Third Watch (26 page)

“And your point is?”

“Well—don’t,” Grimalkin said. “It will upset space and time and the multiverse as we know it.”

“Don’t be silly. Why would I want to do anything to mankind? Actually, I’m considering bringing enough specimens to market to the neighboring systems. They have plenty of lovely things to keep even Akasa happy for a while, and some of them would relish the novelty of the mutable dwellings. To keep the balance of trade on our side, we could accept goods in exchange for dispatching our technicians periodically to maintain, tune, and retrain the dwellings.”

“No, no,” Grimalkin said, waving his hands. “I tell you it will be a catastrophe, a disaster, a—”

“Oh, stop your caterwauling,” Odus said. “Now that you’re here, since you’ve already been to the creatures’ world before you may as well come, too. We’ll work out some sort of profit-sharing split.”

Grimalkin had always been a fast talker, a silver-tongued trickster, but it only worked when he could get the attention of the person he was trying to con. Odus never paid attention to any ideas that weren’t his own. Going on the trip was the best he would be able to do for the moment. Perhaps when Odus saw the condition of the serpent planet, Grimalkin could talk him into leaving. After all, he could talk to him from two directions at the same time, since one of him would be on the
Pircifir
and the other on Odus’s ship. He’d never done that before, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t, did it? Of course, before he could say much of anything, Ariin would turn him back into a cat and that would be awkward, but on the other hand, it might allow the remaining him to be more present. When there were two of him at once, however briefly, both of him were a bit punier than usual. If one of him was a cat, that might allow the larger form more substance, mightn’t it? He supposed he’d find out.

He supposed wrong. Akasa entered the laboratory, gave a small, excited squeal when she saw him and a dazzling smile. She certainly was a fine-looking female. She rushed forward and threw her arms around him, as if they were amiably disposed former lovers. Actually, they had been lovers long long ago, and the parting, though not exactly amiable, had at least been accompanied by quite a lot of distance, keeping him safely out of her way until she and Odus had formed their long-standing alliance.

“Grimalkin! It’s been so long!” she said. “We thought we had lost you forever. We looked for you everywhere when we moved, but you were off in space somewhere, as usual.”

Odus said, “I told her not to fret. ‘Bad cats always return,’ I told her. And here you are. Dearest, I’ve invited Grimalkin to accompany us on our dwelling-acquisition mission. He was considerate enough to bring a rather nice recent-model vessel with him, though we’ll need a larger one if we’re to transport as much cargo as I wish.”

“That will be so handy and—‘historic,’ I believe, is the word the little linearly limited people use—since it was you and dear departed Pircifir who discovered our dwellings originally, was it not? Of course it was.”

Grimalkin said, “I can take you to pick up the ship you desire, then I’ll lead you there and stand watch while you make your collections.”

Odus said, “Our friend has expressed reservations about our mission, dearest. He claims that, as a result of them, some sort of nasty disease will cause a lot of bother to the humanoids. Are you sure the reason you want to fly in a separate craft isn’t so you can betray us, old cat?”

Grimalkin hadn’t thought of that, though it sounded like something he might have considered. The only problem was that the serpent planet was not in Federation territory, so there were no law enforcement people available there, even if such puny beings would have been able to prevail against two of his kind. “Perish the thought! I want to come so that I can help you make the transfer safely and see that whatever went wrong in the future I’ve experienced doesn’t go wrong this time. It must have been an accident, since you are, for the most part, benevolent and use your powers to help all beings.” They nodded at what they judged to be his astute evaluation. He knew that actually, they helped themselves first, and when they did do something for or to other beings, it did not necessarily have anything to do with what those beings wanted. “I was merely thinking that two vessels may be better than one. If the catastrophe that creates the disaster happens sooner rather than later, it might overtake you, and I would be there to rescue you.”

“Or in case of our tragic demise and the loss of our ship, you would still have a means of escape?” Akasa asked.

“That, too, of course. One must be practical, even in the face of such tragedy,” he replied.

And so they set out, and, because he was in a separate vessel, he avoided meeting himself coming and going. If he still appeared on the
Pircifir
with the children, and if his messages confused Odus and Akasa, they didn’t mention it via com. They also time traveled, of course, and were to some degree accustomed to erratic appearances on the part of others. Besides, he had actually indicated he knew what they were going to do, which could only be because he had been there before.

So he took them to Vhiliinyar, where they acquired their ship, then showed them the way to the serpent planet and waited in orbit while they landed. He watched from his ship’s com as his fellow Friends saw for themselves how the Khleevi had destroyed and in turn been destroyed. In spite of a brief appearance by the
Pircifir,
which blinked out quickly, presumably when Ariin wrested the crono from him and took them back to the future, Akasa and Odus collected their specimens and left the surface without further incident.

Landing once more at the primitive settlement where his people now lived, Grimalkin watched as the cargo was off-loaded and taken to Odus’s laboratory for study.

Grimalkin was an explorer rather than a scientist. His catty curiosity was better satisfied by discovering new worlds and races that lacked only an infusion of his superior genes to climb several rungs up the evolutionary ladder.

But he humbled himself to take the role of Odus’s most attentive laboratory assistant, and what Odus wouldn’t explain to him, he asked Sona and the other technicians about.

Odus poked and prodded his specimens and found remnants of both serpent and dwelling DNA. “They appear to be different parts of the life cycle of the same being,” he told Grimalkin and Akasa. “The dwellings are analogous to the shed skin of serpents of other worlds, except that they retain their own viability—rather like the severed bits of worms. From specimens of our old dwellings, it is clear that once liberated from the elongated cylindrical form of the serpents, the new forms can and do take any shape desired—or trained into them. Unfortunately, these new specimens were altered by the invading hordes. Whereas the serpents must have tried, with much success, to kill some of the Khleevi, the other life-forms tried to absorb them, blending Khleevi amino acids with their own.”

Grimalkin hovered attentively over the specimens, which lay inert and seemingly lifeless on the table.

“However, all is not lost,” Odus lectured. “You of all beings know, old cat, that a bit of our own essence can improve other species.”

“How in the cosmos do you intend to do that, Odus?” Akasa asked.

“All in good time, my dear. All in good time,” Odus said. He coaxed the remaining life in his specimens, nursing it along and studying it.

“The creatures reproduce as snakes,” Grimalkin told them. “The first one we encountered was ill because she had attempted to reabsorb her eggs when she was captured. Her effort was not successful, but the fact that she had eggs indicates that even if it has independent life, the tunnel form is only a by-product.”

“You mean we have to put up with a lot of snakes writhing around before we can have our nice houses again?” Akasa asked with a little shudder. She liked to be the slinkiest creature in her vicinity. “Whatever will we do with all of them?”

“I don’t know,” Grimalkin said. “Take them home and help them rebuild, perhaps, or reserve an isolated section of this world as their domain. That would be handy. I have a better idea. Why don’t we return to Vhiliinyar and pack up the houses that are already there? We needn’t do it all at once, but surely it would be easier and safer than all this.” He indicated the piles of specimens filling a slant-roofed annex attached to the laboratory. That wall had been removed to allow easier access.

“Nonsense, old cat,” Odus said. “Where’s the challenge in that? Where’s the thrill of overcoming difficult odds?”

Grimalkin, though he admitted he might have been spending too much time in the company of the Linyaari and humans lately, thought that the oddest thing about the whole situation was Odus and his almost manic desire to do anything the hardest, most complicated way possible.

“The Council felt that Kubiilikaan was our legacy to our progeny,” Akasa said. “Some rather important events in their development will occur once they discover Kubiilikaan.”

Grimalkin scoffed. “I know. I was prominently involved in many of them, but I recall nothing that would be altered significantly by moving a few of the houses to make us more comfortable. I’ll talk to—” he started, before remembering that the Council that convened on Vhiliinyar to banish him and freeze him in small cat form had happened in the past, and some of them might have better memories than others. “You can tell them I said so,” he told Akasa.

Odus gave him a look venomous enough to be worthy of the serpents.

“Dearest, the Council also decided to leave our homes on Vhiliinyar because they were growing old. These creatures, as they have been, do die and have to be replaced. I believe there is a way around that, and that we can also circumvent or at least considerably diminish the role the serpent form plays in the life cycle of the form more valuable to us. If I can distill the essence of the serpent form into an easily transmittable nanocrobe that can be hosted by a wide variety of other forms, we won’t have to deal with the snake problem.”

Grimalkin was shaken from his inner whiskers to his inner tail. This was exactly how the plague began. Odus would not listen to him, and he didn’t want to arouse any further hostility. He would have to destroy the research when it was beyond a point where it could be re-created.

However, that proved to be easier in thought than in deed. Odus worked, slept, ate, and even mated in the laboratory with an unusual dedication that was probably spurred by Grimalkin’s opposition. He was therefore careful to be at his trickiest, always appearing interested and sometimes incredulous at Odus’s results. He found them wholly credible, however, since he had seen their unintended, devastating consequences.

He stuck far closer to Akasa and Odus than he liked, waiting for an opportunity, but to his chagrin saw the experimental specimens grow livelier and livelier.

“At this stage, I wish to infuse them with something of our own vitality and longevity, so that they may be trained once more into appropriate vessels for our illustrious beings.”

In Grimalkin’s head, he could imagine Ariin saying something extremely rude regarding Odus’s illustriousness. But this experiment was now too dangerous to continue. Grimalkin had to stop it, even if he was forced to endanger his own precious hide by doing it openly.

Akasa was saying, “Do you mean to say you intend to mate with one of those things? I don’t care for that idea at all.”

“Dearest, surely a radiant being such as yourself is not jealous of a mere dwelling?” he teased.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said.

“It needs only a bit of our vitality and longevity to revive as a species—or two species,” Odus said. “Now then, excuse me. I have to change.”

Grimalkin thought he’d put something in a beaker or inject something with something else. He had not expected this. Despite all of Odus’s fiddling with their composition and life cycle, the specimens were reviving only slowly from the sorry state to which their battle to assimilate the Khleevi had reduced them. In spite of their dangerous alterations, he couldn’t see that they were yet a threat to anyone. But once infused with some of Odus’s potent and all-but-immortal DNA, they could become—and apparently had become—much stronger. This was the critical step in their development then. The step that must not take place.

“You’re not jealous, too, surely, old cat?” Odus asked. “You want to change and take the honors as the father of another new race?”

“Who?” Grimalkin asked, startled out of his plotting. He had never been all that attracted to things that lacked legs. “Me…ow. Meow?”

Before he could say another world, he shrank to small-cat form. He could make no more arguments to dissuade Odus, for the cat had truly got his tongue.

Akasa upended him to pick up the crono that had outgrown his tiny paw until it surrounded three paws and the tip of his tail. “You won’t be needing this. I remember now why we haven’t seen you in a while. The Council exiled you. Naughty, naughty. It must be time for you to return to Vhiliinyar and be a birthing present.”

Chapter 22

A
riin had no idea how to use the information she’d just acquired. Did it mean Akasa was on the doomed ship and dead? It almost certainly meant, since Odus and Akasa had harvested what was left of the serpent planet species and had something to do with the creation of the plague, that Akasa had introduced the plague to Solojo. She looked healthy enough in the vid, but maybe the Friends didn’t get sick and die from it but carried it instead, as Mother and Father had done.

Even Ariin’s long-held grudge against Akasa and Odus was insufficient to convince her that they would have deliberately wreaked such profound disaster on so many people.

She wasn’t used to confiding in people yet or asking for help, but she was the newest telepath in a family of experienced ones. As she walked away from the conference room with the vid screens, Mother, Father, Khorii, and Neeva flooded her mind with inquiries.
“What’s wrong?”

She told them. Then nothing would do but that all of them, including Maak and Elviiz, had to come and view the vid as well. Only Khorii, who had met Akasa, truly understood what it meant.