Anvil of Stars

by Greg Bear

  The children groaned. They had done much of the momerath themselves, but hearing it from Martin—losing all hope of fast action and sacrifice of fuel to boost up and out—knowing what they had already suspected, that he would choose the most conservative and practical course, however time-consuming—brought the truth home hard.

  Over three years. Awake and vigilant. And then, unlikely to have enough fuel to accelerate to near-c, perhaps centuries to move on to Leviathan…

  At the very least, under those circumstances, they would have to sleep. There were dangers in such a long sleep; even a Ship of the Law could grow old.

  Saying the plan aloud, when he had hardly thought it through clearly himself, made it seem both more real and strangely beyond real. Young human beings saying such words, planning such things.

  As if to highlight the absurdity, Mei-Li giggled. Her giggle died quickly and was not picked up around the room.

  “We will be in position to release the bombships in six days,” Hakim said.

  Nebuchadnezzar was easily visible to the naked eye, a bright diamond among the lesser points of stars. Day by day, it became even brighter, and Martin ordered a star sphere expanded in the cafeteria. As they ate their meals, or gathered in quiet social groupings, they watched their target grow.

  The remotes spread their photon-intercepting fields like webs and gathered in clear images of the brown world, as if opening an eye ten kilometers wide.

  There were no bugs in the atmosphere—no life crawling on the surface, no organic chemical activity within the upper layers of soil.

  Nebuchadnezzar’s subtle motions resembled a feeble, irregular heartbeat, but the profiles of the internal vibrations did not match tectonics. Unlike Ramses, Nebuchadnezzar’s heart was cool; any internal heat had fled long ago.

  Martin finished examining Hakim’s figures while the other children slept, two days from H-hour.

  The five inner masses remained enigmatic. From this angle to the ecliptic, they could not measure the objects in transit across Wormwood, but a chance star occultation allowed Hakim to confirm that one of the dark objects was three thousand kilometers in diameter, with a mass of approximately fourteen billion trillion kilograms, and only as dense as water. The dark objects might be clusters of neutronium with large spaces between, surrounded by a shell…or they might be balloons filled with water, a tantalizing idea, but unlikely.

  “I have no idea what they are,” Hakim said, shaking his head, expression grim and exhausted. “They worry me greatly, Martin.”

  Martin replayed the inner mass star occultation and associated graphics and measurement reports, trying to glean with supernatural intuition what could not be seen. “The War Mother has no suggestions?”

  “The objects are outside the moms’ experience, I think,” Hakim said. He looked as if he were thinking, but would not say, Or they will not tell us.

  But that would be absurd.

  “We should pull in the remotes now,” Martin said, shivering slightly.

  “Still no signs of defense, no awareness of our presence—no preparation to fight,” Hakim said.

  “Nothing we can detect,” Martin added.

  “I would appreciate more time with the remotes—more time to find something…”

  Martin thought that over for a few seconds, then nodded. “Another twelve hours. But let somebody else keep watch. You sleep.”

  “No,” Hakim said. “This is my only duty. I watch, I calculate, I keep you informed…For now, I do not need to sleep.” His eyes stared up at Martin out of sunken orbits. His hair tufted on his scalp, his face gleamed with oil, he smelled faintly sour.

  “Sleep for five hours, and get cleaned up,” Martin said, touching his cheek with one hand. “You’ll make mistakes if you push yourself too much. We don’t need mistakes.”

  “I will get along with two hours of sleep,” Hakim said. Then, smiling his angelic smile, “And I will take a shower, not to offend.”

  “All right. Put Jennifer in charge. She’ll keep an eye out.”

  “It is because I am so worried,” Hakim said. “What we do not know…”

  When the remotes had been withdrawn, Martin conferred with Stephanie Wing Feather and Harpal Timechaser. Theresa and Jorge Rabbit hovered on the periphery in the otherwise empty quarters, representing the children aboard Tortoise in this final meeting of Pan and Tortoise’s, share of ex-Pans.

  “Stephanie…” Martin said. “Your thoughts. Twelve hours and we release the bombships. What have I neglected to do?”

  “Nothing,” Stephanie said.

  “Harpal?”

  “Nothing. We’ve done everything we’ve been taught to do, everything we know how to do…But…”

  “It’s too good,” Stephanie said. “No defenses, no reaction, quiet and almost dead. Nothing like what we’ve been led to expect, what we’ve trained to fight. And…”

  “No volatiles,” Harpal said. “It’s going to be damned difficult to refuel.”

  “Right. If there’s anything here at all, it’s a tired old civilization dreaming in its own high-tech grave,” Stephanie said. “Not much satisfaction killing an old codger who doesn’t care.”

  “Wormwood doesn’t fit any profiles, does it?”

  “It doesn’t,” Martin said. “The War Mother has nothing to suggest, except that this could be—“

  “A sham,” Stephanie said. “Something to draw us into a dead system we can’t pull out of, something to waste our energy and time. Flypaper, baited with nasty evidence of past sins.”

  Martin touched finger to nose, shrugged. “The War Mother thinks the evidence is pretty conclusive.” He glanced toward Theresa. She seemed to be daydreaming, staring at the wall beyond him.

  “What if it is a trap, and we are wasted completely for nothing?” Jorge Rabbit said. Martin didn’t answer.

  “We’ve made our decision,” Stephanie said quietly. “We have no proof it’s a trap. We just don’t know everything for sure.”

  “The five masses,” Jorge said.

  “Nothing’s ever for sure,” Harpal said.

  Martin covered the unmagnified image of Nebuchadnezzar with his hand, edge of palm to edge of palm sufficing; or fist. Soft brown world like a dirty rubber ball. The search team conferred among themselves in the cafeteria, leaving the nose temporarily empty, and Martin had chosen this opportunity to see their target alone, photons reflected directly to his eyes.

  We can kill you, whatever you are or were. Why don’t you react? Why so silent?

  “I don’t think it’s a sham,” William said. “I think they’ve left Wormwood as a kind of sacrifice.” He had entered the nose behind Martin without his noticing. “I think this was their home world, but it’s old now, and they’re old. Maybe they’ve left behind the responsible types, the builders and planners, to wait for execution.”

  Martin frowned over his shoulder at William.

  William smiled a fey smile in reply to the frown, lifted a hand as they floated beside each other, looking through the transparent nose. “If we were to land and explore their…caverns, tunnels, whatever they have, we’d find the guilty ones waiting for us, ready for justice.”

  “Jesus, William,” Martin said, turning away.

  “It’s a freaky thought, isn’t it?”

  “You said it.”

  “The planners would give themselves to us, and the entire world…And it wouldn’t be enough. We want all of them to die, don’t we? Just getting the planners, the leaders, wouldn’t be enough.”

  Martin said nothing, growing angry. This kind of fantasizing was more than useless; it was counter-productive, perhaps even bad for their morale.

  “I hope you haven’t told anybody about this.”

  “I keep my stupid ideas to myself…except for you.”

  “Good,” Martin said, perhaps more firmly than necessary.

  “Don’t be too hard,” William said. “Can you imagine the kind of guilt the Killers feel, if they feel guilt at all?
Maybe they grew up after launching their machines, when it was too late. Or perhaps one tyrannical, fanatic government built and launched the machines, and then fell out of power, and others came in, and they decided the best thing would be to leave all this here for us, to let us destroy their home world, maybe the leaders…That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

  “Nice isn’t the word,” Martin said, his anger subsiding. William was always willing to play this peculiar game, somewhere between Devil’s advocate and unbridled imp.

  “I’m not really kidding, Martin,” William said. “I think that’s what it must be. If this were a trap, we’re in too close already…What sort of trap works only once, when there might be dozens, even hundreds of Ships of the Law closing in? We’ve come too far for this to be a trap. We’ve got them.”

  Martin gave the merest nod.

  “You must be feeling very strange now,” William said softly, cocking his head to one side. “It’s so close.”

  “We’re here. It’s what we’ve waited and trained for.”

  “We never trained for something this easy,” William said. “If they’re sitting ducks, if they just bare their breasts or whatever and shout mea culpa… What will that do to us? Like getting ready to jump over a high wall and finding it’s just a curb. Then waiting years in space, thinking about it. We might go mad. I might go mad.”

  “We’ll make it,” Martin said. “How do you feel?”

  “Numb,” William said. “I’ll be on a bombship with Fred Falcon. We’ll actually drop the makers and doers. We’ll be out there.”

  “I wish I could be with you,” Martin said.

  William nodded. “I suppose we’re privileged. Pulling the triggers to avenge the Earth.”

  They said nothing for a time, the conversation having swung through so many curves, and no central issue apparent.

  “I’m doing fine, William,” Martin said to an unspoken question. “It’s not much fun, but life isn’t supposed to be fun now. Is that what you’re getting at?”

  William caressed the back of Martin’s neck. “It shouldn’t be like this. There should be noise, action, danger, excitement.”

  “You’re lonely, aren’t you?”

  William closed his eyes. “I feel like Rosa Sequoia,” he said. “I wonder how they’re getting along on Hare. They have even less to do than we. Second-line troops.”

  “Are you lonely?”

  “No, Martin, actually, I’m not very lonely. I’ve kind of given up on the old slicking. It seems so trivial. I think I’ll just shut down the libido and absorb these ambiguities. Not that there aren’t possibilities for exercising the old libido. Very thoughtfully you included a couple of compatriots on this side of the split. They’re less inhibited than I seem to be. There have been offers.”

  “But no love,” Martin said.

  William closed his eyes again, nodded. “There’s not much love among any of us now. How about you and Theresa?”

  “Still love,” Martin said, watching his friend’s face closely.

  “Must be a comfort.”

  “I never stopped loving you, William.”

  “I still don’t need comfort slicks,” William said testily.

  “That’s not what I mean. You’re part of me.”

  “Not an exclusive part,” William said, looking at Martin from the corner of his eyes, self-deprecatory smile flickering on his lips.

  “Pretty exclusive,” Martin said. “Making love to you is like having a wonderful…was like having a wonderful kind of brother, a double, not dangerous, just accepting.”

  “Like jerking off by remote,” William suggested. Martin knew that tone; sharp but not mean.

  “Not at all.”

  “Men know men. Women know women. The great justification of homosexual slicking.”

  “William, stop it.”

  “All right,” William said, subdued again.

  “When I think about things, you’re in my head, and I try to think about what you’d say or do in a given situation. I talk to you in my head, and I talk to Theresa. Brother and sister, and more than that.” He was not actually lying, but this was not strictly true; he had given little thought to William, but did not want William to know that, or to acknowledge it to himself; that he could have passed over William with so little trauma, and yet still regard him with immense affection. What sort of love was that?

  “You say you think about me, but you live with Theresa.”

  Both stared at Nebuchadnezzar, the planet whose real name they did not know, if it had a name at all.

  “Did they ever love?” William asked.

  “I don’t give a damn,” Martin said. My friends and my home. They killed the fish in the seas and the birds in the air. They took away our childhood. They killed my dog. “It’s time to get this behind us and start living our own lives. We’ll become shadows if we do this forever.”

  “Amen,” William said. “You want Theresa to wear that gown, on another world, our world?”

  “I do,” Martin said.

  “I’d like to see that. I want to wear something special, too.”

  “We all will, I think,” Martin said.

  “But first…”

  Martin noticed William’s lips working, as if in silent prayer. For safe passage, or forgiveness?

  Will safe passage be a sign of forgiveness?

  No signs, no consolation, no forgiveness; no blame. The forest was full of wolves.

  No God of kindness and justice could allow such a thing. Nature could, but nature kept a balance.

  The forest was also full of hunters.

  The bombship pilots gathered in the weapons stores, Martin and the War Mother presiding. Between them hung a projected image of Nebuchadnezzar, its aspect changing as it slowly rotated night into day, the crescent orb visibly growing: two hours until release.

  Theresa and William floated beside their craft, faces blank. Fred Falcon joined William. Stephanie, alone beside her ship, and Yueh Yellow River beside his. Theresa would fly a bombship alone. Nguyen Mountain Lily and Ginny Chocolate together; Michael Vineyard and Hu East Wind; Leo Parsifal and Nancy Flying Crow. Seven ships for this sortie.

  Martin kept his face blank, hiding the gut-knot within, that nausea of excitement and naked fear, that urge to tremble and run and beg forgiveness of whatever nasty supernatural being controlled things. In his sporadic journal, Martin had written:

  We have hugged and made love this morning, eaten breakfast together. I have seen her wrapped in the final gown, and we have sworn that we are married, that we are bound. “We will make children,” she said, and I agreed; when we are out from under the moms, there will be fertility and we will make children, and we will love and live and argue and feel despair and feel brightness, but nothing like this will come to us again; we will have done our Job, and nothing more like this will be asked of us again, please God, we do not understand the Why…

  The children gathered in the reduced space of the weapons store, fields dimmed almost to invisibility so as not to obscure the ranked Wendys and Lost Boys. It came time for Martin to speak; awkward, expected peptalk before the cosmically deadly game.

  His throat seized and for a moment he could say nothing, just stare at his people with throat and jaw working. Do it. He cleared his throat painfully, swallowed, and said, voice cracking, “You are the finest people I’ve ever known. You are all volunteers, and my friends. We’ve been friends and lovers for over five years now, and we’ve always known that what we are about to do—that’s the reason why…we’re here. We are the best there is, and the moms know that.”

  He turned to the War Mother. There had been no rehearsal, no previous discussion between them of what this ceremony should be like, and Martin thought, Damn you to hell if you don’t commit yourself now and say something.

  The War Mother did not fail him. “You are indeed the best,” it said. “You have been trained and given tremendous responsibilities, and you have done exceptionally well. There
is not a race of beings among all those who made and enact the Law who would not have their sympathies with you now.”

  They have sympathies? They feel as we do?

  “The Ship of the Law is pleased to be associated with you, to work with you,” the War Mother said. “You are no longer children. Today you are partners in the Law.”

  “Good,” Ariel said.

  “We’ve voted and judged and now we must act,” Martin said. He raised his fist, acutely conscious of the symbolic nature of this act, and its disturbing connotations, and most of him filled with passion and energy as the fist rose higher, until his arm pointed straight above his head. “For Earth,” he said. “And for us, and all our memories, and our future lives.”

  His eyes were moist, warm. Theresa did not weep; William did, and through the crowd of children, others as well, including Ariel, whose eyes met Martin’s briefly. She wiped her tears with her sleeve, stiff gesture and anguished face seeming to say: God damn it, I’m human, too, you bastard.

  The children not assigned to weapons backed out of the chamber. Martin was the last to go, after the War Mother, and his eyes lingered on Theresa’s for three long seconds, as if they could live their lives in that moment. They looked away from each other simultaneously. The hatch closed. In the projections of their wands, they saw the pilots enter the bombships.

  They saw the ship’s outer hatches open. Glowing fields pushed the bombships outside Tortoise.

  The children quickly climbed to the first hemisphere and the cafeteria. Martin, for once unable emotionally to fulfill his duty, left them in the cafeteria and went to the nose. Hakim was there, and Jennifer, but none of the rest of the search team; they were all congregated in the cafeteria, watching the craft outside Tortoise.

  Hakim smiled weakly at Martin. Jennifer floated curled behind the star sphere, now showing the bombships trailing Tortoise by a few hundred meters.

  “They are all gathered in the cafeteria?” Hakim asked, perhaps more pointedly than he had intended.

  Martin nodded. “I can’t be there,” he said softly. “I feel like shit right now. I can’t be in a crowd.”