Part 15 (1/2)

Willing his fists to relax, Thssthfok set down the helmet and finished removing his armor. The opportunity to resist would come.

SIGMUND TWITCHED AS THE PRISONER removed his helmet. Those eyes! They were so human human. But by human standards the head was grotesque: misshapen, topped by a bony crest, totally hairless, and too large for its body. The skin looked leathery. The face had neither lips nor gums, only a hard, nearly flat, toothless beak.

Sigmund watched a holo, not the prisoner himself. Only a few fiber-optic cables penetrated into the improvised cell. There had scarcely been time, before the improvised restraint-field generator drained its battery, to empty the auxiliary cargo hold and run cables for monitoring. No active bugs, whose electronics might somehow be co-opted.

”Are you all right, Sigmund?” Kirsten asked. She shared the corridor with him, standing on the other side of the holo. The rest of the crew watched from their posts. ”You look upset.”

Sigmund s.h.i.+vered, in the grip of deja vu. He hoped his suspicions were misplaced. ”I'm not sure.”

Within his cell the prisoner began stripping off battle gear. Inside the pressure suit he had looked humanoid, but that was only a matter of overall shape. Briskly now, having taken to heart the gravity-field lesson, he worked his way out of the suit.

His chest, like his face, was flat and leathery. The more of that body emerged, the more clearly humanoid he was. He had joints where a human had them-only the prisoner's joints were grossly enlarged. His elbows were as large as softb.a.l.l.s. His hands were k.n.o.bby, his fingers like strings of walnuts. The fingers lacked nails but the tips suggested retractable talons.

Not he. Not she, either. It. The prisoner's crotch lacked s.e.x organs.

Sigmund's hands trembled. He willed them to stop.

”What's happening?” Baedeker demanded over the intercom. From the safety of his locked cabin, no doubt.

Only Sigmund did not believe any of them was safe. He managed not not to order Jeeves to open the cargo-hold hatch and vent the air. He needed to know what the prisoner could tell them. to order Jeeves to open the cargo-hold hatch and vent the air. He needed to know what the prisoner could tell them.

Sigmund had once seen such a creature, or at least its mummified remains. In an earlier life. In Was.h.i.+ngton, at the Smithsonian Inst.i.tute, of all places.

He took a deep breath. ”I know who our enemies are. It is not not good.” good.”

25.

”The intruder entered Sol system in 2125,” Sigmund said, although Earth's calendar had meaning only to Jeeves and himself. ”More than half a millennium ago.”

To be precise, a good 550 Earth years earlier. Only any claim to precision was laughable, given the gaping holes in Sigmund's and the AI's memories. By Sigmund's best approximation, the present Earth date was 2675.

From their customary seats around the relax-room table, Kirsten, Eric, and Baedeker waited for Sigmund to continue. Jeeves listened in while keeping watch on the prisoner, no longer pretending that he was on the bridge.

The Gw'oth partic.i.p.ated from their habitat. By choice, Sigmund wondered guiltily, or because the path was blocked? Without Er' o's help, Sigmund would never have captured the prisoner-and Sigmund had welded the Gw'oth into the cargo hold.

Did they know that they were trapped? He should know, but didn't. With equal delicacy, no one ever mentioned hiding sensors in the cargo hold, or finding and neutralizing them. It was a game of cat and mouse like Sigmund had played with Puppeteer agents back on New Terra. Aboard they know that they were trapped? He should know, but didn't. With equal delicacy, no one ever mentioned hiding sensors in the cargo hold, or finding and neutralizing them. It was a game of cat and mouse like Sigmund had played with Puppeteer agents back on New Terra. Aboard Don Quixote Don Quixote, the mice-that was to say, the Gw'oth-appeared to hold the advantage.

Sigmund clutched a drink bulb, more to steady his hands than from any interest in the coffee. So: 2125. Only the saga began long before that.

He started over. ”Humans aren't native to New Terra. You've always always known that. Well, it turns out humans aren't native to Earth, either.” known that. Well, it turns out humans aren't native to Earth, either.”

”What?” Kirsten and Eric shouted, nearly in unison. Baedeker's comment, orchestral and discordant, sounded equally surprised.

”The year 2125. That's when a few learned otherwise.” Sigmund's mind's eye offered up the mummified alien he had once seen. Far away. Long ago. ”Jeeves, what records do you have on the incident?”

”Very little, Sigmund, a.s.suming I'm correct to what incident you refer.” A hologram formed over the relax-room table, a museum display of a s.p.a.cesuit with great ball joints at the knees and elbows. The gear closely matched the suit worn by their captive.

Jeeves went on. ”As you say, in 2125 an alien s.h.i.+p appeared from deep s.p.a.ce. A ramscoop. Belter and United Nations authorities found one alien aboard: the pilot, long dead. His equipment was eventually donated to the Smithsonian. The body carried a pathogen-it killed some of those who intercepted the s.h.i.+p-and was destroyed. The authorities kept the derelict itself for study.”

”Thank you, Jeeves,” Sigmund said.

That, until well after Long Pa.s.s Long Pa.s.s and Jeeves departed Earth, had been the entire story for public consumption. There had been no choice but to tell the public something. The alien s.h.i.+p used magnetic monopoles; its approach had triggered monopole detectors across Sol system. and Jeeves departed Earth, had been the entire story for public consumption. There had been no choice but to tell the public something. The alien s.h.i.+p used magnetic monopoles; its approach had triggered monopole detectors across Sol system.

After centuries pa.s.sed without similar visitors, the authorities had relaxed a bit. They admitted they had quarantined the alien corpse, not incinerated it. The Smithsonian exhibit now included the dead pilot's body.

Even in Sigmund's day, that was all Sol system's public knew, but he wasn't from the clueless majority. He had been in the Amalgamated Regional Militia, the UN's una.s.sumingly named police/military/intelligence organization. Kirsten and Eric knew that bit about Sigmund's past-and that he was loath to discuss his former life. He had told even Penny little more than that. It dredged up too many painful memories.

He had to discuss it now.

Sigmund hadn't been just any ARM, but a high-ranking member of the Bureau of Alien Affairs. That was how he wound up spending so much of his time stalking Puppeteers. That was why Nessus had stalked him him.

And Alien Affairs had had extensive files, still heavily cla.s.sified, about the 2125 incident.

Sigmund remembered checking out the archives when his clearance finally allowed him to. Interesting stuff, but-so it had seemed-ancient history. Very Very ancient. ancient.

He wished now he had studied them more thoroughly.

Sigmund said, ”About three million years ago, a generation s.h.i.+p left a planet somewhere near the galactic core. That vessel traveled deep into one of the spiral arms before the crew, from a species calling itself the Pak, found a world to colonize. Only their colony failed.”

He brought up a second holo, of the improvised cell in which their prisoner moved ceaselessly. The match between their captive and the museum's s.p.a.cesuit was undeniable.

A pacing human tends to retrace his steps, but the prisoner slightly altered its route with every circuit. Each lap would offer a slightly different perspective on its cell, the opportunity to glimpse something overlooked on previous perambulations.

So what, in their haste to empty the room, had Sigmund and Eric carelessly left behind? (Baedeker had been too terrified to help. Kirsten, her arm just put back into its socket, had been unable to help. After hours in the autodoc she looked much better.) If anything at all had been overlooked, this prisoner would find it. And use it against them.

”And Earth has records of ancient Pak,” Kirsten said dubiously.

Paleontology was surely obscure to her, if she could even articulate the concept. All life on New Terra had a recent and well-doc.u.mented beginning. Whether of Hearth or Earth origin, everything everything had been transplanted by Puppeteers. The primitive life that had gone before, source of the oxygen-rich atmosphere that had made the world ripe for exploitation, had perished in the interstellar deep freeze while Puppeteers moved the future Nature Preserve Four to their Fleet. had been transplanted by Puppeteers. The primitive life that had gone before, source of the oxygen-rich atmosphere that had made the world ripe for exploitation, had perished in the interstellar deep freeze while Puppeteers moved the future Nature Preserve Four to their Fleet.

Puppeteers not only lacked curiosity, they discouraged it. They cared nothing about the primordial ecosystem they had obliterated, nor did they allow their servants to waste time on anything as useless as the dead past. New Terran scientists were as curious as anyone Sigmund had ever met. Still, since independence, concerns far more urgent than ocean-floor microfossils from pre-NP4 days had occupied them. Like keeping the present ecology healthy, despite the disappearance of tides....

Yearning for Penelope-her smile, her grace, her touch, everything-burst out of Sigmund. Burst over Sigmund. They had been apart so so long. long.

He struggled to set aside the hunger, to focus. For Penny more than anyone.

Fossils. Ecology. Pak. Something nagged at Sigmund. ”Nature, red in tooth and claw,” he muttered.

Kirsten eyed him strangely. Baedeker shuddered.

Where was that phrase from? Sigmund couldn't remember, whether from Nessus' meddling or the pa.s.sage of time.