04-Protector

by Larry Niven

  She asked, “Weren’t you lonely?”

  “Yah.” Brennan pulled a table out of the floor. It was not memory plastic extruding itself, but a thick slab of wood, heavy enough to require Brennan’s own muscles. A look back at Alice may have told him that she expected more of an answer. “Look, I’d have been lonely anywhere. You know that.”

  “No, I don’t. You’d have been welcome.”

  Brennan seemed to go off at a tangent. “Roy, you’ve been here before. You guessed that?”

  Roy nodded.

  “How did I wipe out just that section of your memory?”

  “I don’t know. Nobody knows.” Roy tensed inside himself.

  “Simplest thing in the world. Just after I stunned you, I took a recording of your brain. Your complete memory. Before I left you in the Pinnacles I wiped your mind completely, then played the recording into it. It’s more complex than that—the process involves memory RNA, and very complex electrical fields—but I don’t have to select the memories I want to remove.”

  Roy’s voice came out faint. “Brennan, that’s horrible.”

  “Why? Because for awhile you were a mindless animal? I wasn’t going to leave you that way. I’ve done this twenty times now, and never had an accident.”

  Roy shuddered. “You don’t understand. There was a me that spent four months with you. He’s gone. You murdered him.”

  “You’re beginning to understand.”

  Roy looked him in the eye. “You were right. You’re different. You’d be lonely anywhere.”

  Brennan set the table. He held chairs for his guests, moving with the smooth lack of haste that marks a perfect headwaiter. He served, taking half the food for himself, then sat down and ate with the efficiency of a wolf. He was neat, but he finished long before they did. There was now a noticeable bulge beneath his sternum.

  “Emergencies make me hungry,”. he said. “And now I’d like to excuse myself. It’s not polite, but there’s a war to fight.” And he left, sprinting like a roadrunner.

  For the next few days Roy and Alice felt like unwanted guests of a perfect host. They didn’t see Brennan much. When they glimpsed him across the landscape of Kobold he would be moving at a dead run. He would stop to ask them how they were enjoying themselves, tell them of something they might have missed, then be off again—at a dead run.

  Or they would find him in the laboratory making ever-finer adjustments in his “telescope.” There was only one ship in the field now, seen against a background of red dwarfs and interstellar dust clouds: a blue fusion flame, blue-shifted yellow helium light, sparkling around the edges.

  He would talk to them, but without interrupting his work. “It’s the Phssthpok configuration,” he told them with evident satisfaction. “They didn’t mess with a good thing. See the black dot in the center of the flame? Cargo pod comes first during deceleration. And it’s a bigger cargo pod than Phssthpok was carrying, and the ships are moving slower than his did at that distance. They aren’t that close to the speed of light. They won’t be here for a hundred and seventy-two or -three years.”

  “Good.”

  “Good for me, or it should be. Cargo pod first, and breeders in the cargo pod in frozen sleep. A vulnerable configuration, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Not at odds of two hundred and thirty to one.”

  “I’m not crazy, Roy. I’m not going to attack them myself. I’m going for help.”

  “Where?”

  “Wunderland. It’s closest.”

  “What? No. Earth is closest.”

  Brennan looked around. “Are you crazy? I’m not even going to warn Earth. Earth and the Belt are eighty percent of humanity, including all my descendants. Their best chance is to miss the fight. If some other world does the fighting, and loses, the Pak may still miss Earth for awhile.”

  “So you’re using the Wunderlanders as a decoy. Are you going to tell them?”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  They toured Kobold, and tried to keep out of Brennan’s way. He would come on them unexpectedly, jogging around a boulder or out of a grove of trees, eternally hurried or eternally keeping himself in fighting trim; he never said which. Always he wore that vest. He didn’t need modesty, he didn’t need protection from the elements, but he needed the pockets. For all Roy knew the vest held protection too: a fold-up pressure suit, say, in one of the larger pockets.

  Once he found them near one of the rounded huts. He led them into an airlock, and showed them something beyond the glass inner wall.

  Floating within a great rock-walled cavity: a silvery sphere, eight feet across, polished to a mirror brightness.

  “Takes a damn finicky gravity field to keep it there,” said Brennan. “It’s mostly neutronium.”

  Roy whistled. Alice said, “Wouldn’t it be unstable? It’s too small.”

  “Sure it would, if it weren’t in a stasis field. I made it under pressure, then got the stasis field around it before it could blow up in my face. Now there’s more matter on top of it. Would you believe a surface gravity of eight million gees?”

  “I guess I would.” Neutronium was as dense as matter could get: neutrons packed edge to edge under pressures greater than those at the centers of most stars. Only a hypermass would be denser, and a hypermass would not be matter any more: just a gravitational point-source.

  “I thought of leaving it here as a decoy, in case a Pak ship got past me. Now there are too many. I can’t leave Kobold for them to find. It would be a dead giveaway.”

  “You’re going to wreck Kobold?”

  “I have to.”

  Sometimes they did their own cooking—avoiding the potatoes and yams, as per Brennan’s instructions. Sometimes he cooked for them. His blinding speed never seemed hurried, but he never stayed to talk after he had finished eating. He was gaining weight, but it seemed to be all muscle, and the great knobby joints still gave him the look of a skeleton.

  He was unfailingly polite. He never talked down to them.

  “He treats us like kittens,” said Alice. “He’s busy, but he sees to it we’re fed and sometimes he stops to scratch our ears.”

  “Not his fault. We can’t do anything to help. I wish there were something—“

  “Me too.” She lay on the grass in the warm sunlight, which had taken on an odd color. Brennan had taken the scattering component out of the gravity lens that showed the sun. The light interfered with his seeing. The sky was black now. The sun was bigger and dimmer; it would not burn out a human eye.

  He had stopped Kobold’s rotation to make it easier to adjust the multiple gravity fields. Now there was always wind. It whistled through the permanent night around Brennan’s laboratory; it cooled the noonday heat on this side of the grassy sphere. The plants had not yet started to die, but they would.

  “A hundred and seventy years. We’ll never even know how it ended,” said Alice.

  “We could live that long.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Brennan must have more tree-of-life virus than he needs.” When she shuddered, he laughed.

  She sat up. “We’ll have to be leaving soon.”

  “Look.”

  There was a bobbing head in the waterfall. An arm emerged and waved to them. Presently Brennan swam to them across the pond, his arms whirling like propellers.

  “I have to swim like crazy,” he said. “I’m heavier than water. “How’re you making out?”

  “Okay. How goes the war?”

  “Tolerably.” Brennan held up a handful of spools in a sealed plastic bag. “Star maps. I’m about ready to leave. If I could think of a great new weapon to take along, I’d spend up to a year making it. As is, there’s only final inspection.”

  “We’ve got weapons in the ship. You can have them,” said Roy.

  “Sold, with thanks. What’d you bring?”

  “Hand lasers and rifles.”

  “Well, they can’t mass very much. Thanks.” Brennan turned back to the pond.

&nbs
p; “Hey!”

  Brennan turned. “What?”

  “Could you use any other kind of help?” He felt silly asking.

  Brennan looked at him for a long moment. “Yes,” he said. “Remember, you asked.”

  “Right,” Roy said firmly. By now that What have I gotten myself into now? sensation was a familiar one.

  “I’d like you to come along.”

  Roy stopped breathing.

  Alice spoke. “Brennan? If you really need the help, I volunteer too.”

  “Sorry, Alice. I can’t use you.”

  She bridled. “Did I mention that I’m a trained goldskin? Trained in weapons, spacecraft, and pursuit.”

  “You’re also pregnant.”

  Brennan, infinitely adaptable himself, had the knack of dropping bombs into a conversation without seeming to realize it. Alice lost her breath. “I am?”

  “Should I have been more tactful? My dear, you may expect a blessed event—“

  “How do you know?”

  “The hormones have made some obvious changes. Look, this can’t be a total shock. You must have skipped—“

  “—skipped my last shot,” she finished for him. “I know. I was thinking about having a child, but that was before all this Vandervecken business came up, and after that... well, Roy, there was only you. I thought all flatlanders...”

  “No, I’m cleared to have a child. Where do you think new flatlanders come from? I’d have told you, but it never...”

  “Well, stop looking so flustered.” She stood up and put her arms around him. “I’m proud. Have you got that through your thick head?”

  “Me too.” He sniffed, forcing it a bit. Of course he wanted to be a father. But— “But what do we do now?”

  She looked troubled, but didn’t answer.

  This was rapidly getting out of hand. Brennan had dropped too many bombs at once. Roy closed his eyes tight, as if that would help. When he opened them Brennan and Alice were still watching him.

  Alice was pregnant.

  Little blue lights.

  “I, I, I’ll go,” he told them. “I’m not running out on you, love,” he added quickly and urgently. His hands had closed too tightly on her shoulders. “We’re bringing a child into the world. The same world which, by an odd coincidence, is now the target for t-t-two hundred and thirty—“

  “I’ve located the second wave,” said Brennan.

  “Dammit! I didn’t need to hear that!”

  Alice put a hand across his mouth. “I understand, my loyal crew. I think you’re right.”

  And the air was full of the smell of burning bridges.

  They stood beneath the branches of the single huge tree, watching. Brennan was occupied with a portable control set taken from his vest. Roy only watched.

  The two-hundred-year-old singleship looked like a short insect with a long stinger, the cargo webs spread like diaphanous wings, the stinger tipped with actinic light. The sound of it was a shrill scream. Brennan had spent a full day teaching Alice how to use the ship, care for it, repair it. Roy would not have guessed that a day would be enough, but if Brennan was satisfied... And she was doing well. She went straight up, then turned smoothly into what had been the sun.

  Roy felt a twitchy urgency, a sense that if he didn’t do something now, right now, he was committed for life. But the moment was long past. He only watched.

  The sun looked odd now. Brennan had fiddled with the gravity lens, turning it into a launching system for the singleship. As Roy watched the sun shifted a bit left, dimming, to catch the singleship, dead center.

  She was gone.

  “She won’t have any trouble,” said Brennan. “She should make a good thing out of that ship. It’s not just a relic. It’s got historical significance, and I made some interesting changes in—“

  “Sure,” said Roy. He saw that the grass was dying and the leaves on the tree were turning yellow. Brennan had drained the pond; it was a shallow sea of mud. Kobold had already lost its magic.

  Brennan slapped him on the shoulder. “Come on.” He walked out into what had been a pond. Roy followed, wincing. The cool mud squished between his toes.

  Brennan stooped, reached deep into the sludge, and lifted. A metal door came up with a sucking sound. An airlock door.

  It was all happening very fast now. The airlock led into a cramped control room, with two crash chairs and a three hundred and sixty degree wraparound vision screen over a control board like that of any spacecraft. Brennan said, “Use straps if you want. If we foul up now we’re all dead anyway.”

  “Shouldn’t I know something—“

  “No. You can inspect the vehicle to your heart’s content after we’re under way. Hell, you’ll have a year at it.”

  “Why so hurried?”

  Brennan looked sideways at him. “Have a heart, Roy. I’ve been sitting out here for longer than your Greatly ‘Stelle was alive.” He activated the vision screen.

  They floated within the hole in Kobold’s donut.

  Brennan stabbed a button.

  Kobold receded violently. “I’m giving us a running start,” Brennan said. “We’ll get root two times the velocity.”

  “Good.”

  Kobold slowed, stopped, then came up like a wargod’s fist. Roy yelped. He couldn’t help it. They were through the hole in an instant, and black space ahead.

  Roy turned his chair for a rear view, but Kobold was already gone. Sol was a star among stars.

  “Let’s magnify that,” said Brennan. Sol became much larger—the view expanding over a rectangular section of the vision screen—and there was Kobold, receding. The magnification jumped again, and Kobold filled the screen.

  Brennan pushed a red button.

  Kobold began to crumple in on itself, as if an invisible hand were wadding it up. Rock churned and began to glow yellow-hot. Roy felt queasy in his soul and in his belly. It was as if someone had bombed Disneyland.

  He said, “What did you do?”

  “Shut down the gravity generators. I couldn’t leave it out here for the Pak to find. The longer it takes them to find artifacts around Sol, the better off we are.” Kobold was all yellow-hot and melted, and tiny. “In a few minutes it’ll all be plated across that eight foot ball of neutronium. When it cools it’ll be practically unfindable.”

  Now Kobold was a blinding white point.

  “What happens next?”

  “For a year and two months and six days, nothing. Want to inspect the ship?”

  “Nothing?”

  “By which I mean that we won’t be doing any accelerating for that long. Look.” Brennan’s fingers flashed over the control panel. The vision screen obeyed, showing a tridee map of Sol and her neighborhood out to twenty-five light years.

  “We’re here, at Sol. We’re on our way to here. That point is just between Alpha Centaurus and Van Maanen’s Star. When we fire up the Pak ship we’ll be heading directly into the Pak fleet. They won’t be able to get our velocity toward them without knowing our exhaust velocity, and they won’t know our transverse component at all. They’ll have to assume I’m coming from Van Maanen’s Star to Alpha Centaurus. I don’t want to lead them back to Sol.”

  “That makes sense,” Roy admitted reluctantly.

  “Let’s take that tour,” said Brennan. “Later we can go into detail. I want you able to fly this ship if anything happens to me.”

  The Flying Dutchman, Brennan called it. Though there were ships within it, it was hardly a ship. “If you wanted to be picky about it, I could claim we’re sailing,” Brennan said cheerfully. “There are tides, and photon winds, and shoals of dust that could chew us up.”

  “But you did all our steering at takeoff.”

  “Sure, but I could spin us a light-sail if I had to. I don’t want to. It would make us more visible.”

  The Flying Dutchman was a matrix of rock, mostly hollow. Three great hollows held the components of a Pak-style Bussard ramjet ship. Brennan called it Protector. Another
had been enlarged to house Roy Truesdale’s cargo ship. Other hollows were rooms.

  There was a hydroponics garden. “This is off limits,” said Brennan. “Tree-of-life. Don’t ever go in here.”

  There was an exercise room. Brennan spent some time showing Roy how to adjust the machines for a breeder’s muscles. Gravity was almost zero aboard the Flying Dutchman. They would both have to exercise.

  There was a machine shop.

  There was a telescope: big, but conventional. “I don’t want to use gravity generators from now on. I want us to look like a rock. Later we’ll look like a Pak ship.”

  Roy thought that was unnecessary. “It’ll be half of a hundred and seventy-three years before the Pak find any trace of what we’re doing now.”

  “Maybe.”

  And there was Protector.

  For the first several weeks of the voyage they did little besides train Roy Truesdale to use that ship. He was drilled in the differences between Phssthpok’s ship and Brennan’s. “I don’t know how long we’ll want to keep up the camouflage,” Brennan told him. “Maybe for keeps. Maybe never. It depends.”

  So Brennan turned the control pod into a training room by hooking sensors to the control systems and monitoring the inputs from outside. Roy learned to maintain a constant point nine two gee. He learned to feather the fields to smear the exhaust a bit. Phssthpok’s drive had not been as precisely tuned as Brennan’s, due to its thirty-one thousand light year voyage.

  The control pod was much bigger than Roy had expected. “Phssthpok didn’t have this much room, did he?”

  “Nope. Phssthpok had to carry food and air and recycling equipment for something like a thousand years. I don’t. We’ll still be crowded... but well be entertained. Phssthpok didn’t have our computer technology either, or didn’t use it.”

  “I wonder why.”

  “A Pak wouldn’t see the point of taking a machine to think for him. He thinks too well already... and likes it too much, for that matter.”