Oxygen soon returned in quantity to New Mars.
Farther north, the impacted remains of Phobos and Deimos, rich in organic materials, supported highland farms of new wheat strains, and the first experiments at Earthlike forests, chiefly conifers. In a few decades, New Mars would have territories virtually indistinguishable from Earth. She—New Mars had adopted Mother Earth's gender—promised to be a planet of broad green prairies, high semiarid forests, and deep, almost tropical oxygen-rich valleys.
Eight thousand were settled here, two thirds of the human race. The remaining third still lived on the Central Ark, some learning the theory of planetary management, some—a select few—waiting for their chance to ride more starships and carry out the judgment of the Law.
With virtually unlimited power supplies, no weapons, and resources sufficient for a hundred times their number already, their life on New Mars held promise of being idyllic. As always, only their own cussedness could change that.
He marched between the milky glass-walled greenhouses and up a low hill to a point where he could look down Feinman Rift. Far below, breeders tended the first range animals born out of genetic storage. It was warmer down there, and it rained far more often, and some complained that in a truly free society, that would be prime real estate, but the area was strictly reserved for the breeders. To give in to the community's baser instincts now might bring the Moms down on their backs again; it had happened once before, on the Central Ark, when human political authority had broken down into anarchy. Arthur did not wish to see it happen again.
Children do so hate to be disciplined.
Nobody knew who had sent these stern, dedicated robot guardians. Chances were they would never know. Arthur suspected that even benefactors had to be suspicious of their charges; it was best, for the time being, to simply stay hidden and quiet.
Arthur pinched his cheek and closed his faceplate against the cold. Then he looked to the east, above the pink haze of twilight, and saw the silvery point of Venus, still wrapped in a mantle of cloud.
Reuben Bordes was in command of the first exploratory and diagnostic mission to Venus. Twenty years ago, the now-moist Venerean clouds had parted briefly, and a decade-long rain had fallen, driving the planet's surface acids into chemical battle with molten rock thrown up by three centuries of fresh vulcanism. The clouds had closed again, and the reconnaissance expedition had been launched from the Central Ark.
Arthur did not envy Reuben his task. Venus was a hard case; it might be centuries more before humans could live in significant numbers on its surface.
What he was actually seeking was a clear view of the Milky Way, so that he could look at Sagittarius. He missed Martin deeply. To be cut off from the past was to cherish the future all the more; Martin was much of Arthur's future, though they would never see each other again, and hadn't communicated for a year and a half, by Arthur's time frame.
Martin had left on the seventh Ship of the Law, with fifty human crewmates, only eight years after Earth's destruction, before most of the survivors had been put into cold sleep. The ships had been traveling for centuries now, accelerating and decelerating, searching, refueling from dead ice moons.
He found Sagittarius, the Archer, between Scorpius and Capricorn. He lifted his gloved hand and pointed: somewhere there. Within the arc subtended by his trembling finger lay the solar system of Earth's killers.
How terrifying the sky was now. Arthur wished he could share Harry's vision of united solar systems forming vast "galactisms." Now, from what the Moms had told them, the galaxy was a vaguely explored frontier at best, a vicious jungle at the worst.
The galaxy, too, was young.
The planet-eaters had not come from such a great distance, after all. The first signs of their builders' interstellar dissembling, their protective coloration, had become evident less than a hundred light-years from the sun.
Martin, a quiet, solemn man who had grown to resemble his father, floated among a crowd of younger student-pilots on the observation deck of the kilometer-long, needle-thin Ship of the Law. All the Ships of the Law had been hewn from the material of the dead Earth itself. With the galaxy's center in view, still inconceivably faraway, he thought back to the debates he had had with the ship's Moms at the beginning of the journey.
" What if we find the civilization of the planet-eaters, and it's matured? What if it's beautiful and noble and rich with culture, and it regrets its past mistakes? Do we still destroy it?"
"Yes," the Moms had replied.
"Why? What good would that do?"
"Because it is the Law. "
In fact, the builders of the planet-eaters had come very early on, thousands of years ago, to realize their mistake. They had laced the planetary systems around their parent star with dozens of false civilizations, misleading beacons, even genetically engineered biological decoys, complete in every detail but one—the ability to mislead a Ship of the Law.
Three ship-years before, Martin had walked the surface of one such decoy planet, marveling at the creativity, the sheer expenditure of energy.
The planet had revealed sophisticated defenses. They had barely escaped the trap.
Now they were closing ...
If they failed, others would follow, more informed, more aware of the dangers and pitfalls of this neck of the galactic woods.
Despite his intellectual misgivings, Martin was committed. He thought often of the age-old Law, and of the hundreds of mature civilizations that had embraced it. In his heart, a cold, rational hatred and hunger for vengeance echoed the demands of justice.
He knew, however strange and out of proportion it might be, that one of his key subconscious motivations was to avenge the death of a single, uncomplicated friend: a dog. He vividly remembered those soul-branding hours in the ark's observation cabin.
Many of the humans aboard the Ship of the Law had been born in the Central Ark and had never known their home world. They were all dedicated to the search, regardless.
Silently, each day before the brief sleep of deep space, Martin swore an oath he had made up himself:
To those who killed Earth: beware her children!
That is how the balance is kept.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:
Special thanks to Larry Niven, John Paul, Jonathan Post, John Anderson, and, as always, Karen and Poul Anderson. Beth Meacham, after she bought this book, lived part of it, as did her husband, Tappan King, my wife, Astrid, and Kim Stanley Robinson. The town of Shoshone is real, a lovely place, and I owe a deep debt of love and many fine hours to Susan, Charles, Maury, and Bernice Sorrells.
Table of Contents
Cover
Contents
Dedication
INTROIT: KYRIE ELEISON
QUID SOM, MISER! TUNC DICTCIRCIS?
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
GUARENS ME, SEDISTI LASSOS
Chapter 8
OFFERTORIUM
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
AGNUS DEI
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter
45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
LACRIMOSA DIES ILLA!
Chapter 61
HOSTIAS ET PRECES TIBI, LAODIS OFFERIMUS
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
DIES IRAE
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
AGNUS DEI
Acknowledgments