David's Sling (25 page)
Leslie had chosen Yakima as their meeting place for two reasons. First, since it was far away from everything, it was a perfect place for them to wrap themselves totally around their work. Second, and more particularly, it was close to the Yakima Firing Range. The Range, a rolling sea of dunes and weeds, lay beyond the sands behind the Thunderbird. On the Range, the Sling team could test the Hunters to brutal effect.
The Thunderbird itself had not changed, either. When they arrived, Leslie took the team straight to the Tieton Room, a conference area that Leslie had commandeered for their computers. Leslie had used this same room in the same way almost twenty years earlier.
Kurt started tearing open boxes at a frenetic pace. "Did you lose something?" Lila jeered.
Kurt stopped. He looked up and explained with clipped words, "There's a continent full of men dying. As we dawdle, they die."
Awkward silence touched them all. Juan moved first, to grab a small box and throw it to Lila. "Let's do it!" he shouted with enthusiasm. He himself turned to one of the largest boxes and ripped its cover off, his thin muscles springing like wires. In a moment, everyone was hip-deep in the unpacking.
The mood lightened as empty boxes accumulated in the center of the room, and everyone felt a sense of accomplishment. Juan stopped for a moment, staring at the label on a work station he had just unpacked. "Haiku?" he asked.
Flo floated to his side. "That is mine," she explained. "Amos and I, we named our machines. Each has a different personality. "
"I see." Juan turned the work station over to her to finish unpacking.
Kurt straightened for a moment; even he seemed mellower as their computers came to life. "That's a good idea. We need to name all this equipment." Lila just looked at him sarcastically. He went on, "After all, I can't imagine Lila wanting to work on the same work station I am." His voice dropped in pitch as he announced with wolfish delight, "I know how to name them."
Lila glanced up suspiciously, but continued unpacking, as did Kurt.
While others plugged in power cords and threw up screen test patterns, Leslie quietly unrolled long sheets of paper and draped them across the one bare wall that had neither doors, windows, nor blackboards. He had not brought the whole PERT chart; virtually the entire length of the corridor to his office at the Institute was a sea of green, and the green boxes of finished tasks no longer mattered.
What mattered were the angry reds and the very recent pale blues. Only a couple feet of chart remained sandwiched between the completed boxes and the final box— the box that represented the completion of the Sling. No pink boxes remained: they had all turned red. No black boxes remained: the planned end date for the entire project had also passed. But numerous blue boxes had grown amidst the red.
Blue—the transparent blue of an editing marker—represented new and unplanned tasks hastily sketched on the chart as the red failures forced the team to seek new paths to success. They seemed to take up most of the space not covered in red. In some places they replaced it, but everywhere they distorted the once straightforward sequence of steps to the end.
But both red and blue boxes would fall to the team's relentless efforts in the next week. With a momentary tingle of triumph, Leslie changed one blue box to green: the arrival of the team in Yakima was now complete.
They finished unwrapping the equipment. As Juan tossed the empty cartons into the hall, Kurt ran around the room with a labeling gun. I'm naming the computers," he proclaimed.
Leslie could all too easily imagine the breakdown of this fragile team over who had rights to christen the equipment. He spoke quickly. "Fine. Someone else can name the HopperHunters and the SkyHunters. They'll arrive shortly. "
When the label maker had finished, Leslie scanned the results. ALEXANDER, CAESAR, CHARLEMAGNE, NAPOLEON, MAO, he read the raised lettering.
Kurt explained, "I've named them for the great conquerors."
Juan laughed—the awkward laughter of someone who doesn't know what else to do. Lila glowered in silence.
Leslie sighed.
A bellboy came to the doorway. Ronnie was closest, so the man spoke to him and left. Ronnie yelled, All right! The
real
stuff's here. Out in the parking lot."
They went around the corner, through the glass doors that opened on the desert side of the Thunderbird. Only a few cars dotted the parking lot, which was fortunate, because a very large glider consumed most of the space. Beside it, a hovercraft rested on its metal skirt.
Ronnie spoke first. "This is great! We can start real testing." He smiled at Juan. "Well put you and your simulations out of business real soon."
Juan smiled softly. "I certainly hope so."
Lila ran her hand down the side of the hovercraft. Only a few openings for sensors and guns still needed filling before it became a bona fide HopperHunter. "I'll name the Hoppers," she said with a glance at Kurt. "I'll name them for the flowers that grow over the graves of the conquerors." She tapped the narrow head of the machine; it echoed with a tinny sound. The flimsiness of the Hopper armor reminded Leslie just how dependent the whole design was on speed and maneuver. The armor seemed puny compared to the stuff that covered the behemoths now roaming Europe. He knew how the barefoot men who first used pikes to defeat steel-clad medieval knights must have felt.
Lila continued, "I hereby christen thee Daffodil.
This time Kurt glowered at the ridiculousness of her naming convention.
Juan spoke, oblivious to the hostility exchanged. "And I'll name the SkyHunters. They qualify as birds, don't they?" He pointed to the pale blue skin that covered the Hunter's underside—a blue meant to render it less visible from the ground. "I hereby christen thee the Bluebird.
Leslie couldn't help laughing. "Caesar, Daffodil, and Bluebird. Yes, it sounds like a very American collection of machines. Now all we have to do is make them work.
They remembered the reason they had come here, and ran back to the Tieton room to start work in earnest.
April 24
Ready. Fire. Aim.
—Motto of Evolutionary System Engineer
Leslie sat in one of the Tieton Room's red naugahyde chairs, his arms crossed over the long table before him. He watched Juan roll over on the floor in a darkened corner. It was noon; Juan had collapsed in that corner a couple of hours ago for his first sleep since arriving.
Juan had not yet picked up his room key, and they had been here for two days.
The rest of the team lay strewn across the room like discarded toys. Empty styro cups and bags of corn chips cluttered odd corners; they had not even taken the time to hit the cafe here in the motel. A huge coffee maker dominated the table by the door, supplied gratis by the staff of the Thunderbird. The employees of the motel did not know exactly what the team was doing. But they knew, from the glowing computer displays and overhead lights that burned all night, that the project had something to do with the battle for Europe, and that their efforts eclipsed the importance of all else in Yakima.
Lila slouched in front of the work station GENGHIS, staring numbly at the results of the latest simulation ran. Kurt leaned forward above her with wide-eyed alertness. At least he seemed alert; a studious observer would have noticed that his expression never changed, that he was more a waxwork of alertness than a person.
Across the room, Flo shook her head periodically as if warding off a close-hovering cloud of gnats. Ronnie's hands trembled with the conflicting chemicals of his bloodstream: he had been running strictly on caffeine since dinner the night before.
Of the lot of them, Leslie sympathized most with Juan. Ronnie's assertion that they wouldn't need Juan's simulations much longer had proved premature. Within hours of their first live test, they had left Daffodil smoking at the bottom of a sandblown valley near Squaw Creek. After a quick survey, Leslie had determined that they could replace Daffodil more easily than they could fix her.
And now Bluebird lay in splinters against the side of the hill north of Daffodil's last resting place. Bluebird's tail fin jutted in the air in a grim caricature of a tombstone. Everyone agreed it was too soon to unpack the replacements, Hyacinth and Oriole: The software was so raw, so wild, it would destroy the Hunters as fast as a computer could load it.
So Juan's simulations became the lynchpin. The efforts of the others spun about him: each time Kurt or Ronnie or Lila threw a new fix into their software, Juan had to already have his simulations refined to test the fix. In a race where Kurt and Ronnie and Lila ran as a relay team, Juan had to run alone, yet stay forever ahead. So far, he had succeeded.
Juan rolled in agitated sleep. A streak of noontime sun, sneaking through the shuttered blinds, struck him in the eyes. He winced. Leslie hurried softly to the window, to block the light, but Juan waved him away. "Never mind," he yawned. With a long, twisting stretch,
he
rose to a sitting position. "It's time to get up anyway. "
Leslie stamped his foot. "No, it's time for everyone to get some sleep."
Kurt objected. "We have to solve this interoperability problem."
Leslie frowned. "We'll solve it better after getting some sleep. We need clear thoughts and fresh ideas, not long hours."
Lila's voice rang out in surprising agreement with Kurt. "I for one won't be able to sleep until we figure out a solution. "
"What's wrong?" Juan asked. He rose to his feet, a feverish fascination now creeping across his face.
Leslie turned to him. "We seem to have found a fundamental problem in the design of the HopperHunter system. It's a problem with the way the expert system and the sensor system interoperate."
Juan looked across the room at Kurt and Lila, as if sharing Leslie's thought: if the expert system and the sensor system worked together the way Kurt and Lila did, they could expect the Hopper to explode. With a slow, strained smile, he asked, "What's the nitty-gritty?"
Kurt went to the white board and grabbed an eraser. As he was about to sweep a corner clean, Lila shrieked, "Don't erase that!"
Kurt jerked back, leaving a slight smudge. "Sorry," he said, in a sincere tone of apology.
Leslie almost smiled. The white board had replaced the PERT chart as the center of organization. Tasks rose and fell too quickly to be tracked on the old, butchered rolls of paper now coated with red and green and blue boxes. Today the white board contained the lists of actions, partially sorted by priority and difficulty. Interspersed with the cryptic questions and answers were equally cryptic comments, such as "DCIU 2 me too."
After careful study, Kurt picked a different part of the board to erase. Under his hurried hand two similar comments faded into oblivion: a crossed-out line, "The LKB is dead," and a newer line that was not crossed out, "Long live fhe LKB." LKB stood for "Last Known Bug."
Kurt listed descriptions of the interfaces between the two subsystems, with Lila making occasional comments. In looking around the room, Leslie realized everyone was watching Kurt at the board. This was the first time since arrival that they had all turned to the same question at the same time. Leslie was afraid to breathe, afraid to do anything that might break the mood: it was their first attempt to solve a problem as a team.
After a few minutes of discussion, Leslie saw the significance of the problem at a higher level. The sensor system could not make analyses of its raw information based solely on the discernible patterns. It needed some idea of the possible meanings of those patterns before it could make a definite match. It needed to understand more of the context.
The expert system understood the context. But whereas the sensor system had been designed for fast processing, the expert system had been designed for careful, meticulous processing. If the expert system got involved with the sensor analysis, the overall operation slowed down to the point where the decisions could not flow out as fast as the Hopper needed them to avoid crashing. They needed a compromise.
Leslie thought he might have an idea, but he decided to let the team try to solve it first. One by one, Ronnie, Kurt, Juan, and Lila each stepped to the board and offered possibilities. Each tentative solution was shot down. A morbid depression followed.
After a long pause, Leslie walked to the board. "How about this?" he asked, and scrawled a series of detailed modifications to the interface, using a purple marker. Meanwhile, he outlined his general idea—the overall concept of the compromise he intended. His real purpose was not to persuade them to use the detailed approach he now drew, but to get them to think about a new, higher-level approach.
Kurt shook his head. "That won't work." He explained why, and Lila nodded her head in agreement.
Leslie shrugged. "Oh, well." He stepped away from the board.
He saw Flo whisper something in Ronnie's ear. Ronnie shook his head. She waved her arm rapidly as she continued. Suddenly he brightened. "Wait a minute," he cried. "What if we modify Leslie's interface like this?" He hustled to the board and started writing, talking half incoherently as he went.
Lila took her keyboard into her lap, muttering, "Yes, yes." She started typing softly.
Kurt squinted at the board as if someone had written on it in Greek—and indeed, Ronnie had used some Greek symbols. "That might work," he concluded a few moments later.
Juan slapped his forehead. "God, this is terrible," he said. "God, this is terrific. God, what a pain this is going to be to simulate!" He strode across the room to the largest collection of displays and processor modules, in the far corner—the simulation setup. He buried himself behind the glow and hum of his machines.
Leslie smiled, though he really wanted to leap in the air and shout with victory. A movement caught his eye from the doorway. He turned to see Nathan leaning against it, framed by the light from the corridor. He must have just gotten in from D.C.
Leslie sneaked out of the room with Nathan; no one noticed his absence. "You should've joined us," Leslie said. "You were a pretty hot programmer yourself at one time, if I remember correctly. "
Nathan shook his head. "I would not pit my skills against yours. " He smiled maliciously. "I wouldn't want to embarrass you." They exchanged low laughter. "Besides, you clearly had everything under control. I never disturb a master at work."
Leslie pointed toward the cafe. "You hungry? I am. "
"Aren't you going to hang around to make sure they all go off on the same track?"
Leslie shook his head vigorously. "In an hour or so I'll go back to force everyone to get some sleep. But I've done my part. They'll finish it. From here, it's just a matter of sweat and enthusiasm." He gave Nathan a puzzled smile. "That's the way we work with ensemble management, remember?"
"Ouch! Cut to the bone with my own words!" Ensemble management was an organizational style taught by the Institute—a style well suited to Information Age projects. "I'll buy the coffee."
"No!" Leslie exclaimed. "No more coffee." He rubbed his stomach. "I need some nutrition for a change."
"A wise choice," Nathan said. "We may need our strength. The Army arrives this afternoon, in the form of a general. General Kelvin."
"Good. He should keep you out of trouble," Leslie offered with a wicked smile.
"Yes, sir!"
Nathan heard Kurt McKenna'a voice from the hallway, accompanied by the pounding of two sets of feet approaching the Tieton Room. Kurt's voice now held the same unthinking respect that it had held during his first months at the Institute. Nathan had finally broken him of that habitual respect, though once in a while he felt a strange desire to receive that blind obedience one more time.
Of course, he knew better. In the knowledge-oriented contexts of the Information Age, the blind obedience observed in military management never served anyone well.
Every human endeavor required a different management style. In the context of lethal battle, Zetetic ensemble management would lead to tragedy. Similarly, in high technology engineering, military organizational style could only lead to failure.
In the respectful tone of Kurt's voice, Nathan heard the fundamental driver behind generations of military research and development catastrophes. In that voice, he heard the form of his own impending conflict: the military, and no doubt the military concept of management, had just arrived in Yakima.
Kurt led the general around the corner. Stars gleamed upon his shoulders; his eyes swept the room as if he owned the place. Nathan could feel himself growing hot, just watching the man. Kurt introduced them. "General Kelvin, Nathan Pilstrom."
They did not exactly shake hands in greeting: their grips more closely resembled a wrestling match. As usual in such pointless encounters, Nathan withdrew first. "So this is the Sling Project, all neatly packed in one little room," Kelvin said, with dismissal in his voice.
"More or less," Nathan replied. "That's close enough for a first approximation, anyway."
Kelvin jerked his head, pushing the warning aside. His jaw clenched as he scanned the room. Nathan knew what he saw: stacks of computer systems strewn about, matched with the expressionless faces of programmers lost in the glow of their display screens. Juan lay curled up like a cat in the north corner, more or less obeying Leslie's earlier orders to sleep. The others had napped shortly after lunch, and they appeared more invigorated—enthusiastic zombies fresh from the grave.
Even Nathan had difficulty believing that this scene belonged in the Valkyrie's hall of heroic images. How could these men and women, some almost adolescent, shape the tools of victory? Thinking about this scene's impact on the general gave Nathan a sour moment of amusement.
Kelvin shifted his weight, preparing to step around Nathan into the room, but Nathan also shifted, blocking him. "General Kelvin, we're planning an all-hands review around five. Why don't you and I go around the corner for a cup of coffee until then?"
The general's teeth clenched tighter, then went slack. "All right."
As they struck out down the hall, Nathan tried to forestall the general's caustic remarks. "I realize that that room looks like a Kansas whirlwind hit it, but we have a good team in there."
"I've seen better," Kelvin said.
They passed the registration desk and came upon a young waitress at the entrance to the coffee shop. She seated them in a booth on the outside edge of the cafe area. According to Leslie, crowds of busy people usually hurried back and forth through the motel lobby and the restaurant, but now the Thunderbird had little business. Since the beginning of the war, the Sling team had been the only regular patrons. Part of the quiet was caused by the general decline in the nation's travel; of course, the principal cause was the Zetetic Institute's rental of the entire motel. It had seemed the least obtrusive way to ensure privacy.
Other than this unnatural quiet, you could not tell that a national emergency existed. You certainly couldn't tell that a war raged with such fury that it might destroy the planet. A few resources had become scarce: only people with military business could catch an airplane, and freeze-dried food had disappeared from the backpacking stores. But no shortages of normal foods or appliances had yet occurred; indeed, the war would end for lack of participants before such an event could take place.
The young waitress looked like she was under severe stress; Nathan suspected her boyfriend was now boarding one of the planes packed with reinforcements for Europe.
Nathan spoke to Kelvin with an ironic edge in his voice. "So you've seen better teams. I must say, you completed your evaluation with amazing speed." Nathan looked straight into the general's eyes, trying to let exactly the right amount of anger shine through.
Their eyes locked; this time Kelvin broke off the engagement first. "You're right, that wasn't entirely fair."
"Thank you," Nathan answered.
"I still can't believe this Sling of yours will make the difference." He shook his head. "Dammit, we need
tanks
, not
gadgets
." He pressed the tips of his straightened fingers to his forehead, as if he could somehow drive home a better solution to their problems. He gave up the attempt as his coffee arrived.