<Not entirely. Remember, I know what you think and feel, too. My mother did farm work and operated dangerous farm machinery up until the day I was born. And you know I mean it that I don’t want a kid if she’s going to grow up under the Quintara, so they’ll know it, too.>
<All right, have it your own way. I can’t believe, though, that I’m still having arguments with women. And losing the arguments!>
They got up, finally, and walked back into the tiled bathroom. Jimmy had a marker and began to draw the pentagram around them.
<If they have sensors on the room, boy, are they gonna get a surprise in a minute or two!> she noted.
<Well, that’s why you drew more than one of the blasted things this mornin’, wasn’t it?>
The pentagram completed, they stood together and visualized another place, another view, that they both had studied well. There was brief vertigo, and they were suddenly standing outside, at street level, in the darkness under a decorative side arch. There was some trash about; it wasn’t the way to anywhere and was unlikely to be invaded or cleaned between the time she’d drawn the pentagram while pretending to fix her clothes in its shadow until now. It didn’t look like it had been cleaned in years.
“Well, all’s quiet,” he noted, still nervous. The packet they’d sent via the cymol back on the frontier world of the station had included a detailed account of what had happened along with an urgent appeal from Tobrush that the Guardians at least talk to them. They had been urged to send a signal of agreement to confer to the Mycohl, but according to Tobrush no such signal had been received. As an alternative, they were told to arrange a meet here, near the great central Exchange building, at midnight of the day they received, via cymol police, a code. Today, Jimmy had picked out someone essentially at random while visiting his old guild hall, and had done something theoretically impossible according to known biology: he’d selected his mark, a Timir, and the little green rodent-faced creature had then received a hypnotic compulsion via telepathy to wait two hours, then call cymol control and phone in the code.
They scanned the area, but because they were not in total dimensional phase they were severely limited in their range and accuracy.
<How long do we wait before giving it up?> she asked him. <It’s chilly out here!>
<You’re telling me! I’d say give them a few minutes, though. If they are here, they II be givin’ us the twice-over before revealin’ themselves. I would. >
There was the sound of someone walking by, but they caught just a glimpse of someone and the footsteps kept going.
<1 feel so damned exposed here,> Jimmy commented.
<Relax. They can’t get to us any more than we can get to them, and we can exit before they can break the barrier and sync us.>
The footsteps came back. They stopped for a moment, quite near, then started again. Suddenly a young Terran woman came into view, stopped, turned, saw them, and stared hard. She was casually dressed, but the sidearm and small utility box on a belt around her waist marked her as a cymol cop.
“What are you two doing there?” she asked in a casual but official tone.
“We hoped we were here to meet someone from your office,” McCray replied. “Were you by any chance expecting us?”
“I was not expecting you, no,” the cymol replied. She drew her pistol. “Step out here now! Come on, or I will be forced to stun you.”
“I’m afraid that’s not fully possible,” Jimmy responded.
She wasn’t programmed for nonsense. She fired almost immediately. The beam covered the whole interior of the arch and lit up the dark place, but when it faded they were still standing there looking at her.
The cymol was clearly not programmed for that sort of reaction. She made an adjustment with her thumb and said, “Out! Now! Or I shoot full power at your legs!”
“Go ahead,” he invited, and she did. The blips of energy sufficient to have broken and mangled their legs hit their marks, went through, and began to cause the exterior of the building wall to flake and chip off.
Suddenly the whole area erupted with black-clad security troopers of a half a dozen races, all carrying enough firepower to blow the building to bits.
“We were expected!” Modra exclaimed. “They got the message after all!”
“Projections!” the cymol shouted to the troops. “They’re some kind of projections!”
“It’s the pair from the hotel,” a translator-clipped voice said, coming from one of the troopers. “Our people are going in now. Hold on . . . Empty! What do you mean, ’empty’? You had all the exits covered!” Pause. “You did have all the exits covered, didn’t you? Well? Then where are they?”
“We’re right here,” Modra said sweetly.
The cymol bolstered her weapon and started to walk straight for them.
“Hold it!” Jimmy warned. “Any closer and we’ll have to disappear on you! And then we’ll have to go through all this again someplace else!”
She stopped. “What is this?” she asked.
“Your masters got our report and our message,” Jimmy replied. “Otherwise you and all this firepower wouldn’t be here. Hopefully they gave you the information on us as well. We need to speak directly to the Guardians. The matter concerns their own survival, and that of the Exchange. ”
“That is impossible. Only cymols may speak to the Guardians.”
“Then plug into them! Or get something that can plug you in. However you do it. We’ll wait, even if we are catching our death out here.”
“That is forbidden,” she told them. “You are agents of the Quintara. You have demonstrated an ability to seize control of cymols and reprogram them. To connect would be to allow you access to the net and to the Guardians. That cannot be permitted.”
Modra’s heart skipped a beat in excitement. This was the first time they’d heard the name Quintara used by anyone other than themselves. She realized now what the Guardians were thinking, had thought since they’d pulled their trick back at the station. That they had been returned as a time bomb, a way to contact and disrupt the Guardians or their communications via a convincing cover story. The fact that a Mycohl master had been with them meant nothing. If you could change sides once; you could again, to save your own hide.
The high and mighty all-powerful Guardians of the Exchange were scared to death of them!
“We are nor agents of the Guardians,” Modra said firmly. “We are their enemies. Our orders come not from the Engineer but from the Executive Officer.”
“The Guardians are the highest uncontaminated life form in this galaxy,” the cymol stated. “If what you say were true, they would not require intermediaries such as you.”
“You are mind-linked to the Mycohl,” the cymol pointed out. “Your own report states as much. The main Quintara breakout is in the Mycohl and is proceeding with remarkable ease. Through such a link, one powerful enough to cause harm to the Guardians might be summoned. This cannot be allowed!”
<Round and round and round it goes, > Modra thought in frustration. <How do we break through?>
“Perhaps,” Jimmy said through clenched teeth, “just perhaps we were sent because your precious Guardians can’t tell God from the Devil any more! Tell you what. You go and ask the Guardians to figure out what happens if the Engineer can’t be stopped. What happens to the Exchange, to them, to everybody. Then you ask them for me to figure out how they intend to stop the bastard. If they have an answer they like, fine. If not, well, they’ve lived and run this thing for thousands of years. Now, they can either compute the odds of holding on a few more years, even a few decades, until he is absolute ruler and they are all dead, or the odds that perhaps, just perhaps, we’re who and what we say we are and we have something of an answer. Remind them to factor in that the Mycohl were essential the last time, and that, if they eliminate us or ignore us, there won’t be any Mycohl in a little while to do anything if they finally do get some guts and sense! Then you put a guard around this spot and tell them to touch nothing, and that we’ll be back at, say, four this morning for their answer. That should be plenty of time for a Higher Race to find its courage! Don’t look for us. We’ll be back.”
The hotel was out; they concentrated on the backup place and hoped Grysta hadn’t either screwed up or been caught herself.
The scene changed to a dark back alley and a loading dock and the sounds of raucous goings-on inside the building immediately behind.
<How long do we have to wait here?> Modra asked.
<Until Grysta comes and gets us out of here or until four, I suppose, > he replied.
<Yeah? Better pray for Grysta, then, priest. How will we know when it’s four o’clock? I can’t get anything but a muddled mess while we’re stuck in this thing, and I sure don’t have a watch on.>
<We’re doomed!> he groaned. <I’m still a total creature of habit beat down until me brains are mush! We put the fate of the whole damned galaxy in the hands of Grysta! And, God knows, nothin’ ever works out if you have to depend on Grysta!>
After an hour or so it certainly seemed like Jimmy was right. Modra was still freezing to death and by now looking around and hoping that someone, even an insect or animal, would come along and break the barrier. The trouble was, on this rock-and-plastic-coated world, there wasn’t anything native.
The music and noise abated, and it sounded like the joint was closing down. Suddenly the door opened and a syn came out. It looked like Grysta, but her furry lower half and long hair were a passionate pink in color while her humanoid upper half was chocolate brown.
She looked around, frowning, “Hey! You guys!” she called in a loud whisper. “You here?”
“Grysta?” Jimmy called, stunned.
“Oh, there you are. Be down in a moment if I can figure out how to get off this thing. Let’s see. …”
“Grysta, how’d you get those colors?” Jimmy asked her.
“Neat, huh? Oof! I’m down, if I didn’t chip a hoof or somethin’. They got all sorts of dyes and shit like that up there in back. Seems all the syns in this troupe are yellow, so they just dye ’em for variety. The hairdo worked real good, but the skin dyes didn’t do much for blue skin, so I had to use the one color that covered. I figured if anything got screwed up they’d be lookin’ for a blue syn named Molly, so I disguised myself.”
“But what took you so long?” Modra asked.
“Oh, sorry, but it was Jimmy’s idea to be here. Syns are like property, right? Like robot dolls or somethin’. So, nobody counted, and I mixed right in, and it was kind’a fun, too. But when I made to sneak off after, this big guy caught me and before I knew it he was slappin’ me around and threatenin’ me and sayin’ he was gonna beat me in front of the others and all that. Then he said he’d do that unless I obeyed and went with the others, so, like, I couldn’t blow my cover, right? I did it. God, those girls are duuumb! They make Molly seem like Captain Chin. So …”
“Grysta,” Modra said exasperatedly.
“… Anyway, I tried to sneak out a back door and them dumb broads actually yelled that I was doin’ it! So this guy comes in and catches me, and yanks me outta there and down this hall, see. …”
“Grysta! Break the damned pentagram!” Modra snapped.
“Oh! Yeah!” A hoof came out and crossed the4ine and there was a very brief crackling sound and they knew they were synced once more.
Modra sank to the ground in blessed relief. “Make a note. Next pentagrams, room enough to sit!”