Mother Death

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After a lengthy and generally fair trial, judge and jury found the accused guilty on all counts: Avoiding surrender once his Family was officially disbanded; illegal terraforming coupled with the unkind manipulation of sentient organisms; misleading investigators in pursuit of Chamberlain ringleaders; unbecoming arrogance; plus an ancient charge involving the fondling of women with fingers and penises composed of substances unknown.

After an appropriate delay—slightly more than three minutes—the Emergency Tribunal passed the expected sentence.

Without ceremony, the prison gates dissolved, and Avram Chamberlain was thrown to the mercy of the waiting mob.

It was a clear night on a minor world that until this moment had little place in history. Anticipating the verdict, three million citizens had gathered outside the prison. Many were refugees from the Core, and everyone had a thirst for vengeance. When the gates vanished, the mob pressed forward; nearly eight thousand were critically injured in the wild stampede. It was an armed contingent of off-duty police who finally brought the Chamberlain into the wide, open-air plaza. And with his appearance came a ringing silence. No one spoke, or breathed. The prisoner walked with a numbed calm. His old-fashioned body was naked, and except for scraped knees, he was fit. Hands and feet were unbound. Thick red hair lay short and neat above the most famous face in the galaxy, and piercing blue eyes looked past his captors, gazing up at the night sky.

The Core had just risen.

It was a spectacular sight, and horrible. On some worlds, the popular game was for people to give themselves a selective amnesia. Forgetting why the Core was exploding, forgetting how many hundreds of billions had died, they were free to look at the sky without pain, marveling at its surreal beauty—a vast storm of radiations and superheated plasmas rushing from the galaxy’s heart, shredding suns and worlds, and now, at its height, smashing into dense clouds of interstellar dust and gas.

Clouds gave the explosion its intricacies, the raw purple-white light transformed into swirling masses of crimson and turquoise and cerulean. Dust and gas shielded the rest of the Milky Way, absorbing the terrible energies before they could reach the spiral arms. Without those barriers, natural and otherwise, the galaxy would have already died. Every competent simulation said so. Everyone claimed that the storm would worsen a little more, or a lot more. But after another few millennia, it would begin its very slow fade. Then in another ten or twenty million years, the Core would grow cold again, at peace, and if any people were left alive, they would have to make do with a considerably duller sky.

Avram stared at the distant storm, never blinking.

The only problem left for the angry mob was the means. What’s the very best way to kill a Chamberlain?

A sour voice roared, “Tear him apart with your hands! Your hands!”

Another screamed, “Cook the fuck whole!”

Then a third voice, closer and more lucid, suggested simply, “Whatever you do, take your time! Do it slowly!”

Suddenly everyone was speaking, offering advice in the art of torture.

Thousands reached for the Chamberlain, and the police found themselves using electric wands and cold-gas guns to push back the crush of bodies. It was pure self-defense. A mob of this size would butcher dozens, perhaps hundreds of people. Innocent skulls would be kicked apart, and the anonymous brains would be carried off like trophies, then consumed with plasma torches and homemade A-bombs. The police realized they were sure to take the heaviest casualties. Not only would they die, but therabble who murdered them would boast about it later, each claiming, “I’m the one who did it! I killed that damn Chamberlain!”

Wands and guns fired without pause. Flesh was stunned and frozen, and people collapsed in waves. As she fell, one woman managed to throw a chunk of gray stone, hitting the prisoner in his face. Only then, finally, did Avram seem to notice the mob. He blinked and gasped, his expression more surprised than afraid, and stroking his bloody chin, he took a tiny, useless step backward.

The mob let loose an enormous roar.

For every good reason, this wasn’t fair. Avram was just a middle-aged Chamberlain. He had spent his life serving humanity as well as his own great Family. What were his crimes? Until a few months ago, he’d had the strength to move worlds, and more important, the morality to keep him from doing harm with his talents. Avram was never a true god, but instead he was a scrupulously ordinary person who wore a godly frame and conscience. That’s why the thousand Families had formed in the first place. Didn’t these people remember their own history? The Families had built the Great Peace. They had terraformed worlds and pacified suns, and acted as explorers and diplomats, and with all the talents on hand, they had done everything in their power to keep this ungrateful galaxy at peace.

Avram cursed his older, infinitely more powerful sister. “Alice!” he cried out, spitting blood on the police. “This is your fault!” he screamed. “All yours!”

Alice had done the unthinkable. Working in the Core, in complete secrecy, she and others from half of the Families had built a new universe for themselves.

It was an intricate, demanding enterprise. Too demanding, even for the likes of Alice. The umbilical between universes was unstable. For a horrible moment, the tiny incandescent child touched its mother, causing a blaze still spreading today.

Before judge and jury, Avram had explained what should have been obvious: He was never part of Alice’s work.

In his entire long life, he’d never even met the crazy bitch.

Learning that the Core was exploding, he was astonished. Like everyone in the courtroom. And when he realized that another Chamberlain was partly to blame, he was filled with a horror and revulsion that would have killed any lesser man.

“The guilty deserve their punishments,” he kept saying.

Then, in his next breath, “But don’t blame the innocent. I beg you.”

Over the weeks and months, Avram had listed his life’s glories: He had played small but integral roles in a thousand treaties and diplomatic missions. (“None of you have worked like I have for the Great Peace.”) Like most Chamberlains, he had made his living by terraforming worlds and entire systems—always for fair market prices. (“Only a true god doesn’t need money for his miracles.”) Yet Avram always gave away his talents to charitable causes. (“What good Chamberlain doesn’t?”) Fifty thousand years ago—as the first waves of refugees came from the Core—Avram had helped this little world improve itself, tweaking its atmosphere and its sun to let it double its population without too much hardship.

Those same refugees, embittered by their struggles, eventually helped the untainted Families lure Avram into their trap. And they greedily helped strip him of his talents before his trial began.

Intellect was a fundamental talent. The man standing naked in this plaza was a moron compared to his old self. In this mutilated state, he had tried to sway opinions and emotions, and on both counts, he had failed badly. Catastrophically. Thinking of the verdict now, Avram began to laugh with an easy rancor. Didn’t these bastards understand? Wasn’t it obvious? Most of what Avram was, innocent or guilty, they were. The creature standing before them was the same as them—small and extraordinarily weak, slightly more articulate than stone, and in the end, inconsequential.

Avram couldn’t count the angry hands reaching for him. The air seemed to tear with the screams. I am going to die now, he warned himself, not entirely displeased. Yet as he closed his eyes, he heard a voice, close and strong:

“Why not let a child kill him?”

The words were framed in a reasonable tone. A quietly compelling tone. For a slippery instant, Avram found himself thinking: Yes, why not? He could see a logic. If an execution was a good thing, who stood to benefit most for taking part? A child, surely. An innocent, pure soul too young to remember the Great Peace, much less those times when the Chamberlains were universally adored.

Avram shuddered, astonished by the turn of his mind.

Three million bystanders heard the voice, and they welcomed its words and the oddly seductive logic.

The plaza grew quiet.

Standing in plain view, between the police and the mob, was a halfgrown boy. No one had seen him before now, and afterward, no one would recall his appearance—not his face or his build, or anything else tangible. The only detail that lingered was the knife he was holding in his right hand, fashioned from pink stone and a simple bone hilt.

With a soothing, almost liquid voice, the boy said, “Let me kill him.”

No one moved, or spoke.

He took a step, then another, passing through a curtain of cold vapor that should have frozen him in mid-stride. Half a hundred unconscious, stampeded people lay in a heap before him. He stepped over them with a gentle grace, smiling now, looking at the nearest of the police without malice or scorn. Later, witnesses would talk about how harmless he seemed. Like a boy about to play a game, they said. Centuries later, when the public finally learned the boy’s identity, the surviving witnesses would grow quiet and thoughtful. Some would laugh painfully, while others simply cried.

The only person who knew enough to be afraid was the prisoner. With a cold clean terror, Avram shouted, “Go away! Leave me alone!”

The boy winked at the highest ranking officer, saying, “Ma’am? Would you please hold him for me?”

The police couldn’t help him fast enough.

“Don’t!” Avram cried out. “I don’t want to… no…!”

But Avram couldn’t defend himself. He was nothing but a retrofitted ape, and five strong officers managed to restrain him, holding him absolutely still as the boy put that odd knife to the throat, slicing it open, cutting the larynx in mid-scream.

The next cut opened the skull beneath the short red hair.

That’s a damned sharp piece of stone, the officers thought. And that was about all that occurred to them.

With his free hand, the boy removed a shiny, delicately crenelated brain, placing it under his arm like a loaf of bread. Then he set out in every direction at once. He walked past everyone in that explosive mob, whispering to them, telling them to go home, telling them that the Great Peace hadn’t died and they should honor it in their lives, always.

He vanished without trace or fuss.

People assumed that he would destroy the criminal’s soul, as promised. No one ever touched him or even thought of questioning his motives.

“I believed him,” thousands remarked with the same unconcerned voice. Even when they knew who he was and what eventually transpired on the Earth, they said, “I don’t know what you’re saying. To me, he seemed like a very good person…”