FORTY-SIX

They were drenched and cold, Folk and Serfs alike, but the hour demanded attention. Memor slumped down to rest, sitting back a bit on her haunches.

Their flight from the poor agonized and wounded skyfish had been rowdy, noisy, swept by rain beneath inky clouds flashing with electrical anger. Their ragged party had slipped and stumbled their way across great slabs of rock, with Memor trying to keep order in their flight. A team from the station had come out to erect, with swift competence, a bridge over the jagged chasm that had split open. The station’s deputy commander said a flying hard-carbon flange had fallen on the mountain, apparently freed of its support structure high up in the envelope’s stanchions, and plunged deep into the mountain’s firm mass. The shock wave had rocked the skyfish sideways and blown several of its compartments, spilling crew onto the rock. That knife-sharp girder had also split a crevasse at the worst possible moment, spraying fragments into the skyfish and killing some local staff. The great skyfish bellowed and writhed against the crews attempting to moor it, killing several. Its flailing fins were sharp and deadly.

Considering this, it was a wonder anything worked.

Memor sagged with exhaustion. She watched Asenath stand proudly at the prow of the command center in their mountain shelter, in full authority. She listened to the panicked signals from the fliers, displayed on screens and sounding shrill even in this large command room. The fliers were guided by robot minds, high level and capable of what seemed like emotions. The voices were brittle, sharp, edged with urgency. The swift ships tumbled and gyred, blown about by the ramscoop thrust. That made evasive navigation and aiming nearly impossible.

“We could use the Lambda Gun, as you said before, Wisdom Chief,” a small lieutenant said softly. “One of the fliers bears only the gun. It is bulky and makes maneuver difficult in the jet. That flier hangs back, away from the pencil exhaust the primates are using against us.”

“Under whose orders was this done?” Memor said.

“Mine,” Asenath said firmly.

“Have the Ice Minds agreed? They have—”

“Bemor is not here, so we cannot readily consult with the Ice Minds. He is off managing their discourse, if that is the proper word, with your talking primate. So I shall have to assume command.”

Memor felt compelled to say, “Separated command? This is not proper use of the hierarchy—”

“Ah, but then, this is a clear emergency. Communications are fragmented and time ticks on. I order the Lambda Gun unfolded.”

Memor felt a sudden spike of fear. “That, that will take time—”

“Get to it,” Asenath ordered the lieutenant. Various officers, gathered around the two Folk in a crescent, rustled with unease. Nobody moved. The silence stretched.

Memor said, “You had the Lambda Gun prepared before, didn’t you?”

Asenath gave an irritated fan-rebuke to her underlings. “Now!” They scurried off to their many tasks.

Almost casually, in a way that told Memor this had been long planned, Asenath turned and gave a gray green feather rush of haughty disregard. “I felt it necessary. Events now prove me correct.”

Memor felt icy fatigue run through her but summoned up reserves, rustled her feathers, and turned inward. She had heard of the Lambda Gun long ago as a historical curiosity, and now had to call up its history to have any hope of dealing with Asenath. Her Undermind held this lore, and was sore abused. She felt this as she unveiled portions, stripping back layers of youthful memory, gazing inward past the trauma suffered after the revelation of the Great Shame. She felt it now in its full ghastly panorama—the images of a long cometary tail, pointing directly at Earth in the final moments, like an accusatory finger, and the spreading circle of destruction that annihilated the ancient civilization of smart, warm-blooded reptiles. Their majesty lay not in vast edifices, culminating in the Bowl. Instead, they were heirs to the fraction of that great species which relished their natural planet and did not want to take part in the Bowl, or its technical prowess, or the alliance with strange minds in the cometary halo. They had kept Earth green and fertile, restricting their own numbers so the natural luxuriant world was not paved over with artifice. In a way, Memor recalled, the Bowl became a tribute to their deep instincts. Its huge expanses enabled many species to live intelligently in Zones dominated by leafy wealth, though built upon a substrate of spinning metal and carbon fiber intricacies. A natural world built upon a machine …

She had become lost in her introspection, a common liability of voyages into the Undermind’s shadowy labyrinths. Memor revived an old image of the Lambda Gun, a fearsome projector of gray spherical bulk, tapering into a belligerent snout. It could project a disturbance in the vacuum energy of space-time, throwing this knot of chaos out in a beam. Suitably tuned, it would cause, when it struck solid matter, a catastrophic expansion of a small volume of space. The inflation field increased the cosmological constant in a very restricted region for a brief snap of time. Whatever contained this howling monstrosity, reborn from the first instant of this universe, would be ripped into particles far smaller than nuclei.

Memor recoiled from this appalling vision. With a hasty withdrawal salute, she slammed her Undermind shut. “This is grisly! This is a planet buster, capable of delivering enormous energies—”

“So well I do know,” Asenath replied. “I have studied this ancient device and its history. The true Ancients invented it as a last resort against balky species. Some hurled relativistic masses at the Bowl to drive it away. The Lambda Gun put a quick end to their mischief.”

“Surely we have shields that would be useful—”

“Not against a vagrant craft with powerful magnetic scoops. We enjoyed great magnetic craftsmanship in Ancient ages, but our Bowl does not muster such intensities. Nor do the Diaphanous have ready responses. Meanwhile, the jet stands in a nonlinear kink mode and deals us terrible destruction.”

Asenath said this with a reasonable air and somber fan-display. Memor knew she could not deflect Asenath in an area where her expertise and rank prevailed. She gave it one last try. “The Ice Minds and the Diaphanous are in charge of jet dynamics!”

“And they have failed. Prepare to fire,” Asenath said to a lieutenant, and turned her back on Memor.