STAR HOUNDS -- OMNIBUS

by David Bischoff

  “I demand you release me,” Cal blustered, his usual cool gone. “I demand you return me to my people!”

  “Demands can be made later, good sir,” said the Jaxdron, waving a purplish stalk to someone behind Cal. “In the meantime, you are expected at the meeting and we have so been looking forward to speaking with you face to face, so to speak.”

  Both of Cal’s arms were grabbed from behind. He looked around and saw that two of his identical copies, divested now of wires, were holding him.

  “Now come along, Cal Shemzak,” said the Jaxdron. “The true games, games that will be heralded in the annals of this galaxy, are just now beginning!”

  THE END

  BOOK THREE: The Macrocosmic Conflict

  by

  David Bischoff

  Chapter One

  He hung crucified on the galaxy.

  His arms were bound to the spiral arms by rings of buzzing force. His legs dangled, wrapped in starglow.

  The stars burned his back. The echoes of other galaxies distantly hissed. Martyr, they whispered. A martyr for physics!

  “I die,” said Calspar Shemzak, “for my race. I die for humanity!”

  “Come now, Mr. Shemzak,” came the Jaxdron voice. “We know you have a tendency for the melodramatic, but don’t you think that this is a bit ridiculous?”

  Cal Shemzak opened his eyes.

  The stars dissolved into dark spots in his vision. These faded as well, into the cool light of the conference room.

  He sat in a chair.

  He was still clad in his khaki-colored jumpsuit, though now he also wore a helmet. To this helmet was attached cables that snaked up to myriad color-coded connections on the wall behind him. Force-bands bound arms and legs to the chair.

  “The more you cooperate, the easier it will be,” continued the Jaxdron voice. “You have been a playful and clever gamesman thus far. Please do not think that we do not appreciate your efforts, your spirit. However, now we need your cooperation, Calspar Shemzak. We need your most marvelous mind to work with the other minds that we have created.”

  Cal Shemzak’s eyes focused upon the Jaxdron relaxing in the gravity baths across from him. What ugly bastards they were! Cal thought, though he usually didn’t make physical judgments about aliens, preferring a more scientific view. He supposed his evaluation was based more on his hatred of these particular aliens—earned hatred—than anything else.

  Less than two meters tall, they were humanoid in form, with very large jade eyes, large lippy mouths, and noses that would not look too out of place on tiny Terran elephants. Translator speaker boxes hung nearby: attachments for the interrogation. Wreaths of gas and mist bathed their light-red skin, channeled by gravity modulators below. Occasionally one of the beings would dip its mouth into dense packs of brown and cerulean mists, suck deeply, then casually exhale the stuff—gray now—through uplifted proboscis. Air intake ducts caught these cloud streams and drew them away. The creatures looked like nothing more than a bunch of human genetic freaks at a ricti smoking bash.

  “I don’t have much control over my unconscious visualizations,” Cal answered in his own good time. “You should know that by now. You’ve been picking my brain long enough!”

  “Yes, with great enjoyment.” The central creature was the principal spokesman. This was the first Jaxdron that Cal had actually encountered, several hours before, in the room full of his clones. “You have quite an active imagination, human. The interweavings of symbols and play added a great deal of spice to our analysis and provided additional depth to several strata of gaming.”

  “I hope you realize that this is no game for me!” Cal shot back angrily.

  “Only because you are not sufficiently enlightened, human.” The sentence was oddly stressed in places—a clear tipoff to its translated nature. Otherwise, the voice was disconcertingly like Cal’s own in timbre and tone. “Perhaps at the end of this session you will be better educated, and appreciate the joys open to you in your role with us.”

  “Role? Wonderful. You mean you’re going to tell me why you grabbed me from Mulliphen, destroyed our project, spirited me to one planet, gave me a butler—of all goddamned things—and then shuttled me to another planet? Why you’ve been putting me through paces like a rat in a lab? Why you’ve created dozens of creatures that look just like me? If knowing my role has anything to do with the answers to those questions, I welcome that knowledge a lot!”

  The flesh of the creatures turned a deeper red and quivered. A sign of some sort of emotion? The response from the speaker seemed to indicate that. “Oh, yes, you are playing! We do so much enjoy learning the various means of language play employed by different races. The more advanced, the more complex!”

  “What do you mean? I’m the sort who plays along—I mean, who goes with the flow. You know that by now, surely. But as to playing with you—”

  “Come, come, now, Cal Shemzak,” the Jaxdron admonished. “You know why we nave taken the trouble to capture you of all other Terrans. You are a physicist of quite amazing mental powers. We wish to unlock that dimension you call Omega Space and so extend the sphere of our jovial cavortings farther, so that we may have better games with the Infinity of Existence.”

  “Omega Space, huh? But listen, guys, that’s what the project on Mulliphen, by the Interspacial Fault, was all about! And we weren’t very close to cracking the problem at all. I was about the only one who really had a chance.”

  “Precisely. Which is why we wanted you. So simple. Despite the subtleties and complexities of Play, in essence, everything is very simple. Wisdom for you, Terran. Do accept our gift. And please do join in with our Joyous Celebrations!”

  “You mean, cooperate. Direct my thoughts in the ways you wish.”

  “Exactly. You claim to be a reed that bends, and yet now all your many symbols are conflicting with our wishes.”

  “No game this time, huh?”

  “Games must have rules, Calspar Shemzak!”

  “So tell me what this has to do with all my copies out there!” Cal tried to twist his head toward the other room, but could not: the helmet would not permit the movement.

  In buzzing, clicking voices, the Jaxdron seemed to confer amongst each other for a time. Then the central alien spoke: “Yes, there is no more reason for hiding matters, Terran. You have provided much amusement in our study of you, but now is the time for clear speaking. As stated before, we Jaxdron wish to find the secrets of Omega Space. We wish to penetrate that dimension. You have the key to unlock our desire. But not by yourself. I presume, Cal Shemzak, you are aware of the basic workings of the organ in your body known as the brain.”

  Cal found that he was able to shrug. “Sure. Synapses and neurons, matrices … stuff like that.”

  “Yes, well … good enough. In simple language, not only is your particular human mind wired in such a way as to be very skilled in the talents of a top physicist, but the psychic energies produced by your problem-solving in that area harmonize and link to cosmic energies. This is called many things by your race. Intuition. ESP. This is your special gift; and you have trained yourself well in its use. It is unique. Certainly none of our race owns such a talent, which is why we bother with you.

  “However, quite simply, it is not good enough.”

  “Huh?” Cal blinked, then grinned broadly. “Well, then you can let me go, can’t you? Could you just ship me back to Earth? That would be very nice!”

  “Ah, your playful spirit again, Cal Shemzak.” Again, the rippling of its mottled flesh: mirth. “It is refreshing to see it returning in such full force. Now please let us continue.”

  “Just trying.”

  “Understandable. We had hoped that by merely putting your brain through prescribed paces, our process would work in you subconsciously. But apparently this is not true, as your rebellious nature, as illustrated in this past sessi
on, proves. Perhaps if we detailed to your rational thinking process our desires, and engaged your willing cooperation, your subconscious will also cooperate.”

  “Well, maybe, yeah. So get on with it. I’m all tied up with suspense!”

  In their gravity baths the aliens looked like contorted planets, swathed in clouds, orbiting some unseen sun.

  “We determined your essential singular inadequacy while studying you after your capture,” the Jaxdron continued. “And thus we devised the possibility now unfolding.

  “By process of both accelerated cloning and cyborg mechanization, we began creating duplicates of you, concentrating in particular upon copying the neural network of your brain. Thus, we hoped by linking these copies physically—and you saw the bulk of them in that other room—we can create a macrocosmic version of your talent.”

  The “others” that he had sensed in his dreams—the mirror images, Cal thought. This was the reason!

  “When linked together they are an excellent simulacrum of higher intelligence, but we found that no matter how many we created, they lacked the essential vital force—the spirit, if you will—that bridges the gap between logic and genius.”

  “Inspiration, you mean,” Cal said.

  “Inspiration?” The Jaxdron seemed puzzled. “Ah! Translation: the breath of God. The concept is appropriate, though your notion of God is different than ours.”

  “Heathen,” Cal quipped.

  “Though not ‘heretical,’ Cal Shemzak. Very good. But we continue: try as we might through all our diagnostic games and our analysis of your mental patterns through our most delightful imposition of brain-play upon your mind—the alternate realities we placed you in—we could not duplicate the odd interplay of thought processes from which your genius springs. Now we should like, quite simply, to plug you into the grid, create a mass-mind with you in the center, thus stepping up your talent and hopefully enabling your magnified mind to come up with a solution to the problem we have presented it.”

  “Namely, how to penetrate Omega Space.”

  “Precisely, Calspar Shemzak. Precisely.”

  “And then what happens to me?”

  “What happens?”

  “Yes, once my ‘magnified mind’ solves your problem for you.”

  “Why, the universe still poses a multitude of problems of interest to us. Perhaps you may be of help in those.”

  “No go. The deal is this: I get you into Omega Space, you get me back home.”

  “Deal, Calspar Shemzak?”

  “Let’s put it this way. Rules. To a game. And that’s the game. I help you win, and the rule is: you take me home.”

  The rippling of amusement again. “Oh, no, Calspar Shemzak. The rule is: you cooperate or you experience pain and affliction unlike anything you’ve ever imagined.”

  “Gee,” said Cal. “And you were starting to act like such nice guys.”

  Chapter Two

  She had never felt so defeated.

  As they flew her back to her XT 9, hidden in the jungle by the native village of the M’towi, Laura Shemzak could still feel the effects of the Federation torture. She was weak and compliant in the backseat between the two muscular, grim guards. The green of the jungle whooshed by underneath the flitter, a sea of vegetation outside the Block compound of Pax Industries, heart of Federation control over this world called Walthor.

  They had neutralized the effect of the drug being fed into her system by an interior dispenser, the drug called Zernin, which heightened her senses, sharpening and expanding the nerve endings in her body to allow for the complex feats necessary for piloting a blip-ship. Instantly she had gone into withdrawal, the intense pain of which she could not tolerate. It had been horrible, as though every sinew of her body were being separated, strand by strand. The terror, the despair—she shuddered again at the very thought of it.

  The man called Friend, a key leader of the Federation, sat in the front seat of the flitter. This was the man who had allowed her to attempt to rescue her brother Cal, after his capture by the alien Jaxdron, with whom the Federation warred. This was the man who had ordered the override implant inside her, forcing her to shoot Cal upon sight. But she had not shot Cal. She’d shot a replica of Cal, one of several that later attempted to control the secret of the Starbow. This plump, pleasant-faced man, this wretched Arnal Zarpfrin, was the man who had captured her here on Walthor. He had also ordered a new operation on her cybernetic implants that allowed her to be a blip-ship pilot.

  Implants that would force her to betray the Starbow crew—people she had come to love.

  The sun beat down hard now, and despite the breeze through the open-canopied aircar riding swiftly on gravity suspensors, Laura sweated. A planet like hell, she thought. And she’d rather be in hell now than on her way back to the Starbow, an intelligence agent for the Federation against her will.

  Zarpfrin turned around and looked at her from his place to the right of the driver. “Why so glum, Laura Shemzak? After all, if all goes well, you’ll get what you want: your brother. And we’ll get what we want. The Starbow and its crew. Only a short time more of service, and we’ll let you two settle on some pleasant, out-of-the-way planet … a threat to no one.”

  “You’ll excuse me, Zarpfrin, but I find that very hard to believe. A government as vicious as your Federation, headed by men as conniving as yourself, will always find uses for individuals as talented as my brother and myself.”

  “Ah, yes, but the difficulties of getting you to cooperate would be substantial. And lack of cooperation might be harmful, to us and to you.”

  “You’re getting my cooperation now, aren’t you?”

  Zarpfrin thoughtfully pursed his lips as he looked down at a river snaking off into the distance. “You are not a being of unlimited resilience, Laura Shemzak. Already our present modifications of the past months have taxed your physical endurance. That showed in your examination test results. Alas, your lifespan is being cut considerably by the device monitoring your voice and actions and the dispensation of both your Zernin and its neutralizer. If we had to use you for anything else, it would surely be the death of you, perhaps in the middle of a delicate operation. Oh, you’ll be fine for the weeks ahead. Just make sure you keep your Zernin flowing.”

  “We’re nearing the coordinates indicated by our passenger,” the driver said, tapping a grid map on a screen.

  Laura craned her neck and peered down over the edge of the car. Down in a clearing ahead was the sparkle of metal: her XT 9, partially buried in vegetation. It was here that she and Tars Northern had landed and walked to the M’towi village where they enlisted the aid of the native Xersi, whom Laura had befriended on her previous trip to Walthor. Xersi had helped smuggle them into the compound, where they were to search for Jaxdron activity.

  What a mistake, Laura thought grimly. “There!” she called, pointing down.

  The flitter landed smoothly.

  Curiously, Zarpfrin did not seem to care how they had gotten from the blip-ship to the compound and then past Security. She did not bring the subject up. Apparently, these Feddies were not even aware of the existence of the M’towi village nearby.

  Which gave her a thought as they disembarked from the aircar and headed toward the blip-ship. Xersi and the M’towi were masters of drugs. If she could escape and lose these Feddies in the jungle trails, she could find haven there, and then take refuge in native drugs ….

  The question was, could she take the pain of withdrawal the neutralizer introduced? Or would even the simple act of running trigger the device?

  She decided it was a risk she had to take.

  Her opportunity came as they approached the gleaming ovoid of the blip-ship. She knew that to do anything amiss within the blip itself would be simple suicide. She couldn’t run the thing with the Zernin neutralized. She had to run now—her instincts told her that. I f
somehow she could override the pain long enough to make it to the village.

  Her opportunity arose. She snatched it almost before she was aware of what she was doing. For a moment the guards both stared at this ellipsoid vessel, this new model with almost magical properties. All Laura’s training focused upon swift action. With a whirlwind of precise cybernetically placed blows, she smashed the men in just the right places to send them sprawling to the ground. Their weapons never left their holsters.

  Friend Arnal Zarpfrin was several more paces away, a more difficult target. He shook his head and smiled, shading his eyes from the glare of sun as he threw his own handgun away into the vegetation.

  “I know how well you fight, dear Laura, so I shan’t contest. Adios!”

  She swiveled and began to run.

  There was hope then, she thought as she whipped past branches and vines, feeling strength pouring back through her body. Automatically her feet found the path they needed and she looked back. Zarpfrin hadn’t run after her or tried to board the skimmer to give chase. He was bent over the two men on the ground.

  She swept along the path, gaining speed and strength and self-confidence.

  Had they been bluffing about the device planted in her? It was a possibility. She prayed it was so. Xersi could hide her until she could somehow get her blip-ship back. It didn’t matter how long, just as long as the Starbow and its crew got away safely. She would catch up with them somewhere down the line.

  Hope bloomed like a desert flower and she ran as fast as she could, her mind seething with possible plans.

  The next thing she knew, she was face first in the dirt. Writhing. Screaming. Her head seemed to have blown into scattered pieces, seemed to be lying now, bleeding in the jungle. Her inhalations were like breaths of raw fire. She seemed to feel every nerve ending in her body. Each was like a lit fuse.