George Zebrowski (4 page)

He thought of worlds farther out in the Federation corridor, worlds teeming with colonists who had burned and reseeded whole planets. There life was more dangerous, yet death was not as feared as among the long-lived; but still the ties with the interior worlds were strong, since so many skills and services emanated from Earth.…

Behind him Gorgias and Myraa were quiet at last, but he did not turn his chair to look at them.

He thought of the fringe worlds of the Snake, scarcity-ridden places where Earth was almost unknown. Into this far end had come the ships of the Cluster, building, consolidating, gathering loyalty at the most distant nerve ends of Earth’s influence; for in fact it was from these most distant worlds that his people were descended, having grown powerful within the rich environment of closely spaced suns inside Hercules.

Later had come the ambition of pushing through to Earth itself, of taking the entire Snake, fifty thousand light-years of space and worlds, for the Cluster. The introversion of Earth’s stratified, immortalist society was supposed to have guaranteed victory. Herculean immortals had needed something grand to do with their existence, he thought.

But Earth had come to care. The takeover of the outer worlds had taken too long; one by one the outer worlds began to fight back furiously, and this led to the waking of the Earthgiant. His response brought back all that was strong and alert and clever in his nature, the same qualities that had built the largest human civilization in history, including Hercules. He had come breathing fire against Cluster worlds, until New Anatolia was burned into a cinder and all hope of winning against him became a sad joke.

Slowly he turned and saw that Myraa and his son were no longer in the room with him. Later, he knew, his son’s rage would return, regardless of Myraa’s efforts to quiet him.

He got up and wandered the large room, thinking about the possibility of life beyond the Earth-Hercules corridor, the Snake was only a thin thread of intelligence lacing the galaxy. Maybe there were other cultures in the central regions of the disk. Was there enough in the idea to interest his son? There had to be a way to change his plans, even if it was with the false hope of making his son think those same plans possible.

“How nice, Father,” he imagined his son saying, “ — you want me to become an explorer. For whom shall we explore, to what end shall we contact other civilizations? Behind me stands the ghost of a dead civilization. Shall we do it for them?”

Then, after a long silence, his son would continue, half-believing. “Will they give us the power to revive our civilization, Father?”

“Perhaps,” he would answer.

“Why should they, whoever they are? And did you consider that we may be alone, that there are no greater civilizations in the galaxy? Even if they exist, they might not wish to be found.…”

Outside, the procession had reached the house and was now standing in front of the windows, peaceful faces looking in. He did not know any of them, and they gave no sign of knowing him.

There was dirt on their hands. He wondered if they had come from burying Oriona somewhere out there in the tall grass of the hilly countryside. They were too polite to come into the house, knowing that he was here with his son. He thought of them living in their monastic cells inside the hill beneath the house; there each occupant turned away from the universe of light and color and substance, in the name of seeing past life and death to some fabulous yonder. They might just as easily see through their cell walls, he thought bitterly. Reality lay not in their self-generated ecstasies, but in the cold ground of worms and decomposition outside their cells; in the life-giving ruin of nature which never gave the same thing twice, settling instead for a repetition of types and approximations, none exactly like the other; in the endless processes of star formation and universe construction, not in the wishes of creatures caught between the infinitesimally small and the infinitely large.…

Oriona
. The thought of her pulsed inside him like a beating heart. His returning grief threatened to swell up inside him and tear his body apart. Ignoring the faces outside, he leaned forward in the chair and put his face in his hands, rubbing his eyes until they exploded into a storm of colors. At any moment he would fall back into the past; his eyes would fail to open when he took his hands away and he would be a stranger to his body while his mind drifted amongst the bloody images of war, in a limbo of sharp pains and shabby sights.…

Suddenly Oriona stood in his blind sight, as if thrown up to him by a merciful field of creation. Naked and beautiful, she stood with her legs together, hands folded across her breasts, eyes looking directly at him, long black hair flowing in a mysterious wind.…

He cried out and opened his eyes; the afterimage faded on the window before him and he was looking again at the mourners outside.

Oriona
, he said to her memory,
your son will go out to kill now, and I am powerless to stop him;
he is as I was
. Then a distant thought whispered itself to him:
If you died he would change
. And an even closer whisper hissed inside him:
You could kill him.

As if something had spoken to them, the mourners outside turned and made their way down the hill.

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AFTER THEIR BODIES were quiet, Gorgias opened his eyes and watched Myraa as she slept next to him. There was no other woman for him among the survivors; she would know him as the son of leaders, to whom the future belonged even if that future were lost.

For a moment he considered what it would be like to come and live here with Myraa, but the thought shamed him; he felt weak before it. He must never forget that something greater had been taken from him.

Myraa opened her eyes and he smiled at her.

“Do you understand now,” she started to ask, “that your mother —”

He turned away from her. “Stop telling me crazy stories — they may help you but they do not calm me. Why don’t you just tell me what happened?”

“When she was ready for passage, she did it herself.”

“What?” He turned to face her, angry again. He had been getting ready to apologize for striking her. “What did it take to convince a mature woman to take her own life?”

“But she’s not dead —”

“Then where is she?”

“Right here — looking at you through my eyes. One day, when you come to understand, she will speak. The passage she has taken —”

He hit her across the face with the back of his hand. She rolled away from him and lay on her back, saying nothing. He got up, put on his black uniform and boots, and went out into the main room where his father still sat looking out the windows. Gorgias went to the window and looked out into the start of twilight. He saw the group waiting at the bottom of the hill.

“What do the fools want?”

“They’ve come from burying Oriona.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere out there in the tall grass.”

“Then she is dead, no matter what Myraa says.”

His father looked up at him suddenly. “What did she tell you?”

“That Oriona is alive inside her and will speak to us one day.”

A look of naive hope entered his father’s pale face.

“Don’t be stupid,” Gorgias said, “you’re a fool if you believe any of it. They’re mad here, comforting themselves with lies and stories — anything to forget.”

“I don’t take it seriously.”

“They talked Oriona into believing it. She killed herself!”

The older Herculean stood up. “Myraa said this?”

“Just a few minutes ago she tried to talk me into their madness. We’ve got to go. My way is the only way.”

His father was silent.

Gorgias looked outside and saw that the mourners had disappeared. He turned again to his father and said, “Myraa and all the others are this way because of the war. Oriona’s death is the fault of the Earthborn. We must strike back, we must make them feel our punishment in any way open to us. When will you share the ship with me?”

His father looked directly at him. The knitted brows seemed to be crushing the blue eyes peering out of the haggard face; his arms were pressed against the stocky body, hands closed into fists.

When his son came out from Myraa’s sleeping room, a wave of pity and fear passed through the older Herculean. He watched his son go to the window and look down at the burial party still gathered at the bottom of the hill.

“What do the fools want?”

“They’ve come from burying Oriona.”

“Where?” his son asked.

“Somewhere out there in the grass.”

“Then she is dead, no matter what Myraa says.”

He looked up at his son and asked, “What did she tell you?”

“That Oriona is inside her and will speak to us one day.”

Could it be true, he wondered, was such a gathering of life after this life possible? If so, then immortality was a foolish thing. He thought of his vision of Oriona. Was she trying to reach him? Herculean women had been known for psionic abilities. Fool, he told himself suddenly, there is no evidence for anything like this; the universe had always been unfair and uncaring of wishes. Hope could not create life, or extend it into the void …

“Don’t be stupid,” his son said, “you’re a fool if you believe any of it. They’re mad … comforting themselves with lies and stories …”

“I don’t take it seriously.”
And what lies do you live by, my son,
he said to himself, knowing that they were the ones he had once believed himself.

“They talked Oriona into believing it. She killed herself!”

He stood up. “Myraa said this?”

“… Oriona’s death is the fault of the Earthborn,” his son was saying …“when will you share the ship with me?”

He felt a sudden anger in himself, triggered by his son’s demand for the ship; anger at Myraa and Oriona; anger at himself for not being able to regain his old strength; anger at the pitiless tide that washed from past to future and had left him here on this despairing shore.

His son turned and left the room. The back door opened and closed with a terrible finality; he would surrender to his son’s will.

Surrender? They would lash out together, bringing a piece of the cruel past into the life of the Federation. There would be a public recognition of the past, however small; there was satisfaction in the thought, and he realized that this was how his son felt all the time. He would transfer control of the ship to him as soon as possible.

He started across the room toward the hall leading to the back exit, but stopped when something reached into him, filling him with sudden doubt and panic.
Oriona, forgive me, he thought, but there is nothing left for me. I cannot live without my son’s approval. I have no one else now.

He went through the hall. Myraa’s naked shape lay on the bed, her body a deep blue from the twilight streaming in the east window. She sat up and looked at him as he hurried to the back door.

It opened and he stepped outside and went down the hill to where the Whisper Ship waited in a warm evening.

His father stood by his side, his face a mask as they watched gray jumpspace swallow Myraa’s World. A reflection of them appeared on the screen for a moment, the ghostly images of two mournful men standing in an infinite sepulcher, faces in shadow. Then the black ghosts that marked star positions appeared, and Gorgias felt again as if he were returning to a vast universe of the dead lying beneath or alongside a continuum of color and life. Here death might dance with his will, fear make love to his courage and dream assassins slaughter his capacity for hope, if he stayed too long.…

“I’ll match the ship to you,” his father said.

The older Herculean had come to his senses at last, Gorgias thought as he sat down at the command station.

His father reached past him and touched the pressure panel. A sequence of numbers appeared on the screen, overlaying a view of subspace.

“The ship will know you by this number. If you ever have to assign the ship to another, you must cancel this number and invent a new one, as I have just done. The ship’s internal fields will adjust to your body and brain-wave signatures within a day. If these are absent from the ship’s interior for any great length of time, and you have left no instructions, the ship will destruct. Remember this.”

“I will, Father, I will.…”

The board went dark and the numbers faded from the screen as the older man withdrew his hand.

It’s mine
, Gorgias thought.

“When we come out of hyperspace, you will be in command.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The older man turned and went aft, leaving him alone.

The oldest Herculean dreamed the past. It drew him into itself, to feel and live again. He was running down a long corridor with Oriona. The passage was filled with water to their ankles; the damp smell of sewage almost made them gag. The air was growing hotter as the city above them went through the stages of disintegration.

High above the planet, mobile fortresses the size of planetoids lanced energy into New Anatolia, incinerating whole cities, precipitating whirlwinds and earthquakes; floodwaters were crossing continents as the polar caps melted.

“Just ahead,” he said, pushing his wife ahead. “There, it’s there — where the General said he’d left it.”

They came to the hidden Whisper Ship, the last possibility of retreat for a group of officers now dead, a gift of mercy for himself and Oriona.

“Our child will live,” Oriona shouted as they scrambled into the side lock. It cycled behind them as they went forward into the control area.

“It’s preset for its base,” he said as he took the station chair.