Barely had he hidden when the door burst inward. A rush of confused colors passed his narrow cone of vision. At least five students had entered the room.
Ralston’s nose wrinkled. The P’torra with his distinctive body odor had also entered.
“He got away!” cried one of the men.
“A moment,” came the P’torra’s sharp command. Ralston heard the crate on which he’d stood creak under the alien’s ponderous weight. He imagined the P’torra running a stubby finger along the window frame, finding the blood, bringing it to his slit-nostriled nose, then lightly sampling it with the tip of his tongue. Then the P’torra would bend closer, check the fibers. The alien’s mind would make odd leaps of intuition not shared by humans.
“In this, you find surety. He got away,” the P’torra announced, finally convinced. “Please to seek him out. Dr. Ralston is a danger to all spirited beings.”
Footsteps shuffled from the room. Ralston waited. He knew the P’torra mind—and his nose still wrinkled. After long minutes, Ralston heard a slight creaking sound. The alien shifted position on the crate on which he sat. Ralston’s mind raced. If he emerged to confront the P’torra, he knew he could physically overpower the alien. He had met enough in single combat to learn their weaknesses. For all their bulk and muscle, they moved slowly to achieve certain positions. He might lure the P’torra to bend slightly from the waist; this constrained motion around their hips. A quick turn to the side, a blow to the side of the neck, death.
Ralston pictured it all clearly in his mind.
But he waited. After another five minutes, the creaking noises sounded once more, this time accompanied by soft footsteps. What had the P’torra thought about while he waited? The same things that Ralston had? Vulnerability and advantage? Or something so totally bizarre no human could share it?
Ralston waited a few more minutes, then slowly pushed aside the box and peered into the room. Warm afternoon sunlight slanted through the destroyed window. Ralston straightened stiffened joints and cautiously looked out into the cellar’s central corridor. Empty. He jumped atop the crate again and looked out across a grassy area leading down to the University’s athletic fields. In the distance he saw the cathedral’s tall central spire and heard the chimes sounding the hour.
“Now they come,” he grumbled when he saw six uniformed men trotting along the walkways. The University security police had arrived to disperse the crowd. More than a hundred students protested. As he watched, the security force used sleep gas against the more violent protestors, but Ralston knew that the P’torra wouldn’t be among them. Always the alien would hold back, stay at the periphery, incite but never participate. That was the P’torra way.
Ralston retraced his path through the cellar and back up to the ground level. He considered going to his second-floor office, then discarded the notion. If the P’torra really wanted his blood, students would be posted there to alert the mob. Ralston walked briskly down the hall, found the westernmost door and left through an arboretum. The overhanging limbs of the trees and large shrubs gave him a sense of security. Away from prying eyes and masked by the cloying floral perfumes from the nose slits of the P’torra, Ralston walked aimlessly until he circled around to face the athletic fields.
The crowd had vanished. The security force no doubt breathed a sigh of relief at their day’s work. And this brief interruption of the University’s tranquility had passed. Ralston went to one of the outlying buildings and slipped inside, taking care not to be seen. He found a shadowy corner in a balcony overlooking the gymnasium floor. With a sigh, he sank into a chair and once again forced himself to relax. The effort this time proved more successful than before.
The danger had passed. Temporarily.
On the floor two teams played mag ball, shuttling a light, metal-encased cork ball back and forth using electromagnetic wands. Each side was allowed only so much charge. The mag ball might be passed back and forth between team members a dozen times or more, as long as each used only a fraction of their allotted energy, or one player might use all the team’s charge in getting the mag ball over the net. If the ball touched ground, a point was scored. As with most games, it required skill and teamwork—and was a game Ralston never appreciated.
“Did you come to play or just ogle all the sweet young girls strutting about in their shorts?”
Ralston whirled at the voice, banging his elbow against the wall.
“My, aren’t you the jumpy one? I’ve got to fence with you today. I really do. This is my best chance in months and months to win. You’ll be a real sucker for even my lousy feints if you keep overreacting like that, Michael.”
“Sorry, Druanna,” he said, settling back into the chair and rubbing his elbow. “You startled me.”
“Hiding out, eh?”
“Nothing gets by you, does it?” He stared at Druanna Thorkkin, wondering how much she knew and how much she’d only guessed. The woman was sharp, he’d have to grant her that. He sighed. She looked so much like another he’d known. The same light brown hair falling in soft waves, the same flush to the cheeks from being perpetually excited by life, the same vitality and imagination and piercing intelligence.
So much like Marta.
Ralston had never gotten it clear in his own mind whether he enjoyed Druanna’s company because of the resemblance to that love long lost, or if he actually appreciated her for herself.
“I was down in the office when the call came for the security force. Those fools came blundering back after they’d so valiantly defended the University’s honor. The P’torra, wasn’t it?”
Druanna Thorkkin didn’t share his dislike of the blubbery aliens, nor did she much appreciate the reptilian aspect of the Nex. But she was a friend.
“I think so.”
“You’ve really stirred up a fuss around here. Makes a staid old University like Ilium sit up and take notice. I think you’re good for the creeping lethargy I see around here.” Druanna looked at Ralston for a moment, then said, “You’re not here for a match, are you?”
“No. Hiding out is closer to it.”
“A pity. I could use a good workout. Foil? Saber? You sure?”
Ralston shook his head. Druanna Thorkkin was the only one at the University who shared his enthusiasm for fencing. The others considered it an anachronism, as they did his passion for other Earthly skills and pursuits. After the brief nuclear exchange, Earth had become little more than a backwater in human affairs. Novo Terra had assumed the role of leadership in political and economic matters, but Ralston still felt a kinship to the planet of his birth. Fencing was just one of the arts that he considered worthy of remembering.
“Grave-robbing isn’t what it used to be,” Druanna said sadly. “You used to be more alive. Just the hint of me besting you at foil sent you into a spiraling orbit.”
“You’re quicker than I am,” he admitted, “but what makes you think I’ve given up the sport?”
“I can’t taunt you into a match,” she said. “Or is it more than stark, shuddering fear of being beaten that stays your mighty sword?” Druanna cocked her head to one side and peered at him. “The P’torra’s not doing this? Are you afraid of Salazar?”
“Verd. I’m afraid of what Salazar and the committee will do to me.”
“Green shit from a purple cow, Ralston! You’re not even lying so’s I believe you.”
“I’d better be going.”
“I think that’s exactly what you’re going to do,” she said firmly. “You’re going back to Alpha 3, aren’t you? Without University sanction, unless I missed all the clues.”
“You’re speculating. I can’t do anything until the hearing. Maybe I can’t do anything after it.”
Druanna went on, as if she hadn’t heard a word he said. “That funny man with no name you find so interesting. You know the one I mean. The one who’s sure everyone’s spying on him. He’s got the connections to smuggle you back, doesn’t he? You’re going to star out to your dig. You left
the equipment on Alpha 3, so to hell with the primary going nova. Is that it, Michael?”
“You’ve been reading those quaint mysteries I loaned you,” Ralston said.
“The Doyles were good, but I liked the Blocks and Ulfbloms better. And I can read you just like I do them. Better, since I don’t have to turn your pages.”
Ralston stared at her. He liked Druanna for her wit and intelligence, but this time she pushed into territory he wanted left unexplored.
“You,” she said, eyes narrowing and finger pointing, “are going to be in more trouble than you can handle if you go back.”
“Do I have a choice?”
“I suppose not,” Druanna said. “The find’s that important, is it?”
Ralston smiled broadly. “Thank you. I appreciate it.”
“What?”
“That you knew the only thing drawing me to Alpha 3 was the museum, that I wasn’t running away from the hearing because of what happened to de la Cruz.”
“Never occurred to me. I know you grave robbers. All wrapped up in your work like a mummy. If de la Cruz had been one of your graduate students instead of one who caught the consolation prize in the grades lottery, I’d’ve thought you worked him to death.”
“It was accidental. I’ve been thinking about it. A lot. And some other things, too. Those I can’t quite put into words, but the de la Cruz death is a part of it.” Ralston leaned forward, looking at the mag ball players without really seeing them. “De la Cruz entered one of the last dioramas. Something happened there that killed him. Something that didn’t show up in earlier scenes.”
“You believe it might give a clue to the culture’s decline?”
“It might not be the cause, but it has to be significant. I experienced nothing but the telepathic communication in the first few dioramas.”
“Handy gadget,” mused Druanna. “I wish I could teach my students mind to mind. Those that have minds would benefit, and I’d find out quicker about the others.”
“I’d like to get the mind projector, too,” Ralston admitted. “The notes I found in de la Cruz’s belongings showed he was interested only in the commercial exploitation of the gadget. But there’s so much more, even if I can’t bring away a working projector to tear apart and reverse engineer.”
“The society?”
“Dead. And the decline came so quickly. Their capital city had been razed. It’s as if the dioramas were their last real effort to pass along their history.”
“You think the last ones show what happened and that de la Cruz died from it. Interesting conjecture.”
Druanna Thorkkin leaned back and hiked her feet to the balcony guard rail. She laced strong fingers behind her head and looked at Ralston out of the corner of her eye.
“It’s a mean job for anyone to help you find out what happened to de la Cruz—and the folks on Alpha 3.”
“I don’t want you to get involved.”
“I didn’t volunteer. I just pointed out what Salazar would say.”
In silence they watched as the far team won the mag ball game. Sweaty, laughing students laid down their playing electrodes and left for the showers.
“I’ve got so much money I hardly know what to do with it,” Druanna said.
“I can’t take it.”
“I didn’t offer it. Just talking. Don’t think Salazar would consider it collusion on my part, either, if some of that money just happened to vanish from my account and show up in yours. You’re going to need a great deal, Michael.”
“If that star goes nova, you may never see any of your money back.”
“My loss is going to be bigger than a few months’ wages lost,” she said. “Hell, Michael, I’ll have lost the only fool on this campus I can out-fence.”
Ralston turned, reached out and laid his fingertips on the line of Druanna’s jaw. He bent over, lightly kissed her on the lips, and said, “Thank you.”
Druanna snorted and pulled away. “What’s got into me, consorting with known grave robbers?” She rose and walked off, never looking back. Ralston sank into the chair and let his mind race ahead. He had so much to plan, so much to do.
But first he had to make one last visit. Ralston wasn’t sure he wanted to see Westcott. Some people were just too strange for him to bear, and Westcott was one of them.
“Something Chen said bothered me,” he told Westcott. Ralston stared at the mathematician and wondered if the man heard or not. Westcott had shaved his head to better accommodate the remote IR interface mounted there. Ralston shivered. No matter that Westcott had all the permits and authorizations required to connect himself directly into his beloved computers, the sight of a man with the flesh-mounted plugs and remote IR devices made him uneasy.
Ralston wasn’t overly religious but he understood the Church’s injunction against such meddling with the human spirit. It seemed sacrilegious.
Westcott leaned back, eyes hooded and a dreamy expression on his face. He reached up and made some minute adjustment to the infrared remote control device atop his head. He smiled, but Ralston shivered even more at it. The smile wasn’t human.
“I’m so slow,” Westcott murmured, almost a croon to put a baby to sleep. “So slow, but my loving friends, they’re so fast, so wondrously fast.”
Ralston looked away from the man, if Westcott could be called that. Even the Nex seemed more human than the mathematician. A single framed diploma decorated the walls of Westcott’s laboratory. Ralston looked at it more closely. As he’d thought, this wasn’t a diploma in the strictest sense. It was Westcott’s license to direct-connect with a computer. Only a few ever applied and less than one in a thousand of those applying were granted what Ralston considered a dubious privilege.
Westcott spoke directly to his computer’s block circuits, saw with the computer’s laser probes, felt with piezoelectric plates, heard with amplifiers, smelled with surface acoustic wave sensors—what truly human function remained in the mathematician? Not emotions, of that Ralston was certain.
He wished that the planetary licensing authorities had totally outlawed such human-computer connection instead of severely restricting it.
From the contented expression on Westcott’s hatchet-thin face, however, Ralston knew where to find one dissenting vote to his gut-level reaction.
“Not brilliant, but sound,” Westcott said.
“What?”
“Chen. You mentioned Chen Liu. Or has it already been erased from your memory?”
“Something Chen said disturbed me.”
“Emotion,” cut in Westcott, “has no place in science.”
“He mentioned a nova seen on Earth in 1054. He mentioned losing a robot probe, possibly two, that he’d recently started out to investigate the accretion disk.”
“Interesting dynamics in the disk,” whispered Westcott, eyes closed now. The light on his interface unit blinked a baleful red. Across the room, the IR beam impinged on a sensor plate and transferred Westcott’s thoughts directly into the computer. Another IR unit broadcast back the computer’s results.
“The Alpha primary is going nova.”
“Much of interest mathematically,” said Westcott. “The tensors for the region are showing…” His voice trailed off to nothing.
Ralston rushed on, wanting only to state his case, see if Westcott would help, and then get the hell out of the lab. “I know the 1054 ‘guest star’ and Alpha Prime represent only two points and thus can be connected with a straight line—” Ralston waited for comment. None came. “I tried to extrapolate along that line to see if there were other novas occurring. I didn’t find anything. But the feel is there. Something else ought to be found from this data.”
“A straight line?” scoffed Westcott, showing that he had, indeed, been listening. “You naively assumed a linear trajectory?”
Westcott did nothing, but an entire wall screen glowed a pale blue. Tiny points began appearing. To Ralston’s eye, they were randomly distributed. But then the display began to ch
ange, to turn, to give a new perspective. A dotted red line ran smoothly from one point to the next, forming a distinct nonlinear curve.
“This takes into account not only appropriate novas, but also proper motion of the stars, drag from gas clouds and other variations in gravity wells.”
Ralston stared at the dozen or so points. “What are they? All novas?”
“You asked for that, didn’t you?” The scorn in Westcott’s voice irritated Ralston. “Here is a different view of the same data. A time variable has been added.”
This confused him. The points along the curve appeared at random—but all the points eventually showed on the graph. The point that interested him most eventually winked into being: Alpha 3 lay in the path. With the 1054 star the last point, and the Alpha primary two points in the past by ten thousand years, Ralston began getting a sense of inevitability to what he witnessed.
“Something following this trajectory might be causing the stars to go nova,” he said. “But there seems to be a time delay from point to point. One star might go nova long before stars on either side along the trajectory.”
Westcott sat as still as any granite statue. His gaunt face seemed to shrink and the red light indicating computer access blinked faster and faster until it shone constantly.
Ralston went to Westcott and placed a hand against the man’s throat. The flesh felt dry and leathery; no pulse throbbed in the arteries. He moved his hand under Westcott’s nose. The faintest of warm breath issued forth. Ralston jerked away when the red indicator light began to blink at a speed detectable by the human eye. When it flashed only once every second, Westcott opened his eyes.
“A problem of great interest.” For the first time, Westcott’s expression showed some humanity. “Curious that one of your type would stumble across this problem and have the intelligence to recognize it for what it is.”
“Then something might follow that dotted line and be causing the suns to explode?”
“A high probability exists. That is not the question. Rather, how is this accomplished? The mathematics of chaos has not been properly examined for”—the red light flashed once on his interface—“since the twenty-first century on Earth. On Earth.” Westcott snickered, as if this were the dirtiest joke he’d ever heard.
[Weapons of Chaos 01] - Echoes of Chaos Page 13