Diuturnity's Dawn

by Foster, Alan Dean;

  A different voice in his ear caused him to glance once again at his companions. "They've located another weapons source." He nodded to his right. "Not far from here. Would you like to witness the arrest? Unless more of these fools are still outside waiting to enter the fair, we're running out of targets to pick up. My people will wait for us before moving in to make the seizure."

  Briann responded for the both of them. "We might as well. If possible, Twikanrozex and I would like to question one or two of the arraigned. There are moral ambiguities in question we would like to establish, and perhaps help to correct."

  Romero was firm in his reply. "That's not up to me. The invaluable aid you've rendered aside, you're not law enforcement or legal. Your official status is as ambiguous as those morals you'd like to investigate. But I'll see what I can do." Following the directions displayed on his tracker, he led them in the general direction of the lake. A red light blinked on the small readout, indicating the location of an unauthorized weapon.

  As the officer led the way, the two padres conversed energetically in his wake. He wished he could make sense of what they were saying. What, for example, did immortality have to do with the story of the baker's wife and the two dwarves?

  A most peculiar theology, indeed.

  Elkannah Skettle was beyond apoplexy. The pressure of trying to keep calm and inconspicuous while running from the law threatened to burst a blood vessel in his forehead. Slipping out from behind one of several brightly colored pylons supporting a children's play area, he walked as rapidly as he dared toward the pavilion exit. Would he be more or less vulnerable to detection outside than within? Even that fragment of knowledge was denied him.

  What had gone wrong? How had the authorities learned of the presence and plans of the Preservers and their thranx comrades, the Bwyl? Every few moments for the past hour, his communicator had informed him of the arrest of another one or two of his people. Attempts to contact the thranx had been met with streams of abuse in the coarse alien language, interspersed with a few crude bursts of Terranglo that were enough to tell him that his insectoid counterparts were also suffering the remorseless attentions of the authorities.

  A year's planning, a year of dreaming and working and rehearsing, was falling apart all around him. A few fires had been set, a few bombs had been detonated, shots had been fired, but for the most part, the fair continued to function as smoothly and impassively as if Preserver and Bwyl had never set foot within its expansive boundaries. Some of his best people, dedicated individuals he had worked with for years and knew intimately, were dead or in custody. Botha and Lawlor, gone. Nevisrighne and Stephens, gone. The damage to the movement was so severe that it would take years to recover. Years during which, if something was not done, the unclean bond between human and bug might be cemented beyond sundering.

  That could not be allowed to happen. Whatever happened to him now, or to any of his followers, paled into insignificance. Those few explosions that his fellows had succeeded in setting off held the key. If he could only follow through on destroying the fair's central communications facility, the consequences might be sufficiently distracting and damaging to allow him and his surviving collaborators to carry out at least a portion of what they had planned to do.

  No one intercepted him as he strolled briskly, eyes darting constantly from left to right, across the fake Dawnic turf toward the fair maintenance facilities. Once, a child caught his eye, and he had to remind himself that police authorities rarely employed children of such a tender age. Still, he was relieved when the child's parents finally hauled it from view.

  Behind the gaily decorated fencing lay support facilities for much of the fair. Food service, water, hygienics machinery, power distribution, communications - much of it specially modified to serve thranx as well as human needs. He did not need to check his communicator for the location of the communications center, having memorized the entire layout of the fairgrounds several months earlier.

  Unusually, there was a live guard at the entrance. Short and burly, he looked ineffably bored. As Skettle approached, the man barely bothered to look up. The warm sun of Dawn was in his face, and he had to blink.

  "Morning, visitor. Can I help you?"

  "Yes, you can. Here is my identification." Reaching into a pocket, Skettle drew the compact pistol lying holstered and shoved it roughly against the other man's neck. With his free hand, he spun the startled attendant around. "I require admittance to the maintenance area."

  Give the fellow credit; he tried. "You - you're not authorized, whoever you are. What is this?"

  Skettle's voice was strained, but as controlled as ever. "Epiphany, my friend. Let us in, or I swear by every uncontaminated gene in your body, I'll blow your head right off its shoulders."

  With the muzzle of the pistol dimpling his neck, the guard hastened to comply. "You won't get away with this, you know."

  "Get away with what?" Skettle smiled humorlessly. "You have no idea what I'm doing here. Maybe I just need to use a bathroom."

  The gate hummed to itself as it drew back. A second barrier lay beyond, which the guard also activated. Standing among muted machinery and functional buildings, unpolluted blue sky still visible overhead, Skettle felt he was at last approaching a small part of the triumph he sought.

  "Thank you for your help," he told the guard as he fired. Contrary to his threat, the shot did not blow the unfortunate man's head off his shoulders. Skettle disliked a mess that could be difficult to conceal. Gripping the body by its sandaled feet, he dragged it behind a large pulsating tank and covered it with one of several sheets of green patching fabric he found there. A quick check to ensure that his actions had not been observed, and he resumed his advance. With no one to witness his progress, he broke into a run.

  Minutes later he found himself standing across a walkway from the central communications facility. There were no guards here, deep within the restricted area. It would be assumed that anyone present inside the fenced perimeter had a reason to be where they were. Should he encounter any active personnel, he would be able to rely on that assumption.

  The tall double doors that led into the building were unlocked. Inside, automated electronics and photonic circuitry filled the modest edifice with a compact network of switching and transmission instrumentation. Loud humming indicated that the facility was operating on a level higher than standby. That was hardly surprising, given the volume of communications that were doubtless flying not only at the fair but between the fairgrounds and the city.

  With the internal schematic of the facility imprinted deeply on his memory, he hurried down several passageways until he found himself standing before the nexus he sought. Instrumentation mounted on a panel monitored the operational status of this small but critical portion of the complex. In a pants pocket lay the special key Botha had programmed to allow him to access the protected, lightly armored panel. All he had to do was pop the seal, affix the cylinder snugged against his chest to the internal components, activate the timer, and get clear.

  He envisioned the consequences: confident police unable to contact one another; hasty attempts to relay all communications through distant city facilities; fair workers incapable of coordinating fire-fighting efforts; medics cut off in the process of receiving diagnostic and treatment information. Communicationswise, the entire fair should be shut down for a minimum of several hours - long enough for his surviving acolytes to wreak at least a portion of the havoc they had planned. He wished he could be there to see it, but knew he would have to wait to view the resultant catastrophe on the tridee. Human terrorists! the media would scream. No, thranx saboteurs! another would cry. He smiled to himself. Let the media apportion the responsibility however they wished. The resulting death and destruction would give pause to anyone inclined to think that the two species could enjoy closer relations than they did at present.

  From his pocket he withdrew the key, then slapped the flexible circle of integrated circuitry over the sealed lock. He
was preparing to activate the device and pop the covering panel when a voice commanded him to halt what he was doing, put his hands over his head, and lie down on the floor. It did not, he sensed despairingly, sound like the voice of a maintenance attendant, bored or otherwise.

  With the two padres looking on, Romero nodded to his people. Holding a brace of body seals, one patroller advanced on the stunned Skettle while his two flanking companions kept the muzzles of their handguns aimed unwaveringly at the Preserver's torso. There was nothing Skettle could do, not a thing. Even if he disobeyed the command and activated Botha's key, it would only open the panel. The prospect that he would then have enough time to remove the key, detach the still-concealed cylinder of explosive, affix it to the instrumentation, and activate the trigger was nonexistent. It was all over. The traitors had won. The contamination of human society by the intrusive, alien bugs would continue unimpeded.

  Something loud, threatening, and unseen resounded through the still air of the facility. The sonic burst struck the nearest patroller in the back of his head. Briann saw the man topple, the back of his skull caved in by the concussion. His comrades tried to react, but they were caught out in the open while their unknown assailants were firing from cover. Both Romero and the female officer went down in quick succession. The lieutenant managed to get off one shot before he, too, was felled. Whoever the attackers might be, Briann reflected tensely, they were excellent shots. As a consequence, he kept his hands out in plain sight, where they could be seen from a distance.

  Both he and Twikanrozex were more than a little surprised when only a single injured thranx hobbled out from behind a dividing wall. Unwilling to grant that the assassin had acted by himself, Briann searched the shadows for others of his kind.

  "You are alone," Twikanrozex declared in Low Thranx.

  "It was not always so." The wounded sharpshooter stood halfway between the two padres and the perplexed Skettle. "I have been isolated by conspiracies, by failings, and by circumstance."

  Skettle finally recognized the intruder. "Beskodnebwyl! Then not all of you bugs have been taken by the authorities."

  "No," the leader of the Bwyl replied in Terranglo. "Not all of us bugs."

  The Preserver promptly turned back to his work. As the key popped the seal on the panel, he reached inside his shirt and pulled out the cylinder of volatile solution. "We can still accomplish much of what we came for. Shoot these two and come and help me."

  Twikanrozex performed a half bow in concert with a series of hand movements too rapid for Briann to follow. "We are spiritual advisors. We carry no weapons."

  "That is unfortunate for you," Beskodnebwyl declared, "since it prevents you from defending yourselves." The muzzle of his sonic projector came up. Briann tensed.

  "Come on; come on!" Skettle was struggling to affix the cylinder to the now open, blinking interior. "Let's do this and get out of here." On the floor nearby, the injured female officer moaned as she struggled to crawl toward the exit. He ignored her.

  Beskodnebwyl turned slowly. The great golden eyes were as expressionless as ever, but the clipped thranx voice was not. "Are you giving me orders, you sickening sack of slack slush?"

  Skettle barely looked over from his efforts. "Not now, bug. We can discuss species primacy another time. Come and help me."

  "Crr!!k, I will help you." Whereupon he proceeded to shoot the leader of the Preservers in his left thigh. The blast of highly focused sound waves smashed into the thick quadriceps muscle and broke the bone within. Letting out a cry of anguish, Skettle collapsed to the floor clutching at his crushed leg.

  Advancing with deliberation, the Bwyl approached him. As the thranx changed his focus, Briann considered reaching into his shirt's inner pocket. A glance in Twikanrozex's direction showed that his companion felt this would be, at least for the moment, a bad idea. Taking into consideration the Bwyl's phenomenal marksmanship with his frightening weapon, together with the usual exceptional thranx peripheral vision, Briann kept his hands out in front of him. Alert but cautious, the two padres waited to see what the other thranx would do.

  "You cretinous insect!" Wincing in pain, Skettle was clutching his smashed leg. "What did you do that for?" Indicating the cylinder of liquid explosive, which was now securely fastened to the sensitive instrumentation and needed only to be activated to disrupt communications throughout the fair, the Preserver tried to pull himself back to the open panel, dragging his unusable leg behind him.

  Beskodnebwyl calmly shot him in the other leg - the calf, this time.

  Elkannah Skettle had been toughened, by work in the field and by philosophy both, but this time he screamed. Very little blood leaked from his ruined limbs, since the condensed burst of sound had compressed veins and arteries without cutting them. Designed to shatter the resistive chitinous material that comprised the thranx exoskeleton, the gun's output passed comparatively harmlessly through soft, spongy human flesh but was highly effective at breaking human bones.

  As the two padres looked on, the leader of the hiveless clan Bwyl stood staring down at his whimpering human counterpart. "This is all your fault. If you people had not come here, all would have gone as planned. Everything would have transpired as set down in the burrow layout."

  "You're out of your deranged bug mind!" Skettle tried to stand on his broken right leg, only to have it collapse beneath him.

  "You betrayed us." Beskodnebwyl was quietly implacable. "Your clumsiness revealed our presence to the local authorities."

  "Us!" Unable to walk or even to rise, Skettle was reduced to glaring murderously at his tormentor. "Our security was airtight! My people were, to an individual, highly trained and motivated. There were no breaches of security on our part. Somehow, someone from outside must have learned of our presence here. I am not accusing your kind directly, but - " He broke off unexpectedly.

  An impatient Beskodnebwyl prodded the severely injured human with a foothand. "What now, srrlkpp ? Finish your thought before I kill you."

  Skettle said nothing, but instead continued to stare. He was looking not at his antagonist, but past him. Following his gaze - a simpler matter with humans than with thranx, Beskodnebwyl reflected - the Bwyl turned his head in the same direction to find himself gazing at the two beings who were still standing, hands held inoffensively in front of them. At the two padres. Theologians, by their dress and demeanor. Upholders of misplaced virtue and the wrong right. That by itself was not enough to condemn them.

  Their presence among the dead and wounded police, however, was rather more suggestive.

  "Yes, I will kill them," the Bwyl finally declared. "It may be that they are not responsible for this failure. But I am no longer willing to take chances, and what compassion remained within my upper gut has died along with my friends and companions."

  Skettle spoke through pain-clenched teeth. "About time you came to your senses. We can still activate the explosive, still reduce this squalid convocation to pandemonium. Still accomplish many if not all of our goals here." He extended a hand upward. "Help me to finish this."

  "I surely will do that," Beskodnebwyl agreed. Raising the muzzle of his pistol, he placed it against the top of the injured human's skull. Briann flinched inwardly, having already seen what the weapon could do to solid bone.

  Screaming at the top of her lungs, Martine burst from the corridor behind the two padres, rushed past them, and brought the cylinder of explosive she had been carrying down with great force. The police trackers had never singled her out since she was carrying only the cylinder and not a weapon. Espying her charge without having to turn, Beskodnebwyl calmly fired in the wildly onrushing biped's direction.

  The sonic burst struck the curved cylinder and glanced off, causing her to stumble but not to slow her mad charge. Before the startled Bwyl could get off a second shot, she brought the cylinder down on his V-shaped head as hard as she could. There was a loud, sickening sound as the insectoid skull was split. Blood and internal fluids gushed forth in a
green fountain as the open circulatory system was ruptured. Falling sideways, Beskodnebwyl fired one last time. Too close to dodge, the woman caught the burst square in her chest. Fragments of shattered sternum were blown into her lungs and heart.

  Briann immediately started to reach for his own concealed handgun, only to find himself restrained by his companion. Turning, he saw that Twikanrozex was pointing with both truhands.

  Using both arms, a determined Skettle had levered himself into position to reach for and activate the cylinder of explosive. Neither padre knew what the slim bottle contained, but if it was worth this many lives to attach it to the appropriate instrumentation, then its contents would surely do the crowds of unsuspecting visitors who were presently thronging the fair no good.

  Nor was there time to call in a warning. As Twikanrozex let go of his friend's arm and rushed forward, Briann was right behind him. The biped's greater speed over a short distance enabled the human to reach Skettle and the open panel at exactly the same time as his multilimbed companion.

  Cursing defiance, Skettle mustered one last supreme effort. Pulling his useless lower body upright, he threw himself forward. Both hands latched onto the cylinder, one gripping it for support while the other stabbed at the softly blinking contact that would activate its contents. At almost the same instant, the leaping, stridulating Twikanrozex struck the larger biped with all six feet, knocking him away from the exposed instrumentation. Briann launched himself at the cylinder, grabbed hold, and twisted, throwing his whole body into the maneuver. The tough sealant that had been incorporated by the deceased engineer Botha to hold the cylinder against the panel's interior snapped beneath the padre's weight an instant after the desperate Skettle succeeded in activating it.

  There was supposed to be a delay of several minutes between activation and detonation to allow the bearer enough time to escape the blast perimeter. Perspicacious terrorist that he was, however, the recently demised Botha had assumed that once the cylinders of liquid explosive were emplaced, the only individuals interested in removing them would be representatives of the unwelcome authorities. He had therefore rigged the cylinders' triggers to bypass the programmed time lapse in the event of early dislodging.