Jonders sighed in relief. (Not forgotten, David. It's been too long, I know. There's a communication from the Talenki that I'd like to ask your opinion about.)
(Shoot.)
(I don't have it in electronic form, so I'll have to do it the hard way.) Blinking, his mind half in and half out of the link, Jonders began reading the transcript. He was a page from the end when the intercom buzzed for his attention. Disregarding the interruption, he finished reading. The buzzing continued. (Excuse me a moment, David.)
It was Lusela. "Bill. Mr. Delarizzo is here."
Air hissed through his teeth. "What's
he
want?" Damn spook from the Oversight Committee; he'd been haunting the place with his security inquiries, and his "recommendations" which were always turning into new rules and procedures.
"He wants to say—"
Lusela was interrupted by Delarizzo's bass voice. "Dr. Jonders, the linkup is presently off limits. I'll have to ask you to disengage."
"What for?" Jonders said in irritation.
"As I said, it's off limits. Disengage and wait for me there." The intercom clicked off.
You son of a bitch, Jonders muttered, to no one. He apologized to Kadin. (Did you catch that? I'll have to get back to you later.)
(I understand.)
Jonders killed the link and waited angrily for Delarizzo to appear. The bastard must have spy monitors planted everywhere. What was it going to be this time? Had someone found out about his talking to Payne?
Delarizzo walked in, an emotionless ramrod. "Doctor, may I ask what you had planned here?" Jonders told him. Delarizzo's eyes flicked like hornets, scanning the room, scanning Jonders's face. "I see," he said finally. "That will have to be approved by the director."
"The director!" Jonders snapped. "I'm supposed to ask for permission every time I want to talk to Kadin?"
"That is the new—"
"Screw the new rules! Who do you think designed Kadin, for Christ's sake?"
Delarizzo repeated himself as though he had not heard the interruption. "That is the new procedure. It has been approved by the director and by the Committee."
Jonders sighed in disgust, realizing that argument was futile. With deliberate movements, he returned Kadin to standby mode and powered down the console. Then he stalked out of the room, gesturing impatiently for Delarizzo to follow so that he could lock up. Returning to his office, he asked Lusela to get Slim on the phone and then slammed the office door closed behind him.
* * *
The intercom buzzed. He pressed the button.
"Bill?" Lusela's voice was strained.
He was calmer now. "Do you have Slim—?"
"Joe Kelly's here to see you."
Joe Kelly? Oh, shit. Had Delarizzo complained about his outburst? "Send him in."
The usually easygoing security chief opened the door, his face grim. Jonders gazed at him questioningly as Kelly stood in the center of his office, staring down at a piece of paper. Kelly looked up and said softly, "I have bad news, Bill. I'm sorry." Jonders waited. This was it, then. "The state police," Kelly said, "found Hoshi Aronson's body—"
"What!"
"—yesterday. Near Old Phoenix. At the edge of the crater."
Jonders felt as though he'd been kicked in the stomach.
"Damn. God damn."
"Yeah." Kelly rubbed his chin unhappily. "He was spotted on a routine overflight. They sent in a chopper to lift him out."
"How long had he been—?"
"A couple of days, anyway. Looked like he walked all the way in from New Phoenix. He must have gotten a good dose of radiation. We don't know if he took anything yet, drugs or whatever."
"Isn't there a
fence
around that place?" Jonders asked uselessly.
"It's easy enough to get past, if anyone wants to. Here, I almost forgot." Kelly handed Jonders the printout he was holding. "This is from a note-recorder that was found by his body. His last thoughts, I guess. Maybe you can make something of it." Kelly shrugged. "He was probably delirious, certainly dehydrated, and maybe having a psychotic episode, for all we know. The coroner said there was probably no way to tell for sure."
Jonders stared at the printout, blinking.
"Anyway, you knew him better than most anyone here. Maybe you can understand what he was trying to say."
Sure, Jonders thought. I knew him. So well I couldn't see him falling apart in front of my nose.
After Kelly left, Jonders sat down to read the note. The text was fragmented and choppy. Had radiation damaged the note-recorder's memory? Or had he had trouble typing? Or was it just that these were the broken, last thoughts of a dying man?
The first part was much like the fragment of diary found in Hoshi's apartment. Guilt, death, obsession. A theme of atonement—intentions of giving his life in the place where thousands of others had died at the hands of human madness. Reference to his parents, who had died in the bombing of Phoenix. Place of birth, Phoenix, yes . . . at least it made some sense so far. But then the text became quite broken:
. . .spoke to me awake . . . dreaming of madness. Real. Now . . . know. Not it is notmadness . . .
At dawn. shimmering. the light. Chilled, my bones. Aforce. It has invaded my mind. soul
—their song in my heart. Yes, song! Voices! ! Not from me. Who re theyy?!!
Lucid.
Never felt such clarity. spirits give me vision, kind of vision toto ends of the univrs.
WHER D THEY COME FROM?
cannot return, no way but forward—pray tht—
Someone must. Read.
not be much longer. The voices.
MOZZZZY!!!## I hear you!!
read this. Plse. Someon.
Jonders read and reread the message, massaging his forehead. Dear God, Hoshi—you poor, poor bastard. I'm so sorry. You deserved better. Jonders could not remember ever feeling so weary. What was going on in this world? Intimidation . . . suicide . . . madness.
Mozy
. As though Hoshi had heard her voice at the end?
Voices. Spirits.
Hoshi had been confused and delirious, clearly. But . . . it sounded almost like a spiritual encounter, a religious epiphany.
Perhaps Hoshi's final thoughts were not as incoherent as they seemed. If his eyesight had failed him, that would explain much of the choppiness of the words. They could not simply be dismissed as madness. What they
were
was another question.
Jonders ground his eyes with his knuckles. It had been one hell of a bad day. And he still had not heard from Slim. Maybe it was just as well. Go home. It's not going to get better.
* * *
Marie's fingers probed his shoulder and seemed to touch, as she massaged, a corner of the complexity of worries and uncertainties that struggled beneath his surface. He closed his eyes, forcing out his breath, as his muscles released a fraction of their tension. "You're a solid knot," she said, and he nodded slowly.
He heard footsteps. "Here, Dad," said Betsy.
He accepted the cup of tea with whispered thanks. He took a sip of the steaming brew; it was too hot to drink. Marie took the cup from him and set it on the end table, then shooed Betsy off to bed. Her thumbs pressed harder into his shoulder muscles. "I guess it couldn't have happened any other way," he said, exhaling.
She worked on his left shoulder. "What couldn't?"
"Hoshi. There was nothing I could have done for him. Not since Mozy's death."
Marie worked silently for a while. "Want to tell me about it?"
He didn't answer at first. As she bore down on a spot of tension, released nervous energy flowed to his fingertips, his toes, the back of his skull. "Can't," he said softly. And then, as though he had in fact said just the opposite, he began talking. Telling her some of the story, not all of it—a bit of Mozy's life, Mozy's death, and Hoshi's tragedy. She listened silently, massaging the back of his neck, and said nothing until he added, "I wonder if Joe Payne knows."
"The newscaster?" she asked in surprise.
He nodded. "I've . . . talked to him already. Before, I mean. Told him some of it." Marie's hands stopped moving, and he reached up to cover them with his own. He leaned his head back and looked up at her upside-down face. "I gave him a starting point. Don't worry. I'm not doing anything that will get me sent to jail." I hope.
Marie kissed his forehead. "That wasn't what I was worried about, dear."
"No? Well, anyway, Payne probably knows more than I do at this point." He chewed his lip, thinking about Hoshi's note—Payne couldn't know about that, though—or could he? It was so hard to shake the feeling of futility, when you had nothing but pain and worry in your heart. Marie was stroking his hair now, and he leaned his head back again between her breasts and pulled her close for a kiss, just a brushing of lips, and he buried his face in her hair, hugging her as she leaned over him. She slipped her hands down the front of his shirt, and he let out a long breath, as he felt himself becoming aroused. "Shall we go to bed early?" he whispered.
She chuckled close to his ear. "What, early? It's after eleven."
"Early, late—what's the difference?"
"None at all," she said, pulling him out of the chair. Together they padded down the hall, flicking off lights, and slipped into the dark and quiet of the bedroom.
It was a difference in the songs that first caused her to wonder . . . odd musical riffs running through a nearby strand of consciousness. She rippled her viewpoint around and beneath the unfamiliar patterns, listening from various perspectives. (These songs—they're strange to me. Are they stories of your homeworld?)
(They are—) (—of worlds—) (—we have known.)
(Indeed?) she said. (Memories? Songs spun of your visits?)
(As undertones—) (—and themes—) (—yes—) (—but also songs—) (—reaching to us now.) For a moment the sounds were muted, and then the odd riffs that she had noticed before recurred, this time alone. They reminded her of some exotic instrument, perhaps a sitar.
(You mean—) she said, surprise rippling through her, (you are receiving these songs—now—from other worlds?)
(Of course.) A flickering vision shot through her senses: a spidery tachyon beam, like a ray of light, joining one world to another, star to star, planet to asteroid, flickering through space in search of others. Something in the image struck her oddly; it was more than just the passage of a tachyon through space—it was a passage through layers of existence, world after shimmering world.
(What are they like, the people of these worlds? Are there pictures within the songs?)
(Of course—) (—we shall translate—)
Light rippled along the interface lines that joined her with them; and images took form. Images of worlds visited:
—a green and purple landscape, rolling hills under a sky whose color defied description. Along the banks of a river, rows of bisonlike creatures marched purposefully.
—a curious botanical city, peopled with lazily good-natured, flat-billed creatures that struck her as lizardly and birdlike at the same time. (The
Slen
—) A glimpse of Slen society suggested an astonishing partnership, a plant kingdom fully co-equal with the animal, four-legged creatures seeking intellectual and philosophical advice from phototrophic, rooted mentors.
—a mouselike creature peering out from under a palely golden leaf, maroon sunlight casting a shadow across its nose, and illuminating the tiny pincers that tipped its forelimbs, clicking to some unheard musical rhythm.
—creatures that shimmered at the limits of visibility, like living manifestations of an aurora borealis. (The
aura-predators
—) remarked someone, with a tone suggesting,
Beware
. One of the creatures slowly melted and pooled into a luminous liquid, and suddenly metamorphosed into a sharp-edged thing with jutting razor fangs. It lunged forward. Mozy instinctively tried to duck aside, but the creature transformed itself into a netlike sail that enveloped her. Then it dissolved, and reappeared as a benign pool of light.
(Careful!) A burst of laughter brought her back to the present. Her avoidance instinct had sent a Talenki fawn stumbling across the floor, its companions scattering.
(Sorry to—) (—frighten you—) (—but it scared—) (—hell out of us—) (—when we met it!) jabbered her collective guides.
(You nearly gave me a heart attack,) Mozy said breathlessly. (You have met all of these beings?)
(And many more.)
(But surely you're not still in contact with all of them!)
(Those who possess—) (—the skill—) (—and the will—)
(But how?) She imagined an immense network of tachyon links emanating from dozens—hundreds?—of worlds, all converging and centering on this one moving asteroid. Even across the light-years, the worlds remained linked in thought, song, and memory.
The image seemed almost too fulfilling, too bold. (Aren't there ever failures, people who don't want you around?)
The Talenki lapsed into stunned silence, and she wondered, had she offended them?
An image opened like a maw and surrounded her. Dark, cold walls on all sides of her. Moisture condensing, dripping. She was deep within a cave. (What is this?) she whispered. (Why are we here?) Even if only a memory, it was frightening.
(The
Klathron
—) whispered the answer. (They dwell in mines—) (—deep inside their world—) (—circling a shrunken red sun—) (—a gloomy body—) (—deep within a dust cloud.)
Mozy shivered.
(Witness our welcome.)
A pale light shone ahead, from beyond a bend in the passageway. The geometry of the mines reminded her of the passageways in the Talenki craft, but without ornamentation or the tricky shifts of dimensionality. Without warmth. Perhaps this was only a little-used outer passageway. As the Talenki rounded one bend and then another, new side passages came into view, offering glimpses of other mazes. Mozy wondered if the Talenki were wandering through the mines unescorted, uninvited; then, dancing at the edges of her vision, she caught the shadowy form of someone—something—guiding them. The Klathron?