Destroyer of Worlds Read online

  That he continued to study the cell was misdirection, for surely his captors watched through hidden sensors. He had long ago completed an inventory of useful materials. For sophisticated parts, the repair kit he had palmed from a pocket of his armor. To fashion into structural elements, bolts and brackets from the empty shelving units, and parts from the latching mechanisms within the empty cabinets. From the corners and recesses of the room, scraps in endless variety, all individually innocuous, the sign of a room hastily emptied. To run what he would build, the magnetically coupled wireless power transmitters recessed into the walls. And for the privacy in which to construct—whatever—the empty storage units themselves, their interiors invisible to watchers.

  Like the briefly glimpsed air lock, every mechanism in this prison was straightforward in function, designed for a single obvious purpose, and profligate in its use of materials. His captors, like the Drar, must be a young race, their worlds all but unexploited. He could fashion many things from the components at his disposal, and what he would make—multipurpose, tiny, frugal in its use of resources—might go unnoticed among such primitives.

  The situation was clear. He would escape and take charge of the ship. He would, if possible, take prisoners for the information they might provide. If their capture proved impractical, the ship itself would reveal much—

  An eruption of noise: complexly modulated, unintelligible, not altogether unpleasant. Speech. It came from a tiny grille high on an interior wall, and Thssthfok added an audio transducer of unknown type to his list of building materials.

  He saw flashes, roughly synchronized to the sounds, at the entrance into his cell. From the rectangular display device still attached to the inset window of the hatch. An image of his battle armor and a sound burst. An image of his captor’s spaceship and another sound burst. An image of Thssthfok himself—and silence.

  “Thssthfok,” he offered.

  And so the language lessons began.

  IN THE PRIVACY OF HIS CABIN and inadequate comfort of his own rolledup body, Baedeker trembled. The wonder was that he had made it to his cabin before collapsing. Sigmund’s revelations had left him teetering on the brink of catatonia.

  Pak fought other clans to extinction! Valuing their own kind so little, of course Pak attacked any other possible threat without hesitation. And so they had, with all those kinetic-kill genocides. And Hearth was in their path.

  Would the New Terrans make common cause with their Pak cousins, abandoning—or betraying—Hearth? The humans had given no reason to expect that, but why wouldn’t they? How else could they save themselves?

  With an inner strength Baedeker had not known was in him, he unclenched and climbed shakily to his hooves. He activated a holo display to follow the interrogation.

  He must study Sigmund as closely as the Pak.

  WITH BUT ONE THREAD OF CONSCIOUSNESS, Ol’t’ro monitored the interrogation. What the Pak might reveal mattered.

  Right now, other things mattered more.

  Thssthfok’s capture had involved instant-transport devices, what Sigmund had called stepping discs. Like hyperdrive and nonbiological computing, instantaneous transport was a wondrous technology Ol’t’ro’s “allies” had failed to mention.

  So that the technology could be deployed against the Gw’oth?

  The auxiliary cargo hold become Pak prison had had a stepping disc in its deck. It took no imagination to suppose another such disc sat beneath their habitat. Activating such a disc would carve a hole in the tank, release the water, and deliver them to a slow and agonizing death.

  But now they had seen a stepping disc.

  An active acoustic sensor would probe through the tank to the deck beneath, and show whether a stepping disc in fact lurked there. They could easily fabricate such a sensor in the habitat water lock/workshop. Ol’t’ro repurposed a thread of consciousness to develop the sonar design and choose its means of fabrication. They assigned yet another thread to mining their archives for hints to how teleportation might work.

  Clearly the Gw’oth had been allowed aboard solely for the help they could provide. If that was the rule, they would help themselves, too.

  Beginning with Don Quixote’s technologies . . .

  SIGMUND STRODE DOWN a curving corridor, clad in battle armor, his massive boots clomping. The world dimmed and shrank and receded in his vision until all that he saw, as though at the end of a long tunnel, was a simple hatch.

  Behind that door, the prisoner waited.

  Thssthfok was smarter than Sigmund. Much smarter. If that wasn’t bad enough, Brennan’s testimony made clear that protectors were also stronger, faster, and more agile than any human.

  Superior paranoia would have to compensate.

  For hours, as Sigmund had mentally prepared for this confrontation, a trace of memory had tantalized. It hung out there still, just beyond his grasp. Not Brennan-as-protector leaving behind his family, the puzzle that Baedeker had chased from Sigmund’s thoughts, but something related. Like a chipped tooth, it nagged at him. Everything Sigmund knew, or wondered, or feared about the Pak ran about in his brain like cats chasing their tails. Until—

  To reach Sol system, Phssthpok had spent most of a millennium, most of his life, alone in a glorified singleship. Would a protector with a family do that?

  Sigmund stopped short. Finally, the right question.

  A voice crackled in his headset—Kirsten asking worriedly, “Are you all right?”—and Sigmund shushed her. He had the elusive memory!

  It was a snippet from the classified files of the 2125 incident. An ancient vid of Lucas Garner, the only ARM to have met the Brennan-monster, dictating his memoirs. The recording included hearsay about Phssthpok: “He had no children, so he had to find a Cause”—proper-noun status echoed in Garner’s voice—“quick, before the urge to eat left him. Brennan’s words. That’s what happens to a protector when his bloodline is dead.”

  Phssthpok was childless. Finding and saving the lost colony had been his Cause.

  What of Thssthfok? Stranded, obviously, on the flying-squirrel planet, how could he hope to protect his family? So he, too, had committed to some Cause.

  Phssthpok had committed a lifetime to crossing the galaxy. Thssthfok would be just as fanatically determined to accomplish his Cause, whatever that was.

  Well, Sigmund had a Cause, too: Penny, and Athena and Hermes, and the millions on New Terra. They were depending on him.

  And so was his crew. Sigmund responded, belatedly, to Kirsten’s worried question. “I’m fine. Just thinking.”

  Outside the makeshift prison he did a final inspection. Battle armor: sealed. Pressure suit, exoskeleton functionality, and comm: all status lights green. Dampers repositioned in the air ducts, isolating this deck from the rest of Don Quixote: check. Back-to-back emergency hatches cutting off the corridor behind him: double check. Holsters: empty. Better to forego weapons than have Thssthfok grab them. The alien moved too tanj fast.

  Gravity in the hold could change in an instant to micro-gee, or thirty gees, or any intensity between. Worst case, Jeeves would kill artificial gravity, open the exterior hatch, and blow Sigmund and their captive into space. Sigmund would live to be retrieved. The Pak would not.

  The decision was delegated to Jeeves. Electrons and photons beat neurons every time.

  “Arm the hold’s outer hatch,” Sigmund ordered. Across the ship an alarm began to wail. A red light strobed in his heads-up display. “Suppress the audible.” A few eye flicks to the HUD virtual keypad set his visor reflective and blocked the flashing.

  In the HUD, the alien continued his pacing, unperturbed. “Jeeves, tell it to move away from the interior hatch.”

  “I’ve connected you to the speaker. You can tell Thssthfok yourself,” Jeeves said. “He speaks excellent English.”

  Sigmund sensed pique in that answer, as though Jeeves resented its struggle to master the Pak’s language. Or maybe Sigmund only projected his own insecurities. Did everyone learn
languages faster than he? “Go to the other end of the room,” he ordered Thssthfok.

  In the HUD view, Thssthfok complied.

  Sigmund activated his boot electromagnets, just to play safe, and let himself into the hold.

  27

  Thssthfok stood at ease with hands clasped behind his back.

  The casual stance failed to disguise an aura of power and speed. Like a cat, Sigmund thought, and then, unavoidably, of a cheetah about to pounce. Thssthfok had claws, too.

  “Go to the curved wall and sit,” Sigmund ordered.

  Thssthfok complied. Seated, he looked no less ready to spring.

  Letting the silence stretch, Sigmund studied the Pak. Leathery and gaunt, with eerily human eyes peering with superhuman intelligence from that expressionless face. Sigmund thought of jack-o’-lanterns, and gargoyles, and things that go bump in the night.

  He told himself to get a grip.

  He towered over Thssthfok. He would have done so even had the alien stood. Sigmund was massive in his armor, mysterious behind his silvered visor. Ominous. In control. Intimidating.

  But how intimidating could he be, girded in his battle armor, while Thssthfok, naked, sat impassively studying him? Sigmund could not shake the feeling the Pak was one step ahead.

  How do you question someone much smarter than yourself? You keep them off balance. You give them no time to regroup. Interrogation 101.

  Sigmund leaned forward belligerently. “You attacked our ship. Now tell me why.”

  “I need it,” Thssthfok answered emotionlessly. Clicks and pops punctuated the short sentence. English must be an unfriendly language for that hard beak.

  “To catch up with your family,” Sigmund said.

  No comment.

  More Interrogation 101: Pretend to know more than you do. “The galactic core isn’t a good place to be, is it?”

  No comment this time, either.

  “Yes, I understand why the Pak”—the word earned Sigmund a twitch—“needed to move.”

  New Terra was too peaceful. Interrogation was yet another skill Sigmund had found neither the time nor any reason to teach. Now he had every reason and no time. He had to be good cop and bad cop both. “It was stupid to try to take our ship. I had expected a protector to know better.”

  Silent but preternaturally alert, Thssthfok watched. From a single unexpected word he knew that Sigmund had other sources of information; he wasn’t going to react again.

  Lucas Garner, in his memoir, had spoken of free will—and that the Brennan-monster had claimed to have none. Sigmund had forgotten the specifics. Something about when the best course of action was instantly obvious, one had no choices to make.

  How, Sigmund wondered, do I make a protector see cooperation as his only choice?

  “Here’s the thing, Thiss-the-fok.” The extra vowels made the word more manageable, but that wasn’t why Sigmund inserted them or stretched out the name. Mispronounced names annoyed subjects, at least the human kind. Annoyed subjects sometimes let important stuff slip. “We have a problem.”

  Thssthfok rapped the exterior hatch behind him. “One you can easily solve.”

  “And some of us”—Sigmund playing bad cop—“see no reason not to pitch you out the hatch. I assume you would rather we didn’t.”

  Thssthfok made a gesture that, making allowances for his stooped posture, enormous shoulder joints, and wrinkled leathery skin, might have been a shrug.

  Sigmund said, “We can open the hatch anytime. Whether we land the ship first is up to you. Given the death and destruction brought on by your unprovoked attack”—he had to pause for Thssthfok and Jeeves to reach an understanding of provocation—“I would have no problem blowing the hatch here in orbit.”

  Sigmund wouldn’t, of course. Not unless jettisoning the Pak was necessary to protect the crew. But Thssthfok could not know that.

  Or did he? Thssthfok sat motionless, sphinxlike, serene. To a protector, any mere human must be an open book.

  No, tanj it! Sigmund defied his insecurities. “You see, Thssthfok, handling you is quite simple. You aren’t the problem. Would you like to know what is? The Pak fleet now destroying everything in its path. They can run from the core explosion. There’s no need to attack those you’ll be leaving behind.”

  Thssthfok stared impassively. “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  Thssthfok opened and snapped shut his beak with a loud clack. Resignation, bravado, disdain. . . the mannerism could mean anything or nothing. Sigmund, pretending to knowledge he did not have, was left to guess at any significance. Disdain, Sigmund intuited. For him personally, or anyone in the enemy’s path?

  The epiphany, when it struck, was blinding. And humbling. He felt like a child badgering an adult—and in a manner of speaking, that was exactly the case.

  Sigmund pictured, suddenly, how Thssthfok saw his circumstances. He lived because his captors wanted him alive. Hence threats were hollow. Hence Sigmund had only proven himself flawed and weak.

  He trembled with the need to order the hatch blown, if only to dent Thssthfok’s smug complacency. No matter that the ground attack on Don Quixote justified it, to execute the Pak now would be self-indulgent, pointless, and counterproductive. Sigmund would not do it.

  As, maddeningly, Thssthfok had realized long before.

  THE VISITOR WAS AN ENIGMA.

  English lessons had been straightforward enough. Thssthfok quickly found Jeeves’s conversation stilted and formulaic. Testing a theory, Thssthfok experimented with ambiguities and incongruities. He concluded that the disembodied voice had no body. Jeeves was a symbolic processing entity, an impressive—but by no means final—extrapolation of the computing technology Thssthfok had begun for the Drar.

  He found humans much more interesting.

  Worlds showing evidence of spaceflight were dangerous and were preemptively destroyed. A few ships might survive such attacks, but survivors would have more urgent tasks than hunting down stragglers like himself to question. Ergo humans almost certainly did not come from anywhere within the wake of the Pak fleets.

  Nor did it seem plausible that the humans came from regions alongside the ever-expanding zone of preemption. No species from outside the zone, having detected the nearby obliteration of worlds, would so foolishly draw attention to themselves.

  That left the humans originating somewhere in front of the fleets, on a world or worlds the vanguard had yet to overrun. But for the humans to explore deep within the wake of the Pak fleets and return home before the vanguard struck—

  Almost certainly the humans had a means of faster-than-light travel.

  As an act of will Thssthfok had fast-forwarded the Drar’s technological development. A possible fleet of Drar servant-warriors was a reason to keep eating. A rationale, anyway, he could now admit, like the mad project for which Phssthpok and his legions had once perverted the Library and plunged Pakhome into war. (Well, somewhat better than that. Thssthfok’s selfish clinging to life only affected Drar. They scarcely mattered.)

  A faster-than-light ship changed everything.

  He could reunite with his sleeping breeders. He could lead clan Rilchuk to safety in some secluded hinterland of the outer galaxy. Now, Thssthfok wanted to live. He ached to live. He must live. Suddenly he craved food, in a way he had not since being abandoned.

  He must seize the humans’ ship. To take the ship, he needed to stay aboard. To remain aboard, he must seem to offer value to the humans. He must speak.

  Thssthfok told his visitor, “You asked why Pak attack. You have many more questions. Answer my questions and I will answer yours.”

  “There are questions I won’t answer,” the human answered. “But here is one fact, for free. I am called Sigmund.”

  As there are questions I will not answer. “Very well, Sigmund. We eliminate from our path those who pose a danger to our safety.”

  “Have any of those worlds done anything hostile?” Sigmund asked.

  English
was verbose, its words ill-suited to Thssthfok’s mouth. Vs and Ws came out entirely wrong. Still he explained patiently, slowly, almost as though to a breeder. “To wait for an enemy to attack is to sustain unnecessary losses.” And is a breeder-stupid error in tactics.

  “How are they your enemy?” Sigmund bellowed. “You talk of civilizations struck down before you even meet.”

  Sigmund knew of Pak by name. From other Pak prisoners was the obvious explanation. Even the prospect of another Pak prisoner made Thssthfok himself less valuable. He must seem to offer more information. And he must act quickly. Another prisoner would also covet the FTL ship. “They are not Pak, so they are enemies.”

  “Expendable, then.”

  By definition. Thssthfok snapped his beak in answer.

  His turn to ask a question. Any question about technology or the humans’ home would be wasted. Useful information would come only when he could seize it. Until then he must bide his time.

  A carafe of water and a tray of unfamiliar foods had been provided hours earlier. Nothing smelled inedible, but Thssthfok had yet to touch it. Of course, he had had little appetite. Now the newly awakened hunger gnawed at him. “Sigmund, is this the best food you have for me?”

  “You can eat it,” Sigmund said bluntly. “I know.”

  Because, presumably, other prisoners had eaten such fare. “I cannot live on this indefinitely.”

  “No, I suppose not.” Sigmund crossed his arms across his chest. “Not without tree-of-life, too.”

  Other prisoners, clearly.

  Thssthfok turned to look behind him and point to the world below. “In the city from which I was taken, there is an orchard. I will need a supply of the root.”

  “You got tree-of-life to grow out here?”

  Sigmund sounded surprised. Why? And what was the context of “out here”? Then Sigmund continued, shocking Thssthfok speechless.

  Sigmund said, “Phssthpok thought he had the solution. Did you get the cultivation technique from him?”