A Talent for War

by Jack McDevitt

  “Why?” I asked.

  “You have the consolation of knowing we are about to turn the war around. The mutes are finally going to get hurt!” His eyes glowed, and I shuddered.

  “You led them here,” I said.

  “Yes.” He was on his feet now. “We led them here. We’ve led them into hell. They think Christopher Sim is on the space station. And they want him very badly.” He refilled his glass. “Sim has never had the firepower to fight this war. He’s been trying to hold off an armada with a few dozen light frigates.” Olander’s face twisted. It was a frightening aspect. “But he’s done a job on the bastards. Anyone else would have been overwhelmed right at the start. But Sim: sometimes I wonder whether he’s human.”

  Or you, I thought. My fingers brushed the laser.

  “Maybe it would be best if you left,” he said tonelessly.

  I made no move to go. “Why here? Why Ilyanda?”

  “We tried to pick a system where the population was small enough to be moved.”

  I smothered an obscenity. “Did we get to vote on this? Or did Sim just ride in and issue orders?”

  “Damn you,” he whispered. “You haven’t any idea at all what this is about, do you? A million people have died in this war so far. The mutes have burned Cormoral and taken the City on the Crag and Far Mordaigne. They’ve overrun a dozen systems, and the entire frontier is on the edge of collapse.” He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “They don’t like human beings very much, Miss Lee. And I don’t think they plan for any of us to be around when it’s over. ”

  “We started the war,” I objected.

  “That’s easy to say. You don’t know what was going on. But it doesn’t matter now anyway. We’re long past drawing fine lines. The killing won’t stop until we’ve driven the bastards back where they came from.” He switched displays to a status report. “They’re closing on the Station now.” His lips curled into a vindictive leer. “A sizable chunk of their fleet is already within range. And more arriving all the time.” He smiled malevolently, and I can remember thinking that I had never before come face to face with anyone so completely evil. He was really enjoying himself.

  “You said Sim doesn’t have much firepower—”

  “He doesn’t.”

  “Then how—?”

  A shadow crossed his face. He hesitated, and looked away toward the monitors. “The Station’s shields have gone up,” he said. “No, there’s nothing up there of ours except a couple of destroyers. They’re automated, and the Station’s abandoned.” The blinking lights on the battle display had increased to a dozen. Some had moved within the inner ring. “All they can see are the destroyers, and something they think is Corsarius in dock with its hull laid open. And the bastards are still keeping their distance. But it won’t make any difference!”

  “Corsarius!” I said. “Sim’s ship?”

  “It’s a big moment for them. They’re thinking right now they’re going to take him and end the war.” He squinted at the graphics.

  I was beginning to suspect it was time to take his advice and make for the wharf, get the Meredith, and head back to the southern hemisphere. Until everything settled down.

  “The destroyers are opening up,” he said. “But they won’t even slow the mutes down.”

  “Why bother?”

  “We had to give them some opposition. Keep them from thinking too much.”

  “Olander,” I asked, “if you have no ships up there, what’s this all about? How does Sim expect to destroy anything?”

  “He won’t. But you and I will, Kindrel. You and I will inflict such a wound on the mutes tonight that the sons of bitches will never forget!”

  Two monitors went suddenly blank. The images returned, swirls of characters blinking frantically. He leaned forward and frowned. “The Station’s taken a hit.” He reached toward me, a friendly, soothing gesture, but I stayed away from him.

  “And what are you and I going to do to them?” I asked.

  “Kindrel, we are going to stop the sunrise.”

  I found that remark a bit murky, and I said so.

  “We’re going to catch them all,” he said. “Everything they’ve got here, everything out to the half-billion-kilometer ring, will be incinerated. Beyond that, if they see right away what’s happening and get a running start, they have a chance.” He glanced toward the computer. A red lamp glowed on the keyboard. “We have an old Tyrolean freighter, loaded with antimatter. It’s waiting for a command from me.”

  “To do what?”

  His eyes slid shut, and I could no longer read his expression. “To materialize inside your sun.” He hung each word in the still air. “We are going to insert it at the sun’s core. ” A bead of sweat rolled down his chin. “The result, we think, will be—” he paused and grinned, “—moderately explosive.”

  I could almost have believed there was no world beyond that bar. We’d retreated into the dark, Olander and I and the monitors and the background music and the stone nymphs. All of us.

  “A nova?” I asked. My voice must have been barely audible. “You’re trying to induce a nova?”

  “No. Not a true nova.”

  “But the effect—”

  “—will be the same.” He looked eminently satisfied. “It’s a revolutionary technique. Involves some major breakthroughs in navigation. It isn’t easy, you know, to bring this off. Never been done before.”

  “Come on, Olander,” I exploded, “you can’t expect me to believe that a guy sitting in a bar can blow up a sun!”

  “I’m sorry.” His eyes changed, and he looked startled, as though he’d forgotten where he was. “You may be right,” he said. “It hasn’t been tested, so they really don’t know. Too expensive to run a test.”

  I tried to imagine Point Edward engulfed in fire, amid boiling seas and burning forests. It was Gage’s city, where we’d explored narrow streets and old bookstores, and pursued each other across rainswept beaches and through candle-lit pubs. And from where we’d first gone to sea. I’d never forgot how it had looked the first time we’d come home, bright and diamond-hard against the horizon. Home. Always it would be home.

  And I watched Olander through eyes grown suddenly damp, perhaps conscious for the first time that I had come back to Point Edward with the intention to leave Ilyanda.

  “Olander, they left you to do this?”

  “No.” He shook his head vigorously. “It was supposed to happen automatically when the mutes got close. The trigger was tied in to the sensors on the Station. But the mutes have had some success at disrupting command and control functions. We couldn’t be sure . . . ”

  “Then they did leave you!”

  “No! Sim would never have allowed it if he’d known. He has confidence in the scanners and computers. Those of us who know a little more about such things do not. So I stayed, and disconnected the trigger, and brought it down here.”

  “My God, and you’re really going to do it?”

  “It works out better this way. We can catch the bastards at the most opportune moment. You need a human to make that judgment. A machine isn’t good enough to do it right.”

  “Olander, you’re talking about destroying a world!”

  “I know.” His voice shook. “I know.” His eyes found mine at last. The irises were blue, and I could see white all round their edges. “No one wanted this to happen. But we’re driven to the wall. If we can’t make this work, here, there may be no future for anyone.”

  I kept talking, but my attention was riveted to the computer keyboard, to the EXECUTE key, which was longer than the others, and slightly concave.

  The laser was cool and hard against my leg.

  He drained the last of his wine, and flung the glass out into the dark. It shattered. “Ciao,” he said.

  “The nova,” I murmured, thinking about the broad southern seas and the trackless forests that no one would ever penetrate and the enigmatic ruins. And the thousands of people to whom, like me
, Ilyanda was home. Who would remember when it was gone? “What’s the difference between you and the mutes?”

  “I know how you feel, Kindrel.”

  “You have no idea how I feel—”

  “I know exactly how you feel. I was on Melisandra when the mutes burned Cormoral. I watched them seize the Pelian worlds. They were irritated with the Pelians so they shot a few people. People who were like you, just minding their business. Do you know what Cormoral looks like now? Nothing will live there for ten thousand years.”

  Somebody’s chair, his, mine, I don’t know, scraped the floor, and the sound echoed round the bar.

  “Cormoral and the Pelians were assaulted by their enemies!” I was enraged, frightened, terrified. Out of sight under the table, my fingers traced the outline of the weapon. “Has it occurred to you,” I asked, as reasonably as I could, “what’s going to happen when the mutes go home, and we go back to squabbling among ourselves?”

  He nodded. “I know. There’s a lot of risk involved.”

  “Risk?” I pointed a trembling finger at the stack of equipment. “That thing is more dangerous than a half-dozen invasions. For God’s sake, we’ll survive the mutes. We survived the ice ages and the nuclear age and the colonial wars and we will sure as hell take care of those sons of bitches if there’s no other way.

  “But that thing you have in front of you-Matt, don’t do this. Whatever you hope to accomplish, the price is too high.”

  I listened to him breathe. An old love song was running on the sound system. “I have no choice,” he said in a dull monotone. He glanced at his display. “They’ve begun to withdraw. That means they know the Station’s empty, and they suspect either a diversion or a trap.”

  “You do have a choice!” I screamed at him.

  “No!” He pushed his hands into his jacket pockets as though to keep them away from the keyboard. “I do not.”

  Suddenly I was holding the laser, pointing it at the computers. “I’m not going to allow it.”

  “There’s no way you can stop it.” He stepped out of the line of fire. “But you’re welcome to try.”

  I backed up a few paces and held the weapon straight out. It was a curious remark, and I played it again. Olander’s face was awash with emotions I couldn’t begin to put a name to. And I realized what was happening. “If I interrupt the power supply,” I said, “It’ll trigger. Right?”

  His face gave him away.

  “Get well away from it.” I swung the weapon toward him. “We’ll just sit here awhile.”

  He didn’t move.

  “Back off,” I said.

  “For God’s sake, Kindrel.” He held out his hands. “Don’t do this. There’s no one here but you and me.”

  “There’s a living world here, Matt. And if that’s not enough, there’s a precedent to be set.”

  He took a step toward the trigger.

  “Don’t, Matt,” I said. “I’ll kill you if I have to.”

  The moment stretched out. “Please, Kindrel,” he said at last.

  So we remained, facing each other. He read my eyes, and his color drained. I held the laser well out where he could see it, aimed at his chest.

  The eastern sky was beginning to lighten.

  A nerve quivered in his throat. “I should have left it alone,” he said, measuring the distance to the keyboard.

  Tears were running down my cheeks, and I could hear my voice loud and afraid as though it were coming from outside me. And the entire world squeezed down to the pressure of the trigger against my right index finger. “You didn’t have to stay,” I cried at him. “It has nothing to do with heroics. You’ve been in the war too long, Matt. You hate too well.”

  He took a second step, tentatively, gradually transferring his weight from one foot to the other, watching me, his eyes pleading.

  “You were enjoying this, until I came by.”

  “No,” he said. “That’s not so.”

  His muscles tensed. And I saw what he was going to do and I shook my head no and whimpered and he told me to just put the gun down and I stood there looking at the little bead of light at the base of his throat where the bolt would hit and saying no no no....

  When at last he moved, not toward the computer but toward me, he was far too slow and I killed him.

  My first reaction was to get out of there, to leave the body where it had dropped and take the elevator down and run—

  I wish to God I had.

  The sun was on the horizon. The clouds scattered into the west, and another cool autumn day began.

  Matt Olander’s body lay twisted beneath the table, a tiny black hole burned through the throat, and a trickle of blood welling out onto the stone floor. His chair lay on its side, and his jacket was open. A pistol, black and lethal and easy to hand, jutted from an inside pocket.

  I had never considered the possibility he might be armed. He could have killed me at any time.

  What kind of men fight for this Christopher Sim?

  This one would have burned Ilyanda, but he could not bring himself to take my life.

  What kind of men? I have no answer to that question. Then or now.

  I stood a long time over him, staring at him, and at the silently blinking transmitter, with its cold red eye, while the white lights fled toward the outer ring.

  And a terrible fear crept through me: I could still carry out his intention, and I wondered whether I didn’t owe it to him, to someone, to reach out and strike the blow they had prepared. But in the end I walked away from it, into the dawn.

  The black ships that escaped at Ilyanda went on to take a heavy toll. For almost three more years, men and ships died. Christopher Sim continued to perform legendary exploits. His Dellacondans held on until Rimway and Earth intervened, and, in the heat of battle, the modern Confederacy was born.

  The sun weapon itself was never heard from. Whether, in the end, it wouldn’t work, or Sim was unable afterward to lure a large enough force within range of a suitable target, I don’t know.

  For most, the war is now something remote, a subject for debate by historians, a thing of vivid memories only for the relatively old. The mutes have long since retreated into their sullen worlds. Sim rests with his heroes, and his secrets, lost off Rigel. And Ilyanda still entrances tourists with her misty seas, and researchers with her curious ruins.

  Matt Olander lies in a hero’s grave at Richardson. I cut his name into the stone with the same weapon I used to kill him.

  And I: to my sorrow, I survived. I survived the attack on the city, I survived the just anger of the Dellacondans, I survived my own black guilt.

  The Dellacondans: they came twice following the murder. There were four of them the first time, two men and two women. I hid from them, and they left. Later, when I’d begun to suspect they would not come again, a lone woman landed on one of the Richardson pads, and I went out in the sunlight and told her everything.

  I expected to be killed; but she said little, and wanted to take me to Millenium. But I couldn’t face that, so I walked away from her. And I lived outside the ruined city, in Walhalla where perhaps I should have died, pursued by an army of ghosts which grew daily in number. All slain by my hand. And when the Ilyandans returned at the end of the war, I was waiting.

  They chose not to believe me. It may have been politics. They may have preferred to forget. And so I am denied even the consolation of public judgment. There is none to damn me. Or to forgive.

  I have no doubt I did the right thing.

  Despite the carnage, and the fire, I was right.

  In my more objective moments, in the daylight, I know that. But I know also that whoever reads this document, after my death, will understand that I need more than a correct philosophical stance.

  For now, for me, in the dark of Ilyanda’s hurtling moons, the war never ends.

  XVI.

  What bleak thoughts carried him high onto that windy rock, we never knew—

  —Aneille Kay,


  Christopher Sim at War

  (These words also appear on a brass plate at Sim’s Perch.)

  IN THE MORNING, when we sat over breakfast in the penthouse restaurant, warmed by a bright sun, it all seemed a little unreal. “It’s a fraud,” said Chase. “They couldn’t count on having that ship materialize inside a planetary system, let alone inside a sun. It wouldn’t work.”

  “But if it were true,” I said, “it answers some questions. And maybe the big one: what’s out in the Veiled Lady.”

  “The bomb?”

  “What else?”

  “But if the thing worked, why didn’t it get passed on? Why put it out in the woods someplace?”

  “Because the Dellacondans thought the Confederacy wouldn’t survive the war, even if they won. Once the Ashiyyur were driven off, the worlds would go back to squabbling. And Sim may not have wanted that kind of weapon loose. Maybe not even among his own people.

  “Maybe toward the end, when things were getting desperate, he saw only two options: destroy it, or hide it. So he hid it. But everyone who knew was killed off. And the entire business was forgotten.”

  Chase picked up the thread: “So now, two hundred years later, the Tenandrome comes along and stumbles on it. And they classify everything!”

  “That’s it,” I said. “Has to be.”

  “So where’s the weapon? Did they bring it back?”

  “Sure. And right now, we’re putting it into production. Next year at this time, we’ll be threatening the mutes with it.”

  Chase was shaking her head. “I don’t believe it,” she said. “How would the Tenandrome recognize the thing for what it is?”

  “Maybe it comes with an instruction book. Listen, it’s the first explanation we’ve got that makes sense.”

  She looked skeptical. “Maybe. But I still don’t think it’s possible. Listen, Alex, star travel is extremely approximate. If I take a ship that’s in orbit around this world, and jump into hyper—”

  “—and come right back out, you might be a few million kilometers away. I know that.”