The Chaos Weapon (25 page)

“What are you up to, Marshal Jym?”

“Of all the Sensitive seers, you’re the one best adapted to read the patterns of Chaos. Well, use your precious gift. Look into the future, Roamer. Follow the program of your ambitions. Does the bright spark become a flame? Does the great chain-reaction take and hold? Or does it just smoulder and finally become nothing but ashes?”

“I see …”

“What do you see in the patterns, Roamer?”

No answer.

“What’s out there, Roamer? What’s taking you so long to visualize?”

She closed her eyes and smiled resignedly. “You know what’s out there. A spark … a flame … a flare—but no great conflagration. We aren’t going to make it. You’re an old devil, Marshal Jym! How could you possibly have known?”

“Saraya once suggested intuition was an unsophisticated form of Chaos sensitivity. I call it acting on a hunch.”

“It was shrewder than you knew.”

“There was a good groundwork of logic behind it. The Sensitives strive to keep themselves apart in order to concentrate the development of their powers. Chemists and physicists refine materials for similar reasons—forms of great purity can exhibit special characteristics not manifest in lesser grades. But entropy—the degree of randomness or intermixing—increases with time. Elements form compounds, and compounds become distributed as random mixtures. The same happens with peoples. There is no way the
Sensitives can avoid contamination by genes from the common pool once they leave Mayo. And into the common pool their own genes will return.”

“A depressing fatalism.”

“Not really. The Sensitives aren’t different in kind from the rest of humanity. Their genes are common genes with the talent-lines refined by purposeful selection and the accidental isolation which followed the Great Exodus. What they’ve developed is remarkable, but it isn’t unique or unrepeatable. Don’t cut them off from the mainstream, Roamer. They’ll either be absorbed or they’ll be destroyed. Fetch them back to where their great talents can be usefully employed.”

“You speak as if they’d already left?”

“I think some have. I’m talking about two lab-ships and a work-ship which landed on the plains of Mayo. Where do the seers hope to take them?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You know damn well what I mean. The golden opportunity for a great number of the best seers to make their escape into space. Where are they headed?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Of course you know. Throughout this whole episode you’ve managed to maintain telepathic communication with the others. It’s important you help me find those ships and stop them.”

“Why should I?”

“Because they’re in a trap, Roamer. A rather savage trap, set and baited by professionals of very long standing. And besides which, we need them.”

Whatever sort of battle had taken place for possession of the vessels, it had left many scars across the sands, and some rocky outcrops had been shattered by truly amazing forces which nonetheless showed no trace of explosive origin. Tents and other items of equipment had been scattered widely, but even a low pass from the air failed to reveal any sign of people. Wildheit guessed the survivors had gone back into the nearby city, and he therefore had the provost-craft
land near the one remaining bridge across the river.

The assembly which came over the bridge was headed by Chief-Marshal Delfan, with Saraya and Dabria close behind. These were followed by men from the city intermixed with displaced technicians and shipmen from the missing Federation spacecraft, and a number of Dabria’s guardians. Wildheit and Roamer met them at the foot of the craft’s ramp.

“I’m certainly glad to see you, Jym!” Delfan’s relief was obvious and heartfelt. “We’re stranded. A whole army of seers attacked us and stole our ships. They’ve not left even a single FTL communicator so that we could call for help. I’ll need to use your set to call out some units of the Space Force.”

“Hold a minute, Marshal!” Wildheit showed no sign of moving out of the way. “If Space Force agrees to send you ships, what instructions do you intend giving them?”

“To blast the seers out of space if they won’t surrender.” Delfan was annoyed by the question. “They’re all guilty of space piracy, and I’ll see the lot executed even if we have to hunt them to the limits of space. The seers are more dangerous even than the Ra. I’m glad to see you brought Roamer back with you. I’ve had charges of treason prepared against her.”

“They won’t stick,” said Wildheit. “She never was a Federation subject. Anyway, we owe her a great debt. She was a component part of the Chaos catalyst which Saraya here devised. That catalyst achieved its objective. Do you fashion a gun and then condemn it because it shoots people?”

“I’ll consider the point sometime,” said Delfan, unconvinced. “Stand out of my way, Jym! That’s an order!”

Wildheit shrugged and moved aside, but Delfan found his way still blocked by Cass Hover standing on the ramp. Behind him were two commandos, equally impassive, and they in turn were backed by the four Ra renegades solidly blocking the inside of the lock.

“What is this?” Delfan
turned back to Wildheit, and his brow was a cast of thunder.

“Listen a moment, Marshal,” said Wildheit. “Before we do anything precipitate, let’s decide whose game we’re playing. Before Dabria came to Mayo, the Sensitives were separated but not isolated from the rest of humanity. I suggest the isolation came when Dabria thought to form the seers into a tool powerful enough to protect him in case the Ra ever found out where he was hiding. He was using them in the same way Saraya has used the Federation to save him from his enemies. Don’t be deceived, Marshal Delfan, these two characters are using us.”

Delfan’s anger was swallowed by a wave of questing speculation. His stern eyes searched Wildheit’s face minutely, and he looked to Hover for a rebuttal, but found none. Then he turned to Dabria.

“How much of this is true?”

Dabria shrugged expressively. “I fear space-fungus has eroded the marshal’s brains.”

“Indeed!” Wildheit held his ground. “Then I’ll elaborate on my theme a little. I further think that when the Ra universe had been triggered to destruction, you found the power of the seers a great embarrassment. That’s why you arranged to allow them to escape under circumstances which made it nearly certain they’d be destroyed.”

“I don’t have to listen to this rubbish. The man’s insane.”

“Remember,” said Wildheit, “I’ve seen your guardians at work. The way you spray hypnotics around, I see no way even an army of seers could steal three ships unless you permitted it.”

“You’re on weak ground there, Marshal.”

“Speaking of ground, whose bright idea was it to carry out the refitting on Mayo anyway? Simple logistics suggest the provost-craft could have been more easily handled at a command workshop.”

“Saraya worked that out with Dabria.” Marshal
Delfan’s fingers slipped off the safety rings on his weapon’s belt.

“And that fact conceals a remarkable coincidence,” continued Wildheit. “According to my information, neither had any reason to suppose that the other had survived even into this century. Yet when the seers set down a damaged provost-craft on Mayo, Dabria just happened to get in touch with Saraya.”

“What are you trying to prove, Marshal?” Saraya’s black cloak swirled around him angrily.

“The point’s already made. Collusion and manipulation of the human race for your own ends. First you used us to fight your own enemies, now you try to divide us to fight among ourselves. You can’t accept that your precious infant colony might have achieved its own maturity. You’re still back seven thousand years—manipulating, pulling strings, playing God, attempting to cull the stock until it conforms to your specifications.”

“Have you finished?” Saraya was nearly dancing with anger. “There’s a point you’ve forgotten, Marshal. When you’re engaged in selective breeding, you don’t consult the beasts on what they wish to become.”

There was a strong scent of violets in the air, and a few people on the fringes of the crowd had begun to sway uneasily. Even Delfan seemed to be having a hard time following the conversation.

“I think you made a mistake there,” Dabria said to Saraya reproachfully. “I’m afraid that’s the very point Marshal Wildheit was attempting to make.”

Without a further word, Delfan buckled at the knees and slipped to the ground. Another dozen of the assembled crowd did likewise.

Clickety …

The occupants of the provost-craft stood firm and undismayed.

Clickety … Clickety …

“It’s not going to work,” said Wildheit to Dabria. “Not any more.”

The look on Dabria’s face was one of patent disbelief until he
noticed the slight ends of the filters in their nostrils which absorbed the pervading scent of violets and the low-frequency attenuating buttons in their ears which stilled the deep subsonics of the horn.

Saraya shook his head sadly. “Looks like we’ve been found out, old friend. Perhaps our job is done and they don’t need us any more. It remains to be seen if they’re tough enough to accept full responsibility for their own development. But for you and me, I suggest a little discrete retirement.”

There was something faintly pathetic about the way Saraya and the ex-guardian walked slowly away, divested suddenly of all the authority they had formerly held. Wildheit watched their departure with sympathetic eyes.

“Aren’t you going to stop them?” Cass Hover came down the ramp to stand at Wildheit’s side.

“We owe them a great deal, Cass. Without them and a few others, Terra would have yet had no civilization, and the Federation wouldn’t even be a dream. I suspect one of them still has an old Ra ship tucked away somewhere. For all their talk of retirement, I’d guess they’ll go into time-dilation and turn up again in a century or two to see if we really did make the grade alone.”

“Do you think we will make the grade?”

“I don’t honestly know, Cass. Kasdeya once told me that our infant culture needed constant culling to prevent backsliding. I wonder if that was a temporary phase, or whether backsliding is an innate tendency in the hybrid species?”

“You’ve got beyond me there, boy.”

“Never mind! I’ll explain it to you sometime.” Wildheit gave the prostrate body of Chief-Marshal Delfan an affectionate prod with his foot. “Saraya’s key phrase was the one about whether we’re tough enough to take the responsibility for our own development. Think about that carefully, Cass. If the human race ever starts to slip into a degenerative decline, who’s going to do the pruning now?”

WELL ahead of
its companion vessels, the patrol-ship dropped out of subspace well clear of the galaxy’s edge. From this position it was possible to appreciate the extreme contrast of the starry bounty of the Milky Way behind them and the emptiness of the great void in front. These were the shores of the great space oceans, across which the other island galaxies gleamed as though but humble stars themselves. It was a sight which always seized Cass Hover’s imagination: tantalizing with the thought that no matter how far a man might travel he could never reach the end of a universe whose frontiers expanded at a rate faster than the mind could comprehend.

His companions on the patrol-ship, two young seers from Mayo, were similarly enthralled. Little Shadow, although space-traveled, was having her very first glimpse of the mysteries of extra-galactic space. And the pallid Brin, more experienced but nonetheless impressed, was straining his marvelous ears to catch whispers which were old before Mayo had condensed from a cloud of gas five-thousand-million years before.

It was not the search for wonder, however, that had brought them to this spot. Somewhere out in the void a squadron of ugly, black, block-like alien warcraft were reported to be moving in toward the Hundred Worlds. At this time when the Federation Space Force was stretched beyond its limit by the chore of mopping up the Ra, this whole sector of space was wide open to devastating attacks by the aliens, whose policy was apparently one of annihilation rather than conquest. Hover, studying his screens, breathed more easily when the three space-corvettes dropped out of subspace in
close formation behind the patrol-ship. Although woefully outnumbered by the black, implacable foe in front, these three light vessels were all that could be spared to meet the alien threat. The marshal was not dismayed, however, because the arrangement had strengths other than those apparent.

“Hullo, Bogy-finder, are you on-line?” The lead space-corvette was calling.

“Bogy-finder on-line, Captain. Marshal Hover speaking. Welcome to the show!”

“What have you got for us, Marshal?”

“Long range Chaos predictions from Mayo suggest a whole squadron of bogies
en route
for the Hundred Worlds. We plan a deep-space intercept. I take it you know the procedure?”

“Indeed, and we’re all prepared. We’re acquiring your data transfer at hundred percent level, and our gunnery is on automatic ready for you to take control. But it beats me how you make this thing work. If our own instruments can’t locate bogies beyond weapon range, I’d have thought it a reasonable certainty that you’ve nothing in a patrol-ship which could.”

“Let’s say we put a lot of thought into it,” said Hover. “Keep an instrument fix on us, and keep your data channels clear. We’re searching for the aliens now, and we’ll give you a verbal indication of what weapons to arm and when to do it. All actual weapons firing and guidance will be under our control.”

“Understand, Marshal—and thanks. We’ve heard great things about Bogy-finder. Now we’ve the chance to see it in action.”

Hover left the communications channel open, and looked around the cluttered patrol-ship cabin.

“All yours, Shadow! Any ideas yet?”

The girl pulled herself back out of a light trance, and gravely stroked her dark hair back from her face.

“Chaos predicts sixteen major blasts, all too great to be weapon reactions. I’ve fixed the timing of the events, but the spatial coordinates are still too soft to be of use yet. Hold your present course and have the corvettes arm long-range
missiles. There’s something peculiar out there. I’d prefer we struck them from a safe distance.”