by M. A. Foster
Liszendir added, “Irrational numbers, again. The realities that device symbolizes are all irrational numbers, nonrepeating decimals. But in her system, she has a way to cut them off at any point, except in certain questions. Without the cutoff, you have to keep considering the operation. I see why it is deadly. Never mind that I can’t use one—I wouldn’t think of even trying.”
“Yes. And it jumps at the first, the first part sets everything up, even the end, of each story. You need do nothing at the end. But I know that is because it was there all along, the jumps because in reality it was smooth, but all that went before has to be compressed at the first.”
She finished, and turned to the panels, expectantly. Han began the sequence, a complete data acquisition sequence for the primary of Dawn, all-instruments mode, all-sensor. He did not understand how she could derive any meaningful ideas from what she saw, for much of it was being displayed in a set of symbols which were strange and unknown to her; but on the other hand, perhaps Usteyin, as she had suggested had been the case for the story-block, didn’t see data at all in any kind of symbols, but gestalt patterns of flow, vectors, directions, intersections, and could insert her own symbols for specific items. It did not seem to make a great deal of difference to her.
“Again, please.”
He started the sequence over again. Yes. Now he was more sure; that was the way she saw things, probably the best possible way, except for the fact that it must be nonverbal, nonsymbolic as he understood symbols, and being thus, could not be explained by her, any more than a two-year-old could explain how he walked.
“Enough. I can do it. Now I need light, strong light. Can you make the window brighter, give me daylight? This is a hard pattern, I will need hard light for this; light is a thing in this, too. It controls accuracy and the rate of movement.” Han adjusted the viewscreen, keeping the bandwidth constant, but lowering the filtration, as he turned the ship so the star came to rest at the center of the screen. Usteyin was already at work. She said, absent-mindedly, to Han, “Yes, that’s right, just right . . .” and trailed off, muttering to herself, absorbed in putting the settings into the story-block.
The glare of the star flooded the control room, erasing color and making contrasts strong, glaring black and whites: in this light a petite witch with burning white skin and hair of space-darkness held up a glittering miniature silver galaxy, her body oriented exactly ninety degrees to the light source, eyes focused intently, mouth slightly open. She made the setting motions for a long time with her free hand, occasionally moving her lips silently, as if subvocalizing something; Han could not read her lips. Then, without waiting, she tensed it: he could sense movement, within it, something shifting, moving, falling into a new configuration. Beads moved, a wire shifted its orientation. Usteyin gasped once, cleared it with a sharp motion that implied pain, and looked away quickly. Han darkened the screen, and Usteyin, moving like a zombie, carefully collapsed the story-block and stowed it away in its place in the small bag. She stood up, but did not say anything. She looked dazed. Han touched her. She did not respond. He took her with both hands, shook her.
“Usteyin! Are you all right?”
The voice seemed to bring her back. She looked at him nodded. “Yes. But almost not. I had to make myself get out. I have used it too much, tried to see too much, too far. No more.”
“What did you see? What about the bright one?”
She hesitated for a moment before answering, as if trying to recall the exact flavor of the experience. Then she began “It was long ago, very long ago. There was darkness. Stars. All far away. Emptiness, loneliness, the void felt tension. There was something there, but it was weak, spread, all over. Then it came together; it looked like smoke, boiling, moving upwards, like for smoke, but inwards, to a point. Knot formed in it, things that glowed, lit up, caught on fire. Many of them. Then the air cleared, the lights became bright, hard fires, and then they began to move apart. This one I saw. It was larger than the others, and it had little cold knots all around it, which did not glow. It took longer . . . but then it grew quiet. I came closer to it. The rate of allmotion that you call time speeded up, raced, slowed down. I was to understand by this that many-many years passed. The thing grew slowly, it stayed much the same outside, but inside it was a sick, heavy, toppling, like when you stack rocks to see how high you can get the pile. Then it became bright, and time slowed greatly, so I could see it, but even with that it was too fast. It became large, bright like this.” She made a ball of her hands, and then opened them rapidly, spreading her fingers and moving her hands apart. “There was only a little thing left of it, but it was very strong. I could feel it, pulling at me.”
“Where are we in that story?” Hatha asked.
“Near the end. I saw us, we will be gone, then. You want time, how-long. Go to the land where we were before. The sun will make the full circle of the two winters five times. No more. They will see it, too. It will be morning, the late spring of the north-winter. Early in the morning. There will be no clouds, they will see . . . and . . .” She stopped. “What does it mean?”
Liszendir said, “You see and you do not know?”
“I see many things I do not know. That is how you get trapped in a story-block: you keep saying, ‘What is this, and this, and this?’ This last time, I saw others like the bright one, like, and not like. How they become, what they become, what all of them mean . . .” She trailed off, became still, glassy-eyed, staring into some interior noplace.
Han took her again, shook her roughly. At first, it seemed to have no effect, but by the second or third, she was out of the trance, returning to reality. As she recovered, she quickly touched Han on the face, chest, shoulders, then turned to Liszendir and touched her, also. She sighed, deeply.
“Yes, here. Back where I am, where I belong. Do not ask me to look into it again, in these stories you have. Please.”
Han turned to Hatha. “She has seen the future and the past. Your star. She has seen it explode. It will supernova in five of your years. You will have time to get the people off Dawn and get away, but no more. And far away. That thing will poison everything within many years’ travel of Dawn, moving outwards almost at the speed of light itself. And we will have to come back and get the humans, too.”
They made their rendezvous with the Hammerhand on the other side of the Dawn system. And its new weapon, a huge clod of nickel-iron almost as large as the warship itself. At first, the scrub crew operating the warship had been reluctant, even hesitant, to make contact; but, thankfully, they had been finally convinced by the sight of the smaller Pallenber. Somebody aboard that monster evidently remembered. They landed in one of the bays, which was opened for them, and then closed over them. The outside sensors reported normal air pressure was returning to the bay. Hatha prepared to return to his ship. At the outer lock, Han and he had a few last words.
Hatha spoke first. “Well, now! All ends here, so it does. It would seem that you have managed to elude me at every turn, so after so many times, I finally admit to a bit of learning. Usually, with a captive, particularly a captive spy, I have found that the value of the individual decreases with time, from the capture. But you and Liszendir fared just the reverse. I had to conclude that I was wrong earlier, or that you two were not spies, but something else entirely.”
“We were not spies, at least as I would think of them. We were not sent out to penetrate anyone’s realm and send back secrets, but rather just go and have a look at what had happened. Hetrus, the human who seemed to be in charge of this, apparently smelled a rat, either in the planted trader Efrem, or in the reported circumstances, or perhaps both. But however it was, you would have done better to let us alone on Chalcedon. Why meddle? Nobody there knew anything; I found that out, after you took the ship away from Liszendir. Things would probably have gone much as Aving had hoped.”
The reminder of Hatha and the Warriors having been used as a disposable tool stung, and Han intended it to. That would not re
pay any of the Warriors for the generations of klesh, but it would be a gesture.
But if Hatha felt any direct resentment, he kept it to himself. “Possible, possible,” he said, noncommittally. “But now we must go our ways, I to smite the aliens, and you back to your own planet, with two girls.”
“Yes, back. But were it not for the fact that you will have to get your own people off Dawn before your star blows, I would fire on your ship myself, for what you tried to do regardless of the source of that motivation. But I will not. Your ship has its uses. And when you have done it, then save your people. But time is precious. And be warned. Liszendir and Usteyin and I go, but we will all be back, within a Dawn year, and this time at the head of a fleet. We humans will take our own back, all of them, and I swear that if one Warrior so much as raises one spear against us, I will polish Dawn as smooth as a steel ball. And they are not to be harmed or carted off to another Dawn.”
“All? Even the pets? Some have treated them kindly, and feel affection for their own.”
“Every single one. Leave them and go your way, follow the teachings of Sanjirmil or the devil. But take one, and we will hunt you to the ends of the universe, for we have Usteyin-who-sees. She can find you, even if you hide in the core of a dark star.”
Hatha looked around, idly, a gesture of resignation. “Very well. I suppose I would feel the same, were things reversed. So it will be! I will do as you ask. And have no fears, if I do not return from this expedition, now, for it is a possibility. When I sent the messenger off, I told him what might be. And without a ship, they can of course go nowhere.” Here, he brightened. “But now, we have a mutual enemy.”
“I will follow you down. Come onto Dawn from its north, out of the sun; follow the curve of the planet around, and drop your meteor as you move away. You should have a chance, because they will have to shoot at it first—I don’t think even the weapons they have will deflect a mass like that. We will make sure nothing is left, and then go get Aving’s castle. And Aving, hopefully. And so, good fortune.”
“I will say one more thing: you have garnered more choice and kept it, than I would have reached for. And you have done much, with very little. I know you are no spy, no militarist. Such a one would have spent his energy on resisting. But I see much, at this late hour, and even a little bit of what that Zlat girl sees, and why. Go! I will await you on Dawn, a year hence, in a ship without weapons.” He turned and left, with neither further word nor gesture. As Han was closing the outer lock, he caught a glimpse of Hatha, hurrying through his own lock, in the cavernous bay.
He returned to the control room, where Liszendir and Usteyin waited, Liszendir looking for him, and Usteyin gazing at the screen, which was once again displaying a view of the stars. Hatha had opened the bay, released the Pallenber, and they were drifting free. She turned to Han as he came to the panels.
“Now what will we do? Go to your place, your world?”
“No. We must finish a thing here, complete the affair with Aving. Then we will go, but we will come back, to take all of them on Dawn to a place where they can be people again.”
The Hammerhand had already started moving, heedless of energy, on a manual course straight for Dawn. The large meteor, or small asteroid, however one wished to look at such an ambiguous object, trailed behind, sluggishly, reluctantly, as if it did not wish to leave its old comfortable place in the void. Han watched for a moment, then set in a course and let the Pallenber fall towards Dawn on a geodesic, down an invisible curve no one of them could see, except the ship’s computer, or perhaps Usteyin, and she would not look. As they began their fall, Han showed Usteyin how to use the screen and make the adjustments. As with everything else, he didn’t have to repeat anything he showed her.
Then they were over Dawn, catching up with the warship, which was close to the surface, near the upper atmosphere, skimming, accelerating, the meteor still trailing behind, but beginning to show some motion of its own. Then, as they watched, under magnification, the Hammerhand began a long, shallow tangental curve outwards, away from the planet. The meteor dipped briefly into the atmosphere, flaring greenish fire, and curved back into space, and then down, on a course which would intersect the south pole, now covered in complete darkness and ice. Nothing showed at the pole except the unrelieved blankness of the ice cap, lit only by the weak light of the stars. Han knew only that they were down there. What they had or how they managed was beyond him.
Seemingly from nowhere, a pale bluish beam appeared from the polar area, waving around uncertainly, seeking. It played briefly upon both objects, one moving away, accelerating, and the other incoming with unmistakable intent. It hesitated, flicked back and forth, and selected the incoming meteor, becoming a narrow lance of burning white light that set off alarms all over the Pallenber, a searing, purple-white dazzle that left painful afterimages. The meteor simply vanished. It was gone, as if it never had been. The light became the pale, broader beam again, almost invisible until their vision returned. They could see a fine cloud, looking like dust at this distance. That was all.
Han began activating defense screens, fields, sealing off sections of the ship. He also opened the weapons bays, although he suspected, with a certain, sinking feeling, that nothing he had could match that terrible beam. But Hatha had also seen what had happened to his meteor, and had taken an action of his own. By the time the pale guide beam had found him again, he had reversed courses in a hairpin maneuver and was falling directly onto the pole, apparently under full normal-space drives. The warship was completely dark, and it seemed to be flickering.
Han said, “Suicide dive. He’s got all his power off except the parts powering the drives and the defensive fields. He wants that ship badly!”
The aliens recognized what was happening too late. Again the full power of the beam flashed out, to skewer the oncoming ship and blast it into a cloud of dust. It had no effect. It glanced off the blurred warship without visible effect, showering the darkness with glittering points and streaks of light. Suddenly the screen began an odd, pulsing motion, like ripples spreading on the surface of a pond, the same motion Han and Liszendir had seen when approaching Chalcedon. Both of them recognized it simultaneously. They knew what the aliens, Aving’s people, were doing. They had turned the full drive on and were readying their ship for flight, with a peculiar drive that distorted his screens. Then that was why they had seen this near Chalcedon—Aving had stopped off to see how things were going, in secret, before returning to Dawn. At the pole, something was moving, the ice cap was breaking up, something was coming upwards, out of the ice. Still firing—although they could not do both well, for every time they fired with the intense beam, the disturbance in their screen gave off extra pulses, as if operating both the drive and the weapon made them interfere with each other. With all shields down, detection gave him an honest reading now, pinpointing the source. The power plant was like the one on Hatha’s rebuilt ship, but much more powerful, not even reasonably comparable in relative strengths. Han expected that. Give the natives rifles, but keep the Catling guns for yourself. And it was large, as large as Hatha’s ship, perhaps larger; something as yet invisible, down there in the ice, struggling like some insect to get out of the way.
But it was too late. Before the alien ship, still unseen, only a suggestive motion below the surface, could emerge, the two objects merged. Han seemed to be seeing it in slow-time, the action fantastically slowed so he could see every detail. They moved together, embraced, intertwined; the mass did not explode, but simply glowed redly, and sank from sight, one undistinguishable, unrecognizable mass. The glow disappeared in a huge gout of steam, fog and cloud, and the pulsating disturbance on the screen faded away to nothing, was gone. Detection showed one remaining source of drive energy in the Dawn system—the star of Dawn, now invisible behind the bulk of the planet, only showing shreds of its swollen corona behind the curve.
Liszendir had watched the entire event without comment or reaction. After a long silenc
e, she finally said, in a calm voice, “You may think I might see this as only evidence of further dishonor and perfidy on the part of Hatha. Not so, not so at all. The law says, ‘Use no weapon that leaves the hand.’ So in the end he did not; it did not leave his hand. Nor does suicide distress me, for it is only an act, and the value of an act lies solely in its purpose in the present and immediate future.”
Han looked at her from the instruments, slowly. He said, “I see that. I also see that in his system, a noble had choice—the higher the noble, the greater the degree of choice. This was an article of faith, so that when he arrived by his own acts into a situation which left one no choices, then one was no longer noble, could not be. He also faced some interesting explanations upon his return, for in the same system, the free chooser does not allow himself to be used as an expendable tool.”
Usteyin added, somberly, “So it is done. They hurt him, just as I said they would. As I saw.”
“He hurt them far worse,” Han answered. “Now the master plotter is found out, and he is trapped, with no place to run. Look at what he faces: he cannot stay on Dawn. The Warriors will be hunting for him, even now, and even if he escapes them, he has the nova to worry about. And of course, the only ship that would take him anywhere is disposed of, gone, ruined, destroyed.”
“No. Not that way of hurt, not the body. I mean they hurt him when he finally realized what they had done to him first, and then to his people. You told him before we came onto this ship, but he did not really examine it in his heart until he was back on his own ship, off this one. For us, he kept a front. A story, if you like. Then he thought. And what he did was planned, not an anger-thing. Those things could deal with the weapons they themselves gave him, those rocks, but they were paralyzed when he used the ship as a weapon, a simple thrust. He knew they would be, that they would think he would save the warship at all costs.”