A Talent for War

by Jack McDevitt

  “A few million kilometers? I’d be damned lucky if I could jump back into the planetary system at all. Now how the hell are they going to be so good that they can hit a star? It’s ridiculous.”

  “Maybe there’s another way to do it. Let’s check out what we can. See if you can find an expert, a physicist or somebody. But stay away from Survey, and tell them you’re doing research for a novel. Right? Find out what happens if we inject a load of antimatter into the core of a star. Would it really explode? Is there any theoretical way to accomplish the insertion? That sort of thing.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Some sightseeing,” I said.

  Ilyanda has changed since Kindrel’s time. No fleet of shuttles and cruisers and interstellars could hope to sneak in now and evacuate the global population. The old theocratic Committee that governed in Point Edward still exists, but it is now vestigial. The doors have long since opened to settlers, and Point Edward is now only one of a network of cities, and by no means the largest. But it has not forgotten its past: the Dellacondan Cafe stands on Defiance Street across from the Matt Olander Hotel. Without looking hard, one can find Christopher Sim Park, Christopher Sim Plaza, and Christopher Sim Boulevard. The orbiting terminal has been renamed for him, and his picture appears on various denominations of Bank of Ilyanda credit serials.

  And Matt Olander: a bronze plate bears his likeness and the legend “Defender” in the archway through which one enters Old City, the four-square-block tract of shattered buildings and gaping permearth which has been left untouched since the attack. Visitors stroll silently through the memorial, and usually stop to see the visuals.

  I spent some time in the dromes myself, watching the holos of Sim’s shuttles, during that desperate week when the Ashiyyur were coming, moving in and out of Richardson on silent magnetics. It was rousing stuff, complete with anthems and stern-eyed heroes and the sort of subdued commentary one expects with the portrayal of mythic events. My blood began to pound, and I was gradually caught up again in the drama of that ancient war.

  Later, in a sidewalk cafe flanked by frozen trees, I thought again how easily one’s own tides rise at the prospect of combat in a cause, even one whose justice may be suspect. The company of heroes: if Quinda was affected by it, so were we all. Our glory and our downfall. Embrace the terrible risks of war; drive home the spear (for all the proper reasons, of course). I sat that morning, watching crowds that had never known organized bloodshed, and wondered whether Kindrel Lee wasn’t right when she argued that the real risk to us all comes not from this or that group of outsiders, but from our own desperate need to create Alexanders, and to follow them enthusiastically onto whatever parapets they may choose to blunder.

  Who was the lone woman who had visited Kindrel Lee? Was it Tanner? Lee had described her as Dellacondan, but she was expecting Dellacondans.

  It was easy to see why the Dellacondans might have lied about the manner of Olander’s death: they would not have wished to reveal the existence of the sun weapon. So they’d simply made a hero out of the unfortunate systems analyst who’d stayed behind to ensure success and had thereby savaged Sim’s plans. But anyone who knew the truth must have hated him. How many had eventually died because of Olander’s act?

  I could imagine them all, posted safely outside this system’s oort cloud, watching the sensors, expecting to strike their decisive blow. No wonder they were bitter.

  But Sim had fought on for another year and a half, and never used the solar weapon. I wondered about Kindrel Lee’s idea that the weapon, after all, had been flawed, rendered unworkable by some quirk of nature, or incapable of execution at the Resistance Era level of technology. That she had, after all, killed Matt Olander for no reason.

  Midway through the afternoon, I took the skimmer up into a stiff wind. Street traffic was heavy, and several giant holos of eminently good-looking models demonstrated winter fashions to a crowd gathered outside an emporium. I arced over the downtown area, gained altitude, and sailed into a gray sky.

  During the evacuation of Point Edward, Christopher Sim had left his staff to direct the operation, and had busied himself with other matters. A curious thing then happened: his officers noticed that he rose well before dawn each day, and took a skimmer north along the coast from the city. His destination was a lonely shelf on a cliff face high over the sea. What he did there, or why he went, no one ever learned. Toldenya immortalized the scene in his masterpiece, On the Rock, and the place has been designated an historical site by the Ilyandans. They call it Sim’s Perch.

  I wanted to look at the war through his eyes. And visiting his retreat seemed a good way to do it.

  The vehicle leveled off at about a thousand meters, and began a long swing toward the sea. I was feeling vaguely overwhelmed by the combination of peaks, city, ocean, and mist, when it occurred to me there was someplace else worth visiting.

  I switched to manual, and turned back inland. The computer buzzed at me, insisting on a higher altitude. I went up until the noise stopped, and was near the clouds when I passed over the western edge of the city. That was also the western rim of the volcano. Safely dead, according to the literature. Taken care of by engineers centuries ago, and checked periodically by the Point Edward Environmental Service.

  All the romance has gone out of life.

  I descended toward the vibrant canopy of a purple forest. To the southwest, the land was divided into large farms. Two streams wound across the countryside, joining approximately eight kilometers beyond Point Edward, and disappearing into a mountain.

  On the horizon, the spires of the spaceport looked fragile against the threatening sky. A curtain of water fell from the top of the Blue Tower. I watched a shuttle loop in from the far side, bank gracefully, and descend into the complex.

  It took a while to find what I was looking for: the road that Lee had taken from Point Edward out to Richardson. It no longer existed in any real sense. All transport between the two points was by air now; and anyone living in the small towns that still dotted the landscape had damned well better have a skimmer.

  But sections of the ancient track were visible. It skirted the edge of a cluster of hills, and ran parallel first to one river, and then the other. For the most part, it was little more than a place where the trees were younger.

  I put the map on the overhead monitor, and looked through the atlas, trying to find the town where she’d crashed. Walhalla.

  It was a small farming community, maybe a dozen houses, a hardware store, a food store, a city hall, a restaurant, and a tavern. Two men were atop a roof, installing a dormer. A few people were gathered on the deck outside the hall. No one glanced up as I passed overhead.

  She’d described a sharp curve, which could only be the eastern side, where the trace wound down out of hilly country. There was no sign of a ditch or depression, but two hundred years is a long time. Somewhere here, it had happened. An unmarked, unknown spot on a world littered with memorials. And I wondered how different Ilyanda’s history might have been had Kindrel Lee died out here that night.

  An hour later, I flew out over the glassy waters of Point Edward’s sprawling, island-studded harbor.

  The city had spread up the sides of the surrounding ridges. It clung precariously to precipices, supported by a combination of metal struts and gantner light. Landing pads gleamed on rooftops and in grottos cut from the cliffside. Some public buildings arched across rock fissures. Seaway Boulevard, which follows almost the same route that it did during Resistance times, skirted the harbor, narrowed in the north to a two-lane, and climbed into the peaks.

  Forest, rock, and snow: in both directions along the coastline, the craggy landscape turned gray-white, and disappeared into a hard sky. I flew in lazy circles over the area, admiring its wild beauty. And then, after a while, I turned north.

  Point Edward fell behind. The coastal highway drifted inland and plunged into thick trees.

  Mountains crowded together, and merged gr
adually into a monolithic gray rampart, smooth and reflective and timeless. The Ilyandans call it Klon’s Wall, after a mythical hero who built it to protect the continent against a horde of sea demons. In its shadow, the air was cold. I stayed low, near the spray.

  Sails stirred the mist and, well above me, skimmers and even an airbus plowed back and forth. A few gulls kept pace. They were ungainly creatures with scoop snouts and enormous wingspans and cackles like gunshots. Floaters drifted idly in the air currents.

  Occasional trees clung to the cliff face. The computer identified some of these as cassandras, thought to possess a kind of leafy intelligence. Tests had proven inconclusive, and skeptics held that the tradition had developed because the web of branches tended to resemble human features, particularly when seen with the sun behind them.

  Some were clustered along the rim. I turned the navigator’s telescope in their direction. Their branches were entwined, and their broad spined leaves extended for whatever gray light they could capture. But there was no sun, and no face. As I neared Sim’s Perch, a repeating message turned up on the commlink. “Full tourist facilities are available,” it said. “Please return your vehicle to controlled guidance. Manual navigation is not permitted within eight kilometers of the park.” I complied. The skimmer immediately swung out to sea, gained altitude, and began a long slow turn back toward the escarpment.

  Three of us were lined up on the approach. A couple of kids waved from the skimmer immediately ahead, and I waved back. We were above the cliff rim now, approaching a blue and scarlet landing pad complex, which was atop the summit. Sim’s shelf was about a third of the way down the cliff face.

  It was marked by a complex of structures, cut from the rock. Among them was a gold-domed hotel, with mush courts and swimming pools. In Sim’s time, the ledge must have been of modest proportions, a strip of rock barely wide enough to support a skimmer. But it’s been braced and extended and broadened and fenced.

  The voice on my commlink was young, female, and syrupy. “Welcome to the Christopher Sim Perch,” she said. “Please do not attempt to leave the vehicle until it has completely stopped. Quarters are available at the Sim Hotel. Do you wish to make a reservation?”

  “No,” I said. “I only want to see the shelf.”

  “Very good, sir. You can reach the Christopher Sim Perch by following the blue markers. The Resistance Committee reminds you that refreshments may be consumed only in designated areas. Please enjoy your stay.”

  I followed another vehicle onto a blue pad, turned the skimmer over to a service attendant, and took a tube down to the main level. That left me in the hotel lobby. But a blue arrow pointed toward a side door.

  A few people, kids mostly, splashed in a fern-lined pool. There was a souvenir shop with Resistance Era dishware and glasses and pennants, models of the Corsarius, and a substantial array of crystals and books. Among the books was Man and Olympian, and a modest volume titled Maxims of Christopher Sim. Toldenya’s magnificent On the Rock dominated the lobby. If you haven’t seen it: Sim sits thoughtfully, and precariously, atop a rounded slab, peering out over an uneasy ocean, illuminated by a rising sun. Storm clouds are visible on the horizon.

  He wears a loose jacket and floppy trousers, his gray-blond hair curling out from under a battered hat. His eyes are narrowed, and filled with pain. The green and white wing of his skimmer is visible on the left. (It was on this occasion that I learned the significance of the tree symbol on the aircraft: it is the Morcadian tree, and has been the official device of Ilyanda for four hundred years.)

  I bought a copy of the Maxims and took it outside, onto the shelf.

  I was almost alone. “Off season,” one of the attendants told me. “We don’t get many tourists this time of year. But a lot of people come out from the city for dinner and drinks. Tonight. There’ll be a good crowd tonight.”

  The shelf was open to the elements. Everything else was sealed and heated, including an observation deck, which lay at right angles to the face of the promontory. A few people had found their way to it, and were manning a battery of telescopes. A young couple, wrapped against the chill of the afternoon, followed me out.

  A few kids played near, and sometimes climbed onto, the low mesh fence which was all that separated them from a happier world. The ocean was a long way down, and I cringed, watching.

  Overhead, a variety of pennants flew. A few seabirds wheeled nearby, and a couple of floaters drifted just out of reach beyond the fence. Their filaments rippled in the moving air. Even in the shadow of the mountain wall, the daylight, reflected through their amoebic sacs, maintained a deliberate cadence of shifting hues. They exist on so many worlds, these peaceful, slow-moving creatures that seem endlessly curious about us. They’d been worth saving, I thought. They and the gulls and the broad sea that had been here for how many million years?

  How could Sim have even considered destroying all this? How could he have stood up here, beneath these timeless walls, and contemplated that kind of act?

  I found a bench on the observation deck, and opened the Maxims. It had been privately printed, through the Order of the Harridan. Much of the material had been derived from Sim’s one published work. But there were also excerpts from letters, court documents, comments attributed to him, public pronouncements, and so on.

  The crisis, he tells the congress of the City on the Crag, is upon us, and I would be less than candid if I did not admit to you that, before it ends, I fear we will have emptied many of the seats in this chamber. And, in a note to a senator from that same body: I have every confidence that whatever Power has brought us this immeasurable distance along the road from Akkad, it surely does not intend to abandon us now to this ancient, unimaginative race that so singlemindedly pursues our extinction.

  Toldenya’s slab is located at the north end of the ledge. It is the largest of a group of rocks, wedged into the cliff face, jutting precariously out over the void. No one really knows where Sim stood when he was here, and I have to think that the notion he actually climbed out there is purely an artist’s conceit.

  His shelf had been narrow. At its widest point, it would have been just wide enough for a good pilot to set a skimmer down. Given a surprise—a sudden downdraft, say—and skimmer and pilot could have fallen a half kilometer into the ocean.

  Why?

  And why before dawn?

  Yet how better to contemplate the star and the world he was about to destroy, than to catch them together in the magnificent symbiosis of an ocean sunrise?

  And I wondered, while I considered what must have passed through his mind on those bleak mornings, whether he had not hoped for the sudden downdraft that might have shifted the decision to someone else’s shoulders.

  Had he perhaps, in the end, come to fear his own weapon? Christopher Sim was first and last an historian. Standing out here, watching what he believed to be the last few sunrises this world would have, he must have been terrified of the verdict of history.

  I felt the certainty of it in a sudden shock: the ultimate warrior had shuddered under that knowledge. No wonder we never heard again from the sun weapon.

  XVII.

  The measure of a civilization is in the courage, not of its soldiers, but of its bystanders.

  —Tulisofala,

  Mountain Passes

  (Translated by Leisha Tanner)

  THE MIST BLEW off the sea in the late afternoon, and I retired to a table in a corner of the bar, to sit quietly sipping green lamentoes. After a while, as the sky began to darken and Ilyanda’s rings took shape, I activated my commlink. “Chase, are you there?”

  I heard it buzz, which meant she wasn’t wearing it. I went back to my drink and tried again a few minutes later. This time I connected. “Shower,” she explained. “It’s been a long afternoon, but I’ve got some answers. Our boy’s idea would work.”

  “The antimatter?”

  “Yes. It should be antihelium, by the way, assuming the target has a helium core. Which is the
case here.”

  “Who’d you talk to?”

  “A physicist at a place called Insular Labs. His name’s Carmel, and he sounds as if he knows what he’s talking about.”

  “But it would work?”

  “Alex, he said, and I quote: ‘A shipload of that stuff would blow the son of a bitch to hell!’ ”

  “Then Kindrel’s story is at least possible. Provided you can get the stuff into the core. Did you ask him about that part of the problem? Could Sim have found a way to navigate in hyper?”

  “I didn’t mention Sim. We were talking about a novel, remember? But Carmel thinks that navigation in Armstrong space is theoretically impossible. He suggested another way: ionize the antihelium, and put it behind a powerful magnetic field. Then ram it into the sun at high velocity.”

  “Maybe that’s the way they intended to do it,” I said. “Could we do that now?”

  “He doesn’t think so. The antihelium would be easy to make and contain, but the technology for the insertion would be pretty advanced stuff.

  “Theoretically, the only type of nonlinear space that permits physical penetration by three-dimensional objects is Armstrong. I still think it’s a hoax.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “Maybe. Listen, I’m at a nice spot. How about joining me for dinner?”

  “The Perch?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sure. Sounds good. Give me a little time to get myself together. Then I’ll take a taxi out. See you in about an hour and a half?”

  “Okay. But don’t bother with the taxi. I’ll send the skimmer back for you.”

  I tried to use my commlink to enter the return code into the skimmer’s onboard computer. But the red lamp blinked: no connection. Why not? I made another unsuccessful effort, and patched through to the service desk. “I’m having problems with my automatics,” I said. “Could you send an attendant to enter a code manually into my skimmer?”