Harvest of Stars

by Poul Anderson

  She hauled her brain together. She didn’t know of anything more she could do for Fireball. Guthrie had declined her offer to pilot Kestrel in his service. “We’ll have plenty, and after what you’ve been through, you need a longer rest than time allows before you’re fit again.” She had yielded, not altogether reluctantly.

  Nor could she phone for his advice. As occupied as he was, it would likely take hours to get through to him. Here was a chance to, just possibly, learn something useful about the Lunarians. Yes, this might turn out to be a new betrayal of theirs, but she didn’t see how she could be so important.

  And—back to Rinndalir, that heartless, treacherous, gorgeous son of a cat.

  “Muy bien,” she threw at him. “I shouldn’t, after the trick you pulled, but all right.”

  His smile flared. “Glorious. Transport waits at the spacedrome, Berth 23.” Did it happen to be there, or had he dispatched it, confident she would accept? “Do not stop to pack. Your room in Zamok Vysoki remembers you.”

  Blood racketed in Kyra’s ears. She sent a message for Guthrie’s attention when he should have some to spare, hauled on her boots, and left the suite at a Lunar run.

  Outside the hotel she must needs slow down. Tsiolkovsky Prospect was thronged. No Lunarians were in sight. Such as had not departed Tychopolis kept to their residential quarter. In this city foreigners outnumbered them and emotions ran high. Few of those dwellers and transients were at their businesses, now when crisis drew near to climax. They wandered about, sat in the cafés talking too merrily or low and intently, fingered wares in the shops, clustered around every multi in which news repeated itself with different speakers and different scenes but over and over. Where somebody used English, Spanish, or Russian, Kyra caught snatches.

  “—won’t attack,” said a thick-set man, unmistakably North American. “Wouldn’t dare. The governments of Earth would seize everything they’ve got on the planet.” Kyra smelled his sweat. He wasn’t as confident as he claimed. Earth’s industries depended on space, its resources were what saved the biosphere, and the over-whelming majority of space enterprises were Fireball’s.

  “—alliance with the Selenarchs?” a Latino raged. “Those double-dealing bastards?” He wore a company emblem.

  “We may have no choice,” replied the woman with him.

  “—God’s judgment,” said a gray-bearded Orthodox priest. “His penalties for our sins and foolishness will be less than they themselves cost us.” Maybe he was right, Kyra thought.

  Yet what could Fireball do, after the Union’s President Escobedo addressed the world? “—no compromise with criminality. Fireball has from the very beginning been hostile to our government, has obstructed and intrigued and encouraged sedition.” True, though no more than was well within the bounds of what North America once, and a few countries today, considered freedom of speech and the right to conduct one’s affairs as one saw fit. “A pronouncement from Fireball has sparked civil war in our country. Sr. Guthrie claims it was false, but he has not called on the Chaotics to halt their rebellion,” and be led away for the Sepo and the corrective psychotechnicians to work on, “nor retaliated against the Selenarchs whom he alleges were the perpetrators.” What was he supposed to do, declare war on them? “I make him this proposal. Let Fireball make amends by helping us. For example, it has more capability of space surveillance than the Peace Authority does, if it chooses to deploy the vessels, and it is not limited by mandate as the Peace Authority is. Let Fireball provide us information about Chaotic units, their locations and activities. Or let Fireball provide suborbital transport, which we are woefully short of, to our militia and Security Police, wherever that will enable them to strike a telling blow. There are many possibilities. We can agree on which, if Fireball will first agree to obey the law of the land.

  “Then, as soon as the present danger is past, we for our part will release all Fireball personnel” to deportation? “not facing criminal charges” which ones, charged with what? “and negotiate other outstanding issues,” such as the disposal of many billion ucus’ worth of property, more of it held by consorte families than by the company. “Meanwhile, we must keep those persons detained,” prisoners, hostages, “and appeal to the High Council and Assembly of the World Federation that they order the Peace Authority to suppress anarchism and piracy.” Easier said than done, when the military force for space operations was lacking. Nothing but small arms in licensed hands legally existed beyond geosync radius, wherefore Luna had been able to make its declaration of independence stick after some minor clashes. “But I hope and pray that such action will not prove necessary, that Fireball will voluntarily redeem itself. May this come about! Then Fireball will have earned a voice in the historic conference that must follow these troubles, to extend law throughout the Solar System and properly regulate activity in space” thus ending the autonomy of human beings freely working together. The North American government wasn’t the only one that had long desired it.

  Yes, the Avantists were playing their cards pretty shrewdly, Kyra thought. They might yet survive the coming showdown. But whether they did or not, this wasn’t the last hand. Much more was at stake. Lord, almost cosmic—An opening occurred in the crowd ahead of her. She hastened her strides.

  At Ley Circus she got a fahrweg out to the drome. She had it nearly to herself. Leaving it, she stepped forth into a tiled cavern where sounds rang unnaturally loud. Activity was about at a standstill. An occasional human worker gave her a frightened look. The machines went about their jobs unperturbed.

  The gate to Berth 23 scanned her and let her past. From the number, she had foreknown that what waited was a suborbital. It too was robotic. She boarded and snugged herself down. The vessel trundled on rails through the airlock to its launch station, got clearance from TrafCon’s computer, and lifted off. The acceleration that pushed Kyra back was mild, two Lunar gravities. Soon she was weightless in her harness, soaring among stars. From the northern horizon, full Earth cast witchy blue over maria and craters. Shadows mingled manifold. This was a soft landscape, actually, desolate but soft; stonefall and spalling radiation had worn it down, blurred its edges, without Earth’s tectonics querning forth mountains ever new.

  The planet fell behind, sank farther, until it hung barely above the Moonscape and the darknesses that it cast stretched very long across level ground. Mostly they lost themselves among the cliffs and crags of the heights toward which the boat slanted. It set down on a small field with a single service building. A car rolled toward it. “Pray debark,” said a musical synthetic voice.

  Kyra obeyed, climbing from airlock through extended gangtube to the interior of the ground vehicle. It detached itself and trundled off on a road rudimentary but adequate for a weatherless world. The castle towers leaped into her view above a ridge, and then the outer walls, and she passed inside.

  A live servant genuflected and escorted her up a ramp to a high, opalescent hall. Rinndalir waited, in purple and gold. He rippled forward to take her hands. His were not metal and plastic but live flesh and graceful bone, warm to the touch. The great gray eyes shone downward at hers. “Well are you come,” he said. “Valiantly did you fare, and what a prize you took!”

  How did he know? That story hadn’t been made public yet. Agents within Fireball—It didn’t seem to matter, when she could tell him, “Gracias,” and hear the pride resonate. She was no longer his captive or his dupe; they met in shared respect. “Where is the lady Niolente?” she asked.

  His reply tingled in her: “Elsewhere, representing us amidst our colleagues.” He raised his brows slightly, mischieveously.

  She made herself withdraw her hands and say, “Yes, of course you Selenarchs need to keep as alert and ready for action as we do. Then why’d you invite me here?” She felt unable to add that it could hardly be for fun and games, at least not exclusively.

  “I told you, amiga. Fireball is understandably angry at us, albeit we require each other for allies in the tricky times
ahead. My hope is that you will return better disposed toward us and influence the lord Guthrie in that direction. I am on call, but there is no immediate need of me and this is a service I can do my race.” The tone grew earnest. “As well as myself. I would like to have back your goodwill.”

  “I’ll … listen.”

  “And behold. Come, pray.” He offered his arm. Hers went below, almost involuntarily. His fingertips touched her hand. It was ridiculous what lust the gentle contact roused in her. “I wish you had arrived earlier, giving us leisure for discourse and friendliness before that happens which must, but I was in truth overbusied until this hour.”

  They moved off between glass pillars toward an archway opening on a corridor. That happens which must The chill struck at Kyra’s loins. “What do you mean?” she exclaimed. “War?”

  He nodded. The wan locks swept past his cheekbones. “The Avantist Synod has beamed an enciphered message to Port Bowen. Unless Fireball agrees within twenty-four hours to furnish aid to the government, its people in North America will be adjudged criminal conspirators, subject to court martial and summary justice. The first such proceeding begins when the ultimatum expires.”

  “No, that’s loco! Got to be a bluff!”

  “You cannot believe that the lord Guthrie will risk that it isn’t. I deem that the Synod expects he will either buckle, thereby beginning the process of Fireball’s complete surrender, or else do something rash that will provoke global sanctions against the company. They have sorely misjudged him and his capabilities. They being what they are, it was probable that they would. His strength is gathered. He will strike as soon as all the data are in.”

  This was another corridor of illusions. The floor was like a rushing river, the walls full of tall flames, the ceiling a night sky where stars fell and burned as meteors, in utter silence. “You claim a hell of a lot of confidential knowledge,” Kyra said desperately. “Have you infiltrated his personal staff?”

  Rinndalir smiled through the light flickering over his face. “That might be difficult. But we have our monitors watchful at many a vantage, as you shall discover, and from what they tell us, we make our deductions. Be not dismayed. Rejoice. Your commonwealth rides to the rescue of its children.”

  The tone was soft, but a bugle was in it. Kyra felt a stirring at the roots of her hair. Why indeed any doubts and fears? Her side had done everything humanly possible, short of breaking troth, to reach peace. The enemy had chosen otherwise. Let her cheer Fireball on, and then help batten hatches against the storm that would follow.

  True, this male at her side had wrought much to bring the battle to pass. Had he not tampered with Guthrie’s first impartation, the Chaotics might well still be quiescent. Without their backs to the wall, the Avantists might well have decided it was best to make an acceptable settlement, even some reparation for their misdeeds.

  Really?

  As if his faun ears had heard her thoughts, Rinndalir said, “Yes, we of Luna did hasten fate a little. Was that not meet? Your foe requires more than chastisement. He requires destruction, as does a cell gone cancerous before it strews its breed. Upon this day, liberty proves it is not simply sweet, it is mighty. The blows it strikes will be in the cause of all folk everywhere and henceforward.”

  Her mind sprang wild. Maybe he was right! She too had felt the future as stifling. No doubt Avantism, left to itself, would rot away. How long would that take, though, and what shape would it leave her poor country in? What of other lands that were unfree? Might lives computerized in the name of order or social justice or whatever they called it, look up with a sudden freshness? Might an idea blow forth upon the wind, that governments and machines ought to be instruments people used, not ends in themselves?

  Let there be Lunacy!

  The way led into the Pagoda. At midnight it was ashine from Earth low in the northeast, a formless blue that diffused through the diamond, star-gleaming at facets that changed as you moved, until it shaded into space-darkness opposite. Handel’s Water Music went clear and cool through air that smelled like roses after a rain. Serenity so abrupt was as startling as an unawaited kiss.

  A couch had been placed at the table, on which stood wine, goblets, and finger foods. Across from it was a giant multi. Rinndalir guided her to the seat and joined her. “Memories,” he murmured.

  No, damn it, she mustn’t let him seduce her, not yet, anyway. “You mentioned having a lot of monitors out,” she said. Her flatness was an offense to these surroundings, though he didn’t appear to take any. “I suppose you intend to receive from them?”

  “Even so. We man no very capable spacecraft of our own, we Lunarians, nor maintain a robotic fleet, merely a few vessels for special purposes. Otherwise we rely on Fireball.” Perhaps he recited that common knowledge because he felt she could do with a soothing noise. “However, we have produced far more miniatures with observational potency than we have hitherto declared, and we have newly launched them, programmed to track what occurs at their assigned watchposts.”

  He took a control off the table and flicked it. An image, doubtless retrieved from the database, awakened in the cylinder, a thin metal shape with an instrument boom forward and a linac drive aft. She recognized the general type, if not this precise model, and guessed it was about three meters long, plus the mass accelerator. Most likely it was launched not by a first stage but by a catapult, easy to do off Luna, and powered by sun-rechargeable molecular accumulators—high specific impulse, therefore low mass ratio. Not much delta v between rechargings, but nimble. Basically simple, producible in quantity by an automated factory somewhere in the body of the Moon.

  “I daresay Fireball has noticed several of these; I think not most,” Rinndalir went on. “We have received no protests. It is a natural act for us and no menace to them. We have also secreted miniflitters with their own observatories near interesting locations on Earth. They transmit at very low energy, but sufficient for the big dish at Copernicus, and with adequate bandwidth. They are now airborne. The Avantists may shoot a few down, but I trust that the majority will show us somewhat.”

  He poured into the goblets, a gurgle that fitted the music. “Once more, will you propose a toast?” he asked.

  Memories, oh, God, yes. “To victory, a clean victory,” Kyra said. The wine anointed her tongue and thrilled in her bloodstream.

  He sipped, raised his glass anew, and said in his turn, “To chaos.”

  “What? Do you mean the Kayos this time, the Chaotics? Bueno, yes, luck to them.” She clinked rims with him.

  “Nay, I mean chaos,” he told her, “the liberator, that annihilates the old and engenders the new.”

  She checked her goblet at her lips. “Chaos in the scientific sense?” she asked uneasily: the forever unforeseeable.

  “If you wish, although I would then draw my trope less from mathematics and mechanics than from the quantum heart of things. Come, will you not share drink?”

  Kyra wondered why she had balked. He wasn’t saluting anything evil, was he? One of his whimsies. She took a larger swallow than she intended.

  “Let us see what betides,” Rinndalir said. Glass in his right hand, he worked the control with his left. The image in the cylinder blinked away. There appeared an arc of Earth’s curve, limned by the multiple layering of air, cloud a volute of purity over turquoise, a loveliness that pierced Kyra as deeply as when she first encountered it. Athwart the environing dark, sunlight slid over the flanks of two spaceships, a big-bellied Argosy-class freighter dwarfing the Falcon torch that paced her. Watched from afar through the opticals of a Lunarian monitor, they showed only by the corposant glimmers astern how they hurtled under drive.

  “A-a-arr-rr-rr,” went Rinndalir in his throat. “The first attack. We are barely in time.” He hunched forward, a-shiver.

  Guthrie’s voice tolled in Kyra’s head. “The high ground is ours,” he had reminded her. “We could nudge a few big rocks into collision orbits, or shoot them from the Moon. The threat of th
e Lunarians doing that was a large factor in getting them their independence, you may recall. But unless the missiles are aerodynamically shaped as well as precision-aimed, we won’t have decent control. We’d oftener dig a hole in an empty field, or in a town full of innocent people, rather than our target. I expect we won’t have time for the necessary work. Instead, if we must fight, we’ll sacrifice a ship or two, crammed full of rocks and dived down on robot.”

  She had shuddered. First that robot must be reprogrammed for suicide.

  But it wasn’t like reprogramming a captive Guthrie. Was it? Machines didn’t really have consciousness or free will or a wish to live. Did they?

  At this instant—Go get ’em!

  The freighter and the torch receded from each other, Earthward and spaceward. Rinndalir fingered his control. Somewhere a computer made its calculations and flashed the result into the multi cylinder. To Kyra it was an elegant alphabet that she could not read. The orchestra had begun the Royal Fireworks section.

  “Destination, Kennedy Base,” Rinndalir exulted. “I awaited as much. We have more than one observer in that vicinity. If any remain operative—”

  A mountainscape stood before them, gray-blue snow-dappled peaks against a sunlit deep heaven, in the foreground pine forest seen as treetops rushing past, in the middle distance an airfield, a radome, a communications tower, clustered buildings, vehicles scuttling about. Underground, Kyra knew, armored, buttressed, lay the command center of the national militia.

  They did not see the ship hit. She came too fast. Retrograde with respect to Earth’s orbit, reeled in by Earth’s gravity, she bore an energy equivalent to the detonation of some two hundred kilotonnes. Stopped down for transmission, the flash nonetheless dazzled Kyra like an unguarded look straight at the sun. It tore into rags in her vision, and she glimpsed a scene that swung and whirled as monstrous winds tossed the aircraft about. A globe of incandescence boiled aloft, spread, vanished into the fungus cloud of smoke and dust that climbed after it to rape the sky. As her sight cleared she made out a broad crater, low-walled but agape at the center where man’s caverns lay sundered.