Starfire

41

“Why isn’t everyone dead?”

Six hours had produced a dramatic change. The communication channels between Earth and Sky City were again free of noise. Celine Tanaka was looking at Bruno Colombo, and his image was perfectly clear and solid. Forget the signal delay, and you would think he was sitting just next door.

She had expected to be talking only to Bruno Colombo, but a dozen other people were packed in with him. She should have predicted that. The Oval Office was just as full. In both places, everyone crowded in who could justify a presence.

Plus, perhaps, a few who couldn’t. Celine wondered about Maddy Wheatstone, standing next to a pale and bandaged John Hyslop. Perhaps the particle storm had led Goldy Jensen to relax her iron grip on access to Bruno’s office, and a few extras had slipped by her.

Celine went on, “Not that we’re complaining, mind you. It’s nice to be alive, those of us that are, and know that Earth can start on the road to recovery. It’s going to be a long and hard road, we realize that, but it’s a shock being here at all, after you’ve sat for weeks preparing for the worst.”

“Yes, indeed.” Bruno Colombo was nodding a mile a minute. “Madam President, we are as delighted as you are that the damage and casualties on Earth are less than anticipated. We, of course, have had our own injuries.”

An extra nod went in John Hyslop’s direction. “We also suffered tragic loss of life. However, this should also be a time for thanksgiving, if not for actual celebration. We have seen, if not a miracle, at least a supreme achievement. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate and to thank publicly every individual on Sky City, all of whose exceptional efforts permitted the damage inflicted on Earth to be far less than was originally feared, and every one of whom—”

“We share your gratitude, Director Colombo.” Celine could see the others on Sky City wriggling with impatience or embarrassment. Bruno Colombo had a rare talent for blather, and he was barely getting started. “I would welcome an opportunity to discuss that with you in more detail — on some other occasion. For the moment, however, we have a practical question: We survived, but why} What, if you like, went right} I thought the storm was predicted to be far more than the defense system could handle. We came to the limit, but the defenses held. How were they able to do that?”

Bruno Colombo looked across at John Hyslop. “I think that our chief engineer, despite his severe injuries, is the person best equipped to handle that question.”

If the poor beggar can talk, Celine thought, what with that choker bandage round his neck, and the blood on it. But he looks cheerful enough.

“No thanks to me.” John Hyslop’s voice was a throaty whisper. “I was as surprised as anybody. Star knows what’s been going on, though. Star? Wake up. I’m talking to you.”

“Me? Ooh! Sorry.” Star seemed startled, but she grinned at Celine. “How are yer, mam? Still got Calvin Coolidge’s seat down there, have yer?”

“It hasn’t been used by anyone since you,” Celine said gravely.

Star cackled. “Don’t wonder, if they know what he did in it. Dirty old beast! Whadyer want to know, mam? I wasn’t list’ning too close.”

“Why weren’t we all killed by the particle storm? You’re supposed to be the expert. And don’t say that if we had all been killed, we wouldn’t be here to talk about it.”

“Never thought of that.” Star blinked. “Anyway, I’m not the expert. I was the dummy on this one, just as bad as the rest of yer.”

Celine heard Nick Lopez snigger behind her. “But you understand it, Star. Can’t you explain it?”

“No, mam. I mean, I could explain. But Wilmer oughter do it. He was the one figgered it out, so it’s like his, not mine.”

“But he’s not there.”

“No, mam, because he’s here. Hey, Wilmer. Tell ’em.”

Celine groaned as Wilmer appeared in the field of view. It was always nice to see a former colleague, not to mention a long-ago lover, but she had tons of work to do before the day ended. She had been hoping for a quick explanation and a rapid advance to other topics.

“We got most of it right.” Wilmer wasn’t being defensive; he didn’t think in those terms. He simply wanted to be accurate. “I mean, we got most of it right eventually. But not on the first shot.

“Star gave us a good theory as to how Alpha C could go supernova. We knew the particle beam was heading in our direction, and it didn’t seem that could have happened by accident. And when we had the Sniffer data we realized that the particles didn’t travel separately, they were tied together in big bundles of a few trillion each. Soon as we had a chance to grab some, Star could start to play around with ’em. Their behavior turned out to be peculiar.”

“Funny little buggers,” Star added. “Put a bundle in some place at a humongous temperature, it don’t give a damn. Sits there, totally comfortable. Surround it with cool matter and lots of slow-moving free electrons, though, an’ it’s buggered. It falls apart.”

“When we knew that,” Wilmer went on, “we still didn’t see how it helped us to guard against them. We went ahead with a redesigned defense to divert particle bundles, but we didn’t seem any closer to real understanding. We didn’t know what was going on with the Alpha Centauri supernova, or why it happened.”

He paused and looked thoughtful.

“And we still don’t know why it happened,” Nick Lopez said softly behind Celine. “And at this rate we never will. Tell him to get a move on.”

Celine knew better. She sat and waited, and at last Wilmer went on. “Then we got newer Sniffer data, and knew we were really in trouble. The particle beam wasn’t just coming our way, it was converging, homing in on us. That’s when me and Star decided we — meaning humans — were really up shit creek. The way the beam was narrowing as it approached the solar system, we’d be hit with a whole load of particles, far more than we’d ever expected. Far more than the new defense system could cope with. Far too much for Earth to stand, or for Sky City.”

Nick Lopez, behind Celine, muttered, “So we all died.”

Celine said patiently, “But it wasn’t too much for Earth, or for Sky City. We’re still here. How did that happen?”

“Because me and Star, we took two correct facts, added an assumption, and drew a false conclusion.” Wilmer shook his head woefully. “Not Star’s fault, mine. I ought to be old enough to know better. Let’s do the facts. First fact: The Alpha Centauri supernova didn’t just happen. It was made to happen.”

“Something hardly anybody in the world believes,” Celine said.

“True. But that doesn’t make it any less a fact. And it’s not what caused our problem. Second fact: The particle beam was converging. The number of bundles per unit volume was increasing instead of decreasing as the beam came closer, and the devastation it could cause was that much greater. And now the assumption: Human beings are important.”

Everyone in the Oval Office jerked to attention. Celine said, “I hope that’s not what you mean by a false assumption. If so, you won’t find anybody here in the Oval Office who agrees with you.”

“Then I’m glad I’m not in the Oval Office.” Wilmer held up his hand. “Don’t get starchy on me; I’m going to explain. I had this thought when I was by myself and the particle storm was sluicing through Sky City. I thought, if I had the science and the technology to make a supernova happen, would I waste a whole star system just to wipe out a lot of silly buggers like me? Of course I wouldn’t. I’ve heard all the talk, that something tuned in on our radio signals over the past century and a half and decided to do away with us. I can’t buy that. I mean, the media programs are bad, but they’re not that bad.

“Once you decide the human race isn’t important enough to be worth killing, you stop saying, ’Something’s out to get me,’ and you draw a different conclusion. Not the wrong conclusion, the one that me and Star made, that the particle beam was converging on Earth. The right conclusion: Whatever made the supernova and the particle beam hasn’t the slightest interest in Earth. The beam was converging on Sol. The Sun was the target, and the only target. And what saved us — what made the difference between total extinction and a near miss — is Earth’s distance from the Sun. We’re alive because all but a tiny fraction of the particle bundles went to their intended destination: Sol. The convergence worked almost all the time. We got the failures, the misses.”

Celine said, a moment before her brain caught up with her tongue, “You mean the particle bundles were designed to destroy the Sun?”

“Of course they weren’t.” Wilmer stared at her in amazement. “Destroy the Sun? That’s barmy. Star, got that bottle with you? Show it off there, would you?”

Star rummaged in the bag hung over her shoulder and pulled out a glossy metal canister about eight inches long. She held it up so that everyone could get a view of it and said, “Ta-daa!”

“Particle bundles.” Wilmer took it from her. “In here. Quite stable, they’re kept away from ordinary matter using electromagnetic field suspension. Harmless. Harmless here, and on the Sun. They wouldn’t destroy it. Why would they want to, when they live inside stars?”

Bruno Colombo said, “You talk as though the things in there are alive!”

It was his turn to receive Wilmer’s withering stare.

“Well, I don’t know. Maybe they are, maybe they’re not. Depends how you define alive. Me and Star, we’ve been wrong too often and too recently to stick our necks out. But let’s say we feel sure that the Alpha Centauri supernova was designed to spread these particle bundles to other stars. We don’t know how they’re aimed, or what they do when they get there. But I’d make a case for saying anything that propagates itself in an intentional way qualifies to be thought of as alive.”

“And sentient?” Bruno Colombo was out to restore his good name. “If they are, and they are able to produce a supernova, think what we might learn from them.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.” Wilmer peered at the bottle. “The bundles in here would be more like spores, or seeds. How much high-tech information would you get from a human sperm? I don’t think it’d produce the theory of relativity, or tell you how to send an expedition to Mars. And if one of these little beggars could tell us anything, I don’t know if I’d trust it. They’re a star form, we’re a planet form. We might not have much in common.”

Nick Lopez, behind Celine, said suddenly, “How long do we have, Wilmer?”

Celine turned to face him. “How long for what?”

“How long before the bundles develop to whatever they finally become, and do whatever they do? If they’re like seeds, eventually they’ll turn into something that produces more seeds. How long before they change the Sun, or decide it’s breeding time and they need another supernova?”

“No worries. Stellar processes are slo-o-o-w — a star like Sol can spend ten billion years and more on the main sequence.”

“It can. But does it have to? Remember, there was no way that Alpha Centauri could go supernova — until it did.”

“He’s right, Wilmer.” Star moved forward to peer at Nick Lopez with new interest. “I thought it the first time I met yer. Yer got a weird mind, mister. I like that.”

“And in fact we know very little about supernovas and how they work,” Wilmer added. “Maybe they proceed from star to star like a chain of firecrackers, one every ten million years. We’ve not been watching for long enough. In a whole galaxy you get only one or two supernovas a century, and mostly so far away we don’t learn much. Did you know we haven’t had a naked-eye supernova since—”

“Thank you, Wilmer, I’ve heard that before.” Celine cut him off. “No more speeches today. The wounded have to be looked after, the dead buried, Earth and the institutions of Earth rebuilt, and Sky City moved back to its old position. And then we must set new goals for humans, including everything we had before the supernova came along, and more.”

She thought, That sounded an awful lot like a speech. It must be catching.

“And while we’re doing all that,” Nick Lopez said quietly, “there’s one other thing that we’ll be doing.”

The others paused expectantly. Not Celine. When you were a world-class worrier, you didn’t have to. be told what else you needed to be nervous about. “I know. From now on we’ll have a new hobby — maybe we should say a new religion.”

“Maybe we should say, more like an old religion.”

“Whatever you call it, one thing’s for sure. We’ll all be watching the Sun.”