Juanita Coulson - [Children of the Stars 04]

by Past of Forever (epub)

  “No trouble. Glad to. By the way, that’s not all you’re good at. Not by a damn sight. You were terrific with Ruieb. That stuff about your relatives floored him. It surprised me, too. I never heard you do anything but badmouth your family before. A McKelvey princeling pose suits you.”

  “I can trot it out, if I need to,” Dan said. “Frankly, considering your feud with Feo and Hope, it’s seemed smarter to clam up about being a Saunder-McKelvey while I’m here.”

  “Nobody blames you for that,” Sheila said, briskly donning her clothes. “Well, hardly anybody. This has been fun, but I have stuff to do in camp. You coming?”

  Jarred into activity, Dan dressed and put ship systems on standby. Sheila noted his library catalog and exclaimed admiringly. “Dumb tech-mech! What a liar! With this in your brain, you’ve got damned near a postgrad degree—or two! Why don’t you drop that uneducated pose and act your ability?”

  “It’s not on paper,” Dan countered, tom between pleased embarrassment and a contrary pride in his self-made indie hauler status.

  “That could be mended,” Sheila said, then swept on out to the skimmer. She showed no inclination to elaborate on that final comment, and her genial mood continued. So Dan let it drop, relieved that there were no more taunts or verbal jabs.

  Landing was routine. As they walked toward the complex, he braced himself for a ribbing. Everyone would know why they were late, and no doubt they’d put him and Sheila through a ribald gauntlet run.

  Halfway to the insta-cells, he forgot that. A horrible sound raised hair on his nape. Dan stopped in his tracks.

  “That’s Armilly!” Sheila cried. “What the hell? That’s his ‘I’m mad and lost, Mommy!’ screech.” She pointed at Hanging Rock. Armilly perched atop the landmark, howling.

  How in the universe had the Lannon scaled the boulder? And why was he yelling his lungs out?

  Sheila gestured urgently, breaking into a lope, Dan at her side. They had to detour around a snarling mass of Whimeds. The ■felinoids, clutching one another, whirled about, ugly, primitive noises issuing from their throats. Praedar, normally so cool, was screaming in fury. Dan had never seen Whimeds so enraged. He gave them a wide berth.

  Beyond them, at the dud pits, the Terran scientists were expressing anger in their way—cursing, hurling rocks at the pits, stamping, shaking their fists—general uproar. Dan slowed his steps, uncertain about wading into this melee.

  Armilly moon baying? Whimeds huddling furiously? Terrans cursing “them”? “They” had done it. “It,” apparently, was one more rotten trick. Another collective gripe session aimed at Feo and Hope Saunder? Whatever had happened, it had obviously been a beaut.

  “What is it?” Sheila demanded.

  Kat stood arms akimbo. “Welcome back. You just missed the news. Our pickup has been ‘unavoidably delayed.’”

  “What?” Sheila yelped. “They can’t do that!”

  “They did.” Dan muttered a question and Kat explained. “Our transportation to the Xenoarch Assembly. We paid for our tickets months ago. Fifteen of us are scheduled to go. We’ve been working our tails off, getting our presentations ready, preparing to woo our sponsors. Now, with barely more than two weeks to go, our ship says sorry, they can’t make it.”

  “Damn them!” Sheila was an explosive device about to detonate. “I’ll bet Feo’s fair-haired boy is behind this again. Tavares bribed someone else—at the transport office this time. He’s burying us, the way he buried that cargo!”

  “Hey, call in the Fleet,” Dan suggested. “There are laws. You have to have a transport lifeline. That’s regulations. Tell ’em you’ve got a medical emergency...”

  “Oh, they’d come, all right,” Kat said. “To transport the patient and only the patient. And if it’s a fake emergency, they’ll slap us with a whopping fine and maybe yank our license. No, we can’t go that route, and Tavares and the Saunders knew we couldn’t.” She rubbed her brow, pushing back dark strands of hair. Kat mimicked their professional rivals shedding crocodile tears. “ ‘So unfortunate that you won’t be at the Assembly. What a shame!’”

  “Message in your data then,” Dan said.

  Sheila growled and Kat replied, “We’ll have to. That’s all we have left. But... you’re a tech-mech. You know what a holo relayed across a parsec looks like. Convincing?”

  “Uh... not very,” Dan conceded. “Distance plays hell with realistic images. I see your point. If tri-dis alone aren’t enough, maybe...”

  “Forget it.” Kat sighed tiredly. “There’s more involved than the data. Xenoarch thrives on a cult of personality, and Praedar has one of the best. We count on him to sell this project and keep our funds flowing. Sure, we’ll message in our material. And some secretary will play the vids for the attendees, and they and our sponsors will yawn and put their credits back in their pockets.”

  “Damn them!” Sheila repeated with vehemence.

  Kat agreed. “Yes, damn them. Feo and Hope have their own share of charisma and enormous prestige with both alien and Terran attendees, not to mention the media. With Praedar absent, they’ll have the Assembly eating out of their hands. All that Saunder money and power—and dirty dealing—is killing us. No one will care whether we publish our findings or not. This project will fold, and we’ll have to pull out.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Tragedy

  Night winds blew off the mesa. Somewhere in the distance the Whimeds continued their huddling, ignoring the temperature drop. Armilly, protected by his fur, was ignoring it, too. Thin-skinned Terrans, however, were gradually driven to seek shelter. Soon only Dan and four of the scientists remained by the dud pits. All the others had retreated to the complex.

  Suddenly Praedar walked up to the diehards. The humans jumped in surprise. No one had heard the Whimed approaching. He seemed to have materialized from nothing. It had obviously taken extreme effort for him to break free of the huddle. Prae-dar’s breathing was harsh, his eyes glistening. When he spoke, his accent was noticeably thicker than usual. “A solution to our problem occurs to me. A starhopper is already on planet. Would not need to summon here. Pilot would not tell us he is delayed.” The Terrans digested that and turned to Dan. Kat said, “Of course! We’ve been so upset we didn’t consider the obvious.” “Slow throttle,” he protested. “Fiona’s a cargo hauler, not...”

  “You told me you’ve carried passengers.”

  “Rarely. She’s a one-man ship,” Dan said. “If I take on supercargo I have to adjust the life support systems, load extra supplies, extra pressure suits ...”

  “Hell, we’ve got suits,” Sheila put in. Kat, Joe, and Rosie nodded as the blonde went on. “A suit’s one of the first things a xenoarch field digger buys. We never know where we’ll ride or what sort of planetary environment we might encounter. As for extra flight couches, you’ve got those, McKelvey. I saw ’em.” “Did you try them all out, Whitcomb?” Rosie asked, winking at the others. Sheila laughed, unoffended.

  Praedar concentrated on the main point. “It is possible for your spacecraft to carry people from there to T-S 311?”

  “Yeah,” Dan said, then shook his head. “But I can’t.” As the scientists argued, he held up his hands, demanding a hearing. “I’d like to help. I really would. But you’ve forgotten something: I’m blacklisted. I know how my rich relatives operate. I’ll bet Feo’s built himself a full-scale spaceport on his world.” His listeners’ faces told him he’d guessed correctly. “Uh-huh! That place will be crawling with people during the Assembly. Media types. Staffers. Spacers who ferried the attendees to T-S 311. If there’s just one freelance repossess artist in that crowd, my ship’s gone.”

  “You’re dreaming up excuses,” Sheila said.

  “No excuse. You don’t know how things are on the space-lanes. The dispatchers have my credit locked. My bills are overdue. A repossessor can legally seize Fiona to satisfy paper holders. I’d be an indie hauler with no starhopper—and you'd be stuck on T-S 311, maybe for a long time.
Or do you think the Saunders would strain themselves to buy you a ride home?”

  That question stopped the scientists for a moment. Then they brushed qualms aside and again clamored that Dan had to transport them, no matter what.

  He drowned them out, shouting “I can’t take the risk. I’m sorry. Dammit, see it from my angle. If my ship’s repossessed, I’m bankrupt.”

  “If you don’t, this project is,” Sheila retorted.

  “So it’s a standoff. A nowhere vector for everybody...” Praedar said in an achingly deep voice, “We are indeed requesting a great sacrifice of you. However, it is in a crucial cause. Our failure to make presentations at the Assembly will have grave consequences for the N’lacs as well as for the expedition.”

  “Yes, they’ll suffer the most, Dan,” Kat chimed in. “We must get to T-S 311, to meet our backers.”

  “Without funds and support, work ceases,” Praedar said. “Our permit will lapse. We will depart. The N’lacs will be alone.”

  Dan felt cornered. “Well, they survived okay for centuries before you got here ...”

  In that same hypnotic tone, Praedar said, “Their numbers had steadily declined recently. They had reached near-extinction threshold. If we leave, they will cross that threshold.”

  Wincing, Dan stammered, “I-I have to think about this,” and sidled away. Praedar wasn’t playing fair, hitting below the belt, appealing to his emotions like that.

  The team members stared morosely at him. Kat said, “While you’re thinking, think about the N’lacs and their future.” She wasn’t playing fair, either!

  He trotted up a trail from the complex, not caring where he was going, wanting only to escape from those accusing stares. Behind him, he heard the group trying to restart the conversation. Rosie asked, “By the way, Whitcomb, when are the Vahnajes coming back to work?”

  “Tomorrow,” Sheila said listlessly. The contrast with her normal sassy tone added to Dan’s guilt.

  “Good. Then Ruieb can get busy on those inscriptions.”

  “Why not? Even if our funding’s gone, we can cram in as much research as possible before we have to pack and go.”

  “It’s not the end. There will be other projects. Life goes on, people.”

  “Sometimes..That last was from Kat, underlining bleak reality, a potential death sentence for the N’lacs.

  Dan walked faster and the voices faded, swallowed in a moaning wind. The sound conjured images of Chuss’ ancestors. Their graves haidn’t been disturbed, thanks to the high principles of the team. But their spirits seemed to line the path, watching Dan, haunting him. He broke into a run, not stopping until he reached Dome Hill. There, catching his breath, he gazed around.

  From that height, he had a panoramic view of the central valley. Two cores of light dominated—the complex and the village, where brush-fed fires danced behind the tendrilled trees, high-tech community and primitive culture, side by side. Five disparate species were living and working together. This was the ideal of humanoid coexistence on the galactic frontier—the ideal the politicians of all the civilizations so often espoused, but that was too rarely fulfilled.

  Had he once suspected the xenoarchaeologists of enslaving the N’lacs? He’d since learned his error. This really was a good, symbiotic relationship. Damned good. And it deserved to continue.

  Dan walked down the ramp to the lamplit painted wall and gazed at those figures, showing the NTacs’ days of glory. If they hadn’t been conquered, Chuss’ people would occupy seats on the Pan Sector Council right now, up there with Terra, the Whimed Federation, the Vahnaj Alliance, and others.

  But the Evil Old Ones had come, nonanthropomorphic invaders. Only a handful of the N’lacs’ many-fathers-ago had ever escaped from their bondage. And their descendants had been on the brink of extinction when Praedar had rescued them.

  The N’lacs were about to be conquered again, victims of a scientific rivalry this time.

  Without Joe Hughes’ hyperbaric treatments, Chuss and his siblings would sink into thick-witted lethargy. Their ability to think and to lead their people would trickle away through their paws like dust. Without the offworlders to teach them how, the N’lacs couldn’t maintain the wells, cope with disease, or survive bad hunting seasons. They might scavenge off the expedition’s debris for a while, but that was a finite resource.

  If Praedar’s dig license lapsed, the Terran-Whimed Xenoeth-nic Council, with assistance from Space Fleet, would take control of T-W 593. Even when they meant well, such groups were generally bad news for native subhumanoids. At best, military officers and bureaucrats would treat the N’lacs as pets. At worst, they would hasten the N’lacs’ extinction, because local e.t.s were an obstacle to settling this world with Terran and Whimed colonists.

  And the N’lacs would be classified as subhumanoids, thanks to the Saunders. Dan’s kindred were at the bottom of this crisis. Naturally, the Council and Fleet would accept Feo’s and Hope’s interpretations and act accordingly. The Saunders were eminent scientists, weren’t they? They wouldn’t bend the truth for petty purposes.

  Dan knew different. And he knew the N’lacs were true humanoids. He’d worked with them, laughed with them, shaken their hands, heard their myths, learned a bit of their language. He’d testify to their right to full Level 3 status.

  Who’d listen to him? Nobody. He was only a self-educated tech-mech pilot without a single scientific credential to his famous name. Feo and Hope Saunder-Nicholaiev had all the odds on their side.

  When he was a kid, Dan had seen what happened to monkeylike creatures on a planet his brother had administered. Adam’s soldiers hadn’t slaughtered the clever little beings. Nothing so crude. But Fleet’s presence had finished off the locals. Most of the e.t.s withered away and died. Others became pathetic copycats of the Terrans.

  Was that what lay in store for the N’lacs?

  Cold raked at him. Dan sealed the cuffs and neck of his one-piecer more snugly. Then he decided he might as well head back to the complex. There was no percentage in hanging around here. Freezing his ass off wouldn’t solve the N’lacs’ problems or his.

  He had taken only a few steps when he heard furtive noises beyond the top of the ramp. Dan peered around its comer curiously. It took him several seconds to locate the source of the mutterings. N’lacs hunkered in the shadows near the small dome —Sleeg, Chuss, Meej, and seven adolescent males. They were whispering, obviously wanting to keep their activities secret.

  If Dan left the site now, the N’lacs would see him and think he’d been spying. To avoid offending them, he moved back out of their view and stayed put, watching.

  Sleeg’s voice was a muted warning. The tale-teller was holding a little “demon,” a half-size version of the one he’d smashed that morning. Dan didn’t need a transbutton to figure out what was going on. The scene was straight out of a docu-vid—the shaman instructing the tribe’s youth, showing them how to protect their people with sympathetic magic. When the models were destroyed, any demon robots nearby would be, too.

  In Dan’s opinion, magic was a poor substitute for a few of Adam’s battle cruisers in orbit around T-W 593. Those would keep the N’lacs safe.

  Or... would they?

  The N’lacs’ ancestors had spaceships, presumably armed ones. But they’d wrecked all of them. Why? Kat’s speculations rang in his thoughts: “Maybe the Evil Old Ones forced them to do it.”

  Psi powers? The Vahnajes had employed tech-enhanced psi devices in their espionage cold war games against the Whimeds. That was why Praedar’s race had developed countermeasures, like the oryuz helmet decorating the wall of Praedar’s office; his grandsire, he said, had used it to ward off such esper attacks, years ago.

  Had the Evil Old Ones invented far more potent versions of the Vahnajes’ psi assaulters? Had the Old Ones compelled the N’lacs to wipe out their planetary defense, leaving themselves helpless before the invaders?

  In retrospect, Dan was ashamed he’d laughed at the N’lacs’ de
mon-smashing ritual. Why shouldn’t they believe in such stuff? Their ancestors’ high-tech civilization had been wiped away, almost overnight. Who could blame the villagers for now relying on magic and mysticism?

  They weren’t the first humanoids to take that course. Homo sapiens had often trusted in mumbo jumbo and miracles. Even today, in 2155, a few Terran Settlements had rejected science, putting their faith in a back-to-the-good-old-days, fringe-cult religion. The N’lacs had as much right, and far better reasons, for doing the same thing.

  The youngsters listened intently as Sleeg, with Chuss’ help, taught them the arcane rules. The tale-tellers’ susurrating voices lulled Dan. His mind drifted into nightmares.

  What if the Evil Old Ones and their robot demons and unknown weapons were still out there someplace? Did they need new slaves? If so, would they strike on the same vectors they used millennia ago?

  The alien monsters would find slim pickings on T-W 593 and its former colony world nowadays. But there were other planets, with larger humanoid populations, in the core stellar regions. Trillions of Terrans, Whimeds, Vahnajes, Lannon, Rigotians, and Ulisorians. Prime stock, with hands, for the Old Ones’ slave markets.

  Would modem civilizations’ star fleets stand up to that non-anthropomorphic invasion any better than the N’lacs had?

  Questionable.

  Acknowledging that, Dan shuddered. He felt... what? More than cold. Pressured by something he couldn’t put a finger on.

  It was unseen, but there, a living presence, incredibly ancient —older than the N’lacs, older than mankind or perhaps than any other humanoid species. It was soft-bodied, bulbous, a sickening excrescence encased in an exoskeleton...

  He swallowed a curse. What the hell was the matter with him? He was beginning to believe Sleeg’s fairy tales—just like a gullible N’lac pup! Evil Old Ones! Demon robots! Invaders from the stars! Vid fiction scare drama, local style.

  Wasn't it? That uncertainty increased the load of ice chilling Dan’s veins. He chafed his arms to stir circulation and waited impatiently for the lessons to end. That took awhile. Sleeg made each boy repeat the magic phrases over and over before he was satisfied. Finally, when Dan ached with cold, the elder allowed the kids to smash the toy demon. In single file, the teenagers followed Sleeg back to the village.