Dragonstar Destiny (16 page)

“SO WHAT
are we going to do?” asked Rebecca Thalberg at the meeting, her fragrant primeval tea ignored in front of her.

The other members of the committee sat without contributions, their feelings showing in their eyes. Mishima read them easily; they reflected his own emotions.

Ships belonging to an intelligent alien life were apparently on their way to dock with
Artifact One.
The first contact between mankind and a more advanced (at least technologically) race of intelligent aliens. But more important, it was the first contact between the lASA crew and the Makers of the
Dragonstar.

Or at least their distant descendants; millions of years had passed. What had the Makers been; what had they evolved into? How would they deal with the captured prizes?

These were the questions in the eyes of his crew-mates—but there was also the unspoken fear that had been covered up by activity and the need to stay alive. The fear of the unknown.

After all, who could blame them? They were light-years away from the security of Earth, traveling along in a hostile environment to God-knows-where. Jakes’s announcement that the frame of the
Dragonstar
could not withstand the arduous pressures of FTL was not exactly a welcome bit of knowledge. The implications had clearly sunk in quite well. Chances were exceedingly slim that they would ever return to Earth.

But beyond these fears, survival shone in these eyes like hard diamonds, and this perception eased Mishima’s trepidations. Still, there was this little matter of what to do.

“What is there to do? Wait. Prepare our spirits for this august meeting.”

“Prepare our
spirits!”
blurted Phineas Kemp. “What kind of proper military action is that?”

Mishima had been watching Phineas lately, and had observed him as being under a peculiar pressure. Something to do with females, ah yes. Rats always acted erratically in pressured and enclosed circumstances. Also, he had not quite relinquished his fancied role as leader and decision-maker, despite his sorry past; orders and decisions and evaluations seemed to ejaculate from him like semen from a half-cocked male organ.

“This is hardly a typical military situation, Phineas,” said Becky. Always eager to take a jab at her ex, Mishima was gratified to see. “We don’t know yet that our visitors are hostile.”

“Ah, but we don’t know that they are
not!”
Phineas said. “We must take the proper precautions to defend ourselves.”

“What’s the use, Phineas?” said Mikaela Lindstrom. “They built this ship eons ago—God alone knows what weapons they have.”

“No, Colonel Kemp is correct,” said Mishima in a calm, assured voice. “My suggestion for spiritual readiness is inclusive of what he terms ‘military’ readiness. But then, are we not as militarily prepared now as we can ever be?”

Kemp looked at Mishima with a clear expression of pity. “Position, man. We’ve got to get ourselves in the proper positions!”

Mishima nodded. “Perhaps. But do you not think, Colonel Kemp, that a formal offensive position might induce the aliens to—how do you say it in your country? —shoot first and ask questions later?”

The laughter eased the tension in the gathering.

“Mishima’s right, Phineas,” said Becky. “There’s no reason we can’t just effect a nonthreatening observational attitude. That way we can watch the entry of the aliens without alarming them and be in a suitable position to offer resistance should that be necessary—”

“Or possible,” Dr. Jakes said, shaking his head. “I don’t know—we’re talking eons of years of superior technological development here. I say we just go with the flow, as it were.”

“The Tao of the physicist!” Mishima said, grinning.

The others laughed again.

Kemp rolled his eyes. “We’re on the verge of what could be the most important conflict between man and alien—and you guys are laughing! I’m glad we’re not recording this for the documentary!”

Mishima studied Kemp a moment. There was no doubt that the man simply itched to take the reins of control and do something typically in the Western military tradition. But Mishima also sensed that this would be an extravagant mistake, and he had to diffuse not merely Kemp—but the Phineas Kemps in the rest of the committee.

“I agree partially with Dr. Jakes,” he said in a soft but nonetheless strong voice. “But we must also speak to the proud resistance that lies within us all, the fire that shines so brightly, say, in Colonel Kemp. Our readiness shall be armed—not merely with weapons but in attitudes. Be sure that if aliens fire at us, we shall return that fire as long as we are able. Our dignity demands that.”

“That’s right,” said Phineas Kemp, gratified. “If we go down, we go down fighting!”

There was a murmur of assent around the table, but those eyes still showed misgivings and fear.

Dr. Jakes examined his watch. “Well, if you’ve got something planned, you’d better tell us about it. There’s less than an hour until those alien ships interact with us.”

“Fine, that leaves us with sufficient time to mobilize,” said Mishima calmly. “This is what I suggest.
”

* * *

Mishima’s suggestions were so solid and sensible that they might as well have been orders.

They were simple. All he wanted was a small party—welcome wagons he called them, with a wry smile—at each of the three main hatches. Dr. Jakes projected that the aliens would choose the largest, so Mishima suggested that the principal leaders of the human and Saurian communities, including himself and Colonel Kemp, should station themselves at that post, with secondary representatives posted at the others, all the while in constant communication with one another. This way, he could keep an eye personally on Kemp. If the man was leading one of the other parties, God alone knew what he would do when the aliens trooped in. Phineas Kemp could not have gotten as far as he had in the lASA without a cool head, Mishima knew. But then, the Colonel had not exactly had the best of luck lately, had he?

So it was that within forty-five minutes of the suggestion and the agreement by the others of its efficacy, a party of twenty men and Saurians stood by the main hatchway, with several OTVs ringed about them, mostly to protect them from any roving dinosaur predators.

“And to think,” said Phineas Kemp, “this is where it all started.” He looked over to Becky Thalberg, standing by Mishima.

“Yes,” said Kate Ennis. “It’s too bad there wasn’t a civilized party waiting for
our
team.”

Mishima sensed Becky flinching at that comment. This Kate Ennis certainly could fling the
faux pas.
He put a gentle hand on the small of Becky’s back and rubbed it in what he hoped was a comforting way.

Becky spoke tensely. “Yes. I’m the only one left of that venture, it seems. Almost appropriate, I think, that I’m standing here now ...”

“What have you got for us there, Doctor?” Mishima asked Jakes, who sat nearby in the back of an OTV, behind a portable set of scanners. “What is the estimated time of arrival?”

Jakes hit a button and read off the numbers. “I have four point twenty-four minutes till docking—and apparently we were right ... it’s going to be this hatch.”

“You’re certain?”

“Yes. “

“Fine.” Mishima turned on his radio. “Delta Two and Delta Three. Come in.”

The other greeting parties chimed in almost simultaneously. “We have docking here at Delta One. Return to base.”

“Affirmative!” the units responded.

“Well, we’re the ones, then,” said Kate Ennis.

“Yes,” Colonel Phineas Kemp sighed. “As usual.”

* * *

We’re the ones,
thought Kemp as he uneasily touched his side-arm. He looked around at the others, who stood tensely waiting. He looked at Mikaela Lindstrom and at Kate Ennis, both clearly tense but excited, and he thought about the aliens just about to arrive—and it seemed as though the problems that faced the three of them were very petty indeed. Was all this business with the three of them really just because of the pressure? Or was it a way to get away from the grim reality of being castaways here—like a fantasy soap opera in the middle of a swampy prison?

He looked at them both and then thought, No. For he still felt love for Mikaela, perhaps deeper than ever. And when he caught sight of Kate, her wide-eyed awe at all this, the way she wore her personality on her expressions ... he knew that she touched him as well. No, it wasn’t just an elaborate escape, his feelings. Feelings weren’t that at all ... They were somehow tied quite intimately into everything. Just
how,
Phineas Kemp did not really know. But the fact that he had learned this much at least somehow pleased him, made him feel like a deeper person.

Nice thing to know, when you’re staring possible eternity in the face Phineas Kemp thought. Are
deeper
people
any less dead?

No, definitely not. But perhaps they were very much more
alive,
even if only for a very short time.

“We have docking of interspatial vehicle,” reported Jakes, not looking up from his readouts.

Two minutes of tense silence passed.

“We have alien boarding through lock,” Jakes said tersely. “Communications procedure initiated.”

Mishima Takamura’s welcome wagon watched as the main door began to cycle open.

WITHIN
his cocoon, Timothy Linden dreamed.

He dreamed dreams of magenta and turquoise, of blood and starshine. There was the smell of an Arabian bazaar, the feel of classroom chalk dust, the taste of sex, and the roar of black holes.

Linden dreamed dreams undreamt by mankind, and yet they seemed all too familiar, as though his whole life had been lived in preparation for their birthing, and his whole essence a foreshadow.

Timothy Linden was unaware that the entirety of his skin had turned into a thick, rubbery hull to this ship of dreams he sailed, or that his colleagues had to loosen the bonds that strapped him to the table so that the leather would not cut into the fibrous hide. He was unaware of the caterpillar growth and mothy changes their devices had recorded beneath that grey-black-white exterior. He only knew the fantastic of his dreams, the breath of pulsing nebulae in his head.

Until the aliens arrived.

Something reached into him, and touched.

It swept through him, seeming to turn him inside out. Within the cocoon, he moved and he groaned and he shuddered at the touch. It was cold and alien, and yet it seemed to strike a chord at a depth of which he had not been aware.

Years, millennia, eons, epochs radiated outward around him, flung out into eternity like a web, at which he was the hub. Like a spider. And the flies that stuck to the web were civilizations: mere specks against the star-shot darkness,

His mind reached out to grasp at the meaning of his vision: his soul ached to catch the full resonance . . .

But a wave of sudden agoraphobia gripped him.

The vision shuddered away like crumbling ice sculptures into mere cold . . .

And Timothy Linden saw Marcus Jashad again.

Marcus Jashad wore the robes of the Mahdi.

He stood in the fields of the desert, with a blood-soaked scimitar in his hands. Dawn peered over the rim of the dunes, and Linden stared wide-eyed at the thousands of dead stretched out at the feet of this General of the Prophet.

“Timothy Linden!” cried Marcus Jashad. “My Hasan!”

“Leave me be, Jashad!” cried Timothy Linden, “Leave me be!”

“Behold, Hasan, the dead! They are the Unbelievers. They would not bow down before the Law of the Prophet of Allah, they would not take the Holy Koran with them to the stars! But Hasan! The Book is in your hand! And your spirit, yea, it soars through the Heavens themselves!”

A scarf was wrapped across the lower face of the Moslem terrorist, muffling his voice. Bloodshot eyes glared out from beneath heavy eyebrows and a death-pale forehead.

“Hasan, have you forgotten your Vows? Have you neglected your Sacred Training?”

“No, Jashad. l have not forgotten.”

“The moment is ripe as the pomegranate upon the vine. Seize it! Take it! Bite it! And behold! With the touch of your scimitar, the Unbelievers in your midst shall fall into Hell, and the word of the Prophet shall be propagated among the New Chosen in the Heavens!”

And then a wind that smelled of rot swept across the dunes, and the robes of Marcus Jashad fluttered and the scarf around his head was unraveled. . .

. . . leaving a death’s head with live and molten eyes grinning beneath the turban and the hood.

Timothy Linden awoke, screaming from the vision.

He awoke, and he was immediately aware of a smothering constriction all around him, dry and irritating. With a moan, he pushed outward upon what bound him down. His hands and his arms struck out from the crust of the cocoon. His shoulders struggled against the straps. They seemed possessed of great new strength, these shoulders, these muscles, and the straps snapped easily.

The cocoon crackled like dry corn husk as Linden slowly but surely broke his way out of it. He stepped down from the table, crunching the remnants of the dry exodermis. He paused a moment as things swam around him, and he recovered his equilibrium.

He was in the camp’s sick bay, a large prefab “tent” manufactured of a highly porous material. As he scanned the room, his mind catalogued and comprehended the uses of every single machine, every bandage and hypodermic. Linden was instantly aware of the content of the air he breathed from the hydrogen to oxygen ratio to the trace of argon. He became aware of the radiation filtering through the top of the tent, through its door. He sensed . . .

He sensed a wide panorama of the five senses normally bestowed upon mankind . . . And he was also aware of
other
senses he did not comprehend but instantly utilized nonetheless.

The information and sensory data bored into him on dozens of levels.

He gasped, and he fell to his knees. His brain felt as though it were on fire. Too much . . . Too much input! He groaned with the pain, and his sanity seemed to be bending, breaking into new patterns.

He sensed that his fellow humans were gone. They had left him here, deserted him. Terror and fear of desertion flooded him and he shivered there on the floor, naked.

After a time, he realized that his mind seemed to be either acclimating to the new sensations . . . or damping down the more unfamiliar ones. He felt a little better, felt more in control. Simply because the others were not in the camp did not necessarily mean they had deserted him. They could not have left the
Dragonstar,
surely . . .

And as soon as the idea came into his head, he knew that they had not left the
Dragonstar.
No, he could still sense the presence of the other humans . . . They were simply not here in the camp.

He went to a closet and dressed himself in the IASA uniform he found there. He found a backpack, and he stocked it with food he found in a refrigerator, certain medicines and equipment, and a canteen of water.

He went outside into the daylight. In a nearby tent, he found a rifle, a handgun, a knife, and ammunition, which he took.

When he left the tent, though, he heard something.

A group of Saurians was patrolling the camp, left behind by the humans. He did not see them; but he could sense them. Before he could run, they turned the corner, and they saw him.

They stopped, clearly stunned at this strange new creature before them.

Then, screaming, they raced toward him, instinctively intending to kill the intruder.

Timothy Linden did not have time to arm his weapons. He had time only to draw out the knife he had taken before the Saurians—all five of them—were upon him, screaming and lashing at him with their own weapons.

He struck. A stab, a slash, a quick chop of his free arm; a kick, another slash.

The Saurians did not know what had hit them. Seconds after their attack, all five were on the ground, either dead or wounded horribly.

Timothy Linden stepped back, regarded his deadly handiwork calmly.

It is the gift of Death from Allah himself!
the voice of Marcus Jashad crowed triumphantly.
Allah smiles again upon the cause of His Righteous Ones!

The Gift of Allah, thought Linden. Coming awake inside of him . . .

But why had the Saurians attacked him? Had they been instructed to do so by the others, if he escaped?

That must be it . . .

But what should he do now?

And his mind reached out. Questing . . .

And it found the answer . . . He felt the touch of the Alien Ones again, and knew the reason for his fear before.

Danger. There was terrible danger from them, he knew. He was not safe here in the camp, not safe from his fellow humans, not safe from the Saurians . . .

And not safe from the aliens who were just now entering the ship.

This was why he had readied himself, not totally understanding the reason. This was why he had taken the guns and the knife and the supplies.

He had to prepare himself . . .

He had to prepare himself in the wilderness . . .

And there the Voice of Allah would come to him, and there he would come to understand why he had been chosen for this duty . . .

And so Timothy Linden ran from the base camp into the primeval fields and forests, to hide and wait upon the whim of his Lord.