“We know many things.”
“I’ll bet you do. Right now I’d like to meditate on someone else. I us name is Cando Proska. Know him?”
The beggar’s eyes remained impassive. “We know Mr. Proska, but we do not fear his power.”
The directness of the response surprised him. “What power?”
“The Great Wheel imparts many powers in its turning. Mr. Proska possesses an unusual one.”
“Yes, but just what is his power?”
The beggar shrugged. “Wheels within wheels, bendreth.”
Here we go again, Easly thought, and reached for a cigar. But there was a subtle difference here. Yesterday’s beggar had an air of tranquility about him; he had sensed an innate passivity about that one. Today’s beggar was something else entirely. Outwardly, he looked like a quiet, removed, contemplative sort. But Easly sensed that this was a thin veneer under which churned a very purposeful being. There was power here, and determination.
This creature was not at all like a Vanek should be.
He took his time lighting the cigar. By the time the tip was glowing a bright red, both he and the beggar were enveloped in a cloud of strong-smelling smoke. This was the effect he desired, for he had removed the small gas vial along with the cigar and now had it palmed against his thigh and pointing toward the Vanek. A flick of his index finger opened the cock and the colorless contents streamed out.
Easly held his breath and waited for the vial to empty. It contained a powerful cortical inhibitor that worked as a highly effective tongue-loosener on humans. The gas, kelamine, was not entirely odorless, however, thus the improvised smoke screen. He had taken a considerable risk by traveling with kelamine. It was illegal on most planets – Jebinose included – and mere possession could result in imprisonment. There were no physical or mental after effects, but its use was classified as “chemical assault.”
A vial was kept hidden in his luggage at all times for use in extreme circumstances. This was such a circumstance. He could only hope that the half-breed Vanek nervous system was human enough to respond to the gas.
When the vial was empty, he slipped it back into his pocket and allowed himself to breath again.
“What is Proska’s power?” he asked again.
“Wheels within wheels, bendreth,” came the standard reply.
Easly cursed softly and was about to get to his feet when he noticed the beggar begin to sway.
“I am dizzy, bendreth. I fear it is the smoke you make.”
“Very sorry,” Easly said with the slightest trace of a smile. A mild dizziness was the drug’s only side effect. He ground the cigar out in the dirt.
“Perhaps you misunderstood my question,” he said carefully. “I want to know what kind of power Mr. Proska possesses.”
“It is a power of the mind,” the Vanek said, and put a finger to his forehead.
Now we’re getting somewhere!
AN HOUR LATER EASLY returned to his flitter and took to the air. Even with the help of the kelamine, it had been hard work to pull any concrete information out of the Vanek; their minds work in such a circumspect manner that he almost had to start thinking like one before he could get the answers he wanted.
But Easly had his answers now and his new-found knowledge made him set a course for the spaceport at full throttle. His luggage was still at the hotel, and as far as he was concerned, it could stay there. There was only one thing he wanted now and that was to get off Jebinose.
His expression was grim as he dropped the flitter off on the rental platform and went to secure a seat on the next shuttle up. The mystery of Junior Finch’s death and Proska’s diabolical psi-talent had been cleared up. He shuddered at the thought of running into Proska now. The little man was no mere psi-killer as Easly had originally suspected. No, what Cando Proska could do to a man was much worse.
Larry Easly was frightened. He had faced danger before – in fact, at one point during an investigation last year, someone’s bodyguard had placed the business end of a blaster over his left eye and threatened to pull the trigger – but it had never affected him like this. This was different. This was an unseen danger that could strike anywhere, at anytime, without the slightest warning. And there was no possible way to defend himself against it.
He didn’t know the range of Proska’s power. Did it require a certain proximity to its target to be effective, or could he just sit in a room somewhere and strike out at will? Every shadowy corner posed a threat now. His palms were clammy, his stomach felt as if something cold and sharp was clawing at it, and the skin on the nape of his neck crawled and tingled.
He was almost giddy with relief when the read-out at the reservation desk told him he had a seat on the next orbital shuttle leaving in one quarter of a standard hour.
On his way to the shuttle dock, he passed the subspace communication area and thought it might be a good idea to get a message off to Jo… just in case something happened to him.
He entered one of the large, transparent booths, closed the door behind him, and seated himself at the console. The locus computer informed him that it was midday at the IBA offices on Ragna. Not that it mattered: the subspace laser was the fastest means of communication yet developed, but it was still a one-way affair. Delay between transmission and reception could range from minutes to hours. And Easly was not waiting around for a reply anyway. The message would be automatically recorded at IBA and Jo would replay it at her convenience.
Easly noted the vid receptor before him and realized he was in a deluxe booth that sent a combined video and aural message. He shrugged and tapped in the IBA locus. All he wanted to do was get the message off, then get up to the shuttle dock. The extra expense was the least of his worries. A red light went on and he slipped his credit ID disk into a slot. The disk popped out and the light turned green. A two-minute transmission had begun.
JO WAS SURPRISED to learn that she had a subspace call from Larry. He would only contact her like this under emergency conditions, so she ordered an immediate replay on her office vid screen. She started to smile as his face appeared, then remembered that he could neither see nor hear her. His voice was stern:
“This is a personal and confidential message for Josephine Finch – her eyes only. Please record the following without monitoring.” He waited a few seconds, then his tone softened.
“I’ll have to make this quick, Jo, and more cryptic than my usual since I don’t know who else will see this before it gets to you. First off, as to your close relative’s end, it’s not at all what it seemed to be. The man you sent me here to investigate may well be intimately involved. And there’s a wild card: a psi-talent who… who…”
Jo saw Larry’s face go slack as his voice faltered. He swayed in front of the screen, fighting to keep his balance. Utterly helpless, Jo had to sit and watch in horror as his eyes rolled up into his head and he sank from view.
Picture transmission was not interrupted, however, and Jo anxiously watched the passers-by, hoping that one of them would glance in and realize that something was wrong with Larry. One man did stop and peer through the glass. He was short, sallow, and balding. His hard little eyes seemed to rest on the spot where Larry had fallen but he registered no surprise, made no move to help.
He merely smiled and turned away.
Tella
ANDY TELLA HAD A STRICT personal rule against taking blind assignments. He not only insisted on knowing the immediate objective but the final one as well. This attitude had ultimately led to his failure as a Defense Force trooper: he hadn’t been able to muster the reflexive obedience required to function successfully in a military unit.
He was bending his rule somewhat for the current assignment, however. The immediate objective was quite clear: secure the export contract for the Rakoan Leason crystals; do it in accordance with Federation conventions on relations with alien races… but do it. The ultimate objective remained vague, and that bothered him.
His first impulse had been
to turn the assignment down. He knew nothing about dealing with aliens, knew nothing about Leason crystals other than the fact that they were used to line drive tubes and were extremely valuable, and had no desire to increase his knowledge in either area. But the request had come from Josephine Finch and she said the job was important and of a highly sensitive nature. It pertained to the deBloise caper, but she wouldn’t say just how.
On faith alone, he had accepted the assignment and was now a passenger aboard IBA’s own interstellar cruiser as it slowed into orbit around a cloud-streaked, brown-and-blue ball called Rako. The days on ship had been spent in encephalo-augmented study of everything known about the planet and the humanoids who inhabited it. Rako was a water-oxygen world circling an F3 star situated along the mutual expansion border of the Terran Federation and the Tarkan Empire. It had been discovered six and a half standard years previously by a Fairleigh Tubes exploration team on a follow-up mission after spectrographic analysis of its primary suggested the possibility of deposits of natural Leason crystals. They found them – huge fields of them.
They found something else, too. The planet was inhabited. They came upon evidence of intelligent life long before they found the Rakoans, however. Dead cities – dank, decaying, alloy-and-polymer corpses, some almost completely overgrown with vegetation – dotted the planet, indicating a sophisticated level of technology at one time. But no natives. It was initially suspected that a plague or biological catastrophe had wiped them out and the members of the exploration team breathed a sigh of relief – intelligent life forms on Rako would complicate matters by preventing them from claiming the planet for Fairleigh.
They decided to take a look at one final derelict city that appeared less overgrown than most of the others from the air. And that’s where they found the last of the Rakoans. Besides their height – some of the adults were almost three meters tall – the most outstanding feature of the otherwise humanoid mammals was their thick, horny epidermal layer which was constantly flaking off. They had three fingers and an opposing thumb, wide-set eyes, and a shapeless nose that drooped over a lipless mouth equipped with short, flat, block-like teeth – a sure sign of a vegetarian.
And they were dying.
Not from disease, but from a birth rate that produced one healthy child for every twenty-three adults of the previous generation. The result was a very steep geometric regression in the planet’s population – from an estimated five billion to roughly thirty thousand, most of them gathered in this single city.
That was one complication for the Fairleigh team. Then the Tarks arrived, claiming they had discovered the planet previously and were only now getting around to mining it. That was a transparent lie. The Tarks had long ago pirated the process for synthesizing Leason crystals and would have immediately begun stripping Rako of its natural deposits – with or without native permission – if they had been the first there.
The Federation stepped in then. It reminded the Tarkan Empire of the expansion treaty it had signed with the Fed nearly two standard centuries before. One of the major articles of the treaty outlined the accepted procedures for dealing with worlds inhabited by intelligent creatures. Since Rako fell into this class, the question of who discovered it first was irrelevant. The Empire and Fairleigh Tubes would have to make competing offers for a trade contract with the Rakoans, with the strong proviso that consent from the Rakoans be informed consent.
The Federation made it clear to the Tarks that it was quite willing to enter into armed conflict to protect the interests of Fairleigh and the Rakoans. Fairleigh, in turn, was advised to abide strictly by the conventions or Fed protection would be withdrawn from the company – not only on Rako, but throughout Occupied Space.
So the Terrans, the Tarks, and the leader of the Rakoan remnant got down to dealing. And that’s where the third complication arose.
The Rakoans wanted more than money and technology in return for their crystals. They wanted a future for their race.
“I suppose you’re well on your way to a solution by now, eh, Doc?” Tella said, fully aware that the answer would be negative.
He sipped a cup of hot tea as he sat across a table from Avery Chornock, the head of the research team on Rako. Chornock had disliked him on sight, and Tella sensed this. But he chose to ignore it, preferring to play the part of the brash, young, bonus-hungry company trouble shooter to the hilt. For that’s how Chornock had labeled and pigeonholed him after reading his authorization from the Fairleigh home office.
“We’re nowhere near a solution, Mr. Company Man,” the lank, aging scientist rumbled. “And under present conditions, it’s highly unlikely we’ll ever get near one.”
“What more could you want? You’ve got a full research team of your own choice here; you’ve got a subspace link to the Derby University computer, which is packed with every available scrap of information on human and non-human reproduction; and you’ve got an open-ended budget for any hardware you should need.”
“Not enough!”
Tella considered this. If Dr. Avery Chornock, the number-one expert on alien embryology and reproduction in the Federation, was at an impasse, what could he contribute?
“What more do you need?”
“I need to be back in my lab at Derby U. investigating live Rakoan subjects. We’ve done all the cadaver work we need and I’ve exhausted the possibilities of field work on live subjects. I need to get a few males and females back to my lab for definitive studies and then I might – I said, might, mind you – be able to come up with something.”
“None of the Rakoans will volunteer, I take it?”
Chornock nodded. “That is correct.”
“Maybe they’re scared of you.”
“No. These people aren’t scared of much. It’s got something to do with their religion.” He made a disgusted noise. “They’ll all be extinct in a few generations and all because of some imbecilic superstition!”
One of the lab technicians stuck his head through the door. His expression was anxious.
“Vim is here.”
Chornock twisted abruptly in his seat. “Are you trying to be funny or something?”
“Of course not!” the technician replied in an offended tone.
“Well, don’t just stand there. Send him in.”
The head disappeared and a Tarkan male entered a few seconds later. Tella had seen holos of them before, and had seen them on the vid, but this was the first time he had ever viewed a Tark in the flesh. There was quite a difference: the doglike face with its short snout and sharp yellow incisors was the same, as were the stubby-fingered hands, the barrel chest and the short, dark, bristly fur; but no vid recording or holo had ever managed to convey the sheer brute strength that seemed to ripple under the creature’s exterior… nor the pungent odor that surrounded it like a cloud. It stood close to two meters tall and weighed 100 kilos easily.
A second Tark entered and stayed slightly behind and to the right of the first.
“Please have a seat, Dr. Vim,” Chornock said, rising.
The Tark to the rear made some growling noises and the first Tark replied in kind. Then the second Tark spoke to Chornock in oddly guttural, but grammatically perfect Instel.
“No time, I’m afraid. I’ve been recalled.”
“Oh no! This is terrible! Why?”
Again, the growling exchange between the two aliens. It was now obvious to Tella that the first Tark was Vim and that he didn’t speak the Terran interstellar language. The translator turned back to Chornock.
“Too expensive, it seems. My superiors have interpreted our lack of progress as a sign that this race is doomed. They have decided to wait until its final members die off. Then there will be no need to make arrangements to pay these primitives for the crystals.”
“Do you agree?”
“I do not see much hope for a solution under these conditions,” the translator said after another exchange. He paused while Vim said some more, then continued. “Before I le
ave, may I say that it has been a privilege to share the same soil with you. I would have much desired to work at your side in this matter, but that was forbidden, as you know. I look forward to seeing more translations of your excellent papers. Good-by.”
With that, the pair of aliens turned and left.
Chornock sat in silence for a few long moments. “A decent fellow, Vim. I know he’s deeply disappointed.”
“Didn’t show it,” Tella remarked.
“Tarks cannot afford to show displeasure with their superiors’ decisions; from what I understand, such behavior tends to shorten their lifespan – if you catch my drift. But he’s disappointed. The Rakoans pose quite a challenge. We could clone out new ones, of course, but their leader says that’s an unacceptable solution. He wants true, natural biological reproduction reestablished on a scale that will ensure the future of the race. I can’t blame him, but I’m afraid I can’t help him either.”
“They’re sterile?” Tella asked. Chornock had lost some of his hostility as he talked about the Rakoans; he was almost likable.
“Sterility would be much easier to deal with. No, there are plenty of active gametes in both sexes – they just won’t combine as they should. But I’m sure Vim’s also disappointed about leaving the bassa behind.”
“What’s that?”
“A very fascinating grain rust with curious antibiotic activity: when an extract of the rust is ingested in sufficient quantity, it irreversibly incorporates itself into the metabolic pathways of any and all the bacteria in the body within one standard day.”
“So?”
“So, when the extract is withdrawn, the bacteria die. The patient must be immediately reinoculated with his own enteric organisms, but the Rakoans seem to have the technique perfected. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence of resistance, either.”
“What about host metabolic pathways? Don’t they get changed?”
“Apparently not – probably because the nucleoproteins of a larger animal don’t replicate at anywhere near the rate of a bacterium’s, so there just isn’t time for the rust extract to insinuate itself into the metabolism. But I suppose if one made a steady diet of the rust…” He let the thought trail off.
The Complete LaNague Page 91