Z-Sting

by Ian Wallace

  Her eyes were wild: “Let Saguni activate! I command it—”

  He shook his head. “At Andhra’s orders, Saguni has permanently deactivated these three failsafes. They are dead.”

  Her eyes died slowly.

  Into her apathy came the feeling of his hands pressing her hands, and the sound of him saying: “But now that you have a new life, Marta Evans, it does not follow that you too are dead. We will be warping into Moonbase in a few minutes. I want you to help clear my way with a set of visiphone orders.”

  Her eyes were closed. Wearily she responded: “I know that you my rescuer are my great-grandfather. Apart from any male-female feeling, the ignominy is exquisite.”

  After that, she suffered poignantly a firmer squeezing of her hands. His voice came into her: “On that point, at least, your investigative apparatus is perfect. Knowing it, cancel it. We are psychophysically the same age, both of us are experienced and vigorous, we have a common purpose, and a decade or two ago we would have been proud of each other. Shall we now try to win mutual pride again?”

  Space-to-Moon orders from Marta, orders which began calm and ended strident, established what the Mazurka was going to be allowed to do on Moon, without interference and with every requested Moon-resource. One specific system of orders: neutralize Ziska—and how to do it. On the lubrication of those orders, Dr. Ziska slid out of history.

  Consequently the ship bypassed Moonbase and came in directly on the Rab experimental ivisiradio project. Time had slipped: Mazurka had taken nearly as long as the slow Moon-ferry for the trip, because a frigate requires light-minutes of space to build up velocity and more light-minutes to brake down. Between Erth and Moon, for speed there wasn’t room.

  By the time when Croyd was settled into the bucket seat of his ivisiradio, the penultimate impulses had been nearly three hours en route to Neptune, with scarcely more than an hour to go before they would be stinging-out the Z-waves. Already the impulses were far past Saturn and hurtling toward Uranus.

  Clustered behind Croyd in the moon-hut were Marta and Marana and Keri and Saguni; the regular crew of the installation stood respectfully back. During turgid minutes Marta, watching Croyd, empathized with him so completely that her mind sailed with his mind while it navigated space . . .

  Croyd asserted without turning, his eyes being frozen into the controls: “I am about a thousand kilometers off Neptune. I seem to have beaten the penultimate impulses by just over an hour. Saguni, give me the coordinates of the Z-sting.”

  Saguni mentioned them, slicing them fine to the nearest thousandth of a second of latitude and longitude on Neptune. He hadn’t known that the planet was Neptune. This meant that he had no appreciation of the size of the Z-sting; but the point was trivial, he was a theoretician.

  Croyd hunched over the controls, peering into the goggles that masked his eyes . . .

  Five minutes later he sagged. Pushing the goggles back onto his forehead, he turned to look at Saguni; his expression was that of a World War I pilot in an open cockpit turning to his copilot and trying to think of a humorous clipped way to explain that they were still deep in enemy air with only a teaspoonful of petrol.

  He stated: “That location happens to be on the far side of Neptune just at the moment. And I haven’t yet found a way to make i-rays turn corners.”

  In the background, Keri, sensing dire trouble, tensed; Dana began to open his mouth; Marta, under tight self-control, snapped at Dana: “Leave this to Croyd and Saguni—we’re spectators.”

  Saguni went slit-eyed. “I see. So then I am after all going to be guilty of polygenocide. You should not have found me, Croyd. I was resigned to my first guilt. I am not resigned to its return.”

  The semi-comedy had faded from Croyd’s face. “I designed COMCORD for humanitarian purposes; inadvertently I created a cause of universal dehumanization. You used the cause for a dehumanizing effect that no planner intended. It would take more wisdom than I have to judge whether you or I or humanity generally is most guilty.”

  “There is no hope?”

  “I can think of no way to speed the rotation of Neptune.”

  Marta incised: "It may not be necessary, if the penultimate impulses are ultra-high frequency.”

  After an instant, Croyd murmured: “Curse me, bless you.” To Saguni: “Are they?”

  “Of course, guided on hyper-laser. Why?”

  “Why then, they cannot turn corners any more than my i-rays! They will pepper this side of Neptune, and otherwise will bypass Neptune, leaving the Z-sting inactivated in the far shadow of Neptune . . . Won’t they, Saguni?”

  “I am afraid not, Croyd. The Z-sting has a secondary receiver at the antipodes. It is time for us to give up, Croyd. Isanami proposeth, Isanagi disposeth. Can you direct me to the nearest sword and sash?”

  Croyd, his eyebrows angling oddly at each other, was gazing at Saguni. Presently he turned back to the controls, murmuring: “You may not need them, Saguni. If the penultimate impulses can use the secondary receiver—so can I, perhaps.”

  With his body and brain and the matrix of his mind solidly based on Erth’s moon, subjectively the conscious mind of Croyd was 4.36 billion kilometers away, hovering above the surface of Neptune not very far inside the orbit of Nereid beneath whose pre-governmental nose the Z-sting had long ago been implanted. And this was Marta’s highest humiliation.

  Diving in toward the gas-cloaked surface of the enormous planet, controlling his visual zoom by the feel of his fingers, blindly manipulating knobs and buttons on the Moon panel, Croyd took moments to appreciate the vast nothingness of the Neptune vaporscape—unwasted moments, since all the time he was approaching target. He had not needed to ask Saguni for the coordinates of the secondary receiver: it was located at the antipodes of the primary; its coordinates were deducible, on this side of Neptune. Only one secondary receiver was needed: necessarily it or the primary would always be positioned to hook impulses from Erth, except on the rare occasions when Neptune was totally eclipsed by Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, or Uranus. On Erth, Saguni now testified, the Crestian Penultimate Trigger had also an antipodean secondary.

  Coming hard-in on the receiver, again, as with Marta on Nereid, Croyd had visual problems of ray dispersal; but he reasoned that the impulses from Erth would be at least as widely dispersed as his i-rays, and since those were sure to make contact, so were these.

  As he approached the receiver more closely, senses other than vision seemed to clear. This receiver was of course a rekamatic collector, reaching out to gather dispersed impulses inward, concentrating them upon itself. Although his i-rays were not rekamatic, they did by nature travel upstream along rekamatic impulses and were therefore experiencing some convergence upon the field of the receiver—to some extent as they had done with Herod’s i-ray receiver on Alpha Centauri III, although less efficiently.

  He could now sense the secondary receiver clearly, although there was nothing to see: it was all gradients polarized into rock, invisible, of the very essence of Neptune, beneath cloaking methane ice pinnacles and seven-thousand-kilometer depth of methane atmosphere, ensuring that seismic deformation of the planet would have to be catastrophic indeed before it could structurally deform the Z-sting into malfunction. Nereid could have found the device by searching systematically with rekamatic scan-probes, but Nereid had no special reason to look for it there, and Nereid had been much too busy with governmental control of Erth and flirtations with other star systems to pay much random observational attention to Neptune. Erth was too important to be ignored, Neptune too near to be noticed.

  Croyd spoke softly to Saguni: “How is the secondary receiver connected with the Z-sting?”

  “Direct kamatic gradients through the planetary core.” The voice of Saguni came to him. from the remoteness of Erth-moon from Neptune.

  Croyd was having continuously to readjust his ray controls in order to keep tracking the elusive receiver which was rotating with the planet at a ground-ice velocity relatively
triple that of Erth. Luckily Moon’s rotation was negligible. He asked, “What time is it now?”

  “1631.”

  "Then I am here only forty-four minutes ahead of the penultimate impulses. I am going in, Saguni. Hold tight; when I get in there, I will have more questions.”

  Now Croyd extruded his mind into the receiver net, boring through the ice and the crust and the mantle into the hard hot core of Neptune (hard enough, but much less dense than the core of Erth): at the far end of a four-billion-kilometer extension along the i-rays, another twenty-seven thousand kilometers mattered little. He thrust past the Neptune center of gravity: technically he was now moving upward instead of downward, although he sensed no difference because his bodiless mind felt no gravity.

  Presently he found himself at the base of some kind of rekamatic three-dimensional delta fanning out above him in the planet’s mantle. “Saguni, I think I’m at the connect. What now?” The fact of speaking reminded him that he was really back on Moon, if that was what was real.

  Saguni’s bland voice instructed him: he was about to enter the second-most-complex computer ever devised, the most complex being Croyd’s own COMCORD . . . Saguni short-circuited five minutes of technical discussion by demanding after seven seconds: “But even knowing all this and being mentally there—what can you do?”

  “A computer is a brain. A mind can operate a brain. Perhaps my mind extension can influence this durundium computer. I am not sure—it will have to be very fine work.”

  “I withhold my questions to save time. Question me as needed.”

  Croyd extended himself further and began to feel faintly giddy as the delta diversified into many thousands of main trunk lines. He had encountered no wires or elements—the entire structure was rekamatic gradients. He paused, collecting himself, extremely overextended, not at all strong here . . .

  “Saguni, instruct me further concerning the vital structure.”

  “There are,” Saguni lectured staccato, “482 tempopatterns, counting each subsector of a megalopolis as one pattern—such as Manhattan in Chihattan. Each of these patterns is memory-banked and revised monthly: this is the major task of the Penultimate Relay on Crest. Hence the banks contain the very latest tempopattern averagings: the most recent that I forwarded were, of course, Senevendia and Chihattan and Moskov, involving among them fifty-nine subsector patterns: they are correct as of seven to thirteen days ago. When the penultimate impulses activate the Z-sting, they will do so in such a way as to generate one bundle of waves for each of the fifty-nine subsectors of Chihattan and Senevendia and Moskov. Each bundle, contacting its metropolis, generates a system of second-generation rekamatic waves programmed to conform their strike to the precise tempopattern of the chosen metropolis—in this case, Senevendia and Chihattan and Moskov; but the triple strike will homogenize the Zeitgeist of the entire planet, insulating Erth. Your most economical procedure would be to locate and deactivate the connection between reception of penultimate impulse and fire. That would be a single connection. If you fail in this, your secondary procedure would be most difficult and time-consuming: locate and severally deactivate connections between the search-impulse and each of the fifty-nine patterns.”

  “Obviously I will try the first first, I am already moving. What time is it?”

  “1648 hours.”

  “Just twenty-seven minutes left, then. I am feeling my way along what seems to be the main line inward, presumably it will take me to the prime connect. I suppose all those other branches are intended to see that reception of the penultimate impulses will put all four hundred eighty-two patterns on the ready.”

  “That is correct—and some other things, such as a trifling quintuple system of mode permutations—”

  “I understand. What time is it?”

  “1650.”

  “Sorry, I’m asking too often. I do feel a bit head-weak. Do me a favor, Saguni. There’s a cabinet in the wall behind me, it has some I-V bottles. Put a needle into my shoulder and feed me, it will take me back to the days when I was old.”

  Somewhat later he remembered having felt a slight shoulder prick. His energy was increasing, he began to regain something resembling orientation in this endlessly self-diversifying labyrinth of durundium gradients. He felt like Theseus, he yearned for Ariadne thread; but that wouldn’t have helped him go forward . . .

  “—Croyd—Croyd—” The remote small voice had been calling before he first heard it.

  “Saguni?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes—”

  “When you can, tell me where you are.”

  “Just a moment—”

  Ten more seconds passed while Saguni died. Then Croyd—whose body for Saguni was in paralysis, fingers frozen on the ray controls, told Saguni thickly: “I may be making some progress. I have definitely located the Reception/Fire bridge; I found it a while back . . . What time is it?”

  “1659.”

  “That leaves us—”

  “Roughly sixteen minutes.”

  “I am working while I talk. The problem is to use psychokinetics on rekamatic connections, and we all do this in our brains, but this is the strongest and most resistant of all connections in the sting. It is showing signs of wavering, but it would still pass a message. What did you give me as a secondary resource?”

  “Killing fifty-nine individual patterns.”

  “Yes. I will stay with this approach. The other would be time-hopeless.”

  Croyd’s body had not quivered. Saguni sat cross-legged on the plastic floor of the Moon-cave, eyes slitted, mouth compressed, breathing slow, pulse sixty. Croyd he was not seeing; instead, he was seeing penultimate impulses winging toward Neptune. He saw each of these impulses individually as a complex of zigzag pattern vibrations like livid interwound spirilla in space-black: they were continually fissioning so that one became two and two four and so on until by now there were indefinite numbers of them, spread out wider than the diameter of Neptune despite their laser-concentration. They had departed his Penultimate Trigger in the Labyrinth of Minos. During nearly four hours, they had crossed Moon orbit, Mars orbit, asteroid orbit, Jupiter orbit, Saturn orbit, Uranus orbit, unchallenged even by stray meteors or microcosmic dust: traveling at a steady three hundred thousand kilometers per second, the swiftest possible velocity of spatial-impulse propagation. The fastest translight space ship could not overtake them because of the time such a ship would expend in building itself up to light velocity and the additional time the ship would throw away in braking itself down to zero at target in the restricted confines of the Sol system. Croyd’s pioneer i-rays, which Saguni did not yet understand, had overtaken and passed these impulses in something like instantaneous travel; but now Croyd’s mind was stalled at the far end of his rays, chipping psychokinetically away at robust rekamatic gradients; and meanwhile the penultimate impulses were nearing, nearing . . .

  A dark alarm shook Saguni out of his imaginative trance. He checked his cutichron. He barked: “Croyd!”

  “Saguni?”

  “Contact minus four minutes!”

  “Mm—”

  Silence. Saguni stayed taut.

  “Saguni—”

  “Croyd?”

  “I have this titillating gradient chipped raw, it may already be unable to transmit full-go on fifty-nine patterns, but I can’t be sure, and I don’t see much chance of significant further progress in three minutes. I am working while I talk. Saguni—”

  “Croyd?”

  “After you’ve finished with that sword and sash—do you mind if I pick them up and use them?”

  “Wipe the sword on the sash first. Why?”

  “What time is it?”

  “Contact minus two minutes—plus or minus fifteen seconds.”

  “How again?”

  “Fifteen seconds probable error. You are working, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why my sword and sash?”

  “I should instead have tried at the
start for the fifty-nine individual patterns. Each is probably far less resistant than this main gradient.”

  “It was the grand chance, Croyd.”

  “Yes. But—”

  “Also your invention of COMCORD was the grand chance. It could have been the ultimate solution to international bastardy.”

  “I know now that you are wrong: it could not have been the solution to international bastardy as long as there were international bastards. Whatever can happen, will.”

  “I have heard that somewhere. Am I distracting you?”

  “Not at all, I am making some progress. What time is it?"

  “Fifteen seconds.”

  “Quiet then. Let me—”

  Eleven seconds of quiet.

  Shockingly the body of Croyd went into galvanic paralysis.

  And slumped.

  Saguni was on his feet. “Croyd?”

  Wearily: “I just had an experience. Something went through me one way—then something went through me the other way.”

  Silence.

  Saguni sagged, understanding how it was. The sting had been stung. The Z-waves were swift-rippling toward Erth. They would confer their gift of shroud upon Erth in four hours two minutes.

  Comprehending defeat, Marta and Dana and Keri frowned hard down, each grappling privately with the human-insoluble problem of conceiving the disaster’s enormity. Saguni sat cross-legged, impassive, one-by-one meticulously rejecting his own emotional rejections and accepting his own intellectual acceptances of the humanity’s-end which he had caused and which even Croyd, even Thoth Evans had been unable to stop . . .

  Abrupt Croyd-bark: “Saguni! I am damned if I’ll accept defeat on this one!”

  All in the hut became hard-focus attentive. Shocked out of impassivity and onto his feet, Shinto Saguni stammered, “What good will cursing do? It is all over.”

  “Hell, Saguni, I wasn’t cursing! I was asserting that if I accept defeat on this one, I am damned! Saguni, we have nearly four hours before the Z-waves reach Erth from Neptune, and our arses are going to get pretty badly pooped if we sit on them so long even with minimal Moon gravity! Think, Saguni, think! What can we still do? Me, I can’t think straight, my brain is still hung up inside the Z-sting—”