George Zebrowski Read Free Page A

Why did he crave closeness with Myraa, and why was he compelled to believe that distance from her way of life was necessary for him? In his way he loved her, but he would not give himself up to her; the cry of the past was stronger than her love; for him to ignore the past would be to die.
    He would have to recreate the history from which he sprang; it would have to be a certain kind of living object, a network of conscious beings again holding the Hercules Cluster together. To this community he would give himself; there love might not be a fault; there he would shine as he had been meant to shine, a king from a line of kings; there he would know the past and future as they should be, unshattered and filled with the meaning of time; there the past would be pride, the future a distant glowing goal that would consume all things in its crucible of satisfaction and joy.
    On the screen, the desolation of otherspace promised nothing as the ship rushed through its oblivion.
    When his father came in to stand his first watch period, Gorgias rose and let the older man take the station chair.
    “I’ve found a likely target for us,” Gorgias said.
    His father swung the seat around and glared at him. The face was pale, the blue eyes sunken from worry and doubt; the hands sought each other from fear, then pushed apart to hide the fact. “What are you talking about? We were not to plan anything until after the visit.”
    “Thirty light-years south of Myraa there is a frontier world, mostly small towns, not more than half a million people, an easy target.”
    His father gripped the armrests. “Later, we don’t have time to discuss it now, get some rest.”
    “You said you would fight —”
    “A world that size is unimportant, settled by rejects. Federation won’t be impressed.”
    “We could destroy a town in a single run.”
    “They’d look for us on Myraa’s World immediately, hold Oriona and others hostage …”
    “We could do it after we take Oriona with us. Besides, what makes you so sure they are capable of holding hostages?”
    His father was shaking his head. “There’s too little thought and preparation. Don’t be so impatient. Do you think that Federation military operatives are stupid? They’ll pick up on every mistake. They won the war that way.”
    “But they never came up against a Whisper Ship.”
    “True, the ship is unassailable, but you might imprison yourself forever inside. Even the life-support systems require mass to synthesize food.…”
    “I could recycle indefinitely.”
    “But you would starve if something went wrong. Son, there are ways to trap or disrupt the ship. In time it would be possible to bring enough power to bear on it to tear it open.”
    “Things would never get that far,” Gorgias said. He turned and started aft.
    “Rest well,” his father called after him just as the bulkhead door slid shut. There was no point in angering the old man now. Later, he thought, when the ship is mine, I can do as I wish, but I need him now to control the ship’s programs. Suddenly, he feared that his father would never relinquish control of the ship.
    At the end of the short corridor, another door slid open to let him into the aft quarters, containing a large bunk with gravity controls, bath cubicle and a small kitchen dispenser.
    Gorgias lay down and tried to sleep, struggling to reach a deep calm, but rest charged a toll of memory before releasing him into its quietest realm. He was on Myraa’s World for the first time. “Is this home?” he asked his father. No, it was another place, far from their enemies. Here the surviving Herculeans might live in peace. A green field showed a pit, a wound cut in the grass. Bodies lay in the pit, the corpses of Herculean animals, those that had been unable to adjust to the new planet. Later, fleeing warships had arrived, burning the grass into desert with their makeshift jets; only the crudest planetfall was left to them after their strained gravitics