The Well of Stars (37 page)
Authors: Robert Reed
When Pamir was more criminal than captain, this had been one of his favorite haunts: Port Denali. The place had always worn a delicious reputation, boisterous and crude yet unexpectedly beautiful, rich with obscure species and dangerous humans who went about their little business with minimal supervision from the Powers-on-High. But change was the basic currency of the universe, and now Pamir was one of the greatest Powers, and his
old friends and lovers had been scattered about the ship, the pure selfishness that had infused the port with its purpose now replaced by more impressive, infinitely more focused energies.
old friends and lovers had been scattered about the ship, the pure selfishness that had infused the port with its purpose now replaced by more impressive, infinitely more focused energies.
Brigades of harum-scarums were scattered across the glassy gray floor, and between them and hanging high above were starships. Tired old vessels from alien worlds, mostly. Machines just swift enough and durable enough to carry their wealthy passengers to the Great Ship. Each was being dismantled and the best of its pieces were being reassembled, then hoisted up into the lacework of hyperfiber being cobbled together far above. In another few weeks, with luck, this could have become the ship’s second ad hoc rocket. Or with a little more work, and with the harum-scarums at the helm, this peculiar fleet of scrap and inspiration could have taken the war back up to the surface again.
But weeks might as well be forever, Pamir reminded himself.
Osmium stood in the shadow of one tiny ship. Eyes like black glass stared off into the distance, while an internal eye watched the latest news. “The probes launch in another moment or two,” he reported.
Pamir climbed off the little cap-car.
Osmium closed his glassy eyes. Then the eating mouth made a vulgar sound, and the breathing mouth said, “I do not know.”
“What don’t you know—?”
“She is my old wife, or she is something else.” Mentioning Mere, he touched his groin through his mirrored uniform—a gesture fond and honest. “She is telling the truth, or she is lying. Or perhaps the truth lies somewhere between.”
As they spoke, a series of little probes were being shunted along several converted hallways leading to Port Endeavor. The probes had been prepared in advance, and then in a final frantic moment, they had been reconfigured. Their missions were narrowed, and every sensor
was given the same small portion of the sky to study. But they were ready now. Hatches were thrown open, and finger nukes shoved both probes and their jackets of low-grade hyperfiber out into the maelstrom, and even as the hyperfiber began to shred and turned to dust, the machines were lifted, spinning out-past the polypond’s boiling self, streaking away from the ship and into the quiet and the cold.
was given the same small portion of the sky to study. But they were ready now. Hatches were thrown open, and finger nukes shoved both probes and their jackets of low-grade hyperfiber out into the maelstrom, and even as the hyperfiber began to shred and turned to dust, the machines were lifted, spinning out-past the polypond’s boiling self, streaking away from the ship and into the quiet and the cold.
The first data would arrive in moments.
Pamir felt his stomach tighten. A long hard look at his half-built fleet made him want to scream, giving a voice to his rage.
Osmium made a hard, injured sound.
Then with an almost human ache, he said, “She might not be my once-wife. But the little creature is telling the truth.”
“NOW WE KNOW,” Aasleen declared.
And then she fell silent.
Once again, the Submasters joined the Master on the auxiliary bridge—each one of them an image made real enough to capture their mood and infect their neighbors. The mood was worry and resignation and anger and determination, and running beside every other emotion, a genuine curiosity. Now they knew what was coming, but what did they know? Washen interrupted Aasleen’s concentration, saying:
“Details.”
In a breathless rush, Aasleen explained what they were seeing. Some of the probes had failed, and others were destroyed by the polypond’s weapons. But thousands of images were descending from the survivors, showing what looked to be a ribbon—a lovely silvery ribbon of lace, thin but opaque, and a little bowed at one, two, no, three points along an outer edge that never ended. The ribbon was more than a thousand kilometers wide and probably not much thicker than a hand, and it formed a perfect ring that was a hundred thousand kilometers in
diameter—larger than the Great Ship by a factor of two—and it was a circular structure that was sturdy enough to spin, making a full rotation in just under ten seconds.
diameter—larger than the Great Ship by a factor of two—and it was a circular structure that was sturdy enough to spin, making a full rotation in just under ten seconds.
It was rotating at a tenth the speed of light.
In a breathless rush, Aasleen said, “This is something you design in school, as a baby engineer. This is the kind of machine every good student dreams up and assembles in the mind and as a simulation, and your teacher gives you a passing grade, nothing more, and she tells you, ‘But of course no species has time or the need for this sort of contraption.’ And you put your plans in a drawer somewhere. If you even bother to keep them. There are probably a trillion drawers in our galaxy filled with these kinds of ridiculous dreamy schemes, and honestly, I never believed I’d ever see any one of them made real.”
More details emerged. The hyperfiber was at least equal to the Great Ship’s best. The three bends along its length were generated by static charges and the subtle tugs of barely visible threads, and inside the center of the ribbon was a substantial mass—reactors and control nodes and probably some potent engines, too. The subtle bends in the ribbon were new features. Each bend grew more pronounced by the moment, and every captain understood what was happening: The great wheeling ribbon was being turned, repositioned to bring itself back in line with its very close target.
“Now we know,” Aasleen said again.
The Master asked, “What do we know?”
“How the polypond dismantles entire worlds,” the chief engineer replied. An appreciative smile came before a polite scorn. “We always assumed patience. Some kind of slow organic dismantling of the massive bodies that happened to fall into the nebula. But she doesn’t work slowly. That’s one of the lessons here. What she does … she builds a cutting implement … an enormous hyperfiber blade … then spins it up and pushes it close
enough to its target that the planet’s own gravity brings it close, letting it slice home …”
enough to its target that the planet’s own gravity brings it close, letting it slice home …”
She fell silent for a moment, her mind wrapped around the images.
“You can’t just cut a world to pieces,” she admitted. “It’s not that simple. Gravity would pull each piece back into the main body again. But of course, a blade doesn’t just cut. It heats. The energy of its momentum is transferred into the target, and if you’re cutting wood or steel, or a continent and the mantle beneath … the object of your abuse begins to gather up the energy, and everything melts in a relatively short period … in just a few centuries …”
Again, her voice faltered.
Aasleen had to feel confident about her numbers. When she was sure, she said with authority, “The blade would fall into the core, and then the polypond would yank it out again. And speed it up again. And let it fall again. And up again. And after enough of that business, the target would be a radiant drop of vaporized stone and metal, and by charging up the ribbon’s surface … oh, sure … the polypond could start lifting out whatever tastes useful, carrying it up into space …”
“But you’re talking about dismantling planets,” the Master began.
Pamir’s image stood next to Washen’s. They glanced at one another, anticipating what would be next.
“Our ship isn’t just rock and iron,” the giant woman reminded everyone. And then, even as she sensed her mistake, she said with an almost hopeful voice, “Even the highest grade of hyperfiber—even moving at relativistic speeds—won’t be able to cut far into our hull.”
Every Submaster was studying the data.
“The blade would degrade and shatter,” Aasleen agreed. “Of course, madam. Ever since apes made the first cutting tool, the blade’s hardness has always been a problem that confounds and inspires us.”
Along the edges of the great ribbon, at regular intervals, Pamir saw the regular marks of a telltale feature.
He said, “Shit,” under his breath.
The Master Captain noticed. A vast hand reached for a point on a display, enlarging it until the image began to blur. The blur was critical. Another probe had sent a tiny burst of laser light at this point of interest, and the light had struck an elaborate bundle of machinery whose only function was to continually replace itself, bringing up new matter from a buried reservoir jammed with raw ingredientsand relentless instructions.
“Shit,” said every Submaster, in a fashion.
“Those early black holes … the ones that the polypond threw into us … they were extras, apparently. Or she wanted to measure our guts, acquiring a better feel for her target.” Aasleen touched the same display, remarking, “If your saw is no tougher than the plank that you wish to cut, then you need to strengthen it. Glue bits of broken glass onto a cotton string. Or diamond dust fused to a steel blade.
“Or maybe, if you are very patient and exceptionally determined … and vast … you can impregnate your saw with a thousand tiny-mass black holes, highly charged so they can be controlled, and placed evenly along the blade’s leading edge … ready to slice into our hull, or anything else, working their way down and down …”
PAMIR ABANDONED THE meeting.
Still unaware of the disaster, the harum-scarums continuedto work, following a schedule and a broad menu of plans that could not have been more useless. Through a minor nexus, he kept tabs on what was being said. Of course the Master doubted that such a machine could ever work. And Aasleen answered every complaint with a responsethat couldn’t help but sound like gushing praise for their enemy. And Washen was talking to the empty image standing next to her, saying, “We need one good option.”
“There are none,” Pamir replied.
Then in a loud voice, he called out, “Osmium.”
The Submaster was still standing beside him. But it took a breath or two before Osmium shook loose from the others. He closed down the nexus linking him to the meeting and stared at his companion, puzzled, then curious, watching the motions of the ape’s fingers.
On the hull of a half-dismantled starship, dust had collected.It was a thick dust made of human skin and alien skin and scrap hyperfiber and other rich hints left behind by the vanished multitude. Pamir was drawing in the dust. With a desperate energy, he invented unworkable or outright fanciful solutions—most involving detonating the starships inside every port, leaving the Great Ship tumbling and gutted by their own hand.
“Not that way,” Washen whispered.
She was using a security eye, watching over his shoulder.
“Then you draw something better,” he growled. With a flattened palm, he began to wipe away his enormous drawing of the ship. Then he hesitated, muttering, “We need some other engine.”
“It won’t happen soon,” Aasleen interrupted.
Every Submaster was watching over his shoulder.
“The blade’s falling on us now,” the chief engineer reported. “Within the hour, it makes contact—”
“Here,” Washen interrupted.
With the projection of her hand, she took hold of Pamir’s hand, leading a fingertip as it drew a few elegant lines inside his rendering of the ship. Then with a hard and flat little voice, she explained what she meant.
Hearing the idea, Aasleen said, “Maybe. Maybe.”
“How did you dream up this improbable?” Pamir snapped.
With a tone as mystified as anyone’s, Washen admitted, “I do not know.” Her phantom hand bled into his, and again, with a quavering voice, she said, “Honestly, I don’t know where this came from …”
“This is what will happen.”
In a multitude of languages—as sound and as scent, flashing photophores and tactile caresses—she began her warning. And then with a mixture of ripping pain and the gravest concern, she paused. For a long moment, the great golden face was tight and slick, the wide eyes glistening with tears too stubborn to roll. Her mouth lay open, the pink meat of the tongue pushed between the extraordinarily white teeth, and billions of passengers and crew listened for the steady wet inhalation of the Master’s next breath. This will be awful, they knew. Very few could imagine what was next, but even the most peculiar species, isolated and unfamiliar with human ways, could sense that whatever followed would be horrible, and probably all of them would die.
“This is coming,” the Master Captain said. And then she showed them something impossible. She shared the most recent data about the blade’s size and density, its velocity and point of impact. “A degree port of the bow,” she described, and then after another deep breath, she added, “In another twelve standard minutes.”
Spellbound, her audience tried to absorb the news.
“Our finest armor is thickest at the bow,” she reminded them. But before anyone could take comfort in that fact, she said with a brutal confidence, “Our hyperfiber will be sliced apart by the revolving black holes. That much is certain. A white-hot fissure will open up, and before the wounded armor can flow back on itself, the polypond’s blade will cut into the plasma. Its rapid spin will increase the damage. We think the blade carries a profound electric charge, and most of our simulations show a flattened jet of superheated matter carried away from the ship. The loss of mass will be trivial, but of course, that is not the point.”
She paused again.
Breathed, again.
“We’ve dubbed the contraption the Sword of Creation. With each passage, its black holes will continue to acquire mass and destructive capacity. The hyperfiber behind them has been carefully shaped to accomplish this one task. The polypond intends to cut through the heart of our ship. In regions that are rich in rock and air, the damage zone will expand. Blast effects and cave-ins will obliterate everything in a zone as much as twenty kilometers wide. Which is why I have ordered a complete evacuation of the following districts …”
“Why run?” many asked themselves. “There’s no escape, so why prolong the misery?”
And then, as if she had heard their doubts, the Master interrupted her own thorough listing of doomed places. For an instant, something of the old cockiness reemerged. She had evolved into a complicated figurehead. Virtually everyone on board knew her personal history and the endless rumors. Washen was the real queen now, with the other Submasters wearing their own vast roles. But still, the Master was the face of the ship, and she was as much its voice as anyone. When she told everyone, “This is not finished,” they heard and smelled, saw and felt more than just her words. This was the face that every sentient soul could read at a glance, and a single glance provided just enough encouragement. Hundreds of thousands began retreating, even as the same face told everyone else, “Remain ready. At any moment, you may need to flee, too.”
Then with a sigh and another sad shake of the head, the Master reported, “If nothing changes, the Sword of Creation will reach Marrow in a moment less than two hours. And a few minutes later, the swollen black holes will begin to strike whatever sits at the center of that mysterious world. And at the very least, we will have the rare honor of learning what precisely it is that is down there.”
Then with a broad and weary smile, she added, “I have had many honors in my life. But this is one distinction that I would most gladly avoid.”
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