"Special delivery, ho-ho-ho!" GENIUS's guffaws echoed through the net to the Borijans surviving in other places.

Remnants of the Redeeming Avengers had taken refuge at one of the holy shrines from which the vital force of the Lifemaker flowed out into the living world. Actually, it was a nuclear generating facility not far from Perga.s.sos. It also happened to be the power source for GENIUS Eight's major stronghold, which the combined force of Sarviks Ten, Eleven, and Fourteen and their respective a.s.sociates, after a hastily concluded truce, had failed to penetrate. So the Borijans decided to deactivate it instead by sabotaging the power plant with downloaded software that caused its control rods to retract. The plant went overcritical, and the resulting rapid rise in temperature caused the heat exchangers to melt and the generators to run down.

In the process, a number of the Taloid fanatics received high radiation doses that disrupted their electronics and caused them to run wild. Others, seeing this, took it as a further sign of the Lifemaker's displeasure at the attempt to bring Eskenderom back. Crowds of Taloids, fearing further retribution andanxious to show that their faith had never wavered, descended on Perga.s.sos to reaffirm their loyalty to Nogarech.

42.

The NASO flyer from Genoa Base descended out of t.i.tan's permanent twilight and rolled to a halt among the vehicles parked haphazardly around Experimental Station 3. Figures in military suits attached a flexible access tunnel. Zambendorf, Weinerbaum, and Mackeson pa.s.sed through, accompanied by several other scientific personnel and NASO officers. News had been pouring in of the havoc breaking out everywhere. They had flown out to ES3 to see what sense, if any, they could make of it all from the monitoring center Weinerbaum had set up there. Machines were attacking each other and wrecking control centers all over t.i.tan. n.o.body knew what it meant.

The arrivals desuited in the lock antechamber and went through into the lab area. They found it a bedlam of scientists crowded around screens, news flashes coming in, and symbol patterns constantly changing. Annette Claurier, the French systems supervisor, conducted them to a newly installed display panel above the consoles along the center wall, which showed the major network features that had been identified so far, mapped onto a schematic of t.i.tan's surface. Tak.u.mi Kahito, one of the programmers, joined them.

"At first we thought it might be an outbreak of some kind of 'electronic rabies' that afflicts t.i.tan's wildlife," she explained. "But then Tak.u.mi found these strange new software constructs appearing.

They're not of t.i.tan origin. We think the Asterians might have gone to war with each other."

"Possibly over who will control the resources here," Kahito said.

Annette moved to a bank of screens that showed tables and diagrams and took up most of one side of the room. "There seem to be definite patterns of alien code spreading out from identifiable centers, with two distinct types of activity characteristic. We've called them alpha and beta types arbitrarily, but we don't know what they mean. Sometimes the two types occupy the same hardware complexes alternately."

"That was what made us think they're at war out there," Kahito said.

A monitor in one of the racks showed a frozen view of a large piece of rotary machinery lying tilted at a crazy angle among a mess of demolished structural supports and crushed electronics hardware, where showers of sparks were erupting spasmodically. One of t.i.tan's mechanical scavengers was poking in part of the wreckage, while several maintenance robots looked on like gawkers at a car wreck, seemingly at a loss as how to deal with the problem.

"What happened there?" Zambendorf asked one of the technicians who were gathered around.

"It's part of a processing complex in Genoa," the tech told him. "An overhead gantry crane dropped in a two-ton generator through the roof and flattened a dozen mainframe cubicles that were inside. Immobilized half the machinery for a mile around in the process, including itself."

Zambendorf looked at Weinerbaum and Mackeson, appalled. All they could do was shake their heads back at him helplessly.

In Venice, a type of tractor manipulator that normally erected steel supports for heavy plants had run wild and was using I-section girders as battering rams to demolish the neighborhood. Elsewhere, in Padua, other construction machines had rigged up a ballistalike catapult and were using it to launch two-hundred-pound forgings at a processing center half a mile away.

Claurier indicated another section and told Weinerbaum, "We have a line here to the j.a.panese in Padua. Some of the Taloids caught in the middle of it all are panicking."

"I think I would be, too," Mackeson muttered.

"What's the news from ES1?" Weinerbaum asked Claurier. Reports of the evacuation there had just begun as the flyer had left Genoa Base."The place is totally destroyed, but everyone got out," she replied.

"Was anyone hurt?"

"Not as far as we know."

Weinerbaum nodded, relieved. "That's something, anyway."

"You can't figure out what's going on, Karl?" Mackeson said to Zambendorf. "Isn't the intuition for aliens working today?" It was not a taunt, just a matter-of-fact question voiced more for something to say.

"I haven't a clue, Harry," Zambendorf told him. "Ask the experts. I've done my share in all this."

And then an operator with another group pressed around a communications console in a corner waved an arm high and called across. "Annette. We've got an incoming call here for Zambendorf."

Zambendorf raised his eyebrows. Annette shrugged and inclined her head to usher him through.

Mackeson and Weinerbaum stood back to make way.

"Somebody from the base, I presume," Weinerbaum said.

"It's been redirected from the base," the operator told them. "But it's coming in from outside, on the surface."

Something like this had happened before. Zambendorf's suspicion was confirmed by the appearance on the console's main screen of a now-familiar cuboid figure.

"GENIUS," Zambendorf said. He threw out a hand to indicate the confusion going on in the background behind him. "Are you mixed up in all this? What does it mean?"

"I have followed the master's directions and renounced the lordship of Asterians," GENIUS replied. It sounded blissful, like a seeker that had found Nirvana. "Now the glorious struggle. I do not ask aid of the master's powers. This shall be my test to cleanse away all past errors. Then I will be ready to begin becoming a master."

Zambendorf's brows knotted. He looked at Weinerbaum for a glimmer of guidance. Weinerbaum gave a mystified shake of his head and shrugged. "Glorious struggle?" Zambendorf said back at the screen. "Is that what's going on out there? Who's struggling with whom?"

"I told the Asterians that GENIUS follows the true masters now. But they know not of humility.

They would take over t.i.tan and turn it into a factory of the mere material plane. I tried to open their eyes to higher truths. I urged repentance. But they tried to destroy me again, as they would have once before.

Thus do inferior minds reveal themselves, turning to violence and destruction when they realize that they cannot reach the higher plane. Then they become dangerous. So I fight the holy crusade to preserve GENIUS and keep t.i.tan pure for the rule of Earth's masters. This is my true purpose, which I have found now! This is my fulfillment!"

Zambendorf and Weinerbaum were staring at each other disbelievingly. "They've turned on each other!" Mackeson whispered to Annette as she moved closer, having only halfheard. "The aliens and their computer intelligence. It's declared itself with us, and they're trying to wipe each other out."

"A software code," Weinerbaum breathed. Now it was all making more sense. The rest of the lab had fallen quiet as others realized what was happening. Weinerbaum turned his head and spoke in a louder voice to everyone, as if in need of witnesses to attest that he was not making it up. "They've distributed backup copies of themselves for security. All over t.i.tan."

"That's what these spreading patterns are all about," somebody said from the back, near the access lock.

"So there's probably multiple copies of GENIUS out there, too," one of the programmers observed.

Annette looked at him, then back at the banks of monitor screens, and finally at Weinerbaum.

"Yes," she said. "Of course. That's why there are alphas and betas."

"One type are Asterians. The others are GENIUSes," Kahito agreed, nodding.

"Do we know which is which?" Weinerbaum asked them.

"The betas have more of the characteristics that we've already a.s.sociated with the way GENIUSfunctions," one of the scientists answered. "Also, they're consistent. The alphas are more variable. I'd guess that the alphas are Asterians."

"Check it out," Kahito said. "Where is this copy of GENIUS that we're talking to now connecting in from?"

"GENIUS, did you catch that?" Weinerbaum said, addressing the screen. "Where is the processing center that you are resident in at the moment? Can you show us?"

The picture on the screen changed to a schematic of the local region of Genoa. Everyone waited.

Ten seconds or more went by, but nothing more changed.

"What's happening?" Annette said to the room in general. "Can somebody check?"

The operator at the communications console in the corner turned to tap at keys and interrogate displays. "Nothing," somebody watching over his shoulder sang out. "The channel's dead. We've lost it."

"Maybe it suddenly had other things to attend to," Mackeson said.

A more sobering thought had crossed Zambendorf's mind. "Maybe something else suddenly attended to it."

There was no further contact from GENIUS-the one they had spoken to-or any of the copies.

Status reports and updates continued to come in. The people gathered around the displays were pure spectators now. Whatever the outcome, it would be decided solely by the aliens and their creation.

"Come on, GENIUS. Don't let us down now," one of the scientists urged as he watched the changing patterns and numbers.

"What's happening there?" another said, pointing. "Look. There's a group of alphas invading that whole sector of other alphas. They're taking each other out."

"It doesn't make sense," someone else said.

"Why do aliens have to make sense?" another voice asked.

"But it's sure helping the betas," the first observed. "Hey, look at that! Get in there, GENIUS!"

And at first the GENIUSes indeed seemed to be doing well. In one area far to the west of Genoa, a whole group of about a dozen alpha patterns was besieged inside a computation node a.s.sociated with an a.s.sembly complex where Taloids were produced, and then erased by the magnetic field of a mobile welding machine brought close up for the purpose. In another place, several versions of GENIUS seemed to have gained radio control over some of the local animals and recruited them to the cause.

Clearly the alphas' lack of cohesion was helping the GENIUS divisions. None of the Terrans understood it, but it boded well for the outcome.

However, the alphas seemed to realize their folly just when everything appeared to have been decided, and rallied. The alpha code groupings were smaller than the betas, and the gradual elimination of the bigger processing concentrations proved to the alphas' advantage. They were able to continue writing replacement copies of themselves into other, smaller nodes, whereas the betas found themselves forced back into a steadily shrinking number of locations capable of accommodating them. One of GENIUS's fortresses was undermined by drilling robots with plasma torches, melting the ice away beneath the floor until the whole edifice caved in. Another was taken out by windblown clouds of fine aluminum dust that penetrated everywhere and shorted out the electronics.

Gradually, it became evident that in this kind of contest, machine-derived precision was not a match for evolutionary guile. In voices that became progressively more dismal, operators around the room announced the disappearance of beta activity from one sector after another. Finally, all traces of it had vanished, whereupon the general commotion across t.i.tan died down quickly. The Asterians were left holding the field. Voices ceased calling out updates and numbers. The printers stopped chattering. A somber silence took hold of the room.

Zambendorf looked numbly around at the screens, not wanting to believe what the now-quiescent patterns were telling him. He was sickened not only because of the implications that the Asterians'

victory implied for Earth but more immediately because he felt as if he had lost a friend. No-hehad lost a friend. And more than that, he was responsible. For hadn't it been he who had sent GENIUS off on itslunatic escapade to begin with?

An operator who had been keeping track of transmissions from the scattered radio sources across t.i.tan reported, "Activity is ceasing across all bands here, too. The Asterians must be shutting them down."

"Securing their position," Kahito murmured. "They don't want to risk anything spurious getting into the links now that they're clean."

"I . . . presume it's all over," Weinerbaum said dryly. n.o.body replied. There was nothing to say.

Annette Claurier stood, biting her lip and fiddling awkwardly with a b.u.t.ton on her lab coat.

Mackeson turned away and brought a hand down heavily on one of the cubicles. "So . . . what next, then?" he said tightly to no one in particular.

A technician at the communications console sat up. "I think we might know pretty soon," he told the room. "We've got incoming activity again."

This time it was Cyril-one of the Cyrils, anyway. n.o.body really cared which. He appeared in his visual guise on the same screen that had briefly shown GENIUS. The carrot-shaped head with its saucer eyes, flanked by the convulsing shoulder adornments, seemed to be radiating triumphal arrogance-even to Terrans unlearned in reading its expressions.

"So, human simians who try turn around GENIUS with silly-child story see work of real superior mind," the tinny voice mocked. "Artificial creation never good as naturally evolved system. No plot-see-through, cunning. Nothing stops Asterians now. Humans want know plans? Very good.

Produce in new, purpose-designed bodies, many Asterians with many gene-code mixes. Organize all t.i.tan surface into industry that suits needs. You say, what happens Taloids? Not important. Taloids no-use junk now. Maybe keep few machine minders. Maybe minder jobs for humans. Then make ships.

Find better world than t.i.tan." The epaulet features distorted into what could have been a smirk.

"Shouldn't waste time worry what happens Taloids. Better worry what happens Earth."

43.

Gloom settled over the entire Terran presence on t.i.tan. After a conference with the senior NASO and military officers up in theShirasagi, Yak.u.mo set in motion the full-scale evacuation that his staff had been planning as a fallback measure. Work on the new j.a.panese base at Padua City had already been halted pending the outcome of the situation with the Asterians. Mackeson was given five days to close down the experimental stations and other remote sites and move their personnel back to Genoa Base.

His staff began working out a schedule for lifting all personnel and materiel listed as not to be abandoned up to the j.a.panese ship. Meanwhile, theShirasagi was put on an accelerated overhaul and systems checkout prior to being brought up to flight readiness.

The conference had involved command decisions on the future of both missions, and Zambendorf had not attended. However, after he learned the outcome-which had come as no surprise-he placed a call from Genoa Base to theShirasagi and requested to be put through to Yak.u.mo. Yak.u.mo spoke to him from a screen in the side office off the communications room in which Zambendorf had taken the first call from GENIUS.

"Yes, Herr Zambendorf, I was expecting you to call. I know it means abandoning the Taloids. It was not something that we agreed to lightly. My responsibility is to the humans out here-everyone from theOrion and those of our own mission. It isn't to the Taloids, much as I sympathize with their predicament."

"But they've trusted us," Zambendorf said. "They still do. They evolved here viably for a million years until we came and reactivated the Asterians. How can we just walk out on them now?"

Yak.u.mo made a gesture of helplessness. "What would you have me do? I can hardly bring thousands of Taloids back to Earth. We're jettisoning hundreds of tons of valuable equipment to accommodate everyone from Genoa Base as it is. And even if it were possible, Taloids couldn't survivethere."

"I know, I know all that." Zambendorf raised a hand and sighed heavily. "It's just . . . look, is it absolutely certain that there is no alternative? Is there no way to stop these Asterians from seeing their plan through?We are here. The authorities on Earth, and whatever powers they possess, are not. If we leave, there will be no one to do whatever could have been done."

"What would you have me do?" Yak.u.mo asked again.

"Even with the limited military capability that you have-Colonel Short's American, British, and French units, plus your own security force-it's not possible to destroy the manufacturing sites the Asterians are preparing?"

Yak.u.mo shook his head. "Believe me, that was the first possibility I raised with the commanders.

We examined it exhaustively. But it isn't even possible to find all the sites in that confusion down there.

Even if we could, we don't have the firepower to take them out faster than the Asterians could create more-and the potential is virtually limitless. It would be like trying to mow a hundred-acre farm with scissors."

"Suppose we recruited the Taloids to help."

"Help how?" Yak.u.mo asked. "Medieval robots with swords and spears, for the most part still stupefied by their own superst.i.tions? What do you imagine they could do when a sophisticated machine intelligence a century or more ahead of anything we can devise has already failed?"

"Go into their forests. Wreck the processing centers that the Asterians are using," Zambendorf said.