Ghost Legion (42 page)

Arriving at the spaceport, she was taken aboard a private spaceplane.
The plane lifted off, was soon in the endless night of space.

Once they had made the Jump, the cyborg gave her another injection.
This one, he warned, would knock her out.

"I'm going to set that broken bone, sister. I assume you don't
want to be awake for the operation."

"No," said Kamil confusedly, "I don't want to be
awake."

Darkness slid over her. The last thing she saw, before she lost
consciousness, was Astarte's beautiful, expressionless face.

Chaos and Ancient night, ... as my way,

Lies through your spacious empire up to light,

Alone and without guide, half lost, I seek

What readiest paths lead where your gloomy bounds

Confine with Heaven ...

John Milton,
Paradise Lost

Derek Sagan opened the volksrocket's hatch, stood a few moments in
the hatchway, before descending the few steps to the damp grass. What
he could see of Vallombrosa was not much different in daylight than
it had been in darkness, this due to the fact that a bank of gray fog
hung over the hillside. Sagan could see the grass beneath his rocket,
flattened and blackened from the touchdown. He could see the stand of
trees that he had walked past last night and not much more beyond
that. The pavilion, the other tents were all shrouded in the heavy
mists.

Convenient, he thought, and walked back into his plane.

He gathered the objects he would need for the rite, wrapped them each
carefully and reverently in black velvet. He could not handle them
without thinking back to the last time he'd given the test: Dion's
rite.

He remembered it clearly, far too clearly. One doesn't usually forget
being kicked in the face by an Immortal foot. It proved, beyond
question, that Dion was meant to be king.

"Or did it?" Sagan asked himself (or was he speaking to her
unseen, but clearly felt presence?). He straightened from his task.
"Or did it mean nothing more than that he was being set up to
take the fell?"

He pondered the question. "If my theories are correct, this
strange force Flaim Starfire controls is unstoppable. A force that is
unseen, unheard, cannot be easily detected. It glides through solid
matter with ease, leaves little trace of its passing behind. It
plucked this volksrocket out of space and transported me here in less
time than it takes to tell it. In addition,

Flaim is recruiting men and machines. With a strong army and navy
behind him, and this terrible power at his command, he is invincible.
One thing could stop him—the space-rotation bomb. But Dion will
never use it He'd die first. And he may well have the opportunity."

Sagan placed the objects in the black cloth scrip he had brought with
him for the purpose. He tugged on the drawstring of the scrip, pulled
it tightly, shut the bag.

He wondered again if he had truly seen Maigrey, if her spirit was
with him, or if that brief flash of silver was something his
mind—sickened by loneliness, grief, anger—had conjured
up. The vision had been very real to him, but then most delusions are
real to those who suffer from them.

Footsteps could be heard, outside the hatch. They were firm and
strong, but lacked the quick, decisive stride of youth.

"Pantha," Sagan said to himself, not turning around.

The voice confirmed it.

"Good morning, my lord. I trust I do not disturb you?"

"I will be with you presendy," called Sagan, taking his
time.

"The fog is thick this morning. My prince feared you might have
difficulty finding your way."

"I found my way to him across a galaxy, sir. I'm not likely to
lose him in a mist."

Pantha laughed politely at the jest that had not been a jest. Sagan
descended from the plane, shut the hatch behind him. The two men
began to walk at a slow and leisurely pace up the hill.

"You want to find out how much I know," Sagan said.

"Naturally," Pantha replied, easily keeping pace with the
Warlord, despite the almost forty years difference in ages.

"Know about what? The other world? The world of strange, dark
matter."

Pantha glanced over at the Warlord. He did not appear surprised. "I
told Flaim you would discover it."

"Let us say 'deduce' its existence. Just as you did, years ago."

Pantha sighed softly. "You cannot imagine the feeling of elation
when I first discovered my theory was correct, when I first contacted
them.
All the tests, the readouts pointed to a second world,
coexisting with this one. This planet—far more heavy than it
should be, the wildly fluctuating gravitational fields. You know. You
saw your own results. Like you, I deduced its existence, but how'to
prove it?"

They came to several boulders, which formed a crude circle. Pantha
stopped.

"Could we talk a few moments, just the two of us? My prince is
not ready yet. He is taking this rite quite seriously. He requested
an hour or so to be alone with his thoughts."

"Quite proper," Sagan remarked. He seated himself on one of
the rocks, laid the scrip at his feet on the wet grass.

"He is eager to impress you. Whereas I—" Pantha
smiled, ruefully, wistfully, "I have been merely eager to talk
to you."

Sagan said nothing, gazed steadily at the old man.

"He doesn't understand the wonder of this, you see." Pantha
indicated, with a vague wave of a gnarled black hand, the world
around them. "He was raised with it. This world holds no marvels
for him. And the new ones, the recruits—once they're over their
initial feelings of terror, once it's explained to them, they accept
it.

"Do you know, my lord," Pantha continued, settling himself
on a boulder, "that I wasn't the first to discover this planet?
An early Earth exploration team found it, landed on it, set up a
small scientific station to study it. They were the ones who named it
Vallombrosa. They deduced what we deduced, you see. They theorized
another world, a world of dark matter. They just didn't carry their
theory far enough."

"To the extent that this dark-matter world was populated, you
mean."

"Precisely, my lord. I have often wondered what reports—if
any—they sent back to Earth. Certainly no record of this
place-was passed down to us. Perhaps they never made it safely back
home. Or perhaps, if they did, they made a pact never to reveal what
they had found. They left all their data of what happened to them
here behind on a vidlog. I found it in the wreckage of the shelters.

"The log is quite frustrating to watch, actually. The innate,
boneheaded logic of the twenty-first century. Since we can't see it
or touch it or smell it or taste it, it cannot exist. Since it
doesn't look like us, it can't possibly think or feel."

"Still," said Sagan, "if they
had
figured it
out—"

"—I would be nowhere. I know that," Pantha
interrupted testily. "I suppose I should be grateful they were
so stupid. But their blind prejudice, their lack of imagination,
irritates me. Here's an example of their report. I quote:

" 'When the universe began, two types of matter came into being.
Ordinary matter—what you and I are made up of—and strange
dark matter. Dark matter interacts weakly with ordinary matter,
mostly through gravity. Dark matter is believed to be more uniformly
distributed through the universe than ordinary matter. Planetary
bodies made up of strange dark matter were believed impossible. We
have now, of course, disproved that. But life based on dark matter;
as some have suggested, is pure fantasy.' " Pantha snorted. "So
much for uninvestigated logic. There is life on Vallombrosa, life
made of strange dark matter."

"Vallombrosa. Valley of Ghosts." Sagan mused. "They
thought this world was haunted."

"Yes, indeed," Pantha said with a grim smile. "As I
mentioned last night, the creatures—I call them strange
dark-matter creatures—are intensely curious. They'd never seen
beings like us before. They were simply studying the scientists—as
the scientists
should
have been studying them.

"You must view the vidlog. It's almost funny, like watching a
cheap ghost movie. Books suddenly leap up into the air, crash to the
floor. A microwave oven sails slowly and effortlessly out a window.
Toilets flush repeatedly and inexplicably. Lights flash on and off.
Computer disks are erased, ruined. And just when these bizarre pranks
started to wreak havoc with the minds of those wretched scientists,
one of them mysteriously dropped dead."

"The creatures?"

"Yes. Oh, they didn't mean to kill the man, mind you. You
reported noticing an odd feeling come over you at one point during
your flight here. You felt 'compressed' was how you put it."

Pantha paused, glanced at Sagan as if expecting him to protest or
question having his personal files invaded. When Sagan did not,
Pantha smiled and nodded.

"You understand, of course. I should have expected you to. At
any rate, I am glad you do. It makes things easier. Where was I? Ah,
yes. Feelings of being compressed. These creatures are amazing. Their
bodies are held together by what I can only describe as coherent
gravity fields. They appear to perceive the world around them by
sensing gravitational distortions throughout their entire bodies. As
a consequence, they have no defined shape, but rearrange themselves
in whatever way best allows them to either sense or transmit gravity
waves. In other words they are all hands, all eyes, all brains. To
move an object, they create a gravitational field around it by
wrapping themselves around it."

"That was how they brought me here," Sagan interjected.

"Yes. The creatures wove a gravitational field around your
plane. They move faster than the speed of light, using the
Einstein-Rosen bridge to open up tunnels in space, through which they
travel. And, as you might suppose, they can pass through matter
virtually undetected.

"I say 'virtually' because, as the cyborg's men discovered
during the raid on Snaga Ohme's, there
are
ways that their
passing can be discovered. Whenever they go through solid matter, for
example, the possibility exists that they will cause a change in the
atomic structure. Ordinarily, such a change is slight, hardly
noticed. But in the case of a living being—a human—the
change could be fatal.

"The odds are extreme," Pantha said reassuringly. "I've
calculated them, of course. The creatures have passed through me a
thousand times, with no ill effects. Unfortunately, one of the
scientists was not so lucky. He died instantly. And none of his
colleagues could figure out how or why."

"That was when they decided to leave."

"Yes. And their decision to flee only made matters worse.
Realizing their human specimens were departing, the creatures became
quite frantic in their attempts to communicate with them. This, of
course, resulted in some spectacular physical manifestations. These
only increased the humans' panic. They were fortunate the creatures
permitted them to leave at all. The creatures could have captured
their ship, brought them back.

"They did follow them to Earth," Pantha went on, shifting
to a more comfortable position on the rock. "They investigated
the planet, found out all they needed to know. Psychic researchers of
the time must have had a field day. When the studies were concluded,
the creatures left. Human civilization posed no threat to them, you
see, and once their curiosity was satisfied, they had no more
interest in it. Or in us."

"Humans posed no threat," Sagan repeated.

"Yes," Pantha reiterated. "That was true
then
."
He laid emphasis on the last word.

"I see. So as long as we 'posed no threat' to them, they were
content to leave us alone."

Pantha shrugged. "They are far more advanced beings than
ourselves. It is difficult to judge them by our standards, but I
would say that they are vastly more intelligent than we are or can
ever hope to be. Their civilization is much older. We are to them
what ants are to us. Unless the ant happens to develop a sting."

Now, at last, Sagan was beginning to understand. "The
space-rotation bomb—the first weapon we have ever developed
which they consider a threat. It could destroy them utterly."

"So they have postulated."

"That's why they raided Snaga Ohme's. They were searching for
it."

"We were fairly certain the bomb transported to that vault was
not the real bomb. Far too easy to locate. But the creatures wanted
to make sure. They would like to have the bomb destroyed, but they
have agreed to allow it to remain in existence, so long as Flaim has
complete control of it. Once he locates the true bomb, the creatures
will obtain it for him. Nothing can stop them. Nothing."

Dion, Dion, Sagan chided silently, bitterly. If only you had taken my
advice!

"You speak of communicating with them," the Warlord said
aloud, casually. "How did you manage that?"

"It took much time. Much patience. The story is a fascinating
one." Pantha grinned slyly. "Perhaps someday I will have a
chance to share it with you." He pushed himself up off the
boulder. "Not now, however. We have been gone longer than I
anticipated. My prince will be growing impatient."

Sagan accompanied Pantha up the hill. The mist lay thick and heavy
still, curling about the trunks of the trees that lined their path.
But the mists were beginning to lift from Sagan's mind. The path he
must follow was becoming clearer to him every moment.

As I feared, nothing can stop them. Dion can surround that bomb with
a fleet of a thousand warships, post a million men to guard it, lock
it in a vault in the core of a world made of solid steel, and these
creatures would slide right through it like butter.