Through his pain-blurred vision, he realized that if there had been any doubt Smith wasn't the product of some pink engineer, one look at this room put all doubts to rest. The room was a squashed sphere nearly ten meters in diameter. Eight, evenly spaced, round holes were in the wall, doors like the one he had come through. In the center of the room was a two-meter-tall cone, molded of concrete, shooting up a jet of blue-green flame. From it came most of the oppressive heat in the room, and the smell of burning methane.
The wall had niches carved into it. Hundreds of them, all the same size, a meter long by half a meter high. They were concave, oval pits that angled down into the wall slightly. From nearly half of them came the glitter of MLI's wealth, diamonds, rubies, emeralds. Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of stones—
And, of course, there were Smith's kinsmen. The creatures that ran Midwest Lapidary. Four, in all, were facing him. They were wearing pink clothing, like Smith had. They all had the same blubbery white hu-manoid form that Smith wore.
'That's why,' Nohar managed through gritted teeth. 'The hit in Lakeview. Couldn't tell who he was over the comm ... '
One of them addressed him in Smith's blubbery voice. 'We do not do such things lightly. We must be certain of the right when we do such irrevocable acts. A waste you must be here—'
The pain in his leg was making him dizzy. He was beginning to feel cold, clammy. In this heat, he must be going into shock. 'Right? 'It was a yell of pain as much as an accusation. 'I talked to Smith.' Nohar caught his breath. 'You were breaking your own rules when you cut him out of the loop.' Nohar wished he had one of Manny's air-hypos.
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'He is a traitor. He knows not that the mission is paramount. He clings to propriety as if we are in—' A word in the alien's language. 'And not in this violent sewer.'
Another one continued. 'We do not allow ourselves to perform physical violence. The traitor does not understand our circumstance is dire and requires an exception,'
Nohar was beginning to have trouble feeling his leg. The dizziness was getting worse. 'End justifies the means?'
A third one, near the cone, spoke. 'It is a waste. The tiger understands.'
The first one—perhaps the leader, but Nohar was having trouble keeping track of these similar creatures— continued. 'The traitor, perhaps, understands or suspects our plans when he hires you. It is intended you lead the new unrest—' The one by the cone, '—like your father leads the convenient rebellion eleven years ago. The traitor anticipates us and hires you against us—'
'The traitor,' one of them went on, 'knows what kind of resonance there is when he hires you—'
'—Datia is a useful charismatic figure to keep unrest going, Datia's son is useful as well. A waste the traitor talks to you before us—'
The one by the cone bent—no, oozed—over to turn a valve that was recessed in a concave depression near its base. The flame sputtered out. 'It doesn't matter. We go, take our supplies and begin elsewhere. We have done well to prepare for the time the plan is uncovered-'
Nohar shook his head too quickly. He felt faint.
He couldn't tell them apart. They all looked like Smith, all smelled like Smith, talked like Smith. 'You guys blew it—'
'Who are you to judge? We achieve our end—'
'It was the vote to scuttle the NASA deep-probe
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project, wasn't it? It will hit the Senate after the election and you just couldn't wait ... '
All the things stopped moving. They didn't say anything, didn't move. Nohar slowly raised the shotgun.
'Enough of your pet congressmen were supposed to win Senate seats to tip the scales on the vote. Then the shit hits the fan and MLI falls apart. You designed the whole thing to be uncovered eventually. The phony identities are just too damn phony. You want the scandal and the indictments that would follow to throw the Congress into chaos—'*
Nohar paused to catch his breath. He couldn't feel his leg at all anymore.
They were regrouping to face him. He still had the shotgun covering them, and he hoped desperately it would do some good. 'The Fed was about to follow up all your false trails. The DEA was about to find its flush manufacturing center. But you blew it. Forensics was not supposed to get to Smith's body that fast. There wasn't supposed to be a body. You tried to have Hassan erase that mistake. It was too late. I know, and now, the Fed knows.'
That got them. They were looking at each other. One spoke, 'Then we must end it—'
'End us—'
One of them headed back for the cone while another addressed Nohar. 'We complete our original mission. We end ourselves. Nothing is left but speculation and pieces of paper. Without physical evidence, no probes are sent. Your violent races will not contaminate our star systems. We need those new worlds, you will not take them away—'
Nohar was leveling the shotgun at the one that was at the cone. 'No, you're not getting off that easy. No suicides. And you call us violent. How many people have you managed to kill because of those probes? A tac-nuke on the moon would have done the same thing, and not killed anyone—'
'Law requires we act indirectly in covert activity.'
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Nohar gagged on that one. 'Law? You screwed-up bastards—no wonder the only one of you with a shred of morality ended up a 'traitor.' '
It kept moving. They were going to flood the room with methane. Nohar pumped the shotgun and shot the creature. Bile and ammonia filled the air, and the creature was knocked back to the far wall. A chunk of the creature's translucent flesh splattered against the wall. But it didn't bleed, didn't even leak. The shot had passed right through it.
It stood up, none the worse for wear.
'Unnecessary display, such things do not hurt our kind. Useless since we end now anyway.'
The thing went back to the valve and started turning. 'You, and others, may know we originate from a different biology. But without us to examine, your ethnocentric culture never accepts the idea of an extraterrestrial culture.' Nohar lowered the shotgun.
What were they going to do, asphyxiate or ignite? Didn't matter, he was dead either way—his leg wouldn't let him move.
CHAPTER 27
The one at the valve had finished his job, and Nohar could hear the hiss of the methane.
The creature had half-turned toward him when Nohar heard a soft 'phut' from the hole behind him. A small tube had planted itself in the folds under the creature's chin. There was a bubbling groan from the creature, and it raised a flabby white arm to the tube stuck in its neck.
Three more 'phuts' and similar tubes embedded themselves in the other aliens. There was a shuddering moan from the first one. Its arm had stopped halfway to its neck. There was a tearing sound as the pink clothes gave way and the thing collapsed into a shapeless white mass. There was a clatter as its eyes, fake plastic orbs, rolled off the mound of shuddering flesh. A pair of pink dentures followed.
The others collapsed as well.
They weren't dead, so much as reverted to some natural state. They still moved, though in a shuddering, rhythmic fashion—occasionally throwing out a multitentacled pseudopod from their mass, only to be reabsorbed into the mound of flesh a moment later. They now looked like the amoebic form of life Manny had described.
