“So what ‘impulse’ did it send to you?”
Augustus scowled in thought, trying to recall, or to interpret, what he had received when the Hive had taken over his connections. Farragut and Cordillera waited.
At last. “This is filtered through my interpretation, mind you. I . . .” Augustus started over in robotic monotone: “Destroy anomalous entity.”
“Me?” John Farragut asked. “ ‘Anomalous entity.’ Was that me?”
Augustus gave a hard, thin smile. “You didn’t look like the rest of us.”
For a moment Augustus had been one with all those crawling ravenous things. Anger twitched again under his eye.
“How close did you come?” asked Farragut. “To shooting me?”
“Not.” Augustus turned his attention to his coffee, held the cup in both hands, let the steam thread up his nostrils. “I have my own fail-safe.”
Of course he would. To keep him from being turned against Palatine.
“I forgot,” said Farragut. “You’re programmed to self-terminate.”
Augustus snorted. “I am not programmed. I am not a cyborg. The organism governs here.
I
am in control.” A little too insistent there. “And anyway, who could shoot those blue eyes.”
The blue eyes blinked. “
You
could.”
“Well, yes. But not because some
thing
told me to. What’s your body count?”
Farragut demurred, not liking to reduce his losses to a number. They numbered eighty-one. “It’s what we call a Pyrrhic victory.”
“Pyrrhic is good. Statistically, you should not have won at all.”
“Told you, I don’t do statistics.”
“I know. Here is the statistical curve,” Augustus drew the curve in the air. “And way out here is John Farragut, one of those outliers we throw out of the calculation.”
“That’s why you’re on my boat.”
“That’s why I am where John Farragut is,” Augustus admitted. He took Jose Maria’s hand, turned it over to check his chronometer, an antique Jose Maria wore on his wrist. August 5th. “Is this right?”
“Some hangover you had, Augustus,” said Farragut. The patterner had slept the clock round twice.
“You throw a hell of a party, John Farragut. Where are we?”
“Twenty parcs out of the Myriad.”
Augustus lifted his brows.
Merrimack
was a lot closer to the Myriad than when Augustus had passed out. “The reason for this incautious haste?”
“A ‘singular’ haste, Colonel Augustus,” said Jose Maria. “Donner threatens to change history. We must stop him.”
“Or maybe I want to do it myself,” said Farragut. And to
Don
Cordillera’s appalled expression said, “It’s a thought.”
“A much-thought thought, Captain Farragut,” Jose Maria said sternly. “A dangerous thought. The old question comes to mind: If you could go back to 1938 and kill Hitler, would you? Let us say you do. Let us say in doing so you also escape the classic paradox of erasing your own birth, which would, of course, mean there would be no you to go back and kill Hitler. Let us leave that loop alone
arguendo
. Let us say you go back. You kill Hitler. You save the lives of six million Jews and you prevent World War II.
“Without their Axis allies, Japan fails to bomb Pearl Harbor. You save Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So then all those farm boys and coal miners who left the plow and the pick to enlist on Monday morning, December 8, 1941, never left your country. They never married their French and English and Italian brides. They never attended university on your GI Bill. All the encounters that led to your end-of-the-millennium Baby Boom never happen. The children and grandchildren of those uncreated people are never born.
“In short, you have just erased the lives of millions of people who would otherwise be alive today. How do you justify it? Because your motives were pure? Because the six million lived? Because Hiroshima and Nagasaki lived? How do you trade lives?”
“I am not going back to kill Hitler,” said Farragut. “I’m thinking about going back ten billion years and sixty-odd klarcs away to try to mess up the
Hive
’s history.”
Never one to let things just happen, if he believed history could be altered, as John Farragut did, then he was all for taking the offensive. “There’s a time portal. What’s to stop us from going back and trying to exterminate the Hive before it can be born?”
“We do not know when the Hive came into being. Ten billion years is a long time in which to hold onto a plan.”
“So we don’t wait. If we can identify the Hive home world, then go back and identify the plasma and dust that will coalesce into the Hive home star, blast the holy peaches out of it and interfere with its formation . . . ?” He trailed off, inquiringly.
“Assume it is possible,” said Cordillera. “Assume you try. What if you get it wrong? Multibody dynamics are complex. In erasing the Hive we could erase humanity.”
“Thousands of light-years across the galaxy?” said Farragut, dubious.
“Ten billion years is a long time in which stars may move. It may be that we and the Hive sprang from the same dust from the same supernova. We destroy them, we destroy us. Or perhaps the Hive ate some other invader who otherwise would make landfall in 1099,” Jose Maria pulled the date out of the air. “Some time before we could defend Earth. Or perhaps in your meddling you redirect the comet that brings the first amino acids to Earth. There are too many variables. Too much time. The moment of intersection is critical—that instant when events you change intersect the history of Earth, no matter how minutely. Everything after that moment is in peril.”
“And you really think events sixty klarcs and ten billion years away can affect Earth? I mean realistically, not wild long shot.”
“They have done,” said Jose Maria. “They do. The Hive is upon us now. The Hive crossed humanity’s path eight years ago. So let us imagine you succeed in your quest. You erase the Hive from Earth history—take away that intersection—then anyone born after it, will not be.”
“Will not be what?”
“Born. Events are interdependent. History is a tower of cards. Remove one card, and this particular structure ceases to exist. The smallest change will have vast consequences. How much does it take to alter the path of one sperm? A missed transport? A second beer? Roll left instead of right? A mote of dust? A sneeze? You take away humanity’s intersection with the Hive eight years ago, then everything from the wreck of the
Sulla
forward is vulnerable to change, beginning with the children. After that? Who knows. Perhaps we are subjects of the Roman Empire. The possibilities are myriad, so to say.”
Farragut looked quite deflated.
“I do hope I have discouraged you,” said Jose Maria.
Farragut nodded, conceding, reluctantly, the point. He spoke a lingering regret, “I took an oath to defend the United States.”
“And I took an oath to do no harm. The past is Pandora’s box. It behooves us to keep what is in there
in.
”
“Then Donner is in a very dangerous position.”
“Very. We have taught him that faster-than-light travel is possible. We have told him his home world, Origin, is doomed to die. Donner has the ability to transport that knowledge back to a time when such things cannot exist. If he preserves Origin from its disaster, then those beings of ten billion years ago will expand across the stars, changing worlds—”
“Killing Hitler.”
“So to say.”
“Then we have to stop Donner from telling Origin about us. Augustus?” Farragut turned to his Intelligence Officer for his take on it.
While John Farragut and Jose Maria were talking, Augustus had lain back down and closed his eyes. He looked dead. His gray lips moved: “Let him go.”
“Let him
go?
” Not the answer Farragut expected. “Donner could erase us all.”
One eye opened a crack. Augustus spoke condescendingly, “We are here, are we not? Which means he didn’t, now doesn’t it? This is basic. This is entropy. The arrow of time flies one way. You know this stuff. You sound like a pair of self-important college students having a weighty dorm chat—which doesn’t surprise me coming out of you, but
you, Don
Cordillera, I mistook for a grown-up. The ability to alter the past remains what it has always been, a silly romantic notion and beneath you.”
Jose Maria spoke earnestly, hand over heart, “I am Spanish.”
“Makes you a silly romantic?”
“Romance is never silly.” Jose Maria picked up the guitar again.
“You are disappointing.” And to Farragut, “You are at least predictable. Before you get too power drunk on this most urgent and desperate mission of yours to save human history and planet Earth, do remember that compliance with physical law is not optional. It’s self-enforced. Your philosophizing is nothing but warmed-over sophomoric hash. That you are sitting here in my torpedo bay, talking, means you were created and no one went back and changed what is. God won’t allow it. Creation won’t stand for it.”
Jose Maria fumbled on the guitar strings, stopped playing. “Augustus, you surprise me. Are you being facetious or do you believe in God?”
“For me to suppose myself the pinnacle of intelligence in existence would be a bit parochial, not to mention arrogant.”
“But you
are
arrogant,” said Farragut.
“I am also
here.
I have faith that Donner will fail to change the history of the universe.”
“Because he must?”
“Because he did. You are more arrogant than I, John Farragut. You just wear it well.”
“You’re awfully sure of yourself when we’re talking about things for which there is no pattern.”
“Of course there is a pattern. It’s called the universe.”
“And there is a twenty-billion-year-old piece of lead 208 that says there is a hole in the big pattern,” Farragut countered. “Donner is importing into the past elements that don’t yet exist.”
“He
is,
John? You mean he
did.
It’s done. Whatever damage he will do is done—done ten billion years ago.”
“Done once implies it can be done again. Your course of action appears to entail closing our eyes, crossing our fingers and hoping. Never an option I was comfortable with.”
“I am not here to give you comfort.” Augustus closed his eye.
“You said Donner was courting a paradox and must be stopped.”
Augustus spoke to the insides of his eyelids, “I believe I overreacted. The danger is all to the Myriad. The Myriad is collapsing, nothing more. The Myriad is not a Roman province; so I do not care. The LEN claimed jurisdiction; let the LEN save it. For Donner’s courtship with paradox, what
is
the effect of paradox? Ever seen one? I shall file paradoxes away with purple cows and not give them another thought.” And he was soon snoring.
Upon leaving the torpedo bay, Farragut conferred alone with
Don
Cordillera. “What do you think?”
“He’s wrong.”
“A patterner? Wrong?”
If anyone could tell a patterner he was mistaken, it would be Jose Maria Cordillera.
“I
know.
In my heart. And so do you, young captain. His argument that he has never seen a paradox, therefore they do not exist, is feeble. Unawareness is not an argument. The dead are unaware. Though it is the knowing that is the danger.”
“You lost me.”
“Do you know the tale of Adam and Eve in the Garden?”
People of the Book were become less and less common. But Farragut answered, “My dad still brings a Bible into his courtroom. And uses a Colt forty-five for a gavel.”
“Then you know this story. It is the knowing, the knowing that changes everything. From the moment you know, return to the Garden is impossible.”
“And you’re still losing me.”
“Once you become aware of the light, you move toward it. Knowing that FTL is possible, the beings on Origin will try to achieve it. Nothing will stop them. The knowing of the possibility makes the achieving imperative. They cannot do as they would have done in ignorance. If Donner tells them of us, we will have thrown an apple back ten billion years. I believe we must get back to the Myriad. No time to spare.”
“I’m with you.” And into his com, “Calli, best speed.”
“Already at it, Captain.”
“Then make it better.”
And then the captain fell uncharacteristically silent, introspective. Not the ground-down sadness of all the deaths. Rather a wistfulness. “Captain Farragut, I sense you are no longer with me. You are perhaps traveling down the road not taken?”
Farragut smiled. Direct hit. Looked a little embarrassed. “It gets the mind running that way, doesn’t it?”
“It is not like you to second-guess yourself. The captain’s sights are forever forward. You do not spend your life looking back.”
“For her, I do.”
“Ah. A woman. I begin to see.” The older man smiled indulgently. “All rules disappear.”
“Ever think, God, if I could only do it again, I’d do things different?”
Jose Maria shook his head. “Do not we all? Tell me what you would do that you did not.”
“In an alternate life, I married Maryann.”
Jose Maria’s smile was bright white in his olive-bronze face. “Maryann. You should hear how that common name becomes so rare and exotic and precious in your voice. How it sings. Maryann.”
“My first love. My only love, really.”
“And so why did you not marry Maryann the first time around?”
“She’s a fragile soul. I knew I wouldn’t be there for her. I married a tougher gal, who could do without me. And she did.” His mouth tightened into a chagrined line. “Maryann was sweet. Pretty. Gentle. Funny.”
“Did she marry another?”
“Not last I looked. I try not to look.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“That she found someone. That she didn’t. I’m still not in any position to do anything about it. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve seen Earth?”
“That is a choice, young Captain. I think you could find your way home again for a pretty, gentle, sweet, funny wife.”
“Afraid she still loves me. We get married. I go back to war and get eaten by a gorgon. And where does that leave Maryann?”
