Scaevola's Triumph (Gaius Claudius Scaevola trilogy Book 3)

by Ian Miller

"I assure you, no," Kuldek replied. "We would never send a single man into a hostage situation, let alone one who was unaware of what the situation was. Even if we were prepared to risk your life, which I assure you we were not, we would never risk young Ulsian life. No, this was a completely unexpected outcome, but it makes you once again a hero, so bask in it, and take advantage."

  Chapter 25

  "What you see here," Kuldek said, as he held a strange metallic object before them, "is a Krezell wand." He held it out for them to examine. It comprised a cylinder, as long as a foot, and of diameter such that Gaius could just get his index finger to reach his thumb when he held it between them. On one end was a small parabolic mirror-like object. There were strange markings on it, but nothing that was obviously functional and there was no obvious join, or any indication how access could be gained to the interior.

  "The system you wish to use works like this," Kuldek continued. "A fine bio-mesh will be interspersed through your brain. Don't even think about asking how! Additionally some other objects are placed in your head and connected to the mesh, which is why your skull is to be enlarged slightly. The mesh 'reads' your thoughts and transmits this to the objects that send instructions as to what you wish to do in a machine-readable form. There has to be an Ulsian energy source nearby, and a generator of appropriate fields that provides the power and forces for whatever has to be done. The Krezell wand acts as an intermediary. It accesses the thoughts, and through your manipulation of the wand it indicates to what the action is directed, how much is done, and if the action is motion, to where. Identifying the target is easy, because, as you will see, you have light to indicate what you are going to do. Indicating direction is a little more difficult, but not too much so. Generating the appropriate fields, transmitting the appropriate energy, and controlling what you are doing is more difficult, and unfortunately it is almost impossible to describe how to do it to an alien, because you never know how an alien mind works. Your next task is to learn to control these effects."

  "So you control it through your mind?" Gaius asked.

  "You control the instructions through your mind," Kuldek said, "but it is usually easier to point it with your hand."

  "We haven't got the mesh," Lucilla pointed out.

  "No, but the objects on your heads will suffice," Kuldek said. "At least, they had better. You have to learn control, but we also have to learn exactly which parts of your brain participate in this."

  "And what happens if none do?" Lucilla asked.

  "Then your species will be incapable of using this technology," Kuldek said flatly, "in which case your efforts will have been in vain. However, let's not get too negative. There's no reason to believe you can't, so let's at least try."

  "So what sort of things can you do?" Gaius asked, trying to be positive.

  "More than you'd probably think," Kuldek smiled, "but a lot less than you'd like. The simplest, actually, is to fly a space ship, because the instructions go to the central computers of the ship, which are so powerful there is nothing you can think of that could possibly perturb them.

  "But back to controllable actions. There are a number of restrictions, the major one being the availability of appropriate physics. However, let's not get too concerned about what you can't do right now. The first task is to learn how to do anything at all with it. There are ways of using language, but you must first learn analogue control.

  "We shall start with something simple. For routine tasks, Ulsians colour code their instructions. This wand is set to the following: if you think of blue light and shine that light on an object it will heat the object. The stronger the blue, the more the heat."

  "What happens if you think purple? Lucilla asked.

  "If you've keyed in something for the colour red, you get that and heat," Kuldek replied.

  "You wouldn't need to key in red as to cool," Lucilla noted with a touch of sarcasm.

  "You wouldn't," Kuldek said, missing the point of Lucilla's comment. "You cannot cool. You can heat because physics permits radiation to be pumped into something from an external source, but you can't pump it out to that source. Also, you cannot magically make cold stuff appear and surround the object. You must understand that while you will be able to do some quite remarkable things, at least in terms of the culture you left, you can do nothing other than what physics and, far more restrictively, what the available power source allows."

  "Perhaps we should try something," Gaius offered.

  "Then you can each start," the Ulsian said. "Take your wand and point it at your block of ice at the end of the table. Think blue, and try to force something from inside you to push the blue out the wand. If it comes, point it at the ice. The objective is to light the ice with blue, and hence heat."

  They each took a wand and sat down. Gaius held his, and thought blue. Nothing happened.

  "Try to push a pencil of blue out of the wand," Kuldek said, "but don't try very hard. What I think is happening is that you are sending a whole lot of confusing thoughts."

  Still nothing happened. Gaius gave a look of frustration.

  "No, don't give up," the Ulsian said. "You must clear your mind. Just hold the wand, sit carefully on the chair, and try to remove every thought from your mind. Try just saying something like a number over and over again, and try not to think of anything else."

  They sat, chanting.

  "Now, try to think of the blue light."

  Gaius sat and thought, but nothing happened. He was almost about to throw the wand away in disgust, when he heard the Ulsian voice say, "Good! Now, point the blue at the ice."

  He looked over and saw Vipsania's wand had a pale blue light connecting it to the ice.

  "Now, try to think harder, make the blue stronger."

  To Gaius' surprise, the blue light did get stronger, and the rather large block of ice not only began to melt, but the water began to steam.

  "Yes!" Vipsania cried out in triumph, and at the same time the blue light stopped. "Sorry," she said to the Ulsian. "I got excited."

  "Justifiably so," Kuldek said. "You can try again if you wish, and learn how to turn it off, or weaken it."

  Gaius and Lucilla stared as Vipsania started the blue light again, connected it, melted some water, then turned it off.

  "Very good! Now, have a rest, and think carefully about what you did," Kuldek said, "and tell the others, because they're having trouble."

  "I started off trying to think the wand was part of my hand," Vipsania said, "and eventually I felt a tingling. Then I thought of my hand being blue at the end, and then I sort of pushed it out by pushing up from my stomach."

  "The idea of connecting the wand to you first is a good one," Kuldek nodded. "After a while you won't have to do this sort of thing consciously, but right now it's almost certainly a good idea."

  Gaius nodded. He was now a little desperate. Life would deteriorate if Vipsania were able to use a wand while he couldn't. However, no matter what he did, nothing worked.

  "Hey! Yes!" Vipsania cried out again. Gaius turned to see that Lucilla managed to start melting ice.

  He should have congratulated her, he realized later, but his mood was darkening. If it were only women who could do it . . ?

  "Gaius," the Ulsian said softly, "the reason you're not succeeding is that you're trying too hard. Relax. Empty your mind."

  The problem was, he could not. The conscious effort to empty the mind only filled it!

  He was not going to give up, but he began to realize that determination alone was not the answer. He tried everything, but nothing happened. It was just as he was beginning to think he would have to give up, and his mind really began to stop thinking about how important it was, he felt a tingling. He immediately began to think about success, and the tingling stopped.

  "Perhaps you should try again tomorrow," Kuldek suggested.

  "No," Gaius said. "I think I nearly had it." He sat back again, relaxed, and found the tingling there again. This time he tried to relax even
further, and simply thought the wand was blue. It felt blue. He mentally pushed, and there was the light. He directed the light onto the ice, and calmly pushed the intensity up. There was a very intense blue light, the ice almost exploded in a cloud of steam, and Gaius stopped the light.

  "There, you can all get an effect," Kuldek said. He was clearly pleased with himself. "The next important thing to aim for is control. Gaius has to learn to weaken his thoughts as well as strengthen them, you two must concentrate on strengthening your beams. That's for tomorrow. Tonight, spend at least half an hour in total silence, calmly thinking about what you did. Tomorrow, we shall try something else. When you hold the wand in your hand, by squeezing the wand you can thin the beam, so you can try to make a chisel-like beam, and if you succeed, you can try cutting something."

  After a week they all found melting ice blocks rather easy, in fact Vipsania remarked that she found it difficult to see what the problem had been. They had learned to shape their beams, to produce broad heat to boil a pot of water, or narrow beams of high intensity to cut something. Next they learned how to move things. This could be done in a number of ways, the simplest involved aligning the momentum of many of the molecules, either in the air or medium around the object, or in the object itself. They found out how to move blocks across a table, to lift them to form a tower, then move levers. Then they learned how to move levers behind a wall, and how to sense the tumblers of a mechanical lock through the signals transmitted from the small motor unit, and to open it.

  "Excellent!" Kuldek beamed when they had each opened locks. "What is important about that exercise is that you use the wand to sense the position of something before you move it, and to sense where to move it to. We shall do a number of these puzzles, to develop as far as possible the ability to get information back from the wand."

  Chapter 26

  It was then their days began to change. Each morning was spent developing skills with the wand. In the afternoon they were allocated separate rooms, and sat down in front of screens that wrapped completely around the room.

  "Imagine this as the bridge of a space ship," Kuldek said, "and to help you, we shall fill in the image of a planet you have seen."

  Immediately, the image of the gas giant filled the screen on the left side. Then, directly in front, a small image of a space ship appeared.

  "We're going to pretend you're a pilot," Kuldek said. "The object is to fly over to that ship, and dock. How would you do that?"

  "I thought the ship did that itself," Gaius said. "The captain tells the ship, and the ship does it."

  "The first problem is how to tell your ship," Kuldek said, then held up his hand as Gaius began to answer. "A warship has a very large range of options available to it. Far more than a domestic ship. So you have to be specific. You start by taking your Krezell wand and instruct the ship to accept a white light as a pointer."

  Gaius did this, then produced a small white light and directed it at his foot. He was now quite confident at producing light.

  "Point at the ship, and tell your ship to approach it. Indicate how fast, and where you wish to end up."

  Gaius pointed the light at the ship, then said, "Approach the right side . . ."

  "Right with respect to what?"

  "Me?" Gaius offered.

  "That may change. There is a straightforward way of doing this, and that is to define the parts of the ship, with respect to some feature. Now, if you look at that ship, it has a clear nest of engine exhausts. Define that as aft. Opposite is fore. Now, if you look carefully, the ship has a plane, and that side," and the Ulsian indicated with his wand, "has no features. Call that the bottom, opposite that the top. Face the fore, head towards the top, and call the right side starboard and the remaining side port."

  "Suppose what I call the bottom isn't?"

  "Doesn't matter," the Ulsian said. "It's for definition only. If you see just one hatch on the side of a near cylindrical ship after you have defined aft, you might call that the port side, which defines the remaining three sides. The object here is to be precise, but not necessarily correct."

  Gaius thought about this for a few moments, then said, "Expand view of ship, slowly."

  The Ulsian looked at Gaius with surprise, and a tinge of respect, as the image of the ship gradually grew "closer".

  "Stop!" Gaius ordered.

  "Cancel order! Cease expansion of view!" Kuldek immediately said. He turned to Gaius and said, "You must be more precise. Stop what? The ship might stop anything, including life support."

  "I thought it would mean stop the last open-ended order," Gaius frowned.

  "We can arrange that," Kuldek agreed, "as long as you have given the appropriate orders to the ship. For the moment, assume you have not. Now, continue."

  "Define that as aft," Gaius said, pointing his light at the engines, "and that as starboard." He frowned, then said, "I think that defines everything. With starboard, aft and the centre of the ship, I have defined a plane, but aft also describes a direction, so as long as starboard is defined as right with the head on top . . ."

  "Correct."

  "Then return to actual view," Gaius ordered, and when this was restored, he continued, "Move towards the ship, but stop moving when sixty meters off starboard, then circle around it and try to find a docking port."

  "Interesting way to go about it," Kuldek nodded. "The alternative is to request the ship to determine where the docking ports are, and when you find out, select one."

  "I suppose," Gaius muttered.

  "Don't get depressed!" Kuldek said quickly. "You'll learn."

  "I'd learn more quickly if you gave me more clues as to what I'm supposed to do," Gaius replied grumpily.

  "But then I'd never find out how your thinking processes go," the Ulsian replied.

  "And why do you want to know that?" Gaius asked with a touch of acid in his voice.

  "Because," Kuldek replied quietly, "if we are going to adapt a ship to suit your thoughts, we have to know what drives your thoughts."

  "Oh!" Gaius said. He was quite taken aback. "You mean, you adapt ships to their pilots?"

  "Of course," Kuldek said, as if this was so obvious he thought everyone knew it. "We try to make it as easy as possible for our pilots to be as right as possible when the pressure's on. I'm getting you to do what you'd do without prompting. The alternatives are not criticism, but rather I am giving you new options to choose from. So, let's keep going."

  The lessons continued for weeks, until Gaius seemed quite capable carrying out the basic operations of flying a space ship, or at least of ordering the ship to fly. Vipsania was making excellent progress, and was already considered sufficiently well advanced that she would be given command of a real ship to practice on. This included her flying it herself, manually working several controls while reading the necessary information from control panels. Lucilla was also making reasonable progress, although she seemed to find the process more difficult.

  However, after a couple of months, the party were given three ships, and instructed to fly these and land them at a specified point on the inner moon. This was achieved, then they proceeded manually to land on the outer moon. This too was carried out uneventfully.

  "That's good," Kuldek said. "Now you will each carry out simulated flights in which a sequence of disasters occur. There will be objects you might collide with, unexpected huge gravitational fields, and attack by enemy warships while you are unarmed. You must not worry about whether what you are doing is correct. The object is to do something as quickly as possible. You must immediately give the order that comes into your mind. If the ship doesn't understand, we'll instruct it, and try again. There are two objectives here. The first is to teach you what does and what does not work, and the second is to ensure that the ship you are going to fly understands what you say by reflex. You will each do this separately, and please don't discuss anything. Each of you will get a different ship, and it is important each is configured for its pilot."

&n
bsp; Gaius found this part of the exercise straightforward, once he had learned the techniques of manoeuvring his craft. Conceptually, flying in a fleeing space ship was little different from fleeing from an archer on horseback. The women initially had more difficulty, but soon they too became adept pilots, at least in simulation.

  They then had to undergo courses in navigation, and on elementary mechanics. Such mechanics were limited to how to repair the most likely faults in repair robots. This involved repairing leaky hydraulics, replacing 'clip-in' limbs and extensions, and replacing the "brain" cubes. Then there were survival courses, which involved how to live off the land if they crashed. Apart from the question of deciding whether the food was suitable, Gaius knew more about this than the instructor. By the end of the year, they were all credible pilots. They were also becoming quite tired of wearing this cumbersome headgear.

  Gaius also began to feel depressed and apprehensive. The problem was the prediction. There were to be two women in his life. So far, there had been only Vipsania. Did that mean he was to lose her?

  * * *

  Ulse was also becoming depressed and apprehensive. News had arrived that, as Gaius had predicted, the two additional planets had fallen to the enemy. The invasion was now directed as if like a knife at the very centre of the Ulsian Federation. Something had to be done.

  The Terrans agreed, although as Lucilla commented somewhat tartly, that something had to be more than the incessant meetings that sprang up.

  Although the meetings seemed to go on and on, eventually some form of a conclusion emerged. Gaius received a deluge of invitations to attend and explain how he knew those planets would fall. The Tin Man intercepted these calls, and after some discussion, arranged for Gaius to be interviewed, and his comments circulated planet-wide.

  Gaius seemed quite self-conscious, especially since he was still forced to wear this cumbersome headgear. However, he managed to explain some of the fundamentals of military strategy, about how there had to be objectives that, if achieved, would considerably enhance the prospects of victory. Once the objectives were decided, the commanders then went about deciding how these objectives could be achieved, what stepping stones were required, and then they put together a plan that would enable these stepping stones to be achieved. If the strategy was good, all the stepping-stones would be in accord with the final objectives, hence once the invasion had gone so far, how the victories had been achieved at that point gave a rather clear indication of at least where this major objective was. Having got that far, it was quite simple to realize there were two more stepping-stones required.