To Crush the Moon (17 page)

Tamra nodded, absorbing that. “I see. And the chance that we'll kill at least one person? Permanently, irrevocably? For no greater crime than the seeking of asylum?”

“That's all but certain,” Xmary said quietly.

Tamra brooded, and would have wept if she didn't still need her face for negotiating. She'd been
fifteen
when they made her Queen of All Things. An orphan, grieving for her drunken, foolish parents. Was it any wonder she'd made mistakes? How could she not? She grieved now—she
ached
for that lonely girl, on whom such burdens were heaped. What a bitter cup to drink from!

To Xmary she said, “Tell me if that ship changes course. If they twitch, if they
move at all
, I want to know about it. Immediately.”

“Aye, Majesty.”

“Time to nasen firing?”

“Six minutes.”

A while later: “Time?”

“Four minutes.”

Later still, Xmary piped up with a guarded, “
Perdition
is turning, Majesty.”

“Oh, thank God,” Tamra said, feeling suddenly clammy and limp. “Stand down all weapons and prepare to destealth.”

But Xmary remained rigid in her captain's chair. “Ma'am, the maneuver could be defensive. It could be
offensive
. It could mean anything.”

“Yes, yes. Is their drive beam pointed through the heart of civilization?”

A pause, then, “No.”

“Does it impinge on any habitats?”

“No.”

“Then we've room to de-escalate this encounter. Stand down all weapons and prepare to escort
Perdition
into high orbit over Lune.”

“But Majesty,” Brown protested. “The economy—”

“Will muddle along somehow. Stand down all weapons, Xmary. That's a
decree
.” Then: “Navywide transmission: Royal Override, all channels, all devices. Cease hostilities and escort
Perdition
to Lune.”

History records this command as Tamra's greatest—and final—mistake, and perhaps that is so. But erring on the side of compassion had always been her way, and if nothing lasts forever, then at least a queen should die as she has lived.

Was there a spy onboard
Malu'i
? A saboteur? Was there perhaps some superweapon onboard
Perdition
, whose design and function has since been forgotten? In any case, these words were Tamra's last, for
Malu'i
exploded three seconds thereafter, in a flash of light so brilliant it was visible to telescopes as far away as Eridani itself.

And then the Nescog fell.

The last official act of the Queendom of Sol was a simple radio message eleven hours later, from a King Bruno mad with grief. “The speed of light is hard upon us, my friends. God forgive us our sins. I cannot rule, with confidence, any region larger than the Earth and moon together. Full legal authority is hereby transferred to the regional governors for the duration of this emergency. Royal Override on all channels, all devices. Be brave, and uphold the ideals for which we've stood.”

And so they did, those citizens of the Queendom, for the bravely fought decades it took the shattered Nescog—nearly a trillion miniature black holes, equaling the mass of several Earths—to alight upon the planets of Sol, one by one, and crush them to oblivion.

Accipe signaculum doni Spiritus Sancti.

“A denouement gives flight to mere incident,” Wenders Rodenbeck wrote in the classic
Past Pie Season
, “freeing us at last from the rigid rail of time. Berries wither, leaves fall, and the mourning dove bows her head, with a song of distant spring beating frozen in her breast.”

book three

twilight over astaroth

chapter fifteen

in which the plight of a
world is examined

“In light of your past service to the nation of
Imbria,” says the woman named Danella Mota, “we are prepared to forgive the excesses of your men on the ramparts today.”

They are deep within the city of Timoch, on the hard-pressed world of Lune, where three women—with shadowy Eridanian faces and six-fingered Sirian hands—apparently rule over humanity's strongest remaining nation-state.

“The Furies are most generous,” Radmer answers, with a bow of the head that is surely calculated for maximum ambiguity. Is he being surly or ironic? Is he partly or wholly sincere? Bruno can't tell.

A partial answer comes when the second woman, Pine Chadwir, admonishes him, “That term is no longer considered polite, General. We are, as always, the Board of Regents of the Imbrian Nation.”

“Ah, yes. My failing memory is abetted by your grandmother's sense of humor in these matters, Madam Regent.”

But “Furies” is a good nickname for these three old women, who command a quarter of Lune's surface from this very room, the Silver Chamber. They are seated on a dais ringed by aides and pages, scribes and whispering advisors, but the room's three primary lights—halide-filament vacuum bulbs, Bruno thinks—point straight down at them, with a smaller, dimmer bulb casting a cone of yellow around himself and Radmer.

Behind them, the Olders Sidney Lyman and Brian Romset—who were permitted to accompany Radmer as bodyguards—exude an air of angry but fearless distrust. And in counterpoint, a dozen Dolceti guards in canary-yellow uniforms loom quietly in the shadows behind the dais, looking grudgingly respectful but ready for anything.
Dead before you hit the ground, villain,
their looks seem to say, though if it came to that Bruno could probably take down one or two of them himself before succumbing to any serious injury.

But all things considered, the chamber is exceedingly quiet, and the lighting makes it seem dreamlike as well, and the seated ladies mythic in proportion and demeanor. All they need is a spindle, loom, and scissors to complete the effect. But out of courtesy they speak the Old Tongue—essentially Queendom-standard English—and Radmer, with a different kind of courtesy, does the same. That makes them seem more human, and anyway Bruno is well familiar with the psychological tricks a leadership can employ to enhance its mystique, its air of natural authority. The Queendom was founded on these principles, long before he'd been drafted as its king.

“Do enlighten us, Radmer, with your reason for this accostment,” says the third Fury, whose name Bruno can no longer remember from the introductions. Sprain? Spirulina? Something like that. “It may surprise you to learn we've an invasion to repel.”

“The very reason I'm here,” Radmer tells her, “for I watched Nubia fall to the Glimmer King's armies. I know very well what Imbria faces in the coming weeks.”

“Our guards report you've distinguished yourself in clashes against the enemy.”

“Aye, madam, on Aden Bluff and outside your gates, and in Nubia before that.”

“We also had a string of reports out of Highrock. That you supervised the construction of a very large catapult? Using the Tillspar bridge as its lath?”

“That's so, madam.”

“And this catapult is capable of flinging a hollow canister completely off the planette?”

“Not to escape velocity, madam. The capsule falls back again unless its rockets are fired. But yes. The VLC can also bombard any point on Lune, though its accuracy is measured in kilometers, and its firing time in days. If we knew the location of the Glimmer King's palace—assuming such a place exists at all—then with a hundred shots we might have a hope of hitting it. But I doubt we'll be granted the time such an experiment would require.”

“Indeed,” says Pine Chadwir. Then she pauses, looking apologetic, as though her next words will sound insane. “But one of our agents observed
you
climbing into such a canister, being fired at the heavens and not returning during the three days of his observation. Is there any truth to this?”

“Aye, madam. The Imbrian astronomer Rigby believed there was someone living on Varna.”

“The slowest moon. And also the most distant?”

“Correct, although there was a farther moon in days gone by. And since traffic to Varna ended with the Shattering, any population there was likely to include Olders from the Iridium Days or before. Specifically, Rigby was of the opinion that the group was small—possibly a single individual.”

Understanding blooms in the eyes of the Furies. “This man?” They point at Bruno, studying him closely for the first time.

“I'm called Ako'i,” Bruno tells them. Not a name but a title: Professor.

This prompts some surprise on their parts. “He can speak!” And this is no idle exclamation, for Bruno passed the time on Varna as a kind of sleepwalker, repeating the same few tasks over and over again, day in and day out. Unaware of the passing centuries—unaware of anything, including himself. Beyond his first few weeks on that neutronium island, he can't remember a single thing until Radmer's arrival.

Indeed, until a few hours after that, for the sleepwalking did not immediately subside. He had spoken—even held fragmentary conversations—but either his brain's neocortex had not fully engaged, or else its hippocampus had been sluggish about laying down new memories. “Neurosensory dystropia,” they called it. Or “maroon sickness,” or “zombitis,” which wasn't even a proper word. In extreme cases it was irreversible.

In declining that final trip from Varna to the chaos of an overpopulated Lune, Bruno had been trying, in a way, to draw an end to his long life. But he hadn't really understood what awaited him. Now the image makes him shudder: the “indeceased,” wandering like animate ghosts, wearing grooves in the countryside with their feet. According to Radmer, whole villages had been known to succumb, going blankly through the motions of life until their crops eventually failed and they starved.

“I can reason,” he assures the Furies. “Though perhaps not well.”

They study him some more, furrowing and clucking. “Radmer, dear, this is a season of ill omens. The sun has been kicked twice, fair Nubia has fallen, and rather than fleeing, or pledging your sword to our defense, you've brought us an old man. Your ways have always been strange—since the world's very creation, we're told—but this is truly baffling. What do you seek from us?”

“The sun has been kicked?” Bruno repeats, wondering what such a thing could mean.

“A metaphor for eclipse,” says Radmer. “Murdered Earth transits the sun, which appears to explode and then re-form. Lesser kickings occur when one of the other murdered planets passes in front of something.”

“Ah,” Bruno says, for he has seen that sight himself, long ago. To the Furies he says, “But that's a matter of clockwork, yes? Not an omen, but a happenstance of whirling bodies.”

“So our ministers inform us,” says the oldest of the Furies, as though it's a matter of little consequence. “But we face extinction. Nubia has been stripped of metal, and is it coincidence that the metal armies which razed it have since doubled in size? The reports we have from that lost republic are as terrifying as they are sparse. Mass starvation, mass enslavement. In the face of that, everything is an omen.”

“We're here to help,” Radmer assures her. “This man is possibly the oldest living person, and his knowledge of Queendom technology is unsurpassed, easily dwarfing my own.”

“That's wonderful,” says Danella Mota, “except that we have no Queendom technology. The city's last wellstone is buried in the dumps, for we were unable to make it work.”

“If that's so,” Bruno says to her, “you should exhume it and allow me to make blitterstaves of the material. It isn't difficult, and it would improve your defensive position enormously. With care, every square meter of rubble can be fashioned into twenty weapons.”

This comment gains him the Furies' full attention.

“Ah, yes,” says Radmer, though surely the idea is obvious to anyone who has been both an architect and a general.
And
a matter programmer.

“Don't patronize me,” Bruno tells him. Then, to the Furies: “How much intact material can you salvage? The deconstruction needs to have been performed in particular ways, to avoid damage to the nanofiber weave that produces the pseudoatoms.”

That goes a bit over their heads, but they are persuaded nevertheless, and in short order a courier is sent out to order an immediate excavation of the city dumps.

“So,” says Pine Chadwir to Radmer, with half an eye on Bruno, “this ancient vessel still holds a bit of wine. You have our thanks, General. Does he do anything else?”

Radmer forms an embarrassed half smile. “Actually, I had something quite different in mind, and with your permission I'll soon remove this man from Timoch altogether.”

“Yes?” says the eldest Fury skeptically. “Our would-be savior? And where exactly would you bring him?”

“The Stormlands,” Radmer says. And everyone in the room seems to gasp in surprise, then slowly nod in agreement.

Soon they're in a different room whose decorations
consist mainly of dead robots crucified on the walls. The human beings—and the Olders—are all standing around a table whose surface is a map of the country. It's rather misleading, Bruno thinks, because Imbria covers almost half of the northern hemisphere, and stretching it out flat produces eerie distortions in the squozen moon's once-familiar features. Fortunately, a large globe hangs above the table for reference, and another one sits on the floor behind it in a two-axis mechanical spin platform that would have been perfectly at home in the Old Girona of Bruno's youth.

The table is dotted with chessmen—mirror-shiny for the Glimmer King's armies, blue for Imbria's, and red for the tattered, fleeing remnants of the armies of Nubia. The planette's Olders are apparently too few and scattered to merit chessmen of their own, but if they ever find their way to this table, Bruno has no doubt they will be some weary shade of gray.

Anyway, at a glance he can see just how badly the war is going; two southern cities—labeled Renold and Bolo—are staring already into the faceless faces of the approaching enemy, and if the robots march by night as well as by day (and why wouldn't they?), the sites will be under siege by midnight, and likely demolished before sunrise, just over sixty hours from now. These sunset rays slanting through the slatted windows might be the last daylight the two cities will ever see.

Meanwhile, a third branch of the robot army is streaming northward between the two, aiming for the city of Tosen and, one hundred fifty kilometers beyond it, the capital city of Timoch itself. The Imbrian Sea—a bit larger than in Bruno's day—fills a basin just west of Timoch, stretching northward to the Mairan Shelf and west to the Stark Hills in a rough triangle three hundred kilometers on a side, covering the middle third between the planette's equator and the north pole.

And chillingly, there are at least a dozen smaller silver chessmen—the Glimmer King's scouting patrols—scattered all the way from Imbria's border to the southern shore of its sea. The only saving grace—the only thing that keeps it from looking like certain doom—is the fact that the bulk of the robot army is still in Nubia, in Lune's southern hemisphere, and does not appear on this map at all. But even Bruno can sense the mass of them down there, implicit in the northward-streaming formations.

“How accurate are these unit positions?” he murmurs to Radmer.

“Very. Cover the nation in hundred-kilometer circles and you'll find a watch tower on the highest points of each, with dozens more running through the passes and lowlands in-between. During daylight hours, everything that moves is tracked with great precision.”

“How do the towers communicate?”

“Semaphore,” Radmer says, as though this should be obvious. “It's a quaternary code loosely based on DNA sequences. With properly trained crews, their data rates approach two digits per second, including parity and checksum bits on every tenth flag. It can even send pictures.”

“Hmm.” Not a stupid way to handle things, though a lot of skill and muscle would be required. Something similar had been tried in Bruno's native Catalonia, before the Sabadell-Andorra earthquake had ended that nation-state's flirtation with things medieval. But he seems to recall that effort being abandoned in favor of an Old Modern maser network.

And it's interesting, he thinks, that Imbria has electricity but no sign of lasers or computers. No telegraphs, no wireless. Its leaders, advised at least occasionally by real astronomers, have a rough understanding of the heavens they cannot touch. And they know what wellstone is, though they lack the equipment to produce it or the technical skill to program it.

Clearly they're not a stupid people. Bruno surprises himself with a sudden ache of sympathy for them, caught as they are in some bizarre remnant of Queendom-era intrigue which they surely can't understand. Not because they're incapable, but because no one has bothered to explain it to them.

“Someone has revived an old fax machine,” he announces to the room, when a lull in the conversation permits. The Imbrians fall quiet at that, and suddenly all eyes are on him. Obligingly, he steps over to a crucified robot—one of a dozen mounted around the room's circumference. He points to the shattered iron box on the side of its head. “As you might guess, this annex, this junction box for external wiring, is not a part of the original design. It's been soldered on—here and here—using aluminum, which adheres well to both silicon and impervium. And while the skin may look flawless it isn't really. It's been scratched and filled, you see? Even impervium, eleven times harder than diamond, will flake and abrade with sufficient mistreatment. There's a thin layer of resin in every small groove; this hull has been expertly polished.”

He moves to another robot. God, they look so familiar. So harmless! “But see here? The same welds. The same scratches. These robots are of Queendom design, crudely modified but otherwise well cared for. And they're all identical. The fax machine has a buffer, you see—a kind of memory of its last few operations. Someone found the fax with its libraries scrambled, but the image of a robot stored intact in its buffers. A household robot, ordinarily harmless. And this Glimmer King—surely an Older of great technical skill—cut it open and jumpered its wiring. This is no small feat, for the Asimov protocols are buried deep in the wellstone itself, and are designed to reconfigure around any casual tampering. But he accomplished the task, and put the robot back together, and fed it into the fax again, to be duplicated and reduplicated.