“Dire consequences!” Watanabe exploded. “You hand over the most advanced computer it might be possible to ever build to a bunch of jack-booted shit-lickers who treat people like machines? The only guarantee of their behavior was the fact that we controlled the master computers! Now they know more about how to run ’em than we do. You hand that kind of mind absolute power like this and all it takes is one hair over the sanity line and we’re living in hell!”
The director let her go, and paused for several seconds after she finished. Finally, he asked, “Are you through?”
“Not by a long shot, but go ahead.”
“All right. I’m not going to debate the honor and commitment of our counterparts in Operations right now. I’m not going to debate this whole military versus civilian thing, which has been ongoing since the start. We had to accept them because they were a condition of our being here. We did, and it’s worked out. Now you have to accept an accomplished fact. This is a report on what is, not what might be.”
He sighed and poured himself a drink of water. No one spoke, but Watanabe glared at him.
“Now, then,” he continued, “this is how it is. I’ve read all the reports and checked everything through with the master project computers. We have two ships ready and standing by now. The others will come through final assembly at the rate of one a month, I’m assured, and each can be flight-tested in a matter of another week after that. The engineering crew currently on site can handle and supervise the automated freighters with the Kagan 7800 set. The Anchors are well along now, and need only the 7800’s to interface with the 7240 maintenance computers already on site at the Gates. My reports show an equatorial temperature of 31.1 degrees Celsius, which is close enough, and an outer life zone low temperature of 6.91 degrees worst case. Gravity is less than two percent off what we have here on Titan. We’re maintaining a median Earth atmosphere that’s better than we have here and so close to dead on, it takes a computer to find the first number after the decimal point. We needed the extra time to test, measure, and experiment so we knew we had it right, but we no longer have that time. I say we go.”
Ibrihim Mohammed Haiudar scratched his ample nose and commented, “You realize that the second wave won’t be what we expected at all.” He was Director of Populations, which meant the nonscientist colonists, and those were exactly what he meant by the second wave.
Van Haas was startled. “What? What do you mean?”
“I mean, my friend, that, yes, we will get experts in farming, in animal husbandry, fertilizers, fields, forests, and deserts—but not as many. What we will get in place of many are the dissidents now languishing in prisons at home, the revolutionaries and the rioters and the conspirators. They will seize this opportunity back home to send us their worst troublemakers. Mass firing squads just fuel revolutions and create new leaders. Permanent exile, now, that’s a different thing.”
It really hadn’t occurred to the director, but, then, he came from a far different tradition and culture than did Ibrihim. He knew immediately, though, that the man was right, and he thought about it. Finally, he said, “What you say is true, old friend, but it doesn’t worry me. I’m from a nation whose first families are all descendants of convicts and whose largest city is named after their first warden. In fact, if we have enough of these—not professional revolutionaries, but leaders out of the masses born and raised in primitive settings—it’s all to the good, I think. We will redirect their energies and build with their passion, as many other civilizations did back home.”
Haiudar shrugged. “You may be right. I hope you are.” And, silently, he added to himself. And, if not, it’ll be easier to shoot them out there.
Schwartzman seemed the most uncertain. “Without any experience on the 7800, I can’t guarantee that everything will download properly from the 7240’s at the Gates. We’re also by no means close to a landscaping master plan that doesn’t cause as many problems as it solves.”
All eyes turned to the heretofore silent figure of Sir Kenneth Korda. The quiet, distinguished architect of Kenya’s salvation from the terrible incursions of drought and desert was head of Landscape Engineering. “Can’t you concentrate on a modular approach?” the director asked him. “After all, we have the basic Anchors sketched out. We’ll use them as our on-site experiments. Build and correct one block at a time.”
“The Anchors aren’t that simple,” he responded. “They are what we call them. Anchors. Templates, or patterns, for an entire region. When we work there, we have to build null energy barriers to keep the surrounding Flux from coming back in and to allow some sort of normal air flow and circulation. We’ll need them developed as quickly as possible, yet, if we make any serious errors there, and then have a substantial population in place, we’ll have no good way of correcting those errors. I am most uncomfortable with this speedup. It will require far too much expediency from my people.”
“They’ll do it,” van Haas said confidently. “You’ll find a way to have them do it. We will live with what we’ve got. Develop the nexus region at the outset, then develop the Anchors in sectors until we have a working ecosystem in each. Then we’ll worry about how they tie together.”
“I do not share your confidence,” said the Kenyan.
“I do not have your time,” responded the director. “Sadira, you’re the only one now who hasn’t said a word. Comment?”
The sari-clad Indian Chief of Administration sat as impassively as always through the deliberations, just making certain that everything was being recorded. Now she looked up at them. “I think I am hearing a lot of nervous babies,” she said at last, her tone very patronizing. “I think that there is only one question for voting here. Either we go, or we shut down. I would like to know which. Either way, all of us will have a lot of work to do in a very short time. I for one would rather go now than have to begin learning Russian or Chinese.”
There was more discussion, but it got them nowhere, and van Haas cut it off and decided to force a vote.
“I see four in the affirmative and two in the negative,” the director said ceremoniously. “There being no tie, I don’t need to vote, but I wish to be on record in the affirmative myself. That leaves only the question of the two nays. Suzy, I can ill afford to lose you, but it must be your decision. If your decision is to terminate, then I would appreciate a recommendation on a successor, preferably from your own team.”
She looked sullen. “Let me think about it today.”
He nodded. There wasn’t much else he could have expected right now. “And you, Ken? The same goes.”
“I will come,” the landscape engineer said without much expression. “Not because I believe we can succeed under these conditions, but out of sheer egotism. My department is the weakest, and I do not want it to fail because I did not go along.”
That pleased the rest of them.
“Fair enough,” the director noted. “Now, here’s the schedule we’ve more or less got to keep. I’ll have copies made up tonight and these can be distributed to your department heads by you personally in meetings tomorrow. They can then take it down to the staff.
“A field test of the first ship, using Gate Five, will commence at eleven hundred hours Friday—five days from now. If it succeeds, and if it returns and checks out, we will send in the initial 7800’s seven days after that to establish Engineering, followed fourteen days later by the initial ground Operational Group. It’ll be mostly military, but, Ken, I’d like you and a few of your best to go along—the five crew anyway. As much as practical, we’ll test out Gate One the same way, interleaving trips with Five, then repeat the procedure. Sadira, that’ll be your people, so we have a functioning headquarters of sorts. Then we’ll develop Two, Three, Four, Six, and Seven, in that order, depending on our initial results with One and Five and the availability of personnel, material, and equipment. I would like to be first, but I am forced by my position to be last.”
He paused, trying to get control of his emotions. Finally, he said, “It was seven years ago that the last of us came to this barren rock, and our anticipated ten-year stay has been shortened to seven. I don’t know what awaits us. It could be misery. It could be failure. It could be paradise. I suspect it’s something none of us have yet dreamed or will dream. But, by God! I am ready to have a go at it!”
There were few working in the Transport Research lab now; most of the best technicians were up the line at the big Borelli Point out beyond Pluto working on the real, not the theoretical. That made the lab section ideal for Marsha Johnson and Jimmy Okieda, who finally found someplace private enough in the wee hours to do a little fooling around.
It was nothing serious. She was no glamour girl, but not hard to look at, and he was of a station beneath her in the scientific hierarchy—a mere corporal in Logistics, barely out of his teens, too low to even be up at the Point. Such liaisons were common among base personnel, most of whom did not have families or long attachments, particularly on the junior levels.
They were quite well along on the office floor, with all but the emergency lights off, and so they didn’t see or hear her come in, nor was she aware of their presence.
Dr. Susan Watanabe was dressed and made up so differently that it was impossible to tell right off that it was indeed the division chief. She had found, or pulled out of old storage or something, a traditional kimono of fine silk, black in color, and she’d cut and shaped her hair and made up her face so that she looked almost like someone out of The Mikado. Tied to her waist was a small ornamental short sword in a fine-tooled scabbard, a keepsake and heirloom handed down to her as the last in her family. She had often showed it off to associates, and told them that it had been in her family for more than two hundred and fifty years.
She paused a moment in the darkness, more meditating than reflecting, then went silently over to the master computer controls. She did not need the lights; she knew this place better than she knew her own body.
She went to the Guard’s chair and sat in it. Unlike the Overrider, this position could be activated on its own, by just one person, since it could not access the files of nor receive the commands from the master computer beneath the laboratory. It was built to do only one thing, and that’s all she wanted it to do.
Deliberately, she lowered the helmet onto her head and adjusted the probes. The computer switched on its external interface, read her brain wave and identity patterns, and confirmed that she was authorized.
“Guard post on. Overrider position is vacant. No transaction,” it reported to her mind.
“Derangement in master computer determined by independent monitors after last run,” she told it. “Emergency deacti-vation procedures in effect, please.”
The Guard computer hesitated. While it was not an improper request, it was certainly an unprecedented one, and its own monitors not only had revealed nothing but told it that there was no imperative for speed. It was not that easy to do what she was attempting, even with all the proper clearances and codes. The Guard’s programming and its own thinking processes, while primitive by the standards of the Kagan 7240 it oversaw, were not only to prevent a big computer running amok but also to prevent sabotage.
“Command reasoning insufficient,” it told Watanabe. “No empirical evidence supports this command. Confirmation is required by higher authority. Shall 1 confirm?” It was being nice to her, giving her a chance to back out before it blew the whistle.
She was calm and undisturbed, and confident she had prepared well for this years ago. “Understood. Check with corporate center for authority of operator.”
It was accomplished in the speed of light, but the computer was still not really convinced. “Action requested?” it asked.
“Erasure of block memory in locations and under encryption to my authority only. No master files involved.”
“Understood. Give locations and password authority.”
Watanabe knew she was being strung along, and that it was only a matter of time before the Guard alerted Security. The easy way was not going to work. “Cancel request. Guard off.”
“Acknowledged.”‘ The computer seemed somewhat relieved.
Watanabe removed the helmet, then reached into her kimono and brought out several small cubes of some translucent material. She then went to work opening a panel in front of the Guard chair, tracing a network of cubes, pulled a certain one and replaced it with one of hers. There were several more positions in the main panel where this was done, and two in a subsidiary panel. Now she left the Guard position and went over to Overrider, then put on that helmet, which could not be activated nor in any way used without someone at Guard. It wasn’t supposed to be possible to circumvent this, but even if someone were bright enough to figure it out, two keys had to be turned within one second of each other at each position to make the interface work, and the positions were on opposite sides of the semi-circular room, at least ten meters apart. One key now sat in the off position at Guard; she now inserted the other at Overrider, and as she did so the Guard’s key turned as if by an invisible hand.
Instantly, she heard the sounds of many feet running toward the lab, and all the lights went on. An alarm also began to sound. She cursed softly to herself, but otherwise ignored it. She didn’t have time to dwell on what she’d triggered; she just pulled the Overrider helmet down on her head and discovered with satisfaction that there was in fact a computer link.