Eater. Part 21

"But the world alliance agreed-"

"To leave final judgment, moment by moment, to the nation actually doing the job," the President finished. "I am keeping my options open."

"Not attacking this thing-"

"May yet prove to be the best course," Kingsley felt himself forced to say, before this deteriorated further. The Secretary of State had been rumored to be a highly political appointment from a wheat state, he remembered hearing. Something about shoring up support with a domestic ethnic const.i.tuency, which unfortunately appeared to be a major theme of this administration, rather than competence. "Only its response to our counteroffers will tell the tale."

"But it doesn't answer," the Secretary of State said moodily.

"Silences are the most artful phase of diplomacy," Kingsley said, and instantly saw that this was the wrong tack. The Secretary of State's eyes widened a millimeter. Plainly he did not like being reminded, however indirectly, of his lack of background in diplomacy. "A strategy you have employed well in the past, as I recall." There. That might put a Band-Aid on the wound There. That might put a Band-Aid on the wound.

The Secretary of State opened his mouth and paused, apparently to let this buildup set the stage for a devastating reply, but the President wasn't having any. He smacked an open palm on the mahogany table between them and said, "I have to be convinced that using weapons of ma.s.s destruction is necessary. I'm authorizing only readiness. No codes are to be pa.s.sed down the line, as insurance in case we lose communications."

This was the essential practical point. No one knew what the Eater could do to their web of connections. Yet targeting nuclear-tipped warheads on the beast's interior demanded timing of fractions of a second, for fast-burn missiles closing at very high speed.

"If I take the Secretary's point, he is quite right, there is likely to be no time for deliberation."

Actually, "dithering" would better describe the tortured path whereby they had reached this point. Kingsley had never operated at this level and had always fondly imagined that matters proceeded here with a swift clarity that made lower echelons look like the swamp they so often were, in his experience. It was never pleasant to discover that one was naive, and in this case it was quietly horrifying.

The Secretary gave Kingsley a quick nod. Fine; with such people the striking of instantaneous alliances was automatic, part of the conversational thrust, enc.u.mbering one for no longer than the need demanded. Certainly not grounds to neglect a later opportunity for betrayal, either.

The President mulled this over for some seconds. "That's a powerful argument for striking early, then, before it reaches inside these belts you mentioned."

"The Van Allen belts?" Kingsley had been called upon to deliver minilectures with slides the day previous.

"You said it may have trouble moving so fast, once it's inside the magnet sphere."

The President was a reasonably quick study and Kingsley would not think for an instant of correcting him on jargon. "Yes, sir, the Earth's magnetosphere may deform its outer regions. Of course, it may be able to deal with that. It is experienced."

"Yeah, eight billion years of experience," the President said with sudden, sour energy.

"Your point is that targeting could be better done before it is that close?" Kingsley prompted. There were only eight people in the room and all seemed to suffer from the fatigue he saw everywhere at this command center outside Washington. Only the guards seemed fresh.

"Is that true?" the President asked the room.

The Secretary of State had been making permission-to-speak noises for some time and now answered, "There are grave consequences if we engage it close to the atmosphere."

"Don't want to let it get that close, do we?" the President said. "We've got enough chaos to deal with now."

This summoned forth rather relieved murmurs of agreement. "Got our hands full just dealing with the breakdown in the cities," a domestic adviser said. More murmurs.

"Any ideas what happens if we fail?" the President asked the room.

"It has announced no purpose here beyond acquiring those uploads," the Secretary of State said. This he had gotten from Kingsley's report of the day before.

The President pressed him, something like dread in the overlarge eyes. "What's the downside?"

The Secretary said, "It could retaliate, I suppose."

"Of course," the President said irritably. "Point is, how? Dr. Dart? What's U think?"

"Its range of response is very large. It could inflict considerable damage."

"How about what the media are hot on? Flying through the Earth, eating it, all that?"

"To plunge into our surface would strip the hole of its magnetic fields, essentially killing the intelligence lodged there."

"Good to hear. It'll keep its distance?"

"It is entirely composed of plasma and gas managed by fields. To collide directly with a solid object would be fatal."

A Science Adviser aide asked, "How come it could eat asteroids?"

"A grazing collision, using its jet to pre-ionize much of the asteroid. It collects the debris using its fields."

"So what can it do to us?" the President insisted.

"I suspect we do not wish to find out," Kingsley said.

"Let's hear from DoD," the President said.

The Defense Secretary was a quiet but inpressive man, exuding a sort of iron conviction Kingsley had seldom seen, for a pointed counterexample, in the English cabinet. But he was obviously starved for material, for his own technical groups had not envisioned many scenarios beyond what the Eater had already displayed. These the President hashed over. Clearly there was danger to all a.s.sets in s.p.a.ce, national and private alike.

Kingsley kept quiet, a welcome relief. He was there for astrophysical advising, bundled off by Arno, yet to his surprise had been drawn quickly into the very center of decision-making. The intruder's ability to hand them surprises had shortened the lines of communication inside the administration. By the time the specialists could figure out what was going on, their insights were needed at the very top. No time for the usual opinion-pruning, spin-alignment, and image-laundering of conventional policy.

In turmoil, everyone-even the immensely powerful-turned to authority. Kingsley had inherited the robes of the high scientific priesthood, not by a thorough selection process, but through the offhand accidents with which history crowded its great events.

"We have to be ready to launch against it soon," the Secretary of Defense came in.

The President raised tired eyebrows. "And?"

Just the soft pitch the Secretary had wanted to coax forth, altogether too obviously. "We're on top of that, sir. Our people are just about in position."

"This is for the China option?" the President said vaguely, looking at his leatherbound briefing book. "I'm getting split opinions on that one. U is split."

A nervous silence. A few heads looked up alertly, others seemed to duck.

The President blinked. "Oh, sorry, that's another meeting, isn't it? This d.a.m.ned thing's got a lot of parts." He tried a sunny smile beamed around the room. "Don't seem to fit right."

The Defense Secretary said hastily, "That's for the later discussion-"

"And targeting, that's a big technical problem, right?" the President prompted. Heads nodded. "Got people on that? Good, then."

The President looked satisfied, a subtle shift apparently signaling the end of the meeting. The man's time was being sliced thin, a style of governance by crisis the Americans had developed to its frazzling fulfillment. He slipped into mechanically affable, look-confident mode as people left, nodding and smiling broadly as if on the campaign trail.

Blank-faced aides ushered Kingsley out of the central sanctum. This was by far the most heady rubbing up against raw power that he had ever experienced, yet it left him curiously unmoved. No one got to even the relatively minor level of Astronomer Royal without some hunger for power, or at least the look-at-me urge that reached far back into the primate chain of evolution. But the vastly greater authority of this company around him, which he was sure would have left him breathless only months ago, seemed to pale compared with the implications of the bright blue spotlight that now hung in the sky over Earth.

His working group convened again in one of the innumerable conference rooms buried in this mountain retreat. If civilization collapsed, the planners apparently had provided that talking could go on indefinitely.

He paid close attention to the gaggle of theorists who had a.n.a.lyzed the magnetic avenues near the black hole. They had cobbled together ideas from the study of pulsars and quasars and their story fit together reasonably well. Yet the Eater was not a natural system, a crucial distinction. He had not been stretching matters when he had told the President the extent of the uncertainty here.

The working group milled around this central fact and then, given the press of time, ended with a list of targeting options. Luckily, Kingsley had begged off chairmanship of this group, and a bulky French astrophysicist got the job of carrying their conclusions to figures in the Department of Defense and to their parallel figures with the U.N.-based coalition. The political nuances now seemed even more complicated than the physics.

Kingsley got away pretty quickly, dodging the usual pockets of undersecretaries and such who always wanted one's "angle" on the thinking of the inner circle. The familiar Washington circuitry of instant a.n.a.lysis and jockeying for position ran on at high voltage, blissfully unaware that this was an event unparalleled in the experience of even this remarkable-and remarkably lucky-nation.

Some of the policy mannerisms here were identical to those of London. Always be clever, but never be certain Always be clever, but never be certain. That held for a good 90 percent of the time, for example. It was no good in this crisis, since only firm answers had any chance of being heard over the din.

Perhaps, he pondered, that explained his anomalous entry into these elevated circles. He had been willing to make predictions that came true-and not only about basic physics and astronomy. These minds around him were used to dealing with social forces that were, in the large, predictable. But the very concept of the utterly strange was for them the stuff of horror, not thought. Yet science taught its pract.i.tioners, at an intuitive level, that the universe was fundamentally of the Other.

Still, he felt a curious claustrophobia in the entire proceedings. It would be good to escape back to Hawaii.

Regrettably, he had agreed to submit to an interview arranged for the press pool. Arno had not worked out well in that regard, proving too brusque for the whipsaw warm-and-rea.s.suring pose useful before the cameras. As well, Kingsley's attempts to fashion Benjamin Knowlton into a serviceable media buffer had failed ignominiously. After losing Channing, the fellow would probably be much worse. It had hit him hard.

So he found himself facing a battery of the modern breed of journalist, faces famous in their own right for being at great events while having no responsibility for them. Their a.s.surance equaled only their ignorance as they shot questions at him and he tried to convey some of the scientific issues without looking impossibly prissy about terminology.

He got through a vague description of what they knew of the hole's interior regions, and then a savant of the image works asked, "Why is an Englishman leading the scientific arm of what is mostly a United States effort?"

Kingsley paused just long enough to give the appearance of thinking this over. "Because the Americans have pulled in those they can work with, I suppose."

"There's a resolution before the Security Council to force control into the Council's hands explicitly-"

"Yes, very bad move."

"-and world opinion is lining up pretty solidly behind it."

"The only solidity to be gained here is through the alliance the United States has yet again st.i.tched together. Who could imagine, say, the Chinese doing remotely likewise?"

"But a.s.sembling the wisest heads of all nations at the U.N. would-"

"Be a madhouse."

"But certainly with everyone's lives at stake-"

"Since the Gulf War of thirty-two years ago, the Americans have twice more put together a coalition to deal with a rogue state. This one deals with a rogue ent.i.ty, but the cla.s.sic means of alliance diplomacy are the essential skills."

"As a scientist, how are you qualified-"

This last from a frowzy woman apparently noted for her "incisive" questions. He put a stop to her by turning his back and walking away, which from startled looks from the "handlers" a.s.signed to him was Just Not Done to Famous Media Personalities. Nonetheless, it got him quickly out of the floodlit room and shortly after into a helicopter for Dulles.

Everywhere people seemed to have only a dim notion of what was at stake in this crisis. He avoided conversation with people in nearby seats from State and Defense. Takeoff was delayed by several people maneuvering for seats near others. The Marine guard got irked at this, quite rightly, and threatened to throw a White House aide off if he would not "get your a.s.s in gear," a delicious American turn of phrase that no foreigner could ever get exactly right in intonation.

"Hey, Kingsley," a fellow from the U Agency called, plunking himself down next to him before Kingsley could think of a plausible reason why the seat had to be kept open as a grave matter of national security. "Herb Mansfield. I met you a couple weeks ago on the Big Island. You heading back?"

"To Hawaii? Yes."

"We'd like you to catch a chopper at Dulles, visit us over by Langley."

"Sorry, can't. Have to"-What's the Americanism?-"mind the store."

"We had a few things to go over."

Something ominous in his tone? "I believe there are a plent.i.tude of you fellows at the Center."

"Not policy stuff."

"Scientific?"

"Personal."

The helicopter roared into the air then, giving him time to judge this odd approach. He barely knew this man. There was an air of heavy a.s.surance about the way he wore his gray suit and undistinguished tie, a ma.s.sive sense that he was not used to being differed with. When they had cleared the trees over the nearby hills, Kingsley said, "I didn't think you cared."

This lightness had no effect upon the government armor. "Oh, we do. Vital personnel we are taking a big interest in."

How nice. "I am scarcely vital."

"You handled getting your friends into the Center pretty well."

"I prefer to work with people I know."

"Funny you didn't bring your wife in."

"She is not a scientist."

"Talked to her lately?"

"I haven't spoken to her in months; I don't like to interrupt her."

This little joke provoked not even a twinge of his upper lip. The helicopter hammered at the long pause between them. All right, then, dead earnest it is All right, then, dead earnest it is. "I suppose I might find it difficult?"

"Some people are hard to reach."

He had to admire the style of this threat, as anyone overhearing it would think it completely bland chat. "You may have overestimated the value of that particular card."

"Don't think so."

"We are separated."

No big effect, but the eyes lost a touch of hardness.

Kingsley sat back and allowed himself the luxury of looking out at greenery zooming by. Generally this sort, from his admittedly limited experience, took a steely stare as the lingua franca lingua franca of such negotiations. Perhaps a show of indifference would work best. He took his time with the scenery. Then: "I don't believe you have weighed all factors here." of such negotiations. Perhaps a show of indifference would work best. He took his time with the scenery. Then: "I don't believe you have weighed all factors here."

"I think so, friend."

"Negative inducements seldom work."

A shift of mood in the otherwise uninteresting face. "Maybe not, for a customer like you. Let me shift the terms."

"Do."