Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail

EPILOGUE

He came out of it slowly, and shivered a bit as he lifted the probes from his head.

“That was most unpleasant,” the computer said.

He chuckled. “Well, God bless Dumonia, bless his devious hide. We might get something yet.”

“You seem remarkably fit for one who just underwent a wrenching defeat, faced his worst fear, and stared at mental savagery. Better, in fact, than you came out of the last three. I fear for your sanity.”

“You needn’t,” he assured the computer. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. I have to argue with you, though, on the failure. We’ve finally met our aliens, gotten their names, and confirmed some of my wildest and least certain deductions.”

“Then you have solved the enigma?”

“I think so. Morah’s comments still worry me. I still have that gaping feeling, not that I’m wrong, but that I’ve missed something. That was confirmed by Ypsir’s own attitudes just now.”

“But we never saw Ypsir.”

“We didn’t have to. But he’s a slick old greasy bastard, an old Confederacy politician, remember, and here he was about to make a recording that he intended to flaunt to the Confederacy. That’s confidence. You don’t flaunt something like that if you expect to get into a losing war soon. Yet he knows the relative strength and power of the Confederacy military. He is depraved, vicious, and almost inhuman, but he’s not stupid. Even with two of the Four Lords gone and the scheme blown wide open—they knew about us, note—he still expects to win. Why? Unless our fundamental assumption about these aliens, these Altavar, are wrong.”

“You think there will be a war, then?”

“I’m almost positive. Actually, it’s pretty odd, but the best chance of avoiding war was the man who doesn’t fit, Marek Kreegan. I wish now he had lived instead of this slime ball Ypsir.”

“I do not understand. He was a traitor.”

“He remains the one who doesn’t fit. Look at the Four Lords. One is a classic gangster, a master hoodlum, and the other two were former politicians so corrupt they crawled. And then there’s Kreegan. What the hell was he really doing there? And how did he come to be accepted as an equal Lord by the other three? Remember, we just learned that the other Lords actually deposed Ypsir’s predecessor because they found him too much the reformer and not really corrupt enough to share in the running of their criminal empire. Everybody keeps going back to Kreegan, too—the only man who wasn’t shown corrupt, and who they all seemed to depend upon even though they had no reason to. Not only did he not come from the criminal class—he was self-exiled, remember—but Lilith has the least to offer the hidden war. Yet there he is, at the forefront, the leader.”

“He did not seem admirable to me.”

He chuckled. “Maybe not, but he sure reminded me of me, and vice versa. I look at Kreegan and I see a man on a mission, a very long and complex mission, not a corrupt criminal.”

“There is no record he was on a mission.”

“Not for us. Well, maybe for us—but not officially. I think Kreegan, somewhere, on some other mission, stumbled on the aliens. I don’t know how, and I doubt if we ever will, but he found out what was going on years before we knew. Decades, perhaps, since there’s some evidence those aliens have been here all along.”

“Would it not have been more effective to report this information?” the computer asked.

“Report it? With what? He probably had no physical evidence. The Confederacy only believed it when they couldn’t avoid the truth, and even now they tread softly and slowly through the Warden Diamond rather than hitting hard and fast when the evidence that this is the heart of the conspiracy is right at hand. They would have declared Kreegan insane and destroyed him or sent him to the Diamond anyway. And so he played his role to the hilt, worked hard for twenty years—twenty years!—and finally became Lord of Lilith so he could take control of events. I think we killed the greatest Confederacy agent in human history before his plans came out”

“You think he was setting the aliens up for the kill, then?”

“Oh, no. If anything, I think he was totally committed to his covert war against the Confederacy, using those damned robots. He preferred a weakened, shaky, off-balance Confederacy to an actual war. That’s just what he was trying to do, in fact. I’d bet on it. And that fits in with Ypsir and Morah. I think these Altavar are stronger than we dreamed. I mink Kreegan assessed them as the probable victors in an all-out war, with huge masses of humanity killed. Sure! It fits! He had to choose between a covert war that would dismember the Confederacy or an all-out interstellar conflict he felt we could not win.”

“Are you going to include that in your report?”

“No. They wouldn’t believe it, anyway, and if they did they wouldn’t understand. It makes no difference in any event, except that explanation lays to rest a few of my remaining questions. He’s gone, and only Morah, who is good-but really hasn’t the skills of a Kreegan, is holding things off right now. Somewhere along the line, Morah and Kreegan met, and Morah, the brilliant.master criminal, developed a Kreegan-style sense of what had to be done. He came around to Kreegan’s point of view. He is doing what he can, but he knows he isn’t up to the job. Damn!” He sat deep in thought for a moment. Finally he said, “Call Morah. Tell him to keep that meeting in session, that I’ll get back to him as soon as I have consulted with my superiors.”

“That is easily done. Has it occurred to you that they all are together in a highly vulnerable and exposed space station around Lilith at this time? Just one well-placed shot…”

“And then we would have to deal blind with the Altavar, and I’m not even sure we can. Besides, with what will you shoot them down?”

“This picket ship has more than enough armament for such a simple task.”

He chuckled. “So man can triumph over computer after all. How the hell do you suppose Altavar have gotten in and out of system, not to mention those robots? Where would be the first place you’d try out and test those robots to see if they really could fool everybody?”

“Oh. You mean that this ship is under their control and in their hands. That is a most unpleasant thought.”

“Bet on it. If you need any further confirmation, just remember that I sat down in a com chair up there, punched in Morah’s name and planet, and got a connection in seconds. No hunting around, no guesswork. The comm people knew who he was and exactly where he was at that point.”

“I could detonate this module, at least protecting our information.”

“t certainly hope not. Right now I’m the only one from the Confederacy that Morah or any of the others will trust at all. They know me, in one form or another. I’m right there with them. I’m Cal Tremon, Park Lacoch, and Qwin Zhang, but uncontaminated by Wardens. I’m the only man they’re going to believe, because I’m the only one they have expert evaluation of.” He laughed. “I don’t think you’re going to get to kill me anyway, old friend.”

“It is not my intention to do so unless the mission is compromised.”

“Maybe, maybe you just don’t know it. But it’s irrelevant.” He got up from the chair and moved back to the desk area, pulling down a pen and a pad of paper. He always used pen and paper for his notes rather than a terminal. You never knew who or what was listening in on a terminal, but if you ate your notes you knew exactly where they were and in what form. Old habits were hard to break now.

He was at it for some time, until, finally, slips of paper, cards, and scribbled notations were scattered all over the place. Finally he picked them up, looking them over, put them in an odd pile, smiled, then nodded. He reached up and pulled down the special comcode set.

“Open Security Channel R,” he instructed the computer. “Tightbeam, scramble, top security code. Let’s let them in on the fun.”

It took several minutes to establish communications through the various secret links over such vast distances, but because these signals traveled in the same oblique inter-dimensional way as the spaceships, communication was virtually instantaneous at this high-priority level. Once the phone was answered at the other end, that is, and all the information was matched to decode what was going in.

“Go ahead, Warden Control,” came a very slightly distorted voice from the speaker. “This is Papa speaking.”

“Hello, Krega! You sound tired.”

“I was sound asleep when your call came in, and I’m taking a couple of pills now to wake up. I assume this is some other special request you want—like the Cerberan thing?”

“No. This is my report. I have the strong feeling that something important is still missing, but I have no way of finding out what it is. Instead, I have assembled everything that I do know and all that my deductions lead to. I think I have enough information to allow us to act and I think time might be of the essence now. There is a war council going on in the Diamond right now, and I think our time’s about run out.”

“All hell’s breaking loose throughout the civilized worlds,” Commander Krega told him. “That sleep you got me out of was the first I’d tried in four days. It’s chaos! Supply ships routed wrongly, causing factories on a dozen worlds to shut down for lack of raw material, causing dozens more to have to ration food’ and other vital materials because the ships didn’t arrive. Even some naval units have opened fire on one another! The number of those damned robots—and the scale of the operation—is massive, Control! Massive! There must be thousands of them, all at different, usually routine posts along the lines of communications, shipping, you name it. Our Confederacy holds together by total interdependence. You know that.”

He nodded and couldn’t suppress a slight smile. So Morah had put Kreegan’s war into operation unilaterally, as well as mobilizing the vast political and criminal organizations the Four Lords controlled. “How are you holding out?” he asked, almost hoping for a really bad answer.

“We’re coping—but barely!” Krega told him. “We were prepared for this kind of thing, considering what we already knew, but the scale is beyond anything we imagined—and it’s devilishly clever. The people they took over are very minor, routine links in complex chains, but they’re at just the right point to make a minor mistake on a shipping order, or routing order, or even battle order. And so damn minor the mistakes are hell to track down. They didn’t go for the admiral, instead they went for a minor clerk who types up or sends out the admiral’s orders. We can hold now, but there are already food riots in many places and I doubt if we can stopgap this for long. You’re right about the time business. If you can’t give us an out, we’ve got no choice but to take out the whole Warden Diamond—now.”

“I’m not sure you can, Papa,” he said bluntly. “We missed it on these aliens. Evidence shows they’re every bit as strong or even stronger than we are. Hold on to your hat. You aren’t gonna believe all this.”

“Well, get going, then. But I’m not sure I go along with that military-strength idea. Logic argues against it.”

He smiled wanly. Why are aliens evil to a psychotic murderer? That question bothered the Charonese, who didn’t answer it. He could.

Evil is when a race casually contemplates genocide against another not because another race is a threat but because it is inconvenient.

He was about to begin his report when something occurred to him. “Papa? Tell me one thing I don’t know. Our other prime operative down there, this Dr. Dumonia. Who the hell is he, really?”

“Him? Former Chief, Psychiatric Section, Confederacy Criminal Division. Not under that name, of course. He devised a lot of the techniques we still use on agents like you.”

“And he retired to Cerberus?”

“Why not? He’s in a volatile profession, Control. All a psych ever sees are really sick minds. They finally just get fed up and can’t do it any more, or they crack themselves. He was a little of both. Well, we couldn’t kill him, after his invaluable services, and we couldn’t use a psych machine on him—he’s so good with one of those things he’s invulnerable to them. So we gave him a complete cover identity and he picked Cerberus, where he could establish a mild private practice and work when he felt like it on either criminal or normal people with problems. He’s pretty sour and disillusioned about the Confederacy, but he’s not fond of the Four Lords, either. This alien thing really got to him, so he came out of retirement and set up an organization for us.”

“I’m glad he stayed on our side.”

Krega laughed now. “He’d better. He’s got a few little organic devices similar to that transmitter we used with your people inside him, including a couple of a new design that he doesn’t know about. If he ever became a threat a remote signal from a flyby would splatter him from Cerberus halfway to the Confederacy.”

There was no real answer to that. After a moment of dead air, Control reshuffled his notes. “Ready to report.”

“Standing by to record. On my mark … Go!”

A great deal of the information in this report is deduction, not direct observation. However, I must point out firmly that every deduction made here is not only logical in the context of the Diamond and our known situation, each and every deduction holds true for all four worlds. I feel that the information presented as fact herein is true and correct and borne out by remote personal observation. Let’s begin by addressing the broad points of the extraordinarily complex and subtle puzzle that is the Warden Diamond itself.

Point 1: No matter what, it is obvious that the four Diamond worlds are not natural. Each of the four worlds was certainly within the known “life zone” before being transformed into its present state, but mere location in the life zone is not sufficient’to guarantee any conditions remotely survivable. This obvious terraforming process of all four would have been easily confirmed had normal scientific thoroughness been applied to the Diamond worlds, but since the appearance of the Warden organism, with its bizarre effects and by-products, such an examination was not possible in the early years and would be subverted by the locals at the present stage of development. Still, from sheer deduction it is obvious that the worlds were extensively terraformed, and I will offer but a few of the abounding examples to prove my point. For example, there is no evidence that any of the planets are the products of natural evolution. While there are different examples of the dominant life form on each world, there are no clear primal orders—each class of plant and animal is unique and in place.

Despite the fact that any naturally evolving life on the four worlds would have to have a common origin—the plants, for example, are too close to one another and to ones familiar to us—the dominant type of animal-life on each is without serious competition and without any sign that the other three forms existed except in minor phyla. Thus, the cold-blooded reptile dominates on the warmest planet, the insect is virtually alone on the lushest, as is the water-breather on the world that is mostly sea, and the large mammal on the coldest planet is the dominant form on both land and sea. In other words, despite a certain common origin, four different kinds of life dominate four different worlds with the other forms either eliminated or reduced to minor and static roles. Frankly, the whole thing smells more like some sort of experiment than any chance occurrence—which form is best for what, perhaps. To accept current biology on all four worlds is beyond my credulity range.

Point 2: All of the flora and fauna on all four worlds logically match with our carbon-based life system, and all are integrated in biologically expected and balanced ways, except for the omnipresent Warden organism, which is unique unto itself. Here is a totally different kind of life that has no microbial relatives yet is static enough that its properties and behavior on each world is uniform and predictable. §uch an organism might be expected to mutate with lightning speed—after all, this is the common theory applied to the three worlds other than Lilith, that we spread the organism and it instantly mutated to meet the differing conditions. So I am asked to accept an organism that mutates instantly and perfectly to other planets, yet shows not the slightest sign of mutation or deviation on any of the four themselves. I find this biologically inconceivable. Therefore, I am forced to the conclusion that the Warden organism is an artificially created form of life superimposed on all four worlds by a common intelligence.

The Warden organism is far too simple a creature to do more than cause an illness or two, yet it is integral to all four worlds and symbiotically matched to them. On Lilith the Warden organism obviously serves as a sort of planetary manager, keeping the ecosystem stable and static; this is what led to the prevailing view of a single source. I submit that evidence exists in ample amounts that the organism is equally the planetary manager of the other three worlds, and that a little hard research will show this to be so. We drew our original conclusions about the Warden organism because of its widely variable effects on humans and human perception and ability. But the Warden organism was not created and does not exist with humans in mind at all—it is there to keep the ecosystems of the four worlds within certain stable tolerances—in effect, to eliminate as many variables as possible.

Charon and Medusa further demonstrate that the Warden organism, while chemically rather simple, has the ability to act collectively and to draw upon a vast amount of complex knowledge. This is less obvious on Cerberus and Lilith, but I can cite examples there as well, and I need only note how fast it is able to regenerate damaged and lost tissue in humans on all four worlds. But how is it able to draw upon and use such knowledge?

At first I was drawn to the hypothesis of a collective intelligence for the organism—that is, each colony represented a cell or collection of cells in communication with other colonies, or cells, making up a single and physically discorporeal entity. I find no evidence to support this supposition, though, and much to support the conclusion that this is not true. People of Charon travel to Medusa, and vice versa, with no ill effects, although, surely, the distance between planets would be more than enough to sever their Wardens from any such planetary consciousness. On Lilith, for example, people can directly perceive the lines of communication between Warden colonies, yet they can perceive nothing of this while on other Warden worlds. Nor, in fact, could I conceive of such organisms even collectively storing and analyzing so many quadrillion-plus data bits just to do some fairly complex regenerations.

But when I thought of the Wardens not in terms of cells but rather in terms of neural transmitters and receivers, the system made far more sense. Consider the nerve endings in your index finger. They serve only one function really—they transmit information to the brain. Burn them and the irritation reaches the brain, and the brain then transmits back through the same network corrective measures to repair the burn. Warden colonies, then, are the neural transmitters and receivers of information, remote sensors to a central brain source. Such a brain must in fact be a tremendously versatile computer of near infinite capacity. This theory then fits in with everything else.

Everything all four worlds say about the Warden organisms on each also belies an external power source, as has been hypothesized as the reason for the so-called “Warden Limit” after which the Wardens run amok and destroy their hosts. The Wardens have been shown to be able to draw whatever they needed from the host for normal operation. On those rare occasions when more was demanded of them than the host could provide, they have shown a limited ability to make energy-to-matter and matter-to-energy conversions, although they are clearly not specifically designed to do so and, when demanded, this causes pain, discomfort, or danger to the host. Such an organism, unless far too much was demanded of it, would hardly self-destruct for the reasons supposed.

However, when you realize that the Warden organism is, in fact, too simple an organism to do anything for itself, being merely a transmitter and receiver, what the limit implies is the limit of its ability to transmit and receive information from its computer.

It is equally obvious that four different frequencies, perhaps four entirely separate transmitters, are in operation. This is why a Cerberan, for example, appears “Warden-dead” to a Charonese, who sees the Warden network in everything and everyone on his own world. But where are the brain’s transmitters and receivers—the Wardens’ base station, as it were? I suspect that there is a central computer outside the Diamond zone itself, perhaps on or beyond Momrath, although that gas giant with its rings and thousands of moons would be the most logical and logically placed location. This would transmit, in turn, to central areas, or subcomputers, on each of the four worlds, which would in turn directly govern those worlds. The two-tiered system would be extravagant, but it is one way of explaining why there is a fixed quarter of a light-year distance for travel from all four Diamond worlds, yet Cerberans can travel to Charon, for example, cut from their own planetary net but not from the central computer.

On Medusa there is a “sacred mountain,” and, remaining there overnight, one is subjected to nightmarish alien dreams and sensations only to awaken the next day with a far greater control of the Wardens in his own body. This mountain, I am convinced, is over the central processor for Medusa’s Wardens. Medusans are already plugged into their Warden network, but here, so close to maximum signal, their Wardens are far more excited than elsewhere. The experience is somewhat akin to, I believe, what communications scientists call “front-end overload,” in which a signal too powerful for the electronics of a transceiver will produce a blasting but unintelligible signal. However, the human brain, which has some control over its Wardens, reacts to this overload much as protective circuits would in electronics—it recoils and damps the overload down. The tremendously high level of excitation the overload produced in the Wardens, however, makes the host far more aware of them and their energy flow.

I am convinced that such points exist on the other three planets. I note, for example, that on all four worlds there are curiously similar religions based on planet worship, of a god who resides inside the world and is the source of all power for that world. If we were able to transport the entirety of Lilith’s population to its central processing facility, I am convinced that everyone would share the powers now limited to a few. The few who do, in fact, are mostly trans-portees to the planet who are likely to be more conscious of the energy flow than those bom with it in place. I shudder to think, however, of what such an overload would do to a Cerberan—madness, perhaps, or constant, uncontrollable body-changing, or perhaps the merging of minds into a single mass entity.

Point 3: We are faced, then, with an incredibly advanced civilization technologically, far beyond anything we can imagine, a civilization that can terraform four worlds, and stabilize and maintain them with a single clever device (the Wardens), yet does not apparently use them for anything. Although these aliens, who are apparently called the Altavar, maintain a token force near the Medusan processing center, and probably near the others as well, I do not believe they inhabit any of the four worlds in any numbers. One of my counterparts theorized them as air-breathing water mammals, but I find it difficult to see how such a civilization could have developed such a high degree of technological advancement if limited to water. Indeed, the few Altavar that I saw, via my remote, appeared equally at home in air and sea, and probably would also be on land. These, of course, were bred to the conditions in which they had to live and work, and are most certainly not representative of the Altavar masses in form of capabilities. Perhaps they are a token force, not guards or soldiers but on-site mechanics or engineers for the processor who simply relieve their boredom with random attacks on any who venture close.

Now, since they went to all this trouble but do not at this time inhabit the four worlds in the broad understanding of that term, it remains to be determined why the project was undertaken at all. Certainly it has all the earmarks of a carefully established scientific experiment, but if this is so, they made no attempt to remove an inconstant variable when introduced—humans—even though they could have easily done so, and in a manner convincing enough that we wouldn’t have bothered with further settlement.

Since they do not use the worlds now, they either had use of them in the’ past, in which case they couldn’t care less about humans being there now, or they have a use for them in the future, in which case they would care a great deal about our being there. Since they obviously do not care about present use, but are still very much around and involved in an action against the Confederacy, their use of the Diamond is obviously in the future.

It bothered me from the start that the aliens, who allegedly could not take our form or infiltrate directly, could still immediately know all about our civilization and go just to the Four Lords, the only people likely to be on their side against us. Obviously, therefore, they came specifically to the Diamond, or were called there by the small permanent party when we landed on the places, and then discovered us. So we have a small cadre of aliens in place when we suddenly show up, which greatly surprised them. One can imagine the problem the small base parties faced. It would take some lime to report our arrival and have experts from wherever good little Altavar come from get here. Meanwhile, of course, the Warden organism was invading and trying to cope with this new element and threatening to destroy or transform the first exploiter teams. If I were in charge of such a base, I would play for time, and the best way to play for time would be to do what I could—and fast—to hold a representative segment of this new race for study while discouraging further approach and settlement. They did this by simply adding human beings to the program of their central computer, making the Warden, in effect, an alien disease that had terrible effects not only on “alien” life forms but also on “alien” machinery. It was a clever and resourceful ploy, and we fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

The Altavar, obviously, were pleased with the arrangement and pleased that it had so obviously worked, and felt no need to go further at this tune. I suspect, though, that they were as surprised as we were at the odd and peculiar by-products the Wardens produced in human beings. I don’t think that those by-products, those bizarre powers, were programmed in, for their best interest would be in leaving us trapped but still ourselves, both for study and for control. It’s simply possible that the bioelectrical system that powers the human body operates within the same sort of range as the Warden transmitters, or fairly close. This would explain why some people have more powers than others, and some have little or none, on three of the worlds, anyway. You might say both our brains and nervous systems and their quasi-organic machines work on the same wavelengths.

A side thought is somewhat illuminating and a little disturbing. In effect, the Warden invasion of human bodies made the humans on the Diamond creatures of the master computer just as the plants and animals and probably anything and everything else are. Everything from simple biology and biophysics all the way to the content of those human minds was sent to that computer. This information would give them all they needed in the way of human nature, human politics, human beliefs, and human history as well. This is how they learned so much about us without having to pay us a visit.

This means, too, that they knew about our agents as soon as they were “assimilated” into the Warden computer system. Knew about our entire plot, in fact. So either they never made use of this information, which is possible, or they really find the Four Lords and their operation irrelevant to them. They certainly did nothing to tell the Four Lords of our plans, nor to inform them of any of our operations. They did nothing to warn or save Kreegan or Matuze, and they did nothing to warn Laroo or to keep him from coming under our control and influence. In point of fact, they must have known about Laroo’s treachery to them, but made no effort even to block the information on their damned robots from coming to us for analysis. They supply the robot masters to Cerberus, yet don’t really care if we know about it or even find a way to subvert the process. I find all this enlightening, and disturbing. It implies that they feel they have sufficient defenses to be invulnerable to attack on their interests—as opposed to those of the Four Lords and the people of the Diamond—and also that this entire sabotage war and its robot campaign are not something initiated by them but entirely conceived of and run by the Four Lords.

But if they can defend easily, why allow this odd and diabolically clever campaign against us in the first place, one that would almost certainly attract attention to themselves when it was put into operation or prematurely revealed, as happened?

The only possible answer is that several years ago the Altavar decided that they had at this time to make use of the Warden Diamond, and that we would get in the way. They decided, I believe, to attack the Confederacy in an all-out and brutal campaign of genocide but were talked out of it, or at least convinced to defer it, by Marek Kree-gan. The evidence for this is all over my alter-ego experiences and can be examined at leisure, but that evidence is inescapable. Kreegan, then, is a rather odd sort of hero. Fearing racial extermination and wholesale destruction of planetary populations in a defensive war against a foe technologically superior to us and unknown to us in the ways that count—including the location of their worlds and fleet—he sold them on a different sort of campaign, one that would strike at the very heart of the political and economic union of the worlds of the Confederacy, causing us to turn inward, to be unable to retain our unity, which is our only strength. It would cost countless lives, of course, and push much of humanity back into harsh barbarism, but we would survive. The other Lords bought the plan for revenge, and because it held out the promise of escape, to leave the Warden Diamond and be the ones to pick up the shattered pieces of the Confederacy. The Altavar bought it simply because it accomplished the same purpose as all-out war but much more cheaply. It is also clear that they didn’t have much faith in the plan’s success, but were willing to give the Four Lords just enough time and material support to try it just in case.

Point 4: The aliens have decided we must be taken out, yet they have perfect confidence that they can lick us in any such war. Why, then, are we a threat to them at all? We don’t know where to hit them back, nor do we know enough about them to pose anything like the threat to their civilization that they are to ours. Therefore, we can interfere in some way that will cause them real trouble. As of now, the only point at which our two civilizations intersect is the Diamond. Obviously, they fear we can destroy it, or badly louse it up, and this must be of central importance to them. Saving the Diamond is their one priority here, the reason they were willing to buy Kreegan’s plot at all. So what is the Warden Diamond to them that they want it so badly? To go to these lengths it must be something of great racial importance to them, a matter of life and death.

The Altavar can breathe the same air we do. They are almost certainly made up. of carbon chains in a.way that will be unusual, but still very understandable to our biologists. Therefore, it’s fairly easy to find their same racial least common denominators—they must be the same as ours. These three LCDs are food, shelter, and reproduction.

I think we can dismiss food out of hand. The amount of protein and other food products that these four worlds could produce is insignificant in the light of an interstellar civilization’s needs. Besides, if they can work energy-to-matter conversions, they’ll never starve.

Shelter is an obvious possibility. These four worlds were deliberately terraformed and stabilized, so they obviously were intended to be settled. But a population that could be settled on four normal-sized planets is pretty small and hardly worth interstellar war to protect. Considering the number of terraformable planets humanity has found just in its galactic quadrant, total war over the colonization rights to four worlds we couldn’t use anyway because of the Warden organism just doesn’t make any sort of logical sense.

That leaves reproduction. Defense of their young would make the behavior and attitudes they’ve exhibited so far totally comprehensible. Assuming their total alienness—evidence indicates that their thinking would be very strange to us, as you might expect—we might extend that to their biology as well. There is no reason to believe that their reproductive method is anything like our own. If we accept the Diamond as a breeding center, though, we must assume they reproduce very seldom or very, very slowly. If so, they are almost certainly extremely long-lived, and, by inference, this would indicate that the number of their eggs, or whatever, is enormous to require four worlds. The Warden organism, then, might be a protective device, keeping conditions for the eggs optimal while also defending them against basic threats. Its defensive capabilities may be very great, and the eggs must be deep inside the planets themselves. I suspect that the fact that there is geothermal activity only on the frigid world of Medusa is evidence that only there is some sort of temperature regulation necessary. They need it warm.

Point 5: Assuming this reproductive function, a number of very interesting possibilities arise. While protecting their young is the only solution that logic admits, then the Diamond worlds are there not only as needed protection for the eggs but also to serve as carefully controlled biomes for the young to settle. It’s a fascinating concept—colonizing worlds by first terraforming them, then planting the eggs which, when they hatch, will become the perfectly adapted indigenous population of those worlds, complete with the Warden computer links to teach them all they need to know. I admit, however, to be missing a key element here, since all this implies that space travel and terra-forming and computers are essential to their reproduction. It is patently absurd to think of such a race, since how did it get born or evolve in the first place?

Of course, if we just accept the idea that their civilization is far older than ours, this problem partly resolves itself. After all, human beings now reproduce in technologically perfect genetic engineering laboratories throughout the civilized worlds. A race just coming upon the civilized worlds and ignorant of our history and of observing the “natural” way on a frontier world or the Diamond might well have the same puzzle the Altavar present to me here. They would wonder how we ever reproduced before we had the technology the bioengineering labs implies. Much the same must be at work here. This is not how they evolved or how nature intended them to breed, but it is the way they choose to do it now—because, for them, it’s better, easier, more efficient, or whatever. Take your choice.

Summary: The aliens created the Diamond worlds as incubators and new homes for their young. They are slow-breeding and long-lived, and thus this must represent a whole new generation for a large mass of Altavar. They can not retreat or back down without abandoning their young, and while I doubt that the Diamond is the only breeding ground for them, it is of sufficiently large size and scope that anything interfering with the hatching and development of the young would be tantamount to genocide in their minds.

When humans showed up, the aliens used their mechanism—the Warden organism—and their planetary computers to understand, evaluate, and assess our entire civilization. As long as the hatching, or whatever it is, was sufficiently far off, they had plenty of time in which to do so. But we obliged them by sending our greatest criminal minds and political and social deviants to the Diamond, and their attitudes shaped the human societies that grew on all four worlds. As a result, their picture of us is rather negatively slanted, to say the least. The hatch time approached—although it may still be a decade or even longer away—and they had to decide what to do. Whether for science, or study, or just out of scientific mercy, they contacted the Four Lords with a view to saving the Diamond population. But it was then also communicated to the Lords that the rest of humanity was simply too great a threat and would have to be wiped out.

Kreegan, upon becoming Lord of Lilith, came up with and proposed his own scheme to the Altavar, who were willing to let him try it but neither expected it to work nor concerned themselves with the fates of the Four Lords. But because the Four Lords made a mistake, the Altavar now feel backed against a wall. To their minds, delaying much longer will risk genocide of their young, and if it’s them or us, they’ll naturally choose us. They know our military strengths and weaknesses, our weaponry, our military mind, and everything else an enemy dreams of knowing. Apparently none of that worries them. They are confident that they can crush us, and I believe they will attempt to do so by preemptive strike, after the Four Lords campaign has wreaked as much damage and disruption as it can. I think we are no more than weeks, and perhaps only days, away from a total war that may result in the near elimination of human—or perhaps both—civilizations.

Conclusions and Recommendations: I think they not only can beat us, but I suspect they have fought at least one such war before. They are too supremely confident. However, we as a race would survive. We are too numerous and located on too many worlds over too much space to be wiped out totally. Pushed back into barbarism, the collapse of interstellar civilization and the death of at least a third of humanity would be the least I would expect in such a conflict, but we would survive. Our only recourse would be that we could, obviously, destroy the Diamond with a concerted, possibly suicidal all-out revenge attack—the thing they fear most, and so do I. Such an attack would enrage them and rob them of their next generation; it would be our last blow, but much of their force would remain intact.

I may be totally wrong, and they may think in so alien a manner that they will not react in a way I can predict, but I feel I must point out how we would react under such circumstances and urge that we act as if they’re more like us emotionally than unlike us. If the situation were reversed: if humans beat the hell out of the Altavar but, in the process, the Altavar managed to destroy every human being’s ability to create children by any means, thereby ending the race in slow agony, we would then seek out Altavar wherever they were, in their ships, on their worlds, and once they were beaten and defenseless, we would then systematically wipe them out to the last one. In-other words, destroying the Diamond might well result in total human genocide.

Obviously I’m telling you that we can not win in this situation. If you refuse to face that fact, refuse to accept my report and its conclusions, then I believe both races could die. The impossible, the unthinkable, will happen. When man first went into space and colonized other worlds, a great pressure was lifted from the collective psyche. The human race would not be totally destroyed by itself in war, at least not easily. And when, finally, we grew so large and so expansive and merged into the single system that the Confederacy represents, we thought we had put any possibility of racial destruction behind us. People could die, even whole suns could explode and take their worlds and populations with them, but humanity would survive.

If this chain is now started, it will be impossible to stop. We have finally come face to face with the horror once again, and we have only ugly choices.

The Four Lords are now meeting in Council and are waiting for my call. The only hope we have is to do everything right, and, therefore, it is essential that you follow all of my recommendations immediately and without fail.

(1) No matter how this sabotage campaign is going, it is essential that only reports of complete disarray and disaster reach this picket ship, which is totally infiltrated with the robots. At all times from this point the Four Lords and the Altavar must be convinced that Kreegan’s war is winning, that his plan is working perfectly. If the Altavar receive the slightest hint that it is not, they will probably launch a massive preemptive strike on us.

(2) Negotiations must be opened immediately. I will be the go-between, because, having three surviving alter egos down there, I will be one they will trust. However, we must be linked directly to the Confederacy Inner Council, who must all be on call to appear on visual transmission. It must be clear that they are dealing with someone—me—^: who speaks for the Council and that I have the force sufficient to make my agreements binding on the Confederacy.

(3) As much of the fleet as can be depended upon not to be needed for emergency actions against the current war campaign must be rushed to the Diamond on full alert. Only with the threat of immediate destruction of the Diamond will we have any leverage at all. Put your best military minds in that fleet and get it here—fast, and on full war alert. You can expect ship-to-ship attack if negotiations fail or if they decide to test us.

(4) No matter what you think of the Four Lords and their organizations, they are not stupid and they will not be lulled into any false agreements. They know that their own worlds are on the line, which will keep them honest, but as agents of the Altavar they also know our real position, which isn’t great. They have also, obviously, been promised safe evacuation in the event of an attack by us, so they are only concerned about their populations, not their own hides. I must warn the Council that the demands the Altavar will make will be stiff and severe. We must negotiate and be prepared to give up a great deal, perhaps much that we hold dear. But we must find a solution that will result in the Altavar feeling safe and secure—and we must mean it and guarantee it with our actions, not just words. They know us too well to accept our promises or a treaty.

This is Warden Control, awaiting your decision and instructions.

“Well? What do you think?”

“It is the only logical solution given the data,” the computer replied. “You should have been a computer.”

“High praise. Well, they got it now. How do you think they’ll take it?”

“They will refuse to accept your conclusions, of course, but they will play along with you and the Four Lords for now. Did you expect anything else?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I doubt it. Given what you know, can you compute the current probabilities of all-out war?”

“Too many variables. But I would say you have a ten-percent chance of pulling something, out of this.”

He sighed. “Ten percent. I guess that’ll have to do. Wake me when they call back.” He paused a moment. “Well, it doesn’t look like you will be ordered to kill me, anyway.”

The computer did not reply.

It took them almost five hours to reach some kind of consensus, which, considering the complexity of the Confederacy and its bureaucracy, was almost miraculous time.

“We can arrange for a complete visual hookup,” Krega told him, “but we’ll have to do an open broadcast. I suppose that doesn’t matter, since they should be able to see and hear your communication with Base.”

He nodded. “They will insist on a remote location. I will try and stall to give the fleet as much time to position itself as I can, but I must have one secure line and this is the only one I’m reasonably sure about. The computer tells me that I can transmit back to this module from anywhere within the Warden system and that it will do the rest. The Council stays on the public and visual band; you stay on this one, and if I have to get word to the Council I will tell you and you will personally tell the Council.”

“Agreed. Uh—if you go down there you’re going to be stuck along with the rest you know.”

“I’m not worried by the prospect. However, I don’t believe that it’s necessarily true, either. I think they now have their Warden organism under pretty complete control. No matter, though. This is a time of ugly choices, and given the choice of being blown to hell in a war or having to live on a Diamond world, my choice is pretty well made. Commander, no matter what, I’m convinced that, after this, all that we know will never be the same again.”

He switched off, then turned to the other side. “Get me Morah on the Lilith satellite.”

It took only a couple of minutes to fetch the dark, eerie Chief of Security. “We had about given you up,” Morah told him.

“These things take time. Your moves against the Confederacy are having major disastrous effects and they’re worried, but they want to talk.” Briefly he outlined his proposal for himself as negotiator with the Council following by direct link, site to be selected.

Morah thought the proposition over. “This is not simply a trick to bring up the fleet?”

“We don’t have to. A major task force has been lying only a couple of days off the Diamond for weeks, waiting for any hard evidence from me so they could act. They’re going to come in reasonably close no matter what, but I think the Council will keep its word as long as we keep talking. It seems to me that delay now is in the best interests of the Altavar as well, since we are already in position while they can use the extra time to position then” own forces.”

Morah seemed to consider the idea, then nodded absently. “All right, then. But any move by the task force to attack positions on the Diamond will terminate everything right then and there. You understand?”

“I understand. You name the place and time.”

“Boojum is the seventh moon of Momrath. We have an all-purpose communications center there, with sufficient room and comfortable facilities. Can you reach it by 1600 standard time tomorrow?”

He nodded. “I’ll be there, along with the comm codes needed to plug us all in. However, I want certain people present from the Diamond as well.”

“Oh? Who?”

“First, I want a senior Altavar empowered to deal for its people. The Council insists on it. Second, I’m not clear on the political situation on the Diamond itself right now. Who will represent Charon?”

“I will, as temporary, or acting Lord,” Morah replied. “Kobe will represent Lilith, and the two surviving Lords the other two.”

“I’ll have to have a psych named Dumonia from Cerberus there.”

“Indeed? Why? Who is he?”

“One of my wild cards. Dumonia is Lord of Cerberus but neither you nor Laroo realize it. Laroo is nothing more than an unnecessary puppet at this point.” He enjoyed the total sense of shock and surprise Morah conveyed. Score one, he thought with satisfaction. Now Morah could not be so absolutely certain of anything. “I also would like, if possible, Park Lacoch from Charon, Cal Tremon from Lilith, and Qwin Zhang from Cerberus present.”

Morah found that amusing. “Indeed? And which side do they represent?”

“Good faith,” he responded. “You were going to bring Lacoch anyway, so why not have them all? Who better to evaluate my own sincerity and behavior?”

“Done, then.”

“I notice you aren’t surprised that I want nobody from Medusa except Ypsir.”

Morah cleared his throat and seemed a bit embarrassed. “We are all well aware of what happened on Medusa. I’m afraid Ypsir hasn’t stopped crowing about it yet. A most brilliant and ruthless but totally unpleasant man, the sort of man that turned us against the Confederacy in the old days.” He frowned thoughtfully. “Um—it will be unavoidable that you and Ypsir and his—pet—will meet. I can assume no personal vendetta as long as we are negotiating?”

“Until we are finished with this business, yes. The stakes here are much too high to allow myself the luxury of personal revenge, right now.”

Morah looked back into the screen with those piercing, inhuman eyes. “I have the strange feeling that you are not telling me all.”

He grinned. “Tell me, if you don’t mind—where did you pick up those interesting eyes.”

Morah paused for a moment, then said softly, “I went to the Mount once too often.”

It was arranged that he would go by picket boat to Momrath. The boat would be completely automated except for him, and would return automatically without him and be totally sterilized. Later, he was assured, if he could leave the Diamond at all, he would be picked up.

Curiously, he found himself reluctant to leave what, only the day before, he had regarded as his tomb.

“We will be in continuous touch,” the computer assured him.

He nodded absently, checking again his small travel kit.

“Um, if you don’t mind, would you answer one question for me?” the computer asked. “I have been wondering about it.”

“Go ahead. I thought you knew everything.”

“How did you know that a battle fleet lay only two days off the Diamond? I knew, of course, but that information was deliberately kept from you. Did you deduce it.”

“Oh, no,” he responded breezily, “I hadn’t a clue. I was bluffing.”

“Oh.”

And with that, he left the cabin with no trouble and traveled down many decks in the picket ship to the patrol-boat bay. The boat was no luxury yacht, but it was extremely fast and had the ability to “skip” in and out of real space in short bursts of only a fraction of a second. Unlike the lazy freighters that took many days to traverse the distance, he would make his assigned rendezvous in just twenty-five hours.

He felt a curious sense of detachment from the proceedings after this point. The final phase, and, in a sense, the final scam, was on its way, working itself out to conclusion. One misstep and not only he but everything and everyone might go up; and he knew it. The fact that he’d failed on Medusa and had succeeded only by flukes on Lilith and Charon bothered him a bit. This whole mission had shaken his self-confidence a bit, although, he had to admit, he had never tackled so ambitious a project before. Indeed, no human being in living memory had ever shouldered such responsibility.

Something still bothered him about his deductions and conclusions, and he knew what it was. His solution of the maze in the Diamond was too pat, his aliens assumed to be too predictably like humans in their thinking. It was all too damned pat. Life was never pat.

He slept on the problem, and awoke nine hours later with a vague idea of what was wrong. It was the animals and plants, he realized. Familiar forms, bisexual and asexual. Since they obviously weren’t created for human viewing, they must reflect the general lines of thinking of the Altavar, who would draw on their own background and experience. No matter how bizarre the Altavar looked, how different their evolutionary roots from those of man, they must have evolved in roughly similar environments. They were highly consistent in their makeups of the worlds, yet here was a basic inconsistency. His view of them did not conform to the kinds of worlds they built.

The screens picked up the vistas he passed, and recorded them for later viewing. He amused himself by punching up all four Diamond worlds, now in anything but a diamond configuration, and blowing up the images as best he could. None of them really showed much in the way of surface features at this distance, but he found himself oddly transported to each as he looked at its disk. So odd, so unusual, so exotic … So deadly.

If they’re really homes for Altavar young, why the hell did they tolerate human populations in the millions on them?

Questions with no easy or clear answers like that one disturbed him. For most of his life, the Confederacy had been his spck, and he had believed in it. He, himself, had caught some of the very people down there on those four worlds, sending them to what he believed to be a hellish prison. He still wasn’t very impressed with the Four Lords and their minions or with the systems they had developed; but, he knew, he felt no real difference when looking at the Diamond or at the Confederacy. He felt like a confirmed atheist in the midst of a vast and grandiose cathedral, able to appreciate the skill and art that went into its construction but feeling pretty sure it wasn’t worth the effort.

In many ways he identified almost completely with Marek Kreegan, who must have had similar thoughts upon coming to the Diamond, and, most likely, even before. That priestly role was more than mere disguise, it was a subtle and humorous tweaking of the man’s nose at Man’s odd and distorted attempt at building institutions that served him. How many thousands, or tens of thousands, of years had Mankind been trying to build the right institutions? How many had slaved in faith at that building, and how many, even now, deluded themselves as they always had that, this time, they’d gotten it right?

Once upon a time sixty percent of the people didn’t believe in their system. Only twelve percent thought there might be something better than the system they hated, something worth bothering to fight about. Loss of faith equaled loss of hope, then, in that large a segment of the population, and it didn’t, in historical retrospect, seem out of line. People tended to extremes, and hope was a very mild extreme when faith became impossible, while despair was easy and all the way down the other end of the scale.

He pounded his fist on the console hard enough to hurt his hand. “Tarin Bul” had given in to despair, yet had died with slight hope. Qwin Zhang had risked everything on hope, and won. Park Lacoch had refused to be seduced by a good and happy life when he knew that others he did not even know depended on his actions. Cal Tremon had been used and abused by practically everyone for their own purposes,, yet he had never surrendered.

Pour people, four distinct individuals, who were, in every sense of the word, sides of himself. He hoped, he thought, he had learned something valuable, something the Confederacy had never meant to teach him. Now it was his turn.

The great orb that was Momrath filled the screens early on in the trip, and he watched it grow closer with eerie fascination. Ringed gas giants were always the most beautiful of places, and, in more than once sense, the most forbidding as well. At last two moons of the great planet were large or larger than any of the Diamond worlds, yet he went not to them but to small and frozen Boojum. Well, Momrath had been the one place he hadn’t visited, in a sense, as yet, and it seemed appropriate that it be his world.

He settled back to await the landing, still deep in reflection.

Task Force Delta was composed of four “war stations,” each surrounded and protected by a formidable battle group. Clustered around the barbell-shaped station that was the nerve center and computer control for its awesome firepower were hundreds of “modules,” each complete in and of itself. Most were unmanned; war these days was very much a remote-controlled affair, with battle group leaders merely choosing from a list of tactics, giving their battle group computers the objectives, and letting everything else run itself. Not a single one of the modules was intended for defense; the battle group provided that. Yet among all the clusters, there were weapons that could take out selected cities on remote worlds, could level a mountain range or even disintegrate all carbon-based life forms within a proscribed radius while doing no other damage. Other modules could ignite atmospheres with sufficient combustible gasses in them, while still others could literally split planets in two.

One such station could wipe out an entire solar system, leaving nothing but debris, gasses, and assorted space junk to orbit the sun, or could, in fact, even explode that sun. There were only six such stations in operation throughout the vast Confederacy, and four of them were concentrated here in the task force, the largest ever assembled.

The protective battle group was composed of fifty defensive ships, called cruisers after ancient seagoing vessels none could remember at this stage, built along the same lines as the war stations. But their modules consisted of hundreds of scouts, probes, and fighters, again almost all needing no human hand or brain, capable of taking continuous streams of orders from their base cruisers or, in the event the cruiser was destroyed, from any cruiser or the war station itself. Nothing else was needed; the combined firepower and mobility of a cruiser was equal to an entire planetary attack force, complete with human and robot troops that could land on and occupy a cleared stretch of land and hold it until relieved provided the cruiser’s modules continued their air and space cover. As well, the human marines inside their battle machines could be so effective that a squad might be able to take and destroy a medium-sized city, even if the city were defended with laser weapons, immune to the lethal energy rain their supporting fighters could unleash.

In theory the task force was as close to invulnerable as could be imagined, combined with the punch of an irresistible force. The only trouble was, its powers, weapons, programming, and tactics had never been tested under real battle conditions. For several centuries the Confederacy military had been amost exclusively devoted to policing itself.

A forward cruiser, still more than a light-year off the Diamond, launched four probe modules, one to each of the four Warden worlds. They sped off, skipping in and out of subspacial modes, in a near-random approach to the system, their next direction determined only after they came out for that brief moment and saw where they were. With no humans or other living organisms aboard to worry about, they made the trip in less than an hour.

Stern-faced men and women born and bred to the art of war sat in the center of the battle group, watching the four probes track on a great battle screen showing the entire probable sector of engagement, while subsidiary screens scrolled data slow enough for the human observers to see, although the data was far behind the reality being fed back to the master battle computer.

In precision drill, the four small steely blue-black modules arrived off each of their four target worlds simultaneously and quickly closed on their targets. Their armament consisted entirely of defensive screens and scramblers for potential adversaries; they were the forerunners, the testers of defenses and the data-bearers to the command and control center far off but closing.

“Measuring abnormal large energy flow between the four worlds,” a comtech reported to the battle room. “Our probes also report scanning on an unusual band, origin each of the four targets.”

“Very well,” the admiral responded. “Close to minimum safety zone on each world. All photo recorders on. Commence evasive action on scans.”

As soon as the order was given it was done. The admiral wanted to know how well his hardware could be tracked after it was first discovered.

It could track very well indeed, it seemed, and the odd sensors kept pace effortlessly with the variations in course and speed; even shields and jamming techniques had no effect.

They approached within twelve hundred kilometers of the respective planetary surfaces, not too far above the orbits of the space stations of the Four Lords.

All data ceased on all boards simultaneously. Startled comtechs and observers leaped to then: consoles and ran every kind of data check they could, to no avail. There seemed no question that, on all four worlds simultaneously, something had fired and totally destroyed the probes.

They ran back the last few seconds frame by frame, looking for what happened, but could see nothing and had to call upon the computers for help. Ultimately the computers could simulate what could not be seen. It had been an electrical beam, a jagged pencil line of force looking more like natural lightning than something fired from any kind of known weapon, reaching up and out from an unknown point below the upper atmospheric layers of each world and striking each probe, destroying it instantly. Only a single burst had been used in each case, the burst lasting mere milliseconds yet packing enough punch to destroy the heavily armored probes completely.

Commander, Special Task Force, sighed and shook his head. “Well, we know that we’ll have a fight when we go in,” he said with professional objectivity.

Five seconds after the probes were destroyed, all Confederacy satellites around the Warden Diamond were taken out, leaving only one channel of outside communication unjammed.

He had to admit that while the rock wasn’t much it offered a really fine view. The great multicolored orb of Momrath filled the sky of Boojum, and the small probe boat settled into a cradle dock on the bumpy and drab surface. The setting made it seem as if the moon and ship were about to be swallowed by a sea of yellows, blues, and magentas.

He donned a spacesuit and depressurized the cabin, waiting for the lights to tell him he could open the hatch. The cradle dock was built for the blocky, rectangular freighters rather than for the small passenger craft he had used, so there was really no way to mate boat to airlock. He noted two of the Warden shuttlecraft parked in the rear of the bay, but was surprised not to see any ship of unfamiliar design. Either the Altavar hadn’t arrived as yet, or it utilized a different and less obvious mode of transportation.

As soon as he was at the hangar-level airlock, a small tug emerged from a recess in the far wall and eased up to his ship, grabbing hold with a dual tractor beam and then easing it into an out-of-the-way parking space. He hoped he’d remembered to tell them that the thing would automatically take back off on command of the picket ship in an hour or two, then shrugged off the thought. What good was taking over an enemy ship like the picket ship if your spies were incompetents? He shouldn’t be expected to do everything.

The light turned green and he opened the hatch, stepped inside the chamber, closed and hit reseal behind him, and waited for the light on the inner door to ogen. He was reminded a bit of that dual airlock in Ypsir’s space palace. Sure enough, there was even a camera here, and some of those odd projections.

He barely had time to reflect on the implications when he was bathed in an energy field from those same projections, just as his counterpart had been back on Medusa. It was over quickly and caused him no unpleasantness; in fact, he felt no sensation out of the ordinary at all. He couldn’t help wondering what all that was about, then. An automatic precaution? If it were some kind of decontamination, it would have been better served if they’d waited until he took off the spacesuit.

The inner lock’s guide light turned green, and he opened it and walked into a fairly large locker room. He quickly removed his suit, then opened his small travel bag and donned rubber-soled boots, work pants, and a casual shirt. He checked the small transceiver’s power, then left it in the case along with a change of clothes and his toiletries, then picked up the bag and walked out of the locker room and down a small utilitarian hall to an elevator. He felt a bit light but not uncomfortably so; they were using a gravity field inside the place.

The elevator was of the sealed type, so he had only the indicator lights to show how far he was being taken. Not too far, as it turned out. While there appeared to be at least eight levels to the place, he went down only to the third one before a door rolled back.

Yatek Morah, wearing a shining black outfit complete with a rather effective crimson-lined cape, stood there to greet him.

He had been used to thinking of Morah as a large man, but, he found, they were both about the same size. The eyes hadn’t changed much, though, and were still hard to look at.

He stepped out of the elevator and did not offer his hand. Instead he stood there, looking at Morah. “So.”

“Welcome to Boojum, sir,” Morah responded, sounding fairly friendly. “Odd name, isn’t it? The outer planets and moons were named for some follow-up scout’s favorite fairy stories, I think. Rather obscure.” He paused a moment. “Speaking of obscure—just what do we call you?”

He shrugged. “Call me Mr. Carroll. That’ll do, and it’s certainly appropriate both to history and to our current situation.”

“Good enough,” the Security Chief responded, apparently not aware of the irony in name or tone. “Follow me and I’ll give you the grand tour. It’s not much, I’m afraid—this is a mining colony, after all, not a luxury spa. Oh, you might be relieved to know that that shower bath we gave you has an interesting effect. The Warden organisms, which are thicker than dirt on this rockpile, will totally ignore you. That should relieve your mind.”

He couldn’t help smiling at that. “As easy as that. Well, I’ll be damned.” He followed the man in black down the corridor.

Morah first showed him his room, a small cubicle less than a third the size of his module on the picket ship, but it would do. He thought about retaining his bag, then decided not to and tossed it on the bed. “Better let your people know not to touch that bag without me around,” he warned Morah. “A few things in there can be very unpleasant if you don’t know exactly how to talk to them.”

“Although this is nominally Ypsir’s territory, I am in complete command here,” the security chief assured him. “You are currently under what might best be expressed as diplomatic immunity. None of your things, or your person, will be touched; whoever touches them will answer to me.”

He accepted that, and they proceeded. “The Lords are staying along here, in rooms similar to yours,” Morah told him. “The others are sharing a dorm normally used by mine security personnel. I’m afraid there’s been a lot of grumbling as to the accommodations, but only Ypsir has a livable place here.”

“It’ll do,” he assured the other man. “IVe been in worse.”

A small central area between the single rooms and the dorm had been set up with a large conference table and comfortable chairs. “This is our meeting hall,” Morah told him, “and, I’m afraid, also our dining hall, although the food comes from Ypsir’s personal kitchen and is quite, good.”

The three people assembled in the room when they entered all turned to look at the newcomers. One of them looked so shocked he appeared to be having a heart attack. “You!” he gasped.

He smiled. “Hello, Zhang. I see nobody warned you.” He turned to the other two. “Doctor, I am most happy to see you here, and I’d like to thank you for all your help.” Dumonia bowed and shrugged. The third man he didn’t recognize at all. He was a tall, thin, white-haired man of indeterminate age. About the only thing that could be told about him was that he was certainly a Medusan. “And you are?”

“Haval Kunser, Chief Administrator of Medusa,” the man responded smoothly, putting out his hand.

He took it and shook it warmly, replying, “It’s very good to meet you. I know you only by reputation.”

He turned back to Zhang, who looked only slightly less stricken. “Are you going to drop dead or shoot me or relax and have a drink?” he asked his Cerberan counterpart.

“Well, what do you expect?” Qwin Zhang responded tartly. “I’m still not over the other two yet.”

His eyebrows went up. “They’re here, then?”

“Everyone is here,” Morah told him. “We can proceed after dinner if you like.”

“The Altavar.”

“Two levels down. Not only do they prefer it down there, but I’m afraid they stink like a three-day-old corpse. Our body odor is similarly offensive to them, so you can understand the separation considering the cramped quarters. I’ll certainly take you down and Introduce you if you want to verify that they’re here, but I think otherwise we should let them sit in by remote, for, ah, mutual comfort. Don’t answer until you’ve smelled them.”

He chuckled. “All right, I have no objection to the remote, although I am going to have to verify their physical presence. I’m afraid that some in the Council simply don’t believe in them.”

“Understandable. Through that door there, and we’ll meet the others.” They walked into a large room that looked more like a barracks than anything else, in which several people were sitting and talking or reading or writing. All heads turned as they entered, followed by Zhang and Dumonia, and he saw immediately that Zhang’s reaction was not going to be unique. Tremon, for one, was so startled he stood up and banged his head on an upper bunk.

“Tremon and Lacoch you know,” Morah said pleasantly, “and the others are either associates of theirs or aides of the Four Lords like Kunser. Communications, coordination, and a subsidiary meeting room with visual facilities have been set up on the level below us. It’s all ready, Mr. Carroll.”

Tremon and Lacoch both shook their heads at that. “Mr. Who?” Lacoch muttered, but did not press the matter. He looked over at two others near them and smiled and bowed slightly. “Darva and Dylan. Charmed.” The two women stared back at him in puzzlement. He looked over at Tremon. “No Ti?”

Tremon looked a little stunned. “So it did work!”

“Better than you could ever know,” he responded softly, then turned to Morah. “I’ll give your techs the codes to open everything to the Council so they can make the proper checks and set up a time. I’m not sure how many on the Council we managed to get together but it’ll be a working majority. Then I’d like to meet privately with my three former operatives, if that’s possible, and separately with you, Doctor. Then 111 go down with you to meet the Altavar, Morah, and we can get started.”

Morah looked a little uncomfortable. “Um, I believe all that can be arranged, but I would recommend eating before going down to meet the Altavar. Lord Ypsir has invited you to dine with him in his private suite above us.” He paused a moment. “Nothing says you have to accept, you know.”

He thought about it “Does he know the full extent of who and what I am?”

“No. I thought it would be … judicious not to tell him. And although he has this whole place wired up, my own people are controlling everything there.”

“I thank you for that. In that case, I’ll accept his invitation. Oh, don’t worry. I’ll be a good boy.”

Morah thought a moment, then nodded. “Very well. I will so inform him. It is now—let’s see, 1720. Give me the comcode and I will see to the checks with my people, and also arrange for you not to be disturbed in the meeting room until… shall we say, 1900? We’ll set your dinner date for then. After, or in the early morning, you can meet the Altavar. Shall we set negotiations to begin at, oh, ten hundred tomorrow morning? That will also give the Council plenty of time, and my men can hook up the Altavar and Council visuals. How does that sound?”

He nodded. “Excellent.” He turned to his counterparts. “You three want to come outside with me? I think we have some talking to do. Of course the ladies can come, too, if you wish.”

He stood there looking at them as they studied him. Tremon was still a big, muscular brute of a man, just as he remembered him, and Lacoch still had a somewhat reptilian cast to him, including a tail. Zhang was in the body of a young civilized worlder, and looked much like he did himself, although he was certainly physically older and felt ancient. He found it interesting that neither of the two with their ladies there had included them in on this reunion, although it saved making explanations.

“I assume we’re being totally bugged, so I won’t say anything I don’t want Morah to know,” he began. “I want to start by stating flatly that I was with you all the way on your worlds. I know you very well, and you know me.”

They were fascinated that, after all the different events that had happened to them, they found it difficult not to begin speaking at the same time, and one quite often could complete another’s statements.

Still, he let them get their resentment out, and, perhaps, their pride as well. Zhang pretty much said why he didn’t want Dylan in the room when he stated, “Hell, you were there, sort of, all the time. Every time we made love, you did it, too. That’s not an easy thing to face, or to explain to her.”

“Then don’t,” he suggested. “Let’s get this straight. We are all individuals. I am Mr. Carroll, for reasons only you three probably understand. You’re Tremon, and you’re Lacoch, and you’re Zhang. I think the easiest way to explain it to others is to explain it in more natural terms.”

They all nodded and said, as one, “Quadruplets.”

“Why not? It’s closer to the truth now, anyway. Have you all been briefed on the situation?”

They nodded, but he found they were still a bit sketchy and he filled in the details. It was surprising, once they got down to business, how quickly the anger and hurt and resentment vanished and they worked almost as a team. Finally, though, Lacoch asked the loaded question. “Where’s our man on Medusa?”

He sighed. “Three hits, one miss. Not a bad record.”

“Dead, then?”

He nodded. “Yes, dead. But his information was the clincher. Damn it, though, I’ll always feel guilty about that. After I got the report from you, Lacoch, on Charon, I had it pretty well down. If I had gone directly to Medusa at that time, instead of delaying as I did, he’d still be alive. It was that close.”

Tremon whistled. “You know, I think all of us hated your guts up until today. I know I did.” The others nodded understandingly. “But, with you here, in the middle of this shit, I think we got off lucky. Not the Medusan, of course, but the three of us, anyway. We’re the individuals, and we’re the free ones living our own lives. You got nothing, nobody, not even the Confederacy in a pinch, and you got all the crosses.”

“And yet you’ve really changed,” Lacoch put in, again getting nods. “We all sense it. Sure, we changed, but you were with all three of us and you still got the load. The big load. That’s, what this is all about, isn’t it?”

He grinned. “In a way, yes. If we never had this meeting, never had this talk, none of us would be really free of the others and you know it. Now you—all of you—are free and only I am not. If this all works out, I think the four of us will do very well indeed as … brothers. If not—well, who knows what will happen to any of us?”

They accepted that in silence for a moment. Finally Tremon said, “The Council will never bargain in good faith. You know that.”

He sighed. “Not yet they won’t. Not without the shedding of blood on both sides. I’m going to do my best, though, tomorrow, to put it together. We’ll see. At least you of all people understand my motives and loyalties.”

“I think we do,” they all said softly. The meeting broke up a little after that, and Dumonia was summoned to the conference room. The little man with the needless glasses and nervous ticks didn’t try to conceal his position of strength from him, but he was curious.

“You are really the original of all of them?”

He nodded. “If original is the right word. And I experienced all that they experienced, Doctor, but without any little memory tricks. You might tell me, though, how the hell you managed to erase yourself from Zhang’s mind. I thought any tinkering like that was damned near impossible with my—his—mind.”

Dumonia smiled. “And who do you think created many of those techniques in the first place?”

He sighed. “I wish you’d been on Ypsir’s satellite a couple of days ago. I assume that you’re behind the Opposition projects there?”

He nodded. “But what happened that you wished for me?”

Briefly, he told Dumonia and asked, “What’s your long-term prognosis?”

“Well, Jorgash is among the best I ever taught, if that’s any consolation, and your kind of mind is best for that procedure, but—and it is a big but—he would have to guess on your mental blocks and patterns where I would know. In any event, I would counsel you to think of Bul as dead, for dead he certainly is. I realize your guilt but I also know this Ypsir. He knows that you were Control for Bul, and that’s why you’ve been invited to dinner tonight. You should understand him, too, to an extent, and realize that if you had been in time to intercede, he would have accidentally on purpose done it anyway. The only real human being in Ypsir’s mental universe is himself. Everyone else is either a tool or an enemy authority. To the enemy authority—and to himself—he must continually prove that he is better, stronger, superior. You are the tool of that authority, the Confederacy, and, therefore, you represent it If I were you I would not go to dinner tonight.”

“Why? You think he means me harm?”

“He is not so foolish. But if you cannot accept the fact that this Tarin Bul is dead, as dead as if he had been shot through the heart, and that this new person is exactly that, a new and different person you do not know and have never met, he will torture you horribly. You must put aside your guilt, for it is misplaced. There is nothing you could have done to stop this. Nothing. You would only have hastened it. In the case of Bul, you must abandon hope with that guilt. Otherwise, cancel and eat here with us.”

He nodded. “Til handle it. But what should my reaction be?”

“You are not yourself here!” the psych snapped. “You are not even the Confederacy! You are all of mankind, and all of the Diamond as well! You’ve been elected, without your consent, to a post that makes you more nonhuman than these Altavar things! You must be above all human concerns, all personal concerns, for the duration of this conference! If not, you are lost.”

He nodded and smiled wanly. “Then you know at least as much as I do about this.”

“I know what Laroo knows, and that is quite a lot. I assume that you are here because you know, too. If you don’t, then God help us all.”

He sighed. “Well, I don’t pretend to have all the answers, or, maybe, any answers at all, Doctor, but you’ve convinced me I have to go to dinner tonight.”

“Eh?”

“If I can’t handle Talant Ypsir’s mad egomania, how the hell can I handle tomorrow?”

After the cramped quarters below, he was surprised at the size of Ypsir’s apartment. Surely the man hardly ever visited Boojum, and so this place spoke volumes about the man’s mind. Ypsir must have a place like this on every damned one of these moons, he assumed.

He entered a main hall and turned into a room at the sound of conversation. They were there, all of them, the old and the new, and he recognized the ones on sight that he had not yet met. The tall, distinguished man with the snow white hair was Duke Kobe, new Lord of Lilith. The tall, muscular, handsome man was Laroo, in his robot body totally indistinguishable at this point from a normal human one. Morah was there, too, temporarily representing Charon. He made a mental note to ask him sometime what happened to his pretty little killer. And over there, laughing and joking, a distinguished-looking civilized worlder with incongruous flaming red hair and mustache, his eyes mischievous-looking and flanked by “laugh lines,” dressed in deep black and gold. He just had to be Talant Ypsir.

Scampering around were four scantily clad young women of inordinate beauty and sexual endowments, supplying hors d’oeuvres, replenishing glasses, lighting Kobe’s Lilithian cigars, all with a smile and an adoring expression. Goodtime Girls, happily plying their trade. Idly he wondered if they were always here, waiting for that incredibly rare occasion when their master might show up, or whether they were part of his traveling party.

Ypsir spotted him, grinned a politician’s grin, and made his way over to him, hand out. “Well, well! So you’re the man’s who’s going to save the universe!” His manner was joking, not sarcastic-sounding, and he recognized the man’s public persona in an instant. The eternal baby-kissing hypocritical politician, the crook who knows full well he’s got everything in the bag. He snapped his finger and a Good-time Girl was immediately at hand, eagerly awaiting a command. “Get Mr.—Carroll, I believe?—a homau and a tray of those little sausage things with the cheese inside.”

The girl was quick to obey and was soon back with both. He sipped the sweet drink and took a small sausage on a toothpick and tasted it. The drink was a bit sweet for him—he recognized it as some blend of Charonese fruits and alcohol—but the appetizer was quite good.

Ypsir engaged him in small talk for some tune, and he found it remarkably easy to do. His indignation and outright hatred were still there, of course, but under complete control. He doubted if he’d ever met someone so internally corrupt and evil, but he’d tracked down and caught a bunch of very unpleasant types in the past, and quite often he’d had a meal with them and been forced to endure their bizarre lifestyles and values.

All the men in the room except himself were in that class, he realized. Laroo had been the criminal boss of a dozen worlds; Morah had run the criminal brotherhood’s scientific branch, which included projects that would probably make the Goodtime Girls seem tame. Kobe had in his youth been a master of the robot and computerized alarm systems, personally looting more works of art by great masters from impregnable fortresses—or so they were thought to be—than any other single human being. And yet, oddly, he felt almost a kinship with those three, whose careers were based upon disdain for the very values he now disdained, and who, beyond that, were at least sane enough to live in the real universe.

Of them all, only Talant Ypsir hoped he would fail to stop the impending war. Dumonia had been most specific about that point. Ypsir saw the destruction of the Confederacy, and perhaps the whole non-Warden branch of humanity, as something very much to be desired. He was assured of survival with his harem, and that was all that mattered to him. He did not consider the Altavar any threat, because they did not interfere with him or threaten what he considered important. In fact, to Talant Ypsir the entire alien race was just another tool against his enemies.

Ypsir held up a finger and grinned broadly, ever the jovial, friendly politician, only his incredibly cold eyes betraying anything of his inner self. “Wait herel I want to show you my most precious possession!” And, with that, he ducked from the room.

He heard the others whispering admiringly of what they knew was coming. But when Talant Ypsir re-entered, in spectacular fashion, he was aware that the eyes of the other Lords—Morah’s inhuman, burning orbs in particular—were all upon him and not on the newcomer to the room. To Ypsir, this was fun torture; to the others, it was very much a test of his own self-control and resolve. If he blew it now, there would be no tomorrow morning.

She was almost inhuman in her wild, exotic, sensuous beauty, far beyond the sketches he’d seen in Fallon’s office. Despite all his knowledge and feelings, he was almost overcome by wanton desire, by pure lust, and that, he realized later, was the key.

You must think of her as someone you do not know and have never met.

It was easier to do than he’d believed.

She entered on all fours, playfully tugging at a golden leash held by Ypsir, whose face showed absolute ecstasy and triumph. Ypsir was having a doubly fine tune, not only tweaking this outsider’s nose and, by so doing, the Confederacy’s, but also showing off to the other Lords, his political equals, with an air of I have her and you never can or will.

Ypsir and the girl halted just inside the entrance door, and she rolled over and then partly propped herself up on one arm, legs crossed, and looked up at them with those enormous green eyes, at once sexy and, somehow, wild as well.

She was, he thought lustfully in spite of himself, the ten best pornographic performances ever given all rolled up into one. She was quite literally designed to create instant envy and lust, and he could only stare at her. She looked straight into his face and there was no glimmer of any recognition at all, but there was a vibrancy, a fire in those eyes that was not in any of the Goodtime Girls.

Ypsir looked down at her with pride. “Tell the nice men your name,” he urged softly, as if talking to a trained animal or a child.

“I’m Ass,” she purred. “I’m a baaad Ass.”

“And why are you named Ass?”

“ ’Cause Ass was ’sassin. Ass try to kill Master.”

He was under control now, perfectly so, and glanced out of the corner of his eye at the others. They were still looking only at him.

“And what happened when you tried?”

“Master too smart. Master too wise for Ass. Master so generous. Master no kill Ass. Master no hurt Ass. Master make Ass love him. Master take ugly, evil ’sassin, make into Ass, to love Master.”

Despite the depravity of the scene, this was becoming interesting, he thought. If they retold her that much, how much did she know of her former self? Not enough to recognize him, certainly. This was different from what he expected, yet it was consistent. Ypsir wanted her to know.

“Do you remember who. you were?”

She looked slightly confused by that one. “Ass not ’member old self. Ass no want to ’member.”

“Are you happy now, Ass?”

“Oh,, yes!”

“Would you want to be anybody else—anybody or anything in the whole wide universe?”

“No, no, no, no, no. Ass loves being Ass. Feels so good.”

Ypsir looked up straight at him. “Your former agent.”

“Very creative,” he responded dryly, sipping at his drink. “And very lovely. Maybe we missed a bet, Lord Ypsir. Maybe we should have made you into a gorgeous beauty like that instead of sending you to Medusa. That’s what you would have done with you.”

Ypsir’s face clouded, and he literally shook with emotion, his inner self coming out in the twisting of his face, in his expression, in his every mannerism. It was a frightening, totally evil visage, a demonic creature that could no longer hide behind the mask of the cheery politician for very long.

He was about to add more, but felt Morah’s arm touch his and thought better of it. He’d done his job, and that was all that mattered, but he took a strong pleasure in twisting Talant Ypsir’s vision of beauty back upon him by applying the Medusan’s standards to himself.

Ypsir took a minute or-so to regain control, and slowly that terrible demon faded and the cheery politician was back with only a nasty leer remaining. He knew now, though, that he was in complete control, and his self-confidence, which had been badly wavering, flowed back into him in a grand surge. He also now knew that, while he still couldn’t believe in a god, he would always afterward believe in the existence of pure evil.

The rest of the evening was strained, but he found the right balance that not only Morah but the other Lords could approve. Not that Ypsir didn’t try, parading Ass, making her do pretty disgusting and degrading things, and pushing him as far as the Medusan could push using her, but to no avail. Ypsir fought his war with grand and ugly gestures; he fought back with sarcasm and flip comments, and totally frustrated the great Lord of Medusa. It was a very rare evening, really, he told himself, equally unpleasant, and rewarding.

Morah got him out of there as soon as dessert was finished, though. Ypsir would be boiling, horrible mad for hours after. Still, the Charonese was more than impressed by his behavior, and seemed to regard him even more as an equal now than before.

“He will kill you if and when he can,” Morah warned him. “Ypsir is not used to losing face so badly. Only the presence of the other Lords restrained him tonight, for his object is not ours.”

He nodded. “Shall we meet the Altavar now? I don’t care how foul they smell—they almost have to be a breath of fresh air compared to the company we’ve been keeping this night.”

“Come with me,” Yatek Morah said.

The smell was pervasive and pretty much as Morah had warned. On a full stomach it almost made him gag, and he restrained the impulse to do so only with the greatest difficulty and discomfort.

The Altavar were not quite what he expected. They bore a general kinship to the demons of the ice, but only a kinship, in the same sense that Ass was generically related to Commander Krega.

The first thing that struck him was the sheer alienness of the special quarters for the three Altavar. The lighting Was subdued, the furniture odd and blocky and totally unfamiliar in form or function, and there was an odd, figure-eight shaped pool of water to one side. He knew the creatures were watching him with interest, but he couldn’t really tell how. The retractable tentacles and odd, heart-shaped pads on their “heads” were familiar, but their bodies trailed into a large, nearly formless mass that seemed constantly in motion. They did not walk, but oozed as they moved, leaving a slender trail of slime behind them. Obviously none of these creatures could fly, or move very fast at all.

The one nearest to him and Morah moved to a small device and extended a flowing stalklike appendage until it reached the box and actually seemed to enter it through a small compartment on the side. A speaker crackled.

“So this is the one who caused so much trouble, Morah.” The voice, totally electronically synthesized, sounded eerie as the dank enclosure added reverb to its already inhuman tones.

Morah bowed slightly, although whether or not the gesture had any meaning to the creatures couldn’t be known. “He wished to meet you prior to the talks.”

“Why?”

The question seemed addressed to either one of them, and so he answered. “Partly curiosity. Partly to add to my knowledge. And partly because protocol demanded it.”

“Ah, yes, protocol,” the alien replied. “It seems important to your people.” It paused a moment. “You hold yourself well. In many ways you remind us of the one called Kreegan.”

“We were from the same place and in the same profession originally,” he told the Altavar. “I suspect we thought more alike than either of us would have admitted. You respected Kreegan, I know. I hope that I may earn a measure of that respect tomorrow.”

“You and he wished to save your people. This is a normal and natural thing to us, and we weakened out of our compassion. We hope sincerely that we did not err on that basis, for the cost will be far greater to you and infinitely greater to us if we did. It was our original intent, you know, to eliminate a number of your worlds in a carefully measured pattern so” that your technological capabilities would be broken for at least three centuries. This would have allowed us the necessary time to complete this phase of our task.”

He was appalled at this revelation, and the casual way in which it was delivered,’ appalled as Marek Kreegan must have been many years ago when, assuming his rank as Lord of Lilith, he had first met this or some similar Altavar. Say there were nine hundred human worlds, seven hundred of them the civilized worlds. Three billion per civilized world, and an average of a half-billion for the others, would be—The Altavar was talking about eliminating over one trillion, three hundred and twenty billion people! And now, the creature had said, the risk was far greater than that!

He drew in his breath and swallowed hard. “Let me get this straight. You wished to eliminate over a trillion of us so that we could not interfere with your activities for three centuries?”

“It has worked in the past,” the Altavar said calmly. “The last time we did not do it with a civilization it cost us dearly in time, lives, and materiel, and your own civilization is easily ten times the largest we have encountered before.”

So calm, so natural and normal, so clearly confirming much of his thesis about the Altavar and their motives.

“We hope that this time we may reason with your leaders, and avoid all war, but this may not be possible,” the creature continued. “We have studied your people well, and we understand you.”

“Do you, really? I wonder.” All he could see was not a terrible, gruesome alien form and stench, only an entire race of Talant Ypsirs, shorn of any need to be cheery, political, or human in any sense. The Medusans called them demons with no real understanding of how right they were.

“We know your concern,” the Altavar told him. “Once, you see, our race was much like yours. We grew from a single world not unlike your own, although, obviously, evolution took a different path. We breathe the same sort of air, we drink and are made up of the same water. Our cells would be understandable to your biologists. Only the most warlike, competitive races survive to expand, so do not think us any different from you there, either. We, too, had our empire of several hundred worlds. And when faced with threat, we, too, fought. Because our history is so much like your own, we know full well what your Confederacy will do, how it will behave. But we are far older than your kind. Our objectives have changed, our purpose is firm and sure, our entire race committed to a single set of goals and objectives, while yours exists only to exist and to no real purpose. We desire none of your worlds. We desire none of your territory, nor your people.

“But your people will never believe that, for they know no higher purpose. They will not accept, or countenance, our great task, nor understand it. This is sad, for if there was any way to avoid the spilling of blood we would do so. That, we think, is why we were willing to allow Kree-gan his chance. That and the fact that we had the luxury of time. We still have some time, but we fear his plan has achieved instead this current situation. Tomorrow we will begin to resolve it.”

He nodded. “Yes. Tomorrow. Thank you for speaking to me.” He looked at Morah, who nodded, turned, and walked out without another word. He followed, remembering that the Altavar didn’t stand on protocol.

It took a little while of breathing good air before his stomach would settle down enough to have any sort of conversation. Morah waited patiently for him to recover.

“Well, did you find any surprises in your pet theories?”

He thought a moment. “Yes and no. It depends on just how well that thing translates. I heard the right words, but words can mean different things to different people.”

“Tell me,” the security chief said, “just out of curiosity—and if you can without giving away your own position. Just why do you think that the Altavar are so obsessed with the Diamond?”

“Huh? I assumed it had something to do with reproduction, but if I heard that thing correctly it may not. What did I miss?”

Morah thought his answer over carefully. “Then my guess was correct. You are a good agent, Carroll, and you have the most brilliant deductive mind I have ever encountered, Kreegan included. Do not feel badly. You labor under a handicap impossible to overcome.”

“I knew I missed something—but you still haven’t told me what, yet.”

“I think not. Not at this time. If anything, the true answer would make even the slender hope of settlement impossible. Reproduction is a good theory, and you should stick with it. The Council will understand it, perhaps accept it, and it will do as a basis for negotiations. The true answer, however, they will never accept, for they share your fatal flaw—and mine, too, for I had to be shown to believe.”

He looked at Morah, frowning. “Then at least tell me the flaw.”

“These are aliens, Mr. Carroll. They are, as the old one said, far closer to us than their hideous appearance and smelly hides admit, but they are alien all the same. They were shaped by a history that went vastly different from ours, and they reacted in a way, I suspect, that we could not. It should be obvious that their values, their institutions, their way of looking at things is very different from our own and would require a mind-wrenching adjustment to understand.”

“Do you understand it?”

“Sometimes I think I do, but I cannot really say so truthfully. I know what they are doing, and why they are doing it, but that is not the same thing as understanding it. I think it is time we both turn in, Mr. Carroll. Tomorrow, we settle it, and, in a sense, I fear that the hopes of Kreegan and, in fact, myself, will be dashed. I know those people too well, those high and mighty Confederacy leaders. You see Talant Ypsir and see a monster. I look at the Council and the Congress and the planetary leaders and I see a great gathering of Talant Ypsirs, and would-be Talant Ypsirs if they thought they could get away with it. That is the true reason they established the Warden Diamond; you have only to recognize it yourself. They wanted a place of security, refuge, and escape in case they were caught. The Four Lords of the Diamond are not truly any different from the Nine Hundred Lords of the Confederacy, who are merely greater hypocrites.” He turned to go, and the agent reached out and softly took hold of his arm for a moment.

“Morah—I have to know. Just whose side are you on?

“What is your ultimate game? You hate the Confederacy, but you have the same contempt for the Four Lords and the Diamond systems. You hoped that Kreegan could save humanity, yet you work for the aliens. What is your game?” The chief of security sighed. “Once I had a game, Mr. Carroll. I don’t any longer. I am trapped in a near-endless madhouse of a universe I did not make and cannot control or truly influence. From our viewpoint the Altavar are incredibly wise and totally insane, but insanity itself is a matter of degree. I am certainly insane by the standards of the Confederacy. Think of me as you would yourself. Neither of us asked to be here, nor did we fight for the responsibility that has been dropped upon us. Both of us do what we must because we are here, not because we are even the best people to be here. And, being totally insane ourselves, while we do not wish the ruin, carnage, and senseless violence that impends, we will both, wearily and without joy, work like hell to pick up the pieces.”

“That’s a pretty shitty universe you live in.” Morah grinned. “I wouldn’t bring this up tomorrow, but, for the record, the Altavar have three sexes. One contributes sperm, one egg, into a third who bears the young. And given a near-perfect medical knowledge, they live about three times as long as we do.” And with that, Yatek Morah went off to bed.

The conference was an awkward affair, but it was the best that could be done on short notice. He wondered from the start why such a minor moon, ill-suited for this sort of thing, should have been chosen, but suspected it might have been to accommodate the Altavar.

The technicians had rigged a screen at each end of the “conference room” and a similar setup, but not two-way, for the aides and assistants and others in the dorm next door. Inside the room sat the four current Lords of the Diamond dressed in their best, or most dramatic, as well as Dumonia and “Mr. Carroll,” the last two facing the rest despite the fact that Laroo was really Dumonia’s surrogate. Morah, it seemed, didn’t fully believe his statements on Dumonia’s power and neither recognized it nor told the others. Dumonia, for his part, was happy to be there as a representative of the Confederacy, although he found that concept highly amusing.

To the Lord’s right, on the screen, was an Altavar, possibly the same one he’d spoken to the night before. To their left the screen showed two men and a woman, all civilized worlders, dressed in formal robes of office. These were the senior ranking members of the Council, the rest of whom watched on a larger screen in an adjoining room back in the Confederacy.

He surveyed the Four Lords and shuffled his note cards nervously. Several times he tried to catch Ypsir’s eye, but while the Medusan kept taking sidelong glances at him he otherwise would not acknowledge the agent’s existence.

When both sides’ comtechs certified all was ready, Morah began the meeting, as he represented not only Charon but also, to some extent, the Altavar themselves.

“These proceedings are open at ten hundred Base Mean Time. I am Yatek Morah, acting Lord of Charon. To my right is Talant Ypsir, Lord of Medusa, then Wagant Laroo, Lord of Cerberus, and, finally, Duke Hamano Kobe’, Lord of Lilith. We speak with full authority for the populations of the Warden Diamond. Across from me sit Mr. Lewis Carroll, authorized agent of the Confederacy, and Antonini Dumonia, the Confederacy’s resident agent on the Warden Diamond.” Morah kept a straight face but Dumonia almost broke up. “Representing the Party Council are Senators Klon Luge, Morakar O’Higgins, and Surenda Quapiere. Representing the Altavar Managerial Project staff and with full authority to represent all Altavar involved in this spacial sector is Hadakim Soog. The name is an attempt to represent the actual name in our speech, and is used simply because the Altavar translating devices will recognize those syllables and transliterate them into Altavar and vice versa. There being no neutral parties present, I will assume the chairmanship for the time being, if there is no objection.”

Nobody spoke or moved.

“Very well, then,” Morah continued, “we will proceed. Mr. Carroll, will you please state your position?”

He smiled and nodded. “There is no use going into all the circumstances that brought us to this point. If we didn’t all know them, and if it wasn’t now a matter of record at all governments concerned, we wouldn’t be here. It is the Confederacy’s position that there is nothing here to fight about, put as simply and bluntly as possible. As far as we can determine, the interest of the Altavar is entirely in the Warden system, as are the interests of the Four Lords of the Diamond. The Confederacy is a very large group not in conflict with the Altavar or any other territory, and, therefore, believes that this matter may be settled simply. We are prepared to cede and concede to the Altavar sovereignty of the Warden solar system for a distance of twenty light-years from its sun, and we are further prepared to guarantee that no people or vessels not now belonging to those in residence in the system will encroach upon this zone, nor will Altavar access or egress from the system be in any way impeded even if it cuts through regions under Confederacy sovereignty. The four worlds known as the Warden Diamond, and their posssessions and colonies, will be given free, unconditional, unilateral independence and may work out whatever arrangement they like with the Altavar. If the Altavar are sincere in stating that they have no interest in Confederacy space beyond the Warden system, this should be sufficient. Any violations, of course, would constitute an immediate act of war, but the vastness of the surrounding zone would provide ample warning.”

He looked around to see how this was being taken—he had hashed it out on the security band well into the night with the Council and Krega—but saw no emotion whatever on the intent listeners. Well, not quite all—Ypsir was cleaning his nails with a small pen knife.

“In exchange for this,” he continued, “the Confederacy expects an immediate and total cessation of hostilities now underway against it by the Four Lords of the Diamond with the acquiescence of the Altavar, withdrawal of all such agents to the Warden Diamond, and a formal agreement that any future territorial or interest conflicts between the Confederation and the Altavar be settled by arbitration with both sides renouncing the use of force against the other. We feel this is more than fair.”

Morah waited a moment to see if he was finished, then saw his nod that he was. “Very well, then,” the Charonese said, “do you have anything to add, Doctor?”

Dumonia shook his head negatively.

“All right. I sense some objections among the Four Lords, but I will defer them at this time, and ask the Council to confirm this offer.”

“We do,” Luge’s voice came to them after a momentary delay caused not by interstellar communications but by the lag from the subspace relay they were using on the picket ship. “In fact, the offer was approved twenty-one to four by the full Council and thus is binding upon us if accepted.”

Morah nodded and turned to the impassive Altavar. “Manager Soog, are you prepared at this time to answer the offer?”

“We are,” the eerie synthesized voice responded. “We would very much like to accept the offer, which answers our basic needs and our objections to the current arrangement. However, we feel we cannot do so. The history of the human race argues against you, Confederacy. It is a most consistent record, no matter the technological or social levels. From the very beginnings of your history you have shown yourselves to be totally intolerant of those who are different. The record is a clear record of repression. Treaties are signed and sworn to and systematically violated at the first opportunity. You persecuted your own for a mild difference in skin color or bone structure, or because some worshiped a different god, or even the same god by different names. Treaties between nations held only so long as both nations felt so strong that they could destroy the other. Not once do we see social or political agreements made and held by mutual respect, only by mutual fear—and then with all the efforts of both sides devoted to destroying even that balance.

“You took these attitudes with you into space,” the creature went on, “and continued them for a while, until the years and the practicalities of distance and the advance of technology merged you racially and culturally. Still, the fact of this merger only caused redirection of this trait. Fully a dozen nonhuman races were discovered in your outward expansion. None equaled your power or emulated your culture. Five you utterly destroyed simply because you could not understand them. The other seven you conquered ruthlessly, and imposed your culture and your system upon them by force. With two of those you first concluded treaties of peace and friendship and the exchange of ambassadors and technical skills, because they were spacefaring races. But as soon as you decided that they could be no threat to you, you ruthlessly rushed in upon them and crushed them, ignoring your treaties. Understand that we do not necessarily condemn this trait, nor condone it, for it is natural to an expanding spacefaring culture and we have seen it before. We were even guilty of it ourselves, once. But you see where this leaves us in the current situation.

“Your treaties are worthless, until you know our strength and power, knowledge those treaties buy you because they buy you whatever time is needed. Sovereignty so easily given away may be more easily taken back. Nor can your military and government leaders rest easy as long as we are hidden behind a shield of their ignorance. Unless we show you all, you will try all the more by any means to learn and thus interfere. If we did show you, either you would determine us too weak and thus rush in to crush us, or we would be too strong, in which case you would spare no effort to catch up, then surpass us technologically and militarily. Your proposal, then, simply buys you the time you need to gain advantage, or it puts off the war, allowing you to build up and improve your forces. It offers us nothing of substance, and we must reject it.”

The three Councillors looked extremely distressed and uncomfortable at this assessment, and Dumonia leaned over and whispered to the agent, “Take ’em off the hook, son. They’re outclassed.”

He nodded. “Then do the Altavar have a counterproposal to avoid war?”

The creature did not hesitate. “We see only one possible guarantee of our own security and safety. The Confederacy will turn over to us control of all spacecraft of whatever size or type capable of interstellar travel, and will build no more. All interstellar travel and communications between human worlds and all forces capable of harming us will be entirely under-our control and supervision for a period of three hundred and fifty years from the date of commencement of the agreement. We will guarantee to maintain all existing passenger and freight routes and establish whatever added schedules are needed for the maintenance of the economy and the well-being of the people. We will not interfere in the internal political affairs of the Confederacy in any way. Expansion or the possession or control of any spacial weapons for the interdicted period will not be permitted.”

The Councillors gasped, and all Four Lords smiled knowingly. “But—that would leave the entire human race totally and completely at the mercy of a race and culture of which we know nothing, having to trust all your promises at face valuel” Senator Luge exclaimed. “Surely you can’t be serious!”

“You proposed to cut loose unilaterally fifty million plus people who are Confederacy citizens under law and put them under these people, you know,” Talant Ypsir snapped. “If it’s good enough for us, it should be good enough for you!”

Morah let the outburst pass, and the Councillors ignored it. “These are negotiations in progress,” he reminded them all. “Let us keep our decorum. Manager Soog?”

“Can the Senator or his advisors suggest any other way we can guarantee our security?” the alien asked.

“Our word is—” the Senator started, but the alien cut him off.

“Your word is valueless. Even you know this. Even as these proceedings begin, a vast and powerful war fleet is within range of the Warden system. On the very eve of negotiations it launched four military probes of advanced design against us. We know what your word is worth, Senator.”

There was consternation and frantic whispering on the Council’s side. Finally Luge seemed to calm everyone down and turned back to the camera. “May we have a recess to discuss a counteroffer?”

Morah looked around. “Is there any objection? No? For how long, then, Senator?”

“One—uh, sorry, two hours.”

“Agents? Manager? Lords? No objection?”

“Let them have their meeting,” Laroo snarled. “It’ll probably be hilarious.”

“Very well, then. This meeting is in recess for two hours and will reconvene at twelve thirty standard.”

Both screens winked out, and everybody seemed to relax. Both Ypsir and Laroo seemed extremely pleased by the way things had gone; Kobe was as impassive as Morah, who looked over at the two opposite him and asked, “Well? Do you think it’s still possible to reach any sort of agreement?”

“I doubt it. Not until we’ve gone through the bloody motions. How about it, Morah? Will they understand a show of force and resistance, or will they simply go all-out?”

“They understand the game, if that’s what you mean. How they will play is anybody’s guess and is certainly beyond my ability to predict. However, they have gone along with it this far, and that is an achievement.”

The agent rose from the table. “I have to call my people.”

He gave it to them straight, but they didn’t really believe him. Not all of it. He was surprised at the start that they had accepted most of his report as gospel—certainly the computer had backed him up, and their own analysis of the same data seemed to have reinforced it. What they could not accept was the concept that the Altavar were in any sense militarily superior to the Confederacy. In weaponry, yes, but not in total weapons systems or firepower.

“But what kind of a solution can you have?” he asked, frustrated. “Nothing less than their offer will give them the security they want, and we can’t possibly accept it.”

“We think we were more than fair in our initial offer,” Luge replied, “and it is still the only offer we can live with. Ypsir certainly has a nerve suggesting we can’t turn over the Diamond to the Altavar—by their own admission now they are in a state of open rebellion. But these squishy, tentacled things give me the creeps. We all wish we had something other than the Diamond to hold over them, but we don’t. We don’t know their power or their forces. In one respect, old squirmy had us pegged. Power and fear of power is the only thing that really counts in situations like this. I know you think they can beat us, but we can’t see any way that’s possible. The only way to get us the information we need, and to learn the true situation once and for all, the Council feels, is a demonstration attack.”

He sighed. “I thought as much, but I’m against it. I don’t know what it is, but I have this crazy feeling that the Altavar, and Morah, are laughing at us.”

“Bluff. They have no place to even hide a fleet, and even if the Diamond is extremely well defended, as we think, they are entirely on the defensive there. Any fleet of theirs capable of menacing the Diamond would be weeks, perhaps months away. Since the Diamond is all-important to them, we must put it in jeopardy. This will force their fleet, if in fact they have one, out into the open to counter us, or it will reveal their bluff. Either way, we’ll know what we’re facing.”

“But if you attack the Diamond you lose the only card we have,” he pointed out.

“Not the Diamond. Not entirely. Just one. One of the four worlds. A demonstration of power—for both sides. If they can keep us from doing it, then we’ll know something. If they cannot, they risk losing the other three, one at a time, unless they agree to our original terms. This way we destroy a quarter of their eggs or whatever, but leave them three quarters. Unless they choose not to call us, in which case the bluff is revealed and we are in complete control. We still feel that if they could have destroyed us, they would have done so at the outset The fact that they are talking at all indicates our original hypothesis is correct.”

He shook his head sadly. “I was afraid it would come to this, but I hoped not. You will have to give the ultimatum yourself—I simply cannot bring myself to do it.” He hesitated a moment. “You intend to target Medusa, is that correct?”

Luge looked slightly surprised, then nodded. “Yes. It has the smallest population, is the system’s industrial base, and is also, in fact, the only world where hard evidence of an Altavar colony exists. Eliminate Medusa and you eliminate the technological base of the Diamond. None of the others could support the needed factories.”

“I’ll need details,” he said softly.

“What you suggest will cost you far more than it will cost us,” the Altavar told the Council. “Perhaps it was destined to be this way. But there will be no limited, demonstration wars. If a Diamond world is destroyed, then we will take appropriate action to bring this matter to a conclusion.”

“You ask us to take your word for your honesty and trustworthiness with nothing whatever to support it,” the agent interjected, trying to avoid what he Was beginning to believe could not be avoided. “You say that our racial histories are not as different as they are similar. You surely must appreciate, then, that a civilization with over nine hundred worlds cannot totally capitulate on the word, the promise, the threat of one opponent whose entire race and history are a blank to us.”

“We know,” Soog responded, and there seemed genuine sadness and regret in that electronic voice. “We have known that all along. That is why generally we simply make an all-out comprehensive attack. It is far less costly to our side, yet comes down to the same thing.”

“But if you felt this way all along, why didn’t you do it here?” Luge responded sharply, thinking he had scored a point.

“If you were faced with this prospect, and there was but a five-percent chance this could all be avoided, would you not try?” the Altavar asked him. “We saw that one chance, and allowed ourselves to be convinced of it. It was a mistake, and many more will die because of that mistake, yet we are not sorry we made it. To have not taken the opportunity would have always left the question begging—did we wipe out so many countless intelligent beings for nothing?”

“I’m sorry,” Senator Luge said, not sounding very sorry at all, “but we simply cannot accept your unsupported threats. If you can stop us from destroying one of the worlds, then do so. If you can not, then you better call all this off and accept our terms before we do.”

Morah, sounding very nervous, broke into the proceedings. “How long before you strike? The Altavar must have time to deliberate this matter and take it up in full.”

The Council could understand that. They would have had the same problems, and the Altavar probably had greater distances to figure in, and, perhaps, a slower communications system. “Beginning at 2400 this night, we will allow exactly seven standard days for deliberation,” Luge told them. “Then we will either have a settlement, or we will commence offensive operations—unless the Altavar can come up with a counteroffer we can accept in the meantime. This channel will be kept open, and our agent will remain on the scene, in case anything must get through to us.”

“Seven days!” Morah thundered, rising to his feet. “But we can not possibly evacuate a world in seven daysl Using the entire Warden fleet, with pressurized freight containers, we couldn’t hope to evacuate a tenth of the population of the smallest worldl”

Luge nodded. “This is a demonstration, not an intentional bloodbath. We have many grievances against the Four Lords, but have no wish to destroy the innocent. We are operating on contingency plans made up when the task force was dispatched, and thus, we have provided for some of this. Sixteen transports, capable of moving twenty thousand people each, with drives capable of making interplanetary trips in one to two hours, are available. If you move only the people, at the most rapid rate, you ought to be able to make four trips a day even with loading and unloading. All ships are automated and computer-driven, but will be commanded by anyone you designate to obey voice orders. The ships will be on station in orbit off Medusa within hours—if the Altavar defenses don’t shoot them down. If you start as soon as they arrive, and mobilize the rest of the Diamond fleet, and cram them in as best you can, you can evacuate the planet. Or you can settle this now.”

Talant Ypsir was up and screaming as he heard the target. “You can’tl You bastards! You swine! You hellish spawn of animals! That is my world you are talking about! Mine! Not the Altavarl It is mine and I will not let you rob me of it!” The combined effect of his inner nature and the Medusan peculiarities of the Warden organism started to change his appearance. He became, in that instant, something terrible, horrible, loathsome to behold, a monstrous, ever-changing vision of evil itself. The creature turned to the agent who sat, impassive, across the table, while next to him Dumonia watched the change with horrid fascination. “Youl” Ypsir screamed, pointing a rotting, crawling finger at the agent. “You put them up to this! I will kill you, kill you, kill—” He made to launch himself across the table.

Yatek Morah turned in the same instant, a laser pistol in his hand, and pointed it at Ypsir. “Oh, shut up, Talant,” he sighed wearily, and pulled the trigger. Ypsir collapsed instantly into unconsciousness and slid beneath the table. They all looked down at the crumpled heap and saw it slowly changing back to the familiar face they knew, the expression alone soon becoming the only measure of the hate that was inside him.

Kunser entered the room from the back dorm in an instant, but they all saw immediately that he was not threatening. “Let me get a couple of people in here and get him back upstairs,” he pleaded. “We have a lot of work to do.”

Morah nodded and bolstered the weapon. “We will move everyone we can to the southern continent of Charon at the start,” he told the Medusan assistant. “If time becomes short, we’ll start putting them down wherever we can on Lilith. Cerberus simply can’t handle any such loads. Tell Ypsir when he wakes up that he can settle scores in eight days. If he does anything else than exactly what this meeting decides, or in any way makes trouble before that point, he will meet the fate of his predecessor instantly. Remind him that we do not need to know where he is or what he is doing, that the Altavar can and will simply order his Wardens to consume him if any of the rest of us say so. Is that clear?”

Everyone else in the room was just getting over their stunned and shocked feelings at the proceedings when Ypsir was finally carried out and away. Even Luge remained frozen on the screen, horrified and shocked by his first direct look at what the Warden organism could do.

Only Morah remained completely in control. “These proceedings are now in indefinite recess. All parties agree that commencing seven days from 2400 this night a state of war will exist between the Altavar on the one hand and the Confederacy on the other.”

Luge seemed to snap out of it. “Any move against us prior to that point will result in even more dire consequences,” he warned. “We are allowing this period not only in hopes of a diplomatic solution but also out of common decency and mercy. If any attempt is made during this period, or is perceived by us to be made, we will abandon our plans and instead all modules will be directed by the task force with the intent of inducing the sun to nova.”

The others on both sides looked particularly shocked by the threat, but the Altavar seemed to take it in stride. “That would be most interesting,” it noted coldly. “However, it would cause quite a lot more problems than we are currently prepared to handle. We will, therefore, uphold the waiting period. But make no mistake o’n this, Senators. Neither you nor the Confederacy will survive many hours after you know just what you have done.”

The agent who called himself Mr. Carroll frowned and looked nervously at the Altavar on the screen. What an odd way to put it, he couldn’t help thinking. What a very odd way to put it…

Talant Ypsir spent most of his time brooding on his palatial orbiting satellite, but he did not interfere with the evacuation nor prevent his aides and infrastructure from doing what had to be done. For himself, though, he spent almost all of his time in his pleasure garden accompanied only by Ass, emerging only briefly to make certain that the station itself would be moved from orbit by tug.

The transports, too, were built on the modular concept, so it was relatively easy for the great ships to break into small compartments and move down to various collection pouits on the surface. These were troop transports, designed to hold half of what they were being asked to hold; but in a war without troops they could be spared by the Confederacy, which was, according to Commander Rrega, still confident that the Altavar bluff would break at the last minute.

The Medusan population proved unusually easy to move. Virtually all of them had been born and raised to obey the orders of the monitors and their superiors, so while they grumbled and complained a lot they did pretty much as they were told. There was some panic in the big cities, among groups who simply would not believe that there was a threat. Others suddenly lost faith when their well-ordered society was proven incapable of protecting them, but these were quickly quelled by monitors with efficient brutality. It was also simply stated that those who did not want to go could remain—but their lives would probably be abnormally short.

Mr. Carroll was particularly concerned about the colonies of Wild Ones. They were too spread out for all of them to be contacted easily, and most disbelieved the news if they heard it and fled into the wild. Finally, he commandeered a shuttle craft and went down to a particular settlement he knew well.

The shuttle landed not in a cradle but on a flat, something it really wasn’t designed to do but could because the possibility of an emergency landing always existed. The door opened and he emerged, the only one aboard, dressed in a protective orange spacesuit with the helmet removed. Still, he wore goggles and a small respirator as he walked up to the rock cliff with the twin waterfalls, aware for the first time of just how hard this land really was on one not redesigned as a Medusan.

The courtyard was deserted, as he’d expected, but he didn’t hesitate a moment, walking up to the one ground-level cave and inside as far back as he could. The torches were still lit, which told him that people were in fact still here somewhere. He cursed himself for not bringing some additional light source. The last time he’d been here he’d been riding along in a Medusan body and hadn’t realized just how damned dark and dangerous the path was.

As he’d hoped, the three elders waited for him across the underground river, eying him without suspicion or fear. He stopped and faced them.

The old woman on the right spoke. “So you have come back after all.”

The comment startled him. “You know who I am?”

“Your body is Warden-dead, yet your spirit shines through,” the other woman told him. “Your walk, your manner, your turn of speech is the same.”

“Then you know why I have come.”

“We know,” the first woman responded. “We will not stop anyone from leaving anywhere on this world, but we will not go.”

“They’re going to do it,” he warned. “They’re really going to do it. The kind of heat and thermal radiation they will use will melt the very crust of this planet. I know you understand what that means. No Warden power is going to save you, and the way the Altavar are acting, they can’t save you, either.”

“We know, and yet to go would be to call our lives and beliefs that we have held for so many years a lie,” the man put in. “When they do as you say, we trust in the God of Medusa to save us, or take us, as is Her will. But no matter what happens there, they will unleash upon themselves a power greater than the pitiful Confederacy can conceive, and She will be angry. We place our faith in Her.”

He sighed. “If you want to be martyrs, I can’t stop you. But you have fifty thousand people across this world, and they are your responsibility, too. They can survive, if we know where they are, and if we can get to them some word that we can be trusted.”

“It is impossible to notify them all in the time remaining,” the first woman pointed out, “but surely more than half have knowledge of what is to come. Some will go, and none will be stopped from going. It is the same here.”

“You have explained to the pilgrims here that they are likely to die in two days?”

“We put it to them just that way,” the man assured him. “We told them that physical death was almost a certainty. Only a very few said that they would like to go, and most of them have not changed their minds.”

“There are two here, though, who should go. I think even you must realize that.”

A few moments later one of the small boats came, bearing two occupants he knew well. They stared at him in frightened bewilderment. He helped them out of the boat, and was immediately aware that both were obviously pregnant, Bura Morphy exceedingly so. Both Bura and Angi just gaped at him. Finally Bura said, “They told us Tari had returned. Who are you?”

“Tari is dead. You know that,” he responded sadly. “I am his—father, in a sense—and his brother.”

Angi gasped, realizing before Bura the implications of that. During the weeks in the wilderness, Tarin Bul had told them of his origin. “You are the man who…” It was all she could manage.

He nodded. “I am. You can’t possibly understand this now, but you must believe me. I was with you in the sewers under Rochande, and with you in the wilderness. I was with you when you came to the pitadel, and with Tarin Bul until the moment of his death. I am not Tarin Bul, but he is with me. I have come to get you.”

“They say they’re going to blow up the planet. Is that true?” Bura asked him.

“That’s true.”

“And nothing can stop it?”

“I tried—Lord, how I tried! But we have an enormous group of men and women who are in the strange position of being totally confident of their power and scared to death at one and the same time. We are trying to save those we can. You carry what future there is for Tarin Bul inside you. Don’t kill him completely. Come with me.”

They looked nervous and uncertain. Bura’s hand took Angi’s and squeezed it tightly. “A pack of mad harrar couldn’t keep us here one more minute if we have a way to get off.”

He grinned. “Fine,” he said, and turned back to the elders. “You may not want to leave, but may I address the others here? Give them one last immediate chance?”

“You have our permission,” the first woman said. “Go to the courtyard, and we will send them to you.”

His speech was impassioned, eloquent, convincing, and mostly futile. Out of perhaps two hundred, only seventeen—all, it turned out, refugees and escapees from the cities—took his offer of escape. He could tell that others, perhaps many others, wanted to go, but were being held back not so much by physical means as by an odd sort of peer pressure. The phenomenon was new to him, and frightened him a little, but he could do ho more.

Not a single one of them had ever been on a spacecraft before, and he had some trouble making the adjustments in restraints and in calming nerves before he could take off. Fifteen of the seventeen were female, all of whom were at least seven months pregnant. The citadel, he knew, was a place where tribes within a weeks’ journey came when it was time for women, to bear their young.

Once over their initial fears, they seemed to enjoy the ride. As time grew shorter and shorter, though, and the evacuation fell more and more behind schedule, he knew that the shuttle would be needed desperately elsewhere. He headed for the Cerberan space station, calling ahead to Dumonia’s people to take on his passengers for now. Ypsir’s Medusan station was already beyond the plane of the Cerberan orbit on its way in-stream by tug, but even if it had been available he wouldn’t have used it. He knew full well what would happen if it were known to Talant Ypsir, as it would be, that two wives of Tarin Bul, pregnant with his children, were within the Lord of Medusa’s station-—all that really remained of Ypsir’s formerly absolute power.

He was surprised to find Dumonia personally waiting for him when he arrived, and after he got the refugees as settled as possible they had a short tune to talk. Dumonia had an easy and relaxed style and the perfect manner, and their talk was pretty wide-ranging, considering the time limit the agent had for turnaround. Dumonia saw the human angle.

“You know,” he said, “that this thing can only end in one of two ways now. Either there will be no more Diamond, or no more Confederacy.”

“Mr. Carroll” nodded. “I’m well aware of that. If there’s no more Confederacy we’re still alive, but in a hell of a fix with no more imports and the Altavar no longer in hiding. On the other hand, if there’s no more Diamond we’ve just done a lot of work for nothing.”

Dumonia grinned. “I think not. You must understand that the Confederacy is ripe for collapse. It won’t take an awful lot to bring that about. Making so many worlds so interdependent has left them far too vulnerable. I’m sure that’s what Kreegan had in mind when he dreamed up this human-replacement business. Unfortunately for all of us, such action was not enough, and if it hadn’t been a desperation scheme it would have been obvious from the start. As fragile and corrupt as the system is, it is still firm enough to keep together a massive population spread out over impossible distances. In its own way the Confederacy was quite amazing, eclipsing any empire in humanity’s past. But it needs collapsing—all empires do, after they have peaked, or humanity grows stale and dies.”

The agent nodded. “I’ve come to pretty much the same conclusion myself. It seems horrible, though, that so many will have to die.”

“It’s always been the case. Back in the very old days when we were only on one planet with simple weapons, occasional wars—even with bows, arrows, and spears—spurred progress. But it is no different, really, if your population dies by the sword or by a fusion bomb, or laser blast, or any other of our modern ways. Still, we finally reached the point on that old world where we couldn’t afford big wars any more without wiping, ourselves out. So we replaced them with small, limited wars, until even these became too sophisticated for any sort of control. Space took much of the pressure off—colonization did that. But political needs and technology unified us, made a human empire of more than nine hundred worlds possible—and kept us in place for a few centuries. Now it falls under the new barbarians.”

“The Altavar strike me as inhuman, and really frightening, but not as barbarians. I wish I understood them better. I’m not even sure I understand then: actions now. Why not strike—if they can? Or if they can defend Medusa, why allow all this?”

“I don’t know,” the psych told him. “The Four Lords really don’t know, either—except Morah, I think. I doubt if Kreegan knew, although perhaps he did. They, too, bought a bill of goods. The Altavar convinced them that they were no threat to the Diamond, perhaps simply by demonstrating that they’d been here all the time. The Four Lords were attracted to a war by remote control, one with no seeming risk and a lot of rewards, including escape, since the Altavar demonstrated to them early on that they could control the Warden organism. Even those robots are totally operated by a variation of the same little creature, each responsive to its own self-contained programming so it can come and go as it pleases. You know, the Confederacy managed to bypass and even reprogram Laroo and others since, yet they really don’t know how the damned things work. Thanks to Merton and her colleagues we knew where the computer-control center was and figured a different but effective input-output system for it, but we still did it by counterprogramming, feeding self-canceling instructions. We couldn’t build one if we tried, nor create our own total-control mechanism.”

He nodded. “You joined our side—for which I’m eternally grateful, by the way—because you feared the aliens. Now what do you think?”

Dumonia shrugged. “Who knows? In science, one takes what is, not what one would like things to be. In the end, perhaps because of the actions of both of us, we’ve come down to war anyway. If the aliens lose, so do we—end of problem. If the aliens win, then we must deal with them and with our own future. Obviously, I am cheering for the aliens even though I don’t trust them one little tentacle-tip. You must understand, for a man who has devoted his entire life to learning what he can—and that’s precious little, I assure you—of the workings of the human mind and personality, to be suddenly faced at my age with the necessity of learning the workings of a wholly different complex creature, was and is a bit intimidating.”

“But if we survive—and have to go it alone—we must look forward. Suppose the Altavar really do let us alone on the three remaining worlds. What then?”

“I began my little operation out of a sense of personal survival,” the psych replied, “but it later expanded, as you know. Ultimately, I hoped for a better, more free and open society on all the Diamond worlds. Turn them lose, with these strange powers, and see what could be built. It’s more than enough challenge for an old man, don’t you think?”

He nodded and grinned. “And for a younger one, too, I think. But what about the Medusans? I wonder if the destruction of Medusa might not also destroy their own potential and actual power. And, if not, whether or not they’ll breed true to Medusa or to Charon or wherever else their children are born.”

“We’ll have to wait and see on that. However, I suspect that the computer for them is the same as the one for us. Probably one of those huge moons of Momrath, broadcasting and receiving on all four frequencies no matter what. In that case, they will retain their potential and breed true. Charon will become a biracial society, which will bear close watching. Eventually we must learn the Warden secrets and go out again from here, of course, but each of the three worlds can handle many times their present population. You could put half a billion or more on Cerberus yet, and perhaps three billion or more on each of the other two. The survivors will have several generations to solve the problems, and with far less ignorance than we’ve all had up to now. Show some bright minds that a thing is possible and sooner or later they’ll drive themselves mad until they learn how to do it. That’s what makes us humans something pretty special.”

It was almost time to leave, but he had one more question. “What about Ypsir’s girl? What if we could get her away from him—or if she freed herself?”

He sighed. “Jorgash is an expert on the Medusan variants. He tells me flatly that the process absolutely locks in the physiological design so that it cannot be changed at alL I suspect the computer treats them as trees or animals or such—things that must be kept stable. Remember, that’s what the Wardens are actually for. Now, assuming your computer would let us, we could take that Tarin Bul recording you used for your report and feed it back into her, but consider the consequences. That body, those revised genetics, that hormonal makeup would, I think, drive you nuts. Still, she was made out of Tarin Bill’s body, and the intellectual capacity is still very much there. The challenge is, at the moment, quite academic, but I’m fascinated by what could be done. Someone with her looks, moves, and drives and your superior intellect might potentially be running all our lives in a couple of years. It’s something to think about.”

“I think about it a lot,” he told the psych master, “but 111 think about it more if I’m still alive and kicking three days from now. I have to go.”

As he stood up to leave, Dumonia put a hand on his shoulder and added, in a concerned tone, “Watch out for Ypsir, boy. He was always for the war, remember—so bad is his hatred of the Confederacy—and now that war’s come, but at a price he never expected to pay. He’ll never forgive the Altavar for that, but he’s very smart and knows it might be a long time before he can get revenge there. Thus, all of his hatred, all of his frustration, almost certainly will be taken out on you and your brothers here. Right now he’s probably spending all his time thinking of how to get his revenge on you. Not by killing you—that’s not his style and would give him only brief satisfaction. It will be something horrible, and far worse than we can imagine.”

He nodded and shook the little psych’s hand warmly. “I know that and I’ll remember. If we’re still around.”

“Yes,” Dumonia repeated grimly, “if we’re still around. Empires never go quietly.”

He was back on Boojum on the night before the deadline expired, as instructed by both the Confederacy and Morah. He opened his secure channel to Krega, a channel so secure that the field enveloping him would not allow any recording device, or even someone standing right next to him, to understand a word either way.

“There has been no reconsideration?” he asked, hoping against hope. “They’re still behind in evacuation, and there are between fifty and a hundred thousand people we just can’t get off under any circumstances.”

“There has been no reconsideration on this end,” Krega told him. “In fact, it’s been difficult just to restrain some of our people, particularly the military, to this limited engagement. However, it’s going to be awfully bloody. We have monitored some traffic not on our control system at various random points around the civilized worlds. They duck in and out of light before we can get to them, but some of them are pretty big. They haven’t budged on your side?”

“Not a bit. I talked to Morah and to the Altavar and they’re both firm—you might say even eager, on Morah’s part. However, that unauthorized traffic gives me bad feelings. There’s been no sign of any fleet massing here—I still haven’t seen an Altavar ship, not even one to take off the party on Medusa. I don’t think they’re going to take on the task force head-to-head.”

“We have a computer projection on their potential, even assuming a tenth of our firepower, and it’s scary,” Krega admitted. “Security and Military Systems Command have used the week to shift to remote backup positions. Unless this is more bluff, we think they have dispersed rather than massed their forces for hit-and-run. If we had ten war stations we could destroy hundreds of planets. We have to hit them in one spot—yours, I’m sorry to say, but it’s the only one we have. They can hit us wherever we’re not. Come in, destroy a weakly defended planet someplace, then get out fast. Choose another equally vulnerable. We can’t guard them all. We’d need eighteen hundred cruisers to do a strong defense of all the worlds and we have less than three hundred. Sounded like a lot when we built them.”

And that was that “They’re willing to accept the possibility of a protracted bloodbath of those proportions?”

Krega chuckled dryly. “Son, maybe you’re still naive. The Council, the Congress, all the top people are in the best, most well-protected rear areas. They’ll die of old age before they’re ’an jeopardy. Face facts—they’ve got to win no matter what the cost.”

No matter what the cost.,. Yes, he reflected sourly, that was the bottom line. Fallen had been right. Korman had been right. They’d all been right. The Warden Diamond wasn’t the opposite of the Confederacy, nor were the Four Lords of the Diamond the opposites of the Council. No, they were merely reflections of the Confederacy, allowing for local conditions. That was it—the break was now complete, total, and irrevocable.

“Good-bye, Papa,” he said, meaning it.

“Good-bye, Control,” Krega responded and broke the contact.

He threw the security transceiver as hard as he could at the nearest wall. It bounced off and clattered and rolled back to his feet.

The task force was already alerted. There was only an hour to go.

Morah turned and nodded to him as he entered the cramped meeting room. “Welcome, Mr. Carroll,” he said calmly, sounding in a good mood. “Have a seat. Some of my staff are here and we thought we would make use of the transmission facilities and these-screens to watch what happens now. Unfortunately, Altavar ships are simply not built for such as us, and the command center itself bears little resemblance to anything we could make use of. I have arranged to couple in our own devices to theirs so that we can, shall we say, watch the show.”

Morah’s manner irritated him. He could not really figure out the man, who moved so rapidly from tired philosopher to master agent to an almost Ypsir-like disregard for suffering and destruction. Still, until this was resolved, he was more or less along for the ride and would have to make the best of it.

A half-dozen others were seated around the table, some with small terminals, others with primitive pads and paper, but all looked more interested than worried by what might well take place. Most, but not all, were Charonese. Medusans were conspicuously absent, though.

One screen displayed the familiar computer plot showing the tactical disposition of the task force, the Diamond worlds, and representations of moving traffic and satellites. The plot extended to Momrath, but not beyond.

The task force had split into three sections. Two battle groups with their attendant cruiser protection had moved well away from the main force and were station keeping at right angles to the task force and the sun. The main battle group, with two war stations, was rapidly beginning to close on the target, its obvious move designed to draw out an enemy fleet and to draw and test interplanetary defenses, since all operations could have been carried out from any distance within a light-year of the target.

He frowned. “From the looks of it the Altavar are putting up no resistance at all,” he noted aloud.

Morah sat back in his chair and watched the screen. “There will be no resistance to the objective except from fixed planetary defenses, which will become increasingly costly to the task force the more they close,” he told the agent. “However, the subsidiary battle groups will be engaged at the proper time.”

“Then there are forces in the area! Where?”

“You’ll see them when the time comes, Mr. Carroll. Be patient. We are about to bear witness to a sight no humans and few living Altavar have ever seen. We have remote cameras stationed in-system and will be able to see things firsthand on the other screen. All of this, of course, is contingent on the Confederacy task force doing exactly what it said it would. If they try to double-cross us with a mass attack on all four worlds or any one other than Medusa, or if they come at us here, the script may change drastically. I do expect some attempt at the moons here, but as long as the main attack is centered on Medusa I believe we are in no danger.”

As the standard clock hit 2400, there was a sharp, anticipatory taking in of breath by all concerned, but nothing happened immediately. The task force continued to close, now well within the orbit of Orpheus, the farthest out planet in the Warden system.

At 2403 the task force slowed, then came to a complete stop between Orpheus and Oedipus, next in of the planets, as shown in the total system insert, and the cruisers deployed in protective formations around the two main war stations. Suddenly buzzers sounded, and they could see a great number of tiny pinpricks of white light emerge from the war stations in a steady stream that lasted several seconds, then halted. The field, resembling an onrushing meteor storm, was on the big in-system board in a matter of seconds.

Streamers of blue light appeared in great numbers, lashing out from the moons of Momrath at the onrushing storm of modules. About a third of the modules broke from the main stream and headed toward the source of the fire, but the defenders were taking a tremendous toll. “The fools clustered them too closely together,” Morah sneered.

And it was true. Bright flashes occurred all through the field and its breakaway segment, followed by tiny white lights winking out all over the place. The blue streams were moving so fast the eye could hardly follow them, but they were well directed and found their targets.

“Second wave, away and dispersing!” an aide at a terminal called, and eyes went back to the insert. The new modular attack appeared to be about the same in number as the first, but it spread into an extremely wide field that was almost impossible for the boards to track properly. They were now coming in from all directions.

“That’s more like it,” Yatek Morah mumbled to himself.

He could only look at Morah and the others in wonder. Quite rightly, some of those modules were aimed directly at them, yet they didn’t seem the least bit concerned. He sighed and gave himself a fatalistic shrug. Either they were safe, or they were not—but, in either case, as much as he’d like to be out there in a ship under his control, he was stuck.

“Open camera screens,” Morah ordered, and on the rear screen a series of views appeared. One was a long shot from a position far enough from Medusa to show it only as a greenish-white disk, the view polarized enough so that the night side of the planet showed dully but completely as well. Then there were six smaller views, some from orbit around Medusa, others apparently on the planet’s surface. One showed a city that might have been Rochande but also might have been any one of a dozen others, while another showed a long shot of the sacred mountain in the far north, a location he recognized well.

“The defensive shields are holding just fine,” Morah commented to nobody in particular. “However, we can’t possibly get all the probes if we’re to save Momrath’s bases as well as give cover to the other three planets.” He turned toward the camera viewscreens and pointed. “There! See the sky near that plains view?”

They all looked, and could see clear streaks in the otherwise blemishless dark blue sky, streaks leaving a reddish-white trail. Now there were more and more of them, almost filling the skies as the attack modules separated after entering the atmosphere and split into a hundred equally deadly weapons each.

Massive explosions showed on each view, with huge domes of crackling energy ballooned up and out. One of the cameras was knocked out, but was quickly replaced by another. Obviously there were enough located all over the planet for them to get at least one good surface view.

The full disk view showed thousands of tiny bursts of light all over the globe, as if it were covered with windows and now suddenly had internal light, each window representing a lethal energy weapon of enormous destructive potential.

He glanced over at the situations board and saw, to his surprise, new formations in a new color, yellow, approaching the system from all directions in a coordinated circle. There was no way to tell their size or design from the board codes, but there were a hell of a lot of them, at least a number equal to the total task force. “The Altavar are closing for attack,” he said to the others, all of whom were watching the merciless bombardment of Medusa.

Morah took a glance back at the board. “Yes. They made it very easy on us, giving us the week. It allowed us to plot their probable attack pattern and to position our own forces so that they could emerge from hyperspace at precisely predetermined points. They will engage only the two smaller reserve task forces, however; the main body’s job is to restrict the main enemy force to its original target.”

“But with a force like that they could have defended the whole damned system!” he almost yelled in fury. “They’re deliberately throwing Medusa awayl” Why? Why? What have I missed?

The Altavar fleet split into three sections, two of which moved to create a ball-shaped attack formation around each of the reserve task forces, the main body moving steadily on toward a position near Momrath.

From their movements, it appeared that the Altavar had ships that were smaller than the Confederacy’s cruisers, perhaps much smaller, but with far greater speed and maneuverability at sublight speeds. They moved so quickly and precisely into their ball-shaped attack pattern and began closing in what seemed like one motion that the bigger Confederacy ships had no chance to get out of the way or disperse. Instead the cruisers positioned themselves in a classical defense and began counterattacking the Altavar formation immediately. The fury and totality of the engagement was such that the board became a riot of colors, both white and yellow, and it quit making any attempt at showing the actual action.

In a sense it seemed an almost romantic vision of war, the ship-to-ship battle of long ago, but he knew it was not. The board itself showed a vast distance, and those ships probably never would see one another, except on boards like this one that were far more detailed and localized. Nor, probably, were very many lives at stake. This was not really man-to-man or even ship-to-ship, it was computer versus computer, technology versus technology, and it was some time before it was clear who was going to win. The Altavar’s smaller, speedier, easier-to-turn and harder-to-hit ships, supported by computers whose programs were based not on problem theories but actual combat, had the edge, assuming the forces were basically equal in strength.

The main task force between Orpheus and Oedipus regrouped, studying the side conflicts and learning from them, but made no move to press inward or engage the main Altavar force, which was clearly now not headed for a direct engagement but rather was establishing a large and formidable defensive perimeter inside the Diamond itself. The task force threw a number of lethal modules at the defenders, but they were easily neutralized. The main concentration continued to be upon Medusa for the moment.

But with both reserve battle groups now showing bright yellow circles blinking on and off, meaning that the Altavar had broken the back of that force, the main task-force commander was not about to continue a methodical demonstration of increasing power against a largely deserted planet. He opted to put an end to Medusa and then, if need be, engage the main task force before the victorious remnants of the two main Altavar groups that were mopping up their battles could regroup and join the defenders.

The agent felt a great deal of admiration for the task force commander, whoever he or she was, for having the good sense and guts not to split up that force and aid the reserves, thereby weakening their own double group to Altavar attack. That admiral understood full well that the alien main group was there to defend the other three planets and, possibly, Momrath, and could not afford to leave those targets open to close and join battle with the Confederacy task force. As soon as Medusa was taken care of, then the task force would have to close on the now defending Altavar.

Only two cameras on the surface of Medusa were still working, and one was up in the north, where energy weapons were melting the glacial ice with ease. For the first time in a long while, perhaps since shortly after the surface was created, there was open ocean on most of the planet, and much of it was boiling.

“Salvo seven. This should be it!” somebody called, and at that moment the last surface cameras went.

He could see them at the citadel, those proud and foolish Wild Ones, praying to their god as the searing heat and energy hit them. At least it had been quick. At least that…

And now simultaneously deployed special warheads went off simultaneously around the entire globe of Medusa, their heat so intense the very atmosphere was inflamed, and the crust began to melt. Great sheets of steam rose from the oceans and the ice, and the world turned slowly from bright white to a dull crimson as the magma underlying the Medusan surface was freed and fed by the material at the top.

It was a gruesome sight that yet so fascinated him that he couldn’t take his eyes off it.

“Any moment now…” Morah said expectantly, then: “There! It’s begun!”

He stared hard at the image, now blood red, and for a moment saw nothing he hadn’t expected to see. Abruptly, he frowned and rubbed his eyes, as the image seemed to lose its consistency and become fuzzy and distorted. Medusa seemed no longer to be a disk at all, but some sort of stretchy blob of reddish-brown goo going off in all directions. And it seemed to be growing abnormally larger, until it was twice the size it had been, and he could only scratch his chin and mutter, “Now, what the hell?”

The glob seemed to flow in a single direction, then separate into two distinct masses, one of which clearly again was a planetary body of Medusa’s size. The other mass, however, of almost equal size, congealed and writhed and twisted—and moved. Moved outward, gaining speed as it did so, moving toward the Confederation task force that immediately began throwing everything it had at the onrushing mass.

The Altavar fleet, in a wide, inverted V, moved in behind it, matching speed and direction.

“Close-up!” Morah snapped. “I want a close-up on the Coldah!”

His staff did what they could, and found at least one view from somewhere out-system that showed the mass of the writhing, terrible planet-sized thing that had emerged from the bombarded planet.

It was a monstrous, ever-changing shape, mostly energy but with some matter, taking no clearly defined substance for more than a second before changing into something else, like a mad ball of lightning gone completely berserk.

And yet it was not berserk—its course and speed were deliberate, and it continued to close on the fleet, ignoring all that was being thrown at it, absorbing module after module that could destroy a planet.

It was on the fleet before any counteraction could be taken, just wading in, shooting off tens of thousands of tendrils of fire and flame into the hearts of the ships, exploding whatever ordnance they still carried. Both war stations went up in blazes that matched Medusa itself, but much of the outer task force, beyond immediate reach of the Coldah’s tentacles, began to fan out and those were now engaged by Altavar ships from the edges of the great fleet’s wedge.

The agent angrily pounded his fist on the table. “Of course! Of coursel” he muttered to himself. “Why the hell didn’t I think of that? Not one species—two! That wasn’t the damned Altavar computer I sensed on Medusa, it was the mind of this other thing!”

Morah couldn’t take his eyes off the pictures, but nodded. “Yes, two. The Altavar serve and protect the Coldah.”

“This—this Coldah. What the hell is it? What’s it made of? How can the damned thing even exist?”

“We don’t know. The Altavar, who have been studying it for thousands of years, don’t know, either. They’re not many in number, these Coldah, so we have no idea how numerous they might be or even if they are native to this galaxy or even this universe. They roam solitarily throughout the vastness of space until they come upon a world of the size and type and position they need for whatever it is they do. Long ago, thousands of years ago, when the Altavar were an expanding empire like the Confederacy, one came into an Altavar system and made one of their worlds its home. They are energy, they are matter, they are whatever they choose to-be whenever they choose to be. In settling into that Altavar world, they killed three billion inhabitants. Naturally, that started a long and dirty war.”

He nodded, seeing the possibilities.

“Of course,” the security chief went on, “they attacked that first Coldah much as we just did, and with similar results. They made the thing irritable. It went right through their forces to another inhabited world and did the same thing. They continued to fight it, to chase it, to harass it as much as possible while trying to learn as much about it as they could. It became an obsession with the Altavar, as, of course, it would with us. But while the Coldah don’t like company they can communicate with one another over great distances, and after a few centuries more of them showed up in the Altavar systems. Eventually the Coldah learned to anticipate the Altavar attacks and take measures ahead of time. The Altavar losses were gigantic, and they finally had to stop their continual, useless war and take stock, learn a bit more, then try again. Every time they failed. For thousands of years they failed. They learned a lot, though. When the Coldah inhabited a planet, it added little or no mass, apparently remaining in an energy state, and it sent out colonies of organisms to create within it a disguise of sorts—a perfect, natural disguise.”

“The Warden organism,” he breathed.

“The concept is not unknown in nature. As to why they always prefer our kinds of planets, and remake them into our kinds of planets, nobody really knows. They are the classic alien—so different from anything we know, any form of life we know, any life origins we can understand, that they are totally incomprehensible to us. Your man on Medusa once made a fringe contact with this one. Do you remember it?”

He nodded. “I thought it was the computer.”

“What was your impression?”

He thought a moment. “It was aware of me, but didn’t have much of an opinion about it. I got the impression of a sense of utter superiority out of the thing, and I had the feeling it noted me, then flicked me aside as we would a fly.”

“I have been—far deeper—hi contact over the years,” Morah told him, “and I find it an impossible, frustrating task. I’m not even certain that what we get into our minds really correlates with the real Coldah. There is an undeniable sense of power—and why not? They have it, that’s for sure. Beyond that—who knows? They are certainly aware we exist, and they are even aware of who their friends are, but that’s about it. Perhaps, one day, we will know, but I somehow doubt it. All we can do is study them and learn what we can. They’re impossible creatures, but whatever they do they seem to obey the laws just as we do. They just might know a few more laws than we do.”

The viewscreens were blank now, except for the long-shot view of Medusa, still molten hot yet cooling even now, swaddling itself in an incredibly thick and violent layer of clouds. He turned to the plot board, which showed no white dots or forms whatsoever and yellow forms only in the mop-up battle operations. It was over. The greatest task force ever assembled by man had been met, and bested, partly by a better assembled force that had an easier time on the defense, and partly by a creature they could neither understand nor believe in even as it was killing them.

“Where’s this thing going now?” he asked Morah.

The security chief shrugged. “Wherever it wants. Probably to another of our planets, to burrow in once again. They go from system to system until they find a planet within our life zone around a stable sun, then they burrow in and remake the surface out of matter and energy. It’s never the same twice, but always something familiar to us, even the atmosphere. It’ll stay there a thousand years unless disturbed, as this one was, then rise again, move on, find the next planet, and start it all again. You know, when they leave on their own they do virtually no damage to the planetary systems their little symbiotic riders create? They just leave ’em. I think a number of mysteries about how so many worlds have formed within our life tolerances may be answered by the Coldah. As random as they are, most of the planets they use are not initially inhabitable, but they leave them that way. Once they leave their little symbiotes don’t destruct, as they do when in residence and taken away, but just sort of fade out. Normal evolution follows.” He chuckled. “You know, it’s even just possible that our own race, and the Altavar, grew up over the millions of years because of Coldah lifestyles. It’s a fascinating concept.”

“But the Altavar—they fought these things. And now they seem almost to protect them.”

“That’s true,” Morah agreed, telling one of his aides in an aside to get them all strong drinks, “but in the thousands of years they fought and studied the Coldah, a funny thing happened. Somewhere along the line they got tired of it, just got sick of futile head-knocking, and sort of mentally surrendered to the big bastards. To the Altavar, the Coldah became their whole life, and in a probably gradual switch they came not only to accept the existence of these creatures but to actually work with them. Don’t ask me to explain it—it’s certainly religious, or mystic, in a way, and those are unexplainable even when we’re talking about our faiths, yet they are coldly and scientifically devoted to the great project, as they call it. They protect the Coldah from outside interference whenever possible, and they try with their fleets to nudge the Coldah into worlds that need some work. Don’t ask me how that’s possible, bat the Coldah, once the Altavar started helping rather than fighting, seemed to go along with it.”

He nodded. “But not here.”

“Well, it was impossible, for one thing. When the Coldah originally came to the Warden system we were still stuck knee-deep on old Mother Earth. These four worlds were pretty piss-poor rock piles with nasty atmospheres and surface pressures, just perfect. And when a particularly big, fat, Coldah arrived, it did something the Altavar, with all their experience, had never seen before. It reproduced by fission. It made triplets, in fact, and the one old and three new ones entered into the four Diamond worlds. Shortly after, they released, or made and released, or whatever, their little beasties, and they went to work on the world, making it over. Lilith, with the original mama Coldah, had the most rigid system imposed on it. Then the Altavar moved in. In the years they have studied, fought, then served the Coldah, they learned a lot. They can make their own Wardens, and they can give orders to these synthesized versions, too. Within limits, they can even play games with the Coldah versions, and they did here. Looking at the climates, they elevated one species on each to dominance.”

“I figured that much out. Reptiles on the warmest world, insects on the lushest, water breathers on the wettest, and mammals on the coldest.”

“Right Part of their own grand project, really. Since die Coldah can leave, although not arrive, with a minimum of fuss—it’s sort of like a big mist rising, they tell me—leaving the worlds to natural laws, they’ve been trying to influence their direction. It’s a very long-term concept, naturally, but they are really trying to learn what factors and conditions produce intelligence one place and not another. Ifs pretty complex. Of course, our arrival screwed up the project here.”

“And because, somehow, the electrochemical wavelengths on which the human brain operates were just slightly off the wavelengths used by the Coldah to command the Warden organisms, we developed these wild talents.” He paused for a moment, then added, “I assume the Altavar are nowhere near those wavelengths?”

Morah chuckled. “No. Oh, they can tune in, as it were, mechanically, but not biologically.”

He whistled low and grabbed a drink as it arrived, drinking a bit more in one gulp than he should. He needed it. Finally he said, “Then we became the project.”

“Yes. We became the project. But in order to control it, and to minimize interference between ourselves and the Coldah, the Confederacy was in the way. The Coldah are headed, generally, in our direction—or back to it, I don’t know which. The idea of our race, who can, as it were, tune in on at least one Coldah band, threatened the Altavar, their lifestyle, their system of beliefs. I think they were actually afraid that, if we followed the same pattern as they did, we could eventually establish contact, even rapport with the Coldah. Maybe we can, although I think they may simply be too alien ever to understand or communicate with on more than a basic level.”

He smiled wanly and shook his head in wonder. “Then, to the Altavar, \ve were the demons. They were scared of us stealing their gods. If the results weren’t so tragic they’d be almost funny, you know that?” He thought a moment. “But if we were that much of a threat to them, the snake that could steal their Eden, why not just wipe out everybody but the project people—the {)iamond?”

“They intended to do just that, as the old Altavar told us. But they are an enormous, mostly mobile population, spread out over half a galaxy, wherever there are Coldah. They faced an empire of vast proportions and unknown capabilities. They had to know how we thought, what our tactics were like, how we’d fight, all the rest. They had time. It’s still three hundred years until the scheduled hatching, or breakout, or whatever it is the Coldah do. It was over four hundred when we first arrived here. They spent fifty years or more just getting to know us through the Wardens, watching us work, and realizing just how different our relationship to the Wardens was from theirs, and only then did they really send for their fleet, which must be assembled from incredible distances and then can only be spared in small pieces. It was easier for them to establish factories on worlds beyond the Confederacy, even Warden worlds themselves, and build the force they needed, along with using the Wardens to breed the Altavar necessary for the fight. By the time they had their fleet and their military ready, Kreegan.was Lord of Lilith.”

“And he stumbled on the whole truth?”

“Much as I did. On each world there was one point, one weakness, that was the Coldah’s window to the outside. Don’t ask me how it works or why, I don’t know. But there was one point, usually in an inaccessible and nasty place on the globe, where this happened. On Lilith it’s very near the north pole. On Charon it’s a small island off the southern continent. I don’t know how Kreegan happened on the north pole, but considering that the descendants of the original exploiter team had set up a planet-worship religion on Lilith they must have put him on to it. The signal strength, as it were, at each of those points is so strong it bleeds over directly onto ours, exciting our own Wardens and our brain’s awareness and control.”

“No wonder, then, Kreegan became Lord.”

Morah nodded. “Local Altavar, bred for the conditions and for unobtrusiveness, try to discourage anyone from getting too close without blowing their cover, often masquerading as wild animals themselves. They mostly staff monitoring and control devices to keep tabs on the Coldah, whose signals increase consistently until they leave. By that monitor they can predict the Coldah’s eventual behavior and be ready for it.”

He thought a moment. “Then the ice demons weren’t the only ones. There were those nasty beasties in the Charonese desert with tentacles, too, if I remember.”

“Oh, the narils. Actually, they’re not Altavar, but Altavar pets, in a way. An attempt to breed an animal with their own biochemical structure that was sensitive to the Warden frequencies. It worked only slightly, though. Some got into the wild and adapted themselves to the desert, that’s all. The Cerberan bork is another botched attempt, only that time their result scared them so much they haven’t tried it again.”

“I still don’t understand why they’d go for Kreegan’s plan, though.”

“Oh, that’s simple. They still weren’t quite ready to tackle us yet. They were pretty sure he couldn’t succeed, but he hit it off with them for some reason, and they agreed to go along simply because, no matter what, it would give them the strategic and military information they craved. If it worked, so much the better. But they couldn’t stand for us in any event, a race with a powerful empire that also could reach, and even make use of, the Coldah and their symbiotes without a lot of mechanical aids.”

“So what will they do to the Confederacy now—and to us?”

Morah sighed. “They will use small but deadly forces to hit weakly defended planets throughout the Confederacy. Eventually the remnants of this fleet not concerned with the Medusan Coldah’s new habitat and settlement will join m scattered action. They will collapse the empire back into planetbound barbarism, but on hundreds of worlds. The Confederacy itself will continue to hold fanatically, all the while contracting to a defensible size and base, but they will be effectively neutralized for a long time. What they will eventually do, or become, you and I will never know, my friend. We’ll be long dead.”

“And the Diamond?”

“The Altavar computers can stabilize the Medusan variety for a while, perhaps rebuilding Medusa or, more likely, just letting it go. We will settle the Medusans on Lilith and Charon, and progressively we’ll switch the programming on them over from Medusa to whatever new world they settle upon, if not with the current generation, then with their children. The Altavar will be around, but remain as unobtrusive as possible, for the next three centuries. Then, one after another, the Coldah will emerge in natural fashion, and, theoretically, our Warden powers will die out and we’ll be just plain folks again. Or maybe we won’t. Whether or not the Medusan young become Charonese or Lilithians or remain their own kind even with the Coldah gone and with subtle suggestion from the Altavar master computers will tell us a lot. If they do continue to breed true, then the Coldah’s leaving will have no effect. If we, in those three centuries, can learn how to keep those Wardens alive, or replace them with synthetic equivalents as the Altavar now could do if they wanted, we Warden Diamond races could emerge as true, spacefaring, Homo excelsius. The Altavar can make their Wardens do whatever they want by mechanical processes. We can do it with sheer willpower, and remake ourselves if we like.”

He nodded slowly. “And you were a biologist.”

“I am a biologist. Sooner or later, working with the Altavar, I will know enough, or my staff will, aided by the computers of Cerberus, now free to expand their potential. We must build up our industry again quickly, and that is the first and vital task. We have the work force with the necessary skills in the Medusans, but we must rebuild the factories, out here first, then in space. The technological brains are all over the Diamond, and now the lid on technological development the Confederacy imposed is gone.”

“You’re certain toe Altavar won’t interfere?”

“So long as they perceive no threat from us, they win not. This is long-term planning, Mr. Carroll. It will take years to rebuild the industry and expand reasonable production. We have three centuries to do it all and learn what we have to learn. At the end of that time, if we have fathomed the full secrets of the Warden organism, we will sit here on our three remaining worlds in relative savagery and wave good-bye to the Coldah and the Altavar. Then we will go out ourselves, and see what of humanity survives and rebuild our civilization in strength, not ignorance. It is a challenge not only for us who will start this work but for our children and grandchildren who will complete it. And if we do our job right, they’ll do it without the mistakes of the past rising again to stupefy human civilization. A race that can, by force of will, become any creature it needs to, destroy mountains with a finger and a push of will, and change bodies, sex, or whatever it is at any time, will be a new type, of creature, or creatures.”

Yatek Morah leaned back, drained bis drink, then pulled out and lit a Charonese cigar. Then he added, “Next time, we will be the demons—or the gods. And what about you, Mr. Carroll? Where do you fit in to this unique new future?”

He leaned back comfortably and put his feet up on the table. “I think I have some unique qualifications in your grand scheme, Morah. I think I’m going to fit in fine around here, all four of me. But first a little unfinished business, if you’ll do me a little favor.”

“We’ll see. Now that you know it all, I still have a nagging feeling that there’s something you haven’t been telling me.”

“Oh, it’s nothing important,” he assured the Security Chief, “except to me.”

He had spent a little time on Cerberus with Qwin and Dylan, who had been more than willing to take in Bura and Angi and delighted to add two children of a “close relative” to the family. Both Medusan children were finally delivered and looked like normal, healthy Cerberan children, although Dylan complained somewhat enviously over the easy and relatively painless way in which Medusans gave birth. At least children conceived on Medusa bred true to form despite the loss of the Coldah, although the Altavar were, of course, still feeding supplementary data the Medusan Wardens needed to everyone through the Snark computer network.

The Altavar, without asking, did in fact randomly cut a number of Medusans off from the computer, and were somewhat distressed to find that, while the subjects’ Wardens became inert, they did not die off at all. Clearly there was something different about the human-Warden relationship, or something brand new was developing in the system, some new and unique variation of human life. For now he depended on Morah and his staff to keep the Altavar from getting too distressed at that.

The huge picket ship had been brought in-system, to an orbit between Medusa and Momrath, and was now being converted into a massive space factory as quickly as could be accomplished, while new industries, with some grudging Altavar support, were rising on the natural moons of Momrath itself.

Dumonia had also been grudging as he assumed the public title and office of Lord of Cerberus, but it was now necessary. Working with much of Morah’s team, however, he tended to delegate much of the actual running to Qwin Zhang.

Park and Darva had taken a little, short vacation to a small island off the southwest coast of the southern Charonese continent on the suggestion of Mr. Carroll. With a little training and work with Dumonia-trained psychs, they would certainly soon be fully in position to assume control of Charon, something that Morah very much desired for them. As he’d told Park before, the security chief had higher goals than being Lord himself, and, in fact, running the place only got in his way.

Cal Tremon, too, got a sudden yen to get away for a while and do some exploring, first. He might, he was saying, go all the way to Lilith’s north pole. Then, perhaps, with an extended vacation back in the tropics talking with the scientific enclave there, he’d be ready for what he wanted to do next.

After keeping himself busy in this way, Mr. Carroll set course once again for Charon, against all advice. Talant Ypsir was still there, still very much alive, and still pretty vicious, all the more so because his people were learning a new life, one without omnipresent cameras and microphones and computer controls. Such things were needed elsewhere in the industrial rebuilding, and nothing new in that line would.be produced for years.

It was with a sense of déjà vu, then, that Carroll eased his shuttle into the dock of Ypsir’s still vast and impressive space station, now in orbit around Charon. He had not really left it since the war, allowing his. less bitter alter ego, Haval Kunser, to organize things below.

The airlock signaled clear, and he walked into the tube and up to the second lock, getting into the small chamber and standing ready. There was the usual energy spray, but it didn’t bother him this time. He’d already checked with the Altavar and found that, in fact, his body was as infested with Wardens—Altavar-created and artificial and with a neutral program—as anybody else. Ypsir’s ray could do nothing to deaden or neutralize the already inert.

Two security monitors met him on the other side, more out of curiosity than anything else.

“Name?” one snapped.

“Lewis Carroll.”

“What is your purpose here?”

“I wish to pay a call on First Minister Ypsir,” he told them. “I represent the Four Lords in Council and we have need of your fancy computer here.”

They looked uncertain, and he knew how much the mighty had fallen by their reaction. He decided to go easy on them. “Call Fallen. She’ll know what to do,” he suggested.

They nodded and seemed appreciative of the buck-passing suggestion. He sat and waited calmly for fifteen minutes or so until she came. She had never met him before, but he knew her, and she had heard more than enough about him from Ypsir. “Welll You’re either a very big fool or you really have nerve, coming here,” she told him.

He grinned, and it unsettled her a bit. At that moment an alarm rang, and a speaker broke in to state, “Administrator Kunser docking at Gate Three.”

Fallen frowned. “Damn! What does he want up here now, of all tunes?”

“Why don’t we go see?” he suggested. “In fact, I called him to come up. I’m representing the Four Lords in Council, with three votes already taken, and I’m here to arrange things with the fourth. Why don’t we go collect him and we can all save time and see the First Minister at once.”

She frowned. “Okay, but I still think you’re nuts.”

Kunser was as puzzled as Fallen, but right now, dependent on the goodwill of the other Lords, he was in no position to disobey an official request. He was surprised to see Carroll, though, although somewhat pleased. The agent could almost read his mind. Morah’s getting rid of his only threat this way. But both he and Fallen were civil to the agent, and that was for the best. Both seemed interested in what would happen when Carroll met Ypsir, though.

To everyone’s surprise, Ypsir, in a spacious office, was ell smiles and cordiality, the politician supreme. In a corner, on satin pillows, reclined the stunning Ass.

“Well, now, what’s all this about a vote and my computer?” the First Minister wanted to know.

“They need it. Its capacity is probably the largest in the Diamond, and it’s doing nothing but running this station right now,” he told them. “The fact is, this station can be maintained on a much smaller and more basic model Cerberus can and will supply. There are few manufactured goods right now, and we need them desperately. The picket ship is being quickly outfitted, but it’s going to need your computer to control the industry we’re putting into her. Nothing else will do the job, and we can’t make any more major computers until we have the picket running.”

“They had then: nerve, voting without me,” Ypsir complained.

He shrugged. “We tried. You didn’t answer the call. That’s why Morah sent me here.”

Ypsir smiled. One oj the reasons, he thought, in accord with his two assistants, but he said, “Well, I don’t like it but I’m hardly in a position to object at this point. One hopes that the Cerberan techs can do it without having to shut down this station.”

“I’m sure they can.”

“Have you met Ass?” Ypsir asked suddenly.

He smiled and nodded. “Yes, I have. In more ways than one, First Minister. You see, using the Metron Process, I was Tarin Bid.”

Talant Ypsir’s face broke into a wide grin that became a real belly laugh. “Oh, my, but that’s perfect! That’s wonderful!” he chortled.

“The matter of the computer is not the only reason I’m here,” Carroll added. “I’ve decided that I need a better position than errand boy for the Four Lords.”

Ypsir, savoring the irony, hardly heard him. Instead he turned to Ass and said, “Did you hear that, my pretty? You were once him!”

Showing puzzlement and confusion, she looked up at the agent, but. said nothing.

“Ass?” the agent called to her. “Do you know who these people are? This is Haval Kunser, and this is Shugah Fallen, and that is Talant Ypsir.”

Her eyes grew even larger, and her mouth dropped a bit, and then she frowned, shook her head, and looked up again.

“I decided I’d either be dead or the Lord of Medusans,” Carroll told her, but she wasn’t really listening to him.

Talant Ypsir’s head was torn from his body before the bodies of Fallen and.Kunser had hit the floor.