The City and the Ship

by Anne McCaffrey

  An appalled silence had broken into a quickly rising babble of "they've brought trouble here," "they led fiends to us?" "But we're defenseless." Simeon let out a modulated howl and they all shut up.

  "Thank you," Simeon said ironically when silence fell. When in danger, or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout, he added to himself.

  "Guiyon brought them here because first, the engines were about to blow, and second, they were dying fast anyway, and third, SSS-900-C is, after all, on the main route in this quadrant of Central Worlds sphere of influence. Now, if we could examine the problem more calmly?"

  Claren turned to May Vickers. "As security chief, you're required to defend us!"

  Vickers looked at the man. "With stundart pistols?" she asked incredulously. "I'm a police officer with fifty part-time assistants. I lock up drunken miners and see domestic disputes don't get out of hand," she said. "I've never had experience with fiends and I want no part of four warships." She crossed her arms across her solid chest and looked accusingly up at Simeon.

  "Is it possible that you might have lost them?" Chaundra asked.

  The two Bethelites shook their heads glumly.

  "Unlikely," Simeon said, "not when Guiyon was overdriving the engines and leaving an ion trail a blind alien could follow."

  Gus nodded. "Any warship could."

  "Iffen they couldn't see the trail, thar's all them pieces of the ship rollin' about, saying 'theah heahh!' " Patsy waved her arms like a signalman. "We cain't hardly say they passed on through."

  "My information banks give me no information at all about any group, or star system, known as Kolnari," said Simeon. "While I realize that your experience with these people is short-term, had you even heard of them on Bethel before they struck?"

  Amos shook his head. "Guiyon had heard rumors of a band of marauders in the Arm from the few traders that came to Bethel. He was also forbidden by the Elders to tell any but themselves what news traders brought of the worlds beyond Bethel. On the ship, he did tell me," and Amos furrowed his brow, trying to remember the exact words the shellperson had used, "that they struck so swiftly that no alarm could go forth. That that was how they avoided detection by any force great enough to come against them."

  "Central Worlds, for instance," Channa said with a rueful quirk of her lips.

  Amos nodded. "The first wave of destruction was aimed at our air and space ports, at communication installations. The strike was as complete as it was unexpected. They chose not to show themselves to us until all our space capacity was destroyed . . . or so they thought. All we know of them was from a very brief time when we fought them. They follow us to destroy the evidence of the destruction of Bethel, the latest of their crimes. They will kill, and quickly. No doubt," he added with scorn, "they feel uneasy being only four instead of three hundred."

  "Three hundred?" Simeon asked.

  "Three hundred ships. So Guiyon told me. He had seen them coming in but was forbidden by the Elders to speak until they had decided what to do."

  Gus whistled. "If that's three hundred warships, people, not only do we have a problem, this whole sector has a problem." The Navy was much larger, but it was scattered.

  "Have you had any recent word from Central, Simeon?" Channa asked him.

  "Basically no more than an acknowledgement of the . . . ah . . . incident in the vein of 'Gee, that's too bad, but you're equipped to handle it and when your reports are filed, we'll see what we can do.' But of course that's based on what happened yesterday; this may get us action."

  At least I hope it will, Simeon thought. Three hundred ships! Shit! Simeon opened a tight beam to Central with a mayday flag attached. Hopefully he'd have some hard news before too long.

  "What sort of armament did they have?" Gus asked while the rest of the station's leaders sat, trying not to look at each other and especially not at Amos and Joseph. Amos had gone even paler and the blue of his eyes had faded. He just sat there. On the other hand, Joseph was watching each and every one of the station heads with a critical gaze and the slightest of knowing smiles on his full lips.

  Simeon could see that the initial numbness his people had felt was giving way to fear. Gus was fighting it with trained reflex, but the others were edging slowly toward panic.

  "You must have something to fight with," Joseph said, suddenly leaning his arms on the table and directing a piercing gaze from one face to another. "We fought, and we had much less than you did who turned the vessel from your station yesterday. With what did you blow it into pieces? Do you have more? That is something. It is more than we had who saw our ships withered to slag. Our city . . ." He broke off and struck his fists impotently into the table. "We have brought you warning. We had none!"

  Amos caught his friend by the wrists before he could damage his hands. "Peace, my brother," he said softly.

  "Oh, youah brothas?" Patsy said in mild surprise, peering closely at both to find some familial resemblance.

  "Not of the blood," and Amos touched his temple with his index finger, "of the mind."

  "Unh-hunh!" Patsy blushed and tightened her lips into a straight line.

  "I've sent a message to Central Worlds," Simeon told them in a brisk voice that he hoped sounded as if he had matters well in hand. "They're consulting with the Space Navy brass—to see what to do. I was hoping they'd tell me what they were doing, and or what we can do. I should've anticipated a full fledged diplomatic-bureaucratic-governmental-gunfight, complete with quarrels over jurisdiction. Everyone with something to say about this has to be tracked down and given an opportunity to give his fardling opinion in triplicate. Amos, believe me, kid, I know just how you feel about elders. The good news is that Navy intends to act fast, only there aren't any Navy units close. The nearest is eighteen days away. This is assuming the brass cut movement orders today and not sometime after we've become the subject of mere academic debate, because we don't exist anymore.

  "Which means that at best we can look forward to thirteen lucky days with our naked butts hanging out waiting for a kick from a booted foot. That nearest Navy unit is a patrol corvette, a warship only by courtesy."

  "Then you must flee!" Amos leaned forward urgently. "You cannot hope to defeat them. You must leave this place."

  "Great idea," Simeon agreed, "in principle. Only the station can't move. That's why it's a station. It's stationary. Get it?"

  "You mock me most unfairly," Amos replied with solemn and offended dignity. "I have no knowledge of space stations or of your capabilities. Further, I am not wrong. If the station itself cannot move, then its people must."

  "As far as such advice goes," Gus cut in, "he has a point. We should evacuate as many as we can—children, the sick, nonessential personnel. Whoever we can, or whoever's hot to go."

  "By my calculations," Simeon said, finishing them in that instant, "given the number of ships currently in or near me at the moment, we should be able to evacuate over a thousand souls." He liked that touch. "Not counting crews."

  There was silence for a moment. A thousand was a fraction of the average ever-shifting population of the station.

  Amos broke the silence hesitantly. "How many people will that leave on the station?"

  "Fifteen thousand, or so," Channa said grimly. "Our population varies. Simeon, does your estimate include emptying cargo bays and stuffing our people into them in suits?" A desperation procedure and liable to result in some fatalities.

  "No, we could evacuate a few hundred more that way."

  Although, given the average softperson's reaction to long-term confinement in tight spaces, we probably won't get many volunteers for traveling that way.

  "And before you ask," Simeon continued, "no, I haven't even asked the captains their views on such an . . . exodus. That's a best case scenario. We can't prevent those who aren't docked in the station physically from leaving, so the scheme is still just inside this room. I think that before we start bringing anyone else into this, we should have at least one plan to p
resent, preferably more than one."

  "Evacuation plans?" Chaundra asked, his brow farrowed.

  "Those," Simeon said, "and plans to fight for the station."

  There was a certain brightening around the table. Nothing visible, but the lift in attitude was almost palpable.

  "That's right up your alley, Simeon," Channa said gently, "even if this isn't a military installation."

  "To fight," Joseph said, his dark eyes glinting with revived hope. Or was it vengeance? "Yes, this is what we would like to do, but how? Did you not say that you had no weapons? And surely they will not give you a chance to combat them. Why should they not simply rush in and destroy you? That would be but child's play for them."

  "We will employ guile." Geeze, their lingo is contagious, he thought. "Remember, you said these people were pirates?"

  "Yes," Amos said. "When they made their initial demand for surrender—they mentioned deliveries of materials, machines, labor. Pirates, but they speak as though they were a people, a nation. The High Clan, they sometimes named themselves. At others, the Divine—" his mouth puckered in distaste "—the Divine Seed of Kolnar."

  "Right." Simeon spoke briskly. This is just another exotic scenario, he told himself firmly. Games theory experience—don't freeze up now. You've done things like this thousands of times. "So they're no more than criminals, not a true army, disciplined, strategically trained. More like guerillas. Jump in, grab what they can, jump out. Right now, they're pursuing you, and these four ships aim to destroy you to keep you from spreading any nasty rumors about them. So, what we better do first, is get their minds off killing by distracting them with the material things they wanted from you in the first place. Right?"

  Every station officer thought about this. Then Gus nodded slowly.

  "If these people are space-based, and from the description I think they must be—what a prize the SSS-900-C would be!" He turned to Amos and Joseph. "What sort of industries does . . . did Bethel have?"

  "Very few," Amos said, rubbing a thoughtful hand along his stubbled jaw. "We could maintain equipment and manufacture some components for in-system work. We traded rare foodstuffs and organic molecules for what little else we needed. Traders came perhaps once in a generation. The latest only last—"

  Joseph swore antiphonally with Gus, Patsy, and Simeon. Channa snapped her fingers. "They must have been . . . what's the phrase?"

  "Casin' the joint," Patsy said for she had a store of such archaic phrases.

  "Spies!" Joseph said. Tears welled in his eyes, tears of pure rage.

  "Always someone who can be bought," Simeon said, giving his holo image a wise appearance. Or so info tapes say, but I've never had to use that tactic.

  Joseph nodded jerkily. "I knew several who would sell their mothers and fathers . . . maybe their fathers . . . for the price of two bottles of arrack."

  "Back to the here and now, please," Gus said, boulder-solid.

  Amos shook his head, sending the long black curls flying. "We have . . . had, very little high technology, and of what there was . . . much was in Keriss."

  "So they'll be hurting for equipment, possibly for skilled labor," Simeon said. "They've got to be. Whaddya bet that most of those three hundred ships are transports, factory vessels, that sort of thing. They wouldn't be self-sufficient even if they have a home base or star system."

  "There've always been folk who'd rather steal than work," Gus said. He had no arguments on that score from anyone. "And they'll want to steal from us."

  SSS-900-C was a maintenance and repair center. It was also heavy with rare materials intended for shipyard and general shipbuilding use. No one argued with that, either.

  Simeon addressed the two refugee leaders. "First, we have to get them thinking along those lines. Otherwise they may simply sweep in and put a couple of high-yield missiles into us. My plan calls for a sacrifice on your part that I'm reluctant to ask of you."

  "Ask," Amos said quietly. "A drowning man will grab even the point of a sword. I should like to prove worthy of Guiyon's sacrifice. Ask!"

  "I want to tempt them with booty too rich to resist and get their acquisitive jukes flowing. We'll commandeer one of the company yachts that salesmen travel in when they show their samples to rich customers, and we'll cram its holds full of things the bastards won't be able to resist. With the promise of much more easily available—here!"

  "Such as?" Channa asked suspiciously.

  "Technological stuff, upgrades in software, in computers, the latest improvements in fuel efficiency. We'll include luxury fabrics, perfumes, jewelry, exotic delicacies . . ."

  "Bribery will only make them hungrier to sack the station," Joseph all but shouted, half-rising from his chair.

  "Peace, my brother," Amos soothed him, "remember that sicatooths do not eat grass. One must put out a goat to bait the trap for them."

  "See, you don't shoot the cow you're milking," Gus contributed.

  "Hell no, you don't eat a pig lahke that all at once," Patsy said.

  Simeon almost laughed aloud to see the puzzled expressions on the faces of Amos and Joseph. Good one, Patsy, remember that "my brother" fake they pulled on ya and don't let 'em think they can be more obscure than we can.

  Chaundra explained the humor and only raised his brows slightly when Joseph asked, "What's a pig?" Channa herself was puzzled. She would have expected the natives of an agricultural world to recognize the name of an important farm animal. Her own protein came out of vats, the way nature intended, as far as she was concerned. If not literally, then she didn't want to think about it.

  "Won't they think it's kinda odd, though, one guy sellin' so many different things?" Patsy asked.

  "Not if he's a middle-man type, importer-exporter, rather than a manufacturer's rep," Simeon said. "It's not that hard to deceive people once, Patsy."

  "But we have none of these things you have mentioned," Amos said, puzzled. "We have no cloth or jewels or software. What is this sacrifice you would ask of us?"

  "We need someone to put in the yacht well be sending out, and I'm not about to send a living person. I'd like to send one of your people who died in transit from ship to station. Preferably someone who died as a result of the environment failure, since that's why he's going to be out there in this luxury ship, broadcasting an offer for a huge reward to anyone who'll rescue him."

  Amos and Joseph looked shocked. They sat unmoving for a minute, then slowly turned to meet each other's eyes.

  "Impossible!" Joseph said, his lips tight with fury. "What you ask is base sacrilege!"

  Channa glanced at Simeon's column as though appealing for help, then plunged in, knowing no diplomatic way of putting this. "Your funerary customs are . . . firmly set?"

  "Yess!" Joseph hissed. "We honor our dead, we bury them and revere their resting place."

  "Well," Simeon told him, "we have no place to bury our dead here on the station, and it's prohibitively expensive to ship them back to their home planets. You can't simply bury them in space because eventually they constitute a navigation hazard. Here we cremate our dead."

  "And the ashes?" Amos asked.

  "Unless specifically requested, there are no ashes."

  Amos bowed his head. "For our dead, we request ashes, so that one day, hopefully, we might return our friends to Bethel. As to your . . . your appeal for the body of one of ours, I think, my brother," and he turned to Joseph, "that we should consider that an honor to serve is being offered one of our dead rather than sacrilege. Surely, whoever we choose, would have been pleased to be of help to those who survived."

  "It is wrong!" Joseph said. "And I object!"

  "My brother," Amos said through gritted teeth, "if you angle with a straight hook, only those fish which are willing get on it. Be reasonable, or we may all be dead. It is only a hope, a possibility we are offered. If they destroy this decoy, they will then destroy the station and we will join our friends who are dead and we can all go unburied forever." He stared at his companio
n until, after a long moment, Joseph lowered his eyes and nodded. To Simeon, Amos said, "Choose the person most suitable for this ruse from among our dead brothers."

  "Thank you," Simeon said simply, and the others around the table murmured their thanks as well.

  "Okay," Channa said, bringing them back to more immediate concerns, "these pirates come upon this derelict space-yacht. They hear the message, 'Help, help, my environment system is down, auggh, I'm dying, save me and I'll reward you with umpity-zillion credits.' "

  "Right."

  "They give him a buzz, no answer, so they bip on over to his craft and board it."

  "Right."

  "They find—whomever—several days dead due to environment failure."

  "Right."

  "Why don't they just hold their noses and sail on?"

  "Um, well, first, it's the nature of pirates to be greedy. So we'll pile the ship high with cases of samples, clearly marked samples, clearly marked as coming from SSS-900-C. Second, no one likes to go back to their senior officer and say, 'It was a total waste of time, sir,' because it makes them look bad in their captain's eyes. So I think we can expect them to make at least a cursory search of the ship. Third, there'll be a curiosity factor, since I plan to choose the most opulent yacht in the area. These guys probably haven't seen anything like it hanging around the out-systems.

  "So they'll probably be crawling all over it saying, 'I can't believe it! Look at this! What luxury!' One of these factors will attract their attention to the com screen, which will show a report our salesman was inputting when disaster struck. It will say something to the effect of O frabjious day, I've just made the biggest sale of my career to the SSS-900-C. I've promised them delivery in fourteen days or less. The home office has confirmed the delivery date. Order manifest follows. Hooray, hooray, bounce bounce!

  "And there will be a listing that would make me drool and want to turn pirate."

  Gus nodded. "It sounds do-able, though I hate to spare even one ship from the evacuation effort."