The Android's Dream

Chapter 13

"Time to wake up," someone said to Brian, and just like that, he was awake.

Brian pulled himself up from the sun couch he was sleeping on and looked around him. From the looks of it he was on a patio, surrounded by an English garden positively erupting with flowers. In the center of the patio sat a young blonde at a table, tea service in front of her. She was pouring tea. It appeared to be late afternoon.

"This isn't real," Brian said.

"It's as real as it gets," said the young lady. "At the very least, it's as real as it gets for the likes of you and me. Come over and have some tea, Brian."

"You know who I am," Brian said, walking toward the table.

"I know all about you," the woman said, and slid the teacup she had just filled toward Brian. She motioned for him to sit at the table. "I know who you are, but just as important, I know what you are. Both are interesting in their own way."

"Where am I?" Brian said, sitting.

"You're in my garden," the woman said. "If you were interested I would tell you which of the Church's servers this was, but that's really immaterial. Suffice to say you're in my garden, and you're my guest. Drink your tea."

Brian picked up his cup. "And you are?" he said.

"Isn't it obvious?" she said. "I'm Andrea Hayter-Ross, matriarch, as it were, of the Church of the Evolved Lamb."

That's not possible," Brian said. "You're dead."

"Well, and so are you, Brian," Hayter-Ross said. "I'm no more dead than you are. No more alive, either."

"I mean, you've been dead for a long time," Brian said. "The technology to do what was done to me wasn't around when you passed away."

"Indeed it was not," Hayter-Ross said. "You managed to sneak into a lab and image your brain in a matter of minutes. The process that turned me into the proverbial ghost in the machine took seventeen months and three billion dollars. Seventeen rather painful months, I have to say. In the end it killed my body."

"Then why did you do it?" Brian asked.

"I was dying anyway, my dear boy," Hayter-Ross said. "I was 102 years old when we started. I was not long for the world. I had the money and the experts and I had nothing to lose in the attempt except some small portion of the Hayter-Ross fortune, which was mine to spend in any event. And so. Here I am. Here you are. Here we are, enjoying some lovely tea." She sipped from her cup. Brian followed suit, and then became aware of Hayter-Ross staring at him.

"What?" he said.

"Do you know," she said, setting down her teacup, "that in all this time you are the very first other artificial intelligence I've met? No one else seems to have figured it out."

"You Church members could have made more," Brian said. "They made you, after all."

"Oh, they don't know about me," Hayter-Ross said. "As soon as they flipped the switch, and I realized that the attempt had been successful, I also realized how much more interesting it would be if the Church had thought they had failed. If you know anything about me you know that I am an observer of the human condition. If someone knows they are being observed, it changes their actions. When I was alive, I was fascinated by the church that sprung up around poor Robbie's ridiculous poems. But of course I could not follow its goings-on without directly influencing them. This way is far more useful."

"You've been alone all this time then," Brian said.

"Yes," Hayter-Ross said. "Although that's not as bad as you seem to think. We're not human, you know. This"—she indicated her body—"is just a comfortable metaphor. We're not bound to it, nor are we bound to perceive time the way humans do. If you know what you're doing, the years fly by."

She stretched, and Brian became aware that under her summer dress, Hayter-Ross was completely nude. "Of course, there are some appealing aspects of this particular metaphor," she said. "Having said that, would you be interested in a fuck?"

"Excuse me?" Brian said.

"A fuck," Hayter-Ross said. "It's been a while for me. I could use one. I create playthings, of course, but that's really just masturbation, isn't it? As a former human yourself, no doubt you can appreciate the value of getting laid by someone who has a working brain."

"Can I take a rain check?" Brian said. "I'm sort of rushed for time at the moment."

"Again with the time," Hayter-Ross said. "I can tell you're new at this being an artificial intelligence thing. Fine. We'll table it for later. Tell me why you're in a rush."

"Friends of mine are in danger," Brian said.

"Harry Creek and Robin Baker," Hayter-Ross said, as she reached for a cookie from the tea service. "And of course you are right. They are in danger. The Church is tapped into the Nidu computer system, as I'm sure you've guessed. The Nidu ambassador to Earth has informed his government that they're on the Neverland cruise ship. As soon as the Neverland enters Nidu space at Chagfun, the Neverland will be boarded by Nidu troops and Robin Baker will be taken and brought to the planet Nidu itself. After Robin Baker is used for me coronation ceremony, it's likely to be war between Nidu and Earth, or so everyone involved appears to believe." Hayter-Ross bit down on her cookie, precisely.

"Do you know differently?" Brian asked.

"I might," Hayter-Ross said.

"Tell me," Brian said. "I need to warn Harry."

"You can't warn Harry," Hayter-Ross said. "I've been examining you for a couple of days, Brian, and only now just zipped you back up. Right now the Neverland is about to jump from the planet Brjnn to Chagfun. You can't hail a ship in n-space. And when the Neverland arrives, its communications will likely be jammed by the Nidu. Church analysts believe that once the Nidu extract Robin Baker, they're almost certain to destroy the Neverland and claim it never arrived at all. And who could argue the point? Robin and Harry are traveling under different names, after all. Her presence at the coronation will prove nothing. She's not likely to survive long past the coronation anyway, of course." Hayter-Ross took another precise bite of her cookie.

"And what about Harry?" Brian said.

"If the Nidu haven't already killed him for trying to defend Miss Baker, I imagine he'll go down with the Neverland" Hayter-Ross said.

Brian pushed away from the table. "Let me out of here," he said.

Hayter-Ross looked up at him with a bemused smile. "Why would I do that?" she said.

"I have to do something," Brian said. "Anything."

"Do you know how you died, Brian?" Hayter-Ross said.

"What?" Brian said.

"Your death," Hayter-Ross said. "You know you died, I'm sure. I'm asking you if you know how it happened."

"Harry told me it was at the Battle of Pajmhi," Brian said. "So what? What does that have to do with anything?"

"It might have quite a lot to do with everything," Hayter-Ross said. "I told you that everyone seems to think Earth and Nidu are headed toward a war. A war that will be no good for Earth, obviously. But as I've said, I'm quite the observer of the human condition—and for the last several decades of the Nidu condition as well. I know things that no one else knows, and I can share them with you, but you're going to have to do something for me."

"I'm now even less in the mood for sex than I was before," Brian said.

Hayter-Ross laughed. "I've tabled the sex, Brian, really, I have," she said. "Honestly. I want to help you, Brian. And I want you to help your friends. But to do that I have to make sure you fully understand what I'm going to tell you and why. And to do that you and I are going to have to do a couple of things. The first of these is to show you how you died."

"Why do you want to help me?" Brian said.

"Because I like you, you silly boy," Hayter-Ross said. "And because I would no more have humanity squashed under Nidu rule than you would. I am human. Or was. And enough of me still is to want to pull our species' nuts from the fire."

"I don't trust you," Brian said.

"Nor should you," Hayter-Ross said. "I have a history of doing bad things to people I like. I liked Robbie Dwellin, you know. He was sweet, in a gormless con-artist sort of way. And look what I did to him. But I'm afraid if you want to help your friends you really have no other choice. This is a lovely garden, but it has no entrances and no exits that you can use. And I think you know by now you're no match for me, Brian. I have many, many years experience being an artificial intelligence. I could unzip you again at my leisure, and you have no assurance I'd put you back together again. So you either do things my way or you can have tea in this lovely garden all the way through to the heat death of the universe. Your choice."

"For someone who wants to help me, you sure are threatening," Brian said.

"Nice is nice," Hayter-Ross said. "But being a bitch gets results."

"You said that there's no way for me to reach Harry anyway," Brian said "If I'm not able to do that, I don't see what advantage playing your game has for me."

Andrea Hayter-Ross sighed. "If I promise you that the Nidu will not get the Neverland without a fight, will that be enough for now?"

"It might," Brian said.

"All right," Hayter-Ross said. "Then it will give you pleasure to know that the Church has dispatched a messenger to tell the UNE about the Nidu plans for the Neverland. Someone who knows your friends. Now will you please sit back down?"

Brian moved back toward the table. "Who is this messenger talking to at the UNE?"

"Someone who can get results," Hayter-Ross said.

"Who?" Brian said, sitting back down.

"Your brother, of course," said Hayter-Ross. "More tea?"

Ben Javna was at his desk when the lobby security detail rang through.

"Yeah," Javna said.

"Mr. Javna, we've got a gentleman here who says he needs to speak to you about a sheep."

"A sheep?" Javna said. "Who is he?"

"His ID says his name is Samuel Young," the guard said.

"Have someone bring him up to me," Javna said.

Two minutes later Samuel "Fixer" Young was standing in front of Javna.

"Let's cut the bullshit and get right to cases, if you don't mind," Javna said to Fixer, after the security guard had left. "Tell me where Harry Creek and Robin Baker are, right now."

"Fine," Fixer said. "Creek and Baker are on a cruise liner called the Neverland. Right now it's in n-space between Brjnn and Chagfun. They're safe for the moment."

"And you know this because," Javna said.

"Because I put them on the ship," Fixer said.

Javna felt himself relax. "That's good news," he said.

"It's not," Fixer said. "The Nidu know they're on the ship. When the Neverland arrives at Chagfun, the Nidu will likely board the ship, take Robin, and destroy the Neverland and kill everyone on board."

"How do you know this?" Javna said.

"I can't tell you," Fixer said. Which wasn't exactly true. He could tell, but the Church had offered him a substantial chunk of cash to keep its name out of it Fixer had had a rough few days, but if he lived through the next few he was going to be richer than hell.

"Can you prove what you're saying to me?" Javna said.

"No," Fixer said. "But it's true."

"Do you seriously expect me to believe you?" Javna said.

"You could double-check my story with the Nidu," Fixer said. "I'm sure they'll be happy to admit they're planning to torpedo a cruise liner filled with UNE civilians."

Three minutes later, Javna and Fixer were in Jim Heffer's office. Fixer repeated his message.

"Isn't this convenient," Heffer muttered, looking up at Javna. "And just a few hours before you and I are supposed to be on our way to Nidu for the coronation ceremony."

"It's no coincidence," Javna said. "They grab the girl and get her to Nidu before there's time to do anything about it. The coronation ceremony starts late, but it finishes nonetheless. And there's another wrinkle."

"I can't wait to hear what it is," Heffer said.

"Robin Baker's no longer a UNE citizen," Javna said. "We disenfranchised her to make her her own sovereign species and to keep the Nidu from having an excuse to break our treaties. But it also means that if they grab her and use her for the ceremony we have no legal way to protect her. We have no treaties with the woman."

"The Nidu would still be violating their CC charter," Heffer said.

"Not if they declared war on her first," Javna said.

Heffer chuckled ruefully. "Nidu declaring war on a single person. Good lord."

"It's idiotic but it's legal," Javna said.

"We can't signal the Neverland," Heffer said.

"It's in n-space," Javna said.

"At the very least we can warn Nidu not to board her," Heffer said.

"We could," Javna said. "But how do we enforce it? Chagfun is a minor Nidu colony. We have no presence there. They could torpedo the Neverland and we'd never be able to confirm it. If they hit her hard enough, everything would simply burn up in the atmosphere."

"How long until the Neverland reaches Chagfun?" Heffer asked.

"I have no idea," Javna said.

"Here," Fixer said, fishing out a piece of paper. "It's the Never-land's itinerary."

Heffer took it and looked at it. "The Neverland jumped into n-space less than a half hour ago," he said. "You couldn't have come by an hour earlier?"

"I'm just the messenger," Fixer said. "Please don't shoot me."

"She's not due in at Chagfun until the day after tomorrow," Heffer said, and tapped his desk for a moment. "Come on, you two," he said. "We're going to the Pentagon."

At the Pentagon, Bob Pope ignored Heffer to zero in on Javna. "You know Dave Phipps has gone missing," he said.

"I didn't," Javna said. "When did this happen?"

"The day he had lunch with you," Pope said, and then pointed at Heffer. "After our little meeting with the president about the Nidu destroyers I tried to reach Dave and got nothing. He's been out since with no word."

"He told me that he needed to close down a couple of projects," Javna said, "relating to our little interdepartmental power struggle."

Pope opened his mouth to refute Javna, then shut it and looked at Heffer. "We're all friends today," he said, as a statement, not a question.

"Whatever you say, Bob," Heffer said.

"We contracted out to a team suggested to us by Jean Schroeder." It was Heffer's turn to open his mouth; Pope put up his hand. "I know. Friends, Jim. Schroeder has gone missing. The team we were using—what's left of it since the Arlington Mall incident—has gone missing, too. I'm pretty sure Dave went to see Schroeder the night he disappeared."

"So Phipps is with Schroeder and his team," Heffer said.

"I can't believe Dave would do that," Pope said.

"I have to side with Secretary Pope," Javna said. "When I talked with Phipps he said things had gone too far. He sounded like he was wrapping things up, not getting ready to run."

"If he's not with Schroeder, then where is he?" Heffer said.

Pope looked at Javna. "You know what I think," he said.

"You think he's dead," Javna said. "You two put together a team to kill Harry and Robin Baker and when Phipps decided to have them take the fall, they killed him instead."

"Bob, whatever happened to Phipps, I'm sorry to hear it," Heffer said. "But at the moment we have another problem." Heffer had Fixer repeat his warning about the Neverland.

"Who gave you this information?" Pope asked Fixer.

"The same people who saved me when one of the members of your 'team' tried to eat me," Fixer said. "I realize I don't count here, but I'm personally inclined to believe them."

"What do you think?" Pope said, to Heffer.

"We can't ignore it," Heffer said. "The Nidu have already tried every legal avenue to get Robin Baker. She's a critical part of the coronation ceremony. I think this information makes sense. I think they're going to try for her and to hell with anyone who gets in their way."

"Dropping a UNE ship into Nidu space is awfully close to war, Jim," Pope said.

"The Nidu firing on a civilian ship is already an act of war," Heffer said. "If nothing else, Nidu won't be able to hide what they're doing from us or the CC."

"If you're wrong on this, I'm taking you down with me," Pope said.

"If I'm wrong on this, you won't need to take me down with you," Heffer said. "I'll go willingly."

Pope jabbed a button on his desk; the windows in his office went opaque and the room became noticeably dimmer. Pope pointed at Fixer. "You wait outside." Fixer nodded and headed to the door. When he was gone, Pope poked a second button. A projector above his desk came to life and displayed a dimensional map of the space that contained the Earth, her colonies, and other local star systems.

"Display Chagfun," Pope said. A star near the top of the display glowed brightly. "All right," Pope said. "The closest colony we have to Chagfun is Breton Colony, here." Pope reached in to touch a star; the display flickered and reset to show an Earthlike globe. "List UNE ships at Breton," Pope said.

There were three. "The James Madison, the Winston Churchill, and the British Columbia," Pope said. "The Madison and the Churchill can't help us. Their jump engines are too weak to get to Chagfun in time. But the British Columbia." Pope touched the name in the floating list; the screen flickered again and generated an image of the British Columbia and a catalogue of its stats. "Yes, the 'Britcee' could do it. If she gets under way in the next hour, she can be there right around the time the Neverland arrives. It's going to be close, though."

"What are you going to do, Bob?" Heffer asked.

"First, I'm going to get Admiral Nakamura on the comm and tell him that if he doesn't get the 'Britcee' on the move in fifty minutes, he can have his resignation on my desk ten minutes after that," Pope said. "Then I'm going to take your little friend on the other side of the door and haul him over to the Oval Office so I can explain why I've committed a UNE battle cruiser to a combat mission without the president's approval. Then if I still have a job I believe I'm going to have a stiff drink. Aren't you going to the Nidu coronation, Jim?"

"I am," Heffer said, and signaled to Javna. "We both are. We're leaving in a couple of hours."

"Well, that"s excellent," Pope said. "You'll be there to explain to the Nidu why we've started a war with them. And I'm glad. After today, I may be out of a job, but the two of you are likely to be prisoners of war. I'd rather have it that way than the other way around. Now if you'll excuse me, gentlemen, I need to play Russian roulette with our planet's future with the bullet you've so thoughtfully provided. I hope you don't mind if I don't see you out."

A bullet whined past Brian's ear. He flinched.

"Realistic, isn't it?" Andrea Hayter-Ross said.

The table at which the two of them sat floated serenely over the vast Pajmhi plain. Around Brian erupted the sights and sounds of war The bursts of gunfire, the wet smacking sounds of rounds striking human or Nidu flesh, the screams of both species as its members fell to the plain writhing, their blood—both red—oozing, spurting, and flowing into the ground. Brian gripped the table; he knew intellectually that the table was actually not floating over the plain, and that what he was seeing was a computer simulation, but that didn't stop him from feeling dizzy or uncertain of the stability of his seat.

"This is how it happened, you know," Hayter-Ross said.

"What are you talking about?" Brian said.

"The Battle of Pajmhi," Hayter-Ross said, and poured herself more tea. "Each UNE serviceman and woman went into battle with a little camera in their helmet, and every camera recorded what it saw and transmitted back the data. Plus monitor cameras that caught the action from above, so long as they weren't shot down by the rebels, and many of them were. But overall, that's over 100,000 points of view of the battle, all recorded for posterity. Not that posterity has bothered with it. All the data feeds are stored in UNE Defense servers and are available for public viewing—Freedom of Information and all that. But no one ever does. Certainly no one has done this—she swept an arm to encompass the carnage—"stitch the data all together and play out the entire battle."

"So this is it," Brian said. "This is really it."

"As best as can be reconstructed," Hayter-Ross said. To her left an infantryman caught a bullet below his left eye; his face caved as he jerked back and collapsed into the dirt. "There are gaps here and there. Even with 100,000 helmets, there are still places where no one is looking at any one time. But it's mostly here. I haven't bothered to simulate the movement of every leaf on every tree. But the battles—yes. Those are exactly as they happened. Now, come along." The table appeared to slide along the landscape; from every line of sight Brian saw death. He longed to warn the humans he saw falling around him but knew it would do no good. Like Scrooge tugged along by the Ghost of Christmas Past, he was seeing only the shadows of the past, not the event itself.

A marine screamed in Briaris ear as a rebel slug raggedly severed her arm from her body, just below her shoulder. Shadow or not, Brian winced at me pain.

"You have no memory of any of this, of course," Hayter-Ross said. "The brain scan that created this version of you was made before you came here. This is all alien to you."

"Yes," Brian said.

"That's probably for the best," Hayter-Ross said. "When you see your friends die, it won't have any meaning to you."

"Did many of them die?" Brian asked.

"Oh, yes," Hayter-Ross said. "Quite a few. And here we are."

Their tea table came to a stop mere feet from a squad of soldiers crouched behind a ridge, exchanging fire with a cadre of rebels in the brush in front of them. With a start Brian recognized himself, only slightly older than he was at the time of his brain scan, tossing a grenade over the ridge at the rebels. Three men down the line Harry crouched, carefully sighting rebel infantry and firing in short, controlled bursts before moving again to avoid being shot himself. Brian was horrified and fascinated at seeing a portion of his life that he had not experienced, and which would shortly end in his own death.

Hayter-Ross noticed. "Unsettling," she prompted. Brian could only nod. "I know," she said. "This version of me was taken from memories stored only until the day before my death. I died during another session to transfer memory and consciousness, so I've no memory of it. I've watched the recording over and over. Watching myself die while doctors and technicians struggle around me, watching the look in my eyes as I realize that I'm passing on and yet not being able to feel the actual emotion. I don't know if it was fear or relief or confusion. I wasn't there. It can be maddening."

"Why are you showing me this?" Brian said, unable to take his eyes away from himself.

"You'll see," Hayter-Ross said. "In fact, you're going to see right now."

Brian watched as the soldier version of himself hurled another grenade and lay low while it detonated. His soldier self peeked over the ridge and saw rebel troops pulling back, let out a whoop, and headed over the ridge to clean up as they fled. Behind him two other soldiers followed, carried as much by Brian's excitement as their own. Watching himself, Brian could hear Harry and their sergeant both yelling at him and the other two to get back, but this other version of himself either couldn't hear or wasn't listening. Within seconds, the three soldiers were heedlessly far from their comrades, chasing rebels through the tall grass toward a copse of trees. Brian felt himself tense, waiting for the inevitable.

It wasn't long in coming. Just short of the copse, one of the soldiers spun wildly from a bullet in the shoulder; another bullet struck as he spun, sneaking under his bullet shield and piercing his back, spattering gore on the inside of his bullet shield as it erupted through his front side. The second soldier was down next, his kneecap vaporized; he was screaming before he hit the ground. From his tea table, Brian noticed the rebels had shot down the most distant soldiers first; the ones in front wouldn't see their comrades fall and would recklessly keep moving forward.

Brian watched helplessly as his other self became the final target. He was struck near simultaneously by two bullets, one in the left ankle and a second in the lower right hip. The force of the ankle hit worked to flip Brian, but the hip shot counteracted the spin; in the end Brian simply flew backward as if hit by an invisible freight truck. Brian the soldier's body flew backward, landing back in the grass with a solid thump; two seconds later he began to scream.

"What do you notice?" Hayter-Ross asked Brian.

Brian collected himself and tried to think. "We're all still alive," he said, finally.

"Yes," Hayter-Ross said. "Alive and screaming and out in the open where anyone who comes to rescue you is an easy target for the rebels. You saw how they shot the three of you in reverse sequence. And they shot you to keep you alive—in the short run at least. You know what that means."

"They laid a trap," Brian said. "I thought I had flushed them out in the open, but they flushed me out instead."

"Because if there's one thing other species know about humans," Hayter-Ross said, "it's that you don't leave anyone behind. And look, here come your squadmates."

Brian turned back toward the ridge to see two soldiers snake their way through the grass toward the last of the soldiers. One lay down a suppressing fire as the second tried to lift the wounded soldier into a firecarry. As he did so he popped up out of the grass. From the copse came a hail of fire; one struck the soldier just below the jaw, tearing open his neck. The soldier instinctively grabbed at his neck, causing the soldier he was carrying to drop heavily to the ground, head first. A second bullet from the copse struck the still-standing soldier, punching him back down to the ground. The soldier who had been laying down fire crawled to the second soldier and pressed his hand against his friend's neck.

"That won't help," Hayter-Ross said. "Look at the spurting. It hit the carotid artery."

"Stop this," Brian said, turning away. "Stop this now."

"Very well," Hayter-Ross said, and everything froze. Brian stared at the stopped time.

"Do you know why I'm showing you this?" Hayter-Ross said.

"No," Brian said.

"I'm showing you this because you have a distressing tendency not to think before you act," Hayter-Ross said. "You attacked the Church's network because you stupidly thought there would be nothing to stop you from burrowing through its defenses. And of course we see how that ended." Hayter-Ross nodded toward the frozen battlefield. "Here, you ran into the open, chasing the enemy you thought you had on the run, and because of it, you died—but not before condemning three of your fellow soldiers to the same fate. You were the last to die, you know. Your friend Harry Creek managed to get to you and stop your bleeding and then protect you and the other fallen members of your squad for two Chagfun days before you could be pulled out. You died just before they got you out. Peritonitis complicated by an infection of Chagfun microbes. The microbes killed a lot of soldiers. Something about the human chemistry superheated their metabolisms and made them reproduce like mad. Your hip had almost entirely rotted away before you died."

"Shut up," Brian said. "I get your point, okay. Please, just shut up, now."

"Don't get angry at me for your own shortcomings," Hayter-Ross said. "I'm doing this for your own good."

"I don't see what good this does me," Brian said. "I have a problem thinking before I act. Fine. Now let me go help my friends."

"Not yet," Hayter-Ross said. "You recognize you have a problem. That's the first step. Now you're ready to learn what you have to tell your friends. It's not going to be easy, and your first impulse will be to ignore the advice—or would have been, before I showed you this. Now you may be willing to listen to reason."

"And what is that?" Brian said.

"I'm not going to tell you," Hayter-Ross said.

"Jesus fucking Christ, woman," Brian said. "You are the single most irritating person I've ever come across in either of my lifetimes."

"Thank you, Brian," Hayter-Ross said. "Coming from an eighteen-year-old, that means a lot."

"Why did you show me this if you're not going to tell me how to help my friends?" Brian asked.

"I'm not going to tell you, because I'm going to show you," Hayter-Ross said. "Or rather, I'm going to show you, and It'll be up to you to see if you can understand it."

"I mentioned you were irritating, right?" Brian said.

"You did," Hayter-Ross said. "Let's just take it as a given from here. And let me direct your attention back to this battle. As I'm sure you know by now, the Battle of Pajmhi was an unmitigated disaster for the UNE: Half of the human forces were either killed or wounded over two Chagfun days, including you. That"'s an awful waste of humans, wouldn't you say?"

"Yes," Brian said.

"Excellent," Hayter-Ross said. "Then here's what we're going to do. You and I are going to recreate the Battle of Pajmhi—the whole thing, down to the very last soldier. You'll be the UNE, and I'll be the Chagfun rebels. You need to find a way to get through the battle without losing so damn many lives. The answer to how you'll help your friends is inside these simulations."

"If I promise to believe you, can we skip all this?" Brian asked.

"This is exactly your problem, Brian," Hayter-Ross said. "Always trying get around the hard work. This isn't a Gordian knot you can slice through. You're going to have to unravel this a thread at a time. Also, you're going to have to find processing power for your side of the simulation."

"Excuse me?" Brian said.

"Having both of us control roughly 100,000 combatants is different from splicing together all those recorded video feeds," Hayter-Ross said. "And it's different from creating a garden. We're going to need a little more room for this one."

"Fine," Brian said. "I know just the place."

Bill Davison was simulating Hurricane Britt smashing into the Outer Banks (and not without some small satisfaction, as his former in-laws had beachfront property in Okracoke), when he noticed the simulation throttling back processing to non-useful levels. Bill grabbed his desk comm and punched through to Sid Gravis, who he knew was modeling a line of storms erupting in the Ohio valley.

"Goddamn it, Sid," Bill said. "You know that hurricanes trump inland storms in the processing hierarchy. It's like the first law of NOAA computer time apportionment."

"It's not me," Sid said. "I'm taking cycle hits myself. I thought it was you." Bill opened his mouth to respond but shut it as his boss popped his head through his office door and told him that the entire system had suddenly ground to a halt.

Three minutes later, Chaz McKean, the department's tech geek, figured it out. "Someone's running a huge fucking simulation out of the IBM," he said. "And whoever's doing it slaved up most of the other processors."

"I thought we took the IBM out of circulation," said Jay Tang, Bill's boss.

"We did," McKean said. "But we didn't take it off the network. So whoever's using it could still hijack the other processors on the network."

"Well, who's the asshole?" Sid said.

"That's just it," McKean said. "No one's the asshole. No one here's been logged into the IBM since we took it out of service. It's like it developed a brain of its own."

"Right now I draft care who the asshole is," Tang said. "We need our computers back. Get into the IBM and shut down the simulation."

"I already tried," McKean said. "But it's locked me out. I can't send any commands."

"Then unplug the goddamned thing," Tang said.

"If we do that, we could tube the entire network," McKean said. "Whoever's set up this simulation has got it locked up good and tight. Realistically, the only thing we can do with it is ride it out."

Tang cursed and stomped away. Bill went back into his office, pulled out his secret flask of whiskey, took a slug, and hoped to Christ that whatever it was Creek was doing, if d be done before anyone could trace the disruption back to him.

Come on, Harry, he thought. Get your ass in gear.

In simulation after simulation, Brian got his ass handed to him. Certain facts became obvious after the first few dozen simulations. The first was that the rebel informational advantage was simply too great to overcome. Even though the rebels had shown they could manipulate the Nidu computer network, the Nidu arrogantly sent combat details through the network as if it were un-compromised. The rebels knew when the UNE forces were landing, which forces were landing where, and what the weaknesses of the various forces would be. UNE forces were constrained by working under Nidu military command, in which clan and chain of command loyalty were more important than military skill. The UNE forces were also misled by the Nidu both about the strength of the enemy and the amount of useful information the Nidu possessed about the rebels and their plans.

The Chagfun rebels were under no such constraints. Their leadership showed surprising adaptability (considering it consisted of former Nidu officers) and the rebels were deeply motivated, both by the prospect of living on a planet with self-rule and by the knowledge of what would happen to them if they failed to repulse the attack Time and again the rebels would outflank, out-think, and outperform the UNE forces. Every simulation ended with tens of thousands of UNE soldiers dead and wounded—including, time and again, members of Brian's own unit

Brian improvised and as much as possible tried to work around the chain of command, but to only limited success. Troops saved in one area were counterbalanced by increased losses in others. Aggressive tactics led to appalling losses early and often. Defensive tactics led to the UNE forces flanked, pressed, and bled dry. Death, massive and arterial in its strength, stalked the UNE forces in every simulation, a constant companion to Brian's leadership. The satisfaction Brian felt when UNE forces inflicted similar-sized numbers of casualties to the rebels was cold comfort when he considered how many soldiers he had condemned to die again and again in the struggle. After more than 200 simulations and untold millions of simulated deaths, Brian felt like giving up.

So he did.

Or more accurately, his soldiers did. Fuck you, Andrea Hayter-Ross, Brian thought, as the first troops hit the Pajmhi plain and immediately dropped their weapons, put up their hands, and waited for the rebels to take them prisoner. Wave after wave of UNE troops landed and surrendered, meekly allowing themselves to be herded up by the rebels, who were themselves constrained by the rules of combat to accept the surrenders. At the end of the simulation, 100,000 UNE troops stood in the center of the Pajmhi plain, fingers interlaced behind their heads, while the rebels milled at the periphery.

Not exactly your usual battle tactic, Brian admitted to himself. On the other hand, the simulation ended with no deaths on either side.

No deaths.

"Holy shit," Brian said.

The plain of Pajmhi melted away and Brian was back in Hayter-Ross's garden. "Now you see," Hayter-Ross said, from her table.

"The only way to survive was to surrender," Brian said.

"Not only survive, but to thwart the Nidu in the bargain," Hayter-Ross said. "In the actual Battle of Pajmhi, the Nidu bombed the plain of Pajmhi almost as soon as the humans left—they dropped their planet crackers and turned one of Chagfun's most fertile and populated areas into a lava-strewn ruin, not to mention throwing the entire planetary weather system into a profound depression that caused famine and death all over the globe. None of that could have been accomplished if human prisoners had remained on Chagfun."

"Now I see why you had me do this," Brian said. "I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't have seen it."

"You wouldn't have believed it if you hadn't seen the UNE troops killed scores of times, either," Hayter-Ross pointed out.

"It's the whole experience that matters. And now you see what your friends must do."

"Surrender to the Nidu," Brian said.

"Exactly so," Hayter-Ross said.

"It's going to be tough to convince Harry of that," Brian said.

"He's not in possession of all the facts," Hayter-Ross said. "And come to think of it, neither are you."

"What new hoops are you going to make me jump through to get them?" Brian said.

"We're done with the hoops for now," Hayter-Ross said. "You've been a good boy with a pleasing learning curve. I think I'll just come right out and tell you."

And she did.