Gerrault"s mouth hung open. He looked at the others. "I"ll do it, I really will! It will be the end of the human race." It was almost as if he were seeking their moral support. He had been outmonstered.
Yelen shouted, her voice scarcely recognizable, "Please, Della, I beg I beg! Come back!"
But Della Lu had disappeared over the crest of the amphitheater. Gerrault stared after her for only a second. Once she got out of the way, suppressor fields and tremendous firepower would be brought to bear on the theater. Everyone here could be killed-and Della had convincingly demonstrated that that wouldn"t bother her. Gerrault sprinted for the floor-level exit. "But I"m not bluffing. I"m not!" He stopped for an instant at the door. "If I survive, I"ll return with the zygotes. It is your duty to wait for me." Then he was gone, too.
Wil held his breath through the next seconds, praying for anticlimax. Dark shapes shot skywards, leaving thunder behind. But there was no flash of energy beams, no nukes. There was no shifting of sun in sky as might happen if they were bobbled; the combatants had moved their battle away from the amphitheater.
For the moment they lived. The low-techs huddled in in clumps; someone was weeping. clumps; someone was weeping.
Yelen"s head was buried in her arms. Juan"s eyes were closed, his lower lip caught between his teeth. The other high-techs were caught in less extreme poses... but they were all watching action beyond human eyes.
Wil looked at his display flat. It was counting down the last ninety seconds. The western sky flashed incandescent, two closely s.p.a.ced pulses. Tunc said, "They both nuked out... they"re over the Indian Ocean now." His voice was distant, only a small part of his attention devoted to reporting the action to those who could not see. "Phil"s got his force ma.s.sed there. He has a local advantage." There was a ripple of brightness, barely perceptible, like lightning beyond mountains. "Firefight. Phil is trying to punch through Della"s near-Earth cordon... He made it." There was a scattered and uncertain cheer from the low-techs. "They"re outward bound, under heavy nuke drive. Just boosted past three thousand klicks per second. They"ll go through the trailing Lagrange zone." Christian Gerrault had some important baggage to pick up on his way out.
And Wil"s display read 00:00:00. He looked at Juan Chanson. The man"s eyes were still closed, his face a picture of concentration. A second pa.s.sed. Two. Suddenly he was grinning and giving a thumbs-up sign. Christian"s baggage was no longer available for pickup.
For a moment Wil and Juan grinned stupidly at each other. There was no one else to notice. "Five thousand kps... Strange. Phil has stopped boosting. Della will be on top of him in... We"ve got another firefight. She"s chewing him up... He"s broken off. He"s running again, pulling away from her."
Wil spoke across the monologue. "Tell "em, Juan."
Chanson nodded, still smiling. Suddenly Tunc stopped talking. A second pa.s.sed. Then he swore and started laughing. The low-techs stared at Blumenthal; all the high-techs were looking at Chanson.
"Are you sure, Juan?" Yelen"s voice was unsteady.
"Yes, yes, yes yes! It worked perfectly. We"re rid of both of them now. See. They"ve shifted to long-term tactics. However their fight ends, it will be thousands of years, dozens of pa.r.s.ecs from here." Brierson had a sudden, terrible vision of Della pursuing Gerrault into the depths forever.
Fraley"s voice cut across Chanson"s. "What in h.e.l.l h.e.l.l are you talking about? Gerrault has the med equipment and the zygotes. If he"s gone, they"re gone-and we"re dead!" are you talking about? Gerrault has the med equipment and the zygotes. If he"s gone, they"re gone-and we"re dead!"
"No! It"s all right. We, I-" He was dancing from one foot to the other, frustrated by the slowness of spoken language. "Wil! Explain what we did."
Brierson pulled his imagination back to Earth and looked across the low-techs. "Juan managed to separate the medequipment from Gerrault," he said quietly. "It"s sitting up there in the trailing Lagrange zone, waiting to be picked up." He glanced at Chanson. "You"ve transferred control to Yelen?"
"Yes. I really don"t have much s.p.a.ce capability left."
Wil felt his shoulders slowly relax; relief was beginning to percolate through him. "I"ve suspected "Genet" almost from the beginning; he knew it, and he didn"t care. But during our war, all the high-tech systems were taken over to fight Della. Juan-or any of the others-can tell you what it was like. They were not completely cut out of their systems; they had just lost control. In any battle, a lot of information is flowing between nodes. In this one, things were especially chaotic. In places, data security failed; irrelevant information leaked across. Part of what pa.s.sed through Juan"s node was the specs on Gerrault"s med system. Juan saw what Gerrault had, where it was, and the exact lookabout timings of the bobbles that protected Gerrault"s zygotes and inner defenses."
He paused. "This meeting was a setup. I-I"m sorry about keeping you all in the dark. There were only certain times when an attack could succeed-and then only if Gerrault had moved most of his defenses away from the trailing Lagrange."
"Yes," said Juan, his excitement reduced to manageable proportions, "this meeting was necessary, but it was the riskiest part of the whole affair. If we trumped him while he was still here, Gerrault might have done something foolish, deadly. Somehow we had to trick him into running without shooting at us first. So Wil told the story you heard, and we played our two greatest enemies against each other." He looked up at Brierson. "Thanks for trusting me, my boy. We"ll never know exactly what drove the Lu creature. Maybe she really was human; maybe all her years alone just turned her mind into something alien. But I knew she couldn"t resist if you told her the right lies about the zygote bank; she"ll chase Gerrault to the end of s.p.a.ce-time to destroy it."
Now there really was cheering. Some of the cheerers were a bit exhausted, perhaps: their future had been bounced around like a volleyball these last few minutes. But now: "Now we can make it!" Yelen shouted. Peacers, Ungovs, NMs were embracing. Dilip and a crowd of low-techs came down to the podium to shake Wil"s hand. Even the high-tech reserve was broken. Juan and Tunc were in the middle of the crowd. Tammy and Yelen stood less than a meter apart, grinning at each other. Only Monica Raines had not left her seat; as usual, her smile was turned down at one corner. But Wil thought it was not so much disappointment at their salvation as envy that everyone else could be so happy.
Wil suddenly realized that he could leave it at this. Perhaps the settlement was was saved. Certainly, if he went ahead with the rest of his plan, the danger to himself could be greater than everything up to now. saved. Certainly, if he went ahead with the rest of his plan, the danger to himself could be greater than everything up to now.
It was a thought, never a real choice. He owed some people too much to back down now.
Wil broke from the crowd and returned to the podium. He turned up the amplification "Yelen. Everybody." The laughter and shouting diminished. Gail Parker jumped on a bench and cried, "Yay, Wili! Speech! Speech! Wili for President!" This provoked even more laughter; Gail always did have a sharp sense of the ridiculous. Wil raised his hands, and the uproar subsided again. "There are still some things we must settle."
Yelen looked at him, her face relaxed yet puzzled. "Sure, Wil. I think we can put a lot of things right, now. But-"
"That"s not what I mean, Yelen. I still haven"t done what you hired me for... I still haven"t produced Marta"s murderer."
The talk and laughter guttered to a stop. The loudest sounds were the birds stealing from the spiders beyond the amphitheater. Where the faces didn"t show blank surprise, Wil could see the fear returning. "But, Wil," Juan said finally, "we got got Gerrault... Gerrault...
"Yes. We got him. There"s no fakery in that, nor in the equipment we rescued. But Christian Gerrault did not kill Marta, and he didn"t take over the high-tech computer systems. Did you notice that he never admitted to either? He was as much a victim of the takeover as any. Finding the systems saboteur was one of the "loose ends" he intended to clear up."
Juan waved his hands, his speech coming faster than ever. "Semantics. He explicitly admitted to taking over the low-techs" military systems."
Wil shook his head. "No, Juan. Only the Peacers". All the time we thought one high-tech was stirring up both sides, when actually Gerrault was behind the Peace and you you were manipulating the NMs." were manipulating the NMs."
The words were spoken and Wil still lived.
The little man swallowed. "Please, my boy, after everything I"ve done to help, how can you say this?... I know! You think only a systems penetrator could know about Gerrault"s med equipment." He looked imploringly at Yelen and Tammy. "Tell him. Things like that happen in battle, especially when penetration-"
"Sure," Yelen said. "It may seem a farfetched explanation to someone from your era, Wil, but leak-across can really happen." Tunc and Tammy were nodding agreement.
"It doesn"t matter." There was no doubt in Wil"s face or voice. "I knew that Juan was Marta"s killer before he ever came to me about Gerrault." But can I convince the rest of you But can I convince the rest of you?
Chanson"s hands balled into fists. He backed into a bench and sat down abruptly. "Do I have to take this?" he cried to Yelen.
Korolev set her hand on his shoulder. "Let the Inspector Inspector have his say." When she looked at Wil, her face had the angry ambivalence he knew so well. Together, Wil and Juan had just saved the colony. But she had known Chanson through decades of their lives; Wil was the low-tech that her Marta had d.a.m.ned and praised. There was no telling how long her patience would last. have his say." When she looked at Wil, her face had the angry ambivalence he knew so well. Together, Wil and Juan had just saved the colony. But she had known Chanson through decades of their lives; Wil was the low-tech that her Marta had d.a.m.ned and praised. There was no telling how long her patience would last.
Brierson stepped around the podium. "At first, it seemed that almost any high-tech could have marooned Marta: There were bugs in the Korolev system that made it easy to sabotage a single bobbling sequence. With those bugs repaired, Yelen and the others thought their systems were secure. Our war showed how terribly wrong they were. For twelve hours, the enemy had complete control of all the systems-except Della"s...
"This told me several things. In my time, it was no trivial thing to grab an entire system. Unless the system were perverted to begin with, it took expert, tedious effort to insert all the traps that would make a grab possible. Whoever did this needed years of visitor status on the high-techs" systems. The enemy never had a chance at Della; she was gone from the Solar System since just after the Singularity."
He looked across his audience. The low-techs hung on every word. It was harder to tell about the others. Tammy wasn"t even looking at him. Wil could only imagine the a.n.a.lysis and conversations that were going on in parallel with his words.
"So. An expert, using expert tools, must be behind this. But Yelen"s GreenInc shows that none of the high-techs have such a background."
Tunc interrupted, "Which only means the killer rewrote history to protect himself."
"Right. It needn"t have been much, just a fact here and there. Over the years, the killer could manage it. Della"s A"s are the only ones that might contain the truth. I spent a lot of time with them after we were rescued. Unfortunately, her general database for the late twenty-second is badly jumbled, so badly that Della herself didn"t use it. But after the battle, I knew what to look for. Eventually I found an opening: Jason Mudge. Mudge was just the religious fanatic we knew, though toward the end of the twenty-second he actually had some disciples. Only one of them had sufficient faith to follow him into stasis. That was Juan Chanson. Juan was a wealthy man, probably Mudge"s biggest catch." Wil looked at Chanson. "You gave up a lot to follow a religious dream, Juan. Della"s db"s show you were head of Penetration and Perversion at USAF, Inc." In Wil"s time, USAF had been the largest weapons-maker in North America; it had grown from there. "I don"t doubt that when Juan left, he took the latest software his division had invented. We were up against industrial-strength sabotage."
Juan was trembling. He looked up at Yelen. She stared back for a second, then looked at Wil. She wasn"t convinced. "Yelen," Wil said, keeping his voice level, "don"t you remember? The day Mudge was killed, he claimed Chanson had been a religionist."
Yelen shook her head. That memory was three days gone.
Finally Chanson spoke aloud. "Don"t you see how you"ve deluded yourself, Wil? The evidence is all around you. Why do you think Lu"s record of civilization was jumbled? Because she was never there Because she was never there! At best those records are secondhand, filled with evidence she would use against me or whoever else was a threat. Wil, please. I may be wrong about the details, but whatever the Lu creature is, she"s proved she would sacrifice us all for her schemes. No matter what she"s done to you, you must be able to see that."
Monica"s laugh was almost a cackle. "What a pretty bind you"re in, Brierson. The facts explain either theory perfectly. And Della Lu is chasing off into interstellar s.p.a.ce."
Wil pretended to give her comment serious consideration; he needed time to think. Finally he shook his head and continued as calmly as before. "Even if you don"t believe me, there are data Juan never thought to alter. Marta"s diary, for instance... I know, Yelen, you studied that for a hundred years, and you knew Marta far better than I. But Marta knew she wasn"t marooned by simple sabotage. She knew the enemy saw what she left in the cairns, and could destroy any of it. Even worse, if she slipped a message past the enemy, and you understood it, the act of understanding might itself trigger an attack.
"But I am a low-tech, outside all this automation. Marta got my my attention with the one incident that only she and I could know. Yelen, after the Robinson party... I didn"t-I attention with the one incident that only she and I could know. Yelen, after the Robinson party... I didn"t-I never never tried to take advantage of Marta." He looked into Yelen"s face, willing belief there. tried to take advantage of Marta." He looked into Yelen"s face, willing belief there.
When there was no response, he continued. "The last years of her life, Marta played a terrible double game. She told us the story of survival and courage and defeat, and at the same time she left clues she hoped would point me at Juan. They were ere subtle. She named her fishermonkey friends after people in our settlement. There was always always a Juan Chanson, a solitary creature that delighted in watching her. Marta"s last day alive, she mentioned that he was still out there, watching. She a Juan Chanson, a solitary creature that delighted in watching her. Marta"s last day alive, she mentioned that he was still out there, watching. She knew knew she was being stalked, and by the real Juan Chanson." she was being stalked, and by the real Juan Chanson."
Juan slapped the bench. "G.o.d d.a.m.n d.a.m.n it, man! You can find any message if the coding scheme is nutty enough." it, man! You can find any message if the coding scheme is nutty enough."
"Unfortunately, you"re right. And if that"s all she could do, this might be a stalemate, Juan. But for all her misfortunes, Marta had some good luck, too. One of her fishermonkeys was a freak, bigger and brighter than any fisher we"ve seen. He followed her around, tried to imitate her cairn-building. It wasn"t much, but she had an ally in realtime." He smiled wanly. "She named him W. W. Brierson. He got lots of practice building cairns, always in the same position relative to Peace Lake. In the end, she took him north and left him in a normal forest beyond the glazed zone. I don"t know how close you were monitoring, Juan, but you missed what that animal took with him, you missed the cairn he built, where Marta never went."
Juan"s eyes darted to Yelen, then back to Wil, but he said nothing.
"You"ve known about that cairn for four days, ever since I told Yelen. You were willing to show your full power-and kill half the human race-to prevent me from getting it." Wil stepped off the platform and walked slowly toward the little man. "Well, Juan, you didn"t succeed. I"ve seen what Marta had to say when she didn"t have to write in parables. Everyone else is free to see it, too. And no matter what conspiracies you blame on Della Lu, I suspect the physical evidence will convince Yelen and her lab autons."
Yelen had backed away from Chanson. Tunc"s mouth was compressed into a thin line. Even without a confession, I may be able to win, Even without a confession, I may be able to win, thought Wil. thought Wil.
Juan looked around, then back at Wil. "Please. You"re reading this all wrong. I didn"t kill Marta. I want want the settlement to succeed. And I"ve sacrificed more than any of you to preserve it; if I hadn"t, none of us would have survived to fifty megayears. But now that"s made me look like the guilty one I"ve got to convince you... the settlement to succeed. And I"ve sacrificed more than any of you to preserve it; if I hadn"t, none of us would have survived to fifty megayears. But now that"s made me look like the guilty one I"ve got to convince you...
"Look, Wil. You"re right about Mudge and me; I should never have tried to cover that up. I"m embarra.s.sed I ever believed his chiliastic garbage. But I was young, and my nightmares followed me home from work. I needed to believe in something. I gave up my job, everything, for his promises.
"We came out of stasis in 2295, just before Mudge"s numerology said Christ would put on the Big Show. There was nothing but ruins, a civilization destroyed, a race exterminated. Mudge reviewed his mumbo-jumbo and concluded that we had overshot, that Christ had come and gone. The stupid jerk! He just could not accept what we saw around us. Something had visited the Solar System in the mid-twenty-third, but it hadn"t been holy. The evidence of alien invasion was everywhere. Mudge had arrived with scarcely more than sackcloth and ashes. I"d brought plenty of equipment. I could do a.n.a.lysis, back up my claims. I had the power to save what humans were still in stasis.
"Yelen, right from then my goal was the same as yours. Even while you high-techs were still in stasis, I was planning for it. The only difference was that I knew about the aliens. But I couldn"t convince Mudge of them. In fact, the signs were so subtle, I began to wonder if anyone else would believe me." Chanson came to his feet, his talk speeding up. "Unless we guarded against the invaders, all the goodwill in the world could not resurrect the human race. I had had to do something. I-I enhanced some of the evidence. I nuked a few ruins. Surely, not even a blind man could ignore that!" He looked at Yelen and Tammy accusingly. "Yet when you returned to realtime, you weren"t convinced. You couldn"t accept even the clearest evidence... I tried. I tried. Over the next two thousand years I traveled all over the Solar System, discovering the signs of the invasion, emphasizing them so even idiots could not miss them." to do something. I-I enhanced some of the evidence. I nuked a few ruins. Surely, not even a blind man could ignore that!" He looked at Yelen and Tammy accusingly. "Yet when you returned to realtime, you weren"t convinced. You couldn"t accept even the clearest evidence... I tried. I tried. Over the next two thousand years I traveled all over the Solar System, discovering the signs of the invasion, emphasizing them so even idiots could not miss them."
"In the end, I had a little success. W. W. Sanchez had the patience to look at the facts, the open-mindedness to believe. We persuaded the rest of you to be a bit more cautious. But the burden of vigilance still rested on me. No one else was willing to put sentries in far solar s.p.a.ce. Over the years, I destroyed two alien probes-and still Sanchez was the only one who was convinced." Juan was staring through Wil; he might have been talking to himself. "I really liked Bil Sanchez. I wish he hadn"t dropped out; his settlement was just too small to succeed. I visited him there several times. It was a long, idyllic, downhill slide. Bil wanted to do research, but all he had was that punched tape he"d found on Charon. He was obsessed with it; the last time I saw him he even claimed it was a fake." A faintly troubled look pa.s.sed across Juan"s face. "Well, that settlement was too small to survive, anyway."
Yelen"s eyes were wide, white showing all around the irises; her whole body had gone rigid. Chanson could not notice, but sudden death was in the air.
Wil stepped into Yelen"s line of sight; his voice was a calm echo of Chanson"s distant tone. "What about Marta, Juan?"
"Marta?" Juan almost looked at him. "Marta always had an open mind. She granted the possibility of an alien threat. I think Lu"s arrival scared her; the creature was so obviously inhuman. Marta talked to Lu, got access to some of her databases. And then-and then "-tears started in his eyes-"she started asking the db about Mudge." How much had Marta suspected How much had Marta suspected? At the time, probably nothing; most of the jumbled references to Mudge had no connection with Chanson. It was tragic bad luck she started so close to Juan"s secret. "I should never have lied about my past, but now it was too late. Marta could destroy all I had worked for. The colony would be left defenseless. I had to, I had to-"
"Kill her?" Yelen"s voice was a shout.
"No!" Juan"s head snapped up; the reality around him was not to be ignored. "I could never do that. I liked liked Marta! But I had to... quarantine her. I watched to see if she would denounce me. She never did-but then I realized I could never be sure what she might say later. I couldn"t let her back. Marta! But I had to... quarantine her. I watched to see if she would denounce me. She never did-but then I realized I could never be sure what she might say later. I couldn"t let her back.
"Please listen listen to me! I made mistakes; I pushed too hard to make you see the truth. But you must to me! I made mistakes; I pushed too hard to make you see the truth. But you must believe. believe. The invaders are out there, Yelen. They"ll destroy everything you and Marta dreamed of if you don"t believe m-" Juan"s voice became a scream. He fell heavily, lay with arms and legs twitching. The invaders are out there, Yelen. They"ll destroy everything you and Marta dreamed of if you don"t believe m-" Juan"s voice became a scream. He fell heavily, lay with arms and legs twitching.
Two quick steps and Wil was kneeling by his side. Wil looked down at the agonized face; he"d had two days to prepare for this moment, to suppress the killing rage he felt every time he saw Chanson. Korolev had had no such time; he could almost feel her eyes boring death through his back. "What did you do to him, Yelen?"
"I shut him down, cut his comm links." She stepped around Wil, to look down at Chanson. "He"ll recover." There was a tight smile on her face; in a way, it was scarier than her rage. "I want time to think of just revenge. I want him to understand it when it comes," Her eyes snapped up to the nearest bystanders. "Get him out of my sight." For once there was no debate; her words might as well have been electric prods. Tunc and three low-techs grabbed Chanson, carried him towards the flier that was drifting down the side of the amphitheater. Wil started after them.
"Brierson! I want to talk to you." The words were abrupt, but there was something strange in Yelen"s tone. Wil came back down the steps. Yelen led him around the side of the platform-away from the crowd, which was just beginning to come out of shock. "Wil," she said quietly, "I want-I"d like to see what Marta said." What Marta said when she wasn"t writing for Chanson"s eyes. What Marta said when she wasn"t writing for Chanson"s eyes.
Wil swallowed; even winning could be hard. He touched her shoulder. "Marta left the fifth cairn, just like I told Chanson. If we"d found it during the first few thousand years... After fifty thousand, all we could see was that there had been a sheaf of reed paper inside. It was powder. We"ll never know for sure what she wanted to tell us... I"m sorry, Yelen."
TWENTY-SIX.
It was snowing. From over the hill came shouts, occasional laughter. They were having a s...o...b..ll fight.
W. W. Brierson crunched down the hillside to the edge of the pines. Strange that with the world so empty he would still want to be alone. Maybe not so strange. Their dormitory was a crowded place. No doubt there were others who"d left the s...o...b..llers, who walked beneath the pines and pretended this was a different time.
He found a big rock, clambered up, and dusted off a place: to sit. From here he could see alpine glaciers disappearing into the clouds. Wil tapped at his data set and thought. The human race had another chance. Dilip and a lot of other people really seemed to think he was responsible. Well, he"d solved the case. Without a doubt it was the biggest of his career. Even Billy Brierson had not imagined such a great adventure for his father. And the chief bad guy had been punished. Very definitely, Juan had been punished...
Yelen had honored Marta"s notions about mercy; she had made that mercy the punishment itself. Juan was executed by a surfeit of life. He was marooned in realtime, without shelter or tools or friends. Yet his was a different torture than Marta"s-and perhaps the more terrible. Juan was left with a medical auton. He was free to live as long as he wished. as long as he wished.
Juan outlived three autons. He lasted ten thousand years. He kept his purpose for nearly two thousand. Wil shook his head as he surveyed the report. If anyone had known that Chanson was into Penetration and Perversion, he would have been an instant suspect-on grounds of personality alone. Wil had known only one such specialist, his company"s resident spook. The man was inhumanly patient and devious, but frightened at the same time. He spent so much time in deep connect, the paranoid necessities of defense systems leaked into his perception of the everyday world. Wil could only imagine the madhouse Penetration and Perversion had become by the late twenty-second. Juan made seven attempts to pervert the auton. One involved twelve hundred years of careful observation, timing the failure of various subsystems, maneuvering the auton into a position where he might take control and get transportation to resources in near s.p.a.ce.
Yet Chanson never really had a prayer of success. Yelen had hardwired changes to the auton. Juan had none of the software he had stolen from USAF, Inc, and he was without processor support. His glib tongue and two thousand years of effort were not enough to set him free.
As the centuries pa.s.sed and he had no luck with the auton, Juan spent more and more time trying to talk to Yelen and the other high-techs who occasionally looked into realtime. He kept a journal many times longer than Marta"s; he painted endless prose across the rocklands north of his home territory. None of it looked as interesting as Marta"s diary. All Juan could talk of was his great message, the threat he saw in the stars. He went on spouting evidence-though after the first centuries it lost all connection with reality.
After five hundred years, his journal became at first irregular, then a decadely summary, then a dead letter. For three thousand years Juan lived without apparent goal, moving from cave to cave. He wore no clothes, he did no work. The auton protected him from local predators. When he did not hunt or farm, the auton brought him food. If the climate of the Eastern Straits had been less mild he would certainly have died. Yet to Wil it was still a miracle the man survived. Through all that time he had enough determination to keep on living. Della had been right. W. W. Brierson would not have lasted a tenth as long; a few centuries and he would have drifted into suicidal funk.
Juan drifted for three thousand years... and then his immortal paranoid soul found a new cause. It wasn"t clear exactly what it was. He kept no journal; his conversations with the auton were limited to simple commands and incoherent mumbling. Yelen thought that Juan saw himself as somehow the creator of reality. He moved to the seash.o.r.e. He built heavy baskets and used them to drag millions of loads of soil inland. The dredged sh.o.r.eland became a maze of channels. He piled the dirt on a rectangular mound that rose steadily through the centuries. That mound reminded Wil of the earthen pyramids the American Indians had left in Illinois. It had taken hundreds of people working over decades to build those. Juan"s was the work of one man over millennia. If the climate had not been exceptionally dry and mild in his era, he could not have kept ahead of simple erosion.
Juan"s new vision went beyond monuments. Apparently he thought to create an intelligent race. He persuaded the auton to extend its food gathering, to beach schools of fish in the maze he constructed on the sh.o.r.e. Soon there were thousands of fishermonkeys living beneath his temple/pyramid. Through a perversion of its protection programs, he used the auton as an instrument of force; The best fish went to the monkeys who performed properly. The effect was small, but over centuries the fishers at the East End had a different look. The majority were like the "W. W. Brierson" that had helped Marta. They carried rocks to the base of the pyramid. They sat for hours staring up at it.
The four-thousand-year effort was not enough to bring intelligence to the fishers. Yelen"s report showed some tool use. Towards the end, they built a stone skirt around the lower part of the pyramid. But they were never the race of hod[?] carriers that Chanson probably intended. It was Juan who continued to drag endless loads of dirt up to his temple, repairing erosion damage, adding ever-higher towers to the topmost platform. At its greatest, the temple covered a rectangle two hundred meters by one hundred, and the top platform was thirty meters above the plain. Its spires crowded tall and spindly all about, more like termite towers or coral than human architecture. Through those last four thousand years, Juan"s daily pattern was unchanged. He worked on his new race. He hauled dirt. Each evening, he walked round and round the intricate stairs of the pyramid, till finally he stood at the top, surveying the temple slaves who gathered on the plain before him.
Wil paged through Yelen"s report. She had pictures of Juan during those last centuries. His face was blank of all expression, except at day"s end-when he always laughed, three times. His every motion was a patterned thing, a reflex. Juan had become an insect, one whose hive spread through time instead of s.p.a.ce.
Juan had found peace. He might have lasted forever if only the world had had the same stability. But the climate of the Eastern Straits entered a period of wet and storminess. The auton was programmed to provide minimum protection. In earlier millennia that would have been enough. But now Juan was inflexible. He would not retreat to the highland caves; he would not even come down from the temple during storms. He forbade the auton to approach it during his nightly services.
Of course, Yelen had pictures of Juan"s end. The auton was four klicks from the temple; Juan had long since destroyed all bugs. The wind-driven rain blurred and twisted the auton"s view. This was just the latest of a series of storms that were tearing down the pyramid faster than Juan could maintain it. His towers and walls were like a child"s sand castle melting in an ocean tide. Juan did not notice. He stood on the slumped platform of his temple and looked out upon the storm. Wil watched the wavery image raise its arms-just as Juan always did at day"s end, just before he gave his strange laugh. Lightning struck all around, turning the storm darkness to actinic blue, showing Juan"s slaves huddled by the thousands below him. The bolts marched across the fallen temple, striking what was left of the spires... striking Juan as he stood, arms still upraised to direct the show.
There was little more to Yelen"s report. The fishermonkeys had been given a strong push toward intelligence. It was not enough. Biological evolution has no special tendency toward sapience; it heads blindly for local optima. In the case of the fishers, that was their dominance of the shallow waters. For a few hundred years, the race he"d bred still lived at the Eastern Straits, still brought rocks to line the stub of his pyramid, still watched through the evenings. But that was instinct without reward. In the end, they were as Juan had found them.
Wil cleared the display. He shivered-and not just from the cold. He would never forget Juan"s crimes; he would never forget his long dying.
The snow had stopped. There was no more shouting from over the hill. Wil looked in surprise at the sunlight slanting through the trees behind him. He"d spent more than an hour looking at Yelen"s report. Only now did he notice the cramps in his legs and the cold seeping up from the rock.
Wil tucked the data set under his arm and slipped off the rock. He still had time to enjoy the snow, the pines. It brought echoes of a winter just ten weeks old in his memory, the last days in Michigan before he"d flown to the coast on the Lindemann case. Only these snowfields were almost at the equator, and this world was in the middle of an ice age.
The tropics had cooled. The jacaranda forests had shifted downslope, to the edge of the Inland Sea. But none of the continental ice sheets had reached further south than lat.i.tude forty-five. The snow around the site of Town Korolev was due to the alt.i.tude. Yelen figured the glaciers coming off the Indonesian Alps wouldn"t get below the four-thousand-meter level. She claimed that, as ice ages go, this one was average.
Wil walked a kilometer through the pines. A week before-as his body counted time-this had been the glazed crater of Town Korolev. So much destruction, and not a sign of it now. He climbed a ridgeline and watched the sunset gleaming red and gold across the white. Something hooted faint against the breeze. Far to the north he could see where the jac forests hugged the sea. It was beautiful, but there were good reasons to leave this era. Some of the best ore fields were under ice now. Why cripple the new civilization when it was weakest?... And there was Della. She had lots of valuable equipment. They would give her at least a hundred thousand years to return.
Suddenly Wil felt very bleak. h.e.l.l. I would give her a thousand times a hundred thousand. h.e.l.l. I would give her a thousand times a hundred thousand. But what good would it do? After that night with the dogthings, Wil hoped she had found herself. Without her, he could never have set up the double play against Chanson and Gerrault. A crooked smile came across his face. She had fooled both the killers into defeat. The plan was to force Gerrault to run, to chase him long enough to trick Juan. And it had worked! She had played the old, crazy Della so well. But what good would it do? After that night with the dogthings, Wil hoped she had found herself. Without her, he could never have set up the double play against Chanson and Gerrault. A crooked smile came across his face. She had fooled both the killers into defeat. The plan was to force Gerrault to run, to chase him long enough to trick Juan. And it had worked! She had played the old, crazy Della so well. Too well. Too well. She had never returned. No one knew for sure what had happened; it was even conceivable she had died fighting Gerrault. More likely, some battle reflex had taken over. Even if the mood pa.s.sed, she might pursue the other for unknown millennia. And if the mood didn"t pa.s.s... She had never returned. No one knew for sure what had happened; it was even conceivable she had died fighting Gerrault. More likely, some battle reflex had taken over. Even if the mood pa.s.sed, she might pursue the other for unknown millennia. And if the mood didn"t pa.s.s...
Wil remembered the scarcely human thing she had been when he first saw her. Even with her computer-supported memories and all the other enhancements, that Della seemed very much like what Juan Chanson had become towards the end of his punishment. For all her talk of being tough, Della had nothing on Juan when it came to single-mindedness. How much of her life would she spend on this chase? He was terribly afraid she had volunteered for the same fate that had been forced on Juan.
Wil decided he didn"t like the cold at all. He glanced at his data set. It showed the date as 17 March 2100; he still had not reset it. Somewhere in its memory were notes about the stuff Virginia wanted him to bring back from the Coast. How much can happen in ten weeks; one must be flexible in these modern times. He turned away from the sunset and the silence, and headed back for the dormitory. He should be satisfied with this happy ending. The next few years would be tough, but he knew they could make it. Yelen had been friendly towards almost everyone the last few days. In the weeks before, she would never have thought of stopping in the middle of this glacial era just to give them a chance to look around.
The tropical twilight snapped down hard, faded quickly into night. When Wil came over the hill above the dorm, its lighted windows were like something out of a Michigan Christmas.
Sometime early tomorrow morning, when they were snug in their beds, Santa Claus Yelen would bobble them up once more. Her sleigh had certainly had a b.u.mpy landing, popping in and out of realtime over the last sixty thousand years. Wil smiled at the crazy image.
Maybe this time they could stop for keeps.
That night was the last time Wil ever had the dream in blue. In most ways it was like the ones before. He was lying down, all breath exhausted from his lungs. Goodbye, goodbye. Goodbye, goodbye. He cried and cried, but no sounds came. She sat beside him, holding his hand. Her face was Virginia"s, and also Marta"s. She smiled sadly, a smile that could not deny the truth they both knew... He cried and cried, but no sounds came. She sat beside him, holding his hand. Her face was Virginia"s, and also Marta"s. She smiled sadly, a smile that could not deny the truth they both knew... Goodbye, goodbye. Goodbye, goodbye. And then the pattern changed. She leaned toward him, snuggled her face against his cheek, just as Virginia used to do. She never spoke, and he couldn"t tell if the thought was only his, or somehow comfort from her. And then the pattern changed. She leaned toward him, snuggled her face against his cheek, just as Virginia used to do. She never spoke, and he couldn"t tell if the thought was only his, or somehow comfort from her. Someone still lives who has not said goodbye, someone who might like you very much. Someone still lives who has not said goodbye, someone who might like you very much.