The Stars Are Also Fire

by Poul Anderson

  “Of course,” she said. “What I mean is seismic-type waves. How do they transmit hereabouts?”

  “Hein? Moonquakes are negligible, of scientific interest only.”

  “I know. But I’m wondering how the shock wave from the impact might have arrived.”

  “Not enough to knock anything down,” he snorted. “You saw.”

  Dagny bridled. “Yes. I also saw what did get wrecked. Forces had to cause that. Where’d they come from? The impact. How’d they get here? Through the ground.” Impulsively: “That should be obvious enough for anyone.”

  He didn’t explode. Instead, his gaze grew intent and he murmured, “You have a hypothesis?”

  “Fancy word for a wild-ass guess,” Dagny admitted. “Still, I have been thinking. How’s this sound?” She addressed Fuentes as well, and especially Guthrie. “A resonant frequency set that particular pylon vibrating. This in turn sent a wave along the cable and made the gondola pendulum. If there was a rock layer down below that reflected the shock, the impulse would be repeated and the oscillations go crazy.”

  Beynac sat bolt upright. “Pardieu!” he exclaimed. “I sink per’aps—” He leaned back, eyes half closing. “Perhaps. Let me too now think if this is possible. A transverse component—” He withdrew into his brain.

  “The probability is ridiculous,” Fuentes objected. “The system would have to have had the exact suitable loading and configuration at that exact moment.”

  Dagny nodded. “Sure. What I’m proposing is a worse case than anybody imagined. It’s just that I haven’t got any better idea. Do you? They’ll have to collect data, and run lab tests and computer models, to check it out. But maybe today Dr. Beynac can tell us whether it’s worth checking.”

  Guthrie’s words cut across her last few. “By damn, my guess is that you’ve got hold of its tail! Good for you, lass!” His grin and wink added: How I wish I could brag you up, granddaughter mine. “And if you’re right, why, we needn’t worry. I could draw a hundred royal flushes in a row before those conditions repeated.”

  Beynac stirred, reopened his eyes, and growled, “Not true, mister.” Himself unwilling to wait out transmission lag, he went straight on: “This especial accident, yes, I must do an analysis, but I believe today that Miss Engineer Ebbesen is basically correct. However, I am interested in meteoritics. That object was a member of the Beta Taurid Swarm. Orbital precession is making it once more, after centuries, a menace. Other strikes may well kill people in other ways. Take this that has happened for a warning. In every month of June, close down tops de operations from sunrise to sunset.”

  Fuentes stiffened. “Wait a minute! Do you realize what kind of burden that would be?”

  Beynac shrugged. “Pft! I am a scientist. I shall make my honest recommendation. The costs they are your department.”

  Deferential, not obsequious, Fuentes signalled a pause for Guthrie.

  The lord of Fireball smiled his oddly charming smile. “Gracias,” he said. “I’d been fretting about that on my own for a spell. Do me a favor and don’t stampede into a press conference, okay? We’ll assemble our facts and figures and calculations, and then go public. It’s that important. Major strikes are a threat to Mama Earth herself. The dinosaurs learned that the hard way; and if the Tunguska object had hit a few hours later than it did, it would’ve taken out most of Belgium.”

  Beynac regarded the image with a freshened respect. Guthrie continued: “It could be that the human race makes a profit off the Rudolph smashup. We may get sentiment for a space patrol to track meteoroids, and deflect or destroy the dangerous ones.” He laughed. “Fireball will bid on the contract.”

  Beynac surprised Dagny when he said, soft-voiced, “Another reason for humans on the Moon.”

  Reasons already aplenty, swirled through her.

  Energy. Criswell solar collectors going up around the globe, to beam to Earth electric power clean and cheap and well-nigh limitless.

  Science. Astronomy on Farside, a stable platform, a planet-sized shield against radio interference and light pollution. Chemistry, biology, physiology, agronomy under conditions unique and enlightening. Who could foretell how much more?

  Industry. Today, small specialties. Ultimately, gigantic factories of every kind, with no surrounding vulnerable biosphere, their products easily launched for the mother world in aerodynamic containers that descended gently to destination. Or sent into deeper space—

  Astronautics, building the fleet and homeporting the ships, at least until humankind had struck roots elsewhere. And so the future. Yes, Luna was poor in heavy elements, airless, waterless; but wealth of that kind waited unbounded in the asteroids and comets, along with the day when no more need be torn out of living Earth.

  Adventure, discovery, deeds to do and songs to sing.

  “We’ll swing it!” she cried.

  Heat rushed into her face. This was a business meeting. Why hadn’t she felt such a childish outburst rising, and stopped it? Fuentes, that very proper man, looked the least bit embarrassed. Guthrie’s image hadn’t yet had time to show reaction. She foresaw him chuckling indulgently and moving the conversation onward. Beynac—Beynac’s gaze had come to rest on her. And now he himself smiled. “Good for you, mademoiselle,” he said.

  5

  Sunlight spilled from aloft and shattered into a million dancing brilliances. The sea ran sapphire-blue, turquoise-blue, cobalt-blue, amethyst, surges and swirls over long, gentle swells. It shushed and rumbled, noises as tender as the wind and as deep as itself. Westward a bank of cumulus towered white above a dim streak that was land. Elsewhere reached distances, moving hues, odors of salt and air.

  Then the day went black. For a moment Aleka knew only the eidophone before her, the sights in its screen and the rage out of its speaker. Fuller awareness returned, but the warmth and breeze that washed her stopped at her skin.

  Small loss, gibed a thought fleeting by. She had been in a mucho hard mood already, outbound to her rendezvous.

  Now time was like a shark behind her. She sprang to her feet and leaned out above the port side. “Ka’eo!” she shouted. “Hele mai! Aboard, āwīwī!”

  Her companion reared out of the water and thrust himself over the low gunwale. The boat canted. It rocked back as his bulk slithered across the deck to the middle, forward of the cockpit where she stood. “Kāohi mai ’oe,” she warned: Hold fast The swimmer pushed his front flippers into a pair of cuffs secured to the framework. His dark sleekness dripped and shimmered.

  They had been idling along at four or five knots, for Aleka was in no hurry to meet those people who awaited her. She made the boat leap. In a minute it was planing, up and down in eagle swoops, forward at a unicorn gallop. The engine purred quietly, being almost half as efficient as a spaceship’s plasma thrust, but air brawled around the hyalon screen in front of her.

  Through it, Ka’eo’s liquid brown gaze met the woman’s. He barked and grunted loudly enough for her to make out. The language was basically Anglo, with many Hawaiian and Japanese loan words and a number—larger year by year, it seemed—that were purely of the Keiki Moana. But no human mouth could have shaped just those sounds.

  “[What hastens us, oath-sister?]”

  Aleka touched a disc on the pilot panel and a supersonic carrier beam gave him her reply, clear through the racket, in her version of the same tongue. “A fight between the inspectors and some kauwa. At least two dead.” She looked at the transmission in the flatscreen, tiny images, cries she barely heard amidst the booming of her speed.

  To her eyes, the seal face did not change, save that whiskers stood straight out from the muzzle and fangs briefly gleamed. She had sometimes wondered what his kind read in the mobile features of hers. Maybe they were too alien for a play of expressions to convey much. She did sense horror in his tone. “[This is bad, orca-bad. Speak to them, sister mine! Make them stop!]”

  Crazily into her mind lurched another question. Where did that phrase come from? Killer whales di
dn’t haunt these seas. Keiki Moana had doubtless seen them on documentary programs and such, but why had their name entered the language, and as a word for evil? For centuries, her own race had pitied and protected what big cats remained.

  Was the forebrain of the seal-folk so new and thin an overlay that an inborn dread of beasts which had preyed on their ancestors still dominated it? Then what other instincts also did?

  “Metamorph” was an easy word to say. Was it that easy a thought to think? A strain of organisms in which the DNA had once been modified to bring forth something never seen in nature—Microbes that decomposed or sequestered toxic wastes. Trees with sap that was fuel. Exotic animals. Talking animals. Lunarians—But when you change the body like that, what changes do you make in the mind? The soul?

  Maybe it was only that certain Keiki had wandered far north, unbeknownst to humans, and brought back tales of orcas. Or maybe not. How little she really knew of these people, her friends and fellows in the Lahui Kuikawa.

  No matter yet, surely not if murder went on any longer. She forced steadiness upon herself, recited the Tulip Mantra seven times, felt the painful tension leave her back and the trembling leave her hands. “Major Delgado, por favor,” she said at the phone, in mainland Anglo. A man’s pale countenance entered the screen. “I’m coming, top speed. But can’t you get this under control?”

  The officer in charge of the Peace Authority’s investigative team bit his lip. “We’re trying,” he grated. “They don’t listen. Do they understand?”

  “Maybe not. More and more of their younger ones have little or no direct contact with us. But what’s happening?”

  “At the moment, a standoff. See.” Delgado swept a scanner around, and Aleka saw.

  His party’s craft, a small submersible with an observation turret, lay near the edge of a biorange. To starboard, the green, loosely woven man of vegetation reached beyond sight, rippling to waves and currents, drinking light, weaving atoms together into material desired by its designers—in this case, Aleka knew, anticarcinoma virus base. In the offing an attendant glided about, agleam, oblivious of everything but its duties, a versatile machine with a program capable of some learning and much adaptation, nevertheless just a robot and unaware.

  To port, blood streaks curled luridly bright. Repeated bursts of foam showed where a body plunged or broached or slapped the water as if it were the enemy. They circled the vessel, those shapes, around and around, more than Aleka had imagined, two or three score. The clamor out of their throats reached her faintly over the phone, hoarse and harsh. Delgado’s team had spaced themselves along the rails, ten men and women in blue field uniforms. Each pair of hands gripped a firearm.

  The view went back to the commander’s face. “I’ve called on the amplisonor for peace, again and again,” he said desperately. “They pay no attention. They’re no real threat to us, of course, but—What should we do? Submerge? Leave the vicinity?” He tautened. “We can’t let them suppose they’ve won, those lawbreakers.

  “Hang on,” Aleka said. She tapped for her location. It appeared on the pilot board. “I will be there in about ten minutes.” She drew breath. “What exactly went wrong? Por favor, begin from the beginning, señor.”

  In the world beyond Hawaii she had learned the value of courtesy, even carefully measured deference. Besides, her brief meeting with him had given her the idea that this was a decent man. If his task put him at odds with her, that wasn’t his fault; and today they could join to fend off more deaths. They must!

  He nodded. “Ciertamente. On our cruise we’ve found considerable evidence of widespread violation, especially ecological; but you can hear the details later, when we enter our report. However, we saw nothing so blatant as here, where we’ve come on that band of seals—uh, metamorphs—openly plundering fish, kinds of fish necessary to the health of the range. You probably know which I mean.”

  Aleka did. They weren’t the little darters developed to eat parasites, they were the grazers that kept the sea plants well pruned: fat, sluggish, temptation incarnate.

  Delgado seemed to draw comfort from speaking methodically. “I called on them to cease and desist. They ignored me. I had us move closer, to no effect. Señorita, our duty is to the law and the general welfare. More and more seals were converging on us. It was clear a large gang had been poaching. I sent a man down onto a diving fin with a shock gun. The idea was to hit a few of them—only painfully, you understand, no serious injury—hoping they would disperse. Instead, two of them scrambled up onto the fin, before our man saw, and attacked him. Señorita, you know those are big animals, with sharp teeth. His squad mates on deck shot them dead. Quite rightly. He returned. Now the creatures act as if they think they’re besieging us. Naturally, knowing you were on your way, I had you called.”

  He sighed. “I could wish, now, you had joined us earlier, yes, had accompanied us from the start. But that is hindsight, no?”

  “Your plan was reasonable under the circumstances, Major,” Aleka gave him.

  Inwardly, to ready herself for the encounter ahead, she rehearsed those circumstances: complaints, suspicions, proven losses, violent incidents, not to mention the demographics. The Peace Authority was bound to look into them. If anything, the surprise lay in how long it waited. Delgado had dropped hints—about hopes that the Lahui could somehow resolve the problem among themselves—thereby helping people around the planet believe that the tribes and cantons and ethnoi of Earth worked, because that helped keep people happy and orderly—Yes, when at last there was no choice but to mount an official investigation, it made sense for the First inspectors to go forth on their own, as well prepared as databases and vivifers could make them. Consciously or unconsciously, a local guide might lead them astray.

  Yet she was in fact a human liaison, within the Lahui, between the Keiki Moana and the outer world. It also made sense for her and a metamorph to join the team after a while, discuss their experiences, conduct them to wherever else they two felt the inspectors should observe things. That they had been on their way when battle erupted was a coincidence.

  Not a very unlikely coincidence, Aleka thought. Not when you recalled how conflict seethed in these waters.

  Delgado scowled, as if deciding he had shown too much softness. “These are not the first killings,” he stated. “Humans have died.”

  “Not just humans,” Aleka countered.

  She could well-nigh hear him thinking, choosing his words. After all, sentient metamorphs had full rights under the law, whether they descended from his species or another. Sophotects did, which could not really be said to have any ancestors—if “rights” in any traditional sense bore any meaning for inorganic intelligences, Aleka thought while she waited.

  “The destructive activity has been … almost entirely … by the … seal beings,” Delgado said. “Those humans who got killed were trying to stop it.” They had come upon it mostly by chance, and reacted more strongly than was prudent. But who would have expected fury to respond?

  “Seven altogether,” Aleka answered. “And some nonfatal injuries. Keiki Moana lost many more.” Humans generally had tools aboard their vessels, knives, tridents, boathooks, anchors, which could double as lethal weapons. The vessels themselves could, if driven hard against swimmers.

  Delgado’s visage congealed. “It is going to stop, señorita. And I did not say no humans are to blame.”

  She believed she knew what he meant. Something of the chill crept back into her. “Hang on,” she repeated. “Don’t provoke anything. My partner and I will be there pronto.”

  He nodded and went from the scanner field, though he left the phone transmitting. She peered ahead, past Ka’eo’s bulk. The submersible was now on the horizon, a fingerling to behold but rapidly growing in her sight. She switched to manual control and sent her hands in a dance across the board. The boat swung about to a precise aim and bounded onward.

  “Did you follow that, Ka’eo?” she asked.

  “[I think so
, oath-sister,]” he replied.

  “What do you make of it?” Since it was to a Keiki she spoke, that was literally: “How do your senses take this water?”

  “[A riptide through reefs.]” He fell silent for a bit. Arrow-swift in the chase, his folk were oftenest slow and careful in their serious thinking, as though the skill was new enough to them that they still had great respect for it. Aleka had wondered if that might not be exactly true. A mere few centuries since the experimentation that brought this race into existence—Had the earliest humans likewise pondered their way forward?

  “[Kauwa,]” he said, as nearly as he could pronounce the word. The judgment was self-evident, but what followed drew on his knowledge. “[They are not here at this same time by happenstance No, they are a band, under leadership that planned the foray. Else they would by now have scattered. They must have nets or mesh bags down below, which they were filling with fish to take home. But home, to them, cannot be a fixed rookery, or I would have heard of it. They must shift about between islets, rocks, small uninhabited coves and beaches, according to some scheme. It is the germ of a … a nation, oath-sister.]”

  Aleka grimaced. “Nomads. I was guessing as much.” Hadn’t it been inevitable, sooner or later? “Why did they attack when they were caught robbing, why didn’t they flee?”

  “[The attack must have been in rage, by those two of them. It is clear that the alpha bull commanded the others to hold back, yet also to stay. He must want to show strength, determination.]”

  Her heart stumbled. It quickened again when the croaking, ringing voice went on: “[But perhaps he hopes to bargain or, anyhow, talk. He knows he cannot prevail. If a little wisdom drifts within him, he knows as well that no kauwa nation can long survive, once the landfolk go on hunt. Nor can it be worth surviving, without anything more than what few poor things they can steal, without writing, pictures, robots, machines, tools.]”