The Hunt
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Table Of Contents
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The HuntCover
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Illyrion and Tlnou
Talbot waits in the dark silence of the orbital shuttle's drop pod, eyes locked to the countdown timer. He hears the ticking as he braces himself against the seat; there is a moment between one breath and the next where he wonders at all of the things he has failed to do. Then it's time to go, he yanks the handles, and pinioning acceleration drives him back into the seat. Space springs to life around him as the imaging sweeps away the walls and the station is ripped away into the distance. The planet wheels below, its cities a rich sparkling where the terminator brings the night. Tiny reddish patches mark the flare of fires hundreds of kilometers across. It is possible that he is just too late, this time.
m'Ilu Ram cowers in the crawlway. The chasms of the city split into vague depths below and above. Metal rattles and rings not far away as a counterpoint to the whispering, chanting, and screams. Movements - footsteps, perhaps, hunting. Below, a huge gout of flame spits, flickers, roars and dies, its hideous reflection cast from the steel walls beyond into the hiding place. And m'Ilu Ram feels its counterpart to fear.
"How could it be so terrible, so fast..." the Director whispers. She stares at the planet below, at the space station that drifts gutted above it, considering the light of the planetary surface through the tears in the station's skin. Hallison grunts, sitting at the conference table, playing with his Ribu sticks. He knows the answer, as well as she does.
"How much longer are we going to wait?" he asks, ignoring the question. His freckled face is closed with the waiting. "It's the damn thing, we know it, it just got away from them."
"It isn't interested in space, just in things coming from space."
"Like the chief."
The Director turns to face him. "Yes. Like Raoul."
"We could be out of here."
"He had to go for m'Ilu," the Director replies, returning her attention to the view. "You would have gone."
Steve Hallison crumples a stick with dry cracking sounds in his lean fist, "Yeah, if I'd been a pilot."
The atmosphere screams across the surface of the pod. Talbot thinks about the orbital station, and then tries to shut out instantaneous images of irrational violence and death. I'm away now, he thinks. He can still listen to his pulse and breath gasping through his body.
It seems ages as he drops toward the urban landscape below. He watches city, then desert, then forest and farmland as twilight sweeps across it toward him, swallowing the world.
The pad on the table signals them. Hallison snatches it before the Director can reach the table.
"Situation room," he says. "They see a ship on the upcurve horizon. It's large - might be military."
The Director's smile widens - but as with all Tereniades, it is nervousness, not pleasure that drives it. "Soon enough." she hisses. "Soon enough we will all see trouble. Not so large as this." She waves at the space station in the view outside. "But it will be more intimate."
The exterior of the pod blazes in the atmosphere, filaments streaming across the view. Talbot feels the tug of fear. He prefers more stable and controllable craft. His hands wrestle the controllers, under the buffeting of the chaotic entry winds. The cities crawl across miles below - millions of windows lit in innocence of the indecent flames only a few blocks away. He thinks of m'Ilu Ram somewhere in that. He steels himself against hopelessness. All it has is me... and all Talbot has is the continuous pulse of m'Ilu Ram's badge to guide him, like a human heartbeat, to a being with no organ even similar to a heart.
The fragile shell shudders with deceleration. The light of m'Ilu Ram's badge flashes on the dawnward horizon of the virtual window. Talbot struggles to hold the line on the signal.
The Director's office is warmly lit, flickering like flames hidden in some corner you could never turn your head fast enough to see.
The Constable Commander had entered with an impatient gait, restrained, like someone used to waiting for slower ones to catch up to him. Now he stands before the Director's sprawling chair, glancing around warily, looming over the small figure.
"Explain to me why you'rr here, orbiting a space station been shreds?"
The Constable Commander is human, with a lilting Cylestane accent, and pale features marked with faint, irregular patches signifying his particular variety of humanity. When he speaks, he gestures with a hand whose arm remains immobile.
The Director simply smiles with tension. "You make it sound like we're guilty of something for being in orbit. Is that a normal police procedure?"
The Constable Commander frowns fiercely, a practiced expression. "Nothing here is normal, Director. I have few hours to spend on this issue while my command gets oriented on the situation below. My interest in this is not yet suspicion. I just don't understand why you'rr not at the port. Your ship is no cargo carrier, and yet..."
"Well, you mentioned it yourself, Constable Commander. The situation below. We're hardly likely to descend until that's been cleared up. We can't even tell if there are any police authorities left to protect our crew. Have they been affected?"
The Constable's face was unreadable. "Of course not." The blankness was a statement that the Director was well-equipped to read.
"It's not a political action, then?" the Director asked. "We've been unable to contact our company. The planetary communications appear to be disrupted, even the active private systems are abnormal and inaccessible."
The Constable looks around the room, disconcerted. "I can't discuss that. Are all of your people on board?"
"No, we have two on the surface. I'm worried, Constable Commander. They were trying to make contact with our company, but we haven't heard from them. Is there anything you can do?"
"Not now, Director -- we have other areas of concern. You will please remain in orbit until the situation has been corrected. Other police vehicles might... misinterpret... a landing attempt, and fire on you."
The Director's tiny face creases with a broad smile. Hallison, leaning silently and unnoticed in the corner by the door, wonders at her lack of control. She must be worried.
Talbot drags the pod into the shadow of a hangar. Fires are raging out on the field, casting garish halos on the remaining ships. The pod is heavy, and the air is oppressive. Talbot sweats as heaves on the exterior handles.
He hurries through the deserted streets, footsteps pounding in echoes. He watches the detective on his wrist, following its pointer.
Suddenly he is immersed in a scene of violence.
Hundreds of beings, all species, filling the streets from edge to edge, like a sea washing the bases of the metal buildings. Their hands are raised and swinging in flickering backlight. There is no pattern, there are no obvious sides. All he wants is to avoid it.
He whirls, looking for a way around. He spots a ramp that contours up a nearby building, only blocked by a few rioters. His pulse is pounding in his hearing, and he desperately wants to leave. But he is committed, and he feels some strange clarity strike his mind - a different level. He runs - confident of his own invincibility - for the ramp, shoving the rioters aside before they can react to him. As his feet hammer the ramp, he hears the screams and roaring descend below him.
But above, he hears a deadly whispering rip, watches the streak of faintly glowing contrail against the night sky -- some kind of aircraft cutting through the atmosphere. Then, the pulsing sound of a large energy weapon, and a distant explosion. Things are getting worse, and, checking his directional, he sees that he is heading away from m'Ilu.
The Director slumps in her chair, watching the status display.
"Military units have apparently joined the rioting. No coordinated action," comes the report from ScanOps.
"We're not going anywhere anyway," she mutters. "What about the police?"
"They're just watching."
"Probably don't know any better that we do."
"Alien! Alien!" they chant, menacing m'Ilu Ram. They are small, blue, asymmetric. m'Ilu Ram considers its options, and snarls, tripartite face swinging open in a frightening manner, though it is, in fact, the one facing fear.
They reach for it - as it flails, they strike it with clubs, and it reels in the metal darkness.
There is a sudden clanging, and the rioters draw back in confusion as the sound approaches rapidly. They scatter down the ramp. m'Ilu Ram is confronted with a dark, disgusting, human face.
"No weapons! You ass, did you think you were coming here for a party?" the face snaps from its tiny, muscle ridged mouth.
Talbot. It is Talbot who m'Ilu Ram finally recognizes.
"Talbot?" it hisses, as if not sure of its perception.
"Talk later. Let's get out of here before they realize there's just me." Talbot finds it awkward to brace his friend's strange body - which is soft in some places where humans are rigid -- but he manages it, and they start staggering down the dizzy ramp to the street below.
"And you're supposed to be the planner," Talbot mutters.
"Options highly constrained in such fluid situations," m'Ilu Ram speaks. It does not breathe with the same apparatus used for speaking, so its words do not gasp with the effort of their run. "Sanctuary unlikely, even... undesirable."
"Yeah, we've got to get to the port."
"Transport available?"
"One tiny launch pod, OK?"
"Stop." m'Ilu Ram halts, grasps at Talbot's upper torso, misses. Talbot stops. "Moment for inventry. Weapons?"
"Brains, stealth, and this," he wiggles the metal rod. "How about contact? Did you find anything about the company?"
"Chaos," m'Ilu Ram moans. Its sensorium is close to overload, and it sways giddily. The Rizniak knows it is close to a mandatory coalescence period - yet sanctuary is unavailable, and, given the situation, undesirable. "The mission failed - departure required. No hope here. The Mover is loose, I fear."
Talbot closes his eyes, feeling a strange cold ache work its way up the back of his neck.
"Beings cohering at roadsidesss, plss." comes a voice hissing like chain mail in motion. Talbot whirls. A door stands gaping darkly, and there is movement inside, highlighted occasionally by the flash of distant flames.
"Who are you?" he snaps. "What do you want?"
"Seek safety." Was it asking or offering?
"We're not planning on hurting you."
"Komdan," m'Ilu Ram speaks.
"Are you telling me what it is, who it is, what it wants, or what?" Talbot snarls.
"Who... and what. Komdan," the Rizniak raises its voice. "Emerge. Reveal your intentions." It lifts itself slightly from where it stands bent into Talbot's support. "We arrre heavily armed, ahttempt no subterfuge." Lying. Its face slips open and slaps shut with a distracting smack that could mean anything. The wind of the jaws blows a foul waft of old breath past Talbot's face.
A strange pile of shifting, metallic appearance slides into the marginal light.
"Keeping shop safe, we demand intruders identify...plss cohere no more closely, or we sshall sssubdivide and conquer."
It is a shape like millions of tiny insects spilling endlessly over each other in a marginally tripedal, trisymmetric form. The sound of their legs is like the sound of the distant fires, and the riot receding along the metal canyons. Its voice is hard to extract from the background, though, like everyone, it carries and uses a Cospuk transceiver that provide the only words Talbot will ever hear from it.
It slumps toward m'Ilu Ram. "You are reconizzed."
"Impossible!" Talbot explodes. "m'Ilu, we've got to go."
"Wait." It looks at him briefly, then turns back to the composite entity, bowing its head toward the ramp floor in politeness. "Explain, if possible."
"Presence of some chordals on Transit Five and Superdarian provides edge between nexus of orbital events and current scenario. Cognisant of self-organization prinsssipals? Are you?"
m'Ilu Ram replies. "Yes. One moment." It bows its immense head toward Talbot. "Komdan are composite entity. Distributed nervous system using pheromonal and radiative sharing of information between subunits which come and go, but with knowledge remaining in the individual. Some subunits were present on the Transit Five station, and some of those found their way to the surface on the last shuttle. I flew that shuttle. It ssstates that some parts of it remember me."
"That's fine," Talbot glares, impatient. "Can we go now?"
"No. Not yet." It turns toward the Komdan. "Can identify a direct route to the spaceport? We desire to avoid disturbances."
The creature surges, as if uncomfortable, though Talbot is surely not going to apply any human standards to this frightening form. Imagine the thing as a shopowner...
"Some of this one must remain to guard the ssshop. Why help?"
Talbot leans forward. "Listen, we know why this is happening. We have to get information offworld, so something can be done. We have access to a ship."
"Enhances long-term security." the Komdan hisses. "Help is offered. Portion will transport others."
"It's going to drive us?" Talbot asked, incredulous.
But before m'Ilu can answer, the Komdan has fissioned. The second entity beckons them into the shop front, while the original half stands guard by the open door. Sounds of an approaching crowd cause m'Ilu Ram to grasp Talbot by an appendage and thrust him past and inside. "Local assistance. Much appreciated," it comments.
The shop is walled with energically fronted cases that glint oddly in the light from the windows. Strange objects of unknown function cast shadows that rear and threaten. Odd animations of incomprehensible import hang on the walls, casting a faint glow as they pass deeper within. They enter a narrow, short hallway. m'Ilu Ram must bend nearly double to stay below the ceiling. Down a ramp and out into a garage, where a small, enclosed car waits.
Their host spills into a tube on the side, and doors gullwing open. "Please, my limo," it says in a laughing hiss.
The spaceport is burning. In the distance, for now, but spreading with the staccato percussion of distant explosions against the brilliantly dark horizon.
Talbot looks around with dismay. The flames edging the horizon flicker briefly on his eyes.
"This place is bigger than I thought."
m'Ilu Ram pushes shakily from the limo to stand at Talbot's side. His face yawns precipitously and claps shut. "Not locating return vehicle. Problem. Detective available is?"
Talbot sighs. "I hate reverse syntax," he mutters. "Yeah, where is the damn thing? Where are we?" He leans into the limo to confront the Komdan. "You know anything about the layout here?"
"Director?"
She looks up from a table display. "Can't you do any better than this? We've got to be able to get more than basic material."
But it isn't someone from the Analytical Office. It is Hallison. "Sorry, Steve. It's just that this information off the surface net isn't doing much good. What's the question?"
"Talbot's on his way up. With m'Ilu Ram.... and, a... guest." He was smiling.
"Does the Constable know?"
His smile vanishes. "I can't see how he couldn't. It's all over the sensors."
She smiles, a human gesture for Hallison. "Then call him. We may as well be open, since we have no choice. Arrange a meeting in three hours, no earlier. Tell him, they're hurt, or exhausted - yes, that will be better. Give us some time..."
"Nothing! That's what it is - nothing. Raoul - this is useless."
Talbot hates when the Director is angry. It stirs old resentments and new shame. He shifts uncomfortably in the briefing room hot seat, watching his hands on the desk in front of him. "I know, but there's nothing I can do." He looks out into the shadows of the room. "What about that ... whatever it was - the shopkeeper, you know."
"Director," Gillian Reed interrupts, "please don't be too hard on Raoul. With all the time we had to study the Mover during the journey back, and, apparently, whatever they tried on the surface, no one has any better answers."
"That's not a help. We don't know for sure that the Mover was responsible. But I can tell you that the Constable, once he finds out about the Mover, is going to make it very hard for us to continue to work on the problem, simply by putting us under arrest." She paces around the table. "We can't afford to not be the ones working on the problem for the simple reason that we already know more about it than anyone else. Let me remind you, if we don't solve it soon, thousands more down there are going to die, and it will be our fault, as much as it is the fault of whoever let the damn thing out." Her sharp teeth are bared in a smile that reveals more fear than anyone in the room has ever felt from her.
m'Ilu Ram leans back from the table. "The shopkeeper regarding. Some information not available from remaining newscasters is being analysed. Not of much to aid in assessing tactical situation or details of cause, so far. Some breaks filled in. More coming. Units were widespread on surface before and during situational development. But the knowledge is fragmentary."
The Director glares at him. "It doesn't matter. You're going to have to speak to the Constable from the security context. Be informative, but keep the full context to yourself. Then we're moving out of orbit, and we're going to try to figure out what to do."
The hot water pours down Talbot's face and streams over his shoulders. He feels unclean with lies of omission that this shower barely touches. In the distance he hears the warp warning. The ship swings in normal space like a secret ghost.
The Constable moans quietly as they slowly move away. "This much is certain," he mutters, in the tone of a quote. "I dislike those merchants. They are dangerous in general, and here, I suspect them of more we don't know." He turns to his XO. "Get a drone on them, and then we talk to the landing parties."
The Director orders the ship to unwarp in the umbra of the moon. From signals reflected in magnetic and gravitic fields, they watch the unfolding chaos below.
The hallway outside the conference room bustles with personnel changing shifts. Through the door and into the darkened room, with the accretion-blasted surface of the moon a wall beyond the vast metal table and the ceiling-high windows.
Talbot expects a crowd, but there's only the Director, at the far end of the table, watching fifteen channels of visual on the other wall.
"Am I early?" he asks, confused.
"No." The video pauses in mid-motion. "Come here."
He paces down the silent room.
"Sit. You make me feel short." Her expression is amused. He purposely doesn't smile in return, trying to meet her halfway.
"Raoul, this is a big operation we're about to start here. There's no room for the kind of grandstanding you pulled, jaunting down to the surface. You were lucky to get out alive, much less with m'Ilu Ram in tow."
He starts getting worried.
"Of course."
"I don't want you to think I'm ungrateful. Or unappreciative." She leans forward. "But I was worried." She hesitates back into her chair. It eases up around her. "On the other hand, you seem to have a talent for following your hunches and surviving. More importantly - you've been delivering. And the people who work with you have confidence in you. I have confidence in you."
"Thanks." But the line of his mouth is uncertain. Is this a reprimand? Or a compliment?
"So, you're going to need some help."
"I'm sorry?"
Impatient, she leans forward. "Pick your own team. You're going to run the moonside operation. But I want you staying in the vehicle, monitoring your sensors. You run things, you don't do things. You tell me everything you plan to do before you go down. Once you get there, fine, you improvise. And right before you improvise, you make sure I would approve of what's going on. Remember, that Constable doesn't know we're staying here. I don't want him to know. If he finds out, the company has trouble... and you know the saying about excrement in gravity? Believe me, it applies."
Talbot leans exhausted over the desktop, planning grids and outlines scattered beneath its translucent surface. He rubs his forehead, while Jill paces the floor behind him.
"You asked for help, I'm giving it," she rants in a whisper, pushing her head over his shoulder.
"I know, I know," he sighs. "But it's been six hours without a break."
"Oh, I see. You're tired."
He reacts to an absent sarcasm. "Yeah, I'm tired. Hungry. You name it."
She pulls her head back and circles the table to look aggressively at him. "Tired. Hungry. I had forgotten." Sarcasm. She steps back. "OK. Call me in... four hours?"
He looks up, surprised. "Four hours would be fine."
She pauses in the door. "We don't have much time, Raoul." The Battle of Tetuan ends behind her.
The planning table lights them all from below, and the screens at the end of the room reflect the same images. Talbot is holding his breath in check hard at the head of the table. A muscle in his neck twitches, almost hidden. They're waiting for him, and he knows it. The notes are under glass below his eyes, hard to read, somehow.
He swings forward to the table with a deep breath. A saying he remembers from Mars runs through his head. You're on...
"Most of you have worked together before - that's why I asked you here. Some of you were with me... before. You know the Mover. Not the same way I do, and one of you even better than I," he indicates Stone with a gesture. "Everyone has some skills we're going to need. In a way, the mission is simple - find the Mover. In a way, the mission is harder. We think the Mover is capable of inciting the disorder we're seeing below, but we can't prove it. In the meantime, the Constable is sitting a few million kilometers away, looking to see if we'll do anything he can get us for."
The Director interrupts, her voice soft but authoritative. "I want there to be no mistake about it. We haven't done anything wrong. We brought the Mover here, and left it in competent hands." She taps the desk and stares down at it. Then she returns from her reverie. "What we thought were competent hands. Maybe there are no competent hands for that thing... we just don't know. But we can't be cut off from solving this problem by some officious idiot who'd be just as glad to lock us away. We're the only ones who know enough to even have a possibility of solving it." She waves her hands and leans back.
Talbot sighs. He still feels uncomfortable with that rationale. But he has a job to do. "That's why we're getting off. This ship is departing the system, heading back to the secondary HQ on Plutarn. On the way out, we're using the Beta moon for a gravitational sling, and when we're on the far side, the ship is dropping a lighter. We'll be on that lighter. Doing whatever possible to find the location of the Mover."
M'Ilu Ram looms across the table, the eyes at the sides of its massive head glinting darkly in the subdued light. "The mission regarding. If found, disposition?"
"We leave it alone."
m'Ilu is shocked. "Alone? Do we contact constable?"
Talbot feels the twitch in his neck again. "No. We wait for the return of company assistance. We get all of the information we can, and we wait." He wishes they would stop asking about it. He decides to redirect the discussion. "You will find your assignments in your files. You may need to familiarize yourself with new systems, and there isn't much time, so please check into the files as soon as possible. We'll be leaving in ten hours. If this is inconvenient for your sleep schedule, those of you who sleep, please try to postpone until you're on board the lighter. Medical services has been told to make the appropriate sleep avoiders or inducers available if you ask for them."
"Thanks rendered, constable," the Director replied. "We'll be off then. Good luck with your situation." She gestures the signal off. Then she connects with the helm. "Go."
The vast hull shifts slowly into motion, inertia still applied... Its engines whisper, then beat. Ancient laws take action, then die away as a ripple of inertialessness sweeps the ship, crinkling the stars. They plummet through stellar darkness toward the crescent of the silent moon - Tlnou Beta.
Talbot on board the lighter, two hours early, unable to sleep. He haunts the pilot cabin, bringing the systems up, taking them down, running tests. Panels flicker and change with the results. Stars swing slowly beyond the tall ports. He wonders if he is afraid, or if the shaking that seems to take his hand from time to time is tension or exhaustion. The lock alarm rings, signalling another team member seeking early admittance. He smiles, and brings up the image. "Come on in, join the party."
The gravity of the moon begins to redirect the motion of the ship in an enormous parabola.
"LOS on the constable's ship."
"Any satellites?"
"None in view."
"Drop the lighter."
"Lighter away."
Talbot feels the controls finally extend into his senses and muscles. Gloves and goggles stretch his view hundreds of miles. He sees the blare of the sun as it prepares to rise over the rim over the moon, rays scattered slightly in the rarefied microatmosphere. He sees the endless and unrepeated tiling of craters from one horizon to the next. He senses the cold and the variations in hardness, roughness, and altitude of the surface below. He selects the spot, a place that will be within view of the planet in fifteen hours, and carefully lowers the bulky lighter to rest below the lip of a crater.
He comes awake in the darkness. For a moment his heart is pounding and he doesn't know why. Then he remembers the dream. Atrenn forcing him to leave the crew behind... but this time, the crew is Amel, x*Rkar, and Schacther. He is screaming as Atrenn slams the door shut from the outside, locking him away in safety... from something. He rolls painfully on his side, and, with the back of his hand, sweeps the tears from his jaw. "Let it alone," he mutters. He swings his legs off the bed and sits. A faint light appears as the room reacts.
By the time he enters the spinal hallway, his eyes are clear, and his jumpsuited bulk feels fairly coordinated. He passes the caf, and sees Reed , Wanr, and Stone in a spirited conversation. He stops in at sensor, where R*Zanaril is wired into the system in near total darkness. He blinks a couple of times to let his eyes adjust.
"R*Zaranil?" he asks.
The shiny metal panels shift in the doorlight. "There is who? Bandwidth I lack for perception local."
"Talbot."
"Glad arivved yu have. Sensorium indicates possible tracker in orbit."
"What do you mean?"
R*Zaranil upgrades the translator. It sounds like an old woman in the darkness. "It would seem the constable has a belief that the darkened cavern is not empty, if you take my meaning."
"He didn't trust us."
"Accepted."
"Does that thing know we're here?"
"Clairvoyance now is not a property of my species, radar or not. However, the system is a passive sensor. We are passive as well. Drop was preset, doors open, power only on final. Inconclusive. Depends on approach parameters. Sensor is stealthed. Could have been close. Could have seen."
"Crap!" So much for sneaking in. "All right, stay silent, warn the next watch. Anything else?"
"Some traces of the Mover metabolic remnants are beginning to be detectable in the atmosphere. They are not crisp enough for localization yet, but the effort continues. Next phase would be orbital or atmospheric probes, but the watcher prevents this. Consider action determination for next meeting, please."
"Yeah. Thanks. Can I get you anything?"
"A cup of warm oil would be appreciated."
Talbot makes a wry face. "No doubt. Coming up."
Talbot watches the filling of cups of coffee and oil. The scent is exotic, and his nose wrinkles as he tries to keep it from affecting his stomach. He takes the cups and leaves his at the table with Jill and the others. Then he drops off the other for R*Zaranil.
Back at the table, Jill smiles tiredly. Wanr asks, "Wll? Wht urr rprts latly?"
"We have company."
Wanr sags attentively. Jill leans forward. Stone makes an odd motion - Talbot is still not sure of how much the alien understands of their conversations.
"The Constable has a stealthed probe orbiting the moon. Maybe its following us, maybe not. We have to stay passive as long as it's there." He sighs and sips at the hot, bitter liquid. The light is too harsh, he thinks. "On the other hand, we have confirmation that the Mover is on the planet."
"Metbalic excesses?" Wanr asks.
"Yeah."
"But we're not going to be able to probe until the spy is gone, right?" Jill wants to know.
"Right." Suddenly he is afraid there was an unintended sarcasm in his voice, because Jill is frowning at him as if he had offended her.
"Bt if wee sk altrnatv and fnd..."
Talbot was interested. "What have you got in mind?"
"No signs of activity on Tlnou Beta, Constable Captain. I think the manoeuvre they performed was just what it looked like - using the gravity well for course alteration."
The Constable's work area is deep in the core of the ship, protected against all but the fiercest criminal onslaughts. Harsh greenish light, matching his homeworld sun, floods from irregular crannies of the ceiling of the crowded room, lighting piles of portable storage media, display pads, and wall panels covered with intricate predictive graphs and networks. It hoods his eyes with shadow, and reveals the patches of different colored skin as adaptations to the constant harsh directly overhead light of the Cylestane's tidally locked sun. His lips move thickly as he speaks, wrapping themselves oddly around the words, as if the Constable Captain finds them like food, to be tasted as spoken. These words he appears to find distasteful.
"Not so, I think. The arms perhaps they are running, or some other off-world support providing are they. Events will show. Withdraw the probe to the opposite side of the moon. Keep it there, watching. Eventually move they will. Then have them we will."
"Wait, the spy's moving..." Jill reports over the intercom, her voice loud in the vacuum helmet.
Talbot looks up from kneeling beside the large rock they have constructed in the open hangar. Stone peers into the propulsion orifice, fascinated, ignoring the call.
On the intercom, Talbot asks: "Where is it headed?"
A pause. "Over the horizon, I don't have enough for a projection yet."
"Keep an eye on it." He turns back to the rock and resumes making simulated sensor passes on it from various angles. Stone watches curiously. Its translator emits a rich baritone at odds with Stone's skeletal, insectoid appearance. "When you first arrived, I thought you had come in a stone. Now, you are making a stone to fool someone." It cocks its head at an extreme angle and then returns to normal. "Perhaps you knew how to penetrate the deceptions of the Mover because you are so good at it yourself?"
Talbot isn't sure what to make of this comment. Is it a joke? A sarcasm? A sign of disillusionment with the team, which might presage problems in cooperation?
"A joke, Stone?" he asks. He has learned not to take things for granted as meaning what first comes to mind. Certainly Stone is more sophisticated than it at first appeared.
"An observation."
He runs his sensor over the seams on the nose of the disguised probe. Jill and M'Ilu Ram have done an excellent job of blending them into the profile of the cratered rock. In flight, they will open and deploy multiple entry vehicles that will probe the atmosphere to localize the Mover.
"Of course, being good at it doesn't mean we like doing it. But we have no better choice, if we're to get the Mover."
"The spy is withdrawing back toward the Constable's side of the orbit." Jill reports. "But I don't have track on it any more through the moon, so they could be doing anything."
Talbot nods. Trust is in short supply right now. The Mover is dangerous, but it isn't the only danger.
The false stone spins through space in a eccentric orbit, its dull, mottled surface catching the light for brief muted moments. Its orbital profile suggests an asteroidal origin and a recent collision driving it in toward the sun. It is not an unusual story in this young system.
Into the shadow of the planet it dives, vanishing like an illusion. Moments later there is a distant shower of sparks as it breaks up on reentry.
The plot webs across the imaged planet as they stare in surprise.
"Nahht loclz." Wanr observes. His fur is fluffy, his eyes wide, seeking every photon, every quantum of information.
Talbot runs a hand across his bare scalp.
"How can it travel like that, so fast?" Jill wonders from the dark at the back of the room. She leans forward, shoulder on the doorframe, worried.
M'Ilu Ram is at the console, tuning parameters to improve the semantics. "Travel is not clear represented plot by."
Talbot leans down beside the massive head. "You mean it's just the wind, or something, dispersing the metabolites?"
"Something."
"Well, find out," Jill snaps, and leaves the room.
"We've definitely got a suspicious entry this time," the Constable mutters. He paces like a stalking animal under the harsh green lights. "But what source?"
"The plot is from the asteroid zones, but it has some anomalies. It could be collisions, or it could be something deliberately scrambling the trajectory."
"Pin it down. Them I want. Their location I want."
Talbot clings to handles that shudder with the energy of the entry wind. The pod loops widely in the force of a plasma envelope and upper atmosphere gales. He squeezes and pulls, trying to master the violence of the high speed fall. The world below swirls for a moment. Its forces compel his mind, and for a moment, his fear, and chagrin, are missing.
He suddenly finds motion subsiding, and the pod is plummeting like the meteor it counterfeits. The sky spreads slowly below, a pearl of clouds that forms a cold surface to the horizon, where the sun sinks away in sharp orange tones. He has another moment to spend regretting his insistence, to remember his promise to the Director. He remembers other conversations...
"If we're not getting sensible answers from the remotes."
Cloud sweeps over the canopy, and the pod is swathed in dark mist.
"The thing is everywhere."
"Unlikely it is to truly be everywhere."
"It must be interfering with the probes."
"Indcnts f sch capabaility nt prev sn. Nw dvlpmnt?"
"We don't know enough."
Sudden clarity and the clouds flash a dim ceiling above, lit from the scattered lights of a twilit planet below, as if the world were the sky, and the sky the ground, rocking gently.
Her cabin is filled with a soft fluted music. Jill and Stone are seated together on the floor, Jill cross-legged, and Stone in an awkward, folded, insectoid position, cylinder in her fingers, while she breathes gently into a flexible tube.
His displays image a field below, carpeted in tiny, bulbous plants. He knows this is the target, and he decelerates drastically. A brief moment of dizziness swirls through him and the blood rushes to his feet. He steadies himself and the pod; he pauses, with deep breaths, twisting slowly only meters above the ground. Then he gently lowers himself to touch it.
The pod splits and the sudden stink of organic air makes him sneeze with its remembered odors - for a moment. Then the smell is pleasant, and normal, with the richness donated by millions of living things. There are tiny lights lined along the left horizon. The clouds are a distant, soft-lit ceiling. Under his feet, the plants make a small squeaking sound as he moves. He looks around, eyes dark in the dark; and there is nothing special to see. Not even the world at war that he expects. A light streaks silently along the distant road.
He consults the detector in his hand and starts out toward the roadlights.
The road slopes down from ground level, bordered with tubes of deep bluish light. It descends into a tunnel whose walls are glistening tiles, patterned in shades of the same deep blue. Talbot steps into the shadowed light, cautiously. His shoes are soft, and they slap on the tile, echoing slightly as he steps, angled against the force of his hesitation.
He hears the sound of a car rushing down the roadway, and he turns. Through the reflections on the dome of the car, he can see the face of a woman. The woman does not see him, but she is hunched over the wheel, and her face is clenched in an intense grimace of fear. Her car whisks away into the dimness, painting a rapidly shrinking circle of light along the tunnel walls.
Talbot consults the detective. But its indications are confused, now. He looks around. Probably the tiles are interfering, or perhaps the tunnel is acting as some sort of unusual waveguide. His eyes rove across the ceiling - and stop. A black streak, irregular, branches across the roof from a break in the wall. He moves slowly along the walkway toward it, feeling a strange coolness on his hands. Another vehicle streaks past behind him, but he doesn't turn around. He draws the laser from his belt and checks the setting. He thumbs the focus to wideband and projects the beam against the tiles. In a moment, the ceramic breaks with a sharp crack under the temperature differential. Talbot holsters the laser and waits for the glowing tile to cool a little. He unslings the water bottle from his shoulder and uncaps it. He tosses a spout of water on the tiles and they steam - then shatter. A moment longer, and he clears them away with quick motions of his hands, trying not to be burnt.
Behind the tile, a thin mortar bulges with fine cracks that are almost invisible in the blue. When he pushes, it gives, flakes away, revealing a soft black mass. He knows the look of that substance. Flesh...
His hands are shaking. He steps back and bumps into the railing. He drops the water bottle, and absently bends down to pick it up again. He turns slightly and paces slowly, irregularly, backward toward the tunnel entrance. Then he twists and runs out onto the surface. The faint squeaking of the plants blurs beneath his feet into a hysterical whisper.
The breath rasps in his dry throat as he sees the pod loom up against the faint sky. For a moment his relief is fear. He pushes into the pod and the leaves fold around him. The sensors power up, and the pod augments his vision with its surfaces. He begins to lift, but as the ground begins to recede, there are traces of running figures converging on the pod.
Panicked, Talbot adds power to the lifters; for the moment he is careless of whether this will reveal him to the Constable. Alarms roar into his ears as small rockets strike the pod and explode near the drive section. He screams as the pod tips out of control, streaking across the plains...
The Constable stares away from the streak of Talbot's pod disappearing over the horizon. He turns toward the squad leader, who manages to look dismayed and smug at the same time, despite the unusual triangular geometry of its face.
"Sir, apologies incurred - the generous leader recalls the warning of the courteous subordinate referencing the improbability of success."
The Constable hates the dark. He is reminded of the constantly annoying habits of the squad leader's species. He turns with a sudden hand gesture cutting the air.
"This attitude is irrelevant. Track the vehicle immediately."
The pod is smoking wreckage at the base of an enormous succulent. Sprawled at some distance from the crumpled machine, Talbot lies, half covered with sublimating crash foam, blood seeping from scalp, arms, hands, and knees. The light of the rising sun, a rich bluish green tint, touches his closed eyelids. A shadow from another succulent moves slowly with the ascent of the sun, and finally touches his face. He stirs, twitches, and then his eyes shoot open with shock and fear. He tries to push to a stand, but the pain hits him then, and he collapses.
M'Ilu Ram crouched in the darkness, watching down-spectrum versions of the displays. He is afraid of what he infers from what he sees.
Talbot finds himself leaning up against a smooth trunk. Not far away is a road. From somewhere over the horizon comes a vague sound like distant thunder which unnerves him. He knows that it is no capability of his own which will keep him alive if the irrational flowers of bombardment spread in his direction. But he doesn't know which way to turn...
He staggers toward the road on uneven legs. Suddenly he stops. He realizes that what he finds on the road can be friend or enemy. He withdraws into the succulent forest, with the shadows wreathing his face. Aching with instability, his fear threatening any second to erupt into panic, he paces carefully through the dry remnants of succulent leaves decaying on the sand.
The sky darkens slowly, clouds clotting the sky and blocking the sun into occasional rays. Talbot is getting more and more hungry, but there is nothing to eat.
The wind picks up, rustling the dead leaves. Tiny sprinkles of rain clatter around him for a moment. He stands, oblivious, his exhausted mind elsewhere. Then the rain pours down in a sudden flood, soaking him to the skin.
His resistance is broken into sobs that shake him by the shoulders, and then curl him into a heap squatting on rain-soaked ground.
He hears a sound. A slightly musical clank that brings his head up. Then another, and another.
Strange pyramidal objects, golden orange in color, are thrusting up from the ground, opening, and spitting out clusters of yellow spheres that rattle on the dead leaves. Talbot watches, and finally realizes that he is watching something similar to the blooming of flowers in a desert after a long dry period. He feels the tension drain away. He laughs.
Small creatures rustle beneath the detritus. A few of them poke jointed appendages above the litter, scrabbling for the wet yellow spheres. More of them emerge, strange articulated shapes. They begin to fight. Talbot leaps to his feet, worried that their appetites might become carnivorous.
He hears the sound of a vehicle over the rain and occasional thunder. He crouches behind the barrel of a thick succulent. The car sweeps by, hissing over the wet pavement. Followed, a moment later, by another - but, from this one, several beings are leaning out into the rain, screaming, and firing energy weapons. Talbot flings himself back behind the barrel. Good thing he hadn't tried to flag down the traffic. Cold water rivulets down his cheek onto his chest, as he waits, panting.
"You know, Stone, before we visited your world, he wasn't like this. He wouldn't have rushed into something like this. Well, I have to take that back. He was never good at working with people, and lately he seems happier on his own. So, no change, there."
Jill had called the meeting in the early sunrise. Muted sunlight streams across the table until Wanr, more sensitive to the day than the others, chokes its brilliance with a control.
"This meeting," Jill begins, "may be difficult. We're going to be dealing with human actions, human behavior..." she looks around at them, trying to gather them together, but there expressions are more than usually impenetrable. "Perhaps it will be confusing, or perhaps you will be able to see things that, right now, are beyond me."
Stone shifted in its position against the wall.
"Does this have meaning?" it asks.
Jill sighs. "It's just a preamble, Stone. Putting things in context, so everyone understands what we're going to talk about."
Stone's eyes shutter with additional membrane. In many ways, she reminds herself, Stone is not a conceptual creature - or it least it fails to share certain meta-concepts...
m'Ilu Ram stands, then lies across the table, face pointed close to her. Its tripartite mouth gapes and seals. "Talbot, trouble is likely. We need action." It slides back to curl up in its bagseat.
Jill avoids an involuntary shudder. She knows that the aggressive, confrontational attitude indicates something corresponding to worry.
Stone speaks up from the corner. "Trouble is not evident. Talbot was involved in my growth, but it joined with him and changed him in response. He now will be grateful for the result that takes him to the world below to grow yet further into adult."
Wanr sighs and taps nervously on the desk, indicating confidence in what it is about to raise. "Sensors haf dsply energic discharges nner lnd st. Talbot not armed is. Coincidental, or attack. Problms cert on surface, so could be coincident."
Jill tries to let that sink in before she continues. "I don't know what made him sure there was no other way but going to the surface. But it was against the instructions we received from the Director. Now we've been waiting for more than a day - and no sign of him. I'd like suggestions as to what action we should take."
The ancient horizon of the moon is silent in the rain of radiation from the sun. Then, against the backdrop of stars, in a line above the horizon, come the searchers. Their prey lies, unsuspecting, in the shadow of the central peak.
He feels himself starving as he walks, though he knows it hasn't been long enough for that. The sun is westering into twilight. Earlier in the day, he had chopped at the bole of a succulent with a rock, and had sucked eagerly at the draining fluid, sweet and sticky on his lips and tongue.
Only hours before, the terrain had begun to dip down from the arid highland plateau, and he had followed the line of least resistance. Strange tangly plants, waving as if animated with a self-contained force, caught at his legs and feet like uncouth hands pulling at the fabric of a sleeve or a coat. They worried him faintly, barely rising above the endless dull roar of the pain in his knees and calves, the fatigue and despair that threatened his remaining energy.
Now, the landscape has given way to a more stable grassland, studded with greyish, bare wood trees that stand like giant bundles of twigs, looming above him. The sun paints them redly. Like blood, like sullen arteries, he thinks. The clouds catch the light for a moment and then recede into a silent violet stain. Desperately, he wants to stop. But if he stops, he is afraid that his thoughts will catch up with him. He is heading, with purpose, with hope of safety, into the worst of the war. Because there, among the purposeless violence, is his last hope of escape. Communications, aircraft, spacecraft... anything.
He knows he must stop for a while... rest. He leans back against the bundle of trunks of a tree, and slides slowly, resisting, to the ground. He feels the warm light painted cold on his face by a breeze. In the distance, there is a sudden, sporadic flashing, and, disconnected by distance, an echoic thunder rolling slowly over the dimming hills. Suddenly he is asleep.
He is awakened in the night by a strange, artificial sound. It is the sound of mechanical saws, biting into wood, not too far away. Under his back, the tree stirs. He shudders, and throws himself away from it. But it is just a faint spasm of dream.
The sound, though, is still there. He rubs his face with a dirty hand, feeling the grit on his skin like a cloth.
He stumbles in the dark. A root catches his foot, and a branch swats just above his eyes, knocking him backward. He bites his lip to keep from crying out. Closer now, there is light escaping between the ragged barrier of more closely spaced trees. A shudder takes him as he remembers another night in the forest, another presence, here too.
Closer now, he drops to his knees, looking around wildly, afraid of everything he can't see, but determined. He creeps forward to the barrier and the light. He gets lower, moving as quietly as he was once taught. The sound starts again, a ripping of wood under metal.
He peers between the spindly pseudotrunks.
Jill sits sprawled across a seat in the darkened control cabin, looking out on the sunbathed crater bottom beyond. Stone stands in the doorway, always more afraid of this room. It whispers.
"Are they close?"
"Yeah."
"Will they find us?"
"Maybe."
"What happens if so?"
"I don't know." Reflections of the landscape glint on the moist surface of her eye. "I guess we won't be helping Raoul."
Lights halo down from tall stands, pooling on the ground. Soft tendrils of moisture rise in their heat. Talbot watches as people bring cut wood from the shadows to brace the walls of a deep pit. Others, in the pit, are digging and hauling dirt.
He slumps against the bundled trunks, stomach growling. The activity below seems purposeless. Why are they doing it at this hour?
Exhaustion creeps inward from his hard, painful limbs. He blinks, trying to stay awake.
Suddenly, a rude grip drags him from a doze. He is twisted up, nearly to his feet, and confronted with an alien face. Crisp surface veins are harshly shaded by the light below. Yellow slit pupils are dilated in the dimness, looking closely into his eyes. A double mouth, one pulsing slowly, one pursed into a round opening, emits a stream of incomprehensible phonemes.
Talbot shakes his head in denial. No translators for his to work with. "I don't understand." He sees another of the same kind behind his captor. Are they all of this sort? Talbot knows that there are no natives on this world, but this species is also unknown to him. It may be hours before his translator can get enough to work out the language on its own.
The captor shakes him, and pushes him around toward the scene below. More sounds. Talbot's heart is pounding, but he thinks... At least I'm getting more language. He wants to run, but another hand closes around his arm. He looks down. Ten stocky fingers, double thumbs. Not a hope of getting free.
"Look," he tries, "I'm not going to harm you."
He is surprised, but his translator emits some sounds. It must be very confident of the language already, perhaps because of similarity to one already known, since he had never engaged the priority mode. Good thing too, since the priority mode "guesses" could do more harm than good in a volatile situation like this.
The others stare at him, as if shocked. Then they continue toward the work site, hooting and whistling among themselves. Gradually, as he stumbles in their grasp toward the pit, Talbot hears some words through the meaningless sounds.
"What's this?" snaps a voice from behind them. His arms are dragged around until he faces the source of the voice - a stocky young male human, sallow complexioned, a faint scar over his left eye. His language, whatever it is, instantly translates.
"Oorsliore urio by trees cdoosre observing." The hand on that side squeezes his arm in some rhythm with the sounds.
The human moves close and leers up at him. A waft of old breath wrinkles Talbot's nose.
"Funny color," the other mutters, introspectively. He reaches toward Talbot's face, but Talbot jerks away.
"Stop that," Talbot demands. "I'm not going to do you any harm. If you're engaged in something you don't want me to know about, that's OK. Just let me go, and you'll never hear from me again."
"Engaged?" the other hisses, as if talking to himself. "Engaged? A funny word." Suddenly his eyes clear, and he leans closer to Talbot. "You're the same damn color as the thing in the pit, I guess. Maybe you're some kind of thing he's made to spoof us. Eh?"
"I wasn't made by anyone other than my mother, thanks." The sound of blood in his ears is a presage of weakness. He feels his legs shaking uncontrollably.
"Well, let's go find out. After all, when things are in flux like they are, nothing is really certain until it's certain. And we'll be certain when we see how you and the thing in the pit get along, then." He turns and gestures to Talbot's captors, who tug him along, feet scraping on the dirt, toward the pit.
"Have you found the damn thing yet?" The man yells down into the pit.
"No.." comes a voice.
"Well, hurry up. We got a piece of the thing up here in a hurry to join with its self."
Time passes. Talbot wants to speak, to protest, but his exhaustion seems to have seized his throat and silenced him. He feels himself sagging, but he is unable to stop himself. In a dim haze he hears shouts, feels people clustering around, as others flee the pit. Then he feels a sudden shove, and plummets into blackness. The soft ground slaps him in the side of the head, and he goes away for a moment. He hears the sound of energy discharges from somewhere far above, then shouting and the clatter of running feet.
Risha leans back into the corner of the room, exhausted. The smell of ionization and scorched walls permeates the air.
Perhaps they are gone.
Or, perhaps not.
The fighting has continued all day, with the bandits trading energy beams with her until sunset. It was a conflict that had been intensifying for the last two weeks. Every day.
She runs her hands through wiry hair. For a moment she wishes she weren't so stubborn - that she could just walk out into the field of fire and end it. She is exhausted from constant vigilance, from waking at the slightest creak of the house on its foundations, from the few moments she could snatch for food and water, hardly tasted. But even as this though passes, her anger reasserts, and she clenches the weapon more tightly, her knuckles a faint pink.
It is her house, and she intends it to stay that way.
But there is a sound from the rear of the house. They must be trying to force an entry again. What if it is merely a feint? She cannot take the chance. Slowly she moves to a crouch. In the dimness, she steps carefully. Around the corner, and she sees the window pop out onto the floor. But no one follows it. What follows is instead a package of some kind, falling with a thump onto the window pane.
She knows what it is, in an instant. There is no choice, but to run forward, and to leap through the open window - just as the bomb explodes. The shockwave slaps her across the back in midair, and she spirals in the flames for a soundless moment, waiting for events to join her. Then the ground smashes across her face, and shoulder, and she is up again, trying to run. But she accomplishes only a half motion before her leg collapses under her with a shriek of pain. Her ears are silent as the debris rains mysteriously around her. Her eyes are partly blinded by echoing greenish shadows that blot away any detail from the night. She knows she could be dead at any moment.
She moves her energy weapon to her other hand, a motion accomplished by dim vision, since she can feel almost nothing. She does not want to fire. They might see her beam, or the sight laser. If she does not move, they may leave her for dead.
It would be as senseless as anything else they have done. So she waits, panting, hidden by the small towers of kree foliage. Gradually, her senses return.
She decides she must have fallen asleep for a moment. When she next notices events, her vision has improved, she can see and hear the fire of the broken home burning behind her. There are tears running down her face, salty on her lips. Her house, so slowly and carefully constructed, so fine and perfected in its design. Now a ruin cracking with the last vestiges of flame. She finds herself worrying about what Rantar will say - but she knows she may never hear from him again. He may be dead on the plain, for all she knows. But she spares no time in wondering, because survival is the only item of motivation left.
Slowly she crawls forward, away from the fire. The sandy soil rubs and abrades her forearms as she moves. She holds the weapon out in front of her, in case she needs it.
She stops, remembering the garage. A horrible smell of burning plastics, composites, and wood wafts across her -- she smothers her choking in aching and battered hands, dropping the weapon. She picks it up again, and clutches it hard. She turns to crawl back toward the burning. In the darkness she hears the slamming of doors and the roar of the bandit's plains jumper, then silence as it moves away.
She waits silently, for a while. Then she begins to crawl again.
The garage is subsurface, with a ramp running down to the door. She pauses at the edge, heart pounding suddenly.
She gathers herself to her feet, carefully, waiting for her pain. Her ankle wobbles, with sharp spikes lancing up through her calf. But she staggers forward down the slope, anyway. The shadows close above her. She spins with a sudden pain and falls into the wall for an ugly-faced moment. More slowly and carefully, she creeps down, with the wall for support.
Something hits her forcefully, full body. She gasps - but it is just the door, hidden in the flickering dark.
She looks around, eyes wide and pale in the dark. Her lips are drawn and feral, but her scraped cheekbones are high and clearly formed, and her dark skin contours smoothly from chin to scalp like a precision model. She turns back and slips the catch to the access door, panting, gun tight. Everything within lights automatically, and she is blind for a second. She leans through the door...
No one there.
She steps in and staggers to the door of the plains jumper. She looks around for anything useful. Some tools, packaged food - laboriously she loads them into the back of the cab. She keeps remembering Rantar, because the sight and smell of the jumper won't let her forget. She doesn't realize she is crying until she sees a tear drip to the seat.
The jumper bursts into darkness on huge wire woven wheels. The light of the flames shatters across the dash through the canopy, fade, then vanish as she rolls down the rise.
An erosion gully slams the wheels against the carriage, throwing her forward toward the control panel. Frantically she stops the jumper.
She knows she can't drive any longer without lights. And for a moment, she isn't sure she wants to.
I could head into the valley, she thinks. Go to the city. But what for? The city is in chaos. I could go back into the mountains, but the bandits are between me and the heights.
She sighs and leans back in the seat, its form creaking under the pressure of her stretch. The endless awareness is taking its toll, and she sees the panel blur for a moment...
Finally, she leans over and roots through some underpanel storage compartments by the light of the displays. There - night goggles. She slips them over her eyes, and the outside becomes a scene like a slightly strange daylight, lit from the cluster stars that cloak the sky.
A speck of warmth moves shimmering near the horizon. She zooms the goggles until a staggering figure is visible glowing pale against the dusky sky. A gasp fills her chest for a moment. Maybe it is Rantar?
A flash lights the horizon - part of the distant war, backlighting the anonymous figure. She feels it as if it is aimed at her. At Rantar. She remembers a slap across her face, his look of sudden, startled hatred, as if he had realized that she were something alien, something awful. And in that moment she wondered if she were. If there were something she had done, that she didn't remember, that made him blame her... It had to be her fault - everything had been fine; even though the war was spreading toward them. She had wanted anything except to blame him. For a moment.
Until she drove him out. She had been sobbing as she struck him, forcing him to the door.
"Never!" she had screamed. "Never are you going to do that to me!"
She shakes her head, and the image of the landscape wavers. She sees in her mind the image of his blue skin, harsh features, and three dark eyes. The lines bracketing his narrow, thin-lipped mouth, which would pull back when he kissed her - a human custom he had come to enjoy... with her.
She can almost feel his arms wrapped across her shoulders, in a silent weight she had not allowed herself to miss.
Her hands shift the jumper into motion, skidding around toward the figure stalking the horizon.
One moment is not going to destroy her life.
Talbot never sees the shape bounding toward him across the plain. He has fallen, again, rolling down a short slope. Some endless determination orders his muscles to rise yet again. Some final reservoir of energy allows it. His consciousness is lucid, but disconnected.
Suddenly he is confronted with the shape of the jumper. A light comes to life as Risha leaps out. She seizes his shoulders and glares into his face. "Who are you?" she shouts, as if he were deaf. She sees his face, crisp with burns, his eyes, dim and reddened with exhaustion, but it doesn't mean anything to her, except that it isn't Rantar's face.
"Who are you?!" she screams.
His lips are slow to respond, but they curve in a faint and ruined irony. His voice is a harshened whisper. "Ma'am, I have been running, hiding, thrown into a pit, set on fire and survived. One thing I have learned is WHO I AM. There's no damn need to shout."
She laughs, just a small chuckle. She slips into laughter, as if relieved of an intense burden. The laughter runs its course, as Talbot watches curiously. If he were stronger, he thinks, he might like her face... though its expressions seem too close to the edge of madness for safety.
His consciousness wavers, and through the fog of hunger and pain, he sees her blurred features move from laughter to concern.
The little hospital is still open, lit from below by neon lines along the roadside. Nearby, an older, domed building smolders, tiny flames still flickering, even as the dark figures of firefighters rove with portable extinguishers.
Two men carry Talbot from the jumper at a run, one on each side of a flying stretcher, Risha following more slowly, almost reluctantly, behind.
She stops at the iris, leaning on its frame, feeling her own raggedness keeping her back from the brightness inside. But she stirs and follows, and the leaves slip shut at last, behind her.
A thin, young physic looks up from where he examines Talbot under a spotlight in the triage section. His teeth bare into a quick, bright smile. "Risha, dear. A surprise. What's going on?"
She sighs. "I brought him in. Found him on the steppe."
"Out looking for Rantar? No sign, still?"
Her hands start shaking. "Our house is gone, too. Raiders - tonight."
He glares down at Talbot. "One of them?"
"No. I just found him. He said he was burned."
"There's some slight burn, but he seems unthreatened. Don't worry, we'll put him on drip for dehydration and anti-infection, and let him sleep. And you? You look like something a jumper ran down."
She manages to find a smile somewhere. "You are SO complimentary."
"What about the raiders? I think we've still got a revenge team somewhere in town, I could talk to Craenshon..."
"They're long gone. Besides, what good would it do? Things are just coming apart, Kahn. I'm so sick of it. What are we going to do?"
He walks slowly over to her and searches her face and posture. He places a gentle hand on her stiffened forearm. "You're not doing anything except getting some sleep." He waves an attendant over. "Put him on EX-34p. Find Risha here someplace to sleep. There's got to be room somewhere."
"Not much after the bombings," the woman replies, pale features sharp and tense. She looks Risha over with a professional eye, and her expression slowly becomes more sympathetic. "Oh, well, we'll find something. Maybe in the midwife's wing. Give me a syke to set the drip..." She walks over toward a cabinet past Talbot's stretcher.
"Who's she?" Risha asks, sotto voce.
"Out of town," Kahn replies, leading her aside. "We're short on nurses, but the word is getting around that things are a little more stable here, and the right kind of people are coming in."
She swallows against an uncomfortable dryness. Kahn should never know how much she wishes she had come into town a megahour ago. "Yes, but you're still getting bombings here, aren't you..."
The line of his mouth levels into grimness. "There are bombing and shellings everywhere, though who knows from who or why anymore. At least the townspeople seem a little more stable."
She can't stop herself. She catches a fold of his shirt in her fist. "But how long, how long are we going to stay normal? How much longer have we got?" Her fist is punching into his chest and his slight body shudders with the blows. He seizes her fists in his hands, and it is not that hard to stop her. She stands apart, tears on her face. He enfolds her in his arms. His eyes are narrow with anger and determination. He looks up at the approach of the technician. "Come on, Risha, I'll find you a room."
An ambulance whines into the parking area, and the iris slams open behind them. They step into the quiet of the dim corridor, as the sirens die away and new voices start shouting.
Talbot wakens in a room, a bed, beside a dark window with lights and fires burning sullenly beyond. There is silence everywhere.
"Doctor Kahn to SCU, stat; wake up doctor." The distant sound filters through the curtains from outside.
Talbot stares around wildly. Where is he? He remembers nothing since being dragged to the pit, which strikes his mind in a sudden rush of context.
He must have been rescued.
He tries to sit, but his muscles protest, and he feels something tied to his arm - a light bottle and pad.
"Hey, anybody?" he tries to yell, but his voice chokes. What a mess I am, he thinks. He notices that his clothes have been changed for a loose white costume. His translator! He rolls himself over until his legs slide past the edge of the bed, and the gravity helps pull him to a sitting position, legs dangling. He waits, panting, for his heart to slow.
Finally he reaches up to massage his cool bare scalp, below which he can feel his brain aching. He had been reduced to the most daily living - timeless and present; desperate and dangerous. Now, he thinks, he should stop for a moment, but the relentless strangeness of his new life is bearing down on him again. He can feel it again. Endless change. Life.
He is afraid to try to walk - his legs feel distant, like sticks. So, clutching the edge of the bed he slowly lowers his feet to the floor, and gradually adds weight until he is standing, gasping, weaving ever so slightly from side to side with the tiny adjustments of his muscles.
There are footsteps in the corridor beyond the curtain. Someone steps through, and a faint light glows from the curtain walls, silhouetting the figure.
"So... you're up. How do you feel?" It is a woman's voice, tart and dry with strange throaty vowels, meaning emanating from a table beside the bed.
"Yes," he whispers. He slumps back against the edge of the bed. It is the translator. But he understands a little of the language. It is Asparti, a subdialect of Cospuk developed on this world by immigrants. He leans down to the table and picks the pendant. Slowly, he puts it over his head and settles it on his chest.
"Who are you?" he asks, forehead creased with the effort.
"Risha," she replies. "I brought you here."
"I thought you'd be gone home."
"I don't have a home." Her voice is harsh, denying pain. "I'm helping here tonight. The Irrationalists bombed a bookstore, and the doctors need help."
"So you're a helper," he mutters, too tired to hold his head strictly.
She wanders slowly into the narrow enclosure, looking around, looking at him. "I don't want to spend my life bailing out boats, if that's what you mean. But when the ship is sinking, you have to save yourself, and the pieces of your world that count."
Her phrases catch at some intuition within him. "Seashore?" he asks.
She turns to him, startled. "What?"
"From the seashore? Boats, you mentioned boats."
"No, the South Panka Lakes. We sail and fish, and transport. Why?"
He is breathing a little hard, but the effort is clearing his mind. "Just curious. Thanks for helping me."
"You're welcome." She stops her roving over by the window. "Maybe you should sleep."
"Slept enough. Maybe too much. Thought I wasn't going to wake up. Won't ever sleep like I used to, again."
She leans toward him, peering as he speaks. "You're whispering." Her teeth are bright in the dark. "Why?"
"Translator. Don't want to be louder than the output."
She sways back in delight. "You're a spacer? I heard they always whispered. What were you doing out there? Shouldn't you be at Port Leonardo, or somewhere?" Her voice has changed, lighter, now that it is animated again.
"I suppose I should. I crashed, north of here, I think."
"Hungry?"
"Thirsty," he admits. "Maybe hungry after."
"Come on, I know where we can get a meal." She tugs at his arm.
The cafeteria is small, just a few tables by a long window onto nearly complete darkness. First light is just beginning to touch the sky with faint fingers of hidden sun. For a while, there is only the sound of utensils and the smell of hot tea.
Talbot is uncomfortable, and he finds himself looking out at the hidden sky, or around the quiet, darkened room. The food is strangely spiced, but not unpleasant. The skin bottle is awkward on his forearm. He feels vulnerable in the hospital clothes.
Hospitals, he thinks. What a strange, backward concept. Nothing more than that could remind him of the frontier. Dangerous places, filled with sick people, a sign that medical technology is so primitive that it must be centralized, and a sign of inadequately developed delivery systems. Well, at least they hadn't operated on him...
"So," Risha asks, and his eyes swing back to her, "What brought you here?"
He has decided that his answers to this will be discreet. Everyone on this planet remains an unknown quantity, particularly with regard to their knowledge of The Mover. His last experience had been the most terrifying he ever remembered, even beyond... the deaths. Because this time he had been helpless, this time, it had been his life at the mercy of complete irrationality.
"Well," he replies, "I crashed." She eyes him, as if expecting more. "You know, the traffic control around here is in chaos."
She looks puzzled for a moment. Then her expression clears. "No, I mean why did you come. To Induran."
"Oh. Business. Our company has an office here. We were checking in on the progress of some research."
She starts up. "Were there others?" she gasps. "I'm sorry..."
"No, no. I'm a shuttle pilot. I was making a pickup. Just me." He relives for a moment the crash, the endless walking... He shakes himself out of it, and returns his eyes to her concerned look. "I'm OK," he reassures her.
She wonders why she was worried for a moment. "Must have been the systems failures, eh? Everything's been up and down the last month."
They are silent except for the small sound of eating. The horizon beyond the window starts to burn with immanent sunrise. Behind them, the hospital is beginning to stir.
"Listen," he asks, "I've got to get to a spaceport. What's close?"
She considers for a while, watching the sunrise through the slowly darkening glass. "Probably Riggers' Cove is the only one you might get to without flying. And right now, flying..." She pursed her lips. "Some of the rebels have artillery and missiles. Not that the roads are that good either."
He sips the tea, feeling it in his throat. A doctor wanders in, pours herself a cup, and leans against the counter behind them. Doctor Kahn follows, his face suddenly pale and lined in the sunlight as he squints. He mixes his tea and chats with the other doctor in low tones. After a moment, he notices the two at the table. He walks over and smiles at Talbot.
"Better already, I see."
Talbot is uncomfortable at the scrutiny, but the doctor's face is likeable, so he forces a smile. "Yeah, thanks. I appreciate everything."
"Join you?"
"Sure. When can I get out of here?"
"Glad to come, gladder to leave. Well, you look all right. The burns are " he peers, lips pursed, "better."
"They hurt."
"That will be true for a while, I'm afraid. Say, you're speaking the language a bit yourself. Spacer, aren't you? Thought I recognized the translator."
"Yes. Shuttle pilot. I want to get back off-world as soon as I can get a flight."
"Don't blame you." He sips his tea, making a slight face at the bitterness. "Riggers Cove's probably the closest, but it's a good seven hundred klicks out. You have transport?"
Talbot sighs. "No."
"Funds?"
"No." It seems hopeless. His hands clench and release in the sudden sun on the table top. He looks at Risha. "Could I impose on you for a drive?"
She is surprised. "No," she says shortly. "That's impossible."
"But why? Listen, I don't have access here, but at a spaceport I'll be able to get company funds. You'll be well reimbursed."
"I have my husband to search for. I can't be tramping all over the countryside. I've wasted enough time bringing you here." She stands suddenly and strides to the window, where she subsides, waiting, staring out.
The doctor's face remains impassive. Talbot wonders what story lies behind their interaction.
Finally Khan speaks. "It's going to be dangerous getting there. There are all kinds of random military actions occurring. I doubt if there are many away from home who know who their enemies are. There's a semi-guided ground trans system - I think it's ClakCo - but they're irregular." He seems to consider for a while. "What net is your company on?"
"Here? I don't know for sure. You've heard of Radelix Geodesic?"
"Oh... I should have guessed."
Talbot drums fingers on the tabletop. His tiredness pulls a yawn. "What do you mean?"
"Well, it explains some of what happened to you."
"How?"
"You don't know? Everyone down here knows the trouble started with an escaped import from Radelix. I wouldn't mention the name much if I were you."
"It doesn't seem to bother you," Talbot replies carefully.
"I'm not happy about it. but rumors are rumors. Besides, what kind of import could make people act insane? Bio? Chem? I'm a man of fact. I'll wait for evidence. Besides, even if it were true, I'm sure it's not your fault."
Talbot sips tea to cover his expression.
Kahn sighs. "Well, a trans ticket isn't that expensive, and I suppose I'll have to do without your paying me for patching you up. I'll front you some funds to get you to Rigger's cove. Do me a favor?"
"Anything," Talbot replies in a hushed gasp.
"Send me some funds when you get to the Cove. I need what I can get to keep this place going."
Talbot watches Risha moving uneasily against the darkened window. Her movement reflects his discomfort.
"Yes. I'll do that."
The doctor pushes to a stand. "I'll get my code. Have some breakfast, and then we'll get you set to go."
Risha turns to glare at them. "Sooner the better, so I can be on my way."
Talbot feels oddly empty as he watches Risha's jumper pull away from the station. The sky is overcast, but the heat is oppressive. He wonders why he feels anything for her. Maybe no more than a gratitude unresolved? He smears at sweat across his cheek, turns, and steps into the transport module. The glass hisses shut behind him and removes the brutal heat.
He settles into a seat. The module starts away, smoothly accelerating to a remarkable speed. Talbot smooths a stack of currency between his thumb and forefinger, enjoying the feel of it, the intricate pictures. Money is rarely needed shipside, and only occasionally planetside.
Foliage shadows whisk across his face as the sun sinks slowly past the noon line.
He switches to the entertainment system, but the broadcast channels are in chaos. The few that remain are transmitting emergency information, apparently from recordings. He begins to wonder if he'll find anything left at Rigger's Cove. The disaster and chaos are spreading.
The slight movement and the tension makes him exhausted, and he finally curls up on a couch at the side. He feels ashamed to be tired, as he slowly slides into sleep again.
Moonlight delineates a distant complex of baroque buildings, mostly unlit. The transport module chimes to announce approach to Riggers' Cove. Talbot stirs on the couch, eyelids heavy and reluctant. Then he remembers and starts up. Ahead, he sees the sporadic lights of residences lining hills that front the cove. Beyond, the areas of industry are blacked out, with only the occasional navigation lights winking solemnly from buildings and antennae. The city seems to crawl up toward him as he worries.
No air traffic visible. No launches. Minimal ground traffic. At least there are no fires visible.
He thinks of Risha again, wonders if she has found her husband wandering across the steppe. He finds himself smiling without knowing why.
How is it, he wonders, that some remain immune to the effect of the Mover? Why didn't he and Risha instantly hate each other? Is it part of the way the Mover functions, to make some cleave together, so there will be groups that can fight? Or is it a weakness in the Mover mechanism? A mutation, like its spread?
A building, partly burned away, slides past, its torn shell silhouetted against the pale green street lighting.
He begins to plan to steal a ship. Private craft are code keyed, but commercial transports are secured mostly by the complexity of the knowledge required to fly them. He will need to know the layout of the port, find some orbital path resources, get a clearance. How to get back to the moon, Tlnou Beta, without being spotted? Is the constable watching for unauthorized launches? Surely refugees would be allowed to leave. Talbot wonders if perhaps he can erect a cover on that basis. But what would justify refugees going to Tlnou Beta, which is completely barren of any installation?
The vehicle slides into a berth by a platform under garish lights. Half of the lighting units are dull with age, some are dark and split open, but the rest cast harsh shadows through the canopy. Instinctively, he presses his hand to the pocket that contains his few items - the small roll of cash, the translator... a network address for the account of Dr. Kahn, representing a fantastic weight of debt.
There are a few people on the platform. Most stand listlessly, but their eyes follow the vehicle until it stops, and he emerges. One individual starts toward him diffidently, eyes cast down, and passes, stepping down into the transport. The canopy shuts softly and the vehicle drifts back onto the reserved road. Talbot tries to walk away with a demeanour of normality. His shadow shifts beneath him and reaches ahead. The others avoid looking at him, and he is nervous at their silence. He feels them like silent predators, not looking, because they know where he is at any moment, and confident that he will be theirs when they decide to pounce.
He reminds himself that they are city people. In the city, people provide each other with space, because they are, themselves, feeling crowded.
But an odor of madness seems to cling to the street beyond the platform, like stepping off the end of the world.
He stops at a kiosk for a map of the city. The automated system helps him produce one with a routing to the spaceport. He examines the glowing smartsheet with some dismay. The distance is fairly large, and he is exhausted. He tries to think clearly. Perhaps he can access company credit, and obtain personal transport. Turning back to the kiosk, he signals his interest. There is a pause, which he spends looking first this way, then that, up and down the road. A personal vehicle hisses past, canopy opaqued, its sound startling him.
The kiosk requests his account identifier and passkey. Talbot chooses to provide retinal print, which will automatically link him to any accounts he might have available. He fits his eye to the socket and endures the dim flash. Then he waits.
Some of his central accounts, established on his prior visit, are available to him, though there are troubling discrepancies compared to his memory of the transactions. Nonetheless, he keys a payment with extras through to Kahn's account.
While he waits for the transaction to go through, a quiet sound behind him seizes his attention. A vehicle slides to a stop in the road beside him. A thin, dark-skinned human of late middle age emerges and hurries over.
"I'm so glad I found you in time," he gasps. His hand snakes out and grabs Talbot's wrist.
"Who are you? What are you talking about?" Talbot snaps. He pulls his arm from the other's grasp.
"I'm Lodekar, from the regional office. Boy, are you lucky I was around when the call came in. Come on, you can't stay here. They've cordoned off this area. It's only for paleskins."
"What! What are you talking about?" He sweeps his hand across the kiosk, disconnecting.
"No time, come on," Lodekar steps back toward the car.
"Show me some identification." Talbot snarls. "Then I'll think about it."
Lodekar sighs with an exaggerated patience, and hurries over, producing a hologrammatic card. "What do you think, I'd lie to you? Like you aren't a fellow, eh? Now, are you satisfied? Eh? Let's go?"
"All right," Talbot hurries to the vehicle, alarmed by Lodekar's insistence. The canopy slides shut over him as he takes his seat - just as a projectile impacts on the top of the clear dome. Lodekar's acceleration shoves Talbot back into the seat.
"It's not just the humans who are fragmenting. Paleskins, slants, darkboy fellahs, sure. But the Christarphi are factionalizing on symmetry and blueness. The Inkstar Confederacy priest guys are having a mortar war with the military allied to the Scientific Regulators. Interbreeds and platonics are splitting up, fighting, even killing each other. The place is a mess."
Pale green street lighting flees past the bottom of the canopy, garishly reflecting Talbot's worried face back from the dark clear.
"I don't know what's happening. I've been here for decards, and it was a nice place to live, know?"
Talbot turns to him. Lodekar's chin is stubbled and grooved, and his teeth look yellow even in the light of the dash. The whites of his eyes are reddened and wide.
Talbot asks, "How'd you know to come get me?"
"Some programmer at central was smart enough to tie account access to the regionals as an alarm before the internet partitioned. We get local accesses - sometimes. Got you. Good thing you're a darkboy, though. I'm having a hard time stomaching all the slants we get in here off the ships from Slobain; and the slopeheads and bug piles drive me nuts. I help 'em all, but it feels better to be helping a fellah, don't you figure?" He weaves through a knot of sudden traffic, intent on driving.
Talbot sighs and stares back out the window. Somehow he can barely stand talking. The Mover is reaching far and subtly.
"Is there any way I can get off this place? I've got a ship in orbit to get back to."
"Orbit? Where's the ship? I heard Ground Warfare took out the stations. 'Course that's just a rumor, I guess, because the press isn't doing much since the purge. But the Port's mostly down. Jurisdictional dispute and nobody's maintaining or fueling, or, probably, clearing even."
"But there are company ships here? Ships you could get me access to?"
Lodekar chews his lip, uncertain, thinking as he drives. "I never had anybody want to do that. Mostly I've been funneling them onto transport to the mainland. Central office. You sure you don't want to do that?"
"I'm a pilot," Talbot feels a sudden desperation at the wrangling. "I can fly it if you can get me to it. I've got a Director waiting my report upcurve." He hopes this bureaucratic appeal for sympathy will do what it takes to refocus Lodekar.
Finally he senses Lodekar come to a decision. " All right, I can go with the flux. You want to try to eat, rest, anything before?"
Talbot grins. "Yeah, all of the above. But I'll be happy with some food and a bit of relief. Then you get me on a ship, and we'll all be happy."
Reed paces the tiny dimensions, again, and again. The harsh greenish light is unsuited to her, and the bathroom appliances are not only strange, but, perhaps, actively threatening. Soon, she knows, she'll have to experiment. Damn Constable.
Suddenly a wall vanishes onto a room with brighter light. She laughs with a joyous abandon as she sees Tranis.
"Director, am I happy to see you!"
"Happiness in the midst of disaster is an inappropriate reaction, Gillian. Come with me, now. We have only a short time to reduce the scope of our problem. Talbot has taken a ship and is heading for Tlnou Beta."
She was sure that when she first saw him again, she would be happy. Instead, she slaps his face in an uncontrollable eruption of anger.
Talbot stands, guilt in posture and expression. But she sees something else, which she has never seen in him before. Pride.
"Listen," he says, " I have to tell you about it. I know I couldn't contact you, but you don't know what I found."
"You found nothing," she snaps. "Nothing."
"You weren't there, how do you know?"
"Believe me, I know." Suddenly, surprisingly, she winks at him. "You didn't find anything of interest right now." Her eyes rove the green-illumined waiting room.
Then he realizes. They are still playing the game. Who's going to know what, when. Us versus them. He palms the cool grey wall. His hand has a rich color against its neutrality. Darkboy, he thinks. He looks at Jill. Paleskin. The thought is like a contaminant. He shies away from it.
"You should be worrying about the level of trouble you and we are in. The Director is likely to strip your skin with a dull knife and hang it up for the newvies to learn from, at the rate you're going."
He sighs. "You're right. When do we get out of here?"
"Now." She tugs at his wrist. His hand is shaking. She stares at it. He pulls back into himself to find her looking at him as if trying to penetrate his thoughts and experiences with the force of her blue eyes' fixity.
"I'm sorry," he says. "I'm tired. Let's go."
The shuttle bay anteroom is home to Talbot. The sight of the cool mottled light and the simulated stone walls arouses an unfamiliar emotion. For a moment, he is caught between one step and the next. A tear slips from his eye and he wipes it. It dries in a cool fern of sensation across his cheek.
The Director's voice is its usual wispy tone. "They let you go because Radelix asked them to. Because we promised to discipline you. We also lodged a complaint with their command regarding actions we discovered they had taken against you while you were on the surface. That didn't hurt."
Jill looks at him sharply, realizing there are thing she does not yet know.
"What actions?"
Talbot wishes he could smile, but the best he can manage is a strange, tight expression. "I think she means when they shot me down. Or ordered it. I don't know which."
The Director's small face is not smiling with pleasure or with tension. Instead, it looks simply alien, as if the human-like characteristics of a mask were suppressed. "This doesn't affect how I or Radelix view your desertion of your team."
Now it is Talbot's turn to be shocked, as the full import of what he had decided to do, and its appearance to others, makes itself felt. "Desertion? I didn't run out on them. We had to find out what was going on down there. The remote probes were little help, and we weren't getting anything by hiding passively on Beta." He plants his hands on the tabletop and stares at them. When he lifts them away, the ridges of his palmprint are left behind for a moment, like a ghost that fades into nothingness. I'm sweating, he thinks wildly. But it's cool in here. I need some rest. Why can't I rest before I have to go through this? Why does everything have to be a damned crisis? "And I did find out. You're not going to like it. It's unbelievable." I don't believe it, and I lived it.
"The probes show it had reproduced." The Director replies, startling him. "Oh, yes, it's quite obvious, given the profiling you ran against it. At least we had that much if you never made it back from your jaunt."
"Why didn't you tell us?" Jill demands.
Why didn't he? Didn't he? "Didn't I?"
"No, you didn't. You just kept saying the data were inadequate and we needed more information from the surface than the probes were going to get."
"I don't know," he replies. He rubs a hand across his forehead. "I don't know why I didn't. I thought I did."
"So, is that all?" The Director demands.
"Hmm? All? No. No, not in the least - something's happened to it down there. It isn't reproduction. Really. It's growth. I mean, the Mover isn't a Mover anymore - not an animal. It's more like... I don't know, a coral, maybe. It's spreading throughout the planet, like it's becoming part of the planet. I found part of it underground, in a tunnel, like a web. Some people found it buried under the ground near where they lived, another place. That's where I got burned. I don't know how they figured out where it was... but they did. And the closer I was to one of these centers, the stranger and more chaotic everyone was acting. It's like the thing is out of control, running away. Positive feedback? Mutation? Cancer? It's dangerous, and every minute is that much less time before it takes everything."
They are looking at him as if he is the one out of control.
Finally, the Director responds. "I suppose I do find this hard to believe. You seem exhausted, Raoul. Why don't you get some food and some rest before the full debriefing. Then we'll think about things and let you know our decision."
"Decision? We have to find some way to get rid of this thing. We can't wait."
"Not that decision, Raoul."
That stops him in mid-speech.
"What decision, then?"
"Whether you're going to stay with Radelix or not."
He sits in his room, at the foot of the bed, and realizes how bare it is. Except for the door painting, he has done little to make the room his own. As if his bitterness had made him keep the walls bare, to remind him of how little he belonged here. And since he had begun to feel differently, there had been no time to make changes.
Maybe I should have the door painting changed, he thinks. Dali is really not something that fits, anymore.
But the thought is idle, when he may not even be here for much longer.
Being fired. It wasn't something he ever thought about. Where would he go? Contract usually stated nearest habitable world, station, or intership transfer. He didn't want to be stranded on Major. That would be a death sentence. He doesn't want to leave.
But he knows the choice isn't his to make. The Director will decide, with a cold alien logic that will dissect his motives, ignore his reasoning as excuse... there isn't much hope. What can he do, but try to prepare?
His fists strike the bed. He pushes to stand.
Leave this? Leave an incredible danger? Leave Risha and Kahn, and even Lodekar to die in the endless war and chaos that are sure to come? And how long would it be until a ship would carry a piece of this thing somewhere else, to continue the hour, until everything in the Geodesic was crumpled under its weight.
Then he realizes that he has done this same thing. That it is his fault. That maybe it was meant to happen that way. The designers of the Mover had known intelligent life well. And had hated it.
He throws himself back down on the bed and buries his face in the pillow. With a sudden angry gesture, he cuts the lights out, and huddles, shivering, in the dark, consumed with despair.
The world of Tlnou Major wheels carelessly through the depths, its continents and oceans unmarred. Over its poles, the aurorae respond to the urgings of the solar wind. The sensors of the two ships in orbit study the chaotic events on the land below, record the transmissions of the conflicts between the sea colonies, watch the hulks of the stations and their retinue of abandoned ships.
The conference room wall shows the globe as it would seem if the wall were a window. Talbot describes his experiences in a dry, factual voice, watched by the Director, Jill, and Hallison. They scratch notes of their own symbologies into tablets, questioning. They restate the questions in times and ways calculated to reveal any lie.
The Director questions with full attention, but in the way allowed by the minds of the Tereniades, follows the conceptual content with one thread of thought, and memories of the angry conversation with the Constable with another.
The pressure to give up on Raoul is very high. She wonders if Atrenn's confidence was warranted. She has allowed that confidence to survive Atrenn's death, despite misgivings. It had seemed that she was justified. But this irresponsible act... It seems irresponsible. She does not want to be disposed one way or another, but it is difficult. She can not let another make this decision; she can not allow anyone else to complete the sequence she had begun.
But her confidence must show another justification, or her own place may be threatened.
Talbot finishes his account, insisting on a quarantine, on full disclosure to the Constable. The Director sighs. So many fragments, so many patterns, but what is the actual weave?
If he is right, and telling truth, and interpreting with justice, then she must take action. More information is needed.
She contacts the Analytical Office. The wall dissolves into the office of Waylandcorrig, a respected analyst on staff.
Waylandcorrig is a being of moderate stature, chitinous in exoskeletal appearance, with several mobile, rectangular pupiled eyes on stalks. A fringe of spidery limbs around a floor-skirting shell twitch rhythmically as if in impatience. It turns from its work surface to face them.
"Director," it hisses quietly, its translator of the highest quality. Its manipulators, artificially controlled implants, swing in a gesture of formal respect.
"Your evaluation of the sensor information?"
"The creature is currently emitting metabolic products from a number of sites across the primary continent. The products are listed in this display - " it waves and the list appears on the wall. "- and this summarizes the distribution, animated across the past six hours, as you requested."
"This appears to be some kind of web, Waylandcorrig."
"Indeed, Director." The voice appears to exude pleasure. "The sources cannot be discrete, even if they were in motion. The metabolic effects appear to pulse along the observed network with a certain timeliness. However, we do not yet know what is being taken in to produce the metabolic activity shown. Note that the area covered is roughly one third of the planet, stretching from the city complexes in the south, to the northern steppe."
"Is the network... growing?" Talbot asks, urgently.
Waylandcorrig twists swiftly to face him, half rising from its crouch, and then settling back again - the motion of a predator.
"The network is growing. Slowly."
The Director swivels to regard Talbot. She must remind herself for a moment that the smile he exhibits is triumph, not tension. This is why her only other advisors in this matter are human.
"What else I should know about?" The Director asks.
"The - whatever it is - it is a source of some unusual energies. The frequency combinations are quite unnatural, and many of them strain the bandwidth of our equipment. I have members working now on augmentation of the receptors, which should be available in a hour or two."
Jill sits forward. "Is there any apparent function to these radiations?"
"Not as far as I can see," Waylandcorrig replies. "Perhaps some of them would resonate with brain function frequencies for some phyla, but as we all know, energic transfer is insufficient for telepathy - so these energies could only partly account for the effects on the population."
The conversation is so dry and detached that Talbot finds it hard to remember that they are not discussing a simulation.
Finally, he demands of the Director, "Are you satisfied?" But the Director does not answer directly. Instead, she thanks Waylandcorrig for the information, and returns the wall to the view of the planet. After a moment of reflection, her inverted teardrop head bent over her notes, she calls up the diagram of the metabolic trace network in place of the planetary image. She watches it for a while, shifting it to the red she finds most comfortable. Finally she turns to Talbot.
"For now, Raoul, that will be all. I will speak to you later. Please make yourself available for my request."
He stands. "Director." He nods at the others and walks out. Jill notices his shoulders held tiredly low. She frowns. Hallison scratches his cheek, looking at a repeat of the diagram on his pad.
Now the three are alone with their decision.
The Director turns to face the others. "You are here to advise me," she states. They nod agreement, taking on the solemnity required.
"The information is correct, do you agree?"
Hallison runs a hand across his thin red hair. "I don't think there was ever a doubt."
The Director bares her teeth. "There was doubt. This thing is so psychoactive that I would rather not be within a million klicks. That it could manipulate Talbot is a natural possibility. However, that is not the issue. The issue is whether the action was acceptable given the context. Jill, you were abandoned."
"He left. We helped him go. I can't call that abandonment. He was right, the plan was flawed. Is flawed. We're going to need a quarantine."
Hallison agrees. "I'm worried what the Constable might do. We're technically liable for the actions of that life form."
The Director differs. "Legal staff have indicated that relinquishment of custody caused liability to transfer to Radelix. Naturally, the company would prefer not to accept liability for the destruction of an entire civilization. Complete dissolution of the company might be the only course available to satisfy creditors. I hope you understand the gravity of this."
"I'm not legal," Jill states, "but isn't it possible that concealment is the worst thing we could do for our liability status right now?"
The Director does not smile, but her gripping finger twitches in an involuntary equivalent. "Perhaps. That is not the issue, however. I must decide if Raoul Talbot is to be released from the company for leaving his team against my expressed and explicit directive. You seem to think that the action was justified, Jill?"
Jill nods acceptance.
"And Hallison believes that the policy was flawed from the beginning. Thank you for the vote of confidence. But what is your assessment of the action Talbot took?"
Hallison chooses his words carefully. "I think that the Illyrion could have gathered all of the data he did, and more. But, given what Raoul knew at the time... well, I wouldn't have gone down, but I'm not sure I would have been right."
"What does that mean?"
"I think he did the best he could based on what he knew. To carry out the mission implied. To find out about the thing, so action could be taken when the Illyrion returned."
The Director bows her head over her pad. Finally she looks up. "Thank you. I'll take your opinions under advisement."
Talbot isn't required to stay in his quarters during the deliberation, so he wanders down to the shuttle bays. A window overlooks the standby area, where craft are undergoing maintenance. Once of those is the Onyx Armadillo which he had flown to the encounter with Stone. It is the first time he has been able to look at that ship. He drums his fingers against the sill of the outlook, watching their reflections move in counterpoint. His gaze shifts to the partly opened shuttlecraft in the bay. Involuntarily, he twitches, smelling an echo of Tereniade blood and excrement. He hears a scream, but it is faint. He keeps himself from turning away.
Face the consequences, he tells himself. You're going to face consequences. There will always be consequences.
The Director seeks her answers in her quarters, amidst the flickering reddish lights that make her happy like home. She could afford a full simulation, but she prefers the abstraction. She curls into her favorite seat, enjoying the smell of its well-worn material. She waits for a portion of the relaxation she requires. Finally, on tiptoe, it arrives, smiling. She shifts her perspective, trying to take in the whole. To envelop the gestalt, to decide what to accept, what to reject in the shifting constellation of evidence. To accept her anger at being ignored; the loss of influence it portends. To try to keep focused on the one issue, not the larger events and portents that threaten to obscure the one fundamental first decision she must perform.
A bridge call rings like a quiet graceful chime. She acknowledges it.
"Director, there is an interfold transmission from the surface."
"So?"
"The source is unidentified, but Waylandcorrig believes it may be the metabolic network you've been discussing."
She springs to her feet, swaying rapidly. "A transmission to where?"
"We have a vector but no destination address. The coordinate encoding is non-standard."
"Can anyone else detect this?"
A moment. "Probably not. We got it off the new receptors. The bandwidth requirements are... unusual."
"Thank you. Record that vector and all of the transmission. I'll be in touch shortly." She taps the caller. "Talbot," she snaps. A pause as he is located and answers, gloomily. "Yes, Director." "Talbot, you are NOT fired. Set up a meeting in the conference room immediately. Get Waylandcorrig, Reed, Hallison, and any of your former team you want present. We have to deal with a transmission from the Mover to some unknown recipient. I want to see you in my quarters right away. Before the meeting."
"Yes, ma'am!"
Stone still has a problem with doors. He can find them now, but he remains amazed by their ability to swing away from the wall in the space of a breath. It leaves him standing in the corridor by the conference room, where the others are working. Finally, he summons up his courage, and steps into the space that was only a moment ago a wall. He lopes forward with an angular back-kneed gait more suited to the terrain of the grassland than the flattened floors of hallways and rooms. The others are already arguing. He swings to the floor beside Talbot's swivel seat. Talbot smiles at him, and Stone restrains a flinch. It is not meant as a threat, he knows - at least, in his mind. But his reflexes are still often faster, and are still often getting him into trouble.
"Biologicals transmit intercurve impossible. Complexity and energetics for production of interfold sheath." mIlu'Ram is hissing his objections to Waylandcorrig. Stone hears more elementary concepts - Class of things which move and eat or grow and absorb cannot send messages between stars...
R*Zanaril buzzes disagreement. "Az moore indicat bio crete no radar. Obv n prob here."
Waylandcorrig speaks from the wall. Its atmospheric requirements prevent it from being in the room without extensive protective gear for either itself or the others. "It's quite correct. We have species that use radar, species that generate electricity and plasmas for a variety of purposes. There is nothing to be gained by casting doubt on properly gathered data."
"What's an axiom to you," Hallison offers, "isn't to everyone. No doubt you take it that way as an analyst once you accept the data source. But some of us reserve the right to question its source even so."
"As is just. Nonetheless, this biomorph is artificial, and may have unusual capabilities."
Talbot brings them to order. "The Director has charged us with recommending action. I want to lay out very clearly what the options are. If there are any differences among team members, we can work them out, no matter what they might be." He says this, hoping to diffuse a sense of betrayal to the old team, for his having left them to the Constable. "I've been on the surface twice. You can't imagine the chaos there. The Mover incites exophobia. Yet its effectiveness is incredibly greater than when we left it here. It has changed, or mutated in some way, and now it may be signalling home. Its new form may have been developed for just that purpose. We have to assume that its makers are now aware of our civilization. We can also assume they are xenophobic enough to want to destroy it.
"We must decide whether we will pursue this signal to its source, or muster appropriate civil or military authorities to do so.
"In addition, we must consider that Radelix may be found liable for the damage done by the Mover and the people under its control. This liability could destroy Radelix as surely as Tlnou is being destroyed.
"But we are, so far, the only people who are aware of the source of the problem. In the event that our ship is disabled, no further defense against the Mover, or any of its offspring, may be able to be mounted until the source of the threat has been independently discovered.
"Last, but perhaps most important, we have very little time. Waylandcorrig's political threat analysis indicates the possibility of an antimatter exchange between factions on the surface within a month. While we decide, people of many phyla are being killed.
"My recommendation has been to notify the Constable, who is in orbit with us, of the source of the threat, require a quarantine, and have him send for military assistance. In the meantime, after transferring all data, including the vector, to him, we would leave for the destination of the transmission to do a reconnaissance. The problem with this idea is, first, he may not believe us, second, when he does, he may detain us, and third, in that instance, we may be unable to offer any of the insight this team has into the problem. That's maybe the worst, although you can rank a Cylestane brig as being high on the list too.
"I want to use this as a starting point. Shoot it down if you can. Build it up if you can. The diagrams of the reasoning are presented in Chakary notation for those using the net. OK?"
Sounds flit around the room.
Hallison speaks up. "The Director's watching, and how we decide as much as the what we decide will be helping determine her decision. So let's keep it clean."
Cycles of relentless effort begin. Chains of evidence, prediction, causes and effects are raised, diagrammed, argued, demolished or sustained. Data is drawn from the Analytical Office through Waylandcorrig, and flashed on the screens and on the wall. Jill tries to help Stone to understand the presentations and the argument, but these methods are completely incomprehensible to him. He curls into the corner with a bowl of soup, and watches occasionally before falling asleep.
Time passes, uncontrollably.
The doors to the conference room open, and the exhausted file out. The walls blink one by one to whiteness as the remote participants close their connections.
"It's a good plan," Talbot replies, settling back into the seat. The lights are dim against the rich wood of the walls.
The Director twitches her grasping finger.
The Constable, however, would not agree. He is helpless to prevent their ship from leaving the system, and he slams his hand on the desk panel several times in frustration, alarming his subordinates.
On the bridge, the Director stands beside the Captain, and smiles faintly, in the Tereniade way, as she listens to the interstation chatter from the crew scattered across the ship.
Once again, the ship begins to twist the metric of space, attaining an extension into a new dimension. Inertialess, it slips slowly up from the derelict stations toward the outer system.
"On cue, surpassing the system marker. Green Buoy off the port bow. Prepare the curve.... OK, drop the information canister for the Constable, and the beacon... start the beacon. Beacon signalling. Curve countdown on the mark. Out of here, Engines." The ship whisks into curvespace and vanishes in a spume of distorted stellar images.
The Constable's ship stirs like a large and sluggish predator, heading for the canister and its frantically signalling beacon.
Curvespace travel has many advantages, but its instantaneity and opacity make it harder to use for exploration. Many systems lie on the transmission vector from Tlnou, so each must be visited, at least briefly, and scanned by the Analytical Office.
Talbot wakes out of a dream into the image of a room looking out on the steppe of northern continent Tlnou. He is momentarily disoriented, until he remembers that these are his new rooms, and new decor. Again, as he lies torpid, he considers changing it to something else, but he accepts it finally, without certainty of reason, and rises.
Why do I like it? he wonders, as he sits on a terrace with dawn, watching the slowly wandering trees in the distance over a breakfast of thinly fried cylestont legs (Never eggs and toast again). He remembers Risha, and Kahn. The spaceport at Rigger's Cove. Frightening and hard. But he had felt he was mastering the situation, and he needs that support now, when he feels weak in the face of new demands.
He has a day off, but is afraid to take it. There are too many things to add to what he already knows if he's to stay in front of the team. Today he plans more work on cognitive techniques for strategic planning, and for a moment, he marvels at his even considering something like that as a use of his time. He remembers himself not so long ago - apathetic, self-limited, sulking in his rooms, or in bars. He hasn't had time to question how quickly things have gone; until now. He thinks again, as he has often, about piloting curvespace, and an echo of the hunger reaches into his wrists. But, somehow, getting more abstract things done is beginning to generate its own hunger.
Suddenly refreshed by that thought, he raises a teaching panel and a working panel, and moves into the notation phase.
A tone breaks reverie, requesting entrance.
He smiles ruefully, and goes to the door. It opens on the bustling residential corridor, and he is expecting to see Jill, or Hallison, or m'Ilu Ram. Instead, there is Wanr, large, dark eyes like deep mirrors in soft fur, looking up at him.
Its fur is flat, which, Talbot knows is a signal of submission. A strange signal in this context, he thinks. "Wanr?"
"Du yu hv time mght mpose, request?"
"Of course. Come in. Please feel free to uplink your translator if you prefer. What can I offer my honored guest?" He knows enough to say the phrase, and to gesture toward kitchen, porch, and seating. It is pleasant to have every practiced action as right as possible.
Wanr bows as much as its stocky figure allows, and steps within. The door, painted with O'Connor's Man Also Rises, closes behind him.
Wanr gestures an uplink for the translator to the room systems. "For your kindness and willingness and offering, I return full thanks. I am pleased to accept what you are pleased to offer. Feel no obligation."
Talbot waves a hand to the terrace in a stylized signal. They walk slowly out into the strangely fragrant air and odd sounds of morning.
"This location," Wanr asks, "is unfamiliar. What place is it? Home?"
"No, it's Tlnou."
Wanr blinks several times. "Very different. I have never been there." It looks around. Talbot tries to restrain the impatience this diffidence and circularity arouses.
"May I ask what I may offer from my store of time?" Talbot asks, carefully choosing phrases which will smoothly translate to concepts in Wanr's weltanschauung.
"Talbot, I am uncomfortable with the team. I should say, with my role. I am not sure why I was chosen, or what I should offer."
Oh boy, Talbot thinks.
"Please excuse my custom," he says, "I will sit as I consider how best to answer what you ask." He takes a seat by the railing. "Feel free to do so as well."
Wanr curls up into a chair which adjusts swiftly to its body type. "I will wait."
Why must I advise on this? I can barely run my own life, I'm just developing the rudiments of what I accept as philosophy. Why does it turn to me?
"I'm not sure how to answer what you're asking. I chose you because you were with us when we first encountered and captured the Mover. Everyone who had direct contact with me in those incidents I gathered into the team. I hoped everyone would find what they could best accomplish. But you say you haven't."
"I cannot decide, Talbot."
"Please call me Raoul. My friends and team mates can use this name."
"Rayoul."
"Good enough." He grins. He tries to know what to do. This situation makes him very uncomfortable. "What do you think is your strongest talent?"
Wanr sits and waves his head back and forth as he looks at the sky. "I am, of course, security, interested in protection, defense, in some cases, offense. But m'Ilu Ram is senior in experience and knowledge. How much can I offer in the face of that?"
Talbot feels a sudden surge of exultation as he realizes how to solve the problem.
"True, but m'Ilu Ram is only one being. He may need new perspectives. Still, there are other reasons for you to be on the team than what you offer. It is what the team offers."
"I do not understand this."
"Think of it this way. You have many things to learn, am I correct? From m'Ilu Ram, from others? In fact, m'Ilu Ram gained his experience by being placed in novel situations with experienced advisors and superiors. So too, are you."
Wanr perks up, his head rising, looking around, more alert. "This makes sense. Was this your plan?"
Talbot shakes his head, then remembers the non-universality of that body language. "No plan. I think it's just the way things should be done. For me, for all of us in the company. Some don't make it, some change course, some fall away. It's how the company improves."
Wanr cocks a hand in space. "This is... pleasant. Thank you. May I ever offer you hospitality or help, please call on me. I can offer endless thanks. I will do my best to improve, as you suggest."
Talbot smiles awkwardly. "Sure."
Wanr unfolds from the chair, and stands as the chair resumes neutral structure. It bows and departs, leaving a bemused Talbot realising that he has surmounted an important challenge - a novel situation - with no advisor or superior to help.
Perhaps he is improving, too.
The system is filled with enormous spheres and the fragments of planets.
A solar system is vast to sight, and dim, far from the star. But the machines which float in this system are almost two hundred thousand klicks in diameter, like titanic eyes whose whites have crusted with crystal, layered in white, green, white, and blue, opening at one end into a blackened interior, seeking each other warily across the emptiness orbiting the sun. Where they occasionally cluster, their shapes silhouette and shadow each other ponderously, constantly exchanging mysterious particles that flit like insects through the cold black. Asteroids tumble past them; small images - moon-sized shattered fragments of planets once whole, now broken.
"We shouldn't have found them here. This is a known system, but there's never been anything like this reported." Hallison whispers. Talbot wants to weep. "There's nothing wrong with the distance or size estimates?" he asks hoarsely.
"The only thing wrong is the gravitational disruption these things are causing, plus the five missing planets. And the three million Tereniades who seem to have been vaporized." Hallison looks sick.
"What about us?"
"Navigation is already trying to get us out of here. The captain is making us look as much like a rock as he knows how."
"Damn good. Is this the terminus of the signal?"
"Apparently not."
"So it's a coincidence?"
"No one knows how long the signal has been repeated."
"This is way out of our depth," Talbot asserts.
"This is way out of anybody's depth. The Director has us jumping back to the previous system for a transmission to the Constable, and then we'll leapfrog."
"You think we should?"
"I'd like to be far away from these things, chief. I'd rather run for the galactic center and hide." Hallison bows his head and rubs his hands viciously against his eyes.
"Steve, we'll be OK."
"You're whistling in the firepit, chief. But I respect you for it. Just remember, these guys blew up a solar system. They have ships the size of planets. A fleet of them. If they notice us, we'll be like fleas in a torch."
The Defense Room is a hectic chaos of video walls and partitions showing images and text of various spectra and scripts bright in the dim human-visible light. A being occasionally rushes through the maze to deal with something that requires physical presence. Tereniades are particularly prominent, flicking their birdlike attention between displays and consultations, enmeshed in virtual systems. Translators hiss with high-density whispering that everyone hears as the best possible voices the crisis translators can provide. In a far corner, a massive tilted image table has been erected for the crisis team, covered with data from the sorters in the Analytical Office.
m'Ilu Ram dominates the area with its towering presence. It is still, slightly crouched as if waiting some trigger, watching the images through data contacts as they arrive in the reservoir at the edge, and occasionally nodding to Wanr or gesturing in a hastily improvised physical language for changes in the arrangement of data images.
Hallison stands by m'Ilu Ram, pointing out items of interes