Anvil of Stars

by Greg Bear

  It no longer blinked. It maintained a steady sandy brown color.

  “Something’s changed,” Martin said. He pointed to Blinker. Hakim’s face darkened with excitement.

  “How long does it take a light signal to reach us from Blinker?” Martin asked.

  “Three hours twelve minutes,” Hakim said.

  “Can you play back the records?”

  Hakim quickly replayed ship’s memory of the planetary images until they found the precise moment when the planet had stopped its fluctuation. “Three hours ago,” Hakim said.

  “What else has changed?” Martin asked.

  Hakim expanded the planetary images one by one: Mirror turning milky, its perfect reflectivity catching a hot moist breath; Frisbee, its edges browning like burned bread dough, the unknown “hair” shedding into space; Cueball unchanged; Gopher’s gleaming lights within impossibly deep caverns burning brighter, bluer, like torches.

  They came to Puffball, with its immense bristling seed-like constructions. Some seeds had lifted away from the planet’s surface, one, three, six of them, and more on their way. Spikes at the top of the seeds also broke free, flying outward at high speed.

  “Are they attacking?” Hakim asked.

  “I don’t know. Pass this on the noach to Greyhound and Shrike.”

  “Done,” Hakim said. A moment later, his mouth went slack. “There is no noach connection,” he said. “They are not receiving. I do not know where they are.”

  Paola and Erin entered the bridge.

  “We’re in trouble,” Martin said. “Hakim, pull out of orbit…”

  Silken Parts pushed through the door as Hakim ordered the ship away from Sleep.

  “What’s happening?” Erin asked.

  “We don’t know, but I’m taking us out of here.”

  “We have a reply now,” Hakim said. “From Sleep…”

  Salamander’s voice filled the bridge. “There have been disruptions on four of our worlds.” Salamander’s image appeared in flat projection. Crest pointed straight out, three eyes open, hissing loudly behind its words, the bishop vulture managed to convey its disturbance.

  “We don’t know what’s happening,” Martin said.

  “There is tampering with balances. These worlds are delicate and many lives are in danger.”

  “We haven’t communicated with our…” He couldn’t finish the deceptive wording, his tongue caught in too many prevarications. He simply stared at Salamander’s image. The bishop vulture lifted its crest, hissed softly.

  “You are a lie and a deception,” Salamander said. “We have no further need of you.”

  The image and voice faded. “End of transmission,” Hakim said. “Still no success with noach to Greyhound.”

  The rest of the crew crowded the bridge, watching the long drama play itself out over the next half hour.

  The three identical planets—Pebbles One, Two, and Three—abruptly glowed dull orange, then red, then white, in sequence according to their distances from the ship. Their surfaces diffused like paint in water, glowing specks rising and falling.

  “Who’s doing that?” George Dempsey asked. “Them, or us?”

  The seeds of Puffball twisted about as if blown in a gentle breeze. On such a scale, that simple motion spoke of immense energies.

  Martin could hardly think in the ensuing babble noise. The cabin filled with Brother smells, stinging his eyes. He saw a cord scramble past him, then watched as a Brother—he could not identify which—disassembled. Silken Parts immediately began gathering up the cords, which clung to fields waving their feelers helplessly.

  They didn’t even know what weapons Greyhound now possessed, or what their effects would be. One effect was obvious—the attack had been launched on many targets almost simultaneously, judging by the arrival of light-borne information at intervals determined solely by distance. That spoke to Martin of noach; and the first object to change its character had been the massive noach station, Blinker.

  What are they up to?

  “I know what’s happened,” Ariel said just loudly enough for Martin to hear, bracing herself on a field behind him.

  “What?”

  “Hans has started the war without telling us.”

  With a momentary sense of dizziness, as if he had been through all this before, he realized she was probably right.

  Hans had used them to give Greyhound an edge.

  “Then why aren’t we dead?” Martin asked. His entire back prickled, waiting for imminent death.

  Ariel shrugged. “Give them time.”

  The mom and snake mother came onto the bridge. “This ship has been under steady attack for an hour, and our ability to armor against their weapons is diminishing. We assume control now. Super acceleration is called for,” the mom said.

  “We don’t have the fuel,” Martin said.

  “We will convert as much as we can,” the mom said.

  “Can you communicate with the other ships?”

  “Yes,” the mom said.

  “Greyhound and Shrike?” Martin asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Are they attacking?”

  “Yes.”

  “You knew they would attack?”

  “No.”

  “But you must have known…You must have known when they began!”

  The mom did not reply. The volumetric fields expanded. Martin felt their molasses grip, the jerky impediment to all bodily motion.

  All slowed in the mire. Martin tried to keep the threads of his attention together. He examined the bridge carefully, separating effect from true perception.

  The bridge changed. Walls grew and separated them into pairs. Martin saw that Ariel would be enclosed with him. She stared at him and he turned his head away, the volumetric fields giving permission for every particle to move, move slowly.

  “Can you hear me?” Ariel asked.

  “Just barely.”

  “I think we’ve split up. Trojan Horse.”

  “You’ve been right so far,” Martin said.

  “Don’t hold it against me,” Ariel said.

  He shook his head. “Never.”

  “He’s taken our rights away,” she said, rather irrelevantly, Martin thought.

  Super acceleration ceased two hours later. Martin had barely regained his wits when the ship’s voice said, “First attack repelled. We are being followed.”

  “What in hell has happened?” Martin asked, trying to kick-start his brain by shaking his head, stretching his body in the directionless weightless meaningless walled-in cubicle.

  Another voice, Hans caught in the middle of a triumphant yell. Ariel gave a small shriek like a doomed rabbit.

  “We’re doing it, Martin! Trojan Horse has gotten the hell away and split up. We haven’t forgotten you. We’re keeping track of you. But you’re being followed.”

  The cubicle lacked screen or star sphere. “Show us something, tell us what’s going on!” Martin cried.

  The ship tried to speak, but Hans interrupted. “We’ve gone black, made our moves. Sorry about not telling you.” As casual as that. Sorry about not telling you.

  “What the hell is happening, Hans?”

  Ariel pushed herself into a corner as if to stay out of his way.

  “Trojan Horse broke up and split. Something’s following you. It sure isn’t bothering to hide, and it’s right on your ass. You and two others are all they’ve managed to tail. I’d say they’re using you to try to find something bigger. If you don’t lead them to us—and you won’t, my friend—you’re dust.”

  “We have broken this vessel into ten units and accelerated them in different directions outward from Leviathan,” the ship’s voice said, almost irrelevantly at this point.

  We are still more valuable as clues to where the big ships are. They know us. They know our psychology; they figured it out right away, that we wouldn’t deliberately sacrifice ourselves, that at some point a rescue would be attempted.

  “Hold on a m
oment,” Hans said.

  Ariel reached out a hand and Martin took it. “He’s going to sacrifice us,” she said.

  “Show me something,” Martin told the ship, whatever kind of ship it was, whatever size. “Show me the outside. What’s following us.”

  A small screen appeared against one wall. A white sphere filled the screen, pocked by glowing blue dots.

  “Harpal has your tagalong’s coordinates,” Hans said. “We’ll get it. You should see this, Martin. It is in-credible!”

  The white sphere blistered like a plastic ball hit by a torch. The blisters spread open and the sphere diminished. Curls of darkness blanked the whirling stars, streaming from the sphere, reaching toward them.

  “Super acceleration,” the ship’s voice said. Fields seized again, and Martin screamed. The scream was forbidden and died as a hollow glurp in his throat.

  He heard and saw again an unknown time later.

  Harpal’s voice in his ears. “We got your dog, Martin. Thought you should know.”

  They have Gauge on Greyhound. My dog is waiting for me? No—

  “We noached it straight to hell,” Harpal said. “It’s a beautiful streamer of plasma about fifty thousand klicks long. Christ, these weapons are unbelievable!”

  The craft following them had vanished. In its place wafted a wide, striated shower of glowing debris, each piece fanning out in a straight line, vapors like rays of sun through clouds.

  Martin still held Ariel’s hand. Slowly, she opened her eyes and looked at him with an expression of intense grief.

  “You’re safe for the time being,” Harpal said. “You’re really rocketing. Can’t talk now. They haven’t pinned us yet, but they’re trying, wow are they trying…”

  Silence, long minutes, before Martin realized the noach message had ended.

  Martin let go of Ariel’s hand.

  “They’re doing it, aren’t they?” she said.

  Martin nodded. “They divided Trojan Horse.”

  “Who?”

  “I didn’t give any order. The moms. The ship itself.”

  “We’re out of the action. Hans screwed you over double,” she said.

  Martin shook his head. “What?”

  “By not letting you do the Job with him. And by cutting all of us out of the decision.” She turned away. “Will they pick us up?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Magnified images: a rocky planet, Lawn, sparkling fire snaking over its surface. Greater magnification: strange superheated forests burning like carpets of magnesium, ribbons of shredded land rising as if cut from paper, something moving over the surface, dark and immense, not a shadow, more like a finger drawing chaos in the rock.

  Another: Big City, the finger moving yet again. God’s finger taking vengeance.

  Much smaller in the screen, another rocky world, not immediately familiar to Martin, this one dying in a particularly violent display, throwing chunks of itself into darkness as if being chewed apart by immense beasts.

  “Blinker,” the ship’s voice said. “It will consume itself. Nothing living or ordered will survive.”

  “How?” Martin asked. “How can we do this?”

  “Remote manipulation of forces within atomic nuclei,” the ship’s voice said. “Blinker is particularly vulnerable, as a noach station of immense power. Greyhound has found the main weakness, and exploited it.”

  “How much can Greyhound destroy?” Martin asked.

  “Uncertain. Defenses are not fully deployed.”

  Sleep appeared, surrounded by immense seeds with brushy tops, much like those released from Puffball, reminding Martin of immune response in humans, although on an astronomical scale. “Explain.”

  “Not clear. White objects in orbit around this world may try to confuse targeting of noach weapons.”

  Noach weapons. Confirmed.

  A haze as fine as dust in air spread out with incredible speed—visible even on this scale—from the scattered seed-puffs. A seed-puff’s crown glowed brilliant orange, then faded to green and vanished, leaving the thousand-kilometer “stem” to precess slowly. Another headless stem, coming into view, as the minutes passed, around the limb of Sleep, fell toward the planet. Its lower extremity touched atmosphere. Slowly, slowly, across more minutes, the stem bent over and laid itself in the atmosphere and across the surface, surrounded by ripples of mixed crust and ocean, all vapor now, glowing dull red with bursts of pink and white.

  Soon all of Sleep became enveloped in a nacreous halo, plasma thousands of kilometers thick turning it into a dim star. Radiation scoured the surface; falling seed-puffs stirred it like mud, a mud of continents and oceans.

  Martin could not believe that Greyhound alone was responsible for this.

  “Are we getting help…from somebody outside?” he asked, face pale. Memories of watching Earth. Same scale, but even more destruction.

  “There are no other combatants,” the ship’s voice said.

  Gas Pump showed in the display now, immense plumes of mined volatiles spreading out of control, white plasma shooting through, green and blue surfaces turning muddy yellow.

  “What can we do?” Martin asked.

  “Escape is our only option,” the ship’s voice said.

  Martin’s fingers curled. Ariel wrapped her arms around herself, watching with haunted eyes.

  Hours.

  Neither Martin nor Ariel expressed hunger, but they were fed anyway, a meager paste that tasted of nothing in particular.

  The display projected their path across a diagram of the system. They were actually moving closer to the star at this point, but a journey across the width of the system would take them almost three days, through the thick of the battle, across the orbits of thousands of vehicles they had never had time to catalog or examine, whose purposes they might never know.

  “Are we going to accelerate again?” Martin asked.

  “All fuel is expended,” the ship’s voice said. “Reserves are for keeping you alive.”

  During his thousands of hours of research into war and human history, Martin had read about a man with a striking name—Ensign George Gay. Ensign Gay had flown an airplane in the Battle of Midway, during the Second World War. He had been shot down, and had floated for hours in the midst of ships and planes trying to destroy each other.

  “How long is it going to take?” Ariel asked.

  “The war? I don’t know. Could be weeks. Months.”

  “It doesn’t look like it will take nearly that long. I’m tired.” She sounded like a child.

  Martin cradled her in his arms.

  Number eight, the gas giant Mixer expanding like a sick, bruised balloon, shell upon shell of brilliant gases like the petals of flowers. Thousands of years of construction and technology and how many individuals, how many beings even more developed than the staircase gods? Imagine so many possibilities not shown. Who is winning

  Eat sleep share a part of the wall that sucks away our wastes

  Ship no larger than an automobile

  How many survived from Trojan Horse

  Most of the seed-puffs gone now exhausted or served their purpose. Four worlds dead or dying, others under siege. God the power. What will we do after, knowing this? Maybe Hans is right they will snuff us.

  Gas giants ripping apart in slow motion can it be we did this? They are like suns now, spinning tails of brilliance from poles and equator, prominences. Did Hans know we could do this

  No messages and two days have passed. We sweep away from Leviathan. Sleep much of the time, eat rarely now, there is no space to exercise. Breathe slowly, watching worlds writhe and die across hours and days.

  All the rocky planets and moons seething surfaces uniform deep red

  All! All! Jesus, ALL of them!

  Ariel leaned over him, hand on his shoulder. “I can’t get the ship to talk,” she told him. “It won’t answer.”

  Martin tried. Still no answer.

  “That means we’re going to die, doe
sn’t it?”

  “I hope not,” he said.

  Ariel pounded a fist on the gray wall. “Hey! Talk to us!”

  No images no information. Try exercising, pushing against each other, feet to feet, wrestling she is almost as strong as I am strain a muscle.

  Tell her I’m dreaming more now of Earth. Of forests and rivers, of our house in the woods in Oregon with the broad patio. My toys, soldiers my parents bought me. We talk until we get thirsty. Trickle of water from the wall, wastes still sucked away something is working but the mom does not speak and we can t see anything outside. Sleep most of the time and talk of spaces outside, times past, places gone.

  Getting cold actually now. We hug each other but no energy left to exercise. Saw Theodore in the cabin playing cards with himself. Smiled at me. Offered a deck to me. Maybe he s a ghost and the dead are going to greet us soon.

  Such a great tide of dead rising from this place, trillions we’ve killed. What do staircase gods look like reporting to the afterlife, already stripped of material bodies? No battlefield so crowded with dead in long lines and we stand in queue waiting our turn to be inspected passed through. Salamander and Frog ahead of me; the babar and sharks up ahead, looking angrily at us. Don’t get too close to them don’t want fights in line Theodore says.

  “Martin, wake up. There’s a little water now. Drink.”

  “Did you have yours?” he asked.

  “I’ve had mine. Drink.”

  He sucked globules from the air. One got in his eye, burned a little. The water didn’t taste good. But it was wet.

  No food.

  For some time, Martin felt no hunger, until he saw Ariel looking visibly thinner, and felt hungry in her place, for she did not complain.

  “It’s been at least six days,” Martin said.

  “It’s been eight days exactly.”

  “How do you know?”

  She held up her right hand and pointed to the middle finger. “Eight. I trim my fingernails with my teeth. See? These two are long.”

  Are my parents dead? How would I know? Maybe we’ll meet them soon. Is Rosa in this line? I see her. Won’t look at me, won’t give up her place to come talk to me. Theodore goes over to talk with her. He doesn’t care about his place.