Cyber Rogues

by James P. Hogan

  “It’s a soldier’s job,” Linsay said stiffly. “You can’t pick and choose. You take whatever comes with the job.”

  Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton—Cassino, Normandy, the Ardennes—Linsay had studied them all and relived time and time again in the private world of his fantasies the days when generals commanded mighty armies and pitted themselves against worthy opponents. A man could prove himself to himself then. What was there to test the mettle of the warrior today? Endless ceremonial parades and occasional show-the-flag police expeditions to disarm a rabble of undisciplined savages or chase a few bandits away from unheard-of villages in unpronounceable places. And even then, the restrictions imposed by nervous diplomats on initiative and anything that might have called for even the rudiments of true generalship made the whole thing more like a college football match, except that the rules applied to one side only.

  But to face an adversary unlike any faced before by any general in history—a real adversary for whom there were no rules. This was the battle for which destiny had shaped Mark Linsay. If Omega were ever needed he would have failed. To fail and die locked to the end in mortal combat would at least be more honorable than to return defeated. Either way he would go down in history as the first military commander to fight not for a religious emblem, a national flag or an ideological creed, but for the whole of his race.

  Nash nodded and turned his eyes toward Krantz. Krantz shrugged and smiled contemptuously.

  “You all know my feelings on the matter,” he said. “There is not the remotest possibility of the situation escalating to the point where something as drastic as Omega will ever have to be considered. The whole thing is a gross and ugly exaggeration—a product of the paranoia bred into the military mind or the politician’s compulsive addiction to insecurity.” He clapped the palms of his hands down onto his knees in a gesture of finality. “Omega will never be used. Therefore I do not take it into account as a factor in making my decision. After the experiment has been concluded the device will be quietly dismantled and the whole shoddy episode buried somewhere in the classified archives. The only effect it will have had will be to leave a sour taste in all our mouths. That’s all I have to say.”

  PART THREE

  COMBAT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Dyer stood on the rock summit of a grassy knoll. On one side the knoll fell away steeply to become one wall of a deep gorge through which a stream flowed toward a lake farther below. Above him the slopes steepened rapidly, merging into jagged outcrops of gray rock silhouetted against the strangely violet hue of the sky. Above them the sky changed color gradually, becoming a normal blue directly overhead then darkening again into violet as it plunged behind the opposite skyline of the valley. The landscape below was more parklike than the rugged, natural-looking slopes and buttresses that formed the valley walls. The valley curved steadily upward in both directions along its length, eventually disappearing up and out of sight behind the two immense semicircular arches of the sky. A fresh, cool breeze rose from the floor of the valley, carrying with it the sounds of birds from the greenery lower down.

  Opposite a point not far behind him, a smooth tower two hundred feet in diameter rose from a knot of buildings half hidden by trees on the valley floor, and soared high above the skylines that bordered the valley on either side. A lifetime’s conditioning made his eyes see the sky as continuing uninterrupted way beyond the top of the tower, but he knew that this was an illusion; the spoke met the roof barely more than eight hundred feet above the center of the Rocky Valley sector of Janus.

  Farther away along the valley floor in the opposite direction, almost at the limit of vision defined by the interposed archway of the sky, he could see the base of a second spoke, the one that terminated in the middle of Downtown. As he followed the valley floor with his eyes, the open patchwork of Rocky Valley transformed itself abruptly into a compact terraced sculpture of rainbow walls and gleaming roofs that became progressively higher nearer the curving precipice of the spoke, like an abstract rendering of an ancient ziggurat. The angles of the architecture and the apparent tilt of the spoke toward him before it vanished combined to tell him he was looking down on the metropolis of Janus from a height, while his sense of balance insisted that he was looking up at it. Even after nearly a month on Janus he still had to stare for a long time before his protesting brain managed to produce a consistent interpretation of the conflicting data coming in through different senses.

  He turned back to face the boulder upon which Laura, clad in jeans and a tartan shirt, was silently contemplating the far side of Rocky Valley.

  “You don’t seem to be saying much today,” he called out as he walked back to join her. “What’s up? Don’t tell me you’re so much of a city girl that a little walk up a hill takes all your breath away.” Laura acknowledged his words with a faraway smile but kept her eyes fixed on the sun-soaked slopes opposite them. Dyer looked down at her suspiciously. “You’re not off into one of those transcendental things again, are you? Or maybe just thinking about something?”

  “I still have to work at it to convince myself that it’s all possible,” she said slowly at last. She focused back on where he was standing and shook her head. “Tell me I’m dreaming. Tell me we’re really on Earth and people didn’t make all this.”

  Dyer grinned and looked apologetic. “Sorry, but that’s not real sky. There are stars outside it and more under your feet. New York’s a couple of hundred thousand miles from here, two stars down and to your left.”

  He sat down next to her and helped himself to hot coffee from the flask in the small knapsack which they had brought with them. They had left Downtown a few hours earlier and followed the north lip of the Rim eastward, through the outskirts of Paris and up onto the low rolling green slopes that bordered Sunnyside. At Vine County they had dropped down to the Rim Boor for a couple of beers at the pseudo-English pub that formed part of the social center surrounding the spoke. From there they had continued on across the Rim to pass through Berlin and on up a winding trail that followed near the crest of the south side of Rocky Valley. They had a little over half a mile to go now to reach the west edge of Downtown to complete their circuit of the Rim.

  Laura turned her head away again to take in more of the view below.

  “It really works, doesn’t it,” she said thoughtfully after a while.

  “What does?”

  “Science. It works.”

  Dyer stopped drinking and looked at her in mock surprise.

  “Are you feeling all right today . . . no headaches or dizzy spells or anything like that?”

  “It’s okay. This really is me talking,” Laura said. “It’s just that . . . well, everything I’ve seen since we came here . . . it’s all too incredible to be real, but it is. Whatever people had to learn to build something like this, they had to get it right. Know what I mean, there’s no room to fool yourself when you take on this kind of thing. There are so many other ‘ologies’ and ‘isms’ and all kinds of stuff that people spend their whole lives believing, but they’re all fooling themselves, aren’t they. They never have to prove it by doing something like this . . . something where there’s no getting away from the fact that it either works or it doesn’t.”

  “You mean results,” Dyer offered, screwing the cap back on the flask and returning the flask to the knapsack.

  “Yes, that’s it I guess. Results. If something doesn’t produce any results outside your own head, there’s no way you’re ever going to know whether what you think about it is right or wrong. You could believe it all you want, but if you’re honest you’d have to admit that you couldn’t know.”

  “Christ, you are starting to sound like a scientist,” Dyer told her. “Did you figure all that out just now?”

  “No,” Laura replied. “It’s crossed my mind on and off for a long time. You ought to know. You’ve already said most of it.”

  “Somehow I always had the impression that my utterances of undiluted wi
sdom were falling on stony ground,” he answered.

  Laura gave a short laugh. “You sound like Chris. Okay, I know I sounded a bit mean at times, but don’t forget I had a job to do. I was supposed to find out how you people thought and how you felt about things. Well, I wanted the full picture. I was curious to see how you handle people who were being obstinate as well as nice people who say all the right things.”

  Dyer looked up at her as the meaning of what she was saying percolated slowly through. His eyes widened and he slowly raised an accusing finger to point straight at her.

  “You . . . bitch!” he exclaimed. “You conniving, scheming, calculating little . . . bitch! You mean that all that time you just sat there letting me make an ass of myself, getting hot under the collar and preaching all those principles . . . and all the time you . . .” His words trailed away.

  Laura grinned and nodded her head saucily. “I needed to see what you’d do about it. I’m not that bad all the time really. I don’t think you think I am either, otherwise we wouldn’t be here, would we?”

  Dyer was still gaping at her indignantly.

  “I don’t believe it,” he declared finally. “What you really mean is it’s just started making sense and you won’t admit that your ideas were all screwed up before. So now you’re saying it was always like that. You just don’t like to admit you were wrong.” He thrust out his jaw in a challenge.

  “If you insist on believing what you want to believe instead of accepting the facts, that’s up to you,” Laura said sweetly. “But personally I wouldn’t say that was a very scientific attitude. Sounds more to me like ingrained habits of thought starched in prejudice. You really ought to try and be a bit more impartial, you know.”

  “Do you know something,” Dyer said, slipping the knapsack onto his shoulder as they stood up. “If there’s one thing I hate in life it’s converts. They argue until they’re blue in the face and then one day something flips and they’ve turned into fanatics. Then they’re all over the place trying to convert everybody else. I hate ’em.”

  “I’m not some kind of convert,” Laura insisted. “I’ve always been keen on science. Why else do you think Zeegram gave me that job? Anyhow, you’ve been doing all the preaching so that must make you one.”

  “Baloney. I hate converts.”

  They had descended about one hundred feet toward the valley floor when a small procession of drones passed by, flying about ten feet off the ground and heading in the opposite direction, presumably off on some maintenance mission. There was a sphere drone, a crab drone, an electric toaster and a couple of others that Dyer didn’t recognize immediately. One of them carried a small parabolic dish mounted on a short pylon projecting from its upper surface. One of the functions performed by this model of drone was to act as a relay of control signals from distant transceivers operated by Spartacus; thus the drones could work unimpeded at remote sites.

  Dyer and Laura halted and grinned as they watched the bizarre troupe continue on its way. A lens in the sphere drone rotated toward them and the relay drone swung itself around in midair to face them without changing direction. The sight of it, sliding comically sideways while maintaining formation, caused Laura to burst into laughter.

  “Good morning,” the relay drone called jovially and with that it extended a claw and tilted its dish to give an uncanny imitation of somebody tipping his hat.

  Laura leaned against Dyer’s shoulder and wept; Dyer continued to stand speechless, gazing in openmouthed amazement after the diminishing shapes. He’d thought that he had already seen most of the jokes that the Army programmers had planted in the Spartacus system from time to time, but he’d never before come across that one.

  “Ray, they’re so cute,” Laura said. “How could anybody imagine they could possibly hurt anybody?”

  “Everything here’s okay with Spartacus running the way it was designed to,” Dyer replied. “But it’s what happens if Spartacus ever gets sick that we need to find out about. Anyhow, tomorrow we’ll be on the way to finding out once and for all. If everything works out okay, I’ll buy you one of those for a pet, They’re no trouble. You can even have your house computer send ’em for walks if you want to.”

  One month had been allowed for settling in on Janus. Tomorrow the experiment proper was due to begin.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The nerve center from which the Janus experiment would be controlled and directed was designated simply the Operational Command Room. It was situated at the center of a complex of computer galleries, monitoring substations, data-display rooms and communications exchanges that formed the Datasystem Executive Sector of the Downtown Government Center. Chris had dubbed it the Crystal Ball Room because of a raised circular platform, about six feet across and a couple of feet high, that occupied the middle of the floor below the tiers of surrounding operator stations and consoles, and served as a base onto which could be projected a 3D view of any selected part of the interior of Janus.

  A fairly spacious area of open floor surrounded the projection base and was approached from the main doorway, twenty feet or so above, by a broad flight of steps that carved a downward swathe through the tiers of control stations. This area was the Command Floor. Large data displays and screens lined its periphery and below these were positioned the work stations of the supervisory crew. A raised dais, in the center of the Command Floor and overlooking the projection base, carried the desk consoles and monitor panels of the directional staff and their assistants.

  The whole team, including Cordelle’s group, were present, sitting at their assigned posts or standing about the Command Floor in twos and threes to watch the experiment begin. The scene appeared calm and orderly as the duty crews attended to their well-drilled tasks, but the air was charged with suspense as the moment that had been the goal of more than half a year of hectic planning and preparation finally approached.

  Dyer leaned back in his seat on the dais and cast a leisurely eye around him. Kim and Fred Hayes were studying one of the supervisory consoles and discussing last-minute details in lowered tones; a few feet away from them Ron was silently keying command strings into another console at a furious rate. Eric Jassic and Chris began checking out some of the communications links while Frank Wescott stood with a small knot of CIM people watching from one side of the floor. Krantz was seated near Dyer acknowledging the status reports coming in from different parts of the project. General Linsay stood below in the center of a semicircle of aides, waiting for the scientists to announce that the opening shots of the battle had been fired. As Dyer’s gaze shifted around the room it came to rest on Laura, who was sitting at a spare station above the main floor and talking into a viewpad she held close to her mouth. No doubt she was dictating notes on what was going on. She caught Dyer’s eye and he winked instinctively. She returned a quick smile that was all confidence. No problems with last-second misgivings there, he thought to himself.

  As part of the testing carried out during the final weeks of commissioning of the Spartacus System, various breaks had been introduced into the data and power circuits to verify correct operation of the redundancy and self-correcting functions built in as protection against the malfunctions that always take place sooner or later in real life. There had been a few bugs and teething problems but overall everything had gone smoothly. Spartacus was now functioning to specification, just like any other system. The time had now come to activate the programs that would make it unlike any system ever before built in history.

  At the side of the Command Floor Kim and Fred exchanged nods over something and Kim leaned forward toward the console. A second later her face appeared on one of the screens on Dyer’s panel.

  “Countdown checks are all positive,” she said. “It looks as if we’re all set.”

  Dyer half-turned in his seat to glance at Krantz. Krantz would also have heard the announcement via his own console; it had not been directed at Dyer specifically; Krantz looked back at Dyer and nodded.

&nbs
p; “Officially it’s your privilege,” he said in response to the unvoiced question. He was close enough for Dyer to hear him without the console. Dyer acknowledged with a slight dip of his head, turned back to direct his words at the grille set high in the center of the panel.

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  Kim tapped in a single brief command.

  “Running,” she announced simply. In that instant Spartacus had been transformed. The instinct implanted deep inside the structure of its supervisory programs was now active. Spartacus had become a creature with a will to live.

  “SYS 2, Level One Monitor,” Dyer addressed Ron via another screen. “What’s the report on the integration checks?”

  “BJ two-two to four-zero, positive,” Ron replied. “CJ one-five to three-six, positive. CK is okay. All Zeta-Array vectors are okay. First pass looks good.”

  “SYS 3 monitor stations,” Dyer said. “Status on secondary-level sequences is Go. Commence tests as scheduled and report as completed.” He glanced at Krantz and signaled an O with his thumb and forefinger. Krantz smiled faintly and nodded. It would be some time now before the tests being performed from various stations around the room would tell them whether or not the way was clear to proceed further. There was no need to announce the situation to the room in general. Everybody there knew exactly what it all meant; it was looking good.