Part 21 (1/2)
”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 Was.h.i.+ngton. 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 s.h.i.+ft 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.