The Cyborg from Earth

by Charles Sheffield

  Ominous thoughts accompanied his words. This was just one ship, but it, alone, had enough firepower to destroy Confluence Center. There were sixty-three more, many of them far more powerful. It was all very well for Connie Cheever to make plans for what to do when the Space Navy flotilla arrived, but those plans would be useless if the fleet decided to attack.

  The people in the Cloud simply had no idea what forces were on the way.

  He spoke again into the recorder.

  "I don't know of any vulnerabilities possessed by vessels of the Achernar class. Next ship: battle fort and launch platform. Exeter class. Net mass, ninety-four thousand tons. Average crew, twenty-seven. Drive, Mark Seven Omnivores, maximum burst acceleration, sixteen Gs. Main weapons . . ."

  Another depressing thought. He knew much of this without thinking. He had picked up masses of information from the navy briefing materials almost unconsciously, and on subjects of no interest to him. It would be nice to think that, for a change, that dreary catalog of weapons might have a use.

  "Supercruiser, Monitor class. Net mass, sixty thousand tons. Average crew, five. Drive . . ."

  But of what use was any listing of weapons, unless it persuaded the people of Confluence Center that their only hope was flight? Energy buildup in the storage rings, no matter how much it might give Connie Cheever the feeling of doing something, was a waste of time. Energy alone could not protect them from the weapons of the approaching fleet. In a day or so, the bearers of destruction that he was detailing so intently would be here. Flee, then, as far and as fast as possible. Surely no one still believed it was possible to negotiate with Mohammad Duval and the Space Navy leaders? Jeff didn't. But he had the personal memory of Myron's vengeful face to guide him.

  "Space frigate, Mirage class. Net mass, fourteen thousand tons. Crew of two. Experimental isomer drive, burst acceleration twenty-two Gs in kamikaze mode. Weapons . . . ."

  All the time, in the background, driving him along and encouraging him to stick at his task, he heard that deep organ tone of the emergency energy system. Whenever he took a short break he felt the vibration, beneath his feet, in the air around him, grating in his very bones.

  How many more? He was avoiding looking at the counter—it might be too discouraging—but he had described what felt like hundreds of different vessels. Finally, though, he was getting repeats. Cruisers of the Alpheratz and Altair classes were different only in crew complement from the Achernar that he had started with, while the Ajax and Achilles battle forts were simply smaller versions of the Exeter. But one thing was certain: This was no fleet designed for a border skirmish. The most powerful vessels of Central Command were here. It was proof that more was involved than any negotiation. Myron had spoken in anger, but he had spoken truth. The plan was to plunder the technological assets of Confluence Center, starting with the Anadem field, and follow with total destruction.

  Without warning, the image that he had been describing vanished from the display. Nothing replaced it. Jeff glanced to the vessel count. Sixty-four. He was done. At last.

  He sighed, stretched, and realized that Lilah was sitting at his side. When had she arrived?

  "What's wrong, Lilah?" She had said not a word, but he was learning. She was upset, and she was angry.

  "Nothing you did, Jeff. It's Muv."

  "She wouldn't tell you what Simon's card meant?"

  "Not that. She took one look and said she had no idea. I'm sure she was telling the truth. But when I asked her where Simon Macafee and the jinners were, and what they were doing, she said she couldn't tell me. And she told me not to ask her again—she never does that."

  "If it's some kind of military secret . . . ."

  "No. She said she couldn't tell me because of you. That's when I got mad."

  "I haven't done anything."

  "It's not what you've done. It's what you might do. Muv says that no matter how we think of you, you're still an ensign in the Sol Space Navy. She has no idea what oaths and vows you may have taken. If she were to tell you important secrets, you might find yourself in a position of divided loyalty. That would put unfair pressures on you."

  Jeff stared at the vacant display region. "It's a bit late to tell me that. I've just finished hours and hours of work, describing the capabilities of fleet vessels. Your mother wants it both ways. She uses me when it suits her, but she won't trust me."

  "I told her that. She agreed, but she said this is one case where the end justifies the means. She wants to avoid killing, and the more we know about the Sol fleet, the better. But she wouldn't tell me any more than that."

  "You could have promised not to tell me whatever she said."

  "I tried that, too. She said that I could be trusted with most things, but not when it came to you. If I knew something that you wanted to know, you could talk me into telling you, no matter what. That's when I really lost it."

  "Is it true?"

  "I don't know." Lilah studied Jeff for a few seconds, and at last shook her head. "I told Muv that she was being ridiculous, but now I'm not so sure. She's right an awful lot of the time."

  "So maybe she's right about me." Jeff wondered if he had done the right thing, describing the fleet ships in such detail. If he were asked to do it again, would he?

  Probably. He trusted Connie Cheever, apparently a lot more than she trusted him. Either he was a great judge of character, or he was stupid. He would find out, soon enough.

  "Twenty-four hours, at the most," Lilah said. Jeff wondered if she could read his thoughts, until she went on, "Then Muv promised she'd tell me. She asked you to wait, and give her the benefit of the doubt."

  Twenty-four hours. Jeff again glanced to the vacant display region, but now his imagination saw it filled with every one of the ships that he had carefully described. He had never estimated their combined firepower, but it was overwhelming. In twenty-four hours or less they could all be here. And then . . . .

  The deep diapason tone throbbed through Confluence Center, sounding more threatening than reassuring. Connie Cheever might feel that the spare stored energy helped, but Mohammad Duval would sneer at that idea.

  The fleet captain had been here, he had toured the Center. He knew that the place had no defenses. In another day, if Duval felt so inclined, Confluence Center could be an expanding sphere of hot gases.

  And then all explanations would become irrelevant.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  IT might have been nervousness, wondering if this was one last night before an eternity of darkness. Or maybe it was the vibration that shook every corner of Confluence Center and grew stronger with every passing hour; or perhaps even the suggestion planted in Jeff's head by Connie Cheever that by his action in describing the navy vessels for her he was guilty of treason—though he had sworn no oath to seek the destruction of peaceful people, in the Messina Dust Cloud or anywhere.

  Whatever the reason, sleep proved impossible. Jeff lay restless, flat and curled up, on his back or side or stomach, covered or uncovered. Long before the usual waking time he abandoned the attempt to sleep and went wandering through Confluence Center to find a quieter spot.

  His search was a failure. The sound followed him everywhere; always he felt that he stood at its exact center. The control-room door was, for the first time in Jeff's experience, locked. In any case, the noise level there seemed higher than ever. He tried Simon Macafee's hideout, hoping less to find escape from the vibration than to find Simon himself. The chamber was empty except for Billy Jexter, curled up in Simon's great padded chair and sleeping soundly.

  Jeff was filled with envy. Oh, to be seven years old, and oblivious to danger.

  At last he decided that the most peaceful place ought to be outside the main body of Confluence Center. That meant he must travel beyond the influence of the Anadem field, to an environment close to free fall. He could take that. Any amount of discomfort in his insides was preferable to the resonance that shook his bones and set his teeth on edge.

  He
called for a route guide. After examining the layout of Confluence Center, he set off for the farthest chamber of the longest extension corridor. On the way he passed the double torus of the Anadem rings. The air of the region smoked and shimmered. He knew from Lilah that the field could be used to store vast amounts of energy. How much? What happened if you tried to exceed that? And what did Connie Cheever and Simon Macafee hope to do with all that stored power when they had it?

  The extension tube was not air-filled. Jeff logged out a suit, cycled through the lock, and entered the long arm of the corridor. The cylindrical dimly lit tunnel stretched off into the distance, as far as he could see. He headed out along it, feeling himself grow steadily lighter as he moved away from the zone of influence of the Anadem field. For the final half kilometer he floated, using only an occasional touch on corridor walls to make small corrections to his motion.

  The arm ended in a launch facility and observation bubble. He spent a few moments examining the ships standing ready for launch, and wondered if Confluence Center had enough lifeboat capacity to evacuate everyone in case of emergency. Surely they must; space colonies had to be prepared for any disaster. But no one ever said a word about emergency procedures. "Abandon Confluence Center" was an unlikely command. The inhabitants of the Center had too much faith in their own creation. The idea that something could completely destroy their home probably never occurred to them.

  Jeff moved into the observation bubble. He ordered the sensors to display the direction of the entry node from Sol. He didn't expect to see the node itself, and he knew there was no chance of detecting the approaching fleet until it was much closer. The displays showed only the vast, multicolored face of the Messina Dust Cloud. But he was clear of the nerve-tingling throb of power that filled the inner regions of Confluence Center, and looking out on the Cloud might help him to relax.

  He went over to the clear window of the observation bubble. Electronic enhancers saw much more detail than human eyes, but there was something special about direct viewing.

  The Cloud filled the sky. With plenty of time for examination, he could at last see logic behind the fanciful names that Lilah had offered. The Treasure Chest was an easy one, knotty strands of lustrous gas coiled and tangled in a jeweled rectangle defined by four bright supergiant stars. The Blind Man's Eye, off to the right, was a clouded oval of white light, like a cataracted pupil sitting at the center of a larger iris of royal blue. The Sisters were three tall columns of gas, bonded at their lower ends as the streams comprising them twisted and turned in response to local magnetic fields. The Snake formed a single luminous river of green, a colossal sidewinder coiling and wriggling its way across a third of the sky.

  The Horsemen required more imagination. If you were generous and did not focus too hard, those four blocky islands of light might become hooded figures, galloping across the sky on spectral steeds of magenta and gold. But when you looked harder, those shapes, like Lilah's impression of Simon Macafee, would fade before your eyes.

  Snakes, Horsemen. It was strange to find elements of far-off Earth named here. The labels must be old, established when Cloud residents still came from and knew well the worlds of Sol. It answered another of Jeff's questions: How permanent were the structures drifting before his eyes? Like the stars seen from Earth, the great dust rivers must endure over many centuries, otherwise the names would lose meaning within a person's lifetime.

  Jeff's mind was wandering, well into the hypnotic stage that comes just before sleep, when he felt a gentle touch on his shoulder. It brought him to nervous, heart-pumping awareness. He turned violently, forgetting that he was in free fall, and found himself floating away from the wall of the bubble.

  A suited arm reached out to hold and steady him.

  "It's all right, Jeff." Lilah's voice sounded on his helmet channel. "It's only me."

  He took a deep breath and tried to speak normally. "How did you know I was out here? I didn't tell anyone I was going."

  "I tried your room, and you weren't there or anywhere else I thought you might be. I queried the general database as a last hope. I learned that you had checked out a suit for vacuum use, and where you did it. This was the only logical place you could be, with that exit point from the Center."

  "What do you want?"

  "Calm down. Maybe I couldn't sleep, either. Or maybe I just wanted to see you."

  "I'm sorry." His question had been abrupt, betraying his nervous condition. "It was a shock, because I wasn't expecting anyone. I've been floating here for ages by myself, just looking at the Cloud. You're quite right, when you stare for a while you start to see all the shapes you told me about."

  "Shapes. That's why I came looking for you." Lilah took his arm and urged him to move along the corridor toward the bulk of Confluence Center. "Simon Macafee isn't back yet, but Hooglich came dashing through the Inner Level. She wouldn't tell me what they were all doing, and she was in a terrible hurry. But I sketched her the pattern of dots on Simon's card, and she recognized it."

  Jeff felt the hair-bristling mood return. "What is it? Some kind of code?"

  "Easier than that. It's a constellation—a star pattern."

  "I know what a constellation is. Was Hooglich sure?"

  "She seemed to be. She said at once, 'I know that, it's the Dragon.' "

  "But your mother didn't recognize it, and she used to be a Cloudship captain. She ought to know the constellations better than Hooglich."

  "I think she does. But she knows constellations as they look from here, in the Cloud. You're forgetting, we're twenty-seven light-years from Sol. Lots of the bright stars are different, so the constellations change. Hooglich says that the dot pattern on the card is the Dragon constellation, as it looks from the region of Sol. You must have seen it when you were on Earth."

  "I thought the pattern looked kind of familiar. But what does it mean? Why did Simon Macafee put it on the card?"

  "I don't know. I was hoping you could tell me."

  Helmet to helmet, they stared at each other in silence until Jeff at last shook his head.

  "It's no use. Even if Hooglich is right and it's the Dragon constellation, that doesn't give me anything new." They were making easy progress, gliding side by side along the corridor toward the main bulk of Confluence Center. Even from a kilometer away, Jeff could feel the thrum of energy generation whenever his hand or foot touched the tunnel walls. "Did you tell your mother what Hooglich said?"

  "I can't get near her. Everything in Control is locked up tight and has been for hours. I'm not sure that the messages I leave for her even get through. You thought she wasn't taking the danger from the Sol fleet seriously enough. Well, I can tell you, if that was true before it's not true now. I've never known Confluence Center to be wound up like this."

  "So what do we do? We can't find Simon Macafee, we can't get to your mother, and the Space Navy will be here tomorrow."

  He turned to face Lilah. She had stopped and was holding her gloved hand against the wall of the tunnel.

  "Tomorrow?" she said. "Are you sure? Feel, Jeff. It ended."

  He reached out his own glove. There was no longer a vibration, passing along into his whole body through his fingertips. The wall was dead to his touch. "They've stopped the power generation and storage. What does that mean?"

  "It could mean we have all we need. Or"—Lilah was moving again, speeding along the corridor to and past Jeff—"maybe we ran out of time. You can't pump energy into the Anadem field rings and take it out at the same time. What's the earliest that the Sol fleet could get here?"

  "At full speed? If it started not long after the Dreadnought arrived, the fleet could be here now. The Dreadnought would have mapped a fast and safe route."

  "Then I think they arrived. Come on, Jeff."

  She was moving fast, propelling herself along the walls with a skill and efficiency that he could not match. He caught the urgency in her voice and followed pell-mell along the corridor. He came to the airlock, already o
pened by Lilah, with his arms and legs flailing in all directions. He could not stop, and sailed across to ram into the far wall. By the time he got his breath the lock was already cycling.

  "Suits off," Lilah cried. "Let's go, Jeff."

  "What's the big hurry?" He followed her method and started to remove his suit from the bottom, so that his body was free while his helmet was still in position and he could breathe its air while the lock was working.

  "You'll see." Her helmet was off, and she helped him with his. "If we're not careful, we'll be locked out of the interior."

  He didn't have time to ask how that might happen. They had weight again, and he could keep up with Lilah as she dashed inward. Within seconds he could see the two great rings of the Anadem field.

  As they approached the catwalk between the rings, a loud voice blared out: "FIELD PREPARING FOR POSSIBLE DISCHARGE. LEAVE THIS REGION AT ONCE."