For Love and Glory

IL

Few spacecraft of Hulda’s size or greater could land on a planet without docking facilities. Descending on an unprepared surface, the plasma jet would melt it. Ironbright must have recognized her type and known what she, meant to meet unpredictable hazards, was capable of. Lissa wished grimly that the Susaian weren’t such an able spacefarer. But the Dominance had known it when making the assignment. Ordinarily, at least in human services, a captain who lost a ship, whether culpable or not, never got another command.

Having positioned herself and verified every vector, Hulda cut drive and fell. Dropping some two hundred klicks under this gravity, she would have struck ground at one kps. Her hull could readily have taken that impact, but her crew were less hardy. She extended the forcefields that had helped keep them alive when she collided with the asteroid. Other vessels, liners, freighters, warcraft, carried no such generators. For them the contingencies were too unlikely to justify taking up the mass and volume. As for landings, some models had boats. Hulda’s machine spread its invisible shields to distribute weight over square kilometers and decreased their strength at a measured rate. Touchdown was feather-soft.

The silence that followed seemed to ring.

The riders stared at the view. Extended landing jacks rested on a basaltic plain, scarred, drifted with reddish dust, but reasonably flat, about five kilometers north of the complex. Seen from their present height, it lay on the near horizon. Shadows reached long and irregular from a sun, shrunken but still too savage to look near, not far up into a sky almost space-black but with stars hidden by glare. A few dust devils whirled on a wind more ghostly than themselves. Hills reached raw across the western distance, streaked with ice that glittered and gleamed and was not simply frozen water.

It was the Forerunner works that captured Lissa’s gaze and would not let go. Seeing them there, close at hand, herself in ready reach of whatever they might send forth, was altogether different from a view in space. An upward helicoid, a spidery polygonal dome, shapes less easily nameable, and smaller shapes that moved upon them, busy with mysteries, a shimmer over all like mirage or heat-waves, but it was cold, cold out there—

Hebo’s prosaic voice hauled her back. “Weird place. Seems peaceful enough, though.”

“Thus far,” hissed Dzesi.

“We’ll sit tight for a while and see if anything happens, okay?”

“Then what shall we do?”

Lissa’s heart rallied. “Go and start investigating,” she said. “Do we have a choice?”

“I do not need a choice, now,” answered the Rikhan, and quivered with the eagerness of a hunter.

Hebo unharnessed, stood up, and stretched, muscle by muscle. “Well, let’s brew some coffee—hell, a shot of brandy in it—and try to relax, try to think,” he suggested.

Lissa had to smile, forlorn though it probably was. “If those aren’t mutually exclusive.” She and Dzesi rose too. Having steadiness underfoot, but weighing only about twenty-five kilos, felt oddly refreshing. “First chance we’ve had, really.” Might it not be the last.

She suppressed that thought and helped with the small mundane tasks, making equally small talk with Hebo. That, and the companionable silences in between, while look met look, also brought back hope, even a bit of cheer. Underneath, she sensed reaction to what they had just been through, but it lapped down near the bottom of consciousness, a black tide rising very slowly. Dzesi didn’t act as if she had been affected at all.

The coffee tasted astoundingly good when they sat down again, like a promise that she would at last come home to the dear everyday. Her mind was thrummingly taut.

“Nothing has attacked us yet,” Dzesi said. “Are the things unaware of us?”

“They could be,” answered Hebo. His tone had gone slow and reflective. “Specialized for their one job of observation. Sure, that’s a complicated set of operations, starting with constructing the apparatus, including robots, computers, and programs. Plenty of unforeseeables to deal with, decisions to make, things to modify or invent as need arises. But nothing that calls for what we’d call sentience. Nothing like us was ever… expected. I think the guardian was supposed to handle anything that came out of left field.”

Once more Lissa must infer what an expression of his meant. “And it may well have been a, an afterthought,” she said. “From Earth.”

Dzesi pricked up her ears. “What say you?”

“Can you think of any plausible way a purely Forerunner— artifact—could acquire the principal languages of the modern space-going races, and knowledge of their capabilities, right down to the details of circuits?”

“How can we say what they have or have not mastered? It’s as bad a mistake to overreckon as to underreckon another. It can well be deadly.”

Hebo lifted a hand. “No, wait, Lissa’s right. Or, anyhow, she’s working along the same lines as me.” He sipped deeply from his cup. “Let’s lay our notions out, share ’em, tinker with ’em.”

“You first,” Lissa murmured in a rush of warmth. Practicality: “You’ve lately been on Earth.”

Hebo grimaced. “And the more I look back on it, the stranger a place it seems,” he said, as if with a slight inward shiver. “Oh, they put on a pretty good show for outsiders, but I’ve gotten pretty sure that a show is what it is. They’re—cooperative, unanimous—in a way impossible on any of our worlds.… Linked, in some fashion, through and to a giant, central artificial intelligence.” He paused. “Don’t get me wrong. I believe they still have individual minds, personalities, as human as you and me.” A smile barely flitted across his mouth. She wondered who and what he was remembering. Maybe best not to ask. Starkness returned. “But they’re also in a sort of mental collective.”

The idea was not entirely new or daunting. “Yes, weren’t things tending that way for a long time?” Lissa asked. “Though we on the new planets grew too occupied with our own new lives, societies, troubles, adventures, to keep track; and of course nonhumans never did.”

“I’ve seen how a few people here and there guessed this was developing. However, what they suggested was fairly well ignored, for the reasons you gave. There were no strong clues to the truth. It was easy to cover up.”

“Easy for—for what they were becoming.” Lissa summoned fresh courage. “That doesn’t mean they’re hostile to us, or, or evil. Why should they be? They may wish to spare us bewilderment and envy, or unnecessary fear. After all, the guardian didn’t hurt us. I think it was only there to keep—amateurs—from bumbling around and interfering with the work.”

“Now, looks like we’ve got to.”

“We shall tread lightly,” Dzesi said. She touched the hilt of her knife, as though to add: If we are left in peace.

“Of course,” Hebo agreed. “As lightly as we can. I don’t want to spoil the fun here.”

Lissa smiled, trying for the same appearance of assurance, “Which they’ve been looking forward to for several million years.”

“In a way. Actually, I doubt it matters much to them—to the Forerunners, at least.”

Dzesi’s whiskers registered astonishment. “What, this unique event?”

“Let’s have a go at reasoning backward,” Hebo proposed. “Why would Earth be involved in it, without any physical presence except, we’re guessing, the guardian—why, if they didn’t know about it from the Forerunners themselves? Otherwise, supposing they are interested in the spectacle, they could do their own observing, mostly on the spot, like us.”

“Do you know they are not?”

“No, but I’m imagining that the Forerunners, foreseeing, set things up for probes to be built here as well as instrument stations, and operate out of here. As somebody remarked earlier, our people wouldn’t likely detect them, in all that volume of space and violence, especially with their whole attention focused on the natural phenomena. This being so, Earth wouldn’t need any.”

“If Earth is in contact with the Forerunners,” said Lissa. The sense of being on a chase thrilled along her nerves.

“That figures, doesn’t it? One super-civilization is bound to become aware of another, wouldn’t you suppose? Maybe by signs or means we don’t yet know anything about. I suspect that thing in Sol orbit, what visitors call the Enigma and never have gotten any real explanation of, I suspect it’s apparatus for the purpose. Not just straightforward communication. Interpretation of concepts. Earth probably has things to tell that the Forerunners find worth hearing, as well as vice versa.”

“But where, then, are they?” growled Dzesi.

“At the core of the galaxy?” wondered Lissa.

Hebo nodded. “Yeah, that’s my best guess. Otherwise, scouting around, our explorers ought to’ve found more spoor of them than a few relics of once-upon-a-time expeditions. We can’t survive in there, and our probes can’t go deep—so far.”

“A high-energy environment.” Excitement swelled in Lissa. “That explains how they can also have a base on the inner planet here. To them, child’s play. It already was, those millions of years ago.”

“Could they, could any life, have evolved yonder?” argued Dzesi. Evolved, survived, grown powerful in that hell of radiation, unstable orbits, stellar crashes and castings out, and at the middle a monstrous black hole devouring suns.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Lissa replied. “We know so little. Perhaps they moved there once they’d learned how, because it’s rich in energy and—and who knows what else? Perhaps they’ve become intelligent machines, or something less imaginable.”

“And they’ve never bothered to come back to the boonies.” Once more Hebo made commonplaces into armor. “They’ve learned as much about the stars and planets as they care to. That gizmo on Jonna may still be working, sort of, by sheer geological accident, but how can it be transmitting? As for sophonts, well, for the last two-three centuries, or however long it’s been, Earth’s reported the news, more or less.”

“Which does suggest they’re not totally alien,” Lissa offered. “Not totally.”

“Doesn’t all intelligence have at least one thing in common? Namely, intelligence. Not that ours is in that league, but—Dzesi interrupted fiercely. “We shall not humble ourselves!”

“N-no. I’m not working on an inferiority complex, nor should anybody. But, still—”

“Does advanced technology bring greatness of spirit?”

“I dunno. You’ve got a point, however. Yeah, an excellent point, old chum. Stick around awhile and we may find out.”

If we can stay alive, thought Lissa. Her verve chilled as she remembered the warcraft hovering watchful above the southern horizon. The tide of weariness flowed higher.

“To get back to a point I was making,” Hebo said, “I suspect the Forerunners aren’t especially interested in our little black holes anymore.”

Dzesi seldom repeated herself. “What, this unique event?”

“I suppose, way back when they were visiting hereabouts and saw what was going to happen, they knew less than they’ve discovered since. So they made arrangements here for observing it. Now they may as well let the equipment run. However, I kind of doubt they’ll collect any data that surprise them, these days.”

Lissa stared again out at the incredible structures on the horizon. “Another abandoned relic?” she whispered.

“Oh, not quite,” Hebo judged. “And Earth’s people are interested. Enough to build the guardian—maybe with some gadgetry aboard that the Forerunners taught them about—and station it.” He sighed. “Of course, they may just want to preserve it as an archeological specimen.”

“Or keep us from learning things they don’t think we should know,” Lissa added.

Dzesi bared teeth. “We will decide that,” she vowed.

“Let’s hope so,” Hebo said flatly.

Lissa gazed upward, as if through the blank overhead into space. “Haven’t these ideas occurred to the Susaians?”

“Or to friend Esker, by now. I expect so. It probably won’t change their course.”

“Must we indeed do their seeking for them?” snarled Dzesi.

“For everybody,” Lissa said. Perhaps, she thought through the waves of exhaustion. But should we? Who can tell?

“Let’s hope for that too,” Hebo said. He rose. “Well, we’d better get some sleep, no? Then a bite to eat, and then go ahead.” His own voice was muted by his own conquering tiredness. Yet a clang remained in it, an answer to a challenge. Only his gaze on Lissa was anxious.