“Pizza and salad would be marvelous, and you know I’m a sucker for Bea’s cake. Is she here?”
He shook his head. “She went to her lab in Commerce Tower to do some work. Don’t worry about your deceased friend. I’m Deputy Coroner for Victoria County. The body is tucked away in our little hospital morgue with a John Doe tag on its toe, and none of the staff saw Bea and me bring it in. It’ll be secure for as long as need be.”
I hesitated. “What did Bea tell you about the guy?”
“That he drugged and kidnapped you. That he’s important. That overzealous parties in the Secretariat for Xenoaffairs might try to take his body away, and we have to prevent that.”
“I didn’t mean for you to get involved in this, Charlie. It could be a massive crock of shit.”
He shrugged and smiled and headed for the door. “Well, I’m involved. So don’t worry about it.”
“Give me a few minutes to dress,” I said. “I’ll be right down.”
I shucked the nightshirt, emptied my bladder, slapped depilatory gel on my face, and had a quick shower. The clothes my host had provided were just my style: Levi’s, a black rollneck tee, and a red wool buffalo-plaid overshirt.
Before I left the guest bedroom I entered Bea’s personal code in my phone. She didn’t answer. Then I called a guy named Cosmo Riendeau, the night supervisor at Rampart Fleet Maintenance at Oshawa Starport. For special consideration, he and his crew had been expediting the off-ticket refit of the good ship Makebate.
“She’s ready to rumble when you are, Helly,” Riendeau told me cheerfully. “We tracked down an LRIR-1400J scanner for you in Chicago, scheduled to be installed in an Astrophysical Survey vessel. Bribery triumphed and it’ll be here tomorrow. I tested the new dissimulator and weaponry systems myself. That buggy of yours is now one righteous bandit-killer.”
I resolved to send the perennially funds-strapped survey a replacement scanner, plus a corporate donation, as soon as possible. “The ship’s gig all refitted, too?”
“Absolutely. Extra shielding and new cannons. The provisions and the personal gear you ordered are stowed, and the fuel bunkers are topped. Makebate’s new range is forty-kay lights at a conservative fifty ross cruising pseudo-vee—twenty-eight thou if you put the pedal to the metal and exceed eighty. Of course, from now on you’ll have to eat and sleep on the flight deck. The only accommodations we didn’t rip out for the jumbo fuel-cell installation were the captain’s head and a little snack bar. It’s gonna be pretty claustrophobic.”
Cosmo Riendeau and his team had no notion why I’d had the starship modified so radically. There had been no alternative when I conceived my aborted exploration of the Haluk Cluster, 17,200 light-years from the closest Rampart refueling depot in the Perseus Spur; but now the ship’s extreme range gave me a tactical advantage in tracking Barky Tregarth to Zone 3. Normally, a Y-770 speedster like Makebate would have been obliged to make three pit stops to cover the 9,600 lights to Phlegethon at top ross. Rampart owned no planets along the route to the inner galactic arm where I might have refueled with a reasonable expectation of confidentiality, and unfriendly folks would have been able to follow my progress easily if I’d used commercial facilities. But now I could approach Barky’s world from a totally unexpected direction if I wanted to, with fuel to spare for the trip back to Earth.
I said, “Nice going, Cosmo. There’ll be a juicy bonus for you and the gang, subject to keeping zipped lips about the refit details per our original agreement.”
“Goes without saying,” Riendeau said. “That’s a joke.”
I gave an obligatory chuckle. “One final thing: Have you or your people noticed any outsiders poking around the shop during the past couple of days, maybe asking questions about when my ship would be ready?”
“Nobody came during the night shift. I can check the day and swing crews. Call you back.”
“Do that. And get hold of Monte Gill at Fleet Security and tell him to post armed guards at Makebate’s bay until I fly her out of there.”
“You got ’em.”
I thanked Riendeau and ended the call, then went downstairs to the cottage kitchen. Through the window, a Rampart hopper was visible on the pad beyond the rainswept garden: Karl Nazarian’s ride. He was sitting at the table with Charlie White, drinking coffee. A delicious-looking cake, only minimally dissected, sat on a platter covered with a glass dome.
“You look pretty decent, considering,” Karl said.
“There’s nothing wrong with me that food won’t fix.”
“Drink lots of water, too,” Charlie ordered. He had already laid out the salad and a pitcher of icewater, and he now took a plate holding three huge wedges of steaming pepperoni pizza out of the microwave and gave it to me.
“Yes, Doctor. Thank you, Doctor.” I picked up a dripping slice, corraled the cheese strings, and started chomping. Even warmed over, it was very good. I was both famished and thirsty.
Karl said, “A few things happened while you were sleeping.”
Charlie gave us a tactful look. “Why don’t I let you two discuss your business in private.”
“Don’t go,” I said. “You’re part of the Baker Street Irregulars now by virtue of the body-snatching. Accessory to a felony. You might as well know the rest of the story. Just let me get an update on current events from Karl first.”
The doctor nodded and sat down again. He uncovered the cake, cut three generous pieces, and passed them around.
Karl said to me, “Your sister Beth is safe. She hasn’t left her house. I personally told her that Dan had escaped with the help of unknown confederates, and she seemed genuinely surprised. Pleased, at first, but the fact that four of Dan’s InSec guards were killed cooled her jets a little. She’s promised not to go to the media or otherwise impede our investigation. I suspect she might be rethinking Big Brother’s protestations of innocence.”
I doubted it. “We’ll have to keep Beth well guarded or even get her offworld. The two Haluk thugs who bagged me last night had some sort of plans for her … What about Dan himself? Did you check out Alistair Drummond’s old place in Mount Julian?”
Karl’s expression turned grim. “I had a Rampart incident team hop over there as soon as Bea called me last night. They were there within an hour. By then the firefighters had pretty much gotten things under control.”
I yelped around a mouthful of pizza. “A fire—”
“The big old wood-frame main house was totally destroyed, right down to the foundations. The battalion chief said the place went up like a bomb. It must have happened just about the time you first contacted me from the highroad. There were no human remains found. Or Haluk. A sophisticated accelerant that generated a very high-temperature burn was used to torch the house. All that’s left is white ash and slag.”
“Damn! The demi who got away must have sounded the alarm. A fire would have ensured that there were no bits and pieces of incriminating DNA left behind.”
“I went out to the scene myself this morning and interviewed the arson investigation people. Talked to the neighbors—such as there are in an upscale area like that. The property has extensive grounds, a wooded perimeter with a security fence, beam-guarded frontage on Stony Lake. It’s not easy for unauthorized persons to get close to it. The adjacent homes are owned by wealthy types or corporations that use them mostly in summer. No one saw anything unusual immediately preceding the fire. Of course, there was a minor blizzard raging at the time. A caretaker woman who lives in a place half a kilometer down the shore says the house was inhabited for at least the past two months. She thought she might have seen a hoppercraft landing on the property yesterday afternoon, when the weather was better.”
“Who’s the owner of record?” I asked.
“Livonia Holdings SC, a Carnelian subsidiary, bought it from Galapharma after Alistair Drummond’s death. About a year ago Livonia leased the place to S’yoma tib Katatosi—a Y’tata trading company—after installing a heavy-duty ventilation syst
em. The Y’s wanted it for an executive vacation retreat. An entity that I reached at the Y’tata embassy claims that the Katatosi outfit is only sporadically in residence on Earth. Conveniently absent at present. The entity was of the opinion that Katatosi might have sublet the house to some human business clients. The place was automatically supplied with food and the like by RoboGrocer and kept clean by Livonia-programmed domestic bots. There was no live-in human help.”
“Uh-huh. What about the security system?”
“That fed to a Y outfit in Toronto that alerted the local fire crew. The Y’tata security entities refused to give me any specifics.”
“This suggestion of a Y’tata-Haluk connection could be significant, Karl. When I talked to Jake Silver about the Barky Hunt Friday night, he told me about a suppressed ZP report about collaborating pirates of the same two races operating in Zone 3, hijacking transactinide carriers.”
“Zone 3?” Karl’s expression was incredulous. “Haluk in the Sagittarius Whorl? That doesn’t sound likely.”
“I didn’t think so, either. But Jake’s source said that the Haluk presence was deliberately hushed up by Xenoaffairs. Maybe the blueballs are encouraging Y’tata freebooters to steal ultraheavy elements so that there’ll be a shortage.”
“To increase the profitability of their own trans-ack trade with us?”
“Maybe. Barky Tregarth is supposed to be hanging out in Zone 3, too. Jake got me a solid lead on him that I intend to check out as soon as possible. If the Haluk are operating in the Sag, I’ll bet Barky knows about it.”
“There’s more bad news,” Karl said, “maybe unconnected to this business. Lorne Buchanan is dead. Apparently a suicide.”
“My God! The secret Galapharma file data—”
“Relax. Everything pertaining to the Haluk was transferred to Efrem Sontag on Friday evening, just as Buchanan had agreed. His body was found Saturday morning in his Rosedale house. There was no note. He had apparently shot himself in the head with an antique Glock handgun.”
“The poor bastard didn’t kill himself,” I declared. “You know that as well as I do, Karl! The Haluk found out what he’d done and murdered him. Maybe to discourage other Galapharma executives from coming forward with evidence against them.”
“We’ll never prove it.”
“Probably one of those security people Buchanan brought to Rampart Tower—” I started to say.
“Any demis in the bunch will be long gone by the time we’re able to check their DNA. It’s a dead end, Helly. Now that they know we can spot them with the genetic marker, they’ll be ultracautious.”
“Shit. I hoped we’d be able to keep the Haluk in the dark about that—at least for a little while longer.”
The good doctor had been looking more and more dismayed as the mystifying two-way conversation proceeded. I said, “Charlie, it’s about time we put you into the picture.”
He said, “Did I understand you to say that Haluk were responsible for your abduction yesterday? And for Buchanan’s murder?”
“Yep. They probably kidnapped my brother Daniel, too.”
“That’s appalling! Why haven’t you notified the Secretariat for Xenoaffairs?”
“Because SXA is hand in glove with the consortium and the other members of the Hundred Concerns who have a vested interest in keeping the Haluk happy. SXA knows very well that I have a hard-on for our devious blue brethren. As we lawyers would say, I am not a credible accusant.”
“Then inform CCID—”
“There’s something else, Charlie. Bea’s probably working to prove it even as we speak. The Haluk who tried to nab me were demiclones. They had been illegally engineered into perfect human replicas.”
“What! And the dead man in my morgue—”
“Is almost certainly an alien. Bea will know for certain when she finishes her genetic assay. The Haluk have been using demiclones as secret agents against humanity for several years now—predating their treaties with us.”
“I can’t believe that no one in authority knows about this!”
“People in Xenoaffairs and Interstellar Commerce almost certainly have proof of demiclone activity on Earth and on other human worlds that they’ve concealed from the public and the Commonwealth Assembly. But no one in SXA or ICS will blow the whistle because high officials in both secretariats are creatures of Big Business. Mustn’t endanger the profits of the Haluk Consortium.”
I’d finished the pizza and salad, and now I started on the slab of German chocolate cake. “Let me tell you the story, Charlie. It’s a real seven-ply gasser.”
The scheme was hatched from a miscegenation of deluded idealism and corporate greed. It started with a crackpot idea conceived by a naive woman who hoped to foment peace and love between the Haluk and humanity by means of genetic engineering.
Emily Blake Konigsberg was a brilliant and very attractive scientist who worked for Galapharma in the years before its unscrupulous CEO decided to take over the Rampart worlds. Emily and Alistair Drummond became lovers. In the course of their pillow talk she told him about her great dream.
Emily was keenly interested in the Haluk and deplored the fact that our two races were enemies. As you know, the Haluk bitterly resented the fact that we halted their aggressive expansion into the Perseus Spur, forced them to accept a humiliating armistice, and declined to share our advanced technology with them. It was Emily’s belief that the refusal of the Haluk to even consider detente was largely rooted in their envy of our stable physiology. She was probably right.
Humanity was spawned on a relatively benign planet. Aside from some relatively minor seasonal glitches, we’re physically and mentally operational all year round. But the Haluk evolved on a world with a highly eccentric orbit that annually carried it into a region of intense solar radiation. The result was allomorphy, an adaptation that originally enabled the race to survive.
For about two hundred days each year, while the home planet was sufficiently distant from its sun, the ancestral Haluk existed as smart, active, sexual, somewhat humanoid individuals called gracilomorphs. But then, as the orbiting world approached the zone of strong solar radiation, Haluk bodies underwent protective changes. For about sixty days, during their lepidodermoid phase, they became increasingly thick-skinned and sluggish. They lost their sexuality. Their brains began to power down, leaving them incapable of high mental function. Finally, in a climactic Big Change, the lepidos morphed into a coffinlike testudinal phase. They slept inside radiation-resistant golden chrysalids for 140 days. When the home planet once again swung away from its ferocious sun, gracile Haluk awakened from estivation and emerged from their protective shells to carry on their interrupted lives.
Eventually the Haluk achieved interstellar travel. On new planets, allomorphy was no longer a survival trait but instead a tremendous inconvenience that slowed racial progress. Millennia passed. As the Haluk expanded throughout their star-cluster, the allomorphic cycles of individuals lost their ancestral synchrony. This lessened the annual nuisance somewhat. At least they weren’t all asleep at the same time. But their civilization—and most particularly their science—suffered a great disadvantage compared to that of other stargoing sapients.
Especially humans.
The Haluk entered the Milky Way Galaxy at the tip of the Perseus Spur and established eleven colonial planets. At the time, the only local race having starships were the Qastt, and they were easily subjugated. But when humanity extended its powerful hegemony to the Spur, Haluk expansion was stopped cold by our superior technology.
So they hated and feared us and refused to trade or enter into normal diplomatic relations.
Emily Konigsberg told her lover, Drummond, that she was convinced Haluk hostility could be mitigated and the race’s great potential realized if their allomorphy were to be eradicated. It was her opinion that the job could be done easily through advanced techniques of genetic engineering. She sincerely believed that Commonwealth policy denying this technology to the H
aluk was immoral. If Galapharma Concern could see its way clear to bypass CHW strictures—that is, work with her to set up genen therapy programs among the blue aliens—a great wrong would be righted.
Alistair Drummond didn’t have an altruistic bone in his body, but he liked Konigsberg’s idea all the same. The Haluk Cluster was rumored to possess abundant supplies of valuable transactinide elements, which the aliens had heretofore adamantly refused to trade. Galapharma stood to make enormous profits in the therapy venture, doing well by doing good.
So Alistair entered into secret negotiations with the Haluk leader, the Servant of Servants of Luk, and the deal was done. Emily set up a genetic engineering lab on the principal Haluk Spur colony, Artiuk, staffed entirely by Galapharma personnel. The project achieved success by inserting human genes into the Haluk. Modified alien individuals remained in the active, brainy, gracile phase permanently. And because the therapy also modified Haluk germ cells—so did their offspring.
The great achievement was doubly illegal under Commonwealth law, which forbade meddling with the genetic heritage of a sovereign race, to say nothing of sharing human DNA with aliens. This didn’t bother Alistair Drummond. Galapharma was one of the almighty Big Seven Concerns. He figured that if they were caught, they could pressure the Commonwealth Assembly to legalize the scheme retroactively since it was good for business.
Eventually, that’s just what happened.
It was a minor embarrassment to Emily Konigsberg that the only viral vector suitable for allomorph eradication therapy was not one under patent to Galapharma Amalgamated Concern. PD32:C2 was an exclusive product of Gala’s small rival, Rampart Starcorp, which had obtained the CHW mandate to the Perseus Spur after Galapharma withdrew in 2176. The vector could not be grown under laboratory conditions or synthesized; its sole source was the planet Cravat, owned by Rampart.