Anvil of Stars Page 19

  “I also did not draw the right conclusions until it was too late. You are not to blame,” the War Mother said.

  “There were four. The other two…What happened to Stephanie and Theresa? Can you convert them back to matter?”

  “We cannot,” the War Mother said. “Tortoise collided with one of the unconverted craft during the explosion. Nguyen Mountain Lily and Ginny Chocolate died. Stephanie and Theresa survived. Hu East Wind, Michael Vineyard, Leo Parsifal, and Nancy Flying Crow are back aboard and safe.

  “Stephanie was killed later by my unsuccessful attempt to convert her craft back to matter. We do not have the technique or the understanding of how the conversion was accomplished—“

  Martin turned his head away from the War Mother, knowing now that Theresa was dead, too.

  “Stephanie Wing Feather’s craft was only partially converted, or converted unevenly. It exploded, causing yet more damage to Tortoise.”

  “Then you tried again with Theresa.”

  “No. Theresa is still in her craft.”

  Martin jerked his head around. “She’s alive?”

  “She is still alive.”

  Martin’s weak grip on consciousness wavered and the War Mother seemed to shimmer before him. He pushed the dark pressures away and said, “Let me speak to her.”

  The War Mother raised his wand to his hand with a slender green ladder field. The wand projected an image of Theresa’s bombship into his eyes. The skin of her bombship still sparkled, but sharp pulses of light occurred much less often. The craft drifted a hundred kilometers from Tortoise.

  Martin saw Theresa’s face, wrapped in the folds of her couch, ladder fields glowing fitfully around her.

  Martin spoke her name. She fumbled to complete the noach connection.

  “You’re awake,” she said listlessly. Her face had yellowed, her hands ulcerated; her anti-matter chemistry, tuned to a slightly different physics, did not match her biological makeup. She was very ill. “I can’t see you too well,” Theresa said. “Were you badly hurt?”

  “I think I’m healing. So are the others.” His voice wobbled with emotion and he swallowed to control it. “I screwed up, Theresa.”

  “You couldn’t have known.”

  “The ship’s badly hurt, I think.”

  “The War Mother tells me about half of it is left,” Theresa said. A picture of Tortoise from her perspective grew above Theresa’s image; one hemisphere, a blunt-ended, debris-scarred pylon, drives gone. “Some amazing things,” Theresa said. “The moms actually used the explosion—William and Fred—to propel the ship away from Nebuchadnezzar. The ship turned into it, used it. I followed…we all followed.”

  “How…How are you feeling?” Martin asked.

  “I’ve been in this can for two tendays. It wouldn’t be so bad, but I can’t eat. I’m pretty weak. I’ve been waiting—“

  “I’ll ask the War Mother. We’ll try everything.”

  Theresa shook her head. “They got us good. They know things the Benefactors don’t.”

  Or aren’t willing to teach us, Martin thought, but that didn’t make sense; the War Mother could have converted the craft while the injured crew slept and nobody would have been much the wiser. Theresa was right. We’ve been aced.

  Martin looked at the War Mother. “You tried, and it didn’t work?”

  “Stephanie Wing Feather agreed to an experiment. She is dead. We cannot turn anti-matter into matter.”

  “You’re supposed to understand,” Martin said. “How can you be ignorant about this?”

  “The techniques are unknown to us.”

  “Jesus, I’m not asking for so much, just learn how to do it! She’s dying!”

  The War Mother said nothing. Martin wrapped his face in his hands.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to wake up,” Theresa said. “I’m glad you did before…I have a plan, and it’s not much, but it’s something. I’ve asked the War Mother to make a strong field and put pellets of matter into it, with me. I’m behind the field. You’re protected. The explosion could be even more powerful than Stephanie’s. That’s what Stephanie asked for. If the experiment didn’t work. It didn’t. She helped push you—“

  “No!” Martin shouted.

  Theresa closed her eyes as if to sleep. “I’ve stayed this long to talk to you. Maybe it would have been easier to just do it while you were asleep. The War Mother says it would be useful.”

  “We’ll take you with us, carry you in a field,” Martin said. “We’ll work on some way to convert you. Jennifer can think of something if the War Mother can’t.”

  “I was being selfish,” Theresa continued, as if she hadn’t heard him. “I wanted to say some things to you, make sure you were all right. I wanted to see you again and talk with you.”

  “Please,” Martin wailed, suddenly back in the crowded chamber aboard the Ark, watching the Earth die, and knowing even as a young boy what he was losing. He struggled but all he could do was twist in the field.

  “Right now I’m good for nothing and I hurt. I thought about going back to Nebuchadnezzar, looking for a target, but the War Mother and I agreed, I’d just fizzle out and give the planet another useless scar.”

  “God damn it!” Martin screamed.

  “Please,” Theresa said, laying her head against the neck rest. “Let’s just talk while there’s time.”

  Martin felt immediate shame and sobered. “I love you,” he said hoarsely. “I don’t want you to go away.”

  “I can’t come back to you, Martin, and that means I’m dead already.”

  He struggled against the fields again but kept his face under control. “We need to think.” He stared at the War Mother, face wreathed with a child’s bitter disappointment. “Nothing?”

  “She is suffering and will not survive much longer,” the War Mother said.

  “I was selfish,” Theresa said. “I’m hurting you more than if I just—“

  “No, no. I’m glad you stayed.” He pushed to be closer to her image. “I’m…I’ll tell you something. I’m going to tell you about the new home.” He made a supreme effort to put on a face of expectancy and joy. “It’s going to be far away from here and so beautiful, Theresa. We’ll make it. We’re going to do the Job, and we’ll go there, and I swear it will be beautiful.

  “I’ll wear my suit. All the Lost Boys will wear their suits. All the Wendys will wear gowns. We’ll step out on the planet, and we’ll marry the new home. We’ll remember everybody, and they’ll be with us, and we’ll grow food, and make wine, and babies, and we’ll…Oh, Jesus, it will be such a party, Theresa.”

  Her face relaxed. “I can see it,” she said.

  “You’ll be there with me, honey.”

  “I think I will.”

  “We’ll do it,” he said. He had run out of words.

  “Martin, Tortoise tells me it’s ready. I’d like to go now. I want to help you get to the new home. Can I do it now, my love?”

  Martin could not speak. He could hardly see. He pushed against the field like a fly in a web. The healing doers hummed.

  “Goodbye.” Theresa blew him a kiss.

  Her image was replaced by a view from the rear of Tortoise. Theresa moved her bombship into position.

  Martin shook his head, disbelieving.

  He wanted to keep her alive as long as possible, to make up for the awkwardness and inadequacy of his last words to her. He wanted to scream but did not.

  Martin closed his eyes and turned away, but he could not keep them shut; he wanted to see, to feel and appreciate the push, to realize for her sake as the first step into grief that Theresa was becoming something so absurd and simple as acceleration.

  He whispered her name. She might have heard.

  Theresa’s bombship hung steady as pellets of mass approached. The stars moved behind her, peaceful and constant; Wormwood’s corona flared in silence beyond a shadowed, ripped edge of Tortoise’s tail.

  The pellets closed.

  A
mbiplasma bloomed brighter than Wormwood. Theresa’s bombship wasped within the fields, frenzied by inequalities of blast. Light ate her. She was eaten by light clean and uncompromising, the opposite of space, of night and ending, all light, all colors.

  The hull sang high and sweet like the tremolo of a flute.

  Martin’s scream came and he choked on it, struggling against the mercy of the healing doers.

  Tortoise moved slowly between the worlds, her children ignored by Nebuchadnezzar, by Ramses, by Herod. The silence of these grim barren worlds proclaimed defeat.

  Within, as the ship repaired itself, as the Wendys and Lost Boys healed, Martin thought about the Killers, the tricksters, impersonal, unseen.

  As on Earth, so it was with the traps of Wormwood. Luring, testing, destroying.

  He slept to the humming of the golden doers, finishing their work.

  Came William this time. “You’re dreaming of me, aren’t you?”

  “I guess so.”

  “I’m glad, Martin. I was pretty sure you wouldn’t forget.”

  But he could not dream of Theresa.

  Until now, Martin had wanted revenge, but he had not felt the extraordinary burn of hatred.

  These monsters had cost him too many worlds, too many loves.

  The children had been brushed away with a casual swat, crippled by an enemy who knew more tricks than their Benefactors. The survivors had been left to starve in a depleted void.

  Tens of billions of kilometers away, Hare fell downward to the brightness.

  Martin came out of his healing field to arrange things, to talk on the noach with Hans, who suppressed emotion in his voice, as Martin expressed no emotion in his. And then he led the children into a long sleep. No dreams, just coldness.

  Tortoise rose from the pit of Wormwood to meet her sister.

  There would be no defeat, no giving up.

  And no peace.

  PART TWO

  Ten years in cold, tracking each other on the rim of a shallow well: Tortoise and Hare. In defeat, caution, conserving resources. Ten years would not matter in this war of centuries.

  While the crew slept, the ships came together again and made a new Dawn Treader, half its previous length, only two homeballs connected by a short neck. Some old spaces came back, though empty of pets and personal effects.

  The schoolroom and cafeteria remained. No damage showed, but the fuel reserves wrapped around the neck were much reduced.

  Martin awoke a month after the rejoining, to consult with the moms. Field-wrapped in a cushion of warm air, he laddered through the cold, evacuated chambers of the Ship of the Law, approving or suggesting changes. He was not sure why he had been awakened; perhaps the moms were interested in the changed psychology of a crew facing defeat and death, and sought to study one individual’s response. If so, they found Martin taciturn.

  He had suffered no ill effects from the long cold sleep. He thought he much preferred sleep to years between the stars, these brief silent deaths between bright lives.

  But there was a handicap to cold sleep. They would all awake with disaster fresh in their minds, their emotions raw, and immediately have to go to work. Martin was angry and frightened and twisted to such an extent he wondered if he were ill. How much psychological damage had he sustained? He could not know; there was no time for grieving and readjustment.

  None of the moms carried a mark of paint. Either the marks had flaked away completely during the ten years, or the War Mother had returned to the bulk of the ship, emerging with Martin from a different kind of sleep.

  Martin completed his inspection in five hours. A mom accompanied him to the chamber where the crew slept. “It is time to awaken everyone,” it said. “Final deceleration will begin before they are revived. We will approach the inner worlds within two tendays.”

  “Good,” Martin said. “Let’s go.”

  He listened to the winds blowing through the ship as atmosphere and warmth returned. Isolated in a small room next to the sleep chamber, he felt weight return, and stood on his feet for the first time in ten years.

  The others came awake in groups of five, were tested by the moms for any health problems, cleared, and gathered slowly, quietly, in the schoolroom.

  The ship’s floor felt cool to their bare feet.

  Martin stayed away from the crew until they gathered in the schoolroom. His mind wandered; he thought of the children’s pets, which would not return; Dawn Treader did not have reserves to spare. Martin did not know how this would affect morale; he thought they had other and larger griefs to deal with first.

  He could hardly bring himself to face the crew and tell what had happened; he did not want to feel their grief as well as his own.

  But duty at least remained, if no direction or feeling, and he spoke to them, to start and to finish, to do what he knew must be done.

  “We’re no longer children,” Martin told them. The schoolroom at least had changed little, with a star sphere at the center, filled with thirty-eight men and thirty-seven women. “We’ve fought and lost. We may not be mature, or very smart, but we’re no longer children.”

  The crew listened in silence.

  “I’ve fought and lost,” Martin said. “I missed what should have been obvious.”

  “The moms missed it, too,” Hakim said, but Martin shook his head.

  “A decade has passed. My term as Pan has long since expired. It’s time to choose a new Pan. We should do that now.”

  Ariel sat looking at her folded hands.

  “I nominate Hans,” Martin said. “Hans is my choice for Pan.”

  Hans stood in a group of Hare’s crew, big arms folded, lips tightening slightly, pale skin reddening. “We usually measure time by how long we’re awake,” he said. “By that measure, you still have some months left.”

  “Hans did a fine job commanding Hare,” Martin said, ignoring the comment. “His instincts are better than mine.” He looked briefly at Hans: Do not make me say it more clearly. Hans looked up at the ceiling.

  Alexis Baikal seconded the nomination.

  “We’ll take any other nominations,” Martin continued.

  The crew looked among each other, then Kimberly Quartz said, “I nominate Rosa Sequoia.”

  Rosa’s broad face flushed but she said nothing. Decline, Martin silently suggested, swallowing back an even deeper sense of dread. No sane person would nominate Rosa.

  “I second the nomination,” Jeanette Snap Dragon said.

  Martin surveyed the crew.

  “I nominate Hakim Hadj,” Paola Birdsong said.

  That was a pretty good choice, Martin thought. Hakim looked up in surprise and said, “I decline. I have my place, and it is not as Pan.”

  “I renominate Martin son of Arthur Gordon,” Joe Flatworm said.

  “Decline,” Martin said.

  There were no further nominations.

  “Vote through wands,” Martin said. The voting was quick: sixty-seven for Hans, eight for Rosa. Martin projected the results, then laddered forward to offer his hand to Hans. Hans shook it lightly and broke the grip quickly.

  “Hans is the new Pan,” Martin said.

  “I don’t want any ceremony,” Hans said. “There’s work to do. I appoint Harpal Timechaser as Christopher Robin. “

  “Decline,” Harpal said.

  “The hell you will,” Hans said. “We’ve had about enough emotional shit. Take the job or we’re all damned.”

  Harpal gaped. Without waiting for his answer, Hans pushed through the crew to the edge of the schoolroom and the door, twisted around with feline grace, and said, “Martin’s right. We’re not children. We’re scum. We’ve failed and we’ve lost friends. I condemn us all to hell until we kill these god damned worlds, all of them. We’re already dead; there isn’t enough fuel to get out of here and go any place decent. Let’s take these sons of bitches with us.”

  The crew began to look at each other now, shyly at first, then with a few reckless grins.
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br />   “Goddammit,” Paola Birdsong said, as if trying out the word for size. It was much too big a word for her, but the solemnity passed from her face, replaced by a grim, lively determination.

  Rosa Sequoia floated as still as a statue, face as impenetrable as a mom’s.

  “Let’s go see what’s up,” Hans said.

  Hakim approached Martin as the crew echoed and laddered out of the schoolroom. “There have been changes,” he said conspiratorially. “I would like you to be on the search team.”

  “Hans should—”

  “Hans has no say, unless he wishes to disband the search team and start over. I do not think he will ask for that, Martin. I would enjoy working with you.”

  “Thank you,” Martin said. “I accept.”

  Hakim smiled. “My friend,” he said, touching Martin’s shoulder.

  There had indeed been changes. “I do not think we wasted our time,” Hakim said as Hans, Harpal, and the search team gathered in the nose before the star sphere.

  Nebuchadnezzar was no longer a brown world. Marked by streaks of bright red running longitudinally from pole to pole, dark lines like cracks covered the surface.

  “It looks sick,” Thomas Orchard said.

  “It is sick,” Martin said in wonder. “Some of our makers and doers got through.”

  Hans regarded the star sphere image with chin in hand, frowning. “I thought everything we sent down turned to anti em and blew up.”

  “Three pods got through,” Martin said. “We assumed they were destroyed some other way, but apparently they weren’t.”

  Hans said nothing for a few seconds.

  Hakim glanced at Martin almost shyly, as if preferring still to think of him as Pan. “Perhaps not all is lost,” Hakim said.

  “Bullshit. We’re dead,” Hans said. “But we may not die in vain.”

  “Perhaps that is what I mean,” Hakim said.

  “All right,” Hans said. “How long would it take for seeds to come down from the outer haloes?”

  “Nine or ten years,” Martin said. Harpal concurred.