“I don’t know.” Hunt shrugged and reflected for a second. “I suppose it’d have to tag them with some kind of header-label system.”
“That’s what I thought,” Lyn said, nodding. “Now suppose VISAR did manage to get inside JEVEX, and it scrambled those labels around so that JEVEX couldn’t tell the difference anymore. It could make JEVEX really believe all those stories were true. Imagine what would happen if it started saying things like that. Bra-
ghuillo and his bunclii would go bananas. See what I mean-it’d be nice to watch.”
“What a delightful thought,” Danchekker murmured, intrigued. An evil smile crept across his face as he pictured it. “How unfortunate that we never mentioned it to Calazar. War or not, the Ganymeans would have been unable to resist it.”
Hunt was smiling distantly too as he thought about it. The idea could be taken a lot further than Lyn had suggested. If VISAR got into JEVEX’s memory system sufficiently to change the labels, it would only be a short step from there for it to add in some extra fiction of its own devising. For example, if it could gain access to the part of JEVEX that handled the incoming surveillance data from Earth, VISAR could probably make JEVEX think anything it wanted about what was happening on Earth-such as a whole armada being readied to blow Jevlen out of the Galaxy. As Danchekker had said, a delightful thought.
“You could fake an agreement with Thurien to use their toroids to transport a strike force to Jevlen,” Hunt said. “That way you could have JEVEX saying it would arrive in days. And if you’d already scrambled its records from way back, that would be fully consistent with what it would think it had been reporting for years. The Jevlenese would know it hadn’t . . . but then if they’ve never questioned it all their lives, maybe they wouldn’t know what to think. What do you think Broghuilio would make of that?”
“He’d have a heart attack,” Lyn said. “What do you think, Chris?”
Danchekker turned serious all of a sudden. “I have no idea,” he replied. “But this is an example of precisely the kind of thing I was referring to. The idea of finding ways to bewilder a foe is something that comes naturally to humans but not to Ganymeans. They are going to attempt the straightforward approach of simply crashing JEVEx-direct, logical, and without any thought of deviousness. But suppose that the Jevienese have prepared themselves by providing backup systems capable of operating autonomously even without JEVEX. If so, the Shapieron could still find itself exposed to considerable dangers when it reveals itself by bringing down JEVEX, assuming it succeeds. I trust you see my point.” Danchekker directed a solemn stare at the other two, then continued: “But on the other hand, if their plan had been to control JEVEX rather than disable it, and to disorient the Jevlenese by
subterfuge of the kind you have been describing, then perhaps all manner of opportunities to exploit and exacerbate the resulting situation further might have presented themselves, which as things stand will never be created.” He looked up at the sky again and shook his head sadly. “I can’t for a moment imagine our Ganymean friends adopting such a tactic, I’m afraid.”
The amusement of a few minutes earlier had drained from Hunt’s face as he listened. He had tried, Caldwell had tried, and Heller had tried, but still he couldn’t escape the lingering discomfort that perhaps they could have tried harder still. Now that Danchekker had voiced them, he recognized the same thoughts that he had been suppressing. “We should have gone with them,” he said in a heavy voice. “We should have made Gregg bully them into it.”
“I doubt that it would have made any difference,” Danchekker said. “Couldn’t you see that Garuth had a personal score to settle with Broghuilio? He didn’t want anybody else involved as a matter of principle. Calazar knew it too. Nothing we could have said would have made any difference.”
“I guess you’re right.” Hunt sighed. He looked toward Taurus again, stared at it for a while, then suddenly snapped out of his reverie and looked from side to side at the others. “It’s getting cold,” he said. “Let’s go inside and get some coffee.”