by Tim Andersen
I started to say, “the---”
Smith cut me off. “Before Fenn starts quoting Mark Twain, we need to verify that the file on the memory chip he’s holding is intact. It needs to be transmitted to the Trolls immediately.”
He turned to Stoss. “I assume it’s not encrypted.”
Stoss was getting to his feet finally. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Those are my personal files.” He turned to Trexel. “Greg, arrest him. He’s a traitor.”
Trexel looked at Smith, then back to Stoss. “How?”
Stoss looked back at Smith who was still holding the gun on him and frowned. Smith smiled slightly. “We will soon see who the traitor is. Fenn is holding the key to ending the war.”
Trexel scoffed. “I’ve already negotiated a settlement.”
Smith shook his head. “A settlement that they have already broken.”
As if to add weight to his words, we heard the wail of the space raid siren. It completely drowned out the fire alarm. We heard a crash and the building shook. All of us except Smith, who stood there smugly, rushed to the northward facing window. Outside we saw smoke and sparks jetting up from where an incendiary bomb had landed in a residential district. As we watched, another crashed down sending a ball of fire into the air. The building shook again.
Washington, DC was burning.
Trexel turned away from the window in alarm. “Alright, about that explanation.”
Smith frowned. “There’s no time. Fenn, give me the memory chip.”
I realized I was still holding it. I started to hand it over when Trexel said, “no Goshan, give it to me.”
Stoss stood there. “They are my files. I will take them.” He held out his hand for it. When I hesitated, he said, “Security forces will be here in two minutes to check the fire alarm and arrest Smith. Don’t find yourself going with him.”
Smith looked at me. “Listen Fe---Goshan,” he said, “that memory chip contains the file we’ve been looking for. I can transmit it and stop this attack.”
I looked from Stoss with his authoritative scowl to Trexel with his watchful eyes to Smith with his insistent expression. They were all boring into me.
“Wait,” I said, turning to Smith, “how did you know he had it? Why was it in his hand?”
Smith sighed. “We don’t have time for this! The chip!”
I shook my head. “No, explain.” I turned to Stoss and Trexel. “There’s no harm in that.”
Stoss frowned but Trexel seemed interested and nodded.
Smith could tell he was beaten. “Very well,” Smith said, “It’s simple really. As soon as I had ascertained that Lika was responsible for the original agreement, I attempted to determine if her father was involved in its transmission. I am trained in detecting deception in several intelligent species, including humans. Questioning him he seemed bewildered. I was aware of an investigation within the diplomatic corps into the possibility of a mole being employed in the department. You, Fenn, were sent to spy on me because of my communications with the Amidans.”
“You shouldn’t have told him,” said Trexel to me.
I shrugged. “I didn’t.”
“Then how?”
Smith looked amused. “It was obvious from the beginning, particularly when you approved Fenn joining my team without the slightest argument. I knew your loyalty to his mother. I knew that you wanted a spy on my team. (A dreadful spy, I might add.) I questioned him at the beginning of the mission and ascertained that he was hiding something.”
“He was never meant to spy,” said Trexel. “He was only to report what he saw like any employee.”
Smith waved his hand. “Never mind that, as I was saying, although he was told about my connection to the Amidans, he was not told of the real reason for your suspicion of me, which were the coded transmissions you detected coming from this building to the Trolls.”
Trexel gaped. “What have you been doing Smith? Spying on me?”
“It’s simple inference.”
“So you say.”
“Indeed, I’m not surprised given your lack of intuition that you would assume I needed to spy on you. I knew somebody had transmitted to the Trolls the moment they stopped their initial attack. It was the only explanation. I knew you were unusually suspicious of me as well. I also knew that my transmissions to the Amidans were a cause for concern, but, given that I took no pains to hide them, you could also assume that I was simply conducting ordinary business.”
“Which you have too much of a habit to do without authorization,” he said.
“Nevertheless, it didn’t justify your level of suspicion.”
“Supposition, guesses, Smith.”
“Inferences,” he said. “Now, as I was saying, knowing that the transmission came from this building. I needed to determine who it was. I had already ruled you out because I was sure you would not go through the pains of investigating me if you were responsible. Lika, who had created the agreement in the first place, had no motive. Any number of employees might have a motive, but none have access to her files and access codes to the transmitter.”
“Those access codes could have been stolen!” said Trexel. “Just because John had access doesn’t mean he’s the only possible person.”
“Ah,” said Smith, “but then we come to the question of motive. Very few people know this, even you Greg, but our dear Director has recently been investigated for diverting funds.”
Stoss’s jaw dropped. Trexel looked at Stoss. “John?”
“Which turned up nothing!” said Stoss. “And I’d like to know how Smith could possibly know about an investigation that was supposed to be secret.”
“It turned up nothing,” said Smith, “because you had replaced the money you had taken with money from another source.”
“What source?”
“The Free Sylvanian Army, of course,” said Smith, “who are currently in control of the entire New Sol system because Earth can’t mount a counterattack while the Trolls are attacking us.”
Trexel considered. “You are saying that John here negotiated a war with the Trolls to help the Sylvanian rebellion in exchange for money to replace money he had already stolen?”
“In a nutshell,” said Smith.
“And Crispin, the attack on these two, and again with the Troll ship?”
He looked at Stoss malevolently. “Ah yes. The fake Troll ship sent from Sylvania. Probably a disguised space borne sentry turret, not a real ship at all. Sylvania has too few. Very ingenious in fact. Those were all meant for Lika.”
Lika, who had shut off her suit as well, looked horrified. “Me?”
“Yes, you were the one Stoss stole the agreement from. He and his masters wanted you out of the way. He was, I’m sure, not sorry to see Crispin go since Crispin was part of the team from Inspector General’s investigating him.”
“This is all nonsense, Smith,” said Stoss. He turned to Trexel. “Greg, why would I, the director of the diplomatic corps, want to do all this? It’s preposterous.”
Trexel ignored him. “Then what’s on that chip?” he asked.
“Nothing!” said Stoss, his shout nearly drowned out by another explosion, this one much closer. “Nothing at all.”
“Nonsense,” said Smith. “It is the file containing the passcode the Trolls sent him to end the war. I knew that he would not want to lose it. He would transmit it as soon as his masters on Sylvania told him to. He was just waiting for---what? The other half of the payoff?”
Stoss was silent.
“Maybe you were even going to transmit it early,” said Smith, “after you learned from your spies there that the defense ministry wanted to anti-matter the Trolls?” He looked at me. “Lika told me. That was your mother’s plan, was it not?”
“It makes sense,” I said, wishing I had thought of that.
“And the explosion you set off?” said Trexel, looking at the burnt walls.
“A crude but effective way of finding the file. He most
likely had it well-hidden but near him at all times. Rather than try to find it ourselves, I thought it more efficient to make him believe the building was on fire. I regret that the explosion was much larger than I thought. Those are not ordinary explosive rounds.” He eyed the gun in his hand suspiciously. “I knew that he would not let anything happen to the file, and sure enough, when he ran out, it was in his hand.”
Smith cocked an ear to the distant sound of a door opening.
We heard the clomp of boots down the corridor. A squad of armed Earth Guards was heading our way. Smith looked at me. “Fenn, the chip now!”
Stoss saw them too and shouted. “Watch out, he has a gun!” and pointed at Smith. The squad stopped and fanned out into a defensive posture, pointing their plasma disruptors at him.
“Drop it!” one of them shouted.
I stared at the scene wide-eyed, holding the chip loosely in my hand. I felt somebody slam into me. It was Stoss. He was grabbing for the chip. I started to topple over.
Without thinking I tossed it in the air toward Smith. It seemed to hang there in slow motion, whirling. Stoss tried to grab for it and fell under it on his face. Trexel was lunging for it too now, but he was too far away.
Then time seemed to speed up again as Smith snatched it out of the air and, looking straight at me, said, “thanks.”
He vanished.
Everyone stood staring at where he had been open mouthed. None of them had seen a person simply disappear like that. Quickly, the Guards ran up to us and a pair ran down the other corridor. They started feeling around them as they went, thinking he had activated the invisibility suit again, but I knew that he had used the mobile. He could be anywhere in the universe.
Stoss stood up and looked at Trexel. “Greg, find him. He’s a traitor.”
Trexel shook his head. “Sorry John,” he pointed his stun gun at him. He pulled out a badge-display and showed it to the squad captain. “I’m the space raid security chief for this building. I’m placing this man under arrest.” He looked back at Stoss. “For treason and murder.”
Abruptly the space raid siren stopped. We had been hearing explosions periodically since the siren began. Now they too stopped.
We all waited, even the Guards, listening to the eerie silence.
A low moaning horn sounded. The “all clear”.
Epilogue – An Unspoiled Weekend
The official news that the war was over was announced later that day. The credit was all given to Greg Trexel of course for ‘successfully negotiating an armistice with a hostile alien species’. Smith was not mentioned until news of John Stoss’s arrest came out, and then Trexel, now an Interstellar Hero, was mentioned as the one who arrested him. Smith was listed as “a diplomatic corps employee” who had discovered Stoss’s complicity with the Sylvanians. Stoss’s negotiation of the ritual war was not mentioned at all. The Prime Minister was keeping that highly classified lest anyone attempt it again.
Earth’s space forces showed up in New Sol with fifty ships and removed the Sylvanian insurgents who had paid Stoss. They had not had time to entrench themselves nor to gather a significant following.
The AWOL Spaceforce officer and Sylvanian Separatist who had planted the bomb aboard the Drunken Seeker and tried again while we were being taken to see my mother had been arrested when he showed up at a local hospital with severe burns. It turned out he had also planted a listening device in my mother’s office, which was how Stoss got his information.
I was at home for the weekend.
The attack had not made it to Maryland, but it had made a mess of the Zoo area. None of the animals had been hurt, but Lika had been forced to find a place to stay while her building was being repaired. The result was that she was spending the next week or so living at my place. It was Friday again, and she had just brought her things over. The first thing she did was take everything out of the refrigerator and dump it into the recycler.
She pressed a button on the fridge. “You should run the self-clean once in a while, Goshan.”
“It cleans itself?” I said, genuinely surprised.
She sighed.
“I still can’t believe that John Stoss would betray us all like that. People died, Goshan. We could have destroyed the Trolls or even been destroyed ourselves! He tried to kill us!”
“I read that he had taken money to cover some bad investments, and he just dug himself deeper and deeper every time he tried to get out of it. Funny, his investments were in one of your father’s companies too.”
“Yeah, well, Dad’s ideas don’t always pan out. Marrying my mom is one of them.”
“Hey, he got you out of it. I’d say that’s a pretty good investment.”
She smiled a little sadly. “Goshan, as long as we’re both working together---I hope you understand.”
I frowned. “I suppose,” I said.
“I mean it.”
“Ok,” I said. Then I paused. “Are we still working together? You and Smith. . .” I trailed off.
After he disappeared, Smith had, it turned out, gone to the Amidan homeworld from where they were able to transmit the contents of the chip to the Trolls. The Amidans had returned him to Earth without the traveling mobile, much to his irritation.
“Tolan’s forgiven me,” she said. “He hasn’t said as much since he got back, but he said, ‘In light of your recent conduct, I believe it is time you had more responsibility.’ I think my translation really impressed him.”
“That’s great,” I said.
“And you are staying too?”
I thought about it. “For now.”
“Good,” she said and went back to her unpacking.
She went about rearranging my things, emptying drawers and putting her things in them. I watched her thinking about how much she resembled my mother in that respect.
I went into my bedroom, remembering the close call I had had with the space forces here. My closet door hung open, and inside it was still a disaster. I shut the door, and, as I turned, I saw the Amidan Abbot standing there.
“You!” I said.
“I apologize for appearing in your private chamber,” he said. “May we chat for a moment?” It had the air of a command rather than a question.
I gestured him to a chair while I sat on the bed.
He looked at me and, smiling in that serene way of his, said, “I am glad to see you unscathed in this, Goshan.”
“Yes, although you could have saved us a lot of trouble.”
“Indeed, we could have,” he said. “Parents could also save their children a lot of trouble by brushing their teeth, dressing them, and tying their shoelaces into adulthood.”
“So you see us as children?”
“We see you as beings on a path of development which demands that you learn on your own. Our only goal was to ensure the survival of your species with minimal interference.” He paused. “Forgive me though, I am not here to defend our actions. It is to ask you something.”
“Ask me? I thought you knew everything.”
“Hardly,” he said, “indeed you may one day realize the absurdity of that statement. But no, you see, Tolan Smith, as you may know, received a consignment of technology from us, a small reward for his work, but we have neglected to offer you any compensation.”
“You want to give me something?”
“If it is something we can give,” he said.
I stood up. I had never been offered anything I wanted from an omnipotent being. What should I ask for? Unlimited wealth? Power? Fantastic technology? I had a feeling that whatever I asked for it had to be something for me personally though and not something that would affect the rest of the human race. They were bent on not interfering, and even the technology they had given us only solved technical problems in technologies that researchers were already developing. They hadn’t changed us, only given us a push in a direction we were already going.
Then I had it. “I want you to answer a question.”
He looked at
me expectantly.
“Why me?”
“Why you?” he smiled. “Why not you?”
I shook my head. “That’s not good enough. You said you wanted to compensate me, and this is how. Look: I’ve lived with my grandfather’s and then my mother’s shadow for my whole life, and I feel like everything that’s ever happened to me is because of them. I feel like nothing I do ever matters.”
“So you are asking if this happened to you because of them?”
“I guess so, or, if not, why.”
He settled back into the chair. “Goshan,” he began, “one of the realities of, well, reality, is that all things are interconnected. There are those of you who would sever those connections, particularly between themselves and others, because they believe that they can only truly be themselves if they are unattached. Mr. Smith is such a person.”
“He seems so,” I said.
“On the contrary,” he said, “he could never have accomplished his goal without you and Lika. He depended on you and you did not fail him. We Amidans too depend on one another, but we have lost the capacity to lie to ourselves. The interconnections inherent in the universe between people, stars, planets, and the void itself are plain to us.”
“But what does that have to do with my question?”
“Everything,” he said. “Everything you have accomplished is because of your grandfather and your mother, but also Mr. Smith, Lika, and countless others. They also depend on you. And yet, those dependencies only carried you to a point.”
“What point?”
“The point where you had to make a decision,” he said. “At the critical moment, you chose to force Mr. Smith to explain himself and gave Mr. Smith the passcode chip.”
I shrugged. “I had no choice.”
“But you did, and, if you had made the wrong one, if you had given it to John Stoss or not made Mr. Smith explain himself, convincing Trexel of Stoss’s guilt, Mr. Smith would have been arrested and the war would have continued. It would have been too late then.”
I looked at him blankly.
Seeing my confusion, he said, “my point is, Goshan, that you made that choice on your own without any help from your grandfather or your mother or, for that matter, Tolan Smith. Indeed, you had to stand up to him to do it. You had to check your natural impulse to go along with those you perceive to be more powerful than you. Mr. Stoss also had choices. Although you may disagree, Mr. Stoss is not an evil man. He is simply a coward. Instead of owning up to his mistakes, he chose to hurt those around him to hide his actions, and, when he failed, he only thought of himself. Thus, he destroyed himself. He too might ask ‘why me?’, and we would respond ‘why not you?’”