Anvil of Stars

average surface temperature was three hundred degrees Celsius, the rivers ran deep with liquid fake matter (so Giacomo and Eye on Sky speculated), and the atmosphere consisted largely of carbon dioxide and steam.

Sleep, a dark funeral bouquet of wilted roses packed into a ball one hundred and two thousand kilometers in diameter…

Cueball, featureless gray.

Puffball with its thousand-kilometer-high seeds.

Pebble One, barely a thousand kilometers wide, empty gray rock and water ice au naturel.

Mixer, cables hanging from three moons stirring its gaseous surface into a beautiful abstraction of swirls and eddies.

Mirror, perfect and apparently pointless.

Gopher, like a huge lava bomb from a volcano, riddled with holes impossibly deep and wide, green lights winking in the holes like baleful eyes.

Pebble Two, very much like Pebble One: in fact, exactly alike in every detail.

Blinker still flipping like the display on a cosmic clock, changing its character between three different worlds.

Pebble Three, duplicate of Pebbles One and Two.

Gas Pump, blue green, a slushball of methane and ammonia and hydrogen and helium, its glowing wells tossing billions of tons of volatiles into orbit every hour.

And at the farthest extremes of the system, Magic Lantern, covered with oceans of perfectly smooth water ice, interspersed with polished iron and crystal land masses, the land and solid seas studded with black domes hundreds of kilometers across.

Naming Leviathan’s fifteen planets did not bring any cheer or sense of control.

Martin hung in his net, watching with half-closed eyes the image of Sleep fill his cabin. Savages canoeing up the Hudson River, walking into New York City. Look up: the skyline. Pad on moccasins down the asphalt streets. Threaten to destroy the city with bows and arrows. Laughing, the mayor invites them into his office.

On the bridge, Jennifer, Hakim, Cham and Ariel floated at different angles, heads turning toward Martin as he entered. They all wore the same half-terrified expectant look Martin had become familiar with in the past few days. “Play it back,” Cham said. “This is new,” Hakim said. “Ten minutes ago.” The transmitted voice sounded flat, sexually neutral, a little harsh, diction precise and almost chilly. “Hello,” it began. “You have entered cooperative areas and are welcome to the gathering of partners.”

“Not perfect,” Jennifer commented. “But good enough.”

“Many different kinds of intelligence work and play in union. Your kind may join, or may visit. There are no requirements except peaceful intentions. As you no doubt are aware, the local star group is a dangerous territory, populated by machines and intelligences not of good will. Weapons are not allowed in our neighborhood. If you have any weapons, even defensive weapons of low power, you must notify us and dispose of them under our direction, instructions to follow. Further informative discussions will follow. Is this understood?”

Eye on Sky listened intently to the same message delivered in Brother audio. “It is hollow and smells like space,” he said. “But it is understandable.”

“They’ll be suspicious if we’re completely unarmed,” Cham said.

Martin nodded. “I think we should make some weapons and hand them over. Nothing impressive. Defensive projectile weapons, chemical…”

“The ship should have something, too,” Erin said.

Martin looked at Ariel. “Lasers,” he said.

“Right,” she said.

“You direct the mom and snake mother,” he said. “We’ll need something convincing to hand over or jettison soon. It’s time we put on our costumes and start getting used to our roles. In a tenday or so, I think we’re going to be in their control…”

Martin asked Eye on Sky, “How do we answer them?”

“Enthusiasm and charm,” Eye on Sky said. “We all we must be eager to learn. We all we are young, loving to splash the shore, and they will teach.”

Martin smiled. “Who’s deceiving the other, more?”

Eye on Sky rotated his head in a figure eight with a particularly equine motion. “We all ourselves, let it be hoped.”

There was no time to think. Exhausted, pushing himself and the others hours past their sleeps, Martin prepared the human crew as best he could, doing what Erin called hearsing and rehearsing.

The roles they played did not stray too far from truth, but reflected a mixing of cultures, human and Brother, still prickly with potential conflict—close enough to reality. Tensions were high and human tempers flared as they critiqued each other over long hours, working to perfect their act.

In the charged atmosphere, the Brothers tended to separate without warning, forcing braids to chase down cords, bag them, and lock them in quiet rooms until reassembly occurred.

Silken Parts apologized to Martin for the inconvenience and confusion; Martin, as always, held his irritation in check… Knowing that humans might do something similar at any time, fight with each other, break into tears, or worse.

But the disassembling stopped after a few days, and the humans held together remarkably well.

Trojan Horse/Double Seed put on scars from supernova damage: radiation erosion on its outer skin, a crippled drive motor, damaged electronics within. The ship manufactured convincing guns and lasers. Martin locked them away, with only himself and Eye on Sky given the combinations necessary to unlock them.

He could hardly keep his eyes off the growing disk of Sleep, drawing faces in the lines of mountains, disquieting patterns in the broad seas. He imagined himself drifting on a raft down rivers a hundred kilometers wide, navigating twisty cracks in the crust between sheer walls of obsidian black and rust red…

A day before noach cut-off with Greyhound, Martin spoke with Hans in private. “We’re doing well. We know our roles. Cham and Erin have worked up a primer of human- Brother history. It’s pretty entertaining. We’ll noach it to you…”

“Anything for a little distraction,” Hans said. “Giacomo’s had a problem. I’d call it a nervous breakdown, but he says it’s just exhaustion. He’s still trying to riddle what Jennifer sent him.”

“She wants to talk with him some more…”

“We’ll be in blackout… He’s really out of it, Martin.”

“What they’re doing might be important.”

“I’d force him if I could, but he’s like a zombie. Anything more and he’ll break.”

“Then she’s on her own for a while,” Martin said.

Hans made an ambiguous humph. “I’m feeding you more data from our remotes. The whole system is a circus. Don’t tell anybody I said so, but I think we’ve more than met our match. The moms say they’re not going to confuse us with guesses.”

“I just can’t figure any of it,” Hans said. “Wouldn’t it be safer for them to destroy all intruders and visitors? Especially after the supernova—they know something’s in the neighborhood.”

“I’m willing to make some guesses,” Martin said. “I think they could have destroyed us already, but they’re keeping up appearances. If they don’t believe our disguise, they still can’t be positive it’s a disguise. Maybe they’re extra cautious, in case we’re backed up by something even more powerful.”

But no amount of discussion could make them feel any more certain, or any easier.

The ships’ distances grew, and blackout with Greyhound, and then with Shrike, left them completely on their own.

Jennifer began to brood, and spent most of her off-duty time in her quarters, shared with Erin Eire. Martin worried she was on the same course as Giacomo.

The Brothers discovered chess, and it became a release for them. One entire day, all the Brothers aboard Trojan Horse played chess without eating or sleeping. Losing a game caused a humiliating shock and momentary separation; by the end of the day, to Martin’s surprise, cords were playing cords. The cords seemed much better at the game than braids, touching the projected pieces with their claws to make