George Zebrowski (17 page)

He looked up and saw the antiquated beacon tower standing on the mountain. There was no sign of people. He took a deep breath of the fresh, moist air. Storm clouds were moving toward the yellow sun from the south. The settlement was probably nearby, but so small that he had passed over it in a second.

He began walking across the clearing toward the wooded mountain, stretching his muscles, enjoying the feel of softness under his boots, looking at the irregularities of dirt and growing things, so new after confinement within the ship’s familiar geometry.

Rain fell as he reached the trees, and he ran under the protection of the huge leaves. He looked around. Here the very shadows were green-tinted; the air’s sweetness mingled with the odor of rotting things. Soon the moisture was running in rivulets from the trunks and branches, in giant drops from the overburdened leaves, accenting the smell of wet bark and minty leaf. Some of the leaves caught the water like goblets, overflowing their fill onto the path in front of him.

Quickening his pace on the well-worn trail, he came to a fork in the path. The left way led up to the tower; the right probably continued around the mountain.

He took the upward path, climbing steadily until he emerged on a flattened summit of dirt and rock. The tower stood above him, about one hundred meters of metal frame and spiral stairway with a cage at the top.

Gorgias turned and looked out over the forest. The ship sat in the clearing, its polished hull looking dull in the rain.

He turned back to the tower and noticed the wooden shelter under the spidery stairs. He hurried between the legs of the tripod and into the hut. The smell of soil was very strong inside. He saw a table, a chair and an old cot. The only window was behind him by the door. The dirt-floor hovel was probably used by maintenance people when they visited the beacon.

He sat down and wiped the wetness from his face. The chair creaked under him as he wondered whether he could readjust the beacon so that it would lead ships into Izar’s sun. That would be much more enterprising than simply destroying the tower; they might replace the beacon as soon as jumpships noticed that the system was missing from their scanners.

He got up, went outside and started up the spiral, reaching the top in a few minutes. He paused and let the sun warm his face. The ship’s hull glinted across the downward slope of trees.

Gorgias stepped through the entrance into a small shelter. The instrument package stood on an anchored tripod. He grasped the clear plastic covering and lifted the hemisphere back on its hinges.

After a few minutes of study, he was certain about how to make adjustments. The entire mechanism was made so that it could be taken apart easily. First he set the standard Federation coordinates for Izar’s sun; then he removed the faceplate and set it to read as it had before, so that the dial would not show the change. He replaced the cover, turned and went down the spiral, his boots clattering on the rungs. It had been easy, but then what kind of security would this kind of installation ever need? Who would think that it might come into danger? Not much could go wrong with its simple design. A few ships would be lost before the beacon was repaired, but that would be enough to make his stopover worthwhile.

He reached the base of the tower and started toward the path. The sound of a snapping twig startled him, and he stopped. Someone was coming up the trail. Standing perfectly still, he listened to the gentle footsteps; then he turned, went into the hut and peered out through the rag hanging over the window.

A figure in green came up the path, grasping a tall walking stick in its hand; a wide-brimmed hat hid the face from view.

Gorgias stepped back from the window, realizing that it was too late to avoid the encounter. The figure came inside, dripping water from the hat. The person was not very tall, but thin enough to appear taller from a distance.

The girl took off her hat in a sweeping motion, throwing drops into Gorgias’s face. Then she saw him and stared back in surprise, but without fear.

She looked upward, as if thinking about the beacon. He noticed her long brown hair, tied up in a bun on the back of her head. She took a step toward him and stopped, unsure of herself; then she shrugged and sat down in the chair. Gorgias relaxed, half-sure that she had not guessed the meaning of his presence.

She said something, but he did not understand the language. Her voice was musical; he could tell that she was making an effort to be friendly.

“Id-della,” she said, pointing to herself.

Gorgias nodded, unused to standing for so long in another’s gaze; he could almost sense her heartbeat, feel the warmth of her skin. If she became suspicious about the beacon, he would have to destroy it. It was inevitable, he realized, that the colony would become suspicious about the beacon, whether he killed her or not, now that she had seen him.

He rushed through the door and ran down the trail. In a moment he heard her behind him, padding noisily on the packed dirt; he turned his head and saw that she was gaining, stick in hand. Suddenly he was uncertain about whether he could defend himself in hand-to-hand combat; he had never gone into a fight without weapons or the ship. His pursuer was armed with a heavy stick, and might easily crush his skull.

She was still on the slope when he reached level woodland; he heard her voice echoing from the trees when he ran out into the clearing. The sun came out, blinding him for a moment; he stumbled forward and stopped in the tall grass.

He turned around and saw her standing near the edge of the clearing, watching him as if he were a wild beast that she was hunting. She called to him, and it sounded like a question.

“
She’s no enemy
,” his father’s voice said within him.

He turned away and sprinted for the ship.

The lock was warm around him as he staggered inside. He looked back and saw her running through the clearing. Voices called to her, and he saw two figures among the trees on the mountainside. She drew closer as he watched, carrying her stick like a spear, rushing through the grass with the beauty of a wild animal. She was only curious about him and the ship.
Coward,
he said to himself, hating his own fear.

“Close the lock,” he said, then went forward when the door had closed, trying to ignore the absurdity of the situation. A single, powerless individual had ruined his plan.

“Lift,” he said as he sat down in the control room.

In moments he was moving slowly above snow-white clouds.

The ship circled and came in over the tower.

“Destroy it,” he said.

Beams reached out and burned the structure. The wet trees began to smoke. The ship circled and came in again. Beams reached out again, hastening the melting; the tower seemed to sink as its metal liquified; a rain of white-hot droplets hit the trees. Gorgias regretted the loss of his jumpship trap.

“Find the town.”

The ship moved away from the ruined tower, widening the circle, searching.

“On the other side of the mountain.”

Gorgias leaned forward as the town came into view — one street with a dozen buildings.

“Burn it.”

The ship came in low and touched fire to the roofs. Gorgias realized that the people would have time to escape if they were quick about it; he had no time for hunting individuals with a ship.

In a few moments he was over the clearing again. The girl and the two men stood in the grass, staring at the smoking mountain. One of them pointed to the smoke rising from the other side of the mountain, where their town was burning. The girl turned and looked up at the ship.

Then the clearing was behind him, and the ship was climbing starward. The drive cut in and the ship slipped into gray ashes.

There was no beacon on the screen — a small thing, but it would inconvenience his enemies; if only the girl had not come to the tower, he might have caused more damage.

She was an absurd image in his mind, laughing at him.

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“There was a child went forth every day,

And the first object he looked upon, that object he became,

And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day,

Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.”

— Walt Whitman

THE WHISPER SHIP flickered out of bridgespace — a broken line suddenly becoming continuous as the stars of Hercules kindled around it, throwing their light into the gas and dust of the Cluster, wrapping the myriad huddling suns in a shimmering field. These were hot suns, these fifty thousand ornaments, intense even in the lenses of faraway worlds.

The core of the Cluster, thirty light-years across, contained the greatest concentration of stars, giving the appearance of a solid mass of light, as if some cosmic craftsman were planning to create a titanic star from the compression of suns.

It had taken almost two hundred hours at full drive to get here; the ship had followed a twisting path through the plane of the galaxy, turning, winking in and out of jumpspace, doubling back to check for pursuers, finally setting a direct course for the base.

He could live out his life among these stars and not be found. As he looked at the Cluster, something like reverence came into him, as if he were looking at the beginning of all things. These stars were silent beings, ruling the galaxy from this place above the hub. The stars below circled the black hole at the galactic core; but the Cluster seemed to ride free in the night.

The screen flickered briefly as the ship passed in and out of non-space, stitching across the remaining distance to the base.

The Cluster swallowed the ship, blotting out the galaxy.

Slowly, the ship penetrated toward the center, until the cloud that hid his destination filled the screen. Here and there the cloud was suddenly pierced with light, the lances of the ruling gods outside, sentries protecting the spark inside.

The screen brightened as he neared the small, white-hot sun. Gorgias leaned forward, anticipating the sudden vista; even as a child it had never failed to move him.

The ship passed out of obscurity and the white-hot star lay before him in a pocket of space, a small desert of darkness and light. Home was here, all there was of it, the warren of war which had never been found by the Federation.

The ship slipped through the sunspace and sought the airless world.

Soon the barren, craggy surface took up half the screen; and a little later the polar mountains sprawled beneath a painted sky of star-pierced gas. The tunnel entrance gaped at Gorgias like the barrel of some huge gun set in the mountainside.

The ship floated inside; locks opened and closed as it passed through to the berth chamber far below.

Gorgias was still as the ship settled into its familiar concrete notch. Homecoming was always a time of mixed feelings. Elation would be followed by a sense of safety; later, he knew, a feeling of entombment would find him. He worried at times that the lock mechanisms might fail, trapping him here forever.

He got up and climbed the ladder to the vertical air lock. The hatches opened and he climbed out onto the ship’s hull, stepping from there to the concrete block which enclosed the ship’s ovoid shape on three sides.

Six berths and only one Whisper Ship. Where were the others? Somehow the question was not as insistent as it had been during past homecomings.

He turned and his footfalls echoed; he walked through the huge open door set in the cavern wall, and marched down the long dark passage until he came to the war room; the heavy door slid open and he stepped into the brightly lit chamber.

He sat down at the table of polished metal and took a deep breath. The room still held the antiseptic odor of the tireless air system.

Centuries had tumbled away and the table had not lost its mirrored luster. He looked around at the empty chairs, imagining the Herculean strategists whose faces had been reflected in the polished metal as they planned and shouted at each other across the frozen, lakelike surface.…

Home. All there was of it.

The base had never been found; even now it would be able to defend itself if attacked — but that would never happen; home was a place beyond reach, beyond all danger, where all hopes were stored, as impregnable as the center of his will.

He reached over and touched the terminal next to his chair, selecting from the historical records.

The long-dead, encyclopedic voice, familiar to him throughout his life, uttered words in the dark region above the table. A misty pillar of light went up from the mirrored surface.

Gorgias had always avoided the visuals of New Anatolia’s destruction; his father had described the event to him, but had always been reluctant to show him what had happened; now it was time to see, Gorgias thought, to renew his weakening will.

“These records were made with great difficulty,” the voice said from the vault. “Where they are deficient, simulations have been substituted, so that the past will stand against the inevitable lies that will be told.…”

A green world appeared, the plaything of a double star.

“A hundred ships from Earth,” the voice continued, “built for one purpose: to strike directly at New Anatolia, to break the will of the Empire. They came out of jumpspace with their heavy lasers and sun mirrors. The entire surface of the planet had been divided up in advance, one sector for each group of ships.…”

They came as if to cut grass and destroy pests
, Gorgias said to himself.

Snippets of battle sequences appeared. Mobile fortresses as large as planetoids lanced energy into New Anatolia, incinerating cities, precipitating whirlwinds and earthquakes, melting the ice caps.…

Floodwaters crossed continents, filling valleys as if they were ditches.…

“The ground was carbonized to a depth of fifty meters, the oceans began to steam; the clouds spread across the blackened land. A billion people died. The corpses did not have time to bleed; firestorms swept the urban areas, disintegrating bone and tissue as if they were paper. Here and there a few survived, coming to the surface to breathe the fine dust and alien air, shriveling up into dry sacks filled with brittle bones.…”