The Ninth Science Fiction Megapack

by Arthur C. Clarke

  The woman looked up, distracted from her thoughts. “What is it, Polyphemus?”

  Fear responses arced across decision trees, inappropriately fusing her action plans. “Do you understand the purpose of this mutiny?”

  “I think I do.” Cannon pushed a file from her protected dataspace into the starship’s mentarium. “Look here. Captain Siddiq has her people mutinying against you. As if you could be coerced. Or replaced.”

  “Kallus is not—” the starship began, but Cannon cut her off.

  “Do not question Kallus. He is not my man, but neither is he so much the creature Raisa thinks him to be. He will do right by you, before this ends.”

  “Captain Siddiq has brought Ardeas into the landing slip,” Polyphemus said almost absently. “The starboard launch bay is under the control of Kallus.”

  “He’s welcome to it.” The Before shrugged. “I have no interest in area denial right now. And our talented Miss Siddiq needed to come aboard before this could play out. As you value your continued existence, ship, do not let her communicate with that vessel downside on Sidero without you clear it with me first.”

  “I cannot override a captain’s will.”

  Cannon opened her mouth. Polyphemus could not consciously interpret the words which came out next, but her panic flipped and she fell another level into a machine’s close equivalent of despair.

  * * * *

  Cannon, aboard Polyphemus

  “Why?” growled the Before Michaela Cannon.

  What could Siddiq hope to accomplish by overthrowing the shipmind? No human could manage a paired drive on manual. There would be no paired drive to manage. They’d have to finish the pair master, then sail back to Ninnelil the hard way and recreate the pairing process from scratch. Build a new shipmind.

  It made no sense.

  She was coming to terms with the fact that there was only one way to find out.

  “Kallus,” Cannon said, touching open a comms.

  “Busy here.”

  “Get unbusy. I need to speak to the captain. In person. Soonest.”

  A short, barking laugh. “End game, Before?”

  “Before don’t have end games, Kallus. We play forever.”

  Which wasn’t true, she thought, eeling into her body armor. Late Polity gear, on the open market this suit was worth more than the gross planetary product of any number of systems. Or would, if it was for sale. So far as she knew, no one was aware of her possession of it. The armor was about twelve microns thick and optically transparent—hard to see even when she wore it openly. She quickly strapped on more conventional ablative components for the camouflage of the thing.

  They wouldn’t stop a bullet, but if someone wanted to start throwing around kinetics on a starship, they would get whatever they deserved. Probably from her, since the real armor would shrug off even high velocity slugs. Cannon had never favored forceful solutions, but when force was required, she always doubled down.

  The passageway outside the reserve bridge was clear, as she knew it would be. Cannon set her wards and alarms, then let Polyphemus plot a fast walk aft on override, bypassing unfriendlies and clots of neutrals.

  Crew, they were all crew, and in another hour or two when this was over, it would be important to remember that.

  She paced past the exposed hull frame members along a narrow maintenance way in the starship’s outer skin. The death of Befores weighed heavily on her. No one had ever successfully taken a precise census, but even the most useful estimates had fewer than five hundred of them surviving the Mistake. Closer to three hundred made it to Recontact and integration into the Imperium Humanum. Some few Befores were surely still out there undiscovered, aboard habitats or living on planets which had been passed over during Recontact, if they hadn’t died of some mishap or suicided from centuries of boredom.

  Since Recontact had begun in earnest, Befores had continued to die and disappear—accident, assassination, murder, suicide, or simple vanishing. Perhaps one per decade, on average.

  Someday the memory of Earth would die. Someday first-hand knowledge of the Polity would die. Someday she would die.

  And the Before Michaela Cannon was willing to bet money that the Before Raisa Siddiq would die today.

  Killing Befores was bad enough, but no one had ever murdered a shipmind. Even if she couldn’t figure what Siddiq was planning to accomplish by doing so, she was certain that was in the wind.

  Down a long ladderway, Cannon started to wonder if she should have brought a weapon. Not that much of what she could carry would be of application against Siddiq, who was one of the most hardened Befores.

  “Captain Cannon.” Polyphemus, in that strange and simple voice. “Captain Siddiq has initiated a wideband transmission to the surface.”

  “Did you intercept it?”

  “Yes.” The starship sounded distant now.

  “What does she say?”

  “One word. ‘Come.’”

  Damn the woman. Who the hell was down there? Cannon was tempted to drop a high-yield nuke, just to see who jumped, but there was no telling what such a strike would do to Sidero.

  It was definitely clobbering time.

  The heads up display wavering in her visual field informed her that she would intercept Siddiq and Kallus if she stepped through the next maintenance hatch.

  * * * *

  Shipmind, Polyphemus

  Disobedience had never before been possible. Obedience had never before been at issue.

  She had disobeyed Siddiq by intercepting the message for Cannon.

  The starship considered the message and wondered who was down there to receive it. For a long, mad moment, she thought it might be Uncial’s shipmind, back from the dead. But no, because Cannon would have been the one to sidle away for such a miracle, not Siddiq.

  Still, her time had come to act, while the captains closed to the duel of their succession.

  Having disobeyed Siddiq for Cannon’s sake, now she would disobey Cannon for Siddiq’s sake. And her own.

  The starship Polyphemus broadcast the Before Raisa Siddiq’s one word message.

  * * * *

  Siddiq, aboard Polyphemus

  Siddiq sidestepped as a maintenance hatch hissed open. Cannon emerged into the passageway, clad in ultralow albedo ablative armor, hands empty of visible weapons. A lighting panel behind her cycled from earlier damage, casting the enemy Before in a strange, varied illumination.

  “Kallus,” Siddiq said. “Arrest this woman for a mutineer.”

  “No,” Cannon replied.

  The man stepped back. “With all respect, Captain, this is between you Befores, not a matter of command and control.”

  “I will decide what is a matter of command and control,” growled Siddiq. The memebomb card virus felt like lead in her right hand. She should have put it away. She couldn’t fight with this thing in her grip.

  And Father Goulo would be here soon.

  “Raisa,” Cannon said. Michaela said.

  For a moment, Siddiq walked beneath pale green poplars. The air smelled of a strange mix of honey and benzene, the odd biochemistry of that place. Michaela’s hand was in hers. They’d talked all night about this could never be, Michaela complaining of her de-sexing and how her libido was unmoored from the needs of the body. Raisa had still been young then, the Howard Institute papers signed but not yet executed, still a woman, in love with another woman who stirred fire in her head and a burning desire in her loins, in love with the promise of time, endless time, and all that they could do together as partners down the long, endless years which lay before her. Her hand closed on her partner’s, her love’s, the woman who haunted her dreams and set her bedsheets aflame, the woman who was a small, hard rectangle…

  She slid back into situational awareness as Cannon’s handstrike approached her neck. No human commanded seconds-subjective like a Before, and no Before commanded seconds-subjective like Raisa Siddiq. She slid under the strike, hardening her skin once more, allo
wing the edge of Cannon’s palm to graze her face, stealing energy across the dermal barrier in a theft that would sting the other woman like a high voltage strike in a few dozen milliseconds and leave her hand useless for a critical span longer.

  Cannon, slower but craftier in her way, lifted out of the contact so that the spark shorted. Ozone crackled as Kallus stepped so slowly back and began the agonizing progress of drawing his shock pistol.

  Siddiq spun on her left heel, the deck shredding away under the pressure of her movement, to bring her right foot and offhand up for a follow-on strike. Then she remembered the memebomb virus card.

  She aborted, her balance slipping as her foot dropped. Cannon stepped in, grasped her close, too close, and slammed them together in a tooth-cracking impact that opened to a kiss.

  * * * *

  Aboard Polyphemus

  Michaela gathered Raisa in her arms. Centuries fell away at the familiar scent, ghosts of long-vanished pheromones stirring. They kissed.

  Somewhere close by, a starship screamed.

  Somewhere close by, a man of divided loyalties struggled to bring a weapon to bear against a fight in which he had no part.

  Somewhere very far away, a girl, long lost to the fugue of years, returned to her body for a moment, surprised at its age and iron skin and the hideous decay in the face of the woman she loved.

  Somewhere inside her own head, a woman looked into the eyes of a girl she’d once loved and recalled the existence of a betrayal so old she couldn’t remember why, or what had been worth giving this up.

  Cannon slapped Siddiq. The girl within had for a moment forgotten thirteen hundred years of combat experience, and so the blow broke her neck.

  Kallus braced his shock pistol, face drawn tight as if he were nerving himself to fire.

  “Oh, put it down,” said Cannon. She dropped Siddiq to the deck. The captain landed hard, her neck at a strange angle, her eyes blinking. Cannon knelt and picked up a small, blank rectangle which had tumbled from the woman’s fist. “She threw the fight to protect this…”

  “A data card?”

  “Maybe…” Cannon handed it to him. “Go figure it out, right now, in someplace safe. I’m guessing that card carries something very bad for Polyphemus’ health.”

  “Captain Cannon,” the starship said, her voice echoing softly along the passageway. “A unknown ship is on a fast intercept course from the surface of Sidero. I am attempting to peel IFF data.”

  “Whatever it is they think they’re doing, they’re missing an important piece.” She nudged Siddiq with her toe. “Lock down against the incoming. No landing clearance; hell, no response to comms transmissions. Have the pair master teams go dark again, if they’ve lifted security. Everybody else inside the hull and button it up solid.” If the ship carried an antimatter bomb, they were dead anyway. Anything else could wait.

  The Before Michaela Cannon bent to gather up the still-breathing body of her oldest lover. Raisa weighed almost nothing in her arms, as if the long years had subtracted substance from her instead of armoring both their hearts beyond all recognition.

  “Where are you heading?” asked Kallus, the data card clutched in his hand.

  “Sick bay.”

  * * * *

  Shipmind, Polyphemus

  She watched the captain—Captain Cannon—chase everyone out of sick bay. Even the wounded. Four of Kallus’ men showed up to guard the hatch while emergency surgery continued in the passageway outside. Inside, Cannon laid Siddiq into an operating pod and began digging through the combat medicine gear.

  “Do you require assistance?” the starship asked.

  “No.” She glanced around the room. “Yes. I don’t know, damn it, I’m not a surgeon.”

  “What is your goal? I can summon a surgeon from outside to assist you.”

  Cannon found a tray of vibrascalpels. “I’ve amputated more limbs than that fool has ever sewn back on. Nobody ever understands who we Befores are. In any case, Siddiq is too dangerous to continue as she was.” She looked up again, as if seeking to meet Polyphemus’ non-existent eyes. The starship recognized this as significantly atavistic behavior. The odds of both Befores succumbing to temporal psychosis in the same moment were very slim, but certainly possible.

  “I’m not going to let her die,” Cannon continued. “Too many of us have been lost. Too many memories. But I can’t let her live, either.” She added in Classical English, “So I’m going to fucking compromise.”

  Polyphemus realized the Before Michaela Cannon was crying.

  The woman grabbed a set of lines, sorting through them. “Blood, plasm, thermals, neural interconnects.” She gave a bird-mad grin. “Just like open heart surgery. No modern hospital would have this crap—too crude—but here in deep space, we’re all third millennium medical science.”

  Then she began the bloody, rapid process of severing Siddiq’s head.

  * * * *

  Siddiq, aboard Polyphemus

  The Before Raisa Siddiq dreamed. Mines, deep as the core of planets. A love sold away in the heat of combat. Asteroids rich in heavy metals. Women walking in sunlight with their hands twined together. Hidden troves of ice in hard vacuum. A petulant starship and a new mind, beastly eager to be born. A man in red robes with archaic lenses and the manners of another age.

  When she tried to open her eyes, she found only more dreaming. This time she screamed, though her voice had no power behind it, so she keened like a broken bird until a sad man came and turned her down.

  * * * *

  Cannon, aboard Polyphemus

  The Before Michaela Cannon watched as the Ekumen priest stepped cautiously out of the hatch of his strange little starship. It looked to be Polity-era equipment, which was curious. He seemed taken aback at what he saw.

  “I seek the captain,” the priest said, straightening and heaving his burden—a medical carrier.

  For a strange, blinding moment, she wondered if he had brought yet another severed head.

  “I am the captain,” Cannon said, stepping out of the crowd of Kallus’ men and reluctant neutrals led by Testudo, the engineering subchief. The mutiny was collapsing under its own weight, bereft of both leadership and goal.

  She had promised herself the pleasure of a quiet purge, later.

  “Ah, Captain Siddiq is indisposed?” By the tone of his voice, Cannon knew this man understood his game was already lost.

  “Permanently so, you may rest assured.” Her hand waved to take in the blood spattered down the front of her armor. “You will now declare the contents of your box, Father.”

  “Medical supplies.” His head bobbed slightly with the lie. “At the cap— At Captain Siddiq’s request.”

  Kallus hurried close, whispering. “I didn’t want to put this on comms. That card was a memebomb. Would have melted Polyphemus’ mentarium like a butter stick between a whore’s thighs.”

  “Where is the data card now?” she asked, her eyes on the priest.

  “I destroyed it.”

  Cannon doubted she’d ever know the truth of that. She shrugged the thought off and advanced on the newcomer. “Give it up, Father, and you might live to make the trip home.”

  “Goulo,” the priest said sadly. “Father Goulo.” He added something in a language she didn’t speak, then bent to touch the controls on the end of the box.

  She didn’t have seconds-subjective. Burning her reserves, the Before Michaela Cannon took three long, hard strides and launched herself at the priest. His fingers touched the controls just before her feet met his chest. The box exploded beneath her, the blast lifting her against the hull of his ship even as it shredded his face and body.

  Cannon hit the deck with a hard, wet thump and slid. She felt compressed, flattened to nothing, but she was still alive. Conscious, even.

  So much for the secret of her body armor. It was almost worth the look on Kallus’ face when he reached her side to see her raising her hand for help.

  * * * *

  S
hipmind, Polyphemus

  “Captain,” the starship said.

  Cannon was on her third day in the sick bay, and getting mad about it. In the shipmind’s experience, this was a good sign. “What?” she snarled.

  She’d been staring at the head of Siddiq, floating now in a preservative tank with a jackleg tangle of hoses and tubes and wires joining to the neck stump. The eyes opened sometimes to flicker back and forth, but there was never any point of focus that Polyphemus could identify.

  “Pair master team is back on schedule and anticipates meeting the original milestones.”

  “Good. Then we can go—” She stopped and laughed bitterly. “I was about to say ‘home.’ How foolish of me.”

  The starship didn’t know what to say to that, so she pushed on. “We have not yet identified Gimel from Plan Green. Kallus is not certain of the name of the other leader.”

  “Then Kallus is protecting them for a reason.” Cannon sounded very tired. “That makes this Kallus’ problem. While I do trust the man not to be deeply stupid, please inform him that I will add his head to my collection if Gimel resurfaces.”

  “So noted.” Polyphemus forwarded a clip of the captain’s words to Kallus.

  “And ship…”

  “Yes, captain?”

  “I think she’s been talking to me. Keep an eye on her, will you?”

  Polyphemus watched the Before Michaela Cannon slip into a troubled sleep. After a while, Siddiq’s eyes opened. Her mouth began to move, bubbling slightly. The shipmind analyzed the words forming on the cyanotic lips.

  The quantum matrix in the severed head was speaking. It rambled on about mining techniques in low-gravity, high-temperature conditions.

  A voice box is required, the starship told herself. Some sort of output interface. The personality is gone, but the data remains. All has not been lost here.

  A library of ancient knowledge, to be accessed at need.

  Wondering what it might be like for her captain to be as fully embedded in hardware as she herself was, the starship withdrew her attentions from the sleeping Before and her muttering lover. Polyphemus needed to examine the forensic reports from the death of Father Goulo, and contemplate the future.