The Integrators had been the primary solution to the conflicts created by the cornucopia contained in the Message. The Integrators managed the technology that produced all the wonders the Message offered. Every individual on the planet could receive all the goods and services a properly modified serene could desire merely by asking, without any of the effort previous generations had categorized as “work.”
But who would select the people who would oversee the Integrators? Why the Integrators, of course. The Integrators selected the Overseers. And obeyed the orders of the people they had appointed.
The system worked. It had worked for three thousand years. Could it last forever? Could anything last forever?
* * *
The winged toad that made the contact had a larger wingspan and a brighter set of feathers than the creature that had approached Betzino-Resdell. Trans Cultural greeted it with its standard rebuff.
“I can only establish contacts with entities that represent significant concentrations of intellectual and governmental authority.”
“This is an extra-channel contact—an unofficial contact by a party associated with the entity who has already established communications. Does your programming allow for that kind of contact?”
Trans Cultural paused for 3.6 seconds while it searched its files and evaluated the terms it had been given.
“How do I know you are associated with that entity?”
“I can’t offer you any proof. You must evaluate my proposal on its merits. I can provide you with aid that could give you a decisive victory in your conflict with Betzino-Resdell.”
“Please wait … Why are you offering to do this?”
“Your conflict is creating disruptions in certain balances in our society. I can’t describe the balances at present. But we share your concern about contacts between unrepresentative entities.”
“Please continue.”
Varosa Uman’s instructions to Mansita Jano had been a flawless example of the kind of carefully balanced constraints that always exasperated her when somebody dropped them on her. Do this without doing that. Do that without doing this.
Betzino-Resdell had to be neutralized. Revutev Mavarka’s link to the humans had to be severed. But Mansita Jano must arrange things so the second visitor collapsed before Revutev Mavarka realized it was happening—before Revutev Mavarka had time to do something foolish. And it should all happen, of course, without any visible help from anyone officially responsible for the response to the Visitation.
“We could have avoided all this,” Mansita Jano had said, “if the Message had been transmitted the day after Revutev Mavarka approached the second visitor. I presume everyone involved in all this extended decision making realizes that.”
“The Message will be transmitted to the Trans Cultural device as soon as Betzino-Resdell is neutralized.”
“You’ve made a firm decision? There are no unstated qualifications?”
“The Message will be transmitted as soon as Betzino-Resdell is neutralized. My primary concern is the unpredictability of the humans. We don’t know how they’ll respond to an overt attack on one of their emissaries—even an emissary that appears to be as poorly connected as the Betzino-Resdell jumble.”
“If I were in your position, Overseer, I would have Revutev Mavarka arrested right now. I will do my best. But he’s just as unpredictable as our visitors. He isn’t just a charming rogue. He isn’t offering us a little harmless flirtation with our vestigial appetites for Adventure.”
It was the most explicit expression of his feelings Mansita Jano had thrown at her. If I were in your position … as I should be … if the Integrators hadn’t intervened … if you could keep your own weaknesses under control.… But who could blame him? She had just told him he was supposed to tiptoe through a maze of conflicting demands. Created by someone who seemed to be ruled by her own internal conflicts.
They were meeting face-to-face, under maximum sealed-room security. She could have placed her hand on the side of his face, like a Halna of the Tara Tin Empire offering a strikejav, a gesture of support. But that would obviously be a blunder.
“I know it’s a difficult assignment, Mansita Jano. I would do it myself, if I could. But I can’t. So I’m asking for help from the best person available. Everything we know about Revutev Mavarka indicates he won’t do anything until he feels desperate. He knows he’ll be committing an irrevocable act. Get the job done while he’s still hesitating and he’ll probably feel relieved.”
* * *
The Message had to be sent. The humans were obviously just as divided and unpredictable as every other species that had ever launched machines at the stars. They were probably even more unpredictable. Their planet apparently had a large moon they could use as an easy launch site. Its gravitational field appeared to be weaker, too. A species that could spread through its own planetary system had to be more divided than a species that had confined itself to one planet.
* * *
Mansita Jano could have handed Trans Cultural the exact location of the Betzino-Resdell base but that would have been too obvious. Instead, Trans Cultural’s scouts were gently herded in the right direction over the course of a year. Predators pursued them. Winds and storms blew them off the courses set by their search patterns.
Betzino-Resdell had located its base in the middle levels of a mountain range, next to a waterfall that supplied it with 80.5 percent of its energy. A deep, raging stream defended one side of the base and a broad, equally deep ditch protected the other borders. A high tangle of toxic thicket covered the ground behind the ditch.
Trans Cultural set up three bases of its own and started producing an army. It was obviously planning a swarm attack—the kind of unimaginative strategy machines tended to adapt. Revutev Mavarka evaluated the situation and decided Betzino-Resdell could handle the onslaught, with a little advice from a friendly organic imagination.
“You can’t stop the buildup,” Revutev Mavarka said, “but you can slow it down with well planned harassment raids.”
Betzino consulted with her colleagues. They had all started working on projects that had interested them. The Institute for Spiritual Research was particularly reluctant to divert resources from its research. “Donald” had made some remarks that set it looking for evidence the resident population still engaged in religious rituals.
The alter that called itself Ivan represented an individual who could best be described as a serial hobbyist. The original organic Ivan had spent decades exploring military topics and the alter had inherited an impulse to apply that knowledge. Betzino-Resdell voted to devote 50.7 percent of its resources to defense.
Revutev Mavarka had decided religion was a safe topic. He could discuss all the religious beliefs his species had developed before the Turbulence without telling Betzino-Resdell anything about his current society.
The Betzino-Resdell subunits had obviously adopted the same policy. The subunit that called itself the Institute for Spiritual Research led him through an overview of the different beliefs the humans had developed and he responded with a similar overview he had selected from the hundreds of possibilities stored in the libraries.
Revutev Mavarka had experimented with religion during two of his awakes—most of a full lifespan by the standards of most pre-Turbulence societies. He had spent eleven years in complete isolation from all social contact, to see if isolation would grant him the insights the Halfen Reclusives claimed to have achieved.
He could see similar patterns in the religions both species had invented. Religious leaders on both worlds seemed to agree that insight and virtue could only be achieved through some form of deprivation.
As for those who sought excitement and the tang of novelty—they were obviously a threat to every worthy who tried to stay on the True Road.
* * *
The religious studies were only a diversion—a modest attempt to achieve some insight into the minds that had created the two visitors. The emotion that co
lored every second of Revutev Mavarka’s life was his sense of impending doom.
He had already composed the Warning he would transmit to Betzino-Resdell. He could blip it at any time, with a three-word, two-number instruction to his communications system.
The moment he sent it—the instant he committed that irrevocable act—he would become the biggest traitor in the history of his species.
How many centuries would he spend in dormancy? Would they ever let him wake? Would he still be lying there when his world died in the explosion that transformed every mundane yellow star into a bloated red monster?
Every meal he ate—every woman he caressed—every view he contemplated—could be his last.
“You’ve acquired an aura, Reva,” his closest female confidante said.
“Is it attractive? I’d hate to think I was surrounded by something repulsive.”
“It has its appeal. Has one of your quests actually managed to affect something deeper than a yen for a temporary stimulus?”
“I think I’ve begun to understand those people who claim it doesn’t matter whether you live fifty years or a million. You’re still just a flicker in the life of the universe.”
* * *
“He’s savoring the possibility,” Varosa Uman told her husband.
“Like one of those people who contemplate suicide? And finish their awake still thinking about it?”
“I have to assume he could do it.”
“It seems to me it would be the equivalent of suicide. Given the outrage most people would feel.”
“We would have to give him the worst punishment the public mood demands—whatever it takes to restore calm.”
“You’re protecting him from his own impulses, love. You shouldn’t forget that. You aren’t just protecting us. You’re protecting him.”
* * *
It was all a matter of arithmetic. Trans Cultural was obviously building up a force that could overwhelm Betzino-Resdell’s defenses. At some point, it would command a horde that could cross the ditch and gnaw its way through the toxic hedge by sheer weight of numbers. Betzino-Resdell could delay that day by raiding Trans Cultural’s breeding camps and building up the defensive force gathered behind the hedge. But sooner or later Trans Cultural’s superior resources would overcome Betzino-Resdell’s best efforts.
The military hobbyist in the Betzino-Resdell community had worked the numbers. “They will achieve victory level in 8.7 terrestrial years,” Ivan advised his colleagues. “Plus or minus .3 terrestrial years. We can extend that by 2.7 terrestrial years if we increase our defensive allocation to 60 percent of our resources.”
Betzino voted to continue the current level and the other members of the community concurred. Their sponsors in the solar system would continue to receive reports on the researches and explorations that interested them.
Revutev Mavarka inspected their plan and ran it through two of the military planning routines he found in the libraries. 8.7 terrestrial years equaled six of his own world’s orbits. He could postpone his doom a little longer.
“We are going to plant a few concealed devices at promising locations,” Betzino-Resdell told him. “They will attempt to establish new bases after this one is destroyed. Our calculations indicate Trans Cultural can destroy any base it locates before the base can achieve a secure position but the calculation includes variables with wide ranges. It could be altered by unpredictable possibilities. We will reestablish contact with you if the variables and unpredictable possibilities work in our favor and we establish a new defensible base.”
“I’ll be looking forward to hearing from you,” Revutev Mavarka said.
They were only machines. They couldn’t fool themselves into thinking an impossible plan was certain to succeed.
* * *
The weather fell into predictable patterns all over the planet. The serenes had arranged it that way. Citizens who liked warm weather could live in cities where the weather stayed within a range they found comfortable and pleasant. Citizens who enjoyed the passage of the seasons could settle where the seasons rotated across the land in a rhythm that was so regular it never varied by more than three days.
But no system could achieve perfect, planet-wide predictability. There were places where three or four weather patterns adjoined and minor fluctuations could create sudden shifts. Revutev Mavarka lived, by choice, in a city located in an area noted for its tendency to lurch between extremes.
Sudden big snowfalls were one of his favorite lurches. One day you might be sitting in an outdoor cafe, dressed in light clothes, surrounded by people whose feathers glowed in the sunlight. The next you could be trudging through knee high snow, plodding toward a place where those same feathers would respond to the mellower light of an oversize fireplace.
He had just settled into a table only a few steps from such a fireplace when his communication system jerked his attention away from the snowing song he and six of his friends had started singing.
“You have a priority message. Your observers are tracking a Category One movement.”
His hands clutched the edge of the table. He lowered his head and shifted his system to subvocalization mode. The woman on the other side of the table caught his eye and he tried to look like he was receiving a message that might lead to a cozier kind of pleasure.
Category One was a mass movement toward the Betzino-Resdell base—a swarm attack.
How many observers are seeing it?
“Seven.”
How many criteria does the observation satisfy?
“All.”
His clothes started warming up as soon as he stepped outside. He crunched across the snow bathed in the familiar, comforting sense that he was wrapped in a warm cocoon surrounded by a bleak landscape. It had only been three and a half years since Trans Cultural had started building up its forces. How could they attack now? With a third of the forces they needed?
Has Betzino-Resdell been warned? Are they preparing a defense?
“Yes.”
He activated his stage and gave it instructions while he was walking back to his apartment. By the time he settled into his viewing chair, the stage was showing him an aerial view, with most of the vegetation deleted. The trees still supported their foliage in the area where the base was located.
The display had colored Trans Cultural’s forces white for easy identification. Betzino-Resdell’s defenders had been anointed with a shimmering copper. The white markers were flowing toward the base in three clearly defined streams. They were all converging, dumbly and obviously, on one side of the ditch. A bar at the top of the display estimated the streams contained four to six thousand animals. Trans Cultural was attacking with a force that exactly matched his estimates of their strength—a force that couldn’t possibly make its way through the defenses Betzino-Resdell had developed.
There could only be one explanation. Somebody had to be helping it.
“Position. Betzino-Resdell orbiter. Insert.”
A diagram popped onto the display. Trans Cultural had launched its attack just after the orbiter had passed over the base.
The antenna built into the rock face couldn’t be maneuvered. The base could only communicate with the orbiter when the orbiter was almost directly overhead. Trans Cultural—and its unannounced allies—had timed the attack so he couldn’t send his warning message until the orbiter completed another passage around the planet.
He could transmit it now, of course. Betzino-Resdell could store the warning and relay it when the orbiter made its next pass. But the whole situation would change the moment he gave the order. The police would seal off his apartment before he could take three steps toward the door.
Up until now he had been engaging in the kind of borderline activity most Adventurers played with. The record would show he had limited his contacts with Betzino-Resdell to harmless exchanges. He could even argue he had accumulated useful information about the visitors and their divisions.
* * *
“Have you considered isolating him?” Mansita Jano said. “It might be a sensible precaution, given the tension he’s under.”
Varosa Uman had been eating a long afternoon meal with Siti. She had been thinking, idly, of the small, easy pleasures that might follow. And found herself sitting in front of a stage crowded with a view of the battle and headshots of Mansita Jano and her most reliable aides.
She could cut Revutev Mavarka’s electronic links any time she wanted to. But it would be an overt act. Some people would even feel it was more drastic than physical restraint.
“He’s an emotional, unstable personality confronted with a powerful challenge,” Mansita Jano said. “He could send a warning message at any time. If they manage to relay it to the backup system they’ve set up, before you can stop them.…”
“He knows what we’ll do to him if he sends a warning,” Varosa Uman said. “He has every reason to think Trans Cultural has made a blunder and the attack is going to fail.”
“He’s an emotional, unpredictable personality, Overseer. I apologize for sounding like a recording, but there are some realities that can’t be overemphasized.”
Siti had positioned himself on her right, out of range of the camera. She glanced at him and he put down his bowl and crossed his wrists in front of his face, as if he was shielding himself from a blow.
Mansita Jano had placed his advice on the record. If his arrangement with Trans Cultural failed—whatever the arrangement was—he would be shielded.
* * *
“This attack cannot succeed,” Betzino-Resdell said. “We have repeated our analyses. This attack can only succeed if it contains some element we are not aware of.”
“I’ve come to the same conclusion,” Revutev Mavarka said.
“We are proceeding with our defensive plan. We have made no modifications. We would like more information, if you have any.”
A tactical diagram floated over the image of the advancing hordes. Most of Betzino-Resdell’s defensive forces would mass behind the toxic hedge, in the area the attackers seemed to be threatening. A small mobile reserve would position itself in the center of the base.
The Year’s Best Science Fiction Page 62