Martin said nothing, growing angry. This kind of fantasizing was more than useless; it was counter-productive, perhaps even bad for their morale.
“I hope you haven’t told anybody about this.”
“I keep my stupid ideas to myself… except for you.”
“Good,” Martin said, perhaps more firmly than necessary.
“Don’t be too hard,” William said. “Can you imagine the kind of guilt the Killers feel, if they feel guilt at all? Maybe they grew up after launching their machines, when it was too late. Or perhaps one tyrannical, fanatic government built and launched the machines, and then fell out of power, and others came in, and they decided the best thing would be to leave all this here for us, to let us destroy their home world, maybe the leaders… That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”
“Nice isn’t the word,” Martin said, his anger subsiding. William was always willing to play this peculiar game, somewhere between Devil’s advocate and unbridled imp.
“I’m not really kidding, Martin,” William said. “I think that’s what it must be. If this is a trap, we’re in too close already… What sort of trap works only once, when there might be dozens, even hundreds of Ships of the Law closing in? We’ve come too far for this to be a trap. We’ve got them.”
Martin gave the merest nod.
“You must be feeling very strange now,” William said softly, cocking his head to one side, “It’s so close.”
“We’re here. It’s what we’ve waited and trained for.”
“We never trained for something this easy,” William said. “If they’re sitting ducks, if they just bare their breasts or whatever and shout mea culpa… What will that do to us? Like getting ready to jump over a high wall and finding it’s just a curb. Then waiting years in space, thinking about it. We might go mad. I might go mad.”
“We’ll make it,” Martin said. “How do you feel?”
“Numb,” William said. “I’ll be on a bombship with Fred Falcon. We’ll actually drop the makers and doers. We’ll be out there.”
“I wish I could be with you,” Martin said.
William nodded. “I suppose we’re privileged. Pulling the triggers to avenge the Earth.”
They said nothing for a time, the conversation having swung through so many curves, and no central issue apparent.
“I’m doing fine, William,” Martin said to an unspoken question. “It’s not much fun, but life isn’t supposed to be fun now. Is that what you’re getting at?”
William caressed the back of Martin’s neck. “It shouldn’t be like this. There should be noise, action, danger, excitement.”
“You’re lonely, aren’t you?”
William closed his eyes. “I feel like Rosa Sequoia,” he said. “I wonder how they’re getting along on Hare. They have even less to do than we. Second-line troops.”
“Are you lonely?”
“No, Martin, actually, I’m not very lonely. I’ve kind of given up on the old slicking. It seems so trivial. I think I’ll just shut down the libido and absorb these ambiguities. Not that there aren’t possibilities for exercising the old libido. Very thoughtfully you included a couple of compatriots on this side of the split. They’re less inhibited than I seem to be. There have been offers.”
“But no love,” Martin said.
William closed his eyes again, nodded. “There’s not much love among any of us now. How about you and Theresa?”
“Still love,” Martin said, watching his friend’s face closely.
“Must be a comfort.”
“I never stopped loving you, William.”
“I still don’t need comfort slicks,” William said testily.
“That’s not what I mean. You’re part of me.”
“Not an exclusive part,” William said, looking at Martin from the corner of his eyes, self-deprecatory smile flickering on his lips.
“Pretty exclusive,” Martin said. “Making love to you is like having a wonderful… was like having a wonderful kind of brother, a double, not dangerous, just accepting.”
“Like jerking off by remote,” William suggested. Martin knew that tone; sharp but not mean.
“Not at all.”
“Men know men. Women know women. The great justification of homosexual slicking.”
“William, stop it.”
“All right,” William said, subdued again.
“When I think about things, you’re in my head, and I try to think about what you’d say or do in a given situation. I talk to you in my head, and I talk to Theresa. Brother and sister, and more than that.” He was not actually lying, but this was not strictly true; he had given little thought to William, but did not want William to know that, or to acknowledge it to himself; that he could have passed over William with so little trauma, and yet still regard him with immense affection. What sort of love was that?
“You say you think about me, but you live with Theresa.”
Both stared at Nebuchadnezzar, the planet whose real name they did not know, if it had a name at all.
“Did they ever love?” William asked.
“I don’t give a damn,” Martin said. My friends and my home. They killed the fish in the seas and the birds in the air. They took away our childhood. They killed my dog. “It’s time to get this behind us and start living our own lives. We’ll become shadows if we do this forever.”
“Amen,” William said. “You want Theresa to wear that gown, on another world, our world?”
“I do,” Martin said.
“I’d like to see that. I want to wear something special, too.”
“We all will, I think,” Martin said.
“But first…”
Martin noticed William’s lips working, as if in silent prayer. For safe passage, or forgiveness?
Will safe passage be a sign of forgiveness?
No signs, no consolation, no forgiveness; no blame. The forest was full of wolves.
No God of kindness and justice could allow such a thing. Nature could, but nature kept a balance.
The forest was also full of hunters.
The bombship pilots gathered in the weapons stores, Martin and the War Mother presiding. Between them hung a projected image of Nebuchadnezzar, its aspect changing as it slowly rotated night •into day, the crescent orb visibly growing: two hours until release.
Theresa and William floated beside their craft, faces blank. Fred Falcon joined William. Stephanie, alone beside her ship, and Yueh Yellow River beside his. Theresa would fly a bombship alone. Nguyen Mountain Lily and Ginny Chocolate together; Michael Vineyard and Hu East Wind; Leo Parsifal and Nancy Flying Crow. Seven ships for this sortie.
Martin kept his face blank, hiding the gut-knot within, that nausea of excitement and naked fear, that urge to tremble and run and beg forgiveness of whatever nasty supernatural being controlled things. In his sporadic journal, Martin had written:
We have hugged and made love this morning, eaten breakfast together. I have seen her wrapped in the final gown, and we have sworn that we are married, that we are bound. “We will make children,” she said, and I agreed; when we are out from under the moms, there will be fertility and we will make children, and we will love and live and argue and feel despair and feel brightness, but nothing like this will come to us again; we will have done our Job, and nothing more like this will be asked of us again, please God, we do not understand the Why…
The children gathered in the reduced space of the weapons store, fields dimmed almost to invisibility so as not to obscure the ranked Wendys and Lost Boys. It came time for Martin to speak; awkward, expected pep talk before the cosmically deadly game.
His throat seized and for a moment he could say nothing, just stare at his people with throat and jaw working. Do it. He cleared his throat painfully, swallowed, and said, voice cracking, “You are the finest people I’ve ever known. You are all volunteers, and my friends. We’ve been friends and lovers for over five years now, and we’ve always known that what we are about to do—that’s the reason why… we’re here. We are the best there is, and the moms know that.”