Members of the team came and went on various mysterious missions, but Doc remained behind, as she did on all but the most extraordinary of occasions. They did not want to risk her outstanding medical skills unless they were needed uptime.
She lost weight, too, and felt better, although she still tipped Doc’s scales at better than ninety-seven kilograms— well over two hundred pounds for her five-foot four-inch frame.
It was months before the bandages could come off, but still more time before they could try Doc’s gadget. The kids approved her new look; even the eyes, they assured her, were big, warm, and natural. Her hair had been cut very short for the operation, and she kept it that way, knowing it was easy to care for.
She had been gone almost fourteen years, not the ten or twelve Ron had estimated, and was physically thirty-four. Now, after a lot of skilled work with the best medical technology, she was beginning to look more her own age, and feel it, too.
Finally came the day when they tried out the seeing eye device. It resembled nothing so much as a pair of tight-fitting goggles, but there was a lot of microcircuitry and even a small computer and power pack in it. It took in the scene and transmitters broadcast it in code to the optic nerves, fooling them into believing that they were getting correct information from real eyes. It had its limitations. Because the thing was basically an infrared device, the images transmitted were mostly in black and white, or soft gray-browns and yellows, as Dawn saw it. Images were sharp and clear at night or in a room with muted lighting, but they faded as the light source was raised. In a brightly lit room it was barely adequate; in full daylight, or in the face of a searchlight beam or fire, it was useless and even a little painful. It also had an effective range of about a hundred yards, with little or no peripheral vision.
Worse, it could be worn only for a hour or so a day. The power supply was quite limited and, when run down, it caused all sorts of random impulses to be sent to the brain instead.
Still, it was sight—real sight. Wearing the goggles, she could see again, could see the kids as they were now for the first time. To Dawn, it was a miracle.
Doc seemed almost apologetic about its limitations. “It was developed late in the nineteen-eighties,” she told Dawn. “This model was actually in production in a limited way, but very expensive, early in the nineties. Then they came up with the ability to organically grow matched eyes for specific patients, and all work on perfecting this was dropped. A pity. The people who would appreciate it the most were the elderly who couldn’t have transplants and those who, for one reason or another, couldn’t stand the surgery to begin with. It’s even more frustrating because the technology to produce eyes for you better than new is available—up at the edge. But it takes time to grow them, and a lot of equipment and skill. The Earthsiders aren’t likely to do it for you, and the Outworlders are more likely to redo the whole you in ways you never even thought of.”
She nodded. “It’s enough—for now.”
“You realize,” Doc added, “that the reason they never gave us the capability was because we don’t need it. We can regulate a trip point and take a different cure.”
Dawn sighed. “Yes, I know. And that’s what you expect me to do.” She paused a moment. “But—if I do, then I won’t be their mother anymore. Oh, I’ll know, but how do you explain it to them!”
“I think,” Doc said, “that it’s time to call a meeting.”
Chung Lind, as squad leader, was chairman of the base general committee. Herb, as his exec, was also on it, and Doc, the most permanent of the residents, was included, too. This trio was absolute in their decisions, although, of course, those for whom they worked severely limited their options.
The huge Oriental leader was serious, as usual, but so was the usually light and airy Herb. Doc was grim. Dawn didn’t have to see them to know that.
“Doc has called this committee into session, but it had to be done anyway, as we are running out of option time from the computer and its controllers on the edge,” Lind began. “Doc has put this off many times, and we have gone along, but things must come to a head—and soon. Do you understand what this is all about. Dawn?”
She nodded. “I think so. You’re going to decide the fate of me and my children.”
“In a manner of speaking, yes, although the ultimate choice will be yours. I’m afraid it’s the same sort of thing we face here all the time. Not a lack of choices, but a lack of good ones. Doc?”
“I finally called this meeting, after fighting it for months, because something happened to make me realize that I was being, in my own way, as cruel as the other choices, although I thought of it as kindness. I wanted to give the kids some adjustment time, and a leg up on joining a very strange world, and, I admit, we wanted to give you some time as well. I think we all agreed we owed it to you. Now, however, I realize we may have gone too far.”
“I appreciate the gesture,” Dawn responded, “but what is the crisis? You and I both know that we can fix things uptime now or later.”
“In a sense, that’s true,” Doc agreed, “but relative time moves on when we are in phase, as we are here. The war goes on, and it is increasingly brutal and ugly. Have you ever wondered what most of us are doing here?”
“Many times,” she admitted.
“You may have been told, or maybe not, that the Earthside leaders have a fall-back position here in the Safe Zone. When the ultimate defeat comes, they will escape to that base, sealing themselves off by detonating the other fifteen thousand nuclear weapons stockpiled from the old days. They will destroy the Earth and every living thing on it.”
“Eric told me that. He gave it as his reason for fighting on their side.”
“Dawn,” Herb put in, “they’re in pretty sad shape. The truth is, the Outworlders could win very quickly. They’ve had the ability to do it for years. The only reason they don’t is that cache of nuclear weapons. They are not out to commit genocide on the people of Earth, believe me. But they have to continue the war, at a reduced level, to keep the pressure on. If they stopped, perhaps for as little as a year or two, it’s possible that Earth could regroup. They have spaceships with terrible weapons hidden in nearly impregnable bunkers far underground, but they have no way to launch them without access to surface installations. They are mother ships for hordes of fighters that can be launched only from space. We can keep them down there by incessant attack, but that’s it. If we let up, they can launch. They still can’t win, but they might just wind up destroying both sides.”
She still didn’t see where this was going.
“So, you see, we’re fighting a bloody and terrible holding action. The more destruction and death it spreads, the more terrible it is. The only way we can take them out, though, is to neutralize those nuclear bombs. To locate and deactivate or destroy every one of them. That’s our job.”
“It can be quite subtle,” Lind added. “Great caverns used for this purpose can be rendered unusable in earlier centuries, with no disruptions to humans. Even such things as soil and rain balances in certain areas can be altered so that what’s there is subjected to corrosion. Trace elements made in future labs can be added to areas so that communications on the firing bands are jumbled. A tiny flaw, subtly introduced in the program used to create the weapons’ microprocessors, can backfire on them over time, although it will test out in the short run.”