Destroyer of Worlds (27 page)

The Gw'oth would not have any say in the matter. They had agreed,
early in this adventure, to share in its perils. They had accepted human command.

They had not agreed to be hurled into some alternate-dimensional limbo.

“One second!” Er'o radioed to the intercom. He wished that Ol't'ro, not he, had the responsibility for saving them. But
he
was suited up to move about the ship, and their fate would be sealed sooner than a meld could take form. And before anyone could suit up to help him.

What did he know? That Thssthfok was loose. On past escapes, the humans had used artificial gravity to immobilize the Pak. Instead, gravity was
off
. Thssthfok must have cut it.

Silence had replaced the countdown, but the numbers continued in Er' o's thoughts. Three . . .

Jeeves had surely followed his programming in announcing a countdown—and Eric or Kirsten had ordered him to stop lest Thssthfok overhear anything useful. The count doubtless continued.

Two. . .

Er'o flipped his radio transmitter to the ship's public comm channel. “No! Accelerate with thrusters!” How much gravity could the humans take? The question didn't arise for the Gw'oth, effectively weightless anyway in their water-filled habitat. Except for Er'o himself, and there was no time to worry about that. He guessed. “Ten times normal.”

One. . .

Kirsten said, speaking rapidly, “Jeeves, wait. Er'o is right. We'll pin down Thssthfok with acceleration.”

“And mash ourselves,” Eric replied. “Is that how you want to go?”

Crushing weight, unable to move—it would a lingering, horrible death. Er'o shuddered. But it did not have to be that way.

He radioed, “I'm in my pressure gear. With the suit's mechanical assistance function, I'll be mobile despite the acceleration. I know you have stunners. Tell me where to find one. Once I disable Thssthfok, Jeeves can throttle back.”

Silence.

Er'o knew what Eric and Kirsten were thinking. By revealing their weapons, they risked the Gw'oth, instead, taking over the ship. At such a delicate juncture, it would not help Er' o's case to assert they would have built weapons already if they so chose.

If they survived this crisis, perhaps they would.

The silence stretched, and in that stillness Er'o contemplated his unexpected mortality. As one within a Gw'otesht, he had thought himself/themselves all but eternal. But that was hardly the case. . ..

The countdown in his thoughts remained frozen at
one
.

“All right,” Eric said over the public channel. “Jeeves, belay my earlier order. Thrusters at six gees, now!”

 

THSSTHFOK SWAM ONTO ANOTHER DECK
. This deck was the smallest yet, and had only three doors. One by one he softened a door and poked his head within. Door three revealed the bridge. And in the large view port—

It was like nothing he had ever seen, or even imagined.

In the moment he stared, a tremendous force struck him. He was smashed, gasping, to the floor—

While his head remained embedded in the door.

The rim of the opening cut into the leathery skin of his neck. Very soon, form and shape would begin reasserting themselves. At best, he would be trapped, choking, head and shoulders on opposite sides. At worst, the door, retaking its former shape, would sever his head. Pulling his head from the stiffer-by-the-moment door was the hardest thing Thssthfok had ever done.

He collapsed onto the deck, exhausted.

Moving so he could see his hands was even harder. The structural modulator folded into a compact shape—no broader than his smallest finger, and not quite as long—the better to hide in his cell. Somehow, he managed to fold and swallow the tool. If he survived—and if the modulator, bathed in stomach acid, did not short-circuit and transform his insides to gruel—nature's course would return the device to him. Or block his intestines and kill him slowly.

Thssthfok lay, panting, on the hard deck.

He had not heard the
pop
of the softened door resealing after he pulled himself free. Because of his gasping for breath? Somehow he turned his head to peer up the bridge door.

A hole gaped, its lower edge swollen. Restored artificial gravity or acceleration—he did not know which, but it hardly mattered—had overwhelmed surface tension faster than the door material could recongeal.

The humans
would
look for an explanation. He had to mislead them.

Straining, Thssthfok pulled himself upright. He rammed fingers through
an air-duct grille and twisted until its fasteners snapped. Moments later, from decks below, metal shards went
clang
. He forced the broken grille into the duct. The bent grille scraped noisily until gravity wedged it somewhere deep within the ventilation system.

Limbs trembling, chest heaving, Thssthfok slumped back onto the deck. He had given the humans someplace to look for a door-melting tool. Let them search for a long time.

The hatch to the stairwell creaked open. An armored, five-limbed—something, perhaps knee-high to an adult Pak, lumbered through. Er'o? Except for the exoskeleton, the alien's gear was transparent. Bubbles rose within; the alien was a water breather. And it was hideous, like five giant snakes fused at their tails.

The only odors were artificial: metals, lubricant, and synthetic hydrocarbons. Somehow that was worse than the thing's true, unrevealed reek. Its skin changed colors, patterns swirling, as Thssthfok watched.

Its motorized exoskeleton whining in protest, the alien raised a tentacle. Viewed tip on, the tentacle was hollow. Deep within the tube, beyond tiers of sharp teeth, a ring of baleful eyes stared at Thssthfok.

From calipers mounted to the tentacle's armored covering, the maw of a gun—ridiculously large for the beast—also gaped at Thssthfok.

Then everything hummed and went away.

 

Saying good-bye to Sigmund was going to be hard. No one could have been more surprised than Baedeker.

“You're going to pluck yourself bald,” Sigmund said. “Do you want to talk about it?”

How could Sigmund be so calm? Did he not wonder why the meeting with the Hindmost had not reconvened? Did he not understand the significance of rooms without comm, without stepping discs, of guards outside their door and following them everywhere they went?

Of course he understood. This was Sigmund.

Baedeker stopped tugging at his mane. Disfiguring himself hardly alleviated his guilt. Maybe confession would. “I'm not going back with you.”

Sigmund stood at the guest suite's floor-to-ceiling window wall, looking out over an unnerving drop down to the sea. Only it would not unnerve a human, would it? “That's what you and Nessus have been talking about, I suppose.”

Baedeker bobbed heads. After so long together, Sigmund would know the gesture. As Baedeker had learned to read human body language. Sigmund was like a coiled spring.

“New Terra will miss you,” Sigmund said. “
I'll
miss you. You've been a good friend.”

And friends don't abandon friends. Certainly not without an explanation. “If the Concordance fights the Pak, Sigmund, we
will
lose. If we do nothing, the Pak might veer in their course.”

Sigmund nodded. “If you can't retreat, at least stall. A very Puppet . . . Citizen attitude.”

“But that's the thing! Maybe we
can
retreat.”

Sigmund's eyes narrowed. He didn't say anything.

“You're right, our worlds cannot move out of the Pak's way, not fast
enough. Now.” Baedeker resisted the urge to resume twisting and tugging at his mane. “Unless . . .”

“Unless
what
?” Sigmund snapped. “You steal New Terra's drive?”

“No!” Somehow Baedeker held his ground despite Sigmund's anger. “No one ever tried using multiple drives on one world. But that
is
one of the things I'll be investigating. I approached Nessus because he has influence. He can get me the resources I'll need: scientists and technicians, equipment, even ships. Because we
cannot
do such tests on our own worlds.”

“But the Concordance doesn't
have
unused drives,” Sigmund said. “Do you?”

Now Baedeker did tear at his mane. The work he envisioned was terrifying. The only thing more terrifying would be
not
undertaking it. He began to explain. “I studied the planetary drives in the past.”

Because he had been coerced to remotely disable New Terra's drive. Cast adrift, the former colonists would have had to surrender their newfound independence. Thankfully, he had never learned how, never had to confront whether he would have complied.

But neither had he refused to investigate. Shame had sent him into self-exile on New Terra. His personal shame, and shame for his government. But now Nessus had the ears of the Hindmost, and policy would be saner.

Baedeker forced himself to look into Sigmund's eyes. “I am close to understanding the underlying principles. If I am right, I may be able to build new drives. Maybe more powerful. Maybe able to work in tandem. And maybe move our worlds out of the way of the Pak.”

“
Our
worlds?”

“New Terra, too,” Baedeker said. “I have Nike's promise.”

“And the Gw'oth?”

That
question would be argued long and hard, and Baedeker was far from certain where his own feelings lay. “It is being discussed,” was the best he had to offer.

“I wish you luck,” Sigmund said. “On both parts.”

 

THSSTHFOK SAT LEANING
against a cell wall, his eyes closed, chewing mechanically on a tree-of-life root.

His prison had been reconfigured as he lay stunned. Holes had been drilled in the interior walls. Transparent material fused over the openings now revealed cameras on the other side. Crude—and hard to interfere
with. Within his cell, every shelf and cabinet had been removed, and with them any pretense of privacy. One of the vanished cabinets held—presumably undetected by his jailors—the remaining parts from his repair kit.

Once the alterations were complete, as Thssthfok lay paralyzed on the deck, Eric had paused halfway out of the hatch. He wore full armor despite Thssthfok's helplessness. To avoid the smell of tree-of-life root?

Eric said, “Listen very carefully. As soon as this hatch closes, I'm depressurizing this level. Everything but this room. The level will remain airless except when I bring food and remove your waste. I don't know how you let yourself out, or how you bypassed the hall sensors, but I do know this. Escape again, and you'll be killing yourself.”

Vacuum all around would have been a deterrent, but the room below Thssthfok's cell dispensed the humans' food. That room, at the least, would keep its air. Once the structural modulator made its reappearance, he would exit again, at a time of his choosing, through the deck.

Meanwhile, Thssthfok had information from his last escape to assimilate.

He had glimpsed five worlds in an equilateral pentagon. Five worlds in flight! Four of the globes, gorgeous blue dots, reminded him, achingly, of a long-lost home. Of Pakhome as it had been before the final war. (But unlike Pakhome, these worlds sparkled! Tiny artificial suns, indistinct to the naked eye from this distance, must accompany them.) The final bright dot, eerily glowing, presented puzzles he still labored to articulate.

To seize this ship had been the focus of Thssthfok's planning. With its faster-than-light drive, he would rejoin his family. Clan Rilchuk scientists would master the technology, fly far from other clans, and establish New Rilchuk in some quiet corner of the outer galaxy.

How modest his goals had been.

The humans and the alien abominations that accompanied them had wondrous technologies: faster-than-light drive, instantaneous transfer, and now a drive to move worlds. And they did not seem ruthless or intelligent enough to protect what they had.

Trade-offs, strategies, and alliances churned in Thssthfok's thoughts. . . .

 

THE GUEST SUITE FELT EMPTY
without Baedeker.

Sigmund sipped from a snifter of brandy. He couldn't fault the repertoire
of the guest-room synthesizer, only that he didn't feel much like a guest. And now that Baedeker had gone, Sigmund's own fate, surely, would soon be revealed. He pictured large numbers of crazed Puppeteers carrying guns.

But only one crazed Puppeteer came, unarmed. “May I come in?” Nessus asked.

Sigmund nodded. The guards waited outside as Nessus entered.

Nessus took a comm unit from a pocket of his sash. Tongue and lip nodules set the device to flashing. He set it on a low table. “We'll have privacy for a little while. I can't say how long. Until our seeming silence becomes suspicious.”

What did they have to discuss in private? Sigmund wondered. “Go on.”

“I am sorry, Sigmund. I did my best, but you will not be going home.”

Sigmund had had three lives, each better than the last. He supposed he shouldn't complain. “What do you expect killing me to accomplish.”

Nessus recoiled. “Kill you? No one said anything about that. You will remain a guest of the Concordance.”

“Because you think the New Terrans won't act without me. I have news for you, Nessus. You still don't get humans. New Terra
will
fight. If we must go down, we'll take as many Pak as possible with us.”

“Why? Your people will only hasten their own doom.”

Because we're
human
tanj it! We don't hide in our navels. “Because if enough worlds resist, then sooner or later the Pak menace will end. That's a legacy to die proud of.”

Nessus looked himself in the eyes. Apparently Sigmund didn't know Nessus as well as he thought, either. Sigmund said, “At our first session with Nike, you were ready to suggest something. I changed the subject. What were you going to propose?”