STAR HOUNDS -- OMNIBUS (41 page)

No, said a voice clearly inside of her brain. And for the briefest instant she felt a foreshadow of the agony she would endure.

“Laura! Laura, are you all right?” Northern asked. She blinked. “Yes. Yes, I guess I was just more tired than I thought.”

“But you will do it, won’t you?” Mish asked, his eyes pleading.

“Sure. Sure I’ll do it.”

She got up and went to her cabin as quickly as she could.

H
is butler set down breakfast for him.

Scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, coffee, and marmalade, on a tray.

“Thank you, Wilkins,” said Cal Shemzak. “Did you bring anything for Igor?”

The tall, dignified man in coat and tails eyed the device grafted upon his charge’s back. “Igor, sir?”

“Or would you prefer to call me the hunchback of Notre Dame?” He tapped the contraption, then let his fingers play upon the nodes on the plastic surface. It was not heavy, but it was definitely unsightly: like a huge puppet master fit snugly onto his back, tendrils dug deep into the back of the neck, to spine and brain. “A mobile unit for the mixing of minds, Wilkins, don’t you know. Perhaps even now I am subconsciously doing all kinds of wonderful computations and equations, connected by neural interface to my delightful clones, droning a somnolent chorus in another room.”

“Ah,” said his robotic servant.

“But then, you already know, don’t you, Wilkins? Or you just don’t care.”

“You must remember, sir, that I am hardly programmed to care.”

Damn him, anyway—this caricature Jeeves they’d fashioned to serve and incidentally watch over him. To talk with him; perhaps even to analyze him surreptitiously through the seemingly innocent mode of conversation.

Now he had another mechanical friend riding his back.

“We have studied the situation thoroughly,” the aliens had said as he still hung, securely wrapped in translucent film, “and it is to our disadvantage to keep you under such constraint. Our studies of human beings show this is bad psychologically, and we wish to keep you as happy as possible during the course of work upon the problems we want you to solve. Therefore, we have devised a mobile device, which you will be fitted with shortly, fully as capable of connecting you to the brain bank of your extensions as these hardwires.

“Then the lovely puzzles and games can begin.”

With a plume of smoke, a whiff of perfume, his mind had been punted off to slumberland. He’d awoken snug in his bed, with an odd sensation on his back. A quick look in the mirror had revealed this monstrous pimple, this terrible growth: muted purple and red veins faintly apulse with lights.

Gaah! The ladies would have nothing to do with him now.

Of course, there were no ladies to be had on this planet of the Jaxdron. The only lady Cal wanted to see was his sister, Laura. He’d asked the Jaxdron about her and their answer had been very strange, and sounded surprisingly truthful.

“Ah, yes, the lady who flies the ingenious Federation starship!”

“You know of her?”

“Oh, indeed. Of course, we’d know her in any event. She is constantly on your mind.”

“She’s all right, isn’t she?”

“All right?”

“I mean, alive?”

“Yes, as far as we know.”

“But she’s been trying to rescue me?”

“Oh, truly, and the web of our game has grown in richness due to the complications of her work.”

“She’s on her Own?”

The Jaxdron had conferred in their own language on that one. Then the middle one had spoken to him in Galactic Standard.

“There is no harm in letting you know. It might even improve your spirits and make our alliance an easier one. No, the one you call your sister, this Laura Shemzak, she is not alone in her efforts.”

“The Federation is helping her then?” Cal said hopefully.

“No. She has fallen in with pirate have been a number of attempts to procure your freedom, Cal Shemzak.”

“Pi-mercs? What’s going on?”

Ignoring the question, the Jaxdron said, “In fact, we have obliged the
Starbow
with the exact location of our planet. They should be along presently.”

Cal was nonplussed by this. “But why?”

“Why, to play the game!”

“Wait a minute, let me get this straight. What use do you have for my sister and whatever bunch of hooligans she’s attached herself to? I mean, all she wants is my freedom! That’s what I want too!”

“We can only say for now that their well-being upon arrival depends entirely upon your cooperation with us presently. We assure you that we are totally in command of the situation. Should they arrive when your work is finished, then perhaps we may simply let you join them and be gone. But should the work not be finished … perhaps we will have to destroy them.”

“Or at least ask them to sit in the waiting room and play a few games of tic-tac-toe!”

“Ah! Sarcasm! A verbal game. Very pleasant. Be assured, however, that we speak entirely true here, Calspar Shemzak. The threat is real. You do not wish to have the death of your sister—and her friends—on your hands, do you?”

But how much truth was there in that? Cal wondered. Still, no reason to complain too much, he thought now as he ate his breakfast thoughtfully. Just see what happens.

When he had finished the last crunch of bacon, the final slurp of coffee, Wilkins reentered to carry away his tray.

“Oh, sir, I hope you are suitably rested,” the dry, unemotional creature said. “Please dress. The Masters wish me to take you to the Play Room.”

This was Wilkins’s term for the room in which Cal had undergone his series o f diagnostic reality tests—seemingly real scenarios in which he was placed in metaphorical conditions with situational problems to solve. Thus, the aliens had no doubt scoped out his interconnections with the duplicates they had constructed.

“Time for a little workout, eh, Wilky?”

“I think that is what the Masters have in mind, sir.”

“Okay. You’ll be happy to know that I am now in full cooperation with the Jaxdron. No more resistance.”

“So pleasant to hear, sir, but you never were very resistant, even from the first.”

“All too true. Part of my nature, I suppose,” said Cal, starting to dress. “God, it is a bit of a bother with this thing on my back. My shirts don’t fit anymore!”

“Allow me, sir,” said Wilkins, who produced a pair of scissors and made the appropriate cutting adjustments to allow his shirt to fit comfortably over the hump.

“Thank you, Wilkins. Not exactly smart-looking, but I suppose it will have to do. I’m not attending any fancy dress functions, now am I?”

“No, sir.”

“You know, Wilkins, sometime I’d like to see just how you work inside. I’ve dabbled from time to time with robots—I’d be curious to see how you’re put together.”

“I hardly think, sir, that the Masters would allow that.”

“Oh, now we wouldn’t have to let them in on our little secret, would we? I mean, you and I have come to be good friends, haven’t we?”

“No, sir.”

“Oh, come on, Wilky. Just a little peek?”

“Let us be on the way, sir. The Masters are expecting us.”

“Okay, whatever you say!”

They marched down the corridor to the room.

Surprisingly, despite the new addition riding his back, Cal didn’t feel too bad. In fact, he felt pretty damned good. At least now he knew what was going on. After his capture the Jaxdron had put him through all kinds of stuff, with nary an explanation. Now that it was all spelled out, he understood what was expected of him.

He could work with that, certainly!

“Would you care for some iced tea?” Wilkins asked as Cal sat in his usual chair and Wilkins went to the control board.

“That would be nice, Wilkins.”

“Very well, sir. I presume the beach would be suitable?”

“Just fine.”

Wilkins’s hands did things at the control board. The blank walls surrounding him faded from dull gray to movement: a shoreline coalesced; blues and greens and sand. The sun beat down from the ceiling-turned-sky. A fresh salty breeze scudded plump cloud puffs and fluttered the end of Cal’s untucked flower-print shirt.

All very calm and relaxing.

Wilkins departed for a moment, returning quickly with a fresh glass of cubes and tea, topped with a wedge of lemon.

Cal took a sip of the cool stuff.

“Just call should you need anything, sir,” said Wilkins, and he was gone.

Cal was halfway through the tea when the warmth at the back of his neck grew noticeable: He reached back and could almost feel the Watcher glowing bright.

There was a sharp shock. The glass fell from his hands, splashing into the sparkling sand.

“Ouch! Goddamn it, this hurts!” he cried out to the sky.

“Sorry,” said a cloud. “We will adjust.”

The pain died away and the heat gradually blended with the soft pound of the sun.

Cal relaxed and slowly began to drift away into the matrix of minds that he had felt intimations of before and now felt fully. The beach slowly dissolved into a series of crystalline reflections of himself, stretching out toward an empty horizon like some wondrously complex geometric hive.

“Hi, guys, how’s tricks?” he said, but the others did not answer.

“Still boring, huh?”

The cool voice of the Jaxdron interrupted this one sided conversation. “The circuits are now fully integrated, Cal Shemzak. Your new mind is now complete. Soon the necessary data will be fed to you. You need but to begin carrying on the work you were engaged in back on Mulliphen … but this time, you will discover powers within your mind you did not own before!”

Suddenly, hanging in the air like clouds of numerals and signs, were a series of equations. Cal did not merely see them, he comprehended their meaning and import immediately.

Whole areas of physics previously hidden to him were suddenly clear. He began to explore the ramifications like a child explores its gifts under the Christmas tree.

The lights about him all glittered like ornaments of stringed jewelry.

And he was lost in wonder.

L
aura Shemzak wandered the halls of the
Starbow
.

If anyone asked her what she was doing, she explained that she was nervous and restless; she just needed to walk.

It was partially true, at least.

Good,
good
, said the voice inside her as she gave it the grand tour.
Circuits recording. Please narrate full knowledge of each section subvocally.

She gave the voice credit on one account. It wasn’t exactly glib. It told her what it wanted and she gave it and that was that, no further discussion. If she didn’t give it, a brief reminder of Zernin-deprivation shot through her.

She assumed that it was storing up this information for Zarpfrin. The bastard hadn’t told her that the device he’d planted this time had a brain of its own, though it made sense.

The thing functioned as a kind of conscience for her. She had the distinct feeling that Arnal Zarpfrin was peering over her shoulder, chuckling softly to himself about his ingenuity. The irony of the situation was that it was so much like the last time: if she didn’t have so much other paraphernalia riding around inside her, this implant would be detected immediately by any cursory,
Starbow
sensor check. The last time, though, she wasn’t aware of an implant’s existence. This time she was aware—but she could do nothing about it.

They had just passed through the hydroponics section and approached a door with an off-limits insignia.

Enter this door.

Sorry, Laura thought silently, communicating to the voice. Strictly off-limits. There’s a lot on board the ship that I’m not going to be able to get into. And if I do, they’ll suspect me and detain me and find out maybe that I’m about three ounces heavier than before I made the trip down to Walthor.

Understood. Should opportunity arise, take it.

Very well, you bastard. But I won’t like it.

Please desist with rebellious attitude. Warning. Warning!

Humorless shit! Even talking with Zarpfrin was better than this! She wanted to collapse and cry, but feared that the implant would interpret this as a threat and deal with it accordingly.

“Pilot Laura Shemzak!” an announcement blared over a loudspeaker. “Please report to Captain’s cabin.”

What could they want from her now? Couldn’t they just let her wander around in peace for a while, before she had to gallivant off on another mission?

She dragged toward the lift.

Attitude uncharacteristic, said the voice. Please assume normal manner lest suspicion fall.

“Goddammit! Fragging demands! Demands! Demands!” she yelped. She formed a fist and hit a bulkhead.

Excellent.

She had to laugh.

“S
o what the hell do you want now, Northern?”

Laura Shemzak paraded into the room and plopped down on a chair, lifting her boots onto a table. Despite everything that had happened, despite the despair that lingered deep within her, she didn’t feel too bad.

Maybe the goddamned implant had increased her Zernin supply or something. Whatever it was, she was finally beginning to feel fit and feisty again.

Captain Northern was stone-cold sober, drinking soda water flavored with some exotic citrus fruit.

“I want to go over some things with you,” he said in a businesslike tone. Then he broke out in a smile. “By the way, Laura, you’re looking quite beautiful. A day’s rest has been good for you.”

“Yeah, and a bath and a change of clothing.” The ship’s store had asked her what kind of clothes she wanted. She refused the standard
Starbow
uniform in favor of duplicates of her favored night-black jumpsuit and glossy boots, offset with a bright red scarf. “You don’t look so bad yourself.”

He looked crisp, clean, and efficient in his casual khakis, complete with epaulets and brass buttons.

“Another adventure. But more to come, I think, for you and I?” His eyes glimmered strangely.

Watch out! she thought. And he hadn’t even been drinking! From the beginning he’d been attracted to her. The astonishing thing was that lately she realized that she wasn’t just infatuated with this handsome, erratic, but very personable starship captain. She had deeper feelings for him. Feelings that had grown as she had learned about the man’s faults and the deeper things about him: his loyalty to his friends, his allegiance to his cause, his love for his ideals. All beneath his exasperatingly playful and cynical veneer.

That he was terminally sexy with his beautiful eyes and chiseled features and wild rumpled hair, didn’t help much.

And here he was, getting interested in her too! Laura Shemzak the walking booby trap; the druggie who in her very return to the
Starbow
had betrayed its crew, its cause … and a man she cared for—its captain.

It took her just a twinkling of a moment to realize what she had to do.

“We’ve been through a lot, Northern,” she said caustically. “And we’ve got a lot more to go through before this wretched business is all through. Let’s keep the flirtation to an absolute minimum, okay?”

His mouth twitched, his eyes blinked, and for a second she saw a spark of hurt in them. Then he looked away.

“Yes. Yes, you’re absolutely correct, Pilot.” When he looked back again, his expression was cut from stone. “Actually, there were other things that we have to discuss. For that reason I have taken the liberty of calling Chivon Lasster up here. She should be here soon. In the meantime, can I get you something to drink?”

“Yeah. How about some of that stuff you got from your pal on Kendrick’s Vision. Brandy is it?”

A bemused expression came to Northern’s face. He said, “Laura, I thought you said that you didn’t drink because it was bad for your nervous system as a blip-ship pilot!”

“This whole goddamn trip has been bad for my nervous system!” she almost shouted. “A couple swigs of brandy ain’t gonna do it that much more harm.” She shrugged, quieting. “Besides, Dansen Jitt tells me that there’s no way we’re going to make it back to Earth from here in less than a week.”

“Right, and during which time we’re going to have to figure out how to get through the considerable Solar System defenses unnoticed. But that’s neither here nor there, Laura. You still are just not a drinker. You know, even with all the medical backup systems in this day and age, the junk really isn’t good for you.”

“You’re worried about what’s good for me when I’m about to be sent off on another suicide mission?” She chuckled. “Just shut up and pour me the stuff.”

Northern went to his cabinet, pulled out a bottle and a glass, and poured.

“More,” she said.

Northern shrugged and poured the glass three-quarters full. He gave it to Laura, who stared at it a moment, then sipped it tentatively.

Her first impulse was to spit it out, but she managed to get it down without too much grimacing, and after a moment of disconcern in her stomach area, a warmth spread.

“I can feel it eating away at my stomach lining,” she said. She began to feel a little dizzy. “Now it’s after the brain cells.”

“I told you, my dear. Perhaps you should give me that glass back.”

“Hell, no!” She took another sip, larger this time. This went down a little easier. “I can handle it. I’m gonna need something if I gotta talk to that Lasster bitch.” The sensation from the drink seemed to loosen her tongue, and she looked at Northern in a sarcastic, squinty way. “I guess now that she’s come over to your side, you two can get back together again, eh?”

Northern raised his eyebrows. “I think that despite our past, at this point that’s highly unlikely, Laura.” He smiled lightly. “What’s wrong? Jealous?”

Warning,
said the voice within her.
Depart from this line of conversation.

“Jealous of that chunk of ice?” Laura responded immediately. “You’ve gotta be kidding. Let’s just drop this, okay, and get on toward important stuff like saving those Whositwhatsis pals of Mish, so we can finally get on with getting my brother out of the fix he’s in. That is the main reason I’m here, you know.”

Commendable
, said the voice.

“It all ties in together,” said Northern nonchalantly.

“Unless we get blown up by the Federation!” Laura burst out. “With Lasster’s defection, you can bet that old Zarpfrin is gonna double-team efforts to nail our asses!”

Of course, her own tail still smarted from the puncture wound.

“I am well aware of the situation, Laura,” said Northern. “But Zarpfrin is surely not planning on a visit to Terra from the
Starbow
.”

Yeah, but he would find out soon enough.

Curiously, the alcohol seemed to dim her desire to confess the whole thing to the man, and maybe save the
Starbow
. Right now, she just didn’t give a damn.

Exemplary
! commented the voice. It sounded a little strange, but Laura hardly noticed, since it seemed to let a little more Zernin into her blood system. She was starting to really fly now—she felt great, and she really didn’t care much about anything else but feeling great.

The door chimed. Northern punched a button, allowing entrance to Chivon Lasster.

She walked in coolly and sat down with a polite nod to Laura. The urge to thumb her nose at Chivon was strong, but Laura contained it.

Chivon wore a more informal version of the khakis that Northern wore, and Laura was sorry to see that she looked good in them. Her hair was much the same as Laura remembered from their last encounter on Earth: blond, with bangs. Her no-nonsense nose and faintly pointed chin were both turned up slightly too high for Laura’s taste.

Still, she had bailed Northern out of trouble—and apparently, judging from Zarpfrin’s reaction, she was for real. No goddamn voices ringing in
her
head.

“Thank you for coming, Chivon.”

“I am, of course, at your service, Captain Northern.”

“I just
bet
you are,” sniped Laura, gripping her glass tightly.

Chivon glanced over to the blip-ship pilot and said, “I thought you didn’t drink, Laura. Clearly, you shouldn’t.”

“I can do what I goddamn well please,” returned Laura. “I’ve been here longer than you.”

“I don’t believe that either of you are ranked aboard the
Starbow
,” said Northern. “And I’m not about to play favorites. Believe it or not, I actually want to hash out something serious here that only the three of us can really talk about.”

“And what’s that?” asked Laura.

“Arnal Zarpfrin. Our dear Friend. Machiavelli of the starways.”

“He’s a Feddy,” said Laura, eyeing Chivon distastefully. “He’s a baddie. That’s his job.”

“No, I’ve been putting this and that together. The lack of Jaxdron activity on Walthor indicates that if there is indeed a spy operation being conducted within the human-held worlds, it’s controlled by the Federation. Which makes one ask, how did the Jaxdron find out about the project on Mulliphen, and specifically, how did they find out about the abilities of Calspar Shemzak?”

“I wish I could tell you,” said Chivon softly. “But that wasn’t my area of management.”

“Another factor, then. This business on Kendrick’s Vision. The Jaxdron had Freeman Jonst scared so shitless, he was willing to seek protection from the Federation.”

“That’s becoming a common occurrence these days, “said Chivon. “It’s a fairly obvious situation. We have a war going with a powerful civilization and the Federation has been using that war to renegotiate ties with the Free Worlds in return for protection.”

“But, of course, once they get enough ships for protection around these planets, they can just take them over again!”

“That is a possibility that Zarpfrin mentioned, and I was fully aware of that, as were all Friends. We all desired the return of as many Free Worlds as possible to the Federation fold, in the least violent manner.”

“Hmm. And I bet that dear old Zarpy has been making a lot of trips lately, hasn’t he?”

“Well, yes, he has, as far as I can tell.”

“This whole way he dealt with you, Laura,” said Northern. “Mish and I have run an analysis on it, and it indeed fits a predictable pattern. Now, let’s hypothesize upon a few facts, shall we? For a bunch of nasty, awful, powerful, planet-hungry bug-eyed monsters, the Jaxdron have certainly done a minimum amount of damage. Oh, sure, they’ve taken a few worlds, but the Federation and the Free Worlds constitute thousands of planets. And sure, there have been some space battles between fleets, but not really that many. It’s my opinion, and Mish’s, that all of this has been for show.”

“Just a goddamned minute!” Laura said. “We know the Jaxdron exist. We’ve fought with them. And their ships sure weren’t built by the Federation. Jitt got that psychic message and—”

Northern held up a hand. “Whoa there, lady. Hold your horses. How’s that for an expression you might use?” He smiled. “I’m not saying the Jaxdron don’t exist. I’m just saying that they’re not really interested intaking over the human-held worlds that much. What I’m saying is that all facts point in one direction. Arnal Zarpfrin contacted them some time back and made some unholy alliance, some complex deal with them. Complex, of course, because it fully plays into what the Jaxdron want … which, of course, is the X factor. All we know is that they want to use Cal Shemzak—and they want the secret that’s aboard this ship. But then everyone does. No, there
is
more, but we have to discover them and them alone.”