Until the Dawn, page 27
"That sounds very frightening, Peter. You're describing a complete lack of individual freedom and no personal rights." She studied his expression carefully. "You've been preconditioned to serve the Brotherhood."
"We look like humans, we are humans, but we aren't allowed to be humans," he said, and this time the tears came unchecked. He leaned forward in his chair, head in hands and sobbed uncontrollably for a moment while the Doctor patiently waited.
"That's the part right there that your Triumvirate doesn't understand yet," she said. "The need for a human being to express emotion… even if it's just to let the emotional baggage go to keep it from bottling up inside. And it scares me, because if your leaders ever figure out the part of the human equation they currently lack – that which makes us fully human – they will almost certainly discover that they have as little in common with you as they do with my people."
"I have met all three of them. The Triumvirate believes itself to be infallible," he told her, wiping tears from his eyes. "I can't imagine what the reaction was for the people on that warship who were out-maneuvered and out-fought by your Captain, the Waywardsman and its crew." He shook his head doubtfully. "Those who survived were very likely executed for incompetence."
"That kind of reaction is probably very similar to the reaction a small child has when it first begins to learn that there is danger in the world and that it can be hurt. I would think that there would be denial, followed quickly by outrage and an emotional reaction such as you describe."
"Yes, you would think that would be the case," said Peter, sniffing back tears and wiping his nose carefully with a tissue. "But their lack of compassion… it's so different. They'll simply file the information from that attack as flawed, study it, and attempt to come up with a solution to solve the problem the next time similar conditions present themselves."
"Very efficient, almost computer-like in fact," commented Cassie. "That's why the Captain chose not to stick around… we would eventually have been out-maneuvered."
"Ah, but that's the continuing problem they face," Peter chuckled. "Beings who respond to emotions do not react predictably. That's been the toughest challenge the Triumvirate faces so far, trying to anticipate how all of you will react when forcibly confronted. The more of you there are, the less chance they have to predict the outcomes of those encounters. That's why they worked secretly, behind the scenes, and attacked using stealth!"
"So the next logical move they would likely choose…" This time it was she who looked down at the floor and had to fight back tears, remembering those images they had all watched of the nuclear fires burning on Earth's surface.
"That's right," he said. "Their choice was to avoid the confrontations and the unpredictability humanity offers altogether. Move by stealth, move by surprise, and before Earth's nations even realized they were under attack… it's all over and our dominance is guaranteed. I'm not surprised at all that nuclear war moved to the top of their priorities."
"Even if they don't already, eventually the Triumvirate will see those of you who don't completely obey as enemies, too." Cassie said softly. "And if people are led off and executed as you say, then to a point they already are treating you as adversaries."
"We know it, and we have no choice but to obey. I was trained for several years and one of three separate cloning lines that infiltrated your society. Our central command knew that you were working on an enhanced Point-to-Point transit drive and they wanted to know more about it. That was my primary mission – to penetrate your command hierarchy and computer systems while stationed on the moon and capture the new technology. Our own culture has advanced at a tremendous rate, driven by slave labor capable of manufacturing heavy equipment like that warship. They wanted to merge your new technology with our own." He began crying again. "Tell your Captain not to go back there… ever. You can't stop them."
"We can't stop them yet," Cassie corrected him. "The data you've helped me collect has been very useful, and the Captain and I are very grateful for that."
"I'm not a mindless, pre-programmed soldier any longer," he said, wiping his eyes again. "This time the emotion isn't shutting off… none of it. The remorse, the anguish of having to sit by helplessly while this unfolded, the guilty knowledge that that man… my neighbor… He was right about who I am and what the legacy of my people will become."
"Do you think that you're the only ones who know how to kill?" she asked. "Every society, every new culture in the history of the human race has started out by conquering other civilizations at one time or another," she said. "Raid the castle and put everyone to the sword… that's how it works until you either mature as a civilization and begin to learn that other peaceful options are possible or someone conquers you."
"Now that your nations on Earth have fallen, our Triumvirate will do whatever it has to do to insure its own permanent dominance," Peter stated firmly. "Whatever it takes."
"Sooner or later at least one of you will try and stop them," she replied. "Then what? A new war begins… against the new, cloned lines of humans that it worked to create? It puts itself back at square one?" The thought seriously distressed her, and she brushed back a wave of graying hair. "So far the superior society your culture has tried to create has simply created a more efficient way of killing people faster than the old methods of using swords, spears and arrows."
"So why show me mercy?" he asked. "There have to be a lot of people on this ship who wouldn't lose a minute of sleep if the Captain had me executed."
"Three reasons," decided Cassie. "First and foremost our culture does not execute living beings without first determining whether they personally are guilty of a capital crime. So far we have chosen to suspend the option for that trial because keeping you alive gives us the option to explore reasons two and three." She carefully scribbled some quick notes on her legal pad. "The second reason is that this 'Brotherhood' and its line of clones is virtually unknown to us, so we naturally need to learn as much about you and your capabilities as possible. It's quite probable that if enough of us survived we may choose to someday launch a counterattack."
"I hope you do," he said. "Murder is against God's commandments… they… we… simply chose to ignore that particular one. And the Triumvirate regularly chooses to ignore God altogether."
"Three," she continued. "If there is ever to be a chance for peace between our people and yours it must begin with someone like you. I would imagine that you're going to get a few more bumps and bruises before this is over but your willingness to cooperate and contribute positively to our efforts signals to the Captain that it's worth his while to offer you the chance to redeem yourself. I just hope that you understand that your access to the critical areas of this ship and its resources must remain limited until we can absolutely guarantee that any possibility of Brotherhood brainwashing has been completely purged from your mind."
"Your people and this ship have purged me," he countered, actually smiling for the first time in a long while. "The transceivers like the one found in my quarters can stay on permanently or upload and download data in quick bursts as other Brotherhood agents passed by the moon aboard other space-going ships. The shorter transmissions, if detected, are carefully encrypted and designed to appear as random static. That connection which kept me informed, up to date and obedient was terminated the instant we left our home galaxy." He shrugged. "A lifetime of training stuck with me for a while, like the urge to sabotage the ship by building a bomb. But once those hallucinations began they became so powerfully strong that I was overwhelmed with the emotions that had previously been repressed, and it didn't take long before I realized my actions were now being driven by a feeling of revenge instead of a preconditioned obligation to obey. That was when your marines caught up to me, in the midst of my emotional confusion."
"With emotional feelings you have options," she said, smiling back at him. "You can give in to them and allow them to control your behavior…"
"Or not give in to them…" he decided, looking elatedly at her.
Dr. Simon carefully took a few minutes to add to the notes she had been writing down as they talked. "Eventually I'm going to have you begin sessions with my colleague on board, Dr. Hagen," she said. "He's a trained psychiatrist, skilled in the psychology of the human mind and he will be able to help you deal with those emotions that continue to be triggered by things that you cannot go back and change. It will take time, but you'll learn to live with them."
"Without my conscience telling me that killing others is a bad idea and just having that feeling automatically shunted to a part of my brain where I can't feel it anymore?"
"Exactly like that," she said. "But we won't schedule any sessions with him until I think you're ready. Right now you're continually experiencing the full onslaught of all-out human emotion and that is quite simply the best experience for you right now. You could have killed Mr. Komm, or any of the others that attacked you, very easily but you didn't. You've put up with a great deal of harassment."
"Because I chose not to give in to strong emotion," he said, smiling at her again. "Because I allowed my conscience to decide the difference between right and wrong and restrained myself."
"Correct," she said. "But I'm glad you pasted that loudmouth at least one decent shot. You do have a right to defend yourself when attacked, you know."
"I know," grinned Peter, pointing to some of the other cuts and bruises on his face. "I've been getting lots of practice at that, lately."
They both laughed for a moment. "Humor is a very positive sign," Cassie said, carefully placing her pad and pen on the table next to her. "I've been using my own judgment as to which parts of our conversation the Captain and others need to hear about," she continued. "No one else but you on this ship can possibly understand what you're going through, so I'll do my best to respect your right to privacy where possible. But I'd like to warn you up front that it may not always be possible in all of the situations that we will address. I want to save my people from further attacks by yours as much as everybody else on this ship does."
He nodded in acknowledgment. "I appreciate the up-front warning, Doctor."
"I also want to explore on a personal basis just how far this 'programmed' part of you goes. The type of preconditioning that you have talked about suggest that there could be time delayed commands within you that can 'snap you back' – as you put it – without your foreknowledge. So that will be the topic of our next conversation. Are programmed responses now permanently a part of your thought process?" She leaned forward with a very sincere expression of concern on her face and turned off the tape recorder. "Okay," she said. "That's what we will discuss next time. Right now I want to hear some more about the dreams that you're still having, Peter…"
Dr. Simon was still working later that day when the Captain stopped by. She pushed aside the microscope she had been using along with its sample of the bacterial infection that was still causing occasional hallucinations among the crew. Norris looked tired but in control, and she was glad that he had accepted her offer to stop by for a few minutes to visit. She handed him the cassette tape of her latest interview with Peter Wrangler and he tucked it into his shirt pocket.
"Have you apologized to Nell yet?" she asked.
"Yes," he said. "It took me a week but I finally admitted that I don't think the kid she's carrying is more important to the survival of our people than she is." He sat down in one of the empty chairs. "It was a good apology too. She even hugged me."
"Pregnant women are more likely to hug irritable Captains who say stupid things then… say… someone like me would be," Cassie suggested. "It's the extra hormones and such…"
"Hey, we agreed that she was no longer commanding the fighter squadron until well after her kid is born," said William, looking at the Doctor with a little apprehension in his voice. "It's too easy for a fighter to get picked off in battle – we would have lost two people."
"She's the toughest pilot on board and she wanted to assist in the effort to defend her ship," Dr. Simon said. "Both of you are right… that's the way it is in life sometimes."
"Can I go now?" he asked. "Or have you got an entire speech prepared?"
"Depends…" replied the Doctor. "You can tell me what's really been bothering you or you can tell Dr. Hagen. I can schedule an appointment for you if you want."
"What do you mean by that?" he asked. "What else would be bothering me?"
"He has two openings tomorrow morning and one in the afternoon."
"The battle we fought last week, what else would it be?" Norris finally admitted. "It's been eight days already and I still wake up at night after a good solid nightmare, sweating and shivering. Considering all that we've been through I expected that to be the very last of all the decisions I've made that would stick with me."
"Do you have any ideas as to why that particular incident bothers you?"
"Because that battle included the first moral decision I made that I really feel deep down was an incorrect one." He looked at her and smiled. "We received a lot of telemetry on that enemy mother ship right up until that final instant our Canary Probe rammed into it and we transited to a new location. All the numbers were right there on my Delta console. Speed, distance, time to impact… all of it. They weren't going to collide with us before we could transit. I knew that but I ordered the collision anyway… because I was at that instant very angry and wanted to see those bastards who tried to take our ship suffer for their murderous behavior." She noted the mixed emotions in the expression on his face with a bit of concern. "Technically we were trespassing in their territory," he commented. "Although even if you don't speak someone's language there's always the common sense option of firing a few warning shots. They wanted to capture the Waywardsman."
"It would have been an irreversible disaster if this ship had been boarded," Cassie said softly. "A lot of people would have died and it's very probable – according to a lot of the officers and not just you – that we would have lost the ship. Those alien people did everything they could to catch us by surprise and overwhelm us before we had time to react, so there are bound to be some strong emotions generated when the enemy shows that kind of contempt for other life. They were deliberately intimidating and you reacted to their posture instinctively."
"Those people have been fighting each other like that for over forty-five thousand years," William pointed out. "They probably don't even remember a time when they got along with their enemies. When you combine that kind of revelation with the surprise nuclear holocaust the Brotherhood unleashed on Earth, something inside of me finally snapped. I wanted to lash out and make a point to somebody – anybody – that we're not just going to sit back and take beating after beating without fighting back."
"But…"
"But we had lashed back and them. The maneuverability of our fighters and the rail guns on those shuttles totally caught them by surprise. We whacked them a good one," he said. "And then I murdered dozens, maybe hundreds more of those alien people, because I was sitting up there in the Command Dome really pissed off. I admit it, I judged them right there on the spot and appointed myself their executioner. Shouldn't a starship Captain be above that?"
"You rely on your instincts during combat, just like any other officer," Cassie pointed out. "Did you read the intelligence report on the Canary Probe's telemetry?"
"Of course I did. The power source in the mother ship was undoubtedly from one of those weapons they've been using against the stars in that wasteland of theirs. Destroying the ship probably saved an entire star system… at least until a replacement arrives to take its place."
"Thanks for confiding in me," she said. "As long as you're talking these things over with someone and not keeping it all packed tightly away inside of you then there's no need for me to recommend an appointment with Dr. Hagen. Everyone on this ship follows the same rules, remember? That's what you told the Council."
"I'm the Captain and I did say that," he said. "During a time of such extreme challenges, anyone who trusts and relies solely on his own judgment will not last long in a leadership position. This is my ship, I'm proud of it and her crew and I plan to stick around."
"Yes, and you're also a flawed, emotional human being just like the rest of us. So go be one and don't worry so much that your performance during this one crisis wasn't perfect. That would be a bad example to set for James. Forgive yourself and move on." She paused, watching him stand up.
"I tell ya… it's been one of those days already, Doc," he said.
"For what it's worth, Captain, I heard about the CAS Drive problems during the battle. Trey said he pulled every trick he knew and then some to get it working again. That was a completely unexpected and unknown situation that he managed to resolve successfully during a time of crisis. But we have the benefit of hindsight. Even with all preliminary data indicating that our systems were back on-line and functional, I doubt that I would have risked the ship by assuming that we could transit away in time to avoid a collision. I would have rammed the Canary Probe into them too and I'm a Doctor, dedicated to saving and healing life. Sometimes there are simply tough choices that must be made in a command position such as yours. We support you Captain, because you are a good man and have worked so very hard to keep us all safe."
