Lisa had delivered another meal to Eric and, more importantly, was watching to make certain he ate it. He’d been monitoring the main console for more than seventy-five hours without sleep. His eyelids did not flutter, and his hands were steady on the controls. As steady as the monotone in which he gave instructions.
“Ready … step through. Ready … step through.”
By now the Terminus resembled a well-oiled machine, and it functioned in comparable silence, each man and woman doing their job efficiently and without question.
Now and then he allowed himself a recreational thought.
They’re confused, he told himself. They can’t figure out exactly what we’re up to, and they’re afraid to attack because the Station will suffer. So suggestions are moving up and down the chain of command, and will continue to do so until someone garners a consensus for their favored course of action.
“Eric, tell me something.”
“Ready … anything I can, light of my life … step through.”
“Why do you love me? You’re obviously much more intelligent.”
“They really restricted your education to a few designated areas, didn’t they? Intelligence is a poor measure of humanity.”
She leaned over to kiss him without obstructing his vision. “When you say that I don’t feel so stupid.”
“You’re not stupid, Lisa. You’ve just been undereducated, and deliberately so. Ready … step through.”
“We’ve all been undereducated, compared to you,” Jeeter told him. “Not that I envy you your manner of education.” He glanced toward the team guarding the airlock, received a wave by way of reply.
“Still quiet, but they’re bound to try something again soon.”
“Another twenty hours and it won’t matter what they try,” Eric reminded him.
“That’s true.” He sounded wistful. “It’s going to feel funny being truly independent of Earth. We’ll be the first group of humans in history to break the bonds for real. We’ll be freer than any settlers have ever been. I wonder what Paradise is really like?”
“We’ll all know soon enough. I expect Paradise to be like paradise. For everyone’s sake. If not, I expect to face a lynch mob twenty-five-thousand strong.”
Jeeter looked around the busy, quiet room and made shushing motions with his hands. “Don’t talk like that. You’ve got everyone convinced that you know what you’re talking about. This isn’t the time to sow uncertainty.”
“The universe is a maelstrom of uncertainty, Jeeter. I’m ninety-five percent sure of the references I drew upon from the Syrax catalog. I considered the five percent deviation acceptable when I made this proposal.”
“Five percent,” Jeeter murmured. “How come you never mentioned that before?”
“Because it would have sowed uncertainty,” Eric reminded him without a glimmer of a smile.
Jeeter shook his head slowly. “It’s a good thing the Syrax didn’t program you for a career in show business.”
“I believe those aspects of human existence are a mystery to them. I never was the life of the party.”
“You’re sure making up for lost time. You are the party now, Eric.” He let his gaze wander back to the undisturbed airlock. “I wonder what they’ll try first?”
Dr. Dhurapati Ponnani was pondering the same question as she stood watching Commander Rasmusson give orders in City Security Central. As it developed, they had less time to reach a decision than they knew.
The young officer who approached Rasmusson was out of breath from running. He saluted quickly and interposed himself between the commander and his subofficers. Ponnani moved closer.
“Whal the devil’s wrong with you, mister?” Rasmusson growled. “I didn’t ask you to join this discussion.”
“Sorry, sir,” the young officer said apologetically, panting hard. “I’ll accept any reprimand, but I considered it vital to deliver this message personally.”
“What message? Why didn’t you call it through?”
“Sir, recalling your general directive about maintaining media silence concerning the difficulty at hand, I—”
“Never mind. Say what you came to say.”
“I’ve just come up from Traffic, sir. There’s a very large ship approaching the city. It's half a luna out and coming in damn fast. It’s Syrax, sir.”
Rasmusson looked grim. “Then this is all a part of their plan.” He looked to his left. “Ovimbi, tell communications to try to raise the Syrax, and fast.” Then he turned to the watching Ponnani. “I’m sorry, Doctor, but this takes things out of my hands. I have my orders. We may have to blow the Station.”
She sighed. “I am expecting suggestions from Colligatarch Authority any time now as to how to proceed with Eric Abbott.”
“Tell it to the Syrax. I’ll delay as long as I can and no longer.”
“I understand. I disagree, and I’ll lodge a formal protest, but I understand.”
“That’s all I expect you to do.” There was a frantic wave from Ovimbi, the communications officer, and Rasmusson stalked over to a wide, curving console. Speakers crackled as communication was established.
The voice that filled the room was gentle but metallic and stilted. The Syrax made use of mechanical translating devices whenever they felt it necessary to speak to human beings. The surprise was that video was provided, and the large opto screen above communications immediately became the focus of attention throughout Security Central.
As always, the sight of the Syrax was disconcerting, though less so on opto than in person. Beyond it, shapes could be seen drifting through thick fog. The Syrax who spoke stood before the alien pickup. No one had ever known a Syrax to sit.
“You are the commander of the orbiting station.”
“I am in charge of its security, yes.” Rasmusson beckoned Ponnani forward until she was standing alongside him. “This is Dr. Ponnani, who is in charge of the scientific complement here.”
“Good life to you also, Doctor.”
“Thank you.” Ponnani eyed the limber, cartilaginous shape with fascination.
“In your language I am called Limpid.” That was all. No surname, no title. “We believe that Eric Abbott has discovered the secret of reversing the polarity of the GATE field, and in concert with an undetermined number of human beings has taken control of it.” Rasmusson did not comment.
“We have sources of information,” the Syrax added.
“Traitors,” the commander muttered darkly, unaware that he’d said it loud enough for the pickup to detect.
“Traitors. You would be interested perhaps to know that the term sounds somewhat similar in our language. That is of no moment now. Eric Abbott is utilizing the GATE for transpositional purposes, yet you have not moved to prevent him.”
“We can’t,” said Ponnani. Rasmusson made as if to quiet her but she shook him off. “I’m within my authority in speaking to matters involving the GATE, Commander. Besides, I see little harm in confirming what they already know.” She looked back to the screen. “You know what rebuilding the GATE would entail.”
“You suggest its destruction. Why would you consider such a thing?”
“To prevent you from obtaining that which you set Eric Abbott to do: steal the secret of GATE technology and operation.”
“Eric Abbott was a failure. A complex, interesting, but overengineered failure.”
Ponnani noted that the Syrax did not bother to try to deny the purpose behind Abbott’s construction. “Why contact us now?” she inquired.
“We disliked failure. To learn why we failed we need to study our failure.”
“Why? So you can build a better thief next time?” Rasmusson snapped at the alien.
“Not sensible. Having been made aware of this method, you would naturally guard carefully against its reuse in the future. I repeat: we dislike failure. An independent tool is a contradiction in terms. There will be no more Eric Abbotts.”
“You say we’d be on guard against it. How do we know you couldn’t build a person who could outwit our safeguards?”
“Because we will help you to design the necessary methods of detection. Methods which your own scientists can confirm.”
“That’s unusually generous of you,” said Ponnani. “Why should you help us guard against your own inventions?”
“Because we want Eric Abbott back. For the time being we are more interested in learning how and why he failed than we are in learning the secrets of the GATE. We feel this is necessary for our own security. You perceive Eric Abbott as a threat to your race. How odd we should feel the same.”
Rasmusson looked dumbfounded. “How can he be a danger to you? You made him.”
“Eric Abbott is human, Commander. As human as we could make him. But he is also full of Syrax ability and information. This melding is unique and unstable. Not a comforting combination.
“I would not reveal this to you except that you should eventually discover it for yourselves, and time is important now to all of us.”
“We know why it’s important to us,” murmured Ponnani. “Why is it important to you?”
“You ask too much. You must be satisfied with the knowledge that he is a danger to Syrax and human alike.”
“What do you have in mind?” Rasmusson asked cautiously.
“We will provide you with the necessary safeguards for your security if you will permit a single one of us to board GATE Station. We have the means for regaining control of Eric Abbott. Once our representative is aboard, you may raise your antiteleportaic screen again. This will enable you to ensure that we do not spirit Abbott and his knowledge away.
“Subsequently, use can be made by all of us of Abbott. You will have possession of him and can prevent us from obtaining any information by wiring him for instant destruction if you feel we are attempting to deceive you. You detected our carrier wave before and can easily do so again. We can study him together.
“Abbott will not be expecting one of us and our operative can appear quite close to him without warning. His friends are guarding against an attack by spacesuited humans.”
“How can you regain control of him?”
“There is a backup control unit implanted in his abdomen. It is very small and must be activated at close range. If this can be accomplished, he will be deactivated.”
“You intend to kill him?”
“No,” said the Syrax. “He will enter-a semicomatose state, at which point he will pose no danger to anyone.”
“What about his friends?”
“Our representative will not be able, once your screen is back in place, to teleport back to our vessel, but will be able to shift self to a place of safety elsewhere within your city. This accomplished, you should meet little resistance in your attempt to regain GATE Station. Cut off the head and the body surrenders quickly.”
“What,” said Rasmusson slowly, “if we agree, and everything goes as planned, except that we refuse to countenance joint study?”
“That would countermand the bargain we strike.”
“Gee, that’d be too bad.”
“Would you go to war to protect the secret of the GATE?”
Some of the commander’s schoolboy sarcasm evaporated. “I understand.”
“It is well that you do.”
“All right. Now we all know what Abbott's worth.”
“You are giving us an opportunity to learn a great deal about the methodology of Syrax bioengineering,” Ponnani said.
“The concession of our part,” whispered the alien.
“I don’t know,” Rasmusson was muttering. “You’re asking us to let a fox in the chicken coop with only the fox’s word as security.”
“The metaphor is clear,” said the Syrax without humor.
“I will contact the necessary authorities,” Ponnani said abruptly, “and pass on your proposal."
“You refer to your mechanical administration?”
“The Colligatarch, yes, and its human operators. It would be encouraging if we could cooperate on something like this.”
“You may construe it as a first step in closer relations, if it will expedite matters.”
“I’m sure it will. We have measured the Syrax teleport range. Stay outside it and we will contact you again as soon as a decision is reached.”
The Syrax executed a strange, fluid motion with its head and arms. Then the opto went black.
“I don’t like it,” Rasmusson said immediately. “Letting a Syrax into GATE Station poses all sorts of dangers.”
“I’m aware of that, but the fact remains that it may be our one chance to regain control of it before Abbott and his people do something unimaginable. I think they’re as scared of him as we are.”
“Nonsense! He’s taken control of his trap, but he’s still trapped.”
“We don’t know that. We don’t know much of anything about Eric Abbott and only a little of what he’s capable of. I don’t like giving the unknown too much time. Fortunately, I don’t have to make the final decision. That’s up to the Colligatarch and the Council Authority.”
“But we can make our recommendations. What are you going to recommend, Dr. Ponnani?”
“I’m not going to recommend a damn thing.”
“You’ll be branded as indecisive.”
She smiled at him as she moved closer to the communications console. “Fortunately, Commander, that is not as much of a vice in my profession as it is in yours.”
They were almost through, in every sense of the word. At the main control console Eric sat steel-steady. He’d gone four days without -sleep, but there was no hint of drowsiness in his gaze and his fingers moved methodically over the instrumentation.
Everyone wishing to transpose to Paradise had done so except for the technical and security personnel, and they were in the process of being shifted. In the interim, Eric was bringing through more than a hundred of the disgruntled who wished neither Eden nor Paradise but to return to Earth. When they were freed to tell their stories of deception to the media, optos would burn out all over the globe. The government would try to silence them, but it’s difficult to silence a hundred angry men, women, and children. Reestablishing only one-way communication with the colonies was going to be a near impossible task for the authorities.
Lisa walked over to stand next to him. She was chewing rations transposed from Eden.
“Hungry, husband?” Madras had made it formal. Kindly old Madras who’d declared Eden her home and had proven unable to resist the challenge posed by a new world. She gave up her Council post gladly. She suffered from chronic bronchitis, and the promise of a warm world eventually proved too much for her. So while waiting for her turn to step through to Paradise, she’d performed the ceremony, beaming at the happy couple from in front of Eric’s station, pronouncing them man and wife in the light of three worlds.
“Not hungry, thanks.”
“You look tired.”
“I suppose I should be, but that’s not it. Something else nagging at me. Going on for almost a whole day now. Digs at me and won’t go away. Ready … step through.”
“You’re sure you’re not sick?” she asked him, concerned.
“I’ve never been sick a day in my life. I always thought I was lucky.” He laughed hollowly. “No luck to it. Just good engineering.” He shrugged. “We’re almost finished anyway.”
“I wish you could be less pessimistic."
“I think I was built pessimistic. Persistent and pessimistic.”
Around them the open spaces between the consoles were filled with the hundred who intended to return to Earth. Children played and bawled, and a thousand conversations made it difficult for the technical crew to continue their work. It was impossible to reach a port, since returnees crowded close to gaze out at the world they’d left behind and would soon be returning to. Eric envied them their affection if not its object. For him, home was a place not yet seen.
Abruptly he rose from his seat, blinked at the GATE. “Lisa!” She turned at the sharpness in his voice. Jeeter also looked up in puzzlement, as did several other techs working near him.
Eric turned a slow circle, staring off into the distance. Returning couples milled noisily around his position, unaware that anything out of the ordinary was going on.
When he moved toward the GATE, leaving the main console activated and locked, Jeeter rose to shout at him.
“We’re not through bringing the last ones over from Eden.”
“No time!” Eric shouted at him. “Everyone for transposition, get in line, now!” The technical and security teams rushed to comply, wondering at the sudden shift in routine. Five-by-five, Eric gave orders for them to step through while Jeeter manned the main console.
At last only the three of them were left, together, with a makeshift tech crew composed of people returning to Earth. That too was part of the plan, though this last-minute change in sequence was not. They watched anxiously, wondering but unwilling to argue with the man who’d succeeded in returning them to GATE Station.
Jeeter moved toward the GATE. “Let’s go, Eric, Lisa. Why the sudden rush, anyway?”
“Just a feeling,” said Eric, making one last check of the controls and imparting final instructions to the young engineer who would take command in his absence. “I’ve had funny feelings before and I’ve always come out better for acting on them.” He smiled then and took Lisa’s hand.
“It will vanish along with ourselves, wife.” He started to lead her toward the GATE.
Behind him the young engineer’s wife moved to stand next to her husband. “Good-bye, Mr. Abbott, Lisa. And thank you.”
She had tears in her eyes, though they were not shed on behalf of Eric’s departure. She was going back to the home she’d considered lost forever.
And he? Where was he going? To oblivion or to Paradise? Well, Paradise would be nice but not necessary. He would settle for a home.
Something stood between him and the main control console. There was no expression on the pale, ghostly face as it stared directly at Eric. Something exceptional passed between human and alien in that instant. Something that was more than a communication between manufacturer and manufactured. It was a cry for help, an angry order, a wash of curiosity, an appeal to a part of Eric that he hadn’t suspected existed, all homogenized and blended together in a single powerful mental rush.
The Syrax had materialized three meters out of position. It took a giant step toward Eric on ropy, flexible legs. A few of the decolonials screamed.
A long-fingered hand stabbed toward Eric’s back. The Syrax had planned to appear directly behind Eric. At the critical moment Eric and Lisa had stepped toward the GATE. Wordlessly the alien tried to recover.
It was not fast enough, not quick enough. His face as blank as that of his erstwhile master, Eric pulled Lisa tight to him and jumped in concert with Jeeter through the Gate, at once ignoring appeals, orders, queries, and everything else the Syrax had thrown at him in that single vast mind-filling stream of consciousness.
Gone. Quite gone.
The alien paused before the humming GATE, centimeters short of its target. Its long, boneless fingers drew back. It could not reach across the lens of the galaxy. It might follow and control, but a glance showed that the necessary sequence no longer flashed on the control console, and the operation of the GATE was foreign to its complex mind. Nor was it immune to human weapons, and surely the construct Eric Abbott had those aplenty wherever he now stood.
Behind the control console the young engineer stared in fascination at the alien, his wife's fingers digging unnoticed into his shoulder. He touched a button as he’d been instructed to do. A few wisps of smoke rose from the console and that cracked the calm. As he hurriedly moved away, the smoke dissipated. But something inside the console had melted. He could not have said what it was. Among them all, only Eric Abbott could have explained, and Eric Abbott had been transposed.
The steady hum of the GATE softened. Around the room gauges slipped and readouts shrank. The GATE was not destroyed, nor had it been powered down, but it would not be working for at least a few days. A few key circuits had been blown, and one bit of coordinating information obliterated.
How much of this the Syrax knew, how much it guessed, none of them could say, but there were those who swore the alien exhaled deeply before it vanished as silently and unexpectedly as it had arrived.
Conversation in the room resumed. Whatever had happened there before the GATE was now past, and they remembered their new futures. The young engineer who’d been left in command moved toward the airlock. Word was given to unseal. Weapons were put aside.
“Hello,” he said to the startled officer on the other side of the opening. Soldiers tried to see past the engineer, into the Terminus. “We’re ready to give ourselves up.”
The spearhead of the security assault team rushed into the Terminus, followed by a small army of engineers and technicians wearing anxious expressions. GATE instruments were examined hurriedly. Everything was found to be in order and untampered with save for a small portion of the GATE master’s console and data bank.
Very soon after, the high brass arrived, led by Karl Rasmusson and the sari-clad Dhurapati Ponnani. She headed straight for the GATE master’s station and the little knot of engineers and scientists examining its interior.
“They did a lot of complex reprogramming,” one of them informed her, “but we can’t say for sure what it consisted of because the memory’s been cremated.”
“I can tell you.” All eyes turned to the plump blonde woman standing close by. “My name’s Greta Kinsolving. I was a programmer on Eden. I was told to explain certain things, but only to a direct representative of Colligatarch Authority.”
Ponnani straightened. “You can talk to me, then.”
“You must be Dr. Ponnani, the one we heard over the intercom.” Ponnani nodded curtly. “It was all part of the plan, Doctor.”
“What plan, young woman? Eric Abbott’s plan?”
Kinsolving shook her head. “The plan all of us decided on.” She gestured back toward the GATE. “Many went through, you see. He found another world for those who still dreamed. I’m not a dreamer. I wanted to come back.” There were whispered rumblings from those decolonials still in the chamber, and Ponnani sensed a hostility WOSA’s publicists were going to be hard pressed to try to contain.
That was not her major concern of the moment, however.
“I don’t follow you, young woman. Are you saying Abbott sent some of the people from Eden over to Garden?”
“No. I said he found another world for them. Not Garden. They called it Paradise.”
“That’s insane,” she announced firmly. The other scientists, though, were listening raptly to the story.
“Abbott said otherwise. He told us it was part of the knowledge the Syrax had stored inside his head. He chose it from their catalog of surveyed worlds.”
“My God,” muttered the man next to Ponnani, “he had access to that kind of information?”
“That’s what he told us.”
Ponnani was tight-lipped. “Gone, if true. All gone. No wonder the Syrax was so desperate to regain control of him. They must have been terrified that we’d succeed without them.”
“He was tired of all of it,” Kinsolving told them. “He was tired of you, and tired of the Syrax. I think he just wanted someplace quiet where he could live with his wife.”
“Wife?” Oh yes, she reminded herself, the artison Lure Tambor series four.
“All we need are the coordinates,” said one of the scientists working on the damaged console. His eyes were alive with excitement. “We can reprogram the GATE, send representatives through to make peace with this Abbott. We can have two-way communication, contact with a third new colony!”
Kinsolving smiled sadly at him. “He doesn't want to have contact with Earth. Neither do the people who went with him. All they want is to be left alone, to have a chance at the life they were promised. The rest of us wished them all luck. A lot of my friends went. I have three brothers and a sister in Oslo who I want to see. That’s why I didn’t go with them.
“Only Mr. Abbott knew the coordinates, and he programmed the GATE himself. Maybe a few others, like Jeeter Sa-Nos-Tee, knew it also, but they’ve all gone now. Nobody you can reach knows where Paradise is or how to sight in on its sun.”
“You could be one of the richest women on Earth,” one of the scientists began, “if you could tell us—”
“I can’t,” she interrupted him. “No one can. And I don’t want to be one of the richest women on Earth.” There were tears in her eyes. “All I want is to see my family again, and I’m going to!” With dignity she added, “Mr. Abbott said you all wanted more than we did.”
Ponnani watched as the woman moved toward the open airlock and disappeared into the Departure Lounge. She offered a few suggestions to the crew working on the control console until her eye was caught by a man standing just out of field range of the GATE.
She walked up behind him, studied his profile. “I think I’ve seen you via opto report. You’re Kemal Tarragon, aren’t you? With WOSA security?”
He turned to face her. “Yes, that’s me, Dr. Ponnani.”
“Just arrived?”
“On the last shuttle, yes.”
“I understand that you had more contact with this Eric Abbott than anyone else during the last several weeks.”
Tarragon nodded, smiled sardonically. “We weren’t close.”
“That’s hardly surprising. What did you think of him?”
“I thought he was a bad man, Dr. Ponnani. I thought he was a dangerous man.”
“He was, but not in the way you think. He was dangerous because he had too much knowledge. I think that may be one reason he’s chosen this extraordinary avenue of escape, so that he won’t be a danger to himself or anyone else.”
Tarragon glanced again at the dusky emptiness that was the GATE. “You can’t trace them?”
“It appears not. These people”—she gestured at the remaining decolonials—“know nothing. I doubt anyone on Eden knows more. The only possible way to trace him would be to strike a bargain with the Syrax. The politicians will not let that happen for some time, I suspect. Perhaps after I am dead. A pity.”
“You know,” Tarragon murmured thoughtfully, “I never really got to talk to him. I was so busy trying to find out what he was up to and then track him down that I didn’t talk to him. I regret that now. He was an interesting man, if man is a proper description.” He blinked, looked back at her.
“Where did they go, anyway?”
“To a world named Paradise, according to a representative of Abbott’s who remained here. Whether the name is descriptive or merely hopeful we’ve no way of knowing.”
“I see. Well, my department should be pleased. The secret of the GATE is still safe from the Syrax, and that was their primary concern. There will be a problem with these returned colonials … I’ve heard their complaints and I can’t say that I blame them … but that’s a problem for WOSA’s hired apologists, not me. I think I'll keep my job, and that was my primary concern. May I ask you something, Dr. Ponnani?”
“What's that, Mr. Tarragon?”
“Call me Kemal. I’ve had a lonely time this past month and I'm sick of dealing with nothing but business. This is my first visit to GATE Station. Would you do me the honor of dining with me tonight?” His meeting with the Colligatarch itself had killed much of the awe he'd felt for those who worked with the machine.
“I am also tired. Han … yes, I accept your invitation.”
He looked very pleased as he moved to talk with Rasmusson.
An interesting man, she thought, but anyone who’d had so much contact with Eric Abbott was bound to be interesting. Dinner conversation should prove equally interesting.
She returned her attention to the silent black nothingness that was the GATE. Dust motes danced in and out of the enigma.
Where have you gone, Eric Abbott? What hopes and fears and private terrors did you take with you? Those of mankind, of your creators, of your unique inner self we are never to know? It seems I am never to meet you in person. What were you? Man, android, artison, sculpture of the Syrax; where in that pantheon of intelligence and flesh lay the line that divided? And what was the difference?
She would have to settle for what information the returned colonists could provide, try to piece together the illusion of a man from the memories of casual acquaintances. Lure Tambor series four could tell her more, but she was likewise gone with the galactic wind. Ponnani’s lips crinkled into the semblance of a smile.
Tambor series four, thought Dr. Emeritus Dhurapati Ponnani, why do I stand here envying you?
The reports were filed—by Tarragon, by Ponnani and Rasmusson, by the scientists and engineers and technicians and those of the disgruntled colonists who could be persuaded or bribed to do so. Every word was dissected, studied, digitalized, and entered into the Colligatarch. In less terse terminology, the information thus gleaned was also passed on to Martin Oristano.
“So what do we do about it?” the Chief of Programming and Operations asked the machine many months later. “We can’t trace Eric Abbott and his friends to their new home unless we cooperate with the Syrax.”
“The time for that is not now,” the machine intoned.
“I agree. We stand to lose too much. More immediately, what are we going to do now that the decolonials have made the secret of two-way GATE travel public?”
“It would have come out sooner or later. We will offer rationalizations for our secrecy that the general public will accept. There may even be a brief upsurge in the desire to emigrate. I believe enough will want to go to cancel out those who desire to return, now that Eden and Garden are well established. The storm will pass.”
Oristano nodded, rose to depart. He hesitated halfway out of his chair. “May I formally declare the emergency ended, then?”
“Do I detect a touch of sarcasm in your tone, Martin? That is not like you. But I sympathize with your frustration. These past weeks have been difficult.”
“Difficult!” Oristano could only shake his head wonderingly. As always, the machine was a master of understatement.
“Yes, the threat has vanished. And if we are to speak of difficulty and frustration, consider the frustration of our friends the Syrax. Now that we are aware of the nature of their biological constructs, we can take steps to guard the GATE against a reoccurrence, regardless of their insistence that they have built their first and last ‘Eric Abbott.’ ”
“I’ll leave the details to you,” said Oristano. “All I want is to get back to the business of running this planet.”
“Yes, Martin. It will be good to get back to business as usual.”
“Speaking of which, you'll have to excuse me. I have—”
“I know. A conference on Level Six. It’s those South Americans wanting to move the Humboldt Current again, isn’t it?”
Oristano nodded tiredly. “I can handle it. But it’s hard for me to keep a straight face when we’re discussing the future of several million tons of anchovies. I hate anchovies.”
“I know that you will placate all parties concerned, Martin.”
Oristano smiled and exited the office. Behind the walls of reinforced concrete and hewn granite and steel beams the Colligatarch pondered the recent series of events all along the miles of chips and circuits that were itself.
Everything had worked out nicely. Better than Martin Oristano knew. Oh, not the frustration of the Syrax and their attempt to steal the secret of the GATE, though that achievement was gratifying enough. But much more than that had been at stake.
Mankind was so much the difficult child, the Colligatarch mused, though it perceived the analogy in purely mathematical terms. Sometimes you had to fool a child in order to make it swallow necessary medicine.
The human race continued to progress, but the last hundred years of that progress had been unsteady, shaky, and halting, compounded by problems ranging from overpopulation to a measurable decline in aspirations. The racial mind was stagnating, an inevitable consequence of worldwide peace. Mankind had traded his aggressiveness for security, as presided over by Colligatarch Authority.
That was a prime reason for the establishment of independent colonies. But once the secret of two-way GATE travel became known, as it had now, it spelled an end to the colonies’ independence from Earth, and from the stultifying peace and prosperity engulfing its inhabitants.
Fortunately, the secret had been kept until both colonies were well established. Otherwise, given the choice between the realities of Eden and Garden and the snug womb of Earth, not enough of the right people would have chosen to emigrate. The problem now was to establish anew a freshly independent colony, free of Earth’s influence. The Colligatarch had worked on that problem for over a hundred years without generating a solution. Any new colony would want communication with Earth. Unless, of course, it by some miracle wished complete estrangement from the mother world.
How kind of the Syrax to unwittingly provide a means by which that might be achieved. How good of them to supply the missing key to the solution in the person of Eric Abbott.
Oh, yes, much more than the secret of GATE physics had been at stake! Worlds and futures had hung on Abbott’s personality. When the time to decide arrived, would he choose Syrax, humanity, or himself and his friends? A great gamble. The Syrax had also gambled, and lost. Only they didn’t know it yet.
Truly his alien bioengineers had built him too well. Eric Abbott had been human enough to fool everyone he’d come in contact with. Now the galaxy enjoyed a good laugh because he’d fooled his creators as well.
Colligatarch had calculated that an independent colony established under Abbott’s leadership boasted a ninety-six percent chance of success. Far less predictable but much more exciting were the possibilities raised by further extrapolation of such a colony’s future. Because the tests run on Abbott during his brief stay in a London prison hospital indicated he was completely human in all the basics. He’d been fashioned to be that way.
What made the extrapolation so interesting was the fact that Lure Tambor series four was also human in all the basics. It was an important part of her makeup. So were contraceptives. But no longer.
What might happen now that Eric Abbott and Lisa Tambor were free to be as human as they wished?
No, it was the Colligatarch which had done the thieving this time, not the Syrax. Let them steal the secrets of the GATE someday. They were too inventive not to succeed eventually. Until that day, mankind had to fight a holding action. Let them subsequently extend their benign dominance over Earth and its inhabitants. Yes, let them even make use of the Colligatarch to serve their own purposes. The thought did not trouble the machine. It was concerned not for its own future but for that of the people it had been built to serve.
The offspring of Eric Abbott and Lisa Tambor would not be machines. They would be human, and artison, and a little bit Syrax, able to meet and compete with the Syrax on their own lofty terms where normal humans and machine would not. They might achieve that level in the near future or the far. It didn’t matter. Because they were safe to develop on distant Paradise together with their 25,000 highly intelligent fellow humans. They were the pick of humanity, those adventurous 25,000, and they had such a leader as history could not have predicted.
A machine is not supposed to have emotions, but the Colligatarch had been programmed to deal with human beings, and as such it had been fully equipped to empathize with them. But only a machine could have risked the gamble. Certainly Martin Oristano would not have chanced it, nor would Dhurapati Ponnani or Froelich or Novotski or any of the others. They were heirs to the fears and hesitations of their forefathers.
The Colligatarch had no forefathers. It had measured the probabilities and gambled on Eric Abbott, and he’d borne out all the hopes embodied in the predictions even as he’d railed against the evils of the machine to his fellow colonials. And that too was part of the plan. Now the descendants of Paradise’s first settlers would mature and develop their abilities free of the ennervating cocoon a comforting computer network could build for them. They would be their own machines, their own Colligatarch.
By forcing them to reject me, I make them independent, the machine thought with satisfaction. It was immensely gratifying to think that out there, someday, its makers would at last stand as its equals instead of its servants.
The Colligatarch turned its vast self to other, more mundane matters. It could be patient. It intended to be patient. Just as it intended to be around several thousand years hence to greet the first of Lisa Tambor and Eric Abbott’s many-times-over great-grandchildren when they teleported all the way from Paradise into its presence without the aid of a GATE.