“Not a strategy designed to make them popular.”

“But all that matters, in this Darwinian Galaxy of ours,is short-term effectiveness. No matter how many Suns you destroy, how many worlds you trash, there simply isn’t the timeto have qualms about such things. And so it goes, as the Galaxy turns, oblivious to the tiny beings warring and dying on its surface…”

She walked on, tending her garden, and Madeleine followed.

“You must help us,” Carl ap Przibram said.

Madeleine sat uncomfortably, wondering how to respond. She felt claustrophobic in this bureaucrat’s office, crushed by the layers of Mercury rock over her head, the looming nearness of the Sun: as if she could somehow sense its huge weight, its warp of space.

He leaned forward. “For fifteen centuries my people lived like this.” He held up his hands, indicating the close rocky walls. “In environments that were enclosed. Fragile. Shared.” His face clouded with anger, hostility. “We didn’t have the luxury for… aggression. Warfare.”

Now she understood. “As we did, on ‘primitive Earth.’ Is that what you think? But my world was small too. We could have unleashed a war that might have made the planet uninhabitable.”

“That’s true.” He jabbed a Chopin finger at her. “But you didn’t think that way, did you? You, Madeleine Meacher, used to ship weapons, from one war zone to another. That was your job, how you made a living.

“You come from a unique time. We remember it even now;we are taught about it. Uniquely wasteful. You were still fat onenergy, from Earth’s ancient reserves. You managed to get a toehold on other worlds, the Moon. But you squandered your legacy — turned it into poisons, in fact, that trashed your planet’s climate.”

She stood up. “I’ve heard this before.” It was true; the bitterness at the well-recorded profligacy of her own “fat age” had scarcely faded in the centuries since, and the travelers, time-stranded refugees from that era, made easy targets for bile and prejudice. But it scarcely mattered now. “Carl ap Przibram, tell me what you want of me.”

“I’ve been authorized to deal with you. To offer you what we can…”

It turned out to be simple, unexpected. Impossible. The Coalition wanted to put her in charge of Mercury’s defenses: assembling weapons and a fighting force of some kind, training them up, devising tactics. Waging war on the Crackers.

She laughed; ap Przibram looked offended. She said, “You think I’m some kind of warrior barbarian, come from the past to save you with my primitive instincts.”

He glared. “You’re more of a warrior — and a barbarian — than I will ever be.”

“This is absurd. I know nothing of your resources, your technology, your culture. How could I lead you?” She eyed him, suspicious. “Or is there another game being played here? Are you looking for a fall guy? Is that it?”

He puzzled over the translation of that. Then his frown deepened. “You are facetious, or foolish. If we fail to defend ourselves, there will be no ‘fall guys.’ In the worst case there will be nobody left at all, blameworthy or otherwise. We are asking you because…”

Because they are desperate, she thought, these gentle, spindly, asteroid-born people. Desperate, and terrified, in the face of this Darwinian onslaught from the stars.

“I’ll help any way I can,” she said. “But I can’t be your general. I’m sorry,” she added.

He closed his eyes and steepled his fingers. “Your friends, the refugees from Triton, are still in orbit.”

“I know that,” she snapped.

He said nothing.

“Oh,” she said, understanding. “You’re trying to bargain with me.” She leaned on the desk. “I’m calling your bluff. You haven’t let them starve up there so far. You won’t let them die. You’ll bring them down when you can; you aren’t serious in your threats.”

His thin face twisted with embarrassment. “This wasn’t my idea, Madeleine Meacher.”

“I know that,” she said more gently.

“In the end,” he said, “none of this may matter. The Crackers have little interest in our history and our disputes and our intrigues with each other.”

“It’s true. We’re vermin to them.” Anger flared in her at that thought, the word Dorothy had used.

But it’s true, she thought.

This, here on Mercury, may be the largest concentration of humans left anywhere. And if the Crackers succeed in their project, it will be the end of mankind. None of our art or history, our lives and hopes and loves, will matter. We’ll be just another forgotten, defeated race, just another layer of organic debris in the long, grisly history of a mined-out Solar System.

I can’t let that happen, she thought. I must see Nemoto again.

On the surface of Mercury, Nemoto sighed. “You know, the Crackers’ strategy — making Suns nova — isn’t really all that smart. When you’re more than a few diameters away from your disrupted star it starts dwindling into a point source, and the light wind’s intensity falls off rapidly. But if you have a giant star — say a red giant — you are sailing with a wall of light behind you, and you get a runaway effect; it takes much longer for the wind to dwindle. You see?”

“So—”

“So the best strategy for the Crackers would be to tamper with the Sun’s evolution. To make it old before its time, to balloon it to a red giant that would reach out to Earth’s orbit, and ride out that fat crimson wind. But the Crackers aren’t smart enough for that. None of the ETs out there are really smart, you know.”

“Maybe the Crackers are working on an upgrade,” Madeleine suggested dryly.

“Oh, no doubt,” Nemoto said, matter-of-fact. “The question is, will they have time to figure out how to do it before their race is run?”

“Why haven’t you told the refugees what you are up to, Nemoto?”

“Meacher, the people on this ball of iron are conservative — and split. There are many factions here. Some believe the Crackers may be placated. That these ETs will just leave of their own accord.”

“That’s ridiculous. The Crackers can’t leave. They must dismantle the Sun to continue their expansion.”

“Nevertheless, such views are held. And such factions would, if they knew of my project, seek to shut me down.”

“So what do we do?”

“The settlers here must go as deep as they can, deep into the interior.”

Just as Dorothy Chaum had said. “When?”

“When the Cracker ships are here. When all the wasps have swarmed to the honey pot.”

“I’ll try. But what of you, Nemoto?”

Nemoto just laughed.

Madeleine leaned forward. “Tell me what happened to Malenfant.”

Nemoto would not meet her eyes.

She told Madeleine something of what sounded like a long and complicated story, embedded in Earth’s tortured latter history, of a Saddle Point gateway in the heart of a mountain in Africa. Her account was cool, logical, without feeling.

“So he went back,” Madeleine said. “Back through the Saddle Points, back to the Gaijin, after all.”

“You don’t understand,” Nemoto said without emotion. “He had no choice. I sent him back. I manipulated the situation to achieve that…”

Madeleine covered Nemoto’s cold hand.

“…Just as I have manipulated half of mankind, it seems. I exiled Malenfant, against his will.” Nemoto continued sharply. “I believe I have sent him to his death, Meacher. But if it is a crime, it will be justified — if the Gaijin can make use of that death.”

“I guess you have to believe that,” Madeleine murmured.

“Yes. Yes, I have to.”

Her manner was odd — even for Nemoto — too cool, logical; too bright, Madeleine thought.

Madeleine knew that no human could survive more than a thousand years without emptying a clutter of memory from her overloaded head. Nemoto must have found a way to edit her memories, to reorder, even delete them — a process, of course, that meant the editing of her personality too.