Harvest the Fire

by Poul Anderson

  Stop that! Sniveling self-pity.

  How ironic that this ship of fools bears the name of Verdea, the first Lunarian poet.

  As for me, when I return home, what about a career in space? The task beneath my hands has been meaningful in its way, a difficult and not undangerous exercise in preparation for a desperate venture. And I have generally enjoyed serving the Rayenn. At rare, brief intervals the work became so intense that I was it. That is the ultimate, the sole true joy, to lose oneself in something greater than oneself.

  But after this expedition, local spacehopping will be mighty pale stuff. Besides, I’d be unwise to stay on Luna. Clues just might link me to Seyant’s death, if the Scaine Croi hasn’t managed to pass it off as accidental. Or I might be blackmailed into aiding them again. No, better go back to Earth and let them forget me on the Moon. At night when it is in the sky I can look up, remembering.

  Why was I that—dement—that stupid? How could I have been? Oh, I was subject to violent impulses all my life, and every so often they escaped my control, but never to this degree; and it did seem I’d fairly well mastered them. How else could I have trained for and held down the position of a space pilot?

  True, Seyant was vermin—in my eyes—but that was no excuse. If only I could remember that evenwatch better. Why didn’t I hit him with my fist? Well, but there the knife was in my hand; and there Falaire was, and he also her lover, or so she led me to think—

  Nicol froze. He stood motionless until a synthetic voice in his sonors announced, “Unit B is now positioned and ready for you.”

  He shook himself, feeling he should do it as a dog shakes a rat, and went onto the girders. While he tested and fine-tuned, his body working as competently and almost as unconsciously as the robots, his mind flew to and fro.

  I cannot be sure of the Lunarians. Maybe they mean to abide by their promises, maybe they don’t. Certain is that they have been less than candid with me.

  Have I any option but to go through with their piracy?

  A weapon would give me some small leeway. Maybe uselessly small, or maybe not what I would care to use. But at the moment I have none.

  That forbidden cabinet—Bluebeard’s chamber—Do Lunarians have a legend answering to Bluebeard?

  It may or may not hold weapons. If not, at least I’ll know I’m on an approximately equal footing with my shipmates, and feel more assured of Lirion’s good faith. If he does keep concealed arms, then I want to be able to play the same game.

  How to get into the cabinet?

  Nicol began thinking.

  CHAPTER 11

  Again the ship gave Lunar weight, decelerating, her bows pointed sunward.

  Food aboard had been delicious throughout. Given a nanotechnic cuisinator, it had no reason not to be. Lirion had likewise been choosy about the drink he brought along. This evenwatch in the saloon, the meal was sumptuous, a festival. Brilliant patterns of light played in the bulkheads and music rollicked through jasmine-scented air. In Nicol’s honor it was of Earth, ancient, Mozart’s Horn Concerto No. 3.

  Lirion raised his goblet. “The instruments and gauges declare you have done your work well, Pilot Nicol,” he said.

  Amazing how easy it was to dissemble. Nicol had never considered himself subtle. But then, the woman beside him and the man across from him were not of his civilization, not of his breed. Tones, expressions, body language—

  “I’m less confident,” he said regretfully.

  “Ai, why thus?” asked Falaire.

  “I’m not satisfied the installations will all be stable under heavy stress.”

  “They are designed for it,” Lirion said.

  “By Lunarians,” Nicol replied. “With respect, your people aren’t used to thinking in terms of high accelerations. I don’t quite like the look of the docking module where it sits.”

  “An intuition?” Lirion scoffed.

  “Grant me some sense for things like this, by heritage and experience. Listen.” Nicol raised his forefinger. “We don’t know exactly how the operation will go, except that we’re bound to be improvising, and hastily. That could involve putting Verdea through evasive maneuvers at full thrust.”

  “True. We will be prepared for the contingency.”

  “But is the system, especially that module, as ready for it as you’ll be? Could it do any harm to find out in advance of action?”

  “What propose you?”

  “I’ve given it thought and made estimates. We should program for about an hour at, say, one Earth gravity, followed by several quick turns and short boosts at up to three.”

  “Three Earth gravities!” Falaire exclaimed.

  Nicol nodded. “Yes. Eighteen Lunar. It’ll be hard on you two. But properly medicated, cushioned, harnessed, et cetera, you can take it without any real damage and soon recover.”

  Lirion frowned. “Shall we add that much time, including the revectoring afterward, before contact? It will be costly of fuel, too.”

  “Admittedly. But we’ll need extra time anyway, if it turns out more work is required.”

  “And if it does not?” Falaire demanded softly.

  “Then you’ll have had your discomfort, even some pain, and the delay and all the rest—but not for nothing. We Terrans would call it insurance.” They knew that concept, though in their society it was minor.

  “M-m—” Lirion pondered. With the abrupt decisiveness of his race: “So be it.”

  Falaire caught Nicol’s arm. “Truly you are one of us, Jesse,” she breathed. When he glanced at her, her eyes gave promises.

  He suppressed a twinge of conscience. After all, he was not planning to betray her, only to make as sure as he could that she would not betray him. “Let me explain specifically what I have in mind,” he said.

  CHAPTER 12

  As he expected, the tests showed everything to be in good order. As he also expected, they left the Lunarians exhausted, hurting, and in need of much heavy sleep. He was somewhat tired and sore himself, but thrummingly alert.

  Low weight and silence enclosed him. Cat-soft, his footsteps nonetheless seemed to racket in the passageways. Ease off, he thought, relax, or you’ll be so clumsy you’ll wake him, and what then?

  The door to Lirion’s cabin slid aside beneath his hand.

  He had not been there before. Bulkheads set to a uniform, winter-cold gray, it might have been the cell of a medieval monk. Nicol felt surprised; or maybe he didn’t. The man lay stretched naked under a sheet, motionless save for the slow, deep breath. Grimness and mirth alike gone, he looked simply old. Compassion passed briefly through Nicol.

  No time for that; but he dared not be hasty either, lest he make a clatter that would arouse.

  He found the belt he sought, on a tunic in the closet, and drew the key from the pouch. Gripping it needlessly hard, he stole out.

  Down the companionways, to the cylinder at the hold entry. Open it, open the portal within, climb on down through the first section. It was dimly lighted. Containers bulked like mythic trolls. Never had he felt more alone.

  Next section. Turn on its illumination, white and chill. Cross a deck that reaches like an empty plain, now that most of what it bore is outside under the stars. Come to the cabinet and touch the key to its lock.

  The door withdrew. Light spilled across a shelf at face level and, yes, two pistols. But it was the case that struck Nicol’s perception like a hammer. Of dark-blue organometal, a rounded box of slightly more volume than his head, it was set with connectors, sensors, a speaker, and two small hemispheres in front, about where a human’s eyes would be. Within it, he knew, dwelt an awareness.

  No. Not at this moment. The thing was clearly inactivated, the neural network dead. Nicol bit his lip. Wrong word, he thought crazily. Death did not mean the same to this entity as it did to him, nor did life.

  Why was it here?

  He didn’t know how long he stood trying to think. It was as if the brain gyred within his skull. At last he realized he was shiver
ing, and caught the reek of his sweat.

  That was like a slap shocking him into purposefulness. An ally of Lirion’s wouldn’t have been shut away in the dark, would it? There didn’t seem to be any alarm. He had come in search of truth.

  Odd how steady his fingers were, pushing aside the appropriate cap on the box and reaching in to press the recessed main switch. At once he stepped back and stood wire-tense.

  The front shells halved themselves and retracted. Two flexible stalks emerged, cups at their ends. They rose to their full length, fifteen centimeters, and swiveled slowly about. When they came to rest, they were aimed at him. Within the cups, he saw optic lenses gleam.

  “Awake again—” The male voice spoke Anglo, with an accent from Earth’s southeastern quadrant. It became a whipcrack: “Who are you? Is this a rescue?”

  It can’t attack me, Nicol thought, and it doesn’t sound like a foe, and I’m starved for friends. He made thick tongue, dry mouth, constricted throat reply, “N-no, I, I don’t think so—not yet—But what are you?”

  The other spoke with machine self-command but human urgency: “Have we much time? What can we do?”

  Nicol began regaining balance, as swiftly as men are apt to when crisis comes upon them. “Maybe an hour. Maybe more, but I’d rather not risk it. Speak low.”

  “We’re aboard the Proserpinan ship, then?”

  “Yes, bound for a rendezvous—Do you know?”

  “Lirion told me in general terms.” The voice turned impersonal. “He was willing to talk, being interested in how I’d respond, till he shut me off. We’re bound for the boldest theft in history, the antimatter carrier, aren’t we?”

  “Yes. In two more daycycles.”

  The voice took on a hint of warmth. “I know you, Pilot Jesse Nicol, but you don’t know me. Permit self-introduction. I commonly use the name Venator. I’m not a sophotect; I’m the download of a Peace Authority intelligence agent, revived when my service got wind of dangerous game afoot.”

  Nicol’s flesh prickled as he noted the word “revived.” More important was “Peace Authority.” Ridiculous though it was, the sense of helpless isolation lifted a little from him, while the fear of being found out back on Earth gained strength. When Venator asked for his story, it rattled from him as if of itself, in broken pieces.

  “But what happened to you?” he blurted.

  Venator replied succinctly.

  “Lirion’s a crafty one,” he finished. “The scheme was his from the beginning, with lesser inputs from fellow conspirators after he reached Luna—and from circumstances as he found them and took advantage of them. What an opponent! … He told me, there in the apartment, that at our previous meeting he’d guessed I’d attempt personally to spy on him. The layout invited it, especially since he was quick to remove safeguards that had been installed earlier.”

  The twists and turns left Nicol bewildered. “Do you mean he wanted you there?”

  “Of course. Then my corps would assume matters were well in hand, and wouldn’t strike at him in other ways.”

  “But now you’ve disappeared!”

  “Hench was ready for that. Another distorted genius. He’d prepared an electronic deceptor. Maybe you haven’t heard of such devices. When the minirobot came to check on me, it would get the sensor impression that I was still present and giving it no signal that I wished to be removed. Oh, yes, eventually my service will grow suspicious and raid the place, but by then all birds will have flown. They’ll have left no particular spoor, thanks to what Hench planted in the TrafCon and security systems. Nor will the Authority be able to locate this ship, when she’s deviated from her declared flight plan.” Nicol nodded. Unless searchers had some idea of where to seek, immensity was a well-nigh perfect hideaway. “All they’ll know, or surmise, is that Lirion completed whatever mischief he intended on Luna, or failed in it, and departed, presumably having discovered me and taken me along for interrogation and a hostage. Which, in fact, are his reasons. And they’ll suppose that’s why he’s taking a roundabout way home.”

  “God, the gamble,” Nicol whispered.

  Venator fashioned a harsh laugh. “Lunarians are gamblers by nature, no? And this game of theirs was cannily planned and played. Also with you, my friend.”

  Nicol’s throat tightened anew. “I’ve wondered—”

  “Have you wondered enough?” Venator snapped. “Do you understand what Falaire’s part in it must have been?”

  Sickness welled up. “Falaire?”

  “She was brought into the plot by those persons Lirion contacted through quantum encryption while he was still en route. Her assignment was to find a Terran space pilot who could be recruited or entrapped. I rather imagine the exact procedure was her idea too, when she’d gotten to know you. The execution of it certainly was. Another formidable brain.”

  “What—do—you—mean?”

  “You did not murder that obnoxious Seyant.”

  Through thunders, Nicol heard the explanation.

  “You couldn’t have been provoked to it, in your normal state,” Venator continued. “Clearly, Falaire slipped a psychodrug into you. Exoridine-alpha, I’d guess, in something you ate or drank. She’d have taken a counter-agent beforehand. Even after that, it took manipulation, very skillful and quite heartless, to make you strike.”

  Silence followed.

  When Nicol had his wits back and could speak, it was out of a great interior hollowness. “I see. Yes. It makes sense. It accounts for everything.”

  “You’re not to blame,” Venator told him gently. “Instead, you’re the single person in the universe who can retrieve this whole disaster.”

  “How?”

  “Why, you need only beam a call to Earth. If you could come here secretly, I imagine you can do that as well, unnoticed, somewhere along the line. The Authority will send combat-armed, high-boost ships. They may arrive after the antimatter vessel had been diverted toward Proserpina, but they’ll recover and redirect it, once they know what to look for.”

  “And we? You and me?”

  “If you get your message off soon, this ship won’t have gotten too far away, either, for radar and neutrino detectors to track her. She’ll be no match for theirs. Lirion will release us to the pursuit. The alternative will be destruction. He’ll doubtless try to bargain for being let go, himself and Falaire, and possibly the service will decide it isn’t worthwhile to attempt seizure. Sophotects are pragmatists. Nor will Lirion take revenge on you. Besides your exchange value, well, Lunarians may be cruel, but they aren’t senselessly vindictive.”

  “No,” Nicol mumbled. “Sometimes they’re actually idealists.”

  Venator’s voice sharpened. “Study some history, and you’ll see how much wreckage, misery, and death was due to idealists. Earth is well rid of their sort.”

  Impulse grabbed Nicol, like his life and free will asserting themselves. “But why do you serve, Venator? Isn’t that for your cause, your ideal?”

  “You could say I serve the cause that logic and experience show is the cause of peace and decency.” The tone softened. “But—oh, perhaps I owe you a bit of confessional have been an avatar of the Teramind. I hope to go back to its Oneness. Then I, this little spark of existence that is I, will belong again to that which truly understands.”

  Nicol stood hushed for a spell, as is seemly in the presence of a faith transcending the world.

  “I see,” he murmured.

  Venator reverted to the practical. “You’ve more reason than that to be on my side. When Lirion and I were alone, talking, he answered a question of mine very frankly. He wasn’t, and I imagine he still isn’t, sure whether he’ll honor his commitment to you. If he leaves you off where you can get passage home, can you be trusted to keep quiet for nine years?”

  “I should think so, if I took part in the theft after … killing a man.” A crawling went through Nicol’s skin.

  “You might break down.”

  “But those arrangements with th
e Rayenn—and, and Falaire—”

  “Yes, as far as I could tell, which isn’t extremely far, they and she intend to keep the pledge to you. And perhaps Lirion will decide to take the risk, if only for the sake of their good opinion. But perhaps not. Once you’re dead, who’ll bother to punish him? Done is done.”

  As if to shove the idea away, Nicol countered, “What about you?”

  “I have my private stake in this,” the download admitted. “Lirion and his colleagues obviously won’t send me back from Proserpina before the antimatter is in their”—another chuckle—“I won’t say hands, but in their possession. And why should they at all? I have plenty of information about my corps that they’d find most useful in planning any future escapades. The methods of getting me to talk and making sure I tell the truth won’t leave much in working condition.”

  Virtual hells.

  “I’d hate to believe that of them,” Nicol said.

  The tone conjured up an image of phantom shoulders shrugging. “He didn’t threaten me with it, only with years of detention, and perhaps he won’t do it, but I’d rather not make the wager.”

  “Or I my wager,” Nicol whispered.

  “Exactly. Now, have we exchanged enough? Safest will be to shut up shop here as fast as possible.”

  The man nodded.

  “I suggest you take those sidearms, keep one hidden, and get rid of the other,” Venator went on. “Lirion won’t likely come inspect this cabinet. Why should he? But if you are caught acting against him and Falaire before the consequences are irrevocable, you’ll be glad of a weapon.”

  “Yes.” Nicol slipped the pistols under his belt. “Shall I leave you awake?”

  “M-m, I do have many thoughts to think. But you don’t know when you’ll be back, do you? Best not.”

  Could sensory deprivation drive a download, too, mad?

  “All right.” Nicol reached for the switch.

  “Good hunting,” Venator said.