Cave of Stars (Macrolife Book 2)

by George Zebrowski

  Paul nodded, feeling weak. “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Nearly all your people will die in a day or two after the strike,” Blackfriar said.

  Shaken, Paul sat back and took a deep breath. “How?” he asked, even though he already had some idea of what Blackfriar was about to tell him.

  This, Paul thought bitterly as he listened to the details of death, was to be the price of Bely’s great crime. History totaled its losses in his mind—the Crusades, the Inquisition, the churchmen’s destruction of heathen cultures, the active or acquiescent support of corrupt bloody regimes, the persecution of great intellects, the intolerance of other creeds and of unbelief—and to them he now added the coming wreckage of Peter III’s assault on Satan. The first pope on Ceti IV had been the only one to repeat the name of Christianity’s first leader, as a sign of the Church’s rebirth on this world; now another Peter had condemned it to death, and would likely be the last pope of human history. For a moment Paul wondered whether any other denominations had escaped the death of Earth to transplant their schismatic rule among the stars…

  “Come with us,” Josepha’s dark shape said to him when Blackfriar had finished.

  “What do you mean?” Paul asked. “Where can you go?”

  Blackfriar said, “We’re planning to assemble an interstellar vessel from our surviving craft.”

  “How many of you—” Paul started to ask.

  “About three thousand so far,” Josepha said sadly.

  “Any of ours?” Paul asked.

  “Jason,” she said, “and about a dozen others. Ondro is dead.” He felt her hand tighten in his.

  “Most of the people we took from the islands,” Blackfriar said, “were recovering from their ill health and deprivations when their end came.”

  “I’m sorry about Ondro,” Paul said to Josepha, dismayed that her beloved had been so unreasonably doomed.

  Blackfriar said, “If the mobile perishes, we plan to take the starship to the Praesepe star cluster, some five hundred light-years from here. The drive configuration that we can assemble may get us there in about a month. There is a base orbiting one of the outer stars, with enough supplies and equipment for us to begin construction of a new habitat. As soon as we’re well begun, we might be able to send back a larger vessel to see what has happened here.”

  Paul knew that Blackfriar was speaking charitably, but the meaning of his words in terms of justice and human lives seemed to be affecting his composure.

  Paul stared at Bely’s empty chair, then looked up into the evening sky, and asked, “Will there be any chance of survivors for us here?”

  Blackfriar said, “It will be unpredictable, but there may be shock pockets, cocoons of small areas which might be spared the ground upheavals, the fires and floods….”

  “How could some of us survive the flood you described?” Paul asked.

  “Perhaps in oceangoing vessels—but even then, you’d have the problem of later survival.”

  “What about your people?” Paul asked, unable to think about the agonizing possibilities.

  “Many of our people are badly injured,” Blackfriar continued. “Only those who make it to the rear docks on their own will survive. We’re trying to suspend as many of the injured as we can’t help now, but we’re uncertain of the equipment. We have few specialists or teachers among the survivors, and only small computers, well below intelligence capacity, with limited knowledge cores and skill-imparting programs. Our Link intelligence is nearly dead, and we have few medical people….”

  He stopped again, and Paul half expected him to lash out at him with bitter words.

  “Fortunately,” Blackfriar continued, “there are two Link cores at Praesepe, equal to our Link. But these have never been awakened, and it will take some time to birth and educate them.”

  “It seems to me,” Paul said, “that by the time you can return there will be no one here to help.”

  “A small ship,” Blackfriar said, “with food synthesizers and portable energy plants could help you preserve a small community of survivors through the winter.”

  “May I be blunt?” Paul asked. “Why should you care, after what we’ve done to you?”

  Blackfriar looked up and said, “We may lose all our millions, with three thousand survivors, a few of them yours, because of one man’s hatred. You may lose fifty million. We are not about to punish you.”

  “Could anyone inside it survive the mobile’s impact?” Paul asked.

  “No,” Blackfriar said, “not even in the core. As it comes into your atmosphere, the habitat will be destroyed in about three seconds.”

  An Alexandrian Library of advanced people and knowledge was about to perish, Paul realized. Why was Blackfriar here, he asked himself, and realized that the reason, in part, was Josepha.

  “You should be inside,” Blackfriar said, “when the shock of high winds and heat reaches you from the other side of the world. Many of your people will survive that. Some will live through the groundshock, but then—“

  As Josepha stood up from the stones and seemed anxious to speak, Paul rose with her and asked, “Are there others of your kind who might be summoned to help you…and us?”

  “No,” Blackfriar said with chilling calm. “Our tachyon transmitters are gone—but even if we could build one it would take months to sweep the sky and find another mobile. There are probably twenty others in the Galaxy, by our estimate, but they have gone their separate ways. Even if we could transmit, help might have to come from very far away. We may try after we reach Praesepe.”

  Paul nodded, then asked, “Can you take any of our people to safety? Perhaps a random sample of a few people from the city.”

  “Come with us,” Josepha said suddenly.

  “No,” Paul said, “that would be too easy.”

  “Where is Josephus?” she asked.

  “In a coma, and not expected to reawaken. He collapsed after the flash, when I told him you were there.”

  She came up close to him, and Paul saw her face clearly in the starlight, eyes wide and unblinking, free of tears.

  “Do you wish to see him?” he asked, knowing that he would not let her take him away. Even the smallest chance of restoring him now struck Paul as a potential resurrection of evil.

  She shook her head. “Paul, you must come with us. You should not have to face what is coming.”

  “I deserve to face it,” he said. “I helped bring this about. Our people are innocent. I’ll do what little I can.” He looked to Blackfriar and said, “I’m grateful that you came to tell me.” And to let me see Josepha for the last time, he thought.

  Blackfriar came closer and stood with Josepha. “We might be able to take a dozen people,” he said, “you and a few others.”

  “So few?” Paul asked.

  “Yes,” Blackfriar said. “Our means are much diminished.”

  “Should we issue a public warning of what is to come?” Paul asked.

  “There’s not much a warning could do. Is there an underground place where you could shelter a small group?”

  “Would it help?” Paul asked.

  Paul thought of the deep places beneath the papal palace, and felt sweat break out on his face. He thought of the millions about to die in the habitat, and the millions of his world, and felt their innocent lives condeming him.

  “Come with us,” Josepha repeated. “What will happen here does not need your sacrifice.”

  “There will be nothing you can do,” Blackfriar said.

  “I don’t deserve to leave,” Paul said. “Besides, you’ll be back to help us. A month or two? Maybe some of us will last that long.”

  “We’ll make every effort,” Blackfriar said. “The library of human life is not so large that we can leave still more of it to perish.”

  Blackfriar’s words moved Paul, but he could not answer.

  “We also provoked Josephus Bely,” Blackfriar said.

  Paul shook his head in disagreement. “
No—how could you have guessed that he would strike out so viciously when I, who knew him all his life and was once his friend, didn’t suspect it? I see now that his bitterness toward death was horrendous and rare, strengthening itself with decades of self-importance and fading faith.” He looked at Josepha, then back at the man from the stars. “You must never blame yourself for his envy, or for aspiring in the way that you do.” He closed his eyes and tried to see the dead, and the dead to come. “I’m sorry,” he said, thinking that if Josephus had truly believed in his God and in the life to come, he would not have done this terrible deed.

  After a few moments, Josepha asked, “Will you be with him…at the end?”

  “Yes,” Paul said.

  He turned away from them, as one damned turns away from the saved, and started to walk back toward the south entrance to the palace, where the long hallway would take him back to his apartment and office. There were officers and cardinals to instruct in justly useless preparations for the end of the world.

  “Paul!” Josepha called after him.

  He did not turn around as he walked away, but raised his hand in farewell, and for a moment feared that she would come after him. Blackfriar, if he would do her bidding, might easily overpower an old man and lead him to the flyer.

  But when he heard no steps behind him, Paul knew that he had made his case with a conviction that Josepha would not dare to reverse by force.

  When he reached the lighted entrance, he turned and saw the dark shape of the flyer slipping across the stars.

  45

  Voss peered ahead, trying to spot survivors in the tube as he ran the scooter back toward the auxiliary control area. The lack of survivors in the passage suggested that people were not leaving the levels into the tubeways in any great numbers, because they were either too injured to move or dead. The only remaining chance for the injured was to put the habitat into a safe orbit.

  It was certain that even if the departure bays filled up repeatedly with survivors, there would eventually not be enough time left to carry people to the vessels standing off in sun orbit. He estimated that maybe twenty round trips would be possible, and only a small number of those individuals able to make it to the docks would be rescued in the time remaining. None of the injured and dying trapped across thirty levels would be saved, because there would be no time to bring them out. More could be saved with round trips to the planet, but that would only help the survivors if the mobile was diverted from a collision; otherwise, the rescued would only be arriving in time to die on the planet.

  In any case, he doubted that the vessels standing by to receive the rescued could hold more than ten thousand individuals.

  As he passed the point where Blackfriar’s car had stalled, he noticed that the air was filling with strange odors, and realized that they were human smells from the dead and injured trapped in unsanitary conditions.

  He heard voices, and his lights caught human figures making their way forward along the walls in zero gravity. There was no telling how far back the congestion extended or how many crossways elevators were feeding it. Faces stared into his lights as he stopped, heartened by the numbers of survivors he had not expected to see.

  “Take this!” he shouted as he got off the scooter. “Extend the utility line as far back as you can and pull your group forward to the docks.”

  “And you?” a woman asked him.

  “I’m going crossways to a control area. Let me through.”

  “Why?” a man asked as people made way for him.

  “There’s still a chance to drive us into a safe orbit!” Voss shouted.

  Hands took him and gave him to other hands, lifting him high in the tunnel and passing him swiftly back toward the exit to the crossways.

  “Hurry!” he shouted as he turned around at the elevator.

  Its doors opened behind him and more people pushed out, jostling him as they drifted past. “There’s a vehicle in the tunnel!” he shouted after them. “Add line to it, and it will tow you forward.”

  He pulled himself back into the elevator. The doors closed. He grasped a bar and touched for the level he wanted. Nothing happened.

  He took a deep breath. The lights were still on, so there had to be enough power. He touched in the destination again, and the elevator moved, but slowly. He waited to arrive.

  When the doors opened he expected to see a crowd, but there was no one. Then he reminded himself that this was engineering and maintenance, so there was no one who would have come here directly from a residential level except to reach the tubeway to rearwards.

  He pushed out and the doors closed behind him. When next they opened, he feared that there would be too many people waiting, too many for the scooter to pull, too many to make it across twenty kilometers in time. This and other passages might be blocked for twenty-five kilometers from the bays. Beyond that, closer to forwards, there would be fewer able survivors.

  He was certain now that the rescue shuttles would be overwhelmed. In the last moments of the mobile’s life they would be forced to abandon people in the bays. If he could divert the mobile, it would suddenly become one large lifeboat; there would be time to salvage equipment and save just about everyone. The planet below would also be saved. It would not become a hell of wind, quakes, tidal waves, and fires, but a temporary refuge for his people.

  It dismayed him to picture the death and destruction forward of the core, and to realize that he was one of the few survivors able even to attempt to save the habitat. Where were the others trying to do what he was about to do? The young men who were here before, where were they? They were gone by now, knowing that what he had to do would require only one person. Still, it was frightening to face the fact that so many were dead that only he and they had made it to the control area; there might easily have been no one at all.

  He looked around, listening, realizing that he might die here alone. Death for him had always been a possible but unlikely accident, not something he had ever thought much about; but now he saw exactly how it might happen—and also that he had to risk it.

  His life was insignificant before the millions that might be saved here on the mobile and down on the planet. He knew that if he saved their lives, he might also save his own.

  But not necessarily.

  To risk his life might well be a necessary condition for saving the mobile, and he might perish in the act of saving it. He had never thought of sacrificing his life for anyone or anything; it was something he had never imagined would be asked of him or anyone in the habitat. So how was it that he was asking it of himself?

  He did not know how to answer or what to feel. In his linkless emptiness, he only knew what he had to do.

  46

  The glowing touchplates promised mastery over the vast forces of the drive generators. Voss hung over the panel, hands extended as if in prayer. One touch might accelerate the mobile past Ceti IV, or slow it into an orbit around the planet. There was no way to be sure. The damaged drive might tear the habitat apart with transient stresses or plunge it even more swiftly into the planet.

  He thought of the people in the bays who might just now be trying to leave. His action here might deny them their last chance.

  “How much time?” he demanded within himself.

  He waited, but there was no answer.

  He looked around the chamber for a clock, spotted one, but it was not lit up. Either it was damaged or had not been set in some time. There had been little need to use this auxiliary facility. Who would have imagined that the habitat would be assaulted so decisively?

  He pushed back from the temptation of the panel and tried to relax, consoling himself with the thought that people were getting away to safety with every passing minute. If he tried the drive now and it failed, he would be killing a certain number of people who might have lived; if it worked, he would save all the injured and living who could not reach a dock; a smaller number might still die from possible collision with the habitat during shuttle launc
h. If he was going to gamble with lives, it should be with those who would be left behind when time ran out. Every choice seemed against him.

  His own pod still waited to carry him away. He would need at least fifteen minutes to reach it.

  Voss waited, knowing that what was about to happen was already determined by the condition of the drive; yet he felt that he might still find some juncture, some instant of choice where his action would make the difference. Was there such a moment waiting for him to recognize it? It was an irrational thought, little more than a hope, but it held his attention as he returned to the panel.

  No, he told himself as he hung over the panel, this was not an irrational hope, but a real possibility for him to seize.

  He grabbed a handhold, braced himself, and touched the restart.

  The panel dimmed, and the lights blinked in single color sequences, signaling the buildup toward the discharge of a gravitational wave front…

  He waited.

  Finally, the lights stopped flashing. The red touchplate glowed at the ready.

  He pressed it and took a deep breath, expecting to feel a distant shudder as the mobile accelerated or decelerated.

  The red light died and the board returned to restart.

  He tried again, hoping that the drive would catch, if only for a few moments.

  The board went through its cycle again, and the red light died.

  He tried again, imagining that it might catch on the tenth, or even the twentieth try, minutes before the mobile hit the planet’s atmosphere.

  Again the red light winked out.

  The damage was too pervasive, he realized, affecting backup systems, the power generator feeds to the drive, maybe even the power generators themselves. It was a mistake to think that because there was power in the back third of the habitat the drive generators might also work.