Guardian of Night (12 page)

Transel had realized the Poet was aboard the
Powers of Heaven
several
semanatos
ago through an off-channel beta sweep, and it had only been a matter of time after that. The DDCM knew Transel was very good at his job. This was not a boast, but a clearly demonstrable fact. It was one of the reasons he normally got along with his captains, in his estimation. What was the use of dominance display when everyone with any sense understood the reality of the situation? Transel had even come to like Captain Malako, his current charge. He was smart and seemed utterly loyal.

But Malako
had
been harboring a traitor on his vessel. And that was intolerable. It was, however, a problem Transel would soon dispose of permanently.

Regulation of feeling produces regulation of thought. Regulation of feeling is accomplished by the surfaction of the flesh.

It had cost him some effort to arrive at a solution. He’d donned the hairshirt
cilice
under his uniform with its surfactant, skin-dissolving gels. Never fear the use of the Garment of Ongoing Surfaction and Revelation, his Master Interrogator had taught him during his training. Surfaction leads to pain. Pain first and always is the precursor to knowledge. This is the foundation to Regulation.

The Master Interrogator had been right. Once the rash had set in and burned a constant ache into his shoulders, the answer
had
come to him.

The answer was words.

The Poet had been careful, so very careful, to time his broadcasts randomly, to make them seem to originate from different portions of the vessel or from outside the craft entirely. His mastery of the technology was astounding, given what Transel now knew of him—so much so that he suspected external aid or perhaps an onboard accomplice. But the Poet was a word-shaper and word-maker, and he’d been unable or unwilling to clean up his first-draft efforts. It was the hubris of creators everywhere, and one of the reasons Regulation must always be vigilant for the excesses of profligate producers. Were it not for the calming influence of parasitism, the galaxy might soon be overrun with words, ideas, out-of-control technology, all competing endlessly for dominance. Endless war, endless chaos and destruction. Dark age after dark age.

This truth made Transel shudder.

Regulation is the solution. Regulation proceeds through disambiguation. Pain is the primary tool of disambiguation.
His Master Interrogator had made sure he’d understood by firsthand experience the pathways to the soul that pain afforded. She had beaten justice into him. Beaten him until his instinct for Regulation was second nature.

Transel was good at his job because it was a
calling
. He knew some on the vessel thought of him as a bit overbearing, doctrinaire—and he’d even sniffed the fragrance of “fanatic” emitted quietly behind his back. He was none of those things. He was merely a faithful instrument in the hands of universal justice. Faithful—and implacable when he had his scent.

He’d simply analyzed the Poet’s verse. Teased ester from ester, pulled the word trains apart and unpacked them transport pod by transport pod. And what had he come up with? Ethyl maltol. Furanol. Methyl maltol. To a human these odors would be part of the makeup of the scents of currants, blueberries, and wild plums. So he’d set up detectors, noted concentrations over a period of
tagatos.
Followed the trail. And trapped Second Lieutenant Mountain-Lichen-Scourer Gitaclaber in the web of his own poetry.

Now came the reckoning. As first political officer of the attack vessel
Powers of Heaven,
the enforcement provision was his call. He could apprehend Gitaclaber for further questioning. Such questioning could, and would be expected to, include necessary physical inducements to cooperation via the application of surfaction and chemical stimulants. On the other hand, he would be perfectly within his duty and right to execute the Poet outright. The choice was Transel’s.

Transel had not entirely decided upon a course of action as he made his way to confront the Poet. Gitaclaber was in the midst of one of his live broadcasts spewing his Mutualist-inspired nonsense on symbiosis, love, the beauty of lichens (why were poets always going on about lichens?), and who knew what else bilge.

One note blown from a stone horn

resounds through the burnt

becoming stone vegetation.

This hard, bright now

What a pile of anal eliminations! A mind spewing . . . gibberish, yes—but dangerous gibberish! As if one could sit back and observe the universe, admire the universe, and heed no call to action. Heresy and madness.

Mutualism!

The transmitter was on the other side of the vessel, but now he had fixed Gitaclaber’s actual location: a little-used janitorial area near the Q drives.

Transel paused on the other side of the janitorial storage-area door and confirmed Gitaclaber’s presence with an atmospheric sensor. And this was where he, Transel, made an error. He immediately acknowledged as much. It was a minor error, but he’d violated best practice nonetheless and would report himself in due time. He hadn’t set his detector to vibrate.

The sensor let out a pungent ammonia alert odor when it located the chemistry it was set to find. And within seconds of Transel’s detector going off, the Poet began to furiously spray more filth out over the beta!

He’d smelled Transel, and he was trying to finish what would be his last broadcast.

It wasn’t going to happen. Not on Transel’s watch!

He made his decision on the Poet’s fate then and there.

He was
not
going to apprehend him. No, he was going to
stop
this excess, this overproduction, this glut of words, once and for all.

The universe is a profligate waste of resources, his Master Interrogator had told him. Regulation arises from the universe’s need to contain itself, to curb its own excess. This is our sacred task. We are the trimmers. The shapers. And, if need be, the cutters. The hewers of species. We are justice embodied.

We are the Executors of Regulation.

USX
Chief Seattle

“He’s talking to
us
. Directly to us. He’s asking for help.”

SIGINT Petty Officer Japps knew from the visual display that this Poet broadcast was very different from the others.

“KETCH and LARK, are you getting the graph pattern here?” she asked.

KETCH’s geist flashed into blue-green being beside the XO. LARK’s was already manifested across the room. KETCH appeared as a bland, vaguely handsome young guy—shaded green and partially transparent, of course—in the uniform of an exper first class.

“Not sure, Petty Officer Japps,” he said. “The articulation is definitely not the sceeve patois used in the other intercepts. Perhaps it is a variant.”

Japps laughed. “Totally. He’s using his own dialect, I’ll bet, instead of sceeve standard. Which would fit with what I’m guessing is happening.”

“What are you talking about, Japps?” said Martinez, still in SIGINT after Japps had called her down from the bridge.

“Give me a sec, XO.” Japps menued up a console, began to rapidly make adjustments. “Adapting to this dialect’s dynamic range,” she mumbled to herself. “Want to catch all of this.”

KETCH understood immediately what she was doing and began following her lead while making adjustments to his own algorithmic workings.

Bink.

After a short wait, KETCH began to speak his rough translation. He didn’t use his own voice, which was something of a tenor, but provided a baritone with a definite Chicago-Midwestern nasality to Japps’s ears. Unfortunately, that familiar element didn’t make what the voice said any less chilling.

“Attention humans. Attention humans. This one knows you are there. Hopes. Attention, for the sake of your species. Much has already been given to you, but not all. Not all. A wrong element, a killer of poets, has found this one out. There is not time to explain, but this one makes the attempt to communicate final coordinates, complete information transfer—”

“There is a break in what follows. Transmission drop-out. Or perhaps the Poet has ceased transmitting without realizing this fact. Eight point four seconds in length, and then the transmission resumes.” KETCH returned to the Poet-analog voice he’d concocted.

“Our sun is dead. The stars blink broken code.”

Japps recognized this immediately as a line from one of the Poet’s own pieces (or by some unidentified someone, if the Poet were not the actual author). It was a poem he’d read time and again during several transmissions.

KETCH continued in his Chicagoan voice. “As previously stated, a visitor comes, comes to your system. Approaching, approaching. A visitor, visitors, vessels speaking Mutualism. This visitor offers trust. Alliance. Opportunity, survival, victory in struggle. Great danger, also. Peril closely follows. This one will—”

Silence. Crackle of stray radiation interference. KETCH sounded like an angry snake for a moment expressing it. Then the Poet’s voice spoke once more.

“—resistance to capture counterproductive at present. Will attempt to abandon this vessel. If this one apprehended, will attempt evoke immediate execution. Produce ejection. This one discard, discarded. N-space. Find this one. Final key delivery, this one. Rendezvous coordinates. Key to all. Key. Request humans attempt contact. Request, request of you. Key. Rescue this one. Key. Find this one. So much remains. Cannot convey. Attempt—”

Another beep, and the translation cut out.

“God in heaven,” said the XO. “What the fuck?”

Japps checked her readout. “That’s it, XO. The conditioner’s still turned on, but there’s nothing on the carrier.”

The XO hadn’t heard her. She was already in furious conversation with the bridge. After a moment, she stopped talking to what was, to Japps, the empty air, and turned back to face her.

“Sceeve can survive in the vacuum,” Japps said. “Sounds like they’ve thrown him out. Or could be some kind of trick.”

“Captain doesn’t care,” Martinez replied. She put a hand on Japps’s shoulder, smiled a big smile. “He wants you down in ET7. Wants you to requisition a lifepod and go after that motherfucking sceeve poet.”

Holy shit in a can.

“Me? On an extravehicular?”

“You’re the closest thing we’ve got to a sceeve expert aboard this godforsaken craft, Japps. So tag you’re it. Now get your ass in gear, Japps.”

“I-I need—”

But the XO was rushing her to the SIGINT portal.

“Suit up at the pod,” said the XO. “I’ll be sure there’s a tank of heliox waiting for you at the tube entrance in case—well, take it with you. Maybe it’ll be useful to have some sceeve atmosphere along. And, hell, I’ll throw in what we know about their rations. Tank of glucose goo. The pod has grub for you.”

“You talk like I’m not coming back for a while.”

“Oh, you’re coming back. Just taking care of a few contingencies. Now get going.”

This was happening too fast. EV in a lifepod? Japps felt her head spinning. She was an exper-tech, not a spacer. Sure, she’d had the training. All expers had. But to actually do it—

“You know I don’t speak sceeve, ma’am,” Japps said. “Not really.”

“You’re what we’ve got. Anyway, like I said, Japps: captain’s orders. Go!”

Japps shook her head to clear it, turned down the corridor toward the exteriorizing tube banks. Then a thought. The briefest pause. For a moment she gazed at the graphic parameters of the Poet’s message on her display.

“I hate those motherfuckers,” Japps mumbled—to no one in particular. “Every one of them. For what they did.” The XO was already turned back to SIGINT, was back into the chroma, talking to another underling about clearing the lifepod’s launch path.

“Poet’s no different,” she mumbled. “A sceeve is a sceeve.”

But her thoughts made a lie of her words. As Japps headed for Exterior Tube 7, her favorite of the Poet’s outpourings echoed through her mind. She’d gone over it in her frequency analysis many times but until now hadn’t realized she’d committed the lines themselves to memory.

Our sun is dead. The stars blink broken code.

I have traveling to do

away from this endless necessity to feed.

SEVEN

31 December 2075

Dallas

Presidential War Room

“Madame President, the issue is not with the enemy intelligence itself, but the idiotic
conclusions
that have been drawn. That person, that
creep,
knows nothing about space or the Extry,” said Tillich. The admiral pointed a finger, seemingly shaking with rage, straight at Leher. “His so-called Xeno Department has filled up with astrologers and phrenologists, to tell the truth. Service malcontents. This sort of thing should be a State Department concern. And, I assure you, the State Department would say that Lieutenant Commander Leher was
full of shit
!”

Leher stiffened, tugged at his beard. He wished he were back safe in his nest in the New Pentagon instead of here, getting torn a new asshole by a world-expert asshole tearer. But he had a simple job to do and was determined to see it through. That job was to tell the truth.

I’m only the messenger, for Christ’s sake! The weatherman. It’s not like I can control what the frigging sceeve are up to.

As if Tillich understood Leher’s objection to the treatment he was dealing out, the admiral smiled sadly and shook his head with disgust. “Now, now. I don’t want to impute too much intelligence to this young officer’s recommendations. He’s an errand boy for his two masters”—Tillich shifted his pointing finger like a turret gun to Secretary of the Extry Huntley Camaroon and his number two, Chief of Extry Operations Maggie Chen—“who are clearly in bed with the military contractors.”

Tillich was known to despise all contractors at all times.

“These actors have made themselves extensions of companies and individuals whose sole purpose in life is to gouge the American people and the world, and the sooner you recognize that fact, the sooner we can all deal with the current situation and nationalize war production.”