"Lumley, Brian - Psychomech 02 - Psychosphere UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

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mentsЧhad a rigidity of mind difficult to crack; they were mentally obstinate. USAD's pilots were no exception. The United States Airborne Deterrent had often been described as a never-ending flirtation with disaster, but it was also the symbol of a nation's security-consciousness carried to the nth degree. Never a moment of the day or night went by without some of those planes were in the sky, and the minds of their pilots were never easy to find and had proved singularly difficult to penetrate.
Be that as it may, Qubwa knew most of them by now; and yet not one of them knew him. His knowledge was the result of over three years' covert surveillance, a gradual insinuation of himself into their minds. This was a continual process which he must forever update and change to suit circumstances. Air patrol routes were changed from day to day (deliberately, of course, to confound the Russians; but as often as not to Qubwa's confusion, too) and pilot turnover was fairly frequent. Because of the nature of the task, however, pilot substitution or replacement never occurred en bloc; there were always half-a-dozen easily recognizable, susceptible minds open to him, most of which he had learned to control in one degree or another. For control was the real object of these exercises. To control minds such as these was to control world destiny. Literally.
This morning Qubwa might well have started World War III, and it was his intention one day to do exactly that. For example: he might have caused one or more of the supersonic, nuclear-
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armed American bombers to enter into Russian airspace, ignoring all commands to turn back. Simultaneously he might have bombed or "nuked," as current jargon would have it, Detroit, Boston and Ottawa. And if he had also managed to maintain radio silence there would have been no way to convince the Pentagon and US authorities that such an attack had been carried out by their own planes! Even had they accepted the unacceptable, conditions worldwide would by then have been rapidly disintegrating, with every country of major military capability elevated to or accelerating towards a "red alert" situation. At which stage ... a little pressure applied to a certain jittery mind controlling the firing-buttons of a nest of missiles in their silos at Vytegra, USSR, andЧ ЧAnd then there had been the Chinese, Qubwa had been there, tooЧto a selected location in the scattered chain of silos along the border of the North Sinkiang Desert. The Chinese still did not have the West's or Russia's targeting technology, but what they lacked in sophistication they more than made up for in muscle. And their bombs were incredibly dirty. A chain-reaction of hysterical button-pushing there could well result in a thousand-mile wide band of nuclear destruction and desolation reaching from the Aral Sea to Siberia!
All very gratifying, and Charon Qubwa might well congratulate himself on the success of the morning's exercises so far. He had broached these various thresholds without breaching them, which remained a step for the future. But
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PSYCHOSPHERE
now, in the mind of Moth's commander, he desired to apply one last test before terminating today's training session. And this was a test which would require a delicate touch indeedЧ or a brutal one, depending on the point of view.
Qubwa had long since learned all of the atomic submariner's habits and idiosyncrasies, and he was well aware of Captain Gary Foster's wont to catnap. The sub's commander was one of those people who work best under pressure, the more extreme the better; whose mind and body performed at their highest levels of efficiency under a workload others would deem crippling. And when called upon he could perform under such stress for long hours at a stretch, even days. His secret (or so he himself believed) lay in an equally impressive ability to fall asleep, however briefly, at the drop of a hat.
This he was given to do as often as three or four times in any period of twenty-four hours, always to the amazement and occasionally the consternation of his immediate subordinates and crew; for while they themselves would normally sleep for six or seven hours at a stretch between duties, their Commanding Officer rarely went down for more than two hours and often made do with as little as fifteen minutes! In the middle of a watchЧor a good read of Playboy, or a hand of pokerЧwhen by all rights Captain Foster should be deep in slumber, he would silently, unexpectedly appear in a hatchway or through a bulkhead door, his sardonic, humorless grin cold as the wind from the pole. So that
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Moth's company was aware to a man that there was never a time, nor even a moment, when they could guarantee that their Captain was "off-duty." It made, he was in the habit of reminding them, for a "very tight ship." It was good for discipline.
And it made Charon Qubwa's task that much easier.
Sleeping minds were far simpler to penetrate; in sleep a man's mental defenses are down, where often a mere suggestion may carry the weight of a command. Using his usual technique of gradual insinuation over many short visits, Qubwa had found that he could slip in and out of certain minds as easily as unlocked rooms, inhabiting and using them as he saw fit. And from the sleeping mindЧwhere certain deeply embedded post-hypnotic commands could be left to take root and germinateЧit was usually only a short step to the waking mind, when Qubwa's unwitting host would become quite literally a zombie working to his command. Thus it was with several of the USAD pilots, and thus he intended it to be with Moth's commander.
It is, nevertheless, a rare brand of hypnotism indeed that can cause a man to do that which his nature would not permit at its normal level of consciousness. And this was the purpose of today's test run: to see if it were possible so to manipulate Gary Foster's mind that he would perform contrary to the fundamental elements of his own nature, ideals, and training. In short:
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to see if he could be made to press the button! fiot to actually cross that threshold, no, but certainly to stand upon its doorstep.
Qubwa had found Foster taking a catnap, a habit of the Captain's around midday, and had crept into the unguarded, sleeping mind. There had been no dreams as such, merely an awareness of the great gray metal shape surrounding mind and body as it cruised in the deeps, powerful as the atomic engine which propelled it and semi-sentient with its computer-controlled "mind" and sensors. With no dreams to usurp, Qubwa had simply inserted a phantasm of his own:
IT'S COLD OUTSIDE, BITTERLY COLD. WE ARE THREE HUNDRED MILES INSIDE THE ARCTIC CIRCLE, EDGE OF THE BARENTS SEA, LYING STILL ON THE BOTTOM AT THIRTY FATHOMS. MOSCOW IS 1300 MILES AWAY. THIS IS NO EXERCISE. THE ALERT STATE IS RED. IT IS RED ALL OVER THE WORLD. THIS IS WHAT YOUR TRAINING WAS ALL ABOUT, GARY. THIS IS WHAT IT WAS FOR . . .
NOW YOU CAN ONLY WAIT. YOU WAIT IN THE OPS AREA. YOUR RADIO OP HAS JUST RECEIVED INFO THROUGH THE DECODER. HIS FACE IS WHITE, DRAWN . . .
In his tiny cabin, Foster moaned and turned over on his narrow bunk. Droplets of sweat stood out suddenly upon his brow. He mumbled some incoherent query, but in his dream his words were sharp-etched, brittle with tension. "What is it, Carter?"
"Russian bombers are on the edge of our air-
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space. Others are coming over the roof, closing on Canada. American bombers are already inside Red airspace. And . . . and . . ."
"Yes, Carter?" Foster snapped. "Come on, Sparks, what is it?"
Carter nodded, gulped. "We're to initiate NU-CAC 7."
NUCAC 7: first phase of a missile launch! Following which there would be NUCACs 8, then 9 . , . and finally 10. And 10 would signify the launch itself!
Foster almost said: "No, I don't believe it," but he held the words back. Instead he said: "Action stations, all. NUCAC 7 op immediate. Other NU-CACs . . . imminent. Mate?"
His 2IC, Mike Arnott, nodded briefly, grimly. NUCAC required both of them: in the hands of one man alone it would be too dangerous. Un-thinkably dangerous.
Carter called out: "Corns cut between Moscow and Washington ..."
The keys code had come through with the NU-CAC 7 order; Carter had already punched the code into Moth's ops computer. Twin red lights were flashing on panels in the curving walls; the panels slid open. Foster reached up and took out a bunch of harmless looking keys from one recess; likewise Arnott from the other.
To one end of the ops area, built into the bulkhead, stood a booth only slightly larger than a telephone kiosk; its windows were dark, tinted; its sealed door bore the legend:
NUCAC CELL 26
PSYCHOSPHERE
Foster and Arnott crossed to the booth, inserted duplicate keys in locks on opposite sides of the door, turned them. The seals snapped open, interior lights flickered into life. Foster slid the door aside and they entered, cramming themselves into tiny padded seats and facing each other across a table whose center was a screen. Foster reached up and pulled the door shut. Outside in the ops bay Sparks plugged in their audio system and gave them direct access to all incoming signals.
GOOD! said Qubwa, fascinated by the progress of the dream he had instigated.
Foster glared across at Arnott and barked, "Good? What the hell's good about it?" The other stared blankly back. Both men put on headphones.
NUCAC 8, said Gubwa.
"Jesus Christ!" Foster hissed through clenched teeth. "It's all coming apart!" Almost automatically, he and Arnott pressed twinned buttons, fed coded coordinates into the computer for its translation, watched the illuminated, reticulated table-screen coming to life between them in lines of red and blue light, glowing with figures, times, ever-changing computations.
Gubwa was now the voice of incoming signals. He painted a scenario of chaos, madness:
SEVEN RED BOMBERS INTERCEPTED AMD TAKEN OUT OVER MANITOBA. SATELLITES REPORT INCREASED ACTIVITY ROUND SILOS IN RUSSIA AND INTERMEDIATE MISSILE BATTERIES IN EAST GERMANY. FRENCH SILOS SABOTAGED
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