While the others saw the problem in moral or metaphysical terms, Josef saw it as basically a military problem. “What you are saying is that the Quintara objective will be to capture territory and people, to enlarge the hole, as it were, for their leader. On this scale, at the hatch, that whole thing we sensed must be a mere hair or single cell of skin in relation to the whole. Fighting the Quintara becomes meaningless until we deal with their leader. Push him back now, while so little of him is here. Push him back and we can take on the rest, like last time. Let too much of him get in, and it’s all over.”
There were nods and murmurs of assent all around, but Gun Roh Chin had to dash cold water on their enthusiasm.
“All right, we understand the basic background and the problem, at least as much as we are ever able to comprehend creatures so alien and of such awesome power. Fine. Find the Engineer, push him back in, and seal the hatch. Wonderful. Now, does anything in that organic database of yours, Tobrush, tell you just how we’re supposed to do it? You’ve been close to the thing, felt some of its power. We didn’t even dare look at this hair, this cell of skin!”
That stopped them. Finally Tobrush said, “The entire nature of the trap and how it was sprung is not within our ancestral memory. Only by bringing the Three Races together will there be any hope of finding out how. Somehow, though, I know the answer is there. We were very careful when it ended. The records are quite clear there. Access to the stations and the entire network was sealed off, lest anyone, even by accident, discover it and free them. It must have taken the Engineer centuries, at least, to figure out how to maneuver one lying inactive in a still incomplete Quintara template and get it through to that world where it was discovered. The closest world to any of us, perhaps, that had been prepared for one but hadn’t been completely tied to the network when the war began. Time is only a factor to him when his actions impinge on our universe.”
Chin nodded. “I agree. It’s up to us now to bring the other two factors into play. If Krisha and I can get back to the Mizlaplan, I am certain of an audience. And if the Guardians, whatever they are, are still around and got that message we sent, the Exchange members of our team should also find an interested ear or whatever they have.”
“Our records only indicate that they are silicates,” Tobrush told him. “Other than that we know little more than you, although we are certain that they still exist and are still in control. Indeed, as silicates, there might well be ones among them who were living even in those times of war.”
“Coordination could be a problem with us, though,” the captain noted. “We are going to need to cut through a lot of attempts to stop us and get together after.”
“Quite so. We will provide a method for communication beyond the obvious Treaty World, which would be a certain Quintara target. You must make them believe us and in the urgency of the case. You must bring them. We will provide the means to get you both to the frontier.”
“Jimmy and I are mind-linked—” Modra started, then stopped. “Oh, yeah. What about Jimmy?”
“I am unqualified to evaluate his total mental state,” Tobrush admitted, “but he is so disturbed, so pulled by his primitive religious conditioning and his biological and psychological needs, that it is my impression he would need the long-term aid of experts to make him sane and whole again. We simply do not have the luxury of time for that.”
“Hey! Wait a minute!” Grysta broke in. “I think I got something to say about that. Can’t you just super-hypno him or something? Make him not want it? Then, when it’s over, he can get the help he needs.”
“It wouldn’t work,” the Mycohl responded. “Oh, it would for a time, certainly, but you saw that wall the Quintara were putting up on the border. Just one touch, an accidental brush with it, would undo everything, and how well I could expel it and exercise control from afar is something we don’t know. If he surrendered to it he would draw the energy to him like a magnet. He would become, as he fears, another Kalia. He is too fragile; a Quintara could break him in a moment no matter what I did. Modra, even you, would be overcome and fall into their hands, and the last link we need might not be forged. Even now, all of us will be targets. Through the mind-link they would be able to find and target Josef and myself. Considering your origins and point of view, Grysta, you are not a credible alternative.
You helped open the way that began all this. It is now your turn to pay the price of that action.”
“Yeah? Well, you sure got a lot of confidence in Modra, there, who’s.gonna be flyin’ through the same shit.”
“You miss the point,” Tobrush responded. “I have no confidence in anyone’s individual ability to withstand such power. If McCray is left as he is, both are surely doomed. Remove this element and McCray may be strong enough to bring them both through.”
Krisha sighed. “I alone, I think, understand his torment. It is still easier for me. What is proposed for him was already done to me when I became a priestess. It made my own personal decision much easier. I also did not share your experience with the Ship, and your memories of it are, to me, incoherent.”
“Yeah, you did sort of have to be there,” Modra admitted.
Gun Roh Chin felt suddenly very stupid. Of course Krisha would have no interest in sex! She might have longed for it as something she knew she could not share, but she had been totally neutered after ordination, as all the Holies were. She looked such a fine figure of a woman, though. … In a sense, it made her final choice all the more understandable, but at the same time it shattered once and for all a cherished little fantasy.
“Jimmy now believes he has a reason for existing, a specific assignment from his God,” the priestess continued. “He doesn’t want to do this, he feels he has to. He feels that if he does, he can do the job. That faith, that belief, may be enough. His faith, like mine, prizes faith and emphasizes sacrifice. This is his sacrifice to his God. It is the ultimate act of faith.”
“Holy cats! I don’t believe this!” Grysta exclaimed.
Modra looked at her. “You think we like it? While you were on his back you never let him get it out; now you can’t get it from him. There’s some poetic justice in that. Some people are born to be tragic figures, I guess, and Jimmy’s one of them. Don’t worry, you’ll still make out all right. As his legal wife you’ll get half his share of what’s been piling up in an account since we completed our job. You’ll have
money, and he won’t care who or what you take up with.”
Grysta thought a moment. “Yeah. Half that fee. … I hadn’t thought about that. And no complications. …”
Selfish to the core as always, Modra thought. She was the Engineer’s perfect tool.
“The best time to do it is now,” Tobrush noted, “so that the body can adjust. It’s somewhat complex to do right. There are chemical imbalances, hormones, all the rest needing compensation.”
“Yeah?” Grysta responded, not quite done yet. “And who’s gonna do it? You?”
“Yes. Unlike the rest of you, it is a meaningless procedure to me and serves my ends. There is a complete single-occupant medical cocoon aft, and analytical programs for male Terrans, since Josef is the commander of this vessel. We will begin as soon as we are under way for the Mizlaplanian border. There we can transfer the two of you for the final stage of your journey. The time to travel back to the Exchange border will allow some healing and adjustment.”
“And what will you two be doing while the rest of us are off?” Modra asked, trying not to think about the subject.
“Josef and I will be quite occupied. There are conditions approaching anarchy or civil war in many areas, and we cannot spare a lot of military from the borders right now with all the tension. The center of the worst disturbance struck a familiar note in us and we feel compelled to check it out.”
Josef nodded. “It seems we have to have a little reunion with an old shipmate.”
RACES HIGH AND LOW
“THE CORRUPTION IS NOT AS DENSE AS ALONG the Exchange border,” Gun Roh Chin noticed, looking at his screens.
“Yes, but the fact that it is here at all is not a pleasant omen,” Krisha replied worriedly. “Can you avoid it?”
They were in a small Mycohlian courier craft with civilian registry and ID which had been waiting for them near the border. There had been no tears, even though they were breaking apart the group of survivors who had withstood the worst anyone had been expected to take in millennia. They were enemies who had been forced to become allies, a microcosm of what they now hoped would happen on a larger scale, but, for now, they were going home.
“I’ll do my best,” he promised. “I may have to run this thing up close to maximum speed to beat the stuff closing in on us, but I think I can make it. The big problem will be, if we come through that fast from this direction and in this ship, will they ask questions or blow us out of space?”
“That would be an ugly welcome home,” she agreed. “Shouldn’t we try and contact them?”
“Too risky at this point. Hyperspace communication goes through this plane. I bet it looks solid as a rock to those things and would draw them like children to candy. No, they’re life, of some sort, but they’re pretty dumb beasts. Let’s not call them.”
He saw an opening, took it, and gunned the engines wide open. The masses on either side sensed the oncoming ship, or, most likely, the energy blister around it, and began closing, but he’d timed it just right. He had to swerve suddenly to avoid a third, smaller, mass beyond that had been obscured by the first two, but then he felt in the clear. When he saw that they weren’t going to attempt a futile chase, he opened up the communications channel to the Mizlaplanian military frequencies.
“Reserve Commander Gun Roh Chin incoming in Mycohl craft, unarmed,” he reported. “One passenger, Krisha the Holy Mendoro, telepath. Request rendezvous with either a major military craft or Holy Arm as quickly as possible.”
For a while there was no reply, then, suddenly, a voice asked, “You’re a what with a who?”
He repeated the call, slowly this time.
“If you’re who you say you are, what are you doing in a ship of those devil-worshipers?”
“We are the lone survivors of a Holy Arm,” he explained. “The rest we must report to the highest authority.”
Another, very different voice broke in, obviously using a translator. “This is Admiralty Security. We will send you course, heading, and speed. Keep to them precisely. Any deviation and we will blow you up. Proceed on that course until you see a beacon and halt there. Someone will meet you and take you off. You have e-suits?”
“Yes, but not exactly regulation.” The captain smiled wryly, wondering what sort of confusion would result when two people got out of a Mycohl ship wearing Exchange blue.
“There it is!” Krisha cried. She seemed almost unable to believe that she was really home, back in the Mizlaplan once more. Chin, too, felt a certain wonder at that. None of them had ever really expected to survive this long.
“I’m at full stop at your beacon,” he reported. “Now get us out of here!”
Of course, it wasn’t as simple as that. Under even normal conditions they would have been treated with extreme suspicion; under the kind of war buildup they’d been witnessing, he was amazed at their gentility.
They were scanned, probed, and everything else, and finally a shuttle of familiar design appeared and approached them, then docked. They locked down their suits and he depressurized the cabin, then he went over and opened the airlock. Two gold-suited figures looked back at them from perhaps five meters away. One took a small pack and fired a line to them, which snaked across. Krisha caught it and secured it to the hatch rail, and then, one at a time, they made their way across.
The two Mizlaplanians proved to be Mesoks, the fierce, huge race that did a lot of the risky work for the Mizlaplan. One of their number lay dead back in that passage to Hell.
“You’re about the most confused people we have ever seen,” one of the soldiers commented. “Mizlaplanians in Exchange suits in a Mycohl ship. I’d almost give up my next leave to hear your story!”
The other was less jolly. “As soon as we repressurize, both of you will strip to your skins and stand away from the suits,” he ordered. “No funny business. He is a hypno and I am a null.”
A hypno! “Are you of Holy Orders, then?” Krisha demanded to know.
“I am Kadok the Holy Lamak,” the hypno replied. “I am Chief of Security for this sector.”
Although that hardly made him a bishop or father of the Church, it meant he was on the same level as herself and ordained, and that meant he had a perfect right to put her under if he felt like it.
The lights came up to full, indicating normal pressure. “Now, over there. A complete strip,” Kadok ordered. “When you are done, kick the suits over to the sergeant.”
They did as instructed. By now, nudity seemed almost normal.
The suits were bundled, boxed, sealed, and then jettisoned, although they would remain within close proximity to the Mycohl courier craft. Both would be picked up by military teams and gone over with a microscope before they’d be allowed near anything valuable.