by Nancy Kress
Oblivion.
Cold and pain: distant pain, as if it were happening to someone else. But Spencer knew it was happening to him, was—
“He's awake!”
“Damn it, I'm not done! Put him out again!”
Oblivion.
He woke in a cool, dim room. Yellow curtains fluttered at the window, framing an upland meadow thick with wildflowers and ringed by blue mountains. Incredulous, Spencer stared at the view—where the hell was he?—until he realized that of course it was a holo and the curtains fluttered courtesy of programmed Scented Breeze.
He sat up in the bed, pulled back the cheerful yellow blanket, and examined his naked body, flexing and lifting everything flexible or liftable. It all worked. But a new scar, already healing, ran jagged across his abdomen, and the back of his head throbbed. Spencer raised both hands and felt the plastic plate embedded in his skull.
His motions evidently set off sensors. A door opened and Plibix entered. The dragon seemed unscarred, but the look in his eyes made Spencer's gut clench. Don't ask. But he knew he would have to ask ... only not just yet.
Instead he said, “What happened?”
“Plasma bomb.”
“Plasma bomb? In Goldmeadow?”
“It took out most of the city. If we hadn't been under those shields ... even so ... you ... I...”
Spencer had worked with Plibix for almost five years now. This faltering was completely uncharacteristic of the dragon, who was a professional, despite his weird body choices. Professionals didn't show such grief, or such incoherent rage. So Spencer was obligated to ask now, after all.
“And your friend—”
“Dead.”
“I'm sorry. He ... she ... your friend was beautiful. They'll pay for this.”
“Yes,” Plibix spat, and then, to Spencer's relief, sought refuge in hard information. “Our orbitals assess Goldmeadow's damage as ninety-nine percent above-ground destruction within a five-hundred-meter radius centered on Service Headquarters, the ostensible target. Commensurate damage spreading outward. Below-ground vault damage unknown at this time. Total dead is point eight million. It's now been fifty hours and thirteen minutes since the explosion. You are at our facility in New Barchester.”
Spencer took a moment to absorb this. Service Headquarters gone. Point eight million beings dead, including Admiral Ktonga. A good man, if misguided. But Carol and the children were safe, gone from Goldmeadow long ago ... point eight million dead.
He said, “My injuries?”
“Mostly internal, plus the back of your skull. Brain undamaged, however.”
“Why the hell have I got a plastic plate there?”
“No time to grow your own bone and skin, Spencer. You know that.”
Spencer scowled. “Who did the operation? Anything could be in that plate, Plibix. I don't like it.”
“It was Dr. Jen Roper, one of our own people. She's good, and she was here. We didn't exactly plan on this, you know.”
Spencer knew. God, what a mess.... Belatedly he said, “And you?”
Plibix turned around. A long scar, healing even more rapidly than Spencer's, ran across the dragon's naked back. Spencer studied it, reconstructing in his mind where he had sat in the bell tower, where Plibix had stood, the table between them, the angle of the building to Service Headquarters. Finally he said, “You bent over the table, didn't you. To shield the package. That's how you got hit on the back. Is the package intact?”
Plibix drew the small, egg-shaped bundle from his kilt and laid it on the bottom of Spencer's bed.
Spencer said, “I still say no to that thing.”
“And I still say that you have no choice. Especially now.” And the grief and rage were back in Plibix's eyes, so that once again Spencer looked away, out the window that was not a window, at the meadow that was not a meadow.
The dragon said, “There is something you have not asked. Ask it.”
“All right.” Spencer looked back at Plibix. This, too, he had to ask. “Was the plasma bomb ours?”
“I don't know. But if it was, and Parapara has double-crossed us, I swear I'll tear this organization into bloody shreds and blow all of Leonardo into shards no bigger than my talon.”
Spencer nodded. He knew that Plibix meant it.
* * * *
The New Barchester station was primarily medical, which meant it was more transparent than not. Supplies and personnel traveled in, and what uses they were put to was carefully documented and reported to all concerned authorities. Only those in the locked operating wings knew whether cloned skin was actually used for grafts over burns, as meticulously listed in the OR log, or for changing facial identity. Eyes could be replaced due to vision loss from Blund-Klein Syndrome, or to alter a retinal scan. Only six people had access to the morgue.
But New Barchester's very transparency meant that little real information went in or out. The reasons behind this were simple: Attract as little attention as possible. If nobody knows much, nobody can give away much. For the next two days, while nanomeds repaired his insides, Spencer was limited to what information Plibix brought him from the dragon's trips away from the station, plus whatever Spencer could learn from Dr. Jen Roper.
First he examined all the station records on her, which were accurate if not very interesting: resume, personal situation, genetic profile. She was a widow, no children, had lived most of her life on Goldmeadow, had an exemplary list of medical accomplishments. She lived alone, was blood type A positive, carried the allele for an allergy to roses, had a weakness for chocolate truffles, and kept a pet cat named Crumbs. She had never been on Leonardo, or apparently anywhere near it. Plibix reported that she had been recruited two and a half years ago, halfway into the project, and had come to New Barchester a year after that. Her reasons were purely ideological: She believed in what the organization was trying to accomplish. That alone aroused Spencer's suspicions. Idealists were dangerous. They lacked a sense of proportion.
“She's a good doctor,” Plibix said impatiently. Spencer leaned closer to sniff the dragon's breath: nothing. Plibix wasn't eating. Since the plasma bomb and the death of the fanged green fairy, Plibix looked scrawnier, and his scales had begun to molt. Spencer had never seen a more dangerous look in any being's eyes.
“I know she's a good doctor, Plib. I want to know what else she is.”
“For God's sake, it's just a plastic plate. You had it imaged, didn't you? Let it rest, Spencer.”
“I want to talk to her.” Unbidden, his hand rose to finger the back of his head. He felt all three textures: the thick rough hair giving way to the stubble where his scalp had been shaved giving way to the slick smooth plastic. Yes, he'd had it imaged, and the image had shown a uniform thickness of regular plastic polymers, nothing else. Nothing embedded in the plastic, nothing leading from it deeper into his skull, not even nanofilaments. Spencer still didn't like it.
“You want to talk to her, talk to her,” Plibix said. “Do I look like I care? But I told you, she doesn't get back until late this afternoon and we leave early this evening.”
“I want to talk to her.”
Plibix snarled something no human vocal chords could have uttered, flicked his leathery wings, and stomped from the room.
Spencer was waiting for Dr. Roper when she cleared Decon. She emerged from the last chamber dressed in loose, disposable pants and tunic of soft yellow. Despite himself, Spencer blinked.
He'd seen her picture, of course. But no holo could capture the impact of her presence. Six feet tall, with deep black eyes and skin the color of caramels, Jen Roper had the curves and walk of an ancient African goddess. She radiated pure, musky, have-to-have-it sex. And since no woman looked like that except by choice, Spencer's wariness about her shot abruptly upward, along with his attraction.
“Commander Spencer,” she said. Her voice was husky, pitched low, and the word “Commander” delivered with a playful smile that said she knew exact
ly how much he disliked it. Who was this woman?
“Dr. Roper,” he said formally. “I'd like to talk to you.”
“Certainly. My office is this way.”
He followed her down the hall, trying not to watch the sway of her buttocks under the thin cloth. Her office was spare, utilitarian, but with framed holos of a grassy savannah dotted with low trees, each holo taken at a different time of day. The savannahs could have been located on innumerable planets, but Jen Roper's history said she hadn't been on numerous planets. Goldmeadow, Talianta, and Terra. That was all. The savannahs were probably Terran.
Although there were also green, grassy savannahs on Leonardo.
“Coffee? Juice?” she asked.
“Nothing, thank you. Doctor, why have I got this plate in my head?”
“Because otherwise you'd be going around with a gaping hole and your considerable brains would spill out.” She smiled. He did not. More seriously she added, “There was no time to clone your own bone and skin—I was told you needed to be in optimum possible condition in three days, max. I had skin and bone on hand that I could have used, but immunosuppressors need to be monitored, and I was told you would be leaving. Of the available materials for a plate, this polymer is the lightest, least susceptible to insertion infections, and the easiest to remove once you do stay long enough in a medical facility to clone your own skin and bone.”
“At the atomic level, this polymer also forms intricate, fractal-like structures rather than, say, regular, crystalline lattices.”
“Yes,” said Spencer. “That's its basic structure.”
“Such a basic structure can be used to encode messages.”
Her dark eyes widened in shock. Spencer watched closely; the shock seemed genuine. “Are you accusing me of ... what are you accusing me of, Commander? And whatever the hell it is, you damn well better be able to substantiate it!”
“I'm not accusing you of anything. I'm merely reciting an inherent quality of the plate you've chosen to put into my head.”
“I'm as loyal a member of this organization as you are!”
“Let's hope so.” He made his tone skeptical, egging her on, watching carefully for every nuance of her reaction.
“I don't have anything more to say to you!” she snapped, and suddenly, in the strain in her voice, Spencer remembered waking during surgery:
Cold and pain: distant pain, as if it were happening to someone else. But Spencer knew it was happening to him, was—
"He's awake!"
"Damn it, I'm not done! Put him out again!"
“Please leave my office,” Jen Roper said, and he did. She'd been perfect, nothing amiss in her reactions except that indefinable strain, and of course anyone would feel strain when implicitly accused of being an infiltrator, or in the middle of a difficult surgery. Her strain was normal, her reactions perfect ... so why didn't Spencer trust her?
What exactly was it that hadn't been “done” when he'd awakened on the operating table?
Walking back down the corridor toward his room, weaker still than he'd like to admit, Spencer put his hand to his head and fingered the plastic plate. Smooth, even, slick. It told him nothing.
An hour later, he and Plibix left for MacDougal II.
* * * *
"It threatens the very foundations of the galaxy!” the garrison officer with Ktonga's face cried, He turned into a blue bellflower covered with blood, and then—
“Wake up, mon cheri,” Patsy Klein said sleepily in French, “you're having a nightmare.”
“I don't ... have nightmares,” Spencer mumbled.
“Well, you're having one now,” she said and then she was asleep again, snoring softly, her sharp hip bone pressing uncomfortably into his side.
It had been a long time since his last nightmare. But Patsy was right—he was having them now.
He lay beside her in the opulent stateroom on the J.D. Peterson and stared at the ceiling. He and Plibix had changed crafts and identities three times on the journey from Goldmeadow. Now Plibix had vanished to take care of his part of the operation, and Patsy had joined him for the last stage of the journey to MacDougal.
They were Monsieur and Madame Jacques Aubert-Bertin, based on Argent Trois, owners of a firm that searched out interesting plant genetics useful for enhancing food crops. Spencer had grown up speaking Terran French with his mother, and Patsy could pick up any language, human or alien, yet discovered. Jacques and Giselle Aubert-Bertin traveled in the most luxurious style, partying every night with the other wealthy passengers aboard, listening to all the gossip and business deals and political speculation. The Aubert-Bertins said little themselves, but then they weren't well, poor elderly dears, and as long as they provided the most scrumptious drinkables in their stateroom ... and did you hear what that fascinating Colonel Matic said about his tour of duty on Leonardo, it was absolutely outrageous, it seems that in the middle of the night certain citizens had just disappeared, and—
Spencer had learned a lot on the J.D. Peterson, although most of it confirmed what he already knew rather than adding anything fresh. He still had no idea who had set off the plasma bomb in Goldmeadow. His superiors, including Parapara, swore they didn't know. Plibix, before he had parted from Spencer, said he hadn't learned anything more, either.
Plibix might or might not have been telling the truth. The answers, whatever they were, lay on MacDougal or on Leonardo. Maybe.
Ktonga had told Spencer, at their meeting that now seemed so long ago (last week) that there “was something happening on Leonardo.” Ktonga had had a gift for understatement. Leonardo had been humanity's most conspicuous failure in human-alien relationships. On every other planet with sentient life—well, almost every other planet—colonizers had been able to use negotiation, trade, or intimidation to settle on worlds already inhabited by some other race. But Leonardoins didn't negotiate, weren't impressed by any technology they were shown, and didn't intimidate. Tall, blue, proud, and unfriendly, they had followed their warrior-wanderer lives for millennia and planned on doing it for millennia more. Twenty years ago, they flat out refused to have humans on the one inhabitable continent of Leonardo, and they flat out refused to say why. The few anthropologists the Leonardoins didn't murder reported that this isolationism seemed to be a religious taboo. Something about a goddess and a native animal—Spencer hadn't paid much attention to this part. Primitive goddesses didn't interest him.
Turning over in the stuffy stateroom, pushing away Patsy's bony shoulder, he suddenly saw an image Jen Roper. Impatiently he pushed the thought away.
With no choice under galactic law, the colonists had prepared to leave Leonardo. If they had, the whole venture might have ended right there and nobody would have ever heard of Leonardo again. Which would have been fine with Spencer, then a junior officer in Space Intelligence. However, just before the colonists had taken off, the Leonardoins had attacked and wiped out the entire encampment.
Which had been under a dome impenetrable by any weapon not operating at an atomic level.
Simultaneously, the colonists’ ship in orbit had blown up, along with seventeen widely scattered orbital probes, a shuttle in transit from the surface, and the Space Navy Belsen-class warship Julius Caesar.
Simultaneously.
Then the Leonardoins had hurled their spears at the rubble left from the dome.
The Navy sent an investigative team. Then another. In twenty years, they had not found out who or what had destroyed the colonists and their military clockwork. But the same thing had happened again, and again. By the third time it was clear to everyone that the Leonardoins had secret champions and that the champions possessed the ability to destroy things that were nowhere near them, or each other. Quantum-entangled weaponry, the physicists called it, because they had to call it something. “Entangle” your target's particles with those physically somewhere else, and blow up things from halfway across the galaxy. Humans could not make such weapons.
So whose weapon wa
s it?
Why was it being used to defend a Godforsaken place like Leonardo?
And what would happen to whatever human group discovered the answers first?
Of the three questions, Spencer could imagine the answer only to the last one. Unimaginable power. No scholar, Spencer nonetheless remembered what Lord Acton had said about power five hundred years ago. It was still true.
Three bells chimed musically. Patsy woke, yawned, and said, “Nous avons arrivées.”
They were docking at the station above MacDougal II. Spencer washed, dressed, and added a few last-minute items to his suitcases, which after a few hours he would never see again. The largest suitcase asked if it should lock and depart. He told it yes. The only item that mattered wasn't even with Spencer; Plibix had taken the egg-shaped package with him.
Dressed, Patsy looked like what she was supposed to be: a gray-haired, very old, very rich woman who still enjoyed a good laugh. That was, of course, nothing like her genuine self, and sometimes Spencer had the sensation that he hadn't been traveling with Patsy Klein at all, or with anyone. Even the carefully managed, sedate sex, suitable for such unrejuvenated ancients, had felt unreal. He didn't worry about that sensation. It was a normal part of working undercover with a good agent.
But what happened next was not part of anyone's plans.
“Allons, cheri,” Patsy said, opened the stateroom door—and gasped.
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* * *
Chapter 4: Smoke and Mirrors
by Robert Sheckley
Spencer heard Patsy gasp, saw her freeze in the doorway.
“What is it?” he asked. When she didn't answer, he walked up to see for himself.
The doorway didn't open into a narrow corridor, as it had when they entered. Now, as though some demonic stage-setter had been at work, the corridor was gone and in its place was a room so long he could barely see the end of it. There was what appeared to be a glow of light from a row of French windows at the rear.
The sole object of interest in the room was a huge pipe organ.
The organ towered up to the ceiling. It was roughly rectangular, painted in garish colors, with multiple keyboards, and above them, a triple row of stops. Its great pipes towered above it, and there were more pipes bristling out from either side. It was a madman's three-dimensional conception of what an organ should look like.
The Omega Egg [A Fictionwise Round Robin Novel] Page 3
