The Infinity Link (57 page)

A barrier dropped away in front of them, exposing an open area, more brightly illuminated—a chamber, with dancing fire at one end, a chamber full of Klathron.

They were all angles and jointed limbs, and they were black as coal, and moved quickly and skittishly, and were hard to track. There was a humming in chorus, which Mozy realized was the Talenki, composing a greeting; but something about it felt odd, it was a very tentative song, the Talenki were uncertain about their welcome here. (Didn't they invite you?) she whispered, as though afraid that the Klathron even now might hear. No one answered. The song grew slowly, hesitantly.

A pair of smallish Klathron "crabs" darted sideways and then toward the Talenki. They muttered with low, throaty voices, husky and hollow—evidently trying to communicate
something
. Their behavior was agitated and restless, but the Talenki judged it to be a welcoming, coaxing behavior. They flowed forward, their song shifting to a lighter, more melodious tune. Listen to the Klathron song, feel it, find its raspy rhythm. What do they feel, what do they mean? What is real, what illusion?

Talenki and Klathron faced. Song and rattle and uncertainty filled the room. The Talenki song quieted; the rattle of the Klathron died down. There was silence.

And suddenly chaos. As though at a signal, Klathron screeched and swarmed across the chamber, and erupted from the walls, limbs waving and snapping. The air was filled with dark, angular arms and legs flying, and claws striking at the eyes. The view began to quake and shimmer. It was impossible to tell what was happening. Mozy heard screams of pain—Talenki pain—and felt the slashing of flesh and burning acid spurting into wounds. Something black and hard struck at the eyes that were seeing, and there was a flash of agony as all went dark, and then images streamed in from other eyes, but everywhere it was the same—everywhere massacre. The Talenki didn't
know
how to fight. Did they at least know how to run?

The answer came in a jumbling of the vision. Talenki were blinking in and out of existence about her, and even the chamber was flickering; the watcher was himself dodging in and out of the continuum. The Klathron, enraged, struck harder and faster than ever. For a time, it looked as though escape would be possible. Talenki flickered out of reach of the claws, in and out of walls. But the hope was an illusion. Something in the bedrock—perhaps the bewildering maze, perhaps another force—thwarted their efforts. Always they found themselves back in the Klathron chamber, set upon in an instant by clouds of flashing fangs and rock-ripping arms. Escape was possible for an instant, and then another instant; but beyond each instant was that terrifying moment of vulnerability, and pain.

The imagery dissolved in a haze of fear and a mist of blood, and behind it all the terrified cries of the Talenki still in their asteroid, watching through a link that was being chewed and whittled to pieces . . . all slowly dissolving, until the only thing left was the mourning wail of the Talenki in space reliving the death throes of their murdered siblings.

(Were they saved—any of them?) she whispered, as though speaking out of the abyss of a bottomless dream.

Silence. And then a whisper. (A bit of their thought—) (—their spirit—) (—their memory—) (—no more.)

(I—) she said, thinking of the Talenki struck dumb with terror, unable even to save their fellow Talenki as, later, they had saved her. (I'm—terribly, terribly sorry.) She wanted to say more, ask more—but she could scarcely talk, it was no longer a time for talk.

Slowly she slipped back into the silence of dreaming.

* * *

Images of Earth: sunset coming on.

She awoke to a golden sun glowing through broken layers of clouds, white stuff banked against the horizon, shimmering with wintry light and shadow. The layers were pulled apart like cotton, letting the dying daylight blaze through. The sun was a sinking, expanding orb, turning crimson and finally spreading its furnace-glow across the undersides of the sky.

She held the image, not wanting to stir from the moment of awakening, not wanting to let pass this memory of the physical beauty of Earth. What had she been dreaming of earlier—the Talenki? She loved them and their world, but it was not Earth—not
her
world. A longing filled her—to see her Earth again, to hold its beauty in her eyes, its warmth against her breast, its spirit in her heart.

Sunset . . . sculpted desert rock . . . a broad, muddy river twisting its course down the center of a continent . . . majestic, thundering oceans. . ..

Thinking of days when such things were a part of her world, Greater-Mozy passed into a reverie of Earthly images and explorations, landscapes once known to her, mountains, ocean, and plain. Sun and storm, desert and snow. Manhome. Cradle of her species. Womb that had given her up to the cosmos.

In her lesser-self, other thoughts stirred. Memories emerged as though from a vault. How could she have forgotten the gift Kink had given her on her eighth birthday, when she feared no one remembered, or cared? The trio of glass figurines, the stallion and mare and filly, stood proudly on the third shelf of her built-in bookcase for nine years, until the filly was knocked over and broken, and she'd put the other two away in sadness, because she couldn't stand to see them bereft of their offspring. By then, she was angry with Kink more often than she was happy; now, she could scarcely remember why.

How was it that she'd gotten herself bound up in such anger and insecurity—that she'd left with hatred and despair in her heart, and bitterness toward almost the whole of her human race? Had events been so unkind to her?

She riffled through memories like files in a library catalog, viewing each long enough to catalyze the recall: days in school, not feeling quite a part of things, but not yet so isolated as to provoke despair; at home, the arguments and tension that crisscrossed the family, and the occasional moments of understanding that almost, but not quite, cemented them together; the night of evil, the mugging, and the terror and humiliation both during and after; the cutting of the bonds of home, going far off to school with Dee; the excitement of freedom—and then the loneliness—breaking with Dee, who'd abandoned her for a man (but had she
really?
); the beginning of work on the Project, meeting Kadin . . . and the rest.

Hoshi. Images of Hoshi blazing in her memory now—stark and painful—why? Hoshi stumbling, agony in every step—where did this image come from, had she dreamed it?—Hoshi calling to her, stirred by a Talenki song. But Hoshi had not . . .
Where did this image come from?
A dream, it must have been a dream. Another puzzle, another question.

And Homebase. Their recent message had been full of confusion. Had she made the last song to them too cryptic, or too blunt? Was she acting out her own past anger?

Here she was, the first and only envoy of Humanity to a race of beings from the stars, and she had to ask: Was she still fully human? Could she fulfill the role that had been thrust upon her? Did she possess the understanding, the compassion? She'd learned to get along with the Talenki. Could she do the same with her own kind?

A feeling welled into existence in her, a prickly light shining through the depths of her consciousness, an aching sullen glow like banked embers emerging, their radiance burning into the self-awareness, making every thought a reflection of the heat. Her people: she could not remember ever thinking of Humanity in this way before. Her last memories were of Homebase—Jonders and Hathorne and the rest—but they were little more than a fleck of Humanity, a quirk. Hers were all the people of Earth, full of imperfections, people who required understanding and care, and mothering.

(You are troubled, Mozy?) A single voice interposed itself softly, at the edge of her consciousness.

It took her a moment to respond. She trembled, aware again of the Talenki presence all around her, like silent breaths of air. One was gently seeking her attention. N'rrril. (Yes?) she answered softly, her answer a question.

His thoughts crept closer. (May I share?)

She hesitated, afraid of being engulfed in the intensity of her feelings, afraid of diluting them if she opened the gates to another. But the fear dropped away as she thought of N'rrril's gentle kindnesses, and comforting ways, and she sighed and reached to him, in the periphery of the mind-net, and like a lover aching with loneliness, she entered him. And looked out through his eyes.

He stood in the central part of the asteroid, alone. Perhaps she had flickered here even as she joined with him. Together, she and he, they looked out over the tiny sea that filled the core of the Talenki world, gazed down into the crystal water, felt the gritty smooth bank beneath her feet. (A touch of home,) she thought wistfully.

(A touch of home,) he repeated, not entirely understanding. He, and she, started to walk along the banks of the sea. (Show me what you're feeling,) he said softly.

(I will,) she answered. (But first let me feel the water again between my toes.)

Singing softly, nodding, N'rrril turned and they waded together in the cool, clear shallows of the sea.

Charles Horst was very quiet by the time Alvarest left the NASA lab chief's office; but Alvarest had secured an ally—and a promise of assistance, in the form of a discreet computer scan of military cargo manifests, in hopes of determining whether special equipment associated with the handling of nuclear warheads had been shipped to the station. It was, Horst had conceded, a faint hope; although cross-linkages existed between NASA's and the Space Forces' computers, it was questionable whether his people could intrude in the military's files without detection. Still, he was willing to try.

Alvarest had succeeded in alarming Horst—and himself. What was going on, that a man in Horst's position didn't know about something this vital?

"It would take a presidential order to put nuclear weapons on that ship, or anywhere in space," Horst said. "And it would be a violation—"

"Of international law?" Alvarest said. "Right. That's one thing. Another is, what's that ship's mission, anyway?" We both know it, he added silently as Horst looked away, but neither of us is going to say it. And if the president already knows about those bombs, what am
I
doing here?

Horst seemed to have forgotten Alvarest's presence. "The president
shouldn't
have given an order like that without going through the Committee," he muttered. "He should have—" Horst's eyes focused on Alvarest, and he abruptly changed the subject.

They talked about ways of learning the truth.

Alvarest wasn't bothered much by Horst's reticence about whom the President should have consulted with. He had already concluded that the "Oversight Committee" was an entity somehow less than and greater than the President, probably representing several nations. Probably that was whom he was working for. He was content to let it go at that; it wasn't his job to know the name of his client. But if someone in authority was pulling an end run around someone else, it was his job to learn the facts.

He floated down a tube to spin-section Alpha and a half-gee cocktail lounge. He settled into a seat at the bar, thought for a while, found a phone, called Spaceman Akins, and arranged for another guided tour. Then he returned to his seat and ordered a Scotch on the rocks.

He'd learned a few things from Horst, not about the military, but about the Tachylab group. The more he learned about John Irwin, the more he tended to put credence in the scientist's accusations. Respected by his colleagues for his pioneering work in tachyons, Irwin was also known to hold moderately radical political beliefs, which had gotten him blacklisted from the most sensitive work at Tachylab. It was also said that he'd been persecuted for alleged homosexuality. A cynic might conclude that the military would be eager to arrest such a man on conspiracy charges if there were even the slightest chance that he was leaking embarrassing information.

Why bother, Alvarest thought, unless there was something to be embarrassed about?

Alvarest carried his glass to the viewing wall. It was an odd sensation, bouncing along at half Earth-normal weight; turning as he walked felt odder still, as the Coriolis effect caused by the station's spin made him veer slightly from his intended direction. Handy feature for a cocktail lounge, he decided. No need to drink; walking sober was enough to make one stagger. The floor's curvature served as a reminder that he was walking on the inner surface of a spinning shell, and only a few meters of steel and shielding slag supported him against hard vacuum.

He sipped his drink and gazed out, down the station's axis toward the zero-gee docks. The docks appeared to be rotating, though he knew full well that it was he who was moving and not the docks. Small vessels hovered in the area. Where, he wondered, would weapons be loaded? Not there, surely. But looking around there might give him an idea of how things were done in zero-gee—might give him some notion of what to look for if he ever saw the real thing.

He would be wise to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible. He'd managed to put off the general's aide for a day or two, but eventually Ogilvy would have to be dealt with.

He turned back to the bar. Where the devil was Akins, anyway?

* * *

"Sure, you can go up that way, Mr. Alvarest—"

"Well, then—"

"—but I can't take you now," Akins said. "I have to get back for duty."

"Oh." Alvarest peered out the porthole in disappointment. According to Akins, the outbound transfer docks—for spacecraft moving outward from geosynchronous orbit, whether to Luna or L5 or interplanetary space—most closely resembled the military deep-space docks, located some distance from GEO-Four. "You think I could find my way down there by myself?" he asked.

"Sure."

"I don't want to go out an airlock by mistake."

Akins chuckled. "Don't worry. Just read the signs." He described the route, advising Alvarest to ask further directions when he got there.