She drew away from him. “It’s the people who have to be willing to change! It didn’t have to end like this. If they could have seen that there was still a future…There could still be one now, but even you can’t see it; you won’t see it. You’re right, death is what you want…Suicide is the ultimate selfishness, and I’ve never seen a people more ready to commit it.” She unstrapped, pushing up out of her seat and away from him, her breath catching at the punishment of sudden movement. “You deserve it. Damn you all!”
He caught her wrist. Furious, she felt Shadow Jack move out of her way, staring, as Wadie pulled her back to the screen. “MacWong, Raul, this is Abdhiamal. I want to talk to you.”
Nakamore acknowledged him and Betha thought she saw a smile; she waited, saw MacWong break off his speech: “Sorry, Abdhiamal. You’re a dead man. You’ve got nothin’ to say to the Demarchy.” MacWong glanced sideways, barely turning his head. Betha looked past him at Tiriki.
“We’re all dead men unless you listen to me! Because of this ship, which you don’t have any more right to than Nakamore does, or I do. For God’s sake, MacWong, there were seven people on this ship, who came three light-years from another system to Heaven; and five of them are already dead because of it. And now you’re goin’ to destroy the rest of them, along with the best ships left to the Demarchy and the Rings? You’re all that’s left of Heaven Belt, and your own greed is ripping your guts out. You’re killin’ yourselves because you’re scared to die. Taking the starship won’t save Heaven, and it’s goin’ to finish you off instead, if you let it.
“But you don’t have to let it happen.” He nodded at Betha waiting beside him, silent with surprise. “These people came to trade with us because they wanted a better life. And in spite of what we’ve done to them, they’re still willin’ to trade. There’s a whole trade ring of worlds out there, holding each other up so that they never fall into the kind of trap we’ve put ourselves in. They can save us too. Heaven Belt can be all it ever was if we join them.” He waited, searching the screen for a response. “Let the starship leave Heaven, instead of destroyin’ it. You’ll accomplish the same goal but you’ll have everything to gain and nothing to lose.”
“You always could convince Djem that cold was hot, Wadie.” Betha looked for mockery on Nakamore’s face, was surprised when she didn’t find it. “But this time you even make sense to me…I don’t want to destroy the starship or my own ships. If I could get out of this bind by lettin’ the ship leave the system, I would. The way things have turned out, it’d be enough just to put the ship beyond everybody’s reach…And the point’s not lost on me that the only reason we’ve got you now is that this woman, this Captain Torgussen, came back to Lansing as she said she would.” Nakamore found Betha’s eyes, curiously respectful. “I think you would come back to help us too.”
Betha frowned in sudden pain, bit her lip.
“I’m willin’ to let you go, Captain. But is MacWong?”
Betha saw MacWong surreptitiously rolling the lace on his shirt front, still listening to Nakamore’s transmission. Behind him the mediamen transmitted his own every move, his every word, to the waiting Demarchy: MacWong was pinned under the public gaze like a bug under glass. At last he said, “Your suggestion violates the Demarchy’s mandate for this mission. I only have the authority to seize the ship or destroy it; I can’t let it go.”
“Even though you want to! Even though we may all die if you don’t.” Nakamore’s words burned with contempt; his taciturn face was abruptly transformed, as though he were making a speech. Betha realized suddenly that he must be well aware that there was an audience waiting to receive it. Wadie began to smile, almost wonderingly. “You puppet. You call the Harmony a ‘dictatorship’ but we give more freedom to the individual than your people’s mobocracy ever did or will. I have the power, the freedom of choice, to stop this stupidity. But you don’t. Your people don’t trust a man to use the judgment he was born with; they pick the words every time you open your mouth.
“But how are they goin’ to tell you what to do this time, MacWong? They never imagined needing second-to-second control over hundreds of millions of kilometers, across a comm lag like this. By the time the whole Demarchy hears this and debates and amends and votes, things will be all over for us, and whatever they wanted won’t mean a damn thing…But you won’t take the decision in your own hands because you’re too afraid of the system, and of those pretty-boy anarchists behind you. The basic weakness and inefficiency of your self-servin’ mob rule will make the Demarchy destroy its own ships, and mine, and destroy this system’s last hope of survival. I’ve always known your ‘government’ was a farce…an’ even you can’t deny that now. I’d laugh if it wasn’t such a tragedy. Because that’s what it is, a tragedy.”
Betha watched impotent rage fracture MacWong’s mask of complacency, saw real emotion for the first time on the faces of the listening demarchs behind him…saw the mediamen recording it all, so that the entire Demarchy could see and share their indignation. MacWong covered his anger. “Captain Torgussen, our ships will pass you in thirty-six hundred seconds. If you intend to follow our instructions, I suggest you get in touch with us soon.” His image vanished abruptly.
Betha said softly, “Try to monitor MacWong’s communications with the Demarchy, Pappy; let me know how much worse that outburst makes things.”
Nakamore loosened the upturned collar of his stiff, bulky jacket, the anger flowing out of his eyes and voice. “He’ll be back, I expect.”
“My congratulations on…your promotion to Hand, Raul.” Betha watched Wadie bow, inscrutable.
“My duty, to accept; my desire, to serve.” Nakamore gestured the honor aside, oddly embarrassed. “I wish I could say the same to you, Wadie. But I don’t know the Demarchy’s etiquette for its traitors.”
Wadie smiled bleakly. “There’s not any.”
“You’re the only reasonable demarch I ever met, and that’s probably why the mob went after you. I don’t approve of your act of piracy against the Harmony…but I think I finally begin to see why you did it; why you want to help these people. I doubt if Djem’ll ever understand it—”
“I know…and I’m sorry. There wasn’t any other choice. It would never have happened if—”
“If we hadn’t attacked the starship when it first appeared? You’re right. It was stupid of us. If we’d had sense enough to direct ’em to one of our bases instead, the Grand Harmony’d have its own starship now. But we didn’t, and all we got was death. But we knew the ship was damaged, and Central Harmony figured it was worth the gamble I could catch them here.”
“That was a long chance,” Wadie said. “You’d have been a long time gettin’ home if what we saw is all the propellant you’ve got left.”
“I know. Even without a battle, it would take us twenty megasecs to get back to Outermost—if our life-support systems held out. And then we’d freeze our asses off on that snowball, waitin’ for a fuel shipment to get us to the inner Harmony.” Nakamore scratched his chin, looking tired. “But we took on food and air down on Lansing.”
Shadow Jack pushed past Betha’s shoulder to the camera. “Why didn’t you just rip the tent and kill ’em quick, you bastard?”
Nakamore shrugged. “Boy, you’re all pirates to me. But we didn’t take that much. Look on it as a trade for the hydrogen you stole from the Harmony.”
“Where’s my mother?” Bird Alyn cried suddenly, shrill with anguish. “What did you do to my mother?”
Nakamore peered at her blankly; Betha saw comprehension come to him. “So…your mother’s goin’ to have a stiff jaw for a few hundred kilosecs. But aside from that she’s better off than you are—or we are—right now. Speakin’ of which: Captain Torgussen, you have my permission to off-load those gas canisters into a low orbit around Lansing. Then I recommend all our ships move out a few hundred kilometers into space. When the Demarchy forces arrive the fireworks’ll be lethal over quite a volume; there’s no reason
why Lansing should be part of it. Somebody might as well get somethin’ out of this.” He turned away, issuing soundless orders.
“Thank you,” Betha said. She saw the curious smile still on Wadie’s face as he watched the screen. “What is that man? I don’t understand him.”
Wadie turned toward her, and the smile grew gentle. “Sanity hasn’t entirely disappeared from Heaven, Betha. Not even from the Rings…Raul is a decent man; but more than that, he’s not stupid. I told you his brother never won a chess game from me. In all the time I spent in the Rings, I won only two games from Raul. He may still have some surprises left.”
Betha rubbed her arms. “All I know is that he intentionally infuriated the Demarchy to the point where they’ll never be satisfied until they see us all in hell. Whatever he thinks he’s doing, I don’t like being his pawn.”
The Ranger moved slowly out from Lansing. Betha watched it growing smaller below them, a world of elvish beauty, rising and falling in soft undulations beneath a transparent film of plastic spotted with milky patchwork. Trees reached upward toward the tent like sprays of lace, fragile fountains of leaves spilling over fields of ripening grain…and fields of dying grass. She saw the velvet green of parklands, still well watered…and the peeling mud of dried marshes. The people below moved in a dream ballet among airy minarets and pillared buildings of state, on the world that had once been the symbol of Heaven’s splendid extravagance. The last world she would ever see…She glanced at Clewell’s still face, his closed eyes, where he drifted in his seat listening for the Demarchy’s response. Afraid of the stillness, she looked away again, stroked Rusty’s purring, clinging form while she tried to picture the other beloved faces already lost to her and the homeworld none of them would ever see again. There was no comfort now, no satisfaction, in this ultimate revenge that Heaven would inflict on itself in retribution for their deaths and her own. A terrible weariness settled over her, the futility of the last few weeks, the last four years.
“Betha…” Wadie kept his eyes on the screen. “I don’t know how to save this ship. But I think I know how to save our lives. We can leave the Ranger, use the Lansing 04 to take us down to Lansing. All Nakamore wants an end to is the ship, not our lives. If we use our suits we can all make it.”
“No.” Betha wrapped her arms across the aching muscles of her stomach. “I won’t leave the Ranger. But yes, the rest of you, get into your suits and go. There’s no reason for you to stay; at least save yourselves.”
“What do you mean, you won’t leave this ship?” Wadie pushed back from the screen, caught her chair arm. “It’s just a ship, Betha; it doesn’t control your life. You aren’t chained to it.”
She shook her head. “You still don’t understand, do you? After all this time. This is my ship. I was part of its design, and part of its construction. Its crew were the people I loved; this journey meant everything to us, the future of our world…Everything about it binds me to my people, my past, my home. I can’t leave it. I don’t want to lose everything, I don’t want to live forever in the place where it happened. I don’t want to live like that.”
“Now who’s indulging in the ultimate selfishness?”
Her mouth tightened. “It’s not going to hurt anyone but me”—realizing, as she saw his face, that that wasn’t true.
“Well, what about…what about Clewell?”
“What about me?” Clewell opened his eyes, irritably, at the communications board. “I have no intention of leaving the Ranger for that overgrown cinder down there.”
“Dammit, you’re just makin’ her more stubborn. Why the hell don’t you tell her she’s wrong?”
“She’s my wife, not my child. She has a right to make her own decision. And so do I…I’ve lived too long already if I’ve lived to see this day. My body already knows the truth.” He closed his eyes again. “Now let me do my job; monitoring the Demarchy is hard enough as it is at this distance.”
“May it do us some good.” Wadie pulled himself back to the panel, massaged the cramped muscles of his neck. “All right, then…I’ll stay too. I guess I’ve earned the right. I lost everythin’ I ever valued because of this ship.”
Betha froze her expression, willed emotion from her voice. “You won’t blackmail me into changing my mind, Wadie.”
He bowed solemnly. “Not my intent. Allow me the privilege of making my own decision, since you expect me to accept yours. I’d rather die a martyr than a traitor.”
She sighed, her nails digging into the palms of her hands. Thank you. “All right, then. So only two will be going to Lansing.”
Bird Alyn raised her head from Shadow Jack’s shoulder, drifting, cradled in his arms. “No. Betha, we’re not goin’.”
“Now, listen—”
“No,” Shadow Jack said. “We did what we wanted to do for Lansing. But there’s nothin’ anybody can do for us. We’d rather be—together—now, for a little while, than be apart forever.” He glanced at the doorway.
“I see.” She nodded once, barely hearing her own voice. “Come here, then, both of you.” They drifted forward obediently. Betha worked a golden band from one finger of each of her hands. Reaching out, she took their own left hands, one at a time, slipped a ring over a thin straight finger, a thin crooked one. She joined the hands to keep the rings from floating free. “By my authority as captain of this ship, I pronounce you husband and wife…May your love be as deep as the darkness, as constant as the sun.”
Their hands clung to her own for a moment; she felt Shadow Jack’s trembling. She turned away, heard them leave the room. Clewell’s eyes touched her face in a caress. “Pappy, get off the radio a minute. We’ve got to leave those people some hydrogen…”
There were seventeen hundred seconds until encounter.
Three hundred kilometers away now, Lansing was a greenish, mottled crescent on the darkness. Far enough away, Betha hoped, to survive whatever fires must burn across Heaven. On all sides emptiness stretched, filling the light-years to the distant stars. And the Ranger had been built to bridge those distances, at speeds close to that of light itself. But it would never cross them again…it lay stranded like a beached cetoid on the desolate shores of Heaven, trapped by primitive ships with primitive weapons in the ultimate irony of defeat.
“Five hundred seconds,” Wadie said. Rusty curled serenely in the crook of his arm and washed a protruding foot.
Betha lit her pipe, inhaled the familiar, soothing odor of the smoke. “That’s when the first ship will pass; they’re strung out at about one-hundred-second intervals. But it doesn’t matter…we can’t comply with MacWong’s demand now.”
Clewell chuckled suddenly, oblivious.
“God, Pappy, what in hell are you laughing at?”
He shook his head apologetically. “At the Demarchy reacting to Nakamore’s speech—their righteous indignation at being named for what they are.”
“Well, put it on,” Wadie said, strangely eager. “I want to hear that.”
A burst of static mixed with garbled speech filled the room. Clewell lowered the volume. “Sorry; even with enhancement, it takes some practice to make sense out of that.”
Four hundred seconds.
He pulled off his ear jack. “My God, Betha, I think they’re actually trying to take a vote…a vote on whether to let us go.”
Betha pushed up out of her chair, caught herself on the panel edge with a gasp. “Pappy! Can’t you clean up the transmission?”
“I’ll try. MacWong’s ships are close enough now; we may be in the tight beam from the Demarchy.” He put an image on the screen; Betha saw print, illegible through snow, recognized the format of a Demarchy general election. A band of golden yellow brightened at the bottom.
“It takes about five hundred seconds for a full tally.”
“Five hundred! Christ.” She felt Wadie move close, his sleeve brush her arm. “Pappy, raise MacWong’s ship.”
“I’ve tried. They’re not talking.”
She
could almost see the numbers, almost see them change. And beside the static-clouded picture, the Ranger’s displays projected the track of three closing ships on a star-filled sky. Three ships that stood out like flares now, their torches extended ahead of their flight, decelerating at last. She searched their brilliance for a smaller track, a seed of blossoming destruction. Give us time, MacWong…Clewell left his seat, moved slowly along the panel to her side; she took his arm. The digits on the chronometer narrowed like sand in an hourglass, eroding their lives. One hundred seconds until the first ship passed…sixty…fifty…She realized she had stopped breathing. “They’re holding off! Forty seconds; that first ship can’t fire on us now.”
MacWong’s face appeared below the tally. “Captain Torgussen.” They saw the stress on his face and on the faces that ringed him in. “We’re just now receivin’ the results of a vote from the Demarchy. The majority accepts your aid to Lansing as evidence of your good will, Captain, and favors a modification of our mission…I hope you’re listenin’, Nakamore; you’ve just seen a demonstration of the real flexibility and strength of the people, the wisdom and fairness of the Demarchic system.” He looked away, into the media cameras, and back.
“Captain Torgussen, the Demarchy will allow you to depart—if you will assure us that the Demarchy will be the center for distributin’ your aid when you return to Heaven.” His eyes asked her to promise anything.
On the center of the screen Betha saw the second Demarchy ship fall past them.
Nakamore’s image came onto the screen. “You know I can’t accept that, MacWong.” His voice was even, no longer reaching out to goad an entire people. “I don’t demand that control go to the Harmony. But it’s not goin’ to you.”
Betha froze, realizing that Nakamore might still let them go. A promise at knifepoint was no promise at all…and no solution. There had to be a way to reach both sides, or the next Morningside ship to come to Heaven would fall into the same deadly trap of greed. She heard someone come up behind her, turned to see Shadow Jack and Bird Alyn, peacefully hand in hand.