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I threw myself into the work. I was a fanatic. The bombing of Patmos had cut
whatever cords still bound me to humanity; I was totally an alien now, totally
di-
vorced from them, totally dedicated to the revenge that I knew must come.
I considered the most pressing problem first, think-
ing on it for several cycles. Where could we get extra
121
The Web of the Chozen space, undetected, to breed? Where could we go, what
could we find that would serve, at least tempo-
rarily? Not a human planet, surely. Those wretches wouldn't be above nuking
another one, if that would get the whole batch. And, although they had some
planets that we couldn't use, ideal conditions for them approached ideal
conditions for us.
In the meantime, I assisted George with the work on the virus, which was
strange; I had the computer link, so I had to be the one to arrange
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everything, yet in many cases I hadn't the slightest idea what was going on.
George had forgotten a lot, but he still knew the questions to ask, and the
computer, to my surprise, knew the answers. George was right the computer had
all the biological knowledge necessary, better than
Moses because it was more up to date.
Our lack of conventional vision was the worst prob-
lem. We couldn't view slides or the like. So I worked on that with the
computer, trying to rig a system so we could "see" what was going on. What we
managed wasn't great, but it would do: a sonic code, that the computer would
translate from the dots that made up the pictures. The system wasn't foolproof
and it was slow going since the sound limit gave us a top-to-
bottom scan but no stable image but it worked well enough.
I still hadn't any real idea what we were looking at, but to George it
provided the last valuable tool. I had some training in interpreting slides
and specimens, enough to do my job. But the bulk of the work on a new planet
was always done from the readout of in-
formation from the computer when I got back. I had been able to identify the
virus in the initial Patmos
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ozen%20UC.txt (97 of 170) [1/19/03 4:45:38 PM]
file:///F|/rah/Jack%20L.%20Chalker/Chalker,%20Jack%20L%20-%20The%20Web%20of%20
the%20Chozen%20UC.txt survey, but would have been unable to combat it or
understand its nature.
Not so with George. He was like one of the kids, happy, playful, almost
overjoyed at his work. More-
over, Eve showed some interest in what we were do-
ing, so he had a helpful pupil as well. As for me, I
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The Web of the Chozen followed much of what he was doing, and learned a lot,
but it was boring and repetitious work, with little gain from day to day. Had
I not been necessary to the job, I would not have been part of it.
And yet, it was I who had the most pressing prob-
lem. I had only a year, no more, to develop and execute a plan for some place
to expand. I had to as-
sume the worst, that Eve would produce the full six eggs, putting ten of us in
the scout ship. We might handle ten, but that would be tough and crowded, and
the food supply would be iffy. But in a sense they, too, would be time bombs
for us two years to leam, to mature, to grow and become people. Ham and Eve
were real people only six months after they were bom.
The decision would have to be made by the end of the Breed; we'd have to smash
the eggs, or, at best, kill them as soon as they emerged from the pouch.
I could cheerfully have killed Seiglein, or Olag, or any human, but I didn't
think I could kill a Choz. I
also didn't think, even if we could, that it would be best for the start of a
new civilization to found it on murder for expediency. So the problem had to
be solved, and quickly. Even a year sounds like a long time, but it would take
time to get anyplace.
One thing was sure: the future had to start in the rear, back within the human
worlds. If I struck out for unexplored territory, we might get lucky, might
find a place. But the odds were too great, and, once there, we would be too
far to turn back. The decision would, in a sense, be forced.
All my life I had resented forced decisions, so I
jumped long for the human worlds, trying to find an answer.
What, after all, did we need?
Space space for a growing population, at least at the start. Not a planet, no.
That wouldn't work. And we hadn't the tools or technology to build our own
place, nor the hands with which to build them.
And then, one day, heading back, it hit me.
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The Web of the Chozen
There were, last I knew, a hundred and four human worlds. On a big map, they
would be a small group, but distances were deceiving. The closest ones aver-
aged fifty light-years apart, except for the eight that were in paired,
multiplanetary systems. The furthest.
averaged over three hundred and fifty.
It took a lot of commerce to connect those worlds, to supply them with what
they lacked from the core factory worlds. Lots of freighters, some almost half
as large as the Peace Victory, moved regularly among them. They had minimal
crews two to five and they had open computers.
If we could take one if, somehow, we could take one we would solve the
immediate problem. But, how did a ship without weapons, a fly speck next to
one of the huge freighters, capture it? Especially with two adults, one of
whom had never done anything underhanded in his life, and two naive kids? With
no hands or weapons except their own bodies against the humans inside?
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Fourteen
Ship's sensors showed a long shape approaching al-
most two kilometers. I stood there, nervously wishing that there was some way
to know what the ships carried. A cargo of robots or an automated machine shop
would be very handy; a billion synthetic steaks or spare parts for
Creatovisions would be worse than useless.
"This one?" Ham asked, nervous but excited.
I studied the scene. "No," I responded. "It would be nice to take it, but a
ship that big has to have a crew of five or so, maybe even a passenger
section. We can't afford that."
Reluctantly, we let the long little world we needed coast on by and. watched
it braking for docking orbit off a new and nameless planet that was still
being
Terraformed.
I chose this area because it would have the most traffic and the least
military. Not that the military was very large there were no more than three
ships the size of Courrant, and perhaps two hundred or so smaller vessels. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]