Greg Bear: Anvil of Stars

“Your investigation.”

“We know who killed Rosa, and he’s dead, and Hans had nothing to do with it, at least no more than the rest of us,” Carl said.

“She would have stopped us,” Thorkild said.

“We did the slicking Job ,” Patrick hissed, and Martin knew the quincunx of his danger. Patrick was the center who would radiate to the other four. “We did what we came here to do.”

“Let’s just give it up, huh?” Harpal asked. “We’re tired.”

Martin rotated in mid-air to face Harpal. Nobody would look straight into his eyes. Harpal managed to focus on Martin’s cheek. “Why are you here? Power?” he asked.

“Beg pardon?” Harpal seemed to sleepwalk, only half-listening.

“I’m asking you why you’re here.”

“I thought we could talk some sense into you. You know as well as I what Hans did. He drew us together.”

“That doesn’t absolve him…”

“After what we’ve just done,” Harpal said, pain and dismay passing over his face but not disturbing the simple, stolid exhaustion behind any expression, “you want to investigate a… what? A murder, you think? It’s insane, Martin. Let it lie.”

“You’ve got the finger of God working for you,” Martin said, not too rationally. “That’s all you need?”

“We couldn’t have done it without Hans,” Patrick said, “and now you want him punished for something he didn’t do.”

“I just want to know,” Martin said.

“We know already,” Patrick said.

“It takes five of you to tell me this?”

“We’re your friends,” Harpal said. “We don’t want anything bad for you.”

“Hans asked you to watch out for me?”

“You be careful,” Carl said, but Patrick reined him in with a sharp look. Who is more stupid, Carl, Patrick — or David? I know Harpal and Thorkild… I don’t know the others nearly as well. Odd some of us are still strangers. Then maybe I don’t know any of them. Why are they here? They were my friends. We worked together .

“We worked together,” Harpal said. “We don’t want you to be the center of trouble.”

“You were a Pan,” Martin said.

Harpal tightened his lips, jaw working, relaxing. “I know the responsibilities, the decisions. So do you. I know what Hans is capable of. So do you. Rex was the one who went rogue, not Hans.”

“Besides,” Patrick said, “Rex is dead, everybody who could know is dead.”

“Rex said Hans put him up to it,” Martin reminded them.

“He was crazy. He fell in with Rosa’s group, they twisted him…”

“All the defectors are crazy, too?”

“They’re ineffective,” Harpal said.

“They don’t understand. They’re weak links,” David said.

Martin still could not tell how far they would go. Surely not all five would attack him. One or two, the others standing back, ashamed, but caught.

“We’re ready to go on,” Thorkild said, glancing at the others. “Get out of here and marry a planet.”

Patrick’s eyes were dead. He seemed half asleep.

“We don’t want to dig it all up. It’s the past. It’s dead.”

“It smells,” Martin said. “It will not stop smelling. We can’t cut clean from the past.”

“We still have mopping up to do,” Harpal said, trying to sound persuasive, reasonable. “The defectors aren’t helping, and the Brothers turned out to be real liabilities.”

“The Brothers helped us.”

“Forget that,” Patrick said. “Let’s just keep it simple.”

Rage colored fear, and the mix made his whole body burn. He wanted them all gone, if not gone then dead, and he could smell the same wish in their breath, their sweat.

David’s eyes had become still, lifeless.

Thorkild and Harpal looked like the ones most likely to back off. He moved closer to Harpal. “I’m not out to cause trouble,” Martin said. “That’s Hans’ doing. Some of us want him to stand down. That’s all. That’s our privilege as crew.”

My, you sound rational, clever. That will increase their deadness, their anger. It decreases your anger, to talk so, to try to reason with friends so. You don’t really hate or fear them. That makes you weaker. They’ll kill you for that, for acting like a victim.

“Not if it puts all of us in danger,” Harpal said, reacting to the reasonable tone with his own reason. Harpal will not act with them . “What if the Killers have a surprise waiting for us? If we drop our discipline, lose our edge, they’ll have us. We’re not ready to check out now.”

“Not after all we’ve been through,” Thorkild said. “Come on, Martin.” Thorkild won’t attack .

Patrick drifted closer, hand gripping a thin ladder field. Martin raised his wand.

“Get me Hans and Ariel, triple link,” he said.

Patrick made a grab for the wand.

“Hans does not reply,” the wand said as Martin swung it out of Patrick’s reach. Patrick lunged again, and again Martin swung it away. Anything can happen now .

Ariel’s voice came on, sleepy.

“Witness!” Martin said. “Tie us in to everybody.”

“What?”

Patrick and David grabbed for the wand.

“Martin?”

Patrick got the wand and wrenched it from Martin’s grasp. David and Thorkild held him, Carl made a grab for a leg but missed and then backed away. Carl’s out .

Patrick tried to smash the wand against the floor, but it would not break. Stupid stupid

“Martin!” Ariel’s voice called out. “I’m tying you in.”

Harpal moved in before Martin could back away and struck him in the kidneys. It might have been a deadly blow, but Harpal’s ladder field was just far enough away that the peak of his blow came before his fist actually struck.

Martin kicked with both legs backward, hands on the floor, and one bare foot caught Harpal in the teeth, cutting Martin’s heel and spinning Harpal away to the ceiling. It was a mess, fighting weightless, grabbing fields, all instincts useless. They had done enough sports to know the right moves for most activities, but fighting engaged an older brain with less savvy, and the result was sloppy.

Patrick slammed his head against the floor. Martin grabbed the wand and tossed it away from the group of them.

“We see!” Ariel cried out.

“WE SEE!” other voices cried.

“Stop it!” Jennifer screamed. “Thorkild, stop it!”

Other voices joined in. David had Martin around his neck and shoulders, beyond hearing. He forced Martin’s neck down with his hands, jerking spasmodically, trying to really hurt him, crack his spine. Martin felt the jerks as explosions of pain. He reached behind and lifted his thumb rigid and slammed it into David’s crotch. The grip relaxed and David grunted, fell away.

For a second, they all flailed helplessly, unable to connect. Drops of blood from Harpal’s lip and Martin’s foot smeared against overalls.

All the ladder fields in the room vanished. His face like a desperate little boy’s, Patrick still clawed at Martin, at the air. Jewels of blood swirled in the vortices of their limbs.

“Stop it.” Hans’ remote voice in Martin’s room.

“Stop it, now !” Hans again.

Patrick stopped flailing.

“What in the fuck are you all doing?” Hans shouted.

Patrick’s expression, Martin thought, was priceless: dismay mixed with deep anxiety, vacant look gone. None of them looked blank now.

The killing time was past.

Martin had survived.

“I’ve lost it,” Hans said.

Martin hung beside Hans in a net, alone with him in his quarters.

“I sent Patrick to do something and he didn’t think he could do it alone. So he asked for some backups,” Hans said, closing his eyes, leaning his neck back. “I should have known he’d be weak.”