Anvil of Stars (20 page)

"Let's vote," Ariel said when he paused.

"No." He shook his head patiently. "This isn't a matter for voting."

"Why not?" Ariel asked, her expression languid, without passion. We all wear killing faces. Faces showing nobody home, nobody responsible.

"Because the Pan makes all decisions now," Stephanie Wing Feather reminded her.

Martin half-expected Ariel to leave the cafeteria in anger, but she did not. She relaxed her arms, closed her eyes, sighed, then opened them again and watched his face intently.

"This is a tough one," Martin said. "If we wait long enough, we might learn whether we should hit Herod, or even focus on it. If there are no defenses, if the risk is low, we can suck out all of Nebuchadnezzar's atmospheric volatiles before the planet is destroyed—much easier and faster than after blowing it up…"

"Strip the atmosphere…" Andrew Jaguar said, shuddering. "Like vampires."

"We're going to blow it to dust anyway," Mei-li reminded him, small voice like a bird's chirrup.

"Hakim, how close do we need to be to investigate?"

"I don't think there's any real gain from being closer than a few thousand kilometers. If need be, we can send out remotes at this distance and create a bigger baseline, gather as much information as we would if we flew right down to the surface… But obviously, we could make a bigger blip in whatever sensors they have."

"What kind of baseline?" Martin asked.

Hakim conferred with his team for a few seconds. "We think at this distance, about ten kilometers. We could resolve down to bugs in the air, if there are any."

"The makers and doers have to be delivered from a distance of no more than one hundred kilometers," Stephanie said. "The bombships, fully fueled, have a range of forty g hours, and that can translate into however many kilometers of orbit we wish, if we're patient… We know that none of us can live in a bombship for more than about four tendays without going crazy. We could induce sleep, but that wouldn't be optimum."

The parameters were now clear to all the children. Each advantage had to be weighed against risk; Martin had worked through the momerath days before, and found several courses equally matched for danger and benefit. Theresa had checked his calculations, as had Stephanie Wing Feather and, he presumed, Hakim Hadj.

"We send out remotes and expand our baseline," he said. "That seems to involve the lowest risk. We can gather all the information we need in a few days. We pull in the remotes, coast in quietly, release the bombships, pick them up again after they've injected the weapons into Nebuchadnezzar, drop our doers to gather volatiles in the ruins, accelerate outward to Ramses as fast as possible, and execute again. If we haven't found any further signs of activity on Herod, we rendezvous with the robots after a fast orbit around Wormwood. Then we measure our resources, report to Hare, drop doers to mine what few resources there are on Herod, and boost out. The best estimate for a rendezvous with Hare is two years. Another year to swing back to Wormwood to gather up the robots and their gleanings."

The children groaned. They had done much of the momerath themselves, but hearing it from Martin—losing all hope of fast action and sacrifice of fuel to boost up and out, knowing what they had already suspected, that he would choose the most conservative and practical course, however time-consuming—brought the truth home hard.

Over three years. Awake and vigilant. And then, unlikely to have enough fuel to accelerate to near-c, perhaps centuries to move on to Leviathan…

At the very least, under those circumstances, they would have to sleep. There were dangers in such a long sleep; even a Ship of the Law could grow old.

Saying the plan aloud, when he had hardly thought it through clearly himself, made it seem both more real and strangely beyond real. Young human beings saying such words, planning such things.

As if to highlight the absurdity, Mei-li giggled. Her giggle died quickly and was not picked up around the room.

"We will be in position to release the bombships in six days," Hakim said.

Nebuchadnezzar was easily visible to the naked eye, a bright diamond among the lesser points of stars. Day by day, it became even brighter, and Martin ordered a star sphere expanded in the cafeteria. As they ate their meals, or gathered in quiet social groupings, they watched their target grow.

The remotes spread their photon-intercepting fields like webs and gathered in clear images of the brown world, as if opening an eye ten kilometers wide.

There were no bugs in the atmosphere—no life crawling on the surface, no organic chemical activity within the upper layers of soil.

Nebuchadnezzar's subtle motions resembled a feeble, irregular heartbeat, but the profiles of the internal vibrations did not match tectonics. Unlike Ramses', Nebuchadnezzar's heart was cool; any internal heat had fled long before.

Martin finished examining Hakim's figures while the other children slept, two days from H-hour.

The five inner masses remained enigmatic. From this angle to the ecliptic, they could not measure the objects in transit across Wormwood, but a chance star occultation allowed Hakim to confirm that one of the dark objects was three thousand kilometers in diameter, with a mass of approximately fourteen billion trillion kilograms, and only as dense as water. The dark objects might be clusters of neutronium with large spaces between, surrounded by a shell… or they might be balloons filled with water, a tantalizing idea, but unlikely.

"I have no idea what they are," Hakim said, shaking his head, expression grim and exhausted. "They worry me greatly, Martin."

Martin replayed the inner mass star occultation and associated graphics and measurement reports, trying to glean with supernatural intuition what could not be seen. "The War Mother has no suggestions?"

"The objects are outside the moms' experience, I think," Hakim said. He looked as if he were thinking, but would not say, Or they will not tell us.

But that would be absurd.

"We should pull in the remotes now," Martin said, shivering slightly.

"Still no signs of defense, no awareness of our presence—no preparation to fight," Hakim said.

"Nothing we can detect," Martin added.

"I would appreciate more time with the remotes—more time to find something…"

Martin thought that over for a few seconds, then nodded. "Another twelve hours. But let somebody else keep watch. You sleep."

"No," Hakim said. "This is my only duty. I watch, I calculate, I keep you informed… For now, I do not need to sleep." His eyes stared up at Martin out of sunken orbits. His hair tufted on his scalp, his face gleamed with oil, he smelled faintly sour.

"Sleep for five hours, and get cleaned up," Martin said, touching his cheek with one hand. "You'll make mistakes if you push yourself too much. We don't need mistakes. "

"I will get along with two hours of sleep," Hakim said. Then, smiling his angelic smile, "And I will take a shower, not to offend."

"All right. Put Jennifer in charge. She'll keep an eye out."

"It is because I am so worried," Hakim said. "What we do not know…"

When the remotes had been withdrawn, Martin conferred with Stephanie Wing Feather and Harpal Timechaser. Theresa and Jorge Rabbit hovered on the periphery in the otherwise empty quarters, representing the children aboard Tortoise in this final meeting of Pan and Tortoise's share of ex-Pans.

"Stephanie…" Martin said. "Your thoughts. Twelve hours and we release the bombships. What have I neglected to do?"

"Nothing," Stephanie said.

"Harpal?"

"Nothing. We've done everything we've been taught to do, everything we know how to do… But…"

"It's too good," Stephanie said. "No defenses, no reaction, quiet and almost dead. Nothing like what we've been led to expect, what we've trained to fight. And…"

"No volatiles," Harpal said. "It's going to be damned difficult to refuel."

"Right. If there's anything here at all, it's a tired old civilization dreaming in its own high-tech grave," Stephanie said. "Not much satisfaction killing an old codger who doesn't care."

"Wormwood doesn't fit any profiles, does it?"

"It doesn't," Martin said. "The War Mother has nothing to suggest, except that this could be—"

"A sham," Stephanie said. "Something to draw us into a dead system we can't pull out of, something to waste our energy and time. Flypaper, baited with nasty evidence of past sins."

Martin touched finger to nose, shrugged. "The War Mother thinks the evidence is pretty conclusive." He glanced toward Theresa. She seemed to be daydreaming, staring at the wall beyond him.

"What if it is a trap, and we are wasted completely for nothing?" Jorge Rabbit said. Martin didn't answer.

"We've made our decision," Stephanie said quietly. "We have no proof it's a trap. We just don't know everything for sure."

"The five masses," Jorge said.

"Nothing's ever for sure," Harpal said.

Martin covered the unmagnified image of Nebuchadnezzar with his hand, edge of palm to edge of palm sufficing; or fist. Soft brown world like a dirty rubber ball. The search team conferred among themselves in the cafeteria, leaving the nose temporarily empty, and Martin had chosen this opportunity to see their target alone, photons reflected directly to his eyes.

We can kill you, whatever you are or were. Why don't you react? Why so silent?

"I don't think it's a sham," William said. "I think they've left Wormwood as a kind of sacrifice." He had entered the nose behind Martin without his noticing. "I think this was their home world, but it's old now, and they're old. Maybe they've left behind the responsible types, the builders and planners, to wait for execution."

Martin frowned over his shoulder at William.

William smiled a fey smile in reply to the frown, lifted a hand as they floated beside each other, looking through the transparent nose. "If we were to land and explore their… caverns, tunnels, whatever they have, we'd find the guilty ones waiting for us, ready for justice."

"Jesus, William," Martin said, turning away.

"It's a freaky thought, isn't it?"

"You said it."

"The planners would give themselves to us, and the entire world… And it wouldn't be enough. We want all of them to die, don't we? Just getting the planners, the leaders, wouldn't be enough."

Martin said nothing, growing angry. This kind of fantasizing was more than useless; it was counter-productive, perhaps even bad for their morale.

"I hope you haven't told anybody about this."

"I keep my stupid ideas to myself… except for you."

"Good," Martin said, perhaps more firmly than necessary.

"Don't be too hard," William said. "Can you imagine the kind of guilt the Killers feel, if they feel guilt at all? Maybe they grew up after launching their machines, when it was too late. Or perhaps one tyrannical, fanatic government built and launched the machines, and then fell out of power, and others came in, and they decided the best thing would be to leave all this here for us, to let us destroy their home world, maybe the leaders… That would be nice, wouldn't it?"

"Nice isn't the word," Martin said, his anger subsiding. William was always willing to play this peculiar game, somewhere between Devil's advocate and unbridled imp.

"I'm not really kidding, Martin," William said. "I think that's what it must be. If this is a trap, we're in too close already… What sort of trap works only once, when there might be dozens, even hundreds of Ships of the Law closing in? We've come too far for this to be a trap. We've got them."

Martin gave the merest nod.

"You must be feeling very strange now," William said softly, cocking his head to one side, "It's so close."

"We're here. It's what we've waited and trained for."

"We never trained for something this easy," William said. "If they're sitting ducks, if they just bare their breasts or whatever and shout mea culpa… What will that do to us? Like getting ready to jump over a high wall and finding it's just a curb. Then waiting years in space, thinking about it. We might go mad. I might go mad."

"We'll make it," Martin said. "How do you feel?"

"Numb," William said. "I'll be on a bombship with Fred Falcon. We'll actually drop the makers and doers. We'll be out there."

"I wish I could be with you," Martin said.

William nodded. "I suppose we're privileged. Pulling the triggers to avenge the Earth."

They said nothing for a time, the conversation having swung through so many curves, and no central issue apparent.

"I'm doing fine, William," Martin said to an unspoken question. "It's not much fun, but life isn't supposed to be fun now. Is that what you're getting at?"

William caressed the back of Martin's neck. "It shouldn't be like this. There should be noise, action, danger, excitement."

"You're lonely, aren't you?"

William closed his eyes. "I feel like Rosa Sequoia," he said. "I wonder how they're getting along on Hare. They have even less to do than we. Second-line troops."

"Are you lonely?"

"No, Martin, actually, I'm not very lonely. I've kind of given up on the old slicking. It seems so trivial. I think I'll just shut down the libido and absorb these ambiguities. Not that there aren't possibilities for exercising the old libido. Very thoughtfully you included a couple of compatriots on this side of the split. They're less inhibited than I seem to be. There have been offers."

"But no love," Martin said.

William closed his eyes again, nodded. "There's not much love among any of us now. How about you and Theresa?"

"Still love," Martin said, watching his friend's face closely.

"Must be a comfort."

"I never stopped loving you, William."

"I still don't need comfort slicks," William said testily.

"That's not what I mean. You're part of me."

"Not an exclusive part," William said, looking at Martin from the corner of his eyes, self-deprecatory smile flickering on his lips.

"Pretty exclusive," Martin said. "Making love to you is like having a wonderful… was like having a wonderful kind of brother, a double, not dangerous, just accepting."