23

Oliver Bowen

August 23, 2030. Washington, D.C.

Oliver watched a cardinal perched in a tree outside his office window. He wondered what birds thought, when they were flying around in deep woods and came upon a Luyten. Were they at all surprised? Did they sense the Luyten were something different that didn’t belong?

“Dr. Bowen?”

It was Carlotta Marcosi, carrying a screen. “You said you wanted to see the fMRI. Is now a good time?”

“Sure. Yes.”

Marcosi set the screen on his desk. Oliver studied the fMRI video, trying to make sense of it. Brain activity was not his area, but he could read an fMRI well enough to know Five’s brain activity was beyond bizarre.

“I don’t understand what I’m seeing,” Oliver finally said. “Do you?”

“Not really, no,” Carlotta Marcosi said. Her hand was trembling as she pointed out regions of Five’s brain. Apparently she was nervous about making this presentation to Oliver, who was, from her perspective, the big boss.

“We’re struggling to link brain structures to functions. We do know there’s a lot of repetition in the structures.” Marcosi pointed to structures that looked like jagged mountain peaks, repeating again and again in Five’s brain. “There’s very little overlap in the pattern of chemical and electrical activity among these structures at any one time, though, so they’re carrying out independent functions.”

“Hmm.” It boggled his mind, how complex their brains were. It would be so much easier if Five were willing to talk to him, although Oliver couldn’t blame Five for not wanting to divulge information about how the Luyten brain functioned. They were, after all, studying Luyten physiology because of the potential to gain military advantage. Still, Oliver couldn’t understand Five’s recent boycott on any communication whatsoever. Oliver had grown so used to hearing that voice in his head that he missed it, in a masochistic way.

Not everything about the Luyten brain was foreign. They shared some neurotransmitter systems with humans, including serotonin, which had been the key to developing the defenders. But the Luyten brain also possessed dozens of mysterious neurotransmitter systems the human brain didn’t.

When Marcosi finished briefing him, Oliver went to Operations for an update on the campaign. Now that it was often good news, Oliver was addicted to hearing the latest on the various campaigns being carried out by the defenders.

The news was always after the fact. The war was primarily taking place in Luyten-controlled territory, so surveillance of defender activity was strictly prohibited, because human knowledge of defender troop movement hindered defender effectiveness. Once a territory was under defender control, they alerted their human counterparts, often requesting that human forces hold captured territory. The defenders didn’t have sufficient numbers to leave behind troops to hold territory after they captured it.

Oliver slipped into Operations and watched over shoulders as technicians updated three-dimensional maps. He worried that they might get tired of Oliver hanging around, although he wasn’t the only one. There were usually two or three voyeurs from other departments hanging around Operations at any given time.

Suzanne Ramos, one of the technicians he’d gotten to know a bit, noticed Oliver and smiled. “Hey, the starfish whisperer.”

Oliver had a thing for Suzanne, but she’d never know it. He was utterly incapable of flirting, and usually didn’t know when a woman was flirting with him. He never would have known Vanessa was interested, if his late sister hadn’t told him.

“Hi, Suzanne. What’s the latest? In—” He stepped closer and examined the topography she was working on. “Southwest Africa?”

Suzanne leaned back in her chair. She was petite, her eyes bright. “There’s no defender presence there yet. We’re trying to assess what sort of Luyten presence there is. I still miss high-def satellite imagery; we’re working with these little butterfly cameras that give you grainy images, plus the Luyten have a habit of routinely frying them to ash.”

“What about in our backyard? Any progress since yesterday?”

“I-95 is clear from here to Baltimore. There’s a lot of activity between Wilmington and Philly. We’re guessing the defenders are trying to create a supply corridor from D.C. to New York.”

Oliver couldn’t help grinning. “That’s just wonderful. It’s hard to imagine, being able to walk from here to New York.”

Suzanne leaned her head back until she was looking at Oliver upside down. “Even if there were no starfish, it’s hard to imagine being able to walk from D.C. to New York.”

“True,” he said, wishing he had a witty comeback. One would come to him tonight, while he was watching a video or something.

“Here,” Suzanne said, calling up a map of the area, divided into a green and red grid. Green squares indicated defender- or human-controlled territory; red squares, Luytencontrolled. There was still an awful lot of red—to the west, between D.C. and Richmond, covering the entire Delaware peninsula—but the green area was growing.

Large-scale battles between the Luyten and defenders were rare. Soon after the bloody battles to defend the production facilities, the Luyten went back to their net configuration—three Luyten defending territories of five to ten square miles. After retaking most of the strategically important facilities from the Luyten, such as power plants, factories, and mines, the defenders were now forced to locate and kill millions of Luyten, three at a time. Meanwhile, the Luyten had resumed their early strategy of sabotage and raids on vulnerable human populations.

“Thanks, Suzanne. Sorry to interrupt your work.”

“Not a problem,” she said, restoring the map of southwest Africa.

Back in the hallway, Oliver passed the room housing Five’s holding cell. He hadn’t been there in two months. There was little point, if Five wouldn’t talk to him. He decided to pay Five a visit.

Five was facing the back of his cell. Oliver took a seat and watched Five do nothing for a while.

“When it looked like humans were on the verge of being wiped out, I still spoke to you. I didn’t blame you, personally, for it.”

When the reply came, it startled Oliver, because he wasn’t expecting it. You spoke to me because you hoped I could provide you an advantage.

“It wasn’t quite that simple, was it? There was more than one reason.”

As usual you give yourself credit for being more complex and inscrutable than you are.

Oliver let it go, not wanting to goad Five into once again hurling the ugliest contents of Oliver’s own mind back at him to prove a point. “If my kind win, I won’t take pleasure in your defeat.” And every day it seemed more likely that they would win. The tide was turning.

Yes, you will. You take great pleasure in dominating and debasing other species. It’s what your kind does best.

“I don’t. I wish we could live in peace. I honestly do.”

No, you honestly don’t.

Oliver sighed, then closed his eyes. Five would never allow that what he thought—actively, consciously—should be given more weight than what the baser, more primitive, less controllable parts of his mind felt. Yes, he hated the Luyten, and hoped to see them rendered extinct as a species, but he didn’t want to hope that.

Yes, you do. You want to believe you’re conflicted, because it makes you feel better. There’s no conflict inside you. Your primitive side and your conscious side feel the same elation at the prospect of our extinction.

“So I have nothing redeeming in my heart or mind. I’m just one big hate pie.”

You don’t want me, personally, to die, if that makes you feel more virtuous.

“No, I don’t want you to die,” Oliver agreed. “And no, it doesn’t make me feel more virtuous.”

Yes, it does.

Laughing at the hopeless absurdity of trying to interact with Five, Oliver stood. He was already tired of this game.

Do you know why we arrived here so unprepared for war?

“You arrived unprepared? You seemed awfully prepared to me.”

If we’d been prepared, you would have lost long ago. Our weapons are adaptations of civilian technologies we brought with us, for heat and power generation. We brought no weapons because we came as settlers, not conquerors.

“You adapted to your new role quickly. And brutally.”

We’re more deserving of existence than you. More will be lost if we’re gone.

“Don’t you think that’s a bit narcissistic?”

No. Evidently Luyten didn’t possess ugly qualities like narcissism or bigotry. They were perfect, enlightened killing machines.

We have many flaws. Understanding them is beyond you.

“Of course it is.” He should have left well enough alone. Now Five would probably yammer in his head all day, distracting him from his work, feeding him false information about Luyten brain function the way he’d fed him false information about Vanessa. “You can do so many things I can’t, Five. But I can do something you can’t. I can leave.” Oliver spun and headed for the door.

We want you to speak with President Wood on our behalf.

Oliver paused, but didn’t turn around. “About what?”

Conditions for surrender.

Oliver’s heart began to thump, slow and hard. “Is this more psychological warfare? Are you just setting me up to look like an ass.”

There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?

Never a direct answer. “Do you have the authority to negotiate this?”

I won’t be negotiating. I’m in contact with those who make the decisions.

“You’re in contact with them right now?”

Shall I tell them you said hello?

It could be nothing but a big screw you Five was orchestrating, but he had to take it seriously. “I’ll contact the president.”

“He’s in a lunch meeting with Secretary of Defense Oteri in the West Wing,” Five said.

“Silly me,” Oliver said as he left Five’s room. He continued as he hurried down the empty hall. “I was on my way to his chief of staff to request a meeting. With your helpful information, now I can barge straight in and interrupt the president of the United States. Unless the Secret Service agents stationed outside his dining room disapprove, of course.”

Oliver hurried toward Chief of Staff Reinman’s office.