“It’s preposterous,” Ludendorff said, “but I actually miss you people. I can’t think of anything more ironic.”
“What’s going on with Galyan?” Maddox asked.
“Andros is separating all the Adok-Builder extras,” Meta said.
“They were there where I said?”
Meta nodded.
“Yes,” Maddox said quietly but intensely.
“What happened on the second planet?” Ludendorff asked.
Maddox snorted. “Give me a break. I’m in the brig aboard my own starship. The most notorious trickster in Human Space appears to be running the show. My own wife is sitting with him. No. I’m going to wait until I have weapons and my command back before providing information.”
“You always were a stubborn rule-breaker,” Ludendorff said.
Maddox said nothing.
“Oh, very well,” Ludendorff said, jumping up, throwing his hands into the air. “I admit I’ve had my share of troubles since seeing you last. Then, when I learned where you’d gone—”
“How did you learn that?” Maddox asked suspiciously.
Ludendorff looked up at the ceiling. “This is the thanks I get for saving everything. I have no idea why I miss this den of lions.”
“Strange,” Maddox said. “I never thought of you as a Daniel.”
“Enough,” Ludendorff said, plopping back into the chair. “Let’s get down to it. I went to Brahma, lived with Dana for a time in order to prove my love for her, when secret policemen started tracking me. Do you know anything about that?”
“Not a thing,” Maddox said.
“There’s a new day dawning in the Commonwealth. The center for the new bigotry is Star Watch. ‘Humans Only’ is the new watchword. That means pure humans, pure Homo sapiens man. You’re not included in that little list and neither am I.”
“That didn’t take long,” Maddox said. “You’ve completely lost me.”
“Have I? Have I indeed? Your own precious Intelligence branch has splintered into three sections. The Political Division is the worst. They’re the ones who sent the hitmen after me.”
Maddox ingested that, wondering. “Did the hitmen happen to be Bosks?”
“How did you know?”
Maddox waved that aside. “Tell me the rest. I’m particularly interested how you knew to come here. The coincidence is too much.”
“No, it isn’t,” Ludendorff said. “You forget who you’re talking to. I’m the smartest man in the galaxy. No one can outwit me for long. Does the name Nostradamus mean anything to you?”
Maddox laughed sourly.
Ludendorff looked away, shaking his head. “You called them the Liss. How much do you know about them?”
“Bosk hitmen working for Star Watch Intelligence, Political Division, tried to kill you. You do realize there was no Political Division when Victory left Earth?”
“Of course I realize that,” Ludendorff said. “You’ve been out here in a temporal distortion. Don’t think Nostradamus did that without reason.”
“Professor, how do you—”
“All right, all right, I’ll tell you the rest. The Bosks stalked me. They failed their first strike, so I started stalking them. I killed two. Then, I began studying the news. I saw the signs before they put me on a wanted list. I kissed Dana goodbye, told her I couldn’t risk her life. She could come with me—” The professor shrugged. “She stayed on Brahma. I set a trap for the next hit squad and slaughtered the lot of them. They said I was a mass murderer after that. Luckily, I saved the leader and interrogated him Ludendorff style. He sang loud and long, telling me more than he should have. I thought about that for a long time. I finally realized what kind of genius I was up against: Nostradamus. He was feeding me information even as I was killing his pawns. I realized then I had to find you.
“It took me a year to find out your latest assignment. I had to kill again to reach the deep-space hauler. More PD hitmen tried to murder me, but I fixed them. Afterward, I rushed here as fast as possible, remembering the old stories about the Liss, Erills and Ur-Builders.”
Heat flooded Maddox’s face. “Ur-Builders is the name for the dead aliens that built the City of Pyramids on Estar?”
From where he sat, Ludendorff clapped his hands sarcastically. “What a brilliant deduction, my boy. Where would you be without me?”
“Why didn’t you tell us about the Ur-Builders last mission?”
“For one thing, I was in a stasis tube last time Victory was here. I suspect the temporal distortions weren’t as strong. So, none of you must have noticed anything amiss, time-wise. Afterward, there was no point in talking about Ur-Builders, as you’d royally pissed me off.”
“I understand completely,” Maddox said, as he stared at Ludendorff.
“That won’t work this time,” the professor said. “I’m immune to your tricks now. I’ve healed inside. Talking to Dana, living with her again, it was what I needed. My heart is fully functional now. I’m ready to hunt and love to my full capacity.”
Meta rolled her eyes.
Maddox merely nodded.
“You saw hieroglyphics in the pyramid corridors?” asked Ludendorff.
“I recognized them, just like other Builder hieroglyphs we’ve seen in the past in space.”
Ludendorff adjusted the gold chain around his neck as he chewed on his lower lip. “Fine, fine, I suppose I can tell you. Valerie won’t do as I say until she gets your go-ahead. You’ll want to know why I’m making such a radical suggestion. Can’t say I blame you…”
The professor took a deep breath before he said, “The Ur-Builders in this case do not mean the original Builders or the ones who became the Builders. In this instance, Ur-Builders mean the primitive Builders, the ones who couldn’t get past their mortality and flesh.”
“But they’re still related to the…to the stellar Builders?” Maddox asked.
“It’s just Builders,” Ludendorff said. “And the answer is yes, quite related. Where to begin? We don’t have much time while we’re here. I know how to explain it. The Ur-Builders were primitive in the sense of mortality and flesh, not in intelligence. They built amazing machines that could do incredible things. Unlike the real Builders, the cyborg and robot Builders, the Ur-branch had the hubris of humans. If they could conceive of an idea, they would attempt it. Now, you’ve met the Erills. They’re spiritual entities like the Ska. There’s a reason for that. The Ur-Builders knew the Nameless Ones in their Destroyers would be back. Well, if the Nameless Ones had spiritual entities, why shouldn’t their side have some as well? They decided to find killer spiritual entities to slay the Ska. What they got were the Erills.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Wish I were,” Ludendorff said. “But no…the Ur-Builders had their Ska, now they wanted their Swarm creatures.”
“The Liss?” guessed Maddox.
Ludendorff pointed at him and snapped his fingers.
“The Ur-Builders created the Liss?” asked Maddox.
“Genetically manipulated Swarm and other bug creatures into the Liss,” Ludendorff said. “They did it long ago. It doesn’t seem that long ago to them, of course, because the rest of the universe flew by in years as they sat in the temporal distortions and screwed around with reality.”
“Nostradamus knows about the Erills?”
“You’re here,” Ludendorff said. “This Nostradamus is supposed to be the ultimate genius in prediction. He would probably have won too, except for me. I’m too wild and wooly for others to successfully predict.”
“I don’t get why Nostradamus would send me here to learn about Galyan and what happened to Captain Becker,” Maddox said.
“Who’s Becker again?”
“You know very well who he is,” Maddox said. “Meta recorded my debriefing.”
Ludendorff didn’t comment.
“What I want to know is this,” Maddox said a moment later. “Why did Nostradamus send me here through Fletcher?”
“
I can answer that with ease, my boy. Nostradamus sent you here to get you out of the way and to give the Erills a message.”
“The first is easy to understand,” Maddox said. “How do you know the second?”
“It’s elementary. While the Erills were regaling you with tales about the Liss, they learned everything Nostradamus needed them to know from you.”
“How do you know that to be the case?”
“It’s a suspicion,” Ludendorff admitted.
“I see,” Maddox said. “Well, supposing that happened, how would that help Nostradamus?”
“He obviously wants what’s in the pyramids. He also needed time to make his moves in Star Watch without your pestering interference. The last is a guess on my part. I do happen to know how stubborn you can be, and how lucky, too. Did you chance upon Bosks while back home?”
“We did,” Meta said.
Ludendorff crossed his arms, sitting smugly. “There you have it. All the riddles solved in a trice.”
“Not quite,” Maddox said. “Who exactly is Nostradamus?”
“Clearly, a Liss entity or creation of some kind,” Ludendorff said. “I’ll know more once you tell me the fine details about Becker.”
Maddox sat there, thinking, analyzing— “I’m going to shower, shave and get something to eat. You can join me afterward in the cafeteria if you like.”
“Captain, before you do that—”
“Save it, Professor.”
“What I have to say means the destruction or salvation of the galaxy.”
“Save it for dessert,” Maddox said. “I need time to collect my thoughts. Then I’ll hear your bombshell, and I can tell you more about Becker.”
-21-
“There’s something I don’t understand in all this,” Maddox said.
Ludendorff, Meta, Riker and Maddox sat around a cafeteria table. They’d eaten dinner, had dessert and coffee and exchanged the rest of their stories.
Ludendorff was staring off into space, perhaps thinking about some of the things he’d just learned.
“Professor,” Maddox said.
“Oh, sorry, my boy,” Ludendorff said. “I was wondering. Why did the Erills show you so much about Josef Becker? It’s troubling.”
“Oh?” said Maddox.
Ludendorff waved that aside. “You said something bothered you?”
“Your showing up when you did,” Maddox said. “Frankly, it’s suspicious.”
“You must mean my appearing while you were on the planet?”
“Bingo,” Maddox said.
Ludendorff shrugged. “It’s not as surprising as you might conceive. Time moves slowly here. Times moves faster outside the distortion.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“The universe is moving faster outside the temporal bubble of the Erill System,” Ludendorff said. “If I spent many months getting here, it shouldn’t be a surprise I arrived while you were on the planet. In my terms, you spent a long time on the planet.”
“So?”
“I get it,” Riker said.
Maddox shot an annoyed glance at Riker before staring at Ludendorff. “It feels as if you timed your arrival.”
“Is that a bad pun?” asked Ludendorff.
“I don’t do puns.”
“For a man with such an agile mind,” Ludendorff said, “you lack a real sense of humor. But that’s beside the point. The key now is end-running Nostradamus. We do that by nuking or dropping antimatter hell-burners on the City of Pyramids. That eliminates its high technology from the equation.”
“You tried having Valerie do that while I was locked up,” Maddox said.
“And that has aroused your suspicions, I realize. I still counsel an immediate bombing of the pyramids. Nostradamus or his allies may already be on their way here. We must act fast, always remembering time moves slower for us in the Erill System.”
“Why bomb the city?”
“For the most obvious reason,” Ludendorff said. “Nostradamus wants it.”
“But you’ve suggested this Nostradamus can predict our actions,” Maddox said.
“Remember your Jarnevon story? That’s what Nostradamus promised Becker. Is it actually true, though?”
Maddox drummed his right-hand fingers on the table. “If you’re right—if we’re right—about Nostradamus, he can accurately predict our future actions.”
“I’m inclined to think you’re right about that, given Nostradamus’s rapid successes in altering Star Watch. However, now that we know his ability, we can forestall him by destroying the ancient Ur-Builder technology.”
Maddox drummed his fingers again. “What if destroying the pyramids unleashes the Erills into the universe.”
“How would it do that?” asked Ludendorff.
“Maybe destroying the pyramids will terminate the temporal distortion. Maybe there’s some kind of spiritual-entity confinement field surrounding Estar, generated inside the pyramids. Whatever the case, Nostradamus correctly knew you would want to destroy Ur-Builder tech. In fact, that’s what he’s counting on. That’s why his Bosk hitmen were so ineffective against you. That’s why he let me leave on Victory. For some reason, Erills running loose in the universe helps him immensely.”
Ludendorff scowled as he considered the possibility. “If that’s true…he would know you would stop me. Thus, Nostradamus would believe it safe to have me here. In other words, your argument is false and the Erills will remain on Estar no matter what. That means by destroying the pyramids as I suggest—the high technology in them—we’re thwarting Nostradamus’s ultimate plan.”
Maddox cracked his fingers, smiling grimly. “Circles, we’re running around in mental, verbal circles. Nostradamus has us second-guessing everything. Maybe that’s his game. Truthfully, we don’t have enough facts one way or another. I, for one, don’t see how this ancient Liss creature has such fantastic predictive capabilities. It’s likely we’re giving him far too much credit.”
“Normally, I would agree, my boy. But the changes to Star Watch shows us that someone incredibly cunning is manipulating people with supreme ease. I don’t believe that someone is Lord High Admiral Fletcher. The number of Bosks running free also points to Nostradamus. There’s a third point to consider. The Erills Problem is an order of magnitude or two more deadly. We can’t afford to guess wrong with them. If Nostradamus is coming in force, he could land with Bosks to absorb the spiritual creatures, fly away, and release them elsewhere. If I’ve guessed wrong and we nuke the city, destroying a spiritual-entity field, the Erills flood into the universe on their own.”
“Damned if we do and damned if we don’t,” Maddox said.
“Not quite,” Ludendorff said. “We just have to make the correct guess. Hmm… This is difficult. I suggest we go with my instincts, as mine is by far the superior intellect. My thoughts would be ten times harder to predict, as who else has the ability to think so highly like me?”
Meta shook her head. “You forget, Professor. My husband has constantly bested you. He is the di-far. His mind is trickier. His thoughts are harder to predict.”
“Bah!” Ludendorff said. “Di-far, di-far. It’s a ludicrous concept in the first place. I stand by what I said.”
“Meta’s right,” Maddox said. “We don’t launch any missiles.”
“We’re doomed then,” Ludendorff said.
“No,” Maddox replied. “We’ve made a choice. Now, we have to cover the other possibility. We need to make sure Nostradamus or his allies can’t reach Estar. If I’m right, spaceships have to land on the planet. The billions of lurker missiles suggest I’m right because the Builders who put the missiles there were trying to prevent anyone from landing.”
“So…?”
Maddox squinted thoughtfully before looking up. “I know. I’ll call the Emperor and convince him about the possibilities.”
“You mean tell him about Nostradamus and the Ur-Builders?” Ludendorff asked.
Maddox nodded.
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“No, my boy, that’s a bad idea. One mustn’t tempt New Men too much. It’s possible he doesn’t know the extent of the high technology hidden in the pyramids.”
“But if Nostradamus lands on Ester…” Maddox said.
“Perhaps we’ll have to guard it ourselves.”
“No!” Maddox said. “We have to attack, upsetting Nostradamus and his allies.”
“How do you upset someone who knows what you’re going to do before you do?” Ludendorff asked.
“We don’t know that’s the case. We know the Erills gave us information that leads to such a conclusion. Maybe that’s why Nostradamus wanted me to come here.”
“Dubious,” Ludendorff said. “Does Nostradamus know then about the Chrono Viewer?”
Maddox pointed at the professor. “If Nostradamus knows about the Viewer, how would he have learned? His knowing would suggest he’s already landed on Estar, reaching here and leaving before we did.”
“That would destroy all our theories. No, I reject the possibility. It is much more likely he knew long ago. As a creature of the Ur-Builders, I deem that the case.”
“You’re probably right,” Maddox said.
“I am right,” Ludendorff said. “Captain, it is imperative that we figure out exactly who or what Nostradamus is. Since you won’t destroy the City of Pyramids, confronting Nostradamus should be our first priority. And since you have a Long-Range Builder comm device, I suggest you hold off on contacting the Emperor. Let’s see if we can solve this on our own, without bringing in the New Men.”
Maddox jumped to his feet.
The others hurriedly did likewise.
“What is it, my boy?” Ludendorff asked.
“Galyan,” Maddox said. “What did he see aboard the Lolis II? Knowing could give us greater insight into Nostradamus. Andros has the needed computer parts. Let’s go see him.”
-22-
Galyan waited deep inside the Adok-Builder AI computer system. He could not sense anything outside of himself. He’d survived on low power for time without end. That’s how it seemed to him. With no other time reference, he thought at computer speed, and thus time flew by.
The Lost Intelligence (Lost Starship Series Book 12) Page 14
