Anvil of Stars

“With slight adjustments, environments can be joined,” the mom replied.

“What do they look like?” David Aurora asked.

“More information about this ship and its inhabitants will be available before we join forces.”

“Do we take a vote?” Ariel asked.

“A vote is not forbidden. But you must understand that we cannot fulfill our mission in our present condition.”

“No shit,” someone said in the back, out of Martin’s sight; it sounded like Rex Live Oak.

“Do we really need to vote?” Hans said. “I’m still ready to fight. If this is our only chance, we should take it.”

“Vote,” Ariel insisted, and Rosa Sequoia, in a calm, deep voice, as if speaking from a cave, agreed.

“All right,” Hans said. “Martin, Harpal, take the count.”

The crew voted quickly, without energy. Of the sixty-five remaining, thirty voted no; thirty-five voted yes. Ariel voted to go; Rosa Sequoia voted against further action.

“That’s close,” Hans said, standing before them. “Now I’m here to take my licks. I screwed up today. I really fouled the nest. I apologize. I’ll go into solitary for a week. I appoint Harpal as Pan in the interim. He’ll work with Martin. I suggest we all take a rest. Let the mom finish its work. We say our farewells to everybody we lost around Wormwood, and we think things through.”

He nodded to the closest members of the crew as he passed them, heading toward the door. Harpal looked at Martin; this was hardly what they had hoped for. Martin felt sick inside; sick with his unresolved pain, and sick at the dissolution that seemed to be upon them.

“We need to talk this out,” Harpal told Martin.

Martin declined. “Rest,” he said. “We’ve been through too much, and I can’t talk sensibly now. Aliens!” He trembled suddenly, whether with excitement or exhaustion, he could not say. Harpal’s shoulders slumped and his chin dropped.

“We’ll all rest,” Martin said, touching his arm delicately. “And mourn.”

Martin’s quarters were bare and cold. Still the smell of burning lingered; the odor of neutrino-singed matter. He entered and the door slid shut behind him and for this moment at least, ignoring the smell, he might have been at the beginning of his journey, when first the Dawn Treader had been presented to the children, and they had made their new homes here.

With some relief and some sorrow, he knew that these were not the same quarters in which he and Theresa had made love. The ship had rearranged and repaired itself too extensively; the deck on which their bed had rested might now be shifted meters away, or recycled completely. What connection did he have to the past?

None.

Martin closed his eyes and curled up on the floor, laid his cheek against the smooth cool surface, flexed his fingertips against it, and waited for sleep.

He thought on the edge of that desired sleep of Jorge Rabbit’s bruised body, and what it had once held: language and laughter and sharp reliability, a favorite of the children. The crew.

Jorge Rabbit and the others might soon be in the air they breathed, the food and water they took in. But not William or Theresa.

Martin reached out for Theresa’s hand. He could almost feel it, his fingers brushing the air where it would be, faintest rasp of sensation. Then, deliberately, he withdrew his hand and folded it under his chest. “Goodbye,” he whispered, and slept.

Behind the Dawn Treader, the corpse of Wormwood expanded as a many-colored vapor, like milk swirling in water and illuminated by many lights.

“Hakim watched the stellar corpse with cold curiosity, arms folded. Beside the image in the star sphere scrolled and flashed figures, charts, condensed images, conveying the qualities of the corpse in an interstellar autopsy of incredible depth and complexity.

“If I were back on Earth now,” he told Martin, “I would be an astronomer, but never in my life would I see something like this. Where would I rather be, do you think? Here, now, seeing this, or…?”

“You’d rather be on Earth,” Martin said. They were alone in the nose; the rest of the crew awaited the end of Hans’ self-imposed week of isolation, going through their own isolations, their own regroupings, reassessments.

Hakim agreed. His face had changed since the Skirmish, as Erin Eire called their costly victory. His expression had hardened, eyes shining brighter, perpetual smile tighter, lines more deeply grooved around his lips and eyes.

“It was a fair exchange, perhaps,” Hakim said. “How many Ships of the Law were trapped by Wormwood and destroyed?”

“We were lucky,” Martin said. “The trap was getting rusty.”

“You know as well as I, war is a matter of luck as much as strategy. We should not deny ourselves satisfaction because we came upon a weakened enemy.”

“We don’t know the enemy is weak,” Martin said. “They might still be strong.”

“Then why do they hide behind traps?”

“To avoid trouble. Maybe this was no more significant to them than the loss of a bug zapper in a front yard.”

Hakim’s smile curled wickedly. “I like this metaphor,” he said. “We are mosquitoes, but we bring yellow fever… And now the bug zapper is down, we fly freely toward the house…”

“About to join with a group of moths,” Martin suggested.

“I would prefer wasps.” Hakim chuckled, and then suddenly his voice caught and he turned away. “Excuse me,” he said, clearing his throat.

“Someone you loved,” Martin said after a moment. He had never followed Hakim’s romantic affairs, partly out of respect, partly because Hakim and his partners had always been extremely circumspect.

“It was hard for me to call it love,” Hakim said. “Min Giao Monsoon. She was my equal, and I couldn’t… I didn’t know how to digest that. But she was very important to me. We were not very open.” For an instant, Hakim showed simple and enormous pain.

Martin watched the beautiful display, greens and reds dominating, cinders of planets visible only in the graphs and enhancements at this distance. Spirals of plasma from the poles had quickly spread and whipped in arcs to encompass a vast sphere; the artificial fields that controlled Wormwood giving way and rearranging in the violence. Wormwood’s corpse had finally assumed an aspect of natural star death. Perhaps that had been planned by the Killers, as well…

No need to light any brighter a beacon in the forest than absolutely necessary.

“However you loved, you loved,” Martin said.

Hakim agreed to that with a measured nod. “I have high hopes that our new Pan will grow into his position.” He spoke quietly, as if Hans might be listening.

“It’s not easy.”

“There are many challenges even before we get to our destination. I wonder how I will react to new and inhuman colleagues… perhaps better to say nonhuman.”

“The ship and the mom don’t know an awful lot about them,” Martin said. “Otherwise they’d tell us more.”

“I agree,” Hakim said. “I have never believed the moms hold things back from us.”

“Oh…” Martin said, “I wouldn’t go that far. They always tell us what we need to know, but…”

“Pardon my saying so, but you sound like Ariel.”

Martin scowled. “Please,” he said.

“Not to offend,” Hakim added with a touch of his old impish-ness.

Rosa Sequoia sat in the cafeteria among a group of twenty-two of the crew, conducting a ceremony for the dead, following— as far as Martin could tell—her own rules and her own rituals. He could not object; ritual was healthy at this point.

She had made up hymns or borrowed from old songs and projected lyrics for the crew to sing. Martin watched from the outside, near the door, and did not sing, but felt his heart tug at the swell of voices.

Rosa looked up, and her eyes met his, and she smiled—broadly, without resentment; beautifully.