Anvil of Stars (28 page)

Hans motioned for Martin to follow him outside. Martin walked through the door and they stayed in step down the corridor, past Jack Sand, past Andrew Jaguar and Kirsten Two Bites.

Out of the others' hearing, Hans said, "When I was a little kid, back on Earth, my folks took television and video games away from me for a week to punish me for something I did. I went nuts. I even started to read books. Well," he said, "our TV's gone now. Rosa is better than nothing." He shook his head. "But not much."

"Did you slick Paola Birdsong?" Ariel asked. Martin picked up his tray of food and walked away from her, face pinking.

"Did you?" she asked innocently, following with her own tray.

He sat, got up when she sat next to him, moved to another table, started to get up again as she kept pace with him, and finally dropped the tray a few inches to the table, slapped the tabletop once with his fist, and said, "Who the hell cares?"

Martin ate and tried to ignore her.

"I'm not trying to be nosy," Ariel said. "I want to know what it means to be devoted to someone for a long time, even after they're dead."

Martin found the situation intensely uncomfortable. "I'd like to eat in peace," he said.

"I'm sorry. I'm bothering you. I apologize." She got up, carried her tray out of the cafeteria, and left him feeling guilty, mad, and confused.

That sleep, he cried again, thinking of Theresa, but he did not remember any dreams.

Two moms appeared in the schoolroom for the next crew tenday report. There had been no announcement, no fanfare, but the crew cheered, taking it as a sign that things were improving.

Hans announced the results of the previous day's nose-to-tail races.

Hakim had five minutes to squeeze in a report on science.

Jennifer Hyacinth came up to Martin after the meeting.

"Maybe you'd like to be in on what we're doing," she said. She sounded almost conspiratorial, but he could not imagine Jennifer involved in intrigue.

"About what?" he asked.

"The noach. We're having a little conference to share results."

"Oh." He had planned to attend the next trial for the main race, but that was certainly trivial enough to ignore.

"Sure," he said.

"In the nose in ten minutes. Hakim Hadj, Giacomo Sicilia and Thorkild Lax are coming."

"I'll be there," he said.

Hakim, Giacomo, Thorkild and Jennifer had formed a Noach Studies Society some tendays before. Martin had not attended the meetings—they were reportedly dry and mathematical, the chief excitement being momerath challenges.

The reports were wrong.

Jennifer, with Giacomo's help, had put together a comprehensive description of how the noach could work, how matter could change character under the influence of noach-transmitted information, and what that meant for the ultimate shape of Benefactor society as they imagined it.

Hakim spent a few minutes projecting graphics for Martin, filling him in on the key points.

Jennifer and Giacomo held hands and contemplated momerath until the meeting was convened by Thorkild.

"We've been trying to piece together an overview of Benefactor technology," Thorkild began. "Jennifer's done most of the tough work, laying a foundation for the rest of us. Giacomo has erected the frame on that foundation…"

Giacomo smiled.

"You might say they work together intimately," Thorkild added. Hakim clapped his hand on Giacomo's shoulder as if in congratulations. Jennifer's face remained set in solid neutrality, but her eyes flashed.

"Hakim has put on the siding and I've painted," Thorkild concluded. "Mind you, none of what we've come up with has much meaning for our mission. It's all theoretical—"

"I disagree," Jennifer said.

"Which I was about to add," Thorkild said.

"I think it could have a lot of meaning for the Job," Jennifer said. "We were caught by surprise when the Killers converted our craft to anti em. We assume the moms were caught by surprise. The more we can guess about the technology and theory behind our weapons, the more we can contribute to planning."

Martin rubbed his nose. "So what's the house look like?"

Hakim projected a list. "First, the noach—instantaneous communication at a distance. This is made possible by confusing two particles—in this case, atomic nuclei—into 'believing' that they are the same. Second, actually creating a particle at a distance—deluding the matrix into believing that a particle exists at a certain position, and has a certain history attached. This could be how fake matter is created—resistance to pressure, but no resistance to acceleration; extension, but no mass."

"Noach could be the key to all of this," Jennifer said. "To send a noach message, you have to confuse a particle's bit makeup, its self-contained information about character, position and quantum state."

"What do you mean by a particle 'believing' something?" Martin asked.

"The particle's bit makeup determines its behavior," Hakim said. " 'Behavior' is a bad word, like 'belief.' We do not think particles are alive or think. But they do exhibit simple behavior, of course—a nature or character, which is the same for all similar particles, and a history in spacetime."

"Given that," Martin said, "how do we get to the rest of the abilities in this list?"

"To create fake matter," Giacomo said, "basic elements in the matrix are convinced they have some of the properties of matter. To noach messages, you tamper with the privileged channels used by particles to convince one particle at some distance to believe it is the same as, or in resonance with, another particle under our local control.

"There could be several ways to convert a particle to an-anti-particle. A boson, approaching a particle, carries information from its source, some of which has already been conveyed by information following so-called privileged bands. The boson also conveys energy, which acts on the particle's data, changing a particular bit sequence."

"Energy is information?" Martin asked.

"Energy is a catalyst for information change. It's information in only a limited sense. To convert a particle to an anti-particle, you can change its bit makeup either by perverting the privileged band information, say by sending it a boson tailored to react falsely, which might compel it to switch a series of bits to be consistent, or by creating a resonance with outside anti-particles."

"Resonance…?"

"Imposing the data of an anti-particle on a particle in another position by making them congruent, coextensive," Hakim said. "It is similar to how the noach works."

"We think," Jennifer cautioned.

Martin could not keep up with their projected momerath, or even all of their explanations. "I'll have to take some of this on faith," he said wearily.

"Oh, please no," Hakim said. "Work it out for yourself in private. We may be wrong, and we need criticism."

"Not from me, I'm afraid."

"We are all out of our depth here, actually," Hakim said. "We must not accept this as anything more than playful theory."

Martin poked at a few expressions in the momerath that he could just begin to riddle. "Would they have to have a lot of anti em to convert something else to anti em—match a mass particle for particle?"

"We do not think so," Hakim said. "In Jennifer's momerath, a single particle could be used as template to confuse and convert many other particles. Possibly, simply knowing the structure of a particle would be enough."

"Even at a distance," Thorkild said.

"But just how it's done, we haven't a clue," Jennifer said. "The difference between theory and application."

"Oh," Martin said.

"Neat, huh?" Thorkild asked.

Martin closed his eyes and shook his head.

After, Martin sat alone in an empty quarters space, dabbling with the momerath but not able to concentrate on it, thinking instead about how much the crew had changed in just a few months. They acted like passengers enduring hard times on a down-on-its-luck cruise ship, or like students in a particularly lax high school with a principal too hip for their own good.

He longed for time to speed up, for the rendezvous to occur, for anything to happen that was significant and not theoretical.

* * *

Rosa's storytelling improved.

The races were concluded, with Hans pitting himself against the fastest of ten trials, Rex Live Oak, and winning by two seconds, the races being run nose to tail within the ship. Hans was inordinately proud of the victory, and took two Wendys to his quarters after for a private free-for-all, the first partners he had taken since becoming Pan.

Martin did not notice who the Wendy's were; he had tired of the growing reliance on gossip for excitement. He did not care who Hans was slicking, or whether Hans had stolen Harpal's love interest, or who was going to attempt Rosa soon.

Rosa, thinner by five kilos, face austere and happy at once, was becoming, for Martin, the most interesting and at the same time the most disturbing person aboard Dawn Treader.

Martin came to the nose when it was empty and collapsed the star sphere to see the outside universe without interpretation. The stars ahead had not yet changed noticeably; bright, frozen forever against measureless black.

Jennifer's theories had upset him on some deep level. He had dreamed about enemies they could not see, malevolent beings confusing and perverting them from a distance like puppetmasters.

"What the hell are we doing here?" he asked. He had come to the nose to pray, but he could not conceive of anything or anyone to pray to. Nothing touched him; nothing felt for him, or knew that he was in the nose, that he was alone. Nothing knew that he was confused and needed help, that Martin son of Arthur Gordon had lost whatever path he had ever known, and that merely doing the Job seemed a highly inadequate reason for living.

His father might have thought this view of deep space the most spectacular and beautiful thing one could wish for; Martin could not see it as anything but scattered light impinging on exhausted eyes.

He had fought the end of his pain for many tendays now, but his grief followed its natural course like a healing wound. Finally even the itch would be gone and Theresa would truly be dead—and William—

He groaned softly, for he owed William so much more than he could give emotionally, now or ever.

With his grief knitting its torn edges, there would be nothing left to define him but the dreary nothingness at his core, more blank than any black between stars, a comfortable emptiness to fall into, a gentle negation and dissolution.

He thought he would gladly die if death were an end in itself and not something more.

What he would pray to, then, was a weak candle of hope: that in these horrible spans of contesting civilizations, there was something, somewhere, that oversaw and judged and sympathized; that was wise in a way they could not conceive of; that might, given a chance, intervene, however mysteriously.

Something that cradled and nurtured his dead loves in its bosom; but something that would also acknowledge his unworthiness and allow him a finality, an end.

He thought of the powerful orgasm with Paola, stronger by many degrees than he remembered experiencing with Theresa.

Confusion and stars. What a combination, he thought.

He encouraged the pain to return and let depression settle over him, until his heart seemed to slow, his eyelids drooped, and he was surrounded by a comfortable blanket of despair, so much more palpable than memory or responsibility or the day-to-day dreariness of shipboard life.

Nothing intervened.

Nothing cared.

In a way, that was reassuring. There could be an end to the universe's complexity, an end to the strife and confusion of intelligence.

In the middle of the sports and competitions, in the middle of Martin's despair, Rosa Sequoia disappeared.

Kimberly Quartz and Jeanette Snap Dragon found her naked and half-dead from thirst five days later. They brought her to the schoolroom. Ariel kneeled on the floor and gripped her hair, pulling her head back and forcing her to drink water. Her eyes wandered to fix on points between the people in the room. "What the hell are you doing?" Ariel asked.

Rosa smiled up at her, water leaking from her mouth, cracked lips bleeding sluggish drops. Her face was smeared with dried blood. She had bitten her lower lip. "It came again and touched me," she said. "I was dangerous. I might have hurt somebody."

Hans entered the schoolroom already in a rage and brushed Ariel aside. "Get up, damn you," he said. Rosa stood unsteadily, smelling sour, drips of dried blood on her breasts.

"Are you nuts?" Hans asked.

She shook her head, her shy smile opening the bites. They bled more freely.

Hans grabbed Rosa's arm, looked around the room for someone to come forward of the ten crew that had gathered. Ariel stepped up again, and Hans transferred the unresisting arm to her hands, as if passing a dog's leash. "Feed her and clean her up. She's confined to quarters. Jeanette, guard her door and make sure she doesn't come out."

"I should be telling stories later today," Rosa said meekly. "That's why I came back."

"You won't talk to anybody," Hans said. He brushed past them all, ridding himself of the mess with a backward wave of his hands.

Martin followed him from the schoolroom, anger piercing his gloom. "She's sick," he told Hans. "She's not responsible."

"I'm sick, too," Hans said. "We're all sick. But she's slicking crazy. What about you?" He whirled on Martin. "Christ, you mope like a goddamned snail. Harpal's no better. What in hell is going on?"

Martin said, "We've fallen into a hole."

"Then let's climb out of it, by God!"

"There is no god. I hope. No one listening to us."

Hans gave him a withering, pitying glare. "Rosa would disagree," he said sharply. "I'll bet she has God's business card in her overalls right now. Wherever her overalls are. " Hans shook his head vigorously. "Of all the women on this ship, she has to shed her clothes when she feels a fit coming on." He stopped a few meters down the corridor, shoulders hunched as if Martin were about to throw something at him.