Anvil Of Stars Part 29

"I hear the muezzins calling the faithful to prayer," Hakim said. "It's very beautiful. I wish you could hear it."

"Are you still a Muslim, Hakim?" Martin asked.

"We are all of us Muslims," Hakim said. "It is our natural state. We must give ourselves to Allah at some point, become obedient. Allah is looking out for us, that I feel...And Muhammad is his prophet. But what shape Allah is, who can say? And it is no use bowing to Mecca."

"I think that means you're a Muslim," Martin said.

"The Pope died with Earth," Giacomo said. "Isn't that something? The moms didn't save the Pope. I wonder why."

Martin saw gra.s.s growing on the rim of a tunnel, the greenness bright and welcoming, blending toward the center.

"Remember volunteering?" Giacomo said.

"A difficult time for me," Hakim said. "My mother did not want me to go. My father spoke to her sternly and she cried. I decided I had to go, and my mother...she ignored me from that day. Very sad."

"The tests?"

"I didn't take a lot of tests," Martin said.

"I remember a lot of tests," Giacomo said. "Physical-"

"Oh, those," Martin said. He remembered being wrapped in fields that tingled while the moms floated in attendance, never telling whether the results were good or poor.

Martin remembered his father's face, proud and sad, on the last day. The families in the Ark gathering at the berthing bay for the new s.h.i.+p of the Law, stars visible beyond the curve of the third homeball. Some of the children barely into their teens getting caught up in the excitement. Martin remembered Rex Live Oak throwing up and a hastily spread field grabbing the expelled contents of his stomach and whisking them away. He smiled. The moms did not disqualify the children for nerves or fright.

Sleepless nights as the Dawn Treader Dawn Treader rose into darkness, climbing for almost a year on a torch dipped into a sump. The cla.s.ses, momerath refreshers, Martin's first tryst with Felicity Tigertail, awkward and delicious, a little scary to him, how much he fixed on her. With a little more innate physical wisdom, she did not fix on him, gently repulsed his further advances, introduced him without embarra.s.sment to her other boyfriends... rose into darkness, climbing for almost a year on a torch dipped into a sump. The cla.s.ses, momerath refreshers, Martin's first tryst with Felicity Tigertail, awkward and delicious, a little scary to him, how much he fixed on her. With a little more innate physical wisdom, she did not fix on him, gently repulsed his further advances, introduced him without embarra.s.sment to her other boyfriends...

Strange that he did not feel attracted to Theresa much sooner. Eighty-seven young crew, given subtle guidance or no guidance by moms intent on letting their charges come to wisdom the human way, not the Benefactors' way, whatever that might be...

"Martin," Giacomo said. "Do you remember first meeting Jennifer?"

"Yes," Martin said.

"Was it on the Ark?"

"No," Martin said. "On the s.h.i.+p."

"What was she like then? I just don't remember much about her..."

They talked into the weirdness for hours, and gradually their talk fell silent, and they simply stared, or slept fitfully. The universe seemed to quiver with Martin's heart, flinching, star necklace alive, a thinly spread tissue of life. His own scale increased to match; Martin became galactic and with his new size came a nervous euphoria.

How long they sat, Martin couldn't tell at first. But Giacomo broke the vigil and said, "That's enough for me."

Hakim made a little grunt. "Why?" he said.

"Because I just had a wet dream, d.a.m.n it," Giacomo said.

They agreed to stop, and the projection folded into a small star sphere, returning them to the narrow and much more comfortable confines of the craft.

Their deceleration was brief, merely two hours, to match course and speed with the derelict. As volumetric fields faded, they waited eagerly for a first glimpse of the s.h.i.+p from a few kilometers.

What first appeared was almost impossible to comprehend. The s.h.i.+p resembled a twisted, crisped piece of paper in a fire, covered with holes, the edges of the holes burning orange and red; homeb.a.l.l.s skeletal, debris drifting in a cloud.

"Dear G.o.d," Giacomo said.

"What happened?" Hakim asked.

The mom took them around the derelict in a slow loop. "This s.h.i.+p is very old," it said. "Central control of its shape has failed. Fake matter is decaying. Within a few hundred years, there will be only the sh.e.l.ls of real matter."

"There are no survivors?" Hakim asked.

"We guessed that much already," Martin said.

"Not with certainty," Hakim persisted.

"There are no survivors," the mom said. "The s.h.i.+p's mind is inoperative. We will search for deep time memory stores."

A hole opened in the side of their craft. Martin pushed himself through first, wrapped in a spherical field with a green balloon of life support.

"It's like being in a soap bubble," he said. They had not practised with these fields before. Martin pulled down an ephemeral control panel and touched arrows to indicate the direction he wanted to move. The bubble thrust away from the craft with a barely audible tink tink and a tiny flash of light-individually matched atoms of anti em and matter, their explosions cupped against a mirror-reflective field the size of his hand. and a tiny flash of light-individually matched atoms of anti em and matter, their explosions cupped against a mirror-reflective field the size of his hand.

Giacomo emerged next, then Hakim. Except for their few words and the sounds of breathing, again they were enveloped by the universe, although in the form of an undistorted field of stars. Martin saw the constellation of the Orchid. In that direction, visually aligned within a degree of the star known to humans as Betelgeuse, lay the Dawn Treader, Dawn Treader, two hundred billion kilometers away. two hundred billion kilometers away.

He rotated his bubble toward the constellation Hakim had named Philosopher. The derelict crossed the sweep of the Philosopher's hand.

"What was its name?" Giacomo asked.

The craft mom's voice answered, "I do not know."

They pushed slowly across the two kilometers. Martin trailed Giacomo's balloon, watching the staccato, firecracker punctuations of dying atoms.

"I feel like an angel. This is incredible," Hakim said, following Martin.

Martin's attention focused on the disintegrating hulk looming before them. He could make out the three homeb.a.l.l.s, reduced to psychedelic leaf-skeletons, all edges glowing red and orange and white.

"I knew it took energy to maintain fake matter...I didn't know it would just fizzle out," Giacomo said. Martin spun around and urged his bubble toward the third homeball, leaving Giacomo and Hakim near the middle. He had spotted a hole big enough to squeeze his bubble through, and with the craft mom's approval, he was going to attempt entry.

Beside him followed a half-sized copper-bronze mom; he had not seen the craft produce the little robot, but no explanations were necessary. The diminutive mom advanced on its own firecracker bursts.

"What do I look for?" he asked the little mom.

"s.h.i.+p's mind will have left a marker that will interact with close fields. The deep time memory store will probably reside within the third homeball, in the densest concentrations of real matter."

His bubble pa.s.sed through what must have once been the hatch to the weapons store. "This s.h.i.+p wasn't attacked, was it?"

"No," the little mom said. "It ceased performing its mission."

"Why?"

"We have insufficient information to answer," the little mom said. Martin watched an extrusion of glowing sc.r.a.p push against his bubble. He slowed and moved deeper, through layer after glimmering layer; walls, distorted cubicles, warped structural members. Sheets of disengaged matter-real matter, not subject to deterioration-hung undisturbed, brushed against his bubble, bounced aside silently, rippling like cloth. He could see now how little real matter actually coated the fake matter within a s.h.i.+p of the Law; no thicker than paint.

"I'm inside the second homeball," Giacomo said.

"I'm entering the first neck," Hakim said. "It's really thinning out here-not much holding it together. I'll go forward."

Within a dark cavity, wrapped by sheets of pitted matter, Martin saw an intriguing shadow, something that did not appear to be part of the s.h.i.+p. He extruded a green field to push aside the sheets. A shriveled cold face stared at him, eyes sunk within their orbits, long neck desiccated to knots of dried skin and muscle around sharply defined bone.

"I've found one of the crew," he said.

"Freeze dried?" Giacomo asked.

"Not exactly. Looks like it died and mummified, then was exposed to s.p.a.ce, maybe centuries later."

"One of our sauropods?"

Martin transmitted an image to satisfy their curiosity. A flapping sail of matter tapped the corpse and knocked lines of powder free.

He maneuvered around the corpse and pushed deeper.

His bubble pulsed suddenly, glowed pale green, returned to normal.

"That is the beacon," the little mom said. "We are near a deep time memory store."

"I've found more bodies," Giacomo said. "Dozens of them. They look like they fell asleep, or died quietly-like they're lying down."

"The s.h.i.+p must have been accelerating when they died," Hakim said. "Unless we are seeing peculiar patterns of rigor."

Martin wiped his eyes with a sleeve. "Really awful," he murmured.

"Do you think they just gave up, or did they run out of fuel?" Giacomo asked. n.o.body could answer. "What happened to them?"

Martin's bubble advanced through curving pipes and conduits, the s.h.i.+p's drive, real matter not fake. He had come to the very bowels of the s.h.i.+p.

The bubble pulsed again. The deep time memory store was a white dodecahedron surrounded by an intact cage of real matter, near the center of the third homeball. "Found what we're looking for," he said. "I think."

The half-sized robot pushed closer, used fields like hands and fingers to disengage the dodecahedron, pulled it from its cage. "I will store it in the craft. You may explore more if you wish."

Martin's horror and pity had diminished enough to bring curiosity to the fore. He moved forward through the neck to the second homeball, saw Giacomo prying his way into what must have once been a large room-a kind of schoolroom-to get at what lay within. More bodies, some hidden by membranes of surface matter, all shrunken, limbs curled in death's rigor, necks pulled back as if they were in despair or agony-rigor also, he hoped-arranged against what might have been a floor. The floor rippled under the impact of dislodged particles. The bodies drifted centimeters from their resting places, illuminated by the spooky fireside glow of fake matter coming apart.

Giacomo kept muttering under his breath.

"Speak up," Martin said, irritated.

"It's so much more...obvious, how they do it," Giacomo said.

"Who does what?"

"How the Benefactors make s.h.i.+ps of the Law. There must be a kind of noach transmitter, and it makes a shape...fools the privileged bands into informing other particles that matter is there, but doesn't finish the job. Leaves out ma.s.s. Something paints real matter over the fake, and voila! A big fake matter balloon. That's all Dawn Treader Dawn Treader is. Our s.h.i.+p could look like this in a few thousand years." is. Our s.h.i.+p could look like this in a few thousand years."

"I think there must have been fifty or sixty crew members," Hakim said. "I count thirteen where I am, near the nose. They all seem to have slept before they died."

"They sure as h.e.l.l didn't die in combat combat," Giacomo said.

"Our mission is accomplished," the little mom said. "It is time to return."

Back in the craft, they sampled portions of the deep time memory store, what little was comprehensible to them. Martin confirmed what he had already suspected; the Benefactors' representatives, the moms, even on this s.h.i.+p of the Law, interfered very little with their charges, and did not keep day-to-day records of activities. But they did store records kept by the crew, and that was what occupied Martin, Giacomo and Hakim in their free moments on the return voyage.

They decelerated, saw the two homeb.a.l.l.s of Dawn Treader, Dawn Treader, and were welcomed back to the s.h.i.+p by a crowd of fit-looking crew. and were welcomed back to the s.h.i.+p by a crowd of fit-looking crew.

Martin did not look forward to briefing Hans. Hans immediately took them to his quarters, with no time to recover. Harpal and Jennifer came as well, but no others.

"The moms let you see what you recovered?" Hans asked.

"They did, as much as we could understand," Martin answered.

"Most of the memory is s.h.i.+p's mind data," Hakim said. "We do not know what that contained."

Martin produced his wand. "We've tried to translate and edit. You can look over the crew records in detail...For purposes of a briefing, I thought this might cover the important points."

They watched in silence as picture and sound unfolded. The unfamiliar visual language of the recordings made viewing difficult; different color values, different notions of perspective and "editing," attempts at three-dimensional images which did not match human eyes, added to their problems.

But the salient points were clear.

They watched hour after hour of sauropod crew history, rituals, ceremonies; and as the other s.h.i.+p of the Law moved farther and farther from Leviathan and their encounters with the civilization there, the sauropod social structure became less and less firm.

Martin pointed out what must have been acts of murder. The sauropods needed a kind of reproductive a.n.a.log without full reproduction; non-fertile eggs provided essential nutrients, apparently. But egg production dropped off, and the egg-producing s.e.x-not precisely females, as three s.e.xes were involved-underwent chastis.e.m.e.nt, isolation, and then death for their failures.

All of this was recorded with a solemn and unwinking attention to detail, a little slice of h.e.l.l from human perspective, but day-to-day existence for the sauropods.

"Don't they see what they're doing?" Jennifer asked, aghast; they saw the ritualized execution of the last egg-producer, multiple hammer-blows by a group of dominants, all of one s.e.x.

Hans grunted, turned away from the flickering images.

"It'll take us a long time to riddle some of this," Giacomo said, clutching Jennifer's hand.

"Seems pretty clear to me," Hans said. "They went to Leviathan, they were given the runaround, they gave up and left. Play back the meetings."

In much clearer detail, they saw selected images and motion sequences of Leviathan's worlds, conferences with multiple-eyed, bipedal creatures that seemed to represent the civilization; these segments were particularly muddy, almost useless in terms of linear history.

A mom entered Hans' cabin. "The s.h.i.+p has translated all Benefactor and s.h.i.+p language records," the mom said. "We may call these beings Red Tree Runners."

"Why would we want to?" Hans asked.

"That is a close translation of their name for themselves. Their home system was invaded four thousand three hundred and fifty years ago, Dawn Treader Dawn Treader frame of reference. They had already established a pact with representatives of the Benefactors. The killer probes were defeated and their worlds were not substantially damaged. Perhaps half of their original population survived, and they were able to rebuild. They were outfitted with s.h.i.+ps and weapons suitable to seek out the Killers. They became part of the Benefactor alliance." frame of reference. They had already established a pact with representatives of the Benefactors. The killer probes were defeated and their worlds were not substantially damaged. Perhaps half of their original population survived, and they were able to rebuild. They were outfitted with s.h.i.+ps and weapons suitable to seek out the Killers. They became part of the Benefactor alliance."

"But they weren't Benefactors themselves?" Hakim asked.

"No. You might call them junior partners."