“Are you suggesting this was a schoolboy’s lark?”
“It must be considered,” she said.
She’s right but that doesn’t help matters. Damn them! My ship could go nowhere but Earth. Erasure is another matter. I am the only one who knows the full sequence. I should have made the erasure automatic. Why didn’t I plan for this contingency?
Mugly was forced to be honest with himself.
I wanted personal credit for eliminating this terrible danger, that’s why! By the blasted-off hind foot of an untaxable demon! My ego got in my way.
“It’s going to rain,” Luhan said.
Mugly looked up at the suddenly cloudy sky. This would be the afternoon we ordered rain!
“We should go inside,” Deni-Ra said. She looked pointedly in the direction of the Supreme Cone, reflecting Mugly’s suspicion that Habiba could watch them wherever they were.
Mugly agreed and, once in the guard station, took the only stool to sit and think while the others stood in obedient silence.
What now? Other than secrecy, what resources do I have?
Mugly believed he concealed his thoughts during the Supreme Tax Collector’s weekly Thoughtcons. It was then that Habiba absorbed stories from people Mugly invited to her Sharing. Mugly’s aides certainly suspected his ability but knew better than to inquire. He had stumbled onto the method: idmaged disconnection of those neurons carrying conspiratorial memories—a piecemeal alteration Dreens considered impossible. It was timed to last a day and left him feeling hazy, wishing Dreens had doctors.
Mugly knew his concealment technique was dangerous.
Do I create a different self by my disconnections?
She gives no sign she suspects me.
Habiba was always more interested in stories of lesser Dreens—the brightest Junior Storytellers, government tax collectors and the like. She displayed obvious fascination in these stories that were the currency of Dreenor. And along with stories went every other morsel of data in the minds of the ones Mugly invited to a Thoughtcon.
She thinks she knows everything and that’s supposed to keep us honest. But the good of our universe requires me to carry out my conspiracy.
Mugly did not know if he were the only Dreen capable of hiding his thoughts and he dared not discuss it with anyone, not even with those who served him.
If two people know a thing, it is no longer a secret
That was one valuable concept acquired from Earth.
I do this for the love of Habiba, he told himself.
He loved Habiba, as did all Dreens, but disagreed fiercely with her claim that nonviolence was intrinsic to Dreen nature.
Mugly saw something he called “the larger picture.” In it lay a total catastrophe destroying all Dreens. Dreenor might be a planet of tranquility and restoration for weary Storytellers home from their creative travels but that universe out there contained wild pockets of supreme peril.
I care not for other matters, but Earth must be destroyed!
This belief he buried in his deepest thoughts, ready for disconnection at the slightest sign of prying. Except on Thoughtcon days, Mugly considered this several times each day.
As long as I control invitations to Thoughtcons, Habiba will continue to believe I have only pure thoughts, and my plea for erasure of Earth is no more than an intellectual thing without plans to carry it out. And I will never permit her to share with those who serve me.
Still, Mugly worried. If only he had been able to design and idmage Patricia by himself! The size and complexity of the task had forced him to enlist these aides, all of them young and possessed of comparatively low storytelling skills. They were, however, energetic idmagers when he guided them. Most vital, they agreed with him that the destruction of Earth was for the good of Dreen posterity.
But only I know all eight parts to the puzzle of Patricia.
And Patricia was needed because the long-ago Storyteller who had idmaged Earth had set in motion a vehicle of destruction.
Strange that Wemply the Voyager’s idmage of Earth has created such a cult of imitations. Why is it so popular! The death and destruction are easy to see. Earthers are sick with a fascination for weapons and attacks on other life forms. I’m sure they would attack even us if they learned about us.
Mugly sighed. What could he suggest to his aides?
“Perhaps Ryll hoped to be a hero,” Deni-Ra said. “Is it possible he learned of Patricia’s purpose? He might have thought he would save our universe and return triumphant.”
“There’s no way he could have learned,” Prosik said.
“Yes,” Mugly agreed. “He most likely would not have gone if he had discovered the secret, because that also would have told him the operator of the ship is likely to die in the erasure.”
“Not to mention the deaths of the Dreen prisoners the Earther Zone Patrol is holding,” Luhan said.
“Is there some way this could be turned to our political advantage?” Prosik asked. “Could Habiba be made to suspect Jongleur sent his son to steal your ship?”
Mugly looked at Prosik with new interest. Despite the bazeel addiction, Prosik showed sparks of real intelligence.
“Thoughtcons will tell her Jongleur had no part in it,” Deni-Ra said.
Yes, always the Thoughtcons to complicate conspiracy.
“Let me go after Ryll and activate the erasure ship,” Prosik said. “Give me the chance to redeem myself.”
Mugly listened to the rain on the guard station roof for a moment, thinking, What if Jongleur, too, can hide his thoughts?
“You will be tempted by bazeel on Earth,” Mugly said.
“I swear I will not touch it! Believe me.”
“I thought of following him myself,” Mugly said. “But I hold knowledge valuable to the Earthers and if I were captured . . .”
“And we need you at the Thoughtcons,” Deni-Ra said.
“Prosik,” Mugly said, “how do we know we can trust you?”
“I will dedicate myself.”
Again, Mugly listened to the rain on the roof. The tempo was subsiding. He studied the penitent expression of Prosik’s face. Yes, Prosik was most easily spared.
“Very well. I will share the secrets of activating Patricia and you will go. Take my personal Excursion Ship, the Kalak-III. But flee rather than be captured!”
“What will you tell Habiba?” Luhan asked.
Trust Luhan to ask the most worrisome question!
“I will tell her a truth—that my aides took it on themselves to prepare a ship in case Habiba agreed to erase Earth. But now, Jongleur’s son, Ryll, has stolen the ship and that may be disastrous.”
***
Dreens appear capable of creating only viral and bacterial life forms as an aspect of what they call “idmaging.” This creativity and allied shapeshifting powers impose their own rules. Idmaged life forms follow laws of evolution inherent to themselves and their environments. Dreens display ignorance about many aspects of their creations and say such understanding does not submit to rational analysis.
—“Dreen Mysteries,” a Zone Patrol report
After the morning gruel, two Zone Patrol guards in brown and blue uniforms with gold braid of Command Echelon escorted Lutt down the drab cellblock corridor and up an elevator to the next level.
Lutt felt clear-headed and in control of himself after a restful sleep disturbed by a brief nightmare most of whose details vanished on awakening: something about redecorating his cell and then removing the changes.
No more hallucinations, he told himself.
The elevator opened into a round room with smoky gray glass wall panels that changed shape as he focused on them.
Spirit Glass!
The glass, an Osceola Industries monopoly, had been demonstrated to him once in a Hanson laboratory where his father’s researchers failed to penetrate their secret.
“Dangerous stuff,” a technician had warned. “It can twist your mind out of shape.”
A familiar
whisper interrupted his nervous examination of the glass-walled room.
“Major Captain will be with you presently.”
That’s interesting, Ryll intruded.
Lutt came to a stop between his two guards, his body trembling without control. That voice’ in his head again! But it was not like the familiar whisper that came to him almost as though originating within his left ear.
Who was that whispering? Ryll asked.
It was you, wasn’t it?
I’m glad you finally accept my presence but I assure you it was not I who whispered.
I don’t accept you or anything like you!
It felt almost as though it came through the Spirals, Ryll offered.
Shut up! Get outa my head!
Slowly, Lutt brought the trembling under control. The two guards were amused by his obvious fear, he saw. If they only knew the cause!
The whisper was a disconnected piece of a lifetime puzzle floating in Lutt’s awareness. The pieces knocked against one another without proper alignment.
Major Captain. Another crazy name!
People with bizarre names often came associated with that eerie whisper. There had been Tundra Farmer, a stocky playmate of his childhood. Tunny, as most called him, always appeared when Lutt was about to be defeated in a schoolyard fight. The strange child threw such a barrage of blows that after a time his mere appearance sent attackers fleeing.
Other oddly named people aided Lutt in adolescence and young adulthood: Pipple Iter got him through college math, and Waxy Gourd convinced him to concentrate on aerospace design, solar communication and study of the flame-drenched planet Venus.
Most recently, Samuel Robert Kand, an aerospace engineer, had presented himself to Lutt and been placed in charge of the Vortraveler shop.
Even “vorspiral” had come to him via that disembodied whisper, a label accompanied by such a spate of technical data Lutt had dashed to the nearest recorder to preserve it for later examination.
When he had said “vorspiral” once in his mother’s presence, she surprised him by saying, “I’ve heard your Uncle Dudley say that. What does it mean?”
They had been home after one of her interminable afternoon teas and Lutt, bored by compulsory attendance, had been galvanized. “Uncle Dudley? Where and how did he mention vorspirals? When?”
“Now, dear, I don’t remember. But it is a curious word. Does it mean anything?”
“I’m not sure. Where’s Uncle Dudley? I have to talk to him.”
“You know he and your father had a falling out, dear. And you mustn’t upset your father.”
“But where’s Uncle Dudley?”
“Everyone says he’s on Venus, as I’m sure you’ve heard. I don’t know why, what with all the violence there. It’s best we forget my poor brother, dear. He always was a bit strange.”
And that was all she would say about Uncle Dudley.
Sam R. Kand’s appearance to work on the Vortraveler had not really surprised Lutt but he still wondered if Uncle Dudley were behind this mystery, especially when the best investigators Lutt hired could not find a trace of the man.
Was Major Captain another oddly named “helper”? Faced with Spirit Glass windows, Lutt suspected he would need all the help he could get.
One of them thrusting each shoulder, the ZP guards pushed him toward the center of the room. “Find your way to the circle at the center,” one of them growled.
Lutt stumbled away from the guards and heard a sliding sound behind him. He turned and was in time to see a Spirit Glass panel close off the elevator. His last view of the two guards was of them grinning at him.
What circle at the center? Lutt wondered.
He turned away from the panel concealing the elevator and saw a spiral pattern spinning on the floor at the center of the room. It had not been there before. They were projecting it from somewhere but he could not determine the source.
Spiral . . . another spiral.
Lutt looked at the Spirit Glass on the far wall and, for an instant, thought he saw the remembered features of Uncle Dudley in the smoky depths. The image disappeared and reshaped into an older Uncle Dudley seated on a rickety pier. Uncle Dudley was watching a woman with a cane pole fish from the end of the pier. The woman turned and Lutt recognized Osceola looking much as she had in the most recent media picture on the five o’clock news.
The pier, Uncle Dudley and Osceola dissolved into gray mists.
Nightmare! The Spirit Glass was taking over his mind!
But Spirit Glass windows were an exclusive product of Osceola Industries. Why couldn’t the glass show her?
Lutt shook his head, Osceola—another barrier to his father’s dreams of empire. Beth Osceola, a seventy-two-year-old half Seminole, ran her company with no regard for L.H.’s dreams. She refused to sell Osceola Industries to his father and would not even return a vidcom call.
“The Old Bag,” Hanson Senior called her, but Lutt secretly admired her independence.
A sibilant voice with no apparent source abruptly hissed at him: “Stand on the circle at the center!”
With a helpless feeling of compulsion, Lutt stepped forward onto the spinning spiral. The Spirit Glass in front of him whirled with dancing lights.
They’re going to fry my brain!
Where was Major Captain? Where was any helper now that he needed one?
He closed his eyes but memory of the Spirit Glass filled his awareness. What could he do? The glass could be shattered by a blow but behaved more like liquid than any solid substance. He opened his eyes and tried to count the windows around the room. They undulated sickeningly.
Thirty-five windows. That’s my age.
He counted them once more and came up with sixteen.
That’s my age, Ryll intruded. Stop counting them.
You don’t exist so stop telling me what to do!
This was much more than interrogation, Lutt realized. And it was very dangerous to his sanity.
Of course it’s dangerous to our sanity! Ryll offered.
Voices in my head, hallucinations!
Lutt felt perspiration on his brow. He rubbed a moist palm across his mouth and smelled machine oil.
Machine oil? That’s the smell in my Vortraveler. Where is my ship? What happened to Drich Baker?
Baker’s dead. I told you that. You’d be dead, too, if I hadn’t saved us. Now let me help you or that Spirit Glass will get us both.
I don’t believe in you!
Stop that! I leave you in control of our body for a few minutes and you fall into this crazy delusion.
You’re the delusion!
You listen to me, Lutt. For the sake of appearances I’m letting you take charge but I can stop that anytime I want.
So stop it! Stop messing up my mind!
Use some intelligence, Lutt. These Zone Patrol people are suspicious. If I made some nonhuman slip, they’d notice. Do you want to spend the rest of your life in a cell?
Then if you’re real, why don’t you go to sleep and let me handle this?
I need to learn about you, Lutt. And we Dreens don’t need much sleep, so don’t think you can wait until I doze off. Dreens lead very active lives.
Lutt removed his glasses, found a handkerchief and wiped perspiration from the lenses. In the search for a handkerchief, he determined that his other personal effects—keys, watch, slips of mini-note, a small pen—were gone.
Removed by the Zone Patrol?
They took everything from our pockets, Ryll offered.
That voice in his head again.
But why was the ZP interrogating him?
Even in voiceless mental communication, Ryll’s next offering was patronizing: It’s because of the crash. You know that. But have you noticed how well you see without glasses?
Lutt looked at the glasses in his hand, at the room, at the handkerchief. Shocked, he realized he was seeing clearly without glasses.
You are seeing well because these are not your eyes, Lutt. T
hey’re my eyes. I idmaged only plain glass in your lenses. Good idmaging, eh? A technique I learned in school and am delighted to see I can perform. Does this convince you?
Lutt replaced the glasses on his nose.
I must fix my mind on one thing to keep my sanity.
To keep your delusion, you mean!
He ignored this and watched a pane of Spirit Glass change from square to round, then to oval and rectangular.
Psychiatrists and police were said to be the principal customers for Spirit Glass. Investigators said prolonged exposure to the constantly changing shapes turned a subject’s brain to mush, causing him to reveal his darkest secrets. Interrogators wore special glasses to protect them from this dangerous effect.
A loud click startled Lutt, causing him to retreat from the central spiral. He looked in the direction of the sound and saw a brown dome emerging from the floor nearby. A hum of motors and noise of gears accompanied the appearance of this object. The odor of machine oil was pronounced.
A female voice filled the room.
“Stay within the circle!”
It’s some kind of freaking vorspiral, Lutt thought.
Spiral! Just Spiral. It is a Dreen label.
Dreen, schmeen!
But something forced Lutt onto the spiral.
Where is my helper? he wondered.
With an increasingly loud hum, the dome came through the floor. Tiles folded into place around it. The room fell silent.
Lutt saw a jagged dent in the dome, surely a sign of damage. A flaw in the adversary?
Adversary? This is my nation’s Zone Patrol!
“By what right are you holding me?” he demanded.
Something in the dome gave off a dull “clunk. “He heard a low voice say, “Oh, shit!” then another dull “clunk.”
Slowly, the dome opened, a metal flower spreading eight, curved petals onto the floor around it. In the center, at a shiny silver desk, sat a fair-skinned female officer in the dark brown of Zone Patrol Special Forces. Blue-black hair wisped from under her gold-trimmed officer’s cap. Her collar displayed golden ovals with caduceus symbols. She appeared preoccupied with turning a large wheel beside her.