by James Axler
The mutie's pronouncement stunted conversation in the room for a long tick of time. Baron Sharpe broke it with a laugh and an expansive gesture. "There you have it, Ericson. I hope your curiosity has been satisfied. Now, if there is no more pressing business"
"With all due respect," Ericson interjected, "if my Magistrates are dead, there are far more questions than answers. Washington Hole is not inhabited. My men were well armed and outfitted. Whoor whatcould have killed them?"
Baron Sharpe's lips pursed in petulant disapproval. "You doubt the words of my high counselor?"
Ericson shook his head vehemently. "By no means, my Lord Baron. But you must consider the full implications of his own wordssix of your Magistrates, your servitors, your soldiers, have met their deaths in your own territory. Such an incident cannot be allowed to lie without a thorough investigation."
The baron's eyes glinted hard with suspicion. Eric-son continued hastily, "If they were murdered, then it is an affront to your authority. Think of the terrible precedent if we do not apprehend the malefactors. We must undertake swift action. Simply command me, and I shall dispatch another team forthwith."
Baron Sharpe sat silently, then a wintry smile drifted over his face. He bounded to his feet, long fringes swishing. "That you shall, Ericson. I command you to dispatch another team, this time by air. And I shall go with you."
"You, my Lord?" Ericson's voice was a faint, shocked whisper.
"Me and my Crawler. Neither one of us gets out very much, you know."
The members of the Trust knew that, and they stared disconcertedly at their lord. Barons, by tradition, almost never left their aeries atop the Administrative Monoliths. Once a year, they visited a subterranean installation in New Mexico for infusions of fresh genetic material, harvested from healthy humans. They traveled by mat-trans, not by Deathbird or Sandcat. They couldn't have reacted with more incredulity to his pronouncement had the baron declared his intent of naming an outlander child as his heir.
Kowper, the senior archivist, said uncertainly, "My Lord, you must take into account the dangers."
"That's why Crawler will be with us." A boyish grin of enthusiasm and anticipation stretched the baron's lips. "An adventure. I've heard about them, but never dreamed I'd go on one."
"My Lord," intoned Tobak, "Washington Hole is a hellzone."
Baron Sharpe flung his arms wide, the fringes dangling from the sleeves dancing. "I cannot die anymore. I've crossed back." He turned to Crawler. "Isn't that right, Crawler old boy?"
The mutie raised his head from the pillow. "As right as anything in this world, my Lord Baron."
Gazing at Ericson, he asked, "What other baron can make that claim? Prepare three of your Deathbirds. Pick your men, arm them heavily. We leave immediately."
Ericson began to voice a heated protest, then shifted his eyes toward the hearth rug. Crawler stared over the ruffled edge of the pillow, an insolent, triumphant smile creasing his face. Realizing the lethal set of events that could be set in motion if he spoke his mind, Ericson swallowed his objection.
Baron Sharpe swung his right arm out from the shoulder in a fringe-whirling circle, then stabbed a finger directly at Ericson's face. "Let's take care of business."
Chapter 8
Lakesh faced Brigid across the top of his small desk in his spartan office and tried desperately to think of a way to deflect her anger. He knew very little about women in general, and worse, Brigid knew it, too.
"Believe me, dearest Brigid," he said, trying his best to sound warm notes of reasoned sympathy, "Rouch overstated her reasons for being here."
"And what about your reasons for bringing her here?" she snapped, a steel edge in her voice.
Lakesh sighed and massaged the deep grooves in his forehead with gnarled knuckles. ' 'Would you not agree that above all else, we must consider the future? What we would term as true humanity is an endangered species. The population of hybrids expands as we diminish. The ville-bred are raised to be servants, vassals, dray animals, and we cannot factor them into an equation dealing with the future of humankind."
"Whether I disagree or agree is beside the point," replied Brigid. "You should have consulted us about your plan to improve the breed, to turn Cerberus into a colony rather than a sanctuary."
"Why should I have?" he demanded.
"Because you're not god, this isn't the Garden of Eden and none of us came here to be Adams and Eves." She inhaled a deep, steadying breath. "What you say about humanity's dwindling population is valid. But I question the means of reversing it. We're not set up here to raise children."
Lakesh nodded. "As of yet. But circumstances change." He dropped his voice. "Tell mehave you ever thought about motherhood?"
Brigid blinked and shook her head. "I admit I haven't. These last few months, I've been too busy trying to keep my own life intact to think about creating another one. But as you said, circumstances change."
Lakesh leaned back in his chair, absently drumming his fingers on the desktop. "At present and for the foreseeable future, you are too valuable to Cerberus to have your time, energy and resources expended on maternity."
Brigid's lips twitched in a cold, humorless smile. "And since Rouch isn't as valuable as me, she can afford to waste her time with pregnancy?"
Impatiently Lakesh retorted, "I'm not saying that at all. But it is a fact that some peoplemen and women alikeare better suited for parenthood than others."
"And Kane is a good candidate for fatherhood?"
"Genetically speaking, yes," Lakesh answered bluntly.
"And what about megenetically speaking?"
Lakesh's finger drumming stopped. "I don't want to have this conversation. These are medical matters, best discussed with DeFore."
"And because DeFore is a woman, you think I should hear the bad news from her?"
"YesI mean, no. I mean" Lakesh broke off, lifted his hands and dry-scrubbed his hair in frustration. He noted how her rosy complexion had suddenly become a shade paler. "You're twisting my words."
"Untwist them, then. Tell me the truth."
Lakesh stared levelly at the woman who had a memory like a computer, reflexes as quick as a scorpion and equally dangerous, but who was still a woman. He was surprised by the sensation of fear her jade bright, jade hard eyes awakened in him.
Softly, sadly he said, "Dearest Brigid, remember the radiation you were exposed to a couple of months ago in the Black Gobi?"
She didn't answer. She wasn't likely to forget the shimmering golden haze that permeated the disabled space vessel and burned like a tiny fire in the blood. Nor would her memory ever relinquish its hold on the tortures inflicted on her by the Tushe Gun, trapped in the genetic mingler
Brigid straightened up in her chair. For a second, the floor and walls of the tiny office seemed to tilt crazily around her. She was only dimly aware of whispering, "Oh, my God."
Lakesh nodded miserably, his seamed face collapsing in pain. He saw the horrified realization reflected in her eyes, on her suddenly stark and stricken face. Gently he said, "Chromosomal damage, due to the effects of the radiation and the Tushe Gun's devilish device. To what extent and to what degree of permanency is still undetermined."
Her tongue felt like a dry twig, but she managed to ask, "How long have you known?"
"Only a short time. DeFore discovered the condition after examining you upon your return from the Irish mission. As you recall, she was too busy treating Domi and myself to perform a thorough test immediately. When she did, she was still hesitant to make an extended prognosis."
Brigid's shoulders slumped. She squeezed her eyelids shut against the hot sting of tears. Despising the quavery catch in her voice, she said, ' 'You brought in Rouch a week after we returned from the Black Gobi. You and DeFore knew then."
"No. DeFore suspected you might have suffered some sort of damage, but her early tests were inconclusive. The plan to spirit Rouch away had begun a full month before you went to Mongolia. You know how far in ad
vance I like to work. Remember, you were contacted a year before you arrived here."
Brigid ran her hands through her hair, sitting up straighten "You'll bring in more women like Rouch, won't you?"
"If necessary." Lakesh leaned forward, elbows on his desk, voice pitched low. "Everything I do, everything I plan, is geared toward our survival. As much as I may wish otherwise, I cannot allow an individual's personal situationno matter how much I empathize with itto take precedence over the good of the many."
Dully Brigid asked, "And Domi? Is she also un-suited for procreation?"
"Perhaps not emotionally or biologically. But genetically is an open question. Her years spent in the Outlands, living near hot spots, may have negatively altered her ability to bear normal offspring. I don't want to take the chance that she might give birth to a mutant or a child with injurious mental or physical abnormalities."
"What about the potency of the other men here?"
Lakesh shifted in his chair uncomfortably. "What about it?"
"For example, Kane and Grant traipsed all over hell-zones in the performance of their Mag duties."
"I can't be sure of Grant," Lakesh replied wearily. "But as you know, I took a personal hand in breeding into Kane a number of superior adaptive traits. Resistance to disease, to rad poisoning are some of them."
"And," Brigid said in a quiet, uninflected tone, "his seed is strong. Did you take a personal hand in that?"
"I did," declared Lakesh flatly. "And it should be passed on."
"But only to a partner who hasto quote Rouch'exceptionally strong female drives'?"
"If you view the situation objectively, you must agree." He waited a beat and inquired, "Don't you?"
Flatly Brigid said, "I view the situation as yet another one of your arrogant assumptions."
Lakesh's eyebrows rose, then curved down. The intercom on the desk suddenly blared with Bry's tight, agitated voice. "Sir?"
Lakesh poked a button, knowing he couldn't conceal the relief he felt at the interruption. "What is it?"
The speaker accurately conveyed Bry's tension. "We've got activity on the anomalous mat-trans-inducer signature."
Lakesh threw Brigid a forced apologetic smile before levering himself out of his chair. She followed him out of the office, down the corridor and into the control center. Bry's eyes were fixed on the wall map. As they watched, the bright light indicating the Redoubt Papa gateway unit winked out.
Gesturing to a computer terminal, Bry said, "The autosequencer read is a definite dematerialization."
Lakesh crossed his arms over his chest and fingered his chin musingly. "Then we should, by all rights, re-ceive a rematerialization signal from the destination unit."
They stood and waited and stared at the map. And waited. Brigid knew the transit process was not necessarily instantaneous, despite the perceptions of those in quantum interphase transition. She really didn't understand more than the basics of mat-trans operations and sometimes she wondered if Lakesh, despite his former position as Project Cerberus overseer, knew as much as he claimed.
As one of the major components of the Totality Concept's Overproject Whisper, the quantum interphase mat-trans inducers opened a rift in the hyperdimen-sional quantum stream, between a relativistic here and there. She knew the mat-trans units required a mind-boggling number of insanely intricate electronic procedures, all occurring within milliseconds of one another, to minimize the margins for error. The actual matter-to-energy conversion process was automated for this reason, sequenced by an array of computers and microprocessors. According to Lakesh, Cerberus technology did more than beam matter from one spot in linear space to another. It reduced organic and inorganic material to digital information and transmitted it along hyperdimensional pathways on a carrier wave.
In 1989, Lakesh himself had been the first successful long-distance matter transfer of a human subject, traveling only a hundred yards from a prototype gateway chamber to a receiving booth. That initial success was replicated many times, and with the replication came the modifications and improvements of the quantum interphase mat-trans inducers, reaching the point where they were manufactured in modular form. As Brigid understood it, the Cerberus redoubt had been primarily devoted to mass-producing the gateway systems.
Although the jumps through the quantum field were not at the speed of light, rarely did they comprise more than three or four minutes. One of the lights on the map should have flashed yellow, whether the destination lock had been set for Texas or Japan.
No light flashed in any state, country or continent. Lakesh turned away, frowning deeply. "This shouldn't happen. The odds are so astronomically high of anyone having the knowledge or technical expertise to alter the modulation frequencies, they aren't even worth entertaining."
Addressing Bry, he asked, "Did you locate a satellite pix of the region?"
"Yes, sir." He thumbed a pair of buttons on a console's keyboard. "On the main monitor."
Lakesh and Brigid moved to a four-foot square of ground glass. The screen displayed a high-altitude view of a dark, barren terrain. The image was dominated by a black crater, like an ugly puncture wound punched through the crust of the earth to its center. Brigid had been very surprised to learn that Cerberus was uplinked with a Vela-class reconnaissance satellite, as well as with Comsat communications. Like everyone bred in the villes, she had been taught that the few satellites still in orbit were free-floating pieces of scrap metal.
The Vela carried narrow-band multispectral scanners that detected the electromagnetic radiation reflected by every object on Earth, including subsurface geomagnetism. The scanners were tied into a high-resolution photographic-relay system.
The Comsat kept track of Cerberus personnel when they were away from the redoubt through telemetric signals relayed by subcutaneous transponders. The transponder was a nonharmful radioactive chemical that bound itself to the glucose in the blood and a middle layer of epidermis. Based on organic nano-technology, it transmitted heart rate, brain-wave patterns, respiration and blood count.
Scowling at the image on the screen, Lakesh demanded, "Did you run it through the multispectral scanners?"
"I did," replied Bry a bit defensively. "I detected nothing out of the ordinarythat is, out of the ordinary for Washington Hole. That pix is only about a week old and shows no activity in the vicinity whatsoever."
Lakesh made an impatient spitting sound. "This is really irritating."
"Are you reacting to this problem as a cerebral one, or a visceral one?" Brigid asked.
Lakesh swung his head around toward her. "Explain."
"Are you sure your ego isn't the tiniest bit threatened by the possibility that someone other than you can tweak the gateways?"
He snorted disdainfully. "Don't be ridiculous. I was the project overseer. I knew more about the transducers two hundred years ago than anyone alive. I certainly know more about them than anyone who might be alive now."
Shaking his head, he eyed the image of Washington Hole, then the Mercator map. "It's a matter that needs investigating, that's all."
"The latest in what seems like an endless line," Brigid said sharply. "Who gets to play detective for you this time? Who do you volunteer to take the risks?"
Lakesh's rheumy blue eyes widened behind the lenses of his spectacles. Reproachfully he replied, "You sound more like Kane than yourself."
"In which case, it's probably for the best he and I can't produce offspring." The instant the words left her tongue she regretted them. Bry swiveled his head toward her in surprise, then he quickly found something else to occupy his attention. Lakesh blinked in owlish embarrassment.
Lowering her voice, Brigid said, "I apologize."
Lakesh cleared his throat. "No need. Besides, you raised a stingingly pertinent point. I shouldn't always be so arbitrary in my selection of" he paused and smiled "volunteers. Particularly since this mission is of a technical nature. Mr. Bry"
"Oh, no!" Bry's normally high voice hit a shr
ill note of angry, dogged determination. "I do not volunteer to jump into a hellzone. No way, no how. You can boot me off the cliff, but I categorically and unequivocally refuse to go."
Patronizingly Lakesh said, "Young man, I was not going to ask you to go anywhere but to the workroom and put together a precision toolkit for me."
Bry reacted with surprise. "For you?"
"I can't pull the imaging-scanner memory banks with my bare hands, can I?"
Brigid stared, then gaped at him. "You?" she demanded. " You're going?"
He lifted his shoulders in a negligent shrug. "And, of course, anyone else who might care to accompany me."
Lakesh angled an ironic eyebrow at her. "Can you think of any volunteers?"
Chapter 9
Kane opened his eyes and stared at the hexagonal island upon which he lay. He blinked, and his sense of perspective returned in piecemeal fashion.
He sprawled not across an island, but on a glittering metal floor plate in the shape of a hexagon, interlocking with others that comprised the jump platform of the gateway. Beneath it, he heard the emitter array's characteristic hurricane howl fading away to a high-pitched whine.
He lay on his side, his stomach spasming, and his head swam dizzily. The vertigo was routine by now, a customary side effect of rematerialization. The nausea ebbed, but he knew better than to sit up until the light-headedness went away completely.
All things considered, temporary queasiness and dizziness were small prices to pay in exchange for traveling hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles, in a handful of minutes.
Occasionally the toll exacted was terrible, as when he, Brigid and Grant jumped to a malfunctioning unit in Russia. The matter-stream modulations couldn't be synchronized with the destination lock, and all of them suffered a severe case of debilitating jump sickness, including hallucinations, weakness and vomiting.
Hearing a rustle of cloth behind him, Kane gingerly eased himself up on one polycarbonate-shod elbow, looking around slowly. Brigid and Lakesh stirred from their supine positions on the platform. The floor plates had already lost their silvery shimmer, and the last wisps of spark-shot mist disappeared even as he looked at it. Lakesh claimed that the vapor wasn't really a mist at all, but a plasma wave form brought into existence by the inducer's "quincunx effect."