The Proteus Operation Read online

  Books by James P. Hogan

  The Code of the Lifemaker

  Genesis Machine

  Gentle Giants of Ganymede

  Giants Star

  Inherit the Stars

  The Proteus Operation

  Thrice upon a Time

  Two Faces of Tomorrow

  Voyage from Yesteryear

  TO

  MICHAEL ROBERT

  Who appeared on the scene somewhere around the middle of the book . . . into most distinguished company.

  THE PROTEUS OPERATION

  A Bantam hardcover edition / October 1985

  3 printings through November 1985 A selection of the Science Fiction Book Club Bantam paperback edition / October 1986

  All rights reserved. Copyright © 1985 by James P. Hogan. Cover illustration copyright © 1985 by Jim Warren and Bob Larkin. Author photograph by Barry Hennings.

  Library of Congress Catalog Number 85-47620 This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. For information address: Bantam Books, Inc.

  ISBN 0-553-25698-X Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words "Bantam Books" and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, Inc., 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10103.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  O 09876 5 4321

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The help and cooperation of the following is gratefully acknowledged:

  Edward Teller, Eugene Wigner, and Isaac Asimov for their agreement to appear as "guest" characters.

  The Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York, for permission to reproduce the Einstein letter.

  Robert Samuels of the Department of Chemistry, Georgia Institute of Technology

  Mark Looper, Mike Sklar, and Bob Grossman of Princeton University

  Brent Warner of the Department of Physics, Ohio State University

  Steve Fairchild of Moaning Cavern, Murphys, California

  Lynx Crowe of Berkeley, California

  Charley, Gary, and Rick of Charley's Bookstore, Sonora, California

  Ralph Newman and Jack Cassinetto of Sonora, California

  Dorothy Alkire of Manteca, California

  Dick Hastings and the staff of Tuolumne County Library, Sonora, California

  U.S. Navy, Treasure Island, San Francisco U.S. Air Force, Langley AFB, Virginia And, of course, Jackie

  PROTEUS

  OLD MAN OF THE SEA in Greek mythology, to whom all of the past, present, and future was known, but who would assume various forms to avoid revealing it.

  Only when he was captured and constrained to a particular manifestation could the future be determined with certainty . . . strangely reminiscent of the collapse of the quantum-mechanical wave function.

  PROLOGUE

  SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1974, dawned sullenly over the Virginia coast, with raindrops spitting from a wet, overcast sky, and ill-tempered squalls scuffing white the wavetops of a choppy, gunmetal sea. Looking like a flecked carpet unrolled upon the surface, a straight, foamy wake extended out of the eastern mists to mark the course of the nuclear-driven attack submarine USS Narwhal, now within sight of its home base at Norfolk and being escorted over the last few miles by a flock of lazily wheeling seagulls, filling the air with their raucous lament. From the sinister black of the submarine's hull to the dirty off-whites of the seagulls and the spray, the world was a composition of soggy grays.

  The grayness seemed fitting, Commander Gerald Bowden thought as he stood with the first navigation officer and a signalman, looking out from the bridge atop the Narwhal's twenty-foot-high "sail". Color came with babies and flowers, sunny mornings and springtimes: new things beginning. But corpses were pale; the sick, "ashen-faced"; the ailing, "gray with exhaustion". Along with strength and life, color drained from things that were nearing their end. It seemed fitting that a world without a future should be a world without color also.

  At least, barring some kind of miracle, the free world of the West that he was committed to defend—what was left of it—had no future. The latest Japanese provocations in the Pacific were clearly the long-expected prelude to a move against the Hawaiian Islands, aimed at the final strategic isolation of Australia. There was no possibility of the U.S.'s meekly acquiescing again to such an aggression, as had happened with the annexing of the Philippines to the Japanese Empire five years previously. War would automatically mean taking on the might of Nazi Europe plus its Asian and African colonies, too, with the Fascist South American states doubtless joining in at the last moment to pick up their share of the spoils. Against such odds there could be little doubt of the outcome. But the nation and its few remaining allies were grimly resigned to go down fighting if they had to. President John F. Kennedy had spoken for all when he pledged America to a policy of "No more surrenders".

  Bowden shifted his gaze from the harbor entrance ahead to the fourth figure on the bridge, whose Russian-style, fur cap with backflap turned down against the wind, and paratrooper's jump-smock worn over Army fatigues contrasted with the Navy garb of the ship's officers. The dress was an assortment of oddments from the ships stores that the soldier had changed into from the workman's clothes he'd been wearing when the Narwhal picked him and his party up. Captain Harry Ferracini, from one of the Army's Special Operations units, commanded the four-man squad and its accompanying group of civilians that had come aboard several days previously at a rendezvous with a fishing boat off the southwest English coast. What their mission had been, who the civilians were, and why they were being brought back to the U.S., Bowden had known better than to ask; but clearly, for some branches of the U.S. military, an undeclared, undercover war against the Third Reich and its dominions had already begun.

  Ferracini had clear, still predominantly youthful features, with fine, handsomely proportioned lines, smooth skin, and a sensitive mouth. His complexion was dark, his eyes large, brown, and brooding, as befitted his name. If he felt any sentiments about the fate of the nation or the demise of democracy, his expression revealed no hint of them as he took in the indistinct Norfolk skyline, his eyes missing nothing, but shifting with the practiced laziness of somebody adapted to existing inconspicuously for long periods in hostile surroundings. Bowden guessed the soldier to be in his late twenties, although his disinclination to smile and the air of seriousness that he wore most of the time were the characteristics of an older man grown cynical with living.

  True, Ferracini's kind of business bred inscrutability as a safeguard and taciturnity as a habit; but in their few, brief conversations, Bowden had discerned a remoteness in the young soldiers manner that went beyond professional habit and revealed an emotional chasm by which he, and others like Ferracini whom Bowden had met on previous missions, seemed to distance themselves from the world of personal feelings and everyday human emotions. Or was it from the world of meaningful things with beginnings, which now meant nothing and led nowhere? Bowden wondered. Was it a sign of a whole generation reacting instinctively to protect itself from the knowledge that it, too, had no future?

  "Welcome home, Narwhal," Melvin Warner, the first navigation officer, read aloud as a light began flickering from the harbormaster's shack at the end of the outer breakwater. "Pilot dispatched. Regret lousy weather."

  "Somebody's awake early," Bowden said. "Either they're expecting VIPs today, or the war's started already." He turned his head to address the seaman. "Make a signal back. 'Thanks. Compliments on speed of service. Weather better three hundred feet down.'"

  "Launch
approaching, starboard bow," Warner reported as the signalman's lamp began chattering. He gestured toward the lines of sleek, gray warships moored in the outer harbor. "There's one of the big carriers in, Gerry. Looks like the Constellation."

  "Reduce speed, open up for'ard, and prepare to take on harbor pilot," Bowden said. He turned toward Ferracini while Warner translated the command into orders and relayed them below. "We'll get you and your people ashore first, Captain. That'll free you up as quickly as we can manage." Ferracini nodded.

  A message had been received in mid-Atlantic, sent by a Navy VLF transmitter in Connecticut on the long wavelengths that submarines could pick up while submerged, advising that Captain Ferracini and Sergeant Cassidy were urgently required for other duties and would be met at the dock to receive further orders. "They don't give you guys much of a break." Bowden commented. "I'm sorry you'll be going so soon. At least it isn't that way all the time, eh?"

  "Not quite all the time, anyhow," Ferracini said.

  "Just when we were starting to get to know one another."

  "That's the way it is sometimes, I guess."

  Bowden looked at the soldier for a moment longer, then abandoned his attempt at conversation with a sigh and a barely perceptible shrug. "Okay, well, we'll be docking in a few minutes. You'll need to be getting back down to join the others in the wardroom." He extended a hand. "A pleasure to have had you aboard, Captain. Glad we were able to help. And good luck with whatever they've dreamed up for you next."

  "Thank you, sir." Ferracini said, sounding formal. He shook hands first with Bowden, then with Warner. "The men asked me to express their appreciation for the hospitality. I'd like to add mine, too." Bowden smiled faintly and nodded. Ferracini climbed down into the bridge hatch and began descending the ladder below.

  From the compartment below the bridge, Ferracini squeezed through another hatch and entered the pressure hull of the ship, beyond which yet another hatch and a third ladder brought him into the forward end of the control room, with its confusion of machinery, consoles, dialed panels, and equipment racks, the purpose of most of which he didn't understand. Crewmen were busy at stations extending away on both walls aft of the twin periscope stand and huge chart table. On the port side stood two padded leather chairs with cockpitlike control columns and arrays of hooded instruments, looking more like an aircraft flight-deck than the helmsman's and diving officers positions on a ship. The seats were fitted with safety belts, which said enough about the Narwhal's maneuvering capabilities; the dynamics of handling fast submarines came closer to flying through water than anything that resembled sailing in the traditional sense.

  Bowden s executive officer and a detail of seamen accompanied Ferracini forward through the passageway leading between the captain's cabin and sickbay to the wardroom, where the passengers had been given bunking space for the voyage. He found Cassidy and the two privates, Vorkoff' and Breugot, packing away final items of kit and helping the eight people they had brought out of England into top clothes suitable for going outside. Several of the civilians still looked drawn and emaciated, although traces of color were beginning to show on their faces after four days of rest, proper medical care, and the Narwhal's generous rations.

  "Pretty well done, Harry." Cassidy drawled, zipping up the last of the bags he had been packing. "How are things doing outside? Are we almost there?"

  "Just coming into harbor. They're taking on the pilot," Ferracini replied.

  "So how's home sweet home?"

  "Wet, cold, and windy. Everyone ready down here?"

  "All set."

  Mike "Cowboy" Cassidy had a long, lanky frame, which he carried with an easygoing looseness that could be disarmingly deceptive, clear blue eyes, thick yellow hair, and a ragged mustache. Special Operations troopers were trained to work in pairs, and he had been Ferracini's regular partner for over three years. By all the measures of mood and temperament that the psychologists made so much of, they should have been incompatible, but each had refused obstinately to work with anyone else.

  While the seamen carried the kit out, Ferracini looked around at the people in the wardroom. This would no doubt be their last time together as a group. Just as they had begun getting to know something about one another after four days in the cramped confines of the submarine, the voyage had ended, and they would all be whisked away in different directions. It was like life in general—nothing permanent; nothing lasting; nothing to attach roots to. Ferracini felt weary at the futility of it all.

  The two scientists, Mitchell and Frazer, were still wearing oddments of the homemade uniforms of the Prison Guard Section, British Security Police—effectively a locally recruited branch of the SS—in which they had contrived their escape from the political concentration camp on Dartmoor. In earlier years, Mitchell, a specialist in high-temperature corrosion chemistry, had been forced to work in the program that was supposed to have led to the first German lunar landing in 1968. Frazer had been working on inertial guidance computers before Berlin ordered his arrest for alleged ideological failings.

  Smithgreen—certainly not his real name—was a Jewish Hungarian mathematician of some kind who had managed, incredibly, to evade detection ever since England's surrender to Germany on the first day of 1941. Maliknin was an escaped Russian slave laborer who had worked on the German ICBM silos in northern Siberia. Pearce—again, undoubtedly a pseudonym—had bleached his hands and facial skin and straightened his hair in order to survive the African genocide of the sixties.

  Then there was the woman who was called "Ada" slumped in a chair at one end of the wardroom table and staring vacantly at the bulkhead as she had for most of the voyage. England might have surrendered in 1941, but Ada never had.

  She had continued fighting a one-woman war against the Nazis for over thirty years, ever since the day when, as a young schoolteacher in Liverpool, she had watched her husband, father, two brothers being marched away as labor conscripts for deportation to the Continent, never to be heard of again. Revenge had become her way of life. Using forged papers, disguises, and a score of aliases, she had reputedly killed one hundred sixty-three Nazis, including a Reich Governor, three district commissioners, the Gestapo chiefs of two British cities, and dozens of British collaborators in local government. She had been arrested repeatedly, had suffered interrogations, beatings, and torture; she had been sentenced to death six times, escaping on four occasions and twice being left for dead. Now, in her fifties, she was burned out, aged prematurely by a life of hatred, violence, and ordeals of the kind evidenced by the gnarled scar tissue at the ends of the fingers of her right hand, where nails used to be. Her fighting was done, but the information that she carried in her head would be priceless.

  Ferracini’s survey of the wardroom finally brought him to the young man with the mustache and the blonde girl who were known only by their code names "Polo" and "Candy." Both of them were U.S. agents returning home after an operational tour. Ferracini had no idea what they had been involved in, and it was better that things should remain that way.

  Vibrations shook the structure, and the sounds of machinery came from nearby. There were no pointless dramatics among the company, or pretensions that their relationships would endure. After briefly muttered thanks and farewells, Ferracini and Vorkoff led the way out into the wardroom passage, down a level, and forward into the torpedo storage room, where one of the main loading hatches had been opened. They exchanged more good-bys with the ship's officers standing around the ladder below the hatch and then preceded their charges up and out through a hooped canvas shelter onto the narrow working space crowning the ship's precipitous sides. Ferracini went ahead up the gangway to join the sailors who had carried the kit ashore, while Vorkoff stayed at the hatch to help the civilians across the wet steel plates. Cassidy and Breugot brought up the rear.

  The first thing that Ferracini saw as he came up to the level of the dock was a naval lieutenant standing in front of a bus that was waiting to take the civilians. The
second thing he saw was the olive drab Ford sedan bearing government plates and parked fifty or so yards back, with a uniformed driver inside and an indistinct figure watching from the back seat. Although the window was misted, making details impossible to distinguish, the figure, with its rounded facial silhouette and the floppy hat jammed squarely on its head, could only be Winslade. That the car was flying a generals pennant and Winslade wasn't even in the Army meant absolutely nothing. In fact, it would have been typical. He should have expected as much, Ferracini told himself. He had never heard of personnel on active duty being intercepted for the next mission like this, before the current one was officially over; and whenever things started moving in the direction of the highly irregular, Winslade was usually involved somewhere.

  The lieutenant, it turned out, wasn't authorized to accept the handover documents for the civilians. The bus was just to take them to the airfield on the far side of the base, he informed Ferracini, where planes were waiting to fly them to their respective destinations. The people who would be taking charge of them formally were at the airfield. "I'll see what's happening here." Ferracini told Cassidy. "You'll have to go with the bus to take care of the formalities. We'll pick you up later."

  Cassidy nodded. "I'd hate to see 'em all sent back because we did the paperwork wrong."

  "You guys can go with Cassidy, too," Ferracini told Vorkoff and Breugot. "You'll be able to find out over there about transportation back to base."

  They exchanged farewells with Ferracini and boarded after the civilians. The naval lieutenant followed last, and the bus pulled away. Ferracini looked up and saw the white-capped figure of Commander Bowden watching from high on the Narwhal's bridge. The figure raised a hand, and after a few seconds Ferracini raised his own in response. Then he shouldered his kitbag, turned away, and walked across the dock to where the Ford was waiting.