by Dan Simmons
Some of the senators with military experience gasped at what they saw.
“Of the dozen Swarms we know to be in existence,” said Morpurgo, his voice still soft, “all appear to be committed to the invasion of the Web. Several have split into multiple attack groups. The second wave, projected to arrive at their targets within one hundred to two hundred and fifty hours of the first wave’s assault, are vectored as pictured here.”
There was no sound in the room. Gladstone wondered if others were also holding their breaths.
“Second-wave assault targets include—Hebron, one hundred hours from now; Renaissance Vector, one hundred and ten hours; Renaissance Minor, one hundred twelve hours; Nordholm, one hundred twenty-seven hours; Maui-Covenant, one hundred thirty hours; Thalia, one hundred forty-three hours; Deneb Drei and Vier, one hundred and fifty hours; Sol Draconi Septem, one hundred sixty-nine hours; Freeholm, one hundred seventy hours; New Earth, one hundred ninety-three hours; Fuji, two hundred and four hours; New Mecca, two hundred and five hours; Pacem, Armaghast, and Svoboda, two hundred twenty-one hours; Lusus, two hundred thirty hours; and Tau Ceti Center, two hundred fifty hours.”
The holo faded. The silence stretched. General Morpurgo said, “We assume that the first-wave Swarms will have secondary targets after their initial invasions, but transit times under Hawking drive will be standard Web travel time-debts, ranging from nine weeks to three years.” He stepped back and stood at parade rest.
“Good Christ,” whispered someone a few seats behind Gladstone.
The Chief Executive rubbed her lower lip. In order to save humanity from what she considered an eternity of slavery … or worse, extinction … she had been prepared to open the front door of the house to the wolf while most of the family hid upstairs, safe behind locked doors. Only now the day had arrived, and wolves were coming in through every door and window. She almost smiled at the justice of it, at her ultimate foolishness in thinking that she could uncage chaos and then control it.
“First,” she said, “there will be no resignations, no self-recriminations, until I authorize them. It is quite possible that this government shall fall … that, indeed, members of this cabinet, myself among them … shall be, as Gabriel so aptly put it, hanging from stanchions. But in the meantime, we are the government of the Hegemony and must act as such.
“Second, I will meet with this body and representatives of other Senate committees in one hour in order to go over the speech I will give to the Web at 0800 standard. Your suggestions will be welcome at that time.
“Third, I hereby command and authorize the FORCE authorities here assembled and throughout the reaches of the Hegemony to do everything in their power to preserve and protect the citizenry and property of the Web and Protectorate, through whatever extraordinary means they must employ. General, Admiral, I want the troops translated back to threatened Web worlds within ten hours. I don’t care how this is done, but it will be done
“Fourth, after my speech, I will call a full session of the Senate and All Thing. At that time, I will declare that a state of war exists between the Human Hegemony and the Ouster nations. Gabriel, Dorothy, Tom, Eiko … all of you … you’ll be very busy in the next few hours. Prepare your speeches for your homeworlds, but deliver that vote. I want unanimous Senate support. Speaker Gibbons, I can only ask for your help in guiding the All Thing debate. It is essential that we have a vote of the gathered All Thing by 1200 hours today. There can be no surprises.
“Fifth, we will evacuate the citizens of the worlds threatened by the first wave” Gladstone held up her hand and stifled the objections and explanations from the experts “We will evacuate everyone we can in the time we have. Ministers Persov, Imoto, Dan-Gyddis, and Crunnens from the Web Transit Ministry will create and spearhead the Evacuation Coordination Council and will deliver a detailed report and action timeline to me by 1300 hours today. FORCE and the Bureau for Web Security will oversee crowd control and protection of farcaster access.
“Finally, I wish to sec Councilor Albedo, Senator Kolchev, and Speaker Gibbons in my private chambers in three minutes. Are there any questions from anyone?”
Stunned faces stared back.
Gladstone rose. “Good luck,” she said. “Work quickly. Do nothing to spread unnecessary panic. And God save the Hegemony.” She turned and swept from the room.
Gladstone sat behind her desk. Kolchev, Gibbons, and Albedo sat across from her. The urgency in the air, felt from half-sensed activities beyond the doors, was made more maddening by Gladstone’s long delay before speaking. She never took her eyes off Councilor Albedo. “You,” she said at last, “have betrayed us.”
The projection’s urbane half-smile did not waver. “Never, CEO.”
“Then you have one minute to explain why the TechnoCore and specifically the AI Advisory Council did not predict this invasion.”
“It will take only one word to explain this, M. Executive,” said Albedo. “Hyperion.”
“Hyperion shit!” cried Gladstone, slamming her palm down on the ancient desk in a most un-Gladstone-like explosion of temper. “I’m sick and tired of hearing about unfactorable variables and Hyperion the predictive black hole, Albedo. Either the Core can help us understand probabilities or they’ve been lying to us for five centuries. Which is it?”
“The Council predicted the war, CEO,” said the gray-haired image. “Our confidential advisories to you and the need-to-know group explained the uncertainty of events once Hyperion became involved.”
“That’s crap,” snapped Kolchev. “Your predictions are supposed to be infallible in general trends. This attack must have been planned decades ago. Perhaps centuries.”
Albedo shrugged. “Yes, Senator, but it is quite possible that only this administration’s determination to start a war in the Hyperion System caused the Ousters to go through with the plan. We advised against any actions concerning Hyperion.”
Speaker Gibbons leaned forward. “You gave us the names of the individuals necessary for the so-called Shrike Pilgrimage.”
Albedo did not shrug again, but his projected posture was relaxed, self-confident. “You asked us to come up with names of Web individuals whose requests to the Shrike would change the outcome of the war we predicted.”
Gladstone steepled her fingers and tapped at her chin. “And have you determined yet how these requests would change the outcome of that war … this war?”
“No,” said Albedo.
“Councilor,” said CEO Meina Gladstone, “please be apprised that as of this moment, depending upon the outcome of the next few days, the government of the Hegemony of Man is considering declaring that a state of war exists between us and the entity known as the TechnoCore. As de facto ambassador from that entity, you are entrusted with relaying this fact.”
Albedo smiled. He spread his hands. “M. Executive, the shock of this terrible news must have caused you to make a poor joke. Declaring war against the Core would be like … like a fish declaring war against water, like a driver attacking his EMV because of disturbing news of an accident elsewhere.”
Gladstone did not smile. “I once had a grandfather on Patawpha,” she said slowly, her dialect thickening, “who put six slugs from a pulse rifle into the family EMV when it did not start one morning. You are dismissed, Councilor.”
Albedo blinked and disappeared. The abrupt departure was either a deliberate breach of protocol—the projection usually left a room or let others leave before deliquescing—or it was a sign that the controlling intelligence in the Core had been shaken by the exchange.
Gladstone nodded at Kolchev and Gibbons. “I won’t keep you gentlemen,” she said. “But be assured that I expect total support when the declaration of war is submitted in five hours.”
“You’ll have it,” said Gibbons The two men departed.
Aides came in through doorways and hidden panels, firing questions and cueing comlogs for instructions. Gladstone held up a finger. “Where is Severn?” she asked. At the si
ght of blank faces, she added, “The poet … anist, I mean. The one doing my portrait?”
Several aides looked at one another as if the Chief had come unhinged.
“He’s still asleep,” said Leigh Hunt. “He’d taken some sleeping pills, and no one thought to awaken him for the meeting.”
“I want him here within twenty minutes,” said Gladstone. “Brief him. Where is Commander Lee?”
Niki Cardon, the young woman in charge of military liaison, spoke up. “Lee was reassigned to perimeter patrol last night by Morpurgo and the FORCE:sea sector chief. He’ll be hopping from one ocean world to another for twenty years our time. Right now he’s … just translated to FORCE:SEACOMCEN on Bressia, awaiting offworld transport.”
“Get him back here,” said Gladstone. “I want him promoted to rear admiral or whatever the hell the necessary staff rank would be and then assigned here, to me, not Government House or Executive Branch. He can be the nuclear bagman if necessary.”
Gladstone looked at the blank wall a moment. She thought of the worlds she had walked that night; Barnard’s World, the lamplight through leaves, ancient brick college buildings; God’s Grove with its tethered balloons and free-floating zeplens greeting the dawn; Heaven’s Gate with its Promenade … all these were first-wave targets. She shook her head. “Leigh, I want you and Tarra and Brindenath to have the first drafts of both speeches—general address and the declaration of war—to me within forty-five minutes. Short. Unequivocal. Check the files under Churchill and Strudensky. Realistic but defiant, optimistic but tempered with grim resolve. Niki, I need real-time monitoring of every move the joint chiefs make. I want my own command map displays—relayed through my implant. CEO ONLY. Barbre, you’re going to be my extension of diplomacy by other means in the Senate. Get in there and call in notes, pull strings, blackmail, cajole, and generally make them realize that it would be safer to go out and fight the Ousters right now than to cross me in the next three or four votes.
“Questions, anyone?” Gladstone waited three seconds and slapped her hands together. “Well, let’s move, people!”
In the brief interval before the next wave of senators, ministers, and aides, Gladstone swiveled toward the blank wall above her, raised her finger toward the ceiling, and shook her hand.
She turned back just as the next mob of VIPs was shown in.
TWENTY-FIVE
Sol, the Consul, Father Duré, and the unconscious Het Masteen were in the first of the Cave Tombs when they heard the shots. The Consul went out alone, slowly, carefully, testing for the storm of time tides which had driven them deeper into the valley.
“It’s all right,” he called back. The pale glow of Sol’s lantern lighted the back of the cave, illuminating three pale faces and the robed bundle that was the Templar. “The tides have lessened,” called the Consul.
Sol stood. His daughter’s face was a pale oval below his own. “Are you sure the shots came from Brawne’s gun?”
The Consul motioned toward the darkness outside. “None of the rest of us carried a slugthrower. I’ll go check.”
“Wait,” said Sol, “I’ll go with you.”
Father Duré remained kneeling next to Het Masteen. “Go ahead. I’ll stay with him.”
“One of us will check back within the next few minutes,” said the Consul.
The valley glowed from the pale light of the Time Tombs. Wind roared from the south, but the airstream was higher tonight, above the cliff walls, and the dunes on the valley floor were not disturbed. Sol followed the Consul as he picked his way down the rough trail to the valley floor and turned toward the head of the valley Slight tugs of déjà vu reminded Sol of the violence of time tides an hour earlier, but now even the remnants of the bizarre storm were fading.
Where the trail widened on the valley floor, Sol and the Consul walked together past the scorched battlefield of the Crystal Monolith, the tall structure exuding a milky glow reflected by the countless shards littering the floor of the arroyo, then climbing slightly past the fade Tomb with its pale-green phosphorescence, then turning again and following the gentle switchbacks leading up to the Sphinx.
“My God,” whispered Sol and rushed forward, trying not to jar his sleeping child in her carrier. He knelt by the dark figure on the top step.
“Brawne?” asked the Consul, stopping two paces back and panting for breath after the sudden climb.
“Yes.” Sol started to lift her head and then jerked his hand back when he encountered something slick and cool extruding from her skull.
“Is she dead?”
Sol held his daughter’s head closer to his chest as he checked for a pulse in the woman’s throat. “No,” he said and took a deep breath. “She’s alive … but unconscious. Give me your light.”
Sol took the flashlight and played it over Brawne Lamia’s sprawled form, following the silver cord—“tentacle” was a better description, since the thing had a fleshy mass to it that made one think of organic origins—which led from the neural shunt socket in her skull across the broad top step of the Sphinx, in through the open portal. The Sphinx itself glowed the brightest of any of the Tombs, but the entrance was very dark.
The Consul came closer. “What is it?” He reached out to touch the silver cable, jerked his hand back as quickly as Sol had. “My God, it’s warm.”
“It feels alive,” agreed Sol. He had been chafing Brawne’s hands, and now he slapped her cheeks lightly, trying to awaken her. She did not stir. He swiveled and played the flashlight beam along the cable where it snaked out of sight down the entrance corridor. “I don’t think this is something she voluntarily attached herself to.”
“The Shrike,” said the Consul. He leaned closer to activate bio-monitor readouts on Brawne’s wrist comlog. “Everything is normal except her brain waves, Sol.”
“What do they say?”
“They say that she’s dead. Brain dead at least. No higher functions whatsoever.”
Sol sighed and rocked back on his heels. “We have to see where that cable goes.”
“Can’t we just unhook it from the shunt socket?”
“Look,” said Sol and played the light on the back of Brawne’s head while lifting a mass of dark curls away. The neural shunt, normally a plasflesh disk a few millimeters wide with a ten-micrometer socket, had seemed to melt … flesh rising in a red welt to connect with the microlead extensions of the metal cable.
“It would take surgery to remove that,” whispered the Consul. He touched the angry-looking welt of flesh. Brawne did not stir. The Consul retrieved the flashlight and stood. “You stay with her. I’ll follow it in.”
“Use the comm channels,” said Sol, knowing how useless they had been during the rise and fall of time tides.
The Consul nodded and moved forward quickly before fear made him hesitate.
The chrome cable snaked down the main corridor, turning out of sight beyond the room where the pilgrims had slept the night before. The Consul glanced in the room, the flashlight beam illuminating the blankets and packs they had left behind in their hurry.
He followed the cable around the bend in the corridor; through the central portal where the hallway broke into three narrower halls; up a ramp and right again down the narrow passage they had called “King Tut’s Highway” during their earlier explorations; then down a ramp; along a low tunnel where he had to crawl, placing his hands and knees carefully so as not to touch the flesh-warm metal tentacle; up an incline so steep that he had to climb it like a chimney; down a wider corridor he did not remember, where stones leaned inward toward the ceiling, moisture dripping; and then down steeply, slowing his descent only by losing skin on his palms and knees, crawling finally along a stretch longer than the Sphinx had appeared wide. The Consul was thoroughly lost, trusting in the cable to lead him back out when the time came.
“Sol,” he called at last, not believing for an instant that the communicator would carry through stone and time tides.
“Here,” came the ba
rest whisper of the scholar’s voice.
“I’m way the hell inside,” the Consul whispered into his comlog. “Down a corridor I don’t remember us seeing before. It feels deep.”
“Did you find where the cable ends?”
“Yeah,” the Consul replied softly, sitting back to wipe sweat from his face with a handkerchief.
“Nexus?” asked Sol, referring to one of the countless terminal nodes where Web citizens could jack into the datasphere.
“No. The thing seems to flow directly into the stone of the floor here. The corridor ends here too. I’ve tried moving it, but the join is similar to where the neural shunt’s been welded to her skull. It just seems part of the rock.”
“Come on out,” came Sol’s voice over the rasp of static. “We’ll try to cut it off her.”
In the damp and darkness of the tunnel, the Consul felt true claustrophobia close on him for the first time in his life. He found it hard to breathe. He was sure that something was behind him in the darkness, closing off his air and only avenue of retreat. The pounding of his heart was almost audible in the tight stone crawl way.
He took slow breaths, wiped his face again, and forced the panic back. “That might kill her,” he said between slow gasps for air.
No answer. The Consul called again, but something had cut off their thin connection.
“I’m coming out,” he said into the silent instrument and turned around, playing his flashlight along the low tunnel. Had the cabletentacle twitched, or was that just a trick of light?
The Consul began crawling back the way he had come.
They had found Het Masteen at sunset, just minutes before the time storm struck. The Templar had been staggering when the Consul, Sol, and Duré had first seen him, and by the time they reached his fallen form, Masteen was unconscious.