Concept YUS (Cross-World Murder Cases Book 1)

by Set Wagner

  “Reder, how are you?” Vernie’s voice sounded confident.

  “Not bad. Thank God! I’m coming in. The load is safe too.”

  Then Philip Vernie rolled down his sleeves, put his hands behind his neck, and relaxed. He had orchestrated a series of “accidents” culminating in an apocalyptic cadenza and had perfectly concluded his performance. His annihilation defractor was no more. A black crater had replaced it—a giant maw poised in an endless scream, a petrified beast roaring into the lurid Eyrenean sky.

  I punched in the code that unblocked the control-room doors.

  Chapter 37

  Dressed in identical surgical gowns, Reder and I stood across from each other at opposite sides of the operating table. The strange Yusian lay between us, strapped to the table. His height demanded an additional smaller table, also on wheels, under his lower limbs. While he was slighter than his fellow Yusians, he still far exceeded the size of any human in the world. Of course, size wasn’t his strangest trait, nor was I concerned with his appearance at present.

  Until now he hadn’t put up any resistance. His eyes, as far as he was using them, didn’t even produce the usual psychosensor blocking in any of us. The communication zones of his torso remained completely closed, although, as I already knew, his space suit didn’t prevent their emergence or the release of electrical shocks similar to the one that hit me during our chase at the biostation.

  “I’m in touch with Vernie,” Elia’s voice blasted from the intercom. “He’s finished the preparation of the base. The montage of the accident is recorded, based on the highlight zones in real time, and has been stored both in the server and in the secure databases in the system. We drafted an official apology about the unfortunate incident and transmitted it to the Yusians. So far, they haven’t responded.”

  “And Larsen?” I asked.

  “He’s calm. Even offered to cooperate with us. Vernie agreed to let him serve as standby operator at the control desk.”

  “Good,” I said. “Good. Initiate the facility’s generators and let’s get started!”

  The generators overrode the external power source so smoothly and silently that we hardly noticed. The lights in the room flickered only briefly, and the monotonous hum of the insulators ceased for a second or two and then returned. With the flick of a switch, we had walled ourselves in, completely isolated more than two hundred meters underground.

  Reder was again regarding me with seething hostility, but I ignored it because I had relieved him of his flexor as soon as he arrived with his precious Yusian cargo. Now his face, thickly coated with burn ointment, was a sickly brick red, his eyebrows and lashes kinky black, and his eyes still bloodshot from the scorching heat in the gallery. I didn’t even want to imagine how he would have looked, or even if he would have been recognizable, if Vernie hadn’t gained him those few vital seconds.

  Soon Elia joined us in the surgery room. Without wasting time, she and Reder precisely adjusted the cameras, microphones, and other recording devices, set the arc lamps at full intensity, and turned on specific monitors, equipment, and measuring devices among those situated in a semicircle around the operating table. Then Elia pulled the surgical cart toward her, where she had arranged, besides the various instruments, numerous test tubes, beakers, pans, and vials, all painstakingly labeled.

  We stood in silence for a while, just looking at each other, and then put on the masks and surgical gloves. We had reached the point of no return—a point exactly the opposite of those moments in science fiction movies when evil aliens prepare to perform heinous experiments on helpless humans they’ve abducted.

  The nonhumanoid lay motionless on the table, a living laboratory specimen for us to examine and “understand.” We had only one purpose: to learn through him how his fellow Yusians could be killed—many of them at a time, from a safe distance and by means harmless to humans.

  Just above him, Elia placed a panel of thermoreceptors specifically adapted to his size. The thermogram on the monitor indicated amazing variations in his torso temperatures: from close to zero up to sixty and more degrees centigrade. Apparently his organs were isolated from each other by vacuum-filled cavities, hindering the heat exchange among them, as if each were contained in a thermos.

  “Capable of floating freely. But only reactive and only some of the organs,” Reder announced for the record. He took one of the scalpels and slowly, obviously enjoying himself, pointed it at the shapeless “chest” of the Yusian. I knew that, for now, he only intended to cut the space suit and to study the process of its regeneration, but in this case, it was much more important to me whether or not the Yusian knew that as well, if he was intelligent enough to realize that he was not going to be killed this quickly? Or was it possible that he didn’t have any suspicion that eventually he was going to be killed!

  The Yusian didn’t react at all to Reder’s first cut, but the response of the space suit was almost immediate: both edges of the cut liquefied and then flowed together like quicksilver. During this process, the thermograph recorded a general cooling of the rest of the torso, while the section around the disappearing cut became a “hot spot.” Seconds later, the space suit was whole again, and the thermograph reverted to its previous readings.

  Reder made a new, longer cut, with the same effect. Then he and Elia removed a piece of the space suit and placed it in a glass pan specifically prepared for the purpose. There it began to shrink, looking like a membrane with expanding holes until it finally disappeared. I checked the measuring devices reflecting the parameters of the room and noted that the air control indicators recorded no variations. Meanwhile, the Yusian’s space suit had again repaired itself, leaving no evidence of our intervention.

  “I was right!” Reder noted. “This material is somehow connected with the creature’s protective mechanisms, and they control its structural changes.”

  “Yes,” Elia said. “We have to find some way to paralyze those mechanisms.”

  “Or to mislead them by sending false impulses.” Reder skillfully attached electrodes to the torso of the Yusian from some device unfamiliar to me, turned it on, and cut the space suit once more. This time the cut remained open about ten seconds longer but finally healed completely.

  “So it’s not simply reactive; the bastards can control it consciously as well!” Reder stated, turning off the device. “The connections are much more complicated than we supposed.”

  “Well? What now?” Elia asked him.

  “I’ve programmed a range of impulses in various combinations. We’ll try all of them at once when”—Reder glared at me from under his scorched eyebrows—“when the time comes.”

  “Stop stalling!” I warned him in an intentionally domineering tone. “Your idea of stripping the Yusians of their space suits by misleading them through long-distance impulses sounds juvenile, if not actually primitive. Superficial at best.”

  “Well, suggest something more profound then,” he added sardonically.

  “You bet I will! That’s why I’m here. But first you need to finish your job.”

  As I expected, Reder wasn’t stupid enough to argue with me. However, since he needed to vent his anger anyway, he naturally directed it completely at the tightly bound object on the table. He grabbed one of the syringes and tried to insert its needle into the creature’s limb through the space suit. He didn’t succeed. He cursed, again turned on the electrode device, and used the scalpel once more, quickly inserting the needle through the cut but unable to draw anything into the syringe.

  “Look!” Elia drew his attention to the thermogram.

  The section where the needle entered had become a “cold spot,” obviously enough to freeze that area completely. Meanwhile the space suit was again repairing itself, and the needle was literally shot out of the creature, probably by a muscle spasm beneath its point. Reder followed its long flight with his eyes, looked down at his now empty hands, and spread them in a momentary expression of confusion.

  “Lo
oks like we’re losing the games we’re playing with the creature’s temperature, doesn’t it?” His lame attempt at humor did little to ease the tension.

  Then the Yusian—the Yusian started to get up. Elia screamed, and Reder reached for his flexor. Realizing that I had it, he gestured at me idiotically, grabbed Elia by the elbow, and dragged her backward with him.

  I approached the Yusian: he had almost assumed a sitting position, and the strong silicon ropes that had bound him were limply hanging around his torso, seemingly having been eaten away by acid.

  “Watch out!” Elia whimpered.

  “Pull yourselves together, both of you!” I ordered without taking my eyes off the Yusian. His eyes still remained covered by the forehead membrane, but his communication zones were already blinking under the space suit, flickering somehow feebly—was he begging?—and all of them gradually becoming pale green. Then he lay back, very slowly, returning to the horizontal position he was in before, although no longer tied down.

  “He wants to cooperate with you,” I said.

  “Nonsense!” Reder hissed.

  “And why not?” Elia replied sharply. “This is a very intelligent creature! We forget that fact and treat him like a dumb beast, just because he doesn’t look like us—and because he was tied to the table, seemingly helpless, like a laboratory animal.”

  “Elia, you”—Reder was choking with disgust—“well, go ahead; hug him, if that’s what you think!”

  “Maybe even that would be easier for me than—”

  “Keep working,” I interrupted them dryly.

  “All right, all right,” Reder murmured, “but at least point the flexor at it!”

  “Don’t worry. My reactions are fast enough.”

  “And make sure not to hit it in those frontal zones. We need them the most. Target its eyes. Yes, Simon! If the creature makes any dangerous moves, blind it!”

  The three of us maintained a strained silence. Elia’s face above the half mask was as pale as before, but I sensed that the tension draining her of color was now from disgust rather than fear, which in this case was not directed at the strange Yusian. She approached him and removed the straps from beneath his torso. He shifted his weight to make it easier for her and then resumed his former position on the operating table.

  Next Reder approached him, picked up the electrodes, and placed them beside that ineffective device. “Let’s see how manageable you are now,” Reder said softly, picking up a second syringe and preparing to puncture the creature. He moved very slowly, giving the Yusian plenty of time to counter its instinct for self-preservation. And it did just that! The only way we had of measuring its reactions was the thermograph, and the creature’s body temperature didn’t vary in the slightest when the needle pierced the space suit, nor when it penetrated internally. Soon a bluish fluid rose through the needle into the barrel of the syringe, where the fluid looked more like a fog than a liquid.

  “It’s similar to that substance they use to charge their materials in the warehouses,” Elia observed gloomily.

  “That’s even worse!” Reder snorted.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because, Simon, we’ve already spent much time and effort studying that substance.”

  “Well?”

  “Its composition is partly material and partly pure energy,” Elia added. “It seems to be a mixture of something—”

  “And nothing,” Reder finished her thought. “Yes, yes, that’s exactly the absurd conclusion we reached. But if the blue substance resembles anything recognizable, it would be blood. Yusian blood. Damn it! What if it is the same?”

  “It would mean,” Elia began, stunned, “that the Yusians feed their materials blood! And that those materials are either very close to, or identical with, their flesh—”

  “What about their machines?” I interrupted her. “Are they fueled with the same—substance?”

  She shook her head. “No, unless it is used in the manufacturing process. The machines are completely self-contained and self-sustaining. They take their energy from sunlight and the matter around them, just as the plants on Eyrena do!”

  “Just as the Yusians do themselves,” Reder added. “Which implies that the Yusians not only construct their machines out of materials resembling their own flesh but also build into them a structure that can duplicate their own anatomical functions!”

  Nervously trembling, Elia took the container of “blood” to one of the refrigerators, placed it carefully inside, and slowly returned to the table.

  “I don’t understand,” I began, “why you find this so shocking? Very often we base our ideas for our machines on the animals and plants around us. Why shouldn’t the Yusians do the same? The difference is that they seem to be limited to ideas based only on themselves.”

  “Yes, you’re right!” Elia rubbed her forehead. “They were the only creatures on their planet, weren’t they? And later, when they started to travel to other planets, they apparently never encountered any considerably more developed organisms that they could use for new, principally different, models.”

  “Fortunately for them, that situation changed ten years ago,” Reder reminded us, viciously narrowing his eyes as he stared at the Yusian on the table. “They have found any number of organisms on Earth that can serve their purposes—not just as models. Even we serve them!”

  The force and truth of Reder’s words reduced us both to silence. We also narrowed our eyes as we looked at the creature, and just then he readjusted himself, his torso clefts slowly opening. Obviously he finally intended to break his long silence.

  Reder quickly focused the ultrasound on him and activated its scanner. The monitors displayed a number of complex color diagrams that I couldn’t identify, and these became much more complicated when the Yusian emitted a prolonged rumbling sound.

  “Just as I suspected!” Reder announced abruptly. “They have nothing that resembles our voice box or larynx. They have ‘produced’ these in some of their representatives specifically so that they can communicate with us!”

  “Wait; wait.” Elia reached across and focused the diagrams. Then she looked closely at them with growing astonishment. “Why, they have no skeletal system! Only hollow cavities and undifferentiated tissue that reflects the waves at the same degree—”

  The Yusian interrupted her by repeating his previous rumble, and this time, I’m sure, trying to “pronounce” it more accurately. Then he rose to the awkward, half-upright position on the table he had attempted earlier, similar to our concept of sitting up. The diagrams immediately changed again, and I realized what was actually happening. His body had responded to the need for inner support and had created it—had transformed tissue into “bones” where they were needed for this precise position. When he lay back down again, the “bones” also relaxed, decreasing their density and expanding their volume into the surrounding empty space.

  The Yusian’s next movements completely assured me of his fully conscious efforts to show us his body potentials. Yes, he understood that we were interested in them and was trying to prove his willingness to demonstrate them voluntarily for us, to be… obedient is the word that occurred to me for a moment and disappeared, leaving me vaguely worried. But that unease also disappeared soon as I was fully captured by the ultrasound reflections accompanying each progressive change in the strange Yusian’s position.

  Undoubtedly his “tissue” selectively regulated its density in response to the constantly changing movements of his organism. Logic told me that it could then react in corresponding ways to other needs as well—because the tissue was universally adaptable! It could function differently depending on the current need—as bones, muscles, organs—fluids. Perhaps it had the potential to convert itself into a gas as well—or even into plasma?

  “This just goes to show that Stein was far from the truth!” Reder’s remark, clearly aimed at me, rang with completely inappropriate triumph. “These creatures don’t have anything in common with plan
ts—or, actually, with anything earthborn. Nor can their tissue be compared with any substance known to us!”

  “This Yusian doesn’t have, at least not at this particular moment,” I specified, “but he might have had at other times. When he needed it. Besides, Stein didn’t mention any substantial similarities; he only discussed certain analogies on the basis of the life forms he knew.”

  Elia turned her head to the Yusian and sighed. She gave me a look that was sad and conspiratorial at the same time, a look I couldn’t quite fathom. “He is completely sane!” She sounded exhausted. “In fact his brain, and heart, are right where they should be.”

  “Wherever that might be!” Reder waved his hand in frustration. “Hopefully the X-ray will show us what they think with. At least their brain tissue should be recognizably different, shouldn’t it? Unless they have no brain at all.”

  “Maybe it’s all brain tissue,” I speculated.

  Reder laughed, assuming I had been joking. But had I been? I don’t know.

  “So now what?” Reder turned his attention to Elia. “I don’t see any reasons for your dejection. Our chances of finding what we’re looking for are much better than Larsen’s ever were. The Yusians may, in fact, have put too much of themselves into technology and machines. Consequently, they haven’t managed to advance their own bodies nearly as far. Otherwise, they wouldn’t still need to wear space suits—”

  Reder’s remarks were interrupted by the strange Yusian, who suddenly froze on the table in a shapeless heap. He hissed quietly as his surface fringe gradually settled down. Elia pushed the surgical cart aside nervously, while Reder removed a remote control from the pocket of his laboratory coat and pressed one of its buttons. The table began to rise; Reder had engaged the hydraulic lifters attached to the table’s wheels. Whether from fear or surprise—probably from both—the Yusian quickly splayed his upper limbs. I had the feeling that he wanted to thrust them forward, but instead he tucked them clumsily into the side clefts of his torso.