A Show of Force (23 page)

“I’m sure that Deliza will miss the stimulating conversations the two of you have shared on so many occasions,” Casimir added, a knowing smile on his face.

Deliza gave her father a look, as if to tell him not to speak any longer. “Yes, I have enjoyed our scientific musings a great deal,” she said. “They will indeed be missed.”

Casimir had to fight to keep himself from laughing out loud. “Well,” he said, taking a deep breath and standing. “If you will excuse me, I must tuck Nalaya in for the night. A good evening to you, Mister Hiller. Deliza.”

“Father,” Deliza replied tersely.

The room was silent until Casimir departed and the door had closed behind him.

“Why did you not tell him?” Yanni asked in a whisper.

“That I’m in love with you? I’m not yet of age,” Deliza reminded him.

“Actually, I was talking about you going back to Earth with me, as a scientific consultant, but…”

“He would have seen right through that, Yanni.”

“So what?”

“If he knew that we were—you know—he would kill you!”

“He’s not going to kill me, Deliza. He’s not that kind of man.”

“That’s what I thought before I found out he was the leader of the Karuzari.”

“Deliza, he’s your father. Besides, you’re a grown woman. On my world, you’d be old enough to marry…”

“This isn’t your world, Yanni. It isn’t even mine, not really.”

“It’s alright, Deliza,” Yanni said, rising from his seat and moving around the table to sit next to her. “There is still plenty of time. The translations will take a few more days. Besides, it’s not like they have a jump shuttle on standby waiting to whisk us away. Transportation will have to be arranged…”

“I just don’t want to lose you, Yanni.”

“You’re not going to lose me, Deliza. I promise. I can stay here if I have to. They don’t need me to go back to Earth with the cores. Perhaps we can convince them to send the copies back, and keep the original cores here, on Takara. Then I can remain here as their caretaker.”

Deliza looked at Yanni. “You’d do that? You’d stay here, with me?”

Yanni moved in closer to Deliza, putting his arm around her. “Of course I would. You know that.”

* * *

Jessica reached the bottom of the stairs that led from the guest suite down to Ellyus Barton’s real estate office. He had told her that he usually worked for an hour or two after the office had closed and everyone had gone home for the day, so she figured it might be a good time to talk more with him. Although she still did not trust him, she thought she might try to glean some more information about the Jung in the Tau Ceti system, as well as the state of mind of the citizens. Were they happy? Did they hate the Jung? Did they love them? More importantly, would they fight alongside them if the Jung were attacked?

She opened the door slowly and stepped into the dark offices. The corridor lights were off, and the only light came from Ellyus’s office at the far end of the corridor. She glanced toward the lobby and saw that it was dark as well.

Jessica went down the corridor to Ellyus’s office. As she approached, she could see him sitting at his desk, turned to his left, facing the side wall. She approached, taking care to make enough noise that she did not appear to be sneaking up on him.

She got to the doorway to his office, and tapped lightly on the door frame. “Mister Barton?” she called, but got no response. His attention seemed to be focused on his computer screen. “Ellyus?” Still no response. He also didn’t appear to be moving. “Ellyus?” she said, this time a bit louder. Still, there was no response. She looked behind her, back down the corridor, then entered the office and closed the door rather hard, again hoping to get his attention. She moved across the office to her right, in front of Ellyus’s desk. As she reached the point where she could see him in full profile, she realized he was not staring at his computer screen. He was staring straight ahead, at the wall.

“Ellyus?”

He was breathing, and his skin color appeared normal, yet he sat there, unmoving, as if in a catatonic state, unblinking, staring at a blank wall. She reached out and waved her hand in front of his face.

Ellyus blinked, then turned his eyes toward Jessica, becoming startled by her sudden presence. “Oh, Jesus,” he exclaimed. “When did you come in?”

“You didn’t hear me calling you?” Jessica asked.

“It must have happened again,” Ellyus mumbled, rubbing his face with his hands.

“What happened again?”

“I don’t know what
it
is,” he explained. “My kids used to call it ‘the stares’. My wife called it ‘switching off’.”

“So, this has happened to you before?”

“Yes.” Ellyus stood up and moved to the small refrigerator in the corner of his office and pulled out a bottle of water. “It used to happen a lot, maybe once or twice per week.”

“How long has it been going on?”

“I’m not really sure. For as long as I’ve been married, at least. It may have happened before then, but since I was usually alone, no one told me it was happening.”

“You mean, you don’t
realize
it’s happening to you?” Jessica asked, taking a seat.

Ellyus finished taking a long drink from the bottle, then sat down again. “Never. When my wife first told me about it, I figured I was just deep in thought, and she hadn’t really tried to get my attention as vocally as she had claimed.”

“Did you ever see a doctor about it?”

“I told my wife I did. I told her they couldn’t determine the cause. I don’t drive because of it.”

“Why didn’t you see a doctor about it?”

“I didn’t want to blow my cover. When I first arrived on Kohara, there was some kind of illness going around. Like a flu or something. It was something that the Jung had brought with them. Everyone on Kohara was being vaccinated, including me. I had a bad reaction to the vaccine and spent several days in the hospital. They found some abnormalities in my blood. I was lacking something that everyone else around here had, some enzyme or something that comes from eating food grown here. I left before they could ask more questions. I’ve stayed away from doctors ever since.”

“Do you think it was caused by the vaccine?” Jessica wondered.

“That’s what I thought at first as well, but I’ve spent thousands of hours on the networks, and I’ve never found anything like this as a result of the vaccine. Not even close. Personally, I think it’s a side effect from the five years I spent in DMS on the way here.”

“We don’t call it ‘decreased metabolic state’ anymore,” she told him. “The common vernacular is ‘cold-sleep’ or ‘SA’. Of course, we don’t use that technology at all these days.”

“You don’t?” Ellyus seemed surprised. “Then how did you get here?”

“Let’s just say that our ships are
much
faster now.”

“Amazing.” Ellyus looked at her for a moment. “So much must have changed on Earth during my absence. It’s hard to comprehend it.”

“You don’t know the half of it, Ellyus.”

“I know you don’t trust me, Jennifer, and I do not expect you to, but I do hope that someday, when whatever is about to happen is over, you will tell me more about Earth.”

Jessica laughed. “What makes you think something is ‘about’ to happen?” she asked.

“Why else would you and your friend be here? And why would you have a deadline?”

“A logical conclusion, I guess.” She looked at him a moment. “So, you really don’t have any idea when it happens to you?”

“None.”

“No headaches, no dizziness, not even dry eyes from staring?”

“None. Actually, the times that my wife has been there to witness the event, I have even felt somewhat refreshed, as if I had taken a nice nap. I think that’s where she came up with the description, ‘switching off’.”

“And how long do these events last?” Jessica wondered.

“According to my wife, only a few minutes. Odd thing is, I haven’t had one in, I don’t know, maybe twenty years? I honestly thought whatever it was had cured itself, until now.”

“Well, maybe after whatever is ‘about to happen’, as you put it, is over, you’ll be able to see someone about it. So, any progress on the files?” she asked, changing the subject.

“Not yet, I’m afraid. I told my son to take extra precautions this time, so it may take him a bit longer than usual.”

“That doesn’t make him suspicious?”

“Not in the slightest,” Ellyus replied. “He knows I handle some very big clients… clients that prefer to remain discrete, for market reasons.”

Jessica leaned back, looking at Ellyus for a moment, thinking.

“Something wrong?”

“It doesn’t worry you, that you’re putting your son in harm’s way without his consent?”

“I’m not,” Ellyus insisted. “He has no knowledge of my true identity, nor my mission here on Earth.”

“Still, guilt by association, and all that.”

“Not with the Jung,” Ellyus insisted. “They don’t need to. They have the ability to tell, beyond a shadow of doubt, whether or not you are telling the truth. If he was arrested with those documents, and the Jung determined the true nature of those documents, he would claim to know nothing, and they would believe him.”

“Still, it must be hard to keep such secrets from them.”

“Not at all,” Ellyus assured her. “It is what it is. I chose this life. It did not chose me. Furthermore, I technically have not yet committed any crimes against the Jung or Koharan society, as all I have done is to collect information. I have yet to pass it on to an enemy of this world.”

“But, you are about to,” Jessica reminded him.

“Indeed I am,” he admitted. “So you can see how I might have a vested interest in making sure that whatever is about to happen, is as successful as possible… for my family’s benefit more so than for my own.”

“Life is that bad here?” Jessica wondered. “Because to be honest, compared to other Jung worlds I’ve seen, this one isn’t bad at all.”

“You’ve seen other Jung-occupied worlds?” Ellyus wondered, looking genuinely surprised.

“I was referring to Earth, when it was occupied by the Jung.”

“Of course,” Ellyus said. “Actually, the Jung occupation of the Tau Ceti system was not all that bloody. I did not experience it firsthand, as it occurred about a year before my arrival. You see, the Cetians had no significant military forces. In fact, although all three worlds had been in contact with one another for nearly a century, they had only recently developed an interplanetary space program. The Jung actually brought all three Cetian worlds together again, for the first time in nearly a thousand years. Now, people can travel between the Cetian worlds with relative ease. Not everyone, mind you, but most. It is a bit on the expensive side. However, the trade opportunities that it has opened up have been quite lucrative for all worlds.”

“Then, the Jung are welcome here?”

“I don’t know that I would go as far as to call them ‘welcomed’, but the number who oppose the continued occupation are definitely in the minority, as best I can tell. It’s not like people talk about it openly. After all, Jung cameras and listening devices
are
everywhere.”

“Everywhere?”

“Well, in most public places, anyway.”

“And
that
doesn’t bother the Koharans?” Jessica wondered.

“You’d be surprised what people are willing to put up with, in exchange for peace and security,” Ellyus told her.

“Yeah, I’ve heard that before.”

* * *

Guards dressed in blue jackets with scarlet trim patrolled the grounds in pairs. Pitora was absent from the skies this night, and Hermes and Arkana were both too low on the horizon at this later hour to provide significant light. Because of this, the guards walked more slowly than usual, taking extra time to examine the shadows in greater detail. On occasion, they paused to shine their portable lights into areas not properly illuminated by the lantern posts scattered throughout the ornate and meticulously landscaped compound. In addition, the fog that normally rolled in from the nearby ocean had reached inland earlier than usual. The effect was a dark, mysterious scene that was both magical and frightening. The combination was what the locals referred to as ‘
tal-sharet
’.

Two guards passed their counterparts patrolling in the opposite direction, nodding recognition but exchanging no further information, as per protocol. Each team continued on their designated patrol route along the garden pathways that wound their way around and between the buildings. As each team turned their respective corners and fell out of view from one another, they stopped for a moment to examine the new area revealed to them, also according to protocol.

Two tiny projectiles silently pierced the fog, causing it to swirl for a moment, after which the two guards dropped to their knees, their heads exploding to their sides and their bodies toppling forward to the ground.

Around the opposite corner, in the direction from which the first guards had come, the fog again swirled as fast-moving projectiles silently found the other pair of guards, dropping them to the ground in similarly gruesome fashion. As puddles of dark red blood began to spread out from the heads onto the pavement, hooded men clad in flat-black combat attire floated down from above, landing gently on the grass nearby. The men began to scurry toward the fallen guards as the black parachutes that had carried them down automatically detached from their backs and fell away behind them. The first two men who landed jumped over the fallen guards and moved quickly down the path toward the next building. The next two grabbed the fallen guards and dragged them into nearby bushes, then joined the first two men to enter the building.

All about the compound a similar scene played out in near-simultaneous fashion. In the blink of an eye, four pairs of guards, eight highly trained men, had been struck down in complete silence. All without causing any alarm to those inside. To anyone who might step out into the garden from some fresh air a minute later, it would appear to be just another night filled with the
tal-sharet
.