by Eric Flint
Her eyes lit up with anger. "You don't understand, do you, Mr. Lorry? Jommy Cross gave me my life back. He restored my mind. I would still be a vegetable were it not for him. He had no obligation to help me, and no reason to. The tendrilless mean to destroy him and all true slans. Why should he care about me? And yet he did."
Jem wondered what it would feel like to strangle her. "Friendship and bleeding-heart dreams have no place in politics. That young man doesn't even know his own powers. He must be stopped."
"I owe him an obligation I can never repay. Given what he did for me, can you truly believe that every slan is bad? The evidence does not lead to that conclusion."
"The evidence I have is centuries of true slans killing the tendrilless, preventing us from achieving a rightful place among the superior races of humanity. You know they bred us without tendrils to prevent us from having powers like theirs. And then they began to kill us off, one by one."
"I believe there was killing on both sides, Mr. Lorry. So we should condemn Jommy Cross and all other surviving slans for the sins of the fathers? Why not trace the crime all the way back to Samuel Lann?"
Jem looked over the sheer drop to the bottom of the dry red gorge. Though the filtered sunshine was warm enough, he continued to feel a chill in his bones. His father was a doddering fool, the Authority members were passive and ineffective, and now this woman, a tendrilless, seemed to be siding with the enemy.
"If you think we have nothing to fear from the true slans, then you haven't realized the insidious ways they continue to strike at us. In the past two months, sixteen babies have been born with tendrils in Cimmerium—here, on our very doorstep! Somehow the slans have been transmitting their mutation rays to Mars. That's the only explanation." He pointed a stern finger at her. "Of course we couldn't allow those babies to live. They would have grown up to be spies among us, so we quickly destroyed them. Their parents have been arrested and are currently undergoing detailed genetic profiling. I suspect they were true slans all along, surgically modified to fit in among us."
"You're paranoid, Mr. Lorry."
"I'm a realist." He stormed away.
Unbothered, Ingrid Corliss lay back in the sun and closed her eyes, continuing to heal.
* * *
The Tendrilless Authority had called an emergency session to talk about the news they had just received, the unexpected proposal from the President-in-hiding on Earth. When Jem barged in, uninvited, his father looked down his nose at him. "You are not a member of this council, my son."
But I certainly should be. And one day after Earth is conquered, no one will deny me my right. He forced a respectful expression on his face. "But I'm sure I could help, given my background. What is the basis for this session?"
His father scratched his neat white beard. "We've received a direct communication from President Gray requesting a summit. He's provided some rather disturbing historical information that explains a great deal about our background. It even explains the babies recently born with tendrils."
"We already have an explanation for that. Anything Gray says is bound to be a trick."
"Nevertheless, we should consider this carefully. Gray has requested that we send a delegation to hear what he has to say."
Jem leaned against a stone column, casual in front of his leaders. "It's bound to be a trap. You do not know Kier Gray the way I do, Father. None of you Authority members do. I worked with him for years. If he truly is a slan, then he was working against us all along. As President he pretended to be human, while plotting against his own kind. If he'd known I was a tendrilless among them, he probably would have hurled me from the highest tower of the palace." Jem smiled. "Fortunately, there aren't any towers left."
One of the old men said in a creaky voice, "Nevertheless, President Gray has revealed historical explanations that makes us question many of our preconceptions."
"Take it with a grain of salt," Jem said. "Gray is trying to save his skin. He's working with Jommy Cross, as far as we know."
Altus seemed intrigued, and expected his son to be as well. "Ah, but hear him out, Jem. It makes a great deal of sense."
He listened with horror, disbelief, then anger as the council members repeated the story of the origin of the tendrilless. Gray suggested that the entire tendrilless race was a mere temporary offshoot, never intended to survive for more than a few centuries. The very idea appalled him. Worse, his own father and the Tendrilless Authority seemed to believe the ridiculous notion. Gullible fools! It was obviously a trick of some kind, an excuse to lull the tendrilless into doubts.
He saw only one way out. Covering his true mood, Jem bowed formally. "Father, this summit meeting will be very important, and it must be done with exquisite care. Perhaps I have been overly hard and aggressive in order to protect our race, but I can be cautious as well. I know Gray's mannerisms and schemes, and I can spot a trap. Please allow me to go to Earth as your representative."
Bleary-eyed Altus perked up. He seemed pleased with his son's apparent change of heart. "A mutually beneficial solution will be best for all of us. Listen to what Gray has to say."
Smiling carefully, he bowed. "If it is not a trap, then I am willing to consider alternatives. No one knows Earth better than I do. I can handle this."
"We never wanted the option of complete annihilation, as you well know," Altus said. "Make us proud."
Inwardly furious with the soft passivity of the Authority, he went to the transmitting center and opened a channel. "This is Jem Lorry. By now, President Gray, you will have realized that I was a tendrilless slan working in your own government. My father is the leader of the Tendrilless Authority here in Cimmerium. He has delegated me to work out the details of the summit." He paused, considered his words carefully. "I am skeptical about what you have said, but I will listen with an open mind. Tell me how to meet you, and we'll proceed from there."
When enough time had passed for a return signal to be received, he paced the floor, waiting and annoyed. The responding voice that came over the transmitting system, though, was a complete surprise to him. "Lorry, you're a bastard! You worked with me, and you worked with the President, and you fooled us all. You were a snake in our midst." It was John Petty.
Jem wished he could have seen the great slan hunter's face when he'd learned the President's chief adviser was a tendrilless turncoat.
Then Petty surprised him even more. "We are two of a kind, Lorry. It galls me to be here with the President, who has revealed himself as my greatest enemy. You and I have something in common—we each want to get rid of Kier Gray, so listen to me well. We'll set up this summit, but I propose a double-cross. I'll deliver Gray's head on a platter."
Jem's eyebrows shot up. At first he didn't trust the suggestion, but he and Petty had known each other for years, both of them ruthless and ambitious. He had to admit that a double-cross sounded like Petty—a way to turn the tables on the government in exile, to kill off Gray, his slan daughter Kathleen, possibly even Jommy Cross. It was an opportunity he simply couldn't pass up.
Hoping that his signal would not be intercepted by the wrong person, Jem answered immediately. The slan hunter should still be there at the communication console awaiting his answer. "I like your proposal, Petty. What I really want is to destroy President Gray and eliminate the government. Despite what my foolish father says, I have no interest in suing for peace with slans or with humans. Why should I? We've already won. You're a realist. Maybe I could find some way to make accommodations for you and a few other human beings. I'm willing to compromise."
Jem smiled to himself as he signed off, knowing Petty would accept the terms. It was all coming together. And once they had everything set up, Jem thought, why stop at just a double-cross? This meeting would be the convenient answer to everything.
CHAPTER 25
When Jommy arrived back in Centropolis, cautiously dodging debris and trying to avoid detection, he saw that the grand palace wasn't the only thing utterly destroyed.
>
He had driven through the night, keeping his vehicle out of sight whenever possible. Hidden in the darkness, Jommy had seen bright signal lights overhead indicating the flybys of bold enemy spacecraft. Parked under a dense stand of trees, he sat waiting in his dark and silent car until the tendrilless patrols passed out of sight.
Though the airships were a threat, he knew these were just scouts, not outright attack squadrons. With Earth's defenses already crushed, the bombardment of cities had stopped. The invaders' vanguard forces expected no further resistance from the vanquished people of Earth.
But Jommy and his friends still stood against them. He had his father's notebooks; he had superior slan technology; he had President Kier Gray. Unfortunately, Kathleen's father had not been able to contact any of his slan operatives from the old government, and Petty could not reach his secret police, who—he claimed—could form an organized resistance. One of Jommy's other hopes for this mission was to find the hidden enclave of slans in ruined Centropolis, the ancient highly secure hideout his father had marked in his logs. He knew some of his people must still be alive, and they had to be willing to fight.
The remaining slans had certainly been driven into hiding, but what had once been a superior race couldn't have been so utterly exterminated. But where were they? Why hadn't they fought against the invasion? Could it be that the true slans were even more afraid of the tendrilless? Jommy knew he wasn't the only one willing to fight for his planet.
He'd been striving to find the lost slans all his life. If a large population did survive, he doubted they were anywhere on Earth—and if they were still here and had chosen to do nothing, then perhaps he didn't want to know them after all. . . .
When the night sky was clear again, Jommy drove his car along the deserted roads. At last he arrived at the outskirts of the main city as the first light of sunrise painted the east with colors of blood and fire.
The streets of Centropolis were a mad turmoil of collapsed buildings and hollow-eyed survivors. Fires had gone unchecked, and entire blocks had burned down. For all their military superiority, the tendrilless had not attempted to mitigate the wanton destruction. They could have assured their victory with far less carnage. Did they really want to take over Earth if they left nothing but a charred ball? It made no sense.
As he drove along, always wary, Jommy understood that the desperate survivors might not be rational. They had gone through two days of hell, and at the very least would try to take his vehicle from him. Though the controls were keyed to operate only to his touch, the mob wouldn't know that. He would have to shed a great deal of unnecessary blood in order to defend himself—and they weren't his real enemies.
Hoping to prevent that, Jommy found a quiet alleyway full of long shadows cast by the intact buildings. With the extra awareness from his tendrils, he listened to the static of frantic thoughts and fear, but sensed no one watching him. He drove the already-scuffed car into a partially collapsed shed structure, then quietly piled debris around the hood and roof. The camouflage wouldn't bear careful inspection, but most people glancing at it would assume the car had been buried during an explosion.
Taking careful note of the car's location, Jommy trudged out into the dangerous streets. He wore nondescript clothes and carried only the small tracking device that would help him locate his disintegrator tube, wherever it might be buried in the palace rubble.
As the morning brightened, he passed people going about the business of survival. They pushed wheelbarrows, carried rucksacks full of canned food or jewelry. Looters ran in and out of stores, breaking open display cases and ransacking cash registers. Pale and frightened faces stared out of darkened windows.
He heard sporadic gunfire, screams, and laughter. One man ran past him with long chickenlike strides, carrying three overstuffed bags filled entirely with colorful hats. Jommy couldn't understand what the man was doing, but a second red-faced man chased after him, yelling, "Give those back! They're mine. Bring them back!"
Moments later, somebody shot at Jommy. He dove out of the way as ricochets peppered the pavement and the building walls next to him. He couldn't see where the shots were coming from or whom he had offended. He got to his feet and ran out of range.
Across one main thoroughfare, someone had strung barbed wire and built a rough barricade of old furniture, a refrigerator, and automobile parts. A huge sign bore dripping red letters that said MY TERRITORY. Three mangled bodies were strung on the barbed wire like gruesome trophies. Jommy chose an alternate route.
When he finally reached what had once been the grand palace, he saw only a wide rubble-filled crater. Somewhere buried inside that wreckage, hopefully close to the surface, was his powerful, one-of-a-kind weapon.
"Like finding a needle in a thousand haystacks," Jommy said aloud. "But at least this particular needle has a locator beacon." He held out his tracking device, and tiny flashing lights indicated the scan of the area, the search for a signal.
Smoke still rose from the pile of rubble, curling out from hundreds of fires still smoldering in vaults and smashed office levels below. He climbed over the debris like an explorer in a dangerous new mountain range. He found thick reinforced walls broken in half, leaving jagged edges like the teeth in a skull.
He balanced on fallen blocks, then climbed on top of a battered metal desk half-buried in the rubble. >From there, he pointed the tracking device into the wreckage, turning in a slow circle. Nothing but gray static filled the screen. Leftover thermal signatures from cooling girders and simmering fires masked the signal.
Jommy ventured deeper into the rubble, walking precariously on fallen blocks. He poked into dark and dead-end passageways that looked like dangerous mine shafts, hoping to catch just a flicker of the signal on the detector. Once he determined the weapon's location, though, then he would be faced with the even more difficult task of digging it out, perhaps under a mountain of debris. That would put his slan physical strength and his engineering ingenuity to the test.
By noon, painted with sweat and dust and soot, he sat down to rest, trying not to be too disheartened. As he propped his elbows on his knees, he suddenly caught a faint signal on the device's screen. Startled, he pointed the nose of his locator device downward, increased the gain, and picked up a louder ping. When he made his best guess of the location, he pocketed the device and used his bare hands to shove the fallen rock plates aside. Uprooting a broken metal pipe, he used it as a lever to pry away more heavy debris.
With no one around in the bombed zone, he dug down with renewed energy and enthusiasm, scraping rubble, gravel, and broken plaster away. Then he found an armored hatch. Confirming that the locator signal came from the chamber behind the hatch, he continued to dig until he uncovered a massive door, sealed and locked. He couldn't believe the detector had picked up any signal at all through such an obstruction.
After another hour of tireless excavation, Jommy realized that he had found an entire isolated chamber, like a self-contained bank vault—just like Petty had said. The armored chamber had remained intact even as the rest of the palace collapsed around it. Now the cubical vault rested in the rubble, tilted at an angle, like a treasure chest buried in debris.
Activating the detector again, Jommy saw that the static was thinner, the signal stronger. Yes, the vault's thick metal walls had blocked much of the beacon, but the disintegrator tube was definitely inside the chamber. He had to find a way to open the heavy door! Now that he had a chance, he had hope, and that was enough to keep him going long past the point where he would normally have been exhausted.
At last, when he had cleared all obstructions from the door, Jommy considered his options. The vault door weighed several tons and was held secure with thick pistons. However, despite its bulk, the motors and the lock were controlled by a simple spring-loaded hydraulic mechanism.
Completely focused on his task, Jommy tinkered with the dead controls. He needed only a power source to activate them, and then he could short-circuit an
d bypass the vault's standard combination. For him, this was child's play.
Now that he no longer had any need for the hand-held locator device, he removed the back plate and exposed its circuits. Pulling out the tiny power source, he inserted and adapted it for the vault door's security controls. He was rewarded to see the lights on the locking panel glow green and amber. Jommy pulled more wires from his tracker, cross-connected them, then hooked the detector to the motor controls for the large locking wheel.
Powered again, the locking bolts slid aside, making the sealed chamber vibrate. The motion caused the whole self-contained vault to shift and settle where it rested precariously in the unstable rubble. Jommy knew that if the rubble pile collapsed beneath him, he—and the vault—could be buried in a giant cave-in. He fought for his balance, ready to leap free at the last moment.
Then the thick locking bolts finally thumped into place, and the door unsealed itself with a hiss. Thick, lubricated cylinders heaved the massive barrier on gigantic hinges. Because the vault box lay tilted backward, the door lifted against gravity, then ground to a grudging halt, leaving a gap barely two feet wide.
