Archon 31

“Shouting”-Continued from page 46Haven't got it anymore/has-been/used-to-be/like hell tootired, too old."I destroyed the Aswann Dam!" He slammed his fistagainst the console. "I'm the one responsible for the 'accident'at the Toronto fusion plant! I engineered the obliteration ofBombay! I'm damned if you beat me!"Old news/yesterday's glories/don't count now.He turned to a different console and keyed into thepersonnel rosters. The systems programmers were on board.Charny searched for one he could revive and coerce intounlocking the watchdog program.Marian Cavafy.He sat back. Everythinginside him shrank. Like filmflash frozen then dunked inboiling water, his mindreticulated, leaving crackedand disjointed memories inplace of tangible goals.Charny brushed his fingersover the screen."You're on board..."Leave it be.Below her name was herclassification:ChiefCybernetics Engineer."God, I've missed you..." He swallowed and chuckled."You were a damn good programmer. The best. Themovement could've used you. Instead you did this. Still tryingto beat me, Marian? Still trying to prove I can be stopped?"The voices cackled in his brain; Charny winced, then shovedthem aside like the noise of a busy city or a battlezone.He cleared the screen. Maybe there was another way.Thawing someone else out was out of the question--if herevived anyone it would be Marian. He remembered their lastargument clearly, even though he had not thought about it inyears. She had received an invitation to work on thePrometheus project and they had squared off in the room theyhad shared in Liverpool."It's an obscenity, that thing," he hadsaid. "A waste!""I'm through destroying things," she had said. "I want tobuild something.""So do I! But we have to clear away the chafe, burn downthe rotten buildings!""No, you don't. All you want to do is have an impact. It'sfunny. You hate waste so much and you make more of it thananyone I know.""What do I waste?""Time. Other people's. Mine, for instance."Their relationship had been a secret from the start--shehad been too valuable as part of the university staff, with a highsecurity clearance, to risk compromising her by anything to dowith him in public. It would have been best had they neverbeen lovers, but at the time they had been unable to stay awayfrom each other, drawn together by needs and wants neitherhad wanted to analyze. After she had left the nature of theirrelationship had made it almost impossible for Ian to keep traceof her.After that, when he had known she was gone, he had foundhimself living in a gritty black loneliness, a suffocating vacuum.To survive, he had learned to hate her. Then forget her. In herplace he had acquired his voices.He left the bridge. He found a chemical lab andrequisitioned everything he needed from the system. It hadbeen awhile since he had constructed a bomb from scratch, butthe skills were still there, like swimming, once learned andnever forgotten.He put on a pressure suite and entered the servicecorridors that ran the length of the ship. He planted the deviceagainst the housing of one of the huge coils that generated themagnetic tube down which theengines poured their fury. If hecould damage the tube andcause a "leak" the enginewould not deliver its full forceand the course would alter. Orthe hole might allow the fusionforces to tear the rest of the coilapart, and then the entiresystem. The elegance of hisoriginal plan no longermattered--Charny was gettingeven now.Not bad/what if it doesn'twork/backup plans/think, think.Charny ground his teeth and went back to the bridge. Thevoices grew louder for a short while, then subsided."Wait and see," he said.A red light flashed on one of the consoles. Charny satdown before it and typed in a request for an explanation. To hissurprise the console responded; he was not shut out of everysystem, then.The screen said: SENSOR CONTACTEXTRAVEHICULAR OBJECT PARALLEL TRAJECTORYDISTANCE 500 KM.Charny stared at the words. The voices stopped. He wasstunned. Then he requested visual. Another screen came on.The object was a trio of long tubes connected by a seriesof struts that gave it the look of spiderwebs. Charny shook hishead at first, then sat very still. The longer he gazed at it theless he was able to dismiss it as a natural form."My god..." He stood abruptly and walked away from theconsole. He paced the circumference of the bridge. Aliens.He had dreamed of contacting another species, yearned for it,for their answers, their solutions to humanity's problems. Hehad come to believe that they were alone, though, and thepossibility had ceased to concern him. The noise in his headwas a shout now, a constant babble that obscured individualwords in a mob chorus of white noise. His heart hammered.When he went back to the console the object was still there."This changes everything," he muttered.What, what, what does it change? Nothing! Changesnothing!He hurried back into the service corridors.He climbed the ladder back up into the service niche wherehe had planted his bomb. As he emerged, he saw a crablikeshape near his bomb. Claws reached out to grasp the device.Art : William Warren“Shouting”-Continued on page 4847