Convergent Series (11 page)

Rebka nodded. One question was answered. Darya Lang had been joined on Opal by more visitors from outside the Phemus Circle. But who were they?

"Better check the arrival manifests," he said softly to Perry. "See what we've got."

"Do that if you wish." Graves stared at him; the pale blue eyes seemed to see right into Rebka's head. The councilor flopped onto a chair of yellow cane and plaited reeds, sniffed, and went on. "But you do not need to check. I can assure you that Darya Lang of the Fourth Alliance has been joined on Opal by Atvar H'sial and J'merlia of the Cecropia Federation. After I met them I examined the backgrounds of all three. They are what they claim to be."

Rebka did the calculation and started to open his mouth, but Perry was well ahead of him.

"That's impossible!"

Graves stared, and the busy eyebrows twitched.

"One day, you said, since your arrival here," Perry said. "If you sent an inquiry through the nearest Bose Network point as soon as you got here, and it was forwarded through the Nodes and answered
instantly,
the total turnaround time can't be less than a full standard day—three Opal days. I know, I've tried it often enough."

Perry's quite right, Rebka thought. And he's quicker than I
realized. But he's making a tactical error. Council members don't lie,
and it's asking for trouble to accuse them of it.

But Graves was smiling for the first time since they had met. "Commander Perry, I am grateful to you. You have simplified my next task." He pulled a spotless white cloth from his pocket, wiped the damp top of his hairless head with it, and tapped his massive and bulging brow.

"How can I know that, you ask. I am Julius Graves, as I said. But in a sense I am also Steven Graves." He leaned back in the chair, closed his eyes for a few seconds, blinked, and went on. "When I was
invited to join the Council,
it was explained to me that I would need
to know the history, biology,
and psychology of every intelligent and
potentially intelligent
species in the whole spiral arm. That data
volume exceeds the capacity
of any human memory.

"I was offered a choice: I could accept an inorganic high-density memory implant—cumbersome and heavy enough that my head and neck would need a permanent brace. That is preferred by Council
members from
the Zardalu Communion. Or I could develop an interior mnemonic twin, a second pair of cerebral hemispheres grown from my own brain tissue and used solely for memory storage and recall. That would fit inside my own skull, posterior to my cerebral cortex, with minimal cranial expansion.

"I chose the second solution. I was warned that because the new hemispheres were an integral part of me, their efficiency for storage and recall would be affected by my own physical condition—how tired I was, or whether I had been taking stimulants of any kind. I tell you this so that you will not think I am antisocial if I refuse a drink, or that I am a valetudinarian, excessively concerned with my own health. I have to be careful about rest and recreational stimulants, or the mnemonic interface is impaired. And Steven does not like that."

He smiled, and conflicting expressions chased themselves across his face, just as a sudden howl of wind hit the low
building from outside. The fiber walls shivered. "For what I was
not
told, you see,"
he went on, "was that my interior mnemonic
twin might develop
consciousness—
self-awareness. It happened.
As I said, I am Julius Graves, but I am also Steven Graves. He is the source of my information on Darya Lang
and on the Cecropian, Atvar H'sial. Now. Can
we proceed to other business?"

"Can Steven talk?" Rebka asked. Max Perry seemed to be in shock. One member of the Council poking around in one's affairs was bad enough—now they had
two
of them. And was Julius Graves always in charge? From the changing expressions on his face, a continuous battle could be going on inside.

Graves shook his head. "Steven cannot talk. He also cannot feel, see, touch, or hear, except as I send my own sensory inputs to mnemonic storage through an added corpus callosum.

But Steven can
think
—better, he insists, than I can.
As he tells me, he has more
time for it. And he sends signals back to me, his own thoughts in the
form of
returning memories.
I can
translate those, well
enough so that most people would believe Steven to be speaking directly. For instance." He was silent for a few moments. When he spoke his voice was noticeably younger and more lively. "
Hi. Glad to be here on Opal. No one said that the weather here would be so lousy, but one nice thing about being where I am, you don't get wet when it rains."
The voice returned to its hollow, gravelly tone. "My apologies. Steven has a fondness for weak jokes and an appalling sense of humor. I fail to control both, but I do try to screen them. And I confess that I also allow myself to become too dependent on Steven's knowledge. For instance, he holds most of our local
information about conditions on this planet, while my own learning is sadly deficient. I deplore my own laziness.

"But now, may we continue with business? I am here on Dobelle regarding a matter for which humor is not at all appropriate."

"Murder," Perry muttered after a long pause. The height of the storm was almost there, and as the sounds of the wind increased he had become more clearly uncomfortable. Unable to sit still, he was prowling in front of the window, looking out at the threshing ferns and tall grasses, or up at racing clouds ruddy with the rusty
light of Amaranth.

"Murder," he repeated. "Multiple murder. That's what your request to visit Opal said."

"It did. But only because I was reluctant to send word of a more serious charge over the Bose Network." Julius Graves was surely not joking now. "A more accurate word is
genocide.
I will moderate that, if you prefer, to
suspected
genocide."

He stared quietly around him, while new rain lashed the walls and roof. The other two men had frozen, Max Perry motionless in front of the window, Hans Rebka on the edge of his seat.

"Genocide. Suspected genocide. Is there a significant difference?" Rebka asked at last.

"Not from some points of view." The full lips twitched and trembled. "There is no statute of limitations, in time or space, for the
investigation
of either. But we have only circumstantial evidence, without proof and without confession. It is my task to seek those. I
intend to find them here on Opal."

Graves reached into the blue-trimmed pocket of his jacket and
produced two image cubes.
"Improbable as it seems, these are the
accused criminals, Elena and Geni Carmel, twenty-one standard
years old, born and raised on Shasta. And, as you can see, identical
twin sisters."

He held
the cubes out to the other two men. Rebka saw only two young women, deeply tanned, big-eyed, and pleasant looking, dressed in matching outfits of russet green and soft brown. But Max Perry apparently saw something else in those pictures. He gave a
gasp of recognition, leaned
forward, and grabbed the data cubes. He
stared into
them. It was twenty
more seconds before the tension drained from him and he looked up.

Julius Graves was watching both men. Rebka was suddenly convinced that those misty blue eyes missed nothing. The impression of quaintness and eccentricity might be genuine
,
or it might be a pose—but underneath it lay a strange and powerful intelligence. And fools did not become Council members.

"You seem to know these girls, Commander Perry," Graves said. "Do you? If you have ever met them, it is vital that I know when
and where."

Perry shook his
head. His face was even paler than usual. "No. It's just that for a few moments, when I first saw the cubes, I thought
they were
. . . someone else. Someone I knew a long time ago."

"Someone?" Graves waited, and then, when it
was clear that Perry
would say nothing
more, he went on. "I propose to keep nothing from you, and I strongly urge you to keep nothing from me. With
your permission, I
will allow Steven to tell the rest of this. He has
the most complete information, and I find it difficult to speak without
emotion clouding my statements."

The twitching ceased. Graves's face steadied and took on the look of a younger and happier man. "Okay, here goes," he said. "The sad story of Elena and Geni Carmel. Shasta's a rich world, and it lets its youth do pretty much what they like. When the Carmel twins hit twenty-one they were given a little space tourer, the
Summer Dreamboat
, as a present. But instead of just hopping around
their local system, the way most kids do, they talked their family into sticking a Bose Drive in the ship. Then they set off on a real travel binge: nine worlds of the Fourth Alliance, three of the Zardalu Communion. On their final planet, they decided to see life 'in the rough'—that's how their 'grams home put it. It meant they wanted to live in comfort but observe a backward world.

"They landed on Pavonis Four and set up a luxury tent. Pav Four's a poor, marshy planet of the Communion. Poor now, I
should say—rich enough before human developers had a go at it. Along the way, a native amphibian species know as the Bercia were a nuisance. They were almost wiped out, but by that time the planet was picked clean and the developers left. The surviving members of the Bercia—what few there were—were given the probationary status of a potential intelligence. They were protected. At last."

Graves paused. His face became a changing mask of expressions. It was no longer obvious whether it was Julius or Steven who was speaking.

"Were the Bercia intelligent?" he said softly. "The universe will never know. What we do know is that the Bercia are now
extinct.
Their last two lodges were wiped out two months ago . . . by Elena and Geni Carmel."

"But not by design, surely?" Perry was still clutching the data cubes and staring down at them. "It must have been an accident."

"It may well have been." From the serious manner, Julius Graves was again in charge. "We do not know, because when it happened the Carmel twins did not stay to explain. Inexplicably, they fled. They continued to flee, until one week ago we closed the Bose Network to them. And now they can flee no farther."

The storm had arrived in full force. From outside the building a mournful wail sounded, the cry of a siren audible over the scream of wind and the thresh of rain on the roof. Rebka could still listen to Graves, but some other conditioning in Perry took over. At the first note of the siren he headed for the door.

"A landing! That siren means someone's in trouble. They're crazy,
if they don't
have the right experience, in a Level Five storm . . ."

He was gone. Julius Graves began to rise slowly to his feet. He was
restrained by
Hans Rebka's grip on his
arm.

"They fled," Rebka prompted. Through the rain-streaked window he could see
the lights of a descending aircar, dipping and veering drunkenly in treacherous crosswinds. It was only a few meters from
the ground,
and he had to get out there himself.
But first he had to
confirm one
thing. "They fled. And they came—to Opal?"

Graves shook
his scarred and massive head. "That is what I
thought, and
that is why I requested a landing here. Steven had calculated that
the trajectory had its end-point in the Dobelle system. But when I arrived
I spoke at once with the Starside Spaceport
monitors.
They assured me that no one could have landed a ship with
a
Bose Drive
on this world, without them being aware of it."

There was a new wail of alarm equipment from outside and the
lurid glare of orange-red warning flares. Voices were screaming at each other. Watching at the window, Rebka saw the car touch down, bounce back high into the air, and then flip over to hit upside down. He started for the door,
but he was held back by Graves's sudden and strong grip on his arm.

"When Commander Perry returns, I will inform
him of a new
request," Graves said quietly.
"We do not want to search Opal. The
twins are not here.
But they are in the Dobelle
system.
And that can
only mean one thing:
they are on Quake."

He cocked his head, as though hearing the scream
of sirens and
the sounds of tearing metal for the first time.
"We must search Quake, and soon. But for the moment, there seem
to be more immediate problems."

The moment of death. A whole life flashing before your eyes.

Darya Lang heard the side-wind hit just as the wheels of the aircar touched down for the second time. She saw the right wing
strike—felt the machine leave the runway—knew that the car was flipping onto its back. There was a scream of overstressed roof panels.

Suddenly dark earth was whizzing past, a foot above her head. Soggy mud sprayed and choked her. The light vanished, leaving her in total darkness.

As the harness cut savagely into her chest, her mind cleared with the pain. She felt cheated.

That
was her whole life, supposedly rushing past her?
If so, it has been a miserably poor one. All that she could think of was the Sentinel. How she would never understand it, never penetrate its
ancient mystery, never learn what had happened to the Builders. All those light years of travel, to be squashed like a bug in
the dirt of a lousy minor planet!

Like a bug.
The thought of bugs made her feel vaguely guilty.

Why?

She remembered then, hanging upside down in her
harness. Thinking was hard, but she had to do it. She was alive. That liquid dripping down her nose and into her eyes stung terribly, but it was too cold to be blood. But what about the other two, Atvar H'sial and J'merlia, in the passenger seats?
Not
bugs, she thought; in fact, less like insects than she was.
Rational beings.
Shame on you, Darya Lang!

Had she killed them, though, with her lousy piloting?

Darya craned her head around and tried to look behind her. There was something wrong with her neck. A shock of pure heat burned its way into her throat and her left shoulder even before she turned. She could see nothing.