Destroyer

by C. J. Cherryh

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Praise for DESTROYER:

  “This series has lost none of its vigor. Destroyer is an excellent adventure.”

  —The Denver Post

  “Well-developed characters, fine style, and intense psychological realism. Cherryh’s many readers should snap this one up.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “With every new “Foreigner” novel, Cherryh strengthens the saga’s already imposing reputation as one of the foremost series exploring the complex and delicate relationships between human and alien cultures. Cherryh’s Foreigner saga is cerebral science fiction at its very best—as entertaining as it is contemplative.”

  —The Barnes & Noble Review

  and the “Foreigner” series:

  “Cherryh’s gift for conjuring believable alien cultures is in full force here, and her characters . . . are brought to life with a sure and convincing hand.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A seriously probing, thoughtful, intelligent piece of work, with more insight in half a dozen pages than most authors manage in half a hundred.”

  —Kirkus

  “Close-grained and carefully constructed . . . a book that will stick in the mind for a lot longer than the usual adventure romp.”

  —Locus

  “A large new Cherryh novel is always welcome . . . a return to the anthropological science fiction in which she has made such a name is a double pleasure . . . superlatively drawn aliens and characterization.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  DAW TITLES BY C. J. CHERRYH

  THE FOREIGNER UNIVERSE

  FOREIGNER

  INVADER

  INHERITOR

  PRECURSOR

  DEFENDER

  EXPLORER

  DESTROYER

  PRETENDER1

  THE ALLIANCE-UNION UNIVERSE

  DOWNBELOW STATION

  MERCHANTER’S LUCK

  FORTY THOUSAND IN GEHENNA

  SERPENT’S REACH

  AT THE EDGE OF SPACE Omnibus:

  Brothers of Earth | Hunter of Worlds

  THE FADED SUN Omnibus:

  Kesrith | Shon’jir | Kutath

  THE CHANUR NOVELS

  THE CHANUR SAGA Omnibus:

  The Pride of Chanur | Chanur’s Venture |

  The Kif Strike Back

  CHANUR’S HOMECOMING

  CHANUR’S LEGACY

  THE MORGAINE CYCLE

  THE MORGAINE SAGA Omnibus:

  Gate of Ivrel | Well of Shiuan | Fires of Azeroth

  EXILE’S GATE

  OTHER WORKS

  THE DREAMING TREE OMNIBUS:

  The Tree of Swords and Jewels | The Dreamstone

  ALTERNATE REALITIES Omnibus:

  Port Eternity | Wave Without a Shore | Voyager in Night

  THE COLLECTED SHORT FICTION OF

  C.J. CHERRYH

  ANGEL WITH THE SWORD

  CUCKOO’S EGG

  Copyright © 2005 by C.J. Cherryh

  All Rights Reserved.

  DAW Books Collectors No. 1318

  DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. All resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-14375-9

  First Paperback Printing, February 2006

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  1

  Spider plants had taken over the cabin, cascading sheets of spider plants growing from pots improvised from sealed sections of plastic pipe arranged in racks around the ceiling of every wall. They made showers of green runners and gave out clouds of miniature pale-edged spider babies that swayed in the gusts from vents, in the opening of doors.

  The plants were fortunate, kabiu, to atevi sensibilities. They were alive. They grew, they changed, masking steel walls that never changed, and in their increasingly abundant green, they reminded a voyager that ahead of them in the vast deep dark of space was a planet where atevi and humans shared natural breezes, enjoyed meadows and forests and the occasional wild mountain-bred storm, in an environment where, indeed, growth was lush and abundant.

  “The planting is becoming extravagant, nandi,” Narani had once suggested, that excellent gentleman, when the pipe-pots were only ten, and ran along only one wall. “Bindanda wishes to inquire if we should simply discard the excess at this point.”

  Bren Cameron’s devoted staff had by now offered spider plants to every colonist in the deck above, and bestowed them on every crew cabin that would accept them, where he supposed they likewise proliferated to the limit of tolerance. He had consulted the ship’s lab, to whom he had given the first offshoots, fearing the spread of his house plants might provide lifesupport a real problem . . . but lifesupport declared that, no, living biomass provided their systems no problem at all, except as they tied up water and nutrients. The ship had plenty of both, and the chief disruption to the closed loop of life aboard Phoenix, so they said, was simply that the plants made “an interesting intervention” in the daily oxygen/carbon dioxide cycle, the energy budget, humidity and climate control. “A catastrophic die-off would be a matter for concern,” lifesupport told him, “but we would of course consume the biomass that might result. Slow changes, we accommodate quite well. We find this an interesting variance in the system. They balance humidity. And they clean the air.”

  So the plants grew, and showered out their runners with baby spiders unrestrained over the two years of their voyage, proceeding from one wall, to two, and now four, having found conditions very much to their liking—the plants especially liked their intervals in folded space, such as now, when plants thrived in crazy abundance and intelligent beings operated on minimal intellect. The spider plants cured dry air, static, and nosebleeds, that persistent malady aboard. They were, most of all, alive, and in the metal world of the ship, they were a bizarre sort of hobby.

  Pity, Bren thought, that he hadn’t brought along tomatoes instead of inedible house plants, preserved tomatoes having completely run out aboard, in the two-plus years of their voyage—tomato sauce depleted along with other commodities, like the highly favored sugar candies. The better part of three thousand souls aboard consumed a great deal of sugar and fruit, fruit being novel to a spacefaring population, the simplest flavors generally being favored over more complex tastes.

  He, himself, was not from a spacefaring population, and he dreaded the day that their daily fare would get down to the yeasts and algaes that had been lonely Reunion Station’s ordinary fare for the few centuries of its existence.

  Reunion was now in other hands. Its population was aboard, headed for a refuge and a new life on a station orbiting what they understood to be an eden, a reservoir of fruit candies and other such delights.

  They consumed stores at a higher rate than planned. Now tea was running short. Caffeine was about to run out
altogether. That was a crisis.

  Bren took his carefully cherished cup—he afforded himself one small pot a day and kept a careful eye on what remained in their stores, knowing that his atevi staff would sacrifice their own ration to provide for him till it ran out, if he did not insist they share.

  This late evening as usual, after a very nice dinner, he seated himself at his writing-desk, which supported his computer along with the paper, pen, formal stationery and wax-jack of an atevi gentleman . . . not the only paper aboard, but close to it. He set his teacup down precisely at the proper spot, just so, opened the computer, and resumed his letters, a tapping of keys so rapid it made a sort of music; it had a rhythm, a living rhythm of his thoughts, like a conversation with himself.

  He wore his lightest coat in the snug, pleasantly humidified warmth of his cabin, maintained only a minimum of lace at the cuffs—in the general diminution of intelligence and enterprise, no one stirred much during their transit of folded space, few people went visiting, and entertainments were mostly, during such times, television of the very lowest order. Staff gathered in the dining hall to watch dramas from the human archive . . . but there were no longer refreshments, under the general rationing, and the whole affair had begun to assume a worn, threadbare cheerfulness, which he usually left early.

  He dressed, every day, wore the clothes of a gentleman, which his staff meticulously prepared and laid out daily . . . the lace now unstarched, that commodity having run short, too, but the shirts carefully ironed, the knee-length coats immaculate. He read in the afternoons. He was learning ancient Greek, long an ambition of his, and working on a kyo grammar—being a linguist, the translator, the paidhi, long before he became Lord of the Heavens. He had been charged with retrieving a few thousand inconvenient colonists and getting them back to safe territory, and in the process he had discovered a further need for his services. He had words. He could make a dictionary and a grammar. He reverted to his old scholarly duties to keep his mind sharp.

  He likewise kept up his letters, daily, his evening ritual, along with the after-dinner tea. He had a cyclic record of the rise in the quality of his output during sojourns in normal space, when his brain formed connections, and, longer still, those intervals of folded space, when his prose suffered jumps of logic and grammar and other flaws. In the latter instance he learned that the ship’s crew had a reason for rules and discipline and careful procedure. He found that strict schedule and meticulous procedure afforded his dimmer days a necessary structure, when it was oh so easy to grow slovenly in habit. Rules and formality were increasingly necessary for him and the staff, when getting out of bed these days took an act of moral fortitude.

  But every day his staff dressed him completely and properly, no matter that he seldom called on the upstairs neighbors and received no guests. He was their necessary focus, as his letters and his dictionary had become the purpose of his interminable days—and he went through his meticulously ordered daily routine on this day as on over seven hundred days before this. The letters, the one to his brother Toby, and the other to Tabini, aiji of the aishidi’tat, the association of all atevi associations, each totaled above a thousand pages. In all reason, he doubted either his brother or the aiji who had commissioned him to this voyage would ever have the patience to read what amounted to a self-indulgent diary—well, they would read certain key sections he had flagged as significant, but that was not the point of creating it in such detail.

  Sanity was. The ability to look up a given day and remember they had made progress.

  Dear Toby, he began his day’s account, a peaceful night and a day as dull as yesterday, which, considering our adventures of time past, I still count as good.

  What have I done since yesterday?

  I solved that puzzle I was working on. I learned a new Greek verb form. The aorist isn’t as hard as advertised, compared to atevi grammar. I reviewed the latest race car design. Remember I had lunch with Gin and her staff last week, and we have that race in their hallway next week, Cajeiri’s team, namely us, against Gin’s engineers, with some of the crew betting on the outcome. I have to bet with my own staff. She has to bet with hers. I have second thoughts on the bet between us being in tea, of which Bindanda tells me I have one cannister remaining, and they are likely as short, by now. I think we should have kept it to sugar packets. We have more of those. Either of us losing will put us in truly desperate straits for caffeine. I think I should propose to Gin that we change the bet to sugar. And it’s the theory of a bet that matters, isn’t it?

  Meanwhile Cajeiri’s birthday is coming on apace. He just this morning proposed we turn the birthday party into a slumber party—God knows where he learned that term, but I have my suspicions he’s seen one too many movies—and he’s insisting on inviting his young acquaintances from upstairs. Cenedi has informed him that propriety wouldn’t let Irene attend an all-night party with boys. Cajeiri absolutely insists on both Irene and Artur, and Gene, of course, and now he wants no chaperons at all. Atevi security is sensibly appalled . . .

  He deleted that paragraph—not the first he’d set down and then, considering the reputation and future safety of the boy who someday would be aiji in Shejidan, erased from the record.

  Too many movies, too much television, too much association with humans, the aiji-dowager said, and he by no means disagreed with that assessment of young Cajeiri’s social consciousness and opinions. But what could they do? He was a growing boy, undergoing this stultifying trip through folded space during two critical, formative years when youngsters should be asking questions and poking into everything at hand. And Cajeiri couldn’t. He couldn’t open doors at will, couldn’t explore everything he took into his head to do—he couldn’t breathe without the dowager’s bodyguards somewhere being aware of it. There were no other atevi children aboard. No one had considered that fact, Tabini-aiji having had the notion for his son to go on this voyage as an educational experience, as a way of making his heir acquainted with the new notions of space and distance and life in orbit. Argument to the contrary had not prevailed, and so what was there for a six-year-old’s active mind on their year-long voyage out to Reunion Station? What had they to entertain a six-year-old?

  The collected works of humanity in the ship’s archive. Television. Movies. Books like Treasure Island, Dinosaurs! and Riders of the Purple Sage. The six-year-old had already become much too fluent in human language, and remained absolutely convinced dinosaurs were contemporaneous with human urban civilization, possibly even living on Mospheira, right across from the mainland. Hadn’t he seen the movies? How could one get a picture of dinosaurs, he pointed out, without cameras being there?

  And then—then they had picked up their human passengers from the collapse of Reunion, 4043 passengers, to be exact, now 4078 going on 4149 in the enthusiasm of people no longer restricted and licensed to have a precise number of children. On the return leg, there were 638 children aboard, an ungodly number of them under a year of age, and seven of them of Cajeiri’s age, or thereabouts.

  Children. Children let loose from a formerly regimented, restrictive environment. And just one deck below, a very lonely, very bored atevi youngster, heir to a continent-spanning power, who had rarely been restrained from his ambitions where they didn’t compromise the ship’s systems.

  It was like holding magnets apart, these opposites of amazingly persistent and inventive attraction. Once they were aware of each other, they had to meet. The situation made everybody, atevi and human, more than anxious. Two sets of human parents had vehemently drawn their children back from all association with Cajeiri, fearing God knew what insubstantial harm. Or substantial harm, to be honest: Cajeiri, at seven years of age, had most of the height and strength of a grown human—he could hardly restrain the boy if he took a notion to rebel.

  Cajeiri had hurt no one, physically. He was ever so careful with his fragile friends. He was not given to tantrums or temper outbursts, which, considering his parentage, was extremely r
emarkable restraint for a seven-year-old. He had, of the remaining five children, a small, close circle of human associates who dealt with him almost daily—a clutch of mostly awed human children who kept Cajeiri busy racing cars and playing space explorer and staying mostly out of trouble . . . if one discounted the fact that they had learned to slip about with considerable skill, using service doors and other facilities that were not off-limits in the atevi section of the ship.

  That was one problem they had to cope with.

  There was another, lately surfaced, but the first of all fears, namely that these young human associates told the boy things. Cautioned never to use the words love, or friendship, or aishi, or man’chi, and constantly admonished, particularly by the paidhi, they had found others he should have forbidden, had he halfway considered. Notably, the words birthday party. They had told him, and, worse, invited him to Artur’s twelfth, an occasion of supreme revelation to an atevi youngster.

  Refreshments. Presents. Parties. Highly sugared revels.

  Four months ago, Cajeiri had served notice he wanted his own birthday celebration, his eighth being the imminent one, and the one he looked forward to celebrating with his—no, one still did not say friends, that word of extreme ill omen between atevi and humans. His associates. His co-conspirators.

  No, had been the first word from Cajeiri’s great-grandmother, early and firm: aside from all other considerations, the eighth was not an auspicious or fortunate year, in atevi tradition. The dowager refused, even cut Cajeiri off from his associates for a week, seeing trouble ahead. So Cajeiri’s determined little band had attempted to corrupt the ship’s communication system (Cajeiri’s clever trick with the computers) to contact one another in spite of the ban.