Authors: Gregory Benford
Killeen turned so that he was facing the pale yellow disk of Abraham’s Star. They had known for months that this was the destination
of their years-long voyage—a star similar to
Snowglade’s. Shibo had told him that planets orbited here as well.
Killeen had no idea as yet what kind of planets these might be, or whether they held any shelter for his Family. But
Argo’
s automatic program had brought them here, following knowledge far older than their forefathers. Perhaps the ship knew well.
In any case, the Family’s long rest was nearing an end. A time of trials was coming. And Killeen had to be sure his people
were ready.
He found himself loping harder, barely skimming the hull. His thoughts impelled him forward, oblivious to his loud panting
inside the cramped helmet. The rank musk of his own sweat curled up into his nostrils, but he kept going. The exercise was
good, yes, but it also kept his mind away from the invisible threat above. More important, the hard pace cleared his mind
for thinking before he began his official day.
Discipline was his principal concern. With Ling’s help he had drilled and taught, trying to fathom the ancient puzzles of
the
Argo
and help his officers become skilled spacers.
This was his ambiguous role: Cap’n of a crew that was also Family, a circumstance which had not arisen in the memory of anyone
living. He had only the dry advice of his Aspects, or the lesser Faces, to guide him—ancient voices from eras marked by far
greater discipline and power. Now humanity was a ragged remnant, scurrying for its life among the corners of a vast machine
civilization that spanned the entire Galactic Center. They were rats in the walls.
Running a starship was a vastly different task from maneuvering across the bare, blasted plains of distant Snowglade. The
patterns the Families had set down for centuries were nominally based on crewing a ship, but these years under way had shown
how large the gap was. In a tight
engagement, when the crew had to react with instant fortitude and precision, Killeen had no idea how they would perform.
Nor did he know what they would have to do. The dim worlds that circled Abraham’s Star might promise infinite danger or easy
paradise. They had been set on this course by a machine intelligence of unknown motives, the Mantis. Perhaps the dispersed,
anthology intelligence of the Mantis had sent them to one of the few humanly habitable planets in the Galactic Center. Or
perhaps they were bound for a site which fitted the higher purposes of the mech civilization itself.
Killeen bit his lip in fretted concentration as he loped around the
Argo’
s stern and rounded back toward midships. His breath came sharply and, as always, he longed to be able to wipe his brow.
He had gambled the Family’s destiny on the hope that ahead lay a world better than weary, vanquished Snowglade. Soon now the
dice would fall and he would know.
He puffed heavily as he angled around the bulbous lifezones—huge bubbles extruded from the sleek lines of the
Argo
, like the immense, bruised bodies of parasites. Inside, their opalescent walls ran with dewdrops, shimmering moist jewels
hanging a bare finger’s width away from hard vacuum. Green fronds pressed here and there against the stretched walls—a sight
which at first had terrified Killeen, until he understood that somehow the rubbery yet glassy stuff could take the pokes and
presses of living matter without splitting. Despite the riot of plant growth inside, there was no threat of a puncture.
Argo
had attained a balance between life’s incessant demands and the equally powerful commandments of machines—a truce humanity
had never managed on Snowglade.
As he slogged around the long, curved walls of the lifezones,
here and there a filmy face peered out at him. A crewwoman paused in her harvesting of fruit and waved. Killeen gave her a
clipped, reserved salute. She hung upside down, since the life bubbles did not share
Argo’
s spin.
To her his reflecting suit would look like a mirror-man taking impossibly long, slowmotion strides, wearing leggings of hullmetal,
with a shirt that was a mad swirl of wrinkled clouds and stars. His suit came from
Argo’
s ancient stores and had astonishing ability to resist both the heat and cold of space. He had seen a midshipman carelessly
back into a gas torch in one, and feel not a flicker of the blazing heat through its silvery skin.
His Ling Aspect commented:
A reflecting suit is also good camouflage against our mech companion
.
This sort of remark meant that the Aspect was feeling its cabin fever again. Killeen decided to go along with its attempt
to strike up a conversation; that might help him tickle forth the slippery idea that kept floating nearly into consciousness.
“The other day you said it wasn’t interested in me anyway.”
I still believe so. It came upon us as though it would attack, yet over a week has passed as it patiently holds its distance
in a parallel path
.
“Looks like it’s armed.”
True, but it holds its fire. That is why I advised you to hull-walk as usual. The crew would have noticed any reluctance
.
Killeen grumbled, “Extra risk is dumb.”
Not in this case. I know the moods of crew, particularly in danger. Heed me! A commander must imbue his crew with hope in
the mortal circumstances of war. So the eternal questions voice themselves again: “Where is our leader? Is he to be seen?
What does he say to us? Does he share our dangers?” When you brave the hull your crew watches with respect
.
Killeen grimaced at Ling’s stentorian tones. He reminded himself that Ling had led far larger ships than
Argo
. And crew
were
peering out the frosted walls of the lifezones to watch their Cap’n.
Still, the magisterial manner of Ling rankled. He had lost several minor Faces when Ling’s chip was added, because there wasn’t
enough room in the slots aligned along his upper spine. Ling was embedded in an old, outsized pentagonal chip, and had proved
to be both a literal and figurative pain in the neck.
He gazed once more at the streaming radiance that forked fitfully in the roiling sky. There—he saw it. The distant speck held
still against a far-passing luminescence. He watched the mote for a long moment and then shook his fist at it in frustration.
Good. Crew like a Captain who expresses what they all feel
.
“It’s what
I
feel, dammit!”
Of course. That is why such gestures work so well
.
“You calc’late
every
thing?”
No—but you wished to learn Captaincy. This is the way to do so
.
Irritated, Killeen pushed Ling back into his mind’s recesses. Other Aspects and Faces clamored for release, for a freshening
moment in his mind’s frontal lobes. Though they caught a thin sliver of what Killeen sensed, the starved interior presences
hungered for more. He had no time for that now. The slippery idea still eluded him and, he realized, had provoked some of
the irritation he had taken out on Ling.
If crew were already harvesting, then Killeen knew he had been running a bit too long. He deliberately did not use the time
display in his suit, since the thing was ageold and its symbols were a confusing scramble of too much data, unreadable to
his untutored mind. Instead he checked his inboard system. The timer stuttered out a useless flood of information and then
told him he had been running nearly an hour. He did not know very precisely how long an hour was, but as a rule of thumb it
was enough.
He wrenched the airlock stays free, prepared to enter, looked up for one last glimpse of the vista—and the idea popped forth,
unbidden.
In a heartbeat he turned the notion over and over, inspecting every nuance of it, and knew it was right.
He studied the sky, saw the course
Argo
would follow in the gradually lifting gloom of the cloud-shadow. If they had to, there was enough in the sky to navigate
by eye.
He cycled through the axial lock, passed quickly through the tight zero-g vapor shower, and was back inside the spun-up corridors
within a few minutes.
Lieutenant Cermo was waiting for him at the midships gridpoint. He saluted and said nothing about Killeen’s lateness, though
his irrepressible grin told Killeen that the point had not slipped by. Killeen did not return the smile and said
quietly, “Sound quarters.” The way Cermo’s mouth turned down in utter dismayed surprise brought forth a thin smile from Killeen.
But by that time Cermo had hurriedly turned away and tapped a quick signal into his wrist command, and so missed his Cap’n’s
amusement entirely.
He directed the assault from the hull itself—not so much because of Ling’s windbag advice, Killeen told himself, but because
he truly did get a better feel of things out there.
So he stood, anchored by magnetic boots, as sunrise came.
Not the coming of sunlight from a rotating horizon, a spreading glory at morning. Instead, this false dawn came as a gradual
waxing radiance, seen through billowing, thinning grit.
Killeen had noticed that soon
Argo
would pass across the last bank of clotted dust that hid Abraham’s Star from them. The swelling sunburst would come as the
ship very nearly eclipsed the mech vehicle that was escorting them inward toward the star.
—Still don’t see why the mech won’t adjust for that,—Cermo sent from the control vault.
“It will. Question is, how fast?”
Killeen felt relaxed, almost buoyant. He had committed them, after a week of vexed, fretting worry. If they entered the inner
system around Abraham’s Star with an armed mech vessel alongside, a mere quick command from elsewhere
could obliterate
Argo
. Best take it out now. If that proved impossible, this was the time to know it.
He searched the quilted sky for a single figure.
—Approaching on assigned path,—Gianini sent.
This young woman had been chosen by Jocelyn to close with the mech. Killeen recalled that she came from Family Rook and knew
her to be an able crewwoman. He followed standard practice in letting his lieutenants choose specific crew for jobs; they
knew the intricacies of talent and disposition far better than he. Gianini had fought mechs back on Snowglade, was seasoned
and twice wounded.
And Killeen found her—a distant dot that sparkled amber and yellow as Abraham’s Star began to cut through the shrouding clouds
that hung over his shoulder, filling a quarter of the sky. The brooding mass had lightened from ebony to muted gray as it
thinned. Shredded fingers of starshine cut the spaces around
Argo
. And Gianini sped toward the mech, using the sudden rise of brilliance at her back to mask her approach.
A tactic. A stratagem. A life.
A necessary risk, because the mech was too far away to hit with their weapons, which were designed for battles fought on land.
Argo
herself carried no weaponry, no defenses.
—I’ll hit it with microwave and IR, then the higher stuff.—Gianini’s voice was steady, almost unconcerned.
Killeen did not dare reply, and had ordered Cermo not to allow any transmissions from
Argo
, lest they attract the mech’s attention in the ship’s direction. Gianini’s directed transmissions back could not alert the
mech vehicle, though.
As they had calculated, Abraham’s Star began to brim with waxy radiance. Rays refracted through Killeen’s helmet, sprinkling
yellow across his lined face. He found he was clenching and unclenching his hands futilely.
Do it now
, he thought.
Now!
—Firing.—
He strained, but could see no change in either the dot that was Gianini or the dark point where the mech moved against the
blue background glow of a molecular cloud.
—I can’t see any effect.—
Killeen grimaced. He wanted to give an order, if only to release his own tension. But what would he say? To be careful? A
stupid, empty nattering. And even sending it might endanger her.
—Closing pretty fast.—
Gianini was a softening yellow dot approaching a vague darkness. Action in space had an eerie, dead-silent quality that unnerved
Killeen. Death came sliding ballistically into the fragile shells that encased moist life.
Starshine from behind him swelled and blared and struck hard shadows across
Argo’
s hull. He felt how empty and barren space was, how it sucked human action into its infinite perspectives. Gianini was a single
point among a countless plethora of similar meaningless points.
He shook off the thought, aching to
do
something, to be running and yelling and firing in the midst of a suddenly joined battle that he could
feel
.
But above him the dots coalesced in utter silence. That was all. No fervor, nothing solid, no sure reality.
Burnished sunlight raked the hull around him. Time ticked on. He squinted at the sky and tried to read meaning into mere twitches
of random radiance.
—Well, if that don’t damn all.—
What?
he thought. His heart leaped to hear Gianini’s voice, but her slow, almost lazy words could mean anything.
—This thing’s had its balls cut off. Ruined. All those antennas and launchers we saw in closeup, ’member? Their power source
is all blowed away. Nothin’ here that works
’cept for some drive chambers and a mainmind. Guess that’s what led it our way.—
Killeen felt a breath he had been holding forever rush out of his chest. He chanced a transmission. “You’re sure it can’t
shoot?”
—Naysay. Somethin’ pranged it good. A real mess it is here.—
“Back off, then.”
—You want I should skrag the mainmind?—
“Yeasay. Leave a charge on it.”
—Doin’ that now.—
“Get clean clear before you blow it.”