Tom swift and the Captive Planetoid (18 page)

“You know why we’re here,” said Tom.

“Not to pay your respects to me, I should venture to say. For I believe you expected not to find me at home. There are indeed times when I am loaded aboard my great
Apocalypso
, carried on my moveable throne by my devoted bearers, twelve very strong men, to take the sea air. But not recently.”

“I’m afraid salt air is known to increase appetite,” Doc observed.

“I have tried to lose weight by jogging, but my twelve bearers become easily winded.”

“Mr. Zai,” Tom said, “as a gracious host, please tell us your story. We know you—or someone close to you—is involved in some sort of secret operation. What is the Ninth Light, sir? Is it something to do with that ancient Gureshpal sect, Qalqaram?”

“You pose many questions,” replied Desh Zai with dignity. “For centuries my family has maintained a degree of faith—or perhaps a sentimental regard—in Qalqaram. We don’t force our beliefs on others. Merely a family custom.”

“I think it’s a little more than that,” Tom declared bluntly.

“Well, perhaps so in recent years. If you wish the ‘story’—forgive me if I must sometimes pause to regain my breath—I was approached a few years ago by a foreigner who had some most interesting things to say. He spoke of religion and destiny, and ultimately of Qalqaram. At first he would not provide his name. but at length he proved to my satisfaction that he is indeed the prophesied one, He Who Is To Come.”

Doc nodded sharply. “In other words, the Ninth Light.”

“So he would be called, in your language. That is his title; his name is Eid-F’lqa, the loyal ninth son of Eid-F’lqa Qalq’r, the First Celestial Light.”

“Are you saying Eid-F’lqa is behind the spying and sabotage, the attack on Fearing Island?” demanded Tom.

Desh Zai’s face twitched up a slight smile which was hard to find. “
I
shall be content to speak of myself only, young sir. Do I appear someone who could lead such vigorous action?”

“The question I have is, why in heaven would anyone
want
to do it?” Doc snapped. “What does your sect have against Swift Enterprises and space travel?”

“Not a thing, Doctor. Do not blame your many adversaries on me or my spiritual counselor. I wish all of you nothing but blessing and success. This trip of yours to the passing asteroid, Qalq’bah, was a most impressive achievement. And now you plan to change its travels, to inhabit it—what a marvel! And as your prize, a star of sapphire.”

“‘
Qalq’bah
’,” repeated Tom. “Your friend Dr. Talmadge gave it a different name.”

Zai opened up a line of large pearly teeth. “But surely it is not suitable to name this heavenly wanderer after the man’s sweetheart? I understand such relationships are transitory. It is like a meal: you eat, you enjoy—it is gone. And indeed, Louis Talmadge is not the discoverer.”

“No,” declared Tom angrily. “It was discovered by Henrik Jatczak on Nestria!”

“Or perhaps, as I politely contend, by Eid-F’lqa, in whose ear Great God speaks.”

“It’s obvious this adviser of yours can somehow monitor, from a distance, what selected persons hear.” Turning to Simpson, Tom added: “
And
what that person sees with his eyes, Doc! Now you know why I had to squint and look away, why I couldn’t even speak aloud about my plan to travel here to the Zai estate.”

“Naturally you chose not to annoy the Ninth Light with the details of your long journey to this breakfast of ours,” said Desh Zai. “But may I suggest, it was all quite obvious. My home would surely be on your itinerary. You suddenly come to Madagascar to—ah, Great God whispered your very words to Eid-F’lqa—to meet the astronomer, but also to uncover the source of
u’umat
, the moment of communion given by the Ninth Light to deserving ones.”

“Deserving of what?” frowned Tom Swift. “Paralysis? Death?”

“You misunderstand. No matter. You shall soon meet the Ninth Light.”

Doc snorted. “In this world or the next?”

The family-sultan glared out of his encumbering flesh. “A guest also has certain duties of courtesy, Doctor. Your insinuations are not appreciated. I need no divine whispers to know what you think of me, you two. Some sort of world threat! Perhaps I wish to reestablish Gureshpal among the nations, eh?

“Not so, gentlemen. I have no regard for the tiny, failed sultanate of my ancestors. Forget Gureshpal! We Boses have made our money; what need have we for a country? I have no wish to be a politician, to run things, to exercise power. To raise my fingers is sufficient exercise! As to my legs—do they yet exist?

“No, I wish only to enjoy this fat life of mine, to listen to fine music—largely Disco—to play Internet Poker and so forth. I say to the world,
leave me alone!
”

“All right, Mr. Zai, you’re not the next Black Cobra. But what
are
you after?” persisted the young inventor. “Why the attacks, the sabotage?”

“You continue to attribute to me things done by others,” muttered Zai. “Perhaps it was that Cobra fellow who committed whatever acts of sabotage you make reference to. As to the raid of the devout Qalqarami followers upon your rocket island, am I to know the will of the Mighty One? Eid-F’lqa did as he was commanded; I trust it is all to The Good. For that is faith.”

Doc spoke up. “I assume you’ll be getting to the point of all this.”

“You shall soon know much more, Doctor, Mr. Swift. Now I grow weary and shall be silent. I recommend you eat your breakfast. You have a lengthy flight before you this morning.”

“To the
Apocalypso
,” stated Tom.

“Ah!—to Truth.”

TOM and Doc were flown across the Indian Ocean by a small but lavishly-appointed jet, with a polite stewardess in a sari who provided snacks and, for Doc Simpson, cocktails in flight. “Drinking isn’t healthy and I do it rarely,” Doc told his fellow passenger. “But this is a rare situation.”

Tom smiled. “As I said—we might as well get the most from our trip.”

“Any guesses on what we’ll find on the yacht?”

“Probably a nut with high-tech electronics,” replied the youth. “If you’re listening in, Mr. Ninth Light, no offense intended.”

“And if you’re
watching
, Mr. Ninth Light, don’t take offense at
this
!” Doc made a sharp gesture in front of Tom’s eyes, a kind of salute.

The jet was amphibious, and at long last they landed in the water near the
Apocalypso
. Tom had seen large yachts, but this one was a titan, virtually as big as a cruise ship! “Good night!” he gulped. “I think this yacht’s bigger than Gureshpal!”

They were taken aboard by silent stone-faced men in pale yellow nautical garb, all bearing the dangling Qalqaram charm symbols. Stone-faced—yet smiling contentedly, a disturbing effect.

After being left to themselves for a time, in a comfortable suite, they were led down a thickly carpeted hotel-like hallway to an odd sort of door. As Tom was made to stand sideways in the opening, the sides of the doorframe slid closer until they touched him lightly, and the top slowly descended, like a lackadaisical guillotine, until it brushed against his crewcut. Then Tom was guided forward, and the doorway adjusted itself for Doc.

Tom understood. “Checking us out for electronics,” he told Doc.

“We’d have to have eaten it.”

“Believe me, Doc, it’s been done.”

A short hall opened into a wide square room with a high ceiling. To Tom’s surprise, the room was filled with rows of small desks, like those in a classroom—and every desk was occupied by men and women in comfortable robes, several score. The “pupils” were all leaning back in their seats, looking ceilingward with intent expressions. Their arms, busy at some task, lay on the desktops. There was a low murmur of many voices. Simpson pointed and whispered, “Look—they’re all on IV lines.”

“We practice a meditative discipline,” said an accented voice. A tall slender man, hair tonsured like a medieval monk, approached them confidently. He shook hands with Tom and Doc, then waved the tranquil guards out of the room.

When the door was closed, the man smiled. “Yes, I am the one you seek. I am Eid-F’lqa.”

“The Predicted One,” said Doc sarcastically.

“The proper term is He Who Is To Come,” reproved the man jovially. “But why not call me the Ninth Light, Doc? Tom? As I’ve heard you do so often.”

“Who are you?” Tom asked.

“What, my real name? Interested in trivia, are you? I’m surprised Mr. Ames didn’t track me down. For most of my life, I was Francesco Orfeo, a humble man.”

Tom nodded and said wryly, “Before you became a prophet?”

“From birth—Sicily. And then I became a kind of electronics engineer, one might say. A special kind in an advanced field. And then... well. Might you have heard of Zolas bar Melchshem?”

“No.”

“Of course not. He was deep in the Israeli military establishment. A genius. Very secret work, very advanced. Science.”

“Weaponry?” asked Doc.

Orfeo smiled. “What isn’t, in the end? I was his assistant for many years. When he died, I was the only man on Earth fully conversant in the details of his work.”

“Which I suppose you stole,” stated Tom, “before going into hiding.”

“Well, Tom, I had to kill Zolas first, naturally. Then I destroyed his journals and so forth. And
then
I went into hiding.”

The so-called Ninth Light regarded his captives with raised eyebrows, as if expecting further questions. The young inventor gestured at the others in the room. “I imagine these ‘meditators’ can’t hear your confession. Or don’t they care anymore?”

“To serve is bliss. They are far too intent upon their tasks to listen to other voices. That is, their
task
—it is a single task, done collectively. Vital spiritual work.”

“Yeah, I don’t doubt it,” Simpson said. “Your spy system. What are you having them do? Project their astral bodies and report back?”

Orfeo chuckled at the idea, but Tom was shaking his head. “There’s nothing spiritual or psychic about it. Obviously he’s using some technology developed by Melchshem.”

“Yes, that’s it,” admitted the Ninth Light with a degree of pride. “It’s all technology. I knew Tom Swift would be interested in the technical end. I planned to tell you about it.”

“Before you kill us,” Tom stated calmly.

“Wouldn’t do much good afterwards, hmm? Here you are, way out at sea, on a trip no one back home knows about—not even your family, not even your best friend ‘flyboy’. By trying so hard to avoid the Ninth Light’s all-seeing eye—and ear—you effectively covered your tracks.”

“Enterprises knows of our flight to Madagascar.”

“Yes, so we saw and heard. So questions will be asked frantically when you fail to return, and your airfield personnel will eventually put your associates on a trail leading to your jet in Fianarantsoa. Eventually. No doubt they will track you to Dr. Talmadge. Then, by logical assumption, to Desh Zai. And then?—but you will both be long gone without a trace. And my patron Zai is a very private person.”

Tom said, “You were going to tell me how you work it, Mr. Orfeo.”

“No reason not to,” said the man. “My friend and mentor the late Dr. Melchshem did advanced work in a new field, the study and development of nanoelectronics. To explain, for you look blank, Dr. Simpson—it involves surpassing, in smallness and speed, the etched planar microprocessor, which is running up against the physical limits of its evolution. Zolas was engaged in ‘growing’ fantastically small spikes of silicon molecules, which could be forced into various useful shapes—rather like Bonsai trees.”

“Little computers,” said Doc.

“‘
Little
’ is hardly the word. Imagine a million microprocessors gaily dancing on the head of a pin! And better yet, the nano-units are
polynary
—several natural default modes, not just ‘on’ or ‘off’ as in binary processors. Thus their capacity increases exponentially.”

“I’ll admit it’s fantastic,” Tom said with unwilling enthusiasm. “Assuming it’s true at all.”

“You should have more of that
trust
you lectured Bud Barclay about,” chuckled the Ninth Light. “You’ve had to deal with the result of this technology, Tom. I know you never believed God was spying on you.”

“Shall I do the exposition?” asked the young inventor dryly. “Obviously Melchshem utilized the nanoelectronic units to create some sort of implant that can ‘read’ certain patterns of nerve activation...”

“Cochlear impulses in the ear, retinal patterns in the eye.”

Tom nodded. “Not
mind-reading
. No device can ‘read-off’ the higher cortical functions. The implants must scan and relay sense data at the very earliest stages, when the pattern still corresponds to the external stimulus—an image, a sound.”

“Correct.”

Simpson took up the nod. “It was the bee sting. That’s how you injected your implant into Tom. I couldn’t detect it because it was too small.”

“Far, far too small, ‘Doc’. We were able to surgically attach it to the base of the sting, which we amputated, for each of those bees. Once beneath the epidermis, the spikes—two of them, sight and sound—are designed to mechanically crawl through the nervous system undetected, using the same chemical traces that guide nerve specialization in the embryo, to reach their assigned positions. Then the sensing process commences.”

“Bees for me,” Tom declared, “because I happened to avoid your original injection technique, the method you used on Fearing Island. The raid and the damage was just a cover, wasn’t it? Those flame-beamers didn’t just shoot fire, but something like darts that inserted the nano-devices into Fearing personnel.”

“And, of course—” began the Ninth Light.

“Into Bud! He just thought he’d been singed.”

“But your ‘Buddy Boy’ was impulsive while you held back, Tom. Obviously, the incursion was timed to match your landing in your spacecraft. The bee approach may seem silly, but I
wanted
to try it, curious to see
if
it would work. And ‘it did happen,’ to use another of your phrases.”

Orfeo now gestured them to precede him in a walk around the periphery of the bizarre “classroom.” “I feel privileged, boasting of these things to what Neil Gerard calls a forward thinker. I’ve enjoyed hearing that surreal nonsense he spouts. A pop-culture charlatan who has outlived his
pop
. I can tell you—as you’ll never know of it otherwise—that he visited his own absurd vault of artificial stars with Bud and Chow—Chow, with his colored shirts.”