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The blood-warm night wind of long ago sighed a calm, angelic death-song through the tree-high bushes of paradise and those bushes wandered their lost course upward across a slight rise toward that region known by all who had seen it as the Thicket. The trees themselves, the brothers of the never-failing wind, were not trees as men had once known them, but were rather massive, unimaginably straight Things which towered their scaly, yellow height skyward into the darkness. Each tree, if it might be called that, ended in a distant puff of blue-green leaves and each leaf, although its substance was not that of the leaves men had made the name for, was itself perhaps as much as a yard across and twice as many long. About the bole of each great tree there were clustered more of the lost little bushes, themselves of a size to shrivel the minds of those who were born of Earth, and, though their leaves were smaller than those of the greater plants, they too sported the ever-present blue-green that was a mark of this Place. Their trunks, while of that same alien scalyness of the trees, did not flaunt the dead sameness of lemony yellow that was a blight upon the beauty of larger things; instead, their, yellows were tempered and made heir to a strong, perhaps even noble, handsomeness by a monstrous blending of metallic greens and blues and of a widely separated splash of pink or perhaps violet.
Through the harshly beautiful jungles of the Thicket there wandered things which were parts of that great eddy in the laws of the cosmos called life. While it was not the sort of life that men were now accustomed to meeting, it did resemble, in a twisted sort of way, the forms that were a shadow out of their cringing, howling past. The Things in the jungle were slimy little things that crawled their frightened way from pool to murky pool and great, shrieking, scaly things that complemented the beauty of the bushes with their size and ugliness. They roared and they tore and they ate and, for a while, their mindless lives were a thing to wonder at. There were men who called them a thing to marvel at and many of those who came to paradise did so for that reason, but not all.
Thus it was on the world of Kunderer in the fortieth year of the coming of man; in the year of our Savior 4125, which the Starovers called 1001.
The man who was called Gilgamesh stalked his silent way out of the jungles of Kunderer in the dead calm of night and stood for a long while looking down upon the dim, spreading glow that was the planet's sole spaceport. If there were nothing to compare him with, he often appeared to be a very large man, for his body was lined and seamed with powerful muscles that seemed to swell his form in height as well as girth, and many a large sailor had backed away at the sight of him: he was a man who radiated largeness. Yet it was not true. This man who could seem so massive, so terribly dangerous when standing alone, stood a few scant inches over five feet and, in an age when all men and most women stood nearly half a yard taller, he found that he could not abide a crowd of others. His maker had committed a major blunder and he was resentful of it. For the rest, there was not much to tell; his hair was of that dirty, often ugly blond which is common among light-skinned men, and his eyes were of that pale, ice-blue that makes them look as if there is nothing behind them. A man could look into those eyes and feel a chill crawling upon the back of his skull, as if he were peering into the eyes of a snake. This too contributed to the sense of hatred that he had long felt for the race of men; for few of them could bear to look into those eyes for very long and, in the end, even the most loving of women had looked away. His face, although handsome and regular in its own strange way, was almost inhumanly alien in its gauntness, and the skin, stretched drum-tight over its skeletal frame, although no longer the spacer's sickly yellow, was badly scarred and pockmarked —an incredibly rare defect in a day when new faces were cheaper than new clothes. The haunted look by which he might once have been further distinguished from his fellows was gone now, supplanted by a calm serenity that was itself a thing foreign to the age in which he lived. He had the look of a man who was at peace with the forces of destiny and, perhaps rarest of all, he was a man at peace with himself.
The man who was called Gilgamesh slung the squat, unadorned black deadliness of his powergun by its plastic strap from his shoulder and, after listening to the sounds of the night for a moment longer, began to slink downward across the hill with its tree-high bushes toward the dimly glowing machinery that was the spaceport.
The place onto which the starships came to ground was nothing more than an oval of hard plastic set flush with the earth and shimmering softly in a pale, pastel indigo. In the day it would have been a very distinctive thing, sharply contrasting with the alien blue-green of the surrounding jungle, but now, at night, it was hidden by a dusky sameness of color; it was visible as simply a glistening pool of lesser darkness in the all-pervading black: a well of liquid light. Surrounding the oval in a semicircle at a good distance were six buildings made of a delicately glistening, crystal-like material and each one was at the end of a spoke which was in reality a walkway leading from the landing pad. The spokes alone, among the objects that made up the spaceport, did not glow: they were of a dull, lifeless black.
Chief among the structures surrounding the dark oval was the one at the base of the semicircle. It was a tall, cylindrical tower which contained two things of primary importance of the passengers on board those ships which came to Kunderer: the control tower and the quarantine station of the Terran Colonial Navy, that place where people were held, unnecessarily, for a time before being allowed to travel on the planet.
Suddenly, out on the field, the landing pad began to glow brighter and brighter and its color began to change. The oval shifted from deep indigo slowly to a paler color, then to a royal blue, and the air began to take on a feeling of charged power, as if static electricity were flowing into its very substance. The blue changed to a yellow, then hot orange, and finally to an astonishingly spectacular pink, and a deep-pitched humming filled the world. The sounds of the Thicket were completely gone, banished before the breathless expectancy of what transpired below:
The spaceport on the world of Kunderer was awaiting a visitor.
Gilgamesh stood in the utter silence of the quarantine waiting room surveying the pale, crimson glass door through which his party of civilized hunters was to emerge. In his past six local years on Kunderer, the man had led many such expeditions into the Thicket and he had always enjoyed their righteous horror at the first view they got of the animal that doubled for what an Earth-oriented paleontologist would have called a tyrannosaurus: sixty feet of solid, angular muscles reaching from a pair of jaws that could snap up a man and gulp him down without even bruising his flesh, to a broad, flat tail that, if it rested on a man, would crush him into a thin pudding. The creature was covered over with thick, leaf-green scales that were pebbled into an abrasiveness that could tear the bark from the hugest of trees when brushed against it.
A yellow light went on above the door.
"Mr. Gilgamesh?" The man who stepped through the door was dressed in the white slacks and tunic of the Colonial Navy, which had purple piping down the seams of the pants and tunic and outlining the lapels of the jacket. He had fine, sandy blond hair, a light down that passed for a beard, and a pair of eyes of a blue so deep and rich that they drew all attention to focus upon them.
"Yes?" Gilgamesh's voice was a deep, bass rumble, stunning in such a small man.
"Ah… your party was held up in transit, so they arrived a bit—"
"When'll they be here?"
The Navy man looked rather surprised at the hunter's abrupt interruption of his explanation. "Why, ah… the Wandervogel is due to ground in, in, uh"—he looked at the chrono which was held to his wrist by a tensor field—"roughly forty minutes."
"I'll wait." Gilgamesh turned his back on the officer towering over him and walked slowly over to the window, which gave an oblique view of the pink-glowing landing pad.
The officer stood for a long moment staring at the man's back with a hot, rushing sensation building up in his throat. Suddenly his eyes focused on the back of the man's hand and the feeling drained away like pus from a burst sore. "I'll be damned," he muttered. There, on the back of Gilgamesh's hand, was a row of numbers through which had been tattooed a thin purple line and the numbers were in such an order as to indicate that he had once been an enlisted man in the TCN. After staring for a good while longer, the officer turned with a shake of his head and reentered the quarantine station.
The man at the window stood silently, expressionlessly staring out at the shimmering oval in the misty predawn darkness without. He stood with his fists pressed to his hips and his back straight, ignoring the plushly chaired comfort around him. " 'Out of the blue of the western sky comes—' "
As the sky above Kunderer turned a slow indigo in color, an orange spot appeared in it that was not the hot, distant sun. The humming pulse of the spaceport quickened in anticipation of the ship that was to come and, from the shining new spot in the swiftly lightening sky, came a deep, atonal buzzing that was the sound of a fixed-mass reaction drive, the mark of a starship too small to hold the bulk of a gravity polarizer. The spot grew to a tawny streak in the now bluing heavens as the buzzing grew until it drowned the softer sound that was the landing pad. Now the ship itself was visible as a dull silver lozenge balanced atop an orange column, still tiny in the distance. As it reached the twenty-five-thousand-foot mark and centered itself above the spaceport, the "xenon-flasher" on the ship's nose began its stabbing signal, brighter by far than anything else in the air. The ship began to descend. As the orange column grew, so did the buzzing of the drive and, as it swelled to a power and intensity that shook the earth and caused the trees of the Thicket to sway in unison, a faint howling became discernible behind the greater sound of the drive generators. It was the sound of the chained plasma mass itself, screaming vainly for its freedom. The wavering tail of orange slowly fell through the sky until, finally, it touched the pink of the landing pad. There was a frantic scrambling of orange lines in the oval and the ground bucked heavily, once, then settled down to a slow rhythmic throbbing. The column grew shorter and thicker and the ship descended until it was sitting atop the pink pad, which was now more of a tawny yellow, surrounded by a doughnut of orange light. Suddenly, the light was gone and with it the sound of the drive. The landing pad swiftly faded once more to a deep, dim indigo. There was a long moment of dead stillness and then the jungle began to scream again.
The ship that was called Wandervogel skimmed lightly along the edge of the plenum to the pulsed urging of its Gauss drive and, while the fields of its sensors projected into the universe and gave it vision, the mass and matter of the hull and all within it was without any contact. This took away the reality of the ship and its cargo and gave it rather a virtual existence so that, though the universe reacted to its presence, it was not subject to most physical laws. Thus it was that the ship swept along in what men were known to call Quantum Six: 820 times the cosmic constant. The Wandervogel had left Geththewar seven days ago and in that time had covered nearly five of the units called parsecs. Her destination was the viciously jungled paradise planet of Kunderer, now only hours away, and the ship drove onward into the misty night.
Geththewar had been a beautiful world, all crystal cities and golden beaches, and the people were proud of the fact that theirs had been the first government to join the Terran Colony System back in 3845. The passengers and crewmen had enjoyed their three-day stay tremendously and, in one case, Captain Bela den Ennov had had to send out the shore patrol to drag a crewman away from his games. The ship had lifted from Geththewar's gigantic port nearly nine hours late and, for a very short time, the captain had shifted into Quantum Seven. In a ship with such a small generator this was a rather perilous move but, for a few minutes, the Wandervogel had multiplied the constant by 4950 times and the lost distance had been made up.
Bela den Ennov was a large man even in this day of giants and he bulked huge in the control chair of his bridge. He was slightly over seven feet tall and, being grossly fat, weighed nearly four hundred pounds. Through the black, dashiki-like garment that he usually wore, his flesh bulged in great, swollen folds and rolls. He was a man who could sweat enormously. Of his face little could be seen, for he wore a huge black cloak of a beard which covered him from his cheekbones to his chest. His nose, though, was plainly visible as a large, sharply angled thing that nearly obliterated the weakness of his small, watery yellow eyes. His brows were equally dominating in their shaggy hugeness. Among his crew there was a standing joke that the captain was not actually human, but rather a product of the secret and well-hidden laboratories of the Society for Space Travel and more than one of them believed it.
Captain den Ennov surveyed the eight men who sat in a half-circle before him and nodded with satisfaction. "Navigator," he said, "status."
Lieutenant Gordeau, who was a slight, trim man, looked down at the complex navigation readout and modification console before him. "Breakout in minus fourteen minutes, captain," he said.
The captain reached to the side of his chair and, lifting off the intercom input, thumbed the general announcements contact. "Your attention please," he said, feeling a sense of still greater power as he thought of the two hundred people who would be paying close attention to each of his echoing words. "The Gauss drive will be shut down in fourteen minutes. Passengers will go to their quarters and crew members will report to their Action Stations." He put down the intercom and said, "Helmsman, begin the downshifting procedure." The helmsman reached forward and touched a flashing contact at the head of the panel. Throughout the ship a computer-tone began ringing: E-E-E-G… E-E-E-G…
Uri ben Baruch was sitting in the starship's dining room when the announcement of their imminent arrival came. He had not been aware of the shift to Quantum Seven and, indeed, was only dimly aware of the fact that the Wandervogel was traveling faster than light. All he knew was that the ships took him from one world to another and did it quickly. Baruch was never one to question technology.
Through all the ages of mankind the Chosen People had never vanished from the face of the universe; indeed, after each great calamity had fallen upon them they had emerged in a better position than before. The Egyptians had given them a god and the Greeks had given them a philosophy or, at the very least, the antithesis to one. The Romans had spread them across the Earth and the Christians had given them an intellectual bent that was to serve them well. The Arabs gave them a new unity and the Combine had made them rulers of men. While the revolutions of 3001 had torn them from their collective throne, it was only to put them once more in the role of the trader and, in time, they were once again the major treasure of the human race—though, of course, one not valued by anyone, least of all themselves. The Sons of Judah represented the very essence of what makes up man and no one, again not even they themselves, was willing to recognize the fact.
At five feet ten inches tall, Uri ben Baruch was not an impressive man by the standards of the forty-second century and, at two hundred fifty pounds, he was understandably pudgy. He was, however, an enormously powerful man and the strength in him was more than that of his well-hidden muscles. There was a bleak coldness in his deep azure eyes that made one forget the plump boyishness of his face, and there was something else that did not show at all on the outside, least of anything in his eyes: Uri ben Baruch was three hundred years old.
As the harpsicord ringing of the breakout warning tone began to sound Baruch put down the coffee cup that he held in his lumpish fist and watched the other passengers begin to file quickly from the room. In particular he watched the full, dark form of a woman known only as Maryam as she undulated through the door. "Sir?"
The man looked up to see a white-coated waiter bending over him. "What is it?"
"You'd best go to your stateroom now. The dining area will be closed during the breakout."
"Uh… very well." He placed the hard, plastic cup on the table and, pushing his chair back with a faint scraping sound, stood up. After shaking his arms to straighten his gold-bordered black toga across his shoulders, he turned and lumbered from the room.
Baruch had once been the first minister of the Vinzeth Empire and had long been used to the starships which cater to men of power. The Wandervogel was tiny and drab compared to those luxury liners in which the servants outnumber those whom they serve. However, his ouster from power had had many long-awaited benefits: one of his first acts as he began his exile was to have a set of male sexual organs implanted in the place from which his own had been removed two hundred and ninety years before and now he was feeling, for the first time, the itching fullness of an adult man. He was as yet finding the way that they encumbered his walking a bit strange, but he would get used to that. What was not so easy to endure was the oddness of trying to lose his three-hundred-year-old virginity.
Like a car downshifting on a highway the starship descended through the spectrum of the Gauss drive quanta: from 820 to 120 to 24 to 6 to 2 to 1. When the ship was traveling at the speed of the constant the men on board began to feel a mild lassitude stealing across their minds and, with it, an equally mild nausea. Captain Bela den Ennov watched the sweep hand of the chrono before him and, when the proper amount of time had passed, he rumbled out a harsh order: "Brake the drive!"
From deep within the ship there came a high-pitched whine which slowly descended into thundering inaudability. The stars flashed into being.
Den Ennov turned his chair slightly to look at the navigator's back. "Get a fix on Kunderer."
Lt. Gordeau touched a series of contacts on the face of his mass proximity indicator and carefully watched the wavering colored lines flowing across its face.
"Well?"
"Captain, as near as I can tell we are exactly on our projected point of arrival. The planet should show as a visible disc from here."
The captain grunted with approval and reached over to the contact that activated the large viewscreen which filled the upper bulkhead of the bridge. It flashed into silent life before him; in the center of its star-filled image was Kunderer, looking like a white-streaked, blue-green pea. "Helmsman," he said, "activate the reaction drive."
As the almost indetectable vibration of the fixed-mass reaction drive began to throb against his body, Pashai anke Soring swung himself up from his too-soft bunk and looked across at the woman, Maryam, who shared his cabin. By the prevailing human standards of the time she was very handsome. With shoulder-length, ebony hair and almond-shaped, brown eyes her compact, six-foot frame was darkly voluptuous and she was the sort of woman whom all men lust to own. She was a whore.
"Lord Soring?" Her voice was a rich, full contralto, vibrant with trained-in sexual overtones and even non-humans such as the Tai could feel it.
Pashai anke Soring rose to his near eight-foot height and strode slowly over to where she lay. He was a typical member of his race's Akoidei caste and possessed a beauty which, by human standards, was so magnificent that it could well have earned the label of indescribability. Added to his great height there was a delicious slenderness that somehow managed to look natural rather than gaunt and his face, though narrow, had features such as those that Michelangelo had given to Adam before the first sin was committed. His eyes were midnight blue and had neither white nor pupil. Framing this and giving it unity was shoulder-length, silvery-blond hair which somehow seemed always to be in order. Like all members of the Tai Akoidei, the minds of their collective race,
Pashai anke Soring had a hobby that was his life's work. He had chosen to be an anthropologist and, as such, had come to study man. "What is it, Maryam?" The sound was a high, clear chime of pure light.
The woman looked up at him, seeing that which had never been there, and said, "How soon will we arrive at Kunderer?" It was not what she meant to say, but it was something.
"I would say that four hours would be a good estimate. Are you excited, Maryam?"
Her breath caught as his voice wandered casually across the scale and her eyes seemed to leap and sparkle as she cried, "Oh, yes! I've never seen a wilderness before!" She was reacting well to the things that he was learning to do with the human spirit.
Soring sat down easily on the edge of her bed, his body the very essence of fluid grace. "Your cities on Hekate are only one-half of what man represents," he said. "Kunderer will be far more like my home." He began to stroke her hair and brush the tips of his fingers along the edge of her scalp and down the sides of her throat. The things that he had first learned in the Teldrar Slums on Hekate needed much more study, for he did not know, as yet, what it was that lay behind the human's seeming slavery to their physical selves.
Maryam's breath began to quicken and her eyes became intense as she anticipated what was going to happen. The beautiful alien was not human and he was not even constructed like a mammal, but there were many things that he could do and many more things that he had learned to do. Maryam closed her eyes in what was almost a religious ecstasy as Soring's slender, too-supple hands moved across her body.
Bela den Ennov watched as Kunderer grew in his view-screens. From space it looked like any one of a million other inhabitable planets: a flattened orb of blue, white, and brown hanging against a star-stippled, black-velvet backdrop. It had four moons, three of which were insignificant little chunks of misshapen rock and one, the moon, nearly a third as large as Kunderer itself. There were no polar caps and the planet possessed four continents: a large one in the northern hemisphere and three smaller ones stretching around the southern. The seas were filled with a sparkling multitude of islands.
The captain turned from this vision of infinity and surveyed the backs of his eight control officers. "Helmsman," he rumbled, "begin your first phasing burn."
The man ran his fingers lovingly across the array of instruments before him and, under his close guidance, the Wandervogel tumbled slowly about until the emission grid of its reaction drive pointed in the proper direction. His finger hesitated for a long moment and then stabbed downward onto the contact. A great tongue of orange light reached out from one end of the dull silver lozenge until it was more than fifty times as long as its originator. The ship began to slow down.
When the globe of Kunderer bulked large in the screens and the stability of the parking orbit had been assured, den Ennov turned to the two men who sat directly in front of him. "Navigator, have you gotten a path-fix on the TCN port?"
Lt. Gordeau nodded. "Yes, captain."
"Begin descent insertion." He picked up the intercom input and patched into the ship-to-shore radio. "Wandervogel calling Kunderer station—"
Perhaps one of the most important subjects that the members of the Colonial Navy study during the first phase of their training is the history of space travel. It not only considers all that man has done in his great expansion, but much of what other races have done. It goes far beyond mere facts, however; it delves into the dreams that the human species has had and goes into great detail when considering the chief vehicle of man's fantasies: science fiction. It is because of this that many men have found it a great misfortune to be named Scott MacLeod and also attend the TCN Academy. Being called "the Space Angel" will not generally enhance a man's leadership capabilities. But if the unfortunate person does survive the course in history, he will usually become a truly first-rate officer. That fact was true of this Scott MacLeod who sat in the passengers' lounge of the interstellar merchant-man Wandervogel, listening to the humming vibration of the reaction drive. A deep frown creased the man's features as he realized that the ship was being mishandled in a way that only civilians, with their perpetual desire to avoid error, could manage.
Lt. Commander Scott MacLeod of the Terran Colonial Navy was a man typical in every outward way of what was considered normal in the forty-second century. He stood a normal four inches over six feet tall and, at two hundred pounds, had a rather nondescript build: thin, tending slightly toward muscularity. He had slightly wavy, light brown hair that was cut in the squared, ear-lobe-length TCN fashion. He had a blunt, square chin, a snub nose, and eyes of the greenish brown that had become widespread among the run of humanity. To the eye, there was no single factor that could distinguish him from any other man; only his name stood out.
"Commander MacLeod?"
The man looked up and saw Soring, the alien, bending over him. He straightened up in his chair. "Yes?"
"May I speak, commander?" The eerie, musical voice sent chills running across the back of his head.
Soring sat down in a chair facing the officer and hunched slightly forward, his expressionless face somehow manag- [sic] centration. "As you know, I am making a rather long field study of secondary human stress interactions, with a recent specialization in sexual reactivism—"
Scott cocked an eyebrow at him and tried to make his face as expressionless as that of the alien. "I'm flattered, Lord Soring, that you take such a detailed interest in my species, but I fail to see how I can be of any assistance in your investigation."
"Well." The alien looked away for a moment in an excellent imitation of human reticence. "The woman Maryam, whom I have been observing for several months, has exhausted her store of information and I am now nearly ready to proceed to the next phase of my project. I wish to observe human sexual interactions in a noncommercial situation and it would be of invaluable aid to me if you would seduce her!"
Scott's mask of calm fell away and his mouth dropped open, his face for the first time taking on some reflection of the mind that lay behind it. "What!"
"You must seduce Maryam without her knowing that I am the cause."
As the first tenuous fingers of the upper atmosphere of Kunderer reached out to seize the Wandervogel, the orange light that was her fixed-mass reaction drive suddenly blunted and thickened, its lower end turning into an inverted mushroom shape. The drive generators began to shriek.
Bela den Ennov sat hunched forward in his control chair nervously eyeing his secondary monitor telltales. "Insert primary roll program," he said, his voice gone hoarse and high-pitched.
The helmsman rummaged among his controls, his fingers a blur of flickering motion. "Mass-fraction slippage zero-point-zero-zero-four!" called the systems engineer.
"Run your first correction syndrome analysis." The captain wiped beaded sweat from his eyebrows.
The ship continued to fall endlessly through the thickening atmosphere and, after a time, the pink oval of the landing pad began to shine through the clouds. The Wandervogel dropped still lower and the column of orange light reached out to pluck at the ground.
"Landing program!" Den Ennov's voice echoed in the cabin and a series of manual relays clicked audibly. The ship touched down.
As the captain leaned back with a sigh of released tension, the walls began to creak with the release of their own. Suddenly there came a deafening B O IN N G G !! and the ship shuddered slightly and was still.
Bela den Ennov leaped to his feet with an anguished scream of, "Oh, goddamned son of a fucking bitch!"
Scott MacLeod stepped through the crimson door of the TCN quarantine station and stood surveying the waiting room before him. It was a typical chamber of its sort and nearly identical with the myriad other standardized waiting rooms that the Colonial Navy had placed in front of each station on all four hundred of the semi-closed planets on which they maintained a surface base. There was the pale, cream-colored shag rug that repelled all dirt and the four identical white couches, outlined in purple trim. In one corner of the room, staring out of the huge bay window, stood a roughly clad, strikingly tiny man. He turned about and looked at Scott, his brushed leather boots making faint wisps of sound on the high pile of the carpet.
The TCN quarantine officer stepped through the door and walked forward a few steps. "Commander MacLeod," he said, "this is the professional guide for your stay on Kunderer."
Scott stepped forward and put out his hand as the officer said, "Mr. Gilgamesh, this is Lt. Commander Scott MacLeod—"
As they clasped hands, the elemental calm of his harsh face breaking for a moment, a smile quirked at the corners of Gilgamesh's mouth as he said, "Scott MacLeod."
The man nodded.
Gilgamesh brought his wrist up to chest level and glanced down at his stricken TCN-ID number and then looked up at Scott, his face shattering into a maze of weathered wrinkles as he grinned. The man had a natural leer. The quarantine officer's face turned a slow pink as he tried to hide his own amusement. "You know, we had a woman named Crystal Mace in my history class," said the guide, "and she didn't last."
Scott nodded. "When I was a senior they actually managed to find a man named Taurus who was from Veii. He didn't last either."
"Where are you from, commander? I'd guess Albany with a name like yours."
"That's fairly close and, uh… call me Scott, I'm on furlough. No, Scotland is my home."
Gilgamesh frowned. "I don't place the name. What sector is your homeworld in?"
"Alpha. It's about a parsec and a half from Kent."
The guide looked puzzled as he thought of the various worlds in the vicinity of the TCN Admiralty-port. "I've been all through that area and I don't remember a planet named Scotland. Sorry."
"It isn't a planet, it's a place on one. Scotland is a country on Earth."
Bela den Ennov stood looking down at his systems engineer, Mr. Guzman, as the man explained what had happened. "Look, Captain," he pointed at a tangled mass of red plastic spaghetti in the heart of the six-singularity drive coil. "They wound the in-phase unit backwards and then installed it upside-down!"
"Why didn't you check it over yourself on Geththewar?" The yellow eyes burned down on him ominously.
"I did! It would take a Gauss's geometry analyst to see the difference before it blew!"
"So. And why didn't the anomaly show on your console?"
"Well, uh… look here." He indicated a tiny red node on the monitor input disc. "That is a little patch of anticonductor material. The system was prevented from functioning and that thing would have been a uniform color—"
The captain slammed his meaty fist against the nearest bulkhead. "I'll have that bastard's ass for breakfast when we get back to Geththewar!" He shook his head in rage. "Why did they do it?"
"Captain, you did refuse to pay the stevedoring fee—"
"But I didn't haul any cargo!"
Guzman nodded bleakly. "That's right."
Scott and Gilgamesh sat together at a table in the spaceport's restaurant watching as other guides arrived to greet their parties of hunters. "How long have you been here, Gilgamesh?"
"About three years. I decided to muster out of the Navy here after ten years in space."
Scott nodded. "I've been in for fifteen years. I think that I'm going to muster out at twenty." He picked up his tumbler of "quaffy" and took a long swallow of the bittersweet drink. It was a chocolaty mixture of rum, ale, and a half-dozen liqueurs that had long replaced grog as the sailor's drink. "Right now I'm thinking in terms of taking my retirement on Crater, you know: Epsilon Eridani, and getting into the Terran Pantechnological Institute. That way I can restart the studies I broke off when I joined the Navy and still be within easy reach of home. Tell me, what ever possessed you to retire in a place like this?"
Gilgamesh rubbed a hand across his jaw and closed his eyes. "I don't know. I love it here, though."
Pashai anke Soring strode his majestic way across the room and stood looking down at the two by the table, his face a totally unreadable blank. "Mr. Gilgamesh, when are we to select our gear for the safari? I was given to understand by Commander MacLeod that the party would enter the Thicket tonight."
The guide brushed his hands through his hair, pushing the loosely hanging strands back behind his ears. "Now's as good a time as any. If you will assemble the others by the door—"
The alien nodded and turned away. Scott started to rise from his chair.
"Wait a minute." Gilgamesh put a hand on his arm. "Are you here to keep an eye on the alien?"
The man grinned briefly and shook his head. "No."
"Well, what are you here for?"
Scott sat down again. "Every year, when I go on leave, I try to find the single most interesting world in my current sector assignment. This year I had a choice of either Kunderer or Niflheim… Well, I've been to hell already."
The TCN quarantine station commander, who was named Elmo Tanzanieff, shook his head slowly and, rising from his desk, walked over to the window of his office and looked out at the rich, outrageous colors of the jungle. He was a tall, slender man with a faintly greenish cast of skin that was a side-effect of certain trace elements found in he food produced on his homeworld, Greenhaven. He wore the uniform of the Colonial Navy well. "Captain den Ennov," he said, "I cannot bring myself to believe that, whether you refused the padding charge or not, the crewmen of a responsible port authority such as the one on Geththewar would stoop to such petty sabotage. And never on a passenger liner!"
The Captain leaped to his feet. "Do you think that one of my crew did it?"
"Well—"
"Commodore Tanzanieff, some of my crewmen are not what you would call gentlemen, but they are not stupid and definitely not suicidal! What if the coil had failed during FTL flight?"
"Don't jump to conclusions, captain. I only suggested that that might have been the case. There were others on your ship who had both the time and knowledge."
Den Ennov looked at him oddly. "What are you talking about?" he said slowly, his voice gone flat.
The commodore looked at his face closely. "Have you yet considered the case of Uri ben Baruch and Pashai anke Soring—the Jew and the alien?"
The man looked at him with disgust. "That's a load of racist, xenophobic bull! What about MacLeod?"
Tanzanieff's face took on a chilling coldness as he said, "Commander MacLeod is an officer of the Terran Colonial Navy. However, Baruch is a man used to power who has been ousted from it. You will be interested know that shortly after his downfall he attempted to commit suicide. As for the alien… well, he is an alien—"
Bela den Ennov stood there, staring silently at the commodore for a long moment. It was ridiculous to think of it, but the Jew had nearly drowned himself on Geththewar…
Uri ben Baruch stood and surveyed the array of strange weapons hanging from the wall before him. They were not the type of weapons that he had known all of his life and many of them were of forms that were never seen in the Vinzeth Empire, which had never felt impelled to remind itself of human history. There were no s-beamers or omnisonics, no riot guns and no stunners. The commonplace military shocker was not there and, only in one corner, on a table marked "reserved", was there any sign of modern weaponry: a small stack of archaically barbaric power guns, sleek and faceless in their deadly black simplicity. He turned to the guide. "Mr. Gilgamesh, what are we supposed to hunt with?"
"Those." He pointed to a long rack of objects hanging from the wall. They were nothing but long, thin cylinders mounted on an omnisonic's shoulder-brace stock. Each had a telescopic sight, a trigger mechanism, and some sort of little box attached to its underside.
"What are they?"
"They're projectile guns, Mr. Baruch. They fire a solid metal slug with a burst of compressed air."
Baruch looked flabbergasted. "I'm expected to kill a… a dinosaur with a bit of metal and a puff of air?"
"Those 'bits of metal', as you call them, travel at quite a speed and they'll go through just about anything. All you have to do is hit the target." The man's eyes glinted, yet never lost their fundamental blankness.
"What if I miss?"
Gilgamesh gave a short, rasping laugh. "Well," he said, "either I kill the animal with my powergun or else I don't, in which case it'll probably eat you."
Baruch nodded, looking slightly unhappy, and turned away as Soring and Maryam came forward to inspect the ancient guns. Maryam took down the nearest one and ran her hands over its sleek surface, her eyes sparkling with fascination. The alien looked on with detached interest.
Scott walked over to where Gilgamesh was standing. "Where are we going to be hunting?" he asked. "Right around the port?"
The man shook his head. "The North continent is a TCN game preserve. I'm scheduled to take you on an air shuttle to the Least South continent, to one of the hunter's substations. We'll pick up the rest of our equipment there and head out on foot."
"Interesting. How many hunting parties are on the planet right now?"
Gilgamesh shrugged. "I don't know. There are only about seventy guides, so there can't be too many. Maybe twenty."
"So what do you do with the rest of your time, sit around?"
The man chuckled and shook his head. "No, most of the time we run the ecological monitoring system and sort of keep an eye on the scientists that are always scurrying around down here. They have a bad habit of getting killed when no one watches out for them."
Scott grinned at the thought of the fanatic little men, little no matter what size they were, who were a plague to the pragmatic minds of the TCN. He knew them well. "I guess I'd better pick out a gun for myself," he said, turning abruptly away from Gilgamesh. "I think that my, ah, friends are getting a bit impatient."
The guide nodded, smiling, as he said, "Yes, I think they want their full two weeks worth." He paused for a long moment. "At any rate, this is going to be one of my more interesting safaris." He clapped Scott on the shoulder and they strode over to where the weapons hung.
The TCN coordinator of On-Planet Services sat behind his purple-and-white plastic desk and looked up at Bela den Ennov. He was a squat, heavily built man who never seemed to be able to find a uniform which could fit his powerfully muscled body and the sleeve on which his sergeant's chevrons—five of them—were emblazoned bulged to the point of having creases when he bent his arm. He shook his head, causing the square-cut red hair to fly. "Captain, this is highly irregular. The usual procedure is to arrange for a guide before you arrive on Kunderer." His voice was a deep rumble, nearly as deep as den Ennov's own.
The captain leaned forward, fists against the top of the desk, and let his weight fall forward until the plastic creaked. "Sergeant, are you telling me that I cannot have a hunting guide?"
The man looked troubled. "Well, no sir, I'm not—"
Den Ennov gave him a grisly smile that stretched the skin of his face hideously. "Then are you telling me that I can have one?"
"Well—"
The captain slammed his fists down and everything on the desk jumped slightly. "Give me an answer, you jackass!"
"Captain, I must protest this—"
"Call your supervisor, damn it!" He picked up the intercom input and smashed it down before the sergeant. "Get him on the phone!"
The man shook his head, looking irritated. "Sir, I—"
Den Ennov stood back from the desk and looked down coldly, his voice sinking into a flat evenness. "Sergeant, if I have to go to Commodore Tanzanieff to get a guide—"
"Uh… just a moment." He pulled over a clipboard and glanced at the first several pages. "I think we have a man who is free at the moment," he looked up. "How many in your party?"
"One."
"Now wait a minute! I can't tie up a guide just to show one man around!"
"I said 'one', sergeant."
The man stared up at den Ennov for a long moment, then sighed wearily and picked up the intercom. "Guide Services? Get me Mashordø Tikavoi, please."
Across a few miles of jungle from the landing pad there lay a short plastic airstrip surrounded by a number of small plastic buildings, each a thin shell protecting a machine. On the runway sat one of these machines, looking like a squat white bullet with long flat wings projecting straight out from its sides and a large, T-shaped tail structure. There were three wheels coming from its undercarriage and three jet engines were clustered about the tail. The bullet had windows.
As it sat there the pilot began to warm up the engines, which had no fuel but instead contained an electric turbine powered by a small battery, and they began to shriek mournfully. When he was satisfied with the ship's behavior, he released the brakes on the wheels and, aiming it down the runway, gunned the jet engines. The ship rolled along for barely its own length and then leaped into the sky with a heterodyne cry of freedom.
Gilgamesh and Scott, who were sitting before the control console of the ship, watched as the jungle flashed away beneath them and receded into the distance below. The guide turned to the man beside him and smiled at the look on his face. "Different from a spaceship, eh?"
"It certainly is! You know, I've never ridden in an atmospheric flier before."
"No?"
"All of the other worlds that I've been on have been civilized. I travel by either tube-subway or, if it's a really wealthy planet, by locus-transfer booths."
"Interesting. Well, how do you like it?"
"It's exhilarating!" Scott's eyes flashed and glittered as he watched a billowy white cloud float foamily beneath them.
Gilgamesh pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it' from the console's disposall field, a trick that was widespread among Navy men. "It's fun, too." He reached forward and snapped off the autopilot. "Watch this," he said, touching the contact that would light the "fasten your seatbelts" sign in the ten-man passenger compartment. Seizing the control wheel, he hauled back sharply and spun the thing completely about, pushing the throttle forward at the same time. The engines gave a high-pitched, agonizing howl and the ship went into a steep, barrel-rolling climb, its field-stressed wings easily taking the strain as the world spun dizzily about them. When they had gained perhaps another thousand feet in altitude, the ship leveled off. There was a shout from the rear compartment. Gilgamesh grinned across at Scott. "Ready to go down?" The man nodded, his face looking slightly strained, and tried to smile. The craft began a long, screamingly steep dive as Gilgamesh eased the control wheel forward. When it seemed as if they were about to plunge headlong into the shimmering green sea of the jungle, the guide hauled back once more and they leveled off at a bare five hundred feet from the ground. Inertia crushed them into the control chairs.
Suddenly there came a thumping from the rear compartment and Soring came through the cabin door. "Mr. Gilgamesh," he said, "you had best tend to your piloting with greater gentleness. I am afraid that Uri ben Baruch has fainted." He retreated silently into the after-cabin.
Scott grinned. "Just as well," he said, "I don't really enjoy the idea of being splattered all over Kunderer. Uh, what were we talking about?"
Gilgamesh scratched his nose slightly and flipped the manual switch of the autopilot into the "on" position. "Transportation systems on 'civilized' planets."
"Oh." He paused for a span of seconds, then said, "Have you ever been to the Oracle on Krishnapur?"
"No. I've heard of it though. Something about psionic teleportation, isn't it?"
Uri ben Baruch sat across from Pashai anke Soring in two of the plush lounge chairs that were facing each other in the passenger cabin of the ship. His face was still a bit pale and his eyes were looking rather nervous. He pursed his lips slightly as he carefully removed an expensive-looking, chrome-plated cylinder from his breast pocket. He uncapped it and extracted a large black cigar and, in a moment, was puffing up great clouds of strangely aromatic green smoke. He settled himself more comfortably in the chair and fastened the seatbelt loosely about his stomach. "Ahhh—" He took the cigar from his mouth and waved it in the air before Soring and admired the little rings of smoke it created. "Wonderful. I became firmly addicted to these more than two hundred and fifty years ago. I buy them from a line importer. They're grown on Earth itself, you know, in a place called Cuba." He looked pleased with himself.
Soring made a twelve-fingered steeple with his hands before his face and smiled the very human smile that he had learned to make on Arous, the planet of Tau Ceti, John Mace's idyllic love planet. "Very interesting." He paused and made a polite throat-clearing sound. "Mr. Baruch," he said. "I am fascinated with the position of your race within the varied stream of human civilization. It is one of the prime objects of my research and I feel that I have a great deal to learn from men such as you."
Baruch smiled slightly himself and cocked an eyebrow at the alien. "Well I'm flattered, Lord Soring." He tried to find an expression of some sort behind the blue-in-blue eyes. "But the Earth Archives are open to anyone and the historians on Crater are far more learned than I—"
"No, you mistake my meaning, Mr. Baruch. I am more interested in the Jewish human as he is today and how he manages to insert himself into a position of power and wealth. I feel that this is the key to Terran economic structure. Only a man such as yourself, who has actually lived such a life, can tell me that which I wish to know. Tell me about yourself."
"You want to know how I became first minister then?"
"Everything! Tell me about your life."
The man scratched his head and looked at Soring dubiously. "Everything? Well, I suppose we have time. May I ask you a personal question, Lord Soring?"
"Of course."
"How old are you?"
The alien flashed a startlingly incredible grin that, for a brief moment, made him look like a man. "I am 105 Standard Terran Years of age and, according to the laws of my homeland, I will live for 295 more," he said.
Baruch looked surprised. "Why four hundred? Can't you live any longer?"
"Our research and knowledge would allow me to live very much longer indeed, but it has been determined that four hundred years is the optimum span and a longer life is not permitted." The grin flashed again. "Come now!" he said. "Tell me of your life!"
Baruch nodded slowly, appearing to be in brow-creasing thought. "All right." He seemed to shudder, throwing off a strange lethargy. "I was born on January 21, 3825 in the Hebrew-speaking ghetto on Delta Pavonis. That was before the beginning of the Space War, you understand, and some twenty years before the creation of the Terran Colony System. In those days the Vinzeth Empire was the most powerful human political unit in existence and, of course, the Colonial Navy did not exist to begin stamping out the slave trade which was so important to my, uh, the Empire." He looked up to see if Soring were listening and found him frozen into an almost hypnotically attentive posture. "When I was ten years old," he continued, "my parents were forced to sell me into slavery by their creditors and I was picked up by the Imperical Crown Agents who were always watching for Jewish children. We were a luxury commodity back then and one of the first things that they did was to make a eunuch of me—"
The man's voice droned on and on and, as it did so, Pashai anke Soring began to learn the things that he sought. They were not the same things that he had spoken of.
"Captain, this is your guide, Mashordø Tikavoi."
The being standing before Bela den Ennov was an alien; that is, he was a member of one of the ten non-human species of major importance in the affairs of the galaxy and, unlike the Tai, he was not beautiful. The øStennh, who ruled an empire slightly larger than the TCS from their homeworld of øRe, were, by human standards, a barbaric-looking race—they are close enough to man in appearance that they looked like animals. This øStennh was a squat, powerfully built humanoid more than nine feet tall and weighed perhaps half a ton. He was naked, but his body was covered completely by a short, purple fur which, in artificial light, appeared to be lavender. On each hand were three blunt fingers and an opposable thumb, while on his head were a pair of small, mobile fox-ears. He had a short, blunt muzzle and his eyes were like anthracite. When he smiled a powerful set of Neanderthal teeth glinted yellowly out at the world. He grinned now. "I'm pleased to meet you, captain."
Den Ennov matched the grin with an equally savage one of his own. "And I you, Mr. Tikavoi. You look like a very capable man."
The øStennh gave the deep, coughing grunt that served him for a laugh. "I am," he said. He threw back his head and laughed with delight, for his race was far more like the sons of Earth than any other and the sense of humor of the two groups was well matched. "I've never been paid to guide one man before." A fleck of red appeared in the black of his eyes.
"Don't expect an easy time of it. I intend to get my money's worth."
The two beings, who were strangely alike in every way, clasped hands, and both were chuckling.
The ship came howling out of the midnight sky over southern Kunderer like a mad demon fleeing from the wrath of his god. The dark jungles of the Least South continent fell silent in awe as Gilgamesh brought the craft in in a long, sweeping dive that barely cleared a low-lying range of hills against whose foot the safari base was nestled. Like all else on this nearly vacant world, the inscrutable black runway and the gayly colored buildings surrounding it were constructed of a hard, metal-like plastic that, when dropped, made a satisfying ring like that of the no-longer-used steel. Besides the large, four-ship hangar set directly at the head of the field, there were four other buildings of varying sizes at Field Station number eight. The smallest of them was a tiny green, cylindrical radio shack; from the roof rose a short stub-mast with a skyward-pointing dish balanced atop it. The building contained a standard shortwave radio, a magnetic field pulse generator, and a seismic wave inductance communicator—at least one of which would work under any conceivable circumstance. The other three buildings were perhaps not quite so important to the men who were using them. They were three identical orange cubes: a warehouse, a house in which the transient hunters were to live, and a big, empty box which had never been used for anything.
The ship came wailing out of the sky, its landing gear down. Like a feather-light bubble of foam, it touched the runway with a faint squeal of plastic on plastic and rolled to one end of the field. Quite suddenly, the sound of the engines died, submerged once again in the sounds of the jungle. There was a muted whir as the door opened and touched the ground.
As the five hunters walked slowly across the landing strip towards the house, Gilgamesh turned to Scott. "Have you ever been hunting before?"
"No, this is my first visit to a world where hunting is allowed… since I left Earth, that is."
The guide nodded silently. "Have you ever killed anything at all?" he asked, "besides Khaara, I mean."
A smile slowly grew across Scott's face as he said, "No, not even them. I was in the wrong part of the galaxy during the Khaaran Police Action—"
"I have." Baruch had lumbered up silently behind the two without even the guide noticing, exhibiting the subtle grace and agility that is sometimes the lot of large men.
Scott jumped slightly. "What were you doing killing Khaara?" he asked, a narrow grin making his lips go thin. "The Vinzeth Empire had no part in that little flareup, just the TCS and øRe."
Baruch made a little snorting sound in his nose and then had to sniff to keep it from dripping. "I didn't mean Khaara, I meant that I had killed things." He raised an eyebrow at the others.
"So—" That was from Scott.
"When I was first minister of the Empire it was my practice to execute traitors personally." He stopped and looked about at the faces ringing him, as if he were awaiting something, and continued. "It was my thought that I could not require a policy which I could not follow myself."
"Adumbration," murmured Soring, his voice becoming an almost inaudible thrum. He turned slowly on one heel until he was facing Scott, radiating a feeling of unbalanced stability. "Perhaps, commander, you were in the right part of the galaxy." The alien walked slowly away. Maryam skipped lightly after him, falling in at his side; Baruch followed her hungrily with his eyes and then set off in lumbering pursuit.
Scott and Gilgamesh were left staring at each other in surprise. "What was that?" exploded the guide.
Scott shook his head slowly. "I don't know," he said, "that last part made a little sense, but—"
Gilgamesh rubbed a hand across his throat. "Yeah."
The starship Wandervogel sat on the dead landing pad of Kunderer's North continent looking like a killed ravished whale, with great, gaping holes showing in her sides where sections of hull metal had been distressed and peeled away to reveal the Gauss-drive mechanism in its entirety. The ship's innards, now beginning to spill out onto the field, looked like nothing so much as some monstrously alien, hideously abstract sculpture. The shimmering insanity of the dimension-twisting singularities were a topological delight and they drew the eye around, down, and inward to a distant infinity. An untrained man might have run shuddering from the sight.
Merchant Lieutenant Gordeau of the Anderson Line, a man trained at the Merchant Marine Academy of Ras Alhague, stood surveying the work crew which was swarming over the guts of his ship, if such a word might be used to describe the relatively tiny maintenance group that the TCN supported on this comparatively unfrequented world. His arms were folded across his chest and his brow-furrowed face was turned downward in an attitude of intense concentration.
"Lieutenant?"
Gordeau jumped at the light, pleasant tenor that came from close behind him. He spun about and looked up at the alien crew chief who bulked large above him. The man was a Capellan, the first advanced alien intelligence ever encountered by man and the one most restricted by the expansion of the Combine. He was grotesquely human, more so than any other race save the Tai Akoidei: eleven feet of thick, massive humanoid with hair where men had hair and pale beige skin. He weighed perhaps fifteen hundred pounds. "What is it?" asked the lieutenant.
The alien, who was called ünHainsh Swävf'r-sí, handed down a tiny, black metal box the size and shape of a cigarette package. "We found this clamped to the subsidiary integral unit, sir."
Gordeau turned the thing over in his hands. "What is this?"
"It's an electromagnetic pulse phaser."
"What!" It came out almost as a shriek.
"Oh, no. Not the kind that they blow up stars with. This one is just powerful enough to decalibrate the control field at its first integration and, uh, lieutenant?"
Gordeau had started to turn away. He looked back and said, "Yes?"
"That thing wasn't handmade."
A second bullet-shaped aircraft sped through the skies above Kunderer, this one in a smooth and level flight, without any of the dives and gyrations that had marked its predecessor. Unlike most such ships, this one did not hold a compartment full of passengers. The two men sitting in the chairs before the control panel were hunting, but not for the dinosaurs of Kunderer.
Mashordø Tikavoi flipped the switch of the autopilot to "on" and, relaxing in the bucket seat that was too small for him, looked over at Bela den Ennov, his eyes obvious in their appraisal. "Captain, just what is it you're looking for in the jungles of the South?"
Den Ennov smiled. "Men, Mr. Tikavoi, the party being led by a Mr. Gilgamesh."
One of the purple-furred ears twitched slightly. "So. Anyone in particular?" The voice had a peculiar gutteral quality, almost like an animal trying to talk, but the intelligence of those eyes was unmistakable and frightening.
The captain nodded. "A saboteur," he said. "One of those men tried to destroy my ship and I mean to find out who. I've checked all of the transient passengers staying at the quarantine station and not one of them could have done it."
The alien nodded in his turn, a gesture as natural for him as for a man. "Interesting. No chance that it was done at your last port of call?"
"Commodore Tanzanieff says that the men on Geththewar wouldn't do such a thing."
Tikavoi flashed a savage yellow grin. "No, I would think not."
"There were only three men aboard who could have done it: Commander MacLeod, Baruch, and the alien… the Tai, that is."
Tikavoi's grin faded to a smile. "Do not classify my people with those, captain."
Den Ennov nodded.
"Why do you accuse the TCN man? He would not have done it."
"So your commodore says, but I doubt that the alien would have either."
Tikavoi looked grimly at him, the corners of his furry mouth turned sharply downward. "Captain den Ennov, a man who would sabotage a passenger ship with himself aboard could not be an officer in the Terran Colonial Navy. Men with suicidal tendencies do not inspire confidence in their followers and besides, warships are expensive commodities and the Admiralty takes a dim view of their loss. I think you're right about the Tai, though. Whatever else may be said about them, they are a very stable race." He paused for a moment, then said: "That leaves you with only one suspect—Mr. Baruch."
Bela den Ennov's eyes glittered with a suppressed rage and his fists slowly clenched and relaxed. "So it does," he murmured, "so it does…"
Uri ben Baruch woke up slowly. His mind surfaced from the black depths of sleep like a great iceberg emerging from the stygian reaches of some midnight arctic sea; lethargically at first, then with greater and greater speed, until, finally, it burst into the light with a tremendous rush. "Wake up, sweet prince," a soft, mellow feminine voice was saying, "wake up, my dear, the time is now. Wake up, the world awaits you…" Baruch reached over and switched off his alarm clock.
He rolled over with an outrush of breath and sat up, looking down as he did so at his new male genitalia. He smiled and shook his head: life was going to be very strange for a long while. As the new hormones flooded daily into his body his muscles got harder and harder and already he had lost much of the doughy, soft look that had marked him a eunuch. After a time, perhaps he might one day look like the lithe guide, Gilgamesh. It was a hope.
With an almost girlish sigh he reached over to the night table beside the bed and plucked up his clothes. They were not precisely what he was accustomed to— for the rich man's toga of the Vinzeth Empire was not common on the TCS worlds—but for the jungles of Kunderer they would be right. He began to pull them on: a shirt, jacket, slacks made of a soft, spun-glass fiber that was finer than silk, and heavy, brushed-leather boots that could never look more torn-up than when they were new. They were surprisingly comfortable.
There came a dull rapping from the door. "Mr. Baruch?" It was Gilgamesh.
"Come in."
The door opened, green on one side and red on the other, and the man looked through. "Could you come down to the lounge? We'll be leaving in about an hour."
Baruch nodded and the door closed with a faint snap. Ever since arriving on Kunderer the most fascinating thing that he had seen was the old-fashioned swing-doors that were everywhere in evidence. This was astounding when, for the last twenty centuries, the common usage had been pocket-panel doors. Gilgamesh's explanation had been that the TCN had originally planned to use this place as a large-scale hunting resort with the emphasis on "primitive" human civilization and, when that had been discarded in favor of a more restricted plan, the builders had simply taken their supplies from existing stock. The man levered himself up from the bed with a grunt and strode from the room.
As he entered the lounge he found that the others were all there before him and that all save Gilgamesh, with his brushed-leather costume, were clad in a manner much like him.
"Ha!" cried Maryam, "The late sleeper." The others chuckled and grinned.
Gilgamesh climbed up on a table and looked down at them. "Now," he said, "over by the door each of you will find a pack, geared to be one-fifth of your total body-weight, and the rifle that you have selected. We will hike out into the Thicket for a distance of twenty-five kilometers and…"
Out in the Thicket there waited an animal. A human paleontologist would have said that it was a tyrranosaur, but he would have been wrong. Equally, the øStennh, who called it nwarkh-Alørë'ul, would have been wrong, for the thing was unique to Kunderer. It stood on four long, powerful legs, thirty feet high at the shoulder and covered over its entire length with beautiful, finely meshed, metallic green scales. From nose to tail it was fully sixty feet long and the jaws of its head, tiny only by comparison with its huge body, were armed with broad, triangular teeth roughly three feet long. They were the sort of teeth that were meant for shearing through living flesh and very little else. The tail of the animal was long and of whip-like muscularity, yet it ended in a heavily spiked mass of bone. The enormous feet each had six glitteringly sharp claws that could clamp into anything and hold on forever. They were six feet long. It was a thing that could only be described by the word monster.
The animal was not hungry. It had, only hours before, killed and eaten another scaly horror that had been even larger than itself. Now it wanted only to rest, but tomorrow… then the hunger would be there again, demanding to be appeased.
Another of the bullet-shaped aircraft swept out of the skies above Kunderer's Least South continent. It was that same ship which contained Bela den Ennov and Mashordø Tikavoi and it bored swiftly through the air toward the same destination as its predecessor. Inside, den Ennov watched as the low-lying hills that fronted the landing field came over the horizon.
Tikavoi looked over at him. "Anxious to catch up with your Jew, captain?"
Den Ennov smiled. "Well," he said, "someone tried to wreck my spaceship. Not only that, but tried to kill me, my crew, and all of my passengers." His face took on a look that was increasingly more grim each time that it appeared. "I mean to find out who."
The guide nodded. "I have no doubt that you will."
The captain began cracking the knuckles of his pudgy hands one by one. "Nothing is going to stand in my way now. I will find out who did it!"
"Save your emotions for Mr. Baruch, captain, if he is the guilty one." Tikavoi reached out and snapped off the autopilot. Seizing the controls in his oversized purple hands he sent the ship in a long, wailing turn that sent the world tilting madly for a long moment, green jungle to the left and blue sky to the right. Then the ground was below them and the hard, dull blackness of the airstrip was flashing toward them. The wheels touched down with the utter silence that spoke of a careful pilot and they rolled to a precise stop next to where Gilgamesh had parked his ship.
Den Ennov came scrambling to the bottom of the boarding ramp and stood looking about at the varicolored buildings. The sun was beginning to fall redly below the horizon of Kunderer, a great, dim blob. "Come on!" he called, "let's see if they're still here." He started off across the runway toward the brilliant orange of the living quarters.
The guide stooped low to get through the human-sized hatch and came lumbering down the steps to stand watching as den Ennov waddled rapidly away. He turned to look up at Gilgamesh's plane and shook his head slightly in disgust, then set off after the captain.
When he arrived at the front of the building, den Ennov was pounding on the door and rattling its handle. As the alien walked up he turned to him and said, "It's locked and no one answers."
"That's all right, captain. I have a key." He pulled out the magnetic key and, placing it at the proper point on the door, pressed a button at its base. Only a person who had both the key and knew where to aim it could open the door. He pushed it open and the interior lights came on automatically. The place was very deserted.
Den Ennov rushed in and began looking wildly about. "They're gone!" he cried.
"That is a very astute observation, captain."
The man whirled on him, his face livid. "Damn you! Get your gear together and start earning your money. We're going after them!"
"No, captain. That is impossible." Tikavoi stood staring at him from his place by the door.
"What do you mean, 'no'?" he asked, "can't you track them?"
"Not at night."
"Why not?" Den Ennov was practically screaming as he stood before the guide, like an elephant attacking a mountain.
"Captain, I could do it, but the Thicket is no place for an inexperienced man to be abroad at night."
"I'd like to try—"
"No!" Tikavoi's voice was like an explosion. "We have too much to do here." The sound receded somewhat. "You see, Mr. Gilgamesh is a very sloppy guide and he left his aircraft outside on the field, as you will probably have noticed. It and our own must be put safely away. We will leave tomorrow."
"Very well," said den Ennov petulantly.
"Cheer up. The only way they can escape us is into the belly of a fiosaur!" He clapped the man on his shoulder, very lightly.
Pashai anke Soring walked slowly across the lush carpet of needlegrass that floored the encampment of the party on their first night out. As he walked his eyes were like black holes in his face, seemingly without vision, yet he was not blind and needed no light; his eyes were sensitive to the infrared spectrum and he could see quite well in any normal night. Unlike the others he had not become disheveled by the day's long march. In fact he seemed as fresh as when they had begun. He stepped into the circle of light before Scott's tent.
The man looked up. "What is it?" he asked.
"Commander, Maryam and I would like you to join us for supper," he said, "We have many interesting things to discuss." The alien shot him a significant look.
"Uh, I'd be honored, Lord Soring." He tried to penetrate the darkness between them, but there was nothing to see.
Soring nodded and smiled. "I will see you there, then." He began to turn away. "When you are ready, commander." The alien strode off into the night, his footsteps sounding steady and sure.
Scott rose from his chair and stretched, then entered his tent. Inside, the interior, which was lit by the endless glow of a microlamp, held the typical accoutrements of a hunting expedition: a thin, inflatable cot on which his sleeping bag lay, his gun, his supplies cast carelessly about and, of course, the gutted pack. He slipped on the shaggy boots and then eased into his thin jacket. As he stepped out into the night the jungle seemed to look at him with a thousand leering faces.
Soring and Maryam had their tents placed together end-to-end so that they could go from one to the other without going outside. There was only one thin slit left through which to gain access and, in front, they had set up an inflatable table like the one Scott had left in its container. The alien stepped through the slit as Scott approached. "Welcome, commander," he said, "We have been awaiting you." The small, almost formal speech carried no meaning. Everything was in his face, which seemed to go suddenly from blank, very inhuman expressionlessness to an unexpectedly beautiful look of eager expectancy.
Scott grinned. "So have I, Lord Soring, but I never got here."
The alien's expression disappeared for the barest fraction of an instant, then came back, this time far more formal and insecure. "Sit down, commander, Maryam will be out presently." He vanished back into the tent.
Scott sat down, chuckling. The Tai Akoidei, especially the scholars, fancied themselves to be among the most capable of beings, but they didn't seem to be able to deal effectively with the semantics of many human languages. Maryam slipped through the slit and she was dressed in an airy, diaphanous gown that did not go far toward covering her full, brown body.
"Commander MacLeod!" she cried, "Oh, I'm so glad you decided to come!" She looked as if she were playing a part.
"Call me 'Scott', Maryam." The man carefully rubbed his jaw as he stared at her, feeling the effect of that body upon him. Her breasts looked out at him like some cast-eyed giant. "Where is Lord Soring?"
"Pashai? He's in preparing the dinner." She flashed him a broad, square grin.
"Strange," murmured Scott, "I'd pictured you as fixing it."
"Me?" The woman looked at him in surprise. "Why me?” Her laugh was almost girlish. "I'm a terrible cook and Pashai can make anything taste good!"
"I see." Scott pulled one of the Terran cigars that Baruch had given him from his pocket, and said, "Mind if I smoke?"
"Oh, not at all." Her grin faded slowly to an interested smile as he made a great production of lighting the thing and filling the jungle air with smoke.
"Tell me," he said, "how did you ever become associated with Lord Soring?"
Her face twisted slightly. "What?"
He blew several large smoke rings, trying to make them go through each other. "How did you meet him?" Two of the rings drifted away and died, linked.
Maryam's smile returned gradually and she did not move to get out of the drift of his smoke. "Oh," she said, "I met him while I was working on Hekate—"
"Really? I've been to Hekate." Scott watched her closely. "Where on the planet did you work?"
Maryam looked at his face and her eyes played across him. "Uh, Teldrar," she said.
Before they could continue, Soring emerged from the tent carrying a tray laden with three steaming bowls and three frost-covered glasses. The alien set it down on the table with a considerable flourish. Scott looked into his bowl and could make nothing of the ropy red-and-white chaos within. It looked like a small animal that had been rather messily killed. "What is it?" he asked.
Soring looked into the bowl in front of him and said, "The dinner."
"Fine." Scott gave him a sharp glance and Maryam giggled. "I know it's the dinner, Lord Soring, but what is it?"
"Lasagne."
"I've never heard of it."
Soring's face went dull and flat for a long moment, then took on an expression of human interest. "It is reputed to be a very famous and ancient human dish. I am surprised that you do not know of it."
Scott chuckled and shook his head. "Many foods are famous and ancient human dishes, but this is only relative. They may be widespread or even not particularly widespread." It was easy to fall into the alien's mode of speaking.
"In the cookbook that was assembled by my countryman, Anuru anke Latai, it is said that this food was much eaten during the days of the Combine—"
"Great." Scott made a wry face. "Lord Soring," he said, "the Combine has been gone for more than one thousand years."
"That is not long and there are many enclaves of the old state still in existence. I would think that their foodstuffs would still be known."
"Not from the Combine. When we threw off that yoke we dropped many of their cherished customs, and their foods, most of them, went by the board."
"Oh?"
"The Combine and what it represented is not among our favorite memories."
Uri ben Baruch sat in the bushes, beyond the circle of light in which Soring, Maryam and Scott sat talking far into the night. He waited and listened, trying to observe them and make sense out of what they were saying and doing. He had hoped that he would be invited to join them and, when he was not, he came to watch. Maryam was there and he wanted her, but despite his centuries of political and diplomatic experience, he did not know what to do.
Bela den Ennov wheezed as he slept. His breath rushed in and out of overtaxed lungs with a tortured sighing of air. He looked like a great mound of frayed rugs lying in the bed and, had it not been for the heaving of his enormous paunch, he would have looked dead. Had it not been for the scientific and medical discoveries of his age he would have been. The door to his room slowly eased open, making no sound save that of its faint whisper against the pile of the carpet, and Mashordø Tikavoi slowly stalked quietly in.
The guide looked down upon the mass of human flesh in the bed, eyeing it with disgust. His race would never allow itself to come into this condition: indolent and, by the standards of any decent species, senseless. He reached down to prod the huge stomach and grunted with surprise as iron-hard fingers reached out and, seizing him by the wrist and neck, sent him whirling through the air to smash against the hard plastic wall with fifteen hundred pounds of inertia. It cracked with a pistol-shot sound and he struck the floor with a thundering crash.
Den Ennov crouched on the bed, smiling down at him with something of a pleased expression. "Don't underestimate my race, friend. Hard muscles do not necessarily have to bulge. Remember—silk is a very soft material when you feel it, but it is very much stronger than steel."
The guide lurched to his feet with a rumbling chuckle. "So I see, captain. I consider myself properly chastised." He walked slowly over to the bed where den Ennov was now sitting. "Come now. If we are to overtake your saboteurs we must start now. They have a twenty-four hour lead on us."
The captain nodded and, standing up, said, "Do you think you'll be able to find a jungle suit in my size?" He indicated his stomach.
Tikavoi grinned. "Your poor naked race is not so fortunate as mine." He fluffed the purple fur on his chest. "But, yes, we carry clothing sized to fit almost anything." He stepped out into the hallway for a moment and returned with a large box. He laid it on the table before den Ennov. The man opened it and inside discovered a shirt the size of a small tent and pants to match.
He laughed and said, "Well, I'll have to shop here more often. Most places don't carry things this large in stock."
"To be sure." Tikavoi turned and strode from the room, closing the door quietly behind him. Once in the hallway he went quickly down to his own room, which contained the only bed large enough to accommodate him, and shut himself inside. Picking up his powergun he broke open the stock and, with deft movements of his short, blunt fingers, inserted the highly illegal cell-regenerator.
"The warriors of peace are all unburned—" he murmured in øStennh-u. The alien began to whistle.
Gilgamesh, the guide, padded silently along the game trail in the Thicket at the head of his party of amateur hunters. The four who followed him did so with an air of wary apprehension and fear, for this was the day that they were to kill. To an earlier and far more romantic culture they, all of them, were going through what might have been called their rite of passage. But, in the end, it was only a more interesting way to risk one's life. Indeed, hunting on Kunderer was one of the few ways to die that did not end in a painless, antiseptic flash of light. Another way was to walk into one of the great, planet-wide ghettos on Ultimo or Hekate and die on the end of a homemade knife. Not many found the latter, more accessible route as romantic as this. Deep within the bushes to their left there came a loud bass rumble. It was almost like a snore. Gilgamesh held up a hand. "Listen," he whispered. The rumble grew louder and a faint rustling could be heard from the side of the trail.
Baruch began to shake and he gripped his rifle harder. "Is it a dinosaur?" Despite the trembling of his body, his voice, through long centuries of training, betrayed nothing in the way of emotion.
Scott stood rooted to the ground, peering intently at the bush, as if trying to see through the leaves. Soring hefted his rifle carefully and glanced about in all directions. Maryam seemed to hide behind him.
Gilgamesh nodded mutely in answer to Baruch's question and motioned for Soring to move toward the head of the group. As the alien drew near he began to whisper: "Lord Soring, I'll give you the first chance at a kill. You are to stand before the bush and shout loudly. When the thing pokes its head out to investigate the noise, shoot it. I'll give you three shots and, if you miss, it will probably ran off into the Thicket. If not—" He hefted the powergun. "Do you understand?"
Soring nodded, his unruffled hair swinging slightly in the breeze. "Yes." He stepped several paces forward and began to scream long, poetic phrases in his beautiful, fluid native tongue. The rustling in the bush stopped for a long moment.
"Now!" shouted Gilgamesh, his voice breaking in three places like an out-of-control yodel.
A long, snaky neck as thick as a man's body came slithering out of the bush about ten yards above the ground and on the end of it was a head the size of an upright piano. It had broad, heavy jaws and there were two insane crimson eyes looking down on Soring. He raised his gun and fired at the thing. There was a dull thump as the shell left the barrel, followed by a sharp crack and a shrill singing sound as a shallow red trough appeared on the side of the animal's head.
The thing gave a high-pitched, almost human shriek and, as its head reared back, a tiny rivulet of blood began to flow down the side of its neck. It took a short step forward and a pair of massive shoulders perhaps four yards across pushed through the foliage. They could see that the neck was twice as long as the shoulders were wide and that everything was covered over with lovely azure scales, as fine as mist. Soring fired again and an identical streak of red appeared on the other side of the head.
From somewhere within the animal an incredibly low rumble sounded and the mouth fell open to reveal a long, narrow yellow tongue that ended in a triple fork. The ground seemed to tremble. The head began to reach for Soring and he fired again. Nothing at all happened and the head began to move faster.
Gilgamesh shook his head slowly and pressed the generator stud on his powergun. It started to hum softly. Lifting it, he took careful aim at the animal's body and pulled the trigger. Pale blue fire splashed harmlessly across the thing and dissipated into the air. The animal twitched and looked about in confusion and, when he fired again, nothing happened. The gun was dead. The animal rumbled softly and its jaws opened to take Soring. Suddenly there came a quick double thump and, as two scarlet holes appeared between the thing's eyes, the back of the head exploded redly across the blue-green leaves. The animal fell to the ground with a crash of thunder that knocked Soring from his feet.
Gilgamesh spun around to see Maryam and Baruch standing with their guns raised.
Bela den Ennov and Mashordø Tikavoi were walking slowly through the jungles of Kunderer on the same game trail as Gilgamesh and his party. The guide was walking stealthily, several paces ahead of the captain, with his powergun held at ready, and periodically he stopped to fire into the bushes and trees. They vanished with a fascinating puff of red-green fire, to reveal a charred dinosaur.
"Tell me," said den Ennov, "do you get a real thrill out of killing plants?"
The guide smiled broadly, showing an expanse of yellow teeth. "Of course, captain. Is it not great sport?"
Den Ennov frowned. "If you say so."
"Save me from your stupidity. It is the act of firing the gun that I enjoy!" He lifted the weapon and blasted yet another bush.
The captain stood for a while watching the glittering whirl of smoke rise into the air and dissipate. "I was thinking that you might advertise our presense to the others," he said.
"Precisely."
Den Ennov turned and stared at the alien. "What are you talking about?"
"Captain, Gilgamesh and his party are moving ahead of us on this trail at a pace not much slower than our own and, at this rate, it will take us several days to catch them. If we give them notice of our existence then perhaps they will return this way to investigate or, at the very least, they might wait for us."
"I see," said den Ennov, "and what if they turn away? What then?"
"Why should they?"
"If one of them is my saboteur—"
Tikavoi made a rumbling snort of disgust. "They are not aware that we are following them and, even if they were, they certainly do not know of our purpose!"
The captain nodded slowly and said, "I suppose you're right—" A volley of shots boomed in the distance and echoed faintly. "What was that?" he shouted.
The alien grinned. "That was your saboteur, captain. We are not so far behind them after all." He turned to resume the march at a faster pace. "Now we go!"
Lt. Gordeau walked slowly through the plushly carpeted, dimly lit hallways of the office level of the quarantine station of Kunderer. In his hands he cradled the deadly little thing that was called an electromagnetic pulse phaser and he carried it more gently than his feeling for it would have warranted. He walked quietly, with his face expressionless, and the only sound that came from him was the faint rustling of his uniform. At the end of the long gray hallway lay the base commander's office. Its plastic door was finished in a white enamel substance that was trimmed about the frame with a royal purple stripe. Centered perfectly on the door was the legend:
He pressed the tone-signal contact at its side.
From a spot on the door, Tanzanieff's voice said, "Come in." A small section of the material was subject to a stressed-polarity field so that it would pass sound perfectly for a few seconds after the contact was pressed. Gordeau touched a second contact on the door itself, one that was disguised as the dot of an "i" and the door slid quietly open.
Gordeau stepped through and stood looking about the room, carpeted on floor, walls, and ceiling in a plush, crimson pile. The commodore was seated behind the antique walnut desk which he had brought with him when he had assumed the post. "Do you have a few minutes, commodore?"
Tanzanieff smiled. "Of course, lieutenant. What is it?"
Gordeau walked slowly over to the desk and the door slid shut without a sound. He placed the little device in front of the commodore. "Do you recognize this?"
The man picked it up and turned it over in his fingers, his eyes glittering. "Fascinating," he said. "Where did you find it?"
"In my Gauss-drive generator," said Gordeau. "It's an—"
Tanzanieff cut him off with a chopping movement of his hand. "I know what it is, lieutenant," he said, smiling faintly. "And I cannot think of a better place to find a small EMP phaser than in one's drive unit. Remarkable things have been known to happen."
Gordeau's eyes narrowed slightly. "The destruction of a passenger liner is considered more than 'remarkable' in some circles, Commodore."
"Indeed."
Gordeau shook his head and frowned heavily, concentrating on the man's seemingly imperturbable expression. "Tell me, what conclusions do you draw from the presence of this thing aboard the Wandervogel?"
"Well"—he raised an eyebrow and, for the first time, looked puzzled —"since this is obviously a factory-produced item, we must assume one of two things: either it was placed on board the ship before it was buttoned up on Geththewar, or else it was smuggled aboard by one of your passengers—"
Gordeau's mouth dropped open and his eyes widened in astonishment. "Oh, come on, now!" he cried. "You know damn well that it's impossible to carry a weapon through the entry field of a spaceship."
Tanzanieff nodded and chewed on his lower lip for a moment. "So it is. The only way a passenger could have gotten it on board would have required the collaboration of a member of the ground crew—"
"So?"
"So I'm going to place a subspace communique to the Portmaster General of Geththewar." The commodore smiled once more. "There are certain procedures that I can use to determine where some of the guilt may lie."
Gordeau nodded and said, "How are we to find out which of our alternatives is the valid one?"
"Go back to the Wandervogel and search in the field space between your thirty-sixth and thirty-seventh field-stress generator, at the ninth order pole. I believe you will find the most pertinent evidence there."
Uri ben Baruch and Scott MacLeod sat together beside the small campfire that the guide had allowed his party to build that night in keeping with the rustic traditions of Kunderer. The day had finished out with Scott and Gilgamesh working hurriedly to repair the defective power-gun and, after the appropriate holographs had been taken, the dinosaur had been vaporized. According to the guide, their meat was inedible to most off-planet species and hence was considered useless.
Scott turned to speak to the man sprawled on the blanket beside him. "This has really been a surprising day, Mr. Baruch."
The fat man smiled. "Call me Uri."
The man nodded. "All right," he said. "Tell me, Uri, where did you learn to shoot like that?"
Baruch laughed and his face jiggled in several places. "When I was first minister, it was considered my duty to go out and make pretty speeches to the people—a thing far below Our Beloved Emperor's dignity." He smiled and shrugged. "As you might understand, this was not the safest of activities and, like all of my predecessors, all of whom were assassinated, I went armed. However, firing a modern military sidearm into a crowd is something of a political blunder, so I went into a museum and selected a small pellet gun. A revolver-pistol it was called, I believe, and I made certain that I knew how to use it. Effectively."
"Did you ever have to?"
Baruch looked curious. " 'Have to' what?"
"Use it."
"Oh!" He grinned broadly, flashing his perfect, even white teeth. "I killed thirty-one men that way."
"I see." Scott closed his eyes and rubbed a hand across his brow. "And why did you fire so quickly?"
"It was not so very fast. Maryam fired as quickly as I did."
"Uri, Maryam had a reason for her reaction—she's in love with the alien. Now, what was yours? You reacted much faster than I did and I'm a trained fighter."
"You're trained to fight with different weapons than those and certainly not against monsters such as that. However, I assure you that I am not in love with Lord Soring." Baruch sat there with his eyes shining and his stomach quivering as he chuckled.
Scott nodded and smiled. "That much is obvious," he said, intending to change the topic of discussion as quickly as possible.
"Why is it so obvious?"
Baruch frowned and his eyes narrowed intently as he watched Scott.
The man laughed heavily and said, "If your tastes had run in those directions I imagine that you would have had yourself restored as a woman! As it is—" His voice trailed off into silence.
Baruch smiled. "Yes," he said, "I suppose that you are right. Well," he heaved himself to his feet with a grunted sigh, "it's been a long day, Scott. I guess I'd better turn in now."
"All right. I'm going to stay up for a while longer and have another of those fine cigars that you gave me. They sort of remind me of home." He smiled and raised an eyebrow at nothing in particular. "Till tomorrow, then?"
"Until tomorrow, Scott." Baruch said, and turned away into the darkness.
Scott leaned forward after he left and carefully lit the expensive Earthian cigar from the fire. It was referred to only in that way, for all cigars were Terran cigars and this one was a Terran cigar of a very special breed: it had been grown on Earth. Its fragrantly hideous green fumes spoke of that most ancient of human worlds, the one that all men thought of as Home.
During the twenty-first century the human race began its great adventure with interstellar travel. The earliest expeditions, such as the Mace-Westinghouse flight which made the first interstellar crossing in 2076, used a rather crude form of antimatter-powered gamma ray reaction drive. However, in 2130, Kerechenko postulated his fourth-order field-stress equations which made the gravity polarizer possible. In the ensuing half-millennium a small number of human colonies were planted and men contacted two other intelligent species: the Capellans and the karkovers. The latter possessed an FTL drive which they refused to share. In 2480, Roald Berens discovered a means of access to the Einsteinian subspace and, in 2495, he and his co-researcher Ntane Vataro redesigned a gravity polarizer in such a manner that it would act like an FTL drive. It proved to be similar to the Karkover drive, although much more primitive.
Human colonization continued in a haphazard fashion until the Combine made its takeover bid in 2650. The Combine was a unification of the old Communist International, the Interstellar Businessmen's Syndicate, and a revived and modified Cosa Nostra. Over a period of thirty years it seized control of all fifty human colonies and fourteen ET worlds within the area. Only Capella and the two karkover worlds near Earth were strong enough to escape conquest. It continued its imperialistic expansion unchecked for nearly four centuries, at its peak controlling nearly three thousand worlds. In 2850 the Combine encountered the outlying worlds of the Khaara Empire, which were too small and weak to oppose them; however, it was also too far away to be worth attacking. In 3001 a popular revolt began on Arous and, within one hundred years, ninety percent of the human planets had thrown off their tyrannical government's control. By 3125 Earth itself had been liberated and, within another two centuries, all but one hundred planets were independent. These the Combine was able to retain in its grasp.
During most of the fourth millennium the growing number of independent human worlds continued to expand across the galaxy. Almost all of these planets were contained in a prolate spheroid oriented along the Orion Arm. They formed a large number of small groupings; the greatest of these was the Vinzeth Empire, which contained five hundred planets, thus the strongest political unit in known space. In 3800, when humans had expanded to nearly twelve thousand planets, the peripheral colonies in the direction of the Hub were attacked by the advanced squadrons of the Tertris Empire in the Aquila Arm. This group controlled some twenty-five hundred worlds and was technologically the equal of humanity. In 3850 a small number of human planets banded together to form the nucleus of the Terran Colony System, largely with the purpose of providing mutual defense. By 3950 the TCS exceeded the Tertris Empire in size and slowly began to push it back. The war could have continued for centuries, however, had not Richard Gauss of Neuhavn developed an entirely new FTL drive. It was one not based on the gravity polarizer and it rendered human ships capable of nearly infinite speeds. In 3970 a marauder Gausship, the Muir, entered the Tertris home system and used an electromagnetic pulse phaser to detonate the sun. That same year the Tertris surrendered unconditionally.
In the next few centuries the TCS explored most of the Milky Way galaxy, encountering a large number of "empires" roughly equivalent to their own. The largest and most notable of these were the øStennh, in 3985; the Tai, in 4003; the Hhwanlh, in 4017; and the Talquestrian Empire, in 4050. This last proved to be more powerful than the rest of the galactic community combined. In 4075 the Society for Space Travel and the Starover Organization mounted an expedition to the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. Here they discovered the ruins of the Toltik civilization, which had fought and lost a war with the karkovers some forty thousand years earlier, producing the star S Doradus in the process…
Uri ben Baruch trudged slowly toward the entry flap of his tent and stopped short at the sight of a tall, strangely gaunt yet not gaunt figure. It was Pashai anke Soring, the Tai. "Yes?"
"I have come to speak to you of today, Mr. Baruch." His tones, were hollow and bone-chilling.
"What of it?"
"I wish to tell you of my gratitude, Mr. Baruch, which is great—"
Baruch laughed and it was an almost equally bone-chilling sound. "There isn't any need," he said.
The alien nodded. "I see," he said, "and there is no purpose."
Bela den Ennov and Mashordø Tikavoi slogged through the jungles of Kunderer as fast as the slower pace of the captain would allow. This was his first experience with the phenomenon of traveling through a wilderness on foot at night and he was terrified, for the jungle, it seemed, had eyes. Some of them were large and blue and stared out at him from the sides of the trail in ominous silence. Others were large and red and were accompanied by a hoarse, heavily cold breathing. It was fortunate for den Ennov's courage that these first two varieties were relatively infrequent. The vast majority of their invisible companions were armed with tiny pinpoint lights of yellow or green and with thin, shrill voices that piped in terror as they fled from the sight of the alien monsters. The darkness of the night in the Thicket was so complete that the captain could see nothing other than the eyes. There were no trees, no stars, no bushes, no ground and, perhaps most terrifying of all, there was no Mashordø Tikavoi. Only the light, rustling crunch of his footsteps advertised his presence for, like the possessors of the jungle's eyes, he could see quite well in almost total darkness. When he turned about he was visible by the subdued violet glow of his eyes, a glow that was of the same hue as his fur.
"Are you still with me, captain?" The voice of the alien guide had a strong element of amusement in it.
"Yes, Mr. Tikavoi,” he said, quavering slightly. "I'm still here. I think."
Tikavoi chuckled and, turning about, placed a hand on den Ennov's shoulder. "That is clever. I pity your kind for being blind at night, captain. It seems to me that you are only half-sighted."
"Your race pays for its sight. Your vision is limited to a narrower spectrum than ours. You cannot see the color that we call red."
Tikavoi chuckled again. "That is true. I have often wondered what a color 'below' hnorrit'h would look like."
He paused for a long moment, as if considering the idea and then continued: "You know, captain, our race considers the spectrum to have only three colors: namu-ø, what you would call violet, indigo and blue; visht'hiri, your green and the 'upper' half of yellow; and hnorrit'h, the 'lower' half of yellow and orange. Is it not a fascinating difference between our species?"
It was den Ennov's turn to laugh, his attention cleverly drawn from the terrors of the night. "Not really," he said. "Among the various human cultures there are many groups that divide colors in your way. It is only the dominant occidental civilization that sees seven colors. Some cultures see as few as two, others as many as twelve."
"That is incredible. My race has had one language and one culture since before the beginnings of our recorded history. Well," he made a rustling sound as he scratched his fur, "we had better start moving again."
"All right."
The two of them turned and set off down the game trail once more. Gradually, as they continued through the night, the sky began to lighten above them. Soon a vague indigo became visible in the west and, after it, a faint rim of pink. With the coming of day the eyes of the jungle began to disappear. When the sky had lightened to the point where den Ennov could see quite well, the trail suddenly opened up into a clearing and in it were pitched five plastic hunter's tents. Between them a dying fire smoldered.
"Well," said Tikavoi, "here we are, captain."
"Yes, here we are," said den Ennov.
The man called Gilgamesh stepped through the flap of his tent and stood staring at them in amazement.
Deep within the bowels of the starship Wandervogel, Lt. Gordeau slowly walked down a row of dull, grayish objects that looked vaguely like ancient phonograph records, counting: "Thirty-four… thirty-five… thirty-six." At this last he stopped and looked between it and the next, at the lined-up rows of metal studs that lined the surfaces. "All right, spin 'em, Misha," he said into the intercom input on his wrist, "but use the lowest setting that you can find. We don't want the drive generator to come on!"
At the other end of the ship the engineer's mate, Mikhail Turganin, looked at his massive banks of controls with great deliberation. Unlike the control room, the engineer's console had, as a safety feature, manual power phasing equipment. With great care he selected a lever and advanced it from zero to one. He then touched the contact below it and a row of lights across the room came on.
Lt. Gordeau stared down into the field-space area between the stress generators and held his camera at ready. As the machinery began to hum softly a faint pinkish line appeared to connect a pair of unmatched studs on thirty-six and thirty-seven. The picture was snapped and he called into the intercom once more: "Shut 'em off, Misha! I've got what I need, so keep everyone away from the SG section until I get back. I'm going to see Commodore Tanzanieff again."
"All right, lieutenant."
As the sun of Kunderer made ready to swell over the horizon, Gilgamesh, Tikavoi, and den Ennov sat in a circle on the floor of his tent. The little guide eyed the two huge intruders suspiciously and slowly, individually cracked his knuckles. "All right, now," he said at last, turning his attention to Tikavoi. "Do you two mind telling me why you tracked my party across this planet illegally, without any attempt to forewarn us of your intentions?"
The big alien turned to look at den Ennov. "Captain—"
"Mr. Tikavoi!" snapped Gilgamesh. "I would remind you that you are required to answer me directly, without any coaching from your employer, or else refuse to answer entirely. In that case we will all return immediately to the quarantine station where a military board of inquiry will be held."
Tikavoi nodded. "Very well, Mr. Gilgamesh," he said. "My employer, Captain den Ennov, instructed me to discover the whereabouts of your party in order to question several of its members privately."
Gilgamesh's eyes narrowed slightly. "For what purpose?" he asked.
"In order to determine which of them sabotaged his spaceship." Tikavoi looked across at him. "That is the full extent of my knowledge," he said.
"Do you corroborate this, Captain den Ennov?"
The man nodded. "Yes," he said. "Do you have any further questions, Mr. Gilgamesh?" He started to rise.
"Indeed I have. Sit down, please. Why didn't you question your suspects before they left the quarantine station?"
"That was impossible." The captain frowned. "Before I could take any action I had to inform Commodore Tanzanieff of my suspicions and gain his permission to conduct an investigation into the matter."
"Why didn't you radio us at the hunting base and make your inquiries that way?"
Den Ennov smiled. "I'm afraid that I'm somewhat old-fashioned, Mr. Gilgamesh. I require a face-to-face encounter for this sort of thing. It's a great aid in determining the truth."
"I see." The man looked downward at his laced fingers and then up at the captain again. "Why didn't you require us to return to the quarantine station?" he asked.
"I tried to. However, Commodore Tanzanieff told me that, since this was not an official military investigation yet"—there was a hint of stress on the last word—"I could not interfere with your trip."
"And did the commodore sanction this move?" Gilgamesh looked at him severely.
"Yes, he did."
The guide frowned and said, "Very well, captain. I'm going to allow you to question my four employers, but only under these conditions: I am to be present during each questioning period, you will be able to question your suspects only after we make camp each day—"
"That seems reasonable."
"I'm not finished, captain! You will be allowed to question each suspect only once. Then you will be requested to leave."
Den Ennov slammed his hand against the ground with a sharp popping sound. "Now wait just a goddamned minute!"
"No, captain," Tikavoi spoke up. "Out here his word is law."
The captain reddened and then subsided, looking unhappy. "Very well," he said.
Bela den Ennov stood squarely before Pashai anke Soring and the two seemed well-matched in their sense of sheer presence. The alien was simply that, alien, and den Ennov's bulk was of the sort that seemed larger than it actually was. He seemed almost to be able to stare Soring directly in the eye and, even beside Tikavoi's massive, purple-furred body, he had not been dwarfed. The man seemed competent in a very special way and Gilgamesh felt very small in his presence, much tinier than he actually was. In a word, he felt like an ant.
"Lord Soring," he said, "this man is Captain Bela den Ennov of the starship Wandervogel, in which you arrived in Kunderer. He is here to question you with regard to the 'accident' which befell his craft upon landing. It is alleged that this was an act of sabotage. Will you allow his questions?"
"Yes," said the alien, and the hair rose on the back of Gilgamesh's neck at the sound of that voice.
Den Ennov looked surprised at the undertones that he felt and his lips parted slightly. "Lord Soring, what has been your technical background and education?"
He smiled and said, "As a scientist of the Tai Akoidei I have what one might consider a thorough understanding of mathematics. Nothing more."
"What do you know of human technology?"
The smile became a thin grin, calculated to make den Ennov feel uncomfortable. "As an anthropologist, I am naturally bound to study the peculiarities of your technology, captain. However, as I am sure you know, Faster-than-Light spacecraft design is governed by a very large number of universal laws and thus the ships of your species are nearly identical with those of mine."
"That doesn't answer my question!" Den Ennov's face had begun to redden. "Do you know anything at all of FTL systems-engineering?"
"No." That word came out with a frightening burst of infrasonics and the captain suddenly felt deflated and small. To Gilgamesh he even looked smaller.
—from the diary of Gilgamesh Feb. 26,
So tonight I presided over den Ennov's first questioning period, with Soring. What a show!! Can that muth control the way his voice comes out! ! ! Sometimes, when he talks, especially when he talks to Maryam, I think I'm going to cum in my shorts! ! ! ! And I see I'm going ape with the exclamation points again (!!!!!).
The whole day was kind of a dull show of its own, with everybody except Soring kind of hateful and suspicious of den Ennov (after they found out what he was after) and everybody but Soring was afraid of Tikavoi, whose sort of a big, mean-looking muth of an alien. Nobody talked much during the day and, as expected, I didn't find much to shoot at, although I am a lot happier for the presense of Tikavoi's powergun, which is a newer model than mine. Well, after we set up camp we all had a quiet (did I say quiet? Try silent) dinner around the campfire, which Tikavoi disapproves of. Nobody said a word. After dinner den Ennov came up and said that he wanted to question Soring first. So I told him that he couldn't bring Tikavoi to the session, it being none of his business. That toad bugger certainly has a foul mouth!
After he finished screaming at me we went to talk to Soring and he shriveled den Ennov. Not only did he deny knowing how to sabotage starships (as if he'd say yes!) but he made that man feel all of two cm. tall. I still get cold chills up and down my back when I think of the way he sounded. I thought den Ennov was going to drop dead when he heard Soring say "NO!" in what sounded like the voice of God.
I haven't been able to figure this group out since I first got hold of them. Scott MacLeod (HA!) seems like the only normal one in the bunch. He thinks, acts, talks and looks like the men I knew when I was in the Navy. (The women too, come to think of it!) The fact that he didn't try to save Soring is nothing especially remarkable, as almost nobody would have thought to try and save a Tai. (The øStennh are something else. They're not quite so, well… alien.) Of course, that's just what Soring is: the original, stereotyped Inscrutable Alien of the sensies. I can see now where the writers got their ideas. (Is inspiration a form of sweat or a form of breathing?)
Maryam is really kind of strange, too. Why is she in love with an alien of all things? Scott told me she used to be a whore. Oh well. And last of all I can look at Baruch and say, "What?" I've heard of a lot of things, but never a Jewish, ex-eunuch ex-president (or whatever). And he shoots one hell of a lot better than I do. To say that he's weird would be what I'd call a massive understatement. Enough! Enuff! etc. (also, I'm out of space for this entry.) 'nite 'ole boy…
Pashai anke Soring sat outside his tent alone, meditating in the night. He looked up pleasantly, his face stretching into its familiar, practiced smile as Scott walked up and looked down upon him. "May I be of service, commander?"
The man nodded. "What did den Ennov say to you tonight, Lord Soring?"
The alien practiced the human shrug that he was developing and watched Scott carefully to see what effect it was having, if he were doing it correctly. "The captain? He wanted to know if I was the one who sabotaged his spaceship."
"Wonderful. That man must be some kind of an idiot if he thinks that the guilty man will admit his deed at a simple question."
"Undoubtedly."
Scott shot the alien a sharp glance.
Soring smiled warmly. "It is," he said, "much like the case of the customs inspector who must ask the smuggler if he is 'on the job' today."
Commodore Elmo Tanzanieff carefully examined the set of holographic cubes that were sitting on the desk in front of him. Everything was there to speak of the sabotage which had been done to the Wandervogel and the pictures argued their case with minute detail and exquisite color. The thin, glowing streak told of how some nameless technician on Geththewar had set up a self-sustaining and indetectable nonstressed node through the generator's semi-continuous field space at its most vulnerable spot, leaving the ship like a mountain climber hanging from a frayed rope. Had anyone been aware of the peril, they could have watched the generator like the climber might have watched his rope breaking strand by strand: helplessly. The commodore had never encountered such a case of interstellar sabotage before and it might have sickened him, but it did not. Tanzanieff was a man fascinated by the workings of the human mind and this insidious example gave him still more material to work with. Lt. Gordeau's voice seemed to cut sharply through his reverie and he started abruptly. "What did you say?"
The man looked down at him with a look of annoyance momentarily twisting his features and he repeated, "Is this the evidence that you sent me to find?"
The commodore smiled wanly and nodded. "Yes," he said, "this is precisely what I had in mind."
"Well?" Gordeau looked at him expectantly.
Tanzanieff's eyes widened innocently, yet not far enough to smooth out the crinkles of amusement surrounding them. " 'Well' what?"
The man clicked his teeth together faintly with frustration. "What about the evidence? What does it show?"
The commodore chuckled and said, "Well, it tells us that all of the work was very definitely done on Geththewar—"
"Look, will you give me an answer? Was the saboteur a passenger on board the Wandervogel?"
"Of course not."
"Would you mind telling me how you've divined that, so I can tell Captain den Ennov when he returns with a screaming passenger in tow?"
Tanzanieff gave a loud, formless bray of laughter. "That ought to be an interesting sight!" He slapped a hand on the desk. "Look," he pointed at the pink line. "This is the mark of an extortion technique so old that I thought it had died out. If this secondary had done its job properly your ship would have given out shortly before it was scheduled to go into drive. You would have had to be towed back in and repaired. Then, if your captain still refused to pay the hiked-up port fees, the sabotage would have been repeated, only in a different way. A mass bearing would have burned out, say, or a computer field would have died. This would have continued until den Ennov got the idea and paid up. Only it didn't work right. The idiot bungled his sabotage and nearly killed a shipload of people!"
Gordeau stared down at Tanzanieff, who was grinning hugely, and said, "Is there any way to find out which man was responsible and deal with him?"
"There sure is. I'm going to get on the Gauss-band interstellar radio and talk to the Portmaster General of Geththewar face-on. He'll be interested in knowing about what happens during a TCN port review and Board of Inquiry!"
Bela den Ennov attempted to smile a toothy smile down at Scott MacLeod, but the man was looking up at him with rather obvious contempt and this made his job slightly more difficult. The TCN officer had seemed to sense that his turn was coming and the tension had built during the evening meal until it was a tangible thing. Gilgamesh watched the two of them with a strong feeling of interested pride as he saw the way that Scott was able to face down den Ennov.
"Commander MacLeod," said the guide, "I'm certain that by now you are aware of the nature of these proceedings—"
"Say your speech properly!" growled the captain. "I'll have no—"
"He isn't required to, den Ennov." Scott's voice carried the sting of a rawhide lash. "As an officer in the Terran Colonial Navy, I am allowed recognizance of the law. Let us continue."
The captain reddened faintly. "Very well," he said.
Gilgamesh took up his role of inquisitor once again. "Are you aware of the nature of these proceedings, Commander MacLeod?"
"I am."
"And are you willing to answer the questions posed to you by Captain den Ennov?"
"I am, provided only that they do not violate the Official Secrets Act of 4117."
Gilgamesh nodded to the captain. "You may begin."
Den Ennov turned to Scott and said, "Commander, do you have the knowledge required to sabotage a starship?"
"That is a state secret."
Den Ennov exploded with rage. "WHAT?”
Scott smiled happily at him. "Captain, the level of my training and capabilities and those of my fellow officers is a carefully guarded secret and falls within the province of the O.S.A. Thus, I may not answer. Next question?"
"Did you sabotage my ship, goddammit!" the man screamed, his face turning nearly black.
"No captain, I did not."
Behind him, he could hear Gilgamesh trying not to laugh.
Gilgamesh and den Ennov sat across from each other on the floor of the first man's tent and they were the perfect counterpoint. One was very small and hard, while the other was very large and soft. These differences seemed to extend to every aspect of their being; they were opposed in size, in coloration, in temperament, and in origin. As one was light, so the other was dark. As Gilgamesh was a calm, phlegmatic man born into easy poverty, so den Ennov was a hot, excitable man born into opulence and plenty. They spoke now in muted tones, as if trying to conceal their discussion from the others in the camp.
"Now see here, Mr. Gilgamesh," said the captain, bitter frustration wearing a ragged edge onto his voice. "I've got to have some kind of cooperation from you during these, ah, 'questionings'."
The guide's eyes glinted blankly out at him, giving no hint of what was going on inside his head. "No," he said, "you're getting all the cooperation I'm required to give you and your own approach does not exactly follow the spirit of the law."
Den Ennov bit lightly on his thumbnail. "Not from you," he said, "from the people I'm questioning. First I had the alien, trying to avoid me through his voice control, trying to avoid my questions. Then that damn MacLeod, refusing to answer at all!" He rapped his knuckles together angrily. "Am I ever going to get to the truth around here?"
"That depends on what you call the truth, captain. As I heard it, Lord Soring answered your questions directly and to my ear, honestly. Furthermore, as a citizen of an allied alien state, he is protected from any criminal arrest save for deportation purposes. Commodore Tanzanieff should have told you that." Gilgamesh scratched at the newly sprouted blond fuzz on his jaw. "If Commander MacLeod is your saboteur, then he was probably under TCN orders to destroy your ship—"
Den Ennov's eyes went wide. "For what reason?" he gasped.
The man shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe they wanted to assassinate Baruch or, perhaps, the alien?"
The captain nodded slowly, his eyes troubled. "Perhaps, Mr. Gilgamesh. I have but one suspect left, and that is Mr. Baruch himself—"
"Why are you eliminating Maryam?"
"She's nothing more than Soring's guinea pig, a whore. I'd be surprised if she knows how to read."
"I see."
Den Ennov frowned. "I'm sure you do," he said. "Now, then. This Baruch seems to have no reason whatever for refusing to answer my questions and I must ask you this: will you compel him to do so?"
"Do you think that he'll refuse?"
"I don't know. If he does, will you assist me?"
The man eyed him with amusement. "We'll see how the session goes, captain."
"Mr. Gilgamesh—"
"Let's go!" He slipped through the tent's entry flap into the gathering night without a backward glance.
Den Ennov sat staring at the ground for a long moment, then he too arose with a small grunt and slipped out of the tent. As he came to his feet and looked around he saw Maryam, Scott, and Soring sitting together at the campfire on a blanket, ignoring Tikavoi completely as he sat well away from them, cleaning his powergun. The alien looked up at him with a face that was blank and unreadable. The man and the woman appeared to be strongly absorbed in conversation and did not look up at all, but he could tell that they had sensed his presence and had not chosen to recognize it. He turned away with a snort to follow after the guide.
Gilgamesh had stopped at the far end of the camp, where Baruch had pitched his tent separate from the others. "Mr. Baruch?" he called. "May we enter?"
The muffled voice came back, "No."
Den Ennov came up to hear this last and he started in with, "Now see here—"
"Shut up!" Baruch's head pushed through the entry flap and the look in his eyes turned den Ennov cold. It was a look that had silenced many a proud ambassador and quenched many a fiery politician. "Shut up and listen. This 'interview', if we may be so inane as to call it that, will be held out there."
The captain shook his head. "No," he said. "Inside."
Baruch tilted his head back slightly. "Then there will be no interview. I will not answer questions put to me unless they are out there."
Den Ennov's face seemed to swell and darken. "Dammit—" he began.
"He is completely within his rights, captain," said Gilgamesh.
The man let out a soft, whistling breath. "Very well."
Baruch stepped out to confront him.
"Mr. Uri ben Baruch," said Gilgamesh, "this man, Captain Bela den Ennov of the merchant starship Wandervogel, is here to question you concerning the alleged sabotage of his craft. Do you assent to answer his questions?"
"No." Baruch looked den Ennov straight in the eyes and said, "This man's attitude offends me."
Den Ennov's mouth fell open and he seemed to gasp for breath as he stared from Baruch to Gilgamesh and back again.
"Captain den Ennov," said the guide, "your allowed questioning period is at an end. You will have to await a General Board of Inquiry of the Terran Colonial Navy."
Nicholas Roald Chandler had worked long and hard to become Portmaster General of Geththewar. And he had worked much longer and very much harder to retain the post. Throughout this region of space he had gradually earned a reputation as a tough, honest, and hard-driving man who also could be trusted to keep his word and, further, a man who could do anything and do it well. He meant to keep that reputation at all costs. Looking at him, one could see only an overpowering sense of grayness: steely gray eyes stared out of a high-bridged hawk's nose; iron-gray hair pulled straight back into a full, wavy neck-roll; pale, transparent grayish skin; and, of course, the gray coverall uniform of Port Services.
Chandler sat looking down at the items spread across his desk. There were six frightening holographs, a vidfield recording of Commodore Tanzanieff's message, and a copy of the Official Regulations of the Terran Colonial Navy. They all added up to the conclusion that his hard-won security was in very strong danger and Chandler knew quite well what action to take, for he had taken a very similar action nearly fifty years earlier, the time the Port Authority had discovered a very large budgetary discrepancy.
The Portmaster rubbed his seamed and leathery jaw and thought his course through for the hundredth time. It had to be done. With a faint, hoarse grunt of decision he reached out and touched the contact that put through an intercom signal to his private secretary. "Mr. Pendletonne?" Chandler's voice was as cracked and ancient as his body.
"Yes sir?" The voice was a surprisingly rich baritone.
"Please have Mr. Fearing come to my office," he said, "immediately." Without waiting for an answer Chandler released the contact and relaxed back into the plush comfort of his chair, closing his eyes as he did so. He would wait. Down in the huge marauder-repair bay Joshua Fearing, who was the Portmaster-Servicing, looked up from a polarization-dynamics flow chart with a look of annoyance as his name was paged across the annunciator. He was needed for the work here, but he knew that Old Man Chandler wouldn't wait. With a sigh he put down the sheet and stepped toward the beam lift that would take him up into the administrative tower that projected needle-like into the pale azure skies above Geththewar's Murchison Cosmodrome.
When Fearing stepped through the iris door that led into his office, Chandler opened his eyes and looked up at him. "Good morning, Josh," he said.
"Good morning, Mr. Chandler. What's the problem?" The Portmaster waved a thin, wandlike arm at the objects on his desk. "Do you recognize any of these things, Josh?"
Fearing picked up a holograph that showed an excellent image of a small electromagnetic pulse phaser. He paled very slightly as he looked at it and his eyes flickered back to Chandler. "Yes sir," he said. "These are ships' sabotage instruments."
Chandler nodded solemnly. "Yes they are, Josh. Do you know anything about this? It was the Wandervogel, you know."
Fearing drew himself erect and returned the holograph to the desk. "No sir," he said, "I know nothing of this."
Chandler smiled sadly. "I'm sorry, Josh," he said. "There isn't anyone else." He reached into his desk and, pulling out an S-beamer, laid it on the desk before Fearing. "I'll be back in about five minutes." He got up and walked slowly from the room, leaving the man to stare down at the pistol.
Pashai anke Soring glanced over at Mashordø Tikavoi, who sat on the other side of the campfire from him as he stood up. The øStennh still sat as he had all evening, cleaning and tuning his powergun. He had not even looked up when Captain den Ennov had come storming back from Baruch's tent to make himself another supper. The alien looked down at Scott and Maryam. "I am going to go in and write today's entry into my journal," he said. Maryam started to rise. "No, Maryam. You remain here and entertain Commander Scott. I will return when I am finished." He smiled at her and then, still smiling, winked at Scott. "I am certain that your… conversation will be of great interest."
Scott frowned as Soring turned and walked slowly toward his tent and went in. The alien's intonation could be puzzling at times and his mannerisms were often nothing less than astounding. "Well," he turned to Maryam and said, "what were we talking about?"
The woman smiled, her teeth glittering and flashing moistly in the firelight. "My life as a prostitute on Hekate."
His lips quirked slightly. "Oh, were we?"
She laughed. "Tell me, Scott. Did you ever visit any of the, uh, 'establishments' in the Teldrar?"
Scott nodded. "Hekate was my first port of call after leaving the Academy. Its reputation was, of course, known to me, so naturally I—" He flushed lightly and she laughed, a high, clear sound.
"You Earthians are really strange," she said. "I've never seen a man blush like that before."
"That's what comes of living on a planet full of ghosts, I guess." He found himself unable to look at her face any longer. His eyes were drawn increasingly to the front of her blouse and to the creases where her legs were crossed. "They… all try to sit on you with the weight of their culture… Scotland, you know—"
Maryam smiled with warm understanding and her eyes sparkled as the light flickered against them. "Tell me, Scott," she said, "how long has it been since you probed a woman?"
His lips parted slightly and he slowly turned a bright pink. "Why, ah… about a month."
She laughed again and said, "That's much too long."
"I know." He sat on the ground, staring at her in helpless fascination. She slid over close to him and passed a warm, capable hand across his brow and tried to remember some of the things she had learned from Soring, and even the thought of him sent a warm surge flowing from the pit of her stomach. As their lips pressed together and opened he sent his tongue probing into her mouth to find hers and felt it squirming out past her teeth like a restless sea-slug. It tasted faintly and sweetly of tobacco.
Mashordø Tikavoi sat for a long time on his side of the slowly dying fire, watching with interest the actions of Maryam and Scott. That she had made the first overture had surprised him for it had seemed to him that humans, like his own race, were male-dominated. The variety of the human mating act had always fascinated him, seen as it was in the light of his own species' simple, if much extended, couplings. He watched carefully as they joined mouths and ran their hands over each other's bodies and wondered if that was related to his own form of mutual grooming. He even understood the fact of their handling of each other's reproductive organs, but the use of their mouths was completely alien to him and the sight of the ropey white liquid trickling from the woman's mouth repulsed him. As their bodies coupled and the rythmic motion began, he quietly arose and walked over to the tent into which Soring had disappeared. "Lord Soring?" he whispered and his voice was very near silence.
"What is it, Mr. Tikavoi?" The Tai spoke in a mormal tone and the sound bulked large in the illusory hush of the night.
"May I enter?"
"Of course."
Tikavoi pushed his massive purple body through the narrow tent flap and found Soring sitting in a small splash of lamplight, looking up from the long, thin green pages of his journal. He had been writing the incredibly condensed hooks, loops, and curliques of the Akoidei shorthand. The alien's face was dead. He was not a student of the øStennh and he saw little point in using the tools on him that he had designed for use with humans. "What is it?" he said and the words came out as a flat wash of semi-inflected noise.
"I wanted to speak with you for a moment."
Soring put down his stylus and closed the book with a sharp snap. "Very well," he said. His attention was a physical thing in the air.
"Have you noticed the… interaction, if you will, between Commander MacLeod and your slave?"
Soring nodded, dipping his head slightly to the left. It was a gesture that his race had developed independently and not one learned from men. "Of course I have," he said. "That is my work."
"Did you plan this to happen?"
"Yes."
"And does the human know about it?"
"I think so." The Tai opened his notebook and flipped back a dozen pages. "Several days ago I asked Commander MacLeod to 'seduce' Maryam. As you will have noted he did not do so, therefore I simply reversed my tactic and had the woman seduce him. It is an equally valid experiment and the results will be very illuminating."
Tikavoi made a distant rumbling sound deep in his chest. "Tell me, are others of your species performing similar experiments among the øStennh?"
"Certainly. We are a curious race, we Akoidei."
"The Overlords will not take kindly to such actions, Lord Soring."
"That is none of our concern." Tikavoi snorted through his throat, a harsh, angry sound, and started to leave.
"Mr. Tikavoi,” said Soring. "I wish to tell you one more thing: Maryam is not my slave. She is a symbiotic experimental subject and, as such, she benefits as much as I do."
Maryam, the whore who had never known another name lay on the blanket by the dying embers of the warm campfire under the star-sequined midnight sky of Kunderer and watched Scott MacLeod as he slept. He looked asleep much the way he had always looked: a man at peace with himself and with pretty much everyone and everything in the universe. As the woman watched him she pondered about the man and others like him that she had met everywhere. The thoughts that passed across the surface of her mind were not kind. They were of one mold, these men, and they never seemed to vary in anything that they did. They had a set pattern in everything that they did and, with love, as with everything else, they looked solely for their own gratification. It had been like the old days back on Hekate when her sole purpose in life had been to ease the biological frustrations of a horde of identical sailors. The men from the big ships were the worst of the lot, for there were women on those ships and the men came to port with an even greater frustration and anger. But then, that was always as it had been. There was nothing more, or less, that could be said for or against them.
She lay there and thought aimless thoughts for a while, longer about Scott, then her mind turned to the image of Soring. He seemed to know, in an instinctive way that was never telepathic, what to do for her. If only he were a man, or even just human… if only there were men like him. The woman rolled over to lie on her stomach, her face buried in the crack of one arm and, in a little while, a scald of hot tears washed across her cheeks. Her shoulders heaved, yet no sound emerged. She had learned that in the Teldrar slums.
Snal soriei 7728.14
February 28, 4125
—Vmër-knádyi Om'Soring
—From the notebook of Lord Soring
What I have learned about the human species has given me a greater lack of understanding than I had anticipated when I set up this field study so many years ago. I must return to the Prime very soon and begin to integrate this system. It becomes more imperative, of late, as I have noted that I am suffering acutely from aculturation. The fact that we have been locked for so many millennia into our structured and regulated way of life has sensitized us to this phenomenon and I am convinced that we cannot be away from it for any truly great period of time. Experiments must be done.
As my notes of the past few days must indicate, our earlier conception of human, and especially male, aggression and dominance are completely invalid. The research of Om'Naijiris has demonstrated itself to be erroneous.
As a member of the warrior sect (I hesitate to call it 'class'), Scott MacLeod would be expected to exhibit the typical aggression syndrome with respect to sexuality. I have found this not to be the case (see Research, 27:6). He is a functional male who has been successful in his military career and he responded well to all of my careful male/male stimuli, yet he has refused to take any initiative toward Maryam. Because of this I was forced to abandon my attempt at observing Maryam's reactions to a 'romantic' seduction. I planted a posthypnotic suggestion in her to the effect that she would wish a coital experience with MacLeod and this was successful. As I write this, the "mate", MacLeod, has offered no resistance to this classical "role-reversal" and, in fact, even seems to enjoy it. This is strange. Why? Is Cdr. MacLeod completely atypical in this respect? More study is definitely required. I have decided to pursue this as far as 27:200 and
DIGRESSION:
I have been forced to interrupt my journal at this point by a visitation from Mashordø Tikavoi who, as you will note from the previous day's entry in this notebook, is a member of the øStennh species. He questioned the nature of my experiments and then asked if we were performing similar probings on his species. When I answered him truthfully, he seemed severely troubled, perhaps even angered. His most forthright statement was that the rulers of his species would be distraught by the possibility. Why?
This must be taken up by the Academicians at their next conclave and research topics made available with regard to it.
The fact that the humans have opened up travel routes throughout the galaxy has rendered our information gathering and synthesizing projects infinitely more difficult. What will happen when they begin to investigate other galaxies? New techniques must be found.
It is my suggestion that the Karkover Archives Computer at the Hub be consulted. Investigations must be made into the possibilities (indeed, the necessities) of interspecies cooperation. The TCS government is, of course, ephemeral and useless. However, other human agencies are far more capable.
The Starover Organization has abandoned its piratical nature and seems to have become the largest single commercial shipping unit in existence. It has endured for more than ten centuries and has remained viable for far longer than any other human institution.
The Society for Space Travel is much younger, but shows even greater possibilities. Its leader, Jaakob Schmidt, is, at 2153 years of age, the oldest known living being. He was born on Earth on July 18, 1971 (roughly, 6120:78) and was the first human to take the Capellan Immortality Treatment.
Lt. Gordeau sat at a small, round table in one dark corner of Mishkin's Cafe, slowly sipping a mug of hot "quaffy". The little restaurant and bar was run by one of the few men living on Kunderer who was not either with the Navy, a guide with On-Planet Services, or with one of the many research groups wandering across the world. Nickol Mishkin had come to Kunderer with the quarantine garrison as a Navy cook and, when his time to retire had come, he had decided to remain. The atmosphere of the place was one of dim, cool friendliness and it had quickly become first a gathering place for the various permanent groups, then a tourist attraction. Men like Lt. Gordeau, who spent their entire lives traveling among the stars, were among those who favored the place most, for it was much like the other astronauts' bars scattered across the galaxy. It gave them a specific type of place to become familiar with, to think of as home.
Gordeau sat in the darkness slowly swallowing his drink and sucking smoke from a hash-stick. He and Commodore Tanzanieff had been enjoying a short rest from their investigation of the ever-greater and more complicated list of things that had been done to the Wandervogel when a young sailor had come rushing in to tell him excitedly of an incoming call from the Portmaster of Geththewar. During the first call and accusation the man had made a complete denial of any sabotage and had indicated that if the Inquiry uncovered nothing he, through the planetary government, would sue the Colonial Navy for damaging libel in the Interstellar Court of Justice. Now, this second call from Geththewar could mean one of two things: either a legal action from Geththewar or an admission of guilt and an offer to settle the matter privately.
Tanzanieff reentered the cafe and came striding across the room, grinning, to flop down heavily in a chair beside Gordeau. "Well," he said, "That's it."
"What happened?"
The man smiled broadly and slapped a hand against the side of his leg. "We've got them," he said. "That call was from Portmaster Chandler and he told me that they dug around in their incidence files and found the guilty party."
Gordeau nodded slowly. "Who was it?" he asked.
"One of their crew chiefs, a man by the name of Fearing. He was the one who supervised the overhaul of the Wandervogel and, apparently, he was the one who was engineering a split up of the stevedoring fee that the port levies."
"Are they holding him for arrest and extradition?"
Tanzanieff's face suddenly went still and grave. "No," he said, "they're not."
Gordeau looked surprised, his eyes widening slightly. "No? Why not? Refusing to turn over a criminal is the quickest way I know of to get unfavorable publicity and, if he hurts the tourist trade, the Chamber of Commerce'll have him out in. an instant!"
"Hold on a minute!" The commodore eyed the lieutenant as he slowly became more agitated. "The reason they haven't arrested the man is because they can't. After they confronted him with the evidence that we sent, he killed himself. He used an S-beamer set at wide-angle, so that all they found was his left hand and a glowing spot on the floor."
Gordeau passed the back of his wrist slowly across his brow. "Oh. That's very convenient."
"Isn't it? So now our saboteur is discovered, apprehended, and punished in one move. The legalities are satisfied and we have no grounds for complaint."
"Do you really think that he did it?"
"Possibly, but we have no way of knowing. I'm going to forward a recommendation to the TCN Sector Marshal, Admiral Goshawk, that the port organization of Geththewar be subjected to a clandestine investigation. Well," he said, "whatever else is done, Chandler has agreed to make restitution for all repairs, reimburse the company for its lost profits, and pay any money due the passengers for the time they've lost." He clapped Gordeau on the shoulder. "Come on. We've got to try and get hold of Captain den Ennov before he catches up with Gilgamesh's party."
As the sun of Kunderer surged redly above the horizon of the first day of March in 4125, five men and two aliens emerged from their tents and began to break camp. They folded their equipment with the speed of prior organization and, before the sun had risen its own width into the sky, they were walking slowly down their chosen game trail. Gilgamesh and Scott took the lead, examining the bushes on either side for movement or sound. Behind them walked Soring, alone, and behind him Baruch and Maryam were carrying on a muted conversation. Den Ennov and Tikavoi brought up the rear, the latter with his powergun held at ready.
Suddenly, forward and to their left, there came a rising grumble from the foliage, like the sound of a rockslide on a distant mountain. Gilgamesh dropped to one knee and snapped the safety off on his gun. "All right, Scott," he whispered, "this one is yours."
MacLeod stepped forward and lifted his rifle to firing position. "Hai!" he shouted, his voice breaking. The branches of the bush parted above his head and an enormous, red-scaled snout projected through, showing a ridge of massive, swordlike white fangs. The thing breathed and an odor of rotting fish washed across the group. The head came through farther and a pair of pale green eyes the size of basketballs became visible; then, as it pushed onward into the trail, a short neck and a pair of narrow shoulders with shriveled arms and hooked claws came into view. The animal snarled and everything went silent. The eyes swiveled about to survey the group, then fixed hungrily upon Scott.
"Fire!" screamed Gilgamesh, "FIRE!" The man remained motionless and slowly, confidently, the head began to reach out for him.
Gilgamesh leaped to his feet with a muffled curse and, running forward, shoved Scott aside. He leveled his powergun at the animal and pressed the trigger stud. Nothing happened. There was no frightful lash of raw energy and no flicker of devastating blue fire. There was nothing. The gun was dead. The head leaned downward towards Gilgamesh, who stared upward in awed fascination, and the jaws closed daintily about his head. As the heavy teeth sank knifelike into his flesh he let out one short, girlish squeal and then there was a loud popping and crunching of bones. The animal dragged him slowly away into the bushes and all was quiet once more. Den Ennov sank slowly to his knees and began to throw up.
Anger, resentment, rage, confusion and horror coursed around, over and through the six survivors who sat about the campfire that night on Kunderer's Least South continent. The dinner had been spent in total silence, with each of them staring vacantly into the flames. Even Soring seemed to be affected, to be visibly shaken by the experience. In every mind there was something that needed to be said and accusations that cried out to be made, but no one wanted to begin. After they had finished eating they sat, each one alone, none daring to look at the others for fear of what he might see. Suddenly Maryam slammed her dishes into the fire and leaped to her feet. "God damn it!" she shouted. "I can't stand any more of this!" As she turned and ran into the darkness a tiny splash of wetness flew from her face to make the fire hiss angrily.
There was a long moment of motionless waiting, then Soring cleared his throat and said, "It seems that today has been rather trying. I think—"
"You cold-blooded alien bastard," rasped den Ennov. "Do you really?"
"That is enough, captain!" snapped Tikavoi, more stung by the insult than its target. "There is no point in throwing indignities about. We are all carrying a share of the guilt here."
"Are we?" asked den Ennov, turning to stare fixedly at Scott, who sat with his eyes closed, holding an uneaten dinner in his lap. He looked up, once, and then turned away again.
"Leave him alone," said Baruch, his voice gone soft and deep. "He's as innocent of any crime as you are."
"Oh? And how do you figure that?"
"He was lying face-down in the dirt with his gun and the rest of us were armed with the same weapons. All of us except—" He stopped and his eyes turned towards the øStennh. "Tell us, Mr. Tikavoi," he said. "Why didn't you shoot the thing with your powergun?"
The alien chuckled deeply and with very real amusement. "Unfortunately I was standing in such a manner that I could not fire without hitting the rest of you."
The man nodded.
"MacLeod isn't getting out of this that easily," said den Ennov, his eyes fixing thoughtfully on Baruch, "and neither are you."
Soring rose to his feet with one single, fluid contraction of his muscles. "Gentlemen, this is a valueless discussion and I suggest that you abandon it. I am going to bed." He turned and strode smoothly into the night.
"I concur," said Tikavoi, lifting himself from the ground with a heavy grunt. "Why not try to keep away from each other's throats?" He shot a swift look at den Ennov and then disappeared into the darkness.
"Well, captain—" said Baruch.
"Good night, Mr. Baruch," he said harshly and, rolling clumsily to his feet, he too walked away from the little circle of firelight, leaving Scott MacLeod and Uri ben Baruch alone in the wilderness.
Scott looked up at Baruch as the heavy footfalls crunched away into silence and his eyes glistened sadly in the flickering light. "Did you ever feel like you just wanted to lay down and die?" he said.
Baruch smiled faintly and nodded. "Many times, Scott," he said, "but the feeling always seems to go away with time."
The man shook his head. "This one won't, Uri. Not the way I feel."
"I wasn't your fault, not really. But I do know how you feel. I was fourteen when I killed my first man and afterwards I wanted to curl up and hide from the universe. It was a boy that I knifed in a barracks duel during my first years as a—"
"That's not it!" Scott savagely hurled a pebble into the fire. "My whole education has been geared to the idea that the death of a man is not such a great thing. On Earth and in the Navy that's all that they told me!" Baruch rubbed a finger across his upper lip and pulled softly on his nose. "What is it, then?"
"Uri, I'm a coward." His face fell forward into his hands.
"What? How did you arrive at that conclusion?"
"I froze," he whispered. "The crisis came and I froze. All of my training… my life… and nothing."
"You idiot." Baruch had had a voice training of his own and he used it now with scathing effectiveness. "I've been alive for a very long time, Scott, three hundred years, and in those centuries I've seen many brave men faced by many strange situations and most of them reacted the same way you did: they froze. It's part of the human condition."
Scott nodded bleakly. "You have lived a very long life," he said, and a flicker of interest crossed his face.
"How? You don't look like a man whose been on the Saunders Treatments for three hundred years—"
Baruch smiled at the way the man's mind was able to shift gears in midflight as he pulled himself forcibly out of his depression. "I stopped taking the antisenescence drugs when I was forty years old," he said.
"Then how—"
"Shortly after I became first minister of the Vinzeth Empire, I was able to secretly take the Capellan Immortality Treatment."
"Jesus Christ!"
Baruch's mouth dropped open in surprise. "I didn't know there were any Believers left," he said. "Are you one?"
Scott nodded. "Tell me about immortality, Uri."
"All right." He rummaged about in his pack until he found a bottle of rum-laced milk and, popping off the cap with a hollow sound, he took a long pull at it. "Well, there isn't much to tell, really. It's a total metabolic and functional reworking of the system that is totally undetectable and completely beyond our capability to figure out. After I had myself smuggled to Capella, I had myself taken right to an operating room and knocked out." He shook his head. "When I woke up they told me that I was immortal. That was 260 years ago and I haven't aged a bit since."
"How long will you live?"
Baruch shrugged. "The Capellans told me forever."
"Forever—" breathed Scott.
As the unanswered tone sounded for the tenth time, Elmo Tanzanieff thumbed the cutoff contact on his input and set the thing back on its cradle on the desk. No one was responding from the radio shack on the Least South continent and, from the looks of it, no one would for quite a while. The commodore frowned and, rising from his desk, stretched slowly and lethargically, listening to the faint popping and crackling sounds of his back. Officially speaking, it wasn't his problem and the sector marshal wouldn't take any action, but the fact that he had allowed this to happen would go on his record along with the fact that den Ennov had hired a free trail guide and taken off. It would be a black mark against him, and when the Admiralty Reviewing Board convened next year it would be there for them to see. Turning away from the desk he strode through the door and into the hallway Where the beam lift was. He dialed for "down" and, stepping into the shaft, calmly ignored the long, breathless fall through the length of the building to where an inertial field caught him and gently deposited him on the floor. He walked away from the doorway and into the entry foyer of Mishkin's cafe. Lt. Gordeau was awaiting him there.
"Well?" said the man.
"Let's go over and have a drink," said Tanzanieff. The two walked back into the bar and sat at a table in the middle of the room. Flagging down a waiter, the commodore said, "Bring us a couple of rum-and-malagas." He turned back to Gordeau, who was beginning to look impatient. "I couldn't get them," he said. "So it's a pretty safe bet that he's already gone into the Thicket after them."
"What can we do about it?"
Tanzanieff shrugged. "Not much except try and talk Mr. Barach out of suing your company for libel."
"Just Baruch, not the other?"
"That's right."
"Why?" Gordeau looked puzzled.
"Because he's the only one who will. MacLeod is TCN and the alien wouldn't go near the idea. Maryam, of course, we can ignore."
Gordeau nodded and paused as the waiter brought up the drinks. Picking his up, he turned to the commodore and said, "Aba la pornta."
Tanzanieff smiled and lifted his glass. "Ir est dreck en vu's omin," he replied. They each downed a swallow of the fiery-sweet liquid. "Where did you learn the patois?"
"I grew up speaking it. My father is a Starover."
"Oh? That's interesting. How did you end up in the merchant marine with a pirate for a father?"
"It was my choice to make and he approved of it Besides, he wasn't a pirate, he was a mercenary."
"Where is he now?"
Gordeau bit his lip slightly. "On his way to Andromeda," he said, "with Tharkie and the rest of his idiot dreamers."
"Is that bad?"
Gordeau shook his head. "No, not really. If they make it they'll be remembered."
Tanzanieff clapped him lightly on the shoulder and laughed. "Come on," he said, "let's get over to that ship. Maybe you'll get a command out of this yet."
Uri ben Baruch walked slowly and meditatively back through the darkness from carrying Scott to his tent. The man had gone on talking aimlessly until he had fallen asleep, mumbling tiredly about cowardice and death. He trudged carefully around the edge of Soring's tent and jumped at the sudden sound of a faint voice. "Uri?"
The man spun about to stare in surprise at Maryam, clad in a filmy, translucent nightgown. She walked slowly towards him, vaguely visible in the light of the dying fire, and when she was close enough, he could see the dark patches that were her nipples through the material. "What is it?" he asked.
She moved up until she was barely a foot away, then said, "I wanted to talk to you," as she looked at his eyes.
He tried to speak, choked hoarsely, and managed to gasp out, "What—" He tore his eyes away from her and stared into the night. "What about?"
"Please." She placed a slim, well-shaped hand on his massive chest and stared down slightly, then peered once more into his eyes. "Could we go over to your tent?"
Barach inhaled sharply and could only nod mutely. The last few days it had been getting almost impossible to talk to her coherently and, in the privacy of his own tent at night, he was having some most incredible fantasies.
She grasped him by the hand and pulled him after her across the campground until they reached his tent; then she stopped and turned to look at him again. "Why are you trembling?" When he didn't answer, she said, "What are you afraid of? Me?"
He shook his head. "No."
"What then?"
"Of myself."
Maryam burst out laughing, then stoppped short when she saw the hurt look in his eyes. "I'm sorry," she said, "let's go in." She kneeled and crawled through the entry flap. After a moment's hesitation, Baruch followed her in.
When they were inside, with the lamp switched on, they sat cross-legged in the mellow glow, facing each other. "Now, what is it that you wanted to speak of?"
Maryam canted her head back slightly and said, "Is it true that you have spent most of your life as a… not a man, and that you have never had a woman?"
Baruch swallowed and nodded, not looking at her. "Yes," he said, "I thought that was common knowledge."
Maryam smiled and said, "Yes, I thought that—" She paused and then the rest came out in a rush. "Would you like to have me?"
He opened his mouth, then closed it again with an audible snap. "Is this Soring's idea?"
The woman looked astounded for a moment, then began to curse fluently in that strange mixture of Greek and Arabic that is the slum lingo of Hekate.
Baruch smiled thinly. "My humblest apologies," he said, in that language. "I have misjudged you."
"You speak Tellex!"
"I sure do. I went there when I was a young, er… eunuch, to study mass sociology."
She shook her head in amazement. "Well, it was my idea."
"Are you getting tired of the alien?"
"No, he's still completely wonderful, but… I'm getting tired of being an experiment!" She reached up and touched the contact at the top of her gown and its front seam fell open to reveal her dark, perfect body.
Baruch reached out shyly to touch her leg and then drew his hand back. "I can't," he said.
"Yes you can," she whispered. She seized his hand with hers and guided it down to the lush, moist forest that grew between her thighs.
Scott MacLeod awoke in the middle of the night to the visage of Mashordø Tikavoi peering down at him. He jumped and then shouted and the alien hissed, "Be quiet!" at him. "I just want to talk to you."
Scott eyed him suspiciously. "What about?" he demanded.
"About today, Mr. MacLeod."
The man shook his head. "Now dammit, I've already told you that I'm willing to accept part of the blame for Gilgamesh's death. So get out of here and let me go to sleep!"
Tikavoi let out a very human sigh that roughed the hair on Scott's head. "There will be no apportioning of blame. Gilgamesh was not the first guide to be killed by a freak accident in the Thicket. We had one man, an experienced hunter, who somehow managed to vaporize himself with his powergun while he was shooting a dinosaur a few years back."
Scott sat up and reached out to take a cigarette from his pack. He lit it and then sat back to watch the alien. "What else could you be here to talk about?"
"Tomorrow morning Captain den Ennov is going to place Mr. Baruch under a citizen's arrest and we will need you to witness the act officially. Will you do it?"
Scott shook his head. "There's no need of that, Mr. Tikavoi," he said.
"Captain den Ennov thinks that there is," said the alien. "Will you be our official witness?"
"No."
"Commander, we are going to take this action tomorrow, whether or not we have your active cooperation."
Scott blew a careful smoke ring from his mouth, then blew another one through it as it hung spinning in the air. "You will not," he said. "I forbid it."
"You can't do that!"
The man smiled lazily. "Ah, but I can," he said. "If either you or Captain den Ennov makes any such unauthorized arrest I will place both of you under military detention and I will personally take command of this party." He stopped and looked Tikavoi directly in the eyes. "I assure you that my charges will stick."
"You bastard!" said the alien.
Maryam the ex-whore sat in the hot, wet night of Kunderer and watched Baruch the ex-eunuch as he lay on the ground and scribbled rapidly in his diary. It had been strange, she thought, and beautiful and now, in some unfathomable manner, she felt completely renewed. This man, unlike every other man she had ever known, had a very different approach to her. In some ways he had been like Soring: careful and meticulous, always experimenting with the new things that he had been doing to her. He had wanted to try everything. In other ways, however, he had been like the girlfriend she had had on Hekate: gentle, loving, and thoughtful. The fact that he had been as concerned for her pleasure as for his own and concerned in a very personal way had all added up to one single, astounding conclusion: for the first time in many years she had come while making love to a man. The other women on Hekate had had their own special brand of uniqueness about them and Soring… well, there was nothing meaningful that could be said about him. With a deep sigh of contentment she leaned down and laid her head upon Baruch's naked shoulder. He looked back at her, his eyes shining happily, and kissed her on the top of her head. Then he closed the little book with a snap and drew her around until she faced him. Wordlessly they drew together, their minds focusing entirely upon probing tongues and wandering hands.
—from the diary of Uri ben Baruch
March 1, 4125.
I have kept a journal of the daily events of my life now for a considerable length of time and my biographers, whoever they may be, are going to have an enormous amount of work ahead of them as I am now in Volume 285. Yet the strength of this strange compulsion was completely unknown to me until, on this night of wonder, I found myself compelled to take out my pen and book and begin writing.
To begin with I am nearly delirious with the incredulity of it all: it has really happened to me. I have reversed the condition of my life, released the mental bonds that have kept me shackled for three centuries. I now feel I can say the thing which is the lot of most of my people to say when they are young boys:
TODAY I AM A MAN.
Is that not silly? Here I sit, closing in like a demon upon Methuselah, three hundred years old, and I rhapsodize inanely about tonight's experience, turning my deflowering into a bar mitzvah. What will the historians think? They will be delighted. I was the most powerful human being in the universe for twenty-six decades (the TCS rulers, being democratic, don't count) and now, for the first time in recorded history I have gotten a fish:
I AM KVELLED.
And that woman is surprisingly intelligent. She speaks six languages fluently, and without hypnopaedia! The fact that she seems stupid is due largely to the fact that, by our standards, she is uncultured. But this is not true in any way that you look at it. Deep down, in my kishkas, if you will, I know that she has a mind capable of comprehending almost anything.
Even now her soft hair is nestling against my back and I think that I must stop now and go back to her lest she be bored. Can I feel for her like this after just one time? I think so. Can I actually love her (that strong word) on so short a notice? I think yes.
Dawn broke with a sullen swell over the jungles of Kunderer and the Thicket slowly went from its nighttime creaking to its daytime rustling as the members of the safari rose from their tents. Scott awoke earlier than any of the others and, as he began his work first, so he was finished first and able to stand and watch as the others slowly folded their tents and packed their equipment. He was standing alone, wryly watching Baruch and Maryam as they worked together, when den Ennov walked up to him and angrily said, "Commander MacLeod! May I have a word with you?"
Scott looked at him coldly. "What do you want?" he asked, his voice chill.
"Why the hell are you—"
"Keep a civil tongue in your head, captain!" he snapped, his tones carrying the lash of military authority. "When you speak to me, remember that I carry the power of a sovereign interstellar government at my side."
Den Ennov's eyes were heavy with frustration and rage, but when he spoke his manner seemed subdued. "Why are you interfering with my attempt to arrest Baruch?"
"Because I deem such an action totally unnecessary."
"But why?"
"Captain den Ennov," said Scott, "has it ever occurred to you that you just might be wrong in your accusations?"
"Well, of course. What does that have to do with it?"
Scott grinned savagely. "And what," he said, "would happen if I allowed you to make this 'citizen's arrest' and then he turned out to be innocent? What then?"
The man shook his head slowly. "Well, he might sue me for libel, but I can afford to take the risk."
"You may be able to, captain, but I can't."
"What are you talking about? I don't understand where you come into this."
"If I allow you to make a false arrest, Baruch will not only sue you, but he will also be able to sue me. My superiors would take a rather dim view of such an error."
Den Ennov nodded, comprehension dawning in his eyes. "I see," he murmured, "I see."
"Wonderful," said Scott and the man flinched at the knifelike slash of sarcasm in his voice. As he turned away bitterly to return to his previous night's campsite, the deep roar that was Tikavoi boomed out across the clearing:
"All right, let's get ready to pack out of here!"
Scott reached down and swung his gear up to his shoulders where it rested snugly upon its straps. Soon they were trudging wearily back down the trail from whence they had come, with Mashordø Tikavoi in the lead, followed by Maryam, Baruch and Scott who were conversing quietly in a little knot. Captain Bela den Ennov brought up the rear at a considerable distance behind the rest and he walked slowly and alone.
As Baruch and Scott trekked together through the late afternoon in the Thicket towards Field Station number eight, each was conscious of the swelling wrath behind him that was den Ennov. He had taken to dropping slowly behind, as if consumed by thought, then hurrying angrily to catch up. He did not want to be left alone in the jungle and Tikavoi was forging steadily and rapidly ahead, seemingly oblivious of those within his charge. Finally, MacLeod turned to the man beside him and said, "Well, it looks like we'll be getting back to base soon."
Baruch nodded glumly, his mouth still pulled slightly downward at the corners as it had been all day. "That's true," he said. "I recognize this section of trail, I think, so we can't be more than a kilometer away, probably less." He paused for a minute, massaging the back of his neck with one sweaty palm, then continued, "Are you sure you can't tell me what this is all about? What happened?"
"Positive."
"But why not?"
Scott's mouth quirked slightly in exasperation. "Look, Uri," he said, "we've been through all of this six million times already today. Because of what Tikavoi and myself talked about last night I am trying to stave off some expensive legal difficulties involving all of us and it's part of the nature of these difficulties that it would be better if you don't know precisely what they are."
Baruch bit his lip and looked troubled. "I can't possibly see what you're getting at," he said.
"If it'll make you feel any better, I'll tell you all about it after we ship off-planet. All right?"
Baruch nodded.
"Look, we're here!" Quite suddenly they had burst through the last line of trees and the buildings of the base were laid out before them. As they walked rapidly down the hill toward the little cluster of dwellings Scott called out, "The rest of you go down to the main house and get cleaned up. I'm going to go over to the radio hut. I have a private message to send out." He shot a savage look at den Ennov.
"Commander MacLeod?" That was from Tikavoi.
"Yes?"
"Are we heading back tonight or tomorrow?"
"I think we'd better fly back tonight. I can spell you at piloting."
Tikavoi nodded his understanding. "I'll get the plane ready after dinner then."
"Right."
Lt. Gordeau and Commodore Tanzanieff sat across from each other once more at a small corner table in Mishkin's Cafe, this time sipping from small carafes of Irish coffee made with expensive Brandy Dionysee. They were surrounded by the laughing and talking crew members and engineers from the Wandervogel and its TCN repair crew. The repairs were finished and the ship would be ready to lift as soon as the authorization to continue the flight was received, probably within a few days.
"Well", said Gordeau, "that's that. What word do you have?"
Tanzanieff frowned and rubbed his chin meditatively. "Not very pleasant, I'm afraid. I just got a call from MacLeod."
"Oh? What about?"
"Their guide, Mr. Gilgamesh, has been killed in the Thicket and MacLeod's had to partially assume command of the group. Captain den Ennov was being so obnoxious with his questioning that he had to threaten to place him under military arrest. Not so good, eh?"
Gordeau shook his head. "That's an understatement," he said, "When'll they be back?"
"Tonight. They're taking off right after dinner, so we should expect them in about five hours."
"Did you tell him what we found out?"
Tanzanieff nodded. "I certainly did. He said that he'd go in and tell den Ennov immediately. He also told me that he was going to demand an apology from the captain in lieu of sending in an adverse report, so I'm off the hook, at least."
Gordeau tugged lightly on his lower lip and then looked up at the commodore. "I'm not sure how Captain den Ennov will take that. He's not the most patient man in the universe, you know."
The officer snorted out a small chuckle. "His patience is probably the last thing at issue here. It's the best deal he's going to get, so he'll have to take it and be satisfied."
Gordeau nodded unhappily and drained his cup. "He's going to be hell to live with after this little bit of foolishness," he said.
Tanzanieff smiled and stood up. "Well, I think we'll all live through it."
Baruch, Maryam, den Ennov and Soring were left alone in the commons room of the main living quarters of Field Station number eight and, as Maryam and the alien had retreated into the kitchen alcove to prepare a hot meal for the others, Baruch and den Ennov were left alone together in the lounge area. When he was certain that the other two could neither see nor hear him, the captain walked over to where Baruch was sitting and stood before him, hands on hips.
"Now," he said, "you are going to answer my questions fairly or I'm going to have you under arrest."
Baruch got to his feet and stood glaring up at the man, canting his head well back to do so. "I'm warning you, den Ennov," he said, his voice carrying ominous overtones, "get off of me or I'll break you in two."
The captain's mouth fell open in astonishment. "You warn me?" he almost shrieked. "Why you little fart, I ought to—" He grabbed the man by the front of his shirt and started to pull him to his feet.
Baruch drove a handful of stiffened fingers into the side of den Ennov's chest and, when the man let go with a grunt of pain, smashed the heel of his hand into his breastbone. He sat down heavily on the floor. "There is your last warning," Baruch said calmly. "Get away from me."
The captain slowly climbed to his feet, madness glinting redly in his eyes and, with a terrible roar of pent-up rage, he rushed at Baruch. In his anger he did not see the long, flashing knife that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere in the man's hand and he never knew of its existence until he felt it drive like a white-hot spike into his stomach, inward and down. He stepped backwards with a sharp gasp, his hands clasped across his abdomen, and stood looking at Baruch and the knife in his hand, then let go of himself. The front of his clothes opened up, then the flesh beneath them and a mass of watery blue intestines and blood spilled out onto the floor. He looked forlornly down at them for a moment, then up at Baruch. "Ohhhh—" he said in a very faint voice, "doesn't that look like shit?" His eyes rolled upward to reveal a broad expanse of white and he slowly toppled forward.
Tikavoi walked back from where he had been checking out the aircraft before readying it for the flight north-ward and came through the front door of the main building. "Hey," he said, then his eyes took in the little tableau before him of Baruch standing over den Ennov who was lying atop an unrecognizable mass in the center of a slowly spreading pool of bright scarlet blood. He uttered a short string of øStennh expletives. "What has happened here?" he demanded.
Baruch looked at the knife in his hand, then said, "Obviously, I've just killed this man."
The alien took a short, sharp breath and stepped forward. "Give me the knife," he said, holding out his hand.
The man shrugged and handed it to him hilt-first. "All right," he said. "Now what are you going to do?"
Tikavoi reached over to pick up the rifle that was lying on the table beside him. "You are under arrest," he said.
Baruch shook his head. "No, you don't have the power to do that. All you can do is shoot me." He spun about and started to walk away.
"Halt!" shouted Tikavoi, releasing the safety catch with a loud click.
The man did not even turn around. "No," he said.
Tikavoi leveled the gun at him and said, "If you don't stop, I'll shoot!"
Maryam came through the door, her arms laden with food, and, seeing the rifle aimed at Baruch's back, dropped it with a splattering crash upon the floor. She screamed.
The man whirled around and looked directly at the alien's face. "Go ahead," he said, his face afire with excitement, "shoot me."
Tikavoi's finger slowly tightened on the trigger and Maryam screamed again, then the finger relaxed and the alien's eyes slowly closed. After a moment the barrel of the gun wavered and then drifted away from Baruch. "I cannot," he said, and his voice seemed very dead. He took the stock from his shoulder and turned away.
"Now," said Baruch, "give the gun to Maryam."
At the sound of Maryam's screams Scott MacLeod came sprinting across the little airfield to burst through the open door of the living quarters behind Tikavoi. In a fraction of a second his eyes took in the components of of the drama being played out in the room: the corpse still bleeding into the soft, plush carpet, the alien standing head-down with the rifle in his hands, Maryam with terror blazing in her eyes, and Baruch looking at him triumphantly with beads of cold sweat lining his brow.
"What the hell is going on?" he cried, face aghast.
"It's very simple," said Baruch. "Captain den Ennov physically assaulted me and, when I attempted to defend myself, he was accidentally killed. Then this idiot came in and tried to arrest me and, when I refused, he said that he was going to shoot me, but," he gestured at the rifle, "as you can see, he changed his mind."
Scott looked at them in total bewilderment. "Is that true?" he demanded of the alien.
Tikavoi nodded. "It is indeed true," he said in a voice that shuddered. "I have failed once more in just the manner that sent me here so many years ago." He threw back his head and uttered a deep, eerie howl that sent chills running through the others in the room, and then up-ended the rifle and placed its barrel in his mouth. He pulled the trigger and the gun went off with a deafening roar in the tiny room as the bullet slammed into the ceiling with a cracking thud. Tikavoi stood, staring stupidly at his empty hands for a long moment, then looked over at Soring, who had slipped into the room unnoticed. He still held the smoking rifle in his hands. "No!" cried Tikavoi, and it was almost a repetition of the howl. He fell face-down onto the floor and his massive, purple-furred shoulders began to heave. "Why?" he sobbed faintly, "why?"
Soring looked first at the gun, then at den Ennov and Tikavoi together on the floor, and, last, over to where Baruch stood with his arms about Maryam, who was crying silently into his shoulder. "There is something here that I do not understand," he said.
"There are many things everywhere that no one will ever understand," said Scott, looking down at the alien's quivering back.
A short row of stunted, blue-green bushes waited patiently at the end of Field Station number eight's hard, black plastic runway in the growing purple sunset that would soon give birth to Kunderer's night. When they had first taken root there from lost, wind-blown seeds they might have considered exploding into the titanic size of their Thicket-dwelling forbears, but some pensive botanist had seen their first buds pushing hopefully through the rich, black earth and had noted the danger that they might pose to the airstrip's users. In a passing fit of generosity he had applied a growth-retardant spray to the plants and the ground in which they grew. Had nothing more happened to them, the bushes would have grown quickly and easily to the height of a tall man. However, the occasional passage of a TCN aircraft with its dynamic, yet static, stress fields so close overhead had done yet more to them. The bushes at the end of the runway were now only three feet tall.
As the darkness slowly became deeper a howling began in the background which slowly grew louder and increasingly more shrill. The bushes seemed to pause in their soft, careless waving and become tensely alert. Behind the howl a faint rushing, as of wheels on plastic, could be heard. With abrupt suddenness a straight-winged white bullet screamed overhead and the bushes lashed madly in a backwash of furiously boiling air.
The plane slammed over a low line of gently rolling hills and then climbed with a somber power into the darkening star-map of the sky.
Scott MacLeod sat in the pilot's seat of the airship holding the control wheel firmly with both hands and watching the dusky landscape of Kunderer rush by far below. "Tell me," he said to Baruch, "what are you going to do when this is all over?"
The man shrugged and shook his head. "I don't really know," he said, "I still have quite a bit of wandering to do."
"Come now, surely you have some idea of where you're going to go next."
Baruch scratched slowly at the inside of his ear, then said, "Well, I would like to go back to Delta Pavonis someday and see how much it's changed. And I never have seen Earth. I guess I'd like to see the Colonial Congress in session one of these days. Maybe I could talk Henry into giving me a job," he laughed.
"Henry who?" Scott was puzzled.
"Henry Harlan. Lord Redmoor of New East Anglia. He was the ambassador to the Vinzeth Empire a couple of centuries ago and they tell me he's going to be Governor General of the TCS someday."
The man shook his head. "How about you, Maryam," he said, "what comes next for you?"
She grinned and said, "I know very definitely what comes next for me. I'm going with Uri," and she hugged his arm and closed her eyes.
Scott laughed. "There's certainty for you," he said.
Baruch chuckled and patted her on the arm, cackling. "Definitely. So tell us: what happens to you next?"
"Well, I've got my tour of duty with the Navy to finish, of course. But eventually"—his face became distant and somber,—"I'm going to Capella."
—from the diary of Uri ben Baruch.
Mar. 2, 4125
To write down a synopsis of today's events I can say but one small thing:
"On this day I took the life of Captain Bela den Ennov."
A small thing to write down, is it not? It looks rather pitiful upon the page, even when it means so very much to me. I could write, "Today I am giving up cigars," and it would look more impressive, even as I sit here smoking in the night.
The future stretches its span before me like a tangible thing and I can see nothing but sweet heaven in my path. I am one of the richest men in the galaxy and, even if I were not, I am a famous politician and, so I am told, one of the single greatest authorities on political science in the history of the human race. The Pan Technological Institute has offered to take on my services for a very large salary. Of far greater importance than all this, however, is the woman beside me. She is truly a hidden gem, a diamond in the rough, if you will. When she is finished with the reshaping of her character she will be a magnificent jewel, outshining all else in the universe. If anything, she had even more potential than I did when I left Delta Pavonis so many years ago. Soon we must go to Capella and buy her Forever. Henry's wife Jane will love her.
This man Scott MacLeod impresses me greatly. He will make a magnificent friend and companion and I must try to talk him into joining me. He is wasted in the Navy. He seems to be just the sort of man who would enjoy living forever and he deserves it, whether I have assessed him correctly or not. These past few days on Kunderer have changed him enormously.
Soring remains an enigmatic mystery to me. These experiences seem to have driven into the very depths of his soul and torn open the well-springs of his emotion. Tonight, as we carried den Ennov and poor Tikavoi out to the plane, I thought he was going to break down and cry. I have never seen a member of the Akoidei react that way, although I've heard that the lesser classes do. It is probable that I'll never know. Passing strange, as they say.
The days of my passing are over now and I, myself, am not quite what I was before this began. Still, are we ever, any of us?
I cannot continue with this scribbling upon pages that now seem empty and sterile: I am too unutterably happy. I must cast this thing aside for the night and turn to kiss my bride.
SHALOM
—from the diary of Maryam.
Mar. 2, 2145
So it begins. Today Uri told me that I should begin to keep a diary and he gave me a blank one of his own to start it in. He said that it should be a journal of the daily events of my life and that I should also write down my reactions to what has happened. I can't see the sense of that first part. If I write down the emotions that I've felt how can I possibly forget what caused them? And what good does it do to write down that today my love chopped the guts out of Captain den Ennov? How can I forget a thing like that? We'll see.
Uri didn't seem at all surprised that I could read and write quite well in all the languages that I speak. He says that he's got about ten million books stashed away in the hold of the Wandervogel (he says that means "Bird of Passage," isn't that beautiful?) and he wants me to read them all. That sounds like fun.
He told me that he was gong to talk Scotty into coming with us to Capella (!) and I kind of like the idea. He said that he really wouldn't mind if I kept him from getting horny until he finds himself a woman. I'm glad he put the really in.
So it begins. The great change in me that was started by Pashai is to be continued by Uri. I'll miss Soring a little, I guess, but this way is better. What will I become? Who knows where it will lead.
Hm. My love seems to be biting on my back. I guess I'd better turn around and let him bite on my front.
NELS DANSKER ANDERSON
OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT,
ANDERSON SHIPPING LINES
HOME OFFICES: 2178 LINDGREN AVENUE, GAUSSSTADT, HAMLIN;
NEUHAVN, TCS. MAR. 3, 4125
TO AARON MICHEL GORDEAU, CAPT.
ON BOARD THE WANDERVOGEL
-DISPATCHED-
VIA THE TCN QUARRANTINE OFFICES
KUNDERER, TCS [PROTECT.]
SIR:
WE ARE GRIEVED TO LEARN OF THE DEATH OF OUR FINE CAPTAIN, BELA DEN ENNOV, AND WE WILL MAKE EVERY EFFORT TO RETURN HIS MORTAL REMAINS TO THEIR HOME PORT OF LINDARIN, TCS. HE SHALL RECEIVE EVERY HONOR. WE NOW BESEECH AND CHARGE YOU TO TAKE COMMAND OF OUR LINER/MERCHANT VESSEL WANDERVOGEL AND TRANSPORT IT, WITH PASSENGERS AND CARGO, TO GN-AUNT'H-IR, CAPELLA, ITS NEXT PORT OF CALL. IT IS HOPED THAT YOU WILL ACCEPT THIS POSITION AND BERTH PERMANENTLY AND WE ARE ISSUING ORDERS TO THAT EFFECT.
GOOD LUCK CAPTAIN.
YOURS,
N.D. ANDERSON,
PRESIDENT.
Captain Gordeau carefully folded the flimsy white sheet and, after inserting it in the pocket of his tunic, buttoned the flap carefully over it. He strode whistling through the front door of Mishkin's cafe to stand and look at his starship, which was shining wonderfully in the brilliant noonday sun of Kunderer. "It's been quite a week," he murmured softly, "quite a week."
As he watched, the cargo hatch slid shut for a last time and the loading gantry sank silently away into the launch pad, leaving the ship to tower majestically against the sky with only a single lift-shaft reaching out to the personnel hatch. Gordeau slipped his hands lightly into his pockets and, as he strolled slowly across to the ship, launch warning bells began to ring.
—Vmër-knádyi Om'Soring
from the notebook of Lord Soring.
Snal soriei 7728:
Mar. 3, 4125
It is finished and I will return now. This is my final and most important entry. I have erred. We have all erred since the very beginning, as the council will see from my report. Our assessment of the confused state of the human species has been totally incorrect and we did not understand them at all. Our assessment of the øStennh, a race we had believed almost as stable as ourselves, has been totally incorrect. Thus, I now raise this one fundamental question:
DO WE EVEN UNDERSTAND OUR OWN RACE?
We have professed that this is so, but it may be false. In my intervention in Tikavoi's suicide I was in no way motivated by puristic research desires, but rather by a strong emotion of pity, one that impelled me to save the creature from himself. This was the one thing that we thought we had purged from our species so many millennia ago when we put an end to our last war and exploded across the stars. Is that not the way we date our era: the Age of Calm?
Can it be that the old emotions are not truly banished, but merely hidden from us, submerged in the racial unconsciousness? I do not know.
The woman Maryam has somehow escaped from my control and has managed to conclude a liaison with Baruch. What has happened? Have I been totally wrong about her? It seems so.
Where I have been wrong once, I can have been wrong many times. I must assume that this is true and that all, or nearly all, of my research has been wasted. Even as I have been wrong, so may many others have been wrong. It is possible that all of the sociological and psychological research that has been done by the Tai Akoidei is incorrect. If so, we have lost one hundred centuries of effort. Perhaps this is why the humans have concentrated their studies upon the physical. It is a hard, observable fact that they have done in two thousand years what it took our race ten thousand to do. Where have we gone wrong?
Even now, as we sit poised upon the launching pad, with Tikavoi in a drugged state and den Ennov frozen in a box, Uri ben Baruch, Scott MacLeod and Maryam sit at a table across the ship's lounge from me carrying on a discussion of their private plans. It was agreed before we returned to the quarantine station that the killing would be reported as an accident and it was. MacLeod seems stunned by the whole affair and Baruch is very obviously triumphant over all that has happened, while Maryam… she seems to radiate happiness. I do not understand.
One thing further: as we were flying back from the south, when MacLeod radioed ahead and reported den Ennov's murder, they all seemed almost uncaring. One in particular, a Lt. Gordeau who is now our captain, seemed almost pleased. Commodore Tanzanieff was far more concerned about the condition of Tikavoi. He was afraid that he might be losing a valuable guide and they spoke of sending him away to a hospital on Geththewar for treatment. I do not understand.
I am finished now. I feel almost sick at heart and that is a thing that my race is not supposed to be able to feel.