Anvil of Stars

Praise For Greg Bear

and Anvil of Stars

"Whether he's tinkering with human genetic material or prying apart planets, Bear goes at the task with intelligence and a powerful imagination."

—Locus

"The sequel to his splendid The Forge of God . … displays all of Bear's superior literary gifts."

—Chicago Sun-Times

"Compelling… A major work of the imagination… Transcends the science-fiction genre, making [Bear] a writer for anyone concerned with the human condition."

—Seattle Times/Post-Intelligencer

"A moving and insightful portrait of an emerging society aboard the starship… a substantial, inventive, and satisfying coming-of-age novel."

—Locus

more…

"This is powerful, well-thought-out science fiction, with believable characters and fascinating science. Anvil ponders in new ways some of literature's oldest themes of justice, conscience and even love… Anvil of Stars is only the most recent proof of the permanent niche [Bear] has carved for himself in the field."

—Flint Journal

"Succeeds because of Bear's ability to create characters the reader can care about… a top-notch space war novel."

—Kansas City Star

"[A] riveting tale of interplanetary revenge."

—The Bookwatch

"An incredible adventure. It's a sequel, but easily stands on its own. It's thought-provoking and maintains an extremely high interest level throughout. What a frantic pace!"

—Rave Reviews

"This is a powerful work that is going to make you sit and think for a while, and hopefully disturb you just a little. A powerful hard SF novel from one of the top writers in the field."

—Amazing Stories

"Provocative and entertaining… an action-packed and often thrilling plot… Bear draws on the full range of his gifts here, seamlessly pulling together action and characterization to create a gripping story."

—Publishers Weekly

"A satisfying sequel to a terrific novel."

—Eastsideweek, Seattle

"If, like me, you relish a neutronium-dense blend of Edmond Hamilton and Freeman Dyson, A. E. Van Vogt and Richard Feynmann, you'll risk super-deceleration under volumetric stasis to lay your hands on the latest Bear."

—Washington Post Book World

"Anvil of Stars shows him at the top of his form and poses a number of fascinating questions about the true nature of vengeance and what seeking it can do to the human heart. Don't miss it!"

—West Coast Review of Books

"Bear writes with a heady brilliance that communicates a sense of immediacy and credibility."

—Library Journal

Also by Greg Bear

Queen of Angels

Eternity

Tangents

The Wind from a Burning Woman

Strength of Stones

Eon

Blood Music

The Forge of God

Psychlone

The Infinity Concerto

The Serpent Mage

Heads

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Greg Bear

Anvil of Stars

WARNER BOOKS

A Time Warner Company

For Dan Garrett, cousin and friend

If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

WARNER BOOKS EDITION

Copyright © 1992 by Greg Bear All rights reserved.

Questar® is a registered trademark of Warner Books, Inc.

Cover design by Donald Puckey Cover illustration by Bob Eggleton

Warner Books, Inc.

1271 Avenue of the Americas

New York. NY 10020

A Time Warner Company

Printed in the United States of America

Originally published in hardcover by Warner Books. First Printed in Paperback: February, 1993

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Prolog

AT THE END OF THE FORGE OF GOD, the Earth is dead, murdered by self-replicating spacefaring machines. A few thousand humans have been saved by other robots, machines sent by the Benefactors to defend primitive worlds and civilizations from the depredations of planet-killing probes. The Benefactor machines have succeeded in wiping out these probes within the solar system, but not before Earth's total destruction.

Kept aboard a huge Central Ark while Mars is made ready for their habitation, the humans are informed of the Law, a galactic code that governs the behavior of civilizations. The Law demands that civilizations which make self-replicating killer machines be punished—with extinction. Humans must carry out this punishment, with the help of the Benefactors. Younger occupants of the Central Ark volunteer, and their journey begins.

This is how the balance is kept.

PART ONE

MARTY SITS IN THE FRONT SEAT OF HIS FATHER'S BUICK, RIDING along a freeway in Oregon at midsummer twilight. The highway is thick with cars and rain glazes the road. Gray-blue sky, tail-lights brilliant red, streamers of reflection in wet dark blue roadways, road reflectors gold, big trucks with running lights and turn signals flashing, windshield wipers streaking all into dazzles and sparks, raindrops reflecting microcosms.

He feels the smooth fur and warmth of his dog, Gauge, pressed between the front seats, paw and jaw resting on Marty's curled knee. "Father," he asks, "is space empty? "

Arthur does not reply. There are no more highways, no more Earth. His father is off the Ark and on Mars by now, far centuries away.

Martin Gordon stirred and tried to wake up. He floated in his net, opened his eyes and unclenched his fists. A single salty tear, sucked into his mouth from the still, cool air, caught in his throat and he coughed, thrashing to complete awareness. In the large, high-ceilinged cabin, beads and snakes of yellow and white light curled along the walls like lanes of cars.

He rolled over in the suddenly strange place. A woman floated in the net beside him, hair dark brown almost black, face pixy with fresh sleep, upturned eyes opening, wide lips always half- smiling. "Are you all right?" she asked.

"I think so," he said. "Dreaming." Martin had been dreaming a great deal lately, much more since joining with Theresa. He had been dreaming of Earth; dreams both pleasant and disturbing, four or five each sleep.

"Of what?"

"Earth. My father."

Eight years after Earth's death, the children had left the Central Ark, in orbit around the Sun, and begun their journey on the Ship of the Law.

Two years after the children's departure, measuring by the Ark's reference frame, the survivors of Earth who stayed behind had entered suspended animation, the long sleep.

Two years for the Central Ark had occupied only a year for the children as the Ship of the Law accelerated to relativistic speed. Now, cruising at more than ninety-nine percent of the speed of light, time advanced even more slowly, relative to the outside universe; six and a half days for every year. Years were an archaic measure anyway, counted against the revolution of a world that no longer existed.

If still alive, Martin's mother and father and all the remaining survivors on the Ark had settled on Mars by now, after almost three centuries of long sleep.

For Martin and the children, only five years had passed.

Theresa drew closer to him in the single net, curled her arms around him, made a warm sound in the back of her throat. "Always the thread," she murmured. She slept again, could fall asleep so easily.

Martin looked at her, still disoriented. Dissonance between that past inconceivably far away in all dimensions, and this woman with her chest moving in and out, eyes flickering in dreamstate.

The thread, umbilicus of all the children, cut only in death.

"Dark, please," he said, and the ribbon lights dimmed. He turned away from Theresa, coughed again, seeing behind closed eyes bright red tail-lights and mystic blue highways.

If the drivers had known how beautiful that traffic jam was, how lovely that rain, and how few twilight evenings remained.

The Ship of the Law was made of Earth, smelted and assembled from the fragments of Earth's corpse, a world in itself, cruising massively close to the speed of light, hundreds of years from the dust and rubble of home.

Christened Dawn Treader by the children at the outset of their voyage, the ship resembled a snake that had swallowed three eggs, five hundred meters from nose to tail. Each egg, called a homeball, was one hundred meters in diameter. Between the homeballs, hung around the connecting necks like fruit in baskets, storage tanks held the ship's reserves of volatiles: hydrogen, lithium, helium, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon. Food and fuel.

The first two homeballs belonged to the children, vast spaces divided into a variety of chambers flexible in design and even in size.

Dawn Treader reminded Martin of a large plastic habitat his mother had pieced together in their house in Oregon; two hamsters in a maze of yellow plastic pipes, clear boxes lined with wood shavings, a feeding box and sleeping box and exercise wheel, even what his father had called a "remote excursion module," a plastic ball in which a single hamster could roll outside the habitat, across the floors, carpet, into corners.

The eighty-two children had even more room in proportion to their numbers. There was sufficient space for every Wendy or Lost Boy to have dozens of quarters in the homeballs. Most chose one primary residence, and used two or three others as occasion suited.

The third egg, farthest aft, held training centers and weapons stores. The spaces between the homeballs, the necks, were filled with huge conduits and pipes. The second neck was cramped by protrusions that Martin had long since decided must be part of the ship's engine. How the engine worked, or its location on the ship, had not been explained.

There were a lot of mysteries. Huge but light, most of the Dawn Treader's bulk consisted of what the robot moms called fake matter. Fake matter had the properties of size and resistance to pressure, but no mass. Dawn Treader massed little more than twenty-five hundred tons unfueled.

The children trained with weapons whose inner workings they knew next to nothing about. What they did not specifically need to know, they were not told.

The necks—dubbed wormspaces because of the twisty pipes—were ideal for gymnastics and games, and thirty Lost Boys and Wendys, two cats, and three parrots even now skirmished, using wads of wet clothing as missiles. Sheets of water crawled along the outer wall beneath a transparent field. Shadows lay deep and black everywhere in the wormspaces, offering even more places to hide.

Martin watched his fellows. They might have been part of a street gang in a city robbed of up and down. He breathed in their beauty and harmony, focused on a select few: Hans Eagle of the Raptors, a year older than Martin—oldest on the ship—pug-nosed, broad-shouldered, short-legged, with powerful arms, blond hair cut close and bristly, skin glistening pale; Paola Bird-song, small and graceful, flowing black hair tied up in a waggling long braid; Stephanie Wing Feather, with gentle, intelligent gray eyes, hair wrapped in a compact bun; Rosa Sequoia, large, red-haired, with her characteristic look of puzzled concentration.

The children screamed, hissed, yelled instructions to fellow team-mates, tossed wads of wet clothes, kicked back and forth among the pipes, all but Rosa, who kept apart.

They had been weightless for over four years now. Ladder fields allowed them to get around where it was inconvenient to echo—bounce from the walls and surfaces—or fly, or climb on physical objects. Whenever possible, the children tried to avoid using them. That was part of the game.

Cats bounded between the children, or hid in the shadows. Birds squawked and pretended to be upset; but birds and cats always followed the children, scrambling along ladder fields or gliding free in the air.

Martin puckered his lips and whistled shrilly. Play broke off in a clatter of shouts and jeers and the children gathered, grumpy at being interrupted. The air between the pipes filled with ribbons and sheets of faint light, ladder fields intersecting, like curling thin paper floating in water.

The children formed a ball around Martin. Most were only half-dressed. Four retrieved the wet, wadded clothes.

"Time for pre-watch drill," he said. "The rest can carry on."

Martin had been elected Pan six months before. Pan was in charge of all strategic functions, the most important now being drill planning and crew training. Five previous Pans had commanded the children, beginning with Stephanie Wing Feather.

Rex Live Oak, Stephanie Wing Feather, Nguyen Mountain Lily, Jeanette Snap Dragon, Carl Phoenix, Giacomo Sicilia, David Aurora, Michael Vineyard, Hu East Wind, Kirsten Two Bites, Jacob Dead Sea, Attila Carpathia, Terry Loblolly, Alexis Baikal, Drusilla Norway, Thorkild Lax, Leo Parsifal, Nancy Flying Crow, Yueh Yellow River. These made up the Pan's drill group today; each day, he drilled with a different group. There were five groups. Once a year, the groups reshuffled. Some members with well-honed skills moved from group to group depending on the drills.

The children's skins, yellow and white, brown and black, shone with sweat. Slender and stocky, tall and short, manner not obeisant, not insolent, within the observed forms, they were family and team, forged by five long years into something his mother and father would not have recognized as a useful society, but it worked… So far.

The twenty rotated and bounced in mid-air, sliding into damp overalls, Wendys in blue, Lost Boys in red. Dressed, they followed Martin aft through the second neck, toward the third homeball. Behind them, Hans Eagle urged the others to continue the game.