“Perhaps they’ve fled Wormwood entirely,” Paola Birdsong suggested.
“Something’s going on down there,” Hakim said, the merest frown crossing his brow. “If the primary civilization has abandoned Nebuchadnezzar and Ramses, they’ve left machines to perform some task or other.”
“It doesn’t make sense. If nobody’s here, and if we destroy these worlds, what do we accomplish?” Ariel asked.
“I believe there are intelligences here,” Hakim said. “There is activity—it is just very low-key. Perhaps they have been hiding for a long time, and they are simply growing lax…”
Martin pondered this for a few seconds. “We go ahead,” he said. “We drop the planetary makers and doers, and if possible, we reconnoiter. Still no evidence of defenses?”
“None,” Hakim said.
“And the five masses inward from Nebuchadnezzar?”
“Still unknown,” Hakim said. “I’m giving them full priority now.”
The system of planets around Wormwood spanned fifteen billion kilometers, the major axis of the outermost planet’s orbit. The Tortoise would not resort to extreme acceleration except in an emergency, and that made the system as vast, with regard to their present flow of time, as the spaces between the stars. It could take them years to explore, reconnoiter… Or they could do their Job and get out as best they could, to rendezvous with Hare, and perhaps begin the new life.
Martin made his quarters small and spare, just large enough to suit two comfortably. He did not request many goods, hoping to set an example for the others.
There were still tough choices to be made, but they would not be made by vote of the children. The decisions were his alone now. The judgment had been passed; the system was condemned. But how much could they contribute to the total effort against the planet killers? How much could they learn here about the development and growth of such civilizations, about intelligences so inclined to destroy and murder?
If Wormwood contained clues to the morphology of such civilizations, Martin argued with himself that they had a duty to learn as much as they could, to help the Benefactors. That meant time, and study—and greatly increased danger.
“I’d like to speak with the War Mother,” he said to his wand. A few minutes later, the War Mother appeared at the hatch to his quarters, and he asked it to enter. The black and white paint on its surface had started to flake. They might have to renew it soon.
He expressed his thoughts about exploring in a few brief sentences, and asked for advice.
“Any knowledge gathered could be most useful,” the War Mother said. “Should we ever be in a situation to pass on what we learn to another Ship of the Law.”
“Would it be crucial!” Martin asked.
“That is impossible to judge until the knowledge is gathered.”
Martin smiled wryly, wondering why he engaged in such conversations at all. As Pan, it was all up to him—to his instincts, which Martin did not trust.
He bit his lip reflectively, sucking in a lungful of cool air. If things went bad on Mars and Venus, if the solar system was (or had been) attacked again and the Benefactors had lost, then the children and records of Earth contained within the Ships of the Law would be all that remained…
Far more than just their individual selves could be at stake. He wondered if, at some crucial moment, all Earth might scream through him, the world in his genes reaching up to his mind, the spirit of terrestrial creation demanding survival at any cost.
Martin sleeved sweat from his forehead. I fear the ghost of Earth.
“Then we concentrate on doing the Job,” he said, “and we learn what we can.”
For once, he was grateful for the War Mother’s silence.
The Tortoise coasted more quietly than any stone. Within, the children prepared, watched, listened to the natural whickerings of Nebuchadnezzar and Ramses and Herod and the high buzz and squeal of Wormwood, tracked the slow courses of the tiny points of light that were ships.
Drifting, drifting, around the shallow well of Wormwood, across its vast gently curved prairie of gravitation.
The children became quieter, more somber.
Theresa and Martin still found occasion to make love, but the love was peremptory, more necessity than enthusiasm. Ramses, slightly larger than Nebuchadnezzar, had once been covered with thick volcanic haze, high in sulfuric acid, still evident in traces in its soil. Some internal anomaly—a huge undigested lump of uranium, perhaps—had kept it hot and heavy with volcanism even into its late old age. It had been tamed only by the action of civilization, perhaps from Nebuchadnezzar if that was where life had first formed around Wormwood—perhaps from Leviathan, the closest star system, or even Behemoth before it became a red giant.
Martin studied the search team’s reports on Nebuchadnezzar hour by hour. Hakim did not sleep; Martin ordered him to rest finally when he found Hakim slumped on a ladder field, hardly able to move.
Down, down…
Time passed quickly enough, too quickly for Martin; there was no time to think the thoughts he needed to think, to reach the conclusions that had to be reached.
The purpose of their journey, perhaps the main purpose of their existence, approached all too rapidly.
The makers deposited in the pre-birth material around Wormwood converted rocky rubble into neutronium bombs sufficient to melt a single planet’s surface.
After reporting their status to Tortoise along channels mimicking the cosmic babble of distant stars, in low-information drones lasting hours, the makers became silent. Not even Tortoise could detect them, or learn where they were; the time for giving them alternate instructions had passed.
Whether Tortoise succeeded or not, the makers would stealthily drop their weapons into the system. The weapons’ journeys would take years…
Martin floated in a net beside Theresa. Both lay awake. For a long time—fifteen, twenty minutes—neither spoke, content, if that was the word, to merely stretch out next to each other, flesh warm against flesh, listening to their breath flow in and out.
“We’re doing it,” Martin said finally.
“You mean, it’s almost done,” Theresa said.
“Yes. The moms have trained us well.”
“To destroy.”
Martin snorted. “Destroy what? The Killers burned themselves out. Or they’ve left. How many thousands of years more advanced were they?” He snorted again, and stroked her arm. “Why did they kill Earth, when they still had their home worlds, and they couldn’t even fill them! Was it just greed?”
“Maybe it was fear,” Theresa said. “They were afraid we would send machines to kill them.”
“Everybody’s afraid in the forest,” Martin agreed. “Kill or be killed.”
“Kill and be killed,” Theresa said.
“I don’t like what I’ve become,” Martin said after a pause. “What I’m doing.”
“Do you like me?”
“Of course I do.”
“I’m doing the same thing.”
He shrugged, unable to explain the contradiction.
“Do you feel guilty?” Theresa asked.
“No,” Martin said. “I want to turn their worlds into slag.”
“All right,” Theresa said.
“Do you?”
“Feel guilty?”
“No. Want to watch.”
She didn’t answer for some time, her breath regular, as if asleep. “No,” she said. “But I will. For those who can’t.”