Then, "Whoa!" Lucas yelped, pulled his hands up off the keys as if they'd been singed and pushed himself and his chair back away from the grouped keyboards.
Westphalen stared at him. "What?"
"What's wrong?" Nathan half-expected to see smoke, or sparks, or something obvious to have provoked a reaction like that.
"It's got dogs," Lucas said, frowning at the screen. Nathan shook his head, very briefly wondering whether that little poodle had gotten into the computer core somehow.
"Watchdogs," Lucas said, with exaggerated clarity, as if explaining matters to three year olds. "Sub-programs set up to protect the virus. If I mess with any of them, the whole ship could crash and burn. Life support, the works..."
He looked at their expressions: they looked as shaken as he felt. "You've heard the old saying 'let sleeping dogs lie'...?" Lucas shook his head, folded his arms and glared at the screen.
Bridger stood there, absorbing it. The fury was building in him now, at someone who could so successfully make the weapon in his hand, the ship that he had designed, into a useless thing, a lump, a liability. But he was not going to let it stop him. It was possible that there was something in this equation that whoever had committed this sabotage had not reckoned with. He would find it. He would use it.
He would make them sorry.
"Captain to the bridge," said a loudspeaker nearby. "Captain to the bridge—"
"I think that's you," Lucas said.
Nathan nodded, already heading out. "Do the best you can," he said, then halfway to the door he paused, and looked back. "Hey, kid—"
Lucas raised his eyebrows at him.
"Good job," Nathan said, and went out, but not before seeing—with some satisfaction—the shadow of a smile of surprise starting to form on Lucas's face.
* * *
He left Lucas's quarters and started making his way back up to the bridge, pushing his anger down to the point where it would not run him, but merely be a useful tool, something he could use to keep himself going.
His mood did not improve... there was nothing that could be done about that. He wanted to find the saboteur or saboteurs and wring his, her or their necks until his hands were sore.
Meanwhile, he slipped back into the place where he was most likely to be of use. Ford met him as he came in. "We're picking up a sat-link video transmission," he said. "Distress call—"
"From where?"
"A small farming outpost."
“I’ve got a partial signal now," O'Neill called.
Nathan turned. "Put it on the main screen."
The screen came to life and showed a very weak television signal, badly cluttered with depth artifact and distortion. It kept drifting out. The only thing that could be made out on it with any certainty was the vague shape of a man, bending with the distortion, then righting itself again. It was someone broadcasting unboosted from some distance away undersea.
Sound was clear enough: sound was always the first thing to come in and the last to be lost on a given carrier. And there were sounds of agitation, pandemonium, going on behind the man: he kept turning from side to side, looking behind him, reacting to the trouble. "... aymond Brenner," his voice said weakly, wiped out then by a blast of static, then coming out strongly again. "... am territorial governor... West Ridge Farm... Community...!"
O'Neill was fiddling with his controls, trying to get a better signal. It snapped in again in a hail of static. ". . . been attacked without provocation," said the desperate voice, "by a renegade craft!"
The whole image jittered as something exploded behind him, rocking the camera mount, the floor, the walls, everything else. The man managed to keep his feet, but only just. "—Why are they doing this?—" Another blast of heavy static cut across what he was saying. "... any ship within the sound of my voice... please help us."
The image danced and jumped. A voice was heard behind him in a moment of horrible clarity when the static died right away. "The canopy is giving way!"
The territorial governor turned back toward the camera. "Please!" he cried. "Someone help us! Some—"
And it was gone: only faint snow and feedback sparkles remained on the screen, depth artifact and nothing else.
There had been murmurs in the bridge until now, people reacting to what they were hearing. Now everyone fell silent. One crewwoman said low, to the crewman beside her, "We could've helped them if we weren't wasting our time patching that stupid vent to protect a few fish."
Bridger overheard the remark. He suspected he had been meant to. At the moment, with all those eyes on him, he found it difficult to disagree.
"Should I recall the repair team and set course?" Ford said quietly to Nathan.
"No," Nathan said.
"But—"
"You've got a job to do right here," Nathan said. "When you've finished locating the rest of the people at the power station, then we can deal with it."
Ford nodded.
"I'll be in my quarters," Nathan said. "I'd appreciate it if you'd keep me updated on the repair efforts."
"Yes, sir."
Nathan looked at the dark forward screen, met the mass gaze of the bridge crew without blinking—then straightened himself and headed out.
* * *
He shut his door and leaned against it for a moment. Only here could he let himself feel the full weight of what he had seen on the bridge: the anguish, the horror, the helplessness.
Death. There was a time, had been many times, when he had looked it in the face and stood his ground. Never unmoved—it would be a dangerous officer, in his opinion, who could do that: someone who would be too incautious with other people's lives. But he had coped with it, nonetheless.
He had even coped when Eric had died. He still remembered looking up from his work to see Bill Noyce standing in the doorway of his old office, looking stricken. Everybody at that point had heard about the trouble going on in the Arctic, the tension between the North Pacific forces and the Aleutian Group; when the shooting started, the scuttlebutt had gone around the offices like lightning, but there had been very few details. Nathan had ignored the gossip and the noise and had concentrated on his work. Not until he looked up and saw Bill standing there did it come home to him that something had happened, and not just to someone else: to him.
His son with the infectious laugh, the intense desire for knowledge, the utter certainty that he was invulnerable: dead, and for nothing. It hadn't even been a proper battle—as if that would have helped—just a dirty little clash between two ships whose commanders both had itchy trigger fingers and not enough courage to back down. Nathan had coped even then, through the horror of having to go home and tell Carol, the dreadfulness of identifying the body, the ravaging funeral which had to be conducted with dignity, for the sake of the others who grieved as much as Nathan in Eric's honor.
He remembered the nights he had held Carol, and cried: both while he was still trying to work out how to deal with the terrible thing that had happened to them, and after he had made up his mind what to do about it—after he had resigned from the Navy, and moved himself and Carol away from the wars and rumors of wars, to the quiet of the deserted island off the Yucatán. It was only Carol, he realized now, who had made it possible for him to cope during that awful time: only her silent support, only her courage.
For now she was gone too, and with her, so was his ability to cope.
Death.
He had been a military man, used to the idea that you might die in the service of something bigger than yourself. His long familiarity with that concept, and knowing his son was familiar with it too, was one of the things that had helped to keep him in one piece through the grief of Eric's loss. But it was another matter to die of something useless, something you were helpless against, something that came and took you, irrationally, by stealth, in the night—the way it had taken Carol.
One evening it had seemed simply as if she had caught cold. Carol had made light of it, had gone to bed early that nigh
t and had told Nathan she would lie out in the sun next day and "bake it out of" her. But the next morning, other forces than the sun were baking her: the fever had taken hold and was burning away her slender body like a stick in a fire. Her temperature was already nearly a hundred and four when Nathan woke beside her to find her tossing and moaning in the grip of delirium. He had no idea what had caused so sudden an illness, and in great fear had done what he swore he would never do again—turned on the radiolink and called the mainland for help. Then he had set about trying to bring Carol's temperature down with brine packs. But it was already too late, and by the time help arrived two hours later, she was gone...
The diagnosis of a rare tropical disease had only infuriated and grieved him more than her death itself. He had given her to the sea, and resolved to have nothing further to do with the world, which was so much faster at delivering death than a chance for life. He had turned his back steadfastly on death, determined at best, with his research, to fight it; at least, to ignore it. Now, though, he found how futile the attempt had been. Those helpless screams echoed in his head, cousins to Carol's dying moans, and to Eric's cries that Nathan had heard in nightmare for so long, despite never having heard them in life. Hearing the desperate cries from the farming community, it was as if Carol and Eric had died all over again, and wounds that Nathan had foolishly thought healed, or at least sealed over, were open again, and throbbing.
He shook his head and let out a long breath, then touched the pad to bring up the lights and looked around. His cabin—not as small as some he had had, not as big as others, but comfortable enough: bed, desk bay with desk and computer, a sea window nearby, the view out of it dark except for the occasional bloom of light from a passing TeamCraft, and off to one side, the door to the head. His bags were on the bed—and an envelope lay there beside them.
He went to the bed, picked up the envelope with his name on it, opened the note inside it, read it.
Swallowed. Nathan glanced over at the desk bay, twitching slightly.
They did it, then. Somehow.
I refuse to be afraid of this—
But, irrationally, he was.
Nonetheless, he walked slowly over to the desk bay. He stood over the desk for a moment, then slid the keyboard out of the console and looked it over. Nathan glanced at the piece of paper in his hand, punched out the password written on it on the keyboard—and waited, his heart hammering.
The light in the room went dark and moody. Now, is that the computer, he thought, turning, or a gray out—
He turned.
And blinked, and stared, because in the middle of the now dimmer room, a swirl of light was beginning to form.
A human shape began to structure itself from that light. From the abnormal clarity and brilliance of the colors, Nathan could see now that it was a hologram forming, the details steadying down now: a man, a little stooped, a little stocky, in tweed jacket and twills, white-haired. The face resolved itself into an image as sharp as any photograph's: a lined face, much lived in, very old, but very sharp and wise, and essentially kind.
The old man stood there and looked at him.
"Professor Danielson?" Nathan said.
"Hello, Nathan... the old man said. "Welcome back."
CHAPTER 8
Gedrick Station was a mess. For all the work that had gone on, and was still going on, the seaQuest engineers might as well have saved their time for tasks aboard the submarine. Its primary derrick and exchanger stack was still wreathed in the filthy clouds of pollutant waste that came smoking from the ruptured vent. Swirls of heat- distorted water mingled with the foulness, sending it spiraling like drunken sea snakes through the jumble of smashed structural bracing that was the legacy of the Delta's attack.
The patching operation wasn't just hot, sweaty, dirty work; it was dangerous too. Every now and then something shifted deep within the tangle, and a couple of tons of jagged ironwork moved together with a sound like the crunch of massive metallic jaws. seaQuest's EVA suits were armored, and the TeamCraft were proofed against most of the hazards of pressure—but against what could happen here, they were no sturdier than blown eggshells. Every time the wreckage settled, they had to move clear or risk the consequences, and that meant whatever task was only half-completed remained that way until it was safe to move back into the area. Only the unmanned welding crabs specifically designed for hazardous deep-sea operation were able to stay in place; and though they could be crushed without loss of life, seaQuest's engineering team had only so many of the little automatons to spare. They were already looking nervously at the inventory listings, because one more drawback about putting to sea for nothing more than a twenty-four-hour shakedown cruise was that those inventories showed nothing like full.
* * *
Nathan Bridger knew nothing of Engineering Section's difficulties. He had enough problems of his own. Every time he thought that he was coming to terms with seaQuest and all the things that had been done to "improve" her since he'd left the project, some other problem turned up to be dealt with. The appearance of a man he recognized—and knew to be dead—for one thing. Bridger didn't believe in ghosts; he had too much of a rational, sensible, scientific mind for that, and this was only a hologram after all. But despite rationality, something inside him felt just a twinge spooked.
"So they've done this too," Nathan said softly.
He walked slowly around the image; it glanced around to follow him, but otherwise stood still and waited. Nathan reached out thoughtfully to the hologram, staring at the back of his hand to see how the projection would alter. It didn't, even when the hand went right through the tweed jacket and came out on the other side. "You look even better than I remember from the Academy," he said. "But wait a second... the Navy was refusing to install you. Had refused. How'd you get here?"
"Our young Mr. Lucas Wolenczak," said the image of Old Man Danielson. "He brought me on-line several weeks ago—found the disabled installation routines in the core and enabled them, despite the password locks." "He" smiled. "He's really quite remarkable."
"So I've noticed." Nathan came around in front of the image again. It still came as a shock to discover that this particular brainchild of his had grown up without so much as a nod of acknowledgment toward its original parent. But that was unjust. For the past few years, the original parent—Nathan's mind still flinched from all but the most abstract implications of that word—had been as far out of touch as he could get, and if he hadn't been kept up to date on developments, he knew who could take the blame.
"What is your mission?" he said, testing.
"I am a synthetic intelligence, intended to provide a sounding board in times of moral or ethical conflict," the Old Man said, "conjoined to a holographic interface for maximum effectiveness of use."
"Very good," Nathan said.
The image looked at him with exactly the same wry expression that the real Danielson would have used on any cadet bold enough to tell him he had done something right. "Lucas has given me a wide range of source material to draw on," the Old Man said. "In addition, you can change my image by inserting a photograph in the imaging port of the main computer unit."
"Well, seems like our little friend thought of everything," Nathan said. "But why is this one the primary image? The default, as I remember, was supposed to be nonspecific—a computer-generated officer of equal rank."
"When Admiral Noyce briefly reactivated the development program a year ago, this was the image and personality he specified for the demos for the brass."
"Maximum effectiveness," Bridger muttered, and paced around the projection again. He was both amused and irritated when it began to pace too, keeping in step with him. Just for me, he thought. Noyce was so sure that the kid would come back to the candy store—and once there, he would find their old instructor waiting for him, in the not-very-solid flesh—
The hologram nodded agreement again, and Nathan knew he would have found more comfort in a mechanical awkwardness than i
n this too-smooth, too-human motion. Too perfect... "Someone the Captain can talk to... when he can't talk to anyone else," said "Danielson's" voice. No, blast it. Danielson's. Some parts of virtual reality could be too real for comfort. "Someone he can confide in. Voice his innermost questions... his doubts...”
Bridger swung around to glare at the hologram. Never mind his innermost doubts, the thing seemed able to read his innermost thoughts, and formulate a reasoned response to them.
Unless...
He hadn't been hiding what he had been thinking, the way he would have done with a real person. Not that he was secretive by nature, but there were some things that were nobody else's business. Was it possible that the holographic receptors were able to react and counteract to visual stimuli even more subtle than a change of expression? He hesitated, wondering just how analytical the circuitry could be. Knowing the difference between right and wrong had long been a yardstick in courts of law for judging the potential for guilt or innocence; and the shades of gray that lay to either side of those absolutes made a morass in which psychology researchers could be heard plunging about even today. But a machine...
"What's seaQuest's current depth?" Nathan said.
“Twenty-two hundred feet."
"What's the meaning of life?"
"Be more specific," the Old Man said, exactly as severely as he would have to a cadet who hadn't been exact enough.
"Forget it," Nathan said, and walked around for a few seconds more. "Are you familiar with the ship's mainframe?"
The Old Man smiled. "Nathan, I am the mainframe."
"Right. Then you can track down the virus that's affected the ship?"
"Can you locate the viruses in your own body from your symptoms when you have a cold?" the Old Man said mildly. "Or locate a growing brain tumor? Sorry, Nathan. My capacities are limited to the data that's fed into my memory units."
"Great," Nathan said, pacing.
"This information upsets you?"