The Relativity Bomb

by Arlene F. Marks

  Things began clicking into place in Novak’s mind. “So you’re Stragori, like Bruni.”

  It wasn’t a question, and Trager gave no response. Novak took the offered datawafer and placed it on the desk behind him. Then he continued, purposely putting an edge on his voice:

  “When we spoke earlier you told me you had information about his murder that could only be shared in a private meeting. Well, this is as private as it gets around here, so you’d better start sharing. Who exactly are ‘they’ and why did they target Patel?”

  Trager’s mouth twisted as though he were trying to swallow something distasteful. “A majority faction of our government would rather the Humans of Earth remain ignorant of certain historical events involving our two planets,” he said. “Bruni felt differently and I agreed with him. A friend helped him gain access to the necessary documentation. Bruni copied it, intending to bring it to you. Unfortunately, the data theft was discovered more quickly than expected. The Directorate held a hearing in his absence. The friend confessed to being an accomplice and Bruni was branded as a traitor. And on our world, as on yours, the penalty for treason is death.”

  “Just a minute!” Novak commanded. “Are you telling me that the Stragori Directorate ordered Patel’s assassination? And it was carried out on Terran soil?”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Trager replied calmly, “Yes.”

  “By whom?”

  “Unknown. All I can say with certainty is that any Stragori who kills a fugitive off-planet is required to bring back the body — or some essential part of it — as proof of termination before a reward can be claimed.”

  Novak had seen Bruni’s corpse when it was brought in — and immediately wished he hadn’t. His friend’s face had been brutally stabbed and slashed, his eye sockets emptied. In fact, his wounds — all inflicted postmortem — had appeared very similar to the ones now visible on Trager’s head. That might explain a lot.

  But it couldn’t explain everything — not to Novak’s satisfaction, at least. He always listened to his gut, and right now it was telling him that they’d barely scratched the surface of this alien’s story.

  “Patel was killed months ago,” Novak pointed out. “Why did you wait so long to contact me?”

  Trager shrugged uncomfortably and averted his gaze. “I was recalled to Stragon before we could put our plan into action. Then I had to persuade a friend in the Directorate to send me back here. It took time.”

  Despite his many wounds and alarming blood loss, he was showing no signs of physical weakness. Impressive. And useful. Trager had defied his government and couldn’t possibly go back home. Juno Vargas had already made it painfully clear where she stood on the subject of adding aliens who looked just like Humans to the EIS payroll. So, Novak wouldn’t recruit this particular Stragori into Earth Intelligence. He would simply help him disappear. Trager would be given a new identity and sent as far away from Earth as possible, where he could also serve as one more countermeasure to Vargas’s Reformation.

  Before they moved him anywhere, he would need at least one regenerative healing treatment, Novak decided. And a change of clothing. His shirt and jacket were dark with the blood they had been drinking. Were all Stragori this tough? he wondered. And if they were…

  “Why didn’t Bruni do what you did? Sever all connections with the intellinet, I mean, so they couldn’t track him.”

  “We were differently optimized. Even if they’d taught him how to do it, removing his implants would have killed him.”

  Whereas the man sitting in front of Novak seemed capable of cheerfully surviving anything short of a direct missile hit. Blood loss wouldn’t knock him out, and he was trained to foil the enemy if he were captured.

  A perfect soldier.

  Forcing himself to breathe normally, Novak leaned over the alien and said in a raspy voice, “You obviously know a lot about us, Trager, including the fact that we can help you stay alive. You wouldn’t have come here otherwise. But there’s a price for that service, and you need to begin paying it now. Tell me: Are there other Stragori on Earth optimized the same way as you are? And if there are, what the hell are they doing here?”

  The visitor’s features contracted slightly, then relaxed as he made his decision. “We aren’t here to make war on your people, Novak. We’re here to protect our own. It has been clear since we first arrived on this world that not all Humans are ready to welcome an alien presence. In fact, many Humans have openly expressed hatred of us. So, every one of our observers has a military shadow ordered not to make contact unless there is a clear and direct threat to the subject’s safety. And I— I was assigned to watch over Bruni Patel.”

  Biting back the first comment that leaped into his mouth, Novak remarked instead, “To watch over him without his knowledge? And yet, you assisted his efforts to bring us this information.”

  Trager’s gaze dropped to his lap. “It wasn’t supposed to happen, but it did,” he murmured sadly.

  In that instant, Novak understood. “You broke protocol and revealed yourself to him, didn’t you? Over time you probably became good friends. Then your superiors learned that Bruni was in possession of the data on that wafer and—”

  “—and I was ordered to terminate him, and I refused,” Trager supplied, lifting his remaining, pain-filled eye to Novak’s face. “You’re right. Bruni Patel and I became friends, and then we became kin. On our world, that is a sacred bond. Kin do not harm kin.”

  At last they were getting to the bottom of things! Trager had been recalled, most likely to answer for his mutinous conduct, and was consequently unable to protect Bruni from being killed. Guilt-ridden, he was willing to risk his own death to ensure that Patel’s would not be in vain. Now it all made sense.

  “There is a place where you’ll be safe,” Novak told him. “We’ll need some time to build you a new identity. And of course,” he added, indicating the datawafer, “we’ll want to check this out.”

  Trager dipped his head in acknowledgment. “You’ll need the decryption key.”

  “Which is…?”

  “Bruni’s genome. He said you would be familiar with the technology.” Trager reached into a different pocket and extracted a small bundle. He unwrapped it on his lap, revealing a sealed vial containing about a spoonful of dark red liquid.

  A Human datawafer and a bit of alien blood.

  Novak took the vial and placed it carefully on the desktop. Then he turned questioning eyes toward the man in the chair.

  “It was Bruni’s backup plan,” Trager explained. “I found it concealed with the datawafer when I returned from Stragon.”

  Novak thought hard. His crew of Warrior Kings were wizards when it came to circuitry and microprocessors using polarized light. They could hack into any kind of software. They had developed the programming for the tactile transmitter that every EIS agent carried. But the kind of technology now sitting on the clean room desk was far beyond their skills.

  In fact, Novak knew of only one person on the planet who might be able to crack the alien encryption code. Good thing he was local.

  — «» —

  With growing frustration, Barry Novak stared at the blocks of text shown side by side on the wall-mounted light screen in Nayo Naguchi’s laboratory. Sitting above EIS Operations Headquarters, this was Nayo’s personal clean room, installed on the top floor of what outwardly appeared to be an abandoned mid-rise office building in the heart of Warrior Kings territory — the Zone.

  Naguchi had long ago outstripped his peers in the field of genetic research. He was the one responsible for figuring out how to key the tactile transmitters to each agent’s DNA. He had discovered a reproducible mutation that enabled him to extend the life spans of the animals in his lab by a factor of four, and counting. And he had clearly perfected the use of genetic patterns to encrypt sensitive information, because it had taken him less tha
n an hour to unlock the contents of the datawafer Novak had brought him.

  Unfortunately, it appeared there were multiple levels of encryption, and magnifying the text to fill most of Naguchi’s laboratory wall didn’t make it any easier to decipher. The file on the datawafer contained three documents in three different languages, none of which Novak could identify. The one on the far right of the screen used symbols that looked vaguely like trees with strangely broken branches. They may have been letters of an alphabet, but since he had no idea how to sound them out, the message they contained was incomprehensible. Bruni Patel had died and Trager had risked the same fate in order to bring him this information, so it was obviously important. Right now, however, it was nothing but gobbledygook.

  “Good — you’re still here.” Soundlessly, Naguchi crossed the room and slid onto the tall four-legged stool beside Novak’s, facing the screen on the wall. “Trager is cleaned up and settled in for the night. He’s had regen treatment for that damaged eye socket, and Danziger assures me he has an ocular prosthetic in stock that should fit the cavity perfectly. He’s painting an iris onto it as we speak. And you and I need to talk. I found something disturbing in the blood sample you gave me.”

  “Well, it did come from an alien.”

  “That’s not what the test results are telling me.”

  Frowning, Novak finally turned his attention away from the screen. “What are you talking about? Trager told me the blood was Bruni Patel’s, and Trager and Patel are both Stragori.”

  Naguchi’s normally serene face was furrowed with concern. “I mapped a drop from the vial, and then some of Trager’s blood from a piece of gauze used while administering first aid,” he explained. “They contain identical anomalous enzymes, but both samples register genetically as Human.”

  A chill trickled down Novak’s back, like an icy finger gently tracing the length of his spine. Patel had been an alien gathering information about Human society when Dennis Forrand had hired him all those years ago. Forrand had been hypercautious back then. He would have checked Patel out thoroughly. He certainly wouldn’t have missed something like this.

  “Are you sure you didn’t make a mistake, Nayo?”

  “Yes. Are you sure you’re not making one?”

  “Could this be just an elaborate hoax, you mean?” It was possible. With Patel dead, they had only Trager’s word for any of this story.

  “The thought did cross my mind,” said Naguchi. “I’m also thinking it might be a diversionary tactic to get you busily chasing your tail while Madame Vargas coordinates her offensive. Think about this, Barry. We both know that she doesn’t completely trust you — she has her own people in the field gathering intel about EIS operations. And experience has shown that she won’t hesitate to sacrifice a pawn if she thinks it will gain her an advantage.”

  It was hard to imagine Trager being anyone’s pawn. Nonetheless…

  Novak considered the strange languages on the screen and the expertise that would have been required to create and encrypt the documents. He reminded himself of Trager’s optimized and definitely not Human soldierly abilities. Then he listened to what his gut had to say on the subject, giving it the final word.

  “I’m pretty sure this didn’t come from her, Nayo. She may be ruthless but she knows what you’re capable of, and that would rule out using Human blood as the decryption key. Especially if the goal is to keep me distracted for as long as possible.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Naguchi, gesturing toward the light screen. “How distracted do you think you’ll be while trying to make sense out of this?” A sideways glance became a double take. “Now, this is interesting. The symbols in the third document appear to be runic. That was an ancient Earth alphabet. I wonder…”

  Naguchi spun on his stool and entered an instruction into the computer. The third document winked out and reappeared, its message written in Anglo letters this time. To Novak, it was still unpronounceable nonsense. However, Naguchi’s lips were curving into a satisfied smile.

  “You’ve got something?”

  “I believe this is Galactic Standard.”

  “I thought Gally was spoken only, not written.”

  “Normally, yes,” Naguchi explained. “It’s the lingua franca of space travel, making it possible for all the alien races to communicate verbally with one another. As I understand it, the decision was made not to create a unique alphabet for Galactic Standard, but rather to let each race use its own letters and symbols for recording purposes.”

  Novak scowled at the screen. He hadn’t spoken Gally in years and would need at least a week of somno to get his fluency back. Even so, he should have been able to recognize a word here and there. Nope. Nada. He shot Naguchi a dubious look.

  “This document was transliterated using the letters of a dead language,” the other man continued patiently. “It’s a primitive method of encryption. When I was a schoolboy we used to encode secret messages to one another thesame way, using the ancient Greek alphabet. The thing about runic symbols is that not all the sounds correspond exactly to Anglo, and some are missing. You have to read a passage aloud to get the sense of it.”

  “So, what does it say?”

  “Give me a second.” Naguchi’s lips moved silently as he read the text on the screen. Finally he replied, “These appear to be observations relating to some sort of experiment.”

  “According to Trager, it involves our two planets and is worth risking death for.”

  Naguchi returned Novak’s dubious look. “Well, I have to tell you, it’s pretty mundane stuff. This Gally may have a strong accent, but I’m a scientist, and these are definitely lab notes. It says here that a control group was assembled consisting of sample populations from five different areas. They were all housed together in a fenced compound. But the various subgroups didn’t get along with one another and were unhappy being penned up. They made several attempts to escape. Finally, the entire control group had to be — had to be—” The last words came out as a whisper.

  “Had to be what?” Novak prompted him. “Dispersed? Killed?”

  “Neither. Barry, did Trager tell you where this originally came from?”

  “No, just that Bruni Patel had copied it illegally and was killed by the Stragori while trying to bring it to us. Nayo,” he persisted, “what does it say happened to the control group?”

  Naguchi inhaled deeply before responding. “They were relocated to another world.”

  The silence that fell then had an almost physical presence. Novak felt trapped inside it, a helpless witness to an inescapable conclusion.

  …certain historical events involving our two planets…

  …and Trager’s genome was registering as Human.

  Novak struggled to keep his voice steady. “Does the document include the coordinates of the other world? Is it Earth?”

  “It doesn’t specify. Maybe that information is contained in one of the other two texts.”

  “We don’t dare reveal the existence of these until we’ve had them translated and we know precisely what they say. If the tabs even caught a whiff of them—!”

  Hoax or not, the contents of the third document alone would be enough to trigger world-wide xenophobia.

  “Never mind the tabs. What if Madame Vargas found out we had them and were keeping them to ourselves?” Naguchi warned.

  Or what if the Stragori find out we have their stolen file?

  As the implications of this thought sank in, Novak’s stomach tipped over. Somebody — in all likelihood an alien somebody — had experimented on Humans, either on Earth or elsewhere. He wasn’t sure which would be worse, finding out that the Humans of Earth were the control group or learning that they weren’t. In any case, if the Stragori had already killed to prevent this knowledge from falling into Human hands, they probably wouldn’t think twice about killing again to keep it quiet.
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br />   Bruni Patel had been optimized. That meant he’d been connected to the Stragori intellinet the whole time he was working for the EIS. Forrand must have known, because he’d restricted Patel to low-level courier runs and had given him no access to anything that could compromise the organization. But he’d made Barry Novak Patel’s handler, and the two men had forged a relationship over the years.

  The Stragori had to be aware of this. By ripping out his implants, Trager might have shaken off his pursuers for a while; however, it wouldn’t take them long to connect the dots and figure out what he’d done and where he’d probably ended up.

  There was no time to spare. Trager would have to be moved off-world as soon and as stealthily as possible. And Novak would need to make several copies of the datawafer and conceal them in the care of people he trusted. People Madame Vargas didn’t know and Patel had never come in contact with. People who had never heard of the Earth Intelligence Service.

  There remained a slender chance that this was all a con, but Novak was betting that it wasn’t. The Stragori were right about one thing: the Humans of Earth weren’t yet ready to know about this part of their past. One day they would be. When that day came, they had the right to know the truth. That was, after all, what the EIS was supposed to be about — uncovering and safeguarding the truth. That was what the Kings had originally signed on for and, Vargas’s political ambitions notwithstanding, as far as Novak was concerned it was still their primary purpose.

  “…imperative that we get the rest of the data translated as soon as possible,” Naguchi was saying.

  “Do you have someone in mind? Someone we can trust to keep it secret?”

  “There’s a brilliant xenolinguist at the university in Clearmeadow Enclave — Doctor Susan Rosenberg. Top of her field and I’d trust her with my life. She’s currently working on some special government project, so it won’t be easy to get to her; but since time is of the essence, I’d like to give it a try.”