Stepping Stones (12 page)

I peered behind me, struck by the similarity of an outcrop guarding the beach in
the other direction
.  I glanced back and forth, c
omparing.  They were identical.

Is this another test?
I wondered.  With a momentary surge of hope, the thought occurred to me that maybe now
I would
actually have a chance to
do
something.

But what?

And if this
were
a test . . .
did
I really want to pass?

If I failed, I reasoned, perhaps I’d be rejected, saving mankind considerable grief and probably doing the aliens a favor as well.  If they expected humans to be well-mannered domestics, they were in for a
big
surprise. 
I’ve
eaten in enough greasy spoons throughout the galaxy to know that our race isn’t much when it comes to service.

On the other hand
, I thought,
maybe I’m supposed to fail.

After more of this, I
realized
I was getting nowhere.  With a shrug, I struck off down the
beach
.  I hadn’t gone more than a quarter mile when I heard something rustling in the jungle.  Something big.

It was paralleling my course, snapping branches in the dark green undergrowth as it
followed me
.  I picked up my pace, trying not to run.  A minute later I stopped again to listen.  Now I could make out the sound of its breathing—thick, heavy, guttural.

Sweat trickled down my forehead, stinging my eyes.  As I watched, a
thick
stand of plants parted before me.  Slowly, a snarl rumbling
deep
in its throat, a Vassorian tiger padded out onto the sand.

Vassorian tigers have long been extinct on their home world, but I
once
saw one in captivity.  It weighed over two thousand kilos and could devour a man in seconds, with room left over for dessert.  This one was even bigger.  Never taking my eyes from the huge cat, I backed into the ocean.  It crept forward, its platter-sized ears focusing on me like twin antennas.  When I reached knee-deep water, I saw the tiger’s hindquarters lower with a slight rocking motion.  It was about to charge.

I turned and ran.

I got in two good strides before the sandy bottom fell off
in
to deeper water.  Behind me I heard the cat crashing through the shallows.  I took a deep breath and dived.  A talon caught my calf as I went under.  I kicked for all I was worth, feeling a stab of pain as flesh ripped from my leg.

Somehow I got away.

I swam underwater for as long as I could.  When I finally burst gasping to the surface, the tiger had returned to shore.  It sat quietly, watching me tread water.  Although its cold yellow eyes studied me impassively, I could tell from the twitching of its tail that it was angry.  After a while it retreated into the jungle.

I stayed in the water for the rest of the day, berating myself for all the things I should have done
that morning
at first light.  Instead of remaining exposed on the beach, I
should
have
slipped
into the jungle and searched for a place to hide.  I
should
have found a weapon of some sort, too.  I should have done a lot of things.  But I didn’t.

Now what?

Later t
hat afternoon a school of tiny
fish discovered me and proceeded to nibble at the ragged flesh of my calf.  I had my hands full k
eeping them off.  A
lthough I worried that my blood might attract something larger, staying in the ocean seemed preferable to facing the tiger.

By the time the sun went down I was blue and shivering.  Warily, I made my way ashore.  No sign of the cat.  I stood at the water’s edge and listened.

Nothing.

The wind came up.  I felt cold and exposed
,
and
I
didn’t relish the idea of spending another night on the beach.  With feelings of misgiving, I crept toward the jungle, deciding my best course lay in finding a suitable tree whose branches might provide a haven from the dangers lurking in the dark. 
I had
almost made it to the jungle’s edge when I heard a low growl behind me.

Mindless terror gripped me.  I turned.  The tiger crouched between me and the water.

My prior escape cut off, I ran for the trees.

This time the tiger came in quickly.  It caught me before I’d gone a dozen steps.  Squirming beneath it, I tried to fend it off with my hands, its fur coarse and wiry beneath my fingers, its breath hot and fetid on my face.

It was too strong.

Talons raked my chest, tearing slabs of flesh from my ribs.  Snarling, the tiger took my head in its jaws.  Slowly, inexorably, my skull splitting like a melon between those merciless gleaming teeth, I felt my life slip away.

This concludes the final exam
.

I sat up.  I was back on the deck of the alien ship, somehow still alive and in one piece.  It had all been an illusion.  “How . . . how did you do that?” I stammered.

The (unintelligible) creates sensory input based on primal fears in your subconscious
.

“But it was so
real.
”

Accurate testing requires accurate input
.

“How does it work?” I asked, putting off what I knew I had to do next.

Surprisingly, they told me.  It took less than a second.  They just dumped it into my brain in one huge chunk.  Even now I’m not sure why they did it.  Maybe it was their idea of a joke, like when your kid asks how the holovid works and to get him off your back you tell him that frequency-modulated coherent light from solid-state emitters are phase-conjugated into three-dimensional standing waves, thus creating full-color visual images.  Understand?  No?  Well, go ask your mother.

Anyway, they told me.  It was too much
for me
to grasp then, but
it came in handy later, not to mention extremely profitable.  As I said,
I
have
a good memory
, and Axel can make just about anything work.  But that’s another story
.

“I want another test,” I said
, fighting a splitting headache that had resulted from the aliens’ data-dump into my cranium
.

A long pause.

WHY?

“Why?  You want to know why?” I shot back.  “I’ll tell you why.  None of your damn business, that’s why.  Just give me another test!”

To be truthful, I didn’t know
why myself. 
I
just
wanted to do it again.  As I said earlier, I’m as stubborn as they come, but anger was a big factor as well. 
They had
kidnapped me, subjected me to degrading tests,
even killed me inside their slimy slug thing, whatever they called it
.  But there was more to it than that.  I didn’t want to quit, not with the way things were.  It had nothing to do with saving humanity.  For all I knew, I was making things worse.
I didn’t care. 
I was mad. 
I couldn’t give up.  I
wouldn’t.

At last they answered.

Your request is granted
.

Along with their response, I detected something else. 
Anger?  Disappointment? 
I couldn’t tell. 
Whatever their reasons
, they gave me another test.  And another.

And another.

I died many deaths.  I was eaten by Thallasian spiders, flayed by Dogral whip-beetles, suffocated in Polaran quicksand.  I lost a game of R
ussian roulette with an android.
I even stopped a fusion meltdown on a jump-freighter, but got fried anyway when the radiation shields malfunctioned.  I always lost, but every time I came out
demanding
the same thing.  “I want another test!”

Eventually they refused.

“No way,” I insisted.  “Give me another test!”

Further testing will serve no purpose.  You have failed
.

“What?”

The purpose of the (unintelligible) is to determine whether a species can grasp the futility of resistance. 
 
From your testing, we conclude that humans lack the intelligence necessary to accept domination.

“Is that so?  Well, let me tell you something, assho—”

This exchange is terminated.

“. . .
running through all our files
, and I can’t do anything about it.”  Axle peered at me expectantly.  “What now?”

At first I was too shocked to speak.  I glanced around the bridge.  Everything looked the same.  I mean exactly the same.  According the ship’s chronometer, absolutely no
time h
ad passed while I’d been gone. 
“Have I been missing
for several watch cycles?” I asked shakily.

“Several watches?  Quit kidding around, Cap.  This is serious.  What do you want to do?”

I shrugged.  “Keep recording, I guess.”

“Right.  Hey, they’re leaving!”

We stared in silence as the alien ship abruptly flickered to an orbit just above the accretion disc. 
Then
it squeezed back into the black hole, apparently reversing the process by which it had
come
out.

“I don’t believe it,”
said
Axle, scratching his head in amazement as the glittering vessel disappeared.

“Yeah,” I said.  “And yo
u don’t know the half of it yet.
”

What Goes Up . . .

S
uccess at last!

Flushed with
excitement
, George Simpson leaned over his workbench, eager to repeat the experiment. 
Nervously,
he inserted
another
roller skate into copper coils, fighting to calm himself.  The first time
couldn’t
have been a fluke. 
He had
seen it with his own
two
eyes!

Quickly, George readied his invention for another attempt.  He worked meticulously, his eyes on the task before him, his mind on the money. 
What difference does it make if I don’t understand how it works?
he
told himself
.  The important thing
is
that it
will
make money.  A
lot
of money . . . assuming he could do it again.

“George?” his wife
called
down
from the kitchen above.  George glanced
guiltily
around the converted garage that served as his workshop, then continued
working
without answering.

“George!” his wife yelled again
.

“Yes,
Martha
.  What is it?” George finally responded, unable to mask the impatience in his voice.

“
Don’t you take that tone with me, George.  Dinner is
nearly ready.  Finish whatever you’re doing and come up.”

“Be there soon,” George lied.

Although George
realized
that Martha resented the hours he spent (wasted, as she put it) in his workshop, he
also knew
she
had some justification for her attitude.  Until now, excepting a considerable depletion of their savings, he hadn’t accomplished anything with his
experiments—a fact she invariably mentioned
every time they discussed money.  Scowling, George thought back to the
numerous occasions
she had
pointed out
that important scientific discoveries weren’t made by
someone like him
working
alone
in a garage
filled
with scav
enged electronic odds and ends.

Well, was she in for a surprise!

Carefully, George completed his preparations,
regretting
that
he hadn’t
kept better records during his previous trials.  When everything lay in readiness,
the controls set as close as he could remember to the previous trial,
he mentally crossed his fingers
and tripped the power switch.

The lights in the room dimmed as current surged through his device.  A low hum emanated from the workbench, slowly increasing to a
throaty
growl.  George stared at the roller skate.

At first nothing ha
ppened.  Abruptly, the skate lurched.  Then, slowly, it levitated
to the center of the
copper
coils.  George felt sweat gathering under his arms, a thrill of anticipation building in the pit of his stomach.  His eyes widened as a blue halo
gradually
surrounded the skate, sparks snapping from its rusty surface to the encircling
copper
coils.  An instant later the skate began to shimmer, flecks of greenish iridescence playing across its surface.

This is it,
George thought, barely able to contain his excitement.

The acrid smell of ozone became overpowering.  George held his breath.
  T
he
skate
began to vibrate—turning translucent, ghostlike, insubstantial.  Then, with a dazzling flash of light . . . it disappeared!

Exhilarated, George peered into the coils.  Not a trace of the skate remained.  It had vanished
completely, just as the
first skate
had minutes earlier.

After turning off the power, George crossed the garage and sat at a small table near the stairs. 
He
leaned back and propped his feet on the table’s
wooden
surface. 
It works!
he thought with a satisfied grin.  It really wo
rks!
  Now, what am I going to do with it?

One by one, George considered
possible
application
s
for his invention,
soon
arriving at the most obviou
s—trash disposal.  Throwaway
items were
everywhere, and
once used,
people needed a place to
throw them away
.  Perhaps
he had
solved the world’s garbage
problem
.  The ultimate
trash
disposer—
one in every home.

There
was
a catch, George
realized
uneasily. 
Where was the stuff going?  It couldn’t simply cease to exist.  It had to be reappearing somewhere, and that could pose a problem.  It certainly would
n’t do to have tons of garbage—
or worse yet, s
pent nuclear fuel and so forth—
reappearing in someone’s backyard.

Hold on,
George thought. 
What if he could get the objects that disappeared in his coils to reemerge someplace else—someplace
predictable
.  Then he would really
have something!

George knew what
he had to do:  more experiments!
  Whistling happily, he
began looking around the garage
for
something else
to place in his device.

*        *        *

In a region of
the galaxy
so distant from Earth that conventional measurement
lost all
meaning, the alien craft
hung in the darkness
of space
.

Though unarmed, the
Polem
, or Treaty Verification Reconship FS1142 as she was formally titled, rese
mbled most of the Federation’s
larg
er warships—a revolving G-ring with
three axis arms connecting the command module to the drive cylinder,
with two
jump-nacelles mounted a safe distance
from the crews’ quarters
.  Fast and agile and crammed with the most sophisticated sensing devices available, she was
designed
for one single duty:  reconnaissance.

Lieutenant Zorial sat at his console in the forward observation post, staring with horror into the viewing holocube.  He couldn’t believe his eye.  Nevertheless, there it was, the ominous red tendrils of the
Sigma
explosion expanding in the holodisplay.

Zorial’s mind recoiled from the consequences—a thousand years of peace with the Santori shattered in an instant!  To make matters worse, the violation had happened on
his
watch, in
his
sector. 
With
a looming sense of dread, he adjusted the viewfield, his tentacles moving rapidly over the control pegs.  The explosion expanded, filling the entire cube.  Zorial leaned closer.

The telltale signature of a Sigma detonation lay centered in the holocube, deadly and unmistakable, a Treaty violat
ion of the greatest magnitude. 
Damn the Santori,
Zorial
thought angrily.  They know
that
retaliation
on our part
is mandatory.  What are they trying to do, destroy us all?

Numb with shock, Zorial moved to the communications panel.  But after actuating the subspace transmitter, he hesitated. 
Why would the Santori jeopardize a peace that has existed for a millennium? h
e wondered.
 
The energy released by the unauthorized detonation had been minimal
—
probably not even
enough to nova a single star—and
it had taken
place in an uninhabited sector.

Could there be some mistake?
he wondered.
Perhaps calling Lexxa
was
in order. 
Postponing the transmission, Zorial opened a channel to the crews’ quarters.  “Captain Lexxa?”

“What?” Lexxa’s voice came back, thick with sleep.

“
You need to
get up here.  Something’s happened.”

A slight hesitation.  Then, “I’m on my way.  But I warn you, Zor, you’d better have a
damn
good reason for waking me.”

As he awaited the arrival of the
Polem’s
other crew member, Zo
rial referred to the code book and
began punching in the transmission ciphers. 
He had
just finished entering the notification protocol when he heard the
metal
deck outside resounding
with
Lexxa’s heavy tread.  As he watched his captain enter, Zorial realized from
the angle of
her distended palps
and the color of her abdominal segment
that she wasn’t in a good mood.  Not even close.

“By the gods, what’s so important that you have to—”  Lexxa’s words died on her mandibles as she spotted the glow in the holocube.  “Great Maker,” she hissed.  “They finally did it.”

“I’ve entered the notification codes,” Zorial informed her.  “They’re ready to send.”

“W
hat are you waiting for?  Do
it
immediately,” Lexxa ordered, glaring her disapproval.

Quickly, Zorial sent the scrambled message, alerting Federation headquarters of the violation.  Upon finishing, he realized that a technical state of war now existed with the Santori.  With a hollow feeling, he stepped back f
rom the communications console.  Lexxa
was still staring
into
the holocube, absorbed in the display. 
Guiltily,
Zorial noticed she hadn’t taken time to dress before coming to the observation deck.  She had on only boots, sidearm, and the short sleeping-tunic she’d worn to bed.  The satiny garment clung to her clean, strong limbs, barely coveri
ng the smoothness of her thoracic segment
and the seducti
vely dark chitin of her spiracle
.  Zorial looked away, thinking, not for the first time, that under different circumstances he and Lexxa might have been more than fellow officers.  “Captain Lexxa?” he said, forcing his mind back to the problem at hand.  “Something about
this is
bothering me.”

“Bothering you?” Lexxa snarled.  “You’re a master of understatement, Zor. 
Our race is
about to embark on the
bloodiest
conflict
in recorded history, and
instead of joining the glorious battle,
we’re stuck here on a reconship.  Your being male, I don’t expect you to understand, but it’s more than
‘
bothering
’
me
.  If I were stationed on my regular
ship assignment
in the fleet
right now, I could be targeting a retrocharge right down their slimy throats, or whatever you call
that
organ they eat with.”

“Gastropore.  But that’s not what I mean
, Captain
.  The Federation has maintained peace with the Santori for over fifty spawnings, right?”

“Correct.  Mainly because our enemies know
that
if they challenge us, we’ll nova their rotten planets straight to hell without a moment’s hesitation.”

“True.  But we’re not the only ones with Sigma weapons,” Zorial countered.  “The Santori have them, too.  Neither of us has ever dared use them for fear of reprisal, so why would—”

“What’s your point?”

Zorial lifted his antennae in a gesture of puzzlement.  “Just this.  A Treaty violation after all this time doesn’t make sense.”

“I disagree.  You know the Santori.”

“Granted, they’re aggressive, but why would they risk war for the sake of a single Sigma test, or whatever it is we’re seeing out there?  They must have know
n we would detect it.  If they
wanted a fight, why didn’t they just hit us with everything they’ve got?”

“I don’t know,” Lexxa
said
slowly.  “But
the
unauthorized detonation
out there
is real.  Our policy leaves no alternative but retaliation, and if that means war, so be it.”