A Stone in Heaven df-12

by Poul Anderson

  When he knew that, he stared back. A pillar of murk rose and swelled, up, up, up above the shaken range. Lightnings lanced through it. That dust would quickly scatter and settle in airlessness, apart from what escaped to space. Radioactivity would poison the stone soil for years to come. The molten-bottomed craters in the valley floor would congeal around what twisted, charred fragments were left of Port Asmundsen—a terrible warning which no future powermonger would heed.

  Well, but there was sufficient evidence for a properly equipped investigative team. No question survived as to what had been hatching here. Flying, Flandry had seen camouflaged portals torn open by quake and collapse; the glare of his bombs had bounced off torpedoes, artillery, armored vehicles, nothing that an honest provincial governor needed or would have concealed.

  He felt incalculably glad. It would have been unbearable had his final great fireworks show destroyed harmless folk. Peace welled forth within him.

  Elaveli fell behind. The residue of its former velocity, combined with the acceleration to escape, had put the missile in orbit—an eccentric orbit about Ramnu or Niku or the core of the galaxy, not yonder poor damned moon. No matter which. He’d try for Diris, but only from a sense of duty to Chives’ sense of duty. With his primitive equipment, the chances of getting there before the tanked air gave out, or just of getting there, were less than slight. Besides, under drive they’d be easily detectable by any war-craft that hurried back to learn what catastrophe had happened. Whether or not the multiple blast was seen from afar, neutrino bursts had carried the news at light speed.

  Flandry grinned. He kept a warhead. If an enemy tried to capture him, he’d produce one more pyrotechnic display—unless the captain was smart and opened fire immediately, which wouldn’t be a bad way to go either.

  He turned off the engine and let his bruised flesh savor its immemorial dream of flying weightless. Quiet laved him. The sun at his back, he saw the host of his old friends the stars.

  “Sir,” Chives said, “permit me to offer congratulations.”

  “Thank you,” Flandry replied. “Permit me to offer cognac.” They had no reason not to empty the flask. Rather, every reason prevailed for doing so.

  “Are you hungry, sir? We have rations, albeit not up to your customary standard.”

  “No, not yet, Chives. Help yourself if you are. I’m quite satisfied.”

  Soon, however, the Shalmuan asked, “Excuse me, sir, but would it not be advisable to begin course corrections?”

  Flandry shrugged. “Why not?”

  He took aim at Ramnu and set off at half a gee, about as much as he guessed his companion could take without pain. They would continue to draw farther away for—he wasn’t sure how long—until their outward velocity had been shed. Then they would start approaching the planet; when they got close, he could pick out the inner moon and attempt rendezvous. The whole effort was ridiculous … except that, yes, it probably would attract a warship, and death in battle was better than death by asphyxiation.

  It was bare minutes until Chives announed, “Sir, I believe I spy a spacecraft, at six o’clock and minus thirty degrees approximately. It seems to be nearing.”

  Flandry twisted about and extended his telescope. “Yes,” he said. Inwardly: If he’s armed, we fight. If he’s a peaceful merchantman—I have my blaster. Maybe when we’ve boarded, we can commandeer him … No. The hull grew fast in his sight. That’s no freighter, not with those lines.

  He choked on an oath.

  “Sir,” Chives said, audibly astounded, “I do think it is the Hooligan.”

  “What the—the—” I can but gibber.

  The spearhead shape glided close. Flandry halted acceleration, and his ship smoothly matched vectors. Across a few hundred meters he saw an outer airlock door swing wide. He and Chives unharnessed and flitted across.

  Nobody waited to greet them when they had cycled through. Flandry heard the low throb of full power commence, felt its pulse almost subliminally. Hooligan was running home again. He shed his armor and shuffled forward along the corridor under a planet’s weight of exhaustion. Chives trailed at a discreet distance.

  Banner came from the pilot cabin. She halted amidst the metal, and he did, and for many heartbeats there was silence between them.

  Finally he groaned: “How? And why, why? Compromising the mission—”

  “No.” Pride looked back at him. “Not really. No other vessel is in a position to intercept us. I made sure of that, and I also dispatched a written report in a message carrier, before turnabout. Did you suppose a daughter of Max Abrams would not have learned how to do such things?”

  “But—Listen, the chances of our survival were so wretched, you were crazy to—”

  She smiled. “I gave them a better rating. I’ve come to know you, Dominic. Now let’s tuck you both in bed and start the therapy for radiation exposure.”

  But then her strength gave way. She leaned against the bulkhead, face buried in arms, and shuddered in sudden weeping. “Forgive me! I, I did wrong, I know, you must despise me, that c-c-couldn’t follow orders, and me a Navy brat, but I n-n-never was any good at it—”

  He gathered her to him. “Well,” he said, with hardly more steadiness, “I never was either.”

  XIV

  Fall comes early to the High Sierra. When Flandry was free of the Cairncross episode and its aftermath, that range in western North America was frosty by day and hard frozen by night. It was also at its fairest. He owned a cabin and a few hectares. Banner had stayed on Terra; first Naval Intelligence had questioned her in depth, and afterward civilian travel to planets of the Hermetian domain was suspended until security could be made certain. They had rarely communicated.

  At last he could call and invite her to join him for a vacation. She accepted.

  They left the cabin next morning on a hike. Chives took a fishing rod in another direction, promising trout meuniere for dinner. In the beginning, man and woman walked silent. The air was diamond clear; breath smoked, and blew away on a cold breeze that smelled of fir. Those darkling trees were intermingled with golden-leaved aspen, which trembled and rustled. On the right of the trail, forest stood thin and soon came to an end. Thus wayfarers could see between trunks and boughs, to a dropoff into a canyon. On its opposite side, a kilometer distant, bluish rock lifted too steep for more than a few shrubs to grow, toward heights where snow already lay. The sky was cloudless, the sun incredibly bright. A hawk hovered, wings aglow.

  After a while Banner said, looking straight before her, “We didn’t talk about politics, or much of anything, yesterday.”

  “No, we’d better things to do, hm?”

  The earnestness that he remembered was back upon her. “What is the situation? Nothing worthwhile comes in the news, ever.”

  “Of course not. The Imperium isn’t about to publicize an affair like that. Embarrassing. And dangerous; it might generate ideas elsewhere. The fact of a conspiracy to rebel and usurp can’t be totally hidden away. But it can be underplayed in the extreme, it can be made downright boring to hear about, and more entertaining events can be manufactured to crowd it out of what passes for the public consciousness.”

  She clenched her fists. “You know the facts, don’t you?”

  He nodded. “Obviously. I’m not supposed to mention them, and I wouldn’t to most people, but you can keep your mouth shut. Besides, you’ve earned the right to learn whatever you want to.”

  “Well, what has happened?”

  “Oh, let’s not drag through the details. The whole movement fell to pieces. Some crews surrendered voluntarily, gave help to the Imperialists—led them to the various installations, for example—and have been punished by no more than dishonorable discharges, fines, or perhaps a bit of nerve-lash. Others fled, whether disappearing into the Hermetian population or establishing new identities on different planets or leaving the Empire altogether.”

  “Cairncross?”

  “Unknown.” Flandry shrugged. “I apolog
ize for lacking a tidy answer, but life is always festooned with loose ends. It’s been ascertained that his speedster was in the hunt for us when we blew his moon base out from under him. Presumably he skipped. However, interrogations of associates lead me to think the men aboard wouldn’t unanimously have felt like staying under the command of an outlaw, a failure. They could have mutinied, disposed of him and the vessel, and scattered.

  “No large matter, really. At worst, the Merseians or a barbarian state will gain an able, energetic officer—who’ll dwell for the rest of his years in a hell of frustration and loneliness. What counts is that he and his cause are overthrown, discredited, kaput. We’ve been spared a war.”

  She turned her head to regard him. “Your doing, Dominic,” she said.

  He kissed her briefly. “Yours, at least as much. You inherited your dad’s talents, my dear.” They went on, hand in hand.

  “What about Hermes and the rest?” she asked.

  Flandry sighed. “There’s the messy part. Hermes did have legitimate grievances, and they still obtain. I talked the Emperor into leniency for the people—no purges or mass confiscations or anything like that. He and the Policy Board do want changes which’ll take away what extra power Hermes had. Its authority everywhere outside the Maian System has been revoked, for instance, and it’s under martial law itself, pending ‘reconstruction.’ But you can’t blame Gerhart too much; and, as said, ordinary people are being allowed to continue their ordinary lives. They’re good stock; they’ll become important again in the Empire … and afterward.”

  Her gaze held wonder. “The Emperor heeds you?”

  “Oh, my, yes. We maintain our mutual dislike, but he realizes how useful I can be. And for my part, well, my advice isn’t the worst he could get; and his son and heir isn’t such a bad young fellow. I’m afraid I’ll end my days as a kind of gray eminence.” He paused. “Though scarcely in holy orders.”

  “I’ll get you to explain that later,” she said. Her voice stumbled. “What about Ramnu?”

  “Why, you do know that the climate modification project has been approved, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” Barely to be heard: “Yewwl’s memorial. Her name will be on it.”

  “Work can’t start till things have gotten satisfactorily organized in that sector. A couple of years hence, I’d guess. Thereafter, maybe a decade till completion, and three or four more decades till the glaciated territory has been reclaimed, right? But the Ramnuans will get assistance meanwhile, I promise.”

  “Thank you,” she breathed. Tiny brightnesses glinted on her lashes, around the big green eyes.

  “The interdict on travel ought to be lifted soon. Are you eager to return?”

  “I could be helpful.”

  Flandry stroked his mustache. “You haven’t exactly answered my question. Tell me, if you will—You didn’t need to hang around on Terra this entire while. You could have gone to your family on Dayan.”

  “Yes, I should have.”

  “But you didn’t. Why?”

  She stopped, and he did, and they stood facing in the nave made by trail and trees. A yellow leaf blew down and settled in her hair. He took both her hands. They were cool.

  She spoke with a resolution she must have been long in gathering: “I had to think. To understand. Everything has changed, been shattered, could be rebuilt but never in the same shape. Half of me died when Yewwl did. I need new life, and came to see—it was slow, finding the truth, because the search hurt so much—I don’t want to begin again with another Ramnuan. Our sisterhood, Yewwl’s and mine, was wonderful, I’ll always warm my soul by it, but it came to be when we were young, and that is gone.”

  The forest soughed. Wind boomed through the canyon. “I stayed on Terra, Dominic, because of hoping you and I would meet again.”

  “I spent the whole time hoping I’d hear those words,” he replied.

  When the kiss had ended, he said to her: “Let’s be honest with each other, always. We’re not a boy and girl in love. We’re both a little old, more than a little sad, and friends. But we make one crackling hell of a team. A pity if we disbanded. Would you like to continue?”

  “I think I would,” she told him. “I certainly want to try. Thank you, dear friend.”

  They walked on into the autumn.

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