A few people, kids mostly, splashed in a fern-lined pool. There was a souvenir shop with Resistance Era dishware and glasses and pennants, models of the Corsarius, and a substantial array of crystals and books. Among the books was Man and Olympian, and a modest volume titled Maxims of Christopher Sim. Toldenya’s magnificent On the Rock dominated the lobby. If you haven’t seen it: Sim sits thoughtfully, and precariously, atop a rounded slab, peering out over an uneasy ocean, illuminated by a rising sun. Storm clouds are visible on the horizon.
He wears a loose jacket and floppy trousers, his gray-blond hair curling out from under a battered hat. His eyes are narrowed, and filled with pain. The green and white wing of his skimmer is visible on the left. (It was on this occasion that I learned the significance of the tree symbol on the aircraft: it is the Morcadian tree, and has been the official device of Ilyanda for four hundred years.)
I bought a copy of the Maxims and took it outside, onto the shelf.
I was almost alone. "Off season," one of the attendants told me. "We don’t get many tourists this time of year. But a lot of people come out from the city for dinner and drinks. Tonight. There’ll be a good crowd tonight."
The shelf was open to the elements. Everything else was sealed and heated, including an observation deck, which lay at right angles to the face of the promontory. A few people had found their way to it, and were manning a battery of telescopes. A young couple, wrapped against the chill of the afternoon, followed me out.
A few kids played near, and sometimes climbed onto, the low mesh fence which was all that separated them from a happier world. The ocean was a long way down, and I cringed, watching.
Overhead, a variety of pennants flew. A few seabirds wheeled nearby, and a couple of floaters drifted just out of reach beyond the fence. Their filaments rippled in the moving air. Even in the shadow of the mountain wall, the daylight, reflected through their amoebic sacs, maintained a deliberate cadence of shifting hues. They exist on so many worlds, these peaceful, slow-moving creatures that seem endlessly curious about us. They’d been worth saving, I thought. They and the gulls and the broad sea that had been here for how many million years?
How could Sim have even considered destroying all this? How could he have stood up here, beneath these timeless walls, and contemplated that kind of act?
I found a bench on the observation deck, and opened the Maxims. It had been privately printed, through the Order of the Harridan. Much of the material had been derived from Sim’s one published work. But there were also excerpts from letters, court documents, comments attributed to him, public pronouncements, and so on.
The crisis, he tells the congress of the City on the Crag, is upon us, and I would be less than candid if I did not admit to you that, before it ends, I fear we will have emptied many of the seats in this chamber. And, in a note to a senator from that same body: I have every confidence that whatever Power has brought us this immeasurable distance along the road from Akkad, it surely does not intend to abandon us now to this ancient, unimaginative race that so single-mindedly pursues our extinction.
Toldenya’s slab is located at the north end of the ledge. It is the largest of a group of rocks, wedged into the cliff face, jutting precariously out over the void. No one really knows where Sim stood when he was here, and I have to think that the notion he actually climbed out there is purely an artist’s conceit.
His shelf had been narrow. At its widest point, it would have been just wide enough for a good pilot to set a skimmer down. Given a surprise—a sudden downdraft, say—and skimmer and pilot could have fallen a half kilometer into the ocean.
Why?
And why before dawn?
Yet how better to contemplate the star and the world he was about to destroy, than to catch them together in the magnificent symbiosis of an ocean sunrise?
And I wondered, while I considered what must have passed through his mind on those bleak mornings, whether he had not hoped for the sudden downdraft that might have shifted the decision to someone else’s shoulders.
Had he perhaps, in the end, come to fear his own weapon? Christopher Sim was first and last an historian. Standing out here, watching what he believed to be the last few sunrises this world would have, he must have been terrified of the verdict of history.
I felt the certainty of it in a sudden shock: the ultimate warrior had shuddered under that knowledge. No wonder we never heard again from the sun weapon.
XVII.
The measure of a civilization is in the courage, not of its soldiers, but of its bystanders.
THE MIST BLEW off the sea in the late afternoon, and I retired to a table in a corner of the bar, to sit quietly sipping green lamentoes. After a while, as the sky began to darken and Ilyanda’s rings took shape, I activated my commlink. "Chase, are you there?"
I heard it buzz, which meant she wasn’t wearing it. I went back to my drink and tried again a few minutes later. This time I connected. "Shower," she explained. "It’s been a long afternoon, but I’ve got some answers. Our boy’s idea would work."
"The antimatter?"
"Yes. It should be anti-helium, by the way, assuming the target has a helium core. Which is the case here."
"Who’d you talk to?"
"A physicist at a place called Insular Labs. His name’s Carmel, and he sounds as if he knows what he’s talking about."
"But it would work?"
"Alex, he said, and I quote: A shipload of that stuff would blow the son of a bitch to hell! "
"Then Kindrel’s story is at least possible. Provided you can get the stuff into the core. Did you ask him about that part of the problem? Could Sim have found a way to navigate in hyper?"
"I didn’t mention Sim. We were talking about a novel, remember? But Carmel thinks that navigation in Armstrong space is theoretically impossible. He suggested another way: ionize the anti-helium, and put it behind a powerful magnetic field. Then ram it into the sun at high velocity."
"Maybe that’s the way they intended to do it," I said. "Could we do that now?"
"He doesn’t think so. The anti-helium would be easy to make and contain, but the technology for the insertion would be pretty advanced stuff.
"Theoretically, the only type of nonlinear space that permits physical penetration by three-dimensional objects is Armstrong. I still think it’s a hoax."
"Yeah," I said, "Maybe. Listen, I’m at a nice spot. How about joining me for dinner?"
"The Perch?"
"Yes."
"Sure. Sounds good. Give me a little time to get myself together. Then I’ll take a taxi out. See you in about an hour and a half?"
"Okay. But don’t bother with the taxi. I’ll send the skimmer back for you."
I tried to use my commlink to enter the return code into the skimmer’s onboard computer. But the red lamp blinked: no connection. Why not? I made another unsuccessful effort, and patched through to the service desk. "I’m having problems with my automatics," I said. "Could you send an attendant to enter a code manually into my skimmer?"
"Yes, sir." It was a female voice, and it sounded vaguely annoyed. "But it’ll take a while. We’re shorthanded, and this is our busy night."
"How long?"
"It’s hard to say. I’ll send someone in as soon as I can."