The Alien Trace [Cord 01] (12 page)

    Neteel pulled open the mouth of the bag, then placed it, still swathed in the ancestor pouch, on the table.

    That sight was frozen forever in Cord's memory, because it terminated in twin explosions.

    If there was a sound, Cord did not hear it. A flash of light blinded him, followed by a breath of heat. Cord's bones seemed to vibrate with the force of the physical blast. But that was not the worst. It was the almost simultaneous psychic storm that deprived him of the ability to think or move. The horror and helpless despair of the dying reverberated through every Mehiran mind and were amplified until the world around Cord dissolved in a maelstrom of emotion.

    

    

    As reason returned, he realized his parents were dead. The explosion had killed them in a single flash. Even now, after what seemed an eternity, debris was still falling on him. Someone, a human-Greffard, Cord thought-had been mortally wounded and was still lingering. What was left of his body convulsed in pain.

    With an iron effort of will, Cord closed his bruised mind to the human's death agony. He found that he was clinging to Bird and that there was confusion around them. Bird was limp in his arms, sobbing softly. The other Mehirans were no better; many were unconscious. There was something to be said for the callousness he had acquired as a Catcher.

    Through the psychic haze surrounding him, he heard a voice and identified it as Hamilton K's.

    "Get him out! Quick, while they're still… medical team, here…"

    Cord opened his eyes. Where the demonstration table had been was a tattered ruin, red and wet-looking. On the floor, beyond the ragged thing that had been Greffard, were lumps of flesh…

    His mind turned automatically to the litany of his ancestors' names, blocking out the sight. He felt someone pull Bird out of his grasp.

    "Bird!" he called, trying to follow. He stood up, swaying, and found his feet were leaden.

    "Not that one," an alien voice said. "She's our number-one suspect. Lock her up and get the rest out."

    A human dragged Bird away. She was not struggling; probably she was so deep in shock that she did not realize what was happening. Other Mehirans were being pushed toward the entrance, some of them bruised or cut. Caught in an emotional storm, some struck out blindly.

    Someone took him by the shoulder and spun him around: Hamilton K. At any other time, Cord would have reacted by going into a defensive stance.

    "Are you all right?" the human asked, then rushed on, not waiting for a reply. "Your mother's device-can it be set to work on other races?" Then Hamilton K muttered to himself, "Stupid question-she wouldn't have offered it otherwise."

    Cord stared at him mutely. K apparently thought that the device was responsible for rendering the Mehirans in the audience helpless. Of course, he did not know their empathic ability-or that the invention was for telepathy.

    "Well, we'll talk about it later." K shrugged. "Joniss! Help this one out-gently: he's our inventor's son."

    Strong hands propelled him out of the room and into the the lobby. Cord dimly recalled seeing Julia McKay leaning against a wall.

    Down the road, at the Council's checkpoint, Cord could see two Mehiran guards on duty leaning against their vehicle. The pair looked agitated and disturbed. They must have felt the psychic blasts but were far enough away not to be prostrated by them.

    In the distance, alarms sounded. Up the road, carriers sped into view, and soon half a dozen Council carriers were halted before the slick black facade of the spaceport. They'd been efficient. One vehicle was equipped for medical care: its staff began treatment of those in shock. The worst cases were placed in cots in the van. Those recovering on their own were helped into a personnel carrier.

    "How many is that?" someone asked.

    "Twenty-three, respected one. According to checkpoint records, we're missing three."

    "I suppose we won't be able to identify them until the rest are able to speak," the first voice observed.

    Cord looked around and saw a Mehiran wearing the Council's insignia.

    "Respected one," Cord addressed him, "Fyrrell and Neteel, the Catchers… my parents… are dead." He fought down his sorrow and anxiety. "And the humans are holding Bird, the Third District Speaker's daughter."

    "The late Speaker," the Council representative automatically corrected. "Are they, now? Why?"

    The man was ten or fifteen years older than Cord, and had the look of all those whom the Council appointed to carry out its instructions. Efficient, pragmatic, used to giving orders and having them obeyed.

    "I heard the Trade Agent say she was suspected of having… having caused the explosion." Cord briefly sketched the afternoon's events for him.

    "The Council will want to question you," the Council agent said. He looked at Cord again. "Fyrrell was your father? And you are also a Catcher?"

    "Yes, respected one."

    "You have some experience of violence." He made no apology for his blunt speaking. The Council never did apologize. "I will relay your report to my superiors. You had better get into the carrier now." He turned away to give instructions to a group of Council guards.

    Dully, Cord did as he was told. Slumped in a seat in the carrier, he felt empty of emotion for the first time in his life.

    

    

    The carrier delivered them to the Council buildings, where members of the staff took charge of most-the majority of attendees had had Council affiliations of one sort or another. No one took any notice of Cord. He began to trudge toward home, moving by rote.

    Activity and distance from the tragedy cleared his mind. He could not think about his parents, not yet. But other matters occurred to him. Reviewing the afternoon, as Fyrrell had taught him to do, Cord came to several conclusions.

    The humans accused Bird. It was true she had been distraught over her father's death, but she had not set the bomb, nor did she have the technical background to construct one. More to the point, there had been no murder in her mind.

    He was inclined to eliminate all the Mehirans present on similar grounds. Even if someone there had been a psychopath, would any Mehiran have had an opportunity to put an explosive in place? Cord doubted it.

    The humans and only the humans had had the opportunity to plant a bomb in their own complex. But why? The humans wanted Neteel's inventions. Why kill their source?

    It made no sense-but murders never did.

    Cord found himself at his own door. He had come through the streets like an automaton. He let himself in and remained leaning against the door for some moments, thinking.

    There was one way to find out. He must go back to the spaceport, using the promise-or threat-of the telepathy device as bait.

    If the guilty one believed that Cord had or could build another device with which to detect the murderer, he might attempt to kill Cord, as well. Cord had no fear that such an attempt might succeed. After all, he was forewarned. The murder of his parents would not have been successful if they had not been sure they were safe there. Now that he was prepared, the killer was in far more danger than he.

    Cord activated the lights-to his surprise, it had grown dim. The sun was down, leaving little more than a golden afterglow-gold, like Bird's skin, so soft, so sweet. His loins tightened in reflex and his tail twitched.

    With the ache still in him, he went into the workroom and tried to concentrate. The bench itself was tidy, but the walls were festooned with tools, completed equipment, and material which might be useful for some future project. This would be the difficult part. Neteel might have left a complete blueprint of the telepathic receiver, or she might not. Sometimes his mother had jotted notes to herself or made drawings of sections she was having trouble with, but sometimes she made no formal plans until after perfecting the thing. Cord could remember parts of the mechanism, but not all of it.

    All of her notes and plans were stored in a jumble in a compartment under the bench. Cord took everything out and sat down to sort through them. His blunted emotions slowly sharpened as his mind cleared. He worked with a cold and calculating purpose, his feelings now dominated by a new desire: revenge.

    Cord rented a skim to return to the spaceport, beyond worrying about the expense. Strapped to its back was a case containing the most useful-and salable-of his parents' inventions.

    He had no illusions about his chances of being admitted to the spaceport. Oh, the aliens wouldn't stop him, but the Council might. A detachment of Council guards were on duty at the entrance, and it certainly wasn't to keep the aliens in. If a fighting force came out of the port, the Council militia would not be able to stop it. Cord doubted the guards had ever had occasion to fire upon any being. Ordinarily they carried no weapons.

    But he wanted to get inside, and he knew Hamilton K would be willing to trade once he did. When the skim was far out into the marshes, with the city out of sight behind, and the Council gate not yet visible ahead, Cord halted the vehicle. He donned a helmet that had rested on the seat beside him and flipped a switch. Objects beyond the skim went slightly out of focus.

    Then he turned the skim off the road and moved off across the marsh at an angle. The camouflage field would not absolutely conceal him, but it would deceive anyone who glanced casually at the marsh. The onlooker would seem to see nothing but reeds and spindling foliage stirring in the breeze. If the marsh had been barren, with only moss-covered hummocks, Cord would have had to abandon the skim and crawl. The field could not disguise any height which was out of keeping with the surroundings. Neither would it work at close range; although it still deflected the eye, the distortion it produced was evident. Anyone who saw it straight on at, say, five or six meters would be conscious of a shimmering-a miragelike quality.

    For that reason he kept a safe distance from the guard post. He moved the skim slowly until the post came into view-and then he gasped.

    It was not the action at the gate, however, that drew a reaction from him. Up to that time, he had not worried too much about Bird. The humans were certain to discover she was innocent, even without the aid of empathy or telepathy. They were not likely to harm her, not if they still wanted to trade with Mehira. And from his experience of them, he suspected that little was permitted to stand in the way of their trading.

    But with the first wave of horror and pain, Cord lost his comfortable certainty of Bird's safety. The force with which she was sending astonished him. Their relationship made them especially sensitive to each other's emotional output, naturally, but even so, he should not have been able to "hear" her at such a distance. He noticed that the Council guards, too, had felt something. They had withdrawn up the road as far as they could without completely disassociating themselves from their post. Thus distracted, they hadn't noticed him.

    Dismayed by what he sensed, he pushed the skim's speed up to its maximum for such terrain until the Council's roughly built wall was near. He veered to parallel it, leaving the checkpoint far behind.

    Cord intended to attempt entrance to the spaceport as far from the main building as was feasible. He landed the skim next to the wall and removed his equipment, working with practiced efficiency. Using a long-bladed knife, he cut a large rectangle in the thick-growing moss and pulled it up. The skim, laid on its side with the moss blanket replaced, should remain undiscovered if anyone happened to pass by. Not that it seemed a likely contingency. Cord marked a corner of the cache with a pair of twigs which would mean nothing to anyone else.

    At last he took a multipronged climbing hook from the case, unfolded it,and locked it open. He stood back to throw it; the hook caught on the first try. Cord had spent a great deal of time practicing the art. Without hurry, he transferred the equipment case to his -back; it was heavy but left his hands free. Finally, with an experimental tug at the rope, he began to climb.

    At the top of the wall he shifted the hook to the other side, while hunching low. Though he trusted to distance and the camouflage field to make him inconspicuous, he did not take the risk of sitting up straight. The descent was easy. At the bottom, he gave the rope a brisk twitch to detach the hook. Gathering it up, he refolded it and stowed it in the chest.

    With his back to the Mehiran wall, Cord studied the next obstacle. Ahead was the massive alien-built wall. The broad expanse between the two walls was covered with a gray-white gritty material, not quite sand but too small for gravel. With no cover, the camouflage field would not be convincing. There was nothing to do but mutter an oath to his ancestors and run across.

    Cord reached the shining black wall. Nothing happened. But he did not expect to get over this wall so easily. It was an enormous number of hands high, and its surface was too smooth to give his boots any purchase. He stretched out a hand cautiously and pulled back. If the wall had some protective field which would electrocute or vaporize him…

    Tail curling at its tip, Cord knelt by his case and considered the options.

    On some smooth surfaces, he would have glued hand and foot holds, using a special adhesive. Once set, which it did in a short time, it would support heavy weights. Cord was not optimistic about its properties on this wall. Nevertheless he took out the glue gun and daubed on a lump of the sticky substance as a test. It wasn't vaporized, but the blob of glue not only did not stick, it slid down the obsidian-slick wall, leaving no trace at all. Cord was not surprised. The alien material's inertness and its frictionlessness would be properties as vital as its density.