Authors: Gregory Benford
A knock at the door proved to be Cermo. Killeen had to smile at the man’s promptness; on Snowglade he had been called Cermo-the-Slow.
Something in
Argo’
s constrictions had brought out a precision in the man that contrasted wildly with his muscular bulk. Cermo now wore an alert
expression on a face which Killeen had for so long seen as smooth and merry. Short rations had thrust the planes of his cheeks
up through round hills of muscle.
“Permission to review the day, Cap’n?” Cermo asked snappily.
“Certainly.” Killeen gestured to a seat across the table.
Killeen wondered idly if one of Cermo’s Aspects had been a starship crewman. That might explain how naturally the man adjusted
to ship life. Cermo’s round, smooth face split with a fleeting grin of anticipation whenever Killeen
gave an order, as though it summoned up pleasant memories. Killeen envied that. He had never gotten along well with his Aspects.
Cermo launched into a summary of the minor troubles that each day brought. They were all hard-pressed, running a huge star-sailing
machine bequeathed to them by their ancient forefathers and foremothers. Though each crewman carried Aspects of former Family
members—which could help with some of the arcane ship’s lore—vexing problems cropped up daily.
As Killeen talked with Cermo his left hand automatically tapped his cube of baked grain on the shiny ceramic table. Two years
before, a crop-tending crewmember had been browsing among the agricultural storehouse. She had mistakenly read a label wrong
and not bothered to consult with one of her Aspects to get it right. Blithely she had accidentally released a self-warming
vial of frozen soil-tenders. They were ugly, slimy things, and the woman had been so badly startled that she dropped the vial.
Some had inched their way to freedom before the crewwoman raised the alarm. In the rich loam of the gardens, carrying with
them not only their own genes but also an anthology of lesser mites, the worms wreaked havoc.
Killeen’s rapping brought two small, squirming weevils wriggling from the tan grain cube. He swept away the tiny things and
bit into the hard, tasty knot. It was hopeless to try to wipe them out now that they had spread. As well, he still objected
to harming living things. Machines were their true enemy. If lesser life got out of its rightful place, thanks to human fumbling,
that was no excuse to strike against the fabric of living beings. To Killeen this was not a moral principle but an obvious
fact of his universe, of unspoken Family lore.
Cermo sat uncomfortably in a small chair, cheerfully
jawing on about the woman’s punishment and all the supposed benefits of discipline that would unfold from it.
He should be the one carrying Ling, not me
, Killeen thought. Or maybe it was easier to take a hard line when final responsibility wasn’t yours.
He had seen that years before, when Fanny was Cap’n. Her lieutenants had often favored tough measures, but Fanny usually took
a more moderate, cautious course. She had kept in mind the consequences of decisions, when an error could doom them all.
It occurred to Killeen that his own hesitant way in those days might have been what made Fanny advance him up the Family’s
little pyramid of power. Maybe she had mistaken that for a wary sense of proportion. The idea amused him, but he dismissed
it; Fanny’s judgment had been far better than his, better than that of anyone he had ever known except for his father, Abraham.
Killeen had enjoyed some success, due mostly to outright luck, but he knew he could never equal her abilities.
“The Rooks ’n Kings always grumble ’bout a whipping if it’s one
their
folk,” Cermo said. “But they get the point.”
“Still bitching over how I chose my lieutenants?”
He had made Cermo and Jocelyn, both Bishops, his immediate underofficers. Lieutenant Shibo was both Chief Executive Officer
and Pilot. She was the last survivor of Family Knight. Though she had lived with the Rooks, everyone considered her a Bishop
because she was Killeen’s lover.
Of such Byzantine issues was policy made. In the difficult days following liftoff from Snowglade, Killeen had tried using
Rooks and Knights as Lieutenants. They simply didn’t measure up. He had wondered if their time living in a settled village
had softened them. Still, he saw that his decisions
had not been politically wise. Abraham would have finessed the matter in some inconspicuous way.
“Yeasay,” Cermo said, “but no worse than usual.”
“Keep your ear on the deck. Let me know the scuttlebutt.”
“Sure. There’s some who talk more’n they work.”
“That’s private Family business.”
“Could use a touch of the crop, I’d say.”
Experience told him that it was best to let Cermo go on for a while, exhaust the subject of crew discipline. Still, he wished
he were breakfasting with Shibo, whose warm, sure silences he found such a comfort. They understood each other without the
endless rattle of talk.
“—train ’em, get ’em savvy out the techtalk in ship’s computers.”
“You think the younger ones’ll do better at it?” Killeen asked.
“Yeasay. Shibo, she says—”
Cermo was always coming up with another scheme to get more of the Family trained. The simple fact was that they were hardened
people and didn’t learn technical matters easily. Families traded knowhow, but their ageold tradition was as craftsmen and
craftswomen, not as scientists.
He nodded at Cermo’s enthusiasm, half-listening, his attention focused all the while on the incessant ship noises. The muffled
thud of heels, a gurgle of fluids in pipes, a subtle creaking of decks and joints. But now there was a lower note, coming
from the rub of interstellar dust against the giant balloonlike lifezones.
The strumming sound had gathered over the last weeks, a deep voice that spoke in subliminal bass notes of the coming of the
beckoning yellow star. Decelerating,
Argo
swooped among thickening dustclouds that shrouded this
side of the coming sun. Mottled dustlanes, cinder-dark, cloaked their view of the inner planets.
The low, resonant bass note kept its unnerving, constant pitch. Sometimes in his sleep he imagined that a slow, solemn voice
was speaking to him, the words drawn into a dull moan that forewarned doom. Other nights it was a giant’s drunken boom hurling
slurred words at him, the tones shaking his body.
He had immediately shrugged off these rough visions; a Cap’n could not afford to harbor such gloomy and irrational thoughts.
Still, the hum now came creeping into his hands as they rested on the table. As a boy he had not known the stars were other
suns. The spilling fluid flow of gas and smoldering dust about Galactic Center had seemed inconsequential, forever silent
and distant.
Now the thick churn sang against
Argo
, a quickening wind driven by the galactic wheel. The
Argo
had somehow tapped this gale, he knew, harnessed its unseen dynamics. The massive, dusty currents smothered suns and silted
planets with grime, so his Arthur Aspect said. The moaning that ranged and stuttered through
Argo
seemed to wail of dead worlds, of silted time, and of the choked-off visions of lost races he would never know.
The tabletop between them flickered abruptly. Shibo’s chiseled features appeared, flattened and distorted by the angle. “Pardon,”
she said when she saw Lieutenant Cermo. “We have clear view now, Cap’n.”
“You see more inner worlds?”
“Aye, a new one. Dust hid it before.”
“Good detail?”
“Aye, sir,” Shibo said, her glinting eyes betraying a quick, darting enthusiasm. If it had been just the two of them, she
probably would have thrown in a dry joke.
Killeen made himself take his time finishing the bowl of
green goulash and then savored the last dregs of his tea. He spoke slowly, almost casually. “Take a sure sighting, using all
the detectors?”
“Course,” Shibo said, a small upturning of the corners of her lips showing that she understood that this show was for Cermo’s
benefit.
“Then I’ll be along in a bit,” Killeen said with unexcited deliberation. He had seen his father use this ruse long ago in
the Citadel.
Cermo shifted impatiently in his chair. They all wanted to know to what world two years of voyaging had brought them. Many
still felt that the Mantis had sent them toward a lush, green world. Killeen was by no means convinced. He trusted no mech.
He still remembered with relish their obliteration of the Mantis in
Argo’
s exhaust wash at liftoff.
He took his time with the tea, using it to consider the possible reactions of the Family if their expectations were not met.
The prospect was sobering.
He debated having another cup of tea. No, that would be too much torture for Cermo—though the man had certainly seemed to
like handing it out to the Radanan woman earlier.
Forgoing the tea, he nonetheless put on his full tunic and walked rather more slowly than usual around the ship’s axis and
up one level.
His officers had already assembled in the control vault when Killeen arrived. They were staring at the big display screen,
pointing and whispering. Killeen realized that a proper Cap’n would not allow such milling in the confines of the control
vault, despite the fact that this was a completely natural reaction to years of long voyaging.
He said sharply, “What? Nobody’s got jobs? Lieutenant Jocelyn, how’s the patching going in the dry zone? Faldez, those pipes
still clogged in the agro funnel?”
His stern voice dispersed them. They left, casting quick
glances back at the display screen. He wanted them to see that he had not deigned even to look at the image there, but had
tended to ship’s business first.
They could not know that he kept his neck deliberately turned so that temptation would not slide his eyes sideways to catch
a glimpse. He exchanged a few words with several departing officers to be sure his point was made. Then he turned, pursing
his lips to guard against any expression of surprise that might cross his face, and stared directly into their destiny.
Two years before, Cap’n Killeen had flinched when he saw the ruined brown face of his home planet, Snowglade, as
Argo
lifted away.
Now, with heady relief, he saw that the shimmering image before him did not resemble that worn husk. Near its poles small
dabs of bluewhite nestled amid gray icecaps that spread crinkled fingers toward the waist of the world. But these features
came to him only after a striking fact:
“Wrong colors,” he said, startled.
Shibo shook her head. “Not all. Ice is dark, yeasay. But middle is green, wooded—see the big lakes?”
“Pale areas in between look dead.”
“Not much vegetation,” Shibo conceded.
“What could cause…?” Killeen frowned, realizing that he would need to know some planetary evolution, in addition to everything
else.
Shibo said, “Could be these clouds did that? Dust killed plants, dirtied up the ice, turned it gray.”
Killeen sensed that it would not be wise to admit complete ignorance in front of Cermo, who had remained.
“Might be. Plenty dust still around. That’s why we’re coming in at a steep angle.” Killeen studied the planet’s crescent for
signs of human life. The nightside was utterly dark, though even if he had seen lights they might easily have been cities
built by mechs.
Cermo said hesitantly, “Sir, I don’t understand….”
Normally it was a bad idea to explain the basis of your decisions to underofficers, his Ling Aspect had said. But it was also
a good idea to train them; the days ahead would be dangerous, and if Killeen fell, his replacement would need to know many
things.
“These little black blotches—see them?” Killeen pointed as the scale of the viewing screen enlarged, bringing in the hot disk
of the parent star. Beyond it, the broad, banded grins of two silvery gas giant planets hung against a speckled tapestry of
molecular clouds. Tiny smudges freckled the image, motes that ebbed and flared from day to day.
“This star, it’s ripped apart a passing cloud. There’s lots of these blobs in the plane of the planets.”
Killeen paused. The three-dimensional geometry had been easy for him to see in Aspect-provided simulations, but now it was
hard to make out in a flat grid projection like this.
So I directed us in at a steep angle,” he said, “cutting down into that plane. That’ll avoid running into small clouds that
we might not detect.
Argo
won’t hold up if we get blind-sided by one of those.”
He watched fondly as Shibo’s exoskeleton whirred as her hands passed over the control boards. Its polycarbon lattice made
swift, sure movements. For Killeen one of the many
delights of
Argo’
s slow spin was that she seldom needed her mechanical aid except for quick precision. In Snowglade’s heavy gravity she had
used it continually just to keep up. A genetic defect had given her only normal human strength, which was much less than the
Families’ level.
Still, the simple sight of her made him smile. Momentarily the day’s weight lifted.
She brought up wildly different views of the planetary system, images colored in splashes of violent reds, tawny golds, cool
blues. Killeen knew these arose from different spectra, but could not say how. They showed grainy specks orbiting between
the planets—small knotty condensations that hailed incessantly in toward all the stars at Galactic Center. These had been
caught by Abraham’s Star and now pelted its planets unmercifully.
“Bet it makes for a dusty sky down there,” Shibo said reflectively. She thumbed up a speckled orange display which highlighted
five cometary tails. They lay above and below the plane of the planetary orbits, gaudy streamers that pointed inward like
accusing fingers.
Killeen caught her meaning. “I don’t believe, though,” he made himself go on with casual assurance, “that the dust could snuff
out life. This planet’s suffered infalling grime before. You can see the forests have survived. It can still shelter us.”