The Fleet 01

by David Drake (ed)

  Considering all this, Esplendadore began to think about the possibilities of sabotage. You wouldn’t think a human being would ever sell out to a weasel-shaped thing with a loud chattering voice and a generally unpleasant disposition. Still, there are men who will do anything for gain, even sell out their own race.

  Treachery has been a part of humankind’s makeup since earliest days and who can tell exactly what pro-survival situation it may encourage? We assume it must have some sort of a survival value, but that’s not how it looked now when the Fleet was extended to its limit.

  The Khalia could be contacted through certain non-Alliance alien planets. They were reasoning beings, at least to the extent that they were able to work together co-operatively, and to make and keep promises. Informers were paid well. The Khalia were able to pay not just in gold and platinum, but they also had access to many of the rare art treasures of the worlds that they had plundered.

  The humans and their allies of the Alliance, the three hundred-odd planets that made up civilization as we knew it, were allied in their detestation of the Khalia and their determination to resist Khalia incursions. They were much less united when it came to their dealings with each other. In fact, the various planets of the Alliance were a swirling mass of treaties, special groups, alignments, organizations, one against the other, forever seeking local advantage. In this regard, at least, mankind had not gotten over its ancient propensity for aggression and competition.

  There were factions among the Alliance planets that felt that the Fleet itself was a greater danger to their life and liberties than the Khalia. Especially resented was the loss of the right to defend one’s own planet with spaceships. It made sense, of course; it would be a senselessly expensive duplication of effort if each planet, some of them with very small populations indeed, should undertake their own guard. The security of all of the planets depended upon a strong Fleet, which could handle any menace.

  This much was obvious and almost everyone agreed. Yet it still went hard to see swaggering armed men on liberty on your home planet when you did not have the right to arm ships. Humans were still caught in a dilemma: that many of them didn’t feel free unless they were able to have their own fleets. But if they did, it rendered peace and security impossible.

  Given the various rivalries among the various planets of the Alliance, Esplendadore knew that it was not impossible that several of the sponsoring planets might want his expedition to fail. There was always the question of council members trying to promote the careers of home town admirals. And this would not be the first time that an Alliance effort had been sabotaged.

  Esplendadore discussed these matters with his security chief. The security chief agreed that there was every possibility that some sort of sabotage was involved. He vowed he would get to the bottom of it.

  The building of the new base did not go well. There seemed to be a rather large number of accidents. Several more smaller buildings collapsed unexpectedly. Everyone was getting nervous.

  Everything was way off schedule. These delays posed an increasing danger upon the entire expedition. It was at this time, also, that Esplendadore began to get more direct evidence that somebody was willfully interfering with things. It seemed that expensive machine tools had been left outside, and their highly polished metals were corroding much faster than they should have been.

  IX.

  Lea had the first of her strange “second-sight” dreams. In her dream, she was going to visit her cousin, Iris. In real life, Lea didn’t have a cousin Iris, but in the dream she did. The dream happened in a place that looked very strange indeed, but when she was dreaming it, it seemed exactly as it should be.

  Iris lived in one of the huge apartment buildings near the center of town. This one was called the Emerald Arms and it housed several thousand families.

  Lea felt right at home when she went into Iris’s building. She took the suction tube to the fourteenth floor and then hopped on a roller which carried her over the mile or so of corridor to Iris’s apartment door.

  “I’m very glad to see you,” Iris said, “but you must forgive me if I don’t pay you much attention. I’m on emergency phone duty.”

  Lea noticed now the thin black wires that went into Iris’s head and led to outlets in the wall.

  “Jeepers! Is something up?” Lea said. “Why are you doing emergency stuff?”

  “Why, it’s the war, you silly thing,” Iris said. “You do remember our war, don’t you?”

  “Oh, yes. We’re being invaded or something, aren’t we?”

  Lea asked. “Frankly, I haven’t paid much attention to it. I’ve got a lot of big career decisions I have to make this year.”

  “Well, you’d better start paying attention to it,” Iris said. “They’re still advancing, you know.”

  “But I thought that our forces repulsed them at great loss,” Lea said.

  “We halted them temporarily, at the cost of over ten thousand of our lives. But they’ve already begun moving again. Uh-oh ... hold on, there’s a signal.”

  Bright sparks flashed across one of the wires that went into Iris’s head. Iris whispered to Lea, “It’s from the Southern Salient. There hasn’t been much happening there for a while. I think something big is about to break. Isn’t it exciting?”

  “Yes, it is,” Lea said. “But it’s also very sad. All those nice boys being killed. I wish I could do something about it.”

  “Well then, why don’t you?”

  “What could I do?”

  “Talk to them. Try to make them understand. Tell them to go somewhere else. There’s plenty of room on this planet. Why must they choose this spot, for heaven’s sake?”

  “But why me?” Lea asked.

  “Because only you can do it. You live in their world.”

  “Iris!” Lea said. “What a shocking thing to say!”

  “But it’s true,” Iris said. “You know it’s true, don’t you?”

  Lea was going to protest again, to explain that she was pure Ariji, just like Iris. Then she woke up. She was one very disturbed human.

  X.

  I just didn’t know who to talk to about my dreams. I felt that I had to talk to someone, because they were really disturbing me and I was beginning to wonder if I weren’t maybe going crazy. I didn’t feel crazy, but my dreams were crazy. I really needed someone to talk to about them.

  There was the Interdenominational Chaplain, of course. He was the official spiritual advisor for all of us. I had seen him from a distance. He was a middle-aged man, a widower, rather slightly built, and he had a short, gray beard and he wore gold-rimmed glasses, not because his eyes were bad, but because on this planet gold-rimmed glasses were a mark of the clergyman. I decided against speaking to him, however, because I suspected that my dreams were not really a spiritual problem, were not in his province, so to speak.

  I knew several girls at work, but I didn’t know any of them well enough. There was Milus Shotwell, of course, and I knew he liked me. He was a sensible young man and quite good-looking and very much my type. I think that’s very important when you’re discussing intimate things like dreams. So I decided to talk to Milus and I honestly don’t know how it was that I found myself walking down the long dusty corridor that led to the small lab and rather dismal living quarters they had found for Allan Bantry and his unwanted Department of Alien Psychology.

  Allan was working alone in his lab as usual. He had on a grimy lab coat and his frizzy hair was standing on end, the way it gets when he forgets to comb it. But I was pretty glad to see him.

  His lab was a small room with two worktables. His computers and their peripheries and printers occupied all of one table. On the other he had his audio equipment. When I came in he was playing something I knew, Bach’s Little Organ Fugue.

  “Hi,” I said. “How’s military life?”

  “I wouldn’t kn
ow,” he said. “I’m civilian labor, just like you are.”

  “I’d have thought the Fleet would have its own military psychologists.”

  “Of course it does. But they’re for the member races exclusively. The Fleet has no interest in outside aliens except to kill them.”

  “Then why do they bother hiring an alien psychologist?”

  “In order to demonstrate their interest in the advancement of knowledge. It’s good publicity when the time comes for military appropriations.”

  “Why aren’t you wearing your tharg suit’?”

  “Please,” Allan said, “don’t remind me. How was I to know people didn’t wear tharg suits here? So. Have you decided to work for me?”

  I told him I came in order to tell him about a dream I’d had.

  “Why me?” he asked.

  I had been wondering that myself, but I suddenly knew the answer.

  “Because no matter what I say I don’t think you’ll tell me I’m crazy. Or am I crazy to think that?”

  “Lea, sometimes I have difficulty following you. Sit down and tell me your dream,” he said, motioning me to a rather fragile-looking rocking chair.

  I told him all about my imaginary cousin Iris. When I had finished I started to rock furiously while he sat and fan his fingers through his hair, a sure sign he’s thinking. For a terrible moment I thought he was going to say, “Lea, I’m sorry to tell you this but you’re just plain crazy.”

  Instead he said, “Lea, I need you.”

  My heart thrilled to his words. I had already decided that I cared for him a little. I knew that he liked me, hut I had not imagined it was to this extent.

  “Oh, Allan,” I said. “Why?”

  “Because,” he said, “you’ve got the highest psi rating among any of us, military or civilian, on Klaxon. This dream convinces me of it. I think it’s an important dream.”

  “But what has that got to do with your needing me?”

  “Lea, I am convinced that only by looking to psi will we get to the bottom of what’s going wrong. Please come and work in my division.”

  I really didn’t know whether to be flattered or not. But I did begin working for Allan Bantry in the Department of Alien Psychology.

  I always record my dreams in a diary. So I had the dates of each of them. But even without the diary. I knew that each dream had come on the eve of some terrible accident. The first was when the new buildings collapsed. Then there had been the destruction of the mill. And then the accident in the car pool. I had even begun to suspect that my dreams were somehow responsible for the terrible things that were going on. But Allan talked me out of that.

  “Forget that nonsense,” he said. “What is happening is obvious. Somehow you are in contact with the people who are causing the accidents. With one of them, at least. Iris.”

  “But those things I dream never happened. Not really.”

  “I believe they happened, but not in the way you remember. The images of your dreams were your mind’s way of making sense out of what you saw.”

  “Allan, you don’t really believe I could be in telepathic contact with the people who are sabotaging our base. I mean, it isn’t even proven yet that anyone is doing it. It could all be Iike accidents.”

  “There’s very little statistical possibility of their being accidents,” he said. “No, there’s obviously an intelligence behind this.”

  “Then it must be one of our own people. There’s no one on this planet but Fleet people and Fleet civilian workers. Or do you think someone else may be hidden out there?” I gestured in the direction of the great wasteland that surrounded Xanadu.

  “No, I do not,” Allan said. “I don’t think it has anything to do with treachery or sabotage. I suspect we’re dealing with an alien intelligence which is opposing us for reasons of its own.”

  “You mean there are aliens out there on the planet?” I said.

  “There would have to be,” Bantry said. “They could have been here even before we arrived. Remember, this planet was only hastily surveyed. We assume there’s no intelligent life here, but that may just mean that the initial survey didn’t turn up any.”

  It was an idea. Frightening. If Iris and her people really existed, where were they?

  It was all getting very solemn, but then I thought of something that made me laugh.

  “Does my alien hypothesis strike you as funny?” Allan asked somewhat frostily.

  “Not at all, Allan! But you must admit, it’s just the sort of hypothesis you’d expect of an alien psychologist.”

  He looked very affronted for a minute, and then he grinned.

  I was glad of that. I think it’s good for a man to have a sense of humor, especially when I’m around.

  “You know something?” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “You’re weird, Lea. Definitely weird.”

  That’s when I knew for sure that he liked me.

  XI.

  I really didn’t want to do the mind exercises. I had a lot of other things to think about. Allan and I had just found each other. That was something to think about. But Allan really didn’t seem quite aware that we had found each other. That was something else to think about. But mainly I didn’t want to think. I was in love and I just wanted to feel good, sort of lazy and laid back, that’s how I felt. Languorous, the poets called it. I felt languorous when I was around Allan.

  But Allan didn’t seem to feel romantic around me. I don’t really think it was in his repertoire. He was a serious-minded young science jock and he wanted me to do mind exercises.

  I had to wear funny metal things on my head and stare at ball bearings on a polished glass surface. I was supposed to get them to roll. Can you imagine that?

  I tried. I pushed against them with my mind. Sometimes I could almost feel I was making contact. I could feel the coldness of the steel against—not my real forehead, of course, but the forehead I was projecting against the little steel ball.

  But I couldn’t budge them. I could see that Allan was disappointed. After a week of this I think he was ready to give up on me, until I discovered the trick.

  I called it a trick, though Allan said it was just my individual way of focusing. I imagined a tiny lever, and I stuck one end of it under one of those bearings, and gave a push, and the thing started to move. After that it was easy for me to push it a little faster with my imaginary forehead. I can’t take all the credit. The psi booster I wore on my forehead helped. Thanks, psi booster.

  After the steel balls, Allan wanted me to try to turn keys in locks at a distance. It was easy once I got the hang of directing the force in a sort of twisting way. After that we turned to communication.

  The next time I dreamed, I seemed to be walking down a street in a city which afterward seemed very strange but at the time of dreaming seemed perfectly normal and commonplace. There were a lot of buildings and they were colored white and blue, and there were no entrances or exits. Allan told me later that many of the details probably had no definite correspondence to reality, but were examples of the mind’s analogizing tendency, the way it simulates environment. That’s how alien psychologists talk.

  The streets were made of porcelain cobblestones. There were horses and riders in the streets, though I realized later that they weren’t horses at all.

  I walked down the street and a lot of people were hurrying past me. They weren’t really going anywhere urgent, I knew that somehow, they just always moved around very quickly, it was the way they were. I went on and came into a sort of village square, and there was a fountain in it, and in it was a fountain with a statue, only the statue had no head and water was gushing from its neck. It didn’t seem to me strange at the time because I knew the statue had been there for ages.

  Then I heard a voice saying, “All citizens, assemble at once at the statue in Sec
tor 22 Orange. We have some important news to tell you.”

  I went there and it was a sad sight. A lot of our soldiers were back from the front, and they had been wounded badly, many of them. There were a lot of stretchers, and ambulances kept arriving and leaving. Some of our men were bandaged and moving around on crutches, and some of them were on six legs, some on seven. It broke my heart to see how they had lost legs and could never dance in the May dances again.

  I went on. I thought I had something important to do, someone to meet. There was some reason for me to be there. If I waited, I would remember it. But there was no time to sit around. Just then Iris’s brother Ingendra came over.

  “You’re just in time,” he said. “The council is moving into supreme session. They’re about to make a very important decision.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Come with me,” Ingendra said. “You can see everything.”

  The council hall was a very high-ceilinged room, and it was lit by some sort of indirect lighting. All of the councilors of the city were there, and the President of the Ariji was there, too. She was very fat, and she wore a lot of black eye makeup. She was old, but I thought she was very beautiful. She frightened me, because I thought she could read my mind and everyone else’s. It’s something they can do, the Presidents of the Ariji.

  “So you’re Lea. We were hoping you’d come visit us again.”

  “But why? I’ve always lived here.”

  “No you haven’t, Lea. Try to remember where you really come from.”

  I thought about it, and I got the feeling, there in my dream, that I was dreaming, and that the real me was lying asleep out there in another world, the real world, perhaps.

  “Do you know where you come from?” the President asked.

  “Am I really from the other world?” I asked.