Forever Peace

  “One of the few days,” I added, “when most of the politicians are also in Washington. And more or less in one place, at the parade.”

  “A lot of what happens before, just before that, is control of the news. ‘Spin,’ they used to call it.

  “Two weeks before, we will have finished humanizing the entire POW compound down in Panama City. It’s going to be a miracle—all those unruly, hostile captives transformed into a forgiving, cooperative nation, eager to use their newfound harmony to end the war.”

  “I see where this is going,” Reza said. “We’ll never get away with it.”

  “Okay,” Marty said. “Where are we going?”

  “You get everybody excited about turning these nasty goomie soldiers into angels, and then you whip aside the magic curtain and say, ‘Ta-da! We’ve done the same thing to all our soldiers. By the way, we’re taking over Washington.’”

  “Not quite that subtle.” Marty rolled up a tortilla with a strange mixture of beans, shredded cheese, and olives. “By the time the public learns about it, it will be ‘Oh, by the way, we’ve taken over Congress and the Pentagon. Stay out of our way while we work this out.’” He bit into the tortilla and shrugged at Reza.

  “Six weeks from now,” Reza said.

  “Six eventful weeks,” Amelia said. “Just before I left Texas, I sent the rationale for the doomsday scenario to about fifty scientists—everyone in my address book tagged as a physicist or astronomer.”

  “That’s funny,” Asher said. “I wouldn’t have gotten it, since I’d be in your book as ‘math’ or ‘old fart.’ But you’d think some colleague would have mentioned it by now. How long’s it been?”

  “Monday,” Amelia said.

  “Four days.” Asher filled a mug with coffee and steaming milk. “Have you contacted any of them?”

  “Of course not. I haven’t dared to pick up a phone or log on.”

  “Nothing in the news,” Reza said. “Aren’t any of your fifty publicity-hungry?”

  “Maybe it was intercepted,” I said.

  Amelia shook her head. “It was from a public phone, a data jack in the Dallas train station; maybe a microsecond download.”

  “So why hasn’t anybody reacted?” Reza said.

  She kept shaking her head. “We’ve been so . . . so busy. I should have . . .” She set down her plate and fished through her purse for a phone.

  “You’re not—” Marty said.

  “I’m not calling anybody.” She punched a sequence of numbers from memory. “But I never checked the echo of that call! I just assumed everybody got . . . oh, shit.” She turned the handset around. It showed a random jumble of numbers and letters. “The bastard got to my database and scrambled it. In the forty-five minutes it took for me to get to Dallas and make the call.”

  “It’s worse than that, I’m afraid,” Mendez said. “I’ve jacked with him for hour after hour. He didn’t do it; didn’t think of it.”

  “Jesus,” I said into the silence. “Could it have been someone in our department? Someone who could decrypt your files and cream them?” She’d been keying through the text. “Look at this.” There was nothing but gibberish until the last word:

  “G¡O¡D¡S¡W¡I¡L¡L.”

  * * *

  it takes time for information to percolate up through a cell system. By the time Amelia found evidence that the Hammer of God had scrambled her files, there was still one day left before the very highest echelon knew that God had given them a way to bring on the Last Day: all they had to do was keep anybody from interfering with the Jupiter Project.

  They were not dumb, and they knew a thing or two about spin themselves. They leaked the “news” that there were lunatic-fringe conservatives who wanted to convince you that the Jupiter Project was a tool of Satan; that continuing it could precipitate the end of the world. The End of the Universe! Could anything be more ridiculous? A harmless project that, now that it was set in motion, cost nobody anything, and might give us real information as to how the universe began. No wonder those religious kooks wanted it suppressed! It might prove that God didn’t exist!

  What it proved, of course, was that God did exist, and was calling us home.

  The Ender who had decrypted and destroyed Amelia’s files was none other than Macro, her titular boss, and he was glad beyond words to see that his part in the plan was crystallizing.

  Macro’s involvement did help the other Plan—Marty’s rather than God’s—in that he deflected attention from the disappearance of Amelia and Julian. He had set up Ingram to get rid of Amelia, and assumed he had taken care of the black boyfriend at the same time, good riddance to both of them. He had forged letters of resignation from both, in case anyone came looking. He’d assigned their teaching duties to people who were too grateful to be curious, and there was already so much rumor brewing about them that he didn’t bother to manufacture a cover story. Young black man and older white woman. They probably pulled up stakes and went to Mexico.

  * * *

  fortunately, i still had the rough draft of the paper on my own notebook. Amelia and I could clean it up and send a delayed broadcast after we left Guadalajara. Ellie Morgan, who had been a journalist before committing murder, volunteered to write a simplified version for general release, and one with everything but equations for a popular science magazine. That would be a pretty short article.

  The staff removed all the plates, empty or piled with bones, and brought back plates of cookies and fruit. I couldn’t look at another calorie, but Reza attacked both.

  “Since Reza has his mouth full,” Asher said, “let me be devil’s advocate for a change.

  “Suppose all it took to become humanized was a simple pill. The government demonstrates how it’s going to make life better for everyone—or even that life will end if everyone doesn’t take it—and they supply the pills to everybody. Pass a law saying it’s life imprisonment if you don’t take the pill. How many would manage not to take it anyhow?”

  “Millions,” Marty said. “Nobody trusts the government.”

  “And instead of a pill, you’re talking about a complex surgical procedure that only works ninety-some percent of the time and when it doesn’t work, it usually kills or stupefies the victim. You’ll have people running for the hills.”

  “We’ve been through this,” Marty said.

  “I know. I got the argument when we were jacked. You don’t provide it for free—you charge for it and make it a symbol of status and individual empowerment. How many Enders do you think you’re going to get that way? And what about the people who already have status and power? They’re going to say, ‘Oh, good, now everybody else can be like me’?”

  “The fact is,” Mendez said, “it does give you power. When I’m linked with the Twenty, I understand five languages; I have twelve degrees; I’ve lived over a thousand years.”

  “The status part will be propaganda at first,” Marty said. “But when people look around and see that virtually everything of interest is being done by the humanized, we won’t have to sell the idea.”

  “I’m worried about the Hammer of God,” Amelia said. “We’re not likely to convert many of them, and some of them like to serve God by murdering the godless.”

  I agreed. “Even if we convert a few like Ingram, the nature of the cell system would keep it from spreading.”

  “They’re notoriously antijack anyhow,” Asher said. “Enders in general, I mean. And arguments about status and power aren’t going to move them.”

  “Spiritual arguments might,” Ellie Morgan said. She looked kind of saintly herself, all in white with long flowing white hair. “Those of us who are believers find our belief strengthened, and broadened.”

  I wondered about that. I’d felt her belief, jacked, and was attracted by the comfort and peace she derived from it. But she’d instantly accepted my atheism as “another path,” which didn’t sound much like any Ender I’d met. The hour I’d spent linked with Ingram and two others, Ingra
m had used the power of the jack to visualize imaginative hells for the three of us, all involving anal rape and slow mutilation.

  It would be interesting to jack with him after he’d been humanized, and play those hells back for his entertainment. I suppose he’d forgive himself.

  “That’s an angle we ought to map out,” Marty said. “Using religion—not your kind, Ellie, but organized religion. We’ll automatically have people like the Cyber-Baptists and Omnia on our side. But if we could be endorsed by some mainstream religion, we could have a big bloc that not only preached our gospel, but demonstrated its effectiveness.” He picked up a cookie and inspected it. “I’ve been concentrating so much on the military aspects that I’ve neglected other concentrations of power. Religion, education.”

  Belda tapped her cane on the floor. “I don’t think deans and professors are going to see the appeal of gaining knowledge without working through their institutions. Mr. Mendez, you plug into your friends and speak five languages. I only speak four, none of them that well, and it took a large piece of my youth, sitting and memorizing, to learn three of those four. Pedagogues are jealous of the time and energy they invest in gaining knowledge. You offer it to people like a sugar pill.”

  “But no, it’s not like that at all,” Mendez said earnestly. “I only understand things in Japanese or Catalan when one of the others is thinking with that language. I don’t keep it.”

  “It’s like when Julian joined us,” Ellie said. “The Twenty never had a physical scientist before. When he was linked with us, we understood his love for physics, and any of us could use his knowledge directly—but only if we knew enough, anyhow, to ask the right questions. We couldn’t suddenly do calculus. No more than we understand Japanese grammar when we’re linked with Wu.”

  Megan nodded. “It’s sharing information, not transferring it. I’m a doctor, which may not be a huge intellectual accomplishment, but it does take years of study and practice. When we’re all jacked together and someone complains of a physical problem, all the others can follow my logic in diagnosis and prescribing, while it’s happening, but they couldn’t have come up with it on their own, even though we’ve been jacked together off and on for twenty years.”

  “The experience might even motivate someone to study medicine, or physics,” Marty said, “and it certainly would help a student, to have instant intimate contact with a doctor or a physicist. But you still have to unplug and hit the books, if you want to actually have the knowledge.”

  “Or never unplug at all,” Belda said. “Just unplug to eat or sleep or go to the toilet. That’s really attractive. Billions of zombies who are temporarily expert in medicine and physics and Japanese. For all of their so-called waking hours.”

  “It’ll have to be regulated,” I said, “the way it is now. People will spend a couple of weeks jacked, to humanize them. But after that . . .”

  The front door opened so hard it banged against the wall, and three large policemen strode in with submachine guns. An unarmed policeman, smaller, followed them.

  “—I have a warrant for Dr. Marty Larrin,” he said in Spanish.

  “—What is the warrant for?” I asked. “—What is the charge?”

  “—I am not paid to answer to negros. Which of you is Dr. Larrin?”

  “I am,” I said in English. “You can answer to me.”

  He gave me a look I hadn’t seen in years, not even in Texas. “—Be silent, negro. One of you white men is Dr. Larrin.”

  “What is the warrant about?” Marty asked, in English.

  “Are you Professor Larrin?”

  “I am and I have certain rights. Of which you are aware.”

  “You do not have the right to kidnap people.”

  “Is this person I supposedly kidnapped a Mexican citizen?”

  “You know he is not. He’s a representative of the government of the United States.”

  Marty laughed. “Then I suggest you send around some other representative of the government of the United States.” He turned his back on the guns. “Where were we?”

  “To kidnap is against Mexican law.” He was turning red in the face, like a cartoon cop. “No matter who kidnaps who.”

  Marty picked up a phone handset and turned around. “This is an internal matter between two branches of the United States government.” He walked up to the man, holding the phone like a weapon, and switched to Spanish. “—You are a bug between two heavy rocks. Do you want me to make the phone call that crushes you?”

  The cop rocked back but then held his ground. “I don’t know anything about that,” he said in English. “A warrant is a simple matter. You must come with me.”

  “Bullshit.” Marty touched one number and unreeled a jack connector from the side of the handset. He clicked it onto the back of his head.

  “I demand to know who you are contacting!” Marty just stared at him, slightly wall-eyed. “¡Cabo!” He gestured, and one of the men put the muzzle of his submachine gun under Marty’s chin.

  Marty reached back slowly and unjacked. He ignored the gun and looked down into the little man’s face. His voice was shaky but firm. “In two minutes you may call your commander, Julio Casteñada. He will explain in detail the terrible mistake you almost made, in all innocence. Or you might decide to just go back to the barracks. And not further disturb Comandante Casteñada.”

  They locked eyes for a long second. The cop jerked his chin sideways and the private withdrew his gun. Without another word, the four of them filed out.

  Marty eased the door shut behind them. “That was expensive,” he said. “I jacked with Dr. Spencer and he jacked with someone in the police. We paid this Casteñada three thousand dollars to lose the warrant.

  “In the long run, money isn’t important, because we can make anything and sell it. But here and now, we don’t have a ‘long run.’ Just one emergency after another.”

  “Unless somebody finds out you have a nanoforge,” Reza said. “Then it won’t be a few cops with guns.”

  “These people didn’t look us up in the phone book,” Asher said. “It had to be someone in your Dr. Spencer’s office.”

  “You’re right, of course,” Marty said. “So at the very least, they do know we have access to a nanoforge. But Spencer thinks it’s a government connection I’m not able to talk about. That’s what these police will be told.”

  “It stinks, Marty,” I said. “It stinks on ice. Sooner or later, they’ll have a tank at the door, making demands. How long are we here?”

  He flipped open his notebook and pushed a button. “Depends on Ingram, actually. He should be humanized in six to eight days. You and I are going to be in Portobello on the twenty-second, regardless.”

  Seven days. “But we don’t have a contingency plan. If the government or the Mafia puts two and two together.”

  “Our ‘contingency plan’ is to think on our feet. So far, so good.”

  “At the very least, we ought to split up,” Asher said. “Our being in one place makes it too easy for them.”

  Amelia put a hand on my arm. “Pair up and scatter. Each pair with one person who knows Spanish.”

  “And do it now,” Belda said. “Whoever sent those boys with guns has his own contingency plan.”

  Marty nodded slowly. “I’ll stay here. Everybody else call as soon as you find a place. Who speaks enough Spanish to take care of rooms and meals?” More than half of us; it took less than a minute to sort up into pairs. Marty opened a thick wallet and put a stack of currency on the table. “Make sure each of you has at least five hundred pesos.”

  “Those of us who are up to it ought to take the subway,” I said. “An army of cabs would be pretty conspicuous, and traceable.”

  Amelia and I got our bags, not yet unpacked, and were the first ones out the door. The subway was a kilometer away. I offered to take her suitcase, but she said that would be too conspicuously un-Mexican. She should take mine, and walk two paces behind me.

  “At least
we’ll get a little breathing space to work on the paper. None of this will mean anything if the Jupiter Project is still going September fourteenth.”

  “I spent a little time on it this morning.” She sighed. “Wish we had Peter.”

  “Never thought I’d say it . . . but me, too.”

  * * *

  they would soon find out, along with the rest of the world, that Peter was still alive. But he was in no shape to help with the paper.

  Police in St. Thomas arrested a middle-aged man wandering through the market at dawn. Dirty and unshaven, dressed only in underwear, at first they thought he was drunk. When the desk sergeant questioned him, though, she found that he was sober but confused. Monumentally confused: he thought the year was 2004 and he was twenty years old.

  On the back of his skull, a jack connection so fresh it was crusted with blood. Someone had invaded his mind and stolen the last forty years.

  What was taken from his mind corroborated the text of the article, of course. Within a few days, the glorious truth had spread to all of the upper echelons of the Hammer of God: God’s plan was going to be fulfilled, appropriately enough, by the godless actions of scientists. Only a few people knew about the glorious End and Beginning that God would give them on September 14.

  One of the paper’s authors was safe, most of his brain in a black box somewhere. The academics who had juried the paper had all been taken care of, by accident or “disease.” One author was still missing, along with the agent who had been sent to kill her.

  The assumption was that they were both dead, since she hadn’t surfaced to warn the world. Evidently the authors had been uncertain how much time they had before the process became irreversible.

  The most powerful member of the Hammer of God was General Mark Blaisdell, the undersecretary of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Not too surprisingly, he knew his arch-rival, Marty’s General Roser, in a casual social way; they took meals at the same Pentagon dining room—“officers’ mess,” technically, if you can apply the term to a place with mahogany paneling and a white-clad server for each two “messers.”