David's Sling

by Marc Stiegler

  And then there was someone there. Or something. Three machines that looked like inverted cupcakes whirred forward from behind the wreckage of a small brick house. The machines moved so smoothly over the tortured pas-tureland, they seemed to ride on air. Focusing his binoculars, Ivan realized that they were riding on air. Hovercraft! He noticed that they skittered when a shell exploded nearby, but they apparently had enough armor to deflect shrapnel.

  Ivan listened to the Soviet chatter. “Commander, we have three targets bearing center.”

  “Teymuraz, right flank, hit those targets.” Six Soviet tanks peeled off to face the attacking hovercraft—the Americans were attacking , despite the overwhelming odds!—but even as they peeled, the odd vehicles zipped amongst the Soviet tanks. Mother of Russia—those hovercraft could fly! One of them swiveled, and the tank nearest it exploded. Ivan thought it was Teymuraz’s tank, the leader of the six-tank combat group.

  Shulgin didn’t know what had happened yet. He had other fish in his skillet. “Anatolii, center lead,” he roared. “Kiril, cover left. Hit the two M60s at—” Ivan heard the beginnings of an explosion on the receiver, then silence. The Americans had killed Shulgin!

  A handful of Soviet tanks hurtled along at the forefront of the Soviet formation, moment by moment separating themselves from the main group. Had Shulgin still been there, he would have brought them back into line. But now the Americans started moving, swinging to get clear shots at the vulnerable side armor of the newly separated strays. Ivan stood up. “Bring me the radio!” he cried. Someone had to take control before things got out of hand. There were ninety Soviet tanks down there—enough to win this batde, even if they fought with no more discipline than a mob. But the casualties would be terrific without leadership.

  Goga ran up, panting, with the bulky, ancient radio. Ivan thumbed the transmitter. “This is Major Ivan Voront-sov,” he yelled into the handset. “Major Shulgin has been killed. I will take command.” He steadied his binoculars on the leader of the strays. “Tank YZ4, stop your group. Wait for ADLT to come up on your flank.”

  A voice he didn’t recognize came up. “Who are you?” the voice demanded.

  “This is Major Vorontsov, commander of the 4-35 Infantry battalion. Obey me! Major Shulgin is dead.”

  There was a moment of silence, then the voice began again. “I think it’s an American,” the voice said. “Disregard the—” the voice ended in a sickening thump, the same sound that had accompanied Shulgins death.

  The Americans had outflanked the Soviet lead tanks. The Russians were quickly destroyed by tightly coordinated fire. Ivan had an idea. “Lieutenant Kondrashin, this is Vorontsov. Can you recognize my voice?”

  The pause seemed to last a lifetime. Ivan looked at the five remaining tanks of the group Shulgin had sent to destroy the hovercraft. They had stopped in the middle of the battlefield, uncertain what to do now that their quarry had passed them. At last Kondrashins voice spoke up. “Yes, Major Vorontsov.”

  “Everyone stop!” Ivan screamed. They stopped, some grudgingly, to conform with the others rather than in prompt obedience to the disembodied radio voice.

  Ivan surveyed the situation—quickly, quickly, a tank that stops in the open is a dead tank—”L23Z, bear left with your group. All tanks forward at 10 miles per hour. RTY7, accelerate to 15 mph, to circle. Americans are veering left. I repeat, left.” Had Ivan s comrades not taken his orders, they would already be passing to the right of the American edge. They would be taking the same beating that had already killed their eager front line.

  He could already foresee the next American step: the Abrams tanks in the bunkers would come up from behind. He had to divert them. He switched his radio to the artillery net. “This is Major Vorontsov. Move your suppressive fires 1 kilometer south.”

  There was another long, hysterical discussion as Ivan persuaded the artillery support personnel to take his orders. At last, however, the fires moved away from the woodland to the north of the Abrams position. “Lieutenant Katsobashvili, take companies B and C down into the woods, and attack the American position,” he pointed at the partly concealed tanks, “there.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m sure there are American infantry there. You will have quite a firefight before taking that position, but you must succeed.”

  “Yes, sir.” The lieutenant hurried away. Troops began moving slowly over the crest.

  Too late. The small group of Abrams tanks on Shulgin’s right flank moved slowly out of their shelters, then charged with ever-increasing speed toward the rear of the Soviet tank formation. And the main group of Americans was moving again, retreating, giving the Abrams time. The Soviet formation, meanwhile, was breaking up again as it moved. The two hovercraft continued to skitter through their ranks, killing tanks seemingly at random. But those random tanks always coincidentally blocked the movements of others. Long lines of stragglers formed.

  Suddenly, Ivan remembered that there had been three hovercraft at the beginning. Now there were only two. What had happened to the third one?

  One of his men shouted, and started firing his Kalash-nikov. Ivan tore away his binoculars and saw the third hovercraft, breezing up the hill straight toward him. “Kill that thing!” he shouted, pointing with his right arm.

  An extraordinary force threw him backwards to the ground. Pain exploded through his ri^ht shoulder. The crack of a bullets sonic boom deafened him. Goga stared down at him in horror.

  Ivan lay there, numb with shock, watching his drivers face. It seemed almost amusing—that face, the wide, terrified eyes. Ivan concentrated on that face because the numbness that replaced the pain in his shoulder scared him. It made him suspect that his arm might no longer be attached there. He watched Gogas face with the greatest concentration.

  Goga looked lip, and his terror exploded. With a choked scream, he dived toward the jeep, sliding the last meter to get behind it. Ivan felt a blast of air behind his head. The roar of jet fens penetrated his deafened ears. A glint of metal crept up on the corner of his vision. The American hovercraft floated beside him.

  Ivan’s mind fragmented. One fragment screamed in pain. Another fragment panicked with the suspicion that he had lost his arm.

  A third mental fragment trembled in terror of the machine that had shot him—the machine that would now kill him.

  But one fragment watched the hovercraft, recording and analyzing. This fragment felt a touch of awe.

  The hovercraft must be a robot; it was too small, too oddly shaped, to contain a person. It unerringly singled out those who showed initiative and destroyed them. It wasted no fire on mere soldiers, the poor lumps of meat sent to die. Goga could have come out and danced before it without fear, rather than quivering behind the futile protection of the jeep.

  Out of curiosity, Ivan moved his left hand toward his grenade belt. The roar of the fans changed pitch, the hovercraft swirled, and a strange, seven-barrel gun stared at him. He recognized the weapon: it was an American ultra-high-velocity gatling gun that fired armor-piercing uranium-depleted bullets, used for killing tanks. It took Ivan a moment to notice a much smaller machine gun adjacent to the seven massive barrels; as he was still alive, that was surely the weapon that had taken his arm.

  Ivan considered reaching for a grenade. Earlier in his life, he would have thought that reaching for the grenade was the brave thing to do. But he had already proved his bravery. He had proved it with the handful of words he had written above his signature in the cold lands of Siberia. He didn’t need to prove himself.

  He did have to get word of this amazing machine home. Surely it was a new, secret weapon, or he would have heard of it before. He had to find a way to counter it.

  One oddity of this machine puzzled him as he lay there in a pool of blood and pain. Why did it sit over him as if watching patiently for life? Why didn’t it kill him?

  Lila watched the broadcast from the HopperHunter with terrified eyes. Nathan watched her and listened to her short b
reaths. Nathan felt the horror himself, the thickness in his mind that wanted to deny this scene any reality beyond the flat panel display. Kurt’s face showed the concentration of a trapeze artist—a dynamic equilibrium of horror and hatred, both submerged beneath the overriding engineering need to diagnose the events. The others had retreated—some across the room, some within themselves.

  A jet of blood spurted from the Russian’s chest. Only lines of pain put expression on his dead white skin. He might once have have been a gardener, or a chess player, or a writer.

  He might once have been a gentle human being.

  Kurt asked the question. “Okay, what’s wrong with the Hopper? Why hasn’t it finished him off?”

  Lila shivered. Her body turned from the violence, then her shoulders, and finally her eyes. Her attention focused on the program monitor. The computer went through its steps in slow motion—logical deductions skipping from certainty to certainty, all the certainties adding up to total uncertainty. She hissed. “It’s caught in an action loop,” she said in a tone as pale as the man on the screen. Her voice strengthened as she studied the problem. “I gave the concept of being ‘dead’ pretty broad definition in the Hopper’s software. This man fits the definition most of the time, but every once in a while he moves, and that shifts the equations to conclude that he’s alive. The Hopper can’t decide.” Her jawline tightened as she turned to look at Kurt. “I don’t think we need to kill that man any more than we already have, do you?”

  Kurt, still on the tightrope, thought out loud. “Can we break the action loop without killing him—and without broadening the definition of death even further?”

  Lila coursed through the program again. “I’m doing it now.”

  “Good.” His voice rang with cold clarity. “You’re right. We don’t need to kill him any more.”

  Lila trembled as she moved through the text on her screen, cutting, pasting, rewriting. In a minute, the boxes of text closed, and everyone turned back to the view of the pale Soviet face. The pain in his face had receded; he now looked back at the Hopper as if he could see through it—through its satellite link—to Lila and Kurt. An expression of concentration masked his pain. He, too, felt horror and hatred and a need to diagnose what had happened. It struck Nathan that the Russian’s face now mirrored Kurt’s.

  Tomorrow, these two men would hate the things they had done. But today, they hated each other. Nathan vowed silently that some day the Institute would find a way to prevent this twist of behavior, the twist that allowed and perhaps even forced Premiers and Presidents to use human beings as weapons.

  Lila whispered, “It’s fixed.” The picture whirled. With its new definitions, the Hopper turned in search of another leader to kill.

  “I can’t believe we’re doing this!” Lila screamed.

  “What can’t you believe—that we’re killing them? Or that we’re letting that man on the screen live?” Kurt mocked her. “Personally, I’d like to finish off the guy who ordered that artillery barrage out there, and the soldier we just saw was probably the one who did it.” He turned from her and spoke more to himself than to Lila. “But that soldier’s more useful to us alive. He’s too incapacitated to lead anymore, so he’s not dangerous. And since he’s dying, it’ll cost the Russians a tremendous effort to try to save him. Better yet, if he dies despite their efforts, his death will demoralize them, because he’ll have died in their hands.”

  Lila sat speechless, listening to this last blast of inhumanly cold, brutal logic. She ran from the room.

  Kurt blinked his eyes slowly. “I spent some time in Stuttgart when I was in the Army.” His voice softened. Abruptly, he grasped the dial and flicked through the images from the Hoppers. He released the knob when the picture focused on the ruins of a farmhouse and the charred ruins of human beings. “I used to pass that farmhouse every day. The man would frown—he didn’t like Americans— but his daughter waved at me. She waved at all the people who went by, smiling …” Fury and pain congealed in the lines of his neck and mouth as he marched stiffly from the room.

  Ivan continued to watch his murderer as it watched him. For no apparent reason, the machine whirled again— how delightfully nimble it was! So graceful and precise a destroyer!—and sped toward the troops who had moved halfway over the ridge toward the woodland. Again, the machine proved its precision. A spit of flame came from it, a short burst of fire. Lieutenant Katsobashvili spun to the ground, very dead.

  Ivan rolled over and crawled toward the jeep. “Goga,” he whispered to his driver, “help me into the jeep. We must get a report on this back to the general.”

  Goga poked his head around, then ran to assist him. He looked like he was about to throw up. Ivan almost laughed. Here was a man who had looked upon the burnt bodies of helpless children without flinching, yet couldn’t stomach the sight of a one-armed comrade covered with blood.

  One-armed! The thought made Ivan want to throw up, too. He refused to think about it. He rationalized that he would soon bleed to death, so the loss of his arm would not be important.

  As they bounced away to the nearest hospital, Ivan looked back to see the first American soldiers come over the hill. Ivan’s battalion was frozen with indecision. Most of them, like his driver, had never been in combat before. A few of them would fight and die. The rest would surrender.

  The pain and the shock slammed against his rationality one more time. As Ivan slipped into unconsciousness, he had one last insight—a thrilling insight that relaxed him, and almost made him feel peaceful, despite his condition.

  He realized that this new American weapon would not hurt any children.

  The SkyHunter floated on the breeze.

  Floating on the breeze meant goodness. Not floating meant endness. Not floating meant endness.

  Recognition of a SAM-27 site meant more recognitions of SAM-27s. It meant float in an out-spiraling helix with radar detectors in full blossom. Recognition of three SAM-27s meant conform a template to match them and see the conformed location of the comsite. Finding the conformed location of the comsite meant match the conformation to the best nearby hill. Best and nearby meant look up pattern definitions and calculate weighted value averages.

  Finding the best hill match meant float over the hill with radio detectors in full blossom. No contact meant circle float. No contact meant circle float.

  No contact for many minutes meant float over the second-best hill with radio detectors in full blossom. No contact meant circle float.

  Contact meant comsite positively identified. Comsite positively identified meant find the best nearby valley for a division headquarters. Best and nearby meant pattern matching with weighted averages. Finding the nearby valley meant float over the valley with infrared and optical detectors in full blossom.

  Infrared patterns of human beings in frenzied action, concealed from optical vision by camouflage, meant division headquarters. Division headquarters meant float over target. Float over target meant—

  Downdraft meant no float. No float meant endness. Floating on the breeze meant goodness. No float meant endness.

  Safety meant altitude greater than 10,000 feet. Safety meant continue to float. No safety meant point to error block. Error block meant touch the satellite with radio transmitter in full blossom. Error block meant connect to the Thunderbird Motel in Yakima. Error block meant dump all status checkpoints to Ronnie.

  Nathan’s eyes jerked at the sound of the alerter beep. It took a few moments of reorientation to remember what the beep meant: another malfunction had occurred in another Hunter.

  A shadow moved in the room’s gloomy twilight. Ronnie stumbled out of his chair and crossed the room to lean over a glowing display of the image that Nathan recognized: an image of the ground as seen from a SkyHunter.

  Nathan walked softly up behind the boy and the computer. Ronnie sighed and drooped his hand over the keyboard. The SkyHunter image slid to the side as chunks of texts, lists of definitions in Modulog style, popped out.
Each Modulog definition held the meaning of another definition, of an event, or of a pattern. Nathan recognized all the words, and all the definitions. Each definition of itself seemed quite reasonable, but Nathan had no idea how reasonably they worked as a collection.

  The problem with blocks of software resembled the problem with teams of people. Like the people in the team, the definitions in the program had to be molded into an organic whole. The organic whole had to make sense beyond the disparate merits of the individuals. He clenched his teeth as he thought about what this week, and this day, had done to his team of individuals.

  They now played a high-speed race—the race of his team and their Hunters against the enemy killers. Creating organic wholeness took time, but they had no time. Instead, they were transferring organic wholeness, from the team to the programs. Every repair they made in response to a Hunter failure expended some part of the integrity of the team. As the team disintegrated, the Hunters became more complete.

  Did the team have enough cohesion left to correct the Hunters? Were the Hunters still so raw and error-ridden that they would take more than Nathans people had to give?

  His voice barked as he asked Ronnie, “What is it?”

  Ronnie jumped. “I don’t know,” he said shrilly.

  Nathan shook his head. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to shout like that.” He dragged his chair over and sat down. The picture from the SkyHunter zigged again, a purposeful motion rattled by random twists of air currents. The craft continuously tweaked its control surfaces to capture every wisp of available lift.

  Looking below the image, Nathan saw the status indicators. Despite its cleverness in using every twist of air, this SkyHunter had dropped below the safe altitude of 10,000 feet. Flying that low, the glider might well be seen from the ground, if someone looked in the right direction at the right time, despite the coloration of the Hunter’s lower surfaces.

  Nathan sat quietly, resisting the desire to ask more questions until Ronnie had at least finished his inspection of the situation. To reinforce his resolve, Nathan sidled his chair back and away from the work station, far enough away to remove himself from Ronnie’s field of view.