Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail

“Now, this is a long shot. One of the three may die, in which case you may find youself in the presence of the other two and not have your rage triggered. Or all three might never be together in your presence, in which case, again, it will not trigger. But all three have been together and may well be again, particularly under war conditions.

“It may be a week, a month, a year, ten years. We can’t know. But we can hope, and that is the chance I must take.”

A chance he must take!

“What you will be after you kill them, assuming you do and survive, I cannot say. Most likely the action will bring about a total release, after which you will again and always be what Ypsk has made you. You might become a wild beast. But you might have rational potential, depending on how much of you survives. Regardless, so thorough will the physical transformation and freeze be that you will physically, hormonally, and emotionally become what I intend to make of you. That I promise, although it is no comfort. Under a really good psych you might be restored intellectually, although, of course, as a new and different person with no past memories. I can do no less and still convince Ypsk and his test battery. Again, this may all fail—even my teacher succeeded only with fewer than ten percent of his subjects—but I can offer you, and your control, the hope that that beautiful creature by Ypsk’s side is in fact a ticking bomb that if triggered, could create such a power vacuum on Medusa that those under our control would assume power. I must proceed now, and I am sorry, but I hope this is some comfort. I have already spotted the absolutely ingenious organic transmitter in your brain, so I know your control has this information, too. Now only he and I will know. Time is short and the process long and arduous. Forgive me, Bul, or whatever your name is. Good-bye.”

Searing pain inside my head… Feel like I’m going to implode … Oh, God! I—

TRANSMISSION TERMINATED. TRANSMITTER DESTROYED.

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