"Joslyn, you weren't there when C'astille and Lucy and I dropped our little bombshells on each other," Charlie said. 'I doubt very much that any Outposters will even talk to her."
Joslyn shook her head sadly. "I still can't get over it all. The poor, poor Outposters. To have your sex drives force you into sex with mindless animals, the bloody stumble-bugs—it amounts to bestiality. And to know your whole life long that you're sure to turn into a dribbling idiot."
"You know, they can't possible have any notion of an afterlife or a soul," Pete said thoughtfully. "They know for sure there is no life after death—they see death in life every time a stumblebug flutters past. They see the death of mind during life. They see life as detached from mind. Our life cycle allows us what are probably comfortable illusions about the soul and the afterlife."
"The poor Outposters," Joslyn said again. "Their whole lives warped by their reproductive cycle."
Charlie snorted. "And ours aren't? Then what's marriage? Where did divorce come from? Why the very, very large importance we place on the male/female dichotomy? Think about child custody. Pornography. Incest taboos. Monogamy. Polygamy. Polyandry. Rules and traditions that encourage marriage with someone from outside the tribe. Homosexuality. Age of legal consent and statutory rape. Family reunions. Teen-age dances that are rehearsals for courtship. Royal lineages. Inheritance laws. Dowries. Adoption. Illegitimacy. Keeping women at home—the way the Guards and a lot of other cultures do. Prostitution. Birth control. Population pressures and immigration. Hell, any shrink will tell you gambling is related to sexual impulses, and a lot of them will tell you starships are the ultimate phallic symbol. You could make a pretty good argument for just about every human activity being affected by our reproductive urges.
"Practically all of the things I just mentioned, and a thousand more that are basic to human society, must not only be unheard offer the Z'ensam, they must be impossible. And all of them are tied up, directly or indirectly, in the way we make babies, or avoid making babies, or decide who should make a baby when, and who stands in what relation to the child. We define so much of ourselves, and our culture, sexually. And all of that is right out the window with the Z'ensam.
"Every human culture invents marriage and marriage rituals. It's so ingrained into us, we don't notice it. But can you imagine a human culture where there were no marriages—for anyone, anytime, throughout all of history? Can you imagine there being a dichotomy more important than male/female for humans? Our lives are every bit as warped by biology and reproductive strategy. But human and Z'ensam are used to being the way they are."
Cynthia squatted down on the decking and stared at the gunmetal gray of the cabin bulkhead. Her mind's eye saw the murky, dismal green fields and forests beyond. "I don't envy them their way one little bit," she whispered.
For the hundredth time, C'astille resisted the urge to fling her picture book into the pond and be done with it. But she couldn't. She was so angry with the humans, so infuriated with all they did and built. They were blessed by their perversities. Without foreknowledge of doom, with intelligence lasting to the end of life, they had apparently invented the bizarre idea of the mind actually outliving the body—if she was inferring from the captions of the pictures properly. Their self-confidence, their incurable optimism, their huge monuments to themselves, all stemming from the crazy idea that they would live forever. And that live-forever idea stemmed directly from their weird, disgusting sexual practices! Practices that they probably saw as natural and right.
C'astille flipped through the pictures. Paris. The Moon colonies. The great bridges. The space stations and the huge starships. The observatory in the rings of Saturn, the lab nestled in among the craters of Mercury, the towers of New York, the Kremlin, Ulan Bator, the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu, the Great Wall, the Washington Monument, the Pyramids, the Parthenon, Kennedy Space Center. All of them so big, so grand. And the Roads! Grand highways that made the widest Road on Outpost look like a rough-and-tumble game path. How had these puny halfwalkers done it all?
Their self-confidence, their lifelong intelligence, and their foul, foul medicine that extended lives, were the difference between humans building future glories, and Z'ensam, at best barely holding onto their modest present; between huge cities suffering from overpopulation, of all things, and a tiny Z'ensam populace that wasn't big or organized enough to build proper cities.
Their perversions had not been punished, they had been rewarded. Their vile ways had been their Road to the stars!
She wanted so much to hate them. Her jealousy was so strong, her anger at being accidentally deceived so great, her pride so wounded by talking to implanters all these months. She tried to hate them, tried to keep her anger alive. All she had to do was keep silent, offer no warning of the Starsight, and the humans would soon be no more.
But the picture book, and the grand works of the human hand—she wanted to see those things. Could she really let the Nihilists inherit them through murder? And Lucy was her friend. Lucy could not help being what she was.
With a sudden burst of understanding, C'astille realized something more—the worst, the absolute worst. The humans would feel sorry for the Z'ensam, would pity them. But she remembered their shock and fear at L'awdasi's simple trick of making their blood, and their fear of the Nihilist bioweapons. The humans would have some fear and respect, as well. Perhaps that would be enough. But perhaps not. She turned the pages of the book, and stared hard at a picture of Earth as seen from orbit. She wanted to see that! Her very soul was knotted in anger and confusion.
Lucy had been walking in the clearing for hours; at first with no clearer aim in mind than getting away from people, being out by herself, but after awhile, she found herself looking for C'astille. The other Z'ensam gave her a wide berth. They didn't want to interfere with her and meet with the revenge of her people in return—but they certainly wanted nothing to do with her. Lucy knew she couldn't rely on non-interference for long; she had the very definite sense of being surrounded by tolerance that was near its end.
When she spotted C'astille lying on folded-up legs by the pond, looking at her book, Lucy was almost afraid to approach. So much accidental damage had been done— but she suddenly wanted someone to talk to, a friend to be with. She walked slowly toward the pond. And C'astille was looking at the book. That was a good sign. Perhaps there was still a chance some of the damage could be undone. For the moment, at least, Lucy managed to forget her own troubles and worry about someone else's.
C'astille saw Lucy approaching but did not acknowledge her in any way. Instead, she pretended to be fascinated by her book. Lucy hesitated a few meters off, and then came to sit alongside her friend. Neither of them spoke for a long time.
It was Lucy who broke the silence. "I'm sorry, C'astille."
No response. Lucy tried again. "C'astille, I wish there was some way to make it all right, some way that your people and mine could see each other, know the way each other lived, and not be horrified." Still no response, but at least she was listening. "Because you are good people. I like you, I like most of the Z'ensam. And the Z'ensam who can stand the way we humans look seem to like us. Even if it means I die here and now, I wouldn't regret having known you and your people. I would never give up that experience. But you must accept the way we are, perversions and all. We must accept you, and not be afraid of your great bio-skills, and try not to blame all Z'ensam for what the Nihilists do."
"Mmmmph," C'astille grunted. "I know. I know all that. But it will take time for my anger and my disgust to die."
C'astille said nothing for a long moment and closed her book, her prize possession that catalogued the great works of humanity.
"There is at least one piece of good news. My Group has defeated the Guardians in a great battle. That will put an end to the Guards and their Nihilist bioweapons. I suppose the League will try to ban such things. A treaty like the ones banning germ warfare," Lucy said absently.
"What is germ warfa
re?" C'astille asked.
"Mmmm. I suppose you might call it war medicine. Medicine deliberately used to kill instead of cure."
C'astille sat bolt upright. War medicine! The term translated well into her language, as one of the worst obscenities, one of the gravest sins possible. The Nihilists had stooped that low, and C'astille knew about it, knew what Starsight had to be intending, and had done nothing, as if the humans were pests that needed elimination. C'astille looked down again at the picture book, the gift Lucy had impulsively filched from the VIP stateroom of the Eagle, and thought again of the fine and mighty things these humans could do. Weird star-mutants or not, these halfwalkers were thinking, talking people, not animals, not Hungry Ones to be killed off if they became inconvenient.
And this was war medicine to be committed against Lucy! Sooner or later her people would die—her family, her Group. Wiping out the faceless Guardians was too huge and impersonal an assault to engage C'astille's imagination. But the Nihilists wanted to kill Lucy along with the rest of humanity. Lucy, the human sitting next to her now, the adult—no, the female who had risked so much for the sake of others. A strange creature, but as brave and civilized as any Z'ensam. It had taken Lucy, an alien pervert, to remind C'astille of the horrible wrongness in what the Starsight was up to. "Lucy, there is something you must know. ..."
Lucy broke all records getting across the clearing to Reunion. She tried using the suit radio to get word back that much quicker, but she was breathing too hard and the radio's range was too short for that.
She rushed through the airlock and collapsed in a corner, panting hard. She wrenched off her helmet, and the others gathered round.
She took a big gulp of air. "C'astille said that the damn Guards were fool enough to give the Nihilists a spacecraft. The Nihilists named her Starsight and launched her on a course that should have her on Capital later today—and C'astille is pretty damn sure Starsight is carrying a shipload of plague virus, and anything they'd develop would make the black death look like a bad cold. It'll wipe out every human on Capital—and let the Nihilists take over there."
All of them stood in shock for a moment. Mac was the first to respond. "How sure of this is she? How does she know?"
"The only hard fact she has is that Starsight launched. But she knows the way the Nihilists think, what their plans are. And why the hell else would they risk a flight in the middle of a war?"
Mac thought hard for a minute. "Cynthia, can you raise the League fleet at the barycenter, warn them, so maybe they can shoot her down?"
Cynthia shook her head. "Not with this ship's gear. Not in a million years. All the frequencies are preset, and there's a scrambler built into the system. The only reason we could talk to Gustav was that we had the beacon modified for voice. And the portable radio we used to talk back to him just doesn't have the range."
"Can you get a beam strong enough and tight enough to hit Capital? Can we call one of their stations and warn them, let their ships do the job?"
"I think so."
"Mac! Wait a second," Pete said. "Gustav told us they had thrown every ship into the barycenter battle. And the way he talked, I think he meant every ship. Certainly, every combatant went. There may be nothing besides a few unarmed tugs left around Capital."
"Hold it," Mac said. "Let me get this all clear in my head: We can't contact Ariadne because it isn't there anymore. We don't dare contact Nike Station. They just blew Ariadne—if we radio to them, they'll drop a bomb on us the moment they track the signal. And you can bet they won't listen to what we have to say. We can't contact the League. We can contact the Guard orbital stations, but they won't have any ships.
"Which boils down to the fact that this is the only ship in the whole double star system with any sort of chance of stopping Star sight."
CHAPTER FORTY Reunion, Surface of Outpost
"Mac, yes, Reunion can make it," Joslyn said. "With the C2 generator installed, we could be in the Capital system four hours after launch—but we don't have the codes or the signaling equipment that will let us through the anti-ship missile system around Capital. That system is still intact, don't forget."
"Won't it stop the Nihilist ship as well?" Charlie asked hopefully.
"No, the anti-ship missiles use a sensor that detects a ship's arrival from C2 space," Mac said. "There's a very specific burst of radiation given off. They can probably control the missiles manually to attack a target moving through normal space, but Starsight is an invited guest. She had clearance, and she's probably inside the defense shell already, where the missiles can't get to her. And once she's inside the defense shell, they probably will have trouble tracking her. She could change course and vanish from their screens."
"Can we radio them, tell them to shut off the system, and then go in?" Pete asked.
"Who'd listen to us? Who'd believe us?" Cynthia asked. " 'Hey guys, let down your last line of defenses just after we've smashed your fleet so we can rescue you. Honest, it's not a trick.'
"I can think of one guy who'd believe us," Mac said quietly. "Or at least believe me."
"Mac!" Joslyn said. "Not George. He's somewhere around Capital, yes, but he's there because he betrayed us!"
"I don't believe that," Mac said firmly. "No offense, but I know George. Gustav must have gotten it wrong. And even if it's true, that means he betrayed the League, not me. He's my friend, he'll know I wouldn't lie."
"But how could we know he'd hear it? How do we know he could convince anyone else?" Joslyn asked.
"We don't. But do you have any better ideas? And if the Nihilists get Capital, they'll have ships and material and technology and starmaps—they'll be able to drop plagues onto League worlds two weeks from now. Unless someone else has an idea, we've got no choice but to try it."
No one said anything for a while.
"I guess we have to chance it, Mac," Charlie said quietly.
Ten minutes later, Cynthia, Mac, Joslyn, and Lucy were at work in the control room.
"There's a big problem," Mac said. "We have to give the radio signal time to cross from here to Capital. We're twelve billion kilometers away—it'll be nearly twelve hours until they get the message. If we wait for a reply, confirming that the way is open, that's at least another twelve hours—and we can't afford to wait. The damn Nihilists will be there by then."
"So we send the signal," Joslyn said, "then wait twelve hours—plus, say two—to give them time to think about it and shut down the system, and then launch. No, wait half a tick—we'll have to boost well away from Outpost before we're far off enough to use C2. We can subtract about four hours. So we launch ten hours after we send the signal."
"That's a hell of a big risk," Cynthia said.
Lucy shrugged. "We're taking a lot of risks already. And by rights all of us should be dead twenty ways each by now. I don't see we have any choice. Do it. We send the message, figure our course, and go."
"Okay, I guess I'm the one to do the talking," Mac said. "I want to send an audio message rather than text, so George can recognize my voice."
"Let me set up the recorder," Cynthia said. "Okay, everyone else keep quiet. Mac—go."
He took a deep breath and thought before he began. What to say? What words were strong enough to convince George, strong enough to convince anyone else who happened to hear it if he didn't?
"This is Terrance MacKenzie Larson, calling George Prigot or anyone else in the Capital star system. George: I trust you. I don't know why you are where you are, but I have faith in you. I know you would never deliberately do anything to harm me, or any other person. I ask you to trust me, as you have many times in the past.
"There is a Nihilist ship coming toward you. She intends to land on Capital and release a deadly plague into the ecosystem. The plague will kill everyone on the planet. You should know by now the Nihilists are willing and able to do such things. If you have ships that can find her and stop her, use them, do it—stop her, whatever it costs.
' But I know
your fleet has been wrecked in the war, and probably left you without combat pilots or ships. I cannot contact the League fleet and get them to stop the Nihilists. The ship I am in, Reunion, might just be able to do the job. But it can't get through your anti-ship defenses. I ask you to shut down those defenses two hours after this message arrives. We will have no way of knowing if you have shut down the defenses. Reunion will launch toward you in any event, and those of us aboard will simply have to trust that you have opened the way. If you haven't, the missiles will get us, a quick and painless death.
"But if Starsight isn't stopped, everyone on Capital will die. And they will not die pleasantly.
"I trust you. I beg of you to trust me. The war between us is over. Please let us help you. For God's sake, shut down the missile screen and let us in!"
Some hours later, C'astille watched the pillar of flame that was Reunion roar into the sky. They were gone. They might die. But her world, she herself, would never be the same. Change was like the Nihilist plague—infectious.
"Good luck, my odd little halfwalkers," she whispered.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Zeus Station, Orbiting Capital
Phillips shut off the recorder and stared across his desk at George. "That came in fifteen minutes ago. We have about another fifteen minutes left until we have to send the shut-down signal, since the actual anti-ship missiles are about ninety light minutes away. So. Ignoring the question of how he knows you're here, ignoring the fact that Larson somehow knew the top-secret fact that Starsight was enroute, and has been since before the battle began, ignoring the fact that Starsight is overdue, ignoring a hundred other things my suspicious Intelligence officer's mind thinks of, do you trust and believe this Larson?"
George squirmed in the visitor's chair and felt the cold sweat of fear pouring out of his body. He was just a dumb engineer who liked playing with gadgets and didn't like to see people get hurt. Now he was mixed up in the fate of worlds. And, intentionally or not, he had betrayed Mac and the League. George knew, deep down in his gut, that League people had died because of his run for Capital. Who could blame Mac if he did scheme for revenge, if this was all an elaborate plot to get the Capital defenses down so the League fleet could pour through and bomb the planet down to radioactive cinders? The League had just demonstrated they could and would blow up a planet. If George wrongly trusted Mac, Capital was a corpse of a world.
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