by Brian N Ball
He was beginning to put together his own interpretation of the stunning events he and Khalia had lived through. He posed the sight of the incredible Army against the fantastic military installation, and what he knew of the men who had created it. He tried to imagine the reasons for the failure of the titanic military weapon he had seen. It was an eerie and baffling puzzle. He knew it was one that he alone could not begin to understand. But Dross might.
The big archaeologist had stirred slightly. He was breathing slowly, his big hands in a triangular shape, fingers touching and pressing lightly together.
Wardle paced about the strange room. He looked in on Mr. Moonman. The gaunt Revived Man lay like a dead man. Moved by a feeling of compassion, the Brigadier inspected the handsome figure of Mrs. Zulkifar. She lay unconscious and smiling, happy perhaps for the first time since she had been hurled down the ancient spin-shaft.
Danecki waited for Dross.
But Dross was still allowing the fat pods of flesh at his fingertips to play one against another.
Wardle stopped his pacing and spoke to Danecki. “Have you noticed yet?” he asked.
Danecki looked into the tired and worried eyes. How had this blustering man come to hold senior rank in his corner of the Galaxy? “Noticed what?”
“Thought you hadn’t,” Wardle gloated. “Didn’t strike me until a few minutes ago.”
Dross surprised Danecki by interrupting his answer to the Brigadier: “I believe it has escaped Mr. Danecki’s attention, as it had mine, until a few minutes ago, that is. Don’t look so puzzled! You’ve been under a strain. Your natural instincts are muted in this prison of ours. But I’d been wondering if you’d be sufficiently perspicacious to notice what is so far the most significant aspect of our confinement. Indeed, it might well have a bearing on the extraordinary story you have just told us!”
“Yes! Really, Doctor?” said Wardle.
Danecki listened to the portentous tones, the delight in passing on information—the sheer arrogance, and the undeniably patronizing tone of the archaeologist! It brought from him an audible sigh of relief. It was what he had desperately hoped for while Dross lay in half-somnolent contemplation. Dross was at last bringing the weight of his intellect to the problem they all faced.
“Just listen,” suggested Wardle.
Danecki understood.
“Why is it so quiet?” said Dross silkily. “Why are the control systems ignoring us?”
“We’ve been here for exactly forty-seven minutes,” said Wardle. “And in that time, not a word! No interrogation, no instructions, no information of any kind. Not a single damned announcement since our arrest!”
“And?” said Danecki. He could feel the tiredness giving way to the stimulation of hope. The almost suicidal desperation he had felt when the hawsers had plucked him away from the girl was almost gone.
“I think the fort doesn’t want anything to do with us,” Dross said. “I believe it is worried.”
“It didn’t stop reeling off information from the time we landed,” said Wardle. “Now, it’s silent. Why?”
“I have to think,” said Dross. “My mind works slowly. I know our time is limited, but there is a vast amount of information to absorb.”
Dross arranged his bulk to his satisfaction. He spoke as if to one of his own audiences in the days of his lectures at Center. His eyes found a point beyond Wardle and Danecki, and his voice was full of calm, measured superiority. “This fort—this extremely sophisticated piece of engineering—is undergoing the initial stages of an alarming traumatic experience. You see, for the first time in its experience, human beings aren’t playing by the rules.”
“Rules, Doctor, what rules?”
“Bear with me, Brigadier. There it remained, self-perpetuating, powered by fuel sources that may even be self-renewing, as it was designed to remain. It waited for the Confederation’s last order. And what happens?” Dross waved a plump hand to the two men. “When a group of unidentified humans at last make an entry, they won’t take on the responsibilities of command!”
“Damn it, we’d have set off the abort systems!” Wardle growled. “How could we have taken command?”
“Very true. Irrelevant, but true. You see, the worst problem for the fort is not that we didn’t take command, though that’s bad enough. No. Even worse is the failure of some internal piece of the Central Command System, that which should have set the Army on its path.” Dross eyed Danecki squarely. “For a thousand years, the fort has ticked over, trying to work out why in all that time it hadn’t fulfilled its function! Just consider its relief when at long last some contact is made with its makers!”
Danecki allowed himself to think of the glistening banks of computers with their cold, barely-moving memory-coils, and the imponderable question before them.
“We came down the spin-shaft. We were Confederation personnel—otherwise we couldn’t have used the shaft! In effect, we were Confederation soldiers! And what happens! That’s the problem the installation has to weigh up now—it has to pose it against its thousand-year-old suspension of the Black Army!”
“It would expect us to act,” said Danecki.
“Precisely! And we do nothing! We don’t send out the Black Army, nor do we assume command to stop the abort countdown! We don’t explain our entry—and, when the fort implores us to produce the Duty Commander, we ignore it.
“Just think of the situation from the fort’s point of view,” he continued. “It has to absorb our arrival logically. That means that we should set in motion a certain sequence of events. This is how it would go: man enters, fort sets up manual controls with sensors for direct transmission of instructions. Then man orders, and fort obeys. But what happened in our case? Certainly man entered— and by the customary process for Confederation personnel. And then, inexplicably, man began to make for the storage, administrative, and weapons areas without identifying himself to Central Command!
“Worse still,” Dross intoned, “when a condition of maximum emergency is declared, man, who should be doing something, simply ignores the Central Command System. The whole thousand-year-old dilemma is reinforced! Can you imagine the unrest among the fort’s systems as our action, or non-action, is analyzed by the decision-making computers?”
“So what we can do, Doctor,” Wardle asked, “in the few hours we have?”
“Let me think,” said Dross.
Danecki covered the wall area, inch by inch. It was a gesture only, for whatever trick of molecular displacement the prison’s builders had used in the construction of exits, there was no break in the even regularity of the strange panels.
After a while he gave it up.
He began to think of the last of the Confederation soldiers. What sort of decisions had they faced when the armies against them broke through and into the huge base above? How had they died?
Dross began to conjecture aloud once more. It seemed to be his pattern of development. An indrawn silence, and then the brisk, lucid tones.
“There must be the most appalling confusion amongst the fort’s systems,” Dross began. “Who are we! Spies? Saboteurs? Confederation civilians accidentally strayed down here? Enemy scouts? And what sort of action should be taken against us! Imagine the unrest in the logic-works!”
Danecki recalled the harsh voice of Security. “In the corridor leading to Level Nine there was confusion,” he said. “The machines weren’t sure of the correct decisions. Security claimed priority in the use of maintenance machines. Central Command was quick to put it down.”
“Interesting,” said Dross. “Part of what I take to be a pattern of unrest and confusion. You see, it’s easy to think of this installation as a single entity—as an individual.”
“It isn’t?” asked Wardle.
“It might have been once. But not now. I don’t believe that the installation that lies around us is exactly the same as the one that was constructed in the Third Millennium.”
“What!” gasped Wardle. “It isn’t
the missing fort!”
“Yes—” said Dross, almost with a smirk, “—and no.”
If the situation hadn’t been so desperate, Danecki could have smiled. He was jolted to the frightful consciousness of the present by Dross’s next remark.
“It’s a machine that is even more deadly than the one the Confederation built. Brigadier!”
“How?” asked Danecki.
“I believe the various systems have followed their own evolutionary path,” said Dross. “Every part of this installation must have been renewed several times. Every last minute system that controls the installation must have been renewed and replaced entirely too. And I believe that an evolutionary process might well have been at work.” Dross refused to go on. “I have to think,” he said simply.
When he spoke again, Dross talked of the long-dead man sought by the machines. “I’ve no doubt that there are frantic messages flowing about this installation, all urging the Duty Commander to take command. Strange! A man who died valiantly, no doubt, some thousand years ago. What sort of man was he! You know, Mr. Danecki, he’s the most important factor of all so far as we are concerned.”
Danecki remembered his own speculations about the last days of the fort, and of the men who had manned it.
“If we knew him,” said Dross, “we could control the controls!”
“Stands to reason,” agreed Wardle. “But time’s passing. Doctor! What the devil are we to do?”
“Yes,” said Danecki, feeling a flood of impatience begin to rise up. “What can we do?”
“Time passing—the fort beginning to get confused!” Wardle, too, was becoming agitated. “The call for an officer who died a whole millennium ago! Doctor, it gets worse! The fort may well go completely berserk!”
Danecki was lost. He sensed that Dross was coming to a framework of decisions, but how the big-bellied archaeologist’s mind worked was beyond him. Dross had outlined the fort’s confusion—he had shown that the fort suffered from what, in a human being, would be a schizoid state. But then he had gone on to talk about the fort as a thing that had changed its nature over the years. Neither of Dross’s lengthy statements had led directly to a strategy, and Danecki couldn’t see that they would. But he had faith in Dross.
“I said the fort might go berserk, Doctor!” Wardle insisted.
“That, Brigadier,” said Dross, “might well happen. In fact, I think our only chance of escape rests with that very possibility.”
Danecki felt a smile edging over his face. The calm tones were silkily arrogant. Dross was at his best, with the tangled skein of possibilities taking on a definite shape. Danecki felt his smile freeze when he thought of the girl and the hours that stood between them and the complete destruction of the fort.
“What!” Wardle exploded at last. He had been utterly dismayed by Dross’s sly statement. “What are you saying!”
“Let me think,” said Dross.
* * *
CHAPTER 12
Time passed in frozen droplets. While Dross closed his eyes and pressed the tips of his fingers together, the Brigadier paced about the room.
Danecki relived the moments of tenderness with the girl, recalled each touch of soft flesh with exquisite care —holding back the weird realities of the prison. But always there were the harsh memories of plunging through the mind-reeling whirlpools of forces in the unreal dimensions, with the Jacobis’ superior vessel hanging near him—memories of the many deaths, of the remaining Jacobi boy and his startlingly clear eyes with their message of hate and doom. And then again of the girl’s proud body with the breasts thrust forward firmly in the sharp light of the little recess where the Black Army was hidden from view.
He was interrupted by Wardle who could no longer hold the silence: “Nasty business, this thing of yours, Danecki. This licensed hunter, Jacobi. I didn’t think it was still used, the vendetta system.” He waited for Danecki to speak, then, somewhat ashamedly, he said, “Makes a difference, the girl, eh?”
Danecki realized that Wardle had guessed the development of a close relationship between himself and Khalia; it was to be expected. What surprised him was that for the first time in over a year, he was aware that another human being was interested in him as a person; and it mattered.
“It does,” he said. He remembered the violence of his assault on Wardle. “I shouldn’t have attacked you.”
“Understandable. Forget it. It’s banal to say we’re under a strain. This place! Think of it, Danecki! I heard about the Black Army as a legend over a quarter of a century ago. All that time, it’s been here. Bit odd, isn’t it? You must feel the same.” He paused. “Nothing in what the boy says?”
Danecki knew exactly what he meant. Was he, or was he not, a cold-blooded murderer? It didn’t matter what Wardle thought, but he still found himself caring that someone should know the truth. There had been little time to convince the legal machines of his innocence. But the facts had been incontrovertible.
“Murder?” he said to Wardle. “The law-machine said it wasn’t. But they still allowed Jacobi to take out a license for revenge. We’re a backward planetary organization, Brigadier. Two suns and more than a hundred planets. Most of them can’t be used without regular supplies of trace minerals—they need a ship or so every year to get the artificial atmospheres right. The Jacobis had the space-lanes by the throat. You’d call them pirates. They called themselves space-line controllers. It was a joke they had; they said they regulated traffic. Insured there were no accidents, that the services ran efficiently. If they weren’t paid, a ship didn’t arrive. I don’t know how they did it, for a ship that was lost never turned up. It was only one man, and not a big ship. But the Jacobis had made their point. I suppose you think it’s a deplorable state, Brigadier?”
“I’ve heard worse,” said Wardle briefly. A flash of anger came into his eyes, and Danecki wondered then if the old soldier was as ineffectual and bumbling as he appeared. “Your line was due for a lesson?”
“I wouldn’t have seen the attack if I hadn’t already had trouble with the space-wreck sensors. I’d nearly collided with the ruin of a monster hyperspace vessel, so I was doing my own observation. There were two of them, little ships throwing out screens that would make them show up as a meteorite shower. Normally I’d have gone through them and accepted a couple of holes that would have sealed themselves off anyway.”
“Two ships?”
“Jacobi was right when he said I’d killed. The second ship was a little pleasure boat. I don’t like to think they’d come to see the fun. The boy’s sister—and her children— were aboard.”
Danecki tried to blot out the desperate little encounter, the turnings and convolutions of his ship. He tried to forget the sudden intuitive skills that had burst through to his brain in the moments of despair. He had found a sense of creative destruction in his hands, a sense that could weave a pattern of forces from the heavy engines of his slow, old trader.
“You destroyed both ships?”
“Both.”
And, later, more. And more. Until there were two boys left, each a wild and implacable foe.
“Galactic Center should outlaw the vendetta,” said the Brigadier.
“It won’t,” Dross put in. “After all, that’s the point of it all. We learned hundreds of years ago that central control doesn’t work. It took the Mad Wars to teach us that.”
Then Danecki was back in the strange present, drearily conscious of the irony of his situation. He, who had been tired of killing, sick almost to death of life itself, had found a reason for survival. And his abilities to stay alive wouldn’t help.
The big-bellied archaeologist understood. “I can find a measure of sympathy, Mr. Danecki,” he said. “It isn’t often that one hears such a frightful story. You are a victim of more than circumstances. There’s something almost Greek about you. Hounded, killing against your will—finding love—it’s in your face, man! Don’t deny it —and waiting for fate to extinguish you.”
&nb
sp; Dross pointed to the food dispenser. “Save an old man a tiring effort,” he ordered. “Bring me a stimulating drink.”
Danecki punched buttons and a bright amber liquid filled the glass.
“Passable,” said Dross, when he had downed half of the liquor. “Strong enough. Odd flavor. Now, save your reminiscences for the young lady, Danecki. Think of her, however. Tell me again about your exploration of the lower levels. I’ve been giving your story some thought, but I suspect you’ve not told me everything.”
Danecki began to say that he had told all he could remember.
Dross stopped him. “I think it’s our only chance. When the fort does acknowledge our presence, it will only be because we can help to solve one of the problems that worries it. Tell me about the remains you found. Again and again!”
Danecki trod down his impatience.
Dross’s big face glowed with eagerness. The archaeologist seemed almost dreamily remote at one time, and then at another, his eyes burned with a gleam of intense excitement. “The bones,” said Dross. “Start with the bones.”
Danecki began again. “Two separate heaps. There were no clothes. I’m sure of it. I looked at the bones for scars the second time.”
“Self-destroying plastics,” Dross agreed. “Yes. All the clothing and equipment would be bonded with a time-limited reagent. That’s why you saw bare bones. The tissues would disintegrate over the centuries, and there’d be sufficient airflow to move the dust. I’ve seen the same sort of thing in the ruin above.” He nodded to Danecki to go on.
“I looked at the skulls.” Danecki recalled Khalia’s gasp of pity as she saw the bright golden hair about the long-dead woman’s skull.
“The fort will worry about the bones now,” said Dross. “More confusion! But why weren’t they removed? If you could go over it again, Mr. Danecki? Wasn’t there anything to identify an individual? You saw the hole in the woman’s skull. Go on.”
Danecki heard again Khalia’s exclamation of pity and awe. Lovers, she had called them. And was it so fanciful that they who had died together should not have loved in that terrible age?