That means we have to understand what the Long Jump is.
“This leads to quite a few speculations. It may be that the Long Jump is simply the extreme end of a bell-curve distribution of jump distances in which case it might well be unique. However, if we start discovering more jumps of this type, we'll have to rethink that. Either the bell curve will be an entirely different shape from we supposed or we will be looking at a quite different phenomena.
"In that respect, we will be starting exploration of portals leading out of the Elpis system shortly. If any of those turn out to be Long Jumps, then we will have to question the whole nature of the portal phenomena. At the moment, we are assuming they are natural occurrences, an explanation that has the support of most of the scientific community. "
"Does that include Doctor Bergmar Hellstrom? The voice from the meeting was unidentified but Parmenio strongly suspected SecDef. The laughter ran around the room. The Disneyland performance had topped the bestselling videodisc lists ever since its release.
"Poor Doctor Hellstrom. I believe he's suffering from nervous exhaustion.” There was more laughter around the room, none of it sympathetic to the victim of Loki’s latest and greatest practical joke. “Returning to the Portals, if it turns out there is a connected series of Long Jumps with a network of short ones at their nodes, we're going to have to seriously ask whether they are a natural phenomena. That layout would make them look painfully like an artificial system, a deliberate construct.
"Speaking about artificial creations, we are now reasonably certain that Armstrong's sleepytrees are not natural to that environment and are probably genetically engineered. Almost certainly are in fact. At the moment, operations on Armstrong are going well. Our first base, the Robert Macdonald Naval Facility, is up and running, the airstrip is under construction along with jetties and support facilities. The area the colonists will occupy is also being prepared ready for their use. We'll be sending the same colonization team that originally landed on Armstrong back there and they'll be joined by an equal number of Nutkins.”
“Why is that Seer? Haven’t they suffered enough from those damned trees?”
“They wouldn’t have it any other way Sir. They refuse to admit the trees got the better of them and they’re demanding they be the ones to go back. Anybody want to argue the toss with 200 veteran Australian colonists?” There was an urgent shaking of heads and Executive Assistants busied themselves ensuring their principals had unbreakable appointments to be anywhere else should such a confrontation occur. “I thought not. But it does make sense. They’ve already learned a lot about the planet and its various hazards - which are not restricted to the Sleepytrees. As a simple example, we are finding the atmosphere with its high inert gas content seems to make people careless so we have to do things like keep working hours short and reduce things like speed limits.
“We're watching the regrowth of plant life very carefully, so far our processes seem to be successful and there is no sign of the sleepytrees returning in the areas we are reseeding. Our second colony is also proceeding well and will be up and running shortly. The Nutkins will be prime on that one. We've agreed it’s their planet, they need it more than we do."
"If it’s going to be their planet, why are we doing so much of the work in reclaiming it?"
"Several reasons. One is that seems likely we will run into the sleepytrees again. They're not natural to Armstrong so somebody put them there. That means they probably put them other places as well. We're developing tactics and technologies for clearing them so we can use them on other planets that will be ours. If you like, Armstrong is a testing ground for future fights against the Sleepytrees. Another is that it will do us no harm to gain a reputation as being a people who generously and unstintingly pay their debts. Yet another is that we will be working with the Nutkins elsewhere and it will help establish that relationship to work with them here. It's only a question of time before the Nutkins start coming to Earth.
"But the most important reason is the Nutkins themselves. We need to know much more about them. Our knowledge of them is limited, in fact, when we put it together, its startling what we don’t know about them. Just as examples, we don't know where they came from, we don't know what happened to their planet – they claim they had to leave when they destroyed it themselves but that could easily be them trying to hide their homeworld from us. A lot more. They’re not hiding anything, every time we ask a question we get an answer, and our people are convinced that the answers are truthful - in as far as they go. But they don’t help us ask questions that lead places they don’t want to go. We are doing the same of course, for exactly the same reasons. It’s not that our two peoples are wary of each other, it’s that we both understand that things must be taken carefully and that too much information is as destabilizing as too little.
"They're more advanced than we are in many ways, they're better engineers than us, their medical capabilities are a bit better, they're better biologists, better astronomers. In fact, they're a century or two ahead of us in everything – except everything that matters. Militarily, we're far in advance of them, so far that there is no real comparison. It's not just equipment although their engineering skills haven't been directed that way. Our military equipment is better than theirs, our carriers have more firepower than they’d dreamed possible and they’d never dreamed of anything like our SAC bombers. It's more than that though, it’s how to fight, the psychology of fighting if you like. Their definition of fighting is undisciplined, they have no real idea of teamwork in a military sense. They have no real sense of strategy or operational art. This comes out in all sorts of unexpected places. They like our games for example, they’re great at playing craps and roulette but they’re dreadful poker players and their ability to play chess is ... well let’s say one of our average teenagers can do better. One on one they can take most humans, even Wolfen, in wrestling or other contact sports but in football or team games? They lose.
"The clue is in their eyes. They have their eyes at the side of their heads. That's significant, it’s a defining characteristic of a prey species. It gives them warning of the advance of a predator. Our eyes are at the front of our heads, they give us a precise and accurate range-to-target. It’s a defining characteristic of a predator. We shoot much better than they do, we’ve already found that. On the other hand, the SEALs are very impressed with Nutkin scouts. One of the things we know about the Nutkins is their evolutionary background. They evolved from a forest-dwelling, tree-living, scavenger; their visual similarity to the squirrel is a good case of parallel evolution. When their forests shrunk, they moved into the plains, they evolved increased size and musculature and switched to a partially-meat diet. They survived as scavengers by becoming useful to predators, by establishing mutually beneficial partnerships with them. That’s why they like hard things to eat; their dentition evolved to crack open leftover bones from predator’s kills.
“We believe the Nutkins evolved as predator-partners, selecting a dominant predator species and making an alliance with it. Making themselves useful to those predators in a variety of ways so they were first tolerated and then became real partners. An extreme case of the relationship between humans and dogs I suppose. Forming and keeping those relationships put a premium on evolving intelligence, to identify dominant species, to form strategies for becoming accepted as partners and for maintaining that partnership. That might be why they’re ability to formulate military-style strategies is so limited; we have that ability because we fight, the Nutkins don’t because they support others who do the fighting. That’s speculation though, I stress, there’s a lot about the Nutkins we don’t understand.
"The Nutkins have adopted the same approach with us, we're predators, they partnered with us rather than fight with us. We believe that they will be valuable and trustworthy allies, as long as we hold up our end of the partnership and we are the strongest, most capable predators on the block. We believe that if we run into a demonstrably more powerful and capable predator, the Nutkins will abandon us and partner with them. So it’s very much in our interest to demonstrate how capable we are at destroying things. Recovering Armstrong is a good way of doing that. It's a non-threatening, indeed friendly, way of showing we are very good at demolishing things.
"Another point. We are friends, allies, with this group of Nutkins. That doesn't necessarily apply to any other groups we run across. We believe there are at least eleven more Nutkin groups out there somewhere. They may be similar to the ones we met, they may be quite different, or have evolved into different cultures. We do not know what their attitude to us will be. There is a pretty good chance we will meet them; the Nutkins are likely to call those other ships and tell them they have found a new home world and a new planet. It will do us no harm if our friendly Nutkins also tell others of their kind 'These Humans are our very good friends, look at everything they have done for us, but see also they could be the worst enemy you can imagine.' Remember, we don't know whether our Nutkins are typical or atypical.
"And that brings me to the last part of today's presentation. I and most of my friends will be leaving soon, to go to Elpis and help manage the growth of relations between Humans and Nutkins. As from tomorrow, you will have a new National Security Advisor. This post is, by long-standing agreement, one that is within the remit of the contractors hired to run the National Security Council. We considered a large number of potential candidates, most of whom were born in the years immediately before the Dark Ages and are therefore representative of a different generation from us. Although we did consider many candidates, one stood out and there was very little doubt as to whom we would finally select.
“Your new NSA was born in 1954 and was originally recruited by us in the mid-1980s as a member of our short-lifer staff. At the time we did not realize that our latest recruit was one of us but we soon realized that this was the case and were able to help our new colleague go through transition to become one our number. Since that time your new National Security Advisor has held a number of posts within the National Security Council and has established an exemplary record for skill, patience and perceptive analysis of complex and troubling issues.
"Therefore, for my last act as America's National Security Advisor, I would like to introduce you to my successor, Doctor Condoleezza Rice."