Again, with a grim resolve, Avram said, “Surrender.”
He didn’t offer, “Please,” this time.
The booby trap would injure him. Badly, perhaps. But in the milliseconds it would take a detonation signal to cross the world, triggering the weapons in a rippling inferno, most of Ord could retreat to space and its relative safety.
But he wasn’t the target, was he?
Avram stared at Ord, his expression changing, an easy disgust making him flinch and shake his head slightly. Then for the final time, he said, “Surrender.” And he breathed. Then because he hoped it would help, he smiled, aiming for a hopefulness, asking his little brother, “Really, what choice do you have…?”
The tiny bedroom was suffocating. Even as portions of Ord spun out estimates of how many would die and how much Earth’s loss would cost humanity, the rest of him—the center of his soul—felt trapped, helpless and worse than half-dead.
With a quiet, mournful voice, he muttered, “Brother,” and began to cry. A woman’s voice asked, “What’s happening here?”
Buteo had arrived, Ravleen still wrapped up in her strong arms, still twisting in her grip. Materializing in the hallway, the Papago stared in through the transparent wall, understanding nothing when she added the second question:
“What’s wrong with you, Chamberlain?”
Ord explained on a private channel, in an instant.
Buteo’s eyes became enormous, and vacant, and she squeezed Ravleen as if trying to crush her.
Ord reached deep and yanked Xo from the jail. Then, ignoring his brother, he directed his rage at the convenient Nuyen. “What were you thinking? The Earth on a precipice… just so you could catch me… what were you assholes thinking—?”
“I don’t understand,” Xo replied. Then as he saw things for himself, with his own senses, he began to shake his head numbly and pull at his hair, screaming, “I didn’t know! I didn’t!”
Avram flexed his right wrist.
Ord reached for him, then hesitated. The trigger was clever in the worst ways, and it was proud of its cleverness. “Touch your brother,” it warned, “and I’ll detonate. Touch me, and I’ll definitely detonate. These are my specifications, and my redundant systems, and every field test result. Look at them. Look at me! You’ve never seen anything like me, and you can’t beat me on your first try.”
Ord winced, then looked straight at Avram’s eyes.
“You were waiting for me,” he remarked. “On the night of your execution… you knew that I would come and save you…”
The pale hand moved inside the fossil print, just slightly.
Then Avram gave a little nod, saying, “Honestly? I’d given up on you. The Nuyens had come long ago and made their offer. If I got my chance, I was supposed to take it. They didn’t explain what this thing was… but I could guess. They told me, ‘He’s not evil, this brother of yours. But he’s sadly misguided. And when the circumstance arises, we promise, Ord will make the sane, decent choice.’ ”
“If I hadn’t come for you?” Ord inquired.
“I would have been killed. Of course. If the execution was theater, you wouldn’t have trusted me.” He sighed, then said, “Honestly, I expected to die. I didn’t want this. Not to save my life, I didn’t. Or even if I was doing some incredible good.” He sighed again, then said, “That’s why I was scared when I saw you… I knew that you’d come to save me at the last possible moment… and I was sick of heroics….”
Ord closed his corporeal eyes, his fatigue genuine.
When he opened them again, Avram was starting to say, “Surrender,” once more.
“I’m doing it,” Ord interrupted. “I’m doing it now.”
With a graceless crash of systems, he began setting his talents into a deep sleep. By the dozens, by the hundreds. He stripped away his camouflage first, letting the world watch him. Then put his weapons to sleep, and every talent with deadly applications. After thirty seconds of hard work, he had almost dismantled himself. Another few moments would have left him astonishingly ordinary. But then his surviving eyes saw something, and his head turned as Ravleen screamed, “No!”
Too late, Ord understood.
The Sanchex was wrestling with Buteo, distracting her with her strongest limbs, while a weak arm composed of the thinnest materials reached through the wall and across the tiny bedroom. Ravleen ignored Ord; she couldn’t have harmed him if she tried. What she grabbed was Avram’s sturdy wrist, and with all of the strength in that secret limb, she gave him a hard swift calculated jerk, barely lifting the hand off the cool mudstone.
But it had lifted. Just enough.
With a cool desperation, Avram pressed his palm back against Alice’s fossil palm. Even as the world began to tear apart, and as the gods screamed in rage and in grief, he kept his hand exactly where it belonged. And with the ancient mansion evaporating around him, he used his other hands to help in his sacred duty… thinking this wasn’t what it seemed to be… telling himself that he mattered, and he was noble, and he was doing, as always, something good…
10
Blame for this horrendous tragedy rests squarely with the Chamberlain… and with his violent, immoral allies, including, we fear, a renegade Sanchex…!
The Families held a private gathering in lieu of their usual public new year celebration.
With their ancient estates obliterated, and the Earth itself a bright white world encased in steam and oceans of irradiated magma, the gathering was held on Mars. It was a sober, prolonged affair. One popular subject was the plan for future estates: The Nuyens had graciously donated one of their intersolar worlds. Over the next few thousand years, the cold body would be eased into the Kuiper belt, then terraformed, and each Family would receive its share of the new land and water.
It was a good, sensible change, many argued. A bittersweet blessing. Having normal citizens living beside the Families was always an unreasonable risk. If Ord had come to their future homeland, not one person would have died. Except the little bastard himself, naturally. Without fragile souls underfoot, the Families could have responded appropriately. And they could have guarded Alice all the better, too.
Had she died with the Earth? Hopefully, was the general verdict.
The Families had saved billions in the first moments after the Chamberlain used that unthinkable weapon. Nuyens had died during the evacuation, all considered heroes today. There were moments when Xo, reflecting on events, wished that his siblings hadn’t wasted time rescuing him. But it was a reflexive altruism, and fragile. Besides, if he had died then, he would be some flavor of martyr today—a role that disgusted him for more reasons, and emotions, than he seemed able to count.
An ancient sister approached him during the dour festivities. But she insisted on smiling, almost laughing as she told Xo, “I know you did your best for us. For all of humanity. As far as I’m concerned, you’re the first Nuyen who deserves to feel pride.”
Because it was expected, he said, “Thank you.” More than two hundred billion were dead, and their ancestral homeland was a ravaged wasteland. And he was expected to be polite, accepting this graceless, ridiculous praise.
“I’ve just heard,” the sister continued. “Did you? A dark-matter body matching Ord’s configuration raced past one of our Oort stations.”