C c macapp, p.3
C C MacApp, page 3
The real savants claimed that there must be quite a number of "spaces," each positioned to the others in such a way that time was involved, along with various dimensions. John Braysen was willing to accept that without being harangued at length about it.
There appeared to be no immediate prospect of switching from "normal" space (that is, "our" continuum) to any of the other spaces. However, there was some kind of limbo, or state of existence that was none of the spaces, into which an object could be shifted. The way this was done was awesome: the object (a ship and passengers, for instance) had to have every particle charged with a kind of energy related to, but not identical with, the field that produced gravity shielding. When this charge reached a critical intensity, a little extra surge caused it (to all exterior observations) to cease to exist in normal space. Passengers felt only an instant of odd disorientation.
In this strange limbo (called "null"), ordinary grav drives could accelerate the "ghost" of the ship at a rate fantastically greater than in normal space. That hull acceleration didn't require exceptional power, but to attain readiness for null did. Conduits to feed that power without melting had a practical limitation: the best rate of charging that Earth's or any other known technology could achieve was a little over four minutes.
So you couldn't "break out" of null and reenter immediately.
One of the puzzling things was that the tremendous power thus fed into matter could be discharged so instantly with very little detectable "spill." A little static, a momentary mild blue glow, were the only phenomena yet detected.
Travel in null was not instantaneous. There was a limit of some sort; and, to simplify as much as possible the terrible problems of navigation, the apparatus was standardized to fit some little-understood natural velocity that approximated four hundred and ninety light-years per hour. Usually a ship going, say, one hundred light-years, could judge its breakout point to within one-tenth light-year of its target. From there you made an additional short null hop or hops, like a golfer sinking a putt.
Chapter Four
THE HOHDANS were humanoid, and in his past dealings with them it had seemed to John that they represented more or less what mankind might have become, given time to expand into space and acquire sophistication. Sophistication, not in the sense that the loose galactic-sector community of races with the null drive displayed uniformity of attitudes (far from it!), but sophistication in the sense of a certain rather cynical acceptance of war, intrigue, empire, and misadventure.
Vez Do Han was, physically, a typical Hohdan. He was three or four inches under John's six-feet-one, broad of shoulder though not thick through the chest from front to back, with a peculiar longness and unbunchiness of muscle that, to a human, disguised his real strength. His fingers (four to a hand plus a thumb, in a human-enough placement) did not taper as a man's did, but had instead somewhat flattened, spatulate tips and very strong and strongly rooted nails. Why that particular oddity had evolved, John could not guess.
The Hohd had hair on the greater part of their faces and bodies, but it was strange hair—short and branched, almost like downy feathers. It came in a range of colors. Vez Do Han's was medium gray with a bluish tinge. He, like other Hohdans, showed no tendency toward baldness.
Hohdan faces, like the faces of most humanoids, were a little disturbing to a man until he was used to them. The nose was triangular in profile, jutting forward from the face like some vane put there for steering. It was big enough, and thin enough, to reinforce that fancy. The nostrils (slits set close together on the lower slant) could close immediately as if to shut out dust storms. The chins were broad and square, the ears more elongated than a man's, the eyes smaller and more deeply recessed.
But Vez Do Han's grin was recognizable as such. So were his scowl and the piercing, scrutinizing look that he directed upon John.
"Aside from professional interest, Commodore"—this in casual Home Hohdan, an expressive though not delicate dialect that John spoke well enough—"it is a personal joy for me to see you again, and you looking so fit. I sought you once, a trifle over a year ago, and heard that you had become an addict on Drongail. I placed a mourning sheaf of black dragonweed on the bulletin board of my flagship for a ten-day."
John shrugged. "Yes, I was addicted. I didn't expect ever to come into space again. But I'm over it now." He wished that were strictly true.
Vez made the fist-opening gesture that meant affirmation or approval, meanwhile turning his small dark eyes toward the mass-indicator sphere of the dispatch ship they were aboard. "I see that two more of your flotilla have made breakout."
"Yes. I left word for them to null here—they were late for the previous rendezvous, as they were out rounding up a few more men—but I told them to show themselves first at a nonthreatening distance, so you'd not mistake them for spies or raiders. They're standard Vul Armed Scouts, with some new launchers for missiles installed. I suspect that the Chelki Omniarch, who arranged this meeting, gave you details."
"Yes, friend John Braysen. Frankly, I would prefer more laser clusters and fewer missiles—the whole point of these raids I contemplate is to throw suspicion upon the Vulmoti, and they are notoriously free with energy beamers—but that is not important. You possess details of our difficulty?"
John made the fist-closed negative sign. "He told me very little, in case I should fall into the wrong hands."
Vez grinned wolfishly. "Were I in his place—dealing not with you, old comrade-in-arms, but with someone I was meeting for the first time—I should have relied upon even firmer precautions, such as installing self-destruct mechanisms in the ships I gave you. But the Chelki are squeamish, which accounts in part, no doubt, for their enslavement… Well, the Bizh Empire is centered about seven hundred light-years out along this spiral arm. That puts them almost directly across a thousand light-years, more or less, of Sparse Region, from the Vulmoti." He glanced again at the mass-detection sphere—a professional like Vez wanted always to know what was around him. "The Bizh are nonhumanoid, ten-limbed radial creatures with certain living habits that would be disgusting were they less fascinating. However, that is not our concern with them, nor do they pose any threat to Hohdan territory within the foreseeable future. They are impinging upon territory of two of our lesser allies, both humanoid. Not that body form would be a matter of blind prejudice with you, I know… These allies have appealed to us for support; and, being that they occupy positions as buffers between us and the Bizh—and also, to some extent, the Vulmoti—"
John studied the alien face. "It seems a bit coincidental that the job we can do for you involves the Vulmoti."
Vez grinned. "Not at all. Surely you see the furry hand of the Omniarch in that? In his fixity of purpose, he has often stooped to interempire intrigue. It is his idea to implicate the Vulmoti, and it is a good one. It will keep the Bizh worried for a while."
John stared at his own hands. He felt as if they were shackled, with the Omniarch holding the keys… He daren't tell Vez the whole of his own bargain with the Chelki. "All right. I'll study whatever particulars you've brought for me. Now… there's the matter of terms. We want to keep whatever ships and materials we can capture intact."
"Of course, friend John Braysen."
"And there's another thing. Our life spans are getting on, and we were scattered—and, as you learned, some of us were disintegrating fast. Our species will soon be gone. While we few last, it seems to me that we ought to draw together, help each other to keep what dignity we can, try to leave some monument, so to speak, other than scattered nameless graves. There may still be some literature in us, some song… Some worthwhile benevolence, perhaps. We want a world somewhere, for our old age. And naturally we'd want it to be in some region that was at least tolerant of us."
Vez peered at him for a minute, then smiled. "I will accept that, tentatively, though it is a bit squashy for hard warriors like yourselves. Certainly we can pick out an uninhabited planet, suitable for you, somewhere within our region. That is all?"
"That is all," John lied unhappily.
"Good, then! I shall be seeing you again before you make the first raids. Oh! You need missiles, of course, and some fuel wire. And we ourselves have four Vulmotean ships to contribute—Armed Scouts, damaged in capture, sold to us by erstwhile skirmishers with the Vulmoti, and rebuilt. Until next joining, then?"
"Until next joining."
Chapter Five
JOHN SCANNED through a set of figures on a single sheet of paper, glanced up at Bart's dissatisfied face, and looked at the figures again. "It's as good as we expected, Bart. Of two hundred and seventy-three we hoped to find, you've brought in two hundred and fifteen. Only nineteen of the list definitely dead, if those two sick cases pull through. Comparing the roster of the last encampment, deducting reported deaths, and applying percentages from these figures here, we can hope to find another forty or so alive somewhere."
Bart said, "I'd put it at another sixty-odd. I didn't want to talk about this until I saw you alone, because I'm not sure what effect it might have on morale, but on this last trip I got a lead on a couple dozen more, all on one planet."
John straightened in his chair and looked more closely at his second in command. "What's bothering you, Bart?"
"Well, I think we ought to make a decision about this group I heard about. They're on Jessa with Humbert Daal."
John suddenly felt thirsty. He spread his hands out flat on the desk and looked at them. They seemed steady. He said slowly, "I was thinking we'd just leave Humbert, and anyone who'd joined him, alone. He made himself very plain the second time we had a rumor about live women. I don't think we'd want him among us anyway, spreading his raven croaks."
"I agree, John. But the others with him don't necessarily all feel the same way. Some of them—Fred Coulter, I hear, and Ralph Sears—were with us the last time you and I fought together for Hohd."
"Oh. Well, did you try to send messages to them?"
"No. Being that Jessa's out in the other spiral arm, I thought I'd better talk to you first."
John nodded slowly. "It's a long way from the Vuls, but they do scout in that far now and then. Well, do you think you ought to make a trip out there and talk to them?"
"I wasn't thinking exactly that. I do think Coulter and Sears and any others who weren't definitely stooges of Humbert ought to be given the choice. But we ought to wait as long as possible; then maybe we should go there as a group. It would impress them more, I think." He hesitated. "John, do you think Humbert was actually a fag?"
John glanced at him quickly. "Oh, no. Definitely not! At least, he wasn't when he and I were at the academy together."
Bart said, "A lot of the men thought he was. After all, a poet…"
John swallowed and wished he had a slug or two of hard liquor. "Well, it wasn't so. His verse wasn't effeminate; and those of us who knew him when he was young never thought there was anything unmasculine about his writing poetry." John paused. The disagreement with Humbert was too clear in his memory for comfort. Besides, a part of him leaned toward agreement with the position Humbert had taken. "You know, Bart, if we don't make it—this thing involving the women, I mean, and Homo sapiens ends right here—it may be Humbert Daal's name that lives awhile among humanoid races. Nothing we've ever done except fight—none of the literature we brought with us, though God knows it was little enough—has caught on like his Epitaph." He was silent for a moment. "And mercenary warriors are a dime a dozen."
Bart said impatiently, "Sure. I'm just wondering how he'd react if we go out there and try to enlist some of his companions."
John took his hands off the desk and put them out of sight. "I definitely don't think we should take the whole fleet out there. A couple of small ships, maybe. We can leave the rest somewhere in the Sparse Regions, and rendezvous afterward. Too many alien cargo ships land on Jessa to load that fiber they grow."
Bart said, "I guess you're right." He stood up. "If you don't need me for anything right now, I'd like to get a little sleep."
"Of course."
After Lange had gone, John sat brooding. He'd never been able to feel angry with Humbert Daal—Humbert had been with him when they sneaked in to get a glimpse of Earth after the Destruction, and God knew that had been enough to scramble anyone's attitudes.
Humbert's poem Epitaph for a Fool had come out of that grim visit. Some of the surviving men might sneer at poetry, but John didn't think any of them would forget the lines, as long as their minds lasted:
Recall not Earth, nor weep. We gelded waifs,
We motes of Death cast on impassive seas,
Own not the right of petulant protest
Nor lien of mercy on the Pleiades.
The worm, the flower, crisped in mega-blast,
Sought not their fate. Yet, was it crueler shock
Than trout-on-hook? Than gut-shot-bison-cow?
Who wailed extinction of the pigeon-flock?
Take steel for sod, take tungsten for its light,
Take tinted glass for sky, and pipe for vine.
Quaff tisanes for the crying of your loins.
Recycled air your breeze, ship's grog your wine.
Go swaggering up the starlanes, grinning, cursing,
Deal blows to weaker creatures that you find.
Run when you must, but not too far; and always
Leave tales of might and daring deed behind.
And when you're senile and you dare to sleep,
You'll have invented lies enough to keep,
And you'll not weep.
The small unarmed ship broke out of its short zeroing-in hop within easy radio range of Jessa. John waited a minute until the companion vessel, piloted by Luis Damiano, broke out a few miles away. Then he sent a call: "This is Unarmed Class Four Explo Ship Council Bluffs, John Braysen commanding. Is Humbert Daal available?"
There was a moment of silence, then the hum of a carrier wave. A bit of static distorted it. He heard a chopped-off syllable, then a mutter of hasty side-talk. Finally, "John? Commodore Braysen? This is Fred Coulter. How are you, sir?"
"Fred! Hello, hello! I'm okay—how are you?"
"Fine, John! Who's with you?"
"Don Bunstill's with me; and aboard Mineola—which should just be a separate blip on your radar screen—are Luis Damiano and Jim Cameron. We came light-handed… Is Humbert Daal handy? And if not, can someone else give us permission to land?"
An embarrassed pause. "Hum's not here right now, Commodore—but for God's sake, come on down!"
"Thanks, Fred. The settlement's grown since I was here. I see a cluster of shacks just off the edge of a hill that seems to have big trees on it. There are level fields—Jessa flax, I guess—with a road running through them to the shacks, and a small clearing to one side of the shacks. Is that you?"
Coulter chuckled. "Yes. That's all the spaceport we've got, Commodore—we send our fiber by cart to one of the other alien compounds for sale. Just try not to land on the shacks."
"All right. Thanks. Council Bluffs and Mineola coming down on gravs."
Eight of the men on Jessa were clustered around. Coulter, flushed with pleasure and excitement, stammered introductions. "This is Walter Bain, Commodore—remember him? And Carl Muntz, and Joe Pina…"
John, knowing that he too was flushed, gripped the hands and mumbled remembrances.
But there was an awkwardness about any mention of Humbert Daal, until Coulter finally blurted out, "Hell—there's no sense in putting it off. The thing is, Hum's narked out right now. I mean, he's, well, sleeping off a hard jag. He's been hitting the drug pretty heavily lately."
John tensed, forced his face to stay calm. "That's too bad. Is he… How's his health?"
Coulter shrugged nervously. "We think okay. But lately he's getting more and more despondent. It's not a drug that's supposed to be harmful, but…"
John's own voice sounded odd to him. "They're all harmful eventually, one way or another." He resisted an impulse to put his hands in his pockets. Damn it, he thought irritably, the stain's gone long ago. "What's he been using?"
"Dron."
Humbert Daal—who, when so moved, could scream the most numbing, daggerlike kind of invective—could also be the most gracious of companions. He was in the latter countenance now. "I can't begin to try to apologize, Commodore. I understand thoroughly how you must despise such depravity as the use of drugs."
John felt his face color. But he'd steeled himself for this. What was bothering him more was the almost irresistible effort of his eyes to turn again and again to the pair of sleek dainty animals huddled together in timorous watchful silence in the farthest corner of the room.
Daal didn't look too unhealthy. He'd gone to fat (shockingly, if one remembered his tigerish leanness of eight years ago). His thighs as he slumped in linenlike pajamas on the big overcushioned couch, were gross things, his belly a flaccid blob. But his skin was smooth, aglow with seeming health, and his eyes were the same pale, innocent blue. There was no redness of the eye whites, no dilation of the pupils, no puffiness of the lids. Dron's effects, at least until the advanced stages, were inward.
A movement in the corner drew John's eyes, despite his resolve. One of the two creatures (could you call them humanoid?) was daring to move. It uttered a soft, mewing sound. It's limpid brown eyes, fixed on John, could have been an artist's symbolization of fear.
Humbert said to it gently, "Come on, my dear. He won't hurt you."
A moment more the creature hesitated, then with a sudden rush it ran to the couch and threw itself against Daal, to clutch at him, hiding its face, muttering in fright. A moment later, as if terrified of being left alone, the second one joined it.
They were both female, of course, and diminutively humanoid. They were the most advanced animal species on the planet, called the "jess," the planet taking its name from that. They were beautiful creatures, with the softest, sleekest of fur, pale cream except for a slightly darker shade along the spines and atop the head. What skin showed (the palms of their hands and the soles of their feet) was like a baby's. But their forms were not infantile; these two were definitely voluptuous; and John felt stirrings of lust which angered and embarrassed him.
