July 29
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—Zetetic Commentaries
A long corridor connected the receptionist hub of the Institute's main building to Leslie Evans's office. Nathan walked that corridor often, but he never walked it without a moment's pause near the beginning of the hall. Nathan paused there now. He stood in the heart of the Sling Project.
A tapestry of colorful lines and boxes filled the walls of the corridor. For a child's eye the pattern would hold little beauty, and less meaning. But to an engineer, this corridorfilling PERT chart held as much truth as a man could bear in a single encounter. And for an engineer, truth always appeared intricately meshed with beauty. In some engineering sense, the chart was beautiful.
Every task in the Sling Project had a box on the wall. Lines of interdependency jagged across the spaces between the boxes—from boxes that could be completed early, to boxes that could not be started until those early boxes yielded completed products. For example, they had to design the prototype SkyHunter before they could build it. They had to build it before they could test it.
No single human mind could understand all the complexities of all the components of the Sling Project. But in this hall a person could at least grasp the outline of the system as he walked from the accomplished past into the dreamedof future. The colors of the chart which described the relation between accomplishment and dream, rippled in an elastic dance with the passage of time.
Greenmarked tasks were already completed. Nathan had entered the hall from the past, from the beginning of the project. He walked through a forest of greens for a long time, and his confidence grew. The Sling team had already accomplished so much. He reached out and touched a green box at random: SELECT BASE VEHICLE FOR THE HOPPERHUNTER. There had been three alternatives for the hopper—a commercial hovercraft and two experimental walking platforms. The hovercraft had won out in the selection because of its speed, despite its inferior stability.
Pink marked the tasks now falling behind schedule. A pink box was not necessarily a catastrophe. Pink tasks still had slack time before they were needed for the next step in the dance of interdependencies, but they were warnings of potential trouble.
Nathan proceeded down the hall. Soon a light scattering of pink mingled with the green. As Nathan walked closer to the present, the pinks clustered more thickly, but they did not yet dominate any part of the wall.
Simple black marked the tasks not yet started, not yet needed. These tasks were the future—challenging, but nevertheless achievable. Nathan stopped where the black boxes collided with the pinks and greens. He stood in the present. Reaching forward, he touched a tiny part of the near future, when they would complete the design for the Crowbar control surfaces. The Crowbar was the projectile dispensed from the HighHunter, a deceptively simple metal bar that would simply fall to Earth from orbit and hit the ground—or an enemy tank—with all the speed and energy it gained in its meteoric flight. Black boxes such as this one covered the rest of the corridor.
Red marked the results of a pink box that had festered too long. Red marked disaster: a task that should already have been completed—one that had to be completed immediately. Every day the red box remained red, every day its schedule slipped, the schedule for the whole wall of tasks slipped. A single red box would ultimately distort the whole wall—all the way out to the box for the completion date, itself so far down the hall it disappeared from Nathan's sight. Red boxes represented the blood and sweat of engineers who would work 24 hours a day to repair the damage. Red boxes marked open wounds on the body of the project.
A single red box glared under Nathan's appraising gaze. This box had triggered his meeting today with Leslie. He touched it. The words inside described his own personal failure. COMPLETE STAFFING OF THE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT TEAM, the box reminded him. With an abrupt turn, he hurried through the black future of the Sling to Leslie's office.
He found Leslie glaring at a paper on his desk, listening to his telephone in annoyed silence. When he spoke he sounded like a miserly grouch. "And I'm telling you that you've billed us twice and delivered the fracture analysis zero times. Send us a copy of the originals and we'll talk again." He listened a few more moments. "Right. Goodbye." He mashed the telephone into its receiver. With an abrupt change of tone to that of a comic straight man, he asked Nathan, "Okay, guru, where's our software development team?"
Nathan shook his head. "I'm sorry, Les. I hate giving excuses—and I'm not giving you one now. But I think you'll find the problem I've run into interesting, even though it sounds like I'm making excuses."
Leslie chuckled. "That's the best leadin for an excuse I've ever heard. Did they teach you that here at the ZI?"
Nathan made a face. "I've found that the software engineers in the United States today fall into three broad categories." He started ticking them off on his fingers. "First, there are brilliant engineers who refuse to work on military projects. Second, there are brilliant engineers who can and will work on military projects. Unfortunately, as nearly as I can figure from the Jobnet data bases, all of them already are working on military projects. The country has sucked an awful lot of people into this kind of work." He waved his hand in a frustrated wipe at an imaginary slate.
"Third there are engineers who are not brilliant. I've got tabs on several solid pluggers who could do some of our work, but no one who can make the Sling fly on schedule."
Les brought his hand to his lips. Several years ago, the motion would have ended with a puff from a thin cigarillo. The cigarillo was gone—Jan had made him well—but his hand remembered. "I know the problem. I've fought it for years." He sighed. "Joel Barton, the first man I worked for after getting out of the Air Force, told me the real reason why the Soviet Union would beat us. 'Les,' he said, 'they have three times as many airplanes, four times as many tanks, and five times as many men. But that isn't the real problem. The real problem is that they have eight times as many smart minds—physicists and engineers and such— working on their military problems.' He clapped me on the shoulder. 'Les, for us to keep up with them, you and I and every other engineer in the United States who does defense work will have to be eight times as productive as one of theirs." He cleared his throat.
Nathan shook his head in mild disappointment. "For shame, Les, do you want me to get up on one of my soapboxes?" he asked. "There's another alternative. We don't have to work eight times as hard, if we can harness the strength of the commercial equipment that our nonmilitary engineers build." He smiled. "That way, we'll only need to work twice as hard as their engineers." The smile dropped. "But even working only twice as hard, I fear we need starquality people to complete the Sling."
"Unquestionably," Les agreed. "Well need stars. The schedule is tight, and the software will be the most difficult part to develop and test—it's the only part that we need to develop from scratch. To make schedule we'll have to keep the software team small and fast. If the team's too big, we'll run out of fuel at test time, when we find out how many ways the team members misunderstood each other when they were building their individual pieces."
Nathan had arrived tense; now the tension subsided as he listened to Leslie's summation. Les understood the problem as well as he did. "We'll do it with no more than four people," Les continued. "We need one sensor expert—a person whose specialty is transforming raw signals into clean images. He shouldn't just know how to handle visual images, either. This person will need to know the whole electromagnetic spectrum. And he'll have some hellish signals to process—the Crowbars will need to identify and lock on targets within seconds of hitting terminal velocity, just after coming out from their own little clouds of superheated plasma."
Nathan plunked into the chair next to Leslie's desk. "Right. Next, well need an expert systems specialist—someone who can analyze those images to decide what the Hunter should do. For example, the SkyHunter needs to look at a random collection of radar sites, communication sites, and images of tents and vehicles. From that, it'll have to figure out where the headquarters is. That's where we need to make the machine think like a human military expert."
"Our military expert is Kurt, right?" Leslie asked. When Nathan nodded, Leslie continued with a frown. "Jan is still doing a better job of running this project than we are."
"Yes." The conversation paused. For the first time since Jan's death, Nathan took a close look around Leslie's office.
The little things had changed—the picture frames on his desk contained only images of Kira. The clutter had shifted, too. Antiquated microcomputers that Leslie had collected in the corners of the room had gone away, opening sections of wall that had not seen sunlight for years. Nathan's nose itched as he thought of the spumes of dust that must have risen from that machine graveyard.
Though the piles of computers had disappeared, the stacks of books had grown, filling a third large bookcase. The pictures on the walls remained the same—pictures of jet fighters, transports, and surveillance aircraft that Leslie had flown and developed before the Air Force had decided to make him a general. The promotion had taken him by surprise; he had not wanted it. He had rushed to get out before they made him a totally political beast, spending his life crafting ways to defeat the internal system rather than ways to meet the external threats.
Nathan continued the count of people they needed. "Third, we need a person who blends robotics and comm expertise—someone who can take the decisions made by the expert and put them into action, moving the vehicle, firing the gun, and so on."
"Sounds like a complete trio to me," Les replied. "Of course, it might be nice if they all had compatible personalities while we re hiring stars. It would certainly make life easier, anyway. But I still only count three. Who's the fourth person?"
Nathan laughed. "The fourth person is the vicious one, the one whose purpose is to ruin your group dynamics. He's the tester—by virtue of his creation of the simulations. We can't smash up 10,000 hovercraft and airplanes trying to test the software. Long before we ever put any of this stuff in a real Hunter, we ll have to work out the bugs by plugging into simulations. The sims will look, feel, and taste like real Hunters, as far as the software is concerned."
Leslie wrinkled his nose. "Of course." He looked Nathan in the eye. "So we need four people. How many of them do we have now? Besides Kurt, that is."
Nathan sighed. "None of them. Though I do have a couple of leads."
"So you found some candidates on the Jobnet after all."
"Not in the usual way." Nathan laughed. "I looked through listings of people who used to be looking for jobs. Out of those people, I looked for people who had found shortterm jobs. Hence, instead of a list of available people, I have a list of people who will be available soon. I doubt that anyone else has searched Jobnet looking for people this way."
Les snorted. He looked stern, and Nathan knew the Air Force had taken a grievous loss when this man had refused his promotion to general. "No one searches Jobnet with the techniques you use, except the ones who take your own classes on data manipulation and information filtering. You, my friend, are creating a huge collection of competitors for yourself. The Zetetic Institute is bound and determined to destroy its own advantage."
Nathan chuckled. "I wish that were the biggest problem we faced."
"If you already have a list of prospects lined up, why'd you come here to bother me?" Leslie asked.
Nathan leaned across Leslie's desk. "I'm bothering you because one of my prospects is an old friend of yours. Currently, he has a job that's barely more than a hobby. He's networking the cash registers for a group of knitting and stitchery shops. He's our comm and robotics man, if you can win him over."
"If I can win him over, huh? Who is this guy?"
Nathan removed a microfloppy from his inner suit pocket and handed it to Leslie. "Amos Leung."
Leslie blinked. "Amos? Jesus, I haven't seen Amos in over a decade. How did you know he worked for me?"
Nathan clapped his hands. "I didn't, actually. But I suspected. He worked on the Version G modifications to the E3 comm system while you were program manager. I just guessed you might know him."
"Hmph. Well, Nathan, if you wanted a star, you'll get one in Amos."
"If we can get him."
"Yeah." Leslie pursed his lips. "He's a great software developer. But Jesus, he'll be a hard sell."
Nathan patted him on the shoulder. "I have great faith in your powers of persuasion."
Leslie scowled.
"Is there anything else we should discuss before I go in search of my next crisis?" Nathan asked.
"No—though you should know about FIREFORS's latest attempt on our lives."
The grim humor of Leslie's voice told Nathan they'd had a close call. "What was it?"
Leslie told him about the backchannel message that General Curtis had intended to send to General Hicks. Fortunately, Curtis had mentioned the message to an old friend of Leslie's, who had tipped Leslie off. Leslie had discreetly arranged for other old friends to dissuade Curtis from sending the message.
"Was that really all that dangerous—just a message from one general to another?" Nathan asked in puzzlement.
"Well, it would have been a whole lot harder for us to stop if it had been sent, that's for sure. Nathan, we're gonna have to watch those guys like hawks. And we'd better keep our noses clean. If FIREFORS gets a whiff that something's going wrong, they'll be on us in a minute."
"Like a bad cost overrun or something?"
"Yeah. That, or a bad schedule delay." He pulled a miniature copy of the corridor PERT chart from deep inside the paper clutter of his desk, and stabbed the small dot of red amongst the greens and pinks. Nathan felt another shiver up his spine as he considered the possible consequences.
Ivan leaned forward in his seat—the unpadded wooden back hurt his spine—then realized how nervous he must look in that pose. He sank back in the chair, only to lean forward again.
As he fidgeted, he occasionally looked out the window to watch children playing in the warmth of the summer sun. Once in a while he yielded to the need to look back at his commander, who now had to double as his executioner.
He could no longer hope that Colonel Savchenko, the man who had given him the promotion and the project on the consequences of nuclear war, had come here for any other purpose.
He chided himself for ever hoping for anything else. He remembered the gunmetal gray of the weather the day this project had started, the unremitting clarity with which he had known that his plans would lead to disaster. Yet over the months, as the grays of Siberia yielded to white-specked blues, Ivan too had yielded to brighter visions. He had come to believe that his superiors would believe him; he had deceived himself with hope that they would be happy to have him disrupt their dangerous selfdeceptions. His hope had peaked as he had framed the summation of the report.
It was the summation that Colonel Savchenko now reread with weary gray eyes. Ivan could almost read it more easily in his own mind than the colonel could read it in wide bold type:
Thus we see that, despite the uncertainties, the best available analyses of the effects of nuclear war all drive to the same conclusion. Five gigatons of explosions would cause a global disaster that would challenge the lives of even the luckiest war survivors. Avoidance of such a nuclear exchange must be a primary goal of the Soviet Union, even if it means concessions to foreign powers. Only if our country faced certain extinction could we justify a strategic battle that pressed the limits of global catastrophe.
Ivan stared at the colonel. A sunbeam of light through the window threw his trenchantly wrinkled features into sharp relief. He gave Ivan a millimeter shake of his head. "The wording in this summation is too strong. Indeed, you overstep the bounds of analysis when you presume to discuss global politics. Neither you nor I is in a position to declare what the State must and must not do."
"Unfortunately, sir, the facts drive one to these conclusions. Only a madman could decide that it's in the Stated best interest to destroy the entire human race. No matter where you were, a major nuclear assault would be a disaster of unprecedented proportions."
The colonel sighed. "This entire report is a disaster of unprecedented proportions."
Ivan's fidgeting stopped. He sat very straight, very still. "There is not a single false word in this report, sir. Every page, every sentence, every word, contains as much truth as science can currently produce."
"Yes, yes, I'm sure. It's a disaster nonetheless."
"I deeply regret that the truth contradicts the preconceived notions some people may have had."
Savchenko looked up swiftly from the paper, to puzzle over Ivan s expressionless face. "Do you regret it?" His voice acquired the hard evenness of glare ice. "It makes no difference. We have neither the time nor the money to redo this effort from scratch without explaining what happened. And I'm sure you're right about the rigor of the research. We would find it impossible to explain away this verification of the current forecasts.
"However, the summation is neither factual nor even logical. It must be rewritten. In fact, this whole document needs to be interpreted carefully, as regards its impact on global strategy. Your brief summation will be replaced by an entire additional chapter." Ivan opened his mouth to speak, but the colonel raised his hand for silence. "But you will not write this last chapter, major. The final chapter needs a more senior hand—someone with not only a keen eye for the facts of the physical world, but with a sensitivity for the intangibles of international relations as well."
Ivan's mouth drew in a thin line.
"You, major, have a new assignment. An assignment in Czechoslovakia. " The colonel rolled his lips; his brow darkened in a moment of melancholy. "We have a cell of tactical nuclear weapons effects analysts in the city of Plzen. You will take charge of them. Your first task is to develop a plan for the nuclear decapitation of the American VII Corps in the event of a drive to Stuttgart from Cheb."
"Yes, sir." What a delicately molded axe they used on him! Many officers would have fought for the chance to serve in a foreign country. But those officers fought for the prestigious command of combat troops. For an officer whose greatest contributions lay in research, reassignment to the borderlands spelled intellectual death. Ivan faced the horror of his own mortality—he could not live long enough to erase this blackness from his record. He was young, yet his career was already quite doomed.
The last moments of the meeting blurred in irrelevance. He found himself outside, walking alone in the sunny warmth. He walked slowly, keeping careful control over the mix of emotions jangling in his mind.
The emotions separated out as he walked. Some floated to the top; others sank away, perhaps to return later, but gone for now. The emotion that rose to domination was a feeling of deep happiness.
Happiness! His career had been destroyed. Still he felt light—the lightness that comes with feeling your own power when you know you are right. Had he protected his career by producing something politically astute, but scientifically wrong, he would have regretted it forever. Instead, he had done what was right. He had done his best. He refused to apologize for it.
A second emotion floated there and increased the sensation of lightness. This was a feeling of relief—relief in knowing he would not have to fight another political battle. They would never try to use him this way again. And they would never again make him walk this treacherous tightrope, trying to squeeze halftruths from the system. He walked a broad avenue where honesty counted more.
As the last glimmers of horror dissolved in the warmth of his happiness, Ivan realized how lucky he was. Most men go through their whole lives uncertain of their own strength, never knowing whether they are cowards or heroes. Ivan knew.
Two children sailed past on bright red bicycles, laughing into the wind. Ivan laughed too, a curiously mixed laughter, both triumphant and defiant. The triumph was internal—his personal victory in choosing to give his best. The defiance was external, directed at those who disdained his best, claiming it was not sufficient. His defiance was anchored firmly in his unfounded belief that, ultimately, the people who gave their best would prevail.
He suddenly saw how his superiors had made their mistake in choosing him. Bright, ambitious Ivan seemed like the perfect tool for twisting the truth. How could they have known that cool, aloof Ivan, the loner with no family and few friends, cared so much about children? In his mind, he watched Anna and her three girls running.
There was a great irony in the freedom he gained from his lack of family. Had he had children of his own, he would have had to worry about preserving his career so that he could give them a good home.
Instead, he had been the worst choice they could have made for their purposes. He laughed again, this time with pure defiance. The laughter, and the lightness of his own power, sustained him all the way home.
Kurt straightened from his console. This desk work challenged even his powers of discipline. He ran a hand through his thick blond hair and realized it needed cutting.
Meanwhile, outside the window of his office in the Institute, a gentle summer day confronted him. The bright, dry terrain reminded him that he should not be inside this building. He should be outside, fighting the enemy in the open. Dammit, this was no way to conduct a war.
He shook his head. No one else around here even conceded that it was a war. Jan had never acknowledged it, though she had come close; Leslie might think it now and again, but never out loud; and Nathan . . . Kurt shook his head thinking about Nathan. He was so philosophical, how could he ever get anything done?
So far, Nathan's help had been zip. Kurt worked in isolation from the world, almost isolated from the problem Jan had given him to solve—the problem of building expert software to make decisions for the Hunters. The necessary decisions covered a wide range of difficulties from decisions as basic as, Where do l go?, to decisions as complex as, How do I kill them before they kill me?
Kurt knew a great deal about how to kill them before they killed him. The survival instincts needed by the Hunters bore a striking resemblance to the survival skills needed by a lone Ranger behind enemy lines.
But the details differed in important ways. Kurt needed more information to complete his mission. He, like the combat expert system he was supposed to build, needed to know what kinds of data he would get from the sensors to make decisions. He also needed to know what kinds of orders he could give to the Hunter's controls to carry them out. At the moment, Kurt and his software were commanders without either recon patrols or assault teams.
Nathan had agreed that Kurt had problems he couldn't solve alone. Nathan was running as fast as he could, so he said, to gather the rest of the men for the development team. In the meantime, Nathan suggested that Kurt start with the simplest of the three combat expert systems.
Of the HopperHunter, the SkyHunter, and the HighHunter, by far the simplest decisionmaking problem rested with the HighHunter. The HighHunter consisted of two parts—the container and the Crowbar. The container was a tin can mounted on rockets, which carried the Hunter into space, where it orbited until someone on the ground needed close fire support. Then the tin can popped open.
Within the tin can, dozens of Crowbars lay packed together. The Crowbars were the weapons of the HighHunter. Each Crowbar had a sensor tab near the tip, four stubbed fins at the tail, and a tiny computer in the middle, all built into a long shaft of solid steel. When the Hunter canister popped open, the Crowbars fell. They fell twenty miles, with violent velocity, torturing the air as they screamed by.
As they fell, the sensor tab watched for targets—typically, enemy tanks. The computer selected one. The fins touched the air, twisting the Crowbar, guiding it to a final contact with the target.
The Crowbar contained no explosives—it didn't need them. After falling twenty miles, the steel shaft could crush any tank armor ever devised.
Kurt loved the concept of the Crowbar. It was simple— simple enough to be brutally rugged—yet it was effective.
So Kurt had started with the Crowbar s decisionmaking problem. At first it seemed so simple as to be unworthy of solving: pick a tank at random and head for it. But that was not quite so straightforward. It would be better to pick the lead tank, to block the passage of the others. What if he saw both tanks and personnel carriers—which should he select? Should he just take one at random? Random selection had several advantages besides simplicity. And Lordy, it was tricky figuring out how to fall at terminal velocity to assure the Crowbar would slam into the vehicle you had picked out.
Kurt understood why they needed him to carry out this mission. They needed someone who could identify and prioritize highvalue targets. They also needed someone who could identify and translate highspeed images.
They needed someone with a background like his, with four years in Army Special Forces. And they needed someone with a background like his, with degrees in software engineering and artificial intelligence.
He also understood why it might be difficult to enlist the other people needed for the Sling Project. The Sling required unusual combinations of talents.
A polite knock on his open door made Kurt whirl to his feet. "Yes, sir, what can I do for you, sir?" he asked of Nathan.
Nathan moved from the backlighting of the corridor to the frontlighting of the window. He looked uncomfortable. Kurt suspected he didn't like being called "sir," though Kurt didn't understand why. It was just a form of respect.
Nathan asked, "How would you like to join a discussion about sensors? I have a sales team down the hall trying to convince me that their near-infrared sensing fibers are the best invention since the eyeball."
"I'd be happy to join your meeting if you think I'd be useful."
Nathan shrugged. "It'll impact your life more directly than it'll impact mine," he said. "I can't help thinking you'd have an interest in the outcome."
Kurt followed him down the corridor, keeping his eyes straight ahead. The ceiling in this place still made him uncomfortable: it curved smoothly, seamlessly, to become the corridor walls—an absence of sharp edges that disturbed him. He'd never worked in a building that seemed so soft.
As they entered the room, three men rose to greet them. Two of them could have been twins, in their crisp white shirts and maroon ties; the third wore a powderblue shirt and sat away from the others. "Jack Arbor," "Gary Celenza," the twins offered. "Howdy, I'm Gene Pickford, and I'm glad you gave us this opportunity to talk with you," the third burst out.
A shiver rippled down Kurt's spine as he formally introduced himself. He could almost smell them, they were so clearly marked as contractor marketeers. The marketeers from federal contractors represented one of the lowest forms of life he had met while in the Army. The contractors with their magic potions, and the officers who believed in the potions—these people endangered the field soldier as much as any enemy.
Only one kind of man endangered the field soldier more: the officer who demanded magic potions from the contractors. Such officers rejected ideas based on what was possible. They showed interest only in ideas based on what was improbable. In their blind desire for something better, they twisted the occasional honest contractor into a marketeer. Anyone foolish enough to offer simple facts found himself cast aside. And though those officers were a minority, somehow they dominated the others: their tales of hopedfor magic enthralled otherwise levelheaded men.
Yet none of these kinds of men had first inspired Kurt to start thinking about leaving the Army. Another group— another derivative of this selfdestroying game—made life so unbearable that the insane battle by Yuscaran could break him.
This group that had most upset him contained the men who had seen too many magic potions evaporate. They were the jaded cynics who no longer believed in any magic. The cynics stolidly performed their jobs today the way they had performed them yesterday; they could not be turned from their deadend path by any force smaller than a kilo of detonating cyclonite. Kurt had finally left the Army to find a place where men judged new ideas on the merits of the ideas themselves—a place where men could be skeptical without being cynical.
After a lot of talk with no purpose, the loud man in powder blue shoved his hand deep in his pocket and tossed a shiny button on the table, where it skipped across the surface like a flat stone on a still pool of water. As it skittered toward the edge, Kurt clamped it to the table top.
A thread trailed from the button. Kurt recognized the connector through which the sensor transmitted its raw readings. On close examination, the head of the button resolved into thousands of circles, the tips of optical fibers. The loud man spoke. "That's it. A whole infrared sensor the size of a postage stamp."
Kurt saw Nathan raise an eyebrow. "Is the image processing done right there in the sensor bundle?"
"A significant amount of the processing is done right there."
Nathan's eyes moved from one marketeer to the next. "What about the rest of the processing?"
One of the twins placed a gray box the size of a cigarette pack on the table. "The rest is done here."
"Ah, that's more like it," Nathan said in soothing tones.
With adroit conversational fencing, Nathan coaxed from them the sensor's specification. Kurt admired Nathan's skill with the detached disinterest that an aerospace engineer might have for the improvisations of a jazz musician. These verbal fencing games were another part of the contracting world Kurt didn't like and didn't understand. He had always given other people straight answers; he expected them to reciprocate.
Nathan asked in the smooth tones of a potion seller, "What kinds of enhancements are you planning in the future?"
The powder blue shirt answered, "We re looking into adding some extra synch bits on the transmitter to increase reliability. So far, that's the only enhancement we've heard more than one of our customers ask for. Of course, we do custom work, too. Frankly, we make almost nothing on the basic sensor; most of our profits come from the customizations that our customers need. For a project like yours, where you're planning to buy lots of basic units off the shelf, that would work to your advantage.'' He tapped the table next to the button. "And for the new Version D, we have a special introductory price that undercuts even our normal prices. '' For the first time in the conversation, he turned from Nathan to look at Kurt. "What do you think of our package here, Kurt?"
Kurt looked him in the eye. "If it meets its own spec, it sounds like it might be a good choice for the SkyHunter. Could we borrow one for testing?"
The man's smile turned to sorrow. "I'm afraid we're having awful trouble just keeping that one to show around. We're shipping as fast as they come off the line. But I'll see what I can do."
Nathan thanked them, rising to show them to the door. The marketeers took the hint, scooping up their samples and departing with much fanfare. Nathan turned back to Kurt. "So what did you think of their psychology?" he asked.
Walking back to his chair, Kurt looked at Nathan with puzzlement. He almost stumbled as he realized that he had just seen, in real life, one of the maneuvers he had just learned about here at the Institute. The man in powder blue had intentionally set up psychological distance between himself and the others. His job was to create ideas and alternatives for customers such as Nathan and Kurt to consider. If the customers rejected an idea out of hand, the other two marketeers would also reject it. If Nathan or Kurt seemed interested, however, the twins in crisp white would take it over as their own, adding their weight of authority and numbers.
Kurt cradled his arm as if to protect it from another bullet. "That psychological maneuvering is silly," he snorted in disgust. "That kind of stuff never persuades people to buy things."
Nathan looked at him with pleasure. ''It certainly never makes you buy things. But the technique does help them push other people over the threshold/'
Kurt made a faint motion of acceptance of his boss's words, though he didn't believe it for a moment. "Yes, sir."
"I understand why you're skeptical, but I think I can prove it to you. And you know what I like about that? Kurt, if I prove it to you, you'll believe me."
"Of course."
"Have you ever noticed how many people aren't convinced by proof?" Nathan switched back to talking about the meeting. "Did anything else about those guys and their sensor strike you?"
Kurt shrugged. "It seemed like a reasonable box to me."
"Yes, especially if they fix the comm problem."
"The comm problem?" Kurt shook his head. Had he fallen asleep in the meeting?
"Yes, the comm problem that they're planning to fix with their enhancement to the synch bits." His voice fell off, as if talking to himself. "And we'll wait a bit for the price to fall."
"What about the introductory offer?"
"Oh," Nathan waved his hand as if warding off a mosquito. "They always have introductory offers when they're afraid the first production run won't sell out at the initial high price." He laughed. "Of course, we'll have to figure out what options we need to build in. I'm sure that, if they make their money on the customizations, there's something fundamental missing from the basic box that needs to be added! But we'll see."
Kurt shook his head again. "I didn't sleep through that meeting, but I get the feeling I didn't hear the same words you did."
Nathan nodded. "Though the guys with the suits didn't fool you, Kurt, you are not immune to all forms of marketing."
Kurt pulled away in disbelief. Nathan chuckled. "You don't believe me. I'm not sure I want you to believe me, actually. But ask yourself the following question, sometime when you have an idle hour or two. Kurt, how did Jan persuade you to come to work on the Sling Project? What compelling reason did she give to make you accept a position where you'd once again have to deal with all the things in the Army that you quit to escape from? How'd she do it?"
Kurt left, but Nathan's questions went with him. Like droplets leaking from a pipe that no one can fix, the questions struck him gently, again and again, all afternoon.
Again the blue haze swirled about Daniel, clinging to him in short strands before it disappeared. Physicists often visualized the electron as an incompressible point, surrounded by a cloud of probabilities. At moments like this, Daniel thought of himself as the incarnation of that vision. His cloud of probabilities was the set of paths to success, combined with the set of paths to failure. His incompressible point was his purpose. His purpose at the moment was to destroy the Zetetic Institute.
He spoke to Kira, setting the contrails of smoke to spinning. "Hey, you've done a great job. I appreciate your efforts. But it's clear that we missed a key point somewhere. Despite all your great efforts, the bottom line on our campaign is a big null. It just isn't working."
Daniel watched Kira with admiration. She had not taken the failure too personally. Her expression suggested a more scientific astonishment—the puzzlement that comes when an experiment invalidates previous research.
The failure had not been her fault. She had collected an outstanding stable of usable newsmen. One had already been lifted to national prominence in his crusade against Zetetic quackery robbing people who want to give up smoking, who are instead sold a barrel of worn and petty philosophy. It was particularly nice since that reporter had earlier spent his days defiling the tobacco industry. Sweet.
But all the work had been in vain. Despite Kira's best efforts, despite his own best efforts, the Zetetic Institute continued growing unreasonably. "We need a new approach. Or at least we need to figure out why our standard approach isn't working. Frankly, I can't understand it."
Kira smiled in consolation, though she was as baffled as he was. I don t understand it either. You can't pick up a paper without seeing an article about some bizarre Zetetic ritual. Market research shows that half the people who have heard of them think they're born-again witches; the other half think they're meditating pacifists." She shook her head. When she spoke again, the lines of surprise around her mouth had softened to a look of awe. "How can the Institute get so much bad press and still thrive?"
Daniel inhaled through his mouth, tasting the hot cigarette smoke as it rushed into his lungs. He offered his most recent thoughts. "Could our attack have enhanced their fame? Could such fame have counterbalanced the success of our attack?"
Daniel watched her for a reaction of guilt. But she was all business, from the concentration of her eyes to the glowing tip of her cigarette. With some amusement, Daniel noted that she had developed some skill in holding her cigarette, though she had not yet developed grace. She nodded. "I thought about the dangers of making them femous, of course. We tried to place our attacks in strategic media centers. Our criticism appeared in places where favorable things were already being said, so we could cut off positive impressions near the root. So our campaign shouldn't have increased the Institute's visibility much at all." Kira looked out the window, across the landscape, where thick green leaves shrouded the trees hugging the Potomac. "Of course, we made the ZIs a little more famous. We can only point the journalists in a direction; we can't quite control them, so they always try to get wider coverage for their stories than we need." She nodded to the terminal on his desk. "If you're interested, we can download a complete description of our actions and results."
Daniel retrieved a cordless terminal from his desk and placed it on the conference table. "By all means, show me the facts. Though maybe we should concentrate on the background material, if you've got that: somewhere, there must be a clue to what has gone wrong."
"Easier done than said."
Together, they studied the fect bases on the Zetetic Institute. There were about 2,000 core Zetetics scattered across the globe, and another 15,000 who were frequently connected with Zetetic projects. About 200,000 people had had some significant contact with them, through educational seminars or therapy sessions such as the antismoking clinics. "They're really a tiny organization," Kira commented.
"True," Daniel replied, "but look at all the things they do." The Zetetic projects showed incomprehensible diversity of purpose. They had commercial software programs, educational seminars, consulting, and engineering and government contracting. The one thing all the projects had in common was a kind of information-intensiveness—projects for which the most important commodity was expertise.
Daniel shook his head. "I must confess that I can't see anything about their diversity that could protect them from a media attack. One of the few things they don't get into is the media business."
"That's right," Kira said, almost with pride. "Even though they're hipdeep in communication, they don't operate any of the classical commercial broadcasting systems." She paused. "My research suggests that they reject the philosophy behind broadcast systems. Broadcasting treats its viewers like empty cups; the broadcast sets out to fill the empty cup. There's no give and take, no way of involving the intellect, or the rationality, of the watcher. " She chuckled. "From what I know of the Institute, that would never do. The Institute's whole view of life is dynamic; they're as interactively energetic as the conferencing networks they operate."
Daniel stared at her with wide, delighted eyes. "I think you've hit it!" He exhaled a puff of smoke, savoring the tobacco aroma. "Their conferencing networks are the problem!" With the satisfaction of a physicist who has just solved a particularly difficult equation, he brought up statistics on the Institute's communication networks. The number of people who used these products far exceeded the number who had had face-to-face contact with the Institute and its philosophies. "Don't you see? The Zetetics operate some of the largest commnets in the world—Jobnet, among others." Jobnet was universally used for finding people who could quickly plug into difficult or unusual jobs. "Anybody who contacted the Institute through something as practical and mundane as Jobnet would surely discount media blasts as sensationalism. In a sense, the Zetetic Institute uses word of mouth for all its important contacts—but the word of mouth is multiplied a thousandfold by automation. Jesus!"
Kiras bright eyes acknowledged the accuracy of this analysis. I'm sure you re right." Again she disturbed him; she didn't seem quite as pleased as she should have been. "Though I'm not entirely sure what to do with the idea."
Daniel paused for a moment, to give Kira's creativity a chance to flourish.
She sighed. "I suppose we could flood the networks with the same kind of criticisms that we're flooding the broadcasts with."
"Excellent."
Kira shrugged. "I'm not sure that it's excellent. We could have a lot of trouble keeping an effective level of pressure in the system, particularly if they find out that there is pressure. Are you familiar with the Zetetic specialty known as conference pruning?"
"No." Daniel sidled closer to Kira; she shifted her chair slightly away. "Tell me about it."
"A conference pruner is a professional editor of network bulletin boards and conferences. The Institute runs a certification system for pruners. A certified pruner sweeps the texts on the net and categorizes all the statements into three categories: opinion, fact, and falsehood. They label the opinions with their implicit assumptions, circumscribe the globality of the facts, and purge the falsehoods."
Sounds like the kind of subjective decision-making that we should be able to manipulate."
Kira sighed again. "I don't know. They take their certification pretty seriously."
"I see. Perhaps a bit of outright bribery will do the trick."
The idea of bribery shocked her, but only for a moment. The shock faded into a look similar to the look of awe she had had earlier, pondering the Institute's immunity to media attack. "Of course. Surely some of them can be bought." She looked at Daniel with bemusement. "I have trouble remembering the sizes and kinds of resources available to the Wilcox-Morris Corporation."
Kiras attitude toward unethical maneuvers matched his own quite nicely. Interesting. "I understand your problem. Wilcox-Morris has so many resources that even I lose track at times. But you'd better get comfortable with all of them, Kira. Were in a fight for our lives with the people who hate us, and we need to fight with every resource available."
He started to rise, to terminate the meeting, but Kira held up her hand. "What should we do with the media blitz? Cancel it?"
"Not at all. It can't hurt, after all, as long as we're discreet." He rubbed his hands together. "I almost wish I could face off against Nathan Pilstrom myself, in public. It would be great to pit my world view against his in a showdown. I've read some of his writings; there are a lot of inconsistencies in his philosophy. I just know I could take him apart if I had the chance."
"Really?" Kira studied his face cautiously. "Are you sure?"
His heart leaped into his throat for just a moment before answering, "Quite sure."
"I might be able to arrange it."
"Excellent!" he cried. "We wouldn't want to try this undertaking just yet, of course; that would certainly increase his national visibility, as well as mine, and that's dangerous to us from both directions." A good tobacco baron needed to keep himself invisible if at all possible; he wanted his opposition to stay the same way. "But if the Institute keeps on growing, despite our sabotaging the net, it may be an appropriate risk."
"I'll start laying the groundwork," Kira promised. With that she left.
Daniel crushed out his cigarette as he looked across the landscape. A jet wobbled down its landing path toward National Airport. This airplane, like so many others that had traveled the same path, seemed to scrape its belly against the pointed tip of the Washington Monument. Of course, this was just an illusion of the angle and the distance; in reality, the plane never came near the monument.
The Institute's dependency on networking raised several inspirational opportunities. Jobnet was the lynchpin. As the controller of Jobnet, the Institute was eminently qualified for quickly assembling teams of people with diverse specialties. Those specialists could be scattered all over the country, or they could all live in the same condo complex. It didn't make any difference; they could telecommute, in any case.
With succulent joy, Daniel realized that the entire Zetetic organization was built around telecommuting. This information gave him the power to totally destroy the Institute.
The unions had been lobbying for years to ban telecommuting; it made it damn difficult to unionize workers. Until now, the tobacco companies had fought in favor of telecommuting, more because the unions opposed it than for any other reason. If it weakened the unions, it was fine with Wilcox-Morris.
Daniel returned to his desk and ran his hand across the smooth teak finish of the plaque hanging there. "I came, I saw, I conquered," the plaque played back his motto. Daniel had swallowed whole corporations that held to this same belief. Could the Zetetic philosophy stop him?
Ah, how surprised the unions would be when the entire tobacco industry tossed its support behind the ban on telecommuting. Many organizations would fight them, of course, not just the Institute. Other people telecommuted as well. But the telecommuters had not formed the kind of potent power blocks that the unions and tobacco industry History would repeat. The unions had succeeded in outlawing the sale of homemade clothing decades earlier, when the invention of the personal sewing machine threatened the textile factories. Now, with Daniel's help, the unions should be able to crush personal computer owners the way they had crushed personal sewing machine owners in that earlier era. Daniel could not imagine the unions and the tobacco corporations failing in a joint political enterprise.
How stunned the Institute would be when drawn and quartered by the collaboration! How sweet.
President Mayfield could not focus his attention on any one part of the nightmare. He winced every time his heart started racing too hard. Sometimes the thumping ended in a twisting spasm that made him want to clutch his chest. He looked down at the Presidential Seal woven into the carpet, but even that inspirational sight did not help calm him. They faced the greatest crisis of public confidence in his career.
His eyes shifted to Nell Carson, sitting in her usual position in the far corner, wearing her usual look of distant concern. She seemed relieved, almost happy, now that she knew what form the Soviet deception would take. He'd desperately wanted to exclude her from this meeting, this moment of terrible embarrassment, but he couldn't. Not only would she not let herself be excluded, but in some sense, her rigid strength of character gave him a secure feeling. She always disagreed with him, but she never stabbed him in the back.
His eyes flickered to the television. He'd never before let televisions into the Oval Office, but now he couldn't bear to see the news without the reassurance this room gave him. On the television his nightmare became vividly real, yet manageable and bearable, because the terror remained confined to the tiny screen. He thought about the millions of other viewers watching this broadcast and shuddered at the opinions they were certainly forming.
CUT. The scene shifts to a lone town on a wide, rolling plain. Wheat grows in fields tended by men and women wearing oddly assorted garments. The clothing is typical of the styles of Iranian farmers.
Mayfield looked back at Nell, who continued to watch the screen impassively. Desperate to see an expression he understood, he turned next to Earl Semmens, seated near the window with the pinched look of a poker player whose bluff has been called. At least Earl showed the proper level of shock and dismay. At least Earl shared the president's outrage and indignation.
ZOOM. The camera soars over the fields to view gray metal boxes against the horizon. Zooming still closer, the gray boxes resolve into battle tanks: Russian T70s. In their wake, mashed pulp that was once wheat twists through the tortured soil. Bill Hardie's voice speaks with studied anger. "This is the most blatant use of brute force ever made in our time. Despite all his long speeches about peace, Soviet leader Sipyagin has once again shown us his lust for war."
Nell looked over at Mayfield for the first time. The corners of her mouth curled in a sad smile. "Now we know what they planned to gain from mutual force reduction."
CUT. FOCUS. Hardie's eyes seem to leap from the camera, to look directly at Mayfield." But not all the fault for this new aggression should be placed at the doorstep of Sipyagin. It was our leadership that made it easy for the Soviet army to amass sufficient forces for this attack." He paused for effect, and his anger grew more apparent. "Our sources tell us that this invasion is being carried out with the divisions released from Europe by the recent Mutual Force Reduction Agreement. If we had not rushed so foolishly into that agreement, this invasion could never have taken place."
Mayfield clenched his teeth to keep from crying out at the distant announcer. Still, he could not help trying to defend himself. "Liar," he growled, "it's not true. I am not responsible for that invasion." He turned to look at the other people in the room. "How can he say that? A month ago he thought the agreement was the best treaty we'd ever made." Another image came to Mayfield: the image of the Nobel Peace Prize that should have been his. The image evaporated as he clung to it wistfully.
SOFTEN. The camera remains in the news room, fixed on Bill Hardies sober expression. "The Russian justification for the attack is Irans support for terrorists and rebels in the southwestern provinces of the Soviet Union. The Soviet invasion at dawn today started with the destruction of rebel bases within Iran. A Soviet spokesman has assured the president officially that this is just a minor police action, and the advance will terminate as soon as Iran has been purged of militant anti-Soviet groups. Since making the announcement, the fighting has spread rapidly." Hardie purses his lips. It would seem that the longer the Soviets fight, the more anti-Soviet groups they encounter."
Nell spoke softly, almost gently, as if she were on Mayfield's side. He looked at her with startled eyes. "I'm sorry I didn't see it coming. I should have. You know, we could have learned this from history. This is exactly how they prepared for their Afghanistan invasion decades ago. They made a big fanfare about pulling their troops out of Europe—just to move them into position for an invasion." The president shook his head helplessly. "What can we say to the people?"
Nell sat very still for a moment, then nodded her head as she said, "I don't know what to say, but I know what to do. We should stop."
"Stop what?"
"Stop making dangerous treaties."
Mayfield's voice rose defensively. "That wasn't a dangerous treaty. We needed to reduce the number of soldiers pointing guns at each other in Europe. It was a good idea. It still is!" He leaned forward with a shrewd look. "And besides, they didn't violate the treaty, did they? The treaty worked. People should keep that in mind."
With an exhausted sigh, Nell agreed. "Yes, your treaty worked. Frankly, I imagine they would have invaded Iran even without the treaty. But, Jim, even though your treaty worked, it didn't work the way you wanted it to. It didn't make the world any safer. Did it?" Her mouth twisted in distaste. "More to the point, it didn't make us any more popular, either."
Mayfield shook his head. "I don't get it. I know you don't care about the next election. I don't understand that, but I know it's true. All you care about is whether we set them up to attack Iran. Yet, if you think they would have attacked Iran anyway, why complain about our treaty?"
Nell blinked. "I'm not complaining about that treaty, Jim. I'm worried about the next one."
The president's heart skipped again. He saw Earl looking at Nell with the same shock he felt. "What do you know about the next treaty?"
Nell laughed. "Only that you're working on one, Jim. You're an addict." Her frustration came to the fore, spotlighted. "But don't you see that we have to be careful about what we sign?"
"Of course we have to be careful. But we don't have to be paranoid!"
Nell slumped back in her chair. Only the motion of her foot swaying rhythmically suggested the energy still waiting inside for a chance to act. "No, Jim, we don't dare be paranoid either. That would be as bad as being naive."
"What do you want me to do?" Mayfield almost screamed.
Her foot stopped moving. "I d like you to let Senator Hilan Forstil review your next treaty before you sign it."
"What? That man's a warmonger!"
Nell leaned forward, speaking with carefully controlled anger. "No, Jim. Hilan is not a warmonger. He's a hawk."
"What's the difference?"
"A warmonger is someone who wants to start wars. A hawk is someone who hates war, who will avoid war with fierce energy—but if forced into a war despite his best efforts, knows that he has to win."
Mayfield felt his stomach tighten with revulsion. "That's just what we don't need working our negotiations—someone who has a vested interest in wrecking the treaty process. Forstil would give the media the biggest leaks since Arken published the radar signatures for Stealth bombers." He rolled his eyes. "One little leak, and he turned billions of dollars of airplanes into museum pieces. That was an important factor in our getting into office in the first glace. We can't let our treaty process be handled that way."
Nell stared at him in disbelief. "Jim, Hilan is on your side. Believe me."
He couldn't believe her. Forstil made him feel as uncomfortable as Nell Carson did. He had no intention of letting them gang up on him. "Let me think about it," he said to put her off. He shifted in his leather chair, unsticking himself. He'd been sweating, despite the cool air that bathed him from the air ducts behind his desk.
"I thought you might say that." Nell rose from her chair. For a moment her shoulders drooped, but with another effort, she stood straight, a radiant wee president. "Think about Hilan, Jim. He can help you." She departed.
Mayfield buried his face in his hands. Why couldn't he have been president during a simpler time? He had completed a longstanding presidential task during his second year of office, yet no one had noticed: he had the collection of portraits of president's wives. This task had been underway since the days of Kennedy. That could have been his crowning achievement, if he'd lived in a reasonable world.
Well, just as he'd gotten the news media to love him yesterday, he'd get them to love him again tomorrow. A few more treaties, and he'd see that Peace Prize once more on the horizon.
A sonic boom and a crashing explosion made him open his eyes; it was just the sound from the television.
The muggy July heat faded slowly in the twilight as Kira bicycled down South Lakes Drive toward home. Only the heat faded, however; the muggy humidity remained. It did not help her think, and she had some thinking to do. Uncle Nathan was coming to dinner. They would surely play the game of wonders, and this time Kira intended to win. It was about time she won: today was her twenty-second birthday.
She shook her head to throw the stinging perspiration away from her eyes, regretting her choice of the bicycle for the day's commute to the Institute. At last she turned left on Cabot and plunged downhill.
This section of the ride did not last long, but it was the exhilarating part. Kira dropped low in the saddle, building up speed. The cool wind whipped across her face.
She veered right onto the uphill road spur that led to her townhouse. She continued to coast, though her speed dropped alarmingly. It was a matter of honor, to get all the way home from here without any more pedaling.
The bicycle bumped into the driveway, and Kira dismounted just before it started to wobble. The humidity closed in around her, displacing the cool wind. In that moment, as the tropical heat returned, Kira had a small revelation—she knew a winning strategy for Uncle Nathan's game.
She hurried to the bathroom and took a quick, cool shower, humming all the while at the thought of her upcoming victory. As she returned to the living room, however, her father interrupted her thoughts by thrusting a shiny, gift-wrapped package in her arms. "Happy birthday," he bellowed, hugging her.
Another package plopped on top of the first one. "Happy birthday," Uncle Nathan echoed with a softer smile.
Wonderful aromas circulated from the kitchen. Even as her nostrils flared, however, a pot lid clattered against a muffled explosion of air. Her father's face took on the expression of a chemist who has just heard his carefully prepared solution pop from its test tube and spatter against the ceiling. He ran for the kitchen. "Hurry!" her uncle called to him. Then, with a wink at Kira, he walked in the same direction.
Putting her presents down, Kira went to watch the hysteria. The kitchen looked like a child's playroom. Pots and pans teetered precariously on every inch of table space, and a fine film of flour coated the vertical surfaces. Her father muttered curses as he twisted dials and punched buttons. Uncle Nathan offered soothing sounds and gently stirred the biggest pot—the one full of chili. Kira could see, amidst the carnage, the makings of a gigantic chili-cheese pizza, a beautiful work of careful engineering.
Her father and uncle always cooked together for special occasions, and they always left a mess best cleaned up with a fire hose. Kira could remember her mother leaning against the door at the edge of the inferno, shaking her head, just as Kira leaned against the door now. At the memory, Kira jerked away from the kitchen and went to set the table. That, too, her mother had always done.
The game of wonders started without warning, as usual. While her father sliced the pizza, her uncle held up his fork for examination. Too casually, he turned it in the air and said, "You know, this fork is made of stainless steel. Do you realize how amazing it is for us to use stainless steel for dinner this evening?"
Kira smiled as her father asked, "Why is it amazing?"
"You need chromium to make stainless steel. But chromium is a rare metal. One of the few places left on Earth where there's an abundance of chromium is on the ocean floor, locked inside metallic nodules coughed up from cracks deep inside the earth. So we send down special robot submarines to scoop up the nodules, to extract the chromium, to make the stainless steel, so that we can use these forks to eat tonight."
Her father had finished serving; he held his pizza in the air and tapped the crust. "Thats pretty amazing all right. There's another amazing thing here, too. Did you know that there was almost a terrible blight on the wheat fields this year? If the blight had taken hold, we might not have had the flour to make this pizza." He pointed at his glass of water. "And we needed water to solve the problem."
Kira frowned. Her father had never really liked the game, it seemed to her; his efforts always seemed halfhearted. But this wonder seemed unusually weak, even for him. So by watering the fields, the plants stayed healthy enough to fight the disease, right?" she asked.
Her father reluctantly nodded. "That, too, but that wasn't what I had in mind." He smiled. "We first spotted the blight through satellite photos. Because the photos showed the problem before it spread, we were able to protect most of the fields. Well, the satellite got into position to take those pictures by firing its rockets. And the rockets used hydrogen for fuel. And of course we got the hydrogen for the fuel from water. And that's how we needed the water to make it possible to have pizza tonight."
Kira laughed. "That's pretty amazing," she conceded. "But there's another wonder here tonight as well. It's amazing that we're living here at all. You know, Washington D.C. was built on a swamp. They had terrible trouble with mosquitoes and yellow fever when they first put the Capitol here. It's unfit for human habitation."
Uncle Nathan wet his finger and held it in the air. "Doesn't feel too uncomfortable to me."
Kira smirked. "Of course not, silly. Our house is air conditioned. If air conditioning hadn't been invented, we wouldn't be here."
Nathan raised an eyebrow. "We'd certainly be less comfy, anyway."
"No, we wouldn't be here by D.C. at all. Do you think you could get so many bureaucrats to live in a swamp without air conditioning? Certainly not. And if you couldn't get that many bureaucrats together, the government couldn't have grown into the big, powerful monstrosity it now is. And if the government hadn't become an oversized dinosaur, we wouldn't have had to move the Institute's headquarters here. We'd live close to a center of business, like Los Angeles or Houston, instead of living close to the center of politics. Right?"
Her father whooped with laughter. Uncle Nathan shook his head. "I think you've hit on the answer to the nation's problems, Kira. If we ban the use of air conditioning in America's capital, we can substantially reduce the burden of government. I like it. And you're right: that's truly amazing. Without air conditioning, we wouldn't be here."
Kira flushed with the glow of victory. For as long as she could remember, she had been trying to come up with a more amazing wonder than her uncle. Yet the glow faded, and Kira felt oddly disappointed. It took her a minute's introspection to realize what was missing. Uncle Nathan hadn't acknowledged that she had beaten him.
The glow returned as her understanding reached an even deeper level. She hadn't really beaten her uncle. He had never really beaten her.
The game of wonders was a cooperative one. It wasn't a zero-sum game like baseball or football, wherein for every winner there had to be a loser. Nobody had to lose in the game of wonders. Everybody who felt the amazement, who ceased to take the little things for granted, was a winner. As Nathan had said before, "It's not how you play the game, but whether everybody wins or everybody loses." Cooperative games made human beings more human; often, zero-sum games made them brutes.
The spicy flavor of the chili pizza filled her mouth; she started listening to the ongoing conversation.
Nathan was speaking. "So our reputation seems to be growing even faster than our seminars."
"What happened?" Kira asked.
Nathan turned to her. "I've been invited to the reception announcing a new book, Statesmanship and Politics. It was written by Senator Larry Obata, a friend of Hilan Forstil's. The announcement takes place at the Capitol, on September 30."
"That's neat," Kira said. "Can I come, too?"
"I'll get you an invitation," Nathan promised. He sipped at his orange juice, then continued, "So now you all know my plans for the next couple of months. What're you up to, Kira?" His tone was even more casual than when he had begun the game earlier.
Kira swallowed hard; her stomach turned into a cold lump. I'm doing some public relations work," she explained. "After all, that's what I got my degree in."
"Yes, I remember. You were going to develop advanced Information Age advertising concepts—ads that could compete with Madison Avenue without being misleading."
"Yeah. Well, I have some things to take care of first."
"Such as?"
Kira flushed, but she looked back at her uncle angrily. "I have to protect you from the cigarette industry, for one thing. And while I'm at it, I have to avenge my mother's murder."
"I see." He watched her with the cautious disapproval that was his strongest rebuke.
The sarcastic anger of her father's voice was a stronger rebuke. "So you think you can waltz in as an advertising agent and destroy one of the biggest, most powerful organizations on Earth?"
Kira shrugged. "I don't know. But I do know that they might destroy you if I don't. " She told them about Wilcox's plans to flood the network conferences with anti-Zetetic propaganda.
"Very clever," Nathan said. "What a brilliant ally Daniel Wilcox would make if we could coax him into the Institute."
She shook her head. "Not very likely. Believe me, he's ruthless."
"That doesn't necessarily make him bad. But you're right." He sighed. "We must think of him in many ways as an enemy."
"And he's talking about having a debate with you, Uncle Nathan. He thinks he can take you apart."
"Really?" Nathan's eyes lit up.
Kira held up a cautionary finger. "He might not beat you in the debate itself, but he might win in the news coverage that followed." She told them about the way Wilcox was pulling the strings of the media. As she spoke, she remembered her suspicions that Wilcox had other anti-Zetetic plans that she didn't know about. She had been building relationships with some of the programmers at Wilcox-Morris, trying to get access to more of the proprietary data bases, but she hadn't yet succeeded. As she thought about it, her anxiety increased; she had to work more quickly on those computers, and yet, she didn't dare.
Summing up Wilcox's plans, she added a final desperate warning to her uncle while her father was out of the room. "So you've got to be careful of what you say in public, because you never know how he'll twist it."
Nathan shook his head. "You're right, of course. Anything I say can be used against me. But you're wrong, too. I can't stop speaking. I can't stop trying to get people to think about their worlds in different ways. You see that, don't you?''
"I guess so." Kira slumped in her chair. "Well, be careful, anyway."
"Of course."
Suddenly the lights went down, and her father came in with a huge cake. Kira could tell they weren't too angry about her work with Wilcox-Morris; they obeyed her when she begged them to spare her their terrible, offkey rendition of "Happy Birthday. "