"Come on, Olander," I exploded, "you can’t expect me to believe that a guy sitting in a bar can blow up a sun!"
"I’m sorry." His eyes changed, and he looked startled, as though he’d forgotten where he was. "You may be right," he said. "It hasn’t been tested, so they really don’t know. Too expensive to run a test."
I tried to imagine Point Edward engulfed in fire, amid boiling seas and burning forests. It was Gage’s city, where we’d explored narrow streets and old bookstores, and pursued each other across rainswept beaches and through candle-lit pubs. And from where we’d first gone to sea. I’d never forgot how it had looked the first time we’d come home, bright and diamond-hard against the horizon. Home. Always it would be home.
And I watched Olander through eyes grown suddenly damp, perhaps conscious for the first time that I had come back to Point Edward with the intention to leave Ilyanda.
"Olander, they left you to do this?"
"No." He shook his head vigorously. "It was supposed to happen automatically when the mutes got close. The trigger was tied in to the sensors on the Station. But the mutes have had some success at disrupting command and control functions. We couldn’t be sure…"
"Then they did leave you!"
"No! Sim would never have allowed it if he’d known. He has confidence in the scanners and computers. Those of us who know a little more about such things do not. So I stayed, and disconnected the trigger, and brought it down here."
"My God, and you’re really going to do it?"
"It works out better this way. We can catch the bastards at the most opportune moment. You need a human to make that judgment. A machine isn’t good enough to do it right."
"Olander, you’re talking about destroying a world!"
"I know." His voice shook. "I know." His eyes found mine at last. The irises were blue, and I could see white all round their edges. "No one wanted this to happen. But we’re driven to the wall If we can’t make this work, here, there may be no future for anyone."
I kept talking, but my attention was riveted to the computer keyboard, to the EXECUTE key, which was longer than the others, and slightly concave.
The laser was cool and hard against my leg.
He drained the last of his wine, and flung the glass out into the dark. It shattered. "Ciao," he said.
"The nova," I murmured, thinking about the broad southern seas and the trackless forests that no one would ever penetrate and the enigmatic ruins. And the thousands of people to whom, like me, Ilyanda was home. Who would remember when it was gone? "What’s the difference between you and the mutes?"
"I know how you feel, Kindrel."
"You have no idea how I feel—"
"I know exactly how you feel. I was on Melisandra when the mutes burned Cormoral. I watched them seize the Pelian worlds. They were irritated with the Pelians so they shot a few people. People who were like you, just minding their business. Do you know what Cormoral looks like now? Nothing will live there for ten thousand years."
Somebody’s chair, his, mine, I don’t know, scraped the floor, and the sound echoed round the bar.
"Cormoral and the Pelians were assaulted by their enemies!" I was enraged, frightened, terrified. Out of sight under the table, my fingers traced the outline of the weapon. "Has it occurred to you," I asked, as reasonably as I could, "what’s going to happen when the mutes go home, and we go back to squabbling among ourselves?"
He nodded. "I know. There’s a lot of risk involved."
"Risk?" I pointed a trembling finger at the stack of equipment. "That thing is more dangerous than a half-dozen invasions. For God’s sake, we’ll survive the mutes. We survived the ice ages and the nuclear age and the colonial wars and we will sure as hell take care of those sons of bitches if there’s no other way.
"But that thing you have in front of you—Matt, don’t do this. Whatever you hope to accomplish, the price is too high."
I listened to him breathe. An old love song was running on the sound system. "I have no choice," he said in a dull monotone. He glanced at his display. "They’ve begun to withdraw. That means they know the Station’s empty, and they suspect either a diversion or a trap."
"You do have a choice!" I screamed at him.
"No!" He pushed his hands into his jacket pockets as though to keep them away from the keyboard. "I do not."
Suddenly I was holding the laser, pointing it at the computers. "I’m not going to allow it."
"There’s no way you can stop it." He stepped out of the line of fire. "But you’re welcome to try."
I backed up a few paces and held the weapon straight out. It was a curious remark, and I played it again. Olander’s face was awash with emotions I couldn’t begin to put a name to. And I realized what was happening. "If I interrupt the power supply," I said, "It’ll trigger. Right?"
His face gave him away.
"Get well away from it." I swung the weapon toward him. "We’ll just sit here awhile."
He didn’t move.
"Back off," I said.
"For God’s sake, Kindrel." He held out his hands. "Don’t do this. There’s no one here but you and me."
"There’s a living world here, Matt. And if that’s not enough, there’s a precedent to be set."
He took a step toward the trigger.
"Don’t, Matt," I said. "I’ll kill you if I have to."
The moment stretched out. "Please, Kindrel," he said at last.
So we remained, facing each other. He read my eyes, and his color drained. I held the laser well out where he could see it, aimed at his chest.
The eastern sky was beginning to lighten.
A nerve quivered in his throat. "I should have left it alone," he said, measuring the distance to the keyboard.
Tears were running down my cheeks, and I could hear my voice loud and afraid as though it were coming from outside me. And the entire world squeezed down to the pressure of the trigger against my right index finger. "You didn’t have to stay," I cried at him. "It has nothing to do with heroics. You’ve been in the war too long, Matt. You hate too well."
He took a second step, tentatively, gradually transferring his weight from one foot to the other, watching me, his eyes pleading.
"You were enjoying this, until I came by."
"No," he said. "That’s not so."
His muscles tensed. And I saw what he was going to do and I shook my head no and whimpered and he told me to just put the gun down and I stood there looking at the little bead of light at the base of his throat where the bolt would hit and saying no no no…
When at last he moved, not toward the computer but toward me, he was far too slow and I killed him.
My first reaction was to get out of there, to leave the body where it had dropped and take the elevator down and run—
I wish to God I had.
The sun was on the horizon. The clouds scattered into the west, and another cool autumn day began.
Matt Olander’s body lay twisted beneath the table, a tiny black hole burned through the throat, and a trickle of blood welling out onto the stone floor. His chair lay on its side, and his jacket was open. A pistol, black and lethal and easy to hand, jutted from an inside pocket.
I had never considered the possibility he might be armed. He could have killed me at any time.
What kind of men fight for this Christopher Sim?
This one would have burned Ilyanda, but he could not bring himself to take my life.
What kind of men? I have no answer to that question. Then or now.
I stood a long time over him, staring at him, and at the silently blinking transmitter, with its cold red eye, while the white lights fled toward the outer ring.