The Prometheus Project

by Steve White

  I remember little of that first trip through an unearthly city. There was too much to take in, and it was too hard to grasp—the mind kept sliding off the strange angles and proportions of an utterly alien architectural tradition. Presently a colossal structure loomed up ahead.

  "It has to be big," Novak answered our unspoken question. "The Akavahn has to deal with various races, some of which are larger than the Delkasu."

  "Like us," someone put in.

  "Also some that are larger still. It's considered bad form to make anybody stoop."

  We passed through an entrance hall that could have held a fair-sized spacecraft and entered a proportionately scaled atrium. At least that was what it looked like to me, for its lofty ceiling held a skylight, and the walls were lined with potted plants resembling ferns. By this time, I was sufficiently immunized to the impact of strange architecture to be able to concentrate on the beings that thronged it.

  The formal dress of Selangava was a good deal more colorful and less practical than the utilitarian garments we were used to seeing on the Delkasu at Farside Station: long tunics and sleeveless robes, whose intricate patterns and combinations didn't always conform to human ideas of color coordination. It was easy to spot the Delkasu from Khemava, for their sartorial tradition was a lot more understated, with simpler lines and a lot of white, although there were some elaborate headdresses, according to a strict hierarchy of rank. (I recalled that this was a "conquest state," overrun by two waves of Delkasu in succession, and class-conscious as such states tend to be.) The outfits were also a little skimpy-looking; their wearers probably felt chilly there.

  But most of my attention was on the beings that accompanied those latter Delkasu. All at once, I understood why this building had to be built to accommodate all shapes and sizes.

  I'd learned in training that toolmaking races were practically all bilaterally symmetrical, and mostly bipedal, and why. I'd also learned that there were certain exceptions. In particular, on worlds whose surfaces were largely dry land, with landlocked seas rather than oceans, life emerged from the water earlier and often retained more than four limbs—six or occasionally eight and very occasionally more. When beings like that went into the tool-using business, they generally ended up with a general configuration not unlike the centaurs of myth.

  That was what I found myself looking at now.

  The four-legged body was larger than that of a horse, and gracile—I knew enough by then to recognize a denizen of a world with relatively low-gravity. Likewise, the upright torso rising from the front like a horse's neck, was deep-chested, suggesting a thinner atmosphere than that of Earth or Antyova II. (No surprise; low gravity, low percentages of surface water, and thin air generally went together, although there were of course exceptions.) The skin was cream-colored, although there were individual variations; at first I thought it was covered with very short, fine fur, but it was really a suedelike surface not unlike chamois. Practically all of it was on view, for their clothing consisted only of a kind of harness. The two long, slender arms ended in hands with six incongruously blunt fingers in two mutually opposable groups of three each. The head, atop a graceful neck, had dark eyes even huger than those of the Delkasu in a visage of sheeplike length, although it naturally didn't really resemble the face of any of Earth's animals. . . .

  "Good day."

  I turned abruptly, and found myself looking up into one of those long, huge-eyed, somehow melancholy faces.

  Language was far more of a barrier between species with differing vocal equipment than it had even been among the various nations and races of Earth. We had been issued earpieces which picked up any nearby voice speaking the Delkasu common tongue—not the only Delkasu language, by any means, but the lingua franca of the well educated—and translated it into Americanese in our ears. It could even handle variant dialects of that common tongue, like the one that had evolved in Khemava. I saw that the centauroid torso in front of me wore a pendant with a small speaker. Evidently the natives of Khemava were expected to transform their speech into that of the dominant Delkasu newcomers. It was that artificially generated speech, issuing from the pendant, that my earpiece had picked up—mine and Chloe's, for she had been standing beside me and had also turned to meet those enormous opaque eyes.

  "Good day," she replied, speaking slowly and distinctly in the knowledge that her words would be filtered through the miniature computers no human of her generation and mine would ever really get used to. We also had pendants that would provide a translation of our speech for the benefit of the Delkasu. "Am I correct in assuming you have some means of rendering the Delkasu speech my pendant is generating into your own language?"

  "That is not necessary." The translators were very sophisticated. Two layers of them could even reproduce nuance—and there was a definite but somewhat wry smile in the voice that sounded in my ear. "I can understand the Delkasu common language, even though my race cannot produce its sounds in a satisfactory way. It is, you see, a required element in our educational system."

  "Oh." Chloe recovered quickly. It was, I reflected, natural that she was taking the lead in this conversation. This particular race might be new to her, but she had years of experience at dealing with aliens. I was just trying not to gawk—without success, I was glumly certain. One thing, at least, was helping me regain my mental equilibrium. The translator programs factored gender into their synthetic production of voices, and this one sounded male. So I was able to think of the being as "he" rather than "it."

  "Please excuse us for staring," Chloe continued, "but you are the first Ekhemar we have ever met."

  "Ekhemar?" The note of bitter amusement I had detected before was back in force. "Yes, that is what you must call me, and my race the Ekhemasu. Actually, those are not our terms. Our own word for ourselves, in our own language, is—" My ears, unaided by the earpiece, heard an alien sound in which a syllable resembling khem had a ghostly existence. The earpiece was silent.

  "You see?" he continued. "The Delkasu gave our planetary system a name based on our own word for it, then imposed their naming conventions. Those conventions are the only ones that their own computer systems recognize, and therefore the only ones that exist. So by all means call us the 'Ekhemasu.' And my personal name—we have at least been allowed to retain a version of those—is Khorat." That, at least, was the sound that came through the earpiece. It wasn't exactly what my ears heard him say—that was longer, and had at least one syllable that was like nothing a human throat would form. But at least the Delkasu computer systems would accept it.

  Chloe gave him our names in return. The stuff we'd been given, having been programmed for English, could handle them.

  "A pleasure." Khorat reached into a pouch of his harness with one of his peculiar hands. "It is a custom among us to present gifts to new acquaintances. Please accept these." He held out two tiny items of jewelry, one to each of us. They were shaped like four-pointed stars, of a metal that looked like it could have been an alloy of copper and gold, with a clip behind and a red stone in the center.

  "Uh, we have nothing to offer in return," I managed.

  "One would hardly expect you to. The custom is ours, not yours. Please accept these nonetheless. I insist."

  "Well . . . thank you." I took the trinket. We humans were wearing what would have been appropriate attire for a similar social function in our own culture. Our hosts' etiquette required it, and even if they would have been none the wiser if we'd worn bib overalls, it made us feel right. I attached the clip to my lapel.

  "Yes, thank you," Chloe echoed.

  "Please don't mention it." Khorat glanced across the room. One of the Delkasu from Khemava gave a gesture whose peremptoriness transcended race and culture. "I must go."

  "Perhaps we'll meet again," said Chloe.

  The alien paused and met our eyes. That long, big-eyed visage wore what I could have sworn was an enigmatic expression. I told myself it probably meant no more than the look of lugubrio
us mournfulness a basset hound wears even when he's feeling positively giddy. And yet . . .

  "I would not be surprised at all if we did," Khorat said slowly. Then he was gone, leaving me and Chloe exchanging puzzled looks.

  Chapter Seven

  "Yep," stated Dan Buckley, standing up from the bench. "It's a homing device."

  "You're sure?" Chloe demanded, looking past my shoulder.

  "No question." Dan turned to the Section Three scientist with whom he'd been paired since leaving the Solar System—and his piloting duties—behind. "Tell 'em, Izzy."

  Israel Berman, Ph.D., also stood up, and ran a hand through his prematurely thinning hair. (I've always suspected that excessive brain activity inhibits hair growth. I've kept quiet with that theory since someone pointedly mentioned the exceptional thickness of my own hair.) He and Dan had struck up one of those odd friendships of opposites. I'd asked Dan to recruit him for a bit of after-hours alien-technology analysis, on a strictly unofficial basis. Thus it was that the four of us were squeezed into Berman's quarters, to which he'd brought certain instruments from his working spaces.

  "Yes," he affirmed, pointing to the little trinket Khorat had given me. It lay on the bench, gleaming in the overhead lights and the table lamp Berman had trained on it. "It's in the thing that looks like a gem, at the center of the star. Amazing. But there are limits to what you can do even with molecular circuitry. It's an extremely elementary, no-frills beacon."

  "What's the power source?" Chloe wanted to know.

  "Would you believe a near-microscopic solar cell? Obviously, the device doesn't draw much power. This makes it practically undetectable, unless you know what you're looking for. If you do know, then it's not hard. Of course, I'm not up to actually tracing the circuitry . . . if you can even call it that. I'd need a—"

  "That's okay, Doc," Chloe said hastily. "We'll take your word for it. And thanks." She removed her own pin, handling it gingerly with unconscious distaste, and laid it on the bench. She turned to me. "Well, I suppose this settles what we're going to do with these things. . . ." Her voice trailed off as she watched me take mine back. "Doesn't it?"

  "Yep. I plan to keep wearing mine. I want you to, as well."

  "What? But . . . but shouldn't we go straight to Renata and report this whole incident?"

  "I never like to bother her with things she doesn't need to know," I said serenely as I reattached the pin to the lapel of my suit. I'd never changed following the reception, for it was later in the same long night of Antyova II.

  Dan stared at me openmouthed, which was enormously satisfying. The rare opportunities that present themselves to astonish one's fellow irreverent young with one's own youthful irreverence always have that effect. (Oh, all right, I was thirty-two. But you know what I mean.) "I can't believe I'm hearing this! You're supposed to be in charge of security for this mission. And an agent of an alien power has just tried to plant a bug on you!"

  "First of all, Dan," I explained in tones of condescending omniscience, "we don't know that Khorat is an 'agent of an alien power.' I don't know for certain who he's working for . . . and I'd like to find out. Secondly, it's pretty obvious that he 'planted' these gizmos on Chloe and me in the knowledge that they'd be discovered. How about it, Dr. Berman? Didn't you say that anybody could detect these devices, given a suspicion of what they were and the requisite technological level?"

  "Well, yes," Berman allowed. "And everybody out here thinks we humans have that technological level—with the possible exception of whatever Tonkuztra 'family' has gotten an inkling of the actual facts. And even they must know by now that we've somehow acquired the capability to use galactic-level technology even if we can't produce it."

  "Precisely." I nodded sagely. "So a member of a hitherto uncontacted alien race gives these things to me and Chloe, under a pretense that wouldn't fool a child, knowing that we'd be able to deduce what they are." I grew even more studiously inscrutable. "I want to know why."

  By now, you're probably wondering why I was being a prick of such monumental proportions. The answer is complex . . . no, correction, it's very simple. Ever since we'd departed the Moon, my job—aside from strictly technical stuff—had consisted of giving lectures on routine security precautions to people I knew I was boring almost as much as I was boring myself. At last, I smelled a whiff of blood. The opportunity to milk the moment for all it was worth tempted me beyond my character—no great feat, according to certain unkind people.

  "So," Chloe said slowly, "you think we should to go along with it? Use ourselves as bait for whatever it is Khorat has in mind?" She looked gratifyingly impressed . . . or at least it was gratifying until I realized there was no telling whether she was impressed by my daring or by my insanity.

  "I'm not sure 'bait' is the right word. But yes, I want to play out Khorat's little game and see what happens. Something's going on here that I don't understand. That bothers me."

  "But Bob," Dan protested, "shouldn't you at least tell Novak what you're planning to do?"

  "And if I did, what do you think the chances are that she'd let me go ahead with it?"

  "Not very good," he admitted.

  "True," Chloe agreed reluctantly. "Renata does have a tendency to be kind of . . . well, you know . . ."

  "Anal?" I suggested helpfully.

  Chloe looked daggers at me, but didn't argue the point. "She'd probably order you to smash those pins with a hammer, then order all of us to avoid any contact with the delegation from Khemava, then—"

  "—Cancel all shore leave," I finished for her.

  This caused a glum silence to descend on the room. Novak had announced that she was going to start letting us leave the ship and play tourist. The array of limitations she'd imposed—groups of two or more, no one ever to wander off individually, definite itineraries submitted in advance and strictly adhered to, et cetera—had failed to dampen everyone's excitement at the thought of being able to explore this city beyond imagination, like something out of a superscientific Arabian Nights.

  "Hmm . . . there is that," said Dan thoughtfully.

  "There sure is that." I nodded. "Hey, people, don't worry! Chloe and I will just go out on one of these authorized sightseeing expeditions. Novak won't have any worries about giving us permission—I'm the security man, for God's sake! We'll just go around and do a lot of rubbernecking . . . and I'll see if a tail has been put on us. I have some experience in that, you know."

  "I suspect," Berman cautioned, "that the means of 'putting a tail' on someone are so different here that your experience will be largely irrelevant."

  "Care to lay a bet on it? And even if that's true, I've got some galactic-level countersurveillance stuff of my own. But I don't really expect it."

  "What do you expect?" asked Chloe. She hadn't, I was pleased to note, protested at my somewhat cavalier inclusion of her in my plans. If she had, I'd been prepared to trot out a theory—doubtless completely spurious—that two of the homing devices were more likely to draw the kind of attention I wanted than one.

  "I'm not sure. I just want to get a reaction of some kind. You see, I have a strong hunch that Khorat is acting on his own. Or, if not strictly on his own, certainly on behalf of somebody other than his nominal Delkasu bosses. I think he gave us these doodads so he can track us when we're away from this ship and can be contacted in a more private setting than that circus of a reception. I want to see if he, or somebody else, does try to contact us."

  Chloe took on the thoughtful look that was natural to her, as she slipped back into her Section Five persona. "Are you perhaps implying that there may be a power struggle of some kind going on among the Ekhemasu? And that it might offer opportunities for us?"

  I noted the way she had pronounced the word Ekhemasu. It was sort of like the word Hawaiian. As you know if you've ever spent any time in Hawaii, that word can mean any citizen of the state, with no more or less significance than, say, "North Carolinian." But, with a subtly but unmistakably different i
ntonation, it means native Hawaiian, the original Polynesian people of the islands. Likewise, "Ekhemasu" (a Delkasu word, as we'd learned) was what the Delkasu rulers of the empire centered on the Khemava system called themselves and all other inhabitants of that empire. But it was also their word for that system's native race, to which Khorat belonged.

  Chloe, I could tell, had used the word in the former sense. And visions of exploitable fissures in that empire were dancing like visions of sugarplums through her Section Five head.

  "The answer, of course, is that I don't know. We're reasoning in advance of the data, which is a capital error, as somebody—"

  "Sherlock Holmes," Berman put in.

  "—is supposed to have said. Let's get some facts to work with. We'll send up a trial balloon, and let the chips fall where they may, and . . . have I missed any clichŽs?"

  "Not for lack of trying." But Chloe smiled as she said it.

  * * *

  As it turned out, Novak gave us no real trouble about approving our outing. In fact, she was agreeable to the point of being out of character.

  In theory, it wasn't even necessary for us to venture outside the ship to go exploring. Instead, one could simply sit in a recliner, put on a headband, and experience any one of the city's attractions. "Virtual reality" was a term we didn't have then, but I've learned it since. And this was far beyond what that term conjures up for you. It really was reality, in all its manifestations, but without reality's irritating little imperfections, and included a guide whose downloaded consciousness would respond to you interactively. I think that last part was probably the reason so few of us went that route; it summoned up too many ghosts and revenants from the tales that still lurked in the shadows amid our mental furniture, however sternly our waking minds might dismiss them in a rationalistic huff. Besides which, we just weren't ready to believe we had actually seen a city until we had actually pounded its pavement.