“Tanya,” he said resignedly, “I know—”
“Let me finish. We were also taught that Black Jack epitomized everything good about the Alliance. He was everything a citizen of the Alliance should be and everything a defender of the Alliance should aspire to. Quiet! I know you don’t like hearing that, but to many billions of people in the Alliance, that’s who Black Jack was. And we all heard the rest of the legend, too, that Black Jack was among our ancestors under the light of the living stars, but he would return from the dead someday when he was most needed, and he would save the Alliance. And you did that.”
“I wasn’t really dead,” Geary pointed out gruffly.
“Irrelevant. We found you only weeks before power on that damaged escape pod would have been exhausted. We thawed you out, then you saved the fleet, you beat the Syndics, and you finally brought an end to the endless war.” She ran one hand slowly across the rough stone of the wall, her touch gentle despite the force of her words. “Now, despite a victory that is causing the Syndicate Worlds to fall to pieces, the Alliance is also threatening to come apart at the seams because of the costs and strains of a century of war. In that time, you’ve come to Old Earth.”
“Tanya.” She knew he would be unhappy with this conversation, with being reminded yet again of the beliefs that he was some sort of mythical hero. For a moment, he wondered if an ancestor of his had stood here, very long ago, peering into that same wind for approaching enemies, burdened with the responsibility of protecting everyone else. “We came to Old Earth to escort the Dancers. If the aliens hadn’t insisted, we wouldn’t have come here.”
“You and I know that, and some members of the Alliance Grand Council know that,” Desjani said. “But I guarantee you that everyone else in the Alliance believes that you chose to come here, to Old Earth, the Home of us all, the place our oldest ancestors once lived, to consult with those ancestors. To learn what you should do to save an Alliance that more and more citizens of the Alliance fear may be beyond saving.”
He stared at her, hoping that Tanya’s security measures really were keeping the nearby observers from seeing his expression. “They can’t believe that.”
“They do.” Her eyes on him were unyielding. “You need to know that.”
“Great.” He faced the remnants of the wall, staring north to where the wall’s enemies had long ago been. “Why me?”
“Ask our ancestors. Though if you asked me,” she added, standing right next to him as she also gazed outward, “I’d say it was because you can do the job.”
“I’m just a man. Just one man.”
“I didn’t say you would do it alone,” Tanya pointed out.
“And our ancestors haven’t been talking to me.”
“You know,” she added in the very reasonable voice of someone repeating common knowledge, “that our ancestors rarely come out and tell us anything. They offer hints, suggestions, inspirations, and hunches for those who are willing to pay attention. And if they care about us at all, they will offer those things to you if you are listening.”
“The ancestors here on Old Earth,” Geary said as patiently as he could, “didn’t get raised in an Alliance at war and indoctrinated about how awesome I am. Why should they be impressed by Black Jack?”
“Because they are our ancestors, too! And they know what Black Jack is! Remember that other wall they took us to? The, uh, Grand Wall?”
“The Great Wall?”
“Yeah, that one.” She gestured to the north. “Now, this wall, the one that Hadrian built, was a real fortification. It kept out enemies. But that Great Wall over in Asia never could do that. The people there told us it was so damned big, so long, that it was impossible for the guys who built it to support a large enough army to actually garrison it. They sank a huge amount of money, time, and human labor into building that Great Wall, and whenever an enemy wanted to get through it, all they had to do was find a spot where there weren’t any soldiers and put up a ladder, so one of their own could climb up and over, then open the nearest gate.”
“Yeah.” Geary nodded. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it?”
“Not as a fortification, no.” She waved again, this time vaguely to the east. “Those pyramids. Remember those? Think of the time and money and labor that went into those. And then those big faces on the mountain a ways north of where we first stopped in Kansas. The four ancestors whose images were carved into a mountain. How much sense did that make?”
He turned a questioning look on her. “This has something to do with me?”
“Yes, sir, Admiral.” Desjani smiled, but the eyes that held his were intent. “That Great Wall said something about the people who built it. It told the world, we can do this. It told the world, we’re on this side of the Great Wall, and all the rest of you are on the other. Those pyramids must have really impressed people a long time ago, too. And the four ancestors on the mountain? It didn’t just honor them, it also honored their people, and their homes, and what they believed in. All of those things were symbols. Symbols that helped define the people who built them.”
He nodded slowly. “All right. And?”
“What’s the symbol of the Alliance?”
“There isn’t one. Not like that. There are too many different societies, governments, beliefs—”
“Wrong.” She pointed at him.
Geary felt that vast sinking sensation that sometimes threatened to overwhelm him. “Tanya, that’s—”
“True. I told you. You still don’t understand us.” Her face saddened. “We stopped believing in our politicians a long time ago, and that meant we lost belief in our governments, and what is the Alliance but a collection of those governments? It can’t be stronger than they are. We tried putting faith in honor, but you reminded us how that caused us to warp the meaning of ‘honor.’ We tried putting faith in our fleet and our ground forces, but they failed, you know they did. We were fighting like hell and dying and killing and not getting anywhere. Until you came along. The man who we had been told all of our lives was everything the Alliance was supposed to be.”
Tanya tapped the wall next to them. “Black Jack isn’t just this wall, the guy who physically protected the Alliance from external enemies, he’s also that Great Wall and those pyramids and those four ancestors. He’s the image of the Alliance, the thing citizens think of that means the Alliance. That’s why he is the only one who can save it.”
He had to look away once more, to gaze across that sere landscape again, seeing overlaid upon it images of the battles he had already fought, of the men and women already dead. “Senator Sakai said something like that to me, but he was a lot more pessimistic.” During the war with the Syndicate Worlds, the Alliance government had created the myths around Black Jack to inspire and unify its people at a time when the example of that sort of hero was desperately needed. Now the man that myth had been built around somehow had to save the Alliance that had created it. “Ancestors help me.”
“Well, duh, isn’t that what we’ve just been talking about?”
Geary felt a crooked smile form and looked at her again. “I never would have guessed what people born during the war were thinking. What would I do without you?”
“You’d be lost,” Desjani said. “Totally, hopelessly lost. And don’t you ever forget it.”
“If I do, I’m sure you’ll remind me.”
“Maybe. Or maybe I’ll just go back to being me.” Her gesture this time encompassed the crowd maintaining its respectful distance behind them. “To these people, I’m commanding officer of the most impressive warship they have ever seen. I’m the girl who wiped out the so-called warships of the so-called Shield of Sol that had been bullying their way around this star system while pretending to protect it from inferior forms of human life like you and me.”
“Too bad for the Shield of Sol that we debased humans from the distant stars
are a lot better at fighting battles than they were,” Geary said.
Tanya grinned. “Pure bloodlines, lots of medals, and pretty ships are no substitute for smarts, lots of firepower, and experience. Anyway, the people here at Sol think what I am, what I’ve done, is all pretty remarkable. Once we get home to the Alliance, though, everybody there is once again going to be looking at me as just the consort of Black Jack.”
He felt anger at that, anger that banished the despair of moments earlier. “You aren’t anyone’s consort. You’re Captain Tanya Desjani, commanding officer of the Alliance battle cruiser Dauntless. That’s the only way everyone should see you.”
Tanya laughed. “You’re so sweet when you’re being delusional.” Despite her warm gear, she shivered as a gust of wind hit. “The locals think this is warmer? I think we’ve done enough sentry duty on this wall. I’ve been spoiled by spending so much time inside climate-controlled spacecraft. What’s that last place we’re supposed to see today?”
“Stonehenge. A religious site.”
“Oh.” She smiled again. “Good. I need to pay my respects before we leave Old Earth.”
“I don’t think whoever built Stonehenge worshipped the same things we do,” Geary pointed out.
“They didn’t use the same names,” Desjani objected. “That doesn’t mean the same things didn’t matter to them or that they weren’t trying to grasp the infinite in the same ways we do.”
“I guess so.” He took a deep breath, looking down and grimacing. “This old world bears a lot of scars that were inflicted by human wars and other forms of destruction. Have we learned anything? Or are we going to keep repeating the same mistakes?”
“We’re going to do our best, Admiral. But the wars aren’t over. Not by a long shot.”
• • •
WHEN their shuttle lifted from a field near the wall, Geary watched with surprise as the Dancer craft shot upward and kept going. He hauled out his comm unit and called Dauntless. “General Charban? Can you find out what the Dancers are doing? They’re supposed to be following us.”
“And they’re not,” Charban had no trouble guessing. The actions of the aliens doubtless always made sense to the Dancers themselves, but humans had found them often hard to predict or understand. “I’ll try to find out what they’re doing.”
A few minutes later, as the shuttle split the sky en route its next destination, Charban called back. “All the Dancers will say is go our ship. They’re returning to one of their ships.”
“You understand them as well as anyone,” Geary said. “Are they unhappy or bored or what? Any guesses?”
“What’s the next location they were scheduled to see?”
“We’re going to a place called Stonehenge. An ancient religious site.”
“Religious?” Charban asked. “That might be the reason. The Dancers have never responded when we tried to discuss spiritual beliefs. Maybe they think such things are private or secret. Let me check what we sent them . . . yes, we told them that Stonehenge is a place where humans talked to something bigger than themselves. That’s the nearest we can come to saying religious site. They may not feel it is appropriate for them to be there. That’s my best guess.”
“Thank you, General. Let me know if the Dancers say anything else. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
The massive rocks at the place called Stonehenge didn’t look that impressive to eyes accustomed to what modern equipment and modern engineering could do. Imagining humans constructing this place with bare hands, muscle, and the most primitive of tools made it feel much more remarkable. Moreover, as Geary left the shuttle where it had set down close to the ancient circle of stones, he felt an even greater sense of age here than at the wall.
“This is old,” Tanya said. “Look, there’s a flame.” She walked toward a fire pit to one side of the stones and knelt.
Geary stayed back, giving her privacy and looking around. The locals who had been waiting for them were approaching with the strange combination of wariness and welcome that many people on Old Earth seemed to feel toward the distant children of this world.
Beyond them . . . “What is that?” he asked the first woman who approached him, her coat adorned with the crest those on this island wore to identify themselves as custodians of the past.
She looked over her shoulder, then made an apologetic gesture. “A different kind of monument, Admiral. Perhaps, in a way, a monument to the things people worshipped in a time in the past for us but in the far future to those who built Stonehenge.”
Geary squinted at the objects. “They look like ground fighting vehicles.”
“They are. Or, they were.” The female steward sighed. “At one time, many weapons of war were built with totally robotic controls. They could and did operate without any human intervention.”
“Autonomous robotics? What were those people thinking?”
“That they could cede control and yet maintain it,” she replied, her voice growing caustic, then taking on the cadence of someone reciting words often repeated. “Those broken machines were Caliburn Main Battle Tanks, part of the Queen’s Royal Hussars. Someone managed to override and alter their programming, causing the most massive and destructive armored vehicles ever constructed to break out of their garrison and head for this site, with instructions to destroy the ancient stones here. Much of the automated equipment that could have stopped them was disabled by computer viruses and worms planted by the same people. Fortunately, humans carrying antitank weaponry were able to destroy the vehicles though at considerable cost in life. The last of the Caliburns, the spearhead of the attack, were knocked out just before they reached the stones.”
She waved toward the crumbling metal-and-ceramic monsters. “They were left here, as a monument to the heroism of those who stopped them and as a reminder of the folly of entrusting our safety to something incapable of loyalty, morality, or wisdom.” Her voice changed, losing the tone of rote recitation. “You don’t use such weapons, then? In your wars among the stars?”
“No,” Geary replied. “Every once in a while someone proposes it, and a few times it has been tried with experimental units, but the results tend to be similar to what happened here. As erratic as humans can be, they are still immensely more reliable and trustworthy than anything that can be reprogrammed in a few seconds or mistake a glitch in its programming for reality.”
He knew he should be focused on the ancient monument, but for some reason he couldn’t explain, the wrecks of the armored vehicles held his attention even as he and Tanya were given a quick tour while the setting sun drew long shadows off the standing stones. It seemed only a few minutes had passed before they were ceremoniously escorted back into their shuttle. “Can we fly low over that?” Geary asked as the shuttle lifted.
The pilot gave him a startled look, but nodded. “It might get me in trouble, but I’ll say you insisted,” she added with a grin.
“Why were you surprised by my request?”
“Because not many who come here want to see that. Most would rather that ugly pile of rust and high-tech pottery was gone, but it’s an historic site just like the big stones, so they’re stuck with it. Me, I’m glad it’s here.”
“Why?” Tanya asked.
“Something my dad said when he brought me here the first time,” the pilot said, twisting her controls to bring the shuttle in a slow pivot over the ruins of the archaic armored vehicles. “I looked at them old, dead monsters, and I said, It’s a good thing they stopped them. And my dad looked at me and said, No, it’s a good thing they had to stop them because if they hadn’t, we might have made ones a lot bigger before we learned our lesson.”
“You’ve got a smart dad,” Tanya remarked.
“A-yeah.” The pilot grinned at her. “He wanted me to work at the law, like he does. But he accepted my being a pilot when I said it was that or I’d ship out for the stars. They
’re all crazy out there, he said. You lot don’t look too crazy to me, though.”
“You don’t know us very well,” Geary said.
• • •
ANOTHER reception committee awaited them at the castle. “Here’s where you’ll spend your last night on Earth,” the pilot said as they left her, laughing at what Geary guessed must have been a joke. He went through the process of introductions and greetings, the faces and names and titles of the various officials blending into the blur of others he had met during what had turned into a whirlwind tour of Old Earth. Back in the Alliance, most star systems had a single government spanning all of the planets and orbiting facilities, but here there seemed to be a new government, a new batch of officials, and a new set of titles every hundred kilometers.
“It’s a real castle,” Desjani said in disbelief.
“Yes, Lady Desjani,” one of the officials responded.
“I’m not a lady, I’m a captain.”
“Uh . . . yes . . . Captain. The oldest portion dates to the eighth century, Common Era. Have you ever seen a castle?”
“I’ve seen fake castles,” Tanya said. “You know, buildings that aren’t very old but were made to look like castles for amusement parks and resorts or for people with a whole lot of money to spend. There are a few on Kosatka, where I grew up. Like the one at—” Her voice cut off abruptly.
“Tanya?” Geary asked in a low voice.
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