The Fleet of Stars Read online

  "We're thinking of the little outer moon Deimos," lokepa said. "And, yes, we are quietly looking into the politics."

  "If we decide to proceed, we can purchase one or two ships almost immediately," Manu said. "They exist, idled, -in storage orbits. True, it would be necessary to build considerably more. Luna is probably the best site for a new shipyard. This is an area in which you could aid and advise us, Lieutenant Fenn. You have the knowledge and experience,, you can put us in touch with others who can help, and you will not likely develop inhibitions or qualms." He smiled. "On the contrary."

  Fenn stared before him. It was as if the wall that showed the arrival of the ancestors at Nauru dissolved and he looked straight out at planets and stars. "Space," he whispered.

  Through the bloodbeat in his ears he heard Manu: "Please understand, this is very tentative. Some of us were thinking about Mars before the news from Centauri was broadcast. The rumors that floated about earlier did influence that thinking a little, and since then, there has been a radical reevaluation. But it is still going on. We do not actually have a plan, only a dream. We will need far more data and thought before we know if it is even possible, let alone feasible. This was one reason for calling you in. But do not resign your employment or otherwise commit yourself."

  "Not yet," lokepa said in an undertone.

  “We shall, if you like, explore the idea further while you are here," Manu finished, "and explore each other."

  In spite of every cautioning, glory flamed up to the sky.

  9

  COME ADVENTURE WITH me,'' Elverir said.

  "Where?" asked Kinna promptly.

  "Belike we return in two or three days. I will tell you more after we are aloft."

  For a moment, she hesitated. It was not that she feared his intention. Often they had been gone longer than that, ranging the Valles Marineris or, once, as far south as the Nereidum Mountains. In their sealtent, the mattresses lay close together, and sometimes when they washed themselves or changed clothes, the curtain would get flipped aside for a moment's accidental glimpse. She had seen his desire and felt her own temptation. Nobody else would ever know. They need not even have given thought to pregnancy. But her spirit always shied off— it would have felt like betraying her parents—it would change this friendship, and herself, in unforeseeable ways—and he, sensing that, was too proud to court her and held back likewise, with a calm coolness she could never match. After all, he had plenty of girls at home.

  Now, though, he might well have in mind one of those absolute recklessnesses or toplofty breaches of law that had more than once brought on a quarrel and a lengthy separation between them. Kinna enjoyed taking chances, within reason, but she was the daughter of David Ronay, who stood high in his community and served in the House of Ethnoi.

  Excitement won. If what he proposed was unacceptable, she could refuse and, getting as tough as necessary, make the refusal stick. "Can you leave now?" he inquired.

  "Let me fetch my kft and call my folks," she answered.

  Their flitter jetted from Belgarre and swung westward. "Ease yourself," Elverir said. "We shall be aflight six or seven hours."

  "What?" she exclaimed. "Why, that'd take us to— Where are you bound?"

  “Tharsis. I know not yet which of the Threedom, but you shall meet with the Inrai."

  Briefly, the world whirled around her. The Inrai— not the irreconcilable cities, but outlaws who robbed caravans, wrecked machines, killed sophotects and men— The knowledge tolled through her: Elverir, her landlouper companion, her private Lunarian, Elverir too was in conspiracy with them.

  Noting her reaction, he said, ‘The wish is but to speak with you and show you a few things. I supposed you would find it interesting, not alarming."

  The sarcasm stung her to alertness. "If you think I'm scared, you're so stupid you don't know which end of a mine shaft to go in at!" She saw him grin, caught her breath, and asked quietly, "Is this real, not some kind of joke? Then you're dement."

  "Nay," he answered as low. "I seek for freedom. It is not something many Terrans care about but I thought you might, in your fashion."

  "We've argued that before, and never gotten liftoff."

  "Where talk has failed, sight may succeed."

  Indecision drained from Kinna. An adventure, oh, yes! Curiosity seethed. She gripped the arms of her seat as if they were common sense. It was faintly surprising how steady her voice became.

  "You won't convert me, you know. Of course I'll be interested—no, that isn't honest. I'll be fascinated. But why me? How did you get them to agree to this, and whatever for?"

  Unwontedly grave, he replied, "The idea was mine, and much time flowed before I persuaded Scorian. I am ... new to the resistance, and marginal. Yet I have come to know you well and, through you, other Terrans, and a few among them have some small force in affairs public. Thus I feel more sharply than most of us, who are so alienated and cut off, how little the outer world—also among my race—understands our reason for being. Even you call it dement.

  "We lose naught, and we may gain somewhat, if the truth goes widely forth that it is ... douris." The Lunarian word he put into his Anglo did not really mean "just" or "righteous." Those were not really Lunarian concepts. "Natural" or "unwarped" came closer. "Ey, as you said, we can make no converts. And simply for the ... clarification, you by yourself are the barest of beginnings. But a good beginning. Your father will listen to you, and maychance through him others will who matter a little. Surely at the university you have many friends among the students, who have friends of their own; and surely, there are those among the preceptors who will not altogether toss your words aside. And you tell me you-often visit the synnoiont. Who better than you could speak on our behalf?"

  Despite the thrumming in her, his assumption—that David Ronay, and humans in general, possessed almost negligible influence—nettled her, as it had in the past. "Don't take me for granted," she warned. "I'll report what I see as I see it."

  His smile approached being warm. "I foreknew that. Ever were you an awkward liar."

  Silence fell, apart from the slight murmur and shiver of the vehicle. Outside reached a wanly roseate sky. A dust storm loomed above the northern horizon like a bank of yellowish-gray thunderheads; but Mars had not-heard thunder for a billion years or more. Dunes rolled ocher-ous, boulder-strewn, around craters that the sun limned with shadows. Closer below, the land grew rugged, ridges, cliffs, canyons, until it plunged into the tremendous deeps of the Valles. Through the bubble, Kinna traced a descending massiveness of mesas, crags, weird wind-sculptures, black, red, umber, streaked soft green and blue with mineral veins, until depth swallowed sight.

  "Look," she said after a spell, pointing to a formation. "Guthrie Head. Do you remember?"

  "I could ill forget." He laughed.

  Camped there on one of their first jaunts together— they were just five, and her mother accompanied them— they had gotten into an hours' long game of hide-and-seek through the crevices and over the talus slopes. Helen Ronay lost all track of them and was desperate by the time they somehow found their separate ways back. She confined them to the tent with bread, water, and a calculator, and did not let them out till they had memorized and recited the sine of every angle from one to forty-five degrees, at one-degree intervals, to four decimal places. But when Elverir's father, in Belgarre, later heard about the escapade, he laughed, which he seldom did, and gave them the first glass of wine Kinna had ever tasted.

  When the Sisters passed beneath them, she said nothing. There, age seven, they had had awhile alone in the tent and started kissing. Already then he was tigerish, Durrine amidst fierceness. No more than that happened, but she never risked it again, and no Terran youth since then had so aroused her.

  The landmarks dropped behind like time itself and they flew over spectacles they knew only from pictures, if at all. It would be long before they crossed the farther regions that, leapfrogging, they had also explored.

 
"What is ... your connection ... with the Inrai?" she asked at last.

  His answer came slow but less hesitant. "I may not reveal anything. Besides, you know there is scant to reveal. The siamos"—disdainful word for the authorities— "do not pursue the matter, for it leaves no tracks they could find. Yet the knowledge is common that some Lunarians around the planet give what they are able when it is requested, supplies, shelter, transport, information, help; and not all traffic in and out of the Threedom takes trails that satellites can watch."

  Kinna nodded. Her neck felt stiff. "So you've become a, a reservist, now and then a courier or, oh, a purchasing agent or something like that?"

  "Correct. You'll not tell anyone." It wasn't a question.

  "No, no." She groped for an argument that might persuade. "What difference would it make, except to us? What difference does your whole movement make, actually?"

  Fragments of the history blew past her like dust on the wind. The settlers of Mars had not been exclusively people in search of profit, honor, and achievement. Some were Terrans dissenting from their Earthside governments; some were Lunarians in blood-feud trouble on Earth's Moon. Whatever their individual motivations, Lunarians were more numerous among the immigrants. Many flourished, and something like the Selenarchy bade fair to arise, with dreams not of terraforrning but of lu-naforming the globe;

  Slowly the dominance and the dreams died. Terrans bred faster. Luna became another republic in the World Federation, its native population dwindling. The Martian economy began its long decline. The Lunarians of Mars felt forsaken.

  When the Lyudov Rebellion erupted on Earth, the towns Arainn, Layadi, and Daunan in the Tharsis region declared independence. No other settlements did, and eventually they disarmed as the Peace Authority demanded. But they never surrendered their claim. They lived and traded peacefully enough. What they refused to do was to recognize the legitimacy of the Federation and, later, the Synesis. They cast no votes, sent no delegates, contributed neither data nor opinions to the official network. It had seemed harmless, a picturesque relic, until the latter-day winter of discontent fell also upon Mars. Then men and women of the Threedom—and volunteers from elsewhere—began to make weapons and take to the wilderness. Had they been Terrans, one would have called them brigands or guerrillas. Being Lunarians, they were Inrai.

  "What can you hope for?" Kinna pleaded.

  Elverir straightened where he sat. Arrogance rang. "Today, that hope stay alive. Tomorrow, that we be free, as they are on Proserpina and at Centauri."

  He doesn't speak of a free Mars or anything like that, she thought. He speaks of a free "us." Free to be— Lunarian. Not that they'd persecute Terrans, if somehow they got power over the planet. They wouldn't condescend to. In fact, I believe Elverir would die defending my life, not because he loves me, which he doesn't, nor because he likes me, which he does, but because I belong to his honor, his self-pride.

  "Proserpina," she challenged. "Do you honestly expect help from there? Oh, I've heard the rumors of secret visits, and maybe there've been one or two, though I can't imagine how, but name of reason, it's out at the far end of the Solar System."

  "We may give them cause to join with us."

  Her eyes stung. "I, I've heard you before, but I never supposed—Trouvour, you're talking revolt not just against overwhelming strength. It's against all sanity, all decency." The ghost of every conqueror and tyrant, every slave and starveling, rose from her readings to mouth at her.

  "You shall continue to dwell where you are in whatever ways you choose, you Terrans. Only let us go ours." He sighed. "Have we not drained this talk well dry, we two?" Reluctantly, she nodded. They had argued it over and over while they grew toward maturity. She had not known he had become directly involved, but now it struck at her: “You shall see the wellspring reality. I think Scorian will take us to an Inrai camp, that you may behold what force of desire is in us. Eyach, I wish for it. I have not yet been to one myself." His smile terrified her. "I want to know what awaits me."

  She clutched his arm. "Elverir, no! You aren't serious, are you? Turning outlaw? Not just a helper, but a bandit?"

  He smiled on. She remembered how he'd once stalked a wild robot. Appeal to what wits he's got, she thought frantically. "I'm ... afraid you won't find it very glamorous. Weeks on end out in the barrens, living on dried rations and recycled piss, waiting for action that never comes—" The humor of it touched her. The situations were rare in which she could not find something funny, "My friend, you're at the point where machismo becomes masochism."

  Not for the first time, she had undermined his position. He was, after all, quite young. “I merely speak of possibilities," he mumbled.

  "Then don't leap blind into any such brannygaggle," she teased. "First count to a hundred by negative numbers."

  It worked to calm, if not to convince him. They became able to talk inconsequentially, play games, watch a show or the passing scenery, sway-dance in their seats to music thev both liked. Tension mounted afresh beneath the pleasure, but they were not much aware of it until journey's end hove in sight.

  Elverir had called ahead and been directed to Layadi. The transmissions used harmless-sounding code phrases rather than encryption, which might have attracted the notice of eavesdroppers. He sent the flitter slanting downward.

  The town, a lesser and poorer version of Belgarre, huddled on a patchwork of cultivated fields. Roads crisscrossed and outbuildings lay scattered about. It all seemed nearly lost amidst rugged, tawny desolation. An edge of blackness stood barely above one point on the western horizon, the heights of Pavonis Mons, hundreds of kilometers distant. The sun was sinking toward it. Shadows of dunes, rocks, and craters stretched long across the desert.

  Little traffic moved. While the seigneurs of the Threedom did not forbid commerce in and out of the Tharsis region, they had taken to discouraging it. Several aircraft were parked at the landing field but they were small, meant for families and local travel, though "local" could imply considerable spans. When Elverir had rolled to the terminal, a gangtube extended to mate with the flitter's main airlock.

  He and Kinna crossed into the building. She barely noticed the calligraphy on the interior walls. The four men who received them shocked her too heavily. They wore ordinary garb, but bolstered at each waist was a pistol. What, firearms inside a habitation? Anywhere else on Mars or Luna, it would bring instant arrest and a stiff penalty.

  She gulped and let Elverir do the talking. That was with one who evidently led the squad, or at least spoke for it. Gaunt, ash-pale, even among his hard-visaged companions he struck her as forbidding. Did his glance at her hold actual hatred? No, she mustn't do him an injustice; they'd never met. His tone was sullen, his nirt-rlpar tn see he disannroved of this assignment. Elverir, who addressed him by name, obviously didn't like him.

  Orders were orders, though, even among Lunarians. The exchange was soon over. Silent now, the guards conducted the newcomers down into a tunnel and zigzagged through several passages. Kinna couldn't tell where they emerged, but from the fact that they encountered hardly anyone on their way, she judged it to be on the outskirts of town.

  The room where the escort left her and Elverir confirmed her guess. A viewport gave on farmland and raw hills beyond. Otherwise the chamber was undecorated and sparsely furnished. Air hung chill, with a slight iron-like smell.

  When they two were alone, she asked, “Who was that person you were dealing with? You seemed to know him."

  Her friend grimaced, which Lunarians did not often do. "Yes, we have met at times, in the course of my zailin." The word did not quite mean "indoctrination" or "training." Maybe "initiation" came closer. "Tanir of Phyle Conaire, from Daunan. He is an able man in the wilds, but cruel, too quick with his weapons, maychance not wholly sane about what we strive for here." And that kind of judgment was one which Lunarians did not often utter.

  She shivered, not from cold. History said that causes had brought forth such people. But the murd
erous great causes belonged only to history, didn't they? They were centuries extinct, weren't they?

  She gestured around her. "The poverty—Is it worth it, pretending independence?"

  "Saou," he hushed her. "Scorian has refuge in this house. He cares not about comfort, when mostly he is in the outback—Ai, he."

  A door retracted, closing again behind the Inrai chieftain as he trod through. In black coverall and boots, knife and pistol at belt, he stood less tall than the average Lunarian had done on Luna but several centimeters above Kinna, lean, hatchet-faced, yellow-eyed, white skin darkened and leathered by a lifetime's accumulation of stray radiation. Scorning biotreatment, he remained totally bald, and a scar puckered his right cheek. Or were those trademarks?

  What she knew of his past tumbled through her. In a dispute over access. rights, his father had killed three sophotects and, irrevocably, a man; then, rather than submit to correction, he'd fled with a dozen fellow rebels into the wilds. That was the germ of the Inrai. Since then they had become virtually institutionalized, supported by the towns and manorial estates of Tharsis, most of them leading civilian lives in between encampments and patrols. Widely around the three dead volcanoes they ranged. Sometimes they attacked a caravan bringing goods, but only when it appeared to be safe to do so and only to augment their supplies; destruction and casualties were incidental. Sometimes they fired on constabulary parties venturing into their territory, but only to keep it for themselves.

  Or so their announced policy was, according to an occasional broadcast from some transient location in the wilderness. Otherwise they abided, building up strength, awaiting a day of upheaval whose nature was unclear to Kinna—and, she suspected, to them. That took a discipline which under such circumstances would have been remarkable among Terrans. Somehow Scorian maintained it over his Lunarians—force of personality and sheer ruthlessness—although she had heard stories suggesting it was qualified and unstable, with bands of Inrai now and then acting as outright robbers. She could believe that of Tanir.