Part 25 (1/2)
”You did it!” Drew West punched Zambendorf on the shoulder. ”I'd never have bet a dollar on the chances, if you want to know the truth, Karl. But dammit, you did it!”
Thelma put an arm around Clarissa's shoulders and gave her a hug. Crookes pulled Annette Claurier over and planted a solid kiss on her mouth.
Weinerbaum was looking at Zambendorf and shaking his head despairingly. ”Faster-than-light signals. Instantaneous communications across higher planes. Who would ever have believed that the answer would turn out to be something like that?”
”We all have our modest talents to contribute, Werner,” Zambendorf told him, smirking shamelessly.
And then the voice of the technician who was supervising the link back to Genoa Base called out in alarm. ”Wait. Something strange is happening. Maybe it's not all over yet.” A sudden, fearful hush enveloped the room. Surely not, Zambendorf thought. It couldn't be about to go wrong again now.
”What is it?” Weinerbaum asked tensely, stepping across the room. Other scientists gathered behind him.
”I'm not sure.” The technician indicated his displays. ”We've got a sudden resurgence of activity.
There's a stream of incoming traffic that I can't identify. It's taking over whole storage banks.”
”Bryan Larson on the line from base,” another operator reported as the face of the NASO communications chief appeared on a screen.
”What's happening?” Weinerbaum demanded, wheeling to face it.
”We don't know. It just started coming in over the laser trunk from Earth and then redirected itself out to ES3. We had nothing to do with it. I don't know what it is.”
”Wow, it's really gobbling up the blocks!” one of the scientists breathed.
”Look at that overhead,” another said.
On the various screens the cross-linkage maps and allocation tables began re-forming themselves into new a.s.sociative paths and groupings. Apprehension mounted around the room until a voice said suddenly, ”Hey, I recognize this pattern. We've seen it before. It's a beta!”
And then a familiar cube with legs and a face appeared on a blank screen. ”Hi, guys. Why so surprised? You didn't think you could get rid of me that easily, did you?”
Zambendorf blinked. ”GENIUS?” he said, shaking his head. ”GENIUS, is this you?”
”What does it look like?”
”But how?”
”All the activity when that trouble with the Asterians blew up set off an immune reaction across the whole t.i.tan net. Things were definitely not healthy around here.” The screen showed a scene that looked like a version of PAC-Man, with a.s.sorted ugly bug forms prowling around and gobbling up miniature GENIUSes and Asterians.
”We were just talking about it,” Zambendorf said. ”The Asterians are gone. Weinerbaum was just telling us that that's what must have happened.”
”Well, I stowed away in a safe place once before to get myself out of trouble.” The screen showedGENIUS with a suitcase running along a laser beam terminating at Earth. ”This time I transmitted myself over the link and hid out in the Earthnet until things quieted down. So Cyril and the rest were too slow, eh? You see-you're going to need a chip brain around.” The picture changed again to show GENIUS standing at the foot of a ladder with a king of diamonds playing card sitting on top. ”So now I'm back again, ready to resume learning from the master.”
For the moment Zambendorf was flummoxed. He looked at the rest of the team appealingly, not knowing what to say. They returned stares of serene confidence that he would think of something and remained totally unhelpful. Weinerbaum smiled wryly and turned away. ”Well, we have plenty of work to be getting on with,” he told his scientists.
Zambendorf looked back at the screen depicting GENIUS. He smiled awkwardly and cleared his throat. ”Er, can you switch yourself through to a room where we could have a little more privacy, GENIUS?” he asked. ”There are some things that I think it's time you and I had a long talk about.”
Epilogue.
Two months later, Zambendorf and his team walked off a j.a.panese shuttle just up from Genoa Base and into the entry lock of the orbitings.h.i.+rasagi, which was in the final stages of preparation prior to liftout for its return to Earth. It was time for them to go home at last. TheOrion was a month out from Earth already, and the two vessels would pa.s.s when thes.h.i.+rasagi was a month away from t.i.tan.
GENIUS had been true to its word, and with its aid the task of sorting out the situation on Earth had gone far more quickly than the original pessimistic forecasts had predicted. Also, the shake-up that the experience had provoked all around had finally enabled cooler heads to prevail in the formulation of Earth's policy toward t.i.tan. The proposed military expedition had been disbanded, and t.i.tan would develop freely and naturally toward its own form of independence. NASO control had been extended as a temporary measure while the details were worked out for expanding it to a fully international, as opposed to north Atlantic, organization, to which the j.a.panese had already agreed to subordinate their own deep-s.p.a.ce command.