Harvest the Fire - [Harvest of Stars 03]

by By Poul Anderson

  Nicol quivered. “I’ve sometimes thought—Go on.”

  “A final consignment of antimatter is a-space in its robotic ship, bound from Mercury for storage in orbit beyond Saturn,” said Lirion slowly. “This is a high secret, of course, but Hench has uncovered it for us.”

  “We knew something of the kind must happen sometime.” Falaire’s voice rang. “Now is the time, and our last chance.”

  Nicol threw up his hands. “Wait! You can’t—no—”

  “Yes,” Lirion answered like steel. “We propose to capture that cargo for Proserpina. To this end we need a spacefarer who is skilled and a Terran.”

  “You, Jesse,” Falaire said.

  “No,” Nicol stammered, “hold on, you’re dement.”

  “The scheme is well wrought,” Lirion declared. “Agree to it, and you shall hear.”

  “Agree blind, to that? No! I tell you, I’m not dement.”

  He doth protest too much, methinks, Venator reflected. Yet he was in truth not witless, whatever the present state of his nerves and glands. He might well be tempted, yes, strongly tempted, but he would not likely fall.

  Evidently Falaire was closely acquainted with him. How could she so have misgauged him?

  “We’ll make it safe for you,” she urged. “None will ever know, save a few who will never forget.”

  “And then when we are all securely dead, the tale shall be set free, to your immortal glory,” Lirion promised.

  “What good’s glory to a dead man?” Nicol flung back.

  “Eyach, you shall have pay worthy of the emprise, and no suspicion will come nigh you,” Falaire said. She paused. “Unless, for your reward, you choose to fare with us to Proserpina.”

  He gaped, bewildered. “Us? You mean you?”

  She nodded. “I claim that recompense for my part in this.”

  “But how—”

  “You shall learn every ‘how’ when you have sworn to us,” Lirion said.

  “And if I don’t like it—No, impossible! And, and it’s piracy you’re talking of, the greatest crime since—Falaire, don’t!” Nicol reached for her. She swayed aside.

  “See, I told you he’d shriek and flap,” Seyant jeered.

  The breath rattled in Nicol’s gullet. “You’re asking me to—”

  Falaire cut him off. “At the bare least,” she said coldly, “you’ve sworn to me you’ll keep silence, whatever you have heard, that we may seek someone else.”

  “Someone with manhood,” Seyant tossed in.

  “Shut your hatch or I’ll shut it for you!” Nicol screamed back. To Falaire and Lirion: “I’m going now, before I kill that slimeworm.”

  Strange, his overreaction, Venator thought. Granted, he already hated Seyant, and the taunts this evenwatch seemed calculated. Nevertheless, a spaceman couldn’t do his job without a cooler head than Nicol was showing. Somehow he’d gotten into a quite abnormal condition. And it must have come upon him unawares, or else he’d recognize it, allow for it, and handle himself a good deal better.

  Ah-h-h. An idea began to grow in the download.

  “You’ll truly not dare it?” Falaire was asking.

  “How can I? Oh, God,” Nicol groaned, and for a moment buried face in hands. “I understand you, your wish, and I—I could wish too—” He looked up. “No.”

  “Then we have naught else to speak of,” she said. “Depart.”

  Lirion raised a palm. “First swear silence before us.”

  Nicol gritted his teeth. “Silence about a, a conspiracy—”

  “You gave me your word,” Falaire said. “We ask only that you give it anew. I believe in your honor. I have pledged this with mine, to these my spirit brothers.” Her voice lowered. “I will not leave Luna for a while yet, Jesse. Would you see me arrested? They will correct my thinking, Jesse, they will make me into something other than what I am, if I fail to kill myself.”

  Shaking and sobbing, Nicol got out, “All right, I’ll swear your damned oath.” His own voice, high and cracked, told how near hysteria he was.

  “Upon the Knife,” said Lirion.

  Seyant glanced down at his belt. “Nay. It would defile my blade.”

  “The Knife, Seyant.”

  The young man heaved a sigh. “As you will. I can consecrate another afterward.” He drew it and extended it to Nicol, who took it blindly, automatically.

  Consecrate? wondered Venator. Seyant had used the Spanyo word. It was not a Lunarian term, scarcely even a Lunarian concept. What was going on? Playacting—

  Nicol hadn’t noticed. The weapon shook in his grasp.

  “No need for that,” Falaire was saying. “The steel is alloyed with its honor.”

  Seyant sneered. “Not after it’s been in the hand of a eunuch.”

  Nicol shuddered. “I’ll have to wash that hand of mine, pretty boy,” he coughed, “till I’ve got the top layer of skin off. Stay clear of me after this, you hear? I’m warning you, stay clear.”

  “Ai, I will,” Seyant laughed. “I’d not have you publicly wet your breeches.”

  Nicol spat at his feet. Seyant struck him across the mouth. Nicol howled, a sound inhuman, and stabbed.

  Crimson spouted. The guard of the knife stood against Seyant’s tunic. He staggered backward and collapsed in a tangle of limbs.

  Lirion seized Nicol’s arms from behind. Nicol fought him, then sagged, the color drained from his face. Lirion released him.

  Falaire and Hench crouched over the body. Hench’s fingers searched across lips and pulse. He looked up. “Dead,” he stated.

  “So easily?” Falaire whispered.

  “A major blood vessel severed, I think. Massive internal hemorrhage.”

  “No, please no,” Nicol mumbled. “Call for medics. Revival—”

  Hench shook his big head. “It would take too long, when we’ve no way here to cool him. Substantial brain cell decay.”

  Falaire rose and made a sign. “He would not want to be what he would be after they restarted him,” she said quietly. “Give him his peace.”

  None of this was right, Venator thought. But Nicol was shocked and stunned beyond reasoning about it. Tomorrow his memories of it would have blurred into nightmare.

  “And the police would make inquiry,” Falaire continued. “Our undertaking would come to light, our cause be lost. You, Jesse, do you wish for psychocorrection, inhibition laid into your mind like shackles, and an end to spacefaring or any other work you ever hoped for? Nay, let Seyant lie.”

  Lirion nodded. “It is done, and belike the blame was chiefly his. Let him not have died for naught.”

  Their attitude was convincingly Lunarian, Venator thought, if Seyant had not been pledge-bound to them.

  Falaire took Nicol’s arm. “Jesse,” she said, “come home with me. We’ll not forsake you.”

  “I have no obligation of vengeance,” Lirion told him.

  “And I have my fealty to a dear friend,” she said. “Jesse, come.”

  He stumbled away with her.

  When they were gone, Lirion stooped above the body and withdrew the knife. Venator saw how the guard clung, and then how the steel came back out of the hilt as Lirion pulled the weapon free. A few more drops of what looked like blood trickled after, luridly red.

  “How fares he?” Lirion asked.

  Hench shrugged. “He should regain consciousness in about an hour, I’d say. Best leave him as he is for a few minutes, then carry him to bed.”

  So the retractable blade had pierced just enough to inject a drug—neurostat, probably—that gave instant anesthesia and reduced respiration and heartbeat to a pretty good imitation of death. The whole thing was staged to ensnare Nicol. Yes, Venator thought, these were desperate and dangerous folk.

  Tomorrow a tiny robot would scuttle up the shaft to check on him. He would signal that he wanted to be removed, and it would go summon a larger machine. With luck, Hench would again be alone here and not notice anything.

  When the Peace Authority ha
d seized the four, clues should radiate outward to others. The plot would be broken and, Venator expected, the heart torn out of the Scaine Croi.

  No public sensation. Everything kept as discreet as possible. But a well-phrased confidential message to the Selenarchs of Proserpina should chasten them. Some among them might begin to think that, after all, membership in the World Federation had many advantages.

  Lirion laid the knife on a desk. “Meanwhile,” he said, “let me see to another bit of business.”

  He strode toward Venator’s place and touched a hidden point. The wall slid back from the cabinet. He confronted a case, about the size of his head, lying on a shelf. Optics on stalks swiveled to focus on him.

  He smiled. “As I thought,” he said. “Good evenwatch, donrai.”

  * * * *

  CHAPTER

  7

  Some thirty hours and ten million kilometers out of Lunar orbit, Verdea ceased acceleration, swung southward widdershins, and resumed boost at the same one-sixth Terrestrial gravity. The maneuver took place so gently that those aboard had no need to harness themselves. Safety regulations required it nonetheless, but this ship hailed from Proserpina.

  Standing in her recreation room, Nicol set the view-screen before him to scan aft. Earth still outshone all stars, brilliant sapphire upon blackness, the Moon a speck of amber close by. It was as if the clarity of the sight pierced through to him and drove the last fog from his mind. He couldn’t tell whether that was good. He had his full awareness back, but also his pain and fear.

  The room seemed both a refuge and a prison. It was small, with a few chairs, a table, the wherewithal for electronic and manual games, database outlets for shows or music or books. No one had yet activated the bulkheads; they enclosed him in blank, pale gray. The gymnasium, larger, equipped to let him maintain muscle tone through a long low-weight voyage, was on the deck beneath.

  He breathed an air cool and, at present, bearing a slight odor of newly cut grass. Ventilation went silently, like thrust and recycling and nearly everything else the ship did. He might have been all alone in the cosmos, until a light footfall brought his glance around.

  Falaire came to stand before him. The blond hair spilled vivid over a darkly iridescent kimono. In the plain coverall given him, he felt more than ever foreign to her. How unfairly beautiful she was.

  “Aou, Jesse,” she greeted. Fingertips brushed across his wrist. It tingled in their wake. “Are you hale? You look less than joyous.”

  He swallowed. “Why not? I’ve been—gone—Nothing was really real—”

  “It was by your agreement.”

  Yes, he recalled blurrily, he had accepted the . . . the drowsy syrup she offered, when they got back to her apartment in that terrible hour. He had been raving with grief over his deed, ready to call the police despite every pledge he had given, but she persuaded him that he must seek a chemical calm, and thereafter—”I was like a robot,” he said. “I had no will or feelings of my own.” His recollection of the time was hazed, like memory of the whole evenwatch earlier. He kept little except knowledge of the fact, that it had happened. Nor did he want more.

  “It was needful to keep you thus, that you could pass through the spaceport and ride the shuttle up to our ship without maychance making a scene that would draw people’s heed.” Falaire smiled. “The final dose has faded away, I see and am glad of.”

  He shook his head, a blind effort to cast off bewilderment. “How did you get us aboard without the spaceport itself noticing?”

  She laughed. “Thank Hench for that. Lirion will explain later if you wish. Suffice for this moment, in the knowledge of the cybercosm he departed as he arrived, companionless. You are free, safe, with us.”

  “How long’s it been?”

  “Since we left Luna? A watch or two past a daycycle.”

  His reasoning mind gave him a slight relief by shoving anxieties aside as it worked. “Hm, yes, you’d want to start out with vectors for a direct return to Proserpina. Now we’re far enough that TrafCon radar won’t be routinely tracking us, and it’ll scarcely keep any other detector on us either. You can change course for your target.”

  “Eyach,” she said warmly, “indeed you are awake again, a pilot whose skill is in his very speech. It bodes well.”

  He must not let her lull him. “How long till we arrive?”

  “Travel time is about nineteen daycycles at this acceleration, with midpoint turnover. Add some time to that because we’ll be in free fall whenever you are working outside. Maychance thirty daycycles altogether.” She finger-shrugged. “Or thus Lirion tells me. I am but a passenger.”

  That was her reward, he remembered. Her reward for recruiting him. “And I—”

  “You have become the hero of the tale.”

  Remorse rushed back to take him by the throat. “Oh, God, no!” he moaned in Anglo. “I’m a murderer.”

  She took his right hand, which had wielded the knife, in both hers. “Nay, Jesse. Think never so.”

  “I killed a man because—merely because he—What kind of animal am I?”

  Her answer came grave and steady. “You are a man who, overstressed and overwrought, lashed out at what had waxed unendurable. Belike a different person would have had a threshold of tolerance more high. But we, Lirion and I, we bear you no grudge.”

  “You—he—I killed one of you, and, and me a Terran!”

  “Heedless of race, Lunarians understand pride and honor.”

  Their kind of honor, Nicol thought amidst the turmoil.

  “Seyant fell on his own misbehavior,” Falaire continued. “I didn’t like him anyhow.”

  Confusion redoubled. She didn’t? Why, half his hatred had had its roots in jealousy. “But he was ... at least he was your fellow in . . . the Scaine Croi.”

  The bright head nodded. “That much is true. You owe us, his spirit siblings—and, yes, his memory—a recompense. It shall be the part you take in our great venture.”

  The ugly word broke unbidden from his mouth: “Blackmail?”

  She let go of his hand. Her tone grew severe. “Reflect that you are in my personal debt also, for that I saved you from the consequences you would have brought on yourself. You babbled of needing punishment. But well you know it would have been worse than that. Psychocorrection. Neural alterations, re-education, elimination of your potential for violence. Your inmost self castrated, a poet and adventurer changed to a placidly contented citizen.” Never had he heard such contempt as she threw into the last word.

  His thoughts groped through shifting darknesses. Maybe she overstated the case. And yet—and yet—he was what he was. In certain ways he wished he were different, but the differences should be what he chose, and not go to the core of his being. “Well, but, but—”

  “Unless that is your desire, then this escape is another debt laid on you. I claim it in the form of your service.”

  Silence fell. Nicol struggled. Now and then he gasped for air. He had won to a measure of calm by the time Lirion descended from the command center.

  The old man wore youthful extravagance of scarlet, purple, and gold. “We are well on our course and the ship can run robotic,” he declared, before he gave the Terran a close regard and added with a smile, “Aou, Pilot Nicol, welcome back to yourself.”

  “I’m not very happy about it,” Nicol snapped.

  Lirion made a dismissing gesture. “Eyach, yours is no abiding trouble. I heard what you and Falaire said.” Was the vessel programmed for eavesdropping, Nicol wondered, or did an intercom simply happen to be on? “What guilt is yours you shall expiate, and go beyond it to become our moral creditor.”

  Guilt and atonement were not concepts that came readily to a Lunarian, Nicol thought; and in fact Lirion had used the Anglo words.

  “Not only shall you win forgiveness and overflowing thanks,” the woman was assuring him, “rich material pay shall be yours. The funds are there on Luna.”

  Sarcasm awakened. “Precisely how shall I
collect them?” he asked.

  “That has been provided for,” Lirion replied. “As Falaire told, your embarkation and hers with me was blocked out of entries the spaceport made in the general database. Your chiefs in the Rayenn—yes, they too are with the Scaine Croi—will record your absence as due to an assignment elsewhere, of no special interest to any authorities.”