The Biofab War (13 page)

H
uge and silent, the ships landed at night far from the great river valleys with their rude villages. Disgorging armies of men and machines, they left—all but three.

It was a task of years before flaring energy beams and deep-set atomics finished the enormous caverns that would house the Project. By then the staff had begun their work.

Men would disappear from their hovels, reappearing months later to speak slowly and strongly of new ideas, new gods, of better ways to live. At first some of them were killed, denounced as heretics, demons, devils. But most lived on to change the lives of their peoples. And once it was known that those who opposed the new men inevitably died—always of natural causes—opposition melted away.

The seed had been sown. Through the centuries it was carefully nurtured and cultivated, becoming the root from which civilization sprang. The arts and sciences came into being and flourished. Temples and monuments were raised. Priesthoods and dynasties were founded and grew to greatness. The time for cross-fertilization had come.

Trade, before confined to land and coastal routes, spread across the great waters, aided by new discoveries and navigation: devices that always showed a true heading and simple instruments to determine position by sun and stars.

Often, touching upon some strange new shore, the mariners found their gods already there, housed in familiar temples. And nearby, hunters, farmers and fishermen, welcoming and eager to trade. Among the natives there invariably lived one person who spoke the mariners’ language and knew their customs: the village shaman, versed in the ways of the gods the two peoples found they shared. Goods and ideas flowed smoothly, the seafarers sharing the techniques of the Bronze Age with the landsmen. Over time, their culture came to resemble more and more that of the mariners.

Bonds of kinship grew through intermarriage. What often began as an arrangement between two peoples would become a trading confederation, expanding until it met other confederations with similar origins. In time, these allied confederations bound a continent. All prospered. East across the ocean went gold, copper, silver, furs and hides. West came bronze tools, weapons, luxury goods.

An objective analysis of this cultural melding would have found that at each critical stage, either a shaman in the West or a high priest in the East—or both—served as a catalyst. But the only social scientists were those orchestrating the process.

The time at last came to begin the next Phase: technological refinements designed to tighten the bonds between East and West, eventually urbanizing the westerners. Steam engines and storage batteries were “invented” simultaneously in several eastern kingdoms. Before they could be refined, however, the Recall came.

It was Rigana’s twenty-fifth and final year on the planet. He’s risen to Senior Developmental Anthropologist, proud that of all his predecessors, he was but one of three under whom a major Phase had begun. Preparations had taken a long, careful decade—one mistake could have undone the work of centuries. He was looking forward to his return to Dalin, headquarters of the Colonial Service and then a well-earned retirement to a small town on a verdant archipelago, a place near his son’s family and where colleagues and friends who’d served across the Empire lived.

Startled, Rigana looked up as four beeps preceding an emergency subspace message sounded. A holograph of the Colonial Minister filled the room’s center, his face lined and haggard.

“This is a general address message.” Despite the hundreds of light-years, the equipment faithfully recreated his exhausted tone. “All stations, all sections, all commands will cease operations at once and fall back to Dalin. Rebel forces have overrun all but Quadrants Green and Yellow. Use extreme caution—the loyalty of all forces but the Home Fleet is suspect. God save the Emperor. Luck to you.”

Rigana sighed, sadly shaking his balding head.
I should have expected this,
he thought—I was in denial,
I wanted my happy ending.
Old age has finally caught up with the Empire. Sector governors had been seceding with increasing success for the past fifty years. The Recall could only mean that last month’s rumor of a savage mauling of Home Fleet by Zakalan rebels under ex-Governor Soren was true and that rebels were closing in on Kronar.

As a social scientist, the Rigana saw no end to the accelerating collapse of the Pax Galactica. Anarchy would reign, and then would begin a long, painful climb back to greatness. (He’d been careful to keep this opinion from the omnipresent ears of Security.) As a veteran of two multi-fleet “police actions,” Rigana knew even if he reached Dalin, his reserve commission would be quickly activated and he’d be thrown into the fight. If his ship was intercepted by the rebels en route to Dalin, he’d be spaced as an Imperial officer. Rigana doubted he’d ever see his lush archipelago.

POCSYM hurled the two transports from their rocky berths in the asteroid belt. From there they began the first of a series of homeward-bound jumps, some through the heart of rebel sectors. Weeks later, badly shot up, one of them would limp into Dalin, half her complement dead, the other half to join the defense of Dalin as the rebels closed in. Rigana didn’t make it home.

Its masters gone, POCSYM placed all but its own core equipment in stasis against the day of their return. He missed the staff—no scintillating conversations, no I’Wor games. Duty-bound, though, he turned to monitoring the Recall’s effect on the plans and work of centuries. He didn’t like what he saw, but was forbidden to intervene.

Lack of speedier transportation prevented a massive infusion of new blood from the West into the atrophying social structures of the East. Losing their vitality, the old dynasties fell to the brash young neighbors they’d before controlled with ease. Trade ceased and the tall ships no longer sailed far away.

In the West, the prosperity brought by the mariners left with them. The confederations disintegrated. Tribes bickered and fought, some slipping back into a seminomadic existence, others descending into the barbarism of human sacrifice. All fell easy prey, much later, to eastern men who no longer came in peace.

POCSYM detected the Scotar fleet when it first came out of hyperspace. It activated its defenses and waited—this was a problem it could confront. When the aliens were within easy range, POCSYM casually transported all ships to the same half-mile of space. It did so with the next two fleets. There was an interlude of peace.

The Kronarins weren’t the only ones capable of finding and refitting old Imperial ships. Using one, the Scotar gave the appropriate recognition codes and landed far from civilization. Destroying their ship, the transmutes scattered across the globe. Congratulating themselves on penetrating POCSYM’s defenses, they began their search for his lair. Over the next half-century, they found and destroyed many of the small transporter/temple sites used by the Colonial Service teams for intraplanetary movement and training of locals. They had no luck, though, in finding any of the main bases.

POCSYM was able to subtly alter their detector readings. Twice the Scotar thought they’d scanned an underground installation. Each time, their assault force triumphantly teleported into solid rock or magma. There was no third attempt.

Knowing they couldn’t control Terra until POCSYM was taken and finding their resources to do so inadequate, the Scotar established a base on a Martian satellite. From there they augmented their force on Earth, teleporting at great risk through POCSYM’s defenses. Thus reinforced, the insectoids infiltrated key posts in one of the more powerful Terran states. With its resources at their clandestine disposal, the Scotar hoped to locate and quietly destroy the pesky computer.
Implacable’s
unexpected arrival and the imminent discovery of a functioning transporter site by the Terrans had forced the Scotar into a premature battle.

J
ohn awoke to something soft beating him in the face. Reaching out, he wrested the small, round pillow from Zahava’s hands.

“You were snoring again!” She slid from his grasp, stepping onto the deep-carpeted floor. “Pleasant dreams?” she asked, ducking into the bathroom.

“Entertaining, certainly. Shouldn’t believe everything you dream, though.” Rising, he looked for his clothes. “There’s a pilferage problem,” he grumbled, not finding them.

“There are Colonial Service uniforms in the wardrobe,” advised POCSYM.

“Do you always eavesdrop?” He opened the wardrobe door. Duplicates of last night’s attire hung there, clean and flawlessly pressed. Warsuits and blasters were neatly stacked on a shelf.

“It’s my programming. I’m sorry if it offends you, but it’s just me.”

“What time is it?”

“Ten-ten A.M., eastern standard time. Would you like to listen to one of the Manhattan FM stations? I favor the classical ones. Or a musical selection from my own library?”

“Neither.”

“Oh.” Irrepressible, the computer continued. “I’ve monitored radio, television and the internet since their inception. It keeps me abreast of the geopolitical situation and helps me monitor changes in human mores and folkways.”

“And what have you learned, POCSYM?” asked John, looking for his watch.

“That Voltaire was right: ‘Times change, people don’t.’ I have evidence, in fact, that minor changes in social mores are frequently engineered by the media.”

“Startling,” said John, finding his watch. “Is there a razor?”

“Depilatory rinse is on the third shelf behind the bath mirror. You should find all necessary toiletries there. If need anything, ask. I’m afraid I don’t have any little butler bots to show you around, but I can tell you where to go.”

“Others have,” said John. Behind him, Zahava closed the bathroom door and started the shower. “Damn,” he murmured. “Anyone else up yet?”

“Me.” Bob came in, looking a like a large avocado in his green Colonial Service uniform. “Don’t let our pompous wizard bamboozle you,” he said, “For all its supposed scientific objectivity, it’s accumulated a vast collection of operatic recordings. It favored me with an original cut of Caruso and Geraldine Farrar in
The Barber of Seville
. God only knows how he . . . it . . . got it.”

Sitting on his bunk, tugging on a boot, John grunted, “We all have pronoun problems with Mr. POCSYM. I’ve decided on he. Is that OK, POCSYM?”

“Whatever you’re comfortable with, Mr. Harrison.”

“How did you record those operas?” asked Bob.

“One of my many secrets, Professor,” said the computer smugly.

“Were you given the same dream as we were, Bob?” asked John, squeezing his left foot into the tight-fitting Kronarin boot.

“Mighty ships, pigmy humans, Imperial noblesse oblige?”

“And the heroic POCSYM. You doubt?” asked John, rising.

“Someone should. I’m bunked with Detrelna and that cynical old space dog ate it up. If he did, so did the rest.”

“I’m wounded,” said POCSYM.

“Surely there’s an opera somewhere you want to record?” suggested John.

“My apologies—I’ll leave you alone.”

Bob waved vaguely. “I accept all this …
a priori.
Direct evidence and the reasoned judgment and all. But we’ve only POCSYM’s word for this revisionist history–subliminal, three-dimensional and in color though it may be. No, I reserve judgment. And you?”

“Likewise. Logic compels caution. We’ve been thrust into the midst of a galactic war . . .”

The bathroom door vanished. Steam billowed in, a naked form dimly visible through the mist. Bob’s hasty exit ended the conversation.

At breakfast, John asked a question that’d been nagging him. “CIA and FSB, working as a team?” His gaze shifted between Bakunin and Sutherland. “Things must really have changed since I left. You’ll put yourselves out of work.”

Zahava and Greg looked up with interest. McShane, listening intently to Kiroda, took no notice.

“Not really our fault,” said Sutherland between mouthfuls of fresh blueberry blintzes, bacon and coffee. “It started with Admiral Canaris’ Abwehr,” he said, naming the Third Reich’s military intelligence arm.

“The Germans stumbled onto a site very much like the one at Goose Hill.” Bakunin picked up the tale. “It was being used by the French Resistance as a storage and staging area. An Wehrmacht raiding party arrived at the site just as Scotar transmutes dropped in—probably looking for POCSYM.” He paused, sipping coffee.

Sutherland pushed his plate away with a contented sigh. “The meeting between the Nazis and the Scotar was ‘nasty, brutish and short.’ The bugs teleported away, destroying the site as they left, leaving one of the Germans alive. He had a map, snatched from the Scotar, showing the probable locations of POCSYM’s transporter sites.”

“An SS officer got the map,” said Bakunin, “then gave it to us and the Americans after the war in return for our not hanging him. By then all the sites we could find had been destroyed.”

“Why did you and the Russians cooperate, Bill?” asked Greg. “Especially during the cold war.” Unnoticed, the window now showed a red-sailed galley skimming an azure sea. High above its fifty-oared deck, a golden hide caught the sun.