Chapter 7

“I’m glad you decided to show up for your clinical training today,” Doctor Ed said, glancing at his watch. “If it were anyone but you, I’d have something very strong to say to them.” Then he looked up for a moment, before meeting my gaze again. “Of course, that may also be why you’re only the second student I’ve ever had assigned to me, as I do have a tendency to not hold anything back. What’s wrong? It’s not like you to be late.”

I sighed. “Oh, nothing much. Just more fate of the world stuff is all.”

He nodded. “I see. Well, you’re only a few minutes late, and it’s not like you really need to be working with me.”

I frowned, then. “I don’t?”

“Well, technically, you do, because you have to make a certain number of diagnoses during your clinicals to actually pass the damned thing. But you’ve not made a single mistake so far, and I doubt you will. You’ve still got to do some work on developing the caring but detached attitude we simply have to have, but other than that, you’re doing fine. I’ve already had a couple of talks with David about what we’ll do with you come Spring Quarter, actually.”

“Oh?”

“Sure. We’ll talk about that more next week, maybe. I don’t want to put the cart before the horse, but I don’t think you’ll be too unhappy. Now then,” he motioned with his hand. “We have some patients to see.”

After I finished shadowing, I went to practice. Our actual group workout didn’t last that long today, with the trainers taking advantage of this week to spend more time helping keep everyone healthy. I did spend time with John, Fred, and Greg working on game plans for the next three weeks, just in case there was a Saturday where I couldn’t play.

Since I was home early, Marcia and I flew down to Vandenberg that night instead of Wednesday morning. I met with General Fitzsimmons when we arrived, to make sure he knew of the situation. He was already aware of it, and agreed with my recommendations. He would take care of everything.

After that, Marcia and I went to our room and cleaned up for dinner with Bob and two more science-fiction authors, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Once introductions were out of the way and we were seated, Niven set a book on the table.

“Bob was talking with us about why we’ve been called here. You’ve read ‘Lucifer’s Hammer.’ I don’t know if you’ve read this one or not,” he said.

I picked it up. The book was titled, ‘Footfall.’ I scanned it as I normally did, then handed it to Marcia.

“Do you two have a thing about dropping rocks on Earth, or what?” I asked with a grin. “I really wish we didn’t have first hand stories that back up what you envisioned for India in that book, but it’s pretty damned accurate.”

Jerry Pournelle frowned then. “You just flipped through the pages, though.”

Bob shook his head. “I told you that it was disconcerting to meet Cal face to face, Jerry. He’s smarter than all three of us combined. He just read your book.”

“I think I preferred our August, without the first Foot falling. It’s almost funny that you have Michael heading out for a next summer rendezvous, considering we’re going to have incoming in March. It’s also too realistic with idiotic and self-centered leaders, trying to cut deals with conquerors,” I said.

“I hate quoting myself, but ‘never underestimate the power of human stupidity,’ especially if greed is involved,” Bob said with a grin.

“That’s for sure,” I said. “We already had the Bilderberg group thinking they could cut a deal with Shiva. They’re dead, but some of them just don’t know it yet.”

Niven frowned. “Can I go back to something you said a moment ago? You said you have first hand accounts of asteroids hitting the Bay of Bengal?”

“You’ve met Pahto, right?” I asked. At their nods, I said, “She’s been on Earth for close to two hundred thousand years. In addition, I’m sure you’ve seen the reports from the Vietnam Wall and Pearl Harbor. I know three young women who have the souls of three women that fought against Shiva thousands of years ago. One of the weapons they used were rocks. That’s why Australia was scoured like it is now, and why Egypt isn’t quite the garden spot it used to be. So far as I know, Meteor Crater in Arizona is exactly what it’s supposed to be: a regular impact crater. But all you have to do is look at the moon – well, ignoring the vandalism, of course – to see that there have been some big ass rocks bandied around Earth. Thing is, with most of the Earth’s surface as water, you literally have a seventy-five percent chance of missing land.”

“What about the theory of Chicxulub?” Pournelle asked. “We’ve both studied that, simply because the thought of something that big hitting an inhabited planet is horrifying.”

I smiled. “You need to spend some time with Pahto when this is all done, then. She has records of things like that happening. The Galactic Council, or whatever name they used then, weren’t necessarily a nice bunch of people. And let’s face it – even something the size of a football, if it was made of iron and you pitched it at close to two hundred thousand miles an hour from the moon, is going to survive the passage through the atmosphere and make a nice, albeit relatively small, hole in the Earth. Tough shit if you’re under it, but that’s only about a one hundred kiloton explosion, with about a football field sized crater.”

“Project Thor,” Pournelle said. “Funny how something I came up with when I was working at Boeing is already a historical reality. Are you planning on something like that for later on, if we win?”

“Really? That was yours?” I asked.

“Before you ask, I didn’t know Jerry had actually invented it as a military weapon. I’d mentioned orbital bombardment twenty some-odd years before in one of my books, but I did pick his brain a little when I wrote ‘Moon.’ Thing is, his ‘Thor’ was classified then, so he didn’t share anything with me about it,” Bob said.

Jerry chuckled then. “Yeah, I remember those talks. It was quite annoying having to watch what I said then, because I was working on an actual system design. I about fell over when the Messenger from Above mentioned it to Reagan. It was disconcerting as hell, to say the least.”

“I bet,” I said. “It’s not like the asshole was wrong, though. Whoever owns the high orbitals, owns the planet. So, yeah, other than correcting you slightly, which is when we win, not if we win, I’m going to have something like that. For good, bad, or otherwise, we have an actual world government. If it’s above what regular jets can fly, then it’s all mine. That’s why I’m shutting down all the airspace around here, because that rocket will go into outer space, so it’s mine, too.”

Niven said, “What about the other way? The Messenger said we could have militaries to defend ourselves. I’m on the Citizen’s Advisory Council on National Space Policy, and I’ve met with President Reagan about setting up a Strategic Defense Initiative – missiles to shoot down incoming ballistic weapons, plus laser and beam weapons. Those aren’t for offensive use, they’re to actually defend us.”

I sighed, then leaned back in my chair, tilting my head back to look up at the ceiling. I stayed that way for a couple of seconds, then came back down. I glanced at Marcia, who was giggling at my discomfort.

“Thanks, you’re no help,” I said.

Bob shook his head. “Boys, this is one of those times when top secret doesn’t even begin to cover what’s going to be discussed next. So, no using it in your novels, no talking about it with Marilyn or Bobbie, and don’t even discuss with each other some of the implications. At least not now, anyway.”

That made Larry Niven blink. He and Pournelle both took their glasses off and cleaned them before putting them back on. Then Niven said, “Bob, we’ve known you for a long time. I mean, shit, we both read your stuff growing up, so it’s not like you didn’t have any influence on us when we were younger. That’s one reason we feel privileged to call you our friend, and why we put you in ‘Footfall.’ If you say we need to be quiet, then we’ll be quiet.”

Pournelle nodded his agreement.

“Okay, I trust Bob, so I’ll trust both of you. We brought two secondary planetary defense beams in the C-130 with us. One is portable and part of a remotely controllable body that Pahto can drive – not one of her regular bodies. The other is going to be placed with just a regular relay to Pahto, so she can control it, near the launch pad. Those are both two hundred fifty kilowatt energy beams, capable of shooting down any missile, and quite honestly, penetrating the front armor of an M1 Abrams tank. Bob knows, he was there when I demonstrated them to Presidents Mondale and Reagan.”

“You’ve already invented SDI?” Niven asked in shock.

I shook my head. “Not invented. Helped rediscover. The earthquake in Nepal wasn’t caused by an unknown volcano, it was caused by an AI left over from Shiva’s last visit killing itself when it found it couldn’t beat me.”

The way the two of them looked at each other at that comment was enough for me to ask, “If you please, what rumors are going around?”

Jerry Pournelle said, “All sorts of wild and crazy shit. Those are easy to dismiss. It’s the ones that almost make sense that bother me. The stories about the Guardians of the Earth, the planet itself has a consciousness – that ties in with Pat Frank’s ‘Alas, Babylon’ – the Messenger was setting us up for an actual alien invasion, even that he was Shiva, coming back ahead of time to scout out things, so he could see what defenses we have, which is why Halley’s Comet changed course, to make it easier for him to take over once he’d wiped most of us out.”

Niven nodded, and added, “I’ve even heard a rumor that you were created in a CIA lab.”

I laughed a little, then. “Well, I suppose you could say I was created in a lab, but only because that’s where my parents were working when they made me. But it was the old fashioned way, same way Marcia and I made our daughter Abigail. You ought to tell that to the people that told you the CIA lab rumor. I’m not sure if the Earth itself is a self-aware being, but from discussions with Pahto about really ancient history – and I’m talking about civilizations that lived closer to the galactic hub millions of years ago, just to make your science fiction writer hearts skip with glee – I doubt it. I’d have to hear what you were told about the Guardians, but those three young women I mentioned before? They do exist, and that’s exactly what they are. So do I.”

We were done eating, just sitting around the table with our empty plates and silverware still on the table. I nodded to Marcia, who picked up a steak knife and stabbed me in the back of the hand with it. The blade broke off, without penetrating my skin. Then she carefully reached over with two fingers, pulling my skin up a little and pinching me.

“Ow! You know, I hate that demonstration. I think I’d rather pick up a jumbo jet.”

“What the fuck...”

Bob chuckled, then. “Jerry, that’s not your normal language. What happened to Alice and believing six impossible things before breakfast?”

He quietly asked, “Did I just fall through the looking glass?”

Niven shook his head then. “You were at Pearl Harbor when the Punchbowl lit up, and the crew of the Arizona became – well, like at the Wall. There was some kind of super secret conference in San Francisco in early March, then a couple weeks later we suddenly had a real world government and Princess Diana divorced Charles to come be with you. There’s no way any of that’s coincidence.”

“The girls have the souls of women that came to Earth during what should have been the second attempt at the colonization of Earth, a little over ten thousand years ago. I don’t.”

I sighed. “I have the soul of someone who was left behind during the first attempt to colonize Earth a quarter million years ago, who came here looking for his wives. He – I – found them.” I took Marcia’s hand in mine. “While we can’t prove it, we strongly suspect that’s why the Messenger left. I’m more powerful, in different ways, than he was. Earth doesn’t need a Messenger. We have a Guardian – me.”

“I know it’s going to sound like a dumb question, but I have to ask it. Why are we here now? I mean, Larry and I are experts on a lot of stuff. It’s rather obvious that Shiva was beaten before, by those three women you mentioned. If he hadn’t been, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Why send up nuclear warheads? If you’re stronger than the Messenger, just fly out and defeat him up in space, and put Halley’s Comet back to its regular orbit.”

“That’s how they’d do it in the comic books. I’m afraid this is real life. As for why we’re here getting a rocket ready for launch, Mister Pournelle, it’s simple,” Marcia said. “The Messenger thought Cal was stronger than he was. He also didn’t know about how strong Shiva is, either. We don’t know if Shiva is stronger than Cal. We hope not, but we just – don’t – know. It took three women to kill his body before. Now, Shiva’s coming back, as an AI piloting the comet, and presumably has his own plan to either take over someone here, or have another body, maybe a clone that he grew in his ship. Does it make sense to send Cal out to the other side of the sun – presuming he could get there, anyway – or send a rocket to intercept the comet in February and if my calculations are correct, break the comet up into a few dozen pieces? Then Cal can clean up any large pieces that are still on collision course with Earth, and fight Shiva here, where the other Guardians can back him up?”

After a couple of seconds, Pournelle nodded. “I apologize. I’ve been thinking about what you just said, and I realize I was being a bit irrational. I try not to be, unless I’m dealing with irrational people in the first place. Huh. I fought in Korea and I remember being scared then, when the Communists were shooting at me. I think I feel almost the same way now, like we’re being shot at.”

Bob snorted. “We are, but not the way you’re thinking. You don’t have all the information. What did Cal say a little bit ago? Something about other civilizations? It’s funny, how those of us in the profession simply accept that we were right all along about there being other life out there in the galaxy, without realizing the implications. Not all of them are friendly. In fact – and this will make you gag when you think about it – Damon accidentally hit the nail right on the head on why we exist in the first place.”

Niven blanched then. “‘It’s a cookbook?’ Please tell me you’re kidding!”

“Doesn’t that just give you chills, and hit you right between the nuts? That’s the reason this sector of the galaxy was originally colonized. Only we weren’t colonists, we were put out here to be someone’s livestock ranch!” Bob exclaimed.

Niven shook his head. “Don’t get me wrong here. We’ve talked to the remotes of both Pahto and Mycroft. Funny, I can accept the idea of computer remotely operated robots a lot easier than I can a multi-million year plan to grow people as food. I know I wrote ‘Ringworld’ and the tech involved with that, but now that I’m facing some of it in reality – well, I guess I am having difficulty accepting it. How can something last that long and still work?”

I snorted. “Would you care to see a piece of tech that’s easily two hundred thousand years old, and still functioning just like it did the day it was made?”

He nodded.

Marcia held up her hand, so the ring with the shivalingam mounted in it was easily visible.

“The ring itself is new. The ‘stone’ in the middle isn’t. That’s also not a stone. It’s a solid state portable and adaptable computer that can only be accessed through mental commands, such as this one.” I gave it just a little bit of power, causing it to glow. “It also works passively as well, without glowing, and can do all sorts of interesting things.”

I put a little more power into it.

“What the hell? Why’d my vision just go to crap?” Niven asked.

“Mine, too,” said Pournelle.

Bob chuckled. “Take your glasses off.”

Both men did, then looked around the room in awe.

“What the hell?” Niven repeated.

“I thought since the two of you do so much writing, plus with everything else you study, you might appreciate having 20/10 vision, even if you didn’t have it before your eyesight started going bad with age,” I calmly said.

Pournelle slapped the table. “I knew it! You’ve healed Bob, haven’t you?”

“Guilty as charged. Of course, I read all his books while I was growing up. I didn’t even realize when I started at Stanford he lived so close. So, I visited him and Ginny. That visit made me realize I needed his help. I’m – well, Jerry, I’m a polymath like you, and incredibly intelligent. But there’s a difference between being intelligent and being smart. Someone who came up with so many things that influenced our world, and he was dying, just when we needed him, more than ever?”

Nodding, Pournelle said, “I agree. We’ve both known Bob for years, and knew how far gone he was. Nothing personal, Bob, but you were in bad shape. Now? Shit! You’re as spry as we are, and we’re thirty years younger than you are.” He stopped, then looked at me. “Ice-X, those new wind turbines, and ‘No Regrets’ are all yours. That’s in addition to the King and Spatial Defense Minister jobs you have, and at your age? Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m slightly more than halfway wondering if you’re not an alien from another planet yourself.”

I’d expected that to come up, so it was easy to shake my head. “Have either of you heard the names Cristian Bauman or Hugo Sokalski?”

Larry shook his head, but Jerry said, “Bauman is one of the Federation Ministers, isn’t he? I’ve also seen reports that Sokalski is doing things in Africa. Why?”

Marcia spent a moment rummaging through her purse and then pulled out a couple of pictures. One was from the Federation ceremony, the other was from our cookout. She laid both of them on the table.

Snorting, Jerry said, “Other than a few years’ age difference, the three of you are damned near triplets. Definitely the three of you could pass for brothers.”

I nodded, then said, “Now, for the really fun thing that’ll blow your minds. Hugo’s father was Grigori Rasputin, his mother was a priestess who worshiped Shiva and between them, they had a dozen of those toys like are in Marcia’s ring. Cris ... wasn’t actually born, per se. He was literally created in a lab in South America by Doctor Josef Mengele.” I stopped for a second, then said, “Huh. I just realized Mengele was also born during the last visit by Halley’s Comet. I wonder if Shiva put that information into his mind then, as an explanation for why he was so damned twisted.”

Then I shook my head. “Anyway, that’s sort of irrelevant. Does Hugo look like he’s seventy-four years old? Amazing what these little toys can do. As for me? I’m not quite ready for the Xavier School for Gifted Children, but I do have a genetic mutation that allows me to use these things. My parents knew about it when I was born, which may be why they kept me with them in their labs, making sure to homeschool me. That, I can’t tell you for certain, one way or the other. My Dad created the original Ice-X, I just modified it a little. Same with my Mom’s invention and ‘No Regrets,’ just some modifications by me. I read all their notes, and the notes of the rest of the scientists that also worked in the labs with them. I took the ideas I’d read about and changed some of them. That’s why the wind turbines seem to violate the laws of physics, creating more power out than what’s put into them by wind. They don’t violate them, they simply – bypass – certain restrictions. I mean, it’s not like ignoring them is something my folks and the scientists that worked with them discovered, after all. Pahto’s power supply is hundreds of thousands of years old, and it’s a stable gravitational singularity, which is impossible as we understand things now.”

Both men’s jaws dropped incredibly wide, with Niven barely beating Pournelle to the question.

“She’s powered by a stable black hole?” he squeaked out.

I smiled as I said, “Yep. It’s sitting in my garage, up at Stanford. Works great as a remote power supply to send broadcast power out to the beam weapons, since that’s not even a tithe on the amount of power it can put out. Which was to power an actual FTL drive, to create wormholes, actually. Anyway, back to your original question, this is all stuff that’s happened here on Earth over the millennia. I’m human, just with a small, albeit important, mutation is all.”

“I need a drink,” Pournelle finally said.

“Me, too,” Niven agreed.

“Cal, I’ll be glad to escort these reprobates over to the Officer’s Club and see if we can’t make their livers regret life, if you and Marcia would care to go do something else,” Bob said with a devious smile.

“Sounds like a plan, Bob,” I agreed.

Marcia and I went to the guest quarters assigned to us. Once we were in private, she wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled my face to hers.

“This is our ‘anniversary’ night together, my love. We’ll be busy tomorrow and Thursday figuring out the fireworks, and finishing things up. Your game this weekend is at home, so everyone wants to just spend Friday and Sunday relaxing. Tonight ... tonight, you’re mine!”

“I always have been, ever since I saw that cute little bubble butt in the swim suit.”

I leaned down and kissed her, then pulled her to bed.

Wednesday and Thursday were spent putting the warheads into place on the payload bus. The whole thing looked a little like a twenty-one foot diameter bowl that was about fifteen feet deep. In the center, and at the bottom of the bowl, were four, eight foot tall and four foot in diameter, cylinders. Each of them contained a W53 warhead assembly, since the rest of the bomb wasn’t needed. They were nine megaton warheads and weighed seventy-five hundred pounds each. Around the perimeter of the bowl were eight smaller cylinders, four feet tall and fifteen inches in diameter. Those W83 warheads weighed eighteen hundred pounds each, with yields of one point two megatons.

I noticed the scientist from Lawrence Livermore kept checking his badge.

“What’s up? You keep looking at your film badge and personal dosimeter,” I asked.

“Oh, maybe nothing, maybe everything. I’m concerned that we’re doing all this for nothing. Just look at this,” he said, pulling his dosimeter off and handing it to me.

I looked through the pen sized device at a light, at the lines within, then handed it back to him. I shrugged, and said, “So? It looks perfectly normal to me.”

“Right! That’s the problem. There’s no radiation coming from these devices!”

“Oh, I understand. That’s okay, they’re fully functional, and there’s no problem with any of them,” I said with a smile.

“Yeah, but ... Look, I helped design the W83. I know the W53 has a lead casing, but it still has enriched uranium for fission, which means there’s going to be some gamma radiation get through the lead anyway. Same with the W83, because there’s not as much sheathing around the central core. We’ve been in here yesterday and all day today, and I’m not showing any exposure over and above normal background radiation!”

His comments were overheard by some of the other men working, and they pulled out their dosimeter pens and radiation badges as well.

At their looks of confusion when they realized he was right, I raised a hand up. “Guys ... well, you nuke guys weren’t here last week when I talked to the rocket guys.” I pointed at one of them and asked, “Based on what I told you, and you saw, what do you think is the reason no one is picking up any radiation?”

He looked surprised, then nodded. “Guardian shit!”

“That’s right, Guardian shit. You can’t explain it. Hell, I can’t always explain it. But that’s why. How long do you think it’ll take to finish this up?”

The rocket technician shook his head. “We’ll have the warheads in place tonight. It’s going to take us, even with Pahto and Mycroft helping, probably until next Wednesday to make sure we have the circuitry tested and correctly placed. That’s the downside of this – everything has to work, and work properly the first time, so there’s no rushing that. That should have us putting the initial cap over things on Halloween, then we should have the steel plates in place over that by that weekend. The darts from Ames are supposed to be installed Monday, November 4^th, so then we truck everything out, put it on top on Tuesday, commence fueling operations, and we should be go for launch by that weekend.”

I nodded, then looked over at Bob, Jerry, and Larry. “You guys good with staying here until launch and helping, too?”

“Wild horses couldn’t drag me away,” Jerry said. “Do you think this is going to work?”

“Is it going to destroy the comet? What do you think, Larry?”

“The nuclear warheads by themselves? No. They’ll definitely knock it off course, though. What are the darts?”

I grinned. “You know the depleted uranium rods that are in the middle of APFSDSDU tank ammo? No explosives needed, they use kinetic energy to punch through tank armor. These are something similar. They’re designed to poke holes in the comet. I know, it’s five miles thick. Still got to be weak points in there somewhere.”

He frowned. “Obviously, that works fine with a tank round, because the explosive force is contained within the tank barrel. These aren’t like that.”

“No, they’re not, Mister Niven,” Marcia said. “But that’s the other reason both the base we put these in, and then the steel plates, were all made to my specifications. Producing them and the darts simply took more time than we anticipated, so if we launch on Veteran’s Day, we’ll have impact on Groundhog Day. It’s funny, but the same principle behind shaped charges works even with nuclear weapons.”

The Oak Ridge scientist nodded. “Yes, it does. The dampening liner doesn’t last long, but it doesn’t have to.”

Jerry nodded vigorously. “Now I get it. You’re not looking to blow the comet up. You’re looking to hit it like an apple slicer!”

“Exactly. With the big charges in the middle working like the corer – we hope,” I said with a grin.

“Do you think it’ll make a difference, though?” one of the NASA engineers asked.

I looked at the three science fiction writers.

Jerry nodded, then said, “Bob, what’s the current projection?”

“It’s still going sunward, obviously, and our instruments are getting the best data they can. Having said that, the course projection is still a WAG, because the margin of error is too big. Currently we’re looking at a quarter million miles – literally just outside lunar orbit – with a margin of error of one million miles in all the axes. Using its direction as the x axis, if everything was exactly perfect as is, it’ll pass just ahead of Earth, on the same plane, while Luna is on the far side. We’re going sixty-six thousand miles an hour, it’s going a hundred thousand miles an hour. That means during the two hundred eighty-three seconds it takes to enter and then clear our orbit, we should be just over three and a half hours behind it. That’s presuming the x-axis is exactly like our numbers, which it always was. It could be off on the y-axis as well, and what’s frightening beyond belief is if we’re off on the z-axis. Half a million mile error on the z-axis puts it colliding with Luna. We don’t know if Luna could actually survive an eighty million megaton hit. The Earth could. Humanity couldn’t.”

Jerry nodded. “Exactly. That’s why we had to scale down the size of the rock Larry and I put in our book. When we hit the Earth with a cubic mile of hot fudge sundae for the television interview, we came up with six hundred forty thousand megatons of damage from three billion tons of ice cream and hot fudge. If it was ten miles to a side instead of the one mile we’d supposed, that’s six hundred forty million megatons of damage, with a crater two hundred fifty miles in diameter, because at that point we’re talking about three trillion tons. We’ve read a lot more about the theory regarding Chicxulub, and that crater is about a hundred fifteen miles in diameter. Comet Hamner-Brown would’ve destroyed the Earth, probably turning it into another asteroid belt if the whole thing had hit. So, we’ve got about two hundred twenty-five cubic miles of comet coming at us in one chunk. That’s another dinosaur killer, basically. And we’re at the goodwill of an insane artificial intelligence that it’s actually going to miss.

“Or ... we blow the fuck out of it. We’re talking about hitting it with four nine megaton bombs at the exact same time in the exact same spot, which is why we’re going to be spending the next week doing the circuitry. That’s four fireballs of three thousand meters in diameter, less than a millisecond after the eight penetrators are launched into the comet face by the W83 warheads. Ideally, the penetrators will split the body into eight chunks, with the center warheads providing a fifty feet per second change in both speed and direction. I know that’s going to make it look a lot like one of your MIRV warheads. That also means each chunk changes course enough that you’ve got a seven hundred twenty-five thousand mile diameter friendship bracelet of eight chunks of comet, and they’re all going to miss us because they’re no longer going to be on the exact x-axis plane the Earth is.”