"It's the madness," Midnight piped. "It's spreading. It's into UpTown and even the High City feels its breath." Turtle had said that last time. She did not think of things like that herself.
"They got their messenger out?" Turtle asked.
"Yes. Aboard a Cholot Traveler. Disguised as the child of a High City lord from F. M'Cartica 5."
"So the infection bounds from world to world. They are fools. Where was the Traveler bound?"
"P. Jaksonica."
Turtle settled into a chair, for all his lethal mass a weary little creature. He picked at a button on his homemade shirt. "Yes. The thing will be fool enough to try it. P. Jaksonica 3. Still under the Ban."
Turtle always knew so much. He amazed everyone. How could he know, trapped here in Merod Schene DownTown?
He looked Midnight in the eye. "The cure will not be long coming if it tries to reach Cholot Varagona." He closed his reptilian eyes briefly, which was no closing at all, for he had only nictating membranes. "Bless the Concord. There is no saving fools. Ladies, it is time we saw to our own welfare."
Is there no chance for the Concord? Amber Soul asked. Just the edge of that thought was enough to make Midnight's head buzz. Amber Soul almost never communicated with anyone. When she did she knocked you down.
"None," Turtle said. "The thing is one of those jackstraw rebellions that come along every human generation. I have seen a hundred. They don't last. The Enherrenraat did not last a year and it was five hundred in the shaping." He paused, then asked rhetorically, "How old are the Guardships? They were old when I was young. Sometimes it seems the stars themselves are younger and the Guardships were created old and wily and deadly and there was never a moment when they were not invincible."
No one knew Turtle's true age. Turtle would not say. They joked that DownTown had been built around him.
Turtle seldom talked about Turtle. Whence had he come? What was he? The last indigene of V. Rothica 4? There were ruins in the deserts. Unlikely that he was of the precursor race, though. Nobody was that old.
An artifact, then? Like Lady Midnight? Created in a laboratory for some inscrutable purpose even he had forgotten? The warrens of DownTown festered with artifacts who had outlived the usefulness of their designs. And it was thick with mistakes. The hobby life designers seldom destroyed their mistakes. They just turned them out. And some were terrible. And some bred true.
If not an artifact, might Turtle be an alien, lost, stranded, planetbound far from home?
That was the popular theory.
Turtle told nothing about himself directly, but Turtle told stories, only to the very young, on the streets of DownTown. He mirrored childhood dreams, singing interstellar songs, spinning epics of great ships clambering the Web. He told tales of warmer worlds and far suns, of races no DownTowner would ever see, of great fires searing the deep between the stars as warships met in battles of unimaginable fury. Perhaps he spoke of the destruction of the Enherrenraat. Or perhaps he spoke of another struggle more remote in space and time. He sang his songs of far wars in shades of emotion that said he had seen them himself, that he might have been among those who had gained only shattered dreams.
Turtle broke a long silence. "If it does try to carry its message to Cholot Varagona it will be taken. Canon garrison will pulse P. Jaksonica station. Every Traveler out will carry a call for the Guardships. The first to arrive will pick the thing's brain to the last synapse. Then it will come sniffing up the creature's backtrail. First stop: Merod Schene."
Lady Midnight trilled, "Will they be that terrible?"
"Huh! Worse than you imagine. A Cholot Traveler picks up a shapeshifting illegal of a race supposedly eradicated from a Merod world and delivers it to a Cholot world under the Ban. They will be thorough. We must assure our own safety. Precautions never taken are the only sort that leave one with regrets."
Amber Soul paced. She radiated a harsh, almost angry concurrence backed by emotions dark and deep and so powerful Lady Midnight cringed away from her.
"We may be in for interesting times," Turtle observed. "I suppose it had to happen."
— 3 —
WarAvocat was a lean old man whose dark uniform accentuated the pallor of his face. Deathshead. Crawling with colors and shadows from the displays. Hard, dark eyes. Thin, tight lips that had forgotten how to smile a thousand years ago. Sound seemed to fade as he approached, the air to grow more chill.
WarAvocat took in the wall display in one devouring glance. "Satisfactory, WatchMaster."
"Grace, WarAvocat."
"Most satisfactory." Hanaver Strate moved toward the Probe team.
A Probe spokeswoman said, "The second approximation is up, WatchMaster. The lifeform in that pod is both alien and engineered."
Third WatchMaster's dispassion cracked. He did not need Gemina's ID. "A krekelen! No known alien could have gotten near a Traveler's escape pods. The ship's own programmes would have prevented it."
"Gemina concurs, sir."
WarAvocat almost smiled. It had been a long time without action. "Access, all crews." A shimmer hovering behind him leapt his shoulder. "Alert, Red One." Alarms screamed. "All ready batteries commence firing. Intercept and Pursuit, commence launch. ConCom. Assemble an I and I team for transfer to P. Jaksonica station."
Third WatchMaster observed, "The pod is in the outer atmosphere already, WarAvocat."
Meaning the batteries' beams would lose coherency, that projectiles would be inaccurate, that the fighters would be wasted because they could not go down into atmosphere.
"Missiles? No. Too late." They accelerated so swiftly they would hit atmosphere like hitting a wall. "Perfectly timed. The thing is crafty."
"Hellspinners?"
"Probably too late for those, too. But they'll make an exemplary display." WarAvocat spoke to the shimmer. "Access, Weapons. Hellspinners, loose. Access, Hall of the Soldiers. Soldiers, warm one battalion of heavy infantry data-prepped for a search-and-kill in Cholot Varagona."
The air murmured, "Have you a unit preference, WarAvocat?"
"Whichever is up." WarAvocat's busy eye noted those from the off shifts who were tardy reaching stations. Second WatchMaster was among the latest. He wilted under WarAvocat's glare. "Access, Communications. Pulse to Station P. Jaksonica 3B. Total quarantine incoming Cholot Traveler Glorious Spent. Responsibility: STASIS. WarAvocat, Guardship VII Gemina."
WarAvocat recalled his interceptors and sent his pursuit fighters to escort the Traveler to dock. "WatchMaster. Efficiency deserves opportunity. I'm sending you to station as prize officer. Empowered to direct and employ I and I and STASIS."
Third WatchMaster flushed. Such an opportunity, unplanned, unscheduled, could make his career. Could get him nominated to WarCrew. Could get him elected if he did his job well. Or could shatter his chances forever if he fouled up. "Grace, WarAvocat."
"The I and I team will leave soon. You'll have to hurry. Second WatchMaster!"
Second arrived briskly, face red. "WarAvocat?"
"Relieve Third. You'll stand his shifts in addition to your own."
Second WatchMaster swallowed. "Grace, WarAvocat."
"Get going," WarAvocat told Third. "Don't embarrass me."
The Twist Masters loosed their unpredictable vortices. The furies ripped across space and clawed at the atmosphere of P. Jaksonica 3, scrawling fire upon the skies of that world, birthing auroras that would persist for days.
They rattled and scaled and scarred the falling pod but they did not stop it. At three thousand meters the krekelen bailed out. At twenty-five hundred, Canon garrison took the pod under fire.