The Stars Are Also Fire Page 11

  True, in repeated talks she had drawn him out concerning the Fireball Trothdom. He wasn’t sure why, and he knew nothing that a datasearch program couldn’t have found for her. It wasn’t much more than an association, after all, a lodge or fellowship rooted in wistfulness for a grandeur long vanished, not unlike the Ronin, the Swagmen, or the Believers. Like them, it had its rituals, social gatherings, mutual helpfulness, and little else. Whatever the secret lore was that was said to be passed down from Rydberg to Rydberg, it couldn’t be of any importance, and it had certainly not been confided to Ian Kenmuir.

  Maybe Lilisaire was trying to get an idea of what membership felt like. It was not a Lunarian sort of thing; it might provide a little insight into the other species. Or maybe she was interested because the Trothdom meant a great deal to Kenmuir, and in her fashion she liked him.

  She had said he was a fine lover. (The memory flamed.) “No, except that you inspire me,” he replied honestly. She laughed and rumpled his hair. He did not delude himself that he was anything but an agreeable diversion, at best.

  And yet … she had called him back, urgently, at no small cost to an undertaking from which she stood to make a profit. In some way, however minor, she needed him.

  His heart thuttered. He didn’t know if he was in love—this was foreign to any such state anytime earlier in his life—or in thralldom. At the moment, he didn’t care.

  The flyer reached apoluna and descended. From the Cordillera reared the witchy towers of Zamok Vysoki.

  Having landed, Kenmuir brushed past Eythil, straight into the gangtube. The slight malaise had faded out of him. If he was afire and ashiver, it was wholly with Lilisaire. Not until later did he hope he hadn’t offended his proud escort, then wonder whether Eythil hadn’t been amused.

  No attendant waited in the room beyond. Clearly, the flyer had sent word ahead, and a robot or a servant would take his things wherever the Wardress desired. A voice from the air said, “Hail, Ian Kenmuir. Betake you to the Pagoda and be made welcome.”

  He knew that turret and the way there. How he knew them! He bounded, he soared down the changeable corridors and through the multiform chambers. Lunarians moved in them, male and female, on various business of hers. Most were staff, whether or not they wore the livery, but several came from outside, and he recognized two magnates. No words or gestures passed between them and him, save for the swift and stylized eye contact that was courtesy. At the end of his trek he did find a guardsman, standing at panther ease, who saluted and let him through the door.

  Sunlight exploded from a blinding center into sparks and flashes of every color his vision could capture. They flowed and shifted all around him with each least movement he made, across the glassy floor and the few fragile furnishings, the walls and ceiling and his hands. He had come into the middle of a single million-faceted synthetic diamond. Odors drifted on the air, spice, honeysuckle. Barely audible wailed the minor-key melody of a canto of Verdea’s.

  By a table set with crystal, near a broad animate couch, poised Lilisaire. The auburn mane fell over bare shoulders and a full-length gown that sheathed her like a second skin. The wreckage of rainbows played on those whitenesses. Her only ornaments were stardrops hung from her ears and a finger ring whose jewel flickered with tiny flames. At her feet lay a pet he remembered, a black leopard with golden spots. It lifted its head and stared at him.

  She smiled. “Yes, well are you come, my captain,” she murmured in Anglo.

  He stopped, suddenly helpless. She advanced. Her skirts whispered. He lifted a hand. She laid fingertips moth-lightly on the wrist. It signified that she was his superior, but he never thought to dispute that. The faintest of pressures urged him to the table. She lowered her arm and stood before him. “Pour for us,” she bade.

  He obeyed. The sound of it rang clear under the music. With a green glance she invited him to partake of the canapés—he knew they were superb—while she raised her goblet. “Uwach yei,” she said.

  “Your service, m-my lady,” he pledged. Rims belled together. They sipped. The wine sang.

  Her gaze steadied on him. He forgot the diamond radiance. “Service,” she said low. “Mean you this?”

  He caught his breath before he answered: “I do. And not because I’m your employee.”

  “My captain.” Her free hand reached to stroke his cheek. He would have felt a blow less keenly and shakingly.

  He snatched after balance. “What is this about?” he asked in his driest voice. “What can I do?”

  “You may well have guessed. It concerns the Habitat.”

  “Yes, I … surmised as much. You and your class have opposed it so hard.”

  The Selenarchic families must feel sore pressed, he thought, when they stooped to politics—what they called monkey dealings. Granted, it was for the most part indirectly. Those who, like Lilisaire, had substantial inherited property on Earth could raise up Terran advocates and get a few into the Federation Assembly—Useless. Public opinion (in such fraction of the public as paid any attention) excitedly favored what would be the first real pioneering their species had mounted in generations. Besides, the cybercosm had first proposed the scheme. Surely sophotectic intelligence superior to the human knew what was best for humanity.

  Lilisaire’s voice plucked him from his recollections. “Indeed. We waxed sufficiently troublesome that the government investigated us.”

  “Well, naturally, if you were making a fuss, a data scan—”

  “Nay, more. Officers from Earth prowled about inquiring. One of them came hither soon after I had called to you. Nor was he an ordinary Peace Authority agent. He was of the best they have, a very synnoiont.”

  Startled, Kenmuir exclaimed, “That was serious!”

  She finger-shrugged. “Ey, he said not his nature to me. But I scented he was no common man. Later I carried a hunt of my own through the databases and among folk. Have no fear. It is unlikely he knows I did. And he found naught of wrongdoing.” Her laughter chimed. “For, I regret, there has been none. Whence might the opportunity for it have come?”

  Abrupt, cold fury spat: “Nay, we lie bound, awaiting the knife. It will not even slit our throats cleanly. First the women shall be spayed and the men gelded.”

  The leopard snarled.

  Kenmuir fumbled for words. “Matters can’t be that bad, my lady.”

  She put on calm. “Think. What has preserved us thus far, save that Terrans cannot breed on the Moon?”

  His mind tried to resist her. What was preserved, it said, was the dominance of the Selenarchy, in fact if no longer in name. And that began to be eroded after biotech enabled his kind to live indefinitely under low gravity, healthy except for loss of muscle tissue if they didn’t keep up their exercises. (For a second he imagined he could feel the engineered microbes implanted in him, their chemistry suffusing every cell.) More and more of the old species took up permanent residence. But, yes, their numbers remained limited by the inability of their women to carry a child to term, or raise one born on a larger world but less than about three years of age, nervous system still developing. However precariously, the Lunar aristocrats clung to dominion over the nominal republic.

  “Now you expect a rush of settlers from Earth?” he asked stupidly.

  “It will be unstoppable. The sociotechnic equations foretell it. Hundreds of thousands declare themselves ardent to go. Once the Habitat is ready—”

  —abandoned L-5 refurbished, brought into low Lunar orbit, provided with lightsails to exert the forces that would keep it on that otherwise unstable path, set spinning again in order to give full Earth weight around its huge circumference. Lo, a place for Terrans to bear young and see them through those early years, while easily going to the Moon and back—

  “—and that will be no long while hence. Time hounds us, Kenmuir.” She never used his given name. He did not know whether it was due habit, hers being single, or a decision to avoid any true intimacy.

  “But they’ll be the fl
ower of Earth,” he argued. “The sort who want to do real work, live real lives, here, in space.” Like himself, he acknowledged. He had been lucky, had gotten into the Academy, the Space Service, at last the Venture. How could be begrudge anyone else the stars?

  Her lip lifted. “Yes, the lords of the world and their machine masters should well rejoice to see that restlessness bled away from the planet. On the Moon it will be more easily contained.” Her tone went urgent. “But understand you not? They will make Luna over. Their vast new constructions will break its peace while they in their hordes impose the society they want.”

  “Uh, that can’t happen overnight.”

  “Swifter than you believe, my innocent captain, and with entropic certainty. I say to you, it will destroy us.”

  “Mars—”

  “Mars is already lost.”

  Recalling Eythil, Kenmuir didn’t dispute that. “M-m, your colonists on the asteroids and the outer moons—no, those places could never hold more than remnants,” powerless, impoverished, until ships from Earth came to remove them under the banner of charity and efficiency.

  He glanced down at the leopard and pictured it confined for life in a cage full of apes.

  “We, or our children, will cease wishing to live,” Lilisaire went on, quietly. “Some will drag out their last years, some not,” but go violently, in rebellion, crime, suicide. “None will bring young into that kennel of an existence. In two centuries, three, no matter, this mischief-making, unconforming breed will be extinct. How convenient for the cybercosm.”

  Kenmuir doubted her concern for her species. Yet how genuine was the despair he heard beneath the steel! If she was right, if the Lunarians is perished, a certain magnificence would have gone out of the universe.

  Shock: Could the cybercosm actually intend that?

  The eyes regarding him were tearless the slim body unbowed. “You must have some recourse in mind,” he said slowly.

  She nodded. The ruddy hair rippled. “A forlorn venture,” she replied in the same level voice, “belike in quest of a treasure that shall prove to be a myth.”

  Leaning slightly forward, suddenly tense: “Will you dare it?”

  Almost, he gasped at the impact. “T-tell me,” he stammered.

  She straightened, relaxing her flesh. “It need be naught unlawful … on your part,” he heard. “Nevertheless there is a thing you can seek to learn for me, which has lain hidden away for lifetimes.”

  “What?”

  “In this house abides a fugitive tradition. Yet I have also fact to relate. Come, drink, calm yourself, hear me out.”

  He was amazed at the deftness with which she reviewed history. It was familiar to him, but she brought it into perspective—her perspective—and touched on matters about which he had known little.

  She recalled to him the long, Machiavellian struggle to keep Luna sovereign, out of the Federation, waged by Niolente and her cohorts after Guthrie and Rinndalir left for Alpha Centauri and Fireball began disbanding. He had not known of several missions into deep space, whose purpose was never divulged, nor that those were what seemed to have given Niolente the confidence to keep striving.

  Of course, in the end it had not helped her. Events torrented, the proclamation of the republic by one faction, its instant recognition by the governments of Earth, the dispatch of Peace Authority troops to its aid. No doubt the old woman had then resolved to die fighting, for the armed force she whistled up had no hope whatsoever. It was inevitable that the Authority would afterward ransack every site she had ever occupied, including any databases kept in them.

  Kenmuir had not been aware that all the material was confiscated, that what was later released was incomplete, or that the official story about the accidental wiping of some files was inconsistent with the methodical procedures of the man in charge. Nobody had taken any special notice. The whole business was soon forgotten, except among certain of her direct descendants.

  “She was working on something in far space?” he breathed.

  “It must have been,” Lilisaire said. “A weapon or—I know not what.”

  “Then how should I?”

  She drained her glass and beckoned him to pour another. First he finished his own. The leopard got up and padded about the room, black and gold among the light-shards.

  “Hear me,” Lilisaire said. “The tradition I spoke of goes further back still, to the time of Dagny Beynac. A son of hers made an expedition into the deeps from which he did not return. Naught of real explanation was ever given. The family held to itself whatever knowledge had been gained.”

  In hopes of eventual profit? That would have been quite Lunarian. But so, too, would have been keeping the secret for a memorial, an enduring sacrifice to sorrow.

  “Searching what records remain, for the conquerors did not find everything, I have come to feel sure that this discovery was what Niolente had intent to make use of,” Lilisaire continued. “Could we acquire it, we might achieve a part of her hope. But time is short, and even before the Habitat makes everything too late for us, the enemy’s suspicions may lead him to take forestalling action. Thus, as soon as I had this clue, I sent for you, who will be able to look further.”

  “I, uh, I’ve no idea where to begin,” he demurred.

  Again her look pierced him. “On Earth.”

  “What?” He realized he was gaping, and snapped his jaw shut. “How?”

  “Well do you know that the first Rydberg was the first child of Dagny Beynac, and came to be in her close confidence. And … to this day, the Fireball lodgemaster guards some arcanum, which appears to go back to that time of upheaval.”

  “You mean—”

  She sighed. “A thin possibility, yes; but I see scant others.”

  “A weapon—” Chill tingled through Kenmuir. It was bad enough when Fireball turned spacecraft against the Avantists. Justified though the action might have been, the outrage it globally provoked brought on the end of Fireball and of sovereign Luna. A teratonne nuclear warhead, an asteroid made dirigible—“No!”

  “It may not be that,” she said quickly. “Or if it is, the menace alone should win us our freedom. In any case, why, since the powers on Earth are so anxious to keep it secret, the simple threat of disclosure would be a weapon for us, nay?”

  He tossed off a long drink. The wine deserved closer attention, but he had to brace himself. As the glow spread through his blood, he became able to say, almost thoughtfully, “Y-yes, if the information’s been buried that deep, there must be a strong reason. … It could be a good reason, though.”

  “I ask no betrayal of you,” she said with a flick of scorn. “Find what you can and choose what you can.”

  It hurt worse than he would have expected. “I scarcely believe the Rydberg will confide in me just for the asking,” he said.

  Warmth returned, and with it a smile. “If you explain, maychance he will. If not, or if what he tells is of no avail, then—” She let the sentence trail off like music.

  “Yes?” he prompted out of his pulsebeat.

  “I have other agents on Earth. Would you be willing to join forces with one of them? Your ken of space may greatly help.”

  This was demented, he thought. He was no spy, no rebel, nothing but a middle-aged, law-abiding technician whose audacity was all in the head, interplay with impersonal forces, out among stars which the contentions and griefs of humankind would never touch. Yet she flung him a challenge, and—she wanted it, she needed it, this might be her life that he could save.

  “I will try,” he heard himself mumble.

  She shouted, cast her goblet shattering against the diamond, and was in his arms.

  The living couch received them and responded to them.

  In his heart he could only praise the terrible necessity that had brought her race into being.

  8

  The Mother of the Moon

  Night on Lunar Farside is a glory of stars. With neither sun nor Earth to override them you need on
ly walk away from human lights and your sky will brim with brilliance, six thousand or more stars revealed to an eye that has nothing between it and them but a clear plate and a few centimeters of breath. They gleam unblinking where they crowd the crystal dark, and the brightest are not all white; many burn steelblue, gold, amber, bronze-red. The constellations are no longer geometrical diagrams so much as they are prodigally marshalling hosts, planets ablaze among them. Nebulae rear thunderhead-black or float softly aglow. From horizon to horizon arches the galactic belt, not milky to sight but icy, a winter river banked and islanded with night. Beyond it you may spy its nearer sisters, the clotted Magellanics, Andromeda vague and huge, perhaps one or two more glimpsed across yet greater deeps. Turn off your receiver and you are wholly of this vision, in a silence as vast as its reaches; far, far beneath it, the murmurs of your body declare that you are alive, you are what is beholding.

  Sometimes a spark hastens aloft, a satellite. It is quickly lost in the Moon’s shadow.

  Dagny Beynac sighed and turned back toward camp. She couldn’t stand long agaze, she had work to do.

  First, scheduled whirly time. The boss ought not to keep anybody waiting. She swung into kangaroo pace, eight or ten kilometers per hour across the murky lava, an easy and exhilarating rhythm. The lamps ahead glared the stars away from her.

  The other three were already at the centrifuge. In undiffusing vacuum, not entirely helped by reflection off surroundings, light and shadow, whiteness and dust made their spacesuits a goblin chiaroscuro. Like every newcomer, Dagny when she arrived on the Moon had had to learn how to see, especially after sunset on Farside. Today she effortlessly identified yonder shapes, the supply depot and shelters in their background, the crews and machines, the widespread complexities they were creating. A multi-facility astronomical observatory was under construction in Mare Moscoviense, and she in charge of housing for its personnel. Advancement was fast if you were able, if you survived.