Into the Looking Glass votsb-1

by John Ringo

“Let me go get my bag,” the SEAL replied, walking out of the room. When he came back in he was carrying an M-4 and wearing a combat harness. “Okay, I’m dressed.”

  “Will there be an issue with bringing weapons with us?” Bill asked.

  “Not at all,” Nyarowlll replied, walking towards the rear of the house. “It is a justifiable action. However, when you meet the emperor they will have to remain outside.”

  Bill mulled that over as they approached the gate. Two SWAT team members were watching it carefully, as if it would start dumping… whatever she’d called them at any time.

  Nyarowlll stepped through with total aplomb and Bill followed her into the looking glass.

  The far side was a large room, about fifteen meters high, with a concrete floor and walls. The ceiling, which looked to also be concrete, was held up with heavy metal beams that were riveted together. The construction looked vaguely familiar to him but he couldn’t place it. Then he noticed the odor. There was a catlike musk but overlaying it was what he identified as wood and coal smoke. He hadn’t smelled coal smoke in years but it was distinctive. There was also a smell like rotten fish or a salt marsh; the place must be near the ocean. The room was cold, cooler than the Central Florida evening they had left, and there were three small potbelly stoves heating it. One of them was glowing cherry red. The room was lit with a large number of lamps which Bill tentatively identified as oil lamps.

  There were about twenty cats in the room, most of them colored like Nyarowlll and almost indistinguishable but a few colored a light tan with brown markings. Some of them wore leather aprons and others bore harnesses made of leather and carried what looked like laser pistols that had been modified for wood stocks. One of the ones wearing an apron came over to Nyarowlll immediately and they carried on a conversation that sounded like a cat fight, meanwhile stroking each other’s ears. After a bit of that Nyarowlll came back over to them and waved to one of the doors.

  “We have a transfer device,” she said, opening the low door and waving them through.

  Bill had to duck nearly in two and when he reached the far side he saw another gate.

  “This gate does not go to another planet but to a linked gate on this planet,” the felinoid said, stepping forward. “It is quite safe.”

  Bill looked at the SEAL, then shrugged, following the cat through another looking glass.

  In a moment he was standing in another room. It was much smaller with fine wood paneling, a terrazzo inlay floor, and lined with low — low even for the cats — benches that were covered in rich furs of an unusual shade of blue. There were two more of the soldier cats in the room, bigger and beefier than the ones in the gate room. Both carried the laser pistol/rifles and were eying the SEAL warily.

  “I’ll be just a moment,” Nyarowlll said. “You’ll have to leave your weapons here.”

  Nyarowlll spoke to the soldier cats and then passed through the door with a perfunctory ear wipe to each.

  Bill got a more careful look at the weapons the cats bore and reached some conclusions. The body of the weapon was made of what appeared to be plastic or ceramic composite with a barrel that was metal, probably a heavy metal. The shoulder piece, on the other hand, was wood and was connected to the main weapon by metal bands that wrapped around a very strangely curved pistol grip. The ammunition pouches were formed and hardened leather secured by a brass clip. They looked about right for some sort of power pack.

  “Doc,” Miller said, glancing around the room. “These guys don’t make those weapons.”

  “Yes,” Weaver replied. He glanced over at the SEAL who was looking dyspeptic. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” Miller said in a muffled voice. He was looking around at the floor with a pained expression and finally swallowed.

  “Couldn’t figure out what to do with your tobacco juice?” Bill said, smiling.

  “Always something you can do with it,” the chief growled. He unbuckled his combat harness and laid it on one of the couches, setting the M-4 down on top of it. Then he pulled out a clasp knife from his pocket, a pistol from the back of his trousers and a knife out of his boot. “That had better be here when I come back,” he added, pointing at the pile.

  One of the cats made a sinuous head motion then stepped over to the pile, lowering his weapon from high port. He gestured at the rifle in interest.

  Miller picked up the M-4 and dropped the magazine, then jacked a round out of the chamber and handed the weapon to the cat who, after a moment’s hesitation touched a stud on his own rifle and removed a small, silver oblong and passed the rifle to the chief.

  “There’s no sights on this thing that I can see,” the chief said as the cat hefted the M-4 and then looked at the sights. He said something to his companion who responded with a series of hacks. It might have been disgust, it might have been laughter. The cat lifted the M-4, figured out how to shorten the stock, which made it just about perfect for him, and looked through the sights, keeping his finger away from the trigger. The pistol grip was too large for him but so was the one on the ray gun.

  “I bet one of those guys could handle the kick on an M-4,” Weaver noted as the cat lowered the weapon and then examined the cartridges. He pointed out the bullets to his companion again who made a sinuous head motion and spat a couple of times. There was a discussion that sounded like two cats stuck in a barrel going on when the door opened and Nyarowlll, followed by a cat that just looked older, came through.

  “The emperor will see you now,” Nyarowlll said, gesturing through the door.

  “Don’t fiddle with that while I’m gone,” Miller said, handing back the ray gun and then accepting his M-4 in return.

  There was a short corridor outside the room and another door with two of the “heavy” cats guarding it. These bore not just the ray guns but short swords that looked oddly ceremonial. The older cat opened the door and they ducked through, it was very low for them although the corridor had been about normal height, into a small office. A cat that looked about Nyarowlll’s age was sitting in front of a low desk that was just about covered in paper. On one side of the desk an odd, capped tube jutted up through the floor. Behind him was a large window that was open a crack at the bottom despite the chill. From it came the sounds of a street, if metal wheels on rock and a strange oinking could be called street sounds.

  Five more cats were in the room, two heavies, one by the door and one by the window on the far wall and three that were all older than the cat behind the desk. One of them was wearing a combat harness that was missing ammunition pouches but did have some silver embroidery that might have been rank markings. He was an old tom, scarred in quite a few places, one ear nearly torn off, eyepatch over his left eye and missing his right arm from just below the elbow. That had been replaced with a steel metal skeleton that terminated in a hook. Despite all the damage he looked as if he could chew nails and spit them out as Rottweiler killers. Miller took one look at him and saluted.

  “General,” the SEAL said, holding the salute.

  The cat looked at him for a moment, then crossed his arms in front of him, hissing something. Miller dropped the salute and turned back to the cat behind the desk.

  “Dr. Weaver, Command Master Chief Miller, may I present His Majesty Mroool, Emperor of All the Mreee,” Nyarowlll said.

  “Your Majesty,” Weaver replied, putting his hand over his heart and bowing slightly. The protocol was probably all fucked up. He probably just said that the U.S. was part of His Majesty’s domain or something. But it seemed like the thing to do at the time.

  “It here is good you visit,” the emperor meowed. “Not many words yours. Nyarowlll tell who here.”

  “Also present,” she said, gesturing at the three older cats standing by the wall, “are Secretary Owrrrllll who is something like our Minister of the Interior, General Thrathptttt, commander of our military, and Academic Sreeee, who is the senior minister for intragate affairs, something like your Secretary of State.” Owrrrllll was a ta
bby as was Sreeee. About half the guards they had seen were female as well.

  “Honored, gentlemen,” Weaver said, doing a slight bow again. “Ladies.”

  “Our interest is to open up trade between our two peoples,” Nyarowlll said as there was a yowl from the tube by the desk. The emperor uncapped it and spit a phrase into it, slamming it shut. “We have things we can trade with you. Our weapons are far superior to yours and we have the teleportation devices which you do not. I’m not sure what you have to trade with us.” She made another of those head tossing gestures as if in dismissal.

  “Well,” Weaver said, dryly, recognizing a bluff when he saw one, “the first thing that comes to mind is a telephone system.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Miller and Weaver stood outside the palace watching the street scene. It was cold and misty and Weaver was shivering in the thin desert BDUs that he’d been given at the hospital. Miller didn’t seem to notice.

  The street was crowded with traffic, most of it carts pulled by long, low, beasts that looked something like six-legged, furry hippopotami. Pedestrians wore coats something like trench coats against the mist and many wore hats somewhat like fedoras. And it smelled, strongly, of chemicals, ammonia and others, that seemed to be coming from the manure of the draft-beasts. Weaver noticed for the first time that none of locals, the Mreee, except the guards, seemed to wear shoes. And few of them gave the two humans more than a glance. They didn’t seem guarded, however. Just uncurious.

  “We need to figure out where the high tech is coming from,” Miller announced.

  “Agreed,” Weaver replied, shaking his head. “This looks to be about 1800s tech. Which doesn’t square with them being able to open a gate. I don’t even see signs of electricity.”

  “Something else,” Miller noted. “That tom didn’t get scarred like that from intracountry wars. Their ‘empire’ might be like the British empire but they all act as if there aren’t other countries. So where’d he get so scarred up? Internal rebellion?”

  “Maybe you attain rank by battle.” Weaver shrugged. “I gotta get out of this weather, Chief.”

  “Yep,” Miller said. He’d reclaimed his weapons after the meeting with the emperor and now he settled his M-4 on his shoulder. “Let’s see how honest we can get Nyarowlll to be.”

  * * *

  They found a guide who led them to a small room in the bowels of the palace. The building, really series of buildings, was large. The center of it was a massive castle on a hill but buildings had been attached that spread down the hill on every side. The emperor, strangely, had his main office right on the edge, by one of the side streets.

  Nyarowlll’s office, or the one she was occupying anyway, was closer to the castle, up the hill and partially dug into it; the back wall was gray stone of the hill’s bedrock. The room was warmed by a small coal brazier that was attached to a tubular chimney.

  “Nyarowlll,” Weaver said, taking a seat on the floor instead of one of the spindly benches. “It’s pretty obvious that our society has a much higher tech level than yours. And that you don’t make those jaunt devices or the guns. Where do they come from?” There was probably some diplomatic way he was supposed to say that but he wasn’t a diplomat.

  “This is true,” Nyarowlll admitted. “We get them from the N!T!Ch! who get them in turn from the @5!Y!.”

  “How do you say that?” Weaver asked. “Never mind.”

  “We have to pay very much for the weapons and the teleportation devices. Our mines are being bled dry of gems and currency metals. But we must have them to fight the T!Ch!R!.” She stopped as if she hadn’t meant to say that much.

  “Oh, crap,” Miller muttered.

  * * *

  The military had set up a secure communications room at the UCF gate so they were no longer broadcasting their secrets to the world. At the moment, Weaver was of two minds about that.

  “The Titcher are a sentient race that has the ability to open gates and invades through them, colonizing the world beyond,” Weaver said, looking at the screen that showed about half the Cabinet. “The Mreee have been fighting them for about fifty years. They have three gates, including the one that connects to us. One that the Titcher opened, one that was opened by the Nitch and the one that they opened, using technology that the Nitch sold them, to us. Nyarowlll is something like a natural scientist; they haven’t really separated out physics, biology and chemistry yet. She’s the closest thing they have to an expert on gate technology and alien technology. She wasn’t really willing to discuss the military situation but it seems the Titcher are well established on the Mreee’s world and they are trying everything they can to stop them. The weapons they get from the Nitch are apparently really powerful, but the Titcher forces, once they’re established, produce immense fighting biologicals and millions of those dogs and thorn-throwers. I think we’ve only seen what they can fit through a gate.”

  “And if they overrun the Mreee?” the national security advisor asked. “Then they’ll be attacking two gates?”

  “That’s right, ma’am, but that’s not all,” Weaver said. “I was asking Nyarowlll about gate tech and she was puzzled by our experience. They’ve only been able to open a couple of gates and it takes the tech they get from the Nitch who are getting it from… I can’t even begin to pronounce it, ma’am. From the Fivverockpit. But the point is, she didn’t know why ours were just opening and they’d only had contact with the Nitch and the Titcher before.”

  “We’ve had two more open,” the President said. “One in south Georgia that is spouting out lava and another in Boca Raton that is just a disaster.”

  “Excuse me?” Weaver said.

  “Everyone within fifty miles of Boca Raton is dead or hopelessly insane,” the director of Homeland Security said, painfully. “Everyone. Millions of people. We have no idea why or what is causing it.”

  “And before you ask, no, you are not going to Boca Raton,” the national security advisor said. “There’s a line you just can’t cross. A recon plane that was sent in crashed, anyone crossing the line goes insane. And it’s a line from the reports we’re getting. There should be a file there called Enigma Site; see if you can find it.”

  Weaver moved around the Top Secret files scattered, against regulation, all over the desk at the communications center and found the one marked Enigma. He opened it up and looked at the satellite photos.

  “All there is is a gray blotch,” he said.

  “Indeed,” the national security advisor replied. “A gray blotch that is some sixty meters wide, appears to be about one hundred meters high and does not cast a shadow.”

  “Nobody is coming out except those at the very edge,” the Homeland Security director continued. “And all we can do with them is put them in straightjackets and sedate them. Psychiatrists hold out hope that with heavy medication they can get some of them back to a semblance of normal. But it’s only a hope.”

  “Are they saying anything?” Weaver asked.

  “Just ravings about formless shapes and huge shambling mounds,” the national security advisor said. “And most of them aren’t even saying that. Just screaming.”

  “Jesus,” Weaver muttered. “Well, trading with Mreee is going to be hard. We might be able to get some weapons from them, thirdhand from the Fivverockpit, but I’m not sure they’ll be worthwhile. I’m not sure, frankly, what they can give us. They don’t have many of those teleportation belts and not nearly enough of the weapons. But we’ve got all sorts of knowledge that would help them and that they really need. And I submit that ensuring that we don’t have one more gate spitting Titcher is probably worth whatever we give them.”

  “Any idea why the gates are opening, yet?” the President asked. “Or where they will open?”

  “No, sir,” Dr. Weaver admitted. “But I’ve been running around from one fire to the next and haven’t really been able to give it much study. That’s next on my list.”

  “When did you sleep, last, Doctor?” th
e national security advisor asked.

  “Sleep?” he said. “A couple of days ago. But I’m okay, I can go for a while without it. I’ll probably get some tonight.”

  “Okay, we’ll talk tomorrow,” the President said. “Let’s hope that another gate doesn’t open between now and then.”

  * * *

  The lab was now in a trailer and Garcia was installed in front of a computer, looking at random scrabbles of white on black that Weaver recognized as particle tracks.

  “Talk to me, Garcia,” the doctor said, collapsing onto a computer chair.

  “The gate seems to be generating one boson every forty-seven minutes,” Garcia said. “If they’re what is causing the gates we should have over a hundred of them by now. But the readings from Eustis show that while there’s some muon emissions, there’s no boson formation.”

  “Nyarowlll said that gates can only form at ‘thin’ spots,” Weaver said. “Although they can open to them from anywhere. I wonder what ‘thin’ spots means? Is that where the bosons are stopping?”

  “They’ve been increasing in mass as well,” Garcia said. “And they seem to be generating in random directions except that some seem to be following the same path as previous bosons.”

  Weaver spent a little time figuring out how to pull up the course tracks on his own system, then studied them for a while. There was a pattern there but he wasn’t sure if it was his imagination. He pulled up a pattern recognition program and fed a couple in and after a while it spat out some equations that he recognized as fractal generation. Taking the course tracks as shown and entering the equations gave him a complex fractal pattern for each of the bosons. Each was different but it spread out widely and in an apparently, but not truly, illogical fashion. Last he brought up a terrain mapping program and overlaid some of the fractals on it.

  “Got it,” he said.

  “What?” Garcia asked, yawning. “You know it’s two o’clock in the morning, right? And you’ve been working on that for four hours?”