Gatefather (12 page)

The whole crew poured out of the tank, some of them rubbing their heads or limping a little. They were expostulating in highly colorful language.

“Attention!” Buck called.

They looked at him, recovered their composure, stood at attention.

“I see some of you rubbing your heads,” said Buck. “Were you wearing your helmets?”

“No, sir,” two of them answered at once.

“And here I thought you were a well-disciplined crew,” said Buck mildly.

“We didn't know she was going to
move
, sir!” said the tank commander.

“How
did
she move?” murmured the driver.

“I think she moved very well indeed,” said the four-star, in a tone that suggested it was the final comment in this conversation.

“Get back in your castle, boys,” said Buck. “Nobody gave you permission to come out.”

“No,” said Alf casually. “We won't need them inside for a while.” He strode to his wife. “Well, Gerd, did you get what you needed?”

“Those speeds took a lot of heat. A lot of
explosions
going on in that engine.” She directed this at Thor.

“If I can't see it, it doesn't count,” said Alf.

“I think I can draw enough ambient heat. Without the load of fuel, it'll be much more maneuverable.”

Buck heard it, but was she insane? Without fuel, an airplane could take off more easily, too—except for that little thing about not being able to work up enough speed.

“About how much gasoline is left?” asked Gerd.

“Oh, at the speed we were going, we used up half a tank.”

“Well, use up the rest,” said Gerd. “I don't want to run the risk of the gas tank exploding when I get to work.”

Buck took in a breath, about to challenge this insanity, but the four-star clicked his tongue. “Let's just watch and see,” he said to Buck.

Alf did not go back to the tank; neither did anyone else. But it started moving again, as fast as before, and in a wide circle. Alf didn't even look at it. Instead, he came up to the four-star. “All of the design flaws I pointed out to you will need to be corrected.”

The four-star raised an eyebrow. “Looks and sounds like she's running beautifully.”

“I made some alterations of my own,” said Alf. “It's better if it comes off the assembly line with a good design instead of having to jerry-rig it afterward.”

Jerry-rig? By caressing the armor plating? But the four-star seemed to think this was all rational, and Buck held his tongue. Besides, it was obvious that
something
had controlled the tank, and it wasn't the crew. It made no sense, but Alf was in command of the tank as surely as if it was Bucephalus and he was Alexander.

It wasn't long before the tank's engine fell silent and it coasted to a very quick stop. “Empty enough for you?” asked Alf.

“You tell
me
,” said Gerd. “I don't work with internal combustion.”

“Till now,” said Thor.

She didn't even look at him. Instead she closed her eyes for a long moment.

Then the engine came back to life.

“Oh, no, dearie,” said Alf. “It can't run on hydrogen.”

“And yet it is.”

“Well, yes, but it's not the fuel it was designed for.”

“Water vapor is everywhere,” said Gerd. “I just separate it electrically and we have all the hydrogen we need. Then it burns and comes out as steam. I think it's elegant.”

“There's a lot less water vapor in the desert,” said Thor helpfully.

This time Gerd glared at him. “Those desert savages won't
matter
if tanks no longer run on petroleum.”

“Hydrogen will require a complete redesign of the engine, dear,” said Alf, “and we need quick results.”

“But direct heat is so
inelegant
. And it becomes less efficient in winter or at high altitudes or extreme latitudes, where there's less ambient heat.”

“We don't care about elegance,” said Alf. “We just need it to never run out of fuel.”

Buck couldn't believe what he was hearing. These people thought they could separate water vapor into hydrogen and oxygen on the fly. They thought they could extract ambient heat and put it in the engine.

And they could.

The tank went in circles again, faster than ever—and without a lick of fuel in it. It stopped only when the four-star asked if the crew could get back on in order to monitor the instruments.

“Just don't try to change anything,” said Alf.

“Not that they
can
,” said Gerd.

“But they could break bones trying,” said Alf.

The tank went around and around. Alf and Gerd led Buck and Thor and the four-star back to Buck's office. Naturally, the four-star took the chair behind the desk, while Buck stood at attention to one side and behind him.

“I don't know what you did,” said the four-star, “but I'm satisfied. Can you give us a redesign to allow all our future M1A3s to run like this? And what will it cost us? Because you can ask for the moon and I'm betting you'll get it.”

What a clever negotiator the four-star
wasn't
, thought Buck.

“Oh, dear,” said Gerd.

“You can't
build
it to do what we got it to do,” said Alf. “Besides, you want your tank crews to be able to control their own tanks.”

“Well, yes. But the fuel thing—do you have to be present for that to work?”

Alf nodded.

“No, dear,” said Gerd. “He means the whole time, and the answer to that is no. We have to start it up, but once Alf and I have spent a few minutes with each tank, they'll all run like this … well, forever.”

“We need to be able to shut them off,” said Buck. “Do you need to be there each time the engine restarts?”

“Oh, that would be so
tedious
,” said Gerd.

“No, it's a one-time treatment,” said Alf.

“No cost,” said Thor. “We don't need
money
, anyway.”

“I think we do,” said Gerd softly.

“What we need is a certain percentage of the tanks,” said Thor.

Silence.

Finally, the four-star showed he had a little spine: “I'm sorry, but it's illegal for private citizens to own tanks.”

“We don't really want tanks per se,” said Thor. “We want the tanks, their crews, all the supporting crew and spare parts and all that.”

“It's
really
illegal for anyone to use the U.S. Army as mercenaries.”

“Oh, we won't pay them,” said Gerd. “Or rather, we'll pay for it all by the cost of the fuel you
won't
be buying. And by the lack of repair needed by the tanks that Alf has seen to. He's really very talented.”

“I can see that,” said the four-star. “But…”

“We won't use the tanks you give us anywhere on planet Earth,” said Thor.

That information hung in the air for a moment.

“Think of it as foreign aid,” said Thor.

“You aren't foreign,” said the four-star.

Gerd rattled off something in a language that Buck didn't think he'd ever heard before.

“We're as foreign as we need to be, she said,” Thor translated. “If we don't get the tanks, we can offer our services to someone else who'll think a ten percent tariff is a bargain.”

Buck thought of calling for some Marines to come and blow these hicks to kingdom come. But he didn't think the Marines would get anywhere near the Norths.

“I will recommend to the President and the Joint Chiefs that they honor your request,” said the four-star.

“We like the President,” said Thor. “Auntie Gerd thinks he's weak, but it's a good sign that he wants our services. We're used to thinking of ourselves as Americans.”

“Sort of,” murmured Alf.

“We wouldn't want that to change,” said Gerd. “But I can assure you that we have desperate need of these weapons on this world, too. But in respect to our agreement, we will explain the missions we need accomplished and the U.S. military can take care of the problem.
Our
tanks we'll only use off-world.”

It made Buck's skin crawl, to see the four-star agree to everything. To treating the Army like these hillbillies' private security force.

But he said nothing.

“How many of these tanks do you already have built?” asked Alf.

“Besides the prototypes, only two dozen.”

“Then you need to stop the assembly line and implement the simple design changes I outlined for you yesterday. Meanwhile, Gerd and I will retrofit the existing M1A3s. Fair?”

“Deal,” said the four-star. “As long as you understand that only the President's word is binding.”

“We're way past the Constitution and separation of powers and all that, don't you think?” asked Gerd.

“I do not,” said Buck.

“You're a brave boy,” she said. “But you must not bluster unless you can back it up. Which, at the moment, you cannot.”

“You can't just come in and take over,” said Buck.

“And yet we did. Last week. But we want it kept quiet. People should think the government is proceeding as normally. You wouldn't want to contradict that, would you?” She directed the question at Buck.

“I don't think it's polite to contradict a lady,” said Buck.

But something must have surfaced in his voice, something that revealed his true feelings—utter loathing, and fear of what these ignorant peasants would do with so much power. Thor must have detected something in his manner. Because he got up and put an arm over Buck's shoulder so he could whisper in his ear. “In case you're thinking of pulling out a gun and hurting somebody, please remember that Uncle Alf could whip the gun out of your hand or make it jam. Auntie Gerd could stop your heart with a bolt of lightning. And I could pound you to a pulp with my hammer.”

So he
did
have a hammer!

Thor burst out laughing. “Lighten up, my man, don't be so grim. We're going to help you be victorious in all your confrontations. We'll save hundreds of thousands of lives. Not all at once, but in the long run.”

“I'm sure you will,” said Buck.

The four-star took them out of Buck's office, and Buck slumped down on the couch. “Those are seriously dangerous people,” he murmured to the junior officer who had happened to be in the outer office waiting for him when the Norths arrived. “I can't tell anybody what I saw because they'll assume I'm out of my mind.”

“But you're going to do as they said, isn't that right, sir?”

“‘One nation under God,'” said Buck. “But now I think that might need changing. To the plural.”

 

6

Danny North had never thought of his life as particularly boring until now, when he was a mere spectator, forced to endure the company of people he did not like, while finding the words coming from his own mouth to be stupid and unfeeling.

Whether Set was deliberately making Danny sound mean, vain, and unwitty in order to punish him, or because Set was incapable of better, was a matter of no importance. Danny only thought about it because there was so little else to think of. What good is it to wonder about this or that, when he had no means of finding out the answer. As for changing what Set used his mouth to say and his body to do, Danny was nearly powerless. Only when Set had determined to sleep with every girl who seemed interested, was Danny able to interfere with him, and then only in the crudest way, by thinking of the aunts and the cousins back on the North Family compound, which made his body incapable of any kind of romantic involvement.

This had been an important discovery, that Danny's body still remained at least a little bit under his control or, at least, responsive to his feelings and thoughts. Since then, he had tried to think of other indirect ways that he could frustrate the Belgod and perhaps encourage him to lose interest in continuing to dwell inside him and overmaster him. But no ideas occurred to him, or if they did, a quick trial showed that Set was able to overwhelm his resistance.

My control remains in the most basic, least volitional parts of the brain, Danny told himself, and then tried to remember what it was that the limbic system controlled. It involved the formation of memory, but Danny hardly wanted to shut that down, since if he ever won back his freedom, he would have to deal with the consequences of whatever Set had made his body do; therefore it was essential that he know exactly where he would have to make amends.

It was, if Danny remembered right, the nucleus accumbens that controlled pleasure and sexual arousal in the brain. Was it possible that this was the
only
part of his own brain that responded to Danny's will in any way?

He hadn't actually controlled it, anyway; he had tricked his own pleasure center into thinking that its sexual arousal was being directed toward the females against whom every instinctive taboo protected him from mating with.

If Danny tried to
do
anything, Set seemed to notice the attempt at once, and blocked him; if they were alone, he'd make Danny's lips say, “Tut tut tut, naughty North boy,” or “When will you learn, you poor ignorant gateslave?” or “None of your tricks, Loki.”

But Set seemed incapable of interfering with Danny's private thoughts or plans, or even sensing them until Danny tried to put any of them into motion. And because Danny still had access to memory formation, especially kinetic memory, he was able to get his way now and then—through indirection and trickery, but it worked.

For instance, if he had tried to go to his cell phone and check his email and text messages, Set would have blocked him—and would have started making guesses and assumptions about Danny's motives.

But if Danny lightly stirred up memories of emails—especially the seemingly endless solicitations from porn sites—Set often responded.
Usually
responded.