James P. Hogan (33 page)

It was called the “Warhorse.” Measuring approximately twelve feet in length overall, it took the form of two cylinders three feet across, set end to end and joined by a narrower waist to accommodate the rider. The front part constituted the bomb, a low-yield fission device salted with a mix of elements selected to produce a detonation signature resembling that of a baryonic-annihilation reaction, along with a grappling mechanism for attachment. The rear part of the Warhorse contained a thermally dark pressured-gas propulsion unit suitable for low-speed local maneuvering. The exterior surfaces were finished in a black matted-woven-fiber compound virtually invisible to regular local-surveillance-and-approach radars.

Banker Lareda pushed against the struts of its supporting cradle and the taut securing lines to propel himself slowly around it, inspecting the device from one end to the other and then back again. Broker Seesilan, who had supervised the engineering, watched from an anchor point at a support stanchion to one side, while two technicians from the Dollarian uniformed Executive branch looked on from farther back. It was early morning, before Lareda’s appearance at the daily Meeting. They were in a service bay forming part of a warren of repair and maintenance shops located at the periphery of Etanne’s wheel, in the outermost parts of the Dollarian sector. This area was off-limits to all but the highest ranking, and a select few organizers and technical specialists involved in the plan. The gravity synthesizers had been turned off to facilitate hauling the cradle over to the exterior-access lock chamber, through which the Warhorse would be moved outside.

Lareda paused at the waist to check over the rider’s indicator panel and controls. In the course of the past few weeks they had been modified from their original layout to one that would suit a more humanoid form. He indicated a small display screen on the panel and turned his head. “This wasn’t here before, was it? What’s it for?”

“A visual numeric readout of position coordinates, velocity vector, status indicators, and a couple of other things,” Seesilan replied. “The way we had it before, they would have been superposed on the operator’s visual field.” Lareda nodded and went through the controls, testing them for range and smoothness of movement. Satisfied, he moved on. It was appearing that the elaborately conceived, carefully implemented scheme would not have to be abandoned after all. Just when all had seemed irrevocably lost, a quirk of fate in a form that no one could have dreamed of had offered a bizarre solution.

The Warhorse had originally been equipped to carry the standard general-manipulator telebot acquired from one of the construction projects. The far side of the access lock from the bay they were in opened into a maze of housings and protrusions making up Etanne’s exterior “tread.” Directed by a human operator inside Etanne, the telebot was to have guided the Warhorse inward across the wheel to the main docking port in the hub complex, where it would attach to the outside of a ferry departing for
Aurora
. The telebot operating range was sufficient for the same operator in Etanne, when the next opportunity presented itself, to move the Warhorse to one of the long-distance shuttles leaving for
Outmark
. At the far end, another Dollarian operator, inserted in among the telebot controller crews at
Outmark
, would detach the Warhorse from the shuttle and move it out to
Envoy
using its own propulsion. Detonation would be remotely triggered to coincide with the launch fire command. It had all seemed so straightforward, yet ingenious. The program of agitation and publicity to prepare the public went ahead vigorously as planned.

But then, around a month previously, just when it had seemed that they would have a clear run, Lubanov had suddenly imposed security checks and supervisory rules that made any prospect of using the local telebot controllers at
Outmark
unthinkable. The telebots had nowhere near the range to operate over the quarter million miles from Constellation. There wasn’t the time to come up with a radical alternative. In one crushing move, the entire plan was undone.

That was when word came back from Dollarians on Istella that a robot had appeared from somewhere and made approaches to the Mediators as a would-be recruit. Looking back, Lareda couldn’t honestly recall who had first come up with it, but amid the banter of laughs and jokes among the upper hierarchy, the realization emerged that here could be a solution to the problem. With the right encouragement, here, perhaps, was a substitute rider that would be capable of operating autonomously in a space environment without need of any human controller or telebot link at all.

But obviously it had come from somewhere – it turned out to be a research program in Astropolis, and the robot was called Tek – and its owners would be missing it, which meant that people would be looking for it. So the first thing they had done was spirit it away to Plantation before one of the other cults, or anyone else, could get their hands on it, while the crazy idea was scrutinized and debated – and eventually adopted.

While the changes to the Warhorse were being rushed through, the question then arose of moving Tek to Etanne. Since the chances were that many eyes would be on the lookout by that time, a volunteer wearing the garb that had been used to bring Tek to Plantation took the ferry to Sarc. It was evidently as well that the precaution had been taken. The decoy was intercepted on arrival and directed to a rendezvous with some people who sounded like anything but research scientists. Almost certainly, they had been agents of Lubanov, who had been taking a disturbing interest in the Dollarians for some time, and even attempted on two occasions to infiltrate spies into the Academy. But by that time it didn’t matter too much, since Tek had already made an inconspicuous exit from Plantation on the next ferry to Etanne.

Trying to fathom what went on in a robot’s brain was a strange and frequently perplexing experience. Words didn’t always communicate what one thought they were communicating. The Dollarians who made the first proselytizing approach to Tek on Istella got into immediate difficulties when Tek interpreted “stock dealing” and “sharp practices” – relating to the old world – as having something to do with the manipulation of gaming cards. For some strange reason, Tek had a fixation on stage magic and conjuring illusions, and could find meanings for the most innocuous things in those terms. Probably it was a result of being exposed to the Mediators and their stunts before the Dollarians intervened.

Then events had taken a more fortuitous turn, when Tek, after arriving on Plantation in disguise and posing as an arrival looking for work, found its way to the abode of an eccentric recluse forester. The forester thought that the Dollarians were resurrecting an old-world theistic religion, which led Tek to make one of its inexplicable jumps of logic by concluding that Dollar had been the name of the omnipotent supernatural god that the old world had worshiped universally. And this suited the Dollarians very well, for it gave them not only the perfect operative for the mission, physically and temperamentally, but one who believed with the passion that only the divinely inspired could command that in carrying it out, it would be directly serving the ultimate Power that ruled the universe and everything going on in it.

Envoy
would launch in three days’ time. The schedule of ferries to
Aurora
and the frequency of shuttles going out to
Outmark
gave a comfortable margin of time in which to move the Warhorse into position. Everything seemed to be working out very satisfactorily indeed.

“We’ll plan on moving it out to
Aurora
tonight,” Lareda said to Seesilan. “Later on today, I’ll have Tek brought here for a run-through and briefing. When can you have everything operational?”

“We’ve got some final adjustments and checks to go through,” Seesilan replied. “Say, first thing this afternoon?” He sent an inquiring look at the two technicians, who returned nods.

“Have things ready by then. But now I must get ready for the Meeting.”

“There is one other thing,” Seesilan said.

“Oh?”

Seesilan gestured at the Warhorse. “The surface finish is about as nonreflective as it’s possible to get. But what about this rider that you’re talking about? It sounds to me as if we’ll need some provision there, too. Some kind of covering with a hood, of the same material.”

He had a point. Lareda reproached himself inwardly for not having thought of it. He nodded curtly. “I’ll talk to Morgal in the workshops after the meeting and have them put something together right away. Carry on.”

Launching himself with a light push, Lareda floated to the doorway, where his trajectory became a curve under the influence of the synthesizers, and landed him on his feet. He negotiated a series of passages and shafts that brought him to a chamber opening out through a secured door into the main part of the Academy. The spectacular failure of
Envoy
would add credence to everything the Dollarians had warned about, he thought to himself as he emerged. And then their numbers would grow.

Stressing competition and survival was a good recruiting tool that appealed to the human instinct to excel and seek recognition from peers. The emphasis on that side of human nature in the old world had been due to a commercial doctrine called capitalism, that divided enterprise among many privately directed interests and pitted them against each other. Such a system was effective in keeping everyone else divided against each other, while a cohesive controlling elite who excelled at working together to protect their common interests remained unchallenged and did very well. The same strategy would divide the population of Constellation, and with appropriate direction lead to the subtle and gradual accumulation of power in a way that would be invisible to the majority, with the few who were awake to what was happening being dismissed as cranks.

Where the old world had come undone was in the legacy it had no control over, of existing as a planetwide agglomeration of many powers whose mutual destruction had been as good as assured as soon as they acquired the technical means of bringing it about. That would not happen on Hera. By the time the mission’s descendants made planetfall, they would do so as a single coherent society, schooled and disciplined to an idealized social design that would maximize efficiency and stability. The big problem with the old world had been that those who possessed the vision had never had the opportunity to take rightful command from the beginning. It would not be allowed to happen again.

Lareda’s phone sounded just as he was entering the central concourse, heading for the Assembly Hall. The tone told him it was on a secure channel. He stepped into a recess behind a support column to be out of the general flow, and answered in a lowered voice. The caller was Archbanker Sorba.

“Are you alone?” he demanded.

“I’m just outside the Hall, but you can speak.”

“Did you check on the horse?”

“I did, and all seems well. The rider will be briefed on it this afternoon for departure tomorrow, as planned.”

“We need to bring it forward,” Sorba said. “I have reports that a special-duty Police Arm unit has arrived at
Outmark
, equipped with heavy weapons. It’s Lubanov’s doing. I don’t like it. There’s talk that he’s tightening up the checks on the shuttles leaving for
Outmark
. Get the horse to
Aurora
now.”

“I’ll get back to the techs and see what they can do,” Lareda said.

“No. Don’t ask them anything. Tell them. Call me back.” The line cleared.

Lareda thought rapidly as he thumbed in the code for Seesilan. It would mean having the Warhorse sitting there for three days. If the launch engineers decided to run a thorough last-minute inspection of
Envoy
, it would all be over. But he could see no alternative. It was a risk they would just have to take.

“Seesilan.”

“Lareda again. Look, I’ve just been told there’s a change of plan. We’re moving the horse out right away. Expect the rider there after the Meeting. You and the other two are excused attendance today. Get moving on things immediately.”

Having a Genhedrin robe was like being given a passport to anywhere in the Academy. Korshak was able to wander at leisure among places where a novice’s tunic would surely have attracted attention. And since it was customary not to engage the Genhedrin in talk unless they initiated it, nobody asked questions.

The door at the side of the Assembly Hall that the Genhedrin used opened into a passage that led to a landing serving a set of back stairs and an elevator, which was also where several other corridors met. It thus provided a convenient means for bringing them together from various locations before making their entrance to the morning meetings – more impressively done as a body, which was doubtless the intention. The passage entered the landing through a bulkhead door that was normally open, but which could be closed in the event of an emergency. An indicator panel mounted above the doorway gave information on pressure differential, locking status, and alert level when the door was closed.

The elevator, located across the landing from the bulkhead, was of a design that dispensed with doors and the chore of waiting. Two openings side by side gave direct access to a continuously moving chain of compartments, each large enough to take a person, one side going up, the other going down at a speed that permitted stepping on and off with comfort. On reaching the top of the ascending chain, a compartment shuttled sideways to become part of the descending chain. The design was used around Etanne but hadn’t caught on among the other miniworlds of Constellation. Some said it was because the style blended in with Etanne’s general image of utility and austerity. It was called a “grandfather train.” Nobody knew why.

Ideally, everyone was supposed to attend the morning General Meetings as a psychological preparation for the day. In the real world, occasions arose when some other matter demanded priority, and this could happen to the Genhedrin as well as anyone else. It was therefore no cause for concern when, two days after Korshak’s performance in the Repository, the line of figures in cowled gray robes filing through after the morning’s ceremony to go their separate ways passed a similarly garbed form already stationed a few yards past the bulkhead doorway. Since none of them had reason to look back and up, they didn’t notice the small device taped to the underside of the indicator panel, attached to a thin wire extending a short distance down the side of the doorway; and even if they had, the chances of their reading anything amiss into it would have been as good as nonexistent. But the tiny white reed flexing momentarily as Number Eleven in line passed by below told Korshak all he needed to know.