W. Michael Gear - The Warriors of Spider

THE

LUARRIORS

NOVELS BY W. MICHAEL GEAR

available from DAW Books:

THE WARRIORS OF SPIDER ——_

THE WAY OF SPIDER (coming in January 1989) ({?

THE WEB OF SPIDER (coming in summer 1989)

SPIDER

111. MICHAEL GEAR

DAW BOOKS, INC.

DONALD A. WOLLHETM, PUBLISHER

1633 Broadway, New York, NY 10019

DEDICATION

THROUGH TIMES OF HEAT AND THIRST

COLD AND HUNGER, TRIAL AND SORROW,

PAIN AND LONELINESS

YOU MADE IT BEARABLE.

PITY THOSE WHO ORDERED YOU

OUT OF THEIR LIVES

THEY KNOW NOT THEIR LOSS.

THEY KNOW NOT OF NOBILITY

THEY KNOW NOT OF HUMILITY

THIS BOOK IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED

TO MY BEST FRIEND

J. B. SARATOGA TEDI BEAR

SHETLAND SHEEPDOG

Copyright o 1988 by W. Michael Gear.

Ail Rights Reserved.

Cover art by Sanjulian-

DAW Book Collectors No. 752.

First Printing, August S988

123456789

Printed in the U.S.A.

CHAPTER I

It began with an accident.

A billion-year-old stringer of gas, molecules, and

dust twisted its way across the path of the fully-

automated GCI cargo ship. The dust didn't mass

much—just enough to trip the warning sequences- The

ship's brain initiated a drop from the nothingness above

lightspeed; the giant cargo-hauler warped into the uni-

verse humans think real.

The ship's brain took an instant to scan the cloud

ahead, noted its composition, and calculated it posed

no threat for hyperiight travel. Mass was present—just

not enough to cause concern for the ship's safety.

As the drives sent a brilliant streak of light across

the black of space, the brain caught a faint transmis-

sion. hesitated, and damped the hellfire raging in the

antimatter reactors. Brain trained sensitive antennae

on a faint red-shifted radio source in the curling mist

of stars and listened. The cyber-human elements reg-

istered surprise; the computers scrambled to record all

they could of the poor signal.

Deciding it had enough, the ship's brain activated

the drive again and powered the shields as the CGI

slipped beyond into the insanity of hyperiight.

A dim room, shimmering with cerulean blue light,

surrounded Director Skor Robinson as he floated eas-

ily over a large rainbow-nued instrument panel that

hovered in mid air. The Director was a tall man, thin,

with the facile bone structure indicative of the station

born. Even with his height, his huge bulbous head was

one of grotesque proportion—that of a mega-cephalic

embryo's on an underdeveloped stick-caricature body.

Though encapsulated by a metal-dull, helmetlike,

5

computer link headset, the calotte did nothing to hide

the. Director's bossed cranium; it emphasized his mor-

phological difference—a man who was half machine-

transmitted his mental patterns to the Gi-net, and

physically cooled his mighty brain, a brain five times

that of a normal human's. Only the weightless envi-

ronment of the control room allowed his fragile neck

to support such a head.

Tubes formed an umbilical which fed his body, re-

moved his wastes, and monitored his metabolic rate,

blood composition, and health. That information

looped in a constant feedback to his mighty brain and

the Gi-net, ensuring his physical self performed at op-

timum.

The headset no burden in the zero g, Robinson

sorted and analyzed the information streaming from

the UBM Gi-net. Trained from before birth, Robinson

was one of a handful of genetically engineered people

who could interface with the giant computer . . . and

supposedly humanity as well,

Each second, thousands of pieces of data required

his attention. Increase production of coffee on Zy-

man's World? Yes, while cutting back on crystal man-

ufacturing in Hebron Station. With the population

growth trends, it would be a necessary precaution in

the next five years- At the same time, another portion

of his faculties balanced toron production against po-

tential use if the Far Side Sector was opened up for

commerce. Decisions flowed like thought.

As he canceled the price stimulation chat would open

Far Side, his tranced face barely twitched. Too much

chance for instability to develop if he allowed human

expansion so far beyond the borders of the Director-

ate. Peace was so very, very fragile. His reins on hu-

manity stretched so incredibly thin. Just a slight

imbalance in the system and . . . disaster.

A job of gossamer webs, humanity hung precari-

ously above chaos. Robinson's control would have been

impossible without the huge UBM computers that

filled the station around him. They processed the mass

of information constantly flooding their banks. They

implemented the policies decided upon by Skor Rob-

inson and the few other Directors like him. Control,

6

like a dust mote in the wind, could disappear at any

Second.

A little slip of data suddenly caught reflexively in

one of Robinson's thoughts. Not much, just faint radio

transmissions accidentally picked up by a cargo ship

beyond Far Side. Important? Skor hesitated. An inner

sense was triggered and he routed a request through

the phenomenal memory of the UBM.

No colonies in that direction. No exploration out

there either. Nothing. Blackness and stars. Still? Cu-

riously uneasy, Robinson didn't have time to ponder.

He routed the report to Semri Navtov in Population

Control before he delved into the wheat crisis on the

Station at Anten IV.

And what was happening on Sinus? Why was the

social pattern there changing? He considered alerting

the Patrol for a second and dismissed it. Radio out

beyond the Frontier? Couldn't be important!

Dr. Leeta Dobra bit her lip, stared at the monitor,

and frowned in anticipation. The analysis was coming

through. She'd finished running the latest bone speci-

mens from one of the stations in sealed containers. Tb

get any kind of human remains away from a station

took a virtual act of God.

Most stations treated their dead with religious fer-

vor. The behavior dated back to the days when any

organic material was prized. Dirt could be manufac-

tured from, asteroids or lifted from the moon; organ-

ics, at first, had only come from Earth. In time, they'd

found such molecules floating free in space. More time

passed before a way was found to harvest them eco-

nomically. By that time station folk were appalled at

the thought of bones, flesh, or excrement getting away

from their steamy hydroponics tanks.

Six hundred years—Earth time—had passed since

the first orbiting space station had been populated. The

Julian calendar continued to give peoples far from their

world of origin a point of reference, but beyond that,

time was a function of mass and velocity.

She paused in thought, looking at the figures on the

monitor. Homo sapiens had come so far—to be so dif-

ferent.

Humankind fascinated Leeta. The species was mak-

ing itself into something else. People iived in far-flung

stations scattered about new suns, planets, and aster-

oids. They were adapting, subject to new environ-

ments and radiation, changing more with every

generation. Only the planet-bound here much resem-

blance to the Earth-normal humans, and even there,

statistical differences could be plotted.

She nodded as the results were displayed. Through

her headset, Leeta made notations and sent the infor-

mation into the Gi-net where it would be distributed—

subject to Directorate approval—to interested parties.

She leaned back and stretched, muscles rippling ato-

ngfjher planet-born arms and legs.

Dobra took a deep breath and yawned, shaking her

thick blonde hair over her shoulders. Carefully she got

up and replaced her headset in its holder. Checking

the chronometer, she growled uneasily, "I'm coming,

Jeffray. I'm coming."

Jeffray Astor would already be waiting, that look of

irritation and insecurity grooving his brow. As usual,

he would be fuming over her tardiness. So much had

changed since that day he'd received a Directorate

Health Department summons. Gone was his sensitiv-

ity, the dreams, the desire to split the galaxy with in-

novations in subspace communications. That dashing,

smiling man who had been her Jeffray had come back

so ... different.

He was handsome, pale, almost albino blond, with

a thin build for a planet-bom man. Acidly, she won-

dered if birth in a gravity well was the only thing they

now truly shared in common. His light blue eyes

hinted at dependence, and though he pouted, a hard

look from her would generally melt him into meek-

ness. Yet he was sensitive and often kind. Brilliant

when it came to transduction communication, he was

self-alienated from the rest of university society. He

didn't mix well, keeping to himself. He was shy, re-

tiring, and so often depressed. Only ... he hadn't

always been that way ... not before the Health De-

partment.

She gave the neat white room a quick check to make

sure everything was in its place. The equipment racks

8

«we in order. The counters sparkled. She resealed the

bone specimens in their vacuum tubes and filed them.

Qod forbid that Dr. Chem, the department head,

should find something amiss! She'd already gotten

enough grief from him. Though an anthropologist, he

was narrow-minded in some respects, never letting her

forget she was planet-born—and, hence, by ship stan-

dards, slovenly.

Station folk were meticulous about keeping every-

thing in order—another quirk in Leeta *s eyes. They

hadn't the room in the eariy days. Stuffed into cramped

shared quarters, they'd made every spare inch count,

another part of their cultural dogmatic baggage.

She shut and sealed the door, posting her handprints

as the last occupant. The hallway under her feet had

that constant upward bend which one grew accus-

tomed to on stations.

Hurrying more than she'd intended, watching the

lighted doors slip past, she pushed her springy, mus-

cular stride into a distance-eating lope. She almost

tumbled trying to slow for the transporter. Inertia re-

mained—no matter what the gravity.

To Leeta's understanding of reality, the thing should

be called a lift instead of a transporter. It took a per-

son up or down, or maybe in or out, depending on

how you looked at it. She requested the level she

wanted and waited for one of the cars. When the door

opened, she almost ran over the man before she saw

him. Catching herself, she swallowed, laughed, and

stepped back.

"In a hurry?" Dr. Emmanuel Chem asked, eye-

brow cocked.

"I'm late for an appointment. Jeffray is already

waiting in the—"

"I'm afraid you'll be a little later," Chem said ab-

sently.

Leeta stopped short, giving him a closer inspection.

His bush-bearded face was intent, preoccupied. She

saw something important hidden behind those dark

brown eyes. The thick eyebrows were pulled down,

crowding the long fleshy nose. She could see the tiny

blood vessels under his aged skin.

"Something wrong with the specimens I ran?" Lee-

9

ta's guts twisted. She'd done everything right! The

analysis had been perfect—even down to the sub-

atomic level. "I can't imagine—"

"Come. It's more important than a couple of bones,

dear giri." Chem was already headed down the hall,

rolling back and forth in the springy walk station peo-

ple seemed to share.

"My God!" Leeta exploded. "We've worked for

... for years to get those specimens! Chung Station

is an incredibly long way away. You know what those

specimens cost the Directorate?"

"Trivial," he muttered over his shoulder. "Please,

I'll explain in my office."

"Coffee!" Chem ordered, clearing his throat and

growling. The machine in the corner slid out two cups

as they passed it on their way into Chem's huge office.

"Doctor Chem, I don't—"

He waved her down absently.

Frustrated, Leeta let her attention wander. Chem's

office was packed with tapes, files, spindles, and pic-

tures. He also harbored a penchant for antique books.

The real kind, made of paper. On one wall hung a set

of ten articulated skeletons, one from prehistoric

Earth, the rest detailing the various osteologies of

modem humanity.

Chem fumbled over the coffee while Leeta fumed at

the delay, looking up at the skeletons- On the shelves

above rested a collection of some three hundred hu-

man skulls as well as another two hundred casts of

prehistoric specimens not allowed off Earth: proto"

hominids, the ancestors of mankind.

The sight of those articulated bones—men and

women so long dead—had snagged Leeta in the begin-

ning. Now they soothed her. As a curious undergrad-

uate she'd been flabbergasted by this room. The lure

of the bones had drawn her into anthropology. Work-

ing with skeletal material was magical. When her

fingers met bone, it touched something deep inside

her—linked past to present, and gave hope for the fu-

ture in light of the span of change and time mankind

had already managed to survive.

The magic had never gone away. Throughout the

undergraduate years, the hard, vicious environment of

10

graduate school, and finally, her postdoctoral work,

«we of the bones carried her. Unlike the dry words in

the professional journals, she could stare into the

empty sockets of a skull and wonder what that indi-

vidual had seen, felt, loved, and feared. What wonders

bad composed his world? What would he think of hers?

Cold, pain, sorrows, and joys were real threads that

bound them over centuries and space.

Chem startled her from her thoughts as he handed

her a cup of coffee and settled himself onto one of the

study couches. He indicated the headsets and put his

on. Leeta settled another on her brow and accessed

the system. A scratchy radio transmission seemed to

echo hollow human voices.

"From beyond Far Side—beyond any known human

settlement." Chem's voice was dry.

When it was over, she pulled the headset off and

looked at Chem, shocked, excited, feeling her pulse

race.

"My God' What ... I mean who are they?" she

whispered, awed. Her eyes strayed to the skeletons on

the wall.

By means of a raised eyebrow, Chem gave her the

fiery look he always did when she wasn't acting like a

professional. He coupled it with an intent "I don't

believe you said that" stare and added, "You tell me."

Leeta dropped her gaze, acutely aware Chem wanted

cold scientific acumen. He was, after all, department

head.

"That is exactly the job Associate Director Navtov

has given us." Chem continued dryly. "I woald sug-

gest you dig your way through the historical files. See

what you can find regarding early exploration. The As-

sociate Director informs us that Records, Archives,

and Historical have been advised. Neither Astrogation

nor Commerce has any record of anything being sent

in that direction."

"You realize,'* she kept her voice cool, "this might

run back to ancient Earth." Her pulse raced. Perhaps

these unknown people had the same brave stalwart

qualities as the men of old Earth. She let her eyes play

over the rugged features of the male Pueblo Indian

skull.

11

Chem nodded. "Exactly. We just don't know, do

we? I don't think we'll find out though unless you get

to work. You check the historical background. I'll pull

the literature on primitive societies."

Leeta chewed her thumb, eyes on the skulls above.

"You think they're that primitive? They have radio."

Dr. Chem shrugged. "We know that. We also know

that no one else has ever heard them. They are in a

portion of space that was never settled—or at least is

not recorded as having been settled." Chem stared

into his coffee, lips pursed beneath his beard. "Patrol

thinks it's solar background ... a radio star."

Leeta nodded, took a sip of her coffee, and pitched

into the historical literature search.

The beep was persistent. Leeta's breath caught in

her throat. "Jeffray!" she moaned, misery dousing her

excitement. Willing her features to neutrality, she took

his call.

"Missed lunch," he said flatly as he looked at her

out of the monitor. His chin bobbed uncertainly. She

noted the tall, bony, planet look he had. It was one of

the things that had brought them together. Station men

had an aversion to women who could snap their spines

without breaking into a sweat.

She nodded, uneasy at the fishlike quality of his light

blue eyes. The whole image was incongruous; a pale

man against a white background. Perhaps their whole

relationship was as washed out as the colorless room

they shared.

She took the offensive. "Look, Jeffray, something

important has come up. I'm not sure when I'll be back.

I may even spend the night up here. I'll tell you about

it when we get some of the details put together. You'll

be fascinated to hear—"

"Sure." He nodded as if he understood but she

could see the emptiness behind his eyes. "You always

do this to me, Leeta. You always manage to make me

feel... I... See you when you get here," he stum-

bled, dropping his eyes.

"Talk about it later," she promised, suddenly bur-

dened by guilt. She almost added, "I love you," but

bit it off.

Sterile. Everything they did was sterile.

12

Her eyes wandered as the monitor blinked back to

file catalog lists. The skulls gleamed in the caressing

tight, leering at her. "If only there were still men

like you," she whispered hollowly under her breath.

And Jeffray? What of him? Boring but bright, Jeffray

had a good future in subspace transduction. Why was

he so damn condescending—grudgingly putting up

with her eccentricities? Not once had he tried to un-

derstand her work and—if the truth be known—he

could care less.

-"Lord!" Leeta sighed, stretching her arms, pushing

against the console. "Oh, for the good old days when

Mead, Underbill, and the rest could see and talk to

their subjects. Where is my blackberry winter?" There

had been rumors about the early dames of anthropol-

ogy. History, long past, the tales remained. Stories of

liaisons among tribesmen, of strong bodies glistening

in the moonlight, of love, of primitive marriages, of

broken hearts when the field season was over.

The stories of Margaret Mead and all her husbands

brought a smile to Leeta's face. Reo Fortune, dumped

for Gregory Bateson, and Mead and Bateson had ended

up great friends as well as lovers—a story to rival He-

loise and Abelard, Simone de Beauvoir and Sartre.

"So go back to Jeffray," she muttered, feeling her

face tighten. "Go back . , . when you're too tired to

focus your eyes on the monitor." A thought tasteless

as the coffee.

How many hours passed as she sent the computer

searching through almost six hundred years of rec-

ords? Leeta stared at the glowing words on the moni-

tor. "Chem?"

"Yes?" Lying on his study couch, he looked up

from the stimulant he was drinking. She waited while

he broke free of the computer.

"I'm patching," she told him, sending him the im-

age of the records she was reading. "Soviet prison

ship, Nicholai Romanan, spaced 2095, reported lost

in Gulag Sector."

Chem was nodding as if to himself. "I see, full

complement of prisoners, American and Mexican lib-

erals, all counter revolutionaries. Not only that, but

13

they had a large number of Native Americans. Hmm.

Arapaho and Sioux. Some Cheyenne."

"I remember," Leeta added with satisfaction.

"Groshin's study! He noted that the Native Americans

were neutral after the Soviet takeover. When things

didn't change on the reservations, they fought back—

successfully, too. Groshin documented the dissent too

well for the party. They threw him in jail for it before

they sent him into exile in Moscow Sector."

"Deviants," Chem muttered. "Excellent. For the

purposes of survival there could have been none bet-

ter. Deviants are innovators. Think of the—"

**I wonder what went wrong?" Leeta scowled.

"They were targeted for Sirius. How did they get so

far out there? I don't—"

"Long time ago! They lost a lot of ships in the early

days." Chem paused. "What makes you sure this is

the group from the Nicholai Romanan?"

"Best guess." She shrugged. "Figure the maxi-

mum reproductive capability of the people. There were

five thousand transportees on the manifest. Assume

the tapes and records of the ship survived. Assume

five to six children per woman. Assume unlimited re-

sources, and you should have a population ready to

expand into space within five hundred years."

She paused. "Emmanuel, these were people from

technologically advanced countries, not exiles from

India and Africa who were transported. They would

have a heritage of technology."

*'If your . . . assumptions are correct," he coun-

tered. "Any other possibilities?"

"One." Her voice came stiffly as she sent him the

data.

"Hum!" Chem grunted. "Potemkin IX. Assumed

destroyed in the Confederate revolution. Last seen

headed Far Side after being badly damaged. My God!"

Chem hesitated, his voice a whisper. "Look at the

holograph! She was hurt badly, I should think."

Already familiar with the blasted hulk, Leeta pulled

the headset off and rubbed her eyes. So tired. It had

been almost twelve hours since Chem had caught her

at the lift and she'd gone to the lab eariy that day to

run the bone samples.

14

Leeta yawned. "I think the Nicholai Romanan

makes the most sense, assuming it wasn't one of the

independent stations that got lost out there. That*s al-

ways a possibility. If only . . . There are no records

tracking all the fissions back that far. Half futile ..."

"Enough for now," Chem yawned in response.

"Perhaps we want it to be a lost colony too badly.

Patrol thinks it's a radio star. A lost station . . . who

knows?"

"Probably so," Leeta agreed. She stood up and

stretched, knowing Chem's eyes were on her trim body.

Her muscles always elicited that amazed response from

him. Poor man, he'd spent all his life in a station. His

bones were thin, delicately muscled from the light

gravity of angular acceleration. She told him good-bye

and palmed the door.

She walked slowly down the hall, lost in thought.

Chem was probably right. Another lost station. She'd

send two or three of the graduate students out to do

the preliminary field work. They'd learn the language,

break into the culture, and establish a communications

net with the UBM Gi-net. Routine. It had happened

four or five times before while she had been at the

university.

Even so, it was unusual for a station to have made

it that far out. They didn't move past light speed. A

lost star ship! She ground her teeth. "Make it be

true!"

W. Michael Gear - The Warriors of Spider

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