Джек Макдевитт - Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

" It now appears that the Scorpions are in full retreat. ”

Those words, delivered with professional aplomb by WBC anchor Margaret Parker from the deck of the Caesar , ignited wild celebrations around the world: drums in Beijing, rockets in New York and London, light shows in Paris, parades in Moscow, hallelujahs at the Vatican.

The Scorpions are in full retreat.

It was over.

The only truly critical war in the history of the species had been fought and won out near Sirius in a single lightning engagement.

First contact.

It was supposed to be the culminating achievement in our expansion beyond home. But the old dreams had died in the face of starfaring creatures of relentless hostility, invaders whose ferocity seemed inconsistent with their technological achievements. Beings who neither gave nor accepted quarter.

The war, measured from the opening assault by the Rainbow Squadron to Parker’s final comment, spanned thirty-two hours and eleven minutes. Now we were raising our glasses and toasting the Fleet. And feeling very lucky.

I was sitting in a bar in a San Francisco hotel while church bells rang, strangers bought drinks for the house, and holoworks brightened the skies. The bar and the adjoining lobby exploded with laughter and tears. And the wine, as they say, flowed.

Up on the screen, Margaret Parker’s cheeks were wet. Someone wearing a headset stepped into the picture and hugged her, and I knew instinctively that on-air hug of the usually aloof Parker would become one of the lasting symbols of the war.

The picture switched to Ransom McKay standing beside an empty rostrum at the WBC situation room. We couldn’t hear him, there was too much noise around us, but he was walking us through the initial tactical dispositions. The Rainbow here; the Legion there; the Nelson on this wing, the Geronimo on that. Lights moved, and coded arrows began the action, feint here, counterattack there, breakthrough in the center.

Yeah. In the center. That was where we took them, the battle cruisers tearing through their ordered squadrons, supported by waves of TLB’s and frigates. Edward Basildorf, in his flag gray, became the hero of the hour by observing, during a briefing, that the “sorry sons-of-bitches were being sent home with their tails between their legs,” an observation that might quite literally have been accurate.

I was in town for the annual Carbury Awards, which are given by the Press Association for outstanding journalism. The big prize this year, for lifetime achievement, had gone to Max Hopkin, essayist, editor, destroyer of the comfortable, two-time Pulitzer winner. But word of the first shots of battle had leaked into the dining room just as he thanked the emcee and stepped behind the microphone. Everyone scrambled for an HV, and poor Hopkin was left standing with his “thank you, ladies and gentlemen” fading into dead air.

It was one of those times when I was proud to be a journalist. WBC’s correspondents did a hell of a job: Mark Everett at the Net’s operations desk, Julie Black outside the staff room of the Combined Chiefs at Moonbase, Sakal Singh on the Berlin , Leonard Edward at World Council.

I was surprised a few hours later to spot Hopkin sitting gloomily in a corner of the bar. If anybody was the journalistic godfather of this night, it was he. It was, after all, his magnificent reporting during the almost equally brief Sikh-Chinese War twenty-seven years before, specifically his description of the Battle of Malacca Strait, that had set the standard for modern combat reporting, and incidentally launched his career.

His must have been the only sad face in the city that evening, and I assumed he was still irritated at being crowded out of the headlines. In the face of events, it struck me as a particularly selfish attitude.

He was alone when I picked up my rum and coke and went over. If he saw me, he gave no sign. “Hello, Mr. Hopkin,” I said.

He nodded without looking up.

“Mind if I sit down?”

He frowned, as if it were a complex matter that had been laid before him. “Sure,” he said finally.

I should mention here that my specialty is economics. And these were exciting times in my field as well. The Grimwell Equations seemed to be accurate, and it now appeared we were finally going to escape the industrial cycles and downturns and rushes of inflation and unemployment that had always undermined prosperity, and which had seemed even more beyond human control than the Scorpions.

“Congratulations, Mr. Hopkin,” I said. “I wonder if I might buy you a drink?” He’d probably already had too many. But what the hell.

He nodded, sure, emptied his glass, and signaled for more. “Thanks,” he said. He was drinking Scotch.

“I’m Jerry Logan. I’m an analyst for the The Financial Review .”

“Good.” His eyes met mine. They were gray and bloodshot. “Solid publication.” He had to repeat himself to be heard over the bedlam in the bar. “Stay with it.” Outside, people were embracing and dancing. There was a cacophony of car horns, noisemakers, clapping hands, cheers.

Hopkin was not a handsome man. His features suggested equal parts indifference and arrogance. He showed the signs of too much indulgence: a thick waist, distended veins, a bulbous nose. His hands were not quite steady. And his eyes were preoccupied. Distracted. There was a cynical signature to his demeanor, as there was to his work.

“Big night,” he said, almost offhandedly.

“Yes. The timing wasn’t so good for you. But I think we’ve been very lucky.”

“Yes,” he said. “We have been.” His expression did not change.

In a corner, Ransom McKay was interviewing someone. Woman in the blue Fleet uniform. “They were completely fooled—,” she was saying.

Hopkin stared into his glass. I told him how much I admired his work, his volcanic assaults against politicians, academics, and the religiously inclined, against all those who thought they had a strangehold on Truth. He nodded and continued to study the bottom of the glass. It would be good, I said, not to have to worry about the Scorpions any more.

“Yes,” he agreed.

A waiter appeared with two scotch and sodas.

“They had their age of steam forty thousand years ago,” observed Hopkin. “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

“Wonder what?”

“How we could have beaten them.”

I nodded, but mentioned Mark Everett’s explanation: “They probably became too rigid. Too old. Can’t respond to a fluid situation.”

“Maybe,” he said.

I was beginning to get irritated. What a son of a bitch he was. The whole world is celebrating, and he was sitting there feeling sorry for himself. I started to get up, because you shouldn’t drink with somebody when you feel that way about him. But he kept me in my seat with a gesture. “Wars are getting shorter as technology gets better,” he said. “The Sikhs took out the Chinese in four days. This one went a day and a half, if we can believe what we hear.”

Outside, the police arrived, probably to try to control traffic, but they seemed to be joining in the celebration.

“I guess it’s inevitable,” I said.

He switched to the second drink and emptied the glass in a single swallow. Good American style. Down the hatch. “War’s that short,” he said, “you can’t find out what’s really going on. I mean, it’s not like the days when we went out with the foot soldiers to see for ourselves. Now the military controls everything. Press conferences, briefings, handouts, holo feeds.” He shrugged. “You’re in the right business, son. Economics. Good. Depressions don’t happen overnight, right? And they happen right out there in the open where everybody can see them.”