Starfishers Volume 2: Starfishers (27 page)

Moyshe slowly relaxed. “Have the covers turned down when I get home, Love,” he said, blowing a kiss. He did it to irritate Larkin. Would you want your sister to marry one? “I’m going to sleep for a week.” He settled himself on the scooter’s passenger seat. “Ready when you are, Teddy.”

He had to hang on for his life. The scooter seemed designed for racing. Its driver was a madman who did not know how to let up on the go-pedal.

“What’s the hurry?”

“I get to get me some sleep when I deliver you.”

A big airtight door closed behind them the instant they entered Operations Sector. Sealed in, Moyshe thought. An instant of panic flashed by. Nervous, he studied his surroundings. Ops seemed quieter, more remote, less frenzied than his home sector. It looked less touched by battle. There was no confusion. People seemed more aloof, more calm, less harried. He supposed they had to be. They had to think
Danion
past defeat. The fighting may have stopped, but it was not finished.

Larkin braked to a frightening, squealing stop that almost threw Moyshe off the scooter. Larkin led him into a large room filled with complex electronics. “Contact,” Larkin muttered by way of explanation.

The battle had reached this place. Acrid smoke hung thick here. It still curled up from one instrument bank. Ozone underlay the stench. Casualties awaiting ambulances rested along one wall. There were at least a dozen stretchers there. But the hull had remained sound. There were no suits in evidence.

Larkin led Moyshe to the oldest man he had yet seen aboard
Danion
. “BenRabi,” he said, and instantly disappeared.

Moyshe examined his surroundings while waiting for the old man to acknowledge his presence. The vast room looked like a crossbreed of ship’s bridge and lighter passenger compartment. The walls were banked with data processing equipment, consoles, and screens whose displays he could not fathom. Seiners in black, seated shoulder to shoulder, manipulated, observed, and muttered into tiny mikes. The wide floor of the room was occupied by corn-rows of couches on which more Seiners lay, their heads enveloped in huge plastic helmets which twinkled with little telltale lights. Beside each couch stood a motionless pair of Seiners. One studied the helmet lights, the other a small, blockish machine which looked uncomfortably like a diagnostic computer. A constant pavanne of repairmen moved among the couches, apparently examining the empties for defects.

BenRabi finally spied something familiar. It was a spatial display globe that lurked blackly in a far corner. Centered in it were ten golden footballs apparently representing harvestships. He supposed the quick, darting golden needles represented service ships. They were maneuvering against scarlet things which vaguely resembled Terran sharks. The tiny golden dragons at the far periphery, then, should represent distant starfish. Stars’ End would be the deeper darkness biting a chunk from the display’s side. He saw nothing that could be interpreted as Sangaree. He hoped they would stay gone, though it was not their style and he did not expect it.

“Mr. benRabi?” The old man said.

“Why dragons?”

“Image from our minds. You’ll see.”

“I don’t understand.”

Instead of responding, the old man plunged into a prepared speech. “Nobody explained this to you, did they? Well, our drives are dead, except for minddrive. The sharks can’t kill that till they get to us here, or till we stop getting power from the fish. But we’re in trouble, Mr. benRabi. We do have minddrive, but the sharks mindburned most of my techs.” He indicated the nearest stretcher. A girl barely out of creche smiled in vacant madness. “I’ve lost so many I’m out of standbys. I’m drafting marginal sensitives from the crew. You’re subject to migraine, aren’t you?”

Moyshe nodded, confused. Here they came with the headaches again.

He had suspected for several months now . . . But the implications were too staggering. He did not want to believe. The psi business had been discredited.

Maybe if he remembered that hard enough this man and place would go away.

“We want you to go into rapport with a fish.”

“No!” Panic smote him. He did not entirely understand his response.

A niggling little demon named Loyalty, to whom he seldom listened, urged him to surrender for the sake of information. Beckhart would reward him with a shovel full of medals.

He thought of sudden, terrible headaches, and of frightening, haunting dreams. He recalled his fear that he had made involuntary contact with the starfish. “I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know how.”

“You don’t need to. The techs will put you in. The fish will do all the work. All you do is serve as a channel.”

“But I’m tired. I’ve been up for . . . ”

“Tell me a story. So has everybody else.” He gestured impatiently. A couple of technicians, hovering nearby, approached. “Clara, put Mr. benRabi in Number Forty-three.” Both techs nodded. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Mr. benRabi.”

Moyshe wanted to protest being pushed around, but lacked the will. The technicians pressed him into a couch. He surrendered. Undoubtedly he had been through worse.

The technician whom the old man had called Clara reminded him of the professional mother of his childhood. She was grey-haired, cherry-faced, and chattered soothingly while strapping his arms to those of the couch. She placed his fingers on grip-switches before she started on his legs.

Her partner was a dark-haired, quiet youth who efficiently prepared Moyshe’s head for the helmet. He began by rubbing Moyshe’s scalp with an unscented paste, then he covered benRabi’s short hair with a thing like a fine wire hairnet. Moyshe’s skin protested a thousand little tingles that quickly faded.

I’m taking this too passively
, he thought. “Why are you strapping me down?” he demanded.

“So you can’t hurt yourself.”

“What?”

“Take it easy. There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just a precaution,” the woman replied. She smiled gently.

Damn
, he thought.
Better be two shovels full of medals
.

“Lift your head, please,” the younger Seiner said. Moyshe did. The helmet devoured his head. He was blind.

His fear redoubled. A green ogre with dirty claws shoved nasty hands into his guts, grabbed, yanked. His heart began playing a theme for battle drums. Words came echoing through his mind, Czyzewski’s, from his poem “The Old God”: “ . . . who sang the darkful deep, and dragons in the sky.” Had Czyzewski had starfish in mind?

Moyshe felt his body growing wet with fear-sweat. Maybe the contact wouldn’t work. Maybe his mind wouldn’t be invaded. That had to be the root of his terror. He did not want anything looking inside his head, where the madness lay behind the most fragile of barriers.

It had taken him all year to get it under control . . . Guns, dragons, headaches, improbable, obsessive memories of Alyce, continuous instability . . . He did not dare go under. His balance was too delicate.

Guns! Did the image of the gun have anything to do with the Stars’ End weaponry? Was it some twisted symbol his mind had created for a part of the mission that Psych had not wanted him to remember?

Somewhere, a voice. “We’re ready, Mr. benRabi.” The old woman. It was an ancient trick for calming a man. It worked, a little. “Please depress your right side switch one click.”

He did. He lost all sensation. He floated. He saw, smelled, felt nothing. He was alone with his tortured mind.

“That’s not bad, is it?” She used the voice of the professional mother this time. His cunning, frightened mind made it that of the woman of his youth. He remembered how she had comforted him when he had been afraid.

“When you’re ready, depress your right switch another click, then release it. To withdraw you have to pull up on your left switch.”

His hand seemed to act on its own. Down went the switch.

The dreams he had been having returned space swimming, the galaxy wrong in color, Stars’ End strangely misty yet bright. Things moved around him. He remembered the situation tank. This was like being bodiless at the heart of the display. The service ships were glimmering needles, the harvestships glowing tangles of wire. The sharks were reddish torpedoes in the direction of the galaxy. Far away, the starfish looked like golden Chinese dragons. They were drifting toward him.

Moyshe’s fear faded as though a hand had erased it from the blackboard of his mind. Only an all-encompassing wonder remained.

Gently, warm, friendly as a loving mother, a voice trickled into his mind. “I do it. Starfish, Chub.” There was a wind-chimes tinkle of something like laughter. “Watch. I show me.”

A small dragon rose from the approaching herd, did a ponderous forward roll. Shortly, “Oh, my! Old Ones don’t like. Dangerous. This no time for fun. But we winning, new man-friend. Sharks afraid, confused. Too many man-ship. Running now, some. Many destroyed. Big feast for scavenger things.”

The creature’s joy was infectious, and Moyshe supposed he had cause—if the sharks were indeed abandoning herd and harvestfleet.

Funny. His conscious mind was not questioning, just accepting.

His fear remained, down deep, but the night creature held it at bay, infecting him with its own excitement. When did the power thing start? he wondered. It had already, the starfish told him. He did not feel anything other than this creature Chub exploring the ways of his mind like a kid on holiday exploring a resort hotel.

“Shark battle won, mind battle won,” the starfish said after a while, when Moyshe finally had himself under control. “But another fight coming, Moyshe man-friend. Bad one, maybe.”

“What?” And he realized, for the first time, that he really was talking with his mind.

“Ships-that-kill, evil ones, return.”

“Sangaree. How do you know?”

“No way to show, tell. Is. They come, hyper now. Your people prepare.”

BenRabi did not want to be out here during combat. He felt exposed, easy prey. Panic began to well up.

The starfish’s control did not slacken. He soon forgot the danger, became engrossed in the wonders around him, the rippling movements of retreating sharks, the ponderous approach of dragons, the maneuvers of the shimmering service ships as their weary crews prepared for another battle. The galaxy hung over everything like a ragged tear in the night, vast in its extension. How much more magnificent would it be if it could be seen without the interference of the dust that obscured the packed suns at its core? Nearby, Stars’ End waited, a quiet but furious god of war as yet unconcerned with the goings-on around it. Moyshe hoped no one aroused its wrath.

“Coming now,” his dragon told him. Spots appeared against the galaxy as Sangaree raidships dropped hyper. Down in his backbrain, behind his ears, Moyshe felt a gentle tickle. “More power,” Chub told him.

The raidships radiated from their drop zone in lines, like the tentacles of a squid. They soon formed a bowl with its open side facing the harvestfleet. It was an obvious preliminary to englobement.

The distant, decimated shark packs milled uncertainly. They withdrew a little farther. They were not yet wholly defeated.

A ball of light flared among the Sangaree. A lucky mine had scored. But it made little difference. The power and numbers remained theirs.

Only a handful of service ships remained combat-worthy. Even the halest of the harvestships had lost some main power and drive capacity to shark attack. Minddrive and auxiliary power were insufficient for high-stress combat maneuvering.

BenRabi sensed something changing. He cast about, finally saw the great silver sails that had been taken in before the earlier fighting spreading between
Danion
’s arms and spars. The ship looked so ragged, so injured, so vulnerable . . . A blizzard of debris drifted about her, held by her minuscule natural gravity.

The Sangaree maneuvered closer but held off attacking.

“Trying to talk First Man-friend into surrender,” Chub to benRabi. “Creatures of ships-that-kill want herd without fight.”

“Payne won’t give up,” he thought back.

“Is true, Moyshe man-friend.”

The starfish drifted closer. They were almost upon the Sangaree. They meant to join the battle this time, though cautiously. Their enemies still watched from afar, looking for another chance to savage fleet and herd.

“Fight soon, Moyshe man-friend.”

The slow, stately dance of enmity ended. The negotiations had broken down. The Sangaree struck fast and hard, firing on the service ships to show their determination. The service ships dodged. Suddenly, there were missiles everywhere, streaking around like hurrying wasps. Beam fire from the harvestships wove gorgeous patterns of death.

And Moyshe became depressed. He had done his Navy fleet time. He could see the untippable balance written in the patterns. There was no hope of victory.

Chub chuckled into his consciousness. “You see only part of pattern, Moyshe man-friend.”

In the far distance a starfish crept close to a raidship. The vessel’s weapons could destroy the dragon in an instant—but the ship stopped attacking. It simply drifted, a lifeless machine.

“We do mind thing,” Moyshe heard. “Like Stars’ End, with much power. We stop ships-that-kill like human eyeblink, so fast, if no guns, no drive field to fear.”

A second raidship fell silent, then a third and a fourth. Moyshe felt less pessimistic. The raidships would be locked into an overcommand directed by a master computer aboard the raidmaster’s vessel. That master computer would be burning up its superconductors trying to adjust fire fields to accommodate the losses. If it became the least hesitant, the least unsure of its options . . . 

A too-cautious starfish burped a ball of gut-fire. The micro-sun rolled through space sedately, devoured another raidship.

“Bad, Moyshe man-friend. Old Ones angry. Will give away unsuspected attack.”

The Sangaree hemisphere closed steadily. Its diameter rapidly dwindled. The harvestships threw everything they had, fire heavier than anything benRabi had ever witnessed, yet were barely able to neutralize the incoming. Offensive capacity seemed to have been lost.