The City Who Fought

by S. M. Stirling

  He opened the door. He hopped backward just in time to avoid a blow from Rachel’s fist, aimed at the lounge doors. “Rachel!” he snapped.

  She stood glaring at him. She was breathing fast, her nostrils flaring, a sheen of sweat across the pale olive of her skin.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  He looked at her in astonishment.

  “You know perfectly well what I am doing here,” he said. He had himself sufficiently under control now to speak with his usual gentle authority, and he could see her purpose falter. “I am living in the manager’s quarters because I am to be a co-manager of the station. I’m studying very hard and constantly to be worthy of this honor. I have told you this. I told everyone.” He let his eyes widen slightly in unaffected innocence.

  She narrowed her eyes. “It is true, Amos, that you told everyone. But, you did not tell me!”

  “All right,” he said soothingly, “all right, come in.” He placed his hands delicately on her shoulders and steered her to the couch. “Sit!”

  She looked first at him, then at the couch as though she suspected some trap before she cautiously folded herself down to the cushioned surface. Looking up at him, she patted the place beside her.

  “You sit down, too,” she insisted.

  “You will have some refreshment?”

  “No. I will have an explanation.”

  He drew over a straight-backed chair, placed it in front of her and sat down. Her eyes widened and she sat up straighter, looking, if possible, even more affronted than she had been.

  “I am sorry,” he said, “if I have offended you, but I have been very busy.” Unspoken was the inference that she should be also, helping to brief the Bethelites and settle them into their temporary roles. “I told Joseph about our plans, and I assumed that he would explain everything to you.”

  “Oh!” she said sarcastically, “You told Joseph. Well, then of course there was no need to enlighten me! He could tell me whatever he pleased of your plans and that would have been sufficient. Then I could go to sleep this night, knowing that you had moved in with that blackhearted slut-bitch, with an untroubled heart.”

  “Rachel bint Damscus!” he said sharply. “You forget yourself!”

  She raised both fists above her head and shouted, “It is not I who disport with the daughters of the heathen, an act forbidden by every scripture! Nor is it Joseph’s place to tell me of what we do. It is yours, yours alone! Are we not to be betrothed?”

  He stared at her in shock. “No,” he said in blank astonishment. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  She blinked. “No?”

  “No,” he repeated, shaking his head in the negative.

  All of the color drained from her face and he could see the white of her eyes all around the iris. She breathed in and out through her nose with a sound like tearing silk. She trembled. She tried to speak and only a garbled sound came out, then she said in a grating voice, “She has seduced you.”

  “No,” he said and shook his head again, waving both his hands in the same negative gesture, but his eyes slid away from hers.

  “Always,” she said harshly, “from the time we first met, I knew that you were mine. Mine!”

  “No,” he said. “You are meant for Joseph, who has always loved you. He will make you happy, and he wants you.” He forced his voice to gentleness. She has become unbalanced, he thought desperately. Of all the times for such a thing to happen! He had thought her only a little more given to hysteria than most of her sex, but something had changed her; perhaps the trauma of the attack, perhaps the massive drug dosages they had been forced to use on the trip.

  Her eyes widened still more, until the whites showed all around the iris. He had heard of such things, but never seen them, except once when an ancient hermit had gone into a trance and prophesied.

  I should have paid more attention to my first-aid training, he thought ruefully. Perhaps then he would know how to deal with her instability. Whatever her faults, she had sacrificed much to follow him. She had been invaluable in the chaotic scramble of the last days on Bethel. My dear friend, I have failed you.

  “He wants me,” she said in the same low growl. “And you do not?” Her mouth twisted, and she bit her lip as she turned her head from side to side and nodded several times. Abruptly she rose and was out the door before he could rise from his chair.

  He grabbed his hair in both of his hands and pulled. “Arrughh! Simeon,” he asked, “what have I done?”

  “Pissed off Rachel, I’d say.”

  Amos sighed, then groaned. “No,” he said despairingly, “I have done worse than that I allowed myself to be talked out of doing what I knew was right. I knew in my heart that she should be evacuated, but Joseph asked me to let her stay. Perhaps I gave you the wrong answer today, my friend. Perhaps I cannot play this role if I am so easily convinced to go against my better judgement.”

  “You thought Joseph could keep her in line?”

  “Yes. I hoped that, because he would be nearby and considerate of her, she would turn more to him and less toward me.”

  “Not a bad reasoning,” Simeon replied truthfully. “Sending her away might break whatever hold she has on reality.”

  Amos looked unreassured and more miserable than ever. He might be a good-looking man, but he sure had cornered the supply of gloomy looks.

  “Today, you have said quite correctly that you are older than I, and also that in many ways you are wiser. Today I should have been the wiser.” He shook his head sorrowfully and shuffled into his room like an old man.

  Well, Simeon thought, what an interesting evening! Looks like the forecast for true love is—not smooth. Such marvelous material for teasing Channa. So tempting to see how she’d react. No! He had to keep his mind on more important things. Like that Rachel. The girl had shot out of that interview with Amos as if she’d lost her rag. Better keep an eye on her, he told himself. And so should Doctor Chaundra, if he’s got the time. Most acute mental illness was chemical, or could be adjusted with the judicious use of neutralizing chemicals.

  With a weary woof, Doctor Chaundra sat at his desk and, setting his coffee cup in the most spill-proof area available in the surface clutter, he keyed up his mail. It had been two days since he’d had an opportunity to look at it. Twenty-five attempted suicides, four of them among the refugee Bethelites who chose gruesomely old-fashioned methods. One had actually hanged herself! Good in one respect: easier to revive, although there might be some memory loss from oxygen deprivation, and he’d have to use a nerve-shunt. The sight of that bloated, blue-tinged face with the protruding tongue lingered unpleasantly.

  He slipped himself a calmer; just one, although the gods alone knew what it would do with all the caffeine he’d been absorbing. He had to get on with this accursed viral project even if he was a doctor, not a gene-sculptor! It disturbed him to deliberately make a virus more harmful: too much like making medicine into a weapon. Chaundra had grown up on a planet where personal violence was fairly common, and done his internship in a trauma ward. His own family came from a pacifist tradition, and the internship had confirmed him in it.

  At least Seld is out of this, he thought with relief.

  The first message was yet another requisition for calmers. He signed it out; the organosynth machines were going to be running overtime. Would pirates take notice of supernatural calm? The doctor smiled ruefully at that and told the machine to show him the next message. It was flagged personal, which was odd. He began to read.

  His heart stumbled; he could feel the pain in his chest quite distinctly, but it seemed distant and unimportant. Vision grayed down to a tunnel; it was long minutes before he could speak.

  At last he managed to croak “Simeon? Simeon!”

  “What is it, Chaundra?”

  I don’t like the way he looks. The sound of the doctor’s voice had been sufficiently worrisome for Simeon to activate visuals. The doctor was visibly tired but, considering the work
load he was pushing, fatigue would be normal. Nor unusual for Chaundra who tended to push himself. If Simeon had been capable of experiencing fatigue, he would be knackered right now. The slightly built dark man was gray-faced with sweat beading his forehead. Simeon ran a diagnostic program; not good. Extreme stress, to the point of endangering the man’s health. Chaundra was not young anymore, and had endured some very hostile environments in his career. Not to mention the current problem.

  “This message . . .” and Chaundra managed to point to his screen.

  Dear Dad—Simeon read.

  “Why on earth didn’t this trip my watchman programs—I’ll have Joat’s hide for this, by God!”

  —I couldn’t go, I’m sorry. I hope you can understand and forgive me, but if anything were to happen to you and I wasn’t there, I’d never forgive myself. I have to be here, because Mom can’t be. I love you.

  Seld.

  “Oh!” Simeon paused in full comprehension of Chaundra’s state of mind. “But didn’t you put him on. . . .”

  “No,” Chaundra said, in a voice drained of affect. “He was in line, almost to the lock. Then I received a bleep message—the most urgent of codes. Seld said I must answer. He understood that. We embraced, said good-bye and I left him there.”

  Chaundra flopped one hand over weakly, unable for more effort than that. “He was practically on the ship. How the hell did this happen?”

  “I’m sorry. I’ve too good an idea!” Simeon told him. “I’ll try to find out where that wicked young rascal is right now.” He didn’t mean Seld, but did not qualify his term. After a moment’s pause he came up blank. “I’m not finding him, so he’s well hidden wherever he is. That should be some consolation, Chaundra,” he said in a firmly reassuring tone. “If I can’t find him, neither can our expected visitors. I’ll keep looking. Count on me for that!

  Looking with every eye I own, Simeon said grimly. How could the well-mannered, well-brought up Seld have fallen for one of Joat’s schemes? And what part would the kid play in it? And I’m to blame for this situation and Chaundra’s heartache. Joat had been so eager to learn, and he’d seen no reason to restrict her terminal’s access to the schematics. She had been bad enough before this emergency sent her to cover; now, he didn’t know what she was capable of doing.

  I’ve an idiot-savant running feral in my station, he thought bitterly. Ten years’ precocity in advanced engineering techniques and the morals of a five-year-old. The selfishness of small children can be charming, when they don’t have the power to do much harm. In a near-adult, and a brilliant near-adult at that, the possibilities went out of bounds.

  “Well, Seld is here—somewhere!” Chaundra said, recovering himself enough to shout and to be livid with rage. “The clock says this message was entered ten hours after his ship left!”

  “I know, I see it. Don’t worry, Chaundra. We’ll find him.”

  “I know we’ll find him. What worries me is that he should hide! That he is no longer as safe as I thought he would be by now. Do you understand? My son could die. My heart is pounding with the anxiety.”

  Simeon ran another quick scan of the station, this time including apartments left empty by the evacuation.

  “Still searching. There are so many places he could hide and even I couldn’t find him,” he said by way of reassuring Chaundra. “He’s a big strong kid who can handle himself.” As well as any of us, he thought. The odds for anyone on the station were not good, but there was no point in reminding Chaundra of that now.

  “No,” the doctor said between clenched teeth, “he isn’t a ‘big strong kid,’ and he can’t handle himself. He’s never going to be strong. The plague that took his mother left him with nerve damage.”

  “Nerve damage?” Simeon said incredulously. Regeneration of nerve tissue was an old technology, and well understood. Without it, shellpeople would be impossible, for the same technique knitted their nervous systems into the machinery that supported them and that they commanded.

  Chaundra shook his head. “I have done what I could to bypass the damage, but if he puts too much strain where the repair exists . . .” His voice trailed off, and when he raised his face to Simeon’s visual node, he had turned into an old man.

  “It was a little clinic, you understand. Mary, she was the meditech, I the doctor. A new continent on a new colony world. Much to do, we were on research grants. Then people began to die. There was nothing I could do . . . They imposed quarantine—quarantine, in this day and age! When I found what had happened, already it was too late for Mary. The virus . . . was a hybrid. A native virus-analogue combined with a mutant Terran encephalitis strain. The native virus wrapped around the Terran, you understand. So the immune system could not recognize it and had no defense. The Terran element enabled it to parasitize our DNA.

  “Seld was damaged, on the point of death. It took three years of therapy for him to be able to walk and talk and move as well as he does.”

  Chaundra turned, picking things up from his desk and putting them down.

  “But he will never be strong. If they seize him, he’ll be as helpless as someone half his age. There could be convulsions: stress accelerates the damage. It is cumulative. Why do you think I took this position? He must be near a first-rate facility at all times. He must not suffer extreme stress or the effects could snowball. As it is, he will probably not live much past adulthood.”

  Chaundra slumped in his chair, anger, even anxiety draining out of him as he buried his head in his hands.

  “Then we’ll make sure they don’t hurt him,” Simeon said grimly. “First, let’s find him. He’s probably with Joat.”

  “Seld’s mentioned her.” Chaundra’s voice was muffled. “He has many friends, but she sounded . . . different.”

  “She is. Oh, she’s different, all right. And she wouldn’t leave, either. So in a way, you and I are in the same boat.”

  Chaundra rubbed his mouth and chin. Whiskers rasped; unusual, since he was normally a fastidious man. “Yes,” he said and laughed sardonically, “and the boat is about to leak.”

  “Not necessarily,” Simeon said firmly enough to make himself believe it. “Seld has something else going for him.”

  “He has?”

  “Yes. Seld has Joat, and she’s got such a strong survival instinct that even if the rest of the station blew, she’d find a way to stay alive . . . and keep Seld alive, too. He’s actually far safer with her than anywhere else he could be. So I wouldn’t worry about his infirmities, or stress. Though I hate like hell to admit it, I can’t think of anyone better qualified to mind him than Joat!”

  “Seld,” Simeon called. “Seld Chaundra, come out where I can see you.”

  Joat popped into view rubbing her eyes, “What are you yellin‘ about, Simeon?” she asked, yawning.

  “Send him out, Joat. This is the only place he can possibly be.”

  Joat crossed her arms and looked sleepily defiant.

  “Your father is worried, Seld,” Simon went on. “He sent you away so that you’d be safe. So you know he’s not really going to kill you for staying, even though you deserve it.”

  Seld appeared beside Joat, who shoved him in the shoulder. “Toldja to stay outta sight!”

  He hung his head and said, “I know. But I can’t let you take my rap. Mom wouldn’t like that in me. At least that’s what my dad says she’d say.” He shrugged and gave her a feeble grin.

  Joat rolled her eyes. “Do what’choo want,” she said in a scathing tone, and disappeared.

  “Actually,” Simeon told them both, “I don’t see any need to rough it just yet. Why not sleep comfortably while you can, eat what everyone else is enjoying, because we’re certainly not going to leave it to the pirates to gobble up. I’d prefer that you hide out when the pirates arrive. Meanwhile, Seld, give your dad the benefit of your company: he needs it. Save your rations, Joat. Eat with us. Food’s better. For now.”

  He picked up her disgusted sigh, and then she walked into v
iew, arms still folded, expression still defiant.

  Simeon warmed to her all over again. I don’t think I was ever that young, he thought, but, y’know, she makes me wish I could swagger. “Okay guys, let’s go.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Very large mass,” Baila said, whispering. “Several score megatons, at least.”

  “You need not lower your voice,” Belazir said, amused and more so when several of the bridge crew jumped. “We are proceeding stealthed, but sound waves do not propagate in vacuum.”

  He turned to the schematic and long-range visual views. Impressive indeed, he thought. Far and away the largest free-floating construct he had ever seen. Twin globes, each at least a thousand meters in extent, linked by a broad tube. More tubes at the north and south axis, evidently for docking large ships, although none were there at the moment. Around the station was an incredible clutter of material: loose ore, giant flexible balloons of various substances, radiating networks, fabricators.

  Large but soft, he decided. Like a huge lump of well-cooked meat, steaming in its own juices and touched with garlic, waiting to be carved into bite-sized pieces. It was a target so rich that he had trouble convincing himself of its reality. Mentally he accepted it, while his emotions could only kick in every minute or so, as jolts of near-orgasmic pleasure. He stretched like a cat, acutely conscious of the anticipatory tension beneath the quiet ordered activity of the bridge. Everyone in the flotilla would come out of this a hero. He couldn’t believe this plum could be snatched away—not from the Kolnari and especially not when he commanded the Kolnari flotilla! And he, Belazir’t‘Marid Kolaren, would be more than a hero. He would be placed firmly in the logical line of succession to Chalku’t’Marid.

  “A pity it is so big,” he mused. “A shame to have to waste any of the possible plunder.” He sighed for, of course, they would have to destroy what they could not take.

  The flotilla were warships by specialty, not cargo carriers. Even if they had time enough to bring in the heavy haulers from the Clan fleet, only the merest tithe of the goods to be found in this size station could be transported. On the other hand, the ecstasy of sheer destruction had its own euphoria—the knowledge that so much data and effort could be casually blown to dust.