by Chris Bunch
Neither relaxed.
“Have you come to kill me?”
“I was hired for that task… not knowing it was you I would find. But it is not a duty my body shall fulfill.”
The Al’ar slightly lowered his grasping organs. “I should have known that if you survived the war, you would be the one to find me.”
“How did you live?” Wolfe asked.
“Better to ask why,” Taen said. “Although that is a question I do not know the answer to. Please speak Terran. For the moment I do not wish to be reminded of what is in the past.”
“Sentiment? From an Al’ar?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps that is why I was… left,” Taen said. “Perhaps I had become tainted by my interest in the life of groundworms. Perhaps I was deemed unworthy to make the Crossing. Or perhaps there is another meaning I have not yet discovered.”
“You know you’re in one hell of a trap,” Wolfe said. “And now I’m in it with you.”
“Those men who dress like hanthglaw?”
“Yes. They call themselves Chitet.” Wolfe half smiled, remembering the Al’ar primitive creature who kept the colors of whatever he slid across.
“I first felt someone was on my trail some time ago,” Taen said. “When I felt you enter my realm, my exhibition, I thought you were the only hunter. But now I can feel the others out there.
“It is truly an excellent trap, well laid to take us both, here beneath the water, inside this dome. I fear we shall have to abandon this craft. Not that it matters. I have Federation monies to build a hundred more like it and know the location of many derelicts.”
“But that is for the future, and their plan will not be set in motion for a time, so we may speak of the past and determine what actions must be taken next.”
“It will take some cleverness for us to escape this snare of theirs. Unless you wish to reverse your intent and attempt to continue the task you were first set and grant me the death. I will warn you, I do not think you can accomplish it, even though your movements are far better than when last we exchanged blows in learning.”
“I do not intend to kill you. And the Chitet weren’t the ones who hired me.”
“The Federation?”
“Yes.”
“So where do these Chitet come into consideration?”
“I don’t know exactly. They captured me on a world called Trinite and interrogated me.”
“So it was you who caused all the upset with exploding spaceships and such matters. I saw some of what had happened on the vid and decided that that was no place for one such as myself to appear, even though I thought it had great promise in my search.”
“So like a gowk, instead of—what is your phrase?—going to ground and seeing what would come next, I continued my rounds.”
“You see how blind a being can become when he is alone and frantic?”
“I never heard you talk like this.”
“I was never unable to feel another one like myself, either.”
“You said the Crossing. What does that mean?”
“Those are the… realms, but that is not the correct word, and I find none in my Terran speech… for where my people have gone. But they have gone on, as they once entered your space.”
Wolfe stared at the Al’ar for a long time. “You—your people—were not of this spacetime?”
“Of course not. How else were we able to move on so easily? Although this time it was into a far different dimension than what you term spacetime.”
“Are they gone for good?”
“Yes. Or, I think so. Let me give you a comparison that you showed me once in one of your books of Earth. Can a butterfly become a larva? Even though what happened cannot be compared to a growing. It was merely a necessary change.”
“Because we were about to defeat you?”
Taen was silent for a long time. He moved his grasping organs together, rustling, like dry wheat.
“Just so. Just as we were forced out of our previous… dimension.”
“This is a great deal to understand,” Joshua said. “And I think I now know more than any other man.”
“That is not unlikely. So come. I will make you a vessel of that potion you so loathed and forced yourself to drink to learn more about us.”
Joshua managed a smile. “At least, drinking that valta crap, I won’t know if you’ve poisoned me.”
“That thought occurred to me as well.”
* * * *
“It is as terrible as I remember it,” Wolfe said, sipping. “Worse, even.”
“I often wish,” Taen said, “I could have understood what you termed humor. It seemed a comfort in times of great stress to your people, and I thought it might be helpful to me.”
“But there is no such possibility.”
The two had left the museum and gone back through the building that extended from and was part of Taen’s ship. It was the same one Wolfe had seen in Cisco’s projection, a time that now seemed far distant.
The Federation craft had been modified internally until it had duplicated Al’ar ships Wolfe had been aboard, bare except for controls and minimal comforts, walls moving with ever-changing eye-disturbing colors. Taen crouched on the spidery rack the Al’ar used to relax on. Wolfe perched on another unit.
“When the war began,” Taen said without preamble, “I was considered suspect. Perhaps it was because I attempted to speak to the Elders about you and your family and others. They thought I had become contaminated.”
“I had not. I merely knew if we did not treat non-fighters with what you told me was called kindness, the Federation forces would fight more strongly, more cleverly.”
“But they paid no mind, and so the situation was as I predicted.”
“You know my parents died in the camp.”
Taen inclined his head but made no response for a moment. “I did not know that. But I knew that you escaped. That was when they allowed me to become a fighter, after the Elders had seen evidence of your thinking, of what we had taught you. I was put in charge of a unit intended to find and destroy you.”
“I wondered,” Wolfe said, “about something like that. As the war went on, several of the… projects I mounted encountered difficulties. I thought then that possibly you, or some of your other broodmates I met and sparred with, had been tasked to hunt me.”
“But we never came close,” Taen said. “I think we held you in too much contempt, as we held all Terrans. After a time the unit was broken up, and we were sent to other duties.”
“I became a… a predictor of events. When your fleets closed on Sauros, I was in a tiny ship, one that even your sensors could not detect, far offworld, waiting to give estimations of vulnerability to our fleet commanders. The link was sealed… and then… then I lost all contact.”
Once more Taen moved his grasping organs together. Wolfe felt dryness, despair, a dying echo, across the chamber.
“Strange,” he said. “I was just below you. On the ground. Doing much the same task.”
The Al’ar uncoiled violently from the rack, eye slits wide, hood flaring. “What did you see? What happened?”
Joshua thought he could feel, behind the toneless Al’ar accents, desperation.
“I saw nothing. I was hidden. All I knew was that all your jamming, all the communication bands I was monitoring went blank.”
“Then there was nothing.”
Taen returned to his perch. “Then there was nothing,” he echoed.
Joshua picked up the bowl again and sipped at the sharp bitterness of the valta. “What did you do then?”
“I waited until my screens showed that all Federation ships had left the system. I used my emergency power to land on Sauros and find a ship.”
“That ship led me to another, one of the Federation ships we had captured and outfitted as a decoy. This craft.”
“I fled deeper into our space to a factory world. I activated the machines, set them to building this… mummery, I think is the word. I
had the machines build me other machines so all this could be run by one being, and actually I am not required beyond the instant to start the apparatus. All else is automated, roboticized. The idea came to me within a short time after my people had… left.”
Wolfe had the queer idea that Taen had wanted to say “abandoned me.” He said nothing.
“Since I must travel in the ways of the groundworms, I remembered a story you had once told me, about how a smart Terran hid something from someone right out in the open. That is why The Secrets of the Al’ar came to be. Who would dream an Al’ar would dare to display himself so openly?”
“Perhaps the idea is clever, although I must tell you, if I shared any of the emotions you tried to tell me about, disgust would match my sentiments as to what I am doing.”
“That’s the question,” Wolfe said. “Why are you doing what you’re doing? What are you looking for?”
“I do not know if I should tell you that. But I knew the link, the place I would find a clue, would be somewhere between the worlds of the Al’ar and the worlds of man. I will find a matrix someday.”
“I must.”
Once more Wolfe felt desperation.
“I didn’t tell you,” he said, “just what the Chitet were interested in.” He stood, turned his back, unfastened his clothes, and took out the Lumina.
“Ah,” Taen said. “You have one of the stones I sold for my expenses. I would guess you have been using it to increase your powers.”
“How did you sell them?”
“It took me a time to establish a method. I watched those who came to see my show, then utilized the resources any computer can access to find out more about them.”
“Eventually I found a man more interested in money than in where the Luminas came from or who provided them. He had no problem doing business with a being he never met, never even saw on a vid screen. He remained honest only because he knew if he cheated me, his source of riches would vanish. No doubt he also assumed that I would hunt him down and slay him.”
“Unfortunately, he died in what appeared to be an accident some time ago. I should have been suspicious and investigated more fully.”
“No doubt if I had, I would have discovered the presence of these Chitet earlier.”
“Taen, you are trying to avoid what we must talk about. The Chitet asked me about a Mother Lumina, something they also called the Overlord Stone.”
Taen made no response.
“Another man, a man the Chitet murdered, was looking for the same thing. Is that what you want, Taen? Is that what you’re looking for?”
“That is what I seek,” the Al’ar said reluctantly.
“For what end?”
“I am not sure yet. But it has a… congruence on the Crossing.”
“Will you know what to do with it when you find it?”
Taen turned his face away from Wolfe, hood inflating slightly.
“Goddamit, answer me!”
“No,” the Al’ar answered. “But there will be those who shall.”
“Other Al’ar?”
“Yes. Not all of us were permitted to cross.”
“Who are these others?”
“I do not know them. I was never told directly of them. But they are the Guardians.
“If they exist, if what I believe is the truth and not a story that keeps me from turning on myself and tearing my own vessels of life apart.”
“Other Al’ar,” Wolfe said, returning to Terran. “Why did they remain? What are they guarding? Why was this Overlord Stone left behind?”
“I do not know the answers to any of your questions. When—if—I find the Mother Lumina, perhaps I shall hold some.”
“But I feel we are running short of time. This dome’s day ends. These docks will be deserted soon. Then they shall attack.”
“We must ready our welcome.”
Chapter Twenty
We may have one slight advantage,” Joshua said. “Since we have information they want—or you do, anyway—they’ll be trying to take us alive.”
Taen held out grasping organs, moved them from side to side: scorn.
“It has been far too long since you have been subjected to the inexorable logic of war. Perhaps you no longer deserve your Al’ar name.”
“I am the one with the knowledge, or so they must believe. Therefore, your presence becomes superfluous.”
“Thanks for the correction,” Wolfe said dryly. “Not that I planned to be around for further tender mercies in an interrogation chamber.”
“Nor I, although no Terran can know how to torture an Al’ar.”
“And thus we reassure the other.” Wolfe once more checked the loading of the medium blaster he’d smuggled down from topside and then inserted gas plugs in each nostril.
“I have a question, Shadow Warrior. I have a special suit that I wear when I fear being seen by Terrans. It gives me a very human appearance. Should I don it? I would rather not, since it restricts my movements.”
Joshua considered, then grinned. “Go naked. The shock value might keep both of us alive a few seconds longer.”
“That is a cunning thought,” Taen said.
The Lumina on the table flared.
“Do you have any idea what that might signify?” the Al’ar asked.
“Not sure,” Wolfe said. “But I’d guess the Chitet have a Lumina of their own. Probably they’re sitting around staring at it, thinking into it, hoping it’s some kind of weapon. I doubt they’ve had a lot of one-on-one contact with Al’ar before. For all I know, they think they’ve got some kind of crystal ball.”
“Which is?”
“Something frauds use to befuddle fools by pretending to predict the future.”
“All we need to know is they’re getting ready to hit us.”
“Since no one knows the exact power of a Lumina,” Taen said, “I’d first suggest that we communicate only in Terran, unless circumstances dictate otherwise. Perhaps they might be able to track me by my speech. I do not know. But I think it is time to take some action to disrupt their strategy.
“If the station authorities had not disabled my drive when they permitted me to bring my ship into the station, the solution would be simple. I have more than enough power to punch through this dome.”
Wolfe stared at the Al’ar. “And what about the ten thousand or so people in the dome who don’t share our feud?”
“What matter they? I do not know them. And they are not Al’ar.”
“Sometimes I forget,” Wolfe said, “just what made your people so lovable.”
“But there’s an idea there.”
There were three “moons” overhead: violet, orange, yellow. The programmers of Tworn Station had decided to add exotica to this “night.”
The ship and its attached, extended structure sat in dimness. There were overhead lights along the lanes on either side of the square, and other lights gleamed from the nearby port terminal.
A few passersby paused, looked at the darkened marquee with disappointment, and looked for other pleasures.
Music came faintly, dissonantly, perhaps from a distant calliope.
Here and there in the shadows there was slight movement. A gun barrel gleamed, moved back into darkness.
A tiny hatch atop the ship’s hull opened, was seen.
“Stand by,” a Chitet section leader said into his throatmike.
Something soared out, throwing sparks, smashed into the top of the dome, and bounced back, and the signal flare exploded. White light flooded the station, brighter than the “sun’s” day.
Night observation devices flared, overloaded, went to black, died. Men and women staggered, blinded, seeing nothing but red.
The ship’s hatch slid open, and two beings darted out, bent low. A blaster bolt smashed into the deck beside them.
“Only the Terran,” Wolfe heard someone shout. “Don’t shoot unless you’re sure!”
A man came up, pistol in a two-handed grip, and Wolfe cut him dow
n. There was a woman behind him, aiming a gas projector. She fired, and the projectile bounced out, spraying a white fog. Taen’s weapon, a long slender tube that fitted over one of his grasping organs, buzzed, and the woman screamed and fell, most of her chest seared off.
They ran down the passage, hearing shouts and the clattering boot heels of pursuit.
“You should have walked your escape route as I did,” Taen said.
“I… wasn’t planning on getting out this way,” Wolfe panted. He turned, sent four bolts at random to the rear, and ran on.
There were milling men and women coming out of doorways, shouting, screaming as the flare overhead died. Some recognized the corpse-white Al’ar, and their shrieks added a new terror to the swirling throng. Gunfire boomed, the screams grew louder, and Wolfe saw a young man gape in disbelief at the bloody mess that had been his knee.
They came to an open square with a deserted bandstand in its center. They ran toward the bandstand, and six Chitet rose from concealment and rushed forward, encircling them.
Wolfe went airborne, his feet lashed out, and he felt bones shatter. He let himself land on the body, scissor kicked the second attacker’s feet out, and pulled the woman down on him as the third’s rifle butt crashed down.
The woman grunted, and Joshua rolled from under her and was up. He sidestepped the weapon’s butt strike. His hand reached and then touched the rifleman’s elbow; he shouted, and the weapon fell from pain-numbed fingers.
Wolfe’s right hand came out in a finger strike, and the man bent double, trying to suck in the air denied him as Wolfe’s left hand tapped the back of his skull; the corpse fell limply to the decking.
Wolfe recovered and saw the fifth man’s body spasm as if electrocuted. Taen’s grasping organ flashed out once more, and the sixth Chitet contorted and dropped.
Wolfe and Taen ducked for cover, and a blaster bolt from behind crashed into the plas wall above them.
“We appear to be cut off,” Taen said, and fired a long burst behind himself.
Not far from the blackened crater the bolt had made was a panel, one of hundreds scattered through Tworn Station. Wolfe had seen them; then their commonality had made them invisible.
On the panel were three sealed boxes, one labeled fire, the second dome leak, the third gas. Under them was a warning: