Star's End, Page 5

“Greta isn’t my daughter, honey. I just helped a kid who needed somebody…”

  “It’s almost the same thing, isn’t it?”

  “Legally, I guess. On paper. They’d have trouble making it stand up in court.”

  “Tell me. Everything.”

  There was little else to do but talk. He talked.

  The doctor, lurking in the background watching suspiciously, had made it clear that he would be stuck here for a while.

  “All right. Let me know when it gets boring.”

  He had been born in North America on Old Earth, to Clarence Hardaway and Myra McClennon. He had hardly known his father. His mother, for reasons he still did not understand, had elected to raise him at home instead of burying him in the State Creche. Only a few Social Insurees raised their children.

  His early years had been typical for home-raised S.I. children. Little supervision, little love, little education. He had been running with a kid gang before he was eight.

  He had been nine when he had seen his first offworlders. Spikes, they had called them. These had been Navy men in crisp dress blacks diligently pursuing the arcane business of offworlders.

  Those uniforms had captured his imagination. They had become an obsession. He had started keying information out of his mother’s home data retrieval terminal. He had not had the education to decipher most of it. He had started teaching himself, building from the ground up toward the things he so desperately wanted to know.

  At ten he had quit the gang so he would have more time to study. Halfway through his eleventh year the revelation had come. He had to get into space. He had approached a Navy recruiter clandestinely. The man had arranged for him to sneak through the Academy exams.

  He never would have made it had there been no special standards and quotas for Old Earthers. He would have gotten skunked had he been in direct competition with carefully prepared Outworlders, many of whom had grown up in the military life. Half the officers in Service were the children of officers. Service was a complete sub-culture, and one that was becoming increasingly less connected with and controlled by the over-culture. He had had motivation.

  At twelve he had run away from home, fleeing to Luna Command and Academy. In six years he had climbed from dead last to the 95th percentile in class standing. At graduation he had taken his Line option and been assigned to the Fleet. He had served aboard the destroyers Aquitaine andHesse, and the attack cruiser Tamerlane, before requesting Intelligence training.

  Following a year of schooling the Bureau had assigned him as Naval Attaché to the Embassy on Feldspar. He had had a half dozen similar assignments on as many worlds before his work attracted the attention of Admiral Beckhart, whose department handled dangerous operations, and tricks on the grey side of legal.

  He had taken part in several tight missions, and had reencountered his former classmate, Mouse. They had shared several assignments, the last being to join the Starfishers to ferret out information that could be used to force the Seiners to enter the Confederation fold.

  Some of it Amy had heard before. Some she had not. She was not satisfied. Her first comment was, “You didn’t say anything about women.”

  “What do you mean? What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Everything, as far as I’m concerned. I want to know who your lovers were and how come you broke up. What they were like…”

  “You’ll shit in your hand and carry it to China first, Lady.”

  He was still a little dopey. He did not realize that he had said it aloud till he began to wonder why she had shut up so suddenly.

  After one stunned gasp Amy blew out of the room like a tornado looking for a town to wreck.

  The lady doctor came out of the background, took his blood pressure. “She’s pushy, isn’t she?”

  “I don’t know what’s got into her. She wasn’t like that before.”

  “You’ve had an interesting life.”

  “Not really. I don’t think I’d do it the same if I had it to do again.”

  “Well, you could, couldn’t you?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Rejuvenation. I thought it was available to everybody landside.”

  “Oh. Yes. More or less. Some of the brass have been around since Noah landed the Ark. But Fate has a way of catching up with people who try to slide around it.”

  “Wish we had it out here.”

  “You don’t look that old.”

  “I was thinking about my father. He’s getting on now.”

  “I see. How soon can I leave?”

  “Any time, really. But I wish you’d wait a couple hours. You’ll be weak and dizzy.”

  “Mouse was right about sonic sedation.”

  “I know. But I don’t write the medical budget. Good luck, Mr. benRabi. Try not to see me again.”

  “I hate hospitals, Doctor.”

  He did. His only stays had been at Bureau insistence, to modify him mentally or physically.

  He did a few minor exercises before catching a public tram home.

  Amy was waiting. “Oh, Moyshe. That was stupid of me. You were right. Those things aren’t any of my business.”

  She had been crying. Her eyes were red.

  “It’s all right. I understand.” But he did not. His cultural background had not prepared him for personal nosiness. In Confederation people livednow. They did not consider the past.

  “It’s just that I feel… Well, everything’s so chancy the way it is between us.”

  Here she comes, he thought. Hints about getting married.

  Marriage was important to the Seiners. In Confederation it was more an amusing relic, an entertainment or daydream for the young and the romantic. He could not reconcile his attitudes with Seiner seriousness. Not yet.

  The Starfishers had won his loyalty, but they could not make him a different man. They could not make him reflect themselves merely by adopting him.

  Was Mouse having the same trouble? he wondered. Probably not. Mouse was a chameleon. He could adapt anywhere, vanish into any crowd.

  “I have to go to work,” Amy told him. Weariness seemed to be dragging her down.

  “You’d better get some rest yourself, honey.”

  After she left he took out his stamp collection and turned the well-thumbed album pages. Mouse had opened a Pandora’s box by mentioning Max and Greta. After a while he pushed the album aside and tried to compose a letter to the girl.

  He could not think of much to say.

  Five: 3049 AD

  The Contemporary Scene

  Admirals and generals did not have to endure the usual waiting and decontamination procedures getting into Luna Command. The security checks were abbreviated. No staff-grade officer had gone sour since Admiral McGraw had turned freebooter following the peace with Ulant. Admiral Beckhart entered his office just three hours after his personal shuttle berthed a little south of the Sea of Tranquility.

  He had not spared the horses, in the vernacular of another age. The mother had dropped hyper midway between Luna and L-5. The first message he had received had been code-tagged, “Personal presence required immediately. Critical.”

  Either the bottom had dropped off of the universe or McClennon and Storm had come home with their saddlebags dripping delicious little secrets.

  The Crew, as he called his hand-picked brain-trust, were in the office when he arrived.

  He raised a hand. “As you were. What have we got?”

  Jones asked, “You don’t want to shower and change?”

  Beckhart looked ragged. Almost seedy. Like a derelict costumed as an Admiral.

  “You clowns sent a Personal Presence, Critical. If I’ve got time to shit, shower, and shave, you should’ve said it was urgent.”

  “Maybe we were hasty,” Namaguchi admitted. “We’d just scanned the crypto breakdown. We were a little excited.”

  “Breakdown? What the hell’s going on?” Beckhart tu
mbled into a huge chair behind a vast, gleaming wood desk. “Get to the point, Akido.”

  Namaguchi jerked out of his seat, flipped a square of manila across the gleaming desk.

  “Numbers. Your handwriting hasn’t improved.”

  “The Section’s doing up a printout. That, sir, is what Storm had for us.”

  “Well?”

  “Morgan Standard Coordinate Data, sir. A stellar designation. Took us two days to convert it from the Sangaree system.”

  “Sangaree?… Holy Christ! Is it?…”

  “What we’ve been waiting for all our lives. Where to find their home star.”

  “Ah, god. Ah. It can’t be. Two hundred years we’ve been looking. Cutting and dying and generally carrying on like a gang of fascist assholes. So it paid off. I bet my butt on a long shot and it paid off. Give me the comm. Somebody give me the goddamn comm.”

  Jones eased it across the desk. Beckhart punched furiously. “Beckhart. Priority. Hey! I don’t give a damn if he’s banging the Queen of Sheba. Personal, Critical, and I’m going to have your ass for breakfast if you don’t… Excuse me, sir.” His manners improved dramatically.

  “Yes, sir, it is. I want a confirmation of our position on Memorandum of Permanent Policy and Procedure Number Four. Specifically, Paragraph Six.”

  A long silence ensued. Beckhart’s cronies leaned closer and closer to their chief. The man on the other end finally said something.

  “Yes, sir. Absolutely. I have the data in my hand, sir. Just decoded. Give me von Drachau and the First Fleet… Yes, sir. What I want is a blank check for a while. I can get started tomorrow.”

  More silence.

  Then, “Yes, sir. I thought so, sir. I understand, sir. Thank you, sir.” Beckhart broke the connection. “He wants to take it up with the Chiefs of Staff.”

  “They’re going to back down now? After all the lives we’ve spent?”

  “Commander Jones. Do you realize the enormity of what I just dumped on him? Let me draw you a picture. I interrupted him while von Staufenberg was briefing him on what we saw centerward. Which was about what we expected to see, and as pretty as a barge loaded with dead babies. Some psychopathic race is doing its damnedest to kill off anything sentient it can find. Then I horn in and ask for a confirm on Memo Four slash Six. Which is a vow to exterminate the Sangaree whenever we find out where the hell they’re hiding their homeworld. We’re supposed to be the good guys, Jones. The things he’s looking at right now kind of tend to put the damper on the fires of that good old-time anti-Sangaree righteousness.”

  “I don’t see the problem, sir.”

  “Pragmatically it doesn’t exist. Having seen what’s going on centerward, I’d say Four slash Six is a strategic imperative. We’ve got to get those bloodsuckers off our backs fast. They ate us alive during the wars with Ulant and Toke. Any time there’s a dust-up between non-Confederation worlds they come on like jackals. Raidships in swarms… Not to mention the price we pay in stardust addiction. Hell, half the fleet is tied up protecting shipping. Four slash Six would free those ships. And if we burned the Sangaree, the McGraws would close up shop. Those are the arguments in favor. Akido. Take the Devil’s advocate.”

  It was an old game. Namaguchi knew his commander well. “Sir. How in God’s name can we go to the people of Confederation—not to mention our allies—with the news that we’ve destroyed a whole race? Just when we’re about to pump them up with moral indignation so we can justify a preemptive strike against a species we claim is guilty of the identical sin? Let me understate, sir, and say that the positions are inconsistent. Let me say, sir, that we’re on a quick slide down into a moral cesspool. We would, quite simply, be the biggest hypocrites this universe has ever seen.”

  “Shit,” Jones responded with no great force. “There isn’t one in a thousand of them would ever see the inconsistency. They’ll cheer about the Sangaree going down, then go sign up for the war against these centerward creeps. Akido, you’re giving Mr. Average Man too much credit. He can’t even follow his credit balance, let alone weigh a moral one.”

  “Charlie, that attitude is going to destroy Luna Command. And when we go, Confederation goes. When Confederation goes, the barbarians come in. In the words of the Roman Centurion Publius Minutius, speaking of the legions, ‘We are the Empire.’ ”

  “Just a minute,” Beckhart interjected. “Akido. Come over here.” He pushed the comm across the desk. “Punch up the library and get me an abstract on this Minutius.”

  “Uh…”

  “I thought so. Another one of your out-of-the-dark authorities.”

  Namaguchi chuckled. It was a favorite trick. His boss was the only man who caught him every time. “Actually, old Publius probably said something more like, ‘Which way to the nearest whorehouse, buddy?’ But I’ll stake my reputation on the fact that some Roman soldier said it somewhere along the way. It was true. The army was the Empire.”

  “You don’t have any reputation to stake, Akido,” Jones quipped.

  “The army got a lot of help from the fact that everybody in the provinces went along with a lot of tacit rules, Akido,” Beckhart remarked. “We’re getting off the subject. What about McClennon’s report?”

  “They’re still working on it. First abstracts should be up any time now. The key thing we’ve gotten is that the Starfishers did go after Stars’ End. So you guessed right on that one, too.”

  “I didn’t guess. I had inside information.”

  “Whatever. That’s where Storm came up with the Sangaree data. Raidships hit the harvestfleet there. They came out on the short end. The point is, the Seiners were sure they could pull it off. The battering the Sangaree gave them is what kept them from trying.”

  “How soon will those boys be done debriefing? I want to see them.”

  Silence hit that room like a cat jumping on a mouse. It stretched till it became an embarrassment.

  “Well?”

  “Uh…”

  “Not one of your more endearing traits, Akido. I don’t need protecting. Out with it. Who got hurt? How bad was it?”

  “It’s not that. Sir, they didn’t come back.”

  “They’re dead? How did they?…”

  “They’re alive. But they crossed over.”

  “They what?”

  “Remember, McClennon was programmed for it.”

  “I know that. It was my idea. But he wasn’t supposed to make a career out of it. He didn’t de-program? What the hell was wrong with Storm? What’s his story? Why didn’t he bring Thomas out?”

  “We’re working on it, sir. Interrogating returnees. When we can lay hands on them. They scattered after they hit Carson’s, before we knew we had a problem. Near as we can tell, Storm stayed behind because he didn’t want to leave McClennon there alone. The programming must have broken down. McClennon asked to stay. They kept Storm from bringing him out.”

  “I see. That would be like Mouse. Don’t leave your wounded behind. He’s too much like his father. I knew Gneaus Storm. When you get to the bottom line, it was his sense of honor that got him killed. Well, I’ve got my honor too, even if it’s a little discolored around the edges. I don’t leave my wounded behind either. Akido, I want those boys brought out.”

  Jones snorted.

  “Charles? What’s biting your ass?”

  “I was just thinking that anybody who cared as much about his troops as you put on wouldn’t have thrown them back in the furnace before they’d cooled off from The Broken Wings. And you hit them with that one before they’d cooled off from…”

  “Hey! Charlie, it’s my conscience. I’m the one who’s got to live with it.”

  “Storm could handle it. He didn’t get the deep Psych-briefings. But McClennon… You probably overloaded the poor bastard. He was goofy at his best times.”

  “That’s enough. Right now, right here, we finish crying about Storm and McClennon. That understood? We start figuring out how
to get them back. And in our spare time we worry about the Four slash Six. And come bedtime, if you get tempted to waste time sleeping, start figuring how we’re going to get a hammerlock on the Starfishers before they get their hands on Stars’ End.”

  “Sir?” Namaguchi inquired.

  “One of you clowns told me they were sure they could get in. You know what happens if they do?”

  “Sir?”

  “We bend over and kiss our asses good-bye. Because we’re dead. We can hope, but we’ll still be in the line to the showers.”

  “I don’t follow your reasoning this time.”

  “You’re not looking at the whole picture, that’s why. The gestalt, if that’s the right word. Look. If they get those weapons before we do, they can tell us to go pound sand and make it stick. We won’t get control of ambergris production, meaning the Fleet will have to do without adequate instel communications, meaning its chances against those centerward things will go down to zit. They aren’t your candy-ass Ulantonids, planning to give us a fair shake after they whip us.”

  “On the other hand,” Namaguchi suggested, “if we get the Fishers under the gun in time, we’ll not only be able to equip the Fleet, we’ll have the potential of the Stars’ End weaponry. Assuming it’s adaptable.”

  “There,” Beckhart told the others. “You see why Akido is the Crown Prince around here. You take a stick and whack on him long enough and he actually starts thinking. Let’s do a little brainstorming, gentlemen. Along the lines of turning our liabilities into assets.”

  Jones suggested, “Regarding the Four slash Six paradox. The right leak of the right info at the right time at the right place might give Luna Command a public opinion base that would make the kill a matter of popular demand. There are some real pros in the Public Information Office. They’ve done a hell of a job creating a climate of trepidation with hints about trouble in the March. Suppose they let a little truth wriggle out now? Just enough so people start asking what kind of horror we’re covering up by giving our friends from Ulant a bad press. There isn’t anything the public won’t swallow quicker than a good conspiracy theory. Especially a cover-up conspiracy.”