Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail flotd-4

by Jack L. Chalker

  “You have explained to the pilgrims here that they are likely to die in two days?”

  “We put it to them just that way,” the man assured him. “We told them that physical death was almost a certainty. Only a very few said that they would like to go, and most of them have not changed their minds.”

  “There are two here, though, who should go. I think even you must realize that.”

  A few moments later one of the small boats came, bearing two occupants he knew well. They stared at him in frightened bewilderment. He helped them out of the boat, and was immediately aware that both were obviously pregnant, Bura Morphy exceedingly so. Both Bura and Angi just gaped at him. Finally Bura said, “They told us Tari had returned. Who are you?”

  “Tari is dead. You know that,” he responded sadly. “I am his—father, in a sense—and his brother.”

  Angi gasped, realizing before Bura the implications of that. During the weeks in the wilderness, Tarin Bul had told them of his origin. “You are the man who…” It was all she could manage.

  He nodded. “I am. You can’t possibly understand this now, but you must believe me. I was with you in the sewers under Rochande, and with you in the wilderness. I was with you when you came to the pitadel, and with Tarin Bul until the moment of his death. I am not Tarin Bul, but he is with me. I have come to get you.”

  “They say they’re going to blow up the planet. Is that true?” Bura asked him.

  “That’s true.”

  “And nothing can stop it?”

  “I tried—Lord, how I tried! But we have an enormous group of men and women who are in the strange position of being totally confident of their power and scared to death at one and the same time. We are trying to save those we can. You carry what future there is for Tarin Bul inside you. Don’t kill him completely. Come with me.”

  They looked nervous and uncertain. Bura’s hand took Angi’s and squeezed it tightly. “A pack of mad harrar couldn’t keep us here one more minute if we have a way to get off.”

  He grinned. “Fine,” he said, and turned back to the elders. “You may not want to leave, but may I address the others here? Give them one last immediate chance?”

  “You have our permission,” the first woman said. “Go to the courtyard, and we will send them to you.”

  His speech was impassioned, eloquent, convincing, and mostly futile. Out of perhaps two hundred, only seventeen—all, it turned out, refugees and escapees from the cities—took his offer of escape. He could tell that others, perhaps many others, wanted to go, but were being held back not so much by physical means as by an odd sort of peer pressure. The phenomenon was new to him, and frightened him a little, but he could do ho more.

  Not a single one of them had ever been on a spacecraft before, and he had some trouble making the adjustments in restraints and in calming nerves before he could take off. Fifteen of the seventeen were female, all of whom were at least seven months pregnant. The citadel, he knew, was a place where tribes within a weeks’ journey came when it was time for women, to bear their young.

  Once over their initial fears, they seemed to enjoy the ride. As time grew shorter and shorter, though, and the evacuation fell more and more behind schedule, he knew that the shuttle would be needed desperately elsewhere. He headed for the Cerberan space station, calling ahead to Dumonia’s people to take on his passengers for now. Ypsir’s Medusan station was already beyond the plane of the Cerberan orbit on its way in-stream by tug, but even if it had been available he wouldn’t have used it. He knew full well what would happen if it were known to Talant Ypsir, as it would be, that two wives of Tarin Bul, pregnant with his children, were within the Lord of Medusa’s station-—all that really remained of Ypsir’s formerly absolute power.

  He was surprised to find Dumonia personally waiting for him when he arrived, and after he got the refugees as settled as possible they had a short tune to talk. Dumonia had an easy and relaxed style and the perfect manner, and their talk was pretty wide-ranging, considering the time limit the agent had for turnaround. Dumonia saw the human angle.

  “You know,” he said, “that this thing can only end in one of two ways now. Either there will be no more Diamond, or no more Confederacy.”

  “Mr. Carroll” nodded. “I’m well aware of that. If there’s no more Confederacy we’re still alive, but in a hell of a fix with no more imports and the Altavar no longer in hiding. On the other hand, if there’s no more Diamond we’ve just done a lot of work for nothing.”

  Dumonia grinned. “I think not. You must understand that the Confederacy is ripe for collapse. It won’t take an awful lot to bring that about. Making so many worlds so interdependent has left them far too vulnerable. I’m sure that’s what Kreegan had in mind when he dreamed up this human-replacement business. Unfortunately for all of us, such action was not enough, and if it hadn’t been a desperation scheme it would have been obvious from the start. As fragile and corrupt as the system is, it is still firm enough to keep together a massive population spread out over impossible distances. In its own way the Confederacy was quite amazing, eclipsing any empire in humanity’s past. But it needs collapsing—all empires do, after they have peaked, or humanity grows stale and dies.”

  The agent nodded. “I’ve come to pretty much the same conclusion myself. It seems horrible, though, that so many will have to die.”

  “It’s always been the case. Back in the very old days when we were only on one planet with simple weapons, occasional wars—even with bows, arrows, and spears—spurred progress. But it is no different, really, if your population dies by the sword or by a fusion bomb, or laser blast, or any other of our modern ways. Still, we finally reached the point on that old world where we couldn’t afford big wars any more without wiping, ourselves out. So we replaced them with small, limited wars, until even these became too sophisticated for any sort of control. Space took much of the pressure off—colonization did that. But political needs and technology unified us, made a human empire of more than nine hundred worlds possible—and kept us in place for a few centuries. Now it falls under the new barbarians.”

  “The Altavar strike me as inhuman, and really frightening, but not as barbarians. I wish I understood them better. I’m not even sure I understand then: actions now. Why not strike—if they can? Or if they can defend Medusa, why allow all this?”

  “I don’t know,” the psych told him. “The Four Lords really don’t know, either—except Morah, I think. I doubt if Kreegan knew, although perhaps he did. They, too, bought a bill of goods. The Altavar convinced them that they were no threat to the Diamond, perhaps simply by demonstrating that they’d been here all the time. The Four Lords were attracted to a war by remote control, one with no seeming risk and a lot of rewards, including escape, since the Altavar demonstrated to them early on that they could control the Warden organism. Even those robots are totally operated by a variation of the same little creature, each responsive to its own self-contained programming so it can come and go as it pleases. You know, the Confederacy managed to bypass and even reprogram Laroo and others since, yet they really don’t know how the damned things work. Thanks to Merton and her colleagues we knew where the computer-control center was and figured a different but effective input-output system for it, but we still did it by counterprogramming, feeding self-canceling instructions. We couldn’t build one if we tried, nor create our own total-control mechanism.”

  He nodded. “You joined our side—for which I’m eternally grateful, by the way—because you feared the aliens. Now what do you think?”

  Dumonia shrugged. “Who knows? In science, one takes what is, not what one would like things to be. In the end, perhaps because of the actions of both of us, we’ve come down to war anyway. If the aliens lose, so do we—end of problem. If the aliens win, then we must deal with them and with our own future. Obviously, I am cheering for the aliens even though I don’t trust them one little tentacle-tip. You must understand, for a man who has devoted his entire life t
o learning what he can—and that’s precious little, I assure you—of the workings of the human mind and personality, to be suddenly faced at my age with the necessity of learning the workings of a wholly different complex creature, was and is a bit intimidating.”

  “But if we survive—and have to go it alone—we must look forward. Suppose the Altavar really do let us alone on the three remaining worlds. What then?”

  “I began my little operation out of a sense of personal survival,” the psych replied, “but it later expanded, as you know. Ultimately, I hoped for a better, more free and open society on all the Diamond worlds. Turn them lose, with these strange powers, and see what could be built. It’s more than enough challenge for an old man, don’t you think?”

  He nodded and grinned. “And for a younger one, too, I think. But what about the Medusans? I wonder if the destruction of Medusa might not also destroy their own potential and actual power. And, if not, whether or not they’ll breed true to Medusa or to Charon or wherever else their children are born.”

  “We’ll have to wait and see on that. However, I suspect that the computer for them is the same as the one for us. Probably one of those huge moons of Momrath, broadcasting and receiving on all four frequencies no matter what. In that case, they will retain their potential and breed true. Charon will become a biracial society, which will bear close watching. Eventually we must learn the Warden secrets and go out again from here, of course, but each of the three worlds can handle many times their present population. You could put half a billion or more on Cerberus yet, and perhaps three billion or more on each of the other two. The survivors will have several generations to solve the problems, and with far less ignorance than we’ve all had up to now. Show some bright minds that a thing is possible and sooner or later they’ll drive themselves mad until they learn how to do it. That’s what makes us humans something pretty special.”

  It was almost time to leave, but he had one more question. “What about Ypsir’s girl? What if we could get her away from him—or if she freed herself?”

  He sighed. “Jorgash is an expert on the Medusan variants. He tells me flatly that the process absolutely locks in the physiological design so that it cannot be changed at alL I suspect the computer treats them as trees or animals or such—things that must be kept stable. Remember, that’s what the Wardens are actually for. Now, assuming your computer would let us, we could take that Tarin Bul recording you used for your report and feed it back into her, but consider the consequences. That body, those revised genetics, that hormonal makeup would, I think, drive you nuts. Still, she was made out of Tarin Bill’s body, and the intellectual capacity is still very much there. The challenge is, at the moment, quite academic, but I’m fascinated by what could be done. Someone with her looks, moves, and drives and your superior intellect might potentially be running all our lives in a couple of years. It’s something to think about.”

  “I think about it a lot,” he told the psych master, “but 111 think about it more if I’m still alive and kicking three days from now. I have to go.”

  As he stood up to leave, Dumonia put a hand on his shoulder and added, in a concerned tone, “Watch out for Ypsir, boy. He was always for the war, remember—so bad is his hatred of the Confederacy—and now that war’s come, but at a price he never expected to pay. He’ll never forgive the Altavar for that, but he’s very smart and knows it might be a long time before he can get revenge there. Thus, all of his hatred, all of his frustration, almost certainly will be taken out on you and your brothers here. Right now he’s probably spending all his time thinking of how to get his revenge on you. Not by killing you—that’s not his style and would give him only brief satisfaction. It will be something horrible, and far worse than we can imagine.”

  He nodded and shook the little psych’s hand warmly. “I know that and I’ll remember. If we’re still around.”

  “Yes,” Dumonia repeated grimly, “if we’re still around. Empires never go quietly.”

  He was back on Boojum on the night before the deadline expired, as instructed by both the Confederacy and Morah. He opened his secure channel to Krega, a channel so secure that the field enveloping him would not allow any recording device, or even someone standing right next to him, to understand a word either way.

  “There has been no reconsideration?” he asked, hoping against hope. “They’re still behind in evacuation, and there are between fifty and a hundred thousand people we just can’t get off under any circumstances.”

  “There has been no reconsideration on this end,” Krega told him. “In fact, it’s been difficult just to restrain some of our people, particularly the military, to this limited engagement. However, it’s going to be awfully bloody. We have monitored some traffic not on our control system at various random points around the civilized worlds. They duck in and out of light before we can get to them, but some of them are pretty big. They haven’t budged on your side?”

  “Not a bit. I talked to Morah and to the Altavar and they’re both firm—you might say even eager, on Morah’s part. However, that unauthorized traffic gives me bad feelings. There’s been no sign of any fleet massing here—I still haven’t seen an Altavar ship, not even one to take off the party on Medusa. I don’t think they’re going to take on the task force head-to-head.”

  “We have a computer projection on their potential, even assuming a tenth of our firepower, and it’s scary,” Krega admitted. “Security and Military Systems Command have used the week to shift to remote backup positions. Unless this is more bluff, we think they have dispersed rather than massed their forces for hit-and-run. If we had ten war stations we could destroy hundreds of planets. We have to hit them in one spot—yours, I’m sorry to say, but it’s the only one we have. They can hit us wherever we’re not. Come in, destroy a weakly defended planet someplace, then get out fast. Choose another equally vulnerable. We can’t guard them all. We’d need eighteen hundred cruisers to do a strong defense of all the worlds and we have less than three hundred. Sounded like a lot when we built them.”

  And that was that “They’re willing to accept the possibility of a protracted bloodbath of those proportions?”

  Krega chuckled dryly. “Son, maybe you’re still naive. The Council, the Congress, all the top people are in the best, most well-protected rear areas. They’ll die of old age before they’re ’an jeopardy. Face facts—they’ve got to win no matter what the cost.”

  No matter what the cost.,. Yes, he reflected sourly, that was the bottom line. Fallen had been right. Korman had been right. They’d all been right. The Warden Diamond wasn’t the opposite of the Confederacy, nor were the Four Lords of the Diamond the opposites of the Council. No, they were merely reflections of the Confederacy, allowing for local conditions. That was it—the break was now complete, total, and irrevocable.

  “Good-bye, Papa,” he said, meaning it.

  “Good-bye, Control,” Krega responded and broke the contact.

  He threw the security transceiver as hard as he could at the nearest wall. It bounced off and clattered and rolled back to his feet.

  The task force was already alerted. There was only an hour to go.

  Morah turned and nodded to him as he entered the cramped meeting room. “Welcome, Mr. Carroll,” he said calmly, sounding in a good mood. “Have a seat. Some of my staff are here and we thought we would make use of the transmission facilities and these-screens to watch what happens now. Unfortunately, Altavar ships are simply not built for such as us, and the command center itself bears little resemblance to anything we could make use of. I have arranged to couple in our own devices to theirs so that we can, shall we say, watch the show.”

  Morah’s manner irritated him. He could not really figure out the man, who moved so rapidly from tired philosopher to master agent to an almost Ypsir-like disregard for suffering and destruction. Still, until this was resolved, he was more or less along for the ride and would have to make the best of it.

  A half-dozen other
s were seated around the table, some with small terminals, others with primitive pads and paper, but all looked more interested than worried by what might well take place. Most, but not all, were Charonese. Medusans were conspicuously absent, though.

  One screen displayed the familiar computer plot showing the tactical disposition of the task force, the Diamond worlds, and representations of moving traffic and satellites. The plot extended to Momrath, but not beyond.

  The task force had split into three sections. Two battle groups with their attendant cruiser protection had moved well away from the main force and were station keeping at right angles to the task force and the sun. The main battle group, with two war stations, was rapidly beginning to close on the target, its obvious move designed to draw out an enemy fleet and to draw and test interplanetary defenses, since all operations could have been carried out from any distance within a light-year of the target.

  He frowned. “From the looks of it the Altavar are putting up no resistance at all,” he noted aloud.

  Morah sat back in his chair and watched the screen. “There will be no resistance to the objective except from fixed planetary defenses, which will become increasingly costly to the task force the more they close,” he told the agent. “However, the subsidiary battle groups will be engaged at the proper time.”

  “Then there are forces in the area! Where?”

  “You’ll see them when the time comes, Mr. Carroll. Be patient. We are about to bear witness to a sight no humans and few living Altavar have ever seen. We have remote cameras stationed in-system and will be able to see things firsthand on the other screen. All of this, of course, is contingent on the Confederacy task force doing exactly what it said it would. If they try to double-cross us with a mass attack on all four worlds or any one other than Medusa, or if they come at us here, the script may change drastically. I do expect some attempt at the moons here, but as long as the main attack is centered on Medusa I believe we are in no danger.”