Anvil of Stars

“I don’t think you were, either. The Brothers took Leviathan’s measure. Have you compared results?”

“They made measurements before our first efforts.”

“And they saw…?”

“From what Paola and Jennifer have translated, and what Stonemaker tells us—so difficult to interpret! They do not use numbers as we do—they saw a system of we think ten planets, with four gas giants.”

“Then they got a picture similar to what the Red Tree Runners saw. The Brothers didn’t pick up signs of civilization?”

Hakim shook his head. “Nor did they notice any reaction to Wormwood’s destruction. From what we see even now, there is no sign of armoring, or any other preparation.”

Martin felt at once a kind of dread and excitement, a chill of surprise and something he could hardly quantify. This is no simple chase now, no sitting duck. We’re close!

“Leviathan is camouflaged,” Martin said.

“I was hoping you would agree!” Hakim cried out, clapping Martin on the shoulder.

Martin could have laughed at Hakim’s relief and joy, but he did not.

“We were not measuring improperly! The death ship saw what it saw! The Brothers did not measure improperly!”

“But how do you mask an entire star system?”

“Only planets,” Hakim said.

“Are they ghost planets?”

“Perhaps,” Hakim said, raising a finger. “One of these versions may be correct, but which?”

“The deception is not infinitely varied… and it changes across fairly short intervals, on the order of years.”

“Yes!” Hakim said, face flushed with excitement. “The bastard Killers fool nobody!”

Martin touched finger to nose. “It’s obvious some massive planetary engineering has been done… You’d think the closer an observer was, the more they’d want the system to look empty,”

“With your support, I will take this to Hans,” Hakim said, rising from the cushion. “He cannot become angry if you back us.”

Martin stood. “Are you afraid of him?” he asked.

Hakim looked away, embarrassed. “I do not trust him as much as I trust you. Do you approve of him, Martin?”

“It isn’t my job to criticize the Pan.”

“I have felt badly about some of his actions, the way we have become. The games, with sexual partners as rewards. Martin, I have kept very quiet until now, but that was wrong.”

“Well, it’s stopped. We start training with the Brothers soon.”

“You are not worried about what might happen?”

“Of course I’m worried.”

“But not worried about Hans.”

“Hakim, I know how difficult it is to be Pan. When I was Pan, people died. Hans was elected. That’s that.”

Hakim regarded him sadly, then arranged his overalls with smoothing gestures of palms down chest and legs. “I will go to Hans now. I hope he will be as understanding as you.”

“He’s no dummy,” Martin said.

“He will not chastise us,” Hakim said. “He will see, as well, that these are not our errors.”

“I’m sure he will,” Martin said. When Hakim had left, Martin rubbed his eyes vigorously with his knuckles, then looked up and around his quarters, as if seeing them for the first time; ribbons of light, bare brown and silver- gray surfaces, the single cushion large enough for two; why had he asked for it to be large enough for two?

He was not due anywhere for an hour. There would be a meeting of past Pans with Hans and Rex and two of Stonemaker’s planners; they would begin to design drills, coordinate strategies.

Brothers and humans could and would work together.

Martin reached for his wand and idly tuned to the translated territories of the Brother libraries. Vast regions were still incomprehensible. The human wands did not supply scent; he could not interpret half of what might be stored. Even the best translations would never be ideal. As Hakim had discovered, even so simple a thing as numbers was subject to ambiguity. He wondered how the Brothers counted…

Perhaps counting was not important to them.

Perhaps they were better equipped to deal with Leviathan’s changing nature than humans.

He searched for Theodore’s texts in his wand, found them still intact after the disasters and merger. Randomly he leafed through the projected pages, hoping for some small insight or guidance.

Never underestimate the power of circumstance to grind your very bones, Theodore had written in the first three months of their journey. Never underestimate the perverse power of everything to go wrong, to tend toward trouble. Always the problems seem to come from within; I judge myself to be at fault, for not anticipating the unforeseeable, not knowing the way a chaotic function will collapse.

And elsewhere.

What I have lost does not make me greater, but it makes me deeper, like a hole. Take more away and I will come through to the other side, like a gaping wound. But then I will be the wound and the body will have sloughed away. Is it possible to lose more of what is not there?

Very adolescent, with the insight of resilient youth and none of the reserved silence of the experienced adult. If he had written these things, Martin might have felt a little embarrassed. But then he had always felt that way about Theodore’s writings: strongly attracted to them, even admiring, but always discomfited by them. They explored territories, emotions, and ideas Martin was not comfortable with.

Theodore had been so open. It was what killed him.

He turned off the projected pages, lay back on the cushion and asked for the lights to dim. Soon there would be much less time for sleep.

* * *

“How in hell can anyone disguise an entire star system?” Hans asked. His hair stuck out in blond spikes; clearly, he had not slept much recently. Ex-Pans, Silken Parts, and Stonemaker’s representatives, Eye on Sky and Shipmaker, gathered in the nose with the joint search team. The starfield expanded beyond, Leviathan bright and steady to one side, still too far away for planets to be visible to their naked eyes.

Silken Parts rustled; every few minutes, the braids would tremble, as if their cords needed to scratch some itch difficult to locate. Luis Estevez Saguaro had prepared a chart comparing the four views they had of the system—the view found in the records of the dead ship, the Dawn Treader’s view from just beyond Wormwood, the view obtained by the Brothers, and the present view. Hans regarded it dourly, chin in hand.

“How much energy would it take to broadcast such a disguise?” he asked.

Hakim calculated quietly. “Half the energy produced by the star itself, in one estimate,” he said.

Silken Parts softly disagreed. With violin speech and a somewhat musty odor, he said, “We cannot assume the disguise is broadcast in all directions—”

“Wait,” Hans interrupted, raising one hand. Silken Parts drew back, rustled again. Martin doubted that the Brother felt affronted, but he wished Hans could be less imperious. “You think something’s being broadcast. What—an image of the system, altered somehow?”

Hakim cleared his throat. “Jennifer and Giacomo—”

“Spare me more goddamned momerath,” Hans said. “I need something concrete.”

“Please have patience,” Hakim said, looking to one side, face darkening.

Hans lifted a hand, flicked a finger: go on.

“Jennifer and Giacomo have taken time from the work in the combined libraries. Jennifer believes that several regions of space may have had their ray tracing, their radiation-transit bit structures, interfered with. Photons could