Tachyon Web (20 page)

“
It was clear to me before you destroyed our factory.
”

“We did not act without provocation. You are refusing to return property that does not belong to you.”

“
Excalibur
does not belong to The Patrol,” Eric interrupted.

“
Excalibur
is bound by laws that The Patrol has been designated to enforce,” Griffin responded, showing no obvious annoyance at being contradicted, showing no real emotion at all.

“
We have laws, too
,” Rak said. “
You violate many of them with your attack and your threats.
”

“I have no choice. We do not want to harm your people,” Griffin said. “If you will return
Excalibur
immediately, we will allow your fleet to continue unobstructed.”

“
Whether you intended to or not, you have already harmed my people in ways that cannot be measured by bodily damage alone.
”

“You demoralized them,” Eric said bitterly.

Griffin ignored him. “First Councillor, ours is a democratic society. Our people, on all our worlds, are allowed to elect their leaders. These leaders create the laws we are to live by and in turn choose people such as myself to make sure these laws are never broken. To follow the will of my people I must obey the orders of my superiors. And they have stated, within the last couple of hours, that under no conditions is your fleet to be allowed access to
Excalibur
. If you do not comply with our request and return
Excalibur
, I have been given authority to take whatever steps are necessary to prevent you from taking advantage of our technological developments.”

Eric fumed. “Our people would never do this to the Kaulikans. The men who gave you that order are out of touch with the masses of The Union.”

“
I speak for my people
,” Rak said quietly. “
They know that with Excalibur the stars are within reach. They have recently lost everything. They have suffered terribly. But now, though the destruction of the factory has struck fear into their hearts, they have hope. General Griffin, I cannot give you back the ship.
”

The lines had been drawn. They were sharp. Neither side would step over to the other side. Not unless they were pushed. Griffin turned on his desktop holographic globe. In the center of the black crystal gleamed the Kaulikan flagship. His face turned grim. “Then you leave me with no choice.”

“
I have no choice.
”

“Your people would rather die?”

“
Than give up this chance? Yes.
”

“What will you do to them?” Eric whispered.

Griffin was blunt. “The flagship will be destroyed.”

“No!” Eric breathed. “There are hundreds of thousands of people aboard it!”

The General pushed a button on his desk. “This is Griffin. Has target been programmed into matrix disrupters?”

“Programmed. Status yellow and waiting, General.”

“Go to status red. Define target’s matrix within our fields.”

Eric's fear and anger skipped a cold beat as a painful sense of unreality tightened his chest, clotting his heart’s blood. He had been so caught up in the tragic size of the confrontation and the years he might have to spend on Mercury working sixteen hours a day under nauseous conditions that his mind had played a trick on him and he had momentarily forgotten the impact the situation could have on his friends. Sammy…Strem…Vani…they were all on the flagship! And this
creature
of a man was going to turn them into rarified plasma.

And it would be
all
Eric Tirel’s fault.

“Disruption is defined.”

“Prepare to disrupt.” Griffin looked at Rak. “Place
Excalibur
outside the flagship. Now.”

Rak was studying Griffin with an intentness that was somehow disconnected from the crisis, as if there were no hundreds of thousands to worry about, no deadly armada surrounding all that was important to him; there was only Griffin’s face, something in it that fascinated the First Councillor. Rak did not answer.

“Awaiting final command, General?”

“Countdown disrupt matrix, thirty seconds.”

“Thirty...Twenty-nine…Twenty-eight…”

Eric looked back and forth, from one to the other, his head grinding on his neck, his muscles tightening into hard lumps. This could not happen, he told himself, he could not let it happen.

“You understand what we are going to do?” Griffin asked.

Rak was hardly listening. “
I understand.
”

“You’ll gain nothing,” Griffin said.

Rak nodded slightly, holding the General's eyes; or rather being held
by
them. “
We will both lose.
”

“Twenty…Nineteen…Eighteen…”

Eric exploded. He leapt to his feet, his chair toppIing over at his back, terror and rage combining in a fearsome possession. He reached across the desk, grabbing Griffin by the collar, feeling the weight of the General in his trembling hands as he tried to pull the man from his seat.

“You animal!” he cursed. “You sit here and tell us of your orders and you give your orders and all those people out there are going to die and you’re going to die, too, ’cause I’m going to rip out your filthy fat throat!”

Griffin glanced at him with mild distaste. “Sit down, Tirel, and shut up.”

“I’ll kill you,” Eric swore, nevertheless feeling his supposed death grip loosening. Rak touched his side.

“
Son
,” he said gently.

“But my friends,” Eric moaned, letting go of the General, his eyes watering. As hot as it had burned, as quickly it burned out, and as his wrath died, he was left feeling cold and weak. He no longer cared about what had happened to Kashi, or what would happen to the rest of the Kaulikans. He just wanted his friends to live. He turned to Rak, pleading. “Give him the ship. Please?”

Rak stood and put his arm around him, placing his lips near his ear and whispering words that it was remarkable the translator was able to catch, words Eric did not understand. “
He does not want it.
”

“Nine...Eight…”

The pressure was smothering. Eric could hardly speak. “What does he want?”

“
To know what is best.
”

“Five...Four…”

Rak turned to Griffin. “
You knew me, before I walked in. You do not need to play this game.
”

“Hold fire,” Griffin said into the microphone beside the globe. “Return to status yellow. Await my command.”

“Status yellow and waiting.”

Griffin erased the flagship in the globe and stood from his place behind the desk. He was deep in thought, the lines in his face now set with weariness rather than cruelty. Or had his expression really changed? Eric no longer knew what he was seeing because he no longer knew what he was looking for. He collapsed in his chair, limp with exhaustion while Griffin stepped to the model of the Spanish warship, placing his back to them, touching the main sail, a yellow mast that could have been sewn by hand. A full minute went by in silence.

“First Councillor,” Griffin said finally, not looking at them. “On Kashi, before the change in your sun, you had oceans like those on our home world.”

“
Yes. And we had primitive vessels similar to your model.
”

The General fingered the ship’s tiny steering wheel. “My people’s planet is called Earth. And in my home on Earth I used to keep many models such as this one, of old sailing vessels. I used to build them; it was a hobby of mine. Even as I rose through our service and began to command ships of extraordinary power, I retained a fascination for such craft. Slow and fragile, at the mercy of the elements, they demanded a great deal from a commander. But aboard a ship like we’re in now, nothing is left to chance. Everything is calculated and computed, and is perfect. Occasionally, I think I would envy those old captains, their strength in the face of unknown dangers.” He stopped, then added, reluctantly, “But I don’t anymore.”

They waited for the General to continue. He did not, lost in some personal reverie.

Rak had to ask, “
Something happened to change your mind?”

Griffin plucked a small wooden chip from inside the model and returned to the desk, taking his seat. He loosened his collar and leaned back, glancing to the wall where his family portrait hung, a large oil of himself and his wife – a short, elegant blonde-haired lady – and three smiling teenage children.

“Yes,” Griffin said, his voice less gruff. “Several years ago I took a sailing expedition from a group of islands we call the Philippines to a continent named Australia. My hobby had taken on a serious note and I had had constructed a forty-foot wind-driven ship that I had the bad sense to believe I could steer across a thousand miles of ocean. I practiced with the ship and its sails on a number of short excursions, then set off on the big adventure without a communicator or mechanical propeller of any type. I had my son with me.”

Eric remembered the incident. It had been in the news, a famous tragedy. He did not understand Griffin’s purpose in narrating it to the leader of a people he was essentially at war with.

“On Earth,” Griffin continued, “we have a reliable weather forecast network. I would like to say that it failed on this occasion and that is why my expedition turned into a disaster. But I knew of the impending storm before I left the Philippines. We were underway three days when it hit. By the standards of earlier mariners, it was not particularly fierce. But I was inexperienced. The ship would not respond at the push of a button as would a Patrol cruiser. We took on a great deal of water. Mark was bailing it out. A wave came. He was washed overboard. It was a small miracle I survived. We never found his body.”

Griffin sat up straight, resting a hand on the desk, the chip he had taken from the model resting beneath his stubby fingers. “Suffice it to say, I lost my enthusiasm for primitive ships. Now I never give Nature a chance, on Earth or in space. I’m sure you can understand that, First Councillor.”

“You were right, I did know you before you walked in. I have watched you from afar for many years. Though it was obvious to us, it wasn’t clear to your scientists till near the end that your sun would nova.” A note of admiration entered his voice. “But you pressed for your fleet to leave when it did, even though a delay would have allowed for the construction of more ships and room for more people. You didn’t trust your sun and you were right not to.”

Eric remembered Vani’s reference in the garden to Rak, how he, too, had left family behind. Eric realized that Griffin knew of the First Councillor’s sacrifice. Yet he had no idea what the General was driving at. Rak was quicker.

“
You see my fleet as being at the merry of the elements, like your toiling boat?
”

“Yes. Your fleet is slow and vulnerable. But it is also big and beautiful. I have patrolled this corner of The Tachyon Web for twenty years. I watched as you built your ships, and put everything you had into them. I admired you. It was a mighty labor.”

Rak nodded. “
It still is.
”

Griffin opened a drawer in his desk and removed a black, cube-shaped device, about a foot in diameter with a glass viewplate on one side and a slit at the top. “Do you recognize this?” he asked Rak.

“
It looks similar to our instructors.
”

“It is a working replica of one of your instructors. We are able to directly scan your computers' data banks. That is how I obtained the specifics of its design. I had a technician on Earth, not in the service of The Patrol, put it together.”

“Why?” Eric asked, still waiting for the light to dawn.

“To see how well this could be read by an instructor.” Griffin held up the chip. It was not made of wood, but of silicon. It was an old-fashioned computer chip.

“What the hell?” Eric muttered.

Griffin dropped the chip in the top slit of the instructor and pushed a side switch. The viewplate glowed. He handed it to Rak. The First Councillor studied it for a moment.

“
This is a translation of your language into ours?
”

“The dictionary is a necessary preface. Fast forward the material and have this young man look at it.”

Rak did as requested. Eric peered into the viewplate. Technical schematics and lengthy explanatory pages flowed by: Dr Pernel's gravity flux theories; Dr Preeze’s papers on hyper link; Dr Hial's notes on interspacial navigation...Eric lowered the instructor, almost dropping it on the floor. Griffin reached across the desk and took it from him, removing the chip.

“
What is it?
” Rak asked, even though he seemed to know.

“Instructions on how to build the graviton and hyper drives,” Eric heard himself say.

“
Detailed
instructions,” Griffin corrected. “As I watched you through the years, I used to think, if I had the chance, what would I tell you?” He tapped the chip. “This has everything.” He handed it to Rak. The First Councillor slipped it in a pocket beneath the folds of his gown. He was not surprised, but still deeply touched.

“
Thank you.
”

“But why did you wait till now to give him this information?” Eric asked. He could not assimilate what had just happened. That General Griffin was a blood-thirsty maniac was deeply entrained in his psyche. There had to be a catch. “Why did you wait till after Kashi was destroyed?”

“I had my orders. I have never disobeyed an order.” He stopped. “I see that you are not satisfied with that answer. Neither was I. But I understood my superiors’ reasoning. They are not the heartless savages you imagine, Tirel. They are just…cautious people. They wanted to wait and see.” Griffin closed his eyes briefly, showing the first real signs of emotion, glimpses of a disturbing realization. “Then the sun exploded, and
I
saw more than I wanted to. Still...I continued to wait.”

“For what?” Eric asked.

“Maybe for you, Tirel, some excuse.”

“But that whole show about destroying the flagship?”