“Ship on collision course with Ruling Mind. Acceleration in excess of 400 gravities. Impact in 121 seconds, mark.”
Harold laughed aloud and tightened his grip around the new-made Frau Raines-Schotmann. “Together all the way, sweetheart,” he shouted. She raised a whoop, ignoring the guard behind them with a stunner.
Markham leaped for the board. “You said nothing could detect her!” he screamed at Jonah, throwing an inert crewman aside and punching for the communications channel.
“It's… psionic,” Jonah said. “Nothing conscious should—” His face contorted, and both arms clamped down on Markham's. There was a brief moment of struggle; none of the other crewfolk of the Nietzsche interfered; they had no orders. Markham snapped a blow to the groin, to the side of the head, cracked an arm; the Sol-Belter was in no condition for combat, but he clung leech-like until the Wunderlander's desperate strength sent him crashing halfway across the control deck.
“Impact in sixty seconds, mark.”
“Master, oh, Master, use the amplifier, you're under attack, use it, use it now—”
“Impact in forty seconds, mark.”
Dnivtopun looked up from the solitaire deck. The words would have been enough, but the link to Markham was deep and strong; urgency sent him crashing towards the control chair, his hands reaching for the bell-shape of the helmet even before his body stopped moving.
This is how it will begin again, the being that had been Catskinner thought, watching the monobloc re-contract. This time the cycle had been perfect, the symmetry complete. It would be so easy to reaccelerate his perception, to alter the outcome. No, it thought. There must be free will. They too must have their cycle of creation.
“Impact in ten seconds, mark.”
The connections settled onto Dnivtopun's head, and suddenly his consciousness stretched system-wide, perfect and isolate. The amplifier was better than any he had used before. His mind groped for the hostile intent, so close. Three hundred million sentients quivered in the grip of his Power.
“Emperor Dnivtopun,” he laughed, tendrils thrown wide. “Dnivtopun, God. You, with the funny thoughts, coming towards me. STOP. ALTER COURSE. IMMEDIATELY.”
Markham relaxed into a smile. “We are saved by faith,” he whispered.
“Two seconds to impact, mark.”
NO, DNIVTOPUN. YOUR TIME IS ENDED, AS IS MINE. COME TO ME.
“One second to impact, mark.”
The thrint screamed, antiphonally with the Ruling Mind's collision alarm. The automatic failsafe switched on, and—
– discontinuity
Catskinner's mind engaged the circuit, and—
– discontinuity
A layer of quantum uncertainty merged, along the meeting edges of the stasis fields. Virtual particles showered out, draining energy without leaving the fields. Time attempted to precess at different rates, in an area of finite width and conceptual depth. The fields collapsed, and energy propagated, in a symmetrical five-dimensional shape.
Chapter X
Claude Montferrat-Palme laughed from the marble floor of his office; his face was bleeding, and the shattered glass of the windows lay in glittering swathes across desk and carpet. The air smelled of ozone, of burning, of the dust of wrecked buildings.
CRACK. Another set of hypersonic booms across the sky, and the cloud off in the direction of the kzinti Government House was definitely assuming a mushroom shape. That was forty kilometers downwind, but there was no use wasting time. He crawled carefully to the desk, calling answers to the yammering voices that pleaded for orders.
“No, I don't know what happened to the moon, except that something bright went through it and it blew up. Nothing but ratcats on it, anyway, these days. Yes, I said ratcats. Begin evacuation immediately, Plan Deinst; yes, civilians too, you fool. No, we can't ask the kzinti for orders; they're killing each other, hadn't you noticed? I'll be down there in thirty seconds. Out.”
A shockwave rocked the building, and for an instant blue-white light flooded through his tight-squeezed eyelids. When the hot wind passed he rose and sprinted for the locked closet, the one with the impact armor and the weapons. As he stripped and dressed, he turned his face to the sky, squinting.
“I love you,” he said. “Both. However you bloody well managed it.”
“He was a good son,” Traat-Admiral said.
Conservor and he had anchored themselves in an intact corner of the Throat Ripper's control room. None of the systems was in operation; that was to be expected, since most of the ship aft of this point had been sheared away by something. Stars shone vacuum-bleak through the rents; other lights flared and died in perfect spheres of light. Traat-Admiral found himself mildly amazed that there were still enough left to fight; more so that they had the energy, after whatever it was had happened.
Such is our nature, he thought. This was the time for resignation; he and the Conservor were both bleeding from nose, ears, mouth, all the body openings. And within, he could feel it. Traat-Admiral looked down at the head of his son where it rested in his lap; the girder had driven straight through the youth's midsection, and his face was still fixed in eager alertness, frozen hard now.
“Yes,” Conservor said. “The shadow of the God lies on us, all three. We will go to Him together, the hunt will give Him honor.”
“Such honor as there is in defeat,” he sighed.
A quiver of ears behind the faceplate showed him the sage's laughter. “Defeat? That thing which we came to this place to fight, that has been defeated, even if we will never know how. And kzinti have defeated kzinti. Such is the only defeat here.”
Traat-Admiral tried to raise his ears and join the laughter, but found himself coughing a gout of red stickiness into the faceplate of his helmet; it rebounded.
“If-I-must-drown,” he managed to say, “not-in-my-own-blood.” Vacuum was dry, at least. He raised fumbling hands to the catches of his helmet-ring. A single fierce regret seized him. I hope the kits will be protected.
“We have hunted well together on the trail of Truth,” the sage said, copying his action. “Let us feast and lie in the shade by the waterhole together, forever.”
“What do you mean, it never happened?”
Jonah's voice was sharp again; a week in the autodoc of the oyabun's flagship had repaired most of his physical injuries. The tremor in his hands showed that those were not all; he glanced behind him at Ingrid and Harold, where they sat with linked hands.
“Just what I said,” General Buford Early said. He glanced aside as well, at Shigehero's slight hard smile.
“So much for the rewards of heroism,” Jonah said, letting himself fall into the lounger with a bitter laugh. He lit a cigarette; the air was rank with them, and the smell of the general's stogies. That it did not bother a Sol-Belter born was itself a sign of wounds that did not show.
The general leaned forward, his square pug face like a clenched fist. “These are the rewards of heroism, Captain,” he said. “Markham's crew are vegetables. Markham may recover—incidentally, he'll be a hero too.”