by E. R. Mason
“Do we need to set up a phony financial assets path somewhere?” asked Wilson.
“No. We do not keep our money in any institution. It has not always been acquired legally.”
“When do you need this by?”
“Tomorrow morning. We haven’t been scanned by anything since leaving Enrika, but tomorrow we’ll be close enough to XiTau that we need to be ready.”
“So you got some big plan for XiTau, then?” asked R.J.
“Pieces of one. Still working on it. We’ll drop into high orbit and hang there a while collecting more data. If and when they contact us, I will be a presumptuous, self-indulgent individual on a never-ending party cruise who is too aloof to speak directly with them.”
“My kind of role,” joked Wilson.
“We’ll need real hi-res surface imaging, maybe some Denard IRIA infrared interior views, if we think we can get away with it.”
“I’ll start setting that up in the morning, too,” said Wilson.
“That’s it for now. Expect more later.”
“Sayonara, you guys.” Wilson backed out and disappeared aft.
R.J. leaned against Danica’s seat and folded his arms. She looked up and gave him a sarcastic stare.
“You ready?” he asked me.
“Really? You’re not going to back out?”
“Did some more research, thought it all over, can’t wait.”
“There’s probably more risk that he’ll be made sane than anything else,” said Danica. “I mean, he can’t get any crazier.”
“So, what have you figured out from all of it?” I asked.
“I believe I will be able to communicate with anyone anywhere once I get the hang of it.”
“You mean telepathically?”
“Exactly.”
“Oh, brother. It’s the great Houdini show in space again,” said Danica.
“How do you go about that, exactly?” I asked.
R.J. cast a sideward warning glance at Danica and said, “Well, at the risk of inviting yet more derogatory remarks from you-know-who, I’ve been studying those poem fragments for a while. They reminded me of a famous psychic named Cayce who could go into a trance and tele-physically find people anywhere, examine their physical bodies, and prescribe cures for them. All he needed to know was their name and location to do it. That ancient poem implies something like that. It says, 'Speak name and harbor,' which to me would suggest a name and location.”
“Kinda reaching a bit, aren’t you?” I said sympathetically.
“Cuckoo,” scoffed Danica, and she drew circles alongside her head.
“I was in there. I felt it. You don’t know,” argued R.J.
“So you’re going to try to contact someone? Who will you choose?”
“I hadn’t thought about it, but now that you mention it, how about Ms. Donoro, my greatest skeptic?”
Danica let out a coughing laugh. “Oh, that’s perfect. Go right ahead. I’ll be here.”
R.J. appeared unruffled. “I’ll set up.” He turned and headed back.
“You have the spacecraft,” I said, and pushed up.
“I have the spacecraft,” answered Danica. “Standing by for incoming communications,” she added, and she laughed.
R.J. came forward with the skull wrapped in a terry cloth sack with a string. He opened it with the greatest of care and placed it in front of his seat at the table. He drew the crystal pedestal from inside the front of his flight suit and set it down with equal respect. Once seated, he rubbed his hands together and looked at me with excitement. I sat slowly with new misgivings.
“Are we sure the others are asleep?” he asked.
“You know Wilson. I can’t speak for the other two.”
Danica was watching us on monitors and listening over the intercom. She clicked on and said, “Really, is there anything I’m supposed to do up here? Splash holy water? Hang up some garlic?”
“You could listen within yourself,” replied R.J. sarcastically.
“Listening…” she said with equal disdain. “Nothing yet.” We heard her laugh before the com squelched off.
R.J. scoffed and shook his head. He separated the crystals and held the clear one out to the skull. As before, it jumped from his fingertips and snapped into place on the forehead. After a deep breath and a moment of consideration, he lifted the companion crystal to his forehead, gave a short wince, and fastened it in place. Immediately the shadow fell over him as before. His eyes blurred and closed. His head tipped back slightly. There was a sudden jerking of his body.
He spoke in a very low tone, sounding like a man on a tightrope. “My god, my head’s outside the bubble again. It’s like a world a trillion times larger than ours. There’s a faint golden light surrounded by darkness. I see galaxies a zillion miles away in every direction.”
He paused. I began to worry. Before I could say anything, he began a chant in that same low, slow voice. “Danica Donoro, barycenter Ara, 423/112/51 P9, Danica Donoro, barycenter Ara, 423-112-51 at P9, Danica Donoro, barycenter Ara, 423-112-51, P9, Danica Don…..”
To my dismay, he suddenly jerked upright and stopped chanting. He sat suspended, in captured silence, not moving, not speaking. It was even difficult to tell if he was breathing. This time my concern overcame my patience. I began to stand. After a minute more of nothing, I carefully reached out, intending to snatch the crystal from his forehead.
Danica’s voice interrupted. “Adrian, you need to get up here right now!”
“Are you crazy, can’t you see what’s going on back here?”
“He’s alright. Just get up here right now!”
“How do you know he’s alright?”
“Trust me. Get up here now!”
Reluctantly, I backed away, refusing to take my eyes off of R.J.’s frozen form. Through the airlock, I was forced to lose sight of him. I hurried forward to the flight deck and found Danica still in the right seat. All systems looked normal.
“Why the hell did you call me up here?”
Danica turned her head in a manner so slow and spooky it rivaled The Exorcist. Her eyes blinked several times in rapid succession. She looked at me, eyes dilated, and said, “Adrian, it’s me.”
“What?”
“It’s me, R.J. I’m here up front.”
“No damn way!”
“Hurry. We need to confirm this. Give me a keyword to take back. Anything.”
“How about The Exorcist?”
“Go aft now. I’m withdrawing and removing the crystal from my forehead.”
I raced back to the habitat module as fast as humanly possible. I arrived to see R.J. lowering the crystal from his forehead. He placed it carefully into its half of the pedestal and sat pale-faced and silent.
I slowly took my seat without taking my eyes off him. “Are you…alright?”
He wiped his face with both hands, turned and looked at me, and said, “The Exorcist.”
“What?”
“The Exorcist. It’s the key phrase you gave me up on the flight deck.”
“No shit!”
“Is Danica alright?”
I straightened up, jumped from my seat, and flew back to the flight deck. Danica was sitting in her seat, adjusting one of the flight displays. She looked over at me cheerfully. “Nope. Sorry to disappoint you two. No psychic contact at all. Is the test over? Are you silly men satisfied?”
“You don’t remember I was just up here?”
“Yeah, you were, before we began this idiotic ghost story thing.”
“No, I mean just a couple minutes ago. I was up here.”
“Were not.”
“The Exorcist, that doesn’t mean anything to you?”
“It was a very scary movie. A lot scarier than you guys, at least most of the time… Why? Should it mean something?”
“I guess not. Hold that thought. I’ll be back.”
“Yeah, you will,” she called after me. “My shift ends in a little bit, you know.”
&nbs
p; I returned to R.J. and took my seat staring at him in disbelief. “She’s okay. Now…what just happened?”
Chapter 23
“I’m telling you, I took control of Danica’s body.”
“Come on! This can’t be happening.”
“Oh, it’s happening alright.”
“You said you were going to communicate with her telepathically.”
“I was wrong. It’s way more than that.”
“If you took control of her body, where was she?”
“Asleep…I think.”
“Asleep where?”
“In there with me… I think.”
“You mean you could move her body like remote control?”
“Nope. I was in there. I could feel everything she would normally feel.”
“You felt what it was like to be a woman?”
“It was quite a new experience, I’ll tell you.”
“You’re sure about this?”
“I could have taken control of this ship and flown it into a sun if I had wanted to.”
“I’m having just a bit of trouble buying into this. There must be some other explanation.”
“I turned her head and looked right at you. I told you to give me a keyword. You chose 'The Exorcist.'”
“Damn!”
“Do you realize how dangerous this thing is?”
“I have an idea.”
“What did Danica say?”
“She doesn’t know anything happened at all.”
“Oh, my god!”
“What have we gotten into here?”
“Dorian Blackwell maybe really could have ruled the world with this thing. Tap into any president, dictator, or military leader any time you need to. Make them do whatever you want. They won’t remember a thing. How convenient is that?”
Danica’s voice cut in over the intercom. “I’m listening in, you guys, but I’m not understanding what you’re saying.” Her voice had a touch of fear in it.
“I guess we’d better go forward and try to explain,” I said.
“Okay,” replied R.J. “You first.”
It was not an easy task. Records were possibly set for the greatest number of facial expressions in the shortest amount of time. She was adamant in her dubiety. That eventually gave way to indignation at the suggestion her private domain had been violated. From there, anger kept popping up in between layers of denial. She knew we would not lie to her, and the evidence was irrefutable. The argument gradually diminished down to long periods of silence, interrupted by occasional, aborted expressions of contradictory reasoning.
As the debate gradually settled down to surrender, the three of us huddled on the flight deck, finally willing to discuss our options, "just in case," as Danica insisted on putting it, what we were claiming was true.
“Well, let’s just take a time-out and give ourselves a chance to consider all of this before total insanity sets in,” I suggested.
“The crystal set should still be kept separated from the skull,” suggested R.J.
“For security, you mean, of course.” I said.
“The least we can do,” he replied. “If somehow someone got their hands on the skull, we would not want them to have the crystal set.”
“Better find a more secure hiding place in the lab,” I said.
“I have one in mind.”
“Only the three of us know about this. Let’s keep it that way,” I added. “Wilson knows about the skull, but not any of this. We should keep it that way, for now.”
R.J. nodded his head vigorously. “Absolutely. The thing is dangerous enough, even to anyone who just knows about it.”
Danica sat speechless, a look of bewilderment still on her face. I suspected she was finally getting past the feeling of violation and beginning to wonder about the greater implications.
When the skull had been carefully tucked into its bogus pressurized compartment, and the crystals hid securely away in the science lab, I returned forward and slipped into the left seat. CD-48 11069 was no longer a twinkling speck in the blackness. It had become dime-sized, dominating all other stars. The larger of its ecliptic family members were now diamonds in the space around it. The scene looked like any typical solar system, but I was already certain that what we would find there would be anything but typical. Danica climbed from her seat and put a hand on my shoulder as she headed back to her sleeping compartment. Neither she nor I spoke, all necessary sentiments understood. I spent the quiet time of my shift learning and practicing enough Sirenian language that I could get by impersonating one with help from the translators in my ears.
Our arrival at XiTau high orbit was mercifully unheralded. There were only two or three orbital corridors containing artificial satellites. There were enough to give complete global coverage, but too few to support the planet’s population. Apparently, satellite support was only available to the aristocracy. Wilson used engineering station B exclusively to study the planetary defenses. R.J. used station A to evaluate everything else. We were careful not to scan sensitive areas. No police vehicles intercepted us. No warning transmissions were received.
At shift change, the six of us huddled around the flight deck and engineering section for an informal discussion of what we were finding.
“No orbital defense at all that I can see,” said Wilson. “They have ground-based laser and pulse cannon at various places on the surface that can take out any spacecraft or armament headed their way. They have a few spacecraft down there that look like police–style cruisers. I guess they’re only used as needed. Their surface-based police installations are substantial, though. Small armies located strategically around the planet. They seem to be set up more to chase down violators on the surface than to wage war in space.”
“You notice any weaknesses there?” I asked.
“One big one. The system itself. As long as no alarm bells are set off, it seems like you could go anywhere and do almost anything.”
“But not on the major estates,” countered R.J.
Wilson agreed. “Yeah, the whole place is a network of large estates serviced by many servant-class individuals. Those estates are usually sectioned off by high walls, with heavy intrusion detection. You do not enter or leave them unless you are allowed to.”
“You have a breakdown of the perimeter intrusion systems they use?”
Wilson answered, “Can’t get that without a detailed scan of one of the estates. You said not to do that. I did find an industrial complex which was manufacturing security stuff, so I have some information on the types of devices they are using, but not an actual estate layout.”
“How about an unoccupied estate? Could we find one of those and do a detailed scan?”
“Thought of that,” replied Wilson. “I’m working on it.”
R.J. summarized. “The place is beginning to look like what we expected, Adrian. The army of servants who maintain the estates do not seem to be free individuals. We haven’t done interior scanning, as Wilson said, but I have a feeling most of the servants live in barracks-styled quarters. The only ones that come and go outside the estate walls seem to be the ones who service the estate. The others never leave. It gives me the creeps, I’ll tell you. I would not want to break the law down there, or show up illegally.”
“Or be kidnapped and taken there?” I suggested.
Everyone looked solemnly at each other.
“They know we’re up here,” said Wilson. “We’ve been pulse-scanned several times. They’re probably trying to verify our registry. But there’s been no attempt to contact us. What you gonna do about that?”
“It takes a long time to make inquires to Sirenia from here. Even if they can’t verify us, I have a feeling many ships that visit here are illegal. That shouldn’t bother them at all. They may be hoping we have a fresh supply of slave labor to bargain with,” I replied.
“Aren’t you afraid of the Griffin being recognized if you put down here, Adrian?” asked Patrick.
“The Griffi
n made no trips to deep space before she came into my possession, Doc. The scum at the Tolkien Minor moon recognized her because she had been built for illegal trafficking and some of them worked for Danica’s dear boss, Dorian Blackwell. But out here, there’s no chance she’s ever been seen. We’d have to run into someone who knew her. That’s a chance we’ll have to take.”
“So you’re actually going down there?” asked Catherine.
“I shall shop for an exotic estate and will need a great deal of servitude to support it. I possess a great deal of wealth. I might even be interested in contributing to the XiTau cause, to enhance my standing in the community.”
“I want to accompany you,” said Patrick. “This is about my daughter.”
“You are already on the list, but you may not like it all that much.”
“You just name it. I’m ready.”
“There is a long-shot chance your daughter is down there somewhere. If we were to run across her in a one-in-a-million coincidence, she’d likely start screaming bloody murder to get your attention. Then we’d all be really screwed, wouldn’t we? You will need to be unrecognizable. You will be my chief accountant. In fact, all of you are my bought and paid-for servants. You will all need to be something other than human, except for my Earth slave Catherine.”
Catherine interrupted. “I should have known.”
“We can’t give them any idea we’re from Earth. Catherine will be the only human slave. My executive consort. She’s the only one of us that speaks English. She’ll do most of my talking for me because interacting with others is below me. Catherine will need something that looks like restraint bracelets. Everyone else here will need to be convincingly alien, and I’ll need you doctor types to make me blue. Do I need to paint myself or is there another way?”
Patrick shook his head. “No, no. That’s easy. The Sirenian sweat glands turn outsiders who get too close blue anyway. I can replicate that in the lab. You’ll be a genuine Sirenian blue for about forty-eight hours.”
I glanced at R.J. He returned a don’t-you-dare look. “Danica will need to stay on the flight deck. The rest of you will also need to accompany me off the ship to enhance my authority.”