“Maybe,” Josef said, “but the Quintara I saw coming into the city today headed straight for the keep. Not, I bet, to visit Lord Squazos, either. And if I were an officer in charge, and particularly royalty, that’s where I’d stay while I was here. It’s the nerve center of the entire hive. I don’t care if they’re harmed or not, while they’re in our universe they’re physical, just as we are. Put a few tons of building on them and the only thing they’ll want right away is to be dug out—fast. My bet is that you could get in and out before they noticed you. And they might even take you for Qaamil Terrans, dressed as you are, if they didn’t try to mind-probe you.”
Chin considered it. “Incredibly risky, but it might work. What do the rest of you think? We won’t get many shots at this, you know.”
“Such an explosion might not hurt them, but it would kill a lot of innocent people,” Krisha pointed out.
Modra stared at her. “Did you see those streets? Honey, in this place, there are no innocent people. I say go for it. It’s the best chance we have.”
“I agree that we must take chances,” the captain said, “but while the three are inside, they will be out of phase with the other two. Grouping will be impossible. The two would be strictly on their own with insufficient power to block a real Quintara onslaught. And what if he doesn’t come as a result of the action? Then the hunt will be on and it will be a near constant battle to remain free.”
“If blowing up the hive of Lord Squazos with Quintara big shots inside and then making one of their stations on their network disappear doesn’t bring him, I can’t imagine what would,” Modra replied. “Worse, can you come up with anything else, particularly anything less risky, that would do the job?”.
The captain was silent * looking at their faces. Finally he sighed and said, “All right, who goes where?”
“I have to be one going to the hive,” Josef pointed out. “I know this city and the general layout of the place.”
“All right. One of us has to go each place, I agree, and I don’t know who has the more dangerous job,” Chin told him. “Who else?”
“We all want to do it, Captain,” Modra told him. “Don’t we all want to give them a taste of what they put us through?”
“I say we match for it,” Jimmy suggested. “Odds and evens. All three of us put a fist behind our back and on signal we all bring it out with either one or two fingers out. We do it until there’s an odd one out.”
Josef was noticeably relieved when Jimmy won at his own game the first time out. He was never comfortable around Krisha and he didn’t want Modra to be his responsibility.
“All right, then,” the captain sighed. “But if anyone is captured, the plan’s off. We go immediately to aid them. Use no talents unless it’s an emergency. So long as you don’t use them, you’re effectively a null to them. Once you use them, you might as well be broadcasting on your radios. If you fall into a Quintara trap, we’ll know. The same goes with any of us. If you get away, you’ll know where to find us. And may the gods be with us all!”
With that the two teams split, after Jimmy drew a chalk pentagram on the roof surface—-“For emergencies only,” he emphasized. Then Chin and the two women watched nervously as Josef and Jimmy let themselves down off the roof and then vanished into the shadows.
Chin lowered his helmet for a moment and looked in the opposite direction, then raised it again. “The forest is on either side of the station “area,” he noted. “Our best bet is probably to work around from the left side through the bush. If the gods smile upon us, we should get to within thirty meters of the entrance without exposing our cover. Each park looks to be, oh, not more than a couple of square kilometers.” He sighed, “Let us begin,” and started down himself. The other two followed quickly, and they were off in the opposite direction from the two men.
The park land surrounding the approach to the hive through which the three of them had to travel to get anywhere near the station without being detected was black as pitch, the dense upper growth blocking off what light there was.
“We’ll have to use the helmet viewers,” Chin told Modra and Krisha. “That means no communications, so everyone keep in sight of everyone else, understand? Hand signals only. And be wary of traps of any kind,” he added worriedly. “If I had that altar and station so close in to dense forest, / would put some traps out.”
There were traps set within the park; most, at least after just going in a few meters, appeared rather simple and primitive, easy to spot with the low light and infrared viewers on. Concealed rope snares, some thinly disguised pits with false breakaway tops, that kind of thing.
They got more numerous but not less obvious as they went on. Modra, in the middle, watched as Gun Roh Chin gingerly went between a snare and a pit, then followed his moves. Suddenly Chin stopped and stared at the ground, thought a moment, then jumped a small distance to his right. He turned and gestured for Modra to do the same. She didn’t see anything, but by now she knew enough to take the captain at his word and tried the leap. She came down wrong, stumbled, and fell, and before either of them could get to her aid she reached out to break her fall and touched something small and thin. A stick of some kind came across the ground and met with two other long sticks, and suddenly she felt frozen, suspended in a netherworld that had no points of reference at all, conscious but unable to move, unable to even get her bearings enough to think. <Where in the Pits ofSargos did she comefrom?> <lt’s one of the traps near Qaamil, I think. But she’s Terran! What’s a Terran doing there?>
<Odd. She doesn’t know herself. Examine her mind. She’s one of the ones they were talking about. Got out of the city somehow. Yet her memories only run to the city station. Very odd. >
<Erased, perhaps? What’s an Exchange Terran doing in a Mycohl uniform in the heart of Qaamil?>
<There is a sense of some erasure, but only to a point. A few glimpses here and there, no sense. Very odd. I’ve never seen anything like it.>
<Well, it’s a certainty that she doesn’t know, either. Whoever or whatever was operating her movements has severed all contact. She’s useless. An enigma, but useless. >
<Not to me. I’ll take her.>
<You’ll take anything. You are too sentimental about these kind just because you once worked Terra. >
<Nevertheless, give her handle to me. Terrans aren’t in your area anyway. >
<Oh, very well.>
The entity who wanted her now addressed her directly.
<Listen well, woman. I can use clever and resourceful ones such as you. You are in my complete and total power. With a flick of my will I can make you cease to exist, or drive you mad with horrors, or I can reward. My power is great. Pray to me and submit to doing my will and I shall give you joy and riches. Pray for what you desire and I shall grant it in exchange for that submission, and I shall raise you up above the others of your kind.>
She could not remember anything beyond the city of the demons, yet she had met this sort before.
<You ask me to act against my own kind, to spread your terror for you. If you are so powerful, why do you ask me to do this at all? Why not simply make me do it?>
<A fair question. I can make you mine, it is true, even enter your body or place a subordinate there, controlling you by urges and by force of .will as a puppet. But a puppet is not a free agent; it acts by the motion of others, without thought or commitment. I have millions of puppets. I need those who will serve me freely to create a dominion and not merely preside over a puppet show. I offer you one of two choices: puppet or puppeteer?>
<In your kind of universe a puppet is free while the puppeteer is in chains, even if they’re golden chains, > she retorted. <No matter how foul the puppet’s deeds, the stains are not on the puppet but on the puppeteer. I will not have the blood of your millions on my hands! Better to die or be forced to act against my will than to sell myself to you!>
<I could break you,> the demon mused, <but broken people are truly worthless. Better a subtle approach. You will pray to me. You will do so. You will get down on your knees and you will beg me for mercy and acknowledge me as your one true god. Now feel my power, for I am the only one who can help you, if you are sincere. If not for me, for the sake of your family and your child to come.>
<My whatf>
There was a sudden rush in her mind of strange, bizarre symbols. With a start she realized, somehow, that these were incredibly long, complex mathematical formulae, and that in some odd manner they were coming from her. They seemed to dance around her, long streams of incomprehensible equations. And then another stream appeared, very like the first, but from some remote point, and the two danced around each other in concentric spirals until they finally met at a point where her mind interpreted a single separator of the pair, not an ” = ” but a “:” instead.
She slept, but lightly, and she dreamed, and the dreams became memories.
“Look, Madam—Stryke,” the cymol said. “You suddenly arrived here at the space salvage yards stark naked and with some bizarre and unbelievable account of being an exploiter and having gone to a literal Hell, but with no memories of how you got from there to here. We’ve run through the records and there is a ship named the Widow-maker under a Captain Lankur, which is currently out on a job, but there is no record of you or anyone answering your description associated with it or with anything else, nor does your genetic record produce any matches at all. You claim to be educated and fluent in standard yet you speak and think only in an obscure dialect called Kor that I had to read into my memory just to speak with you and which is derived primarily from an ancient Terran tongue known as Arabic. There is only one world where Kor is spoken at all, Berbary, and we note that Widowmaker had a repair layover there four months ago. As you are seventeen weeks pregnant, it is clear to us that you had a liaison with this Captain Lankur, not an unknown thing, and that you have fantasized an incredible background for yourself which you now believe in the shock of discovering your pregnancy and, with my research on Berbary, subsequent loss of all status.”
“No! That’s not true!”
The cymol ignored her protest. “So you stowed away on the next ship calling there that was headed for the capital and here you are, delusions and all.”
“It’s true I’m originally from Berbary, but—”
“Enough! It is clear that you require psychiatric help but lack the means to pay for it. You have no skills, no command of a useful language, and you are pregnant. There is simply no way for you to be anything here but a ward of the state, and we do not allow that here. You will, therefore, be placed on the first ship out of here calling on Berbary and deported back to there. Until then you will be detained here.”
“No! You can’t! I am who I say! I did go those places!”
The cymol flicked a switch. “The hearing is over. Until you leave you will do menial tasks here to pay for your keep but be under arrest in this building. Citizen Bhorg, please establish the situation for no more trouble.”
She turned and saw a huge, lizard-like creature with great bulging red eyes standing there. The eyes caught her, and the hypno had her under almost immediately.
She remained there, doing mostly make-work, obedient, helpful, and not even curious about why she was there or who she was, until they put her on a freighter and the daily hypno treatments wore off. The crew, none of whom were Terrans, were told she was a harmless nut case being deported and that was that.. There was little she could do about it.
She did, however, remember the demon, and was beginning to understand just what he’d meant and just how great his power was. To alter probability! To create an alternate Modra, one who hadn’t been so fortunate! It was incredible. The only solace she found was that, this way at least, Tris and the Durquist and the others were still alive, still going! If she had never been a member of their team Tris had no reason to kill himself. Their lives for her current reality didn’t really seem like much a punishment. More line penance. Maybe that demon bastard had blown it.
But the Quintara were a reality here, so maybe not. Maybe they just went in, whole, but without her. From the translator on the ship she learned that they were spreading, and their influence even more so, and that many Terran worlds had gone over to them and others were being attacked to prevent them from going over. It was a grim picture.
Berbary was another shock. It looked and felt much the same, but when she arrived she was past seven months pregnant and showing badly, and the threadbare makeshift dress she’d made for herself back in confinement was no help at all.
“The Stryke family,” she told the man at customs and immigration. “They have a big farm over near Zahari, with fruit orchards as far as the eye can see.”
“Madam, they sent me your report and I read it,” the customs man said. “We checked. A Stryke family did have a farm there years ago, but most of them were wiped out in the plague. The rest perished in a major fire that swept the house. There was a report that one small child survived but she hadn’t been registered and between the plague and the fire there was no one to confirm her identity. Further, several employees saw the child and swore that she was not a Stryke; no Stryke had red hair. As a result, the child was turned over to the orphanage in Zahari where, at age fourteen, while picking fruit for a co-op, she fled, apparently to here, where she lived on the streets and possibly sold herself to spacers. Your code matches the one on file at the orphanage.” He sighed. “I cannot refuse you entry, madam, but I wish I could. My advice to you is to go to the Crescent Society, arrange to have the child and give it up for
adoption, then seek cleansing in the faith and find some productive place for yourself. If I see you around here again I will charge you with pandering and prostitution and arrest you accordingly. Now—be gone!”
Now the full force of the demon’s threat hit her and reduced her to sobs of grief. Her parents . . . her brothers and sisters . . . all gone. Her birthright and dowry gone to distant relatives. Her favorite uncle Amri, who’d left her the cash to buy into the Widowmaker, was certainly dead in this life, too, but never knowing her. Her family’s lands would probably have gone to Zakir Fahmond, a cockroach in human form, relative or not, and most likely the one who’d paid off the employees to swear that no Stryke had red hair even though she’d gotten it from her immigrant grandfather whose features were fair and whose flaming red hair had made him a legend. And, in this loose but still traditionalist society, that left her without anybody or anything and with a choice of prostitution or itinerant fruit and vegetable picker.