Chapter 14
John awoke to something soft beating him in the face. Reaching out, he wrested the small, round pillow from Zahava’s hands.
“You were snoring again!” She slid from his grasp, stepping onto the deep-carpeted floor. “Pleasant dreams?” she asked, ducking into the bathroom.
“Entertaining, certainly. Shouldn’t believe everything you dream, though.” Rising, he looked for his clothes. “There’s a pilferage problem,” he grumbled, not finding them.
“There are Colonial Service uniforms in the wardrobe,” advised POCSYM.
“Do you always eavesdrop?” He opened the wardrobe door. Duplicates of last night’s attire hung there, clean and flawlessly pressed. Warsuits and blasters were neatly stacked on a shelf.
“It’s my programming. I’m sorry if it offends you, but it’s just me.”
“What time is it?”
“Ten-ten A.M., eastern standard time. Would you like to listen to one of the Manhattan FM stations? I favor the classical ones. Or a musical selection from my own library?”
“Neither.”
“Oh.” Irrepressible, the computer continued. “I’ve monitored radio, television and the internet since their inception. It keeps me abreast of the geopolitical situation and helps me monitor changes in human mores and folkways.”
“And what have you learned, POCSYM?” asked John, looking for his watch.
“That Voltaire was right: ‘Times change, people don’t.’ I have evidence, in fact, that minor changes in social mores are frequently engineered by the media.”
“Startling,” said John, finding his watch. “Is there a razor?”
“Depilatory rinse is on the third shelf behind the bath mirror. You should find all necessary toiletries there. If need anything, ask. I’m afraid I don’t have any little butler bots to show you around, but I can tell you where to go.”
“Others have,” said John. Behind him, Zahava closed the bathroom door and started the shower. “Damn,” he murmured. “Anyone else up yet?”
“Me.” Bob came in, looking a like a large avocado in his green Colonial Service uniform. “Don’t let our pompous wizard bamboozle you,” he said, “For all its supposed scientific objectivity, it’s accumulated a vast collection of operatic recordings. It favored me with an original cut of Caruso and Geraldine Farrar in The Barber of Seville. God only knows how he . . . it . . . got it.”
Sitting on his bunk, tugging on a boot, John grunted, “We all have pronoun problems with Mr. POCSYM. I’ve decided on he. Is that OK, POCSYM?”
“Whatever you’re comfortable with, Mr. Harrison.”
“How did you record those operas?” asked Bob.
“One of my many secrets, Professor,” said the computer smugly.
“Were you given the same dream as we were, Bob?” asked John, squeezing his left foot into the tight-fitting Kronarin boot.
“Mighty ships, pigmy humans, Imperial noblesse oblige?”
“And the heroic POCSYM. You doubt?” asked John, rising.
“Someone should. I’m bunked with Detrelna and that cynical old space dog ate it up. If he did, so did the rest.”
“I’m wounded,” said POCSYM.
“Surely there’s an opera somewhere you want to record?” suggested John.
“My apologies—I’ll leave you alone.”
Bob waved vaguely. “I accept all this … a priori. Direct evidence and the reasoned judgment and all. But we’ve only POCSYM’s word for this revisionist history–subliminal, three-dimensional and in color though it may be. No, I reserve judgment. And you?”
“Likewise. Logic compels caution. We’ve been thrust into the midst of a galactic war . . .”
The bathroom door vanished. Steam billowed in, a naked form dimly visible through the mist. Bob’s hasty exit ended the conversation.
At breakfast, John asked a question that’d been nagging him. “CIA and FSB, working as a team?” His gaze shifted between Bakunin and Sutherland. “Things must really have changed since I left. You’ll put yourselves out of work.”
Zahava and Greg looked up with interest. McShane, listening intently to Kiroda, took no notice.
“Not really our fault,” said Sutherland between mouthfuls of fresh blueberry blintzes, bacon and coffee. “It started with Admiral Canaris’ Abwehr,” he said, naming the Third Reich’s military intelligence arm.
“The Germans stumbled onto a site very much like the one at Goose Hill.” Bakunin picked up the tale. “It was being used by the French Resistance as a storage and staging area. An Wehrmacht raiding party arrived at the site just as Scotar transmutes dropped in—probably looking for POCSYM.” He paused, sipping coffee.
Sutherland pushed his plate away with a contented sigh. “The meeting between the Nazis and the Scotar was ‘nasty, brutish and short.’ The bugs teleported away, destroying the site as they left, leaving one of the Germans alive. He had a map, snatched from the Scotar, showing the probable locations of POCSYM’s transporter sites.”
“An SS officer got the map,” said Bakunin, “then gave it to us and the Americans after the war in return for our not hanging him. By then all the sites we could find had been destroyed.”
“Why did you and the Russians cooperate, Bill?” asked Greg. “Especially during the cold war.” Unnoticed, the window now showed a red-sailed galley skimming an azure sea. High above its fifty-oared deck, a golden hide caught the sun.
“Each side was sobered,” said Sutherland, stirring cognac into his coffee, “by the way those transporter sites had been destroyed. Someone—something—used energy weapons far beyond our ken.” He watched the cream curdle to the surface.
“Confronted by this, we didn’t rush to embrace like kids trapped in a wild storm—not quite. Let’s just say that on this topic, and this topic alone, there’s been warm rapprochement over the years, carried on at the highest levels of government.”
“I have a question for the good Captain,” said John, appropriating some of Sutherland’s cognac. “If the Scotar can teleport—and we know they can—why did they storm Goose Hill a second time? Why not just teleport in and blow us to pieces while we were still outside? They had the location from their first attack.”
Detrelna, seated next to McShane, was puffing on one of Bob’s cigars. He took the panatela from his mouth, thoughtfully regarding its profile before answering. “Frankly, I don’t know. And I don’t like it. Their entire method of operation has been different in your solar system—incompetent, really. All we can do is hope they’ll continue blundering, for whatever reason.” He stuck the cigar back into his mouth.
“How do you explain the invisibility of all those warriors over the years?” asked Zahava. “If they’re not telepaths, how could they project illusions?”
“I think I can answer that,” said Kiroda, pushing his empty plate away. “They were probably all housed in one place—the Institute—until needed. Two or three transmutes could project an image of normalcy throughout the entire installation whenever there were visitors.”
“It looks like the surface of the moon,” said MacDonald to Montanoya as the two men looked down on Goose Hill. The morning sun had woven a grotesque tapestry of light and shadow from twisted alien bodies and molten wide-strewn rubble.
“More like something out of Dante, Mr. President,” said Montanoya.
“Land where you can,” MacDonald ordered the Air Force major piloting the Blackhawk helicopter.
“Where you can” was next to a pair of gutted Kronarin scout craft. The six escorting Apache gunships settled in a protective ring around the presidential chopper. Following a combat-outfitted phalanx of Secret Service, they made their way up from the beach to where Scotar bodies heaped the blasted entrance. “Don’t look much prettier burned than they do intact,” said Montanoya, comparing a charred corpse to one less damaged.
“There are probably many life forms in the universe, José,” said MacDonald as their escort checked the site. “Mayb
e they find us equally repulsive.”
“No one home, Mr. President,” reported the Agent-in-Charge a few minutes later. “Something sure blasted the hell out of the lower corridor and the room above it, though. No human bodies, but plenty of them.” He nudged a headless insectoid corpse with his combat boot’s polished black toe.
“Okay. Let’s have a look,” MacDonald said.
Agents front and rear, the President and Montanoya carefully picked their way down the rubble-strewn stairs and upper corridor, through the broken remains of the altar chamber, then down the ladder to the lower tunnel, its lighting flickering on and off. The scarred walls and blasted Scotar corpses gave testimony to the hellish energies that had raged there. MacDonald turned to the escort commander. “Where was . . .”
He never finished his question—he and Montanoya disappeared, consternation in their wake.
“And this is Central Control,” said POCSYM as the humans entered the large room.
Screens above unmanned consoles came on, filling with sights both familiar and strange: London, New York, Moscow, Paris, Tokyo, Singapore, Rio de Janeiro, Bonn, the North American continent, Terra, Terra and its moon, the outer planets, the sun.
“Are those real-time?’ asked the Russian, peering closely at Mars. The color and clarity were astounding.
“Yes.” I’ve maintained the satellite observation network first installed by Fleet. Drone repair ships are on station in the asteroids and many of the planetary satellites.” The screens blanked out.
“We’re about to receive visitors, gentlemen and lady. Please stand well away from the center of the room,” POCSYM requested. “And no matter what you think you see, do nothing.”
Sutherland was awed by the seemingly effortless way POCSYM transmitted and reassembled people. With no apparent transition, José Montanoya and President MacDonald stood in the center of the room, blinking.
“Welcome to Kronarin Planetary Command,” said POCSYM. “I’ve been looking forward to this meeting for some time.”
“You have the advantage, sir,” MacDonald said, taking in the unfamiliar faces.
“Your pardon, sir. I am POCSYM Six, this installation’s guardian.”
“I’m José Montanoya,” said the National Security Advisor. He paused. Why didn’t Sutherland do or say something? The man was just standing there, staring at him. “And this gentleman”—he indicated MacDonald . . . “is the President of the United States, where I hope we still are.”
“You are in the United States, or rather under it, Mr. Montanoya,” replied POCSYM. “But your companion is neither gentle nor a man. Stand away from him, please.”
Ignoring the hisses of indrawn breath and weapons being drawn, POCSYM continued, “Greetings, Guan-Sharick, Illusion Master of the Infinite Hosts of the Magnificent. Hail! And well met, ancient foe.”
“No!” cried Montanoya, even as he backed away from MacDonald. “I’ve known this man for forty years. He can’t be an . . . alien.”
“See and believe, Mr. Montanoya,” POCSYM said.
MacDonald’s form shimmered for an instant, replaced by a transmute. The alien stood unmoving and unarmed.
“And the President?” asked Montanoya after a moment’s stunned silence. “What about the President?”
Dead, said a voice in all their heads. The Scotar turned its huge eyes on them. We held him in our base on Deimos. Your new friends killed him in their rush to destroy us.
“Guan-Sharick is as old as I am, if you discount the hundreds of successive clones through which his persona has passed,” POCSYM said. “He stands high in the Council of the Magnificent. His is the task of exterminating all hostile—that is to say alien—life. If he can sow dissension among the foes of the Host, all the better. He’s the father of lies. Didn’t you wonder, Mr. Montanoya, why on earth, or under it, a President of the United States would expose himself to danger, especially without media coverage? Guan-Sharick hoped I’d be fooled into transporting him here. Talks between the Terrans and the Kronarins being of course, the next logical step. Behold the Illusion Master, stripped of his illusions.
“Captain Detrelna,” POCSYM addressed the Confederation officer, who stood with blaster leveled at the insectoid, “please tell the Terrans what must have occurred for Guan-Sharick to have imitated their President so well.”
Clearing his throat, the captain complied. “His memories had to be transferred, down to the most basic level, directly into the alien’s mind. It’s done by slowly inserting the sharp, hard antennae concealed in the mandibles into the victim’s brain, absorbing each successive layer of memory as the victim dies. The process takes several horrific hours.”
The silence was broken by Montanoya trying to seize John’s blaster.
“No, Mr. Montanoya!” cried POCSYM. “Alive he can be used to avenge your friend. Dead he’s useless. Something he realized—he’s tried to teleport continuously in the last minute. It would be certain death, as he doesn’t know his location. I’ve blocked those attempts as well as his efforts to bring unwelcome visitors. With your permission, Captain, I’ll put him on a debriefer.”
“What’s that?” asked Greg.
“Mind-wiping. It will leech his mind of all data and leave him a big green vegetable,” said Detrelna coldly.
Detrelna gestured to two of his commandos. They came up to the alien, flanking him. “Follow the blue light to Interrogation, gentlemen,” directed POCSYM. “My robots will take charge of the prisoner there.”
A ball of soft blue light, a foot in diameter, appeared on the floor before prisoner and escort, slowly moving toward the door. The trio followed.
Guan-Sharick turned at the door, transfixing them with baleful red eyes, twin pools of malevolence. His voice hissed in their minds again. We shall write your names on water. The scattering dust is your fate. The door closed behind him.
“Now what?” asked a shaken José Montanoya.
“I suggest we await our fleet, sir, then negotiate a mutual defense treaty,” Detrelna said. “It’s only a matter of time before the Scotar bring up their main force. Our presence here confirms the importance of Terra and this system.” He nodded at a wall hologram of the solar system.
“What is that blue light orbiting Earth?” asked Bob. “Implacable?”
“Yes,” POCSYM said. “Blue is friendly, red hostile. Shall we continue the tour?”