Federations

“I don’t know and it scarcely matters, does it? We have to warn them.”

“Maybe there isn’t anyone left to warn,” Niall suggested. “Hey, did you just say they’ve increased their population from the Chloe figures? How does a celibate religious order perpetuate its membership?”

“Converts,” she suggested. She often had wondered how such minorities did manage to continue to practice a faith that rejected procreation as a sin. “There was a new shipment forty years ago.”

“Ach!” and Niall dismissed that. “Even if they converted preteens, how could the present inhabitants run fast enough at fifty-odd years to escape galloping Kolnari?”

“Parthenogenesis?” she suggested.

“That is, at least, virgin birth.” And he snickered.

“That would go with the theories about Mary.”

Niall snorted. “That was just the first recorded case of exogenesis.”

“Possibly, but it doesn’t detract from the Messiah’s effect on man . . .  and woman . . . kind.”

“I’ll allow that.”

“Big of you.”

“To the realities, woman,” he said, stirring forward in his chair. “First we have to find out if there’s anyone to rescue. AND if there’s any safe place to send them so the Kolnari don’t get ’em until the Fleet heaves into sight. I wouldn’t wish that bunch on my worst enemy . . . Even my second-worst enemy.”

Helva had been scanning the file on the Kolnari. “They might be looking for a new home base. Central Worlds sterilized their planet of origin.”

“Then let’s not let them have this Ravel, which seems to be a nice planet. Wouldn’t want the neighborhood to go to such dogs . . . ”

“They have an indigenous sort of canine on Ravel. Have you been speed-reading ahead of me again?” she asked, surprised because the list of local fauna was just coming up for her to peruse.

“Most of the M-type planets we’ve been on have some sort of critter in the canine slot. Cats don’t always make it.” And he shot a snide glance at her. He was a dog person but she had long ago decided she liked the independence of felines. They could argue the merits of the two species quite happily on their journeys between star systems. “Planet does have predators. Furthermore, our Inner Circle does not have any weaponry and does not hunt. They’re vegetarians.” He grinned around at her again.

“So it’s all organic material?” Helva asked at her most innocent, playing on the theme.

“Just the kind of organic virgin material the Kolnari adore.” The holo rubbed its hands together and leered.

She ignored that. “Temperate climate, too. Makes a change from Chloe, which was frozen most of the time.”

“What! No harsh temperatures to mortify the body and soul?”

“No! And a good basic ecology, which they don’t interfere with. Haven’t even domesticated any of the indigenous beasts for use, but then, this entry is forty years old, dating from the last landfall. They live in harmony with their environment, it says here, and do not plunder it.”

“Which sure does leave them wide-open to being plundered themselves. Which is about to happen. Though, when all’s said and done, I wouldn’t like to see them plundered or deflowered among their vegetable patches by the Kolnari.”

“Nor will we permit it,” Helva said fiercely, although she devoutly hoped that she wouldn’t meet with the incredulity and pious fatalism that she’d encountered the first time and which, obliquely, had caused Jennan’s death.

“Frankly, my dear, I don’t know what I could do to help you. You know my reputation with women . . . ” the holo began.

“I’ll do the talking,” she said, firmly interrupting him.

He leaned back in his chair, idly swinging it on the gimbals. “I wonder if they added you to their Inner Circle as a savior.”

“Nonsense. None of the original group would be still alive. They didn’t believe in artificially prolonging life . . . ”

“All cures provided by prayer?”

“Avoiding all impure substances. Like Kolnari.”

Niall cocked his head at her. “Maybe they’ll welcome the Kolnari as a trial sent by whatever Universal Deity they revere . . . ” He paused, scowling. “Mary was never a god, was she? Goddess, I mean? Any rate, would they consider the Kolnari have been sent to test their faith?”

“I’m hoping not. What do we have left of the tapes Simeon recorded?”

“I opine that you would be referring to the rape scene? My favorite of them all,” Niall said, and his fingers tapped a sequence. “You wouldn’t actually dare to play that back at those innocents . . . ”

“A picture is worth a thousand words,” she quoted at him. “If we have to tour as much of the planet as Jennan and I had to on Chloe, I’m going to need to use a sharp, fast lesson. I can rig a hologram for them to see,” she added, since she was pleased with the way she handled holographic programming.

“If you do half as well with that program as you have with mine, it’ll work, honey.”

That remark startled Helva and she activated a magnification of his holographic image. But it was the hologram . . . one could see just the faintest hint of the light source. How could Niall know that he was a holo? Then she remembered the one they had done together at Astrada III when he had had to replay an historical event to prove a point to a skeptical audience. Surely that was his reference.

“I can’t find any indication of how large the population is,” she added, having replayed the entry on Ravel several times.

“Might be they don’t keep an accurate census. Do they even have a space facility?”

“No, but they do have a satellite with a proximity alarm!” she cried in triumph.

“And how far away is the nearest inhabited system that’d hear it, much less act?” Niall wanted to know. “Probably contains no more than the usual silly warning . . . ” And he chanted in the lifeless tones of an automated messager, “ . . .  This . . . Is . . . An . . . Interdicted Planet. You . . . Will Not . . . Proceed Further.” He abandoned that tone and, in a pious falsetto, added, “Or you’ll get a spanking when the Fleet comes.”

Helva gave him the brief chuckle he would have expected. “Our message will prompt action. No one ignores a B&B ship message.”

“And rightly so,” Niall said, loyally fierce, pounding one fist for emphasis on the desk.

There was no sound attached to that action. She’d have to work on that facet . . . when she’d managed to preserve the Chloists, or Chloe-ites or Inner Marian Circle Ravellians from the imminent arrival of the Kolnari. She’d have to be sure they knew just how dangerous and bloody-minded the Kolnari were so they’d make themselves as scarce as possible.

Helva was now speeding along the ion trail, its dirty elements all the more pronounced as she reduced the distance separating them. She’d overtake the flotilla within twenty hours. And arrive at Ravel four or five days ahead of them. She’d have to start decelerating once she passed the heliopause, but so would the Kolnari.

“Don’t forget to cloak,” Niall said, rising from his chair. He stretched until she was sure she could hear the sinews popping: which, she reminded herself, is why she hadn’t added more than vocal sound to the holo. Stretching he was allowed, but not the awful noise he’d make popping his knucklebones. “I’d better get some shut- eye before the party begins.”

“Good idea. I’ll work on the hologram while you’re resting and call you for a critique.”

Niall the holo walked across the main compartment and to the aisle and down to Niall’s quarters. Did it never realize that it melded with Niall’s stasis-held body on the bunk?

She’d almost forgotten the cloaking mechanism that bent light and sensory equipment around the ship itself. She’d only used that device once and had held that up to Niall as a really unnecessary piece of technology for a B&B ship to waste credit on. So, it was coming in handy again. B&B ships had no weaponry with which to defend themselves and vanishing provided a much more effective evasion than the tightest, most impervious shielding.

As she judiciously edited the tapes from the Kolnari occupation of Space Station 900, she mulled over the first encounter with the Chloe-ites. At least this time her brawn couldn’t be killed, however unintentional Jennan’s death