The Stars are also Fire - [Harvest the Stars 02]

by Poul Anderson

  A damaged circuit, Kenmuir thought. It must be generating a signal the mind perceived as noise, whatever was left of the mind.

  The sound in his earplugs softened. "The sea roars. Breakers. Wind. Salt. Driftwood like huge bones. Here, a sand dollar. For you, Uncans." She laughed, quietly and lovingly.

  "My lady," Kenmuir pleaded, "do you know where you are?" Who you are?

  "Lars—" The eyestalks came to rest. He felt her peer at him. He felt knives in his flesh. "But you're not Lars," she said without tone. "You're nobody."

  "My name—"

  "Lars, you ended me. Didn't you?"

  Hope flickered, very faint. Kenmuir drew breath. "I have to tell you—But I've come as a friend. They need your help again on the Moon."

  Chill replied. "There wasn't going to be any again."

  "I'm afraid—"

  Sudden gentleness: "Don't be afraid. 'Mond never was. 'Bloody 'ell!' he'd shout, and change ahead."

  Snatching after anything, Kenmuir responded, "Like Anson Guthrie. Also after he became . . . like you."

  "Sigurd was never afraid either," Dagny crooned. "He loved danger. He laughed with it. Not at it, with it. That's Kaino, you know."

  "Yes," Kenmuir said dully. "Your son."

  "They're dead. They died on dead rocks in deep space. 'Mond and Kaino are dead."

  "I know." In desperation: "That's what I'm here about. You, you carried on. You lived on, for all the others."

  The download began to sing, softly and minor-key.

  "He is dead and gone, lady,

  He is dead and gone;

  At his head a grass-green turf;

  At his heels a stone."

  She stopped. "Only—no grass grows yonder."

  "It may yet," Kenmuir said. "If you will help, this one last time."

  The eyes stood unbending, the voice went grim. "Lars promised."

  "He did. But—"

  "To 'Mond, you said, Lars. I'd go to where 'Mond is."

  "He hoped, with his whole heart he hoped."

  She laughed. He heard the bitterness. "Estúpido. Dagny went there. She was free to. Ghosts aren't. How could they have a birthright? They were never born."

  "You are Dagny Beynac," he said into her delirium. "As Anson Guthrie the download is Anson Guthrie. The man, his spirit."

  Eyestalks trembled, voice quickened. "Guthrie? Uncans? He still is?"

  "Not here," Kenmuir sighed. "At far Centaurus. It's been centuries, Madame Beynac."

  "And the wind blew and blew," she murmured.

  "Centuries."

  She didn't seem to hear him. "From a story I read once when I was a child. By Lord Dunsany. They hanged a highwayman out on the heath and left him there alone. And the wind blew and blew."

  Bring her attention back, hold it to the point. "Yes, Lars Rydberg broke his word to you. In a way. He hoped you'd rest in peace forever as you wished, that nobody would have to raise you. But I must. For a moment, a single moment. One question." Time was blowing by. How many minutes were left him?

  "Where is your face, 'Mond?" The voice cracked across. "I can't bring back your face any more."

  "One question, and I'll give you peace. But now, at once, or it's no good."

  "'Mond, 'You are Dagny's son,' you said to Lars, 'Mond. 'You shall be welcome here, by damn, always.' " How might a download weep?

  And Lars had betrayed them both, Kenmuir thought. Or had he?

  As if from the stars beyond the door, an idea struck through. "I've seen his images, Edmond Beynac's. His face was wide and, and angular, with high cheekbones and green eyes."

  "Yes!" Dagny shouted. "Yes! Oh, 'Mond, welcome back! Bienvenu, mon chéri!"

  Pursue. "He showed the way to Proserpina."

  "Bloody hell, yes, he did!"

  Kenmuir spoke fast, but as he would have spoken to a beloved. "Hear me, I beg you. Your people, his descendants and yours, they need Proserpina now, they need it terribly, and it's been lost. Do you remember how to find it?"

  Anger flashed. "For this you woke me?"

  He stood straight before the eyes. "Yes. If you can't forgive me, will you anyhow help?"

  Suddenly he heard warmth. "I have 'Mond back. For that, thanks."

  "Will you tell me?"

  "Will you send me home to him?"

  "Yes." He bent down to his pack, loosed certain knots, and lifted the sledgehammer in his hands. "I have this." Each single word he must ram out of his mouth.

  "Then quickly," she implored, "before I lose him again."

  He could say no more? The silence took them.

  "Far and far," she sighed, "a long way to go for a death. But Proserpina brings the springtime with her. Apple blossoms behind Daddy's and Mother's house . . ."

  Was she slipping back into nightmare? "The orbital elements!" Kenmuir yelled.

  "Quiet," she bade him. "My caveman's hunting them for me."

  He waited. Through the open door, the stars watched.

  "Yes," Dagny said. "Here they are. Thanks, old bear." She recited the numbers. "Do you have them?"

  "I do," he answered: on a recorder and cut into his brain.

  "Good," she said calmly. "Now, your promise."

  Terror snatched at him. "Do you truly want—?"

  "For me," she said. "And for Lars."

  "I owe it you, then," he heard himself say. His hands closed hard on the helve. "Goodbye, my lady."

  "Fare you well," she said like a benediction. Command rang forth: "Now!"

  He swung the hammer up over his head and back down, with all his force. The case was strong, but it was not meant to take impacts like that, and radiation had weakened it. Organometal split asunder. Iron crushed circuits.

  He cast the hammer from him and reeled out of the tomb. Stars blazed.

  No, he must not cry, he must not huddle into grief, not yet. Kestrel and Aleka were, aloft. He switched his radio on. They could receive across the tens of thousands of kilometers between, and it mattered no longer that others heard. "Are you there?" he called. "Come in, come in."

  "Yes," the dear voice responded. "Oh, darling, you're hurt."

  "Record this." He rattled off the figures. "Do you have them?"

  "Yes—"

  "On your way."

  "Aloha au iā 'oe," he heard. "I love you." He could not see, but he could imagine the spaceship surge forward.

  He slumped down onto the regolith and waited for Venator's men. The sun broke over the ringwall.

  * * * *

  44

  T

  he Peace Authority vessel drove Earthward at half a gravity.

  She was big, with space for some cabins. Kenmuir had been put in one by himself. The door was locked. His guards had told him that if he needed anything he could ask for it through the intercom, but thus far he had not. What he most wanted was to be alone.

  Well, he would have liked a viewscreen, that he might look out upon the stars. Cramped and barren, the room crowded him together with his thoughts.

  For the hundredth or the thousandth weary time he wondered how all this had come to pass, how he turned into a rebel and a killer. Why? He never intended or foresaw it. Events seemed to have acquired their own momentum, almost a will of their own. Was that the nature of human history? Chaos— strange attractors—how much did the Teramind itself understand? How much did God?

  The door spread. It reclosed as a blue-clad figure stepped through. Kenmuir rose from the unfolded bunk. For a few seconds they stood motionless, two men tall and lean, one dark, one pale.

  "Greeting, Captain Kenmuir," the newcomer said in Anglo of the eastern hemisphere.

  "You're Pragmatic Venator, aren't you?" the prisoner replied. "So we meet at last."

  The officer nodded. "I want to talk with you while we can be private."

  "Private? Your machines are watching and listening, I'm sure."

  "They're your machines too." Humanity's.

  "We're both in error. They're nobody's." Robots reporting to so
photects that ultimately were facets of the supreme intellect.

  "No contradiction," Venator said. "Your partner is yours, and you are hers, but neither is property."

  Something stirred in Kenmuir. He had felt emotionally emptied; but he found that he could again care. "What about Aleka? What can you tell me?" What will you?

  Venator raised his brows. "Aleka? . . . Oh, yes. Alice Tam. She's alive and well." A smile flickered. "Inconveniently much. That's what I mainly have to discuss with you, if you're able."

  Kenmuir shrugged. "I'm able, if not exactly willing. The constabulary on Luna were . . . not unkind. I'm medicated and rested." In the body, at least. The mind, the soul—Anxiety died. He returned to the detachment that had possessed him of late, whether because he had been unknowingly tranquilized or because his spirit was exhausted; he stood apart from himself, a Cartesian consciousness observing its destiny unfold.

  "Shall we sit?" Venator suggested.

  "No need." Nor wish.

  "Do you care for refreshment? We've much to talk about."

  "No, I don't want anything," that they aboard could give him.

  "Pray rest assured you're in no danger," Venator said "You're in civilized keeping." The features weakened, the tone flattened. "Perhaps more civilized than you deserve."

  "We can argue rights and wrongs later, can't we?"

  Venator went back to mildness. "I believe we'll do more than argue, Captain. But, true, we'd best get the empirical out of the way first. Would you tell me why, m-m, Aleka didn't take you along when she escaped?"

  "Isn't that obvious? I'd have had to retreat to a safe distance, then run to the ship, after which she'd have had to lift. It could have cost us as much as an hour. We didn't have that long."

  "Obvious, yes. An hour at two gravities means an extra seven kilometers per second. I was probing the degree of your determination. I don't suppose you'll tell me where she's bound?"

  "I can't. She and the ship decided it between them after letting me off."

  "As I expected," Venator said calmly. "What you don't know can't be extracted from you. Not that it matters. One may guess. The goal clearly isn't Mars, which would be a hazardous choice in any case. Several asteroids are possible, or conceivably a Lunarian-colonized Jovian satellite. She's running on trajectory now, conserving her delta v and thus her options. Unless she comes to fear we may close in, and accelerates afresh, it will take a while for her to reach whatever goal she has in mind."

  Whereupon she would be in communication range. Kestrel's antiquated laser wouldn't carry an intelligible message across two or three astronomical units; her radio would require a high-gain receiver; and who yonder would be listening for either? Close by, Aleka's intent to signal would be unmistakable. She might perhaps land.

  "Your scheme worked, fantastical though it was," Venator continued. "I think it worked precisely because it was fantastical. We can't overhaul her before she completes her mission, and we aren't trying any longer."

  Yes, Kenmuir thought, he and she had estimated a reasonable probability of that. The ships of law enforcement were few and widely scattered through the Solar System, because their usual work was just to convey personnel or sometimes give aid to the distressed. Besides, even today, the Falcon class counted as high-powered. It had become mostly robots and sophotects that crossed space. They seldom demanded energy-wasting speed. It was humans who were short-lived and impatient.

  "You see, we don't want to provoke her into haste," Venator explained. "We want time to persuade you two of your folly, so you'll stop of your free choice." He frowned. "Consider. Do you imagine the revelation of a minor planet out among the comets will make you heroes? Think about it. Your brutal destruction of the Beynac download will shock the world."

  Kenmuir sighed. "I told the police and I told, them, she made me promise."

  "Need you have kept the promise?"

  Kenmuir nodded. "She'd been betrayed once."

  Venator's smile was briefly unpleasant. "To your benefit, as it turned out."

  Kenmuir made a grin and gestured around his cell. "This?"

  "I didn't mean you were after personal gain," Venator said. "I confess that your motives puzzle me, and suspect they puzzle you also."

  Once more Kenmuir had the sense—nonsense, cried his rationality, but the feeling would not go away—that he and Aleka had been the instruments of some great blind force, and it was not done with them yet, and they themselves were among its wellsprings. But he had better stay with immediacies. He could take advantage of the huntsman's desire for conversation.

  "What's the situation on Luna?" he asked. His interrogators there had given him no news.

  Venator's voice and bearing eased. "Well," he said as if it were interesting but of little importance, "the lady Lilisaire caused us considerable trouble, in which several of her colleagues gleefully joined. Fortunately, we avoided significant damage or casualties on either side, and things are quiet now. Officially they're under house arrest. In practice, what we have is an uneasy truce. The outcome of that will depend largely on you, my friend."

  "How?"

  Venator turned serious. "You can still halt what you've set moving. Tam has ignored our calls, but Kestrel must have taken note of them and will doubtless inform her of any that come from you."

  "What could I have to say?" Not, in the presence of machines, that he thought he loved her.

  "You, and you alone, can make her come back, keeping the secret of Proserpina."

  "Why should I?"

  "Criminal charges can be dismissed, you know, or a pardon can be granted."

  Emotion stirred anew in Kenmuir. The sharpest part of it was anger. "See here," he stated, "I never proposed to serve as a martyr, nor does she. If and when the news comes out, the Solar System will decide whether we did wrong. In spite of—" his voice faltered "—the download—when that story too is made clear . . . I dare hope for pardon from the whole human race."

  "Spare me the rhetoric, please," Venator scoffed. "You've calculated that the government will be in so awkward a position that its best move will be to quietly let infractions go unpunished, while the more radical Lunarians prepare to emigrate to Proserpina. In exchange, you won't emphasize any irregularities we may have committed."

  Kenmuir nodded. "Yes, that's approximately what we're trying for."

  "I've gathered you're a student of history," Venator said. "Tell me, with how many governments of the past would that calculation have been rational?"

  Surprised, Kenmuir stood wordless before he muttered, "I don't know. Perhaps none."

  "Correct. You'd have been dead by now, unless we chose to torture you first. If our secret got released, we'd put down the restless Lunarians by force, exterminating them if necessary. We'd tell people that the revelation was a falsehood concocted by you evildoers. We'd go on to tell the people, at considerable and emotional length, what a service we had done them, suppressing these enemies of the state. But most of the propaganda we wouldn't issue ourselves. Plenty of journalists and intellectuals would be eager to curry favor by manufacturing and disseminating it. Many among them would be sincere."

  "Yes..."

  "As it is, you are safe, while Tam runs loose because we did not expect that major weapons of war would ever be needed again. You have the cybercosm to thank, Kenmuir. You might show some trust, some gratitude."

  "But you violated the Covenant!" the spaceman protested. "And—and—" And what? How horrible an offense, really, was the hiding of a piece of information?

  "Exigencies arise," Venator said. "My hope is to convince you of that, before it is too late."

  "Suppose you do," Kenmuir retorted wildly. "How can I convince Aleka?" Any passwords or the like could have been drugged or brainphased out of him. Any image of him could be an artifact, in this world where so much reality was virtual.

  Venator hesitated. When he spoke, it was slowly, and did the thin face draw into lines of want? "She ought to listen to you and have fa
ith in you, ought she not? As for how she shall know that it is in truth you—" He looked away, as if he wished to see through the metal to stars and Earth. "My intuition is that you two are lovers. All the little intimacies, body language unique to the pair of you, incidents forgotten by one until the other reminds of them, the wholeness arisen in even as brief a time as you've had—if we wrung that quantity of data out of you, the process would leave you a vegetable. And could we write an adequate program to use it with a generated image? Perhaps the Teramind could. Perhaps not. I daresay it could reprogram your brain, so that you would become its worshipper and ardently do, of your own volition, whatever it wished."