Anvil of Stars

by Greg Bear

  Hakim put his hand on Martin’s shoulder. Jennifer uncurled and recurled near the transparent nose. The nose was turned away from Nebuchadnezzar.

  “Are they going to make it?” Martin asked.

  Jennifer shrugged. “I’m not psychic.”

  “They will make it,” Hakim said with calm confidence.

  “Are you psychic?” Jennifer asked with a kind of innocence, as if he very well might be.

  “No,” Hakim said.

  Jennifer frowned and concentrated on the star sphere. “Maybe Rosa would know,” she said.

  Martin made himself as comfortable as possible in the nose unfolding a net and hooking it to the wall, then wrapping himself in the net.

  Andrew Jaguar poked his head through the hatchway, saw Martin, said, “We’re waiting.”

  “I’ll stay here,” Martin said.

  “I mean, we’re waiting for orders.”

  “There aren’t any for the next hour,” Martin said. “We drift in close, the Tortoise is on automatic. The bombships do their job and we gather them and we retreat and watch. You know that.”

  “We know that,” Andrew said, “but we’re still waiting. We need everybody together, Martin. Everybody.”

  Jennifer sniffed. Martin closed his eyes and with a tremendous effort, wanting nothing more than solitude or at least the company of a select few, released himself from the net.

  Nothing was appropriate or inappropriate; nothing was condemned. In the cafeteria, four couples made love with theatrical noisiness. Martin skirted them and drifted toward the place the crew of Tortoise had made for him near the cafeteria star sphere. Most eyes were on him, and his weariness and frustration gave way to the numbness of a lamb under the knife. Sacrificing the needs of the self to the needs of the group down to even the smallest impulse to privacy.

  The Why. This is the Why.

  Hakim and Jennifer followed. Harpal Timechaser sat next to him by the sphere, the only other ex-Pan aboard Tortoise now that Stephanie led the bombships.

  Tortoise sharpened all its passive sensors. The star sphere divided to show the bombships, the planetary surface, the heavens beyond, then concentrated on the bombships.

  “Still no defenses,” Hakim marveled, head shaking.

  “Maybe they’re cowards,” Jennifer said.

  Martin looked around the room, suddenly disliking his companions intensely. He shuddered the feeling away and settled into a restless neutrality of emotions, waiting. The War Mother floated near a wall, still as a monument. After all this is over, can we take a mom with us and set it up in the middle of our town, on the new world, on a pedestal?

  The view changed. They saw the bombships up close, all six of them, one by one. Martin recognized Theresa’s ship. He fought to keep the neutrality, but his chest seemed stuffed with straw and his palms were damp. No defenses.

  “This is cruel,” said Andrew Jaguar. “We have to do something!”

  Martin said nothing. There was nothing for them to do; best to keep them all in one place, all vigilant, all aware of what was happening.

  The bombships had descended to within four thousand kilometers of Nebuchadnezzar’s surface. Still, the planet had not changed its aspect; dusty brown with gray patches and green mineral stripes and black spots of reservoirs. Atmosphere clear and calm.

  “Hakim,” Martin said softly, “report on seismic disturbances.”

  “Nothing new. Same low-level rhythms,” Hakim said.

  “Project it for us.”

  The traces of crustal and mantle activity moved in graphic display beside the star sphere.

  “Can you turn it into sound for us?” Martin asked.

  “I will have to increase its frequency, repeat it like an echo.”

  “Fine,” Martin said.

  So treated, the deep susurration of Nebuchadnezzar became very like a heartbeat, booming and ticking, the repetition false but still informative, ears providing a more natural interpretation of this information than eyes. Martin quickly picked up the actual rhythms of sound as the series of beats rose at once to a higher frequency, dropped back, rose, dropped.

  “Small ship between Nebuchadnezzar and Ramses is firing thrusters,” Jennifer reported. With a scowl of concern, Hakim projected the picture, checked the images and interpretation, nodded, glanced at Martin, eyebrow raised.

  A very small reaction.

  “Pod release in ten minutes,” Harpal said, stating what they all knew, tracking the numbers on their wands.

  The room fell quiet. Three of the four couples stopped making love. The fourth became subdued, though still active.

  Martin felt sick.

  Nebuchadnezzar’s heartbeat changed. Hakim cycled the signal through several enhancements and interpretations, meaning little to most of the crew, and said, “Subsurface activity seems to have decreased.”

  “Decreased?” Martin asked.

  Seen in the star sphere, Nebuchadnezzar’s atmosphere shimmered. Something sang through the Tortoise’s hull, between a bell tone and the screech of a fingernail on slate.

  Martin’s entire body tensed and he rubbed his eyes with one hand. Nobody moved. The War Mother did not move. Seconds passed.

  “Jesus Christ,” Harpal Timechaser murmured.

  “Quiet,” Martin said.

  The fourth couple had separated and put on overalls. It would not be decorous to die naked and in the clinch.

  Long minutes passed. Two minutes to releasing the pods and scattering the mines.

  The atmosphere rippled again. The simulated beat changed abruptly to a chirp-thud and another bell-screech hurt their ears.

  “The planet’s crust has risen and fallen a few centimeters,” Hakim reported.

  “The entire crust?” Andrew Jaguar asked, incredulous.

  “All that we can see,” Hakim said. “I presume the entire—“

  The surface of the planet seemed to shatter, hot white lines racing from the poles to meet at the equator, marking off jagged polygons, then dying into racing small reddish lines, fading again to normal brown.

  Hakim’s face blanched. “I don’t know what that was…The mines are released.”

  “All eleven ships in the outer solar system have turned on thrusters,” Jennifer said.

  Martin surveyed the room, working to steady his breathing. “Something’s up,” he said.

  The star sphere followed the progress of a pod of mines from a bombship. The pod dropped, exploded in a puff, and thousands of mines spread out in a shimmer, disappearing rapidly. Thirty seconds later, massive blossoms of light spread across the atmosphere. Spinning fireballs cascaded like fireworks, dazzling the eye, too many to count.

  That was not supposed to happen.

  Some of the bombships seemed to ignite with burning halos.

  “Strong traces of anti em reactions,” Hakim said. “Extreme gamma ray production, split nuclei forming alpha particles and larger ions. Cherenkov in the atmosphere…I think perhaps the entire planet is made of anti em…”

  “No,” said the War Mother. All faces turned to the painted robot. “The sensors do not support this interpretation.”

  “Still, there are anti em reactions,” Hakim said, voice trembling. “The mines have detonated prematurely…”

  “Have any mines reached the surface?”

  “None,” Hakim said.

  “Are the bombships pulling away?”

  The star sphere showed that the ships were indeed pulling away, four of them surrounded by glowing halos. The halos faded as they gained altitude.

  “Four of our craft show strong anti em traces,” Hakim said.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Martin said. “Is there a layer of anti em in the atmosphere…?”

  “Not possible,” Hakim said, looking to the War Mother for support. The War Mother agreed.

  Tortoise had passed beyond Nebuchadnezzar and was now dipping below the ecliptic. The bombships, one by one, had dropped their loads. Three of the ships, upon spreadi
ng their mines filled with makers and doers, had produced merely the flowering of immense atmospheric explosions across thousands of kilometers, leaving turbulent scars on the planet’s surface.

  The fresh scars made very little difference.

  The planet looks like one huge scar, smoothed over by time.

  “It’s been attacked before, hasn’t it?” Harpal Timechaser asked.

  Martin shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “That’s it. We drilled on that. Nebuchadnezzar has been attacked before. It’s always survived.”

  But three of the ships’ weapons had found their marks and dropped to the surface, leaving no flowers of radiation behind; falling and entering, unseen from this distance but tracked by the bombships responsible. These ships rose from their close approach, clearly visible to anyone watching on the planet, to Tortoise, but minus halos of light.

  The bombships began their acceleration to be picked up by Tortoise. Nothing followed them; nothing attacked. The defense craft around Tortoise stayed in formation, unchallenged.

  “How long until we pick up the bombships?” Martin asked.

  “Twenty minutes,” Hakim said. “They have to accelerate and decelerate on combat schedule—they will be almost out of fuel. We could be more leisurely about it, perhaps.” But he didn’t sound convinced. Unexplained things had happened; not all the mines had made it to Nebuchadnezzar’s surface.

  Martin bit his fingernail.

  “We’ve gotten ourselves into something,” he said softly.

  “What?” Hakim asked.

  They waited, the crew in the cafeteria silent, or whispering softly. Harpal approached the star sphere, examining the planet closely. “We’ve failed, haven’t we? The seeds from the outer cloud will have to do the Job now.”

  “That will take years,” Martin said. He turned to the War Mother. “We can’t get volatiles from Nebuchadnezzar. We’ll have to move on to Ramses and try again. Do you know what happened?”

  “There is deception here,” the War Mother said.

  “No shit,” Harpal said.

  “Bombships are returning. Something’s wrong,” Hakim said. In the sphere, Martin could see them outlined by tiny sparkles of white light.

  “What’s the discharge?” Martin asked the War Mother.

  “Not known,” the War Mother said. “The effect produces intense gamma rays, much like anti-matter reactions.”

  “Do we keep the bombships out?” Hakim asked.

  Martin masked his face with intense concentration, eyebrows knit, lips tightened and pushed out, breath harsh in his nostrils. “That doesn’t make sense,” he said.

  The six bombships drew closer to Tortoise, came into position for pickup, signaling their status on noach. All were intact, all weapons dispersed. The first ship in line-up for retrieval was William and Fred Falcon’s. William’s voice came over the noach.

  “Mines discharged. I’ve got sparkles all around me. I think I picked something up in the upper atmosphere. Why would my mines discharge? Tortoise?”

  Martin asked, “Is it possible the mines were defective?”

  Hakim shook his head. “Nothing has ever been defective on the ship.”

  “We’ve never been in combat. Could something on the planet deactivate the mines?” He turned to the War Mother.

  “No conclusions are possible. Deactivation of the mines is not inconceivable, but simple deactivation would not cause an explosion. The atmosphere may contain seeker and doer systems designed to attack incoming weapons, but we have detected nothing of that nature. Shielded anti-matter dust does not seem a likely possibility.”

  “The weapons could be disguised, or hidden, like our own ships,” Hakim suggested.

  “That is possible,” the War Mother said.

  “Then they do have defenses,” Harpal said. “Maybe the defenses are trying to break through to the bombships—maybe they’re carrying some back with them.”

  “Are they carrying anything?” Martin asked.

  Hakim examined the bombships again. “There is no atmospheric residue around them. We are trailing a residue ourselves—a very faint cloud of discharged ions and molecules…That is all I detect. I do not know what the sparkles are. The craft look clean otherwise.”

  Martin grit his teeth, relaxed his face, opened and closed his eyes slowly, found his chest bound with tense muscle, relaxed the muscle and exhaled.

  “Bring them in, one at a time,” he said. “Fred and William first. Keep them isolated in a one way field—nothing gets out.”

  “Martin, I don’t feel very good,” Fred said over the noach. “My skin’s changing color, or my vision is going bad. William’s sick, too.”

  Something was very wrong. Don’t let them in.

  Hakim and Jennifer floated nearby. “Bring Fred and William in,” he instructed the War Mother. “Isolated, like I said.”

  The bombships took formation behind the Tortoise’s aft homeball, awaiting instructions. Fred and William’s craft was first in line.

  Hakim inquired on the other bombships: “Theresa, Stephanie, any reactions? Problems?”

  Their ships also sparkled as if surrounded by fireworks. The other four did not sparkle. Martin thought: The mines from these ships did not explode in the atmosphere.

  Stephanie Wing Feather responded: “I feel a little ill. We might have been swept by radiation. The fields should have kept it out, but there was such a burst from our mines…”

  “Theresa?”

  “I’m okay. I’m a little dizzy but I’m not sick.”

  The first bombship entered the hatch. The arresting boom, glowing with a bubble isolation field, reached out to attach to the craft.

  Hakim switched the star sphere to a view of the weapons store. Martin’s eyes narrowed.

  The War Mother said: “There is danger of—“

  Time ran out.

  The arresting boom touched William’s bombship. The star sphere filled with light and winked out, leaving dark dazzles swimming in their eyes. Hakim cursed loudly in Arabic.

  A violent shudder slammed the crew against the walls. Fields rose instantly between them, suspending them from further harm, but already there were screams of pain and smears of blood.

  Anti em, Martin’s inner voice said, too late. The bombships and mines were changed into anti-matter.

  The star sphere flickered back for a fraction of a second, showing a lump of twisted, torch-bright wreckage careening through the weapons store, setting off violent blasts and shrapnel wherever it touched. The bombship disintegrated into hissing, sizzling shards; ambiplasma filled the weapons store, and again the sphere disappeared.

  Martin’s wand sang with warnings and messages, too many to be projected at once. The ship will do something without consulting us.

  “Weapons store and the whole hemisphere is going,” Theresa said from outside. “What happened?”

  The other bombships contributed to the chatter.

  Stephanie Wing Feather was the last to be heard: “Tortoise, the aft hemisphere is cracking—“

  Tortoise spun violently like a whirled dumb-bell, accelerating out of control. Messages from the bombships ceased.

  The noise that sang through Tortoise now was more than he could bear. Screaming, Martin shut his eyes and waited for death.

  The protective fields around them abruptly vanished and they were shoved into an agonized mass in one corner of the cafeteria, arms and knees and heads and torsos interlocking with the force as if manipulated by a giant puzzlemaker. Bones cracked and blood misted.

  The fields came on again, but jammed the crew against one another, unable to pick them apart and suspend them separately. All was failing; control was gone, they could see nothing and feel nothing but their crush and pain.

  The ship twisted like a snake. Martin opened his eyes and tried to move but could not. He lay meshed with Andrew Jaguar, Hakim pressed behind him. Martin’s face threw globules of blood against a bulkhead in the flashing twilig
ht. Barely three or four seconds had passed; he still clutched his wand, and Hakim’s fist and wand ground into his calf. He could not move or think.

  All had returned to the animal, to protoplasm.

  Fear and the smell of blood and pressure like an enormous hand grinding them into the cafeteria wall

  I’m sorry Theresa William

  Relief. Blessed nothing.

  I suppose it picked us apart and put us here, was his first thought on awakening and finding himself surrounded by a green net and a gently throbbing field. Suspended in the field, all his body a huge bruise, medical doers like tiny golden worms criss-crossing, touching his bruised flesh, nothing touching him but the golden worms, mouth dry but not parched, top of head burning.

  They all hung in darkness. A cool breeze pricked the hairs on his head and chest. For a moment Martin thought of being dead, corpses laid out for ejection into space. But all the green fields pulsed gently and doers wove around them all. He could not see to identify the faces and he could not count all the bodies so suspended.

  William is dead. And Fred Falcon.

  There were others awake now, making sounds not like moans, more like sighs and whimpers. All too weak to talk.

  A mom floated beside Martin. He did not know whether it actually appeared out of nothing, or whether his attention had flagged; consciousness was a sometime thing under the ministration of the golden worms.

  “How long since we were hurt?” he asked.

  “Two tendays,” the mom said. He noticed a remnant of black and white paint on the front; this was still the War Mother.

  “Where are we?”

  “We have moved to a wide orbit around Nebuchadnezzar. There has been no further attempt to damage the ship.”

  “Why not? They could kill us.”

  “I do not know,” the War Mother answered.

  “How many of us died?”

  “No one aboard Tortoise has died, but all are injured. Half of Tortoise was destroyed. William Arrow Feather and Fred Falcon died first. Yueh Yellow River’s craft disintegrated.”

  “They were turned into anti em, weren’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anti-matter doesn’t behave exactly like matter…Their chemistry was going wrong, wasn’t it? I should have known that. I should have seen the clues, the sparkles…Our outgassing and fuel remnants reacting with the bombship. I should have seen it.”