The Cyborg from Earth

by Charles Sheffield

  "Billy, I think you lied." It was the deep voice of Hooglich, interrupting his thoughts. "You told me he was awake. Looks like he's dreaming to me."

  Jeff turned to her. "I was just calculating something."

  "Ah. That's all right then. Calculations are sacred." She was as big and bulky as ever, but she had changed into a uniform of pale blue that fitted better than anything she had worn on the Aurora. Her clothes were also a lot cleaner. "How are you feeling, Brother Kopal?"

  "Better. I asked a really stupid question last night." Jeff had to get this out of the way, before any other subject came up. He went across to the desk, unfolded the piece of paper, and marked a set of lines on it with one of the pens.

  "You were three parts zombie," Hooglich said. "I knew you'd figure it out, either before you passed out or right after you woke up."

  He held the page toward her. "I realized as soon as you left. Acceleration is a body force, the same as the Anadem field. So if you want to accelerate hard this way"—he moved his finger upward to follow the lines he had drawn on the sheet—"and not feel it, you set up an Anadem field that works the opposite way round from the one here on Confluence Center. The field produces a force on anything within the double rings in the same direction as the acceleration. If you make the field strength right, the forces from the Anadem field and the acceleration will cancel each other out."

  "Locally." Hooglich took the page from him. "If it exactly cancels here"—she touched it—"halfway toward the rings' center, you would still feel a force at the center. And you'd feel a force in the other direction if you were right between the rings." She gave the sheet back to him. "All right. You've got it."

  "Of course. It's really simple."

  "Everything is, once you understand. But when you don't . . . . And we don't understand the Anadem field. Don't confuse what something does and how it does it. Are you feeling up for something harder?"

  "I think so." Jeff was learning caution.

  "It's all right. You'll enjoy this, it involves the Anadem field again. What do you know about reverse engineering?"

  "I've seen the words, but I have only a vague idea what they mean. Isn't that something to do with finding out how a machine works?"

  "Close enough." Hooglich led the way out. Jeff followed and noticed that Billy Jexter was trailing silently along behind. Lilah was right; the kid seemed to wander as and where he liked.

  "Reverse engineering is used," Hooglich went on, "when you want to duplicate some gadget a company makes, and the company won't tell you. Sometimes the device is sealed, so you can't dismantle it without destroying it." She was taking them on a path where their weight rose and fell, but overall there was a steady increase. It meant they were winding their way toward the outer perimeter of Confluence Center, where the Anadem field was strongest. She seemed to know exactly where she was going. Jeff noticed that Billy had vanished. The conversation was beyond him, and he must have grown bored.

  "So what you do," Hooglich said, "is you buy a few of their machines. You put them through their paces, with every input you can think of, and you measure the performance and output for every set of circumstances. Maybe you try to probe the interior with ultrasonics, or X rays, or neutrinos—though that's always dangerous; the probes might destroy the machine. When you've learned all you can, you build a machine of your own. Ideally, it will be the same inside as the ones you bought. If it's not, but it's good enough so it mimics their performance exactly, no one will ever know the difference."

  They had emerged through a little door into a great narrow corridor, ten meters wide and scores high. It ran smoothly away on either side until its own curve hid it from view. Waiting for them, lounging easily against the far wall with a smug look on his face, was Billy Jexter.

  "Slideway shortcut," he said. "I guessed where you'd be going, when you talked about the Anadem field. I could have told you a good way."

  "But you didn't," Hooglich said. "Why not? You're a pain in the butt, Billy."

  "Well, you never asked." He glanced from side to side, and his voice dropped. "I know a secret."

  "I know a hundred." Hooglich turned to Jeff. "You'll never find a better use for reverse engineering than this one. No one knows where Macafee is, but we have the Anadem field right here, to play with any way we like."

  "Did Connie Cheever say it was all right?"

  "More than that. She suggested it. The Cloud jinners are all working on it, too."

  "Why? Why not wait until Simon Macafee shows up, and just ask him?"

  "A call went out, but there may not be time to wait until he chooses to show up." They were ascending a spiral staircase made of an open lattice of metal. "What Russo warned, of a whole CenCom fleet coming through the node, actually seems to be happening. A coded message came in from one of the harvesters close to Node 23. At least forty fleet ships are already through from Sol. There may be more on the way. The administrator is asking if we can increase the Anadem field strength, add drives to Confluence Center, and be ready to boost away from danger if we are attacked."

  "That doesn't sound like reverse engineering."

  "It's on the way to it. You might say we don't really have to know how the field works, just how to change its settings. But we don't know what else might happen when we make the field stronger. The more we understand of the basics, the better. That's what we'll be working on."

  They had climbed the spiral staircase all the way to the top, where a small boxlike room with one door and no windows perched just under the metal ceiling. Hooglich was almost too big to get inside. She somehow squeezed through. Billy had wandered away again. His attention span seemed to be short. Jeff ducked his head and followed Hooglich.

  He had been expecting some kind of control center for the Anadem field. What he found was a room bare of equipment. Russo was sitting like some strange idol, cross-legged and with folded arms, against the far wall. Hooglich went across, grunted at the effort, and lowered herself next to him. She gestured to Jeff to sit down.

  He remained standing. "I thought you were going to work on modifying the Anadem field."

  "We are. You are. We'll join the Cloud jinners in just a few minutes. But first . . . ." She turned. "Russo, how does it look?"

  He raised his head and tilted it back, as though the great nose was sniffing the air. He nodded. "They don't have the slightest idea of security. But so far as I can tell, this is a place that can't be overlooked or overheard from anywhere."

  "Not even by Billy Jexter?"

  "I won't guarantee against that little imp. But I hope we're snug."

  "We'll have to risk it and talk." Hooglich turned to Jeff. "You must be wondering what this is about. Me and Russo, we think we're all in bad trouble."

  "We are." Russo sniffed. "My smeller tells me. It's never wrong."

  "You mean, because of the report that Captain Dufferin made?"

  "That, and a lot more than that. Russo's been thinking, and he believes he's finally figured it out." Hooglich turned. "Go on, Rustbucket. This is your show."

  "I'd like to be wrong. But"—Russo tapped the side of his nose—"I don't think so. Remember when we were back on the Aurora, and nothing seemed to make sense? We had a teeny little ship with just about no weapons, run by a captain known through the whole fleet as all mouth and trousers. And we were sent to tell everyone in the Messina Dust Cloud to surrender to us—or else. That was the first piece of strangeness. But there was another one, and it seemed to have nothing to do with the first. That was you." Russo pointed a gnarled finger at Jeff. "A Kopal, the first ever to be sent to BorCom. What were you doing shipping with us?"

  "I told you. Back on Earth, I made a real mess—"

  "Yeah, yeah. I heard all that. We know Giles Lazenby was involved, too. But if you follow fleet talk, when it comes to Brother Giles the simple explanation is never the right one. And as the Hoog said to you and to me, if Giles wanted to make his own kid look good, he'd have put you, Jeff—no offense—next
to Myron, where people could compare and contrast the two of you.

  "Then there was what we were told on the Aurora about secession, which Connie Cheever says is nonsense. The Cloud never thought for a minute of seceding from Sol. That's where I was stuck, until your little sweetheart, Lilah—"

  "She's not my sweetheart! She's—she's—"Jeff groped for words strong enough. "She's a horse fanatic."

  "Is that right? I never saw a horse, not live at least. Ate it a few times, back in the Pool. Not bad, when you've been living on cornmeal." Russo blinked. "Where was I? That Lilah, she came up with a good one. The business with the Aurora looked as though somebody wanted to start a war and needed a reason, she said. Now, the Anadem field, there was a real good reason—'specially if you happen to be Kopal Transportation."

  "I didn't—"

  Russo waved his hand. "It's all right, Jeff, I'm not accusing you. You'll see why in a minute. Let's go on. Now I'm moving from fact to theory. Somebody might want to start a war with the Cloud territory, but they couldn't just up and make it happen. Not even if a piddling little nothing of a ship like the Aurora was captured or lost. Actually, I think we were sent through the node, under Squeaky's command, intended to be captured or defeated. The sounder just made things happen a lot faster. But for starting a war, you need something special. Can you think of anything that would make everybody back in the fleet, and all over Earth, willing to send the fleet through the node network and teach the Cloud a lesson—and, along the way, and just by accident, get our hands on the Anadem field? Well, suppose that those terrible cyborg monsters in the Messina Dust Cloud captured a Kopal—an innocent young recruit, ensign in the Space Navy, and a member of the proudest and most famous family in Earth's military and commercial history." Russo pointed at Jeff. "You. Now there's a real reason to go to war. Either to get you back, or to revenge your death." He folded his arms. "That's what I think. And I ask, do you see anything wrong with it?"

  The whole idea made Jeff's head spin, but he could still think. "There is something wrong with it. Your idea could only work as long as we're out here. The moment we got back and told people in the fleet and on Earth the full story—"

  Jeff paused, and Russo nodded.

  "You just got it," Hooglich said softly. "I told you he would, Russo. For the scheme to work, we wouldn't be going back to tell our stories. Not now, not ever. There's only one way to make sure of that. In the next stage of the operation, three people have to die: Russo, and me, and—most important of all—Jeff Kopal."

  Chapter Twelve

  JINNERS seemed to be jinners, anywhere in the universe. They were not strong on ceremony. Jeff was introduced to a bunch of Cloud engineers by name, and ten seconds later he was one of the group, to be noticed only if he spoke. Hooglich and Russo asked for working details on the Anadem field generators. Different features were pointed out, and the technical arguments began at once.

  Jeff didn't mind that he was excluded. He had plenty to see, and lots to think about.

  He was standing with the others on the catwalk that circled the perimeter of Confluence Center. Two hundred and fifty meters above him hung the stupendous upper ring of the field generator. The lower ring lay an equal distance below. Both rings shimmered with a peculiar clear glow, like the change in the sky when Jeff first saw the space sounder.

  He had weight, about the same as on Earth. Confluence Center possessed too small a mass to produce noticeable gravity, and the environment should have been close to free fall. But he didn't forget Hooglich's warning: "Watch your step, Brother. Fall off the catwalk, and you'll head straight down until you hit the lower field-generating ring. It's not gravity, but it can be just as fatal."

  After a while the jinners all ascended in an open-sided elevator and squeezed into a control room perched fifty meters below the upper ring. Anyone who had ideas on field modification gave them—loudly. There was agreement on how to adjust the field setting, but no agreement on how big a change could safely be made, or what might happen afterwards.

  Jeff listened for a while, but it mostly seemed to be confessions of ignorance. He wandered back outside, took the elevator down, and started to pace along the spidery strand of the narrow catwalk. After an hour of watching and thinking, he had formed an opinion of his own. He was reluctant to offer it, because all the other people had more experience; but if Simon Macafee were anything like the genius he was supposed to be, surely he wouldn't have built a potential for disaster into the Anadem field generators. They ought to be a fail-safe design. Also, Jeff had learned something from his own efforts back on Earth: Size shouldn't be confused with complexity. He could take an aircar apart and put it back together with no trouble. The same attempt with his expensive wristwatch had been a fiasco. He had thrown away the random mess of bits and pieces he was left with, and told everyone he had lost the watch.

  The gigantic scale of the rings above and below did not mean that the Anadem field itself had to be complicated. It might have a simple governing equation, as simple as the Newtonian law of gravity. But without some basic understanding of principles, any effort at reverse engineering was doomed to fail.

  Hooglich and the other jinners would probably never agree with that. Maybe Jeff wasn't a jinner after all. He loved to take things apart, but more than knowing how they worked, he had to understand why they worked. The reason he could rebuild the old aircar was because the physical principles that allowed it to rise and move through the air were clear in his head.

  He kept walking. He was lost in his own thoughts, and the control room was far behind. He wasn't worried. The rings extended around the whole circumference of Confluence Center; eventually he must return to his starting point.

  He had begun at a point on the perimeter that faced out into a dark region of space. Now he was far enough along the great exterior circle of Confluence Center to glimpse the misty light of the Messina Dust Cloud through the ports. He paused. Somewhere out there, picking a path through those braided rivers of dust and glowing gas, a ship from Central Command was on its way. Behind it, waiting near the node, sat scores or hundreds of other navy vessels.

  Did he believe Hooglich and Russo, that the three of them were marked for death? From what he had seen, the other two didn't much want to return to Sol and the Space Navy. They were perfectly at home among the Cloud jinners, where there was no threat of a return to the Pool.

  He was in a different position. He had to go back. He was the only thing that stood between Kopal Transportation and a company takeover by his uncles and aunts.

  He thought of Uncle Giles. How far would his uncle go, to advance his own interests and those of his children? Certainly, he would arrange for Jeff to be sent to a far-off assignment in Border Command, while Myron and Myra served in prestigious Central Command. But would he plan murder? Did the long arm of his influence extend all the way here, to the Messina Dust Cloud?

  Jeff wanted to say no, definitely not, of course not. But he couldn't do that: Something in Uncle Giles's perpetual smile said that anything was possible. Jeff felt a shiver up his spine. When the Dreadnought arrived, he would be very careful.

  He started walking again. After a while he felt his weight increase, pressing his feet harder on the catwalk. Soon it returned to what felt like the old value. The jinners were having fun, tentatively exercising the controls to vary the strength of the Anadem field. It would take a high acceleration to fly Confluence Center away from fleet attack. Jeff had heard that some of the Space Navy ships were capable of short acceleration bursts of ten Gs or more, without ruining their drives.

  Jeff picked up his pace. He couldn't imagine that the jinners would intentionally boost the Anadem field to multiple G values, but accidents happened. The lattice of the open catwalk was probably stronger than it looked, but he felt alone and very exposed.

  He stared ahead, wondering if he was past the halfway point. If not, he ought to turn around. He saw a distant black dot on the catwalk. Exposed, yes; alone, no. Some
one was coming the other way.

  It might be Hooglich or Russo, telling him to get back to work. But the colors were wrong. Instead of Hooglich's dark mop or the red of Russo's hair, he saw a gleam of blond hair topping an outfit of startling white.

  Lilah. He had promised last night that he would go and see her horse-infested rooms, but he had passed out before she could drag him away. If she had gone to the trouble to track him down on the outer rim of Confluence Center, she was a worse nutcase than he'd realized. He had known horse fanatics—all girls—back on Earth, and apparently twenty-seven light years wasn't enough to get away from them.

  He waited until she was close, then said brightly, "Hi. Were you looking for me?"

  "You? No." She looked splendid in an all-white jumpsuit, but her tone was icy. "I didn't even know you were out here. Why are you?"