The Fleet Book 2: Counter Attack (16 page)

“Let’s not get into a huff about it,” Tostig said pleasantly. “I intend to get out of this place with my warriors. This man is the key. You can either let him be your assistant, or l will appoint you his assistant. Let’s have no more discussion about this, Homer.”

Homer looked as though he had quite a good deal more to say. But he must have gauged the meaning of Tostig’s set expression and the way his right forepaw toyed with the tassel on the end of his laser pistol.

“Of course he may assist me,” Homer said. “And if he has any worthwhile suggestions, I’ll be glad to follow them. Sometimes the Gods of Communication choose unconventional ways to convey their messages.”

“Good,” Tostig said, “glad that’s settled. I’ll leave you two to get acquainted, then.”

And he hurried off, obviously pleased to get away from Homer Farsinger, but not failing to give me a wink to let me know he sympathized. At least, I think it meant that. He was a good sort, Tostig.

XIII.

A Khalian baron, invariably an outstanding warrior, is in sole command of a Khalian raid. He gives the orders where to go, and when. But it is the Destination Master who actually implements those orders. The baron wouldn’t dream of taking the controls himself. His business is fighting and giving orders. Someone else actually carries out the orders, doing what is necessary to take the ship from here to there.

Khalian navigation is simplicity itself, though only the Destination Masters of the Poet’s Guild seem to have caught on to it. What the Destination Master actually does is this: After a long mantric chant, “New direction, pounds of torque,” repeated over and over until the words made no sense (if they ever did), the Master is ready to perform. He takes from its special receptacle the Ship’s Travel Disc. It is a thin plastic rectangle containing a great deal of encoded electronic information, or, as the Khalia would say, it holds much power. The Master puts that into the computer’s slot, and up on the screen comes a directory of destinations. The Master selects the one desired, and punches EXECUTE. The ship gets underway. The remaining procedures are purely automatic. Unless a manual override is employed, the program will execute lift-off, take the ship off-planet by magnetic engines, switch at the appropriate time to FTL drive, and reverse the procedure for the landing at the chosen destination. In actual ship-to-ship combat, the Khalian commanders override the automatics and fly their ships personally, just as we humans do. But aside from that, the computer program handles everything.

Many variations are possible, but that’s the basic routine.

A nice, simple, foolproof method, well suited to the bloodthirsty and childish personalities of most of the Khalian race. Just within their intellectual grasp.

But what happens when that simple, traditional, time-tested method of navigation fails? What happens when, as in the case of Tostig, the computer, when asked to get us out of here, flashes back *System Error*?

The Destination Master had asked to be alone with his computer, and tried several prayers known only to him, mantras of great power. He emerged after three days, shaking his head. None of his words had had the slightest effect. The machine continued to display its single-minded message:

*System Error*!

“That’s fascinating,” I said to Homer, standing beside him and looking at the CRT tube of the ship’s computer. “My people, too, know what it means when God won’t speak to them any longer.”

“The point is of considerable theological interest,” he said, agreeing with me though that wasn’t quite what I had meant. “
System Error
is mentioned in our ancient literature, specifically in the teaching story called
‘How System Error Came into the World.’
Briefly, the legend tells that the Gods of Communication gave the ancient Khalia two storerooms. From one of them, they were allowed to take all good things. But the other they were not permitted to touch. But they became greedy, and impious, and opened the second storeroom expecting even greater riches. Instead, out came a forlorn little creature with a long sting in its tail, and this was the demon System Error, and it has been stinging us ever since.”

“That’s great,” I said, “I love stories like that. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll just sit down at the keyboard and see what I can learn about System Error.”

“I can show you all the commentaries on the basic text,” Homer said.

“Thanks, anyway, but what we need is a pragmatic procedure. That’s what’s recommended in the System Manual.”

He looked at me with fury. “Don’t pretend to knowledge you do not have! Nobody has ever seen the System Manual, and certainly the Communication Gods would never show it to a human. But you may try to influence the machine, if you wish.”

XIV.

The running of a ship’s computer, even if it is simplified to a degree just short of automaticity, still requires the operator to indicate to the machine what routine he wants the machine to follow. And in indicating his wishes, the operator must communicate them to the computer in the proper order, and know how to recover if accident befalls. He needn’t know what his maneuvers actually do in terms of bits or bytes. But he must know how to do them accurately.

Homer Farsinger knew many programming routines by heart, and that was a considerable- achievement for a pre-technological race. He didn’t call them, programs, however. He called them
“Stanzas of Instruction,”
and they were imbedded in the heart of the Sagas, mixed in with poetical stories of supernatural happenings in the early days of the Khalian race.

A typical stanza (this is from
“The Murder-Rage of Destrid Crazyclaws”
) goes like this:

“Then Destrid toggled once,

And squeezed the mouse of destiny.

And lines appeared on the Video Machine,

And at that moment the Communication God spoke:

‘Option, Shift, E, Seven!,

Do it and all will be well!’

And Destrid praised the Lord,

And reverently entered the divine computation .
. .”

Good stuff, no doubt, and useful, too. As long as the actual programming instructions didn’t get twisted around. If the program needed Option, Shift, Seven, E, in that order, then not even the High Lord of Communication is going to get your program running if you entered it wrong.

The way I figured it, what had originally started as straightforward programming instructions had become poeticized by a race that feared technology and considered it a form of magic. Since they were not considered precise instructions, they were always being improved upon by succeeding generations of Poets. And the new Sagas were being written using many of the old programming formulas, but out of context, merely as a form of poetic speech.

In one of the old Sagas,
“The Threat of Hafeld Alieneater,”
the computer is threatened into obedience by its larger-than-weasel protagonist:

“Hafeld Alieneater, that great warrior,

Seized old Computer by the powercord,

And shook it until its pixels winked in agony,

And System Errors appeared in its screen,

And the soul
of
the machine begged for mercy,

Then Hafeld Alieneater said,

Take my people home, Computer,

Or I’ll feed you no more fat electrons,

And when Computer still hesitated,

Cunningly counting the nanoseconds

On its interior clock of gold,

Hafeld Alieneater grew passing wroth,

And signaled to his men to engage in rude laughter,

So
that Computer should be discomfited,

And stop giving itself airs,

And do what had to be done,

To bring Ostran and his brave warriors

Home to the brave campfires of The People . . .”

It worked in the poem, but nothing Homer could do would duplicate the results.

I worked at the computer when Homer would allow. But it was not easy, trying to deduce its programming from the few clues available to me. He watched my efforts, but made little comment.

During our moments of relaxation, when we paced up and down beside Tostig’s battle cruiser, trying to rest our eyes, I prevailed on Homer to tell me legends from the old days. He saw no harm in this. What practical concern could those old stories be? And perhaps he sought to convert me to his own cult of Orthodox Khalian Communicationism.

Back in the old days, he told me, back in the ancient time before spaceships (a period of about four hundred years back, I estimated through other clues he gave me), The People (The Khalia) were simple barbarians, made up of many tribes and clans continually at war with one another. Then the First Others came from their home beyond the stars, and they gave weapons to the warrior people, and spaceships to the best of the battle group leaders, and sent them out on their trips of fame, booty, glory, and death. And they gave to the Poet’s Guild the task of recording these glories of the Khalian race in the form of Sagas.

This was very interesting news, pointing, as it did, to the intervention of some race into Khalian affairs, the arming of Khalia and encouraging them to raid the ships of The Alliance. Who had given the Khalia their ships? This was something else the leaders of the Fleet would have to ponder—once I was able to return and tell them about it.

After several days, I knew I was getting closer to programming the ship’s computer so that it would accept and access the Destinations Disc. Yet something always went wrong. It began to seem as though there were a perversity built into the machine, something that defeated even the most logical steps, even the most intuitive leaps.

And then one day, coming back to the ship early from a solitary stroll, I came upon Homer Farsinger sitting at the keyboard, rapt in concentration.

I watched his procedure with fascination. With unexpected skill for a pre-technological, he was undoing the information I had previously put in, like Penelope at taking out by night the work she had put on the loom by day.

“You’re trying to glitz the program!” I shouted at him.

His lips curled in a supercilious smile, but he did not reply.

“You don’t want this ship to work! You want Tostig and the men to stay right here and die!”

“I’m surprised that you didn’t catch on sooner,” Homer said.

“Tostig will be interested to hear of this,” I told him. I hefted a crowbar. “Don’t try to stop me or I’ll brain you, you traitorous bastard!”

By then, as was perhaps inevitable, I was identifying with the Khalia.

Before you do that,” Homer said, “don’t you want to know why I’m doing it?”

Perhaps I should have gone straight to Tostig. If I had, the outcome might have been very different. But I hesitated. Inquisitiveness is a well-known Perdidan quality. “Why are you doing it?” I asked.

He smiled. In a mild voice, he said, “Tell me, human, what do you know about the requirements of writing Khalian Sagas?”

I put down the crowbar. I sat down. I was hooked.

XV.

‘“Sagas,” Homer told me, “are the heartblood of our people. All of the great Sagas have certain elements in common. There is a heroic figure, such as Tostig. There is an impossible situation, such as our stay on Target, there is treachery by a trusted key figure, and there is a glorious death in battle for the leader and his men. Tostig is a fit subject for the greatest of Sagas. I have employed my skill to construct such a one. I have enumerated in glowing verses all of his great triumphs—the massacre at Eagle Station, the devastation of Star Pass, the daylight raid against Algol IV. Never in living memory has a Khalian hero performed such feats. All that remains is a satisfactory conclusion.”

“Such as?” I asked.

“There is only one that is possible. Baron Tostig must fight a heroic and foredoomed last stand, betrayed by his friend, and die here upon the site of the greatest naval battle in all Khalian history, here on Target.”

“Maybe that’s not what Tostig wants,” I suggested.

“It doesn’t matter what the Baron wants. What is important is that his Saga be brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and be sung thereafter as an inspiration to the rest of us.”

“It’s difficult for me to see how your saga can be preserved,” I said. “If you are here with Baron Tostig when he goes down to glory and death.”

“That’s my problem,” Homer said. “No doubt I will solve it, as the great bards always have. Even if I die before finishing the final stanzas, I will manage to get a copy of my work back to the Poet’s Guild. Other paws will have to finish the final verses.”

“I don’t like it,” I told him.

“That’s because you do not have the poetic vocation. But you are clever enough to know where your own advantage lies.

‘’’I suppose you have some advice for me on that score,” I suggested.

“Indeed I do. Your loyalty to your own kind should make you desire that Baron Tostig never leave this place.” Homer had a pungent way of speaking. But he had a point. I knew that Tostig was one weasel among a million, far more intelligent and flexible than is usual for his race.

“What surprises me,” I said to Homer, “is why such a Khalian as Tostig was not given wider powers, more warriors.

“It is not our way. We are not a cooperative people. That is why we cannot trust ourselves with a ship larger than a cruiser. A good leader can hold together groups of twenty, fifty, even a hundred warriors. But when it comes to the dreadnaughts with their crews of two thousand, that is beyond us. Nor have the Others encouraged us to combine clans under gifted leaders. They prefer us as we are, intimidating, but not quite overwhelming.”

“They sound pretty smart, these Others,” I said. “What planet did you say they came from?”

“I would die before telling you anything useful about the Others. And I am spared the necessity since I know nothing about them. But tell me, human, do not our aims coincide here? You wish for material victory, I for a spiritual one. Both of us can be satisfied by Tostig fighting his last stand here, and dying.”