Anvil of Stars

Ariel lifted her hands.

“Jesus,” Harpal said. “When Martin was Pan, you were so full of bolsh we could grow mushrooms in your mouth!”

“Harpal,” Martin said.

“I mean it! What’s with the sudden quiet?”

“I trusted Martin,” Ariel said. “He wouldn’t hold things against me. Not enough to hurt me. I’m not an idiot.”

This stopped Harpal cold. He simply stared at her, then at Martin, and threw his hands up in the air. “None of this makes sense.”

Martin gestured with his fingers to her: Come on, let it out.

“Martin was sincere. He didn’t calculate for effect.”

“Thank you very much,” Martin said with some bite.

“I mean it. You didn’t measure everybody for his coffin. Hans hasn’t changed… he’s just grown into the job. Everything is weighed according to political advantage.”

“Even when he blew up after the neutrino storm?” Harpal asked.

“That was genuine,” she admitted, “but it put people in their place. Where he wanted them to be—a little afraid of him. He’s big. He hits when he’s angry. He’s not exactly predictable. So people are more wary and they don’t speak up. Big, smart bully. Or didn’t you notice?” She looked at Harpal accusingly.

“I don’t see how he could plan such outbursts,” Martin said.

“You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed his skills,” she said, eyes glittering. Martin saw the former Ariel again, saw she was keeping her anger and dismay tightly wrapped, and felt a fresh surge of concern.

“He’s a better Pan than I was.”

“Maybe better at manipulating. He knows what he wants.”

“He pulled us out of a pit,” Martin said, realizing his Devil’s advocacy. He wanted to see how much Ariel’s views coincided with his—all unvoiced, even unconfirmed in his own mind.

“He put us there in the first place,” she countered.

Harpal sat and crossed his legs. Martin and Ariel both looked to him for comment. “Good Pan, bad Pan,” he said softly, in wonder.

“The crew puts a lot of faith in the Pan. Martin was good—if a little gullible—because everybody knew they could talk to him, and he wouldn’t hurt them, wouldn’t even think of it,” Ariel said. “I spoke up because I thought I could argue him into seeing certain important things…”

“You went at it pretty forcefully,” Martin said.

“I’ve never claimed to be subtle. When will you resign?”

Harpal squinted. “When the time’s right,” he said. “Can anybody tell me why he’s courting Rosa?”

“He’s doing more than courting her,” Ariel said. “Rosa’s still in his room. You know she hasn’t had a real friend for years?”

Martin nodded. “He thinks she’s on to something.”

“What?” Harpal asked.

“Something we need,” Martin said, and Ariel nodded.

“What?” Harpal asked again, genuinely puzzled.

“Faith,” Martin said.

Harpal drew back as if bitten. “You’re kidding.”

“Not at all,” Martin said. “She’s getting closer and closer to the mark. I’ve felt it myself.” He tapped his chest.

“I’m completely lost now,” Harpal said. “I don’t deserve to be second. I’m out of touch.”

“Things are going to get a lot more complicated very soon,” Martin said. “Let’s see how he handles the situation.”

Ariel surprised him by agreeing completely. “He’s made mistakes… But he’s still in charge, and we’re still ready to do the Job.”

Harpal stood in the door. “If he accepts my resignation, that’s fine by me,” he said. “But why did he pick Rex? Rex is not the smartest person on the ship. He knows nothing about leadership.”

Martin held back the most obvious and the darkest answer he could think of: Rex won’t say no.

Hans kept to the back of the cafeteria, smiling benignly. Rosa stood on a table; sixty-three of the crew listened intently.

“In two days,” she said, “we’ll meet our new colleagues… What will they be like? What will they think and believe? How can we accommodate them? Interact with them? What are we, to them!”

The crew did not answer. Martin sat a few meters from Hans, beside Harpal and Ariel. Hans winked at Martin.

Rosa looked radiant; the beauty of intense compassion, of selflessness. Awkward Rosa had melted finally, giving way to a new woman; had the defining moment occurred in Hans’ arms? Hans revealed nothing.

“In the scale of things, we are the very smallest of intelligences, the very dimmest of lights. Yet like plankton in Earth’s seas, we lay the foundations for all the complex glory above us. We are the food and eggs and seed of all intelligence, up to and including that radiant center beyond all understanding. A disturbance in the sea of little thinking creatures can move up the spiritual food column with disastrous consequences, though it may take an age; and so the highest regards the lowest with more than just disinterested love, for we are ultimately them, part of their flesh, if they have flesh, part of their histories, and their futures…

“The colleagues joining us have undoubtedly suffered as we have. They have lost their home world, have wandered for centuries in foreign shells, and have fought and lost loved ones, all to vanquish the poison, the death of the planet killers. We join with them now, and the little intelligences merge… And it is noticed by those high above us, those in attendance on the Most High, the galaxies of bright spirituality that rotate around the unimaginably vast center… And that notice is not just a kind of love, it is love, compared to which the love we feel for the parts of our own body, for our own flesh, is a cheap imitation.

“Our success or failure has a larger meaning. When we die, we are not just lost; I have felt the cradle of the Most High coming for our dead, to embrace their memories, their essence, and draw them to the center, where there is eternal motion and eternal rest, peace and the center of all action.”

“She hasn’t read her Aquinas,” Ariel whispered to Martin.

But what Rosa said sounded good to him. Martin needed to know that Theresa and William were happy, that they had found rest; that sardonic and razor-sharp Theodore and all the others were appreciated somewhere, that perhaps they floated in a sea of painless interaction, showing their highest qualities to something that might finally appreciate them…

“When our ships join, we join purposes as well. All our goals must mesh. We are here not to satisfy the moms, but to clean the seas of a poison that could reach to the center itself. Call it evil, call it senseless greed, call it maladaptation… It is separate from the Most High, and the Most High does not cherish it.

“The cup-bearers of planetary death are not among the lights in attendance to the Most High; they are caught in a vicious cycle of pain and fear. We have felt their fear. It killed our home planet and it has killed our friends; the time has come for us to apply the burning iron to that fear, and to send the Killers back to where they can again become part of the column, rise in usefulness again to the Most High.

“But we will not receive divine aid. Though there are things repugnant to the highest intelligences, the greatest spirits, they do not give us their powers and insights when we fight the repugnant things. That would be a kind of interference even more evil than senseless murder; a confusion of scales, the Most High stifling the potential of the low, where all creativity, all creation begins. We are on our own, but our struggle is not senseless.”

“What do the moms think of this?” Harpal asked Martin in a low voice.

Martin shook his head.

“The story I tell this evening is of war. Nothing gentle, nothing soothing, it reminds us of what we face still, and may face for centuries more, before we can lay down our weapons and take up the duties of living for ourselves.”

“Why can’t I feel the touch and see what you’ve seen?” Nguyen Mountain Lily asked.