The Stainless Steel Rat eBook Collection (85 page)

I smiled and let the silence stretch before I spoke.

“The Commander—or Alphamega—which name do you prefer? Since you are both of them rolled into one.”

“I
can kill you—quite quickly,” The Commander said coldly and calmly. But at the same time he was stubbing and crunching his cigar out in a most agitated manner.

‘Temper, temper,” I said. “Since you appear to be in charge of both sides in this internal conflict, and you obviously got us here for a reason—why don’t you just tell us all about it?”

He was scowling now, angry and dangerous.
As my mother always said—why was her memory still popping up?—you catch more porcuswine with honey than you do with vinegar. Gently, gently.

“Please, Commander,” I pleaded most unctuously, “we’re on your side, even when no one else is. You know exactly what you are doing—while none of your troops has the slightest idea what is happening. Not only are you in charge here, but it looks as though
you have managed a mild insurrection on your own terms. You have done an incredible job that no one else was capable of doing. We can help you—if you will let us.”

The scowl faded. Floyd followed my lead, smiled and nodded agreement and said nothing; another cigar was produced and lit. The smoke rose up and the smoker nodded beneficently.

“You are right of course, Jim. The responsibility has
been great, the pressure continuous. And I am surrounded by morons—
stulteguloj, kretenoj!
Centuries of interbreeding and hiding underground has done little to improve their brain capacity.
I am amazed that I alone have the intelligence to see this. I’m as different from them as if I had been born on a different planet, the child of superior parents.”

This was sounding familiar. There has never
been a strongman, dictator, military ruler, who did not believe that he somehow came from superior stock.

“You are different, sir,” Floyd said, almost humbly. “I knew that as soon as you spoke.”

We had both obviously read the same textbooks. Though I thought he was spreading it on rather thickly. I was wrong.

“You could see that? The difference is obvious I suppose, to someone from Outside.
It hasn’t been easy, I tell you. In the beginning I even tried to talk to the senior officers, explain some of the problems and suggest solutions. I could have had more communication talking to a wall. Not that the younger ones are any better. Though they are restless, give them that. When you get down to it there isn’t much joy in just plain surviving. In the beginning maybe, it must have been a
challenge then. But after a couple of centuries the pleasures begin to wear pretty thin.”

“Was it the restlessness of the younger ones that gave you the idea to supply a leader for them to follow?” I asked.

“Not at first. But I began to see that the young were losing respect for the old. About the only people they looked up to were the scientists. From their point of view the scientists were
the only ones who at least appeared to be doing new and important things. That’s when I hit on the Alphamega role. They think that I am one of the younger scientists. A rebel who is unable to make any progress against the old ideas, the familiar ways—therefore I have been forced to enlist others of like age and mind.”

“My arms are getting stiff,” Floyd said, smiling. “You wouldn’t mind taking
off these clamps for a bit?”

“I would. I want you two just where you are.”

Mercurial, our friend. All warmth gone in an instant, he dragged so hard on the cigar that it crackled and sparked. “We Survivalists watch events pretty closely—all over this planet. With a surveillance network set up before anyone else arrived. Amplified and spread ever since. Not a bird craps, not a polpettone fruit
falls that we don’t know about. That
I
don’t know about. Because I watch the watchers. I watched and saw that a lot of energy and plenty of high-powered work was going into recovering that artifact. There is something very important about it—and I want to know just what. I had a squad steal it and destroy the building, hide their tracks. It was impossible to follow them. Yet you did. I want to
know how you did that too. So talk—and talk fast.”

“My pleasure,” I said. “My friend here knows nothing about the artifact. But I do. I am the one who found it first, then tracked it and followed it here. I am the only one who can tell you how it operates—and what incredible things it can do. If you can take me to it I will be happy to show you how it works.”

“That is more like it. You will
come with me. Your associate remains here as a guarantee—don’t you agree?” He stood and buckled on a large and offensive-looking sidearm.

“Of course. Sorry about that, Floyd,” I said as I turned my head to face him. Winking with my left eye, the one our captor couldn’t see. “I know that you would come after me and help me if you could. But you can’t. So stay here and you will be safe. You have
the word of James Fido diGriz on that.”

“I’ll be okay, Jim. Look after yourself.”

I only hoped that this mixture of innuendo, hints and suggestions had delivered my message to him. I could only cross mental fingers and hope. The door opened and there was a hiss, rumble and clank behind me as my bonds snapped open. I rubbed my stiff arms and stood up slowly and carefully. The Killerbot blinked
baleful little orange eyes at me and waved a smoke-stained flamethrower in the direction of the door. I followed
Commander Alphamega out, leaving Floyd prisoner in the chair. Not for long, I hoped, if Fido-Aida had understood my suggestions.

We walked side by side down the wide hall with its framed portraits of heroes. My companion smiled warmly in my direction. Pulling his gun a bit out of the
holster at the same time, then letting it slide back.

“You do understand that if you breathe one word about our conversation you will be no more than a grease spot on the floor?”

“Completely aware, thank you. Absolute silence on that topic, yes, sir. I will look at the artifact and explain its operation. Nothing more.”

Maybe I was smiling on the outside—but I was pretty gloomy on the inside.
Jim, you are getting yourself in deeper than a porcuswine in a mudhole. A depressing thought—and a true one. But I really had no choice.

It was quite a long walk and I was getting tired again. When all this was over—it were ever over—I promised myself a nice long holiday. Head up, Jim! Think positive and get ready to improvise.

A last door opened and we were in what was obviously a laboratory.
Complete with control boards, power cables, bubbling retorts and aged scientists in white smocks. There was a lot of loyal fist-smacking on chests when the leader appeared. Salutes that he returned with the merest tap of his own loosely clenched fist. They moved respectfully back to give us access to a lab bench. On it, now sprouting wires and connections to the surrounding test gear, was the alien
artifact. I clapped my brow and staggered.

“What are you cretins doing with the cagleator!” I shouted. “We are all dead if you have actuated it!”

“No, no—not that!” an elderly scientist cackled. Then shut up and looked fearfully at the Commander who sneered in return.

“You are all morons. Now tell this Outsider what you have done,” he ordered. “He is the one who knows what the device can do.”

“Thank you, thank you! Of course, as you have ordered.” The wrinkly turned back to me with shaking hands and pointed a quavering finger. “We have only X-rayed the device and charted the circuitry. Very complex, as you know. There was, however …” he began to sweat, looking about unhappily, “a reaction of some kind when we attempted to test the circuitry.”

“A reaction? If you have made a mistake
the world has just ended! Show me.”

“No, not a big reaction. Just that it absorbed electricity from our test circuit. We were not aware of this at first—and we instantly terminated the test when we saw what was happening.”

“And just
what
did you see happening?” The Commander asked, voice like a file on rough steel.

“That, sir, we saw that. A cover of some kind fell away disclosing this recess.
And the lights. That is all. Just lights …”

Fascinated, we all leaned forward to look. Yes, there was the recess. And inside it there were four little blobs of light. Green, red, orange and white.

“What is the significance of this?” my inquisitor asked, fingers strumming on the gunbutt.

“Nothing important,” I said, stifling a yawn at the unimportance of it all. “The test circuitry is simply
testing the circuits of your test circuitry.”

I poked out a casual finger towards the glowing lights and found the barrel of his weapon grinding into my side.

“That sounds like absolute waffle to me. The truth,
now,
or you are dead.”

There are seconds that sometimes appear to stretch for a length of time bordering on eternity. This was one of those
occasions. The Commander glared at me. I tried
to look innocent. The scientists, slack-jawed, looked at him. The Killerbot waited in the doorway and clanked to itself, hissing steam and probably wishing that it was killing something. Time stood still and eternity hovered close by.

I had very few options open.

Like none.

“The truth is …” I said. And could not go on. What could I possibly say that would impress this maniac in any way? At
this moment there was a great explosion and pieces of Killerbot clanked and rattled in through the door.

As you might imagine this really did draw everyone’s attention. As did the voice that rang out an instant later.

“Jim—drop!”

And there was Floyd at the open door, brandishing an impressive weapon of some kind. Fido has done its job and freed him. He had polished off the Killerbot and was
now taking the action from there.

The Commander swung his weapon around, raised it, ready to fire.

I did not drop as instructed because I was possessed by a hallucinatory moment of madness. I had been pushed around too much of late and suddenly, overwhelmingly, felt like doing a little pushing back.

The lights in the artifact glowed their welcome and my finger punched out in their direction.

To do what?

To touch one of the beckoning colored lights, of course. Which one?

What color meant what to the ancient aliens who had built this thing?

I had no idea.

But green had always meant
go
to me.

Cackling hysterically I stabbed down on the green light …

A
pparently nothing happened. I pulled my finger back and looked at the lights. Then at The Commander and his drawn gun, wondering why he hadn’t used it.

Then looked at him again. And saw that he wasn’t moving. I mean just not moving in the slightest. I mean like paralyzed. Petrified. Glassy-eyed and frozen.

As was everyone else in the room. Floyd stood in the doorway, gun raised and
mouth open in an endless shout. Behind him, for the first time, I noticed an unmoving Fido.

The world was a freeze-frame and I was the only one not trapped in it. I was surrounded by people stopped in the act of speaking, walking, moving. Off-balance, hands raised, mouths gaping. Now stilled, silent—dead?

I started towards The Commander, to relieve him of his gun—saw that his finger was tight
on the trigger! But with each step I felt the air resisting my movement, growing firm, then more solid until it was like walking into an unyielding wall. Nor could I breathe—the air was a thick liquid that I could not force into my lungs.

Panic grew and grabbed me—then died away just as quickly when I stepped back. I felt normal again. Air was air and I breathed in and out quite nicely.

“Put
the mind in gear, Jim!” I shouted at myself, my words loud in the surrounding silence. “Something is happening—but what? Something happened after you touched the green light. Something to do with the artifact.”

I stared at it. Tapped it with my knuckles. Groped about for inspiration. Found it.

“Tachyons! This thing emits them—we know that because that is how Aida tracked it in the first place.
Tachyons—the units of time …”

The device was now functioning—I had turned it on when I had pressed the light. Green for go. Go where?

Stasis or speed. Either I had been speeded up or the world had slowed down. Or how could I tell the difference? From my point of view everything seemed to have slowed and stopped. The artifact had done something, projected a temporal field or stopped the motion
of molecules. Or had created an occurrence that froze the surrounding world in a single moment of time. Time had come to a stop everywhere that I could see—except in the close vicinity of the device. I moved even closer and patted it.

“Good little time machine. Time mover, slower, halter, stopper—whatever you are. Neat trick. But what do I do next?”

It chose not to answer me. Nor did I expect
it to. This was my problem now and I had to force myself to take the time to think it out. For the moment I had all the time I needed. Though eventually I would have to do something. And that something would probably mean touching another one of the colored buttons. Either that or I could stand looking dumbly at the device while I quietly died of thirst or starvation or whatever.

But which light?

Green had been obvious enough—even more obvious by hindsight. And the decision had been made at a moment of life and death. Now I was not so sure. I reached out, then dropped my hand. With plenty of time to decide I had become the master of indecision. Green had meant go, turn on, get started. Did red mean off, stop? Maybe. But what about white and orange?

“Not an easy one, Jimmy boy?” I said
in what I hoped was a jocular voice—which came out very mournful and doom-laden. I wrung my hands together with indecision. Then stopped and looked at them as though I might see some answer printed on my fingers. All I saw was dirt under the nails.

“You have got to do it sooner or later—so do it sooner before your nerve fails completely,” I told myself. Reached out a finger—drew it away. It looked
like my nerve had indeed failed me completely.