The Stars Are Also Fire

by Poul Anderson

  The outer valve opened. Starful darkness welled in the portal. By the handhold he grasped, he pulled himself to the flange and pushed his soles down against the little platform of the personnel springer. His free hand sought its touchoff. The platform tilted, jerked, and tossed him out.

  Slowly tumbling, he saw the universe whirl, Milky Way, Earth, Luna. The sun crossed his vision and his helmet dusked to save it, turning the disc to dull gold, a coin on which the spots were a mintage he could not read. At first Kestrel stretched gigantic. She receded from him at the several meters per second he had gained relative to her. She was still large across the stars when he guessed it was safe for him to boost, but now he saw her whole, slim and beautiful.

  Aleka, though, was locked inside, Aleka who would have wished to die on the sea with the wind caressing her hair.

  Kenmuir got busy.

  The frame of the drive unit curved a member around in front to support the control board before his chest, an incongruously cheerful array of colored lights. He keyed for despin. A short thrust stabilized the sky around him. The unit’s computer was comparatively simple, but adequate for the tasks ahead. Earth steadied to a thick, broken piece of blue-and-white glass. Luna reached across a quarter of the heavens, its night part like a hole down to infinity, its day part mercilessly lighted, wrinkled, pocked, and blotched. Without opticals, he saw no trace of man work. Memory could have given him cities, huge flowers, birds and soarflyers above a lake, Lilisaire; but he lacked time for remembering.

  He deployed navigation gear, peered and measured, identified three landmarks and put their bearings into the computer. After a bit he repeated, thus getting the information for it to figure his location, altitude, and vector function. Radar would have been better, more direct, but he dared not risk it. He had already entered the coordinates at which he wanted to land. Now he keyed for thrust.

  The drive unit swung him around to the proper orientation. Accumulators commenced discharging their energy in earnest. From a mass tank as broad as he was and half as long, three jets sprang. Condensation made a cloud some distance beyond the nozzles—this system was not as efficient as a nuclear-driven plasma jet, nor remotely as powerful—but the cloud was thin, barely visible at close range, and rapidly dissipated. Weight tugged again at Kenmuir. Ever faster, Kestrel went from him, became a toy, a jewel, a star, and was gone.

  For the next half hour he had little to do but take further sightings and let the unit correct his flight parameters accordingly. Acceleration mounted until it settled at approximately one g; thereafter the rate of exhaust diminished together with mass. He would have preferred to go more speedily, whatever the stress on his body, but the strength of the frame was limited. At that, he’d arrive with tank almost empty and accumulators nearly dead.

  His thoughts wandered. Aleka—Presently she’d take lunosynchronous orbit. It would not be straight above him, but she would be in his sky. When he landed, perhaps ninety minutes would be left until the first of the Authority ships, returning at full blast, could reach her. She must be gone well before then.

  Lilisaire—It would be strange if some strands of her web did not extend into the police and the Authority, even now, even now. Unless they had seized her—and he felt sure she had made arrangements for trumpeting that to the Solar System—she knew where Kestrel was and that somehow this concerned her. What she might do about it, he couldn’t tell. If she could keep them busy for an hour or two, that would be helpful. True, it would add to the score against him and her and Fireball … He expelled foreboding.

  Annie—A wistful ghost. He glanced at Earth and hoped life was being kind to her.

  Time passed. Slowly, descending, he flew from one night toward another.

  His approach had been planned more for concealment than fuel economy. Landsats doubtless spotted him, as they spotted virtually everything when turned to maximum gain, but he should be inconspicuous, insignificant, nothing to trigger an alarm report from those robots, especially when they were focused on events elsewhere. Tycho Crater hove above the horizon.

  By then he was so low that he saw it not as a bowl but as a mountain, black and monstrous against the stars. Though the sun was at early morning, the west side remained in darkness. Shadow went down it and across the land like a sluggishly ebbing tide. At first, far to his right and his left, Kenmuir glimpsed the shores of day. Nearing, he lost that sight, he had just the stars and waning Earth. In its last quarter, the planet yet stood radiant, halfway up the northern sky. Blue-white light washed over vast terraced slopes. Ray-splash brightened the ruggedness below them. He found his goal and came down on manual.

  Dust stormed briefly, blindingly around him. It fell, unhindered by air; the material of suit and helmet repelled it; he looked out over a ledge partway down the ringwall, a pitted levelness long and broad, with nighted rock athwart the east and everywhere else the heavens.

  The aftermath rustling of the jets faded out of his ears. Silence took him into itself. When he had uncoupled from the drive unit and tank, under Moonweight he felt feathery, as if half disembodied. His suit, aircycler, and other outfitting were of small mass and close fit, homeostatic, power-jointed, tactile-amplifying, well-nigh a second skin. He unbound his pack of equipment. It should not have seemed heavy either; but he saw the sledgehammer strapped across it, cold touched him, and for a moment he could not lift the load.

  Needs must. He shouldered it and started across the ground. Dust puffed from footsteps until he came to the road the builders had carved down the ringwall from within the crater. It was hardly more than a trail of hard-packed regolith, and the pilgrims upon it had become few, but the cosmos would take a while longer to bury it.

  Ahead of him rested the tomb. Some said that download she who lay here had ordered that it be simple. Seven meters in width, four walls of white stone rose sheer to a low-pitched roof of such height that each side was seen as enclosable in a golden rectangle. A double bronze door in front bore the same proportions. Above it was chiseled the name DAGNY EBBESEN BEYNAC. That was enough.

  Kenmuir stopped at the entrance. Through a minute outside of time, he forgot haste, forgot his need, and was only there. Walls and metal glimmered dimly below Earth and the stars.

  It was as if stillness deepened. With a shiver, he took forth the key that Lars Rydberg had secretly made and brought back with him. He laid it against the lock. The program remembered the code. A pointer turned downward. At his pull, the leaves of the door swung ponderously away from an inner night. He stiffened his heart and trod past them.

  At first he was blind, alone with his pulse. Then his eyes adapted. Light drifted in, barely touching an altar block at the middle. His right hand rose to his helmet, a Fireball salute.

  But hurry, now, hurry. He unslung his pack, set it down, fetched a lamp, turned it on and left it at his feet. Luminance leaped, cut by sharp-edged shadows. Two objects stood on the block. One was a funerary urn, slim and graceful; he thought again of Kestrel. The other was a download in its case.

  Hurry, hurry. Observe, work by helmet light, carry out the necessary violation and crush the guilt beneath your heel; later it shall arise unbruised.

  A meter showed that the download’s energy pack was drained but intact, a relief to Kenmuir although he had a replacement. He attached an accumulator to recharge it, by a jack handmade to fit the obsolete socket. While that went on, he set about reactivating the neural network. Disguising what he had not done, Lars Rydberg had slipped in a bypass program. At Guthrie House, a counteractive module had been prepared, which Kenmuir applied. Thereafter he laid a radio communicator on the altar, found the appropriate spot on the case, and made linkage. Now he and she could speak through the hollowness around them.

  He touched the final switch, stepped back, and shuddered.

  Light glared from below, off the face of the block, throwing urn and download into murk. Out of this, centimeter by centimeter, the eyestalks wavered upward. Lenses gleamed, searching about and
about the tomb.

  After an endlessness Kenmuir heard the voice, a woman’s voice, faint, as if it reached him across an abyss, dragging and stumbling. “’Mond … No, Lars, oh, Lars …”

  He had not forseen how pain would cramp him together. “Forgive me,” he croaked.

  “Uncans!” Dagny screamed.

  “Wh-what?”

  “Dark, dark, and dark—” Despair swept away before tenderness. “Don’t cry, darling. Mother’s here.”

  Kenmuir gripped his will to him. “My lady Beynac, forgive me,” he got out, as best he could utter her language. “I’ve had to call you back.”

  “Where are my arms?” she moaned, while the eyestalks threshed to and fro. “I’ll pick you up and cuddle you, baby, baby mine, but where are my arms? My lips, ’Mond?”

  “I’ve called you back for your people’s sake,” Kenmuir said, “your blood and his,” and wondered whether he lied.

  “The blood ran out. When they got my spacesuit off. It was all over everything.”

  “That happened—long ago—”

  “Little Juliana, she was all blood … No, not Juliana. She’d never be, would she? Not now.” The download wailed.

  She was remembering something old, Kenmuir knew. But what? Could she remember more? “My lady Beynac, please listen. Please.”

  “It roars,” Dagny mumbled.

  A damaged circuit, Kenmuir thought. It must be generating a signal the mind perceived as noise, whatever was left of the mind.

  The sound in his earplugs softened. “The sea roars. Breakers. Wind. Salt. Driftwood like huge bones. Here, a sand dollar. For you, Uncans.” She laughed, quietly and lovingly.

  “My lady,” Kenmuir pleaded, “do you know where you are?” Who you are?

  “Lars—” The eyestalks came to rest. He felt her peer at him. He felt knives in his flesh. “But you’re not Lars,” she said without tone. “You’re nobody.”

  “My name—”

  “Lars, you ended me. Didn’t you?”

  Hope flickered, very faint. Kenmuir drew breath. “I have to tell you—But I’ve come as a friend. They need your help again on the Moon.”

  Chill replied. “There wasn’t going to be any again.”

  “I’m afraid—”

  Sudden gentleness: “Don’t be afraid. ’Mond never was. ‘Bloody ’ell!’ he’d shout, and charge ahead.”

  Snatching after anything, Kenmuir responded, “Like Anson Guthrie. Also after he became … like you.”

  “Sigurd was never afraid either,” Dagny crooned. “He loved danger. He laughed with it. Not at it, with it. That’s Kaino, you know.”

  “Yes,” Kenmuir said dully. “Your son.”

  “They’re dead. They died on dead rocks in deep space. ’Mond and Kaino are dead.”

  “I know.” In desperation: “That’s what I’m here about. You, you carried on. You lived on, for all the others.”

  The download began to sing, softly and minor-key.

  “He is dead and gone, lady,

  He is dead and gone;

  At his head a grass-green turf;

  At his heels a stone.”

  She stopped. “Only—no grass grows yonder.”

  “It may yet,” Kenmuir said. “If you will help, this one last time.”

  The eyes stood unbending, the voice went grim. “Lars promised.”

  “He did. But—”

  “To ’Mond, you said, Lars. I’d go to where ’Mond is.”

  “He hoped, with his whole heart he hoped.”

  She laughed. He heard the bitterness. “Estúpido. Dagny went there. She was free to. Ghosts aren’t. How could they have a birthright? They were never born.”

  “You are Dagny Beynac,” he said into her delirium. “As Anson Guthrie the download is Anson Guthrie. The man, his spirit.”

  Eyestalks trembled, voice quickened. “Guthrie? Uncans? He still is?”

  “Not here,” Kenmuir sighed. “At far Centaurus. It’s been centuries, Madame Beynac.”

  “And the wind blew and blew,” she murmured.

  “Centuries.”

  She didn’t seem to hear him. “From a story I read once when I was a child. By Lord Dunsany. They hanged a highwayman out on the heath and left him there alone. And the wind blew and blew.”

  Bring her attention back, hold it to the point. “Yes, Lars Rydberg broke his word to you. In a way. He hoped you’d rest in peace forever as you wished, that nobody would have to raise you. But I must. For a moment, a single moment. One question.” Time was blowing by. How many minutes were left him?

  “Where is your face, ’Mond?” The voice cracked across. “I can’t bring back your face any more.”

  “One question, and I’ll give you peace. But now, at once, or it’s no good.”

  “’Mond, ‘You are Dagny’s son,’ you said to Lars, ’Mond. ‘You shall be welcome here, by damn, always.’” How might a download weep?

  And Lars had betrayed them both, Kenmuir thought. Or had he?

  As if from the stars beyond the door, an idea struck through. “I’ve seen his images, Edmond Beynac’s. His face was wide and, and angular, with high cheekbones and green eyes.”

  “Yes!” Dagny shouted. “Yes! Oh, ’Mond, welcome back! Bienvenu, mon chéri!”

  Pursue. “He showed the way to Proserpina.”

  “Bloody hell, yes, he did!”

  Kenmuir spoke fast, but as he would have spoken to a beloved. “Hear me, I beg you. Your people, his descendants and yours, they need Proserpina now, they need it terribly, and it’s been lost. Do you remember how to find it?”

  Anger flashed. “For this you woke me?”

  He stood straight before the eyes. “Yes. If you can’t forgive me, will you anyhow help?”

  Suddenly he heard warmth. “I have ’Mond back. For that, thanks.”

  “Will you tell me?”

  “Will you send me home to him?”

  “Yes.” He bent down to his pack, loosed certain knots, and lifted the sledgehammer in his hands. “I have this.” Each single word he must ram out of his mouth.

  “Then quickly,” she implored, “before I lose him again.”

  He could say no more. The silence took them.

  “Far and far,” she sighed, “a long way to go for a death. But Proserpina brings the springtime with her. Apple blossoms behind Daddy’s and Mother’s house …”

  Was she slipping back into nightmare? “The orbital elements!” Kenmuir yelled.

  “Quiet,” she bade him. “My caveman’s hunting them for me.”

  He waited. Through the open door, the stars watched.

  “Yes,” Dagny said. “Here they are. Thanks, old bear.” She recited the numbers. “Do you have them?”

  “I do,” he answered: on a recorder and cut into his brain.

  “Good,” she said calmly. “Now, your promise.”

  Terror snatched at him. “Do you truly want—?”

  “For me,” she said. “And for Lars.”

  “I owe it you, then,” he heard himself say. His hands closed hard on the helve. “Goodbye, my lady.”

  “Fare you well,” she said like a benediction. Command rang forth: “Now!”

  He swung the hammer up over his head and back down, with all his force. The case was strong, but it was not meant to take impacts like that, and radiation had weakened it. Organometal split asunder. Iron crushed circuits.

  He cast the hammer from him and reeled out of the tomb. Stars blazed.

  No, he must not cry, he must not huddle into grief, not yet. Kestrel and Aleka were aloft. He switched his radio on. They could receive across the tens of thousands of kilometers between, and it mattered no longer that others heard. “Are you there?” he called. “Come in, come in.”

  “Yes,” the dear voice responded. “Oh, darling, you’re hurt.”

  “Record this.” He rattled off the figures. “Do you have them?”

  “Yes—”

  “On your way.”

 
; “Aloha au iā ’oe,” he heard. “I love you.” He could not see, but he could imagine the spaceship surge forward.

  He slumped down onto the regolith and waited for Venator’s men. The sun broke over the ringwall.

  44

  The Peace Authority vessel drove Earthward at half a gravity.

  She was big, with space for some cabins. Kenmuir had been put in one by himself. The door was locked. His guards had told him that if he needed anything he could ask for it through the intercom, but thus far he had not. What he most wanted was to be alone.

  Well, he would have liked a viewscreen, that he might look out upon the stars. Cramped and barren, the room crowded him together with his thoughts.

  For the hundredth or the thousandth weary time he wondered how all this had come to pass, how he turned into a rebel and a killer. Why? He never intended or foresaw it. Events seemed to have acquired their own momentum, almost a will of their own. Was that the nature of human history? Chaos—strange attractors—how much did the Teramind itself understand? How much did God?

  The door spread. It reclosed as a blue-clad figure stepped through. Kenmuir rose from the unfolded bunk. For a few seconds they stood motionless, two men tall and lean, one dark, one pale.

  “Greeting, Captain Kenmuir,” the newcomer said in Anglo of the eastern hemisphere.

  “You’re Pragmatic Venator, aren’t you?” the prisoner replied. “So we meet at last.”

  The officer nodded. “I want to talk with you while we can be private.”

  “Private? Your machines are watching and listening, I’m sure.”

  “They’re your machines too.” Humanity’s.

  “We’re both in error. They’re nobody’s.” Robots reporting to sophotects that ultimately were facets of the supreme intellect.

  “No contradiction,” Venator said. “Your partner is yours, and you are hers, but neither is property.”

  Something stirred in Kenmuir. He had felt emotionally emptied; but he found that he could again care. “What about Aleka? What can you tell me?” What will you?