Strings (22 page)

He pushed hands away and sat up. “Quiet!” he roared. “You all right, Alya?” Then he coughed frantically because he had inhaled some blood.

“I think so.”

He felt a great rush of relief. More pains were coming to his attention—crushed ribs and scraped feet and one elbow. Mostly his nose—he tried to pinch it through the plastic to stop the bleeding, but it hurt too much.

“Just sit a moment,” a voice said. “We’re trying to check you for broken bones. Your suit’s intact, so there’s no contamination.”

“Never mind me—the princess…”

But there were others looking after Alya.

“You were right, Highness.” That was Devlin, standing over them among the twitching white ropes and the bustling medics. “I’m sorry. Damn, I’m sorry! You too, Deputy. Great work!”

“Why?” Alya asked shrilly. “Why did it pick me?”

“Fast movement,” Devlin said. “And size. The rest of us would be too big for prey. It went for the guns, too—they’re small. I’ve seen variations on that pattern before. A good thing you didn’t get sucked into the core, or it would have crushed you.”

“Baker?” Cedric mumbled.

“He walked right by the damned thing. He must have been too big, or moving too slow. Lucky bastard, though!”

Pushing medics aside, Cedric crawled over to Alya and took her hand.

“You’re hurt!” she said.

“It’s just my nose.”

She squeezed his hand in both of hers. She was shaking. So was he.

“Of course, every world has dangers,” Devlin said. “We’ll have to see how you feel about this one…later.”

No one was listening to Devlin. Alya tried to sit up, and Cedric helped her.

“Darling, I’m sorry,” he said.

“Sorry? Sorry, for God’s sake? Sorry for what?”

“I let go of your hand.”

She put her arms around him and laughed aloud. “I think you’d have pulled my arm out otherwise. I’m fine, fine! Oh, your poor, poor face! You’re all bloody!”

“Bloody poor guardian.”

Alya shook her head and mouthed a kiss at him. She was happy again. The danger had gone. Her
satori
had warned her—had Cedric not been right there at her side, she would have been sucked down into the heart of that
thing
.

“Call for Deputy Director Hubbard Cedric from Director Hubbard.”

Cedric struggled to his feet, knocking away hands that tried to help. He swayed, wincing at a whole new world of bruises and strains. With his luck he would probably find he was ten centimeters taller yet.

“Call for—”

He raised his wrist mike to his mouth. “
Tell her I’m on my way
.”

Nauc, April 8

AFTER TOO MANY sleepless nights, Dr. Eccles Pandora was running on little blue wheels—chemical wheels, one every two hours. Anything that brushed against her nerves made them twang so loud that she was surprised when other people did not look around. As long as she concentrated, she was fine, but at the slightest trace of relaxation she began to drift off into weirdly rippling hallucinations. She would survive, though, and playbacks of the clips had convinced her that the overload was adding a special luster to the coy sparkle that was her own distinctive style.

About fifteen minutes more would do it. Then champagne and celebration. The plaudits would be flowing, the world at her feet. When she would get to bed, she neither knew nor cared. This was her triumph, her apotheosis. Move over, gods, Pandora had just inherited Olympus.

“Stand by!” said the voice in her ear.

She dug fingernails into her palms and straightened up in her chair, forcing away the wavering shimmer that was trying to settle between her and the studio. She ran smoothing white hands over silver silk, then reached for the glass hidden under the table at her side. The damnable thing was empty, so she palmed one more blue disk and forced it down dry.

Ready for the big windup.

It had gone without a flaw.

The cameramen fussed in the gloom before her, gesturing for infinitesimal changes in the lighting. Up in the control room, Maurice gave her a thumbs-up. A classic, this would be. People would be watching this a hundred years from now. Universities would grant doctorates for analyses of what she had wrought tonight—of how Pandora changed the world.

In the tiny cage of the monitor, her image was concluding the interview with the xenologist from Harvard, Dr. Whatsisname. He had not contributed anything factual, but he had been so excited he could hardly speak, and that had come across beautifully.

The billion-dollar coin had been worth every hecto, every cent. A viewpoint inside the skiv would have been better, of course, and more than one viewpoint would have improved the artistry. The coin had come from one of the fixed cameras inside the dome—they thought it was van Diemen Dome, but that did not matter—and it had been beautifully positioned to watch the door of the skiv.

Higginsbotham had vouched for its authenticity—WSHB’s resident expert on trickery swearing that if it was a fake, he would emasculate himself by hand. “After I do,” she had warned him.

And the technicians had done a lovely job on cutting and extracting close-ups. Lovely, lovely, lovely. Stop that! Concentrate! She glanced at the monitor, where a female hygiene ad was running. Thus was history financed…

Concentrate!

She had begun with a few teasing references to the search for extraterrestrial sentience, with a brief clip of some brainy types from the Sagan Institute.

None ever found, they had said.

Stay tuned, she had told them.

Establish friendly contact, they had advised.

But what, she had asked, if they’re killers, too?

The coin had shown nothing of Nile itself—the Nightmare Planet she had named it—but Moscow had told them what they needed. The mycologist van Schoening had come from Moscow, a consultant brought in to study the fungoid vegetation. He had been supplied with all sorts of preliminary data by 4-I, and had left all that lying in his office. It had not come cheap, but what the hell? Surely Dr. van Schoening Mikailovitch would have died happy, had he known that he was making his secretary a rich man.

So there had been interviews with planetologists from JPL about Nile, a dark and poisonous world where rain never reached the surface, a surface of slaggy black rocks hot enough to cook meat.

There had been an interview—she had done that one live—about the toadstool and puffball vegetation. That had perhaps not been a total success; the woman had used too many big words. Of course, the resemblance to terrestrial fungi was merely “convergent evolution of saprophytic organisms”—meaning they lived on a fallout of organic debris from the airborne algae in the cloud layer. Pandora had cut that off as soon as she had established that fungi could be edible. Food is food. Likely there was something there eating the yeasts and mushrooms. So there was no water? Let them drink beer.

And then she had moved on to the record from the coin—the skiv being retrieved and hauled up on the crane; the scurrying, shouting, near-hysterical people climbing all over it and peering in the windows; Dr. Devlin Grant making a total ass of himself. He had always been one, of one sort of another.

And then…

Pièce de résistance!

Then the skiv doors had been opened, with more excitement and shouting until the bodies had been brought out. Pandora had demanded close-ups and had been prepared to scream for them, but Maurice had agreed without a murmur, bless him. The Institute medics had not even put sheets over the stretchers, so bless them also—and she had given the viewers a good look at two naked male bodies, slashed and ripped, with their heads battered to pulp. Strong, strong stuff!

She had taken a brief detour through the men’s life stories and then zeroed in on the missing woman, ecologist Gill Adele. WSHB’s library had turned up a half-decent file shot, too. Cute little twist—any half-decent surgeon could have made something really great out of her face. Missing…presumed carried off by…

…wait for it…

…the ultimate!…

Cave men in space—zoom in on Devlin Grant holding a stone hand-ax, crusted with dried blood and brains.

Pandora had called witnesses on that ax, too. Early Acheulian, the experts had agreed, an example of cultural convergence. What they had meant was that if one battered up a rock to put sharp edges on it, one finished up with a battered rock with sharp edges on it.

Her ear said,
Ping
! She jumped. Signal light on camera one…

She smiled to the Folks Out There. “So now we come to some different sorts of questions. The pictures we showed you were made on April fifth, and this is the eighth. As yet the International Institute for Interstellar Investigation has made no announcement about these tragic deaths. In three days it has released no information at all about Nile or its sinister inhabitants. We obtained our data from unofficial sources. You have heard how important this discovery is—‘epoch-making’ was the word, wasn’t it? So why is it being kept secret?

“Why the cover-up?

“Why did the next of kin in all three cases refuse to talk with us?

“To help us with these questions, we have Doctor—”

For a moment her head went blank—total whiteout. Panic burned in her throat like acid. Such a thing had never happened to her before, in twenty years’ broadcasting. The prompter blurred before her eyes.

“Jenkins Wanda,” her ear said.

“Dr. Jenkins Wanda, Professor of Political Science at the University of New Orleans.” She recovered and carried on, keeping her hands clasped to hide the trembling. Too little sleep, too many pills! But not long to go—she must not falter.

A chair containing Jenkins Wanda appeared on the other side of the table. Jenkins was a dream. A tall and striking black woman, she was as smooth and deceptive as a jungle stream. She had suggested most of the questions they had selected, offering up some startling implications and innuendos that even Pandora herself had not seen.

“Good evening, Wanda.”

“Good evening, Pandora.”

“Now, Wanda, you’ve been watching…” Gaining strength as she swung back into action and squeezed out a few last drops of adrenaline, Pandora started serving the lines.

Jenkins returned the expected responses. “…but, of course, after thirty years it is a shock to find evidence of sentient life. Of course, after so long the Institute is old and hard-arteried. Of course, its experts could panic…” And so on.

“Now,” Pandora said, leaning into a Between Ourselves mode, “you may recall a curious thing that happened yesterday. The Director of 4-I…” Behind her, she knew, a mirage cut of that disastrous press conference would be reminding viewers of Hubbard’s catastrophe, and the human celery she had left behind, leaning on the lectern.

“Oh, I think you’re right,” Jenkins said, although Pandora had actually made no statements at all. “The original intention was to announce what you have shown tonight—the discovery of sentience on Nile. There can be no doubt of that. Obviously Dr. Hubbard then changed her mind.
Something
or
someone
changed her mind, but too late to cancel the announced reception. So she improvised that absurd excuse about appointing her grandson as a deputy director. Quite clearly, the director herself has panicked, also. The confusion seems to run right through the Institute’s organization, from top to bottom. She made a public idiot of herself yesterday. She is getting on, you know,” she concluded with a slyly feline smirk that even Pandora could envy.

Pandora had thus been granted a clear fairway for the next drive. She swung. “But why, Wanda? First contact with a sentient species is staggering news, a historic event. We all know that the transmensor allows us only very brief access to other worlds, so we have very little time. Surely we should be making the greatest possible effort to learn more about these stone-age beings, whatever they are. Why, we don’t even know yet what they look like! So why this cover-up by the Institute? Why did Director Hubbard panic and change her mind about making an announcement?”

With an eerily sinister smile, Wanda prepared to sink the ball. “Well, remember, Pandora, that Hastings Willoughby himself, the Secretary General, was also at that meeting yesterday. I think it’s a fair guess that it was he who ordered the cover-up, because what may seem to be a very academic scientific discovery will certainly have a real impact on global politics.”

For a moment she lingered playfully on the lip of the cup: such scandalous incompetence had been revealed by the triple tragedy, that a major shake-up…

And then she dropped it neatly: however short-lived it might have to be, contact with another intelligent species would certainly cause the human race to close ranks at last. The World Chamber with its elected delegates would prosper, because it was the only body with a legitimate claim to represent the human race. The United Nations, a discredited and outmoded collection of ineffective governments, would wither to dust. Hastings Willoughby and Hubbard Agnes would be drowned in a political tidal wave, and they knew that.

A lovely piece of work, Pandora thought. Of course, it was only valid if one did not know too much about Chamber elections, but she could save that problem for another day, another show, another night…Gods, but she was tired!

Wanda had finished her razor job on Hubbard Agnes and was waiting for the next question. Was there a next question? Pandora fluttered her eyelids as though they were not made of lead and sneaked a glance at the prompter. No, they were finished.

“Dr. Jenkins Wanda, Professor of Political Science at—at—Wanda, thank you very much for being with us this evening.”

“It was my pleasure, Pandora.” Jenkins dissolved into the air.

Now, just a few closing words…

Ping
!

Maurice was giving her the sign for a commercial! What the hell was that for? But Pandora’s well-honed instincts spoke up to assure the world that she would be right back. She was hoarse.

The signal light went off.

“Maurice!” She began to push herself up out of her chair and then realized that the floor might not be steady enough to stand on.

“Ten more minutes, Panda.” Frazer Franklin’s voice! She would know it anywhere, even in an earpatch. “We have a—”

She leaped to her feet. Swaying, glaring up at the control window, she started to scream. “Frankie, you stay out of my—”

“We have a rebuttal, Pandora.”

“Rebuttal? What in the name of God is there to rebut?” She was too tired. There was nothing left. That damned-to-a-thousand-hells pervert and his accursed friends had no right to tamper with her triumph. “I won’t,” she said. “I won’t—”

A chair appeared, with occupant.

Pandora collapsed back on her seat and for a moment could only gape. “You!” she said. “Oh, sweet merciful…”

It was the human celery; except that someone had taken him in hand and the luminescent green was gone. His hair was combed. He was wearing a pearly-gray jump suit in a frilled bow-bedecked style that was just being adopted by the frantic-fringe youth cults and would not reach the adult world until late summer at the earliest. Damn him, but he could get away with it! It played down his binder-twine skinniness, at the cost of making him seem even younger than he must be. The size of him…But his sandaled feet ended a couple of centimeters below floor level, she noticed. Was that Maurice’s doing, or was someone at 4-I trying to shaft the kindergarten deputy? And weren’t his cuffs riding just a little high at ankle and wrist?

Pandora wanted to laugh, and dared not start in case she never stopped again. Human sacrifice! She had uttered challenge at the gate, and the knight had ridden forth to slay the foe. Oh, jewel beyond price! Perfection—the final touch to add to her glory.

“Cedy! Does your grandmother know you’re out this late?”

He flushed, and Pandora finally managed to bring his face into focus. Great Heavens! This was even better than she could have dreamed of. She felt a tremor of almost sexual excitement run through her. Her fatigue vanished in the thrill of the chase—of the kill. Bless you, Frankie! The final dish tonight, ladies and gentlemen, is human head, served hot and weeping.

“What happened to your nose, Cedric?”

“I had a run-in with some exotic plant life.” It was puffed and purple and probably packed with surgical gauze, because his voice sounded as though he were speaking underwater. By the next day he would have black eyes, also.

It was all just so delicious.

The massacre of the innocent.

But she had watched that kid face a mob the day before. For an amateur, a beginner relying only on native courage, he had done not badly at all, until Pandora herself had sharpened an experimental claw on him. She knew his chinks, maybe better than he did. Very likely better than he did—there could not have been many women in so brief a life. Quite likely only the one.