Tis, they’re coming.
Floating, timeless. Pure release, nonexistence/coexistence with all the universe. The final consummation: satori in a laser beam.
But duration must be. Resolution, downward to ego. To matter.
The asteroid awaited. An unlovely lumpish mass of slag, seeming to fall toward Starshine, though his line of sight ran perpendicular to its path.
He rubbed his jaw and frowned. He had a lot more to say to that alien doctor, about the evil his kind had brought the world, about his own culpability in luring that pathetic burnout Trips into wild dangers. But it would have to wait; time passed.
He wondered how much time he had. From the memories he shared with Mark and the rest, he knew the drug lasted an hour. He hoped he could do what had to be done in that time.
He held out a hand. A beam of light leapt from it to Tezcatlipoca’s pockmarked surface, dazzling white-hot. A circle of rock raced the spectrum and boiled from the surface in a glowing jet.
He was fabulously strong. But all his strength would not divert the evil mass. Nor did he have the power to destroy the rock. What he could do was use his sunbeam to heat a spot on its flank, so that the stuff of the asteroid flared away like a rocket exhaust at right angles to its orbit. Even now, a million miles from Earth, a tiny deflection would make all the difference.
But even the tiniest deviation in the asteroid’s course would require fantastic amounts of energy. And an unknown amount of time.
By increments Starshine increased his output. He felt alive, and huge, and full of power; he could not fail, here before the holy Sun’s naked eye, with her energy to sustain him.
At stake was a planet, his planet, Earth, green and gravid. And, incidentally, his own life, and that of Mark Meadows and the other entities whose existence was somehow locked in his.
At detection’s instant Tach knew Hellcat’s deadliest weapon was out. The coherent tachyons of her ghost lance would have strewn Baby’s component atoms—and his—across a dozen dimensions in an attosecond if it still functioned, and with Baby’s ghostdrive gland had also gone her tachyon sense, so they would have had no warning. But Tach gambled that the Swarm attack had disabled the tachyon beam. It would have been the Mother’s most urgent target; the planetoid-beings feared the lance, even small ones such as Courser-class ships like Hellcat carried.
Zabb’s ship was far from helpless, though. As Baby thrust on a course tangent to hers, crossing outsystem from the path Starshine had taken, a pulse of purple light flashed by to port. I was expecting that, Baby said smugly as she threw herself into an evasive dance, intricate as a minuet, which kept her crossing Hellcat’s bows as the other vessel rounded on her.
Together they sent forth a probe, Tach directing Baby’s greater raw psionic power to scan the other craft. He sensed damage that brought bile to his throat, raw wounds with edges burned or withered gaping in Hellcat’s flanks. She seeks our lives, he thought, but no faithful ship of Takis deserves the taint of swarmling contagion.
Before he could gain a sharper vision he was cut off by mental force like a guillotine blade. No matter; Baby had sensed enough to evaluate what capacity her rival still possessed. Still, he was surprised.
Spavined slut, consort of barges! Tach felt Hellcat’s anger stab Baby like a spear. This jaundiced sun shall taste thee and thy weakling lord.
Brave talk, thou who cannot waddle fast enough to catch me!
Your mental powers have grown, cousin, he projected.
A dry chuckle came into his mind. Adversity forces growth. You’ve come, Tisianne. I take it you found my emissaries on Earth?
Baby was reporting Hellcat’s status: Tegument weakened in several sections; a lesion in her main drive organ …
I have, thought Tach.
Rabdan was a fool. You’ve disposed of him? I perceive you have. And Durg? His death was clean, I trust.
He lives, cousin. With malice: He’s transferred his loyalty to the groundling who bested him. Your former captive, Captain Trips.
White-hot anger spike: You lie! A moment. But no. Perhaps you begin to understand why I’ve taken the steps I have, then, Tis.
According to plan, Baby shaped a curving orbit on constant boost. Despite her best efforts Hellcat could not close the range. Her fire control had suffered as well; at this distance the overwhelming superiority of her firepower was cancelled by the more precise aim of Baby’s single heavy laser—picking at her, forcing her to trade pursuit for evasion.
I understand you’ve betrayed our clan and our people, Tach thought.
It seems so, Tis. But consider: this virus you loosed on that hot, heavy world threatens our existence far more surely than the mindless Swarm.
The experiment was a success.
Therein lies the danger. These altered groundlings, these aces, aided you to escape against all our strength. Now you tell me a gangling weakling bested the deadliest bare-hand fighter Takis has produced. Do you not in this see the eclipse of our kind, Tisianne?
Perhaps the fall of the Psi Lords is overdue.
And you call me traitor. The thought felt more wearily amused than outraged.
You would’ve destroyed the entire species.
Of course. They’re groundlings.
Agony splashed Tach’s brain like acid. He was thrown half out of bed as Baby’s acceleration compensator slipped. Baby! Are you all right?
A grazing wound, Lord Tis. I’m fine. But there was a tentative note; she’d never been injured in battle before.
He caressed her with a brief, healing mind-touch, drove fiercely at Zabb, So you made common cause with the filthy Swarm?
You’ve seen what they did to poor Hellcat. This Mother’s encountered Takisians before, or shared plasm with another who had, and survived—which ought to tell you much, cousin mine. A pod seeded swarmlings in orbit on the far side of this adoptive world of yours, where they remained inert until we drifted in among them. Then they were upon us, with acid, quick-acting pathogens, and brute force.
We drove them off. Tach’s mind filled with images stolen from Rabdan’s, of battle in wavering light against amorphous beings whose touch might mean death by irreversible dissolution. Of swordblades glinting, and screams, and the most desperate defense of all, laser pistols flaring in the corridors while peristaltic spasms racked Hellcat’s whole fabric. We lost four, your old weapons-master among them. The next attack would have finished us. So I chose negotiation.
Violet eyes clenched shut. Sedjur.
After we repulsed the assault, Zabb continued, I managed to touch the swollen dimness that is the Mother’s consciousness even as we tended our wounded and flushed the passageways with antibiotic emulsion, to impress on her that I wished to deal. She understood but vaguely; I believe she felt something akin to curiosity at my temerity, wanted to examine me at closer range. I traveled to her in a single lifeboat, passed within.
Baby was back in control of herself; her violent high-gee maneuvering no longer so much as rippled the surface of the brandy remaining in the goblet by the bed. Sweat stood out in cool domes on Tach’s forehead. Despite himself he felt awe of his cousin—even admiration. To journey alone and unarmed into the colossal body of the Mother, ancient enemy, bogey of a million cradle stories—that took courage from the epic songs.
And this above all was why Zabb had done it, Tach knew: he had suffered humiliation at Tach’s hands, he who had never known defeat. He had to perform some fabulous deed or have his significance, his virtu, drain from him like water from a broken vessel. And to a Takisian even treason was glorious, if grand enough in scale.
Inside a great cavern I stepped from my craft and stood upon the very substance of our oldest foe. The walls around seemed festooned with strands of black moss, illuminated by witchlights in half a hundred pallid covers; the stink was such my vision dimmed. But I made contact with a mind as huge and diffuse as a nebula. After a fashion, we communicated.
The monster and I alike had interest in
destroying life on this Earth of yours. So we came to an accommodation.
Bile bubbled into Tach’s mouth in shocked reflex. We came to an accommodation. With what insouciance his cousin passed the thought, as if it did not at once describe the greatest treason and the greatest act of courage their kind had known.
I honor you, Zabb. I must. If you win this day, they’ll sing your song for a thousand generations. But … I despise you.
I’ll try to bear up.
Tach shuddered in a breath. And you murdered Benaf’saj.
I had to do so. She would never have consented to taking action against you and your precious Earth, to say nothing of treating with the Swarm. To all appearances she died in the swarmling assault; Rabdan saw to it, you’ll be pleased to know.
A tear fell to the silk coverlet.
Zabb. I’m coming to kill you.
Perhaps you even can, so weakened is Hellcat. Or it may be I’ll kill you. A weary chuckle. Either outcome is satisfactory, from my point of view.
Baby screamed.
Suddenly Tach was bouncing around the organiform opulence of his stateroom. He smelled hot silicone; his mind reverberated to his vessel’s anguish.
Now, bitch, came Hellcat’s thought, sizzling with hatred, thou canst flee no longer. A blue-white flare unfolded as Hellcat threw her drive into terminal triumphant overdrive, closing for the kill.
Baby, Baby! Her mind was white-noise terror and pain. Symbiont-ships had advantages over nonliving craft, could think for themselves, could heal themselves of damage. But they had wills of their own, and those could be broken.
Tach grabbed a projection, clung, spread his mind to encompass his tormented ship. Air rushed from a two-meter gash in her hull, tumbling her through space. Oh, Baby, get control of yourself!
He felt the demon breath of a laser pass her by. Daddy, Daddy, I can’t, I can’t!
Light pulsed from the walls in random splashes of color. He summoned all his healing strength, all his love and empathy for his ship, poured his whole being on the terrified flames within her. I love you, Baby. But you must let me help you.
No!
Our lives lie at stake. A whole world’s at stake.
Slowly terror ebbed. The ship’s wild gyration damped, and Tach felt her compensator TK field enfold him once again. He breathed once more.
Hellcat had shape now without magnification, a spiked darkness alive with tiny lights, riding a tidal wave of fire. Her triumph filled Tach’s head as a laser spiked forth and one of Baby’s sponsons evanesced in a flash. Scream for mercy, coward! Thou’ll float forever friendless!
DAMN YOU! Baby’s internal lights dimmed as she channeled all power to her laser. A scarlet spike impaled Hellcat just ahead of her drive. She shrieked—then again, louder, a tumult of agony that went on and on until Tach thought his brain would burst.
1954C–1100 was vomiting its own substance into space. For a moment Starshine almost wished he’d brought some sort of instrument, to measure his progress. Time was fast running out, and no sign of that treacherous alien technocrat returning. It would be good to know if his sacrifice was going to be in vain.
He firmly squelched the thought. He would at least die free of the subtle chains of technology. And the green Earth would live awhile longer, until the land-rapers and techno-freaks burned her out. But he would have done his part.
He began composing his final poem; a poignant piece, the more so since there were none to hear it above the asteroid’s silent photonic scream but the other entities who made up the composite that was Captain Trips.
When he could think again: Baby, are you all right?
We won! Lord Tis, I beat her!—An image of Hellcat, lightless and torn, tumbling away on a cometary path, away from the world her master had sought to devastate.
Zabb! Zabb, do you still live? No reply, and he wondered why his pulse quickened anxiously.
And then, I do. Damn you. Can you do nothing right?
What of our people?
Three died when your shot blew the drive: Aliura, Zovar S’ang, that servant wench you were so fond of. All vanished in a gout of flame. Are you then proud, Tisianne?
He sat dead still, cold emptiness within. He had murdered his own kinsman, first Rabdan, then these others. And Talli, his playmate, who’d warned him of Zabb’s intentions when he and Turtle and Trips were kidnapped. All for a good cause, of course. Yet could not Zabb claim the same?
You’ve won. Take your vengeance, Tisianne.
Baby, match vectors with Hellcat. This must be quickly done.
But, Master …
What?
Starshine—he’s about to revert to Captain Trips.
What are you waiting for? A rising note. Do you gloat, Tisianne? It isn’t like you. Finish it.
Tach stared blankly at the membrane-wall ahead, where Baby formed an image of her stricken foe. His pride demanded consummation. And practicality: as long as Zabb lived, Tachyon was in mortal peril, and Earth besides.
Tis: when my mother cast that mongrel bitch who pupped you down the stairs, I watched. I stood by the balustrade and laughed. The way her head lolled on her neck—
But Tachyon laughed. Enough. Save your venom for the Void, Zabb.
Shoot, then. Damn you, shoot.
No. Repair your ship if you can, limp back to Takis, fly to Network space and live as a renegade. Live in the knowledge that I’ve bested you again. That you betrayed your lineage—and failed.
He threw up a wall against a surge of fury. Baby, find the Captain quickly! She sheered away, her own drives a yellow coma.
… destroy you, Tisianne, I swear … he sensed. Then Zabb was gone out of range, tumbling into the infinite hole of night.
The shine of his hands winked out. As they did, Starshine felt a sickness, a shifting of the very fabric of his being. At least I died in the Sun’s embrace …
Three hundred seconds later Baby braked to match velocity with a form hanging apparently lifeless above a still-glowing crater in the asteroid’s flank. Gently she reached out with her grappler field, caught up the purple-clad form with blood dried in rings about mouth and ears, the silk hat that followed it like a purple satellite, drew them within her. As her master bent weeping over his friend she set her prow toward the world that had become their home.
“Mark, Mark old man!” Dr. Tachyon exploded through the door of the Cosmic Pumpkin, arms full of bouquets and bottles of wine in paper bags.
Mark wheeled his chair in from the head shop. “Doc! It’s, like, far out to see you. What’s the occasion?” His face had an unnaturally ruddy cast where vacuum had burst capillaries beneath the skin, and until his eardrums healed he was hearing by a little bone-conduction unit taped to the mastoid process beside his left ear, but on the whole he didn’t look too bad for what he’d survived.
“What’s the occasion? What’s the occasion? Doughboy is cleared of all charges, he comes home today. You’re a hero—that is, your friend the Captain is. And I, of course. There’s a celebration at the Crystal Palace, and the drinks are on the house.”
“What about those bottles?”
“These?” A smile. “I might be having a private celebration of my own, after the festivities at Chrysalis’s.”
He stuck out a bouquet. “These are for you. Let me be the first to congratulate you, Mark.”
Mark sniffled. “Uh, thanks, Doc.”
“Shall we away? Why don’t you slip into—you know—more formal clothing?”
Mark glanced away. “I, uh, like, I think I better stay here. I got the store and Sprout to look after, and I’m not getting around too well.”
“Nonsense. You must come. You’ve earned adulation, Mark. You. You’re a hero.”
His friend evaded his eye. “Brenda will be more than happy to look after the shop and Sprout for you.”
“Not so fast, buster,” said the woman behind the counter “And I’m Susan.”
Tach fixed her with a penetrant stare. After a momen
t she crumpled. “I, I guess I could.”
“But this chair,” Mark whined.
“Do you require assistance, Mistress Isis?” a voice asked from the rear of the store, deep and resonant like an alien gong. Durg at’Morakh bo-Isis Vayawand-sa emerged into the deli, a collector’s-item Steppenwolf tee shirt stretched to near explosion across his giant chest. He was limping, his cheeks puffy and bruised, but otherwise little the worse for wear. “I can carry you wherever you wish to go, Mistress.”
Mark’s drunkard’s flush deepened. “I wish you’d quit calling me that, man. My name’s Mark.”
Durg nodded. “As you wish, Mistress. If you wish to conceal your name from the envy of your weaker fellows as you conceal your form, I shall use your nom de guerre when there are groundlings present.”
“Jesus,” Mark said. For his part Tach was annoyed that the Morakh had managed to learn that Moonchild’s real name (whatever that meant) was Isis Moon, which was more than he knew. He was also more than slightly amused.
“Splendid,” he said, shifting his grip on his burdens. “You run upstairs and change, and I’ll meet you at the Palace.”
“Where’ll you be?”
“I’ve an appointment first.” Durg picked Mark up, wheelchair and all, and carried him up the stairs.
Sara Morgenstern’s face was flushed almost as deeply as Mark’s, here in the late-afternoon gloom of Tach’s office. “So you did it,” she breathed.
He was aware of the scent of her, sensed her excitement. He could barely contain his own. “It was simple,” he lied.
“Tell me. How was the crime committed?”
He told her, with a minimum of embellishment, since concupiscence enjoyed a higher priority even than inflating his ego. And when he finished he saw to his amazement that her eager expression had collapsed on itself like a fallen soufflé.
“Aliens? It was aliens?” She could barely force the words out; her disappointment beat at his frontal lobes like surf.
“Why yes, new-stage swarmlings in league with my cousin Zabb. And that’s an important part of this story you will write, the danger posed by this new manifestation by the Swarm. Because this means the Mother’s not been content to go and leave this world in peace.”