Anvil of Stars

matter.”

“You’re supposed to understand,” Martin said. “How can you be ignorant about this?”

“The techniques are unknown to us.”

“Jesus, I’m not asking for so much, just learn how to do it! She’s dying!”

The War Mother said nothing. Martin wrapped his face in his hands.

“I’ve been waiting for you to wake up,” Theresa said. “I’m glad you did before… I have a plan, and it’s not much, but it’s something. I’ve asked the War Mother to make a strong field and put pellets of matter into it, with me. I’m behind the field. You’re protected. The explosion could be even more powerful than Stephanie’s. That’s what Stephanie asked for. If the experiment didn’t work. It didn’t. She helped push you—”

“No!” Martin shouted.

Theresa closed her eyes as if to sleep. “I’ve stayed this long to talk to you. Maybe it would have been easier to just do it while you were asleep. The War Mother says it would be useful.”

“We’ll take you with us, carry you in a field,” Martin said. “We’ll work on some way to convert you. Jennifer can think of something if the War Mother can’t.”

“I was being selfish,” Theresa continued, as if she hadn’t heard him. “I wanted to say some things to you, make sure you were all right. I wanted to see you again and talk with you.”

“Please,” Martin wailed, suddenly back in the crowded chamber aboard the Ark, watching the Earth die, and knowing even as a young boy what he was losing. He struggled but all he could do was twist in the field.

“Right now I’m good for nothing and I hurt. I thought about going back to Nebuchadnezzar, looking for a target, but the War Mother and I agreed, I’d just fizzle out and give the planet another useless scar.”

“God damn it!” Martin screamed.

“Please,” Theresa said, laying her head against the neck rest. “Let’s just talk while there’s time.”

Martin felt immediate shame and sobered. “I love you,” he said hoarsely. “I don’t want you to go away.”

“I can’t come back to you, Martin, and that means I’m dead already.”

He struggled against the fields again but kept his face under control. “We need to think.” He stared at the War Mother, face wreathed with a child’s bitter disappointment. “Nothing?”

“She is suffering and will not survive much longer,” the War Mother said.

“I was selfish,” Theresa said. “I’m hurting you more than if I just—”

“No, no. I’m glad you stayed.” He pushed to be closer to her image. “I’m… I’ll tell you something. I’m going to tell you about the new home.” He made a supreme effort to put on a face of expectancy and joy. “It’s going to be far away from here and so beautiful, Theresa. We’ll make it. We’re going to do the Job, and we’ll go there, and I swear it will be beautiful.

“I’ll wear my suit. All the Lost Boys will wear their suits. All the Wendys will wear gowns. We’ll step out on the planet, and we’ll marry the new home. We’ll remember everybody, and they’ll be with us, and we’ll grow food, and make wine, and babies, and we’ll… Oh, Jesus, it will be such a party, Theresa.”

Her face relaxed. “I can see it,” she said.

“You’ll be there with me, honey.”

“I think I will.”

“We’ll do it,” he said. He had run out of words.

“Martin, Tortoise tells me it’s ready. I’d like to go now. I want to help you get to the new home. Can I do it now, my love?”

Martin could not speak. He could hardly see. He pushed against the field like a fly in a web. The healing doers hummed.

“Goodbye.” Theresa blew him a kiss.

Her image was replaced by a view from the rear of Tortoise. Theresa moved her bombship into position.

Martin shook his head, disbelieving.

He wanted to keep her alive as long as possible, to make up for the awkwardness and inadequacy of his last words to her. He wanted to scream but did not.

Martin closed his eyes and turned away, but he could not keep them shut; he wanted to see, to feel and appreciate the push, to realize for her sake as the first step into grief that Theresa was becoming something so absurd and simple as acceleration.

He whispered her name. She might have heard.

Theresa’s bombship hung steady as pellets of mass approached. The stars moved behind her, peaceful and constant; Wormwood’s corona flared in silence beyond a shadowed, ripped edge of Tortoise’s tail.

The pellets closed.

Ambiplasma bloomed brighter than Wormwood. Theresa’s bombship wasped within the fields, frenzied by inequalities of blast. Light ate her. She was eaten by light clean and uncompromising, the opposite of space, of night and ending, all light, all colors.

The hull sang high and sweet like the tremolo of a flute.

Martin’s scream came and he choked on it, struggling against the mercy of the healing doers.

Tortoise moved slowly between the worlds, her children ignored by Nebuchadnezzar, by Ramses, by Herod. The silence of these grim barren worlds proclaimed defeat.

Within, as the ship repaired itself, as the Wendys and Lost Boys healed, Martin thought about the Killers, the tricksters, impersonal, unseen.

As on Earth, so it was with the traps of Wormwood. Luring, testing, destroying.

He slept to the humming of the golden doers, finishing their work.

Came William this time. “You’re dreaming of me, aren’t you?”

“I guess so.”

“I’m glad, Martin. I was pretty sure you wouldn’t forget.”

But he could not dream of Theresa.

Until now, Martin had wanted revenge, but he had not felt the extraordinary burn of hatred.

These monsters had cost him too many worlds, too many loves.

The children had been brushed away with a casual swat, crippled by an enemy who knew more tricks than their Benefactors. The survivors had been left to starve in a depleted void.

Tens of billions of kilometers away, Hare fell downward to the brightness.

Martin came out of his healing field to arrange things, to talk on the noach with Hans, who suppressed emotion in his voice, as Martin expressed no emotion in his. And then he led the children into a long sleep. No dreams, just coldness.

Tortoise rose from the pit of Wormwood to meet her sister.

There would be no defeat, no giving up.

And no peace.

PART TWO

Ten years in cold, tracking each other on the rim of a shallow well: Tortoise and Hare. In defeat, caution, conserving resources. Ten years would not matter in this war of centuries.

While the crew slept, the ships came together again and made a new Dawn Treader, half its previous length, only two home-balls connected by a short neck. Some old spaces came back, though empty of pets and personal effects.

The schoolroom and cafeteria remained. No damage showed, but the fuel reserves wrapped around the neck were much reduced.

Martin awoke a month after the rejoining, to consult with the moms. Field-wrapped in a cushion of warm air, he laddered through the cold, evacuated chambers of the Ship of the Law, approving or suggesting changes. He was not sure why he had been awakened; perhaps the moms were interested in the changed psychology of a crew