Anvil of Stars

Eye on Sky uncoiled, smelling faintly of turpentine and dry grass. “We we have spoken with Shrike. Something important found hidden. Greyhound’s help is requested.”

Ariel appeared greatly relieved.

The remains of Sleep smeared out in an arc that in a few million years would form a ring of asteroids around Leviathan. Already, Leviathan’s radiation and particle winds pushed the lighter elements in the arc outward.

Greyhound accelerated to join with Shrike at the nearest terminus of this arc, a journey of sixty-two million kilometers.

At ten g’s, Greyhound would reach Shrike in less than three hours. The crews endured the field restraints; the acceleration was not so extreme as to completely inhibit activity.

They had enough time to vote. The nominees spoke briefly; Mei-li withdrew, saying she was much too confused and uncertain to exercise leadership. Martin noted with some satisfaction that Ariel did not withdraw.

Hans watched silently, standing by himself to one side.

The vote was conducted secretly by wand. Martin tallied the results.

“Ariel is Pan,” he announced.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Starting now?” she asked.

“Starting now,” Martin affirmed.

“I choose Jeanette Snap Dragon to be my second,” she said.

The defectors were not prepared for this, and left the schoolroom to talk.

Ariel stood beside Martin, distinctly nervous as the crew congratulated her singly and in groups. “I shouldn’t have accepted the nomination,” she said to him in a brief free moment. “This is awful. You really have it in for me, don’t you?”

“You’ll do fine,” Martin said.

“Oh, God, I chose Jeanette. Why did I do that?”

“Brings unity,” Martin assured her, though he had his doubts.

“Are you going to help me, or just gloat?”

“Both,” Martin said.

She squinted one eye and curled her lip. “I deserve it,” she said. “Oh, God, I’m an idiot.”

Shrike sent no more transmissions. Martin thought this might be a small game on the part of the Brothers, and his interest was piqued. Eye on Sky refused to say any more, even with Paola’s urging; the Brother smelled strongly of turpentine.

What could possibly compel them to ask for human help? The Brothers were convinced destruction of the Leviathan system had been wrong, or at the very least premature…

Martin studied the crew in the schoolroom. He could see no more vortices of power, and wondered if he had hallucinated them. What he saw now was quiescence, waiting. Even Ariel drew no more attention than she might have before she was Pan. She sat talking quietly with Anna Gray Wolf and Martin felt a stab of loneliness; she had needed him, the need had passed. He had not nurtured it very well.

Hans squatted in a lotus before the star sphere, ragged, thin, pale, fingers tapping the floor lightly. His face seemed religious with concentration and something like fear: fear that what the Brothers had found might prove they had acted incorrectly. Fear of responsibility for the deaths of trillions…

Trillions of what? Martin asked himself. Ghosts? Shells? Robots? Deceptions? Real, intelligent beings? Innocents?

The last possibility was more than he could bring himself to contemplate.

Scouts continued to work through the detritus like little fish swimming through a swirl of sand and mud, sending information by noach to Greyhound. Shrike no doubt had its own scouts, but the arc was huge, three million kilometers from end to end and several hundred thousand kilometers broad, and the area studied by Shrike was still relatively unknown to them.

Giacomo approached Martin and kneeled beside him. Martin looked up; surprised himself by having napped. He glimpsed the star sphere; Greyhound was very near Shrike. “What is it?” Martin asked.

“We’re here. Stonemaker won’t talk to any human but you. He’s on the noach, and he wants it private.”

“Did you tell Ariel?” She was not in the schoolroom.

Giacomo nodded, biting his lower lip. “She told me to get you. Search team doesn’t see anything. We don’t know what they’ve got or what they’re up to.”

A field had wrapped around him automatically while he slept, to restrain him as the acceleration ended. He converted it to a ladder and followed Giacomo to the nose.

Ariel met him outside the nose. She smiled quickly. “The Brothers like you, Martin.”

He made a wry face and pushed into the nose.

Even to the naked eye, the destruction of Sleep was impressive. Greyhound seemed to hang motionless beside Shrike about ten thousand kilometers above the arc of Sleep’s corpse, a glittering, mottled span of dust and rubble like a layer of oil and dirt on a pond. Glowing commas of molten stuff haunted the arc. One comma disintegrated before his eyes, a silent leap of puckering orange. Beyond the arc, closer in to Leviathan, two diffuse blotches marked other ruins, like swift strokes of watercolor on wet black paper.

“I’ll project the noach here,” Thorkild said, refusing to meet his eyes. “You know how to use it. Of course you do.” He looked as if he was about to cry. “Martin…”

Martin held his finger to his lips, shook his head reassuringly, falsely. He didn’t know how long it would take the wounds to heal, but he did not want to deal with Thorkild now.

Eye on Sky slid into the nose as Thorkild departed. “I we told Stonemaker you have stayed sensible,” Eye on Sky said. “Do not know others as well.”

“Thanks,” Martin said. “What’s happened?”

Eye on Sky splayed his head cords, very attentive. A noached image of Stonemaker shimmered into solidity before them.

“I we am thankful you survived,” Stonemaker said. “You should see what we we have found. Judge with and mark we our opinions.” Stonemaker faded and was replaced by a roller-coaster ride through glowing rubble, wisps of hot gas, into a dark void.

“Record of scout sending,” Eye on Sky explained, making a scent of sharp cinnamon and warm animal. The smell aroused homesickness, deeper loneliness. Gauge. He smells a bit like Gauge.

The void was a great hollow, perhaps ten thousand kilometers wide, cleared somehow in the middle of the arc like a bubble. He was about to ask if it was natural when he spotted a speck at its center, little more than a dust mote in the tarry darkness. The mote glowed green.

Human measurements appeared to the left of the image. The mote, now fist sized and growing rapidly, was about a hundred kilometers in diameter. He could not discern clearly what it was; the ghoulish green spot seemed made of many smaller versions of itself. Enlarged, the mass revealed cluster upon cluster of much smaller needle- like objects, in all manner of arrangements; rolled, bundled, pointing outward in pincushion radiants.

Martin’s throat shrank around his voice and breath. He coughed, covered his mouth with a fist, tried to control his horror, the excruciating churn of emotions within.

Millions upon millions of needles, each fifty to a hundred meters long. He had grown up with their design, their measure; the moms had displayed them again and again to the children in training.

“We our scouts have found forty-one of these collections,” Stonemaker said. “They waited within Sleep. All we we have examined appear to be recent manufacture, not old artifacts.”

Wrapped in protective fields like frog eggs in gelatin cases, survivors of Sleep’s destruction, the needles were not thousands of years old, not artifacts of a bygone and indiscreet age.

They were new. Waiting.

“Do you agree with we our suspecting?”

“Yes,” Martin croaked, and coughed again. “Oh, God, yes.”