The D’neeran Factor

by Terry A. Adams

  “I don’t know. Yes, I do. They only told us to prepare for an attack. They thought we’d ask for help and then, you see, when they had us where they wanted us, they’d tell us all the rest. I don’t think they were even going to tell us where the strike force was coming into realspace without an agreement. But they did. Somebody must have thought the ambush was our only chance. It was, too.”

  Don’s control broke in a wave of death-fear that stopped breath and thought. Hanna clung to her seat and her sanity, riding it out. It lasted only an instant before the smoke knocked him out, and when it ended the others were choking. Alia was awake and screaming in their heads.

  “Roly! Will you go shut that bitch up!”

  “Yes. Yes.” He stumbled into a wall and righted himself and made it out the door on the second try.

  “She’s too dumb to get out of Engineering,” Dorista muttered.

  “Why’d we put her there anyway? Never mind. At least there’s air there,” Hanna said, and rubbed her face with weary hands. After the first two attacks they had been spread too thin to be selective.

  They waited in silence. Alia modulated to shock and pain and was still. It was like having a siren turned off, something that squawked just at the end when you touched the switch.

  “Sharp right to the jaw,” Hanna said.

  I think I’ll stay here, Roly said to her, half-present. To be here when Alia wakes up. For the end.

  He felt acquiescence and let the mind link go, and Hanna forgot him. She ought to be thinking of sidearms, some form of futile deployment, but she could not stop staring at the citybuster. There was something at the back of her mind and she could not dig it out, and it was getting harder to think, to go on trying. Roly and Martin were passive dead weight, the future another weight of apprehension. Clara had set out with a crew of thirty-six and the survivors had died, in effect, thirty times in these last hours. The dead spoke to them still with ghostly voices their ears would not hear again. Perhaps the voices were even real. To let herself and the others believe so would reduce them to shadows for Nestor to take with ease.

  And she could not keep from thinking of how she would die. Small-arms fire if they boarded, perhaps. A single blast of heat and radiation if they didn’t. If she were taken alive there would be the half-world of stripdope, irresistible. And other indignities; but perhaps she would be drugged and would not care; and perhaps she would live and someday get revenge.

  The patterns before her eyes grew and shrank and burgeoned again as the computers adjusted for real motion. They had settled on red and yellow, and the lines that showed the cruisers coming in on Clara’s flanks were lengthening. When they met the uncertainty would end. The thought had a kind of seductiveness.

  “H’ana,” said Dorista from the floor. She still held Martin’s hand. He looked indifferently at nothing; with Willi gone he waited patiently to die.

  “H’ana?”

  Wildfire, whispered her thought, the intimate image that meant Hanna in happier times, laughing and ready and reckless. It woke Hanna, a little.

  “What?”

  “They tried this once with Lancaster, didn’t they?”

  “I think so…” She was not good at history, recent or not. “Years ago. About the time they built Havock, I guess.”

  “And the Polity stopped them.”

  “Must have. Lancaster’s got fewer defenses than we have. Than we had.”

  “Why didn’t they stop it now?”

  Hanna said wearily, “They thought we’d ask for help. We didn’t ask.”

  “Why?” Dorista sounded merely curious, but behind Hanna’s eyes she floated the shadow of D’neera encased in implacable stupidity.

  “The magistrates couldn’t agree. Stiff-necked as usual. That’s all.”

  Hanna saw that her hands were unsteady. It made her angry. She knew, distantly, that Alia was conscious and huddled in Roly’s arms. Tonia sat unspeaking near the door; she had caught Martin’s mood of relinquishment. Only Hanna and Dorista on this dying ship were thinking, and Hanna did not know how much longer her own endurance would hold. She was a D’neeran, after all, though she knew D’neera’s faults better than most. D’neerans gave and took comfort freely, and readily believed against all evidence that wrongs could be cured with love. They were stubborn and joyous anarchists who could not make a common move without arguing the direction for years, and they did not like emergencies, did not know how to meet them. There were men and women still alive and vigorous who remembered the time when D’neera had nothing to do with the rest of the human species. Many wished it were still that way. They had argued too long about asking for help.

  The cruisers were closing in, in no hurry. Perhaps they thought everyone on Clara was dead. The Havock was closer too; Clara could not hold herself steady, and she would drift near but not into the monster’s path. Hanna put her chin on her hand and watched the course and mass displays, resisting an impulse to let herself sink into the pretty colors. The idea was coming by itself. Think of something else and let it be born.

  Dorista said in a desultory way, “They wanted to help, didn’t they.”

  “Umm-hmm. One of the commissioners talked to the magistrates personally. Jameson of Heartworld, in fact. Isn’t that funny?” The ghost of a smile twitched at her mouth. “Of all people.”

  “What did he say? Did Lady Koroth tell you?”

  “There wasn’t time for much. She thought he was angry because she was the only one who’d listen.”

  “They’d listen now.”

  “It’s too late.”

  “To call for help now? Why? Even if we’re finished, the Interworld Fleet would just come in and kick Nestor out of the system.”

  “It would take too long for the Fleet to get here. By that time the buster would be in place. Over Koroth, probably. It’s got the biggest city and its House has the best ties with the Polity. Then—well. City Koroth alone gives Nestor two hundred thousand hostages.”

  Dorista sighed and did not speak again. Hanna watched the citybuster coming closer. She thought of City Koroth with its fountains and its ever-blowing wind and the slow clean river rolling toward the sea, and its white splendid House gleaming in the sun, and how in winter the scarlet stoneveins grew up its walls from the snow. She thought of the sky as she had seen it last, so crisp a blue she could almost touch it, and how this abomination would dirty it with threat.

  The idea was there, born whole.

  Suicide.

  What wasn’t?

  Dorry! Hanna said, showing it to her all at once. They were almost close enough to Havock to make it work. Closer would be better.

  Fear and approval wrestled in Dorista. This was different from deciding to fight; no human being believes in his death, and there is always a chance of winning if he fights.

  But look, Hanna said, concentrating on Havock’s end, displaying it: yes, only dust left of Clara and, yes, her people dust too, but also much of Havock, the rest crumpling and folding like soft plastic and a fireball at the end—

  Hanna looked at her friend. “Well?” she said.

  Dorista hung back. But the logic was irresistible. With Havock gone Nestor would find it hard to press the Polity for terms of occupation.

  “Yes,” Dorista said.

  Martin focused on Hanna and smiled.

  Tonia sighed and got up. “Where do we start?” she said. She added, “Don’t ask the others.”

  “I have to,” Hanna said. “Start figuring it out, Dorry.”

  The ghosts sang to her more loudly: Come to us. I am not doing this, she thought, it is against nature; but her hands moved, her voice was clear, even Roly somehow did not hear the ghosts. Roly was relieved. He did not mind dying so much, only fighting. The picture Hanna showed him comforted him: Clara drifting helpless, harmless, near Havock. A last burst of conventional power to throw them straight at Havock, crashing with luck right through its shields. And a last Jump to anywhere shredding Clara and Havock together throug
h all of space-time. Roly would not have to fight. He would just be here, and then not here; and he settled on what his death would buy with a fixity of purpose that shamed Dorista’s hesitation. And Alia took courage at last, took it from him.

  “Are you smiling?” Tonia asked. She looked at Hanna strangely.

  “It’s everything they warn us about,” Hanna said. “Random terminus, undescribed mass, we’re not clearing dimensional topography for any point—we’re doing it all wrong. Every last thing.”

  They had had the same solemn instructors, and Dorista smiled too.

  For a while they worked very hard, sabotaging failsafes and destroying Clara’s automatic inhibitions against what they were going to do. They worked with an air of astonishment at themselves and also, because they were D’neerans, some of the pleasure of clever children getting away with the forbidden. Hanna fixed on the pleasure to keep her thoughts from other things. She would key the Jump herself. There was no time to program the computers for every contingency, and they might be unreliable in any case. She thought about the final key, the last thing she would touch. She pushed the dead away so the others would not hear, and went machinelike through her tasks. Past a crystal wall the shadows waited, urging her to farewells. Farewell to sun and sea of youth, the lure of stars and strangeness, to the bright future, to so much, so much wasted—

  (You are our future, Lady Koroth said. The white faces of a non-human emerged from the past. The F’thalian Hierarchus had chuckled at humanity’s useless squabbles. You were right, Progenitor, she said. But did you see my only own end?)

  “Ready,” Dorista said, but something in her wavered. Hanna put aside her memories and the alien Hierarchus diminished into the past. She had strength for Dorista and steadied her. Where did the strength come from? The ghosts, perhaps. In a kind of exultation she saw the wills of her friends as separate threads and took them in her hand. H’ana ril-Koroth faded with the ghosts. She had become an instrument.

  She drew a lever through its course, and Clara shuddered and began to move.

  And the cruisers moved fast; but not toward Clara.

  “What the hell? What have they got up their sleeves?”

  Hanna stood up suddenly. She felt very light; gravity had stabilized, but not at norm. She pushed at her hair and rubbed her hands, too nervous to keep still.

  “They’re heading out,” Tonia said.

  “Where? What to? There’s nothing out that way. Why aren’t they defending Havock?”

  Clara picked up speed. Dorista said, “Maybe Havock’s going to finish us off and they’re getting out of the way.”

  “Busters don’t track moving targets. They depend on warships for defense. Clara masses enough to get through its shields. Get us more speed, Roly.”

  One of the cruisers started back in a wide turn.

  “That’s for us,” Hanna said. “That was a command error before. Why? What happened?”

  “Now,” Tonia said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “I can’t get the evasion program going. They’re going to fire and it’ll catch us before we do it.”

  “I want to be closer.”

  “There isn’t time!”

  Hanna’s hand crept toward the key. She said, “A second. A few seconds. Marty, can you hear what they’re saying? Let us hear.”

  The loop was still going, mindless. On another band someone shouted at them to halt. The same on still another.

  They were close enough to Havock and the cruiser would fire. Now. Now.

  A new voice boomed out in clear strong Standard, not at them.

  “This is Commander Andre Tirel of the Interworld Fleet Warship Willowmeade. You are ordered to lay down your arms and vacate the stellar system of D’neera at once. Do not attack. We will return fire—”

  Dorista caught at Hanna’s moving hand. She looked at Hanna’s face, slipped in front of her, and set about changing course. Clara responded slowly, pulling up, up, on a course that would clear Havock. The calm voice went on.

  “Any hostile act directed toward a D’neeran vessel will be considered an act of war against the Interworld Polity and we will take appropriate action—”

  Martin shut off Willowmeade. “We could get them on sensors,” he said.

  Tonia’s fingers flew. “There they are.” Her voice shook. “We weren’t looking there. What’s the other one?”

  After a minute Martin said, “St. Petersburg.”

  “There’s more. What happened?”

  “They must have been waiting. They must have been close. For days maybe. Waiting for the magistrates to yell.”

  Dorista said, “H’ana? H’ana. Are you all right?”

  Hanna slowly took her eyes from the shifting forms. The cruiser was not coming after them. Sweet ballistic curves of life. She said thickly, “All right.”

  All right but wounded. All right; but there was no joy. Shock held them silent and guilt gnawed at them already. Others who deserved to live were dead. The world was changed and they were changed forever. They could not yet know how. Hanna felt them touch her, seeking comfort and offering it. She did not want comfort. She did not know what had happened to her. It seemed she had pressed the button after all; that the decision had been the reality and all of them were ghosts, chattering in the dust, and the fireball which she saw vividly, sharp-edged and real, in the lesser reality of this crippled chamber.

  She moved at last, slowly. Dorista had canceled the Jump order; but she looked once at Hanna, and checked it again.

  Hanna said, her voice dragging, “Get Willowmeade, Marty.”

  The choice came unconsciously from memories of Willow. She had been met courteously there.

  “Got it,” Martin said.

  She did not bother to identify herself. “Polity force,” she said, “we need help.”

  She put her head down and thought about darkness. Dorista took over.

  PART I

  Chapter 1

  The art of personal combat, like every other human endeavor, is transmuted on D’neera. Combatants abstain from the use of telepathy, presumably in order to retain the element of surprise; but in compensation, by a curious inversion of logic, each movement is announced before it is made by the tiniest of gestures, nearly subliminal, so that no one is hurt unless he is incompetent or undisciplined or distracted.

  Hanna nearly got hurt; she was unexpectedly flat on her back, looking up at Master Ling through the indignation of pain, the sun-warmed boards of the studio floor very hard beneath her. The big dusty space swung round her once and stopped.

  Ling thought: Soldiers!—a piercing image of destructive, undisciplined children. “They send me,” he said aloud, “soldiers, who of all human animals are least suited to this art.”

  Hanna sat up and carefully rubbed her spine. She did not point out that D’neera’s tiny defense establishment hardly qualified as an army, or that its handful of part-time fighters had, on the whole, a profound distaste for the job, or that if it were not for them Ling might have been blown to atoms a few months ago. He knew all that; he was only relieving his dissatisfaction with her performance.

  “I was thinking of other matters,” she said humbly.

  “That is more than enough for today,” Ling said, permitting himself a sharp edge of sarcasm.

  “Yes,” said Hanna, still aching. She got to her feet and went to the railing that in summer was the only thing separating the studio from the space over City Koroth. Ling’s next student sat cross-legged near the edge, meditating; he had not seen her fall, nor had he seen anything for some time except the non-images deep in his own soul, where, according to Ling, all the universe was discernible. Hanna had never seen the boy before. She leaned over the railing to let the summer breeze dry her sweating skin and wondered if Ling had arranged for the stranger to be present as a lesson to her. She had been coming to Ling for four Standard years, and for four years he had been scolding her because of her—

  “Youth,” she said.
“That’s all. Consider what distracts me, Master. Travel and sex and curiosity—maybe in forty years, or a hundred and forty, I’ll be an apt pupil.”

  “You are facetious,” said Ling, whose worst fault in Hanna’s eyes was his lack of humor. “I teach children who are less easily distracted.”

  “Yes,” Hanna said submissively, but she was distracted again, looking out over City Koroth.

  Ling had his studio on the fourteenth floor of the tallest building in City Koroth. The child H’ana Bassanio, occasionally towed here by her mother from the little seaside town of Serewind, had looked up, it seemed forever, at this structure with its sometimes transparent, sometimes vanished walls, where artists played in the sunshine and Ling (not much younger then) taught something that might be combat or dance, and at the very top in a space as bare as this, the Development Committee argued the future. The committee had now withdrawn to more comfortable quarters—after fighting about it for years—and to the woman H’ana ril-Koroth, who had traveled, who had seen the cloud-piercing towers of Earth and the spires of alien F’thal, this box of a building was very small. But not many D’neerans had traveled, and to most of her compatriots it was still tall.

  Ling came up behind her and laid his hands on her bare shoulders. He knew what she was thinking, and would not be drawn into it.

  “Nevertheless, you have what is necessary to become Adept,” he said. She shivered a little in the sunlight, caught in his vision of the precise, inhuman control of the Adept.

  “To what end?” she said.

  “The no-end of the inward journey, which is the beginning of all others,” he said.

  “I haven’t the time,” Hanna said, “or the patience,” but that was as close as a D’neeran could get to a lie or an evasion, and the rest of the truth was as visible to Ling as if it stood before them: the silver spaceship and the starclouds.

  Ling’s hands tightened for a moment and withdrew.

  “Go,” he said. “You are impatient for news. Pursue it.”