"I must protest," Sverenssen said in a shocked voice. "Yes, I admit that the Thuriens did establish a link somehow. But the accusation that we have allowed our operation to be penetrated is without foundation. There is no evidence to—"
"Then you are either blind or stupid!" Broghuilio spat. "I was there, in Thurios. You were not. I tell you they knew everything. The Terrans must have turned half the imbeciles in your organization and had them working against us for years. How long have they had a link on Earth direct into visar?"
"We . . . have not been able to ascertain that yet, Excellency," Sverenssen admitted.
"Obviously since long before they started anything on Farside," Broghuilio said. "The whole Bruno operation was a façade to fool you and keep you occupied, and you swallowed every inch of it." He screwed up his face and mimicked a fawning tone. " `We have gained complete control, Excellency,' I was told. Pah!" Broghuilio slammed a fist into his other palm. "Control! They were manipulating you like a puppet. They probably have been for years. Overlord of Earth? You'd be a laughingstock trying to govern a kindergarten." Sverenssen paled, and his jaw strained, but he said nothing.
Broghuilio raised his arms in front of the rest of the company as if inviting them to witness his predicament. "You see what I have to contend with—imbecile engineers and imbecile agents. And what of you? Clearly the enemy will not sit idly by and do nothing while we complete our preparations. But we are told that it will take two years. Thus we have a problem situation that demands some form of action now, while we retain the initiative. What are your plans?"
Some of the generals looked uncertainly at one another. Eventually Wylott replied hesitantly, "We are still analyzing the latest developments. The situation calls for a complete revision of every—"
"Never mind your academic analyses and evaluations. Do you have firm plans drawn up for offensive action, now, to secure our position while the quadriflexor program is being completed?"
"No, but we've never—"
"The general does not have a plan," Broghuilio told the rest of them. "You see—on all sides I have to deal with imbeciles. But fortunately for all of us, I do have a plan. Our weapons production program here at Uttan has begun showing results, has it not? We have ships, armaments, and sufficient generating capacity to transfer them to Gistar at once, while the Thuriens have nothing. It is a time for boldness."
Wylott seemed worried. "That is not the way we have always intended," he said. "Our plans have never included launching an unprovoked assault on Thurien. The weapons were to be used against the Cerians. We would find it hard to justify such an action to the people. It would not be popular."
"Did I say anything about attacking Thurien?" Broghuilio asked. "Can you conceive of no methods other than brute force and clumsiness? Have you no sense of subtlety?" He turned his head to address all present. "War is as much a matter of psychology as it is of weapons, and in particular of understanding the psychology of one's enemy. Study the history of Earth, or even of Minerva. Many great victories have been won by seizing an opportune psychological moment. And such a moment presents itself to us now."
"What are you proposing?" Estordu asked uneasily. "That we might intimidate Thurien into submission?"
Broghuilio looked at him in surprise and with unconcealed approval. "For a scientist you are thinking quickly for once," he said. He raised his voice. "You hear? The scientist is thinking more like a general than any of you. The Thuriens have no taste for war, nor even any concept of it. At this moment they believe that we have retreated into a shell and will not trouble them for a long time to come. They feel secure for the time being, and that is why they are vulnerable."
He strode slowly to one side of the dome and stared out at the distant ball of Uttan for a few seconds. Then he came back to the center and resumed, "I will tell you what the Thuriens are thinking at this moment. They realize that we present a threat which they do not have the stomach to face, but which the Terrans do. On the other hand they possess the technology necessary to counter that threat, whereas the Terrans do not. So what will be their obvious strategy?"
Wylott was beginning to nod slowly. "To arm and equip the Terrans as proxy troops," he said. "Thurien will enlist Earth to fight on its behalf."
"Exactly!" Broghuilio exclaimed. "But Earth is demilitarized and not competent to match us technically anyway, and at this moment the Thuriens have nothing to arm them with." He looked around with a triumphant glint in his eyes. "In other words their solution will require time. But we do not need time because right now we have something, and they have nothing. Our forces might be small compared to what they will be in times to come, but that situation gives us a ratio of something to zero, which equates to infinite superiority. That advantage will not exist indefinitely, and it will never again be in our favor to the extent that it is now. And that is why the time to act is now, and not later."
Wylott's eyes gleamed as he began to see what Broghuilio was driving at. "With self-powered ships we can send a task force in and issue an ultimatum to the Thuriens to place visar under our control," he said. "Being Ganymeans, they will have no choice. Then they'd be helpless, and we would assume full control of the combined empires of jevex and visar."
"And the Terrans will be deprived of their armorers," Broghuilio completed. "In two years they could never hope to match us without the Thuriens. Thus we will have bought the time we need to complete our preparations for dealing with Earth, and for neutralizing Thurien permanently." He turned to confront Wylott squarely, folded his arms across his chest, and stuck out his chin. "That, General, is the plan—my plan."
"A stroke of genius," Wylott declared. A chorus of murmurs from the ranks behind endorsed the statement. "We will commence detailed preparations at once."
"See to it," Broghuilio ordered. He turned and glowered at Sverenssen. "And you, if you think you have the ability to redeem yourself, go back to Earth. I want every one of the traitors in your organization uncovered, tracked down, and dealt with. All except Rank B2 and above. Those are to be held while we arrange a landing to bring them back to Jevlen. I will deal with them personally." His voice fell to an ominous growl, and his eyes smoldered. "And if you fail in this, Sverenssen, you will certainly be brought back, even if I have to come physically to Earth myself to do it."
Chapter Thirty-One
Several days went by without news from the Shapieron. Visar analyzed all the available data on the design of jevex and gave zorac a five-percent chance of electronically lock-picking its way through the layers of security checks and access restrictions protecting the enemy system. The problem was that jevex's Ganymean-designed molecular circuits worked at subnanosecond speeds, enabling an enormous amount of self-checking to be interleaved with its regular operations. The odds were overwhelming that any chink in jevex's armor that zorac managed to slip a wedge into would be detected and closed before visar could be brought in to drive the wedge home. In other words jevex could scan its own internal processes too rapidly, or as Hunt put it to Caldwell, "It's got too much instant-to-instant awareness of what's going on inside itself. If we could distract its attention somehow, even for a few seconds, at the speeds those machines work at, zorac might be able to neutralize the jamming system and let visar in." But how could they distract jevex when the only channel they had to it was through zorac, and zorac couldn't get in until jevex had been distracted?
And then visar reported a series of gravitational disturbances outside Gistar's planetary system, followed by a steady accumulation of objects that seemed to be ships of some kind being transferred through from somewhere. Shortly afterward, the objects began moving toward Thurien. visar could detect no h-grid power or control beams and was unable to check their progress. They were self-powered, heavily armed Jevlenese war vessels, and there were fifty of them. As they fanned out to maneuver into positions around Thurien, jevex reopened contact briefly with visar to deliver the Jevlenese ultimatum: the Thuriens had forty-eight hours to place
their entire world system under Jevlenese control. If at the end of that period they had not agreed, obliteration of Thurien cities one at a time would commence, starting with Vranix. Those were the terms. There was nothing to discuss.
The atmosphere inside the Government Center at Thurios was strained and tense. All of the Terran group from McClusky were present with Calazar, Showm, and a selection of engineering and technical experts that included Eesyan's deputy, Morizal. They were already six hours into the ultimatum period.
"But there must be something you can do," Caldwell protested, stamping backward and forward across the center of the room in frustration. "Couldn't you try using remote-controlled ships to ram them? Couldn't visar make a few black holes to suck them into or something? There has to be a way."
"I agree," Showm said, looking at Calazar. "We should try. I know it's distasteful, but the Jevlenese have made the rules. Have you considered the alternatives?"
"They could pick off ramships long before they even got near," Morizal said. "And they could detect a black hole forming and evade it long before it could trap them. And even then you could only hope to get a few at the most. The rest would incinerate Thurien then and there without waiting for the deadline."
"And besides, that's not the way," Calazar said at last, throwing up his hands. "Ganymeans have never sought solutions by war or violence. I couldn't condone anything like that. We will not descend to the level of Jevlenese barbarism."
"You've never faced this kind of threat before," Karen Heller pointed out. "What other way is there to meet it?"
"She's right," Showm said. "The Jevlenese force is not large. There's a good chance that it's all they possess right now. Six months from now that could change. Earth's logic is harsh, but nevertheless realistic in this kind of situation: losing some people now could buy the time to save many more later. It's a lesson they have learned, and we may have to as well."
"It's not the way," Calazar said again. "You've seen Earth's history. That kind of logic always leads to escalation without limits. It's insane. I won't allow us to start down that road."
"Broghuilio is insane," Showm insisted. "There's no other way."
"There must be. We need time to consider."
"We don't have any time."
A heavy silence descended. On one side of the room, Hunt caught Lyn's eye and shrugged hopelessly. She raised her eyebrows and sighed. There was nothing to say. The situation didn't look good. A short distance away Danchekker was becoming restless. He removed his spectacles, squinted through them while he twisted them first this way and then that in front of his face, then replaced them and began pinching his nose with his thumb and forefinger. Something was going through his mind. Hunt watched him curiously and waited.
"Suppose . . ." Danchekker began, thought for a second longer, then swung his head toward Calazar and Morizal. "Suppose we could induce the Jevlenese to postpone their offensive intentions and switch their force to the defensive . . . in other words take it back to Jevlen," he said. "That would gain us some time."
Calazar looked at him, puzzled. "Why should they do that? To defend against what? We have nothing to threaten any attack against them with, and neither have you."
"Agreed," Danchekker said. "But perhaps there is a way in which we could persuade them that we do." The Ganymeans stared back at him nonplussed. He explained, "Lyn and Vic were talking recently about an idea to simulate an all-out assault on Jevlen inside visar and inject it into jevex, assuming zorac gains access of course. And by suitably manipulating jevex's internal records, visar could, perhaps, then instill in jevex the conviction that the existence of such forces was consistent with what it has been observing for years. You see my point? Such a ruse might create enough confusion inside the Jevlenese camp for them to withdraw their forces. And given a sufficient level of uncertainty, they would probably not risk firing upon Thurien until they had determined the true situation. What we would do then I have no idea, but it would at least gain us some respite from the current predicament."
Showm was listening with a strange look on her face. "That would be almost identical to what they did to us," she murmured. "We'd be turning their own tactic right back at them."
"Yes, it does have a certain appeal of that nature about it," Danchekker agreed.
In response to some questions from Morizal, Danchekker went on to describe the idea in greater detail. When he had finished, the Ganymeans looked at one another dubiously, but none of them could pick out a fatal flaw in the argument. "What do you say, visar?" Calazar asked after they had talked for some time.
"It might work, but it still rests on a five-percent probability at best," visar replied. "It's still the same problem: the only way I could get into jevex is if zorac can switch off its jamming system, and so far zorac doesn't seem to be having much luck. I still haven't heard a thing from it."
"What else can you suggest?" Calazar asked.
A few seconds went by. "Nothing," visar admitted. "I could get to work and manufacture the information with some help from the Terrans and have it ready to beam through on the off-chance zorac does get me in, but its still five percent. In other words don't bank on it."
A faraway look had been coming into Hunt's eyes while the discussion was going on. One by one the heads in the room turned toward him curiously as they noticed. "It's this problem about distracting jevex's attention again," he said, "isn't it? If we could just freeze its self-checking functions for the couple of seconds zorac would need to switch off the jamming routines and open an h-link, visar would be able to hold that link open permanently and do the rest."
"True, but what's the point?" visar said. "We've already been through all this. We can't do anything like that because the only way in is through zorac in the first place."
"I think maybe we can," Hunt said in a distant voice. The room became very still. His eyes cleared suddenly as he gazed around at the others. They waited. "We can't create a diversion through zorac because zorac is outside the system trying to get in," he said. "But we've got another channel that goes straight through to the inside—direct into the core of jevex."
Caldwell shook his head and looked puzzled. "What are you talking about? What channel? Where?"
"In Connecticut," Hunt told them. He glanced at Lyn for a second and then looked back at the others. "I'm betting that what's inside Sverenssen's house is a complete communications facility into jevex—probably one with its own neural coupler. What else could it be? We could get at it through that."
A few seconds elapsed before what he had said registered fully. Morizal seemed mystified. "Get at it and do what?" he asked. "How would you use it?"
Hunt shrugged. "I haven't really thought about it yet, but there has to be something. Maybe we could use it to tell jevex all the things that visar's inventions will corroborate—Earth is fully armed and has been for years; an attack is on its way to wipe Jevlen out now . . . supporting evidence, that kind of thing. That ought to shake it up for a second or two."
"That's the craziest thing I ever heard." Caldwell shook his head helplessly. "Why would it believe you? It wouldn't even know who you were. And anyhow, would you sit down in that thing and let jevex inside your head?"
"No, I wouldn't," Hunt said. "But jevex knows Sverenssen. And it would believe what he told it. That would really shake it up."
"Why would Sverenssen ever do something like that?" Heller asked. "What makes you think he'd want to cooperate?"
Hunt shrugged. "We put a gun to the bastard's head and make him," he replied simply.
Silence fell once again. The suggestion was so outrageous that nobody had a ready comment to offer. The Ganymeans were looking at each other in amazement, all except Frenua Showm, who seemed ready to go along with the scheme without further ado. "How would you get in?" Caldwell asked dubiously at last. "Lyn said it'd take an army."
"So use the Army," Hunt said. "Jerol Packard and Norman Pacey must know some people who could pull it off."
&
nbsp; The idea was taking root as they thought about it. "But how do you know you could force him to do something like that without jevex knowing you were there doing it?" Heller asked. "I mean, visar can see somebody in the perceptron at McClusky even before they sit down in a recliner. How do you know Sverenssen's place isn't the same?"
"I don't," Hunt conceded. He spread his hands appealingly. "It's a risk. But it's a hell of a lot less of a risk than the one you were asking Calazar to take. And besides, the Ganymeans have taken enough of the risks already."
Caldwell nodded curtly as soon as Hunt said this. "I agree. Let's do it."
"visar?" Calazar inquired, still somewhat dazed by the sudden turn of events.
"I've never heard of anything like it," visar declared. "But if it increases the odds above five percent, it's worth a try. How soon can I start working on the movies?"
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