He dropped the dope-stick to the floor, ground it out messily.
“I don’t know. Sometimes I feel I’ve betrayed my own calling,” he said, looking away. “I feel I’m involved in something I should get out of, really quick.” He laughed humorlessly.
A thought flittered through Todd: should he let this man into their plan? He seemed as though he might be willing to help. Certainly, he didn’t seem to care much for Ort Eath. He might be useful, if for nothing else, then back-up,
But no. Too much risk.
“Well, I’d better get to work getting these folks recuperated. Hand some pills around, some water. Check in with me later, okay?”
“Sure,” said Todd.
“See you later, Mr. Mann. Come up some other time when I’m free, huh? We’ll have a drink.”
“Okay,” said Todd, smiling genuinely, “Thanks.” He turned to leave, thinking that poor Russell Dennison would be pleased to know just how much worth these systems were going to have. When push came to shove, they might do the trick.
On the way out, when Dennison’s back was turned, he picked up the satchel, Empty now. Much lighter.
And the computer panel was once more securely sealed.
“MS. SHEPHERD!” So happy, so very happy to see you again!” Second Secretary Morphul Hee smiled expansively, opening his arms in welcome. Behind him soft music played in his cabin.
“I’m just glad I found you in, Morrie,” said Angharad. “I know you like to gadabout all over the ship. May I come in?”
“How can I deny you?” he responded, beckoning her into the room. “You look absolutely lovely, my dear,”
She did indeed and she knew it; but somehow, somehow she felt quite unlovely.
She stepped into the room, every muscle trained to walk as entrancingly as possible. By the expression on the man’s rotund, jovial face she could see it was having its intended effect. His brownish pupils dilated fully.
“A drink perhaps? Certainly a seat!” He indicated the most luxurious of the form-a-fits available.
“Thank you,” she replied demurely, settling her posterior snuggly into the waiting, almost subliminal massage rotors. “I trust that all is well with the august representative of the Terran Council.”
He moved to the drink station. “Your usual?” A nod from her put him into action, adjusting the proper proportion of gin to dry vermouth to crushed ice and lemon twist. “The Council? Oh, I suppose we’re doing well enough. Hard to say, though. I can only actually speak for myself. Don’t see the old chaps too much. Although I suppose I’ll have to, in a day or two, for the arrival proceedings.” After scrutinizing the newly filled glass, pursing his lips contemplatively, he smoothly paced to Angharad and handed her the drink. “If that’s not right, I’ll dump it and give it another go.” He hovered hopefully, his brown bushy eyebrows raised in suspense.
“Perfect,” she pronounced, dazzling him with a smile. “I hope things have been proceeding well for you and your companions.”
Morphul picked up his brandy decanter and replenished his sparkling clean snifter, then almost ceremonially sat in the chair adjacent to Angharad and patted her knee with warm familiarity. “I can’t imagine anything more delightful than this journey. I suspect that they’ll have to chain me in my offices during the Star Fall’s year-long Earth orbit, so that I don’t sneak off for visits all the time,” He barked a hearty, relaxed laugh, and his eyes softened with memory. “It has been grand! The alien. Ort Eath? What a gentleman ... or, should I say, gentlething? I can tell you, my report to both the Terran Council and the Galactic Confederation is going to be slightly more than effusive in every detail. Quite frankly, this project I always thought impossible. If it weren’t for Ort Eath, his money, his management, his dedication to bringing humans and Morapns into congenial contact ... this wonderful voyage would have been nothing more than a fool’s fantasy.”
She smiled and nodded and sipped her drink. “I’m glad you’ve been enjoying yourself,” she said.
“Ah, but I have missed your company. The cruise to Raxes Three was so wonderful with those brief, ghostly encounters with you, Angie ... where have you been? And Blicia?”
“We’ve been just enjoying ourselves.” She forced a pleasant expression while inside she mourned her dead companion whose husk yet haunted the ship, a fleshy memory. “But tell me of yourself. Are you indeed still the designated communications officer for the committee? As I recall you are Earth-liaison. Are you in touch with the home office?”
“How good your memory is, my dear. Yes ... I’ve sent a few messages. Nothing major. Mostly wish-you-were-heres. Why?”
“I’d like to send a message to a relative. Personal. It’s important that I meet them at a special time, a special place after I make planetfall. As soon as I make planetfall.”
“So you visit your old friend Morphul.” He swirled the amber brandy in his glass, watching it circle and slosh. “I’m afraid only priority communications can be transmitted. And, when I send my messages, they have to be short and sweet. I’d like to help you out, but I’m afraid that Ort Eath keeps a tight rein on communications ... as tight as security. Azinatins run them both, so you won’t be able to toss some skirt at them to get your way, I’m afraid.”
Angharad shrugged. She’d suspected this and knew that all communications were rigidly controlled by Ort Eath himself, for reasons he claimed as security measures. But she had to try—and there were other reasons for her visit here. “I suppose Richard will just have to wait then. My former contract husband, you know. But it is good to see you, Morphul.”
“I’m just glad you remembered to call on me! Perhaps next time I can be of more help. And perhaps now you will spend the evening with me.”
“That’s a wonderful idea,” she said enthusiastically. “You know, I’ve seen a good deal of this ship ... but there are certain areas that are restricted to me, being merely a paying passenger. And it all seems so fascinating ... I’d like to see some of these places.”
“And you think I’m allowed access?”
“Well, you are one of the members of the Earth delegation itself.”
“What specifically would you like to see?”
“Oh, the bridge, I think. Perhaps the communications room ... the engine room. Things like those. Off-limits to passengers.”
“I don’t see why not ... least I can do.”
She sincerely wished she could explain to him why. But for safety’s sake, it was imperative that they not take the chance of confiding in anyone else until the last possible moment, lest their plan be fatally averted. Even examining the seizure points was risky ... but; unfortunately, necessary. Although the computer systems supplied specifications on public rooms at request, the other sections—both maintenance and functional—of the Star Fall were strictly off-limits, verboten. Unless you had an in—like a member of the Terran delegation.
Hopefully, Ort Eath was no longer suspicious.
The fact that they were still alive seemed to indicate this.
She finished her drink as Morphul prattled on about this and that. The alcohol relieved some of the anxiety that coursed through her now. But better than the drink was the memory of what they as a group—she, Amber and Todd—had experienced under the guidance of the creature that had called itself Cog.
The Crem and their kindred.
Even now as she endured the glib coos and pawings of the Council nerd she’d buttered up before the voyage just in case she needed him later, she felt a deep inner peace as she recalled ...
Into sensation past explanation, fulfillment of promises previously merely subconsciously whispered ... intimations of states beyond immortality ... a purity of spiritual being that felt as pure as water to thirst, food to hunger.
And she experienced the Crem.
The dead race that was more alive than ever before ...
In the cosmos there were spiritual links of being. All the religions of Earth had merely been shadows of the truth, some more accurate than others, and yet none totally encompassing the beauty of creation and the Ultimate Being that gave it meaning ...
When, after what seemed like ages and could only have been, in linear time, minutes they returned to their bodies and to self-awareness, all of them were changed.
The Cremian, Cog, stood amongst them.
“Now you know my purpose in going amongst you and bringing you, whom I have selected, here ... to educate and renew you, just as contact with my kind has renewed me.
“Through the forces that are available to me,” he said, “I have erased the recordings that Blicia has made of our activities. Implanted instead will be innocent perceptions of your visit here. All of you have now been rendered totally impenetrable by brain-scanners. False patterns have been emplaced to deceive Eath’s machines, if he suspects. And no longer will Ort Eath perceive my presence… now that, thanks to contact with my fellows, I have been restored to full material power. Not that this is enough to foil his intentions. We shall all have to work together to achieve that.”
So saying, the being reattached itself to Todd Spigot and they departed, numbly, yet more alive than ever before.
Knowing they had a mission.
And she, of all of them, had known that in battling Ort Eath, she warred with part of herself To destroy him as she intended ... to avenge herself, was to eradicate all her own flimsy beliefs of before, her self-reliance, her ego ... her blindness.
Now she was doing it gladly. The cost was not too dear.
Morphul Hee clopped his snifter loudly on the table. The sound startled Angharad from her reverie. She looked up and batted her eyelashes at him in bewilderment as she tended now to do with everything.
Morphul Hee seemed content to think of her as a soft purring kitten. He smiled with great satisfaction. “Well, I see you are finished with your drink. Shall we make our tour now, so we have time for dinner?”
“Yes,” she said, recovering her aplomb. “Of course. Thank you.”
They left the room, arm in arm, But Angharad’s thoughts still drifted, half-dazedly ... ethereal as the flutter of butterflies.
* * *
Above all—beyond his feeling of finding purpose at last to his life, beyond his joy of experience, his regained sense of self-worth, beyond even his self-pity and hatred that had bloomed so utterly destructively in his life, Philip Amber felt the tragedy of a wasted life.
As he approached the rooms reserved as Ort Eath’s private laboratories, he thought on this … as he had every moment since his experience on Feloria, in the Melphic Temple.
He neared the entranceway observing and analyzing the situation with all the training that years of planned death dealing had bestowed upon him,
There was one thing that was immediately obvious.
Ort Eath didn’t want anyone inside these rooms.
Indeed, if the evidence was true, the remarkable subtlety and precision with which the creature had so far operated was giving rapidly way to outright paranoia. Evidently Angharad’s “accidental” intrusion had set Ort Eath on his guard. To begin with, there were three Azinatins—not standing guard, precisely, but, rather, sitting guard—crouched in their home planet’s version of chairs, munching stink-weed, playing a game of cards. At first glance, just a leisurely craps game for hard-working security officers on break. But they looked awfully settled in for that—and quite well armed.
Nor was this obvious guard post the only measure Ort Eath had taken. Unobtrusively bolted on either side of the doorway were twin class four portable force screen generators, effectively sealing off the possibility of even touching the doorway controls without the proper entrance tools.
Which he’d have to cook up on his own.
All this, plus, no doubt, doubly reinforced locks, maybe even a second door, stronger than the first. Perhaps another detachment of armed goons beyond that, and maybe even a goddamned fire-breathing dragon, for all Amber could tell from here.
He tossed the dope-stick he’d been smoking into a disposal unit with disgust, blew out a burst of gray smoke, and walked up to the Azinatins, casually as he could.
“Hey guys. Watcha playing?” he asked, hands to hips, big fat smile on his face.
Thick heads swiveled, suspicious. Single eyes glared with bloodshot fervor, sizing up the intruder. “Grumps,” grouched one, slunk deeply over his card hand, one fist close to his leg holster.
“Mind if I join? I’m pretty good at that ... looks like a good game. You’ve been here long enough.”
Seeing that the man seemed to present no threat, they turned back to their game, ignoring him.
Amber shrugged and ambled away. But he’d gotten what he wanted: a closer look at their armaments, the generator, and the type of door. Wasn’t like the one that Angharad’s homemade lock-pick had opened, this door. This door was the kind that Amber had always dreaded. The kind that Durtwood had had, forcing Amber to use the window—starting this whole business.
But it was funny. He didn’t resent all the trouble, all the pain the goof-ups had caused anymore, Because they’d changed him, eventually, so very much, And he rather liked that change.
He strode away from his brief examination, glancing at his wristwatch.
In one hour and two minutes, the final meeting of the conspirators would begin, to prepare the final steps toward the effective neutralization of Ort Eath’s intentions.
He stepped into a bar and ordered a glass of red wine. He drank it slowly.
ANGHARAD WAS ten minutes late.
When she entered the room, she carried three sets of Disbelief Suspenders.
“Sorry,” she said as she set them on the coffee table. “Had a bit of a time getting hold of three of these. Put a hell of a deposit on them.”
Amber had been pacing and smoking. He said, “We’ve got them for the full time we need them. No questions?”
“Absolutely. Forty-eight hours ... plus. That was part of the problem. But I smoothed it over.” She passed them out, and then buckled one on herself, making the proper band attachment around her head.
Used to the assembly by now, Todd harnessed himself in the light apparatus and then settled himself comfortably on the couch. “I sure hope this works,” he said. But within, he was fairly confident it would. Amber sat across from him. As Todd glanced at the familiar body, noting its growing thinness, the erect posture Amber used, for the first time he was actually glad it was here. It no longer seemed to haunt him. He felt a peculiar happiness that both his mind and body would be involved in this. Somehow it seemed right. Whole. That they were not physically connected did not seem to matter much anymore, because something of a spiritual gestalt had built up among them all. An aspect of their relationship that aided their intentions immeasurably ... and that would be augmented by the means the Cog had contrived.
“There. All on?” asked Angharad, inspecting the situation critically. “We’ll soon find out if this works. Todd, are you sure you put Cog by the right entry point for the real-fic computer?”
“How many times do I have to tell you? Yes!” returned Todd, a little too sharply for the composure he thought he maintained. “Knowing Cog, if I hadn’t he’d have wandered out of there immediately and made the right connection himself.”
He looked down at his artificial leg. A true prosthesis now, manufactured by the Crem Anchors—not a living entity in itself. Funny. He actually missed Cog’s presence. Well, he thought. If this works, we’ll all be in each other’s mind.
“All set?” asked Angharad.
“Sure,” said Todd.
“You bet,” responded Amber, placing his hand on the di
al in a pose identical to the others.
“Switch it to fifty percent,” said Angharad. “That should be enough to let Cog in without fully nixing out our own personalities. Now!”
Todd looked down and twirled the dial clockwise to the proper marker. Cog flowed into him like friendly, rushing, warm water ... as it had been in the Melphic Temple ... but with less intensity. .
Cog said immediately—Hello, friends. Everything is operative and go. I’m firmly situated here, snug as a microchip in a circuit. -The real-fic operations are totally mine now; I have complete autonomy, absolute control. Now, I can sense all of you, so all we have to do now is to patch up a few links and presto. Functional telepathy. Now remember, word your thoughts. We’ve only got language relay now. I hear what you’re thinking, so the others will hear as well. So. Here we go.
Todd was aware of further company. The essence of Amber, repentant, intense, and determined. And Angharad, innerly fascinating and beautiful, as always. Todd said, in his thoughts, “Hello.”
Thoughts other than his answered even as no mouths moved.
—Perfect, enthused Cog, unusually ebullient, even for his almost constant ecstatic state following their return to the Star Fall.—Better than I thought. We can keep this up forever ... even if each of you is on different parts of the ship. Certainly better than a conspicuous baffler or scrambler on the conversation, eh?
From Angharad, “Are you positive that security monitors can’t read the radio waves between the suspenders?”
—Absolutely. I have complete control of that aspect. All monitoring of these frequencies is done through the real-fic computer itself. I have cut that connection with the frequency with which we are presently communicating.
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