STAR HOUNDS -- OMNIBUS (27 page)

“B
arbarians!” Overfriend Arnal Zarpfrin toured the destroyed buildings in the capital city of Kendrick’s Vision. President Freeman Jonst walked uneasily by his side, “An outrage! They must be stopped. They must be pushed back to the forsaken holes they crawled from!”

“Please, Zarpfrin, if you could be more quiet!” said President Jonst, darting glances at the people milling around the crumbled masonry and metal, all that remained of the buildings touched by Jaxdron fire. “My people are not aware of your presence. They are still shocked and stunned by this assault on our home. it would not be wise to let them know at this point of your presence here on Kendrick’s Vision. We have not even determined if there are any arrangements that can be made between our world and the Federated Empire.”

“Just Federation will do,” Zarpfrin said, smiling. “New image, don’t you know.” A neat man, he was overweight in a comfortable fashion, as though he had chosen it. Though he had come to Kendrick’s Vision in his Federation military finest, for purposes of inconspicuousness during this tour, President Jonst had dressed him in mufti. He now wore an outfit indistinguishable from those worn by the members of the Forum. Zarpfrin took out a flannel handkerchief and delicately patted away the perspiration that had formed on his temples. “Yes, my friend, the Free Worlds and the Federation certainly have a multitude of differences. But we must stick together in strenuous times like these.”

“Now that you’ve viewed the damage, Overfriend,” said Freeman Jonst, eyes flicking nervously over the devastation, nostrils still cringing at the awful stench of destruction, “can we head back to our capitol building? We have much to iron out in negotiation.”

“All for the good of humanity, I am sure,” said Zarpfrin, a solemn but also somehow pleased expression settling on his face. “For the rock bottom principle of the Federation is survival of the human race, whatever shape or color or quality it finds itself in, on whatever planet.”

Freeman Jonst nodded his head soberly and escorted the Overfriend back to the car that had taken them there.

Jonst just wanted to make the deal and get this guy off his planet, pronto, before he stank the place up too badly.

W
hen Laura entered their cabin, the cyborg copies of her brother Cal flinched.

“Don’t worry fellows, I’m fixed,” said Laura, slumping down onto a couch. Goddamn Tars Northern anyway! She had been looking forward to this and now the guy had ruined it by this stupid course change. She was so annoyed at him, she couldn’t get much out of speaking with these things. She had so hoped that seeing them would relieve her yearning for her brother. But now she was so upset, that having them before her simply confused her.

“Hi, Laura,” said Cal One, grinning with relief. “Good to see you. My memories are quite incomplete but I only remember good things about you. Except, of course, that business on Baleful, and Captain Northern explained that to us.”

“Yes, Laura,” said Cal Two. “I love you, you know, and I always will. I remember that promise and it hasn’t changed.”

Laura sat up. “I’m not sure this was wise,” she said, looking from one to the other of the twins. “I’m getting these strange feelings … as though I really were with Cal, and yet that lie is just real obvious, plain as the nose on my face.”

“Do you think that we’re not confused, Laura?” said Cal One. “After all, we are beings ourselves and we’re both stocked with your brother’s memories. We feel toward you as your brother felt, we respond to you in ways your brother would.”

“And we do love you,” put in the other. “I, for one, am awfully happy to see you. They won’t let us do much except play games here. Do you remember the games we played, Laura? My first memory is of you when we were very young. And they are warm memories … warm memories in this cold universe.”

“Yeah. I have lots of memories, guys,” Laura said, relaxing a bit, getting past her initial difficulties, warming to this pair. They certainly seemed friendly enough. “But neither of you is really Cal, and that’s damn hard to deal with.”

“But Laura, in real ways we are your brothers,” said one, beaming. “We understand you! We know why you want to save the real Cal Shemzak …. No one else truly can, can they?”

“And you will stay, won’t you?” chimed in the other.

“Well, that’s what I want to do,” said Laura. “I guess I can work some things out with you … about Cal and me.”

“Work things out?” said Cal Two. “What do you mean by that?”

“Guilt feelings, I suppose.”

“Guilt feelings? About what? You’ve got nothing to feel guilty about!”

“For letting you go—I don’t know, for a lot of things, I guess. Mainly for letting the system break us up. Maybe that’s why I can’t let you go … I mean, let Cal go. Why didn’t we just run away? Instead, I let them do this to me.” She gestured toward her body. “Let them turn me into something rough and ready, something sometimes I’m not sure I really want to be!”

“But we talked about it, Laura!” said Cal Two. “I can remember that we agreed it was the only hope we had. We bucked the system as long as we could in our own way. You know how I tried to crash the computers to change our life vectors. I went as far as I could, short of getting the contents of our brains rearranged! There was nothing else we could do but promise to see each other from time to time, as often as we could manage.”

“The ways of the Federation are not mild,” said Cal One. “We were lucky to have been able to make the space in which our relationship could grow, without the intrusion of authority.”

“Well, I’ve told that authority where to stuff their oppression!” Laura said defiantly. “I’ve thrown my lot in with this bunch of rebels and I’m damned glad I have! They may be a bunch of lunatics but they seem to care about one another, and maybe that’s what I need right now.”

“I’m glad for you,” said Cal One. “You always were one who needed a cause to believe in, Laura. First it was me, and now you have the
Starbow
.”

“Cal Shemzak is still my first priority, and the crew here knows that.”

“That’s nice to know, Laura. I hope you remember us.”

“You. You’re just copies! And dammit, I’m so confused, sitting here, yakking with Cal clones, that I forgot why I came to talk to you. Why the hell were you made, anyway? I mean, why would the Jaxdron make copies of my brother?”

Cal One picked up a pawn and toyed with it. “As you might have deduced, we are certainly not complete models of your brother. Oh, we may look like him exactly, but inside … well, just from a short talk with us, you can already no doubt tell the difference.”

“The captain gave me the report on your memories of your—I mean, my brother’s—capture, his experiences aboard the Jaxdron ship … it’s all very strange …. Tests, mazes, games … ”

“Analyses, perhaps.”

“They wanted him because of something he knew about Omega Space. That’s why the Jaxdron kidnapped him and destroyed the project on Mulliphen. Maybe Cal was getting close to the secret, a secret the Jaxdron wanted. But how could they get that secret out of him by making cyborg clones like you?”

“We certainly would like to know that answer as well, Laura,” said Cal Two. “We have been rather introspective about the reasons for our existence, though the first memories we have of any awareness of there being more than one Cal Shemzak was on Baleful.”

“Yes, what happened on Baleful?” Laura wanted to know.

“We came into being in a rather pleasant atmosphere of hospitality, in that dome. None of us met the original Cal Shemzak. We were only in existence for perhaps two days before you arrived. We would have all greeted you, but Cally—we all have variations on your brother’s names for purposes of differentiation—saw you first and ran to greet you and—”

“And then I shot him.” Laura shivered. “Damn Zarpfrin’s eyes. He didn’t want the Jaxdron to have my brother’s knowledge and he figured I didn’t have much of a chance of getting him out. Much better to rig me to shoot him automatically on sight.”

Her voice was bitter. She looked away from the two of them; she felt as though she were in some sort of schismatic nightmare, communicating with two Cal Shemzaks. Everything she had battled for in the past few weeks seemed to be coming unglued—she had difficulty even with her sense of reality. The comfort she felt being near what looked and sounded like her brother was frustrated by the fact that this comfort was merely an illusion. She fought to hold back her tears.

“Dammit” she said, feeling the weight of unchecked emotion strain at the thin dam of her composure. “I had so many questions I wanted to ask you, whoever you really are. And I can’t … ” She turned away. “You both make me miss my real brother so much.”

“But don’t you realize that we understand this, Laura?” said Cal Two, going to her and placing his arm over her shoulder in a way entirely reminiscent of Cal. “Those of your crew can’t possibly understand this, but we can. That’s why, even though most assuredly we are not truly your brothers—perhaps not even totally human in a conventional sense—we still are honored with an extreme caring for you, and we want you to feel comfortable with us.”

“This is much harder than I thought it would be,” said Laura. “I think maybe we should continue this interview later.”

“Whatever you say, our sister,” said Cal Two, releasing his hold. “We have been secluded here and here we shall remain.”

“Come and speak with us whenever you please,” said Cal One.

Laura rushed from the room, sealing the door behind her, unable to deal with the powerful emotions that flowed inside her. Go to my cabin, she thought. Rest. Calm down. Compose myself. But she knew she would come back. She needed these two, that was clear, even though they weren’t her true brothers. She needed them just as she needed … other things. Things that got her through ….

She relocked the door from outside, as she had been instructed, then walked away, knowing she would return.

W
hen Laura left their prison, their hands brushed again.

»The preliminaries went well, brother«

»Soon, the Masters shall broadcast«

»I feel the Changelings move amongst my very atoms«

»What confusion we shall cause«

»What havoc shall reign«

»Honor and glory to the True Victory«

»The Victory of the Jaxdron«

»Your move, brother, for my own victory is nigh«

»Spawn of a junk heap, you shall eat your words«

Grinning, the two set about to move their pieces again.

F
ive days after the incident on the Frin’ral ship, the planet called Kendrick’s Vision swam in the vu-screens of the
Starbow
. The Vision, though it was the fourth planet of its class G sun, had a regular orbit and axial tilt that kept the seasons fairly uniform, and was remarkably like Earth in other aspects. It was a gorgeous world, a jewel of a planet.

The Vision was a place that knew the
Starbow
and its crew; knew and welcomed them. Freeman Jonst had tilted many a brew with Captain Tars Northern and kept him supplied from the mammoth stock of rare liquors from many planets, in return for news of Federation activity, Free World intercommunication, and the odd bit of contraband.

So the crew felt safe here, feeding the planet’s defense satellites their usual code then settling into a wide, leisurely orbit of this pleasant planet of browns and blues, whites and greens smeared across the globe like paint on a palette.

The Underspace trip had been uneventful, the crew going about its usual business only slightly more anxious than usual, due to the nature of their quest. Still, in the lives they had accepted, the unexpected was a part of day-to-day events, and this extra bit of excitement was welcomed by all. Except Dansen Jitt, whose moroseness and prophesies of doom had increased to the point that Northern was no longer amused by them; he ordered Jitt to speak only when spoken to, or if he had something of an astrogational nature to say.

Laura made daily visits to speak to the copies of her brother Cal. She confided to Northern that she could only take so much of them—knowing they were not truly her brothers and their memories not the result of experience—but that she obtained a curious kind of satisfaction in being with them. Sometimes, these cyborg clones claimed sensations of contact with their progenitor; but Laura wasn’t sure whether to believe them. The sensations carried no images with them, nor anything at all concrete. They were mere unsubstantiated claims. Their room had already been wired to pick up any indication of signals emanating or entering, and nothing was picked up. Apparently, this phenomenon was localized to the individual cyborgs. No alarm was taken.

Laura had also taken the opportunity to mingle with the crew, getting to know each of the members more individually, as much as her awkward social abilities would allow.

The term “motley crew” seemed custom-made for this bunch. Its thirty-odd components were quite odd indeed. There were individuals from all sections of the Human Zone, all with radically different philosophies and viewpoints, yet all united in this common cause of rebellion against the insidious cultural enslavement exercised by the Federation over its planets and the Federation’s implicit military threat to the autonomy of separated Free Worlds.

Originally, Laura learned, the distances and time between planets had allowed those farther away to rebel easily and sever ties with the Human Federated Empire. However, in the past hundred years, improvements on the Stardrives that carried vessels through the mathematical improbabilities of Underspace had improved remarkably. Where once the voyage had taken months and even years, the most distant colonies were now only weeks away from Earth. The Federation’s weaponry and technology had increased also, while the non-united and often hermitlike independent worlds lagged behind, their fleets and defense systems comparatively primitive next to the Federation’s newer weaponry.

This was the common dream, in one version or another, of all the crewmembers: to establish some kind of loose alliance between all the Free Worlds as a defense against the Federation. In the meantime they intended to aid the
Starbow
, preying on Federation shipping, as best they could with their particular specialties. The Free Worlds also relied on the
Starbow’s
analysis of new Federation technology. Once allied, the Free Worlds could build starships of equal power and ability, thus protecting their planets from both Jaxdron and the Federation.

This seemed a worthy goal to Laura. She certainly had lost all love and loyalty to the Federation, with its glib and smarmy Friends promising opportunity and security yet secretly controlling practically everything for the Greater Good of the State. Even the sort of rebellion Cal indulged in was merely slack in the leash, something in human nature that was expected and accommodated by the Federation lords of psychology, ultimately to be subtly crushed.

Aboard the
Starbow
Laura had the opportunity to think and talk about a great deal, and all the crew had remarked to one another about her sincere interest in overcoming her former doubt and cynicism. As for her abrasiveness and general bad manners, the crewmembers noticed she seemed more relaxed and friendly, in a coarse kind of way; less confrontational, certainly. Her sparring matches with Captain Northern continued but they became much more playful and affectionate. It was clear to everyone that each of them enjoyed getting one-up on the other, be the jokes verbal or practical.

However, despite her requests there were still parts of the
Starbow
that remained off limits to her. This sense of mystery would have troubled her more, and perhaps she might have done something about it, if she were not both preoccupied by the Cal clones and constrained by her word to keep her nose clean.

Dr. Mish had been especially interested in the clones, analyzing the copies of Cal Shemzak to ascertain how the Jaxdron had manufactured them. He admitted reluctantly that there were elements involved in their structure which, while apparently innocuous enough, were a mystery to him and significantly more complex than his squad of robots named after famous military leaders. It had been his voice that had quieted the strong suggestions that these copies be destroyed, in case they were dangerous. Here, he claimed, was the handiwork of the Jaxdron which might present clues as to their science, perhaps even their natures. Why toss this chance away, especially when there was no indication whatsoever that they were dangerous?

As for her promise to be loyal to the
Starbow
, its crew, and its cause, Laura had to consider something she’d experienced before. With duty to the Federation, it wasn’t a matter of loyalty, it was conditioning and lack of choice. When she had thrown her lot in with this curious bunch of her own free will, something seemed to shift within her. Aligning on a course that made her feel as if she were part of something special, not simply alone and struggling for her own survival.

It made her feel good, more whole. It gave her an intimation of the reason for society, much as her promises to Cal had given her a feeling of family, a notion the Federation abhorred.

The
Starbow
crew was a family of sorts, and that notion appealed to her. Families seemed to be important and valuable in the universe, yet hard to achieve and maintain. They seemed a heritage from the past, a stepladder to the future. But most of all, they seemed a cooperative way of dealing with that very strange and troublesome period: the present.

Beyond all that, there seemed to be an emptiness inside her that could only be filled by other people. Her early years had been filled with Cal, her brother. But then, when they were separated, she tried to tell herself that she needed no one, not even Cal; that she was self-reliant and hard and cold through and through; that what was left of her softer, more vulnerable emotions had been thoroughly protected and assigned to her caring for her brother.

Now, though, Laura was starting to have positive feelings about other people. It frightened her, dredging up cold memories of aloneness, isolation.

Captain Northern had picked up on this thawing of Laura’s attitude, and while sharing coffee the morning before their arrival at Kendrick’s Vision, he had commented on it.

“When you jumped aboard our ship, my dear, you were one brawly, feisty lady—even when your fur wasn’t wet.” He looked at her thoughtfully, coffee steam hazing his eyes, particularly greenish now. “You’ve calmed down quite a bit. I didn’t know you had this kind of reserve in you.”

Laura grinned. “Reserve? Goddammit, what do you mean by that? Just because I’m not so aggressive?”

Northern leaned back in his chair, his face assuming a calm, relaxed blankness. “Well, you’re certainly letting us see another side of your character, you must admit that. Actually, I think we’re good for you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said, bridling, on guard instantly.

His expression grew warmer and Laura was again amazed at the man’s quixotic, surprising qualities. He was a chameleon of moods, and yet this calm openness registered as quite sincere. “It’s like that aboard this ship, Laura. It’s not just you. In the past year we’ve acquired perhaps seven or eight new crewmembers, and they’ve had experiences similar to yours.”

“How do you know what my experiences here are?” Laura demanded, though without rancor. “Have you got some sort of mind-reader?”

“Oh, no. It’s just that when we encounter most of the people who eventually become part of our number, they tend to be suspicious, cold individuals, as you were. You see, we all tend to assume at most parts of our lives that we’re lonely victims of a cold, unfeeling universe.” Casually, the Captain gazed off at the lounge’s panoramic vu-plate, which showed a spectacular image of a nebula: a shower of stars, bathed in bold white, crimson, and cerulean. “And who can blame us? But you see, when as a group we see that we all feel this way, it becomes a kind of bond. Despite the variety of experiences and character idiosyncrasies, the wealth of common experience, shared experience, gives the very comforting and moving feeling of oneness and purpose. It’s quite fulfilling, and I expect that you’re feeling something of that, and I’m happy you are because you are certainly a welcome addition to the bunch.”

Laura eyed him suspiciously. “Why do I get the distinct impression you’re being condescending?”

“Who? Me?” Northern cried in mock alarm, his expression unreadable again.

“I just don’t get you, Northern. Sometimes you’re real friendly, sometimes you’re not. Sometimes you play games, sometimes you don’t. What are you really up to, anyway?”

Northern chuckled sadly. “Moods, Laura. Perhaps just moods.” He stood and made a dramatic sweep of his arm. “Or perhaps I like the concept of roles. All the worlds are stages, and I’m a repertory actor, mayhap.” His face clouded over. “And then again, Laura Shemzak, perhaps I just don’t know, and perhaps you shouldn’t even ask.”

Laura shrugged and saluted. “Whatever you say, great leader. I’m not that intrigued, anyway.”

She was, but she wasn’t going to divulge any of her feelings to this joker, she thought angrily. Deep inside, though, she wished she could, and pushed that thought back immediately.

“I hope you won’t need me for your bar stop on this Kendrick’s Vision place, because I have other things to do,” she said grumpily.

“I had no intention of asking you, my dear,” Northern said, smiling again at the mention of the word bar. “I know how you feel on the subject of our quest for your missing brother, but I assure you, it will all work out for the best in the end.”

That was debatable, Laura thought, gloom descending. Nothing ever really worked out the way you hoped it would. You just had to grit your teeth and take whatever life tossed your way, using whatever ways possible to cushion the blows.

As she left the room, she absently touched the place on her abdomen that concealed her drug dispenser. Everybody had to have something, she thought. Captain Northern has his drink … and I have my—

A light shudder passed through her, but she shrugged it off.

Laura was in the room with the two Cal clones when the
Starbow
reached Kendrick’s Vision, passing through its defense satellites using a code reserved just for its private visits. She was having a very pleasant three-way game of cards with them, chatting amicably about the past and possible futures, when Captain Northern, along with Silver Zenyo and Crewman Arbst Nichol shuttled down to the planet’s surface.

Laura could not realize how quickly the
Starbow
contingent would run into trouble. For even though her clone brothers appeared both gentle and benign, they were beginning to change. And before long, they’d mutate into something else.

Into what they really were.