Vaun turned a bland face to the smugly sneering Roker and waited to hear what
mildly risky
fate was in store for him. The gang of accomplices clustered in close to listen.
“Professor Quild,” Roker announced loudly, “is Dean of Aboriginal Biology at the University of Stravakia.” The beribboned sycophants all nodded delightedly, watching Vaun and waiting for his reaction when enlightenment finally arrived.
Vaun looked along the beach at the spreading thicket of pepods. Had the long-lost Cessine and Dice been creeping around disguised as pepods all these years?
“
Silisentiens horribilis
,” boomed the hirsute scholar. “What do you know about our pseudosentients, Admiral?”
“Less than I shall know in a minute, I expect.”
“Quite.” White teeth showed in the jungle of beard. “Have you even been close to one?”
“Twice.” Conscious of the forest of eyes and ears around him, Vaun schooled his poker face.
“What did you do?”
“Ripped off my clothes, and then groveled.”
That was last night. But the first time I ran away screaming, and Nivel…
Quild nodded grudgingly, as if a bright class was failing to live up to expectations. “The undressing tactic is sound. We have not established why garments incite them, although we suspect that they view any extrinsic augmentation as weapons, but our recent tests have amply confirmed the aversive reaction.”
“I hope you didn’t kill too many students in the process?”
The bushy brows dropped in a shaggy frown. “This is a serious matter, Admiral. We used convicted felons, if you must know. Those who survived received reductions in their sentences.”
“So did those who didn’t, I expect. Can we get to the point, Professor?”
“Groveled, you said. Why grovel?”
“Asa child I was taught that the pepods were less likely to attack anyone who crouched down as small as possible.”
But I forgot. I ran. Nivel screamed and screamed…
“Ah! That is where the conventional wisdom is at fault. It is not the posture that matters.”
“It feels right to me,” Vaun said, recalling his narrow escape the previous night.
Quild scowled. “What matters is the aspect you present to them. What do they see—although of course pepods’ perception is keyed to frequencies we cannot appreciate, but ‘see’ is an adequate approximation…What does a pepod see when you grovel before it?”
Oh, of course! “Hair?”
“Exactly! Hair. Being fibroid themselves, they may associate sentience with filamentary texture. Hairy, in other words, although of course this is anthropomorphic speculation. When we shaved the convicts’ heads, the effect of groveling was below the five percentile confidence level. In other words, not significant.”
Perhaps it was fatigue, perhaps it was fear, but Vaun felt a virulent dislike for this oversize anthropoid pomposity. “I think I see why you have met with success in your researches, Professor.”
An angry flush showed above the monstrous beard, but Roker broke in impatiently. “Professor Quild made the initial discovery quite serendipitously. He—” Quild tried to interrupt and was quailed into silence by one of Roker’s sneers. “He was challenged to a duel. A pepod duel. Illegal, of course, but an old Pharishian custom. Perhaps you have heard of it?”
Vaun hadn’t.
Nivel screamed all the way back to the village. There were eleven of them carried back screaming, and even Nivel’s withered foot, which had never moved before, was twisting and writhing
.
He shivered in the cold sea wind. “I can guess. Am I being challenged to a Pharishian pepod duel?”
“It would be murder,” Quild snapped. “They would react aggressively to you long before they did to me. I could go much closer.”
“And I would let you.” Vaun shot an exasperated look at Roker. “Sir, is this relevant?”
Clearly, Roker was enjoying the game, playing to his pet audience. Even Gargel and her playmates had come back to enjoy the show.
“Tell him about the standing wave, Professor.”
Quild grew suddenly coy. “Well, this is a little premature for publication, but we do have evidence that the pepods’ long-range, low-frequency radio communication is a much less discontinuous behavior pattern than has hitherto been appreciated. There seems to be an ongoing form of…well, our working terminology is
continuum
…of emission and response. A sort of background murmur, if you like. And at times it may even have a holographic quality to it.
Standing wave
is a relatively—”
“I don’t see what any of this has to do with me, sir,” Vaun snapped. But it did. Oh yes, it did.
Roker rolled up his lip as if about to wrap it around a juicy bunch of grass. “Where are Dice and Cessine, Admiral? Where are the cuckoos?”
Vaun waved a hand. “Out there somewhere, among ten billion other people. Working as salesfolk or bakers or painters—who knows? Staying in the slums, where spacers never go. Nor pepods, either! I expect plastic surg—”
“Plastic surgery would be quite ineffectual!” Quild boomed. The interruptions were annoying him. “At the wavelengths used by pepods, such detail would be quite undetectable.”
Crazy! Vaun wheeled on him. “Are you saying you can talk to those vegetables, Professor? You think they have the sensitivity and the brains to tell the difference between one human and another? You—”
“Not brains, but the answer to both your questions is yes.” The big boy smiled and stroked his beard with a furry paw. The sycophants were all smirking. “We have established quite clearly by simple reinforcement conditioning that they can distinguish between human beings. They ‘see,’ to use that approximate term, deep within the human physique, certainly to the cellular level, probably to the molecular. They may even be able to read DNA itself. They may not be quite as discerning as you are, Admiral, but they have surprised us several times.”
“I hope they don’t surprise us tonight.” Vaun turned to the high admiral. “Sir, have you considered the dangers in this?”
Roker exchanged amused glances with his entourage. “Your personal courage is a legend in the Patrol, Admiral Vaun. Your annual address to the recruits inspires—”
“Not to me, dammit! This boy is claiming that there is some sort of worldwide pepod network, isn’t that so, Professor? I don’t believe him, because in ten thousand years we should—”
Quild could shout louder. “There are many early records of simultaneous pepod outbreaks on a continental scale.”
“And that’s exactly my point! A massacre’s exactly what you’re risking. We’re within range of the mainland—you know that, Roker! There was a pepod eruption on the coast back in ’98 or thereabouts, and the Valhal thickets rampaged also. If you start messing about with these, then you’re endangering all the coastal settlements from Asimfirth to the cape and God knows how far inland—”
“Your concern has been noted, Admiral,” Roker said, leering.
The sun had set; the salty wind from the sea was as sharp as a knife. Vaun shivered again. What a frigging horrible way to die! And if he refused to obey orders during a state of emergency, then Roker could have him shot. That might be preferable.
“Let’s get this clear,” he said, while his mind raced around the problem in search of escape. “First, you claim you can actually talk to these creatures? Secondly, you think they are sufficiently intelligent to provide useful answers? Thirdly, you think they will then oblige you by going off to look for replicas of myself, and fourthly, that they can somehow direct you to where those replicas may be found? What sort of gullible half-wit would believe all that? What sort of motive can you provide them with that they will give one damn about your problem? What—”
“I repeat, Admiral,” Roker barked, “that your concerns have been noted. After all, the concept of a group mind may be alien to us…but I would have thought that you could comprehend it more easily than most.”
Boorior cackled merrily at such wit, and some of the others followed her lead.
Several of the pepods were wandering in the general direction of the human spectators. Security would never have allowed them to come this close had Roker not already tampered with Vaun’s standard orders.
The high admiral’s sneer told Vaun he was beaten. The smirks on the faces of Roker’s toadies confirmed it. They all thought they were safe, because Roker’s armed band had arrived now, and because Security could call down a firestorm if there was trouble. Had they any idea how fast an angry pepod traveled? Well, he would not give them the satisfaction of hearing him plead. All mortals died in the end. Defeat was inevitable, but to go bravely was the closest a boy could come to victory.
He could not even just punch Roker on the jaw and earn a nice quick firing squad, because Roker would know what he wanted and would surely tie him up and throw him to the pepods anyway. There was no way out of this.
“Sir, I request specific orders.”
“Very well. Admiral Vaun, you will accompany the civilian auxiliary Quild to the vicinity of that pepod thicket for the purpose of facilitating communication with them. You will aid Professor Quild’s research in every way possible. Is that clear?”
“Sir!”
“And then we shall track down your missing brothers,” Roker said, leering in satisfaction. “After so many years, a family reunion should be a very touching experience for you.”
Vaun wondered briefly if he could break that thick neck before Security stopped him. Regretfully he decided that he could not. Randoms! Wild stock! Sex and power were all they cared about.
“Excellent!” Quild said, showing his teeth in his beard. He glanced at the pepods. “We can go a little closer before we remove our garments, Admiral. In the interests of propriety.”
“Lead the way,” Vaun snapped.
He trudged across the sand, following the big boy. Randoms! Lust and avarice would drive them to anything. The brethren could be ruthless—as Prior had been ruthless—but at least they committed their crimes in higher causes than mere personal greed.
Prior had paid dearly for his.
N
OW THAT’S WHAT I call a sexy outfit!” says a teasing, I throaty voice.
Vaun has been examining his image in the mirror above the basin. His head is as smooth as a fresh-washed Doggoth cookpot and decorated with eighty shiny silver buttons, marking the holes drilled in it. Sexy? He has no eyebrows, his eyes are red-rimmed, and his shapeless white gown ends at knees and elbows.
He turns to face the girl in the doorway. Can it be only four weeks since he met her at Doggoth? Tall and black, and wearing medoff insignia…She still outranks him, but his commission is official now. And besides, he has other things going for him.
“Ma’am!” he says. “The last time we met, I was even sexier.”
“Ah!” her midnight eyes twinkle. “You have been taking my advice about spiking your booster.”
“I had no choice. Blood tests?”
She shakes her head, laughing. “The way you look at me is enough. Besides, rumor has it that you ball the high admiral.”
“Krantz, no!” Vaun starts to make a smile and lets it become a yawn, leaching any trace of sincerity from his denial. It is Maeve who comes to his bed in the little hours, the fleet, sweet hours of the night while Roker sleeps, but the Frisde slander won’t do his career any harm.
Yet he feels himself color, knowing he has indeed been looking at the black girl, wondering if her nipples are the same shade as those rich, sultry lips now spread to show snowy teeth.
“And I don’t need to be any medical genius to know that you haven’t been getting enough sleep, Ensign.”
“Absolutely correct, ma’am.”
“Well, she’s gone now. We can get to business.” The medic’s bright glance is still testing the rumors about him and Frisde. Let her pry! Yes, Frisde has gone now—gone without a word of farewell, or thanks, or anger; just gone. Call for her torch and her spade-shouldered Galorian captain to fly it, and gone. Whatever the gossips say, Vaun has never been her lover.
He was never asked.
“Nice place you have here,” the medic says. “I’m going to enjoy this posting, brief though it may be. Ready for the mind bleed?”
He shrugs, remembers that she outranks him, and says, “Ma’am!” But he still doesn’t use his Doggoth voice. She has noticed, and flashes him another amused glance of jet-on-amber as she turns and leads the way.
Barefoot, he follows, and two doors down the corridor she stops and gestures. “Take the empty chair. I’ll be right back.”
Suspicious, he goes in and blinks in the glare. The makeshift surgery is cluttered with metal, it smells of chemical and hums as if it were alive. The most obvious equipment is a pair of inclined chairs, set back to back. Through the web of wires and pipes and monitors around them, he sees that one is already occupied. He picks his way among the tangle, going to look at the other patient.
A slim, well-knit boy, almost slight…Dice, of course. His eyes are closed and the gaunt cheeks are pale. Shins and forearms project from another of the shapeless gowns; wrists and ankles are bound in place by shiny bands. A metal bowl encloses the top of his head, sprouting a tangle of tubes and wires.
Five years ago—three boys in a boat, drifting lazily on the sun-bright waters of the delta. Dice. Happiest days of…
Of course, it isn’t Dice. Dice is still at large. And of course Vaun has always known that Prior looks like Dice, but the reality is enough to tie knots in his innards, and his hands have started to shake. He feels cold trickles run down his ribs. Oh, Dice! Oh, Raj! Oh, me!
Dice, who learned to enjoy eating fish.
Then the familiar eyes open, slowly.
“Hello, Brother!” The smile is the same. The voice is not quite the same, and very weak.
How
dare
he try to be friendly?
“You raped my mother.”
The smile weakens. “I prefer not to discuss it here, if you don’t mind, Vaun.”
Of course this is a setup. There will be cameras and listeners. But Vaun at least has nothing to hide.
“You drove her crazy!”
Prior’s peaked face bears no expression at all now. “That was an accident.”