Nightfall

by Moshe Ben-Or

  True to their name, the Crystallosporarae made crystal-like endospores coated with a tough, acid-resistant resin. No phagocyte produced by the human body could harm them, and no antibody would bind to them. The only solution, besides sending in large numbers of phage nanites to collect up the spores and haul them out of the body, was to wait for the spores to activate, and slaughter the active organisms before they produced many more.

  So he needed bandage changes every few hours, and the wounds had to be washed out every time. Strong tincture of iodine, probably. He remembered the burning. Maybe some kind of homebrew potion, too. Something to inhibit spore formation, or maybe mess with spore activation.

  He was still around, so at the very least the damned thing had been fought to a standstill. Hopefully.

  “What about Leo?” asked Yosi to get his mind off that unpleasant train of thought.

  “Unless he spends all of his time filtering stream water, he should be getting a whopping zirconium deficiency by now. None of the heavyworlder-friendly zirconium concentrators were ever seeded on this planet. Or do we still have supplements?”

  “Your extended survival library strikes again,” smiled Mirabelle.

  “Leo’s been drinking shelleaf tea. Frightful stuff. It’d poison anyone but a heavyworlder.”

  “What about vitamins? You using the autodoc’s synthesizer to make them or have you made contact with the rest of the world?”

  “The former, I’m afraid.

  “Leo says we should lay low until you are back to normal. Says you’re the specialist ground-pounder around here.

  “He doesn’t want to make a stupid mistake and get us all killed. Says he’s tried that one before, whatever that means.

  “I figure it has something to do with Miranda, somehow. Patty let that slip once, before Leo shushed her.

  “You two are full of secrets, you know that? It’s very annoying.”

  Yosi grunted noncommittally.

  Leo talking about Miranda to a girl?

  Not a good sign. Not a good sign at all.

  The whole damned world was going haywire on him.

  “Shin agrees with Leo,” continued Miri in response to his grunt.

  “What about Patty? What does she think?”

  “Oh, she thinks whatever Leo thinks. She’s a bit of a wet blanket.”

  Yosi smiled.

  Well, at least some things didn’t change.

  “I’d bet that’s partly Leo’s fault,” he said.

  “He’s got a thing about being protective, especially when it comes to women he cares about.”

  “All you men do.

  “You all just want to be big strong knights in shining armor, always rescuing us poor, weak, defenseless girls. We’re perfectly capable of taking care of ourselves, you know. At least most of the time.”

  “We know.

  “But you can’t expect a few centuries of culture to undo millennia of evolution. Beneath that thin skin of civilization, we’re all still cavemen.

  “Besides, everyone needs rescuing every once in a while. Strong, self-reliant, mature women included.”

  “And knights in shining armor? Do knights in shining armor ever need rescuing?”

  “Absolutely. All the time. That’s why the Holy One, blessed be He, invented strong, self-reliant, mature women.”

  Mirabelle smiled, running her fingers through his sweat-soaked hair.

  “Here, brave knight,” she said, opening a thermos bottle, “drink your soup.”

  * 39 *

  “You were one of my best students, Ricardo,” said Klaus Weinberger as he walked into the erstwhile governor’s office.

  It was truly amazing, he reflected, how many things could change in six short weeks.

  Society is an unstable pyramid, always looking to topple. But it always grows back, in one form or another. Humans are funny that way.

  “You had me expelled for cheating.”

  “You got caught.”

  Sanchez laughed, waving his hand in the general direction of a chair.

  “Please, Professor, sit down.

  “That boy you sent to arrange this meeting damned well near got himself killed trying to get me to see you.”

  “That is a reflection on the kind of people you hire.”

  “One cannot afford to be picky in my line of work. I am afraid the kind of man it attracts is no choirboy.

  “Why are you here, old man?”

  “The ultimate basis of all social relationships, Ricardo. We can be of use to one another.”

  “I fail to see how an old sociology professor of mine can be of use running a planet.”

  Sanchez grinned in a most unpleasant way.

  It was just like Ricardo to take such a ridiculous potshot, thought Klaus Weinberger.

  As if the man who had spent two years as deputy head of the all-powerful Committee for National Reform was really just a random old sociology professor.

  By his very nature, Ricardo Sanchez could never understand why any man would voluntarily give up so much power, and choose to retire quietly to an unassuming position in academia. And what Ricardo Sanchez couldn’t comprehend he feared, and sought to belittle.

  “That’s the whole point, isn’t it?” replied the Dean casually, without missing a beat.

  “You aren’t running a cartel anymore; you’re President of a planet.

  “And this planet’s infrastructure has been destroyed by an EMP barrage followed by six weeks of lawlessness. Half this city’s population is dead. Most of the rest is sick, starving or both.

  “In order to keep everyone alive, you’ll need to restore the machinery of civilization. The algae tanks, transportation systems, banks, hospitals, factories, sewage plants, police stations, public security bots, the nets… It all has to be rebuilt, or at least put back into operation.

  “Your thugs can intimidate people, they can even stop all looting not done by themselves or the aliens, but can they truly run a city, let alone a planet?

  “If you want to rule, you also have to govern. To do that, you need technical specialists. I have them. The Polytechnic University campus is one of the few places in this city where no one is starving. Our algae tanks and power plant are running fine. Whatever EMP destroyed, we rebuilt. What we didn’t have, we made ourselves. I can help you put this planet back together.”

  “What’s to prevent me from simply walking in and taking what I want? I’ve got the guns. Your techies will work for me, or I’ll shoot them all.”

  “You know the answer to that as well as I do, Ricardo, or you’d have done it already. We’d fight back. You’d have to kill half of us, and the rest would always be looking to screw you over. It’d be inefficient as all hell. Eventually the aliens would notice that things aren’t running smoothly and you’d be through.

  “That is what you promised them, isn’t it? Order and efficiency?”

  “What do you want in return, old man? A piece of the pie?”

  “Yes. A piece of the pie. But not just for me, for all my people.

  “Here’s the deal:

  “We’ll work for you. In return, your people stay off the Polytech campus. The campus police keep their old jurisdiction. We get the equipment we need to comfortably feed everyone we’ve got, and the guns to protect them. Once you’ve reintroduced currency, we get a decent allowance from your government.”

  “You want a state within a state, Professor. Your own little kingdom.

  “How ironic. The great advocate of liberty wants to be a tinpot dictator.”

  “Times change, Ricardo. Liberty won’t keep me on top, not today. It’s no more ironic than yesterday’s public enemy number one suddenly running the government.

  “Do we have a deal or not?”

  “Yes, Klaus. We have a deal.

  “Tomorrow afternoon, say at two, I’ll come visit your little castle. You round up your professors, and I’ll bring my captains. We’ll talk business.”

  * 40 *


  “These were worth every pfennig,” thought Isabella coldly as she paced the bridge of her flagship.

  It was all virtual, of course, but it felt as real as anything could be. Her physical body might be cocooned in an armored control pod in the bowels of the missile boat, but her mind floated free, no different from the detachment commander over by the situation display, or the helmsman at his control yoke, or the boat commander, a fresh-faced young lieutenant drumming his fingers nervously on the armrest of his chair.

  The onboard computers created this virtual world as a metaphor, a facsimile of the reality as it would have been a thousand years ago, when physical muscles had to move physical controls and crew communication involved actual vibrating air.

  Everything that happened here happened a hundred times faster, a hundred times crisper, a hundred times easier. But the human mind still needed a familiar reality to manipulate, however virtual it might be.

  Her military advisors had all but guffawed when their twenty-year-old mistress had proclaimed her desire for a modern sea-going war fleet. And not just a modern sea-going war fleet, but one built on Miranda, by Mirandans.

  She got new advisors. That part had been easy. The war fleet, not so much.

  The missile boat around her had been built on Bretogne. Number 0001 of a projected six hundred, with an option for eight hundred more. Maspanot Barrakuda had designed it based on the Super Keshets used by the Leaguers’ own ground forces. But they had designed it specifically for her.

  Only the first twenty-five were to come fully built. The next two hundred were to come as kits, to be assembled by Her Ladyship’s brand new personal shipyard. And the next two hundred after that would be built on Miranda under license, with only key subassemblies coming from Bretogne.

  By the time missile boat number 0600 came off the quay, Miranda would be paying only license fees and the salaries of a couple of dozen Leaguer engineers imported to supervise the construction. By the time the thousandth boat hit the water, it would be the bright-eyed burgher youngsters she’d sent to study marine engineering on Bretogne as part of the missile boat deal who would be doing the supervising.

  And the next set of missile boats would be designed by her own people, trained right here at home.

  How the courtiers had cringed at the expense of it!

  How awful it was, they had whispered. A beautiful old palace demolished, a scenic fishing resort defaced by a mess of quays and docks, balls canceled, servants fired… All to make a bunch of ugly, prosaic missile boats!

  The people of Rotsach Island, on the other hand, had turned out in droves to cheer when she’d come to lay the cornerstone of her Maritime University.

  They were the ones who would build the shipyard. They were the ones who would man it. And it would be their children who would attend the new university, or at least its affiliated trade schools.

  Under Her Ladyship’s father they had been the indentured fisherfolk of a Baronial Estate. Living, for the most part, in windowless stone-walled shacks roofed with driftwood and scavenged plastic sheeting, without electricity or running water. Owners of nothing whatsoever, not even their own lives and bodies, much less the fishing boats they took out to sea and from whose offal they would, in anticipation of Sundays and public holidays, receive enough scraps to make a pot of fish gut stew to go with their meager daily ration of parboiled rice and pressed kelp.

  Ragged and filthy and sick. Old at forty. Dead at fifty. So poor that even basic antibiotics, much less rejuvenation treatments, had remained forever out of their reach.

  Their sons would grow up as the beperktebürger of a Chartered Domain of the Crown. Some might even earn the privilege of buying their full freedom. Thirty years’ flawless service in Her Ladyship’s fleet would do it, or bravery in emergencies.

  For those less brave, a lifetime of hard work in the shipyard, coupled with a bit of luck and native ability, could see a man rise to Meister, and receive his freiebürgerpas on retirement.

  There was even a Charter clause giving the top three students in every class at Her Ladyship’s new university the freiheitvoorrecht at graduation. And if they managed to save enough money to twice pay the not-so-unreasonable freiebürgergelt Her Ladyship had set when she’d graciously extended them a Charter, and buy their wives’ liberty alongside their own, then their sons might actually be born completely free.

  In the meantime, they would live in fine new villages full of comfortable, well-built houses. Their ailments would be tended to by real, decently-supplied clinics staffed with actual nurses and even the occasional visiting doctor, and their children would be taught valuable skills in spacious new schools, instead of being handed a filleting knife at seven and sent to slave away in the cannery. And if Her Ladyship desired that they build and crew missile boats for her in exchange for her amazing kindness to them, then they would gladly kiss her feet in the bargain.

  And, yes, it had cost three times what it would have cost to just buy a few hundred missile boats. Four times, if you counted the cost of the fish the Volk of Rotsach now ate on a daily basis, thanks to the gracious dispensation of their queen. But a few hundred missile boats did not a fleet make.

  The Zin may have demolished the half-finished shipyard, the university may be in ruins, and she might have taken delivery of scarcely a dozen boats, but Isabella needed only to glance at the fire that burned in the eyes of the young lieutenant as he had saluted, welcoming Her Ladyship aboard, or the naked adoration in the eyes of his crew as they had hurried to load her sparse luggage, to see what it was that made a fleet into a fleet.

  The Mad Baron had needed a battalion of Palace Guards to come “fishing” on Rotsach, and still he’d cowered in terror behind the walls of his seaside fortress. The Mad Baron’s daughter walked among them with naught but a single bodyguard to accompany her, and every one of the low-born boys on this boat would die a thousand times over, before he’d let a hair fall off her royal head.

  They believed. They believed in their officers. They believed in their gear. They believed in themselves. Above all else, they believed in her.

  Millions were already dead. Whole cities had been blasted into glass and dust. An alien enemy mightier than any human Great Power marched across the surface of Miranda all but at will.

  Millions more would die. Perhaps hundreds of millions, before it was all over. But as long as she was with them, they would follow and they would believe.

  If Her Ladyship wished to attack an alien army of three million with a dozen missile boats, then they would obey. And if Her Ladyship wished to lead the attack personally, then they would even believe that they had a chance of surviving the experience.

  Their confidence had perhaps been bolstered, when men of Her Ladyship’s Palace Guard had cordoned off their missile boats’ precipitously emptied payload bays with giant black privacy screens, and proceeded to load something with downrightly ominous care.

  The something had arrived yesterday in the secret grotto where the little fleet had hidden at the first warning that the enemy would penetrate the jump point defenses of the Faerie. And with the something had come the woman they had watched in awe, projected on walls and briefing boards and tiny hand-held screens, as she’d waved the Baronial Mace in the air and vowed to defend their homeland alongside them, or die trying.

  “Treasures!” they had whispered among themselves, excitement and awe and terror all mixed into a single intoxicating brew more powerful than any drug, “Her Ladyship brings her Treasures against the foe!”

  Indeed she was. An effort of will, and she stood suddenly in the payload bay, dwarfed by the ominous black cylinder.

  It was all VR, she knew that. Even so, she couldn’t help but caress the mirror-smooth obsidian skin.

  It seemed to draw all light into itself, that skin, as if in its presence even the sun would darken.

  At the mere sight of this cylinder, at the mere knowledge of what it was, the soul chilled and the heart quivered in terror. It was
beautiful.

  Isabella had no need to view it or pet it, not really. But it would look good when the VR was turned into propaganda. The Nets may be down, but the People still needed to see their Baroness, even if data crystals had to be carried by courier from town to town. At least that was what she told herself, as she bent forward to kiss the meme dispenser.

  “Fly true for me today, my precious,” she whispered to it.

  They all had names. This one was Brunhilde. The other two were Kara and Rota. Six hundred years old. The pride and joy of the House of Rijn. Only used twice in all that time. Today would make a third.

  There were none like them anywhere else on Miranda. As far as Isabella knew, there were none like them left anywhere else in the universe. Or, at least, there were very few, and well hidden.

  Treasures indeed. Treasures beyond price. Used in the right place, at the right time, they could snuff out whole worlds, and bring civilizations to ruin. They were Death personified. They were Terror given form.

  Yet still they were vulnerable. Vulnerable before launch. Vulnerable in flight. Most vulnerable of all during recovery.

  And thus they had to be carried close to the enemy. They had to be launched by surprise. They had to do their work quickly, falling upon the foe without warning, flying their courses and returning to be recovered before they were forever lost. The mighty Ancients of the Golden Age could afford to lose their like, for they could build more to replace them. The Ancients’ fallen descendants in this threadbare modern world could afford no such luxury.

  In this, however, the Zin would be of assistance, thought Isabella wryly.

  The initial nuclear counterattack against the enemy’s bridgeheads had killed perhaps as many as a million of them, but they had answered in kind, with hydrogen and kinetics both. Isabella had no exact count, but perhaps as many as four or five million of her subjects had perished in the crossfire.

  Now there could be no more large kinetics and no more strategic nukes, not unless either side was willing to tip the balance past the point of no return, onto the slippery slope that would speedily revert this world back to the lifeless, frozen iceball it had been before the Terraformer came. Now it was all up to the ground-pounders, toe to toe, bayonet to bayonet, to prevail, or else to perish.