The Stardance Trilogy (32 page)

“That’s the thing that bugs you the most, isn’t it, Silverman?” I grinned. “A
Homo caelestis
in symbiosis has no wants, no needs:
there’s nothing you can sell him
. And he submerges himself in a group: a natural Commie. Men without self-interest scare you silly, don’t they?”

“Pseudophilosophical bullshit,” Silverman barked. “I’m taking possession of the most stupendous military intelligence of the century.”

“Oh my God,” Raoul drawled disgustedly, “Hi Yo Silverman, the John Wayne of the Spaceways. You’re actually visualizing soldiers in symbiote suits, aren’t you? The Space Infantry.”

“I like the idea,” Silverman admitted. “It seems to me that a naked man with a symbiote would evade most detection devices. No metals, low albedo—and if it’s a perfect symbiosis there’d be no waste heat. What a saboteur! No support or supplies required…by God, we could
use infantry to interdict Titan
.”

“Silverman,” I said gently, “you’re an imbecile. Assume for a moment that you can bludgeon GI Joe into letting what you call a fungus crawl up his nose and down his throat. Fine. You now have an
extremely
mobile infantryman. He has no wants or needs whatsoever, he knows that he will be immortal if he can avoid getting killed, and his empathic faculty is at a maximum.
What’s going to keep him from deserting?
Loyalty to a country he’ll never see again? Relatives in Hoboken, who live in a gravity field that’d kill him?”

“Laser beams if necessary,” he began.

“Remember how fast we were dancing there before the end? Go ask the computer whether we could have danced around a laser beam—even a computer-operated one. You said yourself we’d be bloody hard to track.”

“Your military secret is worthless, Silverman,” Tom said.

“Better minds than mine will work out the practical details,” he insisted. “I know a military edge when I see one. Commander Cox,” he said suddenly, “you are an American. Are you with me?”

“There are three other Americans aboard,” Cox answered obliquely. Tom, Harry, and Raoul stiffened.

“Yeah. One’s got a pregnant Canadian wife, two are perverts, and all three are under the influence of those alien creatures. Are you with me?”

Bill seemed to be thinking hard. “Yeah. You’re right. I hate to admit it, but only the United States can be trusted with this much power.”

Silverman was studying him intently. “No,” he decided, “no, Commander, I’m afraid I don’t believe you. Your oath of allegiance is to the United Nations. If you had said no, or answered ambiguously, in a few days I might have believed a yes. But you are lying.” He shook his head regretfully. “All right, ladies and gentlemen, here is how we shall proceed. No one will make a move until I say so. Then, one at a time, on command, you will all jump to that wall there with the dancers, farthest from the forward door. I will then back out this door, and—”

“Mr. Silverman,” Chen interrupted gently, “there is something everyone in this room should know first.”

“So speak.”

“The installations that you made at Conduits 364-B and 1117-A,
and
at the central core, were removed and thrown out the airlock some twenty minutes after you completed them. You are a clumsy fool, Silverman, and an utterly predictable one. Your transmitter is useless.”

“You’re lying,” Silverman snarled, and Chen didn’t bother to answer. His mocking smile was answer enough.

Right there Silverman proved himself a chump. If he’d had the quickness to bluff, to claim
other
installations Chen didn’t know about, he might even then have salvaged something. I’m sure he never thought of it.

Bill and Colonel Song made their decisions at the same instant and sprang.

Silverman pressed a button on the transmitter, and the lights and air conditioning
didn’t
go out. Crying with rage, he stuck up his silly gun and fired.

Ian Fleming to the contrary, the small Beretta is a miserable weapon, best suited to use across a desk. But the Law of Chaos worked with Silverman: The slug he aimed at Bill neatly nicked open Colonel Song’s jugular, ricocheted off the wall behind her—the wall opposite Silverman—and smacked into Bill from behind, tumbling him and adding acceleration.

Silverman was not a complete idiot—he had expected greater recoil in free fall and braced for it. But he wasn’t expecting his own slug to bring Bill to him quicker—before he could re-aim, Bill smacked into him. Still he retained his grip on the pistol, and everyone in the room jumped for cover.

But by that time I was across the room. I slapped switches, and the lights and air conditioning
did
go out.

It was simple, then. We had only to wait.

Silverman began to scream first, followed by Dmirov and DeLaTorre. Most humans go a little crazy in total darkness, and free fall makes it
much
worse. Without a local vertical, as Chen Ten Li had learned when his bedroom lights failed, you are
lost
. The distress is primeval and quite hard to override.

Silverman hadn’t learned enough about free fall—or else he hadn’t heard the air conditioning quit. He was the only one in the room still velcro’d to a wall, and he was too terrified to move. After a time his screams diminished, became gasps, then one last scream and silence. I waited just a moment to be sure—Song was certainly dead already, but Bill’s condition was unknown—then jaunted back to the switches and cut in lights and air again. Silverman was stuck like a fly to the wall, dying of oxygen lack in a room full of air, an invisible bubble of his own exhalations around his head. The gun drifted a half meter from his outstretched hand.

I pointed, and Harry collected it. “Secure him before he wakes up,” I said, and jaunted to Bill. Linda and Raoul were already with him, examining the wound. Across the room Susan Pha Song drifted limply, and her throat had stopped pumping blood. I had lived with that lady for over a year, and I did not know her at all; and while that had been at least half her idea, I was ashamed. As I watched, eight or ten red softballs met at the air grille and vanished with a wet sucking sound.

“How is he?”

“I don’t think it’s critical,” Linda reported. “Grazed a rib and exited. Cracked it, maybe.”

“I have medical training,” Dmirov, of all people, said. “I have never practiced in free fall—but I have treated bullet wounds before.”

Linda took him to the first aid compartment over by the duckpins and Frisbees. Bill trailed a string of red beads that drifted in a lazy arc toward the grille. Dmirov followed Linda, shaking with rage or reaction or both.

Harry and Tom had efficiently trussed Silverman with weighted jump ropes. It appeared superfluous—a man his age takes anoxia hard; he was sleeping soundly. Chen was hovering near the computer terminal, programming something, and Norrey and DeLaTorre were preparing to tow Song’s body to the dispensary, where grim forethought had placed supplies of embalming fluid.

But when they reached the door, it would not open for them. Norrey checked the indicator, which showed pressure on the other side, frowned, hit the manual override and frowned again when it failed to work.

“I am deeply sorry, Ms. Armstead,” Chen said with sincere regret. “I have instructed the computer to seal off this room. No one may leave.” From behind the terminal he produced a portable laser. “This is a recoilless weapon, and can kill you all in a single sweep. If anyone threatens me, I will use it at once.”

“Why should anyone threaten you, Li?” I asked softly.

“I have come all this way to negotiate a treaty with aliens. I have not yet done so.” He looked me right in the eye.

DeLaTorre looked startled. “Madre de Dios, the aliens—what are they doing while we fight among ourselves?”

“That is not what I mean, Ezequiel,” Chen said. “I believe that Mr. Armstead lied when Commander Cox asked him if he was still human. We have yet to negotiate terms of mutual coexistence between his new species and our own. Both lay claim to the same territory.”

“How?”
Raoul asked. “We have no interest in common.”

“We both propose to eventually populate what is known as human space.”

“But you’re welcome to any of it that’s of any conceivable human value,” Tom insisted. “Planets are no use to us, the asteroids are no use to us—all we need is cubic and sunshine. You’re not begrudging us
cubic
, are you? Even
our
scale isn’t that big.”

“If ever Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal lived in peace in the same valley, it took an extraordinary social contract to enforce it,” he insisted. “Precisely because you will need nothing that we need, you will be difficult to live with. As I speak I realize that you will be
impossible
to live with. Looking down godlike on our frantic scurrying, amused by our terrible urgency—how I hate you already! Your very existence makes nearly every living human a failure; and only those with a peculiar acrobat’s knack for functioning spherically—and the resources to get to Titan!—can hope to strive for success. If you are not an evolutionary dead end, then most of the human race
is
. No, Stardancers: I do not believe we could ever share the same volume of space with you.”

He had been programming the computer as he spoke, by touch, never taking his full attention from us.

“The world we left behind us was poised on a knife edge. It has been a truism for a long time that if we did not blow ourselves up by the year 2010, the world would be past the crisis point, and an age of plenty would follow. But at the time that we left Earth, the chances of surviving that long were slim, I think you will all agree.

“Our planet is wound to the bursting point with need,” he said sadly. “Nothing could push it more certainly over the edge than the erosion of planetary morale which your existence would precipitate—than the knowledge that there
are
gods, who have no more heed for Man than Man has for the billions and trillions of sperm and eggs that failed to become gametes. That salvation and eternal life are only for a few.”

Ezequiel was glowering thoughtfully, and so was Dmirov, who had just finished bandaging Bill. I began to reply, but Chen cut me off.

“Please, Charles. I recognize that you must act to preserve your species. Surely you can understand that I must protect my own?”

In that moment he was the most dangerous man I had ever known, and the most noble. With love and deep respect I inclined my head. “Li,” I said, “I concede and admire your logic. But you are in error.”

“Perhaps,” he agreed. “But I am certain.”

“Your intentions?” I knew already; I wanted to hear him state them.

He gestured to the computer terminal. “This vessel was equipped with the finest computer made. Made in Peking. I have set up a program prepared for me before we left, by its designers. A tapeworm program. When I touch the ”Execute“ key, it will begin to disembowel the computer’s memory banks, requiring only fifteen minutes to complete a total core dump.”

“You would kill us all, like Silverman?” DeLaTorre demanded.

“Not like Silverman!” Chen blazed, reddening with anger. At once he recovered, and half-smiled. “More efficiently, at the very least. And
for different reasons
. He wished this news communicated only to his own country. I wish it communicated to no one. I propose to disable this ship’s deep-space communications lasers, empty its memory banks, and leave it derelict. Then I shall kill you all, quickly and mercifully. The bomb you call the Planet Cracker has its own guidance system; I can open the bomb-bay doors manually. I do not believe I will bring my pressure suit.” His voice was terrifying calm. “Perhaps the next Earth ship will find the aliens still here, four or five years hence. But Saturn will have eight moons and two Rings.”

Linda was shaking her head. “So wrong, Li, so wrong, you’re a Confucian Legalist looking at the Tao—”

“I’m part of a terrified womb,” Chen said firmly, “and it is my judgment that birth now would kill the mother. I have decided that the womb must reabsorb the fetus of
Homo caelestis
. Perhaps at the peak of the
next
cycle the human race will be mature enough to survive parturition—it is not now.
My
responsibility must be to the womb—for it is all the world I know or can know.”

It had begun at the instant that I asked him his intentions, knowing them already.

It had happened before, briefly and too late, at the moment of showdown with Silverman. It had faded again unnoticed by the humans in the room. There had been nothing visible to notice: our only action had been to darken the room. We had been afraid then—and a person had died.

But this threat was not to our freedom but to our existence as a species. For the second time in fifteen minutes, my family entered rapport.

Time spiraled down like an unwound Victrola. Six viewpoints melded into one. More than six camera angles: the 360° visual integration was merely useful. Six
viewpoints
combined, six lifetimes’ worth of perceptions, opinions, skills, and insights impinged upon each other and coalesced like droplets of mercury into a single entity. Since the part of us that was Linda knew Li best, we used her eyes and ears to monitor his words and his energy in realtime, while beneath and around them, we contemplated how best to bring tranquility to our cousin. At his only pause for breath, we used Linda’s words to try and divert his energies, but were unsurprised to fail. He was too blind with pain. By the time the monitor fragment of her awareness reported that his finger was tensing to reach for the “Execute” key, the whole of us was more than ready with our plan.

All six of us contributed choreography to that dance, and polished it mentally until it filled our dancers’ souls with joy. The first priority was the tapeworm program; the second was the laser. It was Tom the martial-arts expert who knew precisely where and how to strike so as to cause Chen’s muscles to spasm involuntarily. It was Raoul the visual-effects specialist who knew where Chen’s optical “blind spot” was, and knew that Norrey would be in it at the critical instant. Norrey
knew
the position of the racked Frisbees behind her because Harry and I could see them peripherally from where we were. And it was Linda who supplied me with the only words that might have captured Chen’s attention in that moment, fixing his gaze on me and his blind spot on Norrey.