“We have people from then also.”
“They’ve mostly erased their experiences, you know that.”
“Well, there are Herculeans living on various worlds.”
“Those survivors will never open up — they’ve changed.”
“The simple fact of the matter,” Poincaré said, “is quite clear and needs no justification — a Whisper Ship is a good-sized nuisance. It could kill more Federation citizens, it could destroy a planet under certain conditions — Earth, for example. Whatever Raf’s interest, he would be useful in the hunt.”
“You’re just trying to scare me, Julian,” Grazia said.
“I’m certainly not.”
“Well, it is frightening, no matter what your motive.”
“Raf, she’s picking on me. Grazia, it could happen, what I say.”
Grazia laughed and lay back on the cot.
The war left us a legacy, Kurbi thought,one which must be taken up, examined, understood; to do so is a form of loyalty to the past, and truthfulness to the future.
“Good day,” Julian said and disappeared.
Kurbi looked through the space where the man’s image had stood. The ocean beyond was alive with sunlight and small sailboats. He wondered what they were thinking inside the Herculean ship countless parsecs away.
“I’m going for a swim,” Grazia said behind him.
|Go to Contents |
VI. Target
“The savage mind deepens its knowledge with the help ofimagines mundi. ”
— Claude Lévi-Strauss
“Who is the man walking in the Way?
An eye glaring in the skull.”
— Seccho
HIS SON was shaking him awake.
“We’re not coming out — the ship won’t come out of jumpspace!”
He opened his eyes.
“I can’t tell what’s wrong,” his son was saying, “I’ve tried everything.”
“It’s not the ship,” the Herculean said, “this sometimes happens.…” He got up and followed his son forward through the ship.
The screen was blinking when they entered the control room, as if a storm were raging outside.
“Look,” his son said, “the star analogs — they look solid now!” In normal passage, the black places marking the positions of stars in normal space were not solid objects in relation to the ship; directly ahead of them now was a giant black sphere, its surface shiny and reflective. The ship was rushing toward it at an unknown velocity.
“I’ve tried to alter our course half a dozen times,” his son said, “but the ship fixes on another sphere and runs toward it.”
“We’re not in the usual otherspace, but in a nearby parallel space. A quantum uncertainty within the ship’s vibrancy matrix generator causes this sort of thing. I was warned against it. It doesn’t happen very often, but it can’t be helped. The old builders didn’t have time to iron out the problem, and they were not sure it could even be solved without altering the fundamental laws of nature.”
“But you know how to get us out?”
“I’ll try.”
The object ahead was now twice as large. In a few moments it covered the viewscreen. A reflection of the ship appeared in the black surface, a silver image rushing up to meet them head-on. Frozen energy, the old Herculean thought, everything that a living sun is not. The continuum flickered again, leaving a slow fading flash in the black below. Suddenly the ship’s image seemed to pass into them and the vessel was flitting across a Stygian plain. A mock sunrise flashed on the horizon as the continuum flickered again.Maybe we’ll die , the older Gorgias thought. He would not have to face his son, or watch him carry out his plans.
The ghastly flickering became more frequent. The Herculean passed his hand over the glowing program plate.
The ship switched. For a moment it seemed that a more familiar jumpspace was coming into view on the screen; then the alien space flickered again and he knew that the ship had only changed position within it.
“Tell me the truth — we may never come out.”
“You may be right.”
“Try again.”
“Here we go.”
The ship switched, straining to surface into the known universe, again without success. The ship was running at another black sphere.
“What now?” his son asked. There was a trace of anger in his tone.
“Wait — try again, as often as it takes to bring us out. The uncertainty in the generator fields can’t last forever by their very nature.”
“Regular watches?”
“Try three times during each watch.”
“I’ll wait until you try once more,” his son said. “Then I’ll get some rest and leave you to it.”
“Here we go.”
The ship switched for the third time.
The screen went black.
“Now what?” his son asked.
“I don’t know.…”
The ship’s lights flickered.
“It’s as if we’re not getting enough power,” his son said. “Can we check anything in here?”
“No, the receiving accumulators are a sealed mechanism.”
“You mean we get power from somewhere else?” his son asked.
“We’ve never taken on fuel, if you’ve noticed. For what this ship can do, it could never carry enough power or generate its own. I think we get it from the Cluster, but I don’t know how. Engineering and armoring was not my strong suit. I was just an attack-force captain.”
“But if the ship works, then the power source was never destroyed!” his son said.
“We’re far out of our spaces — that’s probably interfering with power reception.”
All signs of movement were absent from the black screen; reality had solidified, freezing all motion.
The screen lightened, growing brighter, as if some titanic explosion were taking place outside. The ship was suddenly in a white space, and the stars, if they were stars, appeared as small black points.
The Herculean passed his hand over the panel for the fourth time.
The known universe recreated itself on the screen.
“We don’t seem to be far from where we started,” his son said, “maybe a dozen light-years from Precept.”
Where hundreds lay dead in the dust. What had they known of the war? What had they ever done to my son? I should have tried to stop it.
But his doubts and tender feelings of mercy would not restore the Empire’s power. His son would never accept the Empire’s demise; restoration was for him the one supremely valued end, overriding all others; the effort to revive Hercules was the only way of life for him, even if in the end it might mean the death of all surviving Herculeans, including himself.
The interstellar liner drifted slowly on the screen; only minutes out of Sagan IV, it was readying to switch over into jumpspace. The Whisper Ship’s beam reached out to the cylindrical hull and began pumping energy into the forward drive mass. A hole opened like a blooming flower. Gas began to spill out. The beam shifted to the midsection and another wound opened; red light and human shapes spilled out into space.
It’s the only way.
His father had left the cabin a few moments before the attack.The whole point is to do cruel and terrible things . Silently the beam shifted and cut its third hole.
A million miles behind the rupturing vessel, the disk of Sagan IV swam in half phase. In a few minutes port tugs would be rushing out to the dying liner. He could expect a military ship or two, but they would be too late to threaten him.
There would be little for the rescuers to save. The ship would explode at any moment, as the beam’s torrent of energy penetrated into vital areas. Was it true, he wondered, that power from the stars of home was finding its way into the Whisper Ship? He felt pride in the idea; Hercules was still a cluster of war stars, despite his father’s weakness, despite Myraa’s indifference.
The liner blossomed in space. Its hull flew apart as if driven by t
he magma of an exploding planet. The debris expanded, a small universe of mangled life, molten metal and hot plasma; bits and pieces would continue in all directions — into the local sun, into deep space, moving until all time ran out.
Suddenly, the magnification on his screen went up, revealing military vessels coming out from the orbital docks around Sagan IV, two near-planet defense cruisers summoned by the dying liner. Gorgias wondered if there was fear aboard the Federation ships as they examined the Herculean design on their screens. What were they thinking as they stared at the Whisper Ship, a legendary shape far out of its time?
They were coming fast now, growing in size until the screen switched to normal and they were plainly visible as bright stars no more than a few hundred kilometers away.
Automatically, the Whisper Ship began to pull away, shrinking Sagan IV to a blue point. The ship switched, blackening the stars and affixing them to a backdrop of desolate gray. The pursuers were gone.
Gorgias waited for two black dots to appear in the warp. A minute went by, two minutes; after five minutes there was still no pursuit.
“Are we running?”
He turned around and saw his father standing in the center of the cabin. Fear and sadness crowded into the older man’s face, constricting his muscles as if he had been crying. The old Herculean was a disgrace to his traditions.
“The liner is destroyed, and we’ve lost the hunters.”
His father closed his eyes. “Where are we going now?”
“I want Myraa and the others to know before we return to base.”
“It will impress them, you think.”
“It will inspire the others, perhaps, and she can’t help being affected.”
“Don’t you see — it’s your way of stealing courage.”
“I don’t see that at all.”
His father walked up to him and struck him across the face with the back of his hand.
“You have no right!”
The old Herculean struck him again. The blow threw him back in the chair. “I’m going to beat you until you can’t walk, until I can lock you up like a beast and not care.”
“Coward,” Gorgias said as he rubbed his face.
His father lunged at him and seized his throat. Gorgias felt powerful hands close on his windpipe and squeeze.
With great effort, Gorgias lifted his father by the waist and they both fell to the floor, older man on the bottom. The angry hands relaxed their hold on his throat and Gorgias struggled onto his feet.
He turned and looked at the screen. Two black dots had appeared.
“Look — hunters! I can’t bother with you now. Go back to your cabin.”
He sat down at the station, passed his hand over the program plate and rekindled the known universe for a few seconds, quenched it again, then searched for the sign of the pursuers.
The continuum was clear, but he knew that they would reappear in a few moments; the ship was leaving a clear trail. He would have to do something to hide it quickly.
He turned around to face his father again, but the Herculean was gone.
|Go to Contents |
VII. Awakening
“Not till we are lost … do we begin to understand ourselves.”
— Henry David Thoreau
“THE FRONTIER SETTLEMENT on Precept,” Poincaré was saying, “then the liner on the Sagan IV run. That’s more than twenty thousand dead, Raf.”
They sat on the sun-filled terrace, breakfast before them. Grazia was sailplaning over the ocean, a small white bird in a perfectly clear blue sky.
“They’ve dropped it in my lap,” Poincaré said. “What do you think we should do?”
“Ask our military antiquarians.”
“I’m one of them — so are you, to a degree.”
“Well?”
“I say go after the ship with a small force, hunt him down, keep a larger force on call to come running when we’ve found him.”
“What’s your problem then?” Kurbi asked.
“I want you with me. I thought that much was obvious. Raf, you have a feel for Herculean civilization. I don’t want this to be a completion of genocide. I think you can help me save whatever may be worth saving.”
“I’d say that was a charitable way of thinking about it, considering all the carnage the Herculean has caused. Do I have a choice?”
“If possible,” Poincaré said, “I want the Whisper Ship and its occupants captured alive. Everyone I know feels the same. They’re not altruists or historians or bleeding-heart Chards — they’re curious, somewhat greedy men, who want the ship and its base, just to see what’s there. I wouldn’t mind playing with a few Herculean war toys myself.” Poincaré took a deep breath. “Besides, it’s great entertainment to think of capturing these rogues. We’ll exhibit them, question them, try them, inter them for life.”
“The enemy’s face is fascinating,” Kurbi said, “especially when he is in short supply. You want me to go out and find Gorgias?”
“You still want to, don’t you?”
“There’s Grazia to consider — it would be dangerous. I would be giving up a life of travel and reflection.”
“There’d be travel, and you can test what you’ve been reflecting about. You would also be helping to save lives.”
Kurbi shrugged. “Does that mean so much, Julian, with so many dying by choice?”
“The ones who died out there made no choice.”
“Life seems to be most precious when threatened. Take danger away, and a whole starry civilization goes to sleep.”
“Exactly,” Poincaré said. “You and I know that we need all the waking up we can get. This terrorist might be doing us a favor.”
“I don’t think he would appreciate your view of him.”
“Now you’re sounding like Grazia.”
“I sometimes wonder if I know what I want,” Kurbi said. “Life seems to possess a fundamental flaw, especially if you know it can be prolonged indefinitely.”
“What flaw is that?”
“An inability to provide lasting satisfaction.” He looked out across the bright morning and saw Grazia’s glider come sweeping in from the ocean. In a minute or two she would pass over the house. Suddenly the craft dropped below the seaside cliffs and he could not see it. The updraft would hurl it skyward again, and she would hurtle in over the house as she had done so many times before.
Kurbi picked up the half-finished glass of grape juice and finished it. “Won’t you have something with me, since you’re here in the flesh?”
“No thanks. Well, what do you say?”
“I don’t know right now, Julian. Let me think about it.”
“I won’t try and sugarcoat it — we may both get killed.”
“I’m well aware of that,” Kurbi said. He got up. The glider was not coming up into view.
“What’s wrong?”
“The glider hasn’t come up over the cliffs.”
Poincaré got up also and they went to the terrace steps that led down to the path. In a moment Kurbi was running across the grass to the cliff’s edge a quarter of a kilometer away. Poincaré caught up with him just in time to steady him at the edge.
“There,” Julian said, pointing.
The glider was in the water, one wing broken.
“She took this updraft so many times.…”
“Let’s get down there,” Julian said. “Better still, I’ll go down and you call the medics.”
Kurbi turned and walked quickly up to the house, feeling that his body was not his own.
“Hurry!” Julian called after him.
She had fallen to the rocks after hitting the cliff; the sea had battered her body until she was beyond repair. There was no possibility of freezing the remains or of restarting the body’s regenerative systems; only cloning remained, and he had rejected the idea. The person who would have come to him bearing Grazia’s appearance and genetic structure would not have been Grazia, only her twin sister. For many others that
would have been enough, but for him it would have been a mockery of his love for her.
He sat alone in the darkened living room and tried to choke his grief, compress it to a point and squeeze that point out of reality. Outside, the sky blazed, hurling spears of starlight through the clear wall between the living room and terrace. The glider sank in his mind and he reached out with invisible hands to stop it from hitting the cliff. She had been falling as he had talked with Julian, and he had known it; she might even have been conscious after hitting the sea rocks.
It would have been better, he thought, if she had been on the interstellar liner. That would have made more sense; better the explosive decompression of the void than the bloodying rocks; better murder than mindless chance. Anything was preferable to being reminded of frailty and the indifference of physical reality; the intended act was always superior to the unintended event.
Stupid thoughts, he told himself. Maybe he should go and help Poincaré trap his gadfly; maybe it would help him forget. It would be almost … as if he were searching for Grazia again.
He got up and went out on the terrace. The sky made him feel small. For a moment he felt that he understood the feelings of the outworlders, for whom life was joined to strenuous effort; out there living was valuable and dying meaningful. There they would laugh at the manner of Grazia’s death; there life was stretched between demanding limits and did not try to be more; there life spent itself so completely that little regret was possible at its end.
He thought of his son Rik, who had not come to Grazia’s funeral service, and who had refused to talk with him or share his sorrow. It would do no good to search for him among the diverse worlds of the ring; he would not recognize his son if he saw him.
Rik had never reconciled himself to the fact that he had been born of natural parents and in a fairly ancient way, while all his peers in the sun settlements were creative composites drawn from genetic-bank materials. Kurbi blamed himself for letting the boy leave Earth at an early age; in the ring he had come under the overwhelming influence of a myriad of styles. Earth could never be the same for him again.
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