Harvest the Fire Read online

  “You were to work with it.”

  Venator’s mind leaped. Spaceship escape program. It must be for Lirion, but it could not mean that his craft would depart suddenly, without proper clearance. An Authority vessel would then be sure to go in pursuit, at higher acceleration than he could tolerate. No, Hench must have implanted a subtle distortion in the Traffic Control system, such that it would believe it knew everything it should—for instance, whether any passengers went along—but in fact let the ship go without collecting any real data. If Hench had been able to worm into the secrets of the cybercosm—no doubt remained that it was he and his equipment that had done so—then subverting routine procedures was no trick at all for him.

  Lirion laughed. “Eyach, Seyant, hold your nastiness for when it’s wanted.”

  “It is his specialty,” Hench rasped.

  “I would have this thing go as planned,” Seyant answered sullenly. “We should have had one more rehearsal.”

  “You knew that what notice we got would be short,” Lirion said. “She cannot program him as she would a robot.”

  Hench’s lips twisted in a grin. “Besides,” he remarked, “what we play this evenwatch won’t be a scripted drama, it will be commedia dell’arte.”

  Venator recognized the archaic term. Did the Lunarians? How many would, out of humanity’s billion and a half?

  “We must hope you have the wit to carry your role,” Hench said to Seyant.

  “Keep your quarrels for afterward, I tell you,” Lirion ordered. “This will be flickery enough at best.”

  “I will not fail,” Seyant told Hench. “If you do, if the ship does not get clear, then you will soon be dead.”

  “Nay,” Lirion said. “Whatever happens, I forbid that.”

  “You are wise, captain,” Hench said. “Only a dolt would break a tool because it got misused.”

  As often before, Venator wondered about him. How was he recruited for this venture? It must have been before Lirion arrived, although what Venator had heard last time strongly suggested the basic scheme was Lirion’s, transmitted from Proserpina. The organization that made the arrangements was surely the Scaine Croi, which was Lunarian. It did have a few Terran adherents, for their own variety of reasons. But Hench scarcely counted as a Terran. He was a metamorph, an Intellect. The genome of his ancestors had been modified to shape a brainpower that computers made obsolete even before sophotects with full awareness were developed.

  Venator guessed that he, alienated from a civilization that gave him no real purpose in life, had been drawn in by the challenge, the chance to play a genuine game for genuine stakes—against the cybercosmic security system. It was clear that no organic intelligence less than his would have been able to plan and program for the operation, then see it through. Obviously the plotters could not employ a sophotect. Supposing that somehow they had been able secretly to build one with the needful intellectual capacity, they could never have kept it with them. Once it came into contact with the system, it would betray them, for it would realize where it truly belonged. Oh, Venator knew, he knew.

  Lirion addressed Seyant: “Remember, be not too blatant. Watch for my signal to quell yourself, lest we overdo.”

  The other scowled, offended. “I understand. Have I not already been working with him?”

  With whom, wondered Venator, and how?

  A trill sounded. Seyant stiffened, Hench gripped the arms of his chair. The coolness of a skipper came upon Lirion. “Admit them,” he directed the door.

  Two persons appeared. Venator did not know either the spectacular Lunarian female or the lean Terran male. She was altogether self-possessed. Sweat glistened on his face.

  Lirion laid hand on breast, Lunarian courtesy salute. “Well beheld, my lady and donrai,” he greeted.

  The man grew taut at sight of Seyant, who eased off and gave him a supercilious smile.

  “Pilot Jesse Nicol, Captain Lirion of Proserpina, Hench,” said the woman, with appropriate stylized gestures. She must be Falaire, and Nicol and Seyant must have met previously. … Jesse Nicol. Not very many people used surnames anymore, in those subcultures that produced those few individuals who attained his rank. A possible clue to this one’s background and personality. … He was clearly agitated, struggling to maintain a surface calm.

  “I have heard of you as a spacefarer of high worth,” Lirion said.

  Nicol glanced at Falaire, who nodded. Doubtless that meant that, yes, she had told the Proserpinan about him. “Thank you. But, uh, I’m hardly a spacefarer at all, compared to you,” he said. His Lunarian, grammatical though unidiomatic, came out with slightly exaggerated precision, as if he were drunk but didn’t want to show it. That wasn’t actually the case, however; Venator knew the signs. Maybe Nicol was just overexcited.

  “It is not the distances traversed that matter.” Lirion’s smile was sardonic. “Hai, the sole problem they pose is how to avoid going quantum from boredom.”

  “But once you’ve gotten to—a new comet, say—”

  “Yes, the unknowns can kill.” Uncharted gravel swarms, crevasses hidden under frozen gas, quakes, eruptions, even in those cold regions; it must be like pioneer days in the inner System.

  “Not quite the same thing as a task done a few thousand kilometers from home, which a machine could do better,” Seyant drawled.

  Nicol flared. “Do you pretend you’ve ever done either?”

  “Hold,” Falaire interrupted. “Seyant, be more mannerly. At least two of Pilot Nicol’s tasks were in fact hard and dangerous.”

  “I would be glad to hear of your experiences,” Lirion invited.

  “Why?” Nicol growled. To Falaire: “All right, why did you bring me here?”

  “It was indeed unwitful,” Seyant said. “What made you imagine we could trust a loosemouth Earthbaby?”

  Nicol flushed and tensed as if to lunge. Falaire laid a hand on his arm and he curbed himself. Trembling a little, he told her: “If you wanted me insulted, you needn’t have taken me this far.”

  “No, Jesse, never that,” she murmured. Louder: “Seyant, hold your jaw.”

  “Like the lady Falaire—and unlike too many Lunarians, I fear—I have no dislike of your race, Pilot Nicol,” Lirion said. “It is not mine, but it brought mine into being, and in its time it wrought mightily.” He gestured at Hench. “Our respected associate here hails from Earth.”

  Still belligerent, Nicol snapped, “What’s this all about?”

  “Your promise, Jesse,” Falaire reminded him.

  He swallowed. “Yes. Whatever I hear, I’ll keep confidential—”

  “Amazing, if true,” Seyant remarked.

  Nicol glared. “You make me wonder if I’ll choose to hear it.”

  “You said you would,” Falaire put in.

  “Yes—but if it’s something wrong—”

  “It is not,” Lirion assured. “No evil, no harm. Rather, a deliverance. Your name can live in history with Anson Guthrie’s and Dagny Beynac’s.”

  “Then why this God damn secrecy?” Nicol blurted in Anglo.

  Lirion understood. “You shall hear.” He sighed. “Would we might offer you proper hospitality. May it later be unbounded.”

  “I could … do with a drink.” Harshly: “But get to the point.”

  “Observe his demeanor,” Seyant said. “Does it suggest him reliable?”

  Indeed, such brusqueness would be rude anywhere, Venator thought. Among Lunarians it approached the obscene. If Nicol had lived and worked on the Moon, he knew that. If it escaped his control now and then, he must be under a nearly unendurable intensity of emotion.

  He jerked a thumb at Seyant’s knife. “Scaine Croi, huh? Your badge. Your childish ego token.”

  Lirion frowned. “We are squandering time and strength alike.” His voice softened. “Pilot Nicol, in the name of the universe wherein we both find our lives, I ask your patience. This first meeting need not hold you overly long. Thereafter you shall decide whether there will be
more.”

  Falaire took Nicol by the hand and with her eyes. He breathed deep before he said, “Very well. Speak.”

  “Maychance you have perceived that Hench is an Intellect,” Lirion began.

  With a heavy attempt at affability, Nicol said to the metamorph, “If you”—not a sophotect or an interlinked cybersystem—“handle all this gear by yourself, you can’t be anything else.”

  “Computers do most of the work, of course,” Hench replied in pedantic fashion. “But they are strictly isolated.”

  “What’s the purpose?”

  “For me? A pleasure not otherwise attainable, in the thing and the doing.”

  “As can be yours, Pilot Nicol,” Lirion said, “together with rich material reward.”

  “If he has the nerve,” Seyant added, just loudly enough for Nicol to hear.

  “Say on,” the spaceman grated, “before I break that blatherbrain’s snotful nose for him.”

  “Seyant, be silent,” Falaire said. “Jesse, we need him too. Bear with that for our sake … and yours.”

  “Even for Earth’s, maychance,” Lirion added.

  “How?” Nicol asked.

  “You have seen on the news what my mission is, and that it fails.” The dialogue that followed reiterated Proserpina’s need and the Federation government’s refusal.

  “Why this denial?” Falaire cried. “It would cost them well-nigh naught, set against the wealth they command. And we have offered to trade for the stuff.”

  Nicol stared at her. “We?”

  Her gaze met his in pride. “Yes, I am of the Scaine Croi, and the Scaine Croi sees the morrow of the race and someday the liberation of Luna as on Proserpina. It was I who thought you may be the means of our salvation.”

  “Which could also be your own,” Lirion pursued. “I too inquire, why are we denied? None of the excuses but ring false. Nay, it is that the cybercosm thinks millennia ahead. It computes how a new civilization could rise to full power among the comets and reach out for the stars. Then would it lose control over the destiny it wills for itself and the universe. No longer could humans, all organic life, be confined, be kept—ai, ever so kindly—for pets—nay, not that relevant, but an incidental epiphenomenon. Rather than that, shall they not bring forth whatever it will be that they dream of by and for themselves?”

  “Bad enough having Guthrie’s colony at Alpha Centauri,” Hench put in. “The cybercosm can hope it will perish when its planet does, in a few more centuries; or, at least, that its survivors never get any farther. At worst, those people will be many years’ travel away. Proserpina is here in the Solar System. No, it won’t pose a military threat, unless you count maintaining defenses against possible attack. Aggression would be ridiculous. But given an adequate energy source, it will be going its own ways, gaining its own potency, and—people on Earth, Luna, Mars will notice. They will begin to question the order of their world, the whole philosophical basis of its existence.”

  Nicol quivered. “I’ve sometimes thought—Go on.”

  “A final consignment of antimatter is a-space in its robotic ship, bound from Mercury for storage in orbit beyond Saturn,” said Lirion slowly. “This is a high secret, of course, but Hench has uncovered it for us.”

  “We knew something of the kind must happen sometime.” Falaire’s voice rang. “Now is the time, and our last chance.”

  Nicol threw up his hands. “Wait! You can’t—no—”

  “Yes,” Lirion answered like steel. “We propose to capture that cargo for Proserpina. To this end we need a spacefarer who is skilled and a Terran.”

  “You, Jesse,” Falaire said.

  “No,” Nicol stammered, “hold on, you’re dement.”

  “The scheme is well wrought,” Lirion declared. “Agree to it, and you shall hear.”

  “Agree blind, to that? No! I tell you, I’m not dement.”

  He doth protest too much, methinks, Venator reflected. Yet he was in truth not witless, whatever the present state of his nerves and glands. He might well be tempted, yes, strongly tempted, but he would not likely fall.

  Evidently Falaire was closely acquainted with him. How could she so have misgauged him?

  “We’ll make it safe for you,” she urged. “None will ever know, save a few who will never forget.”

  “And then when we are all securely dead, the tale shall be set free, to your immortal glory,” Lirion promised.

  “What good’s glory to a dead man?” Nicol flung back.

  “Eyach, you shall have pay worthy of the emprise, and no suspicion will come nigh you,” Falaire said. She paused. “Unless, for your reward, you choose to fare with us to Proserpina.”

  He gaped, bewildered. “Us? You mean you?”

  She nodded. “I claim that recompense for my part in this.”

  “But how—”

  “You shall learn every ‘how’ when you have sworn to us,” Lirion said.

  “And if I don’t like it—No, impossible! And, and it’s piracy you’re talking of, the greatest crime since—Falaire, don’t!” Nicol reached for her. She swayed aside.

  “See, I told you he’d shriek and flap,” Seyant jeered.

  The breath rattled in Nicol’s gullet. “You’re asking me to—”

  Falaire cut him off. “At the bare least,” she said coldly, “you’ve sworn to me you’ll keep silence, whatever you have heard, that we may seek someone else.”

  “Someone with manhood,” Seyant tossed in.

  “Shut your hatch or I’ll shut it for you!” Nicol screamed back. To Falaire and Lirion: “I’m going now, before I kill that slimeworm.”

  Strange, his overreaction, Venator thought. Granted, he already hated Seyant, and the taunts this evenwatch seemed calculated. Nevertheless, a spaceman couldn’t do his job without a cooler head than Nicol was showing. Somehow he’d gotten into a quite abnormal condition. And it must have come upon him unawares, or else he’d recognize it, allow for it, and handle himself a good deal better.

  Ah-h-h. An idea began to grow in the download.

  “You’ll truly not dare it?” Falaire was asking.

  “How can I? Oh, God,” Nicol groaned, and for a moment buried face in hands. “I understand you, your wish, and I—I could wish too—” He looked up. “No.”

  “Then we have naught else to speak of,” she said. “Depart.”

  Lirion raised a palm. “First swear silence before us.”

  Nicol gritted his teeth. “Silence about a, a conspiracy—”

  “You gave me your word,” Falaire said. “We ask only that you give it anew. I believe in your honor. I have pledged this with mine, to these my spirit brothers.” Her voice lowered. “I will not leave Luna for a while yet, Jesse. Would you see me arrested? They will correct my thinking, Jesse, they will make me into something other than what I am, if I fail to kill myself.”

  Shaking and sobbing, Nicol got out, “All right, I’ll swear your damned oath.” His own voice, high and cracked, told how near hysteria he was.

  “Upon the Knife,” said Lirion.

  Seyant glanced down at his belt. “Nay. It would defile my blade.”

  “The Knife, Seyant.”

  The young man heaved a sigh. “As you will. I can consecrate another afterward.” He drew it and extended it to Nicol, who took it blindly, automatically.

  Consecrate? wondered Venator. Seyant had used the Spanyó word. It was not a Lunarian term, scarcely even a Lunarian concept. What was going on? Playacting—

  Nicol hadn’t noticed. The weapon shook in his grasp.

  “No need for that,” Falaire was saying. “The steel is alloyed with its honor.”

  Seyant sneered. “Not after it’s been in the hand of a eunuch.”

  Nicol shuddered. “I’ll have to wash that hand of mine, pretty boy,” he coughed, “till I’ve got the top layer of skin off. Stay clear of me after this, you hear? I’m warning you, stay clear.”

  “Ai, I will,” Seyant laughed. “I’d not have you pu
blicly wet your breeches.”

  Nicol spat at his feet. Seyant struck him across the mouth. Nicol howled, a sound inhuman, and stabbed.

  Crimson spouted. The guard of the knife stood against Seyant’s tunic. He staggered backward and collapsed in a tangle of limbs.

  Lirion seized Nicol’s arms from behind. Nicol fought him, then sagged, the color drained from his face. Lirion released him.

  Falaire and Hench crouched over the body. Hench’s fingers searched across lips and pulse. He looked up. “Dead,” he stated.

  “So easily?” Falaire whispered.

  “A major blood vessel severed, I think. Massive internal hemorrhage.”

  “No, please no,” Nicol mumbled. “Call for medics. Revival—”

  Hench shook his big head. “It would take too long, when we’ve no way here to cool him. Substantial brain cell decay.”

  Falaire rose and made a sign. “He would not want to be what he would be after they restarted him,” she said quietly. “Give him his peace.”

  None of this was right, Venator thought. But Nicol was shocked and stunned beyond reasoning about it. Tomorrow his memories of it would have blurred into nightmare.

  “And the police would make inquiry,” Falaire continued. “Our undertaking would come to light, our cause be lost. You, Jesse, do you wish for psychocorrection, inhibition laid into your mind like shackles, and an end to spacefaring or any other work you ever hoped for? Nay, let Seyant lie.”

  Lirion nodded. “It is done, and belike the blame was chiefly his. Let him not have died for naught.”

  Their attitude was convincingly Lunarian, Venator thought, if Seyant had not been pledge-bound to them.

  Falaire took Nicol’s arm. “Jesse,” she said, “come home with me. We’ll not forsake you.”

  “I have no obligation of vengeance,” Lirion told him.

  “And I have my fealty to a dear friend,” she said. “Jesse, come.”

  He stumbled away with her.

  When they were gone, Lirion stooped above the body and withdrew the knife. Venator saw how the guard clung, and then how the steel came back out of the hilt as Lirion pulled the weapon free. A few more drops of what looked like blood trickled after, luridly red.