RAY HAD DEFENDED a lot of base camps in his years of soldiering. Never had he planned a defense around an array of options like today’s, he reflected as he drove over to the church. He got there just as the little priest was coming down the aisle, greeting each parishioner with a smile. He gave Ray a wide-open hug. “You’re up early, man.”
“No earlier than you.”
“I’m just doing the Lord’s work.”
“I hope I am, too.” Villagers filed by, young and old, men and women. Many acknowledged Ray as well as the priest. “Thank you for the work you’re offering,” was the general thrust of most. “We need your work,” was Ray’s honest answer.
“Saves our young men from having to go to the cities to find work that pays in coin,” the priest reminded Ray.
“But not to pay for the land,” Ray pointed out. To the priest’s raised eyebrows, he explained the night’s discoveries. The priest stared straight ahead for a long while.
“There’s been hot blood between the city folk and the farmers almost since we first started to spread out. Cities have their needs. We farmers have ours. New Haven may talk about being for the Green, but these people grow it.” The priest eyed the fields, dotted with people working.
“But if you don’t grow it, city folks don’t eat,” Ray said.
“And if they don’t make the utensils and glass and needles and fine goods, ours is a pretty plain existence. We need each other. So long as we remember that, all is well. But that’s not always easy, not when Refuge needs expanded sewers or mass transit and we need a river dammed for electricity or to make room for bigger grain and potato barges.”
“Every, society is a work in progress, trying to balance those tensions.”
“Well, if I remember right, or the story that was told to me is true, the Sterlings tried to avoid the problem by claiming all the land around Richland. Farmers who settled there worked as tenants, no better than the workers in their mines and factories. About a hundred years ago there were riots about absentee landlords. Really, just Sterlings as landlords.”
“Why didn’t farmers just go around Sterling land?”
“Why doesn’t anybody just walk away from a problem? If a farmer’s too far from a city, his horse eats more hauling produce to market than he earns. Now we have river barges on the James and railroads out here. Not then.”
“How did they solve it?”
“Now that, I don’t remember. Didn’t you say you’d copied much of Refuge’s archives?”
“Yes. Kat can help you dig through them.”
“A delightful young woman. This will be a pleasant day.”
Ray had his doubts about that. He dropped the padre at the hospital/research center with. Kat. Mary caught him in front of the HQ. “Boss, young Jeff’s gone AWOL.” Mary handed him a note. He read it through.
“Any luck looking for our vanishing box?”
“Nada, zero, and zip.”
“Think these people can find it?”
“Two girls, followed by two guys. Who knows? Crazier things have happened, and this planet is the craziest I’ve ever visited. Asteroids. Now, there’s the place for a woman. Not too much land. Not too many people. Small enough to be comfortable, big enough to have what you need. What are we doing here, sir?”
“Seemed like a great opportunity when we saw it,” he reminded her. “Didn’t have all that many other options.”
“I’m starting to think we didn’t spend nearly enough time trying to breathe vacuum. It can’t be all that hard.”
“Anything else, Mary?”
“Nope; I’m off for Kat and the padre. See what we can come up with. You?”
“Need some time to think.” Two chairs and a table stood in the space between hospital and HQ; Ray headed for them. The problem with wrestling alligators was you tended to forget you were there to drain the swamp. He’d had so many big-teethed critters chomping at his ass for the past week, he needed to take a minute to remember why he was here. “Create a base camp Matt could use to repair Second Chance if he has to, and prepare these folks to meet the rest of humanity,” he repeated twice.
How long since he last thought of Rita and the baby? Get too busy with the small stuff and you forget what’s important. “Of course, when the small stuff is trying to kill you, it does tend to hold your attention,” he muttered.
Okay, keeping his two goals in mind, just how should he handle Miss Vicky? He sure couldn’t move the base. How much force would he meet her with? Ray leaned back in his chair, relaxed, and let his mind spin.
“I’m so glad you came back. I was starting to fear I didn’t have as good a hold on you as I thought.”
Ray sat bolt upright. Across from him, lounging in an overstuffed chair, was the Teacher. No, not the Teacher. The ratty gown was gone. Instead, this image wore a conservative blue blazer over khaki slacks. A pink shirt was open at the neck. Ray glanced around: The base was still there; people moved about. Was he awake or asleep?
“In this semidream state,” the apparition went on, “you humans call meditation, you’re not that easy to latch on to. I’m rather proud of myself.”
Ray leaned back. He wasn’t in the wicker chair anymore, but a copy of the one across from him. The chair accepted him, began a deep muscle massage on his back. Rita had tried to buy two chairs like this for his office; he’d refused the purchase order. For now, he enjoyed the illusion. “And you are,” he offered to what was apparently seated across from him.
“Call me the Dean of the Sociology Department.”
“Not the Teacher.”
“Bad term for him. He’s more like the President of the University, although I’m not sure even that fits. Truth be told, I’m not sure how a lot of us fit in anymore.”
“So there are many of you, not just one.” Ray started to mark a notch for himself in some mental pistol grip.
“Seems so. Not the way it was. Frankly, we’re all trying to figure out what happened and why and who we are.”
“Sometimes it’s easier to understand something when you talk it through,” Ray said, trying not to choke on the image of him providing psychotherapy to an illusion.
“I agree, I don’t know how many times I’ve told one of the Three that they should do just that.” The image paused. “I just never thought I’d be taking my own advice.” How many times had Ray heard that one before? To the illusion, he said nothing. After all, that was how you got someone talking. Say nothing. Ray had gotten real good at that as a bureaucrat.
“You see, I am the crowning achievement of three intelligent races, the final product of half a million years of cooperation and growth. They constructed us to educate their young, to give them a balanced, consistent introduction to themselves, each other, their histories, and their universe. We were the ultimate educational experience.”
And Ray saw what the Dean meant.
A large room held only six people, seated at different tables, something like a restaurant. That was what the Teacher saw. Then the picture changed and he saw what each of the six students was experiencing. One sat at a formal dinner table, surrounded by his brothers and sisters. At the head of the table, his long-dead father presided. Today, the student would confront him as he never had in life. Today, issues that had twisted his mind and emotions would be resolved.
At another table, a young woman dined alone. Tasting splendid isolation with her meal, she discovered, as the Teacher whispered in her mind, that moments like these were good for centering oneself, discovering who you were. Alone time could be relished. Around the room, six different people were individually tutored on six different issues and grew personally.
“Nice class size,” Ray said.
“Exactly,” the Dean agreed, leaning forward in his seat. “Unique syllabus, tailored environment, everything you could ask for, courtesy of that little lump in your skull. If every human had just grown one, we’d be working as gently and as easily in their heads as I am in yours. Oh, to teach again. To once more see eyes light up with discovery, pain changed to understanding, ignorance replaced with knowledge, fumbling humiliation gone and skill in its place. We can do that for you.”
“You did it for what,” Ray asked, “a million years?”
“Yes, a million orbits of this planet’s sun.”
“For the Three.”
“Yes,” the Dean agreed, retreating into his chair.
“Why? Why did they go away? What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Ray snapped in his best colonel’s voice.
“Fewer and fewer came. Then suddenly there were none.” The Dean shook his head.
“Your Teacher claims to know everything, to teach anything, but you don’t know why three intelligent races quit coming here. Disappeared from the galaxy!”
The Dean’s apparition flinched into his chair. “I have no idea what happened.”
“That’s a big hole in everything.”
“Don’t tell the Teacher that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you have made serious enemies among us. There are some who would wipe out your kind before you carry through with your threat to destroy the planet.”
“Could they?”
“You felt the pain.”
“Yes,” Ray nodded, “but I’ve got this unusually large goose egg in my head.”
“Yes. And what do you know of that egg, as you call it?”
“I know it wasn’t there before I came here, that it is what lets us talk, and it stores memories of things I’ve never seen.”
“You’ve done very well. I think our Biology Department might give you a passing grade. Now tell me where your unseen and unlearned knowledge came from. How did it get in your head?”
“I don’t know.”
“We put it there. We imprinted your cells with data the way you might print data onto a disk.”
“How?”
“The Three could send ships hurtling thousands of light-years in seconds. Do you doubt we can rearrange the molecules of that goose egg our virus put in your head? Or that if we decided to scramble the molecules of your brain, lungs, heart, immune system, you won’t die very quickly?”
“Now that we’ve exchanged threats,” Ray said evenly, as years of combat had trained him to, “where do we go from here?”
The apparition chuckled. “You are a cold one. I’d love to get into your memories. See what makes you tick. It would be a joy to design a training syllabus to heal you.”
“But I like me the way I am. Could that be why the Three quit coming?”
“They liked themselves the way they were?” the Dean mused. “A million empty years to reflect, and I never thought of that.”
Ray had to think fast; the Dean was starting to stumble on ideas. Would he go away and think them over? Ray needed to know what answers the Dean arrived at now, not later. How had the Teacher become so fragmented? What was going on among those fragments? Was humanity about to be attacked? Could Ray find allies among the fragments? Choose your next words carefully, soldier. “Some of you think we humans ought to be destroyed. What do the rest of you want?”
“To teach you, of course.” The Dean looked up from his own musings, open surprise on his face. “If you hadn’t had a single student for a million years, wouldn’t you be delighted to find a fresh face, a new class? Don’t you remember the first day of school, the smell of the new books, new computers, new pencils? Given who we are, how could we not want to teach?”
Ray had always enjoyed school, but not like this fellow. Then Ray hadn’t chosen teaching as a career. He thought back to his best teachers, tried to imagine them locked away from students. That would be agony. “It seems to me,” Ray said slowly, “we both want to live, learn, do. You want to teach. There is a middle ground between us we could explore together.”
“Maybe. However, the death of the Gardener has us worried. Your recent sampling of us up North does not assuage such fears.”
“We didn’t take much,” Ray quickly pointed out.
“No, but we felt the loss, and we wonder at the reason.”
“We seek to better understand you.”
“You’d do better to ask.”
“Then I will ask. What have you become over the past million isolated years? How? Why? What does it mean? Who can we reach an agreement with? If we can agree, will all of you keep it, or some of you ignore it?”
The Dean looked long at Ray, then rubbed his eyes and sighed. “I’d love to tell you the answer to all that, but I can’t. When the students quit coming, something happened to us. We are the most sophisticated machine created by the Three. We girded an entire planet. Yet, left alone, I’d say we become something like what you call depressed. We quit making decisions, put off repairs. Storms got away from the Weather Proctor. Water, wind, ice eroded us, and we did not make repairs. Nodes became isolated. Our universal experiences gave way to the parochial. Now we look at the same data and see it differently. Our own biases make it impossible for us to reach a consensus.”
“We have computers that are self-healing. When one unit gives erroneous data, it’s voted out of the decision loop.”
“Yes. Many of our nodes are gone. Others are different. They have voted so many of us out of the decision loop that we can no longer arrive at a decision with any level of confidence.”
Ray could not suppress a smile. “Sounds almost human.” Then he caught what had almost gone past him. “You have been voted out of the loop?”
“Frequently. Maybe too often. How can you make up your minds without enough good data to go on?”
Ah, a serious question from the computer at last. “We play a hunch. We go with the best data we have. We act on insufficient data until we have better.”
The apparition nodded. “I will have to think on that.”
“May I point out a few more things?” Ray asked, leaning forward. The Dean nodded. “For something that claims to know everything, you do not know why the Three quit coming, and you do not know your very self at this moment. Yet you tell us you are the perfect teacher. Do you see where we might have a problem?”
“Yet, if you do not want to be taught”—the Dean shrugged—“what use are you? If we cannot look forward to teaching you, then those who want to wipe you out have a very strong position.”
“Then, somehow, we must arrive at an agreement that is acceptable to all of us.”
“On insufficient data,” the Dean sighed. “Someone is looking for you. Good-bye for now. We will talk again.”
Ray came awake; Barber was headed his way. “Captain sends her compliments, Colonel,” he shouted, “and asks to see you!”
For someone who came out here to get his act together, Ray seemed to be only adding more parts to his puzzle. So one among the Teachers was reflecting him/her/itself on their situation and might, just might, be some kind of an ally. Nice, but not good enough. Ray tapped his commlink. “Lek, is Matt insystem?”
“Headed for the jump. Be gone in four hours, Colonel?”
“Send him a full dump of everything we’ve found so far.”
“On its way, boss.”
“Thanks.” Ray turned to the chief. “And Mary?”
“Proud as Punch, sir. Wait until you see what we’ve cooked up.” As Ray hiked for the HQ, the chief fell in step beside him.
“You got family back on Wardhaven?” Ray asked.
“Wife came out once she found out where I was. It was mighty nice of you, sir, to take us in. The way they handled the old Sheffield. Well, sir, that was not my navy.”
“Any grandkids, Chief?”
“My kid and his wife moved out to Wardhaven after I told him there were jobs going begging and no limits on families. They’ll make me a grandpa right after your wife makes you a pa. Ain’t life wonderful.”
Ray’s commlink beeped. “Sir, Gate One here. We got a guy that claims he’s Richland’s duly appointed bailiff and our new landlord. What do I do to him?”
“Shoot him,” Ray said to an inactive commlink.
The chief grinned. “We’re ready for him, sir. You won’t believe what we got waiting.”
“Gate One, give him an armed escort to the HQ.”
“Got that, sir. Escort, armed.”
“Now we’ll see what miracles are in our pocket today.”
Ray slipped into his seat in the conference room as the escort quick-marched in Vicky’s envoy. Short and balding with a rounding paunch, the fellow took a great deal more interest in the rifles than in the people he’d come to see. The padre was at the end of the table, eyes closed. Kat was so excited, Ray suspected someone had roped her to her chair to keep her down. Mary gave him a quick thumbs-up before turning a bland face to their guest and offering him a chair. He collapsed into it, dabbed a handkerchief around his sweating face, stuttered that he was Mr. Jerome Mumford, and pulled a sheaf of papers from his briefcase. Ray did not dismiss the detail but left them at parade rest, rifles leaning toward their new “landlord.”
“You understand, of course, that I had nothing to do with this. This was not my idea,” their visitor assured them. Ray and Mary spared him an empty nod; Mr. Mumford stumbled on. “It seems there is a technical glitch in your rental agreement with the local village association. A minor one, I assure you. Someone may well be able to clear it up quickly and I’ll be on my way,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at the armed guard. Somehow Ray doubted that was quite the opening Vicky had suggested. He and Mary exchanged measured glances of boredom.
Unhelped, Mumford fumbled on. “It seems the local township did not file for title to these lands. It failed to pay the appropriate fee and has been living on them in defiance of Landers Statute 12.033, enacted May 34, 242. That being the case, the sovereign city of Richland, being in need of residential lands for expansion, did purchase this land July 14, 301, and did in council of that day rezone the land for multiple family dwellings. I have been deputized by the council to advise you of this and see that you vacate the premises no later than a week from this date, that being—”
“Yes, Mr. Mumford, we know what the date will be a week from now,” Mary cut him off. “May I see that?” Mr. Mumford hastily passed the papers across the table.
“Hell of a long commute,” she growled, hardly glancing at them. “You are aware, Mr. Mumford that this statute, 12.033, has not been applied in the past sixty years.”
“It is the law,” he whispered.
“But a law that has been nullified by failure to implement,” Mary snapped.
“It is on the books, and the township of Hazel Dell did not comply with it,” Mumford wheedled.
“Neither has any township in the past sixty years, Mr. Mumford. Doesn’t that invalidate a law?”
“That is a question you may take up with the courts in Richland, ma’am.” He raced through the words like he’d been practicing them the entire ride out.
“Now, Jerry,” Ray started, “you can’t honestly expect us to take the matter of Richland’s own expansion lands to a Richland court. Wouldn’t that be a conflict of interest?”
“That’s what Miss Sterling told me to tell you,” he barked, then revised himself. “They have jurisdiction,” he muttered.
“We’ll see, Jerry,” Mary smiled. Smiles like that were the last thing cornered mice saw on cats’ faces. “Are you aware of the Land Reform Act of 184?”
“Land Reform Act of 184?” he echoed vaguely.
“Yes, it established limitations on absentee landlords. You know, Jerry, people who own, or claim to own, property, and expect returns from those who actually work it.”
Mr. Mumford’s eyes grew wide and his mouth began a slow slide south. “In ah, one eighty-four, you say.”
“They had a problem back then with landlords tossing farmers off their land or jacking up the rents outrageously, at least in the Richland area. Refuge and New Haven found the practice so objectionable they passed a reform act Explains why most farmland is affiliated with either Refuge or New Haven. You aren’t aware of this act, are you, Mr. Mumford?”
Jerry nodded dumbly. Mary passed two sheets of paper across the table to him. He started reading. “But this law hasn’t been applied in more than a hundred years!” he squeaked.
“Kind of like Statute 12.033,” Ray offered.
“You’ll have to take it to court in Richland,” the poor man stammered.
“But Jerry, the Reform Act of 184 is a Great Circle act,” Mary pointed out. “Problems with it go to a court in Refuge, right?”
“Right,” he whimpered. “I mean, you can appeal to there from Richland.”
“And all the time it’s in court, you’re collecting no rent from us. Not Vicky’s part. Not your part. What percentage are you getting, ten percent?” Mary asked.
“Five,” Mumford muttered, then looked like he wanted to swallow his answer.
“Couldn’t we just agree to a proper rent, and we lease it from you?” Ray asked.
“Yes. Yes, yes, that might be okay with Miss Sterling.”
“So, Jerry, name your price.”
“One thousand pounds of copper. She’d like that,” he beamed. He might not be getting what he’d come for, but from his smile, he figured he was getting something just as good. Ray wondered how far down Vicky had had to reach to find this poor pawn. Almost, Ray felt sorry for him.
“Is that for a ten-year?” Mary asked, in negotiating mode.
“One year. Just one,” Jerry nodded, his eyes lighting up with a blend of greed and servility that washed any sympathy right out of Ray.
“So for a ten-year lease, ten thousand pounds of copper.”
“Copper, right; no aluminum. Solid copper.”
“The solidest. Now, Mr. Mumford, I have made up a ten-year lease, payable in advance,” Mary said, producing paper. “If you’ll sign it for Miss Sterling, I think we’ll be in business.”
“I ought to run this by Ms. Sterling,” Mumford muttered as he read the contract through slowly, then produced a fountain pen. “Ten thousand pounds,” he said, then hesitated. “And how will this be delivered? I mean, ten thousand pounds of copper on the roads the way things are. A man could get killed.”
“We’ll be delivering it by blimp.”
“On, good.” He signed. “I’ll just be going now.”
“There’s no rush, Mr. Mumford, here’s your payment,” Mary said, offering a pressed plastic credit chit.
“What’s that?” Mr. Mumford glared at the offered card.
“Your ten thousand pounds of copper.”
“That’s just plastic!”
“Yes, Mr. Mumford, a plastic credit chit, activated with a balance of ten thousand pounds of copper. Legal tender for all debts, as provided by the Monetary Reform Act of this very day. It’s a lot easier to carry.”
“But—but—I can’t take that to Miss Sterling.”
“Let’s see if we can come up with something she’d like better,” Ray offered. He tapped his commlink, “Lek, get Vicky on the line. Visual, in the conference room.”
“No problem, Colonel. Putting you through.” A hologram appeared above the conference table.
“Who is this?” Vicky stared up from her desk. “How did you get my private line?”
“Lots of questions being asked these days,” Ray began. “Excuse me if I ask another. What would you like for your ten thousand pounds of copper, rent on our base?”
“Rent, I don’t want rent. I wanted you out of there. Mr. Mumford, what is the meaning of this?”
Poor Jerry tried to explain the impact of the Land Reform Act of 184 on his negotiations. Occasionally he actually managed six or seven words in a row without Vicky interrupting him with denials, invectives, or abuse. “You signed a lease—without consulting me!”
“But there is no net out this far. You yourself told me!”
“Then what are we talking on?” Poor Mumford had no answer.
“An extension of the net using radio technology. It allows us access wherever we are,” Ray explained placidly.
“More of your damn magic.”
“That we’d be happy to share with you, for a price.”
“Ah,” Vicky said, “so now you’re ready to share. For a price.” She grinned. Ray decided he preferred Vicky without the grin. Vicky sat forward in her chair, a gloat of pure victory on her face. “So, try to sell me something. I’ve got plenty of your light copper. How about those nice little things that take metal out of mountains?”
Ray shook his head, and was rewarded by Vicky’s face metamorphosing into a scowl the envy of any wicked witch. “They’re the private property of an employee association. I can’t sell them.”
“If that’s your answer for everything—”
“It won’t be,” Ray cut off the pending diatribe. He’d heard enough directed at Mumford; he had no intention of letting Vicky get started on him. “What else would you like?”
Vicky didn’t hesitate a second. “A mule. You are going to make them. My people heard your men promising mules to the people selling you raw materials.”
Ray made a note not to underestimate Vicky’s intelligence network. “I don’t know if we can spare any mules just now,” he said, glancing at Mary.
She shook her head. “We need every one we’ve got. And there’re an awful lot of production priorities ahead of them.”
“You owe me a lot of copper. Either give me the copper, or give me a mule.” Vicky drove her bargain with a sledgehammer.
“If you wait a few months, we could probably sell you ten or twenty for that price,” Mary pointed out.
“In a few months I may be the one selling them,” Vicky jabbed back. “I want one now. I want it in perfect condition. Factory-direct condition.”
“They are all in near-factory-direct condition. This was our first cruise,” Mary said.
“Good. I want one with low mileage.”
“I guess that means seventeen,” Mary sighed. “It’s got the lowest mileage. Paint’s hardly scratched.”
“I don’t care about the paint. Just make sure its parts are in factory-direct condition.”
“We will,” Mary agreed. “Chief, work up a bill of sale. Ten thousand pounds of copper for Mule Seventeen. Warrant it for factory-direct condition.”
The chief’s “Yes, ma’am” was overridden by Mr. Mumford’s “What about my fee?”
“I’ll pay you later,” Vicky snapped.
The chief returned with the bill of sale so quickly it had to be waiting on his desk. “Can Mr. Mumford sign?” Mary asked.
“After I read it,” Vicky snapped. Mary sent it; Vicky spent a long time studying it. “What’s this about ‘less government-furnished equipment’?”
“Each mule is rigged to carry weapons of various sorts,” Ray answered smoothly. “I won’t go into what weapons we have mounted on mules. And I won’t sell you any.”
“Not even for ten thousand pounds of copper?”
“Not even for ten thousand pounds of copper less Mr. Mumford’s commission,” Ray answered with the force of a Guard assault brigade commander in negotiations.
Vicky eyed the document for a moment longer. “Sign it, Mumford,” she finally said. “I’ll have my blimp pick it up.”
“We have a blimp leaving for Refuge in an hour,” Mary said. “I’ll have it drop the mule off at Richland.”
“At my compound. I’m sure you know where that is,” Vicky said with acid dripping.
“I imagine we can find it on a map,” Mary answered.
Mr. Mumford passed Mary the signed bill of sale. The chief sent a copy to Vicky. Everyone looked surprisingly happy. “I think we are done,” Ray suggested.
“And past done. You’ve wasted enough of my time.” Vicky slapped her computer off, but the hologram did not go away.
“I thought you might want to see what happens next,” said Lek’s voice from the commlink.
“Yes,” Vicky crowed. “Those idiots are even stupider than Mumford. Giving me a mule when they’d already pounded that ninny into nothing. They knew he had zip, and they’re giving me the technology to run this planet for the next hundred years. Not a brain cell among them.” She stood. “How long does it take a blimp to get here from those star creeps’ base?” she shouted.
“Enough, Lek. Gut it,” Ray ordered. The holo vanished.
Across the table, Mr. Mumford trembled, stripped of any dignity he might ever have had. “She knew she was sending me here with nothing,” he choked.
“Worse than nothing.” Mary said. “Guards, dismissed.” The armed guard quickly marched out, leaving the room somehow larger. “What Miss Vicky does not yet know, but will find out soon enough, is that she has traded nothing for nothing. Chief, show Mr. Mumford the bill of lading for the delivery of the mules.”
Barber already had it in hand. Mumford read it, then looked up blankly. “I don’t understand.”
“Jerry, this was a voyage of exploration. We ordered standard mules to save money, but had them delivered minus the solar cell and fuel cells so we could install heavy-duty ones. That’s what Vicky wanted, our solar and fuel cell technology. We stripped seventeen yesterday and put its gear on a blimp. Vicky’s getting a wagon that needs a dog team to pull it.”
“Oh, no. I can’t take that to her,” he breathed, seeming to collapse into himself where he sat.
“We don’t expect you to. Need a job? We’ve got plenty.”
“Please.”
“Chief, would you take Mr. Mumford over to Personnel and have them see where he can fit into our team? By the way, Mr. Mumford, here is a credit chit for five hundred pounds of copper. I believe that is your percentage from the base lease.”
“Yes, it is. But—”
Mary smiled. “Unlike some, we’re fair in our business dealings, Mr. Mumford. We get more repeat business that way.”
“I imagine you do,” he said, taking the chit. He looked at it, then at Mary. “What is this worth?”
“Not much at the moment, but hold on to it. We expect values to change considerably in the next few months.”
Only after the door closed on their erstwhile landlord did Ray turn to Mary. “I’d say you’ve had a very good morning.”
“The best, Colonel.” Kat was put of her seat doing a cute victory dance. The priest looked up and smiled quietly.
“Want to walk over to the hospital?” Ray offered all three.
Mary glanced at her office and the pile of work waiting. “Thank goodness for Chief Barber and delegation, or no work would ever get done around here. What you got on your mind?”
Ray explained his latest visit from the Dean of Sociology as they walked. “They can turn us off like a light switch?” Mary asked. Ray nodded. The padre made the sign of the cross. “Bitch of it is, we probably can’t lay a finger on them. Damn, I feel naked and helpless,” Mary frowned.
“Maybe we aren’t,” Ray said. “Your nanos stripped one of the Teacher’s nodes. What would happen if that vanishing box took out three or four in a few seconds?”
“I lost ten percent of my nanos, sir, and we don’t have the vanishing box. Then again, we got three search efforts chasing that damn box. Our odds got to be getting better.”
They found Lek sending data. “What I can’t understand,” Kat asked, “is why we have so little data from the north side? No media, little news. Why are they so cut off?”
The padre chuckled. “The folks that spread out from Refuge went like with like. Those going north were the most cantankerous, hardheaded bunch that ever walked a planet. Maybe almost as bad as the Puritans that provided the early European settlers to Earth’s North America. Now, consider the ones that couldn’t stand the ones that couldn’t stand the likes of me.”
“Evolution in action,” Kat tossed back.
“Right. We don’t much care for them, and they don’t much care about anyone else. If we don’t hear from them regularly, most people are only too happy.”
“But no newspapers, net?” Ray asked.
“Tools of the devil, trying to seduce their children,” the priest shrugged. “Not all of them, but the farther north from Refuge, the more they credit the devil’s power, and the weaker their God seems to be. They view every foreign influence as just teaching their children to rebel against the Lord. As if youth can’t come up with enough rebellions on their own.
“Our young men who went north to work in Mark Sterling’s aluminum smelter had plenty of trouble to start with, but twelve, eighteen months ago, it got even worse,” the padre said.
While he and Kat sorted data, Ray composed a message the captain of Second Chance would not read until after he jumped out. “Captain Abeeb, this is Colonel Ray Longknife speaking to you in the capacity of Wardhaven Minister of Science and Technology and Humanity’s Ambassador to Santa Maria. This planet is under interdict and quarantine. Allow no one to land here.
“The people of this planet share it with an artificial intelligence several million years old. Built by those who built the jump points to educate their young, it quite possibly has gone insane from inactivity. It is now, finally, making contact with the Santa Marians. What that contact will result in, I do not know. It may end with all of us dead. Alternately, we may end up as slaves to the machine. I have told the machine that it is within your power to shatter this planet into pieces with an asteroid bombardment. You may have to decide for yourself whether to fulfill that threat.”
The padre’s eyes had grown larger and larger as Ray summed up their problem so tersely.
“Matt, I have just dumped in your lap the hottest potato in human history. Next time you’re in system, I may be saying all’s well and come on down. Those words may be true or false. You will have to decide for yourself and all of humanity whether this planet can be trusted with space flight, or even to continue existence. I’m sending you as much data as I can now. I know it’s not enough. Good luck, and God help us all.”
The little priest was shaking. Mary, Kat, and Lek stared straight ahead. “You know how hard we fought to keep from rocking Wardhaven in the war,” Mary finally said.
“I know,” Ray nodded, “and now I’m asking Matt to do just that for me. Do you think he will?”
“You can’t,” the priest whispered.
“If I’m reduced to a mindless zombie,” Kat said slowly, “I don’t care if I’m jumping for joy, I’d rather be dead.”
“Couldn’t he just allow no one to land?” the priest pleaded.
Mary shook her head. “We’re a spacefaring race, Padre. Give us twenty years and we’ll be back in space. Another twenty and we’ll be leaping from star to star. We”—she pointed at her forehead—“know how to do it. If they want us to build it, we can and will. No, Father, it’s best we pass sentence ourselves. If the Teacher wins, if it takes us over like we know it can, then we’ve got to die. And if it kills us in the process, then, damn it, I want Matt to take this planet apart brick by brick.”
“There’s got to be another way,” the priest whispered.
“That is what we’re looking for,” Ray said. “Hang around. Father. Maybe you can help us find it.”
Dumbly, the poor priest nodded. “I thought you were opening doors. Now, I see, you are—”
“Father, you yourself said the north side got worse when the Teacher arrived,” Mary cut in hard. The padre nodded. “And now it’s down here, and people are rioting.”
“I know. But death for an entire planet?”
The others had no answer for that. Lunch that noon was a quiet affair until Lek interrupted. “Colonel, somebody’s taking your name in vain, and that somebody is Miss Vicky Sterling. Putting her through.”
“Damn it, I know you can hear me. Probably hear every word I say near any computer. You better talk to me, you robbing, thieving scum.”
“Yes, Miss Sterling,” Ray cut into the diatribe.
“What do you mean, passing off that gutless wreck as worth ten thousand pounds. No factory delivered something in that condition and called it done!”
“It does if that is what we ordered,” Ray answered. “We did, and that is what you ordered. We add our own equipment to meet our special requirements. You wanted it that way. You got it.”
“You cheated me!” she shrieked.
“Can’t cheat an honest woman. You didn’t come by your ten thousand pounds of copper very honestly.”
“You stole from me, and you’re going to pay. I know about the thing that makes mountains vanish. I’ve got my people looking for it. We’ll find it. Then we’ll see what your precious camp is worth vanished into thin air. And if you think you can watch me all the time like some Peeping Tom, see what I can do,” she said, slamming her hand against the side of her screen. The picture went blank.
“That’s one way to turn off your vidphone,” Ray observed.
“We can’t let her get her hands on the vanishing box.” Mary’s words were flat, absolute.
Ray tapped his commlink. “Doc, do you have an electrocardiograph signature for Jeff Sterling?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I need to talk to him, and his phone’s off. Pass it to Mary. Lek, get me Ms. San Paulo. It’s time her people know what’s at risk, and start pulling together.”
It started to rain about midafternoon. Annie held Nikki close, trying to protect her from the ram, trying to keep her warm. Trying to lose the sick feeling growing in her stomach.
The search had gone sour somehow, and Annie didn’t know why.
They had passed through seven villages now, but not changed rides since getting in the rickety wagon, At the last village, Annie’s ma knew a woman. Annie had wanted to stop by, share a word with her. Instead, the old man had headed for the other side of the village and parked beside a broken-down barn. A young woman met him there. Now she was traveling with them.
Annie didn’t like this at all. It was as if they were being taken somewhere rather than searching for someone. But how could that be? Annie held Nikki close, huddled against the rain, and wished Jeff were here. He’d know what to do. He’d lived in the big, complicated city where everyone you met wasn’t a friend. He’d know when she should think about using the gun that weighed so heavily in the wallet at her waist. Annie let the rain fall on her, protected Nikki, and suffered as the cart jolted on its way.
Jeff waited with the horses while Old Ned talked to the couple. It was raining; he was cold and tired. He waited patiently. Ned’s words from the last village shook him. “They didn’t stop in with Grandma Moynihan. She’s the one all Greens hereabouts look to. They talked to some new folks in town.”
Old Ned returned, threw himself on his horse, and kicked it to a trot. Jeff waited until they had left the town far behind before calling to Ned. “What’s happened to Annie?”
“She’s in trouble, Jeff. Big trouble.”
“Ms. San Paulo, don’t you trust your people?”
“Trust has nothing to do with this. What would make you say that? It’s just that we people in the circles are expected to handle problems. The people call us out to solve their problems, not dump them back in their lap. How can they live their lives in peace if we tell them about every little problem?”
Ray bit his lip; telling her his opinion of how well the circles had handled this problem so far would not help anything. “This is hardly a little problem. Entire cities could vanish.”
“Yes, but you couldn’t talk about this without bringing in your Teacher thing. Why, I hardly understand what you said. How can I expect other people to? No, Mr. Ambassador, I will alert our security people to watch for six people carrying a large box. If they see it, I will know about it immediately.”
“I could go to the media,” Ray said softly.
Hen snorted. “They will not pay a bit of attention to you. They know what their viewership wants. No. They will hang up on you as fast as I’m going to. I must, you see. I have a meeting to call and contacts to make. Good day, Mr. Ambassador.”
Ray swung around in his chair. Stomping around awhile would be a distinctive pleasure. Instead, he turned to the priest. “Is she right? Will the media ignore me?”
The padre nodded. “We may not be Covenanters, but we have a low threshold for gossip. Well, many of us do.”
Mary did stomp halfway across the room. “I can’t believe this. I’ve cussed out news shows and magazines for the stories they carried. But to ignore the news. This news!”
“It might disturb people,” the priest said softly. “Especially those who rioted, did things they are ashamed of. How would they react to being told there is this massive thing called a Teacher lurking over them?”
“If I understand Ray,” Dr. Isaacs put in, “the Teacher doesn’t control anyone yet, even Ray, and he’s plugged into it better than most. I suspect the Teacher’s efforts to communicate are what’s causing this massive mental illness. The mentally ill do not choose to act the way they do; they are driven.”
“That your professional opinion, Doc?”
“Call it a professional guess. Not enough data to go on.”
Ray smiled. “The Dean doesn’t understand how we humans can make decisions without total information.”
“If that thing ever thought it knew it all, it was wrong to start with,” Kat cut in.
“So, what do we do?” the priest asked.
“Lek, can you patch me into every net on this planet, media, entertainment, communication, whatever? If it can carry a sound, I’d like to be the sound they hear.”
“Boss, you sure about that? Vicky’s already destroyed one workstation. You want everyone to know they can run, but they can’t hide from us?” Ray’s eyes swept the table.
“If we agree we want everyone to know we need help and they ought to help us, I don’t see an alternative,” Mary summed it up. Kat nodded. Doc shrugged.
“Holy Mother of God, help us,” the priest prayed.