RAY FOUND HE rather enjoyed the quiet time. As a string of peaceful days turned into a week, Matt bounced in and out of the system at increasing accelerations and longer intervals. By the time the weeks were long enough to grow into a month, Second Chance had unwound itself into two-gee accelerations and was spending four and five days turning around from each jump.
Mary was having herself a ball, hiking mineral production from the new southern mines, running a base and most of a planet’s economy. As people went back to work in New Haven, the bosses of Refuge’s factories came, hat in hand, asking to be included in the distribution. That was a real kick for Mary, and left her wondering aloud to Ray if Santa Maria wouldn’t be a great place to settle down.
Doc Isaacs had to be dragged out of his lab for meals. He wouldn’t tell Ray anything specific, but he hinted with a broad grin that he might be getting a handle on this place. Even though the vanishing box was still missing, on the average, things were not too bad; one might even call them normal.
Then Ray heard the padre praying, and normal went to hell.
Ray went into town to ask the padre’s help with the search down South. Jeff was about to come through the commlink at Ray, demanding they do something about Annie. The padre was finishing morning Mass as Ray slipped into the church, but no one was in a hurry to leave. On their knees, they prayed to saints with every name Ray knew, and a few he’d never heard of. After each name came the same request: “Pray for sun.” Ray listened, then waited as people filed out. Every face looked worried.
“What was that all about?” he asked the priest when his people had scattered to their work.
The padre looked up, eyeing the cloudy sky. “We need a week of sun and warmth to bring the crop in.”
“I thought farmers were all the time praying for rain.”
“Shows what you know. Without water, the crops don’t grow. Without sun, they don’t grow either. We need all in their proper balance. We’ve had too much rain and clouds this month.”
“The Weather Proctor,” Ray breathed.
“You think this is no accident?” the priest said.
“Maybe. Probably not. Will you be in the rectory?”
“Yes.”
“Leave me for a few minutes.” As the priest’s footsteps faded, Ray returned to his pew, leaned back, slowed his breathing. Relaxed, though that Was the last thing he felt like.
“Well, hello,” the Dean said cheerfully. “Interesting place to find you.”
“You’ll find humans most everywhere,” he answered. “What’s with the weather?”
“The weather?”
“Yeah, isn’t it awfully cloudy? Doesn’t that affect your solar cells?”
“Yes. It’s just part of the goings-on. By the way, your idea of a second career is attractive to many of us. Not the ones fighting, but a lot of us on the periphery.”
“I’m glad to hear that, but I’ve got a problem. We eat food. Our food needs sunlight. We aren’t getting enough of it this late summer to bring in our crops. If we don’t get some good, solid sunshine, we may all be very hungry.”
“Don’t you have some kind of storage system?”
“Yes, but not enough. What can you do about it?”
“I’ll put in a word with the Weather Proctor. I’m not sure whose side he’s on. He seems to be running his own show.”
“Please talk to him and get back to me quick.”
“I’ll try. You know, I like this place. Quiet, soothing. Ought to spend more time here.”
Ray roused himself, told the priest quickly what he’d found, and headed back to see Kat. She called in a middie, who tracked the weather along with several other jobs. “Sorry, sir, I don’t spend much time there, it’s fully automated” was her initial response as she called up a global map.
“The usual pattern,” she explained, “is a large stream of cool water flows down from the arctic area, swings around this continent, then loses itself in the ocean out there.” She frowned at the east coast of Santa Maria’s one human-settled continent. “But this year, the stream is closer to shore. That’s causing the cool, damp weather we’ve gotten lately. That means the center of this large ocean area hasn’t gotten anything to cool it. It’s very warm, and that could cause the hurricane season to start early.”
“Which direction will they head?” Ray asked.
“Usually north, to blow themselves out deep in the North Continent. However, we have core samples that show some real bad storms slamming the lowlands along our coast. Not in the past three hundred years, but four or five times in the past million. Refuge, Richland, and even New Haven were under water.”
“Whose side is the Weather Proctor on?” Ray whispered.
“Will it matter?” Kat asked.
“What’s the weather right now?” Ray asked urgently.
The middie worked the board rapidly, calling up satellite pictures, then backtracked to gather the past three days’ worth. Four cyclonic wind patterns showed along the equator, lined up one after the other, moving east. “Will they go north or south?”
“There’s a ridge of high pressure over the main continent,” she pointed out. “The hurricanes can’t go north. They have to go east or south. And, sir, we’ve had a low sitting on top of us for the past month. I’d say they’re headed our way.”
“How bad are the hurricanes?”
The woman studied her workstation, frowned, reran her last checks. “Sir, I don’t know how this happened. We’ve got auto alarms rigged on this system, but they’ve been turned off. Those are force five hurricanes. The alarms should have been screaming at us for weeks.”
“Lek”—Ray tapped his commlink—“I’ve got evidence of tampering with our weather net. Check it for fingerprints. I want to know how it happened.”
“On it, sir.”
“Holler when you have anything, an itch, a hunch. Anything. Lek, I don’t like it when I can’t trust our gadgets.”
“Me neither, boss.”
Ray started to leave, paused. “What’s the tidal situation?”
The girl had gone pale after spotting the hurricanes; now she went translucent. “Highest of the summer, sir, are due in the next week.”
Ray kept his pace carefully measured as he marched straight to Mary’s desk. “How long can you tread water?”
She looked up, eyebrow raised. “How long do I need to?” Ray explained the problems lining up off their coast. Mary reacted stronger to their net being compromised. “Shit, if we can’t trust the data we’re looking at, how do we make decisions?”
“Don’t know. Assuming the worse for the purpose of discussion, what do we do now?” Mary converted her station into a topographic map of Santa Maria’s populated area, then added the data from Harry’s core samples. Half the occupied land turned a muddy brown. “Storm surge never got as far as the base,” she noted.
“No, this time we’ll have a population surge.”
“If we tell them, sir.” Mary gave Ray a very bland look.
“Three, maybe four million dead if we say nothing,” Ray breathed. “Is that what you’re suggesting, Captain?”
“Haven’t thought it through enough to make any suggestion, Colonel, just making the initial data identification.”
Ray noted they’d both fallen back on military rank and big words. It was so much easier to discuss mass murder when you put on your armor and held the thoughts at arm’s length. “I want fortifications around this base, ditch, and wall,” he said.
“We can do that. Use local labor. They sure as hell ain’t bringing in any crops. What do we do with the locals?”
“Offer to move them inside the wall. We may need them as reserve police.”
“All of them, sir, no matter how big their tumor?”
Ray rubbed at his eyes. Could he order a husband to leave a wife outside? A family to abandon a child? Hell, he had the biggest tumor of all. “ID cards for all. Tumor size listed in the data. If we start having problems, we’ll isolate the large tumors somewhere under guard. Any problems with that?”
“Not now. Maybe later. What about the food supply?”
“Do nothing for now. Everyone’s scared. We start buying food up, it’ll start a panic and make us look like the bully. What else?” They made their list, trying to guess what they’d need in a long, painful siege. Lek interrupted long after Ray had expected.
“Colonel, I got no idea how the alarm got turned off. It’s off, been off for two weeks, and I can’t tell you who or how.”
“Somebody had to access it. That somebody’s got a code.”
“Yes, sir, to both. Don’t matter; the weather watch system was accessed and no record of it kept.”
“Another human, or my super-computer friend?”
“I’d prefer to think computer, sir, since I don’t want to admit some human outsmarted me, but truth be told, boss, with no evidence, I’m only guessing.”
“Anyplace else hit?” Mary asked.
“Ma’am, officially, the weather wasn’t hit. Only way to know is to check everything and see if it’s still the way we want it. One hundred percent eyeball review. We got time for that?”
“No,” Ray snapped. “Lek, get me Vicky Sterling, San Paulo, and Chu Lyn on the horn. They need to know what we know.”
Lek snorted. “Won’t be easy getting the first two.”
“Get Chu, then tell the others I’m telling her something of critical importance to all three. They can get it secondhand from her, or they can get it straight from me.”
“There’s going to be one hell of a panic,” Mary said. “I better get a crew working on that wall. What do I tell folks?”
“Nothing for now. It’ll be common knowledge by supper.”
“Better pull back our deployed teams. Blimps will have to be deflated before the hurricanes hit.”
Ray’s first call was to Cassie. She was surprisingly recalcitrant to pull out of Refuge, even after Ray painted her a very deep and wet picture. “There’ll be panic in the streets, sir. They’ll need us.”
“We’re going to need you more here. I can’t afford to lose you. Move your team out now; a blimp is already on the way.” After getting a reluctant “Yes, sir,” Ray punched up Harry.
“We’ll be ready when the blimp shows up. What about Jeff?”
“I want them all back in. Things may get ugly fast.”
“I’ll corral him.”
A half hour later Lek had all three women on the line. “What do you want?” Vicky glared. “Why is Cassie leaving?” San Paulo demanded. Chu Lyn stared from her third of the screen.
“May I ask a question first?” Ray began. They neither refused nor agreed. “Someone or something entered our net and turned off the alarms we have on our weather forecasting system. Did any of you have anything to do with that?”
“You’re the one who butts into our systems,” Vicky spat.
“I’m aware of the ill feelings that has caused. I wondered if any of you had sponsored a tit-for-tat comeback.” No one responded. “Then I’ll assume the intervention came from another source,” he sighed. “That may make matters worse.”
“Your super-computer boogeyman got you.” Vicky cackled, causing Ray to wonder why he’d included her in the call. Then again, he couldn’t let a million Richlandites drown to spite Vicky.
“When we reactivated our weather alarms, we found four hurricanes lined up, pointed straight at us.” Ray put the satellite picture on their displays.
“That’s impossible,” Ms. San Paulo insisted. “The season hasn’t started.”
“The weather has been very strange this summer,” Chu pointed out, though from the looks on the other faces on Ray’s screen, the other two were not listening.
“Based on our assessments of core samples taken here, it appears this type of weather has hit South Continent five times in the past. Storm surges flattened everything far inland.” Ray replaced the first picture with the map of human occupation on South Continent; half was covered with brown.
“It can’t go that far inland,” San Paulo sniffed. “The barrier islands don’t even let the worst waves into our harbor.”
“Those are level five hurricanes, four in a row. The first one will flatten your islands. By the third, open ocean waves will be smashing into Refuge. By the fourth, they’ll be washing Richland out to sea,” Ray said with deadly calm.
“That could not happen,” Vicky insisted. “Impossible,” San Paulo snapped. “Oh, Lord,” Chu Lyn breathed. “We have to get people moving inland immediately.”
“That would be my suggestion,” Ray answered Chu.
“That will panic everyone,” San Paulo charged.
“It will if Chu starts moving her people and you don’t. Let this information come as a rumor, and people will run wild.”
“We don’t have to act right away,” San Paulo insisted. “If the first storm is as bad as you say, we could start moving people inland then.”
“Over storm-ravaged and flooded roads,” Ray countered. “It’s only going to get worse.”
“I will announce this within the hour,” Chu said with the finality of death. “What you others do is your decision.”
“We’ll all have to start moving,” Vicky growled, “and this man will have won over us again.”
“What are you going to do?” Chu asked Ray.
“I’m organizing people out here to provide food and shelter. And since this seems to be coining from the super computer I think lives in your planet, I’ll be seeing what I can do to stop it.”
“I wish you luck,” Chu said as they all rang off.
“Well, that was no worse than I expected,” Ray grumbled as he looked up from the screen.
Mary was at his office door. “Harry called. He’s on his way back, but Dumont and Jeff passed up the ride. Du says if you’re putting everything you’ve got here, they better find the vanishing box, ’cause sure as hell, with both Refuge and Richland gone, the only target left is us.”
“That would solve my problem,” Ray sighed. He pushed back from his desk, put his feet up, and relaxed into his chair. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do. I’ve got to talk to my favorite computer and see just how much we can help each other.”
Mary closed the door; Ray concentrated. Nothing happened. After ten minutes he moved from his office to his quarters, laid out full on his bed…and went to sleep despite his worries.
Mary woke him three hours later. “Why’d you let me sleep?” Ray grumbled groggily, “We’ve got things to do.”
“And they’re being done, sir,” she answered way too cheerfully. “We’re doing quite well without you.”
“Just who’s in charge here?” Ray growled, rubbing sleep from his eyes and trying not to smile.
“Me.” Mary grinned unrepentantly.
“You don’t have to be so obvious.” Out the window, the gray day was just starting to fade. Near the base perimeter, people were digging. “You got started fast.”
“I’ll show you after chow.”
At supper, portions were smaller. No one went hungry, but the farmer who’d been fattening pigs on the base’s slop had better think of slaughtering his newly expected wealth. Talk around the dining hall was subdued. “Word already out?”
Mary shrugged. “Leaked a little. No worse than your average volcano. We’ll need to address it up front.”
“Time for a walk around.”
“Looks that way, sir.” Mary had a mule waiting.
“I can walk,” Ray snapped, feeling rather good on his feet.
“The entire base perimeter is a bit more exercise than I care to take,” Mary answered, slipping into the driver’s seat.
Ray settled down beside her. “How are people taking this?”
“Most are still in shock. Nobody really wants to believe everything they’ve worked for and built is about to be washed out to sea. Any chance we can stop that?”
“Don’t know. The computer ain’t talking to me.”
The base perimeter came in view. Up to now it had been marked by little more than a rough path for the perimeter patrol. Now surveyor’s sticks marched in both directions, forming three long rows. Villagers cut the sod, rolled it, and put it aside, then torn to with shovels and picks, digging a trench and piling the dirt on the inside edge. People waved when they saw Ray, shouting “Thanks for the job” and “Glad to have a place to stay.” Ray waved back, then signaled Mary to halt. The little priest was out with his parishioners, wielding a shovel.
“Father Joseph, isn’t this a little out of your line?”
“Since when can’t a man put his back into a job?” the priest answered, but used the pause to wipe sweat from his brow.
“Does everyone understand what we want?”
Mary scowled; the priest smiled. “Dig a ditch ten feet wide, six feet deep, and a wall about the same size beside it. You’re expecting a lot of rain, aren’t you?”
“What have you heard?”
“Forty days and forty nights, or something like it.”
“May not be off by much,” Mary quipped.
“We’re saving the sod. When you have your wall built, we’ll roll it back down along it. That ought to keep the rain off the wall, but the ditch is going to be a muddy mess.”
“Can’t help that,” Ray said. “I want a wooden fence four to six feet high above the dirt wall. Something to protect our guards from thrown rocks.”
“I can get some woodcutters on that,” the priest offered.
“Good, you and the mayor, supervise if you will.” The priest’s only answer was a nod. Mary drove on, circling the perimeter. All of it was marked, with digging rapidly expanding from several points.
Ray went with Mary to check on the kids that evening. Doc Isaacs frowned at Ray’s sudden interest but still showed them off like a proud father. Their headaches were gone. They looked like healthy, dirty urchins despite the clouds. Ray got drafted into reading them their bedtime story, read two, and then did his best to slip away. Doc blocked the hallway outside the room.
“What are you up to?” Jerry demanded.
“I don’t know,” Ray sighed. “I really don’t know.”
“You’re not going to use these kids to fight that thing.”
“I don’t know,” Ray defended himself. “They weren’t hurt when the Gardener died.”
“You are going to.” Isaacs accused Ray like a wrathful god.
“Maybe. If it looks like it will do some good. If you got a better idea on how to fight a million-year-old machine, I’m all ears.” Isaacs said nothing. “Right now, the damn computer won’t even talk to me.” And it didn’t that night, either.
It was only as Ray came awake the next morning that he found himself surrounded by a dozen computer images. Three or four of them wore partial body armor, shabby and worn. Two carried assault rifles, though none too sure how. One looked ridiculous in hockey shoulder pads, knee protectors, and a cooking pot perched on his head. He carried a baseball bat but had pliers and a screwdriver in his breast pocket. That one left Ray really wondering what his mind was trying to tell him.
“As you can see,” the Dean said, a battle vest thrown over his tweeds, “the war has started, and we are losing.”
“Why didn’t you call me?” Ray asked. “I’ve had some recent experience losing wars.”
“What we want,” the one in the cooking pot cut in, “is some suggestions on how we kick their asses.”
“I’ve won a few, too,” Ray drawled. “What’s going on?”
“The President and the Provost are mainly fighting themselves. The Provost wants to exterminate you. The President only to—I guess you would say—enslave you. We”—the image indicated the others with an open palm—“would like to join you.”
“Assuming you’re worth joining,” grumbled Pothead.
Ray eyed them for a moment, then asked, “Where is their center of gravity, their axis of attack?”
“Their what?” Pothead countered.
“What do you know of military strategy, tactics, and logistics? What’s your combat training?” All the computer images looked uncomfortably at the floor. Ray glanced down at himself; he was in his pajamas. He adjusted his dress to full battle kit. The room wavered and came back as the inside of his battle van. The images glanced around their new surroundings; two shifted from battle dress to civilian clothes.
“Ray, we know nothing of war. It’s a word in the lexicon of the Three, but one marked obsolete. They taught us nothing about it because they wanted us to teach nothing of it to their young.”
“An admirable ideal,” Ray said, “but you still don’t know why the Three vanished.”
“No. As you pointed out, and continue to, we do not know everything.” The Dean glanced at his associates. They nodded, looking for all the world like a dozen kids caught with their hands in the cookie jar, only to discover there were no cookies.
Ray conjured up his battle board. He used a wide view, showing not only the southern continent but also the northern. “Where are the President and Provost concentrated?”
The Dean frowned, glanced at the board, and rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s not that easy. We all started moving south together. We’re kind of all over the place together.”
“And being pushed around everywhere,” Pothead threw in.
“Concentration of force is basic,” Ray advised.
“Right, and now you’re gonna teach us,” Pothead spat.
“I’ve got too damn much experience of war. What have you got? You want to learn, you come to the expert or you don’t learn. What’s it gonna be?” The twelve looked at each other. Ray wondered how fast they communicated among themselves. Then he reminded himself they were none too experienced with being individuals.
“What do we need to do?” the Dean finally asked.
“Concentrate your forces is a start. The question is: Where? Where are the President and Provost strongest?”
A pink hue covered the center of North Continent and stretched south to form a large lobe in Convenanters’ territory. “That’s the President. Provost is a bit west of there.” A blue tinge marked the map from north to south. In the south it formed a large lobe along the border of Covenant/Richland.
“And you are?” Ray offered. The twelve looked shyly at each other. “Unaware of where each other are,” he finished.
The Dean made golden a small section of the board in Covenanters’ territory on the southeastern edge of the pink. “I’ve been evicted from my network to the north,” he whispered.
“You, too!” Pothead exclaimed. “Me, too.” A string of brown lines spun and twisted around South Continent. “I get around, though. Even into your net.” He grinned at Ray. “Yeah, that was me. Your guards didn’t come close to twitching to me.”
“Why’d you turn off our weather alarms?”
“Weather Proctor dared me to. Said I couldn’t understand a net as primitive as yours. I showed him.”
“You were on the Weather Proctor’s side?” Ray encouraged him to gab on. Did he really want this ally?
“Nobody’s on WP’s side, except WP. He cut his own deal with the Pres and Prov. Pres wants you down a few notches. Proc want’s you out of here. Either way, WP wins. That one is sly.”
“But you’re not with him anymore,” Ray said.
“Nope. WP snatched my net up North while I was working you guys. Booted me right out. Is that any way to treat a friend?”
“Not the way I would, anyway. I take it all of you are bereft of attachments to North Continent.” They nodded. “May I suggest you concentrate around this base? I’m massing my human strength here. We can protect your physical selves as well. It will keep you out of the line of fire when we open up on them.”
“You can’t touch them,” Pothead sneered.
“I drained the Gardener. That was an accident. Next time won’t be. Dean, you noticed when we took samples up north. If we took enough, could we disrupt the P and P?”
The Dean rubbed his chin. “You’d have to take a lot.”
“The vanishing box could take a lot in a hurry.”
Heads jerked, several took a step away from Ray. That got their attention. “Who do you trust?” Ray tapped the pink and blue on his map. “They’ve booted you out of the North. Think they’ll save anything down here for you? I promise to take you to the stars with me. First we got to survive. And they’ve got to…what? Be taken down a peg or ten? Be destroyed? You tell me. You can’t win a war if you don’t know your objectives.”
The images of the twelve got thin. For a second, Ray feared he’d lost them. “You go away now, will there be anything left of you to talk to me by tonight? You’re losing. Give up and die, or join me and fight. What will it be?”
The Dean thickened up. “I don’t want to die. I like the idea of going to the stars with the humans. I say fight.”
“But can we trust him?” Pothead whined.
“You trusted the Weather Proctor. What did it get you?” the Dean asked.
“Nothing. But at least he was my own kind.”
“Your own kind are killing you,” Ray pointed out. He held out his right hand, palm up. The Dean stepped forward, put his hand on top of Ray’s. A sheepish grin crossed the Dean’s face. “This is the way you do it, isn’t it?”
“Close enough,” Ray answered hard. His gut was in knots. He’d called time on their dithering; either they all joined him, or it was over. Another stepped forward. Then another. The pile of hands grew. If they’d been real humans, Ray wasn’t sure the thirteen of them could have made the circle, piled the hands on. Pothead was the last in.
“Yes!” Ray shouted. The others tried to follow suit. It was a bit weak, but it was a yes.
“Now what?” Pothead asked.
“Any way you could help me find the vanishing box?”
“Not with anything you got,” Pothead answered surely.
“We collected chunks of you up north. Could any of them help?”
“No,” Pothead shot back. Then, “Maybe. For a while after you’ve used a displacer, it has harmonies. If you picked up a harmonator as well as a couple of projectors, I might be able to knock something together. No. They’d be too small. You’d have to get too close.”
“I got a blimp that can move those rocks,” Ray said. “You find the right ones and we’ll have them in the air in an hour.”
“I’ll have to get back in your net.”
“You’re our ally. It’s open to you. To all of you if you need a place to retreat.” Ray hoped he hadn’t just screwed humanity. Trust was a two-way street.
“We will work with you,” the Dean said. “We’ll start moving this way. Net Dancer”—the Dean nodded at the one wearing a pot—“will work with you to find the vanishing box. The rest of us will do what we can to resist the President and the Provost.”
“Anything you do to the Weather Proctor will be appreciated.”
“WP has gone back North,” Pothead/Net Dancer noted.
Ray came awake, grabbed his commlink, and punched for Lek. “Old boy, that gremlin that was in our net is gonna be back any time now. Only this time, he’s on our side.”
“You sure?”
“We’ll know soon. He’s supposed to help you go over Harry’s samples and see if there’s a harmonator—whatever that is—and a couple of projectors. That might help us find the vanishing box, assuming we can get a blimp up in this weather.” Out Ray’s window, the clouds were scudding past, headed south. Hurricane number one must not be too far away.
“I’ll get right on it, sir.”
Ray sat back on his bunk. He’d just sworn alliance with a dozen of the strangest critters ever to cross a human’s path. Had he done right? Was the enemy of my enemy really my friend? Humanity had survived by that creed for a long time—and paid no small price. Ray considered the string of hurricanes pointed at his base, weighed the odds, and found them acceptable. Matt could still rock this place if all else failed. Nice thoughts for a loyal ally. He wondered what the AI’s were thinking. Probably not far from his own. Trust took time to build. Time they didn’t have. Experience they were about to get too much of.
The barefoot girl ordering a pail of beer was the first lead they had in a month. Jeff wanted to run after her the second she said her grandma knew where the box was. Ned and Du followed more cautiously. The girl stopped outside a small stone house. Ned hurried ahead to open the door for her; she disappeared inside. Ned and Jeff followed her into an unlit room. Dumont stood in the doorway for a long minute, eyes searching the street, then ducked inside and closed the door.
“Your man’s a nervous one,” a voice said from a dark corner.
“He’s alive. Others of his ken are not,” Ned answered.
“Fill me glass, baby duck, then run along home. That’s a good one,” the voice told the girl who struggled to pour beer from her large pail. Ned took over. Dumont opened the door for her as she left hurrying, as much as her load would permit.
“What do you know of Annie?” was what Jeff wanted to blurt out. He squatted down, waiting for Ned to do his magic. Today, Ned seemed in no hurry. “Do you think it will rain?” he asked.
“Da ya think it will ever stop raining?” the voice replied.
“Ya’ll need a high mountain. And strong friends,” Ned said.
“Like yours?”
“They’re not a bad bunch at your back, not bad at all.”
“I hear tell the starfolk are building a wall around their base. And they’re letting those who build it stay inside. You’d need a lot of people to build a wall around all that. How do you get a job like that?” the shadow woman asked.
“You’d need to be a starman’s friend.”
The woman edged out of the darkness into the light of the single window. Old, her hair was white, most teeth gone. “I can’t dig, but I do know something you want to know.” Ned said nothing. “I know where the girl is that the other two seek. The six that came South a month ago, my son takes them food. High up in the hills, at the rock castle. From the chatter of old women around town, I’m not the only one who knows. And if many know, someone is likely to talk to the others who want to know.”
“Who else asks?” Jeff demanded.
“You’re the young Sterling boy, aren’t you,” the old woman reached for Jeff’s face. Cold, calloused hands turned his head from side to side. “Why should you be asking?”
“Annie’s my…” Jeff choked.
The woman cackled. “So the Sterling boy has lost his girl to his sister’s toughs. That’s a funny one. Why don’t you run home and ask your big sis for her? Wouldn’t she be glad to give her back to you?” Jeff’s face burned, but he said nothing. Still chuckling, the woman held out a paper to Dumont. “Write to your people to let me and mine in the base.”
Du pointed his wrist unit at the woman. “I’ll do you one better. Duty section, Dumont here. This woman’s doing us a good turn. If she shows up at the gate, let her in.” Dumont got an acknowledgment, then added, “If you don’t hear from me, assume her good deed was a trap and act accordingly.”
“That wasn’t a nice thing to do,” the crone whined, but she turned to Jeff and shoved the paper under his nose. “You say something nice to your sister about me, too. You can never tell where I might need friends.”
Jeff scribbled, “Help her, she helped me, Jeff” on the paper and shoved it back. Still cackling, the woman slipped out a back door Jeff hadn’t known was there.
“Team, home on my signal. Bring the horses. We’re out of here,” Dumont snapped into his commlink in the curt way of talking the starmen had among themselves.
Ned rubbed his chin. “Think she told the others?”
“The more the merrier,” Dumont sighed. “Let’s move it, folks. Guns up. I wouldn’t put it past her to have sold us to Vicky.” So saying, Du slammed the front door open, waited a moment, then crossed the threshold at a run. He stopped only when he was across the street, his back to the stone fence, head and rifle high, sweeping the roofs.
“All clear,” Du called without a trace of the embarrassment Jeff would have felt if he’d admitted to such a fear, let it make him act like that, only to find it meant nothing. What would make a man like that? Jeff wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Then he remembered where he was headed and who was racing him there. There was no one better than Dumont to go there with.
The mule rolled up the alley, a dozen horses capered behind it. They piled in with the rest; it was a close fit. “Head east out of town, then take the south fork. We’re going back country. And boys and girls, heads up. We ain’t alone on this trip, and there’s no second prize.”
Then Du called the Colonel. “I got a handle on the vanishing box,” they both said at once, then laughed. The Colonel explained a blimp would be heading their way with some kind of gadget aboard that might locate the box. Du told him what the woman had said. Their review of the rock castle formation showed several large mounds of boulders covering thirty hectares. “Lots of places to hide,” the Colonel concluded.
“If your gadget ID’s the hideout, I’d be much obliged.”
“We’ll try. You say there are two other teams on this.”
“At least.”
“I’ll get a spy eye going south to give you a hand. Du, we got bad weather coming with north winds. Once they get up to sixty, seventy knots, there’s not a thing on Santa Maria but the shuttle that can work its way upwind.”
“Understood, sir. But we’ll get ’em first.”
Yes, Jeff whispered to himself, now we get the bastards who have Annie. Dear God, let her be safe.
“Up, slut!” the voice shouted as a foot took Annie in the ribs. “All of you, to the horses. We’ve got work to do.” Annie shook Nikki awake; sleeping was all they could do in this stinking barn. It seemed forever that they’d been here.
“About time,” “What took you so long?,” and “Where are those damn greens?” were the greetings Pretty Boy’s words brought from his thugs. Annie stood, waited patiently for someone to tell her what they wanted her and Nikki to do.
“Some old bitch in that stinking mudhole finally decided to take Vicky’s copper,” Pretty Boy bragged. “Told on her own son. He doesn’t know he’ll be leading us in tonight.” That brought laughs that held no humor.
“Bitch must have believed the weather report” drew more derisive laughter. Annie wondered; she’d heard the talk of four monster hurricanes headed at them out of season. Everyone here scorned the story. Annie trusted what Jeff had told her about the super computers the Colonel was fighting.
“Maybe the bitch wasn’t so dumb. I talked to Miss Vicky while I was in town. She believes that story enough to evacuate Richland. She definitely wants the box. Wants to be there when the starbase disappears.”
“Can we get more money?” the woman asked. Annie tried to shrink into the shadows. The men talked bad; the woman was bad.
“She doubled her offer if we get the box to her in the next three days.” That brought joy all around.
“She’ll triple that when we have the box,” the woman said with a soft smile. Annie tried to suppress a shiver, to hold perfectly still and stay unnoticed. The look in the woman’s eyes…Annie didn’t want that focused on her or Nikki.
The men saddled horses, checked air rifles, got supplies. The woman came over to Annie, a knife in her hand. “When we find them, you’ll do what I tell you or die worse than the woman at the house. You understand me, you two mud sluts?”
“Yes,” Annie stammered, keeping her hands folded, covering her wallet. For all this time, she’d seen no chance to escape. She’d held Dumont’s pistol and not used it. Today she’d find a way. Today she’d use it.
But not now. Not here, where there was no way out. She might kill the woman, but the men would get her. That was the counsel of despair, the old priest said in his sermons. No child of grace need taste despair, no matter what happened. Annie wondered if any child of grace had ever been in as big a mess as this. Somehow she doubted it.
Ray dropped by Lek’s shop. The old man was shaking his head. “That was one hell of an experience, Colonel.”
“Tell me about it later. Lek, you remember that rock in the cave I had you look at the day after Mary ran her first ore tap?”
“Yep.”
“I read your report on it. No activity of any sort, you said then. What do you think now?”
“Damn, sir, it could be pudding pie, for all I know.”
“Bring it in here. Then you and Net Dancer go over it, see if you can make it active again.”
“Sir, that AI is gonna be a busy little routine for the next couple of hours, working what we loaded on the blimp.”
“Can’t be too much of it there. How much bandwidth can our radio carry?” Ray frowned.
“Seems so, boss, but I don’t think those things are as big as we think they are. I mean, they’re big, but not like we think of as big. I don’t know.” Lek took his hat off, wiped his forehead. “I tried to get it to explain what it was doing. It laughed. I’ve never had a computer laugh at me. Said it would be easier for me to explain my network to some naked savage just hacking the first spear point out of flint than it would be for it to explain what it was doing. And you know, boss?” Ray nodded into Lek’s pregnant pause. “I believe it. Damned if I don’t. I don’t know about bringing that thing home. Before I talked to it, I thought it would be great, what it could do, what schooling our kids could get. Now, I don’t mind saying I’m spooked. That puppy is spooky shit.”
Ray didn’t blink. “Take part of Net Dancer out there when you get the stone. Can’t risk damaging it accidently. Maybe he can tell you how to cut it loose.” Ray finished what he intended to say. He’d heard Lek’s worry. Someday he’d think it through, but not now. Right now, he had four megahurricanes headed his way and needed every trick he could get his hands on to stop them. After that, he’d think this through. Assuming there was anything after, after that.
Ray had been in some weird staff meetings in his time. Today set a record he hoped never to break. Kat and Doc represented normal; Lek sat like a stone statue, just back with the rock. The padre represented the locals. Blimp pilot Rhynia Loramor had a pile of weather maps in front of her; Harry flipped through papers. Mary was late; Ray would start without her. The humans congregated around the right side of Ray’s battle board, casting uncomfortable glances at what stood on the left side.
There was the Dean and his twelve; Net Dancer had arranged it so all of them could access the local net. That might be another reason why Lek was so quiet; his net was totally compromised. Ray considered his options and decided to be glad Net Dancer had changed sides. Each of the dozen images that sporadically haunted Ray’s dreams now was a holograph, thirty centimeters tall, standing along the edge of the battle board, staring at the map Ray projected on it of South and North Continent. Most were in tweed jackets, their attempt at battle dress past. Net Dancer—or at least as much of him as wasn’t tied up on the blimp—wore a white lab coat complete with the ancient and required pocket protector of the technonerd.
“I’m isolating us from the two main protagonists. Are the rest of you here?” Ray began, making a circle around the table.
Mary came in, worry dripping with the rain from her face. “Colonel, we’ve got a problem.”
“Later, Captain; I’ve got an agenda, and we’re sticking to it.” Mary frowned, but settled into a chair.
Ray went on. “Are the twelve of you in here yet?”
“Yes.” The board turned brown around the base as the Dean walked across it. “Though I don’t know what good it will do. The P and P can follow us anytime they want.”
“They can, but we can make it hard on them. Net Dancer, what’s the main avenue of approach to the base?”
“The line left by the Gardener. It runs up this railroad bed, then follows this road.” The mentioned line lit up in red. “Your farmers don’t mess around with roads, so I guess the Gardener found them the safest routes to use.”
“We’ll cut it. Harry?”
“It’s mainly farmland. This route looks the most likely to me, too. What do you want done?”
“Since you fellows are inside,” Ray said, glancing at the Dean, “we blow it. In several places. Long, deep gashes that’ll take some repairing. Harry, take out a team of marines as soon as we’re done. Captain, can you spare Cassie?”
“Yes, sir.” Mary came out of what was bothering her long enough to start calling orders into her commlink.
That settled, Ray moved to his second item. “Right now the Pres and Provost can draw on their northern assets. I propose we eliminate them, cut them off from the North as they cut you off.”
Net Dancer shook his head. “There may be just one good path into this out-of-the-way mudhole, but there are hundreds to North Continent.”
“We eliminate North,” Ray said simply. That got everyone’s attention. “These are the mountains that serve as their main power base.” Ray circled the pink and blue areas of the map, elevated them into topo relief. The Dean nodded. “We make them go away as soon as we have our hands on the vanishing box.”
“You can’t do that” came from several of the tiny images…and Mary.
Ray waved Mary to silence and faced his allies. “This is war. We enforce our will upon the enemy or, failing that, destroy him. The President and Provost depend on these for their strength. To enforce our will, these have to go. If we have to kill the President and Provost, these go.”
“But, but,” the Dean sputtered, “those were our nodes, too. You destroy them and we’ll be forever rebuilding ourselves.”
“You don’t have them now,” Ray said.
“But we’ll get them back.”
“Not the way things are going. You were losing last time we talked. If things keep going the way they are, you will lose. There won’t be any ‘you’ left to reoccupy those nodes.” These folks really didn’t know war. You don’t win one cheap.
“But if you destroy them, you’ll destroy us?”
That stopped Ray in his tracks. “I don’t understand.”
Net Dancer was the one who stepped forward to look up at Ray with tiny, earnest eyes. “We are here. Our decision-making processes are here. So much of what we know, have done, recall, is there, stored in networks under those mountains. We brought what we needed to survive. But to do more, to really live, we need those rich memories.”
“But I see what the Colonel is talking about,” the Dean said, coming forward. “For us, those are memories. For P & P, those are sources of new nanos, planning, and power. They are reviewing what happens down here, learning what works and doesn’t work. Up there, they are learning how to win this war. What we face here are only their long arms and fingers, so to speak. I know it will be hard if the Colonel wipes out those nodes, but we do have backups scattered around. We could rebuild ourselves.”
“Not all of them,” Net Dancer insisted.
“Enough.” The Dean suddenly cut Dancer off. “Colonel, I agree, as soon as you can, make those mountains vanish.”
Ray turned to Lek and Mary. “Lek, as soon as you’ve got the vanishing box, take the shuttle north.”
“Yes, sir” and “No, sir” greeted that order. Ray said nothing to Mary’s objection.
She leaned forward into his silence. “I was at the shuttle hangar just now. Somebody slashed every tire on it last night. We’ve only got two spares. The shuttle’s going nowhere.”
“Who did it?”
“Sir, we got ten, fifteen thousand strangers on this base. It could have been anyone.”
“Our security patrols—” Ray started.
“Walked past it every thirty minutes last night, on schedule. None noticed it was a bit lower than usual.”
Ray leaned back in his chair, trying to adjust. Were the Provost or President already controlling people on his base? So far they never actually made anyone do anything. Which of his human enemies had decided the shuttle gave him too much power and ordered someone inside his fence to take it out?
Ray’d been trained to take a lance in the chest and keep moving. A commander had to keep moving; if he didn’t, the command didn’t. Should he drop the northern sally or try to make it happen some other way? He’d browbeat his allies into it. Could he walk away from it?
Down the table, the blimp pilot shuffled her papers. “Sir, could you bring up the latest weather on that board of yours?” Ray did. “These things rotate counterclockwise,” she said, half to herself. “If the blimp down South doesn’t get back before the winds pick up, I’ve ordered him to loop around the mountains and cruise up the other side. We’ve never been there. He’s kind of jazzed on the prospects. Me, I’ve always wanted to ride a hurricane. We can’t go north against those winds, but if you ride them south, they turn westward, then north,” she grinned.
Ray shook his head. What was it with stick and rudder people? You put a wing, spaceship, balloon under someone and they started thinking they were indestructible gods. “You want to ride it all the way around?”
“The winds will tear you apart,” Mary said.
Rhynia pursed her lips. “Not if I stay far enough out, where the winds are less than forty miles per hour, not shifting and ripping at a hundred twenty. Hell, I pull this off, every gas bag jockey that ever flies will know my name,” she crowed.
The Dean shook his head. “There are some things that were never fully covered in my databases. Go ahead, make it vanish. I’ll want to write a whole new one anyway after watching you.”
“It’s what happens when you go to war, Dean. You never know what the human heart is good for until you ask ’em for more than they ever thought they could give. Now, folks, let’s get busy.”