STAR HOUNDS -- OMNIBUS (26 page)

“A
t least I’m not bored,” said Cal Shemzak to his manservant.

“Sir?”

“I said, Wilkins, that I have to be grateful to the Jaxdron that they are keeping me entertained.”

Absently, he lifted a knight above the chessboard. A hiss of static sounded in the earpiece of his headset, as though the monotone that barked response moves were eager with anticipation.

Lazily, Cal put the knight back in its position in front of his queen’s bishop and smiled to himself, hoping his procrastination annoyed whatever Jaxdron machine was assigned to him.

Or perhaps it was a Jaxdron in the flesh—or chitin, or whatever they wore—amusing itself.

“Yes, sir. I’ve placed clean clothing in your room,” the tall slender-nosed man said in a clipped accent. “And I’ve taken the liberty of pressing your suit for the meeting later this week.”

“Meeting?” said Cal. “What meeting?”

They sat in what Cal now called the Dream Room. This was where the Jaxdron made him dance to their illusions, which Cal had gotten used to and in fact rather enjoyed now, seeing them as a challenge. He’d been in several of them after the desert and robot scenario. Wars. Jungle chases. Space shootouts. All involved survival … and puzzles.

Now the Dream Room featured a pleasant beach. Hidden speakers provided the tranquil sound of rolling breakers to accompany the sparkling sand, the cheery sky, the lazy warmth.

Cal sat in a beach chair beside a table equipped with the chessboard. He wasn’t forced to play chess but he found it like doodling with his mind and enjoyed it.

“Yes, sir. Did you not read the formal invitation?”

“I wasn’t aware that I had mail call here, Wilkins.” Cal sat up and gazed around him. “Hell, I’m not even sure where ‘here’ is.”

His wanderings were, after all, limited to a corridor and a small sequence of rooms. He had not even been allowed to view the surface of the planet … if he was on a planet. For all he knew, he was on some mammoth starship still in transit.

“Yes, sir,” replied Wilkins. “I left it on your desk this morning.”

Cal ripped his headset off, throwing it across the chessboard, scattering pieces. “Awesome, dude!” he cried, jumping up and running for the door. “This sounds interesting!”

He tore down the hallway and into the small cubicle which was his room in this comfortable prison. Sure enough, there on his dresser was a gilt-edged envelope embossed with a seal.

He turned it over. It was addressed to Mr. Calspar Shemzak in expert calligraphy.

Eagerly, he ripped the envelope and tore out the enclosed invitation.

It read:

YOUR PRESENCE IS REQUESTED IN ROOM 27 FOUR DAYS HENCE AT 12 NOON BY YOUR HOSTS FOR A PERSONAL AUDIENCE CONCERNING YOUR ACTIVITIES HERE.

Room 27? Where the hell was that? Wilkins would know.

Maybe he was going to get a new room added to his little prison world. Perhaps even a room with a window, so that he could get some idea of where he was.

Cal sat down on his bed and sighed. A man with a less sound psychological makeup would never have stayed sane this long. Fortunately, Cal knew who he was. Cal knew to follow the
wo wei
, to go with the flow, to accept the reality that was the next moment, to approach it with no prejudice ….

Even as he lay on the bed relaxing, feeling the exciting promise of knowledge, he experienced another attack.

As usual, it began as a fading away of immediate sensation, like the gentle moments of disassociative logic before falling asleep. Then came the buzzing, the hum of some sort of contact. But with whom? He was much too involved with the experience to analyze.

… whisper … whisper …

… glimmer … glow …

A tumble of images, like a rainfall of pictures, soundless swirling in the wind ….

He felt snippets of calculation, bits of computed formulas, solving of problems, as though he were some capacitor in a system observing logic flow. And again, as always, he flashed on that image with the mirrors, then it was gone.

He knew he was in a room somewhere and the room was dark, knew there were others in the room …

… and by the emerging glow of candlelight, he could see that the others were …

… himself.

And they talked to him.

But their voices were soft and low, and he could not quite make out what they were saying, although he heard snatches of words and phrases which seemed to deal with some scientific problem. He felt hot, sweating, and he could hear the pounding of his heart in his ear, growing unbearably loud.

His own faces approached him and they said, What is the Answer, Father? We live for the Answer, and only you are the—

Someone was shaking his arm.

“Sir? Sir, are you all right?”

His eyelids opened away from the land of reflection and refraction and he saw Wilkins staring down at him with a worried expression.

“The … reverie … again,” Cal muttered. He’d had these things before, and each time they were more intense.

He sat up and Wilkins poured him a glass of water.

“They’re not like the tests, Wilkins,” Cal said, water dribbling down his chin. “They’re not puzzles, dammit, they don’t make any sense!” He grabbed the manservant’s lapels. “Why do your masters do this, friend? Why?”

“I shall report the matter immediately, sir,” Wilkins said, gently removing his charge’s fingers. “Now, can I get you a pill?”

“No,” Cal replied, recovering his aplomb. He kept forgetting to withhold his thoughts and emotions from this character. Wilkins, whoever or whatever he was, worked for the enemy, not him. “No, I’m fine. I think it must just be a side effect of all this testing. Wilkins. I’m fine. You needn’t report anything.”

“Very good, sir.” The manservant’s eyes flicked about the room, caught the sight of the torn-apart envelope and letter.

“Ah. I see you found your invitation.”

“Yes. But Wilkins, where the hell is room 27? Am I going to get expanded access to other rooms in this place?”

“I should think so, sir,” Wilkins replied coolly and noncommittally. “I have taken the liberty of reassembling your chess game. Would you care to return to a beach scene or shall I adjust the climate to something else?”

Cal Shemzak opened his mouth, and if he had let out what was on his tongue, he would have released a torrent of pent-up anger and frustration. But he held his tongue and bided his time.

He could wait a few more days until he actually confronted the Jaxdron, and they could respond directly.

“No, Wilkins, the beach scene was quite restful. Let me take a shower and I’ll be right out. Oh, and could I have some sandwiches, please?”

“Very good, sir.”

A suspicion had dawned upon Cal Shemzak … a suspicion that would explain a great deal.

T
he two identical cyborgs sat in their cabin playing chess.

Though they looked exactly like Cal Shemzak, they were not. In fact, interviews and tests and scans of their systems revealed that though they each owned small fragments of Cal Shemzak, at least in personality and memory, neither were complete replicas in any way.

To be sure, the crew of the
Starbow
had thoroughly checked them for any possibility of threat to the ship or the crew and found the pair extremely weak physically, with no sign of weapons or malicious intent. Their general docility reflected Cal’s accepting nature, at least on the surface. Yet there was more to these constructs than met the eye, be it human or electronic.

Cal One, as he was called, dressed mostly in blue for identification purposes, captured one of his opponent’s knights. Cal Two, in red, countered with a move of his bishop which placed his opponent’s queen in jeopardy.

At the top of the room, to either side, spy eyes tracked their every movement and electronic bugs in the wall recorded every spoken interchange. Thus far the twins had simply played games—not merely chess, but backgammon, shogi, go, mahjong, dominos, carrom, mancala—an endless list of strategic board- and card-based games. For security reasons a computer terminal could not be given to them—though the “Shemzak twins” seemed harmless and were certainly nothing less than totally cooperative. To place access into the
Starbow
’s computers might tempt fate. So, actual physical facsimiles of the games, usually played via computer, were constructed in Dr. Mish’s shop and given to the pair to while away the time they were not being interrogated or analyzed.

As Cal One’s hand reached out for the next move to protect his queen, his forefinger gently brushed his twin’s knuckles. In this briefest of physical contacts an entire dialogue was exchanged:

»Brother, the time approaches«

»Yes, I sense the Communication imminent«

»We must prepare ourselves for the Roles«

»Aye, our Great Playing shall be glorious«

»Our Masters have selected their Targets cleverly«

»Much glory shall be derived from the interchange of Points«

»But will Victory belong to the Jaxdron«

»That, brother, is the Continued Mystery that underlines and defines all experience«

»We can only wait for the Calling«

»The Calling shall surely come soon«

»Praise the Mighty and Manipulative Jaxdron, and let their Conquering Might hang long on the mandibles of their Eternal Ancestors«

»In the meantime, brother, I shall soundly thrash you in these simple games«

»The Challenge is heard, brother, and I shall renew the onslaught. The very air is bloody with our conflict, and the cries of death and vexation are foreshadows to the reality to occur upon this vessel, when the Partnership occurs«

»Hail to the Jaxdron, and watch me chew up these pieces in my fangs of intellect«

… and the hand broke contact, and fell upon a pawn, which it moved forward one space.

C
aptain Tars Northern tossed back his last bit of brandy and looked up from the long list of results that holographically scrolled before him. The text shimmered neon blue and glittered off the ice in his drink, creating a pattern that he found amusing for some reason.

He grinned, but his eyes still showed the astonishment that had appeared in them when Dr. Mish and Laura Shemzak had walked in with the news. “It certainly is something, all right.” He looked at Laura. “Where the hell did you get this stuff, anyway, girl? And what else might be hiding away in some hidden memory cells in that slender little figure of yours?”

Laura fidgeted uncomfortably in her chair. “Only this, Northern. And the reason is simple. They forgot to debrief me.”

“Sounds racy, Laura,” said Northern, leafing back and forth whimsically through a long scroll of analysis. “Dr. Mish, let me get this straight. Just by happenstance, you came upon information tucked away in Pilot Shemzak’s auxiliary memory nodes which reveals that the Jaxdron have infiltrated at least one of the Federation’s outposts without formally conquering it?”

“The information would seem to indicate that, Captain.” Mish took the brandy container from the table and placed it back in the cabinet.

Captain Northern hardly seemed to notice, looking down and frowning at the decryption. “A lot of this is just gibberish to me.”

“And to us as well,” said Mish. “But from the hints and clues scattered through the data, your conclusion is exactly the same as ours.”

“From the beginning, Laura,” said Northern after she took a deep breath and shook her long hair. “How did you get this material?”

“It’s fairly simple, Captain,” Laura said, getting up and pacing. “From time to time, as an agent for IntelNet, I receive undercover assignments. Just before I learned of my brother’s capture by the Jaxdron, it just so happened that I had infiltrated Pax Industries on Walthor.”

“Yes, yes, Laura,” Northern said, tapping the vu-screen at his work bench. “Pax Industries. Walthor. Prominent names here. But why should the Federation ask an agent to infiltrate its own world, its own company?”

“Easy. To check its security measures. I was assigned to get to the core of their primary computer and download parts of their Top Secret databases. I did so surprisingly easily, and reported that to the company’s president, who had no idea of what I was up to. I told him I’d send him a report, which I did, during the trip back to Earth. However, by downloading so much data, I stored a good deal of it in auxiliary nodes. I guess in the hoopla concerning my brother, I forgot to archive and purge my system as required. Hell, Captain, I’m as surprised as anyone! I’d forgotten all about that info and I certainly didn’t think it had anything to do with the Jaxdron!”

Northern shook his head. “How fortunate … for us, Dr. Mish, that you’re working more on this material. Apparently the Jaxdron are manufacturing the equivalent of Underspace-radio bugs within the various highly advanced technological products produced on Walthor, and then shipped throughout the Federation. Electronic spies over the width and breadth of Federation space, collecting information and God knows what else. Laura, did you see anything suspicious on Walthor? Any indication of Jaxdron activity?”

“I wouldn’t know what a Jaxdron looked like if it came up and bit me, Northern! It was an alien world. There are always strange things on an alien world. I had a job and I did it quickly and well. I can’t tell you anymore right now.”

“You do know the planet well enough, though.”

“Certainly.”

Northern considered for a moment, then slapped the table with finality. “Excellent. Then we’ve got a brief detour to take, my friends.”

“What?” Laura said. “You’re saying we’re going to go to Walthor? But Cal isn’t there! Cal has been taken to Snar’shill!” She stood up from her chair, fuming.

“Yes, and we have that information courtesy of the Jaxdron, almost as though they dare us to chase after them,” Captain Northern said, eyes turning chilly black. “Well, if there’s more than we can do except chase after them, whistling in the dark, then I certainly intend to do it. We are equipped with very little information on this race. If we can get more from Pax Industries, then that’s what we’re going to do!”

“Goddammit” Laura cried, stalking about, livid. “This doesn’t feel good to me.”

“It seems utterly rational to me, Laura,” interjected Dr, Mish.

“But you promised! We’ve got to get Cal—before the Jaxdron do something awful to him!”

“Your emotions are quite understandable,” Northern said, standing up and attempting to calm her. He put a hand to her shoulder and it was shrugged off. “But we have to look at this calmly, and as Dr. Mish reminds us, rationally. We are a single starship up against an inscrutable alien race and a malignant group of fellow human beings to boot. We need every bit of the puzzle to succeed here. If we can find some more pieces on Walthor, then that’s where we have to go. And we desperately need your cooperation. So be a good girl, won’t you, and play along.”

“I don’t have any choice, do I?” Laura said, eyes blazing.

“No, you don’t, but take heart knowing that this material,” he swiped at the holo-text, sending it scrolling wildly, “could well mean not only the recovery of your brother, but the hope for humanity against the Jaxdron threat to our space.”

“I’m so goddamn thrilled,” she said, turning to Dr. Mish.

“Well, now that that’s settled, do I have a clean enough bill of health to have a session with those Cal clones? I guess I could use a couple of surrogate brothers right now.”

“Of course, Laura,” replied Dr. Mish. “You might actually learn more from them than we’re able to.”

Laura nodded. “Right, and bring them love from you guys too.”

She left in a huff.

“A vibrant but unpredictable being,” Dr. Mish commented.

“Yes,” said Northern, going to the liquor cabinet.

Mish looked on with strong disapproval. “You’ve had enough for today, Tars. I haven’t got my sensor board, but I can tell.”

Northern shrugged, and grinned like a little boy after getting his hand caught in a cookie jar. “Save it for when I need it, eh, Mish?”

“I wish we didn’t need it at all, my boy, but we can’t fool with something so delicate, something that works. Perhaps later … ”

“Good enough for me,” Northern said, settling for cold soda water. He flipped a star-map projection on by his desk. “Now then, as long as we’re going to be going that way now, I thought we’d make another previously unplanned stop.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. We need … ” Northern glanced over at the liquor cabinet. “ … supplies, and I’ve a friend whose stores are plentiful.” Northern grinned. “There are other reasons beyond that, of course.”

Mish examined the spot where Northern’s hand pointed. “Ah yes, that would be a fortuitous stop-off point.”

Northern nodded. “Yes, Freeman Jonst is one of our few true friends, and Kendrick’s Vision has always welcomed us.”