Anvil of Stars

“I’m glad to have you with us,” Martin said.

“Until we our world was destroyed,” Eye on Sky continued, “Brothers thought the stars to be peaceful, places of unity and being sure-footed. We we have learned, those of other stars are only like we ourselves.”

“We’re a team,” Martin said, rising and extending his arms. Eye on Sky leaned forward, and Martin hugged the sinewy braid as well, feeling the leathery dry ness of its cords ripple beneath his fingers.

The ship began its sounds of dividing, familiar to them all. The door to the cafeteria admitted a mom and a snake mother, and then smoothed shut, its outlines vanishing into the wall. Fields appeared automatically around each of them, vibrating faint pastel colors. Martin watched Eye on Sky return to the center, followed by his field. The humans stayed on the periphery.

“End of deceleration in twenty seconds,” the mom said.

Their weight passed from them until they floated. Martin automatically did the exercises that controlled his inner ear and his stomach.

“Separation will begin in fifteen seconds,” the mom said. The snake mother made low string sounds and percussive clicks for the Brothers.

The ladder fields grew brighter. Muffled sounds of matter being rearranged, fake matter growing; Martin’s hair stood on end. He thought of the decaying death ship lost in endless cold void, its fake matter fizzling away after ages, mummies of the crew surrounded by eternal haloes of cold dust, undisturbed in the interstellar medium until their arrival.

The cafeteria closed in. Fields jostled them within the smaller, rearranged space. They now occupied the sleeping quarters of the Trojan Horse.

“I told them about the Iliad,” Paola whispered to Martin and Ariel. “They were very impressed. And we chose another name for the ship, when we’re in disguise, so we don’t have to explain Trojan Horse: Double Seed.”

More sounds, sliding and scraping, something vibrating like a broken pitch pipe. Trojan Horse/Double Seed broke free of Greyhound and Shrike.

All three ships spread apart, each on a different course and schedule, each with a different mission, fifty billion kilometers from Leviathan, still racing at close to light-speed.

“Super deceleration in ten seconds,” the mom said.

They had been through this many times before, enough to be used to it, but Martin felt a deep sense of dread: dread of the poised dreamstate, his every move second-guessed by the volumetric fields. He felt them creep around his molecules, taking inventory of his body. And dread as well for what they all would have to face if they succeeded, when the ships came back together: the lies and deceit he knew had been perpetrated on the crews.

“Good luck,” Ariel said.

He tried to think of a pleasant scene on Earth, to lock this into his thoughts and avoid visions of the dead.

Instead, he saw as if through a grim documentary that the entire crew had been fed fake matter food, that they were now made of massless coerced points in space; that when the Job was done they would simply dissolve like the Red Tree Runners’ Ship of the Law.

The Law would be done at the cost of their being; in fact, they were nothing right at this moment, merely illusions on a ghost ship falling again into brightness to bring death.

His unvoiced moan seemed to echo behind his closed eyes. If he opened his eyes, he would see the others, trying to do little tasks, conversing or just sitting, waiting out the constrained hours. He preferred to be alone with this nightmare.

Twenty-two hours passed.

An hour before super deceleration ended, as planned, Hakim broadcast their first message to the beings around Leviathan. He had created a simple binary signal repeating pi and the first ten prime numbers, without the Brothers’ help; the moms had indicated Brother mathematics was most unusual, and not likely to be easily understood.

The signal was adjusted to disguise their velocity. It would reach Leviathan’s worlds in twenty-three hours; Trojan Horse/Double Seed would be twenty-two billion kilometers from the system by then, easily visible to Leviathan’s masters.

The mom informed them that Greyhound and Shrike were doing well, that all was going as planned.

Martin listened to the mom’s voice, acknowledged with a nod that he had heard the news and understood it, closed his eyes again, waited, still not convinced of his reality, his solidity.

Ariel touched his arm. “You don’t look happy,” she said.

“Nightmare,” he said, shaking his head.

“You’re not asleep,” she said.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Want to talk?”

“About what?”

“About after.”

He smiled. “After we get the Job done? Or after we’ve decelerated?”

“After anything,” she said.

Martin opened his eyes completely and wiped them to clear his mottled vision. What he saw was still not sharp; Ariel leaned on her elbow a meter away, face blurred, eyes indistinct, mouth moving. He made an effort to listen.

“The Wendys will make their gowns. We’ll marry a planet. Do you ever think about that?”

He shook his head.

“I do. I’d like to let it all down, relax, sit in a thick, fresh atmosphere with the sun in the sky… just not worry about anything. Do you think people on Earth ever did that?”

“I suppose.”

“I wonder if I’d make a good mother. Having babies, I mean.”

“Probably,” he said.

“I’ve just started thinking about being a mother. My thoughts… I’ve been young for so long, it’s hard to imagine actually being grown-up.”

“Ariel, I’m not thinking too clearly right now. We should talk later.”

“If you want. I don’t mind if you don’t answer. Do you mind listening?”

“I don’t know if I mind anything right now.”

“All right,” she said. “I’ll wait. But we’re going to be so busy.”

“That will be good,” Martin said. “Not having time to think.”

“Do you have a voice…” She trailed off. “It sounds so silly, like something Rosa might say. Do you have a voice that tells you what’s going to happen?”

“No,” Martin said.

“I think I do. We’re going to survive, Martin.”

“Good,” Martin said.

“I’ll be quiet.” She lay back and folded her hands on her stomach. Martin looked down at her from his seat against the wall.

“She’s not as pretty as Theresa,” Theodore said, standing over them. “But she’s honest. She’s resourceful. You could do a lot worse.”

“Shut up,” Martin said.

Ariel opened her eyes languidly. “Didn’t say anything.”

“Not talking to you,” Martin said, slumping until his legs bumped hers, then sidling up next to her. He reached out and hugged her. She tensed, then sighed and relaxed, turned her face toward his, looked him over from a few centimeters, eyebrows arched quizzically.

“I know I’m not as pretty as Theresa,” she whispered. Her vulnerability pricked deep beneath his lassitude.