Charon: A Dragon at the Gate

EPILOGUE

The man in the chair came out of it slowly. He lifted the probes from his head and pushed the apparatus away, but just sat there for a while, as if in a daze.

“Are you all right?” the computer asked him, sounding genuinely concerned.

“Yeah, as good as I’ll ever be again, I guess. It gets worse and worse. Now I’m considering joining the enemy!”

“Differing circumstances, an additional year in an alien environment under trapped conditions—it is not totally unexpected. They are not you. They are different people.”

The man chuckled mirthlessly. “Maybe. Maybe. At any rate—you saw and heard?”

“It is obvious. Do you wish to file a report and make a recommendation now?”

The man seemed startled. “Huh? No. Of course not! Some pieces are still missing, and while I’m pretty sure I know what is going on I’m still not at all sure how to stop it.”

“Tune is of the essence now,” the computer reminded him. “You heard Matuze. A matter of months. That means they are probably all in place even now.”

“And we’ve yet to find the aliens. We’ve yet to see what one looks like. We’ve yet to determine their defensive force and how near it is. Pretty near, I’d guess.”

“I believe you do not wish to act,” the computer responded. “You know why the aliens are here, their interest in the Warden Diamond specifically, the method by which the Confederacy is to be attacked and just about when—there is more than enough evidence to act.”

“Evidence! Deduction! Not a shred of real evidence!”

“Considering the extreme circumstances and the consistency of the deductions on three worlds now, I’d say you were more than justified.”

“No!” the man protested. “I want to be absolutely certain! There are millions of lives at stake here!”

“In the Warden Diamond. But there are thousands of times that at stake elsewhere.”

“It’s not as easy as you make it seem. That’s why they just don’t let you make the decisions. We still have some time. And maybe we can figure out some way so nobody has to die.”

“You have changed,” the computer chided. “I feel obligated to make an emergency summary report. You will add your conclusions.”

“Not yet. All right—look. Let me get to the ship’s library and labs for a day or so. I also want to check out communications. I have a strong feeling I can track the alien fleet.”

“I don’t believe you. You’re just stalling. You have become assimilated with your counterparts.”

“Three days. Even you will have to admit that three days won’t hurt anything. Besides, the solution is so outrageous they wouldn’t believe it now anyway. Even you must admit that much.”

The computer actually hesitated a moment. Finally it said, “All right Three days. What can you possibly expect to turn up in three days?”

“Just watch. And I’ll want to run Medusa before we finish up.”

“But Medusa is not complete.”

“Makes no difference. Medusa’s the key to it all. Be ready when I return.”

He walked back, showered, dressed, then approached the security door that both interlocked him to and isolated him from the giant picket ship. He pressed the identplate; the door refused to open. Angrily, he turned and yelled at the empty air, “All right! Let me out, you bastard! We had an agreement!”

“Do you really know what you’re going to do, or are you just grasping at straws?” the computer’s disembodied voice asked him.

“Look—am I a prisoner or the agent in charge?” he shot back angrily.

“You will come back?”

“Of course I will! Where the hell am I going to run?”

“What are you planning?”

’I’m—oh, let’s just say I’m of two minds about it right now.”

“Well…”

“Would I lie to you?”

There was a second pause, and then the door opened.