"After much discussion with my colleagues, I am afraid that we must withdraw our support from this operation effective immediately. We resign from your team." He gathered up his notebook and started for the door, followed by Drs. Amador and Rodriguez, and their assistants.
"Dr. Hikaru," General Tirelli said quietly.
He ignored her. He continued angrily toward the door. It refused to open for him.
"Dr. Hikaru," she repeated.
He turned around to face her. His face was red. "Open the door," he demanded.
"Now it's my turn," she said. She touched a button on the podium. "The network has been disconnected. We are now off the record. Now that you have performed the mandatory dance of outraged national pride for your home constituency, there is still work to be done on this mission. Your contributions, as well as those of your colleagues, are still needed. May we depend on you to-"
"Our resignations," he interrupted, "are final. We shall do nothing that supports the nefarious goals of this operation. Open the door." He glared at her. "Or are we to be your prisoners?"
"It's your choice," she said. She met his furious glare with incredible grace. "I do not have flyers available to take you and your team back to Rio. I still haven't found yesterday's missing pilot, and her safety outweighs yours. This leaves you with two choices. We can let you off here, if you wish-" She tapped her keyboard, and a map of here appeared behind her. Here was literally a thousand miles from anywhere. "-or I will have you and your colleagues confined to your cabins for the duration of this voyage, without access to any of the usual tools of communication. This is to protect the rest of us against any misguided attempts to sabotage the rest of this operation. By the way, you'll find that certain items are missing from your cabins. Specifically, your toothpaste, your shaving cream, the batteries from your portables… and the detonator buttons."
Dr. Hikaru was outraged. He looked like he wanted to attack her. For the first time I noticed that the aides standing on either side of the doors weren't aides at all. They were members of Lieutenant Siegel's team, dressed as aides and technicians. Once again, I was impressed with the woman I married.
"I shall file a most vigorous protest at this invasion of personal privacy," Hikaru said darkly.
"I'd be disappointed in you if you didn't. As a matter of fact, the appropriate paperwork has already been delivered to your cabin. I've taken the liberty of even suggesting a rough outline for you to follow, so you don't leave out any of the good parts. In the meantime, my government is filing a most strenuous protest with your government about the instruments of espionage that you brought aboard this airship."
Dr. Hikaru did something strange then. As angry as he was, he bowed respectfully to General Tirelli. "I curse you," he said with quiet venom. "I curse your blindness. You don't understand what is happening here, so you try to destroy it. I curse you for it today. History will curse you for it forever."
General Tirelli stood her ground rigidly. "No, Dr. Hikaru," she said. "I reject your curse. It's you-and the people who think like you-who have lost your vision. Look around at the rest of the people in this room. We haven't forgotten who the enemy is. We haven't forgotten who killed five and a half billion human beings in six years. So you can take your self-righteous pretense of spiritual superiority and go straight to hell." She nodded to Lieutenant Siegel. "Get them out of here before I lose my lunch." A cordon of "aides" and "technicians" immediately formed around the Brazilian contingent. Sergeant Lopez led the way, Lieutenant Siegel brought up the rear. He was grinning broadly. He was loving every minute of it.
After the door whooshed shut behind them, Lizard glanced around the rest of the room. She tapped the keyboard on the podium and we were live on the network again. "God, I hate this shit," Lizard remarked candidly into an open mike, for the entire world to hear. "I just hate it. When a nest of mindless slugs becomes more important than human lives, there's something wrong somewhere. They told me that Dr. Hikaru was a brilliant man. Brilliant he may be, but…" She shook her head in sadness and resignation. "… oh, so goddamn stupid."
Despite the large body of photographic evidence that suggests that the gastropedes are capable of sentient behavior, there is little physiological basis to support this thesis. More than 120 autopsies have been conducted on gastropede specimens of varying sizes. In no case has any gastropede been found to have a brain large enough to support the intelligence that has been allegedly demonstrated. Clearly there is' a discrepancy between their documented behavior and our ability to understand the basis for it.
It has been suggested by some researchers that we simply do not understand the workings of the organ that the gastropede uses as a brain, but this argument is insufficient in the face of the physiological evidence. It is not just that the brain of the gastropede is too small-it is so rudimentary that it probably should not be classified a brain at all. Even a mouse has more gray matter.
Using Terran organisms as a preliminary standard for comparison, the Chtorran gastropede doesn't even have enough brain power to feed itself. However, as if to compensate, the animal has a large cluster of hyperdeveloped ganglia under its "brain bulge." This ganglionic structure appears to manage most of the autonomic and cortical functions of the gastropede. It is so well developed, it would be an appropriate organ for a creature many orders of magnitude more complex than this. The organ seems very much, out of place in the gastropede.
—The Red Book,
(Release 22.19A)
Chapter 55
Godhead Revisited
"The difference between men and women is that no man ever won an argument with a woman."
-SOLOMON SHORT
When I looked back up front, my general looked a lot more relaxed. She was studying something on the screen in front of her. She looked up, saw that the room was waiting expectantly, and said, very conversationally, "Sometime this afternoon, we expect that the Brazilian government will terminate their participation in this operation and summarily order us out of their territory.
"We are going to refuse." She held up a hand for silence, and the hubbub died down instantly.
"Let me explain," she said. "We are now activating Contingency Plan Norma. What that means is that we are no longer an international scientific mission. We are no longer operating under the control of the North American Operations Authority. We are now a fully recognized agency of the United States government, and we are authorized to complete our assigned surveillance mission. The Brazilian government no longer has any authority over this operation, and their attempts to terminate it prematurely are illegal and will be ignored or resisted. By force, if necessary.
"I can also tell you that our missing flyer went down somewhere near the Japuran mandala. We are therefore ordered to proceed on our present course and perform all necessary searchand-rescue operations-including any and all ancillary operations necessary to protect this airship.
"The United States government will be launching around-the-clock military overflights to protect this vessel from harassment or attack by any units of the Brazilian armed services. Even as I speak, a note is being prepared for the president of Brazil, informing him of this action. In other words, ladies and gentlemen, our government is standing firmly behind us, and we have work to do."
The applause in the room was loud and enthusiastic.