Genesis Force Page 8

  But he was not a real man. He was just one of two consorts, and he had less guts than the new one. Padrin didn’t blame the lad for running away, because it was better to die in freedom and self-respect than live in cowardice.

  * * *

  Most of the roofs in Tejmol were sloped or domed, like minarets, but a few had niches and cornices where two lithe young people could climb and hide, observing the whole city below them. So it was that Farlo and Candra perched on the roof of an art gallery in the old section of town, watching events transpire on the streets below them. They had borrowed some blankets from a deserted apartment and were wrapped up in them, because the night was getting cold. People should have been in bed, but they were gathered in groups, talking, complaining, and watching video logs of people volunteering to stay behind. Farther down the street, hundreds were lined up to enter their names in the lottery. A patrol of constables roamed the sidewalk, and most of the people were respectful to them. Still there was an atmosphere of panic and desperation that Farlo had never seen before.

  In the starlit sky, a shuttlecraft glided slowly past their position, then wound through the sky over the Summer Palace.

  “We’re going to die here,” muttered Farlo, “with all those other sad people. I guess I could go stand in line and tell them who I am.”

  “Nah,” scoffed Candra, hugging the ratty old blanket tighter around her elegant gown and bare feet. “You don’t have to do that. I wasn’t going to tell you, but maybe I should. You look so miserable.”

  “Tell me what?” he demanded.

  She grinned smugly. “I know an offworlder who’s going to take us with him.”

  “What?” asked Farlo doubtfully. Normally he would have hooted at such a boast, but he knew this was no average day. After all, he’d been a homeless street child one instant, the seeress consort the next, and back to homeless.

  “He wants your perfume sprayer,” she whispered. “That’s why we had to get it.”

  Farlo laughed uproariously. “You’ve gone crazy! We were already safe, and now we’re stranded—all to get that perfume.”

  “I’ll prove it to you,” said Candra defensively. She pulled back her blanket to show him a pin she wore on her dress. “This is a communicator—all I have to do is push it, and my pointy-eared friend will answer.”

  “And save us?” asked Farlo. “Go ahead, I’m waiting.”

  Smugly the girl tapped the brooch and grinned. After a few moments, absolutely nothing happened, and she did it again. After Farlo began to laugh at her futile attempts, she tore off the jewelry and was about to hurl it twenty stories into the street below, but he caught her hand.

  “No, wait,” he said. “Don’t turn up your nose at a gift. Let’s keep that pin and see if it’s at all useful in the morning. We’ll keep the perfume, too. You never know—we may want to smell good when we die.”

  She lowered her head and muttered, “I’ve been stupid, haven’t I?”

  “Hey, we’re not used to people giving us stuff,” answered the boy, trying to cheer her. “They’ve tried to give us stuff all day, and we can’t tell what’s good and what’s bad. The important thing is that we stick with each other—and not give up.”

  “I heard them talking,” said Candra, “and we have until tomorrow night. That’s when the ships have to leave to beat the energy wave.”

  “We’ll find a way,” vowed Farlo.

  Eight

  From the cockpit of his runabout, Klamath, the pointy-eared alien looked back at the sleeping Aluwnan in the passenger seat. He wanted to make sure that Vilo Garlet was asleep before he broke security and made contact with his superior. It was a shame he’d had to flee from Aluwna at warp speed before getting the sample he had gone to find, but that girl wasn’t likely to come through for him. Besides, the information he had gathered was almost as valuable as the sample. So was the passenger sleeping in a backseat and snoring contentedly.

  Using a special, encrypted subspace band, the pilot opened a direct channel and carefully enunciated, “Specialist Regimol on starship vessel Klamath to Admiral Nechayev, access code ‘Bakus aurora thirteen’ urgent protocol.”

  Regimol sat back in his seat, inspecting his fingernails. He never got through immediately, especially not in these troubled times, so he used these leisure moments to remove a bit of the pale makeup he wore to look more Vulcan than Romulan. Later he would wash the dye out of his hair and let the gray that revealed his age show through. Finally his instrument panel beeped, and he leaned forward to make contact with his superior.

  Only it wasn’t the admiral on the screen—it was her taciturn Andorian aide, Commander Dakjalu. “Sorry, Klamath, but the admiral is in the field and is indisposed.”

  “In the field during the Genesis Wave?” asked Regimol. “I don’t like the sound of that. Where is she exactly?”

  Even the stone-faced Andorian seemed to flinch as he answered, “She’s on Myrmidon with members of the Enterprise crew, seeing if the interphase generators work during exposure to Genesis.”

  “That’s seeing them at awfully close range, isn’t it?” muttered Regimol. “An interphase generator is fine for walking through walls, but for saving a planet? I don’t know. We really don’t know if she’s alive or dead?”

  “That is correct,” answered the commander. “But she did leave orders for you, if you checked in. You are to report to Deep Space 9 and await further orders.”

  The renegade Romulan scowled. “Hurry up and wait? What about my passenger . . . and the mission I’m already on?”

  “Since Aluwna has been determined to be in the path of the Genesis Wave, we no longer suspect that rebels on Aluwna are involved.”

  “But this research of theirs is very exciting,” countered Regimol. “And it might vanish along with the planet, if we don’t grab it first.”

  “You have your orders, Specialist Regimol,” said the taciturn Andorian. “I will update you when we receive word of Admiral Nechayev’s status. I will inform her that you made contact. Starfleet out.”

  The screen went blank, and the Romulan cursed under his breath. “Stupid bureaucrats . . . worse than the Romulan Senate. Besides, I work for Nechayev, not Starfleet.” He plied his controls and brought the runabout out of warp drive.

  “Vilo!” he shouted. “Wake up! We’re headed back to Aluwna.”

  “Huh? What?” muttered the sleepy Aluwnan. “Are you crazy? We’ll barely get back before the wave hits. And they’re already looking for us!”

  “Then it’s only fair to let them find us,” answered Regimol, setting a new course for the doomed planet.

  * * *

  “But I tell you, I’m Farlo Fuzwik, the new seeress consort,” insisted the young man to the official in the temporary kiosk set up to register citizens for the lottery. Despite their snide comments of the night before, by midday both Farlo and Candra realized they had better get registered. The more ways to escape the disaster, the better. “Look up my name,” urged the lad. “I married Seeress Jenoset just yesterday!”

  “It doesn’t matter—we aren’t using names,” snapped the official. “You were standing in line for over two units—you could read the brochure on how this all works.”

  “They were out of brochures,” said Candra, trying to act seductive and almost making Farlo laugh. “Can’t you just put us on the list?”

  “I can register you for the random lottery,” answered the man, working his board and smiling slightly. “You just married Seeress Jenoset! That’s a good one, thanks for the laugh. We’re taking retina scans and matching them to a microscopic homing device, which I’ll implant under your skin. If the homing device beeps and lights up, you’ve been selected—you can prove who you are later with another retina scan. If it doesn’t light up, well, maybe they’re wrong about how bad it will be. So, my seeress consort, look into this eyepiece with your right eye.”

  As Farlo obeyed and gazed into the white circle, the official readied a hypospray that was connec
ted by a tube to his medical computer. “Almost done, hold still.” He jabbed Farlo in the left forearm, implanting a small tracking device just under his skin. The lad rubbed the bump, which was kind of tingly and itchy.

  “Next, young lady, come on,” said the man wearily. Candra stepped forward and began the same procedure.

  “How long until the random selection?” she asked nervously, while putting her eye to the machine.

  “As soon as we get everyone done. Should be three or four units.” He punctured her arm and shooed her out of the way. “Move on.”

  “Are you going?” asked Candra, staring the man in the eyes.

  He didn’t say anything, but his smirk told them the answer. “Next!” he called, getting the attention of the constables who were standing nearby.

  The two youths shuffled away from the line at the kiosk, not knowing what to say to each other. It was hard to be enthusiastic about being frozen in a pattern buffer for an indefinite time, no matter what the alternative was. Plus they had been treated like royalty yesterday, and today they were like the rest of the dregs, begging for a chance to live.

  “Did you hear what the odds are?” asked Candra. “I mean, for getting a safe spot. One in twenty, I heard them say.”

  “I thought it was one in ten,” said Farlo with surprise.

  She snorted. “Not after you figure the high breeds and all the people who are working this scam, like that spoiler back there. You’ve got all the clerics and constables going, and how many of them must there be? No, all of this is just to keep us quiet while we wait for the end.”

  She lowered her head and added, “You should be going with the seeress—I’m sorry I screwed up.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Farlo, mustering more bravado than he felt. His mind was whirring, trying to figure out how to beat those odds and return to find protection, with the seeress or Uncle Padrin if need be. “If we could only find a working transporter—to get back to the Institute of Devotion—we’d be all right.”

  “But how do we know which ones work?” she asked. “We came through a red one, so maybe the red ones—”

  “Yes, we’ll find another restricted booth!” whispered Farlo excitedly. “Good idea, Princess!”

  She bowed regally. “And how will we do that, Seeress Consort?”

  He held up his transporter ticket for the Stone Spire and said, “There’s one here—it’s restricted. All we have to do is walk there. Maybe we’ll find another one before we reach the Stone Spire.”

  “Can we steal some food along the way?” asked Candra.

  “Sure,” answered the lad, but in truth they didn’t have to steal food. The merchants and vendors were giving it away, along with everything else. Everyone who was condemned could have a free last meal.

  It was a surreal walk through city streets that were often crowded but seemed empty, with people wandering, some weeping, some making grim jokes. Farlo could spot those like him and Candra who were walking determinedly toward a destination. He figured most of them were just trying to get home in time. Their anger had been dulled by the promise that they could still be saved under a system that was fair to all, and not too dangerous. Everyone looked with hope at the transporter booths, all guarded by tight-lipped constables, some of whom didn’t fit their uniforms very well.

  We’ve trusted transporters our whole lives, thought Farlo, so it’s logical to trust them now. Even with this promise, a large number of people wandering the byways of Tejmol looked like the walking dead, far beyond the stages of denial or hope.

  * * *

  “I don’t like the looks of this,” said Chief Dyz to himself, as he grabbed one of the solar panel struts on the satellite and stopped floating in his EVA suit. The technician was tethered to his orbital craft, along with four others from his augmented crew; they were busy attaching power cables to their first test subject. Then it would be filled with precious data and whisked away.

  Like a floating mountain, behind the workers and the transporter satellite hung a massive gray freighter. Dented and dirty, it took up half of the blue-black, two-toned sky. The other half was taken up with the cometlike tail of satellites strung behind the immense freighter. Their pattern buffers were already filled with precious living samples of the planet’s great beasts and small butterflies, plus grains, thorny weeds, and the most prized herbs Aluwna had to offer.

  Despite the marvels around him, Chief Dyz was concentrating on a stranger kind of animal, the bioneural network that formed the bulk of the satellite’s computer system and data storage. On this first test unit, they hadn’t beefed up the memory or installed new biological components; they wanted it to be a typical satellite of common functionality and condition. Now he was beginning to doubt the wisdom of that, because the satellite’s operating temperature had dropped two degrees, according to the built-in scale. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to make the chief frown behind the transparent mask of his helmet.

  “Dyz to orbiter. Lazmon, are you at the console?” he asked aloud.

  “Yeah,” answered his pilot, the only one who was not on EVA at the moment.

  “Double-check my readings on the bioneural network. Has it gone down two degrees?”

  After a moment, the voice came back, “Yes, two degrees from optimum, although contents reading stable.”

  “I know that,” muttered the chief. “I don’t want to cause waves, but make an urgent report of this. Tell them we can’t keep monitoring the test satellite, because they’re going to fill it for real and take it out of orbit. Remind them it was running all night on plasma gel packs.”

  “Yeah,” said the pilot, “so it’s probably normal.”

  “Nothing’s normal when you’ve never done it before,” muttered the chief. “Better yet, bring me back. I’ll make the report.”

  “Aye, Chief.”

  * * *

  Marla Karuw tapped her chin thoughtfully when she read the dispatch from the test satellite. She had been watching for degradation in the system while it ran under the plasma gel packs, and she thought they would be home free. But they weren’t. This was a small glitch, however, and it came after a full night and part of a day running on the emergency power. More important, the data contents were still stable, and that was the stat that really mattered. The regent frowned at the report as she read it again, because she had no backup plan to the backup plan. So she reluctantly filed the log on the computer of the royal yacht, Darzor, and moved on to other matters.

  One of them was waiting on the other side of the bulkhead, kicking up a fuss, and she knew she couldn’t keep him at bay much longer. She tapped the com panel on her desk in the royal library, which was now her private office. “Komplum, is he still out there?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes,” answered her assistant. “He claims he won’t go away until he sees you, and he kicked one of the constables in the shin.”

  “I did not!” shouted a voice in the background. “He’s a liar!” That was followed by more invective, most of it directed at the regent personally.

  “Send Curate Molafzon in,” she ordered with a sigh. “Send the constables with him.”

  “Yes, Your Regency.”

  A moment later, the door to the library slid open, and the wizened clergyman strode into the room, fire burning in his eyes and his six gray eyebrows twitching. “You promised me!” he yelled, wagging a finger at her. “You said you would take all of my clergy and acolytes!”

  “I never said that,” replied Marla firmly. “In fact, I questioned the wisdom of saving an entire class of people, when so many other were dying. I automatically took all of the clergy who are under thirty and put all the others in the lottery, so many more will be saved.”

  “I’ll fight you!” vowed the curate, shaking his fist at the regent. She moved back as two brawny constables surrounded the holy man, whose stream of invective was anything but holy. She couldn’t tell the curate that she had saved an entire class of people, but they were constables
who kept the peace. It was a matter of practicality, she told herself, not of worth or morality. The new Aluwna wouldn’t need swollen ranks of clergymen when the entire planet had to be rebuilt, but she said none of these things, because Curate Molafzon wasn’t listening to her.

  “I’ll rally the masses against you!” he shouted. “I’ll go on all the bands and tell everyone how you tricked me into helping you. I’ll reveal you for the megalomaniac you are!”

  He rushed her and actually had his hands around her neck when the two constables moved in to restrain him. For an elder man, the curate was strong and enraged, and he fought the two constables to a standstill while Marla tried to escape behind her desk. It was shocking, but every moment of life was shocking—and decisions had to be made.

  “Stun him!” she shouted at her guards.

  One of them finally found his stun stick and dropped the maddened clergyman into unconsciousness. They all stood panting for a moment, even Molafzon, who was curled up asleep on the deck.

  “Throw him out an airlock,” said Marla Karuw, her jaw tightening.

  The constables stared at the regent as if they hadn’t heard her correctly. “You want him in the brig?” asked one officer uncertainly.

  “That’s not what I said,” she replied through clenched teeth. “We’ll never be able to reason with him—he’ll do nothing but cause trouble, and he could upset the whole plan. Listen, I can’t appease him and let all of you constables live, too. To be blunt, I haven’t got time to fight problems when I can eliminate them, so do what I say.”

  They gaped at her, and the younger officer finally rasped, “But that would be . . . murder!”

  Marla Karuw scowled as she circled her desk to face them. “I’ve already committed murder seventy million times today—my hands are drenched in blood! Yours will be, too, before this is all over.” She pointed at the well-dressed, gray-haired figure lying on the deck. “I don’t want him on the new Aluwna, and I have the say over who is there. If the two of you won’t throw him out an airlock, I’ll take your names off the list and find two people who will.”