In Earth's Service (Mapped Space Book 2) (11 page)

“Does he get to testify in his own defense?”

“That is neither necessary nor desirable.”

“So his life depends on what the copy says?”

“Yes. Such confessions have far greater weight
under our law than his own testimony because there is no possibility of
deception.”

“What about his right not to incriminate himself?”

“We recognize no such right. That concept is
nothing more than a piece of legal trickery used by primitive societies to
allow criminals to avoid responsibility for their actions. Advanced societies
are built upon a fundamental concept, that justice avoided is injustice. That
applies as much to an individual as to an entire civilization. We seek truth.
Once we know it, we act upon it.”

“You have no secrets,” I said, realizing in their
society, no one could ever lie and get away with it. If they did that to me, my
copy would reveal everything I knew, my threading, my work for the EIS, every
dirty trick and double cross I’d ever pulled.

“Secrecy stands in the way of justice,” she said
simply. “In this case, it threatens the safety of the Tau Cetin people and of
the galaxy itself.”

“Is he asleep?” Jase asked, peering through the
darkness toward Izin.

“He’s conscious, but disconnected from all sensory
inputs. A certain degree of cognition is required for the process.”

“What does he think is happening?” I asked.

“He knows he’s being interrogated, but is unaware
of the method being used.”

“Can he see me?” Jase waved a hand experimentally,
then yelled, “Izin!”

“He cannot hear or see you,” she said.

“Free him now!” I demanded.

“Not until the copying process is complete.”

“You have no right!”

“We have every right. The interrogation of Izin
Nilva Kren is being conducted according to galactic law and with the full authority
of the Forum. We must determine if the terrestrial amphibians of Earth are in
contact with the Minacious Cluster.”

“That’s crazy,” Jase said. “The tamphs couldn’t keep
something like that a secret from us!”

“We disagree,” Meta said calmly.

“Is that why you’ve been following us?” I asked.
It was a theory I’d been considering since Izin’s arrest.

She gave me a puzzled look. “Why do you think we are
following you?”

“There was a ship tracking us on Novo Pantanal. It
wasn’t emitting neutrinos. The only ships we know that can do that are yours.”

Meta fell silent, listening to a conversation among
those who were eavesdropping on us. Finally she said, “No Tau Cetin ships are
following you.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“What you believe is of no concern to us, but it
is the truth.”

As an android, she could have lied through her
teeth without any of the human signs of deceit, yet I believed her. The Tau
Cetins played their games, but they’d never directly lied to us. “Who else has
ships like yours?”

“No one in the Orion Arm. There are others elsewhere
in the galaxy with similar capabilities, but why would they be interested in
you?”

“What about the Intruders?” Jase asked.

“They have recently acquired a theoretical
understanding of aspects of our technology, but they are still some way from being
able to practically deploy it.”

Damn! “They’re catching you aren’t they? And not
just in weapons!”

“They have a remarkably single minded focus, at
least for what they want. In any event, you would find their existing ships difficult
to detect.”

If it was an Intruder ship, why would it be following
us? Were they trying to contact Izin? He’d been the one who’d detected them, proof
he wasn’t working for them, but other tamphs might be – especially the females.
It made frighteningly good sense for the Intruders to use the tamphs of Earth
to spy on our closest neighbor, who also happened to be their greatest enemy.

“Suppose there are Intruder spies among the tamphs.
What then?”

“Skipper!” Jase exclaimed. “What are you saying?”

“Izin isn’t a spy,” I said, “but he’s only one
tamph in ten million.”

“If the terrestrial amphibian population of Earth
are cooperating with the Intruders, then they are implicated in the attack on the
Alliance Fleet, in which case the tamph population will be returned to the Minacious
Cluster.”

“But Earth is their home!” Jase snapped.

“The Minacious Cluster is their home,” Meta corrected.
“Their presence on Earth is an accident of history, our mistake for not
detecting them at the time.”

“How can you return them?” I asked. “You’ve lost control
of their home cluster.”

“They’ll be placed in suspension until the present
hostilities have ceased.” She motioned to Izin, indicating he was in the state
she was referring to. “An orbital is being prepared as we speak.”

“You’d turn them all into sleeping zombies?” I
asked.

“They will not be harmed, but if they pose a
danger to us, they will be returned to where they belong.”

“Does Earth Council have any say in this?”

“They’ll be advised of the sentence, but will not
be allowed to interfere in its execution.”

“We’ll protest to the Forum!”

“You are not yet members. Even if you were, you
would find such a decision is in their interest as much as ours.”

Suddenly, it hit me. They were looking for an
excuse because the tamph presence so close to Tau Ceti made our mighty avian
neighbors nervous. It was an abject lesson in how powerless we were when their
interests and ours conflicted. All it would take was one tamph traitor and Izin
would be condemned to their collective fate whether he was a spy or not.

It wasn’t justice, it was a great power flexing its
muscle.

* * * *

After watching Izin float helplessly for
almost an hour, Meta said, “Jesorl wishes to speak with you.”

“Has he made a decision about Izin?” I asked.

“No, he wishes to discuss the substance you
brought to Ansara.”

In my fury over Izin’s arrest, I’d almost
forgotten my reason for being there. “Does he know what it is?”

“I only know to take you back.”

“I’m staying here, Skipper,” Jase said, “until
they let him go.”

I glanced at Meta. “Any objections?”

“It is permitted. We will provide sustenance and
accommodation while our investigation proceeds.”

I left Jase there and followed Meta back to the
boarding bridge. Floating above our spindle shaped transport was a large Tau Cetin
ship. She was a sleek metallic dart hundreds of meters in length. Her normally mirror-like
hull was pockmarked with circular black scars and her sharp bow had been
completely blown off. Amidships, two ragged holes exposed melted interior decks.
The only other TC warship I’d seen had been Observer Siyarn’s Arbiter a year
ago. It had left me with an impression of immense military power while this smaller
version warned there were limits to Tau Cetin power.

“She looks pretty beat up,” I said, stopping to
watch as the stricken ship glided toward several docking bridges extending to
meet her.

“She was lucky to survive,” Meta conceded. “Many weaker
allied ships did not.” Once docked, lines of small silver capsules began
streaming across to the prism orbital’s open doors. “Those survival modules
contain our wounded.”

No wonder the TCs were mad. I hoped for the sake
of all tamphs on Earth that they weren’t on the wrong side of this fight. I hid
my concern as I followed Meta into our transport, not taking my eyes off the
damaged warship until we shot away from the prism orbital toward Ansara.

“That didn’t look like you have much of a lead on
the Intruders,” I said.

“Once all laws of the physical universe are fully understood,
technological advancement plateaus,” she explained. “The differences between mature
civilizations narrow even when they are of greatly different ages.”

“That’s why you’re paranoid about being spied on,
isn’t it? They’re closing the gap.”

“They have always been a threat, now more than
ever.”

“But if the Tau Cetins are on the plateau, you
must be closing in on the Precursors?”

“Progress exists on the plateau, but it is slow. Nevertheless,
ten million years of gradual advance is an insurmountable lead.”

“Does anyone ever pass someone ahead of them?”

“Only when civilizations stagnate or collapse.
Generally, everyone advances together, at their own pace, only slowing as they
near the plateau.”

So, no matter how hard we tried, our place in the
universe had been determined by a clock we didn’t control and could never adjust.
My mind turned back to the battered TC warship. “Did your allies survive?”

“Only the Yhinsar and the Ovani escaped.”

“I haven’t heard of them.”

“They are Observers,” she said as we plunged into
Ansara’s atmosphere. “The Yhinsar are from the Cygnus Arm. They fought with us
against the Intruder Fleet two and half thousand years ago when it transited your
Solar System.”

“And the Ovani?”

“Their homeworld is very far. I don’t know if
they’ve ever visited Earth.”

“So if only three of you survived …”

She nodded. “Hundreds of ships belonging to minor
powers were destroyed, including more than forty ships from the Orion Arm.”

“Anyone we know?”

“The Syrmans, Minkarans, Matarons, Carolians and
Gienans all lost ships.”

“The Matarons were there?” I asked incredulously.
I’d assumed the idea of cooperating with anyone would have repulsed them.

“Since the Vintari Incident you were involved in last
year, they’ve been actively seeking to improve relations with us and the Forum
Membership.”

“Doesn’t that strike you as strange? I mean, the Matarons
hate you. Why would they suddenly want to help you?”

“We have embarrassed them on numerous occasions. After
Vintari, they sought to improve relations with us. It is normal behavior for a weaker
power to seek good relations with a stronger neighbor. Such a decision is
rational and inevitable, even for inherently aggressive, fearful societies like
the Matarons.”

The snakeheads might just be sneaky enough to cozy
up to the Tau Cetins, hoping one day to catch humanity out. I didn’t like it,
but Meta seemed unconcerned by their change of heart.

“How many ships did they lose?”

“Five. Mataron ships are as inferior to Intruder
vessels as they are to ours. They could have escaped, but chose to stay and
fight. A commendable, if rash choice. You see, even the most xenophobic species
can learn in time to become valuable galactic citizens.”

Once the transport settled on the landing platform
above Jesorl’s house, we took the elevator down to the surface. Jesorl was waiting
for us on one of the curved lounges in the center of the main room. He began
clicking in his native avian language before I’d even taken the seat opposite
him.

“He wishes to know how you obtained the cylinder?”
Meta translated.

“I removed it from a human ship on a planet we call
Novo Pantanal.”

Jesorl twittered again in bird-speak, then Meta
said, “And how did this human ship obtain the material?”

“I don’t know, yet.” If Siyarn had been there, I
might have mentioned the frozen alien and the strange tech the
Merak Star
was smuggling, but with Jesorl threatening to turn every tamph on Earth into
mindless zombies, I wasn’t in a trusting mood. “I was suspicious. I couldn’t
identify it so I came here, because I thought we were on the same side of the galactic
fence.”

“Galactic fence?” Meta asked.

“Figure of speech. I don’t suppose there’s any
chance of contacting Siyarn?”

“We have already communicated with Observer
Siyarn.”

“He’s back?”

“No. He is with our fleet assembling along the
Halo Threshold.” The galactic halo was a long way away. For us to send a
message even one light year required a courier ship, which took time. When she
saw the puzzled look on my face, she added, “Our communications do not operate
under the same limitations yours do.”

Or course they don’t. “What did he say?”

“He said we can trust you.”

If my android liaison could read human
expressions, she would have seen relief wash over my face. “What did I tell
you!”

“But,” Meta added slowly, “he could not vouch for Izin
Nilva Kren.”

“OK. You trust me, I trust Izin. Now tell me what’s
in the cylinder?”

Jesorl clicked once, giving Meta permission.

“It is a form of matter, with negative inertial
mass and negative energy density.”

She might be translating for Jesorl, but if she
was going to talk like that, I’d need Izin to translate for me. “That means
absolutely nothing to me.”

“It reacts oppositely to normal matter.”

“So it’s antimatter?”

“No. Antimatter has positive energy and mass, like
normal matter. This material has negative energy and mass. Matter with a like
electric charge repels. This material attracts. Your scientists call it exotic
matter.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“No. If released from containment, particularly in
a planetary environment, it would instantly dissipate. Unlike normal matter, exotic
matter is repelled by gravity. Its reaction to an applied force is opposite to
what you would expect. Some prestellar civilizations believe they need it for
superluminal flight, but lose interest once they learn to amplify the Casimir
Effect, as mankind did.”

The smuggler Nazari had been trading it for
weapons. I wondered if it was a like for like trade? “You said it’s not
dangerous, so you’re sure there’s no possibility of a negative energy bomb?”

“We are certain.”

“OK,” I said with some relief, “so what’s it good
for?”

“Opposing positive energy.”

“Give me an example.”