Harvest of Stars (43 page)

The passage was bare, drably painted. Machines didn’t care. Along it was the door to a lavabo. Kyra went in. As was customary in L-5, it was unisex. And it was empty. She took a toilet stall and waited. A ventilator whirred unnecessarily loudly.

A tap sounded. Her blood shouted reply. She opened. Arren came in. For a moment her feeling was disappointment. If only Rinndalir—But of course not. He who excused himself en route to the ship needed to be carrying an instrument case. Evidently no Sepo accompanied him. Had that happened, Arren would have outstayed the man; trust Rinndalir to make plain he would not tolerate the insult of outright spying. As was, the Lunarian had headed for the stall that read “Occupied.”

His eyes glinted. “Have you him?” he breathed.

Kyra nodded. The pack already rested on a shelf. Quickly, they made the exchange, Arren’s instruments and tools into it, Guthrie into the case. It was fairly well screened against electronics—wouldn’t stand a close check, but in that event the crapshoot was over anyway. Most of the Sepo were seeking their quarry in chambers and passages distressingly numerous. They couldn’t think of everything. Rinndalir’s tongue should keep these few and the officer to whom they reported from thinking of this.

Just before the lid closed on him, Guthrie waved an eyestalk at her. She guessed his thought. “Yeah, I gained my freedom in a john. It figures.” She began to laugh. Arren cast her an inquisitive glance but didn’t linger. Kyra must remain for some minutes, till the others were well away. She stood alone and laughed on.

I
NIA
BOOSTED FROM
L-5 at one Lunar gravity. Felinely relaxed, Rinndalir took Guthrie out of the case and set him on an acceleration couch. His lenses searched about, up to the pilot limned against a simulacrum of stars in her seat at the control board, down the ladder and hoist to this passenger section, and around the three men who stood on its deck, towering above him. The gaze came to rest on
Rinndalir. “Good day, my lord,” he greeted slowly. “I owe you a lot of thanks.”

The other inclined his head with a smile in which lips stayed closed until he replied, “You are most welcome, my lord. It is an honor to be of your service.” His followers kept back, impassive. The pilot swiveled about to look down. She had had virtually nothing to do but give the ship instructions as to destination and vectors.

Perhaps Guthrie would have smiled too, were he able. “You mean ‘at’ my service, don’t you? I never heard as how you were ‘of’ anybody’s but your own.”

“My error,” said Rinndalir. “Your language is not ours.” Unspoken between them: Nor are your thoughts.

Air blew softly out of the recyclers and back again. Weight and a well-nigh subliminal pulsation were the only signs of waxing speed.

“Aren’t you going kind of slow?” Guthrie asked after a moment. “This is comfortable for you, sure, but you could stand to push harder.”

Rinndalir shrugged. “What haste, now that we are free?”

Did Guthrie wish for a fist wherewith to hit the couch frame? “Damn it, you’re a bright boy. So you understand the enemy isn’t moronic. His head honcho at L-5 will report your visit, if he hasn’t already, and my other self may very well guess what was behind it.”

Rinndalir nodded. “We assumed that risk, my party and I, deeming it not excessive. When we were planning, Kyra Davis reminded me that anti-Guthrie has not had your long years of direct experience in dealing with my kind. Such knowledge as he possesses of how our society evolved during his absence and oblivion has been downloaded into him, together with a huge quantity of other information. It must be an abstraction to him, nothing acutely felt. Postulate what is by no means certain, that immediately upon our arrival at Lagrange-Five, the Security Police chief notified his superiors on Earth and requested orders. What could they do but tell him to follow the course he in fact did, pending consultation with anti-Guthrie? They would not necessarily be
able to reach him on short notice, and he would not necessarily take alarm.”

“Just the same, you were wildcatting.”

Rinndalir’s patience sounded forced, as he no doubt meant it to. “Would you have had us do nothing? Then eventually, inevitably, they would have found you; and meanwhile you would be nullified, they free to strengthen their position. Did our venture fail, there would be other expedients to try; but this was the quickest and most promising.”

“Yeah, it was a cute trick, I gather,” Guthrie conceded. “I want to hear all about it. Later.” His voice tightened. “Right now we ain’t out of the woods. The sooner we reach the Moon and safety, the more beers I’ll stand you in the old Launch Pad.”

Rinndalir raised his brows. “What peril remains?”

“A torchcraft can get from Earth to us inside four hours. Even at twice this boost, you won’t reach home that soon.”

Rinndalir’s tone was not openly sarcastic. “I have not heard that any spaceships are armed. Such a retrofit would be a considerable engineering project, and unacceptable to the Peace Authority.”

“Uh-huh. Couldn’t well be done in secret, especially in the short time they’ve had.” Guthrie harshened his words. “Listen, though. I play rough and reckless when I’ve got to. My copy does the same, I guarantee. Once he’s heard about you dropping in, he may not be as ready to ignore it as you think. Enrique Sayre may well not be—I know a fair amount about that yadswiver—and he could persuade anti-me. They may be organizing a counterstrike this minute. They may already have.”

“The better if they overreach themselves, no? We want them destroyed.”

Guthrie regarded Rinndalir for some seconds before he answered,
“We
do? I’ll settle for some version of the status quo ante. Why should you want more?”

Rinndalir met the stare, smiled as he had earlier, and asked, “Why should you not? Here we have an interesting philosophical question.”

“To hell with that.” Guthrie brooded a while longer.

“Okay, as you like. I haven’t got much choice, do I, really? But let’s broadcast the truth
now
. Call up Luna, record a statement with them, and tell them to give it to the world news media. That’ll draw the enemy’s fangs if anything will.”

Rinndalir shook his head. Light rippled in the argent hair. “My judgment is otherwise,” he said quietly.

Guthrie arched his eyestalks. “Huh? Publicity—Sure, they’ll deny everything, but only to buy time while they scramble for cover. There’ll be no more point in attacking us in space, supposing they intend that. In fact, they’ll know it’d drive the last nail into their coffin.”

“I fear matters are not quite so simple,” Rinndalir replied. “While you lay hidden in the colony, I was gathering intelligence. We must prepare the announcement most carefully and release it at a psychodynamically calculated moment. Else it could well precipitate chaos, which the enemy has been readying himself to cope with and gain advantage by. If nothing else, a great many lives would be lost.”

The download lay mute for a span. The ship hummed onward. Finally: “I never had the impression that innocent bystanders were of much concern to you, señor.” After a bit longer: “I think you decided this in advance.”

“Be that as it may, it is my decision.”

“Let me talk you out of it.”

Rinndalir laughed, far down in his throat. “You are free to try. We have hours to spend. Yet I can imagine discourse more amusing and enlightening to while them away.”

“What is your game, actually?”

“The Selenarchy will not hold you for ransom, if thus you fear.”

“Hm’f. I might prefer shelling out a couple million ucus to whatever you have in mind.”

Rinndalir took a characteristic Lunarian pose, somehow as though he lounged back while standing. “Clear to see, we desire an influence on the course of near-future events, and feel we have earned it. Is this unreasonable? You have just chided me for what you considered heedlessness,
despite its having succeeded. Now you want me to broadcast immediately, without regard for consequences. I pray you of your kindness, be more consistent.”

Guthrie formed a sigh. “We may as well amuse and enlighten, I guess. Tell me about this operation you’ve pulled off. Tamura and Davis hadn’t time for but a few hasty words.”

“Gladly. For your share, will you relate how you fared since you parted from Pilot Davis? It seems me belike the stuff of epic.”

“It didn’t at the time, but—All right, you bastard, go ahead. I suppose you didn’t have trouble figuring out my message, but what’d you guess it might mean? What intimations had you already gotten?”

Rinndalir’s crew settled themselves to listen, with the stoic tenacity that was the other side of waywardness. He sat down on his haunches to bring his eyes level with Guthrie’s lenses, a courtesy that cost him small effort, and began: “You are aware that my kind feel they are remote from Earth in spirit far more than distance. Nonetheless our interests continue entangled with it, and we naturally seek to stay abreast of its affairs as well as may be across the gap.”

After he had talked for a spell, Guthrie said, the grin in his voice that could not form on a face, “Congratulations on a masterly job of telling me what I’ve known for decades and otherwise saying nothing whatsoever.”

“I did but seek to lay background,” replied Rinndalir, unoffended. “Since you prefer, I shall proceed directly to my reception of your message.”

He said little about Kyra’s stay with him except that she had contributed much to the plan of campaign. At the end he proposed a break for tea. “Would we had refreshment to offer you, Sr. Guthrie. Perhaps some music? I have heard that you enjoy the type named jazz, from the early twentieth century, and I have sought out antique recordings. … No? … Let us, then, consider alternatives. Have you perchance screened the recent
Les Sylphides
by the Tychopolis Ballet? An idiosyncratic interpretation,
although—” His crew set out delicacies. In due course he asked for Guthrie’s story.

“I’m not as good as you at noises that sound like they ought to mean something,” the download grumbled.

“Nor, perhaps, as tactful,” Rinndalir suggested jocosely.

“Yeah. Juliana used to claim that for me ‘tact’ was a four-letter word. Well, I’ve got less to pass on. Eiko Tamura plucked me out of space—quite a gal, her—and kept me stashed in that monster sequoia they’ve got—”

Talk veered to and fro, like a sailboat tacking against capricious winds. Rinndalir kept throwing questions and comments at Guthrie. He sought backward in time: the origins of Fireball’s conflict with the Avantists, why Fireball’s cacique would personally slip into North America (a very Lunarian trick, he laughed), what had happened there and what it meant. … He sought forward, to those daycycles in hiding and the real reasons why Eiko Tamura had limited her commitment. “Conflicting loyalties, nay? By digital analysis, her strategy was suboptimal. One might call it deplorable. Yet plainly her intelligence is well above the median. If one takes all factors into account, including the essentially chaotic character of organic life, it may appear that her intuition was sound.”

“You’re trying to understand human beings from the outside,” Guthrie remarked.

“True, to a certain extent. Nevertheless, may it not be that I have somewhat more feel for the irrational at the nucleus of things than you and your entire careful civilization?”

Cua warned everybody to secure themselves.

The ship made turnover and commenced deceleration, backing down on Luna. In the viewscreen it stood ragged-edged, blotched with Nearside’s gray-blue maria. Earth was another, larger and brighter half-disc opposite it, gloriously white and azure. Unless you knew just where to look, L-5 was lost among the stars.

Rinndalir stroked his chin. “Someday I must explore that tree for myself,” he mused. “I have done so in a vivifer, but that is not enough. Did you feel the mystery of it while you swayed in its windy boughs?”

“No, but I never cared for mystiques. And I haven’t got much left to feel with, you know.”

Rinndalir gave Guthrie a steady look. Not hitherto had he spoken this gently. “Yet you have not become altogether a machine, have you?”

Again Cua interrupted from above. She used Lunarian, but had no need for English. A chime and flashing light told of the incoming call. “—spacecraft
Inia
, DR327, respond.”

Breath hissed between Arren’s teeth. Isabu’s fingers crooked like claws. Both stared at Guthrie. That was his voice.

“School’s out,” he said. “I told you and I told you.”

“We could not have reached port before being intercepted, whatever we did,” Rinndalir answered coolly. “I confess to surprise at the identity of our pursuer.”

“I don’t, when I think about it.”

“Receive, pilot.” Rinndalir sat down on a couch, lowered the communications panel there, and activated it. “
Inia
responding,” he said. “Declare yourself.”

“Spacecraft
Muramasa
, TK96,” came out of the speaker.

“Katana class,” Guthrie muttered. “Torch.”

“You’re in unauthorized and illegal possession of a vessel belonging to Fireball Enterprises,” said his voice. “Return to L-5 at once.”

“I fear you are mistaken,” Rinndalir answered. “
Inia
is under requisition by the sovereign government of Luna. If you would maintain differently, the proper venue is an admiralty court of the World Federation.”

“I have him on radar,” Cua announced. She relayed the computer display to the passenger section. Rinndalir moved Guthrie to where he also could see.

“Distance about twenty thousand klicks, decelerating at one
g
, rendezvous with matched velocities in about half an
hour,” Guthrie read off for the men. Cua could interpret it herself. “Probably boosted from Earth at that rate. Radar there might already have acquired us, though data from L-5 would let him figure his course pretty well.”

Concurrently his other voice said:
“Inia
pilot, listen. This is Anson Guthrie in person, speaking. Your jefe. I command you by your troth, take that ship back to L-5. Otherwise Fireball’s in no end of trouble.”