Adiamante (34 page)

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Authors: Jr. L. E. Modesitt

BOOK: Adiamante
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I stuffed Cherle and the marcybs in the back seat.
“Cheer up,” I told Cherle. “You get to go home.”
He didn't answer, just looked at the magshuttle floor, mumbling, “Don't understand … just don't understand … .”
When we landed at Berkin's to the south, the black clouds massed over the seared earth and black glass that had been Parwon.
A series of golden streaks flashed across the sky—more adiamante fragments coming to rest—hard memories of harder choices. My fingers went to the fragment in my jacket pocket for a moment, slipping around that smoothness that was neither hot nor cold.
And because the Consensus Committee had resolved that the crisis wasn't over, and that Old Earth still needed a Coordinator, I was still stuck with the need to go back to the command center with its odors of ozone, metal, and death.
A
s planetary Coordinator, I had to go to Klamat as part of the ceremony that would send the cybs back to Gates. So I trudged out into the dawn, and waited on the
de facto
landing pad east of the end of the escape tunnel. I stood in the chill and the wind, wearing the damned black cloak that Arielle had made, even though it reminded me of Crucelle—and Elanstan and Rhetoral—the dagger, shield, and sword who had led the many who had given all to defend us … and the Construct. The occasion demanded the cloak, if only for me, and its personal symbolism. I'd also brought the chunk of adiamante I'd picked up in hunting down the last cybs. That seemed fitting, somehow.
Behind me straggled Lictaer, Arielle, the six nameless marcybs, Cherle, and Kemra.
Before the sun cleared the eastern peaks, one of the large magfield shuttles hummed out of the gray sky. The door slid open. I stepped inside and peered forward, recognizing a familiar face under short red hair—Lieza.
“I'm glad you made it,” I told her.
“Thank you. Be nice when things settle down.” Her eyes were tired, ringed with black.
I sat down in the right front seat. Arielle sat across from me.
“How are you?”
“Fine.” Arielle paused. “Not now, please.”
I deferred. Grieving was harder and longer for the rat-comps, for the logical, because loss is neither rational nor logical.
The magshuttle's door slid shut after Lictaer settled the cybs into the rear seats.
“We're lifting,” Lieza announced.
As the shuttle lifted and banked toward the northwest, I leaned back in the seat and closed my eyes, feeling guilty for being merely tired after seeing Lieza's face.
My eyes didn't stay closed that long, because someone moved up next to me. I opened my eyes, trying not to sigh.
Kemra stood there in her smudged and wrinkled green uniform. “I'd like to apologize.” Her eyes dropped, then lifted to mine.
I sat there waiting. Behind Kemra watched Arielle, the hooded darkangel.
“There's … what else can I say? We didn't know. I didn't want to know.” The green eyes dropped again, and she swayed as the shuttle eased out of the wide turn.
What could I say? That I'd practically screamed at them? It wouldn't do any good to hammer that farther. I rummaged in my trouser pocket and pulled out the adiamante. “You might take this with you.” I handed Kemra the fragment of adiamante. “It's one of the hull fragments.”
“I've never seen a piece this small.” Her voice was neutral.
“Old Earth is covered with fragments of adiamante,” I answered. “Until you came, I hadn't realized how many there are. The meleysens can't break them down. Nothing, except the interior of a sun, can change them.”
“Or your defense net,” she added.
“That's a high price,” I pointed out. “But one we'll pay if necessary. We hope it's never necessary again.” I sighed. “It will be, but not against you and your people, I trust.”
She looked at the adiamante. “I'll try.”
“That's all any of us can do.” I looked at her.
She looked back, finally saying, “I am sorry. It doesn't mean much, and I can see how much you tried.”
“Think about the adiamante.” I was too tired to say much more. “It says more than I can.” And it did—the hardest manmade substance, and it couldn't stand up to the souls of human beings.
I closed my eyes, and Kemra eased back to her seat in the rear of the shuttle, Arielle's eyes on her the entire way. I wouldn't have wanted that, but Kemra deserved that and more, probably.
As ceremonies go, the one in Klamat wasn't particularly impressive, but some events must be finished, and ceremonies are one of the few ways societies can observe endings. So a dozen of us, me and eleven members of the Consensus Committee, stood facing the cybs, with net-imagers focused on us and upon the dozen or so marcybs and the three surviving officers—Kemra, Cherle, and a subforcer from the cyb group that had attacked Ellay.
As Coordinator, I had to do the speaking, and as at the Hybernium so comparatively few days earlier, I didn't want to.
“We are sending you home to Gates, and we're providing a ship as a symbol of trust. That is because the key to the universe, the key to survival, is trust. Trust is acting in good faith when you have no reason so to act. Trust is refraining from attacking an enemy first, no matter what the cost. Why is that wise? Because once any person or society strikes first, that action sows the seeds of corruption. Logic, even pure cyb logic, is formidable enough that it can justify any action, no matter how base or corrupt, as necessary to survival.
“Physical survival is not enough, not for either a person or a society. A society's principles must also survive, and if you betray your principles for physical survival, then you have doomed your offspring and your society. Principles can be improved, and we have slowly changed ours for what we believe to be the better, but they should never be changed or discarded for short-term expediency. No matter
what the price, we must do what is right, and part of what is right is trust.
“The second key is mutual respect, within a society, and without. We have not threatened Gates since its establishment, and will not—unless Gates proves itself meriting mistrust. We hope not, but, as you have seen, we can and will act, and we will pay the price.
“We respect the integrity of Gates, and leave you to choose your own principles and destiny—provided you respect ours. Fail to respect others, and you are doomed—one way or the other.”
I stopped. What else could I say? Then I added, “Convey this to your people. As invaders, as conquerors, you are unwelcome anywhere. As individuals, as visitors, as friends, you are welcome on Old Earth.”
That really was it.
Dynise had dug up a decent hornist, and the hornist played something that brought tears to the eyes of Cherle and a couple of the marcybs, and it was over.
As the shuttle carrying the cybs up to the starship opened its hatch, Kemra crossed the permacrete toward me. I stiffened. What else did she have to say?
“Reasonable or not, Coordinator, you're harder than adiamante,” Kemra said, her words coming from her mind, not her mouth, for the first time, and with a hint of warmth I had not seen in any of the cybs. Had not seen—or had not been there? “Not harder,” she corrected, “stronger.” She displayed the black oval I'd given her.
With that single net contact, I knew … . But she continued, the words screen clear and rushing at me, hiding one truth behind all the meaning they conveyed. “I don't know that any of us could bear the power and the pain …” she shook her head, “or would want to.”
I thought of the million dead: not more than a handful of demis from the cyb-sluggers or other technological gadgets; of the 100,000 draffs blasted by tach-heads; of
Elanstan, Rhetoral, Crucelle, Dorgan … . My list would have been long.
“Old Earth really is the Planet of Death … . The legends were right … but, it's also the planet of life. I have the wildflowers, and we can replicate them—all of them.”
“I wish you well.” Each word was hard, because I understood what she had not said. What I knew and would not say, for there was no reason to, was that she would carry my child: strange enough since I had never touched her, nor she me, except once, when she had scratched me, deeply enough to draw cell samples—enough for DNA replication, though I doubted that had been her exact intention.
“You, too, Coordinator.” She offered a formal smile, inclined her head, and turned. I watched her climb into the shuttle. In her hand was an oval of adiamante, a reminder that even the hardest substance in the universe can fail.
For all our nets, for all our communications, humans—cybs or demis—are aliens, aliens to each other, and to the universe, and that is why we must trust.
I watched, standing beside the white tower that was the image of the one that had stood in Parwon, a tower that was now melted white and black glass rising at the edge of steaming ruins.
The hatch slid shut, and Kemra was gone, and so were the cybs, and so was the conflict—until the next set of aliens.
Why do we wait? How could we do otherwise?
I shook my head. There was rebuilding to do—we'd need another asteroid satellite defense net, and that meant moving another dozen or more nickel-iron asteroids into the ell spaces. Given the amount of coercion I'd employed as Coordinator, I was going to be busy at that, and satellite development and maintenance for a long, long, time—maybe the rest of my life.
The cybs—or someone—would be back, but it would
be long enough that the next time it would be someone else's problem.
Arielle looked toward me, and I pulsed at her. “Not for a moment.”
I walked up the permacrete to the north, into the wind, away from the others. There was one other thing that I'd put off too long. A locial landing strip wasn't perfect, but nowhere would ever be perfect. I took a deep breath and pushed out a tentative pulse on the shaky, but now-functioning uppernet.
“Yslena?”
“Father! You're there!”
“Not exactly. I'm temporarily in Klamat.”
“Oh … the send-off for the cybs. I should have guessed. I should have watched.”
“Nothing exciting. I gave a short sermon on trust and mutual respect. A trumpet played, and they're shuttling up to the ship.”
“You make it sound so unimportant.”
“It is. What's important is what I've put off for too long. What I never quite said to your mother, but I didn't have to because she knew. You and I, we need the words.” I paused, struggling, “I'll be going back to Deseret. There's not much left of the house, except black glass, but I'm well. Tired, but doing all right. There won't be much free time—and I owe so much comptime I'll spend the rest of my life doing tech maintenance, but that's all right. There'll be another house, in time.
“I don't have much to say, except the important thing—I love you. I always have, and I always will, and it's taken me too long to say it, because I always let your mother do it.”
“I knew,” she said softly.
“Knowing and hearing it are two different things, and you should hear it. That I hadn't told you was something that hit me. I was lucky. I survived and got to tell you. I
might not have been.” I swallowed. “Since there's no place for you to come back to, not now, I'll be coming to see your reef, and, later, you can come back to Deseret, when there's something there.”
“That's not important. I'm glad you linked.”
So was I. We talked more, and the rest was interesting, but the important things had been said.
After we broke the link, I stood on the permacrete as the rain filtered down like mist, and a thousand klicks southwest, Swift-Fall-Hunter circled the hilltop with the black-glass center, then swung out over the valley
Morgen had understood; so had Crucelle; I had not, though now I did.
There was another hilltop that could—and would—bear a home, and another set of piñons to run through, and another golden eagle … in between the years of comptime that stretched ahead, but the work would be good.
Morgen would not be there, though I owed her more than I could ever repay, and neither would Kemra, for all that she and the cybs had forced me to return to life—but Yslena would be, and perhaps others, as the years passed. And all would add to the future.
Klicks away, somewhere, Swift-Fall-Hunter circled, and I wished him well, as I wished the cybs well—Kemra and those few others headed starward on their borrowed ship, and those who lived on Gates and elsewhere—hoping that they would learn from the events we had survived, but not counting on that either.
I only counted on today's sunlight and snow, on the rain that dampened my face.

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