A simple device could be made clever at the same level as a more complex, far more powerful or forcefuldevice; it could be effective against the greater force, preventing its use or destroying it.
A superior adversary was best not confronted directly, or at all (though that was not a choice here; they must bat against such a force like a moth against a glass window, if necessary, dedicated but all-uncomprehending). But the superior adversary was likely also best at concealment, deception, and diversion. A far superior adversary might not be an adversary at all, as much as a supernatural force, a Godlike potentiality that could brush aside the most careful planning and the most concerted assault like the whims of a child.
Still, the moms insisted—and Theodore agreed—confronting a technologically superior adversary was not necessarily folly. Killing Captain Cook.
The tactics of dealing with superiority were largely those of silence and attrition, like an infected flea creeping into a human's clothes to spread plague. The makers and the doers could act as bacilli.
But repeatedly, Martin was reminded by Theodore's writings that any comparisons they made—even the comparison to killing Cook—were faulty.
It was possible the superior adversary could nullify or escape any of their weapons.
Martin closed his eyes and tried to subdue his frustration, his conflict. There would never be enough information. And he—Martin—would never be sufficiently prepared…
The Dawn Treaderused every method at its disposal to slow over the long days of space, and to conserve its fuel, girding for battle.
Martin led the children outside the ship again, and this time he felt they were prepared. He had set up a particularly nasty adversary—one suggested by Theodore years before.
Martin stayed within the ship, directing the efforts of this adversary with two others—Harpal Timechaser and Stephanie Wing Feather.
Outside, forty of the children flew their craft around the Dawn Treader, preparing for entry into a simulated system configured very much like Wormwood.
The five unknown masses around the yellow star were hidden defense stations, in Martin's plan; and Theodore's adversaries, pure machine intelligences that had long since replaced their biological creators, were in command.
Martin watched the scenario play itself out.
Planets met their end in compressed time, surfaces molten slag, and most of the children survived. Hare, portrayed by the still-intact Dawn Treader, came through with minimal damage.
The farthest-scattered craft came in fifteen minutes after the simulation's end.
Stephanie licked her index finger, stuck it up to an imaginary breeze, swayed her arm toward Martin, and smiled. Confidence was returning.
The children gathered in the first homeball's cafeteria and analyzed their performances, Martin and Hans overseeing. The self-criticism flowed steadily, without hurt feelings, and Martin felt a knitting of the teams that had gone out on drill.
Afterward, they ate dinner, then listened to music performed by Joe Flatworm and Kees North Sea: raucous, lively folk music from the Ukraine and Tennessee, barely slowed by the extra weight.
Their bodies had grown stronger, stockier. No need to ask if the moms were responsible.
The performance lasted less than half an hour; they rested after, Martin in Theresa's quarters, in the heavy darkness, watching the ceiling, mind passing over the day's events.
He slept peacefully, without dreams.
Two days until coasting resumed; five days from passage through the pre-birth material.
Martin exercised in the second neck, climbing along the ladder fields instead of letting them haul him up or down. He had climbed almost the entire distance from the second homeball to the third, enjoying the exertion, almost used to the heaviness, when he heard the screaming, thin and far away, sliced into ghastly echoes by the shapes in the wormspace.
Theresa was in the third homeball, above him, doing private practice in a bombship. She quickly descended on a field, pausing beside him where he hung, and listened, frowning. "Did you hear that?" she asked.
He nodded, hoping it was nothing. It did not sound like nothing. It sounded horrible, even more horrible when distorted, and they were used to the distortions of voices in the necks.
Nothing for seconds. Then, a barely audible keening, voices of concern, two or three people trying to comfort.
They descended quickly, ladders dropping them to the second homeball.
In the main corridor, they found Rosa Sequoia weeping, surrounded by five others, two Wendys and three Lost Boys. Her broad, strong face wet with tears, Rosa could not catch her breath, and she could not speak beyond a few gasped words.
"We didn't see anything," Min Giao Monsoon said, patting her on the shoulder. "There is nothing in the halls!"
"What's wrong?" Martin asked.
"Rosa saw something," Kees North Sea said, narrow face nervous, eyes shifting. "She's scared out of her wits."
"What did you see?" Theresa asked, moving in closer to Rosa. Rosa kneeled in a tighter crouch, large frame forming a round obstruction in the corridor.
"Rosa, stop it," Martin said, an edge in his voice. "Please get yourself together." She had piloted a ship outside and performed well in exercises; he had thought she was coming around. Now he was irritated, and then ashamed of his irritation. Doesn't she know she makes this more difficult for us?
But that was truly beside the point, and he buried his resentment at her weakness. He knelt beside her, touching her wet cheek.
"No!" she shouted, starting up, falling back painfully on one arm. She looked so clumsy, so pitiably overwrought, that Martin's anger surged almost too quickly to be hidden. "You didn't see anything," she said. "You won't believe me… But I saw!"
" Whatdid you see?" Martin asked, teeth tight together.
Resonant, almost silky, Rosa's voice carried down the hall to other children gathering, ten, then twenty, coming from both directions. "Something large and dark. It wasn't a mom."
Martin looked up, shoulders and neck tensing, less at Rosa's proclamation than at an intuition something was going to go very wrong, and he could not stop it.
"I've never seen anything like it," she said.
"Did it do anything?" Theresa asked. Martin winced inwardly at her implicit affirmation that there had been something.
"It stared at me… I think. I couldn't see any eyes. It left marks."
"Where?"
Rosa got to her feet, wiped her eyes with the palms of her hands, swung her shoulders back and stood tall. She apologized in a barely audible voice. "I was in the C wing, coming down for my team exercise… The lights were down. I don't know why."
"Lights are always down in C wing," Martin said. "Nobody has quarters there."
"That's the way I come here," Rosa said, glancing at him resentfully. She avoids the place where she saw Theresa and me making love. "It was in the dark, just… being there, sitting or standing, I don't know. I've never seen anything like it."
"Show us," Martin said. He turned to the children gathered on both sides and said, "I'll handle this."
"We'd like to help," Anna Gray Wolf said, face eager—something different attracting her, attracting all of them. She stared owlishly at Rosa.
"It's okay," Martin said. "Theresa and I will take care of it." In case they doubt the masculine touch is sufficient.