Anvil of Stars (11 page)

Earth had been an easy target because of innocent radiation of energy into space, its baby-bird cheeping in the unprotected tree branch of the solar system.

Martin felt a weary sadness, an echo of all the sadness he had known since Earth's death. Was there ever a point in the scale of galactic civilizations when strangers could trust each other? Did civilizations ever develop sufficient scruples that not one of them would think of creating machines of mass destruction?

Perhaps; but humans were certainly not on that level.

Martin's reading of human history easily led him to imagine planet-destroying probes created by his people, and turned against others. And if he could imagine it, the moms could imagine it as well.

What sort of equality could exist between children and Benefactors under those circumstances?

Martin waited in the empty schoolroom, uneasy, a tic in his left eye, simple nerves. He stood near the sphere. The stars appeared normal now, and the sphere was offering an unaltered view in the direction of Wormwood, which he could make out even without help as a slightly brighter spot of light among the myriads. Brighter still was the red burn of Behemoth. Leviathan was not visible from this angle.

The War Mother entered.

"Hello, Martin," it said. "How are the children?"

"Fine, physically. A few social problems. Some aren't meshing perfectly." He always seemed to optimize the situation, making it sound better than he actually thought it was. Was this part of what Ariel might have called toadying to the moms?

"Have you developed plans for further training?"

He swallowed. "No," he said. "We feel stymied."

"Why?"

"We can't do the Job without knowing what might be waiting for us down there."

"All the information you need is being provided as we receive it."

"I mean background," Martin said. "Information about other civilizations, other incidents—how the strategies were created, how we can adapt them to suit our needs… I mean, to adapt them, we have to…" He swallowed again. For a Pan, he was not showing much fortitude. "You have to trust us with all your information. We're calling for full disclosure."

To Martin's surprise and concern, the War Mother did not speak for several long seconds. "The information provided should be adequate," it finally answered.

"We're being asked to show independent thought, to devise our own strategies… and the libraries aren't detailed. How did others fight against the planet-wreckers? How did your builders fight them?"

More seconds of silence. Surely it did not need so much time to compute or think of an answer.

"Your requests cannot be met," the War Mother said. "The information you require is dangerous."

Martin was astonished by the word "dangerous." That doesn't make sense," he said.

"Cooperation was required to build the Ships of the Law. To encourage the cooperation of many civilizations and beings, certain precautions were necessary, among them, that security would be maintained. Ships of the Law might be captured, and their information used to seek out and harm those who built the ships."

Martin had never thought of being captured; it had seemed, from the very beginning, that at least the children were safe, traveling in a Ship of the Law, the ultimate power, the belated victor of the war that had destroyed Earth. But of course that was not a war—just a battle. Probably an unimportant battle, at that.

Martin was not about to budge. "We need to have all your information shared with us."

"Surely you hope to survive this mission," the War Mother said.

"Of course."

"Martin, if your brothers and sisters survive, you, too, could be dangerous. If you are given such information, you also might seek the builders of these instruments."

Martin swallowed hard. "We cannot create strategies out of nothing. I've asked questions that need to be answered, and received no answers."

"You have worked with the best information available. There are simply no clues to where the Benefactors might be found. The information you need is available. Use it."

"I've been told—"

"You are Pan," the mom said.

He swallowed harder, and his tongue seemed to grow thick. "We'll stand down."

"What is 'stand down'?" the mom asked.

"We'll refuse to enact the Law."

"If that is your choice, the ship will change from its present course."

Martin relaxed his clenched fists. He was not angry with the moms; he was not angry with the children. With regard to himself he felt nothing. He looked away from the copper-bronze robot, seeing too clearly how naive they all were.

"We're just asking to be trusted," Martin said, working to keep his voice level.

"We are not empowered to trust or not to trust. Nor can we give you information that this ship does not carry. We cannot do the impossible, Martin."

He felt ill and exhausted. Why had he let the children put him up to this? Because he was Pan, and represented them? That didn't seem at all sufficient to explain his predicament and his misery.

"Why were we sent on this mission when we don't have the information we need to complete it?" He sounded petulant and petty, and he hated it.

"What you lack is information that our builders think you will not need."

Martin's mind worked furiously to find a chink in this thick armor of logic. I would have designed the ship the same way! We all would have!

"But the ship carries information about Earth. If it's captured, they could—the Killers could—"

"This Job would be impossible if you did not have access to your culture, your history and planetary memories."

"You'd risk our solar system, but you will not risk your… makers? Your planet, or planets?"

"That is the way it must be."

Another wall, huge and unyielding; two walls actually, closing with him between. "We feel inadequate to do the Job," he said softly, eyes turned away.

"Go back to the others and tell them they are not inadequate. They have the resources they need.

"There is, in this ship, something that goes beyond knowledge, that is hidden in its structure and the way it operates, which allows this ship to judge with high accuracy the chances of a mission's success. Call it a mechanical instinct. Your people are very capable. Tell them."

Martin lifted his head and stepped back. "I'll try," he said.

His face was red as he left the schoolroom. He had been maneuvered into presenting a case without believing it himself. That showed his weakness as a leader. Failing to get what he had been sent to get would make him seem weak in the eyes of some children—Ariel in particular. But he did not care what she thought.

What would Theresa think? And William?

What would Rosa Sequoia think? Rosa, who needed a strong leader to draw her back into the group?

Sitting on the edge of a table, Martin finished his crew report, the most difficult few minutes in recent memory. Most of the children—seventy-two of them—sat in the main cafeteria, the only space besides the schoolroom large enough to hold them all at once.

The ship's deceleration had hastened and they now faced a steady two g's. They were tired and they listened to his report quietly.

"That's it," he concluded, looking from face to face to keep direct visual contact with as many as he could. Then he gave that up; it might make him seem nervous. Instead, he focused on four or five in the front ranks.

Hans Eagle and Erin Eire sat in the front row. Hans' expression was quizzical. Erin cradled her cat, a fat gray thing with exhausted, bored eyes and matted fur.

"Did you argue with them?" someone asked from the middle. Martin looked up quickly and tried to spot the face, but answered before he had identified Terence Sahara.

"I did my best to present our case," he said. "Either we believe them, or we don't. And if we don't believe them…" He let the question hang.

Theresa sat on a bench to his right. He glanced at her; she smiled support. William, on the opposite side, about one third back into the crowd, sat with hands behind his head, elbows like stubby wings, eyes closed.

No one stood against the oppressive force; no one exerted themselves more than they absolutely had to.

"It's frightening," Erin Eire said. She swallowed; even speaking seemed tiring. "We thought they were all-wise, all-knowing. If the Ship of the Law doesn't know, then the machines that saved us probably didn't know, either… don't know."

"What do the Benefactors know? Anything?" Jack Sand asked.

Felicity Tigertail, in the front row—Martin's first lover, back on the Central Ark, during a brief two-day tryst—raised her hand as if she were in school. Martin nodded to her. Her arm was bruised, he noted; they all had bruises from such casual actions as letting arms drop. She lowered her arm cautiously.

"We're lost if we don't believe them," she said. "We have to believe them. That should be obvious."

"We don't have to believe anything," Ariel said from the rear, voice loud to rise above the murmuring. She sounded harsh, angry. Martin wondered where she got her energy to stay angry. "We have to ask questions. We should continue to ask questions! I think this is bullshit. They can defend themselves against the kind of machines that destroyed Earth! Why worry about what information they carry? The moms—the Benefactors—are simply afraid of us. They don't want us to know anything about them or their makers. "

Martin started to speak, but Paola Birdsong, in the middle of the group, shouted out first, "Hold it! Does anybody here have enough imagination to see what the moms are really saying? Martin, do you know what they're telling us?"

"They're not all-powerful," Jack Sand said.

"I'm asking Martin!" Paola insisted.

Martin looked out over the group from his seat on the table top, then with great effort stood up, holding his hands behind his back. The table seemed very high. If he fell, he could break a leg. Or his neck. "They seem to say there are hunter-killers out there from civilizations much more technologically advanced than the one—or ones—that built the Ships of the Law. "

"It never ends! Nobody ever learns!" Erin Eire cried out. Her cat tried to crawl away in distaste. "Nobody ever grows old enough to be kind or wise!"

"Hold it," Martin said, raising his hand. Noise rippled through the children, words of shock and dismay. "Hold it! Quiet!" he shouted hoarsely.

"Quiet!" Hans repeated, his voice like a bear's growl in the cafeteria space.

The children quieted. Ariel stood and lumbered from the room, followed by two others whose faces Martin didn't catch in the rear gloom.

"To get agreement to build these machines, the Benefactors have to guarantee security. Safety. They need to know that sending the ships and machines out won't backfire and lead bigger wolves down on them. That's just caution. Maybe there aren't really any bigger wolves out there. But they have to be cautious. And of course, in time, maybe we will become dangerous, like a lion turning on its keeper." He looked at Felicity and smiled. Felicity nodded.

"We shouldn't be cynical," Martin said. "The moms tell us we're good, and that we have what we need. We just have to work extra hard with what we have. We have to drill. We have to make up our own exercises based on what we've already been taught. They took risks by teaching us what they have. We're powerful, given the weapons we're taught to use. That shows some kind of trust, doesn't it?"

"We have what we need," Hans repeated. "We have work to do."

"Vote on it!" Ariel had returned and looked at Martin from the shadows at the rear.

Martin's face flushed. "No," he said. "We don't do everything by some sort of silly consensus. If you don't like the way things are being done, you elect another Pan. You can do that now if you want. The moms say we'll be diverted if we stand down. Who wants to lose this chance, after five years?"

Silence.

"God damn it, we have the right to vote!" Ariel said, tears obvious in her voice.

"One vote only," Martin insisted. "Whether I stay Pan." He swung his arms and folded them in front of his chest, aware that this was a silly and classic pose of blustering leadership, and waited for a response, half-hoping for a swell of dissent to take the weight from his back.

Silence.

"God damn you all!" Ariel cried out. The children hunched their shoulders and looked back at her resentfully, but she stayed in the room.

Martin gingerly lowered himself, feeling a moment of vertigo. "We already voted to go in," he said, voice softer. "This doesn't change anything. We just have to work harder. "

"Time is short," Hans said. "We work up a drill schedule now, and we drill by our own designs. We workshop what we might expect to find in this system, and we plan for it, and we take whatever help the moms offer!"

Martin's heart went out again in a perverse way to Ariel, standing in the back of the room, face shiny with tears. He had done his performance and they had agreed, tacitly at least, to continue; he had exerted leadership and had molded consensus of a sort. How long would it last, though, and how strong was their resolve?

In that sick moment, he knew he was wrong to agree with the moms, not demanding a stand-down, not calling their bluff—and that Ariel was right.

He stood on the floor and took a deep breath. Hans came up to one side. Behind him, Stephanie Wing Feather and Harpal Timechaser sat on benches, not looking at him. Finally Stephanie turned.

"Way to go," she said.

"Ignore them," Hans said.

"You've got them dedicated now," Stephanie said without sincerity as Martin turned to walk away. His entire head felt warm. He turned back suddenly, back muscles twinging. "What would you have done, God damn it?"

Stephanie kept her seat as he approached.

"What would you have done?" Martin repeated, less loudly. The other children had filed out now, leaving only Stephanie, Harpal, Hans and Martin in the cafeteria.

"I don't know," Stephanie said, swallowing. "I might have tried harder."

"No," Martin said, wiping his eyes and straightening. "No. You wouldn't have."