Authors: Alan Dean Foster
“Unfortunately,” Beskodnebwyl responded, “explosives are notoriously undiscriminating. It is conceded that thranx will also perish in the making of our statement. It is unavoidable.”
“Then we cannot participate actively,” the Abra concluded.
Beskodnebwyl pounced on an inflection. “ ‘Actively’?”
The leader of the S!k spoke up. “We have no legs to provide you, no antennae to aid you, no eyes to share. But—” He hesitated only for emphasis. “—we wish you well in the enterprise, which seems almost certain to accomplish the goals you have set out for it. While not participating directly, we can perhaps provide some small encouragement.”
“In any event, we will do nothing to discourage you from burrowing in this chosen direction,” the Abra concluded.
It was not all that Beskodnebwyl had hoped for. But logistical support would be useful and would free up the dedicated members of the Bwyl to carry out the more active components of the scheme. The Abra and the S!k could not overcome the deep-seated cultural prejudice against the killing of artists. Only the Bwyl had progressed far enough to do that. But the support of the others would be welcomed. They wished to share in the credit for the ultimate disruption of human-thranx integration, but not in the ultimate risk.
It was better than outright dissension, Beskodnebwyl knew. The Abra and the S!k had access to materials and contacts and useful facilities that were denied the Bwyl. When the deed was done, the truth would come out. Credit would be apportioned where due. Beskodnebwyl was not concerned with the refining of such matters. He carried nothing for credit. He wanted only to put a halt to this abhorrent, noisome mixing of species.
If the Burrow Master was with them, they would do precisely that—once and for all time.
Elkannah Skettle stepped off the shuttle and examined the world spread out before him with great interest. Ahead, he saw Lawlor and Martine passing rapidly through Customs. Pierrot, Botha, Nevisrighne, and the others were somewhere in the crowd behind him that was still filing off the transport vehicle. They had grown used to traveling together yet keeping their distance from one another.
The port facilities were efficient, the port’s equipment spotless, the smiles on the faces of the local officials almost painfully welcoming. And why shouldn’t they be? he mused. Dawn was a new world, bursting with opportunity, unclaimed lands, fortunes yet to be made. The climate was salubrious, the terrain inviting, the local flora and fauna reasonably pacific. A fine place to live and an enchanting place to visit.
Provided, he knew as he smiled pleasantly at the young woman who passed him through the body scanner, it could be kept free of bugs.
Not that there was anything inherently wrong with the bugs, he reflected as he presented himself to Customs. Or with the Quillp, or the AAnn, or any of the diverse other intelligent races with whom humankind shared this corner of the Orion Arm. He had reason of his own to be grateful to the bugs. Without the aid they had rendered to humankind in the Pitarian War, a favorite grandniece of his might not have survived the fighting. Military assistance in the midst of conflict was always welcome.
But the idea that relations should proceed beyond
that
was simply intolerable to one who loved his kind. The thranx might be all twirling antennae and sweet smells on the surface, but they were as alien as any sentient species humanity had yet encountered. The revelation that they had an actual colony in the Amazon Basin had been enough to trigger simmering outrage not only in men like himself, but in many who previously had given little thought to the problem.
And it
was
a problem. How could humankind ever be certain of its safety, of its very future, if empty-headed authorities allowed aliens to expand beyond the customary, restricted diplomatic and commercial sites where they were allowed? The notion that such growth should not only be permitted but encouraged and codified was sufficient to prod Skettle and those of like mind to move beyond protest to action. Negotiations, he knew, were presently at a delicate stage and could go either forward or back. A well-timed statement might be enough to put a stop to foolishness that bordered on the seditious.
Unlike others who felt similarly, Skettle did not think those humans who blindly advocated intimate ties with the thranx were traitors. They were simply ignorant. The bugs had deceived them. They were very clever, the thranx. Polite to a fault, ever conscious of the feelings of others, they had lulled supposedly astute people into a false sense of security the likes of which humankind had never before experienced.
But not all of us, he thought resolutely as he presented his travel case for inspection.
He waited while it passed beneath the Customs scanner. His corpus had already been cleared. Now it remained only for his luggage to do the same. Lawlor was the only potential weak link in the group, he knew. The man tended to exhibit unease even when no threat was apparent. That was why Skettle had chosen to carry this particular case. Old men were not usually the first to be suspected of smuggling.
With a tip of his cap and a practiced smile, the earnest young inspector passed him through. Picking up his case on the other side of the scanner, Skettle resumed his trek through the terminal, staying in the middle of the stream of disembarking passengers. Compared to those on major worlds like Terra or Amropolus, the terminal was not large. The scanner had detected nothing inside his case beyond the expected: clothing, vacation gear, personal communicator—the usual unremarkable assortment of travel goods.
It had not, however, performed a detailed analysis of the luggage itself. Even had it undergone that thorough an examination, the local authorities would still have been hard pressed to prove anything. Had they noted the composition of Lawlor’s case, and Martine’s, and subjected them to observation by a trained physical chemist, however, they would no doubt have been persuaded to investigate further.
Each of the three cases was composed of a different set of materials. When certain specific sections of the trio were cut up and then layered together in the appropriate proportions, then treated with a commonly available binding fluid, the result was neat little squares of an extraordinarily dynamic explosive. Utilizing this product, Elkannah Skettle and his colleagues intended for the widely advertised Dawn Intercultural Fair to give off even more heat than its organizers intended.
Everything had been carefully prepared in advance. It was meant for the deadly consequences to be blamed on unknown provocateurs working together with renegade thranx elements, but the apportionment of blame was not really crucial. What mattered was the disruption, and preferably the destruction, of the fair itself. If nothing else, it would put an end to what was supposed to be an exchange of “culture” among the races. What nonsense! Skettle chuckled to himself. The idea that humans and bugs should create art in common, that thranx culture should be allowed to contaminate human painting, music, song, or sculpture, would have been laughable if it was not so dangerous. Such aesthetic degradation could not be allowed. Were no one but Skettle and his associates thinking of the children as yet unborn? He thought, as he had so very many times, of the brave forebears of his own organization who had given their lives in the attempt years before to wipe out the foul thranx colony located in the Reserva Amazonia. Their sacrifice would not go unavenged.
The Preservers took separate transport to the small hotel they had booked. Located on the outskirts of Aurora, capital of the semitropical colony, the establishment overlooked a small natural lake and was within easy commuting distance of the fair. Following a suitable pause after checking in, they assembled by ones and twos in a prereserved commons room. There they bantered trivialities while Botha checked for hidden sensors and erected an industrial-strength sound envelope. There was no reason to suspect the presence of the former and no demonstrated need for the latter, but they were taking no chances—especially when the hand weapons they had contracted for were due to arrive with their local contact later in the day.
Feeling secure, they activated the tridee and waited the necessary few seconds for the room unit to warm up. As soon as the menu appeared in the air on the far side of the room, Pierrot directed it to provide them with as much local background on the fair as was available for viewing, commencing with material recorded as recently as ten days prior to their arrival.
The site was expanding impressively. Portable structures had been raised on the far side of the main lake, facilities for transport vehicles had been prepared underground, a high-speed transport link with the city continuing on to the shuttleport had been constructed and tested, and the usual virtually invisible molegel had been suspended in place above the entire site to shield it from any adverse weather, since Dawn did not yet possess the advanced climate-moderating facilities of more technologically mature worlds. Most of the larger exhibits were already in place and undergoing final checkout.
“Show us the thranx pavilions,” Skettle ordered the tridee. Obediently, it supplied perfectly formed floating images on one side with a running printed commentary, in addition to the accompanying audio, on the other. Cerebral plug-ins were available, as was to be expected in any decent hostelry. Skettle disdained their use in favor of group observation.
“Look at that grotesquerie.” Pierrot called for magnification, and the tridee unit complied. “What can that abomination possibly be?” She was shaking her head disdainfully.
“Some kind of organic sculpture, I would guess.” Botha possessed more imagination than most of them, Skettle included. “It’s not so bad, if you ignore the color scheme.”
“Remember,” Skettle announced, “it’s not the content of the fair that we’re here to terminate. We’re not art critics.” A few laughs rose above the ongoing commentary from the tridee. “It’s the possibility that such content may lead to a freedom for thranx on human worlds that will let them infiltrate and eventually dominate our very lives, from the way we create to the way we live.” This time his words were greeted not with laughter, but with grim muttering.
They watched for more than an hour, until Nevisrighne could take it no more. Rising, he walked over to the room’s food service bay and ordered a chilled alcoholic fruit drink. “I’m sorry, but I can’t watch anymore. Too many bugs for one morning.”
“Time we finalized more than observations, anyway.” Botha looked expectantly to Skettle.
The old man nodded, his fine gray beard bobbing prominently. “All right. I know you’re all anxious to begin the actual work, but we must be careful not to rush matters. Now that the time for action is so near, it is all the more imperative that we exercise restraint and caution. The last thing we need is to attract the attention of local authorities.”
Pierrot made a rude noise. “Security here is primitive compared to even New Riviera.”
“General security, most likely,” Skettle agreed. “But because of the sensitive nature of the fair, more than local government is involved. As a consequence, there will be extra precautions in place. Not only those of Earth, but from Hivehom as well.”
No one followed Skettle’s observation with any abrupt, disparaging comments. They had a healthy respect for thranx technology. But technology only added to the challenge. As to the eventual success of their mission, none among them had the slightest doubt. They were each of them well and truly dedicated to their avowed cause.
From his luggage Botha produced a purpose-built three-dimensional diagram of the fair site. It was exceptionally thorough. As well it ought to be, Skettle reflected, since he and half a dozen sympathetic associates of the Preservers had worked at refining and improving it almost constantly ever since the idea of the fair had been proposed and acted upon. It was safe to say that even the fair organizations themselves did not possess a schematic any more detailed than the one that presently floated before the oddly hushed crowd in the commons room.
Everything from food service to sewerage to controlling electronics to items as simple and straightforward as disposal bins were reflected in the diagram. There was nothing that could not be expanded and rotated so that the finest detail of construction and integration could be analyzed. Though not of a technical mien himself, Skettle could admire the artistry that had gone into the compilation of the schematic. It was a most beautiful diagram of destruction.
Fanning out to preselected locations throughout the fair, at the height of general festivities, he and his companions would install and try to simultaneously detonate the blended explosives. An impartial, emotionless beholder might have observed that among the myriad devices intended to be planted throughout the fair, not one was designed to impact upon the integrated fire-control facilities. With a cutting-edge emergency plant designed to cope instantly with even a minor blaze, the destruction of such facilities would seem to an outside observer to be a priority for a group of terrorists planning wholesale destruction. That such a contingency was nowhere in evidence was a tribute not to oversight or ignorance, but to the skill of Botha and the team he had worked with back on Earth.
It was astonishing, Skettle mused as he admired the schematic, how few people ever gave a thought to the fact that the time-proven, complex, fire-fighting chemicals used to put out unwanted blazes were composed of a precise chemical mixture that could also, in combination with certain laboriously engineered additional elements, stimulate instead of suffocate the very flames they were designed to extinguish. The anticipated, indeed hoped-for, attempt of the local emergency command to fight the blazes to be fomented by the Preservers would result not in a smothering of those conflagrations, but in their enhancement. Skettle smiled inwardly. The resulting chaos and confusion should contribute nicely to the blossoming cataclysm.
Botha assured him that upon contact with the materials to be spread by the multiple explosions, foams and liquids intended for combating out-of-control blazes would themselves be turned into a substance suitable for supplementing the very conflagrations they were designed to quench. By the time a sufficiency of nonreactive chemical retardants and suppressants could be brought from Aurora City, much of the glorious but debauched fair should be reduced to wind-blown cinders among which would drift the carbonized components of as many baked bugs as possible.