Vatican Ambassador (44 page)

“
Does it have to do with Al-Salid?”

“
No, he has come and gone, just after you. I imagine he will be in touch with you soon. But by
then it may be too late. We can say no more on an open channel.”

“
Okay, I’ll meet with you. Where…”

“
We can meet you on Earth,” the Eldred offers.

Yeah, sure and bring along a new virus, or trigger the next stage, right!

“How about The Project asteroid base?” BC suggests.

Better than here or the Moon…

“The asteroid base, then,” the Eldred agrees.

“
I’ll meet you there in six days,” BC tells the alien. “I need some time to prepare and to get
there.”

“
The need is urgent,” the eldest of the Eldred says. “But if it must be six days from now, so be it.
We can be there in three days. We will be waiting for you. Be aware: the situation is dire. We do
not have much time to deal with the situation. Please, be aware.”

“
I’m aware, okay?” BC assures the alien.

Hope I kept the sarcasm out of my voice, there. Aware? Aware of what? Aware of a whole lot of nothing, so far.

“See you at the base, then. Six days, or sooner if you can. Please,” the eldest of the Eldred
says, signing off.

BC calls his secretary.

“
Sorry, father, but I have to leave again. Here,” BC signs his name on the desktop tablet, sends it
to his secretary. “Have a stamp made of this, and go nuts! Well, not too nuts. No checks or
anything, got it?”

“
Yes, your holiness, but this is no good. It says ‘Bernard Campion’.”

“
What’s wrong? Oh.”

BC signs “Pope Peter IV” and sends it to the secretary.

“
Thanks!” BC says.

“
But sir, you’ve hardly been here!”

“
Silence!” BC raises his voice. The man stops.

Huh, never tried that before!

Guess it works.

“Take care of it. Please,” BC says, and signs off.

I said ‘please’ to be nice. Nicer, anyway.

Now for Anita.

BC puts a call through to The Project’s asteroid base to talk to Anita.

“
Anita!” BC greets her.

“
BC?” she asks, answering coolly after a few seconds pause. “What can I do for you?”

“
I love it when you talk dirty like that,” BC jokes.

BC watches as she listens to his response. Anita blushes.

“
BC! You’re the Pope, for Christ’s sake!”

“
For his sake and everyone else’s,” BC jokes. “Look, Anita, I’m just trying to lighten up the
situation. ‘Cause we’ve got a bit of a situation on our hands.”

“
A situation?” Anita asks.

“
I just got a call from the eldest of the Eldred. He’s coming your way.”

“
BC?” Anita asks, “Didn’t you know the Eldred are asexual, BC, neither male nor female?”

“
What? No! You never told me that, but… look, never mind.” BC shakes his head. “They’re
scared, and they want to meet with me, and they’re on the way to the asteroid base for that
meeting. They’ll be there in three days. I need you to send a flasher to pick me up here at Vatican
City to get me out there.”

“
Again?” she asks. “They want to meet with you again this soon? That can’t be good, BC.”

“
The eldest of the Eldred actually sounded scared,” BC tells Anita.

“
That makes me
scared,” Anita says.

“
Yeah, they
asked for the meeting, said there’s been an important development, that something
had changed. But they wouldn’t say what.

“Mysterious as always,” she says. “I’ll get a ship out to you soon.”

“
Sooner the better,” BC says.

“
Yessir!” Anita says, saluting him. She slaps off the com.

Well, that went kinda well. Doesn’t being Pope, Head CEO on the UTZ Council, and an all around nice guy count for something?

He calls his secretary back.

“
Contact The Project. Get me the ETA on my ship. Please,” BC asks.

“
Your ship?

“
Yes, sir, your holiness.”

What scares the Eldred?

An Eldred ships sits waiting in the landing bay as BC arrives at the asteroid base on the fourth day after his call from the eldest of the Eldred.

“They got here yesterday,” Anita tells BC over the com on the bridge of the transport ship. “They seem anxious. Different, all the base personnel are noticing. Weird.

“And they keep asking for word of your arrival. Quite insistently, from what I’ve heard. Not like them at all.”

A soft “thump” tells BC they’ve landed.

BC disembarks from the ship to face a waiting crowd of Eldred and base personnel. Anita leads the group of Eldred up to the ship. The human techs come forward to take care of the ship.

“We couldn’t keep them away,” one of the techs tells BC under his breath as he passes him.

“Yes!” says one of the Eldred, stepping up to BC. “We have been anxiously awaiting your arrival.” BC

recognizes the alien.

The eldest of the Eldred? Here? This has gotta be big!

Maybe they’re ready to give us the plague cure!

I worried about an assassination run, but if the eldest is here that’s a lot less likely. Pleasant
thought.

“Hello again,” BC says to the Eldred.

“Is there somewhere we might speak privately?” the eldest of the Eldred asks him.
Right to the point, I’ll give him that.

BC looks to Anita.

“We’ve got a meeting room nearby. Follow me,” she says. She leads the group of them out of the landing bay and into the base.

The five Eldred follow Anita and BC to a conference room a short distance inside the facility. The room reminds BC of the conference room back on the Moon.

Same furniture: gray chairs, translucent blue oval table, same room design. No stars here,
though. Probably too far inside the rock.

BC walks over to one head of the table. The eldest of the Eldred almost automatically gravitates toward the other end.

Anita closes the door behind her. As soon as the door closes, the eldest of the Eldred begins to speak.

“We have a major problem. When last we spoke, we could speak of the Ancient Enemy in the past tense. Stories of a million years ago.” The eldest pauses.

It almost looks like he’s in pain!

“This is no longer the case,” the eldest of the Eldred says with dread in his voice. “One of the Ancients has been awakened.” The Eldred looks down.

“The Ancient Enemy has returned.”

BC sits in silence, stunned. He looks over at Anita.

Wish I could think more security into the area!

They may be here to kill us after all!

BC sees Anita touch a small button on some kind of communicator at her side.
She’s doing something… maybe some kind of silent alarm? Good girl!

Anita nods at him.

“Please explain,” BC says. “You told me you wiped them out a million years ago.”

“Not all of the members of the race we call the Ancient Enemy were destroyed,” the eldest of the Eldred says with a deep sigh. “Long ago, we discovered that one of their race had been kept in suspended animation, placed there by others of his kind, before their end, as a punishment for unknown crimes.”

A criminal among the cutthroats?

The worst of a bad bunch?

So bad even his own people put him away?

“His very existence was concealed from us for thousands of years by a race called The Snakt,” the eldest of the Eldred explains. “When we discovered that the Snakt were hiding one of the Ancient Enemy, we took control of the capsule he was sealed inside. The capsule’s technology was beyond us, self contained and apparently designed for permanent storage. We could not penetrate or affect the capsule. The capsule has remained undisturbed on Eldray for over six hundred thousand of your years.

“Until now.

“Now, this one has somehow, er, thawed out, and escaped.”

The eldest of the Eldred goes silent. What he’s just had to relay to BC has clearly drained him.

“What? One of ‘them’ is alive? You didn’t tell me about anything like this!” BC says, amazed.

“It was not a concern. The capsule had functioned and contained him for centuries,” the eldest of the Eldred says.

“So,” BC says, trying to contain his growing anger with the fuzzy blue alien, “what else are you hiding?”

The eldest of the Eldred is clearly taken aback. He glances at the other four Eldred with him.

“Look,” BC says, “you made it sound like this was all a million years ago.” BC forces his point. “This was all in the past! You never told me you had one of them stored away on ice!”

“Please, calm yourself, Campion,” the eldest of the Eldred says. “We were impressed by your candor. Al-Salid was also quite forthright, but we could not reach him after he left us. That is why we came to see
you
. We are here because we need your help.”

“My help?” BC asks, disbelieving. “Are you sure? How can
I
help you?” BC pauses for a thought. “And how can we be sure you aren’t here just to wipe us out, infect the rest of us with some plague, to advance your plague to the next stage to finish what you’ve started? Nip this Ancient Enemy thing in the bud?”

The Eldred exchange glances between them.

Looks like that course of action was at least considered!

The eldest of the Eldred looks back at BC.

“We need your help. Yes,” the eldest tells BC. “We believe you can help us track down this ancient one.”

“You think I can help you do that?” BC asks, incredulous.

“Yes. You think as he does. You share many characteristics with him that we do not,” the eldest of the Eldred says. “You think as he does.”

“I really don’t think I do,” BC protests.

“Well, certainly, you think more as he does than we do. We think, therefore, that your help could be valuable to us. Your perspective.”

“Okay,” BC says. “But I still don’t understand! How could you let this happen?”

“It was not our doing!” the eldest of the Eldred protests. “It was the Snakt who found his capsule and kept it hidden. We did not know that Dolomay was still alive.”

“Dolomay?” BC asks, hearing the name.

“Dolomay was a mid level military commander who fell out of favor and was labeled a criminal. He was frozen, his body placed in suspended animation and encapsulated, and placed in orbit of the homeworld of the Ancient Enemy as an example to others. When their world was destroyed, Dolomay and his capsule were cast out among the stars and forgotten. Eventually the capsule drifted into the space controlled by the Snakt and they found and recovered him.”

The eldest of the Eldred looks to the other Eldred, as if deciding what to say, how much to tell. The eldest seems to stare down his companions, and then continues.

“As I’ve said, the Snakt kept the capsule secret for hundreds of thousands of years. Then we discovered their secret. And we then kept that secret for six hundred years more. We substituted a fake capsule for the real one when we removed Dolomay from their homeworld. The Snakt to this day do not know they no longer possess the actual capsule.”

“You people sure do like your secrets, don’t you?” BC asks.

“It was the prudent course of action,” the eldest of the Eldred assures BC. “And Dolomay in his capsule stayed safely on our world of Eldray for over four hundred thousand years. We couldn’t open the capsule, and we dare not try to penetrate it for fear of cataclysmic self-destruction. The Ancient Enemy was fond of that sort of trap. The Snakt had let it be for much the same reasons. Neither race was capable of operating the capsule. We had assumed that it would remain inert, as it had for a million years and more. But then something happened, something triggered the capsule, and it all changed. Dolomay was awakened.”

“What happened,” BC asks. “What changed?”

The eldest of the Eldred looks down. “It is our own fault.”

“How?” BC wonders out loud.

“We brought you to Eldray,” the Eldred tells BC. “The capsule was close by the statue we brought you to and showed you. Somehow, your presence there triggered the capsule’s mechanisms. We can only guess the apparent cause and effect, but the two events were nearly simultaneous.”

“Why didn’t you stop him?” Anita asks.

“He escaped before we realized he had awoken,” the Eldred explains. “We did not find the empty capsule until just after Al-Salid had left us. By that time, it was clear that he had thawed out days earlier and made his getaway.”

“And you think we’ll know where to find him? How?” BC asks.

“We believe he is heading for your world, if he is not there already,” the eldest tells BC. “There are none who will aide him within our expansive jurisdiction,” the alien explains. “And he can blend in with you and your race quite easily. So, you see, we need your help. We cannot move among you ourselves without causing panic and pandemonium, we would imagine.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right about
that
,” BC admits.

Man… what a fucking bombshell! Gotta think this through.

“But if he’s all you say the Ancient Enemy was, how can we stop him? Never mind find him in the first place?” BC asks.

“As we’ve said, you think more as he does than we do. We believe you can help us figure out how he will behave, where he might go.”

Riiiiight.

“So, where do we start?” BC asks. “Did he take one of your ships?”

“We, uh…” the eldest of the Eldred pauses, “we don’t know.”

“You’re not giving me much to go on, here,” BC tells them.

The Eldred exchange glances among themselves again.

“Do you have a picture of Dolomay?” BC asks.

The Eldred shake their heads, obviously puzzled.

“Can you describe him?” BC asks.