04. Birth of Flux and Anchor by Jack L. Chalker Page A

alternative is no risk—and no project—at all. No one, after all, has to go. There are no guns at people's heads."
    Watanabe, for one, was furious. "The fucking military has been playing with a 7800 and you didn't even tell us?"
    Van Haas shrugged. "What was the point? You all wanted one, and you all would have demanded priority and all have had very good reasons. We have only two spares as it is. The Operations Board could take risks we would have considered unacceptable here, and do so in a location remote enough to insure insulating us from any dire consequences."
    "Dire consequences!" Watanabe exploded. "You hand over the most advanced computer it might be possible to ever build to a bunch of jack-booted shit-lickers who treat people like machines? The only guarantee of their behavior was the fact that we controlled the master computers! Now they know more about how to run 'em than we do. You hand that kind of mind absolute power like this and all it takes is one hair over the sanity line and we're living in hell!"
    The director let her go, and paused for several seconds after she finished. Finally, he asked, "Are you through?"
    "Not by a long shot, but go ahead."
    "All right. I'm not going to debate the honor and commitment of our counterparts in Operations right now. I'm not going to debate this whole military versus civilian thing, which has been ongoing since the start. We had to accept them because they were a condition of our being here. We did, and it's worked out. Now you have to accept an accomplished fact. This is a report on what is, not what might be."
    He sighed and poured himself a drink of water. No one spoke, but Watanabe glared at him.
    "Now, then," he continued, "this is how it is. I've read all the reports and checked everything through with the master project computers. We have two ships ready and standing by now. The others will come through final assembly at the rate of one a month, I'm assured, and each can be flight-tested in a matter of another week after that. The engineering crew currently on site can handle and supervise the automated freighters with the Kagan 7800 set. The Anchors are well along now, and need only the 7800's to interface with the 7240 maintenance computers already on site at the Gates. My reports show an equatorial temperature of 31.1 degrees Celsius, which is close enough, and an outer life zone low temperature of 6.91 degrees worst case. Gravity is less than two percent off what we have here on Titan. We're maintaining a median Earth atmosphere that's better than we have here and so close to dead on, it takes a computer to find the first number after the decimal point. We needed the extra time to test, measure, and experiment so we knew we had it right, but we no longer have that time. I say we go."
    Ibrihim Mohammed Haiudar scratched his ample nose and commented, "You realize that the second wave won't be what we expected at all." He was Director of Populations, which meant the nonscientist colonists, and those were exactly what he meant by the second wave.
    Van Haas was startled. "What? What do you mean?"
    "I mean, my friend, that, yes, we will get experts in farming, in animal husbandry, fertilizers, fields, forests, and deserts—but not as many. What we will get in place of many are the dissidents now languishing in prisons at home, the revolutionaries and the rioters and the conspirators. They will seize this opportunity back home to send us their worst troublemakers. Mass firing squads just fuel revolutions and create new leaders. Permanent exile, now, that's a different thing."
    It really hadn't occurred to the director, but, then, he came from a far different tradition and culture than did Ibrihim. He knew immediately, though, that the man was right, and he thought about it. Finally, he said, "What you say is true, old friend, but it doesn't worry me. I'm from a nation whose first families are all descendants of convicts and whose largest city is named after their