For Love and Glory

She let the little jape go by. “All those centuries, wandering—”

He shrugged. “Would’ve gotten scum-dull staying put.”

“But some people must have become dear to you, and then you drifted apart or—” She winced. “It’s already happened in my much shorter lifespan.”

He went almost somber. “Or they die. We may hang on for a long while, but one way or another, at last the Old Man is coming for everybody.”

“Don’t you find belief in a life after death comforting?”

“Mainly, to be honest, I think how nice it’d be if the faith is true. Whatever the facts of that are, we’ll never get back what we’ve got now. Let’s make the most of it.”

“Is roving around the only way? Didn’t you ever try making a home?”

“Three times.”

“And?” she murmured.

His voice flattened. “Twice, it simply didn’t last. The third, she died. An accident that was ridiculous, unless there is something beyond this universe that sets injustices right.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude.”

“No offense.” He smiled. “Instead, I’m glad you’re interested.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

He brightened further. “That’s a great question, coming from you.”

“We’ve already… been through… quite a lot… together.”

“And we’re still busy at it. Think you might like to keep it going afterward?”

Why am I suddenly so lightheaded? “I don’t know—”

“Why not try it out? No cost, no obligation.”

She regained balance. “Oh, there’s always a cost.”

He nodded. “Yeah. I’m willing to pay. Got a notion I’d make a mighty big profit.”

Does he mean that? wondered bewilderment. If he does, how much?—He didn’t have to come to Asborg from Earth, even for his purpose—

Hebo leaned closer and with an odd gentleness laid an arm around her shoulders. “The accomodations aboard aren’t exactly luxurious, and we haven’t a lot of time, but—”

“No,” she interrupted, stiffening beneath the touch. “We can’t afford to, to get involved.” Not yet, she thought while her pulse accelerated. Maybe not ever. Gerward—

But he was a phantom, pale and fading.

Hebo grinned. “Have no fears. I’m only talking good, honest lust.”

Is he? Am I?

We’re both grown, both tough, we can both think coolly in a crisis no matter what our emotions. Can’t we?

Anyhow, there’s no crisis today. If I were cautious and forethoughtful, I wouldn’t be here.

“Only?” Lissa breathed.

“No,” he said, quickly serious. “But you’re right, we’d better postpone anything more. Meanwhile, though —”

Their lips were centimeters apart. Fire kindled. “Well—”

The bunk was narrow, its cubicle cramped and bare. They hardly noticed.

XLVI

At hundred AU the giant sun cast a tenth the radiance that Sunniva did on Asborg, ample for human eyes; but it was discless, a point of blue-white blaze too brilliant to look anywhere near, drowning most other stars even in empty space.

Mars-sized, the planet shone wanly in that light, a motley of darkling rock, white ices, dull brownish reds and yellows where ultraviolet quanta had forced low-temperature chemistry. Those temperatures were low indeed, ranging around one hundred kelvin. A wisp of atmosphere, a few millibars of pressure at the surface, nitrogen with some methane and argon, scarcely hazed the limb. The axial tilt was small, the rotation period a bit under forty- nine hours.

Such were the facts gathered by the ship as she approached. The sight close by sent shivers along the nerves. Here was a whole world, with all its unforeseeable strangenesses. And here was Forerunner work at work. The instruments had caught enough enigmatic emissions to prove that. What more escaped them?

Otherwise there had been no message, no sign. “I can’t imagine them not having detectors, and equipment to react with,” Hebo muttered. “They couldn’t have predicted that no trouble would ever come in from outside. If nothing else, a comet strike.”

“Those may be only blind machines,” Dzesi suggested.

Lissa shook her head. “They’d have to include robots with at least as much capability as our ship,” she said. “Probably much more.” The thought was cold: that this could be so much more as to lie beyond the imagination of merely organic creatures. She mustered the resolution to add in everyday fashion: “Well, we’ve received no threats thus far. Let’s try for a look.”

Hulda slipped into a forty-five degree orbit, two thousand kilometers out. That was too close for hyperjump or hyperwave; in the near neighborhood of a substantial rotating mass, which drags slightly on the inertial frame, the function steepens from the smooth potential-well dropoff of astronomical distances. However, a hard boost would quickly bring her to an escape point. Meanwhile, here was a good altitude for observation, with a period neither inconveniently long nor short. And there had been no sign of hostility, opposition, anything other than those stray pulses she intercepted.

Acceleration ended. The three hung weightless in harness and silence.

After a long half minute, Hebo hunched his shoulders and growled, “All right, search.” The viewscreen display shifted from stars to planet, swept across desolation, steadied and magnified.

They were lucky, happening just then to be where a site was in daylit view. Seen slantwise, three slim helices reared gleaming against a broad ice-field, a horizon rimmed with murky cliffs, and a cloudless blue-black sky. Spread around and among them were several delicate, intricate three-dimensional webs. Lesser shapes moved over bare rock which had been rendered mirror-flat. Sun-glare made vision difficult. When the optics filtered that out, a subtle, shifting veil seemed to remain; the scene was almost dreamlike.

“I think,” Lissa whispered, “what we see is framework and, and attendants, and—yes, that thing yonder looks half finished, with activity on it—construction, preparing for the wave front.… I think most must be not matter but forces, maybe subatomic, maybe the energy of the vacuum itself—” She was no physicist, but this epiphany wakened learning that had lain half forgotten.

“When did it start?” Hebo asked. “Yeah, three million years ago or more. I should guess that’d be a von Neumann type operation. A kind of seed left, with a clock that germinated it at the right time, to begin making the machines that’d make the machines—but maybe ‘grow’ is a better word than ‘make.’ Or ‘generate’ or—”

“Probably it began before the black holes met,” Lissa ventured, faintly amazed to hear how calm her tone had become. “Building probes to be present at the event and afterward. I suspect they’re there yet. Expeditions of ours wouldn’t spot them except by super-unlikely accident. Meanwhile, newer machines have been making ready to conduct long-range studies in these nonviolent surroundings.”

Again they were repeating ideas they had uttered before, back and forth, apes reassuring each other with chatter, a need that was not in Dzesi—but not entirely so. Reality stimulated a certain hardheadedness that abstract speculation never could.

It spoke through Hebo: “Whatever knowledge can be had here, whatever power, has goddamn got to be kept out of the wrong hands.”

Lissa shuddered a bit. “Whose are the right hands? And how long will they stay clean?”

“I dunno. But I remember reading a historian on Earth, writing way before I was born. ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.’ We can hope we’re more or less amongst the good.” Hebo’s hand sought hers and closed on it. His voice went warm. “You are, for sure.”