InterstellarNet 03 Enigma

by Edward M. Lerner

“What are you talking about?” Grace asked.

  “We’re trying to save time,” Carl reminded her. “Had you noticed the medical scanner at your feet? We’re monitoring it remotely. When I named the Xool, your heart rate jumped. Your brain scan lit up like a Christmas tree. The readouts spiked again when I mentioned the lunar base. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  She bit her lip rather than say more.

  “The Xool don’t want humans ‘wandering,’ and so Helena made them a promise.” Carl smiled unpleasantly. “ ‘Your humble servants will stop the starship.’ And here we found you, stockpiling explosives. Humble servant.”

  “You don’t get it!” Grace blurted out. Her lords, when angered, could do … anything. And they had made their desires clear. “It’s for your own good.”

  “Then help us understand,” Carl said.

  She could not stop the questioning. She could not make her body not react. But if they had had confidence their chemicals would keep her from triggering her bomb, they would be here, not on a vid link. Maybe, their concerns were valid. Maybe, if she could string them along for a while …

  “What do you want to know?” she asked.

  “How is ‘not wandering’ in our best interest?” Carl asked.

  “The Xool have a vision for humanity.” A vision they did not share. Except for some shalt nots, Grace little more understood her lords’ vision than she had when, long ago, as a young orphan, elderly servants had taken her in. “Leaving the Solar System isn’t a part of that.”

  “What is?” Carl asked.

  “I am not at liberty to say.”

  “Do I need to know this undisclosed vision?” Pensively, Carl rubbed his chin. “Of course. I need to know because the Xool are so damned powerful. They have wondrous technologies—setting aside that they have the most pathetic computers in eleven solar systems. I need to know because they’re insistent upon achieving their vision. So here’s the essential question, Grace. What will the Xool do if we go off script?”

  In truth, she also marveled at the lords’ cumbersome computers. More than once she had offered—nay, pleaded—to equip their lunar facility with decent hardware. For her own use, if not theirs. Apart from permission, finally, to bring in the lowest-end of personal comps, hobbled by removal of its wireless chip, her argument had accomplished nothing.

  “What will they do? I don’t think you want to find out.”

  “The thing is,” Carl said, “the UP no longer controls this vessel. For the next few years, at a minimum, the Foremost has stopped humans from roaming. You knew that before sneaking aboard. Kudos on that stunt, by the way. I’m impressed. So why destroy this ship now?”

  A query to her implant evoked less static than just after she had awakened. Days running on desperation and adrenaline might well turn up a person’s metabolism. She might be burning off the suppressant faster than her captors expected. If she could continue a little longer without revealing anything critical …

  “It is because my lords have a distinct vision for each InterstellarNet species. Trafficking among them is contrary to those visions.”

  Corinne sniffed. “What is InterstellarNet but trafficking among species?”

  And so it was. Grace and Helena and other servants had done their best to strangle interstellar communications in its cradle. In other solar systems, other servants had also made the attempt. Their efforts had seldom worked, either.

  On Grace’s next attempt, the static within her skull was clearly fading. Just a little while longer and she could end the threat to the lords that was … herself. She was revealing too much. She knew it, and still she couldn’t seem to stop. A residual effect of the knockout gas? Something more than suppressant in that hypo?

  “Do not mistake the lords’ leniency in one instance with license to defy them.” She only paraphrased an answer she had been given, in a very different context, early in her service. “The present situation is more serious.”

  “I would have words with your ‘lords,’ ” the Foremost said.

  “First you’ll have to find them,” Grace said.

  “They went home to chat,” Carl said offhandedly, “so just point us to their home.”

  A chill ran down Grace’s spine. How did he know so much? She began to doubt Helena, to fear Helena had betrayed the lords. If not her friend, then one of the lords’ servants on Earth.

  Grace said, “That’s information you’ll never get from me, because I don’t know.”

  “Because they don’t trust you to know,” the Foremost said, “and yet you serve them. Have you no self-respect?”

  “I serve the greatest minds in the galaxy!” Grace shot back. “I am honored to do so.”

  “Let’s talk about that,” Carl said.

  • • • •

  It was, Joshua thought, like watching a tennis match—only instead of a tennis ball, they whacked about the fate of worlds.

  One subtext after another soared over his head. There were meanings within meanings, wheels within wheels. Like peeling an onion. Like matryoshka dolls. He wasn’t useful here. Hell, he couldn’t even pick and stick with one metaphor.

  But there was another way he could help: a way he did not expect would be well received. A way that, once the notion had occurred to him, he couldn’t get out of his mind. A way that both terrified and beckoned to him.

  Joshua covered the mic with a hand. “I’m going to sick bay.”

  “Still have that headache?” Corinne asked. “Sorry.”

  Carl brushed aside the hand. “Be right back.” He froze the camera and muted the mic. “Now, Joshua? Seriously?”

  “Now,” Joshua said—hunched over, eyes downcast, doing his best to look pathetic. “Trust me. I need to leave.” If not for any reason I’m willing to share. Call it the Plan B that I’m afraid we’ll need—and that I’m more afraid I’d be too easily talked out of. “You can’t say I’ve contributed a damn thing to the interrogation, or that I’m likely to.”

  “We have to keep pushing,” Carl said, “While Grace is rattled and still punchy from the knockout gas.”

  “Right,” Joshua said. “You do.”

  Corinne turned toward Carl. “Tacitus can handle whatever historical esoterica come up.”

  “Well …,” Joshua said. “He’ll remember the way to sick bay from the tour you gave us.”

  “I’ll bring you,” Corinne said.

  Joshua shook his head once, wincing at pretended pain. “You know Grace. No one else here does. If she acts out of character, no one but you will catch it.”

  “I agree that Corinne belongs here,” Glithwah said. The Snake’s attitude toward his friend had changed since Corinne had given them Grace. “I’ll summon a robot to guide Joshua.”

  “No need.” Joshua patted the server at his feet.

  Carl said, “It’s bad enough that we have to trust a comm link from here. Let’s not risk someone sneaking a bug into this room on a robot.”

  “Someone. Another mole, you mean.” Glithwah licked her lips. “When did you become the more suspicious one? You might yet, someday, best me at b’tok.”

  For an instant, the Snake’s attention was elsewhere. “All right, Joshua, take Tacitus. I’ve netted authorization. You’re cleared to move about unescorted on this deck. I hope you feel better soon.”

  “Thank you.” Joshua grabbed the server handle and shuffled toward the ready-room door.

  “What was that about?” Tacitus asked once the door closed behind them. “The infirmary is a three-minute walk … if you dawdle. You’ll make all of two turns getting there. And I remember signs on the walls. With big, bold letters. Even through this damned mesh I could read them.”

  “Quiet,” Joshua said.

  Two Snakes in magnetized sandals came clomping toward them. Neither gave Joshua a second glance.

  He let them pass before asking, “You think you know me?”

  “I think I do.”

  Joshua turned to his left. At the
first cross-corridor, he turned right. “Let’s find out.”

  He had a proposal to make, proposal being an especially apt word. As for the nature of the proposal, desperate times called for desperate measures.

  “Let’s find out,” he repeated.

  • • • •

  “Thank you,” the warden said. Rattling her. Needling her.

  Grace stared daggers at the med scanner at her feet. When she lied, the device caught her. When she refused to speak, brain patterns disclosed what she recognized, what alarmed her, what had gone wide of the mark. All Carl had to do was speculate … whether he guessed right or wrong, he learned.

  She tried yet again to end it all. She failed, but the interference seemed less staticky than earlier.

  “Let’s recap, shall we?” Carl continued. He did, and the extent of his forbidden knowledge was appalling. “That’s the what. But why do the Xool meddle?”

  She spat. Like where do the Xool come from? and how did they recruit you? this latest sally was a question without a simple answer. She defied anyone to read the answer from her mind, no matter how sophisticated the med scanner.

  Unlike yes-or-no questions. With each of those, her thoughts gave something away.

  Star by star, Carl asked whether the Xool home was warmed by this nearby sun. When he ran out of suns with proper names, he had the pocket comp project a star chart. Then he grilled her about dozens more stars identified only by cryptic survey codes.

  “I don’t know,” she answered, truthfully, every time.

  “New topic,” Glithwah finally said. “Let’s talk about Dolmar Banak.”

  At that name, synapses must have fired like mad. Grace did not bother to feign ignorance of the Snake servant.

  Glithwah leaned toward the camera. “Did you know Banak before your recent trip to Ariel? No. Did you know about Banak before your recent trip? Yes. Because a Xool told you? No. Because a fellow human agent of the Xool told you? No. Because Banak or another Hunter agent of the Xool had contacted you? No.”

  Grace thought, good luck sorting out her connection with Banak by playing twenty questions.

  Corinne took a try. “On our flight to Ariel, you mentioned hoping to buy a sculpture without middlemen or shipping costs. Had you recognized Xool technology in some news report about him?”

  A documentary, to be precise. Grace kept her mouth shut, for all the good that did.

  “The hibernation capsule in the back room of his studio.” Carl said. “The ‘sculpture’ that looked like an open coffin. You saw it on some vid and knew that only another Xool agent would have it. Right?”

  The way Corinne’s eyes went round, the damned scanner must have blazed like the freaking Star of Bethlehem.

  Did her interrogators use hibernation as convenient shorthand, or did they understand that within the devices, time actually slowed? Did they even suspect that through the wonder of such a device, her service had extended across more than five centuries?

  And how did that line of thought show up in a brain scan?

  • • • •

  “That’s how it is, Admiral,” Carl concluded his report. Glithwah would have bugged the stateroom he had been given, but—Carl hoped—the crypto within his implant, now that his dose of suppressant had worn off, remained secure. “Approach this starship and its escorts, or attempt to impede their departure, and hostages will die.”

  Matsushita’s avatar stared back impassively. It appeared against a starry backdrop, giving no hints aboard which warship, and where on that ship, its owner was located. Comm delay implied a location three light-seconds distant, but the direction and apparent distance might be disguised by relay buoys.

  The admiral asked, “When do the Snakes intend to depart?”

  “They won’t tell me,” Carl said, “but foot traffic in the corridors and elevators, from the civilians settling in, seems to have peaked. My guess is they’ll be ready in another day or so.”

  Because no mere eons-old alien conspiracy could make Glithwah lose focus on liberating her clan.

  “Foot traffic in the corridors and elevators. So much for rapport and deep insights from playing b’tok together.”

  “Nor has my coming aboard hurt anything, Admiral. How are the hostages?”

  “To judge by the video streaming from Prometheus, exhausted and overcrowded, but unharmed. Nothing we can sense from afar contradicts that. As for the interned crews abandoned in the outer system, help has reached the closest groups. They’re okay.”

  All clean and precise—just as Glithwah played b’tok. “That’s good news, Admiral.”

  “And the reporter? Is she free to leave?”

  Was she? Carl didn’t know. “For now, she expects to stay.”

  “Unacceptable. Bring her back with you.”

  “When I’m done,” Carl said, wondering if he could keep that promise. “I’m not ready to give up here.” Because bigger issues were at stake than Matsushita could know.

  And because Joshua—by the time Corinne had thought to wonder about his continuing absence and gone to check on him—was in no condition to be moved.

  What the hell had Joshua been thinking?

  • • • •

  In slow motion, as in some B horror vid, time passed. Or maybe time only seemed to pass; with her implant suppressed, Grace had nothing with which to gauge time’s passage but a growing thirst and the pressure in her bladder. On the comp’s projected image, inquisitors came and went. She wondered what those comings and goings meant, and which were real and which computer legerdemain.

  But an end finally came to her interrogation, during which robots brought and chained down a three-meter-square cell. Except for its padded bars, the enclosure was featureless. One bot gave her another hypo of suppressant, ripped off the tape that bound her to the chair, and shepherded her into the cage. A second bot, holding a Taser, stood guard even after the deadbolt slammed home with a definitive, metallic clang.

  Once she was locked inside, the first bot provided diapers, drink bulbs and foil-wrapped emergency rations, and a many-times-folded thin paper sheet. If her captors intended the modesty drape to seem a considerate touch, she was not fooled. Of course she was under continuous observation. The bots doubtless carried millimeter-wave radars that rendered her effectively naked.

  Soon after, the overhead dimmed: simulated night for the orchard. As best she could, Grace slept.

  • • • •

  Too soon, the motorized whirr of a robot woke Grace. She saw it had slipped more food packets and water bulbs through the bars of the cage. Ignoring it all, she tried to trigger the bomb in her head. Nothing happened.

  A comp was still taped to the ground near her cage. The projected holo showed Carl, Corinne, and the Foremost.

  Corinne asked, “Why inflict the Frankenstein myth on humanity?”

  “I don’t know,” Grace said. That hadn’t been her project, though she could take credit for Jekyll and Hyde.

  “A lie. To discourage our development of biotech?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Corinne smiled humorlessly. “Yes, you do. Is that why the Xool gave a similar myth to the Centaurs?”

  “I don’t know.” And this time Grace truly didn’t. It was rare enough that her lords explained their purposes on Earth.

  “Why not also impose that myth on the Hunters?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was the novel Superminds unleashed on the Hunters to encourage their development of neural implants?”

  “I don’t know.”

  On and on the questions came. Grace stopped answering, although her silence seldom made any difference. Her thoughts betrayed her, revealing secrets through the damnable scanner.

  But once more, the static in her head seemed to be fading. And as with every perceptible decrease she reminded herself that standard neural suppressors had never anticipated her self-destruct device. Certainly, her tormentors believed that. As long as they refused to share a room
with her, she would cling to the hope their wariness had justification. That sooner or later, they would miscalculate the necessary timing for a re-dose.

  Damn it, they had to!

  After a while Carl changed subjects. “Did you abduct Joshua? No. Do you know the people who did? Yes. Were any of them Xool agents? Yes. All of them? Yes. Was he abducted and returned drunk and ill to discredit the Matthews conundrum?”

  No verdict announced this time. Because Grace was guessing what this “Matthews conundrum” was?

  “An ambiguous answer because it was an ambiguous question?” Carl mused. “Yes. Okay, let’s try this. Joshua observed that the local interstellar neighborhood has several intelligent species in radio contact, while beyond our cosmic corner there is silence. With that clarified: was he abducted and returned drunk and puking to discredit that line of inquiry?”

  Grace willed herself not to react, willed herself to die. Both times she failed.

  “Excellent,” Carl said. “Now we’re getting somewhere. And are the Xool responsible for that interstellar anomaly? Yes.”

  “Think about that,” Grace said. “I mean, really think. Try to comprehend their power. You and I are fleas. Less than fleas. Totally insignificant. When my lords first came to Earth, the land was barren. Sponges were high on the food chain. That’s more than you are meant to know—and it should make you tremble in awe.

  “They made us. They molded us. Everything we humans are, everything we have accomplished, we owe to them.”

  Carl said, “And when we presume to think for ourselves, they kill us. Or on their behalf, agents like you kill us.”

  “No!” Grace said. “Well, sometimes. When it is necessary. When we have no other way to keep forbidden knowledge from people. As you pointed out, we didn’t kill Joshua Matthews.”

  “No, you just ruined his life,” Corinne said.

  “Forbidden knowledge.” Carl was not to be deflected. “Subjects that we are not told—except, perhaps, in the most oblique ways, like Frankenstein—are forbidden.”

  Why couldn’t they see? Grace wondered. Any more overt identification only gave the taboo matters credence and cachet.

  “We keep you from blasphemy.” From the scowl on Carl’s face, the scanner must have confirmed Grace’s unshakeable conviction. “So forget about interstellar travel. My lords will not allow you to spoil projects underway for eons.”