Prophet of ConFree (The Prophet of ConFree) (53 page)

"Lotus, Control. Cables released. Good fortune to you."

We rode the antigrav slowly right up that huge shaft, and out into the sunlight of a lightly snowing sky. It was a spectacular view from the cockpit behind that amazing panoramic simport. We hovered over the shaft and watched giant clamshell blast doors sliding shut under a camfaxed exterior to hide our exit.

"Blue Flight, Red Flight, Lotus. Are you there?" the general asked.

"We're watching you, Lotus. It's a beautiful day out here. Come on up and play."

"On our way," the general replied.

It was indeed beautiful out there. The star Algenib burnt a pale blue in the sky, tinting the gently falling snow a faint blue-white. The world below was covered with glittering snow and ice, an enchanted kingdom. No wonder the A's loved their native world.

We began to move. Slowly at first, soundlessly, gently, sliding forward, then fast and faster. And faster. Shooting along like a meteor, parallel to the ground. Some movement appeared on a wide monitor on the control panel.

"See that?" the Prof asked. "That's Blue flight. Assidic fighters. See how easy the D's spot us?" The three enemy fighters were shown as red dots, along with some alien text that presumably described them.

"Blue, Lotus. Got you on scope." Now we shot abruptly up to the sky, almost straight up. The simport revealed only sky now. We were far above the weather. The sky began to darken as the atmosphere became thinner.

"Blue, Red, we're losing the at. See if you can catch us. Prophet, the Reds are Fleetcom fighters."

Up, up, up. There was no sensation of speed or even movement. Normal grav seemed to continue. We were in space now, Algenib's blinding blue-white glory glittered to one side, as a star-spangled magnificence lit up the rest of the vac.

"Blue, Red, Lotus. All right, we initiate test. We have you on scope. Red, go to cloaking, please."

"Lotus, Red. Cloaking activated." The three Red fighters disappeared from the Demon scope. Wonderful!

"Red, Lotus, please decloak."

"Lotus, Red, we have decloaked." The three Red fighters reappeared on our scopes.

"Blue, Lotus, Please go to cloaking."

It worked the same way with Blue. Legion cloaking worked!

"Confirmation," the Prof said. "That's why we were able to defeat the Demon saucers on Galinta. They couldn't see us."

"All right, let's do some of this DX testing," Bird said. "Test AG. Prophet, please lean over here and place your hand over this control handle. Do not touch it."

I did as he asked, holding my hand over the handle.

"Any result?" the Prof asked.

"Can't tell," Bird replied. "We'll have to review the readings later."

"All right, let's do the antimat flight controls."

"Prophet," Bird said, "please pass one hand gently over the top of these grip controls. No touching please." I did so. The little glowing oblong lights flashed wildly, then settled down.

"Whoa!" Bird said.

"Look at that!" the general said.

"Spectacular!" the Prof said.

"What did I do?" I asked.

"We don't know yet, but I believe I can get you a new job as a test pilot. It doesn't pay much, but it's pretty exciting."

"Shall we try the DX?" Bird asked.

"No. No," the Prof said. "I want to review the results first. And see what it all means. Let's get back to the at."

We reentered the atmosphere and shot along at a high altitude. The escort fighters were still with us, just to make sure nobody else bothered us.

"Let's do the hands on test with the antimat flight controls," the Prof suggested.

"All right," the general said.

"Prophet, you are to take my seat," Bird said, unbuckling and getting up. "Just sit there, strap in, and don't touch anything."

I did it. The view was spectacular, an awesome panorama of a magical white world, streaked with snowy clouds, a brilliant blue star glittering in the sky. I could see all six fighters on the scope, struggling to stay up with us.

"Prophet, lay your hands gently on the grip controls," the general said. "If I call out, take your hands off instantly."

"Yes sir," I said. I gently touched the controls. A bunch of lights changed color from blue to red. Everything else continued as usual.

"Touch your right thumb very, very gently, one time, on that recessed purple tab by your right hand."

I did it. The
Golden Lotus
shot forward instantly, gaining speed.

"Wow," the Prof said. When the Prof says wow, it means something serious. What a view! I felt like a god, riding a golden chariot across the sky.

"ADX, Red, you're leaving us behind."

"Don't take it personally, Red, you have a very nice fighter there," Bird said. "Take it from an experienced bus driver." Bird really knew how to twist the knife.

Δ

Damn it! Saucers! IDAG saucers, shooting right over my head. I was on the ground, armored, unarmed, and it was freezing, my breath visible in the air. My visor was up. Why? I was in a forest. The saucers shot right over me, very low altitude, the faint metallic agate-like colors shimmering under a grey sky. A blinding flame crackled past the trees, not far off, dazzling my eyes. Damn, it was cold! More saucers. More! Now they burst upwards, climbing into the darkening sky. Count them, count them! Maybe four, six, more! Reinforcements! They were gliding along like they had not a care in the world. Arrogant bastards! Why was I unarmed, what the hell….

I awoke abruptly, thrashing around, growling my objections.

"What is it?" Honeyhair was by my side, holding on to me, trying to calm me down. "It's all right, it's all right, it was just a dream, Prophet. Just a dream."

Just a dream! I strained to remember it. It had seemed so real! Was this my DX side, calling out to me? Issuing a warning, maybe? Or was it just a dream, brought on by my flight in the
Golden Lotus
?

I told the Prof all about it. They gave me a brainscan, just to be sure we didn't miss anything. But there was not much to go on. No hint about where or when or even why. There was not much we could do about it.

Δ

"Your new duty station, Prophet. For awhile." We were down the hole, in an obscure corridor with threatening signs on the doors. The Prof opened a door to a little cube that was all dark inside. Then he touched a light and the interior lit up. It was a perfect duplicate of the IDAG cockpit.

"Go on in, Prophet," Bird said. "This is where we train."

"Why didn't you run me through this before you gave me that test flight?"

"We wanted to confirm some things first. Your test flight confirmed it for us."

"What did it confirm?"

"It confirmed that you are going to pilot our initial test of the DX stardrive."

"Good lord!" I said. "Why me? Bird is the pilot. Or the general?"

"Sit down, Prophet. I'll explain," the Prof said. I took the right seat. It was a beautiful flight simulator. It looked exactly like the real thing. Bird sat beside me in the left seat. The Prof sat behind us.

"Here's the situation, Prophet," he said. "The controls of this ship interact better with you than with Bird or the general. It's because of the DX in your brain. Yes, we can control the ship and manipulate the antigav and the antimat flight controls and pretty much everything else. But there's one thing we cannot do."

"What's that?"

"We cannot manipulate the DX stardrive. Not at all. The DX stardrive does not respond to us. We have extensive information on the drive, we know how to use it but we cannot use it because it is a function of Dimension X, and we cannot interact with DX. But we believe you can."

"So I'm going to pilot this ship into stardrive – into Dimension X?"

"The plan is if all indications look good, you will do a star hop – in our universe – using this Dimension X stardrive. We're not going into their universe, and we're not going into Dimension X. We just want to start with a test hop."

"Oh man! Why choose me? I mean, why not Ice or Saka? They both outrank me."

"They were both wounded extensively. We are worried about them. You were unwounded. We believe you are a more healthy specimen, if I can put it that way. Sorry, Prophet."

"I'll be right beside you the whole time," Bird assured me. "And the general will be observing."

"Can I tell this to my grandchildren?"

"Only if it's been declassified by then," the Prof said, happily. "Prophet, we thank you. The Legion thanks you. ConFree thanks you. You are a patriot and a gentleman. If this works, we may be able to produce our own DX stardrive ships. That will be one of the goals."

Δ

After my first session on the saucer sim, the Prof took me to another level of the hole. "Do you remember Louie?" he asked.

"How could I forget?"

"He's changed a lot. Want to see him?"

"Sure!"

"Right here." There was a sealed double door with an armed and armored Assidic trooper on duty outside. He nodded at the Professor and let us in.

When the inner door snapped open, we walked into a very nice apartment suite. Louie was seated at a desk. He stood up and showed us his teeth. He was clad in a soft dark pullover jacket, athletic pants and slippers. He chattered at us happily in his language as the language unit simultaneously translated it all.

"Professor," he said. "How are you? It is good to see you again! And who is this? Ah, the Evil One! How are you, Evil One?"

"I am just fine, Louie. You're looking good!" I said.

"Well, of course I am! Professor takes good care of me. Have you dropped in to torture me?"

"Why no, Louie. You are one of my heroes. I was only pretending to be the bad guy so the Professor could get to know you better."

"Yes, I know. He told me that. You did a good job. There are no hard feelings."

I suddenly realized something. Call me slow. Louie was not crawling with parasite worms. And he was not covered in worm crap either. There were no worms that I could see. His fur was clean and healthy looking.

"Louie," I said. "What happened to all your friends? Those worms. I thought you needed them, and they needed you."

"Oh, Professor has not told you. He identified the substance the worms use to keep us alive. I now take it as a medication. I was getting very tired of those parasites, anyway. I am grateful to Professor. You see, I trust him with my life. I have a new life now. But I have no sex. I still dream about mating with Yellowhair. But no luck so far. If she mated with me, she could tell her sistercells that she was the only one of them to have done that."

"She clearly has no imagination," I said.

"Evil One! Get me a choco donut!" he commanded, pointing out the donuts on the kitchenmod. I smiled, went over there, picked one up and handed it to Louie.

"I thank you, Evil One! I have wanted to do that for a long time. I may not have Yellowhair, but I have choco donuts. We must be thankful for what we have."

Δ

I worked my ass off on the simulator. There was a whole lot to learn, but by the time Bird and the general signed off on me, I knew what I was doing. It was incredible how much we knew from examining the spacecraft. By then, we understood the D alphabet and could interpret the instructions and the starcharts and the autopilot and the autocombat controls. We had cranked out starcharts showing Mid Haven – all the primary destination stars, the Demon stars and the Bright stars. It was an incredible breakthrough, an amazing view into a universe we had never seen. But what we did not have was an understanding of how to make the stardrive go. We knew how to manipulate the controls to make it work, but we did not know exactly how Dimension X actually penetrated timespace to punch a shortcut between two impossibly distant locations in the cosmos.

And, of course, it did not work for people who did not have a DX "trigger" in their brains, according to the Prof. And that's why they needed me. Naturally, the simulator could not duplicate what would actually happen when I touched the real DX stardrive controls and activated them. That's why my adrenalin kicked in when Bird and the general told me I was ready.

Δ

"Like the view?" the Prof asked. We were cruising along in the vac, and we had left our escorts far behind. I was in the right seat, Bird was on the left, and General Huynh and the Prof were behind us. I had piloted the
Golden Lotus
up from the shaft and into the sunlight, spending close to an hour working the controls through the atmosphere, pushing the limits, then slowing down, hovering, touching down in an empty field, shooting off straight up, leaving the at like a reverse shooting star, up up up up into infinity. Finally cruising through holy vac, my blood ice cold in my veins. The mystery of the cosmos surrounded us, billions of stars, glorious milky gas clouds of starstuff, silent music blasting away in my ears like a chorus of angels. I could see Algenib off in the distance, a blazing, blue-white cosmic jewel; and I could see all of Pandaravos hanging in space like a vision of heaven.