Anvil of Stars

by Greg Bear

  “We have what we need,” Hans repeated. “We have work to do.”

  “Vote on it!” Ariel had returned and looked at Martin from the shadows at the rear.

  Martin’s face flushed. “No,” he said. “We don’t do everything by some sort of silly consensus. If you don’t like the way things are being done, you elect another Pan. You can do that now if you want. The moms say we’ll be diverted if we stand down. Who wants to lose this chance, after five years?”

  Silence.

  “God damn it, we have the right to vote!” Ariel said, tears obvious in her voice.

  “One vote only,” Martin insisted. “Whether I stay Pan.” He swung his arms and folded them in front of his chest, aware that this was a silly and classic pose of blustering leadership, and waited for a response, half-hoping for a swell of dissent to take the weight from his back.

  Silence.

  “God damn you all!” Ariel cried out. The children hunched their shoulders and looked back at her resentfully, but she stayed in the room.

  Martin gingerly lowered himself, feeling a moment of vertigo. “We already voted to go in,” he said, voice softer. “This doesn’t change anything. We just have to work harder.”

  “Time is short,” Hans said. “We work up a drill schedule now, and we drill by our own designs. We workshop what we might expect to find in this system, and we plan for it, and we take whatever help the moms offer!”

  Martin’s heart went out again in a perverse way to Ariel, standing in the back of the room, face shiny with tears. He had done his performance and they had agreed, tacitly at least, to continue; he had exerted leadership and had molded consensus of a sort. How long would it last, though, and how strong was their resolve?

  In that sick moment, he knew he was wrong to agree with the moms, not demanding a stand-down, not calling their bluff—and that Ariel was right.

  He stood on the floor and took a deep breath. Hans came up to one side. Behind him, Stephanie Wing Feather and Harpal Timechaser sat on benches, not looking at him. Finally Stephanie turned.

  “Way to go,” she said.

  “Ignore them,” Hans said.

  “You’ve got them dedicated now,” Stephanie said without sincerity as Martin turned to walk away. His entire head felt warm. He turned back suddenly, back muscles twinging. “What would you have done, God damn it?”

  Stephanie kept her seat as he approached.

  “What would you have done?” Martin repeated, less loudly. The other children had filed out now, leaving only Stephanie, Harpal, Hans and Martin in the cafeteria.

  “I don’t know,” Stephanie said, swallowing. “I might have tried harder.”

  “No,” Martin said, wiping his eyes and straightening. “No. You wouldn’t have.”

  Stephanie got up from the bench and ran her hands down the sides of her overalls, smoothing the fabric. “It’s the weight, Martin,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be sarcastic. Sorry.”

  Martin’s anger wouldn’t go so easily. He backed away, glanced at Hans, who pursed his lips and shook his head. “I’m sorry, too,” he murmured, and left the room, Hans following three steps behind.

  In five days, as they flew through the pre-birth cloud surrounding Wormwood, the children would reach the next point of decision—to judge whether the system had been the source of the Earth-killing machines, and decide whether to split Dawn Treader into Hare and Tortoise.

  Through the tendays of oppressive weight, the children drilled endlessly. Martin actually looked forward to time in the craft, to the relief of volumetric fields. Hakim pushed the search team patiently, trying to absorb as much information as possible about Wormwood before they pulled in the remotes.

  Hakim could shed little light on the unresolved problem of the five dark masses close in to the star, orbiting in nearly perfect circles.

  Martin pondered all this alone, preparing the preliminary order of battle in his quarters. He had not seen Theresa for eighteen hours; had not slept for thirty. Love-making was out of the question.

  The children engaged in routine drills without him. He had to finish his work soon—in a few hours at most—to give time for final practice, and one final external drill, before they entered the pre-birth cloud.

  They had flown for five and a half years, and yet there was the inevitable urgency and panic now, something that proved their humanity. He half-suspected the external drill had been deliberately arranged to be disastrous, that the moms in their subtle way were shocking the children, guiding them into battle-readiness…

  But he could not assume that. The moms might be as coolly unconcerned as they seemed in conversation, relying entirely on the passion of the children to carry out the Law. Do the Job.

  He rubbed his sweat-matted hair. Sometimes he could hardly think; he would curl up on the floor, eyes tight shut, trying to ignore exhaustion, frustrated desire for Theresa, and concentrate.

  Despite these distractions, he was coming to a conclusion about the plan of battle.

  Pan was in charge of general planning. No votes would be taken after the judgment had been made by all the children; Pan and Christopher Robin would have complete control, acting through the division leaders, the five former Pans. Each division leader would oversee a team of fifteen or sixteen children; each team would be assigned a task. Two teams would stay with the Hare. Three teams would fly Tortoise.

  Tortoise would accomplish the main objective. Makers cast into the pre-birth cloud would use the available raw materials to manufacture weapons, gravity-or proximity-fuse neutronium bombs that would comprise a second automatic assault, in case the initial assault failed.

  Tortoise would launch small craft. Their task would be to divert and/or destroy any defenses and accomplish reconnaissance. Two ex-Pans would lead these small craft teams.

  Martin suffered a deep conflict when studying strategy and tactics. Too many possibilities occurred to him; he could not see his way through to a clear line of attack. With some chagrin, he knew the reason for his conflict: he regarded the massive destruction of space war, the necessary total vanquishing of an enemy, as an essentially immoral act. Yet he desired justice for the Earth’s murder as much as any of the children.

  Clear thinking on the matter was very difficult; he simply did not trust his own instincts.

  Many children had created and filed theoretical tactics over the years; Martin had consulted nearly all of them, particularly those created by Theodore Dawn.

  Theodore had been a kind of brilliant child, wise in some respects, but supremely strong-willed and irresponsible in others, a complement to Martin’s indecision and second-guessing. More effectively than Martin ever could, blithely ignoring questions of morality, Theodore had created a mathematics of space war tactics that used nearly all the features of the momerath to great advantage. His schemes covered many contingencies, all suggested by the principles taught by the moms. Basics of space warfare, as taught by the moms, had flowered in Theodore’s mind into a graceful dance devoid of consequences.

  In Theodore’s plans, concealment was the only armor. Concealment, what Theodore called “silence,” was a fine art among high-technology civilizations. Silence meant complete damping of radiation; invisibility meant unaberrated replication of incident radiation. Advantages over an adversary could be measured mathematically by how silent each was. Silent delivery of weapons—and the silence of the weapons themselves—was next in importance.

  Theodore had studied manuals of submarine warfare on Earth. But space was far more dangerous than a deep sea, because it was vast, transparent to all radiations, and a perfect medium for weapon delivery. Yet space had many advantages over ocean; it was three-dimensional without limit, travel paths were limited to orbits, and even the largest unconcealed weapons platform, given sufficient distance, was tiny compared to the background.

  Interstellar space had no weather, and rarely changed its character during a period of confrontation. Interplanetary space—the region most lik
ely to be assaulted and defended—was subject to the vagaries of stellar atmospheres and stellar particle streams, but advanced spacefaring civilizations were not bothered by them.

  Interplanetary space was extremely difficult to guard. When assault could come undetected from almost any angle, the best defense lay in deceit—either camouflage or outright disguise. What did not attract attention was not attacked.

  The libraries told them that only primitive civilizations, such as Earth’s, blatantly announced their existence.

  If deceit and camouflage failed, space warfare was comparatively clean and dependent on initial conditions. Knowing the differences in technology suggested probable outcomes for most confrontations even before battle began.

  For an invader, this could be turned into an advantage. If an invasion force was discovered within a system, it could “pigeon puff:” provide misleading evidence of overwhelming superiority, thus forcing its adversary into ineffective and energy-wasting tactics accompanied by a sense of certain defeat. Psychological weapons were difficult to design because the psychology of an adversary might be unknown, or when facing machines, virtually nonexistent. Even the methods of perception of an adversary might be problematic.

  More effective sometimes, Theodore postulated, was an appearance of weakness, of lesser technological ability. One part of an assault could perform deception while other parts deployed silently. If the adversary were deceived by this “lapwing,” it might exert its forces prematurely, inappropriately, or not at all.

  These were solid but not brilliant reflections of what the moms had taught them. Where Theodore Dawn’s genius truly shined was in describing an adversary’s course of actions under the imagined circumstances of confrontation. Theodore seemed to have an aptitude for creating alien psychologies, and applying them to space warfare.

  He created four categories of adversary: inferior, equal, superior, and unknowable. Unknowable could encompass any of the other categories; for example, a weak, low-technology adversary might have stumbled onto effective methods of maintaining silence, or of deceiving.

  Inferior was easily enough defined, and even dealt with, given due caution; but it was unlikely the Killers were inferior to the Benefactors. Theodore outlined a few simple instances, warned of dangers, and went on to equality and superiority.

  Equality was most difficult to plan for, simply because it could be planned for. Martin, choosing the most likely scenario, studied Theodore’s writing and displays on the tactics of attacking equals What he was concerned with was not equality of force, but equality of technology and intelligence; not equality of desire or fear, not even the sameness of creativity, but equality of the raw materials of warfare, in terms of capabilities. Thus, a torpedo was smaller and perhaps less complex than the submarine it was designed to destroy yet it was equal in technological origins.

  A simple device could be made clever at the same level as a more complex, far more powerful or forceful device; it could be effective against the greater force, preventing its use or destroying it.

  A superior adversary was best not confronted directly, or at although that was not a choice here; they must bat against such a force like a moth against a glass window, if necessary, dedicated but all uncomprehending). But the superior adversary was likely also best a concealment, deception, and diversion. A far superior adversary might not be an adversary at all, as much as a supernatural force, a Godlike potentiality that could brush aside the most careful planning and the most concerted assault like the whims of a child.

  Still, the moms insisted—and Theodore agreed—confronting a technologically superior adversary was not necessarily folly. Killing Captain Cook.

  The tactics of dealing with superiority were largely those of silence and attrition, like an infected flea creeping into a human’s clothes to spread plague. The makers and the doers could act as bacilli.

  But repeatedly, Martin was reminded by Theodore’s writings that any comparisons they made—even the comparison of killing Cook—were faulty.

  It was possible the superior adversary could nullify or escape any of their weapons.

  Martin closed his eyes and tried to subdue his frustration, his conflict. There would never be enough information. And he—Martin—would never be sufficiently prepared…

  The Dawn Treader used every method at its disposal to slow over the long days of space, and to conserve its fuel, girding for battle.

  Martin led the children outside the ship again, and this time, he felt they were prepared. He had set up a particularly nasty adversary—one suggested by Theodore years before.

  Martin stayed within the ship, directing the efforts of this adversary with two others—Harpal Timechaser and Stephanie Wing Feather.

  Outside, forty of the children flew their craft around the Dawn Treader, preparing for entry into a simulated system configured very much like Wormwood.

  The five unknown masses around the yellow star were hidden defense stations, in Martin’s plan; and Theodore’s adversaries, pure machine intelligences that had long since replaced their biological creators, were in command.

  Martin watched the scenario play itself out.

  Planets met their end in compressed time, surfaces molten slag, and most of the children survived. Hare, portrayed by the still-intact Dawn Treader, came through with minimal damage.

  The farthest-scattered craft came in fifteen minutes after the simulation’s end.

  Stephanie licked her index finger, stuck it up to an imaginary breeze, swayed her arm toward Martin, and smiled. Confidence was returning.

  The children gathered in the first homeball’s cafeteria and analyzed their performances, Martin and Hans overseeing. The self-criticism flowed steadily, without hurt feelings, and Martin felt a knitting of the teams that had gone out on drill.

  Afterward, they ate dinner, then listened to music performed by Joe Flatworm and Kees North Sea: raucous, lively folk music from the Ukraine and Tennessee, barely slowed by the extra weight.

  Their bodies had grown stronger, stockier. No need to ask if the moms were responsible.

  The performance lasted less than half an hour; they rested after, Martin in Theresa’s quarters, in the heavy darkness, watching the ceiling, mind passing over the day’s events.

  He slept peacefully, without dreams.

  Two days until coasting resumed; five days from passage through the pre-birth material.

  Martin exercised in the second neck, climbing along the ladder fields instead of letting them haul him up or down. He had climbed almost the entire distance from the second homeball to the third, enjoying the exertion, almost used to the heaviness, when he heard the screaming, thin and far away, sliced into ghastly echoes by the shapes in the wormspace.

  Theresa was in the third homeball, above him, doing private practice in a bombship. She quickly descended on a field, pausing beside him where he hung, and listened, frowning. “Did you hear that?” she asked.

  He nodded, hoping it was nothing. It did not sound like nothing. It sounded horrible, even more horrible when distorted, and they were used to the distortions of voices in the necks.

  Nothing for seconds. Then, a barely audible keening, voices of concern, two or three people trying to comfort.

  They descended quickly, ladders dropping them to the second homeball.

  In the main corridor, they found Rosa Sequoia weeping, surrounded by five others, two Wendys and three Lost Boys. Her broad, strong face wet with tears, Rosa could not catch her breath, and she could not speak beyond a few gasped words.

  “We didn’t see anything,” Min Giao Monsoon said, patting her on the shoulder. “There is nothing in the halls!”

  “What’s wrong?” Martin asked.

  “Rosa saw something,” Kees North Sea said, narrow face nervous, eyes shifting. “She’s scared out of her wits.”

  “What did you see?” Theresa asked, moving in closer to Rosa. Rosa kneeled in a tighter crouch, large frame forming a round obstruction in the c
orridor.

  “Rosa, stop it,” Martin said, an edge in his voice. “Please get yourself together.” She had piloted a ship outside and performed well in exercises; he had thought she was coming around. Now he was irritated, and then ashamed of his irritation. Doesn’t she know she makes this more difficult for us?

  But that was truly beside the point, and he buried his resentment at her weakness. He knelt beside her, touching her wet cheek.

  “No!” she shouted, starting up, falling back painfully on one arm. She looked so clumsy, so pitiably overwrought, that Martin’s anger surged almost too quickly to be hidden. “You didn’t see anything,” she said. “You won’t believe me…But I saw!”

  “What did you see?” Martin asked, teeth tight together.

  Resonant, almost silky, Rosa’s voice carried down the hall to other children gathering, ten, then twenty, coming from both directions. “Something large and dark. It wasn’t a mom.”

  Martin looked up, shoulders and neck tensing, less at Rosa’s proclamation than at an intuition something was going to go very wrong, and he could not stop it.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said.

  “Did it do anything?” Theresa asked. Martin winced inwardly at her implicit affirmation that there had been something.

  “It stared at me…I think. I couldn’t see any eyes. It left marks.”

  “Where?”

  Rosa got to her feet, wiped her eyes with the palms of her hands, swung her shoulders back and stood tall. She apologized in a barely audible voice. “I was in the C wing, coming down for my team exercise…The lights were down. I don’t know why.”

  “Lights are always down in C wing,” Martin said. “Nobody has quarters there.”

  “That’s the way I come here,” Rosa said, glancing at him resentfully. She avoids the place where she saw Theresa and I making love. “It was in the dark, just…being there, sitting or standing, I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it.”