“Shit,” said Reid. “Look, RJR can’t control it and they can’t destroy it. Can you do anything from the line?” He was talking to the Peace Force again.
“Not enough time,” Dryke said to himself, studying the plot of the several satellites.
“What? Was that you, Mikhail?”
“Matt, there’s not enough time. We can’t burn Takara—”
“Funny, that’s what Wian says, except he’s shouting.”
“Can’t we move the ship?” The question came from behind Reid, or from one of his open links—Dryke could not tell which.
Reid shook his head. “All we have are station-keeping thrusters. The drive is dead cold. Mikhail? What about the castle? Are we above your horizon?”
Dryke quickly got the HELcrew boss on a second window. “Just above, the long way through the atmosphere,” he reported back. “Between the scatter and the absorption, the boss says the best we can do is a suntan.”
“Range, three hundred kilometers.”
“Anybody seen the oars for this boat?” a gallows humorist muttered.
“You’re going to have to throw something at it,” Dryke said.
“Yeah. Any ideas what?”
“How about the Knights Peculiar?”
Reid turned away from his telecam. “Martin—plot collision intercepts for CT-5, CT-9, and CT-10. Plug in the masses—I need to know what happens to the pieces afterward. See if you can get me a deflection that’ll throw both of them clear.” He turned back to Dryke. “I knew I should have played more billiards when I had the chance.”
“Three-body no-cushion bank shot, on a warped table. Nothing to it.” Dryke’s words were clipped, his worry undercutting the joke.
“Range, one hundred ninety kilometers.”
“I can give it a pop with CT-9,” Martin called. “The others are too far away.”
“Get it moving, then.”
“Already is. Matt, I’ll do my best. But to knock it clear, I not only have to hit it, I have to hit it square center. Otherwise it’ll just blow by and kick the truck into a tumble.”
“Mister, either you hit it fucking square or I’ll put you outside to walk home.” The words were said calmly. “Bobby, bring up the PDS, just in case. Track it all the way, and if Takara slips out of the hairs, do me a favor and fry the damned can.”
“Sure,” the tech said with a grin. “I’ll cover Martin’s butt.”
“You toast that Hughes and you can cover my grandmother,” Reid said. “Mikhail, you still with us?”
“Yeah,” said Dryke. “So glad to see you’re all taking this so well.”
“Range, eighty kilometers.”
Reid said, “Yeah, well, there’s one other thing. The section has authorized me to tell you that we all quit.”
“No, you don’t,” Dryke said, matching Reid’s deadpan. “If you’re still there in two minutes, consider yourselves fired.”
“Noted. All right, everyone. Let’s be sharp. Marty?”
“On track.”
“Bobby?”
“I’ll pick it up off Takara’s horizon.”
“Range, twenty-five kilometers,” said the AIP.
Reid nodded, looking at a display off-screen. He drew a deep breath and pursed his lips. “Funtime,” he said under his breath. “Here she comes.”
Six and a half kilometers from Memphis, CT-9 glided stalwartly toward Takara, carrying the reflector before it as though it were entering the lists for a joust.
It went into the duel with two disadvantages—size and speed. At a spidery twenty-nine tonnes, it was only two-thirds the mass of the satellite. And even after a full minute of acceleration, its propulsion systems—designed for construction, not interception—had pushed it to a paltry few tens of meters per second. Since the equations being solved and plotted on Memphis’s bridge depended entirely on the mass and velocity of the objects and the location of the starship, those were meaningful disadvantages.
But CT-9 also had one meaningful advantage: a guiding intelligence. The satellite’s engine had finally burned out; it was coasting now, committed to its trajectory. Only the truck could counter and adjust, and so it sped in its own plodding way for the spot where the satellite would meet it.
The intercept point was just four kilometers from Memphis. If the two objects meeting there were perfect, incompressible spheres, the satellite would follow the track on Martin’s display and miss the earthside curve of the hull by less than a hundred meters. Elementary physics of inelastic collisions.
But these were spacecraft, not billiard balls, and no computer on Memphis could predict the outcome.
“Range, twenty kilometers.”
The chatter on the starship’s bridge had ended. Dryke watched the panoramic and the tracking plot on his display wall, both relayed from Memphis via Highstar. They said enough.
“What—”
Something was happening to the truck. The shield had broken free from three of the grapples and was twisting to one side. A moment later, it went spinning away down toward the Pacific night like a discus. As it vanished, the Hughes appeared, a twinkling star skimming Takara’s moonside pole. Dryke’s breath caught.
“Range, ten kilometers.”
“Eight—”
“Five—”
The satellite closed, the Hughes rose, and for an instant—but only an instant—they merged. The violence with which the truck was hurled aside, spinning crazily, underlined the missile’s frightening speed. If it was deflected at all, no one watching could tell.
“Oh, shit—” said Dryke.
Suddenly, the Hughes brightened, as though it were caught in a spotlight. Dryke’s mind locked, and he watched without understanding. Then the display wall strobed blinding white, like a giant photographer’s flash, as the satellite exploded.
The panoramic went black, and Dryke could barely see through the afterimage that the tracking plot had splintered into dozens of diverging lines, some heading directly for Memphis. One second, two, three, four—whatever was going to happen should have happened.
“Matt?”
There was no answer. Then the tracking plot suddenly vanished, and Dryke realized that he was hearing shouting, cheering, the bubbling over of giddy relief. “Bridge link,” he said quickly, and the scene came up in window 1. Reid was being hugged by someone. “Matt?”
Reid escaped the hug and turned toward the cam. “I guess you’ve still got a starship, Mike. You can fire us now.”
“Firing’s too good for you,” Dryke said. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to deny the Director the pleasure of firing us all at once. Did the ship get tagged?”
“We had a little bump, so we must have taken something. But it can’t have been much, because all the important lights are still green. The chief engineer’s on his way out in a boat to take a look.”
“What happened there at the end?”
Reid looked over his shoulder. “Marty?”
The tech looked sheepish. “The reflector was blocking the truck’s rendezvous radar, and I wanted a little insurance for a center hit. I thought it was worth a hundred kilos, so I threw the reflector away.”
“Highstar’s gonna ticket you for that.”
“Ticket, hell,” said Martin. “Do you know how long it’s been since I did this to my shorts?”
Reid laughed. “I’ll buy you a new pair.”
“I’ll pay the ticket,” Dryke said. “Get us a report on damage ASAP, will you?”
The postmortem was not a happy gathering. Marshall was there, and Oker. Talbot, the construction manager, and Reid were linked from Memphis. Edgar Donovan was fresh in from Los Angeles. Dryke was nursing a cold fire and trying to hide it; at the opposite end of the table, Sasaki was hollow-eyed and startlingly frail.
They heard from Reid and Talbot first. The ersatz missile had been detonated by the PDS lasers 2.1 kilometers away from the ship. The explosion was a mercy—it hurled the bulk of the disintegrating satellite away from, rather tha
n toward, the target. Fifty-eight fragments, the largest the size of a child’s fist, escaped the HEL beam and tore through the fringe of the aft structural skirt. It looked worse than it was—no critical systems had been hit, and no pressurized spaces had been breached.
Then Sasaki ordered the links closed. “We did not deserve the luck which befell us,” she said to the others. “This is unrestricted war, and we were not prepared. We were not prepared, and no one stood ready to help us. Governor Wian bears a measure of the blame—he has been unreasonably opposed to allowing weapons or weapons platforms on Takara. I believe he has sufficient reason now to reconsider—”
“He’d better,” said Marshall, the only one present who would dare interrupt Sasaki at that moment. “Who knows if there are any more sleepers parked up there?”
Sasaki’s gaze flickered in Marshall’s direction, but she did not otherwise acknowledge him. “Our opponents are still strong, still determined, and growing desperate. We must take Memphis where they cannot reach us, at the earliest possible date.”
“We’ve got an opportunity here,” Donovan injected. “The real damage isn’t serious. How serious do we want the official damage to be?”
“Will anyone who counts believe it?” Oker’s expression was skeptical.
“I hear that the explosion was visible all around the Pacific rim,” said Marshall.
“It’s number one on the nets,” said Donovan. “Even though they’re starved for facts. That’s the best time to feed them bullshit—if you can get there before they start producing their own.”
“This discussion does not interest me,” Sasaki said. “Issue what statements you wish. Mikhail, I would like to hear from you.”
Dryke looked down the table to her. “This feels like the Kasigau incident. A variation on a theme.”
“The same mind?”
“No. But someone schooled under it. Someone’s taken Jeremiah’s place at the helm.” He frowned and looked away. “Goddammit, it didn’t do any good to kill him.”
She nodded. “Mikhail, I am sorry. It is possible I was wrong about Christopher McCutcheon.”
Shaking his head, Dryke said, “I can’t gloat. It looks like I was wrong about Anna X.”
“What do you mean?”
He touched his earpiece. “I heard from Horizon a few moments ago. The McCutcheon kid passed through there five days ago on his way to Sanctuary.” He stood up, driving his chair away from the table. “With your leave, Director, I’m gonna go correct those mistakes.”
CHAPTER 30
—AAG—
“…a sunless morn…”
Ten and half again had come to the Spring Grotto to hear the story, but the story could not be told with voice alone, or heard only with the ears.
To tell it as Deryn told it required eyes, sad sparkle laughing— hands, signing soaring—a body fluid and supple. She moved among them as a breeze in the many-tiered chamber, hovered as a spirit in the field of firepoint stars beyond the sky windows, rested as a stone on the tumbledown cascade of the waterfall. She told the story from the heart, not from memory, and invested it with her love.
“ ‘Will you stay with us?’ asked Cho. She was first among Asa’s daughters, and the boldest. ‘Stay in the golden house, and be our guiding fire.’
“But Tetsu said gently, ‘Is this as much as you’ve learned, to keep me as an idol in a monument?’
“Cho was shamed, but the others begged Tetsu to stay. They offered their houses and their worship and their love. Tetsu refused all but the last.
“ ‘I have been away long enough,’ she told them. ‘I am going back to my home in the Earth.’ ”
It was then that Anna X appeared at the arched Spring Corridor entrance. She entered the grotto silently, advancing several steps toward where the audience was seated, but stopping before she intruded on anyone but Deryn’s attention. Deryn noted her presence and wondered, but went on without a pause or a break.
“Asa had learned the most from Tetsu, and acceptance was the first of those lessons. ‘How shall we remember you?’ she asked.
“Tetsu smiled, and stole a tear from Cho’s cheek with a touch. ‘When I am in the Earth, I cannot hear your voices, for the air is too thin,’ she said. ‘I cannot know your thoughts, for they belong to you alone. I cannot use your gifts, for I am in all and of all, without form. Remember me with your lives.’
“ ‘You will forget us,’ cried Cho.
“ ‘I am in you and of you as much as the river and the cliff and the forest. I will not forget you.’
“ ‘Is there nothing we can give you?’ cried Cho, her heart breaking.
“Tetsu took the child in a mother’s embrace. ‘I will feel you walking in the world above my world, and hear your footsteps like the echoes of your heartbeats,’ she whispered. ‘And when you gather with light hearts in the circle and dance to the celebration songs, your feet will speak to me of your joy. That will be gift enough.’
“And so we dance. And so we dance.” Deryn smiled and spread her hands wide. “Blessed be. The tale is done.”
They applauded warmly, and several—among them the two youngest children and the oldest crone—came to thank her with a hug. Anna X waited calmly until Deryn was free and then led her by the elbow toward White Corridor.
“Next time, I’ll have to come in time to hear the whole story,” said Anna X. “You hold them in your hand, seven or seventy. It’s a gift.”
“You have it wrong,” said Deryn. “They hold me. I’m never tired, because they send back to me as much as I give them.”
“Never tired? If you ever decide to conduct a workshop on that bit of magic, put my name down first.”
Deryn smiled. “Did you come to listen, then?”
“I came to tell you that you have a petitioner in the Shelter.”
A look of surprise crossed Deryn’s face, and her steps slowed. “Claiming as what?”
“Claiming as your son.” Studying Deryn’s expression, Anna X added, “You don’t have to see him, of course.”
Deryn closed her eyes, the better to see a memory.
“Have you a son?” Anna prompted.
“No,” said Deryn. “But I will see him.”
In contrast to the open-door policies on Horizon and New Star, but in keeping with its own founding purpose, Sanctuary was a virtually closed society. Long at or over its design population, Sanctuary accepted only a handful of new immigrants a year—all women. Only Hanif discriminated so openly (against non-Moslems), though Takara and the Soviet colony-sat, Lukyan, were in their individual ways nearly as effectively closed.
But the isolation of Sanctuary went even further. It and Takara were the only satlands which did not cater in some way to tourists, and Takara had Diaspora traffic to replace the lost revenue. Sanctuary restricted visitors of either sex to a portion of the inner ring of the old-fashioned wheelworld, called Entry by residents and “Mama’s doorstep” by annoyed shuttle pilots.
The Shelter was part of Entry. Its forty small one-a-beds, clustered adjacent to the docking spar, were a buffer between Sanctuary and the outside world. For the wounded who needed only a place to hide and heal, the three-by-five compartments were cocoons. For the hopefuls who had reached the final stage of scrutiny by Anna X and the Council, they were way stations. And for petitioners hoping to visit women who had already crossed through Shelter, they made passably comfortable prisons. The Shelter guide met Deryn as she entered the Sanctuary side of the warren. “Your petitioner gives his name as Christopher McCutcheon and claims you as his mother,” she said. “But the indexes don’t support a blood relation. Did you have an unreported male child?”
“After a fashion,” said Deryn. “Where is he?”
“In 24. You can talk to him from the guide room—this way.”
“Thank you,” Deryn said. “I’ll see him in person.”
The guide flashed a grimace of distaste. “As you wish. We’ll monitor.”
“That’s not necess
ary,” she said, giving the woman’s hand a reassuring squeeze. “He is no danger to me.”
Beside the door to Shelter 24, a small screen showed Christopher sitting quietly near the far end of the compartment, keeping company with his thoughts. Deryn paused before the screen, trying to clear the image of him at fifteen from her mind and replace it with the image before her—a young man, but a man in full maturity.
The darkness cast in his features seemed now more of knowledge than of fear. The softness in his face had been chiseled down to something harder—and perhaps because of it, he was a measure more handsome in flower than she had expected. His spark of alertness was as bright as ever, even in repose. But the joyful innocence was missing, or hidden behind the mask of—what? Sadness? Behind the mask of the purpose that had brought him there.
He looked up as she entered, and his eyes seemed to brighten when he saw her. Showing an uncertain smile, he rose from the seat. He tried to say “Hello,” but the word came out as a noise lost deep in his throat.
Smiling back, Deryn opened her arms, and he came to her. He was the taller by nearly ten centimeters, but he let himself be small in her embrace. There were no words, but something words could not have captured passed between them. She felt great turmoil, great pain, and great relief swirling inside him.
“You always did give the best hugs,” she said, drawing back a step at last.
“I’ve missed you.”
“My memories of you are full of love,” she said. “Why did you come, Christopher?”
He seemed disconcerted by her directness. “Do you follow the news from Earth?”
“No,” she said. “I find it’s never about me.”
“Consider yourself lucky, then,” he said, but did not elaborate. “Deryn, my father’s dead.”
Deryn heard the news with both surprise and understanding. The surprise was the strength of the wave of regret and loss. She was caught for a moment in a time and a place she had renounced, and the breath she drew to quiet her center was quavery.
“I’m sorry,” she said, squeezing the hand she had never released. “Will you tell me about it?”
The Quiet Pools Page 38
