Starborn and Godsons

by Larry Niven

  “What is this?” The speaker asked.

  “We’ve been able to pick up these traces. A communication, a bit of debris, a heat trace. None of them, by themselves, are terribly convincing. Might have been deliberate misinformation.”

  “What is your name?” asked Dr. Mandel.

  “Tsiolkovskii. Colonel Tsiolkovskii.” The Russian paused. “Colonel Anton Tsiolkovskii, U.N. Security Forces.”

  “Very good. What can you tell me about your recent history? Where you are? What the most recent important memories?”

  “I remember Tanzania,” Tsiolkovskii mused. “The last campaign.”

  “How much do you remember about what happened?” His brows furrowed. “I was . . Did we prevail?”

  “Yes, we did. You did. You don’t remember anything after that?” Mandel asked.

  Tsiolkovskii was silent for almost a full minute. “I remember . . pain. Light. Have I been unconscious since that time?”

  “No,” Dr. Mandel said. “And I think those memories will return.”

  “Where am I?” Tsiolkovskii had the uncomfortable sense that he had asked that before.

  “The starship Messenger.”

  “Messenger . . .”

  “Do you remember the Godsons?”

  “The . . Godsons?” A light seems to go on behind his eyes.

  “The Godsons. Yes.”

  “I remember. I remember,” Tsiolkovskii said. “They demonstrated a means of reducing Ballistic Emotional Trauma.”

  “What is that?” Mandel asked.

  “What used to be called PTSD. Shell shock. They came to West Point. I was impressed. You are a Godson?”

  “I am.”

  Tsiolkovskii nodded. “I’m starting to remember. They . . you wanted me to join. It wasn’t something I would do while an active officer, but I did use and approve of technologies.”

  “And do you remember your last conversation?”

  “I . . it was after Central Africa . . .” Something painful about that memory.

  “Yes.”

  “I was . . wounded.”

  “You were almost torn in half. The technology to heal you didn’t exist. The cost to preserve you until healing could be advanced was prohibitive.”

  “I remember. I was in pain.” His eyes seemed to be clearing, his movements and enunciation more certain. “I was told that you could not heal me, but that the technology was projected to be available in ten years.”

  “And . . ?”

  “Please, no games.”

  “This is not a game. You are suffering from cold sleep amnesia combined with the effects of trauma. We expect full recovery, but the more you remember on your own, the better your recovery.”

  Tsiolkovskii grumbled, but agreed. “All right. Well, I was told that if I would agree to . . something . . that they would . . you would pay for the cold sleep until my body could be healed. Was it . . ?”

  Suddenly, his lethargy seemed to dissolve.

  “Yes. It was,” Mandel said.

  “Wonderful. Wonderful. Are these . . my limbs?”

  “They are. A combination of cloning, induced nerve growth, and nanosurgery. While you’ve been under, we’ve had a unique and proprietary process toning your muscles without awakening you or thawing your body. The surgery was performed on your lower body without awakening the upper. It was expensive, I promise you.”

  His eyes narrowed slightly. “Why didn’t you awaken me when you performed the surgery?”

  Dr. Mandel seemed a bit uncomfortable. “It was very extensive surgery, and we thought the process of recovery would be more efficient if it happened in an anesthetized state.”

  Tsiolkovskii turned his face away, and his lips thinned. “I see,” he said. “The contract . . .” His eyes widened.

  “Yes?”

  “Where am I?”

  “The starship Messenger.”

  “Doctor, where is Messenger?”

  “We are orbiting a planet in the Tau Ceti system.”

  Tsiolkovskii couldn’t help himself, put his hands to his temples. He said something fervent in Russian. “How . . how long have I been unconscious?”

  “One hundred and six years.”

  “I don’t believe it. It worked. And now we’re . . I remember! You offered me a contract, if I was willing to function as chief security officer.”

  “Yes. A number of United Nations officers were recruited to this purpose.”

  “If I was willing to become a Godson, and swear to a term of service—”

  “Ten waking years, yes.”

  “That you would heal me.” He swung his feet down off the pallet. “And you did it! By God, you did it!”

  Unsteadily at first, he got up and walked, and then performed some odd rotational motions, starting with his fingers and progressing from there to his wrists, elbows, shoulders, and neck. Then his torso, moving like a belly dancer, and then hips, knees, and ankles. Popping and crackling sounds as he worked a century of rust out of his joints. He moved like an angry yogi.

  Then he grinned.

  “By god! My shoulder! My hips! I’d been suffering degenerative conditions ever since I passed my instructor certification in Systema Kadochnikova.”

  “Sir?”

  The memory seemed to center him. “The most grueling physical and spiritual test in all the fighting arts. Hardest thing I’ve ever done. As Tanzania was the best. Was. I think that this . . What we’re doing now, will be the very best.”

  Dr. Mandel nodded. “We’re hoping you’ll think so. Sir, there is one more thing. When you signed the contract, you were in pain. And under the influence of powerful pain relievers. Therefore . . although the legal contract obtains, our own beliefs, as Godsons, is that drugs reduce the capacity for rational decision. Even prescribed drugs.”

  “And?”

  “You would be within your rights to consider the contract invalid.”

  A pause. Tsiolkovskii seemed not quite to believe what he had just heard. “You . . would spend a fortune to heal me . . bring me lightyears away on the adventure of a lifetime . . and give me an out like that?”

  “It is what is right.”

  Their eyes met, like two live wires touched together. Then Tsiolkovskii extended his hand. “I would be proud to serve such an organization. Colonel Anton Tsiolkovskii, at your service.”

  ♦ ChaptEr 44 ♦

  zack

  After a hundred and fifty years together (fifty of them, admittedly, in cold sleep) Rachel and Zack Moskowitz had fallen into a routine, as old couples tended to do.

  She usually rolled out of bed first, noticing every creak and strain, scanning for new ones, signs that the old machine was breaking down. New ones every week these days, it seemed. Not bad, considering the alternative.

  Rachel tried not to awaken Zack, who usually stayed up later than she did, working on colony business. The arrival of the Godsons, with all of the attendant trouble, had intensified this, and since Cadzie’s escape, he hardly seemed to sleep at all. She was pretty sure that he had been awake working on a speech to give the Godson leader called the Speaker his case for leniency for what Godsons called “rebels” when in a charitable mood.

  His comforting lump beneath the plaid woolen covers was one of the things that marked the beginning of a new day. She tiptoed to the kitchen and set up the sofa-sized fabricator to make coffee from the good beans Cadzie brought back from the mountain. The fabricator was similar to the ones on board Geographic, a new luxury afforded by the technology Godsons had brought, now sprouting across the colony. If the current troubles could be resolved, a golden age beckoned for Earthborn and Starborn alike.

  She was glad to have lived to see it, for she was certain that Zack could work things out. He always had. The Godsons seemed intractable, but there was always room for negotiation if you could understand your opposition enough. If you could look beneath the apparent issues into the values and beliefs that drove the behavior and formed the filters. That was what m
ade Zack such a wonderful leader. He could see beneath the surface, and she had a kind of faith in him that she had had for few people in her life. Even the great Cadmann Weyland, who, she privately thought, had been given entirely too much credit in salvation of the colony.

  It would have survived anyway, because of men like Zack. Warriors got the glory, she thought, but it was bureaucrats who kept the wheels turning.

  Zack’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy: “In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.” Avalon was a long way from that ugly reality, and she suspected that her husband had supported the deification of Cadmann as a way to focus values, an attempt to head off a clogging of paperwork and stratified power generations before it became a threat.

  What might he devise to sway the Godsons? She could hardly wait.

  She sat on her patio, looking north over the Amazon toward Mucking Great Mountain, enjoying the first eastern sunlight as it painted the plain. Despite the danger, life was good. There was still beauty and meaning.

  She made a second cup, and following her long-established habit, took it to Zack.

  Zack was seated in front of the com screen. The screen was lit, and that was Speaker Gus looking out at her. Zack’s head was on the keyboard.

  Rachel tried to move his head, tried to wake him. His head rolled loosely, and the screen jittered. Rachel stepped back a pace, then glared at the Godsons’ Speaker. “What did you say?” she demanded.

  “Rachel Moskowitz? Is your husband all right?”

  “I think he’s dead. What—”

  “We were talking. I was talking. Mrs. Moskowitz, three of your rebels fired on us. They’re dead. This matter has gone too far—”

  “So it has,” she said, and reached over her husband’s body to switch him off.

  She typed a five digit number. Have to tell Sylvia, then Carlos And then . . . She rattled off a list of names, people to call, things to do, dimly aware that the moment she stopped planning, she would begin to sob.

  ♦ ChaptEr 45 ♦

  into the mines

  They traveled at night, by horseback, knowing that they were one of dozens of different looping patterns of riders and walkers and flyers. All of the mainlanders: crazy homesteaders, miners, mappers, hunters and adventurers (all of whom were careful to stay at least twenty klicks from grendel-infected water) seemed to be in on the game, creating a confusing web of conflicting flight paths. Hiding a needle in a stack of needles.

  Piccolo led them across back trails, winding ever closer to the Snowcone pitchblende mine.

  They freed the horses and walked the last five miles, and entered the abandoned mine at two hours past midnight on the third day.

  “Piccolo,” Cadzie said. “Are you sure you know these tunnels?”

  The former surfing instructor nodded his shaggy head. “Upside and down . . way down. I worked them for seven years, before I maxed a hundred millisieverts.”

  “Lifetime dose?”

  Curls bounced. “That’s it.”

  “Nervous about being back?”

  “A little bit,” he admitted. “Then again,” Piccolo brightened, “we’ll probably all be dead in twenty-four hours, so bugger the radiation.”

  “Ray of sunshine, aren’t you?”

  The surfing instructor chuckled, and opened a wall box, thumbed a button. He held his personal slate near it as the green light flashed on. Schematics began to appear on the screen. “Ah. It’s all good. Just give me a moment to orient.” His index finger flipped through screens.

  A compact shape nudged his elbow. “How long do we have?” Mei Ling asked, glancing toward the mouth of the mine.

  “I’d reckon about a half hour,” Cadzie said. “We’ll need to leave false trails. Close a tunnel or two.” That made some sense, right? True, it would create some future chaos for the miners. But at least that assumed there was a future. Hell, there was no way around it: the best plausible result of all this was “bad.” The worst-case scenario was massacre. They were making the best of a disaster. So long as there weren’t any colonists currently down in the dark, he could justify almost anything. He peered over Piccolo’s sunburnt shoulder.

  “What are you showing?”

  “No one carrying a transceiver is in the mine right now. In fact, not a lot of work has been done since Messenger arrived.” Piccolo grinned. “Almost as if someone knew a storm was coming.” He was looking at something resembling a chart of the human circulatory system: a web of caves branching through the mountain vertically and horizontally. “Here.” His fingers traced a line. “We can take this path down to the Styx.”

  “You called it the Styx?”

  “It’s the major underground river, combining several smaller tributaries from the eastern mountains, and flows directly to the magnetic node.”

  Cadzie performed a quick head count. Eighteen in all, Surf’s Up people, other Starborn, even a couple of miners who didn’t fancy remaining behind. “Do we have enough rebreathers?”

  “Plenty of emergency equipment, and it’s designed to function in case of flooding.”

  “Let’s start getting them together, while we rig three of the other mines for collapse.”

  “Then we can seal two . . three tunnels, including the one we’re taking.”

  “Sounds good. I can do that. Let me finish the mapping first. I’m almost done,” Piccolo said.

  “Good,” Cadzie said. “Let’s rig up the sleds.” Three suits of power armor, each towing five people on rebreathers. Could it work? Each was rated for two thousand pounds of towing power. That was five or six human beings, especially if they kicked their legs . . .

  So the nylon ropes were fitted with arm and leg loops. The towees would want to be secure: half a mile underground was no place to get lost in the dark.

  Mei Ling and Jaxxon monitored the radios, trying to extract useful information as the others planted explosives, gathered rebreathers and lanterns, or modified the three power suits. Tracers built into the suits had been ripped out and destroyed two days ago, but a last check was critical. Was there a backup? A work-around GPS chip that would enable the Godsons to track their stolen equipment, even into the depths of the mine? It was entirely possible, and zero reason to believe that Trudy had the technical knowledge to detect some subtle system buried within the hardware or software.

  “I’m reading a Godson skeeter, seven minutes out!” Jaxxon yelled from the tunnel mouth.

  The word was relayed to Cadzie, who ran back to the main tunnel carrying two more rebreathers scavenged from personnel lockers. He, Shaka and Joanie were slotted for the power armor, in tow positions. Joanie was already suited up. Shaka was just putting on a helmet that made him look like a cross between Iron Man and a medieval knight. “Then let’s get in the water. Blow all the tunnels at the same time, but fast. We don’t want to catch any Godsons in the blast. Things are bad enough already.”

  ♦ ChaptEr 46 ♦

  air

  A churning cloud of smoke and dust billowed out of the mine before the Godson autogyro could land. The cloud swamped them, filled the air with particles that made Major Stype cough until she clamped down her power armor’s faceplate and sealed the air system. The skeeter’s props cleared the air rapidly, and when visibility was restored the pilot shut the engine.

  The security squad was off the skeeter thirty seconds later, scanning for life and ready to end it. Nothing. No signs of anything outside but twisted brown high-altitude trees with spiky cactoid leaves.

  “One human being on the upper level of the mines,” Sergeant Lindsey said.

  “Get in there, find that bastard.” Her armored arm swept at the air. “What in the hell was that?” she asked, voice tight “What the hell are they playing at?”

  “They have maps,” her sergeant said. “I reckon they were sealing tunne
ls behind them, either to obscure their intent, or impede our progress. Or both, ma’am.”

  She closed her eyes, and flinched at the image of Captain Sven Meadows’ bloody skull, every scrap of flesh devoured by an alien swarm. Rage tinted the edge of her constructed vision red, and she forced herself to visualize a hastily configured map of the mine, gathered just after their computer had finished sorting the flight patterns with an algorithm that separated random movement from purposeful, then sorted again for high-value destinations. The remaining three choices had been equally weighted . . Stype had made the final decision. This was the place.

  “They could be heading anywhere.”

  “Ma’am,” Sergeant Lindsey said. “I have a notion. We can reconfigure our deep scans. Do that, and we might be able to trace them by our own power suit heat and radio signatures.”

  “Get the hell on it.” Stype growled. She closed her eyes. Sven’s skull floated in the darkness.

  “We have to do it while they’re moving, before they can power it down again . . or we’ve lost them. Maybe permanently.”

  “Then what the hell are you waiting for?”

  At the moment, Major Stype’s prey were deep underground, the cold mountain water sweeping them along in an endless western tide. The darkness was interrupted only by their own lights, within which the smooth tunnel walls looked like a strange combination of machined, natural, and . . organic. Cadzie slowed, closely examining something that reminded him of potter’s glaze. He wished he had time to study more carefully. That he could take off his gloves and feel the textures.

  Nuts. The cold would numb his bare hands. He would feel nothing.

  They reached a branching tunnel. He slowed. Stopped. The people towed behind him continued to move, bumped into his feet. “Which way now?” Trudy asked.

  Cadzie felt a brief flash of panic. “I don’t know . . .” if he chose wrong, they might run out of time, hit a stretch with no air pockets after their rebreathers were exhausted.

  Which way?