[Weapons of Chaos 01] - Echoes of Chaos

by Robert E. Vardeman - (ebook by Undead)

“No one else around here seems to recognize the importance of this find. I do.”

  “I can arrange to star back in a week.”

  “How? Not on any of the University starships.”

  Ralston smiled. “I’ve still got contacts. Don’t worry about that. You can get a supervisor?”

  Leonore nodded. “What else would you need? I’m afraid Daddy’s company doesn’t manufacture much else in the way of robotic research equipment.”

  “I can get the rest. Most of it,” he amended. Ralston’s enthusiasm died a little when logic reclaimed him. He looked at Leonore suspiciously and asked, “What do you want in return for this? Your name’s already on the paper as co-author. You know that.”

  “I don’t have nearly enough data to do an adequate dissertation,” she said, not angry that he accused her of motives other than altruism. “I want to go back with you.”

  “No Leonore, no supervisor?”

  “That’s putting it so harshly, Dr. Ralston,” Leonore said.

  “But it’s accurate.” Ralston frowned, then let a smile dawn. “I don’t care if it’s the diorama find or Nels Bernssen that’s drawing you back to Muckup. When we’re finished with that planet, we’ll both be famous.”

  “I’ll be content with a good thesis,” she said. Leonore rose and left Ralston’s office.

  Ralston sat and stared out a tiny window across the Quad. A statue of Bacon gleamed in Novo Terra’s warm sunlight. Even though Ralston couldn’t read the inscription from this distance, he knew it by heart: “For knowledge, too, is itself a power.”

  “Verd, I know Nels Bernssen,” the research assistant said. He looked up from the terminal where he’d scattered papers and block readers. “Good instincts. And a damn fine mathematician. Wish I had his skill there. Might have done better on my comps. But you’re not here to offer me some tutoring, are you? What can I do for you, Dr. Ralston?”

  Ralston glanced at the nameplate above the terminal. “You’re Liu Chen?”

  “Chen Liu, but don’t worry about getting my name wrong. Even the University computer gets confused. Call me Chen.”

  Ralston pulled a chair up and leaned on Chen’s small, cluttered desk, his elbows resting on a thick mat of paper covered with intricate doodlings.

  “Here, let me take some of that,” Chen said, obviously distraught over Ralston’s disturbing the order of his mess. “Not too many use paper for their calculations. Never could get the feel of looking at it on a screen.”

  “I need some information about novas.”

  “Since Nels is off on Alpha 3, damn his bones, you’ve come to the right place. Simply put, a nova is a star that goes bang.”

  “You don’t like Nels?”

  “I love the man. And I envy him. Being right up there to witness the early stages. While my interests lie more in what happens after the bang, I’d still like to be there nudging Nels’ elbow, getting him to take readings on parameters that count.”

  “What makes Alpha Prime so unusual? I don’t know much about the H-R star classes but I gather it’s the wrong type to go nova.”

  “Verd,” Chen agreed. “Take a look at my big project.” He punched in a few long code words. A nebula leaped into focus on the screen. “I’ve sent a couple probes to the 1054 ‘guest star’ to study the accretion disk.”

  “The gaseous disk around it?”

  Chen looked at Ralston, then nodded. “We call it the 1054 because that’s when it was seen on Earth. They call it the Crab Nebula, but it doesn’t look like one from here.” He brightened even more. “In China it was well documented. They called any nova a ‘guest star’ because it grew brighter and brighter, then faded away. A guest.

  “My work is coming to a chinging dead end and I don’t know why.” Chen thumped a pile of papers to one side of his terminal. “My first automated probe just broke down.”

  “No more telemetry?”

  Chen nodded glumly. “Can’t figure out what went wrong, either. The best I can determine from the readings I got, some flaw in the block circuitry caused the failure.”

  “That’s a bit unusual, isn’t it?”

  “Verd,” Chen agreed. “We always check those babies out to a zillionth of a decimal place. Cost too damn much to have them go wrong five hundred light years from the nearest screwdriver. But random electronics failures do happen. But why to me?”

  “Your other probe’s still sending back information, isn’t it?”

  “I guess so.” Chen turned even gloomier. “The data I expected aren’t showing up. Nothing matches. Some of it is so far off beam I’m beginning to think that I’m looking at a second electronics failure. Won’t be able to get the University to spring for any more probes, either. Too chinging expensive. When everything’s getting confusing and we have a chance to learn something really deep, they cut off our funding.”

  Chen shook his head and stared at the star field on his screen.

  “But Alpha,” urged Ralston. “Is it interesting because you can put observers close by?”

  “That’s part of it. The rest is as perplexing on the good side as my probe failures are on the bad. Alpha is the wrong spectral type. It’s a G5, not a B7 like my ‘guest star’.” Chen shook his head. “Do envy Nels, that son of a bitch. A real chance to shake up all our theories about stellar evolution. The spectrographic readings alone are worth a dozen papers. Nels is seeing iron sublimations in the photosphere. Hope he loosens up and shares some of it with me. I can do a lot for him after the primary goes.” Chen’s face lit like the nova he discussed. “There’s got to be an accretion disk. I can watch it forming. Be a novel idea to co-author with him. The dynamic instability leading to formation of accretion.”

  “Do you have any idea how long before Muckup—Alpha 3—becomes dangerous?”

  “Dangerous now,” Chen said. “Oh, you mean how long before the radiation from the primary fries everything on the planet?” He shook his head. “No way of telling. There’ll be an initial intense burst of x-rays, if our theories are accurate, followed by a powerful solar wind composed mostly of highly energetic protons. Heavy ionizing radiation,” he said, more to himself than to Ralston. “Then?” Chen shrugged.

  “The planet is vaporized?”

  “Verd. But the timetable for it is murky. We just can’t predict to the nanosecond. I’d say that it’s less than six months away.”

  “No more?”

  “Might be less. A lot less.”

  Ralston left. At first he walked with shoulders bowed. Then he began to straighten. Resolve hardened within him. There could be no hesitation, he realized. To vacillate now meant lost opportunity. The civilization on Alpha 3 must not die unexamined.

  And it wouldn’t. Even if Michael Ralston had to die along with the planet.

  “I can’t do it, Doc. No way I can get a chinging starship on such short notice.” The man looked around nervously, as if expecting police to arrest him. “You sure it’s safe here?”

  “The Quad’s as safe as any place I know,” Ralston told him. “I didn’t want to risk my office.”

  “Got it eared?”

  Ralston solemnly nodded, playing the paranoid game. “There’s no way to know who might be listening,” he agreed. “Out here, there’s open spaces and enough noise and people going by to cover whatever we say.”

  “They got good circuits. They can pick up a feather dropping in the middle of a rocket test. Hell, the student newsers got snoops able to do better’n that.”

  “That’s why we’ve got to keep moving. We dare not let them catch up.” Ralston wondered who the man feared—or if anyone truly sought him. He had seen others like this man after the war. They had turned inward, examining themselves and finding only a hollow shell. To give meaning to their emptiness they had fantasized cabals and plots and persecution.

  Ralston knew the man needed psychologic aid, but he couldn’t bring himself to suggest it, not with the radical chemical and electronic techniques used by those in the field.


  “Cost you a chinging fortune, Doc. You know it.”

  “I can pay. For the cause,” he added, almost as an afterthought. This sealed the deal.

  “Two days. Take a shuttle pod up and follow the beacon. Two whites and a red. No other contact.”

  The man slipped away, mingled in the crowd of students watching a news kiosk, and vanished as if he’d never existed. Ralston sat under a large cryptomeria, his back against the rough bark. In a way, the man he’d just dealt with didn’t exist. At least, not officially. Somehow, he had managed to expunge his name from all computer records. Ralston had never heard a name mentioned, nor did he ask. That would violate a trust.

  He briefly considered a life at the fringes of society, providing contraband, smuggling, shipping that which no one else dared ship. Ralston laughed ruefully. That wasn’t the kind of life he wanted for himself. The University of Ilium stretched out in front of him, living greens mingling with artificial browns, the soft scents of summer wrinkling his nose, students hurrying to classes, discussing their lives and newfound knowledge, a tranquil oasis of learning.

  For all the students who only put in their time, he knew there were others who sought to learn, really learn. For those cherished students, he’d gladly devote his life.

  Ralston found himself missing the classroom work, the fostering of education. Sometimes he felt like pounding heads to get an idea into an especially dense skull, but the rewards, for the most part, were worth the effort. The sight of a face brightening as a concept penetrated, the student who clearly stood out as exceptional, the rush of new knowledge, new discoveries, new methods of work.

  He lived for this. The University sheltered Ralston from the pressures that drove the man he’d just spoken with past the bounds of accepted behavior. In return, Ralston performed the generally pleasurable chore of educating students. And writing his research papers.

  All this was worth fighting for. Ralston wouldn’t lightly surrender it because of the unfortunate accident that had taken Yago de la Cruz’s life.

  “We triumph without glory when we triumph without danger,” he said softly. “Knowledge is dangerous to gain and dangerous to use. But we need it. Oh, yes, how we need it. How I need it.” Ralston couldn’t conceive of an existence without progress, without the promise of new and wondrous revelations and the chance to explore them fully.

  A chanting from across the Quadrangle disturbed his thoughts. He leaned over and peered past the statue of Bacon in the center. A tight knot of students—not more than thirty—shouted something he didn’t hear clearly and thrust their fists at the azure sky.

  Such vehemence surprised Ralston. He didn’t think he’d been away from the University so long that he had missed out on the formation of new campus action groups. Apparently, he had.

  Ralston plucked a blade of grass and sucked at the juices, trying to channel his thoughts to Muckup and the equipment he needed. It was nothing short of a miracle that Leonore Disa could supply the supervisor. That would insure a dozen times more work being done than he might achieve alone.

  He frowned when he thought of her demand to be allowed to accompany him. While Ralston hated to deceive her, he couldn’t allow her to return with him to Alpha 3. The danger outweighed keeping his word. All he had to do was drop a word to his mysterious friend that Leonore was one of “them” and she’d be led astray.

  In two days he’d be aboard the starship bound for Alpha 3—and she’d be in the middle of the Quad staring up at the empty sky.

  The chanting again disturbed his concentration. The students had begun moving toward the statue. Ralston went cold inside when he heard their chants.

  “Kill the Nex-lover!” the small crowd roared.

  Michael Ralston had no trouble deciding they meant him. No one else in the University fit that description so well.

  One student climbed onto Bacon’s statue and held on to the precarious perch with one hand. The other waved vigorously to emphasize his obviously popular words.

  “He is a menace! We cannot allow such warmongers and traitors to exist among us. Bigotry must be cut out and destroyed to make a better society!”

  “And he killed Yago!” came the bull-throated cry from the crowd. The others picked up on de la Cruz’s first name. “Yago, Yago, Yago!” the crowd chanted.

  “For that alone Ralston should be barred from the University.”

  Raucous shouts of agreement and encouragement rose from the growing crowd. Ralston didn’t stir. Movement might attract unwanted attention. He looked over those assembled, trying to find students he recognized. Sometimes, students disgruntled with low grades formed into such groups to take out their frustrations. He saw no one who’d ever been in any of his classes.

  What he did see angered him. A gray-skinned, thick-fleshed P’torra stood to one side as an observer rather than as an active participant. Short, bulbous fingers worked at the tiny keyboard of a hand-held electronic device. Ralston had often seen the P’torra use these “impulse drivers” to devastating advantage. A P’torra entered human psychological parameters and, with the intensity of responses to key words from whoever harangued the crowd, got out a detailed blueprint of how to more effectively manipulate behavior.

  The P’torra signaled to his human co-conspirator, who shifted from the bigotry theme to one of praise for Yago de la Cruz. The crowd’s reaction mounted exponentially. They had been angry before. Now they reached a peak where murder wasn’t inconceivable.

  The P’torra’s blubbery lips pulled back to reveal twin rows of needle-sharp teeth. He had found the crowd’s resonance frequency with this topic. His impulse driver had again proven its worth in controlling human behavior.

  Ralston slowly rose, the tree guarding his back. He slowly circled the tree and placed it between him and the crowd. He walked quickly toward his office, trying not to draw attention.

  He failed.

  Ralston heard the impassioned cries go up from the crowd as the man haranguing from the statue sighted him. Decorum dictated that he not change his pace. Common sense told him he’d be torn apart if the crowd caught him on the Quad. Ralston ran as if all the demons of hell nipped at his heels.

  And, as far as he was concerned, at least one did: the P’torra.

  A large rock whirled past his head and smashed into the office building. He ducked and got through the door. Another rock crashed against the clear plastic pane. Ralston vainly sought some way of locking the door. A magnetic key was required; only the night patrol was likely to have one properly coded.

  Ralston thought about barring himself in his office, then discarded the idea as suicidal. If the crowd trapped him there, they could do any number of things. While most University buildings were relatively fireproof, papers still burned and plastics melted. The fumes from the plastic might not be deadly, but they’d certainly be dangerous if the crowd held him prisoner within his office.

  He hurried toward the far end of the building. An exit there would allow him to slip out the back way and elude the crowd. Sooner or later, even the lethargic campus security squad would arrive to contain the students.

  Ralston skidded to a halt. “Damn!” Somehow they had already circled the building and cut off his escape. “The P’torra plotted this out. He had to!” Crowds did not operate with such foresight. Ralston saw no other explanation for the students’ coordinated efforts to capture him.

  He ducked through a door leading into the cellar. Ralston slammed it behind him and leaned against it, heart pounding. He slowly regained his breath. In the corridor he heard the harsh footsteps of a dozen or more pursuers.

  “Where’d he go? Where did that dunging son of a bitch go?”

  “Check the offices!” another shouted.

  “Coolness,” came a soft voice. “Composure. Examine the lower reaches of this edifice.”

  The P’torra!

  Ralston ran down the stairs, new knowledge bursting on him in that instant.

  He knew how a trapped rat f
elt.

  The door opened and the students rushed after him.

  ELEVEN

  “Kill him!”

  The echoes reverberated down the long hallway and through the dusty crates stored in the cellar. The sound of pursuit gave Michael Ralston the added speed he needed to find a small storage room, slip inside, then close the door and block it the best he could.

  He stared in horror at the tiny box he’d shoved in front of the door. It wouldn’t hold back a crowd spurred on by the P’torra’s psychological needlings. It’d hardly hold back a stiff breeze. Ralston’s fear rose, then slowly faded as reason regained a hold. If he acted like a hunted animal, that was the way he’d die.

  Only thinking this through afforded him any hope for escape. Forcing himself to breathe deeply, he calmed more and more. He closed his eyes and found the Nex-embedded hypnotic commands deep within. They hadn’t understood how humans entered battles keyed and nervous. A few deft lessons with their combat psychologists had given Ralston the control needed to keep an edge but not be pushed into panic.

  He shook his head. He had tried to deny that training because of the war and the way his peers reacted to the Nex. No more. He needed every advantage possible if he wanted to get away from the mob and leave Novo Terra for Alpha 3.

  Gray eyes darted around the small storage room, checking, evaluating, hypothesizing, discarding. The window out of the room was far too small for him to squeeze through—and freedom tantalized him on the other side. The bright blue sky shone with the glow of a new lover, and Novo Terra’s summer winds promised life eternal.

  Ralston pulled a crate under the window and jumped atop its sagging wood surface. A desperate jerk tore the window’s lock from the wall. He flung it open so hard that the plastic window popped out of its frame and clattered to the floor. Ralston jumped and cut both arms on the sides of the window. With trembling fingers, he pulled threads from his shirt and stuck them onto the frame. Only then did he jump to one side and crawl into an empty box barely large enough to contain him. He pulled his makeshift blind in close, leaving only a crack through which to peer into the room.