Starborn and Godsons

by Larry Niven

  They had tested their opponents, and were ready to move to the next phase. “Enter the codes.”

  “Yes, sir.” She spoke a series of numbers, and then a code word. Their local computer asked for verification. It was given, and received.

  And elsewhere in the city Joanie’s power armor locked down, the joints frozen as if rusted shut. “Holy shit!” Piccolo groaned. “My suit is dead.”

  “Mine, too.” Shaka said.

  “This isn’t an accident,” Cadzie said in her earpiece. “Why now?” Joanie said.

  “Because they wanted to test us, see what we had in store for them. As soon as they knew we’d counted on the armor as part of our defense, they took it away.”

  “What do we do?” Joanie said.

  Cadzie’s answering made her bare her teeth. “Fight. But get out of those damned suits!”

  And now the Godsons were in view.

  Cadmann knew they were lost the moment he drew a bead on one of the suits . . and it disappeared.

  Vanished. Oh shit. Active camouflage. How had he forgotten . . ?

  They were well and truly screwed.

  Whoville thundered with explosions, and clouds of shattered ceramic choked the air. Shots were exchanged on both sides. Enough explosives were triggered to rain tons of rock from the ceiling.

  Tsiolkovskii’s forces pushed them out of the city, to the rear of the immense chamber, where the colonel glimpsed a handful disappearing into tunnels.

  He allowed eagerness to sweep caution aside and directed his people to pursue . . but as they crossed an open amphitheater, shaped mining charges detonated and the floor collapsed. In an instant three armored Godson soldiers fell into a current that swept them away.

  Tsiolkovskii clamped down on his rage, knowing that this had been a prime gambit, designed not only to damage but anger them, make them less careful, more vulnerable to further traps.

  He would not succumb. No matter what the Starborn did, whatever stratagems they tried or surprises they might have in store, it was only delaying the inevitable. They would lose. Tsiolkovskii was adjusting faster than they could improvise, stalking them through the tubes, closing the gap, and it was only a matter of time.

  A dull glow marked the path ahead. “The thermals show they went this way,” Tsiolkovskii said. “The other tube is a feint.”

  “Mapping,” he said to Stype, and the deep-scan module they’d added to her armor began reading. Every explosion in Whoville had produced waves of vibration the suits had been reading for the last hour, using real-time reflective seismology to create a 3D map coordinating all data.

  The air filled with branching tunnels. Tsiolkovskii repressed his astonishment. He’d spent an hour learning this technology, at least, and understood what he was looking at. “The tunnels meet here,” he said, stabbing with a finger. “Divide into two teams, and trap them.”

  Jaxxon was the first to run out of ammunition. He yelled “I’m out!” to his brother Jason.

  They heard someone coming up behind them from the tunnel, and hid inside some kind of miniature “Whoville” building, carrying stones.

  Two men emerged, neither armored. The twins grinned at each other. They had a chance.

  Jaxxon was better at throwing, and his first stone hit one of the two directly between the eyes, and he dropped unconscious. Jason’s stone stunned the second man so that his rifle almost dropped from his hands.

  They charged, eager to get their hands on that rifle before their opponent could recover.

  And that was their mistake. Colonel Tsiolkovskii hit Jaxxon with the butt of his rifle, stunning him, and hunched his shoulders so that Jason’s clubbing punch hit a solid mass of muscle.

  Jaxxon had swiveled to take the butt-stroke on his left shoulder, came in hard with a tackle, and the fight was on, the two brothers against the Russian.

  He was older, smaller than either of them, but seemed all sharp edges and Shamboo flexible strength. Anything they hit seemed to trigger a response from an unexpected direction, so fast and unpredictable that they couldn’t respond effectively. They tried to sandwich him, but he always moved like a pool player lining up a shot, so that they were colliding rather than cooperating.

  It wasn’t possible. They were the best fighters in the colony, and he hammered them silly. Jason watched his older brother, limping, try a flying tackle, shocked as the Russian seemed to melt away from it. It was a judo technique, which balanced mass with leverage. Or like aikido, which balanced mass with momentum and balance. Or Indonesian fangatua wrestling, which balanced incoming force with strength, aggression and rhythm.

  The Russian seemed to fade away without moving his feet, as if his spine was a rope instead of a rod, absorbing the force and snapping it back like a rubber band, a level of relaxation under stress that judo was supposed to exhibit but rarely did, except among great masters like Mifune or Kano himself.

  It was strange, almost miraculous, and had it not been for the severity of their situation, he’d have applauded and dropped to his knees begging for instruction. As was, he was still trying to stand up.

  Jaxxon’s hips kept going forward as he desperately twisted his shoulders trying to adjust, and as a body cannot do in two directions at the same time, Jaxxon threw himself.

  There was no other way to put it. Somersaulted and face-planted into the rock with an agonized crunch, and was still.

  Jason tried to lever his way back to standing, but wasn’t halfway up when the Russian, somehow converting the momentum stored from the previous movement, slid, spun, and Jason saw the beginning of a knee lifting . . .

  And then darkness.

  Armored, Greg Lindsey took the point position in a side tunnel, a living weapon to those in front of him, a shield to those behind.

  The tunnels twisted but did not branch.

  He and the two men behind him turned a corner in the tunnel and saw a beautiful sight: the stretch ahead was at least a hundred feet, and their two fugitives were only thirty feet away: no chance to miss.

  “Halt!” he cried. One fugitive turned, fired a shot at them and was met with a hail of fire, jerking his body like a puppet, then a puppet with cut strings. He collapsed.

  The woman behind him turned, shaking, her hand climbing into the air.

  “All right,” Greg called to her. “Lay on the ground—” His instructions were interrupted by a burst of fire from behind him. She gasped and sank back against the tunnel wall, then slid bleeding to the ground.

  “Damn it!” he screamed. “She was surrendering! You just—”

  “I zapped a bug,” the soldier said. Carvey. That was the man’s name. Carvey. Turning, Greg saw that the flare in Carvey’s eyes was not what he’d thought. Not hunting. Killing.

  “She had surrendered,” Greg repeated.

  “Just saved our people some time,” Carvey said. “She killed my friend,” he said, the soul of reason. “I just evened it up.”

  You don’t know it was her, Greg thought but didn’t say. There was another voice in his head. Good. Death becomes her.

  But that voice was wrong. In so many ways. It was there, and strong, but Greg knew it was stronger in Carvey.

  Perhaps because he was more vulnerable, unarmored. Something had blossomed inside him, something ugly.

  “Go back to base,” Greg said.

  “No, I—”

  Greg leveled his left arm gun. “Get back to goddamn base, and keep it secure while we finish the sweep.”

  Cursing, Carvey did as he was told.

  ♦ ChaptEr 51 ♦

  dipoles

  The skeeter settled. Joe Martinez, current pad manager sighed and went out to meet them. It was Hal and Towner again. Another stinking bottom feeder?

  The mappers were grinning. They moved briskly to open the cargo pod.

  “What have you got?” Joe asked. He swept the tarp back. The stink wasn’t bad. This body was packed in melting ice.

  “Something a little different,” Towner said
. “No puncture wound.”

  Joe held his nose, and looked more closely. “Maybe Shaka will think that’s interesting.” He triggered his lapel communicator. “Shaka? Are you free to come over here to the pad?”

  “What do you have?” Big Shaka’s voice.

  “Another of those thool-hoo things. No puncture wound, though.”

  “I’ll be right out.”

  A few minutes, and Shaka limped over. “Gentlemen, what do you have for me? Yes, looks good.”

  “That, and this,” Towner said. With a gloved hand he pulled back a flap of flesh from the marine cadaver. “Ever see anything like this?”

  Shaka looked. He said, “Yes. Get that into the biology hutch, please, while I call a friend. Then tell us where you found this.”

  Dr. Martine was prompt. Even so, Shaka hadn’t waited. This time the mappers were both hovering back, observing a mystery they considered their own discovery.

  “As before,” Shaka said, “we have a large amphibious creature, intact or nearly so. We agreed that these organs are electrogenerators. Dr. Martine, you agree?”

  “Speculative, Shaka.”

  “Hal, you got a shock when you touched the corpse?”

  “The first time, yes, and the second too. A little spark. Third time, it must have worn off.”

  “Now, Charlotte, I used the X-ray machine to look at its abdomen. There is no wound, as you can see, and there is this.”

  A shadow in the holoview. Martine said, “A little knob?”

  “And these.” Big Shaka thumbed back a flap between the cadaver’s gills, its chest. “This doesn’t seem to be an injury. It’s a pocket, like the pocket in a kangaroo, perhaps. And these inside?”

  “Two more knobs.” Martine plucked one out. An ellipsoid the size of a man’s finger. “Artificial. Metal, tarnished. Old, I think. This is what Aaron’s killer was probing for, isn’t it? But what is it, Shaka? Have you ever seen anything like it?”

  “There was a hollowed pocket in the rock in the vicinity of Aaron’s corpse. It had a ceramic lid joined with some kind of flexible epoxy. We’re calling it a ‘lockbox.’ Two more of these were in there. We’re calling them dipoles. Powerful magnets, they are.”

  “Are we thinking that these cthulhus perform surgery?”

  “Or maybe they just swallow the dipole as infants. But what if they can’t make them any more? We’ve seen no sign that they still have these skills. They’d have to dig the things out of their dead elders.”

  “But why would they dig into Aaron?”

  Shaka made his first incision into the marine corpse. The long silence, was broken by Towner, the white-bearded mapper. “Sign of intelligence,” he said.

  Martine said, “What?”

  “They see we use tools. They think we think like them. It’s why they don’t kill us. But if we’re intelligent, we must have these, um, dipoles. Only we don’t.”

  Dr. Martine said, “I don’t have any better answer. You—”

  “Towner.”

  “Towner, where did you find the body?”

  “It was on dry land again,” Towner said. “Not far from the second one. Here—” Shaka had popped up a scan map. Hal pointed.

  Shaka nodded. “Within twenty klicks of the spot we’re calling the ‘temple,’ and if you’ll look here . . .”

  “What am I looking at?” Martine asked.

  “Well . . it isn’t more than two klicks from one of the tributary underground rivers. Far from any above-ground waterway connecting with the ocean. What might be inferred from this?”

  “You’re hoping that they might have been involved in Aaron’s death. Three cthulhus, maybe more. But three cthulhus, one badly injured, stabbed Aaron Tragon’s corpse to see if he had a dipole in him. Then they . . ran away? Crawled across land, toward a distant body of water. Why?”

  “We may never know. But the timing is excellent,”

  Big Shaka said. “Suggestive. Died within a day or three of Aaron. Wounded in a fight with grendels . . look. I’m just brainstorming possibilities.” He began to tick off possibilities on his fingers. “One was insane. It was injured, and went off to die. Two others robbed it afterward for its dipole. But we’ve never seen one of these in a situation like this, so we have to think something unusual was at play.”

  “Unusual? Like what?” Dr. Martine wasn’t intrigued yet. She was being patient with a new friend.

  Shaka knew it. He plowed on. “Something unusual happened in an unusual place. Say . . a temple violated by an unbeliever. Led to a killing.”

  “So?”

  “So . . .” Shaka said, “I can imagine three responses to such a thing. Honor, saying ‘thank you, you did well’ and praise. A neutral response, saying ‘you did your job’ and no real reaction.”

  “Hard to believe,” Martine said. “If they are aware of human beings. It had to have been seen as an unusual event.”

  “My point. They know who we are, They have interacted with us over the years. No violent actions for a generation, after the killing in the surf, even though they’ve come close. Then this.”

  “Aaron Tragon’s death.”

  “If the cthulhu consider that we’ve had a detente with them for thirty years . . and if Aaron’s death was in punishment for violation of their space . . .”

  “If they approved of the killing the killers might be rewarded. And the incident might have begun a war.”

  “And if it was an accident? An overreaction?”

  “Then . . the perpetrators might have been punished.”

  “Shunned?” Shaka suggested. “Driven out of the wetlands onto territory where they would dry and die.”

  Dr. Martine said, “That’s quite a tower of suppositions you’re building. Cthulhus might have found Aaron’s body, and seen it as the same opportunity we see here. First chance to examine an alien.” Big Shaka nodded.

  “But I’ll testify to what I’ve seen.”

  “Then let’s keep looking.”

  Dr. Charlotte Martine was the Speaker’s personal appointee. As such she had not just everyone’s attention, but the Speaker’s too. It made her a little shy. She steepled her fingers and took a few moments before speaking.

  “A pair of grendels were killed in a cthulhu temple. This fellow Tragon was killed in almost the same place and in the same way: electrocution. The cthulhus have the capacity to inflict a wound very similar to that of a grendel gun. The hole in Tragon’s belly were very probably made by the same cthulhus who dug these dipoles out of their own kind, and probably for the same reason. We took one of the dipoles apart; Doctor Shaka thinks they’re amplifiers for the cthulhus’ magnetic sense. We have a great deal of solid evidence to back up Doctor Shaka’s speculations. Mister Speaker, you’ve seen our vids—”

  “I think,” Sylvia said, “that that would be called ‘reasonable doubt.’ Is your legal system based on the Code d’Napoleon? Who are you people?”

  “We are the ones who will bring humanity to the stars,” the Speaker said.

  “Speaker!” Marco said.

  “Narrator?”

  Cameras hovered around him. Marco was clearly orating. “I ask that you listen to them. Mistakes have been made on both sides. But if an injustice has been done, and we destroy those fleeing an unjust judgement, they will be right in never trusting us again. Is this what you want? Is this the humanity we seek to spread?”

  “It is your place to record,” the Speaker said. “Not to question. Not on a matter such as this. Not now.”

  “If not now, when? If not me, who? For years, you’ve held me up as some kind of paragon. A role model. I received much from you, but have given much as well. I gave everything. Because I believe in you. In the dream. I’ve been among these people, and they are good people. I know Cadmann, and know him to be a good man. But I held my peace when your judgement said we had to intervene.”

  The Speaker was displeased. “Narrator . . .”

  “I will have my say! And if afterward you fi
nd me unfit, you may rebuke me. But I have crossed a trillion miles, given up all my worldly possessions and said goodbye to everyone and everything I love in the old world, and I will not be silent about an injustice in this one.”

  “Will . . not?”

  “No. I will not. We now know that we didn’t know this planet, and these people do. Didn’t know about grendels. About cthulhus. About harvesters and bees and ‘speed.’ But what we see here is that it is entirely possible that the planet itself killed that man. And he wasn’t even one of ours. We’re all about vengeance, when they behaved as we might have, as I might have, given the same situation. If you knew you were innocent, wouldn’t you have tried to escape? Hell, we traveled that trillion miles without any help from Earth’s institutions because we were misunderstood. Are Cadmann’s actions really so incomprehensible? And if his friends believe in him, as perhaps we should have, had we not been so damned sure that we knew better . . wouldn’t good and true friends act just as they did?”

  “Our people died . . .” the Speaker said.

  “They died attacking. The planet killed them.”

  “They were our people!”

  “And you would do anything to defend them. Avenge them. In other words, these people are just like us. And you thought you had the right to interfere because they were not like us. How many lies are you willing to protect? How many mistakes that our grandchildren will be paying for after we are dust?”

  A pause.

  “Narrator Marco?” the Speaker said.

  “Yes?”

  “You should have won that Oscar.”

  They laughed, and with that the tension was broken.

  “This . . is hard for me to say. But . . we may have made a mistake.”

  Sylvia grew bolder. “Call off your men. You are guilty of kidnapping, search and seizure, betraying your hosts and other crimes I can’t even imagine right now. We welcomed you as friends. Are you really so blind? Is this how you protect humanity?”

  The Speaker hesitated, thoughtful, then said: “Soldier?”