The screen now held a different image. A line of tiny print identified its source as the Saladin. It showed the tower the coons called the Worldtree rising above a shattered Worldtree Center.
Hrecker did not feel victorious.
He looked across the room at Ali Catrone. She was rubbing her forehead with the fingers of one hand. She did not either.
Neither of them dared to put into words their guilt and shame, or the thought that the loss of the Pizarro and the Villa was richly deserved.
“Remember that treachery,” said General Lyapunov. “The coons undoubtedly have more in store. They must have hidden weapons caches. They may even have more nuclear missiles. We must therefore remain constantly alert.”
He paused once more. “For a while. Soon enough they will tell us where everything is hidden. We can be sure of that.”
“They cannot win,” said Catrone stiffly. “They never had a chance.”
Hrecker only nodded.
The roof and one wall of the building were colorful fabric panels taken from a factory where the coons had made sails and tents before the humans came. The other walls were thick masonry, the stone blocks only crudely shaped but so fitted and mortared together that they had survived the explosions that brought down nearly everything else.
Coons had labored under the stern eyes of armed human overseers to clear the building of broken furniture, crates of records, bad paintings and sculptures, and other detritus of civilization. Now they labored outdoors, clearing rubble, exposing whatever rooms and hallways had not been crushed or shattered, burrowing into the remnants of the Great Hall, seeking and setting aside the Gypsy plaques that had been stored away or on display.
Marcus Aurelius Hrecker leaned on the handle of his sledgehammer and fished a rag out of his hip pocket. He wiped the sweat from his face and neck and chest. He stared up at the valley’s rim, where some trees still stood among the ruins. And there, where the bluffs fell toward the pass between the valley and the landing field, were groves, remnants of the forest that must once have covered all the area. A place of shade and comfort.
The weather had turned hotter, and it was especially hot here, among the shattered stones, beneath the fabric that held in the stifling air even when a breeze made the roof and wall billow and flutter. He thought that he deserved this job. So did every other Engineer on the eight remaining ships. Yet sheer muscle-aching labor and hothouse sweat hardly seemed enough to expiate a sin as enormous as the one they had already committed.
The plaques, both whole and broken, were brought into this building and dumped on the stone floor before him. He smashed them, pulverized them, ensured that they could never again be used for anything but sand and gravel. A number of the best specimens had already been crated and loaded onto the Bolivar for return to Earth and display as trophies.
Against one wall of the room were six cages built of metal bars. Each one held a coon, three each of tailed and tailless. They too would go to Earth. For now, they only watched the horror he was committing. Their eyes glowed with anger. They said nothing.
Not far from the cages was a jumbled pile of battered armor and antique weaponry. That too was destined to go home with them. More souvenirs.
“Shit.” Eric Silber was squatting over the results of his latest efforts, stirring the fragments. He drew several aside. They were large enough to show fractions of what had once been inscribed upon them. “Hit ‘em again.”
Hrecker obliged.
This time Silber was more satisfied. He smirked and used a broom to sweep the pile of powdered plaques under the edge of the canvas to join the ruins outside. The smoke of burning books and archives pushed past the cloth and made both men cough.
“Gyppin’ coons,” said Silber. “They ought to let us have some fun.”
Hrecker knew what he meant. Shortly after the landing, Silber and several other Engineers had taken guns and gone coon hunting.
“I mean,” said Silber. He touched the holster that still hung from his belt. “It’s not like we really need to do this. Kill ‘em all, and it doesn’t matter a damn if we leave the goddam plaques intact.”
“We’re knocking them back to the stone age,” said Hrecker. “Turning them into slaves. That’s not enough?”
Silber stared at him coldly. “You’re a sympathizer. I ought to report you.”
He shrugged. “Go ahead.” He felt that there was nothing they could do to him that he did not deserve. This place, this Worldtree Center, had been both university and temple, a center of tradition and learning and worship all at once, and he felt that in aiding its destruction he was committing sacrilege as great as any Vandal newly come to Rome.
The canvas bulged where it met the wall, and a coon stepped into the room. He wore the black-marked yellow cloak and cap of the priesthood, and the toes of one bare foot were crusted with dried blood. His fur was gray marked with brown spots and swirls.
“Where did you come from?” asked Silber.
The alien coon said nothing. He only stared at them, at the cages and the prisoners they held, at the sledgehammer standing on its head beside Hrecker’s leg, at the broom now propped against the wall, at the stone floor streaked with the dusty legacy of creation and history.
“A basement someplace,” guessed Hrecker. He couldn’t possibly have come from beyond the ruins that surrounded what the coons called the Worldtree. If he had walked across the valley, the guards would have promptly added him to the work gangs. Or the trenches full of bodies.
“Talk, goddammit.” Silber unsnapped the flap of his holster. “What do you want?”
The canvas bulged again, this time to admit a naked coon with a basket of plaques. She wore not even a belt, much less the straps that had been normal attire just days before. She froze when she saw the priest.
“Right here, boy.” Silber pointed. “Just like before.”
Her head jerked sideways. She stared, wide-eyed and trembling, at the priest. She did not obey until he bowed his head as if in resignation. Only then did the ceramic plaques crash onto the floor. Several broke in two or four or more.
“Hit ‘em, Mark.” Silber stared at the priest and licked his lips avidly.
When Hrecker did not move, he drew his gun and pointed it at the human. “I said, hit ‘em.”
Hrecker blinked. Tears ran down his cheeks. But he lifted the sledgehammer into the air.
“No,” said the priest. “Please. Don’t destroy them all.”
Now the gun was aimed at the coon. “Are you trying to tell us what we should do? Are you?”
“Please— ” His arms rose and spread, hands open, begging.
The slave— there was no other word— who had brought the plaques cringed.
Hrecker looked at his hammer. He looked at the back of the other man’s head. He wished he dared to…
“You’re like rot in a piece of fruit,” said Silber. “We have to cut it out and throw it away before it spoils all the rest.”
“The rest of what?” But Hrecker did not say that aloud. He knew the answer.
The rest of the universe.
The gun barked.
The cages rattled. The prisoners coughed and keened and froze when the gun shifted in their direction.
Silber poked the priest’s body with one foot. He bent and picked up the yellow cap that had given the coon the appearance of black crown and ears. He put it on his own head.
He took the cloak as well, made a face at the bullet hole and bloodstain that now marred it, and draped it over one shoulder. Then he pointed his gun at the other coon, the slave. “Get that garbage out of here.”
He had known their room was small, but it had not felt too small until after he had been able to step outside the ship. Belt Center 83 had been roomier. So had the tunnels of Mars. But both had surrounded him with walls, and when he had walked on Mars’s red surface, he had remained hemmed in by a protective suit.
He had lived in such places almost all his life. He had been used
to them, comfortable in them, uncomplaining and even happy. Here, on Tau Ceti IV, the Gypsies’ First-Stop, the air was bounded only by dirt and vacuum and held in place by gravity. The only walls were the horizons.
The same had been true of Earth, of course. But that world’s air smelled far more used. Its population was immensely greater, its industry far more extensive, its smokes and fumes more pervasive. They had been so since long before the Gypsies had ever dreamed of making coons. Or Racs. Since long before anyone had even dreamed of Gypsies.
“Why?” he asked. He was sitting naked on the edge of the bunk, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands.
“Why what?” Tamiko was two feet away, dropping her shirt into the laundry drawer. Her skin was golden, her breasts small and pointed, her buttocks tight, and those aspects of her now interested him not at all.
“We’re destroying so much,” he said. “Their space program and industry, the plaques and libraries. I can understand that. But…” He shook his head and told her about Silber’s shooting of the priest and looting of the corpse.
“That’s just murder,” he added. “Mindless violence. Why do we have to be like that?”
She turned to face him. “What’s the matter? Depressed?”
“Murder,” he said again. He hated the thought of what he had helped to do, hated himself, hated…
“Maybe you should have gone back to Mars.”
“Maybe so.” Her? Could he hate her too?
“It’s necessary, you know. We can’t leave them here, ready to move into space and attack us or unleash more monsters.”
“We could have tried to make them friends and allies. That would keep us safe enough. And we could have converted them, made them Engineers.”
Her laugh was a chopped-off bark. “Hah. When their gods are Gypsies? Besides, this is better for them. When they rebuild, they’ll have a civilization all their own, uncontaminated by those heretics.”
Hrecker wondered. Surely they would remember. “They’ll remember us.” And want revenge.
“We’ll keep an eye on them. We’ll come back. We’ll purify them again if we have to.”
“Murder.”
“You shouldn’t be so upset. It’s not like what Silber did was unique. There have been a lot more deaths.”
He nodded.
“We don’t even know how many died in the first attack.”
“Or the coon hunts.”
She made a face. “Those really weren’t necessary, were they?”
Though they continued, he thought, in different form. General Lyapunov had despatched teams to scour both continents, searching out the aliens’ remaining heavy industry and armories, whatever might serve to revive too soon the space program or fuel a drive for vengeance. There would be more missiles, more gunshots, more deaths.
“Do you think Dotson and Sunglow are still alive?” he asked. “They seemed like good people. Even if they were coons.”
She shrugged. “They lived in the valley, didn’t they? We pretty well shredded the place.”
“So they’re probably dead. Do you approve of that?”
She hesitated before she nodded. “Not really. But if it’s necessary. For the sake of our mission and our destiny. Even that.”
Hrecker got to his feet and opened the narrow cupboard in which he kept his own clothes.
She struck a pose beside the bunk. “Coming to bed?”
“No.” He didn’t look at her. He couldn’t. All he could do was select fresh underwear and shirt and pants and socks and begin once more to dress.
“Maybe later?”
“Maybe.”
But he thought that he might use the other bunk.
CHAPTER 16
Few Racs appreciated just how much empty space was concealed within the bluffs surrounding the valley. They knew of the parking areas where they kept their personal vehicles, and they knew of the long switchbacking ramps that led up to Worldtree City. The natural and artificial caverns that earlier generations had used for granaries and armories and even dwelling places were largely forgotten despite childhood school trips and occasional “Did you know?” news stories.
Those caverns amounted to a small city, now populated by refugees from both the valley and the city that had stood above the bluffs. Fortunately, there was no great shortage of food and water. The water came from reservoirs, deeper caverns that had first been sealed and filled not long after the Gypsies left First-Stop. The food had been stored in those caverns that were still in use as warehouses. There was not enough to keep all the Racs who had lived in the valley and in Worldtree City alive for long. But the local population was now much smaller than it had been a few days before. Used carefully, the food on hand would last for months.
“I can smell rain.” Dotson Barbtail stood on a slab of rock human missiles had pried from the face of the bluff. Before him was a mound of more rock and soil, fractured masonry and twisted steel, wooden beams and tree limbs, that blocked the roadway and nearly plugged the Turnstone tunnel. A scrap of bloody cloth was impaled on one of the branches. A hand curled around a piece of wood that must once have been the arm of a chair. The space above the mound let in the scent of moisture and provided a glimpse of clouds.
“Maybe it will be enough to douse the fires.”
The air also carried a mix of stenches that spoke of spilled honeysuckle nectar, broken sewer pipes, bodies already rotting, vermin wastes accumulated within now-tumbled walls, and dust. The vapors of the human explosives provided an acrid grace note.
Behind him voices wailed and keened and sobbed. Grief and anger, rage and fury, indignation and outrage had swept the refugees like an emotional firestorm all night.
Children huddled in silent twos and threes, eyes huge in the dim light of the tunnel. They were staring at Gypsy Blossom, and a few were pawing at their faces just as Sunglow had done when she first saw the bot. A mother cradled the body of her infant in her arms. Her mate closed his eyes and aimed his gaping muzzle into the darkness overhead as if to howl, though he made no sound at all.
“They don’t know we’re here,” said Sunglow. Her voice was higher and tighter than Dotson had ever heard it, but that did not surprise him. His was no calmer, nor any other Rac’s. He could not believe he or any member of his kind would ever again hear the growls and snarls of happiness.
“They don’t care,” said Gypsy Blossom. Her wounds already scabbed over and healing, she stood beside Sunglow, in a clear zone surrounded by other Racs, and she did not seem out of place even though many of the Racs around her could not seem to look away from her. Those who could showed a tendency to stare at Dotson and Sunglow as if the magic of the strange being beside them were theirs as well. It was no secret who was responsible for the bot’s appearance.
“Where did she come from?” Dotson turned, and there was Senior Hightail. His fur was filthy and bedraggled, and his eyes were open wide, staring fixedly at Gypsy Blossom. “It’s a bot. I know it’s a bot. But there aren’t any bots. They all went away with the Gypsies.”
“Yes, sir,” said Dotson. He felt sorry for the older Rac, whose face said that his ability to cope had, at least for now, been thoroughly exceeded. “But…”
He felt relieved when he was interrupted before he could say the Gypsies had left something besides the plaques.
“What can we do?” The Rac who faced the bot belligerently, head thrust forward as if daring her to say she had no answer, was that same tailed Rac Dotson had first met in his own apartment, claiming that Racs should try to imitate the humans by shaving off their fur. His own fur had begun to regrow since then, until he now seemed covered in velvet.
“How can she know?” asked Sunglow. “She’s not a Gypsy, Skin, not really. He…” She glanced up at Dotson on his rock. “He just grew her from a seed.”
“Was that it?” asked Senior Hightail. His voice tailed off as he slumped against the tunnel wall. “I remember those. I wondered once…”
The other Racs
paid no more attention to him than they had before. Gypsy Blossom was a bot. Bots were Gypsies, and if this one were not, she was still an emblem of the Racs’ Remakers, an icon, and all they had for hope. Her sudden appearance was the sort of miracle that only witnessed to their gods’ concern for their fate. Even if the hand of the gods was the hand of a thief in the night.
Dotson looked away from his superior, toward the ruined valley beyond the tunnel mouth. To think that he had worried about keeping her a secret. No one failed to recognize her. No one failed to welcome her appearance, though surely that welcome had more than a little to do with the crisis they all faced at the hands of their Remakers’ ancient enemies.
“What now? What can we do?”
Who had said that? It did not matter. Every Rac in the vicinity was watching him, him and Sunglow and Gypsy Blossom. And why should they ask him? Did they expect him to produce a starship full of rescuing Gypsies as easily as he had produced a single bot? Or was it just that having produced that bot, he was now associated with the destiny of his entire world, the center of his species’ identity?
He sighed and, wishing that he could deflect their focus, said, “The Worldtree is still there.”
But that was almost the only thing that remained the same as it had been the day before. Explosions and shrapnel and the searing heat of landing starships had reduced moss and mossberries and honeysuckle to tattered scraps clinging to the borders of scorched earth circles. One clump of honeysuckle, half its branches broken off, clung to life not far from the Turnstone entrance. A small dumbo with a jagged tear in one wing clung to a stub, its movements jerky and fearful.
The dormitories and shops and homes that had ringed the valley were gone, pounded into rubble from which smoke still rose. Most of Worldtree Center was no better, though a few walls remained, a scrap of roof, the sturdy core from which the modern Center had grown.
Seeds of Destiny Page 16