Rogue Powers

by Roger MacBride Allen

  Romero needed to talk directly with the Outposters to get his plan started. He needed all the credit. If Gustav got his nose into it, no one would ever notice Romero at all. So Romero had fussed and fumed and waited until the computerized auto-translators were ready. He had been one of the main sources of pressure for getting them done—though he had been very backroom about it all, very careful to see to it that no one realized he was eager. He had never personally urged the techs to finish fast, but had gotten others to do that for him. If the Outposters were the biological geniuses everyone claimed, Romero knew he was a made man.

  But how to get in touch with the Outposter leaders?

  Romero had worried over that point for endless hours, and had never come up with anything better that stopping the first native he saw and handing out that centuries-old saw, "Take me to your leader."

  Which is exactly what he did with the next 'Poster that went past, and the black box of the auto-translator blatted and hooted out his meaning in O-l. As luck would have it, the 'Poster was C'astille, the native most used to humans and their ways. If humans had had almost no luck figuring out the Outposter social structure, the Outposters had had just as little success understanding human rules for living. But both sides had tried, and Lucy Calder had explained military ranks and insignia as best she could, even using a wall chart to show which was higher and lower. The insignia this human had painted on her pressure suit denoted a higher rank than any a Z'ensam had ever seen. Perhaps this one should be addressed in the senior mode. C'astille decided to play it safe and use the D' prefix. And she was new here: The auto-translator had barely made sense of the human's words. It took a while for the halfwalkers to understand the limitations of the device they had built themselves. Only after she had considered all that did she think on the actual request the human had made. Certainly if this was a human Guidance, come at last, M'etallis—no, D'etallis now that Eltipa has divided and no longer had a full name—D'etallis would want to see her. C'astille decided she had best cooperate.

  "Our Primary Guidance, D'etallis, would be honored," she said. She spoke in careful Australian-accented English, startling Romero. "I feel certain that she would wish to know you. May I have knowledge of your name?"

  "Romero. Captain Lewis Romero," he said nervously.

  "Honored D'Romero," C'astille said, "you shall soon be with D'etallis. The Talking House is unused at present. If you would accept waiting there, I would bring D'etallis, and thus both sides could talk in comfort."

  "That would be good."

  "Then D'etallis shall soon be there. The two of you shall

  sense each other soon." With that, C’astille turned and walked away.

  Romero's heart hammered in his chest. It shouldn't have been that easy, but he wasn't going to argue. The first hurdle was cleared. Maybe his idea would actually work.

  The two sides misunderstood each other, and this worked to their mutual advantage. Romero was being furtive, hiding his intent from his subordinates, trying to get around the rules, doing something far beyond his authority. He was surprised that the Outposter had accepted him at face value, instantly. For her part, C’astille was delighted to be approached by a senior human eager to get right down to talking. The Z'ensam had been impatiently waiting for something of substance from their visitors. Chains of command, orders from above, the inertia imposed by a large organization, the delays of distance; these seemed inexplicable excuses, stalling. Finally, it seemed, the humans had sent someone who could do more than hold language lessons. C’astille felt D'Romero was the first human she had met who wasn't being furtive (besides Lucy M'Calder, whom she trusted even if she didn't understand her status). Finally, someone in charge was here. Maybe this D'Romero wouldn't wait for orders from above—a concept the Z'ensam were just barely beginning to understand— before he did anything. Leader to leader, directly, immediately, that was the way the Z'ensam did things.

  D'etallis was as eager as C’astille. Now maybe they would get somewhere. She hurried to the Talking House, and found this D'Romero in the boxy transparent room that held the human air, folded up in their strange way into that support thing they called a chair. D'Romero saw her and stood up.

  "D'Romero. I am D'etallis, Primary Guidance of this Group. Your presence is sensed."

  "And yours as well." That much etiquette he had learned, anyway. "I come to ask questions, and perhaps to offer trade."

  "Good. There are items you make that we would have."

  "All—yes. Let me see if I can explain. I have put several things on the table on your side of the pressure wall." Romero pointed to the table. There was a League pressure suit, a section of plastic bulkhead cut from the Venera, some samples of League electronic equipment, a few other things.

  D'etallis turned and looked. "I sense them."

  "Good. Now then. Here is my question. I am told that your people are very wise in the life-sciences. That you can cause living things to breed and grow as you desire."

  "Certainly."

  ***start here***

  "Very good. Now then. Can your scientists create living things that can eat any or all of those materials, live on them, breed and grow very quickly?"

  D'etallis went over to the table and barely glanced at the things on it. She picked up the suit and set it down almost at once. "Absolutely. They could be bred in a few weeks at the most. Eaters are used to dispose of unwanted things already. Simple modifications of these beasts would suit your need."

  "Wonderful!"

  "We would want things in return."

  "Of course." Romero waited for it. If they wanted something he couldn't promise. . . .

  "But let me understand clearly before you hear my bargain. I have toured one of your landers"—D'etallis used the English word—"and I have seen of what they are made. I am told that you have much larger vehicles, starships, that are so big they cannot leave space to land. All these pieces you show me seem to be from a lander or a starship. If properly bred Eaters were let loose on a starship made of such materials, they would wreck it in days, perhaps hours."

  Romero hesitated. "Yes, that is true."

  D'etallis flicked her tail. "You seek living weapons, then.

  You seek such simple things because you humans know all but nothing about life-science, and your enemies, familiar with your other ways of fighting, would have no defense against such things.'

  Romero found himself in a cold sweat, but he could see nothing to be gained by lying. This D'etallis saw the whole thing. "You are correct."

  D'etallis's face wrinkled in pleasure. These humans were ready to help her! And in so doing, they would teach her all their own weaknesses. "I face a similar problem, halfwalker. I want your weapons. I have seen the ones your people carry, and I am sure ours are crude and powerless in comparison."

  Romero almost fainted with relief. He was going to pull it off! His future was assured. Now all they needed to work on was the details. He ran a supply depot. Weapons he could supply until he had enough bioweapons to show the brass—and once they saw bioweapons wrecking a ship, they would back him all the way. The two of them talked on.

  Lucy Calder didn't discover that she had left the voice-actuated recorder on all night until she ran the tape next morning.

  CHAPTER NINE Guardian Contact Base, Outpost

  Lucille Calder was sitting in Gustav's office when he arrived the next morning. Without any preamble, she rose and spoke. "Johnson, I'm about to take a terrible risk. And I might be putting you in terrible danger. It might even be treason. I don't know. But I don't see any choice. You're the only person I can trust," she said, holding up a recording tape. "You've got to listen to this. I left the voice-activated recorder on by accident overnight, and it picked something up."

  Johnson Gustav didn't know how to react. He was having an increasingly hard time knowing how to deal with Lucy. Technically, he was the officer in charge of this CI, the warden of her prison, or to put it in less prettied-up terms, her slave master.
But he was also her partner in an exciting piece of research, her chief scrounger in the constant fight for equipment, the assistant coordinator of all the projects she was involved in. And whatever had brought her here this morning didn't seem likely to simplify matters. He sighed and asked, "What's going on, Luce?"

  "Something that could make the war worse. Spread it to the Outposters. Johnson, I know you and I never discuss the war, or politics, unless we really have to. But I know neither of us wants the killing to spread. And it might, and I need to talk to you, and you have to listen to this goddamned recording!"

  The Guardian Intelligence officer looked over the Conscripted Immigrant. It was hard, even impossible, to think in those terms about Lucy. He looked again, harder. There was barely controlled fear, even horror, in her face. Whatever this was, it was bad. And he was her friend. That much he knew, whatever the rules told him. "Okay, so I'll listen to it. You aren't the sort who'd put both of us at risk for no reason. I trust you."

  "Thank you, Johnson. I hope you don't regret it." She pulled a portable recorder out of her equipment bag and slipped the tape into it.

  Gustav went through the motions of filling the coffee pot and getting a pot started as Lucille fussed with the recorder, finding the right spot on the tape. Finally she found what she was after and let the tape roll. Gustav froze when he heard Romero's voice. He turned away from the coffee machine, sat down behind his desk and listened carefully, the color draining from his face. When it was over, he shook his head and spoke in a whisper. "No wonder he wanted to make this damn fool inspection trip. Jesus H. Christ. Romero, you stupid, stupid idiot."

  "Johnson," Lucy said, her voice quivering on the edge of hysteria, "those bioweapons are to be pointed at my people. If Romero's idea works, I’ll have helped kill them! I can't go on with my work here and tell myself that learning to talk to the Outposters is for all humanity if the result is a thug like Romero and an alien megalomaniac sitting around planning massacres!"

  She stopped, breathed in and out deeply for a moment, making a visible attempt to regain control of herself. She straightened her back and looked at Gustav, straight in the eye. "Lieutenant Gustav, on your honor—tell me the truth: Was Romero speaking for himself, or was the deal he offered Guardian policy? If the bloody Central Guardians are behind that horrible plan, you have to tell me."

  Gustav felt sick inside. The last of his faith was gone.

  The whole thing was rotten. He could give her a precisely truthful answer, but he knew the scuttlebutt, he knew what had been going on, he knew what manner of men had survived the purges and the shake-ups. And he knew how they would respond to Romero. He shut his eyes, cradled his face in his hands. "It is not Guardian policy," he said, his voice muffled by his hands. "Not yet. But it will be. You're right, you and I never talk politics, but I guess it's time to start. The bloody stupid bastards were wiped out on New Finland. The invasion failed. No one made it back. And every source we've got says the League will be out looking for us in force. They know we exist now, and they're scared of us. That changes everything. They know we're out here, they know we've killed a lot of people, and every resource they've got will be put into finding us. It means they will find us. Our leaders have finally admitted that to themselves, and they're in a panic."

  He paused for a long moment, and then went on in a bitter, angry voice. "And our courageous, idiotic Leader of the Combined Will, General Jules Jaquet, who got us into this mess, also got himself into some very big trouble. There was a quiet little coup attempt and he just barely hung onto power. Now he's got to show he's tough and capable and ready to fight the defensive war he's forced on us, or else he's out on his ass. And the people he has to impress, the admirals and the generals and the pols, are brutal, crude. Barbarians. Jaquet and his crowd shot all the decent men still in the government, or threw them in jail. Most of the better ones resigned long ago."

  "But what happens now?" Lucy asked.

  "Romero's probably already en route to Capital. He'll talk up the idea of bioweapons at anyone who'll listen, and the brass are desperate enough that they will listen. Jaquet will love the idea. There is no way we can stop them. They have the auto-translators, and people who know O-1. The situation is completely out of our control. Oh, I could hand you some piece of nonsense that maybe the government wouldn't stoop that low, but the Centrals are scared

  silly. They'll try anything." Gustav suddenly slammed his fist down onto the desk. "The stupid, stupid, fools! We have no idea about these Outposters, what they are, what they think, what they want—and the higher-ups want to give them lessons in how to kill humans and wreck ships!"

  Lucy stared at him. She knew, and Gustav knew, that he had just crossed a point of no return. He should have had her arrested for spying, had her confined already, the recording destroyed. "Thank you for telling the truth, Johnson. And thank you for having the decency to be horrified."

  "I wish I wasn't so easy to horrify," Gustav growled. "I'd sleep better. But wait a second—is there any hope on the other end? Is there any chance that the Outposters can't do it? That they can't deliver?"

  Lucy thought hard for a moment and shrugged. She felt very tired. "I don't know, and I don't think any of your technicians or scientists could answer that—"

  "And even if they could, I couldn't risk asking them. Loyal Guardians all. No Settlers here, thank you. Besides me, I suppose."

  "What's a Settler?"

  "People back home on Capital who want to plant some crops there instead of trying to conquer the universe. Not important now. But the point is we can't ask the techs." I trust C'astille," Lucy said suddenly, firmly.

  "How? Why? Isn't she one of these Nihilists or whatever that religion of D'etallis's is?"

  "It's not a religion, or a philosophy. And C'astille isn't one of them. She’s a sojourner."

  "Say again?"

  "A sojourner," Lucy said. "I don't quite understand it all myself, so I can't explain it very well. Nihilism is a Group, and a Group is sort of a small nation, or sub-nation, except territory isn't involved, and I have no clear ideas about what the supernation is that oversees it all. Anyway, let's say you didn't like your Group, that you didn't agree with the ideas the Group shared. You'd leave

  and get on the road and find another Group. Easy to do. They have excellent roads, and communications are good. You know they have radio, and the equivalents of books and maps. If you find a Group you agree with, you can drift into it as it travels the road. If you disagree, you vote with your feet again and find some other Group, until you're travelling with a crowd that thinks the way you do. And they certainly travel. All the phrases and sayings about roads and journeys show how important movement is to them. It's very unusual for Outposters to stay in one place as long as they have here, incidentally; we're important to them. And since the Nihilists have us, that makes the Nihilists important, and they've attracted a lot of new members who are curious about us. And lost a few who just got restless and hit the road again."

  "But you were explaining why you could trust C'astille," Gustav said.

  "Right, I'm getting there, but it takes so much background ..." It seemed strange to be giving a lecture on Outposter society at a time like this, but Johnson had to understand. "More or less in what corresponds to late adolescence, a young Outposter is expected to wander off from his Group and spend time travelling with other Groups. Sort of exchange students, I suppose. A wanderjahr. They aren't expected to join the other Groups, though they can if they wish. Usually, you finish your sojourn and go find your birth-Group. And C'astille speaks of her Group, which is north of here at the moment, as if she still wants to get back there someday. She definitely has no interest in being a Nihilist. And before you ask, as far as I can make it out, a Nihilist is someone who believes in committing suicide before going mad, or suffering senility, or something. Apparently there's a high incidence of mental disease among the elderly. They don't like to talk about it much, and when they do it's pretty obli
que stuff, even for Outposters. C'astille very strongly does not believe in Nihilism. She was more or less just passing through when we landed, and she stayed around out of curiosity. I might

  add that she seemed worried when the old leader died and this D'etallis took over."

  "Do you think we could talk to C'astille? Play her the tape, ask her if such bioweapons were possible?"

  "Yes—and more than that. I think we owe it to her. Don't forget, in exchange, D'etallis wants human weapons to attack Outposters. The other Groups have to be warned."

  "Then let's find her," Gustav said, rising.

  "Okay," Lucy said, and suddenly the brittle calm that had sustained her collapsed. She felt afraid, more afraid than she had been since the Venera was hijacked. "Johnson? If it's true—what can we do about it?"

  Johnson Gustav looked at the coffee maker. He had forgotten to switch it on. "I don't know, Lucy. We need time to think. But we're in this, even if we don't like it. Let's get suited up and find our friend."