“But you don’t know for sure?”
“No sir. These are estimations and theories. We won’t know if a version works until after it’s proved successful.”
“The trouble with that is, a successful anti-memory would exterminate every soul in the beyond,” Euru said quietly.
“Is that true?”
“Yes, sir,” Gilmore said. “That’s our dilemma. There can be no small scale test or demonstration. Anti-memory is effectively
a doomsday weapon.”
“You’ll never get the souls to believe that,” Lalwani said. “In fact, given what we know of conditions in the beyond, you
wouldn’t even get many of them to pay attention to the warning.”
“I cannot conceivably permit the use of a weapon which will exterminate billions of human entities,” the First Admiral said.
“You have to provide me with alternative options.”
“But Admiral—”
“No. I’m sorry, Doctor. I know you’ve worked hard on this, and I appreciate the effort you and your team have made. Nobody
is more aware than myself of just how extreme the threat which the possessed present. But even that cannot justify such a
response.”
“Admiral! We’ve explored every option we can think of. Every theorist I’ve got in every scientific discipline there is has
been working on ideas and wild theories. We even tried an exorcism after that priest on Lalonde claimed his worked. Nothing.
Nothing
else has come close to being viable. This is the only progress we have made.”
“Doctor, I’m not denigrating your work or your commitment. But surely you can see this is completely unacceptable. Morally,
ethically, it is wrong. It cannot be anything other than wrong. What you are suggesting is racial genocide. I will tell you
this, the authorization to use such a monstrosity will never come from my lips. Nor I suspect, and hope, would any other Navy
officer issue it. Now find me another solution. This project is terminated.”
______
The First Admiral’s staff ran a quiet sweepstake to see how long it would be before President Haaker datavised for a conference,
the winner called it in at ninety-seven minutes. They sat facing each other across the oval table in a security-level-one
sensenviron bubble room. Both kept their generated faces neutral and intonations level.
“Samual, you can’t cancel the anti-memory project,” the President opened with. “It’s all we’ve got.”
In his office, Samual Aleksandrovich smiled at the way Haaker used his first name, the man always did that when he was going
to adopt a totally intransigent line. “Apart from the Mortonridge Liberation, you mean?” He could imagine the tight lips drawn
at that jibe.
“As you so kindly pointed out earlier, the Liberation is not a solution to the overall problem. Anti-memory is.”
“Undoubtedly. Too final. Look, I don’t know if Mae and Jeeta explained this fully to you, but the research team believe it
would exterminate every soul in the beyond. You can’t seriously consider that.”
“Samual, those souls you’re so concerned about are attempting to enslave every one of us. I have to say I’m surprised by your
attitude. You’re a military man, you know that war is the result of total irrationality combined with conflict of interest.
This crisis is the supreme example of both. The souls desperately want to return, and we cannot allow them to. They will extinguish
the human race if they succeed.”
“They will ruin almost everything we have accomplished. But total life extinction, no. I don’t even believe they can possess
all of us. The Edenists have proved remarkably resistant; and the spread has all but stopped.”
“Yes, thanks to your quarantine. It’s been a successful policy, I won’t deny that. But so far we’ve been unable to offer anything
that can reverse what’s happened. And that’s what the vast majority of the Confederation population want. Actually, that’s
what they insist upon. The spread might have slowed, but it hasn’t stopped. You know that as well as I do. And the quarantine
is difficult to enforce.”
“You really don’t understand what you’re proposing, do you. There are billions of souls there. Billions.”
“And they are living in torment. For whatever reason, they cannot move on as this Laton character claimed is possible. Don’t
you think they’d welcome true death?”
“Some of them might. I probably would. But neither you nor I have the right to decide that for them.”
“They forced us into this position. They’re the ones invading us.”
“That does not give us the right to exterminate them. We have to find a way to help them; by doing that we help ourselves.
Can you not see that?”
The President abandoned his image’s impartiality and leant forwards, his voice becoming earnest. “Of course I can see that.
Don’t try to portray me as some kind of intransigent villain here. I’ve supported you, Samual, because I know nobody can command
the Navy better than you. And I’ve been rewarded by that support. So far we’ve kept on top of the political situation, kept
the hotheads in line. But it can’t last forever. Sometime, somehow, a solution is going to have to be presented to the Confederation
as a whole. And all we’ve got so far is one solitary possible answer: the anti-memory. I cannot permit you to abandon that,
Samual. These are very desperate times; we have to consider everything, however horrific it appears.”
“I will never permit such a thing to be used. For all they are different, the souls are human. I am sworn to protect life
throughout the Confederation.”
“The order to use it would not be yours to give. A weapon like that never falls within the prerogative of the military. It
belongs to us, the politicians you despise.”
“Disapprove of. Occasionally.” The First Admiral permitted a slight smile to show.
“Keep on searching, Samual. Bully Gilmore and his people into finding a decent solution, a humanitarian one. I want that as
much as you do. But they are to continue to develop the anti-memory in parallel.”
There was a pause. Samual knew that to refuse now would mean Haaker issuing an official request through his office. Which
in turn would make his position as First Admiral untenable. That was the stark choice on offer.
“Of course, Mr President.”
President Haaker gave a tight smile, and datavised his processor to cancel the meeting, safe in the knowledge that their oh-so
diplomatic clash would be known to no one.
The encryption techniques which provided a security-level-one conference were, after all, known to be unbreakable. The most
common statistic quoted by security experts was that every AI in the Confederation running in parallel would be unable to
crack the code in less than five times the life of the universe. It would, therefore, have proved quite distressing to the
CNIS secure communications division (as well as their ESA and B7 equivalents, among others) to know that a perfect replica
of a 27-inch 1980’s Sony Trinitron colour television was currently showing the image of the First Admiral and the Assembly
President to an audience of fifteen attentive duomillenarians and one highly inattentive ten-year-old girl.
Tracy Dean sighed in frustration as the picture vanished to a tiny phosphor dot in the middle of the screen. “Well, that’s
gone and put the cat amongst the pigeons, and no mistake.”
Jay was swinging her feet about while she sat on a too-high stool. As well as being their main social centre, the clubhouse
catered for the retired Kiint observers who weren’t quite up to living by themselves in a chalet anymore. A huge airy building,
with wide corridors and broad archways opening into sunlit rooms that all seemed to resemble hotel lounges. The walls were
white plaster, with dark-red tile floors laid everywhere. Big clay pots growing tall palms were a favourite. Tiny birds with
bright gold and scarlet bodies and turquoise membrane wings flittered in and out through the open windows, dodging the purple
provider globes. The whole theme of the clubhouse was based around comfort. There were no stairs or steps, only ramps; chairs
were deeply cushioned; even the food extruded by the universal providers, no matter what type, was soft, requiring little
effort to chew.
The first five minutes walking through the building had been interesting. Tracy showed her round, introducing her to the other
residents, all of whom were quite spry despite their frail appearance. Of course they were all very happy to see her, making
a fuss, patting her head, winking fondly, telling her how nice her new dress was, suggesting strangely named biscuits, sweets
and ice creams they thought she’d enjoy. They didn’t move much from their lounge chairs; contenting themselves with watching
events around the Confederation and nostalgic programmes from centuries past.
Jay and Tracy wound up in the lounge with the big TV for half the afternoon, while the residents argued over what channel
to watch. They flipped through real-time secret governmental and military conferences, alternating those with a show called
“Happy Days,” which they all cackled along to in synchronisation with the brash laughter track. Even the original commercial
breaks were showing. Jay smiled in confusion at the archaic unfunny characters, and kept sneaking glances out of the window.
For the last three days she’d played on the beach with the games the universal providers had extruded; swam, gone for long
walks along the sand and through the peaceful jungle behind the beach. The meals had easily been as good as the ones in Tranquillity.
Tracy had even got her a processor block with an AV lens that was able to pick up Confederation entertainment shows, which
she watched for a few hours every evening. And Richard Keaton had popped in a couple of times to see how she was getting on.
But, basically, she was fed-up. Those planets hanging so invitingly in the sky above were a permanent temptation, a reminder
that things in the Kiint home system were a bit more active than the human beach.
Tracy caught her wistful gaze once and patted her hand. “Cultural differences,” she said confidentially as the mortified Fonz
received his army draft papers. “You have to understand the decade before you understand the humour.”
Jay nodded wisely, and wondered just when she’d be allowed to see Haile again. Haile was a lot more fun than the Fonz. Then
they’d flicked stations to the First Admiral and the President.
“Corpus will have to intervene now,” one of the other residents said, a lady called Saska. “That anti-memory could seep outside
the human spectrum. Then there’d be trouble.”
“Corpus won’t,” Tracy replied. “It never does. What is, is. Remember?”
“Check your references,” another woman said. “Plenty of races considered deploying similar weapons when they encountered the
beyond. We’ve got records of eighteen being used.”
“That’s awful. What happened?”
“They didn’t work very well. Only a moderate percentage of the inverse transcendent population were eliminated. There’s too
much pattern distortion among the inverses to conduct an anti-memory properly. No species has ever developed one that operates
fast enough to be effective. Such things cannot be considered a final solution by any means.”
“Yes but that idiot Haaker won’t know that until after it’s been tried,” Galic, one of the men, complained. “We can’t possibly
allow a human to die, not even an inverse. No human has ever died.”
“We’ve suffered a lot though,” a resentful voice muttered.
“And they’ll start dying on the removed worlds soon enough.”
“I tell you, Corpus won’t intervene.”
“We could appeal,” Tracy said. “At the very least we could ask for an insertion at the anti-memory project to monitor its
development. After all, if anyone’s going to come up with an anti-memory fast enough to devastate the beyond, it’ll be our
weapons-mad race.”
“All right,” Saska said. “But we’ll need a quorum before we can even get the appeal up to an executive level.”
“As if that’ll be a problem,” Galic said.
Tracy smiled mischievously. “And I know of someone who’s perfectly suited to this particular insertion.” Several groans were
issued across the lounge.
“Him?”
“Far too smart for his own good, if you ask me.”
“No discipline.”
“We never ran observer operations like that.”
“Cocky little bugger.”
“Nonsense,” Tracy said briskly. She put her arm round Jay. “Jay likes him, don’t you, Jay?”
“Who?”
“Richard.”
“Oh.” Jay held up Prince Dell; for some unexplainable reason she hadn’t managed to abandon the bear in her room. “He gave
me this,” she announced to the lounge at large.
Tracy laughed. “There you go then. Arnie, you prepare the appeal, you’re best acquainted with the minutiae of Corpus protocol
procedures.”
“All right.” One of the men raised his hands in gruff submission. “I suppose I can spare the time.”
The TV was switched back on, playing the signature tune for “I Love Lucy.” Tracy pulled a face, and took Jay’s hand. “Come
on, poppet, I think you’re quite bored enough already.”
“Who’s the Corpus?” Jay asked as they walked through the front entrance and into the sharp sunlight. There was a black iron
penny-farthing bicycle mounted on a stone pedestal just outside. The first time Jay had seen it, she’d taken an age to work
out how people were supposed to ride it.
“Corpus isn’t a who, exactly,” Tracy said. “It’s more like the Kiint version of an Edenist Consensus. Except, it’s sort of
a philosophy as well as a government. I’m sorry, that’s not a very good explanation, is it?”
“It’s in charge, you mean?”
Tracy’s hesitation was barely noticeable. “Yes, that’s right. We have to obey its laws. And the strongest of all is non-intervention.
The one which Haile broke to bring you here.”
“And you’re worried about this anti-memory weapon thing?”
“Badly worried, though everyone is trying not to show it. That thing could cause havoc if it gets released into the beyond.
We really can’t allow that to happen, poppet. Which is why I want Richard sent to Trafalgar.”
“Why?”
“You heard what they were saying. He lacks discipline.” She winked.