She still dreamed of a little love, a little romance, but the man of her dreams was of a shape and form that would crush her in the first embrace. She often wondered, but never asked, if Min and Chung had their own fantasies. If so, it must be infinitely worse not only to be the wrong race but the wrong sex for the one of such dreams.
This had better work. The cost was already too high.
It was a world where you not only never had to grow up, you weren’t expected to. The quarters of the Seed included the most elaborate multilevel swimming pool complex Vulture had ever seen, complete with hewn water slides and many other playthings. There were lots of games and toys available, and elaborate facilities for playing dress-up, and the males took full advantage of all of it.
Most of the cleaning and maintenance was automated; meals were of the dial-in kind using a transmuter, a system not found elsewhere to his knowledge on Chanchuk, but standard on large spaceships and in other confined areas. Food was chosen by pushing the selector until the picture of the meal or snack or whatever you wanted came up in the window, then pressing the select button. About two minutes later it was there, transmuted from waste products or, if they weren’t available, from common seawater.
And there were drugs, too. Drugs to make the Seed feel wonderful, or bring him down; give him energy or let him sleep like a rock. Drugs to aid in meditation and prayer, and drugs to induce feelings of general well-being when the boredom got to be too much.
And there was a considerable amount of homosexual activity, something considered neither aberrant nor odd in a society where the sexes were so completely different and differentiated physically and socially. This was true among the general population as well, females as well as males, although for the females it tended to be less physical. Chanchukian females only really wanted sex during their five-day ovulation period; the rest of the time they had no real sexual drive at all. Males, on the other hand, seemed to be turned on by the slightest things, and it was easier to note the brief periods in each day when they weren’t excited than the bulk of the time when they were.
They were remarkably ignorant, even of their own world. They had no idea that the world was round or large, or how many people there were or how they lived. For those who served a spiritual leader of sorts, they didn’t even know or understand anything about that faith except some very vague meditation and prayer rituals. The reason for this last was obvious: the Holy Lama was close to being deified by her people. If the Seed lived with her and around her and saw her basic humanity, they might lose more faith than they gained, and if they believed in her as something more than their mistress and lover, they might have problems performing their holy sexual duties.
There were more mundane duties, though—even a sort of routine. The Holy Lama was, after all, only interested in their bodies a few days each month, and not at all while pregnant, and she needed various kinds of service. The Seed made up her bed and rooms and served her her meals and cleaned away the trays. They acted as hosts for occasional visitors, and, most of all, they watched over and helped the young new crop of kids they helped bring about. They did everything from nursing them to changing them, and Vulture was surprised to discover that the young of Chanchuk had to be taught how to swim, develop the reflexes for holding their breath, and even how to see and act underwater. Females and males looked much the same until they were more than five years old; then distinct sexual and growth differences developed and accelerated. At that point the girls would be sent away to be brought up in various lamaseries connected to Centers around the world. All were raised as if they all were to be the next Holy Lama, for one of them surely would be. In their remote locations, they would be trained in both spiritual and secular skills well into adulthood, until their mother died and a new Holy Lama was selected by the priestesses. Then the rest would be neutered and become apprenticed to the Centers and lamaseries for jobs like the liaison’s.
The males would be raised to puberty within the Seed’s harem, after which they would be distributed among the ranking family hierarchies of the Centers of Chanchuk, thus giving the secular rulers a claim to spiritual relationship beyond that of the masses.
To Vulture, the primary problem was stealing the ring.
During a sexual encounter would be the best, of course, but he couldn’t rely on that chance, and he certainly couldn’t expect the key period he planned to be inside to coincide with the Holy Lama’s unknown reproductive cycle. Hell, she might even be pregnant. No, in this case a certain amount of outside help was cruder, but far more effective.
It took him some time to realize that his greatest problem in the wait was in knowing what time it was. There were no clocks about, and not much need for the Seed to have them. This meant he had to force himself awake through mental discipline for two nights running to check the automated cleaning and maintenance cycle against the system security clock to be certain he could tell the time when he had to without any watches or clocks. All that without awakening any of his fellow Seed.
And, far more quickly than it seemed, it was the evening of his fourth day inside.
* * *
“Colonel, it is a violation of everything we have sworn to live by to keep us here incommunicado,” the Holy Lama protested. “I stand on my rights, not as spiritual leader to our people but as chief administrator of Chanchuk. I demand to know at once the full and complete reasons for these actions and I demand my right to appeal directly to an agent of Master System.”
That would mean at least a Val, if not a direct link. Chi was fully conscious of the severity of what she was doing.
“Madam, you have an agent inside your lodge. A pirate.”
“Indeed? And when has invisibility been perfected?” the prelate retorted sarcastically.
“Not invisible. A shape changer. It entered in the form of your sister. I am convinced that it did not leave but rather became another, a duplicate, of one it dispatched.”
“You are mad, Colonel! Such a thing is impossible!”
Chi shrugged. “I know what is, not what is impossible. I have no idea whether it is a scientific breakthrough or some alien form of life in alliance with the pirates, but I am convinced it is real. When the Vals arrive along with the task force, I will undoubtedly be arrested, and I will be subjected to a mindprint and probe. They will have the same reaction as you, but they will see how and why I came to those conclusions and they will act. They will act because they cannot afford to accept even the minuscule possibility that I am correct. I am sure, under the proper conditions, we can unmask this impostor no matter how perfect it is and neutralize it. And when that happens I will go from being a mad woman under restraint to being acclaimed as the most brilliant tactical security strategist in history. Only another thirty hours, madam, and we shall see who is insane.”
The Holy Lama gave up and switched off, but then she began to think about it. Suppose this officer were right? Technological breakthrough—ridiculous! But alien life, now that made a certain kind of sense. And if Colonel Chi was correct, and there was no one missing inside the Sacred Lodge, then there was only one person it could be.
She turned and punched her intercom. “Cho, your presence is required—now.” She never used a tone like that unless it was something vital. She knew Cho would come on the run, and he did.
Standing there, looking at him, someone she’d known ever since coming here after her investiture by the Council, someone she’d had sex with, even—it was nearly impossible to believe. Everything was just so absolutely right.
“Cho—you know there are people over us, people who run things even beyond our own power and control?”
The little man looked confused. “Yes, ma’am. I suppose so. You mean the gods?”
“Don’t act so stupid in front of us!” she snapped. “We know you are brighter than that and have been around here many years. You may never have directly seen them, but you know what security is.”
Cho seemed to be quaking slightly. “Yes, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.”
“They have just used their authority to remove us from power, to make us prisoners here in our own lodge. They say it is because an alien being is in here, not of Chanchuk or the People at all but merely masquerading as one. Tomorrow they will pump some sort of gas in here and come in with machines, carrying weapons and cages, and they will take us away. Until then, anyone who tries to get in or out of here will be vaporized. You know what that means? Reduced to nothing. What do you think of that?”
“These matters are not for a poor Seed, ma’am,” Cho responded. “I do not understand all this.”
The Holy Lama stared at him as if looking not through but inside of him. It was a disquieting, discomforting feeling.
“Yes, I believe you do understand,” she responded, sounding a bit surprised. “We have always liked you, Cho. You’ve been the bright one, the clever one, yet very loyal. We believe, for the sake of ourselves and our world, you deserve to rise to the next level of incarnation.”
“Ma’am?” Startled, he started to take a step forward, but she raised a hand and stopped him.
“Do not approach us! We may be insulated, but we are not defenseless. You may meditate on this where you are as long as you like, but in the end it is the end. Only if you give us some compelling reason not to will we fail to send you out to security’s waiting weaponry.” A hand went below her recliner and pulled out a very shiny and new-looking Mark IX needier. It was unexpected. Who would have guessed she would have a weapon of her own in here, let alone know how to use it? Why would she? But the fact was she did.
“This will knock you out, although we could kill you with it without much change in settings. When we desire, we will fire it, then summon some of the maintenance robots to haul your limp form out to Colonel Chi. We preach infinite patience, it is true, but we do not believe that in this case we will wait very long.”
Vulture was caught completely off guard. First he’d misjudged Chi, mistaking the martinet image and crude-ness of manner for the real officer and not recognizing a first-rate mind behind the mask. Now he’d mistaken a first-rate C.A. for a head-in-the-clouds pious mystic. She didn’t believe Chi, that was clear, but for the restoration of her communications links and authority and to get rid of the SPF presence she was sure willing to sacrifice Cho. It was time to give her a surprise in return.
“That little thing would not bother me,” he responded in a cold yet casual tone, a tone unlike that ever used by any male of Chanchuk. The sudden change in him startled the Holy Lama; there was a sudden spirit there, a sudden hard fire inside that tiny body, a cocky sense of power and control. It frightened her more than anything ever had in her entire life.
“Then it is true.” She sighed.
“Whatever Chi has guessed is probably essentially true,” Vulture admitted. “By the way—I notice your thumb just pushed the Mark IX up to kill. I wouldn’t bother. It would cause me pain for a moment but otherwise wouldn’t bother me much, and I am used to pain. And I have no desire to take you over the way I did Cho, even though such a thing would probably provide me with great wisdom and skills beyond my own understanding. I learned much from your sister, but it can be only a shadow of what you know, and you are still growing in this position. I would hate to have to deprive Chanchuk of you.”
The sheer confidence and total disregard for any threat to him, as if he held a gun on her, was perhaps equally as unnerving as being faced with the sheer fact of his existence.
“What are you?” she asked him.
“I am called the Vulture. The name is that of a predatory bird of old Earth that eats carrion, although I do not. Who I eat, I become, and all that they were stays with me. I and my associates have worked for a year to be in more or less this position. I come for the ring.”
“Why not just take it, then, if you are as powerful as you say?”
“I intended to. But, as you point out, there is a matter of escape that is more than a little bit tricky. Something is planned, in the immediate future, that will allow me to liberate the ring and pass it to my associates. Then we will wait for the colonel and her probes.”
“Then they will unmask you and have you.”
He shook his head. “No. The colonel is creative, even imaginative. You saw the conviction in her and you saw the alien within me. Their superiors, however, are technocrats, and their masters are machines. They believe in what can be quantified and measured. If they want blood, I can create whatever is required for their machines. If they probe my brain, they will find only Cho there. If they try their chemical drugs, then they will still not find me. Sooner or later they will have to conclude that Chi was wrong. They will send me back, and I will feed and walk out as someone else. It’s as simple as that,”
“And you admit this to me? This session is being recorded.”
“If necessary, that can be fixed. You know it and I know it. You do it all the time before the required semiannual Master System mindprint and retreat at Qonjin Monastery in the north. They all do it. You have a mind-printer here somewhere to do the fine tuning, I suspect.”
“None is necessary, as you should know if you were my sister as you claim. The Five Levels of Kwanji are more than a match for any of their silly machines. What will you do now?”
“Nothing. If you force the issue, I will, of course, have to deal with you, and that will make things ugly. Nine Seed were here before, nine Seed should be here at the end. But I’ll manage. I am designed to survive. That is my number-one ability. Somewhere in your own mind is another way out. No chief administrator I ever heard of didn’t have all the contingencies covered that they could cover, and I’m sure isolation and entrapment here is one such contingency. What happens next is up to you.”
“Who do you work for? And why is this ring so important?”
“If the Five Levels can disguise the rest they should disguise this. If not, no matter how cooperative you are, you will either die or have your mind erased. My group calls itself the pirates of the Thunder. The Thunder is our base ship. We are refugees, many from old Earth, freebooters and opportunists now wanted by Master System. The ring, together with its four mates, contains a code that will shut Master System down cold. Yours is the third, and we are in league with the possessor of a fourth. We mean to shut this system down. Many brave human beings have died for this cause already, innocent and guilty alike, while others have undergone mental and emotional changes that no person should be asked to endure. Still others have voluntarily turned themselves into what they see as monsters in this one cause. The system is mad, and it is only a matter of time until it eliminates humanity as we know it. Humanity created it. Humanity can and must destroy it first.”
The Holy Lama had not put down the gun, but she listened intently, staring at him the whole time. Finally she asked, “And what, considering all this, would you wish us to do now?”
“Nothing,” he responded. “Just forget it. Wipe it off the recording and then wipe it from your mind so thoroughly that even Master System itself could not find it. If you have a probe and printer around, I’d use it. They will go much deeper than usual this time, searching for me. The other contingencies have been taken care of.”
“There is a huge force coming. A task force. Thirty hours, no more, the colonel said.”
“If they find nothing, then the colonel is imaginative —and wrong. All, save myself, the ring included, will be long gone.”
The Holy Lama sighed and put down the gun. “Just do nothing, you say?”
Vulture nodded. “We have it all mapped out—I hope. And we will give the colonel another bogeyman to chase.”
Hard nails drummed on the desk top. “Do you need anything else from us?”
“As a matter of fact, it would help greatly if I could borrow a watch.”
3. Four Parrots And One Cooked Goose, With Fireworks
THE TEMPLE COMPLEX THAT WAS ALSO WA CHI Center had a far different look to it on the surface; a series of large domes, some atop thick cylindrical bases, stretched out starting about fifty meters from shore. Most were polished, waterproofed wood, ornately carved and trimmed in silver and gold, although there was some polished stone and slate and atop the domes an assortment of stained glass skylights showing religious or ethical themes. Only a few lights showed through; it was essential that the primitive mass of the population should not suspect the existence of the technological wonders that the elite running their world took for granted, even by accident. Water approach was secure, but Chanchukians often were both curious and creative and were not above occasional land forays to see what they could see, and while Wa Chi was sacred ground, forbidden to the masses, it was so eerily impressive above the water that many made pilgrimages just to look upon it.
The coast itself was a black sand beach cut into a wide cleft in the rock; around it the coastal range rose fifteen hundred meters, the first five hundred or so in a craggy basalt rock wall.
The beach was used primarily for recreation and sunning oneself on hot days. Although it was often convenient to bring boats in there, supplies were landed elsewhere. Flat coastal barges were fairly common over the world and so wouldn’t attract any attention. They were powered by oar and sail and often by crews pushing from beneath, guided by a helmsman above who could stomp out commands to the “pushers.”
Every night a thick fog rolled in, covering the domes of the lodges and the beach area, making things miserable for anyone foolish enough to be out in it. Security used a sophisticated radar to sweep the area at those times, and special infrared goggles to see through even the densest fog.
Without the SPF present, this would have been a piece of cake, but now the raiders had to resort to a mixture of the crude and the creative to achieve their end. The crude was first; the SPF had set up a low, horizon-sweep air radar on top of the mountain overlooking the Center to supplement the surface patrols that were normally run from Wa Chi’s security central. It gave some protection against low-flying aircraft should any potential enemy use them, but it was a weak point spotted early by the team.
The small radar station was automated and transmitted directly to security central and also to the SPF command ship via satellite. Monitoring there, too, was totally automated, designed to ring an alarm if anything unusual was spotted. Colonel Chi, however, mindful that the pirates in the past had shown a remarkable talent for beating electronic locks, also had two enlisted personnel fully armed stationed at the radar unit at all times, in six-hour shifts.
Min Xao Po watched the guard change at two hundred hours through her own special night goggles, then waited until the old guards wearily put on their flight packs and jumped off the cliff to float down to the beach below. She allowed them fifteen minutes to be on the beach and in the water, well away from any trouble and unable to return quickly, then took aim on the two new guards and shot them down before they knew what hit them. The weapon fired a high stun, rather than a killing beam, since the guards wore automatic life sensors that would have brought a fast investigation if either had died.
Hurrying to the fallen guards, she removed from a pouch a small medical injector, already loaded with serum, and gave each guard a shot in the arm. It would guarantee that they would sleep until relieved, by which time this would be long over.
The Chows, bom wizards with all sorts of locks, had looked at the analytical photos of the lock on the radar unit and solved it in a flash. It was pretty crude, but it did have a few nasty little booby traps for the unwary or ignorant. The combination wasn’t much of a problem; Vulture had tapped that line long ago.
Carefully Min placed a device measuring about half a meter square over the locking mechanism, securing it with clamps to the small cubicle, then activated it with the press of a button. There was a lot of loud clicking and a whine and then a light began blinking on the device signaling that the door was unlocked. She removed the device but did not immediately unlock the door. Instead she climbed up on the top of the cubicle to the antenna complex, found the set she wanted, removed another small box, and attached it between two smaller antennas and then lifted up a second set of antennas almost the same size as those on the cubicle. Two cables were attached to terminals on the box, and then, stretching, she fastened the huge alligator clips on the other end of the cables simultaneously to the two fixed antennas. She then scurried back down to the ground and waited nearly five minutes to make certain that no activity could be heard from below.
Satisfied, she nodded to herself and opened the door. A bell alarm sounded, but it was muffled beyond the immediate area by the sound of the surf and wasn’t intended to do more than alert the guards. The same alarm was now being transmitted to security central and should have brought a horde of troopers armed to the teeth, but the signal was now not being broadcast by the twin original antennas to the receivers below, but rather being fed directly into her little box, which filtered out all the nasty, unpleasant things like alarms and then sent the rest of the signal unaltered. With the simple press of a button on a remote control on her belt, she could stop even that and send whatever signal she wanted.
Her entry would be recorded and what she was doing would later be plain to investigators, but she didn’t have the time to dig into complex built-in monitor circuits nor did she want to risk tripping secondary alarms. Let them find out—as long as it was later. By now all three of them were almost certainly on Colonel Chi’s wanted list simply by being absent from home for four days, and she had no intention of being anywhere near Chanchuk by the time the recordings were viewed.
She was relieved to find the unit a stock SPF issue as expected. She had nightmares of having to face a totally different design from what she’d been mindprinted to handle. Bless the military mind! Within minutes she had done her work, and from this point you could have brought Thunder in hovering over Wa Chi Center and the screens and monitors both at the Center and on the command ship would show empty, peaceful space. Of course, the orbital and deep-space monitors were still operable, but those were not a concern at the moment.
It went perfectly. The only thing they hadn’t anticipated was the headache that damned alarm gave her, bouncing around in that confined space.
She emerged, closed the door, and got some blessed silence. Since there were no alarms sounding near or far now and no armed squads and since she was still conscious and free, she took the liberty of assuming that their estimate of Min Xao Po as a brilliant communications technician had not been misplaced. She picked up a small waterproof transceiver from her pack and lifted it to her mouth.
“Secure One. Proceeding to level two.” She secured her own floater device, picked up the bulky pack, and jumped off the cliff.
Allowing themselves the time not merely to scout out but to analyze the entire problem with the Thunder’s computer and personnel and then taking the additional time and patience to slowly infiltrate in the exact equipment needed was paying off.
Now, aboard a coastal raft, Chung Mung Wo was getting her own equipment in shape. The raft was a regular; it was expected in these waters between midnight and dawn out on the fringes of the security zone, just out of the fog area. Being subject to all sorts of delays, it wasn’t unusual to have it show up on the surface sweeps at any hour of the early morning—and often later—and, because it wasn’t a Center craft but a native one running between two native villages sixty or so kilometers south of the Center and ninety kilometers north of it, there was really no way security personnel could determine if it was truly the correct raft or not. There would be no way of knowing that the old helmsman had somehow gotten herself dead drunk down in Waning and hadn’t even sobered up enough to leave town as yet.
Chung checked her console, deployed the aerial and underwater transmitters, and began to crank up the juice a bit. “Nice static electricity tonight,” she mumbled to herself. “Couldn’t be better. That fog is energizing almost too well.” She looked at her watch. “Have to bring it up slowly. We want the fireworks on schedule.”
Forward, Butar Killomen, the leader of this meager but well-armed attack force, checked her own control console. This was the one area she was most nervous about, since there had been no way to test this equipment except with computer simulations. She had some faith in simulations, but she was an old spacer. Computers could answer only the questions you asked them in the first place, and there was no substitute for actual experience. The very air was starting to crackle all around them.
Around the Sacred Lodge, the surface guards, in pairs on small platforms and within sight of one another even through the fog, began to get disturbed.
“Must be a storm coming up,” one remarked to her companion. “I don’t remember there being one on the weather plots, but the electricity in the air tonight’s so high I’m blind with these damned goggles on. It’s shorting out everything.”
Her companion nodded. “I’m worried. If it gets much worse than this we’ll get shocks every time we touch anything. You get too high a charge, I heard that these damned rifles’ll discharge all at once. I sure don’t want to be holdin’ one that does.”
“That’s for sure.” The other nodded. “Look, I’m gonna call this in. Anybody tries anything in this shit is gonna be in the same shape we’re in. Besides, this whole watch is screwy anyway. What are they gonna do? Bomb us?”
She undipped her communicator. The static on it was almost unendurable in and of itself. “This is Corporal Gwi, Post Three. We have prestorm conditions up here and high static. Visibility is zero even with the goggles, and we are starting to get equipment malfunction.”
In about two minutes there was a loud splash and the sergeant of the guard popped up and looked around in the water below. She shouted the password, then did a survey. “You’re right. It’s lousy tonight. I’ll call the OD.”
The officer of the day appreciated the conditions, but also reflected that it was just the sort of night that she’d choose to try something. It was certain that the guards were in more danger from their own equipment than any help in fending off an attack. Still, she didn’t like to make any major decisions that might haunt her. She called Colonel Chi in her quarters.
Chi, awakened from a sound sleep, was in a foul mood, but listened intently. “Check with the command ship for weather data, then check space, air, surface, and subsurface scanners. If nothing shows up, have them come below until conditions clear—but they go back up the moment conditions clear, understand?”
“Yes, Colonel.” The OD called the command ship. “Anything unusual on your scopes?”
“Nothing at all, Captain. We’re measuring a local disturbance in your area, though.”
“Anything unusual about it?”
“Well, meteorology can’t give a good reason for it, but we’ve seen this sort of thing a couple of times before. It’s rare, but it happens. Space monitors are clear, and the aerial scan shows only your disturbance. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Thank you.” The OD turned to her sergeant. “Check all surface and subsurface monitors.”
“Already did, Captain. Nothing subsurface, but we’ve got enough stuff there that anyone’d be crazy to try anything. Air is a mess. With all that static and the discharge from the storm, it looks like we’re being invaded, but the monitoring computers don’t seem to be worried. You know they could pick a bird out of that mess anyway, ’cause the echoes from the storm are constantly changing in random patterns. Anything solid would be regular. I’d say it’s clear.”
She nodded. “Very well. Send the sergeant of the guard a stand-down for surface personnel until, in the assessment of this or higher authority or the sergeant of the guard on the scene, conditions should improve to a safe level. Got it?”
“Got it. Sending now.”
Butar Killomen looked at her watch. It was time. She turned and shouted back to Chung. “Let’s do it!”
Chung nodded and brought up the charge to near storm levels. Her console was getting hot, but it didn’t have to last all that long anyway and, besides, enough energy had been dumped into that fog bank now that it had a life of its own. Already there was a good deal of lightning, and even from their distance the boom of thunder reached them with increasing frequency. It was quite a nice fireworks show, if Chung did say so herself.
Butar Killomen put on the command helmet and sat back in her makeshift recliner. The drone was already powered up; now she was in complete command of it, and it was a mess. There was certainly a lot of noise in the interface connection, more as the small drone lifted off like some great bird of prey and slid into the night, even though the special frequencies they were using were supposed to insulate the electronics and the intense lightning and the sudden updrafts and downdrafts caused by the storm were hard to handle. These were not the kind of conditions for an amateur pilot, and the tiny computer brain in the drone was hardly adequate by itself to handle these conditions. The problem was, any radar-type scan to maintain distance and pick out targets that would be useful to them would also be useful to the SPF; by knocking out the SPF, they knew they’d be flying by the seat-of-the-pants method, and that required great skill. Butar only hoped she wasn’t too out of practice.
The visuals were awful; there was so much energy around that the sensors were filled with garbage, and she concentrated hard to separate the real from the unreal and keep everything just so. There! Ease over, careful, careful, you did this in your mind a thousand times blind. . .
The drone, barely three meters long by two across, settled onto one of the guard perches and then locked itself onto the polished wooden dome of the Sacred Lodge itself. A small drill extended from beneath and bored a tiny hole through the more than twenty centimeters of wood wall with nearly silent efficiency. There was a problem when the required depth was reached; there was no indication that the tip of the drill was through. Worried, she continued on, but it was another ten centimeters, almost the length of the drill, before she broke free. She guessed she’d drilled through a case or an ornamental work, but it didn’t matter what.
Next the drill was retracted and a small hose inserted. She had a tense moment when she realized that the hose was only thirty centimeters—perhaps a fraction short— and cursed herself for not thinking of this eventuality, but it was close enough. A centimeter was a very tiny distance and the ejection would be under pressure.