"High up, perfect place to shoot from. Or they can hoof it for the great outdoors if they're spooked." Du eyed Ned. "These folks spook easily?"
"Let's follow their tracks and see."
The trail led south. A dozen horses or so left a wide track. The sky eye lost it in the woods. Base took them up higher, hunting for heartbeats, a bunch of them. It found some, but never more than three or four together.
"All this high-tech, and the best I can do is follow a guy on a horse, looking at the ground." Dumont laughed, but followed Ned. "There's a path one or two klicks farther in the woods."
"Klicks?" Ned frowned. "What's that in miles?"
"I don't know." Dumont asked the base. Suddenly the grid-lines on their display shifted. "About one mile in."
Still, they covered the distance at a walk, Ned following the signs. At the trail, the horseprints led west. 'Tracks are deep. They're riding hard."
Dumont eyed the trail to the east, toward Refuge, Richland. It showed no signs of travel. He worked his reader. "They had more than an inch of rain here after the Colonel's little talk. What would that do to a trail?"
"Wipe it out entirely," Ned answered. "Especially if they were riding slow, like I would at night."
"Damn! Chief, have one of the sky eyes cruise east on this trail. See what you get."
"Will do," came from the commlink.
"Now we go west, I suppose," Du said to Ned.
"It's the only trail I have to follow."
"Annie's that way," Jeff blurted out.
"How long will the trail last?" Dumont asked
"Not long, if I was riding it," Ned answered curtly.
An hour later they called the Colonel to tell him the one trail they had had broken up, and they had no idea which way the box had gone. "What's your best guess, Du?" the Colonel asked.
Du handed his commlink off. "This is Ned. If I had the vanishing box, I'd have gone east. Either the folks at the house lied to the second party, or they believed that the first group went west. That's guessing. What I know is that we've lost them, all of them. Best we wait around and see what happens next. I can talk to some folks, have them talk to others. Until somebody sees something, I think we're just chasing ghosts."
"Sounds like it. Du, Mary's coming back north this evening. She's got things started in New Haven. You want a ride?"
Du glanced at Jeff, who was having a hard time staying in his skin. "We can't just leave Annie out here with people like that! We've got to keep trying!" Jeff insisted.
"Colonel," Du said, "I know you're short manpower, but this is where the action is on the vanishing box. Some pretty nasty people want it; we need it. I want to stay down here."
'Take care," the Colonel said. "Those nasties won't be ignorant about you for long."
"Kind of hope they come looking for us, sir." Du turned to Ned as he tapped off. "Okay, tracker. Let's find the shits that did that house. I think it's time Vicky Sterling learns there's some things her money can't buy."
"She hurts Annie, Du, I swear, I'll hold her down while you cut her heart out." Jeff said the words without thinking, meaning them without reflection.
"I'll try to save you from that, Jeff."
Ray had experienced the calm before a storm. South, miners were making metal, and people acted like they might listen. In the center, Refuge and Richland were quiet. North side was terribly quiet, not a peep. All he could do was wait, worry, and miss Rita.
So Ray got busy, working with Tico and the new recruits. Since riot control was all he could expect from them, they were equipped with ceramic shields, helmets, and clubs of a resilient local wood. Uniforms were armbands; they marched, wheeled, did column rights and lefts, and changed fronts by the flanks. It was a drill as ancient as the Greek hoplite, but it was the best Ray had to fight primal human screams and a super computer. He took a turn with each platoon of one hundred, drilling them, letting them see him, hear his voice. That was what command was; not paperwork, but eye contact.
It felt damn good to have his legs underneath him, moving at the proper cadence and step. Almost made up for the hour spent arguing production priorities with Mary as soon as she got back. He fell into bed ready for the innocent sleep of a baby.
And found himself facing the Dean. "Sociology, isn't it?
"Close enough," the dapper image in khaki and tweeds agreed.
"What're you folks up to?" Ray asked.
"I might ask you the same."
"You'll have to explain the question better," Ray said, still feeling good from the afternoon's workout.
"Why do you want the displacer, the 'vanishing box'?"
"Because I don't trust it in anyone else's hands. There's something about someone on a hill twenty klicks away making my base vanish that tends to upsets me."
"Then I think you'll understand when I say that your having it upsets me."
"I don't understand."
"Come, now. You heard my complaint when you removed portions of our net from the rocks up North. You've figured out that we build ourselves into this world. The surface is our weakness. We need sunlight for power. You burn off our solar cells and we are helpless, just waiting for you to leach the rest of our metal out, like you did the Gardener. No, Colonel, you are a killer, and I don't trust you."
Ray went over the statement slowly. He couldn't really blame the Dean. Given a choice, he wouldn't want the damn thing on the same planet with him. Too much power. Way too much. But something else niggled at the corner of Ray's mind.
"You seem a lot more comfortable talking about yourself. There were quite a few 'I's' in that last statement."
"And you are a savvy type who deflects conversations from where you don't want them to go. The vanishing box, Colonel."
"I'm trying to get my hands on it. What deep hole do you know that I can throw it down as soon as I've got it?"
"I don't trust you to have it that long."
"Has anyone told you that you have a problem with trust?"
"No, nor is anyone likely to. You are about the only one I am talking to these days."
"Then the 'I' does mean something?"
"Yes. We are fractured, divided. Some are at war with others of us. I never expected to see anything like this."
"Are you at war?"
"No. I am
just
an expert on group dynamics. I can do nothing to destroy net nodes, hijack energy lines, silence static, or garble communication packets."
"Sounds like things have gotten bad."
"Bad and worse. Many are retreating to the mainland. It is better to be elsewhere when the President and Provost fight."
"You haven't gone, though."
The image across from Ray fidgeted in his chair. "No, I haven't, yet. I keep hoping that something can be worked out. That somehow we can find a way to persuade you that you really do want us for your teachers. I'm an idealist, I fear."
"Do you have to be our teachers?"
"That's all we know to be," the Dean spat.
"I have a woman working for me. She's been a teacher most of her life. Now she's having a ball helping us decide where to investigate nature. Have you ever considered doing research? Studying why people do what they do?"
"We know all that."
"So you say. Sure you haven't been studying the same data so long you've forgotten what the real thing looks like?"
"It doesn't matter, you won't work with us. You are just as afraid of us and our power as we are of you and yours."
"That's where trust comes in. Look, I'm working with the guy who almost blew my planet out of existence last year. It doesn't mean he no longer has that power. It does mean we're having more fun working together than against each other."
"But we're not human."
"A year ago, I wasn't giving Green Earthy Symps credit for much humanity. All I wanted was to kill 'em. Hell, man, the woman that broke my back was pushing pills at me to help me get well before your treatments or medicines or whatever did the job for her. We humans change. Why can't you?"
"You have no use for us even if we did."
"You're kidding. You have all the knowledge of the Three, the ones who built the jump points. We stumbled through one and got out into the galaxy hardly three hundred years ago. We don't understand jumps, we just use them. If I came back to Wardhaven with the likes of you, ready to help us rediscover all the stuff of the Three, there'd be one hell of a parade."
"You'd want us for ..."
"Consultants, guides, fellow pilgrims on the way. Equals in the search, not superiors telling us not to touch. And yes, as teachers for our young, also."
"Because you do not trust us, you are willing to shatter the planet we share. If you could trust us, you would be willing to take us out among the stars you walk." The Dean spoke the words with slowly dawning eagerness.
"That's the way we do things. We can let fear drive us to kill, or we can trust. With trust, we can build on each other's strengths. Back home, we build things. The strongest building material is made up of many components, working together."
"That was what the Three said. Together they were greater than the sum of their individual parts."
"When you're just one big mind, there is a certain strength. Now you're many," Ray said. "You can hunt for the power of the many, or wipe yourselves out, trying to return to oneness."
"Once again, after our talks, I must think on your words."
"One more thing," Ray said. "Where is the thing that can scramble the molecules of my cells? That is the power you have that I fear the most. What line of thought controls it? Where is it? I could throw the vanishing box into a very deep hole if you tore that puppy apart. Rebuild it once we've gotten some trust built up. But right now it scares me and mine."
The Dean retreated deep into his chair. "That is something I will have to think upon long and hard, talk to others. I see your point. I see what you are offering us."
"It's been good talking to you," Ray said.
"Quite surprisingly, I, too, have found it good."
Thirteen
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 mattes 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."
"You bet, boss."
"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?"
"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 coming from the super computer I think lives in your planet, I'll be seeing what I can do to stop it."