With it came a wordless clarity, a focused four-dimensional seeing. Dualities of all kinds became as obsolete as up and down: within/without, self/not-self, good/bad, life/death.
She now knew exactly where Reb and Meiya and Fat Humphrey were: how far away, and in which directions. There was another sleeping adept here in this pressure, too, one she did not know. Their consciousnesses were like fireflies—not the mighty aliens but the feeble terrestrial kind, glowing like embers and dancing mindlessly in the dark. She called out to them. Each resonated to her mental touch, but none responded. They could not “hear” her, and she could not wake them.
There was no help here. She must cope alone.
She let herself return to her body.
She had forgotten how weary and frightened and angry it was. From a purely selfish point of view, dying didn’t seem like such a terrible idea. Chen was still scanning what looked like the same screenful of gibberish.
“How long have I got?” she asked.
He checked the time. “Another six minutes before I must leave.”
No more time at all. “Chen Ling Ho, I oppose you with all my heart.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, and inhaled sharply through his nose. “That is regrettable,” he said sadly. “As you wish. I will tell you as much as I can before I must go; any questions you still have can be answered by Sun Tzu.”
“How can you possibly kill a quarter of a million indetectable people in free space?”
“Do you remember the terrorist bombing of a shipment of Symbiote from Titan, some forty-five years ago?”
“Sure—your father did it. But that was a traveling ocean, constantly announcing its position. What’s that got to—”
“This will go faster if you reserve your objections. My esteemed father Chen Hsi Feng was acting in accordance with a plan devised by his noble father, Chen Ten Li. His intent was not merely to destroy Symbiote, but to discreetly secure a large sample of it for analysis. Fine control of the explosive caused the Symbiote mass to calve in a predictable pattern. While all eyes fixed in horror on the destruction, then turned Earthward in search of its source, a stealthed ship was waiting quietly in the path of one of the largest fragments.
“My father was assassinated by a Stardancer trainee, but the conspiracy he had dedicated his life to lives on. That sample has been studied intensively ever since. We now know how to grow a pale white variant which does everything Symbiote does except confer telepathy. It has been further altered so that it requires regular large doses of a chemical which does not occur naturally in space to stay alive. One as astute as yourself will immediately appreciate that it is therefore now possible for the first time to create a Symbiote-equipped army which will stay loyal. Starhunters, we call them. Among other things, this base we’re in now is to Starhunters what Top Step is to Stardancers.”
In spite of herself, Eva objected. “You can’t possibly have raised up an army large enough to threaten the Starmind, not in secret. The head start they’ve had, the way they breed, the motivations you can’t possibly offer a recruit—I just don’t believe it.”
He was nodding. “And since our troops must use radio or laser, limited to lightspeed, our communications and coordination are inherently inferior to telepathy, a crippling disadvantage. You are quite correct: we could never seriously threaten the Starmind with infantry, even though Starhunters are heavily armed and Stardancers are not. The Starhunters are not intended to kill the Starmind. They are chiefly intended to conquer the United Nations Space Command, and thus the world. He who rules High Orbit rules Terra.”
“And what is the Starmind going to be doing at the time?”
“Running for their lives, the few left alive. If they are intelligent enough to keep running right out of the Solar System, a handful of them may live to circle some other star—and good riddance to them, for they can never return. Do you recall how the Symbiote mass was bombed?”
She thought hard. Forty years ago, she had read an eyewitness account by a Stardancer named Rain M’Cloud, who before entering Symbiosis had killed Ling Ho’s father to avenge the bombing. Eva seemed to recall there’d been something uniquely horrid about the method of delivery…
She felt a thrill of horror as the memory surfaced. “A nanobomb. Concealed in a kiss.”
“It worked well—and close study of Symbiote has suggested many improvements. For the last forty-five years, we have been seeding the entire Solar System with similar bombs, self-replicating at viral speed, self-powered, absolutely undetectable. They ride the solar wind, seek out red Symbiote, home in, burrow in and hide. They’ve been spreading through space like a fine mist for forty-five years. Stardancers breed like rabbits. Statistical analysis indicates that by now, some ninety to ninety-five percent of the Starmind has come into physical contact with either a bomb-spore, or another infected Stardancer.”
For a moment she thought her old heart would literally stop. This was what she had always imagined that would feel like. “Radio trigger?” she managed to say.
“Relays all over the System,” he agreed. “About an hour from now I will broadcast a master triggering signal from here. At the moment named in that signal, some six hours later, every relay will begin sending the destruct code at once. Maximum possible warning due to lightspeed lag should not exceed one minute anywhere in the System.”
“Trillions of dollars,” she murmured dizzily. “To murder angels.”
“It could not have been done undetected in anything but the wild-growth economy the Starmind gave us,” he admitted. “So in the end they have served a useful purpose.”
“Some of them will survive,” she said fiercely, and felt something tear in her chest. She ignored the pain. “They’ll come for you—they’re good at nanotech, they’ll find a way.”
“Quite possibly,” he agreed. “That is why we have kidnapped Tenshin Hawkins and his friends, and every other human telepathic adept we could locate. Enslaved by drugs, I believe they will function as excellent Stardancer detectors. Is there anything else you wish to know, Eva?”
She was silent, concentrating on listening to her heart, willing it to keep beating.
“Is there any other last favor I can grant you, in the name of our friendship? I fear time is short.”
Was there any chance at all that the truth might change his mind? She had no other cards to play.
No, none. She remembered a fictional god she had read of once, called Crazy Eddie, worshipped with awe because in times of crisis he invariably incarnated in a position of responsibility and did the worst possible thing from the best motives. There were usually just enough survivors to perpetuate his memory. It was proverbially pointless to reason with Crazy Eddie…
“I… I’d like an hour alone to compose myself,” she said.
“Done,” he said. “Sun Tzu!”
“Yes, Highness?”
“Ms. Hoffman is not to leave that chair, nor this room.” The chair’s seatbelt locked with an audible click. “She is not to communicate with any person or persons outside this room. One hour from now I want you to kill her painlessly. She may command you to shorten that deadline, but not extend it. You may answer any questions she has, and serve her in any way that does not conflict with these instructions. Acknowledge.”
“Program loaded, Highness.”
He pushed his own chair away and bowed, a full formal salute of farewell. “Goodbye, Eva. I’m sorry you will not share my joy.”