Bayley, Barrington J - Novel 10 (20 page)

 
          
"Nobody
was armed that I could see. It looks easier than taking a passenger liner, by
far."

 
          
"Okay.
It will take an hour or more to get ready to move. Choose some men and reconnoitre
the bigger ships, if you can do it discreetly. Make sure it's the same all
over."

 
          
Broodingly
Ragshok stared down into the main area of the restaurant from the executive's
balcony he had reserved for himself. They had got the dispenser operating and
now everybody came to the restaurant for meals. Like the ship, it was
overcrowded,
and noisy too. In at least three places brawls
were going on.

 
          
"We're
going to do it," he said in a dreamlike voice. "We're going to seize
an Imperial Star Force fleet, one of the greatest instruments of power the
galaxy has seen."

 
          
"And
then we're going to rape Diadem," Morgan finished for him.

 
          
"That's
right.
The greatest act of pillage in history.
It will
be just like taking some ripe, defenceless woman—Diadem doesn't have any
defences of its own. There are only the Star Force fleets, and they are out in
the Empire."

 
          
"They
could soon be recalled," Drue pointed out.

 
          
"Too late.
It will be a stand-off: we give them the
message, move in and we start blasting worlds."

 
          
"And
if they promise the same for Escoria?" Tengu asked softly.

 
          
Ragshok's
answer was a ferocious growl. "We let them! What's it to us? The Empire
will fall to pieces and we pick up Diadem as first prize."

 
          
He
stood up, pointing to Tengu. "You and Morgan see to
the
reconnoitre
. I'll round up our tern leaders and organise the
squads."

 
          
Just
then an odd, transient event took place. In the air before him Ragshok seemed
to see fine silvery threads, straight as tracks of light and sparkling from end
of the restaurant to the other. It was like a linear cobweb being, spun just
too fast for the eye to catch. But in a second or two the apparition was gone.

 
          
"What
in the Simplex was
that?"
he
demanded.

 
          
When,
in the ballroom aboard
Standard Bearer,
Archier
noticed similar threads, this time glinting obliquely from floor to ceiling, he
took them for an arranged visual effect, a presage to some extravagance to
come. Then word was brought to him. Something unexplained was happening.

 
          
He
summoned Arenas and made his way to the Command Centre. On the way there they
saw the threads again. This time they started at the farther end of the
corridor and proceeded at moderate pace down it, looking, he thought, like an
array of lines marking the interfaces of metallic crystals. But, before they
reached him, they vanished.

 
          
In
the Command centre he found the white-haired Menshek and a number of ship
engineers, including the chief engineer he had questioned earlier over the
behaviour of Earth's moon. Menshek was talking earnestly with the duty officer,
a young tiger.

 
          
With
a spasm of guilt at having such a thought, Archier suddenly found himself
wishing some of the engineers could have been human. Animals weren't at their
best when handling the totally unknown.

 
          
"These
lines that are appearing in the air," Menshek said to him. "We're
getting the same reports from all over the fleet. In fact we think they're
appearing over a wide region of space. It must be another manifestation from
the rent."

 
          
"The
instruments showed a very brief interruption in the operation of the
engines," the gorilla chief engineer told him. "That could be
serious. But it hasn't recurred yet."

 
          
"We're
not supposed to be in the affected region yet," Archier remarked.

 
          
"It's
probably spread."

 
          
"Are
we close to any stars?"

 
          
"Yes
sir," the duty officer informed him gruffly. "We are about to
sidestep a system with an inhabited planet, as a matter of fact. We'll pass
within three light-days."

 
          
"We'd
best make for it. Our investigation can start there. Decelerate and alter
course."

 
          
While
the tiger obeyed, quietly speaking instructions, the cobweb lines reappeared.
Archier could see now that they emerged from the walls. They gave him the
impression of being immensely, immensely long—light-years, at least.

 
          
They
vanished. "What do you make of it?" Archier asked Menshek. He paused.
"Could they be something to do with recession lines?"

 
          
"Nothing
in our universe could make recession lines visible," Menshek pointed out.
"But did you ever watch Cursom's book on what other facets might be like?
Purely speculative, of course, but the point is they might not consist of
three-dimensional realms containing paniculate matter, like ours. The
'flattening' or collapse of the Simplex might take other forms, well-nigh
incomprehensible to our intellects. Specifically, Cursom predicts there will be
facets where it's the recession lines, not the particles they connect, that
become the 'material entities', while the original particles would play the
part of separating locations or end-points. The fundamental unit of such a
facet would not be a pointlike particle but a sort of extensible line, no limit
being placed on length. Such lines, infinitesimal in themselves, would be able
to collect themselves together to form the equivalent of higher structures—
atoms, molecules and so forth—but always strictly in parallel. The threads we
have seen answer to that description. They might even be living forms."

 
          
"Linear
matter," Archier pondered, while the animals stared, struggling to
comprehend. "But could it exist in our kind of space?"

 
          
"Perhaps,
once it arrived here. Or perhaps their space and ours is intermingling."

 
          
"And
if they are intelligent, how would
they
see
us?"

 
          
"Ah,
that's a question." Menshek seemed to find the question intriguing.
Briefly he turned to watch the data form in the air as the Fleet Manoeuvres
Department did its work. "They would lack our sense of individuality as
something existing at a defined place—
indeed,
they
would scarcely understand the notion of 'place' as we do. Their equivalent of
a single particle might sometimes extend throughout the whole of their
spacetime, and it would be the same for larger structures. For them, the concept
of 'being' would be associated with linear dispersal.

 
          
"They
might not, yet, have been able to find anything here they can recognise as
having material properties."

 
          
Archier
sighed fretfully. "I wish Diadem could have sent us a scientist! We're out
of our depth!"

 
          
"Have
you tried to find any among the passengers?" Menshek asked. 'Passengers'
was how Star Force crews referred to the inevitable hangers-on aboard ships of
the fleets.

 
          
"I
did put the word out, but you know how reluctant these people are to get
involved in anything."

 
          
"Perhaps
you should have made it clear what's involved."

 
          
Archier
shook his head. "There's state security to think of."

 
          
The
conversation was interrupted by a sound of tumult from outside. Snarling
softly, the duty officer whirled round as though the door there burst a
shouting group of what Archier, because they still wore costume, the bellicose
images rearing above those who were human, presumed at first were revellers
who had inconsiderately intruded into the working area.

 
          
But
they were clearly terrified. A lissom-figured young woman, her senile face set
into the belly of a writhing, evil-looking Mother Kali, rushed up to him, her
woe-begone expression an incongruous contrast.

 
          
"Admiral!"
she screamed. "They're coming through the intermats! They're killing
everybody!"

 
          
Archier
tried to free
himself
of the clutching arms of both
herself and her costume.

 
          
"Who?"

 
          
"Rebels!
Pirates! I don't know!"

 
          
Shucking
off its silvery-grey covering that vaguely resembled a feetol shell, an impala
trotted up to Archier to paw him nervously. "Savages, Admiral, savages! Do
you know what they're wearing?
Animal
skins!
Do you hear me?
Animal skins!''

 
          
The
impala's voice broke on a hysterical note.

 
          
"Call
commando quarters," Archier ordered the duty officer. "If you find
any troops there, tell them .to arm themselves.
When you've
done that, check with the rest of the fleet.
I'll go and look into
this."

 
          
He
ran from the Command Centre and back down the broad passageway that led towards
the ballroom. But he soon
stopped,
his blood freezing.
Spilling down the corridor, fleeing from the salon,
came
a panicking mob, a jostling forest of screaming, multicoloured shapes.

 
          
Trying
to give himself time to think, he pressed himself against the wall as the crowd
surged by. How could this horror have come about?
Through the intermats,
she had said. And the kiosks in the salon
were only one of several sets throughout the big battleship. But how could
rebels have gained access to the intermat facility?

 
          
Suddenly
he remembered the
Claire de Lune.

 
          
Ragshok
was roaring with delight on the mezzanine, clad in a shaggy bearskin coat, the
beast's dead snarl a helmet for his skull, a gun in each hand, while turmoil
and the satisfying silent flicker of scangun beams filled the music-blasted
area below him.

 
          
It
was incredible. Star Force, terror of the galaxy, dreaded arm of a hard-faced
Empire, and here was its real face:
a motley
of old
women (though they seemed trim of figure, he observed), animals and children,
and not one of them with the guts to do anything but run and scream.

 
          
It
would be different with the commando troops, but there probably weren't many of
those, and then only on a few ships. He was putting two hundred men and women
apiece into
Standard Bearer
and some
of the capital ships where he guessed they were stationed. Generally he had to
try to take each vessel with only a few dozen.

 
          
A
sweating Morgan swaggered up in a leather cuirass and tigerskin pants.
Ragshok's people often wore animal-derived clothing; it was a way of expressing
one's ferocity. In this case Ragshok had ordered them to do so, knowing how
much it would dismay and outrage the animals
who
far
outnumbered the humans on the fleet. A good many of
their
hides would be hung out for curing by the end of the day.

 
          
"It's
a walkover," Morgan said.

 
          
"It
sure is so far," Ragshok agreed.

 
          
To
Ikematsu, the change in the mental ambience was instantly obvious. Withdrawing
his concentration from the room where Pout and Gruwert conversed, he diffused
it, taking in the whole surrounding atmosphere of thought.