Anvil of Stars (49 page)

"What did the Killers do to your people when they came?" Ariel asked Dry Skin/Norman. So far, he was the only Brother who had taken a human name, and seemed the most willing to speak about Brother history.

"We our worlds, already in space, already commerce between worlds, all knew when our moons were taken, planets injected. Death was large and quick. We we made our own escapes. The Benefactors found us and told us the Law." Norman weaved a little, releasing a scent of almonds and turpentine: distressed grief. This was not something any Brother enjoyed talking about.

"We know that much," Ariel said. "But did they try to hide themselves, to… play with you?"

Norman jabbed suddenly with his head at the projected chessboard, and the cords engaged in deep concentration jerked, clacked their claws in agitation, resumed. "No deception, no playing false," Norman said.

"I wonder why?" Ariel asked.

"Why play cat and mouse with us, and not with you?" George Dempsey added.

"Perhaps no learning in we us," Norman said. "Perhaps they already met us our kind before, and knew enough."

"You were stronger and more developed than we were," Cham said. "You actually got away from them."

"But we we hate this as much as you," Norman said, "a hate to ungather a braid for multiple fury."

This was the first time Martin had heard a Brother speak of hatred. His face flushed and his heart raced, hearing these words; humans were not alone in their passions. "We're partners, " Martin said. "We feel the same way."

"Cords have no hatred of abstractions," Norman said. "We all we must take their example now. They play better chess, no fury, no hate. United, we we become weaker in some ways."

"Hatred is strength," Cham said. "That's what I feel. Without hating this… without hating them . . ." He bared his teeth like a wolf at the image on the screen. "Let's not underestimate hating."

Norman weaved back and forth and made a smell like burning sugar and cut grass. "I we believe there is strength in you we we have not. I we say never these thoughts to others, but know we we worry them."

Paola questioned him in crude Brother audio, straining her voice to make the scrapes and tones and piped air hums.

"Norman's saying he thinks we might have done better in their situation. Our literature leads him to believe we're better at getting angry. Better at killing."

"I we hope we can learn from you," Norman said.

"I we think we all our aggression suffices," Eye on Sky said, watching his cord push a holographic bishop three squares diagonally.

"How about names for these… creatures or beings or whatever?" Donna asked, breaking the awkward silence that followed. "I have one for it."

"What?" Paola asked.

"Bishop vulture," Donna said. "Sanctimonious diplomat, eater of carrion. Color of sick vomit."

"Yuck," George Dempsey said.

Jennifer came onto the bridge after a few hours' absence, glanced at the chess game in progress, turned to Martin, and projected a series of charts with her wand.

"They can project false light paths," she said. "They can convert matter to anti-matter at billions of kilometers—maybe up to and beyond our noach limit—and they can disarm neutronium bombs. They have it all, or they want us to think they have it all."

"This is what you worked out with Giacomo?"

"And with the ships' minds."

"Then we can't do anything to them."

The crew, human and Brother, fell silent.

Jennifer stiffly turned her shoulders with her neck, looking at her crewmates apologetically. "Sorry," she said. "Before the blackout, this is all we could figure, all we could deduce, given what we're seeing."

"Any chance you're wrong?" Ariel said.

"Of course," Jennifer said meekly. "We can always be wrong."

"You say the ships' minds worked with you," Cham said. "Do they agree?"

"This last part I worked through on my own, after the blackout, after the moms went away, so I can't be sure they would agree," Jennifer said.

"Then there's some hope?" Paola asked plaintively. The Brothers remained silent, waving like grass in a soft breeze.

Jennifer bit her lip. "I'm not perfect at this sort of thing," she said.

"But you're damned good," Cham said.

Martin reached for the last thread before the void, if only to keep the crew from something they did not need at all: complete despair. "Can the ships' minds—on Greyhound or Shrike—learn from this… advance our technology, add to our defenses, our weapons?"

Jennifer seemed grateful for the suggestion. "That's what we were… I mean, we wouldn't figure this out just to show everybody things were hopeless. We can't do anything on Trojan Horse, but I'm hoping Giacomo and the ships' minds, and all the others…" Tears broke from her eyelids and drifted in front of her face. She batted at them absently. "There just isn't much time, and we could have figured wrong so many different ways."

"But there's hope," Paola persevered. "Real hope."

Jennifer looked at Martin, saw the beseeching in his eyes, and said, "I think so. I haven't given up."

They endured the four-g deceleration for a day. They had created liquid-filled couches for these times; Martin and all the humans kept to their couches and tried to sleep through it. The Brothers' cords clutched their rings.

Orbital insertion was now assured without any further action.

The craft that came alongside a day before they entered orbit gleamed white as snow, a sand-blasted, spherical purity of forty or fifty meters.

The dry voice and image of bishop vulture instructed them, and they pushed their made-up weapons through the mechanical airlock.

The sphere opened a black mouth and swallowed the weapons like a big fish after a school of sprat. Its brightness dulled to charcoal gray; almost lost against the stars, visible only as shadow, it slipped away.

"Nothing lost," Eye on Sky said. "They were not good weapons. They gave no comfort."

Actually, to Martin, holding a laser rifle had afforded a kind of comfort. He hadn't held an actual gun since target shooting with his father when he was seven; the smooth gunmetal blue and gray lines of the laser rifle, though cinematic, had at least given him the sensation, however illusory, of doing something for immediate defense.

None of the weapons had ever been fired. Compared to the ability to control mass at billions of kilometers, a high-powered laser beam and chemical kinetic bullets seemed less than a stone axe against an atomic bomb.

One of the cords died playing chess. It belonged to Sharp Seeing. A brief ceremony was held before the Brothers, alone in their quarters, ate it, separating into their own cords to do so. After, with only twelve hours to go before orbiting Sleep, Sharp Seeing explained that the cord had died of frustration, facing potential checkmate and unable to find an escape. "I we begin to think perhaps this game is bad," Sharp Seeing said. The cord he had lost was not, so he claimed, an essential part.

Paola was the only human allowed to attend the ceremony, after which she emerged both deeply moved and very proud.

Sleep filled the screen in hypnotic detail. Hakim and Sharp Seeing busily gathered information, expressing each in his way the excitement of witnessing and recording such an extraordinary object.

The fourth planet's supply of internal heat was sufficient to keep its surface at a constant twenty degrees centigrade, except where molten material and hot gases leaked through, chiefly along the mountain ridges, which seemed to show where massive rocky plates ground against each other.

The physics, as Hakim had already said, was incomprehensible, pointing to massive technological adaptations. Possibly the entire planet was artificial, but the crudity and violence of its design said otherwise… and there was no way to unravel the contradiction, given what they knew and what they could see.

Sleep's crudity lay in the uncertainty of its surface. With an area of thirty-two billion square kilometers, nine tenths of it under water, hundreds of millions of square kilometers of land churned in apparently useless turmoil. Angry black clouds rose where molten material flowed into the broad seas, rolling from the wall-like mountain ridges.

The air was moist and high in carbon dioxide, low in oxygen. Martin thought it might be an atmosphere adapted for plants.

Hakim and Sharp Seeing used the Double Seed's primitive instruments to capture images of ocean-going forests of dark green, rising from the water like drifting continents, the largest of them wallowing for ten thousand kilometers across a smooth sea.

Low, rounded quartz-like mountains punctuated the dark basaltic crust, topped by thick crests of pink and orange.

"The colors are probably phosphates, volcanic sulfur compounds, and hydrocarbons," Hakim said. "Wonderful sights, wonderful knowledge, but our instruments are so limited! "

"Time for an open meeting, all of us, now," Martin said.

All twenty of the Double Seed's crew gathered in the cafeteria, humans and Brothers mingling easily.

Eye on Sky and Martin floated at the center. Eye on Sky spoke first in a rich sequence of odors and sounds, head cords stretching wide, claws clicking for the third, almost musical, component. Paola might have been able to understand some of this; to Martin, who knew only a few of the less sibilant sounds, the speech was interesting, but empty of meaning. Then Eye on Sky switched to English.

"Decided days ago that we we should speak before we our hosts in language we all us may understand. All we our ten on this ship now speak English enough to be understood, with Paola Birdsong giving help. Thus, we we now will use English exclusively when we are together."

"We appreciate the gesture," Martin said.

"It is some stifling," Eye on Sky said, "but necessary."

"We're going to take some important precautions after our first contact with our hosts," Martin said. "We don't know what they can learn about us at a distance, but we can be pretty sure that once they've actually touched this ship, secrecy may be impossible. We're going to have to be circumspect. We're reasonably sure the noach chamber can't be breached. If we have anything to say to each other that we don't want our hosts to hear, we say it there.

"But if we allow anybody or anything into the Double Seed, we'll have to assume no place is safe."

"Micro-scale listeners," George Dempsey said. "They could even be in our bodies."

"Right. We'll assume they can't be detected. That means no written messages, no winks or nods, nothing suspicious… or out of character."

Humans murmured and nodded, Brothers undulated slightly.

"The play's the thing," Martin said. "From now on, we're actors."

Double Seed entered orbit ten thousand kilometers above Sleep, and the bishop vulture appeared again. There was no discernible delay in communications now. "We have asked you to orbit this fourth planet because it is the safest. Your ship would not be safe near any other planet in our gathering, for there is much activity—exchange of forces, coming and going of other ships. But the fourth planet is not especially comfortable for your kind. We ask that you give us samples of your atmosphere and tissues and nutritional requirements, that we may prepare vehicles and implements for your use."

Martin had already drawn blood from himself and Ariel with the Double Seed's medical kit. Silken Parts took tissue samples from one of his cords.

On the screen, the bishop vulture lifted its long nose, revealing breathing and speech orifices beneath. Its chest expanded and it hissed slightly while saying, "We are very interested in your aggregate species. We have no such intelligent beings in our gathering. You will be very valuable and respected among us, and you will teach us much."

Erin glanced at the ceiling. Martin stared fixedly at the camera, face blank.

"A ship will attach to your ship in a few minutes," the bishop vulture said. "The samples will be collected by a sterilized machine within your ship."

"Maybe we should introduce ourselves and exchange names. We prefer to use names," Martin said.

"We have no need for names, but names can be assumed for your convenience."

"My name is Martin."

"I can be called Amphibian, since I seem to most resemble, in my biology, that class of animals you call amphibians."

"A better name might be Frog," Martin suggested.

"Then I will be called Frog. You will meet other representatives, and assign them names and categories, as you wish."

"Ship is approaching," Sharp Seeing announced.

With a gentle scraping sound, the ship attached to Double Seed, a thick extrusion surrounding the mechanical airlock like lips. Martin took a deep breath. Here it was—intrusion, and all the dangers that might bring. He wondered, too late, if they should have resisted direct contact—decided that would have been impossible.

Eye on Sky opened the exterior door. A gray cylinder with rounded ends entered. Then he closed the exterior door and opened the interior. The cylinder propelled itself into the bridge area with quiet spurts of air drawn through small slits in its middle, and expelled in similar slits arranged around its length.

Paola opened a small refrigerator and passed the samples in their transparent plastic container to Silken Parts, who swung around to release the container in front of the cylinder.

An arm extruded from the cylinder and took the container. The cylinder propelled itself softly to the airlock, and the door closed behind.

On the screen, the bishop vulture—Frog, Martin corrected himself—turned away for a moment, head cocked, then turned back. "We have several possibilities open to us. You may come to the surface of our fourth planet, to meet directly with our representatives, or you may remain within your ship. If you choose to visit the surface, you may use equipment we supply to make your stay comfortable; this is recommended, as testing of your samples tells us you would soon grow tired under this planet's gravity."

They've analyzed the samples already… Martin's neck and shoulders tensed and he shivered.

"You may also choose your mode of conveyance. These decisions may be made at your leisure. I will remain available to you at any time."