Harvest the Fire Read online

  “How fares he?” Lirion asked.

  Hench shrugged. “He should regain consciousness in about an hour, I’d say. Best leave him as he is for a few minutes, then carry him to bed.”

  So the retractable blade had pierced just enough to inject a drug—neurostat, probably—that gave instant anesthesia and reduced respiration and heartbeat to a pretty good imitation of death. The whole thing was staged to ensnare Nicol. Yes, Venator thought, these were desperate and dangerous folk.

  Tomorrow a tiny robot would scuttle up the shaft to check on him. He would signal that he wanted to be removed, and it would go summon a larger machine. With luck, Hench would again be alone here and not notice anything.

  When the Peace Authority had seized the four, clues should radiate outward to others. The plot would be broken and, Venator expected, the heart torn out of the Scaine Croi.

  No public sensation. Everything kept as discreet as possible. But a well-phrased confidential message to the Selenarchs of Proserpina should chasten them. Some among them might begin to think that, after all, membership in the World Federation had many advantages.

  Lirion laid the knife on a desk. “Meanwhile,” he said, “let me see to another bit of business.”

  He strode toward Venator’s place and touched a hidden point. The wall slid back from the cabinet. He confronted a case, about the size of his head, lying on a shelf. Optics on stalks swiveled to focus on him.

  He smiled. “As I thought,” he said. “Good evenwatch, donrai.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Some thirty hours and ten million kilometers out of Lunar orbit, Verdea ceased acceleration, swung southward widdershins, and resumed boost at the same one-sixth Terrestrial gravity. The maneuver took place so gently that those aboard had no need to harness themselves. Safety regulations required it nonetheless, but this ship hailed from Proserpina.

  Standing in her recreation room, Nicol set the view-screen before him to scan aft. Earth still outshone all stars, brilliant sapphire upon blackness, the Moon a speck of amber close by. It was as if the clarity of the sight pierced through to him and drove the last fog from his mind. He couldn’t tell whether that was good. He had his full awareness back, but also his pain and fear.

  The room seemed both a refuge and a prison. It was small, with a few chairs, a table, the wherewithal for electronic and manual games, database outlets for shows or music or books. No one had yet activated the bulkheads; they enclosed him in blank, pale gray. The gymnasium, larger, equipped to let him maintain muscle tone through a long low-weight voyage, was on the deck beneath.

  He breathed an air cool and, at present, bearing a slight odor of newly cut grass. Ventilation went silently, like thrust and recycling and nearly everything else the ship did. He might have been all alone in the cosmos, until a light footfall brought his glance around.

  Falaire came to stand before him. The blond hair spilled vivid over a darkly iridescent kimono. In the plain coverall given him, he felt more than ever foreign to her. How unfairly beautiful she was.

  “Aou, Jesse,” she greeted. Fingertips brushed across his wrist. It tingled in their wake. “Are you hale? You look less than joyous.”

  He swallowed. “Why not? I’ve been—gone—Nothing was really real—”

  “It was by your agreement.”

  Yes, he recalled blurrily, he had accepted the … the drowsy syrup she offered, when they got back to her apartment in that terrible hour. He had been raving with grief over his deed, ready to call the police despite every pledge he had given, but she persuaded him that he must seek a chemical calm, and thereafter—“I was like a robot,” he said. “I had no will or feelings of my own.” His recollection of the time was hazed, like memory of the whole evenwatch earlier. He kept little except knowledge of the fact, that it had happened. Nor did he want more.

  “It was needful to keep you thus, that you could pass through the spaceport and ride the shuttle up to our ship without maychance making a scene that would draw people’s heed.” Falaire smiled. “The final dose has faded away, I see and am glad of.”

  He shook his head, a blind effort to cast off bewilderment. “How did you get us aboard without the spaceport itself noticing?”

  She laughed. “Thank Hench for that. Lirion will explain later if you wish. Suffice for this moment, in the knowledge of the cybercosm he departed as he arrived, companionless. You are free, safe, with us.”

  “How long’s it been?”

  “Since we left Luna? A watch or two past a daycycle.”

  His reasoning mind gave him a slight relief by shoving anxieties aside as it worked. “Hm, yes, you’d want to start out with vectors for a direct return to Proserpina. Now we’re far enough that TrafCon radar won’t be routinely tracking us, and it’ll scarcely keep any other detector on us either. You can change course for your target.”

  “Eyach,” she said warmly, “indeed you are awake again, a pilot whose skill is in his very speech. It bodes well.”

  He must not let her lull him. “How long till we arrive?”

  “Travel time is about nineteen daycycles at this acceleration, with midpoint turnover. Add some time to that because we’ll be in free fall whenever you are working outside. Maychance thirty daycycles altogether.” She finger-shrugged. “Or thus Lirion tells me. I am but a passenger.”

  That was her reward, he remembered. Her reward for recruiting him. “And I—”

  “You have become the hero of the tale.”

  Remorse rushed back to take him by the throat. “Oh, God, no!” he moaned in Anglo. “I’m a murderer.”

  She took his right hand, which had wielded the knife, in both hers. “Nay, Jesse. Think never so.”

  “I killed a man because—merely because he—What kind of animal am I?”

  Her answer came grave and steady. “You are a man who, overstressed and overwrought, lashed out at what had waxed unendurable. Belike a different person would have had a threshold of tolerance more high. But we, Lirion and I, we bear you no grudge.”

  “You—he—I killed one of you, and, and me a Terran!”

  “Heedless of race, Lunarians understand pride and honor.”

  Their kind of honor, Nicol thought amidst the turmoil.

  “Seyant fell on his own misbehavior,” Falaire continued. “I didn’t like him anyhow.”

  Confusion redoubled. She didn’t? Why, half his hatred had had its roots in jealousy. “But he was … at least he was your fellow in … the Scaine Croi.”

  The bright head nodded. “That much is true. You owe us, his spirit siblings—and, yes, his memory—a recompense. It shall be the part you take in our great venture.”

  The ugly word broke unbidden from his mouth: “Blackmail?”

  She let go of his hand. Her tone grew severe. “Reflect that you are in my personal debt also, for that I saved you from the consequences you would have brought on yourself. You babbled of needing punishment. But well you know it would have been worse than that. Psychocorrection. Neural alterations, re-education, elimination of your potential for violence. Your inmost self castrated, a poet and adventurer changed to a placidly contented citizen.” Never had he heard such contempt as she threw into the last word.

  His thoughts groped through shifting darknesses. Maybe she overstated the case. And yet—and yet—he was what he was. In certain ways he wished he were different, but the differences should be what he chose, and not go to the core of his being. “Well, but, but—”

  “Unless that is your desire, then this escape is another debt laid on you. I claim it in the form of your service.”

  Silence fell. Nicol struggled. Now and then he gasped for air. He had won to a measure of calm by the time Lirion descended from the command center.

  The old man wore youthful extravagance of scarlet, purple, and gold. “We are well on our course and the ship can run robotic,” he declared, before he gave the Terran a close regard and added with a smile, “Aou, Pilot Nicol, welcome back to yourself.”


  “I’m not very happy about it,” Nicol snapped.

  Lirion made a dismissing gesture. “Eyach, yours is no abiding trouble. I heard what you and Falaire said.” Was the vessel programmed for eavesdropping, Nicol wondered, or did an intercom simply happen to be on? “What guilt is yours you shall expiate, and go beyond it to become our moral creditor.”

  Guilt and atonement were not concepts that came readily to a Lunarian, Nicol thought; and in fact Lirion had used the Anglo words.

  “Not only shall you win forgiveness and overflowing thanks,” the woman was assuring him, “rich material pay shall be yours. The funds are there on Luna.”

  Sarcasm awakened. “Precisely how shall I collect them?” he asked.

  “That has been provided for,” Lirion replied. “As Falaire told, your embarkation and hers with me was blocked out of entries the spaceport made in the general database. Your chiefs in the Rayenn—yes, they too are with the Scaine Croi—will record your absence as due to an assignment elsewhere, of no special interest to any authorities.”

  “Later they will likewise record my death and ashing in space,” Falaire added, “for I am not returning.”

  “But as for you, Pilot Nicol,” Lirion went on, “when your share of the mission is completed, this ship will double back to Juno and leave you there, before journeying home to Proserpina.”

  Nicol knew about that asteroid. It was among the few where some Lunarians lived, remnants of colonies formerly spread throughout the Belt, though today it was mainly a robotic control station and supply depot for what rare spacecraft still plied those lanes. “And then?”

  “The Rayenn will dispatch a deep-space vessel”—of the two in its fleet—“to carry you back to Luna. There you shall receive your fortune, one million ucus, free and clear.”

  Astonished in spite of everything, Nicol exclaimed, “That much credit? How can I ever explain it?”

  “Readily, if you are as wise as we deem you. A large gambling win, maychance. The police will not ask. If there is no reason to suspect crime, a change in someone’s personal account does not alert the system.”

  “I … suppose not.” This wasn’t the distant past he had read about, when government not only did not provide citizen’s credit, for people to choose what part of automated production they wanted, but actually levied on earnings, among many other outrageous invasions.

  Was the cybercosmic world so bad? Should he do this deed, this violation, against it?

  “Thereafter,” Lirion said, “you can live what life you wish.”

  “You can call up endless songs,” Falaire murmured.

  Bitterness rose into Nicol’s gullet. “Maybe. If I can find anything to sing about.” Or if Lirion didn’t just kill him and toss the corpse into space. Simpler, safer, cheaper.

  Her eyes sought his. “Might you rather come to Proserpina with me?”

  However preposterous, the idea made his suspicions retreat. She seemed honest, if ever a Lunarian wholly was toward a Terran. And … these two were idealists, in their fashion—weren’t they?

  “Come,” proposed Lirion, “let’s go to the saloon, eat, take our ease, and rejoice together.”

  Falaire put her hand in Nicol’s. He went along, sorrow already dwindling, excitement mounting. For better or worse, he was committed, wasn’t he?

  CHAPTER 8

  After a gourmet luncheon and a siesta, Lirion showed Nicol through the ship.

  Her hull resembled a squat, round-nosed cone, about three hundred meters long and as broad at base, studded with airlocks and housings, the thrust director of her drive projecting skeletal “beneath.” Had you watched from outside when she was under boost, you would have seen just a faint bluish glow in the plasma hurled forth—unless you were directly aft, unprotected, within less than a thousand kilometers; then you would have been blinded, and very soon dead.

  Inwardly, the forward half was divided by a succession of decks transverse to the acceleration vector. The first was barred to humans; that section held vital robotic apparatus, including the magnetohydrodynamic generator whose force screen warded off particle radiation. For added safety, the section behind it—below it, when boosting—contained storage lockers, auxiliary robots, and miscellaneous equipment. Next came the command center, where the captain received communications and data, and told the ship what to do; but usually no one need be present. A level of private cabins followed, then the deck for recreation room and saloon, which was also where humans generally entered and exited. Beyond/below lay the gymnasium, cuisinator, and assorted service modules. Past this in turn was the three-level cargo hold. You went between sections either by companion-way or ascensor.

  The after half was entirely off-limits to organic creatures. There were the gyroscopes for maneuver, together with much else essential, and beyond them the reaction-mass tanks, which doubled as shields against radiation from the motor. It was farthest back, antimatter trap, laser-electromagnetic pumps, fire chamber, plasma control, the powers of a mythic hell tamed and put to work.

  Once vessels of this general design had been a familiar sight. But that was when humans flitted around the Solar System in great numbers. “On Proserpina they keep the wish to do their own spacefaring,” Falaire had said. “But without ample energy to drive the ships, they must end huddled on their own worldlet, belike finally destroying themselves in wars brewed by life’s emptiness, like the olden dwellers on Rapa Nui.” Nicol had been surprised that she knew that obscure bit of Earth history. Of course, to her it cut near the bone.

  Lirion stopped in the gymnasium, below the massive counterweight to the centrifuge’s exercise platform, and said: “Before we go on, let us talk a while, to make sure you understand what you will see. Tell me about the ship we seek.”

  Taken aback, Nicol floundered, “M-m, well, I’d never given it any special thought till now. Why should I have?”

  “Say forth, that I may correct you at need. Less peril lies in what you know not than in what you know that is not true.”

  “Agreed,” Nicol acknowledged wryly. “Well—um—” He decided to begin more or less with the rudiments, to show that he too could be patronizing. “Antimatter is—was, this being the last consignment scheduled—it was produced on Mercury, captured according to Bose-Einstein quantum mechanics, and stored underground till a transport arrived. Then it’d be brought up and pumped into the ship by the same basic system which kept it confined—laser, electromagnetic—and refrozen as it emerged into stowage. Small ships delivered small loads to wherever they were wanted, Earth or Mars orbit, Luna, asteroids, outer-planet moons. The big ship, the one you must be after, took large loads out for storage in deep space. From time to time that reserve would be called upon, but in the past several decades it’s mostly just been accumulating, till the government decided that no further production will be necessary or desirable for the next few centuries, if ever.”

  Lirion registered no offense. “Good, good. Where is that storage facility?”

  “Who knows, except the cybercosm? In Solar orbit somewhere beyond Saturn”—hidden by sheer vastness—“that’s all that’s ever been made public. Only machines go there.” Startled by a thought, Nicol peered at the lean face. “Have you learned where?”

  “Yes,” Lirion replied coolly.

  “I don’t … quite like that. Can any human be trusted with … access to the means of burning life off all Earth?”

  “It matters not. The hoard is heavily guarded, by every sort of robotic weapon and a sophotectic intellect in watchful charge. No raider, no craft the least suspect, could come anywhere nigh without wrath consuming it.” Lirion smiled. “I lack that ambition.”

  “Yes, I—I should have understood,” Nicol apologized.

  “It is the ship bound thither that shall be our prize. Tell me of it.”

  A flash of resentment overwhelmed prudence. “Our prize?”

  “Say on,” Lirion ordered.

  Half helpless, Nicol yielded. “Well, uh, the shi
p’s entirely robotic, though I suppose there’s some kind of sophotect in it, probably inert but activated in any doubtful situation.”

  Lirion smiled again. “Shrewdly guessed. That is the case.”

  Soothed more than he believed he ought to be, Nicol proceeded: “It’s public knowledge, has always been, the ship goes on a minimum-energy Hohmann orbit from Mercury to the depot, and back again for reloading. No hurry, no reason to waste fuel on boost along the way.”

  Lirion nodded. “Slightly less than eleven years, in either direction.”

  “You’ve gotten the exact figure?”

  “Necessarily, since the orbit of the hoard is the prime secret. It circles the sun at approximately fifteen astronomical units of distance.”

  Nicol whistled, awed. Yet the cybercosm had more time and patience than mortals—cosmic time, machine patience.

  After a moment, he ventured, “I’d assume the ship is armed too.”

  “Yes, against meteoroids. A serious impact is unlikely but not impossible, the sole hazard foreseeable”—Lirion chuckled, a low, purring sound—“hitherto. We cannot simply match velocities and lay alongside.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Anything whatsoever that comes too close, or appears that it might, is to be destroyed, stone or ship.”

  Nicol nodded. “Y-yes, that does come back to me,” among the things he heard as a child, a part of his education, but an incidental part, casually mentioned and presently forgotten. “Nobody has ever happened by like that, have they?”

  “Nay. Secrecy and immensity have been sufficient shields, until now when we come with the knowledge to nullify them.”

  “You must have gotten highly detailed information.”

  “We did, through Hench. It includes the limitations of detectors and defenses. They are powerful”—the voice rang—“but not unconquerable, by those who have the skill and bravery.”

  Nicol waited.

  “We can pass by at a distance of several thousand kilometers, on a trajectory that will bring us no closer, without exciting alarm,” Lirion continued after a few seconds. “Such has been allowed for, as being bound to happen once or twice by chance in the course of centuries. But we—we will fire an energy beam to take out the ship’s communications antenna. Suddenly it will be mute. It cannot tell its plight to the cybercosm.”