David's Sling (12 page)

Ivan leaned forward in his seat—the unpadded wooden back hurt his spine—then realized how nervous he must look in that pose. He sank back in the chair, only to lean forward again.

As he fidgeted, he occasionally looked out the window to watch children playing in the warmth of the summer sun. Once in a while he yielded to the need to look back at his commander, who now had to double as his executioner.

He could no longer hope that Colonel Savchenko, the man who had given him the promotion and the project on the consequences of nuclear war, had come here for any other purpose.

He chided himself for ever hoping for anything else. He remembered the gunmetal gray of the weather the day this project had started, the unremitting clarity with which he had known that his plans would lead to disaster. Yet over the months, as the grays of Siberia yielded to white-specked blues, Ivan too had yielded to brighter visions. He had come to believe that his superiors would believe him; he had deceived himself with hope that they would be happy to have him disrupt their dangerous selfdeceptions. His hope had peaked as he had framed the summation of the report.

It was the summation that Colonel Savchenko now reread with weary gray eyes. Ivan could almost read it more easily in his own mind than the colonel could read it in wide bold type:

Thus we see that, despite the uncertainties, the best available analyses of the effects of nuclear war all drive to the same conclusion. Five gigatons of explosions would cause a global disaster that would challenge the lives of even the luckiest war survivors. Avoidance of such a nuclear exchange must be a primary goal of the Soviet Union, even if it means concessions to foreign powers. Only if our country faced certain extinction could we justify a strategic battle that pressed the limits of global catastrophe.

Ivan stared at the colonel. A sunbeam of light through the window threw his trenchantly wrinkled features into sharp relief. He gave Ivan a millimeter shake of his head. "The wording in this summation is too strong. Indeed, you overstep the bounds of analysis when you presume to discuss global politics. Neither you nor I is in a position to declare what the State must and must not do."

"Unfortunately, sir, the facts drive one to these conclusions. Only a madman could decide that it's in the Stated best interest to destroy the entire human race. No matter where you were, a major nuclear assault would be a disaster of unprecedented proportions."

The colonel sighed. "This entire report is a disaster of unprecedented proportions."

Ivan's fidgeting stopped. He sat very straight, very still. "There is not a single false word in this report, sir. Every page, every sentence, every word, contains as much truth as science can currently produce."

"Yes, yes, I'm sure. It's a disaster nonetheless."

"I deeply regret that the truth contradicts the preconceived notions some people may have had."

Savchenko looked up swiftly from the paper, to puzzle over Ivan s expressionless face. "
Do
you regret it?" His voice acquired the hard evenness of glare ice. "It makes no difference. We have neither the time nor the money to redo this effort from scratch without explaining what happened. And I'm sure you're right about the rigor of the research. We would find it impossible to explain away this verification of the current forecasts.

"However, the summation is neither factual nor even logical. It must be rewritten. In fact, this whole document needs to be interpreted carefully, as regards its impact on global strategy. Your brief summation will be replaced by an entire additional chapter." Ivan opened his mouth to speak, but the colonel raised his hand for silence. "But you will not write this last chapter, major. The final chapter needs a more senior hand—someone with not only a keen eye for the facts of the physical world, but with a sensitivity for the intangibles of international relations as well."

Ivan's mouth drew in a thin line.

"You, major, have a new assignment. An assignment in Czechoslovakia. " The colonel rolled his lips; his brow darkened in a moment of melancholy. "We have a cell of tactical nuclear weapons effects analysts in the city of Plzen. You will take charge of them. Your first task is to develop a plan for the nuclear decapitation of the American VII Corps in the event of a drive to Stuttgart from Cheb."

"Yes, sir." What a delicately molded axe they used on him! Many officers would have fought for the chance to serve in a foreign country. But those officers fought for the prestigious command of combat troops. For an officer whose greatest contributions lay in research, reassignment to the borderlands spelled intellectual death. Ivan faced the horror of his own mortality—he could not live long enough to erase this blackness from his record. He was young, yet his career was already quite doomed.

The last moments of the meeting blurred in irrelevance. He found himself outside, walking alone in the sunny warmth. He walked slowly, keeping careful control over the mix of emotions jangling in his mind.

The emotions separated out as he walked. Some floated to the top; others sank away, perhaps to return later, but gone for now. The emotion that rose to domination was a feeling of deep happiness.

Happiness! His career had been destroyed. Still he felt light—the lightness that comes with feeling your own power when you know you are
right
. Had he protected his career by producing something politically astute, but scientifically wrong, he would have regretted it forever. Instead, he had done what was right. He had done his best. He refused to apologize for it.

A second emotion floated there and increased the sensation of lightness. This was a feeling of relief—relief in knowing he would not have to fight another political battle. They would never try to use him this way again. And they would never again make him walk this treacherous tightrope, trying to squeeze halftruths from the system. He walked a broad avenue where honesty counted more.

As the last glimmers of horror dissolved in the warmth of his happiness, Ivan realized how lucky he was. Most men go through their whole lives uncertain of their own strength, never knowing whether they are cowards or heroes. Ivan knew.

Two children sailed past on bright red bicycles, laughing into the wind. Ivan laughed too, a curiously mixed laughter, both triumphant and defiant. The triumph was internal—his personal victory in choosing to give his best. The defiance was external, directed at those who disdained his best, claiming it was not sufficient. His defiance was anchored firmly in his unfounded belief that, ultimately, the people who gave their best would prevail.

He suddenly saw how his superiors had made their mistake in choosing him. Bright, ambitious Ivan seemed like the perfect tool for twisting the truth. How could they have known that cool, aloof Ivan, the loner with no family and few friends, cared so much about children? In his mind, he watched Anna and her three girls running.

There was a great irony in the freedom he gained from his lack of family. Had he had children of his own, he would have had to worry about preserving his career so that he could give them a good home.

Instead, he had been the worst choice they could have made for their purposes. He laughed again, this time with pure defiance. The laughter, and the lightness of his own power, sustained him all the way home.

Kurt straightened from his console. This desk work challenged even
his
powers of discipline. He ran a hand through his thick blond hair and realized it needed cutting.

Meanwhile, outside the window of his office in the Institute, a gentle summer day confronted him. The bright, dry terrain reminded him that he should not be inside this building. He should be outside, fighting the enemy in the open. Dammit, this was no way to conduct a war.

He shook his head. No one else around here even conceded that it was a war. Jan had never acknowledged it, though she had come close; Leslie might think it now and again, but never out loud; and Nathan . . . Kurt shook his head thinking about Nathan. He was so philosophical, how could he ever get anything done?

So far, Nathan's help had been zip. Kurt worked in isolation from the world, almost isolated from the problem Jan had given him to solve—the problem of building expert software to make decisions for the Hunters. The necessary decisions covered a wide range of difficulties from decisions as basic as,
Where do l go
?, to decisions as complex as,
How do I kill them before they kill me
?

Kurt knew a great deal about how to kill them before they killed him. The survival instincts needed by the Hunters bore a striking resemblance to the survival skills needed by a lone Ranger behind enemy lines.

But the details differed in important ways. Kurt needed more information to complete his mission. He, like the combat expert system he was supposed to build, needed to know what kinds of data he would get from the sensors to make decisions. He also needed to know what kinds of orders he could give to the Hunter's controls to carry them out. At the moment, Kurt and his software were commanders without either recon patrols or assault teams.

Nathan had agreed that Kurt had problems he couldn't solve alone. Nathan was running as fast as he could, so he said, to gather the rest of the men for the development team. In the meantime, Nathan suggested that Kurt start with the simplest of the three combat expert systems.

Of the HopperHunter, the SkyHunter, and the HighHunter, by far the simplest decisionmaking problem rested with the HighHunter. The HighHunter consisted of two parts—the container and the Crowbar. The container was a tin can mounted on rockets, which carried the Hunter into space, where it orbited until someone on the ground needed close fire support. Then the tin can popped open.

Within the tin can, dozens of Crowbars lay packed together. The Crowbars were the weapons of the HighHunter. Each Crowbar had a sensor tab near the tip, four stubbed fins at the tail, and a tiny computer in the middle, all built into a long shaft of solid steel. When the Hunter canister popped open, the Crowbars fell. They fell twenty miles, with violent velocity, torturing the air as they screamed by.

As they fell, the sensor tab watched for targets—typically, enemy tanks. The computer selected one. The fins touched the air, twisting the Crowbar, guiding it to a final contact with the target.

The Crowbar contained no explosives—it didn't need them. After falling twenty miles, the steel shaft could crush any tank armor ever devised.

Kurt loved the concept of the Crowbar. It was simple— simple enough to be brutally rugged—yet it was effective.

So Kurt had started with the Crowbar s decisionmaking problem. At first it seemed so simple as to be unworthy of solving: pick a tank at random and head for it. But that was not quite so straightforward. It would be better to pick the lead tank, to block the passage of the others. What if he saw both tanks and personnel carriers—which should he select? Should he just take one at random? Random selection had several advantages besides simplicity. And Lordy, it was tricky figuring out how to fall at terminal velocity to assure the Crowbar would slam into the vehicle you had picked out.

Kurt understood why they needed him to carry out this mission. They needed someone who could identify and prioritize highvalue targets. They also needed someone who could identify and translate highspeed images.

They needed someone with a background like his, with four years in Army Special Forces. And they needed someone with a background like his, with degrees in software engineering and artificial intelligence.

He also understood why it might be difficult to enlist the other people needed for the Sling Project. The Sling required unusual combinations of talents.

A polite knock on his open door made Kurt whirl to his feet. "Yes, sir, what can I do for you, sir?" he asked of Nathan.

Nathan moved from the backlighting of the corridor to the frontlighting of the window. He looked uncomfortable. Kurt suspected he didn't like being called "sir," though Kurt didn't understand why. It was just a form of respect.

Nathan asked, "How would you like to join a discussion about sensors? I have a sales team down the hall trying to convince me that
their
near-infrared sensing fibers are the best invention since the eyeball."

"I'd be happy to join your meeting if you think I'd be useful."

Nathan shrugged. "It'll impact your life more directly than it'll impact mine," he said. "I can't help thinking you'd have an interest in the outcome."

Kurt followed him down the corridor, keeping his eyes straight ahead. The ceiling in this place still made him uncomfortable: it curved smoothly, seamlessly, to become the corridor walls—an absence of sharp edges that disturbed him. He'd never worked in a building that seemed so soft.

As they entered the room, three men rose to greet them. Two of them could have been twins, in their crisp white shirts and maroon ties; the third wore a powderblue shirt and sat away from the others. "Jack Arbor," "Gary Celenza," the twins offered. "Howdy, I'm Gene Pickford, and I'm glad you gave us this opportunity to talk with you," the third burst out.

A shiver rippled down Kurt's spine as he formally introduced himself. He could almost smell them, they were so clearly marked as contractor marketeers. The marketeers from federal contractors represented one of the lowest forms of life he had met while in the Army. The contractors with their magic potions, and the officers who
believed
in the potions—these people endangered the field soldier as much as any enemy.

Only one kind of man endangered the field soldier more: the officer who demanded magic potions from the contractors. Such officers rejected ideas based on what was possible. They showed interest only in ideas based on what was improbable. In their blind desire for something better, they twisted the occasional honest contractor into a marketeer. Anyone foolish enough to offer simple facts found himself cast aside. And though those officers were a minority, somehow they dominated the others: their tales of hopedfor magic enthralled otherwise levelheaded men.