David's Sling (32 page)

May 7

Engineering is the implementation of science; politics is the implementation of faith.

—Zetetic Commentaries

Nathan remembered her last words to him—luxurious words, terribly out of place in the nightmare they had been living: "I hope the next time we meet, we will have more pleasant matters to discuss."

How prophetic her words had been; how much they had needed her prophecy to come true. Nathan smiled at Nell Carson, seated across the table from him, and wondered whether Nell saw how much more his smile meant than just a friendly expression.

The office seemed less stark now, though nothing in the room itself had changed. Nell smiled back at him as if she, too, remembered their last meeting, as if she took equal pleasure in remembering this shared secret. Other people shared the table with them today, Hilan among them. Yet in Nathan's tunneled vision, there were just two people here, together savoring the absence of horror.

How wondrously different everything now seemed, just two weeks into the future!

"The war is far from over," a worried voice to his left complained. The voice belonged to an admiral.

Reluctantly, yielding with the stubbornness of cold taffy in warm hands, Nathan acknowledged the accuracy of the admiral's words. The war had ground to a halt—a very different thing from a war that had ended. The Soviet armies, still overwhelming in size, formed turgid lumps throughout Germany and Denmark. Some had reached the Rhine; they were now starving for supplies from the backup troops who no longer knew where they were. But malnourished as they were, they remained wholly unassailable to the pathetic remnants of NATO forces still able to move as organized units.

"He's right," an army general agreed with someone else whom Nathan had not quite heard. "We won't be able to drive them out of Germany unless Operation Steel Bridge succeeds."

Nathan blinked his eyes. Operation Steel Bridge was, very simply, having every ship the United States could lay its hands on cross the Atlantic as fast as it could. As it turned out, that meant that many of them had left at about the same time, so that a scattered crazy-quilt of ships now sailed more or less together, forming the largest fleet in the history of the world. They were also probably the least organized.

The lack of cohesion was planned. The Navy had learned its lesson on the first day of the war, when it lost eight aircraft carriers and their battle groups:
ships that sail together
,
sink together
. So the Steel Bridge moved at random; it would be difficult indeed to sink so many ships. Nathan asked with some surprise, "Is Operation Steel Bridge in jeopardy? Do the Russians have enough submarines to find and sink that many ships at the same time?"

The admiral smiled. "Certainly not. In fact, the Russians don't have any submarines at all anymore."

Nathan stared at the man, who stared back with growing pleasure. Nathan asked, "No submarines at all?"

The admiral shrugged. "There are a couple in drydock. But they lost everything that was at sea." His look hardened. "Maybe our aircraft carriers are obsolete, but our submarines are a damn sight better than theirs are." The smile returned. "Rather, ours are a damn sight better than theirs used to be."

Nathan shook his head. "Then how can they stop our fleet?"

The admiral rolled his eyes, growing silent.

Nell sat forward in her chair. As Nathan's eyes returned to her, she explained, "Both sides are pretty well exhausted out there. They destroyed our surface fleet; we destroyed their undersea fleet. They destroyed most of our air bases around the Atlantic basin, and shot up most of our aircraft; but now we have SkyHunters harassing
their
air bases, so they can't fly their bombers either. "

Her eyes widened in frustrated amazement. "So all that's left is our submarine fleet and their surface fleet. That would be fine, except," and now her eyes narrowed with deep worry, ''for some reason, our subs can't get close to their ships without, uh, disappearing. The Russians seem to have introduced something new themselves in the last couple of weeks. Anyway, their ships seem invincible to our submarines at the moment."

She looked away. When she looked back, not only her eyes, but the eyes of all the people at the table, fell upon him. With a small twist of her head she asked, "So how would the Information Age answer this problem?"

Nathan saw himself suddenly in a new role amongst these most powerful people—that of magician, the man who plucked new methods and ideas from a mystical, supernatural world. He had joked about magic with Nell in their last meeting; since then, he had succeeded as only a magician could.

Over the long run, such a magical role would lead to catastrophe. He was no magician; no supernatural powers could be brought to bear on crises of human making. Indeed, he and Jan had designed the Zetetic educational system to guarantee skepticism about the powers of magicians, whether they be called priests or scientists or statesmen or simply experts.

Still, Nathan had to admit it was a heady experience, having the most powerful people in the world look to him for salvation. It was particularly heady, since he had a salvation waiting in his bag. And for better or worse, the form of this salvation smacked of magic. What a fantastic irony he had here, acting as a magician when his deepest principles denied the concept of magic!

Like all magic, of course, an important part of seeing the trick was state of mind. Nathan could see the answer to this problem almost without thinking, not because he was smarter than anyone else at the table, but because he had had more practice with thinking in terms of the Sling Project and the various Hunters. "Clearly, we can solve this problem by developing a SeaHunter." He pursed his lips, then nodded. "We'll build a variation of the High-Hunter. Instead of loading the missile with small Crowbars for killing tanks, we ll design a larger Crowbar—longer, maybe wider, maybe with a new shape for penetrating ship armor. I presume we know where the Russian ships are?"

Nell smiled. "Of course. Just as well as they know where
our
ships are. "

Nathan smiled in response. "Then we can drop Crowbars all over them."

The eyes in the room shifted as people began murmuring among themselves about the tasks they would need to undertake to make the SeaHunter work. Nathan continued to smile at Nell. As at the beginning of the meeting, it seemed as if they were alone. With a sudden zest, Nathan walked to the bav window and looked out across the Mall. He heard Nell giving orders, questions asked and answered, the rapid motion of men who knew that the lives of other men depended on their success.

He did not hear Nell s approach. Suddenly, she was standing just to his left, sharing with him the view of the city in spring. Her voice seemed distracted. "We'll win this battle. I just hope . . . " her voice trailed off.

"You just hope that the Soviets are smart enough not to throw nukes at us. They'll face the same situation we faced when we thought about throwing nukes at them."

"Exactly." Nell turned to him. "Are you a licensed telepath, or do you just guess well?"

Nathan shook his head, resisting his desire to turn from the window, to savor her appreciation of him. "I do more guessing, though my guessing is well directed. A terribly important part of success in any age—industrial, information, or whatever—is being able to see the situation from other people's viewpoints. In the middle of a world war, a president has a very limited set of things to worry about or to hope for." At last, he turned to her. "You're chained to the position you occupy; for the moment, you dare not think thoughts other than the thoughts of a president. "

It was her turn to look away. Nathan noticed the sleepless circles under her eyes as she nodded. "You're right about that. I can't afford to think about anything else."

"Nell Carson, when this war's over, I'd like to meet you. At that time, please leave the president here in the office." When she looked startled, he continued, "I predict that that will mean dinner in about a week."

She studied him thoughtfully, a chess player sizing up a fellow player, then burst into laughter. "Very well. If the war is over, dinner in about a week. "

On his way out, Nathan looked in the mirror again. Again he shook his head at himself and his dreams of Nell Carson.

Ivan felt amazement that he was still alive. The past three days seemed like shadows in his memory—a feverish blur of hospitals and soldiers, screams of pain, and his own semi-coherent explanations of the importance of what he had seen. His last clear memory was of himself, mangled and bloody, bouncing down the road in a jeep while an American hovercraft executed his best officer.

Given that he was still alive, however, he understood why they had brought him to this odd little room filled with ivory figurines. Few of the bright, observant officers who had encountered the hovercraft in combat lived to tell of it, and none were in good shape. And certainly none of those normal line officers had the technological background to appreciate what they had seen. He was here to tell General Secretary Sipyagin how to fight the new American hovercraft and win the war.

Ivan sat in his wheelchair and listened. The doctor whispered to the Premier, softly, so that Ivan couldn't hear. No doubt they were discussing Ivan's arm.

Ivan chuckled inwardly at their whispered conference. Part of his mind knew, or at least was pretty sure, that he had lost his right arm. Other parts of his mind, though, could still feel that arm out there, as strong and potent as ever.

He knew better than to try to flex his fingers. And he knew better than to look. He would deal with that another time.

The General Secretary sat at the far end of the table, looking left and right, but rarely at Ivan himself. The man to the General Secretary's right, whom Ivan did not recognize, stared at Ivan with an intensity that verged on hatred. Other men filled the table, presumably Politburo and Central Committee members, but Ivan felt the power of those eyes upon him, and knew that the man next to the General Secretary would make the decisions.

Yet that man would not do the talking. One of the oldest members of the council spoke first. "Major Vorontsov, we understand you've encountered the new American weapon."

"Yes, sir." Ivan's speech came slow and fuzzy, but he tried to put some force behind it. "The hovercraft—they tell me the Americans call it a HopperHunter—is a remarkable machine. It is as graceful and precise as it is lethal." He described the way it singled out leaders and killed them. "I've made some recommendations for deceiving the machines, by having our officers act more like ordinary soldiers. We should be able to confuse the Hoppers by making it appear that there are no leaders. But I doubt that my countermeasures will be very effective. Indeed, I doubt that my recommendations will even get to the troops."

"Why not?" one of the faceless men asked.

"Who will forward the information, with half our command posts destroyed?" With exhausted admiration, Ivan contemplated the American attacks he had learned about just an hour ago. A mysterious destruction was consuming the Soviet command posts. Not coincidentally, this brutally effective elimination of Soviet generals had started the same day Ivan had encountered the first Hoppers.

No survivors could yet identify the cause of the explosions that wreaked havoc on critical Soviet headquarters. No one had seen any aircraft, nor had they heard anything that might be a Hopper. Someone had suggested they were mines, but how could even the crafty Americans plant and detonate mines with such precision?

And the destruction of the Third Shock Army from outer space was just incredible! "I have no idea how to combat the weapon that no one can see."

"They must be using Hoppers somehow to destroy our command posts. Hoppers traveling deep behind our lines."

Ivan was too weak to shake his head. He wanted to yell at the stupid creature who had spoken; instead, he whispered. "No, sir. The Hoppers use turbine engines. Advanced turbines, possibly ceramic, but turbines nonetheless. I heard them. They could not possibly carry enough fuel to travel that far. And even if they could go the distance, they could not escape detection. They might destroy the headquarters, but anyone who got out alive would know how it had happened." He licked his lips. His only idea for the cause seemed crazy, but . . . "My best thought is that our CPs are under attack from invisible airplanes. Nonmetallic, perhaps, high enough and small enough to be difficult to see. Perhaps they are using gliders so they cannot be heard. "

No one laughed. Another man cleared his throat. "We had reports of such a craft before the ban on smart weapons. It is under investigation."

So, he had surmised correctly! Ivan's virtuosity here would help him in the inevitable final argument of this meeting. That final argument was one that Ivan
had
to win, although he faced the most powerful men of the Soviet Union.

Another voice asked hysterically, "Are these Hoppers invulnerable to our firepower? Why can't we destroy them?"

Ivan responded patiently. "In fact, comrades, we do have weapons that can destroy them, but those weapons are few and scattered. The Hoppers move too fast for our heavy cannons to take aim. And they are armored well enough to deflect hits from our heavy machine guns. However, I believe our older anti-aircraft guns, with 20mm or 40mm rapidfire cannon, could be very effective. But how do we get word to the troops, to the scattered few who have this equipment?"

Another man—a soldier, this one—spoke. "We must use nuclear weapons to combat this threat," he stated. "We can destroy these things with sufficient firepower. We can still win on a nuclear battlefield. "

With these words the final argument, the one Ivan had feared, had begun.

No one in the room objected. Fools!

The room seemed cold, and yet Ivan could feel perspiration beading on his brow. To brush it aside, he brought up his right arm—but no arm moved to his command.

His arm! He almost screamed as the delicate balance of his mind collapsed. He'd lost his arm, he'd lost his arm— the thought twisted up in his throat, and it hurt so much he couldn't breathe.