Star's End

by Glen Cook

  Both sides had used retrospective observation techniques during the Ulantonid War. A battle’s outcome might be fixed, but it could be studied over and over from every possible angle.

  The second assault was more furious than the first. BenRabi stopped trying to think. He had to give his whole attention over to following the situation.

  More sharks dropped hyper, drawn by no known means. The rage took them, too. They attacked everything, including wounded brethren floundering around the battle region.

  This was the root of Chub’s fear. That more and more sharks would be drawn till they simply overwhelmed everything.

  It was the future foreseen by both starfish and Starfishers. The terror that herd after herd and harvestship after harvestship would be consumed was the force that had driven the maverick commander of this fleet to hazard the defenses of Stars’ End.

  The arrivals slowed to a trickle. Chub thought, “We going to win again, Moyshe man-friend. See the pattern? The glorious pattern. They waste their might devouring their own injured.”

  BenRabi searched his kaleidoscopic mind-link universe. He saw nothing but chaos. This, he reflected, is the sort of thing Czyzew-ski was thinking about when he wrote The Old God. So much of Czyzewski’s poetry seemed reflective of recent events. Had the man been prescient?

  No. He was far gone on stardust when he did the cycle including The Old God. The drug killed him less than a month after he finished the poem. The images were just the flaming madness of the drug burning through.

  “Don’t you get tired of being right?” he asked when the first sharks fled.

  “Never, Moyshe man-friend. But learned long ago to wait till event is certain, predestined, to make observation. Error is painful. The scorn of Old Ones is like the fire of a thousand stars.”

  “I know the feeling.” For some reason the face of Admiral Beckhart, his one-time commander, drifted through his universe. Here on the galactic rim, fighting for his life against creatures he had not suspected existed two years earlier, his previous career seemed as remote as that of another man. Of another incarnation, or something he had read about.

  The assault collapsed once the first few well-fed sharks fled.

  The starfish had suffered far less than their inedible guardians. Not one dragon was missing from the golden herd defended by the harvestships. But another ship had been injured severely.

  A traitorous thought stole across Moyshe’s mind on mouse-soft feet.

  Chub was less indignant than he expected.

  On a strictly pragmatic level, the starfish agreed that getting out of the interstellar rivers would be the best way to conserve Starfisher ships and lives.

  “They’ll never go, Chub. The harvestfleets are their nations. Their homelands. They’re proud, stubborn people. They’ll keep fighting and hoping.”

  “I know, Moyshe man-friend. It saddens the herd. And makes the Old Ones proud that they forged their alliance so well. But why do you say ‘they’?”

  “We, then. Part of the time… Most of the time I’m an outsider here. They do things differently than what I learned…”

  “Sometimes you miss your old life, Moyshe man-friend.”

  “Sometimes. Not often, and not much, though. I’d better tend to business.” He had to focus his attention to force his physical voice to croak, “Gun Control, Mindlink. The sharks are going. They’ve given up. You can secure when the last leaves firing range.”

  “You sure, Linker? Don’t look like it in the display tank.”

  “I’m sure. Let me know when I can stop realtiming. This is my second link in eight hours.”

  “Right. Will do.” The man on the far end seemed impressed.

  Clara’s voice broke in. “Are you all right, Moyshe? The strain getting heavy? We can bring you out.”

  “I’m okay. For a while. I remember what I am. Just be ready to hit me with that needle.”

  At Stars’ End Danion had lost half her native, trained mindtechs because they had stayed in link too long, or had been mindburned by sharks breaking through the defensive fire screen. The best guess was that the former had become lost in the special interior universe of the linker. Dozens occupied a special hospital ward where doctors and nurses had to handle them like newly born babies.

  Their bodies lived on. Their minds, it was hoped, might sometime be retrieved.

  In all the history of the High Seiners no lost linker ever had been recalled.

  The Starfishers were living on hopes these days. Stars’ End had been one, for weapons capable of shattering shark tides.

  BenRabi did not understand how the Seiners had hoped to accomplish what generations of madmen, fools, and geniuses had failed to do. Stars’ End was a fortress unvanquishable.

  It was a whole world, Earth-sized, that was a fortress. Or planetary battleship. Or whatever. It could be approached by nothing. The technologies of its defenses were beyond the imaginations of any of the races aware of its existence. Its builders had long since vanished into the abyss of time.

  Generations of men had lusted after the weapons of Stars’ End. Thousands had died trying to obtain them. And the fortress world remained inviolate.

  Why had the Seiners been convinced that they would have better luck?

  “You were right, Linker. Computer says they’re pulling out. Going to let you off realtime now. We can handle it from here without.”

  “Thank you, Gun Control.”

  The sense of drain stopped abruptly. BenRabi’s universe reeled. Chub reached in and steadied him. “Time to break, Moyshe man-friend. You losing sense of reality and orientation in space-time.”

  “I’m not lost yet, Chub.”

  “You all say so. No more you can do here, man-friend.”

  The crackle of reality beginning to fall into shards rose from benRabi’s hindbrain. It pushed a wave of terror before it. Chub did nothing to soothe him.

  “Clara! The needle. I’m coming out.”

  He slapped the switch beneath his left hand.

  They were waiting for him. The agony persisted for only a few seconds.

  That was bad enough. He screamed and screamed. It got worse every time.

  Four: 3049 AD

  The Main Sequence

  They put him into Hospital Block this time. He was under sedation for three days.

  Two people were at his bedside when the doctor came to bring him out. The thin, pale, blue-eyed woman with the nervous hands was Amy. The little Oriental with the presence of an iceberg was benRabi’s friend Mouse.

  Amy would sit for a minute, picking at her jumpsuit, shifting this way and that. She would cross and uncross her legs, then would rise and pace around for a minute before sitting again. She did not speak to Mouse. Most of the time she deliberately tried to distance Storm from herself and Moyshe. It was almost as if she saw Mouse as a competitor for benRabi’s affection.

  The men had shared missions under fire. Sometimes they did not like one another much. Their backgrounds were day and night. Centuries of prejudice had erected walls between them. Yet an indestructible bond had been forged and hammered on the anvils of shared peril. They had guarded one another’s backs and saved one another’s lives too often to let go.

  Mouse waited without moving, with the patience of a samurai.

  He was a dedicated Archaicist. He had just encountered his own ancient heritage and, in imagination, was trying the samurai role for size. The code and conduct suited the warrior within him.

  But it did nothing for the libertine. And Mouse was a classic of that genre, at least with the opposite sex.

  Masato Igarashi Storm did nothing by half measures.

  The doctor coughed softly.

  “Will he be all right?” Amy demanded. “He’ll come out okay? I know what you told me, but…”

  Mouse’s facial muscles moved slightly. His wan expression spoke volumes about his disgust at her display.

  The doctor was mo
re patient. “Just an enforced rest, Miss. That’s all it is. There’s nothing wrong that rest can’t cure. I hear he did a hell of a job feeding realtime to Weapons Control. He just pushed himself too far.”

  A look flickered across Mouse’s stony face.

  “What’re you thinking?” Amy demanded.

  “Just that he’s not usually a pusher.”

  Amy was ready for a fight.

  The doctor aborted it by giving benRabi an injection. He began to come around.

  Mouse seemed indifferent to Amy’s response. But not oblivious. He was an astute observer. He just did not care what she thought.

  “Doc,” he said, “is there any special reason for sticking with this kind of medical setup?”

  The woman held benRabi’s wrist, taking his pulse. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s primitive. Almost Archaicist obsolete. They had sonic sedation systems before I was born. Easier on the patient and staff both.”

  The doctor reddened. Mouse had been out of the hospital only a few weeks himself. He had spent a month recuperating from a severe wound received from a Sangaree agent who had tried to seize control of Danion. He was not pleased with the quality of medical care, and made no secret of it. But Mouse hated all doctors and hospitals. He could find fault with the finest.

  BenRabi had tracked the Sangaree woman down, and had shot her…

  Mouse had the nerve to stand toe-to-toe with the Devil and tell him to put it where the sun doesn’t shine.

  “We have to make do with what we can afford, Mr. Storm.”

  “So I’ve been told.” Mouse did not pursue it, though he thought Seiners pleading poverty was on a par with Midas begging alms on a street corner.

  BenRabi opened his eyes.

  “How you doing, Moyshe?” Storm asked, trampling Amy’s more dramatic opener. His presence there, betraying his concern, embarrassed him.

  The fabric of centuries takes the stamp; they mark the children indelibly. Their legacy remains as invisible and irresistible as the secret coded in DNA. The young Mouse had learned that Old Earthers were pariahs.

  Mouse’s family had been in Service for three generations. They were part of Confederation’s military aristocracy. BenRabi’s forebears had been unemployed Social Insurees for centuries.

  Neither man considered himself prejudiced. But false truths sown in the fallows of childhood, planted deep, continued to sprout unrealistic real-world responses.

  BenRabi had begun bridling his prejudice early. He had to survive. There had been only two Old Earthers in his Academy battalion.

  He needed a minute to get his bearings. “What am I doing here?” he demanded.

  “You needed rest,” Amy told him. “Lots of it. You overdid it this time.”

  “Come on. I can take care of myself. I know when…”

  “Crap!” the doctor snapped. “Every mindtech thinks that. And then they turn up here, burned out. I change their diapers and spoon feed them. What is it with you people, benRabi? You all got egos two sizes too big for a small god.”

  Moyshe was fuzzy. He tried to say something flip. His tongue felt like it was wrapped in an old sock.

  He saw tears in the doctor’s eyes. “Did you lose someone at Stars’ End?”

  “My sister. She came out of creche just before you landsmen came aboard. She was only seventeen, benRabi.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re a mindtech. Anyway, sorry doesn’t help. Not when I have to take care of her every day. She was just like you, benRabi. She knew she could handle it. She wouldn’t listen either. None of them would. Not even the controllers, who should’ve known better. They put her back in with only four hours’ rest.”

  BenRabi kept his mouth shut. What could he say? He had been introduced to Contact during the battle at Stars’ End. The main Contact room had been a shambles. Dozens of mindtechs had given everything to save Danion.

  He never would have seen Contact, or even have discovered its existence, had those linker casualties not been cruel. In those days he had been a distrusted landsman, a convicted enemy spy who was screened from all Seiner secrets. They had drafted him into Contact only because he might give Danion a millimeter’s better chance of surviving.

  He had made his decision to cross over after Stars’ End, virtually in the hatch of the ship designated to return the landsmen contractees to Confederation.

  He had waited too long. Half of his personal possessions had departed with the ship. He had not recovered them. The service ship crew had gotten into a row with Customs. The bureaucrats had retaliated, seizing everything not bolted to the ship’s frames.

  BenRabi took Amy’s thin, cool hand. “How’ve you been, darling? You look tired. How long has it been?” She felt so cold… She was a spooky woman. Why had he fallen in love with her?

  He always fell for the strange ones, the neurotic and just plain rotten ones. Alyce, in Academy… What a loser she had turned out to be. And the Sangaree woman, Marya, who had been a vampire in the midst of his last two missions.

  “I’m all right now that I know you’ll be okay. Moyshe, please be more careful.”

  She seemed unusually remote. BenRabi glanced at her, at Mouse, and back again. More problems with Mouse? Her dislike for his friend had taken a quantum leap recently.

  Mouse did not talk much. The inevitable chess board had accompanied him, but he did not offer to play. Amy’s presence restrained him. Chess was one of his great passions, rivaling his passion for seducing a parade of beautiful women.

  “Hey, Mouse. Ever wonder what Max is doing these days?” Referring to someone they had known before coming out here was the only way he could think of to pull his friend into the conversation.

  “Probably getting richer and wondering why we don’t come into her shop anymore. I don’t think Beckhart will bother giving her our new address.”

  “Yeah.” BenRabi laughed. “He should have heard the news by now, don’t you think? Or pretty soon. He’ll foam at the mouth.” For Amy’s benefit, he explained, “Max was a friend of ours in Luna Command. She ran a stamp store.”

  “Best hobby shop in the moon,” Mouse said.

  Amy did not respond. She simply could not comprehend what these two got out of accumulating small bits of paper that were ages old and required jeweler’s grade care.

  And stamps were not the only thing. Between them they seemed to collect everything. Coins. Stamps. All kinds of ancient miscellanea. Mouse had little wrought-iron trivets and other old-time dohickeys all over his quarters. The one collection she could appreciate was Moyshe’s butterflies. He had a frame of exotics on his wall. They were incredibly beautiful.

  The Seiner ships were ecologically sterile. Only their zoos contained nonhuman life, and that the large, well-known mammals.

  Amy had no hobbies of her own. She read for relaxation. She had acquired the habit from her mother.

  Mouse even managed passably with a clarinet, an antique woodwind seldom seen anymore. He claimed to have learned from his father.

  “What about Greta?” Mouse asked. “You think the Department will take care of her?”

  Amy jumped at the name. “You never did tell me about Greta, Moyshe.”

  “That was in another life.”

  They were lovers, but they did not know one another well. BenRabi did not like stirring up the snake pit of people’s pasts. There was too much chance of finding something nasty. It was there in every life.

  But he answered Amy’s question. “I told you before. She’s a kid I met the last time I was on Old Earth. The last time I visited my mother. She wanted out. Her friends wouldn’t let her go. I arranged it for her. And ended up sponsoring her.”

  “Sort of like being a foster parent,” Mouse explained.

  “Guess she’d be eighteen now. I haven’t thought about her in ages. You shouldn’t have mentioned her, Mouse. Now you’ve got me worried.”

 
; “Hey, don’t. Max will look out for her.”

  “Maybe. But that’s not right, putting it on somebody else. Is there any way I could send her a letter now and then, Amy? Just to let her know I’m all right and thinking about her? I’d let you or Jarl write it if you wanted. You could even run it through the crypto computer to make sure it’s innocent.”

  “This’s just a kid?” Amy demanded.

  “Yeah. She reminded me a lot of me when I came off Old Earth. Awful lost. I thought I could help out by sponsoring her. And then I kind of ran out when the Bureau sent us out here. I told her we’d be back in a couple of months. It’s been almost fourteen.”

  “I’ll ask Jarl. He lets a little mail go out. Some of us have relatives outside. But it’s slow.”

  “That doesn’t matter. Amy, you’re a jewel. I love you.”

  “Well, if you’re going to get mushy,” Mouse said, standing. “I’ve got to run. A citizenship class. It’s from hunger, Moyshe. Me and Emily Hopkins and this fascist bastard of a teacher… Maybe I’ll hurt the arm again. Get back in here so I can miss a few too. Behave. Do what the doctor lady says. Or I’ll wring your neck.” He made his exit before Moyshe could embarrass him with many thanks-for-comings.

  “You’re awful quiet today, honey,” benRabi said after a while. Perhaps if the doctor had not been there…

  “I’m just tired. We’re still doing double shifts and barely keeping our heads above water. We’re going to be in the Yards a long time. AssumingDanion doesn’t fall apart before we get there. Assuming the sharks don’t knock us apart.”

  “You’ve mentioned these Yards about fifty times and wouldn’t tell me about them. Do you trust me enough now?”

  “They’re what the name sounds like. Where we build and fix our ships. Moyshe, you’re not going anywhere for a while. Tell me about you.”

  “What?”

  “I met you the very first day. Way back on Carson’s, when you signed your contract. We lived together for months before I even found out you’ve got a daughter. I don’t know anything about you.”