Rogue Galaxy, Episode 3: The Golem Gambit

by J. Boyett

  Du’Thokk had been allowing Summers to interview him about Lumley, or his patch of it, about the local flora and fauna, and about the social structure of this set-up he had here with the Helpers. Du’Thokk was forthcoming enough, though not exactly expansive. When he spoke there was the usual unsettling disconnect that came with translation spells, where the sounds they heard coming from his mouth did not match the motions of his lips. Right now Du’Thokk was nodding with vague disdain in Cosway’s direction: “What is he doing?”

  Cosway had his keypad open on his lap and was typing away; upon hearing the query he glanced up, but let Summers field it. She gave Du’Thokk a straightforward explanation: Cosway was taking dictation, writing down every word he and Summers heard when Du’Thokk spoke. Meanwhile he was recording the actual sound of Du’Thokk’s voice, the way his sentences sounded before they were translated in their heads, by the translation spell. Later, it would be a pretty straightforward task to compare the two and begin constructing a lexicon and basic grammar.

  Du’Thokk’s expression let her know he found the project unimpressive. There was no need for them to learn his language; that was the whole point of the translation spell. He was a little more interested in this notion of “writing.” Summers began explaining the process to him, but in less than two minutes he grew disenchanted with that, too.

  “I don’t understand,” he said. “If you need to store knowledge, why don’t you just remember it?”

  This kind of question was always tricky to answer in first contacts with primitive, pre-tech societies. You didn’t want to give the impression that you couldn’t remember stuff because you were too stupid. But you also didn’t necessarily want to let the natives in on just how inconceivably vast and, hence, powerful your stores of information were. Summers was just beginning to dance around the topic when Cosway gasped and muttered, “Holy crap.”

  She looked over at him. He was gaping at his instruments in shock over something. “Dick?” she said, with trepidation.

  Cosway stared up at her, then at Du’Thokk, who gazed down at him with that lordly mien until Cosway dropped his eyes, either to fiddle with his machine or because he didn’t like the pressure. “It’s the audio recording,” Cosway said, softly, as if he hoped that somehow only Summers and not Du’Thokk would hear. “It’s recorded the same sounds as the ones in our heads.”

  Summers stared at Cosway, then back up at Du’Thokk. That was some pretty hefty magic. It was one thing to use a telepathic link to make your interlocutors hear the words issuing from your mouth in English, although that was no mean trick either. But apparently Du’Thokk had managed to make the very sound waves morph in the air, so that even the machine heard them as English, without needing to “translate” at all. Now, that wasn’t just mind stuff, that was telekinesis—some of the most finely-tuned, perfectly controlled telekinesis possible, yoked to an exacting, perfect psycho-linguistic telepathic link with alien creatures whose brain types Du’Thokk was encountering for the very first time.

  No two ways about it. The guy was one hell of a shaman.

  Which made it halfway between flattering and alarming when he bore those eyes into her and said, “You have within you some power I’ve never seen before.”

  For a moment she wondered if maybe she had some untapped psychic resources, but then she realized that of course he meant the werewolfism. It made sense that he wouldn’t recognize that, even if he could sense it. It was vaguely possible that there might be some latent were-strains among the Lumley population, that would have arrived here via some means more exotic than a werewolf bite. But with no moon, full or otherwise, Lumley wouldn’t have offered any infected inhabitant the chance for their infection to manifest. And in the course of manifesting, the were-nature underwent a sea change, a transformation into a state qualitatively different from its latent one. Du’Thokk wouldn’t have recognized the two as being versions of the same thing.

  Unless he would have. Gazing into his eyes, Summers reminded herself to avoid chauvinistic assumptions about her own superiority. Du’Thokk’s people may not have learned how to make bronze yet, but for all she knew they had ten thousand years’ more experience than modern humans with enchantment.

  Du’Thokk said, “And you come from the stars, in a floating Long House. From another world, like this one, but different.”

  Summers was startled. Usually primitive people thought of the night sky as “the heavens,” a supernatural realm, and not a mere continuation of the natural world, sprinkled with worlds similar to their own.

  Du’Thokk continued to look at her, examine her. “For us, your arrival is a notable event,” he said, the sound originating at his mouth but eerily unrelated to the movements of his lips. “But for you, it is nothing remarkable. Less so than if one of my Helpers went for a stroll through the woods and found a flower of a type I had never seen before.”

  Now Summers was growing uneasy. “Have you learned this from previous visitors like me?” she asked. Or are you plucking it from my mind?

  Du’Thokk answered neither the spoken nor the unspoken question. Instead he said, “You interest me, and I interest you. You may ask me questions. And I shall ask questions of you.”

  “Yes, of course. That is the way of things. The best way: sharing.”

  She glanced down at the chronometer on her wrist, then nodded her head in a light bow and said, “Du’Thokk, it is time that I speak to my, to my Long House. My leader awaits news.”

  Du’Thokk glanced at her communicator with none of the awe one would stereotypically expect from a primitive. Disdainfully, he said, “If you wish to speak to your ship ... your Long House, I could accommodate you without need of your baubles.”

  “That’s all right.” Summers had noted his slip in referring to the Galaxy by the word she would use for it. Why turn around and try to conceal that knowledge? “Would it offend you if I went outside to speak to him?” Not that she believed the few meters of distance would hamper his ability to listen in telepathically. It would make it easier on her nerves, though.

  Du’Thokk granted her a shallow nod and looked away from her, gazing straight ahead. Summers supposed she could take that as her dismissal. Cautiously, with another bow, she edged away. When Du’Thokk didn’t seem to mind, Cosway also grabbed the chance to scamper.

  Summers headed for the other end of the Long House and the door outside. She nodded at Blount and at the blank-faced Helpers, trying to keep her expression merely professional, calm. The truth was her belly was buzzing with nervous energy. Partly it was fear of the unplumbed depths of Du’Thokk’s psychic powers, and of the potential threats they might represent. But also it was simple excitement—it had been a while since she’d had a project this interesting.

  ***

  Farraday was hurrying to his quarters—that was where he planned to take Jennifer’s scheduled call, for privacy’s sake, and it was almost time for her to contact him. The unexpected meeting in Sickbay had gone long.

  The gist of it had been that, in terms of drugs and potions, Lumley represented a treasure trove. Or a bomb.

  “We’ve never seen anything like it,” Witch Walsh had kept saying. “There’s nothing on record, anywhere in known space, that compares with the breadth and power of Lumley’s flora, pharmaco-thaumaturgically speaking.” The Weed of Wonder had been mere honeysuckle compared to some of the stuff Summers’s crew had sent up so far.

  Naturally, Farraday’s thoughts had run to the possibility of finding a cure for Jennifer’s werewolfism. But Dr. Carlson had wanted to pursue a darker line: “We need to seriously consider what might happen if the Provisional ever got wind of this place. Or, gods forbid, New Christendom.”

  “What can we do about that?” Farraday had asked. “We’re one ship. It isn’t as if we can garrison the system and defend it.”

  Witch Walsh had looked down at his lap. Commander Blaine had maintained her poker face. Grimly, Dr. Carlson had said, “The entire sentient population on
ly numbers a few dozen thousand. It would be a huge job, but if it’s the only way to prevent the wrong people from accessing this place’s resources, I think we should at least consider transplanting the population to a different world, and then torching this whole planet.”

  Farraday had barked out mirthless laughter. “No,” he’d said.

  Walsh and Blaine had both looked relieved. Carlson had said, “All I mean is, let’s not yet take the option off the table....”

  “I said no.” He’d thought of Bone World. “What option? It isn’t there—I see no option in what you said.”

  Now, as he stepped out of the lift, he wondered if he would tell Jennifer about Bone World. Much as he wanted to talk it over with her, he decided not to; it sounded like they were dealing with a powerful telepath down there, and he didn’t want to muddy the vibe by introducing such stuff into her head.

  Again he wished he could stop by the tech mages’ lab and see how Horowitz was coming along. But, again, it would have to wait.

  Once he was in his quarters and saw, with a glance at his chronometer, that he could expect Jennifer’s call at any moment, all disappointment at the delay in checking up on Horowitz vanished. Only now that the events and news of the day were beginning to slow down did he realize how much he already missed her, after only these few hours.

  He sat at his console and waited patiently. Her call came a few minutes late, but after all, she was in the field. “Hello, Lieutenant,” he said, even though he would have liked to call her something else.

  “Hello, Captain.” She proceeded to give him a verbal summary of their walk to the Long House and her interview with Du’Thokk.

  Farraday found himself interested in these Helpers. “You say you haven’t met any other males,” he said. “Are they a kind of harem for this Du’Thokk?”

  “Maybe, sir. The subjective impression I get is something like that, but also almost like ... well ... like servants, I suppose. Helpers.”

  “Interesting. Maybe some parts of that mystery will be solved once we have a few minutes to analyze data on other population centers.”

  “And I’ll keep you updated if I manage to have any genius brainwaves.”

  Farraday told her how excited Walsh and Carlson were by the potent samples she’d sent up. “Either you really know how to pick a random clearing to land in,” he said, “or else this planet has enough potions and drugs to keep us busy for decades.”

  Summers got excited by this news. Presumably that was at least in part because of the possibility that a werewolf cure might be found in all that bounty, but all she said was, “That might help explain Du’Thokk’s unreal powers.”

  “It might.”

  “Seriously, Terry ... uh, I mean....”

  “It’s all right, Jennifer. There’s no one around me.”

  “Oh, okay. Terry, I have a feeling about this Du’Thokk. I don’t think we’ve yet scratched the surface of what he can do. If he can simultaneously use his telepathic and his telekinetic skills subtly enough to work that kind of translation spell, then he can do a heck of a lot more, too. And he was picking information out of my brain without my noticing at all.”

  “Hm.” All of a sudden Farraday was growing less and less comfortable with the idea of Jennifer having an extended stay on Lumley. “Maybe it isn’t a good idea to leave you and the team down there too long—sounds like you could be pretty vulnerable. Let’s figure out some appropriately ceremonial but fast way for you to make your exit.”

  “Er ... well ... Terry, actually....”

  He waited, but she didn’t continue. “Yes?” he prompted her.

  She cleared her throat, and said, “Actually, Captain, I was thinking it might possibly be a good idea if I stayed here.”

  “How long do you think you’ll need?”

  “I was thinking ... a few months. I suppose I was thinking that I might stay on, after the Galaxy leaves.”

  Silence. Farraday couldn’t yet respond. Or begin to imagine what he would say.

  After waiting for him to speak, Summers pressed on: “Someone with this level of power should be studied closely, sir. Terry. And I’m the best for the job. I’m an ethnographer, the best in the crew. And I’m very comfortable with herb and potion analysis, just ask Witch Walsh and Dr. Carlson.”

  Farraday murmured, “It’s because there’s no moon.”

  Some of the fake enthusiasm dropped out of Jennifer’s voice as she said, “That’s part of it. Of course it is. Not having to worry about whether we might come out of hyperspace someplace wonky, not having to either skip every away mission or else wonder in the back of my mind what might happen if we get stranded planetside for a month....”

  “You’re worried I can’t protect you.”

  “Oh, Terry. I don’t want my crewmates to have to protect themselves.... Anyway, Captain, I do truly believe this is a worthwhile project, one that could further our knowledge and our resources. And anyway, I’m not asking to live here permanently. But learning about Du’Thokk’s abilities and methods would definitely rate a year’s study, I believe, and Galaxy’s current mission doesn’t allow her to simply stay in the system all that time.”

  “A year?” he said, softly.

  Something in his voice must have stopped her. When she spoke again, it was with resignation and despair. “It isn’t like I want to be apart, Terry,” she said.

  Somehow, it was only when she said just those words, in just that tone, that Farraday said to himself, with clear and agonizing certainty, She wants to be apart.

  Farraday’s spirit yearned out for her; he wanted so badly to keep her by him that for a moment it was almost like he was down there on the planet with her....

  In fact, the sensation was so strong that he felt really disoriented, for a moment. It was almost as if he were down there on Lumley, with Jennifer, as if he could just make her out in the moonless starshine. Then there was a kind of fluttering sensation in his mind; he mentally recoiled, and found himself blinking at the relay.

  “No,” he said, once he had himself back under control.

  “But, Terry—Captain....”

  “No and that’s it. It’s final. Now finish your report.”

  After a moment, she did. Farraday listened. Their dialogue throughout the rest of the call was cool and professional.

  At last it was time to sign off. As they said their goodbyes, Farraday had to stop himself from reiterating that he was not going to take the ship out of any system, ever, without her aboard. He refrained because he knew nothing would result but a fight. For his part, he felt like he wouldn’t be able to talk about her having even broached the subject without flipping out.

  It was out of the question. Completely so. The same way burning Lumley to a crisp was out of the question; that was how impossible it was for Farraday even to consider doing such a monstrous thing.

  Four

  Angry and hurt as he might be, he was still the captain of a starship and there was plenty to be done. He sent a message to the science staff to have that preliminary analysis of Lumley’s social structures ready to present to him on the bridge in half an hour. Then he left his quarters and set off down the corridor, planning to grab a few of those spare minutes and use them to go check on Horowitz’s progress.

  On his way to the tech mage’s lab, though, he ran into Dobbler. When he saw the ensign round a corner down the hall, walking the opposite way toward him, he slowed his pace out of respect. Then he realized with dread that the kid was making a beeline for him. Farraday slowed, came to a halt, and said, “How are you holding up, Ensign?”

  “Sir, can I talk to you?”

  “Of course.” Dobbler’s expression was enough to tell Farraday he meant in private, so they left the corridor with its passing crew members. Dobbler steered them toward the nearest conference room instead, Conference Room Seven. Farraday supposed he wanted the extra confidentiality. He noted how easefully the kid took control of their choice of destination. Most would hav
e at least pretended to defer to the captain.

  Once the door closed behind them in the conference room, Farraday began to speak: “You know, Ensign, I can’t imagine what you must be going through. If there’s anything I can—”

  Dobbler interrupted him: “Sir, I have to talk to you.”

  Given the circumstances, Farraday decided to let the insubordination pass. “Well. Here we are, Ensign.”

  Dobbler looked him straight in the eye, his words anchored in firm intentions. “Sir. We all swore an oath to the Democratic Empire and the Space Fleet, and I do believe that the Provisional is made up of traitors to that oath. But it’s clear that the NC represents an even viler betrayal of the Empire’s principles. Given these developments, I think our primary duty is to help fight the NC. Even if that means joining forces with the Provisional, sir.”

  Farraday stared at him. Finally he said, “That’s funny, son. I’ve never heard a Space Fleet spaceman ever define his primary duty as being the exact opposite of the Admiralty’s orders.”

  “Sir, when the admirals went into the Bubble with the rest of the Fleet, they couldn’t have predicted the NC. Besides, it isn’t as if we don’t have experience bucking authority, sir.”

  “Leave that aside. I’ll take your input under advisement, Ensign. Meanwhile I’m ordering you not to share your opinions with the rest of the crew, at least for now.”

  “Sir, the Provisional is in dire straits right now, what with all these factions. You could make it a condition of our alliance that they rescind the standing order about Lieutenant Summers....”

  “Enough!” Farraday felt great sympathy for Dobbler, obviously; but the ensign had just prodded that sore spot, that place perpetually inflamed with anger. And it was particularly inflamed right now, after his conversation with Jennifer.