Pock's World

by Dave Duncan

  Glaum shrugged, indifferent. “It is time to go. I will not keep the shuttle waiting even one minute. Get in the car, Friend Linn, Friend Athena… and take the brat if you want, since he is here. Nobody else. We leave in thirty seconds, ready or not.” He turned on his heel and marched off.

  Ratty jumped up and handed his recorder to Athena. “See that Jake at my office gets this, will you? And good luck.”

  They were all moving now, hurrying after Glaum, clasping hands and making farewells as they went.

  “What’s your reason for staying, Brother?” Athena asked.

  “Because I voted for cauterization, of course,” the old man said. “I cannot sentence the people of Pock’s World to martyrdom and not remain to share that burden. Ratty is staying, too, but I beg you, don’t let the other hacks like him declare me a saint! Now go with God.”

  Everyone but the travelers stopped at a safe distance from the car and watched Linn, Athena, and the boy scramble aboard. Then the door dropped, the motor began to whine, and clouds of dust roiled up.

  Joy enveloped Ratty in a wild embrace.

  Braata went over to the friar and knelt to receive the blessing of the Saint of Annatto.

  Back at the terrace, Umandral was still eating breakfast.

  Chapter 2

  “How are you?” Joy asked as they went back indoors. She was regarding him with concern.

  “Have felt better,” Ratty admitted. The immigrant’s tonic was giving him hot flashes, double vision, and waves of nausea.

  “Can you stand yet another family gathering?”

  “Of course.” The side effects might not seem so bad there. If that failed, he could always ask to be flogged with barbed wire. “What’s the agenda?”

  “Tonight.”

  Oh, yes, the non-end of the world. Plan a party? Count me a no-show.

  He had not yet learned his way around the family quarters, which were enormous. The room to which Joy led him was probably Duty’s grand audience chamber, for it held a chair much like a throne. Two smaller chairs flanked it, and directly in front was what he at first took to be a circular red-and-white rug on a black marble floor. Closer inspection showed that it was a hologram of Javel at the full, seemingly floating below glass. There were stars in the darkness behind it, and he guessed that it must be a projection from a Lagrangian satellite. He had never heard of a religion putting its prime deity underfoot before, but he noticed that as Joy was careful to go around the image and not step on it. She led him to a pair of chairs on the right of the disk.

  He had barely sunk down and leaned his aching head back when Love and Bedel entered, so he had to rise and bob. They sat on the chairs opposite. In a few moments Duty herself entered, with Oxindole and Wisdom. Duty took the throne and they went on either side of her. Ratty had seen the Monody family being informal, so this meeting was more than just a chat. He assumed that it was being recorded and possibly broadcast.

  “First,” Oxindole said, “we welcome Consort Ratty to the family and congratulate him on his faith and courage. We assure him that they are not misplaced. Secondly, we must attend to a painful but traditional task. The last time this ceremony was held was back in 28,928, or 532 Pocosin years ago, almost a thousand standard.

  “I confess that corundum worms got into our data vaults a few centuries back, and the records are not as good as we should like, but we do know that Joy makes the first appeal.”

  Joy took a deep breath and recited: “Grandmother, our Holy Mother strictly forbids suicide, and what you are planning is most certainly that.”

  Duty smiled fondly at her. “No, dearest Joy. You sound just like that tiresome priest from Ayne. I promise you that I have no intention of jumping. I shall merely ask the Mother to spare her children and take my life instead. Three times I shall ask. If she refuses my third appeal, then I shall come back down.”

  “Bah! You know how the wind howls up there, Grandmother! No Duty has ever come back down.”

  “And the Mother has never refused a request we have made from there. No, the danger is real, and Duty’s duty is clear.” For a woman discussing her own imminent death, the old lady was amazingly calm, smiling and showing no resentment.

  Then her daughter, Love, took up the baton.

  “It falls to me to show that what you propose is blasphemous. Although the Mother will intervene with mercy and lift intolerable burdens, even for Monody she will never break the laws she has set to bind the universe. To ask her to quicken a corpse or move the world from its ordained orbit would be desecration of your office and our faith. I call Friend Zyemindar, formerly Engineer Braata.”

  Ratty’s double vision seemed to be getting worse. He watched two Braata-like men walk in from the door. Two names, two men? Or a two-headed giraffe? When they reached the edge of the Javel hologram, they stopped and bowed toward the throne. A good Christian must not kneel to pagan priestesses.

  Bedel, not Love, asked the questions.

  “When you disabled the alien probe, how did you gain entry?”

  Evidently Braata—and despite Ratty’s blinding headache there was probably only one of him—had been coached in what he would be asked.

  “Via the shuttle dock, Consort. A probe of that type usually has many ports, proving access to different areas of its surface, but often their entrances are welded shut by the abrasion of interstellar dust. The shuttle docks are at the stern, sheltered in a minor crater, and we knew they must have been used quite—”

  “And you had no trouble gaining access?”

  “The hatch was locked, of course. We were in a hurry, so I blew it with a shaped charge.”

  “And were not yourself blown away into space by the internal atmosphere escaping?”

  “No, Gownsman. All shafts have many successive safety doors to prevent leakage. Always some are left closed, some open, so you close the first open one you come to and open the first closed one after that, and you have set up a substitute airlock to preserve the internal atmosphere. When I opened my faceplate it made my ears pop.”

  “Did you evacuate the probe’s atmosphere when you left?”

  “No, Excellency. Our mission was, first, to make sure that the probe was not still manned, or capable of being re-crewed through the entangler; secondly to make sure that it could not be used as a missile. That was why we demolished the projector. Our third task was to make the probe safe for future reuse. We turned the hydroponics back on and restarted the climate controls. Shipping a new atmosphere up to it would be an enormous project.”

  “So the probe may still be inhabited?”

  “It certainly includes living bacteria, because food was rotting and everywhere stank horribly. I suppose in theory there could be hominins hiding in there somewhere.”

  “Then it is possible that the probe can still be steered away from its projected impact?”

  “No, Consort. Our orders were to make sure that it could not be steered. I mined the control centers, the power plant, and the Wong-Hui projector. All those charges later blew. That is a dead rock.”

  “How about attitude jets?”

  For a moment Braata looked blank. “Oh, your pardon. No, there are none. A rock like that is far too massive to turn with jets. It is steered by turning the projector, and even that may take a week to alter its attitude significantly.”

  “So there can be no doubt that it will impact Pock’s World?”

  “I cannot answer that from observation, Consort. I can only testify that I am aware of no way to change its course within the next few hours. A few days’ work by a space tug might achieve something, and it could be refitted in a few years, but hours? Never.”

  “Thank you. Now I understand that the probe practically skims the top of Javel’s cloud cover at periapsis?”

  “I know it goes very close. If it were not a nickel-iron monolith, tidal forces would have broken up it apart by now.”

  “And there has been extensive solar flare activity in the last few days. Cannot t
his cause a planetary atmosphere to swell and increase drag?”

  “Again I can speak only to theory, not from observation. Yes, the tenuous uppermost reaches of the atmosphere may rise and increase drag, but that effect at periapsis would tend to change the orbit at its outer limit, apoapsis. In fact Pock’s World is much closer to the probe’s periapsis. The probe passed periapsis a couple of days ago, moving at maximum velocity.”

  And now it was almost here. Braata did not say that, but the thought was inescapable. Ratty glanced down at the hologram as if he might see the monster on its way. He quickly added vertigo to his list of complaints. He would have to go and lie down soon.

  Bedel glanced at Oxindole as if to ask if he had any questions for the witness, but it was Duty who spoke.

  “Engineer Braata, you are fortunate that we do not shoot messengers on Pock’s World, for the news you bring us is dire.” Her smile robbed her words of sting. “Nevertheless, we thank you for it. It was kind of you to come and advise us. My blessings may not mean much to you, but you have them anyway. Live and die happy.”

  Braata hesitated, then made a slightly lopsided bow, as if one knee was trying to bend. He turned and departed, feet tapping.

  “I call Gownsman Trover,” Bedel said.

  Gownsman Trover turned out to be a buxom woman sporting a green cape like the one Skerry had worn. She admitted to being director of the Voissoir observatory.

  “Tell us,” Bedel said, “when you last observed the pirate probe.”

  “About an hour ago, Consort, using radar.”

  “And?”

  “It was slowed slightly by its passage around Javel, about two seconds more than predicted. We recalculated ground zero then as being about fifty kilometers west of Hostie Caldera. Today’s measurements indicate no change in that prediction.”

  Bedel sighed. “So in your opinion Pock’s World is doomed. Do any of your colleagues disagree?”

  “Yes, it is doomed, and I know of no qualified person who disagrees.” Trover looked and sounded close to tears.

  Duty blessed and dismissed her.

  “There is my case, Mother,” Love said. “Clearly the Goddess has decided to gather all her children to her and end this world. She may be defending us from the cuckoos, or she may have other reasons that she has not revealed to us. Whatever they are, we have no choice but to accept them. To ask her to deflect that missile now would be futile and presumptuous.”

  Duty shook her head. “And not to ask would show a sad lack of faith.” She turned lovingly to her own mother, slumped in the chair beside her. “Now you, Wisdom, dear?”

  The old woman sighed as if she found the proceedings absurd. “So Joy tells you it’s wicked and Love tells you it’s useless. What am I supposed to tell you?”

  Oxindole said, “We’re not sure, Holiness. This is where the records are spotty.”

  Duty laughed and patted her mother’s withered hand. “What do you want to tell me?”

  “What I’ve said from the start. You’ll either die trying or you’ll die with the rest of us ten minutes later. You’ve got nothing much to lose and a world to save. Of course you’ll do it.”

  No doubt Duty said something memorable then, but at that moment Ratty Turnsole passed out and slid to the floor.

  Chapter 3

  The air car would have held eight, but there was no one there except Glaum, Linn, Solan, and Athena herself. She did not speak to Glaum the boor, being more inclined to wring that plinth he called a neck, and she was finding it hard to be courteous to Linn Lazuline now.

  As far as she had been able to work out, STARS’s branch on Pock’s World must have learned of the cuckoos two or three days before her political conference at Portolan. A messenger would have come post-haste to Ayne to report to head office. It might have taken a couple of days to organize a meeting of the STARS board, either face-to-face or by cog-com, but the decision to sterilize must have been made quickly. The orders were sent, and the Braata mission dispatched to redirect the probe. Only then had STARS gone public. But Linn had known what was going to happen when he came to proposition her at Portolan.

  On the first day of the Backet Commission’s venture, Ratty had called the sterilization solution overkill, but it made sense now. It was not the cuckoos themselves that STARS feared, at least not as an immediate threat. But if Umandral and his companions ever convinced the Pocosins that there were worlds out there with higher technology, which STARS was censoring for its own purposes, then the ancient monopoly would be in jeopardy. It wasn’t the cuckoos who must not be allowed to escape from Pock’s, it was what they knew.

  So the decision had been made, and the fact-finding farce proposed as a public relations gesture. Likely Lynn had organized that himself. Delegates from both the Sector Council and the Catholic Church were obvious choices, and they had selected their own representatives, Millie and Brother Andre. Whoever they were, their votes were fairly easy to predict, one aye and one nay. But Linn had used the junket to manipulate his youthful dream girl into bed at last and the gadfly Ratty Turnsole into a deathtrap. It all made revolting sense now.

  Athena knew how she was going to get even, but revenge depended on a safe trip home to Ayne, and if Linn stood as high in the STARS hierarchy as she suspected, that depended on his goodwill. Mum was the word, for now. She watched the fabulous Pocosin scenery rush by below and had Solan tell her whatever he could about it.

  The two men remained mainly silent also—Glaum no doubt cognizing, and Linn showing as much interest as Athena in viewing a world that he and his accomplices had already condemned to death. Just as Nervine Landing came in sight, he suddenly spoke.

  “Friend Glaum, is Pock’s Station in danger from the impact?”

  The big man shrugged. “No immediate danger. Its view of the rising fireball will be spectacular, but its orbit will carry it well to the north of ground zero on its first pass. Three orbits later it will directly overfly the crater, but by then there will be no danger. In the long term it needs supplies of food and so on from the surface, but that is all. STARS will leave a few observers on the station and evacuate them later to Pyrus 1.”

  “I repeat that I should like to view the impact,” Linn said. “Worlds do not die every day.”

  Glaum’s smiles were always contemptuous. “You are not the first to ask, but STARS has refused all such requests.”

  Linn sighed. “The path to Heaven is paved with broken dreams.”

  It was an innocent enough remark. It sounded sufficiently like some obscure quotation for its lack of relevance to pass without comment, but something about the way it was said… And the way Glaum glanced at Athena before he answered…

  “I suspect there have been a couple of exceptions. Large donations to favorite charities or research programs may have been involved.”

  “My foundation is always looking for worthy causes to support.”

  And Glaum nodded.

  “That’s the most active volcano in the world just now,” Solan remarked, pointing a weedy finger.

  Linn went back to staring out the window.

  So did Athena. On the face of it, Linn had just been asked for a bribe and had agreed to discuss the amount. But his remark about the path to Heaven could have been a code, and in that case the hints of bribery were mere camouflage; Linn had revealed his STARS rank to Glaum and issued orders. Or perhaps they both belonged to some secret neo-Masonic-type fraternity. Either way, she was convinced that Linn was now in charge.

  Nervine Station came in sight—a bleak, dark lava flow studded with five blockhouses. Those were marked off by shock fences, uninhabited islands in an ocean of people. The STARS forces were having trouble keeping the crowds under control: she saw puffs of happy gas and flickers of writhes in use. Air cars buzzed around like feasting mosquitoes.

  “Busy place,” Linn said.

  “Panic,” Glaum remarked. “Everyone wants into the ark. No one boards a shuttle until their DNA has been checked. Shuttles
are breaking down from lack of maintenance. We’ve had one near-crash already.”

  “But we are guests of STARS,” Athena said. “You will see that we receive priority?”

  Glaum’s eyes flickered momentarily in Linn’s direction. “Of course,” he said.

  The path to the Heaven was still open, no matter how it was paved.

  * * *

  Even with Chairman Glaum’s weight behind them, they had hours to wait at Nervine. The waiting room was packed, mainly with off-worlders and only a sprinkling of Pocosins. Linn disappeared. In the stress and confusion, Solan’s hard-tested nerves finally cracked, and he sobbed his heart out in Athena’s arms.

  After that, the ride up in the shuttle was a relief, and a great adventure for the boy. Alas, Pock’s station was even more crowded than the Nervine blockhouse, with people being shuttled in faster than the entangler could transmit them onward to Pyrus. There was no food or water left, the air was foul.

  Exactly how an entangler worked was outside both Athena’s expertise and—until now—her field of interest. Her knowledge was confined to the popular understanding that the travelers’ bodies were destructively mapped, the information was transmitted by entanglement link, and the atoms that were ripped away in the process became feedstock for the reconstruction of arrivals. This raised the interesting question of what would happen if everyone were leaving and no one returning. Would the Pocosin entangler fill up with human soup and be forced to shut down? Would the Pyrus 1 entangler run out of raw material? These were not matters she wanted to think about, let alone discuss with anyone who might know.

  Tired and hungry, they at last approached the door to the entangler: six ahead, five ahead, four…

  She jumped when Linn appeared beside her, but he was smiling, not gloating. “I wish you bon voyage and happy memories.”

  So she was not to be held against her will, and her sense of relief told her how worried she had been about that.