"Nothing," Pinkh said. "Keep in formation."
He locked them in even tighter, screwing them down with mental shackles till they gasped.
The pressure was building.
A six-power linkup, and the pressure was building.
I am a hero, Pinkh thought, I can do it
Then they were flashing across the Greater Ocean and it blurred into an endless carpet of thick heaving green; Pinkh felt sick watching it whip by beneath him; he went deeper into ship and the vessel felt no sickness. He fed the stability of nausea-submerged along the interties.
They were met by the Thil inner defense line over empty ocean. First came the sea-breathers but they fell short when Pinkh ordered his covey to lift for three thousand feet. They leveled off just as the beaks swooped down in their land-to-sea parabolas. Two of them snouted and perceived the range, even as they were viciously beamed into their component parts by Pinkh's outermost sappers. But they'd already fed back the trajectories, and suddenly the sky above them was black with the blackmetal bodies of beaks, flapping, dropping, squalling as they cascaded into the center of the formation. Pinkh felt sappers vanish from the linkup and fed the unused power along other lines, pulling the survivors tighter under his control. "Form a sweep," he commanded.
The formation regrouped and rolled in a graceful gull-wing maneuver that brought them craft-to-craft in a fan. "Plus!" Pinkh ordered, cutting in—with a thought—the imploding beam. The beams of each sortie craft fanned out, overlapping, making an impenetrable wall of deadly force. The beaks came whirling back up and careened across the formation's path. Creatures of metal and mindlessness. Wheels and carapaces. Blackness and berserk rage. Hundreds. Entire eyries.
When they struck the soft pink fan of the overlapping implosion beams, they whoofed in on themselves, dropped instantly.
The formation surged forward.
Then they were over the main continent. Rising from the exact center was the gigantic mountain atop which the Thil Lord of Propriety lived in his Maze.
"Attack! Targets of opportunity!" Pinkh commanded, sending impelling power along the linkup. His metal hide itched. His eyeball sensors watered. In they went, again.
"Do not strike at the Lord's Maze," one of the sappers thought
Why did I do that? We were briefed not to attack the Lord's Maze. It would be unthinkable to attack the Lord's Maze. It would precipitate even greater war than before. The war would never end. Why did I stop my sapper from reiterating the order? And why haven't I told them not to do it? It was stressed at the briefing. They're linked in so very tightly, they'd obey in a moment—anything I said. What is happening? I'm heading for the mountain! Lord!
Listen to me, Pinkh. This war has been maintained by the Lords of Propriety for a hundred years.
Why do you think it was made heresy even to think negatively about the opposing Lord? They keep it going, to feed off it
Whatever they are, these Lords, they come from the same pocket universe and they live off the energy of men at war. They must keep the war going or they'll die. They programmed you to be their secret weapon. The war was reaching a stage where both Montag and Thil want peace, and the Lords can't have that. Whatever they are, Pinkh, whatever kind of creature they are, wherever they come from, for over a hundred years they've held your two galaxies in their hands, and they've used you. The Lord isn't in his Maze, Pinkh. He's safe somewhere else. But they planned it between them. They knew if a Montagasque sortie penetrated to Groundworld and struck the Maze, it would keep the war going indefinitely. So they programmed you, Pinkh. But before they could use you, your soul was stolen. They put my soul in you, a man of Earth, Pinkh. You don't even know where Earth is, but my name is Bailey. I've been trying to reach through to you. But you always shut me out—they had you programmed too well. But with the linkup pressure, you don't have the strength to keep me out, and I've got to let you know you're programmed to strike the Maze. You can stop it, Pinkh. You can avoid it all You can end this war. You have it within your power, Pinkh. Don't strike the Maze. I'll redirect you. Strike where the Lords are hiding. You can rid your galaxies of them, Pinkh. Don't let them kill you. Who do you think arranged for the path through the labyrinth? Why do you think there wasn't more effective resistance? They wanted you to get through. To commit the one crime they could not forgive.
The words reverberated in Pinkh's head as his sortie craft followed him in a tight wedge, straight for the Maze of the Lord.
"I—no, I—" Pinkh could not force thoughts out to his sappers. He was snapped shut. His mind was aching, the sound of straining and creaking, the buildings on the island-chain ready to crumble. Bailey inside, Pinkh inside, the programming of the Lords inside . . . all of them pulling at the fiber of Pinkh's mind.
For an instant the programming took precedence. "New directives. Override previous orders. Follow me in!"
They dove straight for the Maze.
No, Pinkh, fight it! Fight it and pull out I'll show you where they're hiding. You can end this war!
The programming phasing was interrupted, Pinkh abruptly opened his great golden eye, his mind synched in even more tightly with his ship, and at that instant he knew the voice in his head was telling him the truth. He remembered:
Remembered the endless sessions.
Remembered the conditioning.
Remembered the programming.
Knew he had been duped.
Knew he was not a hero.
Knew he had to pull out of this dive.
Knew that at last he could bring peace to both galaxies.
He started to think pull out, override and fire it down the remaining linkup interties . . .
And the Lords of Propriety, who left very little to chance, who had followed Pinkh all the way, contacted the Succubus, complained of the merchandise they had bought, demanded it be returned . . .
Bailey's soul was wrenched from the body of Pinkh. The subaltern's body went rigid inside its jell trough, and, soulless, empty, rigid, the sortie craft plunged into the mountaintop where the empty Maze stood. It was followed by the rest of the sortie craft.
The mountain itself erupted in a geysering pillar of flame and rock and plasteel.
One hundred years of war was only the beginning.
Somewhere, hidden, the Lords of Propriety—umbilicus-joined with delight shocks spurting softly pink along the flesh-linkage joining them—began their renewed gluttonous feeding.
Bailey was whirled out of the Montagasque subaltern's body. His soul went shooting away on an asymptotic curve, back along the feeder-lines, to the soul files of the Succubus.
This is what it was like to be in the soul station.
Round. Weighted with the scent of grass. Perilous in that the music was dynamically contracting: souls had occasionally become too enriched and had gone flat and flaccid.
There was a great deal of white space.
Nothing was ranked, therefore nothing could be found in the same place twice; yet it didn't matter, for the Succubus had only to focus his lens and the item trembled into a special awareness.
Bailey spent perhaps twelve minutes reliving himself as a collapsing star then revolved his interfaces and masturbated as Anne Boleyn.
He savored mint where it smells most poignant, from deep in the shallow earth through the roots of the plant, then extended himself, extruded himself through an ice crystal and lit the far massif of the highest mountain on an onyx asteroid—recreating The Last Supper in chiaroscuro.
He burned for seventeen hundred years as the illuminated letter "B" on the first stanza of a forbidden enchantment in a papyrus volume used to summon up the imp James Fenimore Cooper then stood outside himself and considered his eyes and their hundred thousand bee-facets.
He allowed himself to be born from the womb of a tree sloth and flickered into rain that deluged a planet of coal for ten thousand years. And he beamed. And he sorrowed.
Bailey, all Bailey, soul once more, free as all the universes, th
rew himself toward the farthermost edge of the slightly flattened parabola that comprised the dark. He filled the dark with deeper darkness and bathed in fountains of brown wildflowers. Circles of coruscating violet streamed from his fingertips, from the tip of his nose, from his genitals, from the tiniest fibrillating fibers of hair that coated him. He shed water and hummed.
Then the Succubus drew him beneath the lens.
And Bailey was sent out once more.
Waste not, want not.
He was just under a foot tall. He was covered with blue fur. He had a ring of eyes that circled his head. He had eight legs. He smelled of fish. He was low to the ground and he moved very fast.
He was a stalker-cat, and he was first off the survey ship on Belial. The others followed, but not too soon. They always waited for the cat to do its work. It was safer that way. The Filonii had found that out in ten thousand years of exploring their universe. The cats did the first work, then the Filonii did theirs. It was the best way to rule a universe.
Belial was a forest world. Covered in long continents that ran from pole to pole with feathertop trees, it was ripe for discovery.
Bailey looked out of his thirty eyes, seeing around himself in a full 3600 spectrum. Seeing all the way up into the ultra-violet, seeing all the way down into the infra-red. The forest was silent. Absolutely no sound. Bailey, the cat, would have heard a sound, had there been a sound. But there was no sound.
No birds, no insects, no animals, not even the whispering of the feathertop trees as they struggled toward the bright hot-white sun. It was incredibly silent.
Bailey said so
The Filonii went to a condition red.
No world is silent. And a forest world is always noisy. But this one was silent.
They were out there, waiting. Watching the great ship and the small stalker-cat that had emerged from it.
Who they were, the cat and the Filonii did not know. But they were there, and they were waiting for the invaders to make the first move. The stalker-cat glided forward.
Bailey felt presences. Deep in the forest, deeper than he knew he could prowl with impunity. They were in there, watching him as he moved forward. But he was a cat, and if he was to get his fish, he would work. The Filonii were watching. Them, in there, back in the trees, they were watching. It's a bad life, he thought. The life of a cat is a nasty, dirty, bad one.
Bailey was not the first cat ever to have thought that thought. It was the litany of the stalker-cats. They knew their place, had always known it, but that was the way it was; it was the way it had always been. The Filonii ruled, and the cats worked. And the universe became theirs.
Yet it wasn't shared. It was the Filonii universe, and the stalker-cats were hired help.
The fine mesh cap that covered the top and back of the cat's head glowed with a faint but discernible halo. The sunbeams through which he passed caught at the gold filaments of the cap and sent sparkling, radiations back toward the ship. The ship stood in the center of the blasted area it had cleared for its prime base.
Inside the ship, the team of Filonii ecologists sat in front of the many process screens and saw through the eyes of the stalker-cat. They murmured to one another as first one, then another, then another saw something of interest. "Cat, lad," one of them said softly, "still no sound?"
"Nothing yet, Brewer. But I can feel them watching.
One of the other ecologists leaned forward. The entire wall behind the hundred screens was a pulsing membrane. Speak into it at any point and the cat's helmet picked up the voice, carried it to the stalker. "Tell me, lad, what does it feel like?"
"I'm not quite sure, Kicker. I'm getting it mixed. It feels like the eyes staring . . . and wood . . . and sap . . . and yet there's mobility. It can't be the trees."
"You're sure."
"As best I can tell right now, Kicker. I'm going to go into the forest and see."
"Good luck, lad."
"Thank you, Driver. How is your goiter?"
"I'm fine, lad. Take care."
The stalker-cat padded carefully to the edge of the forest. Sunlight slanted through the feathertops into the gloom. It was cool and dim inside there.
Now, all eyes were upon him.
The first paw in met springy, faintly moist and cool earth. The fallen feathers had turned to mulch. It smelled like cinnamon. Not overpoweringly so, just pleasantly so. He went in . . . all the way. The last the Filonii saw on their perimeter screens— twenty of the hundred—were his tails switching back and forth. Then the tails were gone and the seventy screens showed them dim, strangely-shadowed pathways between the giant conifers.
"Cat, lad, can you draw any conclusions from those trails?"
The stalker padded forward, paused. "Yes. I can draw the conclusion they aren't trails. They go fairly straight for a while, then come to dead ends at the bases of the trees. I'd say they were drag trails, if anything."
"What was dragged? Can you tell?"
"No, not really, Homer. Whatever was dragged, it was thick and fairly smooth. But that's all I can tell." He prodded the drag trail with his secondary leg on the left side. In the pad of the paw were tactile sensors.
The cat proceeded down the drag trail toward the base of the great tree where the trail unaccountably ended. All around him the great conifers rose six hundred feet into the warm, moist air.
Sipper, in the ship, saw through the cat's eyes and pointed out things to his fellows. "Some of the qualities of Pseudotsuga Taxifolia, but definitely a conifer. Notice the bark on that one. Typically Eucalyptus Regnans . . . yet notice the soft red spores covering the bark. I've never encountered that particular sort of thing before. They seem to be melting down the trees. In fact . . ."
He was about to say the trees were all covered with the red spores, when the red spores attacked the cat.
They flowed down the trees, covering the lower bark, each one the size of the cat's head, and when they touched, they ran together like jelly. When the red jelly from one tree reached the base of the trunk, it fused with the red jelly from the other trees.
"Lad . . ."
"It's all right, Kicker. I see them."
The cat began to pad backward: slowly, carefully. He could easily outrun the fusing crimson jelly. He moved back toward the verge of the clearing. Charred, empty of life, blasted by the Filonii hack-shafts, not even a stump of the great trees above ground, the great circles where the trees had stood now merely reflective surfaces set flush in the ground. Back.
Backing out of life . . . backing into death.
The cat paused. What had caused that thought?
"Cat! Those spores . . . whatever they are . . . they're forming into a solid . . . "
Backing out of life . . . backing into death
my name is
bailey and i'm in
here, inside you.
i was stolen from
my called is wants—
body the some somewhere. he
by succubus kind there in the stars
a he, of recruiter from out
creature it puppeteer, a sort of
The blood-red spore thing stood fifteen feet high, formless, shapeless, changing, malleable, coming for the cat. The stalker did not move: within him, a battle raged.
"Cat, lad! Return! Get back!"
Though the universe belonged to the Filonii, it was only at moments when the loss of a portion of that universe seemed imminent that they realized how important their tools of ownership had become.
Bailey fought for control of the cat's mind.
Centuries of conditioning fought back.
The spore thing reached the cat and dripped around him. The screens of the Filonii went blood-red, then went blank.
The thing that had come from the trees oozed back into the forest, shivered for a moment, then vanished, taking the cat with it.
The cat focused an eye. Then another. In sequence he opened and focused each of his thirty eyes. The place where he lay came into ful
l luster. He was underground. The shapeless walls of the place dripped with sap and several colors of viscous fluid. The fluid dripped down over bark that seemed to have been formed as stalactites, the grain running long and glistening till it tapered into needle tips. The surface on which the cat lay was planed wood, the grain exquisitely formed, running outward from a coral-colored pith in concentric circles of hues that went from coral to dark teak at the outer perimeter.
The spores had fissioned, were heaped in an alcove. Tunnels ran off in all directions. Huge tunnels twenty feet across.
The mesh cap was gone.
The cat got to his feet. Bailey was there, inside, fully awake, conversing with the cat.
"Am I cut off from the Filonii?"
"Yes, I'm afraid you are."
"Under the trees."
"That's right."
"What is that spore thing?"
"I know, but I'm not sure you'd understand."
"I'm a stalker; I've spent my life analyzing alien life-forms and alien ecology. I'll understand."
"They're mobile symbiotes, conjoined with the bark of these trees. Singly, they resemble most closely anemonic anaerobic bacteria, susceptible to dichotomization; they're anacusic, anabiotic, anamnestic, and feed almost exclusively on ancyclostomiasis."
"Hookworms?"
"Big hookworms. Very big hookworms."
"The drag trails?"
"That's what they drag."
"But none of that makes any sense. It's impossible."
"So is reincarnation among the Yerbans, but it occurs."
"I don't understand."
"I told you you wouldn't."
"How do you know all this?"
"You wouldn't understand."
"I'll take your word for it."
"Thank you. There's more about the spores and the trees, by the way. Perhaps the most important part."
"Which is?"
"Fused, they become a quasi-sentient gestalt. They can communicate, borrowing power from the tree-hosts."
"That's even more implausible!"
"Don't argue with me, argue with the Creator."
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