George Zebrowski (33 page)

Kurbi watched the screen.

“There,” Julian said, pointing. “He’s back in the Snake, on a course for Earth.”

“He shows a renewed confidence,” Kurbi said.

“You would too, after that maneuver. We’ll have to push hard to keep up.”

“Do you think Earth has enough firepower to destroy him?”

“Sure — if the ship can be tracked long enough to dump a sun’s energy into it. He’ll take his time getting to Earth.”

Kurbi looked around the bridge. A few of the officers were staring at him from their stations. A junior officer seemed to be struggling to control his fear. One of the engineers seemed skeptical. They all knew that Gorgias was dead, Kurbi realized, but the two lunatics in command were talking as if the Herculean had risen from the dead.

Myraa opened her eyes.

“I’m free of you,” Gorgias said over the ship-com.

She searched herself and found only distant echoes. Gorgias was still anchored within her, but he also flowed through the ship. She was too weak to pull him back.

“You’ll see them all die,” he said, laughing.

“If he answers,” Poincaré said, “we’ll have further confirmation that this crazy business is true.” He glanced at the communications officer.

Subspace beams chased after the Whisper Ship.

Kurbi watched the gray screen.

It flickered after a few moments and Myraa’s face appeared.

Kurbi waited for Gorgias to speak through her, but another voice sounded in the Whisper Ship’s control room. “You could not kill me, Kurbi! Now you’ll see what I’ll do to Earth!”

“He’s … in the ship also,” Myraa struggled to say.

There was a long pause. Myraa’s face became a mask.

“Now he controls her and the ship,” Kurbi whispered.

“Turn back now,” Julian said, “or we’ll destroy Myraa’s World.”

The featureless voice growled in anger and was silent. “Very well,” it said finally and cut the link.

Kurbi shot a glance at Julian.

“What can we do, Raf? I hope it will only have to be a threat.”

“The way he snatched Myraa suggests to me that he may have more in reserve than we can guess.”

“A cheap trick. Impressive, but we’re a hundred ships.”

Kurbi shook his head. “There’s more happening than we can see.”

“You think he’ll sweep through and kidnap us both?”

“Why not?”

“We
can
destroy him. It’s not impossible.”

“Assuming you can keep the ship in the beams long enough to do damage. Destroying Myraa’s World won’t stop him either. It’ll just free him of an obligation and stiffen his resolve.”

“He must believe that we
will
destroy it.”

“He’ll call our bluff, Julian. We’re dealing with a terrorist of some experience.”

“Then we will destroy the place and follow him. What else can we do?”

“The planet is no hostage at all, therefore. The people there are innocent, so you might just as well leave it alone.”

“Earth may send someone else to do it if I don’t.”

Kurbi glared at Poincaré. “Then let them. There may be enough time for the situation to change, so why rush into it?”

“Raf, we can’t leave him a place to come back to.”

“He doesn’t need it! He can always retreat to his base. You know that.”

Poincaré looked around the bridge. “Keep alert! He’ll appear at any moment.” The officers were silent, watching their instruments nervously.

Kurbi turned his chair away and stared at the screen.

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“Ourself behind ourself, concealed —”

— Emily Dickinson

THE FLEET WAITED in high orbit over Myraa’s World.

Kurbi watched the sun. “He’ll come out of the star,” he said.
I got too close to him
, Kurbi thought.
He’s never forgiven me for pitying him
.

“We’ll hold him in a cross fire as long as possible,” Poincaré said as ships moved off to take up positions. “What do you think he’s planning?”

“He’s not coming to surrender,” Kurbi said.

Someone laughed behind him. Kurbi turned around. Birkut, the navigator, gave him a sheepish grin. Kurbi nodded to him, and the man returned to his scrutiny of the 3-D tank in the center of the bridge.

Kurbi turned to face Poincaré’s chair again. “That one was born on New Mars after the ice age set in,” the Security Chief whispered. “A hick, but a great technician.”

“Gorgias must have the survivors on Myraa’s World,” Kurbi continued. “There’s no hope for a future without them. So we must expect him to make a stand if their lives are threatened.”

“He can’t hope to do more than delay us in a direct confrontation. We have him now. He has no choice but to fight.”

He’s decided to stand and die
, Kurbi thought,
rather than live without power over the people who will build the new Herculean Empire
.…

“It
is
him, isn’t it?” Julian asked.

“I think so.”

“The ship is a menace, whether it’s run by Myraa or some pattern left behind by Gorgias.”

The alarm wailed.

“All ships!” Poincaré cried. “Full alert!”

The screens flickered around the control pit, filtering the glare of the yellow-orange sun. The Whisper Ship was a black spot on the bright disk.

“Here we go,” Poincaré said.

Kurbi tensed in his chair. A suspicion was forming in his mind.

“Look at that,” Julian said.

The ship glowed white, flared and seemed to explode.

“Jump!” Poincaré shouted as the flare expanded and rushed through the fleet. Kurbi felt a kick in his stomach.

The screens paled, but the color was not quite gray. There was a red tinge in the pallor of jumpspace, as if a fire were burning beyond the ashen veil.

Kurbi gripped the armrests and waited.

Slowly, other escaping ships entered the safety of jumpspace. They appeared slowly, straining to switch over.

“How many?” Poincaré demanded after a few moments.

“Twenty-three!” one of the officers shouted in a broken voice.

Poincaré stared at the main screen. “Come on, a few more,” he whispered, but no more black globes appeared. “They’ve been destroyed,” he admitted finally, his voice shaking. “Search for survivors in normal space.”

The stars kindled into colors.

There was no debris, no lifepods, barely a residue of radiation in the home continuum.

“He’ll make for Earth now,” Julian said as he turned his chair to face Kurbi. “Did you notice the speed of the expansion? We couldn’t react fast enough. Worlds will be nothing before a weapon of that kind.” He was beginning to sweat.

So you’ve found it
, Kurbi thought,
your ultimate vengeance weapon
.

“Alert all worlds in the Snake!” Poincaré ordered, pulling himself together; but strain showed in the stoop of his shoulders and the tightness of his face. “Should have killed her when she first told us,” he said softly, shaking his head. “We waited too long, Raf.” He looked up. “Follow at a safe distance,” he snapped, “if there is such a thing.” He sat back and spun around to face forward again. “Too long,” he repeated.

The screens flashed the normal gray-white as the fleet jumped.

“We should have destroyed the place,” Poincaré said as Myraa’s sun blackened behind them. “It wasn’t worth seventy-seven ships.…”

“Why didn’t you?” a voice demanded.

Kurbi turned around. It was the navigator, Birkut. Next to him, the junior officer seemed to be losing his battle against the fear Kurbi had glimpsed before. The entire eight-member bridge team seemed to be waiting for an answer. They had lost many friends, perhaps even loved ones, on the other ships.

There was nothing anyone could say to them.

He would burn worlds all the way to Earth.

A thousand planets would be no great effort, Gorgias realized. By the time he entered Earth’s sunspace, he would control a flare large enough to vaporize the whole system. There seemed to be no limit to the size of the sphere he could will into existence.

The force-center flowed through him as the ship slipped through the Snake’s jumpspace. There was no fatigue as he flared the ball of energy around the ship, testing the bubble’s strength. The sphere expanded with the fury of his will, whether he was in normal space or not. He would avenge the death of every Herculean world fifty times over.

He would save Earth for last, to give their surviving ships time to return for a humiliating last stand.

And when the inhabited planets of the Snake were only faint traces of starstuff, he would return to Myraa’s World. There he would destroy her will and take her shape for his own. He would leave her to suffer endlessly in the dungeons of his mind; in time he would forget her, and she would fade away.

It would be a universe without enemies, swept clean from Earth to the Cluster. History would begin again for his kind, and no one would challenge its course.

“But Earth will live in us,” Myraa said. “We are its offspring.”

Surprised, he tried to shut her out, but her thoughts shot into him like a swarm of insects, scattering into his most secret places.

He contorted her innards and forced her to bite her hands until they bled. She cried out, writhing in her seat. Her insect-thoughts died within him and he released her.

“You’ll need your enemies,” she said out loud and hurled her pain into him.

He twisted away, laughing.

“You are nothing without their fear.”

The Whisper Ship flickered out of jumpspace, swimming again onto the surface of space-time.

New Mars lay ahead.

Gorgias listened as he swept toward the planet. The globe sang with pleas and protests. Someone had sent out a warning. He remembered the small effort he had once made to destroy it; now he would finish the job.

He watched for signs of resistance. They came at the last moment, a few beams from the exit beacon, as the edge of his expanding field whisked away the planet’s atmosphere.

Heat buckled and cracked the crust.

The advancing ice age was cut short as the oceans boiled.

The globe glowed and exploded.

Gorgias passed through the shards and hot gasses. He looked back as he switched into jumpspace.

The star was alone, black in the ashes.

“It’s not there,” Julian said as they passed the place where New Mars had been. “Even the exit beacon is gone.”

Rensch is dead
, Kurbi thought.

“
Psia kref!
” the navigator cursed behind him. He would never go home again, Kurbi realized.

“How did we let things get this far?” the junior officer asked in a piping voice.

“Quiet!” the first officer said.

Poincaré stared at the screens. “It’ll be one world after another now.”

Seventy-seven ships and a world for my mistakes
. Kurbi glanced at Julian. The Security Chief was sitting sideways, looking cynical and defeated.

“The old paranoids on Earth sensed it somehow,” he said. “They knew!”

“I’m sorry, Julian, for whatever it’s worth.”

“Go back and destroy Myraa’s World!” an unfamiliar voice shouted.

“Fools!” another added.

Poincaré whirled his chair around to face the speakers, but his anger died and he shrugged. “It would have taken a god to foresee this. Say what you wish. It will not be held against you, but I demand order on this ship.…”

How will I live with myself when Earth is gone?
Kurbi asked himself.
There will be no one to take the memory from me
.

“Perhaps Myraa can still do something,” Julian said. “If she’s still alive.”

The navigator laughed. “Fat chance! She’s with them.”

He’ll save us for last.

“We have to follow him,” Poincaré said softly. “He’ll want an audience before he finishes us.”

Kurbi nodded.
I’ll be there
.

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GORGIAS SURGED THROUGH the ship.

He ingested its routines, penetrated systems-structures and stood before the hordes of memory. Quantum entities flashed everywhere within the leviathan of remembrance and reasoning.

Cool and abstract, the infinitesimal universe of the ship’s intelligence was free of time and will; these, Gorgias realized, came in from outside, setting the ship’s creatures into purposeful activity.

Observing his link to the force-center, the ship had channeled energy through him, shaping the destructive sphere of energy, treating him as a component part of itself. His capacities were an integral part of the ship now — time and will incorporated into a universe hungry for function. The vessel was his servant, but it spared him details; he was its highest function.

Better this universe, with its ties to the existence he had known, than the abasement of Myraa’s interiors.

Gorgias shaped an image of himself on the screen and looked out into the control room. Myraa stared at him, unimpressed.

He heard a distant seething.

A withering wind threw him back from the screen.

He fell. Minds invaded him, gnawing at his will. Whispers cut into him like razors, drowning out his thoughts.

“… let go, let go …”

“… what is lost cannot be reclaimed …”

“… infinity beckons …”

“… yet you strive to reenter the realm of preparation …”

“… follow us …”

“… do not look back …”

“… look ahead to knowledge and bliss.…”

“No!” Gorgias shouted, realizing that he had underestimated Myraa again. And he knew how much he needed to be accepted by the last Herculeans; only they could know his power and be moved, enabling him to rebuild himself, to make up for the centuries of humiliation. There was no other way. He was powerful enough to make them suffer, if necessary. They would follow him, or he would swallow them all and become the only Herculean.