by Ben Bova
“It won’t help you!” he cried, crawling slowly, painfully forward. “It just makes my wounds look all the more real.” He leveled the gun in Eric’s direction and sighted down the length of the weapon.
Wait until he is vulnerable, Eric recited to himself as a bullet plowed into the ground half a meter away. Or until there is nothing left to lose. He closed his eyes tightly and concentrated again. Another klaxon sounded. The hopper shuddered.
“No!” Jephthah dropped the weapon and started pulling himself frantically with his arms in an attempt to get out from beneath the hopper, but made it only as far as the edge of the craft when the forward landing pads gave way just as the aft ones had, allowing the full mass of the shuttle to slam down on top of him.
The sound of the hopper crashing to the ground echoed against the valley wall, reverberating the length of the rift for several seconds before finally dying away and leaving the area quiet once more.
Eric struggled to get up, then helped Adela to stand, supporting her with an arm around her waist. Once on his feet, he could see that all that was left of Jephthah was his arm, protruding from beneath the smashed hulk of the craft, grisly and misshapen. The threat gone, he turned immediately to where Lewis lay motionless on the ground, and saw with relief that his son’s chest still rose and fell evenly.
“Mother,” he asked, moving toward the hatchway.
“What’s inside the shuttle?”
“The—the copilot and another agent are dead. So is the liaison.” She halted, then said, “Gareth is unconscious, I think. I think … he’s alive. No! He is alive, I know it!”
They made it up through the hatchway and into the lower deck, where he made Adela as comfortable as he could against a bulkhead. He pulled his jacket off, nearly crying out at the pain in his shoulder, and balled it into a cushion behind her.
“Stay here, Mother,” he said, playing his hand across her face. “If he said nothing else that was the truth, they must have seen the fireball. They have to be on their way. I’m going up to the flight deck and use the voice channel, let them know what’s happened here.”
He turned to go, but she stopped him with a tug at his arm. “But what happens after that?” she asked, her voice weak. “What about what happened here?”
Eric smiled, chuckling under his breath as he leaned over and kissed his mother on the forehead. “The shuttle was cut off from all outside links, just like he told us. But I could still access any system on the hopper,” he said.
“That’s how I collapsed the landing gear.” He smiled lovingly at her, gently brushing the hair away from her face with his hand. “And that’s how I ordered the hopper cameras to record everything Jephthah said and did.”
36
NEW FRIENDS
The Moon glowed directly overhead in the night sky, but underneath the shielding the air was warm and dry. Adela looked up at the brightness of Earth’s only natural satellite, and saw reflected in its cold surface the loneliness she had felt for so long.
I’d rather be outside, she thought, under the starry Australian sky. But the shielding was a consideration to the others gathered here, she realized, and tried to forget it was there. Still … her memories of the night breezes here, cool and moist off the Timor, made her long to be able to leave. To just walk outside, take Eric and Billy and all the others and walk alone on the sand and listen to the cry of the dingo, the calls of the insects and night birds. No dingo would be nearby, she knew, not with this many people assembled here.
Maybe later. Maybe. But she knew better. After the ceremonies here had concluded, Eric would return to Luna with his children. Even though they had been back from Tsing for more than three months, there was still so much to do. And yet … Maybe. Maybe.
“ … it will not be an easy task,” the Emperor was saying from the dais. “But it will be vastly easier, and unimaginably better, to change the Empire of the Hundred Worlds than to maintain it in its present form.” A roar broke out from the crowd below, and the Emperor waited for it to subside before continuing.
“For the Empire is dead,” he went on, pausing between each sentence. “What it once was, is no longer needed. What it once was, is outdated and obsolete. What it once was … is harmful to the needs of the people it pretends to serve in its current structure.”
They were in a bowl-shaped portion of the old mining steps on the Kimberley Plateau, at the same place where Billy and Cathay had held the corroboree uniting his people’s Song Lines. Eric’s Imperial shuttle formed the backdrop for his address, the raised platform from which he spoke centered at the side of the spacecraft. His podium was flanked on each side by members of the Imperial Court—academicians from the Imperial Academy of Sciences, Lewis’ fleet commanders from the Imperial Forces, and dozens of members of the official retinue of what the Imperial bureaucracy had become.
There were three special sections that had been arranged behind the Emperor. She sat, along with Brendan and Lewis, Billy and Cathay, Templeton Rice—even the House Master, Fleming—in the smallest of these directly behind Eric. To either side of them were the shielded sections reserved for the invited representatives of the Sarpan and Gatanni, about twenty members each. The Sarpan section was climate-controlled so that their representatives would not require E-suits, the misty air inside giving the shielded section the appearance of being a large cube-shaped structure. She knew that Oidar and Tra’tiss would be seated there, but she could not pick out their faces through the haze within it. The Gatanni section, meanwhile, was intended more for security purposes, as they required conditions not much different from humans. Adela looked among the furry faces in the section at her right, finally meeting the eyes of Ettalira, who sat with her husband. She smiled back at Adela, her small nestling sleeping soundly in her arms, and beamed with pride and happiness. There were no spheres to be seen, as biological bodies had been constructed and imprinted long before leaving Tsing. Best of all, this Ettalira was imprinted with memories recorded before the deadly confrontation with Jephthah. She had no first-hand recollection whatever of the events of that night.
And below them, on the valley floor, were thousands of people—standing, sitting on the ground, climbing every rock and ledge to get a better look at the last Emperor of the Hundred Worlds. The sky was only now beginning to lighten with the approaching dawn, but even in the dimness Adela could see the faces, every imaginable shade of black, brown, white, red and yellow all mingling as the Emperor spoke.
And in the distance, ringing the horizon, were hundreds of vehicles of nearly every type, their metal and plastic surfaces glinting in the reflected light from the Moon and stars above.
“ … and a centralized structure is antiquated in a time of faster-than-light travel,” he was saying, his words flowing not only over those present here, but to countless unseen others through the tachyon dishes that linked each of the Hundred Worlds. “As I relinquish my throne—a word that I fervently hope will disappear forever—I will help to create a true commonwealth of worlds. With your help, and with the help and cooperation of our friends the Gatanni and the Sarpan …” He spread his arms to indicate the sections on either side of him. “ … we will create a united system of civilizations that will not only dwarf what we once called ‘the Hundred Worlds,’ but will better it a hundredfold.”
He stood tall at a sound that would have drowned out even the loudest thunder. The joyful noise continued for several minutes, not even slowing as he raised a hand to be heard. Finally, the tumult subsided, and he concluded.
“We owe a great debt to many.” He turned to his left, regarding the Sarpan. “We owe a debt to you for staying by us even when forces would conspire to make you the object of unfounded hatred. We offer our thanks for the technology you have shared with us, specifically in that which led to a new understanding of shielding. For without that technology, the ability to travel quickly between the stars would never have been realized. Indeed, without that knowledge, we would not be gathered here t
onight to watch as the final phase of a project to save our birthworld commences.”
He turned, then, and spoke to the Gatanni. “And to you, our newest friends, we owe a debt for the vast knowledge of our galaxy, based on thousands of years of exploration begun long before Sarpan and human had even flown through the skies above their own worlds on artificial wings. And we thank you as well for agreeing to accompany us as we join with the Sarpan to send ships back along the route you took from the galaxy core. Perhaps one day, our three races will stand together on your homeworld, as well as on the surface of a hundred other Gatanni worlds along the way.” Eric paused as a roar of approval came from the crowd, and sipped from a glass of water. As the noise continued, he swept a hand at the vista around him, then motioned once more for quiet.
“We owe a debt to the ancient people of this land, the Aborigine, who have shown us that it is possible to hold tightly to the best of the old ways and values, while confronting a new life and a new future. The Aborigine have shown us all how to face up to a new day without giving up the best of an ancient culture. The new Commonwealth, in all its complexity, can learn much from these simple people.”
As the roar of the crowd’s approval met his ears, he held out his hand to Adela, motioning for her to join him on the dais. An expectant hush fell over the assembled multitude when they saw her next to him, beginning with those nearest the steps and moving in a wave through the farthest reaches of the crowd.
“And we owe the greatest debt of all to someone I love very much. For without her, this world’s Sun would soon leave this green planet but a burned cinder, floating in space. Without her dream, and her courage to make it come true, not only would Earth, the birthplace of all humanity, have died … but I fear that the Empire would have changed in a way even worse than the mere stagnation we leave behind now.
“People of the Commonwealth of Worlds, people of Earth, our Sarpan and Gatanni friends, I give you Doctor Adela de Montgarde.”
Where the noise of the crowd had been thunderous before, it literally shook the very stone now in an outpouring of approval that lasted many minutes. Adela looked at the sea of faces in the growing gray light of dawn, the waving hands, the shouting voices, and could hardly believe that the attention was for her. She felt distinctly uncomfortable with it, and somehow undeserving.
At last the sound died away, and she looked down on them. “I do not want thanks,” she said, “for pursuing something I wanted all along. What I did was my dream, as my son has said; but even I could never have predicted what would come of it. But it was your efforts …” She swept her arm to include the thousands below her, then looked at the sections on either side. “ … and yours, our new friends, who believed in my dream, and achieved my dream, and in so doing shared it with me. And that is more important to me than any thanks.”
The crowd applauded and shouted again, and as they quieted, the first rays of daylight began to color the sky to the east.
“While we have spoken here these last few hours, the final process to refuel the Sun, to link it to the feeder star light-years distant, has been under way.” She lowered her head, chuckling in an almost embarrassed manner. “I could show it to you. I could have the Academy technicians project a holograph of what is happening in space right now, and display it over this valley such that its illumination would challenge the very Sun itself. I could do that, but there would be nothing to see. The ships ringing the star would be too small to detect, the singularity that was inserted into the Sun invisible, the thousands upon thousands of people—human and nonhuman—circling the Sun within the orbit of Mercury, unseen in their efforts. And even upon viewing it, you would witness no noticeable change. You have seen simulations, I know, of how the process is unfolding, how the ships are placed, how the singularities work—but simulations are not real, and I will not show that to you either.
“Instead, I will show you this.” With that, she turned to the east, gazing at the far horizon, just as the bright star that was the Sun peeked above it. A moving wave of brightness washed over them, then flowed slowly down the sides of the steps as the Sun climbed the sky. “This is not the same star you gazed upon yesterday,” she said. “That star was dying, and in its death threatened to take with it all that it had known for the billions of years it shined on the Earth.”
The light moved down the far walls as the Sun’s angle increased, and began to fall on the part of the crowd on the western side of the valley floor. The crowd was murmuring, covering their eyes with their hands as the light streamed down on them and moved across to those at their sides.
“But this star is new, reborn, and ready to bestow upon us its life-giving warmth for many generations to come.”
With that, she left the dais, pleased that no one in that multitude was even looking at her any longer. Their attention, and the sudden burst of joyous approval that came forth as the Sun shone fully into the valley, was directed at the sky.
And that was thanks enough.
“It’s not going to be an easy voyage,” Eric said. “Even with an experienced survey captain like Anmoore commanding the Newcome.”
“I know that.” Adela looked at him, an eyebrow raised. “But the task you and your children are about to undertake will be no easier.”
“Yes, I suppose you’re right.”
They walked the grounds of the Imperial estate, enjoying a few moments together before she shuttled up to the starship that would take a combined human-Sarpan-Gatanni crew back along the spiral arm to the core. The rest of her family—Brendan, Lewis, Cathay and, now, Billy—all waited patiently near the shuttle, talking among themselves. From here, she could see Gareth Anmoore outlined in the entranceway at the top of the short flight of steps leading into the interior of the spacecraft. Master Fleming’s rotund form stood out easily against the others.
There were guards posted here and there around the landing pad, and one at the top of the stairs leading to the enormous oaken doors of the house, but there were far fewer than had ever been necessary before. Above them, the brilliant rays of the early summer Sun streamed down unfettered by defensive shielding.
“Will you return?”
“I don’t know,” she replied as they walked. “We’ll use the network of wormholes that Brendan and Gareth have located and cataloged, and will cover a great distance in less time than could even be imagined just a few years ago.” She stopped, shaking her head. “Will I return? Eric, we don’t even know if we’ll make it all the way there.”
“I know that.” There was a shout from the direction of the shuttle, and they looked over to see Gareth waving for them to head back. Eric sighed heavily, sadly. “I know the tachyon dish will keep us close, but I will miss you, Mother.”
“And I’ll miss you, all of you.” She looked around at Woodsgate, taking in the trees, the sloping expanse of bluegrass, the gray limestone karst dotting the landscape. “And I’ll miss this place most of all.”
They walked slowly back to the shuttle, where Adela made her last good-byes to Eric’s children, wishing them each luck with their work to set up the Commonwealth. Master Fleming bowed deeply as she neared the shuttle steps, his red cheeks quivering comically at the move.
“I’m gonna miss you, mate,” Billy said, his toothy smile beaming. He hugged her tightly, lifting Adela effortlessly off the ground. The two friends looked at each other, then embraced again as Billy whispered in her ear, “I never got a chance to thank you. You talked about dreams, but I don’t think you ever realized that you helped me find mine. You know the meaning of the Dreamtime.” He smiled broadly again. “I think there may be more Aborigine in you than either of us knows. Good-bye, Adela.”
“No worries, Billy.”
“Yeah. No worries, mate.”
She parted from him and climbed the few steps to the top of the hatchway, looking back at her family before going inside and pressing the closing plate to bring the hatch up. She waved once more as the hatch raised, then turned for th
e flight deck.
The shuttle was a small one, and since Gareth had no need of a copilot she occupied the empty seat next to him. He had been very quiet this last hour at Woodsgate, staying in the background so as not to intrude on the family nature of the gathering, but he turned to her now, saying, “This is it. Are you sure you still want to go?”
“I’m sure,” she replied, smiling at him. “It’s time I left the Sun behind and got on with my life.”
Gareth returned her smile, then focused his attention on the controls, lifting the tiny craft readily off the landing pad.
Through the canopy Adela took a last look at Woodsgate and the green Kentucky hills as he smoothly arced the craft into a flight pattern that would take it to the Newcome, the huge starship waiting in orbit. The craft rose steadily, the horizon falling away below them, and turned to a final heading that allowed a bright shaft of sunlight to stream through the plastiglass of the flight-deck canopy.
Adela felt the warmth on her face and winced at the brilliance of it, the sheer power of the glowing radiance bringing tears to her eyes, but made no effort to shield herself from the light.
Tor Books by Ben Bova
As On A Darkling Plain
The Astral Mirror
Battle Station
The Best of the Nebulas (Ed.)
Challenges
Colony
Cyberbooks
Empire Builders
Escape Plus
Future Crime
Gremlins Go Home
(with Gordon R. Dickson)
The Kinsman Saga
The Multiple Man
Orion
Orion Among the Stars
Orion and the Conqueror
Orion in the Dying Time
Out of the Sun
Peacekeepers
Privateers