Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail (37 page)

“Haval Kunser, Chief Administrator of Medusa,” the man responded smoothly, putting out his hand.

He took it and shook it warmly, replying, “It’s
very
good to meet you. I know you only by reputation.”

He turned back to Zhang, who looked only slightly less stricken. “Are you going to drop dead or shoot me or relax and have a drink?” he asked his Cerberan counterpart.

“Well, what do you expect?” Qwin Zhang responded tartly. “I’m still not over the other two yet.”

His eyebrows went up. “They’re here, then?”

“Everyone is here,” Morah told him. “We can proceed after dinner if you like.”

“The Altavarr?”

“Two levels down. Not only do they prefer it down there, but I’m afraid they stink like a three-day-old corpse. Our body odor is similarly offensive to them, so you can understand the separation considering the cramped quarters. I’ll certainly take you down and Introduce you if you want to verify that they’re here, but I think otherwise we should let them sit in by remote, for, ah, mutual comfort. Don’t answer until you’ve smelled them.”

He chuckled. “All right, I have no objection to the remote, although I
am
going to have to verify their physical presence. I’m afraid that some in the Council simply don’t believe in them.”

“Understandable. Through that door there, and we’ll meet the others.” They walked into a large room that looked more like a barracks than anything else, in which several people were sitting and talking or reading or writing. All heads turned as they entered, followed by Zhang and Dumonia, and he saw immediately that Zhang’s reaction was not going to be unique. Tremon, for one, was so startled he stood up and banged his head on an upper bunk.

‘Tremon and Lacoch you know,” Morah said pleasantly, “and the others are either associates of theirs or aides of the Four Lords like Kunser. Communications, coordination, and a subsidiary meeting room with visual facilities have been set up on the level below us. It’s all ready, Mr. Carroll.”

Tremon and Lacoch both shook then- heads at that. “Mr.
Who?”
Lacoch muttered, but did not press the matter. He looked over at two others near them and smiled and bowed slightly. “Darva and Dylan. Charmed.” The two women stared back at him in puzzlement. He looked over at Tremon. “No Ti?”

Tremon looked a little stunned. “So it
did
work!”

“Better than you could ever know,” he responded softly, then turned to Morah. “I’ll give your techs the codes to open everything to the Council so they can make the proper checks and set up a time. I’m not sure how many on the Council we managed to get together but it’ll be a working majority. Then I’d like to meet privately with my three former operatives, if that’s possible, and separately with you, Doctor. Then I’ll go down with you to meet the Altavar, Morah, and we can get started.”

Morah looked a little uncomfortable. “Um, I believe all that can be arranged, but I would recommend eating before going down to meet the Altavar. Lord Ypsir has invited you to dine with him in his private suite above us.” He paused a moment. “Nothing says you have to accept, you know.”

He thought about it “Does he know the full extent of who and what I am?”

“No. I thought it would be … judicious not to tell him. And although he has this whole place wired up, my own people are controlling everything there.”

“I thank you for that. In that case, I’ll accept his invitation. Oh, don’t worry. I’ll be a good boy.”

Morah thought a moment, then nodded. “Very well. I will so inform him. It is now—let’s see, 1720. Give me the comcode and I will see to the checks with my people, and also arrange for you not to be disturbed in the meeting room until … shall we say, 1900? We’ll set your dinner date for then. After, or in the early morning, you can meet the Altavar. Shall we set negotiations to begin at, oh, ten hundred tomorrow morning? That will also give the Council plenty of time, and my men can hook up the Altavar and Council visuals. How does that sound?”

He nodded. “Excellent.” He turned to his counterparts. “You three want to come outside with me? I think we have some talking to do. Of course the ladies can come, too, if you wish.”

He stood there looking at them as they studied him. Tremon was still a big, muscular brute of a man, just as he remembered him, and Lacoch still had a somewhat reptilian cast to him, including a tail. Zhang was in the body of a young civilized worlder, and looked much like he did himself, although he was certainly physically older and felt ancient. He found it interesting that neither of the two with their ladies there had included them in on this reunion, although it saved making explanations.

“I assume we’re being totally bugged, so I won’t say anything I don’t want Morah to know,” he began. “I want to start by stating flatly that I was with you all the way on your worlds. I know you very well, and you know me.”

They were fascinated that, after all the different events that had happened to them, they found it difficult not to begin speaking at the same time, and one quite often could complete another’s statements.

Still, he let them get their resentment out, and, perhaps, their pride as well. Zhang pretty much said why he didn’t want Dylan in the room when he stated, “Hell, you were there, sort of, all the time. Every time we made love, you did it, too. That’s not an easy thing to face, or to explain to her.”

‘Then don’t,” he suggested. “Let’s get this straight. We are
all
individuals. I am Mr. Carroll, for reasons only you three probably understand. You’re Tremon, and you’re Lacoch, and you’re Zhang. I think the easiest way to explain it to others is to explain it in more natural terms.”

They all nodded and said, as one, “Quadruplets.”

“Why not? It’s closer to the truth now, anyway. Have you all been briefed on the situation?”

They nodded, but he found they were still a bit sketchy and he filled in the details. It was surprising, once they got down to business, how quickly the anger and hurt and resentment vanished and they worked almost as a team. Finally, though, Lacoch asked the loaded question. “Where’s our man on Medusa?”

He sighed. “Three hits, one miss. Not a bad record.”

“Dead, then?”

He nodded. “Yes, dead. But his information was the clincher. Damn it, though, I’ll always feel guilty about that. After I got the report from you, Lacoch, on Charon, I had it pretty well down. If I had gone directly to Medusa at that time, instead of delaying as I did, he’d still be alive. It was that close.”

Tremon whistled. “You know, I think all of us hated your guts up until today. I know I did.” The others nodded understandingly. “But, with you here, in the middle of this shit, I think we got off lucky. Not the Medusan, of course, but the three of us, anyway. We’re the individuals, and we’re the free ones living our own lives. You got nothing, nobody, not even the Confederacy in a pinch, and you got all the crosses.”

“And yet you’ve really changed,” Lacoch put in, again getting nods. “We all sense it. Sure,
we
changed, but you were with all three of us and you still got the load. The big load. That’s, what this is all about, isn’t it?”

He grinned. “In a way, yes. If we never had this meeting, never had this talk, none of us would be really free of the others and you know it. Now you—all of you—are free and only I am not. If this all works out, I think the four of us will do very well indeed as … brothers. If not—well, who knows what will happen to any of us?”

They accepted that in silence for a moment. Finally Tremon said, ‘The Council will never bargain in good faith. You know that.”

He sighed. “Not yet they won’t. Not without the shedding of blood on both sides. I’m going to do my best, though, tomorrow, to put it together. We’ll see. At least you of all people understand my motives and loyalties.”

“I think we do,” they all said softly. The meeting broke up a little after that, and Dumonia was summoned to the conference room. The little man with the needless glasses and nervous ticks didn’t try to conceal his position of strength from him, but he
was
curious.

“You are really the original of all of them?”

He nodded. “If original is the right word. And I experienced all that they experienced, Doctor, but without any little memory tricks. You might tell me, though, how the hell you managed to erase yourself from Zhang’s mind. I thought any tinkering like that was damned near impossible with my—his—mind.”

Dumonia smiled. “And who do you think created many of those techniques in the first place?”

He sighed. “I wish you’d been on Ypsir’s satellite a couple of days ago. I assume that you’re behind the Opposition projects there?”

He nodded. “But what happened that you wished for me?”

Briefly, he told Dumonia and asked, “What’s your long-term prognosis?”

“Well, Jorgash is among the best I ever taught,
if
that’s any consolation, and your kind of mind is best for that procedure, but—and it is a big but—he would have to guess on your mental blocks and patterns where I would know. In any event, I would counsel you to think of Bul as dead, for dead he certainly is. I realize your guilt but I also know this Ypsir. He knows that you were Control for Bul, and that’s why you’ve been invited to dinner tonight. You should understand him, too, to an extent, and realize that if you
had
been in time to intercede, he would have accidentally on purpose done it anyway. The only real human being in Ypsir’s mental universe is himself. Everyone else is either a tool or an enemy authority. To the enemy authority—and to himself—he must continually prove that he is better, stronger, superior. You are the tool of that authority, the Confederacy, and, therefore, you represent it If I were you I would not go to dinner tonight.”

“Why? You think he means me harm?”

“He is not so foolish. But if you cannot accept the fact that this Tarin Bul is dead, as dead as if he had been shot through the heart, and that this new person is exactly that, a new and different person you do not know and have never met, he will torture you horribly. You must put aside your guilt, for it is misplaced. There is nothing you could have done to stop this.
Nothing.
You would only have hastened it. In the case of Bul, you must abandon hope with that guilt. Otherwise, cancel and eat here with us.”

He nodded. “I’ll handle it. But what should my reaction be?”

“You are not yourself here!” the psych snapped. “You are not even the Confederacy! You are all of mankind, and all of the Diamond as well! You’ve been elected, without your consent, to a post that makes you more nonhuman than these Altavar things! You must be above all human concerns, all personal concerns, for the duration of this conference! If not, you are lost.”

He nodded and smiled wanly. “Then you know at least as much as I do about this.”

“I know what Laroo knows, and that is quite a lot. I assume that you are here because you know, too. If you don’t, then God help us all.”-

He sighed. “Well, I don’t pretend to have all the answers, or, maybe, any answers at all, Doctor, but you’ve convinced me I have to go to dinner tonight.”

“Eh?”

“If I can’t handle Talant Ypsir’s mad egomania, how the hell can I handle tomorrow?”

5

After the cramped quarters below, he was surprised at the size of Ypsir’s apartment. Surely the man hardly ever visited Boojum, and so this place spoke volumes about the man’s mind. Ypsir must have a place like this on every damned one of these moons, he assumed.

He entered a main hall and turned into a room at the sound of conversation. They were there, all of them, the old and the new, and he recognized the ones on sight that he had not yet met. The tall, distinguished man with the snow white hah- was Duke Kobe, new Lord of Lilith. The tall, muscular, handsome man was Laroo, in his robot body totally indistinguishable at this point from a normal human one. Morah was there, too, temporarily representing Charon. He made a mental note to ask him sometime what happened to his pretty little killer. And over there, laughing and joking, a distinguished-looking civilized worlder with incongruous flaming red hair and mustache, his eyes mischievous-looking and flanked by “laugh lines,” dressed in deep black and gold. He just had to be Talant Ypsir.

Scampering around were four scantily clad young women of inordinate beauty and sexual endowments, supplying
hors d’oeuvres,
replenishing glasses, lighting Kobe’s Lilithian cigars, all with a smile and an adoring expression. Goodtime Girls, happily plying their trade. Idly he wondered if they were always here, waiting for that incredibly rare occasion when their master might show up, or whether they were part of his traveling party.

Ypsir spotted him, grinned a politician’s grin, and made his way over to him, hand out. “Well, well! So you’re the man’s who’s going to save the universe!” His manner was joking, not sarcastic-sounding, and he recognized the man’s public
persona
in an instant. The eternal baby-kissing hypocritical politician, the crook who knows full well he’s got everything in the bag. He snapped his finger and a Good-time Girl was immediately at hand, eagerly awaiting a command. “Get Mr.—Carroll, I believe?—a
homau
and a tray of those little sausage things with the cheese inside.”

The girl was quick to obey and was soon back with both. He sipped the sweet drink and took a small sausage on a toothpick and tasted it. The drink was a bit sweet for him—he recognized it as some blend of Charonese fruits and alcohol—but the appetizer was quite good.

Ypsir engaged him in small talk for some time, and he found it remarkably easy to do. His indignation and outright hatred were still there, of course, but under complete control. He doubted if he’d ever met someone so internally corrupt and evil, but he’d tracked down and caught a bunch of very unpleasant types in the past, and quite often he’d had a meal with them and been forced to endure their bizarre lifestyles and values.

All the men in the room except himself were in that class, he realized. Laroo had been the criminal boss of a dozen worlds; Morah had run the criminal brotherhood’s scientific branch, which included projects that would probably make the Goodtime Girls seem tame. Kobe had in his youth been a master of the robot and computerized alarm systems, personally looting more works of art by great masters from impregnable fortresses—or so they were thought to be—than any other single human being. And yet, oddly, he felt almost a kinship with those three, whose careers were based upon disdain for the very values he now disdained, and who, beyond that, were at least sane enough to live in the real universe.