Part 24 (1/2)
”No trouble spotting the b.a.s.t.a.r.d,” Kingsley said, facing into the warm offsh.o.r.e breeze. Solid and moist, the tropical lushness lay beneath the fierce glare of a blue-white dot.
”How good does the targeting have to be?” Benjamin asked to focus his attention. He was still distracted and foggy and wondered if this internal weather would be permanent.
”Not terribly, the magnetosphere theorists say. The vital region is about a hundred kilometers across and they are closing at speeds that allow the warhead triggers to go off within a microsecond's accuracy.”
”So we can hit it within a few meters' accuracy? Wow.”
”These weapons chaps are quite able. Impressive. Unfortunately, our understanding of the underlying magnetic geometry is muddy. I am not optimistic.”
”Want to lay odds?” Benjamin chided him.
Kingsley had spilled most of the insider stories from his trip, including the incredible bit about the U Agency guy at Dulles. Benjamin still had trouble believing that things had gotten so extreme. But then, he had told himself, they had spent months holed up here, while the world outside went through a conceptual beating.
So far this entire thing had been easier for scientists to take because they were used to rubbing against the irreducible reality of a universe that was in a sense even worse than the hostility of the Eater. The TwenCen had cemented a solid belief that the universe was indifferent. For many ordinary people, that view was impossible to accept. Not that the eerie interest of the Eater was much solace.
”On success? Small, I should think.”
”Let's be quant.i.tative.”
Kingsley smiled. ”All right, what odds do you give me?”
”Three to one for a fizzle.”
”I'm not quite that large a fool.”
”You really don't think we can short it out?”
”Quite unlikely.”
”But you helped target them.”
”Precisely. I am not married to models, particularly those devised by theorists like ourselves.”
”Okay, ten to one.”
”That I can accept. Stakes?”
”I'll put up a thousand bucks.”
”So if the Eater dies, your bank account does, too.”
”Don't give a d.a.m.n. I'm betting on American warheads.”
”Good point. A general treated me to an hour's lesson on how hardened and compact they are. 'A megaton inside a suitcase,' the fellow boasted.”
”d.a.m.n right,” Benjamin said and wondered why he felt called upon to swagger around like this.
”I shall cheerfully pay up.”
They waited in silence in the soft, salty wind. The ocean lay like a smooth blanket and the world held its breath.
The three flashes came as one, a hard white blink and then a fast-fading yellow. A cheer came faintly up the hillside, ragged and angry, from a thousand voices inside the buildings.
”I'd pray if I believed any of that,” Benjamin said.
”As would I.”
”It'll be a while before we know-”
”No, we've failed.”
”What?”
”The color of the jet emission has not even altered. Its ejection is operating normally.”
”Well, that could-”
”To succeed, we had to disrupt its control mechanisms. Moving ma.s.s into those magnetic funnels is a colossal endeavor. We haven't a clue how it pulls off the trick. If it can still do that, it has survived.”
Benjamin had known it, too, but something made him argue with Kingsley. ”Yeah. Yeah.”
”Where is she?”
”In an orbit timed to put her on the other side of the Earth right now.”
”Good show.”
”You think she'll...”
”Have to be used?” Kingsley gave him a long, sympathetic gaze. ”Inevitably.”
”d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n, I...”
Kingsley put a hand on his shoulder. ”That is, above all, what she wished.”
PART SEVEN.
NO BODY IN A BOX.
3.
Kingsley quickly realized the next morning that to the bureaucratic mind, the most pressing matter would, of course, be the a.s.signing of blame.
This fell to an a.s.sortment of U Agency types. These in the general Executive Committee meeting used ”It is believed” rather than ”I think,” theorists who said ”It has long been known,” when they meant ”I can't remember who did this,” or stated portentously ”It is not unreasonable to a.s.sume” instead of ”Would you believe?” Those defending their ideas-the imported target specialists, DoD experts and the like, retreated into ”It might be argued that,” which was a dead-on clue that it actually meant ”I have such a good answer to that objection that I shall now raise it myself...” These were the same sort whose speech included ”progressing an action plan” and ”calendarizing a project.” Only painfully did it penetrate that the calendar here was set entirely by a being n.o.body understood.