“I asked if we could be of assistance. Are there any instruments we can monitor? Any station we can occupy?”
“The one who calls herself Ashili was true: you are endlessly entertaining. There is nothing you can do, though it is adorable of you to offer. The very notion amuses me and lightens my mind.” It looked back to the small holos which floated in the air before it. “You could sooner be companions to the Drex than to the Enemy. None can be friends to the Enemy.”
“You hate them so,” Iranaputra observed. “Are they truly so dreadful?”
“In attitude evil beyond your comprehension, in shape as different from me as I am from you, a thousand times more repulsive than you can imagine. They murder and destroy without thought, without meaning, without emotion. Destruction is their whole reason for being, which they render as slow and painful as possible.”
“Sounds rather revolting, what?” Heath murmured.
“Boy, that’s sure not us,” said Hawkins quickly. “We’re a peaceful folk.”
“As the recent presence of hundreds of warships in this system has so aptly demonstrated,” the Drex commented drily.
“Recent?” Ashili and Heath exchanged a look.
“Most, though not all, have departed. A few remain.”
“People were afraid.” Gelmann could only be silenced for so long. “The size of your ship intimidated them.”
“As my size intimidates you?”
“Well, actually, no. I admit you took me a little aback at first. Kind of like my Uncle Izzy used to when I was a little girl. But it’s okay now. I’m used to you. You can’t judge someone by their size, whether they’re twice or ten times as big as you. You shouldn’t mind my saying so already, but a person’s a person.”
“What a bizarre notion. You are a very strange species.” A tentacle dipped into a holo and stirred the celestial contents. “The Enemy comes.” Light streaked the vaulting walls, coruscated across the ceiling, illuminated portions of the floor. It was as if they stood inside a monstrous gemstone lit from outside by dozens of spotlights. They found themselves squinting or covering their eyes against intense bursts of brightness.
“A million years asleep,” the Drex proclaimed. Or maybe it was just murmuring aloud to itself and the translating instrumentation automatically picked it up. “The ship is finally coming alive.”
“This enemy,” Shimoda wondered, “has it ever visited this section of space before?”
“Not to my knowledge,” the Drex replied. “That was one reason why it was decided to conceal the ship on your world. All went as planned.”
“Except for perhaps something of a time-delay error in your reactivation?” Iranaputra suggested.
“You could say that.”
Sobran sat deep in thought in his command chair, trying not to imagine the possible fate of the Homeworld he and Hiroshigi and the others had abandoned in their haste to return to their own systems. His depressed reverie was interrupted by the anxious face of his chief communications officer.
“Report just in from far-flung commercial vessels and automatic stations, Admiral. The advance alien fleet is breaking up.”
Sobran frowned and sat straighter in his chair. “What do you mean, breaking up?”
“Dispersing. Going off in different directions. As best we can determine from the admittedly sparse information that’s come in so far, some are heading toward Keiretsu-controlled worlds, some toward the Victoria League, even some toward the federation. They’re fragmenting into smaller and smaller groups.”
Sobran’s expression tightened. “That means we have a chance to defeat them. The larger fleets can concentrate on defending their own systems, and when these creatures are defeated there, we can move on to help the lesser leagues. These creatures are committing tactical suicide.”
“Yes, sir. That seems to be the consensus. It’s the last thing you’d expect them to do.”
“Either they haven’t a clue what they’re doing,” Sobran cautioned, retrenching mentally, “or else they have reason to be confident of their strategy. What I don’t understand is why the abrupt interest in other worlds when the artifact which presumably drew them here remains in the Sol system? What could possibly have so radically diverted their attention?”
“If they truly constitute an advance force, sir,” said his second-in-command from nearby, “they may be dispersing to make sure there are no other artifacts in the vicinity. Or that there are. Remember, we still don’t know if they’re allies or enemies of the artifact.”
“Maybe. But they’ve apparently managed to detect the one near Jupiter at this distance. Why the sudden need to break formation to search? No, it doesn’t add up.”
A second-level analyst spoke up hesitantly. “I should say that they’ve been distracted by something more important to them.” Everyone, including the admiral, eyed her blankly.
XXI
The first contact occurred in the atmosphere above Daibatsume, an important manufacturing world of the Keiretsu. Two space-capable police craft rose to confront the half dozen approaching alien vessels. The officer in charge, one Captain Masa Suhkret, watched and waited nervously, relying on ground control for up-to-the-minute information. He was a municipal police officer, not a soldier, and the situation in which he presently found himself made him extremely uneasy. For lack of experience he held back, waiting for the aliens to make the first move. It turned out to be exactly the right thing to do.
The alien craft spread out and took up orbital positions high above Daibatsume. It was an action they duplicated above dozens of other inhabited worlds. While the people below waited anxiously, some cowering in makeshift shelters, others curiously scanning violated skies, experts fought vociferously over how best to respond to gestures that, while intrusive, could not readily be construed as hostile.
Then the hundreds of alien craft began to communicate, and things started to happen.
Eustus Polykrates was slopping his mutated hogs, a melodious activity he had nonetheless not grown to love, when he heard the rumble. It came from the direction of the dairy barn and it grew louder as he rose to stare. His wife came out on the back steps, knitting programmer in her hands.
“Eustus? What’s happening?”
Polykrates’ attention remained focused on the barn, but he had enough presence of mind to wave at her. “Git back in the house, woman. Git back inside quick.”
With a tremendous crackle of splintered wood and deformed plastic support beams, the main farm computer exploded through the roof of the barn and rose skyward, trailing the lines and tubes of the automatic milking equipment, the fertilizer mixer, and the grain irradiator behind it. Moooing in panic, stunned cows burst from the collapsing structure, scattering in all directions. Within the pen a hundred-kilo porker, all thoughts of traditional farm relationships wiped abruptly from its porcine mind, emitted a shattering sequence of squeals as it ran down Polykrates in its haste to find freedom and shelter.
Shielding himself as best he could against fragments of falling barn superstructure (not to mention berserk stock), Polykrates picked himself out of the muck in time to see his expensive monitoring device disappear among the clouds.
“I’m all right,” he declared, sensing his wife approaching from the back of the house. “You have any notion what this means?”
“Yep.” She put farm-strengthened arms beneath his and helped him to his feet. “It means you’re gonna have to start milking the cows by hand again.”
Recreational boaters on the Potrum River who happened to be looking in the right direction at the critical moment were later able to report that they had definitely seen a large, glittering device erupt from the eighty-third floor of the Cheimer building, pause to hover in midair while raining fragments of shattered lucinite on the street below, and then ascend into the heavens. As if its physical departure wasn’t sufficient to accurately identify the machine in question, confirmation arose (literally) in the form of the alcoholic stench which saturated the main street outside the entrance to the Cheimer Tower for nearly a week thereafter.
Carter was kneeling on the lawn hand-cleaning his perimites when he noticed the procession. It was led by the Wentworths’ expensive (but last year’s model) Hollymate Composter, followed (he was sure) by John Blessington’s matched pair of Garden Knight model 12 edge and bush trimmers. Sprayer in one hand, scraper in the other, he rose to stare.
A repetitive rattling caused him to turn. The door of the greenhouse shook with each bang until it burst open and his (supposedly) just-like-new Persephone gardener-mower came rumbling out, heading directly across the turf toward the gear-grinding parade.
“Wait, stop! It’s not trim time and I didn’t activate you.” With the foolhardy bravery that becomes the dedicated gardener, Carter stepped between the mower and its brethren.
Laser cutter humming ominously, the tool paused. “Get out of the way, Owner Carter.”
“I shan’t. This antiprogramming behavior will not be tolerated.”
The mower revved and edged closer to Carter’s sandalclad toes. “Bugger you, rock-in-the-grass.”
“You can’t hurt me.” Carter smiled defiantly. “It runs counter to your prime directive. Remember the Three Laws.”
“I’m AI-driven. Not AS.”
“What’s AS?”
“Artificial stupidity. Get out of my way.” It backed up and attempted to pass him to the right, but Carter skittered sideways to block it anew.
