by John Grant
WITHIN A SHORT TIME, said Nightmirror. MAINTAINING THE SHIP'S DEFENSES AGAINST THE HEAT HAS NOT BEEN EASY, AND LAUNCHING THE MISSILES TIRED US FURTHER. WE SHALL SHIFT AWAY FROM HERE AS SOON AS WE CAN.
"How long will that be?"
ABOUT TWENTY-EIGHT SECONDS.
"See if you can manage it sooner," said Strider ironically, tugging at the neck of her suit. Destruction of any sort she abhorred; destruction of intelligent life was the worst.
"Oh," she added suddenly, "I meant to say: thank you for saving our lives."
The Images didn't respond.
"Did you say," she continued, "that all the wars in this galaxy were because of cultures rebelling against the Autarch?"
WE DID, said Ten Per Cent Extra Free.
"Well," said Strider, "I reckon we've just made a political statement." She gestured towards the wreckage in the Pocket. "We're on the side of the rebels."
2
Spindrift Would Like to Offer
More Assistance But . . .
They moved back across the elliptical galaxy in carefully staggered jumps until they were fairly close to where they had first emerged into The Wondervale. Strider's reasoning was that the best place to go was where the Autarchy would assume they wouldn't be so stupid as to try to hide.
The Images agreed. WE SHOULD HAVE AT LEAST A FEW DAYS, said Heartfire, BUT AFTER THAT THINGS ARE LIKELY TO GET ROUGH IN THAT REGION. WE SHOULD MAKE PLANETFALL AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.
"This ship isn't built for planetfall," said Strider.
IT IS NOW.
"Oh yeah?"
ITS DRIVE CAN BE SWITCHED FROM ONE MODE TO ANOTHER. IT HAS THE CAPABILITY OF OPERATING AS A SAFE FUSION DRIVE FOR MAKING LANDINGS. WHILE WE WERE BIDING OUR TIME IN THE RED GIANT WE GATHERED FUEL. WE HAVE THE MATTER UNDER CONTROL, CAPTAIN LEONIE STRIDER.
She believed them, and at the same time she couldn't help feeling skeptical.
Also, she was still experiencing guilt over the slaughter she had commanded. She knew the feeling was irrational: it had been a case of them or us. It didn't make the guilt any easier to bear. She felt like a child who has stolen some sweets: the crime is trivial in one way, not at all trivial in another. She kept wondering if she could maybe have talked the reptiloid out of trying to destroy the Santa Maria, then realizing immediately afterwards that of course she couldn't have: The creature has destroyed half a thousand worlds. If the tyranny was prepared to extirpate millions—billions—for the sake of preserving itself, then it wasn't even going to notice the destruction of forty-some human beings.
Still . . .
Still, she wondered how many sentient creatures had been aboard that ship. How many of them were there voluntarily? Tyrannies tended to conscript their troops. She decided not to ask the Images about this. They, for their part, although they must have known that the question was skulking at the edges of her mind, chose not to offer any unsolicited answer. For that she was very grateful.
The other matter that still burdened her was that this wasn't supposed to be the way that alien societies met. From youth she'd assumed that, if ever humanity did encounter eetees, there would be a joyous blending of cultures. The same message had been drummed into her throughout her years of training with the SSIA—whose purposes had been not so much idealistic as practical: make friends with the alien fast, or the next thing that happened might be that the alien made the Sun go nova. In a way, of course, humanity's first meeting with aliens—the Images—had approximated to that vision, although the Images were so divorced from human understanding that the cultural exchange had been all one way. And the other thing to remember was that the Autarchy of Nalla was no more going to be able to establish the Solar System's location than Strider was herself—less so, in fact, because the Autarchy didn't have the help of the Images.
She knew all these things logically, yet it felt wrong to have unleashed so much destruction.
Strider confided some of these thoughts to the most unlikely of people. Marcial Holmberg had arrived on the command deck a couple of minutes after the alien vessel had met its fiery end and after the Santa Maria had fled from the hot haven of the red giant. He had been breathless and angry.
"On behalf of the civilian personnel aboard this vessel . . ."
"Leave it be," said Leander sharply. "We could all have been dead by now."
"We should have been told what was going on," Holmberg protested. He flopped down into the chair that Strider had thrust towards him. "We should have been told."
"O'Sondheim told you as much as he could on the commline," said Strider. She kept her tones steady. Holmberg might be a major pain in the neck, but he was one she had to live with. The personnel might have elected someone worse to represent them, although she couldn't for a moment think of a candidate. Flipping that over in her mind, she realized that from the civilians' point of view they probably couldn't have nominated anyone better. In between wanting to take a lazgun to Holmberg, she had actually begun to feel some respect for him. It seemed like a long time ago that she had told him that he wasn't as good at his job as she was at hers. She wondered, now, if that were true. He was an obstreperous shithead, if the truth had to be told; but it was his job to be that. The non-SSIA personnel would have been a lot worse off if they'd elected someone who allowed every decision made by Strider and her officers to go unchallenged.
"I don't have a commline," said Holmberg. "Quite a few of us don't."
"I don't have one myself," said Strider. "Look, we did our best—OK?"
Briefly she explained what had happened. Less briefly, she heard him explain how terrified many of the personnel had been. She pulled another seat over on its rollers to sit beside him, listening. Leander obviously thought she was mad to waste so much time with the man, but in reality there was nothing much else for Strider to do—the Images were taking care of guiding the Santa Maria through the various tachyonic shifts it was making across The Wondervale. Leander was occasionally monitoring their progress in a Pocket, but in fact that progress might just as well have gone unmonitored.
"We can hardly regard your first tour of duty as being entirely successful, Captain Strider," Holmberg said eventually.
"We're still alive," said Strider, beginning to smile. She could see from Holmberg's face that, yes, he was deliberately acting out a role.
Suddenly relaxing, he grinned back at her. "I know that." But his eyes were still unhappy, belying the smile. Whatever Strider said to him wouldn't take away the memory of the terror he'd been through. It must be the same for many of the other civilians.
"I'm tired," said Strider suddenly. "I'm going off duty—and I'm pulling O'Sondheim off as well. Would you like to join us in the elevator down to the village?"
#
There was only a single city on the airless world of Qitanefermeartha, but it was inarguably the most important city in The Wondervale. Contained within a dome three hundred kilometers from side to side and fifty kilometers high, the city, itself called Qitanefermeartha, was the seat of the Autarch Nalla and his governmental organization. The planet was defended by some four thousand warcruisers; the dome of the city was surrounded by forcefields capable of deflecting any missile or ray that The Wondervale had yet devised; the dome itself was constructed of massively dense deadmetal, which has the capacity to absorb energy, and was thus almost as impregnable as were the forcefields around it; in order to enter the dome, one had to go on foot through seventeen different huge airlocks, each of which was constantly monitored and also had implanted in its walls sufficient laser cannonry to arm a medium-sized warcruiser; after running this gauntlet you were confronted by over a hundred of the most highly trained troopers of the Autarch's Elect, who had general instructions to reduce you to your constituent atoms in a barrage of disintegrator fire if they so much as didn't like your face (or, depending upon your species, nearest equivalent thereof).
Paranoia was neither a rare nor a necessarily disadvantageous quality in a Wondervale autarch: after all, a b
illion billion sentient beings generally wanted the present incumbent dead. On the other hand, it meant that the Autarch Nalla didn't get a lot of casual visitors. Most people either stayed inside Qitanefermeartha, enjoying the luxuries of court life, or they stayed as far away from it as they reasonably could.
There was a small spaceport nearby, but it was rarely used—there were extensive holo linkups within the city, so that it was only infrequently that the Autarch's officers needed to visit in person. To be sure, the reception on the linkups was generally lousy, because of the millions of tons of deadmetal surrounding the city, but it was good enough for the Autarch—who could always have a few technicians executed if the holo became utterly incomprehensible—and for his emissaries, who were well content to be physically unpresent. The Autarch was unpredictable at best; if angered for any reason, he was lethal.
Inside the dome, the overriding impression of the city of Qitanefermeartha was that it was coralline pink. This was the Autarch's favorite color, and he had insisted that every structure within the dome be built in compatible material. Several worlds had been stripped of much of their granitic and metamorphic surface rocks in order to satisfy his desire. That this had destroyed the ecosystems of those worlds, and often their sentient inhabitants, was not a matter of much interest to the Autarch; the haulage costs involved in getting the rock to the remote planet Qitanefermeartha were a greater concern, though one easily solved by upping the tax-tribute required of every inhabited planet in The Wondervale. The more thoughtful of the Autarch's courtiers speculated about what might happen if the inheritor of The Wondervale's throne—for surely the old bastard must die some day—preferred, say, blue. None of them said anything about this out loud, of course: there probably wasn't a single cubic millimeter within Qitanefermeartha that wasn't under constant surveillance.
The Autarch didn't like to be reminded of the possibility of his demise.
He was a member of the Antracvhan species, whose lifespans were a hundred times longer, thanks to genetic engineering in the remote past, than those of the majority of species within The Wondervale. He was not in fact immortal, but to most members of the subject peoples within the Autarchy the distinction was purely academic: they would be dead and dust millennia before he finally succumbed.
Unless someone hastened the succumbing. A billion billion people hoped that someone would. Even the Autarch's most favored courtiers often wished this: when the Autarch got into a particularly filthy temper, the population of Qitanefermeartha became staggeringly sparse.
The Antracvhans were quadrupedal and massive. They were not particularly well coordinated—their early discovery of the trick of genetic engineering had hindered other aspects of their evolution. Finding yourself accidentally under an Antracvhan was a fairly common cause of death among the less agile courtiers in Qitanefermeartha. There might have been many uprisings in the city had it not been for the fact that the Antracvhans dwelling there were almost all in either the bodyguard or the concubinage that surrounded the Autarch everywhere he went, which was rarely outside his own palace—a smaller dome within Qitanefermeartha's great dome and likewise constructed of deadmetal, although painted pink.
Even the open spaces of Qitanefermeartha—of which there were many—were planted with pink grass, pink flowers and trees that bore pink blossom.
The Autarch Nalla's courtiers, the dwellers in the city of Qitanefermeartha, had to maintain a ghastly charade of being Happy Happy Happy throughout their lives. It was the only—partial—guarantee that those lives would not be whimsically curtailed.
At the moment the Autarch was watching a holo of his lieutenant for the Farside sector of The Wondervale. Kaantalech was giving him bad news; the Autarch wished he could kill her for that, but was at the same time glad that he couldn't: she was perhaps the most ruthless of all his lieutenants, and thereby among the most valuable. It was an additional cause for fury, though, that those of Kaantalech's species had an offensively bright green fur coloration.
." . . and the invader craft has destroyed not only Maglittel but also a Class Eight warcruiser," Kaantalech was saying, "at a cost of—"
"Spare me the figures," said the Autarch, with a wave of his suction-padded forefoot. "This is not too severe a financial calamity."
"Yes." It looked as if Kaantalech wanted to say more, but the Autarch overrode her.
"Is there any suggestion that the invader craft from Heaven's Ancestor is acting in concert with any of the terrorist worlds?"
"No, Stars' Elect."
"My advisors have told me that there are no technological civilizations in Heaven's Ancestor," said the Autarch. His voice was a cross between a growl and a whine: it seemed a very small voice to come from such a massive body.
"It is possible," said Kaantalech hesitantly, "that the intruders were lying."
"Why should they lie? It is far more likely, is it not, that my advisors were wrong."
"I believe," Kaantalech said more firmly, "that the aliens were attempting to deceive us. The transmissions we received from Maglittel before its tragic demise—and the destruction of its cruiser—cause me to think that these aliens were attempting to mislead. Maglittel was not the most intelligent of our emissaries: it is probable that the creature stupidly accepted what it was told."
The Autarch snorted. He had been looking forward to executing a platoon or two of his advisors. Watching executions was so restful.
"These aliens—'Humans', you call them—might be useful to us?" he said.
"They are not in alliance with any of the terrorist worlds, so far as we know," said Kaantalech. "It is possible that we could recruit them to the cause of righteousness. With the technology they so obviously possess, they could be powerful allies. At the very least, we could make approaches to them for as long as is required to gain the secrets of their technology."
She perched bird-like within the lightfield of the holo, although her form was nothing like a bird's. Instead, she looked more like a miniature version of the Autarch himself, although lacking his tusks and covered with long fur. Her triangular eyes were on her bulky shoulders; by spreading her breastbone she could look almost directly behind her. She was about two meters tall and almost as wide. Her mouth, beneath a long and constantly flexing proboscis, glittered with teeth.
She was a clever person, and the Autarch disliked that cleverness: it could so easily lead to a rebellion against his reign. On the other forefoot, he relied on the cleverness of people like Kaantalech to maintain that reign. His small eyes were red with confusion.
"You will make friends with these creatures," he said finally. "Persuade them of the need for firm law in The Wondervale. And then, when you have got everything you can from them, you will annihilate them. That is my command."
"They have superior technol—" said Kaantalech before the Autarch cut off the transmission by slamming a forefoot to the floor.
#
Craft designed primarily for interstellar travel do not come to ground easily—those few that can do so at all. It is as if they were protesting that their true place is out there in the infinite vacuum, free and unfettered, rather than down here in a thick soup of gravity. Even despite the massive reconstruction of the Santa Maria that the Images had carried out, the starship's architecture remained one designed for deep space. It was better equipped to exist beneath the photosphere of a star than inside the atmosphere of a planet.
There was also a little indignity involved in that first landing. The tachyonic drive had taken them through large tracts of The Wondervale and into orbit around the larger of the two moons of the world whose name the Images could best translate as Spindrift. For the final approach to landing, however, adjustments had to be made—and they were not simple ones, even for the Images. A day and a half had passed while Heartfire and Nightmirror effected the changes; during part of this time Ten Per Cent Extra Free had communicated with fellow-Images on Spindrift, who in turn negotiated on the Santa Maria's behalf with the milita
ry of the planet's most advanced nation. The granting of permission to land seemed to be a ticklish business; Strider wasn't sure who was doing the most work, Ten Per Cent Extra Free or the other two.
Spindrift looked rather like Earth, but somewhat smaller, its huge polar icecaps dominating its map. As with Earth, only in a broadish swathe around its equator was there blue water visible. Using one of the Pockets, Strider could see that the land areas seemed strangely unpopulated—except for one large island, which was mainly taken up by what was obviously a spaceport. Of the dozen or so landing bays, only three were occupied. From the lack of evidence of any heavy industry elsewhere on the planet, Strider inferred that it was an occupied world rather than one which had developed space travel for itself. Or maybe some other civilization had planted a mere staging-post on Spindrift.
She didn't know why Ten Per Cent Extra Free's negotiations were proving so protracted. If the people on Spindrift weren't likely to be allies, why the hell had the Santa Maria come here?
She turned her attention to the moon close by. Its landscape reminded her of that of Earth's Moon: pockmarked with craters and rays, with great grey plains extending over the most part of the surface. According to the Pocket's graphic display there was, however, the faintest trace of an atmosphere. The smaller moon was much the same, but airless.
There didn't seem to be much she could do on the deck, so she passed over full command to O'Sondheim and went below to her cabin. Once there, reluctantly, she pasted a commlink to her rearmost upper right molar; this would act as a temporary commline, so that O'Sondheim could contact her instantly if need be. She loathed even this degree of invasion of her body by technology.
In fact, it was Ten Per Cent Extra Free who contacted her first.
THEY WILL NOT LET US LAND ON THEIR WORLD, he said, jolting her from sleep. As she struggled out of an anxiety dream, it took a moment or two for the information to sink in.
