by Vernor Vinge
Jau had done everything he could to make this work. I didn’t have any choice. Every few seconds, the mantra floated up through his consciousness, the response to the equally persistent I am not a butcher.
But now…now there might be a safe way to evade Brughel’s terrible orders. Be honest, you’re still a butcher. But of hundreds, not millions.
Without the detailed geographic and ordnance advice from L1, any number of small errors might be made. The Southmost strike showed that. Jau’s fingers drifted over his keyboard, sending last-second advice to his team. The mistake was very subtle. But it would introduce a tree of random deviations into their attack on the antimissiles. Many of those strikes would now be way off target. The Accord would have a chance against the Kindred nukes.
Rachner Thract paced back and forth in the visitor holding box. How long could it take Underhill to come out? Maybe the cobber had changed his mind, or simply forgotten what he was about. The sentry looked upset, too. He was talking on some kind of comm line, his words inaudible.
Finally, there was the whine of hidden motors. A moment later the old wood doors slid aside. A guide-bug emerged, closely followed by Sherkaner Underhill. The guard came racing around his sentry box. “Sir, could I have a word with you? I’m getting—”
“Yes, but let me talk to the Colonel here for just a moment.” Underhill seemed to sag under the weight of his parka, and every step took him steadily to the side. The sentry fidgeted by his post, not sure what to do. The guide-bug patiently dragged Underhill back onto a more or less straight path headed for Thract.
Underhill reached the visitor holding box. “I have a few free minutes now, Colonel. I’m very sorry about your losing your job. I want to—”
“That’s not important now, sir! I have to tell you.” It was a miracle that he had gotten through to Underhill. Now, if I can just convince him before that sentry gets up the courage to intervene. “Our command automation is corrupt, sir. I have proof!” Underhill was raising his arms in protest, but Rachner rumbled on. This was his last chance. “It sounds crazy, but it explains everything: There’s an—”
The world exploded around them. Colors beyond color. Pain beyond the brightest sun of Thract’s imagination. For a moment the color of pain was all there was, squeezing out consciousness, fear, even startlement.
And then he was back. In agony, but at least aware. He was lying in snow and random wreckage. His eyes…his eyes hurt. The afterimages of Hell were burned all across his foreview, blocking his vision. The afterimages showed stark silhouettes against a beam of utter darkness: the sentry, Sherkaner Underhill.
Underhill! Thract came to his feet, pushed aside the flatboards that had fallen on him. Now other pains were surfacing. His back was a single massive ache. Getting punched through walls will do that to you. He took a few shaky steps, but nothing seemed broken.
“Sir? Professor Underhill?” His own voice seemed to be coming from a great distance. Rachner turned his head this way and that, like a child still with its baby eyes. He had no choice; his forevision was filled with burning afterimages. Downhill, along the curve of the caldera wall, there was a row of smoking holes. But the destruction here was enormously greater. None of the Underhill outbuildings still stood, and fire was spreading across all that was flammable. Rachner took a step toward where the sentry had been standing. But now that was the edge of a steep, steaming crater. The hillside above him was blown out. Thract had seen something like this before, but that had been a terrible accident, an ammo dump struck by penetrating artillery. What hit us? What was Underhill storing below? Something in the back of his mind was asking the questions, but he had no answers and plenty of more immediate concerns.
There was an animal hissing sound, right at his feet. Rachner turned his head. It was Underhill’s guide-bug. Its fighting hands were poised to stab, but its body lay twisted in the wreckage. The poor beast’s shell must be cracked. When he tried to sidle around it, the bug shrieked more fiercely and made a ghastly effort to pull its crushed body out from the flatboards.
“Mobiy! It’s okay. It’s okay, Mobiy.” It was Underhill! His voice was muffled, but so were all sounds just now. As Thract slipped past the guide-bug, it pulled its broken body from the flatboards and followed him toward Underhill’s voice. But the bug’s hissing was no longer a threat. It was more a sobbing whimper.
Thract walked along the edge of the crater. The edge was piled deep with debris that had been thrown up. The glassy sides were already slumping, collapsing inward. And still there was no sign of Underhill.
The guide-bug pulled himself past Thract. There, right ahead of the bug: a single Spiderly arm stuck sharp and high from the mangle. The guide-bug shrilled, and started feebly digging. Rachner joined him, pulling boards out of the way, shoveling the warm splatter dirt to the side. Warm? It was hot as the Calorica bottomland. There was something especially horrifying about being buried in warm earth. Thract dug desperately faster.
Underhill was buried rear-end down, his head just a foot below the air. In seconds, they had him free down past his shoulders. The ground lurched, sliding with the rest of the crater’s edge. Thract reached out, twined his arms around Underhill’s—and pulled. An inch, a foot…the two of them fell onto the high ground just as Underhill’s grave slid into the pit.
The guide-bug crawled around them, his arms never letting go of his master. Underhill patted the animal gently. Then he turned, weaving his head about in the same silly way Thract had been. There were blisters in the crystal surfaces of his eyes. Sherkaner Underhill had shaded the blast from Thract’s eyes; the whole top of the old cobber’s head had been directly exposed.
Underhill seemed to be looking toward the pit. “Jaybert? Nizhnimor?” He said softly, disbelievingly. He came to his feet, and started for the drop-off. Both Thract and the bug held him. At first, Underhill let them guide him back over the crest of the splatter. It was hard to tell under the heavy clothes, but at least two of his legs seemed to be cracked.
Then: “Victory? Brent? Can you hear me? I’ve lost—” He turned and started back toward the pit. This time, Rachner actually had to fight him. The poor cobber was drifting in and out of delirium. Think! Rachner looked downslope. The helipad was tilted but the ground above had shielded it from the flying debris. His chopper still sat there, apparently undamaged. “Ah! Professor—there’s a telephone in my helicopter. Come on, we can call the General from there.” The improvisation was thin, but Underhill was drifting in and out of delirium. He swayed for a moment, almost collapsed. Then a moment of false lucidity: “A helicopter? Yes…I have a use for that.”
“Okay. Let’s go down there.” Thract started for the top of the stairs, but Underhill still hesitated. “We can’t leave Mobiy. Nizhnimor and the others yes. They are surely dead. But Mobiy…”
Mobiy is dying. But Thract didn’t say that aloud. The guide-bug had stopped crawling. Its arms waved gently in Underhill’s direction. “It’s an animal, sir,” Thract said softly.
Underhill chuckled, delirious. “That’s all a matter of scale, Colonel.”
So Thract took off his outer jacket and made a sling for the guide-bug. The creature seemed like about eighty pounds of very dead weight. But they were going downhill, and now Sherkaner Underhill followed without further complaint, needing only occasional help to keep on the stairs. So what better could you be doing now, eh, Colonel? The lurking Enemy had finally pounced. Thract looked out across the caldera at the pattern of smoking destruction. Likely it was repeated on the altiplano, trashing the King’s strategic defenses. Doubtless, the High Command had been nuked. Whatever it was I came to do, it’s too late now.
FIFTY-SEVEN
The taxi floated up from the L1 jumble. Below them, the mouth of S745 was open, exhausting air and ice particles. If not for Qiwi, they would still be trapped behind the sluiceway’s pressure hatch. Qiwi’s landing and ad hoc lock work were something that even well-managed zipheads might not have accomplished.
“I think he’ll make it, Qiwi. Look, there’s medical automation at L1-A, and—”
Qiwi pulled back into her seat. “The arsenal…” But her gaze stayed on her father, and the horror was shading toward thoughtfulness. Abruptly, she looked away and nodded. “Yes.”
The taxi boosted on its little reaction jets, sending Nau and his men on a quick scramble for handholds. Qiwi was overriding the taxi’s sedate automation. “What happened, Tomas? Do we have a chance?”
“I think so. If we can get into L1-A.” He related the story of treachery, almost the truth except for Ali Lin.
Qiwi slewed the taxi smoothly into its braking approach. But her voice was near sobbing. “It’s the Diem Massacre all over again, isn’t it? And if we don’t stop them this time, we’ll all die. And the Spiders too.”
Bingo. If Qiwi hadn’t been so freshly scrubbed, this would be a very dangerous line of thought. A few days more and she’d have a hundred little inconsistencies to piece together; she’d quickly see through it all. But now, for the next few Ksecs, the analogy with Diem played in his favor. “Yes! But this time we have a chance to stop them, Qiwi.”
The taxi descended swiftly across Diamond One. The sun was like a dim red moon, its light glistening here and there off the last of their stolen snow. Hammerfest had disappeared around the corner. Most likely, Pham Nuwen was trapped in the Attic there. The fellow was a genius, but he’d achieved only half a victory. He had cut off ziphead services, but he hadn’t stopped the Arachna operation, and he hadn’t reached allies.
And in this game, half a victory was worth nothing. In a few hundred seconds, I’ll have the firepower at L1-A. Strategy would crystalize in assured destruction, and Pham Nuwen’s own moral weakness would give all the game to Tomas Nau.
Ezr never lost consciousness; if he had, there would have been no waking. But for a time, all awareness was centered within himself, on the numbing cold, the tearing pain in his shoulder and down his arm.
The urge to gasp air into his lungs became overpowering. Somewhere there must be air; the park had as much breathable space as ever. But where? He turned in the direction where the fake sunlight was brightest. Some remnant of reason noted that the water had come out of that direction. It would be falling now. Swim toward the brightness. He kicked feebly and as hard as he was able, guiding with his good hand.
Water. More water. Water forever. Reddish in the sunlight.
He burst through the surface, coughing and vomiting, and breathing at last. The sea lay around him. It writhed and climbed, with no horizon. It was like something from a Canberra swords-and-pirates story he had watched as a child; he was a sailor trapped in a final maelstrom. He stared up and up. The water curved around and closed above his head. His seascape was a bubble, perhaps five meters across.
With orientation came something like rational thought. Ezr twisted, looked down and behind him. No sign of pursuers. But maybe it didn’t matter. The water around him was stained with his own blood; he could taste it. The cold that had slowed the flow of blood and numbed some of the pain was also paralyzing his legs and his good arm.
Ezr stared through the water, trying to estimate how far his air bubble was from the outer surface. The water on the sun side did not seem deep, but…He looked down and back toward what had been the forest. Through the blur and the flow, he could see the ruins of the trees. Nowhere was this water more than a dozen meters deep. I’m out of the main mass. His bubble was itself part of a free droplet, drifting slowly across North Paw’s sky.
Drifting downward, by some combination of microgravity and the sea’s collision with the cavern roof. Ezr watched numbly as the ground came up around him. He would hit the lake bed, just off the lodge’s moorage.
When it came, the collision was dreamlike slow, less than a meter per second. But the water swept swiftly around him, spraying and streaming. He hit on his legs and butt and bounced upward, sharing space with a tumble of jiggling, spinning blobs of water. All around him was a clacking sound, a mindless mechanical applause. The stone casement of the seawall was less than a meter away. He reached out, almost stopped his spin. Then his bad shoulder touched the casement, and everything disappeared in a blaze of agony.
He was gone for only a second or two. When consciousness returned, he saw that he was about five meters above the seabed. Near him, the stones of the casement were covered with a line of moss and stain, the old sea level. And the clacking applause…he looked across the seabed. He could see them in their hundreds, the stabilizer servos, pursuing the same sabotage that had set the sea to marching.
Ezr climbed the rough-cut stone of the seawall. It was only a few meters to the top, to the lodge…to where the lodge had been. There were recognizable foundations. The stubs of wall frames still stood. But a million tonnes of water, even moving slow, had been enough to sweep the place away. Here and there, rubble swayed up, snagged in the deeper wreckage.
Ezr moved from point to point, using his good hand to climb across the ruins. The sea had settled into a deep layer that hugged the forests and climbed the far walls of the cavern. It still roiled and shifted. Ten-meter blobs of water still coasted across the sky. Much of the sea might eventually pool back in the basin, but Ali Lin’s masterpiece was destroyed.
Things were getting fuzzy and dim; he didn’t hurt as much as before. Somewhere out there in the drowned forest, Tomas Nau was trapped along with his merry men. Ezr remembered the triumph he had felt when he saw them sinking into the trees beneath the water. Pham, we won. But this wasn’t the original plan. In fact, Nau had somehow seen through them, almost killed them both. Nau might not be trapped at all. If he could get out of the cavern, he could track down Pham or get to L1-A.
But the fear was far away, receding. Ribbons of sticky red water floated around him now. He bent his head to look at his arm. Marli’s wire gun had shattered his elbow, opening an artery. The previous wound in his shoulder, and the torture, had created a kind of accidental tourniquet, but I’m bleeding out. Logically, the thought was cause for frantic alarm, but all he really wanted to do was let loose of the ground and rest awhile. And then you die, and then maybe Tomas Nau wins.
Ezr forced himself to keep moving. If he could stop the bleeding…but no way could he even take off his jacket. His mind drifted away from the impossible. Grayness crept in around the edges of his mind. What can I do in the seconds I have left? He picked his way across the wreckage, his vision narrowed down to the ground just centimeters from his face. If he could find Nau’s den, even a comm set. At least I could warn Pham. There was no comm set, just endless rubble. The fine woods that Fong had grown were all kindling now, their spiral grain shattered.
A naked white arm reached from beneath a crushed armoire. Ezr’s mind stumbled on the horror and the mystery. Who did we leave behind? Omo, yes. But this limb was naked, glistening, bloodless white. He touched the hand at the end of the arm. It twitched, slid around his fingers. Ah, not a corpse at all, just one of those full-press jackets that Nau favored. An idea floated up from the dimness, Maybe to stop the bleeding. He tugged on the jacket sleeve. It slid, caught, and then floated free. He lost his grip on the ground, and for a moment it was a dance between himself and the jacket. The left sleeve slit open, forking down through the fingers. He slipped his arm along its length and the jacket closed from fingers to shoulder. He pulled the fabric across his back, and fit the right side loosely around his mangled arm. Now he could bleed to death, and no one would see another drop. Tighten the fabric. He shrugged it snug. Tighter, a real tourniquet. He slid his left hand down the cover of his ruined arm, squeezing agony from the flesh beneath. But the full-press fabric responded, stiffening. Far away, he heard himself groan with pain. He lost consciousness for a moment, woke lying lightly on his head.
>
But now his right arm was immobilized, the full-press sleeve at maximum tension. Such a painful extreme of fashion, but it might be enough to keep him alive.
He drank from drifting water, and tried to think.
There was a querulous mewing sound behind him. The sky-kitten slid into view, settled onto his chest and good arm. He reached up, felt the trembling body. “You in trouble too?” he asked. His words came as croaks. The kitten’s great dark eyes peered back at him and it burrowed deeply at the space between his chest and left arm. Strange. Normally, a sick kitten would go off and hide; that had caused Ali lots of problems, even though the creatures were tagged. The sky-kitten was soaked, but it seemed alert. Maybe, “You came to comfort me, Little One?”
He could feel it purring now, and the warmth of its body. He smiled; just having someone to listen made him feel more alert.
There was a thutter of wings. Two more kittens. Three. They hung above him and meowed irritably as if to say, “What have you done with our park,” or maybe “We want dinner.” They swirled around him, but didn’t chase the little one from his arms. Then the largest, a rag-eared tom, swooped away from Ezr and settled on the highest point in the ruin. He glowered down at Ezr, and began grooming his wings. The damn creature didn’t even look wet.
The highest point left in the ruin…a diamond tube almost two meters across, surmounted by a metal cap. Ezr suddenly realized what he was looking at: a tunnel head in Tomas Nau’s den, most likely a direct route to L1-A. He coasted up the hill to the metal-topped pillar. The tom hunkered down, reluctant to move out of Ezr’s way. Even now the creatures were as possessive as ever.