The Chara Talisman

by Alastair Mayer

  “But—”

  Ducayne put up a hand. “Oh, I know, there’s a big and mostly black market in artifacts from those primitive civilizations, but that’s because they’re dead. Human civilization is still around, alien civilizations were primitive at best and now they’re gone. Therefore we have nothing to worry about.” Ducayne leaned his fists on the table. “But most Terrans don’t even think about aliens. Certainly not about the possibility that there might still be aliens twenty thousand years ahead of us that we could bump into any time.

  “The idea understandably scares Homeworld Defense, and it scares the hell out of the governments. It’s not just the potential conflict with advanced aliens—and personally I’m inclined to agree that that’s unlikely—but the reaction, the cultural shock if or when we make contact. The human race suffered two traumatic events last century; we’re not ready for another one. At least, not Earth. People out in the colonies are more resilient, but they’re not self-sufficient yet. They, we, still rely on too much high tech that there’s not enough local infrastructure to replace.

  “And that’s another little secret I’ll let you in on, although only the thinking behind it is really secret. We actively encourage, and even assist, the emigration of religious groups who shun high tech. If an Amish or Mennonite, or even Inuit or Yupik,” Ducayne held up a hand, staying Carson’s objection that the latter were peoples rather than religions, “or whatever community wants to set up on a frontier world, we’ll help them out.”

  “But I thought official policy was to discourage emigration of organized religious groups,” said Carson. “No exodus, no finding new homelands.”

  “That’s the official policy, especially if they want to bring their twenty-second century technology with them. The last thing we need is a breeding ground for more religious wars fifty or a hundred years down the line. Of course we can’t stop it totally, and we don’t try to, just where it looks like it might lead to trouble.

  “But the catch with the groups we do help is that then we leave them alone. If they can become self-sufficient, that’s wonderful. If Earth goes through another convulsion and starships start failing because we can’t get spare parts, then at least there will be places where that will have less impact.”

  Carson shook his head. He was having a hard time taking it all in. It all made sense, but . . . “Wow. When you said earlier that you operate a little differently from most bureaucracies, you weren’t kidding.”

  Brown and Black both chuckled at that, and Ducayne grinned. “You have no idea,” he said. “But you managed to get me quite off track, I’m not usually so garrulous. Back to my original point, there are too many risks to allow the Velkaryans to find whatever this cache is.”

  “The alien technology. You’re afraid this ‘Cosmic Maguffin’ might be a weapon.”

  “I don’t know. It may not be, but the potential negative consequences if it is are too great to ignore.”

  “So what do you want from me?”

  “The location of any of these talismans that you’re aware of. Keep an eye out for anything similar, let us know about any suspicious interested parties.”

  “Oh,” said Carson as a wry grin came to his face, “there are always interested parties.”

  “I meant beyond the usual tomb raiders and artifact smugglers,” Ducayne said. “We might ask for consultation on interpreting it the talisman.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Were you expecting something else?”

  “When we first talked, you did hint at funding an expedition.”

  “Did I? Don’t you have classes to teach or something?”

  Teaching classes was the last thing Carson wanted to do if he could get a chance to track down this alien cache. “I’ll be lucky to have a job the way Matthews goes on. But if there were a financed project I could make arrangements to cover all that.”

  “I’ve got my own people,” Ducayne said, and nodded toward Black and Brown.

  “Trained archeologists?” Carson caught the scowls which Brown and Black gave him. “With academic credentials?” The scowls slackened a little. “The other talisman is at the university on Taprobane.”

  “Your partner’s a timoan?” Ducayne asked.

  “Uh, yes,” said Carson, surprised at how fast Ducayne made the connection. Taprobane was the home world of the only technological aliens humans had encountered, and at that only an iron-age level of technology. Away from the main timoan habitations, Taprobane held a human-timoan settlement centered around the university. “He’ll let me have the talisman. I can get it faster and easier than your people.”

  Ducayne slumped back in his chair. “All right, Carson, just what will you need?”

  “A ship and someone to fly it. The university's ships are booked on other projects.”

  Ducayne looked across the table at Brown and raised an eyebrow. “Well?”

  Brown shifted in his chair. “That may take some time,” he said after a moment. We don’t have anything available right now, and charters are harder to find these days, all the charter operators are moving further out.”

  Carson nodded. “Yes, the competition from scheduled runs. I could head out to Tau Ceti.”

  “That may not be necessary,” said Ducayne. “There may be an available operator in-system now. A courier delivered a package to me today. I believe the ship needed minor repairs, she was going to be at Kakuloa for a few days.” He looked at Carson. “If that gives you enough time, I can check them out.”

  “Who is it? Maybe I know them.”

  “Sophie Space Charters.”

  “Sophie? The owner is female?” Not that Carson had a problem with that, on the contrary, but it could complicate things. It had once before.

  “Well, yes, but Sophie is the name of the ship.”

  “Ah.” Carson had heard ship names ranging from the mundane to the weird. Gupta’s ship—one of two that the university held a long-term lease on—was the Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, after both the twentieth-century astrophysicist and the first ship to land on an extrasolar planet, although everyone just called it the Chandra. But right now Gupta was off taking a geological expedition to a planet orbiting some obscure red dwarf star.

  They worked out a few more details—advances for supplies, contacts on Kakuloa, that sort of thing—and Ducayne escorted Carson back out of the facility, checking him out with the guard, up the elevator, and finally the good bye handshake at the hangar door.

  “All right, Carson. You got your expedition after all. Keep me posted.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Ducayne watched as Carson walked across the field from the hangar to the main terminal. He keyed a number into his omni and waited for the reply. “He took the bait. I told you he would. And he knows where to find another one.”

  Chapter 10: Unwelcome Intrusion

  Sawyer City

  Carson left the hangar, intrigued by the whole encounter and somewhat amused at both Ducayne’s behavior and that of the characters Black and Brown. He dismissed it with a mental shrug and a shake of his head. “Spooks!” he muttered to himself.

  He mulled it over as he walked from the older part of the spaceport to the terminal building. He didn’t for a moment believe that the repository, the “store house”, if it even existed, was an arsenal. An arsenal implied a large store of weapons, which implied war or the threat of war, and an interstellar war made no sense at all. Any civilization with interstellar technology had access to plenty of resources, and surely the size limit on a warp bubble and the impossibility of faster-than-light communication—short of hand-carrying a message—made the idea of fleets of interstellar battleships ludicrous. Didn’t it? Carson remembered Rajesh Gupta’s comment about signs of landing sites for impossibly large ships. And humans had fought some horribly destructive wars for illogical reasons. No, that didn’t make sense. Why contact primitive civilizations, in that case? And nowhere in T-space was there evidence of large-scale warfare. It couldn’t be an
arsenal.

  An archive was also unlikely. Although, it occurred to him, off-planet—or out-system—storage was an excellent way to retain data even against such events as the primary star going nova. But a spacefaring civilization could predict something like that, surely.

  No, as Carson thought about it more, it was probably a kind of monument commemorating the very existence of the race that built it. Or the gods thereof, if they had gone in for that sort of thing. The other possibility was perhaps as some sort of teaching museum, to give primitive cultures a boost. Maybe even a combination of the two. Raise the cultural level so the primitives can properly worship the spacefarers or their gods.

  Or perhaps the talisman was just something pretty to look at. He planned to find out soon enough, he had travel plans to make.

  He reached the main terminal building, where he had arrived earlier that day, and thumbed his omni for an autocab. It was just pulling up to the curb by the time he had crossed through the building and exited the other side. The cab door swung up and he climbed in. “Drake University, Archeology Building” he told the cab. It repeated the address back to him in confirmation and pulled smoothly away with a low hum. Carson sat back and considered his next actions. He would need to pack and make arrangements for his apartment. He had nothing scheduled at the office for the rest of the day, so it made sense to do that first.

  “Cab, cancel Drake University, new destination 317 Armstrong Place”—his apartment building. Then he sat back and began to make calls.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Hannibal finished arranging coverage for his classes just as the cab pulled up at his apartment building. He got out and walked into the lobby. Behind him, the cab lowered its door and pulled smoothly away. Carson sometimes wondered where the cabs went when there was nobody in them. Did they just cruise the streets at random, or did they link to the other cabs to provide a coordinated coverage pattern, minimizing how long a passenger would wait? He supposed that they had to report somewhere for periodic maintenance, but it had never really bothered him enough to find out where. This afternoon, though, Carson’s mind was still on the talisman and whatever mysterious secret it was the supposedly the key to.

  He walked up the hall and keyed his door code. As the door opened the lights came up on a scene of utter chaos. Drawers were pulled out, clothes and papers and data chips were scattered every which way. Books and disks had been pulled off shelves, furniture was pulled away from the walls. His bed had been stripped. Even the carpet, in the corner of the room where it had been loose, was pulled up and turned back. He had been ransacked.

  Looking around, he saw his collected artifacts scattered about. Valuables had been tossed aside, but were still here. He couldn’t be sure without an inventory, but Carson didn’t think there was anything actually missing. Trashed yes, robbed no. But this didn’t look like a college prank. Students might pull pranks like this—and worse—on each other, but he had never heard of it ever happening to a professor, not as a joke. Had somebody been looking for something?

  Of course. Ducayne had warned him as much, although Carson hadn’t taken that part of it very seriously. That cult, the Velkaryans, had tracked down his address and searched the place looking for the talisman. Of course they hadn’t found it. They’d probably search his office next, he had better alert campus security.

  He picked up his omni and started to call the university. What the heck was the number for security? Never mind. He called the main number. “Campus Security please.” The comm system connected him.

  “Campus Security, Rogers here.”

  “Rogers, this is Doctor Hannibal Carson, Department of Archeology—”

  “Oh, yes Doctor, we were just going to call you.”

  “—I want you to . . . what? You were going to call me?”

  “Yes, there was a break in at your office, looks a bit of a mess. One of our men happened to notice somebody in there and knew you were off campus this afternoon, so he got suspicious. Surprised somebody in there but he thumped our guy and got away. Empty handed as far as we know, but we’ll need you to check.”

  Carson digested this for a moment. “Is your man all right?”

  “Oh, he’s fine, just a bump on the head and he’s embarrassed as hell that they got the better of him. As he should be, I think.” Rogers didn’t sound too concerned. “Oh, but sir, you were calling us. How did you hear about it so quickly?”

  “Actually, Rogers, I didn’t. I was calling to ask you to send someone over to check my office. My apartment was just ransacked too.”

  “What? Really? Are you all right, Dr. Carson? Shall I get somebody over there?”

  “No, no, I’m fine, I just came in and discovered the place like this.” He panned his omni around to let Rogers see. “It’s off campus, I’ll let the police handle it.”

  “Whatever you want, sir. I’d be happy to send someone over. What’s going on, though? Did you make an enemy of somebody?”

  “I didn’t think so, until just now.” Carson hadn’t, but with the memory of Ducayne’s warning, he was rethinking that. He had a strong suspicion as to just who that enemy might be.

  “Oh? Who, sir?” asked Rogers.

  “Hmm? Oh, no idea really, just thinking that it is a bit too much of a coincidence. Never mind.”

  “If you say so. We do need you to come in to check if anything is missing from your office, and to sign the report.”

  “All right.” Carson looked around his trashed apartment. he had better do something about that first, while he was here. “Let me get the police in here and do a bit of clean up first.”

  “Certainly, but as soon as you can, please. We don’t want to touch much until you’ve seen it. Any time is fine, we’re here twenty-six hours a day.”

  “All right, thank you, Rogers. I’ll be there. Good bye.”

  “You welcome, good bye, sir.”

  Carson clicked off the connection, thoughtful now. The bad guys, whoever they were, seemed to be on to him. He had better get off planet quickly. But first, he had the mundane details to deal with. Still holding his omni, he thumbed the voice dial button and said: “Police, please.”

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Brother Maynard was in his office when his omni chimed. He checked the call info. Taggart. Maybe he’d had more success than Dominguez. He answered the call. “Yes?”

  “Brother Maynard, the talisman was not in Carson’s office, nor in the university storage. We checked the records, and we searched it physically. We were very thorough.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, sir. Security came by just at the end, but we had finished searching.”

  “Damn. Dominguez said his apartment was clear, too. Double damn. It was in the list of artifacts from the expedition. Carson was the lead. Who else would have it?” Taggart was smart enough to say nothing. Maynard balled a fist and thumped his desk. “Do you suppose he has it with him?” That was a long shot.

  “I wouldn’t have thought so, but if he knows what it represents—”

  “Exactly. We’d better cover that possibility too.” Maynard said. If he did know, there had been a bad leak, but then they had already suspected that, and they had dealt with it.

  “I’ll have it taken care of, sir.”

  “Good. The sooner the better.”

  “Ah, sir. There was something else.”

  “Yes? What?”

  “He’s arranging another trip. His teaching schedule has been rearranged, he’s ordering equipment, and he’s booked on a shuttle to Kakuloa.”

  “Kakuloa? There’s nothing on Kakuloa. It’s only a few hours away, why rearrange his schedule?” Maynard considered this. A vacation perhaps? So soon after his last trip? That didn’t make sense, and it wouldn’t explain the equipment. “He must be going somewhere else from there.” Damn, he had to know.

  “I don’t know why he’s going, but it is sudden.”

  “Yes. Suspicious.” Maynard mulled this over for a moment. “Okay, in
tercept him before that, see if he has it with him. If not, we’ll need to keep an eye on him. Get to Kakuloa before he does. He hasn’t left yet, right? Find out who he talks to, who he sees. Report back the moment you find out anything.”

  “Very well. I’ll get on it.”

  “Good.” Maynard clicked off.

  ∞ ∞ ∞

  Two large men approached Carson as he crossed the campus that evening. They wore dark suits, clearly neither students nor faculty.

  “Doctor Carson?”

  Carson studied them before answering. They looked fit, tough in fact, with a vague air of officialdom. He wondered if they were Homeworld Security types.

  “Yes? What can I do for you?”

  “Come with us.” The speaker grabbed Carson’s arm in a strong grip.

  Carson tried to shake it loose. “Where to? Who are you?” Government agents wouldn’t be so abrupt, would they? And if they weren’t government agents . . . He started to pay closer attention to detail.

  “Never mind, just come along.” The grip on his arm tightened. On his right, the other man pulled a hand from a pocket far enough so Carson could see the gun it was holding, then slipped it back into his pocket. Carson had little choice but to accompany them, at least for now.

  Chapter 11: Repairs Complete

  Kiahuna Shipyard, Kakuloa orbit

  “There you go, Jackie, she’s all taken care of. Should be good for another five years or five hundred parsecs.”

  “Thanks. Are you putting a guarantee on that?”

  “Sure, but the fine print voids it the first time you go to warp.” Joe grinned as he said that, but Jackie knew that for all practical purposes it was true. If something went seriously wrong with ship systems in interstellar space, odds were you’d never get back to complain about it. She would run her own diagnostics before engaging the warp modules. “Anything else we can do for you or the Sophie?” he asked.