Wolf Among the Stars-ARC

by Steve White

“Mom!” They embraced, and he looked around at the stragglers of the dispersing crowd. “It’s over, isn’t it? Oh, God, Mom, I’m so sorry!”

  “Don’t worry about it. We’ll visit the grave together later. You remember Svyatog’Korth, don’t you?”

  “Of course. Thank you for coming, sir.” Andrew Roark had known the Lokar as an occasional visitor during his youth and had always regarded him with awe as a tangible link with the heroic past, in which Svyatog had saved Andrew’s parents from certain death—twice, in the case of his mother. Arguably, he had done the same thing for this world of Earth.

  “As I told your mother, I was fortunate to be on Earth at the right time. And it is good to see you after so many years, Captain Roark. I have followed your career with great interest, ever since your distinguished service at Upsilon Lupus.” Svyatog’s alien eyes flickered from one human to the other, and then back again, and understanding flickered in their amber depths. He hitched his fur-collared cloak around his neck against the cold. (The Lokaron found the attitude of modern humans toward fur-wearing disingenuous if not hypocritical, coming from a race with such a bloodthirsty history.) “But now urgent affairs call me away, and I’m sure the two of you have much to talk about—hopefully, Katy, not including any complaints about Captain Roark’s failure to marry and present you with grandchildren, of which I’m sure he has grown even more weary than I have.”

  Katy spluttered with mock indignation, and Andrew gave a laugh that was clearly pro forma. Svyatog’s eyes gave the two of them another appraising glance, and then he was gone, walking with the careful steps of age and high gravity toward a large, ornate Lokaron air-car.

  The towering alien was barely out of earshot when Andrew turned to his mother. “I didn’t tell you why I was detained at the Academy—”

  “It’s all right, dear. I know you weren’t allowed to talk about it.”

  “And I’m still not. But I’m going to anyway.” He drew a deep breath. “Admiral Arnstein is dead.”

  “What?” Katy stared at him round-eyed for a second, then her head slumped and she glanced back toward the grave site she had just departed. “Jesus! It seems like all the good ones are going!” Then she drew a deep breath and took control of herself. “But why hasn’t it been in the news? How did he die?”

  “Suicide.” Andrew met his mother’s incredulous stare and nodded grimly. “That’s why they’re covering it up.”

  “Suicide! I can‘t believe it! Are you sure?”

  “Trust me, it’s true. You see, I was the one who found him. That’s why they’ve held me for the investigation. I was lucky to get away as soon as I did. And I’m still under orders to keep it under wraps.”

  “I can imagine.” Her greenish-hazel eyes sharpened as the shock of what she’d heard wore off. “But if you’re not supposed to talk about it, why are you telling me all this?”

  “Because I’ve got to talk to someone. You’re the only one I know I can trust—and it doesn’t hurt that you’ve still got debts you can call in from people in the American and CNE governments.”

  Her eyes sharpened still further. “There’s more to this than you’ve told me.”

  “Yes, quite a lot.” Andrew glanced around nervously, making sure there was no one in earshot. And there was no reason for any ranged audio pickups to be focused on this place. “As I said, I was the first one on the scene. And . . . I took something from it.”

  “You what?”

  “I know, I know,” he said miserably. “And I would never have considered doing it, except . . .” He looked around again, then reached into a pocket of his greatcoat. “I found this on his desk, beside his body.” He opened his hand, revealing the little datachip case marked with the odd silhouette. He let her stare at it for a second or two before clasping his hand and putting it back in his pocket.

  She met his eyes. “The Black Wolf Society! So they are for real!”

  “And, it would seem, connected in some way with Admiral Arnstein. Connected, perhaps, in some way that caused him to find it necessary to do away with himself.”

  She stared. Clearly, she hadn’t allowed herself to think this far ahead. Roark sympathized. He’d had more time than she for doing some very hard thinking.

  But she recovered quickly, which he knew shouldn’t surprise him. He sometimes had to remind himself that in her youth his mother had been involved in intelligence work. One such operation had left her, by the human medical definition of the time, dead. It had been the beginning of her association with Svyatog, who had been responsible for both her death and her rebirth.

  “Now I understand why you didn’t leave this where it was, and why you don‘t turn it over to the Internal Investigations Division now,” she said levelly. “If Arnstein was involved, then there’s no telling how high it’s gone, or how deep. Naturally you’ve run the chip on your own computer.”

  “Of course. And, of course, it’s in code—and not one I recognize. Not that it would help much if I did recognize it. It takes a full-time expert to read this stuff. Naturally, the Navy has some very sophisticated codebreaking computers—”

  “But you can’t exactly use them for this, can you?” She shook her head. “Andy, I think this is something too big for us.”

  “I know. And I have no right to involve you. But as I said before: I have no way of knowing who I can trust. The only place I could think to turn was to you and Dad. And now . . .” He glanced toward the endless rows of headstones, which had just gained a new fellow, and his misery deepened.

  Katy followed his glance, and she found she had a few unshed tears left after all.

  “Well,” she said, a little too briskly, “let’s at least get out of this wind. I’ve got a hotel room here in Arlington. You’re on leave, I suppose?”

  “Yes—indefinite leave. They let me go after all the questioning. But I’m supposed to keep the IID appraised of my movements.”

  “And coming here was a perfectly natural thing to do. All right. Going home with me to Colorado tomorrow will also be perfectly natural. It’s pretty isolated there. We’ll be able to consider our options.”

  “All right. But before we go. . .”

  “Of course, dear.”

  They turned and walked toward the freshly dug grave.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The following day, they took a suborbital transport from Washington to Denver, where Katy’s air-car was waiting. Then they headed west, to Andrew Roark’s boyhood home. It was a clear winter day, and the sunlight gleamed blindingly on snow-capped peaks that rose over pine-clothed lower slopes.

  Some people who’d known Ben Roark had found it surprising that he had chosen the Colorado Rockies as a retirement locale. Somewhere in the West Indies would have seemed more in character: the Caymans, where he had spent some time before the unforgettable events of 2030, or perhaps Jamaica, whose rum he had always appreciated—appreciated to excess, as some might have said. But Andrew thought he understood what had been going through his parents’ minds when they’d chosen this place, in the spectacularly mountainous heart of their country that had then been in the process of reclaiming the soul it had seemingly lost.

  Now he was surer of that than ever, as the air-car passed over the throat-hurtingly beautiful valley that held the Maroon Bells—Snowmass Wilderness Area and the town of Aspen. They continued on over the sun-gleaming upland lakes and beyond, where the trees that gave the town its name—now, alas, denuded of the soft golden autumn foliage they had worn a month ago—covered the lower slopes beneath a brutally rugged crag. At the foot of that mountain, and seeming to belong there, was the rambling stone-and-timber house he hadn’t seen in far too long.

  After they landed and settled in, he got a fire going in the massive stone fireplace at one end of the cathedral-ceilinged great room, flanked by windows that gave a panoramic view of the ranges to the west, while Katy mixed drinks. Then they accessed the datachip. The fire, unheeded, burned low while they studied the readout.

&n
bsp; “Can you make anything at all of this gibberish?” Katy finally asked. “I know you’re not a crypto specialist, but—”

  “No, I’m not. But I’ve had some basic familiarization. And, as a souvenir of that course, I’ve got some elementary codebreaking software that my own computer can run.”

  “Any luck with it?”

  “Very little. It helps to have some idea of what you’re looking for. So I’ve tried a few of the codebreaking software, and broken a few words.”

  “Surely you can build on that.”

  “Not when it isn’t a straight alphabet-based code. I’m sure this could be broken—there’s no such thing as an unbreakable code, although various people throughout history have thought they had one. But all I’ve been able to do is establish that certain words do occur in this stuff. One is Admiral Arnstein’s name.”

  “No surprise,” Katy put in.

  “Another is ‘Black Wolf Society.’ I don’t suppose that should be a surprise either.”

  “I suppose not. But I’m still having trouble adjusting to the idea that it really exists. Well, no, I guess there’s never really been any doubt as to its existence. But like everybody else, I’ve always assumed that it’s just a crime syndicate, and that the wilder stories about it are just media sensationalism. Sort of like the Sicilian Mafia in the last century. But now I have to wonder.”

  “In addition to those, I ran through anything I could think of that had any connection with Admiral Arnstein. I got occurrences of quite a few of them, but most were pretty innocuous and useless: words like ‘Academy’ and ‘Earth’ and so forth. But a couple of my longer shots paid off.” Andrew paused significantly. “One was ‘Kogurche.’”

  Katy looked up sharply. “Well, after all, that was the system in Lupus where our confrontation with Gev-Rogov began in 2057, leading to the war a decade later. So I suppose it’s not too surprising.”

  “No, it isn’t. But I’ve saved the best for last.” Andrew gave another unconsciously dramatic pause. “‘Admiral Valdes.’”

  Katy looked up sharply. “What made you include him in your search?”

  “Nothing, specifically. I just threw into the pot the names of all the prominent people I could think of who’ve been associated with Admiral Arnstein. And four years ago, Valdes went through the Strategic College—older and more senior in rank than most people are when they start it, but he was a special protégé of Admiral Arnstein, who had just taken charge of the Academy. He was grooming Valdes for Chief of Space Operations. He was bitterly disappointed when Valdes abruptly retired—”

  “—And went into CNE politics, where he’s had a meteoric rise,” Katy finished for him, not troubling to keep the distaste out of her voice. “So, this is all you’ve got?”

  “I’m afraid so. And I don’t know who else I can trust to go to for advice—or, for that matter, who would have anything to offer.”

  Silence fell, and stayed fallen for a while. Then Katy visibly reached a decision. She looked her son in the eye. “There might be one person. You see, your father knew Valdes. He met him . . . oh, it must have been more than ten years ago, because it was before the war. And he was always very reticent about what they said to each other.”

  “Really? I never knew that. But . . .” Andrew trailed to an awkward halt. “Uh, but what good does that do us now? I mean . . . that is . . . well, Dad is . . .”

  Katy smiled. “Don’t worry. I haven’t lost my marbles yet. There’s something else you don’t know. A few years ago, when we were having to face the fact that your father didn’t have very much longer to live, Svyatog came here on one of his visits and presented us with a gift. At first, we were reluctant to accept it—and only partly because it was extravagantly expensive, not that that’s any object to Svyatog. But we finally did, while your father was still mentally alert.” She held his eyes. “It was a full set of state-of-the-art uploading equipment, with all the accessories, including the ability to project an all-senses virtual image, not just a voice.”

  It took several heartbeats before what Andrew had heard registered on him. Several more passed before he could speak. “Are you saying that Dad is . . .?”

  Katy nodded gravely. “Yes, he is. So am I, incidentally, just for future reference.” Her lips quirked upward in a smile of almost invisible brevity. Then she sighed, and her eyes strayed to the mountains outside the windows. “I haven’t accessed it yet. I think it will be a while before I do—before I can. But you may want to do it now, if you feel up to it.”

  Andrew sank back in his chair and tried to sort out his feelings.

  What was antiseptically called “uploading”—copying a brain’s memories through a painless but lengthy combination of external scanners and probing nanomachines, and storing them digitally—was fairly new technology even to the Lokaron. At first, its inventors had thought they were on the brink of being able to transfer those memories to the brain of a clone of the brain‘s owner, thus achieving a kind of serial immortality. That dream (nightmare, as some might have said) had proven illusory. The process took finite time, during which an organic brain, unlike a passive piece of neural-net software, could not accept such an imprinting.

  That digital program could, however, be installed in a computer—a very special, very powerful, very complex, and very expensive computer. The multi-terabyte software then became self-aware, able to run whatever other programs were available to the computer, including those allowing it to communicate interactively.

  The technology had been completely unavailable to humans before the advent of a fully open and equal trading relationship with Gev-Harath. Even now, it found few customers on Earth. Its hideous expense was only part of the reason. Most humans were only a few generations away from belief in ghosts, and for them there was something flesh-crawlingly unnatural about it.

  “So,” Andrew temporized, “is he . . . I mean, is it here?”

  “Yes. We had the computer installed in the basement. Do you want to see it?”

  Andrew wasn’t absolutely sure he did, but he could not refuse. He followed his mother down the dimly lit stairs.

  The basement was as he remembered, and the computer wasn’t as big as he had expected. In fact it was desktop-sized, and while it had the unmistakable look of Lokaron industrial nanotech, it held nothing foreign to Andrew’s experience. As Admiral Arnstein’s chief of staff, he had dealt with hardware just as advanced as this. And the keyboard interface was positively old-fashioned.

  Katy sat down in a perfectly ordinary swivel chair and booted the system. The holographically projected monitor screen appeared in midair, and as Katy began to bring up programs, Andrew saw Lokaron ideographs. He was familiar with them—of necessity, in his line of work—but his mother had spent years among the Lokaron, and she worked at a speed that made them flash by too rapidly for him to read. Finally she nodded, stood up, and took from the desk a perfectly standard-looking Lokaron virtual-reality headset manufactured for the human market: a light openwork helmet. She held it out to her son and spoke with great steadiness.

  “As I’ve said, I’m not ready for this. I’m not certain I ever will be, but I imagine I will, someday. Just not yet. Besides, I hardly even need it. You see, I still have him here. I’ll look at some chair, or step around a corner, and it’s as though he’s there. We were married a long time, you know.”

  “I know,” her son echoed faintly.

  “So if we’re to try this approach to getting the answers we need, you’re going to have to be the one to do it. It’s not fair, but there it is. If you don’t feel you can—”

  “No, I’ll do it. On some level, I even want to do it.” he reached out and took the headset.

  Katy smiled, as though at the confirmation of something she’d more than half expected. “It’s all set up. All you have to do is put on the headset and speak a greeting. It’s programmed to recognize your voice pattern. I’ll be upstairs.” And she was gone.

  Andrew held the headset in his
hands. He was hardly unfamiliar with it. Since Lokaron technology had become common on Earth—even manufactured there, within certain limits—the use of shared VR hookups had become a common means of communication. Indeed, it had probably attained acceptance more easily than it had among the Lokaron themselves, whose upper crust still regarded it as just a bit arriviste.

  Yes, he had used it often enough. But the people he’d used it with had been alive. And they hadn’t been his father.

  He drew a deep breath, sat down in front of the computer’s video pickup, and put the practically weightless latticework frame over his head.

  As always, there was no pain or any other physical sensation as the direct neural induction took hold. There was only the usual indescribable wavering and fading of the senses . . .

  He was sitting in the familiar study upstairs, in a chair whose armrests were upholstered in authentic leather, which was showing its age—he could feel that, under his fingers. Across from him, Ben Roark sat in the chair that had always been his favorite. There was a fire going in the fireplace, and he could feel the heat on his face. The wood must have been damp, judging from the slight smoky smell. Svyatog, as Katy had indicated, had spared no expense.

  “Hello, Dad,” he said, almost choking on his knowledge that what he was addressing was really software.

  Ben Roark looked up. He looked essentially the same as he had the last time Andrew Roark had seen him in the flesh. The programming must have been done in the summer, for his bald scalp looked slightly sunburned. (Svyatog, trying to be helpful, had once told him that baldness in humans was, from the Lokaron perspective, rather an improvement. It hadn’t helped.) He smiled the crooked smile that was the only sort of smile the reconstruction of his face allowed. Andrew was glad that reconstruction had been left as he remembered it, not edited out to leave the unravaged youthful face that he had never seen save in old photos.

  “Hello, Andy. Since we’re talking like this, I gather that I’m . . . well, you know . . .”