Ultima (23 page)

As the ship's position shifted, an overhead window tracked a swathe of the copper sky, and Mardina glimpsed Höd, a tiny disc now, brilliant enough to hurt her eyes.

Kerys lay on her back in an acceleration couch, on the bridge of the
Celyn
, the ship she had stolen. The prow of the ship, a thick shield of metal and dirt designed to defy the erosion of the sparse grime of interplanetary and interstellar space, had no forward ports, but various instruments peered around the shield, and screens around her showed her images of what lay beyond the ship: a glowing jewel hanging over a pale brown landscape.

Surely by now the destination of the asteroid must be obvious to the authorities on Terra, across the solar system. Kerys had moved in elevated enough circles to be able to imagine the consternation that must be unfolding in the capitals, Brikanti, Xin and Roman: the fear, the raised voices, the unbelieved denials that this was an intentional act of war. She prayed for cool judgments, but on a world that was more or less continually at war, she feared judgment would be lacking. And she feared for Brikanti—for her family, her sister and her nephews . . .

Meanwhile it was just three hours from impact. And still the
Celyn
sat on the ground.

“Come on, Freydis, come on—”

“I'm here,
nauarchus
.” Freydis scrambled up a ladder into the cabin, kicked a hatch closed behind her, and hauled herself into a couch alongside Kerys.

“At last!” Kerys immediately started snapping switches and pulling levers. She felt the ship shudder as the huge assemblies of etheric engines that controlled the kernel banks began to power up. “I'd bite your head off if I didn't know how many hatches you had to close, and systems to flush down . . .”

“Yes,
nauarchus
.”

“And if it hadn't also taken me all this time to get the controls in order also. The crew here were doing a sloppy job.”

Freydis thought that over. “That strange creature Earthshine is in control of all of this. Maybe he doesn't
care
about this ship. He's safe in his bunker—well, at least until Höd falls. Maybe he thought the presence of the ship and the crew on the surface would be enough of a deterrent to anybody who was thinking of intruding.”

“We're never going to know. And from now on our priority is
that.
” Kerys tapped a screen that glowed with an image of the falling Eye.

Freydis glanced at a clock. “Just three hours until Höd falls. I didn't realize how much time we've lost.”

“I did. I've been watching that damn bit of clockwork tick away our remaining time. And I've been trying to figure out a flight plan. Right now Höd is a hundred and thirty thousand Roman miles from Mars. That's over thirty planetary diameters. Which sounds like a lot until you remember that the thing is coming in at over ten Mars diameters every hour.” She glanced at Freydis, who was taking this all in very calmly, very seriously—looking more like an earnest student in a classroom than a soldier, Kerys thought, a soldier who was about to lay down her life. “So, you tell me. Given the knucklebones as they've fallen, what play would you have us make next?”

Freydis pulled her lip. “Our objective is to deflect Höd from an impact with Mars. The farther out from the planet we meet Höd the better. Our highest acceleration is three weights—”

“Yes. If we just blast out of here at three weights, we will encounter Höd in less than an hour.”

“Umm. Even then it might be too close to do anything about it.”

“Most likely. And—”

“And we'll go flying by at twenty thousand miles per hour.”

“Yes. But if we plan for a rendezvous, if we allow time to decelerate—”

“Then, by the time we meet Höd, it will be closer yet to Mars.”

“So what do you think?”

Freydis grinned. “Go for the burn. Get there as fast as possible. At minimum, we can blast whatever crew is still on that ice ball with farspeaker messages; maybe the sight of the
Celyn
coming down their throats will persuade them to see the error of the course they've chosen.”

Kerys nodded grimly. “And if that fails, we'll think of something else.” Although she could only think of one alternative, given the situation. “But the first thing we have to do is get there. Strapped in, Freydis? Taken your thrust medications?”

“No, but I'll survive.”

Actually, Kerys thought sadly, no, you probably won't.

She pulled the master lever, lay back, and braced. She imagined the banks of kernels embedded in the base of the ship, etheric pulses washing over them, their strange, tiny mouths opening—the engineers always said they were like baby birds asking to be fed—but those mouths would vomit out a kind of fire that was hotter than the sun itself. Immediately Kerys felt the heavy shove of the thrust, a weight that pushed her deep into the cushions of the couch.

On a pillar of fire, the
Celyn
surged into the air of Mars.

Without thinking, Kerys went into practices for high-thrust regimens as she'd been instructed, many years ago. She kept her legs still, her arms at her side, her head cushioned, and she breathed deliberately, deep and strong, pushing against that savage weight. Only an hour, she thought. Only an hour. Then, one way or another, it would be done.

Almost immediately, it seemed, the wan sky of Mars cleared away in her screens, leaving that deadly spark of light, Höd, hanging in the void. As if a last illusion had been dispelled about the reality of this situation.

The cabin was shuddering, the roar of the drive loud.

“Onward,
nauarchus
!” Freydis yelled, defying the savage acceleration and the noise. “Onward!”

To Kerys's surprise, an internal communications link sounded with a whistle. She looked at Freydis sharply. “Who is that? I thought you said you cleared the ship.”

“I did! I threw off the last of the crew at spearpoint, and they were glad to leave when I told them we were heading for Höd . . .”

Kerys reached up cautiously and snapped a switch. “Identify yourself.”

“I am Gerloc. You may recall, the
nauarchus
tricked me in order to gain access to the ship.”

Kerys grimaced. “I apologize for that.”

Freydis snarled, “And I left you bound up.”

“Not very well, it seems,” Gerloc said.

Kerys had to grin. “Ha! She has you there, Freydis.”

“I wondered if you would like a little help. I do know the ship's systems quite well; I have had extensive training as a backup to the control crew.”

“Hm. It wouldn't harm. You need to understand that our mission—”

“Is what you ordain it to be. I overheard some of your conversation.”

“Oh, you did? Resourceful, aren't you?”

“Yes,” said Gerloc without irony. “You are trying to avert a tremendous disaster. And you are
nauarchus
; you are my superior officer.”

“And so am I, by the way,” snapped Freydis.

“I have trained for this, for mobility in battle situations under conditions of thrust—”

“All right. Get up here as fast as you can, and don't break a leg on the way.”

“Already halfway there,
nauarchus.
See you soon.”

“Ha! I like her,” said Kerys.

“Well, I don't,” said Freydis. “Is there any way we can increase the thrust of this bucket? That would wipe the grin off her face . . .”

On
ce they were off the landed yacht, Mardina tried to help Penny as they made their way through an airlock, and into a cramped elevator that took them down a deep shaft sunk into the Martian ground. Then they followed Earthshine along a short passage crudely cut into the dirt.

They arrived at a bare room, with walls of rust-colored concrete punctuated by several doors, and furnished with a few couches and low tables of metal tubing and webbing—furniture that looked to Mardina as if it had been scavenged from a spacecraft, from the
Celyn
, perhaps. Earthshine stood at the center of the room as the rest filed in. None of them were at ease as they tried to walk in the unaccustomed low gravity—none save Earthshine, who looked as relaxed as if he were in a full gravity on Terra. Mardina found that irritating, as if he was making some point about his own eerie superiority.

Penny picked a chair, eased herself down on it with a lot of help from Mardina, and leaned forward on her stick, scowling at Earthshine. The rest settled: Mardina's mother and father, Beth and Ari, on chairs as far from each other as they could get, and Chu with the ColU satchel on his back sitting modestly on the floor.

“So here we are.” Earthshine pointed. “There are facilities—a bathroom through that door, a small galley, a dormitory.”

Penny barked laughter. “All rather less fancy than the last time I visited you, Earthshine. The great glass hall at Hellas—the trip into your virtual mine, deep underground, where you spoke of your noostratum.”

Earthshine smiled, unperturbed. “I have abandoned the surface facilities now. Down here I can complete my preparations without any interference by the navies of this reality's squabbling empires.”

Ari smiled. “What interference? You maneuvered an object as enormous as Höd onto a collision course with this planet. And all in full view of the Brikanti and the Romans and the Xin—indeed, you persuaded them to give you the facilities to do it!”

Earthshine shrugged. “These are not cultures that prepare well for natural disasters—not compared to our own reality, Penny. They don't track rocks that might fall from space; they don't have the technology to do it, let alone the imagination.
Each other's ships
—that's what they watch, obsessively. And so it was easy for me to smuggle Ceres onto this destructive course, yes.”

The ColU said levelly, “We are here to persuade you to abandon this project—”

Earthshine broke in, “Yes, that was your plan, your surface motivation. But under all that, deeper impulses lurk. I am your grandparent, Beth. Whatever you think of me, that remains the truth. I am all that is left of your family from before what you call the hinge. And in the final hours, you have come to me.” He spread his hands, and looked around, at Beth, Mardina. “Even under the fall of the hammer itself, you, my family, have come to me. For you know I will protect you.”

The ColU said evenly, “They were pawns, Earthshine. A means of inducing you to allow access to this place. As for your family, what of Yuri Eden? Your son. I was with him when he died. He was far from your protection then.”

Earthshine's synthesized face became, eerily, more expressionless. “I am aware of his death—”

“It was freezer burn. That was the colloquialism he used. Your decision, Robert Braemann, all those years ago, to consign your son to a cryo tank, ultimately killed him.”

Mardina had been told about this. Even so, having it stated as baldly as this in front of this strange old monster, this relic of her great-grandfather, shocked her.

Earthshine faced Beth and Mardina, and spread his hands. “I meant only the best for Yuri. As I mean only the best for you—”

Penny snapped, “You're being absurd. How will you protect these people, your ‘family'? This sandcastle of a bunker will be useless when Ceres falls.”

“True. But it is not the bunker that will save us—all of you who choose to come with me.”

Mardina was utterly baffled. “Come with you where?”

Ari's eyes were alight with a kind of greed. “I think I understand.
You're talking about another jonbar hinge
, aren't you? Like the gate between your history of the UN and China and our own with Romans and Brikanti, and again between our worlds and the world of the Drowned Culture . . . I know your own history ended in a war of cosmic savagery, with the release of huge energies. Is that what you're planning here, Earthshine? To
create
a hinge?”

Mardina stared at him, barely understanding. “Father. The way you're talking. You sound as if you
want
this. As if you want everything to be smashed up—everything we've grown up with, everything our ancestors built.”

“Perhaps I do,” Ari said, and he stood and began to pace. “Perhaps I do. Ever since these strangers wandered into our lives—and especially ever since I discovered the evidence of the Drowned Culture for myself—I've become addicted to the idea.
Addicted
—yes, that's the word. To see everything change in a trice—to see new possibilities for mankind and human expression unfold, before one's eyes—perhaps to have the power to
shape
those possibilities. How could any thinking person not be drawn to such an idea?”

“Billions would die, Ari,” Penny said softly. “No, it's worse than that. Billions would never have existed at all.”

“But others would take their place. Don't you see? It would be like looking through the eyes of a god.”

The ColU said, “That's probably blasphemous, in terms of your interpretation of Christianity. And it's also wrong. You would be looking through the eyes, not of a god, but of whoever it is who welcomes these adjustments—and whoever has engineered them.”

Ari frowned. “And who might they be?”

Penny said, “We don't know, not yet. But we know that their meddling in history has nothing to do with
our
benefit. It is all about what they want.”

“Which is?”

“Kernels,” she said. “And Hatches, Ari. Hatches. Of the kind you and your Roman rivals are merrily building for them, all over the nearby star systems, without ever understanding why, or what they're for. We know that much.

“But there's more to this, isn't there, Earthshine?” She held him with her gaze. “We're skirting around elements of a deeper mystery. You came to Mars to explore this noostratum of yours. A layer of bacterial mind, deep in the rocks . . .” She stood straight, stiffly. “My God. I never thought of it before. Could there be some connection? The Hatches, after all, provide lightspeed links between worlds . . .” She faced Earthshine. “
Are the noostratum minds your Hatch builders
, Earthshine? Maybe they aren't just witnesses. And they are everywhere, presumably, on every rocky world . . .
They
are the puppet masters, who control the lesser beings, us, on the planet surfaces. Is that what you're thinking?”

Earthshine just smiled. “What is important in this situation, Penny Kalinski, is what I want of them.”

“Which is?”

“
For them to reply to me
. The Martian noostratum—yes, the Hatch builders, as I believe they are. You know I have been trying to communicate with them—you saw the experimental setup. All I have wanted is a reply.”

“And now? Earthshine, you look rather pleased with yourself.”

“So I should be. The noostratum.
It has replied.
And it has given me the means to save you all.” He gestured to a door. “This way . . .”