Anvil of Stars (53 page)

"I didn't mean to wake you," Ariel said.

"I don't think you did."

"I was too tired to sleep. I came here. I've been listening to you breathing. It's like… When you breathe, it's like…"

He heard her neck bones quietly pop in the dark. She was shaking her head.

"Soothing," she finished. "Can I be in your net with you?"

"I'm still tired."

"I need to sleep, too," she said.

"All right." He opened the net and she pushed in beside him, an elbow in his ribs, her buttocks against his knees, and then they were parallel in the net and he could smell her more strongly. The sweet musty scent of her hair. He had never thought of Ariel as physically pleasant, but he found her so now. She did not move or speak. Finally her breathing smoothed and he listened to her sleeping. It was soothing, simple and basic and human, what someone might have experienced lying in bed next to a woman thousands of years ago, or nearly so: the hug of Earth subtracted.

She wore shorts and top of loose terry. He wore nothing. She had not come into his room to make love, but he knew she would not stop him if he chose to begin making love. The inevitability intrigued him.

He thought of the spiral of plasma and dancing lights, Silken Parts breaking down under the experience of meeting the staircase god.

Bishop vultures, babar, sharks, staircase god.

He lightly touched the stretch of her shorts, withdrew his finger. She still slept.

Reaching down, he touched the flesh between her thighs, centimeters below her pubis, not sexually aroused, simply touching, familiarizing. He did not even think about her consent. He was far from convention and the courtesy of human courtship; he had spoken with a staircase god, and drunk water from the fountain of Sleep.

If there had been something in that water, and if he was now a haven for microscopic listeners and watchers, they could not judge his indiscretion, touching while she slept this woman he had once disliked intensely. No staircase god or bishop vulture, no babar would understand.

Martin could not begin to recall all the races he had been shown, the immense fecundity of the Killers' creation.

"What are you doing?" Ariel asked. He pulled his hand away and pretended to be asleep. "It's okay."

He still pretended to sleep.

She shivered slightly. "You're not asleep," she said.

"No."

"May I touch you?"

"Yes."

She rotated beside him and faced him, then wrapped both arms around him without pressure and touched his back with fingertips, small of back, ribs, where ribs meet spine from each side, fingers gently prodding. "It's okay," she said, voice sleepy. "We feel good."

"Your legs feel nice," he said.

"Not asleep," she chided.

"You have pretty legs," he said.

"They're not fat," she said.

"They're strong," he said.

"It's okay for you to think I'm not pretty."

"I don't think you're not pretty."

"It's okay."

"You smell good."

She hugged him tighter. It was not cold, but both began to shiver, exhaustion compounding excitement. He felt her removing her shorts and then she was on him.

"Ah God," he said. Simple.

She had wrapped her toes in the net left and right of him, and he held himself with fingers and one set of toes above and below her.

She moved strongly and put pressure on him and the result was quick and not particularly intense. She held him then and moved back and forth but did not find herself as Theresa might have. He sensed her weary frustration and even a little anger, angry Ariel, resentful of his ease and her difficulty. But he did not want to put his mouth to her, still reserving that for the memories of Theresa and William.

He put his hand between her legs and she held his wrist and moved his hand and herself, and it was not his doing really when she shuddered in quiet but for a small squeak.

Nothing in the way of finesse, there hadn't even been the voluptuousness of impersonally slicking Paola. But it was enough.

He felt her relax into floating sleep, and willed blanket nothing over himself again. If we all die now and nothing is accomplished, I can at least say

I have met

staircase god

and babar

Pretense seemed useless now. The mom and snake mother emerged from the fabric of Trojan Horse, and now all gathered on the bridge to decide what could be done next.

"If they know, they know," Martin said. "We can't convince them otherwise."

Cham looked around the cabin with a stern, wild face. "Why haven't they blown us to quarks?"

The Brothers curled together in a ten-strand super-braid that filled one side of the room, an imposing knot of knots. Eye on Sky's head swung closest to the sphere of humans, but so far the Brothers had said nothing.

"They could go a lot finer than quarks," Jennifer said. ' "They could grind us to metrons."

"Whatever those are," Ariel said.

"I just made them up," Jennifer said.

Martin could sense the fraying fabric and he extended straight as a board and stretched his arms, in this way imposing on the whole group, most of whom had lotused or curled in the cabin.

"They haven't destroyed us because they don't know where our other ships are. And we won't tell them. We won't even talk about it."

"The possibility of invisible spies," Cham said.

"Right."

"You drank water …" Donna accused.

"We all breathed the air," Ariel said with a touch of scorn. "We knew that would be a problem…"

"So what can we talk about?" George Dempsey asked.

"That's what we're going to establish," Martin said. "When we're in the noach chamber, nothing can transmit out…"

"But the… little spies, whatever, could store up a message and send it after we're out of the chamber," Jennifer said.

"Assuming something that small can transmit without our detecting it," Cham said.

"Maybe the little things can use noach, too…"

Martin held up his hand and turned to the mom and the snake mother. "First things first. Can you tell whether we've been contaminated?" he asked them.

"Possibly," the mom said. "But an exhaustive procedure would not be easy. Miniature devices might be as small as molecules, made from one kind or another of super-dense matter. This was a risk we decided to take."

"Great," Jennifer said.

"A better plan than detection would be to change the design of the ship, and protect all spaces against unwanted transmission, in or out," the mom suggested.

"We can do that?" Martin asked.

"It can be done, with a reduction in available fuel," the mom said.

"There's something else," George said. "If they wanted to kill us, they could give us a disease we pass from one to the other… these spies, miniature machines, something deadly."

"Killing us won't stop the others," Paola said.

"Unless the disease doesn't strike until we rejoin them," Donna said.

"We we do not feel contaminated," Eye on Sky said. But the super-braid uncoiled and the braids drifted apart.

Ariel said, "Maybe those of us who went down should be in quarantine…"

"As no fields were present when the first contact was made by their machine," the mom said, "it seems more likely we are all contaminated."

"We tripped ourselves up," George said. "Too clever for our own good. We shouldn't have tried to fool them."

"No time for regrets," Martin said. He took a deep breath, reluctant to say what he had to say. "I'm going down again, if they let me. Just me. To talk. We won't be out of noach blackout for another day… I need to know more before I make my recommendations to Hans."

"Ask them," Eye on Sky said.

"About what?"

"Ask them if we all we have been contaminated."

"Why should they tell us?" George asked, shivering, agitated.

The second meeting was granted, to Martin's surprise.

He knew now with a certainty beyond intuition why they had not been killed, why the unarmed Double Seed had not been destroyed; they were the only connection their hosts had to the invisible ships now moving back in toward Leviathan, ships with unknown weapons, unknown strengths. The more that could be learned, the longer their action could be delayed, the more advantage for their hosts.

Deception piled upon deception… Their hosts could not know how much of a lie was being told, any more than humans and Brothers.

Martin waited for the white sphere to arrive and carry him, alone, back to the surface of Sleep. He took advantage of the solitude in his cabin to scan Sleep and the other worlds in the Leviathan system, aimless observation, lips pursed, brows drawn together. Ant in kitchen: trying to understand why one planet would be set to change like a clock display, blink one moment, different the next. Why others would be spiky with massive constructs, others barren and smooth. Why Sleep existed at all—perhaps simply to house the staircase gods, all other creatures an afterthought, all other purposes secondary…

The second journey to Sleep followed the exact pattern of the first. He boarded the shuttle and was immediately met by his skeletal suit and by Salamander. He put on the suit—or rather, it put itself on around him.

Salamander gripped its bar behind the transparent wall.

"We are told you are very dangerous to us," Salamander said, hissing faintly behind the words.

Martin did not reply.

"The creators tell us you are an illusion, that you are much stronger than you appear, and that you will try to harm us."

Still, Martin kept silent.

"They tell us you caused the star explosion."

"It was a trap meant to kill us," Martin said, watching the oceans come up beneath them in the display beside Salamander's panel.

"Are we such a danger to you that you would wish us gone? We have never left this system. Nor have we harmed your kind."

"You haven't been told everything," Martin said, face flushed. "Machines came to my world and destroyed it. Other machines destroyed other worlds, maybe thousands of worlds, thousands of races. Whoever made you probably made those machines."

"We are aware of no such history," Salamander said.

Martin shook his head, irritated to be explaining any of this to what might be a puppet, a sham. Still, the instinct to communicate pushed him. If Salamander was anything like a human, the truth might not have much effect… But at least Martin would have done his best.

"Before my world was destroyed," he said, "the robots, the machines, created diversions to test our abilities. They made some of my people believe that a spacecraft had landed in a remote area, and an unknown… being, an individual, came out of the craft, to warn us of our destruction. It didn't tell the entire truth. It was part of an experiment." Anger at the memory made his throat close. He swallowed, then faced Salamander. "It looked like you. They made it look like you."

Salamander lifted its head, brought the knobs of its shoulders together.

"No individuals of my kind have been to your world."

"I'm not making myself clear," Martin said. "Whoever made you destroyed my world. When I look at you, I am reminded of that crime. That's why we're here. To see if any of the guilty still exist."

"I do not believe our creators have done this thing, nor are we guilty," Salamander said. "What will you discuss with our creators?"

"They say they did not create you." Martin shook his head. "Anyway, that's between me and them."

"Are they the guilty ones?"

"I don't know," Martin said. "They say they aren't."

"They claim to be made by others, as we are?"

"Yes," Martin said.

"Would you kill us, knowing we did not harm your world?"

Martin swallowed again, feeling his weight grow as the ship entered Sleep's atmosphere, descending slowly, deliberately and with vast power. "I don't know."

"You do not know anything about us."

"I'm here to learn."

"We are independent. We have a rich existence. Whoever made us did not give us the need to destroy."

Martin stared at Salamander behind the barrier, empathizing for the first time.

"We are not illusions," Salamander continued. "We have separate existence."

Its reiteration made Salamander even more sympathetic. Martin tried to strengthen his resolve, but in Salamander's words there was also sorrow, as well as frustration and perhaps confusion.

"Do you have the power to destroy us?"

Martin said they did, lying.

Salamander's shoulder knobs touched, jerked back, and its six-fingered hands grew tight on the steel bar.

"What will I tell my kind, that we face extinction when we have extended a hand of information and giving?"

"Ask your superiors," Martin said.

"We seldom confer with our creators. We assume they made us. Some have thought perhaps they didn't make us. You say they didn't."

"I don't want to talk to you any more," Martin said.

Salamander's wall darkened.

* * *

The dark sky, thick blue sea, walls of jagged rock; the white disk on its journey around the sharp headland; the triple tunnel mouths, the dock and gray stone floor, into the darkness. Martin carried his water in a plastic bottle, and felt more prepared this time to withstand the heaviness, the weariness in his blood and behind his eyes.

An hour from leaving the ship, he stood within his skeletal suit deep in the tunnel, before the red circle.

The helix of light within its glimmering cylinder rose from the floor.

"Have you contacted your leaders?" the staircase god asked.

"I have more questions," Martin said.

"Why should your questions be answered?"

"If we're going to go to war against each other, we should know more, shouldn't we?"

"That implies an exchange. What do you offer?"

"I'm giving you another chance to convince me you aren't the enemy we've been hunting for."

The staircase god produced its display of cascading lights and colors, but no voice came from the pillar for long seconds. Martin thought of the Bible in his father's library, and reflected that this was a particularly biblical moment. But he did not feel like a prophet facing the burning bush.