by Colin Kapp
“The Sensitives?” asked Tun Tse, who had been following the conversation carefully.
“Exactly! On Mayo they interbred and multiplied, and by a rigid application of their philosophy they have produced some individuals with talents remarkable by anyone’s standards. But even the Sensitives had no idea of the extent of the sensory fields they were developing. Talents began showing up to deal with situations they didn’t even know existed. If my information’s correct they even have developed a Chaos Seer, one who seems to be able to read the patterns of Chaos directly.”
“How probable is that?” Delfan asked.
“It’s certainly not impossible. The human organism is sensitive to heat, light, and sound waves. I see no good reason why it should not also be sensitive to entropic waves.”
“Surely the human being has skin, eyes, and ears as receptors for heat, light, and sound—and there is an evolutionary advantage in using them. But I don’t see any such justification for the reception of Chaos.”
“No?” asked Saraya, and there was a light of faint amusement in his eyes. “Did you never get a feeling of foreboding? Did you never get a hunch about the outcome of something? And how about a leap of intuition? I think that everyone can read Chaos to a limited extent, but we never bother to develop the ability. But just suppose this Chaos Seer does exist and can be persuaded to work with Wildheit, then we might begin to get some of the answers we’re seeking.”
“I really don’t see how a seer would help.”
“Imagine the advantages of having real-time Chaos sensing and interpretation combined in something as small and mobile as a man—and working in cooperation with a prime target for the Chaos Weapon. First off, the enemy wouldn’t be able to get at Wildheit without his having advance warning. Secondly, we’d have someone who could stare back up the barrel, so to speak, with a strong probability of eventually being able to locate the source.”
“That makes some sense,” said Tun Tse. “But the Sensitives have a reputation for being highly insular, and Mayo has now become a forbidden world. So it may be difficult to get the cooperation of their seer.”
“But consider their position. Mayo’s stuck right out on the fringes of the Milky Way. They’ve everything to lose if the Federation falls to pieces because, like it or not, the Federation ships are what keeps the aliens at bay. If our defenses began to crumble, the inhabitants of Mayo would be nearly the first to go. And alien races don’t take prisoners …”
“That argument sounds convincing to us, but I doubt if it would cut much ice on a Rim world before the alien threat became a reality. Remember, they have never seen any of the action for themselves. They don’t even know what things are waiting for them out there.”
“Then it’s up to Marshal Wildheit to convince them. Jym, that’s your first job. Go to Mayo and secure yourself a Chaos Seer.”
FOUR
FOR his journey from Terra to the galaxy’s edge where Mayo 4 orbited its own substantial sun, Wildheit was fortunate that both planets were situated on the same edge of the Milky Way’s great sprawl. Even so, the traversing of some seventeen thousand light-years in a vessel as small as the patrol-ship was no minor undertaking. Five days out of Terra in the Gegenschein, he made the first jump from the sub-light speed into subspace and emerged a mere six days later with nearly ten thousand light-years already behind him. The first leap had not been a critical one: its function had merely been to bring him to a point from which more careful jumps could place him finally within sub-light range of his objective.
From that point on, observation and calculation occupied the majority of his time. A further three-and-a-half-light-year subspace jaunt left him with barely the similar distance yet to travel. He calculated each successive jump to halve progressively the remaining distance. Unfortunately, there was a minimum distance in a subspace leap which the little ship could undertake, and if he overshot or undershot his target by too great a margin he might easily find himself with six months’ sub-light travel before he could make planet-fall. In this respect he envied the great spaceliners which, on a routine trip, could regularly drop out of subspace after a single leap that usually put them within a few days out from their intended ports of call.
He envied, too, the recreational facilities of the great liners. The single cabin of the Gegenschein and the ladders to the store and engine decks below provided the only area available for movement and exercise. Furthermore the light artificial gravity allowed his muscles to slacken to such a degree that he knew contact with a world of terrestial-norm gravity would be tiring and painful until his body had reestablished its tone. At such times of reduced efficiency, the symbiotic attachment of the god, Coul, on his shoulder would become a conscious, nagging ache that penetrated through to the very narrow of his bones.
Coul himself was always more restless when in space. The unchanging scene offered no sustenance for his insatiable curiosity about things human. He would flicker on his ceaseless excursions across other dimensions and return despondently to Wildheit’s shoulder with the heavy-clawed twist of psychic feet. The pulse which marked each beat of his return was a fresh stimulus to a set of sensitive nerves in Wildheit’s upper arm.
Despite all the discomfort, however, several reasons justified the man’s acceptance of the symbiotic god’s tenure on his shoulder. As they dropped into real-space and Wildheit began to make the calculations for the next jump, Coul suddenly crouched in quiet contemplation.
“Marshal, I’m in communion with Talloth. Marshal Hover wishes to speak with you through him.”
“Strange! We’re still in FTL transmission range. But I suppose he may have a valid reason for using communion.”
“Talloth is convinced of his need. Else we would not use our special roads to carry your pedestrian thoughts.”
“Then let’s make the contact and find out what Talloth is so convinced about.”
“Breathe,” said Coul.
The actual period of communion was an experience Wildheit hated. Of all the paranormal things associated with the symbiotic deities, he regarded this one as a true invasion of his body. He had learned to come to terms with the ache in his shoulder, but to hear himself speak with another man’s voice was something to which he never became accustomed.
“Jym!” The voice that came from his own mouth was recognizably Hover’s, but the pitch and timbre were altered by the differences in his own vocal cords.
“What’s on your mind, Cass?”
“I’m using communion because I don’t know who might be monitoring the FTL bands. Subject: our dark friend Saraya.”
“What of him?”
“Some little pieces that don’t fit. When you asked at the meeting who built the weapon, he merely countered with another question.”
“I remember. He asked me how many alien races might be in the universe.”
“Then consider this. As you know, I saw the Chaos Weapon operating on Edel. But the target character which triggered the disaster wasn’t one of our rarer intellects. He came from far outspace in an unidentifiable spacecraft. The planet he gave as his place of origin doesn’t even exist. Somehow he seemed to know the disaster was coming, and he even managed to delay it until the snow-cat was out of range of the effect. Saraya called him one of a kind and said that wherever he went, was where they pointed the Chaos Weapon.”
“Where you leading, Cass?”
“Simply that I’m damn sure Saraya knows a lot more about all this than he’s admitting. The men who came in the snow-cat managed to get someone else out of Edel. I think this was the individual who jumped me and then ran the cat over my legs. He gave me a message for Saraya by name. Said to tell him Kasdeya sent it.”
“The devil he did! What was Saraya’s reaction?”
“He denied either recognizing the name or that the message meant anything to him. Then, get this, he implied I’d probably imagined the whole thing. He probably doesn’t know that every space-marshal makes a permanent recording of eve
ry second of his day. I checked out the suit recorder later, and the message was there loud and clear.”
“What was the message?”
“Quote: Don’t try to join the game until you can give it a name and understand the rules.”
“What do you make of that?”
“Nothing so far. But I have personal doubts that we are looking for an alien device as such. I suspect Saraya’s playing some sort of double game, and since you’re at the operating end of the mission, I thought you ought to know.”
“Thanks a lot, Cass. I’ll keep what you say in mind. By the way, how are your legs?”
“Coming along well. I went to see them yesterday. In the culture medium they’re now about eighteen years in equivalent age. I remember when my own were like that. Clean, firm—beautiful. It’s a pity they have to age them to match the ones I lost.”
“I wonder if they could furnish me with a new set of brains,” said Wildheit ruefully. “This set is getting all clogged up with questions that don’t have any answers.”
The communion finished, Wildheit returned to his navigation. Because of the turbulent flow and eddies formed where the gravitational field of the Milky Way was lapped by the great tides of deep-space, there was no dead reckoning he could use to chart the absolute position of Mayo. So there was an element of luck in the final jump which terminated to leave him no more than a one week sub-light trip to the planet of the Sensitives.
Finally emerging from the darkness of a desert strip where he had landed, Wildheit came to the edge of the capital city. A broad river stood between him and his goal, its dark waters reflecting the random lights from the streets along the farther bank. He searched for a ferry, but instead came upon a bridge. It was a wide and ornate bridge, but unlit and probably seldom used, underscoring what his space survey had told him about the city’s isolation. As he started across the bridge the god on his shoulder shifted expectantly, as if it read something of menace in the strange city beyond.
Wildheit had left the crawler near the patrol-ship, about six kilometers out. Experience had taught him that a space-marshal gained fewer enemies in a strange community if he made a quiet approach on foot rather than arriving with a full show of strength. Surely a man who walked to his destination appeared less ominous than one who came in an armored crawler fully capable of resolving a major outworld war. He paid for this philosophy with aching feet and a broad pain in his left shoulder where the brown, leathery, insubstantial god gripped with an inseparable attachment.
As he traversed the bridge, his emotions were mixed. Social contact with a space culture as isolated as that of the Sensitives presented a psychological mountain he was ever tired of climbing. The tremendous adjustments of insight and outlook needed to adapt to a strange set of mores, beliefs, and circumstances was for him the equivalent of an intellectual death and rebirth. Nowhere, even on Terra, would he ever meet anyone able to appreciate his own peculiar views of the galaxy and its peoples. Always the onus was on him to hunt for sense and clues in any given situation, and to bring his perception down to within the narrow constraints imposed by a crucially limiting environment. Though practice had given him proficiency in the art, repetition had done nothing to lessen the mental torment of the experience.
In front of him on the farther bank he began to make out namesigns written in Alpha Intergalactic characters. This suggested the dominant tongue would be a dialect of one of the thirty-seven space languages he had permanently memorized for use on assignments round the stars. As he walked, Wildheit called up the mnemonics relating to the Alpha tongues and tried to refresh his memory. Even from across the water it was obvious that the city was less advanced than his space survey at first had suggested. Here was a fair example of arrested pretechnological development, although there was abundant evidence of the use of electricity for lighting. Such an anachronism was not uncommon in communities founded by dissident colonists after the Great Exodus from Terra.
The end of the bridge was guarded by twin gatehouses and a barbed metal gate. The structure itself proclaimed an element of paranoia and at the same time defined the technological capabilities of those it was designed to exclude. Wildheit estimated that given the necessity he could have taken such defenses without even breaking stride. At the gate he grasped the knotted summons rope. This evoked a gaunt bell so massive that its chime must have awakened half the city.
Old lamps were lit above his head, dim and inefficient, yet driving back the shades from the square before the gate.
“Who are you, who dare come in darkness?”
“Space-Marshal Wildheit out from Terra on the orders of the Galactic Council. I wish to speak with someone in authority about a Chaos seer.”
“You’re from outworld? You are forbidden to land.”
“I have already landed. I’m on Federation business.”
“Mayo doesn’t recognize the Federation.”
“That’s unimportant. We protect you, nonetheless.”
“Come back in daylight. I’ll see if anyone wishes to talk with you.”
“Find someone now. I’ve traveled far, and the matter’s too urgent for delay.”
“Wait, then. I’ll see what can be done.”
Wildheit turned to the parapet and seated himself upon it, marveling at the naiveté of a community which apparently believed security could be guaranteed by an iron gate.
About an hour later the gate was opened. An old, white-haired man beckoned him to enter. Behind him, dark-clad watchmen armed with short white sticks scowled uneasily at his entry. Wildheit was not deceived; the way the white sticks were handled suggested they were weapons of a surely lethal kind.
“I am Pilon,” said the old man testily. “I was brought from my bed at your insistence. I hope you’ve something important to say.”
“An importance that brought me five kilo-parsecs to say it. Do you have authority here?”
“I’m one of the Elders. For you that will have to suffice.”
Wildheit looked at the circle of scowling watchmen. Suspicion and mistrust were written on every face. The Federation was not popular on Mayo, it seemed.
“Is there somewhere private where we can talk?”
“Perhaps! But first let me have your hand. I need to read your intent. There are many we dare not allow in the city.”
Wonderingly, Wildheit extended his left hand, and the old man laid his upon it and closed his eyes as if to concentrate. Meanwhile each watchman kept his weapon raised and pointed as if prepared for an immediate execution should the old man’s doubts be less than satisfied. Finally Pilon spoke.
“He comes in peace, and has great need. Release him to me. I’ll take the responsibility.”
The watchmen appeared doubtful. “You take too much on yourself, Pilon. There are others who will have to be informed. They may fetch him. Either way, you will give an account to the Conclave of Elders.”
“So it is written,” said the old man, and he took hold of Wildheit’s arm. “Come, I’ve chambers close enough. There we can talk.”
Wildheit allowed himself to be led off the bridge and into the narrow, untidy streets beyond. The roads were sandy, bearing the occasional imprint of an iron-wheeled cart but no evidence of mechanical transport. The buildings were largely massive masonry and rough-hewn timber, and the architecture appeared to depend on individual whim rather than on customary style. Thus the structures were simplistic and given to unexpected changes in form and outline. Under the small, wan lamps, the effect was somewhat feudal, yet giving the impression of great permanence.
“What did you read from the laying on of your hand?” asked the marshal conversationally as they walked.
“I learned you are expected, but not welcome,” said Pilon enigmatically. “It’s dangerous for you to be here.”
“You take great pains to guard your city gates. I find that difficult to understand, since none but the Sensitives occupy Mayo.”
“There are degrees of sensitivity. The rare
r strains need protection from contamination, and the lesser need protection from the rarer. It’s a difficult matter.”
They entered a large, timbered house, and Pilon reached his hand to take Wildheit’s outer garments. The marshal shook his head.
“There’s no need. My suit automatically adjusts for temperature and contains many things I might possibly need.”
“As you wish!” The old man was scanning Wildheit’s face with a searching look. Coul quivered nervously on the marshal’s shoulder. The god was plainly apprehensive about their situation despite its overall calm. Even Wildheit began to experience a strong sense of foreboding.
The old man began again: “You’re a strange man, Marshal. You carry more death in your pockets than Mayo has seen in all her human history. My eyes won’t tell me, but I sense another being on your shoulder. You represent those with the bloodiest of pasts and an even bloodier future. Yet you are a man with a wisdom and humanity that makes birds sing and stars shine. It must be very terrifying and painful to be you.”
“Let’s get down to business,” said Wildheit.
They had entered a small, book-lined room furnished only with a few plain chairs and a table. When they were seated, Pilon looked at Wildheit with questioning eyes, but his attention seemed to be divided to rest partially beyond the room’s thick walls. In the darkness beyond the mullioned windows slight noises were beginning to disturb the night.
“What’s your problem, Marshal?”
“Chaos. I assume you know what Chaos is?”
“Reflections of the slow death of the universe. It has many mysteries for us.”
“And for us. That’s what brings me here. The Galactic Federation appeals for your help. Somebody or something is tampering with the patterns of Chaos. They’ve forged it into a selective weapon. This weapon is being used against key individuals, most of whom are vital links in the future of man’s tenure in space.”