Star's End

by Glen Cook

  This Climber’s crew regarded themselves highly.

  Three: 3049 AD

  The Main Sequence

  BenRabi slammed his scooter through the entrance to Control Sector. Seconds later the massive shield doors rumbled shut behind him. The section was totally self-contained now. No one could come in or leave till those doors lifted.

  Moyshe stopped in a long, squealing slide. He jumped off, slammed the charger plug into a socket, ran through the hatch to Contact.

  “You made it,” Clara said. “We didn’t think you would. You live so far away. Here. Catch your breath.”

  “My scooter was smoking. Better have it checked, Hans.” He settled onto a fitted couch.

  “Ready?” Clara asked.

  “No.”

  She smiled at him. Hans started massaging an odorless paste into his scalp. Clara slipped her fingers inside what looked like a hairnet.

  “You never are. I thought you liked Chub.”

  BenRabi chuckled. “Chub, I like fine. He’s good people. But I’d like him a lot better if he could walk in the door, stick out a hand, and say, ‘Hey, Moyshe, let’s go grab a couple of beers.’ ”

  Chub was the starfish with whom benRabi usually linked.

  “Xenophobe.”

  “Crap. It’s not him. It’s that out-of-body feeling…”

  “Wrong, Moyshe. You can’t fool old Clara. I was babying mindtechs before you were born. And you’re all alike. You don’t want to go out because it hurts so much to come back.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Ready,” Hans said.

  Clara slid the net onto Moyshe’s head. Her fingertips were soft and warm. They lingered on his cheeks. Momentary concern clouded her smile.

  “Don’t push yourself, Moyshe. Get out if it gets rough. You haven’t had enough rest.”

  “Since Stars’ End there isn’t any rest. For anybody.”

  “We won,” Hans reminded.

  “The cost was too high.”

  “It was cheaper than losing.”

  BenRabi shrugged. “I guess you people see things different. I never would have gone in the first place.”

  “You took your whippings and smiled, back in Confederation?” Hans asked. “I never heard of that.”

  “No. We calculated the odds. We picked the right time. Then we ganged up. We didn’t just go storming around like a rogue elephant, getting hurt as much as we did hurt.”

  “Oriflamme,” Hans countered.

  “What?”

  “That’s what they call Payne sometimes. It’s something from olden times that has to do with not taking prisoners.”

  “Oh. The oriflamme. It was a special pennon that belonged to the King of France. If he raised it, it meant take no prisoners. It had a way of backfiring on him.”

  “Hans,” Clara said, “Moyshe is an Academy man. He can probably tell you how many spokes in the wheel of a Roman war chariot.”

  “Take Poitiers, for instance…”

  “Who?”

  “It’s a place. In France, which is on Old Earth…”

  “I know where France is, Moyshe.”

  “All right. One of the big battles of the Hundred Years War was fought there. And you could say that the French lost because of the oriflamme. See, they caught the English in a bad spot. Outnumbered them like ten to one. The Black Prince decided to surrender. But the French raised the oriflamme. Which pissed the English, so they proceeded to kick ass all over the countryside. When the dust settled, the French were wiped out and Louis was in chains. There’s a lesson in there somewhere, if you want to look. Namely, don’t ever push anybody into a corner where he can’t get out.”

  “You see what he’s doing, Hans?” Clara asked.

  “You mean trying to educate us until the all-clear comes through? You’re out of luck, Moyshe. Lift your head so I can put your helmet on.”

  BenRabi raised his head.

  His scalp began tingling under the hairnet device. The helmet devoured his head, stealing the light. He fought the panic that always hit before he went under.

  Hans strapped him in and adjusted the bio-monitor’s pickups.

  “Can you hear me, Moyshe?” Clara asked through the helmet’s earphones.

  He raised a hand. Then spoke: “Coming through clear.”

  “Got you too. Your boards look good. Blood pressure is up, but that’s normal for you. Take a minute in TSD. Relax. Go when you want.”

  His, “I don’t want,” remained unspoken.

  He depressed the switch beneath his right hand one click.

  The only senses left him were internal. Total Sensory Deprivation left him only his aches and pains, the taste in his mouth, and the rush of blood. Once the field took hold, even those would go.

  In small doses it was relaxing. But too much could drive a man insane.

  He flicked his right hand again.

  A universe took form around him. He was its center, its lord, its creator… There was no pain in that universe, nor much unhappiness. Too many wonders burned there, within the bounds of his mind.

  It was a universe of colors both pastel and crisp. Every star was a blazing jewel, proclaiming its individual hue. The oncoming storm of the nova’s solar wind was a rioting, psychedelic cloud that seemed to have as much substance as an Old Earth thunderhead. Opposite it, the pale pink glimmer of a hydrogen stream meandered off toward the heart of the galaxy. The surrounding harvestships were patches of iridescent gold.

  A score of golden Chinese dragons drifted with the fleet, straining toward it, yet held away by the light pressure of the dying star. Starfish!

  BenRabi’s sourness gave way to elation. There would be contact this time.

  He reached toward them with his thoughts. “Chub? Are you out there, my friend?” For a time there was nothing.

  Then a warm glow enveloped him like some sudden outbreak of good cheer.

  “Moyshe man-friend, hello. I see you. Coming out of the light, hello. One ship is gone.”

  “Jariel. They’re still evacuating.”

  “Sad.”

  Chub did not seem sad. This fish, benRabi thought, is constitutionally incapable of anything but joy.

  “Not so, Moyshe man-friend. I mourn with the herd the sorrows of Stars’ End. Yet I must laugh with my man-friends over the joys of what was won.”

  “The ships-that-kill weren’t all destroyed, Chub. The Sangaree carry their grudges forever.”

  “Ha! They are a tear in the eye of eternity. They will die. Their sun will die. And still there will be starfish to swim the rivers of the night.”

  “You’ve been puttering around in the back rooms of my mind again. You’re stealing my images and shooting them back at me.”

  “You have an intriguing mind, Moyshe man-friend. A clouded, boxy mind, cobwebby, atticy, full of trap doors…”

  “What would you know about trap doors?”

  “Only what I relive through your memories, Moyshe man-friend.”

  Chub teased and giggled like an adolescent lover.

  By starfish reckoning he was a child. He had not yet seen his millionth year.

  BenRabi simply avoided thinking about starfish time spans. A life measured in millions of years was utterly beyond his ken. He only mourned the fact that those incredible spans could never touch upon worlds where beings of a biochemical nature lived. The stories they could have told! The historical mysteries they could have illuminated!

  But starfish dared not get too near major gravitational or magnetic sources. Even the gravity of the larger harvestships felt to a starfish much as rheumatism to a human being.

  They were terribly fragile creatures.

  While Chub teased and enthused, Moyshe turned a part of his mind to his private universe again.

  Red torpedoes idled along far away, across the pink river, against the galaxy.

  “Yes,” Chub said. “Sharks. Survivors of Stars’ End calle
d them here. They will attack. They starve. Another feast for the scavenger things.”

  Smaller ghosts in a mix of colors shadowed both dragons and torpedoes. They were Chub’s scavengers.

  The great slow ecology of the hydrogen streams had niches for creatures of most life-functions, though their definition in human terms was seldom more than an approximation. A convenient labeling.

  Moyshe yielded to nervousness. Chub reached into his mind, calming him…

  “I’m learning, Chub. I can see the river this time. I can see the particle storm coming from the sick sun.”

  “Very good, Moyshe man-friend. You relax now. Sharks come soon. You watch scavenger things instead. They tell when sharks can’t wait anymore. They get dancey.”

  Moyshe laughed into his secret universe. Starfish believed in doing things with deliberation, as might be expected of creatures with vast life spans. Young starfish tended to be restless and excitable. They were prone to flutter impatiently in the presence of their elders. The Old Ones called it “getting dancey.”

  Chub was dancey most of the time.

  The Old Ones considered him the herd idiot. Chub said they regretted exposing him to human hasty-think while he was still young and impressionable.

  “Is a joke, Moyshe man-friend. Is a good joke? Yes?”

  “Yes. Very funny.” For a starfish. The Old Ones had to be the most phlegmatic, humorless, pragmatic intelligences in all creation. They couldn’t even grasp the concept of a joke. With the exception of Chub, benRabi found them a depressing mob.

  “I was lucky to become your mind-mate, Chub. Very lucky.”

  He meant it. He had linked with Old Ones. He compared it to making love to his grandmother bare-assed on an iceberg, with a crowd watching. Drawing Chub was the best thing that had happened to him in years.

  “Yes. We half-wits stick together. Venceremos, Comrade Moyshe.”

  BenRabi filled the universe with laughter. “Where the hell did you get that?”

  “Your mind full of cobwebby memories, Moyshe man-friend. One time you play revolutionary on hard matter place called Dustball.”

  “Yeah. I did. About two weeks. Then it was duck bullets all the way back to the Embassy.”

  “You live much in few years, Moyshe man-friend. Ten times anyone else linked by starfish Chub. Many adventures. Think Chub would make good spy?”

  “Who would you spy on?”

  “Yes. Problem. Very difficult to disguise as shark.”

  “That’s another joke, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. You still spying, Moyshe man-friend?”

  “Not anymore. I’m not Thomas McClennon anymore. I’m Moyshe benRabi. I’ve found me a home, Chub. These are my people now. You can’t spy on your own people.”

  “Oh. Saw shadows in your mind. Thought maybe secret spy-stuff lurked. So. Hey! Maybe someday you go spy on hard matter place people? Be double spy.”

  “Double agent?”

  “Oh. Yes. That right words.”

  “No more spying, Chub. I’m going to be a mindtech.”

  “Dangerous.”

  “So is spying. In more ways than you’ll ever understand.”

  “Hurts-of-the-heart dangers, you mean?”

  “I don’t know why they tell you you’re stupid. You’re a lot smarter in a lot of ways than most people I know. You see things without having to have them explained.”

  “Helps, being starfish. People can’t look inside, Moyshe man-friend. You have to tell. You have to show. You not the kind of man to do that.”

  “Yeah. Let’s talk about something else, huh?”

  “Running out of talk time, Moyshe man-friend. Scavenger creatures getting dancey. You not paying attention?”

  “I still haven’t got the hang of seeing everything at once.”

  That was one of the beauties of the mindtech’s linked universe. He was not subject to the limitations of binocular vision. But he did have to unlearn its habits.

  Blind people made better techs faster. They had no habits to unlearn, no preoccupations to overcome. But blind people who suffered from classical migraine were scarce.

  Scarlet torpedoes edged toward the fleet. They were not yet wholly committed. Hunger still had not banished good sense.

  Sharks were slow of wit, but they knew they had to get past the harvestships to reach their prey.

  That was the whole point of the starfish-Starfisher alliance.

  “Can’t visit anymore, Chub. We’re not going on mind-drive, so I’ll have to help fight.”

  “Oh, yes, Moyshe man-friend. Shoot straight. I help, putting right vectors in your brain.”

  “All right.” Aloud, into his helmet, benRabi said, “Gun Control.”

  A second later his earphones crackled. “Gun Control, aye.”

  “Mindtech. In link and free to assume control of a sector battery. Sharks will attack. Repeat, will attack.”

  “Shit. All right, buddy. But never mind the sector battery. Master Gunner says he wants you to feed the main battle tank. Think you and your link can give us good realtime input?”

  “Yes,” Chub murmured deep in benRabi’s hindbrain.

  “Yes,” Moyshe said. And wondered why. It was not something he had ever tried.

  “Monitor?”

  “All go, Gun Control,” Clara’s voice interjected. “Green boards all across. I’ve just keyed the translator. You can bring the computer on-line whenever you’re ready.”

  “Stand by for draw, Linker.”

  “Moyshe,” said Clara, “don’t take any chances. Key out if it gets rough.”

  “Drawing, Linker.”

  For an instant benRabi felt as though some intangible vacuum were sucking his mind away. A smatter of panic quickly yielded to Chub’s soothing.

  Moyshe relaxed, became a conduit. He became an almost disinterested observer.

  The scavengers suddenly grew dancey with a vengeance.

  “Attack imminent,” benRabi muttered.

  Those pilot fish were excited because they would feast no matter what the outcome of battle. They would be perfectly content nibbling dead shark or dead starfish.

  A dozen crimson torpedoes suddenly misted, stretched into long, fuzzy lines, and solidified again near the starfish herd.

  A hundred swords of light started carving them into scavenger food. Sharks were easy meat for particle beams.

  “Teach them to try end run through hyper,” Chub whispered.

  The starfish herd had not bothered to dodge. They would not begin maneuvering till the protection of the human ships began breaking down.

  It might not hold, benRabi reflected. Five vessels could not establish a sound fire pattern. There would be blind spots. Big holes. To fill them would mean risking hitting your own people.

  The shark packs milled. They had not yet found workable tactics for assailing a fleet of harvestships.

  Their intellectual slowness was the only hope for starfish and Starfishers alike. Something had happened to the sharks. Their numbers were expanding almost exponentially. They were becoming ever more desperate in their quest for something to eat.

  Their prey, historically, had been the stragglers of the great starfish herds. The feeble and injured and careless. But now they assaulted the strong and healthy as well, and had even begun turning on their own injured. Even the firepower of a harvestship could not hold the massed packs at bay when hunger heterodyned into a berserk killing rage.

  “Not look so promising as you thought, Moyshe man-friend. All going to come at once, from everywhere, crazy. Just killing and dying.”

  There was dread in Chub’s thought. Moyshe was dismayed. Even in the hell that had been the battle at Stars’ End the starfish had not lost his good cheer.

  The starfish’s prediction proved correct. The red torpedoes suddenly exploded in every direction. Moyshe had seen the same reaction among humans. The first had been by a band of fair-weather revoluti
onaries who had heard the police were coming. Another time, a terrorist had lobbed a hand grenade into a crowded theater.

  But the sharks were not fleeing. The instant-insanity had seized them. They were spreading out to attack.

  They arrowed in on the harvestfleet. Laser and particle beam swords stabbed.

  Danion’s fire was deadly. The realtime simulation from the minds of a man and a starfish linked gave the weapons people a fractional second’s advantage over their brethren in ships relying on normal detection systems.

  The shark wave rolled round Danion like a breaker around a granite promontory.

  They could have worn her down in time, had they had the patience of the sea, and the sea’s resources for endlessly sending in another wave. They had hurt her bad at Stars’ End. It only took one shark getting through, with its multi-dimensional fires, to ravage a whole section of ship. But this horde was more limited in its numbers and more driven by hunger.

  “Oh, Christ,” benRabi swore as an explosion ripped a huge chunk from a sister ship. A shark had gotten through there. The service ships, still evacuating Jariel and trying to plug the holes in the fire pattern, swarmed toward the fragment. Clouds of frozen water vapor boiled round it as atmosphere poured out.

  A shark flung itself into the starfish herd.

  The great night beasts were not defenseless. One burped a ball of the nuclear fire that burned in its “gut,” flung it with Robin Hood accuracy. The shark perished in the fading flash of a hydrogen bomb.

  One predator was gone. And one starfish was disarmed for hours. It took the creatures a long time to revitalize their internal fires.

  BenRabi had seen the peaceable starfish use the same weapon against Sangaree raidships at Stars’ End.

  “Fur is flying now, Moyshe man-friend.” Chub was straining for humor. “We doing all right, you and me. Maybe your Old Ones decide you not stupid after all.” Left unthought was Chub’s hope for the same reaction from his own Old Ones.

  By way of support benRabi replied, “This is a new era, Chub. It’s going to take hastiness and danciness to survive.”

  “Sharks coming again.”

  Once more Danion’s weaponry scarred the long night. Moyshe wondered what some alien would think if he happened on its unconcealable mark, a thousand years from now, a thousand light-years away.