by Steve Rzasa
I rubbed at my throat, wanting to find a mirror and see what kind of prints a three-fingered choke hold left. But more pressing matters were up first. “Carpenter. What’s all this?”
He smiled, that same polished smile I’d seen, but it was cold. There was no humor in it. “I’ll let our friends from Retrieval and Justice do the honors, Mr. Fortel.”
Oh, great. Hounders like Nil.
The qwaddo with the skin like Nil’s raised his weapon or device or whatever. “Prime Investigator Aphu Nil Hemilh Jeq, you stand detained by Consociation law for conspiracy to steal and destroy cultural heritage. Your scent gives you away as being trapped in your failure.”
That same one looked at me next and went on, “Human Casimir Fortel, your stench is foul with collusion. You stand charged the same.”
“Are you guys insane? We got it back for you!” I waved toward Nil. “He’s got the thing! Carpenter, tell these idiots.”
Instead of defending me, the esteemed FBI agent in charge of Boston froze that smile in place, like a department store mannequin. Only creepier. “Take them.”
Red light flashed from the qwaddo devices. Before I could blink away the afterimages, my entire body went numb. The room slid sideways and up, images blurring and slipping away like I was flying backwards at high speed.
Last thing I saw before I blacked out was Nil falling on his side.
Worst. Hangover. Ever.
My bones were buzzing. Feeling seeped back into each hair, nail, and digit. I opened my eyes with some difficulty because some idiot had glued them shut. That’s what it felt like, anyway. When they finally got open to slits, all I could see was bare cinder block.
Not good.
I lay on a cot. Hard as wood, that so-called mattress, and two shades darker than the dirty pale walls I stared at. It took way more effort to turn over than it should have, even after an all-night bender. Every muscle in my body was mad at me and refused to come to work. I forced them.
It was a cell. I was locked in a holding cell with a bare gray concrete floor and pale green bars for a door. The hall beyond it wasn’t any prettier—cruddy tile, more cinderblock, sickly fluorescent lights. Someone was standing guard with his back to me, off to the left, judging by the shadow on the wall.
“Hey, you!” That was what I intended to shout. Except it came out as a zombie’s moan, more of a “Haaaayoo.”
The guy turned around and glared at me. Or he would have glared, if robots glared.
I sat bolt upright. Yes, a freaking robot. Seven feet tall, burnished skin like flat bronze, four thick arms—one of which ended in something that looked like a qwaddo striker on serious steroids. The body was riven by lines that clicked together when it moved. Reminded me of segments of armor, which for all I knew, it was armor. The face was a flat oval with eight black squares in two rows bisecting it.
«DO YOU REQUIRE MEDICAL ATTENTION, HUMAN?»
The voice was as flat and lifeless as the face. Had a nice hum to it, about as pleasant as a swarm of gnats and a couple volume levels too high. “Nah. I’m good. You guys don’t happen to have a bar stocked with Jack Daniels, do you?”
The robot turned away.
“The Tahomjr are not programmed for human flippancy, Fortel.”
That would be Nil. From the sound of his voice he was my left side neighbor. “These are your automaton buddies? They look like a lot of fun.”
“They are Jinn constructions used to supplement Ghiqasu military and security forces. They do not take orders from our race but directly from the Jinn commanders.”
I eyeballed the robot’s back more closely. “There’s Jinn in there?”
“No. They are fully autonomous intelligences. As guards they are exceptional because they cannot be bought or influenced.”
“That’s great.” I heard footsteps on the concrete floor from farther to Nil’s left. “Hey! Whoever’s down there, there’s been some mistake! I need to speak to the agent in charge, right now!”
Got my wish. Carpenter stopped in front of my cell. Actually, he stood far enough back that he could see into both our cells.
So there went my initial plan, which was to strangle him through the bars. Not the best plan, but I don’t reason well when I’m ticked off.
Before I could light into him with my latest round of cunning insults, I noticed that Carpenter was smiling at me. It wasn’t his regular smile. Kind of like he had started to smirk but got stuck partway. Okay. First thing first. “Where’s Ally?”
“The human female is unharmed, Casimir Fortel.” Uh-oh. There was that chorus of Borg-like tones again, shades of Fisk when he was taken over by the Jinn. Great. “She is detained with your law agency DEXA in Denver. There she will remain until your judgment is issued.”
That sounded worse than the buzzing voices. “I think you boys got this mixed up. This is the part where I get paid a million bucks, not the part where you lock me up.”
“There is nothing mixed up, as you stated. There is only a new arrangement.”
“Yeah, I get it. You want the sculpture. Very clever of you guys to use Carpenter too. The one in charge of this whole operation. No wonder he was so insistent on keeping everything so quiet. The fewer people who knew about this mess, the easier it would be to snatch up the Sozh Uqasod when Nil and I retrieved it.”
Carpenter reeled, as if I’d reached through the bars and socked him. My stunning insight? Not so much. He twitched a few times, and then his face resumed its familiar professional mask. When he spoke it was minus the Borg impression. “It was clever, thank you, Mr. Fortel. I’d hardly say I was used. This is a willing partnership. My assistance in gaining the Sozh Uqasod and providing a set of suitable scapegoats for its theft, in return for a bountiful reward.”
Nil’s snort echoed from the other cell. “Whatever they have promised you are lies, Special Agent Carpenter.”
“I seriously doubt that. I’ve already been given a taste of it, you see.” He stepped up to my cell and grabbed one of the bars. With considerable effort, he gripped it and twisted until that segment of the bar bent. When he removed his hands, there were imprints of his fingers in the metal.
Yikes.
“That was their down payment. The rest, I’m sure, will be highly satisfactory—memory alteration, longevity treatment. And you two will be a perfect pair on whom to place the blame. Along with Fisk, of course. I’m sure the three of you can find a lot to chat about in your final hours.”
Final hours. That sounded bad.
“Hounders from Retrieval and Justice are conferring with the Consociation command, awaiting their final orders to collect you.” Carpenter gestured at the Tahomjr automaton. “With the help of your guards.”
“What I don’t get is, why all this over a stolen sculpture? It’s priceless, I get that.”
“It is indeed,” Nil said.
“There is far more than that at stake, more than either of you understand,” Carpenter said. “The Sozh Uqasod is ancient, from a time when the Jinn were able to consolidate their power against the Nivax. Tell me, do you know how the Consociation maintains its supremacy?”
I rolled my eyes. “Sure. Me and every elementary school kid on Earth knows, Carpenter: the Big Rings. You keep a pretty firm grasp on your star systems when you can make a bunch of starships hop from one world to another dozens of light years away in seconds flat.”
“Correct. Without the Big Rings, the Consociation and Nivax would be stalemated by their use of space warp drives.” Carpenter lifted the white ovoid container, the one holding the Sozh Uqasod. “This will upset that balance in a most satisfactory way. You see, the design specifications for a Big Ring are a closely guarded secret. Far more secret than our pathetic human plans for building nuclear weapons. Isn’t that right, Prime Nil?”
“Yes. I smell your confidence, human, but not the reason behind it.”
“The plans are here,” Carpenter said. “Stored deep in the memory of Ichon Iteration Seven Eight Six.”
The plans. For a Big Ring. My mind spun back to that first day in Carpenter’s office when he described the Sozh Uqasod. Said it was made from dead ancestor bodies, right? I gripped the bars, staring at the white container.
“The plans and prototypes were purged long ago. Only a select few, an elite group, have the knowledge to create a Big Ring. But during those long centuries, the names of those who first created it—who first birthed the shortcuts across the galaxy—were lost.” Carpenter twitched. His smile froze into place. When he started talking again, it was in the buzzing chorus of the rogue Jinn swarming somewhere inside him. “Once we discovered those names, we searched the worlds for any hint that their memories existed. Finally we found one: Ichon Iteration Seven Eight Six, whose carapace was included in the Sozh Uqasod. It was a secret unbeknownst to all but us and will remain unrevealed. The theft of the Sozh Uqasod has been placed on your shoulders, Casimir Fortel—yours, and Prime Nil’s, and Tyler Fisk’s.”
When he said that he glanced to my right. So Fisk was down here too, locked. No sounds coming from his cell. He was either playing silent monk or hadn’t recovered from his stun blast.
“That was a nice succinct monologue there. But you’re no more impressive than the criminals I track down all the time. Just thieves looking to sell their goods to the highest bidder.”
“This is about returning power to the strong!” Jinn-Carpenter snapped. “The Consociation is weak. Too many races pulled under our aegis. Too many inferior cultures like your own by whom we must now be weighed down. That will end when we decode the memories contained in the Sozh Uqasod and deliver the information to the Nivax.”
Nil’s cell door bars groaned. I assumed he was doing his best Hulk impersonation and trying to break free. No dice. “You cannot. If the Nivax can build their own Nor-i-Nanq they will lunge across the frontiers the Consociation has used to hem them in. They will bring war to this arm of the galaxy.”
Jinn-Carpenter nodded curtly. “Yes. War that will clean the vermin from many worlds and keep the systems pure for the survival of the strong species.”
I shivered at the words. War. Nothing like I’d ever imagined or any human alive had seen. Not even the soldiers like Fisk and Santoro, who served in skirmishes across the Consociation, had experienced an interstellar war. I had the fleeting image of Earth turned molten red and gritted my teeth. There had to be something bold and heroic to say to these fiends. In my outrage all I could blurt was, well, as Spock once said, a colorful metaphor.
Jinn-Carpenter blinked a few times but didn’t reply to my challenge. Instead he walked off without another word.
“This isn’t over!” I shouted after him. “We’ll come after you, and you’ll get yours, Carpenter!”
The Tahomjr robot shoved an arm through the gap in the bars. The blow to my chest sent me onto the concrete floor.
“Fortel. Are you injured?” Nil asked.
“Nah . . . I’m . . . good,” I gasped.
His voice was closer and low enough I had to strain to hear it. “Carpenter is indeed under the sway of the Jinn. His scent was not the same as I detected in Wyoming. Rather, it is similar to the strange odor that came from Fisk when he was under their influence.”
More footsteps. Clomping metal ones this time. A second Tahomjr walked up to the first from the direction Carpenter had left. «RETRIEVAL AND JUSTICE HOUNDERS WILL ARRIVE IN ZERO POINT EIGHT NINE QIL.»
The first robot swiveled its head. «AFFIRMATIVE.»
Having no idea what a “qil” was, I didn’t know whether to relax or freak out. “Nil, translate?”
“We have eleven Earth minutes.”
I heaved myself up onto the bunk. Great. Really great. I banged my head against cinder block.
The feds had this pinned to me. And Nil. They were gonna turn us over to the Ghiqasu and the Jinn holding their leash. What was it Carpenter had told me? The Jinn treated art theft as a capital crime.
Bet he got a good laugh, waltzing off with the Sozh Uqasod like that.
“Fortel. Caz.” Nil’s voice echoed off the ceiling, coming from the next cell.
Great. Him. “What do you want?”
“I smell your concern.”
I rolled my eyes. “Do you want the award for most obvious extraterrestrial or do you have a point to make?”
“You must breathe in deep your faith. We are not finished.
This pursuit is not complete.”
“In case you haven’t guessed by my hostile tone of voice, I’m still riled up about the whole you-the-alien-getting-baptized thing. So drop it.” I shifted on the bunk, trying to find the best position to settle into for a good sulk.
“Everything I said to you was the truth, Fortel, but I did not tell you everything. I requested the posting to Earth because of its significance. The Death for All. Do you know our Lexicon spoke of your world long before we discovered it?”
I didn’t answer. He was just playing me, I figured. Like I played everyone else.
“Three thousand of your years ago, the Lexicon’s inscribers told us that there would come a being from Qas who would die so that the stench of our guilt for our crimes would be expunged. It did not say where, only that when the time came, the least would be brought into the fold and the world of the Death for All would be revealed. This is the Call to Return.”
Still no reaction from me. Had to admit, though—the curiosity was killing me.
“Few believed this. Many smelled a tale that gave us false hope. Then the Jinn came and the Consociation—the way to the stars for our race. We took our place as protectors and builders of our new realm. The myths were forgotten, the Lexicon ignored. Yet less than a century ago, frontier scout vessels picked up radio signals from a primitive corner of the galactic arm. Your world.”
“Primitive. You still think that, don’t you?”
“The advancement of your species made in the past hundred years is astonishing, given the slow pace at which the vast majority of sentient races achieved likewise.” Nil didn’t directly answer my question. I let it slide. He was on a roll. “It was then we heard the stories of the Christ. We knew, then, He was the one who had Died for All.”
“The Bible doesn’t say that. There’s no four-armed freaks like you in it.”
“It does say for all people who believe and repent,” Nil said. “If I have a soul such as yours, can you not sniff that I can share in that gift?”
“Let me tell you what I sniff: A world where everything I believed, everything I held dear fizzled out as soon as you guys showed up in orbit. Did you see how small the congregation was at Ally’s church? That’s everywhere. Buildings shuttered. People lost. People dead. People like me, the ones who don’t know what’s true anymore.”
Nil fell silent.
I blew out a breath. “Look, Nil. I guess—I don’t hate you. Don’t even hate your people or aliens in general. Whatever. What I hate is the situation. The result of your showing up. Intentional or not, aliens dropping down from the sky and setting up shop on Earth changed everything. Maybe not the whole getting into your car and going to work, but our outlook on life, our place in the universe. We’re not top of the barrel, us humans. We’re not even in the barrel.”
“I understand. What I did not tell you, Fortel, is that I chose Earth because it was one of the few postings I could apply for. My world exiled me because of Qas. There were those who protected me from dismissal, but because of my—outspokenness, I was sent to the frontiers.”
Oh. Here I thought he was just some high muckety-muck on a crusade. But he was persecuted. Alien bigotry. I remember the jerk qwaddos by the hotel elevator. “That’s it?”
“No.” He hesitated. “I expressed my beliefs most strenuously, and in the course of heated debate I became violent. Fought with and maimed a pair of fellow Hounders. Both survived their wounds, though not without lengthy recovery.”
That took the wind from my sails. I had trouble picturing Nil like that, losing his cool and mak
ing such a massive failure. From everything he’d told and shown me about qwaddos, it was tremendous shame.
It meant he was real. Real as I was. A person. Like a certain apostle guy had told his buddies about a certain centurion a long time ago, who was I to rule out God’s mercy? “Then . . . guess a welcome to the family is in order.”
“Thank you. That is most kind.”
I know, right? “Well, as nice as this all is, we’re still stuck in here.”
“You forget already what I said, Fortel.”
“Right. I know you’re big on scent, Nil, but try using your eyes for once. We’re locked up in FBI holding cells with those monster Tahomjr sentinels holding who knows what kind of energy weapons outside, waiting for your Ghiqasu buddies to come rolling in. They’ll ship us off who knows where and execute us in the messiest of fashions I can imagine. Which is very messy. Meanwhile Carpenter’s got the Sozh; he’s gonna strip the plans for the Big Ring out of it and no one believes our innocence.”
“Faulty assumptions,” Nil snorted. “You’ve missed the scent, again.”
“Really? You tell it to those robots.”
“You despair because you can’t smell them.”
Stupid qwaddo. “Nope. Fresh out of robot sniffers.”
“Not the Tahomjr. Them.”
I was about to pound my head against the cinder block again when the robot guard outside my cell cranked its head 180 degrees left. A steady hum made my eardrums flutter. The robot’s head lit up, a red-orange from within. You know, just like when you were a kid and shone a flashlight against your finger to see it glow. It had a second to raise the sleek striker-type weapon where a left hand would be on a human before the head exploded in sparks.
I swore and ducked my head. Bits of melted plastic and metal rained onto the floor, still steaming. You could hear them sizzle like bacon right out of the microwave. Okay, that made me realize how hungry I was.
The second Tahomjr stomped down the hall, weapon arm raised. Its voice boomed loud in the corridor, reverberating off the concrete: «YOUR PRESENCE HERE IS UNAUTHORIZED. DISCHARGE OF A SMITH & WESSON MARK II SIDEWINDER LASER PULSE PROJECTOR IS PROHIBITED. SURRENDER—»
