F Paul Wilson - LaNague 02 (20 page)

           
Larry Easly
was frightened. He had faced danger before – in fact, at one point during an
investigation last year, someone’s bodyguard had placed the business end of a
blaster over his left eye and threatened to pull the trigger – but it had never
affected him like this. This was different. This was an unseen danger that
could strike anywhere, at anytime, without the slightest warning. And there was
no possible way to defend himself against it.

           
He didn’t
know the range of Proska’s power. Did it require a certain proximity to its
target to be effective, or could he just sit in a room somewhere and strike out
at will? Every shadowy corner posed a threat now. His palms were clammy, his
stomach felt as if something cold and sharp was clawing at it, and the skin on
the nape of his neck crawled and tingled.

           
He was
almost giddy with relief when the read-out at the reservation desk told him he
had a seat on the next orbital shuttle leaving in one quarter of a standard
hour.

           
On his way
to the shuttle dock, he passed the subspace communication area and thought it
might be a good idea to get a message off to Jo… just in case something
happened to him.

           
He entered
one of the large, transparent booths, closed the door behind him, and seated
himself at the console. The locus computer informed him that it was
midday
at the IBA offices on Ragna. Not that it
mattered: the subspace laser was the fastest means of communication yet developed,
but it was still a one-way affair. Delay between transmission and reception
could range from minutes to hours. And Easly was not waiting around for a reply
anyway. The message would be automatically recorded at IBA and Jo would replay
it at her convenience.

           
Easly noted
the vid receptor before him and realized he was in a deluxe booth that sent a
combined video and aural message. He shrugged and tapped in the IBA locus. All
he wanted to do was get the message off, then get up to the shuttle dock. The
extra expense was the least of his worries. A red light went on and he slipped
his credit ID disk into a slot. The disk popped out and the light turned green.
A two-minute transmission had begun.

           
JO WAS
SURPRISED to learn that she had a subspace call from Larry. He would only
contact her like this under emergency conditions, so she ordered an immediate
replay on her office vid screen. She started to smile as his face appeared,
then remembered that he could neither see nor hear her. His voice was stern:

           
“This is a
personal and confidential message for Josephine Finch – her eyes only. Please
record the following without monitoring.” He waited a few seconds, then his
tone softened.

           
“I’ll have
to make this quick, Jo, and more cryptic than my usual since I don’t know who
else will see this before it gets to you. First off, as to your close
relative’s end, it’s not at all what it seemed to be. The man you sent me here
to investigate may well be intimately involved. And there’s a wild card: a
psi-talent who… who…”

           
Jo saw
Larry’s face go slack as his voice faltered. He swayed in front of the screen,
fighting to keep his balance. Utterly helpless, Jo had to sit and watch in
horror as his eyes rolled up into his head and he sank from view.

           
Picture
transmission was not interrupted, however, and Jo anxiously watched the
passers-by, hoping that one of them would glance in and realize that something
was wrong with Larry. One man did stop and peer through the glass. He was
short, sallow, and balding. His hard little eyes seemed to rest on the spot
where Larry had fallen but he registered no surprise, made no move to help.

           
He merely
smiled and turned away.

           
ANDY TELLA
HAD A STRICT personal rule against taking blind assignments. He not only
insisted on knowing the immediate objective but the final one as well. This
attitude had ultimately led to his failure as a Defense Force trooper: he
hadn’t been able to muster the reflexive obedience required to function
successfully in a military unit.

           
He was
bending his rule somewhat for the current assignment, however. The immediate
objective was quite clear: secure the export contract for the Rakoan Leason
crystals; do it in accordance with Federation conventions on relations with
alien races… but do it. The ultimate objective remained vague, and that
bothered him.

           
His first
impulse had been to turn the assignment down. He knew nothing about dealing
with aliens, knew nothing about Leason crystals other than the fact that they
were used to line drive tubes and were extremely valuable, and had no desire to
increase his knowledge in either area. But the request had come from Josephine
Finch and she said the job was important and of a highly sensitive nature. It
pertained to the deBloise caper, but she wouldn’t say just how.

           
On faith
alone, he had accepted the assignment and was now a passenger aboard IBA’s own
interstellar cruiser as it slowed into orbit around a cloud-streaked,
brown-and-blue ball called Rako. The days on ship had been spent in encephalo-augmented
study of everything known about the planet and the humanoids who inhabited it.
Rako was a water-oxygen world circling an F3 star situated along the mutual
expansion border of the Terran Federation and the Tarkan Empire. It had been
discovered six and a half standard years previously by a Fairleigh Tubes
exploration team on a follow-up mission after spectrographic analysis of its
primary suggested the possibility of deposits of natural Leason crystals. They
found them – huge fields of them.

           
They found
something else, too. The planet was inhabited. They came upon evidence of
intelligent life long before they found the Rakoans, however. Dead cities –
dank, decaying, alloy-and-polymer corpses, some almost completely overgrown
with vegetation – dotted the planet, indicating a sophisticated level of
technology at one time. But no natives. It was initially suspected that a
plague or biological catastrophe had wiped them out and the members of the
exploration team breathed a sigh of relief – intelligent life forms on Rako
would complicate matters by preventing them from claiming the planet for
Fairleigh.

           
They
decided to take a look at one final derelict city that appeared less overgrown
than most of the others from the air. And that’s where they found the last of
the Rakoans. Besides their height – some of the adults were almost three meters
tall – the most outstanding feature of the otherwise humanoid mammals was their
thick, horny epidermal layer which was constantly flaking off. They had three
fingers and an opposing thumb, wide-set eyes, and a shapeless nose that drooped
over a lipless mouth equipped with short, flat, block-like teeth – a sure sign
of a vegetarian.

           
And they
were dying.

           
Not from
disease, but from a birth rate that produced one healthy child for every
twenty-three adults of the previous generation. The result was a very steep
geometric regression in the planet’s population – from an estimated five
billion to roughly thirty thousand, most of them gathered in this single city.

           
That was one
complication for the Fairleigh team. Then the Tarks arrived, claiming they had
discovered the planet previously and were only now getting around to mining it.
That was a transparent lie. The Tarks had long ago pirated the process for
synthesizing Leason crystals and would have immediately begun stripping Rako of
its natural deposits – with or without native permission – if they had been the
first there.

           
The
Federation stepped in then. It reminded the Tarkan Empire of the expansion
treaty it had signed with the Fed nearly two standard centuries before. One of
the major articles of the treaty outlined the accepted procedures for dealing
with worlds inhabited by intelligent creatures. Since Rako fell into this
class, the question of who discovered it first was irrelevant. The Empire and
Fairleigh Tubes would have to make competing offers for a trade contract with
the Rakoans, with the strong proviso that consent from the Rakoans be informed
consent.

           
The
Federation made it clear to the Tarks that it was quite willing to enter into
armed conflict to protect the interests of Fairleigh and the Rakoans.
Fairleigh, in turn, was advised to abide strictly by the conventions or Fed
protection would be withdrawn from the company – not only on Rako, but
throughout Occupied Space.

           
So the
Terrans, the Tarks, and the leader of the Rakoan remnant got down to dealing.
And that’s where the third complication arose.

           
The Rakoans
wanted more than money and technology in return for their crystals. They wanted
a future for their race.

           
“I suppose
you’re well on your way to a solution by now, eh, Doc?” Tella said, fully aware
that the answer would be negative.

           
He sipped a
cup of hot tea as he sat across a table from Avery Chornock, the head of the
research team on Rako. Chornock had disliked him on sight, and Tella sensed
this. But he chose to ignore it, preferring to play the part of the brash,
young, bonus-hungry company trouble shooter to the hilt. For that’s how
Chornock had labeled and pigeonholed him after reading his authorization from
the Fairleigh home office.

           
“We’re
nowhere near a solution, Mr. Company Man,” the lank, aging scientist rumbled.
“And under present conditions, it’s highly unlikely we’ll ever get near one.”

           
“What more
could you want? You’ve got a full research team of your own choice here; you’ve
got a subspace link to the
Derby
University
computer, which is packed with every available scrap of information on human
and non-human reproduction; and you’ve got an open-ended budget for any
hardware you should need.”

           
“Not
enough!”

           
Tella
considered this. If Dr. Avery Chornock, the number-one expert on alien
embryology and reproduction in the Federation, was at an impasse, what could he
contribute?

           
“What more
do you need?”

           
“I need to
be back in my lab at
Derby
U.
investigating live Rakoan subjects. We’ve done all the cadaver work we need and
I’ve exhausted the possibilities of field work on live subjects. I need to get
a few males and females back to my lab for definitive studies and then I might
– I said, might, mind you – be able to come up with something.”

           
“None of
the Rakoans will volunteer, I take it?”

           
Chornock
nodded. “That is correct.”

           
“Maybe
they’re scared of you.”

           
“No. These
people aren’t scared of much. It’s got something to do with their religion.” He
made a disgusted noise. “They’ll all be extinct in a few generations and all
because of some imbecilic superstition!”

           
One of the
lab technicians stuck his head through the door. His expression was anxious.

           
“Vim is
here.”

           
Chornock
twisted abruptly in his seat. “Are you trying to be funny or something?”

           
“Of course
not!” the technician replied in an offended tone.

           
“Well,
don’t just stand there. Send him in.”

           
The head
disappeared and a Tarkan male entered a few seconds later. Tella had seen holos
of them before, and had seen them on the vid, but this was the first time he
had ever viewed a Tark in the flesh. There was quite a difference: the doglike
face with its short snout and sharp yellow incisors was the same, as were the
stubby-fingered hands, the barrel chest and the short, dark, bristly fur; but
no vid recording or holo had ever managed to convey the sheer brute strength
that seemed to ripple under the creature’s exterior… nor the pungent odor that
surrounded it like a cloud. It stood close to two meters tall and weighed 100
kilos easily.

           
A second
Tark entered and stayed slightly behind and to the right of the first.

           
“Please
have a seat, Dr. Vim,” Chornock said, rising.

           
The Tark to
the rear made some growling noises and the first Tark replied in kind. Then the
second Tark spoke to Chornock in oddly guttural, but grammatically perfect
Instel.

           
“No time,
I’m afraid. I’ve been recalled.”

           
“Oh no!
This is terrible! Why?”

           
Again, the
growling exchange between the two aliens. It was now obvious to Tella that the
first Tark was Vim and that he didn’t speak the Terran interstellar language.
The translator turned back to Chornock.

           
“Too
expensive, it seems. My superiors have interpreted our lack of progress as a
sign that this race is doomed. They have decided to wait until its final
members die off. Then there will be no need to make arrangements to pay these
primitives for the crystals.”

           
“Do you
agree?”

           
“I do not
see much hope for a solution under these conditions,” the translator said after
another exchange. He paused while Vim said some more, then continued. “Before I
leave, may I say that it has been a privilege to share the same soil with you.
I would have much desired to work at your side in this matter, but that was
forbidden, as you know. I look forward to seeing more translations of your
excellent papers. Good-by.”

           
With that,
the pair of aliens turned and left.

           
Chornock
sat in silence for a few long moments. “A decent fellow, Vim. I know he’s
deeply disappointed.”

           
“Didn’t
show it,” Tella remarked.

           
“Tarks
cannot afford to show displeasure with their superiors’ decisions; from what I
understand, such behavior tends to shorten their lifespan – if you catch my
drift. But he’s disappointed. The Rakoans pose quite a challenge. We could
clone out new ones, of course, but their leader says that’s an unacceptable
solution. He wants true, natural biological reproduction reestablished on a
scale that will ensure the future of the race. I can’t blame him, but I’m
afraid I can’t help him either.”

           
“They’re
sterile?” Tella asked. Chornock had lost some of his hostility as he talked
about the Rakoans; he was almost likable.

           
“Sterility
would be much easier to deal with. No, there are plenty of active gametes in
both sexes – they just won’t combine as they should. But I’m sure Vim’s also
disappointed about leaving the bassa behind.”

           
“What’s
that?”

           
“A very
fascinating grain rust with curious antibiotic activity: when an extract of the
rust is ingested in sufficient quantity, it irreversibly incorporates itself
into the metabolic pathways of any and all the bacteria in the body within one
standard day.”

           
“So?”

           
“So, when
the extract is withdrawn, the bacteria die. The patient must be immediately
reinoculated with his own enteric organisms, but the Rakoans seem to have the
technique perfected. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence of resistance,
either.”

           
“What about
host metabolic pathways? Don’t they get changed?”

           
“Apparently
not – probably because the nucleoproteins of a larger animal don’t replicate at
anywhere near the rate of a bacterium’s, so there just isn’t time for the rust
extract to insinuate itself into the metabolism. But I suppose if one made a
steady diet of the rust…” He let the thought trail off.

           
Tella used
this opportunity to make his exit. He rose. “Well, time for me to get to work.”

           
“And just
what kind of work might that be, Mr. Company Man?” Chornock asked, his
surliness coming to the fore again.

           
“Convincing
these aliens to send a few volunteers back to
Derby
with you, for one thing. Who can take me to them?”

           
“I’ll let
Sergeant Prather take you over – just to make sure you don’t try anything
foolish. You’ll probably find him in the courtyard behind this building.”

           
PRATHER WAS
RUNNING his daily check on the a-g combat unit that stood in a sheltered corner
of the courtyard. It towered a full four meters in height. Once inside, a
seasoned trooper could clear a forest, level a city, or hide at the bottom of a
lake for a month. Prather was the Federation Defense Force representative on
Rako. A cruiserful of troopers waited in orbit. Just in case.