Anvil of Stars tfog-2

by Greg Bear

  “Yes. A ship that couldn’t be destroyed without interstellar repercussions,” Martin said.

  “You are assuming,” Eye on Sky began, “that this disguise is meant for senses other than we all our own. That the Killers of worlds assume they are under scrutiny from others besides we all ourselves.”

  Martin nodded.

  “He means yes,” Paola said.

  “It is remarkable insight,” Stonemaker said. A faint smell of peppers and baking bread: interest, perhaps pleasure for one or more of the Brothers. “I we see this is related to your literature, as a fiction or strategic lie. Would all this joined Ship of the Law be part of play-act?”

  “Hans and I believe the ship should divide into several parts,” Martin said. “One part will enter the system, disguised but essentially unarmed, to investigate; the other two will orbit far outside. If a guilty verdict is reached, weapons can be released by the ships outside. We can try to finish the Job. If the Killers no longer live here—”

  “Or if we can’t hurt them without hurting innocents,” Ariel said. Martin cringed inwardly. Yes, but what if?

  “Or if we can’t find them or recognize them,” Martin amended, “then we’ll rejoin and change our plans.”

  “That is feasible,” the mom said. “Useful information will be made available. Do you wish to design the vessel that enters the Leviathan system, or do you wish us to design it for you?”

  “We can do it, but I think we’ll need assistance,” Martin said. Ariel was about to add something, but he looked at her dourly and she clenched her jaw.

  “Your designers should think about these things,” the mom said. “The ship to enter Leviathan’s system must not appear overtly threatening, nor should it appear to come from a weak civilization. It should not, however, appear to have technology equal to that possessed by the Ships of the Law, specifically, the ability to convert matter to anti-matter. Your crew must appear innocent of all knowledge of killer probes.”

  Martin agreed.

  “When will your groups make their decisions?” the mom asked.

  “In a couple of days, maybe sooner,” Martin said.

  “Separation and super-deceleration will have to begin within a tenday,” the mom said.

  “Is there anything else we’d find useful?” Martin asked.

  “There is no possibility that the Killers, if they still exist around Leviathan, have knowledge of humans,” the mom continued. “No killer probes escaped Earth’s system. There is a small possibility they have knowledge of the Brothers. Transmissions by the killer probes from the Brothers’ system were monitored, information content unknown.”

  “We we would like to be part of the crew of any entry vessel,” Eye on Sky said. “This might be a difficulty?”

  “It might,” the mom concluded.

  The snake mother arched and floated a few centimeters above the ground, a purple ladder field faintly visible beneath. In this, too, they differed from the moms; Martin had never seen a mom display its field. Its voice sounded like a low wind interpreted by the string section in an orchestra. “Brothers may play key roles in ships that stay outside the system,” it said.

  “Is that something they will vote on?” Paola asked, brow wrinkling.

  “It is something to be decided by the Brothers in private,” the snake mother said.

  Eye on Sky and Stonemaker produced strong smells of salt sea air. “So is it,” Stonemaker said. “There will be a Triple Merging for objectivity and decisions will be made before next day comes.”

  “I have one more question,” Martin said, feeling his chest constrict. “It isn’t an easy one, and I hope for a straightforward answer.”

  Silence from the robots. Eye on Sky and Stonemaker rustled faintly.

  “Some of us have been given the impression—rather, we’ve observed—that the Brothers’ libraries are much more extensive than our own. Why are they more extensive?”

  The mom said, “Each race is given the information necessary to carry out its part of the Law.”

  “We feel the ships’ minds may not think humans are as trustworthy as the Brothers,” Martin continued.

  “Every race differs in its needs and capacities,” the mom said. “Information differs for that reason.”

  “Will we be denied any of the information contained in the Brothers’ libraries?” Martin asked.

  “You will be denied nothing you need, as a group, to complete your Job.”

  The snake mother said, “Your Ship of the Law is older than the Brothers’ ship. There are design differences.”

  “I thought that might explain part of the…” Martin said, trailing off.

  “Attitudes and designs change,” the snake mother added.

  “We have discussed this before,” the mom said.

  Martin nodded. “I’d like to have it made more clear. Do you trust humans as much as you trust the Brothers?”

  “We are not designed to trust or distrust, or to make any such decisions regarding character,” the mom replied.

  “Please,” Martin said through clenched teeth. Ariel reached out and touched his hand, and he gripped hers tightly, feeling her support, her strength. “We do not need evasive answers. The Benefactors could not have known our character before you sent your ships into the Earth’s system… You must have made some judgment, reached some decision about our capacities.”

  The ship’s voice spoke. Martin was startled. “The ships’ minds can’t make such decisions. If such a decision was made, we didn’t make it.”

  He felt tears on his cheeks and gritted his teeth, ashamed at showing such emotion. “Are we inferior to the Brothers?”

  Stonemaker became agitated. His rustling increased until his entire length vibrated. Eye on Sky coiled and uncoiled twice, weaving his head. “Offense is given here,” Stonemaker said. “We we do not wish we our partners to feel offensed.”

  “Offended,” Paola corrected automatically.

  “We need to know whether we are trusted,” Martin repeated, it seemed to him, for the hundredth time.

  “Both libraries will be open to those who wish to conduct research,” the ship’s voice said. “What is shared and is not shared is up to humans and Brothers, not to the ships’ minds.”

  “We came close to the edge,” Paola said sadly as they walked toward Hans’ quarters. “Maybe we don’t want to know the whole truth.”

  “Maybe the Brothers are afraid of us,” Ariel said. “Of what we might become.”

  “What do they think we’ll do?” Paola asked.

  Martin’s voice shook with anger—and with more than a little guilt. “They might think we’ll become planet killers,” he said.

  Ariel shivered to untense her muscles. “Rex certainly didn’t convince them otherwise,” she said. “What about the moms?”

  “Maybe they think so, too,” Martin said.

  “Wouldn’t they have dumped us or killed us or something?” Paola objected.

  “Not if they’re forced to enact the bloody Law,” Ariel said. “We were victims. They rescued us. They need us to finish the Job.”

  “Why not push us aside, and let the Brothers do the Job?” Paola asked. “They only need one set of victims.”

  “So maybe we’ve scared the Brothers. What have we shown them to the contrary?” Martin asked.

  Paola stared back at him, jaw quivering. “Me,” she said, pointing to herself. “You. We’re not all like Rex.”

  “How could they know?” Ariel asked. “Let’s just ask ourselves that.”

  “By looking at me!” Paola said, crying openly now. “I’m not like that!”

  “Do they expect to send pacifists out to kill worlds?” Martin asked, feeling his anger build, then deflate. He let his shoulders slump. “What are we? Allies, or just bad cargo?”

  Hans examined the designs for the Trojan Horse, nodding and humming faintly. Martin, Hakim, Cham, Donna Emerald Sea, and Giacomo had spent the better part of two days working out the de
sign and details with Dry Skin, Silken Parts, and Eye on Sky; even now, in the Brothers’ quarters, Eye on Sky presented the design to Stonemaker for his approval.

  “It certainly doesn’t look like a Ship of the Law,” Hans concluded. “It looks like a pleasure barge.”

  Eighty meters long, with a brilliant red surface, laser/solar sails folded and rolled along its length, two curving arms reaching from a spindle-shaped body, small, heavily shielded matter-anti-matter drives mounted fore and aft, the Trojan Horse would appear to be the product of a relatively youthful technology, star travel on the cheap.

  Humans and Brothers had come up with something unarmed, innocuous—in so far as any starship could be innocuous, heralding the arrival of potential rivals or partners—and even jaunty.

  “The moms say it can be built,” Martin said. “They say it will fly, and it will be convincing.”

  “Do they say anything about our fitness to be allies?” Hans asked. The circles under his eyes had darkened. He spent much of his time alone in his quarters, as he sat now, in the center of the room, legs crossed.

  A second cushion waited empty nearby; Rosa might still share his quarters occasionally. Yet the condition of a few vases of sickly flowers showed that she had probably not been here for several days.

  “Are we fit for the Job?” Hans asked.

  “I don’t know what they think,” Martin said. “Rex caused a lot of bad feeling. If the Brothers can experience something like bad feeling…”

  “What would they have thought if I’d executed Rex right there, on the spot?” Hans said. “Would that have made them happy?”

  “Would have made things much worse,” Martin said.

  “Well, if they don’t like us now, they’re going to really have it in for us in a couple of days,” Hans said.

  “Why?”

  “Rosa’s on her own,” Hans said. “You should have been here, Martin. She refuses to slick, she looks me right in the eye, and she says,” he began to do a fair imitation of Rosa’s strong, musical voice, “ ‘I have been shown what you are. I have been shown that you are mocking me, and holding me back from my duty.’ ” Hans grinned. “At least it took her this long to catch on. Not bad for delaying action, right?”

  Martin looked away.

  Hans’ grin vanished. “She’s going to start up again, Martin, and this time she really has something good for us. She’s damned near psychic, and she’s tuning in to our inadequacy. ‘We have sinned. We are not worthy of the Job.’ Good stuff to toss out now, right?”

  “Where is she?” Martin asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll ask Ariel to look out for her.”

  “Yes, but who will keep her under control? She should be the one banished and locked away. Before she’s done, she’ll have us all at each other’s throats.” Hans picked up the wand and projected the ship’s design again. “Who’s going to be on board?”

  “The moms and snake mothers think there’s a small chance the Killers might have information about the Brothers. The Brothers are willing to let the crew be human—”

  Hans laughed with a bitter edge that set Martin’s neck hair on end. “It’s probably a suicide mission. How kind of them.”

  Martin’s jaw worked. “Don’t underestimate them, Hans. They want to go. They want to do the Job as much as we do.”

  “I’d rather survive to see it done.”

  “At any rate,” Martin said, “I thought, subject to your approval, that it would be better psychologically and politically if we took the chance, and had Brothers on the crew.”

  Hans rotated the ship’s image, poked his tongue into his cheek, rolled it over his teeth beneath closed lips. “How do we explain two species aboard, if we party with Leviathan’s citizens?”

  “Hakim and Giacomo are working up a whole fake history. Two intelligent species from one star system, cooperating after centuries of war. The alliance is still fragile, but the crew is disciplined—”

  “We’re better at making up stories than the Brothers, I hear,” Hans said.

  “After a fashion.”

  “Where’s the origin?”

  “Hakim has found a buttercup star about forty light years from Leviathan. For the Trojan Horse, that would mean a journey of about four hundred years. The crew will have just come out of deep freeze.”

  “They get this bucket up to, what, one fifth, one sixth c? What’s the drive?”

  “In theory, laser propulsion and solar sail to the outskirts of the home system, primitive matter-anti-matter beyond, no sumps, no conversion technology,” Martin said.

  “And the Killers won’t know this is all crap? Can’t they detect drive flares at forty light years? Didn’t their probes hit on this star system?”

  “For a ship this size, detection of drive flares at forty light years would be almost impossible. The moms say the chosen system shows no signs of being visited. They say the ruse probably will work.”

  Hans rolled his tongue across his teeth again, looked away. “If they say it, it must be so.”

  “Do you approve the design?”

  Hans shrugged. “It looks fine to me. Who’s going?”

  “That’s your decision, of course,” Martin said.

  “I’m glad you’ve left me something to do.”

  Martin did not rise to the gibe. “If you’re having a problem with any of this, or with me, best to talk it out now.”

  Hans looked at Martin darkly. “I’m worried about crew morale. I’ll be damned if I can find any easy solution, or any solution at all.”

  “Isolate Rosa,” Martin said.

  “There are about twenty Wendys and Lost Boys who would be very upset if we isolated Rosa. She’s been quiet, but busy.”

  Martin raised his eyebrows, baffled.

  “I’m working on it,” Hans said with forced cheer. “You seem to be doing well with this stuff. Keep it up.” He waved his hand as if shooing a fly and made a wry face. “Hell with it. Forget what I said. Brothers and humans. You choose the human crew. I’d like to be on the ship, but I don’t think that will be possible. So pick yourself. You’ll be number one again, at least aboard the Trojan Horse.”

  Martin stood beside Hans for a few more seconds, but Hans had nothing more to say, lost in his thoughts.

  Two days before separation, humans and Brothers exhausted from endless drills and conferences, Leviathan a growing point of light and remotes spread to their farthest extent, Martin was overwhelmed by far more information than he could possibly absorb. In his rest periods—now reduced to one or two hours a day—he slept fitfully, images of Leviathan’s bizarre coterie of fifteen worlds haunting his dreams.

  Theodore Dawn sat in a wood-paneled library with him and pulled out book after book, opening them to pictures of ill-defined threats and dangers until, with a laugh, Theodore simply tossed the books into the air. “We always knew we’d die, didn’t we, Marty?”

  “You’re already dead,” Marty said.

  “We’re Brothers under the skin. But even if we die, so will they,” Theodore said.

  “Who?” Martin asked, wondering if he meant the Killers of Earth, or the Brothers.

  He awoke with wand clutched in his hand, and no answer.

  “Three ships, Greyhound, Shrike, and Trojan Horse,” Hans said, projecting the designs of all three before the seven occupants of the schoolroom: Eye on Sky, Silken Parts, Stonemaker, Twice Grown, Paola, Ariel, and Martin.

  Eye on Sky and Ariel would be going with the Trojan Horse and Martin. Stonemaker would be in charge of Shrike.

  Hans said, “You’ve all worked out the Trojan Horse’s mission: envoy and explorer for a young, naive two-species civilization, four hundred years in space. Enough clues to make the Killers think that in the four centuries since Trojan Horse left its system, the civilizations have probably become much, much stronger, and would not appreciate having their early explorers destroyed… Donna Emerald Sea and Silken Parts are designing costumes refl
ecting the cultures.” He smiled. “Sounds like the Brothers are learning the art of fiction.”

  “But this is lying,” Stonemaker said. “The difference was clear, we we thought.”

  “Strategically, no difference,” Hans said. “Greyhound and Shrike have enough weapons and fuel to cook four of the fifteen planets, or enough to blow one planet completely apart, into orbit about itself if we aren’t interfered with—no defenses—a big if… The human crews are ready.”

  “Brothers are ready,” Stonemaker said, smelling of ripe fruit and cut grass.

  “Then we bring the plan to both crews.” Hans raised his hands and the Brothers lifted their splayed heads high. “Courage!” he said. “Does that translate well?”

  “It is the smell of being born,” Stonemaker said.

  “Couldn’t put it better myself,” Hans said.

  Martin came awake to a soft touch on his shoulder. He had fallen asleep in the schoolroom, leaning against a wall. He rubbed his eyes and saw Erin Eire kneeling beside him. “Too much drill?” she asked.

  He stood and stretched. They had two days until the split; preparations had come flooding down on them, and he was embarrassed that his exhaustion had made him drop off in a public place. “Trying to sleep before super deceleration.”

  “Uh huh,” she said, unconvinced. “Donna guided the Wendys and a few Lost Boys in costume manufacture. Moms provided the fabric and did some assembly. We thought you’d like to see them. I think they’re pretty neat, myself.”

  “Sure,” Martin said. Erin led him past groups of other humans, sleeping. Many Smells and Dry Skin conferred with Giacomo near the star sphere; everybody looked exhausted except Erin Eire, who as always was bright-eyed, calmly confident.

  “Where’s Hans?” Erin asked as she walked steadily ahead.

  “Putting together battle plans with Stonemaker, last I heard,” Martin said.

  “Trojan Horse’s crew won’t know the battle plans?” Erin asked. “In case they’re captured?”

  Martin shook his head. “No strategic weapons. What can we do?”

  “Pray, I suppose,” Erin said tersely. “We’ve been working in Kimberly Quartz’s rooms, just up ahead…”