Easy for him to say! Millie was gathering up her books. It looked like she was getting set to leave—oh no!
"She's getting set to go!" I shouted. "Get over to the stacks! She's got to return the reference books!" Apples and I watched the scene breathlessly from the ES sensors above them. Jason got up slowly and headed for the stacks, one book in hand. Millie headed for another part of the stacks, carrying several books. Once she stepped between the tall book shelves, the cops could not see her. There was an aisle that ran between the wall and the end of each stack. Jason hurried along there, largely hidden from the cops. He stopped at the aisle between the two shelves where Millie was returning her books. Both cops were alert, looking her way, but probably not worried because they had both exits covered.
Jason stood there at the end of the aisle, staring at Millie. She glanced his way. He met her eyes. He conspicuously took out a white plastic card and placed the edge carefully between two books. He pointed at Millie, then to the card, then backed away and strolled back to his desk.
Millie walked over to the card, almost as if she was in a daze, took it, and read it. It was written in Trib. We sure hoped there were no errors.
MY DARLING MILLIE, I AM YOUR SWORD AND YOUR SHIELD. NO ONE WILL HURT YOU, WITH ME AT YOUR SIDE. THE PERSON WHO GAVE YOU THIS CARD IS MY TRUSTED FRIEND. GO TO THE COPIER. MAKE TWO COPIES OF THE XENO DATA. LEAVE ONE COPY IN THE COPIER. MY FRIEND WILL PICK IT UP. I PROMISE I WILL RETURN TO YOU. WESTO.
The lady cop was out of her seat and headed for the stacks when Millie emerged. And Millie was radiant. She was ecstatic. I could see it, the lady cop could see it. She was watching Millie like a snake. Millie went back to her seat and started gathering up some papers. The lady cop resumed her seat. She knew something had happened, but she wasn't sure what.
Millie went over to the copier in a daze.
"She's copying it," I told Jason. His back was to her. How could they suspect him?
"She's through!" Jason slowly got up and headed over to the copier. We had made damned sure we knew how it worked. He ran his paper through, recovered his copy—and Millie's, I prayed to Deadman—and headed back to his desk. The lady cop was bristling, glaring at him. The bitch knew something was up. The male cop looked at him thoughtfully. Millie gathered up her things and headed for the door. The male followed her, the female stayed on Jason. I zoomed in to the document on Jason's desk. His hands were shaking as he turned the pages. RECORDING, flashing in red light—all right! One page, two pages, three—that's it! DATA SUCCESSFULLY RECORDED, flashing at me.
"Got it!" I exclaimed. Jason put his things away, got up, and started for the door.
Outside, in bright sunlight, Jason strolled across the park where I had first met Millie. It looked like about six cops were on him. They wanted to see where he'd go. They were evidently not out to arrest him, at least not immediately.
"It looks like a parade, Jason. But you're leading. Take your time. Act natural. If you can just make it around a corner someplace, I'll do it."
"No. Wait."
"Don't talk!" I waited, as Jason led his contingent down Park Road and on to the Museum. He hiked up the steps of the museum and into the main hall. It was not too crowded, but a delegation of cops was right behind him. In a moment, Jason was alone in a corridor lined with statues.
"Do it!" he said. Apples squealed with delight as I powered down. The bang brought the cops running, but all they found was Jason's papers—and Millie's—drifting to the floor.
***
Jason staggered out of the ES chamber, into our arms. "Did you get it?" he asked hoarsely.
"Yes! Yes! That was beautiful! It worked perfectly!"
"Let me at the controls!" He vaulted into the command chair and brought up the documents on screen. All three pages were there. The translation was underway as we watched.
"When that's finished, shoot it over to me," I said, opening up a doc on the Q-link. It was set to go. I had prayed for the moment when I could send it. Now it was here. I read through the headings of the document shell I had already prepared.
'FLASH CRITIC COSMIC SECRET'
Date: 323/06/07
Cite: LIFELINE 3821
To: Exclusive Starcom/Director Galactic Information/Outvac
From: Lifeline
Subj: Salvation—Production
Project Salvation reported genetic code for Xeno and active element in fungicide on 323/06/07. Following is original and translation of source document:
We had the info in a few marks, popped it into the document, and I pressed the SEND tab. There! That should blast Tara right out of her chair. 'Production'—nice and low-key. Let her decide if the mission is a success or not.
I sat in the chair before the console, exhausted. Jason sat nearby, still panting, eyes glazed. Apples was by his side. She was supposed to give him a physical exam, but she just sat there, stunned. It was finally hitting us—what we had done. The info we provided was ripping through the galaxy at quantum speed, faster than light, from Q-link to Q-link, instantaneously. And I knew the classification line on top was just crap. Tara had told me exactly what she was going to do with the info, if I obtained it. It was going, exactly as received, word for word, cosmic secret gibberish and all, to every ConFree world, every System world, every Omni world—every government, every city, every village, every grim and distant outpost, every ship in space, every research center, every hospital, every university, every center of learning—in the known galaxy. It was going to be translated into every language on record, and disseminated, instantly.
Billions were going to live, who might otherwise have died—because of us. Because of Millie S-Fam.
And suddenly my eyes were full of tears. I couldn't stop them. They were tears of joy, for what we had done. Jason took my hand. Apples took his, and mine. We couldn't say a word. It was over, and we were exhausted.
***
But it was not really over. I rang up Tara the following day on the Q-link, after the first good night's sleep I had had in quite awhile.
"Wester!" She almost leaped out of the screen at me. "You did it! You did it! You can't imagine how wonderful this is! We're just beginning to get the initial responses! Almost thirty million messages, so far, and more every frac, for passage to you. We're sorting them. They seem to think you're running some kind of medical research center. Wester, initial response is the substance can be duplicated. Can, can, can! Your mission is a success! Starcom is ecstatic! Do you know what this means, Wester?"
"I know exactly what it means, Tara."
"Wester. Thanks." She was looking out of the screen like a stunned puppy, right into my eyes. Vulnerable. Good!
"Tara. The mission is not yet over. We have a few uncompleted tasks—involving the source. I'd like to continue the mission until everything is resolved."
"Wester, you do whatever you want. You won't get any grief from me. Or anybody else. Oh, and tell Jason he's been promoted three grades—he's now a senior Lieutenant. And tell Alpha Six she goes up three as well, to Senior Nurse Group Super. That's just for starters. We'll fill in the rest of the crew later."
"Good. I'll do that. Thank you, Tara." I cut the connection. '…you do whatever you want.' Gotcha!
Chapter 14
Raped and Forsaken
The screen shows the position of the rogue asteroid Gargantua," Jason said, "as plotted by the CS Salvation, in orbit around Rima 2 in the Year 986 AF—or Year 1286, on the Rima 2 calendar. It's right on course. In a little over two Rima years, in the year 1288, there will be a catastrophic collision with the planet Rima 2. And that'll be the end of both Gargantua and Rima 2." The screen showed it clearly. The mathematics were inescapable. Jason and Apples and I sipped dox, sitting around the console, pondering the future—and the past.
"Any way to stop it, Senior Lieutenant?" I asked.
"Forget it," he grinned wryly. "It's already happened. And you can't change the past—remember?"
"The Legion can induce novas i
n stars. We can hurl planets out of their orbits. We can surely handle a wayward asteroid."
"If it was in our time, Fleetcom could do it. But this is over a hundred thousand years in the past. The only thing that can go that far back—at present—is our small fleet of time-drive drones. And all they can do is project holos and probes. A couple of holos are not going to be able to do anything to change the course of that asteroid. Besides, it's already happened. You can't change it. That's impossible. No, you can forget about stopping it. That planet is doomed. In two years, Rima 2's atmosphere is going to glow cherry-red and then explode in flames as Gargantua hits it. Then the entire planet is going to be blown apart, into billions of fragments. Rima 2 is doomed."
"We owe her."
"That's certainly right."
"Any ideas? Senior Nurse Group Super?"
"Will you stop that?" She smiled, revealing even white teeth. "The only idea I have is to get her off that planet, before the asteroid hits."
"All right," I said. "That's reasonable. Let's say that's the way to go. We can't save the planet, but maybe we can save her. How do we do it?"
"Not so easy," Jason said. "Considering Rima 2 does not have space flight."
"Well, we do."
"No, we don't. Not there. All we've got is the CS Salvation—and she can't enter the at, or land. She can't soft or hardland. She's just a drone. It's hopeless. There are some old hulks in orbit around Rima 2, but they're worthless—total wrecks, gutted and empty. Those people lost space flight capability in the distant past. Until now, they didn't need it. Besides, where would you take her, even if you had a spacecraft? Dump her on some alien world?"
"We'd bring her back here," I said.
"Back here? How? No—impossible. We don't have any more copies of the Star of Dindabai standing by to transport her, and even if we did, the physics of time travel insure our crew would die on the voyage getting there."
"What are you talking about? We've got a time-drive starship in orbit around Rima 2 already, in the Year 1286 local—the CS Salvation."
"The physics of time travel…"
"Forbid trips into the past longer than two hundred years, I know. She wouldn't be going into the past. She's already in the past. She'd be going into the future. Her future. The physics of time travel do not forbid travel into the future. You can go as far into the future as you want, and survive. Right?"
"Well…yes. That's true. The mathematics…"
"And the interior of the CS Salvation is designed to permit access by your techs, isn't it? Access is through standard airlocks—right? It's fully shielded from the D-neg and everything else, to protect all that fancy gear. You've even got chairs for the techs—right?"
"Well…yes. Right."
"Then what's to prevent us from putting her in there, and giving her the ride of her life, into the future?"
"What's to prevent it is that we have no means of transporting her to the Salvation. The only way she's going to get off the surface of that planet and into our drone is via spacecraft. And we don't have a spacecraft that will do the job."
"Then we'll have to get one," I said.
***
Fortunately there was one world in the distant reaches of Sagitta Sector that had not yet—in Millie's time—abandoned spaceflight. Once, their fleets had explored the cosmos and recorded it all. But by the Fourth Dynasty, when Millie lived, they were spent. Fleets of starships still orbited the planet, but most of them were sealed and unserviceable. The government no longer could afford the luxury of space flight. The people were demanding more—and what they wanted did not include star travel. Only a few private individuals and corporations maintained a space flight capability. The world was called Kalalan. We knew it as Odura. I had visited it, far in Millie's future, to uncover the location of Chudit—Rima 2, Millie's world.
Jason projected my Holo-X directly into a small star yacht that was still functional and had softland capability—just what we needed. The yacht was in orbit, dead quiet. Sensors showed only one person on board. A night watchman, no doubt. I appeared in a corridor, clad in Legion camfax, and strolled forward to the bridge. Grav was set to light. Power seemed to be set to minimum. Only one of every four light panels was alive. The door to the bridge was open.
A girl was sprawled in one of the command chairs, short reddish hair, pale skin, clad in shorts and sleeveless blouse, bare midriff, long legs up on the console, bare feet. She was reading something. When I appeared, she screamed and leaped from the chair, eyes bugging out. She stammered, then shouted something in an alien tongue.
I carefully grasped her wrists, led her over to a solid looking floor-to-ceiling cenite pipe I had spotted, and secured her wrists around the pipe with field cuffs. Then I turned to the controls.
"Give us a few fracs," Jason said, as our scanners took in the controls. "That girl was speaking Oduran. You remember the language? We've got all the data from the Oduran mission. Let me bring up the language."
"These controls look a little…strange," I commented, as I settled into the command chair.
"We'll get them," Jason replied. "Just hang in there."
The girl said something, looking back over her shoulder. I had cuffed her so she was facing the wall.
"All right, the translation units just kicked in," said Jason. You'll get audio on her comments. We'll feed you text on the more obvious choices in responding to her. Your Oduran's not bad, right?"
"What do you want?" the girl asked again.
"I must borrow your ship," I said. The psymon had done a good job on me prior to the earlier mission to Odura. The language seemed to come easier now than it did before.
She did not respond. The controls were baffling. I could not identify anything. Hopefully Control would psych it out quickly.
"Are you going to rape me?"
I looked over at her, startled. "No," I replied. She settled into silence again.
"Could be tricky, Thinker. Control says it looks like it responds to oral commands. There's probably an override somewhere."
"Wonderful."
"Where are we going?" the girl asked.
"Don't worry about it." I gave up on the controls. There wasn't much I could do until Jason reported back.
"I won't resist if you rape me," the girl said. "You won't even have to tie my hands."
I looked over at her in amazement. What in Deadman's name was this? Nice long legs, cute little rear, and that bare midriff was really captivating—oh, stop it!
"I said I'm not going to rape you," I replied. "Relax!"
"We're told not to resist a rapist. We're supposed to submit. It's safer that way."
"Who gave you that advice—the Rapists' Guild?"
"No. The Government."
"I'd advise you to kick a rapist in the balls."
"But wouldn't that make you angry?"
"I'm not a rapist! Can you please shut down?"
"Yes sir. Where do you want to go?"
"I want to go to Rima 2."
"Why have you not launched?"
"Because I do not understand how the ship works. That's why."
"How can you starjack a ship if you don't know how to fly it?"
"Well…actually I'm pondering that very question at this moment."
"If I was going to starjack a…"
"Can you please shut down? I can't concentrate if you keep chattering like that."
"Yes sir."
Jason reported a few more findings. The controls were more complex than we thought. You don't want to go into stardrive without a thorough knowledge of your system. These people had developed completely separately from us. We should have anticipated problems like these.
"Sir, don't you find me attractive?"
I looked over at her again. What was it with this girl? She looked at me over her shoulder. Captivating brown eyes, tender full lips—and that terrific figure.
"Well, of course I do. Yes, I find you attractive. All right? What does that have to do with
anything?"
"Then why don't you want to rape me?"
I just looked at her. She was probably put in orbit for her own good, I thought. Finally I spoke.
"Have you been up here long?"
"Seven months, sir."
"All by yourself?"
"Yes sir. I'm the caretaker. They pay well, but…it's boring."
"I'll bet."
"You think I'm ugly, right?"
"You're not ugly. You're beautiful."
"If I was beautiful, you'd rape me. I'm completely helpless, and I won't resist. A hardened criminal like you should take advantage of me—if I was beautiful. But I'm ugly. Right?"
"Can you fly this thing?"
"Sure. I've got my star license. It's easy."
"Can you get me to Rima 2?"
"Only if you promise not to hurt me."
I walked over to her and unlinked the cuffs. "Get over to the controls and plot a course for Rima 2. And don't try anything cute."
"Yes sir. Don't worry, I won't resist. I'll do anything you say." She sat down in the command chair and the controls started to come to life.
"What's your name, girl?"
"Kemah, sir."
"All right, Kemah. Just do exactly as you're told and we'll get along fine."
"Yes sir, I'll be good. Just don't hurt me."
HOW DO YOU FIND THEM? Jason's message appeared in the air.
"It's a mystery to me," I muttered.
"Sir?"
"Nothing. Just set the course."
***
We slipped into stardrive flawlessly and settled down for the voyage. We had a meal in the galley, autofood, completely unfamiliar to me. I told her I was not hungry, although she said she was. I sipped at a cup of water. A holo does not interact well with food.
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