

The Case of the Curious Killers

Louis Shalako

Copyright 2014 Shalako Publishing

This Smashwords Edition published by Shalako Publishing

Design: J. Thornton

ISBN 978-0-9866871-2-9

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person living or deceased, or to any places or events, is purely coincidental. Names, places, settings, characters and incidents are the product of the author's imagination.

Prologue...

When one door closes

Another one opens up somewhere else.

Life is a game.

There are no rules.

Many are called.

Few are chosen.

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

Every morning I pray—

I wake up and I say, "Thank you God for another sunrise,"

"And Jesus Christ, I sure hope it don't rain..."

Chapter One

Things were tough all over...

Things were tough all over. It took Brendan Hartle a few days to find a job in Toronto.

It was far better than St. Thomas, where he had just left. Things were looking up after the defeated feeling of locking the front door for the last time, and walking away past the 'Sold' sticker on the real estate broker's sign. It might be hard to survive on eight and a quarter bucks an hour in the big city, but he could live with his mother Beverly for months if necessary. With a healthy income as a financial planner to rely on, offering her adult son a room in her townhouse was only temporary. Brendan became a security guard. He worked the first two months in a shopping mall. The best part of the job was being able to say you had one. It was refreshing after the last two and a half years. The best part was having a purpose, some place to go when he woke up in the morning. He got to see lots of immaculately-prepared young women as well. None of them ever went out with him, but he enjoyed looking at them no less. He was too shy to ask. It was almost as if they didn't even see him. He felt like he was part of the décor, part of the background, trusted but almost invisible.

***

The boss liked Hartle.

"He's seven effing feet tall." He always said it with a warm smile, although if you looked closely it never reached the eyes.

The boss considered all big, quiet men a little stupid, but then they were dumb enough to work for him. That suited Brendan just fine. He never gave anyone cause to suspect anything in the way of a superior intellect. Brendan was too quiet. The soft, hazel-brown eyes took it all in and reviewed it. His rather large, ovate ears sucked it all up, his brain filed it, and he kept his conclusions to himself. Those conclusions were filed away under a tight cap of grizzled, mouse-brown hair that was once auburn and still was in certain areas, yet it was awfully grey at the sides for one so young.

The boss soon offered a few overtime shifts to Brendan, who accepted them with neither rancour, nor effusive thanks. He just took it in stride and said little. He did the work and slept when he got the chance. Brendan had no girlfriend and no plans to get one anytime soon. He had few social outlets except a couple of buddies. Brendan kept no regular schedule, although he found a morning routine to be helpful. All of humanity has to get up in the morning and have a shower, put clothes on, so he was no different in that regard.

The overtime was okay. A guy could always keep gas in the car, or buy a hamburger combo, a twelve pack of beer, or a nickel bag of pot or something. Life, if not exactly thrilling, was bearable and the time passed quickly enough.

There were times when he felt this odd sense of waiting for something.

One day word went through the grapevine. The company would be hiring thirty or forty new people to handle a strike looming up on the horizon.

A couple of the 'Old Guard' sat in the lunch room. They were men in their fifties or sixties, perhaps even the low seventies. They worked not so much to make a living, as to augment meager pensions. A few former military people were employed here, a few ex-cops bankrupted by one too many divorces. The pair were having stale single-slice bologna sandwiches and rancid buck-fifty-a-cup coffee from the buzzing and rattling vending machine in the corner.

'It's as hot as hell and thick enough to float a bullet,' people said.

"The worst coffee in the world at any price." That was Brendan's opinion, although they all drank it from time to time.

"Hey, big guy, did you hear the news?" Bert Russell asked as he came in.

Brendan just wanted to drop off a couple of dirty shirts and pick up some new ones.

"Nope."

"There's a big strike coming up at McPhail Chemicals." Fred was the older one. "They're asking Slim and I, (Russell weighed three-fifty bone-dry,) to supervise."

"Good for you!" Brendan said it without much thought.

He vaguely looked around for Serena. She was a tall, straggling, young-old battle-ax who ran the office. He just wanted to get the shirts and get out of there. It was his day off, and a cold six-pack awaited in an ice-filled cooler in the back of the car.

"I ain't crazy! Some of them strikes get pretty rough." Russell belched firmly and unequivocally.

The other spoke now.

"I hear the money's going to be good."

Russell nodded. Apparently neither one would be doing the strike.

"How much?" You couldn't escape these guys without a bit of conversation.

"Twenty-six bucks an hour," was Fred's startling reply. "Although both Slim and I were offered significantly more."

"But you're not going?" Brendan came alert now.

"Not on your life, boy." They agreed on one thing, which was unusual for them old gomers.

"Holy cow!"

Hartle went looking for the big boss. Old Stirling Devonchek, (everyone was old around here,) would invariably be found in the capacious, but not airy back room, which he importantly called, 'the ops room,' to the silent amusement of his staff.

Stirling was at his desk, surveying through smoke-squinted eyes the big board where security and crossing guard schedules were worked out. The company was branching out as a kind of temporary, contract personnel service. While Brendan was skimpy on the details, the only contract they had was to provide labour for the city compost site. About three dozen employees, mostly Down's syndrome kids, picked through the loads of compost, removing bits of plastic, rope and wire. Due to the fact they were all on disability pensions, they worked cheap and didn't have too many demands. The government cut back on their benefits and didn't ask too many questions. The company charged thirty-five bucks an hour for each of them and paid minimum wage.

Devonchek's son-in-law was the foreman. A lazy no-good son-of-a-bitch, if gossip was any guide. He had a brand-new white pickup with the company logo, cowboy boots and a sparkling white hard hat with goggles slung on it like Rommel. By now, Stirling had noticed him.

"Hey, Stretch, how's the weather up there?"

"I hear you have a big strike coming up," said Brendan. "I'd like a shot."

It was his longest communication since being hired. The boss took a good long look at him.

"It'll be a tough one. There is an ugly mood down at the plant. Management may lock them out before the deadline." Lockouts were worse than walkouts, especially right off the bat. Strikes tended to get uglier over time.

"I'd like to be there, sir."

"Well, we do need lots of people. You don't have much time and experience in the security industry," Devonchek mused aloud, mostly for his own benefit.

"Will you be running an ad in the paper?" Hartle tried diplomacy.

"Yes, we will, my boy," admitted Devonchek. "Tell you what. If you want to meet Tom Anderson here at the office, six thirty a.m. tomorrow, you can have a crack at it. They meet in the parking lot. Now take off, because I have to figure out how to cover your job at the mall tomorrow. They really like you down there, you know."

"Really? That's the first I've heard of it." The older man just laughed.

"Twelve hour shifts, three on and three off," Stirling said. "Seriously, thefts are down about fifteen percent since we put you in there."

"Awesome."

"I heard you asked out Joanne, the one in the candy department at J-Mart." Devonchek winced. "She's stunning! Really, she's the most beautiful one in the whole mall."

"She's going to marry the assistant manager. M-6. He's in charge of house-wares."

For some reason, Joanne was the only one in the whole mall who interested Brendan.

It was just his luck, really.

"Well, it's her loss."

Brendan agreed inwardly, but let it drop as about this time he was overwhelmed by a powerful thirst.

Gripping the shirts by the hangar, he bid them all adieu.

Chapter Two

A night on the line...

Conditions on the strike were not too bad if you didn't take it personal.

Sometimes, at night, a volley of rocks rattled, banged and bounced off the metal siding of the rail car unloading terminal near the front gate. When the spring nights warmed up, the beer came out. This happened mostly Friday and Saturday nights. On those nights, beer bottles were a kind of ammunition.

The strikers called them 'scabs.'

"Well, I didn't have a job at all before!" Brendan yelled right back, and took it with as much grace as he could muster.

Because the company refused to hire helicopters or feed them all three times a day, so they crossed the picket line twice daily. This happened while cops watched, and then after the shift change was complete, they drove away. There was a sense of the dangers, but the people on both sides also knew it was just a game.

A lot of insults, name-calling, threats, various harassments and provocations were offered to the guards. The strikers were just outside the fence and on the other side of the gate. Days were better, but also hot and boring. At least you could see them. At night when someone sneaked off into the darkness of the surrounding industrial blight, you had to try to keep track of them. Once the shift supervisor, Tom, was narrowly missed by a bottle thrown out of the mist and darkness. The men and women huddled around the fire barrel varied in mood, numbers and intentions. You had to be alert and take nothing at face value. One time a striker called Brendan over to the fence. It was a quiet shift on a Sunday night, with everything low-key and friendly. The strikers were settling down for the long haul. The strikers rotated shifts as well. Some of the older people seemed quite civilized, even mellow at times. The guy spat in Brendan's face as soon as he came near. He retreated from the fence cursing, wiping off the saliva with his bandanna.

"That'll teach you!"

His partner was a nineteen year old, a tattooed and ear-ringed, brush-cut and bleached-blonde crack-head named Lance.

Anderson, who was right there with them, took Hartle aside.

"Do you want to see if we can get a picture, identify this turkey and maybe lay a charge?"

"Hell, no. I've got better things to do than hang around in courtrooms."

Anderson smiled.

"Mind you, I never forget a face like that."

"That's the spirit. Save us both a lot of paperwork." Tom clapped a pudgy and flaccid hand on Brendan's big shoulder.

Dusk was coming on, and the sky was ablaze.

"Just about time to rotate the guys." Brendan tilted his head back for a long look at the clouds scudding past a waxing yellowy moon, down low in the east.

"Why don't you take the truck, you could use a bit of a break. I've been meaning to start training you as a supervisor."

"You mean do the rotation?" asked Brendan.

"Yes. All you do is..." Anderson began.

"I know the routine! Take the guys from the lunchroom to the front gate, front gate to gate two, and so on and so on." And the guys out back return to the lunchroom. "Dead simple, really."

Anderson was unaware that the sheer simplicity of his job made his bald, lumpy, buck-toothed figure unimpressive in the eyes of his crew.

"And if it rains later, I have a couple of boxes of new raincoats in the trailer."

"Right." Brendan turned and made his way through the gloom of the bulk-loading terminal, the pale glimmer of train tracks pointing off to the lighter rectangle of the door at the other end. The truck was parked out of the reach of rocks and beer bottles.

***

Later that night, Brendan and Lance were out watching the rear fence line, where a small piece of woodlot and prairie came right up to the fence. On the other side a pair of ruts running through the long grass beside the fence offered the vague suggestion of a trail in the dim lights of a chemical plant a quarter of a kilometre away.

With his bladder full of coffee, Hartle went down the berm surrounding the oil tanks and stood by a small bush. He took his time and thoroughly relieved himself. Only a half a dozen stars were visible in the haze and light of the urban sky.

After making his way back up the embankment, he was standing there chatting in a desultory fashion with the younger lad, not much intellectual content here, and was startled to hear a 'ssip-sssip-sssip' in the long grass near the fence. He grabbed Lance's arm.

"Shush." He interrupted Lance in mid-sentence.

He pointed in disbelief. A figure was moving away from the fence, in about the vicinity of the weeds and bushes where he was just standing. A dark, amorphous figure, slightly hunched over, was now turning away in the opposite direction along the path, sidling along in a slouch, furtive and casual at the same time. Lance giggled uncontrollably, stamping his feet and slapping his thigh, almost falling over in his glee.

"Holy, fuck, I don't believe it!"

"Is that him?" asked Brendan.

Lance spent a moment watching the retreating figure through a cheap pair of night-vision glasses, a recent company purchase.

"Goddamn!" Lance chuckled. "It sure looks like Murphy."

"Is that his name? I was just wondering where the hare-lipped little sucker got off to." Brendan watched in amazement.

Then he started laughing too. He went down the berm again, where the fence still glistened with wetness. Shining his flashlight around, he reconstructed events and saw the flattened grass.

"Holy crap, what a dedicated little fucker. He belly crawled all along the base of the fence! Just to hear us talk."

"Sure hope it was worth it." Lance scratched himself in disbelief.

"I swear to God, I didn't know he was there," Brendan called into the darkness.

"Did you get 'em?"

"I don't know. Maybe that's why he left," theorized Hartle. "Heh-heh-heh-heh."

Chapter Three

He just wants to sit and think...

Three months on strike duty and it became routine. Head honcho Stirling Devonchek called one day at about three in the afternoon. It was the first of Brendan's days off.

"I got a really good one." As usual, he said it without identifying himself, hardly necessary in light of his ten cigars a day habit and that gravelly voice.

No one else ever called since he moved to Toronto. His mom got plenty of phone calls, but he didn't mind taking messages and soon learned to ignore the ringing and let the machine pick it up. He was expecting a call from Shakey Bill, a guy he met on a construction project. He was hoping to scoop up a quarter bag of pot. He picked it up without thinking.

"You'll like this one. You're just the man for the job. You can study your school books and get valuable experience in different aspects of the security industry." Devonchek always talked like that.

"All you have to do is sit at the airport and guard this big building."

"The terminal?" What the heck was wrong with Stirling? All the crew thought he was a closet nutcase.

One minute he sounded like a university lecturer and the next minute the village idiot. Maybe he was in the middle of three phone calls at once.

"What? No, it's a hangar, hangar forty-three."

"Twelve hours?"

Brendan honestly didn't need it right now. For the first time in a long time he was simply awash with cash, and had no idea of what to do with it—no 'life plan' in effect! He needed the sleep, he needed to have some fun. He needed time to think. But he couldn't just tell the big boss, 'I don't want to go.'

He had to stall, think up a valid excuse. That was why Stirling mentioned the schoolbooks, heading him off at the pass. It was no big thing. Brendan was trying to get his English 211, and was having a hard time with it. Every so often, he missed a night class due to work. It was the last credit he needed. Then he would have two years of college, a General Education Diploma. Not that I'm a lazy son of a bitch, he thought. You have to stall, and having just awoken from a three-hour nap, he was a bit slow on the uptake.

"Well, the car's not running too good and the airport's way the hell out there."

"No problem! I'll have Tom drop off one of the pickups on his way home."

Devonchek meant that Tom's wife would follow him to Brendan's and the two of them could then go their own way. She often picked Tom up at the end of the shift, as the family only had one car. The fucker had him, damn it. Anderson lived only a few blocks away.

"Tom? Doesn't he ever sleep?" Brendan tried to stall, wracking his brain in a whirl for something plausible.

He sighed at the inevitability of it all.

"Do you want it?" asked Stirling.

"Okey-dokey." The minute he hung up the phone, he regretted it, as he remembered school was tonight.

Today's Tuesday, right?

"Why me?"

It was the last stinking credit. He missed last week's class as well. The clock by his bedside mocked him.

"Damn it all to hell." In three and a half hours, he would be on duty.

What a wasted life.

***

He dreamed of being a bush pilot.

Brendan had always liked airplanes, but sitting in a truck on a dark and rainy night outside of a hangar was awfully boring. There were no windows, just two doors and a half a dozen mercury-halide security lights on the building's exterior. One door was a three-foot by seven-foot hollow metal door. Unpainted, its zinc swipe-coat gleamed dully as the rain fell upon it. It was blank except for the keyhole, an aluminum knob and three hinges, or technically speaking, 'ball bearing butts.'

The other was a fiberglass sectional overhead door about forty metres wide, twenty-five metres high and completely blank except the seams and a row of tiny slit windows.

They were simple horizontal slots about two metres up, one every three metres or so. It was white. When he got there, he tried to look in but an object obscured a dim glow from the rear of the building and he couldn't make out what it was.

Not the most architecturally detailed of buildings, he mused wryly.

Very observant.

"Yes, sir, you'll go a long way in the security business, young man...long way. Long, long, way..."

He grimaced and tried to hold off on eating all of his lunch too soon. The radio crackled with distant lightning bursts. The song was 'Fool in the rain,' by Led Zeppelin.

On impulse he got out of the truck and went to the small door. Security is like that sometimes. Nothing ever happens, but a man must keep busy, or fall asleep. This job only paid about twelve bucks an hour. The rate was based on whatever the traffic would bear. It was better than the mall, anyhow. He could fill in the logbook, detail the interior of the truck, or he could walk, just to keep from going quietly nuts.

Before it even registered that the handle was turning, he gave it a little jerk and it popped open. He paused for a moment. It wasn't all that much of a surprise. He had found a few things on security patrols. He had heard all the stories of the other guards, even one story, perhaps apocryphal, of a bank leaving the doors unlocked over a three-day holiday weekend. Not too sure he believed that one. Imagine if someone came along and tried the door! All urban legends have a moral, he knew. Whoever did it was up shit creek, that is for sure.

If the door hadn't opened, Brendan would have gone around the building, back to the truck and had another smoke. No doubt, some harried type-A personality forgot to lock it on his way home, briefcase in hand and coattails flapping as he worried about his next performance analysis. Or maybe George, the guy he relieved, fell asleep or went to the terminal for a dump. Maybe some kids got in while he was away. Kids do that sort of thing, he thought vaguely. Snapping on his flashlight, he eased the door the rest of the way open and stepped in quietly. He looked for the switch panel, ears and consciousness agog. He had a strong suspicion there was nobody here. The panel should be right by the opening, but it wasn't.

Cursing quietly, he groped further. Nothing. Trying not to stumble over boxes of tools, air hoses and wires, a loading ramp, step-platforms on wheels, a small, box-like ground service vehicle loomed up. In spite of his flashlight and precautions, he banged a knee on something with a 'whang' sound. It was a pile of pipes, flat-bar, and lengths of aluminum angle, all on a rack with one sticking out.

'Idiots,' he thought, having been a helper in a welding shop at sixteen. He simply couldn't point the light everywhere at once.

"Shit." The word was swallowed in the silence.

He was getting the impression of a tool crib or fabrication shop.

Behind a welding flash-shield, a feeble glow came from a small office cubicle at the very back. There was a wide electrical panel on its left outer wall. Thick cables came down from the roof into the top of it. Taking an educated guess, he tried the breaker labeled, 'lights.'

Big overhead amber pods glared and a soft hum came from them.

"That's better."

Turning, he was finally able to see the object that dominated the space of the hangar, and he came close, very close to shitting himself. It was a space vehicle. He knew it instantly, although it resembled nothing he had ever seen, either for real, on TV, or in a movie. It was huge, gleaming in the soft, overhead light as he stood there gasping like a beached carp.

"Holy crap!"

Time passed, maybe half a minute.

"Holy crap," he repeated.

He was beginning to wonder if he might be in a little trouble. Other than the hum from the lights and the soft patter of rain on the roof, the building was dead silent. By now, he was sure there was no one else in the building. The small noises were confirmation of the emptiness.

"Holy."

Still feeling that he had done something wrong, he headed for the door. Then he remembered that he couldn't leave the lights on, and hesitated. He found himself unable to take his eyes off the thing. The beauty, the sheer size and complexity of it overwhelmed him! One good look and he was hooked.

"Not that they ever tell you anything in this job." He spoke aloud. "Although, most of the time they at least tell you the name of the company."

Devonchek hadn't given him a direct order to stay out...only 'guard it until relieved.'

"And be careful not to fall asleep."

Brendan wasn't going to fall asleep now, not with that thing in here. He went back outside, got his smokes from the dash, and his camera. He put his phone in his top shirt pocket. He locked up the truck. Calmer now, he returned to the interior of the hangar, locking the door behind him to avoid surprises.

He slowly walked around it, feasting his eyes, savouring the moment and the fact that he was all alone with it. It was the most awesome flying machine he had ever seen. It was so big he wondered how they brought it in without hitting anything, as large as the hangar door looked at first glance. It grazed the cantilevered roof girders, hulking there in the glare of the lights. Smooth-polished but dull, there was no problem finding the back end of the machine. It had four large blackened holes, nacelles visible bulging out from the razor-sharp line that was the trailing edge. There was a suggestion, a faint clue from certain very tight seams. Co-axial vectored thrust.

What in the hell was it doing here?

He gulped air, and kept moving. To Brendan, it most resembled a weapon, like an arrowhead, a spear point. There were canard fore-planes, viciously streamlined and sharp, drooping like on a B-1 bomber. The lower fuselage blended into the wing in soft compound curves. The thing sat on what looked like retractable skids. This thing wasn't meant to be launched from a rail! It clearly had elevons or ailerons, flaps and elevators, rudder surfaces, twin fins starkly pointing at the roof, swept back and angled outwards for presumably, low radar signature. He saw a shiny little plate on the front skid support, a radar reflector for some landing system.

The craft was a thickened-up version of the classic paper airplane, only a million times more controllable.

"You don't need all this stuff in space. This thing flies in the air." He wondered how much it weighed.

There were other holes and projections, though not as many as one might expect. He took a look at a cluster of smaller holes on a wing tip, which was thicker than the main section of airfoil beside it. The holes went up, down, front, back, and on multiple angles. The hole in front was the same size as the hole in the back end.

"Holy." He deduced, perhaps erroneously, some kind of reaction attitude control.

Here he found the same discolouration as the engine outlets. His jaw dropped a little when he realized there were no intakes visible anywhere on the machine. He rubbed with a fingertip but none of the stain came off. And the colour wasn't black. It was more of a metallic, greenish blue. Sure enough, there were four big outlets on the nose, almost undoubtedly for braking. Again there was the same discolouration.

"Something to do with the heat." It was purely a guess. "Like when you weld certain alloys. Welds!"

He looked for welds, but the lines on the body of the thing just looked like seams drawn on with a graphics pen. There were no rivets.

Just amazing, he thought. There were no ceramic tiles on the bottom—it was all of a piece, all one material, all one surface. He went out to the front by the door and stood looking at the thing in an overall view. He saw a pair of black shinier surfaces near the wickedly pointed front end. His impression of blended fuselage contours was confirmed above the wing as well, now that he could see it properly.

Those curved panels were possibly windows, or cameras or sensors or radar scanners or something. He couldn't see through into the cockpit. His angle was wrong, maybe the cockpit was just dark inside, or maybe there was some radar-absorbing coating on the glass? None of this made any sense. This was just way too advanced for any Canadian space technology project. No one he ever heard of had a space program like this. Certainly not in a building like this, with dusty tools lying around in heaps, and with cobwebs in all the corners.

"What is going on around here?" He was in big trouble now...

He pulled out his digital camera and began to look at the ship from all angles, hoping the batteries wouldn't fail him in his hour of need. Setting it up for the type of lighting, he began to shoot.

He wandered around under the thing, looking up into the landing gear wells, which looked like you would expect. After all, a Grumman Avenger has hydraulic rams, locking pins, tubes and wires clipped to bulkheads, rubber grommets where things came through from the other side. But he didn't know how to interpret some things, a little black box here, a round red module about twenty centimetres in diameter there. Was it some kind of a gas bottle, maybe to pressurize a system? Would pneumatics work in space temperatures, close to absolute zero? The questions were endless, yet he kept asking them in his mind.

It was fascinating. His old man built model aircraft for him and his brother as kids. Even his little sister flew control-line planes at about ten years old, probably just to be with dad and her big brothers. He grinned a little in fond memory.

Continuing to poke and prod, sniff and nod, Brendan built a number of models, some of his own design. He had read hundreds or even thousands of books on aviation, flying, air power, as well as World War One and World War Two combat flying. He always wanted to get a pilot's license.

He would have loved to own his own plane, maybe become a bush pilot somewhere.

It didn't have to be in northern Canada, after all. It could be anywhere. Maybe if he got a better education and saved up a little money, he might own his own plane someday. Growing up, he was about eleven years old during the Apollo Program, and sitting there with dad in the living room watching black and white TV when the first 'Star Trek' episode ran.

For the most part, Hartle accepted his lot in life, but a man had to dream, or he had nothing. Everyone knew the destination wasn't the important thing—it was the journey.

"The struggle is its own reward." He snickered as he photographed the thing from a low three-quarter view.

He squatted in the furthest front corner of the vast room. Briefly, he thought of his struggle with Amy, who literally absconded with his credit cards, claiming, 'he owed her...' One of the reasons for selling the house, was that he figured she would be back sooner, or later. He hadn't left a forwarding address. She had her twenty-three grand and he had his. She would be back sooner rather than later.

By this time, Hartle had examined all the ship farthest from the door, so he moved past the needle on the nose, so low to the ground he had to duck under it. It was much dimmer under there, but there was more to see. A name, or the company logo, a 'Starship 21' stenciled on a fin or something would be helpful. His light revealed little more, in the dark shadows under it. He didn't know what to expect, but felt like the luckiest guy in the world for this. As soon as he got around the nose gear skid, he turned and his heart almost stopped dead.

"Jesus."

The sound echoed about the vastness, mocking him. There was no other noise, and everything else faded into insignificance. Silently the door beckoned. Taking a deep breath, he found himself listening intently, feeling guilty for he knew not what. He was hooked now! Seeing the open door, he couldn't go back outside and finish the shift without a quick look. Even if he never, ever, told anyone about the experience, he was going to look.

He totally missed it the first time around, but there it was. A moment of thought and he decided to go in.

"Better make sure there are no kids in there." A little justification goes a long way.

There was some strange compulsion in being alone with the ship. Besides, a man might not get an opportunity like this in an entire lifetime.

"Guess I can find another half-ass job if I have to. Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke."

The machine was lightly mottled in some indistinct camouflage scheme in greens, faded blues, and greys, with a sandy patch here and there. It had no other markings. There were no other markings, plain and simple. He just had to accept it. Maybe they weren't done yet.

Gripping the light a little more tightly, he gingerly moseyed up the ramp. Into the craft he went, finding himself in a large vestibule. There was a pad on the wall, about twelve centimetres square. It was divided into quarters...some kind of light switch?

He pushed on the top left 'button,' and nothing happened, then the next little square or key or touch-sensitive pad and all of a sudden, the ramp came up and closed him into the darkness.

"I knew this was dumb." He had fresh batteries in the flashlight, but how much air was in there?

The bottom left square made a sudden 'clunk' sound, perhaps door locks? He pushed the bottom right-hand one and heard a similar noise, as if the lock pins were being withdrawn. On instinct he pushed the top left-hand one, and the ramp went down again. This time a light came on in the airlock, for surely that was what it must be, as he turned and studied the back wall. Maybe the light was on a timer and it would go off on its own in a while. Shouldn't it have come on when he entered? That is just bad design, he figured absently. There were bins, storage for ropes and other gadgets. Huh! His attention moved on.

Sure enough, he found some tight seams and another little pad. This one had six keys. The pads were all flush, with no screws or fittings visible. No entry points for dust and dirt, properly pressurized. Everything was reassuringly quiet. He kept an ear cocked on the world outside of the building and switched off the flash after locking the outer door open just in case.

He pushed the second button on the top. A tall panel on the left side of the back wall sank in thumb-deep and then retracted out of sight to his right.

"Huh!"

He pushed the third button in the top row and heard something click. It was like the hatch could be locked open as an option. While there was about an eight-centimetre sill, the entranceway on the other side simply showed a blank wall. When he looked to the right, the passage's walls were covered in rows of access panels and a couple of metres in, another hatch. This one had a little window in the upper centre. The basic interior looked more like a modern office environment than a spacecraft. The ceiling was composed of softly glowing panels. When he moved in the light increased in intensity to a nice white-green fluorescent. The corridor to the left was invitingly longer, and at the end, it turned to the right.

The walls, where blank, looked just like a commercially available covering, it was just like the inside of an elevator. The rug looked like a rug. It was a brown two-tone, lightly sculptured. The corners of the room were square and the doorways looked relatively civilized, except for pivots and little runners in slots top and bottom, evidence of the tracks they ran in.

There was a ring of electrically operated, rotating clamps around the perimeter, all set in flush sockets. He went to the left, feeling a little let down, past an inner pair of pocket doors as the corridor abruptly turned right. He found himself in the control room or cockpit.

"Wow." No other word would do. There was nothing to say.

There was a pair of big, capable-looking seats with the flight controls arrayed around them. A row of smaller seats and harnesses along the back wall indicated up to seven additional passengers.

In front of the seats were built-in consoles with large, multiple screens, switches and keypads. On the front of the armrest of each seat was a joystick with several additional switches and buttons on it. With a machine like this one, you don't worry about the weather.

He grinned, fixated in a gape of disbelief.

"Fly by wire, obviously," he gathered. "Or fully programmable."

She could probably go from takeoff to landing all on autopilot. He kept looking and saw rudder pedals under the consoles.

It all looked simple, perhaps too simple. Struck by a thought, he wondered if it was just a prop on a movie set under construction. But it was too well thought out. It wasn't outlandish enough. He couldn't see any corrugated, big-O type drainage pipe spray-painted silver and tacked to the walls. It wasn't dark and dreary, or wet-looking enough for Hollywood. There was no dark mist hanging in the air. His smile was fixed in amazement.

There were no chains hanging and water falling from above. There was a soft, warm white light in this compartment, some of it indirect, and some were quartz-type recessed spots.

Looking further, the walls on each side were covered in clip-detachable panels. Removing one, he saw wires, busses, and breaker-switches, all neatly labeled with numbers in Arabic numerals and some strange symbols he didn't recognize. It was not Greek, or Chinese or Hebrew. It was just weird.

Circuitry and wiring. He mentally noted not to touch anything. He put the panel back on and looked in another. More stuff, similar but not the same. Brendan knew damned well he would be in trouble for looking in there.

He was surprised to see the seat adjustments were at least as complicated as anything else. Some of it might work in ways incomprehensible.

"There must be one hell of a big computer in the back room." Feeling foolish, he went looking for a key switch in the dashboard, or some way to turn it on. "You probably just tell it went you want to go."

Yet there had to be an on-off switch somewhere. Some sort of manual kill-switch was only logical. What he needed was some kind of crash course in rocket science.

***

When the simulacrum appeared, Hartle was sitting in the left-hand seat, gripping the joysticks with both hands, grinning, sounding 'brat-a-tat-a-tat.' The thing took him by surprise, but he recovered quickly. He pulled his feet out of the rudder pedals and sat up properly.

"Nice ship, Buddy! Mind if I take her up?" He said this with a rueful smile. It was best to be diplomatic under these kinds of circumstances.

"Let's consider your options." Which sounded kind of ominous.

Brendan became more serious, contrite.

"Look, I guess I can save you the trouble. Maybe save you some time." He was planning to quit before they could fire him. "Shall we try a few plausible excuses?"

"You may leave now, if you wish."

Brendan studied the person for a moment, taking in the height of about five-ten, seventy-five kilos, grey hair, RCMP regulation-standard-issue moustache, large grey eyes with very clear whites around them. Age perhaps forty, maybe a little more. He was neatly dressed with anal-retentiveness written all over the belt and suspenders. These were revealed under an extremely conservative business suit in soft, subdued greys and a shade of charcoal for the shoes. Pudgy cheeks and something of a double chin, the suggestion of youthful jowls, indicated some pretty soft living, confirmed by the pale tones of the pasty skin. This man would do anything but work for a living. He looked successful, with a quiet authority written all over the raised chin and imperious posture.

Something lit up in his head.

"You know something, Buddy? I have a quite a few questions for you and your boss, whoever that may be. Did you people know the door was unlocked? And how do you expect to get away with one little unarmed security guard on a job of this magnitude?"

He was fishing around here, but bluff and bluster can save your ass, at least if you have a good record. The grey eyes regarded him calmly.

"And how do I know you even belong here, butthead?"

"You're welcome to stay." The gentleman had a wisp of a smile.

The creep was starting to get to him, yet on a personal level he didn't feel too threatened...not yet. This kook wasn't yelling and screaming enough to be an angry customer. Taking the notepad from his vest pocket, he played a card.

"What's your name and occupation, sir?" He clicked his pen and waited.

"Call me what you will," his companion said. "Call me anything but an ambulance. I am a simulacrum and I place my services at your disposal."

"A sim-simulacrum? What the bleeping fuck is a simulacrum? You mean like an android?" Brendan was still playing at cop.

"Heh-heh-heh." He chuckled in cynicism. "You mean as in separate and distinct from a cyborg, a clone, a robot, a bionic person, a fucking golem, a hallucination, apparition, spirit, manifestation...a frickin' android? You are an appliance, sir?"

His new friend stood solemnly blinking at all that.

"Okay, you're an androgynous android, we got that settled." Brendan wrote that down with a flourish. "So, you are entirely sexless, then."

This conversation wasn't going anywhere. Was the guy playing games with him? If this was the owner, Brendan was in uniform and the man didn't seem angry. Sooner or later, he would spill the beans or screw up. And it was kind of entertaining.

"Think of me as part of an interactive educational program. While the flight controls are simplified in the extreme, my function is to train and guide the pilot." The sim stood there smiling.

"So you're like software?" Hartle took notes carefully. "That's very interesting, but stupid."

This jibe got no response, yet the other's eyes twinkled in a rare humour. The other guy seemed to be happy. Unsure of how to express it, the security guard reckoned it up in his head. He was beginning to get real interested in this game they were playing. Some of his initial tension left him. He breathed easier and relaxed in his seat. So many questions! And so little time, but what an opportunity.

"You're saying you're a teacher?"

"That is correct, very perceptive. I am a teacher."

Brendan thought furiously.

"Suspect claims to have no name, and is uncooperative." He sounded it out as he wrote to keep up the pressure. "A lot of teachers are assholes."

Silence.

"Good," thought Brendan, let this turkey stew on that for a while. "How do you navigate this thing?"

Again, he took the initiative. Surely, this would bring the game to a climax.

"It's quite simple. The control systems are geared to the lowest common denominator of the western educational system."

"Not very high, in other words."

"It's based on the layout of a simple fighter jet, which we chose over the private aircraft due to the resemblance to a radio-control flight-box," the simulacrum explained.

"Really? I fly radio control, at least I used to."

Everything all boxed up, much of it sold in a garage sale or sent to the Goodwill charity store. It was kind of a shame to get pennies on the dollar for it, but there you are. Divorce sucks, right?

"This allows three-axis control. The fly-by wire system—you surmised correctly," (And how in the hell did he know that—must have been listening all along!) "...can also be used to control the ship in space, where the forces are not aerodynamic in nature."

"Ballistics and stuff," said Brendan. "Mass, gravity, inertia, applied forces, some symmetrical and some non-symmetrical, thrust, drag, et cetera...I saw trim tabs out there..."

"Just so." Nonplussed, his new friend paused for a moment.

Brendan took notes as fast as he could. While the Mounties might seize them later, it would help to inscribe it into his brain. One way or another, he would probably remember this for the rest of his life.

"Go on. There must be a catch."

Possibly some form of entrapment at work here. It had to be some kind of test. They were looking for some kind of reaction. Suddenly he thought of the hidden camera gag shows. Was he being punked? But it had already gone on too long. It was too long already, for that.

Why him? And who was doing it? Surely, there was no need to delve that deeply into the psyche of a non-descript, thirty-four year old security guard.

"I just want to be ready for the test."

"The ship will respond to verbal or oral commands, whichever you prefer. That's a joke."

Brendan shook his head in mock disgust.

"No, it ain't."

It began anew.

"It's based on the following system. Imagine the horizon as a circle. It has three hundred and sixty degrees. Directly ahead of you is south, to the rear is north, to your right is west and left is east."

"Got it." Brendan scratched a rude diagram on the small notebook page. "Oral is okay, if you can get it."

His new friend made no response to that one.

"East is 90 degrees, south 180, west 270, north is zero degrees."

"Excellent, truly exceptional," beamed the simulacrum.

"Wait! Let's keep going."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Let's see. If we assume north-south to be the baseline, then there should be another circle perpendicular to the plane of the first circle," said Brendan. "Then you could intersect that with another. Now, if we assume the galaxy is longer in one axis..."

But it was best to listen as well as talk.

"That's not bad."

"In fact, it's pretty good. You can't put nothing past me, Buddy."

"What came first, the chicken or the egg?"

Brendan was caught out momentarily.

"The rooster!"

"Haw! Haw! Haw!" His teacher laughed aloud.

"Gotcha, motherfucker." Brendan gave his subconscious mind a pat on the back.

(And where in the hell did that come from?)

The simulacrum played a major card.

"We really need to know how far you are prepared to go."

Balls to the wall.

"I'll play your fucking silly game all night long, Buddy."

He held back one trump card, asking the jerk for some ID. So far, no harm done and the guy's confidence was a prime indicator of innocence anyway. A real thief would have barreled out the door, right? What would a con artist be doing here in the middle of the night? But wait! Why not a con artist here in the middle of the night?

"You guys got a coffee-maker in the back room?"

"Of course." The sim went on in all seriousness. "Navigating inside the galaxy is based on further curving lines drawn both on and in layers inside of a sphere. If you imagine the galaxy as a dinner plate, then the galaxy would in essence be your horizontal circle, with the perpendicular based upon the axis of rotation of the system."

Brendan listened intently. The simulacrum waited while he jotted it down.

"And your second perpendicular is cut through long ways, it's not arbitrary." The simulacrum nodded.

"Are you getting all that?"

"Oh yeah, no problem," said Hartle. "Is gravity important? I mean which way is up and how do you determine galactic north, and stuff like that?"

On Earth north is based on the pole star, Polaris, and magnetic north is not true north. How did that relate to the universe? Was it a purely local phenomenon?

"Whichever way your head's pointing when they drew the first map, that kind of thing?" Everything is relative, he knew that.

The simulacrum patiently let him wallow along at his own speed.

"Is galactic north the same as north on Earth? Like the pole star?"

"Not all planets have a pole star per se," the simulacrum said. "North and south are based on the planet's polarity."

"So in terms of charge, a planet could be upside down?" Hartle had questions flowing faster than he could actually ask them. "When I pitch down, do I quote a number in degrees, or call out 'yaw left nine degrees,' stuff like that?"

To his surprise, the sim nodded agreement.

"Below the base plane is a negative integer, and above is a positive integer...?"

"Yes, young man."

"Huh," said Brendan. "And don't call me Percy."

The simulacrum went thankfully silent for a moment. He was certainly intrigued by all this stuff, and there was still the chance to trip the guy up. Maybe end the game of wits with some dignity. He had the feeling he was actually doing pretty well so far. Bullshit baffles brains, right?

"Exactly. You really are quite knowledgeable," the simulacrum gushed, ignoring the fact that Brendan had sidetracked away from his original question.

"Flattery will get you nowhere, my man. Tell me more about this ship. What powers it, what fuels it, how long does it last, how fast does it go? Stuff like that?" Hartle continued. "I guess I don't have too much to lose, and besides, Brendan has been starved for intelligent conversation lately."

"Who?"

Hartle roared with laughter.

"Got you motherfucker!" His companion just stood silent, eyebrows lifted. "I'm Hartle, you big dumb idiot! Did you get the wrong guy?"

He stuck out his hand as he stood up.

"You played a good game and I'd like to shake on it."

When the sim's hand slid right through his, because the sim had no real body to him, Brendan came pretty close to crapping himself.

Chapter Four

A gambler's philosophy...

While Brendan didn't actually release a massive bowel movement into his trousers, something escaped from his body. Call it a semi-liquid fart, a microscopic diarrhea, call it what you will, his previously fresh underwear felt uncomfortable afterwards. Perhaps a quick and sudden freshet of moist, warm sweat went down the proverbial plumber's cleavage.

Hartle rapidly composed himself, and sat down. He tried not to fall down too quickly into the chair. He went back on the attack after a moment's furious thought.

"You almost caught me by surprise there. But this opens up another interesting line of inquiry."

"I told you I was a simulacrum," the thing explained. "I should have made sure you understood."

"Don't try to weasel out of my last question!"

It's one thing to be fired, or reprimanded. It is another to be embarrassed, or even humiliated. It almost had to be network TV. Somewhere nearby was a remote control center, where no doubt technicians were amusing themselves with him. He expected people with cameras and microphones to come bursting in at any moment.

"Why are you afraid to be here in person?" He asked neutrally, in what he hoped was a loaded question.

"A simulacrum differs from an android or a robot in several fundamental ways. The most important is that a simulacrum is not meant to manipulate objects in three-dimensional space. For training, there's really no need for a physical presence."

"Okay. You're an educational tool. I can imagine how that might work." A thought struck him. "This is some kind of intelligence test, eh?"

"Not really, no. You seem intelligent enough, and we are gathering information as we go. We need to know a good deal about you in order to be able to work with you."

"Yeah, of course. It has to be something like that." He was quiet for a moment.

It had better not be the anal probe thing, he vowed.

"So what do I call you?"

"You may call me what you wish." It stood there looking at him.

"I have a cat, had her about five years. I've never gotten around to naming her," Brendan said.

"That's very revealing. Why didn't you give it a name?"

"Names don't mean much to a cat. She knows where her bowl is," explained Brendan. "She sleeps beside my pillow and ultimately, where the heck is she going to go?"

Cats were loyal creatures. He thought a moment and rejected the possibilities. Call a dog a bad name and all that.

"Sim." There was a long silence while the thing appeared disconcerted to a certain extent, then it made up its mind.

"I was right. You have revealed a significant part of your personality. Oh! And I approve of the name. It is simple, logical and quite unromantic. Quite suitable, quite suitable," it said. "A simple contraction."

"Actually it's for symbiote."

"Er, why is that?" spluttered the sim.

"Because you won't get off my back. So what did I reveal?"

"That you are capable of rejecting the unimportant. You have an original mind."

"Is that a compliment?"

"Not always, but it might save us some time."

***

"So you figure I could run this ship?" repeated Brendan.

"The manual controls are simple. Voice commands alone can be used, or you can use the key pad or fly on autopilot, and I'm here to brief you on all other requirements."

"And you're sure I'm the guy for the job?"

The sim merely smiled.

"Many centuries ago, it was foretold that a barbarian from a distant, unknown and savage planet would save the Empire in its hour of need," it said. "You are that man."

"I want to hear more about this Empire thing," said Brendan. "What if I don't want to go?"

"Then obviously you weren't the right man."

"And I'm free to leave right now?" This must be the climax to their little game. Glancing at his watch, he noted in some astonishment that it was only five to ten. "Well. I've got a few hours to kill."

"Very good, sir." It pointed to the seat he was in.

"Lesson number one: how to put the straps on. First, put your feet in the pedals and wrap the straps onto each other..."

Brendan noted the Velcro-like product used. Apparently, aliens didn't know everything, it was copycat technology. They were on lesson nine when Hartle looked at his watch again. More than two hours had passed, yet there was still plenty to see and do, still plenty of time until dawn reared its ugly head.

He yawned and stretched.

"What kind of grub you got in this thing?"

"All your needs have been provided for."

"Yeah, but what does that mean? I could walk out to the truck and grab a ham and cheese sandwich, if it would be easier," said Brendan.

"The galley can provide you a ham sandwich, although it is definitely a hands-on process."

"And why is that?"

"For one thing, I'm not here to cook for you! For another, it was felt that to yank a basically unsophisticated type from his home world directly into a much more advanced society, would require certain small reminders of who he was and where he came from," explained Sim. "It provides something of former self, former life to hang onto."

"Psychological reasons, morale reasons, okay. What about clothing, entertainment, music, smokes, beer, you name it?"

"Again, psychological reasons came into play. We have attempted to meet them to the best of our ability."

"Well, in that case, what I need is clean underwear, jeans, and a new shirt. A western shirt, and some alligator-skin boots. I need to eat something. How do we go about accomplishing this in your brave new world of the future?"

The thing appeared to be thinking.

"I'm not wearing a lousy brown polyester security guard uniform all over the freaking galaxy! And I may have a few other little requests." He stumbled over an afterthought or two. "But we'll see how you do with these first."

"Still testing, Hartle?" This with a small smile from the simulacrum.

"Maybe. I could have named you asshole."

Maintaining the smile, Sim beckoned Hartle to follow him into the after part of the ship. Brendan managed to get out of the restraining straps quickly, although he got hung up a little on the rudder pedals as he forgot the ankle straps at first.

"Now, the door you came in leads to the storage and medical center and the airlock."

"Them doors didn't look all that tight." Brendan kept interrogating as he went along.

Sim hastened to explain.

"The actual airlock is inside. The outer door just acts as a dust cover and is part of the shape of the hull." Brendan assumed he knew what the sim meant. "The inner seal is wedged in by pressure, the outer chamber pressure fluctuates."

"Ah," said Hartle.

"The outer door keeps out dirt and dust and is useful in keeping lubricants on the inner door seals, which would vapourize in hard vacuum. The mechanisms are inside of course, and the slider panel is the actual airlock, not the stairs and outer door."

Internal pressure keeps the seals tight, Brendan figured. The airlock didn't have to be quite as airtight as the rest of the ship.

"The airlock, is only 'flooded' with air when in use, 'topside.'" The sim explained further. "Also on the ground, in hostile environments, but the rest of the time it is evacuated for various reasons. In terms of heat-signature, a flooded lock flares like mad against the cold backdrop of interstellar space."

"Of course." Brendan nodded. "And, what's the middle door?"

This was in the middle of the back wall of the control cabin, with four seats on the side closest to the airlock and three on the other, all equipped with harnesses.

"That one leads to your quarters. Touch the pad beside it." Hartle did as instructed.

This door slid into a hollow wall pocket and wedged from inside the room. Compartments in a ship stop it from sinking. Compartments on a space ship retain atmosphere in case of damage or leaking, right? He whistled approval.

"Nice shack, bigger than expected. Although it is smaller than the bullshit you see on Star Trek, The Next Generation."

"The side door leads to the head, which leads to the side corridor on the starboard side of the ship. And you can get there from the right side of the cockpit."

There was a pair of heavily recessed skylights above the bed. Nice touch, he thought, real windows.

"And what about this hatch here?"

"Overhead access to maintenance tunnels outside of the crew quarters, but inside the pressure hull," the sim said.

Brendan visualized a Thermos bottle, shaped like a spaceship.

"Okay," he said.

"On the back of the right-hand corridor is a hatch which leads to the engine room, and several more doors. They lead to workshops, tools and spare parts, the ship's libraries, food storage, laboratories, et cetera."

The galley was at the front of the access tube, taking up the space where the airlock and medical room were on the port side. It was all very logical, and fairly simple.

"Libraries?"

"Converted crew quarters," the sim explained. "Earth books, music, videos, are quite bulky. The original materials and packaging are informative as well, so we acquired some samples. Our ongoing studies of your planet benefit, as well as providing for some of your needs."

"So you guys don't know everything."

"The Mythological Institute will study it and re-format it so we can use in our own machines."

"What is the normal crew of this vessel and what's its usual mission?"

"The ship was formerly used as an Imperial yacht, which is not such an informal designation and usage as you might think. It was converted for scientific duties recently. The basic configuration is that of an Imperial Fleet Scout." Sim gave his version of a smile again. "Normally the ship is crewed by from one to nine beings, although forty-three refugees were once carried a short distance by a scout ship."

"Wow," said Brendan. "The air-conditioning plant must have been groaning."

"Just so," agreed the sim.

"Is this vessel armed?" Brendan asked innocently enough.

"Yes, but I cannot release the details yet."

"That's fine by me," muttered Hartle. "Show me the galley. Did you say beings?"

The simulacrum walked through the door panel, but Hartle had to hit a pad on the wall. It was an antiseptic-looking place, although one could have guessed its function from the sink, stove, cupboards and drawers, and other furnishings such as a booth and a curving bench.

"Where's the fridge?" The sim pointed to a pad on the back wall, to the left of where the passage went on.

"This allows access to a series of cold rooms, among other things." Hartle just stood there. He didn't know what to ask next. It was a lot to take in. "Some contain meat products you are familiar with, vegetables and fruits, dairy products, staples and anything else you might think of."

"I'm impressed." Brendan nodded in approval.

"This vessel is supplied for an extended period, estimated at ten years of your time frame," offered the sim. "The bulk of it is hard rations, but you won't starve."

"That's not all stored in here."

"No, there are other stores scattered around the ship, including canned goods, pre-packaged foods, all stored in other lockers."

Brendan visualized the loads had been well distributed to balance the ship properly. He would have put the engines and fuel tanks on the center of gravity, if designing it himself.

"Uh, huh. Where are the Pop-Tarts?"

"Limited space, decisions had to be made. They're on the back of the top shelf."

Hartle was silent, intent on opening up the packet and looking for a toaster.

"I haven't had Pop-Tarts in so long. Maybe things are looking up." As they toasted, he explored further and came up with a can of chili and a pot to put it in, and then went looking for a spoon and can opener, not always easy in a strange kitchen. "Okay, I give up."

The sim showed him the lock-up for utensils. A good idea not to have them flying around under g-forces, he reasoned. He found a bowl clipped into a top cupboard. The stove was either for real or a copy of a Maytag. The two watched each other as he ate. Hartle ate the bowl of chili and then the whole packet of flat, crispy, toasty tarts.

Hartle glanced at his watch. Plenty of time until dawn, although he had a twinge of guilt at the thought of the empty pickup truck parked out there all night.

"Sure hope the big boss doesn't come looking." He grinned at the possibility that it was some big con job.

And yet, hours had gone by.

"Damn good chili." His belly was stoked for the time being. "A guy could get used to this."

The coffee wasn't too bad either. He was grateful for any small mercies.

"I must take the time to point out that the Council of the Institute of Mythological Studies has examined the records and we have determined that the prophecies are a lot of balderdash."

"Hah?"

It all seemed very formal all of a sudden. Was this the climax?

"But many members of the populace believe in the prophecies," added the sim.

"Oh, I get it. Plus a few of the ruling class, no doubt, even some Members of Council?"

"Er, quite. So your duties won't be too onerous, and we'll see how it goes when we get there. You shouldn't have much trouble meeting the requirements."

"So you've made your decision?"

The sim hesitated, a good effect. Awesome programming, thought Brendan. Whoever was doing this was good.

"What do you know of chaos theory?"

"Whew. I don't know much about it, although I may have seen a little one-hour show on it on Public Television once upon a time. I think chaos theory could explain much about the universe in a physical sense. But, it could explain so much in a social sense. Not too sure what I mean by that."

That part hadn't been touched on in the program.

"You are correct, and this is where you come in. We will use you essentially for propaganda reasons, which are by no means as scientifically-predictable as we might wish."

In order to work, propaganda takes time. To be effective, propaganda must contain a small kernel of truth.

"I don't believe any of this shit," said Hartle. "You're going to have to prove it by me."

If this was a Hollywood production, now was the time to whip out the special effects.

"Let us re-enter the control room and get you started," suggested his mentor.

"Bingo," thought Brendan.

He quickly strapped in, including the ankle straps. The stirrups, which controlled the rudders, gripped his feet securely. Then it was okay to do up the six-point harness.

"Okay, where's the key?"

How long could this crazy charade go on?

Still, every time he thought the psychological moment was rife to hit him with the punch line, a new twist, a new curveball got thrown at him. Sim fooled him again.

"Just behind the right side control stalk is a small panel. Push the lighter-coloured square."

The beige panel beckoned as his hand hovered over it. Hartle pushed on it and the panel hinged up automatically to reveal a small cavity. In it was a key switch, complete with a small ring of keys. It was just like an automobile ignition switch, and there was a small red button. He turned the key, something a little awkward in its recess, and pushed it. A red light came on below it. A small beeping sound began.

"What if I were left-handed?" He had to raise his voice a little over the noise.

"There's one on the left side as well." A quick glance confirmed it.

"Holy, crap!"

He was startled by faint noises and a quivering, rumbling sensation through the seat of his pants. The illusion was a good one.

"You may instruct the ship verbally, or operate it manually."

"Yeah, right." Brendan reached out to grasp the two control sticks.

He pulled the right one back just a little from the neutral point.

"That's about right." The sim didn't utter a peep and Brendan flushed in resentment. "Let's start off with about ten degrees of flaps. Can you open the door from here?"

The sim nodded and it began to lift in the view-screens. Perfectly situated, the hangar sat at the end of an access taxiway. Presumably, the sim had somehow accessed the industrial equivalent of a remote garage-door opener. The sim still smiled, as Hartle's hand sat on the left stick, where throttle and rudder-control combined under his palm. He began laughing in sepulchral fashion, still sure that it was all some colossal, cosmic joke.

A joke perpetrated by somebody somewhere.

He pushed hard on the throttle, and the laughter turned into a scream as the hangar vapourized behind them and the walls burst outwards. The lights of Toronto quickly flashed past below them before he knew what was happening. He felt like he weighed ten tons. For a brief moment thought he was going to die. Then he blacked out into merciful unconsciousness.

He didn't sleep very long. Slowly Brendan fought his way back to reality.

"What happened? How did you do that?"

"Still don't believe, Hartle?"

He sat for a long time, watching the view of the planet rotate past under the nose.

"You have no faith, Brendan? No faith in your own eyes? Or in your own senses?"

The screens directly in front of him were all lit up, showing the planet down below. He quickly recognized the west coast of North America as it slid past underneath them. The main screen just showed a glowing curve of the planet. They were flying east.

"We'll soon be able to get a picture of our takeoff point," said the sim.

Now the camera lens zoomed in on a place with dizzying speed. He recognized the city, with its chaotic blob of brightly lit streets and highways, tall buildings foreshortened yet recognizable for all of that. He was looking at the north shore of Lake Ontario and then it swept to a point. It stopped and he saw the airport.

A red circle appeared.

"What's that?" His head hurt deep inside, a dull throbbing ache.

There was a queasy, nauseous feeling in the guts.

The image amplified. Hartle was looking at a smashed and flattened building. Smoke poured out of a deep slashing scar in the earth, even as fire and rescue units pulled up to the crater's edge. Another red circle appeared, without bidding. It focused on another object as he tried to get the reality straight in his head. It was the remains of his company truck. It, too, had been totally destroyed, literally torn apart by the forces of their departure.

Another, smaller red circle appeared.

"What were you reading?"

"'The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe,' by John Killen."

The circle enlarged and he could see the cover art—a Messerschmitt ME-262, and the title. The cover was burnt but recognizable. The screen cleared and once again showed the surface of the planet.

"Our autopilot took over when you blacked out," said Sim. "You briefly sustained seven and a half gees, not too bad for someone totally unprepared for it. We're in a stable orbit."

"Thanks, I guess. You might have warned me."

"You need to take this seriously, and the time for discussion has run out."

There was a silence. Hartle was transfixed by the view.

"You still have time to back out."

"Really? Even now?" Hartle didn't believe it.

"It's illegal to remove indigenous non-citizens from their home world without their express permission."

Hartle doubted if that stopped them from doing it.

"Well, there's no point in turning back now. In fact, wild horses couldn't drag me away."

"Please state for the record that you understand your rights," requested Sim.

"Brendan Hartle says okay. Let's get on with it."

There was a silence again.

"No doubt you were wondering what it's all about."

"Actually, I still need some underwear, perhaps more than before." He wasn't too shy to say so.

In response the sim undertook a further tour of the ship, speaking almost non-stop. First, he showed Brendan the bathroom. Hartle didn't say much but just took it all in. Some form of artificial gravity at work here, he noticed. The toilet had no water in it.

"How does it flush?" He thought of his dear old dad.

His first question would have been, 'Where do you go to take a crap around here?'

"It doesn't, not in the normal way. Remember to activate it before attempting to use it. You push the green button on the wall."

"Attempt is the operative word. I may be a little kidney-shy right now. Are you sure you need to monitor so closely?" He stabbed at the button, saw a set of helical shutter vanes open up and then a sucking noise began.

"The surface is frictionless, ninety-nine per cent anyway, and a routine maintenance program does the cleaning."

"I could make you a rich man," said Brendan as the flow began.

All that coffee, it wasn't good for a man. It makes you irritable.

The sim left the head and went into the stateroom. Apparently using a com-link in its head, he made the door slide back on the wardrobe. The front companionway door opened and diffused lighting came on.

Hartle re-joined him.

"Went like clockwork. I feel a lot better now."

Sim beckoned to the open closet door. The bottom half was all built-in drawers with snap locks on each one. Each shirt and jacket had a separate tall, narrow bay of its own.

"Underwear and socks are located in this drawer here." Sim pointed. "Size fourteen socks and medium, size thirty-four gotchies, to use the vernacular."

"I'm thirsty now."

How did they know what size to bring? This was no random test of an unspecified alien to these people. They wanted or expected him, or at least someone with really big feet.

"Got any beer?"

"Yes. We have a selection of about a dozen beers. I'm sure you'll find one to your liking." It was more cultural research, no doubt.

"I got a funny feelin' they're all to my liking," Brendan pulled out a pair of jeans and slid them on.

He found a dark blue shirt of heavy denim, with two pockets. Nice stuff. They thought of everything, including a pair of running shoes that fit okay.

"We'll burn that later." He referred to his Stirling Security outfit.

He tossed it behind the door just like at home. A short time later, he sat in the control seat, pondering what the sim had chosen to tell him. Sim caused a holographic projection to appear in front of Hartle.

"Here is our galaxy. The Empire is marked in red."

"Where's Earth?" Another dot appeared, this time a tiny dot in blue. It flashed to attract the eye, then settled down and a little white box outlined in black appeared. It said, 'Earth.' A bunch of numbers, three sequences of four...and what looked like a distance...?

It was all so much alien spaghetti to him.

"What happens if you miss a decimal place?"

"You end up in the sun," was Sim's terse reply. "At infinite velocity..."

The Earth was a dot well off to one side from the amorphous blob that represented the Empire. It was a pink haze with black dots. Just like a map in an encyclopedia, he saw.

"Show population density in whites, yellows and browns." The computer did just that and a few more name plates appeared. "Okay, go back to the star map."

The screen changed instantly.

"Zoom in here." He pointed and more nametags popped up. "Very good."

Sim went on with the briefing.

"The Empire is in a time of great upheaval. There has been a movement, called devolution, led by a group of heavily developed industrial planets who wish for all intents and purposes to secede from the Empire..."

"Why?"

"Economic reasons, cultural reasons, including a certain amount of simple bigotry," the simulacrum explained. "They also control significant resources, which have traditionally been regarded as held in trust for the common people."

"How much access do the common people have to these resources?"

"Yes, very definitely the right man for the job," mused the sim. "They object to their burden of taxes, from which they receive no direct economic benefit. It goes to support a large number of impoverished planets, which traditionally, have a large number of seats in the Assembly."

"Why are these planets impoverished? What's the problem?"

"Initially they were developed as agricultural planets. Some may even have evolved from agrarian societies in their own right. Slavery, a plantation mentality, dependence on exports for prosperity, which not unnaturally falls mostly on the rich and well-born..."

"In other words, it's for reasons of social policy. Slavery debases the master equally as much as the slave. Even more so, because the slave can at least dream of freedom, the master simply cannot conceive of it," Brendan threw in. "Because it's, 'unnatural.'"

"It is unknown how quickly you can assimilate all the material available to you, and how much you can really understand in a limited time. Still, you may be objective where we cannot be."

"So, back in history, the rich planets conquered the poor ones, colonized, some were agricultural, some were mining. Others were low-cost manufacturing planets. They used slave labour to exploit them. Then they became captive markets for their own goods. You guys encouraged breeding, ignorance, and of course, some kind of kooky religion got cooked up to account for it all? It's all justified?"

"All of that and more," said the sim. "Essentially, it is our suspicion that someone invented a religious system to perpetuate the god-king, usually male, to control the populace in virtually all the cultures we have studied."

"There must be a few mother-gods?"

"Not as many as you might think." For the moment, Brendan seemed to have stumped it. "Essentially the female role is passive, and the male role is active, even invasive."

"There's no such thing as a submissive god," admitted Hartle. "Not too many submissive women, either."

That was mostly cultural.

"It is unlikely that a lack of knowledge has ever discouraged speculation."

"To engage in idle speculation is the mark of a free man," Brendan said and it merely smiled its inscrutable little smile. "Cicero."

"There are literally billions of historical and scientific archives in the files," Sim informed Brendan. "Perhaps you should begin a reading program, although you may never reach the end of it. You know next to nothing about the universe."

"Oh, I don't know about that." said Brendan. "Guys like you tend to forget that a straight line is a curve of infinite diameter."

"Hah!"

"Oh, yeah? Well, now it's your turn to listen!"

The sim sighed deeply, nodding glumly in resignation.

"An intelligent man might look at a grain of sand and deduce the universe. Is it such a stretch to look at the universe and deduce the presence of God?" asked Hartle.

"Well, I don't know about that."

Sim stood dumbfounded as Brendan took a deep breath, and his eyes went back and up a little, wavering from side to side momentarily. Another deep breath and he dove in.

"Scientists theorize the universe sprang into being through a singularity. A singularity is an infinitely small point in space from which infinite matter, energy, space and time exploded outwards in all directions at extremely high velocities. Public opinion, so often wrong, believes this happened in the centre of the universe, but this is a contradiction."

Sim's eyebrows rose in disbelief at what he was hearing.

"Where is the centre of infinite space?"

Sim said nothing.

"Philosophers and scientists believe that if there is an effect, there must be a cause. The ancients called this 'the first cause,' or the 'first principle.' People call this, 'God.'"

Brendan paused for breath, and sought the words in his own heart.

"It seems to me that evolution is one of the engines of creation, no matter how it all came about. If God created the universe, He would have needed an impressive set of tools. These tools are the immutable laws of nature."

"Man may have been created 'in God's own image,' I'm not competent to say. But man was clearly an imperfect being, as Adam and Eve quickly demonstrated. The truth as I see it is that we are still evolving, at times perhaps not quickly enough," he spoke as the poor Sim just gaped.

"Anyhow, if God exists, surely he permeates and encompasses all things, including the infinity of the universe. He transcends everything—everything. If you wanted to find God, the first place to look is in your own heart. And, if He's not there, well, now you have your answer. Sometimes I go out back at night, have a smoke and look up at the stars."

Sim just stood there regarding this bizarre performance.

"I just sit there and look up, wait and listen."

Wait for it.

"When revelation hits, she hits with a bang," Brendan said with a sardonic grin. "Did you know there is a fifth dimension? It is a kind of force that cannot be measured or quantified, or proven in any way. I like to think of it as love—maybe even God's love. What could be better than that?"

There was a silence.

"Thank you for sharing that," said Sim with no trace of humbug. "I'm sure that will be of great use in the troubled times that lay ahead."

"Well, if that's your attitude..."

The sim sighed again.

"What now?"

"Nature abhors a vacuum. When the Creation event occurred, space had infinite velocity. This made sufficient room for matter and energy to expand outwards. Time sprang into existence fully formed, in the sense that the past and future were created at the same time, although there really is only one moment. The fact that all of infinite space came into being at the same 'moment' implies faster than light velocities. Time is a closed loop of infinite diameter, and I can prove it: everyone knows, there is only one moment—the so-called straight line."

"Time and space are merely two aspects of single continuum," added Brendan.

Sim had a pained look on his face.

"It gets worse when you realize that time is also a mobius strip, in the sense it is one-sided. Now in my opinion, the matter in the universe has or had, different velocities. The reason for this is simple, and any good scientist will tell you the same thing: you have to have some variables or the math don't work out. Also implied by my hypothesis is the fact that all the energy in the system also 'happened' at the same time. I say this because otherwise more matter and energy 'must' be spewing out of some singularity somewhere, located in the centre of infinity...which is a contradiction in terms. A statement cannot be true and false at the same time."

"And why is that?" Sim asked against his better judgment.

"Because it would violate one of God's laws, you dummy." Sim's patience was being strained to the limit, but Brendan relentlessly ground on. "In order to obtain a relatively objective viewpoint, you must get outside of the system. How is this possible? Easy: infinity has been expanding outwards at infinitely variable velocities since the dawn of Creation. Think of a bubble, it is a spherical wave front, nothing more. Only on the other side of that expanding wave front is any objective reality possible."

"Oh, man," groaned Sim.

"We are blown along by the winds of time," Hartle said. "It's not the same time all over the universe...it can't be."

The poor sim was shaking its head and rolling its eyes.

"Just for interest's sake, if you went towards the singularity, and stuff was coming out, that would be the future...right, sir? Are you with me so far? Okay, then in order to find the past, the dawn of time, we have to go outwards, and somewhere on the other side of that...I reckon that's where we will find the God of Creation."

"Oh, Jesus."

"At the very least we should be able to ask Him what it's all about. Oh! Incidentally, the importance of Time is often overlooked. If it wasn't for Time, everything would happen all at once...and that would be confusing. As for the so-called 'missing matter' or 'dark matter' in the universe, either it's way ahead of us or it hasn't come out yet."

"Oh, God," moaned the sim.

"Nothing can exist without its opposite, hence Good and Evil, light and darkness, up and down, love and hate, cold and hot, summer and winter, et cetera."

"Oh, make it stop!" The sim was rolling its head in dismay.

"Let's see here. God doesn't give pay-cheques and He don't make deals, He doesn't have any part-time jobs, so don't start anything you can't finish. It's all or nothing with That Guy. Well, it's your life and you're only going to get one shot at it."

"Oh, fuck," said the sim.

"Oh, yeah, nothing in the Universe can hold a candle to an honest man. But it's simple, really, once you think about it."

"Oh, thank God. Is it over?"

"No. One more thing. There's no such thing as a parallel universe," Brendan said.

"Eaugh! Eaugh," it whimpered in well-acted pain. "Eaugh! Why is that?"

Sim asked in a kind of agony of despair. The thing was holding its head in its hands and swaying on its feet.

"Because if they all sprang from the same singularity, radiating out from a point, then they're all on a slight angle to each other. No matter that there is an infinite number of them."

Brendan had never seen a sim or anything before, but this one appeared to be sweating, and perhaps in some kind of respiratory disturbance.

"Please, please, somebody kill me!"

"The only way for two timelines to intersect is if there are two singularities...but if that happened, the two, and only two, timelines that intersect would cancel each other out..."

"Please...please...I've had enough." It moved from the front of the room and dropped into the other seat.

"They would mutually annihilate each other," said Brendan.

There was to be no quarter for the sim.

"By the way..." to more groans from his companion. "The missing matter implies the possibility that the singularity did not happen in a micro-nano-second, but had a certain duration...again, a question of the variables. What this would imply, is the universe is not only older than we think, but that time is going slower than we think, and that the universe will in fact last longer than present estimates give credit..."

But the sim had obviously had enough. It sat in the co-pilot's seat, wringing its hands. It sat there shaking its head.

"Well, fucked if I'm going to take your word for everything." This seemed to put the cap on this part of the conversation.

He felt okay, which was surprising, after all he had been through tonight. Thoughts of his mother, father, family still trapped down there on the planet occupied him. Brendan turned to Sim, wondering if he could explain this cold and lonely feeling, and realizing that for all intents and purposes, they would believe him dead—he was dead, in a way. Much food for thought—silent thought here.

'Jesus H. Christ,' he muttered.

He might see things no man had ever seen before, yet he also suspected the price was more than he was willing to pay. He wasn't scared, exactly. He just felt all quivery in the guts and shivery in the lower back region, in the area of the adrenal glands.

"Look, I'm not scared or anything, but I really don't want to leave so suddenly like this." Sim seemed to have the ability to recover quickly.

"Unfortunately, goodbyes are not an option. Surely you can see that too many questions would be raised? Where would you say you were going?"

There was a silence while Brendan digested this. He rubbed his whiskers, suddenly realizing he was tired, and maybe not thinking too clearly.

"At the speed we'll be traveling, it's about a three-week journey to Centralia. We should be on our way right now."

Brendan nodded. Sim relented, but only slightly.

"Come with me," he motioned. "We can at least pick up a few things for you before we leave."

Wondering anew, Brendan followed him down the companionway to a rear compartment. Standing beside Brendan at a console, Sim instructed him to type in certain words into a keypad.

"Your home address?"

Hartle tapped it in, and then the more specific instructions.

"Back bedroom, upper floor, right side."

"Type in anything less than fifty kilos," instructed his mentor.

Hartle's face split in a wide grin.

The cat was very, very angry with Brendan, but he figured she would get over it—eventually. There were a few other items as well. His tired mind rapidly ran out of ideas. Once again Brendan sat in the pilot's seat. The cat was strapped down in a padded cage in his stateroom. She had been sleeping beside his pillow, as predicted.

"So it's three weeks to Centralia, eh?"

"Yes. The time has been allotted for your cultural briefing," said Sim. "The speed of the ship will be governed accordingly."

"You mean it can go faster than that?" asked Hartle. "Wait, don't tell me."

He looked down at his favourite jeans, swiped by some unknown means from his old bedroom.

"This is real...really real."

He wasn't going to wake up from this feeling lost, and disoriented, and slightly foolish. Like a sexy dream that ends a moment too soon.

"Wouldn't you prefer programmed flight?"

"Brat-a-tat-a-tat," replied Brendan.

He reached for the stalks, and the ship moved slowly forward and upward as the velocity increased smoothly. Numbers sped by on a digital readout.

"How's that, Butthead?"

"Do you know where you're going?" He pointedly ignored Sim.

"Computah!" He bellowed at the screen in a corny English accent like Patrick Stewart. "Give us a bearing for the Centralia system."

"No need to shout." His teacher displayed some impatience.

A red arrow pointed to the upper left corner of the main frontal viewing screen. Or should he call it a 'plate?' He lifted the nose, fed in some left bank and pulled. He could feel but not hear the thrusters on the wingtips activating. Soon the system, a tiny white dot at this range and magnification, slid into the screen. He carefully centred it up with the sticks.

"Time of arrival at this speed?"

The calm impersonal voice of the slight system told him 'ninety-seven days,' so he increased the throttle setting, noting a gentle push back into the seat. But there was no other feedback, no engine growl, no whisper of air over a body at speed. It was eerily silent.

"Computah! Set course and engage pre-set cruising speed."

"Acknowledged." At a nod from Sim, he began to remove the straps holding him into the seat.

Apparently the accelerations would be gentle, at least for the present. Something passed through his head, something like 'a tenth of a gee.' Maybe it was something in an old science book? Science fiction?

He wished he could remember. A tenth of a gee of constant, gentle acceleration would soon build up into one impressive number, if you were into that sort of thing.

He switched screens, and watched the earth, the moon and the sun, all of the familiar, nearby stars slowly begin to diminish in size and fade from sight. His jaw hung slack for a moment as Saturn approached. With its rings, and multiple moons glittering around it, the system swung past.

"What a fine mess you've gotten us into this time."

Chapter Five

They were six days out...

They were six days out and Hartle was falling into a routine that would sustain him through the journey. He slept when he needed to, ate when he felt like it, and Sim talked to him non-stop when he wasn't reading or sleeping.

Still, the cat seemed to get hungry about the same time every day and the lights were programmed with a normal terrestrial pattern, dimming down for about eight hours at 'night.' He wasn't exactly a morning person, but a regular 24-hour day had always been in the background of his existence.

"I need to see the sun come up once in awhile," he explained to the sim. "Even if all I do is stop reading, roll over and go to sleep."

Hartle had never been hung-up on food, skipping breakfast and even lunch most days.

Somehow Sim, with subtle prompting, managed to get him eating three squares a day.

Brendan and the cat often ate together, with Sim looking on. The cat accepted Sim's presence, without actually liking him. Initially the cat stared at Sim, hissing and growling a little. But when she tried to sniff for his scent, he got nothing, and in some ineffable way had figured out that Sim was a thing. Sim couldn't feed you, and you couldn't jump up into his lap even if you wanted to. To the cat, Sim was distinctly a non-entity. Hartle wondered if more than smell was involved. How much higher cognitive power did a cat really have? Perhaps that explained their relationship, it was an uneasy truce.

The big forward view-plates were set on wide-angle. Occasionally a cluster of stars or other bodies would hurtle past. Brendan sat idly watching. Sim was bound to start talking again. Relative to their viewing, the most distant stars remained more or less fixed in place, with only subtle shifts over time.

Sim's mouth opened to speak, but he was interrupted by an alarm sounding three short squawks.

"Three armed vessels, eleven o'clock, vector two-thirty-five." The flight computer's flat, unemotional voice made him sit up.

Sim looked alarmed, something Brendan didn't know he was capable of.

"Who are they?"

There were three red circles, little lights shining against the inky blackness behind, on a tactical view to his lower left.

"Unknown at present," reported Sim after a brief consultation inside of his head.

Hartle grabbed at the straps, suddenly glad for the extensive briefings and practice they went through.

"They're turning to intercept," said the flight computer.

"Hail them," blurted Hartle, as the center lock pin on his abdomen clicked into place.

"And what shall I tell them?" inquired Sim.

"Tell them to get the hell out of my way," suggested Brendan.

"I'll say we're on a scientific and diplomatic mission for the Institute."

"Fine. Just do it, okay?"

"But we're not, officially."

"Tell them anyway." Sim could be so dense, and there was no time to explain. "They're here for a reason."

Sim nodded in agreement.

"We have a channel to the flagship, that's the big one at the rear."

Hartle heard a brief squeal, like when you dial a number and accidentally get someone's fax machine.

"Their reply is that they are police forces from Rigel Nine, engaged in an anti-piracy sweep."

"What do you think?" So far he hadn't made any control inputs.

"Rigel Nine is a long ways away. They're way out of their jurisdiction. However, in the case of a clear pursuit, that is legal."

"They're not in clear pursuit of anybody. They're probably pirates themselves."

"I must concur," said Sim. "It is but a guess, of course..."

Startled, Brendan took a good long look at him.

"Really?" There was this insane urge to laugh aloud. "Son of a bitch!"

He bit his lip, and then a wolfish grin cracked across his visage.

"A guess you say?"

Sim's embarrassment took second seat to the threat from without.

"How much time to intercept?" Brendan asked.

"Nine minutes. I suggest evasive action."

"Oh, that's not so bad. I thought it was closer than that."

"We cannot outrun them without a major course deviation."

"Get me a direct line, a picture of the guys in that other ship."

It was the flight computer that obeyed him. Sim was objecting.

"Inadvisable..."

His forward screen acquired a new box centred-up down low. He saw a being in a cabin much like this one, perhaps a little larger. Another being moved into the picture and stood there looking out at him through their own screen.

"Is that a uniform?" He asked out of the corner of his mouth.

The thing nodded. He stared at a green-skinned apparition. Sim only nodded again.

"Could be fake," said Hartle. "What do you guys want?"

"We are pursuing suspected pirate vessels in this sector." The standing one's face distorted and gaped at him.

It had some kind of hole in front, with a pair of tiny slits for nostrils. Three koogly eyes bulged menacingly. No chin—the aliens had no chins! Yuck.

The thing spoke calmly.

"We intend to board your ship and carry out a search for contraband."

"You have no probable cause. As far as I'm concerned, you're way out of your jurisdiction."

"Your identification codes are suspicious. Your ship is registered to the Mythological Institute, but there is no record of a mission in this sector."

"This ship is in my care and custody, and as a licensed security agent I have sworn to uphold the law and to protect the property thus entrusted to me," Hartle informed them in an indignant voice. "And I'm prepared to repel boarders, sonny boy."

"The vehicle is improperly insured and has not been inspected for some time. We have the legal right and duty to inspect for substance abuse by pilots and crew of vessels..."

"We're properly insured." Hartle just grinned. "Screw you! You're through wasting my time."

"These people don't take kindly to that kind of tone," the sim offered. "Try to keep calm."

A quick internal audit informed Brendan that he was as calm as glass inside, never mind what the outside looked like. The other creature was visibly gaining control of some emotions of its own. Its subordinate just sat there impassively, eyes locked on its own instruments.

"You are advised to cooperate," the chief bug said finally.

"And I would advise you to stay the hell out of my space." A kind of anger was building inside of him.

"Seven minutes to intercept," intoned the flight comp.

"Yeah, yeah."

"Cut channel," Sim said.

Hartle acknowledged with a hand gesture.

"They'll expect you to turn and run. If you do, the ships will spread out on each side. If you turn, you will lose ground. Sooner or later you will be caught by one of his flankers."

"Computer! Guns up!"

"You don't know anything about those weapons! There is hardly time to explain even their basic fundamentals!" Sim was aghast.

"Please hook them up to fire from the red button on the top of the right-hand joystick."

"Acknowledged." It at least responded without hesitation. "Guns are up."

"Thank you," said Brendan. "Display weapons stores. I'm taking manual control. Any famous last words?"

Sim shook his head. Brendan took a look at the missiles available. Short, medium and long-range, with a nice mix of radar guided, heat-seekers and optical sensors. He touched a finger to the tactical screen. One set began blinking.

"In which case, I suggest you shut up for a couple of minutes, okay?"

The thing nodded. It seemed thunderstruck, eyeballs a-goggle, or maybe it was just wracking its memory banks for a suitable aphorism.

"Continuous tracking of targets, verbalize," Brendan said.

Sim began to respond again, jerkily, his short pauses and hesitation made it seem like it was partially against his will.

"Targets...closing... at steady speed and bearing."

Brendan hadn't made any moves yet.

"This is called the merge," he told Sim, who said nothing. "Do we have shields? Anything like that?"

"No! That is only on TV. This will be quite a rude surprise for you, I expect."

"Arm all weapons," Hartle called.

"Armed," the impersonal voice of the computer replied.

The missile shape on his console began to glow, and something beeped quietly. Its seeker head actively sweeping visually, it gave a double beep and began to growl.

"They're increasing speed. Soon they will turn and come up beside you," Sim said.

That's when Hartle wrenched the controls in a great slewing arc, watching as a field of stars swept past his view. A big red circle appeared in the forward screen, and then split into three smaller ones as the range closed. He rammed the throttle forward.

"Mark flagship in green." He aimed straight for it.

"Extreme weapons range...now," Sim yelled.

"Fox one and fox two." Pinpricks of blue-white light vectored off into the space ahead of them, converging to a point and then flashing into brilliance as they impacted. "Fox three and four!"

If the violence of the reaction was any indicator, they were all dead aliens over there, but he had no time to watch the show. There was a scatter of blips as he fired on a smaller needle-like ship. He centred up the pipper dot. The thin juddering of the airframe and flashing in his peripheral vision indicated cannon fire as he zoomed through the loose formation.

"Nice shooting, computah!"

The sim was flatfooted by the excitement.

"Give me maximum design speed," Brendan called, and then a big boot came up and kicked him in the ass.

He just had time to see the stars turn into big white and multi-coloured streaks before he blacked out, his sight going into grey, tunnel-like circles with spots floating around in them, and then attenuating into nothingness. The last thing he heard was Sim's voice, but he couldn't comprehend what he was saying.

His body shook all over in a kind of fit, and somehow he knew that was natural. He was alive, then.

"Where are we?"

Something pricked at his left forearm. Sim brought him back through a needle complex buried in the arm of the seat.

"Forgot to mention that." He apologized as Brendan's eyes swam back into focus.

"Whoa, what the heck happened?" His left arm felt like a bee had stung it, with a deep resonant ache down in the wrist.

"You've just been blotto, not a highly technical term, but fairly apropos under the circumstances."

"Oh."

"Actually, you did rather well," Sim added. "Good news and bad news."

"Well?"

Brendan's voice was crisper now, and he had a big thirst. Even slightly turning his head brought dizziness.

"The flagship has been destroyed. One of the destroyers was heavily damaged. The third ship, another destroyer, pursued briefly. They took on survivors...or victims. They destroyed the wreckage with their own torpedoes." Sim was quiet for a moment. "You almost collided with the flagship. If you had been...if you had been..."

"A cunt-hair to the right?" offered Hartle.

"Ahem! Something like that. We have eluded their pursuit. While they can still track us, we should be able to make a safe port and they know it."

He went on.

"With the Institute backing us up, and through their influence, the Emperor on our side, we should be safe enough. The bad news is, is that they actually were police ships."

"So, there must be a leak."

"Yes," said Sim with a dark look.

"Oh, shit."

"Did that destroyer leave any marker buoys on the wreckage?" he asked the flight computer.

"No, they didn't."

"All right. They probably were bad guys then."

"Yes," agreed Sim. "Until we make planet-fall, in a port strongly controlled by the Empire, you are at risk."

"So they really were cops. I'll bet they would still like to get their pseudopods on us."

There was a sudden gush of adrenaline, but he was okay with it.

"That was a brilliant attack, Brendan," said Sim. "I have forwarded a full 'report on enemy action' to the Institute."

"You should get some kind of top-secret forensics team out there."

"Um, yes," muttered an embarrassed simulacrum.

"The Institute must think I'm a total asshole."

"Remember your chaos theory? This might be the start of something big," rejoined Sim, with his sinister and inscrutable smile.

"It's a good thing you have a sense of humour," reckoned Brendan. "Do you have any sense of self-preservation?"

"Yes. Absolutely. Of course." It's eyebrows climbed. "Why do you ask?"

"Oh, I don't know. Let me know if I get too personal." There was a pause. "Ship's status?"

He should find some kind of name for the flight computer. 'Fred,' or something like that.

"At ninety percent of design speed, with new course changes, approximately nine hours to destination."

"You have precipitated the game. There is no point in limiting you to ten percent power anymore. Why did you ask about self-preservation?"

"All of the rules just went out the window, Sim. My ass and the cat's, the ship's ass are all on the line. And I guess maybe yours is too."

"And?"

"A ship can only have one captain."

Sim gulped, and then nodded. He just looked at Brendan. There was really nothing to say. They were committed.

"I'll go and check on the cat now," Brendan said while Sim chewed on his thoughts.

Chapter Six

Sim was right...

Sim was right. The Rigellian ship still shadowed them from afar. They were no longer a serious, imminent threat. The cat was fine, she had been asleep on his bed, and her impact with the back wall softened by pillows. It's not that she wasn't pissed off, she was for sure. But no harm done.

The cat slept on a corner of the bed. Hartle sipped a cold beer as he lay there. Six hours of sleep weren't enough to refresh him. Soon he would be going down to the planet, the most powerful and important world of the Empire, centre of government and commerce. He was to be received by the Imperial Family, as well as some of the biggest and most important figures of the day. A mere hour's run from the planet, the Rigellian ship darted off on a tangent, as they were in patrol range of the system. Most likely they would go to ground.

He didn't know what to expect. From what Sim said, he didn't know if they took him seriously, or if they thought it a farce. He wasn't sure if he took it seriously either. The whole premise was ludicrous. Yet he didn't have to pinch himself to convince himself he was here.

Another thing that preyed on his mind was aliens. How do you meet an alien? Offer to shake hands? Mimic its body language? You didn't want to be a boor or a fool in a situation like this.

Sim promised to provide him with a translator, a small necklace-like device with a pair of wireless earplugs. That was fine, but he supposed it would interfere with normal hearing, which always added a level of stress to anything.

He had to keep his eyes open and his wits about him. On the way, he could study the buildings, the streets, and the people. Any details of culture and civilization might be interesting, but how do you observe attitudes, their way of thinking? That might take a long time.

Any clue could be meaningful.

Sim came into the room.

"There's a ball at the palace tonight," he said. "That would be a good time to present you to the Emperor. No doubt members of the Council will be in attendance, it would be remarkable if they were not."

"Big social bash, eh? A holocaust of conspicuous consumption?"

"Quite so, quite so." The sim said this with a certain relish.

"I suspect my attire may be of some import."

Brendan had a sulky tone.

"Let's have another look in the closet." Sim was as diplomatic as ever. "They do say the clothes make the man."

"They've got it ass-backwards, as usual."

"Council Member Trent, whom I have been in contact with, has offered some suggestions for your deportment."

"Oh, goody! Guess we'd better get to work."

Brendan chugged the rest of his beer. He went into the galley, cracked open another and then went to the closet.

"The people will, for the most part, look very much like your Earth types, Brendan. There will also be people who are very alien in appearance, but they are not so numerous here in the central part of the Empire."

First the shirt, a soft, cottony-white colour, big and streaming out in the tails, with huge floppy sleeves, and big cuffs with no buttons.

Sim pointed at a jacket.

"That one, I think."

"Yikes." Brendan regarded the hellish thing.

It had a high, ruffed collar. It was a velvety, cheesy, lacy thing with heavily padded shoulders, quilted with vest-like appliqués in gold and purple thread. It was hideous, really. Tight sleeves came halfway down his forearms then just kind of stopped in a cone-shaped pansy-like floppy ring.

"Nope," said Brendan.

Sim pulled out something else, and this one had no sleeves at all. Less was definitely more in some cases, Brendan concluded.

"Are you sure these go together?"

It was a horrible wine or maroon colour.

No reply. But then Sim went on.

"All professional people carry translators and are used to dealing with a great variety of beings. There is no real reason to be shy."

"Yeah, right." Brendan studied himself in the long mirror. "Did you steal Liberace's undershirt?"

"Fits well, though. A little conservative, but that suits your background story. You will be the stereotypical backwoods boy at court."

"You say this is conservative?" wondered Brendan. "This is just sick."

"Take off the coat for a moment...now the tights. Your jeans can hang up there," Sim said, pointing.

"Oh, no. Did you say tights?"

Sim seemed unperturbed by the deep, barren growl, laden with forlorn longing. It petered out finally.

Chapter Seven

The line crept forward...

"I have to piss like a race-horse."

"Shush! Don't discuss biological functions out loud." Sim promptly led him down a hall and through a door off the side of the ten-acre vestibule, where something like a public facility existed.

"Try...that one."

"Yeah, the first two look out of the question."

He didn't in the least regret the three Red Ales consumed prior to the evening's festivities.

"You're always watching me pee, Sim."

"It's quite instructive. You seem a little tense. There is no danger here," Sim said for the second or third time in an hour.

Brendan didn't see it that way at all. His every instinct was screaming at him to turn around and go home!

"Shut up."

"Sooner or later, we have to meet with members of the Council and you simply must be presented to the Emperor, or a member of the Family. I cannot stress that enough. You are a representative of another world, after all."

Something fresh popped into Brendan's head and he resolved not to sign anything. Was that the real game here? Was he a representative of Earth? These people were imperialists, after all. As he relaxed, the flow began. To keep his mind off his problems he pulled out his smokes single-handedly.

"Too bad you can't give me a light, Sim."

"You are attempting to do two things at once."

"I could sure use another beer." Brendan shook it off and closed up the clothing. There was nothing as simple as a zipper here. There was a double pee-flap, just like a pair of briefs of the bikini type. His mom once gave him a pair of jeans with a three-button fly. What a pain. He insisted that she return them to the store.

"There will be refreshments inside." Hartle snapped the flint on his lighter. "Smoke in here. It's bad manners to smoke in the presence of the Family. Just try to be natural. Answer questions simply if you can. Do not attempt to dance. I'll try to explain it later. Right now the big dance fad is a trifle anti-social. After you've seen it, you won't need any explanation and will probably thank me."

"What about this Trent person? Is he here?" asked Brendan. "Incidentally, you've begun using contractions."

The sim ignored him again, thinking it over.

It would be nice if he had at least one ally, at least one friendly face, someone who knew of him, maybe help him out a little bit in this most socially-threatening of environments.

"I have to admit, in the last few years, I haven't been getting out much." He sucked hard on the smoke."What about manners? Protocol? Do I kneel? Kiss the ring? Crawl in supplication? Back away afterwards?"

Sim sighed deeply.

"This is why we were supposed to take three weeks for the journey. There is so much to explain, and we have too little time."

A purple blob of a crustacean, spotted in yellow and blue, entered the lavatory. Stalked eyes ratcheted around for a look at them, then it went directly to the first of the wall-mounted devices, and then ignored them pointedly. Hartle tossed the cigarette butt into the bowl and followed Sim back out into the hallway.

An arm beckoned from the lineup and a space was there.

"Thank you, that's very kind," Sim told the pair of creatures, one apparently male and the other apparently female.

"Nice of them to save our spots."

"Yes, Hartle! As I've tried to tell you repeatedly, we are fairly civilized here."

It occurred to Brendan that Sim was as nervous as he was, perhaps even more so.

Why was that...?

The line lurched forward. Perfumed, bewigged, clad in peacock colours, the women in frigate hairdressings, the crème de la crème of the Empire sweated it out in hopes of admission to the Grand Ball. Only held once a year, Brendan Hartle regretted not missing it. The tall, brown-haired Canadian's hazel-green eyes glinted in a kind of amused, sardonic resentment. His own get-up wasn't much better, with the padded and embroidered jerkin, white shirt with long, flowing sleeves, a puffy neck-cloth, velvet cap, and hosiery all itching with some kind of badly-combed natural fibres, and of course the floppy, ankle-length blue velvet buskins on his feet, which had very thin soles and no arch support.

The soaring facade looked tantalizingly close, but a quick count of the backs of heads told Hartle that it might be a while yet. He looked around, and found himself attempting to grab Sim's elbow. The computer-generated apparition that was his guide and mentor noticed the attempt.

Another sudden movement flurried the crowd closer to the entrance. Now Hartle could begin to pick out some details through the far brighter haze inside of the ballroom. A kaleidoscope of colours, a cacophony of sounds greeted his senses. There was even a fresher, better smell wafting out of there, compared to the dankness and mustiness of the much-used entranceway. It was, after all, just a glorified front porch, or perhaps foyer was a better word. Open to the black sky overhead, it was a long row of obelisks, with the weird alien runic-hieroglyphic inscriptions running up and down, yet sloping backwards. They looked like stone candy-canes. The half-inside, half-outside space was an architectural concept for which Brendan had no handy word. Sometimes one just couldn't think of the exact word for something, but it will come eventually. Somehow, he knew there was no word in his head for this kind of space. It was quite a let down, impressive as the initial impact was. Countless feet had trodden this way before. The pavement was liberally smeared with gobs of something that looked suspiciously like bubble-gum.

"Smells like they're whomping up a big mess of vittles in there."

He saw with some surprise that there was a small gap. It seemed all heads and eyes were intent on a harried man in a dark, drab boiler suit sitting at a table, checking tags and glaring at a little computer screen on the table as he scrolled through a seemingly endless list. But at the far end of the silken ropes that would have been appropriate in a museum or a bank, there was a space he could easily get through. He firmly twisted off the top of a bottle, which had the effect of getting the sim's attention again.

Sim had the air of someone looking around for friends and Brendan filed it away for future reference. For a machine, or a program, the simulacrum had a few peculiar mannerisms. Catching his (or its,) eye, he began moseying, knowing the sim would be obliged to follow his charge. To hell with manners and polite society! This was probably just a big garden party where the gentry would spend hours kissing babies and shaking hands. He prayed there was no poet laureate. Brendan prayed he wouldn't have to politely listen to some big, epic, panegyric performance.

Sure enough, only good manners on the part of those at the head of the line kept them from going in before clearance. The security arrangements seemed pretty lax here, but that wasn't his problem. Ignoring the murmurs he heard around him, he unhooked the padded fabric ropes and let himself into the Grand Ball. Just then, the music swelled to a brief crescendo and drifted off into silence. They heard an announcement that the band would be taking a short break, as applause spattered and rippled through the vast space.

Above, ten thousand crystal chandeliers, hung on cables that disappeared into a smog that reflected the light back down, like a luminescent artificial sky. But it was just a kind of fugue, he reasoned. Bad air, thank the Good Lord they weren't all eating popcorn. It would have been unbearable.

All around him couples danced yet, in some inner-known world. Potentates discussed their world-shattering plans under the curtained arches. A huge fountain played and shivered in one end of the arena-sized room. He could see the small figures of children running around and shrieking in joy. Crowds of beings swelled and diminished as creatures and people came and went. It was bedlam. Over in one corner, by what was obviously a bar, tall, straight young men with cold, glittering eyes stood watching the action. Accountants. Old men sat in chairs, nodding in half sleep. Matrons keenly watched their debutant daughters, as if reliving their youthful glory days vicariously through them.

It was one humongous, mad, crazy, mixed-up matrix of a thousand worlds, all those people here to petition, gain audience or merely catch a glimpse of their sovereigns.

Court life at its very best—or very worst, depending on who you asked or the eye of the beholder or something. Sim caught up with him.

"As I mentioned, it is a very social affair. The Empress loves to entertain."

"A hundred and twenty or thirty thousand of her very best friends." Brendan was only half joking. "But seriously, folks, how many people are friggin' in here?"

"Hopefully not too many, but there's always the coat room." Sim responded with a remarkable attempt at humour.

Brendan's eyebrows rose in disbelief.

"Just promise me you won't smoke." The sim actually laughed out loud!

Clearly, the thing's software allowed for party mode.

"There are perhaps eighty thousand in here, on a big night like this."

"Awful hot in here," said Brendan. "Your people evolved somewhere real hot."

He took a big swig of the drink, noting a powerful fruity flavour, musky and spicy at the same time. It was about nine-o'clock by the curious Centralian chronometer, and the chill night air was about fifteen degrees Celsius. Thankfully, the jacket had some stuff to it. At the very least, the coat was warm. People tend to forget what a coat is made for.

"Ugh! Some kind of wine cooler."

At least it was liquid, but the throat still seemed dry. He drank again.

"Let's have a look around for that Trent guy, or any Member of the Council. I'd rather start with one or two of them guys before I talk to the Emperor."

He had the insane feeling that he wasn't taking it seriously enough. The reality of the room was awe-inspiring, even overpowering. Although the band had stopped, the noise didn't seem to let up, only change in character. There was a hell of a lot of activity going on around him, and he smiled at an old something as it drifted past.

"Greetings, neighbour." It came through in the earpieces.

Then it drifted on in search of someone or other, but he realized it was a start. He was aware of a couple, perhaps husband and wife or their cultural equivalents. With humans, he could have decided if it was a couple, or a boss and secretary, or two flunky-types of equal status. Here, it was all guesswork. They walked up to him and he had the impression he was under study. Mind you, he was an alien. He gave the little twitch as taught by Sim and spoke into the microphone thus activated.

"Greetings, neighbours."

"Greetings! I'm Krill, from Caltrop Four, and this is my wife Hunni," one creature or being said.

They were bipedal, with bilateral symmetry, binocular vision, hair on top, five fingers, what else could you say? They were slightly green in colour, but it wasn't displeasing.

It was just different.

"I'm Hartle. I'm a consultant."

"Oh!" said Hunni. "What kind of consulting?"

He didn't want to waste a lot of time making up a story.

"A little of this and a little of that." He hoped they didn't think him rude.

Sim wasn't being too helpful, tongue-tied and bashful, when he could have jumped in to help.

"How very interesting," said Krill. "My firm is into materials and marketing."

"Is it incredibly hot in here, or am I just suffering from space-lag?" He spoke quickly enough to head the man off. "Pardon me if I seem rude, I don't wish to criticize."

"No, not at all. You're quite right. It does get a little warm in here. It takes some getting used to. Just imagine the poor Family, sitting up there in those stiff robes, and it's probably ten squinches hotter up there."

Squinches? What the heck was a squinch? Not an architectural term. It must be a unit of measurement. Brendan had sudden doubts about the translator device.

"Why, the first time we were invited, forty years...no, more like forty-five..." Hunni said.

"You should have been here," completed the husband.

Perhaps wifey-poo had a tendency to ramble on.

"If I had to join a downtrodden, repressed minority group, I sure wouldn't want to be royalty."

The pair of them laughed, big hearty belly-shakers, so his thoughtless remark hadn't done any harm. He would have to watch out. It was too easy to put your foot in your mouth. All the way up to the neck, if you weren't careful. Krill nodded, the wife drifted off, and with a startling-quick move Krill beckoned at a passerby who turned out to be a waiter.

"I still have a little pull around here." The servant approached in an obsequious posture and with his submissive eyes downcast.

Brendan was momentarily embarrassed for the 'man,' but it wasn't his problem.

He probably made a million credits or star-bucks a year. You could make a lot of money drawing bath water or combing hair for the royals.

"Do they have beer?"

"Man, they got everything." The other laughed, slapping him on the shoulder and turning away again.

Brendan had the impression he was dismissed.

"Sim, where do we go from here?" They drifted further. "Penny for your thoughts."

No response.

"Trent and the others may be at the Admiralty Bar, which is at the other end." The sim finally spoke.

"Looks like a couple of kilometres from here!"

Sim seemed to take a long time to do the conversion in his head, something Brendan had noticed before.

"Actually, the room is about one-point six kilometres in circumference."

"I wondered about that! I just thought I couldn't see into the corners with all the haze."

"Let's work our way over there, shall we?"

Brendan had another hefty swig and reluctantly followed. It was a long walk, and he wasn't in a hurry. As they crossed a clearing in the wide expanse the music started up with a bang and a puff of smoke. It was a completely different kind of music, than the stuff playing when they came in. The gaudy bandstand, kind of a circular stage in various levels, was in the exact epicenter of the room, where all eyes could see it.

The music had a syncopated, throbbing, thumping bass-line. A ragged cheer went up from clumps of youthful aliens here and there, and they came running out to the center, forming up in couples, trios, quads and odd-numbered formations. The biggest was a v-shaped formation, which looked like a club, due to the striped colours of their knee-length silken t-shirts.

This was merely the overture. He observed in fascination, as the bodies, including more of the alien types, began moving in a curious, shambling gait. Hartle caught the rhythm, and began to groove a little himself, conscious that he danced like a white man at the best of times. Their bizarre, long-armed, bandy-legged, ape-like shuffle was intriguing, he had to admit. As the music and the people began to speed up, he became aware that Sim was trying to grab his elbow and not having much luck.

"We must get off the dance floor."

"Yeah, well, maybe I want to see this."

"Watch from the side of the room!" Sim was practically shouting at him now.

He agreed a little unsteadily as they tried to make their way. What had been an empty, open space, was now covered in whirling dervishes, gymnasts, acrobats...when he felt the first hard elbow graze his rib cage it took a while to sink in.

"Excuse me, neighbours."

The trio spun away. Then he took another hard one to the ribs just above the left kidney.

"That was a punch!" Sim looked thoroughly frightened now.

A rock-solid, chitinous body slammed into him and he went down. He heard a shrill keening sound from the creature as he kicked upwards viciously. It scuttled right over him, putting a barbed foot-pod partly in his mouth, and suddenly his rage cracked wide open.

"Get your dirty alien mating-claspers off me, you creepy thing!" He shouted, all vestiges of courtesy and deportment gone.

Rolling and tumbling, he came up in a half crouch, hoping the thing was hurt real bad.

"Have your lost your marbles?" He bellowed at Sim. "You should have told me about the dancing."

A quad of dancers, moving quickly in his left peripheral vision, targeted him. After a flurry of mutually exchanged blows with various members of the group, just as suddenly they broke off to engage another quad approaching. Hartle was furious, and came up again like a mongoose battling to make a cobra its dinner.

He ran at the bunch who had just attacked him, only to be grabbed and spun around, and he lost sight of them in eddies and currents of the dance. Lifting a leg and straightening it out real quick, Brendan managed to kick the boy who had grabbed him right in the face. There was a hot gush of satisfaction as the splash of blood vented. The boy's two partners dragged him away by the legs, trailing bright yellow goo across the highly polished black tiles.

He had one brief moment of relative peace while the ebb and flow continued, and always that beat. Brendan gasped for air, with Sim beckoning from fifty metres away. Rival groups were attacking each other, and always, in time to the beat. Two big crabs came at him and he leaped on the nearest one's head. Hartle tried to twist its antennae off by grabbing one and yanking as hard as he could. He kneed it in the side between two legs as he did so. The scream was so loud it startled him and he leaped off again with no trophy. He bared his teeth and growled and they both ran away.

Only fifty metres! In this crowd, it might as well be the other side of the Goddamned Galaxy!

"Fuck you all! Fuck all of you!" He stomped back and forth spitting mad. "Come on, you gutless fuckin' little pukes."

He bellowed, and then he was running at the wall of deadly dancers. Surreal in its bizarre incongruity, a spotlight followed him as he ran...

Wetness, warm and sticky, clouded his left eye. He brushed at it with a sleeve, and crashed into the line. Something in someone cracked with a brittle sound, and there came another shrill cry. His head jolted into his neck, there was greyness and stars, literally a flash of light in his head. He was pounding a fist into something's abdomen. There was madness in him.

He lifted a knee into an obvious spot but got no response. He jabbed a thumb into its eye and it thought better of continuing the encounter. Again, someone raked his belly but it was a glancing strike and the clothing snagged and protected him. He popped it one in the kisser. Spinning, he was all arms and legs. A hole opened in the crowd, and he took a running, jumping dive, sliding to a halt right at Sim's feet.

It was an oasis of peace and a kind of relative quiet here on the edge of the dance floor. Rolling over, he laid there, hoarse breath rasping in his throat. A semi-circular gaggle of citizens, all dressed in their Easter Bonnets and finery stared down at him.

"That was very impressive, young man." An older female something or other with green eyes and head shaved bald stared at him through huge blue plastic pince-nez.

Four football-sized breasts heaved under her thin white blouse.

"You're the best dancer we've seen tonight, at least so far." Very upper class, you could tell by the diction, the terse elocution.

Maybe it had something to do with the long yellow bill, like a spoonbill or an egret. He got up stiffly.

"May I ask a personal question?"

She nodded, beckoning for something in a champagne-style glass. She only had four fingers, perhaps evolved from something like the tip feathers on a condor? Wow.

"What's that thing sticking out of your ass?"

"It's my tail, young man. We're from Gallienus. We're descended from avians." She explained with a gracious nod.

"You're very beautiful." She simpered back at him and pecked at her stemware, filled with little multi-faceted pellets about three millimetres in diameter.

They were red and black. He had his breath back. She really was beautiful, in her own way. Her obviously male companion whispered in her ear and the pair of them giggled, nuzzling and cooing over some private joke, like mourning doves nestling together on a branch in winter.

"I got a bone to pick with you." Sim blenched and swallowed.

Brendan took out his handkerchief and mopped his brow, expecting to see it smeared with blood, but apparently, it was just a lot of sweat stinging his eyes.

"I did try to warn you," the sim hastened to explain. "And the Countess is right! That was really something. We haven't seen a performance like that in some years."

"My ass tells me I'm going to be hurting tomorrow," he grumped. "It hurts when I breathe."

Pulling out the hem of his shirt, he showed Sim a four-inch gouge, going from his left hip, up to just above the navel.

"That crab-guy was trying to disembowel me."

The song or whatever faded just as quickly as it began. Things returned to relative normality on the dance floor. He stood unhappily beside Sim.

"Shall we try again?" asked the other.

"I knew this was going to be an ordeal."

The flow of the crowd kept pushing them ever closer to the dais, a huge construction rearing up in tiers of steps and landings, with several railed balconies at multiple levels.

It might be symbolic of the political structures of the Empire, he deduced.

"I bet there's a root cellar, maybe even a cess-pit under there." He muttered quietly in a kind of generalized grumpiness.

This just kept getting worse and worse. On the corner nearest him was a fountain, with small shrubberies and floral thingies in elaborate crystal-carven tubs. There was a small group of beings about halfway up, seated at another tableau, surveying the scene below impassively.

He wondered if they were petitioners or junior members of the royal brood. They might be client kings. Craning at the neck, he was unaware that he looked like a hick in a big city for the first time. Sim was drifting away on a current of persons passing the base of the throne dais, most of them not looking too much more sophisticated than Hartle. Hartle finished off the drink, looking vainly for a place to put the empty. It would almost certainly be bad manners to simply place it on the bottom step. Just then, one of the ubiquitous servants came along with a trolley and he tossed the bottle into the sack on the end as it went by. A three-pointer at this range.

"Simmy baby!" He yelled at the back of the other's head, but then the head turned to speak to a companion and he saw it wasn't him after all.

"This sucks."

He looked up at the top. It would put the throne at about the same height as the peak of a large house. There was a small group of colourfully garbed figures up there. There they sat, clustered under the embroidered canopy with fringe balls all tailored in gold, silver and purple threads.

"Wonder which one's the Emperor."

Then he stood open mouthed. Possibly the most beautiful woman in the universe stood there, three or four metres away. Flushed from a recent dance, her womanly breast heaved with laughter as an elegant young male said something, let go of her hand, and disappeared back into the milling bodies.

She looked right at him, and there was a kind of contact. Recognition? Of what?

Curiousity? He had few illusions about his attractiveness to the female sex. She lifted an eyebrow at him.

"Hello," said Brendan. "Lovely evening, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is," she said, smiling sweetly, and then she ran lightly up the steps, feet barely touching the marble.

The hall to his left took on added insignificance, as she ran up and up, disappearing behind some potted plants, mutated penicillin or something by the look of it.

Where in the hell was Sim?

Brendan hoped Sim would double back to find him. How long could he just stand here looking like an idiot? Couldn't he just ask his way to the Admiralty Bar? But what if Sim wasn't there? His impatience with the whole masquerade was gaining ground. His crotch was beginning to chafe from the unfamiliar tights, which were made of something that felt suspiciously like canvas. These people had to be masochists to dress like this.

Impulsively, he began to move, with an impulsiveness he knew he should guard against, but what the hell? He was a barbarian, after all. He made sure the second bottle was snug and secure in its pocket. Confidence is everything. He began to climb the stairs.

Several beings made as if to confront Hartle. He patted his chest, gave a knowing nod, and the things allowed him to pass, showing deference in their posture. These creatures were born and bred to obedience. He made eye contact with a group on a lower terrace. The smile and the nod worked for him again. They seemed to accept him, as he stood for a moment and searched the crowd for a glimpse of Sim. An assassin would have used stealth. A terrorist would have been shouting, running...and sweating, he reckoned, trying to see himself through their alien eyes. Suddenly he was there and no time to think.

He went down on one knee, and then rose again to his full height.

"Salutem et felicitatum, honorarum, dignitatum et scholasticum, et regis." He rumbled majestically in the dulcet tones of a sportscaster.

(Greetings and felicitations, honoraries, dignitaries and scholars, and kings.—ed.)

Brendan hoped that he had it right. He had a longer one up his sleeve if he needed it.

"The seeker after truth travels hopefully, but will never arrive," he said. "Either the future is subject to chance, in which case nobody, not even the gods, can change it. Or it is predestined, in which case foreknowledge cannot avert it."

He spoke this in plain English.

"The question is what do you think, young fellow?" The Emperor's smoky blue eyes locked onto his own.

It was a probing glance into character, something not easily assessed. The mind behind those eyes weighed him, measured him, and listened very carefully. Of that he had no doubts, not now. Yet the results of this survey were unknown to Hartle, and he tried to keep his own thoughts to himself as well. The eyes acknowledged Brendan's guard coming up, but in a friendly glint, the Emperor let him know it was okay.

"I believe that chaos reigns supreme."

The Empress laughed in delight. The Emperor gave him a bright and artificial grin meant to convey his quizzically amiable nature. The Emperor beamed at him and the Empress seemed genuinely interested in the spectacle he was making. While these society events might take their toll on the royals, they sure seemed pretty open and accessible to the common man...right? Sudden doubts.

What was wrong with this picture?

"Ah! This is the young man we've been hearing so much about," said the Emperor in dawning comprehension.

"Bullshit" thought Brendan.

"Where is your sim?" asked the Empress. "No doubt this is all a lot for you take in at once."

"Actually, confusion is a normal state of mind for most humans." He said it with a grin.

The pair of them chuckled, but he noticed few among their retinue really appreciated it. They were a deadly serious bunch. Bored stiff, he concluded, as one appeared to be consulting a timepiece.

"I can tell you we take the Prophecies, that is to say the effect of the Prophecies on the populace, very seriously," the Emperor said.

"We're so very, very grateful for your help," added the Empress.

"What a man believes to be true about himself, that is what is important." Hartle had always liked that one.

"Nietzsche." Her grey eyes bored into his.

Sweat popped out in his armpits when he heard that. The Emperor just smiled, averting eye contact to look at small device in this hand. It was some kind of reading device.

The translator seemed to be working fine. Hartle prayed the tiny power source didn't die on him suddenly. Just in the nick of time, Sim arrived, bringing along another being.

Brendan figured this must be Trent. Like any good professional politician, niceness and sincerity just beamed out of his freshly scrubbed and finely-tuned face. He seemed very relieved to find Hartle here, but was somewhat upset as well. Average height, that is to say about five-ten or so, he hovered at Brendan's shoulder in a submissive posture.

"Majesties, I was hoping to formally introduce this person a little later. After a briefing on Court protocol. But perhaps it is better this way," he said, giving Brendan a quick evaluation with no trace of the impatience he must surely have felt.

There was something of the professional toady about him, and not much to identify him as an alien. At first glance, this fellow looked as human as he did. So did the royals, but Hartle expected that from three- dimensional promotional images Sim had given him. He carefully studied them, trying to build an impression, futile though that must always be. You can't judge a book or a government by its cover.

"Why is it better this way?" asked the Emperor.

"It's because I'm a barbarian. I should act like one once in a while, in order to create a certain impression."

They all nodded as if they knew what he was talking about.

"That's very perceptive, young man," said the Empress.

"Strike fear into the hearts and minds of our common foes." Trent expressed the thought in sulky tones.

Brendan had the feeling he was not pleased with all of this forthrightness. A born manipulator, he was used to getting everything exactly his way. Used to fooling the uninitiated without half trying.

"While Mr. Hartle may not entirely understand the role he is to play, neither is he irreplaceable, but he is essentially correct," began Trent.

"Sim explained that I am a catalyst, brought by artificial means from outside of the system. It is hoped that a chaotic chain reaction will ensue from my presence. I represent an element of change which is uncontrollable."

They all nodded sagely.

"I understand that much or I would have hardly committed my personal runabout to this endeavor," the Empress said.

"That's your ship? She's a beauty."

"Yes, young man, and I'd appreciate it if you look after it."

It was the kind of smile that belied her words. T

There was a sheet of steel beneath the demeanor. The Empress was joking around with Hartle, an unemployed security guard. In spite of the projected confidence, he was dazed and confused, wondering if he could keep his feet much longer. Sim noted the distress. As the others consulted, leaning close together to speak quietly despite the noise, he adroitly maneuvered Brendan to where he could sit on a low, bench-like apparatus facing the Family members. A flunky nipped into the breach, whispering into the ear of the Emperor. He couldn't catch the words, but then they retreated to an inner room.

This was located through another curtained archway behind the thrones.

The Empress remained behind, as more petitioners and supplicants were expected to 'The Throne.' The others were clustered at the far end of a large oval table carved from a single piece of onyx, gleaming dully and reflecting bizarre shapes in the hum of voices.

He sat down promptly, keeping the length of the table between himself and them. The Emperor, a small, pudgy-faced balding man, now that his foot-high mitre was removed, consulted with Sim and Trent. The schedule was in disarray. He didn't look happy as Brendan caught the words 'Rigellian police' once or twice. Trying not to think of his immediate future, his shoulders slumped in physical and emotional exhaustion. He was bone-tired, and frankly didn't give a damn who knew it. More bodies entered, a couple of young males of the Imperial line, judging by their resemblance to the Emperor. Then there was a young lady, the same one as before. He sat up a little straighter as her eyes turned and met his.

At her approach, he rose to greet her with alacrity.

"My brother says you were a refreshing breath of fresh air in the dance," she said. "You broke his nose, incidentally."

Hartle was aghast.

"Oh, hell," he began in confusion. "I really didn't mean to! I mean, if I had known he was a Prince..."

"You would have hit him harder?" She smiled, taking the sting out of the words.

He had to laugh, he just couldn't help it.

"Flattery will get you pretty much everywhere, young lady," he joshed. "Actually, I have some sense."

Looking into her eyes was like taking a big dive into a very deep pool without checking for rocks, but he just couldn't help himself.

She looked at his humongous hands and feet, then their eyes met again and she smiled some more, studying him in a friendly way.

"You look like a man who knows his own strength."

"I lost my temper." There was a silence and it looked like the ball was still in his court. "I've come to take you away from all this."

She laughed delightedly and he felt naked under her gaze.

"So what they tell me is true." She wasn't as used to all this banter as she made out, she couldn't possibly be.

He stuck his thumbs into the tops of his pockets.

"You should come over, take a look at my rocket ship sometime. Maybe go look at a moon, someplace."

She smiled. Gently touching his upper arm, she turned and left him standing there, swishing out the rear door again.

Hmn! It wasn't exactly encouragement, and it wasn't exactly a dead end. Although where could it go? He pondered life with a Princess. It couldn't be all bad.

Sim came over as a group of beings entered again, and the general level of noisy discussion went up a few decibels.

"You look tired. Let's go back to the ship for a while."

"Yeah, I'm dead beat." He stood, wondering how you took your leave of a monarch.

Sim just headed out a side door, and soon they were out of the palace proper and into a parking lot. As they walked along behind a row of vehicles, some had occupants.

"Life's pretty much the same all over the universe," he said.

They got into their own auto and it moved off to the ramp. Soon they were on a highway that wouldn't have looked out of place in any town he'd ever been in. A few soft-spoken words in an alien tongue and Sim sat back as the vehicle steered along a busy thoroughfare. There was always time for Hartle's education. Despite his tiredness, Brendan found himself studying the architecture. They drove past a park first, and then over a bridge over a creek. It wasn't the actual details that were of interest, but the scale of things. The bridge was about eighty lanes wide, but it was still a bridge. Buildings rose up in the distance. They might be a few hundred metres away, or they might be kilometres away. It was a brightly lit city at night.

He simply had no concept of the scale of things in relation to other things. With the beginnings of a mild headache, at this point he really didn't care. He stared out into the darkness. Sim's voice was just a rumble in his ears, and Brendan was almost beyond comprehension.

Even the fact that windows were lit couldn't tell him the scale of the objects he was looking at. Scattered houses and small businesses along the street were easier to examine for size and utility, so he paid more attention to them.

"Do you like it?" Sim cruised along in one of the slow lanes at the far, right-hand side of the highway.

"Pretty impressive," acknowledged Hartle. "I like the style. Those ones there look like stone cottages back on Earth in a country called England."

"What do you think of the family?" Sim maneuvered around a parked truck.

Hartle saw perforated boxes, with large holes all over them, as they were unloaded from a small truck. Like the sort of box lettuce comes in.

"Produce intended for local consumption," Sim advised. "All rather prosaic and not what you expected. You must have been expecting something quite ludicrous, based upon my study of Hollywood movies. Those inverted pyramid houses, spherical houses...people floating around in gravity suits..."

"You got that right. I'm looking for cities floating on clouds."

Sim laughed at that one, giving him a chummy look. Brendan had never really considered whether an android could like a person or even be likeable, like a real person.

"The family seemed like nice people. How much do they know about the actual mission?"

The sim made another quick assessment.

"Hope I didn't make too big a fool of myself," Brendan added.

"Only with the Princess! We noted your interest. Trent disapproves strongly, of course."

"Of course!"

But the sim's tone was noncommittal.

"She would be a helpful acquaintance, if you can manage it."

"What's her name?"

"Constance. She is the youngest of seven sisters, and there are four brothers as well," the sim said.

"I'm not interested in brothers. Are all the daughters as good-looking as her?"

"Unfortunately, no. The rest of the girls seem to take after their father. Their faces are strong, but a little too aquiline to be considered truly beautiful."

"Yes. On a man, the receding chin, sloping forehead, and buck teeth are bad enough."

Sim appeared to regret the direction this was going and remained silent.

Brendan held back comments about 'wishy-washy eyes,' and stuff.

"So. Constance is the pick of the litter." Brendan was hoping to needle Sim into further revelations.

It was an understandably awkward position to be in. How much of this would Brendan pass on in subsequent conversations? It always comes back to you, doesn't it? Teasing Sim was getting to be a bad habit, but it would do well to keep Sim and Trent and all the others guessing. Especially the Princess. It might be best to ignore her for a while. Not much of a plan, but it was better than nothing. To forget about her would be the best thing, but clearly that was impossible in the short term.

Just play it stupid.

"Here is the spaceport. We'll be home soon and you can rest your poor, tired brain..."

"The Empress was great," said Hartle in a conciliatory tone. "She seemed like a pretty groovy old lady."

Sim gave him a withering look that could have fried an egg.

"Thank you, my good man."

So, Sim was capable of getting upset! That was useful to know, maybe. They got out and the vehicle moved off on its own volition.

"Not at all," said Sim.

"There she is!"

The cat dropped out of the starboard landing gear well.

"I told you she was one smart cat. Did you go poopie, little buddy?"

The cat ran up the steps ahead of them and made for the galley.

"Okay, kitty, I guess I'm hungry too."

Brendan remembered just how long it was since his last meal. It was another chore before bed. After gulping a gargantuan bowl of honeycomb-shaped cereal, he slept like a dead man.

Chapter Eight

The cat lay on a corner of the bed...

The cat lay on a corner of the bed, legs a-twitch as she dreamed of mice and birds.

"Grumph," said Hartle.

Eight hours later, he was still in bed, but in that cottony-soft world of the semi-conscious. Feeling no pain at first, when he tried to roll over it all came back to him.

"Jesus!"

Sim appeared instantly. Brendan gave his head a little shake at the sight.

"There is water and two pills on the bedside table." The sim gestured.

"Fuck." Hartle gulped water, then downed the pills. "How did they get there?"

Sim didn't reply. Hartle realized he probably beamed them there in anticipation of his distress.

"Oh, God. Too bad you can't help me into the shower."

He lay back for a moment, and then he gave it all he had. Brendan's feet hit the floor with a mind-numbing shock of pain and dizziness. His head spun around inside for a moment, adding to his distress.

"Whew! Remind me to lay off the coolers." Then he was up.

"You'll live. Besides. This is the price of getting results."

Hot water did things to him. A slow and thorough shave did things to him.

"Coffee, lots of coffee...and cigarettes."

But the pills were already working. He was moving with more flexibility now. The first cigarette, that was heaven, and hell in a way, as he coughed and hacked at it.

"Holy, shit." This was through tightly clenched teeth.

The pills had a rapid effect, but nothing could disguise the toll of the previous evening. The pills merely masked the pain. Taking a deep breath, tentatively, he looked across the galley table to Sim.

"Think I'll skip breakfast today."

"A wise precaution," was the reply. "Let us retire to the control room and consider our options for the next couple of days."

When Hartle was as comfortable as he was likely to get for a while, deep in the seat cushions, Sim stood near the holo display of the galaxy.

"Crack the door please?"

Hartle briefly regretted needling Sim the night before. Sim was the only friend he had around here besides the cat.

"Did I say anything incredibly stupid last night?"

Then he heard the sounds of vehicles, and shouts, just like his street back home. "Is there any way we can get some windows in here?"

Sim helped select options from one of the nearby keypads. Air began to blow in from somewhere. Hartle hacked his way through the menu and prompters to put an outside view on the forward screens.

"How come it wasn't working?" he asked. "Those ventilators work well."

"Power saving and privacy. It's an automatic feature."

"Cool."

He felt not much better now. A breeze, the air soft and warm, touched his cheek. Trent arrived soon after, as Hartle sipped his coffee and he and Sim chatted about the future.

"Good morning, Hartle. You're not looking too bad, all things considered."

Trent looked as if he had been up all night, and probably had, Brendan reckoned. The man was supposed to be one of the people in charge of this project, and the schedule had been moved up by no fault of his own, or Hartle's for that matter. Also, he had all the problems of justifying all the time and expense. He could sympathize. The poor fellow must have a lot on his mind.

"What can I do for you?"

"The next meeting of the Council will be seven days from now," Trent said. "We have the full council meeting once a month. There will be an early session for the public and news-disseminating media, and an in-camera session afterwards."

"Monthly?"

"Ten times per planetary cycle," explained Sim.

"How does that affect me?"

"I will make a full report during the in-camera session of events so far, including Sim's observations, character assessments, and other details. It's nothing, really, but in a formal sense, the council must be kept in the picture."

Character assessments?

"These are the guys paying the bills," said Brendan. "Hopefully you're doing a few tactical and strategic assessments as well!"

"Yes," agreed Trent with a quick look and a small smile at Sim. "We haven't decided whether you need to be there or not."

"So what do I do in the meantime? Like over the next few days? Just sit here and twiddle my thumbs?"

Hartle was serious. He really didn't relish the thought of waiting around for some council of professional bureaucrats to determine his fate.

"Continue your educational program. Visit a museum, go to the show, or maybe see a couple of nearby worlds." Trent smiled again.

"Become a catalyst," offered Sim.

Brendan nodded decisively. He stood, offering his hand.

"Well, thanks for stopping in."

"But, but...we have so much to discuss, there is so much I need to explain," Trent said.

"Oh, well! No sense sitting around waiting for the opposition to take me out," Hartle said.

Finally, after some gentle hints and some stiff prodding, in which he noted an air of unspoken tension between Sim and Trent, the man finally went.

"Sim. Get me a takeoff clearance," Brendan ordered. "Did you notice his reaction?"

There was no reply. Sim stood there, gazing out the windows.

"Guy looked a little spooked to me."

"You spooked him, Brendan."

Brendan went into his cabin, grabbed up the cat and put her in the box, locking down the cage door, and brought it out into the control room.

"I figure there's enough strapping here to put her in the other seat. It's not like you need it," and the other was forced to agree.

"True," Sim admitted. "Where exactly do you plan on going? I could find a museum or two for you right here in the capital."

"Never sleep in the same place twice. Never sleep right next to the fire." That was all Sim was going to get from him.

Hartle was too intent on finding a fresh shirt and socks to answer. He needed to keep his own council as much as possible. At least until he figured out what was really going on around here. He heard some sort of alarm buzzer and bellowed from his room.

"Get that, will you?"

"Brendan, the Princess Constance is here to see you." Oddly breathless, Sim told him in a discreet and formal tone, coming into his quarters.

"Haw, haw, haw." It was a bit of a shock, when he realized Sim wasn't joking.

"Good morning, Brendan." For some reason she was having a little trouble meeting his eyes.

This was actually a bit of a relief, as in the broad and sober light of day his natural shyness came to the fore.

"Good morning, Princess." Finally their gaze met in mutual regard.

A pair of liveried servants hustled and bustled around as he put the cat's box back in his stateroom, opened the cage and closed up the cabin door. They bore silver platters with domed covers, and little chafing dishes. There was the tinkling of silverware upon his kitchen tabletop. They brought napkins, and candles, the whole schlemiel. An aroma tantalizing to his nostrils wafted through the ship. They kept eye contact while waiting for the servants to finish.

"I brought you some breakfast," she said. "How are you feeling this morning?"

"Fine, fine, never been better. Actually, we were planning to take off soon. I'll have to defer my clearance."

Sim made a hand signal, went to take care of it, and did not return.

"But you simply must eat breakfast." She insisted, even taking an active hand in serving up the hot dishes. As steam rose from their plates, the servants left unobtrusively. Hartle dug in, aware that his hangover was dissipating.

"Looks good, um...my lady." He was all humble and lovable like a shoeshine boy.

She watched indulgently for a moment, and then began to eat herself. It was delicious, resembling what he knew of Asian food, at the typical Oriental restaurant back in North America.

He was about to say, "Ah! I've always wanted to try alien food," but thought better of it.

There was also something of the Italian in one of the sauces. He could almost detect tomatoes, garlic, oregano, something cheesy and warm. A creamy spread to put on the little loaves of crusty bread and his meal was complete except for coffee. The big trouble with the universe was, how do you get a good cup of coffee without going out for it? The milk he got from the fridge seemed to go rather well with it, although it was probably culinary sacrilege. The milk was kept as hard as a rock in the freezer, but they helped make his instant coffee palatable. He didn't offer her one. She drank from a bulbous crystal glass.

"Try the wine," she suggested.

"I'm driving." He looked up. She just nodded.

While she had a healthy appetite, she also sat watching him enjoy the meal. From time to time her head rested on her hand, with an elbow resting on the table's edge. Once again, he was stunned by her eyes, and by her beauty. Her hair smelled good, he caught a whiff of it occasionally. It was the incredible colour of her eyes, a kind of violet with sparkling highlights from the reflected glare of the Spartan, barren room with its overhead spots, offset by the coppery sheen of her shimmering tresses.

He allowed a quiet burp to escape, then rose. They went together into the control room, which was all he had as a living room. The servants knew enough to return and begin picking up the pieces. Presumably, she had some kind of remote-control beeper for them.

She sat down with a grace and poise that would be lacking in some ballerinas. Her pose looked comfortable, yet she was no sloucher. He marveled at the fortune that had brought him this far. He sat down too. She sat on a rear seat on the other side of his cabin door, as if to keep just a certain space between them. The pilot seats would presumably be sweaty? Something like that? You could only read so much into it. At least this way they could look directly at each other. Maybe that was it. He perched sideways across from her.

"You said you were planning to go somewhere?"

"Yeah. Councilor Trent says there are days until the next meeting of the Council." He explained cautiously. "I'll cruise around and see what I can see."

"My mother likes you. My father says you're a very impressive young man."

"They know what they're talking about," he said.

They weren't used to dealing with someone who grew up in freedom, in a society not quite so deferential. Perfectly aware that he was at their mercy, and they could kill him on impulse and no one the wiser, he wasn't prepared to take any shit from them—why the fuck should he? If he was a free man on Earth, he was a free man anywhere.

"Oh, yeah, your old man's a swell guy." He wasn't trying to be silly. "I was wondering what he did in his spare time?"

This was rewarded with a genuinely appreciative chuckle. He grinned at her, shyness gone now.

"He races yachts, space yachts, or at least he used to. He has other hobbies, like collecting antique stamps," she explained. "Daddy doesn't get a lot of free time."

"See, I figured that. But he must do something to relieve the pressure." Brendan was aware that it was a little pompous-sounding.

He had a persona to project, after all. This conversation didn't seem to be going too far.

"My brother isn't angry with you," she began again. "I'm not sure if you completely understand that. It's just the fashion in the dance, popular with a rather younger crowd."

Why would anyone care what he thought? Why?

Brendan nodded.

"No problem there. We have young people on Earth, and these things are finely calculated..."

"Really? What do you mean?"

She was intrigued. The education of the children of the elite kept them isolated, cloistered from the true reality. She probably lived in a fairy-tale world.

"Whatever is most likely to piss off one's father." He thought for a moment. "Actually it's a mutual, uh, antipathy. The child rebels against the parent at about the same time the parent begins to reject and rebuff the child."

"I've never heard it expressed that way before."

"It's just Mother Nature at work," he explained. "What looks like a problem to the individuals concerned, is often the way of all things. And in the end, Mother knows best."

"Well, he offers his apologies," she said.

"What? Oh, hell, there's no need for that. I was just wandering around and not paying attention to Sim here."

The android re-appeared as mysteriously as he had gone. He wondered if the sim needed bathroom breaks. They were at a standstill again. Brendan recognized the perfect psychological moment. As he thanked her profusely for the snack, and, 'all the little kindnesses,' she smiled her dazzling smile again. She stood to leave, and he coughed a little self-consciously, neck warm, and looking downcast at his shuffling feet. He tried just one more, planting a seed for some future conversation.

"Er, Princess...Constance?" He trailed off in humble confusion and diffidence.

"Yes, Brendan?" she asked as the servants finished gathering up all the debris.

She reached for the little flat-brimmed thing she had been wearing, and perched it on her head.

"Back on Earth, centuries ago, there were kings and queens and princesses. For reasons there is no time to explain, I wonder if you could leave me something, maybe your scarf?"

Hartle was blushing furiously for some reason and just couldn't help it. It was the best he could think of, having decided not to ask for her phone number, or anything as crass as that.

Sim got it. Hartle saw that out of the corner of his eye. He could deal with the sim later. But the Princess obediently removed a thin, wispy thing from her neck. While it was all of a metre long, it seemed to weigh like a spider web, gossamer in his hand. It shimmered there, still warm, still smelling vaguely of her.

"Thank you, my lady." He dropped to one knee again.

She laughed, her head thrown back.

"Off you go then, Hartle, and promise you'll try and stay out of trouble." And then she was gone.

Sim looked reproachful.

"Really, Brendan, sometimes you are just too much."

There was nothing much to be said about that. He put the scarf up to his face and breathed deeply.

"Is she married?"

"The Princess? Constance?" Sim's jaw dropped in disbelief. "Oh, don't even think about it, Brendan! You're in deep enough now, aren't you?"

Sim was trying to make it seem ridiculous, which of course it was, but Hartle had his mind all made up.

"Butt-head! What do I have to lose by being sweet on a pretty girl?" he asked. "I'm risking my ass for you guys, and you just don't seem to appreciate it. Besides, royalty are people too, and I'm a good-looking guy."

"Yes, Hartle." The sim was hoping to shut him up.

By now, Brendan was intent on doing up the straps, having boxed up the cat again. He looked over at her.

"Sorry baby, you'll be out soon."

Sim watched in silence from the right-hand side of the room.

"Got that clearance?" he asked. "I'm going to try driving it out of the barn."

Pushing equally forward on both sticks put power to the tracks. There was a grinding sound and he stopped abruptly. Impatiently he rapped out instructions to lower the crawler tracks and retract the landing skids. He tried again. More silently now, the ship crept ahead and he turned it carefully onto a taxiway in front of the hangars.

"Use runway sixteen. It will take about five minutes to get to the ramp at this speed. No damage to the machine, please and thank you."

"Fine, be that way." He used a low throttle setting while he got used to the rather sloppy feel of the vessel's ground-handling. When he touched the brakes, the nose dipped alarmingly, and when it turned, there was a lot of body roll, but this wasn't the vessel's natural element anyway.

Power through the hands and steer with the feet...maybe if he throttled back a bit. When he was younger, Hartle took a few lessons at a flight school. After ten or twelve lessons, the reality sank in. He just couldn't cope with it financially.

"Once, when taxiing a Cessna Skyhawk, I removed a couple of runway lights."

It was a not-so-fond memory. The thing grinned delightedly.

"Were they angry?" He was unsurprised by this personal revelation.

"No! They laughed their damned fool heads off, and it cost me a hundred-fifty bucks to replace 'em."

"Very embarrassing," said the sim.

"Yeah! It's highly motivating, too. Batten down the hatches." he told the computer. "You would have reminded me sooner or later, right? I don't trust you sometimes, Sim. And that's putting it mildly."

"Just try to stay above the centerline," Sim advised. "No doubt there's a lot in your ah, personal history that you would prefer not to discuss."

"The idea that a bunch of aliens may be spying on you, would tend to put a guy off puberty and things," Brendan agreed. "No doubt the anthropologists and biologists would find it fascinating. But that's not my area of expertise...psychologists, too."

Sim nodded in comprehension.

"There's nothing a shrink likes better than watching people whack off." The exit ramp was coming up. He counted as each slid past, the runway numbers all painted on in the ubiquitous alien script.

"Give me a visual translation on these signs," he said on a hunch.

Sure enough, the computer surrounded them with a thick orange line, and then it changed them into the numerals he was familiar with.

"Ah, that's better." The number fifteen slid by.

They sat on the end of the runway. He lowered the skids, and retracted the crawler tracks.

"I want to do it manually, but I wouldn't mind a little help from you."

His eyes sought out the appropriate keyboard, and his fingers found the buttons.

"You could use autopilot. So far you're doing fine."

"Wait, let me figure this out." He thought back to his radio control days.

After taking off a tail-dragger, coming at you on an angle from the far end of the field, with the sun in your eyes, and your pals offering unnecessary advice, in a gusting cross-wind, with three or four other planes buzzing around in the sky above, how hard could it be? He asked for a weather check and listened carefully, studying the map.

The wind was twenty-five kilometres an hour from the south, on the right side of the nose.

"Okay, I got it now."

With a light pressure on the right foot, and the left foot just feeling for the pedal, he kept the stick neutral and advanced the throttle smoothly, nice and linear. He held the toe brakes firmly.

With a blinking green dot visible in the center of the forward view plate, he wiggled the sticks until the little red cursor pointed to it. Then Brendan throttled down again.

He took a couple of deep breaths, holding the last one in to oxygenate his system.

Then he vented it out, to get rid of excess CO2. It reminded him of standing on a rock, preparing to dive into the river. Home and Canada seemed a long ways away right now. Sometimes a man has to dive in headfirst. It helps to check for gators and stuff.

There were no alarms, no warnings, no yellow lights, no red lights. There were no objections from the flight-comp.

"Hey! I just remembered something. The good old energy-straining maneuver."

He clenched up tight in his rectal sphincter. Sucking air down hard into his diaphragm, he could feel pressure in his upper body. Easing forward on the throttle control, he applied a little power and the ship began to slide forward. It was quieter than expected, even though Sim had already explained the surface was like a Teflon plastic. Adding full take-off power, and keeping light pressure on the rudder pedals, he felt the crosswind begin to bite. Focusing on the pipper, he managed to hold her steady on the white dotted line, which showed a tendency to drift a little to the right in his peripheral vision.

More pedal pressure...easy, easy.

"Here we go!"

Something beeped and he pulled back on the stick. The nose came up and the noise stopped. They were up. Gentle turbulence tugged at his right hand through the ailerons. He just tried to keep the wings level. A properly designed and balanced aircraft will essentially fly itself given the proper thrust. The machine was inherently stable. The key was to relax. He became more aware of the thudding of the engines, at the back of the ship. Tightly strapped in, he made an effort to forget it was a machine at all...he wiggled the stick and the wings rocked.

"This is a nice flying plane." He was a little surprised.

He could see nothing out the windows, so he rolled into a thirty-degree left bank in a kind of clearing turn. The horizon was there now, tilting up, but also dropping away. He kept feeling her out, as a giant hand pressed him into the seat.

"Flight-comp!" He banked, avoiding a couple of marked targets on his screen. They came out of nowhere. He saw clear air ahead.

"Speed nine thousand...speed ten thousand," it advised, and he eased off the power a tad and tried an axial roll.

"Yah, hoooo-oo-oo! This baby really goes!"

He pulled back on the stick and headed out into the wild blue yonder, now rapidly deepening into inky blackness. There were thousands of little lights on out there, the homes of the far distant gods.

He pulled her into a tight orbit, keeping the speed up and using control inputs to keep in close to the planet. He rolled inverted. Watching the planet rotate overhead, Sim appeared unmoved by the performance.

Finally he spoke.

"You're getting better, no doubt about it, but that maneuver could be done by any recruit at the Academy." Brendan was adjusting the power again, but Sim continued. "Don't forget, you've never landed a ship yet."

Their landing on Centralia had been pure autopilot, a remote-directed ground system assisting. That was a constant feedback loop between two computers and a bunch of sensors, nothing more.

"True, very true, my man, but we'll soon show you how that's done as well." Hartle had a breezy and confident air. "Where's the nearest museum?"

"There are at least six worlds within a days cruising," Sim reported. "There are hundreds of places on each of them. You need to be more specific."

"Right, right. You're back in your tutorial mode again, aren't you?" The thing just grinned. "Okay, how about art. The history of art."

Brendan was thinking aloud.

"I want to look up the history of space flight, or maybe go someplace where I can find out more about the origins of this society, and this type of government."

It was a pretty tall order on the face of it. He wondered what a reporter would do if marooned in an alien culture. But pictures on a screen meant little. He had to get out and about.

"The planet known as Gepharl will suffice." said Sim. "Just type in the name and then the number sequence as it is listed in the star catalogue."

A touch of a button, a quick scroll-through and there it was. He managed to get the ship slowly moving out of orbit. It began to accelerate.

"Where's Gepharl on the map?"

A circle in white showed that it was quite close to Centralia, along with a bunch of other planetary systems, isolated asteroids, a veritable maze of cometary epicycles, mostly outside of the plane of the ecliptic, something called 'Marginals,' and other populated objects.

"Hell. There's a whole bunch of populated asteroids in this area, what's the name."

It appeared.

"Oh. Pleias Obji? Is that how you say it?"

The sim nodded with a wince.

"That's as close as you're likely to need. Sounds like a swell place, but they tend to be grimy and culturally isolated."

"Mining developments," agreed Hartle. "Not too many cultural facilities in such small communities. Lost of bars, porn-shops, maybe a hockey rink."

He was looking for culture and history. He doubted if you could ask the average Earthman in the street the history of his own planet and get a lucid, objective answer.

"What's this over here?" He pointed at a blank volume of space with yellow and black sloping bars all over the place.

"Unexplored, or at least unmapped at present," Sim said.

"It's within the boundaries of the Empire?" Hartle questioned. "Yet they're still unexplored?"

"Yes. The Empire is more or less co-extensive with extremely ancient trade routes that evolved over time between disparate peoples and political units." The sim went on. "It has developed offshoots of its own since Amalgamation in more recent times. It's almost like a river system, one that goes uphill and downhill, and flows both ways."

"And the Marginals?" Brendan tried to keep it all straight.

"Places where sentient life is believed to exist. No ship has touched there in so long, that the status of those communities is unknown."

"But the Empire still claims sovereignty?"

"That is an extremely interesting question." The thing would go no further.

"Empires may expand and contract over time, but on my planet, there are very few places with no people. You guys have unlimited space, where the Earth is finite," said Brendan. "Right?"

"Right," nodded Sim.

"Two thousand years ago, the Roman Empire and the Persian Empire butted up against each other. They were the two most advanced cultures, but there were plenty of barbarians scattered all over the north, the east and the west," Brendan said. "Oh, and in the south."

"That was essentially the situation before Amalgamation," admitted the sim. "But we had half a dozen species expanding outwards from their home systems. Warfare was pretty much endemic."

"Would that impair trade or stimulate it?" Brendan asked, but got no reply.

"How come no one ever goes into the Marginals?" he went on. "They're only barbarians until you tax them."

"Brendan, there are over ten thousand, three hundred known political entities in the Empire," said Sim. "Not to mention science stations, resource developments on otherwise uninhabited worlds, and only about sixteen hundred ships in the Navy. Trading ships and other vessels are in short supply as well."

"Yeah, I guess so." Hartle's attention was beginning to waver. "How long until we get to Gepharl?"

"Four hours plus a little bit," said the flight computer.

Hartle grinned at that.

He undid the straps. The cat made her displeasure known with little yips and yaps from her cage. He needed a beer, and she wasn't used to being boxed up for long periods of time. He tore open the fasteners and she popped out.

"Where's my smokes?" He wandered into the galley. "Ah, here they are. What happened in here?"

Sim was laughing at him.

"Fuck," said Brendan in sudden comprehension.

He lit up a smoke, and put the pack in his pocket. He bent down and started picking up the pieces.

"You should have reminded me to do the dishes."

His bowl, a cup and plate, a couple of pots and pans had been left in the sink. Sim pointed to a fork, embedded in the rear wall, which Brendan knew was a synthetic, cork-like insulating material.

"I'm sure this will only happen once, Brendan. And it does serve a purpose."

"Yes, it does, Sim. Yes it does."

Son of a bitch!

You can't think of everything.

Chapter Nine

Sim reappeared, standing by the map...

Sim reappeared, standing by the holo map of the galaxy.

"Shall we continue with our discussion?"

A person could only study so long, and then he needed a break.

"Sure." Hartle, although genuinely interested in everything so far, was kind of non-committal.

For one thing, a good hot cup of tea would be nice every so often. He was actually thinking about two doobies in his blue shirt pocket, hanging up in the closet. He went into his cabin. Sim for some reason didn't follow him in there. Hartle was aware that the sim adapted constantly as it learned more about him. It was a very interactive learning program. Maybe the thing would begin to understand that a man needed a little privacy sometimes. He groped around and found what he was looking for.

Muttering to himself, he went back out to where the cat perched on the top of his control seat. He sat and the animal climbed down into his lap.

"That's right, baby. Stick with me, and you'll go places." He idly scratched behind its ears.

Did Sim have a sense of smell? That would be a good thing to know. He gazed at the view-screens, sometimes the forward ones, or out to the side, or the upper and lower quarters, and sometimes he switched to an enlarged version of the rear view.

"So the Empire dominates and controls the trade routes. This may be their weak point. What once helped them to find their way is in fact the Achilles heel of the whole enterprise."

"Very perceptive. In the beginning it was the path of conquest, trade and diplomacy, eventually, cultural exchange, but it inevitably became the lifeblood of the Empire."

"Rome was dependent on wheat from Egypt," agreed Brendan. "The Empire, I mean. The Republic was dependent on wheat from Sicily in the time of Julius Caesar."

"Now we have challenges that range from piracy and smuggling, to the illegal migration of whole peoples, even secret commercial empires being built in places that we don't know about..."

"On my own planet, I've noticed a strange but fundamental trend in the development of technology," said Brendan. "At some point you reach the point of rapidly diminishing returns. It's like the costs start to go up exponentially. I don't know if I can explain it properly. A phone can only be so small. You have to hold it in the human hand. They're jamming a thousand applications into a single hand-held device. Sooner or later, you end up with a little chip hard-wired into the brain, and you can't escape the fucking thing. You can buy a digital phone for twenty bucks. Some phones are free! The real cost is social."

"What are you saying?"

"Maybe a society can only get so big," said Brendan. "But also, the phone bill can only get so big."

"And those political and social forces are at work within the Empire."

"Yes."

Nothing lasts forever. What did it all add up to? Hartle pondered the question before him. Was the Empire even worth saving? From their point of view, of course it was. Was it really worth the effort? If not, what would happen if it broke up? Should he actually help them, allow himself to be used passively, and for unknown purposes, he had to admit that, or what? Or what?

"Nothing happens for no reason." He tried to cover his own confusion, than anything else.

He wasn't to have long to consider the question, for the flight control computer came up to tell them they were again being shadowed. It wasn't exactly unexpected.

"Well, well, well. I wonder who that could be?"

Sim, linked to sensors and computers, was busy trying to get some answers. Hartle zoomed in and focused on the object, taking a good long look at their pursuer.

Then he reduced speed.

It grew in size and he could tell that it wasn't an official ship. It was painted in psychedelic colours reminiscent of rich people on a ski slope.

"Everyone wants to be a playboy," he told the sim. "That could be construed as a rather sexist remark. Play-person would be a little more politically correct."

Sim just groaned.

"Get me a line."

"Brendan..." Sim said.

"Fuck it, Sim."

The screen switched over. There was a young man or being about his own age, maybe a little younger, sitting in the other control room. The being opened a channel but Hartle didn't activate his own pickup yet. Let the guy talk to a blank screen.

"Brendan Hartle. Brendan Hartle. My name is Boyce. I want to speak to you."

"What about?" He typed it into the pad, and hit 'enter.'

"Personal matters regarding the Princess."

Sim's eyebrows rose.

"A young academy cadet, posted to the Fleet, and currently on embarkation leave," he reported.

"He's not connected to the Institute? Wonder what he wants."

"He's being very open about it, and he is acquainted with the Princess," said the sim. "He's not a known criminal."

This was said with some doubt.

"I have the impression he's not carrying a love-note or anything stupid like that. She doesn't impress me as that sort, what with her training and all. Anything she had to say, she could have told me at breakfast."

The sim just nodded at Brendan's logic.

"You said there was a pistol on board. Stolen from some Terran gun shop in the name of research, no doubt."

Sim told him where it was and how to dig it out. He had to move a few boxes and then he had it. By this time, Boyce was coming up from a hundred kilometres behind, nice and slow and non-threatening. That's exactly how Brendan would have done it. Nice and slow, and non-threatening. He slid cartridges into the magazine, and closely examined the thing.

Here is the safety, and here's how you cock it. It's a nine-millimetre. Not much stopping power so shoot 'em twice, and then twice again. Right out of 'Soldier of Fortune' magazine, every security guard's midnight friend..

"Mag's full and nothing up the spout. Safety's on."

"No point in being stupid," Sim observed.

"Let's see what the gentleman wants."

The vessel made rendezvous alongside and they were hailed again.

"When he comes out, follow him every inch of the way," he ordered the computer.

"Come aboard," Brendan typed into the pad, then watched as the computer focused a camera on the other craft's top hatch.

This was clearly marked with a red 'x' by his flight computer. Boyce would be coming in through the airlock. A small ship like that wouldn't have a large-scale transport device. There was a little bungee-corded pocket on the right side of his seat. He put the gun in there so only he would know.

With the Glock snug as a bug in a rug, he watched the suited man. Hartle studied him carefully through the sensors for weapons, or any unusually bulky or hard objects on him. He looked pretty clean. Sim just stood there licking his lips. But he could worry about that later.

"Scat." The kitty boogied for the back room.

"You weren't kidding, Hartle, a very intelligent animal! Why it's almost as if she could speak sometimes."

"Shut up!" He thought for a moment. "Unlike myself, you mean."

Finally, the guy was there and Hartle unlocked the door for him. Standing aside, he let him pass down the little corridor, he closely studied his body language to try to get some kind of a clue, as to the threat level from this guy. The helmet came off.

"I'm at a bit of a loss," said Brendan. "I don't know whether to say good morning, or good evening, or what?"

He stuck the butt of a smoke in a bowl he used for an ashtray.

"Normally, we say greetings."

"Okay." said Brendan.

Boyce blanched when he saw the scarf sitting there on the arm of the co-pilot's seat. Hartle scooped it up, twisted it around his neck and noted a bit of colour begin down low on the man's neck. It crept up to his face, eyes and forehead. Boyce took a big deep breath. His white-skinned head and hands turned a pale shade of green. His chin dropped a bit. Brendan tucked the ends into his shirt-top. He felt like Hugh Hefner, only younger, more muscular, and tougher than whale-shit. He tried very hard not to smile.

The being composed itself.

"I have come to talk to you about the Princess," he said with a harsh tone in the voice, but the being was trying to keep its cool about it. "You are to stay away from her."

"Oh? Really? And why is that?" Brendan didn't trust him one bit.

He stood there glowering at Hartle, then spoke again.

"She is not of your class. You are a bumpkin. She is to marry me," said Boyce.

"Is this true?"

Sim shrugged.

"Not entirely. There is pressure of a kind upon her to marry, and Boyce's people have been pushing for a match," admitted the Sim. "But nothing has been finalized yet, in fact far from it! As you should know, young man."

Boyce glared at Sim.

"Stay out of this! This is between me and the troglodyte."

"He didn't mean that, Brendan." Hartle just laughed.

"Sure he did." He said it with a gleam in his eye.

He considered killing Boyce where he stood, but it would just create more problems than it would solve. But action was required, that much was obvious. Standing to his full height, Brendan pulled the Glock out of the seat pocket. He handed the weapon to a startled Boyce.

"Go ahead...make my day."

Boyce held the pistol tentatively, hand visibly shaking as he looked from one to the other. Neither Sim nor Brendan spoke. Brendan towered over him silently. Brendan stood there calmly, and waited for what might happen next. It was just as he thought. The man was all bluff. Boyce hastily put the gun down on a level spot, watching Brendan with narrowed eyes.

"So..." he said. "I can see I'm wasting my time here."

Brendan began moving again, to usher the gentleman to the door.

"Stop in anytime," he told the man, in as friendly a tone as he could muster.

Something clicked in. A gut-busting wrench of adrenaline hit him as he noted the set of Boyce's head and neck, his shoulders all bunched up like that.

Just like a cat, a fuckin' cat ready to pounce...

Brendan's fist shot out straight from the shoulder to its fullest extension, but Boyce was fast, real fast and it merely grazed the top of his right shoulder. He fired a knee with all his might into Hartle's groin. While not a good hit, Brendan began to go over because he hit the co-pilot's seat trying to back up. But on the way down, he managed to slam a pounding shot into the other's midriff.

Bending, Boyce began to turn green again, but started off on a spinning kick to Hartle's head, and tripped over a carpet seam on the cabin floor and spun into the back wall. Covering up more now, Hartle made it fully upright again. Out pounced his flicking fist, and a little blue blood began just above Boyce's left eye. Again the man counterattacked. Hartle began to see stars every time he got hit. Punch for punch he could only take so many hits.

Next time he fell, he coyly stayed down, with head away and ass pointing up at the idiot, and when Boyce got in a little too close, he tripped him up good. Perhaps a little too good—Boyce went down hard, striking a glancing blow with his head on a sharp corner. He stayed down, and Brendan had a sick feeling in the stomach. If the man came up again, he would be damned hard to handle. His head caught the alloy corner framing of the passenger seats.

Sometimes you put a man down, he comes up twice as mad and three times as strong.

Brendan saw that he was still mostly conscious. He sprung on his inert form like a spider, getting a good pin on the fellow. Grabbing the long blonde hair, he looked into the eyes.

"You wanna fuck with me mister—you bring some friends next time." Then, slowly, so the other guy could see it, he brought his right fist back and let one go. "Looks like he'll be out for while."

He stood. Sim assessed the damage.

"Cadet, eh? They teach 'em pretty good down there," Brendan observed.

"Quite so," Sim ventured. "He's also from a planet with about twice Earth's gravity."

"In which case I'm a very lucky young man."

Brendan felt like he'd just won a fight with a grizzly, although the whole thing couldn't have lasted much more than ten or twenty seconds.

Chapter Ten

On Sim's instructions...

On Sim's instructions, Hartle put the gentleman's helmet on, and made sure the breathing mixture supply was functional. Then he put on a suit himself, something he hadn't actually done yet, and the pair of them checked that out.

Sim coached him through the airlock routine. It is not like it wasn't self-evident, but it's a good idea to have someone check your work once in a while. It was a good idea not to make too many assumptions.

Sim's apparition followed him across the line which Boyce had strung between the two ships. Then they opened up the airlock of Boyce's sporty little ship. Hartle put him into the control seat and strapped him in securely. Cracking open the visor, he made sure the guy was alive and everything. His breathing was nice and regular. There were some movements behind the eyelids, and when he peeled back the lid the pupil dilated. Mind you, the gentleman was an alien, but he would probably be okay.

"Let's be on our way."

He pulled himself back on the thin line, then disconnected by pushing the button and shutting it off. He tossed it out into space towards the other craft. He had a couple of identical devices in a locker on his own ship. They looked like an oversized pistol, or maybe a spear gun. The head of the projectile resembled a miniature toilet plunger. It wasn't for suction. It was a shock absorber. You fired it across at another ship, and then hooked the end through an eyelet. The snap-ring had a spring-loaded safety catch. Self-guided, the projectile worked on the gravity-well principle, or so it said in the manual. There was a micro-sized pressure switch in the end to activate it on impact. The actual batteries and effect-generating output device were in the long, tubular handle part of it.

"Hopefully he'll bring it in before he goes."

"Send a request for assistance to Centralia control centre," Sim suggested. "They'll come and pick him up, if necessary."

"So that's what it's like to be weightless," Hartle said. "Doesn't seem to be all that much of a big deal."

"It isn't."

"In space, no one can hear you fart. Aren't my fingertips supposed to tingle or something?"

"After an hour or two, and only in an inferior suit. Farting is your own problem. Deal with it as best you can."

It sounded like something in a movie trailer, or on one of the posters outside of a theatre. Back in command of his own ship, Brendan reduced throttle a little, watching the other ship drift out ahead. He changed his vector half a degree to pull away nice and gentle.

"Gepharl, here we come. How long now?"

"A little under two hours," said Sim. "Plenty of time for a snack."

"Just what I was thinking. Time sure does fly when you're having fun."

The cat seemed in total agreement as she rubbed up along his leg. Purring, she tried it on Sim, but went right through.

"I can't pet you," Sim said. "Sorry."

"She's trying to show affection," said Hartle in astonishment.

"I guess she's gotten used to me."

"Another guess, Sim?"

Hartle watched the other's eyes shift left, right, left.

Fuckin' priceless. Stupid bastard.

***

Soon the planet Gepharl lay below. It was mostly desert according to Sim. But a pale greenish tinge in certain circumpolar regions showed through the faint and widely-dispersed cloud layer.

Brendan had a quick sandwich as Sim talked, on, and on, and on.

"Less than ten percent of the surface is covered with vegetation and only three to four percent of the surface is water-covered," Sim lectured. "There is just sufficient free atmosphere for crops. All the sentient beings live in multi-domed cities, or live in small self-reliant enclaves scattered around in the moderate climate zones."

"What do people do for a living around here?"

"It is the center of a transportation hub, and several local products are exported."

"What kind of products?"

"They export all kinds of lumber, soap, potash, pharmaceuticals, gold, and silver. All kinds of things really, but it is a very small economy."

"Lumber?" asked Hartle in disbelief. "Potash?"

"As you saw, Centralia is vastly overpopulated. It has no forest reserves of its own." Centralia manufactured its own atmosphere, but little else.

Its major export was government bureaucracy. For the most part, raw materials flowed inwards.

"All right, I get you. What about the museum?"

"Several, as requested, in the capital city, Gepharl." Sim marked them on a flat-plane map projection very similar to his own favourite search-engine, only it floated in mid-air.

"We might as well map out a landing sequence. Destination, Gepharl spaceport," Hartle instructed the flight computer.

"Acknowledged." It had a bogus Scots accent.

"Fuck. Has Boyce been picked up yet?"

"Planetary authorities are taking remote-control maneuvering action," the flight comp reported.

"Stop it, you're killing us all." The computer ignored Sim.

"So he isn't going to crash into the sun," said Brendan, and then it was time for a few routine checks.

All systems looked good, or 'nominal.'

The spaceport loomed below them. Gepharl City, population 57,000. Huh! His home town, good old St. Thomas, was bigger than that.

"Sim. Got any of those pills left?"

The two from the morning were wearing off. The sim led him into the medical room, and pointed at a numbered cabinet located on a wall over a work surface. It was equipped with a sink, taps, a simple layout, not much different from a typical doctor's consulting room. The little padded table even had stirrups for a woman's heels. Maybe aliens really do anally probe some poor creature from time to time, he wondered.

They had thought of everything, even things which seemed very unlikely to happen.

Much of the equipment was meant for one person to work on another. In a pinch, he could do first aid on himself quite effectively.

He swallowed the pills down with a sip of water from a disposable cone-shaped cup, and reached for his smokes, figuring that on autopilot, he could enjoy the view on the way in.

Strapping himself in again, he allowed the cat to roam free. The curves he saw dotted on the screen predicted a relatively mild descent. The cat could grip the rug with its claws and be safe enough.

"As soon as we land, I'll let the cat out for a while. Is that legal?"

"Is she fixed?"

"Yes."

"Then as an invasive species she's not much of a threat."

"She's not likely to drop a bunch of kittens," said Brendan. "What about bugs in her gut, and things like that?"

"Without a proper host species, most parasitic bacteria and viral life-forms quickly die in a new environment. If she pees or poops, it will dry up on the 'drome. There are drains scattered around, and they go to a treatment facility."

"Okay. Well. It's your planet."

***

The ship sat on the pad, out of doors due to the small size and busy nature of this particular facility. A babble of noises rattled through his translator, but Sim quickly reduced it to just one.

"I have engaged a taxicab."

"Is that what all the jabber was about?" asked Brendan.

There was a thump on the hull, and then a hiss as something came in through the airlock. Brendan stood, poking around in his gym bag, with smoke curling out of his nostrils. When the alien person came in, he was ready for just about anything. If necessary, he was prepared to shoot him and then leave, just leave, dumping the body in space somewhere.

But there was no trouble. The being seemed to be just what Sim said he was, a cab driver. He couldn't keep one hand in his gym-bag all day, Brendan realized.

He saw a tall, slender-bodied alien form, with short, iridescent feathers all over its body. It had two arms, two legs, and a sort of flattened, mostly-naked face. Hartle stepped forward smiling sincerely, with a hand extended.

"Pleased to make your acquaintance."

"Honoured, sir." It bowed to him. "I will take you to the shop of my brother, who is the finest jewel-cutter in all of this sector."

"That would be very pleasant, I'm sure, but I have an appointment at the museum," Brendan said. "I'm going to look at some old bones and stuff. Very boring, but a man has to work."

His new friend nodded with a bright look. It seemed like a tactful way to get what he wanted, which was a ride with minimal talk.

"I'll be paying for this on my card." Brendan showed it to him.

The being scanned it through a hand-held device, and nodded.

"Off we go then. Your credit's good, and other than true friendship, that's all that really matters, isn't it?"

They made their way through a dilapidated tube of more or less transparent corrugated plastic, expandable when required. A thin wind whistled by outside, and it came in through a few small tears, as well. Brendan could breathe just fine. The taxi was in good shape, it was all nice and clean inside. With the tube scrunched up against the side of the vehicle, they moved off through the flat, open expanse surrounding the ship. They headed for a gap in the tall fencing where a guard post stood.

"Security guards! They're probably making four-thirty-five an hour. The most boring job in the world."

"Actually, that's a crack unit of the Gepharli Golden Dragoons," the driver explained.

They were waved through without any inspection.

Observing the sullen demeanor and slack postures, their basic deportment, the glazed eyes, Hartle made his own assessment but kept further observations to himself. He clicked off the translator and pushed the button so the window between them and the driver went up.

"Any halfway-motivated bad guy would go through them like shit through a goose."

Sim nodded thoughtfully.

Hartle hit the button and the window came down again. Their cabbie kept trying to entice them into tourist traps, much to Sim's annoyance, although Hartle was enjoying it hugely. He watched out the window. Turning off his translator earphones, he just sat there smiling. Soon they entered a tunnel under the ground. He assumed they would come out inside the biggest dome and this turned out to be correct.

The capital city was served by a dirt road from the spaceport, and that should tell you something. Garishly printed billboards slid past. Occasionally one had full video, and they had sound as well. He discovered this when he tuned in again. The cabbie never quit.

"This is the shop of a cousin, the maker of beautiful dolls and doll houses, and other miniatures," the creature in the front seat told them in his singsong fashion.

"Just the museum, thank you," said Sim for the fourth or fifth time.

***

The museum was everything it pretended to be, and less. He wandered through the galleries, seeing how the medium of painting had progressed over the centuries. He marveled at sculpture in a hundred styles and types as he munched some form of small crunchy things purchased in an arcade.

"Just before Michelangelo's 'David' was complete, the penis broke off and they had to re-do it. That's why it's so small. These are quite realistic."

Brendan was pointing at some creatures with two heads, six legs, three arms and huge phalluses sculpted in bronze. Hundreds of different beings wandered slowly from one display to another. Moving past a tightly knit group standing near a large sculpture, he pitched the wrapper into a nearby garbage bin. The guide's voice was clearly translated in his ears.

"And this of course is from the artist's later period." Brendan just grinned.

But he couldn't get into it. He didn't know what he was looking at. It was so difficult. While a painting may be beautiful to look at, to understand its importance in a cultural context, you had to know the artist's own culture to a certain extent. Or have some kind of historical perspective.

"If everyone else in the village is carving paddles and making filigree work for the gables of the their houses, painting curlicues on their body and shoving a bone through their nose, and some guy comes along and paints the Mona Lisa, then you know you have a breakthrough."

Sim didn't seem to get it.

There was little in the exhibit, that in comparison, he had not seen similar on Earth, whether it be real in a museum, or in an encyclopedia, online, or in a book. Sim followed along, as he examined watercolours, oils, and montages. He looked at a battle painting, eerily similar to one in a textbook at college.

"I thought it was the Nazis who stole that one."

Sim remained silent.

"Where's the picture of Dorian Grey?"

"Nice try. I am of course familiar with the story."

Things got serious all of a sudden.

"I believe someone is following us." Hartle heard the murmur in his earpiece.

Sim's lips didn't move.

"That's fine by me." He was intent upon not looking around. "Actually the work is not all that unique. The building itself overwhelms it."

The art was somehow degenerate, effeminate. It was decadent, like some sort of fin de siecle art nouveau. Decorative and illustrative, it was technically perfect but boring as all hell. He could spit a better piece of art, Brendan realized. It was a kind machine-age cabinetmaking, no more. These people learned to draw by tracing slots in a stencil...holy, cow.

He followed Sim's leisurely lead, allowing the other to wander along five metres ahead, and felt the thrill of diddy-bopping in Indian Country. He stopped by a terrarium. They were now in a different exhibit, presumably natural history—from the point of view of Empire. It was a little more subtle than 'national socialist mathematics,' or 'national socialist geometry,' but they weren't fooling him anymore.

He removed a cold Maximum Ice beer from his shoulder bag, cracking the cap ostentatiously after much digging. He took a long drink in plain view of anyone who wanted to know. No one paid much attention to the strange, tall alien.

He rejoined Sim, looking out through a bank of tall glass doors. The pistol was now out of the bag and in his waistband. He worked it into the small of his back by pretending to scratch himself, the big bag with colourful lettering acting as blind cover.

"Try to get a different cab, this time. Frankly, I'm tired of the sales pitch."

He stumbled, but recovered as he went out the door, the aluminum sill apparently tripping him up. They made their way outside, and stood looking up and down the street.

Brendan closely examined the patterns of traffic.

"Here's one," said Sim, but Hartle pulled him back and waited for a family to take it.

"Thank you, Mister," said a voice as they got in.

He nodded politely.

Sim waved another into the curb.

"No." Brendan strode left down the sidewalk for fifty metres into the oncoming flow, in the sense that they drove on the right side here too.

He selected one discharging a passenger, the cabbie haggling over the price. You could never be sure, but.

"Elementary precaution." He looked the driver over carefully.

It was another alien, but different from the last one. This one, although humanoid in general layout, was smooth-skinned and had more human features. He had just a hint of elfin cheekbones, and a pair of almond-shaped eyes with no whites in them.

"Stay in the right lane," Brendan ordered. "Leave the doors unlocked."

The driver gave him a quick look. They were followed as they left the museum. He checked the pursuit out of the corner of an eye as they drove along. The car even came up alongside, as he gripped the gun just below the edge of the window, but the pair inside, both blue-skinned males of non-descript appearance, just stared straight ahead. Then, due to traffic patterns ostensibly, they dropped back again.

"They're pros. They're confirming the target's identity."

"It's a rental," Sim advised. "It was probably picked up right here in the city, or even at the spaceport."

Hartle had a mental flash of O.J. Simpson in slow motion, dashing through a crowded airport facility, with a big, flashing knife in his hand, leaping over piles of luggage.

"Huh." He checked the magazine and the safety, but not cocking it yet. "I bet they try to take us. They'll want to see us go somewhere good. Although you seem to be immune."

He looked at the other.

"They know they can't kill you, so they can't really be trying to kidnap me." Revelation came. "I've just figured out one of the many reasons why you have no body. You would just follow where they went...presumably."

"I can't carry weapons either," Sim replied. "That would be useful sometimes. And there are ways to block the simulacrum signals band."

"We'll have to do the best we can with what we've got." You learn something new every day.

Signals band? He made up his mind.

"Is there a big park nearby?"

A monitor on the back of the forward seat lit up and displayed a map of the city. There were several parks in the immediate vicinity. Parks were marked in green, city arterial roads in red, a river in blue. Ripple marks, those had to be artificial terrain in the park. The bulk of the planetary surface was extremely flat, like salt flats without the salt. He saw a pond. Hopefully there would be lots of trees, or their cultural equivalents.

He instructed the driver to cruise around a while, then head for the place. He studied the trails, scrolling left and right, up and down, zooming in tight to get a look at it.

"All righty then. Lakeside Park, willows in the breeze..."

"What's this?" Sim was mystified.

"Never mind." Brendan was intent on the job at hand. "Lakeside Park—so many memories."

The driver turned around to have a good, long look at this tall handsome stranger with the beautiful voice. Exchanging a glance with Sim, the driver spoke.

"You're better than half the people on the nets."

"That's where we want to go," Brendan said.

Settling back a little more comfortably, now that he had a plan, he watched carefully as the geography sped past the window. Their followers stayed right with them, fifty to a hundred metres back. He needed an edge, some kind of an edge and this ground was not of his choosing.

Explaining what he had in mind to the sim, he took from his pocket a micro-camera, one complete with a metal spring clip. He put it on the back of his ball cap.

"That way you can watch my six, get it Sim? All I need is a little running commentary. I'll take 'em right here."

He showed Sim on the nav-screen a spot on a meandering side trail, curving to the right between two artificial hills, all covered with shrubs and vegetation. As Brendan gave Sim simple instructions, the cab slowed and turned into a parking lot beside an empty kiosk and a gateway. The lot was surrounded by hedges.

"Beautiful. Take us to the back, right in the corner where the path begins."

He got out and began walking at a moderate pace, disguised by the occasional stumble or drift to the side. Again, he drank ostentatiously from a beer. He swaggered his way over a little bridge and into the forest.

"They're out of the car and going towards the gap. I see weapons!"

Without even looking back, Brendan turned to his left and scrambled up a slope into the woods. Having made a hundred-eighty degree turn, he began stalking the pursuit. He found what he was looking for, a place where he had good cover but clear air and blue sky above the trail. It would be a clear, open shot from thirty feet. Not close enough, with this gun. Wind in his face, he crept in a little closer. Nice, soft turf underfoot, well turned by the park's robotic staff. A tracked, robotic gardener scuttled along the path down the hill to the right, with a dull whine covering his own noise.

In a low voice, Sim described the situation.

"A pair of individuals, blue-skinned, wearing black, conservative business suits, going through the gap now...they parked forty metres south of us...they're at the bridge...over the bridge...they're right on the trail...can you see them, Brendan?"

With a finger, he clicked once on his communications device.

"They've stopped...they're moving on..."

Hartle clicked twice on the microphone and Sim shut up. Brendan turned it off for a moment.

In fascination, with a kind of dread in the pit of his stomach, he watched them coming up the trail, heads down. It almost looked like they were sniffing for his scent. It was a good thing he doubled back downwind, although he was thinking of noise. They had big banana-like things in their hands. They were shiny cobalt blue, with a series of three pale, translucent rings around the pointed, rod-like barrel tip. Breathlessly, he waited until they went past.

Now he had an unobstructed avenue of retreat.

Bottle in right hand and gun in left, he waited for the perfect moment...now.

He threw it up and over their heads. It must have been five or ten metres behind them, ten metres up. It arced over and crashed into the underbrush on the far side of the trail. He slithered over a log, and slipped into the water. Switching hands with the gun, keeping the creek bank on his right for cover, and them plainly in sight, Brendan was moving the second it hit.

He had them dead to rights as he leveled the gun at arm's length. Take a breath...

They stood half-crouched, against the far side of the trail. They were fixated by the hillside opposite. It was a killing zone, perfectly laid out. The trap was sprung. He fired at the one on the right, to prevent them from running back the way they came. They were faced with a slope of about forty degrees, with little brush or cover. They would go left...he kept firing even as one went down in a sprawl, sliding on bloody leaves, face down. The other crashed up the hillside on an angle, running for the nearest cover. He stumbled once or twice, legs flailing, and making for the left. Brendan fired two more shots, and was certain that he hit him, too.

Brendan buggered off, back up the reverse slope, over the hill, around and into the streambed again. He scrambled along with his gun up to change the clip. He crouched by the bank looking back up the trail. Someone was crashing through the woods over there...

Brendan waited a half a minute. He moved on after confirming there was no pursuit. He made it back to the car park in jig time, only half out of breath.

His last visual impression was of the bottle rolling down the hill out of the weeds, then stopping on the mossy hillside in anticlimax. The body didn't even twitch.

He leapt in and closed the door.

"Burn rubber," he said.

Chapter Eleven

His gut ached, deep down...

His gut ached, deep down, a cold glass of neat whiskey kind of ache.

"No prisoners, Hartle? Did your hasty little plan go awry?"

"Yeah! I guess it did," admitted Brendan. "A little help would have been nice."

"Maybe you should have asked the driver."

"Oh, no!" the alien cried. "Not if the Empress herself came into my bed!"

They peeled tires going out the exit and through the first few turns.

"Report."

"He came out of the bushes," said the driver unexpectedly. "He was bleeding, too."

"He took off in the car and seemed to be going south," said Sim.

'Go east." The driver nodded.

He whipped them through lanes of traffic and a succession of circles and ramps.

"Your service is appreciated, and a substantial gratuity would appear to be in order." Sim nodded to Brendan.

"Go north, now," said Brendan.

He peeled a couple of brown ones out of his wallet and handed them over.

"Turn off the meter." The driver complied with a certain relish.

"I've been meaning to get that thing fixed." This was said with a certain flair, and the pair in back chuckled.

He tipped them the wink in the mirror. Relief flooded over Brendan.

"One of my pet theories is that memory is a reconstructive process. Let's skip the next museum," decided Hartle. "I think we've had enough for one day. Driver, the local constabulary will probably get a routine report from you. The assassins were pros and they would of course expect that. They have certain rules, one of which is that they don't kill people for free. You're not in any danger. After we leave, that is."

"Yes, sir," this surprisingly unfazed denizen of the universe agreed. "Have your pistol out, and I will take us out a little-used gate."

"Nope," said Hartle. "I want the busiest gate."

"Yes, sir."

Then Sim spoke as if in reverence.

"Mr. Brendan Hartle doesn't sneak out little-used back gates."

"You catch on fast, my friend," agreed Brendan, as truth is not always the best policy.

The cabbie happily drove them out of town at a steady and sedate velocity of about forty-five k's an hour, if the weeds speeding by outside and the drift of the dust were any indication.

Each wondered what might await them at the spaceport. If they could try to kill Hartle in the city, they could just as easily have stationed someone at the other place.

"They'll have local help." Brendan spoke in explanation, the driver's ears all cocked and ready. "They'll have two or three safe houses, close together, easy to get to one another without being under direct observation. They might use alleys, airshafts, rooftops, stairwells. They could have two apartments in one building with multiple stairwells."

Brendan was a cab driver for a few months one long winter. Cabbies were inveterate gossips. Word would get around. Sim was zipping some kind of message to the security services in town. As a government official, he got a quick answer, holding up a hand to Brendan for a moment.

"Go ahead," he said, and now the sim became a direct patch-in to the cop-shop.

"Okay, they'll have a place near the wall of the dome, where they can get in and out."

Brendan talked as the simulacrum kept up a running feed to police headquarters. "Whether they have a little tunnel, or just planned on ripping a hole if necessary for escape, I don't know..."

He peered off into the distance over the waving dunes and low grasses.

"Remind me to fill the mag." He checked again that he had a fresh one in the breech. "It's all too easy to get killed, in your Empire. I have come to suspect that you guys are counting on me to become a martyr."

He muttered to himself.

"They'll have more cars, somewhere."

He pulled a slip of paper out of a shirt pocket and examined it and the contents of his wallet. Sim kept the cop shop on the line in his virtual head, consulting back and forth.

"They probably have a stolen flitter. And a safe house in another town not too far away," Brendan sighed tiredly. "You steal the flitter way ahead of time and just put it on ice in a shed."

Sim asked a few quiet questions, assisting the cops.

"I paid the first cab with a sixty-credit Imperial banknote. The serial number was, LKOT-00945376, and it was an Honest Joopi's cab, number fourteen."

What else could he tell them?

"We'll pick him up and sweat him a little. Just for luck. Were you expecting trouble?" The chief seemed impressed.

"No, sir. I'm on an expense account," and the alien cop just grinned in the view-screen, now lit-up on the seat back.

"The on-site police squad has recovered the body," Sim reported.

"Tell them to give the autopsy top priority. And check for an unusually-large olfactory organ...fuck. I can't think of anything else right now."

Brendan was a very tired young man.

***

Hartle and Sim checked the ship over thoroughly and intently, first by interrogating it electronically, and then close physical examination, but could find no signs of tampering. The cat's reaction was calm and leisurely, which helped to convince Hartle that no one had been around.

Bushed by his short day already, he allowed Sim to take them out on autopilot. Soon they were in a stationary orbit around Gepharl's second moon. It hung over them, a pale orange glow, cameras in the underside slaved to the view screen of the ship. Two small but armed police tugs orbited slightly higher in erratic, ever-changing orbits. As Brendan cleared the straps, Sim was again getting in touch with planetary authorities. A being appeared on the centre screen.

"Mr. Hartle, let me first apologize for this dreadful incident. And I am pleased to announce that we have captured a severely wounded individual who fits the description."

"Good," said Sim and Hartle simultaneously.

"He will be thoroughly questioned. His partner was D.O.A. at Gepharl Memorial Hospital," he went on. "Approximately seventeen minutes elapsed from the time of your call."

It paused, seeking approval.

"Where did I hit him?" asked Brendan. "The number one suspect, our deceased fellow, and the other guy?"

"Suspect one was shot twice. They were high, on the left side of the thorax, with entry but no exit wounds. The other was shot in the leg and foot. These were clean wounds but he had severed arteries. He pulled over to help himself, almost bled out and then he lost consciousness. A passer-by called it in."

"Okay. I fired six shots, incidentally."

"We've recovered the bullets," acknowledged the chief with a nod.

"What were they armed with?"

"Blasters. It's a oscillating, high-density particle beam. Lethal up close," said the chief. "It is a silent sort of a weapon."

"What's the effective range?"

"A few metres at best. Marksmanship is not a requirement. That was very good shooting on your part, Mister Hartle."

"I had a BB gun as a kid."

"You can see an additional, marker beam when you fire a blaster," Sim explained further. "Then you just move the beam around until it hits the target."

"In other words, if they got within five or six feet, two metres, they would have sliced me in half?"

The chief said nothing, just dropped his eyes, and then raised them again.

"It would have sliced into you, and the meat would have been well done," he said. "It wouldn't exactly cut you in half. They are mostly used in a sword-like fashion."

"Thank you, chief," said Brendan.

While a professional, the chief was as upset as anybody would be. It happened on his watch, it was an Imperial beef, and he could expect a lot of questions.

"You've done very well, Chief Ploke. Have you recovered the vehicle?" asked Sim.

"Yes, and get this. It was rented innocently enough, then stolen from an elderly couple," said the cop. "An extremely professional operation. That car would blend in pretty well, in a town like this."

"Were they tied up in a room somewhere?" asked Brendan.

"Yes, how did you know?"

"They try to get in, get the job done, get out, and get paid, just like any other working stiff. "They had a time-table. Killing people sometimes makes a lot of noise, and stuff can go wrong. Old people, perfect. All you really have to do is take away their glasses, their teeth and their hearing aids, and they're just plain fucked."

He and Sim looked at each other for a good long moment.

"It's a working assumption that they had a plan to get out," acknowledged the copper.

Why leave witnesses, he wondered...yet somehow he knew they would.

'Follow the money trail,' a little voice in the back of his head said.

"Who were they?" Brendan was running out of steam.

He had narrowly avoided a properly set-up hit, one with a short schedule, by the sheer luck of the Irish.

"Their species and home world are unknown. Evidence shows that they spoke the language well and were sophisticated enough to have credit cards, nice shoes, expensive clothes," the chief said. "They had proper ID. It must be false, of course. It will take a while to find out how they managed that."

"Bribery," noted Brendan and the chief looked angry all of a sudden.

He nodded silent agreement.

"Any cavities?" asked Brendan, much to Sim's sudden amusement.

"Any what? Cavities?" The chief dithered for a moment. "I'll check with my people immediately."

"Could they have come from the Marginals?" asked Brendan. "They have any dope?'

"No, sir, but we haven't found any hotel rooms, or anything like that yet," the cop said.

He had the nudge of an idea. It was so faint he couldn't bring it to the surface yet.

"The Marginals?" prodded Sim.

Brendan spoke up again.

"Could they be a historically-known species, but not seen recently?"

"Yes, that's possible," agreed the chief. "I'll have a team on that right away, Mr. Hartle. But certain records, from before Amalgamation, tend to be fragmentary."

"Thanks," said Brendan as Sim cut back in again.

"I'll see if we can get you some more manpower," Sim said. "This is a high-priority investigation. Wring everything you can out of it."

"I'm going to take a shower," said Brendan. "Flight computer!"

"Scanners active, full power, max range, no unusual activity..."

"All right," said Brendan.

He left the control room in search of soothing hot water and an ice-cold beer, a real one this time. Sucking tap water out of a beer bottle all day had given him a big thirst.

As he undressed in the bedroom, he could hear Sim and the chief talking. He approved the effort to suck the criminal's brain dry. Sim should try to suck the chief's brain dry as well, he figured.

He discovered the two joints in his pocket again. He took his lighter and a beer into the shower. Maybe he would get a moment's peace. He closed the compartment door, and turned on the showerhead and exhaust system. Noises and steam began to rise.

He fired up the first joint. Since he was so tall, the shower water actually hit him about neck height, but if he was careful he could smoke in there. He held the burning reefer up out of the spray and kept the smoke in his lungs for a while. Soon it was getting small, as he turned this way and that, letting the pulsating water take away the aches and pains. He sucked at his beer. Keeping a thumb over the top the rest of the time, he tried not to think for a while. Just let the organism heal.

Dripping water made a trail as he put out the heater by pressure against a piece of shiny metal trim. Then he put the roach into his cigarette pack and got back into the shower to wash his hair. Brendan emerged from the hot, smoky room almost thirty minutes later, hair still wet and slick, freshly shaven, and all.

Disregarding the clothes he had been wearing, he put on his old jeans and faithful runners. He opened the laundry hamper and stuffed the used items in. Tucking in a faded yellow shirt, he re-entered the control room.

"You know, Sim, I think it's about time you started leveling with me. There are at least fifty questions you have failed to answer. Although you never refuse outright, you just adroitly steer around the subject."

"All right, Brendan." The sim was reluctanct. "You must be aware that there is no way for you to know everything, no man could do that."

"You're trying to sidetrack me again," Brendan marveled. "But you can't keep it up forever."

He began with something that bothered him right from the start.

"How in the hell did you manage to get the ship into that little wee hangar?"

"The one in Toronto?" asked Sim. "We used a device similar to the transporter aboard this ship."

"But that one can only lift fifty kilos, and the frickin' lights got dimmer when we used it. Holy, crap!"

"It took the power of a dozen star cruisers. The actual machine was temporarily placed in orbit around Saturn. We had to build an entire generating complex to get that kind of capacity, especially as we preferred to remain anonymous."

"And why is that? You're not exactly shy about showing yourselves, are you? There's fuckin' UFOs all over the place these days!"

Some real information would be nice.

"We were trying not to draw the attention of our enemies," Sim explained. "Look, to sneak a ship in through Pearson's air traffic patterns would be tough, lights in the sky notwithstanding. Also, the opposition might try to exploit the ancient prophecies just as we are, for their own anti-social purposes."

"Now there's another one. Just what the hell is in that thing? I've been hearing so much about, it, but no one wants to show me a copy."

"Brendan, it is forty thousand rhyming couplets in Snythinian hecatombic pentameter! Do you really want to hear it? And if I translate, edit, or even perform it for you, how can you trust my version?"

"Am I supposed to take it on faith?"

"Briefly, then, I'll give you the condensed version. Once upon a time..."

Hartle listened in amazement as Sim went deeply into the ancient religious myths of the people who were the immediate predecessors of the Empire.

They held sway more than thirty thousand years ago, that much was known. Some said the beginnings of stellar civilization might go back as much as a hundred thousand years ago.

Eminent scholars differed, admitted Sim, but the actual dates were irrelevant, except in a more recent sense. They came to trade and to colonize. They learned diplomacy. They learned to divide and conquer, first allying with one prince and then again with his former enemy. It was a long story, but then they died away. All aristocracies eventually failed to reproduce themselves. That was some kind of natural law in effect.

"Far off, long ago, a date was carved in stone on a great cliff overlooking a city. The ruins of the city were discovered about a hundred years ago, and archaeologists have been excavating ever since. The inscription was only uncovered about eighteen years ago, and it was only successfully translated three years ago."

"And?"

That this had to be the clincher, Sim was leading up to it.

"The inscription reads like many epics from your own world, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh, or the Holy Bible, or the Aenid. All creation myths indeed. However, and this is crucial, they are the creation myths of a very sophisticated, technologically-advanced race or species..."

"Huh?" asked Brendan. "All civilizations rule by superstition, you idiots!"

"They weren't cave-dwelling morphs, hunting with fire-hardened spears, Brendan. The prophecies were written by an advanced people, more advanced than ourselves. They didn't have a home planet. It was forgotten in the mists of time, the old log books had rotted away. Old data banks became obselete, too slow, incompatible. Too expensive to fix, maybe. All they had were legends of a time when they cruised the stars like gypsies or buccaneers. You are mentioned by name, Brendan."

He was dumbfounded.

"All civilizations rule by superstition," Brendan repeated.

Sim's eyes kept boring into his own.

"That's just bullshit! Coincidence!"

Brendan chuckled in sheer amazement. "'Brendan Hartle,' in ancient Centralian probably means 'I got to take a dump.'"

"Do you remember the other day? When I asked where you were going, and you said, 'something wonderful is going to happen,' and then went for a dump?"

Hartle nodded.

"In ancient Centralian, your name translates like or very similar to exactly the phrase: 'something wonderful is going to happen.' Too many coincidences, Brendan."

"And that's what all this is about?" His voice shook with repressed laughter, a kind of panic, and he didn't want to get started on that.

He might never stop. He was stressed-out and he knew it. Then the dam burst.

"You want me to work miracles? Heal the sick, and change water into wine? Raise the dead? Walk on water? You're out of your fucking minds!"

He laughed at Sim, with the simulacra sitting there in the passenger seat like a normal human being just this once, and he laughed and he laughed and he laughed. It took a while to calm his mounting hysteria.

"I'll just ascend into heaven, I mean the galley, and get myself another God-damned cup of tea."

"Hartle."

Sim was undeterred by the outburst.

"Hartle. If we hadn't gotten to you, the opposition would have. I don't like to think of what might have happened," said Sim. "Remember the two in the park?"

"Yeah. You poor, stupid buggers want to watch me to wrestle with Enkidu, for Christ's sakes! Just like in the Epic of Gilgamesh." He took another deep breath. "There are three Fates, and they determine the thread of a man's life," griped an angry Brendan. "Grab a notebook, get this down. The first one unrolls the yarn, the second one measures it, and the third one cuts it off."

He said all this with no trace of humour, just a real disdain in his voice.

"Brendan..."

"Aw, fuck it. Just shut up for a while."

He headed for the galley to put the kettle on and get some peace and quiet.

That damned voice came again from outside the room.

"The planet Earth was mentioned, Hartle, and a crude but accurate star map to your system," he heard.

He rolled his eyes around and shook his head.

He put a cup of tea together, letting it sit on the table and then went to the bathroom. Sim could hear the toilet apparatus running. Sooner or later, Hartle had to come back.

"Those ruins were centuries old, Brendan. The estimates range from twelve to fifteen thousand years old," Hartle heard as he emerged from the bathroom. "The Inscription itself, thirty thousand."

He sat down and picked up the cup. It was just the right temperature. Sim came in now.

"There's even a physical description, and it fits your description, Brendan."

"I am the way, the light, and the truth?"

"That's what it says, Brendan," offered the sim. "It all depends if you believe in prophecies. Actually we don't, but the electorate does. You have to admit, it is very strange. Naturally, you understand our concern."

Brendan glowered at him. All he wanted was a cup of tea.

"So when you went to Earth, you knew who you were after."

"Yes," admitted Sim. "Brendan, your home address is literally carved on a cliff, in letters ten feet high, one thousand and fifty-one light years from Earth...and we'd like to know how it got there just as much as you do...believe me."

No matter what he might personally believe, danger still lurked nearby, in fact everywhere. Where could a man go to escape an unwanted destiny?

"It's a kind of quest, Brendan. Those traders, those gypsies, they could be still out there, somewhere, perhaps on the other side of the galaxy."

"Fuck," said Brendan.

Chapter Twelve

Hartle took manual control of the vessel...

Hartle took manual control of the vessel.

"We'd better get out of here."

They sped out of the system, and he curtly told Sim and the flight computer to watch for pursuit. Sure enough, a pair of blips peeled off from behind the other moon and began to track them from a respectful distance.

"I knew it. They had a backup."

"They're over fourteen million kilometres behind. Surely a maximum speed dash to Centralia..."

"Fuck that." Hartle watched the distance stabilize as they settled in for shadowing.

They knew that he knew...that they knew...that he knew...each watching the other.

"You know, I've never landed a ship," he reminded Sim. "It's time we found a place to practice."

"Why are we doing this?"

Sim beckoned at the screen.

"For one thing, I'm trying to make sure there are only two of them. Two, I can handle."

"Oh, you have a plan, Brendan. I see. Well, thanks for letting us help you." The simulacrum pouted, feelings still hurt from a while ago.

But it finally relented.

"I think we could find a suitable place for you to practice," it said. "But, I doubt if the ambush-in-the-park gambit will work twice."

"That's not exactly what I had in mind."

Sim kept busy on the communications gear.

"I have an interesting item to report. Boyce's ship has safely returned to Centralia, where he appears to be nursing his wounds."

"Do you think he could be part of the conspiracy?"

Brendan concentrated on the pair of ships, who were slowly closing the distance, but at a barely perceptible rate.

"Unknown. His father is a powerful figure. He owns two mining planets outright, and has extensive holdings on Belchev Three," said Sim, considering the possibilities. "One of the reasons for the possibility of a marriage with Boyce was the need to ensure the loyalty and cooperation of the clan to the Throne."

"There's more than just a property alliance involved." He was familiar enough with the propensity of powerful families to forge bonds, and make political alliances through marriage.

The dynastic principle was a compelling urge, like writing poetry.

"Yes. Belchev, and elder Boyce is very powerful there, has several key seats in Parliament."

"You mean the Duma, don't you?" muttered Hartle. "And key seats in Parliament, means key seats on key committees making key allocations."

Sim nodded, having explained the basic set-up in general terms previously.

"Like Louis the fourteenth. He gave them their freedom, only to make their submission more pleasing to himself."

Sim wasn't familiar with the quote.

"We'll worry about that one later." The ships behind were still closing, but very cautiously.

"They know you, now. They expect tricks and surprises"

"Those aren't Fleet ships? Cops?" asked Brendan, "Gee, I wonder why they're not out here too."

"They may be, Brendan, but if I was you..."

"Wouldn't count on it," Brendan finished the thought for him. "Let's find a place where I can practice a few landings."

"Away from Centralia?"

"Yeah, might as well," agreed Brendan. "Find me a place with an atmosphere, and...let's see, I need a place to land, but maybe a few obstacles. I'm thinking of cover."

"Mountainous with open plains, hard, flat, open ground with good cover, but maybe a few obstacles, dry, yet not too dry," opined Sim.

"Come on, Sim! Help me with this."

"I believe the planet Welstnashta would be the nearest," Sim said with a smile. "See, you still don't trust me."

Using the star catalogue, he saw that it lay up and to the right of their present heading. Punching the numbers into his keypad, the ship slowly began to come around.

"Computer! Make it look clumsy." He watched in silence as the sticks moved jerkily around on their own, and the star with its four planets drifted ever closer in lazy little spirals to the centre of his main forward screen.

"They won't know we're on autopilot They'll think I'm a crappy pilot."

"Is that part of your tactics?"

"I don't know yet. Let's have a look at this planet."

Right about now he needed to know everything there was to know about spaceships and there just wasn't time. Their flight system confirmed the new heading, and came up with an estimated time of arrival of one hour and twenty-two minutes.

"Sim, I'm banking on their curiousity. They won't kill me as long as there is the chance of learning something. Let me know if they do anything unexpected."

He studied the spherical map projection in silence for a while. He came up with a simple little plan.

He went to check on the cat. She was lying on the bed in his room. Laying down with her, he kissed her tummy and got her to roll on her back and begin purring. He chuckled with her for a while. Surprisingly, he almost fell asleep himself. With a quick rub of the face around his eyes, he got going again.

"Sorry, Kitty."

He hurriedly boxed her up and strapped down in the back room near the engines. If she started howling, it wouldn't be a distraction.

"We have a report from Centralia. The Rigellian Police ship never returned to port. It seems to have disappeared with all hands."

"They would have no choice, at this point," said Brendan. "That's not unexpected. Their cover was blown. They must be playing for very high stakes."

"We have the impression they were not the instigators."

"No, they were following orders. It's what they're trained to do. Where did the ship go missing?" he asked after some thought.

"Brendan, it was on the edge of a remote, unexplored region which borders on the main part of the Empire, where Marginals are believed to exist," Sim carried on. "In fact, more or less where you predicted."

It was strategically sound, a hiding place with easy access to the main routes. Hartle couldn't remember saying anything of the sort, but kept that comment to himself. Sim was sort of revealing today. A faint buzzing sound came from the control console speaker. It stopped when he sat down.

He strapped himself in tightly, regained manual flight status, and told Sim to get him a channel to the two ships following. During his little power nap they had closed up to within thirty thousand kilometres, then stayed there, holding steady.

"They're curious," Sim said.

He opened up the frequency for Brendan.

"Curious killers," said Brendan.

Then he nodded. Hartle saw views of both alien control rooms presented to him.

"Are we on yet?"

Sim shook his head.

"Like a Perry Mason book—'The Case of the Curious Killers,' with some hot babe on the cover....okay."

The red light came on. The camera was active.

Touching the microphone button on the top of the left stick, Brendan saw three figures in the one ship and two in the other.

"Hello." Brendan hoped his cheerful tone might be missinterpreted as immaturity. "Just thought I'd let you folks know. I'm on my training permit. I need to practice my insertions, maybe do a few touch-and-goes."

"Oh, thank you for the warning." One of the alien captains broke the channel.

But the other ones were less experienced.

Hartle watched the aliens, as they looked off to one side at something off-camera. They were looking at another screen or maybe somebody else in the room. Maybe it was some radioed instructions from the other captain. His flight comp was logging a signal, but couldn't crack it, apparently. Still, it wasn't necessary to crack it. Merely knowing it was there was helpful.

"So what are you folks doing around here?" Brendan asked. "Surfing, waterskiing, hot air ballooning?"

"Pardon?"

The things looked at him, each other, off to one side, back to him. These guys appeared to be more of the blue-skinned humanoids.

"Maybe the hot springs? I hear they're the best thing this side of Coogliawottomi."

"Something like that," an alien said.

It seemed confused, nonplussed. They were afraid of being rude. This one wasn't properly briefed, he saw it in an instant. Finally the thing made a chopping motion with a tentacle, and the view was cut.

The ships continued to dog his tail.

"Huh," he said. "Must be a crack unit. Mark the left hand ship in yellow, and the right hand ship in red."

"What's going on over there, Brendan?"

"They're training a new guy. Map!"

The holo display opened at the command.

"They appear a tad disorganized," said the sim.

"Maybe they just got some new orders, more complex than just killing me. They've been ordered to abduct me, and they have no idea of how to go about it. It's the only theory that fits all the known facts."

Sim stared at him.

"Jesus! You may be right!" gasped Sim in some kind of sick parody.

"Don't piss me off right now, Sim. I am kind of busy." Hartle was thinking at a furious pace, studying the planetary surface.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," said Hartle. "Okay, okay, okay. I got it—I got it now."

"Brendan..."

"Here we go now."

"Brendan!"

"Shut up! Here we go, we're going to do some aero-braking, we're going to go down this valley and pull in here."

He pointed to some marks on the side of the dark globe in front of Sim's face.

"Close map," he ordered, biting his lip. "We have the initiative."

There was a long moment of silence.

"Hang on, Sim, we're going in." Then he set up for his first landing. "We start with the conventional approach."

Pull the nose up a bit, and then wait for the dot on the screen. And there it was, the curves matched and the machine beeped.

"Hartle is punching in!"

He looked at the planet, pulling back on the thrusters, past the neutral point. This fired his retro thrusters proportionately, and soon he could hear and feel the outer atmosphere of the planet. Vectors and astrogation gave way to aerodynamics briefly, but then they popped up out of the atmosphere again. He rolled inverted. Pulling back on the stick had the effect of dropping the nose towards the planet. He held it for a while, and soon the two blips were above and in front of them again. He thrust himself back level, down to ten percent of the original flight speed.

"Seventeen thousand. Rolling left," he noted as if for posterity. "Time for evasives."

"They must be convinced you're a madman by now," said Sim.

"Targets, six thousand kilometres," advised the flight computer. "Speed of targets, sixteen thousand-five hundred and dropping."

"What's the diameter of the planet?" asked Brendan.

"Forty two thousand k's." said the flight computer. "Density, nine point eight-one-three."

Ballistics gave way to aerodynamics and thermodynamics, shock waves and compressibility. Now he was flying, and he rode her down by the seat of his pants. He was flying, leveling and braking an aircraft in flight through an atmosphere. He exulted that no one could touch him in his own element. He grunted his way through a high-g turn or two.

"I'm S-turning at high speed, coming around."

Poing-poing-poing...the tactical radar warning system sounded.

"They're painting us, no lock, no lock," said the flight comp.

Sim looked scared, but Brendan didn't have time. He added thrust.

"Bastards," said Brendan. "Stupid bastards."

His left thumb hovered over the button controlling certain countermeasures including chaff, flares, and aerial mines, but he waited.

"Two thousand knots, fifty thousand Centralian feet," said the flight comp. "Fifteen hundred, forty thousand feet. Twelve hundred, thirty-five thousand feet."

Their angle of descent was rather steep, about twenty degrees. He started to bring up the nose, and put in a little power, gliding in through the stratosphere.

Sim spoke up.

"When you get closer to the ground," he said. "Until then, conserve your kinetic energy."

"Bandits one and two in sight, three thousand kilometres, twelve o'clock, high," said the computer. "Painting, no lock. No lock."

"Don't want to stall her." Brendan was busy watching the pair in the front-upper view-screens.

Suddenly a wolfish grin broke through his focus. Sim, jarred by the sight, noted it for future reference.

"You love this! Gadzooks," Sim muttered.

"Notice where the terminator is?" Brendan asked Sim, referring to the line where the sun and shadow met.

The simulacrum nodded, but he didn't get it for a second.

"The sun comes up in the east around here," said Brendan, looking through the upper plates.

They were high and to the right.

The rasping of air particles was becoming obtrusive. It is funny how it meant more when the landing was up to you. All their previous landings were on different planets.

He picked up the valley he was looking for. The ship slid lower and lower. A brief flurry of clouds cleared from his forward screens. Now he could see something besides the radar contours of the land below. More S-turns, dropping a wing and sliding lower as if on impulse.

Suddenly mountain peaks surrounded them on all sides. He dropped down further, and thus from the view of those following the program on sensors. Hartle rammed the retros once more, watching for the enemy blips.

"They're staying high. They're going too fast!"

Hartle ignored Sim's commentary.

The pair of them watched as the enemy passed above, crossing from right to left a little as they did so.

"They're painting us," said the flight comp. "No lock."

"Right."

The targets cruised by overhead.

"See that big valley up ahead?" Hartle had a tight, gleeful tone in his voice.

"Yes..." said Sim. "But won't they orbit once and come out of the sun, and shoot you down as you practice landings?"

He seemed mystified.

"Watch this," said Brendan. "They shouldn't have fuckin' done that. We surprised them, and they still think I'm an amateur. Don't you worry, Simmy baby!"

"Eight thousand feet, four hundred fifty knots," said the flight comp.

Brendan watched the two blips nose over in relative terms. They were still flying level, but orbiting at about two hundred kilometres up.

"Five thousand feet, four hundred knots, ground coming up."

"Where's the sun now, Simmy baby?"

"Directly behind us," he said in sudden comprehension. "Brendan!"

Brendan powered up suddenly and blasted his way into the clouds again.

"They'll have to hook left just about three degrees in order to approach us. They'll come down and sneak in through the valley. Hold us in the clouds," Brendan ordered.

There was a brief silence.

"Missiles up, guns up."

"Acknowledged," said the flight computer. "Weapons armed and up. We are closing targets."

"Weather map indicates the clouds are ending," predicted the sim.

"Here we go."

"Targets, six hundred thirty kilometres," reported the computer.

Hartle had the undulating growl of the seeker-heads in his ears.

"We have good tone," said the computer. "Targets very hot...we have lock-up."

"Fox one and fox two," said Brendan. "Target number one please."

"Firing, running," said the computer. "Six seconds to impact."

They watched the pair of missiles fly right up the tail pipes of the enemy machine. There was a brief pause. Like salmon spawning up a raging torrent, they had that one final hurdle, the extremely high velocity gaseous discharge from the nozzles.

Then it blew up spectacularly. The right-hand ship suddenly broke up and away. From the black pall, chunks of smoking wreckage fell though endless sky, taking forever to reach the ground. The other enemy rolled over and headed down, headed for the deep canyons below. Brendan felt cold balls of sweat running down his armpits as he focused on the challenging and rapidly changing situation. He rammed more power to it, following his quarry down in with a yo-yo maneuver so he could stay fast and remain behind it.

The enemy ship broke right and left, trying to climb in a corkscrew turn into the sun, then it departed, flipping over backwards into inverted. It went end over end and then into a wild gyrating spin, nose coming up and down.

"Hold fire, computer."

"Whoa! Look at that!" Sim was fit to be tied. "What the hell happened to him?"

The enemy spacecraft was spinning down out of control. Suddenly the speakers opened up with a torrent of screaming. They looked at each other.

"Mayday, mayday, mayday." Someone in there was screaming hysterically.

"Jesus, Christ," said Brendan.

It seemed to take forever, and still that screaming came. Such a high-pitched keening sound, it was difficult to believe it was torn from a living throat.

"Huh!" said Hartle. "A high-speed stall."

The thing made impact in a puff of white dust and debris, looking like a splash in a mud puddle, but that was solid ground down there.

"Looks like a write-off. Flight computer, log two bandits waxed. He should have been able to recover that ship. They spend too much time in space, and too much time on autopilot."

The sim had no choice but to listen.

"They should have shot me in aero-braking, when I popped back up," added Brendan. "But they were out of range. And they weren't ready."

"What would you have done then?"

"Drop nose first into the atmosphere. I was all set up for it. Their missiles would have skipped and bounced off the atmosphere, and then while they re-oriented, I would have shot them down from behind and below," he explained. "Loop back around from underneath, roll out and bang-bang, you're dead."

The sim nodded slowly.

"I see."

"I suppose I could fire from inverted. It's true the missiles might have key-holed and gone erratic..."

"Did they never even have a chance, Brendan?"

"Fuck, no! Why should I be nice?"

"This may seem like a stupid question, in fact I suspect it will after I hear the answer, but how do you know they were bad guys?"

"One, they followed us here, two, they had no good answer when I asked them their business," explained Brendan. "Three, they should have asked if I needed assistance. When I came too close to the planet and then popped out, but not a peep out of them. Then, they did make the course correction to come out at the valley entrance. And they painted us with their radar..."

Sim sighed deeply.

"Sorry I asked," he muttered. "So let's see if I have this. You tucked under until you were facing them. Their radar couldn't lock us up."

"Right," said Brendan. "But the key thing is they were planning a gravity insertion where they simply reduce speed and allow planetary gravitation to capture them. They must have been doing twenty thousand. I had her down to sixteen or seventeen."

"Then you zig-zagged, right under them," said Sim.

"I was pretty sure they didn't have look-down-shot down capability," said Brendan. "I guess they just weren't ready. I dropped into a hole and let them roll right on over us."

"A tough maneuver to use that much thrust in an atmosphere," said the sim. "Especially in such tight quarters."

"As long as they thought I was crashing, they weren't going to shoot."

"And why is that?"

"Missiles are expensive. Combat is dangerous. Why not let the other guy kill himself if he seems determined enough?"

Sim had no answer and no questions. They were looking at a seriously damaged mountainside. The flight comp was replaying the tape mostly for Sim. Brendan had lost interest.

"Looks like he overcooked that last turn," said the computer. "Very light little engines in them babies..."

Brendan raised an eyebrow.

"They can't hold a candle to you," he agreed.

"What would you have done if he made the turn?" asked Sim.

"I have cannon. He didn't. We have vectored thrust and they don't. I would have shot him down one way or another."

"But what about the missiles, Brendan?" spluttered Sim. "I can't believe the risk you took."

"Heat-seekers won't lock onto the front of this baby, and their radar missiles can only acquire a target within the cone of the scanners, located in the nose of their ship," said Brendan. "By the time they were in range, I was out of the cone. All they could do then was to poke and prod with other systems, systems which aren't integrated with the missiles."

"This wreckage gives us an opportunity," said Sim. "We'll try to verify your theories, of course. That is to say, if we can find anything to analyze."

"If they get a proper fighter, instead of converted yachts, if they had any idea of what they were doing, we could be in trouble," said Brendan. "If they had brains, they could become dangerous! I don't begrudge you that."

"Hah!"

"Anyway, this gives us the opportunity to practice a few landings." He grinned.

"No, seriously, Brendan. If we can shake off the pursuit, it might be a good idea to disappear for a while," the sim said.

"Way ahead of you, buddy. For all intents and purposes, we've disappeared for the next few days."

"We have?"

"Think about it. They must have had orders to pursue us. Until we turn up, or until they turn up, no one knows what happened."

He brought the ship down to a thousand feet. Slowing down, he kept the nose high, in high-alpha flight, with the canard fore-planes grappling and wrestling with the air.

"When they don't return to base," asked Sim. "Won't their contact know?"

"He won't know anything," said Brendan. "He'll have no information whatsoever. It's called radio silence..."

He took them slowly over the wreckage.

"He'll be reluctant to send out a search team, that's for sure. He'll assume the kill was made, but the killers had to evade pursuit and go to ground, or something. He'll wait. See any markings? Any clues at all?"

"Radiation profiles indicate rather small engines, two of them." The flight computer gatehred data. "The black boxes are intact."

They waited.

"It's an unmarked ship, private registration, reported stolen according to archives, about ten years ago," reported the flight system.

"What about armaments?" asked Brendan.

"While cannon would shake it apart, they could certainly deploy a number of different missile systems. On a little ship like that we don't have to worry about particle beams or directed-energy weapons," according to Sim. "The other ship was larger, but we have less debris to analyze."

"Forty kilometres north," said the computer. "Two hot spots! More motors."

"Another frickin' yacht," concluded Brendan. "They're arming civilian craft. Nothing indicates a major threat to the Empire, nor an all-encompassing presence such as the Old Ones."

He inculcated the latter phrase with a drama that indicated his sense of ridicule.

"That's good news, I'll be happy to pass on the results of your analysis, Mr. Hartle."

Sim was getting snippy. The sim wasn't exactly overjoyed at Hartle's adrenalin high.

"You'll observe radio silence until I say otherwise."

Sim shut up for thirty seconds while he digested this.

"Okay, Brendan. Let's teach you how to land this ship," said Sim rather morosely.

"Yay!" said the flight computer in an ironic tone.

Hartle took it up to a little over Mach one, but stayed down low, keeping mountains, hills and the sides of gorges close at all times. The terrain-following radar kept them out of trouble, as his reaction time really wasn't good enough for this kind of flying. He put ten thousand kilometres between himself and the scene of the crime.

"If I was them, I'd wait until Brendan Hartle reappeared at that Council Meeting, or just try again later."

"What are you going to do?" asked Sim.

"Practice a few landings, just like I said."

Chapter Thirteen

Hartle practiced touch-and-goes...

Hartle practiced touch-and-goes with ferocious concentration. He practiced take-offs and landings over, and over again. Early in the process, he learned to relax, which helped.

With the aid of the computer, he located a grassy plain that stretched a good six hundred kilometres east and west, and over a thousand north and south. He looked it over carefully, making sure the map jived with the actual terrain. He didn't want to get tripped up by even the shallowest gully.

Once the first landing was complete, he taxied along on the skids, using bursts of main engine power to keep the thing from sinking into any unduly soft spots. He slithered and skidded a full eight kilometres. Spinning right, he went back to the point of landing, powered up and took off again.

He made left and right-hand circuits at low level and checked out the marks on the ground. During a low pass at three hundred metres, an altitude which barely registered on the instruments, he dropped a series of flares a kilometre from his improvised runway and set a few small, smoky grass fires to indicate wind direction.

"Flight comp, estimated wind speed fifty-five kilometres."

"Vector two-seventy," the machine advised.

The runway was at about two-fifty. The landing was dead easy, his high 'pucker factor' unjustified. Landing on a gently undulating plain of tall grass was a little queasy, until you found the ground, and suitably marked it. It reminded him of a story. Bush pilots in Alaska kept piles of spruce branches in their aircraft. Not too sure he believed that story. In whiteout conditions, they dropped them out to see where the ground was.

"Have you ever seen a Piper Cub up close?"

"No, Brendan, I haven't," admitted Sim.

"There's a little door-panel that drops down, and the window lifts up," he said. "Then it clips or locks in position. Some guy offered me a ride once, and I couldn't even get in the damned thing."

"So what are you saying?"

"This is one awesome flying machine."

"Why, thank you," said the flight computer.

Brendan and Sim laughed.

Brendan practiced touch and go landings. He practiced low-altitude flight, at high and low speed, and he practiced aerobatics. He pulled heavy gees, time and time again, with no g-suit available.

In the evenings when he wasn't flying he went for a five-kilometre run after supper, and tried to cut back on his smoking. He cut back to three beers a day.

During daylight, he flew his brains out, until he could fly inverted for hours, do rolling circles, and land the ship on a dime using all the vectored thrust, canard, double-delta leading-edge-extensions-potential at his disposal. He could come down at seven hundred knots, pull up on the nose, and bleed off the speed and just drive her onto the field.

He figured, with a strong enough wind, he could literally land vertically. It might take a stiff breeze of about sixty kilometres per hour. He was sure he could do it, but the weather held fine, so he never tried.

Brendan ate steak twice that week, and cut down on fatty foods. He had a certain hankering for some good old liver and onions, but who knew when he might see home cooking again. Just like the man and the simulacrum, the ship was adapting as well. Brendan used the flight computer's assistance, and a little help from Sim. He added more screens in the cockpit, re-arranging a keypad so it would always be near, even when his body was totally strapped down. He customized the data displays onscreen, and made a few more changes to the set-up. If the bastards were expecting him to go sightseeing, they were mistaken.

It was getting on for nightfall. Hartle sat on the ground beside the ship on a blanket he had pulled out of storage. A tiny wisp of steam rose from a ventral orifice. He was doing a laundry, which on such a small ship, put a lot of moisture in the air. All the tools had been properly stowed in their clamps. It would soon be time to get out of there.

"I want to walk through all maintenance chores and systems checks."

During the day, he had cleaned the guns, refilled the ammo drums, lubricated the drive chains, topped up a few fluids here and there, and cleaned the sensor panels on the nose. He pumped out the holding tank, re-constituted the goo with water and a bag of microbial starter. Everything seemed good, and it paid to be able to understand your machinery. A hundred metres away, a herd of ungulates with musk-oxen-like bodies and six legs, with antlers, stood watching him. Ruminating as they chewed their cud and nursed the young, who were covered with a blanket of long, soft-looking pink fur, they seemed docile enough. The adults were a deeper burgundy wine colour, but the whole herd seemed very tame, as if they were used to ships and bipeds.

"March twenty-sixth, spring must be breaking at home," he said. "I used to go out behind the house and listen to the grass wake up...it makes a sound, it really does."

He pissed on the tiny fire built from sticks and grasses, and some kind of dried dung, and headed for the ship. Other than Centralia, there was no place else to go. A couple of hours later they left the surface and went into orbit around the planet.

"Let's make sure everybody sees us."

"We're not picking up anything nearby," said the sim. "But they could be there."

"He wouldn't use a moon of this planet," said Brendan. "It's too close. Then we could get away on the opposite side. He must be further away where he could watch the entire system."

There were three planets outside the orbit of Welstnashta, the prairie planet, and they all had moons. There were two smaller inner bodies, and this is where Hartle turned his attention. They were both moonless, with high surface temperatures.

"Locate and mark." The computer put red rings around them onscreen.

He examined their positions, determined their speed of orbit and rotation, magnetic field, proximity of dust clouds, and looked for nearby cometary bodies. He had observed that the tiny planets closest to a star rarely had moons. He wondered if there were any binary planets in this proximity to a sun, but hadn't found any so far. Basically just curious, he was looking for two planets sharing an orbit without actually rotating about one another. Brendan's tired brain had begun to wander lately.

"If I was him, I'd keep the sun at my back. Sit on the pole of a planet with a very fast rotation. I could watch the whole system. If I was him, I'd be on or near that one—the one with no atmosphere," said Brendan. "See how it dips below the plane of the ecliptic."

"The other object will go behind the star soon," acknowledged Sim. "He would be subject to a great deal of interference."

Hartle pointed his ship in the direction of the centre of the system and the planet in question, knowing it was a gamble.

"Orbit, forty-seven million kilometres."

They sped across the intervening space.

"Your intentions should be pretty clear," said Sim.

"It's all part of the plan."

"Oh, we have a plan." The pair of them watched their screens.

"Got him," Sim said.

"He's running," said Hartle. "Silly bugger. He could play possum and wait for us. He should have tried to bluff."

"What do you mean?"

"Stay in place and claim legitimate business," explained Brendan. "They tend to think like criminals. Amateur criminals try to evade detection or even just capture. A real pro prefers to avoid conviction. They really don't care what the neighbours think."

Sim nodded.

"I see the distinction," he said.

Brendan slowed, waiting to see what the mouse would do.

"Is he slowing?"

"No, yet neither is he accelerating at the rate he should," Sim reported.

Sim, like Brendan, was cautious.

"Two possibilities. One, he's damaged or had component failure, two, it's a trap."

"What are the odds?" asked Brendan. "Okay, I get you, Sim."

The longer he thought about it, the closer they got, the more danger, or potential danger, there was.

He threw the ship into a wild and crazy maneuver, calling to the flight computer to vent something, anything. He kept the ship in a tight, flat spin, gyrating rapidly. He was on the verge of blackout. Brendan put in some control movements and felt her slowing. With his temples throbbing, his vision blurred as a grey smear went past the view-screens.

"Pumping liquid reserve tanks, dumping sanitary holding tanks, venting excess liquid oxygen," called Sim. "We can refill on Centralia."

They spun ever slower. Hartle ordered the flight comp to lock the controls and shut the engines down, but the laws of inertia and momentum kept the spin-rate nice and high. The engines powered down gently. He could now breathe again as the ship spun in space, end over end over end. There was more of the gas cloud and condensed, frozen water vapour around and behind them.

"Pump something else," he told the sim. "Shut down the navigation lights."

"Quarry is slowing," reported the computer.

Apparently, they had nothing else to vent.

"Discontinue auxiliary systems, shut down everything but optical sensors."

Now there was no gravity in the ship, and it darkened considerably, the interior lights and the few systems operating on internal battery power only.

"Hull temperature falling," said Sim.

Weightless, Hartle watched and waited, staring at the screens, as the straps tugged on his shoulders.

"Enemy ship has stopped. It is now turning," said Sim.

"Okey, dokey," murmured Brendan. "Wish I could have a beer."

It was a better idea to put on a couple of thick sweaters, so he did. They waited two hours for the alien ship to make its approach. Brendan could almost imagine his enemies, intent upon their victim, watching their own screens, trying to figure him out.

"How quickly can we start up?"

"Seconds, you know that," said Sim.

"Yeah, just checking."

He could almost see it. They were arguing, trying to decide whether to board him, blast him, or get a higher authority to make a decision. Still they crept closer.

"Someone will have to make a decision."

He remembered his early days in the industrial door business, back in his early twenties. No one ever wanted to take responsibility. The ship still drifted. Soon his nose would point in the general direction of the enemy ship.

"Any doubts?" he asked. "If it's a rescue or salvage effort, they've made no attempt to contact us."

"Maybe their communications are out," suggested Sim.

"Why the tippy-toe approach?"

Sim just shook his head. No real answer.

"Missiles up, guns up," Brendan ordered. "They're in the zone."

"It's yours," said the flight computer.

"Get me a link!"

"Open," said the flight comp.

"Unidentified ship, Welstnashta system, what are your intentions? You have ten seconds."

No reply. He let nine seconds pass.

"Fox one." Brendan tapped the button.

The weapon launched. They watched the little bobbling fireball, all that could be seen of the projectile, as it sped towards the enemy ship. They were making a hard turn to starboard, relative to his own observation.

"They're running!" shouted Sim.

Too late, the vessel blew up with a sudden blue-white pop like a camera's flash unit. Hartle powered up his ship fully, all the instruments came on again and he cruised slowly towards the center of where they had been. Stuff sped by in tumbling free-fall.

They examined some of the debris up close, and placed a marker buoy at the site, careful to match the velocity of the buoy with the wreckage, which still had its original momentum plus a few new ones. It was just an expanding cloud, with no particular destination in mind. Sim busied himself getting a scrambled message off to Centralia. Hartle sat in his seat with the Princess's scarf around his neck, cat in his lap and a beer in a special seat-pocket holder of his own design. He lit up the first smoke in some hours.

"Yeah, that's a little better."

"Where do we go from here?" Sim asked.

"I don't know. Hopefully the forensic exam of the wreckage will tell us something we didn't already know." Brendan gave an expressive shrug. "Other than that, I'd like to see a couple more planets before the Council meeting. I'm almost sure that something will come up."

"Why don't we just cruise for a while," suggested Sim. "We still have a little more time."

Chapter Fourteen

Hartle studied the prophecies...

Hartle studied the prophecies. The ship idled along in a lane of traffic that went on for a few dozen million kilometres. It was a mixed bag of private traffic, small tramp freighters, ore ships, and grain ships owned by huge consortia. Some of them were probably family men commuting to and from work, dwarfed by the interstellar trucking industry.

The sight was a compelling one. Hartle was beginning to understand a little of the size and complexity of the Empire. Yet it seemed too simple, too pat. In the ancient Roman Empire, hard currency flowed out of the realm to purchase luxuries from the East and to pay the troops on the frontiers. While a limited supply of that money must have trickled back into the coffers of the government, they exported little to the barbarians, or to the spice-lands of the East. It was a question of foreign exchange, and balance of trade. Troops had to be paid in cash, and surely spent much if not all of the money at the frontier. Collecting taxes was always a problem for the ancients. The redistribution of that wealth based solely on patronage, whim, and prerogatives of birth. When a Roman army disbanded, land had to be seized from legitimate, local owners to settle the retirees. Taxation was 'farmed' out to private contractors, none of whom were honest or trustworthy. Canada was some kind of lineal descendent of Rome! If you drew a line from ancient Rome, right through modern Canada, and extended it outwards, somewhere along that line lay the Centralian Empire.

The big question was, how far 'out there' were they?

His own planet was his only model. Brendan figured, using simple logic and common sense, that if the third world was experiencing a rise in the standard of living, and the 'second world' was rapidly developing, something would have to give somewhere else. It seemed a logical inference that perhaps the industrialized nations of the west might see a rise in poverty in their own spheres of influence. Hell, his own country was a good example. The rise of prosperity in the west had been counter-balanced by declining prosperity in Ontario and Quebec, two former 'have' provinces. Brendan dug deep to remember stuff he had read and thought about over the years. And the two provinces had a huge number of seats in Parliament. Hence, recent so-called western separation movements had arisen in scattered, disparate, but vocal groups. Economists always worried about the overall size of the economy. The redistribution of wealth necessary to keep any society going was beyond their ken. They would deny the truth of it, but it was truth nevertheless.

How did this half-baked economic theory actually fit in with the Galactic Empire?

He lay on his bunk reading the translation from the ancient tongue in which it had been transcribed, eons or epochs ago. Sim was right. It was hard going. Even for a guy who read the Bible one long, dreary winter. But, at least then, he had some idea of what they were talking about.

The Prophecies were thousands and thousands of lines, all rhymed and rhythmed to the last degree in the original. English translation made it even more ungainly to read. It reminded Brendan of the style of Francis Parkman, author of a book on Montcalm and Wolfe. They had a real turgid style of speaking back then, at least the gentlemen, the more pretentious ones did. He barely managed to work his way through it.

Tossing the volume aside, he stood and stretched as the cat looked on. She was well fed, happy and content here aboard ship. What a relief! It was a mad impulse to bring her, and it was only once they were a few light years from home, when he wondered if he was letting himself in for a big ordeal.

What if an alien landed on Earth and tried to figure out society by reading the Bible?

He remembered a time in a one-bedroom, eighteenth floor apartment in Hamilton. He shared it with a cat in heat. He was unemployed for sixteen weeks that winter.

'Not good,' but the result was, he wouldn't take a cat if it wasn't fixed.

People acted like they were doing you a favour.

'You love cats,' they said.

Then they dumped a pregnant one on you, if you weren't careful.

Brendan drank from a big mug labeled Oktoberfest '86. In it was some ice, Coke from the galley fridge and a triple shot of Canadian Club from his cabin. The rye was the most overrated he had ever tasted, but consumers bought it because they liked the name. They liked themselves.

Sim knew that Brendan had been drinking heavily all day. He was beginning to get a little concerned, very much aware that Hartle had been through a stressful period in his little alien life. Other people's sufferings seemed so trivial at times. But as the man stood at the window looking out over the galaxy, Sim was aware that he could be pushed too far. He might break, and they still needed him. Or, he might snap, which he suspected with someone like Brendan might be a far different thing altogether.

"Funny how you can feel so powerless," said Brendan. "Even when you have the galaxy by the ass."

Or thought you had, he reasoned.

Sure, he had a spaceship. He had big problems to go along with it.

True, he had seen things no man had ever seen before—and there was no one to share it with. He had a body that might pack it all in at a moment's notice. He felt another twinge of pain.

"Yes, it's all coming up roses." He sang to the empty room. "Except that you're neck deep in shit just to get a look at 'em."

What was the point of thinking about the Princess? Even if she wanted to, there was virtually no chance. Not with a guy like him, right? He had no illusions. He knew what life was. He knew what reality was...right? What is reality? Where does it begin, and where does it end? And how can you tell the difference?

How much fun could a man have before he got blown away? Was it really worth it?

If it was absolutely necessary, he could run away, whether on Centralia or otherwise. He could just live the life, the underground life that exists in all major cities. Or, he could just bolt and run for it on some pioneering alien planet and try to live off the land. Not pleasant to contemplate, but it was better than execution.

Sometimes it was easy enough to see which way the wind was blowing. Sometimes you couldn't.

The trick was in knowing when to walk away—when to leave. And not look back, not even once. This wasn't the sort of thing he could discuss with Sim.

"I thought life was meaningless on Earth. But I was wrong. Out here among the stars, that's where it's meaningless."

"But why is that, Brendan? Isn't life precious?"

"Because it's so damned lonely," he said. "Actually, water's the most precious thing in the universe."

Sim ignored this statement.

"Singed by the flame, Hartle?" The sim still had the humourous set to the eyes that had been evident from the start. "Flew a little too high? Did you get a little too near the sun?"

Sim kept pecking at him.

"Did the sun melt the wax in your wings?"

Stunned into true anger for the first time in days, Brendan wasn't faking it.

"Walk north until your fucking hat floats!"

He clenched his fists. He had just figured out another reason for a sim not to have a physical body. It would get damaged from time to time. Sims cost money. Eyes narrowed in anger, with the skin all puckered up around the rims, he clenched his fists, and sucked back more cold rye and Coke. He must try not to crush the handle of the glass.

"What are you implying? What are you getting at?" Then he was shouting. "You son of a bitch, you got something to say, spit it out!"

"Brendan." Sim tried to be conciliatory. "You seem to be in a state of delayed shock. Maybe you should eat something."

Sim winked out of existence. He disappeared and didn't come back for several hours. Brendan had plenty of time to think about things. He just sat there heavily in the seat, watching the view. Finally he stirred towards the galley.

Chapter Fifteen

He assembled a plate of bacon and eggs...

He began to assemble a plate of bacon and eggs. Placing a half pound of bacon in the pan with a little water, he put a lid on it and some heat to it. He fooled around with the ship's coffeemaker. While doing routine maintenance on the planet, he had turned up the heater element, and wondered if it would do any good.

He chopped up an onion, put it in with the bacon, peeled and sliced potatoes, and laid them in the pan off to one side. The bacon was about half done now.

In a measuring cup, he cracked out four eggs. Pouring in a little milk, he whipped that up just so. Setting it aside, he listened to the mixture in the pan crackling and sizzling. The cat came in. She sat down and began licking her crotch.

"Good girl."

She jumped up on the table to await her just desserts. Brendan was always good to her. Too much so, in fact, she needed to look after her girlish figure. She was getting a little pudgy around the middle. She regarded her master with love in her eyes and a purring in her body cavities.

Brendan ate in silence, comforted only by 'the Damned Cat,' as he had been calling her lately.

"Here you go." He handed her a crunched-up half-slice of bacon.

"At least we have each other, eh, baby?" Yeah, the cat thought. Bacon!

He still hadn't cheered up, not much anyway, after a couple of fat cannons. He lay on the bed smoking his Player's Smooth Lights knowing he would not sleep. For reasons he knew not why, he felt like crying. The cat came in and sat on his chest. She was rubbing her muzzle up against his eighth-inch-long stubble. Soon his chin was wet with her snot, and he pushed her off to the side.

"It's just you and me now, Baby."

The next morning he lay there looking up at the skylights, on top of the covers, still with all of his clothes on. He felt wet and sticky all over. Perhaps he had a touch of fever?

That would be bad news. Sim did not appear immediately as he usually did, so Hartle assumed he was in the doghouse yet. That suited him just fine. A guy could only do so much. He could only take so much.

Ignoring the hollowness in his belly, Hartle checked out the control room readouts as was his wont upon awakening. He made sure they hadn't strayed from the traffic lanes in the night. All okay. He had a quick shower. Soon he was dressed and had his marijuana bag out. He had a plastic tray, along with his rolling papers on his lap in the control seat. There was a beer beside him and things felt better than the night before.

There was a lassitude about him today. He felt it, he knew it, but could do nothing about it. When Sim still didn't reappear, Hartle lit up the joint right there in the control room. Let Sim be damned! It was Hartle's control room, his and his alone.

The sudden realization stung him.

He might not get a chance like this in a long time, he thought abruptly.

That was when he took his fate into his own hands. Leaving the main channel of the great shipping lanes, Hartle struck off on his own, not caring where he went. The star maps would guide him.

Not to mention his trusty old notebook.

"You know Simmy baby, you guys aren't so smart after all. If you fuckers won't tell me anything, I'll find out for myself." He was talking to the walls. "Besides, I'm tired of looking at you."

There was no answer, no sign that his departure from registered flight plan had been noticed. His screen showed several objects the system was tracking, one of them apparently a military patrol vessel assigned to guard this sector.

They ignored him too.

The scout ship blew along like a 1960's British sports car with a big American V-8 shoehorned into it. He had some fun with her, throwing it into big, slippery curves that pushed him from one side and then the other. His head got really heavy after a while. He stopped from sheer tiredness. Maintaining 'level flight' briefly, his head regained equilibrium. Then he went again. When he felt the higher levels of consciousness going, he tried to fight against it. There was nothing out here to hit, and the flight comp was backing him up with avoidance protocols...you were awake but blind sometimes...your tingling fingers could still feel the stick. You could feel the weight of the body in the seat. You could almost imagine what was all happening around you without actually seeing it. Back up out of it...pull again. Check the star fields and the screens.

Once again, he felt blood pressure falling in his head, heart working up a storm, little black dots in his ever-shrinking cone of vision. Laughing, he settled down a bit, noting the cat had her claws firmly dug into the fabric of the other seat. The expression on her face was priceless, and he remembered how he found her after the zero-g maneuvers of the day before. Her fur stuck out in all directions, fluffed up in three hundred sixty degrees as she floated along, clawing wildly at the air, eyes as big as saucers.

"Sorry baby, you can relax now."

She reluctantly retracted her claws.

"Meowr-ripp?"

"Yep." Hartle agreed. "What planet would you like to see next? Earwig Nine? Twerpel Six? Fucksville Two?"

The question was asked in a serious tone.

What difference did it make? Still, it doesn't pay to be too impulsive.

"Meep."

"Okay, Fucksville Two it is," he grinned. "Any port in a storm, eh, Baby."

He talked to the walls for a while.

"Nobody's fault but mine." Brendan sang in a creaky falsetto.

No Sim!

"Okay, fuck ya!" Hartle roared, as he took the ship on another tangent.

Yowling like a banshee, noted the Damn Cat. She gingerly worked her way to the cabin door, not sure whether to expect more unnerving maneuvers. She hid under the bed. Tender ears stung from the abuse. Hartle kept singing.

Chapter Sixteen

They watched the big screens in dismay...

Sim, Trent and several others watched the big screens in dismay.

Hartle was flipping out.

"He's going mad." Clive was another Council appointee, part of the civilian oversight on this project. "Look at him. Listen to him!"

His pudgy frame was tense with expectation. He hadn't witnessed these scenes when they occurred previously. He had only been briefed on them. For some reason his skin felt damp and clammy. He mopped his brow ridge and curled his tail up close for comforting reassurance. This was truly amazing. It was a privilege to see this. All those years of theory put to the test. The proposal process alone took two and a half years. It was all coming to fruition!

Hartle had been digging in one of the library databanks, and music was blaring out of the audio monitors. Brendan abruptly turned up the volume.

"Can you turn it down, or filter it out?"

Trent queried the technicians, with one hand on GeeBee's shoulder, unconsciously squeezing hard. She ignored it, intent on the data-stream.

"Hartle has made an interesting selection," Sim informed the group. "He's playing Rush, '2112,' side one, at full blast."

The committee members awaited the significance of that.

"In police work, even the vaguest hint can be of some assistance." From time to time, the others needed reminding of the purpose of the mission. Too often, they saw the work in purely political terms.

"We are the priests of the Temples of Syrinx," they heard. "Our great computers...fill the hallowed halls..."

"Is his subconscious mind trying to tell us something he cannot directly express?" Admiral Hrickletl was the debonair scion of a fine old Ducal Family from Antares' fourth planet, the one they called 'The Big One.'

Hricketl had an unprintable nickname due to his left-handedness and an importunate habit of picking his nose and wiping it on the back of his pants at the knee. The story dated back a few centuries. There were other stories, perhaps less credible. Sim had never actually seen it. It was all in his file, the most ancient part of which was a voluminous pile of yellowing parchment, but boring reading for the most part.

"Knowing Hartle, he could just like the song," he advised.

"What a nice contented world, let the banners be unfurled."

"Is he mocking us?" They all froze, then relaxed as if nothing had happened, unable to meet each other's eyes for a moment.

"He has already been useful," admonished Trent. "But what a tool to work with."

"He seems to have a mind of his own," said Sim.

This was a different Sim. This Sim had a body, a real live body, and stood as an equal with the other people in the room, or perhaps slightly more than equal.

"Look at skin conductance!" said a technician. "Look at respiration and heart-rate, look at the Alpha and Beta waves."

"Yeah, but what does it all mean?" asked Belinda Weo, and someone in the background snickered.

She blushed a little but went on.

"In lay terms? What does it mean?"

"Whatever's going on in there, he believes in it strongly," said GeeBee. "It's enough to scare him."

The difficulty of course lay in interpreting the data.

"Turn it up," said Weo on impulse.

"Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! Attention all Planets of the Solar Federation!"

They sat breathlessly, the crescendo at hand.

"We have assumed control! We have assumed control! We have assumed control!" Then it faded out.

Brendan was seeking out more music, and they watched entries scroll past as he searched. With a constant feed from the ship, they saw what he saw and heard what he heard. The only question, what was Brendan thinking?

"I'm not too sure I like the sounds of that," said Hrickletl with no trace of facetiousness.

Clive and Weo exchanged glances. The dear old Admiral had gone right to the crux of the matter.

"Ladies and gentlemen, he's weird but I like him," announced Sim in his role as the senior Imperial Representative. "I'm prepared to continue the experiment!"

The others muttered amongst themselves. A decision had been made.

"I figured something out." Hartle shrieked at his screens. "Sim...Trent...Constance...none of you are real..."

Brendan was yelling in drunken glee.

He slammed the controls again, and lucky for him the compensators could handle the extra gees. Otherwise, he and the cat would have been splattered all over the walls. Sim and the others watched in amazement.

"What's he trying to do? Does he know we're watching?" Trent looked at Sim, who could only answer with a shrug.

"I'm expected back," said another diminutive figure. "The Emperor will be curious, to say the least. Now that you're here, what should I tell him?"

Salmsoni's bald pate gleamed dully in the soft strip lighting, the shine of his smoky orange pince-nez hiding his eyes, which were a piercing red with black vertical slits.

Sim sighed.

"I think he's just letting off some steam, as the saying goes. Or maybe he really is going mad. We've pushed him pretty hard after all."

"A great deal of stressful activity," put in a technician, Bithwell.

"And we have picked up a few crumbs," said Clive, in his role as the Undersecretary for Research and Development, Special Projects Section.

His day-to-day activities at the Institute were mostly sedentary, even clerical up until now. But this was exciting.

"Harrumph!" Nine hundred year old Admiral Vrikop was about to make some obscure point. Sim tried to suppress a yawn and wondered when he could get back to the ship and Hartle.

"Personally, I find it repugnant," the old fart paused to gather breath before the steamroller got going. "Do we really need to sit around listening to this sub-sentient critter while he insults the Princess and the Family."

Sim made a hand signal and the tech people turned down the volume so they could talk. Hartle kept up with his antics onscreen, playing air guitar silently as the discussion went on oblivious.

Sim sighed, searching for just the right words.

"And yet, we have picked up a few crumbs. We know more about structures and methods of operation. And the ongoing investigations, these are promising leads. Hartle's intuitive leaps of the imagination are unique among all the subjects tested."

"It takes some getting used to," admitted Trent.

For a moment, the councilor was transfixed by the sight of Brendan moon-walking backwards, and playing an imaginary bass guitar.

"The only trouble is deciphering what his subconscious mind knows, that his conscious mind doesn't, before he does," noted the technician. "The present phenomena would be a case in point."

"So we allow this cretin to wander our Empire, running up a tab," grumbled Vrikop, and Hrickletl nodded in agreement.

Sim was convinced that Brendan was on the verge of a breakthrough of some kind. The difficulty lay in convincing the others.

"You have made the nubbin of the matter very clear." Sim used the formal tone of address to a senior citizen.

Neither of the Fleet men was placated.

"Look at all the ships he's destroyed," said Hrickletl. "We should have tried to recover them. Now they're lost forever."

"And where would we have gone to look for them, Admiral?" asked Belinda Weo. "We've been chasing stolen ships all over the place for eighty years, and this is about as close as we have ever gotten. Except for two that were in fact destroyed when capture was attempted."

You had to be nice to the older politicians. They could be so obstreperous, especially when you needed continued funding for a half-completed project. Hartle spilled his drink.

One of the small team of tech people sat up in his console chair.

"Hey. That's a pretty clear indicator of intuitive visualizations." He had an enthusiastic tone. "That runs about a ninety-three-point-oh-nine-to-one probability that something will happen."

The tech was a non-descript Centraloid being in brown coveralls, with patches on his shoulders to indicate security clearances.

"He's going to fall and break his neck, most likely," said Snoby, his immediate junior in seniority.

Snoby was a being from Ota-u, easily distinguished by the ring of eight tentacles around the upper ridge of the skull. Their ruby red lips, pointed chins, six compound eyes in deep sockets, and slit ears made them characters no matter where they went or what company they found themselves in. The Ota-u had a sense of humour about themselves, referring to their race as 'good-looking.'

"At least he's denied those ships to our enemies." Trent argued as if it were a big revelation.

Knowing Trent, it probably was.

Trent wasn't much in the thinking department. His election victories were the result of hiring a good manager and riding a well-chosen wave of public sentiment. The wave was chosen by the manager, if Sim's guess was of any import.

Thank you. Sim prayed to his gods silently. Now, if only the old admirals would shut up. Sure enough, Hrickletl was nodding off, and Vrikop seemed embarrassed for him, although a sprightly and chipper old fellow himself. Whining air entered and exited his lungs in a manner peculiar to the species. The Admiral Hrickletl was an Antarean, and they had evolved in a semi-aquatic environment that flooded routinely. When they fell asleep sitting up, the autonomic aquatic system kicked in. He will be gone for days now, Sim thought inconsequentially, then unexpectedly caught Weo's eye with a laughing gleam in it. Was she thinking what he was thinking? How odd. You work with the tools you have, he noted internally.

Vrikop was quite a picture himself, having evolved on a planet where the atmosphere had a jelly-like consistency, which was why they always had the little bottle and nasal harness rigged on their faces. Apparently he was a great swimmer, which Sim thought a useless skill.

"He's drifting out of range of the network." With a note of alarm the technician got their collective attention.

He picked up a phone, spoke briefly, and made a note on a pad.

"He'll probably drift back into another limb of the coverage zone soon," he added hopefully.

Sim and the others looked on as he punched button after button speculatively on the board. Still, nothing came up. Snoby shrugged.

"Nothing yet."

"Expect the unexpected, with Brendan," said Sim with a wince.

"That's torn it," rasped Krill. "You can't get back to monitor the situation, now."

Sim looked at Krill, then back to the boards and the screens. Krill's shaggy white eyebrows lowered over the icy, sea-coloured orbits, contrasting with his vellum-like yellow skin tones. His jaw worked back and forth in thought. The realization hit that Krill was right.

"Shit!" Yet Sim was relieved to be out of the isolation tank and back into his real body.

He thought of his wife and kids. Making up his mind, he spoke.

"Call me if anything happens. I'll be at home."

And then Sim was gone, striding out of the conference room with arms swinging purposefully. The admiral came awake again. Weo briefly wondered if he had really been asleep at all.

"Poor Sim," he murmured. "It must be awful to be cooped up with a critter like that for days at a time."

"The body suspended in the tank also undergoes certain stresses," pointed out Krill. "No wonder he looked like hell."

"Ladies and gentlemen, it appears to me that the mission has already gotten way out of its original parameters." Hrickletl was caught in the middle of this speech by a big yawn.

Murmurs and mumbles echoed around the room.

Krill went to the hot-drink-maker in the little cubicle. Since the tech men had nothing to watch on the screens, Snoby stood up and stretched, and reached for a proffered foamy cup of beverage.

"That's true. This is kind of getting out of hand."

"It was the unexpected that we were looking for, sir." This from Snoby.

"Tell me about the stresses on Sim," asked Krill. "As far as you may."

"Well, I can tell you he was working eighteen hour days supervising Mr. Hartle." Snoby stood regarding the slight figure of Krill.

It was amazing to imagine how much power could be concentrated in one person. Yet the only real clue lay in Krill's posture, which positively reeked of a quiet, unmistakable confidence. He was used to obedience.

"And his body?"

"His body's fine. Oh, maybe a little wet and wrinkled-looking. We use a kind of substitute amniotic fluid and suspend the body in the tank, at least for the longer trips," said the technical assistant. "Water works well for short tests. It's the psychological displacement that wreaks havoc, on the body as well as the mind."

"And?"

"When you come back out, it's like being a new-born baby. Your skin is really quite hypersensitive, the bowels..."

Krill waved a hand. This was too much information all at once.

"Right."

"Well, to be honest with you, I sort of wondered who was going to break first," admitted Snoby.

Belinda Weo rejoined them. She spoke up now.

"We were after a primal instinct."

"And we got it!" bellowed Hrickletl.

"No need for the reminder," allowed the technical assistant in a low voice.

"So we did, but the thing is far more intelligent than our previous expectations," said Krill. "All of the other test subjects...we had no idea of the sheer potential. This gentleman is a psychopathic killer of the third kind, and he was just waiting for a chance to get out."

"The other specimens never demonstrated that our technologies might be so accessible, acquirable...so immediately useful," Weo admitted. "Among previous test subjects, obvious leadership types either froze in terror, or wiped themselves out pretty early."

More than one simply flew into the ground at speeds the compensators simply couldn't handle. Probably suicides, but that is difficult to prove.

"In our attempt to go back to the basics, and there's no question we needed to, I concede," said Krill. "We seem to have come up with more than we bargained for."

"No one could have foreseen the speed with which events have unfolded," said the technician.

Snoby paused.

"You know, according to the original schedule, Hartle shouldn't even have arrived yet!"

No wonder their perceptions were thrown into disarray.

"I say this critter is dangerous," said Admiral Vrikop, joining the huddle, and perceiving perhaps erroneously that no one seemed to pay attention to him anymore.

Fools!

"You know, Hartle walked right up to me at the ball," Krill said. "He turned and looked and our eyes locked. It was pure coincidence, although I was there to sneak a surreptitious look at him. A very curious feeling...like I was caught, or something. It gave me a creepy sensation."

"Well. We knew strange things would begin happening when he entered our frame of reference, no matter who got to him first," Snoby said. "The key thing is to stay ahead of the game...if we can."

Chapter Seventeen

Hartle parked beside a derelict freighter...

Hartle parked beside a derelict freighter out of curiousity. There was also the fact that he was alone and needed to sleep sometimes. Much of the ship had been stripped over the ages.

Some of the major components were there, held together by structural members, pipes, and wiring harnesses. Odd bits of sheet metal remained on patches of the old hulk. The covering material could have been the most valuable part of the salvage. The engines, fuel tanks, pumps and things may have been simply too old, or even dangerous to tamper with. He could see that a lot of stuff, for example all the bridge computers, ripped out and wires hanging, were gone.

What was left wasn't even good for souvenirs.

There was graffiti, no doubt sprayed on by passing tourists, on a cracked and splintered window of the ship's forward compartments. It was a futuristic version of the classic junked car in the woods, complete with holes, dents and punctures from the alien equivalent of .22's and BB guns. It had the usual hole in the car door where someone tried out a 12-gauge to see what happened, and the usual hole punched through the engine block with a .357.

It made him think. Back home, there were all kinds of wing-nuts wandering about in the woods, in the movies. As he stared across, peeking in through the shattered panels on the high-powered optical periscope which lowered from the top of the cabin on his request, he asked the computer to translate some of the writings.

'Wenji and Ryoby, 899,' and stuff like that.

"Is that a date?"

He wondered what the numerals meant. The flight computer told him it was in the ancient Snythinian dating system, based on a Zodiac of twenty-eight constellations. Their world-view dated from approximately nine-hundred thirty-four Centralian years previously. It had been written approximately thirty-five years ago.

"Thank you."

This would be a good place to hide, at least for a while. With luck, he could squeeze it for a few more days. Hartle had been going non-stop since the moment he stepped into the ship back in the hangar in T.O.

What he needed was about forty-eight hours of continuous sleep. After setting up some alarms and warning bells, he went into his cabin. Since the ship was parked up tight against the old hulk, he figured a casual passer-by would skip on past without a second look.

He dreamed crazy dreams, dreams of love, and dreams of conquest. He dreamed he was being chased. He dreamed he was a sparrow. He awoke several times. The worst one was when an eye appeared in a blank wall, a wall he recognized from his bedroom back home...that one made him break into a cold sweat.

Every time he went back to sleep, the dreams returned. They came back into his brain, but by morning seemed to have worked themselves out of their final frenzy. The last dream was a warm and friendly one. It involved a Princess. He was a toad. Waking suddenly, he still remembered part of the last dream. He was a toad! All the others of the night were gone, leaving nothing more than a bad taste in his mouth. For a brief moment he was in bed with a Princess. She faded away.

He realized he was lying in bed, in a spaceship, hiding near an ancient wreck, with a sense of dread, and half the people in the universe were trying to kill him. Not unnaturally, his erection went away pretty darned quick, perhaps mercifully so. It wouldn't do to get caught whacking off if Sim came back suddenly.

He might never live it down.

"What time is it?"

"Eleven thirty a.m. Centralia Mean Time," said the desk clock in its flat monotone.

"Huh."

Rolling out of bed with alacrity, this was the latest he had slept since the whole adventure began.

"Well, kitty, it's another day and another dawn."

Hartle was whistling a nameless tune. He would have been stunned if an innocent bystander told him it was the music of the deadly dancers. Feeding the cat, making strong tea, crunching some stale home-baked bread, he felt good again. Even the bruising, the abrasions and contusions were healing up. He decided to forgo the pills. It wouldn't do to become too dependent.

"It's a good thing I'm not too dependent on you, Sim." No response. Good. "Baby, we're on our own."

The cat watched him crap, purring and rubbing up against his bare leg. She nipped at his exposed flank. Brendan wasn't paying enough attention to her.

"Good girl."

He gave her a scratch behind the ears. Regaining the control room, he spoke.

"Computer, I want to know about anything that moves in the space surrounding this vessel. And I don't want anyone to know we're here."

"Passive scans, silent running," acknowledged the comp. "Range of scan, one hundred million kilometres."

"That'll do."

Everything was turned off, except a little heat, the cabin lights, and the screens. Optical sweeps with the cameras, all radar and radio sets set to receive, antennas powered down, navigational systems off. Running lights off, fuel pumps, off. The engines and pilot lights were off. Putting on a sweater was a low-tech solution, but effective.

He just left basic life support, and at a minimal level at that. He sat there smoking, and drinking tea. No beer in evidence today. He watched and waited. Half a day passed, just reading and smoking. His eyes hurt a little, but other than that he was alert. The holo of the galaxy, Empire space prominent, was turned on for further examination. He figured one or two things out. If he stayed out of Empire space, Sim was cut off. He had always assumed that the simulacrum was somehow connected to the ship. But apparently, he was operated from outside the ship. His early, initial gut reaction that technicians in a control room were fucking with his head might still be the only valid conclusion! You could only take the known facts into account. He had no speculation, no hearsay. He was totally objective. His vessel was parked just inside the border of an unmapped area of the Empire, and several Marginal planets were nearby. The wreck bore mute testimony to the fact that this was once a busy and thriving part of the economic sphere of Empire.

That might account for the amount of debris, including the ship he nestled against. His hiding spot wasn't the only wreckage or abandoned hulk in the immediate vicinity.

This was a well-used and relatively well-known dumping ground for abandoned wrecks. This had certain implications.

Others in the course of time might have hidden out here, for a day, a month, or a year. Others might hide out still. He wondered what kind of people they might be. It wasn't always bounty hunters and people with a price on their head. People run for different reasons. While some would be true anti-social psychopaths, he suspected the bulk of them were just unfortunate. A lot of them might just be losers, maladjusted to life in a decaying metropolis that covered fifteen hundred light years from end to end, and with branches another six hundred long in several cases. How do you govern something like that?

Answer—you can't.

And so the Empire began to contract inwards, for a thousand very good reasons.

What had begun as ungovernable eventually became unlivable for a couple of thousand trillion beings. The government knew it, and was scared shitless. After years of trying to hold a lid on it, the government got curious. Exactly what does freedom look like? Is it dangerous?

What does chaos look like?

Mind you, almost anyone can be dangerous. His thoughts went back to the problem of the Marginals. He needed information, and from someone who was not connected to the Empire. With a little luck, he might get an alternative viewpoint, a little man-in-the-street interviewing.

What he wouldn't give for some untainted data.

After a lot of deep thinking, he came up with a few answers.

"One, they can't seriously expect me to perform miracles. Two, the Institute is only one department in a huge government."

Brendan's lips began going back and forth, as he pushed air in and out of his lungs. He pondered what he had seen, and done, and had been told. What he had learned or guessed.

"Three, either Sim is ignoring me or he really can't get back, for unknown reasons." Brendan allowed his mind to ramble. "Four, ships disappear regularly and no one seems to find it strange at all. And most important of all, either side could do away with me if they really set their minds about it."

He was a symbol...of something, for something. Brendan was a potent symbol, made a symbol, of something he didn't really understand. Not too many conclusions could be drawn from that. The cat looked up at him, the centre of her little universe.

"Meow."

"Yeah." Hartle nodded in vague agreement.

It stood to reason that with a lot of frequencies being used, the transponder net would be a whole lot of low-powered devices, and a quick query to the computer revealed this to be true. A ship on frequency 'A' wouldn't interfere with a ship on frequency 'B.' Millions of channels of traffic could be passed along from station to station, and so why blast out energy sending signals into empty space? A little electronic ball, hanging in space with a cone of signal pushing in and out each side of it...a mere hundred milliwatts of short-wave energy, and a radio signal on earth was good for a kilometre of radio control flight. That was a bubble, and it had nothing to do with gravity, in the sense that the range would be the same in a vacuum. It might be directional, and not spherical. There were times when he felt kind of dumb. He just didn't know enough physics, but antennas could be directional sometimes. Something happened. The trouble was what to make of it.

"Ship approaching."

"There's something familiar about that ship." He started at the realization.

"It is a destroyer-class vessel with Rigellian Police markings." The flight computer was unperturbed.

"That's easy for you to say." He was now so very grateful for the extreme caution.

It seemed overly melodramatic at the time.

"It's not squawking. Safety lights are off," the comp reported.

His optical lenses zoomed in. The computer enhanced the dim images as best it could, but the brighter the picture got, the grainier.

"Okay, stop, stop." He watched intently as it drew near.

Then it did a most fantastic thing. While it didn't appear to have spotted them, the ship came to a dead stop, and held it for exactly two minutes. Then it slowly went into a series of maneuvers that seemed mindless. It rotated axially to the left and then to the right, and stopped again.

Using reaction-control jets, the ship tumbled nose first, end over end, with a slow balletic grace, and then it stopped again. It turned ninety degrees left. He watched it pull into a ninety-degree climb, becoming perpendicular to the original course.

"Where did he come from? What's out there?"

"He approached from open, empty space. There is nothing out there but dust clouds, and a few burnt-out cinders from dead, extinct stars. He approached from an angle of one-thirty-five degrees east, negative pitch of forty-five degrees, and at a relatively slow speed of point oh-two parsecs per hour..."

Fascinated, Brendan knew this was important. But what did it mean?

The enemy ship and he had no qualms about calling pretty much anyone out here an enemy, continued its strange machinations as it proceeded a few hundred thousand kilometres. They remained undiscovered. He prayed for his luck to hold. The enemy ship righted itself. It made an abrupt turn and went on its way, on a new course some degrees in deviation from the original.

"He's headed for another semi-extinct star." This was amazing. "What was all that about?"

He pondered the significance of what he had witnessed. There was something buried deep. It surfaced at the back of his mind. Hartle knew enough not to push it. It would come. You just had to have faith.

"Music." The volume gently swelled to a discernable but relaxing point. "Log that location!"

"Album?"

"Bush, Deconstructed. 'Insect Kin.'"

It was the sound of flies on crap or something. It was quite an effect.

"Bees," he said. "Thank you, flight-comp."

Bees, that was it. And there's no such thing as coincidence. For some reason he kept thinking about an article in an old encyclopedia. Something about bees. It would come in its own time.

Now that Brendan had seen bees, or maybe a big fish, he wanted to see more, and maybe put out a hook or two. It was best to sit and think a while. He would wait hours in any case before moving. That made sense. The ship's library had nothing on Terran life forms, just simple school-kid entries on various alien life forms, interesting though they were. They could also be total fiction. He was feeling a little paranoid.

Perhaps a man could look at a grain of sand and deduce the universe, but, even the possibility of a lie could be a fact. Or the opposite? Was it the opposite of a fact? The fact that someone was lying was clearly significant, no matter what the truth turned out to be.

Looking at the holo of the galaxy with renewed interest, he saw that the Rigellian coppers had intercepted them in one end of the galaxy, but reappeared hundreds of light years from the scene. And they weren't coming out of the Marginals. They were going into an unmapped, but previously populated part of space, in close proximity to a heavily traveled trading route. Unmapped was the wrong word. They had maps. They just didn't communicate through officially recognized channels. Theoretically, the government had no idea of what went on in there.

"I think they're home, now."

Knowing that there were still one or two more days until the Council meeting, and glad to be apart from Sim for a while, Hartle hung on and kept watching. He saw a ship appear, coming from another sector of space, which was mapped in tapered cubic-conical sections. This one was fully lit, not just big but incredibly long, so long that linear perspective made the rear of the ship look pointed. But the thing was more or less cylindrical.

"Holy crap! It's two hundred eighty-four point three kilometres long," said Brendan. "Why is he so far out of the lanes?"

"The slowest traffic keeps farthest to the galactic right." It was simple and logical.

The shipping lanes followed curved lines, which roughly corresponded to great circle routes, except that it had something to do with the curvature of space, and not the surface of a globe. It was a matter of the shortest distance between two points, or the most energy efficient. It was one or the other. The aliens hadn't told him that. He knew it already, somehow. They had to aim where they expected it to be.

It reminded him of lake freighters at night on Lake Erie. It cruised sedately past, making no course changes or adjustments. There was just the low-powered hum of a carrier wave on the radio. Typical IFF signal, perhaps even robotically flown. The computer confirmed that it did have a nominal crew. Perhaps they were the owners, or employee-brokers and about a half dozen others. For all he knew they were cooking spaghetti over there. It blocked out a background of stars as it passed, substituting its own flashing blue-white clearance lighting. There was large white script on the side, lit by floodlights on framework booms of lattice-like construction.

"The Trans-Thelven Mining and Development Corporation." The flight computer identified it. "It will pass seven hundred and fifty thousand kilometres from this point in space."

"Excellent." Let them be the centre of attention.

Bulk cargoes didn't go at high speed, but were dispatched regularly, to keep the factories humming with their precious cargoes of raw materials.

Five hours later, they were still watching it on scope as the huge ship slowly but surely disappeared from the screens. It was just a point of light now. Just as he was about ready to warm up the circuits and try his luck somewhere else, two more ships appeared. These tiny vessels, smaller than his, were running silent.

From the computer, he learned that their range was only a little less than his own. It was their capabilities that were limited.

"In space, size matters." Once again he saw no lights, no IFF-squawk, no ID, nothing. "Uh, oh."

He watched again in pure fascination as both of them stopped for two minutes exactly. Then they went through the same rigmarole as the police destroyer. When revelation hits, it hits with a bang. In any case, it hit Brendan.

"Waggle dance!" He shouted and the computer squawked.

"Sorry," it said. "You overloaded the audio circuits."

"It's a waggle dance. When bees return to the hive, they do a little dance." Hartle was up out of his seat, and doing a little dance himself.

"A lot of information can be conveyed by dancing," he explained. "Like if there are honey and pollen nearby, or even where it can be located. But in this case, it's more of a recognition signal. It's just a recognition signal!"

Breathing a little heavily, he sat back down.

"I think I'll smoke one of my big, fat stinking cigars," he decided. "You know what Winston Churchill said once?"

"Winston who?"

Hartle ignored it.

"He said, 'I think I'll smoke one of my big, fat, stinking cigars.' Heh, heh, heh."

"That seems pretty logical."

Hartle laughed.

"We have a surprise for Mr. Sim."

"We do indeed," was the machine's surprising reply.

Lighting up took but a moment.

"Did we go anywhere near that part of space?" Brendan asked.

"We never came closer than eleven million kilometres."

"That's no guarantee they didn't see us," he said. "We need a cover story of our own."

The computer raised no objections.

***

Twelve hours later, he began his fourth walk in space. The extra-vehicular activity was all part of a plan he was fudging up as he went.

"Can't play possum much longer."

Brendan stood on the hull of the derelict vessel and examined the results of his work.

He was grateful that no further traffic came along. He knew what he was doing, but it might have been hard to explain. On the way out of here, his ship would be towing one humongous pile of scrap metal. He grinned at the thought.

By towing the old hulk with him, he had a cover story. He was salvaging scrap metal.

The bright light pods strung out all along it would disguise his small ship beyond recognition.

Brendan schemed as he worked. He tightened up the nuts on the sling harness, now safely clamped upon itself, grateful for the rigging experience gained loading construction materials in a chemical plant a long time ago. The second last thing to do was to rig up the jettison charges on the cables, insert the radio-controlled detonators, and encode them with his personal squawk. He used his bank machine PIN number, only in reverse, for safety.

All that remained was to activate the battery power for the lights and it would be time to go.

"Sure hope we don't get stormy seas." He muttered and grumped as he patted the old hulk's side plating.

His personal suit and rigging-box included funny strap-on booties, with a smooth plastic surface on the bottom. There were cords going up to a belt that fastened around the waist. There were two handles, each with a spring-loaded button on it. They hung on flexible wires. According to the written instructions in the shiny transparent bag, the thing was to release the button to stick to any surface, and you could lock yourself in place as well. Brendan wished he had more time to investigate some of these little gems of data. The job would have been almost impossible without them. Once you got the hang of it, and developed a little rhythm, you were okay. Part of the routine of operating a spaceship was bagging up all the stuff, putting the tools back in place, everything must be clamped down. The booties worked very well, and he plugged them into the re-charger. Theoretical quantum physics turned into usable consumer products!

Amazing...but there was no time.

It didn't pay to hurry it.

Sooner or later he would like to figure out how the engines of a spacecraft actually worked. Back inside the scout ship, he used attitude thrusters to gently push him out to the full extent of his towline. He didn't attempt to steer it yet, allowing the line to take up slack and pull her around. The cable tugged at the back. He typed in instructions carefully and read them three times. He hit the enter button and the ship took over from there. Sometimes you needed lightning-fast reactions, and sometimes you wanted to think it through.

It seemed like an okay time to go, but there was no way to know for sure.

His luck held. After a while they were gently, gently accelerating. Through the control stalks, with his hands resting lightly on them, he tried to get an idea of the stability, and how hard the ship was compensating for the load. The cables and coupling held, despite the swaying and dragging weight on the back. Things looked good.

"Flight comp, how's it going, any worries?"

"None, until it is time to initiate braking. We will lose some of the load due to thrust and heat ablation."

"We'll worry about that later. Rubber and plastic aren't worth much anyway."

It would take just about nineteen more hours to get to Centralia, with plenty of time to make the meeting. With any luck, someone there would know how to get the hulky thing behind him stopped.

Hartle was sleeping when a hail came from a traffic monitoring ship. The control room buzzer awakened him with a start of adrenalin. Straightening in his chair, he opened up the channel, and heard a voice calling.

"This is the Centralian Federal Commonwealth Police Vessel Princess Andereia. I am Lieutenant Grosz. Please identify, pilot in command?"

Brendan turned on the IFF, somehow 'forgotten' earlier.

"Sorry about that. Brendan Hartle here. I'm the pilot in command."

Keep it simple! Let them ask all the questions and make all the statements. Not having his squawker on was an error, but not a serious one. They were real police. He knew that because they gave him a ticket, an electronic one encoded on his ship's license. Five hundred space-bucks! He had thirty days to pay. It was just like on Earth, where you signed a declaration of guilt and paid the fine. Either that, or they took you to court.

These guys were the real thing. That didn't make it any less of a piss-off. His control room was now crowded with three officers questioning him, examining the computer logs, and the salvage behind, and just getting in his hair generally.

One of the officers had an additional chevron of rank.

"Sorry to bother you, Mr. Hartle," the alien copper said. "It's just that when we read the Imperial signature codes coming from something like this."

"Just doing your job," agreed the human.

They were also leaving a thin vapour trail, but there were no emissions controls in space. There was nothing in particular he wished to volunteer. They seemed to be deferring to the Imperial codes in his computers.

"Mr. Hartle?" The third one called from over by the door, he was listening on an earpiece away from the huddle. "Mr. Sim sends his regards and would like you to call him."

"It's the middle of the night, here, guys," he reminded them.

The senior officer apologized for bothering him.

"You know, Mr. Hartle, your tow-rig is substandard, in this particular shipping lane, but we'll forget about that."

"Sorry. I just didn't know."

"Well, Centralia is just around the corner," acknowledged the copper.

Hartle wondered if that was a gentle kind of hint, but in any case, where in the hell else was he going to go? The police finally left and he had cause to congratulate himself. He was relatively safe now. The cops would keep an eye on him. He hadn't been arrested on sight, and Sim was taking him seriously. Anyone cruising around in a former Imperial yacht was a V.I.P and would be treated accordingly. He went back to bed.

Chapter Eighteen

Sim could have gone back...

Sim could have gone back in simulacrum form at any time after Brendan re-entered the coverage of the cellular network. He chose not to for several reasons.

There were too many reports to be read, and leads to be followed up. Runners to be caught. Now that he was back in the office again, he was literally swamped by routine matters that had been piling up. He was spending a lot of time at his desk.

Hartle still hadn't called, not unexpectedly. The man was stubborn, that's for sure. Sim still worried, though. It was funny, how someone like Brendan got under your hide. A briefing was scheduled for late afternoon. The mission's headquarters were located in a heavily classified sub-basement of the Institute complex. Sim arrived there half out of breath, after making his way about the huge building.

Sim regretted keeping much of the work in his old office in the main tower, but knew once it was vacated, he would never get it back. Everyone else had moved without complaint to the temporary set-up allotted to them. Others were filing into the room. They clustered around a table that could have seated a two dozen people, although today it was only at half capacity. In front of each seat was a file, with a water glass turned upside down in a clear paper wrapper. The drinks machine gurgled away in its little alcove. Sim waited for everyone to straggle in, and then he sat. This initiated a general movement towards the chairs. Sim poured water from the carafe and waited another minute or two. He spoke.

"Ladies and gentlemen, let us discuss tactics, strategies, and character assessments."

He began the meeting according to protocol, letting quiet routine absorb some of the aches and pains. Formally open, the meeting proceeded.

"We will examine the results to date." Trent went on without further ado. "Will the various department heads please make their reports?"

Belinda Weo, in charge of the Rigel end of the inquiry for the Crown, made her statements first. Councilors believed in civility towards each other and everything was recorded as a matter of course.

"We have two ships destroyed and one destroyer-class ship is lost. And the scout ship. Without ships returning to port we have no one to interrogate and no idea of how many loyal personnel were killed due to friendly fire."

She looked at Sim.

"I'm not criticizing," she allowed. "They may not have been quite ready to desert, if you know what I mean."

"But why were they so far out of their jurisdiction?" asked Clive.

"We did force their hands, a little." Her beady black eyes glittering in speculation.

She loved the game, this one. Her aging visage belied a keen, cold and calculating brain, yet she was just a little old lady of the admittedly ruthless Imperial species. Trent broke in.

"There has been a great deal of pirate activity in that sector of late. The Rigellian police commander could have explained it away."

"But only if they survived!" said Weo. "The old adage holds true. Dead crew tell no tales, no matter which side kills them."

"True," admitted Clive. "But whoever gave the orders, assumed they would succeed. And what if they did? What then? How would they explain that? Or, would they have simply disappeared with Hartle aboard? We lose ships either way. This way we still have Brendan!"

"Just exactly how intuitive is this Hartle?" asked Hrickletl.

"Right off the map," said Snoby. "I think that's the key to his survival. All the other test subjects killed themselves or went mad within a few hours or at best, a couple of days."

"He's just plain crazy," blurted Vrikop. "That's the big difference—he can't be driven nuts if he's already there, and he just accepts it all at face value!"

"So he has no objective reality that we would recognize?" Trent's eyebrows climbed. "He has no doubts?"

Snoby just shrugged. He didn't know.

"The original signed orders for the Rigellian police seem legitimate and warranted and genuine and all that." This comment came from further down the table.

Other than the fact the surviving ship had disappeared, there was no non-disruptive way to find out how far the rot had set in. Certain officers had never been out with that squadron before. Admiral Vrikop pointed out that they at least had a starting point.

"We have a lead with a little heat, a little scent left in it," as he put it. "If it were up to me, I'd grab a few of them almost at random and sweat 'em a little."

Vrikop sighed, holding up a paw with two opposable thumbs and three fingers.

"I know, I know," he said. "But these are our own people. That's what makes me so angry."

"When ships disappear, there is a huge volume of space between the point of their departure and the expected destination," said Clive. "It's no wonder that bodies have seldom, if ever been recovered."

He stood, notes in hand. Clive tended to wander a little near his seat. The others were used to it by now.

"When you consider the options, where do you begin to search?" It was a rhetorical question.

"Yet that may not be the only answer. People can desert, or defect to an enemy, or be kidnapped for skills, or labour, or knowledge," he said. "They might be held for ransom or for the extortion of a piece of information. Hartle's ability to theorize with minimal data is always inconclusive. But, his utterly spontaneous decision-making ability has been helpful, and in fact a bit of a revelation."

A hand-controlled device operated a giant view screen at the far end of the conference room. Clive's presentation began with a view of a segment of the galaxy, showing the locations of recent events in relation to Centralia and the populated parts around it.

"Here is where the Rigellians intercepted Mr. Hartle and the survivors subsequently disappeared." A dot of light appeared. "As you can see, Brendan was leaving Earth on a direct bearing for Centralia. The Rigellians, according to log data recovered from the scene, put out from their base and proceeded directly to the point of intercept. Then they waited, cruising for several days in that area of space, engaging in what appeared to be legitimate vessel inspections."

"That is, if you overlook the significant factor that they were a hundred and twenty parsecs out of their jurisdiction," Weo said.

"How did he know?" demanded Vrikop. "He blasted them on minimal provocation. I would have submitted to that inspection. The Emperor himself probably would have pulled over for inspection. He would have smiled, and patiently waited, expecting to give them a pat on the back and pay his ticket cheerfully as a good example to other citizens. He would, with all due respect, be thinking of a public relations opportunity. How did he know?"

"We have speculated for some time that there may be leaks." Sim was aggrieved. "But until the Rigellian destroyer failed to return to port, I must say I was upset with Brendan."

"Yes. What I find frightening is the idea that a police unit can be that thoroughly compromised," Clive told the group.

"We knew that police and military personnel have been approached," Belinda Weo agreed. "But we have no way of knowing who was approached and never told us about it."

"Now we have proof of enemy success in that regard," said Sim. "But what if the police were simply ordered there and no record was kept? Yet there is a record."

There was a brief silence while they digested that one.

"The real stinkers might still be sitting behind a desk at Rigellian Police Headquarters."

They had to consider all possibilities.

"That's what I was getting at," put in Vrikop as if covering his backside for later posterity. "Even though the ship is gone, there must be one...I'm almost sure of it."

"Now for the next incident." Clive proceeded with the briefing. "Again, we have the attempt to kill or kidnap the subject, on the planet Gepharl."

The magnification and angle of view switched over.

"The prisoner has made no statements. He appears well trained and highly motivated. This one is not an amateur."

"Could he be a professional assassin, not involved in the political aims of the conspirators?" asked Weo.

Clive explained.

"It's not known, but this would be a wise precaution on their part. An enthusiast might be happy to make statements. A pro would keep his mouth shut, get a good lawyer, and avoid signing anything. A signed statement is the basis for further charges regarding other individuals...sooner or later, the whole pack are giving evidence against each other."

There was no need to explain everything, so he shut up.

"Brendan took the fight to the enemy," Sim advised. "How many of us would have chosen to do that? Yet I cannot help thinking that the local police, in a city of that size, might not have been able to offer much protection or even useful suggestions. Brendan is not the type to be locked into protective custody, and the smaller police stations can easily be stormed by professionals anyway. And if we had driven to the police station, it might have either precipitated the attack, or more likely just delayed it."

The group around the conference table chewed on this tidbit of data.

"It's quite possible real pros would have scoped out the police headquarters or had it under constant surveillance during the operation." Weo thought it out aloud. "By doing it his way, he netted us a prisoner."

It seemed that conclusions came in pairs, not necessarily mutually excluding each other.

"What about the attack on Brendan after leaving Welstnashta?" asked Sim. "What did you get there?"

"Ship number one, er, not much left of it. We believe it was stolen years ago in the Corvus sector," said Clive.

"And the other?" asked Sim.

"Stolen much more recently, from an exploration team nine years ago in the sector marked on the screen in red." Clive pointed it out to them. "As surmised, it was a private runabout, again, not much in the way of engine power. Four or five enemy personnel were aboard each craft. Both of the vessels were armed with 'black-aftermarket' light missile systems. These systems are actually more suited to fixed, low-level air defense, but can be 'hacked' with a suitable interface."

The systems were slaved into the ship's navigational sensors. The cue-pipper became a primitive gun-sight. The pilot maneuvered manually by steering the pipper with his mouse-controller. When the pipper went into the centre circle, the pilot fired the missiles.

"The ship was sent into a marginal area on a mission to locate suitable raw resources for industries based on Belchev."

That was all they had on the second craft.

"All hands went missing, of course no wreckage was ever found," Clive said. "But at least now we know one of the crew was probably a traitor."

They had previously agreed that most pirate operations required inside knowledge, or maybe just previous knowledge, of the vessel to be taken. These were never random operations. They were too dangerous. They had to know, in advance, what they were stealing. The pirates had to make sure it would be worth the risk and effort. Even their fuel costs would be considerable, for 'private citizens.' Clive went on to explain that they had never nailed down large, unprosecuted fuel thefts, or even unusual purchases on a lavish scale. Big thefts could usually be related to big crime, even if the intelligence wasn't the same as 'evidence' leading to convictions. They were also convinced the operation was a small one.

"Any connection to the Boyce family?" asked Sim.

"The ship and the company operating it were employed by the consortium known as Tech Mills. Boyce senior owns a nominal three percent of the shares, and does not have a seat on the board," admitted Clive. "Ordinary shares at that."

"But it's a small connection," said Admiral Hrickletl. "Hell, it's probably worth...oh, three-hundred-fifty million a year. Just chump change for a Boyce."

"Worth looking further, I agree," said Clive.

"Admiral, you had a thought?" asked Sim in his role as chairperson.

"That air-brake maneuver, followed by a split-S of all things, and then the reversal, keeping the nose to the enemy. Admiral Vrikop and I have revised our opinion."

"What are you saying?" asked Weo.

"We want to see what he does next," admitted Hrickletl with a shrug.

This was crucial. The Admiralty carried a lot of weight with the full Council, never mind the small working committee.

"Check every name, I want backgrounds on all missing persons in those ships," said Sim, following along. "All right, that seems to take care of that."

Hrickletl suggested they take a short break and they all agreed.

"Then we'll touch on what Hartle is doing now, and then talk about strategies for the future. Please be prepared, those department heads involved," the admiral noted.

The meeting eddied around the room, mostly by the urn in the alcove but over by the windows, and by the door as well. Sim found himself with one of the Fleet men as he sipped his drink.

"Bet you're glad to be home for a while," said the elder being, Vrikop.

Sim nodded and smiled, but then the talk turned serious.

"While I respect your feelings in the matter, it should be noted that Hartle is a sentient being by definition of the Convention of '667," said Sim.

"I know, I know. I've always believed the parameters were set a little too low." The Admiral grimaced.

Sim was aware the Admiral was on the commission that created the guidelines.

"I've read the minutes of that commission." It was wise to be a little diplomatic.

Sim went to the head of the table to call them all back to order. Bithwell was often the supervisor of the night shift of the technical teams. The tall, slender technician ran a hand over facial features, sharp and hard in the light of recent long shifts. Bithwell consulted notes and then spoke.

"Hartle has spent days away from supervision by leaving the proximity of the transponder network," the report began. "Then, reappearing with his ship disguised, he did not reveal his reasons to the officers who questioned him. He referred to his disguised ship as 'scrap,' and offered this as his explanation, and I quote: 'try to see what it's worth.' End of quote."

"Of course it has to be a disguise. He couldn't possibly expect to begin dealing in salvage, can he?" Belinda Weo was completely mystified. "Why is he disguised? And doesn't he trust the police?"

"It seems likely that something caused him to do it," offered Sim. "I could go there now. But he'll arrive in a few hours."

"Save your energy," broke in Admiral Vrikop. "That isolation-tank, it's too hard on your system. You spent days in there the first time and you may have to do it again soon."

"Thank you, admiral." Sim sighed.

He thought for a moment, privately relieved, although his own curiousity was getting to him. What was Hartle up to? When last seen, he was behaving rather strangely. On the other side of the argument, Hartle was apparently returning of his own volition. Interior shots of the ship showed a scene of normality.

The Federal Police report said he appeared, 'Calm, cool and collected.'Whatever happened next, Sim was afraid it might be interesting.

"For what it's worth, Hartle says, 'a man with a plan is better off than a man with no plan.' And a man with a little faith is way better off than a man with no faith at all."

They smiled ruefully at that one.

Someone else began their report and Sim listened with half an ear and about half his mind as well. He came alert as the phrase was spoken.

"The Princess," Salmsoni was saying...

Sim sat up. Of course! He had a crush on the Princess. He listened more intently to the other Crown Representative, Espin Salmsoni, and his ineffably dull manner.

"Who could have guessed, even with the most accurate data to use in our projections, that Hartle would meet, attempt to seduce, and make enough of an impression, that she has been asking about him," said Espin, vertical pupils black as carbon, pince-nez dangling from a hand as he read his large-script device.

The cluster of folks around the gleaming oval table muttered and mumbled amongst themselves for quite a while. Slowly the meeting broke up. Hrickletl's reminder of the full council meeting the next morning hit largely on deaf ears. The room fell silent as a secure crew came in to clean and ensure that all notes, documents and materials removed or destroyed, and to take away the empty cups, saucers and spoons.

Sim headed home again, thankful that the meeting had been shorter than expected. A light rain began. Yet sunlight slanted down through a hole in the cloud cover, as golden burnished clouds floated on a coppery sea of light. The window wipers on his flitter were clapping out a tempo and he turned off the radio to focus on his flying. Something was bothering him. Was there something he had forgotten? Had he promised to pick up a gallon of malakka on the way home or something? If he forgot, Yashalaiga would shoot him.

Chapter Nineteen

By some bizarre quirk of fate...

By some strange and bizarre quirk of fate, Brendan was looking down at the very same hole in the cloud cover, recognizing the patchwork quilt that was the surface of the planet. He examined Centralian space during the approach run, breaking off earlier than usual from the normal pattern for incoming ships.

He had figured out a way to get the hulk off. Hopefully, he wasn't making one assumption too many. He didn't want it crashing into other bodies, especially private property. With the proper radio-control box from the workshop, he planned to just cut the line, turn away, and let the thing drift.

"Computer! Is there a directory? On Earth we call it the Yellow Pages. Like, a directory of communications codes for sales, and services, and products?"

"Accessing, running...routing to your display."

"Good," said Brendan. "Thanks."

"What services are required?"

"Buyers and sellers of scrap metal, specifically, old spaceships."

"Dialing the first of the A's," he was informed.

Soon Brendan had a being on the phone screen in front of his control seat.

"Hello. What can I do for you, sir?" a rather saurian creature asked him in solicitous concern.

Crocodilian was a better word. Brendan amused himself wondering about the wolfish grin and what it meant to the customer. It takes all kinds to make a universe, apparently. The thing walked through some kind of building as it talked to him, followed by a series of cameras as the views switched from one room to the next.

"I have a large quantity of scrap metals, plastics, including copper, brass, lead, titanium, aluminum, banks of battery cells, a few solar panels, some other stuff," Hartle explained. "Plus a fair bit of tin, tungsten, bronzes. There's molybdenum, and maybe some beryllium."

"We're located in the fourth quadrant, upper hemisphere, third moon," the alien said. "I'd have to see the load before working up a price."

"I understand. Could you help me unhitch it? I'm alone on the ship," said Brendan. "I'm hauling it on a cable. I plan on re-orienting, reversing with the load, braking and then cutting it away."

"When would you be arriving?"

"About thirteen-forty," said Brendan.

"I'll have a crew get up there," the proprietor said. "Let her go with less than nine metres of delta-v, at about fifty thousand k's. We'll take it from there. Somewhere between seven and nine metres is good for us, okay?"

A series of vectors appeared in the view screen, and the flight-comp beeped agreeably.

"Codes noted."

"Right," acknowledged Brendan. "I can brake down to that, for sure, if I start right now."

"I'll put up a box on your site. Your flight computer can upload it. Just put the load in the middle of the flashing red box, or as close as you can."

"Right," said Brendan. "Gotcha."

The thing beamed at him through oval black eyes.

"I'm sure it will be an honour doing business with you," it said. "Shake."

"Shake," said Brendan.

He cut the connection.

"Well, there's one problem solved," he told the cat. "Who knows? By the time we get her unloaded, the guy may let me off at no charge."

Remembering his limited experience and not particularly good luck in dealing with scrappers on Earth, he figured to get ripped off to some degree.

"We might even have a couple of bucks left over for a cheeseburger and a cup of coffee."

Settling back, he considered just what to tell Sim and the others at the Council meeting. He might have to make it up as he went along, but he sure didn't want to have to make it up on the spot.

Chapter Twenty

Hartle's assessment...

Hartle's assessment turned out to be correct. After unhitching the old hulk, he watched it drift in to be captured by the moon's gravity. Then they haggled over the price.

He ended up with a hundred ounces of gold, twenty of platinum, and fifteen hundred of silver, plus another thirty thousand in Empire paper. He figured this would trade at a discount.

While it seemed like a lot of money, he guessed it was but a fraction of the old wreck's true worth. The metal alone was probably worth ten times that. Any useful components would be gravy to the dealer. As soon as the money was in his hand, he borrowed an envelope and a stamp from the guy and paid his ticket with cash money, enclosing a little note with the ticket's offence number and relevant information. The guy promised to mail it for him. Not that Brendan cared, but he made the effort.

He made them put the crates of precious metals in the rear of the ship, strapping them down with strong bands of woven plastic and bolts through the provided eyelets into the floor-holes. Tighten up the ratcheting centre fasteners, and it was done.

At least he didn't owe them anything. It felt good to have a little money. You had to admit, it made for an impressive sight, hauled inside cheap metal-edged trunks with bands and a locking hasp, just like a real live treasure chest. He knew next to nothing about what it might actually purchase. He didn't even know how to go out for a pop or a bag of chips in this society.

Although he could make a rough guess at the value of the metals back on Earth, it all seemed pretty academic. Hartle hadn't been a big reader of the stock pages in the newspaper, or a watcher of the cable business networks. It came to him, that lately gold had shot up to almost $1,000 an ounce, then began to drop again. He had no idea of the price of platinum and figured silver at twenty or thirty an ounce. He couldn't even really do the math.

He stared at a couple of bags of hexagonal 'coins' as they lay there on the galley table where the deal was struck. Momentarily, he had second thoughts. He was almost sure to have been ripped off. But what the hell, what the hell. Some of the coins were triangular, some were round but pierced. There were several small tablets of platinum. Nice.

"It's better than a kick in the ass."

It was time to be getting back to Centralia.

"Let's get out of here. Computer!"

He allowed the flight computer to run them back to Centralia on autopilot. Brendan wanted to sleep and hadn't been having much luck lately. There were a lot of things on his mind, not the least of which was wondering when someone would try to kill him. No doubt very soon. It was best to be ready and well rested when it came. He fed the cat and went into his cabin, tossing some of the laundry into the closet. His laundry habits were haphazard at best.

"Wake me when we get there."

"Acknowledged."

This time he had no trouble dropping off. He woke up refreshed and alert. He swung his legs over, got out of bed and headed straight for the shower.

When he came out an alarm was ringing.

"Pre-programmed landing sequence initiated," he was informed by the flight comp.

"Continue." Brendan wondered what the new day held in store.

Time for breakfast, and then it would be time to begin drinking again. It was all part of the show. One good way to get the Empire, and the opposition, everyone to continually underestimate him was to stay sloshed all the time. It was the best way to get them to underestimate him. Whenever he was in an alien's presence he would act the fool, the barbarian. It was working so far. He waited for touchdown, eager to begin.

"Hey, kitty." The animal was securely strapped down in her box. "How're you doing? And I wonder if the Princess is looking out her window right about now?"

He had a few surprises for the Council, and he wondered what old Simmy Baby had been up to lately.

"How much time?"

"Ten minutes, plus or minus ten percent. Traffic is light. Tracking."

"Access music." The library banks came up. "Play Led Zeppelin, first song, side two."

The music began to play softly in his monitors.

Soon Hartle was singing along in his baritone voice.

"...nobody's fault but mine..." and Jimmy Page's guitar ripped out.

He still hadn't called Sim, he remembered with a shrug. Sim could wait. Brendan cracked off the cap and drank deeply, wiping foam off his lips with a sleeve.

"Sim was right. In all, my duties are not too strenuous. As long as you don't mind being shot at..."

The cat groaned a little.

She was stuck in her cage, and Hartle was caterwauling.

"Nobody's fault but mine," sang Brendan, and the guitar ripped out again.

***

The day dawned bright and clear. Sim awoke to a fresh breeze through his open windows. The smell of breakfast wafted up from below. As he showered, he planned the day ahead. The highest priority was the full Council meeting, but he had time before and after, and there was much to be done.

The thoughts crowded in and out. When the buzzer sounded loudly from his study it took a moment. The sober realization hit him that a message this early usually meant trouble. Heart thudding, he grabbed at it. He was nervous for no reason...yet.

"Hello?"

It was Clive, and his voice quaked with emotion.

"It's Hartle." Clive's voice was pitched high and fast. "He crashed on landing less than fifteen minutes ago. You had better get down to the Port Medical Centre."

"On my way." Sim's calm shocked his own ears.

Had he grown so cold then?

But then, they were all expecting it. There was no denying that his hands trembled as he grabbed his keys, hat and black case. He bent at the waist, impatiently finding his heel was jammed down the back of one shoe, painfully. He cursed and fixed the problem.

"Argh."

His wife looked patient and solicitous, and understanding.

"Argh," he said, finally getting the shoe on. "Sorry, honey."

Her wide-hipped figure stood there disconsolately. Lately, Sim had wondered once or twice if she was thinking of leaving. Who could blame her? He was never home, among other things.

"Sorry, honey, I have to leave early."

As if to add to his troubles her lip trembled when he kissed her goodbye, just a quick brush-past of his lips against her hair. She knew he was upset but also knew enough not to ask. There were some questions she didn't have to ask. She knew what her husband did for a living. Mind bent on very private thoughts, Mrs. Sim went about the daily task of getting the kids dressed, breakfasted and off to school.

Sim had his official driver take him to the emergency department admitting gate at the port medical facility. It was located just beside the space-drome, on a green belt surrounding the city. Clive awaited him, standing out of doors to wave him in.

"Hal! Park it and watch for me." Sim leapt out before it really got stopped.

The car moved off in search of a parking spot.

Clive greeted him breathlessly, palpably frightened. He strode along, the prototypical aide, clad in dark blue suit with narrow lapels, a snazzy yellow shirt and a black western tie of all things. He must have been studying the Earth tapes again.

Some of the staff were real aficionados.

"Where is he?" asked Sim.

Clive's hard black shoes clattered on the steps as they rounded a corner. Sim's soft shoe-bottoms squeaked, he noted insanely, but still it annoyed one. What had Brendan said? The man was a drunkard, but out of the mouths of babes.

"You throw a pebble down here and a mountain springs up over there. Nothing happens for no reason," according to Hartle.

Bad shoes meant something in other words.

Together they rapidly paced down the highly polished granite-like floors and halls.

"Private room, secured wing, twenty-seven-hour guards, two of them, with relief coming in at eight-thirty." Clive huffed and puffed, trying to keep up with Sim's long stride.

"No phones, no calls, no announcements," blurted Sim.

"Yes, yes," agreed Clive.

"What about the crash scene?"

Sim demanded facts as workers and nurses, doctors and orderlies scattered in their wake.

"It's being described as a routine autopilot failure, and we're saying it's an unmanned vessel."

"Good. Thank the Gods. We may be able to keep a lid on this...but probably not." Sim seethed inwardly. "What about the staff? And who else knows?"

"The Doctors and nurses are all Top-Green Security or better." The aide stepped forward right smartly to open up the double-glass and super-sealed hall doors, built to keep anti-biotic resistant disease vectors from spreading.

"I called you first." Clive knew that it was the only course he could have followed, and yet he felt a distinct queasiness, as they rounded the last corner by the nursing station.

They arrived at the room.

Clive held up a hand, slowing Sim down, otherwise he might have tried to go barging in and it was locked from the inside.

Clive rapped seven times with an odd, distinctive and vaguely familiar beat-pattern.

It opened up and a hard lean face glared at them, then the thing closed, and Sim heard rattling. The door opened up and he strode in, a deep, thumping sensation in his middle. It felt like his rectum was going to let loose and his knees were knocking.

The plainclothes officer hastily slammed it shut again.

Sim looked at the supine figure in the bed, with hoses, clamps, electrodes, taped all over him, with monitors bleep-bleeping and his heart sank. He shuffled now, and was almost overcome by a sudden urge to weep. Such a waste!

All of his hopes, fears, dreams and aspirations, and all that youthful potential, and all that vibrant life, all wasted now. If Hartle died, Sim would probably be relegated to a lower-status position in the Ministry.

The doctor had a glazed look on his face. Sim stood, feet practically glued to the floor. When he walked in closer to the bed, it was almost as if the floor stuck to his shoes, and came up in little wavelets as he moved, like water. Like a hallucination.

The worst had come to pass. He knew it with a dreadful certainty.

"Report."

Then he heard a whisper. Eyes wide, he shushed the doctor before he could speak, and leaned over the bed in desperation. Head cocked to one side, staring in supplication at Brendan's sallow face, he leaned in to try to comprehend anything Brendan said.

"You son of a bitch!" Hartle roared and his arm shot up from under the edge of the blanket.

Sim's throat was squeezed in a vice-like grip as his tongue and eyes bulged out involuntarily. His temples began to pound and he could hear the blood squishing through his inner ears. Fighting to remain upright, he was being pulled down and forwards, air burning in his lungs as little swirly black-and-white vortices hovered and spun in the perimeter of his sight.

"Eaugh! Eaugh! Ugh..." The buzzing in his head stopped.

Hartle allowed the limp body to fall onto the bed beside him.

"That'll teach the bastard." He had the glimmer of a smile.

"I...I..." said Clive.

"It's all right, he'll live," announced the doctor after a quick check with a good old-fashioned stethoscope.

The only thing weird about it was the fuchsia colour.

"Told you so," said Hartle. "I did that before! It works real good."

"You mean strangling people?" The white-garbed figure of the doctor gaped in horror.

"No. Hiding in bed." Brendan hit them with the punch line. "It's the perfect ambush."

Sim was unable to be angry with Brendan, who lay beside him grinning like an idiot. He was just so grateful to see the mad Earthman alive and kicking, even. Grinning like a big predator, a big cat, an animal in every sense of the word.

The doctor and a security man rolled Sim over. They propped him up on pillows. His ears still rang a little, and his heart hadn't calmed down yet. Nor had the rush of gut juice completely subsided.

"So," Brendan put an arm around Sim's shoulders. "I always figured you had a warm body stashed around here somewhere."

"Er...yes, Brendan," Sim admitted.

Sim sat up. Discovering that he could now stay up, he let his feet drop to the floor.

"Stay there, Simmy baby, we'll talk a while. Have I got a bone to pick with you."

Clive sent the doctor and nurse out. One security man sat on a chair by the door, the other went into the hallway.

"Thanks, people, and remember no talking. And no visitors. Stay nearby, but grab some refreshment. Our patient needs a sandwich."

Clive went to a far corner to make some calls and send messages. For one thing, they would need to do deep background checks on the staff members and put them all under surveillance indefinitely. More headaches. He wondered if they knew they would be watched. It wasn't every day you learned a big secret.

"Well, Hartle, what happened to the ship?" asked Sim a little weakly.

He would have preferred a stronger attack.

"Is this all a fake?"

"Oh, no, Sim. I crashed the ship, that is to say the ship crashed." Hartle was grinning like an idiot.

"The ship is badly damaged, but it's not a complete write-off," explained Clive. "It was clearly a case of attempted murder."

"Murder?" asked Sim. "Did you say murder?"

"Yes!" blurted Brendan, rolling his eyes in emphasis. "He did say murder."

"Yes. Hartle's ship was landing on autopilot, using ground assistance."

Clive related how he went there to pick up Brendan upon arrival, take him to breakfast and then the morning pre-Council briefing, as scheduled.

"I saw the whole thing." Clive explained. "I was standing there on the observation deck. A ground transport, a robotic service vehicle, moved out into Brendan's path as the ship approached the touchdown point. It was perfectly timed."

"Then how did he survive?" demanded Sim impatiently. "All right, all right, just tell it your way, but get on with it."

Hartle spoke up.

"Well, you know me, Sim. I don't trust the autopilot, so I was watching the approach. I saw that thing out of the corner of my right eye and I thought, what the fuck? I mean, what the fuck?"

Sim hung on his words.

"So when it came out from behind the hangar, I just knew it. I grabbed her and pulled up, and threw her sideways, but she stalled. We were so close to the ground she didn't have far to fall." Brendan told his story with flashing eyes.

"You should have seen it, chief," broke in Clive. "All that noise, dust, dirt and debris, then Hartle slams her into a storage shed for recyclable fluid containers, paper products, light metal cans..."

"It was spectacular, even in the view screens," said Brendan.

His eyes were a bit funny, all lit up with some inner splendour.

"But...but..." said Sim.

"And that's when I decided it was my time to die," Brendan told Sim brightly. "Do you get it Sim? My time to die?"

The slow inkling of a vague glimmer of a devious glimpse of Hartle's possible plan began to emerge from the depths of the recesses of Sim's shocked and unwilling mind.

"Yes, yes, I get it. You wish to announce your death. Be buried or cremated. Or a Viking funeral! Or whatever. You're going underground." He nodded in contemplation.

It was brilliant and he knew it. To cover up a death and pretend it never happened would inevitably backfire. To try to keep Brendan's survival a secret would backfire soon enough. It would invite speculation and inquiry. But, if we tell them what they want to hear—that Brendan is dead...he saw it in lose-lose terms but had few options. It bought a little time, if nothing else...

"Okay." He was still having some internal conflicts, but saw no good options.

"It's a good thing Clive here has a quick mind and a good attitude," said Brendan. "We really have to give him a lot of credit for picking up on it so quickly. The cat's fine by the way, I'll tell her you asked."

"He said you would approve, sir."

"Yes, yes. Give Hartle anything he wants." Sim moaned a trifle bitterly.

"Sim, lighten up! It's better this way, can't you see that?" Hartle was almost begging him to understand. "I still don't know anything about your people, your government, your cities, your Empire, and the odds are I never will."

"It's true you've been repeatedly targeted." The admission was pulled from Sim like a bad tooth.

"You know, I learned about them straps real good. Clive was telling me that a lot of people don't wear 'em and most people aren't even monitoring their flight controls."

"They find them a little restrictive," explained Clive. "In a personal craft, with the music videos going and all...kids jumping all over the place."

"The damned things restricted me today, but the point is the believability of my death will be high, know what I mean? Tell 'em I wasn't wearing my belt."

"Autopilot landings are usually a gentle affair," said Clive. "People take them for granted after a while."

"So exactly what did you have in mind?" said Sim as he bit the bullet.

"I'm not sure yet, Sim." Hartle paused, as there was a new commotion outside the door to the room.

They were dismayed to hear the voice of the Princess Constance. Her imperious voice was upraised, demanding, and downright loud. She had a kind of desperate un-accepting and disbelieving anger. Her voice was strident, almost a wail of frustration.

"I don't care what your orders are!"

There were a couple of thumps against the wall.

"Help me, Sim!" gasped Brendan, literally diving back under the covers.

He frantically plucked at the leads and hoses.

"Oh, no!" Sim stood in a hysterical frozen attitude.

The door slammed open and a nurse half-fell backwards into the room, with the Princess Constance trying to hold on as if to avert the fall. The Princess had eyes only for the muffled, swaddled figure propped up on the pillows. Sim noted that Hartle had even managed to get a couple of the leads re-attached. Her eyes regarded the figure of Brendan in white-faced shock.

Sim's part fell into place naturally enough, to distract, delay, and confuse without offending.

"Princess...I have very grave news for you." And she began to tear up, automatically reaching to her purse for a tissue, but Sim and Clive both managed to get a handkerchief to her in time to prevent this.

"Oh! No!" she cried. "Oh, to be taken so young, and so handsome, too! Oh, Brendan, what have you done to yourself?"

She sat on the edge of the bed, putting a hand on his forehead.

"Temperature's good."

"He's an alien, Majesty," Clive put in quickly.

She peeled back an eyelid.

"Eyes are good." It was like she was examining a horse.

Brendan tried to ignore everything going on around him, and to enter into a Zen-like state of unawareness. He felt an up-swelling, an insane urge to laugh, and his guts twitched a little. Oh, no! Maybe she was a doctor. Lord knows, she could afford a good education.

"Well," said the Princess. "He doesn't look so badly-injured."

Hartle decided to give it one last shot. He re-gained consciousness, and in a dramatic attempt to sit up, eyes goggling and gasping, hoarse rasping breath hot in her face. Brendan convulsively reached into his shirt, still reeking of sweat, and pulled out her scarf, and touched it to his lips.

"See...Princess...I still have the kerchief you gave me..." He began twitching and contracting his muscles with great rapidity, a trick that had gotten him out of math class once, (but only once,) back in grade five.

His head fell back and he tried not to catch Sim and Clive's eyes while he did it, then he sat up straight again, pushing her off the bed onto the ground. The Princess landed on her rump with a distinct 'thud,' as Clive and Sim rushed to help, quite clumsily as it turned out.

"No! No! Ah, God, No!" Brendan cried aloud, and proceeded to fall down stone cold dead at her side, making his best effort to produce something that sounded like a death rattle.

The Princess held Brendan in her arms. His body was limp, sweaty, and warm, still smelling vaguely of him. He was as limp as a sack of waste, and then a terrible smell of gas escaped from Hartle's body, silent but terribly repugnant to her polite nostrils. The others hovered in uncertainty beside her.

Slowly, ever so slowly, she managed to tear herself away from the corpse, with Clive on one side and Sim on the other helping her to her feet. They tried not to stare, both with a little too much white around the eyes for comfort. Clive shuddered. The events of the last hour were almost more than he could bear. He wasn't exactly faking it, saw Sim.

Sim and Clive picked up the body of Brendan Hartle up from the floor and put him back on the bed. Sim began to hook up the monitors, but Clive held his arm. Luckily for them the Princess was looking the other way. Brendan quickly ripped one out of his wrist and the little bleeping sounds stopped finally. He glared at them. Shutting his eyes firmly, he let his head thump on the pillow just to show 'em.

Sim stood there. It was all so sad. Hartle wouldn't be needing monitors in the time ahead. Princess Constance wept in a chair, silken tresses covering her face, wet and slick with tears. She sat wringing the scrap of cloth in her intertwined fingers, lamenting the dear departed. The servant stared at them as if they were all mad, tears pouring down.

"He was such a nice man." She blubbered into her hands. "Oh, for poor Brendan to be taken in the full virility of his life."

Her maid was bawling and sniffling and carrying on as much or more than the princess.

Neither of them wanted to correct Constance facts or grammar. The security man caught Sim's eye. He looked pretty pale around the gills. The magnitude of the bald-faced lie they were perpetrating made his concern for the future understandable. Clive just shook his head and the security guy subsided, clearly trying to calm himself. Sim could imagine his thoughts, this was the princess, after all. His head was on the block, no doubt about it.

"I never really got a chance to get to know him," she said. "But he seemed so kind, so open, really. He had a kind of child-like quality, a kind of innocence."

"He had his faults, Princess Constance." Sim kindly patted her on the arm.

She shrugged him off and kept crying.

Sim wondered how long this could go on. How could they get rid of her? He needed time to plot, to think, to scheme this out. A faint snickering noise escaped from Hartle and Clive quickly began coughing in an effort to cover it up.

Sim and Clive looked at each other in panic and astonishment. They hurriedly covered up the cadaver, Sim being sure to put an extra blanket on Brendan's head and chest, all folded up so the princess wouldn't see his shallow breathing. He lay there, swaddled up like a mummy, as still as death.

The servant comforted her mistress.

"There, there." She was busy hugging Constance and weeping right along with her.

"Well. Guess we'd better get the meat wagon," said Clive.

Sim could have kicked him in the shins. Red-faced, Clive covered up by clearing his throat. Fresh wailing began and the weeping servant gave them a dark look. Sim shuddered at the crassness of it all, but it was enough. Almost an inspiration! Clive really was a genius, in some ways.

"Princess. There is nothing more that you can do for him now," said Sim.

She rose, wiping her eyes, and Sim touched her elbow.

"I wonder if I might escort you back to the palace?"

Reluctantly, with one last backwards look, the Princess Constance allowed herself to be led away. Sim saw the doctor returning with a bag, and a cup in his hands.

"I brought a sandwich for Mister..." He spoke up brightly.

"Not now! Leave it with Mr. Clive."

Sim almost bodily pushed the Princess down the hall, with the servant scurrying along behind, still holding a pungent-smelling fruit basket in her hand.

As he left, Sim took one quick look back over his shoulder. Clive was standing there, grabbing the bag and pulling the doctor in. Sim gave him a significant look and made a universal hand motion, the old 'call me and let me know what the hell is going on as soon as you can' sort of gesture.

***

The door closed. Sitting up, Brendan plucked off the sheets.

"Lucky."

"Yes," agreed Clive. "That was some incredible flatulence...nicely timed, though."

"I was saving that one up! I was going to shove Sim's head down under the covers and..." Hartle cracked a grin. "I was going to hold him there and let him squirm."

The doctor stood open-mouthed.

"Perhaps it's just as well that you didn't," Clive put in.

"Ah, here's the doctor. Shit! Let's have a smoke first."

"You know, Mr. Hartle, that's the best idea I've heard all day."

"Oh, do you smoke?" He proffered the pack.

Clive shook his head.

"No, but I have been meaning to start." Poor Clive shook his head again. "One minute it was stark terror, then the next minute this horrific urge to bolt for the hills."

Hartle was just smiling.

"If you think that's good, stick around a while."

The alien seemed like a pretty good dude. Once you got used to the ovipositors, vestigial on the males, which were located where the neck met the shoulders. Clive was a Taurian, derived from some insectoid roots.

"Get me that gym bag." Brendan beckoned at a side table. "I'll show you a thing or two."

Much to Clive's dismay, Hartle proceeded to crack open a beer, with the warm wet foam flowing down the bottle and his hand. Then he lit up a funny-looking cigarette, which almost gagged them with an aroma like burning underbrush on a wet autumn morn. Brendan reached over and turned off the oxygen supply on the wall. One of his buddies back on Earth had seriously burned himself trying to sneak a smoke in a hospital bed once upon a time, and a long, long way away.

"What the heck is that?" Clive willed himself not to be shocked. "Is that what I think it is?"

Acrid smoke filled the air as Clive and the doctor stood flabbergasted.

"It's not illegal," said Brendan. "Just unusual. I checked. You can look it up for yourself, if you like."

Chapter Twenty One

Over the next few hours...

Over the next few hours the announcement went out that a man had died in the space-drome incident. It was now being reported ad nauseum by the local media, which had several remote units on location. Their endless, repetitive footage was quite thorough, including a pall of greasy black smoke, which appeared to be coming from a series of blue dumpsters.

The ship itself was upside down, a blackened hulk with stumps where the wingtips and vertical fins once were. It was completely covered in fire fighting foam, and surrounded by emergency vehicles and flashing lights. But the best part was the instant replay.

Hartle had the unique and rare privilege of watching himself die, over, and over again.

"Hey, I never thought I'd tire of seeing this, but here we are," said Brendan. "Mind you, the more channels there are on TV, the less content there seems to be."

"Over two thousand channels on pay per view," boasted the alien guard. "It's program dilution. Where my brother-in-law lives, they only have thirty or forty channels. They get all the same stuff, essentially."

"Sometimes less is more."

The guard nodded in agreement.

Later Brendan had the opportunity to watch his televised funeral, where even certain members of the Family attended, although the Emperor and Empress were off planet at the time. He was struck to recognize the Princess in a hat and veil, wearing lacy white gloves up to her armpits. White was the exclusive symbol of royalty mourning. It meant 'a new beginning.' A couple of her brothers were there, and good old Sim too. From what he could gather, mourning customs, at least among the upper crust, involved a conspicuous display of gaudy colours and extroverted emotions. Was it all an act, then? They seemed all broken up about his passing.

They were intent on creating a myth or legend of his life. Several commentators called him a 'disturbing young philosophe,' and shit like that.

Apparently he was a consultant on moral philosophy! He howled when he heard that, but he sobered up abruptly. Who better, after all?

One report even went so far as to suggest that Hartle was a prophet. Maybe one of the Institute's tame networks, thought Brendan as he watched in disbelief and a kind of sickness. Yet the opposing forces had to be convinced that they had killed him.

On one network there was a short backgrounder on the digs at the ancient city, and the inscription. This time Hartle got it right from the horse's mouth, and a good picture of the Prophecy in popular interpretation. Right there in plain Centralian script. There it was, onscreen in short clips of carven stone, right there in digital technicolour. Sometimes you have to make tough moral choices, like when a good friend goes mad and threatens to kill you. Do you rat him off to the cops? Or wait a while and see if he cools down?

The whole thing was disturbing. He recorded it for later analysis.

"Sometimes it's a very good thing to have a newsman's interpretation. The lies they tell themselves have to be heard to be believed."

It was the proverbial three-minute news story. It was a strange thing. He studied journalism in school, but of course, once you learned the trick of how the news was made it kind of lost its glamour.

He knew enough to take a good hard look before swallowing it whole. What about the populace? If the media were some kind of a mirror on society, did the populace see, did they know that the reflections were distorted parodies of themselves? Did they accept the stereotypes as reality?

A half-ass propaganda ministry could always cook up something that would suffice.

After observing municipal politics in his own hometown for a few years, he concluded that 'The Big Lie' didn't work half as well as lots of little lies, none of which were important enough to be challenged. But over time, they added up with considerable effect.

The network he was viewing came out of Sartorius, which seemed to be a very liberal planet with a great deal of cultural autonomy. Hartle liked structures, and the structures of government could be deduced by inference, from relatively fragmentary bits of data.

He sat in his hideout, rented with cash funds. It was a shack in a warehouse district, near a municipal airport industrial park. The place didn't look much like a home, but Brendan had lived in an un-insulated four-room cottage years before. In that place, there were little gaps between the floorboards in the kitchen. When you swept, stuff fell down under the house. He sat, remembering some good friends and good times.

"Amazing what a couple of gallons of paint and a couple of cases of beer can do."

There wouldn't be any of that here. He regarded the cat with affection.

"It's all right for you," he said. "You guys are supposed to have nine lives. But I've never been dead before. No, wait! This is my second time!"

It was kind of a strange feeling, cooped-up in here. Brendan had easily read two hundred books in the last four or five weeks, and watched too much video feed. The ship was being repaired at a leisurely pace. To do otherwise would have aroused interest.

This was actually stranger than being cooped-up aboard ship. Thankfully, it would soon be time to go. He picked up the phone device, and called a familiar number.

"Clive." A cautious voice answered.

"Come on over, we'll have a cup of coffee." Brendan hung up.

He stood, stretched, and looked out the window, with the TV news out of Sartorius in the background. Half an hour later Clive came along, with a few things Hartle asked him to pick up on a previous visit. Lately the tension had been getting to him. Occasional urges to retch and dry-heave made the internal message plain: get the hell out, now. Clive shook out his raincoat and hung it on a peg in the back hall.

"We confiscated everything. We have most of your personal effects."

He dumped the contents of a briefcase onto the wood-topped kitchen table.

"There's really not much that's mine," said Brendan.

Clive handed him the Glock and spare magazines.

"We replaced the items in the evidence lock-up with replicas made up in one of our shops."

Perhaps it was for the record—Hartle could only assume the place was bugged to the tits. Upon discovering a tiny micro-camera in the showerhead, he gave it a kiss, tipped it the wink and put it back. Aliens could look at his ass if they wanted to.

"Good, someone might get suspicious if stuff got up and walked away. It all has to be fully accounted for. What about food?"

"Sim has put it all in the hands of the technical people. The theory is that it will help in the study of Earth culture."

"Good. I'm doing all right here on your food," said Brendan. "Although I opened one up today, man did she stink."

Out of curiousity and concern, Clive lifted the lid and saw the label on the plastic cylinder there in the kitchen garbage.

"That's drain cleaner. I guess your language studies aren't coming along too well." For Clive grumbling was becoming a habit.

"I thought it must be an acquired taste." Clive paled.

Brendan held up a hand.

"I didn't eat any." Relief was evident on Clive's features. "Life's not so easy anymore."

"There's no flight computer here to help," Clive admitted.

The alien had been isolated here in this building for too many days now. Hartle disarmed his blaster and boxed it up for Clive. Government issued, it wouldn't be coming along with him.

"Yeah. Well. We'll soon have that fixed. How's she coming?"

Clive consulted notes, and read aloud from them. Somehow, Brendan was dominant in the relationship, in the same way as his boss for the project, 'Sim,' as Hartle referred to him.

"The major dents are all banged out. She has new wingtips and vertical surfaces. The stabilizers have been all rebuilt, or replaced. Small holes have been patched and covered with the proprietary skin coat," said Clive. "I wish I could tell you more about the process."

Brendan just grunted.

"Let's see here, the landing gear has been rebuilt and re-installed, and all of the modifications have been completed as requested."

Certain pieces of information were verboten and likely always would be. Oddly enough, Brendan's own assessment of typical Earth people not being able to give a coherent account of their own history or technology held true in the opposite case. The average man or alien in the street here was simply unable to give the secret of interstellar spaceflight away. Because they either didn't know it, or couldn't explain it. As long as no one in the know sat down and thoroughly explained it, Hartle was unlikely to figure it out on his own. Clive's thoughts were cluttered, as he worked through the last briefing. It was simple enough, to be sure.

He had a mental vision of Odd Ball in 'Kelly's Heroes,' Donald Sutherland the actor. 'I don't care what makes 'em go, baby, I just drive 'em.'

It was still one of his favourite Earth-type films. Clive had studied it endlessly in the early days, trying to trying to figure out what made men tick.

"Okay then," Clive continued. "The ship has been auctioned off to the highest bidder. The purchaser of record is Up Yonder Products, of Centralia, a numbered company with a bank account on Gabbel Seven."

He handed Hartle a ring of keys and a packet of documents.

"It's right near the terminal, capital city, Tingawaga. You can pick her up there. Here are your bank cards, fresh ID, a contract to explore the Marginals in areas and for purposes outlined there in the terms of service."

Knowing Hartle as well as he did, he expected Brendan would read it thoroughly and understand its contents.

"Good, thank you. And how is Sim keeping?"

"He's fine. The bruises on his neck have all but disappeared."

"What about the Princess?"

Prompted, Clive went on.

"Well, when in attendance at your funeral. She seemed particularly affected by the sight of the little coffin your cat was allegedly buried in."

The alien patted the kitty's head, as she sat beside him on the kitchen counter.

"Yeah. She was all broken up on TV." Hartle sighed.

There was silence.

"Who did you get?" Brendan asked a little obscurely, but Clive knew what he meant.

"It was an old wino from the clinic downtown. He died of a heart attack the night before," said Clive. "And the other was a pet that was put down at an animal shelter recently."

"Fuck." Brendan had a moment of sadness at the thought of those forgotten lives.

He had to contrast that with his own luck and keep it in perspective. Funeral staff needed bodies to go in boxes, otherwise a lot of talk would ensue. With Brendan and the cat being aliens, almost any body would do.

"You guys didn't kill some old lady's lap dog?" Brendan was kidding Clive, but his heart wasn't in it.

"Oh, no, it bit a child. It was destroyed by court order."

"An old wino and a mad dog or something," Hartle told the cat. "I guess we were adequately represented at our funeral."

"So you guys will have the van stolen from the airport and then taken directly to the chop shop?"

Clive nodded.

"That seems adequate."

"Well, Clive..." Brendan extended a hand.

He was genuinely fond of the youthful scientist.

"Yes. Gods be with you. And try to report in once in a while! You know how Sim will worry. Er, so will I."

"Me too, likewise, even." Brendan gave him a searching look.

They shook hands, and without further ado, Clive exited the building with his bulging valise. One last friend heading out the door and both knew it.

He packed up his small remaining possessions, including the cat, and chucked them into the small white rental van with the deeply-mirrored windows. He opened the wooden sectional overhead warehouse door with the radio-control hand-held device and drove out into the drizzly evening fog. The fuse on a small incendiary device smoldered in the dank blackness, piled high with oily rags just to make sure. No DNA samples with any luck, not after a small but intense blaze had gutted the contents of the building. With no victims, no insurance claims, it would be quickly forgotten. Just a two-inch story on the fifth page of the local news-text, he reasoned.

Heading for the main trunk route, which led to the off-planet spaceport, as opposed to the little continental airport near his temporary home, he took time to go down a few streets and bade farewell to Centralia in his own fashion. You could hardly call it an emotional farewell, but there was a hollowness in the belly. This world had become familiar to him. Daily errands, going out to buy lunch, liquids, cat litter, taking care of simple wants, was the beginning of a learning process. You just learned to blend in and act naturally. Gluing the bumps on his forehead, making up his face and hands before going out, had become like second nature. He was just another bad actor in some kind of crazy space opera. It was like the tears of a clown, lonely and futile.

He drove past the palace on the way, feeling guilty for he knew not what. Was this how stalkers felt? Unnamed fears filled him. Ultimately, we all die alone.

"I think she would understand." He took one last look over his shoulder.

He was looking for a lit window in a turret, or a solitary figure wandering the grounds in a flowing white night-gown, with thunder smashing and lightning flashing.

He was looking for a girl with long silky hair blowing in the breeze, barefoot in the night, and she wasn't there.

Nothing. With one, last, sheepish sigh of regret, he found the entrance ramp to the mega-highway. It was time to get the hell out of town.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Time well spent...

'His time though short, was time well spent.'

'Sowing fear and confusion wherever he went...'

These were lines 28,899 and 28,900 from the prophecy.

Not a bad epitaph, thought Sim. He turned away from the freshly turned grave trying very hard not to laugh or show any hint of inner glee. It was a nice stone.

The new plan was going well, and Hartle seemed to be working his tail off trying to fulfill the Prophecies. He must have been doing some deep reading. It was amazing how the fellow could pick it up so fast. Their testing indicated that Brendan could read well over three hundred and fifty words a minute, with about a ninety-eight percent comprehension rate. When he didn't get it the first time, he simply slowed down, went over it again, and raised that to more like ninety-nine and a half! While conscious retention levels were not high in humans, less than five or ten percent, usually more like one percent, Brendan had a demonstrated ability in intuitiveness. For the purposes of the study, this was defined as a state where the individual could extrapolate with minimal input.

But this was in English, normal English, not fraught with all the ancient symbolism and allegory of the Prophecies. Brendan was an amazing person, considering most of the team had expected something closer to a pre-societal state of cognitive development and social adaptive skills. Brendan claimed to be an 'average' student, but privately Sim believed that to be nonsense. Brendan had a deep streak of insecurity that welled up from time to time.

His capabilities offered much food for thought. What if by some unforeseeable chance of misfortune, Earth developed star drive on her own? The thought was utterly horrifying. Some Members of Council were all for killing Hartle the minute they were informed of the project. There was a mild feeling of relief when he got killed so suddenly.

It was Sim's operation now, his and his alone. Trent and some of the other political types were seeking new rows to hoe, new melon patches to cultivate. While his personal confidence remained unshaken, the consequences of failure would be considerable, perhaps even fatal.

He compensated by throwing himself into the work piled high on his desk. There was also the matter of the Prophecy, building on what they had started. By the time the Mythological Institute was done, Brendan really would be the Messiah—whether he liked it or not. It was a long-term plan. The benefits might not come in his lifetime. If the Empire was to be saved, they needed inspiration, and the motivation to change.

At least that was the theory.

There were a lot of loose ends to be tied up. Trent and many others were on new duties, so now Sim and Clive had to look after almost everything. Now only a skeleton staff worked in the control center, following up old leads and trying to develop new ones.

There was some talk about finding a replacement for Brendan, but too much 'hype' had gone into the mission during the selling of it. The costs were outlandish, and now people thought the results too slender to go on with it. This fit right in with Sim's plans. If they all thought the project was dead, if they thought his career at a dead end, so much the better.

But, had Trent and the others really been fooled? Who knew what private sources of information they might have available, or what they might have heard.

Who would inevitably talk, sooner or later? Someone would, almost certainly.

The populace had already heard much of Hartle through the media. A whole plethora of religious cults sprang up overnight, based on his already-legendary life and exploits. Brendan's antics had left a huge number of eyewitnesses. Stories grow in the telling. He grinned at the audacity of it all. It was amazing what a little funding in the right place could do! Calling the cash handouts 'cultural grants,' ostensibly for the promotion of 'multiculturalism,' was a stroke of pure genius. But as Clive said, 'ignorance is cheap,' in the end.

Hartle's mother, a mythical figure to these people, was now venerated, and someone had somehow generated a bogus likeness of her, which was selling very well. His cat was supposed to have extra-sensory powers and it was remarkably articulate, if Tri-D and web-vids were any indication. Show trials of certain offenders, murderers and assassins, were proceeding at a glacial pace, with virtually unlimited media access. If the Messiah said the Empire was to be saved, by golly, it would be saved. How could you argue with the logic of a prophecy?

It was a scientific experiment in group consciousness and wish fulfillment, and it was going very well indeed. It was difficult at best for Sim to understand the gullibility of uneducated persons. What mattered was that it worked. Sometimes he would watch the broadcast evangelists who were already coining money off Hartle's good name.

"When, and if, He comes back, there will be hell to pay," thought Sim. "No one will ever understand the facts, even if He were to attest to them Himself."

He now realized it was possible to go too far in psychological warfare.

If people began to think Hartle had risen from the dead, a major new religious force would be created. Admittedly, that was his semblance of a plan from the start. Bad as it was to conceive of it, now he saw it could actually come to fruition. He had lost control.

Clive admitted to being deeply troubled by the whole project. He was having trouble sleeping at night. Unfortunately he was having second thoughts. But they were in too deep to quit easily, or painlessly, thought Sim. Somehow, they would have to keep the lid on, and use Hartle's undisputed skills in some other way. At this point Sim accepted that he couldn't kill Brendan. It just didn't seem right. And Hartle would probably escape anyway. Essentially, it had to work the first time, or they lost Brendan.

He hoped no one else would learn of the terrible secret be bore. He wondered what the princess would think. What would she say if she found out Brendan was still alive? Not good. Certainly the council wouldn't approve of Sim's recent activities. What would she say to Hartle?

"She would not be amused."

What else could Sim and Clive have done? Brendan presented them with a fait accompli.

"When I see you again, Brendan Hartle, you and I are going to have a little talk," he promised. "That is, if I don't decide to kill you before then."

'Chaos reigns supreme,' according to Hartle. Sim didn't like that idea one bit.

He rose from the desk, and packed up his little computer, putting other items in his black case. The secretary came in. She was a temporary assigned from the pool because of the cutbacks in his program.

"I'll be off for the day, sir."

It was early yet, but he nodded enthusiastically.

"Yes, that's fine."

"Good night," he added like some absent-minded professor.

Tomorrow would be another long day. Sim sighed as he left the room himself. The way things stood now, to lock the door would almost be suspicious. Now, if Missy Smoothbottom forgot to lock it, no harm done. He had to play the role of a bureaucrat between big projects, the only road to promotion and advancement. The next six months or so looked very bleak indeed. He had to make plausible proposals for plausible projects, and make sure every damned one of them failed! What a chore. What a chore.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Brendan disembarked...

Brendan disembarked from the cruise liner, glad to be away from the holidaying crowds. People were people, he mused, but alien kids could be just as badly disciplined as Earth kids, just as obnoxious.

Honeymooning couples and small groups, there was no other way of describing them, saddened Brendan. They made him feel more alone than he ever felt on his own planet, and that was saying something.

It depressed him, and rubbed salt in the wounds, when in an elevator, or at dinner, or just walking on the promenade decks overlooking the terrarium, to run into them, and see their love. Nothing reminds a person of their basic loneliness more than the sight of lovers intertwined. It was depressing, to see six or seven of them, in newly wedded bliss, in some kind of chain or serial marriage. It was enough to make you sick. They were usually as drunk as hell, and groping and smooching like animals. Yuck!

Yes, Hartle was glad to be off the interstellar cruise ship, which should have been fascinating, but it wasn't. The only impression, other than kids and lovers, was predictably enough the food, huge, heaping mounds of it, big gobbly piles of it, eighty and hundred-metre tables of it, with ice sculptures and creamy pale linen. Tonnes of glittering glassware, shimmering stemware, mountains of sherbets, ice creams, chasms of cupcakes, cliffs of cheesecake, flowing with rivers of house wine and oceans of brew. Skyscrapers of grub and vittles, where the visual impression was far more important than the flavour. The first impression, or better yet, a snapshot from a cheap camera reigned supreme. A meal meant to be photographed, above all else. They gave you something to talk about, if you could hear yourself over the roar and throb of eight or ten thousand in one really big room having dinner. Statistically speaking, there must have been one hundred and ten heart attacks, eighty-three separations, two hundred and forty births, two murders, three rapes and an incident of arson during the dinner hour. Yet the show must go on.

People at one end of the room got fed and the tables were being cleared for cards and a bingo-like game, while the people at the far end hadn't got their soup yet. In a kind of fascination, Brendan objectively and impartially observed the waves of food, which sort of crossed the room, crested and receded. They left nothing but dregs and foam.

To say that Brendan hated every minute and every second of every day on that stinking trip would be a misstatement, but not too far off. You couldn't complain about the food, anyhow. Obviously, that was the point.

What do you give the dull, unimaginative slob who has everything? A cruise.

He went to the cargo side of the Tingawaga space-drome, looking for the ship. That would make him feel better. A uniformed customs officer directed him. Not precisely sure of the species, they were all starting to look the same to Brendan. While he always wore the translator, he kidded himself that he was picking up the lingo, a kind of trade-jargon that concisely cut through the bullshit of life. An armed, private security guard checked his papers and allowed him in through a fence. He saw forklifts, skids, huge containers, and smelled something rotten in the cracks. People were shouting at one another, as robotic handlers went rolling along lines of electrodes on the floor. It was an odd mix of hand labour and automation. This sure beats cruise ships, he thought sardonically.

The smell hit him like a physical force. It wafted its miasmatic tendrils from the crates marked in an alien script to his left, and it came from the pipes smoked by some of the natives, and from the rotting jungle right next door. It came from the cesspit behind the buildings, and the acrid exhaust of the bottled gas-powered cargo-handling machinery. A searing alien sun beat steam up out of the ankle-deep puddles in the grey-white muck that passed for a public road on the other side of a sagging, weed-obscured fence.

Finally, he came to a sealed impound yard, and found a little office building.

It was made of scrap materials. While paneled in plates and sheathing of alloy metals of various sizes and textures, the fasteners were ferrous and left huge rust streaks on every seam.

An unknown animal, quiet now during business hours, lay on the floor, regarding the newcomer with dark, sad, but beautiful eyes. He knew beyond any reasonable shadow of a doubt that it was a holy terror after business hours, when it would be allowed, even encouraged, to roam, slavering at the jaws looking for fresh blood. He gave the Shetland pony sized, four-legged armadillo-like critter a surreptitious examination, noting the huge canines and slashing claws.

This animal would be omnivorous, to say the least. It was so ugly, he reckoned the pups wouldn't even have the redeeming grace of being cute. He tried to ignore the rancid saliva trailing out of its jaws.

He gave the creature a wide berth and presented his paperwork to the alien being crouched behind the thickly glassed window and its semi-circular cutout with stainless steel brushed-metal tray. The being pushed his papers back out through the slot.

After a cursory examination of a peg-board, the person or being grunted and called a number. It reached out with one of its six clawed tentacle-like formations. Compound eyes regarded him in a mellow and benign fashion, as it cocked its long-necked head to one side in a listening fashion. For one crazy moment, he wondered if it was gay.

Taking a set of keys off a numbered rack, the alien person waited impatiently until an inner door opened and someone else came into the office. Cadaverously pale, this rather human looking lad, red-haired and blue-eyed, came out and took a ticket from the creature's outstretched talons.

He looked like about seventeen years old in Terran terms. Brendan was bemused to contemplate the faded and fringed, blue bib-type overalls, the raggedy short-sleeved shirt, perhaps white once-upon-a-time, a straw hat, and almost unbelievably, there was a slingshot hanging out of the back pocket!

'Huckleberry Finn meets the 21st Century, for Christ's sake,' he thought rather uncharitably.

"Foller me." The kid had a real drawl. "Yer ship's down at tuh other end."

As they strolled along, the kid pulled out a pipe and began expertly filling it with an unusual mixture, but Brendan was unfamiliar with Child Bureau laws around here. The lighter looked suspiciously like something available on Earth, but he had noticed that paradox before. Form follows function. Utility was everything in the mass-marketing arena. The trouble with a Klingon knife, he once explained to Sim, was that you had to spill blood just to cut a piece of cheese. A two-ended, eight-headed knife a full one and a half metres long was useless in anyone's galaxy, at least for slicing tomatoes.

"Nice lighter, kid." They walked out the mucky road through the weeds, gravel and mounds of impounded freight.

Outlined against the sunset, the spaceport on the horizon rumbled with traffic. Contrails of vapourous exhaust led like white ropes into the sky, but then faded quickly. Another sonic boom rattled the entire scrap yard. Every few seconds the windows rattled.

"Sell you one." The kid was studying Brendan unobtrusively out of the corner of an eye.

Hartle noted the caution with a certain amusement, considering his own present predicament.

"How much?" Brendan had been wondering how and where to replace his trusty convenience store, flint-and-steel, gas-powered device.

This kid might be brighter than he looked.

"What do you got?"

The kid was sharp. Let the mark shaft themselves, he probably stole the lighter from a packing crate full of them.

"Let you have a couple of packs of Earth smokes."

"Where the hell's Earth? Probably shit smokes." The kid was disdainful.

"I can assure you, they are the finest Virginia tobacco. Uh, here. This looks like the one." He pretended to study the papers in his hand.

"So...you want the lighter?" The kid was still there.

Feeling foolish, as if he were contributing to the delinquency of a minor, Hartle gave the alien youth two packs of Player's Smooth King Size from his gym bag. The rest of his luggage was to be delivered by the cruise people shortly.

"Ya, t'anks." The kid's eyes lit up.

He tore off a piece of the paperwork and gave the rest to Brendan.

"Here's your lighter." He cracked open the pack and lit up in a heartbeat.

"Tower freak's written on there."

"Okay."

"What's 'at mean?"

"It means hunky-dory," said Brendan.

"Oh, okay," said the kid, and turned and prepared to hoof it back to the lunch room or wherever they went and whatever they did to kill time around here besides shooting at things with slingshots.

Imagine a kid not knowing that.

"It means everything is going fine. Thanks, and see you."

The kid came back, eyes on the friendly human face.

"You need any help to fire her up?"

"No, you mean you fly?" asked Hartle, as the door retracted for him.

"Sure do!"

"Tell you what. If I decide to pick up a crew here, you're first on the list."

It could do no harm to foster and inspire youthful ambitions. Poor kid might not have any decent role models around here. Probably not, but what was he doing working on the fringes of the space-drome, in essentially a customs lock-up yard? Was it summer vacation? He slipped the kid a twenty for good luck.

"Thanks," called Brendan to the retreating back.

The youth's pace picked up, sure enough, he broke into a skip. Then he was racing to the building. Not for the first time, not for nothing, Brendan reflected that youthfulness was wasted on the young.

Brendan hoped he wouldn't tell all his friends what a sap he was. Just an old softy, as the saying went. The guy's friends would probably laugh at his claims to being considered a potential crew member. He hoped they wouldn't be too hard on him.

He entered the ship, leaving the door open to let out the musty, unkempt smell.

It felt good to be home again. The first thing he did was to check the fridge, to see if the repair crews had left him any beer.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Hartle spent a few hours in pre-flight...

Hartle spent a good few hours in pre-flight, going over the ship, unloading his luggage when it arrived, and uncrating the cat. The cat took her time in sniffing out every corner. Soon she found the room she had used for a toilet previously. It was enough to convince her that this was indeed home, and she began to relax. The cat was in luck. A plastic bin of an odd shape, with an uncomfortable-looking seat-lid and bags of clay pellets thoughtfully provided by the catering firm. The apparatus was labeled 'Emergency Chemical Toilet #132.' Centralian script. Military issue.

Brendan checked the food lockers, discovering them to be full of food packs vaguely resembling military surplus. The kind of food that mountain climbers and wannabes were seen with.

It all made sense. A prospector out for the long haul would equip himself with the barest of luxuries. There were a few items of new equipment. These included a pair of retractable manipulator arms slung under the leading edges of the wings for example.

They were enclosed in pods, but the radar signature would go out the chimney. Any good prospector would be glad to trade a little speed and stealth for those beauties. A unique set of tools. He thought of the places he might be going. On the galactic frontier, people would try to take his ship away from him, and he meant to prevent them from doing it. He took proper care in the setting up of his security programs, examining the ship. Brendan checked all the modifications, as well as the fuel, the batteries, the lubricants, all the little subsystems.

Soon he found beer aboard, deep among the rations. It was in marked crates, with 'Standard Issue #44' stenciled on them. He had visions of British naval power at its height and the traditional tot of rum. A gill of rum per day, which is why half of them signed on, and why the other half didn't desert, as Nelson said.

Grinning to himself for no good reason, he put it away after making a check mark on his list-of-things-to-do. At least he wouldn't have to go into town for it. Just then, through the audio speakers he heard a scream of tires not far away. They were set on extra-sensitive and on external pickup just in case of footpads and assassins. For no reason at all, he felt a shock of adrenalin in his midriff. His pulse shot up. He nipped out to the control room. Hartle scanned the view-screens and saw a running figure pursued by a big black automobile in the parking lot. It was the kid, running for his very life if a picture said a thousand words, and damn it all!

The kid was running straight for the ship and Brendan Hartle.

"Aw, kid, what did you do?"

Brendan turned the key, and the scout rumbled to life. The shed, or what was left of it, blew away unnoticed behind him. He only had eyes for the kid, sprinting this way barely a hair's-breadth from disaster. The car bumper was inches behind his fleeing heels.

"Flight computer!"

"Yes."

One word was enough, they were all old friends here.

"Soon as the kid's aboard, close locks, max power and give me flight control."

"Acknowledged."

The car screamed sideways and careened to a halt beside the ship. The kid was in one of the blind spots. Thumping at the small landing stairs, someone was gasping for life. Hartle concentrated on doing up the straps, although he was praying he wasn't a little rusty over his layoff period. Then the kid was there.

"I'm sorry," blurted the kid.

"Shut up and sit down."

"See how fast you can strap in, kid."

"Door closing," reported the computer.

"Stop! Thief!"

He yelled into the microphone, fooling no one but at least you could say he tried, then slammed his throttle way forwards, gave her a little up and at 'er, and they flew through a small row of private hangars that collapsed in pathos all around them. Fortunately they were mostly empty. He had just had a lot of body work done. The tower tried to call repeatedly, but he didn't have time to care. The skids were screeching in protest.

"Did we hit them?"

The kid shook his head after a quick sidelong glance.

"Why, no."

"Want me to go back around and try again?" Brendan called, and the kid gave another dazed shake of the head.

"No! No!"

Whang! Crack! Now the ground and sky ahead of them were clear. They had just done a two-second quarter mile, a record in anyone's books.

"Up, mother-fucker!" Then the nose tilted and she was clear of terra firma.

Thick clouds, unseen during his afternoon's work obscured his vision. Sun broke through, and the screens darkened down before he could speak. You couldn't be mad with the kid really. Only it was such a perfect set-up, he wondered what Sim was trying to pull. Half the systems weren't turned on yet, and the kid reached over and began flipping switches. Soon they had low-level radar, anti- collision assistance, and infrared views. Brendan would bet a hundred bucks there was an ambush just waiting in low orbit. He swung from side to side in basic evasion mode. Stay low, and think it through.

"Watch our tail," he told the computer. "Are we airtight?"

"Yes." The flight computer did a quick check for holes and pressure leaks.

"Nice work, kid! Just what the hell did you do?"

"I'm awful sorry, sir."

He had to strain to hear the low voice. Contrition and sincerity oozed out of every pore and he just didn't buy it.

"I'm awful sorry," the kid started again. "But I sold some of those smokes in a bar downtown. Some people started shoving me around. I ran away, but they chased me. I thought I could hide somewhere in the impound-yard, but..."

"Jesus," said Hartle. "I should have known!"

Committed now, the sky turned black and bright stars appeared in the emptiness.

"They had another car at the yard," the kid recounted. "I lost the first bunch easily."

The kid looked him over pretty thoroughly.

"I don't think they were after me, so much. They seem to know you from somewhere."

"Okay, kid. I guess it really isn't your fault. They might have been watching this ship for weeks." Brendan figured that was the most likely scenario.

There would almost certainly be enemy ships in orbit. There was no easy way to get the kid back home. It would endanger him to try. The kid was a potential witness, one who could possibly identify the perpetrators. And for Pete's sake what was he supposed to do with a kid aboard? They were silent, Brendan for one trying to think of what to say next.

The kid seemed to know something about ships.

"Did you sit in here? In the ship, before I got here?" He recalled some of the sins of a mis-spent youth of his own.

"Oh, well, yeah." The kid's admission was innocent enough. "I didn't take her up. I just checked out a few of the systems."

"You just like ships, eh?" He couldn't think of anything else to talk about. "I'll take us out of here in a second. Maybe we'll check you out later, okay?"

The kid nodded agreement. He hadn't had time to consider the consequences, or maybe he had.

"Right now, I'm expecting company. In fact they're a little late and the suspense is almost killing me." Anticipation churned at his guts.

"Three bogeys, seven o'clock, level, eighteen-five, eleven hundred kilometres." It was the calm voice of the flight computer.

"Ah! Here we go," yelled Hartle in a kind of savage glee.

The game was on.

"Missiles up, guns up," called the computer on its own initiative.

Hartle had the throttle tight against the stop. He had a simple plan.

"Drop chaff continuously." He rolled into a ninety-degree left bank, pulling hard.

After counting to five, he rolled back and turned one-hundred-eighty degrees to the right, spewing out radar-reflective strips as he flew. He reduced throttle to slow her down. Deltas bled off speed quickly at high angles of attack. His fore-planes wrestled with the thin atmosphere.

Reversing his turn, he pulled hard to the left again in a kind of procedural turn, and descended about five hundred metres. They couldn't lock him up. His front end was all oblique angles. He was almost sure of it. Hand poised on the throttle, he began easing it forward again.

"Missile impact," warned the computer, and he saw multiple flashes in amongst the glittering cloud of descending foil.

"Coming out now." He punched through the shiny speckles like rain on a sunshiny day.

"Drop flares," he called. "Stop! Here they come. Watch this one."

Hartle hit the button for aerial mines. Then he centred up the pipper on the larger of the red circles that represented the foes.

"Press the trigger, here he comes." Brendan narrated for the kid's benefit.

He was gratified to see sparks, flashes, and puffs of smoke or vapour splash off the hull of the enemy ship as it shot by underneath on an opposite heading, now trailing blue-white gases.

High-pitched squeals in the monitors indicated the aerial minelets were chasing and impacting upon the enemy. The squeals stopped to indicate the minelets were expended.

"Ships fired at flares." The computer was keeping him up to date on all the latest info. "Target one is destroyed, target two appears to have rudder control only."

"Ship two is dying." Some poor bastard was kicking his life out in there.

"Ship three is damaged and running...will pursue." The front end began to come around.

He and the kid kept their eyes peeled for sight of their quarry. There was a sudden ball of blinding glare out there. The kid yelled in glee.

"Two ships behind..." Brendan broke up and over them.

His sudden Immelman, then several seconds of inverted level flight, followed by a spiffy split-s, gave him a blind spot, an under-the-belly firing position, and he used it with no hesitation.

"Sons of bitches."

He pulled down on them, the cannon shells making short work of the pair of them, firing first on the leader and then the guy on the left and rear. He just plain, flat-out, up and ran away, discretion being the better part of valour. Trailing a thin vapour trail, this guy was clearly heading for the atmosphere and the cloud-caps down there. They saw smudges, a greasy black stain in the sky.

"Next!" He keyed the microphone, and pushed all manual freak buttons.

"Holy crap and here they are!" The kid shouted in stark raving fear.

Another merge, another head-on pass, one of the pair blew up and then he had the fight of his life on his hands. This guy was good. The pilot rolled, up and over, hitting the retros. This time he had a killing shot on Hartle, whose wingtips narrowly missed the guy once or twice. It was a rolling-scissors fight, but without gravity or the possibility of stalling, completely pointless. He deftly blocked the maneuver with a Lomcevak followed by a shark's tooth followed by a half-roll. The other rolled as if to speed around to get on his tail again, but Brendan ignored the gee's. He just kept pulling, and finally he managed to sweep the pipper out in front.

"Die, you piece of shit."

He squeezed the trigger, and the ship began to burn, a nasty thing to see in space. It was like fireworks in a bottle all going off at once. The enemy ship was spinning around, clearly out of control. He shut down the cabin speakers for a while and took his thumb off the microphone button. The kid sat there, pale and white, wet with perspiration. Never holding for more than a few seconds in any straight line, he kept on.

There were no further responses to his challenge.

"Kiss your asses goodbye." It went out on all frequencies.

Then Brendan made the big jump to mega-light speed.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Sim was furious...

Sim was furious. He was furious with Brendan, furious with Clive, but mostly furious with himself. Hartle hadn't waited like he promised, no! He started right back in with the action.

Just couldn't resist, apparently. He studied the results, documents sent over from Federal Police Headquarters. Clive sat there with him in his office, ashen-faced but strangely unrepentant.

"So! The game begins anew." Sim was bitter.

"He knew what he was doing, and we knew there would be risks." Clive spoke firmly.

He expected to be fired any minute. Somehow that emboldened him.

"How the heck are we supposed to keep this under wraps?" Sim rumbled, aggrieved by his fate.

Right then Clive wished he would fire him. Almost anything, rather than face an angry Crown Representative much longer.

"And of course now we have no idea of where he went, except that his original plan is defunct."

Hartle planned to go into the Marginals and, 'have a look around,' as he put it, and report his findings when possible.

"All that just went out the window, is my assessment," nodded Clive.

"Yet he did say he would report in occasionally. That's mighty nice of him. Let us hope he does so very soon."

He was working hard to regain control over the emotions seething inside. The buzzer on his desk sounded.

"Trent is here to see you," said the secretary in a shaken voice.

He looked at Clive.

"Oh, shit." The door burst open and a red-faced Councilor Trent came barging in.

***

At about the same time but far, far away, Hartle and the kid surveyed their first planet.

It was clearly inhabited. They saw evidence of farming, with lots of smoke from slash-and-burn agriculture. There was an indication of hydrocarbon pollutants in the planet's atmosphere from some light petrochemical industry. Soon they found the biggest urban area. It must be the capital. It lay at the hub of a small road network, which petered out into the hills surrounding the city. A natural deep-water harbour showed why the city was here, a small metropolis plopped right down into the midst of huge ruins, crumbling walls, and pagan temples brooding in the rarified air. Ruins sat cheek-by-jowl with skyscrapers and more humble constructions, some of which appeared to be packing crates and scrap wood.

Sure and begorrah, there was a small airport-spaceport complex. Hartle's gut tightened in anticipation as he contemplated the unknown...

Meanwhile...

Sim and Clive, with Trent now in attendance, were having a palaver in Sim's palatial office. He wondered how long he would keep it. They had their hands full with Trent so far, but all was not lost, and once again Sim was grateful for his choice of the young scientist for this project. He waited to pounce on any little perceived openings.

"This Hartle is a very interesting individual carbon-based life form," Clive said. "He specified some rather interesting new equipment for the ship."

"Yes, I've read the report." Trent groaned.

To him, it was just more expenditure on a budget already cancelled. Sim could see thoughts going through his head, if you could call it such.

"He felt it was worthwhile to give up something in the way of forward speed, and maneuverability. But for what?" Sim hoped to spark some interest, some renewed concern for the mission in the Councilor.

"Other than that, we just don't know," confessed the junior conspirator.

"The best advice I can tell you," began Sim, lost for how best to express it.

"You never know what the idiot is going to do next," concluded Trent.

Clive grinned.

"You're picking up the lingo."

"It took a couple of days to sanitize my language, especially around the mother-in-law," said Sim.

They didn't quite have Trent, but they hadn't quite lost him yet either.

"You know, when he's not here, it would be easy to hate him, or even lightly dismiss him," Trent said. "When he's in the same room, there is an unmistakable animal magnetism."

"They're not telepathic, are they?" He asked after a brief and unapologetic pause while Clive and Sim regrouped via eyebrow and twitch-signals.

Trent was far away, lost in his thoughts.

"I still don't know, and we will never know for sure." Sim chose his words carefully and judiciously.

"On at least one occasion, I did feel something quite weird from him, and I myself am definitely not a telepath."

He sensed Clive's initial shock, but sudden comprehension. Pull out all the stops. Lie your brains out.

"I've felt the same thing once or twice." Clive straightened and began to tell his story now, giving the impression of having been reminded of something important but long forgotten.

"And?" murmured Trent, pale eyebrows curved up, the moist red mouth in an 'oh' of anticipation.

"It was nothing, really. Except that for one brief moment, I really wondered, you know." Clive artfully composed his thoughts, lying was one thing, inspiration was quite another. "Well, you know, if he was really like invincible, and omnipotent, and all-seeing...I wondered for a moment if he really was the Messiah..."

Sim watched Clive fish Trent in with jaw-dropping awe.

"I wondered what he must think of us..."

Both men looked at the picture of the Imperial Family on the wall and their eyes met. Sim smiled again.

"It would be a good joke on us," he told Trent.

Trent tried to get back to the subject.

They had done it! This was no time for gloating or triumph.

"Hartle is still above the ninety-fifth percentile in terms of sheer flat-out speed, but I doubt if I would be willing to give up having the fastest ship in the Galaxy," said Trent. "Makes you wonder what he has in mind."

The Councilor reluctantly agreed with Sim's bitter assessment.

"We're all in it together, aren't we?"

Sim's shoulders slumped with the narrowness of victory. Was this how Brendan felt after a combat? Unbelievable. How did it feel to shoot down six enemy ships in an air-to-space-borne engagement lasting less than two minutes?

"Maybe the Messiah really is getting into the scrap and salvage business," the councilor allowed. "You just never know with this Hartle."

"Even Jesus had a job," said Sim.

***

"Okay. Kid, I'll try to fill you in as we go along. Sorry about your life. Things could get seriously screwed up around here."

The kid looked at him steadily.

"Living in a twisted hulk in a compound, slaving for crazy old Vink, wasn't exactly my fondest fantasy."

"Well. This might not be much better. There are certain occupational hazards."

"Yes! I think I may know what you mean," blurted the kid, all pissed-off.

It reminded Brendan of a good line, but this was not the time to share it with an alien kid.

"I'm not exactly overjoyed myself. Contributing to the delinquency of a minor, abducting a minor, reckless endangerment, child labour laws, I guess we just better hope we don't get caught."

Try to break it to the kid with some gentleness. His eyes wandered around several screens.

"Let's thrash this out later." The kid was refusing to look at him anyway.

Sooner or later the kid would cry, and then what the hell was he supposed to do?

The ship rested at the edge of a huge expanse. What had once been a thriving, busy place was now moribund. It was just a smooth clearing in the jungle, albeit one with a recognizable concrete patchwork visible through hedges of tall weeds and with buildings in use still along the southern perimeter line. So far, no one had crossed the intervening two thousand metres to ask for papers, welcome them, or offer service.

He had the distinct impression no one would come. No one on this little planet gave a tinker's damn, and that suited him just fine.

"So? They have to catch us first. Besides, there's no way for them to check your age out here..."

Brendan laughed.

The kid was precious.

"Er, exactly how old did you say you are?" Brendan was a little startled at the quick turnabout, but turnabout is fair play.

The kid consulted the calendar-conversion tables after clicking on the icon, looking at the secondary displays for a moment.

"Near as I can make out, one hundred thirty-seven of your Earth years."

"Huh!" said Brendan. "Well, isn't that nice."

Time to reassess some pre-conceived notions of his companion.

"A hundred thirty-seven."

"Sorry, my implant is not as discrete as some of the newer units," complained the other, and Brendan repeated it.

"Somewhere nearby is a strong radio source," said the kid. "That's all that I can tell you."

The kid tapped in a few inputs, and Hartle was quite impressed.

"We can record, log, attempt to translate, decode, analyze, all this may take a while."

"Really! That's good to know," said Hartle.

If the kid really did know something about ships, he would be less likely to turn it on accidentally or otherwise do something stupid.

"In the beginning, it was presented as a mission of disinformation. I was to play a prophet, of Messiah-like character. They even faked up some ancient texts with my name all over them," said Hartle, composing his thoughts While the temptation to spill his guts all over the place was very high, this alien kid had no common terms of reference. Yet he was intelligent, and more mature than Hartle at first thought. He had the local experience and knowledge that only comes from growing up as a boy with little parental supervision in an urbanized, industrial setting. Maybe it was Hartle that lacked terms of reference...it was all in the point of view.

"My name, carved in stone, in English, that was a nice touch. I found out about that later. Supposedly carved in modern English, twenty or thirty thousand years ago."

"Really?" said the kid.

"If you think about it, it's a pretty obvious con-job. It is not unheard of to topple statues of previous emperors, or send out busts carved in marble, then insert them into an old work. No one knows for sure when," he reiterated significantly. "The rest of it was modern Centralian. They thought I would never figure that out in a million years. They claimed to have translated it. They forgot the news coverage had real-time pictures. And the populace is very badly educated, oddly enough."

He picked that up sitting in the cultural equivalent of a doughnut shop. The kid listened in rapt attention.

"Apparently they hoped that it would give the poor teeming trillions something to watch on the video news programs, and they also have this conspiracy theory, where a bunch of bad guys were going to overthrow the Empire, and plunge the Galaxy in chaos."

"Into," said the kid.

"What?" Brendan was completely mystified.

"Into. You said 'in,' when it should be 'into' chaos," the kid explained patiently.

"Yeah. Whatever. In any case they got some old book, probably re-wrote the Aenid or the Illiad or something. It's like forty or fifty thousand badly-rhyming couplets in some kind of pseudo-antique gibberish...and I guess I'm supposed to carry out all these little prophecies," said Brendan. "The language is deliberately ambiguous, yet the individual words are modern. Most of the spellings are modern. Did I make that clear enough?"

It was a bad parody of Nostradamus, nothing more. The kid simply wouldn't get the allusion. The breeze, soft and warm, came in through the door and skylights, intruding on the silence between them.

"Can you believe them guys?" Hartle stood and went into the galley. "Want a beer?"

"Yeah, whatever that is."

"We have milk."

"What the hell's milk?"

Brendan sighed as he cracked the lid on a Rickard's Red.

"One for me and one for you." He would have to go digging in the back room for more beer soon. The last thing he really needed was a passenger. "I figure the Empire was interested in humankind because we so closely resemble them."

His own observation that Corvans and Centralians were virtually indistinguishable would have to wait. In his mind, it was almost a certainty that the Corvans would never get their freedom for that reason. There was no way the socially superior Centralians would ever acknowledge the equality.

And if they did, what about alien land claims?

The Snythinian minority groups were variants of the avian theme. They didn't compete so directly in the political sense with Imperial Authority, he theorized. In a sense, their needs were different. Originally, back in the mists of time, they didn't compete for the same types of resources, an old and comfortable relationship. Corvans would also want to vote and run for elections, so they must not be equal beings.

The whole system might crumble.

Do you simply hand over a bunch of planets and set them free? Even if unthinkable from an Imperial point of view, or even if you wanted to do just that, it would be an unmanageable problem for the authorities. Just think of all those minimum-wage earners, quitting their jobs and immigrating to 'the promised land,' or planet. Brendan fussed in the kitchen, mopping up the sweat rings from the beer bottles.

Society would grind to a halt! Production numbers would fall, and production was the economy.

The kid's mind was focused on the more immediate problem. The kid had to consider what, and when, and how much to tell the other. The kid had to learn how to deal with the new boss...wow.

Brendan re-entered the control room and handed the kid the bottle.

"Careful, we have no way of knowing if this will have a bad reaction in your gut."

The kid took a swig.

"Nope." The kid held it up to the light, examining the label and taking a couple of more swigs.

He gave it a good taste test, that's for sure.

"Boss."

It was calm, cool, not quite a statement. There was a tone to it that Hartle didn't like, and it sounded like bad news. Hartle drank deeply himself. He might as well enjoy the first gulp.

"I don't think you quite understand the importance of 'The Books.'"

"Oh?"

Then Hartle coloured in shame. Of course! It was freakin' Gospel to some of these folks.

"Sometimes an apology won't do," he began. "But..."

"I'm not offended," hastened the kid. "More like you should just try to understand the power of a religious bureaucracy, firmly embedded in the political fabric of the Empire and the mass consciousness of the laity."

"Oh."

"On your planet, I don't know what that's like, but we have hundreds of billions of beings who live, breathe, eat, drink, sleep, shit, piss, fuck, and eventually, die, by the books."

Hartle just stared. The enormity of their sick plan seeped into him.

"Jesus H. Christ. What a breathtakingly stupid thing to do!" He was in awe of them now.

"If they could manipulate you, in some way help to fulfill at least some of the Prophecies, then maybe they could use the situation to their own benefit," said the kid. "By the way, who is they?"

"The Imperial Family! Or, you could say it's being done in their name and at least allegedly on their behalf." Brendan explained his thoughts, which were only half-formulated at best.

This was no way to explain anything convincingly.

"The actual concept, the studies and planning, were done by the Mythological Institute. They're an umbrella organization for one thousand, two-hundred thirty-six departments, sub-branches and non-governmental agencies. All funded through Imperial largesse."

"Oh, then you are in trouble," said the kid matter-of-factly. "That's like the Ministry of Truth over there..." He wasn't smiling.

"Are they that bad?"

"Absolutely ruthless," assured the kid. "They're in charge of video production tax credits, prizes for the community newspaper association, cultural grants for films and books, and I don't know what all. Archaeology, all kinds of stuff like that too. They make thousands of rah-rah documentaries each year, give out cable and satellite licenses, and routinely monitor the airwaves and the wireless networks for drab, dull, mindless conformity."

Brendan considered what little he knew of espionage and mass mind control, which largely consisted of stuff he read as a boy in spy novels and science fiction.

"When you think of limbic stimulation, mind control, psi-ops in the military, science-fictional sense, you always think of a big thingy on a truck or helicopter. I don't know, maybe a satellite. They point it at a big crowd of people, and they all become willing slaves, or something. What was implied was some kind of waveform. A big electronic finger gets shoved into the primitive forebrain and gives it a stir. But that would merely destroy the brain, in my opinion."

Brendan couldn't put it into words very coherently.

"So what are you getting at?" The kid seemed to follow along pretty well.

"Well. The best way to warp a mind, is voluntarily. If they pick up a newspaper on their own initiative," Brendan thought it through. "If they have control over the channel changer, if they get to pick and choose what they watch, it's self-induced. It inevitably sinks to the lowest level. But it's not the medium that's important, it's not just the fact that a signal is beamed in from the sky. It's the content, ultimately, that really matters."

"And you're saying the content is shit," said the kid. "Well, tell me something I didn't already know."

"Yeah, but why?" asked Brendan. "Shit content means shit for brains?"

He was so close to solving the ultimate puzzle. It was so near and yet so far sometimes.

"They don't need a reason," decided the kid with finality. "They have all the power."

That wasn't good enough for Brendan, but they had to let it drop for a while. Chew on it from another end. Brendan was an idealist. The kid was an escaping slave. Their point of view was inevitably different.

"The Mythological Institute is entirely dedicated to espionage. Some of those departments are fictional, simply cover, for some other, more shadowy institution," said Brendan. "There are probably competitors."

Brendan did some of his best thinking aloud.

"Covers can be penetrated, or infiltrated, and any kind of corporate structure is subject to takeovers."

Another thought struck him. He had plenty of time to watch TV during his enforced layoff, and watched plenty of news programming. With too much time on his hands, Hartle did some deep thinking.

"Has the Institute been privatized?" he asked. "I'll bet you that thing's got a huge budget. Privatized institutions operate on a cost-plus basis. It's a guaranteed percentage, maybe fifteen or twenty percent, plus all that power."

"I couldn't tell you about that," said the kid. "But you could call a journalist or a video news station."

Brendan just shook his head. They were always the last to know what was going on.

"At the very least they could tell us when it happened, even if it was a big lie?" suggested the kid.

Brendan found that logical enough. They prided themselves on accuracy.

"Just think of all that power," he murmured.

It would give you the power to do what you want.

The pair sat drinking beer. They had much to think about. Hartle broke the mood.

They were mostly ignoring the outside environment.

"Why don't we call the tower? See if we get a response," suggested the human to his young protege.

'The Kid,' or 'the First Apostle.' No, wait: the cat was first. He hadn't seen her in a day and a half or more. Where in the hell was the cat?

"What do you want me to say?"

"Notify them of our arrival," said Brendan with a hint of irony. "Request permission to dump and flush holding tanks, whatever you can think of. Ask them how to get to town from here."

"We've been sitting here for quite some time!"

"Fuck 'em. We got a fuel injector seat gone and this ship don't move until the skipper says so."

"Who's the skipper?"

Just then the kid kind of 'yeeped' and stood up so quickly that Brendan heard cartilage crackling.

"Meow-ripp?" The cat introducted itself.

"Ugh! Where the hell have you been the last few days?" He was heartsick when he couldn't find her, and could only conclude that she went out just before their escape from the planet.

The last planet, what was its name? It was like a bad Euro-bus tour lately, nine countries in seven days and six nights, only the planets he went to weren't nearly so interesting as Luxembourg or Lichtenstein.

Guilt overcame him. Imagine, to have lost the cat, for nearly two whole days!

"Sorry about that! She won't bite." The kid sat down gingerly, regarding the animal with caution.

Brendan glanced at the ship's chronometer as he sped to the galley, hands a-flurry with activity. Quickly he whacked open a can of cat grub, tossing the lid and can into the garbage receptacle.

"Come on, baby." He mooned and swooned over her as she did figure eights around his ankles to hurry him along.

"I didn't know you had a girlfriend." The kid was cold and disdainful. "The tower says, and I quote, 'come on over.'"

Brendan nodded. Pleasant as the interlude had been, it was time to get back to business. They watched the cat eat after she got used to the kid.

"Just what the hell is that thing?"

"That's a cat. She's pretty harmless, although she has a sharp set of claws if you tease her," explained Brendan. "You've been on the ship a couple days now, with no allergic reaction?"

"Uh, no. Not yet, anyway."

Both were more or less aware of the problems of differing sentient species making contact for the first time.

'What diseases do you have?' This was usually the first question asked on both sides.

Stories of inter-galactic plague, terrible epidemics of alien diseases often borne by innocence, and naïvete on the part of well-meaning explorers and missionaries, in the name of science and the gods they worshiped abounded on Tri-D, and in pulpy books of the science-ecological horror genre.

"Cats are okay." Brendan looked at the other in a new light. "What species or race are you? Where are you from? Do you have a name?"

"I'm a Chilliwock from the planet Sleptair in the Corvan sector. There are three inhabited planets, so they call us all Corvans."

"Welcome aboard. Do you have a personal name you like best?"

The kid was stunned. This person really was from some other dimension that he had never heard of.

"People of my class really don't have the right to name themselves," he began. "Vink usually just said, 'hey, you,' but sometimes he called me other things."

Now Hartle was stunned.

"Whoa! Huh?" he gaped. "What did you say? What do you mean, no name? That's bullshit!"

He didn't want to go off the deep end, into a pool of anger as he was wont to do, but this was unconscionable. While he knew he was seeing the Empire strictly from the top, he had no idea.

The kid thought he must have done something wrong, sort of cowering there before him, which only seemed to enrage Hartle even more. The significance of the kid's posture finally worked its way into his forebrain. He was looking like he expected to be kicked! Hartle calmed down quickly. He took a deep breath or two, waving to the kid to follow him back out into the control room. For some reason he had the urge to do something, but what?

"Call the tower. So you're a Corvan, then."

"Right." The still-shaken kid sat and manipulated the buttons on the communications panel at the right-hand seat.

Brendan had liberated a slave. That was bound to be a federal offense.

"Activate main audio pickup," Hartle ordered. "Attention Tower, this is delta, niner, foxtrot, four-oh-three, over."

Seconds passed and then he got his response.

"Go ahead please. We assume you are the arrival."

The tinny voice dryly rattled out of the speakers on the console, carrying just a hint of silent amusement, and a whiff of sarcasm.

"Good," he thought. "Roger that, over."

Let them ask the questions.

"Anything required in the way of assistance? Er, over."

"No, thank you," said Brendan. "Is there a shoe store in town, over?"

Let them chew on that one for a while.

"Any fees, any Customs requirements or inspections?" He sat waiting. "Over."

"Pass through Gate D when entering or exiting the field perimeter. There are two or three shoe stores in town. Fill out Form Four-Twelve dash Seven if you deposit any goods on the surface of the planet, excepting dump and flushes. Declare your purchases at the next port. Over."

"What about holding tanks?" The kid was on the other microphone.

"Use the extension hose and adapters from the storage shed marked in red, black and white. The pump-out connection is fifty metres to your left behind the tubular fence," the voice instructed. "Over."

"Thank you, over," said Hartle.

There were no more transmissions from the tower. The kid snapped off the link. That was it.

"Self service, an ever-increasing trend in the Galactic marketplace," said the kid.

Hartle grinned.

"Okay, just remember if anyone asks, there's something broken in the motor and we're working on it in a very non-specific manner. Oh, yeah! The skipper's a real A-type personality."

"If people want to ask questions, or make suggestions, I send 'em to you?" The kid nodded.

"Right."

The kid never seemed to stop working the electronics suite. Sound filled the room.

"Gotcha. It's a local broadcasting station," said the kid. "Audio only."

He kept searching. An image popped up on screen eight, and Hartle instantly recognized a three-dee panel discussion show with moderator.

"Keep flipping," he said with a wry face.

The picture was a little fuzzy, reminding him of 'Cable 25' TV back on Earth. There were two or three channels on cable television that never seemed to come in very clear, yet the cable bill was always the same. No one ever complained about it. They just paid the bill without question. Most other channels on cable came in clear as a bell.

Hartle thought it was time to go for a walk. To get out in the sunshine would do him good. The external temperature was twenty-four degrees Celsius.

It was a fine day out there.

"Watch my back while I'm working."

He went into his cabin and got the Glock. A little hard on the spine, but he wasn't dumb enough to stick it down the front of his pants. When he came back out, the kid looked up.

"All set to monitor yer egress."

Hartle nodded and went out the airlock, breaking the seal and stepping lightly onto the stuff of the planet known as 'Lacerta-B.'

That was about all they knew about it. According to the brief notation in the star catalogue, they had maintained an Imperial garrison of about eighty individuals until a hundred and fifty years ago. The planet was mostly jungle, with a so-called normal atmosphere, and in the polar reaches there was abundant steppe and muskeg. About one-third of the planet was covered in small, interconnecting seas and lake systems. The highest mountains were less than three kilometres high, although there were a lot of them, and the density was about point seven-eight. The only name they could find in the catalogue had no known provenance. Lacerta-B was a name in a catalogue, a series of numbers and nothing more.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Moving out of the shade...

Moving out of the shade and into the light, he began the two-kilometre walk to the line-up of sheds and buildings. Blue haze obscured the fine details at this distance, but they seemed deserted. There were several types of antenna-masts visible on a hill in the background. The rise was covered in a low, woody scrub. It was beautiful enough, after all those days on the ship, to see brilliant white cumulus clouds and shadows on the land. It was springtime for Brendan on planet Lacerta-B.

It took longer than expected and he was soon sweating, with the hint of a stitch in his left side. Being cooped up in a little ship wasn't good physically or psychologically. Then again, two packs of smokes a day might have something to do with it. No matter how he tried, he couldn't seem to quit. Too much stress in his life, he concluded. He selected the building on the far left of the row, where a row of vehicles of a utilitarian nature sat out front. One of them was idling, with a puff of water vapour and black smoke coming out of the back end intermittently. A small creature in the underbrush twittered in musical counterpoint to the tune, but his eyes weren't sharp enough to pick it out in the light-and-shadows playing in there. The second and third buildings were locked.

His ears picked up the soft brush of the wind on the barren, tree-studded hillside, and a small, brightly-coloured piece of empty packaging skittered past him in erratic circles.

There were no other noises. He trudged past, to the multi-coloured building he sought. It was a hundred feet long, about the same wide, with thirty-foot tall vertical slab sides. The gaping red and white-painted slider of a barn door stood wide open. Centralian feet were about twenty-nine centimeters or about eleven and a half inches. He found himself converting back and forth endlessly. Brendan had just mastered measurements in grade five when the government decided to switch over to the metric system. He got used to thinking in multiple systems years ago.

He had no trouble recognizing hoses, clamps, various metal collars in racks upon what could only have been the classic wooden pallet or skid. For some reason no one used multi-faceted, hexagonal packing crates these days. His mental focus was on Sim's patient instruction, which seemed like a long time ago now.

"Let's see, the ship takes a number six outlet...number six pipe. How much hose do we need?"

The kid's voice spoke in his ear, startling in its intimacy.

"Two hundred metres will be enough. It shouldn't be too heavy."

"Screw that." Hartle didn't bother to twitch into speak mode, and so he perched on a small fork-truck vehicle.

It appeared to be powered by bottled gas.

"I can drive anything."

"Don't be too sure of that," said a fruity little voice in his ears.

"Flight-comp?"

Silence. Huh!

"Look, kid, you think you're good figuring out every damn switch and gadget on the panel, but leave the driving to me!"

Brendan didn't even try to figure out how the kid pulled that one. He grimaced, noting a furry little alien standing in the doorway with a decidedly foolish looking thing on its face, reminiscent of the Proboscis monkeys of Sumatra, or wherever. The being looked about five-foot four inches tall, and it was very hairy.

"Hi there!" He kicked into the public relations gig. "What's a nice guy like you doing in a place like this?"

The creature just looked at him blankly. He realized that it didn't have a translator, for one thing the twitch of face, cheek, and neck to activate didn't happen. There wasn't a radio box on the belt, nor a microphone clipped to the lapel. No headphones or earpieces were visible. When in doubt, improvise.

He smiled, and waved a hand.

"Hey, give me a hand loading this, and I'll buy you a bag of opium." He said this in a friendly and non-threatening tone.

This was another person, just like him.

The alien shook its head. One of its paws fumbled around behind its hips. The language was unmistakable. He had a bad back. Brendan made soothing empathetic noises and chucked the stuff he needed onto the skid, big rolls of corrugated tubing with the connectors nestling in the middle. It looked balanced enough for what he was doing.

Yes, Brendan sympathized with he, she, or it, as he knew full well the agony of a lumbar spasm, or maybe something akin to arthritis? Pressing a red button ahead of the broken-off stub of a key, the rig fired up and he cussed a couple of times just to set the mood.

The alien being was clad in a silver-lame body stocking with integral booties. It was unzipped halfway to the waist, exposing an icon or something on a chain, and a lot of brown fur. It stood regarding him imperturbably. The poor guy, with those big round ears, and the receding hairline over the sloping brow, he probably thought he was God's gift to all the female Lacertabians in the world. He might have been, for all Brendan knew. A good-looking young guy like that, with a responsible, secure and high-paying job, with his whole life in front of him. Quite a catch, when you thought about it! He grinned at the alien.

"I love my job sometimes, eh?"

With a wave and a nod, licking his dry lips in anticipation, he let out the clutch and smoothly eased over to the pallet he wanted. He lowered the forks, drove right in, and lifted the load gently up a couple of foot-lengths. At this point the alien conceded that the gangly stranger knew what he was doing with a nod and a wink.

The employee gave an imitation wave, which was something unknown in its own cultural sub-context, turned and went back towards the building with the vehicles parked in front.

Cracks in the ground made the heavy and totally un-sprung little machine trundle precariously along as it gained a couple of knots. A side breeze fondled the tall thing. On its solid plastic wheels, about twenty kilometres an hour was the all-out limit.

He backed off on the foot pedal. The burbling of a propane or natural gas motor cheerfully serenaded him. The spring under the pedal was old and slack. Brendan noted the familiar and universal use of grey, plasticized fabric tape wrapped around a tubular frame member to hold some miscellaneous wiring in place.

Tall weeds growing in cracks snagged at the left fork. The rear wheels were the ones that steered, otherwise, these machines wouldn't be able to shove big objects into tight rows. It is funny how you had to travel a thousand light years to figure out the simplest notions. He never realized that before. The machine wobbled and veered alarmingly.

"Sheep-dip." He grunted, compensating with the rather loose steering.

"Where do I drop it?" He twitch-called, keeping both hands on the wheel. "Hundreds of years of market research, and they still can't build a decent fork truck."

"Take the load another fifty or a hundred metres. That person in the tower didn't know what he was talking about," said the kid. "I find a steel tubing construction, eighty-seven metres, surrounded by growths, and there are some cylindrical alloy pressure fittings there."

"You can see that from the ship?"

"You've been using the sensors at long range, haven't you? You'd be amazed what they can do up-close."

"I can see some kind of light standards there," Hartle said. "Thank you."

The kid might turn out to be a useful man, for an alien subspecies.

The kid lowered the crawler tracks, and retracted the landing skids. These were heavily braced for landings, but had no brakes. The tracks had brakes, so you could steer the machine at slow speed on the ground. He went to the auxiliary power sources. Selecting the most efficient combo, the kid snaked the ship along behind Hartle's racing lift-truck. Luckily, Brendan didn't have a rear-view mirror. It as an alarming sight, as the kid, with years of book learning, and thousands of fantasy-missions under his belt, had never actually done this before, nor thought to practice any fantasy ground-handling.

Without attempting further maneuvers, he simply throttled back and shut off, the vessel lurching forward slightly on its own momentum. Two hundred metres of hose would be more than adequate. The cat looked at the kid, and the kid looked at the cat.

He had no idea of how intelligent it was, so he said nothing.

"Perfect," came Hartle's encouraging voice in the earpieces.

"Meowrip," It was the cat, perking up at the sound of Brendan's voice.

"Thank you, thank you very much."

He heard a thump from the outside of the hull. It was a strange situation. Normally this would be the kid's job, to download a big backlog into the septic holding tanks at the compound while the transiting crew swaggered off the ship in search of whatever bordello action they could find in a strange port. If they didn't like bordellos it was either drinking or gambling. Not that the kid was much of a ballet or symphony aficionado himself.

He felt strangely humbled as never before, in spite of the menial and unskilled nature of his existence. The kid was a pretty imaginative sort, with dreams, and fantasies, those forlorn hopes of what might have been achieved—if only. If only. It was humbling to realize just how small life had been before the tall stranger adopted him. Sucking the tanks out, scraping the space encrustations from the hulls, sometimes going out with his employer into orbit to recover a derelict, old Vink patiently letting him fly the tug once in a while when he'd had a couple of pipes. Sometimes when they were nosing up to a big freighter and nudging them into a secure orbit, it felt pretty good. It was always something new. Up until now, it seemed a reasonably good life.

And so now...what?

Hartle was going off up the pavement in the little ground vehicle again. He watched through the lenses, switching pickups for best viewing.

"Is the valve open?"

"Well, I'll put it you this way. It turns the wrong way from what I'm used to, but it seemed to be closed down tight. If so, I opened it, and as it rotated, it seemed to come up and out from the valve body. Presumably that means it is open. The adapter went right in and locked securely. The ship's outlet should be showing a green light on your board," said Brendan.

"Confirmed." The kid punched up the pump and turned it on. "Valve open, the pump is on."

Another item appeared on-screen. The flight computer would beep when the task was completed.

"What?"

"Nothing."

By now, Hartle had driven back and parked the forklift and the empty skid. He returned a couple of unused lengths of hose to the pile. Dumping and flushing would take an hour and half anyway. While it seemed unlikely, but someone might want to use the machine.

"Kid," he called. "In the medical room there are two long boxes strapped down at the back wall. Take them out, and read the instructions. See if you can assemble them."

The ship was supplied with a pair of bicycles for occasional ground transport. Again, it was the odd mix of the old and the new, the fully automatic and the manually powered. Exiting the warehouse, he turned to the tower and terminal building. The front door admitted Hartle automatically, with no questions asked. He was in an office with a reception counter. Behind were a couple of desks. There was no one there, but he heard noises coming out of another room at the back, where a blank wooden door stood ajar. It was held in place by an alien brick.

"A space-brick," he muttered.

Taking a look, the side offices were empty too. Not exactly a buzzing hive of activity, these days. Then, there they were, four aliens sitting around a shabby lunchroom, playing a game of cards-and-sticks. The big center table, the row of cupboards, the sink, the furnishings were all totally generic, featureless and without character of any kind.

Done on the cheap. These were employees, not owners, and neglected ones at that.

"Hey, guys, how's it going?" Hartle nodded politely around the room.

It seemed to be the cusp or crux, the nexus of the game. They ignored him.

"Whoa! A slap and a tickle for me!" A green-footed, naked except for a loincloth in yellow plastic held up with reflective tapes, and hair like dread-locks except thickened with white mud, held in place with red ribbons sort of person howled in pleasure and threw some cards down.

Displaying more cards and some sticks in his hand, the alien stood and waited for the other aliens to pay up, which they did grudgingly and with much vocal complaint. Two of the aliens, including Nose-Boy, whom he had met earlier, left the room. 'The Thing' spoke up now.

"Anything we can help you with?"

"Nope. Just popped in to say hi," said the Earthman. "Are you the owner of this fine establishment?"

"Hah! No one really owns it," said the one still sitting at the table.

Another green-footed alien, he was perhaps a little taller, rather heavy compared to his host, who was close to two metres tall.

The first green-footed guy spoke.

"We just work here. We work for the city."

"Who are the big employers around here?"

Brendan was fishing for any sort of information.

It was the old job-search ploy, simple and familiar.

"Some big mining and resource company, I'll bet?"

"Don't bet with him," said the seated one morosely.

Hartle was impressed anew with the little translator devices. They had a range good enough to talk to the ship from here, and they seemed pretty competent at conveying inflections and little nuances of expression.

With these devices, you could actually get the point of some of these alien jokes, which were more about male bonding than any real strife, conflict or dislike.

"Actually, we work for the municipal utilities. I've been on this job so long, I can't even remember what honest work is like." The taller of the two aliens was busy preparing some kind of hot beverage in a jug-like device.

"Would you like a nice, hot cup of sproo?"

"Sure, why not?"

Hartle sat down.

"My boss is a real fuckin' asshole, maybe you guys have a few cultural equivalents around here..."

They howled at that one!

"And if he wants me, he'll come and get me," Hartle added with finality.

The aliens sympathized, as he sipped his liquor, a taste which was oddly familiar. It was like a kind of 'Russian tea.' His mom used to make it with instant iced tea, sugar, orange juice crystals, certain spices, perhaps nutmeg or cinnamon. He just couldn't remember. It made for a fine, misty, burning sensation, not unpleasant, at the inner place where his nostrils met at the back of his throat. Like having one beer and going outside on a cold winter night. His sense of smell perked up considerably.

"You guys got it pretty good, though? Not so much to do around here, by the looks of things?"

"Oh, I don't know. Sometimes we get like two or thee ships all at once, and then the boys and me really have to bust our pedipalps getting them fuckers served and out of our hair again." The glum one did most of the talking. "And the money is piss-poor. But where else is a poor Lacertabian supposed to find another job in this neck of the galaxy, I don't know. Pedipalps, that's a kind of copulatory organ."

"Yeah. I know, I read the book. Anyhow, we're supposed to be looking for some kind of crystalline methamphetamine deposits, but my boss is a dingbat. Fuck, he doesn't seem to know his ass from a hole in the ground." Brendan petered out.

They nodded in comradely agreement. He polished off the cup of grog, which gave a nice warm feeling in the guts, but he felt little intoxicating effect.

"You'd be surprised by some of the shit we've seen around here." This was the one on the other side of the table.

Hartle laughed. After all, he was from Canada.

"I've seen everything," he said. "It takes a lot to shock me anymore."

"Not long ago, we had to fix a ship in here, with no proper materials, no spares, and no manual to refer to. The jerk of a skipper stood right there and watched us the whole time," began the first green-footed one.

"Oh, fuck. I always hate that."

"Yes, this idiot had torn off some major control surfaces, lots of shredding on his ship. He claimed it was a collision with a belt of small asteroids that caused the damage."

"And?"

"No way! For one thing, it was all on the back end of the ship." The alien had a positive manner. "I told Fetz here it was gun damage for sure."

"Yep, for sure," agreed Fetz.

Excitement mounted in Hartle. One of the ships he encountered must have somehow managed to get their damage under control! They had escaped the authorities. The Centralians must have flooded the space lanes with cops and military after that little fiasco.

"Really?" His fascination was hardly feigned under the circumstances. "Of course out here, so far from any police jurisdiction...?"

"That's what we thought at first, but if they were attacked by pirates, why not just fuckin' say so?" said Greenie. "They just really, really didn't want to talk about it."

"Maybe the captain was somehow liable, you know? Maybe he was like, I don't know, lying to his customers, or covering up a big mistake? Didn't want word getting around?" Brendan made it sound like an innocent suggestion.

"The insurance people can be real pricks these days," assured the green-footed guy. "But I don't think so."

"Yeah! You got that right." Brendan stood to go. "I better get back. The skipper will be demanding food soon."

Placing his cup in the stainless metal sink, he slapped one on the back as he went out the door. They nodded pleasantly in goodbye.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The aliens weren't overworked...

The aliens weren't overworked.

Still, he had the scent of a trail. Hopefully he played it innocently enough. It could be a set-up. It was practically the first thing out of their mouths. Just couldn't wait to tell that story, he reckoned. It probably was a set-up. The long walk to the ship gave him plenty of time to think. To be impulsive would be unwise. There was no way he was going to blast off in a hurry to go somewhere important. There would be no tight-beam scrambled transmissions to Centralia, no nothing in fact.

The thing to do was to sit tight, give the ship a little tune-up, maybe go into town and have a few drinks with the locals. This was the first Marginal planet he had ever visited. It was a good opportunity to get a look at the other side of life.

"Hey, kid." He entered the ship.

The kid was monitoring the big consoles in the control room. He looked up.

"The stuff's out of the tanks. I'm flushing now."

"Okay. Do you know what sproo is?"

The gun in his waistband was chafing, so he stuck it in the side pocket of the seat.

"No, I don't," assured the kid, without even a raised eyebrow.

"Well, I just drank a cup of it. It's not bad, a hot drink with a very odd flavour."

Hartle went into the library cabin after passing through the spic-and-span galley. The kid's new quarters were just across the hall. Some of the stuff that had been stored in there was in the library, and it took a moment to empty the best seat and drop it into a corner.

"Encyclopedia."

The screen lit up. There were two beeps, and he touched the keypad with his fingertips. Although the desk was too low, and the chair had heavy arms that didn't allow him to get in close enough, he was fairly familiar with the idiosyncrasies of the room and the use of this terminal.

"Define sproo." He typed the assumed spelling into the keypad. "It's a drink."

"The drink called sproo is made from local mineral waters, citric acids, spiced with barks, fermented, contains approximately eight per cent ethyl alcohol, heated before consumption," alleged the computer.

"Barks?"

"Yes, barks," it confirmed.

"Will it make me sick?"

"Based upon my minimal knowledge of human physiology, and assuming the water, the most dangerous thing in there, was properly processed, it seems unlikely."

"That's reassuring." Brendan had never even considered the water.

The most innocuous mistake could kill him. The green-footed alien had in fact boiled that kettle for quite some time, but he doubted if it was a full five minutes of bubbling. He hadn't been paying attention.

"What about local microorganisms? Are any likely to affect me?"

"You've had all your shots," countered the computer.

"Fine, be that way. Why are you guys always giving me such a hard time?"

The mechanical voice paused but another group of script appeared on the screen. There was a photo of a pill and some numbers, all nicely labeled in English characters and Arabic numerals.

"Specific I-B-7895-41-UJ is located in the medical quarters, top shelf left wall, in a blue-tinted plastic bottle with child-proof top and accurate labeling. Read the warnings."

"Thank you. And exactly what does this pill do?"

"It's used by a large cross-section of species, including the Centralian, Corvan, Snythinian, Centaurian, Altairian, and fourteen lesser sub-species in order to obtain temporary immunity from low and medium-level indigenous flora and fauna of the microscopic variety as well as certain other immunological disorders..."

"All right, all right. What about hornets, stings from insects? What about pollen? Or other potential problems?"

He interrogated the system. He knew enough to ask a few questions before mindlessly popping down some unknown pill. And two or more drugs might interact, any idiot knows that. Like beer and muscle relaxers.

"There is no single treatment which can eliminate one hundred per cent of the toxicological potentialities in an unexplored planetary environment."

"True." Hartle went looking for the pills, locating them just where described.

He brought them back to the library after grabbing a brewski in the galley in passing. He waved them in front of the camera pickup so the computer could get a good look at them. Just for good measure, he waved the beer in front of it as well. Every legally manufactured product in the Empire contained what was known as a 'taggant' in the product or packaging, or both, he knew that from Sim.

"Confirmed. Take one a day, every day for one week. Discontinue use when exposure has lapsed thirty days, take seven pills every four weeks for proper continuous coverage."

"Any side effects?"

"With your species, unknown."

There was no sense wasting time. He swallowed one down with a swig of beer, then called out into the hall.

"Hey, kid! Come in here for a minute."

He turned to the camera pickup again.

"The kid is apparently of the Corvan sub-group. At least linguistically."

"Confirmed. She is of the Corvan subspecies."

Hartle slumped back, totally stunned. His mind was doing loops and barrel rolls and spinning out of the sky with flames pouring out the back. It was just one more shocker. As if he didn't have enough on his plate! A moment later the kid came in, snapping the lid on a can of Old Milwaukee, so he didn't have time to think.

"Pop this pill, and read this stuff."

The kid chugged a goodly portion of the beer while doing so.

"Oh, man! I'd better try and get one down the cat's throat as well," said Brendan a little disconsolately.

For some reason, he was feeling really, really depressed right then.

"Sure is a big responsibility. She doesn't take kindly to pills. I never had much luck with them when she got sick."

The kid sat there on a cleared bit of bench space, swinging his or her legs back and forth and kind of slouching there. He was drawn to her feet. There were no big black hairs on the toes or insteps...uh, oh. Trouble.

Big trouble.

Her feet were a little grubby. There was a scruffy and stained little bandage around the big toe on the left foot. Her toenails were not neatly painted or anything, they could use a clip in fact, but they were a girl's feet nevertheless.

He tore his eyes up and away to find her regarding him with the most solemn look on her face. On her smooth, hairless little face, there was no sign of any whiskers...it was amazing what you took for granted with aliens. This was a pile driver of a revelation. Gawd help us.

"That's one of the newest and most powerful library computers ever made." She didn't give a damn about the cat, she just loved machines.

He managed a ghastly smile, then stood and beckoned her forward.

"Use it any time! You, um, get to know this machine." The kid eagerly took a seat and started flipping through the programs.

Brendan learned more by looking over her shoulder for five minutes than he had ever done on his own. She also knew how to adjust the seat to a lower position. Now why hadn't he thought of that? He watched in disbelief as she proceeded to lower the chair arms as well. At home, he used a computer of course, but mostly for writing and such. He wasn't curious about computers the way kids these days are. Directories, menus, guides, files, windows, all flashed by at high speed.

"I've been meaning to get some sleep soon." She gave him a blinding, happy-as-a-meadowlark smile. "Now look what you've done."

Hartle gave the kid, it was still hard to think of her as a girl, there's one assumption that came back to bite, a gentle slap on the back, and left the room again. Suddenly he turned and went back in.

"Maybe we should clarify your status on board this ship."

The kid's shoulders slumped, and there was that furtive cowering impression again. He didn't let her suffer too long.

"I don't believe in slavery, and you are a free man, or whatever, as far as I'm concerned. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. You can go if you want." Her shocked face turned to him in total incomprehension, but he went on. "If you want to stay, I'll pay you twice—no, three times what Vink was paying you, if anything."

The kid brightened up considerably, but not completely. There were a few questions she would like to ask. There were a lot of things to tell, as well, but Hartle was leaving the room again. She sighed and went back to her explorations. This wasn't the best time to tell her new master that the moult was nearly upon her. And of course it couldn't have happened at a worse time.

The kid, or the girl, was good with tools as well.

Hartle found the newly assembled bikes, convenient personal transport, in the back utility room. He dragged one out through the ship and rode it across the 'drome' noting that the cables still needed adjustment as he could only really get it to hold in about fourth gear. Nothing worse than trying to put power to it and the gears keep skipping.

He fired up the forklift, picked up an empty pallet, put the bike on it and went back to the ship. He loaded the hoses back on there and placed the bike on top again, and returned the hoses to the depot. Cycling back to the ship, he had a lot of problems on his mind. They should try to figure out a way to keep the bikes in the airlock or something.

It was kind of reassuring to focus on the little, simple problems once in a while. He cleared his mind of other problems long enough to adjust the shifter and brake cables.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Hartle woke up with a cold...

Hartle woke up with a cold. He woke after about fifteen hours of sleep and instantly knew he was sick. Panic stabbed his heart, but as he stumbled up and out of bed, he groped his way to the bathroom for a drink of water, hoping against hope.

It felt like a common cold. The microbes could have lain dormant in his system for quite some time. His throat was scratchy and swollen. Swallowing was painful. His nose ran with snot in a constant trickle, his head hurt, and his body ached all over.

"Eaugh!" He gasped and even the rumbling of his voice in his throat felt different today.

"Goddam. Fucking cold."

He wondered if the kid would be affected, and how badly. Leaving the head, he went and retrieved his gym bag from the stateroom. He pawed through the contents. Then in disgust, he dumped it out unceremoniously on the bed through sheer impatience. Couldn't God cooperate, or see that he was suffering?

"Ah." Hartle grunted in recognition of his personal pill bottle.

They were quickly spilled onto the rimmed hollow that was the top of his space desk, in his space bedroom.

"Maybe I'll live." Something for the pain, that was a good start. Head pounding, Brendan went back to the control room and sat in his favourite seat.

"I know, beer."

He hopped up and went to the galley. Crack one open, this time a Black Label, a nice Canadian lager, and ice cold too. He seated himself again. The kid was not in evidence.

From the view screens the planet was in darkness outside.

"Flight computer. Bring up a shot of any moons, major star clusters, find the source of the dim light outside."

"Acknowledged." Two of the upper screens activated.

"Neat. A binary moon-pair. And what is the other object on screen five?"

"Screen five shows the gaseous nebula PPO-128543."

"Any name translatable into English or Latin?" he asked.

"None listed."

"Show me the holo of the galaxy," requested the hollow-voiced human, only just beginning to feel relief from the aches in his spinal column.

He squirmed and slithered about in the chair. Everything hurt. This little bug might be more than a cold. It felt like the flu now that he had time to examine it.

"Circle Centralia in red. Circle our present position in blue. Circle planet Earth in green."

Two, and only two circles appeared, one red, one blue. No green circle.

"Huh?" he asked. "Huh?"

"There is no planet Earth listed."

Hartle shuddered.

"I don't need this..." This was something he couldn't handle, not all at once and right away.

Up until now, he was full of answers, and cocky as all hell. Not really like the way he used to be, when he was just another thirty-something loser back on his home planet. But now Earth was gone! Although he did, upon mature reflection, have a reasonably good idea of where to look.

"As I recall, flight computer...I need a stylus."

"Look in the number two forward storage bin, directly under the main screens."

He did so. Cold, flu, whatever the disease was, nothing was as important as trying to remember where he came from, and how to get back there.

"Label each place. Show me Gepharl, Welstnashta." He probed into the holo projection.

"What's this one here?"

"Rigel."

"Just as I thought, label it." A lighted script-board floated in space beside the dot of light.

"Which one is Rigel Nine?"

"A colony of the dominant civilization on the third planet, the colony is located near this star here." Another dot appeared, highlighted by its name plate, Rigel Nine in script.

"Do you have a continuous log of all flights of the past...oh, hell..." How long had he been out here?

"Continuous logging is a legal prerequisite for the operation of a space vehicle."

"Good. Mark this vessel's movements, start from here, and go backwards...that's good, a little faster..." He considered the situation. "Stop."

The flight recorder showed everything accurately up to a point. The trail stopped dead at Centralia. Everything before that, including his trip from Earth to Centralia, was blanked out. There was no attempt to fictionalize, it was just blank. There was some kind of message here. It confirmed that Sim or someone had given the orders. Someone must have, after all. Someone had to execute the deed, for whatever reason. Hartle could think of several, none of which he liked. The most obvious is that they had no intention of ever letting him go home. Which he had suspected right from the start, but this put the lid on it. Centralia and Rigel. That didn't make sense either for some reason. They were lying all along...and how did the kid convert her age into Earth years?

Sipping beer, he swilled it around his tongue and wished for a large double-double from his favourite coffee retailer. Still, the beer soothed the sore throat.

There was another way to go at it. He recalled a flat drawing pad in the storage bin. It plugged in to the armrest somewhere...there. Brendan stretched his memory, literally pounding himself on the skull to try to bring it back. He had soon placed a few dots on the screen.

"Okay, this is supposed to be a star configuration known as Orion where I come from. This is approximately the way it appears from Earth, in winter, in the northern hemisphere. Orion drops below the horizon in summer. There is a star named Betelgeuse...not sure exactly which one...but possibly a red giant of immense size and activity. And there's another star, Sirius, so-called the Dog Star, I guess it sort of rises in the spring time...its red, I think..."

Sirius was red and Vega kind of greenish-blue. The flight comp held no answers for him, based on such slim data.

Polaris! Hartle drew the big dipper while he was thinking. He wished he knew more stars, but the galaxy in Andromeda wasn't going to help much...Vega perhaps? If he could only identify one star for certain! He was trying to narrow down what was an infinity of space, and he was in a bit of a panic! Let's say he could positively identify one star—that meant that the Earth, could be anywhere within a full sphere of space, at anything up to two or three thousand light-years, anyhow. And something like Orion was not a flat figure made of dots. All those stars were at different distances from his home world.

The vector had to start somewhere and go somewhere. He had little doubt that Sim's henchmen would have removed any Earth books or materials that would be of any use to him—like for example a children's book of astronomy. He should have been paying more attention.

Damn!

Needing time to think, he decided to do some household chores. He went to the library, noticing the kid's door was closed. The bottle of anti-plague pills was right where he left it. He took a pill, and took a swig. Needing fresh smokes, he dug out a new pack from his stateroom. Brendan fed the cat. He fried sausage and eggs.

Wash dishes, and do laundry. Do anything! Just don't look at that holo of the galaxy anymore.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Flies in the Vaseline...

Andrel looked up from his monitor.

"We're getting a clear signal, strength eight-point-five," he said. "He is still very upset, which seems pretty rational."

Loud music poured out of his speakers when he turned it up so the others could hear.

Hrickletl winced.

"...flies in the Vaseline..."

Sim grinned, being more familiar with the music of Hartle's generation. The Earthmen had some anti-social dance movements of their own. He noted the lyrics, beat, guitars, every part of the musical performance was bent, skewed, twisted, and filtered. They could measure things. Yes, it was music, yes, some type of information was being conveyed, but it was conveyed symbolically. Music hardly qualified as language.

Music was somehow intuitive, and hence their interest in Hartle's music. The music could be further broken down by musicologists, contrapuntal, atonal, dissonant, and other factors. Repetitive stuff like 'Baby, baby,' and 'Yeah, yeah,' were not totally without meaning. Sim toyed with the ideas in his head.

He knew this wasn't the only music that emanated from the planet, but Hrickletl only heard what Hartle chose for him, that's one way of looking at it.

"I have to get back. Trent is keeping a pretty tight pair of nostrils on me," he told the Fleet man.

Hrickletl signaled his sympathy as he left the room, allowing the others to relax a little. Hartle switched songs again, quickly. It was hard to figure out what motivated his selections "...On the bottom words are shallow...

"...On the surface talk is cheap..."

Andrel turned down the monitor again as he took more notes on his laptop device.

"Joe Walsh."

"What's he getting at?" Andrel just shook his head and grinned.

The Admiral grinned as well.

"I get the distinct impression he's not happy. He's found the computer logs wiped..." Andrel's visage indicated some sympathy for the Earthling.

The Fleet man just sat there with his antennae quivering.

"Pissed 'im off did we?" The Admiral had a smile apparent in his voice.

"...strip you down to size, naked as the day that you were born..."

The instrumentation went wham, wham, pause, wham, wham, and then guitars gently faded up again.

"Those drums are great." Bithwell was at another workstation in the next cubicle. "He's got a lot on his mind right about now! Why was he so assertive with the princess, and so frightened by a slave girl?"

Bithwell stared and listened in fascination.The computers would analyze everything they could get, just as fast as they could get it loaded in. They were just crying for input sometimes.

"The microphone is fucked." Andrel reported this in disbelief. "That's a pretty rare occurrence."

He switched to another, then another, trying to get a better sound and signal.

"Drat! I liked that tune," grumbled the Admiral.

"I have an idea that he is about to do something crazy again," Andrel said in anticipation.

"...runnin' down a dream...never would have come to me...workin' on a mystery...goin' wherever it leads..."

"This one's not bad. Tom Petty. I understand your prisoner broke," said Bithwell, working at her console. "Andrel was telling me this morning. It's all over the building."

She gaped widely in humour.

"This is one little leak we're not too interested in plugging. At least not right away." This according to the Admiral.

Word sure traveled fast.

"It's nice to get some good news once in a while," put in Andrel.

"So, Sim, I can't believe how fortune treats him," said Bithwell.

"That fellow could trip over a diamond mine and come up smelling like the scent glands of a three-breasted werlmij," agreed Andrel.

"Yes, he goes from being golden boy to the garbage truck, but I'll bet he's soon in good odor again." Hrickletl marveled at the luck, but it only stood to reason.

Sim was one hundred and twelfth in line for the Throne, and those people simply weren't allowed to disgrace themselves beyond a certain point.

It reflected poorly upon the system.

Admiral Vrikop, like Hrickletl, semi-retired and merely serving on a consultancy basis, was even now supervising the team of interrogators who were debriefing the prisoner. But it was Hrickletl's small team of part-timers and temps who created the strategy to break him. He still felt a little breathless at the sheer cruelty of it, yet a kind of thrill as well.

Imagine putting a sentient being in the isolation tank, and then not sending them anywhere. Just let them stew, deprived of all sensory inputs. It was diabolical, really. A shudder wracked his big frame.

"I know what you mean," said Espin Salmsoni in a rare moment.

***

Sim whistled a happy little melody as he entered his office. Still the same office for these twenty past years, but somehow it didn't look as small, not as drab as it should be.

Maybe the bright light of the morning sun slanting across the rug could account for it.

Trent sat there behind Sim's desk.

Very pushy lately, pondered Sim. Time to push back.

"Get the fuck out of my chair." He bellowed experimentally, for the first time in his entire life.

Trent lurched up as if he had been stung, face flushing red, and mouth opening in stunned disbelief.

"Bu-bu-but..."

Sim waved him back, having just learned something.

"Sorry, Councilor, that's fine, just a little joke."

Trent sank back into the seat distrustfully. Then he unexpectedly laughed.

"I've never seen you do that before." He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. "Holy, crap! You had me going there."

"Has I ever occurred to you, Trent, that Hartle may at times act totally randomly?"

"I suppose it has, but not seriously...?" Trent begged to understand, he really did.

"A leader doesn't have to be right all the time."

"He doesn't?" said Trent.

It wasn't like he hadn't heard something like this before.

"No. He just has to make a decision once in a while."

Sim and Trent sat there looking at one another, both of them trying to get where the other guy was coming from.

Finally Trent spoke.

"All right," he said. "And is that the secret to his success? Or his survival?"

"I think he has just learned to trust his instincts...more than anything."

"But that's sort of out of the question...for a government...isn't it?" asked Trent.

Brendan's words rang in his ears.

"'Truth doesn't matter. The only thing that really matters is public opinion,' I just about shit when I read that transcript," said Trent.

Sim agreed totally with this, and it was at about that point, when he actually began to get nervous, to have nagging second thoughts about their choice of Hartle. This was not the sort of thing you told someone like Trent.

Sim couldn't afford to be uncongenial, since Trent would be on the project until new orders came through, and Sim still had no idea of how he was going to arrange that. It might not happen anytime soon, so it was best to keep the peace and try to remain civil. He sat in a window seat, back to the light. His secretary came in, seeking instructions.

"Coffee," he requested, it was an Earth product he had come to enjoy, in spite of misgivings about anything from that vile place. "And bring anything Council Member Trent requires."

The secretary simpered and cooed extra hard in his direction. It was well known from the political tabloids and net-casts that the councilor was a bachelor, relatively rich and not too bad looking for a Centralian of Andorran heritage, of his age and calibre.

"Nothing for me, thanks. I'll join you over there."

He came over and took a big armchair.

"You are one lucky son of a bitch."

Sim grinned.

"Hartle couldn't have put it any better."

Maybe Trent wasn't such a bad person. He just needed to loosen up a bit. His education had focused on protocol, languages, diplomacy, and rhetoric. Logic, and structures.

Certain characteristics might be expected of him, like going by the book, deferring all decisions to a committee, always looking for a consensus, never lose your temper or lower the mask. Sim was brought up in the same school. The difference was that he knew it, and that it conferred many limitations.

Never say anything you really mean, he thought.

Sim was used to it by now, although occasionally one of the people he found himself with would suddenly find a career going nowhere. Some said, 'Attitude is everything.' A person could have a fine attitude and be useless, or espouse a good attitude and exhibit a bad one.

"What are your goals now, for the project?"

Trent considered his options, mind wide open.

The man was everything he pretended to be.

"Well, they've changed, that much is obvious. But I'm happier now that it's smaller, the objectives more reasonable," Sim began. "It's just a coincidence that we get results now."

"I have to smile when I think of the naivete of trying to create a new god-king in our own preferred image, or perhaps more accurately, the way we think he should be, for the sake of political expedience."

That summed it up nicely, thought Sim. But does he buy it?

"Yet it was an idea that you backed fully."

"The Emperor is a hard person to say no to," said Trent with some heat. "I felt it would be better for me to be on board right from the start, with a project of this complexity."

Sim sat patiently.

"Congratulations on regaining control."

"Hah! That would be a little premature, considering Brendan's propensity for getting in trouble," Sim replied.

"My point exactly." Trent grim face revealed depths of meaning hidden beneath the surface. "Hartle may sooner or later suspect the presence of a bugging device on the ship."

"And who is the new member of the crew?" Sim was fascinated in spite of his lack of regard for Trent.

"You're not sure?" gaped Trent. "You have that ship constantly under surveillance, inside and out, or so I thought."

Sim didn't even bother to explain that data required interpretation, and only then did it lead to conclusions.

"An orphan, possibly, of drifters, tramps, ne'er do wells of some sort," speculated Sim. "Considering our own ability to create false documentation, case histories, purchase histories, school histories, the being may be a plant by the opposition. She's been employed as an indentured servant at this Vink's compound for about ninety years."

Trent's composed features reflected thought.

"If you believe the documentation." Sim pointed out the obvious.

"But, wouldn't Hartle think of that?" spluttered Trent. "One of the reasons for using Hartle in fact, is because his instincts are so strong, defective as he may be in intellect?"

"Yes, sometimes a little too strong," said Sim. "And sometimes, maybe not so defective."

Both thought of Princess Constance.

"Is it true? Is she really going around fund-raising for some foundation?" Trent asked bitterly.

"That's what it says in the paper."

"Is she really going to start a monastery?"

Sim just shook his head. It seemed unlike her, but he couldn't rule it out.

"The proper term is 'convent.' She'll get over it...eventually."

Trent raised his eyebrows.

"What I don't understand is the attraction," admitted Sim. "Nothing in the initial research indicated that Hartle was particularly successful in previous sexual relationships with females on Earth," Sim told the councilor. "He just isn't so charming to females of his own species, yet we should have been able to understand our own species."

"Who knows what goes through the mind of a female." For Trent, probably the most intelligent thing he would say all day.

"True." Sim had the feeling that some kind of breakthrough was being made.

"But this is the total crux of the matter. These are the seemingly random side effects that cause ripples in our own frame of reference, quite unbeknownst to Hartle."

"And us..." said Trent. "Because it might happen somewhere out of our view."

"Quite so. If we could predict what would happen next, we wouldn't need to employ Hartle at all," said Sim. "But he stirs the pot."

Trent nodded in comprehension. He thought he understood it now, as he reached for his favourite pipe in the pocket of his dark blue tunic which he wore loosely draped around his rounded shoulders.

"Excuse me, I have an itch."

"And we'll talk again later?" Sim spoke in his most reassuring manner.

"Sim, you have the ball, just don't drop it. You could use a day off, but you wouldn't take it anyway, would you?"

"No."

"If it's any help, Sim, I'm perfectly aware that this planet is one big city. A city laced with thin strips of parkland, and dotted with vast ghettoes. A city of forty-eight billion people who produce no produce, who grow no grain, fatten no poultry, they make no milk, nor cheese, nor wine..."

"So you do understand?" The irony was lost on Trent. "Quoting Hartle, again?"

"I guess you're trying to tell us that research and development will bring new insights, and you're trying to tell us that it can't be predicted, just what might happen next," said Trent. "Well, sir, you were the last fucking one to find out."

Trent gazed at him fondly, trying to guilt him into submission.

"I'll get out of your hair for a few hours now."

Both felt in some way they understood the other better now. Only time would tell if that was true.

Chapter Thirty

Weo murdered! The headlines screamed...

Weo murdered! The headlines screamed.

The shock was like a pail of cold water right in the face. He sat down with a thump.

"Thank you." He spoke in hushed tones to his secretary.

She left the room, almost as dazed as her boss. He could rely on her to begin checking the facts, and notifying those who might have missed the news. Sim sat there breathing heavily. He remembered with regret, the living, breathing person who was Belinda Weo, a colleague, sometime friend, critic, political adversary, ally, and acquaintance. She had a husband and two children, both adults, out on their own. It was a tragedy.

He had barely skimmed the story yet. He sat there thinking, barely glancing at the lead of the story to pick up two or three details. Sim finally unfolded the traditional full-colour flex-copy newspaper, hoping and praying it was all a big misunderstanding and that some horrific mistake had not been made. In some corner of the mind he wondered if this was what it was like to be in shock.

Belinda Weo was one of the Imperial species, although not of the Family. She was a wealthy and powerful woman in her own right, a respected politician, and his wife's mother's cousin. She was third cousin, twice removed, of the brother-in-law of the Empress Matilda. This was hell to pay, no matter how you sliced it.

His phone rang and he stabbed a claw-like finger in desperation at the button.

"Sim," he said.

"Trent." It came to his ears as a sigh, pregnant and laden with meaning.

There was a full minute of silence. At that moment, Sim for one had no doubt of the reality of telepathy. He could feel Trent's thoughts all at once and one by one. They were all jumbled up, just like his own. They were communing silently, in the best sense of the word. Neither one believed in telepathy.

"Sim. What the hell are we going to do?" Trent finally asked.

"I don't know," said Sim. "According to the story, an assassin's bullet was fired at her head at the dedication of the Peace Memorial."

It was the official opening of a major new civic park. At long range, a marksman's shot, and a professional hit.

"What other kind of bullet is there?" asked Trent, which was like a kick in the sternum to Sim.

He ground his jaws silently, praying for Trent to go away.

The planet was EeEe, less than seventy-nine light years away. It was a peaceful and prosperous planet with no political unrest, and no great social movements. The authorities there saw it as a matter of a routine photo opportunity. Security arrangements were lax. EeEe had strong ties to the established order. Other than that, they knew nothing.

When a badly scared Trent finally rang off, Sim sat there in dread waiting for the phone to begin ringing off the hook. He only became frightened on his own account when it didn't ring at all—not even once.

***

The kid lay in agony in the darkened room, lying stretched out rigidly in the fetal position of her kind. Her skin literally crawled, as it slowly worked its way off her body.

Largest organ of the human body, it was at least as important in the kid's species. Perspiration poured from her around the eyes and face most notably and uncomfortably, but it poured out everywhere. At one moment, the kid felt hot, and the next moment heavy chills wracked her in painful intensity as she shivered. The smallest hint of a cool breeze stirred senses and raised nipples and hair follicles.

The worst part of the unfortunately long process was the hypersensitivity of the epidermis. It was terribly like not having any skin at all for a few hours. The thin sheets that she was laying upon were like old ropes on her skin, so she tried to move as little as possible.

Moisture fell into her eyes, salt stinging her into more tears. Parts of her felt cold, and others burned.

Suddenly a portion of her old skin let go around her abdomen, swollen with retained fluids, and she gasped at the searing pain.

"Let it end soon," she prayed.

Deep in her heart, she knew it would be hours, perhaps days yet. She moaned in despair at the thought of more suffering. Thankfully, her master seemed to require a lot of sleep, much more than she did, so with a little luck she might have a chance to finish.

People of her Corvan species felt especially vulnerable during the moult. It was preferable to have others near when it happened. Better still, to have it happen at home, with your family, your loved ones, your mother—a sob tore at her heart, when she acknowledged that thought. It was best if other were nearby to help and comfort you. She hadn't really thought about her mother and father in over a hundred years. The kid was unaware of where such loved ones might be. She had survived for so long on her own. She had always survived before. That sharp stab of loneliness shocked her. On her previous moultings, it wasn't so bad.

But then, she was prepared with the proper drugs, a tub filled to the brim with soothing liquid. It was the one and only luxury her employer, Vink, did not begrudge her.

Technically, it was the law that proprietors had to provide for their chattels, but old Vink was shocked by the extreme violence of the moulting process. Old Vink wasn't such a bad person to work for, now that she thought of him again. And because of the pain, and the fact that she missed that tub very desperately right now. She wanted that tub so very, very desperately.

***

Hartle heard the groaning coming through the wall from the kid's quarters. With a flash of insight, his own flu not forgotten, his heart spurted up and fear swept over him for a moment. Leaping out of the bed, ignoring the blankets spilling out across the floor, he nipped out to the control room.

"Flight!"

"Go ahead."

"Can you get us a picture inside the kid's room?"

He asked with no reservations or false modesty.

Whatever was going on in there was serious, of that he had no doubt. This was an emergency—maybe. The picture came now. The kid had darkened her quarters, but the computer visually enhanced the scene.

"Careful."

"We are using available light only," it assured.

The picture brightened up a lot, but it was low-contrast and details were foggy.

Sound came from the monitor.

Moaning.

The kid thrashed around stark naked on the covers and Brendan felt a moment of dread guilt. It was not a pretty sight. She was obviously in great distress from some unknown disorder. His heart pounded blood up into his head. The first impulse was to go running in there.

"Any idea of what's happening?" The machine was watching right along with him.

Almost like a guilty friend, and both of you caught with your chins hanging out by some chick's windowsill. Just like a couple of fascinated 13-year olds.

"She is apparently shedding her skin."

"Yes, dammit, but why? Was it something she ate? Is it a disease?"

He had a bizarre urge to laugh in hysteria, but then sheer impatience made him want to puke. Brendan tried to get a grip on the situation.

"Answer me!"

"Running," noted the machine.

"Oh, no."

It was his mistake. You had to ask the right question or you got nowhere. This was the flight computer, not a medical machine. The machine had too little in the way of parameters to judge its answer.

"My guess is as good as yours," he decided. "Disregard command. Make sure the door to her quarters is unlocked. And get me an audio circuit into her room."

"Kid, kid."

He wondered if she heard him. Yet she went silent at the first call.

"Kid? Are you all right? We're worried about you." He spoke reassuringly.

"Boss?" She was as wet and slimy and weak as a newborn pup. "Oh, please, please don't look at me now."

She cried, heart-wrenching in its simple sincerity.

"Kid! Do you know what's happening to you?"

He needed some answers.

"I—I'm moulting, it's a normal thing." The weeping, whispery, shuddery voice trailed off as she fought to hold her composure against the searing pain, fighting to keep her sanity.

"Is there anything I can do? You must be thirsty as hell. You appear to have lost a lot of, um, fluids."

"I have water in here." There was a plastic bottle there on the nightstand.

"What about a bath? A shower? You must be hungry? Is there anything special you need?" He couldn't get the questions out fast enough.

Moulting! Holy crap. Holy crap.

"Don't tell me you have a bath!"

"I'm sorry, kid." She struggled to sit up. "I'll go rig it up."

He heard a strange noise, a sloppy tearing sound. God, what a mess she was!

He ran to the head to deploy the special insulated plastic panels, which made a big, boxy tub when required. He heard her voice, commanding the lights in the hallway to dim.

"Just a minute."

It required a bit of weight on the pieces to squeeze down the gasket and lock the catches.

Quickly he plugged in the sides to the floor holes, and clipped them together. He found the showerhead and plugged it into its twist-lock position on the side of the tub.

"Dim the lights." He turned on the water, but not too hot or cold, he thought.

She was right there, slipping under his outstretched arm and blind eyes, groping to find the water controls.

"I, I," she whispered.

"Shush. That's all right."

Then he was gone, right to the library, and to the medical files.

The kid sank into the steaming tub, as water rose higher. At last only that part of her body composing her chin, nose and cheeks, as well as her forehead were out of the water.

She closed her eyes and dipped her head under, holding her breath. It was almost over. To have endured so much, all that pain, when there was a bathtub and obviously no shortage of water here. It was almost enough to make a girl angry.

Chapter Thirty-One

Hartle gave her a couple of pills...

Hartle gave her a couple of re-hydration pills recommended by the autodoc system, and she was grateful enough for a cup of strong tea. She was getting stronger by the minute. Returning to his control seat, he was bemused to see that a corner of the upholstery was starting to show a shabby wear mark.

"When was the last time I even knew what day it was?" The question was a bleak one.

If he thought he was tired a while back, it was nothing compared to this.

"The Earth date is April twelfth," the computer replied.

"And how do you know that?" demanded Hartle. "Yeah! So where is Earth?"

"Because twenty days ago, you said, and I quote, 'it must be the twenty-third or twenty-fourth of March,' that's what you said. There is no listing for Earth."

"And?"

"Your first guess, by a small statistical margin, is more likely correct."

"I had the crazy idea that I might want to write a few books," Brendan confessed. "But I don't know about working in the library."

And he knew what it was too. He felt funny smoking in a library. It just didn't seem right.

"We could set up a portable terminal with a competent little writing program I know. While I'm incapable of any original, creative, artistic work, my spelling is good and the grammar is adequate."

Hartle smiled at that one.

"It ain't exactly going to be easy for me neither. But what I want to do is just sit and talk. I might want to record my thoughts while I maneuver, or in the bathroom, or something that takes the place of a pen and a piece of paper beside my pillow."

"And what sort of project did you have in mind?"

"I'm going to have to create some crazy new kind of religion for these people."

"Oh! Nice," said the computer.

"Yeah! Tell me about it. So sayeth Brendan."

"What are you going to put in it?" Amazingly, the flight-comp managed to put a note of sheer disbelief in its response.

"I'll have to think of something." The weight of the universe settled on his shoulders. "The crazier, the better, is what I'm thinking."

The machine had no response.

"When was the last time I had a joint?"

"Approximately fifty-two and a half days ago," it informed Brendan. "Is that line one?"

"And where did I leave it?"

"You placed it in the right chest pocket of suit number one, locker number one, compartment number two."

"Thank you."

While he was still sick, he was also beating it, and the relief had to be experienced. The locker was in the hall containing the airlock. He opened it in jig time.

He sat there and rolled a couple of doobies on his notebook. A ninety-nine cent paper notebook, handy friend of security guards everywhere, had also been lurking in the pocket. And now it lay on the table beside him. Brendan was grinning like a very fat and contented cat.

"Sim! You guys aren't quite as smart as you think you are."

Someone on the repair crew must have stuck it in the pocket, thinking somebody might like it back someday. Which was very thoughtful of them. But then, those Corvan slaves were everywhere these days.

"Do you wish to record?"

"Nope. Later," promised Brendan. "All in good time."

Chapter Thirty-Two

Admiral Vrikop worked on the suspect...

Admiral Vrikop was working on the suspect personally.

"Relax, young man. You are Atropxe from a place called Schenalackanwoya, that is a little planet orbiting a sun known to you folks as Hgooniuvc? Did I say that right?"

"Yes."

It was one of the Marginals, way out at the other end of the Empire.

"But you were hired locally on the planet Welstnashta to make a hit. Was your partner from the same planet as you?"

"No. None of the operatives knew each other." Atropxe had a wry, businesslike tone.

"There were a total of four?" asked the Admiral.

"Four shooters, yes. There was another who came and went."

"Yes, you told us that before. Any idea of what his job was, other than to bring food, clean the kitchen, cut the lawn? Was he there to check up on you?"

"We treated him like a servant. We said nothing in front of him. He saw no plans, documents or equipment. We drew our own conclusions. Perhaps he was our landlord."

"And how did you receive your orders?"

"As I told you before, and shall no doubt tell you again many, many times, the phone rang. One of the other operatives picked it up. I don't know what was said..."

"And he wrote down the instructions?"

"Yes."

"And he was the man that was killed?"

"Yes," the prisoner sighed.

"And you didn't know the target?"

"She was just a name and a description, a time, a place, a date."

"And you were on the planet how long?"

"Eight days in total," said the prisoner.

"And why were you there?"

"A former acquaintance in a bar told me I might find work there."

"And you have no name," said the Admiral.

"He was just a face in a bar. After a while, they become acquaintances...of a kind."

"What kind of work did you say you were looking for?"

"I told him I was a contractor."

"Did he know what that meant...to you?"

"It's hard to say," admitted the prisoner. "But it works either way. On occasion, I adopt a cover. I have been a contractor in the past."

"It's a reasonable cover story," allowed the Admiral, thinking it through. "And you were provided a picture?"

"It was in an envelope. It was in a hole in a tree, behind the mental hospital on Upper Empress Matilda Drive. There's a little park there."

"And what about the expense money, the down payment? It was there? Did you see anyone in the park?"

The prisoner sighed.

"And no electronic transfers? Cash is anonymous, right?"

"There were several dozen people in the park. I doubt if we were watched so much, as to make sure no one else took the envelope. Which can happen."

"If some curious child or a passer-by should happen to see someone putting an envelope in a tree, yes, that would be a problem," said the Admiral. "Still, it could have been put there the night before."

"That is possible."

They had been over this ground before, and they would again, and again. Each time they did, they picked up a few tiny new tidbits.

"Did you see any animals in the park?"

"Pardon? Animals? Oh, a few. There may have been a fur-bearing, four-legged animal or two. There was one biped. I'm not familiar with local pet species."

"Tell me about the biped."

"Well, it was on a chain. It had a long tail, a little red cap, and the lady fed it some kind of nuts from a paper bag. That's all I remember."

The prisoner wasn't so sure of his recollection now. This wasn't unusual in suspects who had been over-interrogated.

"How old was she? What colour of slacks was she wearing?"

"Perhaps a hundred, or a hundred and ten at most. She wore a dress with a printed pattern. It was blue and yellow. She had a yellow hat, one of those flat-brimmed things."

The admiral changed tacks.

"Tell me about the other two shooters. Where did they go? Where were they hiding?"

"They were at the other end of the path. Presumably they went back to the safe-house, but you would know more about that than I."

The admiral kept working it. One way or another, they would wring this person dry.

"And you didn't talk about the mission?"

"We didn't know what it was. It was planned spontaneously, practically on the spot."

"When you got the call?"

"Yes. No. We waited in the house. We got the call. Two of us went to the drop. We returned to the house. We planned it then."

"What did you do in the house?"

"We slept, we drank. We watched TV. We sent out for the best food."

"Your food was purchased where?"

"We called the ones with the biggest ads in the directory," the prisoner said. "If you get me a phone book from that city, I'll try to remember."

"The food was from restaurants? Not stores?'

"We bought certain liquids at stores. One or two of us went out every day."

"You scouted the neighbourhood every day, didn't you?"

"Yes. I've told you about that."

"And the food, it was delivered?"

"Yes, in a private car or in a taxi-cab."

"And who paid?"

"We took turns. We paid in cash. Small bills, we tipped normally."

"And the man that hired you was the one that was killed," said the admiral.

"Yes," said the prisoner.

There was a knock at the door.

"And your wounds are healing?" asked the admiral.

"Yes, thank you," said the prisoner.

"All right, we'll talk again later," Admiral Vrikop told him a little superfluously.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Hartle deals with it...

Brendan knew that you just had to deal with the little things that come up in life.

You try to make the best of it. Forge ahead, and fill in the annoying little gaps later.

Nothing in the universe would ever be glitch-free. Not in his life, not in this dimension, this frame of reference. Not as long as he could remember.

He went into the bathroom with a really big doobie, fully a gram of black Lebanese hash that he was saving. This was a special occasion.

She was very shy, diffident...demure. He commiserated with her. The kid was in a lot less pain now. It was her basic and fundamental distrust, that made his cautious entry into the bathroom somewhat unwelcome.

"I should be okay in a little while, Boss."

Only her head and her face stuck up out of the tank. He looked into her eyes, and didn't think a puff or two would harm her physiology. If anything, it would help her to sleep.

"I brought you some more tea."

"Oh, thank you." Her un-self-conscious poise, her solemnity, tugged at his heart. She was cute, now that he looked, the sheer vulnerability and innocence of her, completely defenseless.

There was something floating in the pool of steamy, blue-tinted water. She must have poured something in there. He wondered if it was in the cupboard. The shower was what he used all the time. Once he found soap and a washcloth, he didn't look much further. The only reason he knew about the tub, stowed away in the side locker, was because he noticed snap-in receptacles on the wall and asked Sim about them.

He put the cup on the lid of the toilet, about the only level place in the room. Unlike the bathroom at home, this room was actually quite large. He figured it was used for casualties such as burn victims, in its official scout or military duties. There might not be a tub at all, if it wasn't for the fact that the Empress used the ship occasionally.

"So, does this happen often?"

"I don't know the terms of your calendar," she said. "But it happens ten or fifteen times in our lifetimes."

Hartle curiously looked at the thing floating in the water.

"Can I pick it up?" He wasn't sure if he was being incredibly rude or what, and it was kind of gross looking.

But it was just a piece of skin, right? Like a coat or a pair of shoes?

"I certainly don't need it anymore." She spoke with more life and vitality.

Reaching with his fingertips, he picked it up by a corner and found that it was flimsy but resilient. It wasn't as elastic as he might have thought. It was a kind of dirty-milky translucent colour.

"Huh."

It literally fell apart under the weight of water it had absorbed. He had to handle it carefully to examine it. Not much to it really, just a piece of dead, scaly old skin, only bigger than anything he ever saw before, like old snake-skins and stuff out in the woods.

"Could you help me?" The kid was feeling a little bolder.

There were stories of masters who didn't beat you, hurt you, slap you, starve you, provide you with cast-off clothes, forget about your teeth, or your shoes, or your health, or work you sixteen hours a day, and expect you to sleep in a shed or hut.

The kid had never actually met a master like that, but some of the legends might be true. Anything was possible. You could be a slave in a big castle somewhere, owned by some really nice people.

"What do you want me to do?"

She reluctantly brought her legs up to brace herself properly. The kid struggled to sit up. As her neck and shoulders came up of the foamy liquid, he saw that there was plenty more where that came from, more skin to come off yet. It hung there in thin, tattered sheets.

"My God! No wonder it's painful."

She sat up higher, and the loose skin clung tight in huge, elongated wrinkles of dead tissue.

"There's a big tangle between my legs," she explained. "The left leg peeled off quicker, the right one hung on stubbornly. It was dried to a hard knot before I got to the tub."

She gasped in pain as it tugged at her.

"Ah." Brendan said it as if he understood.

Brendan looked in the cabinet, and found what he was looking for. As the mirrored door swung shut, it revealed a disturbing silhouette, the reversal of reality somehow making the truth more poignantly clear to him.

Gently, he inserted a forefinger between her thighs, groped at the hard-stiffened elastic shred of skin, fully half or three-quarters of an inch thick, holding the gnarled lump of something that acted like rawhide—wet rawhide knots being difficult to untie after they dried. He remembered reading about that somewhere.

"Then the knife goes in this way." He bit his lip for fear of hitting something vulnerable. "Hold still."

"Ah," she raved, her body twitching alarmingly.

In reflex, he almost slid off the edge of the wet tub-surround. Brendan was so scared, more scared than at any moment thus far in this whole damned ordeal.

"Are you okay?" He asked in some agitation.

The shock of her cry set his adrenalin going something fierce. Finally the mess came away in his hand, water splashing around as he hacked at it.

"Ah, the relief." She gasped a couple of times.

A few deep breaths calmed her down.

"Thank you, master."

"Ah, cut that stuff out."

An incredible sight was before his eyes. The skin was no longer dead white, like when he and the kid first met.

"Well, there's the left leg free," she said, with soapsuds dripping down from its naked length.

It submerged from his fascinated gaze.

"Might as well cut the rest away." The kid gratefully raised up from the water again. "I can see why that might hurt."

The poor thing! The kid's leg was black and blue from bruising. The rest of the piece was more elastic, but also softer and more easily cut. Some parts of the new, exposed dermal layer were a glowing, beautifully tanned colour.

"There, you should be okay for a while. Let me know if anything else needs offing. Doogie Howser, MD, at your service."

He stood to dispose of the ugly mess in his hands.

"That's a nice name. Do you use it often?"

"Ha! Ha! Ha!" He laughed. "Please! That's not my name."

There was a loud sucking noise and the toilet rig chewed down the tasty morsel presented to it.

"Here's another one."

She held a soggy mess in an outstretched hand. He obediently lifted up the lid and put that one in too. Rinsing his hands in the tub water, he found a fresh towel and hung it close to her. Her hair lay on her head like the top piece of a wet suit. Her shining eyes gleamed up impishly at him. He couldn't help but gulp a little air and hope for some oxygen to arrive soon at his brain. She had the cutest chin, now that he had time to study her.

"Would you like a little privacy? Am I bothering you by being here?"

It was a little presumptuous to come into a young girl's bath and plump himself down, unshaven, beer and a doobie in hand, and ogle her to death.

"No, that's all right." He sat there with a funny look on his face, all screwed up around the eyes like a raisin.

He felt a little ashamed, but she didn't know that.

"Normally families would help each other moult, or even those who are alone, would recognize the signs, and make sure to be close to water, or hell, even a hotel." She seemed very lucid now.

"You mean, like your ancestors? Or like now?"

"Yes, it's evolutionary, but even now. You should see the lakeshore in summer time. Ugh. Horrible, ugly things, imagine all those dead skins floating at the water's edge, bobbing up and down in the waves."

"What about your hair?" He asked in a fine fascination, every other thing in the world fading into the distant background.

Impulsively, Brendan reached over and plucked off a piece of skin hanging from her forehead and over her eye.

"Let's get a look at you." His heart skipped a beat or two.

"I'll have to scrub that out, that dead skin in there," she told him prosaically. "Reach me that bottle of head cleaner, will you?"

Hartle laughed, thinking of the stuff he used to clean the decks.

"You mean shampoo, presumably." He handed her the bottle.

Suddenly he was holding his breath.

"Hey, let me do it."

His heart began to pick up speed like a steeplechaser coming out of the gate, thud-thud-thud, a pounding like hooves on the soft, green, moist turf of Old Blighty. Cheltenham, the Breeder's Cup. Just like in a Dick Francis novel. He was all alone in space, with a hundred-something-year-old girl-child of an alien race, who was sitting naked in a bathtub, slippery with foam. Yikes!

"Sure." She said it, but shyness and hesitation were still evident in her demeanor, which was very submissive.

And the confusion! She looked about seventeen and that was being charitable. Yet she claimed to be one-thirty-seven?

He dropped the bottle on the floor and began working up a lather. The girl shivered a little with the exquisite pleasure of his fingernails gently rubbing the highly sensitive scalp.

He gently massaged the lather and suds into her hair. A person could totally relax. Never in her whole life had she been treated like this. Yet even that thought carried its own sense of dread. It was clearly too good to be true, and therefore there must be some danger.

"There we go."

Her head was a mass of pink, glistening and foamy bubbles. His fingertips—she realized there were nobbly, scratchy things there.

"Ooh, what luxury, master. You really know how to look after your workers—"

Brendan was suddenly upset again, the mood spoiled beyond recognition. What had begun as sort of tender, beautiful and somehow inevitable, was now ugly, and tarnished. Even slimy.

"Forget that stuff! You're not my slave. You're free to go anywhere you want, anytime you want..."

"But...but...where would I go?" Then she started crying.

It was all going bad. Her head jerked around spasmodically as she sobbed, and her hair still wasn't rinsed out.

"Where would I go?" She wailed, then just as suddenly bit off further complaints.

The silence was acute for a brief moment. She was afraid of being punished, he realized, struck by the guilty notion that it was him she was afraid of.

"All right, all right, hold still. You can stay as long as you want. Is that all right?"

He worked her scalp in silence, otherwise, he just kept putting his foot in his mouth. She was trying get a grasp of her emotions. She dunked down into the depths of the tub to rinse off. It took a couple of minutes for Brendan to figure out that this might be a vulnerable time psychologically for her. It was pretty obvious—but only once he thought about it.

The clunk-sound of the plug being removed came then, and the water level dropped abruptly. Leaving the room for a moment, he went into the control room. The water was draining properly through the vents according to the board. It was properly re-circulating back to the holding tank for processing. A bit of dead skin wouldn't hurt. It was no worse than anything else in there.

The sound of fresh water running came out of the open door to the head, just down the hall. Going back into the room was inevitable. He sat down on the toilet, noting she had drunk her tea in the interval. The cup was on the floor beside the tub.

He watched in fascination. After all, how often does a guy get to watch an alien sentient species in the moulting process?

His lighter sparked and he inhaled the sweet smoke into his lungs. The girl looked at him, by now the water had only risen a foot deep again. As it splashed in, he realized that with wet hands she would probably get the joint wet. Kneeling beside the bath, he offered her a hit. Her lips, red like raspberry wine, parted and he saw the way the muscles moved over the bones when she inhaled. She was such a skinny kid. It was scary. She seemed to like it, took another and waved him off.

"Boof." She let out a big cloud of bluish gases-of-combustion.

The water was rising, and she continued to pluck at the loose, dead skin, hanging there in grisly folds and pleats.

"Only a little longer."

"Take your time, kid. Take all the time you want." Brendan sat and smoked.

Then he reluctantly stood to go. It was time to get out and leave her by herself for a while so she could do her thing. He felt like a heel for the invasion of her privacy, necessary as it was at first.

Who knows what she will look like when she gets out of there, he thought. Would wonders never cease?

"I'll be out in the control room, if you need anything."

"Thanks." She nodded brightly as she sunk under the water again.

Just for a second he wondered if the kid was an amphibian. But, no! That would just be crazy.

"Flight computer. Is the medical computer hooked in?"

"Affirmative."

"What about the others?"

"The memory storage of the library is now fully accessible to you from every terminal in the ship, including lap-top and hand-held devices," it reported its new modifications.

"Do you wish to write something?"

"Not now," he said. "What about the science lab?"

"That will take a little longer. A cable will have to be run manually."

"Ones and twos, where's my shoes." He said it gently, so as not to trip the threshold of the computer's attention.

To some extent, it had learned to deal with his incessant muttering and talking to himself.

"Threes and fours, where's my drawers," he hummed and hawed.

The machine bleeped in acknowledgement.

"Ah, yes, the notebook."

The library was the place. He looked in there and found the digital camera and a blank chip. The thing was dummied up to look like an old Sony, but that was just an illusion.

"No worries, mate." He twanged just like Croc Dundee.

Placing the book under the roof light, he cracked the spine so it would lay flat. Setting up the tripod, he focused the camera so it pointed straight down, with no glare showing through. He screwed it tightly to the adapter plate. He locked it in place. Then, one page at a time, he photographed every sheet, constantly monitoring for clarity. The kid splashed happily and noisily in the tub. She was taking forever in there.

No problem, he cracked the airlock and took a brisk walk to the brush-line by the back fence. He had the oddest feeling of déjà vu. A lot of water got passed under the bridge in his time...that's for sure. It could have been any planet, really.

The fence, brown-rusted and stained, seemed to be straining to hold back the encroaching jungle, omnipresent in the quiet, steaming night. Steam rose as he tinkled, and again he was amazed when he recalled that only this morning he had been sick.

Clearing his throat, he knew he was still unwell. Now, he was sure it would pass. Hopefully, it wouldn't affect the kid in any way. Like the computer, he also needed input once in a while. There was so much he just didn't know.

What he didn't know could kill them.

"Meow." The cat was there at his leg.

"Come on in, I'm going to cook some grub soon."

Back in the control room, Brendan continued his work. He took at least a hundred and fifty pictures, page by page. All the rest of the pages in his notebook were blank. Whistling a mindless tune, he tried to figure out what to do next, or more to the point, when to do it.

"Sim, Sim, Simmy boy. I'm sure glad I found my notebook."

He threw it on the seat, and put the camera in his room, which had a lockable compartment beside the captain's bed.

"Hey, kid!"

Turning, suddenly she was standing there right in the room with him, still dripping wet.

"How do I look? Do I look all right?"

Slowly she turned three hundred sixty degrees in front of him, with her arms raised up and extended outwards, happy face uplifted.

"Wow," he said. "I'm...stunned."

"What colour was your hair before? Wasn't it red?"

"Yes, but this time, when it dries, it will be much lighter, I think."

He grabbed a fresh towel laid over the back of a chair.

"Thank you, master, oops! Sorry." Then she turned and was gone again.

"Would you like something to eat?" She called in afterthought.

"Yes." He had a glazed look in his eye. "If only you knew how much."

"What was that?" her eyes regarded him gaily with her angled head, shoulder, an arm and breast visible at the edge of the door.

"Uh, yeah, kid, I would love...to." He was finding it hard to breathe again.

He tried to force down a swallow or two of air. Hartle was literally fighting hyperventilation.

"I'll whip up a little treat I know, is it really okay with you?"

"Whatever you want to do." He was unable to rip away from her sparkling blue eyes.

He felt so useless.

He heard her feeding the cat, and then pots and pans banging away in the kitchen. If he knew women—and he probably didn't, even after all these years—and this was surely a woman to beat all hell—the process could be some time in the making.

"Whew."

My God. He felt a shiver go up and down his spine. A lot of little follicles on the back of his neck felt the cold electricity and climbed erect.

Sounds came of something frying, sizzling in the pan. She came out into the control room with a couple of cans of beer. He took one and swung it up for a long drink, trying not to stare.

"I can't put clothes on for a couple of days. But I don't mind. Old Vink always had to give me time off, my skin is so sensitive at first."

"Er, that's fine, fine." He took another deep haul at the Old Milwaukee.

He needed a distraction right now.

"Where did I leave that doobie?"

The bathroom, he decided.

She turned for the galley again, and he followed along behind through the passageway, noting her magnificent behind, the smoothly rounded muscles in her legs. Her trim ankles caught his eye, and the little dimples at her lower back, then her shoulder blades, fine-boned like a little bird with the feathers plucked, all that smooth, creamy skin.

"Whoa! I got it bad."

Once in the bathroom, he closed the door so he could de-rig the tub, but first he used the higher pressure setting on the shower hose to clean out the remaining sludge. Soon all the dead skin scraps and soap scum were gone. He used the proper 'head cleaner' all over the dull off-white plastic assembly.

"You know, I've used the shower a lot, I could damned well use a bath myself sometimes...might be relaxing." But the instant hard-on he got convinced him that this was a bad idea and might indeed be so for a very long time to come.

He decided after cleaning to leave the tub rigged for a while. He could step in and out to shower, and she could use it when she wished. About forty minutes later, Hartle and the kid sat in the control room eating their meal off of trays, a home-sickly reminder of his former existence. He felt an unknown stranger creeping up on him: an intense feeling of well-being.

Life was good. No matter that it was also precious...it was good. Just good. You had to be grateful for that. His system had been in need of real sustenance for some time, and man does not live by bread alone. He would have to tell that one to the computer later.

The kid was trying to explain things to Brendan.

"You're a stranger to our way of life."

She was reluctant to ask too many questions yet.

"That's very true," he admitted, relieved to find a line of conversation with which to occupy his primitive forebrain.

"What you call slavery, is deeply embedded in the fabric of the Empire," she explained. "It would be crazy. Just imagine if everyone just went around doing what they wanted to all the time."

He had to chuckle at that, just a little guiltily. It was the way he had lived his whole life, after all. But she had a point. Probably, that was one good reason why his life back on Earth had never amounted to much. There were so many options, so many choices for a young man to explore. He never stuck at anything for more than a couple of years, He was a sheet metal worker, a dry-waller, cab driver, community college in '92 to study art, no. It hadn't amounted to much in the way of results. You had to admit that. At some point maybe, just maybe, he would have a two-year college degree in an arts program. Where was that going to get him? He would be literate. You could say that, right? That's always something, right?

She was completely dry now, as she stood to collect the plates. As she came near, he caught a faint tingle in the nostrils. Then she was gone. With an effort, he managed not to stare at her ass again.

His beer was empty, and he went into the galley, where she was busy cleaning up the mess.

"I don't know what that was, but I liked it."

Suddenly he found himself having a kind of out-of-body experience. He saw himself leaning halfway in to give her a kiss on the top of her head. In a state of shock, he halted halfway. Then he carried through with it half believingly, and then rapidly and without further ado, and in some confusion, took his beer out to the other room. There, he thought. I did it.

Chapter Thirty-Four

She sang softly in the kitchen...

She sang softly in the kitchen, as happy as she could ever remember being. This Brendan Hartle was such a nice man, even though he was quite ignorant of many things she thought everyone knew.

"Service." Hartle muttered as he sat and rolled a joint.

By running with the kid, he had made her a criminal. Her last eighty or ninety years had been spent living in a rusting compartment, doing who knows what, in some second or third rate freight brokerage-cum-impound yard.

There was little doubt in his mind that he was responsible for her safety and welfare, and for the foreseeable future. She was in the bathroom again. He had a few unanswered questions.

"I'm going out for a while." There was a muffled response from the other room. "I'll be back in an hour or so."

It has been a long time since I told anybody that, he thought to himself.

Brendan made sure the door was locked, and then he mounted upon the bike. Putting up the kickstand, its spring lock clicked in place. He pedaled down the tarmac, marveling at his view of two moons. There was a strong impression of Zodiacal light, that's the dust surrounding a sun when seen at sunset, and one really bright star overhead, possibly the other major planet of this system. He would have to check to be sure and he really didn't care right now.

The little capital city, population about sixteen thousand, was a bare two or three k's down the road, but there was only the faintest hint of light on the cloud base over there.

Because of the planet's short seventeen-hour day, the sun would pop up in a moment.

His light was sufficient to pick out the lighter patches of clear pavement. The local topography wasn't mountainous, so Brendan figured he could get there in a fairly gentle ten or twenty-minute pedal. He could see a couple of lights in the distance, and heard the noise of vehicles on a roadway. A screen of brush and trees obscured them, but the bright lights kept popping in and out, tossing his stark shadow all over the place.

Standing up and leaning forward, he could feel the bite of each powerful stroke of his long legs. Biking was always better for him than running, just like snorkeling and diving were easier and therefore more fun than the crawl.

There was a rhythm to it as he leaned into a turn and shot out the gate, bleakly lit by overhead yellow lighting. Brendan made another, deeper leaning turn out onto the road. It was completely deserted, and quiet as a graveyard. Nice bike, he decided. There must be at least one other species with limbs, head, body and mass similar to his own. Yet the Centralians didn't look too althletic. Centralians tended to pudgy faces, big bellies and a vacant look, perfect teeth, artificial boobs for the women, penis augmentations for the men, and the most useless minds he had ever met.

There were lights up ahead now, as he came over a gentle rise and then coasted down into the valley. Next came a bridge over a small river, and the street got flatter, with lights along it, and he knew it had to be here somewhere.

Over on his left, the sun was coming up in an orange haze. Little things in the grass beside the street croaked and chirruped. He saw a wispy, wind-borne thing. It flew along, fifty metres up. The actual seed, if that was what the dark dot at center really was, looked to be about the size of a grapefruit. The rising sun caught it and turned it into a hazy globe, which seemed to be made of spider webs, glittering like icicles. It was still dawn at street level.

"Awesome." He dropped into the seat to coast the last few hundred metres as he caught his breath.

He pushed off his goggles and hung them on the center post, letting the cool sea breeze dry his sweaty forehead.

Then he pedaled again, leisurely looking for a shop that was open, where he might find something special. A couple of hours later he had the items he was looking for. This time his trip was made in the light, which revealed a prosaic little side road with the occasional farmhouse or simple outbuildings, satellite operations for a larger manor located somewhere else. A small proportion of the rain forest had been cleared to provide farms that looked to be on average fifty or sixty hectares each.

"Man, that's beautiful." The two moons in the sky were glowing brick red from the light of the risen green-white sun, which beamed its light through the thickness of the atmospheric haze. Off in the distance more glittering icicle-seeds floated by on the morning breeze. It looked like the start of another fine day.

He was stalling and he knew it. Returning to the ship could only take so long. No doubt about it, the Empire was in a state of decline. The planet's population of about two hundred fifty thousand were scattered all across the sphere of the planet. A land area that was about two and a half times that of Earth. This place was only hours from the Gabbel System. That system was definitely still under Imperial administration. This was a Marginal for sure.

The storekeeper opened up to him as he tried to find shoes, 'for a young lady.' He seemed to know plenty about interstellar and interplanetary politics, and he wasn't shy about sharing it.

The place wasn't that far off the beaten track.

The gate to the 'drome loomed up. He paid by credit card—acceptable even out here. They must still communicate electronically with someone, some commercial banking enterprise within the boundaries of civilization. He wasn't sure whether to fill out a form or not. All he had deposited, or exchanged, were electrons.

In a town like this, they would appreciate the sale, and not worry too much about an absentee government's tax forms.

Brendan stopped the bike by the door, placing the bag beside it. The door opened up and the steps came down and he could see her through the open hatchway. She waved, smiled brightly, picked up the packages he had deposited there, and went in again. He undid the clips and folded up the bike, stowing it in his newly installed clamps at the back wall of the airlock.

His breath caught in his throat again upon entering the passageway, as her slender yet softly rounded form was backlit by the red safety lights in the control room. She sat down in the darkened room, and he gestured at the bag.

"I picked up a few things you might need." He went to piss and get himself a beer.

When he came back, she was crying again.

"Hey, hey, hey." He rushed over to kneel at the side of her chair. "It's just a damned toothbrush."

"But not this, or this, or these," she cried, holding up a little tank top.

He brought some plain trousers, shorts, a dufus-looking pair of red suede high-top running shoes with brilliant-white rubber soles, and some kind of electric-blue silky sheer kimono, which he actually thought too big for her. There was a sewing machine in the work room. She pulled out a few more items as he watched. Brendan sure wished he knew more about women, right now. She pulled out his prize, a pale sky-blue hooded sweatshirt, with deep pockets and a zipper front.

He took a moment to get the staff to fire up their machine and put on an appliqué that said, "The Kid," in silver threads on the back of it, in big, bold lettering a hundred centimetres high.

"There, now you won't have to freeze your brass monkeys."

"It's all so beautiful," she moaned. "Oh, thank you."

"Hmn."

"You can take it out of my allowance."

"No way." He was a little more businesslike than he would have wished. "It's a signing bonus."

Suddenly she was clinging to him, and he couldn't see how that had happened. It was like she just leapt up into his arms. He was amazed that she didn't seem to notice his boner pressing into her soft, warm tummy. He realized just how hard he was hugging her, but she didn't complain. He didn't want to let go too soon. He didn't want to seem rude.

Jesus H. Christ, he was thinking, I thought I would never love anyone again.

"It's like he just got run over by a train." A little voice in the back of his head told a little pair of ears in the front of his head.

"Absolutely," said the front part.

Brendan broke off, sat down, watching her with her new possessions. She was running a comb through her hair, which was maybe a foot long when properly combed out. He wondered what it would look like at half a metre. He was sure it would be glorious.

"You—you're so beautiful." He said it without thinking. It came out all low and husky.

"What's this?" She was holding up a bottle from the bags he had brought from town.

"It's supposed to be wine, apparently. It reminds me of home, for some reason."

Maybe it was the shape of the bottle, or the crudely printed chateau and vineyard on the label. Taking it out to the galley, he put it in the freezer section for a while to chill.

When he came out, she had found the other bottle. Once again the air wouldn't go down the right way. She was seated on an old towel, in her co-pilot's seat, rubbing it into her new skin. She was rubbing it with slender fingers over her shoulders, facing away from him on a slight angle. Brendan was grateful she didn't catch the look he was sure must have escaped from his petrified face.

"Would you help me with my back, please?"

"Who—ah, um, er, um, yes of course." He stammered, as the blood stopped absolutely dead in his veins. "Your wish is my command, my lady."

He fumbled the slippery bottle and had to go chasing after it under the front dash-panels.

Her laugh sparkled around the room, and her eyes danced at him again.

"You're so funny!" She giggled. "Old Vink was never as much as fun as you are."

"He never looked after me at all," she went on. "The only reason he ever gave me time off was because I cut my feet working in the rain this one time."

"That bastard! I'll fuckin' kill him!"

He had been noticing some rapid little mood shifts lately.

"Hartle! Really," she said. "Besides, that's all past now."

"Yes, kid." He meekly sighed and went over to rub the thick, viscous fluid onto her back.

Gently yet firmly, his long, strong, bony fingers and hardened palms worked the scented oil down her shoulder blades, then down her ribs on each side, along the spine, and finally to the pair of impudent little dimples between her hips. Brendan found himself breathing very hard again.

"I can reach the rest."

"I believe in a job well done." She laughed again.

He took some more oil, a big gob in each palm.

"Stand up please."

Then, kneeling behind her lithe, feline figure, he did her two little hemispherical buttocks, down the backs of her thighs, and down her ankles. He made the rubdown as much a massage as anointing her. He finished by going up the front of the legs to just above the knees. Then he forced himself to quit.

Standing, he marveled at her height.

"Have you grown?"

"Yes, I think I have!"

The little alien stood a good ways further up his arm now, closer to shoulder-height now. She looked to be about five foot eight. Dropping into his seat rather heavily, he reached for the beer in its holder. He drank in the sight of her, finishing the last of the job with the oil. Somehow he knew it would be all right, and somehow he knew life would never be the same again. So be it.

"Flight computer," he called.

"Yes," the machine said.

"Prepare all systems for instant flight readiness," he ordered. "Close the door, lock the lock."

"Talk the talk and walk the walk," said the machine.

"You got that right," he asserted. "Kid, crack open that wine."

Chapter Thirty-Five

Are we going somewhere...?

"Are we going somewhere?" she asked, combing out her hair again.

"First some minor housekeeping chores."

The cat, lying in the master bedroom, watched the scene through the open door. She stretched, rolled over on her back with paws stretched wide and went back to sleep. All was well with the universe.

Hartle took his notebook out of the ship, back to the fence line, and dropped it on the ground. He stood and pissed on it.

"Bye, bye, Simmy baby."

Then the human went around to the lower front part of the ship's fuselage, He removed a small access plate with his trusty hex driver. With a strong yank, the IFF box was unplugged from its latch. Next, the wide, ribbon-like connectors were unplugged. He pulled a number of little components out of there. Then he went back to the bushes and let them rest there beside the soggy notebook. He went to the cold room at the back of the ship, where all the beer was stored for him.

He began by pulling case after case out, until there was only a couple left by the back wall. Ripping the cardboard open, each and every box was examined, one bottle at a time.

That last bottom row interested him. Sure enough, there was a small black plastic box, about the size of a pack of cigarettes. Batteries included. There were twenty-three bottles of beer and one transponder device. Not meant for children under twelve.

It was placed outside the ship as well. Then he returned to the bridge.

"You can take us out of here," he offered to a delighted Kid. "We'll clean up and go."

There was an awed look on her face, but then doubts clouded over.

"Don't worry about a thing, I'm right here with you," he advised. "Just be gentle on the throttle, and don't yank the stick around. It will fly itself if you let it."

He gazed at her, personally filled with confidence. No doubt about it, Brendan Hartle was in love, and nothing was going to ruin his day.

She took the ship up after putting her presents in her room, while Brendan washed the dishes. The last thing they saw of the planet was someone, perhaps Green-Feet. They must have been walking out to the ship unobserved among the tall weeds in the paving. The being just stood there, watching them leave, in almost the exact spot where he had dumped the stuff.

"You'll figure it out some day, buddy," he promised whoever it was.

Then he dismissed it from his mind.

"Where to now?" she asked.

"First we check out a little extinct star system nearby, then we send a message, then Earth," he told her. "It's a little blue planet, third from the sun."

He sang it to her as best he could.

"Earth?"

"Earth."

He considered a moment.

"Steer galactic north, and then pitch. No sense in leaving an easy trail to follow."

Brendan had a hunch like a camel. Onboard this ship...there must be another one, two, three or even possibly four bugging devices.

With the help of the kid and flight computer, he soon found another one, another positional transponder buried in the skin of the wing.

"I can cut that out for you. I'm real good with a torch."

He just smiled.

"I'll make you a deal," he told the girl. "I'll do it, since you can't wear one of them rough, dirty old spacesuits on your tender little...epidermis."

She actually pouted! She was proud of her skill and wanted to show him. He was touched enough by that, but it didn't make sense.

"But you seem to do most of the work around here. You could let me do something."

"That's what I mean. I'd love another one of your suppers."And I ain't lying. You're a good cook. Why, it's like something out of a gourmet book. Please. Let me do it," he asked gently, tempted to kiss her again. "Pull that wine out of the freezer and put it in the fridge."

"Yes, Brendan Hartle." She turned to the kitchen, and Hartle went to his room to remove jeans and sweater, which were impossible to wear inside one of the skintight suits.

Padding out in socks and underwear, he was reassured to hear the fridge door opening. He hoped she didn't mind cooking duties, but he was sure sick of his own cooking. She was showing good sense, though. They would have to come up with a fair division of labour. The question was, how do you negotiate ethically with someone who would agree to anything?

This poor beautiful girl/senior citizen didn't know a damned thing about being a person in her own right. She was an equal now. Was she really a hundred and thirty-seven? Or just pulling his leg? And what about all this traipsing around nude? He had never seen anything so beautiful, so innocent, or so natural. Her lack of modesty was somehow modesty in itself. What sort of an awful man would want to spoil that? The very thought of a girl like that making love to someone like him was a bit of a turn-off. Yet how long could any normal man stand it? He could never force himself on her, even if she still thought of herself as a slave. He wanted her to want him, that was simple enough. But he was deathly scared to ask.

Soon he had the suit on. Leaving the helmet and air pack in the lock, he went into the workshop beside the engine room and got out one of the powerful mini torches. He checked the fuel bottles to make sure they were fully charged, and then strapped on the belt-harness for all the gear. Confusing thoughts, he jammed back into the subconscious.

In a few moments, he was outside the airlock, a pair of safety lines snapped onto sturdy, recessed stanchions outside the door. He used his hands, knees and the tips of his toes. These parts were equipped with micro-electromagnets, in order to be able to work in any position on a ship in free fall. Apparently, the anti-gravity booties wouldn't work on the stealthy surface coating of his ship.

"Okay, flight. Am I in position?"

"Two metres left, one point three metres back towards the trailing edge of the wingtip." He moved farther out the wing.

He gingerly moved while seated on his buttocks, feeling more magnets make contact. He increased power through the suit controls, because the composite nature of the ship meant that there was very little ferrous material in it. Perhaps as little as two or three thousand pounds scattered around here and there in its architecture. His personal velocity was the same as the ship. Simple static electricity should be enough to keep them together! The key was not to jump about too much, just slide and slither along the hull.

Perhaps if they rubbed him with a piece of silk or something, that might work.

"Here?" He was looking for the intersection of two tight panel lines.

"Two centimetres forward, three to the right."

"Make an incision forward of that point about ten centimetres."

He activated the switch and the torch came on, although the blue flame was incredibly tiny. Make sure to keep it away from the safety lines, thin as a spider's web and allegedly capable of a four-tonne pull under one-point-one g's according to manufacturer's specs.

"Darken your visor controls before contacting the surface."

"Right, copy."

He fiddled around, one-handedly trying to keep track of the torch, while not floating away, and trying to find the silly control knob to the left of his bulging visor.

He made the cut, noting that the spark was indeed still very bright. Gases dissipated off into space, although for some reason, maybe his electrical field, or simply its own low velocity, some wisps of smoke lingered around him. Maybe it was surface tension! Who knew? He was like the 'Peanuts' character 'Pigpen,' a man walking around in his own fog cloud. Brendan was a man with his own weather pattern.

"Next cut?"

"From the initial point, cut a ninety degree incision, twelve centimetres to the left," the machine instructed him.

Smart machine, he thought. He worked the torch carefully, and the machine stopped him again.

"That is sufficient. Now complete the box as neatly as you can."

The machine was definitely, and he mentally underlined it, adapting along with his needs. Like in a video game, you have to get so good before you go on to the next level. Sim had turned out to be a sentient being, but that didn't mean the ship didn't have teaching abilities of its own. He wondered sometimes, just how self-aware it might be.

"Okay."

He was by now prying out the piece with a screwdriver, perched on the right wingtip, over a vast black void filled with nameless stars. It was the middle of nowhere.

Brendan didn't want the thing to burn a hole through his glove, so instead he used pliers to grip the edge and twist it out. He used a bit of ultra-high temperature rated silicone caulking to hold it temporarily to the hull beside him, half a metre away from his position.

"Good."

"Yup. Way ahead of you." He gooped it down, his breath hard in his ears, not so much from hard work as the sheer focus of attention.

It was like walking a tightrope over an infinite Niagara Falls.

As long as you stared at the work, there was no vertigo, but at some point you really were suspended over an abyss, with no idea of up or down. The only saving grace of it was, no gravity to pull the blood up or down, into or out of your head. There it was, the moment of disorientation passed, and a small object was revealed in the white woolly-looking stuff that made up the next layer of the ship's outer skinning.

He picked it out with the screwdriver, and taped it onto the hull beside the cutout.

"Forgot the insulation." He returned to the airlock where the bag floated just inside the doorway.

Topside once more, he trimmed it so that it fit snugly, expanding a little to fit in the cavity exposed. The scraps and unused portion went back into the bag, which he hung from his waist belt by a handy plastic loop.

"Now reverse the setting on the torch. There is a roll of metallic material in your pouch. Snap the roll into position, feed the end of the wire into the cone-shaped cavity, press the trigger once."

Brendan did so and the wire loaded itself into position.

He shoved the plate back into the hole, and held it flush against the light pressure of the insulation.

Slick as a red-ass fox, he tacked the corners, once even breaking it loose to re-align it, then re-attaching it. When he had a good smooth fit, he filled in the cracks a short distance at a time, first the left, then the bottom, top, right, following it around to avoid warping.

He chipped off the slag with a wedge-shaped hammer, and then shone a special nano-viewer tool on it to look at the crystal lattice-work of his welding. The interactive nature of the tools meant the computer was right there with him.

"That will be adequate," said the computer.

The transponder went into his breast pocket for the time being. The rest of his tools properly stowed, he reached for the mini-grinder slung on his belt by a spring clip.

"No sense in leaving an ugly mess."

Sparks flew into the endless void, and then he had a smooth surface. All the bumps were gone. He hooked the thing back into his belt and pulled out the can of spray. He sprayed on the new skin, a special patching compound of the original coating. The whole job had taken less than thee-quarters of an hour, much of which was spent dressing up in the suit. It hardened in seconds, and so he ground off one little bump, touching things up with the grinder.

"Coffee time," he joked. "I am returning to the airlock."

He was still stalling...stalling off the inevitable.

Standing in the open airlock doorway, he braced his head against the top of the frame and held on with his left hand. He took the small device out of his pocket, and then flung it out of the opening and away from the ship as hard as he could. The thing was probably going seventy or eighty miles an hour as it left the ship on its own trajectory. He coiled up the safety line and stowed it in the proper receptacle.

He closed the door, mind as temporarily clear of disturbing thoughts as it was likely to get for some time.

"Man, am I hungry." He informed the flight computer, no that it cared either way.

Music poured out of the internal speakers as he entered the vessel.

"Running away from what you don't understand...Love....It's all right, it's all right, it's all right...She moves in mysterious ways."

One of the better U-2 songs, and the context wasn't exactly wrong, either.

A moment of consideration, but the computer was no critic. He sat down in his chair, ensured that all doors and hatches were battened down. They crunched on toasted sandwiches the kid whomped up for them. They drank some of the wine. He figured you train like you fly and you fly like you train. There's no time like the present. Besides, the wine might relax her some.

"Well, go crazy."

He stuffed the tightly corked bottle into the side pocket of her seat, and tightened up the drawstring to secure it in there.

"What? What do you mean?"

"I mean take over. Fly the big red rocket. Take us to the stars. Fly me to the moon. Let her hang, blast off." He thought some more. "First we begin with a little pre-flight."

Hartle grinned mischievously, and told her to take the right-hand seat. She plopped her little behind into it, looking up at him wide-eyed. He went down on his knees before her.

"Now the straps are very important." He placed the long strips around her trim ankles.

Bare toes beckoned, but a quick little peck on the forehead would suffice...for the moment. She was working the upper straps on her own, he saw through a film across his eyes that just wouldn't go away.

"Heavens above."

"I know, but forget about that for a moment," he said. "Do they rub your skin?"

"A little."

"We'll begin our training with a few gentle maneuvers, okay?"

He leaned forward and kissed her again, this time on the lips. Just by accident, she was reaching for the joysticks, and her hand brushed up against his crotch, sending a loud jolt of adrenalin through him.

Her eyes stared into his, but she didn't slap him away.

Returning to his own seat, as he strapped in he was afraid to look at her, afraid to see what might or might not be there.

She moved the ship forward, picking up speed. She gasped a little as the upholstery bit into her underside. Under the throttle, the ship accelerated up to six hundred million an hour or so, she turned, bringing up the right wing and emulated the wingover maneuver he remembered doing with Cox .049-powered control line planes when age ten or twelve. Hartle felt the g's begin to build up as she used side-thrust to fake slipping in a turn. Cranking hard on his neck, he caught a look at her. Sweat beaded her upper lip.

"Jeez, you're a spunky little thing. Try some axial rolls, and try one with a little bit of down-stick...whoo-hah!"

She cranked in rolling thrust and around and around they went. She tried to keep it centred up on a brilliant blue-white star, and while it drifted about in a little circle, she did pretty well.

"Is that your new name for me? Jeez?" She was concentrating on another turn.

"Back off on the throttle." She immediately did so.

"I got a better idea."

The kid trimmed out, shutting down the throttles. Soon they were in a free fall through the hard vacuum of intergalactic space, going nowhere fast. He undid his straps, and the weight came off his chest.

Brendan had thought for a long time, trying to come up with a good name for her.

"What would you like to be called?"

"Layla," she said.

"Layla! That's a beautiful name!" he gasped. "Um, where did you get it?"

"It's a song in the library."

Looking deep into her eyes, he was glad she had found the confidence to name herself. Actually, he just liked gazing into her eyes, deep and azure. Her face was serious, scared probably. She seemed quite troubled.

"Master—Brendan. Why are you teasing me so?"

He gave a little shove, went down onto the ceiling, then back up to the rug. He grabbed at the bracket of the seat she was still strapped into and hung on, pulling himself to her.

"I want to tell you something." Then he was kissing her all over, from her ankles up to her hair, her eyes, her nose, her lips, her chin, her neck and throat. Her small hands slithered up his shirt, up behind his back.

"Oh! Oh!" she gasped. "What are you getting at, Brendan?"

He stuck his tongue in her ear for a moment, and then breathed some, holding on tight. He stopped himself for a moment.

"I want to make mad, passionate love to you. I don't know why, or how, or when it hit me...I don't even know if it's possible. But I want to try."

Watching her face, he sought some clue as to her inner feelings. Nothing else mattered. Hartle kissed her again, this time open-mouthed. Her naked little body quivered in his arms. Pulling away, he stared at her in desperation. She pulled him back, face to face.

"You're a very nice master." And then she stuck her tongue halfway down his throat.

Layla went for his pants with a vengeance. One-handedly she opened up the top of his Levi's and began tugging at his shirttails.

"Here! I'll do it." She grabbed his wrists with surprising strength.

All of that unloading of boxes in the compound, he surmised.

"No, no, no! You said I could do anything I want..." Layla reminded him in a purring, husky whisper.

"Ahhh! So I did," he gasped. "Yes, anything your little heart desires...all I ask is one thing: don't hurt me and make it last a very long time...okay, that's two things."

Now it was his turn to be slave. She made him go forward and float in the front of the control room, and ordered him brusquely to strip. She sat in the control seat, knees up around her ears, shins and feet impudently displayed and nothing else! She sat regarding him in mock seriousness. Who was teasing whom, now?

All his clothes floated around.

"Turn around."

So he did a clumsy enough little dance for her, waggling his butt at her, and after a full circle she was gone! He waved his arms wildly, lost in space, but finally caught a bracket to hold onto.

"Kid?"

Now what? But it was her party, as he soon found. She came back shortly, wearing the silky little shift he'd bought her.

"Computer! Give us a little gravity," she ordered.

Then they were standing again.

Her eyes burned into his.

"Come here, slave. And bring the last of that wine."

She pressed the button to open up his stateroom. She stood there, arms crossed, her little foot tapping in impatience.

"Well, well, well," he began.

The bed-sheets were changed, music came out, the bottle of wine went into a bucket clamped down with tape...she had been planning this for some time. Candles! And the cupboard door opened just so the mirror would catch all the romance...and stuff. He poured wine into one huge balloon glass, just for the two of them.

"When did you do all this?" What was going on in her mind?

"Silence. Come to Layla. You think you're so tough, Brendan Hartle."

Chapter Thirty-Six

There was time enough for all things...

There was time enough for all things.

At one point in his life, Brendan became very discouraged, and one fine day life taught him a little lesson. Laid off for months, he showed up at his Uncle's, an old stonecutter.

He watched the old guy, sixty-five if a day, naked torso dripping in sweat as he tried to separate a slab of granite from the rock face which he owned in partnership with a couple of other fellows. This was up in northern Quebec. They specialized in a high-grade of stone used by sculptors and artists, and makers of monuments.

Brendan sat there with a coffee, and watched him banging away with his hammer maybe seventy-five, a hundred times. There was not so much as a crack showing in the rock after all this. Yet the next blow split it in two. It couldn't be done without all that went before. He saw it at the time. It was relevant forever.

He was happy enough with Layla's choice of a name. Hartle had at first thought of calling her Samantha, or Sibyl, or something that started with an 's.' But he knew she would hate whatever name he picked for her...or would she? It was definitely better this way.

"...I got the strangest feeling coming over me," the Stone Temple Pilots told him raucously.

His plan of going to Earth was not necessarily half-baked. And that crazy something, that thought at the back of his mind kept eating away at him. Something he had read somewhere, either in a book or a magazine. He could see it in his mind's eye. Maybe if he retraced his steps, like when you lose your car keys.

***

So Brendan and Layla went to Earth, where he proposed marriage, and introduced her to his mom. In spite of her objections and misgivings of a legalistic type, ultimately, it was what they both wanted, and she eventually gave in.

How could she resist? When Brendan pointed a gun at his head, and demanded, 'Either you marry me or the dummy gets it...'

She could take a hint.

Some weeks later, they were back in the neighbourhood of the Centralian Empire, cruising around the periphery of the Galaxy to get there. That way he avoided ambush, and too many questions before he was ready to answer them.

Hartle was sitting in the pilot's seat with Layla beside him, as they approached the cinder-star system from the deepest, blackest depths of intergalactic space. He figured outlaws watch the back trail, and if they weren't careful, they might run into a tree.

They were bound to look for pursuit, out of a sense of guilt, or peril, or danger. All the psychological factors were in place for them not to see the scout ship's stealthy approach, as long as he picked the right direction. Brendan had it all scoped out. They brought her up to speed, achieving their desired velocity, and then he switched off the motors and just coasted in. They were rigged for silent running and passive information gathering.

The former star was black and cold. He wished he had more time. Some pictures might have been worth a few bucks. There was only focus and concentration.

Non-rotating bodies hung in endless hard vacuum, a plethora of empty space. All the planets were dark and cold. While comets and asteroids hung about the system, the comets had no tails—no solar wind or light pressure to form it. There was no energy in the system left to power it.

"This one has hot spots." Layla pointed to the fourth planet in the system.

"Good girl."

"Hah! Anybody can operate this thing."

She had the fear. He could see that. She had no great political motivation, no moral stance. She had no great mission in life. She was willing to go where Brendan went, through thick and thin, and what could be better than that? He wasn't prepared to dispute her logic.

"But it's you, baby," he said.

"What are we going to do?"

"We just got here. There's something I've been meaning to tell you."

Maybe if he pissed her off, the anger would hold back the fear.

Brendan had no illusions about a former slave's motivation or bravery. Nothing in her life had prepared her for this, nothing. Yet Brendan had the sense that he had been preparing all of his life, all of his life waiting for something to happen.

"You know, that Princess Constance, she was a pretty nice lady." Her face darkened with something.

"She seemed to like me. Perhaps she had some dreams, dreams which could not be accommodated to the life of a Member of the Royal Family," he added. "She was tall, smart, beautiful...everything a man should want in a woman. She was rich and powerful too."

"I'm sorry, Brendan." She was real quiet now.

He could see her puzzling away at it, and not getting it yet.

"Do you know when I fell in love with you?" he asked.

Shaking her head, she didn't know what to say. Her eyes seemed better, and he sure as hell hated to say anything that hurt her.

"When I saw you in that tub, with your skin hanging off, and you just seemed...I don't know, so helpless, so vulnerable...I guess you needed me in a way she never would...and I was sunk," he told her. "She can't hold a candle to you, kid...Layla."

Layla was silent, mutely considering this. She finally spoke.

"Thank you." That was all, and pretty much the last time the Princess was ever mentioned in that household.

"We have three buildings...and no ships in the system," she marveled. "What is that, down there?"

"It's their base, their hideout. And that's where they keep the hostages," he said.

"Hostages?"

"That's one reason the Centralians needed me," he said. "In some insanely illogical fashion, they reasoned that since I'm not one of them, the bad guys can't retaliate for what I do. I think that's nonsense, but that's what they figured."

"Retaliate...? For what?"

"For trying to track them down. That's probably the one advantage the bad guys don't have. They don't prey on Earth. We have no traffic. They have no hostages from Earth. They all think I'm a freakin' prophet, or a messiah, or something damned un-fucking-reasonable, if you ask me. But the bad guys are scared shitless, and the Centralians are in the rather unenviable position of half-believing their own propaganda."

"Well, there are no ships in the system," she told him. "What do we do?"

"Go to Plan B."

"We have a Plan B? That's the first I heard of it!"

"I've heard of it," he quipped.

"What?" she muttered. "Again?"

"You said I...it should be I've..." He admonished her while grinning sweetly, in all innocence, and he would never tease his wife.

"Yes, master." He felt better about things.

Her accent was adorable, and her grammar was improving. Brendan sat watching the planet approach. On his visage, a serious look, an unusual look for him. But then, she saw the corners of his mouth tug up a little and down a little. Knowing her man, she bided her time patiently.

"We'll put her down right...there." He indicated a place with his stylus.

"Put her down? Why?" she asked nervously. "Can't we just tell the authorities?"

He shook his head mildly, absently.

"I want to see what they got down there," he said. "And then we'll take care of that no-good piece of shit Sim."

Chapter Thirty-Seven

The big car slid to a stop...

The big car slid to a stop. The door was opened for him by a grave-faced figure he knew from webpix to be Quertyl, head of the local Security Branch.

"Greetings."

"Talk to me." Clive was all business today.

The pair of them walked forward into the area, a semi-circular clearing in front of the Peace With Victory Memorial.

"Where?" he asked.

"She was placing a garland of flucci nompissaea," began the other. "Back of the head, high angle, massive damage to the brain tissue..."

"How's your garden going?" Clive asked on a hunch.

"Fine, good." Quertyl's response settled an internal bet Clive had made with himself.

The operative pointed up at a building or rather a line-up of buildings on the horizon.

"The gunman fired one shot and one only, from the top floor of the nearest building to the east," Quertyl said.

Clive had himself oriented now. He visualized the scene, dignitaries, schoolchildren, families enjoying the holiday. The parade ending in the woods behind him, the solemn procession to the monument...speeches, flag waving, choirs singing...and a single shot ringing out, turning the scene of innocent celebration into one of horror.

He thought of all those school kids and his guts tightened up.

"My Gods. He must have been very lucky...or very good."

Quertyl shrugged.

"Our working theory inclines to the second possibility."

"The field of highly-paid assassins with that skill, and that mode of operation, is a small one," said Clive.

Ground, cover, visibility, distractions, angles and distances, it was good to see the scene first hand. He looked up suddenly again, a sense of dread making the thing more imminent.

"I have men covering the buildings."

"Uh, thanks," acknowledged Clive.

He stood where the Representative of Monarchy died, looking at the memorial.

"She collapsed straight forwards, onto the steps. Never knew what hit her, poor dear."

At least it was a quick death. No lingering end for the old lady.

"The reports you forwarded have been very helpful," said Clive. "We're seeking persons of the profile indicated, and we agree the likelihood of a team of four to be very high. I can't tell you the source, but it's a good one, very reliable."

"I don't know much about Mrs. Weo," said Quertyl. "What she was into politically, financially, personally. All I know is she came to my planet to lay a wreath and got blown away."

"I'm sorry, but it may have had something, ah, to do with her work at the Institute." Clive's tone said much more than the words. "We're working our end, but her personal life seems exemplary...squeaky clean."

"Yes." Quertyl was bitter. "That's my working theory of the crime. It's a crime against the government and nothing...personal."

What could Clive say to that?

"Any positive leads?" They strolled back to where the driver and guards waited.

"There is a report of four businessmen. They stayed in their rooms for long stretches at a time. There are a few such reports. These gentlemen interest me. The individuals didn't leave the rooms or balconies for a solid week."

"Let's go there," suggested Clive. "While we go over the ground again, perhaps some inspiration will strike."

He wished he hadn't said it, but perhaps he was being a little oversensitive to nuance.

"Would you like dinner first?" Quertyl hadn't eaten yet.

"Later, there's time for that later. Just drive," he said, taking over command as naturally as breathing to him, noted the agent with little resentment. "You're not telling me everything."

"I have more theory." The agent shrugged.

"And?"

"Someone was sending someone a message," said the other. "The victim really didn't matter at all. And whoever worked most closely with her is also probably at risk."

The tightening of a knot, the sudden ache in Clive's stomach confirmed this general hypothesis. He never seriously considered the possibility before. He was at risk too. It only followed.

"The hotel is about seven blocks," said Quertyl. "The best way to do it is to walk out separately, and the odds of anyone recognizing a face are quite slim after a week. We feel the pair of primary shooters may have waited on the roof from before dawn until the actual hit..."

"Leave in the dark? Pick a lock and sit there eight to ten hours? Wow."

"They probably walked separately to the hit, four men going alone in different directions. The secondary shooting position is only theoretical, but we feel we have it...fibres and pollen."

The team probably included a lock specialist, a car thief, and two shooters, the agent explained.

"Although they all would have had a similar skill-set, we feel they cross-specialized to avoid surprises—but the lock man would be the best they had, for example, perhaps not adverse to use of weapons but not a brilliant shooter..."

Clive nodded. It made some sense.

"The stolen vehicle, the theft occurred about ten minutes previous to the shooting. It was an unmarked police utility van," said the agent. "It was radio-equipped. Their escape was very professional."

The conclusion was one primary shooter, and the rest were to make the escape possible. That made a lot of sense.

"They had a fifth man coming and going," surmised Clive. "That's how the vehicle was stolen."

The agent nodded in comprehension but made no note of it. Clive wondered if he was keeping other guesses to himself.

"Any officer on routine patrol would just wave, assuming official business, technical people on their way to a crime scene somewhere. We have multiple units."

The scientist didn't reveal to the agent that Admiral Hrickletl had visited Sim in his office yesterday. He didn't tell him that he had seen a photo of Belinda Weo, in a blue dress with yellow flowers, her flat-brimmed yellow hat, complete with her pet biped Pookie on her shoulder, at the head of the parade, nor that the one prisoner in custody instantly identified her with a single glance at some archival news video.

Clive sank into the green boigno leather of the motorcar. Its silent tread was sedate as they merged smoothly into the traffic patterns of the city.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The Kid sat with weapons warmed up...

The Kid sat with weapons sytems warmed up and engines on idle, barely thirty metres from the door of the bio-dome. While trees and shrubs were in the minority, in the hard white glare of the lighting system, they could see figures moving along the rows. It looked like they were weeding, watering, hoeing, and harvesting. Infrared scans of the other buildings indicated no occupants, just the heating system which appeared to be set at a rather low temperature.

The other buildings included two much larger ones, a power plant being the largest.

The dormitory was the smallest of the three main complexes. A number of sheds and shelters stood around. They were mostly for stuff that didn't need to be stored indoors, they speculated. The unnamed planet was airless, dark and cold.

Brendan and Layla were all suited up for the approach, so all he had to do was unbuckle and nip out the airlock. He passed the nose of the ship with an air of unreality foremost in his mind, but he estimated the risk as quite low. With a gun-belt on his hips, anyone would take him for one of them.

A simple airlock lay ahead, as he crunched the soil. It was like walking on corn flakes.

The entrance to the dome automatically retracted a pair of doors as he approached.

Like everything else the panels were clear. There was no sunlight to admit. It might have been for surveillance. So guards could see inside? With no ships to escape in, guards were simply unnecessary, he hoped. Then he concluded the simplest explanation would suffice. It would have been easy to steal the bio-dome from a pirated shipment. Under such circumstances, you take what you can get.

He saw a being a short few steps away, but apparently not noticing Brendan, it turned and stepped into a row of tall, leafy, corny-looking thingies, several metres tall, and was lost to sight. He saw a figure on a cart or powered mule, like in a factory, but it was a hundred metres away and going in the opposite direction, pulling a small trailer piled high with the harvested vegetation.

"I'm okay." he told his wife by radio.

"I can still see you."

In a kind of anticlimax, he came upon a two-legged being as it came around the corner of a side aisle. The being would have brushed by him, intent on some business of its own, but he grabbed at he, she, or it as they went by.

"Where is everybody?"

"Bzzt—bzzt-bzzt." It had no translator, but all of a sudden it let out a big yell and another being came up from the opposite side of the corridor, where Brendan hadn't seen it.

Apparently doing something with roots or berries, it still had a bunch in its paws. He was struck by the realization that they all wore a kind of drab, dull grey, workman-like uniform.

"Where is everybody?" he asked again. "Sim? Have you seen Clive? Trent, or anybody?"

The bulky one with the paws spoke.

"How the hell would I know?"

"Well, when will they be back?" Brendan focused on communicating as ambiguously and obscurely as he could and still get it across.

"Maybe a week—maybe a month." He didn't know and didn't seem to care.

"All right, I'll come back then. Thanks for your help."

The thing was already going back to its job, perhaps hoping that Brendan would give it a favourable employee report, or something. The one with no translator waved languidly and went back to work as well.

"Can't say as I blame them." He had the microphone in the off position.

From what he could see, their lives depended on that garden.

"It's all right, Layla. I'm coming out now."

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The meeting of the Council was in full swing...

The meeting of the Institute's Governing Council was in full swing. They had adjourned briefly and returned to the in-camera session. Members of the public were politely ushered from the room. Reporters had gone back to their newsrooms, or went to the bar to compare notes. A barren silence was broken only by dull mutterings as aides-de-camp passed out folders and nudged gentle reminders to their superiors. The thick deep pile of the rug and the vaulted chambers overhead sucked up the small sounds and distorted them, giving them a solemnity beyond any real weight or importance.

Sim was seated at the head of the table beside Krill, Chairman of this session.

He was just calling the room to order when Brendan and Layla appeared standing in the middle of the horseshoe-shaped space made in the center by the huge table that dominated the room. And a nice room it was too, reminding one of Liberace's boiler room, all fluted columns soaring into the corbelled vaults. He noted a certain Calabrian Romanesque church influence in terms of architecture. Brendan and Layla stood there, drinking in the scene, waiting for the Council Members to notice their presence.

Brendan had taken more than usual care with his wardrobe this morning, attiring himself in tight-fitting white breeches with rather rough homespun appearing hose that was the fashion this season although the hairs on your legs got caught in them and pulled rather painfully, and the same embroidered jacket he had worn to the Imperial Ball. The soft yellow ankle-length leather boots were at least comfortable, although he had his doubts about the colour. A simple, soft black velvet medieval hat like Henry the Eighth's perched on his grizzled short hair.

Layla looked stunning in a simple black Jean-Paul Gaultier shift of clinging knit, and wore open-toed sandals, which revealed a pair of feet that Brendan considered the most beautiful in the universe, and he would fight any man who said otherwise. Her hair, cut in a pageboy style, made her oval face and dimpled chin unforgettable. Long sapphire pendants dangling from her elfin ears set off the crystal-clear sky blue of her eyes.

A quick glance reassured him, her understandable nervousness was under control.

When he realized that this person loved him and would follow him to the ends of the universe, and stick to him through thick and thin, it almost brought tears to his eyes. He was so unworthy of her love...she was so cute. When he shoplifted the dress using the transport device, she was shocked by the theft.

"Brendan!" But a lady had to have the proper clothes.

Brendan and Layla stood in the center of the glittering winged oval of the Great Seal of the Empire, woven in red, gold and black threads into the deep pile of the antiseptically clean white rug. It took a moment to sink in, then the whole assembly fell absolutely dead silent.

"Brendan!" said Sim in sincerely feigned joy. "Where have you been, buddy? And who is this?"

Half-risen, he subsided into the high-backed formal chair, eyebrows raised in expectant query.

"This is my wife, Layla. I'm sorry, I don't know all your names—I know you sir," he nodded to the white-haired Krill. "How's your wife Hunni?"

His eyes scanned all the little name-plaques lined up in front of each Member. Behind them gargoyles and harpies, and two-headed dragons carved in high bas-relief leered at everyone from big stone plaques inset into the deep russet paneling.

"She's fine." The Chairman cleared his throat. "Do you have business you wish to bring to the attention of this committee?"

"Yes, I do, sir." Brendan made this statement with a certain flair, a kind of relish.

A kind of closure.

"And that being?" asked Krill.

"I've solved the mystery," said Brendan. "You will note that we have appeared as simulacra, projected from our ship at an undisclosed location. It is a two way street, as it were. It was a while before I finally figured out why they had such a big tub in such a little ship. It is a knock-down isolation tank, for virtual in-person exploration of extreme environments. At first, I thought the plug-ins for life support were meant for burn victims. It was an assumption, not the most reliable type of data."

"Well, better late than never." Sim's joke elicited a couple of dutiful chuckles around the room.

"I have here a magazine. It is a back number of 'Plasma Magazine,' dated about three and a half years ago. It's a publication on my home world."

The room was dead silent. All those eyes, ears, antennae, and other sensory organs were turned to him exclusively.

"There's a little article in here. It's about a company called Simulator Corporation of America," he told the Council. "Limbic stimulation and virtual reality meets game theory and chaos theory...perhaps a little fractal geometry to make the illusions seem very natural. For those of you who are not technically inclined, it may be useless to tell you, but the simulacrum process makes use of the phenomena where a particle passes through two holes in a screen at the same time."

He threw in a shrug for effect.

"That's more than a ghost can do. I read a paper on it, published by one of your Crown Agencies, dedicated to the promulgation of research and development."

It was a big mistake for them to leave him alone with a TV set and two thousand channels for a few weeks. The Centralian internet was phenomenal, their libraries unbelievable. Clive sat there blinking. He had written that himself eighteen years ago.

"I also read a few other books once upon a time. For example, photons of zero rest-mass have been observed in the process of giving virgin birth to twins endowed with solid rest-mass, and Feynman made time flow backwards in his diagrams. Dirac postulated holes in space stuffed with electrons of negative mass, and Heisenberg replaced determinism by uncertainty and causality by statistics. The reason I'm telling you all this, is because you don't even know how your own star drive works...you simply inherited it from the Old Timers, or Predecessors, or whatever the fuck you're calling them this week..." Brendan stared into the mute, stunned silence. "And I like to earn my keep."

An old alien gentleman in a brilliantly decorated uniform, whose tag read 'Admiral Hrickletl,' coughed softly.

"And what is this magazine story about, Brendan?" asked Krill.

Sim was looking fidgety and seemed to be about to object, but thought better of it.

"Apparently they have a Canadian subsidiary. They build not aircraft and aerospace simulation devices for flight training, but games...video games.

Cutting edge games, more than just coloured figures on a screen."

"Is this relevant, Brendan?" Sim didn't seem in such a good mood now.

"Oh, it gets better. Layla is holding a black box with a button and a red light on it, just for the record. You will note the antenna is properly extended and such, I can assure you the batteries are fresh."

She held it up for them to see.

They all goggled at it, sitting up straight and murmuring.

"The bomb is fifty kilos of a very special compound which we have just transported into the basement of this building."

There was a bit of a clamour in the room.

"We're listening very carefully," said Krill.

He was no coward, some of the others were just getting up, and some clustered by the door. The guards made no move to open it. They were prohibited from doing so by law until moved and ratified by a majority. Brendan had boned up on Sniggurl's Rules of Procedure, a college text for political-science students.

"Silence!" bellowed Krill and it got quiet again, although someone was weeping in the corner of the room. "What...what are you trying to say, Brendan?"

"I'm saying that agents of the Mythological Institute have infiltrated the Simulator Corporation and steered the research into a very special end. They invented stuff that really isn't available on Earth...they allowed a few selected pieces of, if you'll forgive the expression, alien technology to fall into the right hands. It's a very serious criminal offense."

"And what was the intent? What was the motive?" Trent asked from further down the room, interested in spite of, or perhaps because of the danger.

"The result was that Simulator Corporation thought they were building the greatest virtual reality game ever invented, complete with limbic stimulation of the cerebral-cortex, the amygdala, the hippocampus, hypothalamus, the medulla oblongata. And, it's true enough, when you consider the inner reality of the ship, where I can cook real bacon and eggs for breakfast, combined with the bogus displays of the simulator windows. With limbic stimulation, they can control what you feel, taste and smell when you leave the alleged ship. It is absolutely seamless, and very convincing—maybe even a little too convincing. Yet it is a fairly simple application of Boolean logic, where all questions are boiled down to yes or no, one or the other. There is no maybe. A statement cannot be both right and wrong at the same time...it's plugged right into the brain."

"I'm not technically inclined myself," Krill told Brendan and the rest of the room.

"Consider if a keypad or a mouse, a database, a temperature gauge, a seismograph, microphones, cameras, a barometer, accelerometers, and a score of other scientific instruments were giving inputs directly into the brain, with a software package and a language that the brain can understand. It must be a language that it can interpret."

"They could control your entire perceptual basis," agreed Krill. "Yes, we were briefed on all that."

"I still don't get it." stated Sim. "Why, I..."

"Shut up!" Krill banged his hammer on the little stone pad.

"Thank you," said Brendan.

"So why would they do this?" asked Clive, Trent nodding beside him.

"Because it's cheap," said Brendan. "They simply borrowed the resources of a big firm. They experiment on Earth types due to the fact that it's illegal in the Empire, even to experiment on convicted capital criminals."

"These are very serious charges." Sim's voice was rising, and his face was all red.

He was sweating, although the Imperial Species was not known for it.

"But why would they do that?" Clive wasn't looking too happy himself, but perhaps with better composure.

"Reasons too numerous to list, but they sold it to you very well, and in fact got results. For example, now you know a lot more about the capabilities of human beings. I have a question...how many people have died in that simulator?"

"Um, there have been twelve previous subjects," said Bithwell, among those still seated.

"And?" Brendan was relentless.

"Four died, and the others are permanently hospitalized for mental problems."

"Incidentally, we used the medical lab's MRI machine to locate the chip in my head, and the transport device to remove it. So don't try to switch me off, as the saying goes..." There was a stern set to his jaw.

"If this corporation built a simulator, how are you here?" demanded Clive.

"Mister Clive, the clever Clive. Simple once you know the trick. My real body was snatched by you guys, most likely when Sim gave me an injection, or possibly sooner than that, if you consider the possibility of gas being used. And the technicians at the real Simulator Corporation are even now monitoring what they think are real phenomena of my psycho-sexual makeup, but those inputs are emanating from a pre-programmed simulacra. The technicians think I'm inside the game space, nothing more. As for how they sold my disappearance to my mom, and to Stirling Security, my mom thought I was locked in on a strike, and Stirling Devonchek is probably not asking too many questions about the actual number of bodies on site. He may in fact be padding it out a little, if I know them guys. If I wasn't there, they wouldn't look too far, when you consider automatic payroll deductions and direct deposit...I simply must exist, from their point of view."

There was dead quiet.

"Otherwise someone would have had to leave cellular residue, ninety kilos of it, sufficiently detailed to pass a DNA test. That hangar's perfectly intact," he added. "I went and looked."

"How long have you known all this?" Clive suddenly slumped visibly in his seat.

He sort of wilted in front of the eyes of the assembled Council.

"Well, something's been bugging me right from the start. The company has an annual report. There are rows of pictures of the principal officers of the company on the first two pages...see right here? Sim's here too," said Brendan. "Clive Johnson, Head of Research and Development. Why, here is Simpson Lee, Vice President of New Products Development. The flight logs of their ships can be checked, but almost undoubtedly, you'll find them altered. It is a long commute. Check their fuel purchases."

"So what are you saying, Mister Hartle?"

This question came from Salmsoni, absolutely in awe of what he saw going on around him.

"The simulator company wanted a hot new game that felt real, and designed an environment that closely mimics Centralian space...it's for war games. They can teach themselves how to defeat you, for they can never match you in numbers. By 'them' I mean the infiltrators...get it?"

"Well, the pirates are real enough." Sim was yelling now.

There was a pandemonious roar in the room for a while and Krill banged his gavel to no avail for a couple of minutes.

"I have more," said Brendan. "The pirates are real, that's true. But for me to try and catch them was the part that interested this committee. Otherwise, there would be no money, no mission, no program. The pirates serve a useful purpose. By focusing your attention on the perimeter, the periphery of Empire, you neglected the possibility of a palace revolution."

Brendan had come up with a theory that not only fit the known facts, but some of the unknown facts as well.

"That's true." This admission came from Krill.

He stared in fascination as a simulacrum of the cat wandered about the room, attempting to sniff everything in sight, but it wasn't having much luck.

"Is that animal in the tank?" Trent stared in amazement.

"Nope. Just a fun little program whipped up by a friend," said the cat into the stunned silence.

Layla's mischievous grin lit up her face. Some of the group were puzzling it out, piecing it all together. He could see comprehension was not there yet.

"It's a matter of controlling your perceptions," the cat said, and then proceeded to sit down and lick its backside.

A couple of Council Members giggled at this sight.

"Just for the record, Centralian is an example of a trade jargon, and in fact the Imperial Species are relative newcomers to the language. It's only about fifteen hundred years old." Brendan expanded with confidence in his conclusions. "How the heck did that nasty old Prophecy get carved into a rock over thirty thousand years ago?"

They all avoided his eyes, the silence becoming oppressive.

"I'm going to provide you with coordinates to a place where you can rescue the survivors from pirated vessels."

He read off a string of numbers to them. Someone would be sure to jot it down.

"My suggestion would be three destroyers, six or more scout ships, and a transport capable of at least two or three thousand passengers. And of course, you should bring a couple of hundred Marines."

"I'll send you some stuff later," said Brendan. "Code name, the Case of the Curious Killers. Wait until you see enemy ships returning. Take them out while you're in the vicinity. I think they're running short of manpower."

Admiral Hricketl was standing up, bellowing in rage, and some people were trying to hold him back. He was waving a newsprintout, with a photo on the front of it.

"You killed her! You son of a bitch boigno!"

He shouted at Sim, who yelled, "Clive!"

Clive was headed for the door.

"What's all this?" asked Brendan.

"She was one of them...when the prisoner broke, they must have shot her to keep her from capture...the prisoner saw her in the park when he got paid off!" Hrickletl was livid with rage.

If he hadn't been held back, Sim would be beaten to pulp by now.

"Well, be that as it may," said Brendan in a debonair fashion. "It's really no concern of mine. But my wife has something to say."

"Order! Order! Arrest these two here," called Krill to the others in the room.

The guards complied with alacrity. Sim had gone all wobbly in the knees, yet oddly enough Clive seemed almost relieved to be caught. He stood tall and didn't try to avoid eye contact, neither was he aggressive. He was just relieved. It was finally over. When the noise subsided again, and the prisoners removed, Krill banged the hammer one more time.

"Go ahead, young lady."

Layla blushed beet red and stammered a little, but she got it out.

"I want my freedom."

"Granted," said Krill, "I'll personally guarantee that! It's one of my pet peeves, that progress has been so slow...but another time perhaps...?"

"Truer words were never spoken," said Brendan. "You'll be hearing more on this later."

"I reckon we will, young man," said Krill. "And what a privilege it is."

"Included in the materials I will be sending you is the first installment of your new religion, which was part of the mystification process for my original so-called mission." Brendan's voice dripped menace. "I strongly suggest that you people should be very careful of what you wish for."

He regarded them in a long moment of silence, biting back an ugly little speech he'd mentally rehearsed a few times. With his eyes boring into Krill's with as much fanatical intensity as he could fake, he gave the assembly instead a little quote from Frank Herbert's 'Dune.'

"A world is supported by four things. The learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the righteous, and the valour of the brave. All of this is nothing without the art of ruling...and you have none of these things."

"Promise me something, Mr. Hartle!" Krill beckoned frantically, stopping their instant departure.

"And what's that?" Brendan's anger was written all over him.

"Look after each other."

Brendan nodded shortly in comprehension, and then wound things up for the day.

"My wife and I will be leaving now...and if you come within a hundred light years of Earth I promise I will hunt you down and kill you all like rabid dogs by the side of the road."

Then they were gone.

Epilogue:

Two months later...

Two months later, as they cruised in the general vicinity of the center of the galaxy, a bit of a delayed honeymoon, Layla darkened the lights and put on some music, and got Hartle a cold beer from the fridge. She cooked up a Corvan stir fry, and they had Pop-tarts for desert.

"Brendan?"

"Yes?"

"What do you want more than anything else in the whole universe?"

"Well, I have all that," he said. "What do you want more than anything in the universe?"

Then something clicked in.

"Oh, my God!" Tears sprang to his eyes. "Is it...true?"

"What shall we name him?" she asked, as they clung together in the little booth in the galley. "I'll bet it's a boy."

"Anything you want, Layla."

Brendan was crying in joy and hanging on for dear life.

"How about Star Seed?"

And so it came to pass that a child was born...

The end

Louis Shalako began writing for community newspapers and industrial magazines His stories appear in publications as diverse as Perihelion Science Fiction, Bewildering Stories, Aurora Wolf, Ennea, Wonderwaan, Algernon, Nova Fantasia, and Danse Macabre. He lives in southern Ontario and writes full time.

http://shalakopublishing.weebly.com

