The Prison in Antares (13 page)

“So if I told you I'd busted off part of the extender on my metal hand, that'd be outside your field of expertise?” suggested Ortega.

“I'm afraid so.”

“Ah, well, I'll get a new one back in the Democracy.”

“I have a question,” said Nmumba.

“Ask away,” replied Pretorius.

“What happened to the Antarean officer who was with you? Was he killed?”

“No.”

“Surely he didn't stay behind!”

Pretorius grinned. “He's right here on the ship.”

Nmumba looked around. “Where?”

“You're looking at him.”

Nmumba frowned. “I don't understand.”

“Proto, do your trick for the gentleman.”

The figure of the middle-aged man instantly morphed into the Antarean colonel.

“Well, I'll be damned!” exclaimed Nmumba. “A genuine shape-shifter!”

“Not quite,” said Pretorius.

“Then I still don't understand.”

“I'll explain it to you,” said Irish, leading him to an empty cabin. “We have to have a long conversation anyway.”

“And while she's explaining it to you, I'm going to grab some lunch,” said Pretorius, getting to his feet. “Or is it dinner?”

“Who the hell cares?” said Snake, heading to the galley. “I'll join you.”

“I could do with a meal too,” said Pandora, joining them. “The ship will warn us if I'm needed.”

Pretorius ordered the Antarean equivalent of a sandwich and a beer, made a face as he took his first bite, and made another one as he washed it down with a swallow of what passed for beer.

“Awful stuff,” he muttered.

“Once we're back in neutral territory, I can touch down and change the galley's contents,” said Pandora.

“Good thought,” agreed Pretorius. “But let's give Miga a wide berth. Someone's got to have reported this ship as missing by now.”

“To say nothing of its crew,” added Snake.

“All right,” agreed Pandora. “I'll try to hunt up some world populated by Men. It might make getting a different ship a little easier.”

“Good,” said Pretorius.

He took another bite of the sandwich, and made another face.

“Hard to win a war eating shit like this,” said Snake, nibbling around the edge of her own sandwich. “Damned lucky we didn't have to do much fighting down there in the tunnel.”

“Sometimes lucky is better than good,” offered Pandora.

Pretorius frowned. “We
didn't
do much fighting down there, did we?”

“You killed six Antareans and three members of some other race,” noted Pandora. “I'd call that a lot.”

He shook his head. “Not for the most valuable prisoner in a war that involves close to a trillion on each side.
Think!
This is a guy who, if they break him, they win the goddamned war.” He paused. “If we got our hands on Nmumba's equivalent, an Antarean who, say, could create a bomb we had no defense for, would
we
guard him with just six Men?”

There was a brief pause as they considered what he had said.

“Now that you mention it . . .” replied Pandora.

“Would we put him on a vehicle that didn't have half a hundred defense mechanisms built into it?” he continued. “Why didn't anyone or anything attack our sled when it was descending to the tunnel? And why did we emerge so close to the only turn where we could board a vehicle that was otherwise going too fast?”

“What are you getting at?” demanded Snake, frowning.

“I was so busy concentrating on the mission, I hadn't realized it until just now,” he said.

“Realized
what
?”

“It was too easy,” said Pretorius.

18

Pretorius sat on his cot in his cabin. Seated opposite him, on an obviously uncomfortable chair created to accommodate the Antarean bulk, was Irish.

The door was closed.

“It certainly didn't seem easy to
me
,” she was saying. “I was terrified.”

“You've never seen action before,” he replied. “And killing the enemy in battle is never easy. I'm just saying that this particular prisoner should have been
much
harder to reach, and all but impossible to free. There are something like seven or eight billion Antareans in this system, plus some alien allies. Why were only six of them guarding him?”

“Well . . . the train . . .” she began.

He shook his head. “We reached the tunnel without anyone trying to stop us . . . and we reached it very near the one place where we were able to board the damned train.” He paused. “They've got what's supposed to be an impenetrable jail two miles beneath the surface. Why wasn't he there?”

“I don't know,” said Irish. “Maybe the gravity?”

“I had Pandora check it out when we thought he might be there, before Madam Methuselah gave us his location.” He frowned. “Which reminds me: I have to let her know, far from owing her,
she
owes
me.
And she'd better get a new informant for this system.”

“So are you trying to say he's
not
Edgar Nmumba?”

“I'm saying that he might not be,” answered Pretorius. “We need an expert to determine whether he's the real McCoy or not. That's why you're here in the first place.”

“I'll do my best.”

“Good,” he said. “I just wanted to alert you to the fact that there are now two possibilities, not just one. The one you were prepared to find was whether or not he'd broken, whether he'd talked and they'd somehow tinkered with him so we wouldn't know it. But now the other possibility is that he's not Edgar Nmumba at all.” He stared at her. “The end result is the same: whether he broke or whether he's a ringer, we need to know, and act upon that knowledge. But the method of finding out if either is the case may differ, and you need to know that.”

“And do the others know?” asked Irish.

“Which he is? No, of course not. You're the expert.”

“No, I mean, do they know about your suspicions?”

“Yes. You'll have three, four, maybe even five hours of sessions with him every day, but the day is a lot longer than that, and I want everyone watching and listening and analyzing when you're not around.”

“All right,” she said. “Is there anything else?”

“No, that covers it.”

“I'll do my best, Nate.”

“Okay, we're done. Let's go back out before Snake accuses us of having an affair.”

They returned to the main deck, and shortly thereafter Irish took Nmumba off to a cabin to continue running mental and emotional tests on him while Pretorius rejoined the others.

“So what do you think?” asked Ortega.

Pretorius shrugged. “I don't know. That's what we've got an expert for.”

“Well, he's not armed, so even if he's a ringer, what harm can he do?” continued Ortega.

“Oh, come on, Felix,” said Snake. “For one thing, he can crash the ship. Or signal for help while we're in Coalition territory. Or just kill the oxygen and die with the rest of us.”

“Just be aware of what he
may
be, and don't be obvious about keeping an eye on him,” said Pretorius.

“I can do sixteen or eighteen hours here at a stretch,” said Pandora, “but eventually I have to sleep.”

“When you do, let me know and I'll sit in.”

“Nate, you don't know how to run this vessel.” She looked around the deck. “Hell, none of you do.”

“Yeah,” said Pretorius, “but Nmumba doesn't know that. Just put everything on automatic and show me how to respond to an alien signal if one comes in. I'll just sit here, and he'll assume I'm piloting it.”

Pandora considered what he said and smiled. “You know, he probably will, at that.”

“Okay,” said Pretorius. “The rest of you, spend your spare time learning everything you can about Nmumba from the computer. What was his home planet's major spectator sport, what were the best teams, anything like that. Then, without being too obvious—that especially means you, Felix—let drop that you rooted for such-and-so a team, and who did he like? Anything like that, anything at all that could trip him up.”

“And if he's the real thing?” asked Proto, who was back in his guise as a middle-aged man.

“Then either they broke him and put him back together, or he's one tough son of a bitch who hasn't told them a thing. And if that's the case, if he really
is
Edgar Nmumba and not a ringer, then Irish better be as good as she's supposed to be.”

They spent the next two hours learning what they could about Benitara IV, Nmumba's home world. Irish emerged first, and Pretorius promptly walked up to her.

“How's it going?” he asked.

She shrugged. “It's too early to tell. He
seems
all right, but of course if the Coalition expected us to rescue him they wouldn't have chosen a mental weakling.”

“When can you make a definitive call?”

“I don't know. Three days, four days.” She paused. “Of course, if he blunders, if he lets something drop that he shouldn't, then I'll know right away. But if I just use normal means, and he doesn't make a mistake, then it'll be a few days before he either makes that mistake or shows me that he's been telling the truth and there are none to make.”

“Okay,” said Pretorius. “In the meantime we'll be doing a little low-level testing of our own.”

She shrugged. “He told me that he expects you to, that he'd do it if he was in your place. He says he didn't break, but too many lives depend on our taking his word for it.”

“Then we won't disappoint him.”

“All right,” she said. “I'll tell him he can come out now. I explained that I had to report to you first.”

Pretorius nodded his assent. “Go ahead and get him. Whatever happens over the next couple of days, we might as well head out of the Coalition's territory and back to the Neutral Zone. If he's legit, we're on our way home. And if we find out he's not, then we'll kill him right on the ship.” He paused, then added: “Let's see just how hard the Coalition pursues us.”

She waited to make sure he had nothing further to say, then went to her cabin, ordered the door to iris, and escorted Nmumba back to the main deck.

“Getting hungry?” asked Snake.

“It's been a long time since I've had a
real
meal,” said Nmumba. “They only gave me enough to keep me alive.”

“I wish I could cook you up a silverwing, but we're stuck with the equivalent of soya products until we can get some new supplies.”

“Not a problem,” he answered. “I've never had silverwing.”

“I thought people on your world—”

“I know you're testing me,” he interrupted her mildly. “And in your place I'd do the same thing. But the silverwing is not native to my world, and I've never eaten one.”

“I'm sorry,” said Snake. “I meant silverthorn.”

He smiled. “Now
those
I like.” He sighed deeply. “I haven't had one in, oh, it must be fifteen years. They didn't import them to Braxus II, and they were just too expensive on Deluros VIII.”

Ortega brought up the subject of murderball, which was popular through the galaxy. Nmumba didn't have a rooting interest, didn't even know the leading players in the various leagues, let alone his planetary team . . . but as he explained, he'd been much too preoccupied with his scientific studies and then duties to spend any time on such frivolous pursuits as sports.

Pandora decided to take her down time, and Pretorius seated himself at the control panel.

“How am I doing so far?” asked Nmumba.

“I beg your pardon?” said Pretorius.

“I know you've all been testing me. It's what I'd do in your position.”

“Good answer.”

“So how
am
I doing?”

“You're still alive,” said Pretorius. “And we're disinclined to give second chances.”

“Good!” said Nmumba. “Then perhaps I can start relaxing.”

“Be our guest. You know where your cabin is.”

“Yes, I do,” he replied. “But by relaxing, I meant, well, unwinding. Perhaps with something to read.”

Pretorius tossed him a couple of ear inserts. “There's a simple extension of the computer in your cabin. Just tell it what book you want to hear, and if it's in the ship's library it'll . . . oh, shit! I forgot. This isn't
our
ship.” He grimaced. “It's
our
computer, but it's not tied in to the master computer on Deluros anymore. Couldn't take the chance that anyone or anything scanning the ship might catch that.” He uttered a brief command, then gestured to the screen. “What we've got is Pandora's personal library,” he continued, indicating a list of perhaps four hundred titles. “Pick the one you want.”

“Not a problem,” answered Nmumba. “I haven't seen
any
book in months.” He got to his feet. “I think I'll listen to it while I'm lying down.” He paused. “You don't mind if I cast some tranquil scenes on my wall?”

“
I
don't have to look at 'em,” said Pretorius. “Be my guest.”

“I
am
your guest,” said Nmumba with a smile as he began walking to his cabin. “Your very grateful guest.”

Then he was in the cabin, and the door had snapped shut behind him.

“Well?” asked Pretorius. “Anyone got an opinion?”

“He seems okay to me,” offered Ortega.

“I don't know,” said Snake. “I mean, hell, we've hardly spent any time with him when we weren't running for our lives.” She paused for a moment. “If anything, he seems too calm.”

“She never trusts anyone,” said Ortega.

“That's why I'm still alive,” she responded.