“Doesn’t seem as if it would be that hard to figure out. They have rifles.”
George blipped. It was his equivalent of shrugging his shoulders.
“What about sensors or radar? Anything like that?”
“They have no tracking devices other than their eyes. And telescopes.”
“They do have telescopes.”
“Yes. Most certainly.”
We overtook the raiders, passed above them, and arced out over the beach. Several small boats lay in the wet sand, apparently awaiting the arrival of the land force.
“George,” I said, “let’s take a look at the ships.”
We glided out into the harbor.
“The one in the middle,” I told him. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. We loped in, moved slowly over masts and gun turrets, and stopped directly over the bridge.
The guns were primitive, but that wouldn’t matter if one of the shells hit us. The only Noks I could see were manning the rails with rifles.
I could make out several figures on the bridge, in the glow of instrument lights. I thought about the wedding guests, and Trill, help me, and I wished I had a few bombs.
“What’s that, Dr. Kaminsky? I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you.”
I didn’t realize I’d said anything. “Nothing,” I said. “Never mind.”
I wanted a way to pay them back in their own coin. While I watched, the raiders arrived on the beach, scattered across the sand, and headed for the boats. They moved with a jaunty precision that implied they were happy with the evening’s slaughter. Still taking no precautions for their own safety. And you might be thinking that nonverbal cues are deceptive even among humans of different cultures, and what did I know about Noks. But it was my specialty. “George,” I said, “get us over to the beach and take us down to ground level.”
“That’s not advisable, Doctor.”
“Do it anyway.”
“If you insist. But it is dangerous. Someone might walk into us before we can react.”
“Just do it.”
There were seven boats. They were made of wood, and each was designed to accommodate about twenty. The raiders surrounded each boat and began pushing it into the surf. When it started to float, they jumped aboard. I watched as, one by one, they set out for the ships, which were about a kilometer away. They were spreading out, making for different vessels.
The lander was at ground level, the treads a half-meter above the sand. “Okay,” I said. “George, I want you to keep us right at this altitude.”
“And—?”
“We’re going to take out the boats.”
“Ram them?” He sounded horrified.
“Can we do it without damaging the lander?”
“I can’t guarantee that.”
“Give me the odds.”
“There are too many variables, Doctor.”
“The odds, George.”
“Eighty-eight percent.”
“Eighty-eight percent what? That we come away undamaged?”
“That we come away relatively undamaged. Still able to make orbit.”
“Okay. Let’s do it. Start with that one over there.”
“Sir, I am required to inform you that you will be in violation of the Protocol.”
“Do it anyway.” A fifth boat launched.
“I am sorry, Doctor. But to override, you will have to get authority from the director.”
There was a way to disable the AI, and if I could do that I thought I knew enough about the controls to be able to get the job done manually. “George.”
“Yes, Doctor.” The rest of the boats were into the waves.
“How do I disable you?”
“I’m afraid, under the circumstances, it would be best if that information were withheld.”
Damn. I studied the control panel. It was an array of switches, illuminated gauges, presspads, levers, warning lamps. There was a retractable yoke that could be used for manual operation. But I saw nothing marked Shut off AI.
“Let me out,” I said finally. “Open up.”
“Doctor, you sure you won’t hurt yourself?”
“No, I’ll be fine.”
I climbed through the airlock and stepped down onto the sand. It was hard and crackly underfoot, like the sand on a thousand beaches at home. The ships and boats showed no light. And I no longer heard voices over the roar of the ocean. But I could see them, the ships, and the raiding party. I watched the boats close with the vessels. Saw rope ladders cast over the side.
The Noks scrambled up the lines. They were far more agile than human beings. Then they hauled up the boats. I watched until the last of the raiders were aboard, and the boats had been stowed. There were belches of smoke from the three vessels, and they turned and began to move out of the harbor.
I walked down to the sea, until the tide lapped at my feet.
Help me.
“Where to, Doctor?” asked the AI.
“Orbit, Get us to the Sheldrake, George.” I threw my head back in the seat and tried to shut out the images of the victims. “Very good, sir.” We lifted off the beach, and began to accelerate. “I know this has been hard on you.”
“Just take us home, George.” I wasn’t sure whether I was talking about the Sheldrake. Or Toronto.
2.
Nok was a laboratory for anyone interested in the rise and fall of civilizations. With such a long history, and the cycles of prosperity and collapse, it was possible to draw a wide range of conclusions about the impact of technology, climate, religion, and economics on cultural development. And on the tendency of civilizations to overextend. It was, in fact, the thing they did again and again. And always with the same catastrophic results. Fortunately, no one on Nok had ever discovered how to split the atom, so the land, at least, was still habitable.
Were they more barbaric than humans? I thought about it while the lander passed through a thunderstorm. At the present time, they certainly were. But we had our own bloodsoaked history, didn’t we? I knew of nothing in the Nok archives to rival the Holocaust or the great Communist purges or the African massacres of the twentieth century.
I was still seething when we arrived in orbit. It wasn’t as if I didn’t know what Nok was before I’d come. But actually seeing these creatures murder one another had been something for which I really hadn’t been prepared.
When we caught up with the Sheldrake, McCarver was waiting for me, and I could see he was genuinely worried. “You all right, Art?” he asked. “You look a little bloodshot.”
I was wiped out. I needed a shower and a night’s sleep. And something to calm me down. “Answer a question for me, Paul,” I said.
“Sure. Go ahead.”
“We’ve been here how long now?”
“Forty years. Give or take.”
“And we’ve never lifted a finger. About the killing.”
McCarver was a diminutive guy. He was the only male on the mission who had to look up to me. He was thin, not the sort of person you’d expect to find out here. Had I met him socially, I’d have pegged him strictly as a classroom guy, or somebody doing lab research.
But he was the director. McCarver had only to walk into a room to bring everyone to attention. He wasn’t the most brilliant of the researchers on the Nok team. He admitted that himself. But they all respected him. We were in the main deck conference room. McCarver was nodding, as if he’d been bothered by the same issue. “Art,” he said, “I can guess what you went through today. I’ve seen it myself. They’re savages. They have a lot of our capabilities, and sometimes they’ve done pretty well for themselves. But in the current era, they’re savages, and we have to accept that.”
“Why?”
McCarver looked past me, at a distant place. “Because we’re not missionaries. Because we can’t convert an entire global population to the rule of reason. Because even if we could, we probably shouldn’t.”
“Why is that, Paul?” I knew why, of course, but I wanted to force McC
arver to say it. Maybe he’d come to understand how bloodless that view was.
“You know as well as I do, Art. If the Noks even find out we’re here, they’ll become dependent on us and they’ll never develop properly.”
“They haven’t developed anyway.”
“It’s not our call, Art.” He managed a smile. “Anybody who got involved down there, we’d have to put on the next flight home.” Our eyes locked. His were dark and intense and bottomless. “Wouldn’t want to do that.”
“I took one of them down,” I said.
“One of who?”
“The raiders. He was going to kill one of the people at the wedding.”
“They’re not people, Art.” His voice was soft. But there was no give.
“He was trying to kill the bride.”
“Who else knows?”
“Nobody.”
“Keep it that way.”
“Okay.”
“Forget it happened. Technically, it puts you in violation of the rules. Could end your stay here. Maybe your career.”
“It’s happened with other people—.”
“I know. And I understand why it happens. You’re human, Art. You watch some of the things that go on here, and you know you can step in, save one of them. But you’re putting your career on the line. Don’t let it happen again.”
And by the way, since you asked, the bride didn’t survive. “I don’t think I can promise that, Paul.”
McCarver nodded. Okay. That’s your position. “You don’t leave me any choice, Art.” He went over and got some coffee. One for him and one for me. He brought them back and sat down and put cream in his. The whole time he managed to look distressed. And I suppose the truth was he was unhappy. “I’ll have to ask you to stay on board until you’re able to comply with the policy. The last thing we need is a lone gun running around down there. You let me know when you can give me your word, and I’ll take it from there.”
I spent the evening in the archives. During the forty-two years since the Valoire discovered the Noks, hundreds of researchers had been here, and had walked unseen among the natives. They’d studied Nok mores and traditions, political and religious concepts, their literature, their family structure, and they’d begun to construct theories detailing what kind of behaviors were purely cultural, and what kind would be found to be characteristic of any intelligent species. It was a field that, because so few functioning cultures had been found—to date, only three—was still wide open to speculation.
I sat watching vid records. I was a silent witness at funeral services, at beach parties, at celebrations of various kinds, at their courting procedures. I watched them work, watched them play on the beach, watched them prepare food.
I took a look at troops in combat, though there wasn’t much of that in the archive, probably because getting the footage entailed a degree of risk. It was. also the case that troops seldom fought other troops. And for the same reason. The various Nok militaries preferred knocking over villages to taking on armed opponents. It was a style of war-making that appeared to be a recent development.
I watched from a lander as dirigibles dropped their bombs. There weren’t many pictures of the effect of the weapons, which was to say nobody had been on the ground getting shots of Noks with missing limbs, or with massive burns. Mostly, it was strictly a light show. You drifted above the attack site, seeing the flashes, hearing the distant rumble moments later. And it all seemed very precise. And even, in its own strange way, beautiful.
“Paul’s right,” Cathie told me. “We can’t get involved in all that. I don’t think it’s a problem if you just step in and stop one of them from getting killed. Just, if it happens, don’t put it in the report. Better yet, don’t even mention it.” She looked puzzled. “Why would a military force raid a wedding party?”
“They don’t operate the way we do.”
“Explain.” At that point, Cathie had been there only a few weeks.
We were sitting in the common room. There were maybe half a dozen others present, arguing about the evolution of Nok’s four major religious systems. We were off to one side, drinking coffee. “They don’t think in terms of strategy and tactics. They go after the easy targets instead. Places where they can kill a maximum number of victims with minimum risk. The idea is presumably that after a while the other side gets discouraged and gives up. Except that it never happens.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t know. Maybe because attacks like the one on the wedding party get everybody angry and they just fight harder. You get lots of flag-waving, patriotism, falling in behind the head guy.
“The balance of power shifts constantly. Seventeen nations are caught up in the current war. But it’s hard to sort out the sides. There seems to be more than two. It changes. Somebody goes down, and they rearrange the allies to make sure nobody gets too strong. It’s right out of George Orwell.”
“It’s crazy,” she said.
“I know. It’s the political system. The leaders aren’t responsive to the wedding parties. They’re all dictators, and I doubt they care much about anything other than staying in power. And the killing just goes on and on.”
She looked unhappy. Worried. “So what are you going to do?”
Ordinarily, having a woman like Cathie Ardahl so close would have completely absorbed me. But not that night. “I don’t know,” I said. “We’re not going to look very good in the history books. Standing by and watching all this happen.”
I couldn’t be sure but I caught a glimpse of something in her eyes. Respect, maybe. Admiration. Whatever it was, she was taking me seriously. “Art,” she said, “you’re not the first here to go through this. You have to divorce yourself from it. Think of the Noks as a species to be studied.”
“I know.”
“Nothing more than that.”
I wondered whether things would change if the people who made and enforced the policy had an opportunity to get a good look at the carnage. Paul and Cathie and the others, sitting in landers or in the VR chamber, saw only the light shows. And the statistics. Estimates of how many killed in a given attack. How many total casualties. They didn’t experience any of it. I couldn’t be sure, of course, but I suspected my colleagues made it a point to avoid areas where there might be incursions. Or raids. God knew, it was the way I felt. Who needs all that unpleasantness? I’d thought the little coastal village with its bright lights and its upcoming wedding would be safe enough.
I didn’t like the idea that eventually there’d be a change in policy, that we’d adopt a more humane attitude, and everybody would wonder how people like me could have just sat and let it all happen.
I didn’t know it then, but I learned later that, over the years, various directors had suggested intervention. But the requests had always come back with the same reply. The Academy would look into it. For the moment, the Protocol would be respected. And it went on being respected. Nothing ever changed.
“How would you suggest we intervene?” Paul’s voice. I hadn’t seen him come in. “Do you think they’d listen to us if we told them to stop?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “We’ve never tried. How do we know what might happen?”
When I was alone, I brought up the operational instructions for the 44 lander, the one we used. I looked up its range, read about its gravity index, saw what I had to do to disable the AI. And I studied the instructions for emergency situations. How to pilot the craft, how to land, how to manage its mass, how to turn left and right, how to descend, how to operate the lightbender.
In the morning I hijacked a lander.
It wasn’t hard. I just got some sandwiches and soup out of the kitchen, checked out a laser and a tensor, and told the ship’s AI I needed a lander. It apparently had never occurred to McCarver that anyone would disregard specific instructions, so he hadn’t bothered to lock me out of the flight lists.
The result was that within an hour of grabbing the extra food, I was on my way gro
undside.
“Where are we going, Dr. Kaminsky?” asked George.
Nok’s class-G sun floated just above the rim of the planet, painting the clouds gold. Below us, an ocean extended to the horizon. “Night side,” I said. “Engage lightbender.”
“Engaged. Anywhere in particular?”
“No. Just get me someplace where it’s dark.”
3.
Nok had anywhere from four to nine continents, depending on how you choose to define the term. Seven of the nine were caught up in the war. The conflict itself was so confusing that it appeared allies in one place were fighting each other elsewhere. Armies seemed to be on unopposed rampages across the globe.
The wedding party had taken place on an island a few kilometers offshore one of the smaller land masses. It was in the southern temperate region. I told George to pass over it. There was smoke still in the air. The harbor in which the three ships had waited sparkled in a rising sun. Broad beaches swept away on both sides.
Nok was a beautiful world, as all living worlds are.
We continued west, outrunning the sun, and soon we were soaring through starlit clouds. I began to see lights. Scattered across the land masses.
Some were constant and, if I was willing to give sway to my imagination, seemed arranged in patterns. Others, usually in more remote locations, flickered and burned.
“Fires,” said George.
The dictators held each other’s populations hostage. It was almost a kind of sport. You kill some of mine, I’ll take out some of yours. Everybody goes home happy.
On a dark peninsula, we found an inferno. An entire city, and surrounding woodland, were ablaze. “This area has undergone a dry spell,” said George. “It wouldn’t have taken much to start this.”
Ahead and below, moving away from the conflagration, lights bobbed among the clouds.
“Aircraft.” George put an image on screen. Big, lumbering dirigibles. The Noks had no heavier-than-air vehicles, hence nothing in the way of a fighter. They didn’t have much ground artillery, either. The Noks preferred offensive weapons; they didn’t play much defense. This made places like South Titusville an attractive target for bombers, as opposed to national capitals, or fleets of warships.
Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt Page 38