The Footprints of God (46 page)

"How do you feel about full-scale thermonuclear war?" I asked. "Is attacking the computer worth
that
level of retaliation?"

"What are you talking about?” asked Senator Jackson. "General Bauer assured us that nuclear war isn't a possibility."

"Do you know about something called the 'dead-hand' system, Senator?"

Jackson's deep-set eyes narrowed. "We were just discussing that. The consensus is that it's a myth."

"What do you know about it, Doctor?" asked General Bauer.

"I know what Andrew Fielding told me. He believed that system existed during the Cold War and might still today. So does Peter Godin. Fielding and Godin discussed the potential for Trinity to disarm such a system prior to a nuclear exchange. And Godin has been involved in American nuclear planning since the 1980s."

Everyone looked at the hospital bed. Godin still lay unconscious on his pillow.

"Is he sleeping?" asked McCaskell.

"We had to give him morphine," explained Dr. Case. "Nerve pain."

"Can you wake him up?"

"I'll try."

General Bauer addressed the senators. "Peter Godin built supercomputers that carried out nuclear-test simulations. That's the extent of his contribution to American strategy. The Soviet dead-hand system never existed. That's the informed consensus of the American defense establishment."

Horst Bauer was a good salesman. The temptation to agree to his plan was tangible in the room. I could read it on the faces of the senators on the screen. That the plan involved a nuclear weapon only made it more attractive. Every American carries a memory of Hiroshima as the terrible but final solution to the deadliest war in history. And the unknown nature of Trinity's power seemed to cry out for some force of equal mystery and power to vanquish it. What the senators did not understand was that nuclear weapons held no mystery for Trinity. In the world of digital warfare, atomic bombs were as primitive as stone clubs. There was only one weapon on earth remotely equal in power to Trinity. The human brain.

I got to my feet, faced the screen, and spoke with as much restraint as I could muster. "Senators, before you attempt something that could trigger a nuclear holocaust, I beg you to allow me to speak to the computer. What do you have to lose?"

General Bauer started to speak, then thought better of it. The senators conferred quietly. Then Barrett Jackson spoke.

"General, why don't we see how the computer feels about speaking to Dr. Tennant? It hasn't talked to anyone else."

Skow began to protest, but Senator Jackson cut him off with an upraised hand.

"Tell the computer who Dr. Tennant is," said Jackson. "Also where he is. Then ask the machine if it will talk to him."

"I need to go into the Containment Building to do this," I said.

Jackson shook his head. "We can't allow that, Doctor. What if you start hallucinating? You might hit a switch or something. No, if you speak to Trinity, you do it from here."

On General Bauer's order, a technician typed in what Jackson had said and sent it to Trinity.

Blue letters flashed instantly onto the screen.

I
will speak to Tennant.

"I'll be damned," said Senator Jackson.

"Look," said Ravi Nara.

More letters had flashed up on the screen.

Send Tennant into Containment.

"What the hell?" said General Bauer. "Why would it ask that?"

McCaskell looked at me. "Can you explain this, Doctor? Why would the computer make the same request you did?"

"I have no idea."

"Type this," said McCaskell. "'Why do you want Dr. Tennant in Containment?'"

The response was instantaneous.

Hath the rain a father? Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? Wilt thou hunt the prey for the lion? Or fill the
appetite of the young lions? Canst thou draw out
Leviathan with a hook? None is so fierce that dare stir
him up. Who then is able to stand before me?

"That's Scripture, isn't it?" said McCaskell, obviously taken aback.

"The Book of Job," said Skow, making me picture him as a little boy dressed for Sunday school.

"Why is the computer answering like that?" asked Senator Jackson. "Was Godin a religious nut?"

"The man is still alive," I reminded Jackson.

"Godin doesn't believe in God," said Skow. "He once told me that religion was the result of an adaptive process evolved to help
Homo sapiens
overcome its anxiety about death."

Soft cackling echoed through the room. Everyone turned toward the hospital bed. Godin's eyes were open, and the delight in them was plain.

"It's a joke," he rasped. "Trinity's telling you to know your damn place."

McCaskell got up and walked over to the bed. "Why would the computer want Dr. Tennant in the Containment building?"

"Computer, computer," muttered Godin. "Trinity isn't a
computer.
A computer is a glorified adding machine. A logic box. Trinity is
alive.
It's mankind freed from the curse of his body. Trinity is the
end of death."

The old man's voice had the conviction of a prophet.

"Mr. Godin," said McCaskell, "what do you know about the existence of the so-called 'dead-hand' Russian missile system?"

The old man's head jerked forward as he struggled against a spasm in his throat. "The 'dead hand' is yours," he wheezed. "Yours and those of all the impotent apparatchiks of our outmoded system."

McCaskell’s face showed some emotion at last. "Why have you done this? Are you such an egoist that you can't bear to think of the world without you in it?"

Godin was struggling to breathe. Dr. Case moved to help him, but Godin waved the physician away.

"Look around you," Godin said. "Why does all this high-tech machinery exist? I built the most elegant supercomputers in the world, machines capable of enormous contributions to mankind. And what did the government do with them? Cracked codes and built nuclear bombs. For twenty years they used my beautiful machines to perfect their engines of death. But why should I have expected any different? Human history is a charnel house of carnage and absurdity."

Godin began to cough as though his lungs were coming up. "We had our chance, gentlemen. Ten thousand years of human civilization has brought us in a circle. The twentieth century was the bloodiest in history. Left to us, the twenty-first would only be worse. Darwin tolled the bell on our stewardship of this planet in 1859. But today you finally heard it."

"Look at the screen!" cried Ravi Nara.

The blue letters glowed ominously, more menacing by their silence.

Send Dr. Tennant to me or suffer the consequences.

"I guess our decision's been made for us," said Senator Jackson. "Send the doctor into the Containment building."

General Bauer signaled two soldiers, who came and stood at my shoulders. I looked at Bauer and let him see my mistrust.

"Do you intend to go ahead with your EMP strike, General?"

He wore the mask of a veteran poker player, but it didn't fool me for a moment. I knew I had less than thirty minutes to accomplish my goal.

McCaskell walked over to me. "Dr. Tennant, we're relying on you not to reveal the potential strike to the computer."

"Of course."

He offered his hand. "Good luck."

The moment I started for the door, alarms began sounding in the hangar.

"Code blue!" shouted a nurse. "Mr. Godin's coding!"

I hadn't handled a code in years, but my response was automatic. Even Rachel jumped from her chair and raced to Godin's bedside.

Dr. Case and the nurses were already working on the old man. The cardiac monitor showed another coronary event, but Ravi Nara seemed to think obstructive hydrocephalus had finally occurred. When Godin's heart monitor flatlined, Dr. Case climbed onto the bed and began administering CPR. It did no good. The old man's face had the gray pallor of death.

"Look at that!" someone shouted from the table.

I whirled and looked where he was pointing.

On the screen used to display Trinity's messages, chaotic streams of characters flashed by almost too rapidly to be recognized. Numbers, letters, and mathematical symbols merged in a blinding river of confusion. The computer's circuits were clearly in disarray.

"What's happening?" asked McCaskell. "What does that mean?"

The symbols on the screen went multicolored as Japanese and Cyrillic characters began to appear.

"General!" cried a soldier at one of the consoles. "The signals from the pipeline running from Containment just dropped to zero. I think the computer's crashing!"

A whoop of triumph came from somewhere in the hangar. Then a new alarm sounded in the room, much louder than the others.

"What's that?" asked Senator Jackson. "What's going on? Is Godin dead?"

General Bauer walked to one of his computers, then turned to the senators with a nearly bloodless face.

"Sir, one of our surveillance satellites has detected fourteen heat blooms on Russian territory. The blooms are consistent with the launch of ballistic missiles." He looked back at the computer screen. "From the speed and heat signature of the rockets, NORAD computers have designated them as a combination of SS-18 and SS-20 intercontinental ballistic missiles. Those missiles carry heavy thermonuclear warheads."

Senator Jackson opened his mouth, but no words emerged. The brown eyes blinked in the bulldog face. "But you said that was impossible."

General Bauer didn't flinch. "It appears that I was wrong."

CHAPTER 
41

"Senators, we're approximately twenty-nine minutes from the first impacts," said General Bauer. "I ask for your approval to initiate the EMP strike as soon as the bomber is in position."

Senator Jackson looked uncertain. "What if that causes more launches?"

I glanced at the screen showing Trinity's output. The chaotic flow of numbers and characters showed no sign of abating.

"Highly unlikely, sir," said Bauer. "The computer appears to be crashing. Fourteen missile impacts are survivable. And with the poor state of Russian maintenance, we might only suffer half that number of detonations. Even fewer on target. If we take out Trinity now, we'll survive this in relatively good shape."

"If the computer is crashing," said Jackson, "perhaps we should try to contact the president. He should make the final decision on this strike."

"NORAD shows seven more heat blooms!" cried a technician. "Bases are Aleysk, Pervomaysk, Kostroma, Derazhnya."

"Does that mean more missiles?" Jackson asked.

General Bauer waited for the panicked chatter of the other senators to subside. "We're now under threat of twenty-one missiles, Senators. Russia has over three thousand viable ICBMs. If we don't act now, we could be looking at numbers like that. The president empowered us to make these decisions. It's time to act."

Senator Jackson turned away from the camera and took a hurried vote by acclamation. "The EMP strike is authorized, General."

General Bauer nodded to his chief technician, who began transmitting coded orders to the B-52 code-named Arcangel.

"Where are these Russian missiles likely to land?" Senator Jackson asked.

"NORAD will compute that, but Washington is almost a guaranteed target. They'll be coming on a polar flight path. You'll need to move to the bomb shelter beneath NSA headquarters very soon."

"We're already there."

"Good."

"But our families ..." Senator Jackson's face seemed to deflate, but then steel came into his eyes. "Should we send a car to the White House? Should the president consider a nuclear response against the Russians?"

"This isn't a Russian strike," said Ewan McCaskell. "It's a launch by Trinity. It's the dead-hand system that General Bauer told us didn't exist."

"We don't know that," General Bauer insisted. "The Russians may be trying to destroy Trinity themselves. Trinity's incursions into their defense computers may have frightened them into thinking Trinity is planning its own preemptive strike against Russia. Remember, they perceive Trinity as an American computer. An American weapon."

McCaskell was shaking his head. "The Russians know our missiles aren't under computer control. And the president explained the situation to the Russian leadership before he went under surveillance. As did Trinity itself, with its message to world leaders."

"That was two hours ago," General Bauer reminded him. "Fear has its own reasons."

"Or none. We can't afford to act out of fear now." "Or not to," Bauer retorted.

"General!" yelled a technician at one of the consoles. "NORAD shows one of the Russian missiles going down over the ice cap. Looks like a malfunction." "Let's hope for more of those," said Jackson. "The satellite has detected multiple high-energy flashes," the tech continued. "That was a MIRV warhead, probably from a prematurely detonated SS-18. Spectrum analysis is not yet completed, but yield estimates show ten warheads at five hundred and fifty kilotons each."

"In twenty-five minutes we'll have that happening over Manhattan," said General Bauer.

On the NORAD screen, a group of red arcs extended from Russian soil to the edge of the polar ice cap. The arcs continued slowly and steadily toward North America.

"Why did this happen?" asked Senator Jackson. "Because the computer is crashing? That's what caused the Russian launch?"

"No way to know," said General Bauer. John Skow stood and spoke in a loud voice. "I think we should cut power to Trinity while it's in a chaotic state. We've seen its retaliatory response. Let's not give it a chance to do more damage."

"General Bauer?" said Senator Jackson.

"I'm tempted, Senator, but I've been proved wrong once already. Trinity told us that it exported its retaliatory ability to other computers. So neutralizing the computer here doesn't solve our problems. If we cut power, we could be dealing with another twenty-nine hundred inbound missiles. I don't want to contemplate that."