Harvest of Stars (52 page)

The music rollicked.

“Ya-a-a-ah,” breathed Rinndalir. A human in that mood would have screamed it. “Beauty, beauty.”

Gladness fled from her, off to wherever yonder lives had been cast. “No, por favor, no,” she begged. “I’ve flown missions to stop this kind of thing.”

Sobriety was instant. He set down his glass and laid a
hand over hers. “I pray pardon. The spectacle was magnificent, but, yes, the loss lamentable. Forget not, however, forget not, my dear, this was also ineluctable.”

“Did we—did Guthrie—have to? I mean, a demonstration in an area where nobody was—”

“I fear not. What must be demonstrated is not power alone, but the will to use it. The shock of the actuality shatters the spirit and brings a speedy end to resistance. Else might the conflict smolder on for days or weeks, and reach no final decision. What meanwhile would become of your consortes there? And the rebels who trust you, they would not survive. Remember how the second World War was ended.”

“What?”

“Japan was beleaguered. Yet it was not ready, it was not able, to yield. Blockade and famine could have reduced it in a few more years, invasion in perhaps one more, but deaths would have been millionfold and the country left waste, its heritage down among Crete and Babylon and Mohenjo-Daro. Moreover, the Soviet Empire would have been a co-occupier. If you have knowledge of Korea and Vietnam, you may think on what that would have meant. Two nuclear bombs forestalled all this.”

Comfort ran into her through the light pressure of his clasp, until he drained it away by saying pensively, “I anticipate your second strike soon,” as he began to hunt through sendings from Earth.

She pulled free of him. “No! Not after that!”

He looked at her. “Yes, if Guthrie is the realist he claims to be. He must show forth his arsenal—most especially, to the World Federation and its armed enforcers. This day many things begin to perish. None may foreknow which they are, nor where he shall stand in the wreckage, but be sure, Kyra Davis, that none can stand save by his own strength.”

She stared at the mask of him, which slowly grinned. “You can’t mean that,” she whispered. “You mustn’t. This—victory?—won’t be worth it. Nothing could be worth it.”

“Oh, but it is itself the end, to which victory is but a
means and of small account,” he rejoiced. “Whatever befalls, the order of things that has prevailed is broken. Grieve not. Nothing did it hold for our kind—yours, mine, all that are now freed to be born—save ignominious doom. Again is chaos loose and every tomorrow unbound.”

“You, you wanted a war.”

“Say rather that that was the tool which came to hand.”

“You engineered it. Guthrie’s broadcast. And … the Avantist ultimatum, was that your work too?”

He laughed. “Darling, you compliment extravagantly our cleverness and our abilities. Thank you.” His attention went to the multi. “Hai, but here is promise.”

Scenes had been flickering past, Northwest Integrate asprawl around its waters, a truck convoy on a prairie highway, a squadron of flyers, thousands of people packed and shouting in Exploration Plaza, fire raging in Quark Fair. … Rinndalir turned back to the next latest and held it.

Momentarily, Kyra knew confusion, a disrupted anthill that burned. Her pilot’s skills took over and the pattern emerged for her, making insane sense. The observer hovered high to scan a reach of tawny hills where live oak and eucalyptus stood in scattered groves. Afar shone water, and beyond it lifted a serration of buildings. She recognized the main biospace in San Francisco Bay Integrate.

Explosions had scarred the slopes. Park service robots sped ludicrously about, quenching blazes in the dry grass, while armored cars lurched forward, helmeted men zigzagged crouched, flitters hummed overhead, and guns spat. The men struggled up toward a tree-clad ridge. Rinndalir magnified their goal, and Kyra discerned hastily dug earthworks, shelter holes, rapid-fire stations. There other men tended a flatbed truck on which stood a generator and what she guessed was a laser gun, scanty defense against attack from above.

“The remnant of a substantial Chaotic force,” Rinndalir deduced. “The militia have them trapped, but they hold out for a span yet, perhaps in the hope a relief
troop will fly in.” He made a finger-shrug. “That might have been a possibility daycycles ago, for the Chaotics had a few airborne units, but they are brought down.”

For Kyra it was nightmare, a past she had known only through books and dramas, had believed safely dead. Corpses and wounded, obscene beneath the sun—The Peace Authority could end it in an hour or less, with proper military equipment wielded by professionals. Instead, these poor, ill-outfitted, ill-trained militia—backups for the civil and political police—slogged and died in a fight with brother citizens who had even less at their beck. But the Avantists did not want international intervention. It would bring inconveniently much to light.

Rinndalir stroked his chin. “This is a suitably spectacular rescue to carry out,” he said. “It won’t necessarily happen. We may have to watch a playback from elsewhere— Hai-ah!”

The torchcraft descended. In atmosphere her jet was a white flame-tongue tinged with blue, red where it licked at Earth. Kyra knew how it roared, the heat that billowed from it and the lightning smell of air through which lethal radiation went lancing. Metal melted, flesh exploded in soot off calcined skeletons, ground quaked and blackened, flames leaped up in a ring that widened.

Laterals blasted. The torchcraft tilted, recovered, hopped from point to point as she scrawled her swath across the Union’s men.

Rinndalir chanted in his own language. Ecstasy was upon him. The militia broke, ran, stumbled, fell, shrieked appeals for mercy that Kyra could not hear. The music played on.

The torchcraft ascended. Nothing remained but ruin, and rebels on the crest who one by one crept forth-stunned, terrified by their deliverance? In a while they would cheer, maybe.

Kyra supposed the spaceship hadn’t actually killed many of their foes. There was no need. A demonstration of power and of the resoluteness to use it, that sufficed. Yes. She wondered who the pilot was. Names, faces tumbled through her mind. Did she want to know? It might well
stay a secret. But then she’d have to wonder about all of them.

Rinndalir turned to her. “
Consummatum est.”
His voice throbbed. “Surely no more after this. Who dares fight on? You drank to a clean victory, Kyra. You have it, as clean as ever in history. Drink afresh!”

She sat passive. In the multi the hillside burned.

He lowered the glass he had raised. “True,” he said quietly, “what you have witnessed bears its troublous aspect. Pray believe not that I enjoyed the sight of death and agony. Yet those inhere in life, Kyra. Here they have served a worthy purpose.” His tone gathered a lilt. “And the spectacle
was
superb.”

“Yes, you would appreciate it,” she replied.

He stiffened a bit. “Do you mourn? Do you feel guilt, that you were party to this? Will you denounce Fireball and renounce your allegiance?”

“No. Oh, no.” Her words fell dull into the music. “I just … need to come to terms with it. And with myself.”

“I understand.” He smiled. “Or mayhap I do not. We are of different natures, you and I. Well, I bade you hither in hopes we might learn somewhat more of them”—he laid an arm along the couch back—“and celebrate together.”

His skin was giving off a strange fragrance, not quite musky. Warmth blossomed in her. It guttered out. Kyra stood up. “No,” she said, “gracias, but I want to go home. Now.” To Tychopolis first, unavoidably, a way station for the house on Lake Ilmen. Or Toronto Compound? That might be where she could soonest find out what had become of Bob Lee and, if he lived, help him back to freedom.

A
TTENDANTS DISCONNECTED THE
case from the electronics and photonics that its program had controlled, and bore it to Guthrie’s private office. They set it on the desk and
went out. For a while it lay alone. Eyestalks swung about, vision ranging over stone floor, silently occupied equipment, view-dome full of Moonscape and stars and waning Earth. This had been built since Guthrie came home from Alpha Centauri. The lenses fell to rest looking at a picture, an old photograph copied and recopied as the decades faded it, of Juliana and her children when they were young.

The door retracted to admit a form not unlike a knight in armor, which strode to take stance before the desk. Until the door shut, the sole sound was a soughing of the ventilation that neither one here had need of. Then, “Saludos,” rumbled Guthrie in the robot.

“Do you mean that?” gibed Guthrie in the box.

“Probably not.” The robot hesitated before he went on, sardonicism dissolving: “Or—I don’t know. You’ve caused a lot of grief, but you’re me, in a way.”

The other tone remained derisive. “Well, I wish you luck. Why not, considering who you are? You’ll have use for all you can get.”

The robot laid a hand across the base of his turret, as a man cups his chin when thinking. “How’ve you been?” he asked.

“Stupid question. Same as you’d’ve been. Half glad, half sorry that a spook can’t stew in a helpless rage. It passed some of the time, inventing new cusswords for the situation.”

“Didn’t your hookup help?” Quiviran apparatus wasn’t available, but prisoner Guthrie had had full multiceiver and data retrieval access, plus pulsation if he wanted to feel drunk.

His voice lightened. “Assorted shows did, yes. Classics especially. When did you last play the Helsinki Opera
Faust
and ideationally lust after Olga Wald? She must be pretty long in the tooth by now, if she’s still alive. A couple of new things were good too, things composed after you switched me off and tucked me away.”

“I think I know which you mean. And then the news.”

“I haven’t bothered with that for the last three or four daycycles.”

“Huh?” The robot’s lenses peered into the casket’s as if trying to find something behind their glitter. “I sure would have.”

“No, you wouldn’t. Not when it no longer had anything to do with anything
you
would ever do. You’d go for stuff that took you out of yourself for a short, short spell. Think about it.”

The robot straightened, gazed forth at the stars, and presently said, “I suppose so.”

“Oh, I am sort of curious,” the casket admitted. “Not enough to want details. But in a general way, what’s happened?”

The robot folded hands behind back and paced to and fro. “The Avantists are out,” he related. “Literally out. When their militia and most Sepo units declined to fight on, just about every top-rank political-bureaucratic-doctrinal honcho vamoosed, with quite a few of their understrappers. Some are in Hiroshima, calling themselves the North American government in exile, also claiming asylum. Meanwhile the Liberation junta is in Futuro, calling itself the interim government. The Federation Assembly’s bickering over whether to recognize it. However, the Council has accepted its invitation for the Peace Authority to restore order and bring relief to damaged areas. On the whole, the country’s functioning.”

“You think the Federation will recognize?”

“Eventually. After an election, anyway. Popular sentiment around the world seems to favor it.”

The voice tautened. “Do you by any chance know what’s become of Enrique Sayre?”

“The Sepo chief? Yes. Dead. As far as I’ve been able to find out, he didn’t escape because he lost time trying to make off with another copy of me he had stashed. He must have had some or other wild idea about advantages it could give him. The pursuit got wind of that and cornered him. Next day, a drumhead court martial—or kangaroo court, if you prefer—and a firing squad.”

Eyestalks rose, lay back, rose again. “Good,” murmured Guthrie in the box.

The robot halted his pacing and stared. “You say that?”

“Sure,” his voice snarled. “After what that slimester did to me.”

“But you’re programmed to—”

“Believe in Xuan’s revelation and the technosalvation to come.” The sneer died away. Quietly: “Yes. I do. But at the same time—” Barely to hear: “Can even you who’re me understand?”

The robot lifted a hand that was not quite steady, let it fall, and stammered, “You, you knew, you knew all along, you know it was forced on you. Into you.”

“Yes.” The answer was like metal. “And I had to work for the cause. Had to. Would yet, if I were more than a thing in a box. I’d destroy you.” The metal snapped across. “Nightmare.”

The robot looked down at his hands. “I can imagine a nightmare where I strangle Juliana. Not with these. With what were mine.”

“You know it. You can say it.”

“Only to you. To myself. Here, alone.”

They became without motion for minutes that neither counted.

Guthrie in the casket broke that stillness, harshly. “What do you know about the Lunarians?”

The robot started. “What? … Why?”

“Waiting for this meeting, I’ve maybe had more time than you to wonder. That ultimatum from the Avantists to you was such an incredible piece of stupidity. Not that governments or corporations haven’t often bungled worse yet. Just the same—”

“You mean, did the Lunarians fake it?” The robot recovered self-possession. “Of course the notion occurred to me. When the message came in, I beamed back to North America asking if they were serious. They replied yes, and our techs verified this was from their headquarters. We didn’t and we don’t know any way an outside party could have monkeyed with the transmissions. But now … assorted members of the former Synod, and several other bigwigs, deny having known anything about it.”

“They might well be lying. Or, I’d guess for some cases, their colleagues didn’t inform them, knowing they’d try to
prevent or retract the threat. You’ve more knowledge of the Lunarians than I do. Could they have triggered it somehow?”

“They may have applied vectors,” the robot said. “Two or three key Avantists—probably not in the Synod itself, but close and trusted counselors—may have been moles in Selenarch pay. Besides that, or alternatively, humbler agents could have been at work, agents in a position to slip false data and computer worms into the sociodynamic programs the Avantists put so much faith in. That could’ve made the analysis of how Fireball would react come out wrong. Might be. Kyra Davis has brought me reason to believe the Lunarian lords intended this result, whether or not they had anything effective to do with actually causing it. But we haven’t the hard information, and I suspect we never will.”