“Some twenty-two years ago,” Councillor Alaina said, “before I had this last rejuve, I hired Mavra Chang to attend Antor Trelig’s little party as my agent. I never heard from her again, of course—but, since New Pompeii disappeared, taking dear Antor with it, I was satisfied.” She looked around at the odd little group of human women and aliens. “And now I see she succeeded after all.”
They all had tears in their eyes, and even the Bozog quivered a bit. Only the Ghiskind, as usual, was impassive.
“When I heard the police report, I didn’t believe it—but here you all are, even Nikki Zinder!” She turned to Vistaru. “And you—an unexpected pleasure, Star Tonge. One of your sons is an invaluable Chief Counselor.”
“The kids,” Wooley murmured to herself. “It’d be interesting to see the kids again.”
“And now we must decide what is to be done,” Councillor Alaina continued. “We owe you all a great deal.”
Renard slapped himself. “The sponge cure!” he blurted.
The refugees looked startled, and he nodded. “Obie—the computer—gave it to Mavra. She recorded it in the ship’s log.”
Alaina nodded to a Com policeman. “Get it,” she ordered. “Secure it.” She looked preoccupied, as if watching new vistas unfold. “If that cure holds up,” she continued, “It’ll break the back of the syndicate. The changes will be revolutionary.”
“It’ll work,” the Agitar assured her. “Mavra said it would.”
A grim expression marred the Councillor’s normally impassive features. “Mavra Chang. Yes. So sad. You’re sure we can’t go back for her?”
“Studies show most power has failed,” a policeman put in. “The plasma shield itself is weakening. If anybody’s still there, they’re dead now for sure.”
She nodded. “I thought as much. But her name shall live on in our histories. She shall be celebrated among the greats. We will not forget her.”
“None of us will,” Renard replied sincerely.
They sat about half a light-hour off New Pompeii. On the screens the planetoid showed clearly as a small ball.
“Everyone thinks that you need the weapons locker to destroy a planet,” Alaina noted. “But you don’t. That takes a vote of all the Council, and we can’t put this to the Council until we’ve substantially laundered it. No use informing the universe that such a thing as Obie is possible. Somebody else would surely build one.”
All agreed.
Four ships showed on the screens, Com police cruisers towing huge objects with tractor beams.
“What are they?” Wooley asked, fascinated.
“Antimatter, my dear,” Alaina replied. “It’s all over the place, you know. Always has been. Calculate the mass of the object you want to destroy, grab some antimatter of equal mass, bring the two together, and they cancel each other out. Took a century even to create a tractor beam that wouldn’t react with the stuff. The police craft will follow a trajectory that will have the antimatter asteroids strike New Pompeii at the same time. Should be quite a flash, and that will be that.”
They watched as the ships moved by, curved, swung the asteroids around and let them fly.
And then scrammed like hell.
While they waited for the missiles to reach their target, Alaina discussed other things.
“Makes you wonder,” she said, looking at Renard, the Bozog, and the Ghiskind. “If you three can exist, how many others might? Maybe just over the next solar system, so to speak. Perhaps within our lifetime two of our cultures will meet. How I’d love to see that!”
“If you’d been on the Well World you’d have your fill of alien races pretty quickly,” Vistaru responded.
She shrugged. “I’ve always wondered. Perhaps such a clash will be the ultimate problem. Perhaps the other beings will be antimatter? That would be frustrating!” She laughed, then changed tone.
“Have you thought about your own futures?” she asked them.
“We—the Bozog, the Ghiskind, and I—can return to the Well World,” Renard replied. “We’ve told you that. Just get us to a Markovian world. That’s what we have to do, of course. There’s no place for us in this part of the universe.”
She nodded, and turned to the others. “What about you, Tonges?”
Wooley smiled. “Nikki Zinder has never had a chance to be a real person, live a real life. Her daughter even less so—and the others, well, they can learn to be people. It will be interesting to see how the family’s come along. And, well, Star and I really did love each other, you know. It’ll be fun being together again after twenty-two long years.”
“And we owe Mavra something,” Vistaru put in. “Both of us keep thinking, if only we had stayed a little longer, if only we’d made sure that Vash’s children all got out. If only we hadn’t left them. She had such a horrible life—maybe we can help these other women, instead of letting them wind up in a hole, like Mavra. I think we owe that much to her, to them, and to ourselves.”
Alaina nodded. “I think I can understand. Bodies like those can be wonderful, or the biggest curse you can have. And I’ll help. Mavra’s fee was agreed to, recorded, and never paid. I think you could do a pretty good job with a million, couldn’t you?”
Wooley’s eyes went wide. “A million?” She laughed suddenly. “Wow! We’ll buy our own frontier world!” She looked at Vistaru. “You know, it’s crazy, isn’t it? We had lives once, then second lives on the Well, then third lives back here, fourth back on the Well, now fifth—I wonder if that means we’re going to keep living forever? We can always return to the Well again in the future.”
Vistaru laughed. “Yeah, but take it easy. You aren’t my husband any more. You’re superwoman now.”
“I started out a woman,” the other pointed out. “Not much of one, I admit. Maybe it’s time for Wu Julee to find out what it’s really like.”
Vistaru nodded. “It can really be wonderful,” she said softly.
“Look!” Renard yelled. “The asteroids are about there!”
As he spoke four smaller dots converged on the large ball. A tremendous flash of energy blurred their vision momentarily, then there was nothing.
Scans revealed no trace of New Pompeii, not the slightest speck of dust.
Alaina sighed. “That’s it, then. Let’s get out of here.”
The ship throbbed to life and started moving. There were tears in Renard’s eyes and all were silent.
“Good-bye, Mavra. Forgive us.”
And even the Yugash’s hood bowed.
An Unnamed Star in M-51
She stood and stretched all four legs in the darkness. She was used to working in the dark, and her nose quickly found some edible fruit and some stale bread. It would do, and the fruit provided needed water. She’d gone through the last of the preserved foodstuffs the day before.
She wondered why she was still alive. She wondered why she persisted in postponing the end.
The lights came on. That, in itself, was no surprise. She’d been expecting it any time now, ever since she’d experienced the familiar blackout and that long dropping feeling a few hours before.
She turned her downward-facing head and looked around. The place was a mess. Much of the structures had collapsed, including part of the far balcony.
The explosions, hisses, and rumbles had stopped several days earlier, but they had been replaced by the sounds of hammering and welding and lots of clanking. She’d actually gone out to see what was making them, but except for discovering some emergency lighting still going in the main shaft area, there was nothing that could be seen. Whatever was going on was going on far below her, she was sure.