Rinndalir found the seat beside Cua, settled into it, harnessed himself, cradled Guthrie on his lap. He gave the pilot an order, she acknowledged, their language rippled and sang. “What was that?” Guthrie demanded.
“To put me through to Luna,” Rinndalir said mildly. “What else?”
“Where, and who?”
“Waste no time,” Cua clipped. “I have contact.”
“I should’ve learned your damn lingo when it was invented,” Guthrie grumbled.
The comscreen came alive with the head of another Lunarian. He made a gesture of respect. Rinndalir addressed him briefly, and then: “Say what you wish, Sr. Guthrie. The pickup has you in its field.”
The download began to speak, short barking sentences. The Lunarian at the far end showed an instant’s amazement, then listened hard. From time to time Rinndalir made an English addition to the story. Cua studied her readouts.
“He comes back,” she said. No droplet of sweat glimmered on her brow.
“He’ll aim to fool you,” Guthrie predicted. “Don’t try that sideslip again. I think the max thrust you can conn, straight, will surprise him.” He continued his narration.
Pressure slammed bodies backward, downward. Blood burst from the nostrils of Rinndalir and Cua, twice scarlet against those marmoreal skins. Aft, a man groaned. But the torch flamed in the viewer, only in the viewer. And then Muramasa had slashed by. Guthrie spoke on. Weight dropped to Lunar.
Eyestalks turned upward and around to Rinndalir’s dripping face. “It’s done,” Guthrie rasped. “Beam to yon ship.” Cua did, her hands shaking.
“Inia to Muramasa,” Guthrie chanted. “Respond.”
The screen stayed blank, but his voice snarled, “Muramasa to Inia. You did it, huh?”
“Yep. They have the story on Luna, complete with video of me and these nice folks here. You can still wipe us out if you feel like it, but Lunar radars are locking on, opticals are tuning up, and all in all, it wouldn’t sit well with people.”
A laugh rattled. “No, I reckon not. Naturally, we’ll deny everything.”
“Deny away, if it amuses you.”
“It doesn’t. It just helps a bit. We aren’t about to fold our hands, you know.”
“You could.”
“We could not. I could not. Screw amnesty.”
“They really got to you, didn’t they? Wouldn’t you like a reprogramming job? Be your own man again.”
“Man? Hah.”
Stillness fell, save for the murmur of ships and the hoarse breathing of abused bodies.
“Well,” said Guthrie aboard Inia, “no doubt we can negotiate some kind of peace with you and your friends.”
“If your friends allow,” said Guthrie aboard Muramasa. “From what I’ve heard about them, look out.”
“Hasta la vista.”
“Toujours gai.” So had Juliana often bidden him good-bye. The transmission bulb went dark.
Guthrie looked at Rinndalir. “You okay?” he asked.
“I will survive,” the Selenarch answered, wryly, not quite steadily. “Well that I had the foresight to pack good wine along.”
“Sure, go ahead, get drunk, and lift one for me.” Guthrie’s jesting was mechanical, his mind elsewhere. “We’ll come down in the middle of one all-time luau, won’t we?”
Rinndalir straightened in the seat. From behind red smears, his gaze probed into the lenses. “Not yet shall it be thus,” he said.
Guthrie lifted. “Huh? You mean your people won’t pass the story on?”
Rinndalir lifted a hand. “Have no fears. I could not suppress it did I choose. The odds are even or better that the message was acquired by more than that one station.
In any case, the activity that will ensue, on our part and on the enemy’s, will be largely unconcealable. Rumors will breed and fly free.
“Nay, I simply intend to proceed as I told you, circumspectly. Before this vessel is returned to Port Bowen, she will set down on a Lunar spacefield. You will be brought thence to a safe place. There we will plan and issue your manifesto to the Solar System.”
34
HER SAVAGE ACCELERATIONS done with, Muramasa started for L-5 at half a gravity. Felix Holden released himself from his couch, clambered painfully erect, and limped about checking on the welfare of his five men. Space-trained and in peak physical condition, they had not suffered too badly. Those who had lost consciousness stirred back awake, searched for injuries, and mumbled, “Yes, I’m fit, sir.” They were somewhat dazed, as much by what had happened—bewildering to them—as by what they had undergone.
Holden scorned to take the hoist up to the pilot console when he weighed forty kilos. Climbing the ladder, he sometimes caught his breath and bit his lip. He eased down into the control chair. A semicircular viewscreen reproduced for him stars enhanced, Earth resplendent, Luna harshly outlined, against the dark.
He did not see the pilot. New Guthrie laired beneath these switches and meters, which he made purposeless, connected directly to sensors, effectors, and computers, the heart and forebrain of the system. With its instruments he also looked inward, felt the forces, tasted the chemistry of air, snuffed the faint lightning-whiff of ions. “You okay?” asked his voice.
Holden made a stiff nod. “We came through it, sir,” he reported.
“Sorry to’ve subjected you to that beating. I kept the boosts to what I figured wouldn’t do you any permanent damage, but—I’m sorrier it went for nothing.”
“You are definitely letting them go free?”
“Not much choice. They got the story out. I caught enough of their transmission.”
Holden sighed. “And so, of course, if you did kill them, matters would become worse yet for us.”
“I’m not quite sure of that,” Guthrie growled. “Hell knows what Rinndalir will make of the situation. I wish I’d met him personally over the years. Maybe I’d have a little insight into him.” A rasping chuckle. “I suspect my other self, who does have direct experience, isn’t unrelievedly happy. But we’ll see. Obviously I couldn’t carry out what everybody would call a wanton massacre.”
“What do you intend, sir?”
“Play by ear, roll with the punches, bet according to how the cards are dealt. Juliana always complained about my jumbled metaphors.” Humor died. “Are you game, colonel?”
Holden raised his head. “I’m prepared to do my duty, sir. Likewise my men.”
“But what you see as your duty will depend on what develops, eh?”
The ship could destroy the humans merely by opening the airlocks. “Yes, sir. I hope you feel the same way.”
“M-m, my relationship to your government is kind of different. However—Listen. What I figure to do is refuel at L-5 and return to space, to keep watch against contingencies. I’ll need your help for that. And afterward, I think—I’ve gotten to know you a bit—I think you’ll be the best man to have in charge of the Sepo garrison there.”
Astonished, Holden asked, “What can we do but evacuate it?”
“Toss away a bargaining chip like that, in exchange for a goose egg? You’ve got to be kidding.”
Holden looked at Earth. He had a family. Guthrie waited.
“My command and I will do what our superiors order, sir,” Holden said.
“Good enough. I’ll call them. Sit back and relax. You’ve earned it, all of you.”
“Sir,” Holden said low, to the gentleness he had just heard, “I see why your people always followed you.”
“Followed me? … Okay, take it easy, let me work.”
A beam flashed invisible. A tiny satellite, one of scores circling Earth, detected it and shot back an identification signal. The beam tightened, to track that single relay until time for the next to take over. Its enciphered content passed to a station on the ground and thence to Futuro. Night lay over the North American capital, but Enrique Sayre kept vigil in his office.
His image and words did not appear to Holden. Guthrie received them as inpu
t which he interpreted as face and speech. It would be wrong to say that a computer prepared this for him. Certain centers in the living brain process data that nerves bring in from the eye and the ear, but it is the human being as a whole that perceives the encompassing world. Where he lay connected, Guthrie sensed the electromagnetic spectrum as once the man sensed light. He felt himself moved through gravity fields as once he moved through wind and wave. He knew how to vector himself toward a moving goal as once he knew how to throw a ball or shoot a rifle. Sensations and knowledge were more abundant than when he lived—overwhelmingly more, they would have been, were they not ice-crystal clear. Physics is calculable where biology is not because it is simple. It is incomprehensible where biology is not because it is strange.
“Bueno?” Sayre cried. “What’s the result?” His eyes stared from dark rims blotched on sallowness. He looked hollowed out.
“It was them, all right,” Guthrie told him. “They fired the word to Luna before I could stop them. They’ll arrive in person pretty soon.”
Silence quivered while photons sped to and fro.
Sayre slumped in his chair. “Then the game is up?” He stiffened. “No. We’ll carry on. Come back. Not to Quito, I suppose that’s impossible for you now, but to us. We’ll give you asylum.”
“No, thanks,” Guthrie replied. “To sit useless forever? Listen. We might still manage more than just damage control. You remember my speculating about the Lunarians, when we first learned they’d shown up at L-5? Plain to see, their intent was to winkle my twin out of there, and they succeeded. But they didn’t immediately proclaim what they’d done and why. In fact, they kept mum till I forced them. Doesn’t that suggest they’ve got some intention of their own? What it might be, I don’t know. It could be much worse for you than anything my twin wants. On the other hand, I recall an old saying about fishing in troubled waters. That’s what I aim to try.”
Transmission.
The human peered as if he saw a face in the screen before him. Perhaps he wished he did. “What have you in mind?”
“For the time being, go to L-5, take on reaction mass and antimatter, and prowl space. I’ll leave my crew off there, and I want you—your Synod—to appoint Felix Holden commander of our forces in it. That’ll mean he can get my needs taken care of at once, and he’ll be a tough, smart, reliable man on the spot.”
Transmission.
“I don’t know,” Sayre mumbled. “Some of the cusps in his psychoprofile—Oh, he is loyal.”
“Guys like that may be in short supply once the news breaks,” Guthrie warned. “Let me do as I see fit in space. You’ll have your hands full at home, and then some. Between us, we may yet stay on top of things. We may even end up ahead of the game.”
His electronic senses, probing forward, found the great cylinder, a-wheel against stars.
35
THE ROOM TO which they brought old Guthrie after his speech was not large; but light and shadow, shifting dim in ceiling, walls, floor, gave a sense of unboundedness unstable as a dream. They left him there on a table with much courtesy: he would appreciate how time ran clamant at their heels, he would be alone no longer than the urgencies upon them compelled, if meanwhile he desired entertainment he need but command the multiceiver.
It opened no communication line to the outside cosmos. He left it dark and waited in his case among his thoughts.
At last there came to him the lady Niolente. Her gown glimmered silver through the many-hued dusk into which her hair melted. Its skirt rustled to her stride, which otherwise did not trouble the silence. She drew up to the table and gazed into the lenses he raised toward her. “Hail, my lord,” she greeted. “In what may I serve you?”
“You know damn well what,” he said. “Where’s Rinndalir?”
She spread her fingers fanwise; an Earthling would perhaps have shrugged. “Much is afoot. At this hour, the task of leadership is his. I, being free for a brief while, have sought to you.”
“Yeah, sure, we’ve got to stay on top of things. Then why the hell are you keeping me here? I don’t even know where on the bloody Moon you’ve taken me to.”
“Rinndalir promised you an accounting in due course. I am come to render that.”
Guthrie muttered something elaborately blasphemous before he said, “Account payable to him and you, eh? Okay, tell me what you want of me, we’ll dicker, and then for Christ’s sake let me go. I’ve got Fireball to take charge of. Can’t that penetrate your Tom o’ Bedlam heads? It must be a snake’s nest by now.”
“Nay, my lord,” she told him calmly. “Thus far, a fragile order endures.”
“Well, of course the consortes have common sense, and they’re used to thinking for themselves, but just the same, this news—”
“Only rumors have flown, by-blow of that call to Luna you were forced to make from space.”
“You mean Rinndalir was forced to allow. I wanted—Wait a flinkin’ minute!” Guthrie roared. “You mean your stooges squelched that word as much as they could manage to, and you haven’t aired my statement I made from here?”
“That would have been impolitic to do at the time, as my lord can belike see upon reflection.” Niolente smiled. “The recording of it has now gone forth. Let me show you how it went.”
Guthrie’s eyestalks lay back like the ears of a cat or lips that curl away from teeth. “Yes. Do.”
She sang a command. The multiceiver on the floor lighted. A machine voice declared, from a background of EMERGENCY symbols, that the major matter announced some hours ago would appear, pre-empting all regular transmissions on and from Luna. Rinndalir’s image succeeded it. He identified himself and declared that what came next, the Selenarchy viewed with the utmost gravity. He did not say this in the heavy manner of an Earthside politician, but in an almost casual tone and with the hint of a smile. That was Lunarian fashion.
“So far, so good, and so what?” Guthrie snapped.
His own image sprang into being, the electronically created likeness of a burly man in middle life, clothes informal and somehow looking rumpled, eyes pale blue and aimed straight at the audience, voice deep and a little hoarse. “To Fireball Enterprises and everybody else, this is Anson Guthrie.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said the program in the case. “What else is new?” Niolente waited, on her feet in an easy posture, a statue that breathed.
Guthrie in the cylinder described laconically what had happened to Guthrie in the box. He did not go into detail, nor name any of his allies except Rinndalir, because, he explained, the rest of them were still in danger. As for the encounter in space with his other self, he said merely that a ship had intercepted the Inia—
“Hey, hold on, there!” bawled from the table. Niolente laid a hand on the case. Guthrie did not feel the gesture, as limited as he was when unconnected, but saw it and strangled his oaths.
—fortunately, evasive action foiled the attack. In light of this outrage, the latest of countless that the Avantists had committed over the years against Fireball and freedom and common decency—
“Consejeros and consortes, haven’t we taken enough? Never mind revenge, or simple justice against the persons who commissioned and carried out these violations. We can bring suit before the World Federation and maybe get a judgment for the Peace Authority to enforce, but to what purpose? The Avantist government of the North American Union will continue. It will breed more such persons, who’ll use its machinery to carry out more such antics, while it squats on the North American people and their liberties. It is the menace to world peace, world survival, of the same breed as those that went before it, Holy League, Renewal, Communism, fascism, nationalism, every kind of absolutism, back as far as history goes. Here’s our cause to be done with Avantism.”
The face formed a bleak smile. “Not being a politician, I can’t proclaim a grand crusade for thousands of people to get killed in while I sit safe at home and enjoy my perks. However, in the course of my misadventures on Earth, I learned more than
I knew before about a resistance movement in North America. The Avantists call those folk Chaotics, but that’s a swear word, propaganda. What they are is men and women who want to be free again; and they’re well organized and responsible, too. Avantism is rotted and crumbling. The revolutionaries want to clear it away, quickly and cleanly, before it can do more harm.
“I can’t tell them how they should go about this. But if they choose to rise against the Avantists, now while the grievances of Fireball are fresh—I’ll call on Fireball to give them every help in its power. Repeat, this is not a question of getting even. It is that I’ve always loved freedom, and so has our Fireball.”
When after a while (a short while, because he had never been one for oratory) the cylinder blanked, Guthrie rested quiet half a minute before he said, “That was cleverly done. How much did you have prepared before-hand?”
“Rather little, for we could not foresee whether we would have occasion for it nor what form the occasion might take,” Niolente admitted.
“Computer editing and revising, with reference to analyses of every recording of every talk I ever made, and my biography, and the derived psychoprofile—Pretty slick job. The machines will soon be better at being us than we are ourselves, no?”
She moved to stand in front of him. “The changes are minor,” she said, a trace of amusement in her tone.
“Yeah, small, like changing ‘help’ to ‘hell.’”
“You would in truth like to bring down the Avantists.”
He had no head to shake, but his voice did. “No. Not that way, anyhow. Inciting a rebellion—Haven’t you stopped to think what the risks are? You hope to touch off something that’ll be uncontrollable, the consequences unforeseeable. Why?”
“Precisely for that reason.”
“Wreckage for its own sake? You can’t be that Q-jumpy. Can you?”
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