Collected Short Fiction, page 659
By now the rogue was ancient and mature, in its own terms at least; it had existed and learned through billions of cycles of its picosecond reflexes. It had learned a full complement of “emotions,” or at any rate of those polarizing tropisms which did for it what the glandular byproducts called emotions did for human beings. It had learned anger, and the calm pride of the target sun called forth anger in the rogue:
If it would only recognize me! If it would only admit causing the sun of Earth to strike at me! If it would offer some apology for deceiving me, for its contempt of me . . . then perhaps yet I could stop my blow . . .
But it ignored him.
The rogue was not entirely ignored. Though the great white star blazed on passionlessly, benevolently, still the rogue found itself the target for great forces from elsewhere. Another sun of Almalik had joined the attack upon it. The blue companion of the golden giant stabbed at it with a twisting shaft of plasma, a monstrous snake of glowing ions and transcience energy, which pierced to the rogue’s heart, withdrew and jabbed again.
An agony of meta-pain jolted the rogue to its innermost plasma swirl; but it was not destroyed. It gathered its forces and sought for a weapon to hurl back the thrust of the blue star.
And it found one. Passing by the great fifth planet of the unresisting white sun, the rogue reached out with its plasma arms to snatch a string of moons. It gathered them to itself, fired their shattered mass into its own body, linked their electrons into its transcience patterns. With its new mass it strengthened its defenses.
And secure in its new strength, it drew more strength from the attacking stars themselves. It sucked their transcience energies, through the blue bolts and the golden ones, tightened its transflection fields and hurled its new mass always faster toward the maddening white star that glowed on, contemptuous of all the rogue could do.
And that phase of the battle ended.
Though the rogue had never struck back at the twin attacking giants, they were beaten.
Their plasma coils had exhausted even their giant strength. The coils withdrew, collapsed, disintegrated. The blue giant shrank and dimmed; its golden companion swelled and reddened.
And then they were both dead. Their fusion fires still blazed on—but mindlessly, now; the intellects that had animated them were drained empty.
Sentience had fled from them. Anger and fear and purpose had gone. The blue star swelled again, the golden companion shrank back to normal size; they had become merely globes of reacting nuclear gas, normal atomic engines no longer controlled by any transcience intellect.
It was a clear victory for the rogue . . . but his major enemy, the bright white star in his path, was still the same.
It was not defeated. If it was even threatened, it gave no sign.
The rogue felt its vast quiet mind watching, alert but strangely unafraid. It was anomalous, the rogue considered, that the target star did not request mercy, or a discussion of terms. Anomalous—and somehow disturbing.
But the rogue would not be deterred from its purpose. It plunged on to smash the white star and its haughty pride. It sought and found new fuel for its vengeance. Passing a cloud of asteroids, it swept them up and added them to its mass. It reached ahead to gather in the barren satellite of the fourth planet and crushed and fused the new mass into its own as it sought to crush and fuse all the suns of Almalik.
Already in anticipation, it tasted the acrid joy of victory and destruction.
Thirteen suns would die or be driven to mindless burning. A hundred planets and a thousand inhabited worldlets would be destroyed. A million million living things would go up in white-hot plasma as the stars died . . .
And among them, thought the rogue with a bleak stab of pain, would be the trivial living blob of organised matter called Molly Zaldivar.
I do not wish Molly Zaldivar to die. She must die. I will not save her. But I do not wish her to die, because I love her.
In its deadly plunge toward the white star it sent thin threads of plasma effectors ahead to seek her out. Its sensor filaments ranged the cubic miles of void and found her at last, still on the sleeth, far ahead of the rogue and dropping toward the atmosphere of the third planet. The arm of the golden giant that had freed her from the rogue was gone now, with its master’s death; but Molly Zaldivar still lived.
And felt the rogue’s delicate tendril-touch.
She looked up, unerringly toward the point in space where his massed energies were driving the planet down to its primary. “Monster?” she whispered.
The rogue was silent. It merely watched, and listened.
“Monster,” she said, more confident now, “I know you’re there. I don’t mind.”
She was silent for a moment, leaning forward over the sleek black skin of the sleeth, staring toward the cloudy world below. “You’ve done so much harm, monster,” she sighed. “I wish . . . And yet you’ve tried to be good to me. Monster, I’m so sorry that you must make war on Almalik!”
The rogue did not answer. But it probed her interior spectrum of thoughts and energies, registered the dark shadow of sadness and, with it, a pale golden glow of—of what? Love? Fondness at least, the rogue considered.
It contracted its tendril to the merest whisper, content only to observe her, while it considered. Its strength was so immeasurably greater than her own that it could lift her from the sleeth in an instant. The energies that had hurled planets about and slain stars could fold both her and the sleeth back into its own fused and glowing mass effortlessly, carrying them with it into the collision with the proud white star ahead.
But it did not.
It watched her carefully, but without interfering, as she darted, secure in the sleeth’s shimmering transflection fields, into the ionized border-layers of the third planet’s atmosphere and dropped swiftly toward the cities on its surface.
The third planet was a blue-green world and beautiful. It was a world of peaceful seas and friendly continents. Dazzling cities dwelt along its oceans and rivers, inhabited by all the many kinds of creatures that were companions of Almalik.
The rogue watched her drop into the towering spires of one of the cities. It was not yet too late; it could sweep her up even there, and bring her back in the effortless recoil of one of its plasma arms.
But it stayed its energies. It merely watched, as it drove on toward the collision, now little more than an hour off, which would sear and melt this world, and destroy the organized mass of matter that was Molly Zaldivar.
XX
The flyer, with its organic passengers and trailed by the green spirals and the pink-cloud citizen, fell endlessly through the transflection distances and emerged into the exit port on Kaymar, crown city of the planet of Kaymar, central world of Almalik.
Clothilde Kwai Kwich’s hand tightened in consternation on Andy Quam’s arm. Beside him the boy gasped: “Preacher! Looks like we’ve come to a bad place!”
The great central dome of the city seethed with citizens of all kinds. Many were human, in this central city of the worlds of Almalik, calm Terrestrials, bronzed giants from the Reefs. But there were citizens in a myriad of shapes and in no shapes at all, liquid citizens and gaseous citizens, citizens that had no form of matter to clothe the bare energies that constituted their beings. The diaphragm of the transflex cube behind them was already contracting on a full load of refugees lucky enough to be on their way to some other world. The shouts, cries, hissing whistles, electronic pulses’ and other sounds of the countless thousands who had not yet been so lucky added up to a vast chorus of pleas for help. Twenty crystal citizens hung just before them, their razor-sharp edges of bright blue transparency flashing in the suns of Almalik. Quam dropped the flyer to the ramp, opened the door and led the way, ducking under the crystal citizens.
“Got to get out of this crush,” he panted. “Headquarters of the Companions of the Star is just over here—I think—”
Clothilde Kwai Kwich cried breathlessly, “Yes, Andy! They’ll still be functioning; we’ll go there, and—” But she had no breath to finish. It was all they could do to urge their way through the incredible press of citizens. There was neither violence nor outright panic; those were not the enemies. But there were so many of them, so many countless thousands more than the transflex cube could evacuate in the few score minutes left, and backed by so many thousands of thousands more that had not yet managed to make their way even into the central dome of the city. They were orderly. They were brave. But each of them knew that most of them were doomed.
They fought their way to a clear space and paused for breath. The carnivore citizen was the least affected of them; he glanced at young Rufe and bayed a laughing comment which the translators in Quamodian’s ear rendered as: “Let the cub ride my shoulders! We’ll never make it any other way.”
“Naw!” flamed Rufe. “I can keep up if you can. Come on, preacher, let’s do what we came to do!”
The pinkly glowing cloud citizen was the worst damaged of the party. Little cloudlets of his material had been detached; some were still floating after him, rejoining the central mass of his being; others were hopelessly lost in the crush behind them. The grass-green spirals had merely tightened their orbits, maintaining exact spacing and speeds.
“All right,” said Andy Quam. “Let’s go!”
But a great shout from the dome behind them made them turn.
Every citizen, warm-blooded or cold, humanoid or amorphous, was staring upward, through the crystal ceiling of the dome, with ten thousand thousand eyes, photoreceptors, radar scanners, sensors of every description.
There, streaked like a child’s bright daub on the calm blue skies of Kaymar, hung the bright and glittering globe of the invading rogue star. Lightnings played about its blazing body as it shot across the sky, its motion visible even though its distance was many millions of miles.
Andy Quam tore his eyes away. “Come on,” he muttered. “We’ve got even less time than I thought.”
The Grand Hall of the Companions of the Star was empty. The thirteen suns of Almalik blazed down from the ceiling on an auditorium that could seat thousands, and now held no one at all.
Monitor Clothilde Kwai Kwich said dolefully: “I can’t understand. I thought here at least we’d find someone who could help—”
The chant of the grass-green spirals sounded in Andy Quam’s ears: “No indications! No operative functions being performed! This construct not inhabited!”
The boy clutched Quamodian’s arm. “But preacher,” he said. “Almalik told us to come here. Didn’t he?” Quamodian said, “He gave us permission. Directly. Yes.” He turned, searching the vast room with his eyes. “But perhaps something has happened.”
The weary sigh of the cloud citizen whispered: “There exists a large-scale entity which is observing us.” Quamodian flung himself into a chair, trying to think. Time was so short! He had counted on finding the order of Companions of the Star still functioning. Perhaps it had not been realistic, but in his mind he had expected to find the great hall thronged with worshippers, the many offices and administrative sections busy about the endless tasks of Almalik. If he had thought at all, he had thought that a robot monitor or a citizen would have greeted them at the entrance, led them directly to someone in supreme authority, received his information about the rogue—and acted. Acted in time to save this world, and all the world of Almalik.
He had not expected that the building would be empty.
The others were waiting quietly for him to act. He realized that, right or wrong, he would have to make the decisions for all of them. And there was less time with every passing clock-tick . . .
He stood up. “All right,” he said, “we’ll go back to the transflex cube. Perhaps the monitors there can help us.”
“Through that mob, preacher? Impossible!” cried the boy.
“Impossible or not, that’s what we’ll have to do. Unless you have a better idea—”
But then, as they turned to leave, a Voice rumbled softly in their ears.
“Wait,” it said.
They froze where they stood. The girl looked imploringly at Andy Quam. She did not speak, but her lips formed a word: “Almalik?”
He nodded; and the Voice spoke again:
“Behold,” it said, and the great dome lifted on its transflection forces to reveal the splendor of the heavens themselves. It was daytime now; the glittering stars that the dome was designed to reveal could not be seen. But the bright smear of the invader was there, blighting the beauty of the calm clouds. And near it in the sky, dropping toward them—
“It’s Miss Zaldivar!” shouted the boy. “Look, preacher! It’s her and the sleeth!”
They were in that great hall for less than a quarter of an hour, and in all that time Quamodian could not after remember taking a breath. He was overpowered by the immense majesty of Almalik himself, brooding over them, watching and helping. Even the nearness of the girl he had crossed half a universe to find could not break him free from the spell of that immortal and immense star.
Though what was said was surely catastrophic enough to rouse him to action; for Molly Zaldivar, she said, was dying.
“Dear Andy,” she whispered across the vast gulf of the chamber, her voice warm and affectionate in his ears. “No! Don’t come any closer to me. I’m charged with radiations, Andy dear—the old ones from the Plan of Man machines, new ones that our Little monster-star used to try to save my life. Or to give me life again; because I was dead. Anyway, if you come near me now it will be your death . . .”
Even so, he rose to run toward her; but she stopped him with her hand. “Please,” she whispered. “Now. What was it that you came from Earth to tell?”
He stammered out the story the Reefer had told him, while Clothilde Kwai Kwich and the boy, one on each side of him, stood silent and awed. Molly Zaldivar listened gravely, her face composed though her eyes widened, then danced, as she saw how Clothilde’s hand sought his.
Then she said, “Thank you, Andy. You’ve always been the best friend I could ever hope to have. I—”
Her composure almost broke for a moment, but she controlled herself, and smiled. “I don’t mind leaving this world much, dear Andy. But I do mind leaving you.”
And then she was gone, mounting once more toward the sky on the great, patient back of the sleeth, while the enormous dome of Almalik swung majestically back into place to blot her out.
XXI
Something had happened. The rogue’s thin thread of sensor had been snapped; it had lost Molly Zaldivar and her sleeth.
It tried to find them again for many picoseconds, but in vain. Some force larger than itself had shut her off, blinded it to her activities. A sense that in a human might have been called foreboding filled the rogue; but it had not time for even meta-emotions; it was driving ever closer to its enemy sun, and it needed all its forces for the task ahead.
The third planet had fallen far behind it now. It flashed through the orbit of the second planet, now hidden from it at inferior conjunction by the expanding white sun. The great white disk grew ahead of it.
—Still the star ignores my attack. It refuses to resist. It offers no apology for the attacks it has made on me through its lesser stars. Still it is watching . . . mocking me . . .
“Monster! Stop for me. Now!” The thin filament of the rogue’s probing sensor was alive again, carrying a message for it. The rogue energized its perceptions and saw that Molly Zaldivar was pursuing, racing after it on the black and shining sleeth. There was a power flowing from her that the rogue could not quite recognize, but that made it uneasy, unsure of itself. The feeble human frame of organized matter that was the girl should not have been able to dispose such powers. Not even with the energies the rogue itself had bestowed on her; not though her life was close to an end, and all her accumulated strengths were being disposed at once.
The rogue considered for some nanoseconds the possibility that these forces came from its enemy, Almalik. But it dismissed the possibility. It simply did not matter. Contact was only minutes away. Already the thin solar atmosphere was boiling around it. It did not stop, perhaps could not stop; the gathered mass of its planetary body was plunging too fast to be diverted now.
But it sent a message through its plasma effector, shaking the thin atmosphere that the sleeth carried with it through space. “What do you want, Molly Zaldivar?” its tiny voice piped. “Do you love me now?”
Her answer sent a seismic tremor through the core of the planet it had made its body: “Love you, monster? I don’t know. I cannot imagine it. And yet—yes, perhaps I do. If it matters . . .”
The rogue shook in its mad plunge. Its boiling seas loosed huge clouds of vapor as, for a moment, its grasp slackened; lightnings played through its tortured skies. But Molly was “still speaking:
“But I have no life left to love anyone, monster. My body is dying, and I must tell you something. Monster! Please listen. Almalik is not your enemy.”
A shock of doubt shattered the rogue’s great joy.
“Listen, monster! Almalik never hurt you. Almalik has renounced all violence. He could not harm you, nor any sentient thing. Ever!”
Rage shook the rogue now. The crustal rocks of its planetary body snapped, and white-hot magma spewed forth. In the air around Molly Zaldivar its tiny voice shrieked: “Lies! Lies again! The sun of Earth that tried to kill me was Almalik’s vassal! Its twin stars that tried to kill me again—they were Almalik’s companions!”
But Molly Zaldivar’s voice came strongly: “No, monster. I lied to you once, yes. Because I was afraid of you. But Almalik has never lied, nor has he tried to harm you. The sun of Earth that struck you—it was your own brother!”
The rogue called back the huge effector that it had lashed out to strike her. Puzzled, its shrill voice repeated, “Brother?”
“Yes, your brother! Another synthetic sentience, made before you. It occupied the sun of Earth and tried to destroy you—came here before you, and tried to destroy you again through the twin stars of Almalik. But you defeated it, monster. And now it is gone, and you must stop before you destroy great Almalik!”
