had created the two visitors. The emotion that colored every second of Revutev Mavarka’s life was his sense of impending doom.
He had already composed the Warning he would transmit to Betzino-Resdell. He could blip it at any time, with a three-word, two-number instruction to his communications system.
The moment he sent it—the instant he committed that irrevocable act—he would become the biggest traitor in the history of his species.
How many centuries would he spend in dormancy? Would they ever let him wake? Would he still be lying there when his world died in the explosion that transformed every mundane yellow star into a bloated red monster?
Every meal he ate—every woman he caressed—every view he contemplated—could be his last.
“You’ve acquired an aura, Reva,” his closest female confidante said.
“Is it attractive? I’d hate to think I was surrounded by something repulsive.”
“It has its appeal. Has one of your quests actually managed to affect something deeper than a yen for a temporary stimulus?”
“I think I’ve begun to understand those people who claim it doesn’t matter whether you live fifty years or a million. You’re still just a flicker in the life of the universe.”
“He’s savoring the possibility,” Varosa Uman told her husband.
“Like one of those people who contemplate suicide? And finish their awake still thinking about it?”
“I have to assume he could do it.”
“It seems to me it would be the equivalent of suicide. Given the outrage most people would feel.”
“We would have to give him the worst punishment the public mood demands—whatever it takes to restore calm.”
“You’re protecting him from his own impulses, love. You shouldn’t forget that. You aren’t just protecting us. You’re protecting him.”
It was all a matter of arithmetic. Trans Cultural was obviously building up a force that could overwhelm Betzino-Resdell’s defenses. At some point, it would command a horde that could cross the ditch and gnaw its way through the toxic hedge by sheer weight of numbers. Betzino-Resdell could delay that day by raiding Trans Cultural’s breeding camps and building up the defensive force gathered behind the hedge. But sooner or later Trans Cultural’s superior resources would overcome Betzino-Resdell’s best efforts.
The military hobbyist in the Betzino-Resdell community had worked the numbers. “They will achieve victory level in 8.7 terrestrial years,” Ivan advised his colleagues. “Plus or minus .3 terrestrial years. We can extend that by 2.7 terrestrial years if we increase our defensive allocation to 60 percent of our resources.”
Betzino voted to continue the current level and the other members of the community concurred. Their sponsors in the solar system would continue to receive reports on the researches and explorations that interested them.
Revutev Mavarka inspected their plan and ran it through two of the military planning routines he found in the libraries. 8.7 terrestrial years equaled six of his own world’s orbits. He could postpone his doom a little longer.
“We are going to plant a few concealed devices at promising locations,” Betzino-Resdell told him. “They will attempt to establish new bases after this one is destroyed. Our calculations indicate Trans Cultural can destroy any base it locates before the base can achieve a secure position but the calculation includes variables with wide ranges. It could be altered by unpredictable possibilities. We will reestablish contact with you if the variables and unpredictable possibilities work in our favor and we establish a new defensible base.”
“I’ll be looking forward to hearing from you,” Revutev Mavarka said.
They were only machines. They couldn’t fool themselves into thinking an impossible plan was certain to succeed.
The weather fell into predictable patterns all over the planet. The serenes had arranged it that way. Citizens who liked warm weather could live in cities where the weather stayed within a range they found comfortable and pleasant. Citizens who enjoyed the passage of the seasons could settle where the seasons rotated across the land in a rhythm that was so regular it never varied by more than three days.
But no system could achieve perfect, planet-wide predictability. There were places where three or four weather patterns adjoined and minor fluctuations could create sudden shifts. Revutev Mavarka lived, by choice, in a city located in an area noted for its tendency to lurch between extremes.
Sudden big snowfalls were one of his favorite lurches. One day you might be sitting in an outdoor cafe, dressed in light clothes, surrounded by people whose feathers glowed in the sunlight. The next you could be trudging through knee high snow, plodding toward a place where those same feathers would respond to the mellower light of an oversize fireplace.
He had just settled into a table only a few steps from such a fireplace when his communication system jerked his attention away from the snowing song he and six of his friends had started singing.
“You have a priority message. Your observers are tracking a Category One movement.”
His hands clutched the edge of the table. He lowered his head and shifted his system to subvocalization mode. The woman on the other side of the table caught his eye and he tried to look like he was receiving a message that might lead to a cozier kind of pleasure.
Category One was a mass movement toward the Betzino-Resdell base—a swarm attack.
How many observers are seeing it?
“Seven.”
How many criteria does the observation satisfy?
“All.”
His clothes started warming up as soon as he stepped outside. He crunched across the snow bathed in the familiar, comforting sense that he was wrapped in a warm cocoon surrounded by a bleak landscape. It had only been three and a half years since Trans Cultural had started building up its forces. How could they attack now? With a third of the forces they needed?
Has Betzino-Resdell been warned? Are they preparing a defense?
“Yes.”
He activated his stage and gave it instructions while he was walking back to his apartment. By the time he settled into his viewing chair, the stage was showing him an aerial view, with most of the vegetation deleted. The trees still supported their foliage in the area where the base was located.
The display had colored Trans Cultural’s forces white for easy identification. Betzino-Resdell’s defenders had been anointed with a shimmering copper. The white markers were flowing toward the base in three clearly defined streams. They were all converging, dumbly and obviously, on one side of the ditch. A bar at the top of the display estimated the streams contained four to six thousand animals. Trans Cultural was attacking with a force that exactly matched his estimates of their strength—a force that couldn’t possibly make its way through the defenses Betzino-Resdell had developed.
There could only be one explanation. Somebody had to be helping it.
“Position. Betzino-Resdell orbiter. Insert.”
A diagram popped onto the display. Trans Cultural had launched its attack just after the orbiter had passed over the base.
The antenna built into the rock face couldn’t be maneuvered. The base could only communicate with the orbiter when the orbiter was almost directly overhead. Trans Cultural—and its unannounced allies—had timed the attack so he couldn’t send his warning message until the orbiter completed another passage around the planet.
He could transmit it now, of course. Betzino-Resdell could store the warning and relay it when the orbiter made its next pass. But the whole situation would change the moment he gave the order. The police would seal off his apartment before he could take three steps toward the door.
Up until now he had been engaging in the kind of borderline activity most Adventurers played with. The record would show he had limited his contacts with Betzino-Resdell to harmless exchanges. He could even argue he had accumulated useful information about the visitors and their divisions.
