Ghost Legion (35 page)

Even now, years after the hormone-based disease had been isolated and
conquered, with the male population thriving, the people of Ceres and
its surrounding systems retained their ma-triarchal culture and their
worship of the Goddess. Men as well as women served Her; the priests
practicing their own rites and ceremonies. Young boys as well as
young girls were required to give a year of their lives to the
Goddess, learning to respect life and the land that gave it, both of
which were the Goddess's special province. Women were held in high
esteem in the society; the crime of rape was practically unknown.

But there was darkness in the past, arising from the early bad times
when society was in chaos, the women fighting among themselves to
propagate their race. The few fertile men who survived became
valuable commodities, a source of wealth and power to the women who
owned them. A wife would share her husband and his seed with other
women—for a price.

But if the husband decided to indulge in a little private pleasure on
the side—spent without being paid, as the saying went—his
wife was entitled to remuneration. The price was often paid in blood,
the injured wife having the legal right to kill her rival.

The custom belonged to the history books now. Most people on Ceres
would be shocked to hear of the commission of such a barbarous act.
But it was a part of their heritage and, knowing and respecting their
past as they did, they would most likely (however reluctantly)
approve the deed.

DiLuna knew this, and so did Astarte. The realization of how easy it
would be to have her rival put out of the way appalled her. That—and
the temptation to do so.

She entered the chapel. Several novices, young girls, were placing
fresh garlands of flowers and fruit at the feet of the statue of the
Goddess. They bowed in awed reverence to the High Priestess. Urged by
the duckings and whispered scoldings of their priestess overseer,
they blushingly hastened to leave the chapel.

When they were gone, Astarte made the customary offerings at the
altar, then knelt at the Goddess's feet. This statue was ancient, the
oldest in all of Ceres, dating back to the very beginning of the
religion. It portrayed the Goddess in her mothering, nurturing form;
the warrior image would come later. The perfume of the freshly cut
flowers and the fragrance of the fruit mingled with the sweet smell
of incense.

Astarte took time to rearrange one of the garlands. Nervous, childish
hands had dropped it in the wrong place. Remembering a time when she
had been one of those young girls, remem-bering how she had loved and
adored this statue which, to her, had been the only true aspect of
the Goddess, Astarte sighed. She had learned a lot since then.

"What am I to do, Blessed Lady?" Astarte prayed aloud. She
was not afraid of being overheard here; not even her mother's spies
would dare commit such sacrilege. "I could return to my husband.
It would mean a bitter argument with my mother. She could not prevent
my leaving, but she would certainly make it difficult, keep me here
as long as possible.

But going back to Dion now would avail me little. The damage has been
done. He would never believe that I was not in on this plot with my
mother. He would never trust me, never respect me, and I could not
blame him. And if anything were to happen to this woman he loves, he
would accuse me. And he would hate me for it—always."

Shivering, Astarte lifted one of the flowers, smoothed its petals. "I
see your guiding hand in this, Blessed Lady. I know my mother. She
was planning to murder this woman without my knowledge. I would have
never discovered her plot if you had not brought me here. I will not
fail you, Holy Mother. I will not fail my husband ... or myself."

Rising to her feet, Astarte made a deep reverence to the statue,
whose eyes gleamed warm and approving in the flickering altar light.
"My way is clear, Holy Mother. Grant me strength."

She left, heading for her own private quarters in the temple complex.
Due to the "solar disturbance," Astarte would not be able
to communicate with the Glitter Palace, but she guessed it would be
possible to transmit messages to other, ordinary places in the
galaxy.

On her way to her own private communications center, the queen did,
for her, an unusual thing. She stopped to pay homage—with a
prayer and a gift of a golden dagger with a jeweled hilt—to the
statue of the Warrior Goddess, who reigned over a small, dark chapel
of her own.

The world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire"

The lone spaceplane flew upon its strange journey, heading
deliberately for a part of space in which no life existed. A part of
space that was, according to record, uninhabitable, unsuited for the
maintenance of human life, one that had never even nurtured alien
life.

The spaceplane itself was unprepossessing in appearance, being one of
those simple, cheaply but well-made volksrockets valued by traveling
salesman, rock-star groupies, and missionaries. This particular
spaceplane had obviously, from its religious markings, been used by a
missionary of the Order of Adamant in the early, pre-Revolution days.
It was unarmed, of course, and was badly in need of exterior
maintenance, having been resurrected from a wayside combination space
museum and petting zoo.

It had taken seventy-two hours for Sagan to locate the plane, on
Omega 11, make necessary repairs, and refit it with the special and
complex instruments delivered by courier from Admiral Dixter. Sagan
had not slept those seventy-two hours. He was impelled by an urgency
that had no tangible source, but was like a nagging tug at his
sleeve, a foot tapping impatiently.

I am waiting for you, a voice seemed to say, but I will not wait
long.

Sagan had worked in solitude, careful not to attract the attention of
Omega's inhabitants. He had put away the clergyman's habit and
vestments, which might have excited comment. Dressed in military
fatigues purchased from an army surplus store, he looked like any
other aging spacer, who had taken it into his head to build a rocket
ship in his garage. Omega 11 was a middle-class suburban planet,
circling a much larger more important planet—Omega 12—and
its people were not inclined to be overly curious. A group of
neighborhood chil-dren, lining up in a vacant lot to watch the
volksrocket being towed to the spacesport, had been Sagan's only
audience.

He traveled hyperspace to as near Vallombrosa as the Lanes would take
him, left them at the same point the explorer Garth Pantha had left
them on his journey. Sagan had entered Pantha's old log (part of the
courier's delivery from Admiral Dixter) into the spaceplane's
computer. It was a voice log, deliberately recorded by Pantha for
playback on his own vidshow. Sagan listened to the entire log often;
the gravelly voice with the honey drawl became a familiar companion
on the long trip, as familiar to him as the notes of Bach's Concerto
No. 2 in F, one of the several "Brandenburg Concertos" he
had brought to fill the silence that was now so terribly silent.

He listened to Pantha's narrative with the ear of one who not only
enjoyed music but who subconsciously analyzed musical cadences and
intricate patterns. Hearing the log over and over again, Sagan was
interested to note that, at one point in the narrative, Pantha's
discourse grated on the ear, as if the conductor and entire orchestra
had skipped a measure.

"Computer, analyze voice patterns," Sagan commanded.
"Specifically, was this section of the voice log data entered at
the same time as the rest of the log?"

The computer's response was negative. The original log entry had been
erased and this entry substituted. The splicing had been expertly
done. Sagan himself had not noticed it at first. Constant repetition,
familiarization with the rhythms and patterns of Pantha's speech, and
the Warlord's own finely tuned musical ear had caught the slight
discrepancy.

The original log entry concerning Vallombrosa had been altered by
Pantha, presumably at a later date. He had entered his initial
discovery of Vallombrosa and information concerning it in his log;
then he had, for some reason, altered the log.

Sagan sat back in the pilot's chair, leaned his elbows on the
armrests, placed his fingertips together, and gazed out over them at
tiny specks, like glittering dust, that were as Vallombrosa's suns.

"Why did you alter it? What did you discover that you decided to
keep hidden? Or perhaps not completely hidden. Perhaps you gave us a
clue. The name. Vallombrosa. Vale of Shades. Valley of Ghosts. You
told us that much—a clever little joke for your own private
amusement."

He pondered on the problem long, considering this, discarding that.
One of the first things he threw out was the information gathered
from the unmanned space probes. That information was false, he
decided, although how it had been altered, who or what had found the
means to tamper with the probes without revealing themselves to the
probes was a fascinating problem. At length he gave up trying to
solve it and went to bed. He would have answers tomorrow, for he
would, by his calculations, be near enough to the planet to take his
own readings—unless something decided to tamper with him.

The next day, something did.

His first indication of the strange presence came moments before he
would reach the point where his instruments could begin long-range
scanning of the planet. He was standing in the small galley, brewing
a pot of oolong tea (a luxury he had denied himself during his years
at the abbey) when he experienced a most remarkable and unusual
sensation.

He felt compressed, as if each bone and muscle in his body were being
compacted, as if his limbs were now made of lead, as if every gram of
body weight was suddenly equivalent to a kilogram. The sensation
passed immediately, almost before his brain could register it, and he
might have ignored it except that there was an odd deja vu quality
about it, as if it had happened to him before.

At almost precisely the same instant, sensor alarms sounded. He
looked swiftly about the interior of the small spaceplane. Movement
caught his eye—the breviary lying on his nightstand rose into
the air, then fell back down. The book had moved only the barest
fraction of a centimeter, but the book had certainly moved.

Forgetting the tea, Sagan advanced to the console, to eagerly examine
the instruments, which were not standard equipment on a volksrocket.
Whatever had been in his plane was now apparently gone. All
instrument readings—from motion detectors to heat sensors—were
back to normal. But there
had
been something on board. It had
left its trace. He began to compare the data with the readings taken
from the security devices guarding the dwelling place of the late
Snaga Ohme.

Sagan studied again Xris's vid report (compliments of Dixter), and he
understood why the odd feeling of being compressed had seemed
familiar to him. It
had
happened before— only not to
him. He came to that part of Xris's report, played it back.

"Now, that's another strange thing, boss," the cyborg was
saying. "The guards didn't see or hear anything, but one of them
reported
feeling
something. About a split second before the
alarm went off. She said she felt as if she'd been shoved into a
compression chamber. The feeling passed immediately. She shows no
physical damage, no chemical alteration. No increase in radiation
level, no aftereffects. But notice where she was standing, boss."

According to Dixter's files, the guard had been standing right in the
path the "ghosts" had taken to enter the sealed vault.
Sagan reran the report, time and again, matched it with his own
instrument readings.

Xris: "The first we know we're being invaded, the motion
detectors inside the house start registering movement. Like you see
there."

Sagan's own motion detectors had picked up movement inside the
spaceplane.

Xris: "A drop in barometric pressure—in certain areas
only— and a corresponding movement of the air in places where
no air should be moving."

Sagan's instruments registered the same.

Xris: "The thing moved too damn fast. It made it safely to the
house, slid right through a fortified exterior wall that could
withstand a direct hit from a lascannon and not buckle. Nothing
stopped it. Nothing even phased it, apparently."

It had passed through the hull of a spaceplane—not a plane
intended for combat, admittedly, but one meant to withstand the
rigors of space travel.

Xris: ". . . We registered an increase in the radiation level
around the vault. Not much. But enough to make us suspicious,
especially tracing the path the thing took. We examined the vault's
superstructure. There'd been an alteration in the metal itself, a
chemical change, enough to generate radioactivity. And only in that
one place, directly in line with the path."

Sagan examined the plane's superstructure, the console's, the
nightstand on which the breviary rested. An increase in
radioactivity.

Xris: "The bomb was moved."

Dixter: "Moved?"

Xris: "Jostled, handled. Not much—a fraction of a fraction
of a centimeter before it vanished. But enough to set off the alarm."

And the book had moved. Another man might have doubted his own
senses, told himself he was seeing things, but Sagan had no such
self-doubts. He had trained himself to be observant, had trained
himself to trust those observations once he'd analyzed them. He knew
he hadn't been seeing things. Ghostly hands had touched that book.
The same ghostly hands that had touched the fake bomb.

The same ghostly hands that had, apparently, touched him. He was
beginning to get a faint glimmer of what might have happened to the
space probes.