The transmitter had been left on.
Something was going out. I put it on the speaker. It was simply the quiet murmur of electronics. Telemetry, I decided. The spaceport was transmitting telemetry.
It made no sense. I went to a window and looked out. Looked for moving lights somewhere, something going up or coming down. But the night sky was quiet. At ground level, a light mist had begun to creep across the parked vehicles.
I sat down at the radio. “Hello,” I said. “This is Richardson. Where the hell is everybody?”
I’m not sure precisely when I realized I wasn’t alone. A footstep somewhere, maybe. An echo. Whatever it was, I became conscious of movement, and of my own breathing.
My first impulse was to get out of the terminal. To get back to the car, and maybe back to the boat. Sweat rolled down my ribs.
I moved through the offices one by one, clinging to the pistol.
I stopped in a conference room dominated by a sculpted freediver. A holograph unit which someone had neglected to turn off blinked sporadically atop a carved table. A half-dozen chairs were arranged around the table, in disorder. There were empty coffee cups, and a couple of light pads.
I activated the holo and one of the light pads. They’d been discussing motivational techniques.
And somewhere, far off, glass shattered.
Above, in the Tower Room, the rooftop restaurant.
I rode the elevator up two floors, came out into a dark corridor, and stood before a pair of open doors.
There were lights on, computerized candles flickering in smoked jars. Music was playing. Soft, moody, romantic. The Tower Room in those days looked, and felt, like a sunken grotto. It was a hive of (apparently) rocky vaults and dens, divided by watercourses, salad dispensers, mock boulders and shafts, and a winding bar. Blue and white light sparkled against fake sandstone and silverware. Crystal streams poured from the mouths of dancing nymphs and raced through narrow channels between rough-hewn bridges.
It felt as if the heating system had given out.
I crossed a bridge and followed the bar. Everything was neatly arranged, chairs in place, silver laid out on red cloth napkins, condiments and sauce bottles stacked side by side.
I could feel tears coming, and sank into a chair.
There was an answering clatter. And a voice: “Who’s there?”
I froze.
Footsteps. In back somewhere. Then a man emerged from the shadows. In uniform. “Hello,” he called cheerfully. “Are you all right?”
I shook my head uncertainly. “Of course,” I said. “What’s going on? Where is everybody?”
“I’m back near the window.” He turned away from me. “Have to stay there.” He looked back to make sure I was following, and then retreated the way he’d come.
I’d seen the uniform before. Somewhere. By the time I joined him, I’d placed it: It was the light and dark blue uniform of the Confederacy, the small group of frontier allies waging war against the Mutes.
He’d piled a table high with electronic equipment, a computer, a generator, a couple of displays, and God knew what else. He stood over it, a headphone clasped to one ear, apparently absorbed in the displays. They showed schematics, trace scans, columns of digits and symbols.
He glanced in my direction without quite seeing me, pointed to a bottle of dark wine, produced a glass, and gestured for me to help myself. Then he smiled at something on one of the screens. He pulled the headset off one ear and dropped into a chair. “I’m Matt Olander,” he said. “What the hell are you doing here?”
He was middle-aged, a thin blade of a man whose gray skin almost matched the color of the walls. “I don’t think I understand the question,” I said.
“Why didn’t you leave with everybody else?” He watched me intently, and I guess he saw that I was puzzled. Then he started to look puzzled. “They took everybody out. You know that, right?”
“Who?” I demanded. My voice must have gone off the edge of the register. “Who took everybody where?”
He reacted as if it was a dumb question, and reached for the bottle. “I guess we couldn’t expect to get one hundred percent. Where were you? In a mine somewhere? Out in the hills with no commlink?”
I told him and he sighed in a way that suggested I had committed an indiscretion. His hair was thin, and his features suggested more of the tradesman than the warrior. His voice turned soft. “What’s your name?”
“Lee,” I said. “Kindrel Lee.”
“Well, Kindrel, we spent most of these two weeks evacuating Ilyanda. The last of them were sent up to the ships yesterday morning. Far as I know, you and I are all that’s left.” His eyes switched back to the monitors.
“Why?” I asked. I was feeling a mixture of relief and fear.
His expression wished me away. After a moment, he sat down at the computer. “I’ll show you,” he said.
One of the screens dissolved to a ring display. The figure eight infinity symbol, which was prominent on the flag, was at the center. An array of more than forty trace lights blinked along the outer circumference. “Ilyanda is at the center,” he said. “The range runs out to a half billion kilometers. You’re looking at a Mute fleet. Capital ships and battle cruisers.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “What’s happening, Ms. Lee,” he continued, “is that the Navy is about to blow hell out of the sons of bitches.” His jaw tightened, and a splinter of light appeared in his eyes. “At last.”
“It’s been a long time coming,” he said. “They’ve been beating hell out of us for three years. But today belongs to us.” He raised his glass and finished the wine.
“I’m glad you were able to get people away,” I said into the sudden stillness.
He smiled. “Sim wouldn’t have had it any other way.”
“I never thought the war would come here.” Another blip appeared on the screen. “I don’t understand it. Ilyanda’s neutral. And I didn’t think we were near the fighting.”
“Kindrel, there are no neutrals in this war. You’ve just been letting others do your fighting for you.” His voice contained an edge of contempt.
“Ilyanda’s at peace!” I stared at him, into his eyes, expecting him to flinch. But I saw only annoyance. “Or at least it was. Anyhow, thanks for coming.”
He looked away from me. “It’s all right.”
“They’re only here,” I said, “because you are, aren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve brought your war to us!”
He propped his chin on his fist and laughed at me. “You’re judging us! You know, you people are really impossible. The only reason you’re not dead or in chains is because we’ve been dying to give you a chance to ride around in your goddamn boat!”
“My God,” I gasped, remembering the missing shuttle. “Is that why they never got here?”
“Who?”
“The shuttle that was supposed to be coming in.”
“Oh.” That infuriating grim reappeared. “Don’t worry about it. It was never coming.”
“You’re wrong. I overheard some radio traffic shortly after midnight—”
“They were never coming. We’ve done everything we could to make this place, this entire world, appear normal.”
“Why?” I asked.
“You have the consolation, Kindrel, of knowing we are about to turn the war around. The Mutes are finally going to get hurt.” His eyes glowed.
“You led them here,” I said.
“It wasn’t hard.” He got to his feet and looked through the window. “We led them here. We’ve led them into hell. They think Christopher Sim is on the space station. Or on the ground. And they want him very badly.” His face was in shadow. “Sim has never had the fire power to fight this war. He’s been trying to hold off an armada with a few dozen light frigates and one battle cruiser.” Olander’s face brightened. “But he’s done a job on the bastards. Anyone else would have been overwhelmed right at the start. But Sim: Sometimes I wo
nder whether he’s human.” He turned back to me. “Maybe it would be best if you left,” he said tonelessly.
I made no move to go. “Why here? Why Ilyanda?”
“We needed to pick a system where the population was small enough to be moved.”
I smothered an obscenity. “I don’t recall that we got to vote on this.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “You have no idea at all what this is about, do you? A million people have died in this war so far. Millions more have been enslaved. The Mutes have burned Cormoral and the City on the Crag and Far Mordaigne. They’ve overrun a dozen systems, and the entire frontier is on the verge of collapse.” He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “They don’t like us very much, Kindrel. And I don’t think they plan for any of us to be around when it’s over.”
That was a lie. “We started the war.”
“That’s easy to say. You don’t know what was going on. But it doesn’t matter now anyway. We’re long past drawing fine lines. The killing won’t stop until we’re driven the bastards back where they came from.” He switched one of the displays. Studied the screen. “They’re closing on the Station now. A sizable chunk of their fleet is already within range. And more arriving all the time.” He smiled, and I felt sorry for him. He’d been so caught up in the killing that he was enjoying himself.
“You said Sim doesn’t have much firepower—”
“He doesn’t.”
“Then how—?”
A shadow crossed his face. “The Station’s shields have gone up,” he said. “No, there’s nothing up there of ours except a couple of destroyers. They’re automated, and the Station’s abandoned.” The blinking lights on the battle display were becoming brighter. And more numerous. “All they can see are the destroyers. And something they think is Corsarius in dock with its hull laid open. And the bastards are still keeping their distance. But it won’t make any difference.”
“Corsarius!” I said. “Sim’s ship?”
“It’s a big moment for them. They’re thinking right now they’re going to take them and end the resistance.” He squinted at the graphics.
I was beginning to suspect it was time to take his advice and make for the wharf, get the Meredith, and head back to the southern hemisphere. Until the dust settled.
“The destroyers are opening up,” he said. “But they won’t even slow the Mutes down.”
“Then why bother? What’s going on?”
“We had to give them some opposition. Keep them from thinking too much.”
“Olander,” I asked, “if you have no ships up there, what’s this all about? How does Sim expect to destroy anything?”
“He won’t. But you and I will, Kindrel. You and I will inflict such a wound on the Mutes tonight that the sons of bitches will never forget.”
Two monitors went blank. Stayed out a few seconds. Then the images returned, swirls of characters blinking frantically. He leaned forward and frowned. “The Station’s taken a hit.” He reached toward me, a friendly, soothing gesture, but I stayed away from him.
“And what are you and I going to do to them?” I asked.
“Kindrel, we are going to stop the sunrise.”
“What?”
“We’ll catch them all. Everything they’ve got here, everything out to a half-billion klicks, will be incinerated. Beyond that, if they see they can get a running start, they’ll have a chance.” He glanced toward the computer. A red lamp glowed on the keyboard. “We have an old Tyrolean freighter, loaded with antimatter. It’s balanced in hyperspace, and it’s waiting a command from me.”
“To do what?”
His eyes slid shut, and I could no longer read his expression. “To materialize inside the sun.” He hung each word in the still air. “We are going to insert it at the sun’s core.” A bead of sweat rolled down his chin. “The result, we think, will be—,” he grinned, “—explosive.”
I could almost have believed there was no world beyond that bar. We’d retreated into the dark, Olander and I and the monitors and the background music and the stone nymphs. All of us.
“A nova?” I asked. My voice must have been barely audible. “You’re trying to induce a nova?”
“No. Not a true nova.”
“But the effect—”
“—Will be the same.” He drew his right hand across his lips. “It’s a revolutionary technique. Involves some major breakthroughs in navigation. It isn’t easy, you know, to maintain a relatively static position in hyperspace. The freighter has a tendency to drift.” He tapped one of the keys, producing a display of technical data. He began an explanation. “Look at this.” And, “Over here, though—.” I could not begin to follow. I didn’t care anyway about the details. He dropped into a monotone and started to talk about gamma rays and hydrogen atoms.
“Come on, Olander,” I exploded, finally. “You can’t expect me to believe that a guy sitting in a bar can blow up a sun!”
“I’m sorry.” His eyes changed, and he looked startled, as though he’d just realized where he was. “You may be right,” he said. “It hasn’t been tried, so they really don’t know. Too expensive to run a test.”
I tried to imagine the sun bloating, expanding, blazing down on Point Edward, engulfing it, boiling the seas. It was Gage’s city, where we’d explored narrow streets and old bookstores, and pursued each other across rainswept beaches and through candlelit pubs. And from where we’d first gone to sea. I’d never forgotten how it had looked the first time we’d come home, bright, and diamond-hard against the horizon. Home. Always it would be home.
And I watched Olander through eyes suddenly grown damp, perhaps conscious for the first time that I had come back with the intention to leave Ilyanda, but knowing now that I never would, would never wish to.
“Olander, they left you to do this?”
“No.” He shook his head vigorously. “It was supposed to happen automatically when the Mutes got close. The trigger was tied in to sensors on the Station, But the Mutes have had some success at disrupting command and control functions. We couldn’t be sure—”
“Then they did leave you.”
“No! Sim would never have allowed it if he’d known. He has confidence in the system. Those of us who know a little more about such things do not. So I stayed. And disconnected it. And brought it down here with me.”
“My God, and you’re really going to do it?”
“It works out better this way. We can catch the bastards at the most opportune moment. You need somebody to make that judgment. Not a machine.”
“Olander, you’re talking about destroying a world.”
“I’m talking about destroying a threat to human survival.” His eyes found mine at last. The irises were blue, and I could see white all around their edges. “But I understand what you’re saying. No one wanted this to happen. But we’re driven to the wall. If we can’t make this work, here, there may be no future for anyone.”
I needed a moment to find my voice. “If the danger is so clear, where are Rimway and Toxicon? And Earth? A lot of people think the Mutes are open to negotiation.” I was just talking now, my attention riveted to the computer keyboard, to the EXECUTE key, which was black and polished and longer than the others.
I pushed the laser down deeper in my pocket, trying to keep it concealed.
“Well,” he continued, “what the hell. It doesn’t matter anymore anyway. A lot of blood has been spilled, and I don’t think anybody’s much open to negotiation now. The only thing that does matter is that they’ll kill all of us. If we allow it.” He stared at the empty glass. Flung it into the dark. It shattered. “Ciao,” he said.
I was thinking about the broad southern seas and the trackless forests that no one would ever penetrate and the enigmatic ruins. And the thousands of people to whom, like me, Ilyanda was home. Who would remember when it was gone? “What’s the difference between you and the Mutes?”
“I know how you feel, Kindrel.”
�
��You have no idea how I feel—.”
“I know exactly how you feel. I was on Melisandra when the Mutes burned the City on the Crag. I watched them make an example of the Pelian worlds. Do you know what Cormoral looks like now? Nothing will live there for ten thousand years.”
Somebody’s chair, his, mine, I don’t know, scraped the floor, and the sound echoed round the grotto.
“Cormoral and the Pelians were destroyed by their enemies!” I was enraged, frightened, resentful. Out of sight under the table, my fingers traced the outline of the weapon. “Has it occurred to you?” I asked, as reasonably as I could, “what’s going to happen when they go home, and we go back to squabbling among ourselves?”
“I know,” he said. “There’s a lot of risk involved.”
“Risk?” I pointed a trembling finger at the stack of equipment. “That thing is more dangerous than a half-dozen invasions. For God’s sake, we’ll survive the Mutes. We survived the ice ages and the nuclear age and the colonial wars and we will sure as hell take care of the Mutes if there’s no other way.
“But that thing you have in front of you—. Matt, don’t do this. Whatever you hope to accomplish, the price is too high.”
I listened to him breathe. An old love song was running on the sound system. “I have no choice,” he said in a dull monotone. He pointed at the display. “They’re beginning to withdraw. That means they know the Station’s empty, and they suspect either a diversion or a trap.”
“You do have a choice!” I screamed at him.
“No.” He folded his arms. “I do not.”
I pulled the laser out of my pocket, raised it so he could see it, and pointed it at him.
He unfolded his arms and stared at the weapon. “You’re really serious, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Look, there’s no way you can stop it.” He stepped to one side, trying to get out of the line of fire. “But you’re welcome to try.”
Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt Page 36
