A Talent for War (44 page)

S'Kalian's image reappeared. "I hope you have made the wise decision," he said.

"I don't think you're going to like it much." I paused for effect, and tried to look moderately demented. "I'm going to arm one of the nukes and I'm going to sit here and blow the Corsarius to hell."

"I don't believe you."

"Believe what you want."

"I've seen your psyche, Alex. In a sense, I've been you. You don't believe strongly enough in anything to commit such an act. Your will to survive is very strong—"

I shut him off. "That's it," I told the computer. "I don't want to receive any more transmissions from the other ship. Nothing. Refuse everything."

"It's useless," said Chase. "What are you trying to do? They don't believe you. They'll be looking for a trick." Her eyes widened. "Hey, you weren't by any chance serious, were you? I have no interest whatever in going up in a fireball."

"No. Of course not. And they won't believe it either. That's what I'm counting on. Stay by the scattershot. In six minutes, we're going to send the capsule for a ride. Shortly after that their shield should come down. You'll get green lights on the status board. Then pull the trigger. Aim into the center somewhere, and fire everything we've got." I began counting off the time.

"What if the shields don't come down?"

"Then we'll have to think of something else."

"I'm happy to know we have a plan."

"Are you ready to launch the capsule?"

"Yes," she said. We waited. The minutes ticked off.

"I want it moving away from the alien. It should be on a course back toward the planet."

She frowned, understood, and smiled. "They won't buy it," she said. "We're too far away from the planet now. They'll know we couldn't make it."

"Do it," I said. "Now."

She pressed a stud on the console. "Capsule away."

"They won't know," I said. "They probably don't know a damned thing about its capabilities.

And if they do know, they'll assume we don't. The only thing they're going to be thinking about
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is the two of us trying to cut and run. And the nuke that's ticking away in here. Tricky humans."

She put the capsule on one of the monitors, and we waited. It looked good: two people in pressure suits, one bent over the controls. "You look drunk," Chase said.

"It's okay. It's good enough to fool them."

She agreed. "And I wish I were on it."

"No, you don't. We're going to come through this okay. Try to maneuver it in the shadow of the ship. We want it to look as though we're trying to keep out of sight. But make sure they can see it."

"Right," she said uncertainly.

"Enemy missile is locked on the bridge," said the computer.

"I hope this thing has enough of a charge to take them out." She looked doubtful.

"Be ready," I said. "We're only going to get a couple of seconds. As soon as the green lamps go out—"

"Captain," said the computer, "the enemy ship is signaling again."

"Don't respond. Tell me when it stops."

"They should be able to see the capsule now, Alex."

"Okay. Any time now. It'll happen quick."

"Captain, the signal from the mute has broken off."

"Alex, are you sure this is going to work?"

"Of course not."

We watched the consoles, the green lamps, waiting.

"Activity in one of the ovoids," said the computer. We got several simultaneous views on the screens, in close. A portal had opened, and the silver prow of a launch vehicle was visible. It looked armored.

"Here we go," I said. "It's the bomb disposal unit."

Chase heaved a sigh of relief. "They've got guts."

The lamps flickered and died. "Their shields are down."

Chase pulled the trigger.

We bucked and rolled, and a deep-throated roar shook the bulkheads.

I stabbed at a row of keys, and our own shield activated.

Blinding light spilled through the ports; the screens blanked out. Chase was pitched out of her chair, but held the firing stud down. Course correction jets fired.

Something hammered us. The ship shook, and the lights dipped.

"Proton burst," announced the computer. "Shields holding." One of the monitors came back and we were looking again at the mute ship: its lights flared and swirled in a frenzy. Patches of darkness appeared among them and expanded. The oscillations abruptly collapsed and broke apart. A few fireballs erupted and died in showers of sparks. When it was over, there remained only a blackened network of spheres and tubing.

Chase shut off the scattershot. "I think we're depleted," she said. The silver launch and its assault team had spurted past us and was still going, hoping (I assumed) not to be noticed in the general melee.

Another blast hit us. "A second proton burst," said the computer. "This one was well off target.

No damage."

"Computer, arm a nuke."

"Alex, this is our chance to run." Something else blew up out there. Whether it was the warship disintegrating, or continuing to fire on us, I couldn't tell.

"In a minute."

"Armed and ready to fire, Captain."

"Alex, what are you doing? It's over. Let's get out of here."

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"The sons of bitches tried to kill us, Chase. I'm going to finish them while we can."

I listened to the sounds of the bridge: the reassuring throb of power in the bulkheads, the cadences of the data processing systems, the soft murmur of the intership commlink. Chase's breathing.

"There's no need," she said.

I locked in the target angle.

She stared at me. "I liked the earlier Tanner," she said. "The one who offered her arm to a mute."

Electrical fires raged throughout the stricken ship.

"Captain, it has begun to move away."

"Let them go," urged Chase. "Let's try to do things right this time."

I sat with my finger on the presspad.

"They'll know you could have killed them, and didn't. They'll always know that."

"Yeah," I said. "For all the good it'll do anybody."

We watched them limp off into the dark.

XXV.

Boundaries have no existence save on charts or in small minds. Nature does not draw lines.

—Tulisofala, Extracts, CCLXII, vi

(Translated by Leisha Tanner)

I THINK SOMETIMES about Christopher Sim's observation that Thermopylae need not have been fought.

My war with the Ashiyyur seems to fall into the same category. It would not have happened had I not spent an afternoon revealing everything I knew to S'Kalian at the Maracaibo Caucus.

That visit may not have been the dumbest act of all time, but it's certainly up there among the top ten. We came desperately close to losing the Corsarius and all she contained.

Chase was right about the Armstrongs: there weren't any. But a far more sophisticated propulsion system stood in their place. And, about ten hours after the incident with the mute warship, the computers gave us a few minutes warning, and the Corsarius took us home.

It was not the sickening dive into multi-dimensional space, and the dreary two-month ride down the gray tunnel that we'd endured on the way out.

It was more like a blink.

Stars blurred, and reappeared. (If we'd been watching closely, we'd have seen the constellations change, the Great Wheel vanish, the familiar configurations of Rimway's nighttime sky emerge from the moment of confusion.) Belmincour's sun was gone, and we were approaching lovely, blue-white crescented Rimway. The comm system crackled with traffic, and a quarter moon floated off to starboard.

There was only the briefest physical sensation: a moment during which there had been no deck underfoot, no air to breathe. It passed so quickly that I was unsure it had happened at all.

Under the pressure of that desperate war, someone, certainly Rashim Machesney and his team, had solved a series of theoretical problems related to gravity waves and derived a practical application. Recognizing that gravity, like light, is dualistic in nature, that it is both wave and particle, they had drawn the obvious conclusion: gravity can be quantized.

A wide range of implications rises from this simple fact. The one most significant for Chase and me, sitting in our ancient frigate, feeling not confident of ever getting home, was this: large physical objects are capable of the quantum jump of the electron. That is, it is possible to move them from point to point without crossing the intervening space.

The Corsarius was equipped with a tunable gravity wave collector, enhanced by hyperconductive magnets designed to reduce electrical resistance to a negative factor. The result: the ship was able to achieve displacement in the time/space fabric with a zero time interval.

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Well, you already know all that. But that's how it happens that Chase and I are not still out on the far side of the Veiled Lady.

The quantum drive.

Range isn't unlimited, of course. It's a factor of the nature of the drive, and of available power.

Energy is stored in a hyperconducting ring, and must be applied within excruciatingly exact limits at the moment of transition. And a ship can't move freely even within that range. The minimum distance it will cross is slightly longer than a light-day. After that, intervals are reduced by infinitesimal, but steadily increasing, variables. It's somewhat like stations. All this is apparently tied in with statistics and quantum logic and the Hays Certainty Principle. But the result is that the method isn't practical for voyages that are either very short, or very long.

We have a better understanding now of what relations among the various human worlds really were during the War against the

Ashiyyur. (Or at least Chase and I do.) Though we had always known they hadn't trusted one another, it came as a shock that the Dellacondans withheld their discovery from their allies. And that it was consequently lost for two centuries after Rigel.

A lot has changed since we brought the Corsarius back from Belmincour.

Political unity on a grand scale has become practical, and the Confederacy appears to be stabilizing. We may make it after all.

I've also been happy that the drive has not been used in any particularly offensive way against the Ashiyyur. I owe them no love, and yet, if there is a lesson in all this, I think it points in that direction. We own an immense technological advantage now. Tensions have eased, and some experts claim you can't have a serious rivalry without a military balance. Maybe we're looking toward a new era. I hope so.

The Maracaibo Caucus is still open down at Kostyev House. I've never gone back, but I wish them well.

You can still see Matt Olander's grave outside Point Edward. The Ilyandans dismissed Kindrel Lee's story out of hand.

There's talk now of an intergalactic mission. Power remains a problems; the voyage would have to be made in a series of (relatively) short jumps. Recharging is slow; and the experts estimate that a trip to Andromeda would consume the better part of a century and a hak But we're coming. There've already been some improvements on Machesney's basic design; and I hope to live long enough to crack a bottle across the prow of the first intergalactic survey ship.

(Promises have been made.)

The reputations of the Sims have suffered no lasting damage. In fact, most people dismiss the Belmincour story and believe firmly that the hero died off Rigel.

There's a theory that has gained some status among scholars that I've found interesting: the notion that there was a final confrontation on the shelf, and that the brothers ultimately embraced, and parted in tears.

Which brings us to the inscription on the rock:

The first section is a cry of anguish, used often by the hero in classical Greek tragedy. Then: O Demosthenes. Most historians read that cry as a tribute by Christopher Sim to his brother's oratorical abilities and hence as a demonstration of forgiveness: I am in agony, O Demosthenes, it seems to say. This also supports the view of the final parting on the shelf, attended by all the concomitant bitterness and affection that such an event would have generated.

But I have my doubts. After all, Demosthenes persuaded his countrymen to fight a pointless and suicidal war against Alexander the Great!

If we have not understood the remark, I think Tarien would have.

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We've always wondered about Tanner and Sim, why she searched so relentlessly for so many years. Somehow, there seems to have been more than simple compassion or loyalty in that quest.

Chase would inject a romantic note: She loved him, she has told me on occasion, when the wind blows hard outside, and the fire leaps high. And she found him. I am sure of that. She would not have given up—

Maybe.

I've always suspected that Tanner was part of the original plot. That it was she, and not a nameless staff officer or crewman, who saw the Wheel. And that it was guilt, rather than love, that drove her.

And anyhow, we know he didn't come back. Christopher Sim was never heard of again, after Rigel. Sometimes I think about him on that rock, and I want more than anything else in my life to believe that she came down out of the clear blue sky. And that she took him away.

I like to think it. But I don't believe it.

And finally, Gabe.

Today, the logs of the Corsarius, and a personal notebook in the hand of Christopher Sim, are on display at the Center for Accadian Studies. In the Gabriel Benedict Wing.

THE SKIMMER ARCED in over the rim of St. Anthony's Valley, circled the abbey, and set down on the visitors' pad near the statue of the Virgin in front of the administration building. A tall, dark-skinned man climbed out of the cockpit, blinked in the sunlight, and glanced round at the cluster of dormitories, the library, and the chapel, which seemed to have been scattered over the landscape in no very orderly fashion.

A young man in red robes had been standing off to one side, near the Virgin, watching. Now he walked swiftly toward the visitor. "Mr. Scott?" he inquired.