A Talent for War (29 page)

What kind of men fight for this Christopher Sim?

This one would have burned Ilyanda, but he could not bring himself to take my life.

What kind of men? I have no answer to that question. Then or now.

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I stood a long time over him, staring at him, and at the silently blinking transmitter, with its cold red eye, while the white lights fled toward the outer ring.

And a terrible fear crept through me: I could still carry out his intention, and I wondered whether I didn't owe it to him, to someone, to reach out and strike the blow they had prepared.

But in the end I walked away from it, into the dawn.

The black ships that escaped at Ilyanda went on to take a heavy toll For almost three more years, men and ships died. Christopher Sim continued to perform legendary exploits. His Dellacondans held on until Rimway and Earth intervened, and, in the heat of battle, the modern Confederacy was born.

The sun weapon itself was never heard from. Whether, in the end, it wouldn't work, or Sim was unable afterward to lure a large enough force within range of a suitable target, I don't know.

For most, the war is now something remote, a subject for debate by historians, a thing of vivid memories only for the relatively old. The mutes have long since retreated into their sullen worlds. Sim rests with his heroes, and his secrets, lost off Rigel. And Ilyanda still entrances tourists with her misty seas, and researchers with her curious ruins.

Matt Olander lies in a hero's grave at Richardson. I cut his name into the stone with the same weapon I used to kill him.

And I: to my sorrow, I survived. I survived the attack on the city, I survived the just anger of the Dellacondans, I survived my own black guilt.

The Dellacondans: they came twice following the murder. There were four of them the first time, two men and two women. I hid from them, and they left. Later, when I'd begun to suspect they would not come again, a lone woman landed on one of the Richardson pads, and I went out in the sunlight and told her everything.

I expected to be killed; but she said little, and wanted to take me to Millennium. But I couldn't face that, so I walked away from her. And I lived outside the ruined city, in Walhalla where perhaps I should have died, pursued by an army of ghosts which grew daily in number. All slain by my hand. And when the Ilyandans returned at the end of the war, I was waiting.

They chose not to believe me. It may have been politics. They may have preferred to forget.

And so I am denied even the consolation of public judgment. There is none to damn me. Or to forgive.

I have no doubt I did the right thing.

Despite the carnage, and the fire, I was right.

In my more objective moments, in the daylight, I know that. But I know also that whoever reads this document, after my death, will understand that I need more than a correct philosophical stance.

For now, for me, in the dark of Ilyanda's hurtling moons, the war never ends.

XVI.

What bleak thoughts carried him high onto that windy rock, we never knew—

—Aneille Kay, Christopher Sim at War

(These words also appear on a brass plate at Sim's Perch.) IN THE MORNING, when we sat over breakfast in the penthouse restaurant, warmed by a bright sun, it all seemed a little unreal. "It's a fraud," said Chase. "They couldn't count on having that ship materialize inside a planetary system, let alone inside a sun. It wouldn't work."

"But if it were true," I said, "it answers some questions. And maybe the big one: what's out in the Veiled Lady."

"The bomb?"

"What else?"

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"But if the thing worked, why didn't it get passed on? Why put it out in the woods someplace?"

"Because the Dellacondans thought the Confederacy wouldn't survive the war, even if they won.

Once the Ashiyyur were driven off, the worlds would go back to squabbling. And Sim may not have wanted that kind of weapon loose. Maybe not even among his own people.

"Maybe toward the end, when things were getting desperate, he saw only two options: destroy it, or hide it. So he hid it. But everyone who knew was killed off. And the entire business was forgotten."

Chase picked up the thread: "So now, two hundred years later, the Tenandrome comes along and stumbles on it. And they classify everything!"

"That's it," I said. "Has to be."

"So where's the weapon? Did they bring it back?"

"Sure. And right now, we're putting it into production. Next year at this time, we'll be threatening the mutes with it."

Chase was shaking her head. "I don't believe it," she said. "How would the Tenandrome recognize the thing for what it is?"

"Maybe it comes with an instruction book. Listen, it's the first explanation we've got that makes sense."

She looked skeptical. "Maybe. But I still don't think it's possible. Listen, Alex, star travel is extremely approximate. If I take a ship that's in orbit around this world, and jump into hyper—"

"—and come right back out, you might be a few million kilometers away. I know that."

"A few million kilometers? I'd be damned lucky if I could jump back into the planetary system at all. Now how the hell are they going to be so good that they can hit a star? It's ridiculous."

"Maybe there's another way to do it. Let's check out what we can. See if you can find an expert, a physicist or somebody. But stay away from Survey, and tell them you're doing research for a novel. Right? Find out what happens if we inject a load of antimatter into the core of a star.

Would it really explode? Is there any theoretical way to accomplish the insertion? That sort of thing."

"What are you going to do?"

"Some sightseeing," I said.

Ilyanda has changed since Kindrel's time. No fleet of shuttles and cruisers and interstellars could hope to sneak in now and evacuate the global population. The old theocratic Committee that governed in Point Edward still exists, but it is now vestigial. The doors have long since opened to settlers, and Point Edward is now only one of a network of cities, and by no means the largest. But it has not forgotten its past: the Dellacondan Cafe stands on Defiance Street across from the Matt Olander Hotel. Without looking hard, one can find Christopher Sim Park, Christopher Sim Plaza, and Christopher Sim Boulevard. The orbiting terminal has been renamed for him, and his picture appears on various denominations of Bank of Ilyanda credit serials.

And Matt Olander: a bronze plate bears his likeness and the legend "Defender" in the archway through which one enters Old City, the four-square-block tract of shattered buildings and gaping permearth which has been left untouched since the attack. Visitors stroll silently through the memorial, and usually stop to see the visuals.

I spent some time in the dromes myself, watching the holos of Sim's shuttles, during that desperate week when the Ashiyyur were coming, moving in and out of Richardson on silent magnetics. It was rousing stuff, complete with anthems and stern-eyed heroes and the sort of subdued commentary one expects with the portrayal of mythic events. My blood began to pound, and I was gradually caught up again in the drama of that ancient war.

Later, in a sidewalk cafe flanked by frozen trees, I thought again how easily one's own tides rise at the prospect of combat in a cause, even one whose justice may be suspect. The company of
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heroes: if Quinda was affected by it, so were we all. Our glory and our downfall. Embrace the terrible risks of war; drive home the spear (for all the proper reasons, of course). I sat that morning, watching crowds that had never known organized bloodshed, and wondered whether Kindrel Lee wasn't right when she argued that the real risk to us all comes not from this or that group of outsiders, but from our own desperate need to create Alexanders, and to follow them enthusiastically onto whatever parapets they may choose to blunder.

Who was the lone woman who had visited Kindrel Lee? Was it Tanner? Lee had described her as Dellacondan, but she was expecting Dellacondans.

It was easy to see why the Dellacondans might have lied about the manner of Olander's death: they would not have wished to reveal the existence of the sun weapon. So they'd simply made a hero out of the unfortunate systems analyst who'd stayed behind to ensure success and had thereby savaged Sim's plans. But anyone who knew the truth must have hated him. How many had eventually died because of Olander's act?

I could imagine them all, posted safely outside this system's oort cloud, watching the sensors, expecting to strike their decisive blow. No wonder they were bitter.

But Sim had fought on for another year and a half, and never used the solar weapon. I wondered about Kindrel Lee's idea that the weapon, after all, had been flawed, rendered unworkable by some quirk of nature, or incapable of execution at the Resistance Era level of technology. That she had, after all, killed Matt Olander for no reason.

Midway through the afternoon, I took the skimmer up into a stiff wind. Street traffic was heavy, and several giant holos of eminently good-looking models demonstrated winter fashions to a crowd gathered outside an emporium. I arced over the downtown area, gained altitude, and sailed into a gray sky.

During the evacuation of Point Edward, Christopher Sim had left his staff to direct operation, and had busied himself with other matters. A curious thing then happened: his officers noticed that he rose well before dawn each day, and took a skimmer north along the coast from the city.

His destination was a lonely shelf on a cliff face high over the sea. What he did there, or why he went, no one ever learned. Toldenya immortalized the scene in his masterpiece, On the Rock, and the place has been designated an historical site by the Ilyandans. They call it Sim's Perch.

I wanted to look at the war through his eyes. And visiting his retreat seemed a good way to do it.

The vehicle leveled off at about a thousand meters, and began a long swing toward the sea. I was feeling vaguely overwhelmed by the combination of peaks, city, ocean, and mist, when it occurred to me there was someplace else worth visiting.

I switched to manual, and turned back inland. The computer buzzed at me, insisting on a higher altitude. I went up until the noise stopped, and was near the clouds when I passed over the western edge of the city. That was also the western rim of the volcano. Safely dead, according to the literature. Taken care of by engineers centuries ago, and checked periodically by the Point Edward Environmental Service.

All the romance has gone out of life.

I descended toward the vibrant canopy of a purple forest. To the southwest, the land was divided into large farms. Two streams wound across the countryside, joining approximately eight kilometers beyond Point Edward, and disappearing into a mountain.

On the horizon, the spires of the spaceport looked fragile against the threatening sky. A curtain of water fell from the top of the Blue Tower. I watched a shuttle loop in from the far side, bank gracefully, and descend into the complex.

It took a while to find what I was looking for: the road that Lee had taken from Point Edward out to Richardson. It no longer existed in any real sense. All transport between the two points was by air now; and anyone living in the small towns that still dotted the landscape had damned well better have a skimmer.

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But sections of the ancient track were visible. It skirted the edge of a cluster of hills, and ran parallel first to one river, and then the other. For the most part, it was little more than a place where the trees were younger.

I put the map on the overhead monitor, and looked through the atlas, trying to find the town where she'd crashed. Walhalla.

It was a small farming community, maybe a dozen houses, a hardware store, a food store, a city hall, a restaurant, and a tavern. Two men were atop a roof, installing a dormer. A few people were gathered on the deck outside the hall. No one glanced up as I passed overhead.

She'd described a sharp curve, which could only be the eastern side, where the trace wound down out of hilly country. There was no sign of a ditch or depression, but two hundred years is a long time. Somewhere here, it had happened. An unmarked, unknown spot on a world littered with memorials. And I wondered how different Ilyanda's history might have been had Kindrel Lee died out here that night.

An hour later, I flew out over the glassy waters of Point Edward's sprawling, island-studded harbor.

The city had spread up the sides of the surrounding ridges. It clung precariously to precipices, supported by a combination of metal struts and gantner light. Landing pads gleamed on rooftops and in grottos cut from the cliffside. Some public buildings arched across rock fissures.

Seaway

Boulevard, which follows almost the same route that it did during Resistance times, skirted the harbor, narrowed in the north to a two-lane, and climbed into the peaks.

Forest, rock, and snow: in both directions along the coastline, the craggy landscape turned gray-white, and disappeared into a hard sky. I flew in lazy circles over the area, admiring its wild beauty. And then, after a while, I turned north.

Point Edward fell behind. The coastal highway drifted inland and plunged into thick trees.

Mountains crowded together, and merged gradually into a monolithic gray rampart, smooth and reflective and timeless. The Ilyandans call it Klon's Wall, after a mythical hero who built it to protect the continent against a horde of sea demons. In its shadow, the air was cold. I stayed low, near the spray.

Sails stirred the mist and, well above me, skimmers and even an airbus plowed back and forth.

A few gulls kept pace. They were ungainly creatures with scoop snouts and enormous wingspans and cackles like gunshots. Floaters drifted idly in the air currents.

Occasional trees clung to the cliff face. The computer identified some of these as cassandras, thought to possess a kind of leafy intelligence. Tests had proven inconclusive, and skeptics held that the tradition had developed because the web of branches tended to resemble human features, particularly when seen with the sun behind them.