THE WORLD WAS CALLED ALITITI, WHICH BASICALLY
meant “Land of the Gods’ Children.” It took
considerable time to read out the language from the pair delivered
to Thunder and then compare and correlate it with known
linguistic files and run it through computer interpolations. Some
words were very strange, and the context of it was even stranger.
These people had a far different idea of reality than the men and
women of the Thunder. There was also some question of
whether any of the company would be capable of speaking that
super-tonal tongue, and whether even the artificial speaking and
translating devices could handle it.
The natives had no knowledge of Master System; in fact, they had
no knowledge of anything beyond their own watery world. Unlike on
Matriyeh, China and Clayben were certain that this entire culture
was one quite deliberately and completely worked out by the early
colonial leaders themselves and not by the heavy hand of the
all-powerful computer. Much of the traditional Polynesian cosmology
and attitudes were retained, and ancient tales and legends were
adapted to the new conditions, but there was nothing in the minds
of either guard to indicate that they had any idea that there were
other worlds than this, only a vague legend about their people
crossing a great sea to a new land as the gods, led by volcanic
Pele, destroyed all other tribes and nations for renouncing their
faith and the old gods.
They lived in the water and were best suited to breathe it, and
their world below the waves was bizarre indeed. The few images that
the mindscans could get showed a world so strange, so different,
from anything any of the pirates had ever seen that even the truly
alien Makkikor seemed closer to them.
It was a world without sun, yet not a world of darkness. All of
the creatures there, it seemed, save just a few predators, provided
their own illumination. Plants below shone with varicolored radiant
light; fish and other denizens of the deep had elaborate patterns;
some could create and even beam light. Even the people there could
do this, and with some control, by electrochemical mechanisms on
their ribbed chests. So elaborate was this ability that one could
tell tribe, rank, even individuals, from how the patterns formed
there. Males could vary the coloration from yellow through some
oranges and reds and even into purple; females tended to go through
blues and greens. One could tell a lot about a person by his or her
pattern, colors, and intensities, including their emotional state.
It was difficult for these people to hide their feelings or
moods.
Females had the unique ability to manufacture and exude this
self-illumination substance, and their homes and lands and
territories were marked with it.
Their underwater domain was not at all ugly; rather, it was a
fairyland of colors and shapes that all of them found beautiful and
fascinating.
Yes, there were predators, some large and deadly, all
teeth or tentacles, who were doubly feared because they had no
self-illumination. Maui’s Gift—light in the
darkness—was a double-edged sword that made their world a
place of beauty and magic but also made them targets for the
creatures of the darkness.
But this was not the only source of light below. This world was
heavily volcanic, and for all the activity above sea level there
was a lot more below. The Alititians lived in a hot, violent world
of bubbling lava and steam jets and had within them abilities to
see differences in temperature, to clearly define currents, to see
the differences in the water high and low as some birds could see
or sense differences in air.
Water was the domain of Men, but a biological quirk, or a Master
System shortcut, impelled them to occasionally take to the land, a
medium both feared and mystical to them all. Copulation took place
in the water, but the children could not be born there. In an
ironic throwback to their origins, with considerable complex
religious explanations, the children were born looking more like an
Earth-human, at least internally, than like their own parents and
able to breathe only air. Thus, they, and their mothers, had to
remain in the air until, over a period of months, they developed
the protective layers of skin needed to survive in that
violent ocean and the primary respiratory system they would need
there. They even developed distinctive glowing markings that would
make them easy to spot by a mother under the sea. Then they could
be taught, usually very easily, to swim.
Raven’s team and its encampment had been withdrawn. They
had served their purpose—for now. Now they would have to
study the information they had retrieved.
The Crow chomped on a cigar and looked at the data. “Well,
I’ll be damned. So that’s what that thing is
over there. Kind of a birth and nursing center. No wonder they
guard it like they do. Any enemy who successfully attacked and
wiped out that heiau would be striking a body blow at a
tribe’s future—and maybe capturing the women and
children to enlarge its own size and strength.”
Maria nodded. “It is a familiar pattern in the end. Still,
they do not have the limitations imposed on the Matriyehans. They
have areas where they breed and raise food fish and underwater
plants, and they also harvest some of the islands. One would think
that after all this time there would in fact be some consolidation
of tribes here, some small kingdoms or even larger
groupings.”
Many strong chiefs had tried, and some had expanded over great
areas by Alititian standards, but none had been able to hold or
control such a domain. Lack of communications over wide areas and
the ambition of local nobles trusted to run things tended to break
up any large concentrations. Thus, while many tribes, including
this one, were technically a part of nations under kings, the kings
tended to be titular or ceremonial figures with little real power.
The real power resided in the tribal chiefs and in their high
priests, and it was considerable—but localized.
Star Eagle analyzed the entire situation and came up with a lot
of recommendations, none particularly appealing and none
short-term.
“It is obvious that one of the kings or one of the high
priests serving a king would be likely to have the ring,” he
noted, “but there are hundreds, if not thousands, of such
people. Unlike the other areas, there is no trace of the ring motif
in their myths and legends. It is possibly no more than a royal
ornament. There is simply no way that we are going to locate it.
Not even Vulture could have done that, except by sheer
luck.”
Hawks nodded. “And even if we could locate all these
kings, they wouldn’t be very receptive to people not of their
form, and would be openly hostile to people of their own race but
of different tribes or nations. Ceremonial or not, it’s not
very practical to think of walking up to each king saying,
‘Hello, your Majesty. Can we take a look at all your
ceremonial jewelry?’ ”
“Yes. Now we could play gods, of course, and possibly hook
an ambitious chief into a massive expansion plan, but it might
still take years to conquer a region that only might have the ring.
You would eventually have to conquer the entire planet. If we just
had an idea of the region where the ring resided we would have at
least a chance, and even that chance is beyond rational
odds,” the computer agreed.
Hawks sighed. “I also find
this . . . distasteful. We’re usually the
underdogs battling Master System. I can identify with that, work
with it, live with it. But now I am being asked to totally destroy
a culture by sheer weight of our technological power and
superiority. For all their relative primitiveness, these people,
this culture, have much merit. Their world is a place of beauty,
their common interests are in using and loving their element
without destroying it or overmanaging it. They love their world and
their culture. Their intellectual direction is spiritual and
communal. Yet it is all so fragile, so easily destroyed forever. I
suspect that was what the early colonial leaders here realized.
They took what was necessary for their survival and what was
essential and important to their spirits and rejected the rest,
which might corrupt or destroy them. Now you are telling me that I
must do just that.”
“Nevertheless, it must be done,” Isaac Clayben put
in. “To have come this far and not succeed merely on the
basis of preserving a culture makes no sense. There is Earth and
more than four hundred and fifty other colonial worlds to consider.
The greater good for the greater number is the imperative
here.”
Raven shook his head in wonder. Other than Cloud Dancer, he was
probably the only one aboard who really saw and understood
Hawks’s mental agony. It was one he, too, shared, although
perhaps not with the chief’s intensity. Clayben was right, of
course, and so was Hawks.
The chief was not about to start formulating detailed plans
right then. “Run through other alternatives!” he
ordered Star Eagle. “If they are longer, more time consuming,
or have a higher risk then so be it!”
But there were no efficient alternatives, and everyone,
including Hawks, really knew it. His failure to act on this, to
stall and hope for a miracle, absolutely bewildered the others.
Ultimately it was China who was dispatched to Raven by the rest for
an explanation of Hawks’s behavior.
“First you got to get some history,” the Crow told
her. “Ten, twenty thousand years ago, maybe more, the
ancestors of Hawks and me picked up everything and everybody from
their homes in southeast Asia and started a walk. It was one
hell of a walk, too. All the men, women, children, their
dogs and chickens, and you name it. Why they did it we might never
know, except that we were a small people surrounded by fierce
enemies, or potentially fierce enemies, and we knew we
couldn’t last there. So we walked. And when we got to the
Pacific, we walked north until the great land bridge between Asia
and America was reached, and when the little bit of water froze
solid we kept walkin’. Not until we were well on the other
side did any of us stop. It must’ve taken generations. The
ones who finally made it probably knew no other life than walking,
moving, settling for a little while, then picking up and moving
on.”
He sighed, settled back, and lit a cigar. “Their
descendants didn’t stop until they were all the way down as
far as you could walk in South America. The rest—they split
up and went different ways. Each had a group, a tribe, with a
different idea of the promised land, I guess, and most of ’em
found theirs. Two continents, every kind of climate and weather,
buffalo and deer by the millions, huge prairies and vast
forests—you name it, it was there. Two vast continents with
everything anyone could ever wish for—and no people. They
settled in different places and the tribes multiplied and became
nations, the distances so great the languages themselves wound up
bearin’ no real resemblance to one another—just like
what happened in the colonial worlds here. Different cultures,
different languages, different ideas. And they traded with each
other—pottery, pipes, gems, and ideas as well—and
sometimes they fought each other as nations do, but they had a real
good thing there. Some became big empires like the ones in Europe
and Asia and Africa; some kept small, ’cause maybe their
religion or their feeling for the land made empires, to them, sort
of sacrilege. Those were the nations like the Cheyenne and Sioux
and Blackfoot and Crow—my people.”
She nodded. “Then he sees in this world an echo of his own
people’s past. Even though they appear serpentine monsters
with dolphin’s tails he sees only their essential humanity.
His empathy for them binds him.”
“Sort of, but it’s not like that. Hawks ain’t
no prairie original, and neither am I. We love our people and our
ancestral lands but we don’t belong there no more. We
don’t fit. But that’s okay. It’s what happened to
all our people that’s got him troubled.
“See,” he continued, “nations came and went,
empires rose and fell, but it was all ours. Change was slow. We
weren’t saints—the idiot people of the Southwest
chopped down all the trees and wound up turnin’ their lands
to desert and killing themselves. We screwed up, but in little bits
and pieces. The whole stayed the same, and the basic values of
spirit, community, and honor held up. Then the Europeans came. No
problem at first—just another crazy set of empires. Hell,
they brought the horse to America and the native people took to it
with a vengeance. But they also had the guns and they were
comin’ out of a period of wars where there’d been so
much killin’ for so long they were hard and mean and
intolerant of anybody else. A war between the Crow and Blackfoot
took maybe weeks and killed a few folks until honor was balanced
and a settlement reached. Them Europeans fought one called the
Hundred Years War. They were different—and war is the best
way to generate new technology. They had us cold and they
didn’t see us as much more than ignorant savages. We were
different, not even Christian, and we had different looks and
darker skin. In two hundred and fifty years they killed a lot of
us, destroyed all our nations and cultures, burned the Mayan
libraries, and penned up a lot of us on the worst patches of land
in the middle of nowhere like prisoners. We fought—but they
had the guns and the numbers.”
“I know little of that,” China said, “but I
knew of course of the European conquest of the Americas. It was
Master System who reversed things and restored the tribes where it
could, was it not?”
He nodded. “Yeah, sort of. We’re better than we were
’cause we’re in charge and not cooped up, but
it’s not really the way it was. It’s the way Master
System figured it should be for economy’s sake. Same goes for
the Polynesians. The Europeans marched in and took over and even
after they left there wasn’t much left of the old culture but
shows for tourists. Hawks figures that what happened here, on
Alititi, was that Master System kind’a made a deal with some
Pacific folks who wanted to turn their back on the modern world and
get back to what they saw as the basics. They’re ugly as sin
and they live in a crazy kind of world, but it’s
theirs, and it works. See, that’s what’s got
Hawks so round the bend. We’re sittin’ up here, not
many of us, but with more power at our command than they dream
their gods might have, and they got something we want. All them
other rings—we didn’t have to destroy nothing. We tried
to do it so quick and quiet that not many folks even got hurt. But
here, now, Hawks has been handed this thing. You know the best way
to find a needle mixed in a haystack?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Your burn the haystack and sift through the ashes.
That’s what Hawks is bein’ asked to do—repeat
history. Kill who-knows-how-many innocent people, destroy their
culture, ransack a world to find a ring. He’s bein’
pressured to do to them what the Europeans did to our people, only
faster, which means even dirtier and deadlier. The cowboys and
injuns changed places, and he didn’t bargain for
that.”
The alarm rang in the quarters of each member of the council of
captains. Hawks was outside playing with his son when he heard it
and rushed inside.
“Yes?”
“Ships in the Alititian system,” Star Eagle
reported.
Hawks frowned. “A task force?” That would be
disastrous, for it would mean not only that the already difficult
and dangerous job was getting impossible, it would also mean that
the SPF had discovered the deception the pirates pulled on Matriyeh
and had maybe captured some of their people left behind there.
“No. A small SPF vessel. Data indicates the probability
that it is a tactical ship—a mobile command post rather than
a true command ship designed for orbital work. It might be a
forward scouting party for a task force, perhaps not. It is being
covered by two Val fighters.”
Hawks thought a moment, then snapped his fingers. “Chi!
Has to be! Star Eagle—we have to get something in there close
and fast! They won’t want to stay around long in plain view.
Too much danger of giving the location away. Chi’s not taking
any chances, though. She’s gonna booby trap the
ring.”
“That is bad,” the computer responded.
“Uh uh! It’s the best break we’ve had, and
right in the nick of time, too! To booby trap it they’re
gonna have to send some people down there. Odds are they’ve
got some Alititian SPF in that ship who have some tribal ties to
whoever’s holding the ring. Hell, there might be SPF down
there all the time—but there’s no way to contact them.
Star Eagle—we have to know precisely where they go down
to the surface! Precisely! And they must not know we’re
doing it!”
“Working on the problem. We have the inactive base camp
fighter there and the relay fighter inactive in solar orbit. Their
scanners are not the best but we dare not risk a punch right now.
If I could get that second base camp fighter up, I’d have a
fighting chance. There are only three ships and they will not
establish orbital positions for a couple of hours. Perhaps I can
get that one on the ground off when they are positioned right. I
will try.”
“You must! No matter what nasty business Chi and her Vals
are pulling, they’re doing work for us we couldn’t
dream of accomplishing. Come on, Star Eagle! They are going to
point an arrow right to where we must look! You cannot
fail!”
But it was several hours of nail-biting as they all sat around
in the common waiting for word.
Finally Star Eagle reported, “I have it, I think, and
I’ve correlated it with our own surveys. They apparently have
no receiver on the ground and so they had to send a pod down with
their people. The region is in the southern hemisphere, a tiny
island in an unusually quiescent geologic region. Obvious when you
think of it. They would not place the ring where it would be likely
to be melted in volcanic fires or lost by seaquake. It is well away
from the base camp—halfway around the world, almost. Our
prisoners had no data at all on any region beyond their own and
their neighbors. We will require more prisoners from the immediate
area to get hard information, and they will have to be taken with
greater stealth than we used the first time. We will need specimens
from the proper tribe or nation, but ones who will be considered
missing—a natural if sad turn of events—rather than
obviously kidnapped. We can’t just walk in on these people.
There must be permanent party SPF down there.”
“I agree,” Hawks replied. “First we have to
wait for them to leave—not just the planet but the system.
Make certain that they are gone, too, and that they leave no
surprises behind in the system that we don’t know about and
can’t counter. Then we’ll need high-resolution surveys
of the entire area. We can assume a general similarity to the ones
we know, but there will be regional differences. We must know them.
Then Raven, here, can work out how to make a few of them
vanish.”
It must have been a real welcome home celebration, because the
pod remained on the island for nine days. The ships, however, were
not idle during that time—the Vals looked over much of the
inner solar system, and definitely with mischief in mind. Had the
rebel band not beaten Chi to the place, the additional monitors and
sophisticated sweep and I.D. systems installed by the Vals would
have been virtually undetectable, just as those small fighters from
Thunder were not detected by the newcomers. Being able to
watch them plant things, though, and even monitor their tests of
the devices, made it relatively easy to determine where and of what
type the new traps were. It would take some time and trouble, but
they had defeated or fooled worse.
Ultimately the pod took off and rejoined its parent vessel. The
trio of ships wasted little time after that in regrouping and
heading out and away. By the time they accelerated and punched out
of the system as a group, the sophisticated defense computer
network aboard Thunder had already completed the plan for
neutralizing the new orbital devices and begun to create the
necessary equipment. They could not, however, do anything about
what those who had gone down to the surface, and below it, had
done. That would await more information than Star Eagle’s
monitors could give.
They gave everything a few extra days just to make certain
nobody in Chi’s band had forgotten something and come back
for it, then sent Lightning in for a methodical mapping of
the pinpointed surface area.
Raven was a little concerned. “If Chi’s as good as
Vulture says, this could be one hell of a trap,” he noted.
“I mean, suppose she figures we’re already on to this
hole? She comes in, bold as brass, pinpoints a location far away
from the ring, and sends some folks down there making everybody
sit, open and obvious, for nine days so there’s no
question we get the point. Then we move in; right into her trap, no
ring in sight. I mean, this, comin’ when it
did—sort’a just when we needed it—smells like
two-month-old dead fish.”
“It’s a possibility, but not a likely one,”
Hawks replied. “I agree that the move, coming now, makes me a
little suspicious, but unless they just went down and sat and
camped for nine days—and we intercepted no messages from the
surface on our scanners—they had to go under, and if they
went under, then whoever it was had to be people who were known
there and wouldn’t be immediately captured and maybe killed.
No, Chi might be smart enough to plant some SPF in the wrong spot,
but that’s not consistent with Master System’s behavior
and Chi hasn’t been on the job long enough to set up that
sort of trick even if she could think of it.”
“I agree with Hawks’s logic,” Star Eagle put
in. “Also, I have dispatched probes back to Matriyeh and am
just now receiving information that the same three ships visited
there before coming here. I will attempt to contact Ikira when I
feel it is safe. If she is still alive and still on duty there, it
is logical that they did not discover the switch and that whatever
they did there is fairly similar to what they did here. It is also
logical that they went to Matriyeh first—that is a world
Master System knows full well is named in some of the documents and
so they assume it will be our next target. This one was last
because it is presumed unknown and hidden.”
“I’ll feel better when we hear from Ikira,”
Raven commented. “That had to be pretty damned hairy.
Remember, the whole damned Matriyehan division’s on the
planet permanently so who could they send down? If it was a Val or
two, with their scanners, Ikira’s already dead meat and
there’s a task force around here somewhere.”
“In the meantime, there is no substitute for intelligence,
and we need it fast,” Hawks said. “They won’t be
expecting any move so soon. Get me some of those locals,
Raven.”
It was a quo’oa night, the kind of night when
vision at the surface was clear, the distant gods shined down, and
even the forms of the clouds could be told. It was the sort of
night when Gatherers came forth from the Sea-Mother to fetch and
tend those things most precious, the food of the gods, for the
sacred ceremonies in the kingdom below.
The four who came out of the surf onto the beach were old,
experienced men; not elders but senior warriors who feared little
beyond the powers of Pele and who had never met their match. They
came in professionally, spread out, and immediately were up on
their tails, all senses fully alert and spears at the ready. They
remained there, motionless, poised, for several minutes, like
grotesque statuary, until they were satisfied. The spears went back
in the pu’oa, and great arms stretched out like the
legs of the great lizards they had never known, and they walked
confidently inward to the macadamia groves.
They cleared the beach and then stopped warily again as the
gateway, guarded by tikis with powerful mana, stared back at them.
One great one in the shape of the Tentacled Demon-Lord on the
right, another in the form of the Shark God, its enemy, were as
they should be, to warn any and all of whose territory and whose
groves these were and just who any sacrilegious trespasser would
have to answer to for his desecration. They were not the trouble;
they were comforting as the guardians of the tribe.
It was the new one standing in the middle of the path that
caused the problem.
It stood perhaps three meters high and looked to be of the same
polished wood as the other tikis, but the features carved upon it
were those of the fierce and unreachable sea birds of the Wind
Spirit, a symbol understood here but not having any relation with
this or any other local tribe in the kingdom, its stylized wings
upturned toward the sky. Someone had been here; someone from
outside was challenging their own spirits, their own rights to the
sacred grove!
The four warriors immediately fanned out in a rough diamond
formation, so that the one in the rear was nearest the sea and
ready to summon a larger army if need be.
Yet the warriors were still, straining for any hint of unnatural
sounds coming from the groves just beyond that provided the only
possible cover. There were no strange scents they could detect, but
in the air their noses weren’t very good anyway. Suddenly
they were on alert, weapons poised, as rustling sounds came from
the groves on both sides of them, drawing their attention away from
the profaning idol, not even noticing that those great upturned
wings were now coming, ever so slowly, down, down,
down . . .
The initial shots were on broad beam from the pistols that Han
Li held in both hands; this was only sufficient to stun the
warriors for a few moments, but it was more than enough time for
Han Li to adjust the intensity with her thumbs and then pick each
of the four off with a cleaner, stronger knockout shot.
Satisfied that the quartet was out cold, Han Li knocked away the
thin casing of the tiki and stepped out fast. She picked up a
communicator and called, “Condor to Crow. Come pick them up
before somebody comes looking for them. Four in, four
down.”
“We cannot keep them here for long,” Isaac Clayben
told Hawks. “They have status and they are on the equivalent
of a religious retreat, so while they are not expected back
immediately, they are expected back. To be safe, I would
say four days, five tops. Certainly no more.”
The leader nodded. “Three days should be sufficient after
all your practice. You’ve done the mindprint analysis. What
do we have?”
“I believe I should answer that,” China came in, her
voice echoing from the small speakers usually used by Star Eagle
and indicating that she was in her favorite place—mentally
joined with the great computer through the pilot’s interface.
She did a lot of this sort of thing over the years; Star Eagle was
excellent and personable, but he was still a machine and had never
lived as a human being. The computer could assemble, sort, and
evaluate information, but it took a human to interpret it
properly.
“Go ahead,” Hawks told her.
“Thanks to the first two we could dispense with most of
the general testing and concentrate on the individual life data.
Makoa, the old one with all the black gashes in his thick hide, is
a real rake. He has nine wives, forty-three living children, and
even though he exaggerates his claim of forty mistresses he does
have a dozen or so. Macho seems to go a long way down there.
He’s also a king’s warrior, which means he’s
about as high up the secular social scale as he can go, due mostly
to the fact that he’s a tough survivor. Warriors don’t
grow very old down there and when one does and keeps it up,
he’s almost worshipped like a god no matter how rotten he
might be inside. It might be hard for anyone to live up to his
image or keep up a masquerade and survive, but he’s the one
with access to the high places. Short of royalty, he’s pretty
well connected there, which was why he led the sacred
gathering.”
Hawks nodded. “Okay, okay. But what kind of system are we
facing down there?”
“No Center, but definitely a small city—huge by
Alititian standards, I think, and consistent with what we’ve
seen of Master System’s layout. It’s a secular center,
the seat of the hereditary king of the region—and he’s
a pretty tough old guy himself. He’s executed a half dozen of
his sons for trying to hurry along succession by attempting to
knock off their old man. He’s a good politician and warrior,
and if he had just a hundred needlers he’d have conquered
half the hemisphere by now. The tribal chiefs are all his sons by
various wives and they’re as ambitious and ornery as their
old man, only not as experienced so they haven’t succeeded in
doing more than ignoring him on a day-to-day basis. It’s all
kept reasonably together by Halaku. He’s the high priest of
the big temple down there and the only one other than the king who
can talk to members in other kingdoms—and he’s
the only one who actually does.”
“SPF?”
“Possible but doubtful, unless they’re pulling a
variation of the Matriyehan sleepers on us. He does, however, have
a hell of a temple guardian force at his command, and it’s
almost certain that some and maybe all of them are SPF mindprinted
and hypnoed to love their jobs and their places. That’s if
the ring is down there. I can’t get anything showing that any
of these four, not even Makoa, has seen the ring, but that’s
not as unusual as you might think and doesn’t mean much. When
the king or the high priest goes all-out for ceremonies and the
like, they’re so weighted down with jewelry and ornamentation
that you might never notice a little ring. The ring would have to
be worn as a charm or something anyway; as should be obvious, while
these people might wear special kinds of rings they couldn’t
possibly wear and keep on their finger a ring like the others we
have. The ridges, bone structure in the finger, and slight webbing
would prevent it.”
Hawks had already thought of that one. “So we’re
still blind.”
“Not quite. They had visitors for a few days, you know,
from an outlying tribe loyal to the king.”
“Aha!”
“There were three of them—the high priest of the
tribe and two associate priests. They brought fine gifts to the
king and court, and joined in a religious ceremony and sacrifice at
the temple. They also brought harrowing tales of demon monsters who
appeared vaguely human and had godlike power. These demons
pretended to be gods and would come in and rape tribes of their
wealth and arrogantly loot the temples, but although they looked
like demons or gods they were actually mortals, animals of a high
sort. Forget the gods approach, Hawks—any of us go down
there, they’ll check our mortality before they check anything
else, and believe me, they’re not stupid. They’d
welcome you, bow and scrape, throw a big feast, and while
you’re relaxing their best warriors would puncture every area
of your body. You have to hand it to this Brigadier Chi—she
certainly did her homework. She’s made certain that no one
who’s not Alititian will get anywhere near that city, let
alone close to the higher-ups.”
Hawks sighed and scratched his chin, thinking. “Uh huh.
She’s decided or deduced that Vulture was the only one of his
kind, and she’s pretty confident that the Vulture
threat’s been eliminated. That also means she’s
anticipating us very nicely, forcing us to do just what we were
thinking of doing—a switch using the transmuters.”
“Uh uh. The locals have been told that these evil mortal
creatures have some great magic, and that they can imitate people
very well. These Alititians aren’t the sort to get paranoid,
but they will notice and become suspicious of any strangeness or
deviations in behavior, and the place is small enough that they
know each other pretty well. Any infiltration here will require
deep mindprinting, maybe relying on hypnotic commands and
triggers. The problem is, Master System and this Chi will know that
as well. Having planted cultural traps for the standard infiltrator
to violate, we must assume that there are sophisticated traps,
maybe of a very high-tech sort, to trap anybody deep-printed as a
primitive.”
“Remember, too, that all these men have families,”
Clayben put in. “They aren’t the sort of people we
picked—or had the luxury of picking—in the past. Any of
our people will have to live in an intimate environment with family
and children who have known them better than anyone else for years
or perhaps a lifetime. The best actor in the world cannot feign
affection or real love and concern for children not his own on a
day-to-day basis.” The scientist nodded. “Yes, that is
what I would do in reverse circumstances. Create a
situation where only deep printing will do, where the subject must
really become the one he replaces, and then set some nice,
sophisticated traps. Then an infiltrator, an impostor, either gets
exposed by family and tribe and dealt with that way or he is so
good that he is ultimately caught in traps his necessarily enforced
ignorance can’t even imagine. Remember that without Vulture
even Matriyeh would have been impenetrable. This setup is at least
as good.”
“All right,” Hawks responded, “so what do we
do about it?”
China had some ideas. “First, it’s deep infiltration
for sure. We must have that. We must construct a structured
hypnotic sequence that works until the last moment on a
subconscious level. Prime command: look for the ring, locate it.
Second, run an academic warrior’s exercise—how would
you steal such a thing? Ultimately, and there’s no way around
it, bring the original personality and knowledge forward for the
actual operation. Star Eagle and I recommend a self-trigger that
would allow the infiltrator to reimpose the deep print, or allow
one of the compatriots to impose it. It will be a long, slow,
perhaps laborious process, Hawks. We might be out here a very long
time, and, unlike the other operations, we’ll of necessity be
in total ignorance of what progress is being made, if any. It is
very frustrating—but there is no other practical
way.”
The leader sighed. “I am resigned to it. I have just been
attempting to run through my mind what they might have put down
there in nine days. What sort of unobtrusive yet effective trap
might be there that would not violate this world or its culture or
even be noticed by them but would stop us. I am too remote for this
sort of thinking, and I am not a military man.” He paused and
shook his head. “I just wish we had Vulture here. Even if he
wasn’t his old self he knows this Chi better than we do.
I’d even settle for a direct line to Matriyeh to determine
what they pulled there.”
“I dare not. The only safe way is to wait until those on
the ground can signal us, if they can.”
Hawks nodded. “And that may be weeks. We have to give
these four back, one way or another, in just a couple of days. I
don’t like it, but the odds of capturing this many together
without arousing any suspicion below—and one a reasonably
high-level warrior—are slim. No, we have to go now, while the
opportunity’s there and the time is perfect. The primary
question now is just who to send.”
That was something of a problem, since no one who had already
been through the transmuter could repeat the process. That left,
excluding the children, Raven, Hawks, Cloud Dancer, Clayben, Takya,
Dura, Gobanifar and his mate, Chun Wo Har and his two wives,
Captain ben Suda and his wife, and the alien and remote Makkikor,
who remained with its ship and was still an enigma to almost
everyone, its captain of eleven years included. And the
now-totally-reclusive Savaphoong, of course.
Raven seemed genuinely anguished, more haunted and upset than
anyone could ever remember him being, but he was adamant.
“I am ashamed of myself, Hawks. Really ashamed. I think I
could stomach being one of them Matriyehans, or a glorified sea
otter like Bute, or even, maybe, a cud-chewin’ Janipurian. I
think I could probably accept becoming one of Dura’s race, or
Takya’s, or even Ikira’s—but not these. Not
them. My honor, even my position, screams that I’m
the best man for this job, but—I would gladly kill myself
first. It’s tough to explain, even to myself. It has to do
maybe with some childhood nightmares or something—I dunno.
But I just can’t become one of them things. I just
can’t. When we was down there, I was terrified. I kept
control, I did my job, but I was terrified of them. It was all I
could do to keep from switchin’ from stun to
lethal.”
Hawks shook his head in sympathy. “I know. I have often
wondered how I would react if and when my turn came—and it
might yet, if this fails.”
“You got a pretty wife and good-lookin’ kids who
need a daddy, and Cloud Dancer’s the only mother most of
China’s brood really know. Me—I got nothin’ and
nobody. I got no excuse. No use givin’ me the standard
lecture, neither. I know what I look like. I know that the Chows
and Bute and the two Chinamen and maybe even Manka and Maria and
the rest had the same problems and that even though they never have
been fully right since, they’d do it again. I know all that.
And I know I’m gonna be guilty as hell when others go
’cause I should have been with ’em—I
should’ve gone instead of one of ’em. If they fail, it
might be because somebody like me wasn’t with ’em. God!
All that shit I spouted about makin’ my ancestors proud of me
and now here it is and look at me!”
Hawks sighed. “Well, we’ll see what can be worked
out.” He sympathized with the man and his private terrors,
but he knew that if it meant success or failure, he would
do it, even though, as Raven pointed out, the cost to him and his
family would be particularly high. This operation was
particularly tough, although none of them had been all that easy.
Min and Chung, for example, had not only the problem of being
turned into strange creatures but into creatures of the opposite
sex.
Which was, of course, also Dura’s and Takya’s
problem now. Chung and Min had volunteered, none too
enthusiastically, for the honor of themselves and their ship, which
had heretofore been untouched by the burden of such
responsibility—even by casualties in battle. But
Kaotan had only two crew members left who had not given
all they had for the mission.
Takya was not too thrilled, but she had already accepted fate.
“I am the logical one, possibly, to lead,” she admitted
to Hawks. “Of all the survivors here, I alone come from a
water world, a water civilization. A much higher one than this, to
be sure, but I will be in my element there for the first time in
years. But as a man . . . No offense,
but I have never much wanted to be one. It is just not in my
nature.”
“I understand,” he responded, although he
couldn’t see much wrong with being a man himself. In a
reversed situation he could see no dishonor in becoming female, but
on the whole he liked himself as he was. “Still, we have no
females to clone, for one thing, and for another, in that culture,
the sex roles are very clearly separated, and unless we could get
someone like one of the king’s wives or concubines, they
simply wouldn’t be of as much use to us. Master System
interpreted the requirement of ‘humans with power’ to
mean political power, and down there politics is a man’s
game.”
She nodded. “I know. And that is why I will do it. Is it
true that Han Li has also volunteered?”
He nodded. “Yes, the only real volunteer I had. Apparently
she is not happy as number-two wife and Chun Wo Har is something of
a dominant man. And she thinks the Alititians are beautiful,
proving, at least, there are grave differences between the
colonials and Earth-humans.”
“They are not an unattractive race,” Takya
responded. “I have been trying to dissuade Dura, you know.
She does not find any of it at all attractive or alluring, but she
has been adamant. If I go, she goes.”
“I know. And Raven is the logical fourth, but you know the
problem there. Everybody else has wives or children or both. Except
Savaphoong, of course, but I’m not sure I’d trust him
down there even if he had the guts to go. And, for that reason, and
considering Raven’s refusal as well, I don’t think I
should force him to go.”
“And you shall not,” came a man’s voice behind
him. They turned and saw Savaphoong standing there.
“Nevertheless, Señor Capitán, I shall go. You have
trumped my ace, as it were, and beaten me even though the game was
rigged from the start. If I remain here, it is only a matter of
time until the ring is secured and I am jettisoned, cast adrift in
a universe that no longer has any use for me, my contacts many
years stale, a price on my head. Either that or I remain a recluse
attached to this ship while others go stick the accursed rings down
Master System’s throat until it chokes. No, señor and
señorita, I, Savaphoong, intend to be there at the end even if I
must crawl there with a fish tank over my head. If you will take
me, Señorita Mudabur, I will go. If you will not, then the
capitán, here, cannot deny me a presence at the
climax.”
Hawks looked at Takya quizzically, and she shrugged. “You
are welcome, sir. We should have one true male among the group, I
think. But if you betray us, I swear that you will not outlive the
last of us, and if you act with courage and honor, I also swear
that you will be present when that ring is used.”
The old trader smiled and bowed slightly. “It is a fair
bargain.”
Hawks was uneasy about Savaphoong’s offer, but could find
no compelling reason to bar him from the group. The chief was in
his quarters brooding over what Savaphoong might be planning when
he received news that pushed all other thoughts from his mind.
“Hawks?” came Star Eagle’s voice from a hidden
speaker. “You wanted to be notified immediately. Vulture is
signaling for a pickup.”
“I just can’t understand it,” Isaac Clayben
mumbled for perhaps the tenth time in an hour. He had been going
over all the tests on Vulture.
“You said I was immune to the transmuter,” the
little male Chanchukian reminded him in his high, somewhat squeaky
tenor. “You said that what they did to me couldn’t be
done!”
“I—I thought it couldn’t. I swear to you I
thought it could not be done. Your cells—your original
cells—were quite literally created in a transmuter.
They were tested, many times, and found to be impervious to the
transmuter process. All we got was an automatic abort from the
control computer—every time. Even I, who created you, could
not uncreate you, as it were. Star Eagle was fed from my data banks
all the information on your creation and structure, just how you
worked, and there was no way even he could see how it was
done. Alas, it would take a far larger computer than we have here
to repeat the experiment—if indeed we dared repeat
it.”
Vulture shuddered. “I am small and weak now, and I am but
a shadow of my former self, but I believe I would kill you no
matter what if you should try. You can never know the pain, the horror
of that experience. So terrible is it that even though most of my
past lives are mercifully dim, just pale shadows now, still that
period haunts my nightmares.”
“Rest easy on that score,” Star Eagle broke in. The
great computer that ran the ship was also virtually omnipresent on
it. “All of the data that we have examined shows that even
were I a hundred times as large and complex and even if I had all
the esoteric biophysics and biochemistry needed for it, still it
would be impossible. There is a missing element in all the data. Just what is
impossible to determine, but without it the rest will not work.
It’s just so much synthetic primordial soup.”
“Impossible! Everything was there!
Everything!” Clayben exclaimed.
“No. Sorry to puncture your ego, Doctor, but you are a
brilliant man and you will survive it. Now that I have all the
files, though, and all the records of the work done, I can see the
procedures and the holes. The conclusion is unmistakable, Doctor.
You did not invent Vulture. You created him, but you did
not invent him.”
“No, that’s not
true . . . ”
Even Vulture was puzzled. “Invent,
create—what’s the difference?”
“The difference between a scientist and an engineer, for
the most part. Clayben was the engineer who oversaw the project,
but this is far too complex even in its minor parts for any human
brain to follow with the detail required. In many important ways,
Vulture, you were a far more complex synthetic organism than I, or
a Val. We had no problems synthesizing a Val, or at least a cyborg
that allowed tiny, organic Ikira Sukotae to become a being much
larger and who would measure as synthetic. But be honest, Doctor.
No human invented Vulture any more than a human invented me.
Humans, in fact, did not even invent Master System. They had a set
of ideas that they fed into large computers who then fed it into
larger computers and so forth. The human in the chain was left far
behind. As brilliant as you are, Doctor, you have no more real idea
how Vulture worked than Cloud Dancer knows of nuclear physics. You
initiated and oversaw the mechanics of the project. Computers did
the rest.”
Clayben nodded. “Yes, yes, that is self-evident. There is
only one way for a human mind to approach computer speeds and
capacities and that is through the interface I did not have. And
even then we are subordinate, since the human mind cannot function
at such blinding speeds nor access the memory banks without
computer aid. But the Vulture was my idea.”
“Perhaps. But one wonders if you were at any time truly
the master of your own little world. We know that Nagy was a plant
of some sort, although whose is unknown. It always seemed bizarre
that Master System, who liked to control every variable it could
within the limitations of its core directives, would allow you and
the Earth Presidium to have your private world and keep hands off.
Still, Master System would be unlikely to let you forge a weapon
that could strike against it so thoroughly and efficiently, and
that leaves the other side, the enemy for whom Nagy presumably
worked and whom Master System has been at war with for some time.
To even fight Master System to a draw on any plane would imply,
almost require, a computing center at least as vast as Master
System itself.”
Clayben blanched. “Two of them? And you mean that
after I started this project, Nagy covered it from Master
System’s own spies and supplied what I could not from his own
master?”
“I have analyzed the physical plant of Melchior. The
computer you had was vast and sophisticated. I wish I had a
hundredth of its power and capabilities. Next to Master System
itself it might have been the largest and fastest computer we know
of, yet it is wholly inadequate for the precision and number of
computations designing a Vulture would require. You did not create
Vulture because you could not. Only a computer at least the equal
of Master System could do so. Since Master System obviously did
not, then there is another.”
Vulture shook his head in disbelief. “All this time I
blamed this egomaniac bastard. God, how I hated you, Clayben! How I
wanted you to suffer like I had to suffer. And all the time it
wasn’t you at all. You were just as much a pawn in all this
as me. So a second Master System got wind of your idea and supplied
what was needed to create me, maybe just for this job. And when
Master System learned from Chi the possibility of my existence, it
was powerful enough and bright enough to figure out how I was made,
see the flaws, and capitalize on them.” He sighed. “In
the end, I guess it’s my fault, then. I hated your guts, but
you were my creator, damn it! I questioned everything, but I would
never question any statement you made about me. Never. When you
said I was immune to the transmuter, I believed you. Instantly. It
became a factor I no longer had to take into account. In the end,
that was my blind spot. Funny, but I can accept that. Even
feel stupid about it. Considering the history and state of
humanity, if it had a creator, he sure as hell made a lot of
mistakes for an allegedly omnipotent, omniscient being. Master
System makes so many mistakes that people like you and the chief
administrators can walk right through them. Why in hell would I
think that my creator, whom I knew and could see, would be
perfect when they were not?”
Clayben threw up his hands. “Because you were in some ways
always an extension of me. Because humility does not become either
of us. We are done in by such vanities, I fear. The Blue Fairy gave
you life, Pinocchio, but this time you did not escape Pleasure
Island’s more evil magic.”
Vulture looked into the air. “What is he talking about?
Has he gone mad?”
“No,” Star Eagle responded. “I’ll
explain it to you later.”
Vulture sighed and got off the examining table. “Well, now
I’m different. I guess it’s time I got the lay of the
land and contributed whatever I still can.”
It was some time until he found Hawks, though, and when he did,
he found the chief more than a little gloomy. Hawks looked up
straight into Vulture’s brown eyes, a gesture made a bit more
dramatic because they were eye to eye, although Hawks was sitting
down and Vulture was standing up.
It wasn’t so much that Vulture was in an inhuman shape, or
that a Chanchukian male was a rather weird creature even when you
had the three females around to get used to, but rather that
something was missing from Vulture. The old spark, the total
self-confidence, the feeling of omnipotence, of “can’t
fail,” just wasn’t there anymore.
“Clayben and Star Eagle briefed me,” Vulture told
him. “They’ve been down only two weeks,
right?”
Hawks nodded. “We have small tracers embedded in them that
we can follow by a water probe floating on the surface. It’s
burned into a rock jutting just out of the water so it’s not
likely to be found, and if triggered it gives us information on
their general location. We also have communicators embedded in the
tikis on the cultivated islands, on the theory that at least one of
them will be able to get to one of those spots if they must or if
they have the ring—or if they are convinced that we blew
it.”
“Uh uh. I think the ring’s there, and so do you. And
it took a year for my team, with the old me included, to nab the
one on Chanchuk, so two weeks is nothing. That’s not
what’s bothering you. Is it Savaphoong?”
“Not really. Right now Savaphoong is unaware of his own
name and can’t even conceive of outer space. It’s a
deep mindprint. And what can he do? Master System won’t
reward him if he betrays us—it will just take all he knows
and then convert him to one of its own. When his old personality is
triggered he won’t find staying there tempting for two
reasons. First, real power down there is gained by fanatical
bravery or by heredity and he has neither. Second, the ring’s
no good to him without the other four and we have three of them.
No, it’s not that. We heard from Matriyeh.”
Vulture was suddenly very interested. “Yes?”
“Ikira passed muster, even though it was a close thing.
They sent a real Val down along with two technicians from races she
had never seen before.”
“And she fooled a Val?”
“We did a good job analyzing the remains of the original
goddess. The structure was particularly interesting and synthetic,
you know. That was how we could add so much mass to her tiny frame
within the transmuter’s limitation against addition of mass
to a living creature. They landed in a remote section and took that
magnetic train to the holy place. They were hardly interested in
her except as a guide. She wouldn’t stand a real inspection
and full-scale analysis aboard a command ship, of course, but the
original was never intended to be more than a guard and caretaker
making sure things functioned correctly down there—the one
who alone knew the truth but who, being so singular and synthetic,
had no interest in any role beyond the one assigned.”
“So? What did they do?”
“Just what I should have thought of, and what
Raven’s hitting himself over the head for not thinking of.
They installed hypnocasters. A variety of them.”
Vulture nodded. “Yeah, sure. I told you Chi was bright and
dangerous.”
“Ikira is immune, of course, but she’s the only one
who is. She’s going nuts trying to deal with it. She has an
internal one, remember—they replaced it as well. The new
one’s on all the time, and in addition it reinforces the
others they fixed all over the mountain region. Come within range
and you forget all about rings and Master System and any other
nonnative ideas. Get this—it enhances any mindprint to a
tremendous degree while suppressing literally everything else from
your conscious mind. Anything not applying to living a perfect
Matriyehan life and attaining spiritual perfection is shut out.
It’s in about forty different languages but not Matriyehan,
so it has literally no effect on any natives. Only impostors will
get creamed if they know any of the languages covered, and
it’s unlikely they wouldn’t know at least
one.”
“Clever. On a primitive world like Matriyeh the closer you
got, the more effect it would have. If an imposter got close enough
to get a full or maybe multiple doses, he’d vanish into the
priesthood or a tribe and never be seen or heard from again. Even
after it had worn off, the life in the tribal culture would
reinforce it.”
“Not just on Matriyeh. Hypnocasters also work in water.
Star Eagle offered that with the report. Below ten, maybe fifteen
meters they are killers. They don’t have the range underwater
that they do in air, but they have far greater intensity. The SPF
was down there for nine days. That’s long enough to plant
them throughout that whole underwater city. Ten, twenty—who
knows how many? All nicely arranged, I bet, so they focus their
maximum power on the temple or palace, whichever has the ring. I
know what one of those things did to me with just a barrier
exposure. Constant exposure, day in, day out, for weeks,
months . . . The odds are that even now our
four are effectively neutralized. They have become those people
they were intended to imitate, we’re out four people and back
to square one.”
THE WORLD WAS CALLED ALITITI, WHICH BASICALLY
meant “Land of the Gods’ Children.” It took
considerable time to read out the language from the pair delivered
to Thunder and then compare and correlate it with known
linguistic files and run it through computer interpolations. Some
words were very strange, and the context of it was even stranger.
These people had a far different idea of reality than the men and
women of the Thunder. There was also some question of
whether any of the company would be capable of speaking that
super-tonal tongue, and whether even the artificial speaking and
translating devices could handle it.
The natives had no knowledge of Master System; in fact, they had
no knowledge of anything beyond their own watery world. Unlike on
Matriyeh, China and Clayben were certain that this entire culture
was one quite deliberately and completely worked out by the early
colonial leaders themselves and not by the heavy hand of the
all-powerful computer. Much of the traditional Polynesian cosmology
and attitudes were retained, and ancient tales and legends were
adapted to the new conditions, but there was nothing in the minds
of either guard to indicate that they had any idea that there were
other worlds than this, only a vague legend about their people
crossing a great sea to a new land as the gods, led by volcanic
Pele, destroyed all other tribes and nations for renouncing their
faith and the old gods.
They lived in the water and were best suited to breathe it, and
their world below the waves was bizarre indeed. The few images that
the mindscans could get showed a world so strange, so different,
from anything any of the pirates had ever seen that even the truly
alien Makkikor seemed closer to them.
It was a world without sun, yet not a world of darkness. All of
the creatures there, it seemed, save just a few predators, provided
their own illumination. Plants below shone with varicolored radiant
light; fish and other denizens of the deep had elaborate patterns;
some could create and even beam light. Even the people there could
do this, and with some control, by electrochemical mechanisms on
their ribbed chests. So elaborate was this ability that one could
tell tribe, rank, even individuals, from how the patterns formed
there. Males could vary the coloration from yellow through some
oranges and reds and even into purple; females tended to go through
blues and greens. One could tell a lot about a person by his or her
pattern, colors, and intensities, including their emotional state.
It was difficult for these people to hide their feelings or
moods.
Females had the unique ability to manufacture and exude this
self-illumination substance, and their homes and lands and
territories were marked with it.
Their underwater domain was not at all ugly; rather, it was a
fairyland of colors and shapes that all of them found beautiful and
fascinating.
Yes, there were predators, some large and deadly, all
teeth or tentacles, who were doubly feared because they had no
self-illumination. Maui’s Gift—light in the
darkness—was a double-edged sword that made their world a
place of beauty and magic but also made them targets for the
creatures of the darkness.
But this was not the only source of light below. This world was
heavily volcanic, and for all the activity above sea level there
was a lot more below. The Alititians lived in a hot, violent world
of bubbling lava and steam jets and had within them abilities to
see differences in temperature, to clearly define currents, to see
the differences in the water high and low as some birds could see
or sense differences in air.
Water was the domain of Men, but a biological quirk, or a Master
System shortcut, impelled them to occasionally take to the land, a
medium both feared and mystical to them all. Copulation took place
in the water, but the children could not be born there. In an
ironic throwback to their origins, with considerable complex
religious explanations, the children were born looking more like an
Earth-human, at least internally, than like their own parents and
able to breathe only air. Thus, they, and their mothers, had to
remain in the air until, over a period of months, they developed
the protective layers of skin needed to survive in that
violent ocean and the primary respiratory system they would need
there. They even developed distinctive glowing markings that would
make them easy to spot by a mother under the sea. Then they could
be taught, usually very easily, to swim.
Raven’s team and its encampment had been withdrawn. They
had served their purpose—for now. Now they would have to
study the information they had retrieved.
The Crow chomped on a cigar and looked at the data. “Well,
I’ll be damned. So that’s what that thing is
over there. Kind of a birth and nursing center. No wonder they
guard it like they do. Any enemy who successfully attacked and
wiped out that heiau would be striking a body blow at a
tribe’s future—and maybe capturing the women and
children to enlarge its own size and strength.”
Maria nodded. “It is a familiar pattern in the end. Still,
they do not have the limitations imposed on the Matriyehans. They
have areas where they breed and raise food fish and underwater
plants, and they also harvest some of the islands. One would think
that after all this time there would in fact be some consolidation
of tribes here, some small kingdoms or even larger
groupings.”
Many strong chiefs had tried, and some had expanded over great
areas by Alititian standards, but none had been able to hold or
control such a domain. Lack of communications over wide areas and
the ambition of local nobles trusted to run things tended to break
up any large concentrations. Thus, while many tribes, including
this one, were technically a part of nations under kings, the kings
tended to be titular or ceremonial figures with little real power.
The real power resided in the tribal chiefs and in their high
priests, and it was considerable—but localized.
Star Eagle analyzed the entire situation and came up with a lot
of recommendations, none particularly appealing and none
short-term.
“It is obvious that one of the kings or one of the high
priests serving a king would be likely to have the ring,” he
noted, “but there are hundreds, if not thousands, of such
people. Unlike the other areas, there is no trace of the ring motif
in their myths and legends. It is possibly no more than a royal
ornament. There is simply no way that we are going to locate it.
Not even Vulture could have done that, except by sheer
luck.”
Hawks nodded. “And even if we could locate all these
kings, they wouldn’t be very receptive to people not of their
form, and would be openly hostile to people of their own race but
of different tribes or nations. Ceremonial or not, it’s not
very practical to think of walking up to each king saying,
‘Hello, your Majesty. Can we take a look at all your
ceremonial jewelry?’ ”
“Yes. Now we could play gods, of course, and possibly hook
an ambitious chief into a massive expansion plan, but it might
still take years to conquer a region that only might have the ring.
You would eventually have to conquer the entire planet. If we just
had an idea of the region where the ring resided we would have at
least a chance, and even that chance is beyond rational
odds,” the computer agreed.
Hawks sighed. “I also find
this . . . distasteful. We’re usually the
underdogs battling Master System. I can identify with that, work
with it, live with it. But now I am being asked to totally destroy
a culture by sheer weight of our technological power and
superiority. For all their relative primitiveness, these people,
this culture, have much merit. Their world is a place of beauty,
their common interests are in using and loving their element
without destroying it or overmanaging it. They love their world and
their culture. Their intellectual direction is spiritual and
communal. Yet it is all so fragile, so easily destroyed forever. I
suspect that was what the early colonial leaders here realized.
They took what was necessary for their survival and what was
essential and important to their spirits and rejected the rest,
which might corrupt or destroy them. Now you are telling me that I
must do just that.”
“Nevertheless, it must be done,” Isaac Clayben put
in. “To have come this far and not succeed merely on the
basis of preserving a culture makes no sense. There is Earth and
more than four hundred and fifty other colonial worlds to consider.
The greater good for the greater number is the imperative
here.”
Raven shook his head in wonder. Other than Cloud Dancer, he was
probably the only one aboard who really saw and understood
Hawks’s mental agony. It was one he, too, shared, although
perhaps not with the chief’s intensity. Clayben was right, of
course, and so was Hawks.
The chief was not about to start formulating detailed plans
right then. “Run through other alternatives!” he
ordered Star Eagle. “If they are longer, more time consuming,
or have a higher risk then so be it!”
But there were no efficient alternatives, and everyone,
including Hawks, really knew it. His failure to act on this, to
stall and hope for a miracle, absolutely bewildered the others.
Ultimately it was China who was dispatched to Raven by the rest for
an explanation of Hawks’s behavior.
“First you got to get some history,” the Crow told
her. “Ten, twenty thousand years ago, maybe more, the
ancestors of Hawks and me picked up everything and everybody from
their homes in southeast Asia and started a walk. It was one
hell of a walk, too. All the men, women, children, their
dogs and chickens, and you name it. Why they did it we might never
know, except that we were a small people surrounded by fierce
enemies, or potentially fierce enemies, and we knew we
couldn’t last there. So we walked. And when we got to the
Pacific, we walked north until the great land bridge between Asia
and America was reached, and when the little bit of water froze
solid we kept walkin’. Not until we were well on the other
side did any of us stop. It must’ve taken generations. The
ones who finally made it probably knew no other life than walking,
moving, settling for a little while, then picking up and moving
on.”
He sighed, settled back, and lit a cigar. “Their
descendants didn’t stop until they were all the way down as
far as you could walk in South America. The rest—they split
up and went different ways. Each had a group, a tribe, with a
different idea of the promised land, I guess, and most of ’em
found theirs. Two continents, every kind of climate and weather,
buffalo and deer by the millions, huge prairies and vast
forests—you name it, it was there. Two vast continents with
everything anyone could ever wish for—and no people. They
settled in different places and the tribes multiplied and became
nations, the distances so great the languages themselves wound up
bearin’ no real resemblance to one another—just like
what happened in the colonial worlds here. Different cultures,
different languages, different ideas. And they traded with each
other—pottery, pipes, gems, and ideas as well—and
sometimes they fought each other as nations do, but they had a real
good thing there. Some became big empires like the ones in Europe
and Asia and Africa; some kept small, ’cause maybe their
religion or their feeling for the land made empires, to them, sort
of sacrilege. Those were the nations like the Cheyenne and Sioux
and Blackfoot and Crow—my people.”
She nodded. “Then he sees in this world an echo of his own
people’s past. Even though they appear serpentine monsters
with dolphin’s tails he sees only their essential humanity.
His empathy for them binds him.”
“Sort of, but it’s not like that. Hawks ain’t
no prairie original, and neither am I. We love our people and our
ancestral lands but we don’t belong there no more. We
don’t fit. But that’s okay. It’s what happened to
all our people that’s got him troubled.
“See,” he continued, “nations came and went,
empires rose and fell, but it was all ours. Change was slow. We
weren’t saints—the idiot people of the Southwest
chopped down all the trees and wound up turnin’ their lands
to desert and killing themselves. We screwed up, but in little bits
and pieces. The whole stayed the same, and the basic values of
spirit, community, and honor held up. Then the Europeans came. No
problem at first—just another crazy set of empires. Hell,
they brought the horse to America and the native people took to it
with a vengeance. But they also had the guns and they were
comin’ out of a period of wars where there’d been so
much killin’ for so long they were hard and mean and
intolerant of anybody else. A war between the Crow and Blackfoot
took maybe weeks and killed a few folks until honor was balanced
and a settlement reached. Them Europeans fought one called the
Hundred Years War. They were different—and war is the best
way to generate new technology. They had us cold and they
didn’t see us as much more than ignorant savages. We were
different, not even Christian, and we had different looks and
darker skin. In two hundred and fifty years they killed a lot of
us, destroyed all our nations and cultures, burned the Mayan
libraries, and penned up a lot of us on the worst patches of land
in the middle of nowhere like prisoners. We fought—but they
had the guns and the numbers.”
“I know little of that,” China said, “but I
knew of course of the European conquest of the Americas. It was
Master System who reversed things and restored the tribes where it
could, was it not?”
He nodded. “Yeah, sort of. We’re better than we were
’cause we’re in charge and not cooped up, but
it’s not really the way it was. It’s the way Master
System figured it should be for economy’s sake. Same goes for
the Polynesians. The Europeans marched in and took over and even
after they left there wasn’t much left of the old culture but
shows for tourists. Hawks figures that what happened here, on
Alititi, was that Master System kind’a made a deal with some
Pacific folks who wanted to turn their back on the modern world and
get back to what they saw as the basics. They’re ugly as sin
and they live in a crazy kind of world, but it’s
theirs, and it works. See, that’s what’s got
Hawks so round the bend. We’re sittin’ up here, not
many of us, but with more power at our command than they dream
their gods might have, and they got something we want. All them
other rings—we didn’t have to destroy nothing. We tried
to do it so quick and quiet that not many folks even got hurt. But
here, now, Hawks has been handed this thing. You know the best way
to find a needle mixed in a haystack?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Your burn the haystack and sift through the ashes.
That’s what Hawks is bein’ asked to do—repeat
history. Kill who-knows-how-many innocent people, destroy their
culture, ransack a world to find a ring. He’s bein’
pressured to do to them what the Europeans did to our people, only
faster, which means even dirtier and deadlier. The cowboys and
injuns changed places, and he didn’t bargain for
that.”
The alarm rang in the quarters of each member of the council of
captains. Hawks was outside playing with his son when he heard it
and rushed inside.
“Yes?”
“Ships in the Alititian system,” Star Eagle
reported.
Hawks frowned. “A task force?” That would be
disastrous, for it would mean not only that the already difficult
and dangerous job was getting impossible, it would also mean that
the SPF had discovered the deception the pirates pulled on Matriyeh
and had maybe captured some of their people left behind there.
“No. A small SPF vessel. Data indicates the probability
that it is a tactical ship—a mobile command post rather than
a true command ship designed for orbital work. It might be a
forward scouting party for a task force, perhaps not. It is being
covered by two Val fighters.”
Hawks thought a moment, then snapped his fingers. “Chi!
Has to be! Star Eagle—we have to get something in there close
and fast! They won’t want to stay around long in plain view.
Too much danger of giving the location away. Chi’s not taking
any chances, though. She’s gonna booby trap the
ring.”
“That is bad,” the computer responded.
“Uh uh! It’s the best break we’ve had, and
right in the nick of time, too! To booby trap it they’re
gonna have to send some people down there. Odds are they’ve
got some Alititian SPF in that ship who have some tribal ties to
whoever’s holding the ring. Hell, there might be SPF down
there all the time—but there’s no way to contact them.
Star Eagle—we have to know precisely where they go down
to the surface! Precisely! And they must not know we’re
doing it!”
“Working on the problem. We have the inactive base camp
fighter there and the relay fighter inactive in solar orbit. Their
scanners are not the best but we dare not risk a punch right now.
If I could get that second base camp fighter up, I’d have a
fighting chance. There are only three ships and they will not
establish orbital positions for a couple of hours. Perhaps I can
get that one on the ground off when they are positioned right. I
will try.”
“You must! No matter what nasty business Chi and her Vals
are pulling, they’re doing work for us we couldn’t
dream of accomplishing. Come on, Star Eagle! They are going to
point an arrow right to where we must look! You cannot
fail!”
But it was several hours of nail-biting as they all sat around
in the common waiting for word.
Finally Star Eagle reported, “I have it, I think, and
I’ve correlated it with our own surveys. They apparently have
no receiver on the ground and so they had to send a pod down with
their people. The region is in the southern hemisphere, a tiny
island in an unusually quiescent geologic region. Obvious when you
think of it. They would not place the ring where it would be likely
to be melted in volcanic fires or lost by seaquake. It is well away
from the base camp—halfway around the world, almost. Our
prisoners had no data at all on any region beyond their own and
their neighbors. We will require more prisoners from the immediate
area to get hard information, and they will have to be taken with
greater stealth than we used the first time. We will need specimens
from the proper tribe or nation, but ones who will be considered
missing—a natural if sad turn of events—rather than
obviously kidnapped. We can’t just walk in on these people.
There must be permanent party SPF down there.”
“I agree,” Hawks replied. “First we have to
wait for them to leave—not just the planet but the system.
Make certain that they are gone, too, and that they leave no
surprises behind in the system that we don’t know about and
can’t counter. Then we’ll need high-resolution surveys
of the entire area. We can assume a general similarity to the ones
we know, but there will be regional differences. We must know them.
Then Raven, here, can work out how to make a few of them
vanish.”
It must have been a real welcome home celebration, because the
pod remained on the island for nine days. The ships, however, were
not idle during that time—the Vals looked over much of the
inner solar system, and definitely with mischief in mind. Had the
rebel band not beaten Chi to the place, the additional monitors and
sophisticated sweep and I.D. systems installed by the Vals would
have been virtually undetectable, just as those small fighters from
Thunder were not detected by the newcomers. Being able to
watch them plant things, though, and even monitor their tests of
the devices, made it relatively easy to determine where and of what
type the new traps were. It would take some time and trouble, but
they had defeated or fooled worse.
Ultimately the pod took off and rejoined its parent vessel. The
trio of ships wasted little time after that in regrouping and
heading out and away. By the time they accelerated and punched out
of the system as a group, the sophisticated defense computer
network aboard Thunder had already completed the plan for
neutralizing the new orbital devices and begun to create the
necessary equipment. They could not, however, do anything about
what those who had gone down to the surface, and below it, had
done. That would await more information than Star Eagle’s
monitors could give.
They gave everything a few extra days just to make certain
nobody in Chi’s band had forgotten something and come back
for it, then sent Lightning in for a methodical mapping of
the pinpointed surface area.
Raven was a little concerned. “If Chi’s as good as
Vulture says, this could be one hell of a trap,” he noted.
“I mean, suppose she figures we’re already on to this
hole? She comes in, bold as brass, pinpoints a location far away
from the ring, and sends some folks down there making everybody
sit, open and obvious, for nine days so there’s no
question we get the point. Then we move in; right into her trap, no
ring in sight. I mean, this, comin’ when it
did—sort’a just when we needed it—smells like
two-month-old dead fish.”
“It’s a possibility, but not a likely one,”
Hawks replied. “I agree that the move, coming now, makes me a
little suspicious, but unless they just went down and sat and
camped for nine days—and we intercepted no messages from the
surface on our scanners—they had to go under, and if they
went under, then whoever it was had to be people who were known
there and wouldn’t be immediately captured and maybe killed.
No, Chi might be smart enough to plant some SPF in the wrong spot,
but that’s not consistent with Master System’s behavior
and Chi hasn’t been on the job long enough to set up that
sort of trick even if she could think of it.”
“I agree with Hawks’s logic,” Star Eagle put
in. “Also, I have dispatched probes back to Matriyeh and am
just now receiving information that the same three ships visited
there before coming here. I will attempt to contact Ikira when I
feel it is safe. If she is still alive and still on duty there, it
is logical that they did not discover the switch and that whatever
they did there is fairly similar to what they did here. It is also
logical that they went to Matriyeh first—that is a world
Master System knows full well is named in some of the documents and
so they assume it will be our next target. This one was last
because it is presumed unknown and hidden.”
“I’ll feel better when we hear from Ikira,”
Raven commented. “That had to be pretty damned hairy.
Remember, the whole damned Matriyehan division’s on the
planet permanently so who could they send down? If it was a Val or
two, with their scanners, Ikira’s already dead meat and
there’s a task force around here somewhere.”
“In the meantime, there is no substitute for intelligence,
and we need it fast,” Hawks said. “They won’t be
expecting any move so soon. Get me some of those locals,
Raven.”
It was a quo’oa night, the kind of night when
vision at the surface was clear, the distant gods shined down, and
even the forms of the clouds could be told. It was the sort of
night when Gatherers came forth from the Sea-Mother to fetch and
tend those things most precious, the food of the gods, for the
sacred ceremonies in the kingdom below.
The four who came out of the surf onto the beach were old,
experienced men; not elders but senior warriors who feared little
beyond the powers of Pele and who had never met their match. They
came in professionally, spread out, and immediately were up on
their tails, all senses fully alert and spears at the ready. They
remained there, motionless, poised, for several minutes, like
grotesque statuary, until they were satisfied. The spears went back
in the pu’oa, and great arms stretched out like the
legs of the great lizards they had never known, and they walked
confidently inward to the macadamia groves.
They cleared the beach and then stopped warily again as the
gateway, guarded by tikis with powerful mana, stared back at them.
One great one in the shape of the Tentacled Demon-Lord on the
right, another in the form of the Shark God, its enemy, were as
they should be, to warn any and all of whose territory and whose
groves these were and just who any sacrilegious trespasser would
have to answer to for his desecration. They were not the trouble;
they were comforting as the guardians of the tribe.
It was the new one standing in the middle of the path that
caused the problem.
It stood perhaps three meters high and looked to be of the same
polished wood as the other tikis, but the features carved upon it
were those of the fierce and unreachable sea birds of the Wind
Spirit, a symbol understood here but not having any relation with
this or any other local tribe in the kingdom, its stylized wings
upturned toward the sky. Someone had been here; someone from
outside was challenging their own spirits, their own rights to the
sacred grove!
The four warriors immediately fanned out in a rough diamond
formation, so that the one in the rear was nearest the sea and
ready to summon a larger army if need be.
Yet the warriors were still, straining for any hint of unnatural
sounds coming from the groves just beyond that provided the only
possible cover. There were no strange scents they could detect, but
in the air their noses weren’t very good anyway. Suddenly
they were on alert, weapons poised, as rustling sounds came from
the groves on both sides of them, drawing their attention away from
the profaning idol, not even noticing that those great upturned
wings were now coming, ever so slowly, down, down,
down . . .
The initial shots were on broad beam from the pistols that Han
Li held in both hands; this was only sufficient to stun the
warriors for a few moments, but it was more than enough time for
Han Li to adjust the intensity with her thumbs and then pick each
of the four off with a cleaner, stronger knockout shot.
Satisfied that the quartet was out cold, Han Li knocked away the
thin casing of the tiki and stepped out fast. She picked up a
communicator and called, “Condor to Crow. Come pick them up
before somebody comes looking for them. Four in, four
down.”
“We cannot keep them here for long,” Isaac Clayben
told Hawks. “They have status and they are on the equivalent
of a religious retreat, so while they are not expected back
immediately, they are expected back. To be safe, I would
say four days, five tops. Certainly no more.”
The leader nodded. “Three days should be sufficient after
all your practice. You’ve done the mindprint analysis. What
do we have?”
“I believe I should answer that,” China came in, her
voice echoing from the small speakers usually used by Star Eagle
and indicating that she was in her favorite place—mentally
joined with the great computer through the pilot’s interface.
She did a lot of this sort of thing over the years; Star Eagle was
excellent and personable, but he was still a machine and had never
lived as a human being. The computer could assemble, sort, and
evaluate information, but it took a human to interpret it
properly.
“Go ahead,” Hawks told her.
“Thanks to the first two we could dispense with most of
the general testing and concentrate on the individual life data.
Makoa, the old one with all the black gashes in his thick hide, is
a real rake. He has nine wives, forty-three living children, and
even though he exaggerates his claim of forty mistresses he does
have a dozen or so. Macho seems to go a long way down there.
He’s also a king’s warrior, which means he’s
about as high up the secular social scale as he can go, due mostly
to the fact that he’s a tough survivor. Warriors don’t
grow very old down there and when one does and keeps it up,
he’s almost worshipped like a god no matter how rotten he
might be inside. It might be hard for anyone to live up to his
image or keep up a masquerade and survive, but he’s the one
with access to the high places. Short of royalty, he’s pretty
well connected there, which was why he led the sacred
gathering.”
Hawks nodded. “Okay, okay. But what kind of system are we
facing down there?”
“No Center, but definitely a small city—huge by
Alititian standards, I think, and consistent with what we’ve
seen of Master System’s layout. It’s a secular center,
the seat of the hereditary king of the region—and he’s
a pretty tough old guy himself. He’s executed a half dozen of
his sons for trying to hurry along succession by attempting to
knock off their old man. He’s a good politician and warrior,
and if he had just a hundred needlers he’d have conquered
half the hemisphere by now. The tribal chiefs are all his sons by
various wives and they’re as ambitious and ornery as their
old man, only not as experienced so they haven’t succeeded in
doing more than ignoring him on a day-to-day basis. It’s all
kept reasonably together by Halaku. He’s the high priest of
the big temple down there and the only one other than the king who
can talk to members in other kingdoms—and he’s
the only one who actually does.”
“SPF?”
“Possible but doubtful, unless they’re pulling a
variation of the Matriyehan sleepers on us. He does, however, have
a hell of a temple guardian force at his command, and it’s
almost certain that some and maybe all of them are SPF mindprinted
and hypnoed to love their jobs and their places. That’s if
the ring is down there. I can’t get anything showing that any
of these four, not even Makoa, has seen the ring, but that’s
not as unusual as you might think and doesn’t mean much. When
the king or the high priest goes all-out for ceremonies and the
like, they’re so weighted down with jewelry and ornamentation
that you might never notice a little ring. The ring would have to
be worn as a charm or something anyway; as should be obvious, while
these people might wear special kinds of rings they couldn’t
possibly wear and keep on their finger a ring like the others we
have. The ridges, bone structure in the finger, and slight webbing
would prevent it.”
Hawks had already thought of that one. “So we’re
still blind.”
“Not quite. They had visitors for a few days, you know,
from an outlying tribe loyal to the king.”
“Aha!”
“There were three of them—the high priest of the
tribe and two associate priests. They brought fine gifts to the
king and court, and joined in a religious ceremony and sacrifice at
the temple. They also brought harrowing tales of demon monsters who
appeared vaguely human and had godlike power. These demons
pretended to be gods and would come in and rape tribes of their
wealth and arrogantly loot the temples, but although they looked
like demons or gods they were actually mortals, animals of a high
sort. Forget the gods approach, Hawks—any of us go down
there, they’ll check our mortality before they check anything
else, and believe me, they’re not stupid. They’d
welcome you, bow and scrape, throw a big feast, and while
you’re relaxing their best warriors would puncture every area
of your body. You have to hand it to this Brigadier Chi—she
certainly did her homework. She’s made certain that no one
who’s not Alititian will get anywhere near that city, let
alone close to the higher-ups.”
Hawks sighed and scratched his chin, thinking. “Uh huh.
She’s decided or deduced that Vulture was the only one of his
kind, and she’s pretty confident that the Vulture
threat’s been eliminated. That also means she’s
anticipating us very nicely, forcing us to do just what we were
thinking of doing—a switch using the transmuters.”
“Uh uh. The locals have been told that these evil mortal
creatures have some great magic, and that they can imitate people
very well. These Alititians aren’t the sort to get paranoid,
but they will notice and become suspicious of any strangeness or
deviations in behavior, and the place is small enough that they
know each other pretty well. Any infiltration here will require
deep mindprinting, maybe relying on hypnotic commands and
triggers. The problem is, Master System and this Chi will know that
as well. Having planted cultural traps for the standard infiltrator
to violate, we must assume that there are sophisticated traps,
maybe of a very high-tech sort, to trap anybody deep-printed as a
primitive.”
“Remember, too, that all these men have families,”
Clayben put in. “They aren’t the sort of people we
picked—or had the luxury of picking—in the past. Any of
our people will have to live in an intimate environment with family
and children who have known them better than anyone else for years
or perhaps a lifetime. The best actor in the world cannot feign
affection or real love and concern for children not his own on a
day-to-day basis.” The scientist nodded. “Yes, that is
what I would do in reverse circumstances. Create a
situation where only deep printing will do, where the subject must
really become the one he replaces, and then set some nice,
sophisticated traps. Then an infiltrator, an impostor, either gets
exposed by family and tribe and dealt with that way or he is so
good that he is ultimately caught in traps his necessarily enforced
ignorance can’t even imagine. Remember that without Vulture
even Matriyeh would have been impenetrable. This setup is at least
as good.”
“All right,” Hawks responded, “so what do we
do about it?”
China had some ideas. “First, it’s deep infiltration
for sure. We must have that. We must construct a structured
hypnotic sequence that works until the last moment on a
subconscious level. Prime command: look for the ring, locate it.
Second, run an academic warrior’s exercise—how would
you steal such a thing? Ultimately, and there’s no way around
it, bring the original personality and knowledge forward for the
actual operation. Star Eagle and I recommend a self-trigger that
would allow the infiltrator to reimpose the deep print, or allow
one of the compatriots to impose it. It will be a long, slow,
perhaps laborious process, Hawks. We might be out here a very long
time, and, unlike the other operations, we’ll of necessity be
in total ignorance of what progress is being made, if any. It is
very frustrating—but there is no other practical
way.”
The leader sighed. “I am resigned to it. I have just been
attempting to run through my mind what they might have put down
there in nine days. What sort of unobtrusive yet effective trap
might be there that would not violate this world or its culture or
even be noticed by them but would stop us. I am too remote for this
sort of thinking, and I am not a military man.” He paused and
shook his head. “I just wish we had Vulture here. Even if he
wasn’t his old self he knows this Chi better than we do.
I’d even settle for a direct line to Matriyeh to determine
what they pulled there.”
“I dare not. The only safe way is to wait until those on
the ground can signal us, if they can.”
Hawks nodded. “And that may be weeks. We have to give
these four back, one way or another, in just a couple of days. I
don’t like it, but the odds of capturing this many together
without arousing any suspicion below—and one a reasonably
high-level warrior—are slim. No, we have to go now, while the
opportunity’s there and the time is perfect. The primary
question now is just who to send.”
That was something of a problem, since no one who had already
been through the transmuter could repeat the process. That left,
excluding the children, Raven, Hawks, Cloud Dancer, Clayben, Takya,
Dura, Gobanifar and his mate, Chun Wo Har and his two wives,
Captain ben Suda and his wife, and the alien and remote Makkikor,
who remained with its ship and was still an enigma to almost
everyone, its captain of eleven years included. And the
now-totally-reclusive Savaphoong, of course.
Raven seemed genuinely anguished, more haunted and upset than
anyone could ever remember him being, but he was adamant.
“I am ashamed of myself, Hawks. Really ashamed. I think I
could stomach being one of them Matriyehans, or a glorified sea
otter like Bute, or even, maybe, a cud-chewin’ Janipurian. I
think I could probably accept becoming one of Dura’s race, or
Takya’s, or even Ikira’s—but not these. Not
them. My honor, even my position, screams that I’m
the best man for this job, but—I would gladly kill myself
first. It’s tough to explain, even to myself. It has to do
maybe with some childhood nightmares or something—I dunno.
But I just can’t become one of them things. I just
can’t. When we was down there, I was terrified. I kept
control, I did my job, but I was terrified of them. It was all I
could do to keep from switchin’ from stun to
lethal.”
Hawks shook his head in sympathy. “I know. I have often
wondered how I would react if and when my turn came—and it
might yet, if this fails.”
“You got a pretty wife and good-lookin’ kids who
need a daddy, and Cloud Dancer’s the only mother most of
China’s brood really know. Me—I got nothin’ and
nobody. I got no excuse. No use givin’ me the standard
lecture, neither. I know what I look like. I know that the Chows
and Bute and the two Chinamen and maybe even Manka and Maria and
the rest had the same problems and that even though they never have
been fully right since, they’d do it again. I know all that.
And I know I’m gonna be guilty as hell when others go
’cause I should have been with ’em—I
should’ve gone instead of one of ’em. If they fail, it
might be because somebody like me wasn’t with ’em. God!
All that shit I spouted about makin’ my ancestors proud of me
and now here it is and look at me!”
Hawks sighed. “Well, we’ll see what can be worked
out.” He sympathized with the man and his private terrors,
but he knew that if it meant success or failure, he would
do it, even though, as Raven pointed out, the cost to him and his
family would be particularly high. This operation was
particularly tough, although none of them had been all that easy.
Min and Chung, for example, had not only the problem of being
turned into strange creatures but into creatures of the opposite
sex.
Which was, of course, also Dura’s and Takya’s
problem now. Chung and Min had volunteered, none too
enthusiastically, for the honor of themselves and their ship, which
had heretofore been untouched by the burden of such
responsibility—even by casualties in battle. But
Kaotan had only two crew members left who had not given
all they had for the mission.
Takya was not too thrilled, but she had already accepted fate.
“I am the logical one, possibly, to lead,” she admitted
to Hawks. “Of all the survivors here, I alone come from a
water world, a water civilization. A much higher one than this, to
be sure, but I will be in my element there for the first time in
years. But as a man . . . No offense,
but I have never much wanted to be one. It is just not in my
nature.”
“I understand,” he responded, although he
couldn’t see much wrong with being a man himself. In a
reversed situation he could see no dishonor in becoming female, but
on the whole he liked himself as he was. “Still, we have no
females to clone, for one thing, and for another, in that culture,
the sex roles are very clearly separated, and unless we could get
someone like one of the king’s wives or concubines, they
simply wouldn’t be of as much use to us. Master System
interpreted the requirement of ‘humans with power’ to
mean political power, and down there politics is a man’s
game.”
She nodded. “I know. And that is why I will do it. Is it
true that Han Li has also volunteered?”
He nodded. “Yes, the only real volunteer I had. Apparently
she is not happy as number-two wife and Chun Wo Har is something of
a dominant man. And she thinks the Alititians are beautiful,
proving, at least, there are grave differences between the
colonials and Earth-humans.”
“They are not an unattractive race,” Takya
responded. “I have been trying to dissuade Dura, you know.
She does not find any of it at all attractive or alluring, but she
has been adamant. If I go, she goes.”
“I know. And Raven is the logical fourth, but you know the
problem there. Everybody else has wives or children or both. Except
Savaphoong, of course, but I’m not sure I’d trust him
down there even if he had the guts to go. And, for that reason, and
considering Raven’s refusal as well, I don’t think I
should force him to go.”
“And you shall not,” came a man’s voice behind
him. They turned and saw Savaphoong standing there.
“Nevertheless, Señor Capitán, I shall go. You have
trumped my ace, as it were, and beaten me even though the game was
rigged from the start. If I remain here, it is only a matter of
time until the ring is secured and I am jettisoned, cast adrift in
a universe that no longer has any use for me, my contacts many
years stale, a price on my head. Either that or I remain a recluse
attached to this ship while others go stick the accursed rings down
Master System’s throat until it chokes. No, señor and
señorita, I, Savaphoong, intend to be there at the end even if I
must crawl there with a fish tank over my head. If you will take
me, Señorita Mudabur, I will go. If you will not, then the
capitán, here, cannot deny me a presence at the
climax.”
Hawks looked at Takya quizzically, and she shrugged. “You
are welcome, sir. We should have one true male among the group, I
think. But if you betray us, I swear that you will not outlive the
last of us, and if you act with courage and honor, I also swear
that you will be present when that ring is used.”
The old trader smiled and bowed slightly. “It is a fair
bargain.”
Hawks was uneasy about Savaphoong’s offer, but could find
no compelling reason to bar him from the group. The chief was in
his quarters brooding over what Savaphoong might be planning when
he received news that pushed all other thoughts from his mind.
“Hawks?” came Star Eagle’s voice from a hidden
speaker. “You wanted to be notified immediately. Vulture is
signaling for a pickup.”
“I just can’t understand it,” Isaac Clayben
mumbled for perhaps the tenth time in an hour. He had been going
over all the tests on Vulture.
“You said I was immune to the transmuter,” the
little male Chanchukian reminded him in his high, somewhat squeaky
tenor. “You said that what they did to me couldn’t be
done!”
“I—I thought it couldn’t. I swear to you I
thought it could not be done. Your cells—your original
cells—were quite literally created in a transmuter.
They were tested, many times, and found to be impervious to the
transmuter process. All we got was an automatic abort from the
control computer—every time. Even I, who created you, could
not uncreate you, as it were. Star Eagle was fed from my data banks
all the information on your creation and structure, just how you
worked, and there was no way even he could see how it was
done. Alas, it would take a far larger computer than we have here
to repeat the experiment—if indeed we dared repeat
it.”
Vulture shuddered. “I am small and weak now, and I am but
a shadow of my former self, but I believe I would kill you no
matter what if you should try. You can never know the pain, the horror
of that experience. So terrible is it that even though most of my
past lives are mercifully dim, just pale shadows now, still that
period haunts my nightmares.”
“Rest easy on that score,” Star Eagle broke in. The
great computer that ran the ship was also virtually omnipresent on
it. “All of the data that we have examined shows that even
were I a hundred times as large and complex and even if I had all
the esoteric biophysics and biochemistry needed for it, still it
would be impossible. There is a missing element in all the data. Just what is
impossible to determine, but without it the rest will not work.
It’s just so much synthetic primordial soup.”
“Impossible! Everything was there!
Everything!” Clayben exclaimed.
“No. Sorry to puncture your ego, Doctor, but you are a
brilliant man and you will survive it. Now that I have all the
files, though, and all the records of the work done, I can see the
procedures and the holes. The conclusion is unmistakable, Doctor.
You did not invent Vulture. You created him, but you did
not invent him.”
“No, that’s not
true . . . ”
Even Vulture was puzzled. “Invent,
create—what’s the difference?”
“The difference between a scientist and an engineer, for
the most part. Clayben was the engineer who oversaw the project,
but this is far too complex even in its minor parts for any human
brain to follow with the detail required. In many important ways,
Vulture, you were a far more complex synthetic organism than I, or
a Val. We had no problems synthesizing a Val, or at least a cyborg
that allowed tiny, organic Ikira Sukotae to become a being much
larger and who would measure as synthetic. But be honest, Doctor.
No human invented Vulture any more than a human invented me.
Humans, in fact, did not even invent Master System. They had a set
of ideas that they fed into large computers who then fed it into
larger computers and so forth. The human in the chain was left far
behind. As brilliant as you are, Doctor, you have no more real idea
how Vulture worked than Cloud Dancer knows of nuclear physics. You
initiated and oversaw the mechanics of the project. Computers did
the rest.”
Clayben nodded. “Yes, yes, that is self-evident. There is
only one way for a human mind to approach computer speeds and
capacities and that is through the interface I did not have. And
even then we are subordinate, since the human mind cannot function
at such blinding speeds nor access the memory banks without
computer aid. But the Vulture was my idea.”
“Perhaps. But one wonders if you were at any time truly
the master of your own little world. We know that Nagy was a plant
of some sort, although whose is unknown. It always seemed bizarre
that Master System, who liked to control every variable it could
within the limitations of its core directives, would allow you and
the Earth Presidium to have your private world and keep hands off.
Still, Master System would be unlikely to let you forge a weapon
that could strike against it so thoroughly and efficiently, and
that leaves the other side, the enemy for whom Nagy presumably
worked and whom Master System has been at war with for some time.
To even fight Master System to a draw on any plane would imply,
almost require, a computing center at least as vast as Master
System itself.”
Clayben blanched. “Two of them? And you mean that
after I started this project, Nagy covered it from Master
System’s own spies and supplied what I could not from his own
master?”
“I have analyzed the physical plant of Melchior. The
computer you had was vast and sophisticated. I wish I had a
hundredth of its power and capabilities. Next to Master System
itself it might have been the largest and fastest computer we know
of, yet it is wholly inadequate for the precision and number of
computations designing a Vulture would require. You did not create
Vulture because you could not. Only a computer at least the equal
of Master System could do so. Since Master System obviously did
not, then there is another.”
Vulture shook his head in disbelief. “All this time I
blamed this egomaniac bastard. God, how I hated you, Clayben! How I
wanted you to suffer like I had to suffer. And all the time it
wasn’t you at all. You were just as much a pawn in all this
as me. So a second Master System got wind of your idea and supplied
what was needed to create me, maybe just for this job. And when
Master System learned from Chi the possibility of my existence, it
was powerful enough and bright enough to figure out how I was made,
see the flaws, and capitalize on them.” He sighed. “In
the end, I guess it’s my fault, then. I hated your guts, but
you were my creator, damn it! I questioned everything, but I would
never question any statement you made about me. Never. When you
said I was immune to the transmuter, I believed you. Instantly. It
became a factor I no longer had to take into account. In the end,
that was my blind spot. Funny, but I can accept that. Even
feel stupid about it. Considering the history and state of
humanity, if it had a creator, he sure as hell made a lot of
mistakes for an allegedly omnipotent, omniscient being. Master
System makes so many mistakes that people like you and the chief
administrators can walk right through them. Why in hell would I
think that my creator, whom I knew and could see, would be
perfect when they were not?”
Clayben threw up his hands. “Because you were in some ways
always an extension of me. Because humility does not become either
of us. We are done in by such vanities, I fear. The Blue Fairy gave
you life, Pinocchio, but this time you did not escape Pleasure
Island’s more evil magic.”
Vulture looked into the air. “What is he talking about?
Has he gone mad?”
“No,” Star Eagle responded. “I’ll
explain it to you later.”
Vulture sighed and got off the examining table. “Well, now
I’m different. I guess it’s time I got the lay of the
land and contributed whatever I still can.”
It was some time until he found Hawks, though, and when he did,
he found the chief more than a little gloomy. Hawks looked up
straight into Vulture’s brown eyes, a gesture made a bit more
dramatic because they were eye to eye, although Hawks was sitting
down and Vulture was standing up.
It wasn’t so much that Vulture was in an inhuman shape, or
that a Chanchukian male was a rather weird creature even when you
had the three females around to get used to, but rather that
something was missing from Vulture. The old spark, the total
self-confidence, the feeling of omnipotence, of “can’t
fail,” just wasn’t there anymore.
“Clayben and Star Eagle briefed me,” Vulture told
him. “They’ve been down only two weeks,
right?”
Hawks nodded. “We have small tracers embedded in them that
we can follow by a water probe floating on the surface. It’s
burned into a rock jutting just out of the water so it’s not
likely to be found, and if triggered it gives us information on
their general location. We also have communicators embedded in the
tikis on the cultivated islands, on the theory that at least one of
them will be able to get to one of those spots if they must or if
they have the ring—or if they are convinced that we blew
it.”
“Uh uh. I think the ring’s there, and so do you. And
it took a year for my team, with the old me included, to nab the
one on Chanchuk, so two weeks is nothing. That’s not
what’s bothering you. Is it Savaphoong?”
“Not really. Right now Savaphoong is unaware of his own
name and can’t even conceive of outer space. It’s a
deep mindprint. And what can he do? Master System won’t
reward him if he betrays us—it will just take all he knows
and then convert him to one of its own. When his old personality is
triggered he won’t find staying there tempting for two
reasons. First, real power down there is gained by fanatical
bravery or by heredity and he has neither. Second, the ring’s
no good to him without the other four and we have three of them.
No, it’s not that. We heard from Matriyeh.”
Vulture was suddenly very interested. “Yes?”
“Ikira passed muster, even though it was a close thing.
They sent a real Val down along with two technicians from races she
had never seen before.”
“And she fooled a Val?”
“We did a good job analyzing the remains of the original
goddess. The structure was particularly interesting and synthetic,
you know. That was how we could add so much mass to her tiny frame
within the transmuter’s limitation against addition of mass
to a living creature. They landed in a remote section and took that
magnetic train to the holy place. They were hardly interested in
her except as a guide. She wouldn’t stand a real inspection
and full-scale analysis aboard a command ship, of course, but the
original was never intended to be more than a guard and caretaker
making sure things functioned correctly down there—the one
who alone knew the truth but who, being so singular and synthetic,
had no interest in any role beyond the one assigned.”
“So? What did they do?”
“Just what I should have thought of, and what
Raven’s hitting himself over the head for not thinking of.
They installed hypnocasters. A variety of them.”
Vulture nodded. “Yeah, sure. I told you Chi was bright and
dangerous.”
“Ikira is immune, of course, but she’s the only one
who is. She’s going nuts trying to deal with it. She has an
internal one, remember—they replaced it as well. The new
one’s on all the time, and in addition it reinforces the
others they fixed all over the mountain region. Come within range
and you forget all about rings and Master System and any other
nonnative ideas. Get this—it enhances any mindprint to a
tremendous degree while suppressing literally everything else from
your conscious mind. Anything not applying to living a perfect
Matriyehan life and attaining spiritual perfection is shut out.
It’s in about forty different languages but not Matriyehan,
so it has literally no effect on any natives. Only impostors will
get creamed if they know any of the languages covered, and
it’s unlikely they wouldn’t know at least
one.”
“Clever. On a primitive world like Matriyeh the closer you
got, the more effect it would have. If an imposter got close enough
to get a full or maybe multiple doses, he’d vanish into the
priesthood or a tribe and never be seen or heard from again. Even
after it had worn off, the life in the tribal culture would
reinforce it.”
“Not just on Matriyeh. Hypnocasters also work in water.
Star Eagle offered that with the report. Below ten, maybe fifteen
meters they are killers. They don’t have the range underwater
that they do in air, but they have far greater intensity. The SPF
was down there for nine days. That’s long enough to plant
them throughout that whole underwater city. Ten, twenty—who
knows how many? All nicely arranged, I bet, so they focus their
maximum power on the temple or palace, whichever has the ring. I
know what one of those things did to me with just a barrier
exposure. Constant exposure, day in, day out, for weeks,
months . . . The odds are that even now our
four are effectively neutralized. They have become those people
they were intended to imitate, we’re out four people and back
to square one.”