Juanita Coulson - [Children of the Stars 04]

by Past of Forever (epub)

  Dan nodded, then winced at the new stab of pain the motion brought. The woman was right. They shouldn’t draw the invader’s notice. It would be best to get out of its way. That’s what he wanted to do.

  But he couldn’t move his legs. They seemed paralyzed.

  The intruder rocked past him, less than two meters away. One of its splayed feet dropped into the pit, striking the Whimed female Praedar was with. She shrieked, writhing. Uncaring, the metal object lurched on.

  Joe Hughes, on all fours, crouched on an adjacent dud pit apron, staring at the apparition in astonishment.

  Sheila was outdoing herself for profanity.

  A Vanhaj ran by, wild-eyed and gibbering.

  Somehow, Dan finally willed his legs to function. He got out of the pit and to his feet. He stood there swaying while Kat used him as a living crutch to pull herself upright beside him.

  Praedar was making the same heroic effort. He paused, his big hands curved into humanoid talons. Like Dan, Kat, and others, he was gawking incredulously at the invader.

  N’lacs were loping madly in circles, setting up a terror-stricken, ululating howl. Some were so panicky that they ran directly in front of the invader, barely escaping being crushed by its damaging feet. Chuss’ shrill voice blasted Dan’s eardrums: “Demon! Demon! The Evil Old Ones’ demon!”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Ancient Enemy

  Nausea turned Dan’s insides to an acid boil. His body was a leaden weight, his head an explosion about to happen. Was that the aftereffects of the binge juice—or of this party crasher?

  He felt bugs under his skin, itching intolerably, and his eyes wouldn’t work right. His gut was in a mess...

  The pit fit had seemed like a good idea at the time. Now alcohol addled his wits and made it nearly impossible to think, move, or be sure that what he was seeing was real.

  Goaded by an unknown compulsion, Dan put one foot in front of another, forcing himself to follow the metal thing. Praedar was doing the same. More slowly, Kat and others followed them.

  The invader was heading east, leaving the dud pit area. They had to hurry, if they were going to catch it.

  Why the hell did they want to catch it?

  For some reason, Dan knew he had to try to do exactly that.

  Panic reigned at the pits. But Sheila and Joe were remembering their paramed training and starting to get into gear. “Calm down and give us a hand here!” the blonde yelled, bending over an injured Whimed, And always, Chuss and his brother Meej, galloping in circles, continued to cry, “Demon, demon, Demon!"

  The pandemonium faded as Dan plodded farther from the fires. Every instinct told him to find a hole and bury himself in it. And yet, over and above that sense of self-preservation was a burning need to find out. He and Praedar trudged ahead, still struggling against the itch, pain, and lingering partial paralysis. Others trailed them.

  Solar storage lamps alongside the trail bloomed to life as the pursuers neared. Ten meters beyond Dan, the spindly-legged intruder’s metallic skin reflected the lamps’ gleam. Beyond, Chen’s Rock loomed, a dark presence set against the eastern cliff. To the left of the grave marker, in the N’lac village, frightened screams rang through tendrilled trees. The natives who’d returned early from the pit hadn’t escaped this walking horror.

  Abruptly, unexpectedly, those agony bands holding Dan’s skull fell away and the maddening itch stopped. Hardly daring to believe he was free, he broke into a run. So did Praedar. The Whimed ate up ground, with Dan right at his heels. Farther back, the rear guard shouted encouragement to them, promising help.

  Help? What kind of help? None of them was armed or knew what the intruder was capable of. It could be a bomb, one that might detonate before they figured out how to defuse it.

  And still they chased it. Curiosity was an unquenchable thirst.

  Dan stumbled, blinking. Illumination was poor. This end of the trail had few solar lamps. But there was no doubt of what he was seeing. The intruder was walking straight up Chen’s Rock, and over its top.

  Grimacing, determined to close in, Dan raced around the boulder. They had it! They’d head the quarry off, trap it! He met Praedar, who’d gone around he opposite side of Chen’s Rock, on the far side.

  There was nothing between them but cold night air.

  Moments later, their fellow team members crowded around them, babbling questions. Kat pressed Dan’s arm demandingly. “Where did it go?”

  “Didn’t you see?” He sketched out the intruder’s feat with a sweeping arc of his arm.

  “That’s not possible!”

  “None of this is ..Rosie complained.

  Baines hefted a metal bar he’d picked up somewhere along the trail. “Dammit. I wanna pound tha’ thing . . . poun’ it inta junk.” The drunken xenogeologist seemed unaware of his nudity and the fact that he was shivering until his teeth chattered.

  “No,” Praedar said. “No destruction. Analysis.”

  That brought a noisy outburst of opinions. Dan stayed clear of the argument, thinking hard. On impulse, he looked up, pointed, and roared, “Look!”

  Praedar echoed him, having seen the same thing at the same instant.

  Silhouetted against one of T-W 593’s moons, the intruder perched atop the cliff. Several of its wispy tentacles waved, seeking purchase. Finding it, the visitor finished its ascent.

  A heartbeat later it was gone, over the rim, and out of view. The scientists craned their necks, staring at the empty spot where the nightmare had stood.

  “How could it... ?”

  “It couldn’t!'

  “Right up the side of the rock, and then right up the cliff!”

  “Nothing can do that!”

  “Some machines can,” Dan said, surprised that he sounded so unexcited. “Telorobots...”

  “Tha’s in space,” Baines countered. “Couldn’ do it here.”

  “It just did,” Dan reminded him. “We saw it. Or does binge juice produce hallucinations?”

  “Maybe,” one of the rear guard muttered. “Maybe the nonhumans saw something else...”

  “They saw something!" Kat protested. “Dan’s right. This can’t be the result of intoxicants.”

  “Chuss’ people identified the object,” Praedar said.

  Dan felt rather than heard a collective intake of breath. He seconded the Whimed. “Yeah. They called it a demon, just like the model they smashed and the paintings in the small dome ...” “But this was three times the size of the models,” Rosie said, her voice cracking. “Four times!”

  “Did their legends reduce it to something they could handle without tonight’s terror?” Kat wondered aloud. “It fits. It fits.” Everyone tried to talk at once. Thick-tongued, still giddy from intoxicants and adrenaline, they tangled, words colliding.

  “What a discovery! The N’lacs’ myths. Proved! They’re not fairy tales. Wait till the Saunders hear this!”

  “Sleeg’s magic didn’t work. Supposed to keep th’ Evil Old Ones and their demons at bay..

  “The significance!” Kat exulted. “Why has one of the Old Ones’ demons returned here after a two-millennia absence?”

  “If wha’ we saw was one o’ their robots,” Baines said sourly.

  “How can you deny it?”

  “I’m s’drunk I’m not sure who I am, let alone tell wha’ happened here. Coul’ you?”

  , “We aren’t that drunk,” Rosie said, offended.

  Praedar broke in sternly. “This accomplishes no good. We go back. Colleagues and N’lacs are injured.”

  The statement chastened the enthusiastic and helped sober the drunks a trifle. Shame replaced argument, and the group began retracing it steps. Now and then one of them glanced back at Chen’s Rock and the cliff.

  Halfway along the cross-valley path, Dan overheard Praedar mumbling “Must find, must find...”

  And what would they be up against if they did?

  Nightmares, akin to the intruder, babbled from the darkest depths of Dan
’s brain. Nonanthropomorphic conquerors and their robots existed. And the robot demon was still on the prowl for humanoid slaves—to punish the heirs of those who had escaped, and to press new humanoid species into its masters’ services.

  No! That invasion had happened millennia ago, in the forever time.

  According to Feo and Hope, it hadn’t happened at all. The stories were mere primitive fantasies.

  That thing that had reeled through the pit fit and climbed the cliff was one hell of a damned real fantasy!

  Baines pounded his arms against his body to stimulate blood circulation. Dan empathized, though he didn’t share Baines’ state of undress. One didn’t have to be naked at a time like this to feel ice seeping through one’s bones and soul.

  As the servant, so the masters? Were the Evil Old Ones mere parsecs away, awaiting a report from their robot? Was history about to repeat itself on T-W 593 in a new attack, with a much wider scope than the original invasion? Not only a handful of N’lacs would be swept up in this slave-catching net. This time, the roundup might include the Whimed Federation, the Vahnaj Alliance, and Terra.

  Dan shuddered. What a night this had been!

  Kat stumbled off the path, sobbing a curse. Dan steadied her fl and she said, “This is so... so stupid. The whole thing. Getting drunk. No sleep. Running after that thing like a bunch of... of maniacs...”

  “We’re only humanoids,” he said. Her laughter was heavy with suppressed tears.

  “Humanoids,” Praedar put in. “Like the N’lacs.” His calm tone was a facade. When the group reached the bonfires, Dan saw that the felinoid’s crest was a bristly thorn bush. So he, too, had been badly spooked by this past hour’s events.

  The scene at the dud pit resembled a battlefield after the de- i feat. Victims were moaning and retching. The broken still lay on its side, its contents soaking into the sand. Pieces of clothing, tufts of hair, and spilled food were strewn over a midden of mug shards.

  Praedar attempted to backtrack the intruder’s course, hunting footprints. To his disappointment, most markings had been obliterated during the panic.

  “I wish someone had been alert enough to use a vid cam when that thing was coming through here,” Dan said. The boss favored him with a wry look and a nod.

  Parameds and good samaritans were helping the wounded. The returning chase team hurried to aid them. Baines detoured long enough to locate his clothes and put them on. Unlike the wounded offworlders, who were scattered all over the dud pit area, the N’lacs had gathered in a bunch. Kat bent over them, concerned. The e.t.s shrank from her touch.

  Joe said, “I checked them earlier. No serious damage. Just scrapes and bumps, mostly.”

  “But they’ll suffocate in that pile,” Dan said, worried.

  “No, I’ve seen them do this before, when they’re badly scared,” Hughes replied. “They’ll come out of it, eventually.”

  Chuss bared his tiny teeth. “You fellow go away. We okay.”

  They definitely weren’t okay. They were a quaking heap of wrinkled red skin and wide golden eyes. But any effort to pull them apart obviously would only add to their trauma.

  The N’lacs were still there when the last of the injured scien- I tists had been removed to the cook shack. By then Dan had quit worrying about the e.t.s suffocating. Instead, he was afraid they’d freeze; the bonfires were dying out fast, and predawn temperatures were sinking.

  Joe, on his way to the village to see how things were going there, stopped and spoke to Chuss’s gang once more. Whatever he said finally penetrated. Slowly the N’lacs untangled themselves. Then they scuttled ahead of Joe on the trail. Sleeg, though, stayed put where he was—at the foot of Dome Hill. The tale-teller was spellbound, gazing unblinkingly at the structures, mumbling charms to ward off evil.

  Sheila and Joe had converted the cook shack to an emergency med station. They’d progressed far enough in the mop-up that they could split their attention. Joe took care of the villagers. Sheila finished treating patients in the complex. She dosed out painkillers liberally, drafted muscular types to carry sedated coworkers to their sleeping quarters, and completed a tally of casualties. Luckily, there were no critical injuries. The most serious involved broken arms, legs, ribs, and a concussion. The rest were an assortment of sprains, abrasions, and bruises. Many people admitted they would have escaped the intruder unharmed if they hadn’t been so drunk; in their fright, they’d run right across the thing’s path.

  Reasonably whole expedition members stoked up on caffa, stims, and hangover remedies and debated what to do next. Bleary-eyed, queasy, and aching, Dan put his credits’ worth in.

  First, they had to agree on what had taken place.

  With four different species, four different varieties of sensory inputs, and four different cultural styles of observing and interpreting, that was tough. Stir in mood alterants, and it was a miracle any of the team members’ accounts meshed. Even teetotalers offered wildly conflicting versions of what they’d seen, smelled, heard, and felt. Dan was grateful the N’lacs weren’t participating in this rehash. They would give yet another viewpoint.

  They argued it around and around, sifting testimony, questioning, proposing, and theorizing.

  Slowly they arrived at a consensus, or as much of a consensus as they were going to get.

  Praedar ticked off their conclusions. “It is metal. No apparent visual or auditory orifices. Thin, multiple upper appendages. Articulated lower ones, with splayed, footlike bottom sections. No detectable scent. No detectable sound...”

  “Or none we could hear under those chaotic conditions,” Rosie corrected.

  Nodding, Praedar went on. “To Whimeds, its silvery color luminesced. To Vahnajes, it radiated an aura, possibly an effect connected with the itching compulsion that we all suffered to a degree, the cranial pressure, and the temporary paralysis some were prey to...”

  “And I’m betting it’s probably the source of those quakes,” Baines added. He looked like hell, but he was considerably more awake and less drunk that he had been. “Remember that we felt that same scratching urge when that quake shook loose Chen’s Rock. And we’ve felt it during each subsequent seismic disturbance. The tie-in seems too strong to be coincidence.”

  “One more reason to pull its plug,” Sheila growled.

  Praedar resumed his summary. “In all respects except size, the intruder duplicates the demons described in N’lac legends and artifacts. Although it demonstrated an unanticipated ability to scale sheer rocks and cliffs in apparent defiance of gravity, its major method of locomotion was irregular, creating havoc for those unfortunate enough to be in its way.”

  “It’s a miracle no one was killed,” Kat said.

  “Yet,” Cavanaugh added.

  Praedar turned to Dan. “Does our xenomechanician confirm that these data suggest a robot?”

  “Yes, one capable of interstellar travel.” Dan had everyone’s full attention. “The ship’s monitor tracked an unknown blip entering T-W 593’s atmosphere weeks ago. At the time, I assumed it was space junk. Now I think what the detectors picked up was our visitor, spiraling in for a landing.”

  Ruieb-An asked, “Urr... is search probe? Like Vahnaj?”

  “Huh uh. Not like the one your race sent to welcome mine into the galactic community, over a century ago. This one is probably a slave scout.”

  All of the scientists had been mentally circling the same ominous idea. They stared at Dan, silently begging him to come up with technological reasons why what they feared wasn’t true. He did exactly the opposite.

  “It’s tricky to extrapolate about an alien machine, but... working on the basis of what our servos can do, that thing holds some deadly potentials—recording images, analyzing, and identifying our five species as a particular type..

  “Humanoid,” Rosie whispered. “Slaves.”

  “It might also be programmed to send a message back to its home base regarding what it’s found,” Dan said. “There’s one bright spot; t
he way it’s acting, its programming’s badly messed up, maybe bad enough to prevent coordination and any message-sending. That could be why we’re still here and why no Old Ones’ spaceships have arrived to round up us and the N’lacs and haul us off to unknown stellar regions—and the slave camps.” Another pained silence fell. Armilly broke it, saying “If catcher, did not try catch. Stomped. Broke inside.”

  “As Dan theorizes,” Praedar agreed. “Indeed. It is very possible we owe our present freedom to this robot’s state of disrepair.” Dan massaged his temples. “Yeah. It’s drunk, in a way, as we were. Drunk from too much spacing. I suspect our intruder is a quick and dirty expendable. The Old Ones could send out scouts by the kiloton, primitive, simplistic servos, in their terms. It makes sense. The N’lac legends hint at an enormous alien empire, thousands of millennia old. Such a species wouldn’t waste its time personally searching this galactic quadrant’s Terrene worlds for slave stock. So, send out fleets of intruder models. Most of their searches would come up empty. Or they’d get wiped during planetfalls or passages through radiation and magnetic belts. But if only one in centuries hit a humanoid gold mine, it would be worth it. We humanoids do the same thing; we prospect by remote servos in asteroid belts and hunt for habitable planets. Stripped robots are ideal for that kind of work.”

  “Simplistic with some nasty fillips,” Sheila said. “Terror tactics.”

  Praedar summarized, “We have assumed the N’lacs’ demons were policemen. Were they instead such scouts?”

  Dan nodded. “This one’s damaged. Imagine one in better shape, landing in an isolated geographic region of T-W 593, two thousand years ago, flattening the locals, and sending a report back to its masters. In effect: ‘Come and get them!’ ”

  “Yes,” Praedar said, very thoughtful. “Was this valley that isolated region? We may have erred in postulating this was a capital city. Such a discovery will require correction of our hypothesis.”

  Baines spoke up. “Hey, the quakes could be a form of detec-259