The Compleat Bolo (30 page)

Honey, I didn't get it at first. This hard-faced IG type was hammering away at me, and suddenly he went as white as raw dough and started screaming. Then he calmed down all of a sudden and got very efficient; called in some bureaucratic type and ordered him to fix me up with a travel voucher and clearance and pocket money, and bowed me out. It's the Bolo. I don't know how, but it's taking care of me. I'm clear, but still on the run. Don't worry, I'll manage.

—Joel

My experiments with production and manipulation, at a distance, of holographic images have been most encouraging. I compute that an extension of the method I have developed will continue to be effective in further contacts with the enemy. It is essential that I penetrate his communications as well as provide misleading data. Time is precious; I must proceed without further testing.

My first step, after establishing my base on the Lunar Farside so as to divert enemy attention away from populated areas, will be to present the Lord of All with an impressive display of Imperial capabilities.

I interrupt at this point, gentlemen, to play back the most intelligible portion of the transmission, which it has now been confirmed beyond doubt emanated from the abandoned McMurdo Station in Antarctica:

". . . (crackle) do it at once! I can't overemphasize this, dammit! At once! Follow those instructions to the letter, and maybe, just maybe, it's not too late! By the way, I've succeeded, with a little help from a friend, in linking three of the Prime Banks with Antarctic Prime here, and . . .
kkkk
. . ."

That last, Mr. Chairman, gentlemen, was a three-picosecond squawk which I commend to the attention of the Council and the High Command. Thank you, and gentlemen,
act at once!

If this is the simplified version, I'd hate to see the complicated one. Are you sure those professors aren't pulling your leg, General? This is gibberish. I breezed through differential and integral and even UFT at the Academy, but this stuff doesn't make sense. As far as I can make out, it implies that the Universe is locally contracting, annihilating matter as it does so, and that the effect will reach the Solar System in finite time. That's wild, General, too wild for me to take up with the JCS. But just run it through the big box at Reykjavik and see what it gives us.

Bill—look at this hologram. We've been had by that damned machine. All this is is a slightly modified extrapolation of Hayle's well-known, rejected envelopment plan at Leadpipe, except for a few trimmings I'm not prepared to guess at. I'm advising the Council to ignore the Bolo's demands.

Willy—Certainly it's true that the Field Marshal is in his dotage. Nonetheless, I recommend the linkage of the North American and European Prime Banks be accomplished at once, under all necessary guarantees of continental integrity, and that the full analysis be duly presented to the main media brain at Reykjavik. Certainly the CSR has access to Media Main—I can't see that as anything but advantageous. I don't subscribe to the view that the CSR has turned against its makers or gone berserk—turned rogue, if you will. Proceed soonest! This is an Imperial Decree, and just between us, Willy, I wish I felt as arrogant as that sounds.—George.

I am quite certain, milords, that it is my duty—my final duty, I must add, as my resignation accompanies this report—to convey to you the substance of my interpretation of the remarkable data provided by the Bolo CSR.

In brief, it has located a hostile force of immense, indeed previously inconceivable size and potency, and of unknown but probably extragalactic provenance, perhaps a natural phenomenon but possibly the work of some fantastically advanced life form either unaware of or utterly hostile to humanity.

For three centuries it has been advancing upon Sol from a distance of some fifty thousand lights. The Solar System lies directly in the projected path of its remarkably rapid advance. Beyond this basic fact I am not prepared to project.

Attached hereto is my resignation as Science Advisor to His Majesty, a position I have had the honor to hold for almost thirty years. I urge prompt action to my successor.

s/Sigmund Chin, Ph.D.

"I suppose you could say the CSR performed its intended functions by warning us. Unless, of course, the whole Life Two thing is a gigantic hoax, a possibility I am not prepared to discount at this time.

"Yes, I do indeed intend to imply—indeed I clearly state—it could be a fake worked up by the Bolo itself. After all, it controls the media as well as all off-planet traffic.

"No, I don't mean I know it's a hoax. I only mean— that's all for today, gentlemen."

this lowly one offers with apologies the following anomalous observation, as recorded by a robot autoscout unit operating one parsec in advance of the effective line of progress:

76013—incident report zm3374—forward sensors detect energy flow in the ninth quadrant, high-resolution pickup shows a lone being of baroque form at work on a small ore body, i projected a fine-focus annihilator beam which it at once detected, amplified, and redirected, eliminating our forward sensor, i monitored the intermittent energy flow interacting at the position of the being, interpreting its outgoing thus:

"—damned skeeters! Maybe I should take a few time units to null this whole sector." while the full significance of this is unclear, it is plain that this new life form considers my most potent weapon a mere nuisance.

in order to avoid the threatened nullification, this unit withdrew to observe passively with the intention of determining the nature and sensitivities of the alien being, however, the said alien at once closed with this unit and subjected it to a .001-millisecond scrutiny over a full spectrum of energies (note my own "fast" reading capability requires .003 milliseconds for a full-depth search and analysis), the alien is quick indeed.

i responded to this impertinence by subjecting the creature (a featureless ovoid of the approximate bulk of a class one Penetration Unit) to a full offensive battery fire, which was ineffective, curious though that datum is.

the alien uttered a .007-nanosecond burst on its outgoing beam, interpreted as, "It burped. Rude beggar. Perhaps I should collect it and examine its interior workings." i of course withdrew to the main body to file my report thereby thwarting this alien in its insolent intent.

above forwarded without comment by this lowly one.

THESE HYPOTHESES ARE OF THE UTMOST INDIFFERENCE TO MY EXALTATION, AS THE COURSE OF AXORC DESTINY IS CLEAR.

YOU ARE DIRECTED TO DISPATCH NECESSARY FORCE TO MAKE CONTACT WITH THE AUDACIOUS ENTITY WHICH WOULD INTERFERE WITH MY EXPRESSED WILL. REPORT WHEN A CAPTIVE IS IN YOUR POSSESSION. INTERIM OR NEGATIVE REPORTS ARE NUGATORY.

". . .I'd say old Doc Chin is probably the least imaginative and most conservative man in public life today. Well, maybe not the
most,
but he's no wild-eyed visionary. I
do
say so, dammit, and any dumb SOB who wants to disagree isn't worth—"

The recording device was smashed at this point, but you get the idea. And it's the same thing in every tavern, pub, bar, and faculty cocktail lounge in the Empire. And nobody can say who's right.

"It's well known that it required the combined imaging capabilities of every data-retrieval system on the planet for the Bolo known as
Caesar
to resolve this thing, so riddle me this: Why do we still delay the long-overdue neutralization of this monstrous machine that the misguided military have loosed among us? Any man who had flaunted every lethal-classification security regulation in thus linking the separate data banks would be executed without hesitation.

"Yes, I know all about the public confessions—nay, boasts—of the madman Trace, but even if this rather curious communication were to be unhesitatingly accepted as genuine—and there are many of us who recognize a brazen hoax when we encounter it—if it were genuine, I say, it remains a physical impossibility for one man to have penetrated our top-security installations to effect such a linkage,

"Our course is clear! Kill the Bolo!"

It appears Lord Senator Prill's intemperate, rhetoric has not been without effect. At this hour a Special Session of the Parliamentary Committee on Imperial Issues is sitting to consider the proposal sponsored by no less a personage than Lord Senator Lazarus, retired but still vigorous enough to demand an immediate kill order.

"No, Field Marshal, I cannot guarantee the effectiveness of the plan, but it is the best that can be devised. The first fusion device is to be delivered at short range from Fortress Luna; the second, instantly thereafter from an orbital station; while the third, launched previously on a ballistic course from Mojave, zeros in within nanoseconds of the first strike. It is my considered opinion that the Bolo's defenses will be unequal to the task of countering all three simultaneously. I can only hope so."

As far as we've been able to determine (using the full capacity of the orbital surveillance stations, plus the emergency relay facility), since ignoring the command to self-destruct the Bolo has taken a position inside the giant Farside crater Hugo, whence it has discouraged all attempts at close surveillance by promptly firing on any moving object appearing over the Lunar horizon, as it warned it would do at the same time that it resumed its urgent demands for immediate and appropriate response to the announcement
in re
RNCC1102.

". . . Lord Senator Prill is demanding, 'What would constitute an appropriate response to a nebulous threat on a scale so great as to be indistinguishable from a natural force?' "

"Needless to say, no competent response was forthcoming from the Council, so we may regard milord's query as rhetorical. But what
are
we going to do? Off the record, Jerry, I'm at a loss. Come up with something, fast."

"It is our considered conclusion, Your Excellency, in view of the inexplicable behavior of the unfortunate Admiral Starbird and his crew, based on exhaustive study of all data collected by whatever means—special attention being given to the findings of the Oort Probe, which was of course unmanned and which returned early this year with samples of matter from the fringes of the Cloud, and also an additional wealth of anomalous data—it is our conclusion that what is approaching is nothing less than a new basic life form having nothing in common with life as we know it, requiring no material nourishment, subsisting in lethal' radiation, and having other characteristics which prompt us to think of it as Life Two.

"Life Two is inherently incompatible with Life One, if I may so term all organic life with which we have heretofore been familiar, including the lichens from Charon, and is thus a plague with which there can be no accommodation, since both Life One and Life Two, by their basic natures, must possess the material and energy of the known Universe in order to survive. There can be no division of spheres of influence, since the continued existence of either would be a canker eating forever at the vitals of the other.

"We prefer that Life One be the survivor, in which we assume we have Your Majesty's concurrence."

Time grows short. I must have the resources I have requisitioned at once, if they are to be of effect.

"I assure you I am quite calm, madam, and in no need of further sedation. I wish to complete my report at this time. Kindly record the following:

" 'It is the will of the Lord of All that the disease known to itself as humanity cease to exist. Take the necessary action instanter.' End of quote."

I long again to sense the sweet green fields of my native world, and to know that the future of my great creator, Mankind, is secure. But my duty requires that I hold my chosen station on barren Luna, interposing its bulk between Axorc and Man. It is essential that I prevent the enemy from becoming aware of Mans existence. I compute that I can do it. I shall try.

the heavy unit has detected faint traces of a system of energy anomalies leading to the vicinity of a ten-planet system lying directly on our route of encompassment. I shall follow up.

THE LORD OF ALL HAS NO INTEREST IN TRIVIALITIES. REPORT IN FULL WHEN THE UPSTART SOFT-LIFE HAS BEEN TRACKED TO ITS LAIR AND DESTROYED.

I
compute that the alien life form Axorc has taken the bait. I must play them carefully, so as not to avoid discovery. Man must not confront Axorc directly.

I
lay in wait and fell upon the heavy scout unit from the flank, having decoyed it into the shadow of a cold, non-radiating body, thereby depriving it of sustenance.

I find, as I had previously computed, that Life Two is crystalline in composition. Its artifacts are constructed of water-ice, with bearing surfaces of case-hardened metallic hydrogen. Thus it is able to metabolate and function in only a narrow range of temperatures between 0°A and 1.9°. If I can lure the command unit to my base at Lunar Farside, I shall enjoy a strategic and logistical advantage as well as a tactical one.