Crown of the Serpent

by Allen Wold

  Polski stared at Brenner for a long moment, then turned to Chiang. "Any ideas?"

  "A Patrol craft," she said, "or a courier could land and take off here without being detected. We're far enough from major cities, and there's no reason to keep a watch. A shuttle might be picked up by regular air traffic control, if there's any normal air traffic in the area."

  "But we had our long-range scanners centered on the town," Brenner said, "just as soon as we were near enough, and we kept our surveillance up until we landed. The most recently killed were less than an hour dead when we got here. These God damned raiders left while we were watching, and we didn't detect anything. That scares the shit out of me, Major."

  Chiang stared at him tight-lipped, as if she wanted to say that was impossible, or that he must have been mistaken, but all she said was, "I'll check into it as soon as I get a chance. The fact that they were able to do that may actually be a clue."

  "How about the town itself," Polski asked, "any damage?"

  "Eight buildings trashed," Brenner said. He made an effort to regain control of himself.

  "Let's see one," Polski suggested.

  They left the building, but as they went down the broad, shallow steps toward the van parked at the curb, they saw, about a block away, a solitary figure walking down the middle of the street toward them.

  It was humanoid, but so garbed in loose-fitting gray that its species could not be determined. It walked toward them with a calm deliberation, as if it owned the street, and with a strange combination of fluid grace and spastic clumsiness. Its face was covered, with goggles over its eyes, and what looked like a vocalizer over its mouth and nose. Anavür and Brenner stepped forward to intercept the figure as it neared the van.

  It reminded Rikard of the Circularians, a cult whose religious beliefs forbade them to show any part of themselves in public. Except that Circularians were strictly Human, and this person's movements could not have been made by Human physiology.

  The figure stopped when it was a pace or two from the two captains.

  "What are you doing here?" Brenner asked.

  "My name is Grayshard," the figure said. Its mechanical voice was low-pitched, implying a masculine gender. "I wish to speak with Colonel Leonid Polski."

  Maybe, Rikard thought, it was just so ugly, in Human terms, that it had decided to conceal itself in order to avoid causing dismay. The Ratorshya were like that, mammalian and human-oid, but they looked more like something long dead than alive, and in many places they had to remain covered by law. But they had four arms and were only a meter and a half tall. This stranger stood nearly two meters from the soles of its boots to the turbanlike wrappings around its head.

  Polski hesitated only a moment, then joined the two captains. "I'm Polski," he said to the stranger. "What is your business here?"

  "My credentials," Grayshard said. He reached slowly and carefully into the folds of his loose jacket. His voice did not lack intonation, but it was completely artificial, as if he did not have a typical vocal apparatus at all. He drew out a card and handed it to Polski.

  Polski looked at it, touched a spot on its face and read what the card displayed. He took longer than he should have, and for a moment Rikard wondered if the card might have had an effect on him the way a dragongem would. But at last Polski handed the card back. "Very good, Msr. Grayshard," he said. "What can we do for you?"

  "I am to participate in your investigation of these atrocities."

  "Impossible," Sukiro said as she strode forward. "I know every species in the Federation, starfaring and otherwise, and you're not from here."

  "It is true," Grayshard said, "still, I will participate."

  "By whose authority?" Sukiro demanded.

  "The Secretary of State," Polski answered dryly.

  "The—what? I don't believe it."

  Grayshard took the card out again and handed it to Sukiro. She activated it and read it, for far longer than Polski had. Even from where Rikard stood, he could see her face coloring. At last she handed the card back, turned abruptly away, and went to get in the van. Rikard couldn't help but chuckle at her discomfiture.

  "Looks like she got her own back," Darcy said to him, smil­ing softly. But nobody else was amused.

  Polski took a deep breath. "Let's go then," he said, and everybody else got in the van too, Grayshard last of all.

  Sukiro was sitting way in the back, her arms folded across her chest, staring out the window. When Grayshard got in he hesitated a moment, then took a seat up near the front, away from the others, as if he respected their dislike or distrust of his presence. The driver started the van and drove off toward the far side of town.

  The site of the damage was a house. Alone among its neighbors, it had been thoroughly destroyed, the window-walls broken out, the furniture knocked over, broken, and scattered, a corner of the roof half caved in. There were no bodies here.

  Rikard got out of the van with the others. The sun was far too bright here. It glinted, almost painfully, off the all but invisible glass walls of the nearby houses. He squinted to shut out the glare and followed the others toward the ruined structure.

  "In this neighborhood," Brenner said, "only one person in ten was found dead, and none of them were debrained. None were taken away, either, which is why we think this is at the limit of the raiders' activities. And an interesting point, this is where we found Savathorn."

  They went inside, and had to step carefully over all the bro­ken glass.

  There were too many people here, Rikard thought. It made him feel very uncomfortable, and he wanted to drop back as they went from room to room, but he was in the middle of the crowd and couldn't get away without pushing somebody aside, and physical contact was the last thing he wanted right now. Occasionally they stopped to look at some particular piece of violence, but Rikard didn't pay much attention. He didn't want to be here, there was no need for this further demonstration, he just wanted to get away, from the house, the city, the planet, just go and get back to his quest. The Leaves were too impor­tant. He was not going to let Polski talk him into this.

  They did not stay in the house very long. There wasn't much to see, after all, and nothing different from the other seven sites of destruction. But when they left the house Rikard's relief at not feeling so crowded was countered by his unease at being out in the open again. And everybody was looking at him as if expecting some reaction.

  "Why did they do it?" was the only thing he could think of to say.

  "We have no idea," Polski said. "Damage like this always occurs in isolated instances, and not in every town. It's another of those complicating factors that may or may not mean any­thing."

  Rikard started to go back to the dark haven of the van, but the others—too many people, far too many—were going around the house toward the backyard. Reluctantly, Rikard fol­lowed. He felt uncomfortable with no ceiling over his head.

  Darcy was looking at him with a concerned expression. "Are you all right?" she asked.

  He stared at her for an instant. "Sure," he said, almost snapped. "Of course I am."

  She said no more, but went to walk beside Polski as Rikard followed along behind the others.

  There was a series of police flag-stakes making a line across the back of the backyard, and along the backyards on either side. On the left the line angled through the far side of the next lot over back to the street, where the van was parked, and on the right it cut through the next yard farther on to the next street over. Rikard hung back as the others neared the line.

  "We occasionally find marks like these," Brenner said, pointing to something on the ground. "They might be foot­prints, it's hard to tell in the lawn." The grass had been lightly pressed down, but there was no shape to the mark, and each mark was a different size. "They're not made by Senola, their hoofprints are quite distinctive, and there are no such marks on the other side of this line of stakes, which is why we think the raiders stopped short just here. In other places, the line is
not so clear."

  Rikard didn't think the line was clear even here. He looked up from the gently bruised grass and stared at the stakes. The scar on the palm of his right hand itched. He groped for his gun, but it was still with his luggage somewhere. He scratched his palm with the first two fingers of his left hand, and saw the momentary, half-visible concentric rings of his built-in ranging device.

  "No casualties on the other side of the line?" Sukiro was asking.

  "No bodies at all," Brenner said, "except for a few who seemed to have died in accidents caused by their sudden loss of consciousness—falls, cars out of control, drowning in bath­tubs, and so on."

  Rikard didn't want to be with these people. Their voices were too loud, they were moving around too much. He caught Darcy glancing at him with a strange expression on her face but couldn't meet her eyes. The only person who seemed to be acting normally was Grayshard, whom he'd almost forgotten about, and who was also keeping apart from the group, and from Rikard too.

  He wanted to go back to the van, but the others went on across the boundary into the next yard. I'll just wait there, he thought, but as he looked around he saw the desolate town, heard the breeze through the trees, felt the oppressive emptiness of the sky—without even cloud cover—and in a half panic pushed on to keep up with them.

  He passed between two flag-stakes. This is insane, he thought. He—they—were so vulnerable out here. No place to hide in a town like this, no way to get away from prying eyes. The sun was much too bright. Every minute reflection from glass walls, near and far, was painful in his eyes. People were scurrying around uselessly, burning up precious energy, moving too fast, talking too loud—he didn't know what they were say­ing, Brenner or Polski or Anavür, and he didn't care. It was all he could do to keep up with them, to get even within twenty meters of them, to walk fast enough not to be left behind. He wouldn't have minded that if there had been someplace he could have waited. He looked over his shoulder at the van, its interior dark, comfortably enclosed, and wished he could go back there.

  The group, with Brenner and Chiang in the lead, came to the far street and turned to the right. Rikard didn't know whether to follow them or go around the back of the house. He did the latter.

  He could see the others through the transparent walls well enough, but he was afraid he would get lost, and that would be worse than being too close to these oppressive people. The line of flag-stakes came up the yard beside the house and crossed the street. The group crossed back over the boundary, and looked at him curiously as they did so. What business was it of theirs?

  "Are you coming?" Polski called to him. The colonel's voice was harsh and grating.

  "Be right with you," Rikard called back, and was shocked to hear that his own voice sounded as unpleasant, more so even as it resonated inside his head. Reluctantly, he passed back across the boundary.

  It was like waking up out of a nightmare. Much of the dream-feeling was still with him, the sky was too high, the light too bright, the people, even at this distance, too near. But his thoughts were much clearer now and curiously, just as an ex­periment, he stepped back across the boundary again.

  As soon as he did the oppression closed in on him, half terrifying, half welcome. That ambivalence contributed to the nightmarishness of the feeling, and for a moment he was con­fused. Then he heard Darcy calling to him—they were coming back toward him, back toward the demolished house—and he quelled his momentary panic at their nearing and stepped back across the boundary one more time. The oppression faded again. It did not disappear altogether but was reduced enough so that he knew where he was, who he was, and remembered why he was here. He forced himself to rejoin the group.

  "What's the matter?" Darcy asked. "You don't look well."

  "I'm not," Rikard said. "Let's get back to the van."

  "What's the matter," Sukiro repeated sarcastically, "this place getting to you?"

  Rikard ignored her, and turned to Polski instead. "Leonid, do you feel anything strange about this place?"

  "Aside from the obvious?"

  "Yes. Like maybe the residue of some kind of psychic field."

  "No," Polski said uncertainly. He turned a questioning glance to Brenner.

  "Nobody's reported anything to me," the captain said.

  "It's not as strong here," Rikard said, "but just beyond that row of flags it was fierce."

  "I didn't feel anything," Darcy said. "What was it like?"

  "Tathas," Rikard said, and watched with some satisfaction as both Polski and Darcy registered surprise.

  By now they were back at the van. Rikard got in and they all followed. "It feels better in here," he said. "Enclosed. Not so much light. Too many people, but I can bear it."

  "Well aren't you the tough guy," Sukiro sneered.

  "That's enough, Orin," Polski said without looking at her. "Are you sure it's Tathas?" he asked Rikard.

  "It's not exactly the same, but so much like it—"

  "What are tathas?" Chiang asked.

  "A degenerate fungoid race," Rikard told her, "found only on Kohltri, as far as we know. They'd been isolated and living underground for thousands of years. They're not intelligent any­more, but they're mildly telepathic. They project their thoughts and feelings, unconsciously. They're insane, want to be left alone, resent any intrusion, live on the memories of what their world used to be like before they started regressing. They leave a physical residue that has much the same effect, making in­truders see the world as the Tathas see it, not as it is. They're hungry, fear light, hate to move too fast, and though they clus­ter together, hate company."

  "I've never heard of them," Sukiro said.

  "But how could they get here?" Darcy asked.

  "I have no idea," Rikard said, "but I think we ought to go back to that house, with whatever detectors we can, and find out more."

  "We haven't got time for that," Sukiro said impatiently.

  "Wrong," Polski told her, with something like excitement in his voice. "That just might be the clue we've been looking for—if we can figure out what it means."

  But before he could issue any orders, a call came on the van's radio for him. He took the message, then turned to the others. "The statistical report has just come in," he said, "at headquarters.

  "We'll look into this later, Rikard," he went on, "but right now I want to see that report." He gave the driver instructions, and they drove back to the town's police station. As they went, Rikard noticed Grayshard watching him.

  3

  The police station, near the center of town, was only three floors tall and occupied less than half a block. Like all the other buildings, it was walled almost completely in glass. If there were cells, they had to be underground.

  The main room was dominated by a large comcon screen, which had been temporarily set up against a side wall. This screen would normally be used to display orders of the day, progress reports, messages, and so on, but now it showed an enlarged view of the report's title—"Statistical Analysis of Bel­ligerent Activities"—addressed to Colonel Leonid Polski, and with Federal and Police symbols, signatures, and other front matter.

  The com sergeant, who would run the report display, was waiting for them at a smaller screen, from which she could control the larger one. When everybody was inside and seated in every available chair, Polski gave the word and the sergeant started tapping buttons.

  The first image was a simulated 3D map of the stars of the Federation, those with inhabited systems shown as small disks, those without as rings. After a moment the uninhabited stars winked out, and those star systems where the raiders had not struck were reduced from disks to points. The victim systems formed an irregular clump, filling about a quarter of the volume of the Federation.

  A legend appeared at the bottom of the large screen, a scale of colors from yellow through red to purple and then blue, di­vided into twenty-four shades, each color representing a differ­ent time period, from one year ago for palest yellow to dark bl
ue, which covered the last fifteen standard days. The victim systems changed color to correspond to the scale.

  "This is the data we've been working with," the sergeant said. She was reading text on her smaller screen. "As you can see, the earlier victim systems are nearer the center, the later ones toward the edge, though there's quite a bit of apparent variability."

  It was not easy to see even that much pattern. There were white points representing untouched systems scattered through­out the colored region, and all the violet and blue stars were concentrated more or less on one side, though the yellow and orange systems were more toward the other side.

  "Some of this distribution," the sergeant went on, "may be due to where potential victims were located, rather than to any plan on the part of the raiders."

  "There are two kinds of victims," Polski said. "Those where there was occasional severe damage, as here..." About half of the colored stars now had small rings around them. "... and those where there was no appreciable damage."

  "Natimarie is right here," the sergeant said, and one of the ringed blue stars flickered for a moment. "From what we un­derstand, there were other variables besides damage, but no­where near as consistent or as widespread, and nothing could be determined from them. But the damage implies the existence of two different raiding parties, one of which exhibited occasional fits of violence.

  "The analysts still can find no pattern in the type of species taken, except that they're all intelligent and from small towns. But if they assume two raiding parties instead of one, the first thing is that we no longer have to seriously consider the possi­bility that their ships are faster than ours. The time between each raid of each party is more than sufficient for them to get back to a base somewhere within the area of activity and out again to their next target.

  "If that assumption is made, and correlated with the dates of each raid, then a pattern does emerge—at least to the statisti­cians."