Her answer sent a seismic tremor through the core of the planet it had made its body: "Love you, monster? I don't know. I cannot imagine it. And yet—yes, perhaps I do. If it matters . . ."
The rogue shook in its mad plunge. Its boiling seas loosed huge clouds of vapor as, for a moment, its grasp slackened; lightnings played through its tortured skies. But Molly was still speaking:
"But I have no life left to love anyone, monster. My body is dying, and I must tell you something. Monster! Please listen. Almalik is not your enemy "
A shock of doubt shattered the rogue's great joy.
"Listen, monster! Almalik never hurt you. Almalik has renounced all violence. He could not harm you, nor any sentient thing. Ever!"
Rage shook the rogue now. The crustal rocks of its planetary body snapped and white-hot magma spewed forth. In the air around Molly Zaldivar its tiny voice shrieked: "Lies! Lies again! The sun of Earth that tried to kill me was Almalik's vassal. Its twin stars that tried to kill me again—they were Almalik's companions!"
But Molly Zaldivar's voice came strongly. "No, monster. I lied to you once, yes. Because I was afraid of you. But Almalik has never lied, nor has he tried to harm you. The sun of Earth that struck you—it was your own brother!"
The rogue called back the huge effector that it had lashed out to strike her. Puzzled, its shrill voice repeated, "Brother?"
"Yes, your brother! Another synthetic sentience, made before you. It occupied the sun of Earth and tried to destroy you—came here before you, and tried to destroy you again through the twin stars of Almalik. But you defeated it, monster. And now it is gone, and you must stop before you destroy great Almalik!"
The rogue paused, while its sentient plasma revolved the startling new concept. "Brother?" its tiny voice whispered again. A dreadful doubt shivered through its core.
If it were wrong, it thought—if it were wrong, then it was doing a dreadful and irrevocable deed.
For if it were wrong, then Almalik had always been its friend. And it was within minutes of destroying Almalik forever.
Methodically, patiently, the rogue rebuilt its net of sensors, threw out probes to scan the patient white star before it—so close now, and so vulnerable!—and all of space around. Its velocity, hard driven and accelerated through hundreds of millions of miles, was huge. Unstoppable. It had thrown its energies in profligate abandon into thrusting the dead planet toward the white star. It was simply too late to stop.
With care and speed it calculated possible trajectories to divert its own plunge, not to stop it—for that was utterly impossible now—but simply to deflect it enough to miss the star and plunge on into the dark space beyond . . .
Impossible. It was too late.
Well, then: to pass through the star's corona, destroying itself in the process, of course, and working great havoc with the star's internal energy balance, but leaving most of it intact. . .
Also impossible. Also too late.
In what passed in it for desperation, the rogue computed its chance of plunging through the skin of the star but on a tangent that would miss the core, leave the star wounded and erupting with enormous violence, but perhaps not entirely destroyed . . .
Also impossible, and finally impossible. Its energies were too great, its time of collision too near. It would strike the white sun almost dead on, whatever the rogue did now. And rogue and white star together would erupt in the ultimate violence of a supernova, destroying themselves and everything for a lightyear or more around.
I regret, thought the rogue. / feel pity. For Molly Zaldivar. For Almalik. For all the myriads of beings on Almalik's doomed planets. And for me.
It sent out a message on the thin, stretched filament of energy with which it had been in contact with Molly Zaldivar, to say that there was no longer any hope.
But it could not make contact.
Once again it searched all of space nearby, seeking Molly Zaldivar and the sleeth. Uselessly. Somehow, Molly Zaldivar was gone.
The patterns of energy that made up the essential being of the rogue were shaken with grief and pain. Despairing, it thrust with all the energies it possessed at the calm white disk of its target sun, now so near and so vulnerable. Great spouts of flame boiled from the star below it; the rogue's own planetary body split and shattered in the violence of its effort to undo what it had done. But it was no use. The fragments of its planet, continental in size, massive as worldlets themselves, drove on unchecked.
Look, little one. Take that blue star. XJse its energies, if you will.
The rogue darted out sensors in all directions, seeking the source of that soundless, gentle voice. The sensors found nothing. But the rogue knew where it came from: it was Almalik, speaking to it from the enormous, swelling, flame-ringed solar disk so near below.
The blue star?
Experimentally the rogue threw out a sensor toward it. It was empty, untenanted since it had destroyed the mad sentience that had inhabited it. It was waiting for it.
Something helped the rogue, something to which it could not put a name: not merely Almalik, not just the star it was so close to destroying, but a congeries of sentiences, a pooled strength of living and stellar creatures, all urging the rogue on, supporting it, giving it help.
It drove along the lines of its sensor and entered into the waiting star.
New energies flooded its webs of sentience. The resources of a giant stellar furnace were now its own to command.
It reached out to the planet it had abandoned, hurtling down on the white star, grasped it with the mighty plasma arms of its new body. White arms from Almalik himself joined the rogue—and with them, golden arms. The rogue puzzled over that for a few electron-orbits; surely the golden star was dead, unable to take part.
Yet it was taking part. The golden arms linked with the blue and white ones, and together, smoothly, strongly, with infinite speed they pulled the planet aside.
The planet did not survive those mighty forces; it crumbled into a million billion fragments, streaming past the great white orb of Almalik and heading out into space on cometary orbits.
But it had missed. Almalik was safe.
And the rogue had time to realize what it had gained, in the might of its new stellar body—and what it had lost. It sensed the joy, the proud approval, of that far-off fatherly watcher—which was now more akin than ever, but no longer all rogue.
The great tolling chorus of the stars welcomed it into brotherhood. Join us, brother, said a great collective voice. Be one with us. Be one with all things that share the bonds of mind. Be one with Almalik.
And a part of the rogue rejoiced, and a part of it ached with an unpracticed grief for Molly Zaldivar, doomed to death in her frail human body, lost forever.
The slow, gentle voice held a hint of amusement, and wry pity. Look, brother, it said. You gave her your strength. We gave her our empty sun for a home.
And the rogue struck out, unbelieving, with a bright blue plasma sensor toward the golden star; and it met the rogue's sensor with one of its own. Gold thread and blue touched and joined, while the stars watched and rejoiced.
The voice that spoke to the rogue was not a human voice, but there was something of humanity about it—something soft and merry, something very like the voice of Molly Zaldivar and dear.
"Hello, monster," it said. "Welcome. Welcome forever."