Dragonstar Destiny (7 page)

“Expecting someone?” asked Mikaela, who had stiffened a bit in his arms at the sound of Kate’s voice.

“No,” he said softly. “Of course not.”

Mikaela turned away and moved quickly to the front flap of the tent, pulling it back to reveal the lithe figure of Kate Ennis.

“Good evening, Ms. Ennis,” said Mikaela with just a slightly perceptible tinge of sarcasm in her voice. “Please come in.”

Kate was tall and leggy, with shining dark hair that was a subtle blend of brunette and auburn highlights. Her face was angular, accented by large, glistening doe-eyes. She had a perfect media-smile, and even Mikaela had been known to admit that Kate projected a great image for NBC news. There was no denying that Phineas found her extremely attractive, although up to this point their other-than-professional relationship had progressed no further than the flirtatious smile, the double entendre, and the occasional, semiaccidental touch of the hand. Phineas knew he was entering dangerous and uncharted waters, but there was a thrill about it which kept him from shutting down the operation.

“Sorry to interrupt anything,” said Kate, “but I had a few things I wanted to check out with. you, Phineas.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” he said, gesturing Kate to a chair by the table. “Would you like some tea or coffee? We were just about to make some.”

Mikaela shot him a look which said:
Oh, were we, now?
Then she moved to the stove and prepared a pot of water.

“Coffee would be fine,” said Kate, taking a seat opposite Phineas.

“So what’s up, newslady?” He attempted to be light and casual, especially under the harsh examining light of Mikaela’s attention.

“Well, I was just contacted by Mishima Takamura,” said Kate. “I guess you’ve heard about the expedition he’s planning.”

Phineas nodded.

“He’s planning to take a band of Saurians along, did you know that?”

“No, I hadn’t heard,” said Phineas, looking over at Mikaela. “Did he mention any of that to the rest of the Council, my dear?”

Mikaela shook her head as she began pouring the water for coffee and tea. “No, nothing at all. But why does he want the Saurians along?”

Kate shrugged. “Something about engendering a ‘spirit of cooperation’ is what he said to me. He also thinks the Saurian Warriors would be a great advantage in case the team runs into trouble.”

“What?” said Phineas, only mildly surprised. “I’ve had a bunch of the warrior-caste working in salvage and reconstruction. Rough, brutish types. Rather difficult to keep in line, don’t you think?”

“Of course! That’s why he wants me to come along ...”

Phineas nodded. “Because you’ve been working with them in ... oh,
whatever
committee name they dreamed up, right?”

“Yes, the Cultural Exchange Committee,” said Kate.

Phineas smiled. He loved the officious names someone had conjured up to describe all the foofaraw that was going on. Because of her investigative and journalistic skills, Kate had been selected to work on the committee to try to establish better lanes of communication with the various biological “castes” among the Saurians. Phineas knew that Kate had been working with digital translators and several of the members of the priest-caste Saurians. Bridging cultural and communications barriers with the Merchants and Priests had been easier than with the Warriors and the Agrarian Workers.

And yet, in a relatively short time, Kate had made significant strides, enough to qualify her as an “authority” on Saurian culture—if there could
be
such an entity.

“And so ... let me guess,” said Phineas. “Takamura wants you along to act as an interface between the humans and the Saurian Warriors?”

Kate smiled and batted her long lashes in mock-dramatic fashion. “That’s right, and that’s why I thought maybe I should talk to you first.”

“Me? Whatever for?” Phineas tried to act surprised, but he was inwardly pleased that she had thought to seek his advice.

Mikaela served the mugs of coffee and tea, then took a seat next to Phineas. She sat very close and reached out to casually touch his forearm. The cat establishing territorial imperatives, thought Phineas.

Kate paused before replying. Then: “Because I trust your opinion, Phineas.”

“But
I
can’t tell you whether or not you should go along with them! You’ve got to decide for yourself, Kate.”

“Is it safe?” she asked, then sipped from her mug.

“Safe?” interjected Mikaela. “Is
anything
safe on the
Dragonstar?
I mean ...
really,
Kate.”

Kate Ennis seemed a bit embarrassed by the silliness of her question. She looked away from Mikaela without acknowledging what she had said. To Phineas, she said: “I don’t mean to sound silly, but after working with the warrior-caste, I’m
scared.
I just don’t seem to be getting through to them, and I can’t let myself
trust
them. They’re weird, Phineas!”

He smiled and nodded his head in a fatherly way. “I understand what you mean. To be honest, I never did much care for any of the Saurians—they
all
kind of give me the creeps. But I’ve had one of the Warriors’ leaders on my salvage team—we call him Visigoth because he’s such a damned brute! —and I don’t trust the son of a bitch any further than I can throw him.”

“That’s great advice, Great White Hunter,” said Mikaela. “You sound like the bad guy in one of the old Tarzan movies.”

Phineas shrugged. “Sorry, but that’s how I feel.” He looked at Kate. “My advice is simple: if you don’t want to feel trapped on a mission with any of the Warriors, then tell Dr. Takamura you can’t go,
that’s all.”

Kale seemed relieved and a smile gradually appeared on her face. She stood up and reached out to shake his hand. “Thank you, Phineas. Suddenly I don’t feel like a whiny baby about this.”

He shrugged. “Despite all the frigging committees, this is
still
a democratic process we’ve got going here. Nobody’s going to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

Kate nodded. “I’m glad you don’t think less of me because of the way I feel.” She turned toward the entrance, then paused to look back at him and Mikaela. “I’ll go tell Takamura I can’t make it. Thanks.”

“No problem,” said Phineas. “See you later, then.”

“Good night,” said Mikaela.

Kate said her good-byes and walked off into the darkening evening. Phineas returned to his seat and stretched out, gesturing for Mikaela to come back to his lap.

She stood for a moment eyeing him oddly.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“I wonder if she would be so afraid of going on that expedition if she knew
you
were planning to volunteer?”

Phineas laughed, “My God, I do believe the paleontologist is jealous of the journalist!”

“Jealousy has nothing to do with it, Phineas.”

He was still grinning at her. “Then what is it?”

“I can tell from she way she looks at you—that woman’s in love with you.” Mikaela spoke as though she were recording an observable phenomenon.

“That’s ridiculous!” he said, although he was inwardly flattered at the thought of such a possibility

“You might think so,” said Mikaela, “but just watch what happens when she finds out you’re going with Takamura ...”

I will!
thought Phineas, feeling like a mischievous school kid.
I will indeed!

IT WAS A
typical evening within the
Dragonstar.
Hanging in the zero-gravity center of the immense cylinder, the Illuminator—a 200-mile-long fusion-reactor kernel—began to cast off
its daytime brilliance, creating the perfect illusion of twilight. The close, humid atmosphere seemed a fright more bearable as the temperatures slowly dropped. It made Becky wonder if maybe she was finally growing accustomed to feeling sticky and always in need of a shower.

Riding in one of the only operable IASA vehicles, the trusty OTV, she and Mishima left the wide boulevard which flanked the Human Enclave in the Saurian city of Hakarrh. They entered a smaller pathway, which gradually snaked up to higher ground, toward the ruined Temple and its Potemkin steps. Beyond the squat architecture of the Saurian Priests’ headquarters lay the steel-grey wall which soared upward into the ever-present clouds at the end of the vessel’s interior.

The wall behind the Temple. The Saurians called it the End of the World, and it was certainly that. Beyond the wall lay the alien crew section, the control-section of the
Dragonstar
where Drs. Jakes and Takamura, and all the others in the IASA research team, had been carrying out their initial investigations. But when the ship prepared itself for the jump into hyperspace, it automatically sealed off the hatches to the control-section, and thus began Takamura’s latest mission.

They passed few Saurians in this part of the city. As evening drew on, there were a few lamplighters out riding ostrich-like dinosaurs from post to post, lighting the oil lamps, and only a few pedestrians. That was to be expected, thought Becky. They were entering the domain of the priest-caste, and it was forbidden territory to all other Saurian castes. She didn’t like being out on the Hakarrh streets after dark. There was something about the Saurians that would forever make her uncomfortable. It was not only their temporary insanity caused by the start-up radiation of the
Dragonstar’s
command systems which scared her ... but also their
coldness,
their lack of emotional bonding to each other as well as to their human allies.

As guilty and ashamed as it made her feel, she honestly believed she could never trust them as a group.

“The meeting went very well, don’t you think?” asked Mishima Takamura as they approached the cliff wall of pueblo-like dwellings carved into the rock. He drove the OTV past the end of the Temple steps, following a route which would take them directly to the base of the cliff-face dwellings.

“Yes,” said Rebecca Thalberg automatically, although her private assessment of the recently adjourned Ruling Council meeting was markedly less enthusiastic than his.

Joy Davison, the Chair of the Council, had expressed reservations about Mishima’s idea—as had his department head, Dr. Robert Jakes. However, Mikaela Lindstrom and Dennis Patrick, the remaining members of the Council, had not really expressed any negative opinions. Since Mishima was a member of the ruling board himself, his own vote tipped the Council’s decision. Maybe
that
was why he felt things went very well ...

Becky had no interest in the lines of power and the attendant politics which were being drawn up by the very formation of the Ruling Council. She found politics a thundering bore, arid the people who pursued its ramifications to be shallow fools. Not that Mishima was getting into the inherent politics of his position ... moreover, it seemed that he only liked the power because it gave him the chance to pursue his own private interests.

From what she had seen of Mishima, he did not seem to be an authoritarian type, getting his cookies off by bossing other people around. Rather, he seemed genuinely driven and fascinated like any good scientist should be. He was open and generally cheerful. His intelligence was ever present, shining out from behind his dark, almond-eyes. His Beatles haircut enhanced his “little boy” image even though he was taller than the average man.

She found herself liking him in spite of her unspoken, practically
unthought,
decision to call a moratorium on relationships, feelings, emotional entanglements, and all the baggage that went with it. Since Ian Coopersmith’s death several weeks ago, Becky had been trying to cope with the finality of it, the deep sense of loss, the anger and frustration, and the seeming pointlessness of ever allowing oneself to fall in love with
anyone.

And now she could tell that Dr. Takamura was definitely interested in her. Just what she needed right now ...

Of course Mishima couldn’t possibly know of any of this—and she had no intention of telling him or anyone else how she truly felt. Really, now, who
really
knew how they truly felt about everything? Here she was sounding like she was getting ready for the convent at the not so terribly old age of thirty-three. Looking over at him, he was grinning to himself, obviously pleased to have received the go-ahead to put together his expedition. He
was
like a little boy.

A silent chuckle passed through her mind. There wasn’t one man she’d ever met that did not, at some time or another, remind her of a little boy. Maybe there was a part of
all
of them which was incapable of growing up. If that was true, then she envied them at least that part of their nature.

A loud groaning sound interrupted her from her thoughts. It was a low-frequency howl not born in the throat of any living creature.

The groaning increased in intensity, like the straining sound of wood rafters being twisted away from their support beams in an old house. The sounds echoed and rolled across the landscape like thunder, setting up vibrating resonances beneath their feet. Then just as abruptly, there was silence once again.

“My God, what was
that?”
said Becky.

Takamura had maneuvered the OTV to a halt at the onset of the sounds, and was listening with his head slightly tilted.

“I’m not certain,” he said. “At first I thought it might be the engines! Changing their status in some way—accelerating, braking, whatever ...”

“But now you don’t think so?”

Mishima shook his head. “No, that was a
different
sound. This was like a ... a
groan,
a crying out of pain, if you will allow me the metaphor. Do you understand what I am trying to say?”

Becky smiled at his attempt to describe what they had heard. And she nodded because she, too, had felt a straining, almost painful quality in the sound. “Yes, I do,” she said after a pause.

“Something is putting structural pressure, or some other kind of stress, on the hull,” said Mishima. “That was the sound of metal trying to do things it is not intended to do—such as stretch and bend.”

He looked up into the cloudy sky. as if to penetrate the murky clouds and coming darkness.

“Any good ideas?” asked Becky with a tinge of childish hope in her voice. Despite her close association with real, “hard” scientists over the years, Becky, like most people, still half-believed that
real
scientists could come up with the answers to just about any goddamned question.

Mishima shrugged. “It could be any number of things. Don’t forget, this ship is very, very old—two hundred million years at the outset, maybe much older. Nothing lasts forever, so maybe it is finally beginning to wear out.”

“Great timing,” she said. “Just when it decides to take us all for a ride across the galactic rim, it also decides to start falling apart ...!”

“Now, don’t start quoting me! The last thing we need right now is a panic situation.”

Becky shook her head and grinned. “We already
have
a panic situation ... We’re just getting used to it, that’s all.”

Mishima laughed in spite of himself, then tried to assume a more serious countenance. “My expedition through the bulkhead area might be more fortunate than we could have imagined.”

“What do you mean?”

“If the superstructure of the hull is indeed undergoing severe stress, we can run some tests to check it out.”

Becky nodded but did not respond, and Mishima fired up the vehicle again. They approached the base of the cliff dwellings called the Priests’ Rookery and climbed down to the red-clay soil. Walking to the face of the rock wall, they entered a staircase which had long ago been cut into the stone. Like an immense fire escape, the staircase scaled the cliff, switching back and forth as it angled from landing to landing, level to level. At each landing, a stone catwalk stretched in both directions, allowing access to hollowed-out interiors in the cliff. These were the dwellings of the priest-caste, the biologically superior subspecies of the Saurians. The higher a priest lived in the Rookery, the higher his social and biological status was perceived by his peers.

Becky and Mishima were climbing to the highest level to see Thesaurus, one of the oldest, wisest members of his race.

She remembered first encountering Thesaurus with Ian Coopersmith, back when they had first discovered the Saurian Preserve by simply stumbling out of the jungle and seeing the Barrier. It was the great wall which protected this race of evolved dinosaurs from their more primitive relatives, the wall which Ian eventually died protecting.

Mishima had wanted to enlist the aid of Thesaurus in handpicking a detachment of Saurian Warriors for the expedition. Since Becky was probably the closest human to the old priest, she had agreed to accompany him for an audience.

“I must be getting old,” said Mishima as they approached the second-to-the-last landing. “This is going to kill me.”

“We’re almost there,” she said.

“Do you think he’ll give us any static?” asked Mishima,

“I don’t think so. He’s very intelligent. Nobody wants to give any of the Saurians credit because of the way some of the other castes act, and the way they’re treated, but you’ll see.”

“I hope so.”

They reached the final landing, more than four hundred meters from the surface. Becky looked over the railing and stepped back as a wave of vertigo crashed over her. Heights usually did not affect her. Maybe it was just her nerves ...

Thesaurus was awaiting them as they approached the entrance to his dwelling. He was tall and thin, almost fragile in appearance, and his smooth greenish-brown skin was mottled from age and a bout of radiation poisoning. Like all Saurians, his long neck flowed upward from his shoulders to support a reptilian/bird like skull. But his stereoscopic eyes, high forehead, and large brain case were all indicators of sentience. He wore the loosely flowing, bright lemon-yellow robes of the priest-caste, cinctured by a thin waist-high belt.

He also wore a digital translator which allowed Saurians and humans to communicate. Their language sounded like a series of clicks, barks, and hisses, which were not easily produced by the human throat and tongue. English was equally impossible for the Saurians, and the digital translator would forever be one of the primary ways of the two species to exchange ideas.

The only hang-up with the translating devices was the inherent delay in all interspecies conversations. But, thought Becky, you could get used to just about anything, and after a while, you didn’t even notice the delay—it became part of the whole ritual.

“Greetings, my Rebecca,” said Thesaurus, holding out both hands to touch her own.

“Hello, Thesaurus. This is one of our scientists, Dr. Takamura. He is here to seek your advice.”

The Saurian Priest took Mishima’s hand and welcomed him.

As Becky watched the two of them, she was reminded of how Ian had first tried to talk with Thesaurus, how the always-witty Englishman had given the Priest his funny name as a joke and how it had simply “stuck.” It occurred to her that she’d never actually learned the Priest’s “real” name ...

“Whatever I can do to help,” said Thesaurus. “Please come in and tell me.”

They entered the spacious front room, which was filled with odd-shaped pieces of furniture, shelves, and cabinets. The walls were decorated with various woven tapestries and macramé-like “hangings.” Becky also noticed ordinary IASA items such as a canteen, a calculator, a cam-corder, even a jumpsuit insignia. These were also placed on display proudly. It was a warm room, even in its alienness, radiant with the personality of Thesaurus.

Calmly, but with the deliberate manner of a philosopher, Thesaurus began their conversation with a question about the groaning sounds just heard. Mishima explained his theories about their possible origin, and watched the old Priest as he accepted the information in silence. Becky imagined the concern which must have filled him, but the Saurian did not allow it to manifest itself.

Briefly then, Takamura outlined his planned expedition, his intentions, and his wish to have a detachment of Saurian Warriors included in the party.