The D’neeran Factor

by Terry A. Adams

  “I left Captain Karsh to call for assistance and ran to the docking bay after obtaining a gas filter and a handheld colloidal disruptor. I could not enter the bay because Captain Karsh had sealed off the area to trap the attackers in the bay. However, the main cargo hold on the Pavonis Queen backs onto the docking bay. For this mission the connecting entryway had been sealed with a security wall. But the attackers removed a heavy-duty laser cannon from one of the lifeboats and brought it to bear on the interface between the bay and the cargo hold.

  “I therefore proceeded through the interior of the ship to the alternate entrance to the cargo hold. I had the combinations for the locking mechanisms of all three of the intervening doors, but the sequence was so long, and included so many halts for identification, that several minutes were required to effect an entrance. We found that the attackers had entered the hold and were using the Pavonis Queen’s own equipment to move the cargo. My personnel were armed with disruptors, and all of us began firing as soon as the last door was opened. One of the attackers fell at once. I believe a clean hit was scored in the chest and that he was killed immediately.

  “We continued to direct heavy fire at the attackers. At one point more sleepygas was dispersed, but Mulready and Serlio also had filters, and none of us were affected. The attackers were unable to proceed with the transfer of cargo to the lifeboats as long as they were under fire, and it was my intention to harass them until, one, all were dead or disabled, or, two, help arrived. However, they took cover behind the largest of the cargo pallets. These were antigravity pallets, and the one they chose was solidly packed to a height of four meters and was opaque to the disruptor beams. They activated the pallet and began to move it into position in front of the entryway, making it necessary for us to enter the hold to avoid being trapped outside. We therefore came into the hold, at which time Ms. Serlio was stunned. Mr. Mulready and I reached the barrier. I waved him to the left of the pallet, intending to rush the attackers from the right myself. That is the last thing I remember. Mr. Mulready told me later that just as I fell he was conscious of a movement overhead, and was then stunned also. I believe one of the attackers had scaled the barrier from the other side, and fired on us from above.

  “I was unconscious for six hours. When I awoke, the Joyeuse out of Willow was on the scene, and I was in its sickbay. The cargo of the Pavonis Queen was gone.”

  * * *

  The voice ended, impersonal and didactic as it had been at the start. The reader did not make another sound. Hanna’s cheek was pressed against the smooth covering of the chair, and her eyes were closed. At the beginning and the end the voice had belonged to the quintessential bureaucrat, but in between there had been pictures in its hesitations, its stilted formality and the lapses from that, its confidence in the recitation of numbers and dates, the omissions on less sure ground. Everything had been so neat out there. Everything had been planned. Even the urgency of an emergency in space could be handled, there were procedures; then the unexpected entered, the men and women falling in heaps, a man dead with his heart turned to jelly…

  Jameson said close by, startling her, “What do you think of it?”

  “I’m sorry for Honoria Hood…”

  “Oh, it didn’t ruin her. It was a long time between promotions, but she’s still with Fleet. What else?”

  Hanna opened her eyes finally, and straightened. “How could they do it?” she said. “How could anybody know ahead of time that the real Pastorale would be out of contact?”

  He smiled at her. It was a particular smile which she recognized; it meant she had said something naive.

  “They arranged it,” he said.

  “Arranged it?”

  “The Pastorale’s communications system was sabotaged. The damage was repairable, but it took a day or two. The man responsible had been hired to do only that, he knew nothing of the plot, and he was not punished very severely.”

  “All right. Still. The Pavonis Queen was ahead of schedule, isn’t that what Hood said? The timing—”

  “It was not as close as you think,” he said. “Remember the accomplice at Admin; he knew the Queen’s precise location at all times.”

  “Who was he? What happened to him?”

  “I told you: Ivo Tonson. He left Earth and vanished a few hours before the robbery. One supposes he went to a new identity and a comfortable life.”

  Hanna tried to fit it together. The more she thought about it the more improbable it seemed. The restrictions, the safeguards, the controls, the agencies, the Interworld Fleet, the hounds of I&S—! In the last few years she had become well acquainted with them. She herself was ordered and official, pigeonholed and tamed. Someone had looked on all the regulations as simple problems to be solved, one by one. She could not imagine it.

  She said, “They must have known every detail of the mission.”

  “They got the information from Tonson, undoubtedly.”

  “What happened to the one Hood killed?”

  “The body was taken away, along with the lifeboats, the money, and the Pastorale replica, the decoy—which must have been safe in essential areas.”

  “And all those people in the docking bay—”

  “They had Alves and the two engineers move them all to safety before they cut their way out of the bay and escaped.”

  “They thought of everything.”

  “Everything.”

  “Then how did I&S hear of that one? Kristofik?”

  “The name was brought to their attention by a man whose grievance—there must have been a grievance—is unknown. The information produced by the initial investigation was promising. Kristofik’s activities at the time of the incident bore out the theory of his involvement. But when the investigators sought to question the informer further, he had disappeared. No trace of him was found. Probably he was dead.”

  “And you think that now the same people, or Kristofik at least…”

  Her voice trailed off. It seemed impossible to bridge the space of twenty years; when the Pavonis Queen was attacked, she had been a child, running barefoot in the bright morning of Province Koroth.

  Jameson said, “That’s what the I&S computers think. They were asked to generate a list of known felons who might be capable of planning and carrying out a theft on the scale this would be. There were four possibilities. One is in prison on Nestor; one was Adjusted, and is now tending cattle on Lancaster; one is dead, ID certain. The fourth is Kristofik.”

  “Who is he?”

  For answer Jameson took the reader from its place. The long fingers moved delicately, searching the index. She could not ask a question the file could not answer. It was all there, neatly cataloged. She wondered if the robbers had been patient with files, kept them tidy, known where to look for everything. When Jameson handed the reader over, a face showed on its screen. He watched Hanna’s eyes and saw the pupils of her eyes dilate. He said, amused, “A typical woman’s reaction, I’m told.”

  “What?” She did not know what he meant at first; then she did, but she did not take her eyes from the image. The man was beautiful—there was no other word for it. There was just enough sharpness in the lines of brow and jaw, nose and cheekbones, to save them from effeminacy. She said doubtfully, “Is that his real face? Or did he have it constructed?”

  “From all accounts it is his own. No one really knows.”

  “Why not? Valentine has good records.”

  “He has not always lived on Valentine. He turned up on Alta as a child of twelve or thirteen. The monks of St. Kristofik have a school for homeless children there, and they took him in. That’s where he got the name he uses. Before Alta there is nothing. Certainly his face was not changed afterward. But his origin is unknown.”

  “Unusual. But possible. So many little settlements, half-forgotten, or more than half…”

  She bent over the reader, studying Michael Kristofik’s eyes. They were amber-brown in color, long-lashed, oddly flecked with gold. He looked out of the
picture with half a smile, as if someone had just said something pleasing.

  She said, “He doesn’t look dangerous.”

  “It’s true no one was hurt on the Pavonis Queen. But there were incidents of violence on Alta and Valentine both before and after that, and later everywhere. And don’t forget the man who accused him. Do you think he disappeared naturally just then, by coincidence? Kristofik was dangerous. He is still dangerous.”

  Hanna turned off the image and got up. The faraway voices sang around her and she felt misplaced in time.

  “I will try to persuade Rubee to change the plan,” she said.

  “You don’t have much hope,” he said.

  “No.”

  * * *

  When Rubee and Awnlee left the Far-Flying Bird for good to sojourn among humans, it had been necessary for the three of them—the aliens and Hanna—to establish semipermanent lodgings near Admin. Starr Jameson had offered his own home for their use. Hanna refused it. She had lived in that house, and had not entered it since the day she left without farewell; she would not enter it now. She was obliged to explain her refusal to Rubee and Awnlee. At that time—when human beings were new to them—they knew in an abstract way that humans came in two sexes. The principle was not new, it was commonplace on life-bearing planets, but Uskos had not met it in a sentient species. Linguistic analysis then had laid in only a foundation for the translator, and much of Hanna’s communication with Rubee and Awnlee was telepathic. Her explanation therefore was three parts emotion, and it shocked them. It was their first glimpse of the complications human sexual arrangements made. They got them mixed up for a while with the permanent bonding of the People of Zeig-Daru, of which Hanna had recently informed them.

  “Does obtaining such loss mean that like those beings you will die?” they said.

  “Humans don’t die when they lose a love,” Hanna said. “It only makes them want to.”

  Such discrimination was beyond Rubee and Awnlee at the time, but they were pleased to acquiesce in whatever Hanna might suggest. Therefore when they were on Earth they rattled around in a pile of a house that occasionally slipped its moorings and floated above the hills and meadows around it, high enough for the inhabitants to see Admin and its city sixty kilometers to the east. When the house had taken flight four or five times, Hanna found that it did not do so of its own accord; Awnlee had found the key to the place’s programming, and had something to do with the phenomenon.

  Even at rest the house made them giddy. It was filiagreed, frescoed, fretted, and gilded. The ceilings crawled with molding, the exterior with mosaic and bas-relief. The first time Hanna stood in a jet of perfumed air after bathing, she saw that even the airstream nozzles were engraved with detailed scenes so tiny that they were almost indecipherable; she deciphered them, and discovered their theme was scatalogical. Rubee, at about the same time, tried to revise gravity in the area of his bed, and spent a night on the ceiling. He could not get down until Hanna and Awnlee missed him in the morning and went in search of him. The house or the estate or both for some reason were called Puddin’. Hanna could not remember the names of the people who owned it, nor where they had gone while they left their property at the disposal of aliens.

  Here Hanna told Rubee and Awnlee what she had heard about the Far-Flying Bird. They sat in a grove of maples whose shade at noon did little to cut the muggy heat. Rubee and Awnlee were thoroughly comfortable; Hanna, wearing nothing, tolerated the heat. D’neerans as a rule were not particular about clothes, and with only the indifferent aliens for company, it did not matter if she were clothed or not.

  They took the news well. Uskosians understood crime. They were even pleased, Hanna thought, that the gifts to be made to them by the peoples of human worlds should be great enough to inspire it.

  But they would do nothing to avert it.

  “Tell me why,” Hanna said. She lay on her back, arms clasped behind her head; wiggled a toe, closed one eye, and took aim at the toe with the other. The heat soaked into her bones. Should she, before going to Uskos, have her long hair cut and its growth inhibited? She would spend much of her time in hot climates, so it would be wise, but she did not want to.

  Such a question seemed ordinary. Nor did it seem odd to lie under a tree with beings from another star, talking of a crime to which all three of them might fall victim. She had done stranger things.

  “To alter the course is to alter the design and end of our voyage,” Rubee said. “I have fixed the day of return.”

  “Yes, I know, but why?”

  “Why not?” said Awnlee, and shook all over, fingers flexing rapidly. This was laughter. He had once heard Hanna respond thus to an absurd question, and lost no chance of using the phrase.

  “We are expected on the fourteenth day of Strrrl,” Rubee said. “That is the appointed time.”

  “Yes, I know that, Rubee, but I do not understand. I am sorry. We have had fixed dates for our travels together here and changed them. We ought to be on Co-op now, in fact. The changes have annoyed you because they are a nuisance, just as they have annoyed me, for the same reason. But if we are on Earth instead of Co-op on the eighteenth day of an Earthly August, how is that different from being in space instead of at home, on the fourteenth day of—what you said?”

  “Details change,” Rubee said gravely. “Grand designs must not, except by the hand of the Master.”

  She thought she felt her ears prick, a physical movement. She said casually, “You mean the Master is the only permissible agent of change in a grand design?”

  “Not at all. Yet if the design is beneficent, who would wish to change it? And this that we wish to recreate is a design of peace and amity between peoples divided by distance.”

  “But what if the Master does intervene?”

  “Then it is a new design, and the meaning may remain obscure forever.”

  Hanna concentrated on her toe. They were within a step of granting the Master of Chaos the status of a physical agent, it seemed; she had formerly gotten no hint that he might be so regarded.

  “By whom are designs made?” she said.

  “By persons.”

  “And persons can alter them?”

  “They may; but each alteration may be a place for the Master to enter, and the persons who make them his tools. Therefore, in such a case as ours, the old,” said Rubee simply, “is better than the new.”

  “So this journey of yours…” She looked up into the shadows of leaves. “You set out to seek—something. Intelligent life, anyway. Not specifically us. You didn’t know we were here. You didn’t know you would find us. Or if you would find intelligent life at all. And yet you mean this is not something new, but something old?”

  “Very old.”

  “It was once new, wasn’t it?”

  “In part. But only in part.”

  “What is it, then? What is the old thing?”

  “It is best illustrated,” said Rubee, “by The Travels of Erell.”

  “Will you tell me of the Travels of Erell?”

  “Gladly. Do you wish a formal presentation?”

  Hanna almost said no, but hesitated. The Travels of Erell might illuminate an attitude that to humans seemed entirely irrational. She did not want to summarize a summary to Jameson in a matter so important, nor make him further summarize it for Vickery.

  “I would like that,” she said.

  “We are honored.”

  “I think I would like for Starr to see it, too. If he can come tonight, would you do it then? Is that too soon?”

  The restless cilia around Rubee’s mouth moved in a way that meant he agreed with grace and pleasure.

  “Then it will be his, too,” Rubee said.

  * * *

  There was no taboo against watching preparations. The aliens prepared in Rubee’s room, and Hanna stood by with Starr Jameson and watched them get ready.

  First each put on a garment of white cloth, plain but fine in texture, so soft that it fell about his c
hunky body in a hundred delicate folds. Round the neck went another piece of cloth, this woven in a seamless circle and falling in equal lengths over chest and back. A pattern was woven into it: an endless spiral.

  The outer gown was brilliant in color and made of such heavy stuff that it kept its shape by itself. It was floor-length and hooded, and covered everything except the face and the elusive fingers. Rubee wore a blue so bright it was shocking to human eyes; Awnlee wore scarlet. They also had masks colored like their gowns. These were simply constructed of some artificial substance, and were pierced so that the eyespots and tendriled mouths were visible.

  They were not doing the thing the way it ought to be done. At home the vast costumeries held accessories for every conceivable performance. “The Travels of Erell” rightly called for more than two hundred participants, each with his own individually painted mask, special jewelry, and symbolic garments. Rubee and Awnlee had apologized before for the poverty of their resources; they apologized again now.

  “Thank you, the loss is unimportant in your company,” Hanna answered properly in their tongue.

  Jameson was using a translator; he did not know a word of Ellsian, the principal language of Uskos. He said, “You’re picking it up very well.”

  “It’s not difficult. The grammatical structure isn’t nearly as mad as Pan-F’thalian.”

  “Does knowing the language help? We saw that recording of a ‘formal’ together, you remember, shortly after they came. I got nothing out of it.”

  She thought for a minute, remembering “The Journey of Nlatee.” She and Jameson had gone to the Far-Flying Bird to see what Rubee had to show them, hardly anyone knowing about it; information about the aliens was jealously guarded then. Jameson had managed to look as if he were not hot. Hanna’s hair was damp. The translator did its best, an adequate job in fact, since the tales used a simple, straightforward vocabulary while the drama was acted out. Jameson watched the play courteously but without much comprehension; so did Hanna, until—guessing already the importance of the tales—she began “listening” to the Uskosians’ emotional reactions to the show.