Джек Макдевитт - Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt

I was thinking about the broad southern seas and the trackless forests that no one would ever penetrate and the enigmatic ruins. And the thousands of people to whom, like me, Ilyanda was home. Who would remember when it was gone? “What’s the difference between you and the Mutes?”

“I know how you feel, Kindrel.”

“You have no idea how I feel—.”

“I know exactly how you feel. I was on Melisandra when the Mutes burned the City on the Crag. I watched them make an example of the Pelian worlds. Do you know what Cormoral looks like now? Nothing will live there for ten thousand years.”

Somebody’s chair, his, mine, I don’t know, scraped the floor, and the sound echoed round the grotto.

“Cormoral and the Pelians were destroyed by their enemies !” I was enraged, frightened, resentful. Out of sight under the table, my fingers traced the outline of the weapon. “Has it occurred to you?” I asked, as reasonably as I could, “what’s going to happen when they go home, and we go back to squabbling among ourselves?”

“I know,” he said. “There’s a lot of risk involved.”

“ Risk? ” I pointed a trembling finger at the stack of equipment. “That thing is more dangerous than a half-dozen invasions. For God’s sake, we’ll survive the Mutes. We survived the ice ages and the nuclear age and the colonial wars and we will sure as hell take care of the Mutes if there’s no other way.

“But that thing you have in front of you—. Matt, don’t do this. Whatever you hope to accomplish, the price is too high.”

I listened to him breathe. An old love song was running on the sound system. “I have no choice,” he said in a dull monotone. He pointed at the display. “They’re beginning to withdraw. That means they know the Station’s empty, and they suspect either a diversion or a trap.”

“You do have a choice!” I screamed at him.

“No.” He folded his arms. “I do not.”

I pulled the laser out of my pocket, raised it so he could see it, and pointed it at him.

He unfolded his arms and stared at the weapon. “You’re really serious, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Look, there’s no way you can stop it.” He stepped to one side, trying to get out of the line of fire. “But you’re welcome to try.”

It was a curious remark, and I played it again. Welcome to try. “If I interrupt the power supply,” I said, “it’ll trigger. Right?”

His face gave him away.

“Get well away from it.” I waved him to one side. “We’ll just sit here awhile.”

He didn’t move.

“Back off,” I said.

“For God’s sake, Kindrel.” He held out his hands. “Don’t do this.”

“There’s a living world here, Matt. And if that’s not enough, there’s a precedent to be set.”

He took a step forward. Odd that a guy prepared to be subsumed in a nova would show fear in the face of a laser.

“Don’t, Matt,” I said. “I’ll kill you if I have to.”

The moment stretched out. “Please, Kindrel,” he said at last.

So we remained, facing each other. He read my eyes, and the color drained from him.

The eastern sky was beginning to lighten.

A nerve quivered in his throat. “I should have left it alone,” he said, measuring the distance to the keyboard.

Tears were running down my cheeks, and I could hear my voice loud and pleading as if it were someone else, someone outside. “Don’t do it. Just sit still, Matt. Or—.”

The entire world squeezed down to the pressure of the triggeragainst my right index finger. “You didn’t have to stay,” I told him. “It had nothing to do with heroics. You’ve been in the war too long, Matt. You hate too well.”

He took another step, tentatively, gradually transferring his weight from one foot to the other, watching me, his eyes pleading.

“You were enjoying this, until I came by.”

“No,” he said. “That’s not so.”

“Sure it is.” His muscles tensed. I saw what he was going to do and I shook my head no and whimpered and he told me to just put the gun down and I waited there looking at the little bead of light that had crept up to his throat.

When at last he moved, not toward the computer but toward me, he was far too slow and I killed him.

My first reaction was to get out of there, to leave the body where it had dropped and take the elevator down and run—

I wish to God I had.

The sun was on the horizon. A few clouds drifted in the east, and another cool autumn day began.

Matt Olander’s body lay twisted beneath the table, blood seepingout through the hole in his throat. His chair lay on its side, and his jacket was open. A pistol, black and lethal and ready to hand, jutted from an inside holster.

I had never considered the possibility he might be armed. He could have killed me at any time.

What kind of men fight for this Christopher Sim?

This one would have burned Ilyanda, but he could not bring himself to take my life.

What kind of man? I have no answer to that question. Then or now.

I stood a long time over him, staring at him, and at the blinkingtransmitter, with its cold red eye, while the white lights fled toward the outer ring.

And a terrible fear crept through me: I could still carry out his intention, and I wondered whether I didn’t owe it to him, to someone, to reach out and strike the blow they had prepared. But in the end I walked away from it, into the dawn.

The black ships that escaped at Ilyanda went on to take a heavy toll. For almost three more years, men and ships died. Christopher Sim continued to perform exploits that had already become legendary, his Dellacondans held on until Rimway and Earth intervened, and, in the heat of battle, the modern Confederacy was born.

The sun weapon itself was never heard from. Never used. Never mentioned. Whether, in the end, it wouldn’t work, or Sim was unable to lure a large enough force again within range of a suitable target, I don’t know.

For most, the war is now something remote, a subject for debate by historians, a thing of vivid memories only for the very old. The Mutes have long since retreated into their sullen worlds. Sim rests with his heroes and his secrets, lost off Rigel. And Ilyanda still entrances tourists with her misty seas, and researchers with her curious ruins.

I buried Olander outside the terminal, and used the same laser to cut his name and an epitaph into a nearby rock. There’s a monument there now. But the rock remains. And the epitaph: No Stranger to Valor. When the Dellacondans found it they were puzzled.

The epitaph led to a tradition that Olander died defending Point Edward against the Ashiyyur, and for that they honored his gallantry by burying him and leaving the marker. Today, of course, he stands high in the Confederacy’s pantheon.

And I: I hid when the Dellacondans came back to find out what had happened. And I spent three years in a city pursued by an army of ghosts which grew daily in number. All slain by my hand. And when the Ilyandans returned at the end of the war, I was waiting.

They chose not to believe me. It may have been politics. They may have preferred to forget. And so I am denied even the consolation of public judgment. There is none to damn me. Or to forgive.

I have no doubt I did the right thing.

Despite the carnage, and the fire, I was right .

In my more objective moments, in the daylight, I know that. But I know also that whoever reads this document, after my death, will understand that I need more than a correct philosophical stance.

For now, for me, in the dark if Ilyanda’s hurtling moons, the war never ends.