Anvil of Stars

by Greg Bear

  “Who is Theodore?” Ariel asked. Her lips had cracked and bled sluggishly. She looked elfin with hunger, eyes large and high cheeks gaunt.

  “He died.”

  “On the Ark?”

  Martin shook his head and his neck muscles hurt, bones grinding. Muscles atrophying. No exercise no energy. “On Dawn Treader. Killed himself.”

  “I don’t remember him.”

  “He killed himself.”

  Ariel wrinkled her face in concentration. “Maybe my mind is going. I don’t remember him.”

  Martin looked at her and felt something cold. His lips were parched and cracking and he licked them. “Very smart,” he said. “Smarter than me.”

  Ariel shook her head, and the coldness grew in him.

  “I remember him,” Martin said, but there wasn’t enough energy for either of them to carry the question farther.

  Captain Bligh in his boat carving up a bird between the men sound

  Water dripped onto his lips like rain.

  “Martin?”

  Moved, lifted, weight. Pressing of hands weight on his back. Voices familiar.

  “Twenty-two days.”

  “Martin.”

  Small pain in his arm nothing compared to a chorus of fresh pains all over his body. Tingles, stabs, bones grinding, eyes opened to whiteness no detail.

  Then snakes of lights. Freeway rain in Oregon with tail-lights last year of the world. Snakes of lights in a cabin, ceiling and floor, weight.

  “Hello.”

  No longer in line of dead.

  “Hello,” he said, voice like rocks in a slide.

  “You look pretty shitty, my friend.”

  So who was it? Familiar.

  Shadow in the light, another shadow. “I can’t see.”

  “You both died, you know that? I mean literally, your hearts were stopped and something in the ship, the ship’s last energy, wrapped you in a field so you couldn’t, you know, decay. Absolutely incredible. Martin, come forth.”

  Who would talk like that.

  Joe Flatworm.

  “I’m on the ship?” Martin asked. “Greyhound?”

  “We picked you up five days ago. The sores are gone. You’re looking a lot better. We got four of the other ships. Saved seven Brothers, seven of us.”

  “Ariel.”

  “She’s alive. It’s been a season of miracles, Martin.”

  He saw Joe’s face more clearly. “The war?”

  “It’s still going. We’re still here.” Joe’s broad, pleasant face, supple brows, wide smile. He held Martin’s hand firmly between his hands. Skin warm, dry, like sunned leather.

  Martin craned his neck and looked at himself, wrapped in a medical field, surrounded by warmth, an electric tingle moving from place to place through his body. Relaxed his neck. Swallowed. Throat raw. “Hans?”

  Joe’s smile vanished. “Hey,” he said. “We’re getting it done. That’s enough.”

  Add to the list: Hakim Hadj, Erin Eire, Cham Shark. Silken Parts, Dry Skin/Norman, Sharp Seeing, missing or dead as well. Presumed dead after so many days.

  Still weak, Martin insisted on leaving the medical field to join Hans and view the war. The war had been on for twenty-four days; most of the damage, Joe said, had been done. “We’ve whipped them,” he said with an uneasy smile. Then he took Martin to the nose of Greyhound.

  Hans hung in a net before dozens of projections. His appearance shocked Martin; hair almost brown with sweat and oil, face thin, stinking of sweat and tension. Hans wore only shorts and a sleeveless shirt. His arms seemed knotted with muscles, empty of fat; legs likewise. He did not turn around as Martin and Joe entered.

  Giacomo curled asleep in a rear corner, hand reflexively grasping a net.

  “Martin’s back,” Joe announced. Hans shivered and looked around.

  “Good,” he said.

  The projections showed planetary cinders, wreaths of fading plasma, oblong chunks of moons, seed structures scored and headless and broken like sticks.

  Hans kept his shrewd and weary eyes on Martin, evaluating, smiling faintly. “How are you feeling?”

  “Okay,” Martin said. He had never imagined they would ever summon such destruction.

  “Kind of stirring, isn’t it?” Hans said, nodding his nose at the projections

  Martin shook his head.

  “Hard to take it all in, sometimes,” Hans said. “I’ve spent hours up here just…assessing damage, looking for something we haven’t destroyed. It’s complete. Last two days, even Sleep has broken up.” He pointed to a large image of scattered masses, some dark, some flickering with light, floating in a gray, hazy void. Within the debris, a piece of what must have been crust, thousands of miles wide, rippled like fabric, its edges crumbling away. “No more staircase gods.”

  Martin forced himself to breathe again. The intake of breath sounded like a groan. Hans chuckled. “Glad to see you’re impressed.”

  Martin shook his head. Tides of conflicting emotion pulled him one way, then another. We’ve done the Job. How do we know? We’ve done it. It’s over.

  “Whenever you’re ready to lend a hand, there’s a lot of scutwork to get done,” Hans said. “We’re taking a break now. Ship is on relaxed alert. You should have seen us at the peak. Every Wendy and Lost Boy had their hands on some weapon or another. Giacomo and the ships’ minds…the ships’ minds, mostly, once the evidence was in…really went to town on new weapons. Long-range noach conversions, quark matter pitfalls, spin shattering, they made a whole new arsenal.”

  Did they? Or had the ships’ minds kept them hidden, waiting for necessity?

  “We sent out fifteen craft, mostly for reconnaissance. We got twelve of them back.”

  Martin nodded, eyes still fixed on the abstract complexity of Sleep’s corpse, muted colors horribly beautiful. He could not connect the debris with what he had seen on the two journeys to Sleep’s surface. Somewhere in the dust, scattered atoms of Salamander and Frog, the babar, the red joint-tentacle creature that had crawled up onto their disk ferry for a look.

  Trillions.

  Hans motioned for Martin to come closer. “I’ve got my suspicions,” he said as Martin laddered forward and hung beside him. “I think the moms held back on us at first. Maybe we’ve been lied to all along. But frankly I don’t give a shit. In the end, they gave us the tools, and that’s what counts.”

  Giacomo stirred, opened his eyes, and saw Martin. “Hakim didn’t make it. Erin. Cham.” Giacomo nodded and set his lips, then shook his head.

  “I know,” Martin said. Resentful that he could be expected to react. He could not feel grief yet. None of this seemed real. He expected to wake back on Dawn Treader and know they still had the Job ahead of them.

  Giacomo blinked slowly. “We saved Jennifer,” he said. His eyes seemed darker, deeper, wrapped in exhausted, bruised flesh. “She’ll be all right.”

  Martin shouldered Hans to peer into Hans’ display. Hans made space for him without complaint.

  “It’s done,” Giacomo said. He shook his head in disbelief. “It was a shell. Sixty percent of what we saw was fake matter. We think there were only four real planets. Sleep was one of the real ones.”

  “Don’t cheapen our victory,” Hans said.

  “It was just a shell,” Giacomo repeated. “We found the projectors, we figured out how to make them echo our energy, subvert the system from within…we found a few points where we could start chain reactions…We couldn’t have done it before. It wasn’t nothing and it wasn’t easy. We used up nearly all our fuel.”

  “Real fireworks,” Hans said. “Did you see it?”

  “Is there enough real mass, are there enough volatiles for us to refuel?” Martin asked.

  “Plenty,” Hans said. Martin looked to Giacomo for a second opinion.

  “We’ll have enough,” Giacomo said.

  Hans reached out and grabbed Martin’s shoulder, fingers hard and painful. He shook Martin lightly. “You going to fault me
for this?”

  Martin looked aggrieved, or perhaps simply confused.

  Hans smiled. “We can go marry a planet now.”

  “We can’t leave yet, actually,” Giacomo said. “We have to finish the examination—“

  “Autopsy,” Joe said from the rear.

  “Make sure it’s dead. Do some research,” Giacomo continued. “The moms need a death certificate. We still haven’t talked about being released. We don’t know where we’re going—“

  “Shit,” Hans said. “Let’s savor the moment. We’ll have time enough for the bureaucratic stuff later.”

  Giacomo seemed not to hear him. “We’ve got to transfer Greyhound’s Brothers to Shrike.”

  “Shrike stayed out of it,” Hans said. “Can you believe it? They didn’t do a thing.”

  “I didn’t do a thing,” Martin said.

  “You opened the door, Martin.”

  Giacomo agreed. “You put yourselves in much more danger than we did. You lost many more…” He saw Martin’s expression and lifted his eyebrows, cocked his head. “Sorry.”

  “We should hold a service. Honor the dead,” Martin said.

  Hans did not answer; calling up projections, baring his teeth in a grimacing smile, shaking his head in victorious wonder. “Look at that,” he murmured. “Look…at…THAT.”

  Eye on Sky, Double Twist, Rough Tail, Strong Cord, Green Cord, all had agreed to Martin’s request for a meeting in the Brothers’ recovery quarters.

  He visited Paola Birdsong in her quarters to ask that she interpret for him again.

  Paola had spent less time in space than Martin and Ariel, fewer than eighteen days, but she had been with Strong Cord and Green Cord, and Joe told Martin that the time had been very hard for her. None of the braids had held together; she had been alone for eighteen days with twenty-eight hungry, confused cords.

  “At least they didn’t chew on me,” she said, her voice weak and rough. She had thinned considerably, but her color was good and she moved without apparent pain. “I’m fit enough to work. I never do eat much.”

  Martin smiled admiringly. “You’re a tough one. My joints still ache.”

  “Have you visited Ariel?” Paola asked.

  He shook his head. “I asked, but she’s in seclusion. We spent a lot of time together. I’m not sure she wants to see me again.”

  “She’s been sweet on you for months,” Paola said.

  “We’ve been lovers,” Martin admitted.

  Paola raised her eyebrows. “Better than having cords squirm all around you,” she said. “I’m glad it was me. Anybody else might have come unglued. Is Ariel going to join Rosa’s people and go with Shrike?”

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

  “I’m thinking about it,” Paola said. “You?”

  “Hans got it done,” Martin said.

  Paola sucked in her lips dubiously, decided against arguing the point, and took his arm. “Let’s go,” she said.

  Eye on Sky and the other Brothers resembled bundles of dry sticks. Recovery was harder for the Brothers; the cords had to heal themselves, which meant frequent disassembly and individual care for each cord.

  Martin began to understand why war and conflict had played a much smaller role in the Brothers’ history. Braids were not robust; their existence as intelligent beings was delicately balanced, and violence quickly reduced them to an animal level. Wars fought between cords could not last long.

  So why did the Benefactors send them in the first place?

  Because everybody deserves a chance at justice, no matter how slim the chance might be.

  “We we congratulate you on survival,” Eye on Sky said.

  “We’re sorry to see you leave,” Martin said. He touched Eye on Sky’s broad trunk. The Brother shivered but did not shrink back.

  “I’m very sorry,” Paola said.

  “You can join us,” Strong Cord said.

  “I won’t,” Martin said.

  “I haven’t decided,” Paola said.

  “You, Paola Birdsong, would be very welcome,” Eye on Sky said. “You as well, Martin.”

  “Thank you,” Martin said.

  “The destruction is frightening,” Eye on Sky said. “Simply thinking of it risks disassembly. We hold such power now.”

  “If the moms let us keep it,” Martin said.

  “Will they?”

  “I hope not.”

  “Where will humans go now?”

  “We’ll survey the system. See what evidence we can find. The ships will scoop up fuel. Then…we’ll explore. Find a planet we can live on.”

  “You will not return to your world, to Mars?”

  “I don’t think so. We’ll vote on it, but by the time we get back, almost a thousand years will have passed. Nobody we know will be alive…At least, I don’t think they will.”

  “Other humans have come to visit we us,” Eye on Sky said. “Have expressed regret. Perhaps more will come with Shrike than go with Greyhound.”

  Martin didn’t think, when it came right down to it, that anybody would accompany the Brothers. The mood had changed since the war.

  “How many humans can you stand?” Martin asked with a faint grin.

  “It is a problem,” Green Cord said. Eye on Sky slapped his flanks with tip of tail—something Martin had never seen a Brother do to another. Green Cord expelled a faint odor of turpentine, then baking bread. Upset, propitiation.

  “Martin, your presence would be good, as well,” Eye on Sky said. “I we think of this, and to have you with we all us, that would not cause pain or upset, but linking and harmony.”

  Martin shook his head. “I appreciate the invitation, but I don’t think I’ll go with you.”

  Eye on Sky smelled of licorice and salt air.

  “Polite disappointment,” Paola murmured.

  “Thank you for asking,” Martin told Eye on Sky.

  It was a dangerous time, but Martin could no longer be circumspect. He had survived too much, seen too much, to let certain small things go by.

  On the bridge, Hans ate his meal with measured motions, ignoring Martin. Martin crossed his legs and folded his arms, watching Hans toss bits of cake to his mouth and grab them. When he finished, Hans wiped his hands on a towel stuck in a field, pushed himself around with one hand, and faced Martin squarely.

  “Well?”

  “I’m asking for an investigation,” Martin said.

  “Of what?”

  “Rosa’s death.”

  Hans shook his head. “We know who did it.”

  “I don’t think that’s enough.”

  “Martin, we’ve done the Job. We’ll finish here and go find someplace to live. That has to be enough.”

  Martin’s face flushed. He felt as he had when confronting the moms. “No,” he said. “We need to clear the air.”

  “Rex is dead.”

  “Rex left a message,” Martin said.

  “It’s guilt-crazed shit.”

  “The crew…needs to know, one way or the other.”

  “You want to be Pan again?” Hans asked, deceptively calm. Martin could read the signs: neck muscles tight, one hand opening and closing slowly, grasping nothing.

  “No,” Martin said.

  “Who should be Pan?”

  “That isn’t my point.”

  “If you believe I had something to do with Rosa’s death, then I should be…what? What penalty do you suggest?”

  “Did you put Rex up to it?” Martin asked.

  “Whoa. Shooting at point blank range, Marty. What makes you think I did?”

  “Did you?”

  Hans kept his eyes focused firmly on Martin’s, said, “No, I did not put Rex up to it. I don’t know what was going on in his head. He was confused. Rosa took him in—made him a part of her group. That was her mistake, not mine.”

  “You didn’t tell Rex to attack the Brother?”

  “Christ, no. What good would that have done me?”

&nbs
p; Martin blinked. Got to keep it up. Can’t give up now.

  “You saw Rosa as a real threat, somebody who could divert the whole mission.”

  “Yes. Didn’t you?”

  “You saw yourself as the only one capable of finishing the mission.”

  Hans spread his arms, stretching. “Okay. Not too far wrong.”

  “Rex was your friend. He was devoted to you.”

  “Bolsh. Rex was his own man.”

  “You wanted to make it look that way. You ordered him to attack the Brother, take the blame, isolate himself. He agreed.”

  “So now I’m some sort of hypnotist. Why would I isolate him? You think Rex wasn’t smart enough to see through such a crazy scheme? He’d know why I wanted him isolated. He was no idiot. He’d know it would be so I could jump clear if he was caught. That’s just plain crazy. Rex was not crazy.”

  “Devoted,” Martin suggested.

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “There’s sufficient question to make an investigation necessary,” Martin said.

  Hans wagged his head back and forth, eyes wide, silently mimicking him. “’Sufficient question.’ ‘Investigation necessary.’ Christ, you’re an intellectual giant. Do you think the crew would have followed you into something like Leviathan? We were pissing in our pants, Marty.”

  Martin could feel the nastiness building. “Will you agree to an investigation?”

  “Is this revenge for my not telling you when we’d attack?”

  “No,” Martin said.

  “I think it is. You know why I did it that way. You were in the middle of things. There could have been little ears everywhere. Did you think I would drop all our plans right in their laps?”

  “This is beside the point, Hans, and you know it.”

  “Sure,” Hans said, lifting his hands. “Anything for you.” He leaned forward, one hand pushing on a field, the other pulling, and released his grip to jab a finger at Martin. “They wouldn’t have followed you, Martin, because you get people killed. You’re a regular goddamn McClellan—did you read about him, Martin? American Civil War. Made an army but refused to really go out and fight. Your instincts are bad. You think leadership is a game with justice and rules. It isn’t. Leadership is getting the most people through a hell of a time, and doing the slicking Job!”