The Dark Path

by Walter H Hunt

  "This will give you any additional information you might need. There's an MP on duty outside Admiral Tolliver's quarters, and he will be present in the room during your interview, in case there is a difficulty."

  "Don't you think that would inhibit—"

  "Begging the Commodore's pardon, but I will not bear responsibility for letting you into the admiral's quarters without escort. The MP has his orders in case my patient becomes violent. I have my orders as well." He looked across at Maartens.

  "It's for your own protection," Maartens added.

  "For my own—" Jackie's face reddened. "Listen here. I'm an officer in His Majesty's Navy, and perfectly capable of taking care of myself—"

  "Nonsense," Callison interrupted, which stopped her in mid-sentence, making her even more angry. He tapped the desk with an index finger. "In my professional opinion, the admiral is violently insane. At the moment, he has fifty cc's of quintivalium in his bloodstream, about ten times the normal human dosage.

  "Last night, under a dosage of half that amount, he pulled down a wall section with his bare hands because he believed there was a 'monster' behind it, trying to take over his mind. It took three MPs to control him, despite the fact that the admiral is fifty-three years old and is in subpar physical condition. Three MPs, Commodore, and a direct injection of enough qv to put a Cicero tusker into a coma.

  "The MP has a tranquilizer rifle. If Tolliver makes anything like a sudden move, he will be pumped full of qv darts. The admiral is my patient, Commodore, and as such, I will only allow you to interview him on those terms."

  " 'Allow—' " Jackie began.

  "He's got you, Commodore," Georg said, winking. "He has authority."

  "All right. I won't disobey your advice," she said after a moment.

  "That's settled, then," Callison replied, as if he'd expected that result all along. "Whenever you're ready, ma'am?"

  ***

  The room was dimly lit but looked clean and normal. It was a typical outpatient hospital room, not much different from dirtside: There was a single bed, neatly made, in one corner; a couch and two armchairs, with a side table alongside holding several chips and a tablet; a small autokitchen. The walls were painted in a pale pastel and adorned by abstract paintings.

  Tolliver sat on the couch with his hands folded. He appeared to be dozing, but looked up when Jackie and the trooper came into the room. The MP took up a position just inside the door, his rifle held ready but pointed downward.

  "Commodore Laperriere," Tolliver said quietly. "How good of you to visit."

  "It is my pleasure, sir." She took a seat in one of the armchairs. "If it pleases the admiral . . . I need certain matters clarified for my report."

  She tensed, waiting for something to happen as he raised his eyes to meet hers. He merely gazed at her languidly. "Certainly, Commodore. How may I be of service?"

  Direct approach, she thought to herself, feeling the presence of the MP behind her. "I read your deposition to Dr. Callison, but I would appreciate it if you would tell me personally what happened out there."

  At the words "out there," Tolliver's eyes grew clearer for a moment, as if he were straining against the effects of the tranquilizer in his bloodstream, then they became glassy again.

  "I've . . . been thinking that I'd like to talk to you personally, Commodore, and I'm glad you chose to come out to visit me. I've . . . It's hard to try and explain it all in report language, even though I've been doing it all my life . . . I'd hoped that I would be able to explain in person to another officer, not to some doctor.

  "They've decided I'm nuts, you know. Space-sickness. Jump fever." He looked off into one corner of the room and then threw a quick glance at the MP. "They don't really believe what I told them."

  "Forgive me, Admiral," she replied quickly. "I didn't come out here to dispute your story, or to cast aspersions—"

  "I appreciate that, Laperriere, I truly do."

  "—or to cast aspersions," she repeated through his interruption. "I only came out here to listen."

  "Perhaps when this is all over I can return the favor." He leaned forward and put his head in his hands for several moments. Then he looked up at her with a pained expression that roused sympathy in Jackie, making her feel a trifle uncomfortable.

  The moment passed and his expression was swallowed by lassitude, and he slumped back on the couch. "Where shall I begin?"

  "Tell me about Sargasso."

  "Sargasso." He looked into space again. "It was a normal planetary system—nine planets, two habitable, and an asteroid belt. We conducted the usual survey, which, incidentally, did not agree with the original survey."

  "But it did agree with the data from the Gustav Adolf."

  "To the last decimal place. But there it was—in . . . incontrovertible, on our forward and deep-radar scans. Nine planets, two habitable."

  "Please go on."

  "I left two vessels at the edge of the system near our jump point and dropped into the gravity-well. I was . . . primarily interested in finding any trace of the missing ships.

  "We explored the system thoroughly and found nothing. Nothing!" He sat forward again, shrugging off a bit of his former calm. The MP moved behind her; Tolliver's shoulders sagged a bit.

  "Nothing," he almost whispered. "No unusual background radiation, no debris, no jump disturbances. Then we did a scan on the t-two habitable worlds.

  "I sent a landing party down. Four . . . special officers"—he seemed to avoid using the term "Sensitives"—"and eight Marines. For twenty minutes they sent up survey data on the planet—its ecosphere, flora and fauna—then we began to lose contact with the survey teams. One after another after another." He began to shake almost uncontrollably. Jackie exchanged glances with the MP, who seemed nervous, listening to the admiral's story. She knew what was next in his report; she waited for him to become calm again. Tolliver had changed: his hauteur had melted away and been replaced by fear.

  "Then the WS4s came back up from the surface." WS4 was the highest rank for a Sensitive in the field. "They hadn't been ordered up—they just came on their own."

  He looked at her with a look of such anguish and despair that she could hardly hold his glance. "Then the planet began to quaver . . . the mass sensors went crazy. Our ships were flung from orbit . . . except one.

  "The planet changed shape and en-engulfed the Johore. I heard them screaming . . ." He put his head down and clapped his hands over his ears. "Screaming . . ."

  She stood and took a step toward him, but he looked up at her suddenly, his eyes ablaze with anger. "They took the Johore. They took it, do you understand?" He was almost shouting. "Then the Maldive and the Andaman opened fire . . . on each other.

  "I countermanded the order, but no one was listening." He clenched his fists. On his forehead, several veins stood out in stark relief. "No one was moving on the bridge of the Singapore. They were frozen in their seats. Everyone but me."

  Some of this detail had not reached the report from Tolliver's briefing session. She realized it as the words poured from his mouth. Callison was no doubt recording this. Still, it seemed impossible for the admiral not to have said it all, since the reader (or listener) would have had to hurdle yet other impossibilities to get here.

  "I turned to look at the WS4s," he said. "And I didn't see humans, Commodore. I saw . . ."

  A look of horror spread across Tolliver's face.

  "What did you see?"

  He was looking directly at her, but she suddenly knew he didn't see her anymore. He saw something that horrified him beyond all comprehension.

  Without warning he hurled himself at her with his arms outstretched. Jackie stepped quickly from his path and pulled him to the deck, her reflexes acting far quicker than the admiral's drug-weakened ones. The MP's rifle coughed several times.

  Tolliver struggled, shouting inarticulately, while the drug slowly took effect, until at last he was immobile. Perhaps fifteen seconds had passed.

&nb
sp; "Are you all right, ma'am?" the MP asked as they rolled the now unconscious admiral onto his back.

  "Forget about me," she replied. "Let's get a Sensitive in here on the double—"

  She looked down at Tolliver. His eyes were rolled up in his head, and the chest wasn't rising and falling. She began to apply CPR. "How much did you pump into him, damn it?"

  "Not enough to kill him, ma'am," the trooper said. "Besides, it wouldn't act that fast."

  The look of inarticulate horror gazed off into space, past Jackie, at some imagined terror she would never know.

  Chapter 5

  The surgery door opened and Dr. Meredith Hsu stepped into the waiting room, wiping her hands on a towel. Arthur Callison followed, sliding the door shut. Maartens looked up with questions in his eyes.

  "Well?" Jackie asked. "What happened?"

  Dr. Hsu tossed the towel into a receptacle in the corner and sat down on the opposite side of the room from Jackie. She swung the chair around to face her expectant commanding officers.

  "You'll be receiving a full report from me in a day or two, but I can give you a preliminary analysis."

  "By all means."

  She looked from Jackie and Maartens to Callison and then back again. "I found absolutely nothing, Commodore. I conducted every forensic test available to me. In my professional opinion, the Admiral's heart simply stopped. There is no evidence of chemical or biological alteration that might have caused the stoppage."

  "What about the tranquilizer?"

  "Three hundred fifty cc's of quintivalium will not produce that sort of reaction, Commodore," Dr. Hsu responded quietly. "His bloodstream simply could not absorb that much in fifteen to thirty seconds before he was subdued."

  "The qv didn't kill him, then. What did?"

  "There was no evidence that anything did, Commodore. His heart simply . . . stopped. So did his brain activity."

  "Dr. Callison, will you confirm this?" Jackie asked, turning to the older physician.

  "My examination will corroborate Dr. Hsu's statements, Commodore."

  "Well, it's not good enough." Jackie's voice rose in anger. "You're stating in effect that Admiral Tolliver simply hurled himself at me, and before he could so much as cry out, he dropped dead. I'm terribly sorry, Meredith, Arthur, I can't accept it. I was in that room, and I saw it happen."

  "It all happened rather fast. Perhaps you didn't notice—" Maartens began, but Jackie cut him off.

  "After this many years in the Service, Georg, credit me with enough powers of observation to notice when a man is dying. He didn't convulse, he didn't have a seizure, he didn't cough up blood. One moment he was alive, succumbing to qv darts, the next moment he was stone dead. People don't die like that, Meredith, and you know it."

  "He was more than fifty years old—"

  "Someone killed him," Jackie said, her expression freezing Meredith Hsu into silence. "Someone killed Horace Tolliver before he could tell me what he saw."

  "Who? And more importantly—how?"

  "I don't know who. It was like the work of a Sensitive, but I don't know anyone—human or zor—with that much power. But whoever it is, the person is still aboard this ship."

  Hsu looked angrily at Jackie. "I didn't realize that you'd received a medical degree . . . or become a Sensitive."

  "Did you consider this possibility in your report?"

  "Of course not. I'm a forensic pathologist, not a zor mystic. What do you want—"

  "Answers." Jackie stood up and walked toward the door, where she stopped and turned to look at the three officers. "I've got a frightening situation on my hands and it's getting worse. Even if nothing else happens—which I doubt—the Admiralty will be crawling up our asses, what with the Sargasso disaster and the admiral dead. I want answers, and I will have them, and I will not accept your report until you provide them. Is that clear?"

  "Your authority doesn't—" began Dr. Hsu.

  "Oh, but it does. We are in a state of emergency, Lieutenant Hsu. I will remind you that this is the Imperial Navy, and that I command here. The murderer of Admiral Tolliver is still at large and likely aboard this ship. A Sensitive might even be able to locate that person, and a Sensitive's examination might be able to determine the actual cause of Tolliver's death.

  "I want answers, Doctor, and I will have them. Is that clear?"

  "I—" Hsu looked down at the floor. "Aye-aye, ma'am."

  "I'll be at Cicero Operations. I'll expect your report within forty-eight hours." Without another word Jackie stalked from the room, the door sliding shut behind her.

  ***

  She was exhausted when she returned to Cicero Op. She had quarters two decks below the bridge near the outer rim of the station; she went directly from the shuttle deck to her room. She dropped into an armchair, putting her head back against the wall behind.

  After a few minutes of quiet lethargy, she stripped off her sweaty uniform and headed for the shower.

  Centuries of human civilization had raised the art of showering from the mundane to the sublime, and the Cicero orbital station was equal to the state of the art. For ten minutes she let the water pour over her and the tension flowed out as well.

  Then, suddenly, as she stood in the shower she heard her name spoken clearly and distinctly, ringing like a bell in her ears.

  She tensed—undoing half of the purpose of the shower in a single moment—and opened her eyes.

  se Jackie, the voice said again.

  "Who's there?" she said over the sound of rushing water. She turned the water off and reached outside the compartment for a towel. "Who—"

  She realized the voice was coming from inside her mind. She felt a familiar touch: It was Ch'k'te. She wrapped the towel around herself absently, letting her mind reach out tentatively for contact as Ch'k'te had taught her.

  Where are you? She tried to form the words, not sure if the words would be communicated. She received an impression in return: a metal structure, spinning slowly in orbit. She felt the gentle touch of a zor's wing around her.

  Look, the voice said. She closed her eyes—

  And opened them again. Before her, she saw a high-ceilinged room, the tower room of a fortress. Above, there were high skylight windows looking out on a terrible storm.

  Ch'k'te perched in front of her, looking haggard and weary. She'd never felt a mind-touch that had taken visible form be fore: This was etched sharply before her in sight and sound.

  I speak to you from far inside myself, Ch'k'te said over the storm's noise. He cannot sense my contact with you.

  He?—

  Listen to me, Ch'k'te said urgently. There is not much time. He is here. He took your guise and lured me here and has trapped me.

  Help me, se Jackie, Ch'k'te said at last, his wings curling into a position she knew held some significance she could not interpret. She realized, in some level of consciousness above the present frame of reference, that this setting had some figurative meaning, though she could not recall it at the moment.

  How can I help you?

  esGa'u, Ch'k'te said. esGa'u the Deceiver is not far away. He holds me . . . he controls me, se Jackie. He is—

  There was a sound to the right. Jackie turned to look at the heavy oaken door and heard a noise, as if someone were trying to break it down—

  She blinked and saw her quarters again, quiet but for the occasional dripping of water in the shower. After a moment she realized she was shaking all over.

  She slumped into the armchair, still mostly wet, thinking about the sudden contact and the way in which it was suddenly broken off. esGa'u . . . Ch'k'te had mentioned the name of the zor religion's dark sorcerer, esGa'u the Deceiver. He had said he was being controlled by esGa'u.

  Controlled.

  The contact had been broken suddenly, sharply, like switching off a light. Had the control slipped somehow and then re asserted itself? What could it mean?

  The discipline learned during years as an officer took over then, pushing fear off i
nto a corner of her mind as she dressed. Without stopping to consider, she pulled on a gunbelt, went through the ritual of stripping and testing her pistol, and holstered it at her side. Jackie was unsure what would happen next but intended to be prepared for it.

  ***

  Cicero Operations consisted of a long, thin spindle passing through a wide disk. At the very top of the spindle, just where it protruded from the disk, was the station's bridge. While the station spun, turning on its axis once an hour, the bridge remained stationary relative to the planetary surface in geosynchronous orbit with Cicero Down, located near the planet's equator.

  As always, when Jackie stepped from the lift onto the bridge, she had a slight feeling of vertigo. The screens displayed the grim visage of Cicero, a few hundred kilometers away, hanging luminously above them, ready to fall on them at any moment. (Or was it below, and they were plummeting toward it?) It was no wonder people felt vertigo.

  The bridge was a warren of activity. In addition to constantly monitoring the operations of the station itself, Cicero Op con trolled the anchorage of the remaining Cicero Military District fleet. It also collected meteorological data from the planet and astronomical data from Cicero System. The Exploration arm was beached at the moment, but when it was engaged in surveying, its reports also filtered through this station.

  Jackie surveyed the scene and picked out Ch'k'te. His back was to her, but she recognized him by the pattern of his wings—the slight brownish tint where they joined his shoulders, and the bluish scar near his left wing-talon from the boiler explosion last winter.

  ***

  He holds me . . . he controls me, she heard in her mind. Without speaking, she slowly looked across the bridge at the forty or so individuals, human and zor, who worked there. Could one of them be . . . esGa'u? Could one of them be controlling the mind of her exec?

  Commander Noyes looked up from a screen and noticed Jackie standing near the entrance to the lift. He immediately walked toward her. She took a step forward to meet him and suddenly stopped, the hairs on the back of her neck rising in alarm. Years in the military had taught her to trust her instincts. There was something about Noyes—the way he was holding himself, perhaps—something she couldn't identify.