Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail

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.