Second Star

Prologue

For the last 354 years, she was simply Charu—androids do not take surnames unless they were trying to hide their non-Humanity. She was a Companion; in fact, she was the first Companion, the prototype, created to replace the slain wife of Bill Kyrou, now long dead. However, that’s another story.

The Human woman she was created to replace was born Charu Saxena in the State of Punjab in northern India and she was a close, if slightly idealized, copy of that petite, dark-skinned woman.

For the past 51 years, Charu served on the staff of Eden’s ambassador to Earth. In those years, she had watched Earth recover from the great cataclysm that had nearly destroyed the planet and settle into a stable environment with a people who worshiped the god they referred to only as the One. It had settled into a simple, peaceful society, slightly technophobic, annoyingly evangelistic if one were one of the few unbelievers.

It was late at night in her Spartan quarters. She had no bed—she never slept. She had no kitchen—she ate once a year, a viscous liquid specifically formulated to nourish the biological component of Systems of all kinds from the tiny Transports to the massive, multi-segment Super Controls that managed entire planets. She sat in her cherished twisted-twig chair, a present from the residents of the restored city of Newpeg who had burned her original chair years ago—again, another story.

Gandhi, she spoke into thin air. She was alone in her quarters.

An accurate image of the wizened little man, complete with bare feet, steel-rim glasses, and a white, homespun dhoti appeared. It was a hologram, but it looked and moved like a real person. It was the chosen avatar of the Planetary Super Control, Gandhi. The one that sat in five cases spread around the earth and managed its infrastructure.

You have not asked for me in three years, five months, eighteen days, and five hours. There was something accusatory in its tone.

I need your help designing a ship.

"You have access to nearly any ship you fancy. I think the First Minister would place her own Queen Ann at your disposal if you asked. You are still occasionally known as the Black Witch, but it is no longer a pejorative; the people hold Lady Charu in awe."

I may not return this one.

You’re leaving Earth? The wizened face showed concern, although the System behind it was incapable of emotion.

The Sol system, including Earth, sits on the fringe of the trade zone for the six civilized species. We know there are more species; examples present themselves from time to time. We have never managed to establish relations with any of them. Some, like the Swarm, may not be reachable, but I have decided to explore in that little-known direction away from Eden and Bak Prime. I need a ship that will survive almost anything, and support me, a Pilot, Nav, Comm, and Transport for several hundred Earth years. It should have climate-controlled compartments for passengers who may, eventually, join us.

Armed?

Defensively. I have no desire to conquer the galaxy.

You will limit your travels to this galaxy?

A million such ships could not explore this galaxy given a thousand years for the effort. I have no plan to leave it. No one even knows if space between galaxies bends the way we are used to traveling.

I can have preliminary plans in two days. Who knows of this plan?

You and I.

I would think you owe the ambassador and President O’Neal a courtesy call.

I have been procrastinating, a human trait. Perhaps some vestige of Charu Saxena.

*****

Charu parked the embassy shuttle in low orbit over the earth colony planet Eden and requested a portal to President O’Neal’s office. She had set up the appointment three days ago, although Terrance O’Neal would have made room in his schedule even if she had arrived unannounced.

They sat silently in his office and shared thoughts at a depth even most telepaths could not reach. They had known each other for longer than any Human besides Terrance had been alive. There was some question as to Terrance’s Humanity. He was largely prosthetics, the result of combat on earth before the cataclysm.

You want to leave forever? He sent directly into her mind.

Forever is undefined; I may have another seven hundred years left, barring something violent shredding me.

It amounts to forever for me. Medical says it has prolonged my life as far as known technology will allow. My only other option would be to become, as you are, a Companion with Human memories. I have lived half a millennium; that’s long enough.

I have never felt my status was inferior.

Neither do I; I just choose not to walk down that path. When would you leave?

I have no ship yet. Gandhi is working on a design for me. One that would survive anything but flying directly into the core of a star.

Thank you for coming to tell me face to face. I almost envy you the adventure.

You would be welcome aboard for the rest of your life.

I have an orderly transfer of power to engineer. We are still a planet of Humans, and nature abhors a vacuum, especially a power vacuum.

Charu stood. Rule well until your last day, Mr. President.

He also stood. Find something important.

She left without another word.

*****

Ambassador Armin O’Neal sat rather suddenly and heavily. You’re leaving? He had never known her to be gone more than a week or two in his lifetime. He, his father Dak, and his mother, Amicia were with her in the social section of Eden’s embassy on Earth. Dak had stepped down from the ambassadorship on his 100th birthday, nine years ago, and passed it to his son. He now enjoyed traveling his adopted planet and often taught in the University’s live presentation program. Amicia’s highly prized artwork hung in museums and private collections on five planets.

As your father did, I see my work in the embassy as complete, and I want to start a new phase. Unlike any of you, I am free to choose something that will run several hundred years if that is where it leads me.

Who will replace you?

I’m unconvinced anyone needs to, but that is your choice.

When?

Gandhi and I are just finishing the plans for the ship. Building it will take at least a month. I will want to take it on a shakedown cruise. Perhaps two months.

Earth will be in mourning.

I doubt that. Amicia, would you look over the plans for the ship? You see patterns better than most Humans and any System.

Anytime.

*****

Izetta Farrow and her husband Peter Payne called to Charu as she walked through the central arboretum of the World Palace. The couple was now in their 90’s but she had given no thought to stepping aside as First Minister. Medical saw her regularly; she was in perfect health and looked no more than 50.

Peter was no longer the hulking blacksmith he once had been. Medical had eased him into a body that was still active, but less bulky.

The couple was one of only a handful of telepaths on Earth. Unlike Eden, where virtually everyone was telepathic, Earth had quietly rejected it.

You’re going exploring, I hear. Izetta called to her.

Is there anything you don’t hear?

Not much. The ruler smiled. We wish you luck. And that was the sum of her farewell to the government of Earth.

*****

The ship was a sphere, actually two spheres, one inside the other. The outer sphere was a thick, resilient, matt-black material designed to absorb the impact of the small objects found everywhere in space except in the odd dimension universally called the bend. It would also augment the massive shield generator the ship carried. Short of a nuclear blast, no weapon known would be able to harm the ship, but then she was seeking things the civilized species had never seen. The ship itself was only lightly armed.

The inner sphere fit snugly inside the outer, constructed of the specialized material used for nearly every spaceship hull currently in service.

At Amicia’s suggestion, she had added a Medical to the Pilot, Nav, Comm, Utility, and Transport she had originally requested. In addition, at Amicia’s urging, she and the six Systems shared the bond that the two Super Control’s Gandhi and Centurion had pioneered. The big Systems each considered themselves one System, although each of them lived in five separate cases. Charu suspected adding that bond would be something the Systems guild would want to vote on and classify, but she did not intend to ask them. She had undergone significant changes to her own body and was now closer to one of the Protective Units. Her size and appearance had not changed, but she had Tactical training, a built-in charged-particle weapon, and her own shield generator. The ship currently hung motionless a hundred meters above the World Palace complex. She named the ship, Rocinante, after Don Quixote's bony horse. There may not have been a human mind on the planet that would recognize the name that she sometimes shortened to Rosy.

She saw no reason to say any further goodbyes. She willed the ship to leave the atmosphere. There would normally have been a spoken command; ship’s Systems are not telepathic. Because of the bond she now shared, no command of any sort was necessary. She and Pilot were one—the ship simply moved at her desire.

At a safe distance from Earth, the ship entered the bend and took a course directly away from Eden and into the little-explored arm of the galaxy. She chose an arbitrary 24 hours in the bend. For comparison, Eden, the planet the colonists had traveled just more than 50 years at near light speed to reach, was four hours, fifty-six minutes in the bend.

Chapter 1

There was no warning chime when the ship came out of the bend. There was no one to warn. Charu, the Systems, the entire ship were one.

The ship came to a dead stop and listened. It also looked. Its internal star maps were only useful because it knew where it was in relation to the known star patterns. It carefully drew new maps extrapolated from the old.

There was nothing but the background noise of stars birthing, growing, and dying. Nothing that would indicate communication between intelligent beings.

Charu picked a star, a G3V— Sol, the sun she just left was a G2V. This one would be similar if a little cooler. G-type stars were not rare, but less than 10 percent fell into that category. This one would be capable of supporting carbon-based life if any of its planets had water, and if a few dozen other elements fell into line. Charu still remembered the Goldilocks—not too (pick a category) and not too (pick the opposite)—designation, although she was doubtless the only one. The star was two hours in the bend away from her position. The ship winked into the bend without any instruction.

The star had three planets. One sat within the fringes of the star’s corona and glowed a dark orange. It was largely iron and might be worth mining someday, but not today, or even soon.

The second was a gas giant. There was water vapor, but no liquid water, and perpetual storms boiled the gasses at velocities up to 1200 KPH. She found no sign of a solid core.

The third and final planet appeared to be a very large comet the sun had captured. It was an irregular ball of ice, both water, and carbon dioxide, with rocks. Given the cooler sun and the great distance at which it orbited, the temperature at the surface approached absolute zero.

Charu located the ancient star designation and updated its data.

She picked another star. It had an asteroid belt of enormous size, but no planets.

The 37th star had 14 planets. Two of them appeared to circle each other as they orbited the star. They both showed blue in color and were in the Goldilocks zone for this larger, hotter star. She listened carefully but heard nothing.

The ship eased itself into the gravity well between the two worlds and began to map both of them. She was suddenly aware of objects moving rapidly toward her from both planets. They were not a design she had ever seen, but both were clearly chemically powered rockets.

She moved out of their path. They changed course to follow her. For the first time, she heard communication. As one of the rockets tracked across her, she got a brief burst of intense communication, and then it was gone. Comm formed the conclusion that it was a tightly focused light beam, perhaps a laser. If that was their normal communications carrier, that would explain the lack of chatter.

One by one, she vaporized the rockets with a charged particle beam. She held her position.

An hour later, a spaceship rose from one of the planets but did not approach her ship. Comm began feeding her the communications from the ship—clearly directed at her. She and Comm started to analyze them.

Welder began to make a device that could return a signal in that same tight-beam format. It was not a laser, but simply a tightly restricted beam of light carrying a frequency-modulated signal.

After analyzing about three hours of continuous transmission, she was reasonably sure the very first questions had been, Who are you? and, Why have you violated the neutral zone? She was not completely sure of the exact meaning of the word she was translating, neutral, but she had no good alternative.

She responded, My name is Charu; I am an explorer. I know nothing of a neutral zone.

And yet you sit in the middle of it. Surrender to me before the fanged baby-eaters from Aaru destroy your ship and eat your crew.

Aaru is your sister planet?

Aaru is where all evil men go when they die.

Charu tried to put men into context. Only males? All the dead? She could not. Clearly, the speaker thought of the planet, Aaru, as some sort of hell. What is the name of your planet?

We are Aatu.

Are you at war with Aaru?

No, they are at war with us. We simply defend ourselves.

Would you come aboard my ship? I would like to meet you.

You are in the neutral zone.

Her ship moved toward the ugly, lumpy ship hanging just outside of Aatu’s atmosphere. Tell me when I have left the neutral zone.

How is it you can put a ship in space and yet not know something as basic as that? I do not trust you. You must be working for the fanged ones.

They shot as many missiles at me as you did.

I have only your word for that; we do not watch the neutral zone.

Then how did you know I was there?

Are you questioning the honor of a man of Aatu?

No, only the accuracy of his facts.

If you want to meet, come here to my ship.

Transport put her in the largest space on the ship. It proved to be the bridge; the more modern term, flight deck, did not apply to this rough room.

It held five creatures covered in thick plates which may have been natural or could have been applied armor. They were Humanoid in the sense that they had two arms and two legs. Each arm and leg had what probably had been a cloven hoof at some point in their evolution but was now surrounded by six fingers. The head had large, bony eyebrow ridges and a large bulge protruded from the back of the skull.

The five turned as one and pointed weapons which appeared to fire a solid projectile from a hollow tube.

She simply stood, her shield on, but invisible. One of you, I believe, invited me aboard. Well, here I am.

One said, On your face on the deck. When he opened his mouth to speak, it was clear the men of Aaru were not the only fanged ones.

She was learning vocabulary at an astounding rate, now that she was in the room with them, but she had not yet mastered inflection. I am your guest; I will stand.

On the deck or die on your feet. The weapon rose menacingly.

"Do I look like anyone from Aaru? Your diplomacy is a little rough around the edges."

He fired. The sound was loud, but nothing compared to the little charged particle weapon she had built into her left arm. Half of his weapon vanished.

His conical piece of lead struck her shield and hung there, trapped. After its energy dissipated, the slug sank slowly to the deck. Place your weapons on the deck.

Slowly, they complied.

Give me one reason why I should not consider your greeting as an act of war. Do you want to be at war with me?

We have learned to be very careful with new ship types that appear in the neutral zone. Aaru has tricked us more than once. In your case, we may have gone too far. What kind of a name is Char-oo, and where are you from? If you are not fighting for the baby-eaters, will you fight with us against them?

It is a Human name. I come from a Human planet called Eden, and as I said earlier, I am simply exploring. I will not take either side in your war.

One of the others said, If you are not with us, then you are against us.

She refused to rise to that one. Why do you call them baby eaters?

They come in the night and steal our children. No child has ever returned. We only assume….

The thought patterns in their minds were foreign territory to her, but she was beginning to sort some of it out. There, indeed, had been raids over the nearly 150 of their years they had been at war. There was no hard proof the raiders came from Aaru, but they had no real knowledge of any other planet. They had made raids of their own to recover the children. None of the children recovered had originally been taken from Aatu. Somehow, that mattered very little—they were replacements.

She willed both ships to move to low orbit around the other planet. Alarms began to sound on the bridge where she stood.

What have you done? the first speaker snapped. He bent to pick up a weapon.

She vaporized it, along with a small section of the deck. When they had recovered from the deafening sound of her weapon, she said, Both your ship and mine are going to Aaru. You have just volunteered as peace emissaries. I will find other volunteers from their side. We will talk—on my ship. No one will harm anyone; is that clear?

Another flight of missiles rose from the surface as they approached Aaru. By then, she had ported the people to a room Welder had prepared. It was austere—bronze-colored walls made of the inner hull material, with a large table in the center. Chairs, patterned after chairs on the bridge of the ship she now had in tow, sat around the table. A force shield ran down the middle of the table.

She used the communication device Welder had made to access the missiles’ primitive guidance computers. They instantly recognized each other as enemy weapons and destroyed each other.

As with the other planet, a ship followed the missiles. This one was a little larger but otherwise similar to the one she had essentially captured.

Utility detected seven lifeforms onboard, and Transport ported them directly to the other side of the large table from their enemies. All seven instantly drew weapons and fired.

The shield stopped all the slugs. They eventually formed a neat row down the middle of the table—a clear separation between the two sides. It was several seconds before any of the seven even noticed Charu.

"What is that?" one snapped.

My name is Charu, and I would like to get to know both of your worlds much better. It would seem that for me to do that, I need to create, if not peace, at least a cease-fire. Therefore, we are not leaving this room until we can all speak to each other in civil tones.

One of them said the one thing none of the rest had dared say, You are different from us, but you appear to be female.

I am anatomically female, yes.

The apparent leader of the seven said, I will not be dictated to by a female, even an alien one. It would be obscene to conduct business with one in the room.

Charu stood at one end of the table. Then we wait until it feels less obscene. I believe I can wait longer than you can. She simply stood, motionless.

After about 20 minutes, one of the men said, Is there a toilet here, or do we have to wet ourselves?

She passed an instruction to Welder. A moment later, toilets of their design sat against the wall, one on each side of the field.

You do not expect us to use that in the presence of a female.

She continued to stand motionless. Her mind was learning everything she could glean.

Men and women came together for procreation, period. Other than that, they led separate lives and had very little contact.

The two groups of men were, genetically, indistinguishable, although their dress was different and there were small differences in their language. They had spent years apart, but they came from the same stock.

They both, correctly, accused the others of stealing children. The story on the one side was they killed and ate them. The story on the other side was they sacrificed the children to a mythical dragon-like monster. Neither story had any basis in fact.

The complainer rose, and with all the dignity he could muster, relieved himself. He seemed surprised when the toilet flushed as designed.

After about an hour, the main spokesman from the Aatu side asked, Do you intend to give us anything to eat or drink?

Do you know you all share a common ancestor?

"Have a care, alien. The last person who spoke that heresy was roasted alive over a slow fire. We have nothing, repeat, nothing in common with those baby-eaters."

Baby-eaters, is it? the leader of the seven snarled. We have never taken a child except as a replacement for one you fed to the pit monster.

There is no pit monster, and you know it. How do you choose who eats the babies you steal? We are the ones who only take replacements.

Liar!

Liar!

Charu said, Both of you speak the truth. No child has ever been eaten, and there is no pit monster. Can we agree to stop the raids? No child can ever replace one stolen in the middle of the night.

Arrogant female, the one from Aaru nearly screamed. You know nothing of us.

She went around the table. She told each one his full name, the name of his father and mother, what he had eaten for his morning meal, and how long it had been since he had touched a woman. The last was a closely held secret. I know more about you than your own crewmembers, and far more than anyone on the other side of that line of bullets.

One from the smaller group said, You do not eat children?

Are you insane? We love children. Any man or woman on Aaru would starve to death before eating any child, no matter what their planet of birth. There truly is no pit monster?

I have no idea where that story got started. We have weapons; if such a creature existed, we would kill it, not feed it children. If you do not eat the children, what do you do with them?

We only replace those you stole.

There was a moment of silence. And we only replace those you stole.

All 12 faces turned to Charu. The leader of the smaller group said, How did you know this?

She decided the truth would greatly complicate things. She settled for a half-truth. I am an explorer; I do a great deal of research on the places I visit. Did you not wonder how I spoke your language?

Language? There is only one language. There are small differences between the two planets, but it is the same language.

There are thousands of languages. I had to learn yours before we could communicate at all. Fortunately, I’m a quick learner.

They just looked at her in disbelief.

I am going to return you to your ships. You have this one chance to end this war and the stealing of children. I have done all I can.

All twelve of them vanished.

She picked another star.

Chapter 2

She found many planets orbiting the next 22 stars she visited. None would support life, as we know it, although she always looked for signs of anything organized in a way unlikely to have occurred naturally. She refused to believe all life had to be carbon-based, but she did believe all life left patterns on the planet it inhabits.

The 23rd star had a promising planet. Its blue color indicated liquid water, and as she approached, she could see large patches of green through gaps in the clouds. She stopped in high orbit and listened. There was nothing on any known communications system at any frequency.

She brought the ship into the atmosphere and took samples. It was about 75 percent nitrogen, 22 percent oxygen, almost one percent carbon dioxide with lesser amounts of all kinds of gasses. It was quite humid.

She set her altitude at 1000 meters above the ground level and began to survey, starting at the north geographic pole and working southward. Above 15 degrees north, there was snowpack and tundra. After that, the land lay largely forested, with the occasional extensive plain. There were small deserts in the rain shadow of high, young-looking, snow-capped mountains.

There was no sign of any intelligent life anywhere. There were not even paths in the plains areas. She began to question if animal life had ever developed here.

Three seas occupied more than half the surface.

As she approached the equator, the forest changed to a high jungle canopy. She took the ship to a higher altitude and increased the speed of the survey. The southern hemisphere produced no surprises.

She had Welder make a beacon that claimed the planet for Earth Prime, placed it in high orbit, and left.

The next closest star was only two hours in the bend away—unusually close for stars. Unexpectedly, it also had a planet in the Goldilocks zone which showed every sign of having liquid water. As she approached, there were power signatures and the planet crackled with radio communications. They were in a form Comm easily understood and adapted to. Oddly, the language appeared to have roots from the Bak species, although it was different from any Bak she had ever heard spoken. Fully half of the words would require some translation. She sat in high orbit, listened, and learned. Externally, the Bak were indistinguishable from Humans.

Two days later, she took the ship into the atmosphere. She picked the city her listening indicated was the capital or at least first among a large number of city-states.

The ship was not designed to land, but it could hover motionless indefinitely. She picked a large public area, a park by the look of it, and hovered one meter above the tuff, gray green, spreading plant that served as ground cover. The ship’s shield was at full power.

The crowd that gathered looked Bak but were dressed more like Humans. She waited an hour for a military force to show up, but when none did, she ported into the clear circle sounding the ship. Her Bak was flawless, but she was a little unsure of this dialect.

I am surprised to find a Bak outpost this far from Bak Prime, she said in her best approximation of the local accent.

No one moved for a long minute. At last, a man stepped forward. He had a fierce-looking creature at his heel, but the animal seemed well trained and under control. He did a stately bow. We are Ibo, what are Bak?

She returned his bow in the oddly different form she had seen women use. She