David's Sling (27 page)
Juan nodded his head vigorously.
When the hopper popped out again, a formation of tanks faced it.
Now they heard angry static from the speakers. Lila said, "Those are the tank radios you're hearing."
The general cleared his throat of dust, then asked humbly, "Why aren't you shooting at them yet?"
Kurt answered this one. "Two reasons. First, we haven't identified the commander yet. If we don't identify the commander soon, we'll knock a couple of the front tanks out, then listen for the new series of orders that'll let us locate him." He wrapped his knuckles against the side of the van. "There's a more fundamental reason why we can't fire yet, however. Our gun can't penetrate their frontal armor. We'll have to get in among them before we can be effective. He grinned. "Imagine telling your troops that they'd have to get in among the enemy tanks before firing. He grimaced. "I went in like that myself a couple of times. It's no fun."
True to Kurt's words, as the hopper broke past the lead tanks, the picture spun in a dizzy pirouette. The hopper fired twice— a much louder, thudding sound than the machine gun fire earlier. The screen showed kills against the first two tanks. Hyacinth spun and skittered as the speakers burst with radio activity. With a purposeful lunge, the hopper outflanked one more tank, fired, and raced away from the cluster of enemy armor.
"I take it that last one we took out was the leader," Kelvin said drily. Nathan almost betrayed his excitement— Kelvin had said
we.
Juan scrutinized the alternate display, finely printed with scrolling data. "Yeah, we picked out the right one all right. Magic!" A general murmur of pleasure arose in the stale air of the van.
As they watched, twilight overtook the afternoon. Mottled red glares and long shadows burnished the valley. Nathan felt his own breathing take on a jerky rhythm. "Did you guys plan this test to run into sunset?"
"Sure." Juan's voice reflected the tension Nathan felt. "I've never been in a war myself, but from what I've heard, they don't go nine to five and then wait until the lights come back on."
Hyacinth now coursed along an arrow's path, straight toward a convoy of trucks. Kurt muttered, "Hit the lead." The hopper continued its unveering flight that indeed zeroed in on the lead truck. The crosshairs came up. The Hopper spun, and fired into a shadow. "Damn," Kurt muttered.
Believing itself to have completed its mission, the hopper bounced away—like a pinball, Nathan thought—toward a clump of troops on the horizon.
Nathan's ears had filtered out the incessant whine of the hopper's engine long before. But now the hum changed tune, slowly coming down the scale from soprano to baritone. As the tone dropped, so did the Hopper's speed; meanwhile, the dust cloud boiled up across the screen, as it caught up with the slowing vehicle.
Lila shook her head, her hair continuing to bounce after she had stopped. "Double damn," she muttered. "It's the dust. The engine filter's plugged full. And once we stop like this in a cloud of the stuff, it plugs my sensors, too. The dust is killing us."
Juan tried to push his chair back, but failed in the tight clutter of people and equipment. "That's one of the things we haven't any idea of how to fix: if we hover long enough, the poor thing chokes to death."
Nathan watched Kelvin's reaction to this discussion carefully: he frowned, then shrugged. "If we were fighting a war in Egypt, that would cancel the project right there. But we're fighting in Europe, in April. Do we have any similar problems with mud? Again Nathan hid his elation: Kelvin had had two choices in the face of this apparently insurmountable obstacle. He could clutch at it as a fatal flaw, using it as a rationale to end the program. Or he could help in the search for solutions.
Juan replied, "No problems with mud to my knowledge." He raised an eyebrow. "Of course, we haven't tested it in mud the way we've tested it in dust."
The discussion continued for a while before everyone agreed to finish the analysis back at the motel. Kelvin made contributions in his own brusque way. They would no longer drive out here in vans, jeeps, or otherwise: Kelvin would commandeer helicopters for transport. A platoon of technicians would man the Point at all times, guaranteeing that the equipment was tuned and ready at a moment s notice. And above all, they would get air conditioners, with their own power generators, to keep the vans cool when they were working. He announced that last measure while wiping a thick line of perspiration from his forehead.
Nathan slid the door back and stepped into the desert. With twilight came cool air—too cool to stand in for long, but perfect for someone stepping out of a van whose cabin resembled a furnace. Though the Sling had not passed the desert test this afternoon, it had passed the political test. Nathan stood quietly, loving the simple joy of just breathing the cool, dusty air, watching the sharp orange edge of the sun put a crease in the bright blue sky.
April 29
Filter fourth for completeness. This filter
Protects from the media.
—Zetetic Commentaries
Nathan and the general crossed the street to Pioneer Pies in silence. Nathan felt famished, but his latest tense confrontation had left him unable to appreciate even the thought of lemon creme pie.
The silence continued as they sat down in one of the booths and ordered steak and fries. Nathan shifted several times on the hard boards of the bench. Although the wood decor of the restaurant was pleasing to the eye, and the well-varnished surfaces were pleasing to the touch, the wooden boards were not pleasing to the human back.
Neither Nathan nor Kelvin broke the silence. Instead, a burst of static made them look up. A television, distinctly out of place in this rustic setting, showed them a picture that was sure to restart their argument from an hour ago.
FOCUS. Bill Hardies subdued voice speaks. "Yet another heroic moment occurred in Heidelberg today. Russian forces fresh from overrunning Frankfurt turned south to destroy the fragments of the Third Armored Division " Men and machines race across the autobahn bridge that arches over the Neckar River.
PAN. To the north, clouds of smoke twist and rise from the ground. Shells burst, spawning new smoke clouds. The clouds and explosions seem to center on a single point, like an unpracticed dart thrower closing in on a bull s-eye. In the distance, dozens of giant engines of destruction slow down as they approach that bull's-eye. Here and there explosions appear among the attackers as well. Frequently, when the smoke clears, only dead men and dead machines remain.
ZOOM. The camera closes on the bulls-eye. A gust of wind blows the smoke away, and a lone Abrams tank hugs the ground at the center of the fury, its turret shifting smoothly, its cannon periodically spitting fire. Shells pound upon it. Hardie speaks of the extraordinary toughness of the Chobham armor plate. The turret continues to spin, blithely ignoring the hellfires unleashed.
PAN. The bridge is now quiet: the Americans have completed their retreat, save, the one vehicle left behind to cover their movement. That one Abrams backs slowly toward the bridge, enemy machines pressing ever closer.
FOCUS. The periodic flames from the Abrams cannon cease. One shell too many has struck it in a weakened plate. Recognizing the failure, the enemy rushes forward, firing constantly. A larger, darker cloud rises from the Abrams. It moves no longer. The dark cloud clears to reveal an empty hulk, spotlighted by a series of explosions that destroy the bridge.
FADE. "Unfortunately, individual acts of heroism may have no significance. More significant than the successful retreat across the Neckar is the French announcement of a separate peace treaty with the Soviet Union. The French armies now in Germany will return home under banners of neutrality during the next 48 hours." Bill gives a comprehensive list of the cities in Germany and Denmark that have surrendered since his last report.
Kelvin turned red while viewing the newscast. As he turned to Nathan, the pulse in his left temple throbbed visibly.
Nathan watched him with concern. "We can't deploy them yet," he said again, as if repetition would make his point fasten itself in Kelvin's mind. "Just because the Hunters passed the basic test doesn't mean they work. If you deploy now, and we find another hardware problem, we're sunk."
"And if we deploy after all our troops are dead, we're also sunk," Kelvin retorted, doggedly reiterating
his
position.
Seeing that it had become a confrontation of egos, Nathan sat back in his chair and consciously relaxed his mind and body. He concentrated on the amusing aspects of the past 48 hours; though difficult to recall, amusement was a salient feature of his situation. After all, two days ago, Kelvin had been against deploying the Sling Hunters, while Nathan had been in favor.
The pinball game on the testing range had not brought about this transformation by itself. Even discounting the problems with desert sand, the hopper had failed: it had fired at shadows rather than targets, for one thing. And every member of the team had grown silent as they had examined the detailed readouts of the battle: from the sensing, through the decision-making, through the hovering, there had been odd quirks in the hopper's behavior that left the programmers puzzled and worried. The problems seemed more numerous than the successes.
Fortunately, they would not have to wait until all the problems were fixed before they could deploy Hunters. As Nathan had explained to Kelvin the day before, once they were sure the hardware worked, they could build and ship Hunters while they continued to work on the software. As they made software improvements, they would download the new versions by satellite link: it would be no different from the way they loaded the test Hunters with new software in Yakima.
Kelvin had not merely accepted the idea of deploying the hardware before completing the software; he had ordered Leslie to start a ramp-up of all the factories involved in Sling manufacture, to prepare the production lines for peak output. They would immediately start manufacturing and stockpiling Hunter subassemblies. That way, they could run the first thousands of Hunters through production almost instantly, and they would face bottlenecks only with new parts demanded by the results of the testing.
Kelvin had gone on to ask about the software for all three Hunters. "How long do you think it will take before all the software bugs are out?"
Nathan had laughed. "It'll be
years
before
all
the bugs are out. We'll deploy before that, too."
"What about the SkyHunter and the HighHunter? Are they ready, or are you testing them yet?"
"We've been alternately testing the SkyHunter and the HopperHunter on the range," Nathan had explained. "Basically, they both work, except for the kinds of problems you saw yesterday, where the Hopper started shooting at shadows. Most of the problems with target recognition are shared by both systems—fixing it in one will fix it in the other."
''What about the HighHunter?"
"The HighHunter has nastier problems. We can't run a full-up test of the HighHunter without shooting one into orbit. Then we d have to make it dispense its Crowbars somewhere over Seattle, to make them drop here on the Range. I don't know what our chances are of surprising the Russians with the Hunters, but if we drop a HighHunter out of orbit, they'll take a
serious
interest in everything we're doing in Yakima. "
Kelvin had growled—the sound of a mountain climber who has just found frayed rope in his hands. "Damn. This project is completely unclassified. I'm sure the Russians know about it. "
"Actually, we're counting on it." A Zetetic observation on institutions leaped to Nathan's mind:
Organizations never know anything
. Rather, certain select individuals in organizations knew certain things. By grouping selected individuals together while dispersing others, the manipulator could dominate the organization. "Certainly, individual Soviet officers know about different aspects of the Sling. However, the Sling has never been important enough to classify. So the Russians who know about it wouldn't consider it to be important either. Our complete lack of classification may have protected us more than a Secret or even a Top Secret clearance would have. We're lost in the noise."
Kelvin had looked doubtful. "I hope you're right."
"Yeah. So do I," Nathan had responded drily. "Anyway, that chance of surprise prevents us from doing a full test of the HighHunter. We've dropped some Crowbars over the range, but I'm not comfortable with the extent of our testing. It's been far too incomplete. We'll have to be alert when the first HighHunters go into action." Kelvin had seemed satisfied at that point; they had dropped the subject
Now, sitting in Pioneer Pies with Kelvin on one side and a terrifying newscast on the other, Nathan understood the driving force behind Kelvin's eagerness to get the Hunters to Europe. He ate slowly; a cold lump grew in his stomach.
Kelvin pressed his attack. "The Hopper flew across the twilight and hit everything it was supposed to hit. It didn't hit anything it wasn't supposed to hit. It dodged around enemy fire like a mosquito dodging a fist. Damn! And then the SkyHunter did the same thing. " His eyes held a tortured combination of pleading and commanding. "The hardware's fine." He clenched his fist, his tendons vibrating, and pressed it against the wooden table as if afraid he might lose control otherwise. "We need those Hunters in Europe
now.
"
Nathan temporized. "Let's talk with the team before we do anything hasty. "
After an unhappy pause, Kelvin said, "All right."
They drove back to the Thunderbird.
They asked Lila first, "Is the hardware ready to ship? Can we fix the rest of the problems in software?"
Lila pulled on her lip, twisting it in her fingers. "I don't know. I guess so. I . . . guess so. But we really ought to test it more."
They asked Kurt. "Why not?" Kurt replied. "What we ve got works well enough to zap
some
of the bastards." He paused. "It wouldn't hurt to test a bit more, though."
They asked Flo. "I believe all the equipment in the control and communications parts of the Hunters—the parts for which Ronnie and I are responsible—work adequately correctly." A pair of creases marred the soft smoothness of her forehead. "But I am sure Amos would advise against sending them yet. Even if all the separate pieces work correctly, we may be surprised when they work together at cross-purposes." She shook her head. "This is not a good idea. "
They asked Ronnie. "Great. Get 'em over there. Anything that goes wrong, we'll get around it with a software kludge of one kind or another."
Finally, they asked Juan. They sat in Nathan's room, Juan stretching his long legs across the bed, toying with a microfloppy. As he spoke, he flipped the flat plastic square back and forth with ever greater agitation. As he flipped it one way, he seemed anxious; as he flipped it the other way, he seemed amused. "So here we are again, Nathan, on the verge of a beta test." Beta testing was a stage commercial vendors usually went through with software. During beta test, the vendor released the new product to a carefully selected handful of customers who understood the risks—and who knew enough to help the vendor fix the last problems. The beta customer also knew how to create his own, temporary work-arounds for outlandish problems.
But no one in the middle of a war had the time or the clarity of mind to produce novel solutions to outlandish problems. Nathan smiled back at Juan. "Yes, Juan, it's beta test time. Whom do we victimize this time?"
"No doubt the whole damn army. " His head lolled, then swept sideways in a slow shake. "But not yet," he whispered desperately. "We aren't ready yet." He clenched the floppy, then tossed it aside. "Listen. I know the Hunters better than anybody else here. Kurt, Ronnie, Flo, and Lila may have developed the software, but when they test their stuff, they test it against
me
. There is not a single nuance of those machines that I don't understand as well as they do. Nathan,
it doesn't work yet
. There are too many things that nobody understands, even when it works right, the way it did yesterday."
The general spoke. "What's wrong with it?"
Juan shrugged helplessly. "If I knew what was wrong, we'd fix it. But we don't know. Christ, there's so much we don't know."
When
will
you know?" Kelvin asked, his words forming bullets that made Nathan wince.
But Juan just smiled sadly. His shirt was open at the collar; to Nathan it seemed to leave his throat exposed. "I don't know when I'll know." The sinews in his throat rippled, and he suddenly sat erect, a judge proclaiming a verdict. "But I know I'll know when they're ready."
The general reacted, squaring his own shoulders. "We can't wait forever. "
"And you won't have to." As suddenly as he had straightened, Juan coiled around the bed again. He reached into his back pocket, pulling out his credit-card-size note computer. "We may be close. Actually, I think we really are close. Maybe, if we push all the way today, we can learn everything we need to know." His right hand worked silently over the palm-size touchpad as he studied the testing schedule. "If things go well, we can pack about three days of tests in by midnight."
"And then it'll be ready?" Kelvin demanded.
"And then we'll decide whether it's ready," Juan corrected him.
They broke into two teams: Kurt, Lila, and Ronnie ran one test while Flo, Juan, and Nathan prepared the next. The tests became ever more rigorous, ever more complex, ever more ruthless—a series of gauntlets that no machine could run successfully. Indeed, that was the point: "Test to destruction," Juan explained cheerfully, "is the truest form of analysis."
They tested Hyacinth to destruction before lunch. Once too often, Hyacinth raced close to the ravine wall. A stone outcropping appeared and the hopper smashed into it, crumpling its ground-effect skirt, spinning out of control. Hyacinth bounced along until the rocks turned it to rubble.
"Hardware or software?" Kelvin demanded.
The new van, permanently emplaced at the Point, reverberated with the rumble of air conditioning—a level of cooling that kept the van so chill they had named it the Refrigerator. Now everyone twisted to hear the verdict from Ronnie and Florence. The van seemed stuffy, despite the bracing air. "Well, I guess it's software," Ronnie muttered.
Florence quietly tapped at the keyboard, pointed out a routine on the screen to Ronnie, who nodded. "That is correct," Florence agreed. Her voice matched the coolness of the van.
Juan frowned. "Why didn't we catch this software problem in the simulations?" He, too, turned to reexamine his code.
While they reworked the sims and the hopper control systems, they sent Oriole into the air.
The SkyHunter performed magnificently on one test. They set up the second test series, and it dropped all its bombs on shadows.
"Hardware or software?" Kelvin asked in a near-scream.