Glory's People

by Alfred Coppel

  Damon, closely attended by an excited, tail-lashing Pronker, crouched by the fighting chair. “What happens if we attack the Terror and they ”--he indicated the cluttered radar screen--”decide to attack us?”

  “During the Jihad, our ancestors learned a simple reality from the Muslims. ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend,’ “ Duncan replied.

  Damon was silent, his eyes fixed on the enlarging images on the screens. Then he asked quietly, “Will we ever get back, Master and Commander?”

  “I don’t know, Damon,” Duncan said. “At the moment I see no way we can return. I’m sorry.”

  The alien ships were sparks of colored light in the screens. The Terror was a mass of darkness and threads of fire. Duncan drew in a slow, deep breath. If the killer’s attention were not already heavily engaged, Duncan was sure that it would by now have made an attempt to engulf the MD ship. There was nothing whatever about the Yamatan technology that inhibited attack. Perhaps a Gateway and a retreat into the Near Away might forestall the Terror. But that path seemed foreclosed. Ahead was where duty lay for Glory's syndics.

  Duncan spared a glance for Ishida, who lay, still dazed and cradling a broken arm, against a bulkhead. The young pilot lay dead in a veritable lake of blood. There were still englobed droplets in the air. When they struck the imaging screens they adhered and smeared the surface of the cathode-ray tubes.

  “Kantaro-san,” Duncan said. “Can you give me a clear holograph?”

  In the well of the flightdeck an image formed. Tiny spacecraft closed on a star-killing darkness. As Duncan watched, one of the first wave of alien craft loosed what appeared to be a spread of torpedoes. They left golden trails as they vanished into the fire-shot cloud. Two flashed with a brightness that was unmistakably nuclear. Two hot globes appeared within the darkness and were swiftly engulfed. A crooked bolt of electric-violet light snaked across the intervening distance between the Terror and the leading ships of the attacking fleet.

  Two of the vast vessels that had fired missiles began to dissolve into dazzling fountains of light. How many lives aboard those ships? Duncan wondered. Judging from the size of the vessels, there were probably thousands. They imploded, collapsed into corroding fire. Within seconds, two of the mammoth ships were reduced to white-hot debris tumbling away from the heart of the destruction.

  How long had it taken the Terror to learn such combat? The scope of the puzzle was mind-numbing, Duncan thought. When it fought us in the Ross Stars it was an elemental--a force of nature, violent, but devoid of destructive sophistication. Yet now it attacked the alien ships as though it were itself a vehicle of war. It took years, perhaps centuries, to change so radically. That left a daunting question: How many years, centuries, aeons, had passed since the battle at Ross 248?

  We are disadvantaged by our need for linear time, Duncan thought. We can accept intellectually that we have passed through a space, a dimension (what should One call it?) in which time, like space itself, either did not exist or existed informs corporeal entities such as we could not conceive.

  Yet the battle developing now was real enough. Those beings aboard the destroyed ships, whatever and whoever they might be, were beyond question dead, destroyed, reduced to their constituent atoms.

  The injured ninja began to stir.

  “Keep him under control, Damon,” Duncan ordered.

  “Aye, Captain.” Damon stepped over the body of the MD pilot and stationed himself over the reviving Ishida. The man’s broken arm, bent in the wrong place and wrong direction, made Damon feel queasy. The only violence Damon had ever experienced were the earlier encounters with the Terror. He considered binding Ishida, but decided against it. He did not wish to inflict pain.

  Kantaro, in the pilot’s chair, said over his shoulder, “Two more ships are coming in to attack, Kr-san. With five more behind them.”

  “Get us closer,” Duncan said, raising the power of the laze-gun to the maximum setting. He suspected that the laser would have no effect. So far the weapons used by the alien spaceships had been ineffective, and they were clearly more powerful than what the Yamatan craft deployed.

  But we have not come all this way to surrender, Duncan thought, and Mira yowled angry agreement.

  The spark representing the MD ship within the holograph moved in a tightening curve as it approached the dark shadow. Duncan put his forehead against the sight and directed a hot beam of coherent light into the center of the target. The beam penetrated the darkness and vanished. No damage had been inflicted. None at all. But the laze had provided a distraction, and the alien vessels closed to exploit it. Whoever or whatever fought the ships of that alien fleet were being strained and trained again for battle. Whatever else the Terror might have done in the distant past of this space, it had impressed upon this race the absolute need for an ability to wage war.

  This time the aliens attacked with energy weapons. Jagged beams of violet light formed on forward projections of the lead craft and then flung themselves at the enemy. It was as though the beams themselves were intelligent and sought their target with a malevolence to match the Terror’s own.

  At the point within the darkness where the beams intersected, a coruscating fireball formed, extended fiery, questing tendrils of light. For a moment the Terror seemed in danger of being overwhelmed by the power of the weapon, then it recovered, smothering the inner fire with its darkness.

  “Again!” Damon shouted empathically. “Shoot again!”

  As though the alien warriors heard the empathic command, a rank of the huge warships repeated the attack with the beams of violet light. Duncan counted an attack by a dozen ships before the Terror’s movement blotted out half the ships and left the others gutted and in expanding masses of ruin. The environment resonated with the death agonies of thousands.

  The cats screamed and Duncan fought off the avalanche of pain and death that radiated from the destroyed ships. Damon had slumped to the deck, his anima outraged by the terrible dying of the alien thousands.

  Even Kantaro, who was only a partial empath and totally untrained, was staggered by the tsunami of death. He fought to keep the MD pointed at the swirling, furious darkness.

  Duncan felt its anger. He felt, too, its fear. It was orders of magnitude greater than that of the quarry he remembered from the dark savannah of their passage to this place. He fired a second bolt of light into the sooty cloud. Again the tiny attack distracted, and Duncan felt its attention focus on him at last.

  There was a flash of recognition. “The thing remembers us, Mira, “ he sent. He fired the laser still again. Mira sent back, “Kill it, dominant tom. “

  “If only I could, “ Duncan lamented.

  But he had drawn its attention, and the warriors aboard the ships of the alien fleet had millennia of battle knowledge to guide them. The violet weapon formed on the projectors of the entire fleet, held there for one long moment, and then converged upon the Terror.

  The darkness was shot through with light and fire. Duncan wondered what the accumulated power of those weapons might be. Millions of gigawatts? Billions? Without Glory's computer banks and sensors he had no way of knowing. But the effect on the Terror was vast. Duncan felt Mira’s triumphant surge of pleasure. Small Hana gripped the top of a console and trilled with satisfaction.

  Have they killed it? Duncan wondered. Is it truly ending now? Will we see it die here and know Glory's people are safe at last?

  The fire spread through the cloud like a cancer. Second and third discharges from the alien fleet struck the Terror again and again.

  Surely it is dying now, Duncan thought savagely. Die, damn you. Die!

  “They have done it, Kr-san!” Kantaro shouted.

  The Terror swirled, diminished. The fires within burned hot and white. Duncan remembered how men had died in the Ross Stars, consumed by fire from within.

  Between the MD and the Terror a point of light appeared. Duncan stared, appalled.

  “What is it, Duncan?” Damon shouted.
“What’s happening?”

  “A singularity,” Duncan said, aghast. “It is opening a Gateway!”

  The point opened into a double fan of light. Beyond the light lay the indeterminate space of the Near Away.

  “Kantaro!” Duncan called desperately. “Follow it! “ He heard Mira’s scream of rage and fear.

  Damon Ng’s voice was shrill as he screamed, “No! Duncan, look out!”

  That was the last thing Duncan Kr heard before the point of a throwing knife struck him in the back and began to drain the life out of him.

  34. Schrodinger’s Cat

  Anya Amaya, exhausted by the undesired responsibility of commanding Goldenwing Gloria Coelis, lay lightly tethered to her bunk in her austere quarters. Her eyelids twitched in Rapid Eye Movement sleep. The feminist from New Earth was dreaming.

  Duncan lay bleeding from a wound that would kill him, yet his eyes were open and filled with some urgent message that she, Amaya, could not grasp. And while she failed in her task, Duncan slipped farther from life, drowning in a lake of blood.

  She could see Artemis stepping daintily through Duncan’s blood, sniffing at his face, running her rasp of a tongue across his pallid lips, then lifting her head and yowling mournfully. Somehow the other syndics’ cats were also in Amaya's dream. Buele’s Big twisted and darted across the frozen lake where Duncan now, miraculously, lay facing a white sky in which a white sun held motionless. Now Buele and Broni, together with their cats, shouted across the empty ice at Anya, who could not hear them. Dietr Krieg, wearing Paracelsus like a fur collar, loomed before Anya and said scornfully, “No woman is fit for command of a Goldenwing. No woman has the gifts. No woman has the imagination. Duncan made a mistake when he chose you, Amaya. Can’t you hear him, Anya? We can hear him, why can’t you?” Anya heard herself protesting, “Why doesn’t he speak to me, Dietr? Tell me why. “ And suddenly she was a small girl again, a failure at Leadership School, soon to be cast out of her clone. The other Amaya 6 Clone girls materialized around her and threatened to beat her--and all the while Buele and Broni Ehrengraf were calling her name, again and again. . . .

  She opened her eyes in shock. The syndics had all gathered in her room. Their cats clung like bats to the fabric walls and uttered wailing, frightened calls.

  Dietr Krieg, his customarily pale face dead white, said, “You were dreaming, too.”

  Anya looked from one to another. Buele was Wired; his eyes had the glazed look of one undergoing an information overload. “I dreamed Duncan is dying,” Broni said. “Did you?”

  “Yes, yes, I … ”

  “Listen,” Dietr said.

  From beyond the fabric walls, beyond and down the tangled plena, came a howling tumult.

  Amaya’s eyes widened. “The cats?”

  “All of them, “ Broni sent. “All.“

  Dietr said, “Do you have any idea how many cats there are aboard Glory?’

  Amaya shook her head in bewilderment. She had never asked, never investigated. Until Artemis appeared to choose her as partner, she had deliberately avoided thinking about how many of Mira’s descendants, natural, in vitros, or clones, there might be in the kilometers of internal passageways and holds of the ship. Duncan knew, but he had never actually said.

  “There are dozens, Anya,” Broni sent. “Ours are only the cleverest ones. Clavius told me tonight. “

  Dietr broke in brusquely. “They are hearing from Mira and Pronker and Hana--the little cat that chose Kantaro.”

  “Hearing? How can you know that?”

  “We were all dreaming. You dreamed that Duncan was dying, didn’t you? Artemis says you did. “

  It was the first time Dietr had ever communicated with Anya empathically.

  Anya felt a surge of joy that immediately became a plunge of grief.

  “But they died. We saw them follow that thing through a singularity. “

  “No!” It was Buele’s powerful sending. “Find drogues. Wire up! Hurry! “

  “Get to the bridge. Leave me here. Hurry.’’ Anya realized that the syndics were all communicating without Glory's help. Only Buele was Wired, and he was using Glory to amplify his Talent by orders of magnitude. The force of his sendings was enormous. “Go!”

  The syndics flew through the plena toward the bridge. When they tumbled into their accustomed pods and Wired, they realized that Glory, acting on her own, had reduced her delta to a minimum. This was both a difficult and a dangerous evolution. Sails had to be trimmed, some had to be furled, still others reefed. The holographs showed tiny monkeys swarming through the rig in a flurry of activity. Anya was shocked to receive sendings from the small critters. The empathic messages were primitive, but they were self-directed in a way that had never happened before. It was as if all the living things aboard Glory, even Glory herself, were combining into a superorganism intent on retrieving a part of itself.

  This is insanity, Anya Amaya thought. The great-queen-who-is-not-alive was what the cats called the ship. How could a nonliving being acquiesce in the recombination of all the life-forms within and without to form this--cyborg? What mind controlled the transformation?

  Artemis clawed indelicately at Amaya’s naked shoulder. “Wire!” the cat demanded. “Anya, Wire!”

  Anya seated the drogue in her skull socket. Instantly there came the familiar broadening of perceptions, the expanding awareness and vision. She soared momentarily above the ship, needing a moment of solitude to integrate the changes that were taking place in her capabilities.

  She “heard” a rustling background of tiny empathic voices calling plaintively for “Damon. Damon. Damon. “ It was the monkeys whispering as they scrambled through the kilometers of the glowing skylar rig. Anya felt a twinge of pity for the half-living beings, and a discovered warmth. Neither she nor any of the other syndics (except, perhaps Damon?) had ever been aware of the monkeys as entities with wants and loyalties.

  Yet why not? Hadn’t the small critters shown that they had fears and wants after the fight in the Ross Stars? Hadn’t they, in effect, gone on strike because they were afraid? What was happening to Glory?

  She returned her anima to the bridge and was immediately bombarded with sendings from Broni.

  “Did you hear the cats? “

  “Clavius is forcing them to stop shouting. “

  Then Buele, floating on the end of a drogue tether in Anya’s quarters: “I can’t get Glory to respond, Sister Anya. Help me. “

  “Glory--what is happening?” Anya made the query as forceful as she dared. The truth was that she doubted her ability to command Glory in any sort of emergency without Duncan to back her.

  “The cats are receiving a message from Pronker. “

  “But Pronker must be dead. “

  “There is no ‘must be,’ Sailing Master. “

  The communications were short, abrupt. As though Glory's enormous computing capacity were being strained.

  “Explain, “ Anya demanded.

  “Not possible. “

  Anya fought an upsurging of desperation. Over the years one came to expect human responses from Glory. One tended to forget that she was not human, not even, as the cats so succinctly put it, alive.

  Broni interrupted, “But Clavius says--”

  “Broni, “ Anya sent firmly. “Be silent. “

  The girl subsided and Anya heard Clavius’s growl of complaint. “Glory, “ Anya sent again. “ What do you mean, ‘there is no must be?’ “

  That question the ancient computer handled firmly. “There are many theories about an infinitely variable universe. If any one of them is true, then there is nothing that ‘must be. ’ All things are. “

  Amaya suppressed an outburst of exasperated anger. This was no time for abstruse theories. But she had asked and had been answered.

  “Is there a message from the Near Away?”

  “The cats hear one. “

  Hope exploded in Amaya’s chest. “From where? How far away?”

  “From he
re. There is no ‘away. ’ All possibilities are part of one reality. “

  Amaya’s eyes burned with tears of frustration. “I do not understand that, Glory.”

  “It cannot he stated more simply. The language does not permit it. “

  “I haven’t time for mathematics!” Anya Amaya shouted aloud. Then she controlled herself and sent, “Who do the cats hear?”

  Artemis yowled in a frustration that matched Amaya’s own.

  “I know you are trying to tell me something, “ Amaya sent to her partner. “But I am only a human being. “

  Glory sent cryptically, “I am only a machine. “

  Oh, God, Amaya thought. Help me.

  Buele pushed his way into the rapport. “I think I hear Pronker and Mira. Support me, Glory. Help me to hear them. “

  Amaya caught the overspillage of the empathic exchange. It was being conducted on a plane she could not reach, and at a speed that burned the empathic environment as a speeding bullet might bum the air.

  Broni was listening. Amaya and Artemis could feel Clavius intervening from moment to moment.

  Glory sent to all, “There have been, will be, may be, two deaths. “

  Dietr Krieg interrupted heavy-handedly, “None of this makes sense. What does ‘have been, will be, may be’--mean? Are our people alive or dead?”

  Maddeningly, Glory responded, “There was a Twentieth-Century physicist, Erwin Schrodinger, who won a Nobel Prize for Physics in nineteen thirty-three. He propounded this question: If my cat is confined in a box for an unspecified length of time, he may be alive or dead when the box is opened. But until it is, the cat is both alive and dead--’ “

  “Glory! We have no time for parables!” Amaya’s sending was an empathic scream of desperation.