Playing God

by Sarah Zettel

  So am I, believe me. “Thank you, Vice President Brador.”

  Brador turned to the entire assembly. Lynn recognized about two dozen of the faces there. The rest were strangers. Their names had probably been stored in her implant.

  “I would like to officially open this meeting,” Brador said. “Please be aware that these proceedings are open for remote viewing. Room voice, begin recording.” He paused briefly to give the cameras time to switch on, then launched into a very canned opening. “We are all aware of the immediate crisis on the planet Dedelph—”

  “Crisis?” snorted one of the people standing against the wall. “It's a world war, not a crisis.”

  The speaker leaned forward and Lynn recognized Vincent Berkley's lean, sharp face and angular body. His clothes fit loosely, but his elbows, shoulders, and knees still seemed about to poke holes in the fabric. Berkley was in charge of environmental micromodeling, so she hadn't had much to do with him, yet. But she knew about him from Trace and R.J., who spoke his name with a healthy mix of respect and wariness.

  “I don't see what we're doing here.” Berkley stepped away from the wall. “The Confederation's fallen apart. Nobody's holding our contract. The social dynamic has turned into an unpredictably dangerous situation that Bioverse can't expect any of us to walk into.”

  “Every contract has provisions for hazard duty,” tried Brador.

  “Yes, but not suicide.” Berkley folded his arms. The cloth around his elbows strained to keep them covered. “We are citizens as wed as employees and we have a say in what the corp, and we, get to do with our lives.”

  “They've already attacked us,” said a thin, pale woman with watery grey eyes whom Lynn couldn't put a name to. “They've already tried to kill us. We've had to pull out. We can't do our jobs. There's no one left to work with.”

  Lynn glanced at Keale. He sat like a stone with his hands on the arms of his chair. If Brador had brought him there for moral support, it didn't look like he was getting it.

  “I am not going to order my people into a situation that's going to get them killed,” said a short, broad man with his sleeves rolled up to expose burly forearms. “We can't let this situation continue.”

  “No,” said Lynn quietly, “and we don't have to.”

  Everyone's attention fastened on her.

  “Don't we?” inquired Keale, mildly.

  Lynn got to her feet. “We can stop the war. Wars. Give those who want to get themselves to safety a chance to leave.”

  “If you have any suggestions as to how we can do that without unduly jeopardizing the Dedelphi or our citizens, Dr. Nussbaumer”—Brador spread his hands—“I'd love to hear them.”

  “Disinformation.”

  “What?” said Brador. Several others’ mouths began moving without sound, getting a definition for the archaic word from their various implants.

  “Nothing is accomplished without knowledge. Lose your source of information …” Her voice shook. She stopped and took a deep breath. “Lose your source of information, and you lose your ability to plan, to strategize.

  “Not even the Dedelphi fight without knowing whom to hit and where they are. We can use the communications network, our security teams, and our people to spread false reports about troop movements, numbers, who's been evacuated, and who's still here.”

  Berkley raised his eyebrows. “She's suggesting we lie to our clients.”

  “It's less deadly than letting them fight it out.” Lynn planted both hands on the table and let her one eye track the room. Let them all get a good look at me. Let them see what's already happened. Let them think about how much further it can go.

  “The Dedelphi have already tapped our communications network and broken our codes,” said Keale. “We can use that against them. Send out bogus confidential reports.”

  Lynn resisted the temptation to stare at him. Was he coming in on her side? Or had she switched over to his? Lynn shoved that thought aside. “There are a large number of Great Families who want no part of this war. We can still relocate them. We can make it public that we will defend the ports and our transports, and if anyone wants to take their chances attacking them, well, they're taking their chances.”

  “Lie, then threaten them,” murmured Berkley, scratching the back of his head. “I don't know how they do things where you come from, Dr. Nussbaumer …”

  Lynn felt a rush of real anger. “Where I come from,” she said in a tight, controlled voice, “we don't abandon those we've promised to help.”

  “Do you kid your own people instead?” asked the grey-eyed woman.

  Lynn bit down on her first reply. “You ad seem to think we're helpless. We are not helpless. You, we, tame entire ecosystems. We steamroller whole planets when necessary. This war, these combatants, are a hostile ecosystem that needs taming. That's the job. The only question is how do we tame them?”

  A rustle of cloth and voices drifted through the room. For the first time, Lynn felt something thaw slightly. Maybe people were thinking. Maybe.

  “If we do this,” said Keale, “we have to move quickly. From what we've heard, a number of the Great Families are talking about teaching both the t'Therians and the Getesaph a lesson for their arrogance.”

  Berkley held up one hand, making a “stop” gesture. “Assuming we could get the boards to listen to this, can you give me one reason why we should try to get it approved?”

  Lynn met his gaze. “You heard Commander Keale. If we don't, the war becomes total. If we don't act, not only do we lose everything we've worked for, doing irreversible damage to Bioverse and all its contractors and subsidiaries, but we are going to leave millions of Dedelphi to die in a war and plague we could have prevented.” She straightened up. “On the other hand, if we do this, we still have a chance to win. We can still save this world if we try.”

  Come on, all of you. You must see it. If we stop now, barbarity wins. We cannot let it win! “We are talking about hazard duty, there's no question. I've been kidnapped, I had my implant cut out. I've been shot at, beaten on, chased, and trapped in a bombed-out building. I've seen what the wars will do, to them and to us. I wouldn't be suggesting this if I didn't know it would work. We can still save Dedelph, and we can still save ourselves.”

  Berkley wasn't finished, though. “Dr. Nussbaumer, with all due respect, we got into this mess because we didn't know what we were doing. Can you be sure that situation's changed?”

  Nice touch. “We always knew what we were doing. What we didn't know was what they were doing. Now we do. Now we can readjust our strategies to compensate.”

  The murmur grew stronger. Hope took shape in the back of Lynn's mind.

  The burly man coughed once. “I'll have to take it to my people.”

  “We all will,” said Berkley, keeping his steady gaze focused on Lynn. “As a strategy, it's fairly outrageous.”

  “The situation is outrageous.” Lynn looked back without flinching. Ask your people if they want to try to find a new corporation to take them in after they've been part of the biggest business disaster on record. She did not say that. She was trading on every last drop of her reputation as a Dedelphi expert. She was milking the bandages for all they were worth. I've been battered, her appearance said, but I'm still here. I've triumphed, and I say we can all triumph.

  She'd almost made it. Bitterness would not help now.

  Brador was looking hard at her. Something between greed and desperate hope shone in his round eyes. “I am going to ask Dr. Nussbaumer to write up her suggestions as a formal proposal for distribution on the private web. We will take objections or commentary for twenty-four hours after the knot is tied.”

  There were a number of thoughtful looks, and some rapid messages and signals to implants, but no objections.

  “Then I officially close this meeting. Room voice, recording off.”

  All at once, Lynn was besieged. A solid wall of bodies and voices surrounded her. “Dr. Nussbaumer, what are your plans for handlin
g the sick?” “Dr. Nussbaumer, have you looked at the analysis of vulnerable mechanical points?” “Dr. Nussbaumer, have you contacted … ?” “Dr. Nussbaumer, have you consulted … ?” Lynn felt her head begin to swim, but she held her ground. From here on out she had to hold her ground. Whatever anybody else thought was happening, Lynn knew they had now entered a war with the Dedelphi. A war where they had to hold, had to advance, and had to keep their intentions a secret.

  We can do this. I will do this. She looked at the faces crowded around her. And you're all going to help.

  The cafeteria was not as full as Arron had expected. Most of the Bioverse personnel, he guessed, had chosen to watch the meeting in their apartments, rather than out here on the communal screens. He only had to peek into a half a dozen cubicles before he found the one in which Cabal sat nursing a beer. He watched the wall showing a news report about the new crater being opened up for Dedelphi use on Mars.

  “Cabal?” Arron stood in the cube threshold.

  “Hi.” Cabal lifted the beer and waved him inside. “Come to see me off?”

  Arron sat down. “Come to ask you to stay.”

  Cabal put his beer down and touched a key near the center of the table. The wall blanked. He focused completely on Arron. “Stay? Why?”

  Because Lynn has been so scared by what happened to us, she's lost all perspective. Because I don't know what the corp's going to do next. “I need your help.”

  Cabal gave a short, humorless laugh. “Again?” he shook his head. “Arron, the help you need has a tendency to outweigh what you can pay.”

  Without a word, Arron reached into his pocket and laid down the chit card he'd charged from the Bioverse cashier system. Cabal picked it up and squinted at the codes.

  “This is six thousand from the First Banking Enclave of Earth.”

  “That's right.” That's everything I've got, Cabal, it's going to have to be enough.

  Cabal put the card down and took another swallow of beer. “What do you want?”

  Arron leaned forward. “I want you to cut through the Bioverse web and find the contingency plans for the Dedelphi project.”

  There had to be contingency plans. There had to be a list of what the corp would do if the Confederation broke apart, or at least broke the contract There was no way on this side of heat death they would just shrug and walk away.

  Cabal's eyes widened in an expression of surprised innocence. “What makes you think I could do that?”

  Arron snorted. “Come on, Cabal, I'll admit I'm blind, but I'm not deaf. You said you were an info-runner. That you specialized in getting information to people who don't have it.” Come on, Cabal. Are you going to make me say system cracker?

  Cabal fingered the card for a moment. “All right. But I'll need a portable and a room that is both blind and deaf.”

  Arron nodded. “I've got a portable, and I think we can arrange the room.”

  Cabal opened his mouth and closed it again. Arron knew he wanted to ask what was going on, and was very glad when he didn't.

  He did not want to have to explain the game he was playing.

  Chapter XVIII

  The Nussbaumer Redirection Proposal flew through the seniors. The veeps, led by Brador, got behind it and pushed. Back in the Solar system, the presies decided it might just work and gave it the go.

  In just under forty-eight hours from the time she stood up in Brador's meeting, Bioverse set aside Dedelphi Base 1 conference room Al as Lynn's command center. She had all the wall screens lit up at once to keep in constant touch with her subcommittees. Trace and R.J. worked the conference table while she threaded between the assorted offices. Her new implant flashed reminders at her constantly. A patch cord ran from her temple to the table in front of her. Every order she subvocalized went straight to the main computers.

  The word PIETER blinked in front of her eye.

  Lynn touched the screen to what Trace and R.J. were calling spy central. “How're we doing on the sat count, Pieter?” As part of their surveillance, both the Getesaph and the t'Therians had launched a series of the very small, disposable spy satellites Praeis had told her about two weeks and a million years ago.

  “We've identified six out of the eight satellites. We've got five t'Therians and one Getesaph, but we think they're getting ready to send up more.” Pieter, an oak-colored man, typed frantically at his own keyboard as he talked and always seemed to have a significant portion of his mind elsewhere. “Of course this count is dependent on who manages to shoot down what over the next couple of hours.”

  “How's the decoding going?” Lynn zapped a note across to Trace about repeating this update to Brador. There's a nice symmetry to the whole situation, she thought privately. The Getesaph tapped and decoded our communications system, now we're doing the same to them.

  “We've got the AIs burning through it.” Pieter hit a final key, looked at the results on his screen, and smiled in triumph. He looked up, fully present for a brief moment. “We should have that for you in two hours.”

  “Great,” announced Lynn. Without ceremony, she cut the connection there and threaded down to Shelly Greene in bioengineering R and D. “How are we coming with immobilizing the t'Therians?”

  Shelly had a broad face that wrinkled up like a prune when she was thinking hard. Now it was smooth and cheerful. “We think we've got it, Chief. We've got a template for a yeast that eats oil. Turns it into a lovely sticky meringue. We can seed the harbor with it. It'll seize up everything tighter than tight.”

  “Okay, that's good. Let me know when it's ready to drop down, so we've got people in place to work with it. Thanks.” She cut the thread.

  “How are you going to handle the aftermath of immobilizing them?” asked Trace, looking up from her spot at the table.

  Lynn shrugged, as if it were all obvious. “We'll apologize profusely and offer to clean it up, and send word to the Getesaph that while the cleanup is going on we're protecting the t'Therians.”

  R.J. looked serious. “You're going to need Keale's help with that.”

  “He's already offered,” Lynn assured him. She'd been shocked when it happened, but accepted the help gratefully. “What do we hear from the negotiators?”

  “We've just had word,” R.J.’s gaze unfocused as he looked at something displayed on his implant. “The Ui Shai and the Fvrona have just said they want to be relocated.”

  “Good.” Lynn murmured to her implant to add the names to the list in front of her. “Get a head count and order the shuttles down there before they have a chance to change their minds. How much space have we got?”

  “Four ships without the Ur,” said Trace. “We've currently committed for one hundred thousand, not counting the Ui Shai and Fvrona. So …” She paused while either she or her implant made a calculation. “We've got room for three-pomt-five-million more immediately.”

  “That'll make a dent, anyway,” Lynn sucked on her lower lip. “How soon before we get more ships?”

  Trace threaded through to another memo. “We've got three more on the way with Keale's reinforcements, but that's still two and a half weeks away.” She touched another key. “The engineer's reports from the belt say they'll have the Dublin together in a week and down here two days after that.”

  “Okay, good,” said Lynn with the grim firmness that had marked her voice since she'd gotten the go-ahead for her plan. “That's another two-point-five-million spots in five weeks. We load them up as fast as we can convince them to leave.”

  For the first time, Trace gave her a searching glance. “And if we can't convince them all?”

  Lynn shook her head. “We have to.”

  Praeis stood beside Theia in the engine room. The entire engineering crew stood behind them in a tight semicircle. It was too quiet. The place should have been filled with the roar and hiss of machinery, with the smell of hot diesel and oil filling the air. Praeis's nostrils flared. The smell was still there, but now it was strangely sour, like bread dough left ou
t too long. She crouched and reached into the frozen engine, running her fingers along the side of one immobile drive shaft. They should have come away coated with smooth, black grease. Instead, they were covered with foamy grey gunk. She sniffed her fingertip, and her nostrils clamped shut.

  “How much is down?” Praeis asked the engine room's prime-sister as she stood up, examining the tacky substance on her fingers.

  “Everything,” Prime-Sister said bluntly. “We're cleaning and relubricating as fast as we can, but we can't run anything while that … stuff is in there.” Her face went tight with distress. Another prime-sister, probably her blood sister, put a hand on her shoulder. “Where'd this come from, Task-Mother? Have the Getesaph got a new weapon?”

  “I don't know, Prime-Sister,” said Praeis heavily. “But we're going to find out Carry on with the cleanup. Let us have a progress report in three hours.”

  “Yes, Task-Mother.”

  Praeis flicked an ear toward the stairs. She felt Theia follow her as she trudged up to the bridge.

  “You do know,” murmured Theia in her ear, “there is no way the Getesaph did anything like this.”

  Praeis bared her teeth and stopped in mid-stride with Theia two steps below her. She bent down until her lips brushed Theia's ear.

  “No, you are right. It must be the Humans,” she breathed.

  Praeis straightened up, but she held her daughter's attention with both eyes and ears. Theia dipped her ears once. Good. She got the message and wouldn't say anything.

  She had grown so much in the last few, hard, sad days. The work of the war had not ceased for their grief. The report ships had gone out with their letter to Armetrethe to tell her that Res and Senejess had died. They had written the letter one slow word at a time. Since then, Praeis had been out of Theia's sight for maybe five minutes. She wasn't sure if this was healthy. She was certain they were bending the rules to the breaking point, but on that score, she didn't care. She did not want to leave her daughter, and her daughter did not want to leave her.

  Now, this … thing had happened. All the ships were suffering the same problem. Machinery seized up. Weapons seized up. At least one copter was down. They had engineers posted by the planes, but Praeis had no faith in that doing any good. Neys and Silv were out in the fleet, getting a firsthand look at the damage.