V03 - The Pursuit of Diana

by Allen L. Wold

"How long will it take to repair?"

  "Without a major maintenance facility, several months. We just don't have the equipment or the personnel aboard. All we can do is hold the ship together. We'd need orbiting docking frames, megaton clamps, full-scale stress analyzers, and then it would take more than a week."

  "I'm afraid of what's been happening back home since we've been gone," Mike said, explaining his impatience.

  "What could happen?" Martin asked, looking up at his friend.

  "I hate to think. Maybe nothing, maybe after all the ships left, everybody started returning to normal. But with so many government officials, at every level, either missing or converted, I just don't see that. And besides, what will people think when this ship comes back? We won't be welcomed with open arms, of that I'm sure."

  Diana sat in her new prison, calm and defiant. This was not a simple cell, but a suite that had been specially prepared for her. A sheet of transparent material, not quite either glass or plastic, had been welded to walls, floor, and ceiling, forming a wall through which her every action could be observed. She had the use of three-quarters of the suite, which had been left fully furnished. The only opening in the crystal wall was just large enough to permit passage of the live animals she needed for food. If her captors wanted to take her out, welders would have to come and cut the wall apart.

  The front quarter of the suite, which gave access to the corridor beyond, contained four chairs, a table, and a communicator which let Diana's captors talk to her and to the rest of the ship. Three of those chairs were occupied now, by Juliet Parrish, Elias Taylor, and Barbara. On the table in front of Julie was a notepad on which she had been writing.

  "Tell us again about that signal you sent," Juliet said. Her voice sounded tired, as if she had asked the question more than once before.

  "It was just a distress call," Diana said. Though she was the prisoner; she seemed to be in control of the interrogation.

  "To whom?" Elias wanted to know.

  "To anybody who might listen. I had hoped that some of the fleet might still be in range."

  "What is the range?" Julie asked. Barbara started to say something, but Julie stopped her. "What is the range?" she repeated.

  "Accounting for the inverse square law," Diana said, leaning back in her chair and smiling, "it could be infinite. But for practical purposes, about half the diameter of your solar system."

  "Is that right?" Julie asked Barbara.

  "More or less. Half the diameter means the full radius, of course. If one of our ships were as far as Pluto, the signal could be detected without difficulty."

  "That's a very powerful distress call," Elias said.

  "No sense whispering—" Diana smiled at him, "—when you're calling for help."

  "Of course not," Julie said. "If you need help, you shout. But if you were calling for help, why did you call in code?"

  "I knew you would pick up my signal," Diana said. "I didn't want to give you my location."

  "A rather useless precaution, since we could find you by locating the signal itself. Which is what we did. So, since just calling gave away your location, what need was there to use code?"

  Diana was silent. She no longer smirked, but she didn't look at all concerned.

  "I've had enough of this," Elias Taylor said. "She can outtalk all three of us. Hell, she even outtalked her own Supreme Commander. If we want information out of her, we're going to have to use more direct methods."

  "And just what do you have in mind?" Julie asked shortly. She sounded more than a little tired.

  "A little physical pressure," Elias said, making a wringing motion with his hands.

  "No," Juliet said. "I won't allow that."

  "You got any better ideas?"

  "I will not be party to that kind of brutality," Julie insisted.

  "But dammit, she deserves it. How many people died because of her? How many people are prisoners on those other forty-nine ships, to be used as cannon fodder or to be eaten?"

  "That doesn't excuse torture on our part."

  "I agree," Barbara said, "for what it's worth. Just because Diana is a criminal is no reason for us to act like criminals too."

  "But dammit—"

  "That's the whole point of the fifth column," Barbara insisted. "We rejected the criminal commands and intentions of our superiors. We forsook loyalty to our government, and even to our people, for a higher loyalty—to all intelligent life. If we stoop to torture and coercion now, we'll be no better than she is."

  "What?" Julie said sharply. "Of course we're better than she is." She seemed to be confused. Her eyes went back to Diana, who appeared unmoved by the conversation.

  "I think you need to get some rest," Elias said to Julie. "Barbara's got a good point, I won't argue with that, but sometimes you have to take drastic steps. Why don't you just let me call my father. He'll help me with her. You don't need to know anything about it."

  "No," Julie said again. "Absolutely not."

  "And yet," Diana said calmly, "you threatened to try to convert me, knowing full well that you could destroy my mind in the process."

  "I've changed my mind," Julie said. "We won't convert you until we know how the process works."

  "Julie," Barbara said, "Elias is right. You need to catch up on your sleep. We can come back later when you're thinking more clearly."

  Julie sighed and covered her face with her hand. "We could all use some rest, I guess." She looked up at Elias. "You're not exactly in top form yourself."

  "Okay, okay, but I still think she'd be more cooperative if we broke a few fingers."

  "Let's discuss it later," Barbara said, getting to her feet. Elias followed suit. "Are you coming?" Barbara asked Julie.

  "In a minute." She looked at Diana again. "I'd like to talk with Diana alone for a while."

  "What about?" Elias asked.

  "About my conversion," Julie said grimly. "Diana pried into the deepest parts of my mind. I want to talk to her about that, and I'd just as soon you didn't hear what she might reveal about me."

  "All right," Elias said reluctantly, "but don't take too long. I'll check back here in half an hour, and if you're still here, I'll drag you away and force a sleeping pill down your throat."

  "Just a few minutes," Julie said, "that's all I need."

  "If you say so, but I'll check anyway."

  "Thanks, Elias," Julie said. She reached out and squeezed his hand. "Now, will you please leave us alone for a while?"

  Elias nodded, then he and Barbara left the cell.

  "I'm worried about Julie," Elias confided to Barbara as they walked through the ship's corridors. "I've never seen her act like that before."

  "How do you mean?"

  "Well, threatening to use conversion on Diana, especially when she won't let me apply a little pressure. Diana hurt her badly. She may not want to be brutal when it comes to finding out about the code signal, but that's a rational response on her part. A desire for personal vengeance is something else."

  "You don't think she'd actually try to do anything?" Barbara asked. "Besides, she can't even get into Diana's part of the suite."

  "She could shoot her through the food slot," Elias said. They stopped and looked at each other for a moment, considering the possibility.

  "Nah," Elias said, "she's still a doctor. She won't kill unless she actually has to."

  "Maybe we should go back and insist that she come with us now," Barbara suggested.

  "Give her a little time," Elias said. "I can understand her not wanting us to hear about the secrets Diana might have uncovered. But dammit, I will check on her, and I'll bring Mike with me just to make sure."

  Elias Taylor and Barbara entered the command center. Mike Donovan and Martin were sitting at the main controls, relaxing. Other crew and their guards seemed to be taking it easy.

  "How's it going?" Elias asked.

  "Just a matter of time now," Martin said. "There's nothing more to do until we enter Earth's atmosphere." />
  "Where's Julie," Donovan asked.

  "Having a little private conversation with Diana," Elias answered.

  "You left her alone with that woman?"

  "It will be all right," Barbara said. "She wanted to talk about what Diana found in her mind during the conversion attempt. She didn't want us to hear all the nasty details."

  "That's got to be a strange kind of relationship," Elias said.

  "The one person Julie possibly hates is also the one who knows more about what's inside her than Julie herself does."

  "The idea of that gives me the creeps," Mike agreed. "I think I'm a pretty nice guy most of the time, but there are some things I wouldn't want even Julie to know."

  Elias said, "I told her if she wasn't back here in half an hour that we'd come and get her."

  "That's probably a good idea. Were you able to get anything out of Diana?"

  "I'm afraid not," Barbara said. "She's a very strong person. I felt like I was pounding my head against that crystal partition in her cell. But I'm pretty sure the coded signal she sent wasn't a distress call, even though she claims it was. It just doesn't make sense, but I don't know what it could be."

  "We've got the whole thing recorded," Martin said. "I've been repeatedly running it through that decoding program you wrote for it, Barbara, but that executive encryption system Diana used is still proof against computer analysis. Sometimes I think we've got something, but when I check it, it just doesn't make any sense."

  "She did tell us," Elias said, "that she was hoping part of the fleet was still near enough to receive the signal."

  "That's not very likely," Martin said. "They had enough of a head start to have gotten completely out of the solar system by the time Diana started sending."

  "Could she have been intending the signal for your leader?" Mike asked.

  "I suppose so, but it would take almost nine years for him to receive it. And then he'd have to have a receiver aimed right here. Of course, he probably does, but nine years is an awfully long time for a distress signal."

  "I think we can forget the idea that it was a distress call," Mike said. "I think she learned something about us, some weakness we don't know about, and wanted that information to get back home, no matter how long it took."

  "I suspect you're right," Barbara said. "So that makes it more important than ever that we find out the contents of the message."

  Juliet Parrish sat slouched in her chair in front of the crystal partition. Her eyes were closed, as if in deep exhaustion, but her fingers tapped the blank notepad rhythmically.

  "I'd like to know more about this conversion process," she said. Diana, watching from the other side of the crystal wall, said nothing.

  "Obviously," Julie went on, "I have a personal interest. I'm still not completely sure about myself. If we could get the cooperation of those conversion technicians who are still alive, maybe we could figure out how to reverse the process. I'd certainly be willing to be the guinea pig."

  Still Diana said nothing, but a small smile drifted across her face.

  Juliet opened her eyes and looked at the other woman. "But more than that," she said, "are all those people in positions of power back on Earth who have been converted." She pulled herself more erect in her chair. "God knows what kind of state they're in now, without you and other Visitors to give them instruction."

  Diana's soft smile became broader, more smug.

  "In a way," Julie went on, "you may have achieved the destruction of our world after all, even though the doomsday device was disarmed. With most of our leaders converted, our governments might collapse, our economy crumble, our military destroy itself or start senseless wars. And so it seems to me that learning how to deconvert people is our highest priority." She slouched down in her chair again, and her gaze turned inward.

  "It will take a long time," Julie murmured, as if to herself. "The only facility we have is aboard this ship. Some of the converted might resist. We don't even know who all of them are." Her eyes closed again. She didn't see Diana get out of her chair and come to the crystal wall directly opposite her.

  "You could help us," Julie said softly. "You know so much about life, about the mind. You could teach us not to hate you and your people."

  Diana didn't speak, but concentrated her thoughts. As when she had forced Julie to let her escape, she spoke directly into the human woman's mind.

  I can help, she said silently. If you'll let me.

  "We don't have to be enemies," Julie murmured. "We could share. If only you'd offered to share instead of trying to steal our water, our lives."

  I'm sorry about that, Diana said directly into Julie's mind. I'd like to help you, but I can't do it in prison.

  "How can we trust you?" Juliet asked. Her voice was low and flat, as if she were in some kind of trance. "Martin, yes, and the other fifth columnists—we can trust them, but there are so many, many others."

  They would follow me, Diana thought. Even Martin would, if he knew that I was on your side.

  "Without your help," Julie said, "our world will take years to recover, decades, if at all. You could shorten that time, assure its reality."

  Yes, I could do that. But first, I have to be free. You can let me out of here, Julie. You can convince Mike Donovan that I'm on your side. Do that, Julie. Let me help you.

  Julie opened her eyes. They were glazed, staring into unknown depths. "I'll need a torch," she said, "to cut through the partition."

  Yes, that's it, a torch. I'll teach you how to use it, Julie. And then, when I'm free, I'll help you save your world.

  Julie sat up, climbed clumsily to her feet. Her eyes did not see. She turned away from Diana and walked slowly to the door. Her hand went up to press the release button, but instead of touching the button with her finger, she covered it with her whole hand. The door did not open. She stood there, leaning against the wall, as if needing support. Then slowly she turned back to Diana. Her eyes cleared, and a smile crossed her face.

  "That was very informative," she said, and this time her voice was loud and clear. Diana's smug smile vanished in a scowl of apprehension. "You did this to me before," Julie went on, "when I let you escape. And that tells me something very interesting."

  "You know nothing," Diana snarled, "nothing at all."

  "Oh, but I do. Though I don't yet know how it works, I know a secret. You can control converted people by telepathy. Just the knowledge that telepathic control exists is significant. Who knows what we can do with that, once we figure it out."

  "It won't do you any good," Diana said. "I'm the one who converted you. I'm the only one who can speak with you that way."

  "We'll see," Julie said. "I'll ask Martin to perform a little experiment with me. If it works with him, we may have found our key to recovery." She smiled broadly, and while Diana glowered, pushed the button and went out the door.

  Juliet Parrish lay back in a large, comfortable lounge chair in a cabin that they had chosen for the experiment. Martin sat on a stool in front of her while Mike Donovan and Barbara stood on either side of him.

  "I'm sorry," Julie said, opening her eyes, "it's just not going to work."

  "Dammit," Martin said, "I don't see why not. There's nothing special about Diana except her knowledge. If she could communicate with you telepathically, I should be able to too."

  "It's not your fault," Barbara said. "I think Julie's just too tired."

  "But isn't that how Diana was able to do it in the first place?" Mike asked.

  "No, I was tired then, but I was faking most of it. In a way, 1 suspect it's like hypnotism. That doesn't work if you're tired either, or if you're drunk or distracted or have too low an IQ." She sat up, stretched, then rubbed her eyes. "Right now I feel like I'm all of that."

  "I still don't like the fact that you let yourself be used as a guinea pig," Mike said.

  "So, who else was going to do it?" Julie countered. "I'm the only one here who's gone through the conversion process."

&
nbsp; "But what if you'd underestimated Diana's power?" Donovan insisted. "She was able to make you let her escape before."

  "But then," Juliet said, "I didn't know what she was doing. This time I put myself into her hands deliberately, fooled her into thinking she could do it again."

  "And could she have?" Martin asked.

  "Again, it's like hypnotism. If she told me to do something that I wanted to do anyway or convinced me it would please me to do it or fooled me into not knowing what I was doing, yes, I think she could have controlled me. But in another way it's not hypnotism at all. There's no trance. Just thoughts set into your mind, so that you don't know what's yours and what comes from outside. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and nothing she could say could have confused me about that."

  "I see what you're getting at," Barbara said. "And that means that your senators, your governors, your generals who were all converted will be controllable by even the subtlest suggestions."

  "Exactly. Since they won't know they are being controlled, they can't resist. And since they're confused anyway as a result of the conversion, they're not likely to figure it out for themselves."

  "This is a phenomenon I've never heard of before," Martin said, "but I suspect that, even without telepathy, the control could be exerted by simple suggestion."

  "The Visitors who were controlling people might not even know they were using telepathy," Julie said. "We may not need to be able to learn the technique, but it would surely be a help. In any event, we need to know more." She turned to Barbara. "We need to screen the conversion technicians," she said. "Diana may not be willing to help us, but one of them might."

  "I'll have somebody check the crew roster right away," Barbara said, "but right now, you need some sleep."

  "I'm not going to argue with you," Julie said with a yawn.

  "This could be a big breakthrough," Sancho Gomez said to William. They were outside the locked compartment where a number of conversion technicians were being held prisoner. William carried the list of those they were going to question.

  "Conversion must be an awful thing," William said. "At home, it is used to turn political prisoners into willing workers."

  Just then two fifth columnists, Tim and Ralph, came up the corridor toward them.