Wolf Among the Stars-ARC

by Steve White

  “But,” said Andrew, “I was under the impression that he had been reassigned to the Lupus frontier by that time.”

  “Indeed he had. The assassination of the Kogurche system’s ruler in 2057, and the subsequent charge by Gev-Rogov that humans were responsible, had destabilized that region of space, and the Harathon—particularly Hov-Korth, with its special relationship with the CNE—were sufficiently concerned to send their best intelligence operatives. In the matter of the assassination, Reislon had come to smell a rat.” Andrew’s respect for the translator software went up another notch. “He became convinced that the Rogovon accusations were not entirely unfounded, but that the humans in question represented not the CNE government but the Black Wolf Society, which wished to incite a war. What’s more, in the course of his investigation he had uncovered indications that the Black Wolf Society was exhibiting an interest in the Imperial Temple. This last caused him to recall his earlier conversations with me, and he put two and two together. He then arranged a leave of absence and came here to Tizath-Asor to take counsel with me.

  “At this point my inhibitions dissolved and I told him everything I knew. We agreed that the Black Wolf’s curiosity about the Imperial Temple could have but one cause.”

  “I have reason to believe,” said Andrew carefully, “that shortly after this, in 2064, Reislon communicated a vaguely worded warning about the Black Wolf Society to his superiors in Hov-Korth and then dropped from sight after the war.”

  “The vague wording was doubtless a result of my entreaties to him to be discreet and conceal my identity, which must have placed definite limits on his use of the information I had given him. And as for him dropping from sight . . .” Persath took on what Andrew’s acquaintance with the Lokaron told him was a look of sly caution. “Yes. The human-Rogovon war broke out in 2066, despite his best efforts, for he was deeply concerned with averting it.”

  “Was he?” Andrew left it at that, not mentioning that Reislon had been working for both sides of that war simultaneously, in addition to his official employers. He didn’t even try to relate Reislon’s triple game and his antiwar sentiments to each other, for his head was spinning with the implications. There would be time for that when he had more information.

  “Yes, although I was never entirely clear on why. And afterward, disgusted, he vanished . . . as far as most were concerned.”

  “But not you,” Rachel stated rather than asked, before Andrew could.

  Persath stood up slowly and looked down on them from Lokaron height. “Reislon and I are working toward, if not the same goal, then goals which are not incompatible.”

  “So are we,” Andrew risked saying.

  “Especially,” Rachel added, “in light of your recent communication with my father. I can’t believe that was unconnected with all this. Coincidence isn’t that hardworking.”

  “You are correct. Your father contacted me because he had been contacted by Reislon.” Rachel drew in a hissing breath, but said nothing. “I told him little he had not already heard from Reislon. It is my sincere hope that whatever knowledge I imparted to him had no connection with his death.”

  His suicide, Andrew mentally amended.

  “You too are correct,” Persath told Andrew. “The three of us are now linked in this—as is Reislon, although he does not know it as yet. There is only one solution: we must consult with him.”

  “You know where he is?” Andrew asked.

  “Yes—but I would rather not say. The fewer who know, the better. We will use my personal ship to go to him. I suggest you return to your lodgings and prepare yourselves. I will communicate with you directly, rather than through your embassy—and I must insist that you not involve them.”

  “No argument,” Andrew muttered.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The great interstellar liners, freighters, and men-of-war were strictly orbit-to-orbit ships, built in space and never touching a planetary surface, where their weight would have wrecked them. The consequent economies of lightweight construction more than made up for the inconvenience of surface-to-orbit interface via shuttles.

  However, given reactionless drives and transition gates, there was no reason why a surface-to-surface vessel could not be given interstellar capability, if money was no object, as it was not to Persath’Loven.

  He sent word to their hotel as promised, with instructions for meeting him at the private-vessel annex of the city’s spaceport. They packed some basic necessities, and Rachel met Andrew in his room.

  “Do you realize how many gender stereotypes you’re shattering, being ready before me?” asked Andrew, looking up from the packing process he still hadn’t completed.

  “Dinosaur!” She stuck out her tongue. “I just wonder how Leong is going to react when he finds out we’re gone.”

  “Have a stroke, I imagine,” Andrew predicted, going on with his packing.

  “I hope not. He’s been helpful, after all, and . . . and what, exactly, is that?”

  There was no apology in Andrew’s voice as he held up the weapon he had been about to toss into his bag. “It’s called an M-3 gauss pistol—a standard Navy sidearm.” With which your father spattered his brains over his office, flashed through his mind, only to be sternly suppressed. “It has a number of highly desirable qualities. One is that it’s manufactured entirely from materials that can get past ordinary customs scanners, which is why I was able to bring it from Earth without having to answer any awkward questions. Another is that it can be used inside a space vehicle without jeopardizing hull integrity.”

  “But . . . do you really expect to need it?”

  “I have no way of knowing what to expect. So I’ve done my best to be prepared for all eventualities.”

  She held his eyes with hers—eyes oddly at variance with her overall appearance, for they were that curious light shade that could seem blue or gray or green depending on the lighting. Some unacknowledged Cossack ancestor who had gotten in a bit of raping in the course of a pogrom, Andrew imagined.

  “You know a lot that you’re not telling me,” she finally said. “That was obvious from some of the things you said to Persath. I kept my mouth shut at the time because I didn’t want to queer the deal. For that, I think you owe me one. I wish you’d take me into your confidence. And please don’t give me any military chickenshit about ‘need to know.’”

  “It’s actually not as chickenshit as it may seem. More often than not it operates for the protection of the person lacking a need to know. As you’ll recall, I told you I can’t be responsible for your safety. That doesn’t mean I’m eager to expose you to potential danger unnecessarily.”

  “All right. I’ll accept that for now. But sooner or later I’m going to want to know everything you know.”

  “Yes, I know you will.” Andrew did know it, and he dreaded it so much that he was still in denial about the prospect. A glance at the clock saved him. “And now it’s time to get up to the landing flange and meet the air-car Persath is sending.”

  Persath hadn’t wanted them to use public transportation, in which the two humans would have attracted attention, and Andrew wasn’t quite prepared to write this off as paranoia. So an air-car awaited them, piloted by a completely uncommunicative Lokaron chauffeur. (Tizathon law required air-cars over urban areas to be under sentient control as well as being hooked into the computerized traffic-control network.) He took them over the seemingly endless alien cityscape until the towers thinned out and the extensive open expanse of the spaceport appeared. They passed beyond the vast commercial facilities for ground-to-orbit shuttles and finally came to rest alongside the private vessels of the super-rich.

  One of the things Andrew had always found appealing about the Lokaron (at least those of Gev-Harath and cultures derived from it, like Gev-Tizath) was that they didn’t make any sophomoric noises about having “outgrown ornamentation.” The vessels that stretched away into the distance were inherently attractive, with the streamlined look of ships inten
ded for atmospheric transit. But that look had been enhanced with a dazzling variety of colorful designs programmed into their liquid-crystal skins, giving them almost an enameled appearance, pleasingly “retro” to human eyes. Some of the color combinations seemed gaudy, but Persath’s ship was tastefully understated: mostly medium-gray, with a decorative pattern of sweeping lines in gleaming dark green lined with sliver trim.

  Persath was waiting alongside it and dismissed the chauffeur. His jitters were manifest. “Good. You are here. We have clearance. Let us proceed immediately.”

  The interior lived up to their expectations of luxury. It was organized around a kind of saloon from which one could look directly up a half flight of steps to the control bridge, where Persath now seated himself.

  “No crew, Persath?” inquired Rachel.

  “No organic one.” Persath didn’t look up from the control panel, and his irritability would have been obvious even if the translator hadn’t reproduced it. “The ship is almost entirely automated, and I am qualified to perform those piloting functions which are not. And now, please prepare yourselves for takeoff.”

  The preparations were not as elaborate as might have been supposed, for the ship, unlike the ground-to-orbit shuttles with their brief flight times, had a complex system of compensating artificial-gravity fields that gave it a ventral-equals-down orientation and largely cancelled out the feeling of movement. This enabled its reactionless drive—quite powerful relative to the mass it had to push—to pile on an acceleration that quickly brought them to one of Tizath-Asor’s transition gates. (Even among the Lokaron wealthy, private individuals simply did not own ships with their own transition engines.)

  Once the kaleidoscopic tunnel of light had vanished into infinity astern, leaving them in featureless blackness, Andrew turned to their host. “All right, Perath. We’re in overspace now, and as we all know that means we’re cut off from the normal universe with no possibility of communication. So could you please gratify our curiosity about our destination?”

  “I suppose it can do no harm,” Persath conceded with no good grace. “We are bound for the Kogurche system.”

  “The Kogurche system?” echoed Rachel. She sounded as stunned as Andrew felt at the mention of the system in Lupus that had been the proximate cause of the late unpleasantness between Gev-Rogov and the CNE.

  “I believe that is what I said.” Persath did not look up from the controls, with which he was peevishly preoccupied. “I assure you that this vessel, with its high thrust-to-mass ratio, will get us there in a reasonable length of time.”

  “But are you saying that Reislon’Sygnath has been there all this time?” Andrew couldn’t keep the incredulity out of his voice.

  “No. He moves around. But he spends a fair amount of time there, and I have excellent reason to believe it is his current locale.” Persath’s eyes were still on the instruments.

  “But what’s he doing there? And how is he able to operate there undetected nowadays? And—”

  “The answers will become apparent in due time.” Persath finally looked up. “I suggest that at the moment we have more immediate concerns.”

  “Such as?”

  “A vessel passed through the transition gate after we did. This ship mounts military-grade detectors, by which I can ascertain that the other ship has matched our course, far enough behind us to be beyond the range of ordinary civilian detectors. In short, we are being followed.”

  ***

  Earth had been the first non-Lokaron world ever found to have made the twin breakthroughs of the scientific and industrial revolutions. To fit it into their edifice of comfortable assumptions of superiority, the Lokaron had been forced to devise elaborate theories assuring themselves that it was an unrepeatable freak.

  Then, a decade after the tumultuous events of 2030, explorers from Gev-Rogov had discovered the Kogurche system. The Lokaron had been picking up the pieces of their theories ever since.

  They tried to tell themselves that it was a matter of chance, for Kogurche was an unusual system. In the first place, it had a binary star: a G0V primary component with an M2V red dwarf in an orbit which, while quite eccentric, hadn’t prevented the formation of planets around either component. Those planets formed a tightly organized system around the central star, and masses and orbits had fallen into a pattern that made terraforming a more practical proposition than it had ever been in the Sol system. (As one human wag had remarked, it was as though Mars and Venus had traded orbits.) Furthermore, the secondary star had a “hot Jupiter”—a gas giant planet that had formed and then migrated inward to take up a very close orbit. This phenomenon, which even the Lokaron hadn’t entirely accounted for, occurred with unfortunate frequency in planetary systems—unfortunate because in the course of its inward spiral, the gas giant destroyed any planets that might have formed in the star’s liquid-water zone. But in the case of Kogurche B this was no loss, as a red-dwarf star was unlikely to have had a life-bearing planet. And the result was a wide region of orbiting planetary rubble almost as dense and resource-rich as Sol’s asteroid belt had once been imagined to be.

  All of this had made spaceflight a more attractive proposition for the Kogurin—compact bipeds averaging four and a half feet tall, an advantage when coping with the dismal mass ratios of chemical rockets—than it had ever been for humans. They had first ventured into orbit when their overall technological level had approximated that of Earth in the 1930s, and by the time it had reached the equivalent of the late twentieth century (which had taken them longer, as they had lacked the driving force of hot and cold ideological wars), they had a bustling interplanetary commerce, powered by a variety of fission rockets, ion drives, Orion drives, and other forms of nuclear propulsion from which, for various reasons, they had not flinched as late twentieth-century humanity had. They had even established a very slow but self-sustaining importation of raw materials from Kogurche B.

  At the same time, their society had gradually been overtaken by toxic sociological byproducts analogous to those that had produced the dominance of the Earth First Party. The Kogurin equivalent of the EFP hadn’t been able to abandon space travel, which had become basic to the economy. But it could and did freeze technology before the computer revolution could take place, resulting in something which, to human eyes, bore an uncanny resemblance to “yesterday’s tomorrow”: interplanetary travel as it had been visualized by Robert Heinlein and Chesley Bonestell, and computers on a 1960 level at best. It also fossilized society under a self-perpetuating class of political careerists that had eventually devolved into the one-person rule of the “Implementer of Correct Social Organization,” as humans translated the title.

  Thus the Rogovon discoverers of Kogurche had found a wealthy, intensely industrialized system stagnating under what was at its best a kind of Confucian statism. And it had been stagnating for a long time. That last part made the discovery even more unsettling to the Lokaron than Earth had been, for they had to ask themselves what they would have found (or, perhaps, been found by) if Korgurche had continued developing instead of locking itself into an artificial stasis.

  Nevertheless, the commercial possibilities were obvious, once the Rogovon had forced the system open by means similar to those used by the Tizathon on EFP-controlled Earth (but rather less subtle, as was the Rogovon way). Not many non-Rogovon interests among the Lokaron had become involved at first, for it was too far from their normal areas of operation. It was, however, in precisely the region where humans, newly released from the dead hand of the EFP, were beginning to expand. Rivalry would have been inevitable even if a legacy of poisonous hate hadn’t already existed.

  Then, in the midst of complex negotiations for concessions, the reigning Implementer had been assassinated, throwing the Kogurche society—already dissolving in a flood of new technology—into chaos. In such a setting, the human-Rogovon rivalry had grown increasingly cutthroat. In retrospect, the only surprise was that the conflict had festered for nine more years b
efore erupting into open war in 2066.

  Afterward, the peace settlement brokered by the other Lokaron powers had made Kogurche a recognized human sphere of influence, and the implementer now hosted a human “resident advisor” appointed by the CNE. But, to the disgust of humans of Franklin Valdes’s persuasion, those same Lokaron powers had prevented the Rogovon or any other Lokaron from being excluded altogether. So intrigue simmered under the system’s seemingly placid surface.

  They emerged through a transition gate that had been built with human know-how and local Kogurin resources. Andrew chuckled to himself at the sight of Persath paying toll. Ahead lay the yellowish Sol-like Kogurche A. Off to starboard the dim Kogurche B, currently near perihelion, glowed ruddily. Perath wordlessly shaped a course in the latter’s direction and made various adjustments to his communications panel. All the while, his eyes periodically flicked toward the detector readouts, as they had been doing since the discovery that they were being shadowed.

  For a long time, Andrew and Rachel held their peace, reluctant to disturb their pilot. Finally Persath swiveled his seat around and faced them.

  “As you have probably surmised, we are headed toward the region of space where Reislon is to be found, if indeed he is currently present in this system. I have activated an automatic signaling device, operating on a special frequency, with which he provided me in case I should find it necessary to contact him in an emergency.”

  “So we can only wait until he responds?” asked Rachel.

  “Yes. But in the meantime, there is a development I find disturbing.” The translator performed the difficult feat of making Perath sound slightly crestfallen. “In the course of making transition . . . well, I was busy, and I temporarily lost sight of the vessel that had been following us in overspace. And now . . . I find I cannot locate that vessel.”