by Chris Bunch
‘And so you started the war,’ Wolfe said. ‘I’ll accept you believed you had to wipe us out. But what made you think we were as eager to shed blood as you?’
‘That was first prophesied by some of our more conservative elders, beings like Cerigo. We studied the matter further, and realized that those who predicted the worst were right, after we found what you beings did to your more primitive ancestors.’
‘You mean such as the North American First Men, those we call Amerinds? There are still many of them, and they occupy high posts and are respected in the Federation.’
‘But are they as they were, before better-armed humans came on them and forced them to live a certain way? And is the way they live now the way they would have grown, would have built their own culture if they’d been undiscovered?’
‘No one can say,’ Wolfe said in Terran. ‘Probably not. They would have found their own way, made their own civilization.’
‘And they are human, of your own breed. Do you really believe Terrans, once they won the war, would have accepted and lived in peace with complete aliens like us?’
Wolfe remained silent for a long time. He finally shook his head slowly.
‘When we knew of the inevitable destruction to come,’ Jadera went on, ‘once more we used the Overlord Stone, the Mother Lumina, to seek another world and then to go to it.’
The Lumina hanging in the air shrank and was surrounded by a lattice of shimmering crystal that looked like pure, many-colored light, a spindle with rounded ends. Stars came into being around it, and Wolfe realized he was looking at a small artificial world, built solely to house the Lumina.
‘We put the Lumina in this small satellite, exactly in the geodesic center of the Al’ar worlds, and the necessary focus was applied so our people could free themselves.’
Taen shuddered.
Jadera appeared not to notice. ‘Then the only ones left were the Guardians . . . and this one.’
‘So why was I not permitted to make the Crossing?’ Taen demanded.
‘I do not know. There are always incongruities. If you wish, now we could use our powers and attempt to help you go with the others.’
Taen’s grasping organs raised, lowered, and his hood flared, subsided.
‘Once, not long ago,’ he said ‘there could have been nothing else to desire.
‘But that was then. Not now. There is another task I must be prepared to undertake.’
The two Al’ar looked at each other, then Jadera turned back to Wolfe. ‘We Guardians were to remain for a time, to make sure you Terrans could not deduce where we went, nor follow us. Then we were to make the Crossing ourselves, taking the Lumina with us.
‘But then we felt the enemy reaching for us, looking for that still-existing rift into this universe.
‘It is strange that not long ago we discovered a way we might have closed that rift to seal the enemy off and let him die as his universe dies . . . or let him be consumed when it is reborn. But it would have taken all the Guardians’ power, plus calling on other forces, and once again using the great lens of the Mother Lumina.
‘Which we cannot do.’
‘Why not?’ Wolfe asked.
‘The Overlord Stone is gone. Now we are trapped in this time, and will go in death with everything else when our enemy arrives, which will be soon.’
‘What happened to it?’
‘Your Federation has it.’
Wolfe jerked back. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That is false, and I do not know how your perception was arrived at.’
‘That is the only explanation,’ Jadera insisted.
‘It cannot be,’ Wolfe argued. ‘First, I was brought into this matter by a high-level Federation Intelligence official. He was - as far as I know still is - using false Lumina stones to try to find out what is going on. All he knew was that one single Al’ar might have survived, and commissioned me to find him, then later to kill him. At no time did he even mention a Mother Lumina.’
‘High-ranking officers do not always tell their subordinates more than what they must know. I think in Terran it is termed not letting one hand know what the other does.’
‘I am very aware of that,’ Wolfe said. ‘But this man, this one called Cisco, gave me all his raw data. There was no mention of the Overlord Stone anywhere in it. If the Federation had it, wouldn’t they have given me different orders? And if they did have the Overlord Stone, it seems they would have insisted I take Taen alive, not kill him.’
Jadera thought. ‘There appears to be merit in your reasoning,’ he said grudgingly.
‘Now I shall provide a puzzler,’ Wolfe went on. ‘The Federation doesn’t know about the Mother Lumina, but the ones who call themselves Chitet do. They even know to call it the Overlord Stone.’
‘Who are these Chitet?’
Wolfe explained the group, their onetime attempted rebellion against the Federation, and his and Taen’s murderous encounters with them.
‘This,’ Jadera said, ‘is truly a puzzlement, as you said. While I consider it, I think it is time I show you why I said what I did about the Federation having stolen the Overlord Stone.
‘Now it is time to show you some deaths.’
THIRTEEN
Federation Hides Deadly Secret:
DEATH STALKS DREAMERS
Do the Al’ar Somehow Murder from Beyond the Grave?
By the Federation Insider’s Special Investigation Team
A strange, supernatural death has struck at least a dozen of the Federation’s most noted psychics and mystics, a special investigation by your Federation Insider has discovered.
According to secret police reports that were provided to your Insider’s newshounds by concerned higher-ups within the government, these vision-favored men and women all died in the same manner: burning to death in awful agony. Yet none of them had time to scream or cry for help, since in several cases loved ones or others were nearby and heard nothing.
In one horrifying case Lola Fountaine, who has frequently made predictions for your Federation Insider over the years, was in the company of her business advisor and best friend when she suddenly clawed at her throat, and her body, the terrified friend told police, showed a terrible rash, then turned red, as if burning, then the flesh charred and boiled, lifting away from the bone. ‘Yet,’ she went on, ‘there were no flames, and I felt no heat.
‘It was almost like Lola was struck by some strange disease, some virus, that killed her by fire before she had time to call for help,’ the friend went on.
Lola was not the only one.
The first to die, Federation officials believe, was the late Leslie Richardson of Earth, once known as ‘The Great Deceiver,’ whose body was found on his houseboat two months ago.
With at least a dozen dead, the Federation Insider queried officialdom as to why this horror is being kept secret. None of those we questioned had any response other than ‘No comment.’
There are only two similarities to the deaths: All of the victims were known for their extraordinary powers; and all of them specialized in psychic investigations of the monstrous Al’ar.
Other known victims, and the circumstances of their death, are . . .
FOURTEEN
The crystal spindle’s fire gleamed no more. It hung, dead, in emptiness, far from the nearest star. There were two other ships nearby. Joshua recognized them as Federation long-range scoutcraft, probably Foley class, built within the last five years.
‘So the Federation did find the Lumina,’ he said. ‘Why was Cisco lying to me?’
‘As I said previously, my explanation is that the one hand knows not what the other does,’ Jadera said.
‘You said there were deaths here,’ Taen said, ‘so something beyond the discovery of the Lumina occurred here.’
‘It did,’ Jadera agreed. He went to another screen, touched its surface.
The image showed the Lumina carrier ship, then moved past it, into emptiness. Then there was something visible, something
too small to show up on the screen.
It was the body of a human. He wore no spacesuit, and most of his head had been shot away.
‘Here is the first death. None of us can tell what might have happened. One Who Fights From Shadows, bring your Terran eyes to this, so we may learn and decide what must be done next.’
‘Suit up,’ Joshua said in Terran. ‘We’ll go visiting.’
The entry lock of the Al’ar ship bulged outward, and three beings moved through its viscosity into space.
‘Are you hearing this band?’
‘I am,’ Wolfe said. ‘You correctly set my suit’s communicator. ’
White mist came from the driver on Wolfe’s suit, what appeared to be green light from the belts of the two Al’ar, and they moved toward the Lumina’s carrier-ship.
Wolfe looked back at the Al’ar craft. Like his Grayle, its bulk belied the size of the crew - only ten Al’ar had been needed to man the craft before it lifted away from the Guardians’ world.
The ship was named Serex, which translated as Swift-Strider. It was a light cruiser and looked as starkly alien as it was, with a sickle-shaped ‘wing’ that housed the drive, fuel and weapons pods, and twin ovals that hung inside the c-curve at the front for the crew.
The cold past ran down his spine, and he remembered the war, seeing other Al’ar cruisers snap out of N-space toward him.
The Lumina’s carrier-ship loomed close, and he reversed, braked briefly, and touched down on the skin of the craft. It was ridged, and he used the ridges as handholds to follow the two Al’ar to the entry lock.
Jadera touched the circle in two places and it bulged expectantly. They pushed their way through.
Wolfe looked at his suit’s indicators and saw there was zero atmosphere.
The ship’s interior was a single circular room, the walls lined with screens, controls. Coming down from the ceiling and up from the floor were two pylons about a foot in diameter.
The three-foot space between them was empty.
‘Here is where the Lumina would have been?’ Wolfe asked.
‘Just so. The suspending forcefield has been shut down.’
Wolfe went back to the lock and examined its edges closely.
‘There are signs of damage,’ he said. ‘Someone forced the entryway and entered who did not know the pattern of this entrance.’
‘A Terran.’
Wolfe nodded, then realized the gesture couldn’t be seen. ‘Almost certainly,’ he said. ‘Would there have been any devices protecting the Lumina?’
‘None. The stone’s potency is lessened by anything that blocks any sensory approach.’
‘So this person would have entered and seen the Lumina hanging in midair. How would it have appeared? Blank, dull, like mine, when I am not using it?’
‘No,’ Jadera said. ‘The Overlord Stone is always reflecting a measure of the energy going into the smaller stones.’
‘So somebody - maybe a couple, three somebodies - boards this ship, and here’s the biggest jewel they’ve ever seen. Real hard to figure what comes next,’ Wolfe mused aloud, without keying his mike. He looked around the chamber again. No thoughts, no impressions came.
‘Let’s go look at the other exhibits,’ he said.
The first Federation ship’s outer lock yawned. Wolfe maneuvered into the small portal, saw the inner lock door was also open.
He ran his fingers along the edges of the lock, then looked at black smudges on his glove’s fingertips. He unclipped a light from his belt and pulled himself into the ship’s interior, the two aliens behind him.
There were ten dead men inside, grouped around the unfolded chart table. Their bodies had exploded when the lock was blown open, then, as the years passed, withered into dry mummies. Their blood and body fluids were dried red, brown, gray spatters on the bulkheads and overhead.
Wolfe glanced at the bodies, then went past them to the scout’s main control panel. There was a gaping hole to one side. Wolfe touched it, again saw black on his fingertips.
He examined the controls, found the EMERGENCY OVERRIDE switch.
‘Try to pull that outer door closed and turn the locking wheel as far as it will go,’ he asked.
Taen obeyed. ‘It appears to have sealed.’
Joshua closed the override switch, saw indicators flicker feebly to life.
‘There’s still air in the bottles. Stand by.’ Again, he examined the control board, touched sensors.
Overhead lights glowed into faint yellow life.
An indicator on his suit’s panel moved sluggishly. Joshua opened his faceplate.
‘We have atmosphere,’ he said. ‘Unseal your suits.’
The thin air smelled dead, dusty.
The two Al’ar slid their faceplates up.
‘Why did you do this? We have no need of their atmosphere,’ Taen asked.
‘Because it’s hard as hell to do a shakedown with gauntlets. Shut up. I want to pay attention to what I’m doing.’
Wolfe took his gloves off and, beginning with the first man, trying not to look at his twisted grimace, he systematically went through the pockets and pouches of the torn shipsuit. He did the same for the other nine men.
‘Not a bit of ID,’ he said, sounding unsurprised. ‘Now for the ship’s log.’
He sat at the pilot’s chair, again fingered controls.
Nothing happened.
He looked to one side, saw a small slot where something the size of a ship’s log cartridge would have been. The slot was empty.
He found the ship’s safe. The door had been blasted open, and papers were scattered on the deck. He knelt, went through them.
‘No ship’s roster, no orders, no nothing.’
He went to one corpse, touched the crumpled skull, closed his eyes.
He felt back into dim time, felt surprise, horror, agony.
‘Do you know what happened?’ Jadera asked. ‘We were unable to determine who was the murderer, since all of the Terrans died by violence.’
‘Pretty sure. Let’s take a look at the other ship. I’ll predict we’ll find one more body.’
‘We do not need to investigate that ship unless you need to,’ Jadera said. ‘It is just as you said. How did you know?’
Joshua didn’t respond but pulled his gauntlets on and turned their wrists until they clicked sealed.
The second scoutship showed no sign of damage, and Wolfe opened the lock and entered. There was still air in the ship. As the inner lock cycled open he wrinkled his nose, smelling what he’d expected, an echo of the familiar sweet stench of an unburied corpse.
This man had died more quickly than the others. A blaster bolt had cut him almost in two. Over the years the body had decayed slowly, the ship’s conditioner system fighting against corruption: skin pulled tight against bone, ripped, tore. Fingernails, hair grew as flesh vanished. The corpse leered at Wolfe.
Wolfe went to the controls, touched sensors, and the panel came alive. He scanned it.
‘Plenty of fuel . . . air . . . we’ll take this one back with us.’
He spun around in the chair. The two Al’ar stood on either side of the corpse, their eyeslits fixed on him.
‘First,’ he said, ‘is we get rid of that.’
Joshua found a thick plas tarp, rolled the remains into it, and the three lifted the tarp to the lock and cycled it out into space.
He found his lips moving in almost-forgotten phrases as the body orbited away aimlessly.
‘Now, Joshua Wolfe,’ Jadera said in Terran. ‘Tell us what happened.’
‘It’s pretty obvious,’ Wolfe said. ‘These scouts have four-man crews for most missions. Two men and one kills the other, three and it’s two against one, five is cost-ineffective.
‘They send them out in three-ship elements.’
‘Ah. There is one ship and one man missing.’
‘This is what I think happened,’ Joshua went on. ‘Possibly these scouts came on the Lumina craft by accident, although
I find that almost impossible to believe. They’ve got good sensors, but space is pretty big the last time I checked.
‘Maybe the Lumina ship radiated some kind of signal that could be received by someone, and they were just being curious as to the source of this signal. Or maybe they were following up on something Naval Intelligence picked up on one of the Al’ar homeworlds.
‘I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.
‘I do know that at least one member of the crew was Chitet - maybe the man that’s missing, although that’s not likely.
‘They found the Lumina carrier ship, boarded it, saw the Lumina. The biggest goddamned jewel any man could believe. Somebody got greedy. I’d guess . . .’
Wolfe stopped, thought for a time.
‘Jadera,’ he asked slowly, ‘if someone, someone who had never been trained, concentrated on the Lumina, what would he see? Anything at all?’
‘That is almost an impossible question to answer,’ the Al’ar Guardian said. ‘But I can hazard a thought. If someone saw the Lumina as what you said, a jewel of inestimable value, and he gazed into it, the Lumina would most likely reflect what he brought to it.’
‘Dreams of glory,’ Wolfe said.
‘This is so. I would imagine he would suddenly find his mind filled with all manner of possibilities.’
‘So we have,’ Wolfe went on, ‘our dreamer, whom the Lumina has just taken to the roof of the temple. So he arranges a conference on some pretext aboard one ship. One man - or woman - is left on each of the other two. Standard policy.
‘Our villain arranges to be the last to arrive, waits until he knows everybody’s unsuited, then blows the lock safety and the inner door open.
‘He goes to this ship, kills the man here, and then, or maybe later, shoots the man on the third ship and pitches him out the lock.
‘At leisure, he tries to make sure he - or she - is going to be able to disappear, and destroys all the crew IDs and the ship’s log so, he hopes, nobody can know which of the twelve did it.
