“Funny little buggers,” Star added. “Put a bundle in some place at a humongous temperature, it don’t give a damn. Sits there, totally comfortable. Surround it with cool matter and lots of slow-moving free electrons, though, an’ it’s buggered. It falls apart.”
“When we knew that,” Wilmer went on, “we still didn’t see how it helped us to guard against them. We went ahead with a redesigned defense to divert particle bundles, but we didn’t seem any closer to real understanding. We didn’t know what was going on with the Alpha Centauri supernova, or why it happened.”
He paused and looked thoughtful.
“And we still don’t know why it happened,” Nick Lopez said softly behind Celine. “And at this rate we never will. Tell him to get a move on.”
Celine knew better. She sat and waited, and at last Wilmer went on. “Then we got newer Sniffer data, and knew we were really in trouble. The particle beam wasn’t just coming our way, it was converging, homing in on us. That’s when me and Star decided we — meaning humans — were really up shit creek. The way the beam was narrowing as it approached the solar system, we’d be hit with a whole load of particles, far more than we’d ever expected. Far more than the new defense system could cope with. Far too much for Earth to stand, or for Sky City.”
Nick Lopez, behind Celine, muttered, “So we all died.”
Celine said patiently, “But it wasn’t too much for Earth, or for Sky City. We’re still here. How did that happen?”
“Because me and Star, we took two correct facts, added an assumption, and drew a false conclusion.” Wilmer shook his head woefully. “Not Star’s fault, mine. I ought to be old enough to know better. Let’s do the facts. First fact: The Alpha Centauri supernova didn’t just happen. It was made to happen.”
“Something hardly anybody in the world believes,” Celine said.
“True. But that doesn’t make it any less a fact. And it’s not what caused our problem. Second fact: The particle beam was converging. The number of bundles per unit volume was increasing instead of decreasing as the beam came closer, and the devastation it could cause was that much greater. And now the assumption: Human beings are important.”
Everyone in the Oval Office jerked to attention. Celine said, “I hope that’s not what you mean by a false assumption. If so, you won’t find anybody here in the Oval Office who agrees with you.”
“Then I’m glad I’m not in the Oval Office.” Wilmer held up his hand. “Don’t get starchy on me; I’m going to explain. I had this thought when I was by myself and the particle storm was sluicing through Sky City. I thought, if I had the science and the technology to make a supernova happen, would I waste a whole star system just to wipe out a lot of silly buggers like me? Of course I wouldn’t. I’ve heard all the talk, that something tuned in on our radio signals over the past century and a half and decided to do away with us. I can’t buy that. I mean, the media programs are bad, but they’re not that bad.
“Once you decide the human race isn’t important enough to be worth killing, you stop saying, ’Something’s out to get me,’ and you draw a different conclusion. Not the wrong conclusion, the one that me and Star made, that the particle beam was converging on Earth. The right conclusion: Whatever made the supernova and the particle beam hasn’t the slightest interest in Earth. The beam was converging on Sol. The Sun was the target, and the only target. And what saved us — what made the difference between total extinction and a near miss — is Earth’s distance from the Sun. We’re alive because all but a tiny fraction of the particle bundles went to their intended destination: Sol. The convergence worked almost all the time. We got the failures, the misses.”
Celine said, a moment before her brain caught up with her tongue, “You mean the particle bundles were designed to destroy the Sun?”
“Of course they weren’t.” Wilmer stared at her in amazement. “Destroy the Sun? That’s barmy. Star, got that bottle with you? Show it off there, would you?”
Star rummaged in the bag hung over her shoulder and pulled out a glossy metal canister about eight inches long. She held it up so that everyone could get a view of it and said, “Ta-daa!”
“Particle bundles.” Wilmer took it from her. “In here. Quite stable, they’re kept away from ordinary matter using electromagnetic field suspension. Harmless. Harmless here, and on the Sun. They wouldn’t destroy it. Why would they want to, when they live inside stars?”
Bruno Colombo said, “You talk as though the things in there are alive!”
It was his turn to receive Wilmer’s withering stare.
“Well, I don’t know. Maybe they are, maybe they’re not. Depends how you define alive. Me and Star, we’ve been wrong too often and too recently to stick our necks out. But let’s say we feel sure that the Alpha Centauri supernova was designed to spread these particle bundles to other stars. We don’t know how they’re aimed, or what they do when they get there. But I’d make a case for saying anything that propagates itself in an intentional way qualifies to be thought of as alive.”
“And sentient?” Bruno Colombo was out to restore his good name. “If they are, and they are able to produce a supernova, think what we might learn from them.”
“I wouldn’t count on it.” Wilmer peered at the bottle. “The bundles in here would be more like spores, or seeds. How much high-tech information would you get from a human sperm? I don’t think it’d produce the theory of relativity, or tell you how to send an expedition to Mars. And if one of these little beggars could tell us anything, I don’t know if I’d trust it. They’re a star form, we’re a planet form. We might not have much in common.”
Nick Lopez, behind Celine, said suddenly, “How long do we have, Wilmer?”
Celine turned to face him. “How long for what?”
“How long before the bundles develop to whatever they finally become, and do whatever they do? If they’re like seeds, eventually they’ll turn into something that produces more seeds. How long before they change the Sun, or decide it’s breeding time and they need another supernova?”
“No worries. Stellar processes are slo-o-o-w — a star like Sol can spend ten billion years and more on the main sequence.”
“It can. But does it have to? Remember, there was no way that Alpha Centauri could go supernova — until it did.”
“He’s right, Wilmer.” Star moved forward to peer at Nick Lopez with new interest. “I thought it the first time I met yer. Yer got a weird mind, mister. I like that.”
“And in fact we know very little about supernovas and how they work,” Wilmer added. “Maybe they proceed from star to star like a chain of firecrackers, one every ten million years. We’ve not been watching for long enough. In a whole galaxy you get only one or two supernovas a century, and mostly so far away we don’t learn much. Did you know we haven’t had a naked-eye supernova since—”
“Thank you, Wilmer, I’ve heard that before.” Celine cut him off. “No more speeches today. The wounded have to be looked after, the dead buried, Earth and the institutions of Earth rebuilt, and Sky City moved back to its old position. And then we must set new goals for humans, including everything we had before the supernova came along, and more.”
She thought, That sounded an awful lot like a speech. It must be catching.
“And while we’re doing all that,” Nick Lopez said quietly, “there’s one other thing that we’ll be doing.”
The others paused expectantly. Not Celine. When you were a world-class worrier, you didn’t have to. be told what else you needed to be nervous about. “I know. From now on we’ll have a new hobby — maybe we should say a new religion.”
“Maybe we should say, more like an old religion.”
“Whatever you call it, one thing’s for sure. We’ll all be watching the Sun.”
EPILOG
From the private diary of Oliver Guest.
At Otranto Castle a wind from the south-southwest should be a warm zephyr, bringing the lotus ease of the lazy tropical o
cean whence it came. But not this time. The wind had blown as a force-five gale for six days and nights, a fury that carried in its dark heart sleet and hail and the sour, bitter stench of cindered lands and dead seas. The castle, windows shuttered, crouched down and endured this blast, as it had stood and withstood for more than two and a half centuries.
Soon after dawn on the sixth morning, I opened the heavy oak door of the main entrance and stepped outside. The wind was strong as ever and rain sheeted at me sideways, but there was a freshness in the air and a clarity to the sunrise. It was possible to believe, for the first time since the onset of the particle storm, that Earth had a future.
In that moment of spiritual rebirth, the castle Alert blurted in to steal joy from the morning. Warning, it shouted in my ear. Possible intruder sighted to the southwest. Human evaluation requested.
I sighed and went inside. Under high magnification I studied the solitary walker. He was enveloped in waterproof clothing that flapped like dark wings in the gusts, and he maintained a wide and wise separation between himself and the edge of the cliffs. This time, however, I had no doubt as to his identity. For more than a week I had been waiting and wondering; not if, but when.
I opened the door and held it as he approached. He hurried into the dark hallway as though the wind bore him across the threshold unassisted.
“A nasty morning,” I said.
“You might say.” Seth grinned at me as he stripped off his overcoat and leggings. “But we’ve both seen worse.”
His clothing had been inadequate protection. His hair and shirt were soaked. I led him through to the far end of the kitchen, where towels hung drying on a line and a gallon pot simmered on the blackened stove.
He took a towel and rubbed at his hair until it was a drier but more tangled mess, then went over and sniffed the pot. At my nod he filled a bowl and carried it to the long wooden table.
“Beans?” he asked.
“With ham hocks,” I said. “From the gentleman who pays the rent.”
“Huh?”
“It’s an old Irish joke. It means a pig.”
Those were our first words after the initial greeting, and they were not inspiring. After that neither seemed inclined to speak again. The silence continued until Seth had emptied the bowl and refused more with a shake of the head. Finally he said, “You were expecting me.”
“It was my preference.” I led the way to the study, and we sat down in front of the peat fire. “Otherwise I would have ultimately been obliged to seek you.”
“Yeah.” He removed his boots and held his stockinged feet close to the red peat coals until the soles began to steam. At that point he moved back a couple of feet, accepted my offer of whiskey, stared into the low flames, and said, “We got unfinished business. It’d be nice to say, go back to the way it was before any of this started. But we can’t. You know that I know.”
“And vice versa. I know about you. More, perhaps, than anyone else in the world. Even in these troubled times, the curious demise of Gordy Rolfe was widely reported.”
“Yeah. There’s rumors that he was part of some big conspiracy, robbin’ Sky City blind, an’ his business partners knocked him off so he couldn’t talk. But some people talked conspiracy with the Sky City murders, an’ we know how that turned out. Me, I think nobody’s goin’ to find anything more. Old Gordy made hidin’ what he knew an’ did into an art form.”
“I will not dispute the conspiracy theory. However, I suspect that you and I alone are aware of your intention to visit Gordy Rolfe on the day before he died.”
“Ah, but did I go there? I vote for natural causes, Doc, comin’ as a result of unnatural experiments. You heard what the media said about poor old Gordy. ’Hoist with his own petard,’ if you want to put it fancy. They found one of his boots, an’ that was all. Nobody’s lookin’ for me as a killer. Can’t say quite the same for you.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Or thinking to blackmail me?”
“Never.”
He glanced toward the door behind me and frowned. I turned and saw four faces peering in a vertical line around the jamb: Paula, Bridget, Beth, and Trixie. They had been in the cellar earlier, but they must have seen the Alert flashing or heard the outer door.
“This meeting does not call for your presence,” I said sharply.
That would probably have been enough had not Seth made the mistake of adding condescendingly, “Run along, kiddies. You heard your dad.”
Paula frowned, and Bridget flushed and opened her mouth as though about to speak. Before she could do so, Paula dragged her out of sight. A moment later the other two faces vanished.
Seth waited to make sure they had gone, then went on. “Take it easy, Doc. I’m just sayin’ we need to have some sort of negotiation or truce, an’ it’s nice to know where each of us is startin’ from. Seems to me you’re startin’ off vulnerable. Not because of you; you’re fireproof.” He gestured toward the door. “Because of them.”
“If you imply that through the existence of those girls I have, in the words of Francis Bacon, given hostages to fortune, then I am obliged to agree with you. However, you know my history. The addition of one more victim to the roster for the sake of security would not, if discovered, change my sentence at all were I ever to be recaptured.”
“One more victim. Are you threatenin’ me, Doc?”
“I would not dream of it.”
“Or tryin’ to blackmail me?”
“Never.”
Seth grinned. Far from being intimidated, he seemed amused. “So we both know where we stand. Question is, what do we do?”
“If you are referring to the reward for the apprehension of the Sky City murderer, I neither need nor want it.”
“That’s good. I need it, an’ I want it, ’cause with Gordy gone I don’t have a job. But the reward ain’t the problem. How do we work the other stuff?”
I had no immediate answer. Regrettably, he was right. I was far more vulnerable than he. Eighteen young girls are not easy to hide. With them to protect and nurture, I would need a permanent and safe base of operations for many more years. A single male like Seth, on the other hand, could vanish with ease or wander the world as he chose.
Should I seek to kill him now, this very minute, while he sat drinking my whiskey? He was undeniably accessible, but I felt a reluctance even to consider that prospect. I ascribed it to a worry that my darlings might somehow become aware of such a bloody deed. There was also, of course, a more practical consideration: Seth Parsigian’s whole history proved that he was no easy man to kill.
Before I could decide on action or inaction, another complication reared its head. My darlings appeared again; not, this time, in the form of the previous four. All eighteen came trooping into the study and stood in an orderly line, oldest to youngest, along the wall opposite the fireplace.
“Paula.” In spite of her short stature I addressed her as the most senior and the usual ringleader. “I told you once to go away. What do you think you are doing here?”
When Paula spoke it was not to me but to Seth. “We wanted to meet you,” she said in her deep, husky voice. “And we wanted you to meet us. We thought it was important.”
This time he did not try to dismiss her. He studied the girls, carefully and one by one, his tawny eyes moving steadily along the line. “Important how?” he said. “We never met. You don’t know me.”
“You came to our home on one previous occasion. You are Seth Parsigian.”
Seth jerked around sharply in my direction. His face was more surprised than I had ever seen it. I shook my head. “Not from me, Seth. I swear on my nonexistent soul, that did not come from me.”
He turned angrily back to Paula. “So you know who I am. Clever girl. Do you also know who-”
He caught himself, but she had followed his eyes.
“Who he is? Yes. He is our father, Kevin Baxter. Not our biological father, o
f course. But he raised us, and so far as we are concerned he is our true and only father.”
Seth looked at me, but he did not speak. My eyes told him that he was on very dangerous ground. To protect my darlings, I would do anything. But Paula was not finished.
She added, “He is our father. And he is also Dr. Oliver Guest, who in the year 2021 was sentenced to six centuries of judicial sleep for the murder of fifteen teenage girls. That number was later, through his own confession, increased to eighteen.”
If Seth was surprised by that announcement, I was stunned. I made a faint sound in my throat. I think I was trying to offer a denial, stupid as that sounds, but no words came out.
“And,” said Paula, “we know who we are.” She took a step forward out of the line. “I am Paula Baxter. I was once Paula Searle. I was raised in Norfolk and in the Atlanta Scantlingtown. I never knew my father, but my mother was a druggie and a whore, and I was mostly a nuisance to her until I became old enough to go on the game.”
While I gaped-how did she know any of that? There was to my knowledge no written record-she stepped quietly back in line and made a little hand gesture. Amity, standing next to her, moved forward.
“I am Amity Baxter. I was once Amity Carlisle. I was born in San Antonio. My mother was only fourteen, so I was sent to El Paso to live with an aunt and uncle whom I had never met. She beat me most days and when I was ten years old he raped me. I ran away when I was eleven. I lived along the transport strips. Money was short, but I always knew I could get some from older men if I did the right things to them.”
Amity, my magical, innocent Amity who insisted that she believed in fairies and danced with joy when she saw a rainbow. Not even I knew all of what she had said. But she was back in line, and Rose was stepping forward.
“I am Rose Baxter. I was once Rosa Gonzales. I was born in Coral Gables. When I was little we had plenty of money, but my father was ruined in the economic collapse after the Turnabout riots, and he killed himself. Mother had to work, and so she left me home alone . . .”
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