Брюс Бетке - Expendables

"Now, I can't guarantee this one's true," Klein began another story, "but the way I heard it… this was back around '70, '71, they were testing the

first Phoenix missile in New Mexico. Were you…? No, you couldn't have been with the company then. I was still in primary school. Where were you in '70?"

"Nowhere important," Meredith said.

"No, c'mon," Klein badgered him. "Where were you?"

"In a tiger cage near Hanoi," Meredith said softly.

Klein blushed. "Oh geez, I'm sorry, I–I didn't…" The liquor got the better of him.

"Right, anyway, they were testing the Phoenix down in New Mexico. Now, that baby had a low-band radar, and they were real worried about Russki jamming, so they gave it this home-on-jam mode with priority over everything else. Any hash in the air, it locks on the transmitter and flies right down its throat, okay?"

"Okay." Meredith refilled his glass from the pitcher.

"So the target's a drone F-102, about thirty miles downrange. They pop off a missile first thing in the morning, and it's perfect. Scratch one obsolete jet. They pop off a second one about noon, and it's about 15 miles downrange when suddenly it takes a 90-degree turn to the east and it is gone! That's it, they postpone the rest of the schedule until they can recover the second bird and find out what went wrong."

"What did they find?" Meredith asked, helpfully.

"Nothing. I mean, they found the missile, but there was nothing wrong with it. So they start up testing again a few days later, and the same thing happens. The morning shot is perfect. The noon shot is halfway downrange, and it suddenly shears off due east again."

"Ahahh…" Meredith said, comprehension dawning.

"You start to see a pattem?" Klein asked. Meredith nodded slowy. "Well, it took them a couple more tries and a couple strange theories about heat and sunspots and such before someone decided to just drive over and see what that Phoenix was so interested in."

"And they found?"

"About 50 miles off the east there was this guy with an illegal overpower CB rig and a hundred-foot mast, and every day at noon he'd start calling up his good buddies all over the state!" Klein slapped the table and collapsed in a fit of manic cackling.

When he recovered, Meredith noted, "Lucky thing the poor bastard didn't catch a missile through his roof."

"Or too bad! We could have opened up a whole new market!" Klein did a fair imitation of a RonCo TV pitchman when he was drunk, and he launched into it. "Are amateur radio operators putting a crimp in your TV viewing pleasure? Get the new RonCo CB Killer!"

"New Mexico." Meredith shook his head slowly, hoping to change the subject. "Lovely state."

Klein was not to be deterred. "And if you order now, you'll get this set of beautiful Ninja survival steak knives absolutely free!" Klein tried to refill his glass, only to find that the pitcher of Bloody Marys was empty. Drunk, he became a man of decisive action. "Eindander!" he yelled at the barmaid, bad German being the closest he could come to Afrikaans.

The barmaid, who could speak perfect BBC English when she chose to, thought both Americans were already sufficiently drunk and obnoxious. They were also, however, heavy tippers, so she just smiled and fetched the pitcher.

Klein turned back to Meredith. "You were saying…?"

Meredith blinked. "I—? Oh yes, New Mexico. I don't suppose you were at Schleyer's range trials, were you?"

"Oh God, was I ever!" Klein yelled. "Weren't they a hoot?"

Meredith's eyebrows went up. "I wouldn't know," he admitted. "I signed on after the test. Schleyer said he was looking for a fighter jock with real combat experience, and I was looking for a chance to get out of lobbying and back into flying." Meredith shrugged. "Then they sacked Schleyer and made me a lobbyist. So for two years I've been hearing that the Fury field trials were a total disaster, and I still don't know what happened."

Klein started to lounge back in his chair; when the front legs lifted off the floor he realized his balance wasn't up to par and lurched forward again. "Pretty simple," Klein said. "In five separate tests, Schleyer flew five prototypes into the same side of the same mountain. Pissed away 15, maybe 20 million dollars, and he still wouldn't admit that the system had a fundamental design flaw." Klein leaned across the table and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial growl. "Y'see, the problem with the Fury was Schleyer himself. You ever deal with him personally? Danke," he added, as the barmaid topped up his glass and set the pitcher on the table.

"Gracias señor," she replied, but it slipped by him.

Meredith got the feeling he was unleashing a reply of an argument that Klein had lost many times and tried to tread gently. "I met Schleyer once," he answered. "He seemed nice enough."

"He was faking it," Klein declared. "Schleyer was arrogant, authoritarian, and very jealous of his power. A perfect example of the Head Cheese syndrome: couldn't trust subordinates to make decisions. Didn't want to hear anyone else's ideas. You know what it's like to work under a mindset like that for six years?" Klein knocked back his drink and started fumbling for his cigarettes.

Meredith stared quietly into his glass. "Yeah, I know the type."

The cigarette seemed to calm Klein. "Schleyer was in Remotely Piloted Vehicles right from the start; back when it was radio-control and a guy with a joystick on a box. Model Airplane stuff. So when he started the Fury project, that's the approach he took. Digitized the controls of a T-38 and recorded a test pilot putting the thing through aerobatics. Then he put a rudimentary A.I. up on top to evaluate the situational data coming back from the birds, shuffle through the control routines, and formulate an action sequence. It's a high-order anatomical model, right? Brain, nerves, fingers?"

"Makes sense," suggested Meredith. He was starting to feel irritable. "Except you don't consciously think about every muscle involved in moving your finger! The Fury was all forebrain; no reflexes, no autonomic nervous system. Every damn trim tab adjustment had to go through the A.I.! It was an Einstein that had to remember to make its heart beat." Klein sloshed some more Bloody Mary near his glass. "I s'pose that, given five more years, we could have ironed out the bugs. We've already solved the reflex problem. Just changed the anatomical model a little, is all." Klein looked Meredith straight in the eye and raised his finger portentously.

"Y'know, a grasshopper's brain doesn't know diddly squat about jumping. It just thinks, 'Jump!'" Klein reached around and started poking himself in the back. "Grasshopper's got these ganglia all down its notochord, take care of the actual mechanics of the business. You can cut a grasshopper's head off and the damn thing'll still jump.

"That's what we did to the Fury. Put a ganglion in each vehicle and cut most of its head off. The geeks in avionics software are already calling me 'Klein the Philistine.' In 20 years they'll probably put the Fury right up there with Babbage's analog computer as another brilliant idea murdered young." Klein looked at Meredith with an expression that was almost a plea for understanding. "But dammit, I gotta deliver a product the military'll buy! You have any idea how those jarheads reacted when the A.I. started arguing tactics with them? That's the last thing they want: a weapons system that sits up and says, 'I think, therefore why am I taking orders from you?' They get enough of that from humans."

Meredith started to suspect that he'd feel better if Klein shut up.

Ryan burst in. "There you are! I've been looking all over for you two. We're showing the game film in the Soweto Room!" Klein leaned back and blinked unsteadily at Ryan. "The gun camera tapes from the birds," Ryan clarified. "I spliced 'em together and stole a projection TV from the convention hall. C'mon, you have got to see this!" Klein lurched to his feet and followed Ryan out of the lounge; Meredith stayed behind to settle the bill.