Starhunt: A Star Wolf Novel (27 page)

Then he places both hands on the table edge and slowly pushes himself back. He rises like an old man. His back hurts. He walks slowly to the door and proceeds down the dark corridor to the auxiliary bridge. It is here that he has spent most of the last seventeen hours. Monitoring. Studying. Running simulations on the computer. Testing. Planning. Thinking. Trying to assimilate. Trying to synthesize. Listening, both inside and out.

But now—finally,
now,
for the first time, he is beginning to understand the larger pattern.

If it isn’t already too late—

History is written by the survivors.

—SOLOMON SHORT

The captain’s door opens with a tired sound. Brandt steps out into the corridor, blinking uncertainly. He looks old. He looks unsteady. He pulls at his tunic, as if to straighten it, as if to stretch his own wrinkles into invisibility. He turns and heads forward to the control room.

The Command and Control chair is empty. The bridge is unnecessarily dark. The captain sags into his seat and gestures vaguely. “Someone bring the lights up, please.”

He glances around as the room brightens, then rubs his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. He sniffs once, then returns his attention to the screens that line the upper circle of the room.

“What’re we doing here?” he asks. “Does anyone know? Where’s Barak?”

Jonesy looks up from the astrogation console. “Uh, I think he’s in his cabin. I’ll buzz him, sir.”

“Yes, do that. Why are we still powered-down? Bring the uh—bring all systems up to standard operating levels. And—uh, secure from general quarters.” He squints at the assistant astrogator. “You—Jones, isn’t it? Can you plot a course back to base?”

“We’ve already got it, sir. Whenever you’re ready.”

The bridge crew is looking now, surreptitiously sneaking glances—Brandt in command? Has something happened?

“All right, set it up on the boards. And give it to the engine room too.”

“Aye, aye, sir!” There is a noticeable snap to Jonesy’s voice. Brandt ignores it. He stifles the urge to yawn.

Goldberg leans over and whispers to another crewman. “In about ten seconds, Korie is gonna come screaming through that door.”

Goldberg is wrong. Korie doesn’t appear until a full minute and a half has elapsed. And when he does enter, his manner is strangely calm, almost relaxed.

He looks to Brandt. “We’re going home?”

Brandt doesn’t return the glances, he merely nods.

“I concur,” says Korie. “I don’t think there’s anything more we can do out here.”

Behind him, Jonesy drops his clipboard in startlement. Other members of the bridge crew also turn to look. Their expressions range from “Huh?” to “Hah!!”

Brandt almost smiles. “Giving up the ghost, huh?”

Korie shakes his head slightly, a noncommittal gesture of acknowledgment, nothing more. After a moment, Korie says, “I don’t think further explanations are necessary. If you hadn’t already ordered it, I was prepared to recommend just this course of action, sir.”

“Well,” says Brandt. “Well. That is something. Isn’t it?” Brandt adds,
sotto voce
, “I should have done this before. It’s time I reassumed command of my own ship.”

Equally soft, Korie replies, “As you say, sir. But whether or not that bogie really is out there, whether or not I still believe he is, there’s no way I’m going to convince anyone else on this ship that there’s something out there tracking us, hiding from us. The most I could do would be convince you that I’m mad. I don’t think I am, sir—but never mind—I agree with you that we should go home—but not because I’ve given up. Not for the reasons you’re thinking.”

“Your plan didn’t work, Mr. Korie.”

Korie shrugs. “I don’t exactly see it that way, sir. My plan was the correct one for the circumstances as we understood it at the time. Circumstances are different now. We need a new plan.”

“Ah, yes. I can agree with that. But this time, I’ll make the plan, if you don’t mind.”

“Whatever you say, sir.” He looks calmly at Brandt. “With your permission, sir, I’d like to leave the bridge.”

“Certainly. May I ask why?”

“Well. There seems to be a certain . . . uh, feeling that the bogie was only a flux-wobbly. I would like to go down to the engine room and see if I can find a source. So it doesn’t happen again.”

Brandt’s voice is cool. “You expect the wobbly to reappear, then?”

“Yes sir. I do.”

“If it does reappear, you understand Mr. Korie, then that’s pretty definite proof we’ve been chasing nothing more than an echo.”

“Yes, sir. I understand the implication. But I’m sure you can understand that I need to know
for certain.
”

Brandt lifts one hand from the arm of the chair. “Permission granted. Amuse yourself. But keep out of the way, Korie. The crew is tired. I’m tired.”

“We’re
all
tired, sir.”

“Umf,” says Brandt.

Korie makes a quiet exit. His face is unreadable, almost hardened. He moves like a man playing a part.

He stops at the radec room. Rogers is alone at the console. “Rogers?”

Rogers looks up quickly, sees who it is and looks back to his board just as quickly. “Sir?” He bites off the word.

“How are you feeling?”

Rogers won’t meet his gaze. His voice is sullen. “I’m all right, sir.”

“Good. Will you do something for me?”

Rogers doesn’t answer.

“Will you plot me some . . . ah, simulations?”

“What kind of simulations, sir?”

“Well—” Korie levers himself down into the empty seat beside Rogers. “I’ve been thinking about the . . . ah, behavior of that wobbly. Now, this is in the strictest confidence, you understand—but I’m not fully convinced that it was just a wobbly. I mean, think about it. What if—what if there were an enemy ship out there actually pretending to be a wobbly. We wouldn’t be able to tell, would we? And at the point at
which we stop believing it’s a ship, that’s when we’re most vulnerable, isn’t it?”

Rogers doesn’t speak. He stares at his console. His hands are still.

“So—” Korie continues, “I was just . . . uh, wondering how such a ship might behave. And I thought that you might . . . ah, work up some simulations for me. Radec simulations.”

“You want to use them for a drill, don’t you?”

“Who said anything about a drill?”

“Sir—you always ask for a menu of simulations when you start planning a drill.” Rogers swivels and stares hard at Korie. “You want to know something? You want to know how the crew finally started getting our scores moving toward optimum? We tapped into your files. I did it. You didn’t know that, did you? That’s how we finally got you off our necks with the drills. We know what you were going to do before you did it.”

Korie’s face is blank. Unaffected. “That’s very interesting. May I ask . . . how?”

“Easy. I tapped your console in the auxiliary bridge. I put a wire in, and made a duplicate file of everything you accessed.”

“Clever. Why are you telling me this now?”

“Because there’s nothing you can do about it. There’s nothing you can do to any of us, any more. When we get home, you’re probably going to be relieved, so why should I bother—”

Korie nods in modest agreement. “I really can’t argue with your assessment of the situation, crewman. But I should give you one piece of advice. I am still the first officer of this ship. And I still outrank you. And until such time as I
am
relieved of command, I expect you to behave accordingly. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

Korie rises. “Don’t bother about those simulations, Rogers. I’ll do them myself.”

“Yes, sir. You do that, sir.”

Korie steps out of the radec room. And permits himself the briefest of smiles. So far, so good. Maybe—

The difference between psychonomy and chemistry is that raw chemicals are smart enough not to run experiments on themselves.

—SOLOMON SHORT

Rogers thumbs his mike to life, “Jonesy? Rogers. Listen, he still believes there’s something out there.”

Jonesy tells Goldberg.

Goldberg tells Ehrlich.

Ehrlich tells Cookie.

Cookie tells Panyovsky.

And so on. Within fifteen minutes, every man on the ship knows that Korie still believes there’s something out there. The story is repeated in whispers; at first with incredulity, then with anger, and finally with snorts and snickers of contempt. The remarks are shockingly candid.

But—listening privately in his own cabin—Korie is not shocked. He expected it, so the flicker of anger is a small one. It’s a tightly focused anger, directed not at the remarks as hostility, but as noise. It interferes with the rationality of the speaker, and consequently, the coherency of the information being relayed is affected. But as the story is told and retold, a semblance of rationality begins to manifest itself. The situation is observed from the perspectives of every member of the crew, and individual deviations are averaged out.

But the process takes so damned long. And it is frustrating to listen to a conversation go astray and not be able to steer it back toward the desired consensus. Not if you want to get there.

“—Naw, he can’t have any more drills. The captain wouldn’t stand for it!”

“I only know what I heard, y’can ask Rogers—”

“Yah, yah—but it doesn’t make sense—”

“He asked for simulations. You know what that means—”

“Maybe he just wants simulations!”

“—and Erlich talked to Leen—”

“Say again?”

“Erlich told Leen what was up and Leen said Korie’s looped out. He wouldn’t say how he knew, in fact he didn’t want to talk about it at all. The most that Erlich could get out of him was that Leen ran into Korie in the galley last night and Korie was babbling about being a supermind or something, and that the captain of that other ship is trying to drive him crazy—”

Listening, Korie raises one eyebrow. (No, he sure didn’t get much out of him, did he?)

“There isn’t any other ship.”

“Yah, you know it, I know it; everybody knows it but Korie. You know what I think?”

“What?”

“He can’t stop believing for even one second that there’s another ship out there—because if he does, then he’ll realize how crazy he is—except when you get someone that crazy, they
can’t
realize how crazy they are—”

A spasm of rage flashes on Korie’s face. He forces himself to take a breath, then looks at the speaker and grins. “If I’d been holding a pencil, I’d have snapped it.” He leans over and switches off the monitor. (Either they don’t care anymore, or they don’t think I’m bothering to listen. Hardly matters. The psychonomy is working. It’s really working. They’re finally starting to function like a unit. I did it. I actually did it. Lordy, this is amazing. A class-A mega-response from a class-F stimulus. The dynamic is finally self-operative . . . and I know where all its buttons are.)

And then his own voice, the quiet one in the back of his skull, says, “Eh? Did you hear what he said?”

(Hear what?)

“—what that crewman said: ‘He can’t stop believing for even one second . . . because if he does, then he’ll realize how crazy he is . . . except when you get someone that crazy, they never realize how crazy they are—’”

(So? That doesn’t apply to me.)

“Stop,”
his voice tells him. “Just stop for one moment, Jon Korie, and consider: Is there even the slightest chance you could be wrong?”

(No.)

“You’re not considering.”

(How do
you
know what I’m thinking.)

“Don’t be silly. I stood on a chair and peeked over the partition.”

Korie is stopped, staring at the opposite wall. His eyes seem focused on something inside of himself. (No, I couldn’t be mistaken—could I?)

“It’s something you have to consider. It
is
a possibility.”

(No, I’m a pro. I don’t . . . listen to the advice of . . . amateurs. What do they know about it?)

“The perceptions of amateurs are often surprisingly valid, you know that. You just have to know how to interpret them.”

(But they don’t have the information I do—)

But the thought won’t go away. And Korie can’t shake this sudden inner dread. (I’ve done all right. I—I’ve taken care of Leen, for instance. Leen was a big problem. And his big mouth. Unloading on him like that was the right thing to do. I gave him far more than he can handle. He’ll be paralyzed, terrified because he doesn’t understand—
can’t
understand what I’m doing—he’ll cooperate now with the first semblance of rational authority that manifests itself. I’m counting on it. I didn’t expect him to talk—at least not quite that vividly, but—but that’s a useful bonus. I’ve got them all terrified of me now. So that part’s working. It’s
all
working. Have I got any other crew problems that I haven’t fixed? Rogers? No—) Korie allows himself a smile, puts his hands behind his head and leans back in his bunk. (That was a real challenge—integrating the little bastard into the crew. He’s sure a spoiled brat, isn’t he? Always looking for a Daddy. Well, now he’s got the whole crew to protect him from me. That was a hard one, a tricky one. If I’d shown even the slightest interest in protecting him, they would have resented him even more. This way is better. As soon as they thought I was abusing him, or perhaps using him as a weapon against them, they closed
ranks around him . . . yes, that was the move—Lord, I don’t like doing this—but I have to use every tool at my disposal, if it’ll work, don’t I? And it worked. Didn’t it? Rogers is finally functioning
for
me instead of against me. I knew I’d done it when he finally tapped into my console. But it sure took him long enough to do it. I was starting to think they’d never figure out why I was asking for those simulations. Now there—that was one of my ideas that worked perfectly. I knew they were going to hate the drills. I had to give them a way to cheat—a way to “get even” with me. But all the time they thought they were doing it to me, I was doing it to them. The amount of time they spent in figuring how to outwit my simulations was more time than they would have spent preparing for a drill. They didn’t improve their ratings by cheating; not with those exercises. They did it by learning how to outthink an enemy. But, Lord, what a price. I had to be the enemy.