CHO WAS WAITING FOR HER WHEN SHE EMERGED from
the audience, as she’d hoped. Vulture liked the Holy Lama;
she was sorry that circumstances cast them as enemies, but there
was no way around that. The old girl’s primary
responsibility, as it should be, was to her faith and her planet.
Vulture cared only about one thing the Holy Lama did not—but
there was a knife at Chanchuk’s throat, and the throats of
the Holy Lama and her people, and those who held that knife cared
only about that ring as well.
The orders had been simple, although they would never be
properly delivered: turn everything over to Chi and the SPF; give
them every cooperation and defer to them completely, but record
every order and every decision and every demand, so if anything
went wrong, it would be Chi and the SPF who would get the blame for
usurping normal authority and failing while Chanchuk came out pure
and noble and patriotic.
“Is all satisfactory, Holiness?” Cho asked her
politely, not really expecting to be taken into her confidence. The
effects of the hormone were far too subtle for Cho to even
understand why he remained there or why it mattered.
“Yes, Cho, all is well. We would, however, appreciate a
small service. We suffered an accidental shoulder injury not long
ago and it is not yet fully healed, making it difficult to bend in
certain ways. We have had problems putting on the backpack now and
again, and it would be appreciated if you might accompany me to the
drying room to aid me should I have problems. Would that ask too
much of you?”
Cho’s eyes lit up. “Oh, no, Holiness. No
trouble at all. It will be my pleasure.”
This would be tricky. Between the drying room and the waiting
hall was a very short length of corridor that wasn’t under
direct observation—Vulture had determined that from past
visits. It was the only unmonitored area available to a Seed, and
it was so because it didn’t need to be monitored.
There were more than enough monitoring devices on either end of
the corridor to require them there.
She walked down, Cho following. He probably wouldn’t have
had the nerve to do it except for the lure of the hormone, which
left him slightly turned on and very eager to please.
Halfway down the hall, she checked to make certain that no new
security devices had been added, stopped, turned, listened for any
sounds from below, and then stared down at the little male.
Cho stopped and looked up at her quizzically. “Is
something wrong, Holiness?”
“No. At least we do not believe so. Come here. Closer.
Yes, that is about right.” Without another word she put her
arms around a startled Cho as if to hug him, but that was not the
intent as the process began instantly, freezing any further thought
or comment the Seed might have.
It was always a gruesome sight, but no one was supposed to see
it. Almost instantly the flesh of the high priestess seemed to take
on a life of its own, reaching out and blending with the flesh of
the hapless Cho. They seemed to merge, the inorganic things they
had on or with them falling away, seemingly repelled from the
increasingly shapeless, bubbling mass of flesh.
It took several minutes; that was why this had been so difficult
and was even now a risk should anyone enter or leave through the
corridor. What they would make of it was anyone’s guess, but
there would certainly be quite an alarm.
Now, out of the seething, bubbling, merged mass arose a new
shape, Chanchukian in form but at first hairless and featureless.
It was far smaller than the total mass, drawing from the throbbing
pulp what it needed and no more. In an almost magical transition,
the form took on the eyes and mouth and general features of Cho,
then the hair and other elements took shape. Cho was completely
reconstituted, and exactly so, right down to his memories and brain
and body chemistry; so close that if it were possible, even a
cell-by-cell comparison of the two would not show any
difference.
But there was a difference. Vulture was in many ways as much a
machine as the devices he fought against; a wholly organic machine,
which stored its own memories and separate identity and will
throughout every cell of its body, whatever that might be. The new
creature that stepped out of the still-seething goo was Cho in
every way—physically, mentally, emotionally—but not
down to the basic submicroscopic structures within each cell that
retained all that Vulture had been and the memories of all the
people the creature had eaten before.
The goo was still living, but it was beginning to die, bereft of
its controlling mitochondria-sized program. Getting the clothing
and other articles out of the edges of the goo where it had fallen
and getting the ichor off so that Cho could return above was
unpleasant, but Vulture had done this sort of thing before. Far
more difficult would be disposing of the priestess’s papers,
case, and minimal clothing and, if possible, getting rid of the
goo. That was more of a problem here, and Vulture relied from the
start on Cho’s own knowledge of the Sacred Lodge to
accomplish that. Fortunately, it provided a fast and easy means for
part of the problem.
There was a maintenance chute in the hall used when the
robotic cleaners worked the place at night, but while that might be
all right for the clothing and travel case with its papers, it
wouldn’t do for the goo. To prevent accidents, the automated
cleaning systems would sort out anything organic and pass it
through to a secondary inspection before sending it to waste
disposal. That second check would find the goo unusual enough to
flag a security computer.
He did what he could. The stuff wasn’t even completely
dead yet—and when it was it would turn brown and give off a
terrible odor. Papers down the chute, also the briefs, but before
disposing of the case, he removed a small vial of muscle balm and a
small lighter used in religious ceremonies. He also removed the
high priestess’s large signet ring. He poured the balm over
as much of the goo as possible, wishing he had a few liters and not
just the small amount he dared to bring in, then lit it with the
lighter. Both vial and lighter, then, also went into the chute.
Dissatisfied but not able to come up with anything better, Cho
returned to the glare of the waiting room and began to hum softly
as he cleaned up the place. Let them make what they would of the
remains of the goo. He knew now that he could patch into the
internal computer and send out a recording of the high priestess
leaving the lower chamber from a visit months ago, since, even
though Cho didn’t have the vaguest idea about such things, he
knew where a terminal was—and Vulture clearly recognized the
standard model and knew it well.
High priestess comes, high priestess leaves, goes on four-day
trip to Wa Chi. Not unusual even in light of the Holy Lama’s
orders. There would be no one unusual or detectable inside the
Sacred Lodge, where it mattered.
The male body Vulture now occupied
was . . . sensual. Probably the most sensual
Vulture had ever experienced. The mind was not particularly limited
in intelligence or reasoning ability, any more than the
female’s had been, but it was culturally limited and
intimidated by its own feelings of sensuality and inadequacy at
being so small and weak compared to the women.
The males of Chanchuk, it appeared, were as dull and docile as
they seemed mostly because of their physically and culturally
induced inferiority complexes, fed by their lack of any real
education and the impossibility of being more than they were. Only
in the bedchamber and the nursery were they in any way dominant,
and so it was in those roles that the Chanchukian male found refuge
and security and ego, solaced only by a religion that stressed
reincarnation as the true path, the soul being both male and
female.
It was a shame, really, but biology had played this cruel trick
on them, and Master System had either created or imitated that.
Still, it might be a lot of fun to explore this kind of body in
general society, although Cho was now incapable of actually
fathering anything. The sperm he would make would look and act
correctly but would be bereft of that extra part the cells needed
to keep pretending to be the real thing. They would quickly become
nothing more than microscopic bits of the same goo, and then
quickly dead. But he was unlikely to get to test it in normal
society.
First he had to do a bit of computer doctoring, something that
males would certainly never be expected to be capable of doing.
Then he would start his preparation, so that when the time was
right, the primary mission could be fulfilled.
Satisfied that all was as reasonably correct as it could be
under the circumstances, Vulture put the signet ring under his
armpit and walked toward the Seed’s quarters. He would have
to stash the ring someplace until, later on and in private, he
could remove the thin shell and reveal what it really was.
Colonel Chi frowned. “So what is the foul-smelling stuff?
It smells like a decomposing body.”
The SPF technical officer shrugged. “I have never seen
anything like it, and I’ll have to send it up for full
computer analysis. It’s definitely organic, but there is no
life left in it, I feel certain. Someone or something has tried to
burn it, but the fuel was not nearly enough to do more than scorch
an area on top and set off the fire sensors.”
“Well, take no chances. No one touches it or even
approaches it except through remotes. Seal it and get it up for
complete analysis.” Chi looked at it a moment. “You
know, if it weren’t such a—mess—and weren’t
flattened out so, it would have a fair amount of mass. Almost as
much as a real body . . . I wonder—could
this once have been alive?”
The tech shrugged again. “As you said, Colonel, it seems
to have the mass for it, but I know of nothing that could do
this to a body. Why bother? A disintegrator is cleaner, a
laser pistol or projectile weapon is less messy if you need the
body. Why even invent something that would do this?”
Chi nodded. “Why, indeed? Unless it was because you
couldn’t sneak a real and recognizable weapon past our
security system. Perhaps a catalyst. Some sort of chemical agent
that wouldn’t show up in the screen. There would be ways to
do that, if you knew the limits of the screening. Go—get on
it! I want to know!”
“At once, Colonel,” the tech responded, and began
supervising her staff in the recovery of the material.
Colonel Chi didn’t like this, not one bit, and certainly
not coming right on the heels of the discovery of that mysterious
engine. As soon as she returned to security, she stormed upstairs,
not even taking the time to dry off, and stormed into the Center
security officer’s cubicle.
“Where is the remote Center liaison?” she asked
crisply. “She went to see the Holy Lama at sixteen-thirty and
did not return.”
The security officer sighed and checked her terminal. “She
is on her way to Wa Chi Center. The Holy Lama ordered complete
cooperation, Colonel, but we suspect that the liaison had
more—proprietary orders.”
“Can you check and see if she actually left the Sacred
Lodge?”
“Huh? What? Well, we suppose so. She would have had to
pass the security sensors on the way out. Yes. There is a record of
it. Why?”
“I really don’t know,” the colonel answered
honestly. “Still, I want your best people to find her. She
can’t have gotten too far. I want her located and brought
back here tonight. It is vital. I will make certain she
makes her appointment. Also, I want to talk to the regular guards
outside the Sacred Lodge entrance as soon as they can be
relieved.”
“We will do what you say—but might one ask why? It
seems that you are acting as if her holiness is some sort of
traitor.”
“No. I doubt that. I am not trying to call your sister
into question. Believe that. In fact, I may be her best friend at
this moment. You see, what I am seeking is proof that the liaison,
your sister, is still alive.”
The security chief’s eyes bulged.
“What?”
By the time the first lab reports were coming in from the
command ship, Colonel Chi was already forming a pattern. The
problem was, she didn’t have any idea what the pattern
meant.
The guards at the entrance had a clear memory of the section
chief entering and no recollection at all of her leaving. They
considered this unusual but not impossible, of course, and in and
of itself it wouldn’t mean much. Various guards had to take
air breaks every once in a while anyway, and that often left only
one pair of eyes to see in both directions.
Most disturbing was the fact that there were entries in the
various computer logs substantiating that exit. How had they gotten
there? There was no direct input terminal to the master security
computer net from inside the Sacred Lodge except in the Holy
Lama’s private offices. This indicated a possible involvement
of the chief administrator, but even Chi couldn’t bring
herself to believe that the C.A., particularly this one, would be
involved in overt treason. It was not only against her character,
it was too stupid for one such as the leader of this world. If the
object were to steal the ring and the Holy Lama had it and was in
league with the thieves, a simple swap of a look-alike on a routine
visit would have done it and no one would have been the wiser. No,
it didn’t make sense, but that only deepened the mystery.
Chi did not underestimate her enemy. They were clever and
incredibly resourceful. She even had a real sense of admiration for
anyone who could do what they did on Janipur and get away, not to
mention fighting a brilliant space battle and dispatching several
Vals—no mean feat when even the SPF had been taught that it
was, while not impossible, very nearly so. Admiration and respect,
however, did not mean that they were not still the enemy. It had
been so long now since they’d been active that many commands
had a false sense of security. Chi was one, along with her general,
who believed that the space battle over Janipur’s ring was
costly to the pirates and that they had not so much quit as changed
tactics. Now, clearly, that time had been well spent on
Chanchuk setting up who knew what.
Security could not locate her holiness, but it was early yet and
the routing wasn’t clear. If, however, there was no further
evidence of exit or her supposed trip by the middle of the night,
Chi felt certain that the priestess would never be located.
A special read-only security circuit to the Sacred Lodge’s
internal computers clearly showed the priestess in the entry hall
and going in for the audience, then leaving again. Master security
showed an exit—or did it? She studied the pictures of the
priestess’s entry and exit. Any differences? Yes—but
subtle. The backpack looked slightly different. But these were
security records, not great art, and it might have been
imagination. You couldn’t blow them up to improve detail. It
just got fuzzy. But such records for that very reason weren’t
all that hard to fake.
She dispatched a squad to pick up the housekeeper and
maintenance people who shared a lodge with the missing priestess.
No one was home and Chi was not really surprised at this. They took
the lodge apart piece by piece but found nothing
unusual—except that the taps on the lines in and out had been
circumvented and different tapes were fed to the monitors rather
than actual conversation. Not unusual in and of itself; Center
personnel often pulled that sort of thing just to get some privacy.
Again, though, it was yet another nail in the priestess’s
coffin. Chi ordered the lodge monitored and staked out although she
felt certain that no one who had lived there would ever return to
it.
The medical team on the base ship was less helpful than Chi had
hoped.
“The material is decomposing rapidly. We have frozen some
of it, of course, but it’s impossible to do any real tests
that way. The cellular structure is—unusual. It is as if the
interior of each cell has simply collapsed, broken down. There
isn’t a piece of DNA, RNA, or any other useful combination
left, although the fragments we have recovered do show what we can
only call a consistent inconsistency.”
Chi frowned. “Explain.”
“We have been able to identify two separate patterns, as
if these had been cells from two totally different individuals, yet
they are intermixed and bound in the mass. We do not have enough to
give you any real information on either master code, but it is as
if you took two people and broke them down as if melting them into
a single cellular mass. We have never seen anything like this, but
if we were to try this the laboratory, the computers required would
be enormous. Nor would we want to—not with a transmuter
available.”
“I see. But a transmuter wouldn’t produce this
effect? Say, if two people were transmitted down and got all
jumbled up together.”
“It would be possible to induce it, yes, but where is the
transmuter? There is no way you could get the necessary machinery
into that hall unobtrusively no matter how long you took, and even
if we accept that someone did, there is certainly no way you could
get the stuff back out of there or effectively hide or
shield it from our own search in so short a time.”
Chi nodded, knowing that this had been the conclusion of the
computer systems as well. The bottom line was that anybody good
enough to do that wouldn’t have to do it.
The scenario was simple enough, if grotesque. On Janipur
they’d managed to snatch and switch one of the top security
people in that Center and replace that person with a
ringer—and it fooled every security safeguard in common use.
That was certain. All right, assume that was the case with this
priestess. With so long to work, it might have been done
months, even years ago. A mole in the heart of this Center. All
right—they had done it before, so it wasn’t a fantastic
idea.
Now what? The ring’s on the Holy Lama. Can’t snatch
it when the C.A. is outside—too much security. You might
snatch it but you’d never get away. But the C.A. is a
cloistered monk—nobody who sees her day to day is ever
allowed out, and no one is ever allowed in except under maximum
security monitoring. The only one who could get close enough to the
C.A. to steal that ring outside of normal internal security would
be one of the permanent party. Not a monk—an insect
queen!
She turned to her computer. “Comparison, in percentage.
Total mass of the recovered organic substance against total
estimated mass of the deputy administrator.”
“Recovered mass is eighty-nine point three three percent
of estimated mass of the subject,” the computer
responded.
Chi nodded. There would be some loss, certainly. Energy would be
consumed, there would be free cells, and possibly a measure of
decomposition of the outer area before they’d been able to
get to the mass and stabilize it. All right.
Colonel Chi wasn’t a scientist or any sort of technocrat,
and she knew it sounded bizarre, but somehow, she was convinced
against all of the computer’s logic that she was right.
Somehow these pirates had made a very big discovery, a kind that
could shake the system to its foundations. No wonder they
had managed to get so far! Some sort of biological or chemical
agent, or some strange thing created by transmuter. It didn’t
matter to her how it was done. Somehow, they could become someone
else. An exact duplicate—almost. And without further aid of
any machinery at all. So one of them had become the priestess and
learned all there was to learn and gained access to the Sacred
Lodge. Access—but not the ability to steal the ring
unobserved. So now, spooked by the discovery of the motor and the
resultant knowledge that the pirates were at work here, they had
moved—now! Before new precautions could be put in place! Now
what had been the priestess was one of the Seed within the Sacred
Lodge, with full run of the place and full access to the Holy Lama
and the security system. The excess mass not needed in the
transformation was the dying organic matter they had found.
And now what? Perhaps a switch of rings, or maybe even a theft,
then wait for a new audience to be commanded. The next poor sucker
walks in, gets escorted back, and in the hall there is another,
smaller pool of goo. And the thief walks right out with the
blessings of the guards past the best security net they could
design!
Colonel Chi knew that she was right. She also knew that, without
any proof that such a thing was possible, she would be considered
mad not only by her subordinates and superiors in the SPF but by
Master System itself. The mere idea that some escaped prisoners and
freebooter refugees could do something Master System itself
considered impossible would be tantamount to heresy. But it
wouldn’t help if this ring—her ring—was
stolen, either, to be right and silent. It was a tricky
problem—and the reason why this pirate scheme was so
fiendishly clever.
Hell, I’m the boss here, she thought suddenly. I
don’t have to explain myself to anybody at this point.
She turned back to the special SPF channel. “This is
Colonel Chi. Absolutely no one—repeat, no
one—is to enter or leave the Sacred Lodge from this
point on until I give the word. That includes anyone summoned
there, regardless of rank, or any of our forces, or so much as a
sea slug. No one in or out—including the Holy Lama. Then I
want a full electronic and human ring, on the surface and below,
around the Lodge and I want the same on any exit channel large
enough for a microbe to get out. All trash, all garbage,
is to be instantly and completely disintegrated by automated
equipment independently programmed and under our exclusive control.
I want our nastiest sentry robots in the automated areas. Seal all
watertight doors and exits. Put the vacuum seal in place in the
entry passage. The only communications channel in or out is to be
routed directly to me and not through any locals or any
subordinates. Understand?”
“As you command, Colonel,” came the crisp reply.
“May I ask why all this? I have to have it for my
reports.” Always covering your sweet ass, aren’t you, Wu?
“I have evidence that an agent of the pirates is already
inside the Sacred Lodge. It is speculative and circumstantial, but
I believe on my authority as commander that we have no choice but
to act as if it is real.” Think now. Everybody knows you
can’t transmute somebody twice. “There is a
possibility that this agent has coercive means to gain the
cooperation or obedience of anyone inside, including the Holy
Lama.”
There was a pause, then: “Very well.”
“Major? Check to see if there’s any way we could get
a nerve agent of some kind in there—either in the air or
water or food—to knock them all completely cold.”
Another pause. “It would be difficult and perhaps not a
hundred percent effective, but I feel it is possible. The problem
is, the place has its own internal security system that we
can’t tap. It’s murylium-powered so we can’t cut
it out, and if activated, it’s among the best.”
Chi sighed. “Could we lull them, then? Be certain we
killed every living thing in there no matter how big or how
small?”
“Easier—but, Colonel, if you do that you will kill
the spiritual leader of this world and everyone, male as well as
female, who could create the children to replace her. None of her
own children are yet old enough to be outside. The oldest is barely
six. You would turn this entire peaceful and basically loyal
population violently against us and against everything we stand
for. Something of that magnitude would require the direct order of
Master System, and you know it.”
The major, of course, was right. Chi wanted to be a general, not
a heretic and maniac. “Very well. Do what you can and make
certain nothing gets in or out, period. Nothing. And I
want all human guards paired at all times. Not for a moment is
anyone to be left alone. We have at least three other missing
agents around and they definitely have transmuter access. You
understand me? I don’t want any of our people switched. If I
can’t get in to the agent, at least, he, she, or it
can’t get out and can’t get the ring out. Sooner or
later a deal will have to be made or they’ll remain here
until they rot.”
The colonel signed off and leaned back in her contoured chair.
All right, you pirates. You’re very good at playing the
system against me, she thought firmly. But you won’t succeed.
I know your little unbelievable secret. And I need hold you for
only five days. In five days I will have sufficient force behind me
that you could not escape without a fight more disastrous by far
than Janipur, and possibly not even then. And in five days
I’ll have you all out of that Sacred Lodge, immobilized, and
in stasis—completely isolated. And if you remain behind, you
will die. If you do not, then you will be in an SPF control lab
where we’ll find which one of them you are.
“Something has gone wrong. I can feel it,” Min
commented nervously. “They have the Sacred Lodge sealed off
and the SPF has taken total and exclusive command of all Center
security. They know. I tell you, they
know.”
Butar Killomen shook her head. “No. They suspect,
which is quite a different thing. The Vulture is inside, that is
all that matters at the moment. Our job is to get the ring and get
safely away. Vulture has prepared for a number of contingencies,
and this plan has been checked and rechecked by our best minds and
best computers. It is the only way to do it, and no matter how
strong the enemy seems to be, it is his own system we use against
him. This Colonel Chi is good—better than any Val we have
met. She has both guts and imagination, a dangerous combination in
an adversary. The only question we can concern ourselves with is
whether or not we can still get the ring through the increased
security cordon. Well?” She stared at Min and Chung.
“If the equipment works, we should have several
minutes,” Chung responded nervously. “If the computer
analysis of their response time is near accurate, at least ten. We
have been operating entirely on that window. I feel I can control
the exterior—if all goes well with Vulture inside.”
“There will not be two chances,” Killomen reminded
them. “If we fail this time, the three of us will be useless.
It must work!”
She had tried hard not to think of the possibility of failure,
but it wasn’t an easy thing to do. This was so complex, and
if just one thing went wrong, it would all be for nothing. She did
not like this body in which she knew she would be spending the rest
of her life, and all the mindprinting in the universe
couldn’t help that. She had been born to a race that was
large and physically tough, both the men and the women. She could
get over being covered with hair, and swimming was something of a
thrill—her native race had no mobility in the water at
all—but she felt ugly, ugly and also so
very . . . fragile. She knew she’d always
seemed somewhat monstrous to others of different races, but never
to herself. The transmuter transformation had been, to her, a
severe sacrifice, but one she had felt she couldn’t refuse.
Not after so many of the others had allowed themselves to be turned
into far worse.
It had been just as hard, if not harder, on Min and Chung. She
knew that, although it didn’t help that she had company. They
had been Earth-humans, as far from this form and life as hers, but
they had also been males from a social tradition that prized
masculinity and detested its opposite. She at least had been born
female and had spent many years as a part of an all-female crew.
Part of it had been mental protection—all the members of the
Kaotan crew had been of different races and each had been,
as far as they knew, the only one of their race to escape their
home worlds. Far better for mental health to be in the company of
women who, however different from one another physically, could
understand the problems of the others; in particular, how hard it
was to see men and women of other races relating to one another,
interacting, even occasionally bonding and having offspring. When
there were others who were also the sole representatives of their
species, at least there was some solace.
Now the old crew was broken up; only two were left in their
natural forms, and who knew how long that would last? She
was stuck now, and the old times, the old independence, were gone
forever. Win or lose, this one operation was her last moment, her
final purpose. After this they would just be a bunch of fragile
water creatures out of their element and unable even to procreate
due to the lack of a male.
She still dreamed of a little love, a little romance, but the
man of her dreams was of a shape and form that would crush her in
the first embrace. She often wondered, but never asked, if Min and
Chung had their own fantasies. If so, it must be infinitely worse
not only to be the wrong race but the wrong sex for the one of such
dreams.
This had better work. The cost was already too high.
It was a world where you not only never had to grow up, you
weren’t expected to. The quarters of the Seed included the
most elaborate multilevel swimming pool complex Vulture had ever
seen, complete with hewn water slides and many other playthings.
There were lots of games and toys available, and elaborate
facilities for playing dress-up, and the males took full advantage
of all of it.
Most of the cleaning and maintenance was automated; meals were
of the dial-in kind using a transmuter, a system not found
elsewhere to his knowledge on Chanchuk, but standard on large
spaceships and in other confined areas. Food was chosen by pushing
the selector until the picture of the meal or snack or whatever you
wanted came up in the window, then pressing the select button.
About two minutes later it was there, transmuted from waste
products or, if they weren’t available, from common
seawater.
And there were drugs, too. Drugs to make the Seed feel
wonderful, or bring him down; give him energy or let him sleep like
a rock. Drugs to aid in meditation and prayer, and drugs to induce
feelings of general well-being when the boredom got to be too
much.
And there was a considerable amount of homosexual activity,
something considered neither aberrant nor odd in a society where
the sexes were so completely different and differentiated
physically and socially. This was true among the general population
as well, females as well as males, although for the females it
tended to be less physical. Chanchukian females only really wanted
sex during their five-day ovulation period; the rest of the time
they had no real sexual drive at all. Males, on the other hand,
seemed to be turned on by the slightest things, and it was easier
to note the brief periods in each day when they weren’t
excited than the bulk of the time when they were.
They were remarkably ignorant, even of their own world. They had
no idea that the world was round or large, or how many people there
were or how they lived. For those who served a spiritual leader of
sorts, they didn’t even know or understand anything about
that faith except some very vague meditation and prayer rituals.
The reason for this last was obvious: the Holy Lama was close to
being deified by her people. If the Seed lived with her and around
her and saw her basic humanity, they might lose more faith than
they gained, and if they believed in her as something more than
their mistress and lover, they might have problems performing their
holy sexual duties.
There were more mundane duties, though—even a
sort of routine. The Holy Lama was, after all, only interested in
their bodies a few days each month, and not at all while pregnant,
and she needed various kinds of service. The Seed made up her bed
and rooms and served her her meals and cleaned away the trays. They
acted as hosts for occasional visitors, and, most of all, they
watched over and helped the young new crop of kids they helped
bring about. They did everything from nursing them to changing
them, and Vulture was surprised to discover that the young of
Chanchuk had to be taught how to swim, develop the reflexes for
holding their breath, and even how to see and act underwater.
Females and males looked much the same until they were more than
five years old; then distinct sexual and growth differences
developed and accelerated. At that point the girls would be sent
away to be brought up in various lamaseries connected to Centers
around the world. All were raised as if they all were to be the
next Holy Lama, for one of them surely would be. In their remote
locations, they would be trained in both spiritual and secular
skills well into adulthood, until their mother died and a new Holy
Lama was selected by the priestesses. Then the rest would be
neutered and become apprenticed to the Centers and lamaseries for
jobs like the liaison’s.
The males would be raised to puberty within the Seed’s
harem, after which they would be distributed among the ranking
family hierarchies of the Centers of Chanchuk, thus giving the
secular rulers a claim to spiritual relationship beyond that of the
masses.
To Vulture, the primary problem was stealing the ring.
During a sexual encounter would be the best, of course, but he
couldn’t rely on that chance, and he certainly couldn’t
expect the key period he planned to be inside to coincide with the
Holy Lama’s unknown reproductive cycle. Hell, she might even
be pregnant. No, in this case a certain amount of outside help was
cruder, but far more effective.
It took him some time to realize that his greatest problem in
the wait was in knowing what time it was. There were no clocks
about, and not much need for the Seed to have them. This meant he
had to force himself awake through mental discipline for two nights
running to check the automated cleaning and maintenance cycle
against the system security clock to be certain he could tell the
time when he had to without any watches or clocks. All that without
awakening any of his fellow Seed.
And, far more quickly than it seemed, it was the evening of his
fourth day inside.
“Colonel, it is a violation of everything we have sworn to
live by to keep us here incommunicado,” the Holy Lama
protested. “I stand on my rights, not as spiritual leader to
our people but as chief administrator of Chanchuk. I demand to know
at once the full and complete reasons for these actions and I
demand my right to appeal directly to an agent of Master
System.”
That would mean at least a Val, if not a direct link. Chi was
fully conscious of the severity of what she was doing.
“Madam, you have an agent inside your lodge. A
pirate.”
“Indeed? And when has invisibility been perfected?”
the prelate retorted sarcastically.
“Not invisible. A shape changer. It entered in the form of
your sister. I am convinced that it did not leave but rather became
another, a duplicate, of one it dispatched.”
“You are mad, Colonel! Such a thing is
impossible!”
Chi shrugged. “I know what is, not what is impossible. I
have no idea whether it is a scientific breakthrough or some alien
form of life in alliance with the pirates, but I am convinced it is
real. When the Vals arrive along with the task force, I will
undoubtedly be arrested, and I will be subjected to a mindprint and
probe. They will have the same reaction as you, but they will see
how and why I came to those conclusions and they will act. They
will act because they cannot afford to accept even the minuscule
possibility that I am correct. I am sure, under the proper
conditions, we can unmask this impostor no matter how perfect it is
and neutralize it. And when that happens I will go from being a mad
woman under restraint to being acclaimed as the most brilliant
tactical security strategist in history. Only another thirty hours,
madam, and we shall see who is insane.”
The Holy Lama gave up and switched off, but then she began to
think about it. Suppose this officer were right?
Technological breakthrough—ridiculous! But alien life, now
that made a certain kind of sense. And if Colonel Chi was correct,
and there was no one missing inside the Sacred Lodge, then there
was only one person it could be.
She turned and punched her intercom. “Cho, your presence
is required—now.” She never used a tone like
that unless it was something vital. She knew Cho would come on the
run, and he did.
Standing there, looking at him, someone she’d known ever
since coming here after her investiture by the Council, someone
she’d had sex with, even—it was nearly impossible to
believe. Everything was just so absolutely right.
“Cho—you know there are people over us, people who
run things even beyond our own power and control?”
The little man looked confused. “Yes, ma’am. I
suppose so. You mean the gods?”
“Don’t act so stupid in front of us!” she
snapped. “We know you are brighter than that and have been
around here many years. You may never have directly seen them, but
you know what security is.”
Cho seemed to be quaking slightly. “Yes, ma’am.
Sorry, ma’am.”
“They have just used their authority to remove us from
power, to make us prisoners here in our own lodge. They say it is
because an alien being is in here, not of Chanchuk or the People at
all but merely masquerading as one. Tomorrow they will pump some
sort of gas in here and come in with machines, carrying weapons and
cages, and they will take us away. Until then, anyone who tries to
get in or out of here will be vaporized. You know what that means?
Reduced to nothing. What do you think of that?”
“These matters are not for a poor Seed,
ma’am,” Cho responded. “I do not understand all
this.”
The Holy Lama stared at him as if looking not through but inside
of him. It was a disquieting, discomforting feeling.
“Yes, I believe you do understand,” she
responded, sounding a bit surprised. “We have always liked
you, Cho. You’ve been the bright one, the clever one, yet
very loyal. We believe, for the sake of ourselves and our world,
you deserve to rise to the next level of incarnation.”
“Ma’am?” Startled, he started to take
a step forward, but she raised a hand and stopped him.
“Do not approach us! We may be insulated, but we are not
defenseless. You may meditate on this where you are as long as you
like, but in the end it is the end. Only if you give us some
compelling reason not to will we fail to send you out to
security’s waiting weaponry.” A hand went below her
recliner and pulled out a very shiny and new-looking Mark IX
needler. It was unexpected. Who would have guessed she would have a
weapon of her own in here, let alone know how to use it? Why would
she? But the fact was she did.
“This will knock you out, although we could kill you with
it without much change in settings. When we desire, we will fire
it, then summon some of the maintenance robots to haul your limp
form out to Colonel Chi. We preach infinite patience, it is true,
but we do not believe that in this case we will wait very
long.”
Vulture was caught completely off guard. First he’d
misjudged Chi, mistaking the martinet image and crudeness of
manner for the real officer and not recognizing a first-rate mind
behind the mask. Now he’d mistaken a first-rate C.A. for a
head-in-the-clouds pious mystic. She didn’t believe Chi, that
was clear, but for the restoration of her communications links and
authority and to get rid of the SPF presence she was sure willing
to sacrifice Cho. It was time to give her a surprise in return.
“That little thing would not bother me,” he
responded in a cold yet casual tone, a tone unlike that ever used
by any male of Chanchuk. The sudden change in him startled the Holy
Lama; there was a sudden spirit there, a sudden hard fire inside
that tiny body, a cocky sense of power and control. It frightened
her more than anything ever had in her entire life.
“Then it is true.” She sighed.
“Whatever Chi has guessed is probably essentially
true,” Vulture admitted. “By the way—I notice
your thumb just pushed the Mark IX up to kill. I wouldn’t
bother. It would cause me pain for a moment but otherwise
wouldn’t bother me much, and I am used to pain. And I have no
desire to take you over the way I did Cho, even though such a thing
would probably provide me with great wisdom and skills beyond my
own understanding. I learned much from your sister, but it can be
only a shadow of what you know, and you are still growing in this
position. I would hate to have to deprive Chanchuk of
you.”
The sheer confidence and total disregard for any threat to him,
as if he held a gun on her, was perhaps equally
as unnerving as being faced with the sheer fact of his
existence.
“What are you?” she asked him.
“I am called the Vulture. The name is that of a predatory
bird of old Earth that eats carrion, although I do not. Who I eat,
I become, and all that they were stays with me. I and my associates
have worked for a year to be in more or less this position. I come
for the ring.”
“Why not just take it, then, if you are as powerful as you
say?”
“I intended to. But, as you point out, there is a matter
of escape that is more than a little bit tricky. Something is
planned, in the immediate future, that will allow me to liberate
the ring and pass it to my associates. Then we will wait for the
colonel and her probes.”
“Then they will unmask you and have you.”
He shook his head. “No. The colonel is creative, even
imaginative. You saw the conviction in her and you saw the alien
within me. Their superiors, however, are technocrats, and their
masters are machines. They believe in what can be quantified and
measured. If they want blood, I can create whatever is required for
their machines. If they probe my brain, they will find only Cho
there. If they try their chemical drugs, then they will still not
find me. Sooner or later they will have to conclude that Chi was
wrong. They will send me back, and I will feed and walk out as
someone else. It’s as simple as that.”
“And you admit this to me? This session is being
recorded.”
“If necessary, that can be fixed. You know it and I know
it. You do it all the time before the required semiannual Master
System mindprint and retreat at Qonjin Monastery in the north. They
all do it. You have a mindprinter here somewhere to do the fine
tuning, I suspect.”
“None is necessary, as you should know if you were my
sister as you claim. The Five Levels of Kwanji are more than a
match for any of their silly machines. What will you do
now?”
“Nothing. If you force the issue, I will, of course, have
to deal with you, and that will make things ugly. Nine Seed were
here before, nine Seed should be here at the end. But I’ll
manage. I am designed to survive. That is my number-one ability.
Somewhere in your own mind is another way out. No chief
administrator I ever heard of didn’t have all the
contingencies covered that they could cover, and I’m sure
isolation and entrapment here is one such contingency. What happens
next is up to you.”
“Who do you work for? And why is this ring so
important?”
“If the Five Levels can disguise the rest they should
disguise this. If not, no matter how cooperative you are, you will
either die or have your mind erased. My group calls itself the
pirates of the Thunder. The Thunder is our base
ship. We are refugees, many from old Earth, freebooters and
opportunists now wanted by Master System. The ring, together with
its four mates, contains a code that will shut Master System down
cold. Yours is the third, and we are in league with the possessor
of a fourth. We mean to shut this system down. Many brave human
beings have died for this cause already, innocent and guilty alike,
while others have undergone mental and emotional changes that no
person should be asked to endure. Still others have voluntarily
turned themselves into what they see as monsters in this one cause.
The system is mad, and it is only a matter of time until it
eliminates humanity as we know it. Humanity created it. Humanity
can and must destroy it first.”
The Holy Lama had not put down the gun, but she listened
intently, staring at him the whole time. Finally she asked,
“And what, considering all this, would you wish us to do
now?”
“Nothing,” he responded. “Just forget it. Wipe
it off the recording and then wipe it from your mind so thoroughly
that even Master System itself could not find it. If you have a
probe and printer around, I’d use it. They will go much
deeper than usual this time, searching for me. The other
contingencies have been taken care of.”
“There is a huge force coming. A task force. Thirty hours,
no more, the colonel said.”
“If they find nothing, then the colonel is
imaginative—and wrong. All, save myself, the ring included,
will be long gone.”
The Holy Lama sighed and put down the gun. “Just do
nothing, you say?”
Vulture nodded. “We have it all mapped out—I hope.
And we will give the colonel another bogeyman to chase.”
Hard nails drummed on the desk top. “Do you need anything
else from us?”
“As a matter of fact, it would help greatly if I could
borrow a watch.”
CHO WAS WAITING FOR HER WHEN SHE EMERGED from
the audience, as she’d hoped. Vulture liked the Holy Lama;
she was sorry that circumstances cast them as enemies, but there
was no way around that. The old girl’s primary
responsibility, as it should be, was to her faith and her planet.
Vulture cared only about one thing the Holy Lama did not—but
there was a knife at Chanchuk’s throat, and the throats of
the Holy Lama and her people, and those who held that knife cared
only about that ring as well.
The orders had been simple, although they would never be
properly delivered: turn everything over to Chi and the SPF; give
them every cooperation and defer to them completely, but record
every order and every decision and every demand, so if anything
went wrong, it would be Chi and the SPF who would get the blame for
usurping normal authority and failing while Chanchuk came out pure
and noble and patriotic.
“Is all satisfactory, Holiness?” Cho asked her
politely, not really expecting to be taken into her confidence. The
effects of the hormone were far too subtle for Cho to even
understand why he remained there or why it mattered.
“Yes, Cho, all is well. We would, however, appreciate a
small service. We suffered an accidental shoulder injury not long
ago and it is not yet fully healed, making it difficult to bend in
certain ways. We have had problems putting on the backpack now and
again, and it would be appreciated if you might accompany me to the
drying room to aid me should I have problems. Would that ask too
much of you?”
Cho’s eyes lit up. “Oh, no, Holiness. No
trouble at all. It will be my pleasure.”
This would be tricky. Between the drying room and the waiting
hall was a very short length of corridor that wasn’t under
direct observation—Vulture had determined that from past
visits. It was the only unmonitored area available to a Seed, and
it was so because it didn’t need to be monitored.
There were more than enough monitoring devices on either end of
the corridor to require them there.
She walked down, Cho following. He probably wouldn’t have
had the nerve to do it except for the lure of the hormone, which
left him slightly turned on and very eager to please.
Halfway down the hall, she checked to make certain that no new
security devices had been added, stopped, turned, listened for any
sounds from below, and then stared down at the little male.
Cho stopped and looked up at her quizzically. “Is
something wrong, Holiness?”
“No. At least we do not believe so. Come here. Closer.
Yes, that is about right.” Without another word she put her
arms around a startled Cho as if to hug him, but that was not the
intent as the process began instantly, freezing any further thought
or comment the Seed might have.
It was always a gruesome sight, but no one was supposed to see
it. Almost instantly the flesh of the high priestess seemed to take
on a life of its own, reaching out and blending with the flesh of
the hapless Cho. They seemed to merge, the inorganic things they
had on or with them falling away, seemingly repelled from the
increasingly shapeless, bubbling mass of flesh.
It took several minutes; that was why this had been so difficult
and was even now a risk should anyone enter or leave through the
corridor. What they would make of it was anyone’s guess, but
there would certainly be quite an alarm.
Now, out of the seething, bubbling, merged mass arose a new
shape, Chanchukian in form but at first hairless and featureless.
It was far smaller than the total mass, drawing from the throbbing
pulp what it needed and no more. In an almost magical transition,
the form took on the eyes and mouth and general features of Cho,
then the hair and other elements took shape. Cho was completely
reconstituted, and exactly so, right down to his memories and brain
and body chemistry; so close that if it were possible, even a
cell-by-cell comparison of the two would not show any
difference.
But there was a difference. Vulture was in many ways as much a
machine as the devices he fought against; a wholly organic machine,
which stored its own memories and separate identity and will
throughout every cell of its body, whatever that might be. The new
creature that stepped out of the still-seething goo was Cho in
every way—physically, mentally, emotionally—but not
down to the basic submicroscopic structures within each cell that
retained all that Vulture had been and the memories of all the
people the creature had eaten before.
The goo was still living, but it was beginning to die, bereft of
its controlling mitochondria-sized program. Getting the clothing
and other articles out of the edges of the goo where it had fallen
and getting the ichor off so that Cho could return above was
unpleasant, but Vulture had done this sort of thing before. Far
more difficult would be disposing of the priestess’s papers,
case, and minimal clothing and, if possible, getting rid of the
goo. That was more of a problem here, and Vulture relied from the
start on Cho’s own knowledge of the Sacred Lodge to
accomplish that. Fortunately, it provided a fast and easy means for
part of the problem.
There was a maintenance chute in the hall used when the
robotic cleaners worked the place at night, but while that might be
all right for the clothing and travel case with its papers, it
wouldn’t do for the goo. To prevent accidents, the automated
cleaning systems would sort out anything organic and pass it
through to a secondary inspection before sending it to waste
disposal. That second check would find the goo unusual enough to
flag a security computer.
He did what he could. The stuff wasn’t even completely
dead yet—and when it was it would turn brown and give off a
terrible odor. Papers down the chute, also the briefs, but before
disposing of the case, he removed a small vial of muscle balm and a
small lighter used in religious ceremonies. He also removed the
high priestess’s large signet ring. He poured the balm over
as much of the goo as possible, wishing he had a few liters and not
just the small amount he dared to bring in, then lit it with the
lighter. Both vial and lighter, then, also went into the chute.
Dissatisfied but not able to come up with anything better, Cho
returned to the glare of the waiting room and began to hum softly
as he cleaned up the place. Let them make what they would of the
remains of the goo. He knew now that he could patch into the
internal computer and send out a recording of the high priestess
leaving the lower chamber from a visit months ago, since, even
though Cho didn’t have the vaguest idea about such things, he
knew where a terminal was—and Vulture clearly recognized the
standard model and knew it well.
High priestess comes, high priestess leaves, goes on four-day
trip to Wa Chi. Not unusual even in light of the Holy Lama’s
orders. There would be no one unusual or detectable inside the
Sacred Lodge, where it mattered.
The male body Vulture now occupied
was . . . sensual. Probably the most sensual
Vulture had ever experienced. The mind was not particularly limited
in intelligence or reasoning ability, any more than the
female’s had been, but it was culturally limited and
intimidated by its own feelings of sensuality and inadequacy at
being so small and weak compared to the women.
The males of Chanchuk, it appeared, were as dull and docile as
they seemed mostly because of their physically and culturally
induced inferiority complexes, fed by their lack of any real
education and the impossibility of being more than they were. Only
in the bedchamber and the nursery were they in any way dominant,
and so it was in those roles that the Chanchukian male found refuge
and security and ego, solaced only by a religion that stressed
reincarnation as the true path, the soul being both male and
female.
It was a shame, really, but biology had played this cruel trick
on them, and Master System had either created or imitated that.
Still, it might be a lot of fun to explore this kind of body in
general society, although Cho was now incapable of actually
fathering anything. The sperm he would make would look and act
correctly but would be bereft of that extra part the cells needed
to keep pretending to be the real thing. They would quickly become
nothing more than microscopic bits of the same goo, and then
quickly dead. But he was unlikely to get to test it in normal
society.
First he had to do a bit of computer doctoring, something that
males would certainly never be expected to be capable of doing.
Then he would start his preparation, so that when the time was
right, the primary mission could be fulfilled.
Satisfied that all was as reasonably correct as it could be
under the circumstances, Vulture put the signet ring under his
armpit and walked toward the Seed’s quarters. He would have
to stash the ring someplace until, later on and in private, he
could remove the thin shell and reveal what it really was.
Colonel Chi frowned. “So what is the foul-smelling stuff?
It smells like a decomposing body.”
The SPF technical officer shrugged. “I have never seen
anything like it, and I’ll have to send it up for full
computer analysis. It’s definitely organic, but there is no
life left in it, I feel certain. Someone or something has tried to
burn it, but the fuel was not nearly enough to do more than scorch
an area on top and set off the fire sensors.”
“Well, take no chances. No one touches it or even
approaches it except through remotes. Seal it and get it up for
complete analysis.” Chi looked at it a moment. “You
know, if it weren’t such a—mess—and weren’t
flattened out so, it would have a fair amount of mass. Almost as
much as a real body . . . I wonder—could
this once have been alive?”
The tech shrugged again. “As you said, Colonel, it seems
to have the mass for it, but I know of nothing that could do
this to a body. Why bother? A disintegrator is cleaner, a
laser pistol or projectile weapon is less messy if you need the
body. Why even invent something that would do this?”
Chi nodded. “Why, indeed? Unless it was because you
couldn’t sneak a real and recognizable weapon past our
security system. Perhaps a catalyst. Some sort of chemical agent
that wouldn’t show up in the screen. There would be ways to
do that, if you knew the limits of the screening. Go—get on
it! I want to know!”
“At once, Colonel,” the tech responded, and began
supervising her staff in the recovery of the material.
Colonel Chi didn’t like this, not one bit, and certainly
not coming right on the heels of the discovery of that mysterious
engine. As soon as she returned to security, she stormed upstairs,
not even taking the time to dry off, and stormed into the Center
security officer’s cubicle.
“Where is the remote Center liaison?” she asked
crisply. “She went to see the Holy Lama at sixteen-thirty and
did not return.”
The security officer sighed and checked her terminal. “She
is on her way to Wa Chi Center. The Holy Lama ordered complete
cooperation, Colonel, but we suspect that the liaison had
more—proprietary orders.”
“Can you check and see if she actually left the Sacred
Lodge?”
“Huh? What? Well, we suppose so. She would have had to
pass the security sensors on the way out. Yes. There is a record of
it. Why?”
“I really don’t know,” the colonel answered
honestly. “Still, I want your best people to find her. She
can’t have gotten too far. I want her located and brought
back here tonight. It is vital. I will make certain she
makes her appointment. Also, I want to talk to the regular guards
outside the Sacred Lodge entrance as soon as they can be
relieved.”
“We will do what you say—but might one ask why? It
seems that you are acting as if her holiness is some sort of
traitor.”
“No. I doubt that. I am not trying to call your sister
into question. Believe that. In fact, I may be her best friend at
this moment. You see, what I am seeking is proof that the liaison,
your sister, is still alive.”
The security chief’s eyes bulged.
“What?”
By the time the first lab reports were coming in from the
command ship, Colonel Chi was already forming a pattern. The
problem was, she didn’t have any idea what the pattern
meant.
The guards at the entrance had a clear memory of the section
chief entering and no recollection at all of her leaving. They
considered this unusual but not impossible, of course, and in and
of itself it wouldn’t mean much. Various guards had to take
air breaks every once in a while anyway, and that often left only
one pair of eyes to see in both directions.
Most disturbing was the fact that there were entries in the
various computer logs substantiating that exit. How had they gotten
there? There was no direct input terminal to the master security
computer net from inside the Sacred Lodge except in the Holy
Lama’s private offices. This indicated a possible involvement
of the chief administrator, but even Chi couldn’t bring
herself to believe that the C.A., particularly this one, would be
involved in overt treason. It was not only against her character,
it was too stupid for one such as the leader of this world. If the
object were to steal the ring and the Holy Lama had it and was in
league with the thieves, a simple swap of a look-alike on a routine
visit would have done it and no one would have been the wiser. No,
it didn’t make sense, but that only deepened the mystery.
Chi did not underestimate her enemy. They were clever and
incredibly resourceful. She even had a real sense of admiration for
anyone who could do what they did on Janipur and get away, not to
mention fighting a brilliant space battle and dispatching several
Vals—no mean feat when even the SPF had been taught that it
was, while not impossible, very nearly so. Admiration and respect,
however, did not mean that they were not still the enemy. It had
been so long now since they’d been active that many commands
had a false sense of security. Chi was one, along with her general,
who believed that the space battle over Janipur’s ring was
costly to the pirates and that they had not so much quit as changed
tactics. Now, clearly, that time had been well spent on
Chanchuk setting up who knew what.
Security could not locate her holiness, but it was early yet and
the routing wasn’t clear. If, however, there was no further
evidence of exit or her supposed trip by the middle of the night,
Chi felt certain that the priestess would never be located.
A special read-only security circuit to the Sacred Lodge’s
internal computers clearly showed the priestess in the entry hall
and going in for the audience, then leaving again. Master security
showed an exit—or did it? She studied the pictures of the
priestess’s entry and exit. Any differences? Yes—but
subtle. The backpack looked slightly different. But these were
security records, not great art, and it might have been
imagination. You couldn’t blow them up to improve detail. It
just got fuzzy. But such records for that very reason weren’t
all that hard to fake.
She dispatched a squad to pick up the housekeeper and
maintenance people who shared a lodge with the missing priestess.
No one was home and Chi was not really surprised at this. They took
the lodge apart piece by piece but found nothing
unusual—except that the taps on the lines in and out had been
circumvented and different tapes were fed to the monitors rather
than actual conversation. Not unusual in and of itself; Center
personnel often pulled that sort of thing just to get some privacy.
Again, though, it was yet another nail in the priestess’s
coffin. Chi ordered the lodge monitored and staked out although she
felt certain that no one who had lived there would ever return to
it.
The medical team on the base ship was less helpful than Chi had
hoped.
“The material is decomposing rapidly. We have frozen some
of it, of course, but it’s impossible to do any real tests
that way. The cellular structure is—unusual. It is as if the
interior of each cell has simply collapsed, broken down. There
isn’t a piece of DNA, RNA, or any other useful combination
left, although the fragments we have recovered do show what we can
only call a consistent inconsistency.”
Chi frowned. “Explain.”
“We have been able to identify two separate patterns, as
if these had been cells from two totally different individuals, yet
they are intermixed and bound in the mass. We do not have enough to
give you any real information on either master code, but it is as
if you took two people and broke them down as if melting them into
a single cellular mass. We have never seen anything like this, but
if we were to try this the laboratory, the computers required would
be enormous. Nor would we want to—not with a transmuter
available.”
“I see. But a transmuter wouldn’t produce this
effect? Say, if two people were transmitted down and got all
jumbled up together.”
“It would be possible to induce it, yes, but where is the
transmuter? There is no way you could get the necessary machinery
into that hall unobtrusively no matter how long you took, and even
if we accept that someone did, there is certainly no way you could
get the stuff back out of there or effectively hide or
shield it from our own search in so short a time.”
Chi nodded, knowing that this had been the conclusion of the
computer systems as well. The bottom line was that anybody good
enough to do that wouldn’t have to do it.
The scenario was simple enough, if grotesque. On Janipur
they’d managed to snatch and switch one of the top security
people in that Center and replace that person with a
ringer—and it fooled every security safeguard in common use.
That was certain. All right, assume that was the case with this
priestess. With so long to work, it might have been done
months, even years ago. A mole in the heart of this Center. All
right—they had done it before, so it wasn’t a fantastic
idea.
Now what? The ring’s on the Holy Lama. Can’t snatch
it when the C.A. is outside—too much security. You might
snatch it but you’d never get away. But the C.A. is a
cloistered monk—nobody who sees her day to day is ever
allowed out, and no one is ever allowed in except under maximum
security monitoring. The only one who could get close enough to the
C.A. to steal that ring outside of normal internal security would
be one of the permanent party. Not a monk—an insect
queen!
She turned to her computer. “Comparison, in percentage.
Total mass of the recovered organic substance against total
estimated mass of the deputy administrator.”
“Recovered mass is eighty-nine point three three percent
of estimated mass of the subject,” the computer
responded.
Chi nodded. There would be some loss, certainly. Energy would be
consumed, there would be free cells, and possibly a measure of
decomposition of the outer area before they’d been able to
get to the mass and stabilize it. All right.
Colonel Chi wasn’t a scientist or any sort of technocrat,
and she knew it sounded bizarre, but somehow, she was convinced
against all of the computer’s logic that she was right.
Somehow these pirates had made a very big discovery, a kind that
could shake the system to its foundations. No wonder they
had managed to get so far! Some sort of biological or chemical
agent, or some strange thing created by transmuter. It didn’t
matter to her how it was done. Somehow, they could become someone
else. An exact duplicate—almost. And without further aid of
any machinery at all. So one of them had become the priestess and
learned all there was to learn and gained access to the Sacred
Lodge. Access—but not the ability to steal the ring
unobserved. So now, spooked by the discovery of the motor and the
resultant knowledge that the pirates were at work here, they had
moved—now! Before new precautions could be put in place! Now
what had been the priestess was one of the Seed within the Sacred
Lodge, with full run of the place and full access to the Holy Lama
and the security system. The excess mass not needed in the
transformation was the dying organic matter they had found.
And now what? Perhaps a switch of rings, or maybe even a theft,
then wait for a new audience to be commanded. The next poor sucker
walks in, gets escorted back, and in the hall there is another,
smaller pool of goo. And the thief walks right out with the
blessings of the guards past the best security net they could
design!
Colonel Chi knew that she was right. She also knew that, without
any proof that such a thing was possible, she would be considered
mad not only by her subordinates and superiors in the SPF but by
Master System itself. The mere idea that some escaped prisoners and
freebooter refugees could do something Master System itself
considered impossible would be tantamount to heresy. But it
wouldn’t help if this ring—her ring—was
stolen, either, to be right and silent. It was a tricky
problem—and the reason why this pirate scheme was so
fiendishly clever.
Hell, I’m the boss here, she thought suddenly. I
don’t have to explain myself to anybody at this point.
She turned back to the special SPF channel. “This is
Colonel Chi. Absolutely no one—repeat, no
one—is to enter or leave the Sacred Lodge from this
point on until I give the word. That includes anyone summoned
there, regardless of rank, or any of our forces, or so much as a
sea slug. No one in or out—including the Holy Lama. Then I
want a full electronic and human ring, on the surface and below,
around the Lodge and I want the same on any exit channel large
enough for a microbe to get out. All trash, all garbage,
is to be instantly and completely disintegrated by automated
equipment independently programmed and under our exclusive control.
I want our nastiest sentry robots in the automated areas. Seal all
watertight doors and exits. Put the vacuum seal in place in the
entry passage. The only communications channel in or out is to be
routed directly to me and not through any locals or any
subordinates. Understand?”
“As you command, Colonel,” came the crisp reply.
“May I ask why all this? I have to have it for my
reports.” Always covering your sweet ass, aren’t you, Wu?
“I have evidence that an agent of the pirates is already
inside the Sacred Lodge. It is speculative and circumstantial, but
I believe on my authority as commander that we have no choice but
to act as if it is real.” Think now. Everybody knows you
can’t transmute somebody twice. “There is a
possibility that this agent has coercive means to gain the
cooperation or obedience of anyone inside, including the Holy
Lama.”
There was a pause, then: “Very well.”
“Major? Check to see if there’s any way we could get
a nerve agent of some kind in there—either in the air or
water or food—to knock them all completely cold.”
Another pause. “It would be difficult and perhaps not a
hundred percent effective, but I feel it is possible. The problem
is, the place has its own internal security system that we
can’t tap. It’s murylium-powered so we can’t cut
it out, and if activated, it’s among the best.”
Chi sighed. “Could we lull them, then? Be certain we
killed every living thing in there no matter how big or how
small?”
“Easier—but, Colonel, if you do that you will kill
the spiritual leader of this world and everyone, male as well as
female, who could create the children to replace her. None of her
own children are yet old enough to be outside. The oldest is barely
six. You would turn this entire peaceful and basically loyal
population violently against us and against everything we stand
for. Something of that magnitude would require the direct order of
Master System, and you know it.”
The major, of course, was right. Chi wanted to be a general, not
a heretic and maniac. “Very well. Do what you can and make
certain nothing gets in or out, period. Nothing. And I
want all human guards paired at all times. Not for a moment is
anyone to be left alone. We have at least three other missing
agents around and they definitely have transmuter access. You
understand me? I don’t want any of our people switched. If I
can’t get in to the agent, at least, he, she, or it
can’t get out and can’t get the ring out. Sooner or
later a deal will have to be made or they’ll remain here
until they rot.”
The colonel signed off and leaned back in her contoured chair.
All right, you pirates. You’re very good at playing the
system against me, she thought firmly. But you won’t succeed.
I know your little unbelievable secret. And I need hold you for
only five days. In five days I will have sufficient force behind me
that you could not escape without a fight more disastrous by far
than Janipur, and possibly not even then. And in five days
I’ll have you all out of that Sacred Lodge, immobilized, and
in stasis—completely isolated. And if you remain behind, you
will die. If you do not, then you will be in an SPF control lab
where we’ll find which one of them you are.
“Something has gone wrong. I can feel it,” Min
commented nervously. “They have the Sacred Lodge sealed off
and the SPF has taken total and exclusive command of all Center
security. They know. I tell you, they
know.”
Butar Killomen shook her head. “No. They suspect,
which is quite a different thing. The Vulture is inside, that is
all that matters at the moment. Our job is to get the ring and get
safely away. Vulture has prepared for a number of contingencies,
and this plan has been checked and rechecked by our best minds and
best computers. It is the only way to do it, and no matter how
strong the enemy seems to be, it is his own system we use against
him. This Colonel Chi is good—better than any Val we have
met. She has both guts and imagination, a dangerous combination in
an adversary. The only question we can concern ourselves with is
whether or not we can still get the ring through the increased
security cordon. Well?” She stared at Min and Chung.
“If the equipment works, we should have several
minutes,” Chung responded nervously. “If the computer
analysis of their response time is near accurate, at least ten. We
have been operating entirely on that window. I feel I can control
the exterior—if all goes well with Vulture inside.”
“There will not be two chances,” Killomen reminded
them. “If we fail this time, the three of us will be useless.
It must work!”
She had tried hard not to think of the possibility of failure,
but it wasn’t an easy thing to do. This was so complex, and
if just one thing went wrong, it would all be for nothing. She did
not like this body in which she knew she would be spending the rest
of her life, and all the mindprinting in the universe
couldn’t help that. She had been born to a race that was
large and physically tough, both the men and the women. She could
get over being covered with hair, and swimming was something of a
thrill—her native race had no mobility in the water at
all—but she felt ugly, ugly and also so
very . . . fragile. She knew she’d always
seemed somewhat monstrous to others of different races, but never
to herself. The transmuter transformation had been, to her, a
severe sacrifice, but one she had felt she couldn’t refuse.
Not after so many of the others had allowed themselves to be turned
into far worse.
It had been just as hard, if not harder, on Min and Chung. She
knew that, although it didn’t help that she had company. They
had been Earth-humans, as far from this form and life as hers, but
they had also been males from a social tradition that prized
masculinity and detested its opposite. She at least had been born
female and had spent many years as a part of an all-female crew.
Part of it had been mental protection—all the members of the
Kaotan crew had been of different races and each had been,
as far as they knew, the only one of their race to escape their
home worlds. Far better for mental health to be in the company of
women who, however different from one another physically, could
understand the problems of the others; in particular, how hard it
was to see men and women of other races relating to one another,
interacting, even occasionally bonding and having offspring. When
there were others who were also the sole representatives of their
species, at least there was some solace.
Now the old crew was broken up; only two were left in their
natural forms, and who knew how long that would last? She
was stuck now, and the old times, the old independence, were gone
forever. Win or lose, this one operation was her last moment, her
final purpose. After this they would just be a bunch of fragile
water creatures out of their element and unable even to procreate
due to the lack of a male.
She still dreamed of a little love, a little romance, but the
man of her dreams was of a shape and form that would crush her in
the first embrace. She often wondered, but never asked, if Min and
Chung had their own fantasies. If so, it must be infinitely worse
not only to be the wrong race but the wrong sex for the one of such
dreams.
This had better work. The cost was already too high.
It was a world where you not only never had to grow up, you
weren’t expected to. The quarters of the Seed included the
most elaborate multilevel swimming pool complex Vulture had ever
seen, complete with hewn water slides and many other playthings.
There were lots of games and toys available, and elaborate
facilities for playing dress-up, and the males took full advantage
of all of it.
Most of the cleaning and maintenance was automated; meals were
of the dial-in kind using a transmuter, a system not found
elsewhere to his knowledge on Chanchuk, but standard on large
spaceships and in other confined areas. Food was chosen by pushing
the selector until the picture of the meal or snack or whatever you
wanted came up in the window, then pressing the select button.
About two minutes later it was there, transmuted from waste
products or, if they weren’t available, from common
seawater.
And there were drugs, too. Drugs to make the Seed feel
wonderful, or bring him down; give him energy or let him sleep like
a rock. Drugs to aid in meditation and prayer, and drugs to induce
feelings of general well-being when the boredom got to be too
much.
And there was a considerable amount of homosexual activity,
something considered neither aberrant nor odd in a society where
the sexes were so completely different and differentiated
physically and socially. This was true among the general population
as well, females as well as males, although for the females it
tended to be less physical. Chanchukian females only really wanted
sex during their five-day ovulation period; the rest of the time
they had no real sexual drive at all. Males, on the other hand,
seemed to be turned on by the slightest things, and it was easier
to note the brief periods in each day when they weren’t
excited than the bulk of the time when they were.
They were remarkably ignorant, even of their own world. They had
no idea that the world was round or large, or how many people there
were or how they lived. For those who served a spiritual leader of
sorts, they didn’t even know or understand anything about
that faith except some very vague meditation and prayer rituals.
The reason for this last was obvious: the Holy Lama was close to
being deified by her people. If the Seed lived with her and around
her and saw her basic humanity, they might lose more faith than
they gained, and if they believed in her as something more than
their mistress and lover, they might have problems performing their
holy sexual duties.
There were more mundane duties, though—even a
sort of routine. The Holy Lama was, after all, only interested in
their bodies a few days each month, and not at all while pregnant,
and she needed various kinds of service. The Seed made up her bed
and rooms and served her her meals and cleaned away the trays. They
acted as hosts for occasional visitors, and, most of all, they
watched over and helped the young new crop of kids they helped
bring about. They did everything from nursing them to changing
them, and Vulture was surprised to discover that the young of
Chanchuk had to be taught how to swim, develop the reflexes for
holding their breath, and even how to see and act underwater.
Females and males looked much the same until they were more than
five years old; then distinct sexual and growth differences
developed and accelerated. At that point the girls would be sent
away to be brought up in various lamaseries connected to Centers
around the world. All were raised as if they all were to be the
next Holy Lama, for one of them surely would be. In their remote
locations, they would be trained in both spiritual and secular
skills well into adulthood, until their mother died and a new Holy
Lama was selected by the priestesses. Then the rest would be
neutered and become apprenticed to the Centers and lamaseries for
jobs like the liaison’s.
The males would be raised to puberty within the Seed’s
harem, after which they would be distributed among the ranking
family hierarchies of the Centers of Chanchuk, thus giving the
secular rulers a claim to spiritual relationship beyond that of the
masses.
To Vulture, the primary problem was stealing the ring.
During a sexual encounter would be the best, of course, but he
couldn’t rely on that chance, and he certainly couldn’t
expect the key period he planned to be inside to coincide with the
Holy Lama’s unknown reproductive cycle. Hell, she might even
be pregnant. No, in this case a certain amount of outside help was
cruder, but far more effective.
It took him some time to realize that his greatest problem in
the wait was in knowing what time it was. There were no clocks
about, and not much need for the Seed to have them. This meant he
had to force himself awake through mental discipline for two nights
running to check the automated cleaning and maintenance cycle
against the system security clock to be certain he could tell the
time when he had to without any watches or clocks. All that without
awakening any of his fellow Seed.
And, far more quickly than it seemed, it was the evening of his
fourth day inside.
“Colonel, it is a violation of everything we have sworn to
live by to keep us here incommunicado,” the Holy Lama
protested. “I stand on my rights, not as spiritual leader to
our people but as chief administrator of Chanchuk. I demand to know
at once the full and complete reasons for these actions and I
demand my right to appeal directly to an agent of Master
System.”
That would mean at least a Val, if not a direct link. Chi was
fully conscious of the severity of what she was doing.
“Madam, you have an agent inside your lodge. A
pirate.”
“Indeed? And when has invisibility been perfected?”
the prelate retorted sarcastically.
“Not invisible. A shape changer. It entered in the form of
your sister. I am convinced that it did not leave but rather became
another, a duplicate, of one it dispatched.”
“You are mad, Colonel! Such a thing is
impossible!”
Chi shrugged. “I know what is, not what is impossible. I
have no idea whether it is a scientific breakthrough or some alien
form of life in alliance with the pirates, but I am convinced it is
real. When the Vals arrive along with the task force, I will
undoubtedly be arrested, and I will be subjected to a mindprint and
probe. They will have the same reaction as you, but they will see
how and why I came to those conclusions and they will act. They
will act because they cannot afford to accept even the minuscule
possibility that I am correct. I am sure, under the proper
conditions, we can unmask this impostor no matter how perfect it is
and neutralize it. And when that happens I will go from being a mad
woman under restraint to being acclaimed as the most brilliant
tactical security strategist in history. Only another thirty hours,
madam, and we shall see who is insane.”
The Holy Lama gave up and switched off, but then she began to
think about it. Suppose this officer were right?
Technological breakthrough—ridiculous! But alien life, now
that made a certain kind of sense. And if Colonel Chi was correct,
and there was no one missing inside the Sacred Lodge, then there
was only one person it could be.
She turned and punched her intercom. “Cho, your presence
is required—now.” She never used a tone like
that unless it was something vital. She knew Cho would come on the
run, and he did.
Standing there, looking at him, someone she’d known ever
since coming here after her investiture by the Council, someone
she’d had sex with, even—it was nearly impossible to
believe. Everything was just so absolutely right.
“Cho—you know there are people over us, people who
run things even beyond our own power and control?”
The little man looked confused. “Yes, ma’am. I
suppose so. You mean the gods?”
“Don’t act so stupid in front of us!” she
snapped. “We know you are brighter than that and have been
around here many years. You may never have directly seen them, but
you know what security is.”
Cho seemed to be quaking slightly. “Yes, ma’am.
Sorry, ma’am.”
“They have just used their authority to remove us from
power, to make us prisoners here in our own lodge. They say it is
because an alien being is in here, not of Chanchuk or the People at
all but merely masquerading as one. Tomorrow they will pump some
sort of gas in here and come in with machines, carrying weapons and
cages, and they will take us away. Until then, anyone who tries to
get in or out of here will be vaporized. You know what that means?
Reduced to nothing. What do you think of that?”
“These matters are not for a poor Seed,
ma’am,” Cho responded. “I do not understand all
this.”
The Holy Lama stared at him as if looking not through but inside
of him. It was a disquieting, discomforting feeling.
“Yes, I believe you do understand,” she
responded, sounding a bit surprised. “We have always liked
you, Cho. You’ve been the bright one, the clever one, yet
very loyal. We believe, for the sake of ourselves and our world,
you deserve to rise to the next level of incarnation.”
“Ma’am?” Startled, he started to take
a step forward, but she raised a hand and stopped him.
“Do not approach us! We may be insulated, but we are not
defenseless. You may meditate on this where you are as long as you
like, but in the end it is the end. Only if you give us some
compelling reason not to will we fail to send you out to
security’s waiting weaponry.” A hand went below her
recliner and pulled out a very shiny and new-looking Mark IX
needler. It was unexpected. Who would have guessed she would have a
weapon of her own in here, let alone know how to use it? Why would
she? But the fact was she did.
“This will knock you out, although we could kill you with
it without much change in settings. When we desire, we will fire
it, then summon some of the maintenance robots to haul your limp
form out to Colonel Chi. We preach infinite patience, it is true,
but we do not believe that in this case we will wait very
long.”
Vulture was caught completely off guard. First he’d
misjudged Chi, mistaking the martinet image and crudeness of
manner for the real officer and not recognizing a first-rate mind
behind the mask. Now he’d mistaken a first-rate C.A. for a
head-in-the-clouds pious mystic. She didn’t believe Chi, that
was clear, but for the restoration of her communications links and
authority and to get rid of the SPF presence she was sure willing
to sacrifice Cho. It was time to give her a surprise in return.
“That little thing would not bother me,” he
responded in a cold yet casual tone, a tone unlike that ever used
by any male of Chanchuk. The sudden change in him startled the Holy
Lama; there was a sudden spirit there, a sudden hard fire inside
that tiny body, a cocky sense of power and control. It frightened
her more than anything ever had in her entire life.
“Then it is true.” She sighed.
“Whatever Chi has guessed is probably essentially
true,” Vulture admitted. “By the way—I notice
your thumb just pushed the Mark IX up to kill. I wouldn’t
bother. It would cause me pain for a moment but otherwise
wouldn’t bother me much, and I am used to pain. And I have no
desire to take you over the way I did Cho, even though such a thing
would probably provide me with great wisdom and skills beyond my
own understanding. I learned much from your sister, but it can be
only a shadow of what you know, and you are still growing in this
position. I would hate to have to deprive Chanchuk of
you.”
The sheer confidence and total disregard for any threat to him,
as if he held a gun on her, was perhaps equally
as unnerving as being faced with the sheer fact of his
existence.
“What are you?” she asked him.
“I am called the Vulture. The name is that of a predatory
bird of old Earth that eats carrion, although I do not. Who I eat,
I become, and all that they were stays with me. I and my associates
have worked for a year to be in more or less this position. I come
for the ring.”
“Why not just take it, then, if you are as powerful as you
say?”
“I intended to. But, as you point out, there is a matter
of escape that is more than a little bit tricky. Something is
planned, in the immediate future, that will allow me to liberate
the ring and pass it to my associates. Then we will wait for the
colonel and her probes.”
“Then they will unmask you and have you.”
He shook his head. “No. The colonel is creative, even
imaginative. You saw the conviction in her and you saw the alien
within me. Their superiors, however, are technocrats, and their
masters are machines. They believe in what can be quantified and
measured. If they want blood, I can create whatever is required for
their machines. If they probe my brain, they will find only Cho
there. If they try their chemical drugs, then they will still not
find me. Sooner or later they will have to conclude that Chi was
wrong. They will send me back, and I will feed and walk out as
someone else. It’s as simple as that.”
“And you admit this to me? This session is being
recorded.”
“If necessary, that can be fixed. You know it and I know
it. You do it all the time before the required semiannual Master
System mindprint and retreat at Qonjin Monastery in the north. They
all do it. You have a mindprinter here somewhere to do the fine
tuning, I suspect.”
“None is necessary, as you should know if you were my
sister as you claim. The Five Levels of Kwanji are more than a
match for any of their silly machines. What will you do
now?”
“Nothing. If you force the issue, I will, of course, have
to deal with you, and that will make things ugly. Nine Seed were
here before, nine Seed should be here at the end. But I’ll
manage. I am designed to survive. That is my number-one ability.
Somewhere in your own mind is another way out. No chief
administrator I ever heard of didn’t have all the
contingencies covered that they could cover, and I’m sure
isolation and entrapment here is one such contingency. What happens
next is up to you.”
“Who do you work for? And why is this ring so
important?”
“If the Five Levels can disguise the rest they should
disguise this. If not, no matter how cooperative you are, you will
either die or have your mind erased. My group calls itself the
pirates of the Thunder. The Thunder is our base
ship. We are refugees, many from old Earth, freebooters and
opportunists now wanted by Master System. The ring, together with
its four mates, contains a code that will shut Master System down
cold. Yours is the third, and we are in league with the possessor
of a fourth. We mean to shut this system down. Many brave human
beings have died for this cause already, innocent and guilty alike,
while others have undergone mental and emotional changes that no
person should be asked to endure. Still others have voluntarily
turned themselves into what they see as monsters in this one cause.
The system is mad, and it is only a matter of time until it
eliminates humanity as we know it. Humanity created it. Humanity
can and must destroy it first.”
The Holy Lama had not put down the gun, but she listened
intently, staring at him the whole time. Finally she asked,
“And what, considering all this, would you wish us to do
now?”
“Nothing,” he responded. “Just forget it. Wipe
it off the recording and then wipe it from your mind so thoroughly
that even Master System itself could not find it. If you have a
probe and printer around, I’d use it. They will go much
deeper than usual this time, searching for me. The other
contingencies have been taken care of.”
“There is a huge force coming. A task force. Thirty hours,
no more, the colonel said.”
“If they find nothing, then the colonel is
imaginative—and wrong. All, save myself, the ring included,
will be long gone.”
The Holy Lama sighed and put down the gun. “Just do
nothing, you say?”
Vulture nodded. “We have it all mapped out—I hope.
And we will give the colonel another bogeyman to chase.”
Hard nails drummed on the desk top. “Do you need anything
else from us?”
“As a matter of fact, it would help greatly if I could
borrow a watch.”