Stardogs (47 page)

The crowns arrived while they were still strapping-up Mark’s finger. A low-bedded sleek relative of the stevedore beasts came bearing nine of them.

“What do we do with these?” Martin Brettan eyed them dubiously.

Juan had already picked one up. He paused. “Put them on, of course!”

“What is it going to do to me?”

“Nothing. These are blanks, aren’t they Central? New animals.”

The biocomputer replied in his own voice. “Yes. They will have no memories but your own.”

“You mean that thing will read my mind?” Martin Brettan said warily.

“It won’t read your past memories. But if you think about things the images and information will be stored. With a little experience you can prompt it to give you precise recall.”

“So that computer can pick my brains. Not likely!”

“Oh for heaven’s sake, Brettan!” Tanzo picked one up and put it on her head without any further ado. She took it off and undid her hair. It descended in a dark waterfall to nearly her waist. Even Sam was stunned. No-one had ever seen Tanzo with her hair down. She put the crown back on. “There. No ill effects. And if the Denaari’s computer wants my thoughts it is welcome to them. “

“But you could betray the empire’s secrets…”

“Like what? It was their Empire, remember.”

“I’m still not going to put that thing onto my head.”

Tanzo shrugged. “Suit yourself.” Brettan soon found himself the only person not wearing a mnemonic crown. Juan and Una had even put them onto the unconscious Shari and Deo. This didn’t worry Martin Brettan. They should stay under for at least eight hours. By then… he’d either see that they would never wake again, or it wouldn’t matter.

Central spoke again. “Several of your number have expressed an interest in departing Denaar. The Stardog on which you came has successfully pupped. It will be some time however before those pups are well-grown enough for wormhole surf. There are some other pups from an earlier litter which are ready to mate and imprint.”

“An earlier litter… You mean other Stardogs have come here, since the Denaari plague? Not just us? “

“Yes. Only those who began to die in surf, of course. Or those which were off on mapping expeditions. All Stardogs must return to Denaar to pup. Returning to the gravity well is a one-way journey for the creatures, so they only come at the end of their lives. I will guide you to the imprint center, where the young ones are gathering for mating. There is a Geosynchronous-upline there, and Ground Control is sending a spacecraft for you.”

“What about the Princess and Deo?” asked Caro. “We can’t just leave them here.”

“I will send a further small-carrier beast for them. And also for yourselves. Analysis of the data from Juan reveals that you would consider it a great distance to walk.”

They loaded the Princess and Deo side-by-side onto one of the low-flatbacked creatures similar to that which had brought the crowns. Otto showed no hesitation about leaping up next his mistress. Another two creatures provided transport for the rest of them. The creatures did have legs but it was apparent these were secondary to their flying ability. This was just as well as the imprint-center was half a mountain away at the edge of a vast plain. The mountain itself would have been hell to traverse on foot. Its steep sides had once been neatly terraced, but time and erosion had made the proud crystal fields of yesteryear into a shredded landscape. Seeing it hurt Central. It was time it was all put right again.

They flew towards yet another typical Denaari-place. Endless rows of soaring roost-towers faced the plain. Juan knew that it had once been a much-loved place, a place where Stardog-pups met their Denaari. It was also in Denaari terms a glamorous and above all a sexy place. Streams of new Denaari fives had come here to enjoy the Denaari equivalent of a honeymoon. The Denaari had few hang ups about sex in their relationships, compared to humans. Sex and reproduction were an intrinsic part of a five… platonic relationships and such polite fictions were for other species. The emotional backwash from Stardog matings made this the most aphrodisiacal place on the planet.

Central wanted to see how the aliens responded to it.

On the third carrier Deo stirred. After the amount of Dormantin Brettan had dosed them with, neither of them should have been capable of any voluntary movement for at least another three hours. The Viscount had disregarded them from his plans for at least that time. However, Martin Brettan did not know that only part of the Princess’s manservant was unconscious. The nanomech surgeon had all its slave-units out working frantically. The host’s metabolism was working at nearly double its normal rate.

They landed at what was the Denaari equivalent of the Bali Hilton. This was one of the tallest towers, balanced like a turnip on a chopstick. The same enormous self-repairing crystal windows looked out onto the plain. Long ramps made for easy take-offs of mating fives. At the base of the roost-stalk were the imprint caves. No place could be closer to where the Stardogs would want to mate.

The eggs would hatch somewhere out there, the hatchlings devour the remains of their mother, and begin silica-feeding their way to the breeding-grounds. By the time they got here, they’d be nothing but a huge segmented caterpillar of gametes, emotion and an empty head. A head with a vast potential but quite unusable until they’d stopped being entirely focused on sex. Juan looked out and saw seven of them coming in from the plains. He found them easy to identify with, even if they were alien, virulent green and chartreuse striped, caterpillar-like, and ninety feet long into the bargain. They were still rather like human teenagers.

The males had got there already. They had a serious advantage in that they didn’t have to grow very large. They only had to carry gametes to their mates, not passengers across deep-space. They were only a few feet long, but their display colors would have put peacocks to shame. They’d begun their display dances along the plain-edge.

Juan found himself subject to an overpowering urge to rip Una’s clothes off and to make passionate love to her. He found himself blushing furiously and holding his own hands to stop them taking independent action. She rubbed against him and traced interesting patterns on the inside of his upper thigh. He began to feel dangerously close to exploding.

Martin Brettan was calmly questioning Central. “So how do the beasts know where to go?”

“Once the female has male gametes from sufficient males she will enter the caves below. The source-creatures are asteroid dwellers at this stage. They pupate and develop into the mature form, which is space-motile. The masters changed this pattern very slightly. Only the female is space-motile, and because of the gravity-well, the pupae are transported into space. The pupal-brain is fully developed, but sensorially deprived in the cocoon. Map data are rapid flashed with ultraviolet through the cocoon material onto the retina while they are going up to space.”

Behind the Viscount, Deo stirred again and half sat up. He collapsed back onto the carrier beast. His mind was beginning to function but his body was still disobedient. The Viscount was pursuing vital information and did not notice. “So where is the launch-pad? How do they get into space? And why haven’t more Stardogs arrived at human-worlds?”

“There is a geosynchronous line up from here. What you might term a skyhook. The animals and their passengers ride up on that. What you termed a barge is being readied even now. The Stardogs, since the Sil, have not been given navigational data for the old worlds of the Denaari Dominion. Instead they have route-information about the new worlds. The animals who are going to mate now will have the routes to the old Dominion imprinted as well as it appears the Sil too are extinct.”

“You mean… there are more planets?!”

“Another 22 have been mapped which are considered Denaari-optimal worlds. Suitable for your species…. There are many listed with too high a water proportion to be Denaari optimal. Perhaps a further 730 worlds, discovered pre-and post Sil are habitable by your species.”

The Viscount closed his jaw with a snap. He turned to the others. “Do you hear that!!!?” But there was no one listening. The others had all left him in a hasty search for some privacy. Even Deo was back in a highly erotic dreamland, his body twisted against that of Shari, who was occupied in a graphic dream of her own. It was a confusing one. Why should the writhing of psychedelic colored worm-like creatures be so compellingly sexy? Only Viscount Brettan, deep in dreams of power, was unaffected by the Emo-telepathic erotica. But then, to Martin Brettan, sex and power had always been facets of the same thing.

He concluded that they had all decided to act before he could. He checked the magazine of Kadar’s Tarbin machine-pistol. He was glad he’d appropriated that, as well as having gone through the dead Leaguesman’s kit while they were travelling. He’d found two spare magazines.

He looked at the sleeping Princess and her manservant. God! The two of them looked like they were screwing! She was smiling, a wide happy smile. He nearly killed them both then and there, but decided against it. Dead they would have to be, as would all the rest, except for the ridergirl, but at the moment these two were hostages.

He addressed the computer again. “Central, when will the spacecraft be ready to leave?”

“In your timescale approximately one hour twenty-seven minutes and seven seconds, although it can be delayed.”

“And where is it?”

“Approximately 1.8432 of your miles away.” Central did feel it was being deceitful in omitting to mention that the way-up was also on the top of a mountain, and that more than half of that distance was a vertical component. The Geosynch line began on the mountain between the Memory Vaults in the breeding grounds. This alien had failed to respond at all to the stimuli that would have had the masters joyfully spiraling all over the sky. It noted that the others of the party were not unreceptive, even if their attempts lacked grace in its Denaari colored mentality. Perhaps this was one from whom the heat should have been withdrawn as an egg? Juan’s memories suggested that this was not a normal thing for humans to do. The memories suggested that love was lavished even on callous offspring.

Viscount Martin Brettan was not the sort to sit around waiting. He ordered the flatbed beast to follow him, which it obligingly did, and went looking for the others. Central in collusion with the roost-tower ensured that he did not find them for seventeen minutes. Below the Stardog-larvae had finished mating, and had crawled into the cocooning caves. By the time Martin Brettan did find the others he was good and mad. He didn’t expect to find the six others all together looking out over the plain, looking sheepish. And… happy? Especially the ridergirl. She was radiant. As if her life finally had a meaning. Well, it would have in a minute or two.

He raised his hands in an odd sequence of patterns

“Is that some kind of greeting, Martin?” said Tanzo dreamy-eyed, shaking back her long shawl of hair.

“Fudge.” It was a six year-old’s voice that replied from Una’s mouth.

His hands moved, forming the numbers 662.

Sam knew with a sudden and terrible certainty that he had arrived at one of those decisive points, where he could choose between life and death.

In the soft shadows behind the Viscount, Deo sat up like a badly controlled marionette.

He was not meant to attempt to move yet. Of this he was utterly certain. Something was using him. Was he possessed by Denaari Demons? What was this thing on his head? He took the crown off with oddly clumsy fingers. And stared in horror at the Denaari crown. He put it down slowly, and wiped his fingers frantically against his trousers. Praying, he closed his eyes and lay down again trying with all his might to will himself back into the arms of Morpheus and the sweet if disturbing dream.

Central’s vermilion hedgehog brain-auxiliary wobbled off the carrier-beast’s head and across to the discarded crown. It began inputting data.

The brain auxiliary sent the data string directly to Central. And Central began arming weapons, even if it feared to use them here. The ancient enemy had come again. There was one possibility. The virus. A high-speed carrier was sent hurtling towards the breeding-grounds.