Old Pete was on his feet. “This calls for a celebration!”
“Not yet,” Jo said, her facial muscles tightening and her eyes going crystalline. “Not until I go to Fed Central and personally see Elson deBloise thrown out on his ear!”
DeBloise was not to be thrown out. When the accusation was made in the General Council, he and his Restructurist allies were ready. Jo and Old Pete arrived in time to hear the end of his firey speech.
“. . . And so we take our leave of you. You haven’t driven us out with your false, slanderous smears against my character! It is your stupidity, your blindness which causes us to leave you to fester in this pool of anarchy called the Federation! We’ve tried to warn you, tried to help you bring order to the galaxy but you seem to desire chaos. Then chaos you shall have! We leave to form a new coalition of worlds. And woe to everyone who stands in our way!” With a dramatic swirl of his cloak he left the dais and headed for the door. Other Restructurist members of the Council followed him out.
Jo and Old Pete were standing by the main door as the group marched through. Jo stared intently at deBloise: their eyes met, then deBloise was past. She was just a bystander to deBloise. He did not know—and perhaps never would—that the young, attractive woman watching his grand exit was the cause of his downfall.
A vid reporter rushed frantically around the foyer of the Council hall trying to get reactions. He approached Old Pete and aimed his recording plate at him.
“Sir,” he asked, breathlessly, “what do you think this means? Do you think there’s a chance of war between the Fed and the new Coalition?”
“The secession is certainly a bold move,” Old Pete replied, “but I doubt if it means war. Oh, there might be a few armed skirmishes over some of the resource planets, but I hardly think the Fed will go to war in the full sense of the word.”
This calm, reasoned reply was not at all to the reporter’s liking. He turned to Jo.
“What about you, Miss? Mr. deBloise claims the terrible charge against him is all part of a plot to destroy him? Do you think there’s a possibility of such a thing?”
Jo smiled and shrugged. “Wheels within wheels, bendreth.”
She took Old Pete’s arm and they walked away, laughing.
PARD
Some partnerships are brought about my chance, some by force, some by mutual consent. Some partnerships need to be broken up, for the good of the partners. But then there are certain kinds of partners that cannot be separated.
The orbital survey had indicated this clearing as the probable site of the crash, but long-range observation had turned up no signs of wreckage. Steven Dalt was doing no better at close range. Something had landed here with tremendous impact not too long ago: there was a deep furrow, a few of the trees were charred, and the grass had not yet been able to fully cover the earth-scar. So far, so good. But where was the wreckage? He had made a careful search of the trees around the clearing and there was nothing of interest there. It was obvious now that there would be no quick, easy solution to the problem as he had originally hoped, so he started the half-kilometer trek back to his concealed shuttlecraft.
Topping a leafy rise, he heard a shout off to his left and turned to see a small party of mounted colonists, Tependians by their garb. The oddity of the sight struck him. They were well inside the Duchy of Bendelema and that shouldn’t be: Bendelema and Tependia had been at war for generations. Dalt shrugged and started walking again. He’d been away for years, and it was very possible that something could have happened in that time to soften relations between the two duchies. Change was the rule on a splinter world.
One of the colonists pointed an unwieldy apparatus at Dalt and something went thip past his head. Dalt went into a crouch and ran to his right. There had been at least one change since his departure: someone had reinvented the crossbow.
The hooves of the Tependian mounts thudded in pursuit as he raced down the slope into a dank, twilit grotto, and Dalt redoubled his speed as he realized how simple it would be for his pursuers to surround and trap him in this sunken area. He had to gain the high ground on the other side before he was encircled. Halfway up the far slope, he was halted by the sound of hooves ahead of him. They had succeeded in cutting him off.
Dalt turned and made his way carefully down the slope. If he could just keep out of sight, they might think he had escaped the ring they had thrown around the grotto. Then, when it got dark
A bolt smashed against a stone by his foot. “There he is!” someone cried and Dalt was on the run again.
He began to weigh the situation in his mind. If he kept on running, they were bound to keep on shooting at him and one of them just might put a bolt through him. If he stopped running, he might have a chance. They might let him off with his life. Then he remembered that he was dressed in serfs clothing and serfs who ran from anyone in uniform were usually put to the sword. Dalt kept running.
Another bolt flashed by, this one ripping some bark off a nearby tree. They were closing in—they were obviously experienced at this sort of work—and it wouldn’t be long before Dalt was trapped at the lowest point of the grotto with nowhere else to go.
Then he saw the cave mouth, a wide, low arch of darkness just above him on the slope. It was about a meter and a half high at its central point. With a shower of crossbow bolts raining around him, Dalt quickly ducked inside.
It wasn’t much of a cave. In the dark and dampness Dalt soon found that it rapidly narrowed to a tunnel too slender for his shoulders to pass. There was nothing else for him to do but stay as far back as possible and hope for the best . . . which wasn’t much no matter how he looked at it. If his pursuers didn’t feel like coming in to drag him out, they could just sit back and fill the cave with bolts. Sooner or later one would have to strike him. Dalt peered out the opening to see which it would be.
But his five pursuers were doing nothing. They sat astride their mounts and stared dumbly at the cave mouth. One of the party unstrung his crossbow and began to strap it to his back. Dalt had no time to wonder at their behavior for in that instant he realized that he had made a fatal error. He was in a cave on Kwashi and there was hardly a cave on Kwashi that didn’t have its own colony of alarets.
He jumped into a crouch and sprinted for the outside. He’d gladly take his chances against crossbows rather than alarets any day. But a warm furry oval fell from the cave ceiling and landed on his head as he began to move. As his ears roared and his vision turned orange and green and yellow, Dalt screamed in agony and fell to the cave floor.
Hearing that scream, the five Tependian scouts shook their heads and turned and rode away.
It was dark when he awoke and he was cold and alone . . . and alive.
That last part surprised him when he remembered his situation and he lost no time in crawling out of the cave and into the clean air under the open stars. Hestitantly, he reached up and peeled off the shrunken, desiccated remains of one dead alaret from his scalp. He marveled at the thing in his hand. Nowhere in the history of Kwashi, neither in the records of its long-extinct native race nor in the memory of anyone in its degenerated splinter colony, had there ever been mention of someone surviving the attack of an alaret.
The original splinter colonists had found artifacts of an ancient native race soon after their arrival. The culture had reached pre-industrial levels before it was unaccountably wiped out; a natural cataclysm of some sort was given the blame. But among the artifacts were found some samples of symbolic writing, and one of these samples—evidently aimed at the children of the race—strongly warned against the entering of any cave. Creatures described as the killing-things-on-the-ceilings-of-caves would attack anything that entered. The writing warned: “Of every thousand struck down, nine hundred and ninety-nine will die.”
William Alaiet, a settler with some zoological training, had heard the translation and decided to find out just what it was all about. He went into the first cave he could find and emerged seconds later, screaming
and clawing at the furry little thing on his head. He became the first of many fatalities attributed to the killing-things-on-the-ceilings-of-caves which were named “alarets” in his honor.
Dalt threw the alaret husk aside, got his bearings and headed for his hidden shuttlecraft. He anticipated little trouble this time. No scouting party, if any were abroad at this hour, would be likely to spot him, and Kwashi had few large carnivores.
The ship was as he had left it. He lifted slowly to fifty thousand meters and then cut in the orbital thrust. That was when he first heard the voice.
(Hello, Steve.)
If it hadn’t been for the G-forces against him at that moment, Dalt would have leaped out of his chair in surprise.
(This pressure is quite uncomfortable, isn’t it?) the voice said and Dalt realized that it was coming from inside his head. The thrust automatically cut off as orbit was reached and his stomach gave its familiar free-fall lurch.
(Ah! This is much better.)
“What’s going on?” Dalt cried aloud as he glanced frantically about. “Is this someone’s idea of a joke?”
(No joke, Steve. I’m what’s left of the alaret that landed on your head back in that cave. You’re quite lucky, you know. Mutual death is the result—most of the time, at least—whenever a creature of high-level intelligence is a target for pairing.)
I’m going crazy! Dalt thought.
(No, you’re not, at least not yet. But it is a possibility if you don’t sit back and relax and accept what’s happened to you.)
Dalt leaned back and rested his eyes on the growing metal sphere that was the Star Ways Corporation mother ship on the forward viewer. The glowing signal on the console indicated that the bigger ship had him in traction and was reeling him in.
“O.K., then. Just what has happened to me?” He felt a little ridiculous speaking out loud in an empty cabin.
(Well, to put it in a nutshell: you’ve got yourself a roommate, Steve. From now on, you and I will be sharing your body.)
“In other words, I’ve been invaded!”
(That’s a loaded term, Steve, and not quite accurate. I’m not really taking anything from you except some of your privacy and that shouldn’t really matter since the two of us will be so intimately associated.)
“And just what gives you the right to invade my mind?” Dalt asked quickly, then added: “And my privacy?”
(Nothing gives me the right to do so, but there are extenuating circumstances. You see, a few hours ago I was a furry, lichen-eating cave slug with no intelligence to speak of—)
“For a slug you have a pretty good command of the language!” Dalt interrupted.
(No better and no worse than yours, for I derive whatever intelligence I have from you. You see, we alarets, as you call us, invade the nervous system of any creature of sufficient size that comes near enough. It’s an instinct with us. If the creature is a dog, then we wind up with the intelligence of a dog—that particular dog. If it’s a human and if he survives as you have done, the invading alaret finds himself possessing a very high degree of intelligence.)
“You said ‘invade’ just then.”
(Just an innocent slip, I assure you. I have no intention of taking over. That would be quite immoral.)
Dalt laughed grimly. “What would an ex-slug know about morality?”
(With the aid of your faculties I can reason now, can I not? And if I can reason, why can’t I arrive at a moral code? This is your body and I am here only because of blind instinct. I have the ability to take control—not without a struggle, of course—but it would be immoral to attempt to do so. I couldn’t vacate your mind if I wanted to, so you’re stuck with me, Steve. Might as well make the best of it.)
“We’ll see how ‘stuck’ I am when I get back to the ship,” Dalt muttered. “But I’d like to know how you got into my brain.”
(I’m not exactly sure of that myself I know the path I followed to penetrate your skull—if you had the anatomical vocabulary I could describe it to you, but my vocabulary is your vocabulary and yours is very limited in that area)
“What do you expect? I was educated in cultural studies, not medicine!”
(It’s not important anyway. I remember almost nothing of my existence before entering your skull, for it wasn’t until then that I first became truly aware.)
Dalt glanced at the console and straightened up in his seat. “Well, whatever you are, go away for now. I’m ready to dock and I don’t want to be distracted.”
(Gladly. You have a most fascinating organism and I have much exploring to do before I become fully acquainted with it. So long for now, Steve. It’s nice knowing you.)
A thought drifted through Dalt’s head. If I’m going nuts, at least I’m not doing it half-heartedly!
Bane was there to meet him at the dock. “No luck, Steve?”
Dalt shook his head and was about to add a comment when he noticed Barre staring at him with a strange expression.
“What’s the matter?”
“You won’t believe me if I tell you,” Barre replied. He took Dalt’s arm and led him into a nearby men’s room and stood him in front of a mirror.
Dalt saw what he expected to see: a tall, muscular man in the garb of a Kwashi serf. Tanned face, short, glossy black hair . . . Dalt suddenly flexed his neck to get a better look at the top of his head. Tufts of hair were missing in a roughly oval patchon his scalp. He ran his hand over it and a light rain of black hair showered past his eyes. With successive strokes, the oval patch became completely denuded and a shiny expanse of scalp reflected the ceiling lights into the minor.
“Well, I’ll be damned! A bald spot!”
(Don’t worry, Steve,) said the voice in his head, (the roots aren’t dead. The hair will grow back.)
“It damn well better!” Dalt said aloud.
“It damn well better what?” Barre asked puzzledly.
“Nothing,” Dalt replied. “Something dropped onto my head in a cave down there and it looks like it’s given me a bald spot.” He realized then that he would have to be very careful about talking to his invader, otherwise, even if he really wasn’t crazy, he’d soon have everyone on the ship believing he was.
“Maybe you’d better see the doc,” Barre suggested.
“I intend to, believe me. But first I’ve got to report to Clarkson. I’m sure he’s waiting.”
“You can bet on it.” Barre had been a research head on the brain project and was well acquainted with Dirval Clarkson’s notorious impatience.
The pair walked briskly toward Clarkson’s office. The rotation of the huge spherical ship gave the effect of 1-G; movement for all the personnel aboard would have been a major task without the artificial gravity.
“Hi, Jean,” Dalt said with a smile as he and Bane entered the anteroom of Clarkson’s office. Jean was Clarkson’s secretary and she and Dalt had entertained each other on the trip out . . . the more interesting games had been played during the sleep-time hours.
She returned his smile. “Glad you’re back in one piece.” Dalt realized that from her seated position she couldn’t see the bald spot. Just as well for the moment. He’d explain it to her later.
Jean spoke into the intercom. “Mr. Dalt is here.”
“Well, send him in!” squawked a voice. “Send him in!”
Dalt grinned and pushed through the door to Clarkson’s office with Bane trailing behind. A huge, graying man leaped from behind a desk and stalked forward at a precarious angle.
“Dalt! Where the hell have you been? You were supposed to go down, take a look and then come back up. You could have done the procedure three times in the period you took. And what happened to your head?” Clarkson’s speech was in its usual rapid-fire form.
“Well, this—”
“Never mind that now! What’s the story? I can tell right now that you didn’t find anything because Barre is with you. If you’d found the brain he’d be off in some corner now nursing it like a misplaced infant! Well, tell me
! How does it look?”
Dalt hesitated, not quite sure as to whether the barrage had come to an end. “It doesn’t look good,” he said finally.
“And why not?”
“Because I couldn’t find a trace of the ship itself. Oh, there’s evidence of some sort of craft having been there a while back, but it must have gotten off-planet again because there’s not a trace of wreckage to be found.”
Clarkson looked puzzled. “Not even a trace?”
“Nothing.”
The project director pondered this a moment, then shrugged. “We’ll have to figure that one out later. But right now you should know that we picked up another signal from the brain’s life-support system while you were off on your joyride—”
“It wasn’t a joyride,” Dalt declared. A few moments with Clarkson always managed to rub his nerves raw. “I ran into a pack of unfriendly locals and had to hide in a cave.”
“Be that as it may,” Clarkson said, returning to his desk chair, “we’re now certain that the brain, or what’s left of it, is on Kwashi.”
“Yes, but where on Kwashi? It’s not exactly an asteroid, you know.”
“We’ve almost pinpointed its location,” Barre broke in excitedly. “Very close to the site you inspected.”
“It’s in Bendelema, I hope,” Dalt said.
“Why?” Clarkson asked.
“Because when I was on cultural survey down there I posed as a soldier of fortune—a mercenary of sorts—and Duke Kile of Bendelema was a former employer. I’m known and liked in Bendelema. I’m not at all popular in Tependia because they’re the ones I fought against. I repeat: It’s in Bendelema, I hope.”
Clarkson nodded. “It’s in Bendelema, all right.”
“Good!” Dalt exhaled with relief. “That makes everything much simpler. I’ve got an identity in Bendelema: Racso the Mercenary. At least that’s a starting place.”
“And you’ll start tomorrow,” Clarkson said. “We’ve wasted too much time as it is. If we don’t get that prototype back and start coming up with some pretty good reasons for the malfunction, Star Ways might just cancel the project. There’s a lot riding on you, Dalt. Remember that.”