He stops at the radec room. Rogers is alone at the console. “Rogers?”
Rogers looks up quickly, sees who it is and looks back to his board just as quickly. “Sir?” He bites off the word.
“How are you feeling?”
Rogers won’t meet his gaze. His voice is sullen. “I’m all right, sir.”
“Good. Will you do something for me?”
Rogers doesn’t answer.
“Will you plot me some . . . ah, simulations?”
“What kind of simulations, sir?”
“Well—” Korie levers himself down into the empty seat beside Rogers. “I’ve been thinking about the . . . ah, behavior of that wobbly. Now, this is in the strictest confidence, you understand—but I’m not fully convinced that it was just a wobbly. I mean, think about it. What if—what if there were an enemy ship out there actually pretending to be a wobbly. We wouldn’t be able to tell, would we? And at the point at which we stop believing it’s a ship, that’s when we’re most vulnerable, isn’t it?”
Rogers doesn’t speak. He stares at his console. His hands are still.
“So—” Korie continues, “I was just . . . uh, wondering how such a ship might behave. And I thought that you might . . . ah, work up some simulations for me. Radec simulations.”
“You want to use them for a drill, don’t you?”
“Who said anything about a drill?”
“Sir—you always ask for a menu of simulations when you start planning a drill.” Rogers swivels and stares hard at Korie. “You want to know something? You want to know how the crew finally started getting our scores moving toward optimum? We tapped into your files. I did it. You didn’t know that, did you? That’s how we finally got you off our necks with the drills. We know what you were going to do before you did it.”
Korie’s face is blank. Unaffected. “That’s very interesting. May I ask . . . how?”
“Easy. I tapped your console in the auxiliary bridge. I put a wire in, and made a duplicate file of everything you accessed.”
“Clever. Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s nothing you can do to any of us, any more. When we get home, you’re probably going to be relieved, so why should I bother—”
Korie nods in modest agreement. “I really can’t argue with your assessment of the situation, crewman. But I should give you one piece of advice. I am still the first officer of this ship. And I still outrank you. And until such time as I am relieved of command, I expect you to behave accordingly. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
Korie rises. “Don’t bother about those simulations, Rogers. I’ll do them myself.”
“Yes, sir. You do that, sir.”
Korie steps out of the radec room. And permits himself the briefest of smiles. So far, so good. Maybe—
THIRTY-TWO
The difference between psychonomy and chemistry is that raw chemicals are smart enough not to run experiments on themselves.
—SOLOMON SHORT
Rogers thumbs his mike to life, “Jonesy? Rogers. Listen, he still believes there’s something out there.”
Jonesy tells Goldberg.
Goldberg tells Ehrlich.
Ehrlich tells Cookie.
Cookie tells Panyovsky.
And so on. Within fifteen minutes, every man on the ship knows that Korie still believes there’s something out there. The story is repeated in whispers; at first with incredulity, then with anger, and finally with snorts and snickers of contempt. The remarks are shockingly candid.
But—listening privately in his own cabin—Korie is not shocked. He expected it, so the flicker of anger is a small one. It’s a tightly focused anger, directed not at the remarks as hostility, but as noise. It interferes with the rationality of the speaker, and consequently, the coherency of the information being relayed is affected. But as the story is told and retold, a semblance of rationality begins to manifest itself. The situation is observed from the perspectives of every member of the crew, and individual deviations are averaged out.
But the process takes so damned long. And it is frustrating to listen to a conversation go astray and not be able to steer it back toward the desired consensus. Not if you want to get there.
“—Naw, he can’t have any more drills. The captain wouldn’t stand for it!”
“I only know what I heard, y’can ask Rogers—”
“Yah, yah—but it doesn’t make sense—”
“He asked for simulations. You know what that means—”
“Maybe he just wants simulations!”
“—and Erlich talked to Leen—”
“Say again?”
“Erlich told Leen what was up and Leen said Korie’s looped out. He wouldn’t say how he knew, in fact he didn’t want to talk about it at all. The most that Erlich could get out of him was that Leen ran into Korie in the galley last night and Korie was babbling about being a supermind or something, and that the captain of that other ship is trying to drive him crazy—”
Listening, Korie raises one eyebrow. (No, he sure didn’t get much out of him, did he?)
“There isn’t any other ship.”
“Yah, you know it, I know it; everybody knows it but Korie. You know what I think?”
“What?”
“He can’t stop believing for even one second that there’s another ship out there—because if he does, then he’ll realize how crazy he is—except when you get someone that crazy, they can’t realize how crazy they are—”
A spasm of rage flashes on Korie’s face. He forces himself to take a breath, then looks at the speaker and grins. “If I’d been holding a pencil, I’d have snapped it.” He leans over and switches off the monitor. (Either they don’t care anymore, or they don’t think I’m bothering to listen. Hardly matters. The psychonomy is working. It’s really working. They’re finally starting to function like a unit. I did it. I actually did it. Lordy, this is amazing. A class-A mega-response from a class-F stimulus. The dynamic is finally self-operative . . . and I know where all its buttons are.)
And then his own voice, the quiet one in the back of his skull, says, “Eh? Did you hear what he said?”
(Hear what?)
“—what that crewman said: ‘He can’t stop believing for even one second . . . because if he does, then he’ll realize how crazy he is . . . except when you get someone that crazy, they never realize how crazy they are—’”
(So? That doesn’t apply to me.)
“Stop,” his voice tells him. “Just stop for one moment, Jon Korie, and consider: Is there even the slightest chance you could be wrong?”
(No.)
“You’re not considering.”
(How do you know what I’m thinking.)
“Don’t be silly. I stood on a chair and peeked over the partition.”
Korie is stopped, staring at the opposite wall. His eyes seem focused on something inside of himself. (No, I couldn’t be mistaken—could I?)
“It’s something you have to consider. It is a possibility.”
(No, I’m a pro. I don’t . . . listen to the advice of . . . amateurs. What do they know about it?)
“The perceptions of amateurs are often surprisingly valid, you know that. You just have to know how to interpret them.”
(But they don’t have the information I do—)
But the thought won’t go away. And Korie can’t shake this sudden inner dread. (I’ve done all right. I—I’ve taken care of Leen, for instance. Leen was a big problem. And his big mouth. Unloading on him like that was the right thing to do. I gave him far more than he can handle. He’ll be paralyzed, terrified because he doesn’t understand—can’t understand what I’m doing—he’ll cooperate now with the first semblance of rational authority that manifests itself. I’m counting on it. I didn’t expect him to talk—at least not quite that vividly, but—but that’s a useful bonus. I’ve got them all terrified of me now. So that part’s wor
king. It’s all working. Have I got any other crew problems that I haven’t fixed? Rogers? No—) Korie allows himself a smile, puts his hands behind his head and leans back in his bunk. (That was a real challenge—integrating the little bastard into the crew. He’s sure a spoiled brat, isn’t he? Always looking for a Daddy. Well, now he’s got the whole crew to protect him from me. That was a hard one, a tricky one. If I’d shown even the slightest interest in protecting him, they would have resented him even more. This way is better. As soon as they thought I was abusing him, or perhaps using him as a weapon against them, they closed ranks around him . . . yes, that was the move—Lord, I don’t like doing this—but I have to use every tool at my disposal, if it’ll work, don’t I? And it worked. Didn’t it? Rogers is finally functioning for me instead of against me. I knew I’d done it when he finally tapped into my console. But it sure took him long enough to do it. I was starting to think they’d never figure out why I was asking for those simulations. Now there—that was one of my ideas that worked perfectly. I knew they were going to hate the drills. I had to give them a way to cheat—a way to “get even” with me. But all the time they thought they were doing it to me, I was doing it to them. The amount of time they spent in figuring how to outwit my simulations was more time than they would have spent preparing for a drill. They didn’t improve their ratings by cheating; not with those exercises. They did it by learning how to outthink an enemy. But, Lord, what a price. I had to be the enemy.
(Do I dare question myself?) Puzzlement knits his brow. (I—I have to—it’s part of the process. But I’ve gone over the logic of every level a thousand times. I couldn’t have missed anything. Could I?)
Korie feels a sudden moment of fear, an icy sinking feeling—(What if the wobbly doesn’t reappear?!! That would prove that it was a ship—and that I’m right. But—what if it doesn’t reappear, then where is it? Good Lord—could his plan be even more complex than—? No, it couldn’t possibly be—nobody could possibly juggle that many levels—unless he’s trying to drive all of us mad—
(All of us—
(Me. He’s working on me. Remember that. Trying to drive me mad.
(Maybe it’s really working. Is this what madness feels like? My brain hurts. A lot. And what if he does reappear, then what? What if it really is a wobbly? Then maybe I really am scatter-beamed. Oh, God—this is part of his plan too. The self-doubt. He really is trying to drive me crazy. And it’s working. I’m the only man on this ship who believes I’m sane, and even I’m having doubts.
(But it doesn’t matter anymore, does it? Because there’s nothing more that I can do. It’s all been done. The last piece is in place. But, oh, it’s such a fragile structure. Will it hold together for the twelve days it’ll take us to get home? Or will it fracture when the bogie reappears? Or tighten? So much depends on how I react. How will I react?
(I have to game this out. They’ll be looking for signs of madness, so I daren’t obsess about that bogie—but I still have to give them some kind of cue—because they’re going to be looking to me for a handle on how to react—and I need them to see that bogie as an enigma, not sure whether it really is there or not. They have to doubt it too—even if only a little. And as long as they see that I still believe in it, they’ll doubt. Just a little.
(Hm. I’ll have to keep a low profile, then, won’t I? Yes, the engine room is the right course. Who knows? If they’re right, and I am wrong, and it really is a wobbly, maybe I can source it. Hmp, that would be funny; the only person on the ship able to find the wobbly is the officer that it drove mad—because he’s the only one obsessive enough to look.)
But somehow, Korie is not amused.
(I can do a little to keep the structure maintained—but there are no major steps that I can take now without destroying the balance. Either it’s going to work, or it’s not . . . I wonder, though—if I had foreseen this possibility from the beginning, is there anything I could have done differently? Better?—) He thinks a moment, rehearsing his recent decisions one more time. (No, I did what I had to. There wasn’t any better way.)
He rubs his forehead tiredly. The hardest part is going to be the waiting.
THIRTY-THREE
If you build a better mousetrap, you’ll catch a better mouse.
—SOLOMON SHORT
And then bogie reappears.
Quietly. Almost insignificantly. A faintly detected shimmer at the edges of probability.
Rogers spots the anomaly on his screens.
He frowns, he punches up double-check programs, then checks the accuracy of them. He orders up a system analysis for the entire sensory set.
The possibility remains. There is a . . . discrepancy.
Where the field should be blank, there is a matrix of eighty-one pixels that flickers with random points of light. Possibilities. The individual points are meaningless as data. It is the fact that they are occurring within a defined matrix that gives Rogers such concern.
He clenches his hands together, leans elbows on the console, leans his chin onto his hands and bites one knuckle pensively.
Should he tell them? And who? Korie? The captain? Barak? Leen? Maybe he should ask Jonesy—?
No. He has to figure this out for himself.
What if it isn’t there?
“I mean—they’ll think I’m as twitchy as Korie.”
But the screen before him continues to flicker.
He leans back in his chair uncomfortably—then, resolutely, leans forward again and completely repeats every scan and double-check he had previously performed. Unable to make a decision, he postpones for the moment the need to. He rationalizes, he tells himself he just wants to be certain.
Although he is certain enough already.
And he is not surprised when the results are the same as before. The instruments say that something is out there.
Except . . . maybe—
There’s one other thing to check. He orders up a simulation of the Burlingame’s stress-field ripple, then begins altering it, trying to see if he can make it match the pattern of the bogie.
He can, but—he doesn’t feel good about the match. It’s too contrived.
“Maybe it’s a wobbly—and maybe it isn’t.” There. It’s said. “Maybe it’s a real bogie.”
But, dammit! That sounds like something Mr. Korie would say!
(I have to figure this out now—by myself. There isn’t anyone else I can check with first.)
Rogers is upset, frustrated. His nervousness shows; his hands are twitching. He feels almost close to tears. It isn’t fair! “We’re right back where we started.”
(What do they want me to do? No—that’s not the question. What should I do?) (I should tell the Captain.) (I should tell Korie too.) (Why?) (Because—uh—what if—?)
The wobbly could be a stress-field echo. The phase adapters could be magnifying the vibrations of the inherent velocity, or it could be another starcraft of roughly comparable size. But what class? The classification of a ship isn’t dependent on its size, but on its armament—
“That bastard!” Rogers says in frustration. “He’s got me thinking like him!” (And I won’t have it! I’ll show him! It’s only a bogie—I mean, wobbly! It isn’t there! Never has been!) He stabs the communicator button. “Jonesy? Rogers. Moby Dick off the port bow.”
“Eh?”
“Uh—” He hadn’t thought this far ahead. “Uh—it’s back. The bogie.”
“Huh? Are you certain?”
“Yes, of course. I checked it three times.”
“Have you told the captain yet?”
“Not yet. I thought we ought to put it on the grapevine first.”
“Yah, sure. Thanks.” Jonesy switches out.
Rogers touches another button. “Captain? This is Rogers. In the radec room. Uh—that bogie’s back.”
The captain’s reply is unintelligible.
“Beg pardon, sir?”
“Tell Mr. Leen. In the engine room. Tell him to check his Hilse
n units. That’s probably all it is.”
“Yes, sir.” Rogers disconnects and contacts Leen. “Sir—Captain wants you to check your Hilsen units. It’s back.” And so on.
By the fifth call, the response is, “Yah, I already heard.”
So he stops calling. The news is spreading. The ripple is moving faster than the object that caused it.
There’s only one person who won’t have heard.
(Somebody’s got to tell him.)
“But I won’t—” Rogers considers it. “No, I won’t do it.” And then he thinks. (But it sure would bug Korie, wouldn’t it? To be told that his bogie was only a wobbly. Had been all along. And now there’s proof. Incontrovertible evidence!) “Like hell I won’t!” Punch, flick. “Mr. Korie? The wobbly is back. Huh? Oh, Rogers, sir. Yes, I checked. Yes, sir. You’re welcome.”
(But is the evidence really incontrovertible? After all, Korie isn’t that stupid. If he suspects something is out there, maybe he has good reason to—) (No, don’t be silly.)
He puts his elbows back on the console, folds his hands together, and leans his chin on them. Absentmindedly he begins chewing his knuckle again.
An eighty-one-pixel matrix of probability is flickering in front of him. Maybe there is something there, and maybe there isn’t. But there is no way he can tell from this board.
THIRTY-FOUR
A man is known by the enemies he keeps,
—SOLOMON SHORT
Korie enters the engine room quietly. He ignores the sudden startled glances and moves politely, almost timidly, to the auxiliary monitor console and taps the man sitting there out of the seat. “It’s all right. There’s something a little more important than that.” Then, ignoring the man—and the rest of the engine room crew as well—he drops into the seat. He slips on a pair of earphones and clears the board.
On the other side of the engine room, Leen and his first assistant are standing, staring amazed at Korie. Leen starts to take a step forward, then stops himself. His eyes are troubled.
“Chief?” asks Beagle. “Aren’t you going to say something to—him ?”
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