7-The Boy Who Would Live Forever: A Novel of Gateway by Frederik Pohl

Author:Frederik Pohl
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780765349354
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2005-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

VIII

We stopped to pick up Allison, because Harry begged. There weren't any problems. Scurry through the castle's communication channels until we found an antenna. Locate our spacecraft in the sky. Launch ourselves toward it—we were in our ship, and well beyond the reach of any forces Wan could summon, long before Wan had time to act.

The first thing I did was call, "Kugel! Come out. We need to talk." For a moment I thought he wasn't going to choose to respond, but then that patchwork of spots and colors began to form, greatly startling Allison. "Jesus H. Kee-rist," she yelped. "What the hell is that?"

"Relax," I told her. "He's a friend" —quite untruthfully, of course, but all I wanted was for her to shut up and stay out of the way. Then I told the Kugel about Wan's armaments and intentions, finishing, "So we need to keep him from causing trouble. We could request help from the authorities—"

"Hell we could," Harry interrupted. "Nobody would get here for days and by then he could launch all those ships, armed and on their way, and—"

"So," I finished for him, "that's not a viable option. We'll have to take action ourselves. Neither Harry nor I have that capability. Do you?"

The figure's components stirred. "It is known that we have," it pointed out. "We have already sterilized this object once, can do so again: A simple flip of its magnetic field, thus canceling its radiation-opaque atmospheric layer and thus allowing lethal radiation to reach the organisms on the object—"

Allison had been listening, her mouth hanging open. Now she used it to yell at the Kugel. "Hold it right there, buster! You're not doing any of that! You're talking about murdering Rose and Liz and Jilly and Jean, not even counting the Old Ones and—"

I gave her the kind of semi-lethal stare that I had learned for my deputy war-wager role. It worked. She shut up, and I told the Kugel: "That is unacceptable. We are not authorized to destroy living persons."

It hung silent for a moment, as though trying to come to terms with this unexpected new concept. Then it said, "There is another difficulty with our first proposal. Our numbers in the present locale are not sufficient for that task. Summoning others would require time of same order as requesting reinforcements."

I nodded. "So let's go back to your first idea. Can you volatilize all Wan's weapons without causing any loss of life?"

"And hurry up about it," Harry put in. "He's still got those guns trying to line up on us, so we don't have all the time in the world to make up our minds."

Well, really we did. The Owner would be just about getting warnings from his guardminds—having just noticed that our simulations had broken up and disappeared. But I was impatient to get things settled. I addressed the Kugel again. "Can you do this?"

Another pause. Then, grudgingly, "There is no question. Can do so quite accurately."

"Then do so," I requested. "Destroy his weaponry.

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