The D’neeran Factor

by Terry A. Adams

  In his ear Rodrigues’s voice said clearly, “Priority one,” and followed it up with a series of tones guaranteed to wake him if he were half-dead.

  He cursed the transmitter implant violently. Henriette said, “Oh, no!”

  “House! Tell Rodrigues to shut up!” The noise stopped. He said, “Be a good girl and get some clothes on, and bring me the Imagos antidote, would you?”

  Tucked away behind an elegant bronzewood door was a private communications center. He disliked using it; it was a cold reminder that chaos was no respecter of his working hours. It would not open for anyone but him, and required palm, voice, and retinal identification. He gave it a slap, a curse, and a glare; there were certain liberties one could take with machines. Inside the lights were too bright, and a sharp reflection from somewhere shaped itself into a spearpoint before his eyes.

  He said, “All right, Paul,” and blinked to focus the other man’s face.

  Rodrigues said without preamble, “Anja Daru and Charl Zeig are dead. XS-12 is out of contact.” His face changed briefly to something else and back again. Jameson ignored it.

  “What happened? Oh—”

  Henriette was back. She injected the Imagos antidote with practiced fingers. She’s used to this, he thought.

  “Out,” he said, and made sure the door locked behind her.

  Rodrigues said, “Apparently Zeig and Daru died about two hours ago. I tried raising XS-12 myself, no luck. I got General Steinmetz out of bed and he’s got Fleet Communications trying.”

  “How did you find out about it?”

  “Lady Koroth. D’neerans know when somebody they’re close to dies, you know. She got a call from Daru’s current, uh, spouse? He’d already been in touch with some of her other relations and they all thought she was gone. Lady Koroth then talked with Zeig’s mother—same thing was going on in his circle. It took her a while to get to me. Central didn’t know what to do and passed her on to Martinson first, and he put her through to me.”

  Jameson’s head was clearing. He let the blue-and-gold go without regret. He said, “Has there been any alarm from XS-12?”

  Rodrigues shook his head. “They checked in Sunday morning as usual—twenty-two hours ago now. Nothing to report. No contact since.”

  “Have you still got Lady Koroth holding?”

  “Yes. I thought you’d want to talk to her.”

  “I do. Get back to Steinmetz and see if he’s having any luck. If he’s not, get on to the Commission. Let me talk to Lady Koroth.”

  It was midday at Koroth. Iledra, who must have been jolted hard by the news, appeared calm, but the younger woman at her shoulder looked anxious. Cosma ril-Koroth: Jameson remembered she was likely to be Iledra’s heir if anything happened to Hanna.

  He bit back the obvious question and said instead, “Rodrigues has filled me in. Did he tell you he’s been trying to reach XS-12?”

  “No, he didn’t. We have not tried. It would go through Central, and be stopped. He has had no answer?”

  “We’re still working on it. Tell me what happened.”

  It was only a more detailed account of what Rodrigues had told him. She recited it with precision, filling in names, times, circumstances, but she moved restlessly as she did so and once Cosma touched her hand. When she finished he said finally, “You have no reason to think Lady Hanna also is dead?”

  “None. I would know; so would her parents and cousins. I’ve spoken with them, too.”

  Jameson found it hard to picture Hanna with a family. She had grown up with her mother, he remembered, but likely had been close to her father; such relationships were common on D’neera. “Cousins” could be siblings or half-siblings or entirely unrelated people with whom one had intimate ties; D’neerans often did not distinguish among the categories.

  He said, “Would you know if she were injured? Unable to respond to us, for example?”

  “Probably not. It’s nearly always clear and unmistakable when someone you love ceases to exist, no matter where they are. You seldom know of any trauma short of that, unless they’re close at hand. It sometimes happens; not often.”

  “All right.” The antidote had taken full effect now. He did not have to think about what to do next. “Unless we get some word from her in the next few minutes I’m going to get a search underway.”

  “There is already a D’neeran ship on the way. Estimated time of arrival is seventy-two hours.”

  Jameson blinked, taken by surprise. She was not supposed to know XS-12’s location. He remembered Hanna’s insistence on finding it out. She must have passed it on before she left Earth, probably without even thinking of security. It could not be undone, however. He said, dismissing it, “We’ll have something there sooner. Can you keep this quiet until we know more?”

  “No.”

  There was no point in arguing about it. He could exert little influence on D’neeran public information policy. But it meant the news would be known on other human worlds in a few hours, and he would have to deal with that problem sooner than he would have liked.

  He closed the call and paused, thinking. Hanna had not known, and Lady Koroth could not know, that XS-12 had not been entirely unsupported. Sadam Aziz Khan in the Fleet warship Mao Tse-Tung was hours away. Clearly the communications blackout no longer was necessary. Better check with Steinmetz and get the Mao moving.

  It was fruitless to consider what this disaster would mean to him personally. If XS-12 had only blown up by itself it would not be so bad. If the aliens had something to do with it it would be the worst crisis for humanity since the plague years of the twenty-fourth century. And there would have to be a scapegoat, and he would be it. He would be lucky to end up an assistant to some village mayor in the wilderness; very lucky.

  It was going to be a bad Monday.

  * * *

  The Questioner’s Assistant shoved a nipple against her mouth, but it was still too short a time since the last red bout of pain, and the water dribbled unnoticed onto the tabletop, already slick with her body fluids. She could not scream any longer and her right arm, broken in some massive convulsion, hurt all the time now. Her body twitched and jerked uncontrollably even when they were not doing anything to her.

  Her mind began to work a little again in a slow daze. She licked a drop of water from her lips with painful concentration. Her vision cleared for a moment and beyond the scarlet shape of The Questioner she saw others like him. They were not even trying to block out her pain; they were drawn to it, hungered for it, ate it, absorbed it. Always outside her own agony she felt their gluttonous satisfaction, and sometimes, dimly, savage flashes of joy and ancient victory.

  When she could think—less often now—she knew it was impossible. Everyone knew it was impossible. She had accepted unquestioning the common wisdom that star-traveling aliens could not do things like this, that xenophobes do not take to the stars, that compassion and intelligence are inextricably linked. No telepath would know her suffering without sharing it, nor disbelieve her assurance of harmless intent. She had said so in “Sentience.” She did not think she would live to write a retraction.

  The Questioner saw her limbs quiet, and felt the fog clear from her thought. He said (she knew now it was “he”): Where in misted stars do the unPeople lair?

  The thought was a glimpse of bloody fangs, and she shook her head weakly. A hank of sweat-soaked hair clung to her cheek.

  We are not beasts, but People like yourselves.

  With what arms would the not-People kill us?

  It was utterly and absolutely impossible to avoid telling him something. Her perception of each question carried a partial answer within itself. The common barriers of her kind, which were all she knew, were nothing to The Questioner. She did not even have the privilege of thinking of the meaning of her death; there was nothing safe to think of for distraction.

  Therefore she counted; did sums, remembered logarithms, cherished listings of the elements; that was all they would get, unless pain
broke her. This death was slow and hard and worse than anything she had ever imagined, but she thought it could be endured. She was stubborn, adamant. Such qualities had given her trouble in life; they would serve her well in dying. The core of her was strong and inviolate. As long as it stayed so, she could keep silence. And no matter what they dripped into her veins to keep her alive, sometime she would die.

  The Questioner said: This tool has other uses.

  She knew that. She remembered them very well, from one riotous trip to Valentine that had left her shaken and unsure and forced to the conclusion that D’neeran sexual mores, notoriously flexible, had their own rigorous limits for her.

  She thought the being was going to try bribing her with pleasure, since pain so far had failed. It made her angry; but that would not work, either.

  When she understood its intent, however, she wanted to scream again, and could not.

  * * *

  The commissioners of the Polity rarely all met together in the flesh; for once all of them were here. Andrella Murphy had been a little distance from Earth when Rodrigues called her, going home to Willow, and was breathless from a last-minute rush to Admin. Not only the six of them knew what was going on. After Lady Koroth’s announcement some hours before, everyone knew.

  Struzik gave Murphy time to settle in a chair before he called the meeting to order. Murphy’s single glance at Jameson was anxious; the others were nervous or resentful, angry or triumphant. He knew that all of them, even Murphy, had already taken steps to dissociate themselves as thoroughly as possible from the Endeavor Project. The groundwork would be laid—had been laid for months, no doubt—and all the subtle machinery would begin working as soon as they had a little more information. They would have it in a minute now, and he would be left to face the storm alone. He had never expected anything else, and had accepted the risk from the beginning.

  “I think,” Struzik said, “Starr has a new report for us.”

  From long habit Jameson spoke calmly, his face betraying nothing.

  “I spoke a few minutes ago to Aziz Khan on the Mao,” he said. “I’m sorry to say he had a worst-case confirmation. XS-12 has been destroyed by enemy action.”

  He looked past them to the end of his career, and waited for the frozen silence to end.

  al-Nimeury leaned forward and said, “What weapons?”

  “Simple lasers, Aziz Khan said.”

  “Why? If these aliens have Inspace capability, why not anti-gravity derivatives?”

  Jameson resisted an impulse to inquire how he was supposed to guess why aliens used one weapon and not another. He said, “Aggies are very destructive. It may be they wanted to preserve the vessel for study. Aziz Khan said there’s very little debris, not nearly enough to account for XS-12’s full mass.”

  Murphy said, “Is there any trace of them?”

  “No. You know how easy it is to disappear using Inspace. They know too, evidently.”

  Katherine Petrov had not been listening. She said, “They’ve taken it away, then?”

  “It appears so.”

  “Then they’ve got everything…”

  Her old hands hovered anxiously. Jameson said, “Maybe not, Kate. They might have made a mistake. Aziz Khan says the nature of the debris indicates central control took a direct hit. Main data storage almost certainly was destroyed, and the backup may have been damaged.”

  “Why?” said Murphy. “It doesn’t make sense. Why waste the computer?”

  “The theory is that their prime target was a human prisoner. It’s likely that Lady Hanna, as the logical contact, was the first to come into their hands. It would not make sense to us, but when I notified Lady Koroth—” His eyes were on Murphy, but he found he was seeing Iledra’s face, with its barely hidden pain. “Lady Koroth said if they are indeed telepaths they may find it easier and less time-consuming to interrogate a prisoner than to analyze human language and mathematics and hardware.”

  “You’re sure Lady Hanna’s alive, then?” Murphy looked worried but far from hysterical—and not nearly so thunderously angry as al-Nimeury.

  “Quite sure.”

  Arthur Feng said, “How much does she know?”

  “Too much,” Jameson said wearily, thinking of that intent young face. “She has detailed knowledge of D’neeran defense capabilities. She’s state-of-the-art where Polity defenses are concerned, although she’s never been in a position to know the details.”

  Petrov said, “We’ll have to assume she tells them. And that they’re hostile.”

  Jameson said nothing. According to “Sentience,” a defensive posture to a newly encountered intelligent species was inappropriate when a telepath made the contact. But according to “Sentience,” not to mention humankind’s cherished beliefs about intelligence, such a species would not, as its first act of contact, destroy a human space vessel.

  Struzik murmured, “It’ll have to be max security.”

  A storm of voices broke out. Jameson listened without comment. Probably it should be max security. He would speak with Damon Taylor, president of his own world’s general council and the man responsible for Jameson’s presence on the Commission, but he thought “maximum security” would be Taylor’s first words. It was expensive, it was frightening, it interfered with commerce and lawful travel and it was of questionable value, given the nature of Inspace transit, but probably it should be max security. Until they found out what was going on. If they ever found out what was going on.

  “But—” Feng’s voice rose above the babble. “Three conventions next month in Foresight alone. Foresight alone! And anyway they don’t have the computer data. And Lady Hanna might not tell them anything.”

  al-Nimeury growled, “I do not want to count on that.”

  There was an overtone in his voice Jameson recognized, something more than the bruise to pride the Endeavor Project had been. al-Nimeury simply disliked D’neera, and violently distrusted D’neerans. It was only an extreme form of a widespread prejudice; Coopers had made themselves into a human unity and combined a checkered assortment of settlers into a human whole against great odds. They were hard on outsiders.

  Maximum security was the only realistic choice. It would take days to implement; there was no time to waste; even in this room, which was supposed to hold humanity’s coolest heads, there was a shadow of fear. Jameson cast his vote without a word, knowing it might be his last.

  When they got up to leave, Struzik nodded to Jameson, who recognized the signal to wait until the others were gone. But Struzik, who gently pried whenever he had the chance, only wanted to gossip, and Jameson was in no mood for gossip.

  “You know everything I know,” he said.

  “I know. Still…” Struzik hesitated. “We’ve never had to do this before.”

  “No.”

  “Dust off the contingency plans…We never really expected hostile aliens.”

  “Somebody did,” Jameson pointed out. “That’s why the plans are there.”

  “But I never thought we’d have to use them.”

  Jameson shrugged. “You take your chances,” he said.

  “Your chance. Your idea.”

  Jameson waited, watching his oldest Earth-born friend.

  Struzik said, “How much did you know?”

  “Nothing,” Jameson said, understanding the question perfectly.

  “Tell me the truth, Jamie. You thought she might have been right all along, didn’t you? Being scared of them as she was?”

  Jameson did not answer. Struzik said. “This puts you in a spot, doesn’t it?”

  “You might say that.” Jameson had made mistakes before, but he could not recall another that had endangered the whole human species. In a day or so the pack would be in full cry. It would be folly to dispense with his experience in a time of crisis, but he did not know if Taylor would be able to avoid it.

  Struzik began, “All the fuss about Endeavor in the first place—”

  “Seems to have been justified.�
��

  Jameson started out the door. Behind him Struzik said, not without sympathy, “You really put your foot in it this time, Jamie.”

  “Don’t call me that,” Jameson said automatically, but his heart was not in it.

  * * *

  Hanna found humiliation could do things simple pain could not. The boundary in her mind between rape and the pleasures of love had been clear; that made it worse. Rape was a true-human crime which she had heard of but never met, and she had faced the possibility of the start of war with Nestor with a certain equanimity. If it happened she would endure it, and when there was a chance—even if years passed before the chance came—she would kill the man who did it. The principle was as clear to her as anything in her life, her mastery of this part of herself indisputable and a foundation of her existence. In this matter there were no gray areas.

  What happened to her now was different, and beyond enduring. Bad enough, insane enough, to have the paths of pleasure charted by some monstrous being unmoved as the tool it used; but each time, at the end, to want what it promised! The instrument was forbidden everywhere except Valentine; her own experience had shown her why; it took away your humanity. The body had its own imperatives, and no matter how she set her will the moment would come when she gave in to them, and her will would be broken. And when she wept in shame and self-hatred the pain would come again, and it would be harder to resist that too.

  Stop. Stop. Oh please, I beg, oh please.

  I will not. Thus were beasts destroyed before you time-ago; in this and other ways: We learned.

  Abject I crawl, I beg, implore, I will do anything save speak!

  That too. How not? Ask when. There is no escape. Of all agonies that is the worst: no ending nor escape.

  Pain merged with pleasure, she got them mixed up, the creature was as close as her self, the bond was irresistible. Yet she resisted.

  Answer, if thou lovest me. A single flame. The heavens thus. Knowest thou this benchmark?

  I know….

  And this? No? Then this?

  No! I will not.

  You will.

  The universe contracted to Hanna and The Questioner. She resisted, surrendered, forgot she was human, remembered. The past died in the evil present. The little certainty that was left her blurred and dissolved; but The Questioner was certain. In an unguarded moment he let her see his sureness that he hammered at a fracture point, that she would split cleanly as a crystal, and he would not let her shatter into dust.