Absorption (2 page)

He hoped she wouldn’t be disappointed if he got her a flashlight, magnifying glass, and toy detective kit.

“Wayout! Grandma says she’ll help me bake you wafette’s too.”

Brett didn’t like sweets that much, but he wanted to see Lydia again. “That sounds great. I really appreciate your attitude and so will the Colonel.”

“Is he listening to you now? He can’t hear me, can he?”

Perhaps she had potential as a detective cyborg. “That’s correct. I don’t want to keep him waiting, and he doesn’t have time for details.”

Hopefully the Colonel would take the hint.

“OK, bye. Talk to you later.”

After Lydia had disconnected, Brett made a preemptive strike before he could be questioned. “Sir, you were exactly right. When I was firm she realized Space Force supplies were not necessary for her purpose.”

“Good job, Lieutenant. I’ll whip you into shape yet. Whatever other problems you may have, I’ve heard good things about your medical skills.”

Brett already knew that, but his boss had to be in a much improved mood to admit it. Maybe he could actually get something he wanted today.

“Thank you, sir,” he said crisply, as if a kind word from Eastings meant a lot to him. Then he continued, “I’ve heard the Unificationists recorded their own atrocity, and broadcast the video to several cities.”

Eastings’ bushy eyebrows crowded downward, nearer his nose. “Why are you interested in that? Because the hive mind was involved?”

Stupid people were ingenious, Brett mused, always oblivious unless it was actually convenient for you that they be so. Brett had no reply.

“Why’re you so convinced the hive mind plays a bigger role that the experts think? Something psychological in your childhood?”

Clearly Eastings would be no help, but at least Brett wouldn’t let him change the subject.

“I don’t see a copy on our network,” Brett told him.

“The effect on morale is still being evaluated.”

“My personal morale would go way up if I knew what happened and why.”

Maybe he could smuggle the recording home somehow?

“The video is being kept confidential, both for the sake of the natives, and the people back home.”

Brett nodded. “A good thing too sir. Something like that makes it look like we’re in the middle of a war zone! Now that I think of it though–”

“That will be all. Dismissed.”

He headed back towards his makeshift office. Walking through musty and ill lit wooden hallways, he stumbled over a crack where two wooden planks didn’t join smoothly. Wood was not a luxury here. Trees from Old Earth apparently did very well. Metal was the expensive material, partly because Roundhouse was relatively poor in iron, but partly because most of the conveniently mineable metal had been taken, and imperfectly recycled, as civilizations rose and fell. Hopefully the Space Force would help put a stop to the latter.

The locked drawers of his massive wooden (oak?) desk presumably held the stuff of some town hall bureaucrat, but he didn’t mind. He appreciated the adjoining empty room with only one entrance, which gave him somewhere to set up experimental apparatus. It didn’t take up much space. Just a small pump attached to clear plastic tubes filled with saline solution circulating at about the speed blood flowed, and heated to body temperature. A sample of nanomachines obtained by Brett circulated inside the tubes as well.

Although Oceanian technology had long been banned as too dangerous for use on the Federalist Worlds, Brett felt military intelligence hadn’t studied it’s characteristics as a military threat sufficiently. After reading a study where some idiot had dried out the delicate nanomachines and chemically prepared them for viewing under an electron microscope, then pronounced them tiny pieces of useless junk, Brett really hoped somebody was doing better science that was still too secret to talk about. He had no way of knowing though, and life had taught him not to count on the commonsense of strangers.

Brett pulled the computer off his belt. Despite its size, the machine possessed fair computing capacity, and could communicate with his ship’s computer wirelessly, when he dwelt aboard. A few days ago he had used it to determine the frequencies the nanomachines transmitted and received upon. Since then he had done some programming in his spare time.

Brett started the transmission sequence. First his computer lay silent, recording electromagnetic activity, but detecting none from the nannies. Then it started broadcasting, alternating between a monotone and silence. Filtering out its own activity, it detected a scattered response from some of the nanomachines for a few seconds, which soon died out. This repeated when it began broadcasting random static. The last minute consisted of playing back a recording of neural activity from the human brain. To this there came a weak response, dying down gradually over about twenty five seconds.

Now Brett released a measured volume of sugar dissolved in saline solution into the tube. Sugar could carry energy to cells of the human body, and now he would try and confirm it helped power these nanomachines as well.

He tapped his computer, making it repeat the sequence. The response was only slightly longer and more emphatic during the first two phases, but it lasted throughout the entire minute of the final phase.

Could the nanomachines function less well if a soldier’s blood sugar became low as he became tired? Possibly, but Brett had something better.

This time his computer played back the signals it received from the machines themselves. Bursts of frenetic activity alternated with baffled silence. Brett had a way to confound the machines.

That was something, at least. Not much of a start on reverse engineering the damned things though. The things needed to be imaged while floating in saline solution, perhaps with the help of a laser high energy enough to distinguish the details, but low enough not to destroy them. Or perhaps it couldn’t be done, if individual atoms made up the smallest components, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle might come into play.

He shouldn’t be the one who had to do this. More primitive versions of Oceanian technology were used for military research in a carefully controlled environment as a collaborative tool. If anyone there had switched from building other weapons to studying the technology itself, Brett hadn’t heard of it. Until a few years ago, even some elected politicians had been talking about Oceanian technology as the next step in human evolution.

Of course the so called ‘Unificationist’ rebels had asked Oceania to send the technology, and bore a heavy burden of guilt for starting this war. Having seen the hive mind in action though, Brett remained convinced that those Unificationists who became part of it were now less that human. He could only imagine the sort of groupthink that would allow the rest of the Unificationists to deny to themselves their horrible blunder. Apart from anything else, there was something deeply wrong with anyone who would even think it made sense to surrender their individuality to a group mind.

Enough futile speculation. Brett would tap into the planetary computer net and get the video recording of the rape of Skulton. Or not, there lay another difficulty many less technologically advanced planets encountered. Despite the expense of interstellar commerce, the most sophisticated parts of advanced computers could be sold, while interfaced and casings were assembled locally. In the end the well-off had fine computers, but the world as a whole failed to build up the technologies and massive economies of scale that enabled most people to own computers on Old York.

He headed for the stairs. Not everyone now in the building had shuttled down from the Firestorm. In the last couple of days some volunteers and support personnel had arrived from elsewhere. At the very least, he had seen a local security guard in the lobby.

Dressed in an old blue uniform with a few small food stains, the man acted pleased to have someone to talk to. “They’re not showing it anymore. The government decided the replays harmed morale.”

Brett replied, “Suppose we want a copy for official purposes?”

The man eyed his uniform. “I think your superiors already have one.”

Slob or not, the man knew a second Lieutenant when he saw one. Brett suggested, “So help me get in contact with a video broadcasting station – or whatever you call it – and let them decide if they should share it with me.”

Now he didn’t seem so eager to talk. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to do that.”

Exasperated, Brett wished he had some local currency. He didn’t want to run around displaying his ignorance to the locals. Instead he considered his small store of material for bribery. “I’ll give you a bottle of decent vodka and six chocolate bars if you’ll get me in contact with them.”

“What if they don’t talk to you?”

“Not your problem.”

If it had been too easy Brett would have been all the more embarrassed about having paid for help. Fortunately it wasn’t, but he suspected negotiations would have gone better with a little preplanning. They walked over to a box on the wall with a combination speaker and receiver attached by a wire. The man removed several circular disks from his pocket. He pressed several buttons, spoke to a systems operator who gave him a numeric code, and started again.

“Cordwin Broadcasting Network, may I help you?”

The gentle feminine voice represented a secretary or receptionist, of course. “I’d like a copy of the video the Unificationists distributed about their war crime in Skulton?”

“We’ve been asked not to distribute that further, but at nine this evening we have a program on the war effort and how the Space Force is bringing us toward victory you might find interesting.”

Brett lied, “That does sound interesting, but I’d still like the video. I’m with the Space Force.”

The woman remained polite, but her voice became skeptical. “The Space Force has already received the material they requested.”

Brett reached for a lie that wouldn’t get him in trouble, found instead a misleading truth. “Don’t consider this an official request. We really appreciate your cooperation, and have no wish to put you to extra trouble. It would help us out though if you’d send it to the town hall of Rinton, care of Lieutenant Brett Johnson. He’ll get it where it needs to go.”

If she knew where the Space Force had set up their emergency hospital, if she accepted the implication that the Lieutenant worked as a messenger boy for someone more senior, it might be enough.

“Let me talk to my supervisor.”

Brett should have insisted on speaking to someone in authority in the first place. He believed in learning from every mistake.

To his surprise, Brett received the video two days later. He watched it on the big display in his planet-side quarters the first time he found a moment of privacy. He sat waiting for it to start, certain that despite the rumors none of it would shock him.

After a few seconds of blackness the sun rose behind the camera and began to illuminate the town. The frame was rather artistically composed. Within a few dozen yards of the camera was a small wood and brick house. The outskirts of the town stretched to either side. A few stone buildings could be seen near the center of town, as well as some larger wood and brick ones. Presumably the town did – had done - little more than provide a place for the surrounding farmers to go for entertainment, or to buy what they could not make themselves. Beyond the outskirts was mostly grassland, with a few trees and rocky outcrops and shrubs.

On all sides men and women seemed to come from nowhere, even where the trees and rocky outcrops and bushes offered only a little concealment. They all had thick chunky skullcaps, and a small object on their hips or backs. They wore no uniforms, did not move in formation or in step, were not organized into squads. Yet they entered the town simultaneously, not breaking the early morning silence. Brett knew only a few elite scouting units could equal the performance. War was one of the things the supermind excelled at. Every individual was linked together as a portion of a composite general's brain - and functioned as an obedient private. There was no sign the town knew they had been surrounded under cover of darkness. A scraggly feral cat was wise enough to keep silent, but the stray mutt curled in a hollow in the ground for warmth was foolish enough to give a tentative yip. It was unlikely anyone would care, but a sharp steel blade instantly severed the throat, so no further vocalization was possible as it died.

Though worse would come, Brett experienced a pang of sympathy for the animal. He knew loneliness.

A sleepy man in a frayed bathrobe opened his front door. He spied a small package a few yards away, possibly a newspaper. Since the intruders were thinly spread, he saw only three strangers milling aimlessly in front of his house, and they did not form a group. A frown of annoyance crossed his face as he stepped out for the package. His closest approach to one of the loiterers was a couple of yards away. The latter stepped quickly, and used the edge of his hand to smash the victim’s windpipe.

The picture focused for a few moments on the man writhing on the ground as the killers stepped casually around him, his bathrobe falling open. Then the picture cut to another image of a man in a floppy hat lying on the ground dying of asphyxiation. A couple of similar scenes were shown.

Brett had seen death before, but usually the killers found themselves busy. There was seldom time or inclination to mock it, to display it as a spectacle. Brett’s teeth ground together. The first image was indelibly engraved on his mind’s eye: The man’s hands grabbing for his throat, as if he could make his windpipe work again. The bathrobe falling open, showing dirty white boxer shorts. The hopeless and painful struggle. That death felt like an individual murder, while the others bled together into the beginning of a massive slaughter.