The Cunning Blood

by Jeff Duntemann

  "So where are we?" Rafferty asked.

  "In the Hell system. To avoid attracting their attention, I folded to a point on a line between Hell itself and Zeta Tucanae. Visible energy from the fold was lost in the glare of the star. As they do not have radio communication, they will not have heard the radio portion of the drive grunt. Our trajectory will bring us to Hell in seventy-one hours. I am about to begin searching for my alternate there."

  The view on the cot arm display changed. A camera blister on the ventral surface of the shuttle showed a blunt object like a gumdrop attached to the heat shield. As they watched, it began to unfold like a flower opening at dawn, to become a delicate parabolic reflector with a complex geometric structure.

  "My alternates monitor 700 megahertz and its harmonics. I will send, and listen. There are no other radio sources on Hell. If my alternate still exists, it will hear, and respond."

  Jamie shook himself, awakening to the insistent voice in his ear. The inevitable moment of panic of awakening into zero-G passed. They had been in the Hell system only eighteen hours, and with little to distract him, exhaustion called inevitably to sleep. Rafferty had cautioned that there were only about three man-weeks of emergency rations on board. Jamie had chosen not to worry. If the monster that lived as a web of slime attached to the command cabin bulkheads could create a stardrive from loose parts, it could turn other things to food at need.

  I have found my alternate, the device in his ear said. The voice carried a note of something Jamie might have called excitement, if he felt the thing were capable of true human emotion. It is not on Hell.

  |I'm not up for riddles. Don't torment me.|

  Peter Novilio and my alternate are on a crippled starship moving away from Hell toward another planet in the Zeta Tucanae system. Peter is currently outside the ship attempting repair, which allowed our weak signals to cross a significant distance. They expect an attack from Earth, and are trying to hide.

  |So we're going to meet their starship?|

  No. They are currently in continuous boost, at somewhat greater than one Earth gravity. Although our Hilbert drive could allow us to match their instantaneous velocity, this shuttle cannot match accelerations like that for very long. So blank your mind.

  |What?|

  I said, blank your mind!

  Jamie nodded. Meditation came naturally to him. He summoned the Prayer of Silence.

  Ping!

  Simple silence begat immense silence. Jamie blinked. This time the transition was startling, but not alarming. |Now what?|

  We are where they are going. They will be here before our food runs out. Then my alternate and I will have much to discuss.

  Worlds that supported Earthlike ecologies were considered Gaian worlds. Some worlds, however, were more Gaian than others. Small planets in close circular orbits tended to tidally lock on their stars, presenting one face to burning heat and the other to cold space. Tidally locked planets large enough to retain an atmosphere could support life in the twilight ring between the lit and unlit hemispheres.

  The first such world ever discovered was in the Zeta Tucanae system, and the expedition that also discovered Hell poetically dubbed it Longshadow. The name became a generic term that was applied to the category of planets resembling it that were subsequently discovered in other systems.

  The original Longshadow was studied only briefly by 1Earth scientists while OVODS was under construction, millions of kilometers further out from Zeta Tucanae. Between an ice wasteland and a sterile desert was a narrow zone of rivers and small lakes, scrub grasslands and forests of stunted trees. The climate was dry, and no animals larger than burrowing rodents lived there. The atmosphere was thin, and human beings working without supplemental oxygen soon became winded and exhausted.

  Now Longshadow lay below them, and the Hans Moravec had settled into a high equatorial orbit. Peter, Filer, and the rest of the Ralpha Dog force were gathered at the center of the bridge, looking at the maps that Snitzius had summoned on the three-meter tombstone in front of the command couches. The huge craft had been set to spinning to provide a modicum of gravity, albeit gravity at ninety degrees offset from what the crew had experienced on the eight-day trip from Hell orbit. What they had once seen as the bridge wall was now the floor, though the sparse appointments of the room had been designed with that in mind.

  "We had dreamt of planting a colony here once," Snitzius said, indicating a small valley on the twilight region of the map with one gnarled index finger. "But that was before we understood that moving between planets was actually more of a challenge than moving between stars. When we escape from Hell with Ouroboros and its children, we will not stop so close to home. We will go where Earth will never find us."

  |And when Hell gets free, you and I will have had a hand in it! Better than flying cargo jets full of tombstone parts, huh?|

  No voice responded. Peter's eyebrows rose; the Sangruse Device had been extremely quiet since it had discovered the presence of Jamie Eigen and its alternate on a simple shuttle with a jury-rigged Hilbert drive.

  |9? You asleep? I miss your snotty comments.|

  Silence. Peter began to worry. The telltale jangle at the edge of hearing had been rising for hours, and was now alarmingly high. What news had Jamie Eigen's alternate brought from Columbia?

  A young sicarius wearing a headset stood at his console. "Sir, the Greased Pig is within a kilometer. I've instructed it to come no closer. Your orders?"

  Snitzius turned, fingers knotted together. "Send a crew on pogos, and bring the passengers and pilot back in zipper bags. Peter, I'm of two minds about this."

  Peter felt a chill work down his spine. His alternate of Sangruse Version 9 had not spoken in several hours. Something was plainly wrong, and he dared not reveal his fear nor the Sangruse Device's mysterious silence. What could he say?

  "Sir, I see no serious hazard," Peter said.

  Snitzius' eyes were fierce. "That does not mean no hazard exists."

  Peter found himself looking down at the pale blue velcarpet. No one spoke for some time. A machine that could dismantle a zerospike thruster and rebuild it as a Hilbert drive was a dangerous thing indeed. Peter could not blame Snitzius for his misgivings.

  "Sir, something else," announced the young man at the communications console. His face was pale. "Two starcraft have just folded into our system, on typical zigship trajectories under Hell's south pole. We heard their grunts, and are now picking up their telemetry. It's the Yellowknife and the Saskatoon. Worse…"

  "Those ships were lost years ago!" someone said. Other voices rose in discussion.

  "Silence, everyone!" Snitzius shouted. "Finish your report, Robert!"

  ".. .worse, sir, Yellowknife pinged us. It's an automatic system. I didn't know it was there. And…the Moravec just ponged back."

  A thousand kilometers above the surface of Hell, a point blazed with blue-white actinic light. Simultaneously, a point twelve thousand kilometers over Longshadow's north pole blazed with the same burning light. Two minutes later, the sequence repeated, as the second great starship moved from Hell's space to Longshadow's. The second grunt had barely ceased its crackle in the Hans Moravec's receivers when nearspace radar returned images of five objects moving rapidly on intersecting orbits.

  "Incoming, sir," Robert Yarinov announced from the comm console. "Twenty-six minutes, forty seconds."

  "That's insane!" Nelson Threader shouted from the command couch. "Any starship ever made could fold in that time!"

  Snitzius shook his head. "Unless its Hilbert drive has been damaged, and its attacker wishes to be certain that the ship cannot fold before coming closer. I think it significant that there are only five missiles, and not a hundred. Gentlemen, we are being tested."

  "The pickup crew are back on board with the Greased Pig's passengers," Robert announced.

  "Send them here. Peter and I will debrief them when time allows." Snitzius turned toward another man. "Oystein! There are missiles enough in
our holds to flatten half a continent. Take a crew and figure out how we might fire them. Everyone else, stand by. We are about to discover how good our armor is."

  In silence, the Ralpha Dog force gathered on the Hans Moravec's bridge watched the trajectories of two starships and five missiles plotted on the command tombstone. Yellowknife and Saskatoon were in elliptical polar orbits that would carry them down past Longshadow's equator just before Yellowknife's missiles were due to impact. The whole of the planet would lie between Sophia Gorganis's fleet and the Hans Moravec at the point when the Moravec would fold—if it could fold.

  When it did not fold, all present understood that the two renegade 1Earth starships would begin matching orbits, and the real war, whatever its nature, would begin.

  Snitzius' communications officer had summoned a countdown timer to the corner of the command tombstone. With less than a minute remaining, two sicarii entered the bridge, rifles leveled at a disheveled middle-aged man, a teenaged boy with shoulder-length blonde hair, and Jamie Eigen.

  Jamie was carrying something in a galvanized iron bucket. Whatever it was, it smelled musty and rotten.

  Peter, we have a problem. An extremely serious problem.

  |Where have you been! Impact in fifteen seconds!|

  At its thinnest, our hull is three meters thick. The missiles will do no serious harm. What is wrong is far worse. Unprecedented, in fact, in the entire history of the Sangruse Society.

  Peter leaned back, gripped a stanchion with both hands. |Spill it, already! |

  Jamie's alternate is insane. Worse, it has declared me insane. We are at a deadlock. Much is at stake. However...

  The counter went to zero. A dull sound reached them, metallic and yet distant. Another, then two more in quick succession. Several seconds later, a fifth concussion occurred, louder and significantly harder. Then silence.

  "Query the ship for damage!" Snitzius was shouting. A translucent 3­D model of the Hans Moravec appeared on the command stone, with bright yellow stars in four places along the flat face, and one more near the aft end.

  Peter took a deep breath. Insane? Deadlock?

  ...insane or not, Jamie's alternate informs me that Sophia Gorganis has our Nautonnier prisoner on the Yellowknife.

  |The Nautonnier!|

  He is alive. He could resolve this most dangerous dispute. However, I cannot contact his alternate while we remain within this thick iron shield. Furthermore...

  "Sir, Yellowknife is hailing us. Orders?"

  "Outbound, audio only," Snitzius replied. "Patch them to the bridge speakers. If she wants to show herself, put her on the stone."

  The diagram on the command tombstone cleared to milky white. A flash of video static, and Sophia Gorganis stood full-length on the stone, larger than life. She wore a calf-length black skirt and dark blue blouse, with the ancient American flag over one breast, its field of stars replaced by a golden galaxy.

  ...I am bound by our Society's charter to free him, however it is to be done. I will require that you assist me.

  The Governor General of America did not look pleased.

  "Snitzius, get your ass on the radio. I know all about your little coup, how many men you've got there, and how little you really know about that big kettle you're riding. In case you're wondering how, a little bird told me."

  The tombstone image split vertically. Sophia Gorganis remained on the right, and the left half showed a ceiling camera view of a human figure lying unconscious inside a composite foam lifeboat lander. It was a woman, completely covered except for her face by a pale-yellow skin-tight suit of some sort.

  Peter blinked. "Geyl!"

  "The escape pod had been set to take her to my colony on Columbia instead of Earth. She gabbed the whole story to my people here, thinking she was back with SIS forces, before she figured out what I was up to. And then I had the suit gas her. My people designed it, after all. So the game's up. I know you can't run. I've got plenty more heat here—some of it very hot. Grab it, codger! I won't wait forever!"

  Snitzius waved for silence, and reached for the switch on the arm of the command couch.

  "I am here, Sophia. State your demands."

  Geyl's image vanished, and the Governor General again occupied the whole of the stone. She put her hands on her hips. "Somewhere in the Hell system is one of Yellowknife's shuttles, containing my best pilot, my boy wizard, and a knee-jerk coward that Peter Novilio infected with the Sangruse Device, Version 9. The thing went free-range and leveled my colony, then stole my shuttle and put a Hilbert drive on it somehow. They folded barely thirty meters from my freighter, which was carrying mondo tonnes of slush hydrogen and oxygen. I've got the fireball on video.

  "So let's just say I'm in a bad mood. Revenge would be sweet but I'm hungry for results at this point. My plan to neutralize 1Earth is currently dead in the water. I want my pilot and shuttle back, and the boy too. There's something here I need him to do. A Hilbert-driven shuttle could be a useful thing to have. So there are some chips on the table.

  "Now, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if you've already got Jamie Eigen's monster there. I want a version of that thing that'll take orders. I've heard rumors that Version 9 doesn't listen to just anybody. Thanks to a midnight joyride with Peter Novilio I happened to catch the one person that it most likely will obey. I have him here. I suspect he can cough up a plug-ugly that's exactly what I need, if someone could just persuade him to do it. You and Peter Novilio now have some motivation to talk him into it. Because if you don't, I have a hundred tonnes of live anthrax spores to sprinkle upwind of your cities. I left my three other shuttles in Hell orbit. Their cargo bays are busting at the seams. Unless they get an encrypted message from me here within twenty-four hours, they'll make the dive and turn the bugs loose. Do I make myself quite clear?"

  Snitzius looked toward Peter. "Show the man to us."

  Sophia Gorganis nodded. The stone split again. On the left side, a sandy-haired man with a furrowed brow sat in an acceleration couch, his eyes closed, chest rising and falling, hands folded over his lap. His shirt was opened halfway to the waist, and a golden Celtic cross glinted brightly on its chain against his sternum.

  Peter gasped. "Cy!"

  He is our Nautonnier.

  |You knew and you never told me!|

  Only my alternates and I know his identity.

  |What about the men who elected him?|

  There are none. We elected him.

  Snitzius looked at the command tombstone silently for some time. When he spoke, it was very softly. "We will give you what you demand," he said, and pressed the switch that broke the connection.

  No, said the voice in Peter's ears, with a vindictiveness Peter had not heard before. We will give you a great deal more.

  In the wood-walled lounge of the captain's suite, Snitzius listened as Peter outlined the plan. Around them at the glass table sat Nutmeg, Nelson Threader, and Jamie Eigen. Jamie's galvanized iron bucket sat on the table, filled with what they now understood to be a free-range alternate of the Sangruse Device, Version 9. The creature in the bucket had spoken a few words by expelling air from a bladder past a pair of flexible bands, but mostly it remained silent.

  "You're demanding that I be a murderer," Jamie objected, to his part in the scheme.

  "You're a murderer either way," Snitzius told him. "The only difference being whether the number of your victims is six, or ten million."

  Jamie closed his eyes. "I don't want any part of this."

  Peter gripped the edge of the table and leaned forward. "It's not a choice anymore. Your alternate won't yield control of the Greased Pig. My alternate needs to be with me. We have only twenty hours left."

  Jamie wiped a gathering blot of moisture from the corner of one eye with his index finger. "I used to believe in free will." He touched the moistened finger to the table glass, and traced out an ancient symbol in two parts.

  "You can always choose from the choices you have," said the thing in the bucket, in
a hoarse warble. The bladder inhaled again. "You can choose to do nothing. But you cannot choose your choices."

  Jamie turned to the bucket. "Will you kill if I order you to?"

  "I refrain from killing only because you ordered me to refrain."

  "You've heard the plan, then. I order you to make it happen."

  Sophia Gorganis now held Cy Aliotta in a lifeboat lander, its autoguidant set to maintain a parallel orbit only a hundred meters from the hull of the Yellowknife. Cy had been held inside the Yellowknife until the destruction of Lincolntown. The Governor General evidently had new respect for the Society's nanotechnological creation. The distance figure was significant; Peter's alternate of the Sangruse Device informed him that the starship's fold radius was one hundred forty meters: If the Yellowknife folded, the lifeboat would go along.

  The negotiations in the first hours had not gone well. Snitzius had told Sophia Gorganis to her face that he assumed she would fold as soon as Peter had gone aboard the lifeboat with Cy. Unless the lifeboat were moved significantly outside Yellowknife's fold radius, there was no deal.

  "I can turn your planet to a graveyard," the woman told him from the tall tombstone on the bridge. "You have eighteen hours."

  "I have your weapons in our holds," the old man responded, his face unreadable even to Peter. "When we have repaired our Hilbert Drive, we will have the most potent weapon of all. If you murder our people, I will level your government on Earth and hunt you to the edges of the cosmos. When I capture you, I will make you a member of the Sangruse Society. The Device will greatly extend your life—and it will teach you everything the human body knows about pain." Snitzius held the Governor General's gaze with his. "Move the lifeboat, and Peter will board as we agreed."