The Stars are also Fire - [Harvest the Stars 02]

by Poul Anderson

"I do not have that information, nor may I speak the address," it responded.

  She shrugged, turned toward Kenmuir, and said, "All I could tell Juan was to call Iscah and tell him this felt like 'an emergency, that I had a party with me who might be radiating, and that we'd go to the place on Pico in hopes he could send a screened carrier." Her head drooped. "If we'd waited there till morning and nothing came, I don't know what I’d have done." The head lifted, the words regained a little color. "I'd have thought of something."

  "Concealed doorways, screened tunnel, screened transport," he said slowly. "You're quite familiar with this, this underground, aren't you?"

  "Not really." She regarded him a while before continuing. "I'm not in any illicit operation. Nor am I involved in a revolutionary movement or any such pupule—such nonsense. Nobody I know is. It's just that I work with metamorphs. Not here, mostly, but the work brings me here from time to time, and it's caused me to meet some of these people."

  She paused. When she went on, her voice had more emotion in it. "The metamorphs of Earth . . . they've got a hard fate, you know; Prejudice, discrimination, and there's very little the state can do to help them because in fact they don't fit in. They can't. Think how the Lunarians, the lucky ones, don't."

  Again she fell silent. He waited. A spacefarer grew good at waiting.

  "They form their organizations, their societies— cultures, even, or the germs of cultures," she resumed presently. "Yes, part of what goes on is illegal, but any victims are usually other metamorphs, and often there are no victims, it's a matter of helping each other toward a life that suits the species better. Most of the different leaders are trying to work out a . . . commonalty, a way for all metamorphs to cooperate, openly and lawfully. It isn't easy, it's not progressed far, in the long run it may be impossible, but we have to try, don't we? That's what I've been involved in, on behalf of my people." He wondered if she was a changeling herself, beneath the mask. What breed? If not, how closely did she identify with one of those races, and which? "It's led me into odd byways, yes, I’ve been initiated into certain secrets, because I needed the information so I could go home and suggest to my people the best courses for them to steer. Don't ask me too much."

  "I have to ask a few things," he rasped. "You, they, were very quick, very well prepared to react against . . . official actions. That doesn't sound like legality to me."

  "I admitted some activities are covert," she replied. "We, the leaders I've dealt with, we hope to phase those out, but meanwhile we've got to collaborate with the—you can call them gang lords if you insist, but the fact is that their ordinary, decent followers trust them." After another stillness: "The gang wars have practically ended. And the outright persecutions and the mob attacks by straight-gene humans. But metamorph history remembers, and tells metamorphs to stay prepared."

  Also, he thought, the maintenance of protections and of a communal structure was a strong moral factor by itself, giving cohesion, hope, meaning to life. Fireball—

  Norton sank back. "Por favor, I'm wrung dry," she whispered. "Can we just rest a while?"

  Compassion touched him. "Surely." His own bones seemed to go liquid.

  The car drove on, kilometer after kilometer, mostly through darkness and ruin. After a while Kenmuir made himself stop looking at the time.

  Norton sat leaned into her corner, eyes closed, maybe asleep. She had drawn the poncho close about her, revealing a shapely frame. Remarkable person, formidable, but he had an illogical sense of an inward vulnerability. Why was she engaged in this unhopeful cause? For the sake of her creatures, whichever they were? Hardly that alone. What had Lilisaire promised her?

  What had Lilisaire really promised him?

  —The stop jolted him from his inner darkness, back to the outer. Norton sat up. "I guess we've arrived," she said. Eagerness throbbed in the words. As the vehicle opened, she scrambled lithely out, all her energy regained. Young, Kenmuir decided. He himself felt stiff and chilled. Fifty-five wasn't old, not nowadays, but probably the years wore away the spirit as much as ever in the past. He followed her.

  Sky-glow above walls told of a settlement not far off. No doubt the building before him tapped its utilities. Windows steel-shuttered, the brick facade appeared in good condition, as nearly as he could tell through the gloom, but its neighbors crumbled empty and one was a rubble heap. Iscah wanted isolation, did he?

  Norton moved toward the door with a sudden hesitancy not due to the poor seeing. "I've never been here," she admitted. "I just met him once, at a . . . an organizational conference, and heard a little about what he does. Assorted technical jobs." For people who perhaps couldn't afford a regular service, or perhaps did not wish the work known, Kenmuir thought. "Carfax—Lilisaire's agent who briefed me mentioned him too, among possible contacts."

  Yes, Kenmuir thought, the Wardress had more operatives on Earth than Norton, some of them likely more active than she. He had a strong impression that she was carrying out her first mission for the Lunarian, because she happened to be the best qualified for these special circumstances. Or because she was the most powerfully motivated? . . . The others, though, at least gathered what information they could, information of every sort that might conceivably someday prove useful. Much of it would concern the Hetero-sphere, where unregistered facilities and unconforming lives were many. . . .

  The door swung back on hinges. Light spilled around the hulk of a female Titan. She gestured them to come inside, and closed the door behind them.

  The entry room seemed too small for her. But if you allowed for the stockiness demanded by the mass, she was a handsome woman, evidently of Near Eastern descent, neatly clad in blouse and trews. A knife at her hip, with knuckleduster haft, was the single disagreeable feature. When she spoke, the bass sounded educated and quite feminine: "Bienvenida, Señorita Tam and señor. I hope everything went well?"

  Tam? Kenmuir shot a glance at Norton. Yes, she'd have given her right name to the waiter, else he'd never have cooperated. "As far as I can tell, we got clean away," she answered.

  "Muy bien. Would you like to shed that coat, señor? The house is thoroughly screened and shielded." The Titan helped Kenmuir take the garment off while she added: "I am Soraya, Por favor, follow me." She laid the mesh across a chair and started down the hall, so soft-footed that the dry old floorboards made hardly a sound. He did feel them tremble.

  At the end of the house, a modern door contracted. The chamber beyond also belonged to the present era, cluttered though it was. Several rooms must have been demolished to make this large a space. The ceiling shone white on shelves, cabinets, benches, consoles, apparatus of physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, computation, and things Kenmuir did not recognize. Despite ventilator grilles, the air kept a faint acridity, smells of what happened here. Something in the background ticked.

  A man got up from a computer terminal. He was a Chemo, totally hairless, skin obsidian-black. The lean body, long skull and visage, pale eyes were nordic. He wore little more than a gray smock over a shirt and hose, but somehow he made it imperial. Yet he spoke quietly, in a rather high-pitched voice: "Buenas tardes, señorita and señor. Will you be seated?" He waved at tall stools. Clearly he did not mean to shake hands, bow, or otherwise salute. "Would you care for coffee?"

  "Gracias, no," Norton said. "I'm too charged." She turned to Kenmuir. "You?"

  "Nor I," he replied, truthfully enough. Something wet would have been rather welcome, as dry as his mouth had gone, but he didn't want to delay matters and wondered, besides, whether he could get anything past his gullet. The weariness in him had become a pulsing tension. Like Norton, he perched himself. Soraya loomed at their backs.

  "I am Iscah." Facing them, the man folded his arms, leaned against a lab bench, and talked methodically. "I take it that you, señorita, are Alice Tam, known too as Aleka Kame. It is prudent to make sure. Would you remove your mask? Soraya will assist you."

  Norton—no, Tam?—hesitated for an instant, then jerk
ed a nod. "Might as well, I suppose." She accompanied the Titan on a labyrinthine course to a medical couch and counter.

  "It is equally wise from your standpoint," Iscah remarked as she passed by. "If the pursuit inquires among patrons at the Asilo, it will obtain a description of you in your disguise. I assume it will find no reason to associate that with your real persona—" he grinned "—insofar as 'real' has meaning in this context."

  "Oh, I'm Aleka, all right," she flung back over her shoulder. "Anyhow, I was the last time I looked." The forlorn attempt at a jest appealed to Kenmuir.

  Iscah focused on him. “How shall I address you, señor?" he asked.

  The spaceman considered. What the Q, he wasn't a character in a historical thriller on the multi, required to act mysterious. He snapped forth his name and profession. "And I'd like to know what this rigmarole is about," he added. The roughness surprised him. Not his normal style.

  Iscah stayed cool. "We share that desire. Let us try to learn. What can you tell me of the situation, Captain?"

  Kenmuir swallowed. What should he tell, in this den of grotesquerie?

  "Go ahead," called the woman who tagged herself Aleka. "It's nothing to be ashamed of." After a moment: "And you won't proceed blindfold, will you, Iscah? Besides, I suspect having the facts spread around will upset those bastards."

  In for a penny, in for a pound, thought Kenmuir, harking back to centuried texts that had beguiled daycycles in space. But—He smiled ruefully. "I'm afraid I have very little in that line," he said. Indeed, a few sentences delivered his tale. "In spite of Lilisaire's animus against the Federation, I had no idea its police were aware of me till Mamselle Nor—Tam hauled me off."

  "'Animus,'" I scab murmured. "I can like a man who uses words of that kind."

  "I've no wish to become an outlaw, either," Kenmuir stated. "If the government is trying to stop this business, it must have a reason."

  "Necessarily a good reason?" rumbled Soraya. She took instruments from a case.

  "Let us first collect what further data we may," Iscah said. He walked off. "Over here, por favor."

  Electronic equipment was ranked along one wall. Kenmuir knew the object Iscah first picked up, a magnetic field mapper. He couldn't see what it read as it was moved across his torso, and Iscah's midnight countenance had turned expressionless. Across the room, Soraya worked with a delicacy incredible for those gigantic hands, teasing the life mask skin free of Aleka's. You could do the job alone, and no doubt Aleka had donned it thus, but removal without help took a long time if you weren't to hurt the delicate organism.

  Peculiar partnership, Kenmuir thought. Titan, gene-bred for strength and endurance, infantry to go where war machines could not; Chemo, hardy against radiation and pollution that would sicken or kill ordinary humans; both stemming from a few ancestors engineered to deal with things as long vanished as the governments and the fanaticisms that had ordered it. Beings obsolete, purposeless, except for what they could make of their lives by themselves. He could only guess at that. Plainly, Soraya was more than a bodyguard. Was Iscah more than a technician? Might they even be lovers? The idea seemed freakish at first, then touching, then tragic.

  Various instruments had been busy about his person. Iscah laid the last of them down, stepped back, and nodded. "You were right, Señorita Tam," he said, still imperturbable. "He carries a spy."

  The notion had barely skimmed over Kenmuir's mind. The utterance hit him like a fist. He snatched after breath. "No, impossible!" he cried. "How could anybody—-no way—"

  The ice-colored glance laid hold of his. "Let me explain," Iscah said. "The technique is not publicized, but a part of my business is to know such things. A conjoined set of molecular assemblers was slipped into you. You may think of it as a pseudo-virus. Obviously, the servitor in the lounge put it in the drink it gave you. A single drop of liquid would be ample to hold the nanomass involved. I would guess that the dropper was in a substituted finger. Did you later feel a trifle ill and fevered for a short while? . . . I thought so. The pseudo-virus was taking material from your bloodstream to multiply itself. When there were sufficient assemblers, they set to work, again using elements in your body, carbon, iron, calcium— I won't bore you with the list. The process was harmless per se, because the device they built masses less than a gram, neatly woven into your peritoneum near the diaphragm, and taps less than a microwatt from the metabolism of surrounding cells. Essentially, it is a circuit controlled by a simple computer with a hardwired program, although it does include a transponder for sonic-range vibrations."

  "I didn't have those details," Aleka said. Her voice came muffled through the skin being pulled over her head. "I'd just seen reports of tracers planted in people or animals for study purposes, and Lilisaire's agent warned me it can be done clandestinely."

  Yes, passed through Kenmuir. Lilisaire would think of that possibility. It was a trick she'd gladly play herself. "The, the thing can't radiate . . . enough for pickup at a distance . . . across background noise," he protested.

  "No, no," Iscah replied. "What it does is to detect an ordinary transmission line nearby—which means almost anywhere on Earth, you know—and tap in with a microsignal, an imposed modulation. Special equipment is necessary to recover, amplify, and interpret that weak an effect; but the cybercosm does not lack for special equipment. Hence it tracks your movements—through the air, too, since every vehicle must always be in contact with Traffic Control. And it conveys your speech. To listen in on what you hear, it has run a line up to the auditory canal—a submicroscopic thread, I assure you. Interruptions of the surveillance will be accidental and transitory, unless deliberately arranged as we have done for you."

  Rage exploded in Kenmuir. Suddenly he believed he understood what it meant to be raped. Not that he'd said or done anything intimate these past days. Nevertheless!

  Vaguely, he heard Iscah muse aloud: "I wonder whether the spy was able to eavesdrop on you inside Guthrie House. I have heard that that place is well screened, and you mentioned being lent a secure line when you called for further instructions. Presumably the number you called activated a shuntaround program as well. Still, I suggest you bear in mind the possibility that that agent of Lilisaire's is now compromised."

  "It's a, a violation of my Covenant rights," Kenmuir choked. "I never consented. I'm going straight to the nearest ombud and—" He strangled on his words.

  "And what?" asked Iscah sardonically. "Do you expect the miscreants will be found and punished? They are agents of the government, remember."

  "Why? Why?"

  "The secret's got to be that important," Aleka said. "Which means Lilisaire is right about the size of it."

  Unmasked, she came over to the men. Kenmuir stared. She had doffed her poncho too, revealing a body hard-muscled beneath spectacular curves, clad in plain tunic and slacks. The features were nearly as arresting. It was as if every bloodline on Earth had flowed together, harmoniously and vibrantly. Anyone who paid for biosculp could have any face desired, of course, but he felt sure hers was natural. Only nature had the originality to create all the little irregularities and uniquenesses that brought it so alive.

  "What are you going to do to get justice?" she challenged him.

  Energy drained away. His shoulders stooped. "What can I do?" he mumbled. "I'm marked. A medic will have to dissect this thing out of me."

  "That would take at least a day, probably more, in a clinic where they have healing enhancements," Iscah said. "I don't, and to go there would defeat the purpose. Fortunately, I can set up a resonator that will burn out the circuit by overloading it. No significant damage to you, as low as the power levels are. Any discomfort will be slight and brief. Later, when it is convenient, you can have your surgery. I do not think I would take the trouble. The remnants will be inert and unnoticeable."

  Heartened, Kenmuir drew himself erect. "What then?"

  "We'll talk about that," Aleka said. "You two will help us, won't you?"

  So
raya rejoined them. "We certainly will," sounded above their heads like summer thunder.

  "Why?" Kenmuir floundered.

  Iscah gave a parched chuckle. "In due course I shall present the lady Lilisaire with a substantial bill."

  "No, I mean—the risk—"

  "We live with risk all our lives, here," Soraya said quietly. "I have a feeling this is a gamble more worth taking than most."

  "Is it?" Kenmuir wondered. "What can you, your people, gain?"

  "Maybe nothing. Maybe much. We'll see."

  He looked from eyes to eyes. The fury had left him, unless as a coldness deep inside. He was confused, and a peaceable man, and the doubts were swarming afresh. "You can't have any notion of. . . overthrowing the Federation. You aren't dement. And I, I wouldn't go along. There may after all be a, an excellent reason to keep the secret."

  "In that case," Aleka said, "they could have told you so like honest po'e. Plenty of information's not allowed loose, but everybody knows why. How to scramble a driver robot to make the vehicle crash onto a target, for instance. But no, they broke in on you, your perfectly legitimate inquiries, before you'd even begun them." She was still for a moment. The hidden ticking seemed louder than before. "I don't want anarchy either," she finished low. "But I believe we've run afoul of a criminal conspiracy."