Soaring through my endless task
Shadows are my faithful mask.”
Angelique was trembling a little now, like a hunting hound straining at the leash. “Did you hear it?”
“I did,” Scotty said. “The stress on the first syllables.” As he counted off on his fingers, Maud’s eyes widened.
“Darkness!” she said. “The answer is darkness. It’s the first letter of every line.”
A pale holographic ghost of Maggie the Mooncow rose up, and began to dance.
“Dance with me!” Maggie said.
Angelique frowned. “Ah… do we have to?”
“Look at this,” Wayne said. “There’s some kind of an imitation loop running. Reasonable to assume that we have to imitate or respond to these motions, and that it is set up to trigger if we get it right.”
“Like a dance instruction program?” Scotty asked.
Wayne nodded approval. “Just like that.”
The mooncalves began to dance around the mother. The gamers, frustrated, began to dance.
Ali danced, but seemed none too happy about it. “Are we crazy? We are being hunted by assassins.”
“Got a better idea?” Wayne asked.
A little mooncalf in front of Wayne rose up on its hind legs and turned in a circle. When Wayne responded, the larva glowed red.
“I’ve got it!” Wayne howled. “I’ve got it! Imitate the caterpillar until it glows!”
Sharmela first, then the rest of the gamers jumped, twirled, spiraled and capered in response to the little mooncalves. One at a time, the calves glowed red in their innards, until they all looked as if they’d swallowed emergency beacons.
The mommy rose up, her vast faceted eyes facing them.
“You honor my children. Here.” The mooncow rolled over onto her left side, exposing a glistening length of pale flesh stippled with brown nipples.
Scotty stared, and then shrugged. “Ah… are we supposed to do something?”
“Please,” Maggie said.
“I think,” Wayne said, “that we’re being welcomed to supper.”
Angelique groaned. “Oh, jeez. That would make sense.”
They crept up to the side of the mooncow. Its teats glistened. Wayne was the first to put his mouth on one of the nipples, and began to draw.
“Whoa,” Wayne said. “Whoa. Tastes like… beer.”
This announcement triggered a roar of pleasure, and the gamers rushed in. “I have milk here!” Maud said.
“I have… some kind of citrus juice.”
“Beef broth.”
The mooncow’s eyes sparkled, and lights seemed to reflect from them, onto a nearby stand of mushrooms. Maud and Sharmela examined these more carefully.
Sharmela sniffed, and then smiled. “I think we have located lunch!”
“It figures. We don’t have time for a picnic. Tear off chunks, and take them with us.”
They did that, as the mooncow nodded approval. Then that “reflected” eye light focused on a pile of stones twenty yards away. “And when you are finished, my new children, you may exit to the deeper levels here.”
Scotty and Ali ran over, arriving just as the light faded. They overturned the rocks, and revealed a hatch.
“I’m in love with a mooncow,” Wayne said. “Let’s get the hell out of here before I propose.”
“If I’d known you were that easy,” Darla said, “I would have fed you loooong ago.”
30
1430 hours
From the safety of Heinlein base, Kendra watched the gamers climb down through the hatch.
“So… we can watch,” she said, “but we can’t communicate with them.”
“No,” Xavier said. “I haven’t access to any of the lights. All are on automatic.”
“And the dancing bugs,” she said. “You had nothing to do with that.”
Xavier sighed, as if trying to project infinite patience. “No. All of that was programmed before the kidnappers damaged the circuits.”
Kendra glared at him. “And you are aware that their lives depend on their ability to navigate these passages?”
“Of course.”
“Pardon me,” Kendra said, “but it seems to me that you are enjoying all this just a little too much.”
He smiled at her placidly, and she left.
Wu Lin drummed her fingers on the table. “Xavier,” she said. “You have no control at all? The gamers had to perform that dance?”
“I wish I could say I had control,” he said.
Wu Lin smiled at him. “It was very entertaining.”
He interlaced his fingers behind his head, and leaned back in his command chair, drumming his feet like a happy child. “Wasn’t it, though?”
Kendra was in the main communications center within ninety seconds of leaving Xavier. “What do we have?”
Foxworthy ran his finger along a column of recent notes floating in the air. “We have reason to believe that Thomas Frost has been talking to allies on Earth. We have communication with Cowles Industries on the conference channel.”
“Mr. Walls?” Kendra said. A pleasant-looking, intense man appeared. There were several other heads floating in screens around him.
“Kendra,” Walls said. “Let me begin by saying how sorry I am, how sorry we all are.”
“I appreciate that.”
“And I want to say that so far, you seem to have done everything a person could reasonably expect.”
There was an anvil in that sentence, waiting to drop on an unwary head. “We have to do more,” she said. “I’ve made queries about Thomas and Douglas Frost, and communications that they have made to Earth.”
“I’m sorry that we were so long in getting this to you, but we have been backtracing their telemessages, and there is no doubt that they have been in touch with radical groups.”
“What kind of radicals?”
“Expatriate Kikayans.”
“Are you talking about people who might have wanted the Prince kidnapped?”
“Exactly. We located a snippet of a speech given by a Dr. Mubuto, speaking to the African community in America.”
A second screen opened in the air.
“When was this taken?” Kendra asked.
Walls looked down and made a rustling sound in his lap. Notes. “Ah… two years ago.”
Mubuto was a small, round-faced man who wore wire spectacles and shook his finger at the camera a lot. A line of translated text ran across the bottom of the screen. “And there is no disgrace like that visited upon those who forget. Forget that we had a tyrant who controlled our lands, and threw him off. Followed by dictators, and we threw them off, and gave the reins of power to the one man who we could all agree upon. Who then threw aside our democratic ideals and made his title not President, or even President for Life, but King, and then passed that title on to his son.”
