THE VAL EXTENDED A COM POD AND ATTACHED TO the transmitting console. The interstellar transmission system included complex miniature punches and required much power, which was why it wasn’t used very often. It also still was slow enough that the conversation between the two machines, which might have been done in seconds, instead would take hours. Machines, however, were patient—when they had to be.
The Val received the sign-on from Master System itself, and quickly transmitted the entire record, including all the test and probe data on the suspects and the complete readout of Colonel Chi.
“If such a being were possible,” the Val added, “it would explain much.”
“Such a being is theoretically possible,” came the reply from deep within the greatest computer ever known. “It would take a computer with vast potential, much biosurgery almost cell by cell and incredible skill with the principles of cellular transmutation, and years of trial-and-error research, but such a creature could theoretically be designed. There was no need for such a project on my part.”
“But could anyone we know do such a thing? Who would have the computer with the skills capable of doing so? And could any human ever dream up such a creature?”
“Humans designed me, with far more primitive tools, and I am infinitely more complex than that. As to the computer—it is obvious. The one on Melchior that was stripped of all data was nonetheless of sufficient size, speed, and capacity for it, if it were a primary task of research and at least half of it were constantly devoted to the problem. That means Clayben. He is the only one who could have done it. An agent who could go through security systems anywhere undetected, find out anything . . . Yes. It is obvious now. You are certain that there is absolutely no alien element of any kind within any of the suspects, including the children?”
“None that can be measured by any means currently at our disposal.”
“Very well, then. Order them held in continued isolation and wait.”
The wait lasted two days.
“I cannot create such a being without much experimentation, and that takes time,” Master System said at last. “However, proceeding from what we know about such a hypothetical creature, I have determined a basic set of methods that had to be employed in its design. If it is close to what was finally accomplished on Melchior, it is specifically designed so that no form of measurement we can employ will unmask it. However, we do not have to create one. I am certain that there could not be more than one such creature. Otherwise the game would be up long before now. They have, however, placed us in an immediate quandary. Remaking and remolding an entire planetary culture takes time and resources I do not wish to spare at this time, although Chanchuk is now a primary candidate for such treatment at the earliest opportunity. To kill the Holy Lama, her consorts, and their children is the obvious plan to eliminating this creature, but it would totally disrupt and turn against us an entire planetary culture. It would tie down too many resources for too long, and we are always faced with the possibility, even probability, that no such creature exists, making the move meaningless as well.”
“It is true that we are in only tenuous control on Chanchuk at the moment. The local Center and temple authorities have refused to aid us and in many cases have shown a willingness to die rather than cooperate. They have managed to get the word out to the other Centers in spite of our control and from there to the masses in the region. There have been massive demonstrations. The bulk of the population is pacifist, but some are not. Troops have been harassed, some killed. They demand the restoration of the Holy Lama and the Sacred Lodge. It is not anything that we cannot handle, but it is not a good situation. Still, is there another choice?” The Val seemed uncomfortable with its current position.
“I believe there is. They already have the ring. They now face us with creating an entire world of allies and tying up tremendous resources handling such a thing as well. This is a double victory I will not permit. Better to wrest a major victory out of a defeat. They do not have all the rings yet. Without this creature they are highly unlikely to be able to get inside information sufficient to steal another without tripping up. Nor are they likely to have access to a computer capable of creating another even if they somehow have all the programs. But suppose in the process of returning them to Wa Chi Center we also transmuted them?”
“Transmuted? Into what? If we make major alterations in their holy family it is the same as keeping them.”
“A body of a suitable and similar-looking priestess of about the Holy Lama’s age can be procured. They are, after all, all sisters. The reproductive functions can be restored during the process. The sterilization is surgical, not transmuter induced. Nine males of the royal lineage can also be procured from the Centers as models, and their children can be the templates for the Holy Lama’s children. Each can then be transmuted into the form of one of the randomly selected templates.”
“I see. And since one cannot be transmuted twice, the agent will be exposed, perhaps killed.”
“Possibly. I said transmuters were used to create it. I do not believe it is possible to modify a human being to become one of these creatures. If it was, then all of the rebels would be like this thing and we should be lost. No, it must be created and nurtured in a specially controlled laboratory. It is unlikely that it has ever used a transmuter for more than transport. It has no need to do so, and it might actually be threatened by it. But matter is matter and atoms are atoms to a transmuter program. Have we not created Vals that are so human none can tell the difference without instruments? It will not care what this creature is made of, or how it works. It will simply do a transmute. If it exists at all, it will emerge back on Chanchuk as the Holy Lama or a male consort or a child. It will no longer be artificial—it will be real, and fixed immutably as one of Chanchuk. It is also likely that memory is stored cellularly, throughout the body, rather than merely in the brain. If that is true and it is a true mimic to the end, it is quite possible we may also eliminate most if not all of the memories, knowledge, and personality beneath the Chanchukian facade. Either way, it will be neutralized. Do you need specific programming instructions?”
“No. The only regret in this is that we shall never know for certain if the colonel is brilliant or if this is a fantasy. I would like to know.”
“It is probable. It is the most logical way to explain their successes, as Chi so brilliantly determined. Clayben has the ability, Melchior is the logical place, and the idea is consistent with the way Clayben thought. The traitor Nagy could have brought the creature along, since Nagy would be immune to it. No. I am convinced that with this move we shall deal them a blow so crushing that it will be another generation before they succeed in gaining another ring. We will not let down our guard, for we want to capture them all, but as far as obtaining all five rings is concerned, this will halt them in their tracks.”
“It shall be done, and the restoration shall be highly publicized and with suitable ceremony. I feel certain the Holy Lama will go along even without mindpripter inducement, which is always the best way. She is concerned about her people in a genuine way and anxious to restore normalcy. If such normalcy can be assured, what do you wish us to do next?”
“The SPF should be withdrawn as soon as possible, but keep a regional command in the area just in case the Holy Lama is not altogether clear on where her own and her people’s best interests lie. I would suggest that Commodore Marquette and his command be relieved of task force duties and placed in command of a project to analyze specific SPF training responses. I have done a complete analysis of his defensive plan and can find no specific flaws in it. Clearly insufficient force was deployed to defend Chanchuk, and the pirates’ computers were able to predict the logical responses of our programs, commanders, and forces and find the weak links in the chain. It is essential we become less predictable in the future. Were it not for Colonel Chi, we might have suffered a total humiliating defeat in this matter and learned nothing from it.”
“Colonel Chi failed,” the Val pointed out.
“Vals failed on Janipur,” the master computer noted. “The only reason we struck any blow at the enemy on Janipur, even with our overwhelming force, was that the enemy was new at the game and had not been tested in battle or planning. They lost their ships and personnel because of their own mistakes, not our efficiency. They are clearly patient and they have learned well. Chi salvaged something here by showing imagination and initiative and because she circumvented the rigidity of procedure and thought that the enemy counted on. I am far removed from the scene of this fight. Communications cannot be instantaneous. On the scene, our computers and their computers are equal. The difference, then, has been their human controllers who clearly have a great deal of resourcefulness and imagination. This system was created because it is the best for humans. Perhaps it is time we allowed the products of that system to have a direct hand in this.”
“What, then, are your orders?”
“The rings on Matriyeh and Alititi are to be secured with monitors so that any removal will result in an automatic alarm. Large automated task forces are to be deployed in waiting stages in null zones out of detection range, but within monitor range, capable of closing on either world and sealing it off should either ring be stolen. Even without their special agent they will try and perhaps succeed, but I do not want them getting away again. I want so much force available with such speed that the enemy must bring all of his ships and weapons to bear. They must be smashed so thoroughly that they are forced to bring their base ship into the fight and we must be able to take and secure it. Colonel Chi is promoted to brigadier and is to be placed in charge of a special SPF task force with all authority necessary. All Vals and other extensions of myself shall be at her disposal. Move!”
Raven had been morose off and on of late. He always had his moods and his depressions, but this one seemed longer and deeper than most. The Crow had taken to simply sitting on an overlook, staring out at the vast worldlet that was the Thunder’s deep interior.
He’d been up there, staring out, for over two days now, eating or drinking nothing, and clearly now even out of cigars. The former was not totally unusual; the latter was history making. Hawks, concerned, finally decided to make his way up there even though it broke his own personal rule on disturbing others and certainly violated the compact that existed now with the remaining multiracial company.
The Thunder was impressive, and never more so than from its heights. Its kilometers-long interior, balanced by a comfortable artificial gravity and landscaped with plants and rocks from dozens of worlds, actually contained small villages and a network of paths, central wells, sanitation, and cooking—all that was needed. There was even a small area for livestock, although, since some of the races aboard were strict vegetarians, some by biology and others by custom or religion, it was agreed that those who chose to remain meat-eaters would eat synthetics in the interest of harmony.
Raven was a craggy old bastard, with scars all over his body from his tough early life and career; his long hair, kept straight at his own insistence, as if to mark him as one apart from the Hyiakutts like Hawks and Cloud Dancer who wore the traditional Plains braids most of the time, was steel-gray now. He was built like a wrestler; a man nature had designed to be large as opposed to tall, yet more muscular than fat.
As much as he had been a prime mover and shaker in the quest for the rings and as much as he was a child of his northwest wilderness, he was also always the cynic, always the materialist and scoundrel, always the one who looked for profit in everything he did and approached even the vastness of the universe in coldly pragmatic terms. In all these years he’d rarely let down his guard, rarely given anyone a glimpse of what might lie behind those cold, brown eyes and that impassive, stonelike face. Just enough, over all this time, to give those with whom he’d lived and worked and plotted and planned an indication that somewhere under all that was a far different sort of human being.
Raven, dressed only in a loincloth and sandals, did not move or acknowledge Hawks’s presence when the leader came up to the platform level and stepped off just behind him. For a while Hawks just stood there, wondering if he was doing the right thing. But he was the leader, and he had to know the condition of his company.
Hawks approached, then sat down next to the big man, cross-legged on the metal platform, and stared out at the vast interior below.
Hawks reached back and took a long object from a box he’d brought with him. “I brought you another box of cigars,” the leader said conversationally.
For a moment Raven said nothing, then, without turning or moving, he responded, “If you came up here and didn’t bring ’em, I’d’ve thrown you off this platform.”
“You’ve been up here a long time.”
“Sixty-two standard hours, forty-six minutes, more or less.”
“You can keep track like that?”
“You kiddin’? The master clock’s just up there.”
Hawks felt a bit silly. “Yeah. I should have thought of that. How long do you intend to stay here?”
“I don’t know. It’s either this or I start hittin’ the bottle. This is healthier. What’s it to you, Chief, anyway?”
“Because I’m the chief,” Hawks replied. “Because I think it’s more appropriate for the chief to check you out than the medicine man, considering that would be Clayben.”
“Good point. So what’s on your mind, Chief?”
“I think that question is reversed. What’s on your mind, Raven? Finally getting to you? All this time, all this plotting and all this waiting—and we still don’t know if we’re going to make it.”
“Oh, we’re gonna make it, Chief. Ain’t you figured that out yet? I don’t know which of us, but some of us’ll make it. We’ll get there and we’ll figure it all out and we’ll switch that big mother right out of the circuit and give it a lobotomy. Somebody will. It’s almost like we were playing out a script. Not our script, or we wouldn’t have this much trouble, but somebody’s script. God’s or something more sinister, I don’t know, but I’m damned sure of that much. We come too far, Chief. A lot farther than I ever dreamed, and maybe you, either, in your saner, less idealistic moments. We got three rings and we know where another one is. We got just one to snatch and then it’s home. And we’ll snatch it. And we’ll come home. Whether we can hold ’em long enough for us to use ’em, I don’t know, but somebody will.”
“That what you’re worried about? Going home? Holding on?”
Raven shook his head. “Uh uh. But, see, we—all of us—been so hot on gettin’ the damned things and survivin’ to use ’em and all that we ain’t thought about the one big thing. We been like folks sealed in detention cells who spend half their lives plottin’ how to escape and findin’ all the flaws, like us back on Melchior so long ago. Then they bust out, finally, and they realize they spent so much time figurin’ how to bust out they ain’t got the slightest idea where the hell they’re goin’ or what they want to do. Suppose we get in there and we turn that sucker off. Ain’t nobody but me ever thought beyond that, I think. What then? What happens then, Chief?”
Hawks was startled. “I don’t know. We just don’t have to worry about Master System anymore.”
“Uh huh, and just what do you turn off? The boss, that’s all. The chief. You knock off the only chief capable of keepin’ track of, much less rulin’, the tribes and what happens? You got thousands of little chiefs all at one another’s throats tryin’ to be the new big chief. You get tribalism and civil war and you get massive deaths. The people? They’re still under the rule of the Great White Father they were born under—or the Great Red Father or the Great Yellow Father or whatever. The C.A.s are still in charge. They just got the boss off their backs is all. The interdependent trade system handled by the automated spaceships also goes down the toilet. No more resupply, no more innovation, no more external contacts. A human empire goes the way of all empires and you get four hundred and fifty plus alien worlds. And I mean alien, Chief. You drop me as I am down in the middle of Janipur and I’ll either get worshipped as a god, stoned as a demon, or in the end cut down as a monster anyways, and they won’t ask about my table manners. Stick a Janipurian on Chanchuk. Try and hold a solid dialogue on important affairs on Earth with the average Matriyehan. You see what I mean?”
Hawks nodded. “I have thought on it. It is not sufficient to turn the machine off. One must also determine how to replace it with something infinitely fairer. Your knowledge and understanding of history are quite surprising, Raven. But doesn’t the Thunder itself give you hope? Here the children of wildly differing races play together as friends, and their parents fight and die alongside and for one another.”
“My business has always been human behavior. You can’t be a field agent without knowin’ a lot more than just how to point and shoot a gun or bow. But the Thunder’s different and you know it. These folks—they ain’t aliens. They’re space children, even the old folks. Their parents were freebooters, the best liars and cheats and thieves in the universe and already alienated from their own homes as much as we are from ours. The rest started off as our own people, and we still think of them that way and they think of themselves that way. So the Chows look like humanoid cows. You think they’re among their own people on Janipur? We’re their people. But you stick ’em anyplace but Janipur or space and you got monsters. You’re the historian. Am I wrong?”
“No. If anything, you are overly optimistic. History is filled with examples of times when people hated all who were different from them even if the differences were quite minor. Our own people were reduced from proud civilizations to helpless prisoners on the worst of our own lands, begging our conquerors for food. We were childlike, primitives, ones who could not accept technology and so had to perish. Accept technology! Before the Spaniards none of the nations of America had so much as seen a horse, let alone a gun. We learned. We took what was useful and valuable. We rejected the rest because it had little value to us. Their values were different from ours, their goals, their cultures, were directed toward things we found dehumanizing. In the end, their worship of mind, property, nation, and invention for its own sake, stripped of any moral valuations, led them to terrible wars and to Master System. I have often reflected on the irony that some of those now attempting an end to that result are of the very people they so scorned and nearly destroyed.”
Raven’s head suddenly turned and he looked directly into Hawks’s eyes. “Are we? Are we, really? Oh, we got the right bloodlines, but we ain’t no damn men of spirit and tribe. You’re a damn computer hacker and researcher into lost records who works in a sophisticated high-tech environment where the air is filtered and measured and you can be practically brought back from the dead. Me? I’m a high-tech security man from the same element. I spent much of my time in the wilds, with the tribes, it’s true, but I wasn’t one of ’em, not even among the Crow. I was a smug, superior, patronizing son of a bitch down there where I was king and the people were blind. Your precious Hyiakutts weren’t your people, they were some charming living history exhibit. A way you could go back and study like Clayben with some new alien bug under his microscope. Funny thing was, you was playin’ Injun among the primitives and me, I was playin’ the white man.”
“So? We are not what we like to think we are. It disturbs me. It disturbs me more to hear you voice it because it is so much the truth. But what would you have us do? Not turn it off?”
Raven sighed. “I don’t know, Chief, but I got a real weird feelin’—I always kind’a had it—that even after the switch is off, it’s up to us. We can turn it off and run and hope we’ll be long dead before whatever wars and new tyranny that follow its death find us, or we can fall into a trap that’s maybe infinitely worse.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“You ever really read all that journal?”
“No, and neither did you. It is decomposing someplace in the middle of the Mississippi River.”
“Come on, Chief. You got the transport copy Warlock’s boss tried to send to Chen. When I decided to take this mission I read the one Warlock had, the one we eventually delivered to Chen along with you. I read all of it, Hawks. All of it. Them rings—they don’t turn Master System off. They revert control to the master consoles. In other words, Master System stops bein’ a run-amok, independent machine and becomes just a computer again. It don’t stop bein’ the master system. It just stops bein’ the boss. Whoever’s at the consoles, whoever’s got the rings—they become the boss. That’s why Chen’s so hot for this—if that slimy rat is still even alive. No matter. Whoever his successor is will be the same guy only lookin’ and talkin’ a bit different. That’s why Clayben’s been such a good, solid, devoted servant all this time, too. He knows. You stick in the rings, you unlock the master control center, and you go in. Then you’re it. You’re God. You’re Master System. You call the shots and good old MS and its minions obey. Of course, originally it just allowed control to return for defense purposes, but Master System has grown into a big boy after all this time. And it’s all yours—whoever uses the rings.”
“My God!”
“Exactly—if it ain’t you at the controls, whoever is surely is your god, and mine, too. Turn it off and you break the system and return us to all the worst features of human civilization we’ve been protected from. But ain’t nobody gonna turn it off, Chief. Not when you can save humanity from that and be God, too.”
“I see. And why have you kept this from us until now?”
“Not all of you, Chief. Warlock knew. She’d read it, too. But she never would’a thought to be a goddess herself, Chief. She just figured to be there on the winner’s side, just like me. Clayben knows—either through his private library, somehow, or maybe he figured it out by deduction from all the rest he knows. And I think Savaphoong knows, somehow, too. Maybe more instinctively than anything else—his type always seems to figure this sort of shit out—but he knows. Or he suspects, and can’t afford not to be there. They’ll be with us all the way—until they get a better deal.”
“And you?”
Raven sighed. “I’m gettin’ old, Chief. I never been all that ambitious, though. The game’s the thing for me. But I’m gettin’ too old to play games. It took me a long while before I realized why Warlock and some of the others stayed on Matriyeh and quit the chase. Less biology and new race psychology than old psychology. She had what she wanted, more or less. A society so wild and violent it kept her crazy part goin’ but also gave her somethin’ solid and real. She couldn’t think of a better place to be, that’s all. Me—I ain’t sure if there is such a place for me.” He sighed again. “Up until now, the game’s been enough. But first Nagy, then Warlock, then Ikira, and now Vulture.”
“We do not know about Vulture yet. I wouldn’t count him out so easily. Is it that you fear that it is your turn, or are you guilty that it is not?”
Raven gave a dry chuckle. “You know, I wish I knew the answer to that one. I do know that I don’t want the control, Chief, but I’d damn well be more satisfied if it was me than the turkeys in the rear like Clayben and Savaphoong. Who’s left, Chief? You, me, China . . . that’s about it. The rest—they don’t know what they want any more than we do, but they’re not the kind of people to be gods. Star Eagle deserves it, God knows, but he’s out. It has to be people, I’m sure of that.”
“Well, there’s Santiago.”
“She don’t want to be a goddess, Chief. She just wants a strong mate for a partner, a good solid ship, and a little peace and quiet for her kids to grow up in. Like most of ’em—simple dreams, really. The Chows want this nice peasant farm someplace. Bute and the other freebooters, new races and forms or not, just want ships and for everybody to leave ’em alone. That’s what it’s all about for them, Chief. They don’t want to run the system, they’re doin’ all this to get the system off their backs so they can do what they always wanted to do and not worry about it. It’s what most folks want. Deep down it’s what you and Cloud Dancer want. Maybe the human race could use some peasant gods sometime, but the peasants got more sense and more real sense of values, too. No, it’s guys like Clayben and Savaphoong and Chen—those are the god types.”
Hawks smiled and gave a slight shrug. “Then maybe you are the one to be the god, Raven. You don’t really want anything but you understand them. You might at least be fair, which is more than all our race’s gods have been in the past.”
“I can’t imagine anything duller. I been up here tryin’ to decide what I want, and maybe what I want to be.”
“Any conclusions?”
Raven nodded. “I think I want to be a Crow, Chief. No matter what I became I’m still a product of thousands of years of a culture that has real value, real meaning, in this materialistic, mechanistic, messed-up universe. I just want to know that if I’m ever in the position where it is needed that I am, at heart, the representative of my people and that when my time comes, if it comes, they and my ancestors will look upon me with pride. Now, does that sound corny or doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Hawks replied. “It sounds corny as hell. You know something, Raven? I’ve respected you for years, but I’m beginning to be in real danger of liking you.”
Raven just shrugged and said nothing.
“You know, it’s not going to be as simple as you say, even if we win,” Hawks noted. “I mean, what’s Master System, anyway? It’s already done all its real damage; it’s just tryin’ to keep what it’s got. It took even the big machine over two hundred years to do all this damage. We can’t undo it. There’s no way back. No, the problem won’t be any different with any of us than with Master System itself, except, of course, we’ll do it differently.”
That started Raven. “Huh?”
“Like I said, we can’t undo it. It isn’t a matter of being god and working miracles, it’s an engineering problem of system management Do we get rid of the Centers and all their marvels and let all the worlds go their independent way, perhaps forget their origins, and eventually meet when their technological levels grow? Or do we bring the wonders of technology to everybody everywhere, an interstellar empire with the resultant destruction of those cultures? Could, indeed, human beings who could never even get together on Earth because of differences in color or religion or culture get together under any system when they are now so physically different and so culturally aberrant? I’ve gone over and over those questions, Raven, and I have no answers. None. Neither my research, nor Star Eagle’s computer, nor the wisdom of the ages can give a guide.”
Raven nodded sympathetically. “Well, then, I guess we leave it to luck and screw it up as usual. We’re gonna have to fight our way all the way to Master System’s lair. Whoever survives and is the strongest and smartest—whichever five of us have the rings—we’ll decide. It ain’t fair and it ain’t right, but there it is. I’m probably the worst guy for that kind of thing and I don’t even want it, but I’m a survivor. Maybe I’m just gonna wind up with the bad luck to be one of ’em.” He paused a moment. “And then there was one,” he said softly.
Hawks nodded. “Yes. It is time to think of that. We’ve had little luck with it, you know. The one ring missing in all this mess.”
Raven chuckled. “Funny thing is, it’ll probably be the easiest to get. I mean, what’s Master System gonna do? Shove half the SPF and a dozen Vals and ten fleets and task forces around it? That’s all we’d need—a bright sign sayin’ ‘Here it is!’ Oh, there might be some tricky security setup like with the Matriyeh ring, but it’ll be an engineering problem. A heist. Real difficult unless we get Vulture back, but we’re experienced now. It’s about time we grew up. But first we gotta find it and I’m fresh out of patience. Didn’t you say a long time ago that Savaphoong intimated he knew?”
Hawks nodded. “He promised that sooner or later we’d have to come crawling to him.”
Raven got up, stretched, reached down, took a cigar, and lit it. “Give me half an hour to shower and change, Chief. Then I think we pay a little call on Savaphoong. That little bastard’s had a free ride far too long.”
Fernando Savaphoong still lived on his rather luxurious yacht attached to the outer hull of the Thunder, his every wish catered to by the pitiful but beautiful personal slaves he’d taken from his old outpost empire when he’d been forced to flee. With his ship’s transmuter and a few of almost all imaginable luxury items, he’d been able to sustain himself in aloof style for years.
“Ah! Capitán Hawks and Señor Raven! Come in, come in! Might I offer you some wine, perhaps?”
They took seats in his luxury bar and entertainment room. Savaphoong knew that there was no love lost between himself and the others, Hawks in particular, but he was a businessman and trader without a scruple in his body and he never let such things interfere with business. His dull-eyed, oversexed slaves served them, and they relaxed.
“Now, then, what might I do for you gentlemen?” Savaphoong asked genially.
“You know,” Hawks replied evenly. “You were expecting this visit sooner or later. You know that every attempt we’ve made to locate the fifth ring has failed, and you know that you intimated to me that you knew where it was.”
Savaphoong sat back, savoring the moment. “But, no, Capitán Hawks, I do not know. I think I know, because it is the only place that it could be and remain within the conditions for the possession of the rings that I know of. Certain I am not. But I would wager money on it, and I am not a gambler.”
“We’re all ears, pal,” Raven commented.
Savaphoong sighed. “But, you see, it is all that I have to offer other than hospitality. So far I have contributed little, I admit, but I have taken little as well, and certainly it was I who convinced the freebooters to join our little band. That is worth something—a contribution. Free and without charge, I might add.”
“Many of us have given our lives, Savaphoong,” Hawks pointed out. “Others have lost ships, at least once to your cowardice. Captain Santiago went through a wrenching transmutation from which she has never fully recovered, in part because of the loss of that ship and her comrades, but her new race is a pretty violent one, you know. Without my intercession you’d have suffered a slow death by torture long before now at her hands. You owe her and her dead comrades, at least. And if we hadn’t taken you aboard you would have lived in total isolation without hope for the rest of your life, so don’t give me that favor crap.”
“And you would not have been able to track and steal an entire freighter full of the murylium that powers our vessels, gives them their punch, and fuels our transmitters and transmuters,” the old trader retorted. “No, señors, I think we are even. Not all of us serve in the trenches.”
Raven saw that Hawks was ninety-nine percent ready to leap the table and strangle the man and decided to intercede. “You’re the trader. You have something to trade and we’re interested—if the price is within reason. You haven’t mentioned price.”
Savaphoong sat back and stared at them. “I will play no haggling games. I give you the place, I want the ring. I want to be one of the ones present at the end as an active player.”
“You know the rules. The ones who go and get the ring and risk everything decide who gets to keep it,” Hawks pointed out. “Besides, you don’t want to really be there at the end. It’s likely to be a battle all the way. Lots of shooting and danger. And the targets of choice will be those with the rings.”
The trader shrugged. “I am not averse to risk if it means high gain. I am getting to be an old man. There is no place for me to go and no future for me in any other situation. Remember that I am risking something, too. I do not know how the rings should be used, or where. That is your job, Capitán. And whose ring will you commandeer when it is time? Who is voting you a twenty percent godhood?”
Hawks smiled. “Nobody. If they feel me capable, they will. If not, then it is not my right to take one from them. I have a wife and three children. Godhood sounds like a full-time job, and I am not certain that I want it in any case.”
Raven lost patience. “Look, Savaphoong, we’re not gonna sit and rot here, you know. It won’t take much under Clayben’s mindprobe to find out what we need to know, if you really got anything at all.”
“The machine will not avail you what you seek, it will only kill me. You did not think the proprietor of such a place as Halinachi could ever risk being seized by Master System, do you? I knew too much, and I sold information as well as pleasure. My sources would never have trusted me with anything unless they could be assured it could never be traced to them. No, you cannot probe it out of me, and while I have a high pain tolerance, I am not a strong man. I would prefer to die rather than be tortured or dismembered, and I assure you when my threshold is attained, I will do just that. Again, some assurance for my old customers. And without a ring, why keep on? As I say, I am old, and as you pointed out, I have no place else to go.” He finished his wine. “No, gentlemen, my price is absolute.”
“What’s to keep us from sayin’ yes, then reneging on the deal once we know what you know?” Raven asked him.
“Because the ring I wish is not the ring you seek. Bring me one of the rings we already have and I shall tell you where to find its companion. It is as simple as that.”
Hawks began thinking furiously. For almost five years this situation had haunted him, although not in the way the old trader thought. For almost that whole period, Hawks felt he should know right now just what Savaphoong knew, and the comments here only intensified that feeling. Why would Savaphoong know? Until he’d joined them he didn’t even know the importance or significance of the rings. And now, after all this time, he just admitted that the ring really wasn’t a factor. He didn’t know—he had deduced it. How? He knew so much, had such a network in the old days, that it might be anywhere . . .
But it wasn’t. “Son of a bitch!” said Hawks softly, not referring at all to Savaphoong. “Five bloody years and I couldn’t see it.” He sighed. “Forget it, Savaphoong. Die in decadence—or join the hunt and earn the prize. Come on, Raven.”
The Crow was suddenly very confused. “Huh? What?”
“He’s been laughing at us, and particularly me, for years. I already know what he knows. The joke’s on you, Savaphoong.”
The trader was suddenly concerned, his self-assuredness gone. “What do you mean? You could not know.”
“In each of the three other cases the ring has been prominent enough that it was no sweat finding it. Even Matriyeh, which had no Center as such. In the last five years, Kaotan, Chunhoifan, and Bahakatan have checked out every single colonial world on the charts, and Star Eagle has analyzed their origins, their culture, and everything about them we could know. No sign, no clue. We’re pretty sure it’s not on any of them, but we also know it’s not back on Earth. For a long time I was scared it was on the finger of the head of the SPF, but that’s not it, either. Master System would be a little nervous about handing such a thing to somebody with all the technology of the system at his or her command and a lot of ruthless ambition to boot. And what does that leave?”
Raven was blank. “Beats me, Chief.”
“Another colony. One not on the charts. One that’s primitive, so primitive that it can be pretty well divorced from the system and still be counted on. Not air breathers and probably with a ferocious, xenophobic culture to boot. No Centers, no technology at all to speak of, but right in close, in the middle of the rest, so it can be constantly checked on. One that every old spacer knew about but nobody knew anything about, which is why we wound up there first. One almost in Savaphoong’s old backyard. Do what you like, you old bastard. You no longer have anything to trade.”
Hawks got up and Raven followed, leaving the trader just sitting there looking disgusted, not so much at Hawks but at himself. Maybe he was getting too old. In the old days he would never have overplayed such a meager hand.
Hawks wasted no time once he got back inside Thunder. “Star Eagle, I have our destination.”
“I overheard. It is so obvious once you think on it.”
“Yeah, but the point is we didn’t think much on it. We were too damned concerned with ongoing projects and with our own lives here.”
“I should have deduced it at once,” the computer pilot responded. “So much wasted effort! And we really could use Vulture on this one.”
“Well, we may have to go without him. Until he can contact us, we have no way of knowing if he’s even still alive. We should start our planning anyway. How’s Lightning?”
“It was badly damaged, but repairs are coming along nicely. It is capable of standard duty now. Give me a week and it will be better than new.”
Hawks nodded. “Call a captain’s council. Include the surviving company who escaped with us from Melchior, Clayben included.”
Raven stared at the Hyiakutt. “I still don’t get it, Chief. Where the hell are we goin’?”
“Back where we began, Raven. Back to a hot, violent world with coconut palms planted in neat rows but without any apparent civilization at all. To the first alien planet you or I ever set foot upon. To ring number five, which we might well have been within only kilometers of stumbling across mere weeks after our escape!”
The last time they had entered that solar system they were rank amateurs, without much of anything at all except hope and fierce determination. They had lived almost like savages on a little volcanic spot down there for what seemed an eternity while Star Eagle had made the necessary repairs and adjustments to Thunder. Nothing much to remember, really, except the heat and the storms and the terrible humidity and the sense of impending danger when none ever materialized.
Blocking the monitor satellites hadn’t been a problem last time and was even less of one now. They were used to such things as a matter of course.
“We have all heard of this place,” Maria Santiago told Hawks from the first. “A number of freebooters used it as temporary hideaways and for rendezvous since it is at once so accessible and so remote, but none really even looked for inhabitants. I was never here, but I had heard of it.”
Captain ben Suda had much the same memories and even showed it on his charts. “There was some early attempt to carve out a freebooter base or trading post, if I remember the stories,” he told them. “It failed for some reason. Never really got started. There were tales of fierce, suicidal attacks by some kind of creatures, but that’s all—just tales.”
“Yeah, well, there’s somebody livin’ down there all right,” Raven assured them. “I almost forgot about this hole, but thinkin’ about it now brought back all sorts of memories. Me and Nagy, down by the beach, havin’ a less than pleasant chat, and the sense that, somehow, we was bein’ watched. Black blobs in the water, as I remember it, but we never had the means or will to find out about them. That wasn’t our job and this place didn’t mean nothin’ to us except as a hideout. I remember Nagy, though, starin’ across at the next island and suddenly frowning. He said that island looked like it was somebody’s garden, and sure enough, there was these trees all planted in neat rows. We were tempted to go over there but never got the chance.”
Hawks sighed. “How we miss the Vulture now! It’s been too easy to rely on him. How simple to just drop him in and let him tell us all about it. Damn it, we don’t know what we’re dealing with here! Who are they? What culture? Are they water breathers or just water dwellers?”
“Anybody who comes up on land to plant fruit trees isn’t wholly aquatic,” Isaac Clayben noted logically. “Still, there was absolutely no sign at all that anyone or anything with a brain had ever been on ‘our’ island. If they use the land, why not where we were? It wasn’t a bad place, if a bit wild and overgrown. The volcanoes weren’t recently active, and there were even wild fruit-bearing trees if I remember correctly.”
Hawks nodded. “That’s about it. And if we accept the legends of the place as being based on reality, and couple that with history and our own experience, we come up with a real puzzle. An attempted colony or permanent outpost was attacked and wiped out, yet generations of freebooters used it as a contact point and place to stash valuables and make repairs without any reports of molestation. The island we were on wasn’t touched, yet the one not much different than it within easy eyesight on a clear day was cultivated.”
Santiago thought about it. “I have never been there, it is true, but I cannot help being reminded of Matriyeh. The tribes were enemies and had clear hunting and gathering territories, yet there is a unifying religion that made certain places forbidden. That was on land, with a land-based culture spanning two huge continents. Here—I look at the surveys and I see water. Perhaps the total landmass is the equivalent of a continent or more, but this world is one vast sea covered with tiny islands, all the tops of vast underwater volcanic ranges. If a civilization was water-based, might it not have some sort of unifying religion as well, if, as with all the others, it has a single culture?”
“That’s good thinking,” Hawks responded. “Taboos are standard in many societies. The fact that our island had some edible plants indicates that it might have been cultivated once, then abandoned, perhaps centuries before. The fact that they attacked one party and not others indicates that there may be rules for each island and we just got lucky. The Matriyeh model is a good one here, I think, considering the total lack of any signals or signs of any sort of mechanical or electrical power. Even the traditional water-breathing colonies are set up on the Center model; there is power, there are ways to use adapted technology and that shows up. It doesn’t there.”
“But it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is not there,” Star Eagle put in through his speaker. “Remember, who would have guessed a magnetic rail system on Matriyeh? We aren’t geared for that sort of detection, and under water—who can say?”
“It’s a point, but somehow I doubt that such things lie hidden here,” Hawks said. “Raven is correct on one point—Master System doesn’t dare defend this one unless it has to. That’s not to say that we can’t expect traps at least as bad as Matriyeh down there. I cannot forget the mystics of Matriyeh who themselves didn’t know they were really an entire SPF division under intense mindprint conditioning with a humanoid Val to worship as a goddess and to control things. No, this is going to be the nastiest little problem we’ve had to solve, if we have no inside man as it were. I would wager, though, from the depth of the legends about this place, that it is old, and that, unlike Matriyeh, it probably remains very much the way it was originally designed. No, I feel now as I felt then—that this was a prototypical colony, one of the first. That it was settled with a distinct people, perhaps a culture that would be very comfortable with a world such as this, and one that might well turn its back on technology.” He sighed. “Well, it’s a dangerous situation and there’s no way around it.”
Raven nodded. “Uh huh. First, we want as good a current orbital survey as can be made of the place. Then we’re gonna have to send a party down there with some mobility, heavily armed and ready for bear, and see what the place looks like. Finally, and this is the worst part, we’re gonna have to draw some of ’em out of the water, and if we can’t talk things over peaceably with them we’ll have to knock ’em cold and bring ’em in. That means exposing a group to dangers unknown by persons or creatures unknown, ones that managed to take out at least some well-armed freebooters. After all, for the most part we only know of the ones who didn’t get hit, right? It also means that, right from the start, we’re gonna have to expose ourselves as aliens. If there’s anything like that Matriyeh gimmick with the SPF, we’re cooked and you’ll have a task force here before you can learn the name of the place.”
“Doubtful,” said Star Eagle. “Even on Matriyeh they had a communications link to a master ground computer. No such link exists here or my probes would have detected it. There is a monitoring satellite but it is not geostationary. It’s designed to casually sweep the planet’s surface and is easily fooled. No, it is probable that Master System here is relying entirely on its anonymity and the hostility and insularity of its people. This is not to say that there are not permanent traps there—an SPF sort, or disguised Vals, or whatever. And if the latter, there can just as easily be one or more Val ships down there, hidden, switched off, self-maintained and ready, which could be impossible for us to detect but available to be switched on and used as required. All it would take is orbital attainment and it could send an emergency call through the solar system monitors.”
“And it might be the wrong place,” China put in worriedly. “We have no real evidence that this is where the fifth ring resides. The reason that there is no activity might be that there is nothing to guard. The reason why these people are on no charts might be that they are not descended from humans at all but are an indigenous species.”
“Unlikely,” Clayben responded. “Even from our crude early examination of the place I can say that it doesn’t fit the pattern for the independent evolution of intelligent life. Oh, give it a few million years and I will readily change my mind, but there is clear evidence here of Master System’s terraforming methodology, and with the air, water, and organics present—all clearly introduced and the plants descended from easily recognizable Earth ancestors—it would be in some way life as we know it. No. It is circumstantial evidence, but we must take the risk. Logic says that it is here, that this is the place. It is consistent with the way Master System thinks.”
Raven sighed. “I’d say we start where we were before. It seemed to be a safe spot in the middle of some civilization, and we’ll have to stick to land at the start, until we get the full lay of it.”
Takya Mudabur, one of the two remaining unchanged crew of the Kaotan and the only native-born water creature among them, spoke up.
“Why do we have to stick to the land? I would enjoy a dip in such a beautiful ocean.” Her people breathed air but lived entirely in the sea. She needed to be in water much of the time, and could be underwater, even in depths as high as five hundred meters, for hours at a time. She had a rudimentary gill system as well as lungs.
“Can’t risk it, or you,” Raven replied. “Butar, Chung, and Min also can handle themselves in water, and we sure have some weapons that’ll work there easy enough, but even sending four instead of one in their element—the element of our unknown people—is like setting me and Hawks down in the middle of Janipur. Somebody would notice, and these folks got a reputation for killing first and wonderin’ later. No, there’ll be a time for that, but not yet. The only smart way to do this is to draw ’em out into our element, away from water. Then we get a look at ’em and we got a fighting chance.”
“Who would you want, then?” Hawks asked him. “I assume the way you’re talking that you’re volunteering to mastermind all this.”
Raven grinned. “About time I did something, ain’t it, Chief? And this is just up my trail.” He looked around at them, thinking. “I want folks with lightning reflexes, in better condition than me, and real nimble shooters. Any volunteers?”
“You need warriors to protect you, Raven,” Santiago said. A great deal of therapy, both mental and physical, had restored the original personalities of her and her companion Midi while retaining the aggressive instincts they had needed to survive on Matriyeh, and now both were resigned to accepting their adopted race and form. They were once more the primitive warrior women of that fierce world, yet their old, technologically sophisticated selves were once again very much in control. Maria was tall, with almost black skin, little body hair, and small, rock-solid breasts. Her European-featured face, which was quite reminiscent of her original looks, was crowned by short, straight black hair. She also had the gracefully athletic body of a female body builder, and the strength and reflexes to match, and looked quite Earth-human, though she was not. Her race was as alien as that of Chanchuk or Janipur. Midi was much the same, only very slightly shorter and with different, more Orientalized features reflecting her original looks.
“You’ve done your share,” Hawks pointed out. “More than your share. You’ve lost a ship, a crew, and become one of a colonial race. Besides, you both have children to think of.”
“Matriyehan children are more independent than that,” she responded. “I was a freebooter captain and then I became a warrior. It’s in the genes you stuck me with, you know. We were talking about it not long ago. We are now designed as warriors, not as sweet young things to tend the kids while the menfolk go off to fight. On Matriyeh there are no menfolk. We crave action. And we are best suited for this kind of thing.”
Raven shrugged. “I agree you two’d be perfect if you really want to go. That’s three. I think I’ll need at least five, maybe six. Somebody’s got to tend camp and maintain the communications and security links, and I ain’t too sure I want to go on the other island with less than five good guns.”
“I’ll go,” said Dora Panoshka. “It is likely that Kaotan will not be needed at this stage of the game, and it would be nice to be on the ground for a change. If Kaotan is needed, then Butar can do for me what I did for her.” Panoshka, now captain of the Kaotan and the one responsible for picking up the Chanchuk team, although humanoid, looked more like a bipedal lion than an Earth-human woman. She was covered with orange and yellow lionlike fur, her rather Earth-human-looking hands and feet disguised with pads, hairy clumps, and nasty retractable claws. Her face was also fur-covered and had a flared-out all-around mane, and the lipless mouth opened wide and menacing, as if it could swallow a person whole. Few would take the time to see that that mouth had no fanglike teeth at all, merely even rows of large, flat ones that were for a jaw that moved primarily from side to side and betrayed her for the absolute vegetarian she and her race were.
“Pardon, but Chunhoifan has been a peripheral player until now,” said Captain Chun Wo Har. He, too, was a born colonial, a humanoid but with a hard, chitinous exoskeleton, bulging black eyes, and the look and manner of a giant insect. “Such a civilization as might be down there would likely be of the bow and arrow and spear variety. I doubt that weapons such as these could pierce my body. I might not be so quick, and I am certainly getting old and out of practice, but I would be honored to come along.”
Captain ben Suda sighed. “I, too, feel much the same. We have fought battles in space and done much scouting, but Bahakatan is also underrepresented in the real object of all this. I was quite good with rifle and sidearm in my younger days, and I feel the need to oil the joints and remove some of the rust.”
“Well, I’d welcome you both,” Raven responded, then caught Hawks’s glare.
“No,” said the leader. “Both of you have intact families predating any of this. And I cannot afford to risk both of my most experienced surviving captains along with Santiago and Panoshka on this kind of scouting expedition. There’s going to be more fighting ahead no matter how this comes out. I just can’t spare the two of you. I’ve lost San Cristobal and Indrus. Kaotan is down to a skeleton crew now and needs supplements to run efficiently. I’m sorry, but this is a command decision. I don’t want either of you away from your ships where you’ll be ready at a moment’s notice for any emergencies.”
Both captains said nothing, immediately sensing Hawks’s resolve and, as captains themselves, seeing reason in it.
Finally Captain Chun said, “Bahakatan contributed Chung and Min to the Chanchuk operation. Allow me to consult with my own crew. Perhaps we can find ones more acceptable to you, sir.”
Hawks nodded. He understood how much honor meant to Chun, and he didn’t want to point out that they were running low on people who could be transmuted. If that was required here, then Chun’s crew were likely candidates.
“Very well. We don’t have to decide now,” the chief told them. “It will take some time to fully scout and plan this out, and I want all care and caution taken both before and during this operation. Because we have three rings and need only one more, we’re overanxious. That could kill us, or sink everything we’ve spent all these years and all these lives in attaining. Even after we select the team, I’ll want Raven to work with all of you, drill and practice, until you do the right thing without thinking. For now, this meeting is adjourned.”
Cloud Dancer was sketching again. She was an excellent artist, both drawing and sculpting, and the interior of the Thunder was filled with her work. Now, though, she had been doing a simple project, but one that immediately caught Hawks’s eye.
There were four of them, charcoals, one for each of the known rings—the three they had and the one they knew was back on Earth. For some reason, it had never really occurred to Hawks to study the rings themselves before. True, the designs were there, but so small, so delicate, that he’d found it impossible to really see the detail in them. Cloud Dancer, however, was an artist with an artist’s eye for even the finest detail, and she had studied them and drawn them folio size. Now, suddenly, seeing them blown up to so large a size, every tiny detail enlarged and reproduced, each of the intricate designs seemed too perfect, too deliberate, to be just ornamental numbers.
He picked them up, then placed them in descending order, 4-3-2-1. He stood back. He stared at them. Suddenly he turned and went to an intercom.
“Star Eagle—the Fellowship. The five who created the Master System program and had the rings made.”
“Yes?”
“What religions were they?”
“You asked me this before, a few years ago. Joseph Sung Yi, born Singapore, China, naturalized citizen: no religion of record but had dabbled in Buddhism. Golda Pinsky, born Haifa, Israel: Jewish. Aaron Menzelbaum, born New York City: Jewish ancestry but an outspoken, rather militant atheist. Maurice Ntunanga, born Mimongo, Gabon, naturalized citizen: Moslem. Mary Lynn Yomashita, born Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii: nominally Buddhist.”
Hawks frowned. “No Christians? None of them were Christians?”
“No. Everything but. Interesting. The records on them are quite complete, even in my original pilot’s program. Why would it be there? I wondered about that the first time you asked, but dropped it because there was no chance of an answer.”
Hawks sighed. “I think I may have an idea on that. Let’s just say it doesn’t surprise me. But—no Christians?”
“No. Apparently that was what originally brought them together. They were the only born non-Christians among the top team assembled to oversee the creation of the master core program. Many of the rest had no known religion or were agnostics or atheists but they had come out of nominally Christian backgrounds. These others also tended to go home for Christmas holidays, while the Fellowship, who had no real family and not even a nominal religious excuse, stayed on. That is how they all came to know each other so well and came to found their little group. I had no idea this stuff was buried in my memory! I’ll be damned.”
Hawks grinned. “You can’t be damned. You’re a machine.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”
“Oh, but you were. In fact, what you told me is as good as if you had told me the opposite.”
“Huh? Explain.”
“Not now. All of this simply confirms an old theory of mine, and this final ring will be the proof of it. It is odd, though. Unless Isaac Clayben had a more traditional upbringing than I suspect, I may be the only one who knows this. I would prefer that no one else knew that I knew it. Understand?”
“No. However, if it makes you happy, I will deny all knowledge of what I do not know and will deny to everyone that you know anything at all.”
“Good enough,” he responded, feeling quite upbeat for a change, even though they were entering the most dangerous phase of the whole quest. Maybe Raven was right. Maybe they were meant to get the rings.
He had to stop himself before he began to hum an obscure, forgotten old English tune that only a historian specializing in presystem cultures might ever have encountered. He didn’t want to hum that tune. He’d heard it going over many of the ancient records of old America, but the tune was English, and so was Isaac Clayben. The old boy might well figure it out, but Hawks sure as hell wasn’t going to help him.