3001 The Final Odyssey

chapter 35 Council of War
No one asked for a replay. Once was sufficient.

There was a brief silence when the playback finished; then Chairperson Dr Oconnor removed her Braincap, massaged her shining scalp, and said slowly:

'You taught me a phrase from your period that seems very appropriate now. This is a can of worms.'

'But only Bowman - Halman - has opened it,' said one of the Committee members. 'Does he really understand the operation of something as complex as the Monolith? Or is this whole scenario a figment of his imagination?'

'I don't think he has much imagination,' Dr Oconnor answered. 'And everything checks perfectly. Especially the reference to Nova Scorpio. We assumed that was an accident; apparently it was a - judgement.'

'First Jupiter - now Scorpio,' said Dr Kraussman, the distinguished physicist who was popularly regarded as a reincarnation of the legendary Einstein. A little plastic surgery, it was rumoured, had also helped. 'Who will be next in line?'

'We always guessed,' said the Chair, 'that the TMAs were monitoring us.' She paused for a moment, then added ruefully: 'What bad - what incredibly bad! - luck that the fmal report went off, just after the very worst period in human history!'

There was another silence. Everyone knew that the twentieth century had often been branded 'The Century of Torture'

Poole listened without interrupting, while he waited for some consensus to emerge. Not for the first time, he was impressed by the quality of the Committee No one was trying to prove a pet theory, score debating points, or inflate an ego: he could not help drawing a contrast with the often bad-tempered arguments he had heard in own time, between Space Agency engineers and administrators, Congressional staffs, and industrial executives.

Yes, the human race had undoubtedly improved. The Braincap had not only helped to weed out misfits, but had enormously increased the efficiency of education. Yet there had also been a loss; there were very few memorable characters in this society. Offhand he could think of only four - Indra, Captain Chandler, Dr Khan and the Dragon Lady of wistful memory.

The Chairperson let the discussion flow smoothly back and forth until everyone had had a say, then began her summing up.

'The obvious first question - how seriously should we take this threat - isn't worth wasting time on. Even if it's a false alarm, or a misunderstanding, it's potentially so grave that we must assume it's real, until we have absolute proof to the contrary. Agreed?'

'Good. And we don't know how much time we have. So we must assume that the danger is immediate. Perhaps Halman may be able to give us some further warning, but by then it may be too late.'

'So the only thing we have to decide is: how can we protect ourselves, against something as powerful as the Monolith? Look what happened to Jupiter! And, apparently, Nova Scorpio...'

'I'm sure that brute force would be useless, though perhaps we should explore that option. Dr Kraussman - how long would it take to build a super-bomb?'

'Assuming that the designs still exist, so that no research is necessary - oh, perhaps two weeks. Thermonuclear weapons are rather simple, and use common materials - after all, they made them back in the Second Millennium! But if you wanted something sophisticated - say an antimatter bomb, or a mini-black-hole - well, that might take a few months.'

'Thank you: could you start looking into it? But as I've said, I don't believe it would work; surely something that can handle such powers must also be able to protect itself against them. So - any other suggestions?'

'Can we negotiate?' one councillor asked, not very hopefully.

'With what... or whom?' Kraussman answered. 'As we've discovered, the Monolith is essentially a pure mechanism, doing just what it's been programmed to do. Perhaps that program is flexible enough to allow of changes, but there's no way we can tell. And we certainly can't appeal to Head Office - that's half a thousand light-years away!'

Poole listened without interrupting; there was nothing he could contribute to the discussion, and indeed much of it was completely over his head. He began to feel an insidious sense of depression, would it have been better, he wondered, not to pass on this information? Then, if it was a false alarm, no one would be any the worse. And if it was not - well, humanity would still have peace of mind, before whatever inescapable doom awaited it.

He was still mulling over these gloomy thoughts when he was suddenly alerted by a familiar phrase.

A quiet little member of the Committee, with a name so long and difficult that Poole had never been able to remember, still less pronounce it, had abruptly dropped just two words into the discussion.

'Trojan Horse!'

There was one of those silences generally described as 'pregnant', then a chorus of 'Why didn't I think of that!' 'Of course!' 'Very good idea!' until the Chairperson, for the first time in the session, had to call for order.

'Thank you, Professor Thirugnanasampanthamoorthy,' said Dr Oconnor, without missing a beat. 'Would you like to be more specific?'

'Certainly. If the Monolith is indeed, as everyone seems to think, essentially a machine without consciousness - and hence with only limited self-monitoring ability - we may already have the weapons that can defeat it. Locked up in the Vault.'

'And a delivery system - Halman!'

'Precisely.'

'Just a minute, Dr T. We know nothing - absolutely nothing - about the Monolith's architecture. How can we be sure that anything our primitive species ever designed would be effective against it?'

'We can't - but remember this. However sophisticated it is, the Monolith has to obey exactly the same universal laws of logic that Aristotle and Boole formulated, centuries ago. That's why it may - no, should! - be vulnerable to the things locked up in the Vault. We have to assemble them in such a way that at least one of them will work. It's our only hope - unless anybody can suggest a better alternative.'

'Excuse me,' said Poole, finally losing patience. 'Will someone kindly tell me - what and where is this famous Vault you're talking about?'