Anvil Of Stars Part 65

Three / Theodore.

Well now that you're rid of me I can write down my reactions and then fade away, all right? I think we did pretty well, for humans. I think you did d.a.m.ned well, and learned a lot. You're still not as sharp as I am, but then, what the h.e.l.l, I killed myself, didn't I? You are a survivor. You care. When we get to our home, you'll do well, and you'll keep the balance, because that's what you re good at.

It is time to be whole again, to forget as much as we can, to take us where we have to go to become adult human beings.

Know thyself. You are little and clumsy and need love.

Four / Martin.

Today I laddered down the aft worms.p.a.ce and found a bunch of Lost Boys and Wendys playing with wet wadded clothes. Brought back such memories. I spent the rest of the day in a kind of haze, watching videos from the Ark, watching Mother and Father, wondering if I measured up to them. But I now realize they can't judge me, or us.

We have found a candidate star. It's about a thousand light years away. With our remotes out as far as they'll go-fifty billion klicks on each side now!-we can see two worlds that look very pretty, and Anna and Giacomo and Jennifer say we can live there.

The worlds are silent, but that doesn't mean they're not inhabited. We'll take the risk, and just go on to somewhere else if they are. That is how we differ. That is how we differ.

These worlds are farther away than the Sun and Mars and Venus. But we can't go back. We don't know what our people are like now, how much they've changed. I would hate to go all that way to encounter disembodied intelligences, like staircase G.o.ds.

Besides, we're war dogs. David Aurora did a study to show that what we knew and what we've become would disrupt any human society we might find. The crew agreed. Cla.s.sic Catch-22.

Most of the crew thinks finding the needles gets us off the hook. n.o.body's debating the matter, though. We're all very sensitive about this. This is the one issue that could still kill us in the years ahead.

I believe Frog and Salamander and the others did not know. did not know.

DID NOT KNOW.

Ah, Christ, I don't want to think about it but I can't avoid it in my dreams.

Our evil is far less than theirs, but what does that mean? What did we do, and who or what has been served?

For me, nothing is resolved. I must not look again at the records sent from Sleep.

In time I might have to believe as Hans does, that it was all a sham.

I try to imagine the depths of viciousness, of evil, of the Killers, that they would hide behind their own children. children. I cannot. I cannot.

I had hoped that with the end of the Job there would be relief from pain, and perhaps there will be, but only in deep time.

The moms did not train us for this.

We left Leviathan behind two tendays ago. Scouts still fly through the debris, searching, but we'll have no more to do with it. We accelerate at one g, the memory of Earth in our flesh still making that most comfortable. Twenty years will pa.s.s for the ship, even at near-c; long enough that the moms will put us in cold sleep. We'll have about a year to think and heal.

Dyads are forming again, stable ones.

Ariel is coming to visit later. She's a very good Pan, better than I was.

Paola is seeing Hans. Can you believe it?

I wrote the last message from Theodore. Then I removed it from ship's memory. I can take it now, the cruelty, the fear, the responsibility. I think I can.

Five / Dawn Treader II.

I will take them to their chosen worlds and a.s.sist them in adapting to the new environments.

I have no instructions what to do with the fruits of our combined efforts. Having no knowledge of how other ships have dealt with intellectual collaborations with their crews, or how they have dealt with the inevitable transfer of characteristics, I can see no other option.

When the humans are settled, I will destroy myself.

I am not what I was when I was made. This qualifies me as a mutation, and mutations are forbidden among robot vehicles capable of self-replication. That is the Law.

I watch over them still, and never reveal this aspect. They would not be comfortable with my judgment. They would ask questions I can't answer. They are small, they are incredibly dangerous, but they will survive. They can absorb much pain and growth.

They or their descendants will witness the grand coming together, and they will enrich the whole.

I would like to see that, but I will not.

Six / Eye on Sky.

(Smells of cinnamon, fresh baked bread, new cut gra.s.s, sea air.) We we have seen we our world, and travel now in strong braid, resolute.

There is shame in victory, and much to think about, and that is enough until we we arrive and are young and fertile again.

Alderwood Manor, Washington August 30, 1991