Nathan chuckled, crossing the room to avoid the sunshine’s glare. “You have summarized the situation with clarity, Madam President.”
Her eyes narrowed for a moment; she was not yet accustomed to the honorific. She replied, “Hilan has told me a bit about your Sling Hunters, just enough to tantalize me. Frankly, they sound like excellent toys. The big question is: can they work in combat?”
“I don’t know. But I do know that our alternatives are few and bleak.”
“True enough.” She gazed into the distance, as if at a field filled with corpses. “It’s too late to use tactical nuclear weapons to defend Germany. We’d kill more of our own people than we’d kill of theirs. So in the absence of a miracle, we have only two choices. We can surrender Europe, or we can drop a nuke on the Soviet Union.” Her eyes shifted back to Nathan. “At least if we surrender Europe, we know exactly how great the loss will be.”
“Yes.” The simple precision of her words pleased Nathan. Obviously, she had learned in her own ways and her own time how to filter the thousands of facts, theories, opinions, and rumors that assaulted an American president. She had extracted the fundamental points; only relevance remained when she spoke.
Nathan tried to match her. “The third alternative is a miracle—and the Sling is about the only magic box left. Let me see what rabbits I can pull out for you.” Nathan inserted a videotape into the president’s system and started the simulations of Hunters in action. He gave her the speech that he had once given Hilan Forstil.
Nell nodded with quick understanding from time to time. At the end she held up two fingers. “Two questions. Clearly, your Hunters qualify as a potential miracle. But are they miracle enough? Our forces are now scattered in helpless little clusters; I’m not even sure we can get the HopperHunters to the battlefield, because our logistics collapsed along with the front lines. Our people no longer know where the battlefield is. They are no longer sure where they themselves are.” She crossed to the empty table by the bookshelves and sat down.
Nathan joined her. “I don’t know if the Hunters are enough of a miracle. They may no longer be adequate, even assuming they perform brilliantly—and there will surely be some problems when they first go into the field. But let me point out that the Sling Project is the kind of miracle that can make the difference. With the Sling system, we are talking about a quantum leap—the transition from an Industrial Age system to an Information Age system. That jump is every bit as great as the jump that mankind made in going from the Agricultural Age to the Industrial Age.
“Let me draw an analogy. Suppose ‘we could put a single Industrial Age weapon into the middle of an Agricultural Age battle. For example, suppose we dropped an M60 tank into the Battle of Thermopylae. Who would win?”
Nell wrinkled her nose. “Whoever had the tank would win.”
“Exactly.” Nathan pounced on her words. “Even though the Spartans were outnumbered by more than ten to one, if they had that one Industrial Age weapon, they would win.”
He tapped the table top. “Similarly, a single Information Age weapon could decide any Industrial Age battle, even in the face of a ten-times-more-powerful enemy. What good is an army, if it does not know where to go? What good is an army, if it can no longer process enough information to make decisions? That is what an Information Age weapon would do to an army. That is what the Sling Project is all about.” Nathan could feel his whole body pulsing with the strength of his convictions. He realized he had lost control of his enthusiasm, even as Nell gestured in mock surrender.
“I see your point,” she said. “My second question is the more difficult of the two, however: can you complete the project in time?”
“I don’t know,” Nathan answered with dull sorrow. “We’ve collected the Sling team outside the Yakima Firing Range to work as fast and as hard as they can.”
“Does it make sense to add more people to the team? Is there anyone—anyone in the country—whom you’d like to have with you at Yakima?”
Nathan shook his head. “No, it’s too late to add people.” He chuckled again and gazed at Nell with pleasure. “Madam President, I’m surprised that you’re asking about adding people, rather than demanding it. Most politicians and businessmen don’t understand how dangerous it is to add technical staff at the last minute when you’re creating a new system. Adding people works so well when duplicating copies of old systems that they find it difficult to understand how harmful even the brightest added people can be.”
“I’ve worked with engineers before,” Nell replied drily. “I know they work best in small teams.” Her eyes narrowed. “And I know how much effort it takes to go from a system that almost works to a system that does work.”
Nathan nodded. “Exactly. So we return to the question, can we be done in time?” He took a deep breath. “How much time have we got? Good as my people are, determined and driven to succeed as they may be, I can’t believe we can have something useful in less than a week.” His voice shrank, fearing the answer to his next question. “Do we have a week?”
Nell shrugged. “Perhaps. Even though we’ve been scattered and mutilated, our men are still fighting. Jesus, they’re fighters.” Her eyes glistened. Nathan remembered the regular reports coming across the Atlantic of incredible stands being made by once-ordinary soldiers. “Fortunately, the Soviets are neither gods nor demons. They’ve made mistakes, too.” Her smile might have chilled an iceberg. “At the beginning of the war, there were only a handful of railroads that could carry heavy military supplies to Germany from the Soviet Union. And their fuel came via the oil pipelines that Europeans built for them 20 years ago. Well, the railroads are wrecks now, as are the pipelines. Supplies barely trickle across the border to their troops in Germany. And their whole strategy is based on lots of supplies.”
“So we have some time.”
“Only a little.” Nell responded sharply to the sound of relief in Nathan’s voice. “Perhaps enough.”
Nathan swallowed. “So you’ll back the Sling Project?”
“Yes, granting one more condition.” She closed her eyes, and for a moment, the lines of worry lifted from her face. Nathan stared raptly at the moment’s vision of tranquility. When she opened her eyes again, they held laughter, the joy of a fond mother humoring a child. “The commanders of our armed forces aren’t very happy with the idea of tossing an untried weapon into the middle of the battlefield.”
“I can hardly blame them. I don’t like the idea myself.”
“I’m glad you see their point of view. Anyway, they’re willing to go along—they’re willing to grasp at any straws now—but they want the last chop on sending these things to the field.”
Nathan laughed. “I’m not surprised. Madam President, the military organization is carefully designed to prevent men from grasping at straws. The American military has rarely achieved its victories with great strokes of brilliance. Few armies ever have. The failure of just one brilliant stroke could cost you more than a dozen brilliant strokes could gain. Cautious movements have historically kept men alive longer; and if you kept your men alive long enough, you usually won.”
“I suppose so. Anyway, the major general we’re sending should be helpful as well. If he were just a judge and jury, I wouldn’t have let the Army foist him on you. He’s a brilliant tactician, I’m told, as well as an able program manager. And he is very fair.” She smiled. “Hes also a skeptic about gadgetry. If the Sling passes his inspection, we’ll have a winner.”
Nathan laughed at the propriety of having a skeptic pass judgment on a Zetetic project. “We’ll do our best to keep him entertained. I look forward to meeting him.”
Nell laughed. “I suspect you’re lying,” she said, “but it’s a gallant lie, nonetheless.” She rose, offering Nathan her hand in dismissal. “I hope the next time we meet, we’ll have more pleasant prospects to discuss.”
A mirror hung in the hall beyond the president’s office. Nathan saw his own reflection: a man with unw
avering eyes, with the alertness of a sometimes swift intelligence, with a gentleness that might be construed as dignity. The man he saw might well have trouble controlling flights of fancy and impossible daydreams.
He shook his head at himself. How foolish he would have to be to fell in love with the President of the United States.
With a last shake of his whole body, his mind returned to other matters. He wondered how things were going in Yakima.
Leslie had started the day feverish with excitement. The
Sling team would come together at last, in a heroic effort to finish the Hunters, to end the war and save humanity from nuclear holocaust. At last he was free of the politicking that had wasted his time. At last he was free of the endless negotiations that had wasted his energy, his begging for small sums of money to keep the project slogging forward. Now those issues had been thrust aside, leaving Leslie with only the technical problem of building the best Hunters he knew how, in the shortest time he could manage. Certainly the technical problems formed a formidable array, but at least they were clear, understandable problems—problems of a kind he knew he could solve.
Now, three hours later, Leslie stood by the vast picture window of the airport terminal, alone and exhausted, the taste of disappointment dry on his tongue.
The passengers from Seattle disembarked in ragged groups. He recognized Juan Dante-Cortez immediately. Though they had never met in person, they had held numerous video conferences together. Leslie shuffled toward the gate, forcing himself to move, though he barely had enough enthusiasm and energy to stand. Leslie did not call to the other members of the team to come meet Juan, though they also waited in the terminal. Even without another introduction, interpersonal frictions had already made the great meeting of the Sling team a frightening failure.
Flo and Ronnie stood near the baggage conveyors, looking uncomfortably out of place. Kurt and Lila stood at another corner of the great room, within spitting distance of one another, poised with the tension of wrestlers at the beginning of a bout. Their bickering had started when Lila had arrived and Kurt had picked up her bag to carry it for her. She had made a rude comment. He had tossed his own bag at her, telling her she could carry it as well if she wished. Somehow, when the loud words ended, Kurt held both bags. Leslie wondered if they enjoyed the antagonism in some way beyond his own comprehension.
What peculiarities would Juan bring to the group?
“Hi,” Juan called to him, entering the building on the tail of a gusting wind. “I’m glad to meet you at last. It’s always so odd having friends that you’ve never met, if you know what I mean.”
Leslie nodded, and opened his mouth to speak, but Juan rushed on. “Where’s the rest of our team—I thought we were all arriving more or less the same time—oh, there they are.” He had spotted Kurt and Lila in their corner. With long strides that picked up speed, Juan whirled across the room and stopped himself by throwing one arm around Lila and one arm around Kurt. “Boo,” he said saucily.
Leslie expected to see Juan get punched in the stomach from both directions. Instead, Lila and Kurt stepped back uncertainly, then smiled. “Where’s Ronnie?” Juan asked next. As he twisted his lanky frame around, Ronnie and Flo were already walking toward him. “Howdy,” Juan said, offering a vigorous handshake to Ronnie and a gentler one for Flo. “So the gang’s all here.” He looked at Leslie. “We ready to go?”
Rejuvenated by Juan’s energy, Leslie pointed to the Thunderbird Motel’s shuttle waiting outside. “You bet.”
Juan kept up a steady chatter until they boarded the shuttle. Once in motion, however, he stopped suddenly, a runner hitting the wall. He seemed totally spent, as if the extra energy he had used in his arrival had cost him far more than it might another man. By the time he stopped, however, the icy mood had broken, and the other members of the team were speaking eagerly about their plans. Besides Leslie, only Lila watched Juan with questioning concern.
As they drove through Yakima, Leslie looked around with a surprising sense of warm contentment. He had not passed through the town of Yakima in years—not since the days of Interim FAAD, a combined Army/Air Force project that had planned to use commercial equipment and that had been killed several times by government bureaucracies.
Yakima had not changed much. Sweet Evie’s restaurant still offered simple yet wonderful home-cooked meals; Leslie remembered the flavor of their roast beef gravy on mashed potatoes from long ago.
The Thunderbird Motel still stood on the edge of civilization: on one side of the motel, buildings and parking lots crowded together, back to back. On the other side, a scattered handful of worn storefronts quickly yielded to barren sands.
Leslie had chosen Yakima as their meeting place for two reasons. First, since it was far away from everything, it was a perfect place for them to wrap themselves totally around their work. Second, and more particularly, it was close to the Yakima Firing Range. The Range, a rolling sea of dunes and weeds, lay beyond the sands behind the Thunderbird. On the Range, the Sling team could test the Hunters to brutal effect.
The Thunderbird itself had not changed, either. When they arrived, Leslie took the team straight to the Tieton Room, a conference area that Leslie had commandeered for their computers. Leslie had used this same room in the same way almost twenty years earlier.
Kurt started tearing open boxes at a frenetic pace. “Did you lose something?” Lila jeered.
Kurt stopped. He looked up and explained with clipped words, “There’s a continent full of men dying. As we dawdle, they die.”
Awkward silence touched them all. Juan moved first, to grab a small box and throw it to Lila. “Let’s do it!” he shouted with enthusiasm. He himself turned to one of the largest boxes and ripped its cover off, his thin muscles springing like wires. In a moment, everyone was hip-deep in the unpacking.
The mood lightened as empty boxes accumulated in the center of the room, and everyone felt a sense of accomplishment. Juan stopped for a moment, staring at the label on a work station he had just unpacked. “Haiku?” he asked.
Flo floated to his side. “That is mine,” she explained. “Amos and I, we named our machines. Each has a different personality.”
“I see.” Juan turned the work station over to her to finish unpacking.
Kurt straightened for a moment; even he seemed mellower as their computers came to life. “That’s a good idea. We need to name all this equipment.” Lila just looked at him sarcastically. He went on, “After all, I can’t imagine Lila wanting to work on the same work station I am.” His voice dropped in pitch as he announced with wolfish delight, “I know how to name them.”
Lila glanced up suspiciously, but continued unpacking, as did Kurt.
While others plugged in power cords and threw up screen test patterns, Leslie quietly unrolled long sheets of paper and draped them across the one bare wall that had neither doors, windows, nor blackboards. He had not brought the whole PERT chart; virtually the entire length of the corridor to his office at the Institute was a sea of green, and the green boxes of finished” tasks no longer mattered.
What mattered were the angry reds and the very recent pale blues. Only a couple feet of chart remained sandwiched between the completed boxes and the final box— the box that represented the completion of the Sling. No pink boxes remained: they had all turned red. No black boxes remained: the planned end date for the entire project had also passed. But numerous blue boxes had grown amidst the red.
Blue—the transparent blue of an editing marker—represented new and unplanned tasks hastily sketched on the chart as the red failures forced the team to seek new paths to success. They seemed to take up most of the space not covered in red. In some places they replaced it, but everywhere they distorted the once straightforward sequence of steps to the end.
But both red and blue boxes would fall to the team’s relentless efforts in the next week. With a momentary tingle of triumph, Leslie changed one blue box to green: the arrival of the team in Ya
kima was now complete.
They finished unwrapping the equipment. As Juan tossed the empty cartons into the hall, Kurt ran around the room with a labeling gun. “I’m naming the computers,” he proclaimed.
Leslie could all too easily imagine the breakdown of this fragile team over who had rights to christen the equipment. He spoke quickly. “Fine. Someone else can name the HopperHunters and the SkyHunters. They’ll arrive shortly.”
When the label maker had finished, Leslie scanned the results. ALEXANDER, CAESAR, CHARLEMAGNE, NAPOLEON, MAO, he read the raised lettering.
Kurt explained, “I’ve named them for the great conquerors.”
Juan laughed—the awkward laughter of someone who doesn’t know what else to do. Lila glowered in silence.
Leslie sighed.
A bellboy came to the doorway. Ronnie was closest, so the man spoke to him and left. Ronnie yelled, “All right! The real stuffs here. Out in the parking lot.”
They went around the corner, through the glass doors that opened on the desert side of the Thunderbird. Only a few cars dotted the parking lot, which was fortunate, because a very large glider consumed most of the space. Beside it, a hovercraft rested on its metal skirt.
Ronnie spoke first. “This is great! We can start real testing.” He smiled at Juan. “We’ll put you and your simulations out of business real soon.”
Juan smiled softly. “I certainly hope so.”
Lila ran her hand down the side of the hovercraft. Only a few openings for sensors and guns still needed filling before it became a bona fide HopperHunter. “I’ll name the Hoppers,” she said with a glance at Kurt. “I’ll name them for the flowers that grow over the graves of the conquerors.” She tapped the narrow head of the machine; it echoed with a tinny sound. The flimsiness of the Hopper armor reminded Leslie just how dependent the whole design was on speed and maneuver. The armor seemed puny compared to the stuff that covered the behemoths now roaming Europe. He knew how the barefoot men who first used pikes to defeat steel-clad medieval knights must have felt.
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