Empery

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  Studying the images of the crystallike domes scattered over the surface of both the planet and its moon, Sujata tried to embrace the totality of their existence, their unity to each other and with their worlds. The integration of the Mizari to their homeworld was even more total than that of the Mother to the motherworld, and she marveled at it. When she listened to the modulations of their life signature, the unique expressions arising from each of the two Alcor nests, she tried to infuse them with meaning.

  So hard even to think of it as life, even for me. So hard to identity with—so easy to discount. Nothing here to love or even to know empathy with—

  It was not until after the successful Triad One wave-off, which she went ahead and witnessed as planned, that she made contact with Dailey. Though there was weariness in his eyes, there was also an inner glow of satisfaction illuminating his features.

  “My greetings and apologies, Chancellor,” he said cheerily. “I was notified of your messages, but I simply could not break away until now.”

  “I understand,” she said. “I realize that you had a lot of business to attend to—and probably still do.”

  “Indeed,” Dailey said, tipping backward in his chair. “It was quite exciting, actually. The Elder of Rena-Kiri put forth the proposition that since the crisis had been averted, the Concordat should therefore be dissolved and everything would return to the way it was. In short, he wanted to turn it into the sham Commander Wells’s advisers were saying it was. It was rather a challenge to turn him away from that idea.”

  “I’m happy to hear that you succeeded Sujata said. “I have some good news for you as well. Kite has been recalled from her survey of Phad, and Triad One from its attack on Alphecca. The other recalls should be completed shortly.”

  “Excellent! You seem to have managed to make the most of our meager assistance. I am sorry that we could only muster seven worlds,” Dailey said. “I was concerned that that would be a problem for you.”

  Sujata shook her head. “I’m amazed that you managed that much in as little time as you had. And you gave Wells the opportunity, the out he needed, at just the right time.”

  “In truth I’m rather amazed. But we—Earth, that is—had more influence than I would have thought before trying. Journa and Maranit were with us from the start, Journa because of the special affection they have always felt for us and your world as a matter of principle—your involvement may well have been a factor too. But the Ba’ar were more than a little reluctant to play the mouse bedding down with the elephant, which is why we ended up with a one-world, one-vote system.

  “Of course, the prospect of the Renans or the Liamese getting the upper hand then scared the Dzubans so badly that they threw in with Journa and Maranit to see that I became Chief Delegate.” Dailey laughed to himself. “Oh, it is going to be a challenge, I can see that already. I intend to go back and read everything Devaraja Rashuri wrote on the subject of statecraft. I will need all the help I can get to keep the worlds from flying apart again like marbles on a spin-table. But I can postpone such concerns until tomorrow. Tonight is a night for celebrating. Do you have something to drink at hand? I would like to toast you for bridging us back from the brink, for preserving the delicate peace.”

  Sujata shook her head. “I would have to refuse the toast, Chief Delegate. This isn’t peace—it isn’t even a stalemate. It isn’t enough just to go back to what and where we were before. The status quo represents sterility, not stability.”

  Dailey frowned. “I’m sorry, Chancellor, I don’t understand why so.”

  “I wonder even if you can. You see one moment in time, and nothing of the path that’s brought us here. This whole business of the Mizari and the endless, unfought war has arrested us, diverted our creative energies into engineering destruction. We’ve become so numbed by the prospect of death that we no longer feel the life within us.

  “You see, Wells and the Nines were right, at least in part. We need a solution that will reopen the Galaxy to us,” she said with a passion she had not realized she felt. “Until we find one we’re blocked not only physically but emotionally. We don’t know how to turn inward on ourselves. We need the frontier. We need the capacity to grow, to conceive of hopeful futures.”

  “I find nothing to quarrel with in that,” Dailey said easily.

  “But that’s a vision for a tomorrow still a long way away.”

  “No, sir,” she said. “It has to be a vision for today. Knowing that the Mizari exist and something of what they arc and what they can do does nothing to erase the fear we feel. All it does is give it a clearer focus. Unless there’s a change, there’ll be more like Wells. And eventually one of them will get what he doesn’t want but is always working toward—war.”

  “I thought you said we couldn’t win.”

  . “Not now. But you know the way we are. Some of these people are already working their endlessly inventive little brains overtime trying to find a way to overcome the Mizari advantage. Perhaps there’s some way to blind the Mizari. Or perhaps we’ll learn how to gravigate accurately enough to bring a robot bomber out of the craze ten clicks above the surface of one of their nests. There’ll either be a way or we’ll convince ourselves there is.”

  Dailey sighed. “Agreed. But what can be done to prevent it? What is it you want me to do?”

  “All you need to do is give permission. I’m ready to do the rest.”

  “Permission for what?”

  “I want to take Wesley to Alcor. Not to spy on the Mizari or to try to take their measure. To reach out to them as best we can. To try to show them that we, too, are life, worthy of surviving.”

  “And if they destroy your ship, as they did Falcon and Munin?”

  “I hope you’ll send another, building on whatever I learn. Ships and staff are cheap enough when it’s the future you’re trying to buy back.”

  Dailey considered for several moments before answering.“I don’t think we could approve it without some reason to hope for success.”

  “I wouldn’t offer to go if I didn’t think there was one,“Sujata said quickly. “The Alphecca and Alcor systems have both been heavily altered by Mizari efforts. The only bodies in them are stars and the Mizari nests—we didn’t pick up a bit of debris larger than a fist. They’ve swept their homes clean, as it were—planets, moons, asteroids, everything—using this energy instrumentality we’ve been calling the black star.”

  “You’re not encouraging me,” Dailey said. “That’s a terrifying power.”

  “Agreed,” she said. “But ask yourself why the two nests in this system, left each other alone while they cleared out everything else. Why don’t they mutually annihilate each-other, or at least the larger destroy the smaller? Why make this one exception? Because they know the other is there. This low-frequency signature we used to find them—it’s how they talk to each other, or at least how they identify each other.”

  “So you think you can dress like a lion and walk among them?”

  “Munin had no EM output, and it was destroyed, probably as soon as it was detected. Falcon got much closer, but after it shut down its EM output it was also destroyed. If we go in there broadcasting the signature of the Phad or Alphecca nest, I know they’ll leave us alone.”

  Dailey pursed his lips. “Write up a proposal. Something I can show the other Delegates—”

  Before Dailey was finished, the screen blanked, cutting him off in mid-sentence. A moment later Yamakawa appeared in his place.

  “Chancellor, you’re needed in the situation room immediately,” Yamakawa said.

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Triad Two didn’t acknowledge the wave-off,” he said grimly. “It’s still ton its way to Alcor.”

  “How the hell could this happen?” Sujata demanded, thrusting her face close to Wells’s. “If this is some kind of trick to commit us, to go back on your word—”

  “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you would think that,” Wells said tiredly.
“The fact is that we did everything the same for Triad Two as we did for Triad One. Except Triad Two never acknowledged. We never even picked up their transponder signal.”

  Sujata turned away and hugged herself. “Maybe because there was nothing to pick up. Maybe something went wrong.”

  “Chancellor, each Triad command ship has dual backups for the Kleine system,” Yamakawa said. “It’s unlikely that any technical failure would render it mute.”

  “Unless it had been destroyed.” Wells shook his head. “I’m afraid we have a good idea why they didn’t hear us. Mr. Marshall?“One of the comtechs cleared his throat nervously. “Chancellor, I was reviewing the transmission from Falcon just be fore it—before the link was broken. At the moment the black star first appeared, the interference jumped up fifteen points and kept climbing through to the end of the encounter. Even ifFalcon had survived, we would have lost contact with it in a matter of a few more seconds.”

  “What about the Munin encounter?”

  “The same pattern, though less severe—proportional to the black star’s release of energy.”

  Sujata’s brow furrowed as she looked back and forth between the tech and Wells. “How can that be? I understood that the Kleine link was direct through the spindle. How can anything happening on our side of the fence cause interference?”

  Yamakawa answered. “It appears that the spindle is the source of the black star’s energy. Or to put it more accurately, the black star is the manifestation of a corridor to the spindle. The Data Analysis Office confirms that the spectrum of radiation directed against the Falcon and Munin is identical to the raw energy flux tapped by the AVLO drive.”

  “They can tap the spindle, just as we can—”

  “Yes,” Yamakawa said. “It explains the sudden appearance of the black star on both occasions. It also explains the interference. Their weapon disturbs the spindle. After it’s used, it leaves a zone of”—he paused, looking for the right word, then shrugged—“a zone that the relatively low-energy Kleine carrier can’t penetrate.”

  “Why wasn’t I told?”

  “Chancellor, all these pieces have fallen together in the last few minutes,” Wells said. “No one kept any secrets.”

  Her back to everyone, Sujata retreated a half dozen nervous paces, then turned and looked at Wells. “So, what now?The Triad commander was expecting to hear something, right?What are they supposed to do when they don’t hear it?”

  Wells nodded to Marshall, who cleared his throat again before answering. “The procedure is that if they don’t acquire our carrier in the first ninety seconds, they extend the exposure—their time out of the craze—to a total of three minutes. If they don’t have it by the end of that time, they go back up.”

  “And do what?”

  “Carry out their standing orders,” Wells said. “That’s what presumptive-go mission rules are all about—the possibility that the command structure may be impacted by enemy activity, leaving the battle group to carry out its mission without support. Triad Two is on its way to attack the Alcor nests.”

  Sujata stared at him for a long moment, then searched the faces of the others, each in turn: Yamakawa, Venngst, Shields, Marshall, and the other auxiliaries. What she read’ there frightened her. “Why isn’t anybody doing anything?” she demanded, throwing her hands in the air.

  “There’s nothing we can do,” Wells said quietly. “Nothing to stop them, anyway.”

  “When they begin their attack, we can catch them then, though, just as we did Kite.”

  Wells lowered his eyes and shook his head slightly. “Triad Two is heading into the zone of interference. There’s very little reason to hope it will abate enough by the time it gets to Alcor for us to reach them.”

  A small spark of hope manifested itself in Marshall’s eyes.“Chancellor, if the black star really is a spindle manifestation—” he began tentatively.

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve been thinking about the fact that it’s been eleven years since the Munin incident, and there hasn’t been any retaliation. If they can respond as quickly as it seems they can—maybe they can’t track an AVLO ship through the craze back to its point of origin the way they could a Weichsel ice-ship. It is a much more difficult feat, even for us, and they’re our ships. Maybe they don’t yet know where to find us.”

  “Maybe not,” Sujata said. “But if Triad Two reaches Alcor, we’re going to be giving them three more reasons to keep looking.” She turned to Wells. “When will they reach Alcor? How long do we have?”

  “Three months.”

  Sujata stared blankly. “I have to talk to Dailey,” she said at last.

  “I can make that link for you here,” Marshall said.

  “Chancellor, be sure to ask him if he still wants us to recall Triad Three,” Yamakawa said pointedly.

  She understood immediately the implication, and the realization chilled her. To think we may end up stumbling off the precipice after deciding to turn and walk away—the true mistake was made when we walked up to the edge in the first place. Too late now for regrets—or for much of anything else.

  “Chancellor, I have the Chief Delegate now.”

  Sujata drew a deep breath and started across the room toward the com station without knowing what it was she was going to say. Already fevered by her distress, she did not notice the swirling pool of warm air she passed through on the way.

  Wait.

  “No,” Sujata said. “I don’t think anyone here is to blame, at least not for the specific failure. There’s plenty of blame to pass around for creating the circumstances in which it’s taking place.”

  Do nothing.

  “My recommendation is going to sound like a non-decision.”

  Trust.

  “I say we hold our breath and ride it out. Maybe we can’t stop Triad Two, but we don’t have to help them.”

  It is my turn.

  “Yes, three months is a long time for us to hold our breath. But we know what will happen with the other option. It’s a choice between the chance of them striking back and the certainty of it.”

  In his newest metamorphosis he knew himself to be even more of the spindle and less of his former existence. Much that was old and no longer useful had been stripped away, and he had learned much that was new. The most important lesson he had learned was that he could channel the spindle’s energies and did not need to risk his own. Understanding that, he had power; understanding himself, he had the skill.

  Thackery had sensed the wrongness the moment he brought his once-again-restored resonance back to the focus of disturbance. He listened and then reached out and touched Sujata’s mind, this time with a delicate, sure touch that left pale, quavery shadows on her thoughts:

  Wait.

  Do nothing.

  Trust.

  Then he moved off, riding the currents of the spindle with the same grace he had once seen in Gabriel, his sight focused far across the fibers to where a trio of wormholes betrayed the presence of three infinitesimally small cylinders enclosing the ordered energies of life. There was no haste in his movement, for he knew the moment and the means and that both were within reach. Doubt was not part of him, nor fear. He had given those up forever.

  At one time he had garnered acclaim for doing that which any of thousands could have done as well. Now there was a service that only he could perform but which none would ever know about. They would know only, in time, that the ships and their crews never emerged from the craze, never completed their mission.

  He did not even regret their sacrifice, not only because regret, too, had been excised from his substance. He saw that those ships were the center, the source, of the dark anticipations that clouded the near uptime and confused the present. It was within his power to erase those anticipations, and the price paid, even the death of those who had once been his kin, could not begin to compare with the value received.

  Calling on knowledge both new and old, Thackery reached out, down toward the bounda
ry, and extended his essence and control into all three wormholes at once, into the hearts of the three ships. It required only a mere shrug, a twist so, and a flood of energy poured through him and into the fragile drives. Irreplaceable circuits fused, then melted. There was a sudden flowering of energy where the ships had been, a flowering of such dimensions that the watching eyes on the matter-matrix could not help but detect it and know its meaning.

  It was done.

  He lingered there to watch the cautious approach of a single ship singing the song of the Mizari to the system of seven suns, to savor the meeting of mind and Mind, and to listen to messages meant for other hearers.

  “We will never stand face-to-face to take each other’s measure,” the woman told those whom she served, “for what we are is as far outside their grasp as what they are is outside ours. We will never join hands in friendship, for they have nothing to offer us or we them. But neither will we make war on each other again. We will never share a world with them, but we can share a Galaxy.”

  In his new state Thackery could no longer feel, save for those two feelings that all intelligence cannot help but know: amusement at the absurdity of existence, and respect for the finality of nonexistence. But he still had the memory of other emotions, and the heart he no longer possessed swelled with a joy his new body could not have mustered.

  For the disturbance in the spindle was vanishing even as he watched, and at long last, the way uptime was clear. And in the tranquil far future, he saw a wondrous vision in the matrix, a living resonance of such delicacy and beauty that merely to embrace it Thackery was required to grow in himself.

  = Gabriel…=

  >I heard your call and came down from terminus, but the turbulence blocked the way to you. Are you in need?<

  The touch of the D’shannan’s answer on Thackery’s being was rapture, a taste of reunion, of completion. =No. I am whole. =

  >Are you finished here?<

  Before answering, Thackery looked out across the barrier to the matter-matrix that had been home and hell, that had created him and then destroyed him. He saw the restless activity of the ships and their crews, the worlds newly astir with unleashed ambition. There was no place among them for him, no part in their strivings for him. He was done with that now.