They Also Serve (32 page)

"I wish you luck," Chu said as they all rang off.

"Well, that was no worse than I expected," Ray grumbled as he looked up from the screen.

Mary was at his office door. "Harry called. He's on his way back, but Dumont and Jeff passed up the ride. Du says if you're putting everything you've got here, they better find the vanishing box, 'cause sure as hell, with both Refuge and Richland gone, the only target left is us."

"That would solve my problem," Ray sighed. He pushed back from his desk, put his feet up, and relaxed into his chair. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have work to do. I've got to talk to my favorite computer and see just how much we can help each other."

Mary closed the door; Ray concentrated. Nothing happened. After ten minutes he moved from his office to his quarters, laid out full on his bed ... and went to sleep despite his worries.

Mary woke him three hours later. "Why'd you let me sleep?" Ray grumbled groggily. "We've got things to do."

"And they're being done, sir," she answered way too cheerfully. "We're doing quite well without you."

"Just who's in charge here?" Ray growled, rubbing sleep from his eyes and trying not to smile.

"Me." Mary grinned unrepentantly.

"You don't have to be so obvious." Out the window, the gray day was just starting to fade. Near the base perimeter, people were digging. "You got started fast."

"I'll show you after chow."

At supper, portions were smaller. No one went hungry, but the farmer who'd been fattening pigs on the base's slop had better think of slaughtering his newly expected wealth. Talk around the dining hall was subdued. "Word already out?"

Mary shrugged. "Leaked a little. No worse than your average volcano. We'll need to address it up front."

"Time for a walk around."

"Looks that way, sir." Mary had a mule waiting.

"I can walk," Ray snapped, feeling rather good on his feet.

"The entire base perimeter is a bit more exercise than I care to take," Mary answered, slipping into the driver's seat.

Ray settled down beside her. "How are people taking this?"

"Most are still in shock. Nobody really wants to believe everything they've worked for and built is about to be washed out to sea. Any chance we can stop that?"

"Don't know. The computer ain't talking to me."

The base perimeter came in view. Up to now it had been marked by little more than a rough path for the perimeter patrol. Now surveyor's sticks marched in both directions, forming three long rows. Villagers cut the sod, rolled it, and put it aside, then turn to with shovels and picks, digging a trench and piling the dirt on the inside edge. People waved when they saw Ray, shouting "Thanks for the job" and "Glad to have a place to stay." Ray waved back, then signaled Mary to halt. The little priest was out with his parishioners, wielding a shovel.

"Father Joseph, isn't this a little out of your line?"

"Since when can't a man put his back into a job?" the priest answered, but used the pause to wipe sweat from his brow.

"Does everyone understand what we want?"

Mary scowled; the priest smiled. "Dig a ditch ten feet wide, six feet deep, and a wall about the same size beside it. You're expecting a lot of rain, aren't you?"

"What have you heard?"

"Forty days and forty nights, or something like it"

"May not be off by much," Mary quipped.

"We're saving the sod. When you have your wall built, we'll roll it back down along it. That ought to keep the rain off the wall, but the ditch is going to be a muddy mess."

"Can't help that," Ray said. "I want a wooden fence four to six feet high above the dirt wall. Something to protect our guards from thrown rocks."

"I can get some woodcutters on that," the priest offered.

"Good, you and the mayor, supervise if you will." The priest's only answer was a nod. Mary drove on, circling the perimeter. All of it was marked, with digging rapidly expanding from several points.

Ray went with Mary to check on the kids that evening. Doc Isaacs frowned at Ray's sudden interest but still showed them off like a proud father. Their headaches were gone. They looked like healthy, dirty urchins despite the clouds. Ray got drafted into reading them their bedtime story, read two, and then did his best to slip away. Doc blocked the hallway outside the room.

"What are you up to?" Jerry demanded.

"I don't know," Ray sighed. "I really don't know."

"You're not going to use these kids to fight that thing."

"I don't know," Ray defended himself. "They weren't hurt when the Gardener died."

"You are going to." Isaacs accused Ray like a wrathful god.

"Maybe. If it looks like it will do some good. If you got a better idea on how to fight a million-year-old machine, I'm all ears." Isaacs said nothing. "Right now, the damn computer won't even talk to me." And it didn't that night, either.

It was only as Ray came awake the next morning that he found himself surrounded by a dozen computer images. Three or four of them wore partial body armor, shabby and worn. Two carried assault rifles, though none too sure how. One looked ridiculous in hockey shoulder pads, knee protectors, and a cooking pot perched on his head. He carried a baseball bat but had pliers and a screwdriver in his breast pocket. That one left Ray really wondering what his mind was trying to tell him.

"As you can see," the Dean said, a battle vest thrown over his tweeds, "the war has started, and we are losing."

"Why didn't you call me?" Ray asked. "I've had some recent experience losing wars."

"What we want," the one in the cooking pot cut in, "is some suggestions on how we kick their asses."

"I've won a few, too," Ray drawled. "What's going on?"

"The President and the Provost are mainly fighting themselves. The Provost wants to exterminate you. The President only to—I guess you would say—enslave you. We"—the image indicated the others with an open palm—"would like to join you."

"Assuming you're worth joining," grumbled Pothead.

Ray eyed them for a moment, then asked, "Where is their center of gravity, their axis of attack?"

"Their what?" Pothead countered.

"What do you know of military strategy, tactics, and logistics? What's your combat training?" All the computer images looked uncomfortably at the floor. Ray glanced down at himself; he was in his pajamas. He adjusted his dress to full battle kit. The room wavered and came back as the inside of his battle van. The images glanced around their new surroundings; two shifted from battle dress to civilian clothes.

"Ray, we know nothing of war. It's a word in the lexicon of the Three, but one marked obsolete. They taught us nothing about it because they wanted us to teach nothing of it to their young."

"An admirable ideal," Ray said, "but you still don't know why the Three vanished."

"No. As you pointed out, and continue to, we do not know everything." The Dean glanced at his associates. They nodded, looking for all the world like a dozen kids caught with their hands in the cookie jar, only to discover there were no cookies.

Ray conjured up his battle board. He used a wide view, showing not only the southern continent but also the northern. "Where are the President and Provost concentrated?"

The Dean frowned, glanced at the board, and rubbed the back of his neck. "It's not that easy. We all started moving south together. We're kind of all over the place together."

"And being pushed around everywhere," Pothead threw in.

"Concentration of force is basic," Ray advised.

"Right, and now
you're
gonna teach
us
," Pothead spat.

"I've got too damn much experience of war. What have you got? You want to learn, you come to the expert or you don't learn. What's it gonna be?" The twelve looked at each other. Ray wondered how fast they communicated among themselves. Then he reminded himself they were none too experienced with being individuals.

"What do we need to do?" the Dean finally asked.

"Concentrate your forces is a start. The question is: Where? Where are the President and Provost strongest?"

A pink hue covered the center of North Continent and stretched south to form a large lobe in Convenanters' territory. "That's the President. Provost is a bit west of there." A blue tinge marked the map from north to south. In the south it formed a large lobe along the border of Covenant/Richland.

"And you are?" Ray offered. The twelve looked shyly at each other. "Unaware of where each other are," he finished.

The Dean made golden a small section of the board in Covenanters' territory on the southeastern edge of the pink. "I've been evicted from my network to the north," he whispered.

"You, too!" Pothead exclaimed. "Me, too." A string of brown lines spun and twisted around South Continent. "I get around, though. Even into your net." He grinned at Ray. "Yeah, that was me. Your guards didn't come close to twitching to me."

"Why'd you turn off our weather alarms?"

"Weather Proctor dared me to. Said I couldn't understand a net as primitive as yours. I showed him."

"You were on the Weather Proctor's side?" Ray encouraged him to gab on. Did he really want this ally?

"Nobody's on WP's side, except WP. He cut his own deal with the Pres and Prov. Pres wants you down a few notches. Proc want's you out of here. Either way, WP wins. That one is sly."

"But you're not with him anymore," Ray said.

"Nope. WP snatched my net up North while I was working you guys. Booted me right out. Is that any way to treat a friend?"

"Not the way I would, anyway. I take it all of you are bereft of attachments to North Continent." They nodded. "May I suggest you concentrate around this base? I'm massing my human strength here. We can protect your physical selves as well. It will keep you out of the line of fire when we open up on them."

"You can't touch them," Pothead sneered.

"I drained the Gardener. That was an accident. Next time won't be. Dean, you noticed when we took samples up north. If we took enough, could we disrupt the P and P?"

The Dean rubbed his chin. "You'd have to take a lot."

"The vanishing box could take a lot in a hurry."

Heads jerked, several took a step away from Ray. That got their attention. "Who do you trust?" Ray tapped the pink and blue on his map. "They've booted you out of the North. Think they'll save anything down here for you? I promise to take you to the stars with me. First we got to survive. And they've got to ... what? Be taken down a peg or ten? Be destroyed? You tell me. You can't win a war if you don't know your objectives."

The images of the twelve got thin. For a second, Ray feared he'd lost them. "You go away now, will there be anything left of you to talk to me by tonight? You're losing. Give up and die, or join me and fight. What,will it be?"

The Dean thickened up. "I don't want to die. I like the idea of going to the stars with the humans. I say fight."

"But can we trust him?" Pothead whined.

"You trusted the Weather Proctor. What did it get you?" the Dean asked.

"Nothing. But at least he was my own kind."

"Your own kind are killing you," Ray pointed out. He held out his right hand, palm up. The Dean stepped forward, put his hand on top of Ray's. A sheepish grin crossed the Dean's face. "This is the way you do it, isn't it?"

"Close enough," Ray answered hard. His gut was in knots. He'd called time on their dithering; either they all joined him, or it was over. Another stepped forward. Then another. The pile of hands grew. If they'd been real humans, Ray wasn't sure the thirteen of them could have made the circle, piled the hands on. Pothead was the last in.

'"Yes!" Ray shouted. The others tried to follow suit. It was a bit weak, but it was a yes.

"Now what?" Pothead asked.

"Any way you could help me find the vanishing box?"

"Not with anything you got," Pothead answered surely.

"We collected chunks of you up north. Could any of them help?"

"No," Pothead shot back. Then, "Maybe. For a while after you've used a displacer, it has harmonies. If you picked up a harmonator as well as a couple of projectors, I might be able to knock something together. No. They'd be too small. You'd have to get too close."

"I got a blimp that can move those rocks," Ray said. "You find the right ones and we'll have them in the air in an hour."

"I'll have to get back in your net."

"You're our ally. It's open to you. To all of you if you need a place to retreat." Ray hoped he hadn't just screwed humanity. Trust was a two-way street.

"We will work with you," the Dean said. "Well start moving this way. Net Dancer"-the Dean nodded at the one wearing a pot-"will work with you to find the vanishing box. The rest of us will do what we can to resist the President and the Provost."

"Anything you do to the Weather Proctor will be appreciated."

"WP has gone back North," Pothead/Net Dancer noted.