Mother Death
by Robert Reed
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If preparedness means that you have weighed your enemy’s options and taken every sound precaution, then we are unequivocally prepared for whatever is to come.
If it is possible to keep a secret in our porous little universe, then we have one or two or possibly three great secrets in our possession.
If confidence produced a light in those who possessed it, then each of us would shine like the galaxy’s exploding heart.
Paranoia is our greatest attribute.
Patience is our watchword.
Our only imaginable concern—one barely worth mentioning—is that Alice, in her malicious wisdom, did give her talents to a Baby… and who can say what any child in any circumstance will at any given moment do…?
After a lengthy and generally fair trial, judge and jury found the accused guilty on all counts: Avoiding surrender once his Family was officially disbanded; illegal terraforming coupled with the unkind manipulation of sentient organisms; misleading investigators in pursuit of Chamberlain ringleaders; unbecoming arrogance; plus an ancient charge involving the fondling of women with fingers and penises composed of substances unknown.
After an appropriate delay—slightly more than three minutes—the Emergency Tribunal passed the expected sentence.
Without ceremony, the prison gates dissolved, and Avram Chamberlain was thrown to the mercy of the waiting mob.
It was a clear night on a minor world that until this moment had little place in history. Anticipating the verdict, three million citizens had gathered outside the prison. Many were refugees from the Core, and everyone had a thirst for vengeance. When the gates vanished, the mob pressed forward; nearly eight thousand were critically injured in the wild stampede. It was an armed contingent of off-duty police who finally brought the Chamberlain into the wide, open-air plaza. And with his appearance came a ringing silence. No one spoke, or breathed. The prisoner walked with a numbed calm. His old-fashioned body was naked, and except for scraped knees, he was fit. Hands and feet were unbound. Thick red hair lay short and neat above the most famous face in the galaxy, and piercing blue eyes looked past his captors, gazing up at the night sky.
The Core had just risen.
It was a spectacular sight, and horrible. On some worlds, the popular game was for people to give themselves a selective amnesia. Forgetting why the Core was exploding, forgetting how many hundreds of billions had died, they were free to look at the sky without pain, marveling at its surreal beauty—a vast storm of radiations and superheated plasmas rushing from the galaxy’s heart, shredding suns and worlds, and now, at its height, smashing into dense clouds of interstellar dust and gas.
Clouds gave the explosion its intricacies, the raw purple-white light transformed into swirling masses of crimson and turquoise and cerulean. Dust and gas shielded the rest of the Milky Way, absorbing the terrible energies before they could reach the spiral arms. Without those barriers, natural and otherwise, the galaxy would have already died. Every competent simulation said so. Everyone claimed that the storm would worsen a little more, or a lot more. But after another few millennia, it would begin its very slow fade. Then in another ten or twenty million years, the Core would grow cold again, at peace, and if any people were left alive, they would have to make do with a considerably duller sky.
Avram stared at the distant storm, never blinking.
The only problem left for the angry mob was the means. What’s the very best way to kill a Chamberlain?
A sour voice roared, “Tear him apart with your hands! Your hands!”
Another screamed, “Cook the fuck whole!”
Then a third voice, closer and more lucid, suggested simply, “Whatever you do, take your time! Do it slowly!”
Suddenly everyone was speaking, offering advice in the art of torture.
Thousands reached for the Chamberlain, and the police found themselves using electric wands and cold-gas guns to push back the crush of bodies. It was pure self-defense. A mob of this size would butcher dozens, perhaps hundreds of people. Innocent skulls would be kicked apart, and the anonymous brains would be carried off like trophies, then consumed with plasma torches and homemade A-bombs. The police realized they were sure to take the heaviest casualties. Not only would they die, but therabble who murdered them would boast about it later, each claiming, “I’m the one who did it! I killed that damn Chamberlain!”
Wands and guns fired without pause. Flesh was stunned and frozen, and people collapsed in waves. As she fell, one woman managed to throw a chunk of gray stone, hitting the prisoner in his face. Only then, finally, did Avram seem to notice the mob. He blinked and gasped, his expression more surprised than afraid, and stroking his bloody chin, he took a tiny, useless step backward.
The mob let loose an enormous roar.
For every good reason, this wasn’t fair. Avram was just a middle-aged Chamberlain. He had spent his life serving humanity as well as his own great Family. What were his crimes? Until a few months ago, he’d had the strength to move worlds, and more important, the morality to keep him from doing harm with his talents. Avram was never a true god, but instead he was a scrupulously ordinary person who wore a godly frame and conscience. That’s why the thousand Families had formed in the first place. Didn’t these people remember their own history? The Families had built the Great Peace. They had terraformed worlds and pacified suns, and acted as explorers and diplomats, and with all the talents on hand, they had done everything in their power to keep this ungrateful galaxy at peace.
Avram cursed his older, infinitely more powerful sister. “Alice!” he cried out, spitting blood on the police. “This is your fault!” he screamed. “All yours!”
Alice had done the unthinkable. Working in the Core, in complete secrecy, she and others from half of the Families had built a new universe for themselves.
It was an intricate, demanding enterprise. Too demanding, even for the likes of Alice. The umbilical between universes was unstable. For a horrible moment, the tiny incandescent child touched its mother, causing a blaze still spreading today.
Before judge and jury, Avram had explained what should have been obvious: He was never part of Alice’s work.
In his entire long life, he’d never even met the crazy bitch.
Learning that the Core was exploding, he was astonished. Like everyone in the courtroom. And when he realized that another Chamberlain was partly to blame, he was filled with a horror and revulsion that would have killed any lesser man.
“The guilty deserve their punishments,” he kept saying.
Then, in his next breath, “But don’t blame the innocent. I beg you.”
Over the weeks and months, Avram had listed his life’s glories: He had played small but integral roles in a thousand treaties and diplomatic missions. (“None of you have worked like I have for the Great Peace.”) Like most Chamberlains, he had made his living by terraforming worlds and entire systems—always for fair market prices. (“Only a true god doesn’t need money for his miracles.”) Yet Avram always gave away his talents to charitable causes. (“What good Chamberlain doesn’t?”) Fifty thousand years ago—as the first waves of refugees came from the Core—Avram had helped this little world improve itself, tweaking its atmosphere and its sun to let it double its population without too much hardship.