Anvil of Stars

libido. Very thoughtfully you included a couple of compatriots on this side of the split. They’re less inhibited than I seem to be. There have been offers.”

“But no love,” Martin said.

William closed his eyes again, nodded. “There’s not much love among any of us now. How about you and Theresa?”

“Still love,” Martin said, watching his friend’s face closely.

“Must be a comfort.”

“I never stopped loving you, William.”

“I still don’t need comfort slicks,” William said testily.

“That’s not what I mean. You’re part of me.”

“Not an exclusive part,” William said, looking at Martin from the corner of his eyes, self-deprecatory smile flickering on his lips.

“Pretty exclusive,” Martin said. “Making love to you is like having a wonderful… was like having a wonderful kind of brother, a double, not dangerous, just accepting.”

“Like jerking off by remote,” William suggested. Martin knew that tone; sharp but not mean.

“Not at all.”

“Men know men. Women know women. The great justification of homosexual slicking.”

“William, stop it.”

“All right,” William said, subdued again.

“When I think about things, you’re in my head, and I try to think about what you’d say or do in a given situation. I talk to you in my head, and I talk to Theresa. Brother and sister, and more than that.” He was not actually lying, but this was not strictly true; he had given little thought to William, but did not want William to know that, or to acknowledge it to himself; that he could have passed over William with so little trauma, and yet still regard him with immense affection. What sort of love was that?

“You say you think about me, but you live with Theresa.”

Both stared at Nebuchadnezzar, the planet whose real name they did not know, if it had a name at all.

“Did they ever love?” William asked.

“I don’t give a damn,” Martin said. My friends and my home. They killed the fish in the seas and the birds in the air. They took away our childhood. They killed my dog. “It’s time to get this behind us and start living our own lives. We’ll become shadows if we do this forever.”

“Amen,” William said. “You want Theresa to wear that gown, on another world, our world?”

“I do,” Martin said.

“I’d like to see that. I want to wear something special, too.”

“We all will, I think,” Martin said.

“But first…”

Martin noticed William’s lips working, as if in silent prayer. For safe passage, or forgiveness?

Will safe passage be a sign of forgiveness?

No signs, no consolation, no forgiveness; no blame. The forest was full of wolves.

No God of kindness and justice could allow such a thing. Nature could, but nature kept a balance.

The forest was also full of hunters.

The bombship pilots gathered in the weapons stores, Martin and the War Mother presiding. Between them hung a projected image of Nebuchadnezzar, its aspect changing as it slowly rotated night •into day, the crescent orb visibly growing: two hours until release.

Theresa and William floated beside their craft, faces blank. Fred Falcon joined William. Stephanie, alone beside her ship, and Yueh Yellow River beside his. Theresa would fly a bombship alone. Nguyen Mountain Lily and Ginny Chocolate together; Michael Vineyard and Hu East Wind; Leo Parsifal and Nancy Flying Crow. Seven ships for this sortie.

Martin kept his face blank, hiding the gut-knot within, that nausea of excitement and naked fear, that urge to tremble and run and beg forgiveness of whatever nasty supernatural being controlled things. In his sporadic journal, Martin had written:

We have hugged and made love this morning, eaten breakfast together. I have seen her wrapped in the final gown, and we have sworn that we are married, that we are bound. “We will make children,” she said, and I agreed; when we are out from under the moms, there will be fertility and we will make children, and we will love and live and argue and feel despair and feel brightness, but nothing like this will come to us again; we will have done our Job, and nothing more like this will be asked of us again, please God, we do not understand the Why…

The children gathered in the reduced space of the weapons store, fields dimmed almost to invisibility so as not to obscure the ranked Wendys and Lost Boys. It came time for Martin to speak; awkward, expected pep talk before the cosmically deadly game.

His throat seized and for a moment he could say nothing, just stare at his people with throat and jaw working. Do it. He cleared his throat painfully, swallowed, and said, voice cracking, “You are the finest people I’ve ever known. You are all volunteers, and my friends. We’ve been friends and lovers for over five years now, and we’ve always known that what we are about to do—that’s the reason why… we’re here. We are the best there is, and the moms know that.”

He turned to the War Mother. There had been no rehearsal, no previous discussion between them of what this ceremony should be like, and Martin thought, Damn you to hell if you don’t commit yourself now and say something.

The War Mother did not fail him. “You are indeed the best,” it said. “You have been trained and given tremendous responsibilities, and you have done exceptionally well. There is not a race of beings among all those who made and enact the Law who would not have their sympathies with you now.”

They have sympathies? They feel as we do?

“The Ship of the Law is pleased to be associated with you, to work with you,” the War Mother said. “You are no longer children. Today you are partners in the Law.”

“Good,” Ariel said.

“We’ve voted and judged and now we must act,” Martin said. He raised his fist, acutely conscious of the symbolic nature of this act, and its disturbing connotations, and most of him filled with passion and energy as the fist rose higher, until his arm pointed straight above his head. “For Earth,” he said. “And for us, and all our memories, and our future lives.”

His eyes were moist, warm. Theresa did not weep; William did, and through the crowd of children, others as well, including Ariel, whose eyes met Martin’s briefly. She wiped her tears with her sleeve, stiff gesture and anguished face seeming to say: God damn it, I’m human, too, you bastard.

The children not assigned to weapons backed out of the chamber. Martin was the last to go, after the War Mother, and his eyes lingered on Theresa’s for three long seconds, as if they could live their lives in that moment. They looked away from each other simultaneously. The hatch closed. In the projections of their wands, they saw the pilots enter the bombships.

They saw the ship’s outer hatches open. Glowing fields pushed the bombships outside Tortoise.

The children quickly climbed to the first hemisphere and the cafeteria. Martin, for once unable emotionally to fulfill his duty, left them in the cafeteria and went to the nose. Hakim was there, and Jennifer, but none of the rest of the search team; they were all congregated in the cafeteria, watching the craft outside Tortoise.

Hakim smiled weakly at Martin. Jennifer floated curled behind the star sphere, now showing the bombships trailing Tortoise by a few hundred meters.

“They are all gathered in the cafeteria?” Hakim asked, perhaps more pointedly than he had intended.

Martin nodded. “I can’t be there,” he said softly. “I feel like shit right now. I can’t be in a crowd.”

Hakim put his hand on Martin’s shoulder. Jennifer uncurled and recurled near the transparent nose. The nose was turned away from Nebuchadnezzar.

“Are they going to make it?” Martin asked.