Battlemind (37 page)

“Sometimes,” Norris pointed out, “dizziness is an asset for physicists.”

The audience laughed, but Kara heard the nervousness there. One-GEF was preparing to leap into a very dark unknown, with no guarantees that they would be able to return.

“We think,” Norris said, “that the reason we’ve not been able to send probes more than a few centuries into the future and have them come back to us is that they, well, they get lost among all those countless branchings of the universe. That may also explain our problems with teleoperation through the Stargate across such long periods of time. Theoretically, we should have a much better chance. Instead of sending one probe with a single AI or teleoperator aboard, we will send three DalRiss and three Confederation vessels through to the future. The DalRiss Achievers will be able to sense that new space and help prepare a kind of road map for us to find our way back. We will take each jump step by step, and not proceed unless we have a good indication that we can find our way back. We may even learn what we need to learn, about the Web, from our first translation, to the future Gr’tak system. There are indications, from the probes that have made it back from there, that… there is something strange there. A structure. An engineering project, if you will. If we learn what this is, we may learn something important to our struggle against the Web here.”

“How can we be sure we’ll always have a stargate to make these jumps?” Captain Deverest asked. “I mean, the Web uses them to just dump kickers into a target system, even when there’s no stargate there, like just before the Battle of Earth. If we emerged somewhere out there and there was no stargate for the return trip, we’d be gokked, but good!”

“All of our translations will be made from one gate to another,” Dev said, moving once more to the center of the assembly. The equations above his head unfolded further. Kara could just follow them, watching how certain specific course-vector parameters in a close approach to a stargate excluded the possibility of emerging in empty space.

Red and green lines began drawing themselves next to the stargate image, modeling different types of approaches, and accompanied by sets of statements in calculus.

“You see?” Dev said. “By staying within these parameters, we limit our choices for emergence into normal four-space. If we go in
this
way, we can have what’s called an open-field emergence, which means we could pop up anywhere. That’s how the Web has been reaching places like Sol and Alya, where there aren’t any local stargates. They drop out of four-space and emerge in the general target area, but specifically in a place where the local gravitational gradient is relatively smooth. But by adjusting our speed and angle of approach into the space close to the rotating cylinder of a stargate, we can make sure that when we reemerge into four-space again, it’ll be where the… call it the
quality
of local space is the same as the place where we dropped out in the first place.”

“In other words,” Vic said, nodding, “alongside another stargate.”

“Exactly. But I think you can all appreciate the importance of sticking to the flight vectors exactly. Any shipjacker who lets himself drift is going to have one hell of a long walk home.”

The audience laughed.
At least their morale is high,
Kara thought.

“So,” Captain Hernandez said. The skipper of the cruiser
Independence
was a small, dark-skinned man with a black mustache and a brusque, no-nonsense manner. “The idea is that we travel into the future, from one Stargate to another. Looking for… what? Allies, like our orders say? Or something else? Information, you said.”

“We wrote the orders to state explicitly that we were looking for allies,” Dev said. “As much as anything else, that was to sell the idea to the Confederation Senate.”

Briefly, Dev’s eyes met Kara’s. They had a haunted, empty look to them, and his form showed a distinct translucency.
My God,
she thought.
What happened to him during the battle?

“That was Senator Alessandro’s idea, actually,” Dev continued. “Sometimes it’s hard to sell civilians on how a key piece of intelligence can turn a battle, or a campaign. If we tell them we’re going into the remote future to find a way to beat the Web, they’d ask why we don’t just keep sending probes. And… maybe they’d be right. If we sent out enough, we might get lucky. But I’m convinced that we’ll be luckier still if we send a sizable contingent up there, people able to get a good look and make solid decisions. Decisions that may, literally, reshape our own universe of possible futures. Instead of arguing the point, we’ve told them we’re looking for allies, somebody big enough and powerful enough to help us put the Web in its place. Simple, direct, and easy to say ‘yes’ to.”

“We might meet such allies,” Admiral Barnes pointed out. “We shouldn’t overlook the possibility, anyway.”

“We might meet allies,” Dev conceded. “Or the Web, grown so powerful that humanity and every other species in the Galaxy is extinct. Or ourselves, for that matter, if we survive. Where are we going to be in a thousand years?”

“Where’s the
Web
going to be a thousand years from now,” Vic said. “That’s a damned frightening thought.”

“Well, it’s a fair bet that either we’re going to win, or they will. It might take more than a thousand years to decide the thing, though. The Galaxy is one hell of a big place. In any case, our primary objective is to get information.
Any
information. About the Web. About our war with them. Anything that might help us shape strategy here in the twenty-sixth century. As a secondary objective, we’ll be looking for some sign of where all of this…” He stopped and gestured again at the image hanging in the darkness, indicating the streams of plasma spiraling in from the stars. “Where this, and the plasma they must be stripping from thousands of other stars gone nova, is going. Or when it is going. They must be using it somewhere, or some
when,
to build or power something. It would be useful to know what.”

“Any reason why you use a thousand years in your argument?”

“Not really. We want to select a figure where some change has manifested itself, one way or the other.” He spread his hands. “Theoretically, I guess, we could travel billions of years into the future, without a problem. We would just need to select the appropriate course and approach speed to the Stargate.”

“A billion years might be no problem for
you,”
one of the company commanders off the
Karyu
said, and the others in the audience laughed.

Kara felt a small stab of concern for Dev, though, as the laughter broke down into scattered chuckles. He looked… almost translucent, and that was something that just shouldn’t happen to normal image projection through a Companion or—as in Dev’s case—the Naga fragment residing in the computer net where he was currently resident. What was wrong with him? It was almost as though he was having trouble hanging on to his own conceptualization of himself.

“We tried to make this clear from the beginning,” Dev said, “but let me restate it now, for the record. There are no guarantees here. It’s entirely possible that we’ll find ourselves unable to return… especially if our understanding of quantum physics, of the interplay of quantum universes, turns out to be less than accurate. This is strictly a volunteer mission. Anyone, any one of you, anyone in your departments who doesn’t want to come along, all you need do is speak up between now and zero-six-hundred hours tomorrow. Talk to me, or General Hagan, or Admiral Barnes, or have a word with your section or department leader. We’ll transfer you to one of the Confederation ships with the Unified Fleet, and not a thing will be said.”

“Sir,” Captain Deverest said. “That was quite clear long before we started playing with whole universes. I know I speak for my whole company when I say, if there’s a chance here of beating the gokking Web once and for all, then we want in!”

The assembly dissolved in a chorus of shouted agreements, cheers, and clapping hands.

Eventually, the group returned to the briefing, which ultimately began to wind down into the drudge-work details of ship and crew preparation. When the assembly was dismissed an hour later, only Kara, Vic, and Dev remained.

Dev looked at Vic. “You’re still not convinced about this, are you. Do you want out?”

Vic sighed. “No. I’m in. I just… well…”

“I’m still not convinced that we’re going to find help in the future,” Kara put in. “Whether the Web is still there or not, civilization a few thousand years from now is going to have plenty of troubles of its own.”

“You’re probably right,” Dev said. “That’s why our emphasis will be on getting intelligence. Information. That, by itself, will be the most powerful weapon we could find.”

“I’m not sure I see how,” Kara put in. “If we find out the Web is destined to win? What do we do? Give up, roll over, and die?”

“Quantum theory doesn’t believe in
destined,”
Dev said. “Since all possible outcomes are inevitable, as part of the branching, many-universe hypothesis, there’s no inevitable outcome to anything.”

“All of this kind of avoids a major question though,” Vic said. “Our operational orders for Gateway say we’re to conduct reconnaissance for the purpose of gathering intelligence. It doesn’t say how we’re supposed to do that.”

“The Net,” Dev told him, “has become a necessary part of the human community. Quite apart from the Overmind, it’s a tool for human interaction, trade, education, and personal fulfillment as vital and as important as the creation of the family. Of agriculture. Of language. It may well mark the next significant step in our evolution.”

Kara’s eyes widened. “Interesting thought. I never thought of it in quite those terms. The Net as another step in Man’s social evolution… on the same level as the invention of language. Pretty far-reaching stuff.”

“It’s true. If any fact, no matter how obscure or how complex, is almost instantly accessible by anyone equipped to retrieve it, then we’ve entered a new evolutionary phase, one closer to Daren’s odd little Commune creatures, where we all become mobile extensions of a broadly distributed, information-based society.”

“Put that way,” Vic said, “it sounds like the Web.”

“Does it? Maybe it does, though I have a feeling the Web doesn’t perceive information the same way we do. For one thing, it seems to ignore things it doesn’t understand. Man is… built differently. He’s not exclusionary.”

“I don’t know about that,” Kara said. “How often do we refuse to look facts in the face? Or reject an idea because it’s not what we were brought up with, or because it violates some cultural taboo?”

“There’s a difference, I think, between censoring information because you don’t approve of it, and not being able to process it in the first place. Look at the Imperials and their bias against Companions. Some Nihonjin
do
use Companions, you know, despite the social prejudice against it. And people out on the Frontier nearly all have them now. There has been change. And I suspect the Imperials will come around to our way of doing things in a few more years. If they don’t, a synthesis will emerge, something involving both our way of doing things and theirs.”

“You were talking about the Net being an important part of our lives,” Vic said. “That’s true whether you talk about us or the Imperials. What’s your point?”

“That we can expect to find the Net existing up in the future. Or at least, we’ll find its descendant, something that does the same thing as the human network we know, only bigger and better and more powerful.”

“The Overmind?”

“Maybe.” His eyes were distant again. Kara was certain she saw a stark and cold fear there. God… what had happened to him? “I don’t know. But no matter what the Net is going to evolve into, I would expect to find some sort of information retrieval system. Some means of storing history and being able to download it. And that history, I would think, should feature our own struggle with the Web rather prominently.”

“So we go into the future and download their equivalent of ViRhistory,” Vic said. “Something with a title like,
How Humans Won the Web War.
Of course, nothing says we’ll be able to access their system.”

“The trend has been toward nonspecialization,” Dev reminded him. “That’s become especially important since we’ve begun meeting nonhuman species. The Gr’tak are excited about the Net, now that they’ve been able to adapt their artificials to access it. That job was made a hell of a lot easier by the Companions. And Companion biotech, of course, is compatible with the older cephlinks, like the Imperials still use, which is why we’ve been able to penetrate their systems. Likely, whatever system is in place a millennium or two from now, it’s going to be something just about anyone could use. Or could learn to use, with some help from the Naga we’ll take with us.”

Vic smiled. “Even if what we find is a Web version of the Net? You know, if they win, they’re not likely to keep the network in place.”

“Then we’ll see how we can tap the Web’s communications network,” Dev said. “That’s essentially what we did at Nova Aquila, with the Overmind’s help. We can’t do it now because they’ve changed tactics in response to our tactics at Nova Aquila, but if we emerge deep in Web territory a few thousand years from now, well, they won’t be expecting us then, will they? Maybe we can tap their Net and learn what we need to learn—like where things went wrong for humans—before they even know we’re there.”

“Like mice in the walls,” Vic said. He shook his head, then grinned. “I like that. I have to admit, I’m damned curious about what we’re going to find up there.” He stopped, his gaze going expressionless for a moment. “Uh oh.”

“What is it?” Kara asked.

“You two’d better see this.”

The Stargate still hanging above their heads vanished. In its place, seven DalRiss transports and seven starships, just dropping free of their larger carriers, appeared. They were Imperials, without a doubt, a kilometer-long ryu dragonship, two cruisers, and four large destroyers. A voice began speaking, caught in mid-sentence.