Wolf Among the Stars-ARC

by Steve White

  Andrew turned to Reislon, who was critically examining the hole in the heel of his hand where the tiny flechettes had torn away a covering of artificial skin. Their eyes met. “It sometimes has its uses,” said Reislon urbanely.

  Surgically implanted weapons, operated by direct neural induction, were highly illegal on Earth. Among the Lokaron, a general distaste for implants in general made legal prohibition almost superfluous. But, Andrew reminded himself, Reislon was an atypical Lokar in many ways. He dismissed the matter from his mind and gestured at the viewscreen, where the white-hot debris was rapidly dissipating.

  “Your associates?” he queried.

  Reislon, an old hand with humans, nodded his head. “I would hardly have come here alone, without what you call backup.”

  Further explanation could wait, Andrew decided. He knelt beside Leong, who was still moaning softly, and turned him over. He seemed about to speak, but his mouth only produced a bloody foam. There was obviously no saving him, although he was taking his time about dying, considering his assortment of perforated vital organs.

  “Leong,” Andrew began—but then he staggered back with a nonverbal cry of horror, because before his eyes Leong began to change.

  Leong’s skin rippled and flowed in delicate patterns as it changed color and texture and became a purplish-white integument, too pale to be called lavender, repellently translucent. At the same time, his facial structure and entire body began to writhe and reshape. There was a creaking sound as the bone structure altered and foreshortened, the nanofabric of the suit contracting to keep pace with the change. Andrew also heard a grinding sound, but then realized it was his own teeth, in a rictus of shock.

  A moan of agony finally escaped the small lipless orifice that was no longer a human mouth, rising to a kind of choked shriek that could never be produced by a human throat. The spray of froth was no longer the same shade of pink. The body went into a sudden violent convulsion and then lay still. It was dead, and the obscene transformation was over.

  Behind him, Andrew heard a gagging followed by a splash. This time, Rachel was being sick. There was no other sound.

  They all stared down at that which they had known as Amletto Leong. It was a biped less than five feet tall, slightly built even in proportion to itis height, with arms almost as long as its legs. Those arms terminated in disproportionately large hands whose four spidery fingers were all mutually opposable. The face was dominated by huge golden-black eyes. There was no nose as such, only a small but complex orifice flush with the face, which tapered from a wide forehead to a tiny mouth and almost nonexistent chin. The head had an unpleasantly thin covering of white hairs or perhaps cilia. The pool of blood that was beginning to spread from under it was a kind of dark copper color.

  Rachel wiped her mouth and pointed unsteadily at the thing. “What is that?” she whispered.

  Andrew turned to the two Lokaron, whose race had explored a significant fraction of the galaxy. “Do you know . . . ?”

  “No.” Reislon’s usual urbanity was in abeyance, but the translator conveyed calmness. “I have never heard of this species. Nor have I ever heard of any species which could alter its form in this manner.”

  “It’s a myth among us,” said Rachel. “Were-animals, usually wolves.”

  “We lack even such a myth. Incidentally, as you will have noted, the transformation did not overtake the other one.” Actually they hadn’t noted it, in their stupefaction. But in fact the goon’s body was still as human as it had ever been.

  “This requires study,” said Reislon in a masterpiece of understatement. “Fortunately, we will soon have the facilities available.” He indicted the viewscreen, where a ship was gliding into view. Andrew automatically classified it as what the CNE Navy called a frigate: a light combatant, the lightest capable of mounting its own transition engines (the lessons of the events of 2030 had not been ignored, and the Lokaron navies had begun mounting such engines on lighter vessels than cruisers), although heavier than the corvettes that were the heaviest capable of landing on and taking off from a planetary surface. It was not intended for fleet actions, but it was more than adequate for the kind of battle it had just fought. A vague familiarity made him feel he ought to be able to identify its class, but he wasn’t exactly thinking straight at the moment.

  “If you wil,” Reislon said to Persath, indicating the post-side passenger lock.

  “Oh . . . yes. Of course.” Persath gave what seemed to be a delayed-action shudder and came out of shock. He busied himself clearing the lock by disengaging the intership car and letting it drift off into infinity. In the meantime, Reislon went to the comm console and hailed the approaching ship. A face appeared on the comm screen.

  Rachel gasped. Andrew didn’t even do that. He had had too many shocks to his sensibilities already.

  It was a Lokaron face, as expected. But it was a green-skinned face, and it was broader than the faces of humanity’s Harathon and Tizathon associates, and it was . . . Rogovon! Andrew forced down the emotions that a face like that aroused in every human.

  He turned and gave Reislon a long look. “Well, I see you finally decided which side to come down on.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “This,” said Reislon, formally introducing the Rogovon transmitter they had seen in the comm screen, “is Borthru’Goron.”

  The newly arrived ship—which Andrew now recognized as a Rogovon Potematu-class frigate, an obsolescent prewar design—had maneuvered alongside and sealed its access tube to the port-side lock. Borthru had entered: a stereotypical Rogovon in ways besides his green skin, for he was less than seven feet tall and almost as broadly built as a human, in keeping with the almost one-Terran-g planet for which their subspecies had been gengineered. It was not a body type that the other Lokaron admired.

  “And these,” Reislon continued, “are Rachel Arnstein—”

  “Arnstein?” Borthru cut in. His voice held the oddly metallic-sounding quality that was one of the things setting the Rogovon apart from other Lokaron. “Would that be . . . ?”

  “Yes.” Rachel’s voice rang with quiet defiance. “My father was Admiral Nathan Arnstein—a name I imagine is familiar to all Rogovon.”

  Andrew wondered if it was only his imagination that the hulking Lokar flinched just a bit.

  “And I,” he said before Reislon could continue, “am Captain Andrew Roark of the CNE Navy. I was formerly Admiral Arnstein‘s chief of staff, after previously serving under him in a number of capacities.”

  “Including, perhaps, the Battle of Upsilon Lupus?” Borthru asked mildly.

  “I was executive officer of a battlecruiser there.”

  “Ah.” Borthru’s eyes seemed to darken to a deep gold, but his voice remained mild. “I have heard that there were inexplicable delays in acceptance of some of our ships’ surrender signals there—fatal delays, in certain cases.”

  Andrew met those eyes unflinchingly. “I’ve heard that, too. I’ve also heard that Gev-Rogov had struck my world with a kinetic-kill weapon, intended as a preliminary to wiping it clean of all life, including my species.”

  They glared at each other for a silent heartbeat. It was Borthru’s eyes that slid away.

  “I cannot deny historical fact. Especially when the act in question was so very much in character for the regime we are trying to overthrow. It should come as no surprise to you, as your own history should teach you what totalitarian regimes are capable of.”

  “What?” Andrew blinked. “You mean you’re not Rogovon Navy?”

  “That’s what I was about to explain, Andrew,” said Reislon patiently. “I am associated with what you would term a revolutionary organization, whose rogue fleet is secretly based here in the outskirts of the Kogurche system, outside the jurisdiction of Gev-Rogov.”

  “Yes,” Borthru exclaimed, and the translator registered bitterness. “We’re sick of Gev-Rogov being a pariah among the other gevahon. It isn’t just that they find us physically unappealing. It’
s our centralized, authoritarian government that’s the real freak.”

  Andrew found himself nodding. “Yes. The governments of the other gevahon are so limited that they’re barely governments at all by human standards. The ideologues who were running Earth when the Tizathon arrived never recovered from the shock!”

  “You understand, then, why we want Gev-Rogov to become a normal gevah, instead of continuing to stagnate under a system that, as our defeat in the war showed, is as corrupt and incompetent as it is repressive.” Borthru seemed to rein himself in. “I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to burden you with a political speech.”

  Andrew turned to Reislon. “So this is where you went when you dropped from sight after the war.”

  “Yes, but I had been working with the revolutionary elements in Gev-Rogov even before the war.”

  “Are you aware that Svyatog’Korth thinks you were working for Gev-Rogov Intelligence at that time?”

  “So does Gev-Rogov Intelligence, since I was pretending to do precisely that. It was thus that I was able to maintain very indirect lines of contact with the revolutionaries.”

  Andrew struggled to keep it all straight. “And we think you were working for the CNE during the same pre-war period, although as far as I know Svyatog isn’t aware of it. Was that also a pretense?”

  “Not at all. I passed some quite useful information on to your service and aided it in planting a certain amount of disinformation. You must understand, I never felt I was in any way betraying my employer, Hov-Korth, in any of this. My goal, a reformed Gev-Rogov integrated into mainstream Lokaron civilization, would be to the benefit of everyone, including Hov-Korth and, incidentally, Earth. Also, I was working to prevent the war.” Reislon gave Borthru a sidelong glance. “This did not endear me to certain factions among the revolutionary underground.”

  “Yes.” Borthru’s bitterness was back in full force. “We were fools—children! We actually wanted a war, thinking that defeat would discredit and destabilize the regime, creating a power vacuum for us to fill. Reislon warned us that we were dreamers, and that the only result would be tightened repression. And he was right. Oh, there was some disorder at first, and a great deal of outrage over the regime’s mishandling of the war. The government offered some concessions as a sop. But then, as soon as quiet had returned and the regime felt secure enough, they clamped down, rescinding all the reforms, and now things are worse than before.”

  Andrew considered this in light of what CNEN Intelligence knew, and it fit. After the war, despite all attempts at censorship, it had been clear that Gev-Rogov had been wracked by political upheavals, brutally suppressed.

  “There were mutinies in the fleet,” Borthru continued. “Some succeeded. Those whose ships had integral transition capability—including the one I led—escaped into overspace. We met at prearranged rendezvous points—we had had that much forethought at least—and decided that we needed to establish a base outside Gev-Rogov. The Kogurche system at first seemed an odd choice, but the more we thought about it, it was rather like . . . like . . .”

  “Hiding in plain sight,” Rachel suggested.

  The translator evidently had a little trouble with that, as it often did with paradoxes, for Borthru paused perceptibly. “Yes. It had certain other advantages. It was as close to Gev-Rogov as we could safely get. It was easy to remain undetected in these unfrequented gravitational hinterlands between the two component suns. And once the treaty came into operation and allowed Lokaron—including Rogovon—access to Kogurche, we were able to pass unnoticed on the system’s inhabited planets.”

  “I arranged my own disappearance at this point.” Reislon picked up the thread. “I realized I would not be able to sustain the rather complex game I had been playing for much longer. And you were right, in a sense, Andrew. For all my high regard for Svyatog’Korth, honesty forced me to confront the fact that my first priority was and always had been the liberation of Gev-Rogov from the regime that had . . . mistreated me in my youth. Finally, I was disgusted by the failure of my efforts to prevent the war—a war I was more and more convinced was being promoted behind the scenes by the Black Wolf Society.”

  “Which doubtless was also behind this attack on you,” Borthru said grimly.

  “So it was. But . . . there is more.” Reislon turned and led the way to a storage area with temperature controls that allowed it to be used as an improvised meat locker. While waiting for Borthru, they had loaded the two corpses into it, with Andrew’s flesh crawling at the touch of “Leong,” although he had retained enough presence of mind to notice that the body had seemed very light even for the short, slight human they had thought they’d known. Now Reislon opened it and slid out the tray on which the bodies lay. Borthru made a rustling sound that Andrew recognized as the Lokaron equivalent of a sharp indrawing of human breath.

  “It gets worse,” said Rachel. “On Tizath-Asor we knew this being as a human, working for the CNE embassy. He still appeared to be one when he showed up here and declared himself a member of the Black Wolf Society. And then, as he was dying, he somehow changed into . . . this.”

  “What’s more,” Andrew put in, “He followed us here from Gev-Tizath in a ship using a form of cloaking technology more advanced than any we know—except that of certain ships briefly glimpsed by a Harathon vessel in the Sol system in 2055. Yes, Reislon, I know about that.”

  “I believe,” said Persath carefully, “that this calls for further study.”

  “Agreed,” said Borthru firmly. “Fortunately, we have the facilities for it.”

  The three vessels proceeded in formation to the headquarters of the rogue Rogovon fleet. It appeared in the viewscreen as a sprawling junk sculpture, a madman’s caricature of a space station, obviously added on to over the years with components surreptitiously brought to this system and bits and pieces of damaged or uselessly obsolete ships, each segment with its own artificial-gravity generators. Escher would have gone crazy trying to figure it out.

  They disembarked in what must have passed for a central reception area, although it looked more like a deserted factory. After the one Tizath-Asor G they had been used to, a near-Terran gravity pull seemed almost burdensome. Persath didn’t trouble to conceal the fact that he thought so.

  Borthru and Reislon had been in almost constant communication with the station, and a fair-sized group awaited them. Andrew, who prided himself on his savoir faire among Lokaron, now realized it extended only to the “good guy” genotypes; he could not yet overcome his discomfort in the presence of so many Rogovon. But one member of the group stood out by reason of several departures from the stereotype. For one thing, he was short even for a Rogovon—only about six and a half feet—and less inclined than most Rogovon to what passed among the Lokaron for stockiness. Secondly, he was dressed, even in these surroundings, in the universal Lokaron semiformal attire of double-breasted tunic and sleeveless robe, suggesting an old-fashioned, shabby-genteel fustiness. Possibly accounting for the last, his old age was obvious even to a non-expert like Andrew. Borthru introduced him as Zhygon’Trogak, the revolutionaries’ chief medical officer, head of research, and general polymath. He listened with avid interest to the story behind the two corpses.

  “Exobiology is one of my interests,” he told them, “including the study of humans. And we have fairly up-to-date biological sensors and other tools here.” He took the bodies away, and Andrew and Rachel were assigned quarters where they waited with all the patience they could muster.

  It was an awkward wait. The quarters were most charitably described as “functional,” less charitably as “industrial-hideous,” and they were not designed for human occupancy, least of all for privacy of humans of different genders. The two of them established a set of unspoken protocols for handling the problem, but the time still dragged.

  Finally Zhygon reported his findings to a group consisting of the two humans, Reislon, Persath, Borthru, and a couple of members of the executive committee that governed the ragt
ag refugee community. “The human-appearing corpse is, in fact, indisputably human. The other is, obviously, something else. What that something is, I cannot say. The species is entirely unfamiliar.’

  “But,” Rachel protested, “He looked human! We never suspected him of being anything else. He passed for human well enough to get a job with the CNE diplomatic service. For God’s sake, he passed for human with a bunch of human chauvinists like the Black Wolf Society! How can that be possible? Shape-shifting like that is supposed to be a fantasy.”

  “That was what took me so long. Fortunately, I was able to draw on a human analogue, which may make it easier for you to understand.

  “Put very simply, this species—let us call them the Shape-Shifters for convenience—has a gland somewhat similar to the human pineal gland, producing a hormone similar to a more extreme form of pinearin. The result is something beyond the most extreme case of hyperpinealism. It affects the surface tension of the protoplasm’s cells in such a way as to make the entire body plastic and malleable. And unlike hyperpinealism among humans, which is an allergic reaction, this is produced and controlled as a conscious act of will. Evidently the hormone also reroutes the sympathetic nervous system to the cerebral cortex, or its equivalent.”

  Andrew wasn’t sure what to marvel at more: Zhygon’s knowledge of human biochemistry, or the ability of the translator software to cope with all this.

  “This ability must have limitations,” Persath argued.

  “Undoubtedly. First of all, while it may be able to arrange and shape its organs to resemble the imitated speces, their function would remain closer to their own species.”

  So their heartbeat might be slower or faster than a normal human heartbeat?” Rachel asked.

  “Precisely,” Persath continued. “More importantly, it must be able to affect the skeletal structure in a very limited way, so it can only assume the shape of a quadruped or a two-armed biped. Furthermore, there must be very definite limits on the degree to which density, and therefore size, can be varied. This is a small species, as sentients go. I am surprised it was able to assume the form of a human.”