by Timothy Zahn
But then, what sense did the protocol make in the first place? Why impose such arbitrary rules of conduct on helpless people, with death as the punishment for every single infraction?
And not just on human beings. Whoever had set up the Pyramid with its five languages had clearly been trying to make sure that at least five different species would be able to learn and follow the protocol. Apparently, the Stryders played this same vicious game with everyone who happened by.
Except that this particular group of playmates weren’t going to simply play the Stryders’ game for awhile and then move on. If Earth hadn’t sent a follow-up ship by now, they never would. The colonists were trapped here. Trapped on this otherwise lovely and bountiful world with the Stryders and their protocol.
And if there was something new happening with that protocol, they weren’t going to be living here much longer.
So what in heaven’s name had she done?
Her plate was lying on the bench near Patrolman Clay’s folded jacket. Slowly, reluctantly, she reached over and picked it up. The record of Ted’s death was in there, recorded in all its horrifying detail. The thought of watching it …
It’s been another twelve years since then, Patrolman Clay had suggested. Maybe the Stryders are celebrating an anniversary.
She took a deep breath. The thought of living through Ted’s death again made her feel violently ill. But she had to know. Bracing herself, she keyed for the record.
It was as bad as she’d expected. Worse. With the position the plate had been in, she could only see Ted’s left side, but that was enough to send her stomach into a fresh knot. She watched and listened as she and Ted went into the protocol positions; watched and listened as the Stryder clumped toward them; watched and listened at that horrible moment when the razordisk whipped past overhead, cutting into Ted’s side with a splash of red and then returning like a deadly yo-yo to its owner. She heard herself give a strangled gasp as Ted fell to the ground; saw the image turn half red as a stray drop of blood landed on the recording lens, partially obscuring it.
And she saw the Stryder pass by, looming overhead like a giant tree as he made his unconcerned way past his victim. The footsteps faded into the distance, and she heard herself begin to moan …
With a stabbing jerk of her finger, she shut off the record, squeezing her eyes tightly shut as if cutting off the images would somehow destroy the memory.
But at the same time, she knew she couldn’t afford to lose any bit of that memory. Not yet. Sergeant Royce had said Ted’s plate didn’t show exactly what had happened, either. If they were going to figure out how he had broken protocol, it was going to be up to her to figure it out.
Slowly, tiredly, she opened her eyes.
To find a Stryder standing directly across the Sanctuary ring, just outside the hedge.
Staring at her.
Her heart seemed to freeze in her chest. No one knew how exactly the hedge protected them against the Stryders. One theory was that they liked the orange flowers so much they didn’t want to risk damaging them. Another was that the delicate aroma somehow obscured their vision, so that they literally couldn’t see what was happening inside the hedge.
But all anyone really knew was that, up to now, the hedge had kept the Stryders away from you.
But then, up to now, following the protocol had done the same thing.
Up to now.
The Stryder was still standing there. Still staring at her. Aimee stared back, holding as still as she could, Ted’s image of a rabbit facing a doggerelle flashing through her mind. No Stryder had ever stared at her that way before. For that matter, she couldn’t recall ever seeing a Stryder even standing still before. Even when they killed, they never so much as broke stride.
And yet, this one was standing. And staring.
Was it the same Stryder who had killed Ted? There were supposed to be subtle differences between them, but Aimee had never been able to tell one Stryder from another. Could Sergeant Royce have been right about her somehow instigating the attack? Had the Stryder later realized that, and decided that Aimee deserved to die, too?
She realized she had stopped breathing. Slowly, carefully, she inhaled, feeling terribly alone. If only someone was here with her; Patrolman Clay, or even Sergeant Royce. If the Stryder wanted her, of course, there was nothing either of them could do. But suddenly she was terrified at the thought of dying without another human present to say good-bye to.
The Stryder still hadn’t moved, and she found herself wondering bleakly what he was waiting for. The hedge itself was certainly no physical barrier, and his razordisk probably had enough range to get her here at the far side anyway. What was he waiting for?
And then, suddenly, something inside her snapped. If this was her night to die, she wasn’t going to take it hiding beneath the flowers in a corner like a frightened rabbit. Standing up, stuffing her facplate back into its pouch, she started across the Sanctuary ring toward the Stryder.
With every step, she expected him to raise his right arm and send the razordisk nestled beneath it flashing toward her, to cut through her heart and lungs and to quiet forever the agonizing memory of Ted’s death. But still he stood there, unmoving, as she approached.
Until finally she stood just inside the hedge from him.
For a long moment she gazed silently at him, staring up into his face. Every variation of the protocol she’d ever heard made you bow down before a Stryder ever got this close; and though she’d seen plenty of telephoto pictures of them, she realized suddenly that no picture or video had ever really done them justice.
It was an old face. A face that had seen many things; a face that somehow reflected deep wanderings in secret thoughts and paths. Even in the darkness his eyes were bright as he stared down at her, and Aimee could feel a sense of eminence and mystery and serenity hovering around him. Like a Greek god, she’d often thought, or the wise mentor to humanity that so many people had longed for over the centuries.
Only these mentors killed on a whim.
She took a deep breath. If this was indeed her night to die, then nothing she could do could stop it. But perhaps she could at least voice her objections to this insanity before that happened. “Why?” she asked, her voice sounding harsh and crowlike against the Stryder’s innate grandeur. “Why did you kill him?”
The Stryder seemed to consider that. Or maybe he was just ignoring her. The first colonists had tried to talk to the Stryders too, she remembered. All it had gotten them was killed.
And then, abruptly yet smoothly, he lifted his arm.
Aimee flinched back, her eyes dropping to the razordisk against his forearm. But the arm stopped, and there was no wolfbat moan, and the weapon didn’t move. Slowly, she let her gaze travel down the arm to the huge hand reaching over the hedge toward her. The hand was cupped, palm up, as if he wanted something.
Aimee swallowed. What did he want? In another human, the gesture might have indicated that she was to take his hand, as if he was preparing to lead her somewhere. But somehow, she sensed that wasn’t it.
And then she noticed that not all the fingers were cupped. One of them was stretched out straight—almost curved under, in fact—pointing at her belt pouch.
At her facplate.
“My plate?” she asked, reaching carefully toward it. “Is that what you want?”
The Stryder didn’t move or speak. Carefully, wondering if she was in fact reading him correctly, she began working the plate free. Was he trying to tell her there was a protocol for this kind of face-to-face meeting? She couldn’t imagine there being such a thing; and even if there was, no Stryder ever gave out hints like that, even in mime. Their entire range of responses was either to ignore or to kill.
Still, this one was already doing things she’d never heard of from a Stryder. Maybe, for once, one was actually giving a human the benefit of the
doubt. She got the plate out and lifted it to her lips—
And with a smooth motion, the Stryder turned his cupped hand over and plucked it from her grasp. Turning, he strode away across the square and disappeared around a shop.
Aimee watched him go, her body seeming to sag inside her skin. So that was it. No benefit of the doubt; no communication; no nothing. The Stryder had indeed realized he’d made a mistake earlier, and this was his way of rectifying it.
Because without a plate, she was as good as dead. Her mind flicked back to that day with Aunt Ruth, and how she’d had to use her plate to pull up the protocol three more times before she was able to make it home. By taking her plate, the Stryder was effectively condemning her to death the minute she left the safety of the Sanctuary.
Slowly, she turned and headed back across the circle. Relax, she tried to tell herself. Just stay here until Patrolman Clay gets back, and he’ll get you a new plate.
But that would be at best a temporary fix. If the Stryders could take one plate away from her, they could take the next one away, and the next one, and the next, until at some point she would be caught out in the open with a Stryder and no idea what the protocol was to keep him away.
And even in her despair, she could see the irony in it. Sergeant Royce had all but accused her of getting a Stryder to kill her husband for her. Now, by taking her plate, this Stryder was doing that exact same thing to her.
She reached the bench where Patrolman Clay’s jacket lay and sat down beside it. All sorts of desperate plans and ideas had chased each other through her mind on the short walk across the circle, but she knew there was no point in trying any of them tonight. In the morning, perhaps, she would be able to think more clearly.
Assuming, of course, the Stryders didn’t come for her before then.
But if they did, there was still nothing she could do tonight. And at the moment she was too drained of emotion to even worry about it. Stretching out on the bench, pillowing her head on the folded jacket, she drifted off to sleep.
“Mrs. Shondar? Aimee?”
She woke with a start, muscles jerking with sudden terror. But it wasn’t one of the Stryders who had haunted her dreams crouching over her, just Patrolman Clay. In the pink predawn light she could see the lines of tension were back in his face. “Yes, I’m awake,” she said, her mouth feeling dry. “What is it?”
“Come on,” he said, taking her hand and urging her upward. “You need to see this.”
Abruptly, the memories of the night flooded back. “I can’t,” she protested, even as she swung her legs over the side of the bench. “He took my plate.”
“Who, Sergeant Royce?” Clay asked, frowning.
Aimee shook her head. “One of the Stryders.”
Clay’s eyes widened. “One of the Stryders? But …”
He inhaled sharply, his face abruptly changing. “Oh, my God,” he said softly. “So that’s it. Come on, you definitely need to see this.”
There was something in his voice that stifled all further protest. Standing up, she let him lead her across the Sanctuary circle.
There, lying on his back in the square a few meters outside the hedge, was a Stryder.
Dead.
Aimee caught her breath. “What—”
“He was there when I got back a few minutes ago,” Clay told her. “We can check your husband’s plate record, but I’m betting he’s the one who killed him.”
He gestured toward the Stryder. “Which must be why the other Stryder took your plate. So he could figure out who he was, too.”
“I don’t understand,” Aimee said, unable to take her eyes off the body. She was so accustomed to thinking of the Stryders as messengers of death that it was a shock to see one lying there dead himself. “What’s he doing here?”
“Don’t you see?” Clay said quietly. “He killed your husband. Only he shouldn’t have, because your husband hadn’t done anything wrong.”
Aimee turned to him, sudden understanding twisting through her heart. “Are you saying … ?”
“Your husband didn’t break protocol, Aimee,” Clay said. “Neither did you. It was the Stryder who broke it.”
His lips compressed briefly. “And even for Stryders, I guess, the penalty for breaking protocol is death.”
Aimee looked out at the body again, a dark and depressing confusion tugging at her emotions. “They’re trapped by it too,” she said quietly. “For all their cold-blooded killing, they’re as trapped by the protocol as we are.”
“So it seems,” Clay agreed. “Well. Come on, let’s get you a new plate, and I’ll escort you home.”
“It’s not that easy,” Aimee said, looking at him again. “What about him?”
Clay frowned. “What do you mean? What about him?”
“What do we do with the body?” Aimee asked. “Do we leave it there for the Stryders to collect? Or do we bury it, or build a funeral pyre, or walk in a circle around it with our heads bowed, or what? What’s the protocol for this?”
The tension lines were back in Clay’s face. “Oh, my God,” he breathed. “We’d better get someone out to the Pyramid. And fast.”
Old-Boy Network
The sunlight was glowing softly through Rey’s eyelids when he woke up that last morning. For a few minutes he just lay there, luxuriating under the warm weight of the blankets and comforter, happy to be alive.
She had smiled at him again.
He smiled himself at the thought. The left side of his mouth didn’t join in the smile, of course, but for once he almost didn’t even care. At first the half-paralyzed face had bothered him terribly, even more than having been made a cripple. But today, none of it seemed to matter.
Because it hadn’t seemed to matter to her. And if it didn’t matter to her, it certainly shouldn’t matter to him.
She had smiled at him. For the fifth time in the past four weeks—he’d been keeping count—she had smiled at him.
He yawned deeply. “Curtains: open,” he called.
From across the room came a soft hum as the filmy curtains were pulled aside. He pried open his eyelids—rather literally in the case of his left eyelid, which had a tendency to glue itself shut overnight—and looked outside.
The sun was high up over the stark Martian landscape. He’d slept in unusually late this morning.
But that was all right. Unless and until Mr. Quillan called for him, his time was his own.
And if that call held off, and if he was lucky, he might see her again.
His chair was waiting beside his bed where he’d left it. Throwing back the blankets, he maneuvered himself to the edge of the bed and got himself into it. “Chair: bathroom,” he ordered.
Obediently, the chair rolled across the room and through the wide door of his bathroom. He took care of the usual morning business; and then it was time for a quick shower. The breakfast he’d ordered last night should be waiting by the time he was done.
Idly, he wondered what the meal would consist of. Mr. Quillan had been talking with the other men and women on the Network quite a lot lately, and that much TabRasa sometimes played funny games with his memory in general. Still, surprises could be pleasant, too.
By the time Rey was dressed and back in his chair the tantalizing aroma of Belgian waffles was wafting through the bathroom door. He rather hoped he’d asked for bacon with it, but it turned out he’d ordered a side of sausage instead.
No problem. He liked sausage too. He would just order bacon tomorrow.
Maneuvering his chair up to the table, wondering what she liked for breakfast, he began to eat.
“So this is Mars,” Hendrik Thorwald commented, gently swirling his coffee cup as he gazed out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the landscape and the cluster of domes that made up Makaris City. “Not nearly as claustrophobic as the Ganymede Domes.”
“
That’s because here you can at least walk around outside without a full vacuum suit,” Archer Quillan pointed out, sipping at his own spiced coffee as he watched the circling motion of the other’s cup. It was almost as if Thorwald thought he was holding a brandy snifter.
A simple nervous habit? Or did it imply that the man drank too much?
Neither added up to much of a recommendation, in Quillan’s book. But in this case, Quillan’s book didn’t matter. Thorwald’s net worth had reached the magic trillion-dollar mark, and McCade wanted him in, and that was that. His wealth had made him an Old Boy, as McCade sardonically called them, and he would be offered a spot in the Old-Boy Network.
“Of course, you need an air supply and parka,” Thorwald said. “Still, it’s not as cold as the travel books make it sound.”
“Hardly worse than a typical Swedish winter, I imagine,” Quillan said politely.
“Hardly at all.” Turning away from the window, Thorwald resettled himself in his chair to face Quillan again. “But you didn’t ask me all the way to Mars to compare weather. We’ve had our breakfast; we’ve had our coffee. Let’s talk business.”
“Indeed,” Quillan agreed. Straight and direct, with neither belligerence nor apology. Much better. “Actually, it’s not so much business as it is an invitation. You’ve reached the magic trillion-dollar mark, and the thirty or so of us already in that rather exclusive club would like to congratulate you on your achievement.”
Thorwald inclined his head slightly. “Thank you.”
“But as you’ll soon realize, if you haven’t already, making a trillion dollars is only the first step,” Quillan continued. “The challenge now is to hold onto it. Currently, you’re Target Number One for every con man, minor competitor, and ambitious young Turk in Northern Europe, all of whom hope to pry some of that money away from you.”
“Joined by every governmental taxing agency from Earth to the Jovian Moons and back again,” Thorwald added sourly.
“Absolutely,” Quillan said. “And with all of them nipping at your heels, I would venture to guess that your biggest headache these days is that of secure communications.”
