25: Heroes


"You Argus-A?" the man quickly repeated in a sterner tone, as if to reassure himself - or as though Argus had not heard him.

He was a pale, sturdy adult midget with a large, thick black beard and a serious face. The little man's eyes seemed distracted, as if some thought kept interfering with what he saw before him.

In infrared vision, Argus could only sense fragments of the fluctuating tensions in the miner's compact frame - beneath thick clothing, pressure-suit and transparent face-mask. The Jovian apparently was in mental turmoil, but Argus also sensed two conflicting impulses.

The cyborg pretended to be calm and still, while carefully watching the miner's every movement.

"That's me. And you are?"

"Proxi. Lode Proxi, Mining Engineer Class A." The man's infrared color shift clearly showed that this was a lie. "My second shift Kun'Lun. You... saved our men." That wasn't a lie. Argus nodded lightly - yet, the miner's question felt like a vague accusation. "Why?"

"Why not?"

"A Jovian saying: 'For three good reasons, do it. For two good reasons, big mistake. For one good reason, you're genius or idiot.'"

Argus laughed at (thought he) the clever joke; then he stopped, a little too abruptly (but his cyborg construction sometimes did that) and realized that Lode Proxi wasn't joking at all.

"Okay, Lode Proxi... Reason one: Only I could save them right then. Reason two: Doing nothing would not have improved Terran-Jovian relations, and I want this war to end just as badly as you do. Third reason: It seemed the right thing to do. I could think up more reasons, but they basically amount to the same thing: I did what was right."

"Then tell me, Terran cyborg: is the war right?"

"It has to end soon." He spoke faster, adapting his speech. "Looks like only Inner Planets will win, but in the end better for everyone. When war over, trade can go normal, and all back to way it was -"

"But it won't, Argus-A! It all changes! The war can end now! We tell the Inner Planets every day: Stop attacks and we resume normal relations. We can even take back our claims for unlimited independence."

It seemed the Jovian felt insulted by Argus's attempt to "talk the talk." So much for trying to be nice, Argus thought. He spoke faster still, but switched vocabulary back to the Terran idiom.

"Why do your representatives persist in demanding independence? I don't see the point, because all planets depend on each other. We can produce the goods and food that you can't, you can produce the deuterium we can't. Whether you call yourselves 'independent' or 'colony' makes no difference out here."

"You wrong, Terran! Liar, or fool! The Terran Fleet dictates terms of peace for Outer Planets. Every negotiation failed. For one reason: Fleet always refuses to change one term."

"Which term?"

The miner punched up a quote from the computer on his sleeve, and read it: "'Clause Twelve. The Chancellor of the Outer Defense Ring Charter is appointed Executive Protector of the Jupiter Sector. The title grants him the power to veto any administrative decision, to make governing decrees, plus a ten-year concession to maintain law and order in the sector.'"

Argus turned the quote around in his mind, wrestled the true meaning from its dense prose. No, it couldn't be that simple. Nobody could have intended that... the people back on Earth would have stopped it. And it was just words, open to interpretation.

Argus replied - and the miner seemed a little surprised at this response - almost before "Lode Proxi" had finished speaking.

"I just can't believe it means what you think. Not to the Inner Planets. It's not our intention to make the Kansler a... I don't know the word for it..."

"You poor Terrans forget how Earth was in Century Two-One. People elected ambitious men to control them. Called it 'government' - it's gone now. Planets too big, too free, too rich, too AI to govern. Quantum computers made better bureaucrats, replaced human government. But ambitious men still here. We Jovians have councils, when necessary. But no elections. Council duty involuntary. Picked by the computers for competence. Men who enjoy control not allowed. Council duty is unpleasant. But is... the right thing to do."

"The Kansler isn't a..." It was like trying to name something there wasn't a word for anymore. "You know what I mean. He was appointed to defend, to protect."

"Then why does he not? Why maintain terms of peace that make him a... controller of Jupiter with ten years total power? Is no other power to equal the Fleet here. When he's in control, can anyone control Kansler? Ask him. Ask why the war began."

"I know why the war began!" Argus retorted, but even as the words flowed from between his artificial lips, he doubted them; Caver Pi heard it in Argus's voice. "The sabotage attacks by Jovian separatists started it all. And they haven't stopped. Like when Colonel Clarke was..."

A terrible idea occurred to Argus, so bizarre he might finally be going over the edge. But it fit the chain of events perfectly.

Haruman Clarke, who just happened to be of identical height, age and appearance, just happened to crash-land at exactly the same place where Gus worked his nightshift... and just happened to get killed while Gus just happened to survive. He had to dig deep into the records of what had happened, although the accident still frightened him so much he'd rather repress the memory...

"Honestly, Terran: I don't know if any sabotage attacks were by my people. I know only Jovians are still sending deuterium to your planets. If we stopped export - right now - Inner Planets start starving in about eighteen months. But so do we."

Outside, another huge balloon load of deuterium shot up from the clouds beneath their feet, and floated upward to be collected by the shuttles up at the stratospheric rim. It would take that load about seventeen months to reach Earth on the slow cargo routes.

Caver Pi felt awkward for talking more than was proper among Jovian colonists. He wanted to look up into the cyborg's face to judge his expression, but the gravity and the thick collar of his suit made it too exhausting.

Argus looked about himself, and motioned to leave. He leaned down, focused on the miner who stood in his corner - and, as if he had read his mind, gave him a few parting words.

"Tell them, your people back home, that I may be the last man standing between Jupiter and Earth. Think about it."

With that, Argus moved out of the room so fast that the floating quarters quivered. Caver Pi made a sigh of relief, and punched in the code that disarmed his hidden bomb. He opened a small vent in the transparent wall and slipped the bomb into it. As he shut the inside lid, the outer lid opened, and the bomb dropped into the clouds.

Caver thought about it, and no matter how much he tried to reason against it, that enemy cyborg was right. But Caver would live another day to see his wife and child. Then it struck him what Argus had tried to say.

"Hot Io," he muttered, "...he is human."

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