BenRabi slammed his scooter through the entrance to Control
Sector. Seconds later the massive shield doors rumbled shut behind
him. The section was totally self-contained now. No one could come
in or leave till those doors lifted.
Moyshe stopped in a long, squealing slide. He jumped off,
slammed the charger plug into a socket, ran through the hatch to
Contact.
“You made it,” Clara said. “We didn’t
think you would. You live so far away. Here. Catch your
breath.”
“My scooter was smoking. Better have it checked,
Hans.” He settled onto a fitted couch.
“Ready?” Clara asked.
“No.”
She smiled at him. Hans started massaging an odorless paste into
his scalp. Clara slipped her fingers inside what looked like a
hairnet.
“You never are. I thought you liked Chub.”
BenRabi chuckled. “Chub, I like fine. He’s good
people. But I’d like him a lot better if he could walk in the
door, stick out a hand, and say, ‘Hey, Moyshe, let’s go
grab a couple of beers.’ ”
Chub was the starfish with whom benRabi usually linked.
“Xenophobe.”
“Crap. It’s not him. It’s that out-of-body
feeling . . . ”
“Wrong, Moyshe. You can’t fool old Clara. I was
babying mindtechs before you were born. And you’re all alike.
You don’t want to go out because it hurts so much to come
back.”
“Yeah?”
“Ready,” Hans said.
Clara slid the net onto Moyshe’s head. Her fingertips were
soft and warm. They lingered on his cheeks. Momentary concern
clouded her smile.
“Don’t push yourself, Moyshe. Get out if it gets
rough. You haven’t had enough rest.”
“Since Stars’ End there isn’t any rest. For
anybody.”
“We won,” Hans reminded.
“The cost was too high.”
“It was cheaper than losing.”
BenRabi shrugged. “I guess you people see things
different. I never would have gone in the first place.”
“You took your whippings and smiled, back in
Confederation?” Hans asked. “I never heard of
that.”
“No. We calculated the odds. We picked the right time.
Then we ganged up. We didn’t just go storming around like
a rogue elephant, getting hurt as much as we did hurt.”
“Oriflamme,” Hans countered.
“What?”
“That’s what they call Payne sometimes. It’s
something from olden times that has to do with not taking
prisoners.”
“Oh. The oriflamme. It was a special pennon that belonged
to the King of France. If he raised it, it meant take no prisoners.
It had a way of backfiring on him.”
“Hans,” Clara said, “Moyshe is an Academy man.
He can probably tell you how many spokes in the wheel of a Roman
war chariot.”
“Take Poitiers, for
instance . . . ”
“Who?”
“It’s a place. In France, which is on Old
Earth . . . ”
“I know where France
is, Moyshe.”
“All right. One of the big battles of the
Hundred Years War was fought there. And you could say that the
French lost because of the oriflamme. See, they caught the English
in a bad spot. Outnumbered them like ten to one. The Black Prince
decided to surrender. But the French raised the oriflamme. Which
pissed the English, so they proceeded to kick ass all over the
countryside. When the dust settled, the French were wiped out and
Louis was in chains. There’s a lesson in there somewhere, if
you want to look. Namely, don’t ever push anybody into a
corner where he can’t get out.”
“You see what he’s doing, Hans?” Clara
asked.
“You mean trying to educate us until the all-clear comes
through? You’re out of luck, Moyshe. Lift your head so I can
put your helmet on.”
BenRabi raised his head.
His scalp began tingling under the hairnet device. The helmet
devoured his head, stealing the light. He fought the panic that
always hit before he went under.
Hans strapped him in and adjusted the bio-monitor’s
pickups.
“Can you hear me, Moyshe?” Clara asked through the
helmet’s earphones.
He raised a hand. Then spoke: “Coming through
clear.”
“Got you too. Your boards look good. Blood pressure is up,
but that’s normal for you. Take a minute in TSD. Relax. Go
when you want.”
His, “I don’t want,” remained unspoken.
He depressed the switch beneath his right hand one click.
The only senses left him were internal. Total Sensory
Deprivation left him only his aches and pains, the taste in his
mouth, and the rush of blood. Once the field took hold, even those
would go.
In small doses it was relaxing. But too much could
drive a man insane.
He flicked his right hand again.
A universe took form around him. He was its center, its lord,
its creator . . . There was no pain in that
universe, nor much unhappiness. Too many wonders burned there,
within the bounds of his mind.
It was a universe of colors both pastel and crisp. Every star
was a blazing jewel, proclaiming its individual hue. The oncoming
storm of the nova’s solar wind was a rioting, psychedelic
cloud that seemed to have as much substance as an Old Earth
thunderhead. Opposite it, the pale pink glimmer of a hydrogen
stream meandered off toward the heart of the galaxy. The
surrounding harvest-ships were patches of iridescent gold.
A score of golden Chinese dragons drifted with the fleet,
straining toward it, yet held away by the light pressure of the
dying star. Starfish!
BenRabi’s sourness gave way to elation. There would be
contact this time.
He reached toward them with his thoughts. “Chub? Are you
out there, my friend?” For a time there was nothing.
Then a warm glow enveloped him like some sudden outbreak of good
cheer.
“Moyshe man-friend, hello. I see you. Coming out of the
light, hello. One ship is gone.”
“Jariel.
They’re still evacuating.”
“Sad.”
Chub did not seem sad. This fish, benRabi thought, is
constitutionally incapable of anything but joy.
“Not so, Moyshe man-friend. I mourn with the herd the
sorrows of Stars’ End. Yet I must laugh with my man-friends over
the joys of what was won.”
“The ships-that-kill weren’t all destroyed, Chub.
The Sangaree carry their grudges forever.”
“Ha! They are a tear in the eye of eternity. They will
die. Their sun will die. And still there will be starfish to swim
the rivers of the night.”
“You’ve been puttering
around in the back rooms of my mind again. You’re stealing my
images and shooting them back at me.”
“You have an intriguing mind, Moyshe man-friend. A
clouded, boxy mind, cobwebby, atticy, full of
trap doors . . . ”
“What would you know about trap doors?”
“Only what I relive through your memories, Moyshe
man-friend.”
Chub teased and giggled like an adolescent lover.
By starfish reckoning he was a child. He-had not yet
seen his millionth year.
BenRabi simply avoided thinking about starfish time spans. A
life measured in millions of years was utterly beyond his ken. He
only mourned the fact that those incredible spans could never touch
upon worlds where beings of a biochemical nature lived. The stories
they could have told! The historical mysteries they could have
illuminated!
But starfish dared not get too near major gravitational or
magnetic sources. Even the gravity of the larger harvestships felt
to a starfish much as rheumatism to a human being.
They were terribly fragile creatures.
While Chub teased and enthused, Moyshe turned a part of his mind
to his private universe again.
Red torpedoes idled along far away, across the pink river,
against the galaxy.
“Yes,” Chub said. “Sharks. Survivors of
Stars’ End called them here. They will attack. They starve.
Another feast for the scavenger things.”
Smaller ghosts in a mix of colors shadowed both dragons and
torpedoes. They were Chub’s scavengers.
The great slow ecology of the hydrogen streams had niches for
creatures of most life-functions, though their definition in human
terms was seldom more than an approximation. A convenient
labeling.
Moyshe yielded to nervousness. Chub reached into his mind,
calming him . . .
“I’m learning, Chub. I can see the river this time.
I can see the particle storm coming from the sick sun.”
“Very good, Moyshe man-friend. You relax now. Sharks come
soon. You watch scavenger things instead. They tell when sharks
can’t wait anymore. They get dancey.”
Moyshe laughed into his secret universe. Starfish believed in
doing things with deliberation, as might be expected of creatures
with vast life spans. Young starfish tended to be restless and
excitable. They were prone to flutter impatiently in the presence
of their elders. The Old Ones called it “getting
dancey.”
Chub was dancey most of the time.
The Old Ones considered him the herd idiot. Chub said they
regretted exposing him to human hasty-think while he was still
young and impressionable.
“Is a joke, Moyshe man-friend. Is a good joke?
Yes?”
“Yes. Very funny.” For a starfish. The Old Ones had
to be the most phlegmatic, humorless, pragmatic intelligences in
all creation. They couldn’t even grasp the concept of a joke.
With the exception of Chub, benRabi found them a depressing
mob.
“I was lucky to become your mind-mate, Chub. Very
lucky.”
He meant it. He had linked with Old Ones. He compared it to
making love to his grandmother bare-assed on an iceberg, with a
crowd watching. Drawing Chub was the best thing that had happened
to him in years.
“Yes. We half-wits stick together. Venceremos, Comrade
Moyshe.”
BenRabi filled the universe with laughter. “Where the hell
did you get that?”
“Your mind full of cobwebby memories, Moyshe man-friend.
One time you play revolutionary on hard matter place called
Dustball.”
“Yeah. I did. About two weeks. Then it was duck bullets
all the way back to the Embassy.”
“You live much in few years, Moyshe man-friend. Ten times
anyone else linked by starfish Chub. Many adventures. Think Chub
would make good spy?”
“Who would you spy on?”
“Yes. Problem. Very difficult to disguise as
shark.”
“That’s another joke, isn’t it?”
“Yes. You still spying, Moyshe man-friend?”
“Not anymore. I’m not Thomas McClennon anymore.
I’m Moyshe benRabi. I’ve found me a home, Chub. These
are my people now. You can’t spy on your own
people.”
“Oh. Saw shadows in your mind. Thought maybe secret
spy-stuff lurked. So. Hey! Maybe someday you go spy on hard matter
place people? Be double spy.”
“Double agent?”
“Oh. Yes. That right words.”
“No more spying, Chub. I’m going to be a
mindtech.”
“Dangerous.”
“So is spying. In more ways than you’ll ever
understand.”
“Hurts-of-the-heart dangers, you mean?”
“I don’t know why they tell you you’re stupid.
You’re a lot smarter in a lot of ways than most people I
know. You see things without having to have them
explained.”
“Helps, being starfish. People can’t look inside,
Moyshe man-friend. You have to tell. You have to show. You not the
kind of man to do that.”
“Yeah. Let’s talk about something else,
huh?”
“Running out of talk time, Moyshe man-friend. Scavenger
creatures getting dancey. You not paying attention?”
“I still haven’t got the hang of seeing everything
at once.”
That was one of the beauties of the mindtech’s linked
universe. He was not subject to the limitations of binocular
vision. But he did have to unlearn its habits.
Blind people made better techs faster. They had no habits to
unlearn, no preoccupations to overcome. But blind people who
suffered from classical migraine were scarce.
Scarlet torpedoes edged toward the fleet. They were not yet
wholly committed. Hunger still had not banished good sense.
Sharks were slow of wit, but they knew they had to get past the
harvestships to reach their prey.
That was the whole point of the starfish-Starfisher
alliance.
“Can’t visit anymore, Chub. We’re not going on
mind-drive, so I’ll have to help fight.”
“Oh, yes, Moyshe man-friend. Shoot straight. I help,
putting right vectors in your brain.”
“All right.” Aloud, into his helmet, benRabi said,
“Gun Control.”
A second later his earphones crackled. “Gun Control,
aye.”
“Mindtech. In link and free to assume control of a sector
battery. Sharks will attack. Repeat, will attack.”
“Shit. All right, buddy. But never mind the sector
battery. Master Gunner says he wants you to feed the main battle
tank. Think you and your link can give us good realtime
input?”
“Yes,” Chub murmured deep in benRabi’s
hindbrain.
“Yes,” Moyshe said. And wondered why. It was not
something he had ever tried.
“Monitor?”
“All go, Gun Control,” Clara’s voice
interjected. “Green boards all across, I’ve just keyed
the translator. You can bring the computer on-line whenever
you’re ready.”
“Stand by for draw, Linker.”
“Moyshe,” said Clara, “don’t take any
chances. Key out if it gets rough.”
“Drawing, Linker.”
For an instant benRabi felt as though some intangible vacuum
were sucking his mind away. A smatter of panic quickly yielded to
Chub’s soothing.
Moyshe relaxed, became a conduit. He became an almost
disinterested observer.
The scavengers suddenly grew dancey with a vengeance.
“Attack imminent,” benRabi muttered.
Those pilot fish were excited because they would feast no matter
what the outcome of battle. They would be perfectly content
nibbling dead shark or dead starfish.
A dozen crimson torpedoes suddenly misted, stretched into long,
fuzzy lines, and solidified again near the starfish herd.
A hundred swords of light started carving them into scavenger
food. Sharks were easy meat for particle beams.
“Teach them to try end run through hyper,” Chub
whispered.
The starfish herd had not bothered to dodge. They would not
begin maneuvering till the protection of the human ships began
breaking down.
It might not hold, benRabi reflected. Five vessels could not
establish a sound fire pattern. There would be blind spots. Big
holes. To fill them would mean risking hitting your own people.
The shark packs milled. They had not yet found workable tactics
for assailing a fleet of harvestships.
Their intellectual slowness was the only hope for starfish and
starfishers alike. Something had happened to the sharks. Their
numbers were expanding almost exponentially. They were becoming ever
more desperate in their quest for something to eat.
Their prey, historically, had been the stragglers of the great
starfish herds. The feeble and injured and careless. But now they
assaulted the strong and healthy as well, and had even begun
turning on their own injured. Even the firepower of a harvestship
could not hold the massed packs at bay when hunger heterodyned into
a berserk killing rage.
“Not look so promising as you thought, Moyshe man-friend.
All going to come at once, from everywhere, crazy. Just killing and
dying.”
There was dread in Chub’s thought. Moyshe was dismayed.
Even in the hell that had been the battle at Stars’ End the
starfish had not lost his good cheer.
The starfish’s prediction proved correct. The red
torpedoes suddenly exploded in every direction. Moyshe had seen the
same reaction among humans. The first had been by a band of
fair-weather revolutionaries who had heard the police were coming.
Another time, a terrorist had lobbed a hand grenade into a crowded
theatre.
But the sharks were not fleeing. The instant-insanity had seized
them. They were spreading out to attack.
They arrowed in on the harvestfleet. Laser and particle beam
swords stabbed. Danion’s fire was deadly. The realtime simulation
from the minds of a man and a starfish linked gave the weapons
people a fractional second’s advantage over their brethren in
ships relying on normal detection systems.
The shark wave rolled round Danion like a breaker
around a granite promontory.
They could have worn her down in time, had they had the patience
of the sea, and the sea’s resources for endlessly sending in
another wave. They had hurt her bad at Stars’ End. It only
took one shark getting through, with its multi-dimensional fires,
to ravage a whole section of ship. But this horde was more limited
in its numbers and more driven by hunger.
“Oh, Christ,” benRabi swore as an explosion ripped a
huge chunk from a sister ship. A shark had gotten through there.
The service ships, still evacuating Jariel and trying to
plug the holes in the fire pattern, swarmed toward the fragment.
Clouds of frozen water vapor boiled round it as atmosphere poured
out.
A shark flung itself into the starfish herd.
The great night beasts were not defenseless. One burped a ball
of the. nuclear fire that burned in its “gut,” flung it
with Robin Hood accuracy. The shark perished in the fading flash of
a hydrogen bomb.
One predator was gone. And one starfish was disarmed for hours.
It took the creatures a long time to revitalize their internal
fires.
BenRabi had seen the peaceable starfish use the same weapon
against Sangaree raidships at Stars’ End.
“Fur is flying now, Moyshe man-friend.” Chub was
straining for humor. “We doing all right, you and me. Maybe
your Old Ones decide you not stupid after all.” Left
unthought was Chub’s hope for the same reaction from his own
Old Ones.
By way of support benRabi replied, “This is a new era,
Chub. It’s going to take hastiness and danciness to
survive.”
“Sharks coming again.”
Once more Danion’s weaponry scarred the long
night. Moyshe wondered what some alien would think if he happened
on its unconcealable mark, a thousand years from now, a thousand
light-years away.
Both sides had used retrospective observation techniques during
the Ulantonid War. A battle’s outcome might be fixed, but it
could be studied over and over from every possible angle.
The second assault was more furious than the first. BenRabi
stopped trying to think. He had to give his whole attention over to
following the situation.
More sharks dropped hyper, drawn by no known means. The rage
took them, too. They attacked everything, including wounded
brethren floundering around the battle region.
This was the root of Chub’s fear. That more and more
sharks would be drawn till they simply overwhelmed everything.
It was the future foreseen by both starfish and Starfishers.
The terror that herd after herd and harvestship after harvestship
would be consumed was the force that had driven the maverick
commander of this fleet to hazard the defenses of Stars’
End.
The arrivals slowed to a trickle. Chub thought, “We going
to win again, Moyshe man-friend. See the pattern? The glorious
pattern. They waste their might devouring their own
injured.”
BenRabi searched his kaleidoscopic mind-link universe. He saw
nothing but chaos. This, he reflected, is the sort of thing
Czyzewski was thinking about when he wrote The Old God. So
much of Czyzewski’s poetry seemed reflective of recent
events. Had the man been prescient?
No. He was far gone on stardust when he did the cycle including
The Old God. The drug killed him less than a month after
he finished the poem. The images were just the flaming madness of
the drug burning through.
“Don’t you get tired of being right?” he asked
when the first sharks fled.
“Never, Moyshe man-friend. But learned long ago to wait
till event is certain, predestined, to make observation. Error is
painful. The scorn of Old Ones is like the fire of a thousand
stars.”
“I know the feeling.” For some reason the face of
Admiral Beckhart, his one-time commander, drifted through his
universe. Here on the galactic rim, fighting for his life against
creatures he had not suspected existed two years earlier, his
previous career seemed as remote as that of another man. Of another
incarnation, or something he had read about.
The assault collapsed once the first few well-fed sharks
fled.
The starfish had suffered far less than their inedible
guardians. Not one dragon was missing from the golden herd defended
by the harvestships. But another ship had been injured
severely.
A traitorous thought stole across Moyshe’s mind on
mouse-soft feet.
Chub was less indignant than he expected.
On a strictly pragmatic level, the starfish agreed that getting
out of the interstellar rivers would be the best way to conserve
Starfisher ships and lives.
“They’ll never go, Chub. The harvestfleets are their
nations. Their homelands. They’re proud, stubborn people.
They’ll keep fighting and hoping.”
“I know, Moyshe man-friend. It saddens the herd. And makes
the Old Ones proud that they forged their alliance so well. But why
do you say ‘they?’ ”
“We, then. Part of the
time . . . Most of the time I’m
an outsider here. They do things differently than what I
learned . . . ”
“Sometimes you miss your old life, Moyshe
man-friend.”
“Sometimes. Not often, and not much, though. I’d
better tend to business.” He had to focus his attention to
force his physical voice to croak, “Gun Control, Mindlink.
The sharks are going. They’ve given up. You can secure when
the last leaves firing range.”
“You sure, Linker? Don’t look like it in the display
tank.”
“I’m sure. Let me know when I can stop realtiming.
This is my second link in eight hours.”
“Right. Will do.” The man on the far end seemed
impressed.
Clara’s voice broke in. “Are you all right, Moyshe?
The strain getting heavy? We can bring you out.”
“I’m okay. For a while. I remember what I am. Just
be ready to hit me with that needle.”
At Stars’ End Danion had lost half her native,
trained mindtechs because they had stayed in link too long, or had
been mindburned by sharks breaking through the defensive fire
screen. The best guess was that the former had become lost in the
special interior universe of the linker. Dozens occupied a special
hospital ward where doctors and nurses had to handle them like
newly born babies.
Their bodies lived on. Their minds, it was hoped, might sometime
be retrieved.
In all the history of the High Seiners no lost linker ever had
been recalled.
The Starfishers were living on hopes these days. Stars’
End had been one, for weapons capable of shattering shark
tides.
BenRabi did not understand how the Seiners had hoped to
accomplish what generations of madmen, fools, and geniuses had
failed to do. Stars’ End was a fortress unvanquishable.
It was a whole world, Earth-sized, that was a fortress. Or
planetary battleship. Or whatever. It could be approached by
nothing. The technologies of its defenses were beyond the
imaginations of any of the races aware of its existence. Its
builders had long since vanished into the abyss of time.
Generations of men had lusted after the weapons of Stars’
End. Thousands had died trying to obtain them. And the fortress
world remained inviolate.
Why had the Seiners been convinced that they would have better
luck?
“You were right, Linker. Computer says they’re
pulling out. Going to let you off realtime now. We can handle it
from here without.”
“Thank you, Gun Control.”
The sense of drain stopped abruptly. BenRabi’s universe
reeled. Chub reached in and steadied him. “Time to break,
Moyshe man-friend. You losing sense of reality and orientation in
space-time.”
“I’m not lost yet, Chub.”
“You all say so. No more you can do here,
man-friend.”
The crackle of reality beginning to fall into shards rose from
benRabi’s hindbrain. It pushed a wave of terror before it.
Chub did nothing to soothe him.
“Clara! The needle. I’m coming out.”
He slapped the switch beneath his left hand.
They were waiting for him. The agony persisted for only a few
seconds.
That was bad enough. He screamed and screamed. It got worse
every time.
BenRabi slammed his scooter through the entrance to Control
Sector. Seconds later the massive shield doors rumbled shut behind
him. The section was totally self-contained now. No one could come
in or leave till those doors lifted.
Moyshe stopped in a long, squealing slide. He jumped off,
slammed the charger plug into a socket, ran through the hatch to
Contact.
“You made it,” Clara said. “We didn’t
think you would. You live so far away. Here. Catch your
breath.”
“My scooter was smoking. Better have it checked,
Hans.” He settled onto a fitted couch.
“Ready?” Clara asked.
“No.”
She smiled at him. Hans started massaging an odorless paste into
his scalp. Clara slipped her fingers inside what looked like a
hairnet.
“You never are. I thought you liked Chub.”
BenRabi chuckled. “Chub, I like fine. He’s good
people. But I’d like him a lot better if he could walk in the
door, stick out a hand, and say, ‘Hey, Moyshe, let’s go
grab a couple of beers.’ ”
Chub was the starfish with whom benRabi usually linked.
“Xenophobe.”
“Crap. It’s not him. It’s that out-of-body
feeling . . . ”
“Wrong, Moyshe. You can’t fool old Clara. I was
babying mindtechs before you were born. And you’re all alike.
You don’t want to go out because it hurts so much to come
back.”
“Yeah?”
“Ready,” Hans said.
Clara slid the net onto Moyshe’s head. Her fingertips were
soft and warm. They lingered on his cheeks. Momentary concern
clouded her smile.
“Don’t push yourself, Moyshe. Get out if it gets
rough. You haven’t had enough rest.”
“Since Stars’ End there isn’t any rest. For
anybody.”
“We won,” Hans reminded.
“The cost was too high.”
“It was cheaper than losing.”
BenRabi shrugged. “I guess you people see things
different. I never would have gone in the first place.”
“You took your whippings and smiled, back in
Confederation?” Hans asked. “I never heard of
that.”
“No. We calculated the odds. We picked the right time.
Then we ganged up. We didn’t just go storming around like
a rogue elephant, getting hurt as much as we did hurt.”
“Oriflamme,” Hans countered.
“What?”
“That’s what they call Payne sometimes. It’s
something from olden times that has to do with not taking
prisoners.”
“Oh. The oriflamme. It was a special pennon that belonged
to the King of France. If he raised it, it meant take no prisoners.
It had a way of backfiring on him.”
“Hans,” Clara said, “Moyshe is an Academy man.
He can probably tell you how many spokes in the wheel of a Roman
war chariot.”
“Take Poitiers, for
instance . . . ”
“Who?”
“It’s a place. In France, which is on Old
Earth . . . ”
“I know where France
is, Moyshe.”
“All right. One of the big battles of the
Hundred Years War was fought there. And you could say that the
French lost because of the oriflamme. See, they caught the English
in a bad spot. Outnumbered them like ten to one. The Black Prince
decided to surrender. But the French raised the oriflamme. Which
pissed the English, so they proceeded to kick ass all over the
countryside. When the dust settled, the French were wiped out and
Louis was in chains. There’s a lesson in there somewhere, if
you want to look. Namely, don’t ever push anybody into a
corner where he can’t get out.”
“You see what he’s doing, Hans?” Clara
asked.
“You mean trying to educate us until the all-clear comes
through? You’re out of luck, Moyshe. Lift your head so I can
put your helmet on.”
BenRabi raised his head.
His scalp began tingling under the hairnet device. The helmet
devoured his head, stealing the light. He fought the panic that
always hit before he went under.
Hans strapped him in and adjusted the bio-monitor’s
pickups.
“Can you hear me, Moyshe?” Clara asked through the
helmet’s earphones.
He raised a hand. Then spoke: “Coming through
clear.”
“Got you too. Your boards look good. Blood pressure is up,
but that’s normal for you. Take a minute in TSD. Relax. Go
when you want.”
His, “I don’t want,” remained unspoken.
He depressed the switch beneath his right hand one click.
The only senses left him were internal. Total Sensory
Deprivation left him only his aches and pains, the taste in his
mouth, and the rush of blood. Once the field took hold, even those
would go.
In small doses it was relaxing. But too much could
drive a man insane.
He flicked his right hand again.
A universe took form around him. He was its center, its lord,
its creator . . . There was no pain in that
universe, nor much unhappiness. Too many wonders burned there,
within the bounds of his mind.
It was a universe of colors both pastel and crisp. Every star
was a blazing jewel, proclaiming its individual hue. The oncoming
storm of the nova’s solar wind was a rioting, psychedelic
cloud that seemed to have as much substance as an Old Earth
thunderhead. Opposite it, the pale pink glimmer of a hydrogen
stream meandered off toward the heart of the galaxy. The
surrounding harvest-ships were patches of iridescent gold.
A score of golden Chinese dragons drifted with the fleet,
straining toward it, yet held away by the light pressure of the
dying star. Starfish!
BenRabi’s sourness gave way to elation. There would be
contact this time.
He reached toward them with his thoughts. “Chub? Are you
out there, my friend?” For a time there was nothing.
Then a warm glow enveloped him like some sudden outbreak of good
cheer.
“Moyshe man-friend, hello. I see you. Coming out of the
light, hello. One ship is gone.”
“Jariel.
They’re still evacuating.”
“Sad.”
Chub did not seem sad. This fish, benRabi thought, is
constitutionally incapable of anything but joy.
“Not so, Moyshe man-friend. I mourn with the herd the
sorrows of Stars’ End. Yet I must laugh with my man-friends over
the joys of what was won.”
“The ships-that-kill weren’t all destroyed, Chub.
The Sangaree carry their grudges forever.”
“Ha! They are a tear in the eye of eternity. They will
die. Their sun will die. And still there will be starfish to swim
the rivers of the night.”
“You’ve been puttering
around in the back rooms of my mind again. You’re stealing my
images and shooting them back at me.”
“You have an intriguing mind, Moyshe man-friend. A
clouded, boxy mind, cobwebby, atticy, full of
trap doors . . . ”
“What would you know about trap doors?”
“Only what I relive through your memories, Moyshe
man-friend.”
Chub teased and giggled like an adolescent lover.
By starfish reckoning he was a child. He-had not yet
seen his millionth year.
BenRabi simply avoided thinking about starfish time spans. A
life measured in millions of years was utterly beyond his ken. He
only mourned the fact that those incredible spans could never touch
upon worlds where beings of a biochemical nature lived. The stories
they could have told! The historical mysteries they could have
illuminated!
But starfish dared not get too near major gravitational or
magnetic sources. Even the gravity of the larger harvestships felt
to a starfish much as rheumatism to a human being.
They were terribly fragile creatures.
While Chub teased and enthused, Moyshe turned a part of his mind
to his private universe again.
Red torpedoes idled along far away, across the pink river,
against the galaxy.
“Yes,” Chub said. “Sharks. Survivors of
Stars’ End called them here. They will attack. They starve.
Another feast for the scavenger things.”
Smaller ghosts in a mix of colors shadowed both dragons and
torpedoes. They were Chub’s scavengers.
The great slow ecology of the hydrogen streams had niches for
creatures of most life-functions, though their definition in human
terms was seldom more than an approximation. A convenient
labeling.
Moyshe yielded to nervousness. Chub reached into his mind,
calming him . . .
“I’m learning, Chub. I can see the river this time.
I can see the particle storm coming from the sick sun.”
“Very good, Moyshe man-friend. You relax now. Sharks come
soon. You watch scavenger things instead. They tell when sharks
can’t wait anymore. They get dancey.”
Moyshe laughed into his secret universe. Starfish believed in
doing things with deliberation, as might be expected of creatures
with vast life spans. Young starfish tended to be restless and
excitable. They were prone to flutter impatiently in the presence
of their elders. The Old Ones called it “getting
dancey.”
Chub was dancey most of the time.
The Old Ones considered him the herd idiot. Chub said they
regretted exposing him to human hasty-think while he was still
young and impressionable.
“Is a joke, Moyshe man-friend. Is a good joke?
Yes?”
“Yes. Very funny.” For a starfish. The Old Ones had
to be the most phlegmatic, humorless, pragmatic intelligences in
all creation. They couldn’t even grasp the concept of a joke.
With the exception of Chub, benRabi found them a depressing
mob.
“I was lucky to become your mind-mate, Chub. Very
lucky.”
He meant it. He had linked with Old Ones. He compared it to
making love to his grandmother bare-assed on an iceberg, with a
crowd watching. Drawing Chub was the best thing that had happened
to him in years.
“Yes. We half-wits stick together. Venceremos, Comrade
Moyshe.”
BenRabi filled the universe with laughter. “Where the hell
did you get that?”
“Your mind full of cobwebby memories, Moyshe man-friend.
One time you play revolutionary on hard matter place called
Dustball.”
“Yeah. I did. About two weeks. Then it was duck bullets
all the way back to the Embassy.”
“You live much in few years, Moyshe man-friend. Ten times
anyone else linked by starfish Chub. Many adventures. Think Chub
would make good spy?”
“Who would you spy on?”
“Yes. Problem. Very difficult to disguise as
shark.”
“That’s another joke, isn’t it?”
“Yes. You still spying, Moyshe man-friend?”
“Not anymore. I’m not Thomas McClennon anymore.
I’m Moyshe benRabi. I’ve found me a home, Chub. These
are my people now. You can’t spy on your own
people.”
“Oh. Saw shadows in your mind. Thought maybe secret
spy-stuff lurked. So. Hey! Maybe someday you go spy on hard matter
place people? Be double spy.”
“Double agent?”
“Oh. Yes. That right words.”
“No more spying, Chub. I’m going to be a
mindtech.”
“Dangerous.”
“So is spying. In more ways than you’ll ever
understand.”
“Hurts-of-the-heart dangers, you mean?”
“I don’t know why they tell you you’re stupid.
You’re a lot smarter in a lot of ways than most people I
know. You see things without having to have them
explained.”
“Helps, being starfish. People can’t look inside,
Moyshe man-friend. You have to tell. You have to show. You not the
kind of man to do that.”
“Yeah. Let’s talk about something else,
huh?”
“Running out of talk time, Moyshe man-friend. Scavenger
creatures getting dancey. You not paying attention?”
“I still haven’t got the hang of seeing everything
at once.”
That was one of the beauties of the mindtech’s linked
universe. He was not subject to the limitations of binocular
vision. But he did have to unlearn its habits.
Blind people made better techs faster. They had no habits to
unlearn, no preoccupations to overcome. But blind people who
suffered from classical migraine were scarce.
Scarlet torpedoes edged toward the fleet. They were not yet
wholly committed. Hunger still had not banished good sense.
Sharks were slow of wit, but they knew they had to get past the
harvestships to reach their prey.
That was the whole point of the starfish-Starfisher
alliance.
“Can’t visit anymore, Chub. We’re not going on
mind-drive, so I’ll have to help fight.”
“Oh, yes, Moyshe man-friend. Shoot straight. I help,
putting right vectors in your brain.”
“All right.” Aloud, into his helmet, benRabi said,
“Gun Control.”
A second later his earphones crackled. “Gun Control,
aye.”
“Mindtech. In link and free to assume control of a sector
battery. Sharks will attack. Repeat, will attack.”
“Shit. All right, buddy. But never mind the sector
battery. Master Gunner says he wants you to feed the main battle
tank. Think you and your link can give us good realtime
input?”
“Yes,” Chub murmured deep in benRabi’s
hindbrain.
“Yes,” Moyshe said. And wondered why. It was not
something he had ever tried.
“Monitor?”
“All go, Gun Control,” Clara’s voice
interjected. “Green boards all across, I’ve just keyed
the translator. You can bring the computer on-line whenever
you’re ready.”
“Stand by for draw, Linker.”
“Moyshe,” said Clara, “don’t take any
chances. Key out if it gets rough.”
“Drawing, Linker.”
For an instant benRabi felt as though some intangible vacuum
were sucking his mind away. A smatter of panic quickly yielded to
Chub’s soothing.
Moyshe relaxed, became a conduit. He became an almost
disinterested observer.
The scavengers suddenly grew dancey with a vengeance.
“Attack imminent,” benRabi muttered.
Those pilot fish were excited because they would feast no matter
what the outcome of battle. They would be perfectly content
nibbling dead shark or dead starfish.
A dozen crimson torpedoes suddenly misted, stretched into long,
fuzzy lines, and solidified again near the starfish herd.
A hundred swords of light started carving them into scavenger
food. Sharks were easy meat for particle beams.
“Teach them to try end run through hyper,” Chub
whispered.
The starfish herd had not bothered to dodge. They would not
begin maneuvering till the protection of the human ships began
breaking down.
It might not hold, benRabi reflected. Five vessels could not
establish a sound fire pattern. There would be blind spots. Big
holes. To fill them would mean risking hitting your own people.
The shark packs milled. They had not yet found workable tactics
for assailing a fleet of harvestships.
Their intellectual slowness was the only hope for starfish and
starfishers alike. Something had happened to the sharks. Their
numbers were expanding almost exponentially. They were becoming ever
more desperate in their quest for something to eat.
Their prey, historically, had been the stragglers of the great
starfish herds. The feeble and injured and careless. But now they
assaulted the strong and healthy as well, and had even begun
turning on their own injured. Even the firepower of a harvestship
could not hold the massed packs at bay when hunger heterodyned into
a berserk killing rage.
“Not look so promising as you thought, Moyshe man-friend.
All going to come at once, from everywhere, crazy. Just killing and
dying.”
There was dread in Chub’s thought. Moyshe was dismayed.
Even in the hell that had been the battle at Stars’ End the
starfish had not lost his good cheer.
The starfish’s prediction proved correct. The red
torpedoes suddenly exploded in every direction. Moyshe had seen the
same reaction among humans. The first had been by a band of
fair-weather revolutionaries who had heard the police were coming.
Another time, a terrorist had lobbed a hand grenade into a crowded
theatre.
But the sharks were not fleeing. The instant-insanity had seized
them. They were spreading out to attack.
They arrowed in on the harvestfleet. Laser and particle beam
swords stabbed. Danion’s fire was deadly. The realtime simulation
from the minds of a man and a starfish linked gave the weapons
people a fractional second’s advantage over their brethren in
ships relying on normal detection systems.
The shark wave rolled round Danion like a breaker
around a granite promontory.
They could have worn her down in time, had they had the patience
of the sea, and the sea’s resources for endlessly sending in
another wave. They had hurt her bad at Stars’ End. It only
took one shark getting through, with its multi-dimensional fires,
to ravage a whole section of ship. But this horde was more limited
in its numbers and more driven by hunger.
“Oh, Christ,” benRabi swore as an explosion ripped a
huge chunk from a sister ship. A shark had gotten through there.
The service ships, still evacuating Jariel and trying to
plug the holes in the fire pattern, swarmed toward the fragment.
Clouds of frozen water vapor boiled round it as atmosphere poured
out.
A shark flung itself into the starfish herd.
The great night beasts were not defenseless. One burped a ball
of the. nuclear fire that burned in its “gut,” flung it
with Robin Hood accuracy. The shark perished in the fading flash of
a hydrogen bomb.
One predator was gone. And one starfish was disarmed for hours.
It took the creatures a long time to revitalize their internal
fires.
BenRabi had seen the peaceable starfish use the same weapon
against Sangaree raidships at Stars’ End.
“Fur is flying now, Moyshe man-friend.” Chub was
straining for humor. “We doing all right, you and me. Maybe
your Old Ones decide you not stupid after all.” Left
unthought was Chub’s hope for the same reaction from his own
Old Ones.
By way of support benRabi replied, “This is a new era,
Chub. It’s going to take hastiness and danciness to
survive.”
“Sharks coming again.”
Once more Danion’s weaponry scarred the long
night. Moyshe wondered what some alien would think if he happened
on its unconcealable mark, a thousand years from now, a thousand
light-years away.
Both sides had used retrospective observation techniques during
the Ulantonid War. A battle’s outcome might be fixed, but it
could be studied over and over from every possible angle.
The second assault was more furious than the first. BenRabi
stopped trying to think. He had to give his whole attention over to
following the situation.
More sharks dropped hyper, drawn by no known means. The rage
took them, too. They attacked everything, including wounded
brethren floundering around the battle region.
This was the root of Chub’s fear. That more and more
sharks would be drawn till they simply overwhelmed everything.
It was the future foreseen by both starfish and Starfishers.
The terror that herd after herd and harvestship after harvestship
would be consumed was the force that had driven the maverick
commander of this fleet to hazard the defenses of Stars’
End.
The arrivals slowed to a trickle. Chub thought, “We going
to win again, Moyshe man-friend. See the pattern? The glorious
pattern. They waste their might devouring their own
injured.”
BenRabi searched his kaleidoscopic mind-link universe. He saw
nothing but chaos. This, he reflected, is the sort of thing
Czyzewski was thinking about when he wrote The Old God. So
much of Czyzewski’s poetry seemed reflective of recent
events. Had the man been prescient?
No. He was far gone on stardust when he did the cycle including
The Old God. The drug killed him less than a month after
he finished the poem. The images were just the flaming madness of
the drug burning through.
“Don’t you get tired of being right?” he asked
when the first sharks fled.
“Never, Moyshe man-friend. But learned long ago to wait
till event is certain, predestined, to make observation. Error is
painful. The scorn of Old Ones is like the fire of a thousand
stars.”
“I know the feeling.” For some reason the face of
Admiral Beckhart, his one-time commander, drifted through his
universe. Here on the galactic rim, fighting for his life against
creatures he had not suspected existed two years earlier, his
previous career seemed as remote as that of another man. Of another
incarnation, or something he had read about.
The assault collapsed once the first few well-fed sharks
fled.
The starfish had suffered far less than their inedible
guardians. Not one dragon was missing from the golden herd defended
by the harvestships. But another ship had been injured
severely.
A traitorous thought stole across Moyshe’s mind on
mouse-soft feet.
Chub was less indignant than he expected.
On a strictly pragmatic level, the starfish agreed that getting
out of the interstellar rivers would be the best way to conserve
Starfisher ships and lives.
“They’ll never go, Chub. The harvestfleets are their
nations. Their homelands. They’re proud, stubborn people.
They’ll keep fighting and hoping.”
“I know, Moyshe man-friend. It saddens the herd. And makes
the Old Ones proud that they forged their alliance so well. But why
do you say ‘they?’ ”
“We, then. Part of the
time . . . Most of the time I’m
an outsider here. They do things differently than what I
learned . . . ”
“Sometimes you miss your old life, Moyshe
man-friend.”
“Sometimes. Not often, and not much, though. I’d
better tend to business.” He had to focus his attention to
force his physical voice to croak, “Gun Control, Mindlink.
The sharks are going. They’ve given up. You can secure when
the last leaves firing range.”
“You sure, Linker? Don’t look like it in the display
tank.”
“I’m sure. Let me know when I can stop realtiming.
This is my second link in eight hours.”
“Right. Will do.” The man on the far end seemed
impressed.
Clara’s voice broke in. “Are you all right, Moyshe?
The strain getting heavy? We can bring you out.”
“I’m okay. For a while. I remember what I am. Just
be ready to hit me with that needle.”
At Stars’ End Danion had lost half her native,
trained mindtechs because they had stayed in link too long, or had
been mindburned by sharks breaking through the defensive fire
screen. The best guess was that the former had become lost in the
special interior universe of the linker. Dozens occupied a special
hospital ward where doctors and nurses had to handle them like
newly born babies.
Their bodies lived on. Their minds, it was hoped, might sometime
be retrieved.
In all the history of the High Seiners no lost linker ever had
been recalled.
The Starfishers were living on hopes these days. Stars’
End had been one, for weapons capable of shattering shark
tides.
BenRabi did not understand how the Seiners had hoped to
accomplish what generations of madmen, fools, and geniuses had
failed to do. Stars’ End was a fortress unvanquishable.
It was a whole world, Earth-sized, that was a fortress. Or
planetary battleship. Or whatever. It could be approached by
nothing. The technologies of its defenses were beyond the
imaginations of any of the races aware of its existence. Its
builders had long since vanished into the abyss of time.
Generations of men had lusted after the weapons of Stars’
End. Thousands had died trying to obtain them. And the fortress
world remained inviolate.
Why had the Seiners been convinced that they would have better
luck?
“You were right, Linker. Computer says they’re
pulling out. Going to let you off realtime now. We can handle it
from here without.”
“Thank you, Gun Control.”
The sense of drain stopped abruptly. BenRabi’s universe
reeled. Chub reached in and steadied him. “Time to break,
Moyshe man-friend. You losing sense of reality and orientation in
space-time.”
“I’m not lost yet, Chub.”
“You all say so. No more you can do here,
man-friend.”
The crackle of reality beginning to fall into shards rose from
benRabi’s hindbrain. It pushed a wave of terror before it.
Chub did nothing to soothe him.
“Clara! The needle. I’m coming out.”
He slapped the switch beneath his left hand.
They were waiting for him. The agony persisted for only a few
seconds.
That was bad enough. He screamed and screamed. It got worse
every time.