"All right," Fred said abruptly. Cindy could feel a harshness behind the tone, the same force that had been hag-riding him since his return from Earth. There were new lines graven in the heavy-boned face, down from nose to mouth. "First, let me say you're all here because I trust you. Your intentions, and your ability to keep your mouths shut. We've all worked together for…
at least a decade now. You've all shown that you are willing to cut yourselves off from the outside world to work on the Project in its various phases." He paused, looked down at his hands for a moment. "I think most of you who haven't been told have guessed; the
New America is
not the only purpose of this installation."
Ali Harahap nodded. "Indeed so," he said in his singsong Sumatran accent, lighting a cigarette that smelled sharply of cloves. "But what is not said, cannot be betrayed." There were more nods around the table.
"Good man." Fred nodded, satisfied. "That was the right attitude. It isn't anymore. Before I go on, I want to make clear that what I'm about to say is unauthorized. If this ever gets out, I could be shot." A slight intake of breath among the others. "And all of you could be ruined, your careers ended. Does anyone want to leave?"
Colin McKenzie laughed shakily and wiped at the sweat on his high forehead; he was Quebec-Scots, a heavy-construction man.
"Wouldn't do any good, would it, unless we finked? And you're the OSS rep here, Fred."
The security chief waited. When a minute had gone by, he turned to de Ribeiro. "Fill them in, professor."
"We all know we have been building a starship," he began, stroking his goatee, "with surprising success—Although the only way to test it is to undertake the voyage. Scarcely a low-risk method! Many of you have suspected that the reason for this is as a last-ditch guarantee against defeat, to preserve something if the Alliance falls."
Patricia Hayato nodded. "We've all gotten used to secret projects," she said. "Since the War, every five years another group of scientists drops out of sight. The Los Alamos Project pattern. Mistaken, in my opinion. It sacrifices long-term to short-term; more suitable for wartime than the Protracted Struggle."
De Ribeiro inclined his head graciously. "What is the best disguise? A disguise that is no disguise at all. Here we hid the
New America
within a series of concentric shells of secret projects, each one genuine. Within the
New America,
the ultimate secret. A weapon."
Hayato threw up her hands. "Oh, no, not some superbomb!"
Everyone else winced slightly; the rain of fission weapons that had brought down the Japanese Empire towards the end of the Eurasian War was still a sensitive subject. "Just what we need, more firepower. What have you discovered, a way to make the Sun go nova?"
Lefarge rapped sharply on the table. "Ladies, gentlemen, we've all been cooped up with each other so long our arguments have gotten repetitive. Let the professor speak, please."
The Brazilian examined his fingertips. "We've developed a weapon that is no weapon—which should appeal to you, my dear colleague." Hayato flushed; she took neozen more seriously than the founders of that remarkably playful philosophy might have wished. "You were quite right; bigger and better means of destruction have reached a point of self-defeating futility. But consider what
controls
those weapons."
"Dataplague," Henry Wasser said. He was head of the antimatter drive systems, and worked most closely with the Infosystems Division de Ribeiro directed. "I always did think you had too much facility for what we needed."
De Ribeiro beamed; he had always had something of the teacher about him, and enjoyed a sharp student. "Exactly." A sip of coffee. "To be more precise, contamination of the embedded compinstruction sets of mainbrain computers, the cores." The white-haired Brazilian sighed. "Their complexity has reached a point barely comprehensible even to us, and the Domination's people are somewhat behind." He brooded for a moment. "The paranoia both sides labor under has been a terrible handicap.
Both in designing our little infovirus, and in spreading it. The absolute barrier between data-storage and compinstruction…"
Another silence. "Still, perhaps our errors in design have spared us certain temptations, certain risks. Often I feel that computers might have been as much a snare, a means of subverting our basic humanity, as the Draka biocontrol. As it is, we have reached a limit and will probably go no further—" Lefarge rapped on the table again, and he started.
"Si. In any case, it was unleashed perhaps a year ago. It spreads slowly, from one manufacturing center to another, as improved instruction-sets are handed out. In the event of war—"
he grinned—"The Draka will find their machines… rebellious."
"And when enough are infected, the Alliance would move.
That was the original plan." Lefarge looked around the table.
"We're cut off here. Not from the latest fashions or slang; we get those coming in. But from the movement of thought, opinion, the climate of feeling. They've relaxed, down there, this past decade. They've started to think there might be some alternative to kill-or-be-killed. Fewer and fewer clashes, no big incidents.
The Draka have been cutting back on their ground forces; these so-called 'reforms'…"
His fist thumped the boards. "They know enough to see that tanks aren't going to win them any more wars. And a better-treated slave is still a slave… Hell, I don't have to tell
you
all this. The crux of it is, they've changed the plans, there in San Fran. They're thinking in terms of an ultimatum; demonstrating our capacity, then demanding that the Draka back down, accept disarmament as a prelude to,"—his mouth twisted—"
gradual
reform."
Their eyes turned to Hayato. The lifesystems specialist fiddled with her cup. "No," she said. "It wouldn't work." Meeting their regard: "Yes, I know I've made myself unpopular by saying Japan would have surrendered without cities being destroyed by nuclear weapons. I still think so. The Domination is a different case entirely. The old militarist caste in Japan, they could surrender, sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the nation. The Draka, the Citizens, their caste is their nation. If that's destroyed, everything worthwhile in the universe is gone, and they'd bring the world down with them out of sheer spite. "
Lefarge turned his hands palm-up. "Anyone think different?"
McKenzie hesitated, then spoke. "Fred… Look, I'm just a glorified high-iron man. What the hell do I know? That's what we've got spooks like you for, and a government we elected, come to that. Policy's their department."
Lefarge opened his mouth to speak. Hayato cut in: "That's bullshit, Colin, and you know it. We've got the power; that means we have the responsibility to make a decision, one way or another. And it
is
a decision, either way."
He slumped. "I've got kin back on Earth," he said.
"We all do," Lefarge said. "Every indication of the way they've configured their off-Earth forces, every intuition I've built up about Draka behavior, tells me that the Snakes have some sort of ace in the hole comparable to us. It's a race, and we know for a fact that they won't hesitate a moment once they're ready; they aren't going to suffer from divided counsels. That's why we've got to act. Right, let's have a show of hands."
One by one, they went up. McKenzie's last of all, but definitely.
"I hope everybody realizes we're committed? Good, here's what we do. First, we make multiple insertions of the infovirus; we're set up for it. Next—"
Cindy Lefarge held her husband's hand. The grip was strong enough to be painful, but she squeezed back patiently, waiting in the silence of the emptied room.
"Am I doing the right thing?" he asked at last, in a haunted voice.
"It's what Uncle Nate wanted, honey," she whispered back.
"Yes, but… he was an old,
old
man by that time."
"And he'd taught you to think for yourself!" she replied sharply. He looked up, startled, as she continued.
"You wouldn't be doing this if you didn't think it was right,"
Cindy went on. "For what it's worth, I agree… but you know what Uncle Nate always said: 'you take the choice, you bear the responsibility'." More gently: "I can't be sure that what you're doing is right, Fred. But I'm behind you, and I always will be."
"I know," he said, and raised her hand to his cheek. His shoulders were still slumped, as if under an invisible weight. "I'm left with another question. Is what I'm doing
enough?"
INGOLFSSON ISLAND PRESERVE
SEYCHELLES DISTRICT
ZANJ COAST PROVINCE
DOMINATION OF THE DRAKA
APRIL 2, 1998
Marya Lefarge shaded her eyes and looked out over the waves.
It was a clear day, and the afternoon sun was white light on the hammered indigo metal of the ocean; there was enough wind to ruffle it, throwing foam crests on the waves and up the talc-fine powder sand of the beach. The endless background hiss of the light surf was the loudest sound; above her the wicker sunshade thuttered, and the fronds of the coconut palms rustled over that.
Out in the water the three Draka were playing, and she could see their bodies flashing through the surface layers. Then they were in the shallows, and Gwen and her young man swept Yolande up between them. They came trotting up the beach with an effortless stride; New Race muscles could do on Earth what ordinary humans did in low-gravity.
She studied them as they washed off the salt under a worked-bronze waterspout and walked over to the blanket and deckchairs. You could see the differences better nude and wet; slight variances in the way the joints moved, the pattern of muscles sliding under tight brown skin. It was natural; they could secrete melanin until they were at home under this equatorial sun or pale to cream white at will; tablets had done that for Yolande and herself. No body hair, save for the scalp and the pubic bush. They walked unconcerned over sand that had made the elder Draka slip on thong-sandals. Yolande moved with the studied grace of a lifelong athlete in hard training; the younger pair had the fluid suppleness of leopards.
Oh, Gwen
, she thought.
It was easier when you were a child
.
A saddening thing, not to be able to wish luck and happiness to one you loved.
"Remind me not to play tag with yo' New Race types,"
Yolande was saying, her hands resting on their shoulders. "I wonder that yo' puts up with us fossils."
"Oh, we've got time," the man chuckled. He was a handspan past six feet, with a head of loose white-gold ringlets.
That they do
, Marya thought with a slight shiver in the warm tropical day. They were in their early twenties, and it would be two centuries before they showed much sign of age.
How can
even Draka bear to cut themselves off from their descendants
so?
Gwen gave her companion a good-natured thump on the ribs.
"A little mo' respect for my momma, there," she said. "See yo' up at the house, Alois."
"Gwen. Miz Ingolfsson," he nodded to the two.
Yolande threw herself down on the blanket and stretched.
"Nice boy," she said. "Drink, please, Marya."
Marya smiled to herself as she opened the basket and took the pitcher from the cooler. Yolande regarded her daughter's newfound enthusiasm for the opposite sex with tolerant indulgence, as appropriate for her age. To the elder Ingolfsson, Marya suspected, men were nice enough in their way, often pleasing, but with some exceptions basically rather stupid and prisoner to their emotions. Not an uncommon attitude among female Citizens… She glanced up and met Gwen's eyes; for a moment they shared amusement.
"Ma," Gwen said, taking one of the chairs. "Do me a favor?"
"Anythin', child of my heart," Yolande said, accepting the chilled papaya juice. "Thank yo', Marya. Have what yo' like."
"It's that damned controller cuff," Gwen was saying. Marya froze for a moment, with a feeling of insects crawling on her skin, then made her hands busy themselves in the basket.
"Tantie-ma's never said much about it, but it makes my backbone crawl. Take it off her, would yo'?"
"Ah." Yolande rose on one elbow and considered the serf. "As a matter of fact… Hand me that case from the bottom of the basket, would yo', Marya?"
There was a thin leather binder about the size of a small book; the serfs hands shook slightly as she handed it to her owner, kneeling beside her. She had not noticed it, slipped in among the bowls and packages and softcover volumes of poetry brought along for a day by the ocean. Yolande opened it and took out a slim jack on the end of a coil cord.
"Hold out yo' hand, wench," Yolande said.
It was shaking worse as the Draka took it and slid the jack into an opening on the front edge of the thin metal circlet. The bright sun darkened and the world blurred before Marya's eyes.
She saw Yolande's fingers touching controls within the opened binder. There was a tingling in her wrist, and a subdued
click.
Marya heard herself whimper slightly as the metal unclasped; the skin beneath it was very white. Angry, she caught her lower lip in her teeth as Yolande turned her palm up and dropped the cuff into it. The metal was still warm from her skin.
"Do what yo' want with it," the Draka said.
Marya looked at it. Feeling the tears cutting tracks down her cheeks, and making herself remember the
pain.
It had been twenty-four years, and not a day had passed when she had not suppressed that memory; now she let the holds crack. The two Draka were looking politely aside as she rose unsteadily to her feet and walked out into the light, down to the edge of the water.
The sand was scorching through the thin sandals, the waves cool as she walked into their knee-high curling. There was an intense smell of ocean, of iodine from the seaweed along the high-water mark. A gull went by overhead, shadow against dazzle,
grawk-grawk-grawk
. Her arm went back, seeming to drift.
Forward with an elastic snap, and the cuff was soaring until it was a dot. Hesitating at the top of its arc, then dropping down at gathering speed. A last
plek
as it broke the smooth curve of a wave in a tiny eruption of white.