“What I thought,” Littlefeet commented. “C’mon. Let’s get back.”
“What you thought? What the hell did you think to do this? There wasn’t nothin’ there but a bare back!”
“A red back. I seen it before on a couple Family members who were hurt bad and hid in the caves for a couple weeks to heal. When they come back out, one or two days of sun, they looked like that. `Sunburned,’ they called it. I noticed it on the shoulders and some of the face. I couldn’t be sure with all this blood and crap, but the back wasn’t touched by that.”
“Sunburned? What the hell you mean? Red, yeah, but…”
“Ain’t nobody burn like that guy did. You burn like that, you’re dead. But this guy burned! So there may be some truth to them rumors after all. I mean, where’s the only place where the sun don’t never get to you?”
Big Ears saw his point. “Underground… Jeez! But what was he doin’ here?”
“Who knows? No way to figure it now. But lookit his fingers on that one hand, there. Smooth and nice as a baby’s, even with the scuffing. This guy didn’t live like we do, didn’t work like we do.”
Big Ears nodded slowly, then shook his head in wonder. “But if he was all protected and soft, then why did he come up here?”
They were both silent for a moment, awestruck at where evidence and logic had taken them. Then, suddenly, there was a voice. A third voice. It sounded quite near, and quite pleasant, but it shouldn’t have been there.
“I can answer some of your questions,” said the voice, a very kindly male voice. They both tensed and the spears came up menacingly, and they were suddenly back to back, looking for the speaker.
“Please don’t be alarmed,” said the voice, which seemed to be coming out of the rock itself. “I mean you no harm. I could not harm you anyway. I am quite dead, I assure you.”
Both boys screamed and ran so fast down the trail they almost walked over one another’s back, and their leaps to the ground and their speed away from that haunted rock set new Family records, no question.
FOUR
Mayhem, Real and Simulated
“How many does that make so far, Joe?”
They were aboard the tender Margaite, in the orbital docking area above the planet, examining the liner Odysseus close up.
“Nine, Mister Harker,” responded the chief, checking a list on a small portable tablet. “Your opera singer, if that’s what she is; the Orthodox priest; the physicist from the University of New Kyoto; the mathematician from Hendrikkaland; Colonel N’Gana; his sergeant; Admiral Krill; the archaeologist from Tamarand; and the Pooka, profession unknown.”
“The Pooka’s the only nonhuman in the bunch?”
“Far as I can tell. Of course, who knows what Madame Sotoropolis is under all that stuff?”
Harker sighed. “Well, she’s a real person, anyway. Would you believe we even found some recordings of hers in her prime? Old stuff—took forever to find something that would play it but she was good. Of course, now you can have the perfect opera singer, good looks instead of battleaxes, too, with perfect pitch and a five-octave range just by dialing your preferences in.”
“Never went in for opera, sir. They get stabbed and then they sing like stuck pigs for forty minutes before they croak. If I want that level of realism, I’ll watch the ancient cartoons.”
The officer chuckled. Still, it was an interesting, if eclectic, group and it didn’t make any sense. The only thing they had in common was that they all suddenly had quit their jobs and flown out to this godforsaken place, walked into the Cuch, and asked for the Dutchman. Then, getting no satisfactory answer, they’d all gone, one by one, to the spaceport and boarded the shuttle that just happened to come down to meet them from the Odysseus, which still hadn’t filed any kind of departure plan or papers.
Some were of Greek ancestry, of course, like the family of the Odysseus. The priest and the old lady and the ship, anyway. But that wasn’t much of a tie to the others. When Colonel N’Gana and Sergeant Mogutu appeared, it had at least added spice to the puzzle. Their reputation as mercenaries and experts in their craft was well known and respected. N’Gana was said to have gone in and out of a moon of Malatutu, spiriting off wealthy and influential evacuees even as the planet below was falling. It was rumored that he’d actually gotten down to the surface and lifted off somehow, but while that was believed by the masses it was doubted by the military. There was just too much data suggesting that if you got within the Titans’ energy field then any machinery you might have would be sucked dry of power in nanoseconds.
“You see a correlation, Chief?” he asked, more fishing in his own mind than expecting an answer.
“No, sir. Except that maybe this Greek angle is being overplayed. Maybe it’s something else about them that’s the real clue.”
Maybe, but they’d run that through some pretty smart computers and not come up with anything that made practical sense.
Maybe it wasn’t supposed to make practical sense!
Suppose… Okay, the Melcouris were from a world called Helena, probably very Greek in its settlement and culture considering the naive and the family. The priest, Father Chicanis, had been at seminary there, but had spent much of his time in missions on planets with far stranger names and ethnic backgrounds. Dame Sotoropolis had been related to the Melcouri family. Fine. But there the linkages and potentials stopped.
A priest, an old opera singer, a shipping family, a physicist, a math genius, two expert mercenaries who’d worked in the occupied regions, a retired admiral who designed sophisticated weapons systems for a couple of major defense contractors (for all the good it did them), an archaeologist, and a creature that was long and furry and fluffy and was best known for being able to squeeze itself into and out of tight places.
That suggested that they were going after some sort of treasure in occupied areas: something from ancient times. A group to get you in and hold off the enemies while your nonhuman squeezed in and got something, with guidance from the archaeologist. And how did you get out? Nobody had solved that, because anybody who did would be named Emperor of the Universe and more if they could. The computers gave a sixty percent chance, give or take, that the treasure scenario was correct, but they stipulated that only someone who solved that exit problem would try.
The Dutchman. There wasn’t any crime in asking for him, but hadn’t he promised the old lady that he could get in and out? If they believed him, what sort of treasure could be worth that kind of risk with that undependable and highly nasty character? Or was the Dutchman merely a code word used by an old lady with a background in opera?
“Admiral Krill will be there with something to keep us from following,” Harker noted. “That should be child’s play for her.”
“She didn’t take much baggage aboard,” the chief pointed out.
“Didn’t have to. Whatever she’d need would be likely illegal and they’d have picked it up in one of those containers ahead of time or in pieces that she’d now be busily having the loadmaster robots assemble. Chief, you’re an old hand. We’ve gone round and round that ship. How would you track it if they could jam any conventional tracking devices or systems?”
“With that kind of assumption, they’re home free,” the chief replied. “Hell, any universe in which I can have lived for thirty-six years and still be a hundred and four years old is beyond me to track.”