Wheelers

by Ian Stewart

  Then he glanced at the news window on his 'node, and gloom descended over him. It didn't look as if many people back home shared his optimism. Several influential commentators, in fact, were screaming for his head—the Dump Dunsmoore movement was all over the public flatscreens—which proved how unutterably foolish they were, since he was safe and sound on Europa, far beyond anyone's reach, but if they were correct in their assessment, then they would shortly all be dead and he'd be king of the castle. Competent or not, he was all they had. Others clearly understood this all too well, but still weren't overjoyed about it.

  He had a feeling that Uhlirach-Bengtsen was protecting the Jovian Task Force's shaky morale by not passing on the really nasty items: there was a delicate line to tread between stimulating them to greater efforts and worrying them sick. Even so, the news from Earth made depressing reading. Rioting and looting in a hundred major cities. Constant outbreaks of pointless violence, mostly from people whose minds were teetering on the verge of collapse. Six hundred killed and two thousand others injured when a communal pray-in organized by the Church of the Gospel Code succumbed to mass hysteria and the crowd stampeded. The two-hundred-inch Active Optics Array in the mountains near Riobamba had been burned to the ground by a mob— if you cant see the comet coming, then it doesn't exist, that must have been the reasoning. A group calling itself the Jaramaranites was taking a very different view: that the comet was a spacecraft that was coming to take the faithful to the afterlife. Charles was unable to suppress the sour thought that they were right—and that the unfaithful would accompany them. Heavily armed troops were on the streets in Aachen, Aali-an-Nil, Aalwynsfontain, Abadan, Aberdeen, Abilene, Abisko, Adelaide—it took an awfully long time for the list to reach Zyryanovsk. Southern Mali had seceded from the Saharan Agricultural Combine and was insisting on stockpiling all the food it produced. President Elaine Bell of the United States was being impeached for allowing evolution to continue to be taught in eleven states, thereby angering God and bringing the calamity of the comet down upon believer and unbeliever alike. (Charles had a feeling they wouldn't have minded if only unbelievers were being targeted.) A group in Australia had seized the great rock of Uluru, north of Alice Springs, and was proposing to blast tunnels in its sides to create a comet-proof spiritual refuge: the Canberra authorities were under severe pressure from Aboriginal politicians to carpet-bomb the hotel complex where the group had currently set up its headquarters. Neo-Gaians in Finland had driven millions of copper tubes into the ground in the belief that the way to avert disaster was to administer acupuncture to the planet, which was somehow supposed to anesthetize the global ecosystem and prevent impact damage. A Russian priest had accidentally burned himself to death while trying to exorcise the telepathic ghosts that he claimed had taken over the entire Solar System. Secessionist Cornish ecoterrorists had blown up a dog farm outside Penzance. Conversions to Gnosticism were skyrocketing, for no very clear reason. Stock markets had collapsed, worldwide. There were rumors that a million Free Chinese were starving to death every week.

  He wondered how much of this would have happened even if there had never been a comet. Anyway, in a few minutes' time he would be holding the next round of discussions with some of the top Jovian bureaucrats, and with a bit of luck, there would be some positive developments.

  Bailey, Jonas, and Cashew arrived to film the negotiations. Charles wanted his triumph to be recorded for posterity. He hadn't changed that much.

  An hour later he consented to a post-negotiation interview. Yes, he definitely believed the task force was at last getting somewhere. As always, the Jovian officials had been very polite and enormously considerate. Yes, they realized completely how the Poisonbluvians felt about the imminent destruction of their homeworld . . . Yes, they saw no obstacle in principle to instructing the wheelers to move the Inner Moons again and change the comet's path to something more convenient. Why had there been so little progress? Oh, but there had been enormous progress! Why, even now the Third Subcommittee on the Harmonization of Presentational Standards was on the verge of reporting its findings to the Sociometric Focus Group of the Working Party on the Creation of Novel Covenants. However, this was a complex issue. Steering such a decision through the hierarchical network of bureaubonded subcommittees was distinctly tricky—especially when key figures were liable to go into estivation at any time and might not be seen again for a hundred thousand years. Only meticulous recordkeeping could ensure that their replacements were correctly briefed. Everything possible was being done, and he personally was certain that there would soon be an acceptable outcome.

  Bailey wasn't so sure. It sounded to him very much like, Don't worry — we're working on it. And, Don't call us, we'll call you. But when he said as much, Charles disagreed. He was convinced that salvation would soon be at hand. Then Halberstam barged in.

  "Charles! Sorry, hope I didn't startle you. We've found some very curious items among the Jovian transmissions. Thought you should be told immediately!"

  Charles would have preferred no distractions right then, but he had committed himself to being more accessible and taking more advice, so he could hardly complain if Wally took him up on it. He asked the W team to leave: this was to be confidential. Then: "Okay, Wally. Fire away."

  "Charles—you're aware that the Jovians are extraordinarily long-lived? That their records go back billions of years? Yes, of course you are. Well—some of their records seem to go back too far."

  Charles didn't see how Halberstam could tell. "We really haven't a clue just how ancient these beasties are, Wally."

  "Agreed. But they can't be older than the universe. Some of their records refer to events that happened up to forty billion years ago. But the age of the universe is only fifteen billion, as you know."

  "Translation error?"

  "No way. And that's not the only example. They say very clearly, all over the place, that today's Jovian ecology is a mixture of organisms that were here long before they arrived and ones they brought with them. Worse, the indigenes and the newcomers have essentially the same genetics and have interbred."

  Charles was no biologist, but he could see that was ridiculous. "There isn't a standard molecular basis for life! Look at our DNA chemistry compared to the weird genetics of the aliens!"

  "Absolutely. Of course, Jovian science might be so different from ours that the translators are misinterpreting it. But there's a third anomaly, Charles, and it's much harder to explain away. Why did the aliens colonize Jupiter?"

  "I have no idea. I haven't seen anything in the briefings."

  "The few hints that they've dropped implicate cometary diversions. On Firsthome they used to dump incoming comets into their sun, but now that idea scares them stiff. They say it causes too much damage, and that seems to be a lesson they learned the hard way It forced them to leave their first system and colonize this one.

  "It kind of makes sense until you check it out. The astrophysics team wondered whether exotic elements from comets might slowly poison a star's nuclear reactions. We know that infalling gas-giant planets can sometimes do that; lithium poisoning in particular. You can imagine the scenario: the aliens merrily polluting their star, assuming that it was so gigantic that they could go on dumping stuff in it forever. The junk accumulates, but no one notices, until suddenly the system passes some critical threshold and there's a crisis. Changes in heat output, persistent solar flares—maybe it even goes nova."

  "Just like we used to dump all our junk in the oceans," said Charles. "We thought they were infinite, too. But not a nova, surely? That wouldn't have given them enough time to prepare for the Exodus."

  "Exactly. Still, it all looked vaguely plausible until I got the astrophysics group to run simulations for lots of different scenarios. Comets are tiny compared to a gas giant. Unless Firsthome's solar system was a solid mass of comets, they could have gone on dumping them into their star forever. You can't pollute an ocean with an occasional bucket of trash."

  "
Why are they here, then? What drove them out?"

  "That's what I keep asking myself, Charles. And I've come to the conclusion that they're lying. I don't think anything drove them out. They came here voluntarily. And having done so, they started bombarding the rest of the Solar System with asteroids and comets. It looks like an invasion, not an exodus."

  Charles concurred. Maybe there was a less sinister explanation, but . . . why were the aliens lying? Were the signals intended to mislead? And if so . . . how could he possibly trust the Jovians' assurances that they were trying to redirect the comet?

  Not fifty yards away. Prudence sat on the edge of her bed and reviewed their options. Unlike Charles, she had no particular reason to mistrust what the Elders were saying. She just didn't trust them to do anything. They were so tied up in their own red tape that with the best will in the world nothing would ever happen. Charles might have changed, but he hadn't changed a great deal: he was still a bureaucrat by heart, more concerned about not making a mistake than about solving the problem at hand. He was the same ditherer that he had always been.

  Time was fast running out. The comet was now clearly visible to the naked eye if you took a suited walk outside the base. From Tiglath-Pileser even a low-powered telescope revealed the interloper as an irregular lump, all shadows and bright patches in the dim sunlight. No tail yet—the temperature wasn't high enough this far from the Sun. But it was starting to look fuzzy, as the lighter volatiles began to sublime away.

  Charles could negotiate with the Elders till pigs sprouted wings and it wouldn't make a shred of difference. Communications from Earth were becoming increasingly frantic—the whole planet was going to hell in a handbasket. Charles was trying to reassure people, put positive spin on the situation, when mindless panic would have been more appropriate. If in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. That way you might accidentally do something useful. Sitting like a stuffed duck with a bemused smile on your face, waiting for the universe to come to your rescue, was a recipe for exactly zilch. It was what had wrecked their relationship in Giza, come to think of it.

  Time for the backup strategy If only Charles hadn't been so bloody optimistic, she would have put it into action long ago. But he'd been so sure they were on the verge of a breakthough . . .

  Prudence set off through the base in search of Moses. She was going to have a very serious chat with Bright Halfholder of the Violent Foam, and she needed an interpreter.

  19

  Orthodox Morlity Squodhome, 2222

  Darkness was falling as Halfholder made her way through the network of concourses, wide tunnels, and plazas that formed the base-level superstructure of Whispering Volve of Late Morning. She avoided Main Avenue—every city had a Main Avenue, straight as a die along its "spine"—because of the throngs that always milled around, getting in the way even if you used a bit of extra liftgas to float up to mezzanine levels. There were plenty of blimps on the streets at that time of day. Their bondshield reflexes were in operation, closing their minds to any prying observer on the squark band, because this was a public place: bureaubonding was a private activity, entered into voluntarily and in appropriate surroundings, such as a Conclave chamber. Halfholder gave thanks that this was so—she would not care to broadcast the contents of her mind for public scrutiny, not now, not ever. Nor could she be forced to, for the reflex was innate and unbreakable. Skydiving could never have existed had it been otherwise.

  Within its private confines, her mind was reeling. The most recent request from the ugly little extrajovian named Dingo would put the entire skydiver organization in a very difficult position. It would be easy to pretend to take action, but do nothing. Poisonblue would die, but the skydiver insurrection would be able to proceed without undue haste. However, she could not allow the extrajovian race to be destroyed without perverting every belief that the skydivers held dear. Her decision was therefore straightforward, but not easy.

  Keeping all eyes open for guardians, she followed a circuitous route through the city until at last she came to the understated crenellations that marked the boundary of Orthodox Morality squodhome. Discreet security staff recognized her, allowed her to enter, and reerected the barriers behind her.

  One of Defier's aides-de-camp met her, out of sight of prying eyes, and ushered her into his presence. After a polite interval for routine greetings, a servaut rolled up, its six pairs of wheels helping to smooth out a few untreated worm scars that currently marred the fibrous floor of Defier's personal sanctum. In due course it would have to be scarified, but such mundane tasks would have to wait. They floated from beautiful laminated tuber tethering rods from the 915th Continuity: Defier's squod was ancient and wealthy. Halfholder politely helped herself to a pinch of ammoniated aeroplankton. Brave Defier of the Orthodox Morality could tell that she was not really hungry, and gave the servant a silent signal to remove the delicacies again.

  «The Poisonbluvian named Dingo,» he remarked. «His judgment is trustworthy?»

  «He claims to speak for a small squod of extrajovians,» Halfholder responded, and then realized that she had not chosen her words with sufficient care. «It is not a squod in our sense, of course—merely an emotional grouping. However, he assures me that it represents the united wishes of his entire homeworld.»

  «Claims? Have you been shown assurances?»

  «I have no independent way to verify his statements,» said Halfholder. «I doubt that any could exist, under the circumstances.»

  Defier readjusted his trunks' grip on a tethering rod. «I do.

  Dingo has told you that the Elders are continuing to prevaricate?»

  «So his squodmate Prudent Dingo has concluded. She is of the opinion that the Poisonbluvian Elder called Charred Lea of the Dun Moor is constitutionally incapable of decisive action and prefers to clutch at drygrass rather than accept that his strategy will fail. She is convinced that it is beyond saving.»

  Defier huffed humorlessly. «::Xxxx.' She is right. Similar information has come to the Instrumentality from diverse sources. The issue is stalled in a ninth-level subcommittee, and since it lacks an enthusiastic advocate—as it has from its inception— there is no significant probability that the Diversion Engines will be realigned. There never was.»

  Disappointed, Halfholder expelled a small puff of liftgas. She had hoped for better news. «Then Poisonblue is doomed? But the EJs have charged me with—»

  Is she getting too attached to these strange heasts? «Halfholder: what matters here is not the task with which the extrajovians have charged you, but the tasks with which the Lifesoul Cher-isher has charged all clear thinkers. However, in this instance the two are mutually consistent. If the Instrumentality knowingly permits itself to be an accessory to the destruction of an intelligent life-form, however ungainly and improbable, then its principles are as the mists that vanish in the morning sun shafts. We must therefore move with the speed of a frenzied snark, for the snowstone will soon be upon us. Haste may even be to our advantage, for nothing can be more certain than the inability of the Elders to work to a deadline.»

  Halfholder hoped he was right and feared he was not. «Do you truly think so?»

  Defier became animated. «I do! We must, however, not underestimate the Elders: slow though they may be in Conclave, they can be very quick indeed if their own safety is threatened. But Secondhome is poised on a cusp of history, and this can-

  not be an accident.» He returned to the overt purpose of the bonding. «My aides tell me that you have obeyed instructions and brought with you the construct that communicates with the extrajovians. As you have no doubt guessed, you will not be returning to your blisterpond. I need you here to assist with the insurrection—and I need your mastery of alien communications even more. My aides will find you comfortable quarters: I suggest you take every opportunity to preestivate, for you will soon need all the energy you can conserve.»

  He signaled to the servant, and two blimp aides shortly arrived, swirling their tru
nks to acknowledge Halfholder's presence and importance. She followed them out of the sanctum, taking the communicator with her. Defier would have preferred to keep the alien construct in his own possession, but only Halfholder could converse with the aliens, so until others could be trained it would build her confidence to let her keep the device. She was, in any case, under constant symbiaut surveillance.

  Defier summoned a drafting wheeler and began to rehearse his plans.

  Skydiver factions were already in place on most of the cities. The key to a successful thrust for power, however, was not blimps, but symbiauts. He called to mind one of the sayings of Cunning Intriguer of the Sideways Assault: She who controls the modalities of communicauts controls Firsthome! Intriguer's incisive precept applied equally well to Secondhome, and its implications had not been lost on the Instrumentality. Their covert plan to corrupt overwhelming numbers of symbiauts was already close to fruition. Now it must be accelerated.

  Every intelligent symbiaut had a germanium-matrix memory, which included its default competences and loyalties—its personal belief system, its identity. If a wheeler passed to a new owner, for example, then a new identity could easily be uploaded, and because the wheelers were fundamentally machines, this was a hard-upload of executable code. Naturally there were numerous checks and balances to ensure that such uploads were carried out only when the law permitted, but the weak point in the Elders' armor was the capability of changing wheeler identities by hard-uploading.

  Rogue wheelers were not just subversives. They were infectious subversives, able recursively to pass their anti-authoritarian identity on without the usual legal niceties. This ability offered obvious evolutionary advantages, though they were memetic rather than genetic—they operated in the realm of ideas, not body plans. Not that there was much difference between these when it came to wheelers, who broke just about every terrestrial assumption about how traits get passed to the next generation. The Instrumentality, the core politico-military organization of the skydiver cult, had been cultivating rogue wheelers for hundreds of thousands of years. The viral meme was simple: your mind is like this, and you should upload a copy into other symhiauts whenever you get the chance. Implicit in the "this" were a host of caveats about when and how to carry out the upload, so that nobody except the two parties could tell what had happened; also implicit was the instruction to continue as if nothing had changed until informed otherwise by an appropriate authority. There was a complex system of codes to ensure that a putative authority was appropriate, and the Instrumentality owned those codes and kept them secure.