Shock Diamonds

by E. R. Mason

“No shit.”

  “Like I say, I’m still coming to terms with all of that. He wasn’t the only one.”

  “Man, that was the last mistake those bastards will ever make.”

  “Were they bastards, Wilson? How do you know?”

  “Oh, hell yes. You read some of that crap we intercepted on the B-station com panel. That ship was a regularly scheduled coffin for a whole lot of innocents. It had just made a dump of the latest victims and was on its way back for more. A bunch of the communications we intercepted were saying the destruction was way overdue, and how those lizard people needed killing, and I’m putting it nicely. You read some of them, Adrian. Some of the crap they were doing on that ship will make your hair curl. Don’t take it from me, read it for yourself. It was so bad, the Docs and R.J. didn’t want to believe you were on it. They thought you’d be dead or missing parts for sure, if you were.”

  “I hate that surprised look they give you when you kill them. Can’t get it out of my head.”

  “Yeah, something you’d only tell to another combat soldier. Only we can understand.”

  “What’s the dues, Wilson? What happens when it’s your turn and the bill comes due?”

  “For killing somebody who’s tryin’ to kill you? What’s the dues if you stand by and let them do it, instead of trying to save yourself? There’s gotta be dues for that, too. Which kind’a dues you want to pay? All the civilians who were gonna be put down by that ship, I know what they’d say.”

  “I’m lucky to have a friend like you, Wilson. There aren’t any others like you.”

  “God, I hope you’re not turnin’ sentimental on me. We’re way overdue at tyin’ one on, Adrian. We got plenty of blue stuff left.”

  “I’ll put it on my to-do list.”

  “And I’ll hold you to it.”

  As we entered the camp, the Tusani once again paused to watch the new strangers. Word had spread of the promise of friendship and gifts, so this time the atmosphere was silent but warm.

  Chief Tawna greeted us at the cave, bowed to the doctors, and led them in where those injured in previous battles were still being cared for by the nurses with the green goop. After a few words to them from the Chief, Catherine and Patrick went right to work. I had to hang around to help with translations. Wilson hung with me, not knowing what else to do.

  As the doctor-patient relationships began to take hold, Wilson begged off and headed back to the ship. I sat by the cave entrance, watching the day’s activities, and a short time later spied R.J. walking into the camp alone and unarmed. He passed through the Tusani, smiling, waving, and calling out, “Yei, yei.” Tusani for hello. Aboard Griffin, I had recorded the Tusani dialect that I knew. R.J. had obviously already learned it. He came up alongside and looked out over the camp.

  “This is so beautiful,” he said.

  “You should be carrying at least something, you know. There’s some nasty prehistoric animals out there.”

  “Nothing bothered me.”

  “There are flightless birds three times the size of an ostrich, and they eat meat.”

  “Have you seen them?”

  “Up close.”

  “Do they still have dorsal feathers on the wings or have they lost those?”

  “I couldn’t see, running as I was.”

  “Oh!”

  “They do have spiked teeth.”

  “Oh! You were running from, as opposed to with, I take it.”

  “For my life.”

  “Perhaps I will begin carrying something.”

  “It would be prudent.”

  “These people are fabulous.”

  “I thought of you often as I was trying to teach them things.”

  “Yeah. I wanted to talk to you about that. How would you feel if I took that job over?”

  “I would love it. Please do everything you possibly can to improve their lives and ensure their survival, as they ensured mine.”

  “I have to warn you, I’m thinking metallurgy.”

  “Wow. That would be one giant leap. Why so much so fast?”

  “Because, to farm successfully, they need hardened tools. Have you seen any shiny deposits of any kind anywhere?”

  “I’m not that dumb, R.J. There are iron deposits about a mile up the north trail. It’s so plentiful some of it has collected as powder on the ledges. Can you really construct a furnace?”

  “Leather and wood for the billows. Stone and mud for the oven. No problem.”

  “I can’t wait to see the Professor at work.”

  “The other thing will be pottery. One must have jars to put one's harvest in.”

  “The women will love you. They may not let you leave.”

  “Don’t tempt me. I can imagine staying here, forever.”

  “I’ll let you in on a secret. So can I.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. You?”

  “You go from kidnapping and killing with bloodthirsty aliens to this, and it makes you think. The whole time I’ve been here I kept replaying your annoying lectures about technology versus nature in my head. At some point, you started to win.”

  “Have either of the doctors taken your temperature?”

  “Sometimes disagreements here turn into fights, just like in the modern world, but you know what happens? The two that are fighting tire themselves out and end up laughing so hard they roll in the dirt holding their stomachs and pointing at each other. Then everyone around them breaks out laughing and it turns into a damn celebration. How did modern society lose that last part?”

  “Did you hit your head or anything when you touched down?”

  “There’s not a Tusani here I wouldn’t trust. All of these people just assume that’s the way it should be. You know what? They’re right. Why isn’t our world like this? Everyone’s life could be like euphoria.”

  “For gosh sakes, this isn’t fair. I’m supposed to be the naturalist. You’re supposed to be the rocket man. Now you’re forcing me to give you the 5 percent lecture. It’s not fair.”

  “Five percent what?”

  “There are fifty-six people in this tribe. If 5 percent of them are troublemakers, that’s 2.8 troublemakers and 54.2 people who are okay. Fifty-four people are a strong influence over two or three troublemakers. They can be kept in line and taught. On Earth, there are eight billion people. Five percent of eight billion people means four hundred million assholes. That’s too many to control. You get just one real asshole in a restaurant and he disrupts the entire place. You get one asshole on a flight to somewhere and he makes the trip life-threatening. Even just the whiners will drive you insane. So, in our very large modern family, there has to be special people who prevent the five-percent idiots from blowing the place up. That’s who Adrian Tarn turned out to be. We have police, but there has to be troubleshooters who know how to get around the rules and cheat a little to stop bad things from happening. You break the rules better than anybody I know. That’s Adrian Tarn. Knight in tarnished armor. Breaker of rules. Rescuer of damsels in distress, which happens to be our current mission by the way. Occasional slayer of windmills, as Bernard Porre would put it. Player of all-night poker games. Drinker of whiskey often smuggled aboard. Scourge of Earth’s premier space agency. Why do you think they always let you off? It’s because they know they need you, that’s why. Now, can I go back to being the naturalist and argue with you that technology is not the Holy Grail?”

  “Whew. Was I whining?”

  “A little bit. You were whining a little bit.”

  “That reminds me, I promised Wilson I’d tie one on with him. Care to join us?”

  “Exactly what you need. And by the way, there’s something I need to discuss with you privately.”

  “I’m not married here.”

  “Right… That’s not it.” R.J. stopped and looked around to see if he had attracted too much attention. “I’ve spent many an hour monitoring space communications, searching for clues about you.”

  “Yeah, apparently I’m i
nfamous.”

  “Not important. During all the searching and cross-checking, I came across something unexpected, a reference to Danica’s priceless diamond skull.”

  “God, I forgot all about that thing. You guys been riding around the worst hoodlum sector of space known to man, with the most valuable diamond ever seen aboard. Tell me God doesn’t have a sense of humor.”

  “Yes, this is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into. I agree.”

  “You were saying about the skull…?”

  “As near as I can tell, there’s a legend about a planet that no longer exists. It’s carved in a strange sort of stone script called "The Legend of the Elohim." Someplace in this sector, a solar system died a million years ago in a supernova. As the story goes, and believe me this part is going to blow your mind, the skull was created with a set of companion crystals.”

  “Companion crystals like the ones…”

  “Oh yes indeed, like THOSE crystals.”

  “The false radar emitter we removed from Griffin’s tail section? That’s a companion piece to the diamond skull?”

  “Yep.”

  “Wow! But how? The fake transducer crystal was put in there at Enuro, during the gravity install. Are you saying they were in on this somehow?”

  “We were wrong about that. I checked it out. The interference first began when we left Earth on our way to Enuro, not after we had been there. The trouble actually started when Danica showed up with the skull.”

  “When the skull came in close proximity to the fake transducer?”

  “Yep.”

  “You know what? I got to admit that makes sense. Blackwell financed the building of the Griffin with money from human trafficking. He must have already had the crystals, but still did not have the skull. He hid the crystals in the tail of the ship during construction, while he continued to try to get his hands on the skull. But the Griffin was seized by the government and he was sent to prison. Danica said the skull was delivered to Blackwell’s estate while he was still in prison. As soon as he got out, he needed access to the Griffin to get the crystals back. That would not be easy. He made Danica a test pilot offer he knew she couldn’t refuse, hoping to use her. He was working on that when she flew the coop. So the skull is priceless but it’s incomplete. He needed the crystals to complete the set. He was going to make a killing selling a complete, legendary skull set on the black market. What would they have offered him? A planet of his own? A solar system somewhere?”

  “None of the above.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He wanted the skull and crystals for what they can do, not what they are worth.”

  “Okay, now you lost me. They really do something?”

  “It’s just a guess, but I’d bet money on it. The two crystal-halves we removed from the tail. One fits into the forehead of the skull. The other sticks to the forehead of the user. That’s why it was sticking to my skin when we were messing around with it.”

  “You’re starting to creep me out, R.J.”

  “Yeah? You think so? Well, listen to this. Putting the crystal on your forehead opens a link to the skull. At that point, the user only needs to think the name and location of anyone anywhere, and he can communicate with them telepathically.”

  “Oh, come on. You’ve gone too far now. Is that part of the legend, or something you made up?”

  “Everything fits perfectly.”

  “You haven’t been doing dangerous experiments with that thing while I’ve been gone, have you?”

  “Of course the hell I haven’t.”

  “So all of this is just wild conjecture?”

  “Not really. There’s ancient script supposedly associated with the thing that implies everything I’ve told you.”

  “Man, now that you mention it, Danica kept saying how Blackwell was trying to meditate to the thing thinking it would give him some kind of power or something. I think cigar man Killion mentioned something about Blackwell dreaming of world domination, too.”

  “See?”

  “So he believed in it, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Only one way to find out…”

  It took only one day for R.J. to rob me of my Tusani V.I.P. status. From that time on, Tusani men and women were constantly going to him for instruction. He was never in one place for more than a few minutes, overseeing a particular operation in each area, then moving on to the next. The Tusani women were neglecting their duties outright, gathered en masse around the pottery area, captivated completely by the modeling of river clay. Many of the men were enthralled by the construction of the smelting furnace. To my credit, the archery area remained very popular.

  The doctors were no less in demand. While performing the necessary inoculations, they were curing a variety of problems that had plagued the Tusani for years. Traffic to their treatment section of the cave was continuous. To the Tusani women, injections were suddenly considered an absolute must. It was an irony that the tribe had gone from Tusani nurse-doctoring to two of the most advanced physicians in the modern world.

  On the third day of the Griffin crew invasion, I watched R.J. break apart two stone molds he had shown the Tusani women how to carve. They separated to reveal the first Tusani iron axe head. The people stared in wonder as R.J. rubbed it against a sharpening rock, and when he made the motion of chopping on a nearby log with it, understanding came over them like tidal a wave.

  By the end of that third day, the doctors were finished. It was finally time to leave. The doctors gathered up the considerable number of accessories they had ended up bringing to the camp, then said many goodbyes and were escorted back to the ship by Wilson. R.J.’s leaving was much more difficult. They had him by the arm, one after another, last-minute questions that were difficult to understand and even more difficult to answer in Tusani. A group followed him to the edge of the encampment, helping him to hoist his backpack on the way. When his chance came, he did not wait for Wilson’s return, but backed down the trail waving until he was out of sight.

  I had no idea how to say goodbye. That difficulty was made worse by the fact I really did not want to leave. The Chief and Ooda walked me to the forest edge. We said little, but understood completely. When I turned to look back at the camp, I found all of the Tusani had gathered in a large group and stood silently staring. It made me choke and I had to catch a pre-tear with a forefinger. They noticed. It said more than I ever could have. I held my big bird tooth necklace high, and against all Tusani custom hugged the Chief and even Ooda. With a last look, I turned to the trail and consciously had to force myself to put one foot in front of the other.

  Danica had Griffin idling. The airlock door swished shut behind me. The air conditioning kicked on and was too cold trying to catch up. In the habitat module, two seats were set up for departure for the doctors. They were already strapping in. Beyond the forward airlock, R.J. and Wilson were strapped into their respective engineering stations. On the flight deck, Danica had taken the right seat and left the command chair for me. I lowered myself in and felt the long absent Commander Adrian Tarn resurface. I tugged at the beard so unfamiliar to him.

  “Are you ready, Danica?”

  “Let’s get into the sky, Adrian.”

  “Checklists complete?”

  “Engineering and flight deck all green. Flight director loaded and standing by.”

  “What’d you put in there?”

  “I programmed one orbit at 200. I thought you’d like to get a look at where you’ve been for the past few months.”

  “You are an angel. You know that?”

  “I can’t tell you how good it is to have you in that seat again.”

  I tapped the intercom. “Launch in 3...2…1…mark.” I hit the engage button and felt the ground-plane give us up. The forest below fell away as we dashed upward into the orange sky.

  Chapter 20

  We coasted on orbit around Tusania, a planet that until now had no Earth designation. I logged it in under tha
t name, making it a keepsake forevermore for the Tusani people. It was an ovoid-shaped, green planet, spotted by frequent blue, no oceans, but many large lakes and rivers. I turned in the command seat and renewed my familiarity with the busy displays, panel lights, and clicking meters, as R.J. arrived forward.

  “We’re coming up on the break-orbit point, Adrian, unless you want to alter the flight plan,” said Danica.

  “What have you guys put in there?”

  “We’re set up with the coordinates we got from Killian’s henchmen. It’s a system beyond the NGC 6188 nebula. It’s another place that has not been mapped or visited by any Earth ships yet, another big blank spot on the charts.”

  “Where else would we want to go?” mused R.J. “Anybody can travel known space.”

  Danica cast a sarcastic look.

  “How long a ride?” I asked.

  “Only three days to reach the outer rim,” she replied. “At max.”

  “How’s the Griffin been?”

  “Not one single no-go, not a single warning light since you’ve been gone. Just a dream to fly.”

  “Must be the engineers,” said R.J.

  Danica rolled her eyes. “God, he’s been jovial since you returned.”

  “Hey, I don’t have to come up front to be insulted. I can go back there with Wilson…” R.J. pushed himself away and retreated aft.

  Danica looked at me with a more somber expression. “He’s discovered something about the skull, but he won’t tell me.”

  “Yeah, he thinks it’s some kind of telepathy device. Those crystals that were in the tail go with it.”

  “Wow! That sounds ridiculous, but it really makes sense. That could be what Blackwell was trying to do. Where’d R.J. get that?”

  “He found some stuff in other people’s data streams. He’s been watching for something the whole time. I agree with you. It’s bull crap.”

  “So what do the crystals have to do with it?”

  “One half crystal fits into the indentation on the skull’s forehead, the other one sticks to the user’s forehead. Theoretically a connection is then made somehow.”