The Cosmic City

by Brian K. Lowe

  “Maybe we should let it go, Keryl. Maybe it’s our time.”

  “No. You know better.” I put my arms around her. “We can fix things. We have already started to change them. Once we stop this time fracturing, we can go to the Council and demand changes. They may believe themselves superior to the Thorans, but most of them will not countenance murder.”

  She stared to speak, then paused. “We’re almost there. We’d better get Dr. Wilner cleaned up, and we have to change. You can’t go out in your dress uniform.”

  “Oh thank God,” I said. “I thought this was my duty uniform.”

  Maire giggled and opened the door, halting in surprise at finding not only the displaced crewwoman, but an officer awaiting her as well. He saluted.

  “A message for the lord admiral, my lady.” And he handed me a folded sheet of paper.

  I stared at it. This was one of the very few slips of paper I had seen since I arrived in this era. I had no idea it was even used by the Nuum. I opened the message.

  Chapter 16

  An Unwanted Reunion

  The note was two words long.

  You’re welcome.

  “What does that mean?”

  Maire did not answer me. She was wearing that blank look that said she was accessing the datasphere. She grabbed my arm.

  “We have to go.”

  Dragged along in her wake in a most un-admiral-like fashion, I was bubbling over with questions, but I feared making us look even more ridiculous to the crew by pestering their duchess. Apparently believing that I was not about to run away like a disobedient puppy, Maire let go of my arm but did not slacken her pace.

  I caught up to her easily and leaned in to ask her what was going on in a voice no one else would hear. At times like this, I had never fully trusted that telepathy was completely private. I could never forget how when I first learned it, I was told that my broadcasts were like shouting throughout the neighborhood. Even now, I sometimes doubted my own ability to be discreet. Perhaps I was not so paranoid as it seemed, however, because Maire answered me aloud.

  “I just got a call from Skull. He needs us on The Dark Lady. Right now.”

  “Why? Has something happened?”

  “He says someone tried to board her—and he’s asking for you.”

  Once I was even with her, it was no chore to keep pace, but after this news, it was Maire’s task to keep up with me. I wondered about the propriety of the two ranking persons in the entire “Navy” making such evident haste in front of their subordinates, but Maire never appeared to give it a thought, so I did not slacken my pace. It was only then that I realized I had no idea where I was going.

  Trusting to Maire to correct my course if she needed to, I forged ahead. After a few minutes of this, it did occur to me that if traversing this ship was going to be a common activity, I would want to institute some type of internal shuttle system. I consider myself to be in reasonably good shape, but I had never taken up running as a hobby.

  We stopped abruptly before a metal door which opened immediately onto a cavernous hangar, made apparently even larger by the fact that it only held one vessel set down precisely in the center of the floor—The Dark Lady. Given Maire’s description of the crew’s confinement, I had expected they would have spread out over all the available space, exercising, talking, anything to alleviate the boredom, but there was only one, standing next to a grav sled, waiting for us. When we boarded the sled, he took us up to the deck without even a greeting.

  We were lead to the captain’s cabin. A pair of crewmen stood guard outside; three more men awaited us inside. One was Skull, of course, Timash another—and the third was Zachary Kyle!

  “Keryl! Maire! Thank God!”

  “I’m glad you’re here, Maire,” Skull greeted us. “And you too, Keryl.” He indicated Kyle. “As you can see, we have an unexpected guest—and he insists he knows you.”

  For a long moment, neither Maire nor I could speak, but one of us needs must eventually, because Kyle’s identity was plainly in doubt. Now I could see why two of the Lady’s crew were standing guard at the cabin door.

  “Kyle—what happened? What are you doing here?”

  “Truthfully? I have no idea. I don’t even know where I am.”

  “Skull? How did he get here?” Maire asked.

  Her captain shrugged. “Damned if I know. A couple of the boys found him sitting in a dark corner over on the other side of the bay. He was half-conscious, claimed not to know how he’d gotten there… They brought him aboard, of course, because he wasn’t in a Nuum uniform. They didn’t know what else to do with him. Before we could bring him around he was mumbling your name, and when I was finally able to ask him about it, he said he was a friend of yours.”

  “He is,” I said. “You can send the guards away.” They left, closing the door behind them. “All right,” I said to Kyle, “tell us what you do remember.”

  “It’s a long story—up until the part where it isn’t. If you don’t mind,” he said, taking a chair, “I’d like to sit down. What I can remember was an eventful few days, and I have a feeling the rest of it wasn’t easy.

  “It started right after I left you. I thought I could get out of the palace as easily as I got in, find a good spot, and activate my return beacon. Trouble was, I ran into somebody as I was leaving. He was dressed like a clown; I should’ve just whacked him, knocked him out and hid him until I could get away, but I thought I could bump past him and he wouldn’t pay any attention.”

  I could see what was coming, because I was fairly sure I knew the toadying little courtier he’d run into, and that one would never let anyone just “bump past him,” particularly someone he thought he could push around, the way he had tried to push me around.

  “But he grabbed me, and he was stronger than he looked. Before I could get rid of him, there were guards everywhere. They took me away. And none of them said a word! It was creepy.”

  “They were using telepathy,” Maire explained. “That’s how the first one knew something was wrong. He tried to talk to you and you didn’t answer, and when he scanned you, he got a blank.”

  I began to get a cold feeling.

  “Yeah, I know that now,” Kyle answered. “But I didn’t then. They took me and put me in front of a bunch of guys who stared at me for a couple of minutes, then they marched me into a cell.” He sighed. “They took my retrieval beacon. I was stuck.”

  “Oh my god,” I breathed. I grabbed Maire. “If they realize what they have—what he is…”

  “I know,” Maire said. “Tell us what happened next.”

  “They left me in the cell for a while, until finally they brought in another prisoner. They threw him in with me and left. I didn’t want to have to talk to the guy, but I could tell he was trying to talk to me. I mean, he made some sounds, but I couldn’t figure them out for the life of me. That went on for what seemed like days.

  “I don’t know how long we were really in there, but after a while I started to hear this buzzing in my head all the time. I thought it was something in the food. But then it started to make sense, like—”

  “Like someone was trying to talk to you in a foreign language,” I interrupted. “And as time went on, it began to become clearer and clearer.”

  “Yes! Eventually I started to understand what he was trying to say. Apparently the guys in charge wanted to teach me how to speak—well, how to use telepathy, I guess—but they didn’t want to spend the time it would take, so they let him do it. Eventually, it worked, and we started talking. And that’s when we came up with a plan.

  “Every day, right before they fed us for the first time, somebody would open the window in our cell door and ask my cellmate if I was making any progress. We got the idea maybe we could stall till something came up, so he lied and said I was too stupid. I don’t know why, but it looked like they believed him. Finally, he told them he was fed up with me and I’d never learn anything and they should just let him out. And damned if they
didn’t open the door to let him out! That’s when I grabbed our jailor and knocked him out, and we escaped. The security in that place was a joke.

  “My friend said he could find us a place and hide and we could hook up with some of his friends. Well, that was all fine and fruity for him, but I needed to get back, and I knew the only chance I had was to get hold of you. I asked him if he could help, and he said he’d heard of you and knew how to me to you. We got out, found his friends, and the next thing I know they’re stuffing me in some kind of a crate and I guess I fell asleep. When I woke up, I was lying out there and these two guys found me and dragged me in here to see Captain Skull.” He shrugged. “The rest you know.”

  “Sounds like you were drugged,” I said. “But why? And how did you get here?”

  “We think he was smuggled in, in a supply crate,” Skull said. “A shuttle came in a couple of days ago and offloaded somebody who looked like an officer and a bunch of his flunkies. He wasn’t happy when he saw us, let me tell you!” I glanced at Maire, and she nodded: Lobok, obviously. “They offloaded about a hundred crates worth of his stuff. This guy could have been in one of them.”

  Maire frowned. “We didn’t see a shuttle when we came in.”

  “They sent a pilot in and took off this morning,” Skull explained. His expression plainly said that he now considered Kyle to be my problem, and when was I going to take him off Skull’s hands?

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” Maire said. “Who could smuggle an extra crate onto Lobok’s shuttle? And how did they know it was coming here?”

  The cold feeling running down my spine returned, colder than ever.

  “I think I know.” I took a deep breath to steady myself. “Kyle? What was the name of your cellmate?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “We never actually exchanged names. He said it was better if we didn’t.”

  No matter. Maire and I exchanged looks. We knew exactly who was capable of planning the jailbreak, and had the organization to deliver both Kyle, and the note, to the Procyon:

  “Farren.”

  Chapter 17

  Hiding and Seeking

  Skull blinked. “Farren? But he was—How could he—?”

  Timash groaned. “Why is it always Farren? I told you, Maire, I should’ve shot him when I had the chance.”

  Maire sighed theatrically, and Kyle assumed a horrified stare at hearing the hated name he had read in my earlier memoir.

  “It’s not surprising that we would have some personnel on the Procyon who were still loyal to him,” Maire explained. “We tried to pick crew who could work with Thorans, but nothing is perfect. I couldn’t drag every one of them into the Great Hall and let the servers examine them.”

  “How many of them do you know personally?” I asked.

  Maire thought it over. “A few. A handful, but they’re all senior officers. If Farren’s got sympathizers among the crew, I wouldn’t know it.”

  “This would have required a big operation,” Skull pointed out. “He’s only been out of prison for a few days.”

  “That’s not the worst of it,” I said. “Lobok brought his own staff on board. Any one of them could have helped Farren carry out his scheme. Not to mention whatever else he might have planned.” I shook my head. “No time to worry about that now. Even if we knew who we were looking for, we have no proof. We could always order Lobok to lock them up, but he would put up a fight. Even if all I did was warn him to watch out for them, he probably would not believe me.”

  “We have to assume Farren has help,” Maire said. “We know that some of the members of the Council of Nobles are a lot less interested in Thoran welfare than we gave them credit for. If they still see Farren as the future of the Nuum, they’ll back him up, even if they have to keep quiet about it.”

  Kyle spoke up hesitantly. “Um, I don’t know anything about local politics, but if Farren has to stay low to the ground, doesn’t that mean that there must be some members of your council who won’t support him?”

  I rubbed my chin. “That’s a good point. If Farren had a majority of the Council behind him, he could just stand up and demand whatever he wanted.”

  “If Farren had the support of a majority of the Council,” Maire reminded me, “he wouldn’t have been arrested in the first place. No, he’s up to something. I just wish I knew what it was.”

  “That’s all good to know,” Timash broke in. “But I think our first order of business is what to do with your friend Kyle here.”

  “We can’t keep him here,” Skull said. “The Nuum could come charging through those doors at any minute, guns blazing, and accuse us of harboring a criminal.”

  I took a moment to consider this. “I tend not to think so,” I said at last. “If the Nuum wanted you in custody, they could take you in at any time. Lobok has a pretty good idea you have guns, and that would be enough of an excuse. The same goes for Kyle; if that was their plan, they would have been here by now. My bet is someone is waiting for you to leave, to try to get Kyle off the ship. The Dark Lady is neither well-defended nor well-armed. They could send a couple of scouts after you, shoot you down, and we would never know it. I think your best bet is to stay here, where we can protect you, until we know what is going on.

  “Oh, and speaking of finding out what’s going on, Timash, I gave orders that you were to be given the run of the ship. I told the captain I was drafting you as my aide-de-camp.” He gave me a blank look. “Never mind. The point is that you might want to get out and stretch your legs.”

  We took our leave of them with the phrase “…where we can protect you…” echoing in my brain. I only hoped I would never have to write it on their gravestones.

  “Do you think there’s any point in trying to figure out who smuggled that note on board? I mean, somebody had to hold onto it until the right moment. We might be able to backtrack from the officer who handed it to you.”

  “I think we have to. Farren will expect us to try to find out who sent it. If we leave it lie, he will know that we already know he sent it, and I hate to give him that kind of intelligence.”

  “I’ll give the order. But I’ll tell them to keep it quiet. I don’t want rumors flying around that I don’t trust the crew.”

  “Do you?”

  Maire smiled. “I trust The Dark Lady’s crew with my life.” She kissed me. “C’mon. We won’t reach the time machine for hours. I’ll give you a tour of your ship.”

  “Only if you promise there will be no more running.”

  As a flag officer and visiting VIPs, we rated a sumptuous suite with a wall-sized viewer surface showing our flight as if it were a window. Maire assured me that it could be used as entertainment or a communications console at will, but I doubted we would have time for either. I had been making use of Maire’s guided tour to listen in on passing crewmen’s thoughts with an intensity that embarrassed me. She knew what I was doing—she could hardly not—but refrained from asking. It was shameful, even from the snooty Nuum point of view.

  On the other hand, ironically justifying the Council’s fears, I was the only one who could carry out such brazen invasions of privacy without worry. Anyone else would risk the subject detecting the intrusion and tracing it back to the source, with painful and perhaps dangerous consequences to both parties. I, on the other hand, was undertaking no such risks, and anyone who believed he felt my presence would be baffled when he could not locate any foreign train of thought.

  Still, my passing mental forays faltered in the face of strong shields, and without interrogating every person on the ship, I could gain no more insight than we already had. Timash’s anthropoid brain structure (closer to mine in some respects than to the Thorans’ or the Nuums’) was even less suited to such work, and his perambulations seemed to yield as little success.

  “The trouble is I don’t know what I’m looking for,” he complained over dinner. “I’m not familiar with airships, and I can’t exactly start chatting up the crew. A few of them have
talked to me, but I think that’s only because they’ve never seen a gorilla before. And every time I talk to them, I have to keep my story straight. Tehana City is still a secret.” He took a bite. “And I can’t even get into the secured areas by the engines.”

  I had been about to sip my wine, and my glass stopped half-way to my mouth. “Secured areas?”

  “Uh-huh. A guard stopped me. He was nice about it, but he said there were high radiation levels and only authorized personnel were allowed in.”

  I glanced at Maire, and she shrugged.

  “There isn’t anything like that on the Lady, but this isn’t the Lady.”

  “Huh. Well, if the section is radioactive, I suppose there are reasons to keep people out. It was fortunate there was a guard on duty.”

  “I’ve been thinking about our other problem,” Maire announced.

  “What, we’ve only got one?” Timash shot back.

  “I meant the problem with our cargo on The Dark Lady.” Our suite was well-insulated from telepathic eavesdropping, but she lowered her voice conspiratorially. “I’m going to tell Lobok that I need her to run an errand for me right before we get to the time machine.”

  “Where we hope to find the time machine,” I corrected gently.

  She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. The point is that The Dark Lady leaves an hour before we do, and I’m going to make damn sure nobody leaves this ship in that hour.”

  Timash looked at me, and I at him, and we nodded.

  “I like it,” I said. “But how is Skull going to escape detection once he has left?”

  Maire gave me one of her looks. “Um, Keryl? Have you met Skull? You know, the smuggler?”

  I filled my mouth with food and chewed vigorously.

  Director Wilner’s apprehension at being summoned from his cabin by two guards calmed considerably when I told him we were disembarking to examine one of the possible time travel sites. He went from anxious to enthusiastic in a heartbeat.