The Caterpillar's Question by Piers Anthony and Philip José Farmer (31 page)

The honker spies had reported that the Gaol had not as yet sent out scouts or exploratory parties. Whatever they were up to, they were taking their time. Probably, the technicians in the vessel were probing with their cavity detectors and also with the instruments that assumedly could detect the presence of the Imago. The latter instruments, he hoped, were directed outside of the radius of the landing structure. They would never imagine that the Imago and its host could be inside the structure. If, at the time of landing here, they had probed directly beneath the ship, they would have detected only a hollow beneath the huge meteorite fragments. If, that is, their instruments could penetrate through the nickel-iron pieces.

Jack stepped out to the edge of the shadows of the trees. Honkers followed him. Then the Integrator was standing by his side, his hip tentacles waving languidly like seaweed in a current.

The Integrator watched for a while. Then he bleeped softly, and he moved out into the moonlight. Jack and Candy and the two honkers ran swiftly to the doors of four domes near them. Each pulled out of a bag a small creature the bottom of which was a flesh suction pad. A long tuft of hair serving as a handle for the warriors projected from the back of each. Jack stuck his suckerbug, as it was called, onto the center of the door. Using his beamer, he cut a circular hole in the door. When he was close to completing the circular section, another warrior grabbed the creature's hair tuft. He pulled it and the section away from the door as soon as Jack had finished.

Another honker stuck the front of a glass cage against the hole. He pulled up a slide for a second or two, then closed it. At least two hundred flies, maybe more, had gone through the hole. Jack ran on to the next house while another honker put back the cut section and applied tape across it to hold it to the door.

Meanwhile, some honkers had gone to the parking lot. They had to make sure that none of the motionless machines there were actually cyborgs. In a few seconds, the Latest held clenched hands overhead. That was the signal that all was well in the lot.

Jack and Candy and the two honkers worked swiftly. Already, the first of the parties to enter the domes behind the cutters had made sure no one was alive in them. Now they were going into other domes, and most of them were carrying beamers appropriated from the dead Gaol.

Jack was on edge. He expected an automatic alarm to sound at any time or a Gaol in his death agonies to scream out. That did not happen. After an estimated fifteen minutes, the last warrior had reported to the Integrator. He held one hand up, turning this back and forth, a signal that he had completed his assignment.

Jack's beamer sliced through the thick outer wall of the curving landing structure. Three others also cut several large entrances near the one Jack had made. Then a number of suckers were applied to the wall sections just before they were completely cut. They dragged the pieces rather easily. Though thick, they were of very lightweight material.

The perilous ways were open. A dark corridor stretched before them. If an alarm was sounding in the main body of the ship, the war party could not hear it. But the Latest were going on the assumption that some would soon be activated. Jack was not so sure. The Gaol may not have thought it necessary to activate them.

The party was not in danger of getting lost in the vast maze of the ship. Garth had served on the same type of vessel. Through Candy, he had provided all the information needed to find the places to be invaded. The honkers had made diagrams of the passageways and the control center and where the crew was stationed when on duty and where it slept. While going through the tunnels to the chamber beneath the ship, the war party had studied these. Everyone knew exactly where to go and what he must do and how many he would have to fight.

Nevertheless, as in any battle, things could not only go wrong but doubtless would.

Chapter 15

Jack kept moving, knowing that time was critical. The Gaol captain had to know that the security of the ship had been breached. He would be ruthless in the defense of his command. The honkers were following a meandering trail around, over, and through the trusses and pipes of the skin of the ship, evidently seeking to lose themselves so that no guards inside could spot them. This was no innocent camping hike!

Yet now Jack was suffering significant second thoughts. Doubts which had been nagging him were now threatening to overwhelm him. It wasn't that he was afraid for his life, though he was, or that he was concerned that the odds were against this mission, though he was. It was that now, belatedly, the scattered bits of wrongness he had felt were coalescing into a more solid structure. He was no longer vaguely concerned; he was quite specifically alarmed.

He followed the honkers automatically while he put it together, making sure of his notion. Because if he was right, there might be worse trouble ahead than behind. Not physically, but in terms of Tappy's destiny.

Item: Tappy was the host of the Imago, an ethereal entity who could cause any living creature to have great empathy for all living things. The Imago could destroy the galactic empire of the Gaol by causing all living creatures, including the Gaol themselves, to have empathy for others, instead of oppressing them. Therefore the Gaol intended to capture Tappy and lock her away in isolation for life so that the Imago could not spread its harmony.

Item: Tappy had led Jack to the planet of the honkers, who were only vaguely manlike, and this planet had extensive ancient artifacts. These had been constructed by the Makers, who seemed to resemble centaurs whose nonhorselike portions were bearlike rather than human. Some of these artifacts were enormous, and seemed to be still operative, such as the metallic band around the crater wail, about fifty miles in diameter. What had happened to the Makers, whose power must once have shamed that of the present-day Gaol?

Item: A honker had somehow drugged both Jack and Tappy, and planted the egg-seed on Tappy's chest. Hormones or something similar from that egg had nullified the effect to the volition paralysis the Gaol had used on the two of them, so that Tappy was able to get them free, so that they could reach the Agents of the Imago and get help. This indicated that the honkers were not the primitives they had at first seemed to be.

Item: The egg had in due course hatched, producing the Imaget, a creature who could facilitate or enhance the qualities of the egg's host. The Imaget had the power to enhance or facilitate the powers of its original host, so that the effect of the Imago could be transferred in an hour instead of a day. It also was a telepathic transmitter, at least between creatures with whom it had had close physical association, or whom it had helped convert.

Item: Despite the empathy which had transformed him, cyborg-Gaol Garth had gone to his former ship and slain its living guards, equipment operators, and true-Gaol captain. He had shown no compassion; rather, the opposite, becoming an efficient killer. This could not have been because of reversion and loss of empathy in the absence of the Imaget, because both Tappy and the Imaget had been with him. Jack himself, just minutes ago, had participated in the honkers' savage attack on the human minions of the Gaol. Where was his empathy for those living creatures, which were his own kind? He should not have been able to do it. Only now, in retrospect, were his qualms manifesting. This suggested that the Imaget had another property: the ability to reverse what it had enhanced. It was a phenomenally potent little creature!

Put these items together, and what larger picture emerged? Imago, Makers, honkers, Imaget. All of them seemed to have powers beyond what first showed. All of them were working together to oppose the Gaol. But what were they working for? It wasn't enough merely to say that the empire of the Gaol was evil; one empire was probably similar to another, when it came down to it. Maybe it would be a better galaxy if every living creature in it had empathy for every other creature. But it might also be anarchy. Now, with this realization of what else the Imaget could do, Jack realized that he might not be working for a future Utopia. He might be just another tool for some shadowy alien force whose ultimate purposes might be just as nefarious as those of the Gaol.

How could he be sure he was on the right side-- assuming there was a right side? That he and Tappy were not mere patsies for some player in a galactic game of intrigue and power? That their honker allies were their friends and not their enemies? That they were not working for the restoration of the Makers to power, if any still existed, regardless of the welfare of the galaxy?

But his thoughts were cut off by an outside event: They had been walking through what appeared to be the space between the outer and inner shells of the ship. There was surely an aperture to the main portion. But the defenders of the ship must have located them, and were now counterattacking. There was a hiss of gas.

Jack and the honkers quickly donned simple gas masks that the honker leader passed around. These consisted of spongelike objects. They simply held them in their mouths and breathed through them. Jack realized that these could be living creatures, or could be infused with microscopic entities, that detoxified the gas biologically.

Similarly they plugged little pieces of sponge into their ears and nostrils and clapped flexible transparent shells over their eyes. None of Jack's senses seemed to be impaired by this. Then they brushed damp sponges over their bodies, covering them with somewhat sticky goop that quickly thickened. Jack painted his face, neck, arms, and ankles. They were now completely protected against poison gas-- Jack hoped.

They moved on, breathing through their sponges. Jack found that the air through his was slightly flavored, not unpleasant. But his legs began to itch, and then his crotch.

He realized that he should not have assumed that his clothing would protect him. Of course it wouldn't! So he stopped to do what he should have done before. He ripped off his clothing and jammed the sponge into all the itchy areas, vigorously swabbing them. The discomfort eased immediately; the honkers did know what they were doing, here.

But his pause had caused him to fall behind; the honkers hadn't waited for him. They evidently did not suffer fools gladly. He would be lost in this labyrinth if he didn't catch up quickly. He didn't have time to put his clothing on again, so he settled for his shoes, and wadded the rest up into a knotted ball. Naked, he charged along the route he had seen them go.

For a while he feared he was lost anyway. Then he spied a honker, waiting for him. As he came up to it, the honker loped ahead, showing the way to the others. They had not after all left him to be lost. That was nice, since he was the nominal leader of this raiding party.

They came to a flat wall that might be the back side of a control panel. Many lumps and strands projected from it: the wiring of the ship? One honker brought out a little sac of paste. He rubbed this carefully on the metal wall, in a disk about two inches across. The wall became translucent, then transparent there. The honker peered through it. He nodded, then brought out a thin strawlike tube with a bulb on one end. He poked this at the transparent section, and it penetrated the metal. When it was through, he squeezed the bulb. There was a faint hiss of gas being forced through.

Then there was a thump on the other side of the wall, as of a guard falling to the floor. Gas was a two-edged weapon.

Another honker did something, and a panel swung open. They piled into the ship proper, jumping over the body of the guard or technician there. Jack saw that it was a human female, halfway pretty. But he felt no sympathy; she was a minion of the enemy. And realized that he could no longer trust his feelings; he carried the Imaget, which seemed to be immune to the gas, and it had reversed his emotion.

But now that he realized that things were not exactly as they seemed, he might be able to compensate. Regardless, he had to take this ship, because if he failed, it would soon attack and reduce the honker defenses on the planet, and Tappy would either be captured or killed. Of the two, capture was the worse risk. So his understanding could have little effect on his immediate actions, but perhaps much on his longer term strategy.

There were a number of creatures in sight, but they paid no attention to the intruders. Apparently they were androids, programmed for specific tasks, not for defense of the ship. However, when the authorities realized that their gas attack had not succeeded, they would send a more competent contingent to do the job.

The honkers had gone about as far as they could, without direction. They had breached the shell of the ship and gotten him inside. Now it was time for Jack to do his thing.

He had had a foolish notion of carving his way through the ship with a giant curving laser-edged sword, protected by some kind of magic armor, lopping the heads from any who opposed him. But of course that was unrealistic. The Gaol had lost one ship to a surprise attack, and would not allow another to go the same way. There would be attack robots marshaling right now, to come and cut him down. Sword and sorcery was not for this realm. There was a more subtle but effective procedure. He was prepared in a less foolish, less dramatic, but more realistic way.

He felt in his bundle of clothes and brought out a tiny tightly sealed jar the honkers had given him. He unscrewed the cap and lifted it off. There was a little puff of dark vapor that quickly dissipated in the air. That was all.

"Now find us a hole we can defend," Jack said around his sponge.

The honkers were already doing that. The interior of the ship was a labyrinth of passages and tubes ranging from twenty feet in diameter to less than an inch, and cables of many sizes twining like serpents through and between. Some seemed to be for air, others for mechanized delivery systems, and others for the passage of robots or living creatures. But spread around in it were glassy bubblelike chambers, evidently little command centers, which could be sealed off. Most of them contained creatures, but some were empty. The honkers brought him to one of these bubbles, sealed him in, then dispersed.