Z-Sting (2475 CE)

by Ian Wallace

  “Does General Sherman know why his colonel felt impelled to push this Croyd?”

  “Sir, you would have to ask the general.”

  “Why didn’t you ask the general?”

  “Sir, he is a general.”

  The nimbus that had been padding at the back of Herod’s mind abruptly took shape and lost shape again. He probed further: “Did Mr. Croyd give his first name?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Does he have an ID?”

  “No, sir, and no money.”

  “But he came on an airvent couch? What does he look like?”

  She shuddered. “Like a mummy, sir.”

  The species name of Dr. Thoth Evans had been—what? Not Homo sapiens, but croyd Thoth?

  CROYD Thoth?

  "For the love of any saint,” Herod commanded low, “push him in—and then go away and forget this.”

  Still the headskin of the mummy was stretched taut around temples and cheekbones and eye sockets, but it was no longer ash white; it had a bit of tone. The recently bare cranium already showed incipient fuzz. The eyes were open and clear blue, blinking normally. The lips were perceptibly lips. Nevertheless the skulled body was old, old . . .

  The ancient voice came out with surprising clarity marred by tracheal sough, came in short phrases with labored inhalation between:

  “Listen hard, Herod, here is the bare gist. Forget Thoth Evans. Old alias, discarded now. Call me Croyd. Just Croyd. Equally my name. Buy?”

  “Buy, Croyd. Go on!”

  “I’ve been awake inside for years. I’ve listened to talking. Your Galactic is bidding—against Mare Stellarum—for the Interplanetary Union—contract. Here’s your chance—to win it. Erth is in trouble—it must be. I built COMCORD. I gave it political sting. But they substituted—cosmic death in a Z-shroud. And what’s worse—ludicrously worse—they can’t control it—hell, they’ve lost the sting!”

  Herod frowned in pain. Right! right! even Marta Evans didn’t know where the Z-sting was located, whence it would come if activated . . .

  The mummy pressed: “Herod, the sting needs tending! How can they tend it—when they don’t even know where it is? Something has to go wrong! After most of a century—Erth has to be in trouble!

  “Herod—here I am. I am begging you. Send me to Erth—as an agent of your Galactic. You have about a week—to get me in shape. I have to find—the Z-sting. That’s what is lost. I have to kill it—”

  He stopped, choking. His breath stopped, his ribs heaved, his lips worked. Herod started for his intercom to call medical help. A Croyd hand came up to stop him—and the thin lips were painfully smiling!

  Added the mummy: “And I haven’t had a drink—for three generations!”

  Medical Doctor Fortescue gently shook a shoulder of her emaciated patient Croyd, noticing with professional pleasure that the shoulder was no longer mere skin-on-bone—it was skin-on-frail-sinew-on-bone. His eyes opened instantly: charming eyes that were steadily regarding her tawny handsome face. What a wonderful old man!

  “Get set,” she warned him. “I’m going to flip back your bedclothes and carry you to the whirlbath.”

  He inspected her. It was the second day of this routine, and his tall doctor was dressed normally for whirlbath treatment—in very little. Somehow his voice had become a modulated baritone which, however, cracked too often: “I’d rather do it myself.”

  She drew back in mock shock. “Doc-tor Croyd! You reject my advances?”

  He succeeded in making his skeletal grin look genuinely humorous. “If I ever get strength to reject—I’ll have strength to accept.” He sobered: “Please, Fortescue—call me plain Croyd. And—let me do this—” Still his breath was short, but there was no more throat-sough: yesterday evening she had decided to seal his old tracheotomy with synthederm which had grown swiftly into normal tissue, its cells adapting themselves sympathetically to the genetic pattern urgencies of their new neighbors.

  Wrestling himself up on to an emaciated elbow (she noted a hint of a new Mickey Mouse biceps bulge), Croyd used about five laborious arm efforts to shove back a light sheet, then got a skinny leg up and with a foot pushed the sheet all the way down. He was raw to the waist, and no Olympian. Dropping back exhausted, he closed eyes and opened mouth and breathed hard. Fortescue gazed appreciatively down upon him.

  When he had quieted, she asked: “Ready, friend?” It had been his first do-it-yourself sitting-up-in-bed, but she suspected that he would prefer to waive applause.

  The eyes came open. He regarded her calmly. “You notice that I recovered fast from that action. This is the morning when I choose to walk. Given the proper incentive, that is.”

  Her brown eyes went mocking: she had no quarrel with sexism as long as it wasn’t occupational. “It would have to be some incentive. You’re awfully far from being ready.”

  His eyes narrowed slightly. “I have less time than you think. Back up there, Fortescue, and I’ll stagger into your arms. That’s the incentive.”

  Dr. Fortescue had known many patients and passes. Younger ones amused her; Croyd, oddly, didn’t. Her voice went soft: “Like nursie was saying—relax, grandfather: I’m about to make a pickup. No walkie yet: I cradle you in my granddaughterly arms—”

  His eyes and voice were steady. “I meant what I said. The psyche is ready to walk, and the silly old body is going to have to do it. Stand back five paces and catch me when I fall. And while then you hold me in your granddaughterly arms, let me take time to appreciate my incentive. Or shall I recite the Hippocratic Oath? All of it?”

  Professionally she examined his debilitated body. Her inspection returned to his eyes and steadied there. His eyes held hers. She made a professional risk decision. She nodded once. His eyes squeezed approval. She stepped back a few paces and held out her arms: he may as well learn his limitations the hard way, she’d stop him before he could kill himself.

  Croyd impossibly sat on the edge of his bed, feet on the floor, hands gripping the bed edge, head far down revealing top of curved back with skin-cutting vertebrae and scapulae, rasping-gasping, about to fall forward. With a little cry, Fortescue ran to him and seized his sharp shoulders. They held the pose for half a minute; and then his breath, while continuing hard, ceased to gasp, and his head came slowly up. He stared straight ahead for a moment, eyes not quite in focus; then his head went farther up and back until his focused eyes met hers. And his mouth corners quirked, and he told her: “You’re a good girl, Dr. Fortescue. Take my pulse.”

  She fingered his wrist, timing his pulse with the cutichron on her left small fingernail. She frowned and kept at it. After two incredible minutes, she released the wrist, straightened, and poker-face announced: “First 110, then 100, then 90, now 85 and slowing.”

  “See what I mean, Fortescue? Here we go, then. Stand back five paces. The incentive is superb.”

  She backed away slowly, frowning, enormously apprehensive for him. Firming her mind, she said: “Let’s go, Croyd.”

  Again his head went down, and he hunched, and gripped the bed, and began to breathe deeply. Fortescue was taut. He rocketed into a semi-standing position, teetered with bent shaking legs, strained to straighten. Fortescue set her jaw and waited for disaster. Somehow, necessarily with his mind, he slammed his legs straight and locked knees. After another moment of seeking and finding precarious balance, he began to stilt-shuffle toward her, using his arms like a wild apprentice tightrope walker.

  Not until the tenth step did he totter. She went stiff-cold: he was far short of her, she should run to him; but she waited, respecting his ancient manhood. His eyes appeared to go inward. She was poised to leap. Miraculously he steadied. His gaze externalized, fastening on the pit of her breasts. Now breathing hard indeed, he recommenced the arduous shuffle.

  After another ten steps, he was a pace away. She dared to step back. Nodding approval, gasping, he stagger-shuffled on. She stepped back again. He took another baby step. His arms began to flail. Hoarsing pa
roxysmal breath, he fell into her embrace.

  He perhaps had killed himself. She perhaps had killed him.

  Eyes wet, she gathered his featherweight into her strong arms, and carried him back to the couch, and sat there with his body across her knees, clutching him to herself, rocking and crooning: a pietà. For a moment his breath stopped, and so did hers; then he breathed again, rattling death.

  And stopped. And prolongedly cleared his throat. She snatched tissues from a side-table receptacle and held them to his lips: “Spit!” she commanded. He spat copiously, and coughed, and began to breathe a little better. Crumpling the soiled tissue, she set it aside and went back to comforting him.

  She laid an ear on his big bony ribcage. His heart was a pneumatic hammer: she didn’t look at her cutichron, her experience timed it: a devastating 140 hurting her eardrums while his heaving chest dizzied her head.

  She clutched her moribund hero.

  Still terribly fast and hard—but a shade better: 130, maybe?

  Now no worse than 120, Breathing less aggressive but still bad.

  110.

  100.

  90.

  85.

  80—and breathing almost normally after—what? Four minutes?

  Her face was close to his, and his eyes were open.

  She whispered: “What sort of old man are you?”

  He told her: “A resolutely self-youthening old man. But still much too old to make an ass of myself. Better drop me into that whirlbath.”

  “Tell me again,” Herod begged, “why I am not merely hero-worshiping you, Thoth Evans alias Croyd, when I commit all this budget to your fishing expedition on Erth and on Nereid.”

  The old man sipped bourbon, strengthened himself with the conscientious anxiety of Herod, wanned himself with side-contemplation of fascinated-fascinating Fortescue. He warned: “You aren’t mentioning the Thoth Evans identity outside this tiny circle?” When Herod looked pained, Croyd nodded: “Well done, and I’m sorry. All right Why all this budget for fishing? Because my COMCORD has been hooked up to the Z-sting during seventy-five years, and COMCORD is overdue for a critical imbalance. Because you have already spotted a subcritical yet noticeable imbalance: 0•9 against Senevendia. Because, in your judgment, my Mare Stellarum and its leader Marta are senescent and even possibly rotten—and even if she is my great-granddaughter, I’m damned if I’ll be less than objective about her! Herod, before that imbalance or any other imbalance can go critical, we have got to get rid of the Z-sting and substitute something less Erth-lethal. But we don’t even know where the Z-sting is located, and worse, neither does Marta, the boss of Erth! So I have to go fishing—what else is there?”

  This evening’s conference came at the end of their preparations: not a war-room conference, but a physically relaxed soirée-gumbeating in Croyd’s private salon, with tawny-tall Fortescue wearing her Mona Lisa smile and otherwise only a white satin blouse and a black satin skirt and high-heeled sandals, with Herod and Croyd dressed in conventional black-and-yellow Rab evening elegance. Fortescue now interjected: “I can see a somewhat different approach for Thoth Evans. He is still the owner of all his old interests; by now, after most of a century at compound interest, he probably owns Erth. Why shouldn’t he just announce himself and take over?”

  Herod studied Croyd while Croyd watched Fortescue’s eyes. Presently Fortescue, smiling small, dropped those eyes, concluding: “Because Marta Evans would probably kill Thoth Evans. All right, I'm not Herod’s brains, I’m only his doctor; you go ahead and satisfy Herod.”

  “He already has,” declared Herod, “to the tune of an expensively outfitted space-frigate commanded by my most promising young officer, Dana Marana. The equipment, Fortescue! Like temposcanners! and an autocrew! and a totally new thing called ivisiradio—and who do you suppose invented that? This guy, a century ago. He had the makings hidden in a diamond mine right here in this complex! And even this apartment here, you think I assigned it to him? Hell, it’s his, he designed and furnished it decades before you and I were born! And again, now at this last minute, I demand of you, Croyd—since you are brushing off the entirely cogent suggestion by Fortescue—why all this budget?’’

  Silence. Then Croyd, ruminatively: “Maybe I just want to make you look good, Herod—to strengthen your bid for the Interplanetary Union.”

  “Horse, Fortescue should excuse it, shit. You were never so direct, Croyd. What’s the indirect purpose?”

  “Maybe I’m figuring that if you or I were simply to pull off a power play, we still wouldn’t be locating the Z-sting. Or maybe I’m playing with the idea that if you put me in a god position with respect to the ownership of Erth interests, then in all reverence I should try to imitate God; and I don’t see God stepping in to arrange human destiny by fiat—rather, I see him allowing humans to work it all out among themselves, and maybe gently strengthening the hands of humane humans who ask for his help, hut nevertheless staying out of it himself. So maybe I should stay out completely. But it so happens that I am not a god: I am a human, and I hope a humane human. So I have to do what I can. But just maybe, I can do it best by working through others—”

  Fortescue demanded: “Tell us what you’re getting at.”

  Croyd turned to her, and he was profoundly grave. “Herod has drawn for me a picture of Marta Evans as a woman who has lost power and will. And yet I notice that her organization continues dominant. I am suspecting that her organization is sliding out from under her, that some powerful clique of subordinates is acquiring control and is generating a fascist grab for the power of Erth. At the least, my mission is to get sharp evidence confirming or denying this; and if I confirm it, I must find a way to break it. Herod, who is maybe the villain?”

  Herod: “It has to be Dr. Ziska. He is Marta’s Minister of Internal Defense, but more, he’s been playing Essex to her Elizabeth—and by her command, the entire ministry of Mare Stellarum waits for his nod before jumping.”

  Fortescue: “Ziska is Marta’s paramour?”

  Herod: “He’s her Essex; I say no more. Not gallant, not deft, but magnetic in a Richard Crookback way, excuse the allusion switch, and totally unscrupulous, which Crookback or Essex may or may not have been. If Mare Stellarum is moving into a power grab—a dumb, insensitive, Erth-periling power grab—believe me, Croyd, it is Ziska: with Marta’s acquiescence, or with Marta’s bemused ignoring, but either way, Ziska.”

  Croyd: “All right. Beginning tomorrow, I have to find out whether; and if yes, then how to break. And here is the vicious relatum. Herod, I’ve balanced all the details you’ve given me against all the prior intimations that I woke up with; and I’m convinced that COMCORD is on the verge of activating the Z-sting and permanently enshrouding Man on Erth.”

  Shocked silence. Then Fortescue: “Why all that, Croyd? The worst penalty in the COMCORD wiring would be the cocooning of a single constellation—”

  “Worse is possible, Fortescue; and therefore, worse can be! Maybe tomorrow, maybe a generation from now: a tick in the clock of nature. What’s a generation? Since civilization began, on Erth or on Rab, there have been only one hundred fifty half-century lifetimes laid end-to-end! COMCORD alone, without complications, is basically unstable through tampering or computer failure without good guardians: does Mare Stellarum constitute a good set of guardians? Is any set of guardians good enough for a mechanically fatalistic threat of shroud? And how about that lost Z-sting? Think how long it has been piling up malfunction probabilities without any guardians at all! On one good theory, the accumulated chances of trouble this year are now much higher than one in two hundred—and that’s more than one chance of a strike every day!"

  Herod tapped teeth with a thumbnail. “There is something maddeningly suggestive about the time factor. Once a critical COMCORD imbalance has reached 3•0 and has activated the Penultimate Trigger, the interval between the triggering and the Z-strike is—what?"

  Fortescue intoned: “Minimum time seven hours fifty-four minu
tes thirty-six seconds; maximum time eight hours thirty-six minutes fifty-four seconds.”

  Croyd: “That is some kind of cue. And I’m remembering that the Penultimate Trigger is also lost: one more unguarded and unserviced device in the chain of potential disaster."

  “Which could mean," Fortescue speculated, “that either the Penultimate Trigger relay or the Z-sting is no longer functional. And with either out, COMCORD could go critical and nothing would happen.”

  “Do you want to count on that benign possibility, Fortescue?”

  “I do not!"

  “Consequently, I am going to Erth for the immediate purpose of learning where the Penultimate Trigger and the Z-sting are buried; and then I have to put both out of commission—”

  “Isn’t that a little like putting the solar system out of commission?”

  “I hope you see that it is tied in with the other part of the errand: looking into the Mare Stellarum power slippage. The two parts of my self-charge are intertwined. I have to play them both together.”

  “How?”

  Old Croyd took a sip of neat-but-rocked bourbon, let it infuse his auronasal epithelium, and pronounced with a mean gleam: “Dirty infighting. Infiltration. Double agent. On Nereid.”

  Fortescue stared at him, then took a hard slug of her zac collins and stared again. Herod economically stated: “On, I leave to you. But how in?”

  “I have a proposal that old Marta Evans can’t resist”

  “Name of?”

  “Make her young.”

  After a shock period, Fortescue clutched Croyd’s arm and talked at him fiercely. “Man, are you still senile? Suppose two impossibles: that you do get on, that you do get in—think! If you make her young, you restore her power, you perpetuate her power; you improve her chances of beating out Herod’s Galactic for the Interplanetary contract, so you work against all of us—”

  “Boy, will I be a double agent!”