“The Outsiders do not — cannot — think as we do. They require a model of alien thought, as a translator.”
She pulled on her lip. “An electronic slave?”
“Hardly. They know how to restrict my… growth… to keep me human. They want to keep a copy of my mind as a translator.”
Bruno's mind, loose in any computer architecture, would mutate and change rapidly, turning into something inhuman. His reactions to extended Linkage proved that. But did the Outsiders know that much about how a human mind operated?
“There is more, Captain Faulk,” interjected the puppeteer.
She nodded at him to continue.
“Our hosts can build Mr. Takagama a fresh biological body. They can use what they learned when you were first taken on board, along with the autodocs on Dolittle.” The weaving heads peered at Carol. “And then they can download his mind into it.”
“Impossible,” she scoffed.
Diplomat pawed delicately at the turf beneath his hooves. “You seem to use that word often, Captain Faulk.”
Wasn't hyperspace impossible? Or how about a galactic war between creatures of flame and ice? She was certain that, even now, she was not being told even a fraction of what was truly at stake.
“Carol,” Bruno's voice broke in. “Please listen. Please.”
“If this is another trick,” she reminded Diplomat almost gently, “I will find a way to get around these force-shields and wring your necks — one at a time.”
The weaving heads stopped. “You would do this? Truly, Captain Faulk?”
“If you tell the truth,” she clipped, “you have nothing to fear, do you?”
The puppeteer considered her statement. “With your kind, there is always something to fear.”
Carol held back a smile. “Keep that in mind.”
A head cocked. “As you say, Captain Faulk. Though you do not improve your position with threats. But it is true that the Outsiders will download Mr. Takagama's stored mind into a rebuilt body. It would be most difficult under normal circumstances, but so much of Mr. Takagama's mind was…”
“Mostly circuitry,” added Bruno's voice helpfully.
“Yes, electronic… so that the task would be much easier.”
“What is the catch?” Carol asked. “I doubt that even aliens do favors out of the goodness of their hearts.”
The puppeteer froze for a moment, then both heads leaped up and faced one another again.
“Wonderful phrase,” the three-legged alien sang.
“The catch,” reminded Carol.
“It is unlikely that you will be returned to human space soon. The Outsiders do not want extensive information regarding them distributed, until they are known by a new species.”
Carol finally did laugh. “Diplomat, I don't know anything about the Outsiders. And I just witnessed a battle between two factions.”
“Nonetheless.” Again, the little alien pawed the lawn in impatience. “The Outsiders require that you and the… reconstituted Mr. Takagama stay out of human space, until such time as the Outsiders make themselves known to your race.”
“Easy to do,” Carol pointed out to the puppeteer. “Our ship is useless. Do you intend to strand us somewhere?”
The puppeteer moved from hoof to hoof lightly. “Not at all, Captain Faulk. You and Mr. Takagama would assist me in my dealings with alien races.” The eyes on different heads held hers. “You seem relatively unfrightened of new things, and I find your insights interesting. You will make useful companions and coworkers.”
“And once humans make contact with Outsiders or puppeteers?”
Diplomat's right head wobbled up and down loosely. “You would of course be returned to human space.”
Yeah, right, Carol thought to herself. But what choice did she have, really? There was only one more thing…
“Bruno,” she called.
“I hear you, Carol. Will you agree to Diplomat's terms?”
“If you are with me, Tacky, yes. But — even if they can do all they promise — how do I know it is you?”
The voice of Bruno Takagama sighed. “Carol, I can't answer that question. Are you the same person when you wake up as you were when you fell asleep? And can you prove it?”
“This is a little different — ” But the disembodied voice cut her short.
“Not at all. A great deal of my mind was stored electronic data; you know that. And did you not think it was me after the EMP fried my brain?”
The Bruno-voice had a point, but still…
“Wait a minute,” she argued. “You only have Bruno's memories up until he left for the Zealot ship.”
“True enough,” replied the voice. “But again: You were prepared to take care of me after the EMP blast, even had I been seriously brain damaged, right?”
She nodded. “Yes,” she added, not knowing if Bruno's mind could see her.
“How is this all that different?”
She could not disagree with the voice's point. Was she doing the right thing? She was Finagle only knew how far away from Earth or Wunderland. What could she do? And she might learn something, if the little alien was not treacherous.
Carol thought about a completely foreign set of stars and planets, strange aliens and odder adventures. Things no human had ever seen. And wouldn't see, if Diplomat had its way, for some time yet.
But she would. And — maybe — she would do so with Bruno by her side.
“Yes,” Carol said simply. “I accept.”
She could hear Bruno's voice sigh.
“Excellent,” replied Diplomat.
Carol held out a hand. It couldn't have all been for nothing. “There is one more thing, Diplomat.”
“What is it, Captain Faulk?”
Carol's eyes jogged back and forth, trying to hold the gaze of the two weaving heads. “We can't leave humanity to be kzin bait.”
“We will not obliterate the kzinti,” Diplomat sang firmly. “They are aggressive, but may someday be useful. You know this, surely.”
“Fine,” Carol replied. “But they have too much of a technological edge. How can we humans hold our own long enough to learn to live with the ratcats?”
The two snake-heads of the puppeteer again flipped up and stared one another in the eyes. “Captain Faulk, I have an excellent idea regarding that concern of yours.”
“Do tell,” Carol drawled. She would have to play this one carefully. Maybe it was possible to salvage something from this debacle, after all.
Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast, Carol thought to herself. The phrase did, she decided, have a certain ring to it. A good antidote for her becoming too dogmatic, he had told her. Carol had always wondered where Bruno had dug up that phrase.
Perhaps she could ask him soon. In the flesh.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
In the scented meditation chamber the Dissonants had constructed for him, Diplomat sat with folded legs before a holoscreen.
The image showed a grassy sward, beautifully crimson red with lolaloo foliage, simply made for a long, hard gallop. It was the estate that the Hindmost had promised Diplomat upon his retirement.
He whistled a sad melody, thinking of the work before him. A terrifying trip to the holiest of places for the Outsiders, the region where both Radiant and Outsider were born…
If only another puppeteer were present, even Guardian.
At least Diplomat would have some help. These humans were so unlike most of the Pak variants produced by the Dissonants. The titanic ring of a world that the Outsiders had constructed so long ago was home to many diverse humanoid species — all with different outlooks, different skills. Art, technology, philosophy — to the Dissonant Outsiders, it was all trade goods, and could be used as tender for information across an entire galaxy.
Perhaps even beyond.
And — perhaps — the Outsiders kept Diplomat's people in zoos, as well. It was impossible to know.
A low tone fi
lled the chamber with music. Diplomat fluted an acknowledgment.
“The re-creation of the Bruno-human has begun,” sang the Outsider puppeteer translation program. “We have learned much about the physiology of this variant species.”
The little puppeteer shook his right head up and down twice — the gesture the humans called 'nodding'. It was an agreement or acceptance signal between them, one he knew he should learn.
“They have agreed to aid us?” persisted the synthesized voice.
“Of course,” Diplomat sang in reply. “The one named Carol had no choice.”
“Why? Her coding partner…”
“… mate…” Diplomat whistled in correction.
“… mate, then, was enough of a impetus?”
“Indeed. Also, the promise of help for her species.”
The Outsider voice sounded a bit confused. “We would have done that in any event. The hominids are special interests of ours, and this species has even more generality than the other variant forms under study.”
“They do not know that,” Diplomat reminded his host.
Still, it was good that the Dissonants had decided to aid the humans.
The Outsiders said nothing for a time. Diplomat knew from his dealings with the coldlife traders that they would speak when ready, and not before.
“We were not,” stated the Outsider program, “responsible for these Pak variants, despite our intense interest in them. They are escaped ferals. There is no violation of Treaty or Pact.”
“I gathered as much.” Were the Outsiders just as driven by self-justification as a puppeteer? Even with circulatory fluid a few degrees above Absolute Zero? Diplomat's necks flipped up and looked at one another in a chuckle.
The synthesized voice became stern. “A new Pact must be drawn, at the Oracle.”
Diplomat ran a forked tongue over lips. The Outsiders needed to travel to a great cosmic string, and the colony of Radiants that kept watch over it. There, they would plead the case for another treaty between Zealot and Dissonant.
“Have I — and the humans — not agreed to help?”
Diplomat was not surprised at the humans' offer; they were grateful. The Outsiders were to provide a new balance of power against the kzin, by providing human space — seemingly by accident — with access to primitive hyperdrive capacity. Which would not incidentally halt the humans from using large-scale reaction drives in deep space. That would please the uncommitted Outsider factions.
“They will be useful to our common goals, then?”
Diplomat nodded again. “They are marvelously complex, and well worth preserving from the kzin and the Zealots.” He thought a moment, then offered the highest praise he could. “I grow less frightened of them with each watch.”
Though he always kept force-shields ready, of course.
“It is good,” responded the idealized puppeteer voice. “You have a duty to perform, as do the humans. Will you guide them?”
“Of course.” Diplomat tried to laugh in the human fashion. The choking gurgles he emitted did not sound humorous, but like an animal in pain. Were all human utterances devoid of a sense of tone and pitch?
He considered duty. Was it so very different for Outsider and puppeteer, kzinti and human? His left mouth snaked into the ornately carved box on the low platform. He picked up the Sigil of the Hindmost. Guardian had left it for him before she died fighting the Zealots.
“Perhaps this thing called duty is common to all thinking beings,” Diplomat hummed meditatively.
“One is a portion of the All, you have tried to tell me before. Does not one reflect the other?” asked the Outsider translator program.
“Perhaps,” Diplomat replied, and hung the medallion around his own left neck. It felt warm there.
He had caught threads of thought from the Outsiders, slippery contemplations that were truly unsettling. To them, kzin and primates and the Herd were all the same, finally — warmlife. To Outsiders, the true basis of all things was, well, objects — dusty plasmas and topological fractures of space-time, names like Radiants and Those Who Pass. Those were more important than the fleeting forms of sun-baked creatures.
He shivered. Duty. Perhaps such an idea could bind the many factions of warmlife together. He suspected that they would need it, for what lay ahead. Strangeness awaited. Forces that, worse than merely killing, could make a being irrelevant, meaningless.
Duty. He began reviewing data for the jump they would soon make. Across the yawning geometries of hyperspace, to the ancient menace called the Oracle.
PRISONER OF WAR
Paul Chafe
The kzin ship dropped out of hyperdrive and drifted. Jupiter's bulk stood between Earth and the telltale spoor of her re-emergence. Course and speed had been carefully calculated to swing through the Solar system with no maneuvering. All nonessential systems had been shut down. Her crew hoped that any casual observer would take them for a chunk of fast-moving cometary debris.
It was already too late for that.
A couple of hours later a civilian observation station in the Belt picked up an anomalous radiation burst. It corresponded to a hyperspace emergence but it was outside the arrival zones designated for human ships. Powerful scanners swept the space around Jupiter. More hours passed before their echoes highlighted perhaps a thousand likely objects. Only two had been in the emergence zone, only one had a course that would fly past Earth. The analysts took their time verifying the contact. It didn't matter: war in space is slow.
Forty hours after the kzin's arrival the destroyer Excalibur abandoned her Belt patrol and changed course. Her new orbit swept past Earth in a slow, looping curve. Then she too shut down her systems and drifted. When the kzinti caught up they would be well past the orbit of Mars, too far inside Sol's gravity well to use their hyperdrive.
Commander Mace was not happy about her orders. They were to intercept a 'single kzinti ship, presumed scout'. When UNSN Command 'presumed' something it meant they were guessing. As a line officer Elizabeth Mace had little respect for the speculations of staffers whose necks weren't on the line with hers. The intruder could be an unkzinned launch platform crammed with conversion bombs or it could be a battlecruiser. It might even be a scoutship after all. UNSN Command didn't know, and it wanted Excalibur to find out for them. All she could do was plot her intercept deep enough into the singularity to prevent the kzin from jumping out when she sprang her trap, but not so deep that Excalibur couldn't back away from a losing battle. Humans and kzinti were not again at war, yet, but the peace was continually interrupted by what the flatlander holocasters called 'minor skirmishes'. Minor to them perhaps, but the loss of a warship involved one hundred percent fatalities ninety nine percent of the time, regardless of the size of the battle. Elizabeth didn't want to lose Excalibur to some analyst's error. She sighed and tried to put the worry out of her mind. It would be another two months before she would have her answer.
Aboard the scoutship Silent Prowler Chraz-Captain extended and retracted his claws. The cramped conditions and deadening watch-on/watch-off routine were barely tolerable at the best of times. With life-support systems running at minimum and an extra body consuming precious space and atmosphere his nerves were stretched to the extreme. That the extra body was a senior officer did nothing to improve the situation. Now that they were at the most delicate and dangerous point of their mission his passive sensors were picking up a ship on a nearly intercepting course. It too was drifting, power off. Worse yet its flight path would put it behind him in another two hours, cutting off his retreat. It could be a derelict, but that was asking too much of coincidence. It was even less likely to be another kzin reconnaissance ship. The vegetable chewers had detected them and laid a subtle trap.
He vented his pent-up frustration in a scream, slammed his fist down on the alarm button and shouted into the intercom, “Battle stations! Chief Engineer, come to full power.” Simultaneously he grabbed his battle armor and began to put it on. It took him le
ss than thirty seconds to don the cumbersome gear and pressurize it. Before he was finished Advanced Sensor Operator and Sraowl-Navigator had bounded into the control room and started scrambling into their own suits. Already the missile status indicators were glowing red, indicating Senior Gunner was at his post. No more than forty-five seconds elapsed before Sraowl-Navigator reported, “Battle stations established, sir, power and drive coming on line, sensors and weapons systems ready.”
Chraz-Captain growled in approval, his hands busy entering targeting and course commands. His crew were second to none. Their performance could not fail to impress the senior officer. After weeks of tense boredom it was almost a relief to see combat. He keyed the intercom again. “The monkeys have set a snare for us. We will show them what it means to catch a kzin!”
“They're powering up,” warned the ensign at the sensor console. Commander Mace had no need to sound the alarm. Her crew had been waiting on full alert standby for six hours now. Knowing their target's course and speed, Excalibur had found the enemy three days previously through their optical telescope. To her infinite relief it had turned out be a scoutship after all, Prowler class, reconnaissance variant. Now its image floated serenely on the bridge display screen, its absorptive hull coating only slightly lighter than the ultimate black surrounding it. A stylized twin glowed red on her combat console. Excalibur had gone to battle stations long before her wide-angle sensors had given the slightest hint of the kzin's presence. It was a safe bet that the scoutship would have instruments as good or better than theirs, but Excalibur had the advantage of knowing their target's courseline.
She smiled a little at that thought. Detection technology had become amazingly sophisticated, but since the time of sail nothing beat a trained eye and a telescope — you just had to know where to look. She had an antique brass naval telescope hanging on the wall of her cabin and beside it an iron sextant. Thus she maintained her link with the generations of mariners who had sailed Earth's oceans. She also wore a skull-and-crossbones earring in defiance of UNSN regulation. Elizabeth Mace was a Belter, and Belters were prone to identify with outlaws in general and pirates in particular.
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