But his yell of triumph was echoed by the techs. One of them came sprinting clumsily up the slope to Torec. “It worked!” A burly girl from Earth, she grabbed Torec and tried to kiss her on the lips. It was typically inappropriate earthworm behavior, resulting only in a clash of visors, but Torec let it pass.
The bots descended on the prototype complex, checking its physical integrity. But ironically, Torec knew, there should be little for them to find, for as the processor’s paradoxical operation had worked, there had been no need for the problem to be brute-force solved, and no need even for the little toy ships to chatter back and forth on their FTL hops — in this draft of the timeline anyhow. The curves in time had served their purpose — and had rendered their own existence unnecessary. It was another peculiar advantage of a time-travel computer. If it worked correctly, it never actually ran at all — and so it should never wear out. Some of the techs had even debated whether they could get away with the economy of making the processors shoddily, almost at the point of failure — for that failure would never be tested.
The four of them stood in a rough circle: Torec, Luru Parz, Nilis and Pila. Of the four, only Torec was physically present, though they all wore skinsuits, save the stubbornly uncouth Commissary. The light falling on each of the Virtuals came from different unseen sources, subtly different angles, and that, set against the black sky and shining ground of the Moon, added to Torec’s sense of unreality.
Pila said coolly, “The trial was obviously a success.”
“Thank you,” Nilis said. “But it’s more than that.” He waved a hand, and a crude Virtual diagram appeared before him. It was Pirius’s early whiteboard sketch, Torec saw, the asterisk standing for the Prime Radiant, and the obstacles surrounding it marked in red — the FTL foreknowledge symbolized by a bar across the approach path, the superior Xeelee computing and defensive ability a circle around the Radiant. Now Nilis snapped his fingers, and the circle around the asterisk turned green. “Today we have removed one of the three fundamental barriers lying between us and the conquest of the Galaxy. We can outthink the Xeelee, outmaneuver their final defenses!
“But you all understand this prototype is just the beginning, the proof of concept,” he said. “Much more work will be needed to turn this crude, sprawling prototype design into a battle-hardened unit. Now is the time for a fresh tranche of funding to be released.”
“We at the Ministry do understand,” Pila said, with the faintest condescension. “That’s why I’ve been authorized to tell you that, with the successful completion of the trial, the project will continue under the auspices of the Navy. The technology is obviously of strategic potential, and funds for its full development will be made available.” She beamed, as if she were handing out gifts.
Torec quietly clenched a fist. She felt vindicated. But Luru Parz stayed silent.
Nilis stepped forward. His face, pocked by resolution flaws, was working as he tried to maintain his smile. “The Navy? But the CTC processor is just the first step to the greater goal, the strike at the Prime Radiant.”
“Which was only a pipe dream, wasn’t it?” Pila said sweetly. “You still have nothing, not even concepts, for overcoming your remaining obstacles. Commissary, it’s time to stop. The Minister feels he has done his duty in backing you this far, on the basis of your previous accomplishments. You’ve done well! Bask in the glory. Once again you’ve done your duty for the cause of the Third Expansion, and now your garden needs you.”
Nilis laughed. “And you’ll throw this miracle to the Navy? Who will use it to lose even more battles in ever more ingenious ways — oh, you fools, can’t you see what you’re doing?”
Pila flinched, and her face closed up. But her Virtual image shuddered.
In a silent explosion of pixels it burst open, and the slim woman was replaced by the massive form of Minister Gramm. He was without a skinsuit, and grease was smeared on his chin. And he was trembling with rage. “You call me a fool? I am warning you: take the get-out, Commissary. Go home. If you make any more trouble, I will cast you down in the pits of Mercury with this child soldier of yours.”
Nilis trembled too, through anger and fear. But he held his ground.
Luru Parz stepped between the two of them. “Enough.” Her Virtual form grazed Gramm’s, and his belly exploded in a hail of muddy pixels.
Gramm lumbered back. “Stay out of this, Luru Parz.”
“I will not. You may not be able to see the potential here, Minister, but I can. For the first time in three thousand years we may be glimpsing a way to end the relentless friction of this war — end it before it ends us.”
“My verdict is final,” shouted Gramm, eyes bulging.
“No,” Luru Parz said simply. “It isn’t. The project continues.” She held his gaze.
To Torec’s amazement Gramm was the first to back down, a Minister of the Coalition somehow beaten by this small, worn-smooth, mysterious woman. Not for the first time, Torec longed to know the secret of Luru’s power.
Luru turned away. “There is nothing left to do here but detail. We must move to the next stage. We meet in one week. In person, if you don’t mind; these Virtual confrontations are unsatisfactory.”
Torec asked, “Where?”
“Port Sol,” said Luru Parz. And she allowed her Virtual to break up, the pixels fading from view in the bright light of the late lunar morning.
Chapter 16
On Quin Base, after the initial flurry of curiosity died down, Pirius Blue tried to keep his distance from the other cadets. He was too old, too different, too outside ever to fit in with these swarming kids.
But, despite his reserve, Pirius became an unlikely favorite of three girls who called themselves Tili One, Tili Two, and Tili Three. They were alike in their slight build, their dark coloring, and their small toothy faces. They were actually triplets, products of the same ovum. That wasn’t terribly uncommon, he learned, if you came from a certain big hatchery on the periphery of this star cluster, where for some reason multiple births were common. “But it makes sense,” Cohl said with her usual sour humor. “This is the Quintuplet Cluster…”
The Tili triplets spent almost all their time together. They always seemed to fix it so they worked together during training exercises, and when they were off duty they stayed even closer. Eating, working on their gear, they were always giggling, talking, their three so-similar heads clustered together. They shared one bunk, and when they slept, the three of them tangled up together in a warm heap of limbs and heads. They even made love, in full view of everybody, unembarrassed. But their lovemaking was gentle, very tender, almost presexual, Pirius thought. Of course this was all inappropriate. Family units, even twins and triplets, weren’t supposed to be left together lest the bonds they formed got in the way of loyalty to a wider humanity. But then a lot of what went on here was non-Doctrinal.
Things got complicated when the triplets fixed on Pirius. Apparently they had had some rudiments of flight training, as navigators, before falling foul of the authorities. So they had something in common. When one of them offered to show Pirius how to repair scuffs on his skinsuit or to clean out the algae beds in his backpack, he accepted with good grace.
They seemed to treat him as a big, clumsy pet. He put up with it. Maybe it was because the Tilis so obviously had each other that he felt a bit more secure with them.
There were a couple of times, though, when they tried to entice him into their crowded bed. As they ran their little fingers over his belly and calves, no offer could have seemed more tempting. But he drew back, again fearing he might somehow lose himself. He was also worried about how old the triplets were; like the other cadets they seemed very small, very unformed, very young.