Four Hundred Billion Stars

by Paul J McAuley

  Andrews looked at Dorthy, then said, “Then let that be a basis of our first cooperation. I can agree to have the base on the surface dismantled, the people there evacuated. We can arrange some link with you.” He was lying of course, simply trying to buy time; perhaps he even harboured the hope that the female would agree, let them go…and then the Navy would destroy her. Dorthy said nothing.

  The neuter female said through the translator, “You misunderstand. I do not wish peace. That is why I wished this female killed, for she could have guessed the truth of the changeling children before they began their defence of their parents. Twice I tried to arrange her death, twice I failed. But she came here anyway.”

  Dorthy remembered the vision that had been planted in her mind at the keep and said, “You wanted me to come here.”

  “And now I have you, and the war will proceed.”

  Andrews said stubbornly, “But there doesn’t have to be a war! Together, your people and mine could fight these marauders, if they come.”

  “It would be better if you ran, as we did. But you will not. Your species is like so many that have gone before, seeking to bestride the Galaxy. This has already happened, from the evidence of the technology captured and perverted by the marauders. Perhaps many times. We live in the ruins of history. This family may be destroyed by your people, must be destroyed. Before the marauders come, as they will come. Yes, yes. And others in the refuges scattered among the small stars will all uncomprehending see the flashes of light in their skies that show the destruction of the suns of your worlds.”

  “And of yours,” Dorthy said.

  There was a pause. The female’s vestigial arms fidgeted with her pelt, and the monkeylike creature dropped her shoulder and bounded away, its bifurcated tail high in the air. Two herders followed it through an archway. The others continued to watch the humans, faces impassive within cowls of folded skin.

  Watching the neuter female’s aura and the flaw within it, Dorthy thought, it’s like an upwelling, an eruption from some deep vent that is dispersed by strong currents before it reaches the surface. If I knew its source…

  At last the translator raised his head. “It is necessary,” he said. “If we survive, we will be found by the marauders when they track down the traces left by your ships. Finding this world, they will know to search all the other insignificant stars for the other refuges.”

  “Nothing would go to such lengths,” Andrews said.

  “It is truth.”

  Andrews worried at his hair and said with explosive exasperation, “Then you’re crazy! Keep us here and you will surely die. Everything on the planet will die.”

  “It is necessary,” the neuter female said, as the cloud surged about the knot, the flaw, that split it. She was lying, Dorthy saw, lying. Her only loyalty was to her own immediate kin, those of her family living on this planet, not other colonies sundered by more than a million years. She had said as much herself.

  “Will you discharge your duty by sacrificing your family?” Dorthy ventured.

  “For the greater good of the species,” the neuter female said.

  A lie, a lie. Dorthy tried to look into the outpouring light, like trying to glimpse the ghost of a snowflake whirling in a nova. For a moment her entire self was open to the light; the only way she could capture the knot and resolve it was to take it into herself, regardless of the danger of breakout. From a long way away she heard Andrews shout, “What are you doing to her? Stop it, fucking stop—” And without interval, it seemed, she was lying on the ground, looking up at Andrews’s anxious face, framed by the black sky beyond. For a moment it was like seeing double, his familiar features overlaid by a weird alien mask, a wrongness. And then she felt the pattern of the neuter female’s multiple persona fade, and she was herself again. And understood the flaw, the knot, the terrible thing that had had to be done so long ago to keep this world hidden, keep it safe from the core.

  “Christ,” Andrews said. “Say something, Dorthy. Are you all right? It was as if you had a fit.”

  “I’m okay,” she said, and tasted blood: she’d bitten her tongue. When she sat up she discovered that she’d wet herself, too. Petit mal. But she knew.

  Andrews helped her stand, and she said in English, “Don’t try anything, I know why she wants to die now…and perhaps how I can convince her not to die.”

  “She didn’t do that to you?”

  “Not exactly. I looked into her mind. I saw.” Dorthy grinned, and felt a thread of blood roll down her chin. “I thought I’d given up therapy long ago.”

  “Use your Talent if you like, but there is only an hour until we must rendezvous with Angel. If we stay here any longer she’ll go without us, and the Navy will trigger the sun. If you can do something, do it quick.”

  “Trust me,” Dorthy said, and turned to the neuter female—who, if she knew what had been done, showed no sign of it. In Portuguese Dorthy said, “I should have guessed you wanted to die when you gave that ridiculous explication of the Sonnets.”

  “This was wrong?”

  “The dark lady was no God; she was only an ordinary woman, a female. The poet was urging his master to marry her, the woman he also loved. There is the dichotomy from which the themes of the Sonnets sprang. There is flattery, yes, but also the discharging of a duty, no matter how painful, and the promise of the poet’s undying love, as undying as his art. You saw only what you wanted to see, an obsession with death, the path your sisters took from shame so long ago. But the shame is not yours; it is your ancestor’s, the one who acted to preserve this world. It was wrong, yes, but you cannot allow your family to die now. It will not wipe away the shame. Because I know now. I know what was done.”

  “I knew that you were dangerous. Yes, I knew.” The neuter female watched Dorthy with great, lambent eyes. Behind her, the herders shuffled in confusion, the grip of the webs of routine slackened.

  Andrews said, “What is all this? What guilt?”

  “Half a million years ago,” Dorthy said steadily, returning the female’s gaze, “more or less, a civilization arose on a world of a nearby star. We call that star Epsilon Eridani.”

  “Novaya Rosya,” Andrews said. “So that was what almost destroyed it.”

  “Yes. In the same way that they moved this planet, some of the neuter females altered the orbit of one of the moons of one of the gas giants, sent it careering towards Epsilon Eridani. I wondered why the drive system of the ark was no longer in orbit around this planet; now I know. It went with the moon. Only a small, insignificant rock, all that the drive could move after millennia of disuse, but when it struck Novaya Rosya it was travelling at close to the speed of light. It didn’t quite destroy the planet, but it came close. And destroyed the civilization which had just begun to explore the nearby stars, which would have soon betrayed themselves to the marauders; and perhaps betrayed this world, too. Poor Arcady! His zithsa hunters were right after all! The other neuter females tried to prevent the genocide. There was a power struggle; you can guess who won—” Dorthy stopped, because the neuter female had begun to move.

  Grunting, she rolled her great bulk on to bended knees, then pushed with shaggy arms, shadows weaving around her as she reared up, almost twice as tall as the herders ranked behind her.

  “Goddamn,” Andrews said, and Dorthy caught his hand, reminded him to be still.

  He shook off her grip and stepped forward. He had gone beyond fear. “Is what Dorthy said true?” he demanded. “You destroyed a world to keep your secret here?”

  “Let her talk to me,” Dorthy said.

  “You and your goddamn pride,” Andrews said fiercely. “Your damned Talent can’t do everything.”

  “It happened long ago, so long ago,” Dorthy said to the female. “Why does it still torment you?”

  “Because I am many, not one, and many remember. When the new civilization arose, so close to our hiding place, we remembered how this world had been harmed by a few small asteroids when our rebellious s
isters had stolen the ark. Afterward, we had to scour nearby systems to replace all that had been lost of the life we had brought here. Yes, we remembered that, when the new civilization was discovered. We were the oldest of our kind then, and only we remembered. Only we knew what had to be done. Some of our sisters did not understand, and resisted us. They are gone, so long ago now. Even those of our sisters who helped us are gone. Only we are left. Only we remember.”

  How old she was, Dorthy saw, how singular and alone, how tired of living! The lineages of the other neuter females who had helped the act of genocide had died out long ago; those who had resisted it had been destroyed. She alone was left, still gripped by the urge to protect the herders. This instinct, which had driven her to genocide and murder and left her ridden with guilt, had also sustained her through the millennia…until the humans had come. She had not been able to repeat her act, but in their coming she had seen a chance to rest, to bring an end to her guilt, the collective guilt of her ancestors. That that end would also mean the end of her family was the paradox which Dorthy had seen knotted at the core of the neuter female, the pivot on which she might be turned.

  Dorthy said, “Will you discharge your guilt by sacrificing your family? They know nothing of it. How can they? You told us of their innocence, their ignorance. Why should they also die?”

  The neuter female said nothing, her gaze still locked with Dorthy’s. But the translator threw up his head and howled, clutching at his hood with clawed fingers so that blood ran along the folded skin. Behind the female’s still figure the other herders clutched their heads, too.

  And in that stretching moment Andrews made his move.

  Dorthy realized what he was about to do and whirled; but too late. He triggered the signal flare and white light scorched among the herders behind them, searingly bright. One whirled, afire, its panic breaking the weakened thrall of command. Frantically slashing at its burning pelt, it stumbled into two of its companions. The flare screamed into the far wall and skittered off in a shower of sparks as Andrews ran forward, scooped up the rifle that one of the herders had dropped. When he turned, Dorthy caught the hard edge of his purpose: he thought that he was doing right, destroying something before it destroyed him, unable to imagine any motivation on the neuter female’s part other than those he himself possessed. Kill or be killed.

  All this in the moment as he brought up the rifle.

  The first shot kicked fragments of black flooring around the female’s clawed feet. She did not even flinch, watching Andrews as if calmly resigned, the cloud of her aura united at last, as he steadied his nervous grip and fired again.

  In the moment of her fall, the herders were still. Then the translator collapsed like an unstrung puppet, and the others began to shuffle forward. Andrews struck Dorthy’s shoulder, turning her and pushing her back.

  “Run,” he said. “Run, you little fool,” and turned to face his enemy.

  Dorthy ran.

  5. FOUR HUNDRED BILLION SUNS

  Later.

  A stone disturbed by her feet chuckled away over some unseen edge and Dorthy stopped, listening to the diminishing echoes. She was still afraid that one or more of the herders had followed her through the vegetation-choked dry riverbed of the ravine, around the slopes of the hold; still half expected that Andrews would walk up to her, smiling his easy smile.

  But he was dead; as dead as Arcady Kilczer, as dead as the twins and the people in the high camp in the keep. All dead. The desert circled Dorthy, quiet and immense beneath the starry sky.

  She went on, stumbling through chalky shadows until at last the homing compass settled to a steady glow. She threw it away, its little light vanishing silently into darkness, pushed up the goggles of her nightsights and rubbed the pinched bridge of her nose. Now all she had to do was await Angel’s return. No more than a few minutes.

  And afterward?

  She would tell her story, explain all that she had learned. If she was persuasive enough perhaps she could convince the Navy to withdraw from BD twenty and so end the war; but she was certain that this world at least would not be scorched clean. Once the Navy learned that the enemy was, at bottom, cowardly, the risk of exploration would seem small beside the potential rewards. P’thrsn would be blockaded until the changeling children died out, but it would not be destroyed.

  And if the marauders still lived at the core, they would not come in Dorthy’s lifetime. From the residue of the neuter female’s mindset she knew that the signals which betrayed phase graffles propagated through contraspace at the same relative velocity as the ships they powered. It would be at least two hundred years before anything arrived in the vicinity of Sol; the very size of the Galaxy would protect her. Unless Andrews had been right after all, unless humankind went out to challenge the marauders in their own territory…

  Well, the future was, as always, unguessable. But Dorthy knew at least that when her part was done, when she was released, she could no longer hide as the herders, the Alea, hid among the marginal suns. Poor little monsters fearful of the sky, of the light of four hundred billion suns.

  No, she could no longer deny her birthright. She would go out at last among the burning mysterious minds of her people.

  Contemplating this resolution, Dorthy sat on a slab of freezing rock and hugged her meagre warmth to herself, too tired to wonder if she had missed the rendezvous. But at last she heard the thrum of the thopter, distant but already growing louder, nearer, a heartbeat winging over the still, dark desert. She stood and triggered her signal flare.

  At the top of its brief erratic ate the white glare for a moment drowned out the stars.