Anvil of Stars (48 page)

"I think they must be treating us like nursery school kids—if not like stray insects."

"We've been looking over the mug shots of the citizens of Leviathan," said Hans. "The crested critter is pretty audacious. They like to repeat themselves, don't they? Anybody prepared to make a judgment now?"

"I think we're close."

"What more do we need?"

"The final dotted i and crossed t."

Hans chuckled. "I'll settle for frontier justice and getting the hell away."

"We've come this far," Martin said. "We've been invited to orbit the fourth planet, and we've already set our course. We'll be down there in twenty-seven days."

"Godspeed," Hans said.

"How's politics?" Martin asked hesitantly.

"My worry, not yours, Martin."

"Just curious."

"We're prepared for whatever you ask of us. Count on it."

"Any idea who killed Rosa?" Martin asked.

"Time enough after the Job's done."

"Jennifer wants some extended time with Giacomo. She thinks she may have something interesting to present to the ships' minds."

"I can't wait," Hans said. "Not more super-physics doom and gloom, I hope. We're getting enough of that here, every time we look at those damned planets."

"She says it might be good news."

"Put her on, then. Giacomo's in the nose with me."

Jennifer came forward and said she wanted the bridge empty while she talked with Giacomo. Humans and Brothers left, all but Silken Parts, who was collaborating on the problems using Brother math.

"Hans doesn't sound good," Erin told Martin in the hall outside the bridge.

Ariel concurred. "I hope he's keeping it together."

"Maybe he's depressed because of the show," Erin suggested. "It's gotten to me."

"Maybe," Martin said. He was empty of either optimism or gloom. The sheer weight of superiority of Leviathan's worlds made it hard for him to breathe, much less think.

Silken Parts and Jennifer left the noach chamber after three hours. Jennifer could hardly talk. She hung on to a net in the crew quarters and thirstily gulped a bulb of juice. When Martin approached, she held up her hand and shook her head.

"Please," she said. "My head hurts. Giacomo's found ways to—"

"You don't have to talk now if you don't want to," Martin said. She ignored that.

"He's found ways to use Brother math to describe Leviathan's noach physics. Silken Parts and the ships' minds are collaborating.

"It's just too fast, much too fast. We see something, maybe the way number twelve changes or the number eight has big suspended cables, and Silken Parts comes up with a hypothesis… Giacomo runs it through… I look it over. Ah, God. I'm dead tired."

Jennifer waved her hand again weakly, closed her eyes, and instantly fell asleep.

"I think we've broken through," Hakim said. "I give them all the credit. They're sending us basic math now, which means they understand the symbols… the human symbols."

"Is there any of interest in the math?" Silken Parts asked.

"All very innocuous, child's stuff," Hakim said. "More like human math than Brother math."

Silken Parts made a noise like leaves on pavement.

Eye on Sky examined the projected records of the transmissions from the fourth planet. Still shaky after four hours' sleep, Jennifer peered around the Brother at the records. "They're echoing most of what we send, but making changes, some… improvements? The notation is altered a little… here and here." She pointed to equations describing n-dimensional geometries. Martin couldn't begin to interpret what she was seeing.

"They learn fast and soon," Eye on Sky said. "We can seed the beach now, I we think."

"Time to test them on language," Martin said. "Transmit a Brother and an English dictionary, and a full audio record of speech sounds for both languages."

"Like opening our book to them," Ariel said.

"Baiting the hook," Martin said. He turned to the mom and snake mother. "Can you arrange for the Trojan Horse to have some supernova damage?"

"Yes," the mom replied.

"Cham, you and Erin design our damage and report to Eye on Sky and me when it's done."

"Got it," Cham said, and they left the bridge.

"It looks dark and heavy," Ariel said, staring at the projection of the fourth planet. "I've got a name for it, if anybody cares," she said.

"What?" Martin asked.

"Sleep. The other planets… the bristling world, looks to me like Puffball. The flipping world…"

"Masque," Martin suggested.

"Blinker is better," Erin said. Within ten minutes, they had named each of the planets, according to their characteristics, working outward from Leviathan itself:

Frisbee, orbiting barely half a million kilometers above the surface of Leviathan, a rapidly rotating white disk seventy-two hundred kilometers in diameter, its circumference fringed with tangled, outward-streaming "hair" of unknown purpose and composition.

Big City, surrounded by red acid haze, covered with architecture to a depth of four hundred kilometers.

Lawn, a blanket of blue-green vegetation divided by artificial rivers, Earth-like but for the fact that the average surface temperature was three hundred degrees Celsius, the rivers ran deep with liquid fake matter (so Giacomo and Eye on Sky speculated), and the atmosphere consisted largely of carbon dioxide and steam.

Sleep, a dark funeral bouquet of wilted roses packed into a ball one hundred and two thousand kilometers in diameter…

Cueball, featureless gray.

Puffball with its thousand-kilometer-high seeds.

Pebble One, barely a thousand kilometers wide, empty gray rock and water ice au naturel.

Mixer, cables hanging from three moons stirring its gaseous surface into a beautiful abstraction of swirls and eddies.

Mirror, perfect and apparently pointless.

Gopher, like a huge lava bomb from a volcano, riddled with holes impossibly deep and wide, green lights winking in the holes like baleful eyes.

Pebble Two, very much like Pebble One: in fact, exactly alike in every detail.

Blinker still flipping like the display on a cosmic clock, changing its character between three different worlds.

Pebble Three, duplicate of Pebbles One and Two.

Gas Pump, blue green, a slushball of methane and ammonia and hydrogen and helium, its glowing wells tossing billions of tons of volatiles into orbit every hour.

And at the farthest extremes of the system, Magic Lantern, covered with oceans of perfectly smooth water ice, interspersed with polished iron and crystal land masses, the land and solid seas studded with black domes hundreds of kilometers across.

Naming Leviathan's fifteen planets did not bring any cheer or sense of control.

Martin hung in his net, watching with half-closed eyes the image of Sleep fill his cabin. Savages canoeing up the Hudson River, walking into New York City. Look up: the skyline. Pad on moccasins down the asphalt streets. Threaten to destroy the city with bows and arrows. Laughing, the mayor invites them into his office.

On the bridge, Jennifer, Hakim, Cham and Ariel floated at different angles, heads turning toward Martin as he entered. They all wore the same half-terrified expectant look Martin had become familiar with in the past few days. "Play it back," Cham said. "This is new," Hakim said. "Ten minutes ago." The transmitted voice sounded flat, sexually neutral, a little harsh, diction precise and almost chilly. "Hello," it began. "You have entered cooperative areas and are welcome to the gathering of partners."

"Not perfect," Jennifer commented. "But good enough."

"Many different kinds of intelligence work and play in union. Your kind may join, or may visit. There are no requirements except peaceful intentions. As you no doubt are aware, the local star group is a dangerous territory, populated by machines and intelligences not of good will. Weapons are not allowed in our neighborhood. If you have any weapons, even defensive weapons of low power, you must notify us and dispose of them under our direction, instructions to follow. Further informative discussions will follow. Is this understood?"

Eye on Sky listened intently to the same message delivered in Brother audio. "It is hollow and smells like space," he said. "But it is understandable."

"They'll be suspicious if we're completely unarmed," Cham said.

Martin nodded. "I think we should make some weapons and hand them over. Nothing impressive. Defensive projectile weapons, chemical…"

"The ship should have something, too," Erin said.

Martin looked at Ariel. "Lasers," he said.

"Right," she said.

"You direct the mom and snake mother," he said. "We'll need something convincing to hand over or jettison soon. It's time we put on our costumes and start getting used to our roles. In a tenday or so, I think we're going to be in their control…"

Martin asked Eye on Sky, "How do we answer them?"

"Enthusiasm and charm," Eye on Sky said. "We all we must be eager to learn. We all we are young, loving to splash the shore, and they will teach."

Martin smiled. "Who's deceiving the other, more?"

Eye on Sky rotated his head in a figure eight with a particularly equine motion. "We all ourselves, let it be hoped."

There was no time to think. Exhausted, pushing himself and the others hours past their sleeps, Martin prepared the human crew as best he could, doing what Erin called hearsing and rehearsing.

The roles they played did not stray too far from truth, but reflected a mixing of cultures, human and Brother, still prickly with potential conflict—close enough to reality. Tensions were high and human tempers flared as they critiqued each other over long hours, working to perfect their act.

In the charged atmosphere, the Brothers tended to separate without warning, forcing braids to chase down cords, bag them, and lock them in quiet rooms until reassembly occurred.

Silken Parts apologized to Martin for the inconvenience and confusion; Martin, as always, held his irritation in check… Knowing that humans might do something similar at any time, fight with each other, break into tears, or worse.

But the disassembling stopped after a few days, and the humans held together remarkably well.

Trojan Horse/Double Seed put on scars from supernova damage: radiation erosion on its outer skin, a crippled drive motor, damaged electronics within. The ship manufactured convincing guns and lasers. Martin locked them away, with only himself and Eye on Sky given the combinations necessary to unlock them.

He could hardly keep his eyes off the growing disk of Sleep, drawing faces in the lines of mountains, disquieting patterns in the broad seas. He imagined himself drifting on a raft down rivers a hundred kilometers wide, navigating twisty cracks in the crust between sheer walls of obsidian black and rust red…

A day before noach cut-off with Greyhound, Martin spoke with Hans in private. "We're doing well. We know our roles. Cham and Erin have worked up a primer of human- Brother history. It's pretty entertaining. We'll noach it to you…"

"Anything for a little distraction," Hans said. "Giacomo's had a problem. I'd call it a nervous breakdown, but he says it's just exhaustion. He's still trying to riddle what Jennifer sent him."

"She wants to talk with him some more…"

"We'll be in blackout… He's really out of it, Martin."

"What they're doing might be important."

"I'd force him if I could, but he's like a zombie. Anything more and he'll break."

"Then she's on her own for a while," Martin said.

Hans made an ambiguous humph. "I'm feeding you more data from our remotes. The whole system is a circus. Don't tell anybody I said so, but I think we've more than met our match. The moms say they're not going to confuse us with guesses."

"I just can't figure any of it," Hans said. "Wouldn't it be safer for them to destroy all intruders and visitors? Especially after the supernova—they know something's in the neighborhood."

"I'm willing to make some guesses," Martin said. "I think they could have destroyed us already, but they're keeping up appearances. If they don't believe our disguise, they still can't be positive it's a disguise. Maybe they're extra cautious, in case we're backed up by something even more powerful."

But no amount of discussion could make them feel any more certain, or any easier.

The ships' distances grew, and blackout with Greyhound, and then with Shrike, left them completely on their own.

Jennifer began to brood, and spent most of her off-duty time in her quarters, shared with Erin Eire. Martin worried she was on the same course as Giacomo.

The Brothers discovered chess, and it became a release for them. One entire day, all the Brothers aboard Trojan Horse played chess without eating or sleeping. Losing a game caused a humiliating shock and momentary separation; by the end of the day, to Martin's surprise, cords were playing cords. The cords seemed much better at the game than braids, touching the projected pieces with their claws to make them move, minimized mentalities fully focused, undistracted by organized higher intelligence. So much for cords having no intellect, he thought.

The first complete communication, face to face, began three days before entering orbit around Sleep. Martin and Eye on Sky stood on the bridge, a flat screen monitor hissing faintly in front of them, a video camera focused on them, befitting their level of technology. Martin almost felt at home with the equipment; like Trojan Horse/Double Seed, this was something on a human scale, something he could imagine his own people building and doing.

The standards for transmission had been established four days before. Communication had been sporadic since; a kind of formality, perhaps an interspecies shyness, wariness, keeping the channels of communication closed most of the time, except for essential information. At this distance, there was an hour's delay.

The speaker mounted beside the screen crackled faintly, and then fell into silence as a many-layered digital signal was received and translated. The cool, neutral voice spoke, musical and dry like wind-blown sand. Symbols and numbers passed across the screen, to be translated into final orbital adjustments.

"We are speaking to you from the fourth planet," the voice announced. "All is ready now. Our first meeting will occur in orbit. You will be fitted with apparel for a journey to the surface of the fourth planet, as agreed. We are ready to transmit picture as well as sound."

A vivid moving image appeared on the screen. The most human-like of their hosts' species—the crested, pale green being first encountered on Earth as the Death Valley decoy—lifted its miter-shaped head. Three amber eyes arranged in a small triangle on the snout of the miter sank into flesh, reemerged in a kind of blink. The knobby shoulders behind the crest moved slowly back and forth. Two six-fingered hands gripped a bar before it.

The miter-head shifted to one side. "We are anticipating a physical meeting, and have made equipment to prevent biological contamination. When you enter orbit around the fourth planet, we will learn the qualities of your atmosphere and chemistry, and suit our equipment to your needs. We will tell you how to put your weapons in our safe-keeping before you enter orbit. "

Martin froze the last image of the miter-head creature and examined it thoughtfully, goosebumps rising on his arms. This one shape so symbolized deception and betrayal, but in fact on Earth this creature had spoken a kind of truth, as part of the deadly, playful testing of humanity: it had warned American scientists of coming destruction.

They used it on Earth, they use it still, how many thousands of years since they launched the killer probes? No wasted effort; is their creativity depleted?

The delay still prevented practical two-way communication, but Martin thought it best to maintain an atmosphere of ceremonial observance, as befitted a truly historic occasion: the first communication between intelligent species, for humans and Brothers, since their own meetings centuries in their fictitious past.

The red light on their camera blinked and Martin took a deep breath and delivered his reply: "We are proud to be a part of this meeting. All individuals on Double Seed are prepared to follow your instructions. Your civilization seems much more capable than our own, and we entrust ourselves to your superior reasoning and technology." Let them digest and react to humility—or abject innocence.

He stepped aside and let Eye on Sky deliver his message in Brother audio language. Paola stood beside Martin and translated.

"We are most impressed by your partnerships," Eye on Sky said as the camera light blinked. "We have learned to work in partnership ourselves, two very different kinds of life and intelligence, and we have hopes of exchanging useful knowledge."

Hakim turned off the camera. "It is sending," he said. Martin looked around the bridge at Brothers and humans, at the mom and snake mother out of camera range, soon to disappear into the ship's fabric.

Martin could not help thinking of themselves as sacrifices, less Trojan Horse than trussed lamb waiting for the knife.

He was prepared for that. Death would bring certainty, even an ultimate relaxation. But too many others had gone before them to make the prospect of death in defeat attractive.

William and Theresa. The five billion dead of Earth.

The frozen image of the miter-head creature remained on the screen. Ariel floated beside Martin, swimming against the air with gentle hand motions to stop her axial rotation. "We were taught to hate that thing on the Ark," she observed. "I hope our hatred doesn't show."

"Two hours until our next deceleration," Cham said. "We'll have to be ready—it's going to be four g's and no fields. A big burn."

Eye on Sky and Silken Parts deftly removed a cord apiece and set them down to play chess while they watched. Jennifer, George Dempsey, and Donna Emerald Sea also observed, faces dreamy.

Jennifer said very little now but her eyes were large and her cheeks had hollowed; she slept fitfully, Erin said, and never more than an hour any given time before coming wide awake with a jerk, sometimes a little shriek.