Anvil of Stars

“We’re not questioning that,” Theresa said, though Martin certainly thought they should, and she had. “We’ve all been under a strain lately, and…”

Rosa was turning inward again.

“I saw it. I think it might be important,” she said.

“All right,” Martin said. “But for now, until we know more, or somebody else sees it, I’d like to keep this quiet.”

“Why?” Rosa asked, eyes narrowing. Martin saw more clearly the depth of her problem. She was not going to react well to his next request, but he saw no way around it.

“Please don’t talk about it,” he said.

Rosa tightened her lips, jaws clenched, eyes reduced to slits, face radiating defiance, but she did not say anything more. “Can I go?” she asked, as if she were a little girl requesting dismissal from class.

“You can go,” Martin said. Rosa walked on long, strong legs down the hall toward the central corridor, not looking back. Martin inhaled deeply, held it, watching her like a target, then exhaled when she was too far away to hear.

“Jesus.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Theresa said. She grinned. Martin felt the walls again, as if there might be some mark remaining, some trace of Rosa’s shadow.

“I don’t think there actually was anything,” he said, trying to be extra reasonable, extra careful, even with Theresa.

“Of course not,” Theresa said.

“But we shouldn’t be too certain,” he said without conviction.

“You think she’s… let’s not use the word hysterical,” Theresa said. “That has the wrong sexual connotations. Let’s say stressed out. She’s been working up to something. That’s what you think? Don’t be a hypocrite, Martin. Not with me.”

Martin grimaced. “If I tell it like I think it is, we might both reach the wrong conclusions. If I say Rosa is losing it, well… there’s evidence, but it’s not a sure thing. Maybe she saw a trick of the light. Something we don’t know about.”

“Ask the War Mother,” Theresa suggested.

That was an obvious first step. “Rosa should ask,” he said. “It’s her sighting. Let’s make her responsible for it.”

Theresa touched index finger on one hand to little finger on the other, bent it back until it was perpendicular to the joint, a gesture she sometimes made that fascinated Martin. “Good idea. Do you think she’ll keep quiet?”

“She doesn’t have many good friends.”

“Poor Martin. On your watch, too.”

“Maybe it’s just a temporary aberration, and she’ll pull out of it. Just to be safe—”

Theresa caught his meaning before he expressed it. “I’ll have some Wendys keep watch on her.”

Martin lowered his hands from the unmarked walls. “Right,” he said.

“Maybe Ariel…” Theresa said. “She seems to be the only friend Rosa has.”

“We’re all friends,” Martin said.

“You know what I mean. Don’t be obtuse.”

Theresa, as their time together lengthened, was becoming more and more critical, more and more judgmental, but in a gentle way, and Martin found that he liked it. He needed another voice now.

There were things he could not directly express, even to Theresa: a growing fear. Rosa expresses it her way. I almost wish I could be so direct.

In the central glow of the schoolroom, the War Mother contemplated Martin’s report. They were alone in the large chamber, Martin standing and the War Mother floating, both in a spot of bright light. The doors had closed. Nobody else could hear them. Rosa had refused to go to the War Mother, had seemed insulted they would ask her to. And inevitably, word about her experience had spread.

“No such phenomenon has been noticed within the ship,” the War Mother said.

“Rosa didn’t see anything?”

“What she saw is not apparent to our sense,” the War Mother said.

“Is it possible that we could see something aboard the ship, something with an objective reality, that you would not?”

“The possibility is remote.”

“Then it’s a psychological problem…” Martin said. And you won’t or can’t do anything about it.

“That is for you to decide.”

Martin nodded, less agitated by such an attitude than he might have been a few tendays before. Other than providing an interface with the ship, the moms did little now. He could issue direct instructions, request direct answers, but critical judgments from their former teachers were not forthcoming. This was independence and responsibility with a vengeance, and he had to complain, however weakly and uselessly.

“The strain is intense. We’re drilling day in, day out. The drills are going well, and everybody’s doing their job—no more absentees, not even Rosa. But I don’t like the way the children reacted to Rosa’s… sighting. Vision. They were fascinated by it.”

The War Mother said nothing.

“There hasn’t been much talk since, but it worries me.”

The War Mother said nothing more. He looked at the black and white paint on its facelessness. He wanted to reach out, just once, and strike it, but he did not.

The tenth drill on ship division went as smoothly as the first. In the nose, Martin projected the schematic of the Dawn Treader’s practice preparations. Paola and Hans and Joe crowded closer to see from his wand, somehow more special than viewing the same through their own.

The picture of the changing Dawn Treader loomed large in the corridor, a vivid ghost in three dimensions. The ship had contracted, necks reduced in length, tail and nose become blunt nubbins, grooves indenting the circumference of the second homeball like the cell divisions of a blastula. The third homeball also revealed grooves, an inscribed portion of the second neck connected to an orange-slice of the second homeball.

The drives would break down into two units, of sizes proportional to Tortoise and Hare, Hare being approximately twice the size of Tortoise. Tortoise claimed most of the second homeball and the shortened neck between.

Within the image, new bulkheads glowed red against the general green, spreading like wax in hot water over designated spaces, until the units were completely marked out, ready for separation.

“Show me status,” Martin said. Partitions melted away, necks lengthened, homeballs became ungrooved and round. Whiskers of magnetic field vanes streamed out from the third homeball; inner traces of the scoop field glowed red around the nose.

“Looks good,” Hans said. “When do you want to do final strategy?”

“The search team has more to show us. We’ll listen to them, then you and I and the ex-Pans will pow- wow.”

“Palaver,” Paola said, smiling.

“Jaw. Chew the fat,” Hans added, also smiling.

Martin was pleased that some excitement had returned.

Rosa Sequoia had performed her latest duties flawlessly, and there was little more talk about what she had seen. The incident seemed to have become an embarrassment to her, and she did not respond to inquiries from the children.

Hakim Hadj’s face was less beatifically calm, his manner less polite, though hardly abrupt. He looked tired. He seemed at most mildly irritated, perhaps by a tiny itch he could not get at. The transparent nose of the Dawn Treader showed stars now instead of abyssal darkness; the chamber was crowded with projection piled upon simulation upon chart and those piled upon neon finger-scribbles hanging wherever space allowed. Hakim and two assistants, Min Giao and Thorkild Lax, seemed to know their way through the confusion.