The City and the Ship

by Anne McCaffrey

  Chaundra shook his head. "I have done what I could to bypass the damage, but if he puts too much strain where the repair exists . . ." His voice trailed off, and when he raised his face to Simeon's visual node, he had turned into an old man.

  "It was a little clinic, you understand. Mary, she was the meditech, I the doctor. A new continent on a new colony world. Much to do, we were on research grants. Then people began to die. There was nothing I could do . . . They imposed quarantine—quarantine, in this day and age! When I found what had happened, already it was too late for Mary. The virus . . . was a hybrid. A native virus-analogue combined with a mutant Terran encephalitis strain. The native virus wrapped around the Terran, you understand. So the immune system could not recognize it and had no defense. The Terran element enabled it to parasitize our DNA.

  "Seld was damaged, on the point of death. It took three years of therapy for him to be able to walk and talk and move as well as he does."

  Chaundra turned, picking things up from his desk and putting them down.

  "But he will never be strong. If they seize him, he'll be as helpless as someone half his age. There could be convulsions: stress accelerates the damage. It is cumulative. Why do you think I took this position? He must be near a first-rate facility at all times. He must not suffer extreme stress or the effects could snowball. As it is, he will probably not live much past adulthood."

  Chaundra slumped in his chair, anger, even anxiety draining out of him as he buried his head in his hands.

  "Then we'll make sure they don't hurt him," Simeon said grimly. "First, let's find him. He's probably with Joat."

  "Seld's mentioned her." Chaundra's voice was muffled. "He has many friends, but she sounded . . . different."

  "She is. Oh, she's different, all right. And she wouldn't leave, either. So in a way, you and I are in the same boat."

  Chaundra rubbed his mouth and chin. Whiskers rasped; unusual, since he was normally a fastidious man. "Yes," he said and laughed sardonically, "and the boat is about to leak."

  "Not necessarily," Simeon said firmly enough to make himself believe it. "Seld has something else going for him."

  "He has?"

  "Yes. Seld has Joat, and she's got such a strong survival instinct that even if the rest of the station blew, she'd find a way to stay alive . . . and keep Seld alive, too. He's actually far safer with her than anywhere else he could be. So I wouldn't worry about his infirmities, or stress. Though I hate like hell to admit it, I can't think of anyone better qualified to mind him than Joat!"

  * * *

  "Seld," Simeon called. "Seld Chaundra, come out where I can see you."

  Joat popped into view rubbing her eyes, "What are you yellin' about, Simeon?" she asked, yawning.

  "Send him out, Joat. This is the only place he can possibly be."

  Joat crossed her arms and looked sleepily defiant.

  "Your father is worried, Seld," Simon went on. "He sent you away so that you'd be safe. So you know he's not really going to kill you for staying, even though you deserve it."

  Seld appeared beside Joat, who shoved him in the shoulder. "Toldja to stay outta sight!"

  He hung his head and said, "I know. But I can't let you take my rap. Mom wouldn't like that in me. At least that's what my dad says she'd say." He shrugged and gave her a feeble grin.

  Joat rolled her eyes. "Do what'choo want," she said in a scathing tone, and disappeared.

  "Actually," Simeon told them both, "I don't see any need to rough it just yet. Why not sleep comfortably while you can, eat what everyone else is enjoying, because we're certainly not going to leave it to the pirates to gobble up. I'd prefer that you hide out when the pirates arrive. Meanwhile, Seld, give your dad the benefit of your company: he needs it. Save your rations, Joat. Eat with us. Food's better. For now."

  He picked up her disgusted sigh, and then she walked into view, arms still folded, expression still defiant.

  Simeon warmed to her all over again. I don't think I was ever that young, he thought, but, y'know, she makes me wish I could swagger. "Okay guys, let's go."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  "Very large mass," Baila said, whispering. "Several score megatons, at least."

  "You need not lower your voice," Belazir said, amused and more so when several of the bridge crew jumped. "We are proceeding stealthed, but sound waves do not propagate in vacuum."

  He turned to the schematic and long-range visual views. Impressive indeed, he thought. Far and away the largest free-floating construct he had ever seen. Twin globes, each at least a thousand meters in extent, linked by a broad tube. More tubes at the north and south axis, evidently for docking large ships, although none were there at the moment. Around the station was an incredible clutter of material: loose ore, giant flexible balloons of various substances, radiating networks, fabricators.

  Large but soft, he decided. Like a huge lump of well-cooked meat, steaming in its own juices and touched with garlic, waiting to be carved into bite-sized pieces. It was a target so rich that he had trouble convincing himself of its reality. Mentally he accepted it, while his emotions could only kick in every minute or so, as jolts of near-orgasmic pleasure. He stretched like a cat, acutely conscious of the anticipatory tension beneath the quiet ordered activity of the bridge. Everyone in the flotilla would come out of this a hero. He couldn't believe this plum could be snatched away—not from the Kolnari and especially not when he commanded the Kolnari flotilla! And he, Belazir t'Marid Kolaren, would be more than a hero. He would be placed firmly in the logical line of succession to Chalku t'Marid.

  "A pity it is so big," he mused. "A shame to have to waste any of the possible plunder." He sighed for, of course, they would have to destroy what they could not take.

  The flotilla were warships by specialty, not cargo carriers. Even if they had time enough to bring in the heavy haulers from the Clan fleet, only the merest tithe of the goods to be found in this size station could be transported. On the other hand, the ecstasy of sheer destruction had its own euphoria—the knowledge that so much data and effort could be casually blown to dust.

  "A message torpedo to the fleet?" Serig asked.

  "You echo my thoughts, Serig," Belazir said. "Ready for instant transmission once we close our fist on our prey."

  The message sent back with the captured merchantman would have the Clan fleet on alert. But the transports could not yet have arrived at Bethel, much less landed there. Rigged for deep-space running, sufficient ships could be diverted to assist him without hindering the effort at Bethel. Say, ten days' transit from the Saffron system, to be conservative; two or three days loading, depending on how many Father Chalku decided to send. Then set demolition charges, nice large ones to leave nothing larger than gravel. There might well be prisoners worth taking for skilled labor. The huge rectangular frame of a shipyard was now visible on one side of the station, and that meant that there would be rare and valuable slaves to sell.

  With an effort, he restrained himself from rubbing his hands together. "Oh, what a surprise they have in store," he said.

  "Indeed," Serig said. His eyes and teeth shone in the dim blue lights of the bridge and his voice was husky, like a man in the grip of lust. Which, Belazir reflected, was exactly what it was. Metaphorically and literally.

  "Keep your eagerness in chains, my friend," he said genially. "It is a good slave but a poor master." He turned to Baila. "What traffic inbound?"

  "None, Great Lord."

  "None?" Belazir raised a brow.

  Curious, he thought, a space station built in an area nearly devoid of traffic. Is it old and due to be abandoned? Or is it new and as yet rarely used? A small chill diluted the perfection of his pleasure. There were alternatives here; he might be the hero who brought unimaginable wealth, or the immortal villain who revealed the existence of the Clan to an enemy more powerful than they.

  He shook his head with a small, tssk of disgust. Impossible. The merchantman had been rich with treasure and
it had just left the station. "Indications?"

  "Great Lord, the background radiation is consistent with large-scale departures over the past five days." Baila paused, hesitant. "Lord, it is difficult to be certain, with the density of the interstellar medium here. Subspace distortion damps out very quickly . . ."

  The small chill became fingers of ice stroking the base of his spine. His testicles drew up in reflex.

  "I want information, not excuses!" he said in a harsh voice. "Ready the seeker missiles." If the accursed Bethelite cowards had warned the station—prompting the normal traffic to flee—they would destroy it and run immediately. He was nearly certain he had crippled the prey's communications apparatus in the pursuit, but "nearly" grilled no meat. But, if it had escaped, where was it? Or had the station done his work for him? A rich station would have cause to be wary of unexpected visitors. "Continue stealthed approach."

  That meant running with the powerplants down, off accumulator energy, on a ballistic sublight approach. Slow, they would take years to come near at this speed, but quite safe at a respectable distance. At any moment they could power up and close in swiftly at superluminal speeds. This was a modification of a tactic the Clan sometimes used against merchantmen on the outskirts of a solar system. And they were close enough that lightspeed was not much of a problem for detection purposes. Briefly, he considered running back on FTL for a few parsecs, to see if he could pick up traces of in- or outbound traffic over the past week. Then he shook his head, rejecting that plan. Signal degraded too much over distance, and his own trail would advertise his presence. While the station retained subspace communicator capacity, it presented the Clan with a deadly risk.

  Taking time to consider a problem from all angles was no excuse for inaction. Strike the hardest blow you could, then see if another was needed; that was the Kolnari way.

  "See if you can pick anything up from their perimeter relay beacons," he said. In dust this thick even local realspace beacons needed amplification.

  "Message, Great Lord," said Baila.

  "I would hear it."

  Immediately a woman's crisp voice filled the control center, "Warning all ships, warning all ships. SSS-900-C is under Class Two quarantine: I repeat, Class Two quarantine. The following species are advised not to make port at these facilities under any circumstances."

  A list of alien species followed, most of them unknown to t'Marid.

  "Human visitors are restricted to the dock facilities and the entertainment areas immediately adjacent to them. You are advised to continue on to your next port of call. Warning . . ."

  The message began to repeat and Baila cut it off. "Further scan, lord: there are two debris fields. Both of them between us and the station. The one nearest the station is largely of natural ferrous compounds, probability ninety-seven percent-plus semi-processed asteroidal material. The other, nearest the Bride, is of . . . metal and ship-hull compounds, finely divided. Computer assessment is that the mass represented by the metal debris is equivalent to the mass represented by the prey ship."

  She touched several controls, and the multiple screens displayed a scene of tumbling scraps of half-melted metal, no single piece larger than a meter wide or long. Most were a fog of metallic particles.

  His eyes narrowed. The quarantine could explain the absence of shipping. Baila's analysis suggested that, either the prey ship, which he knew had been ancient, had disintegrated under the stress of redlining or the station had destroyed it. The former was more likely since no weaponry had been detected on the station. No doubt the truth of the end to the Bethelite refugee ship would be found in the station's records.

  "Your appraisal?" Belazir asked his weapons officer.

  "Great Lord," the man said, collating a probability run, "the bulk of the fragments are definitely the result of ultra-high temperature breakdown. The profile is completely compatible with sudden energy discharge from the main internal drive coil of a very large ship. Some of the other debris—" he called up relevant views "—show blast fragmentation. That could either have been the result of direct hits with chemical-energy warheads, or secondary propagation effects when the engine blew. The Shockwave through the hull . . ."

  "I'm aware of the phenomenon," Belazir said dryly. The weapons officer shrank back. Belazir t'Marid had fought his first space engagement before the younger noble was born. "Continue scan and analysis. Inform me of any anomalies."

  "They blew up," Serig said.

  "Just as they arrived? How convenient," Belazir said. He gnawed a thumb. "Possibly too convenient?"

  "Possibly. However, we were expecting their engines to fail catastrophically at any moment. They were sublimating bits of their cooling vanes for the last thirty light-years."

  "True. It is still a coincidence."

  "Once is coincidence," Serig said in ritual tone, "twice is happenstance—"

  "—and the third time is enemy action, yes," Belazir finished irritably. "But for the station to be plague-ridden at the same time?"

  "The scumvermin races are weak of body, lord," he noted.

  Belazir signed confirmation. The seed of Kolnar was strong. It had to be, to have survived so long on a planet not suitable for human beings, and further devastated by so many centuries of reckless development and continual war with every nuclear, chemical and biological weapon ingenuity could produce. When the Clan fled a losing struggle, they had kept the tradition of culling any child who showed signs of vulnerability to infection. In fact, it was a stroke of fortune to have the enemy immobilized by a menace that was no menace to the Kolnari.

  "Hold position. Call in the consorts."

  "Yes, Great Lord."

  Belazir glanced at his communications officer. Her face was bright with excitement, too. He smiled. She was young; this was her first term of duty. He remembered well that sharp, eager feeling. He grinned. Ah, but he was feeling now, at the ripe age of thirty, that his life was half over.

  "All captains confirming receipt of your orders, Great Lord. Moving into position."

  "Excellent," he said, glancing back at the schematic. You have already given a cry of distress, oh rich and beauteous station, he thought vindictively. The entire universe was in conspiracy against the Clan—against all of Kolnar and its children. Soon you will scream.

  * * *

  Channa turned at her desk. "Hi Joat, welcome home."

  A relieved, shy smile greeted her. "Um . . . gonna take a shower."

  "You can use it," Channa said, sniffing. "When you're through, I want to introduce you to someone."

  "Ah," Simeon said lightly. "We're a family again."

  "Shut up, you hunk of tin," Channa said good-naturedly, throwing a wad of scrunched-up tissue in the general direction of the pillar. "How does this look?"

  She punched a key to feed in the distribution of supply caches.

  "Hmmm. Not bad. Okay, how about we seal off the following passageways?" A schematic of several decks sprang up. "If you didn't know about modern fabrication methods, that would look right for structural members."

  "Good, good—what does that give us?"

  "About a thousand people we can stick away in corners—the 'b' list." Those were the ones that they hadn't had space available to evacuate.

  "Nobody essential, I'm afraid," Channa said. They had agreed that they had to let essential staff take the risks, as their absence would elicit questions.

  "No, but it'll cut down the number of potential victims quite nicely. Also, it'll give us a chance to scatter around some stuff that'll come in useful later. Ah, Simeon-Amos."

  The Bethelite leader's eyes were red-rimmed, but his smile brought a warm lurch to Channa's diaphragm. "I think I have mastered the basic administrative structure," he said. "It is not too strange."

  Channa raised a brow. A 900-series station isn't too strange to a backworlder? she thought.

  The thought must have been obvious, but Amos only spread his hands and tossed his head, setting aswirl the coal-black curls
of his shoulder-length mane. The blue eyes twinkled beneath the broad clear brow.

  Oooooo, Channa thought, and fought to bring her attention back to his words.

  "In any large organization, there will be certain constants," he said. "The central authority; officers in charge of various departments; a structure for meetings to coordinate activities; procedures for routine decision-making, and so forth. This is not too dissimilar to my family's holdings on Bethel. We, too, were essentially coordinators of the activities of many independent entrepreneurs. There are no ranchers or farmers here, of course, but both communities have mining, manufacturing, education, cultural facilities . . ."

  "Culture?" Joat ducked back into the lobby, toweling her wet hair. For a wonder, she had on something more formal than the shapeless, patchwork-colorful overalls that were current fashion among SSS-900-C's youth. "Like holos and virtie games and stuff?"

  "Ahhh . . ." Amos hesitated. He had been thinking more of choral song and traditional dancing. "The general principle is the same."

  The servos had been setting out the evening meal. Simeon had programmed them to meet the basic dietary superstitions of the Bethelite religion, although Amos had turned out to be flexible. Channa shuddered mentally at some of the things she'd screened in that Bethel text. How in God's name, for example, were they supposed to check that none of the materials had ever been touched by a menstruating woman?

  They sat down, Amos murmured a prayer, and for another wonder Joat waited a second before grabbing the nearest bowl. She had turned out to be a monumentally unfussy eater, but in sheer capacity she belied the scrawny underdeveloped frame. Between—or sometimes during—mouthfuls, she grilled Amos about Bethel.

  "Sounds dull," she said at last.

  "I thought so, too," Amos said, pushing a bowl of steamed millet closer to her. She shoveled several helpings onto her plate and heaped them with sour cream and chives.

  "Joat," Channa said gently. "That really doesn't go with pineapple slices, you know."

  "Why not?" Joat asked, turning to her with a milk mustache on her upper lip. The girl licked it away with satisfaction as Channa searched for a reply, gave up, and turned her attention back to Amos.