When I made a shadow on my window shade,
They called the police and testified.
But they're like the people chained up in the cave
In the allegory of the people in the cave by the Greek guy.
No one understands.
No one knows my plan."
-They Might Be Giants, "No One Knows My Plan"
"That's Medusa," Troilus cried, over the mule's braying, and some kind of hissing. "Don't look into her eyes or you'll turn to stone."
"Too late," rasped the figure, in a hideous, gravelly voice. "Too late."
With a hand on her forehead shielding her from the creature's gaze, Zoe glanced around. Vicki was unmoving. Her skin had a grayish tinge.
"She's turned to stone!" Troilus exclaimed.
Rubenstein raised a canister of gas and clinked it against her visitor's teacup. "To joint ventures," she toasted in her carefully synthesized tones.
The man sitting opposite her gave a cautious, wry smile and allowed the gesture. "To joint ventures," he responded, a little more reserved and businesslike.
Rubenstein sat down in her chair and unfurled her feeding tube from inside her mouth. The needle-like proboscis extended into the eight-inch-long canister she held in her hand, and pulsed as she extracted a sip of gas from inside it. "I'm quite serious, Mr. Ibbotson. I realize that our organizations - our species - have had their disagreements in the past, but I hope that this project heralds a new age of cooperation between our peoples," Rubenstein declared once she'd swallowed the gas.
"I hope you're right, Professor. However, before we usher in this new age of peace and prosperity, perhaps you'd care to tell me why you violated our agreement?" Ibbotson had set his cup on the saucer that Rubenstein had thoughtfully provided and was now staring at Rubenstein with more than a little suspicion.
Of course, "Ibbotson" and "Rubenstein" weren't their real names. Hers wasn't even pronounceable by humanoid tongues, considering that it was nothing more than a puff of pheromones. His wasn't so exotic, but the Agency insisted that he use a pseudonym, since his real name might still be floating about in some obscure section of Earth bureaucracy. "Ibbotson" and "Rubenstein" suited the pair of them quite well though, and both didn't know the other by any other name.
Rubenstein affected a hurt expression. "I'm not sure I follow you."
"Is it my imagination, or was part of our agreement that we would limit the first-hand contact that you and your race would have with humans. You know very well that humanity has yet to formalize relations with any non-terrestrial civilizations, and yet when I arrive today, I find you talking to Ms Herriot as though she were an old friend of yours. Hardly 'low-profile,' I'd say."
Rubenstein took another sip from the canister and laughed. "My dear Ibbotson, I do believe your brain has frozen. You never should have shorn that fur off." Ibbotson rubbed his stubble-covered scalp self-consciously. He hadn't wanted to shave his head, but he'd only just returned from a mission on a planet where the color red was considered a mark of demonic possession. "Before meeting with her personally," Rubenstein continued, "I made a careful study of her background to double-check that she was indeed the subject we were looking for. If, by some incredible stretch of the imagination, I had made a mistake and she was the wrong subject, her reaction to me would have given her away. The Time Lords may have erased her memories, but it's clear that she's spent enough time around non-humans to feel comfortable around them."
"You still should have consulted me. What if you *had* been wrong?"
Rubenstein opened her mouth to respond, but was cut off by a sharp chime from her desk. "Well, she appears to be done. Shall we check on her?" She stood up, unfurling her translucent wings. Ibbotson finished the last dregs of his tea and followed her out the door. He was a bit sorry to leave - it was quite excellent tea, one of the few good things this backwater planet had to offer.
It was at this point that the girl Zoe came into his view once again. She was standing some distance away from the action, having presumably had enough good sense to run when she'd seen what had happened to Cressida. She was looking over Troilus' shoulder and pointing at something. From the direction she was pointing, Troilus could tell that it wasn't the medusa, and she seemed like she was about to shout a warning.
Pain blossomed across Troilus' back, and he crumpled to the ground, landing painfully on the statue of his wife. The specter of unconsciousness nibbled at the edges of his vision, and he felt the desperate need to black out. He heard his first commanding officer's voice in his head, admonishing him for the weakness that consumed him. *Don't you dare pass out on me, soldier! I didn't give you permission to lose consciousness, did I?* Through an amazing display of willpower, he forced his eyes open and saw the girl Zoe rushing toward him.
He felt her hands slip under his arms, and his perspective shifted as she began pulling him away from where he recalled the Medusa to be. He managed to regain a modicum of control over his body, and tried to move his feet to help the girl move him away. *You weakling! You're letting a woman - a girl! - pull you away from a battlefield. You better pray that you're dead, soldier, because if that creature didn't kill you I swear I'll finish the job.*
The terrain began to blur, and the pain finally won out over his training. He only lost consciousness when he was sure that they'd traveled far enough away from that medusa. His last thought before the darkness claimed him was *Maybe I am dead.*
"There you have it." Rubenstein fluttered her wings politely. "My obligations are fulfilled. I imagine you'll want to check the data, but I also imagine you'll want to do it safely ensconced in one of your agency safehouses. So I suppose this is goodbye. One of my staff will show you out."
Ibbotson's brow furrowed in disapproval. "You're forgetting one thing, professor. The girl?" He sauntered over to the shadowy corner in which he'd stood when Zoe had first entered the pod.
"Of course. How could I forget?" Rubenstein pressed a button on the front of the pod, and the door swung open, providing a series of steps designed for the entrance and exit of a user.
Zoe Herriot, civilian advisor to the Deep Space Probe project, walked out, her eyes squinting in the bright light.
"How do you feel, my dear?"
"Wonderful! I feel like a new woman." She smiled.
The short Vegan quivered for a moment, which was his equivalent of a shrug. He used two of his arms to jab at the translation matrix hung around his neck while still covering the retreating humans with the weapon held in four of his others. The matrix hummed for a moment, then said in a synthesized voice, "Unsure whether more than a single human would pose too much of a challenge for you at a single time."
Olec was insulted, but tried not to show it. "Hey, I did fine with that one, didn't I?" She pointed at Vicki's prone form, still locked into a single position.
426ahw replied with "Question whether you recalled to allow cardiac muscle to remain functioning."
Damn! She kept forgetting. They'd lost too many subjects already because these "humans" were constructed inefficiently. She tried to telekinetically switch the human's heart back on, but it didn't work. She'd have to release her hold on the human's other muscles first - but she wasn't about to let 426ahw see that she'd forgotten Demck's orders. "Go after them. Make sure they're not coming back."
The Vegan's multitudinous appendages exploded in a flurry of motion, his equivalent of laughter. "Question whether you saw their expressions. Observed that they were scared for their lives. Theorize that they are either some distance away, with no intention of returning, or dead. Suggest that if you're so eager to ensure they're gone, you follow."
"Well then, take Demck's lunch back to him. You know how he hates it when it gets lukewarm." Olec was ready to boot the insectoid in the abdomen if he didn't just get out of her way.
462ahw holstered his energy weapon, picked up the containers of oxen blood and scurried away. Olec was about to release the human when she heard the bug's voice in the distance: "Remind you of cardiac muscle!"
She winced and dropped her telepathic hold over the human. All of its muscles relaxed, and a little color flooded back into her face. Olec frowned. The cardiac muscle still hadn't restarted. She scanned the brain stem, like the owner of a temperamental computer system leafing through the manual after a particularly frustrating system crash. *C'mon, c'mon. Why in the name of creation would any sentient organism want non-bubble memory? You have a catastrophic systems failure, and you have only a limited time to reboot before the electrical impulses degrade.* Fortunately, all of the electrical patterns inside the human's brain were still intact, despite the deprivation of oxygen, and it was simple enough to stimulate the right nerve ending to get the heart pumping again.
Once the heart was pumping, blood returned to the medulla oblongata, which sent impulses to the diaphragm. Vicki inhaled her first breath in three minutes, and oxygen flooded back into her bloodstream. Mission accomplished, the subject wasn't going to die. Now, to re-immobilize her before she regained consciousness. Olec let her mind play across the human's heart, simply observing it's motion and wondering how best to stop it from clenching along with the rest of the body's muscles when she re-initiated control.
If Olec had been more familiar with human brain patterns, she might have realized that Vicki was about to regain consciousness.
"Thank you, Major. I have to admit, your advice was quite correct."
Bromley looked around the room, a little confused. "Not that we couldn't use your help right now, Herriot, but was two hours enough of a break for you? We've all been working around the clock on this thing, I know, but we have enough personnel on reserve for everyone to get a good eight hours downtime. I'm about to head home myself."
Zoe looked at Bromley with a reassuring expression. "Don't worry, Major. I'll be fine. I'll get something to eat from the lounge before I return to duty if it'll calm you."
"No, no. Whatever you feel like you're up to. In any event, I'm off. I'm leaving Corporal Nohara in charge until I return. Goodbye." Bromley waved at her crew, and trotted out the door.
Mission Control's lounge was quite well-equipped. It had several large couches, an entertainment console, and - the feature that Zoe was most interested in - a well-stocked kitchen.
She crossed to the refrigerator, and removed a potato. Then she opened the microwave and placed the tuber inside, pointedly neglecting to poke holes in it. She set the timer for twenty minutes, and strolled back to the main control room.
Zoe busied herself with some mundane tasks, calculating the effect of the probe's subspace jumps on its sensors. It was work that anyone could have done, but she needed to be near the sensor read-outs when the alarm went off.
Sure enough, with five minutes left on the potato's cooking time, the lounge fire alarm went off. For almost a minute, the crew of Mission Control scrambled to work out where the noise was coming from; they were trained to react almost instinctually to any alarm that indicated the probe was in danger, but couldn't recognize a simple fire alarm until Corporal Nohara had ordered everyone to shut up and listen.
While everyone was busy dealing with the detonating vegetable, Zoe quietly and unobtrusively connected a small piece of alien technology to the sensor read-outs, and concealed it so that no one would be able to find it unless they knew exactly what they were looking for.
Olec swore under her breath. The human was awake. Oh well, she was still too weak to move, and there was no harm in letting her remain conscious until Olec could work out how to telepathically "clench" all of her muscles except for her heart. Of course, if 462ahw returned, it wouldn't matter how safe it was to immobilize the human. Olec would let the human die before letting 462ahw realize that she couldn't do what she'd claimed.
She frowned, realizing that there was something odd about that thought, but shrugged it off. It was Demck's job to think, not hers.
The human had opened her eyes and was looking at Olec. *Oh no,* Olec thought. *I hope she won't make that annoying noise that most humans make when they see me.*
But Vicki didn't. Instead, she said "Who are you and what do you want with me?" in commonspeak.
Commonspeak? Olec couldn't believe her earspots. What was a human doing speaking commonspeak? Okay, perhaps commonspeak was occasionally picked up by isolated societies when unauthorized travellers came into contact with them, but Olec and her comrades were the only unauthorized travellers here... weren't they? In any case, why did this human speak it, when none of the others that they'd encountered had?
The human was still staring, and it took Olec a few moments to work out that it was because she was expecting a response to her question. "I'm Olec. Demck wants this area clear of humans, so everyone who comes here either has to die, get completely scared off or immobilized until we're ready to leave. How do you know commonspeak?"
"Express surprise!" came 462ahw's voice from the bushes. "Unaware any humans knew commonspeak. Question why you bothered to find out. Ask human, do you know commonspeak?"
Vicki suppressed her fear at being once again thrust into the midst of aliens who didn't care whether she lived or died, and forced herself to cope. "Yes. Are you Demck?"
462ahw's appendages fluttered rapidly. "Express amusement. 462ahw. A Vegan."
"A Vegan? Does that mean you don't eat meat?"
"Express further amusement. From Vega. Eat live mollusks, when the opportunity arises." 462ahw turned to Olec. "Returned to base camp, and found Demck had gone diving. Suggest we take the human back."
Olec nodded. She'd been afraid that 462ahw would work out that she hadn't been able to immobilize the human without stopping her heart too, and was relieved that he hadn't mentioned it. She was a little worried about what Demck might say, though, and asked "Why? Shouldn't we just kill her?"
"Amazed at your lack of imagination. Ask you to recall why sit here and scare and kill humans."
Olec thought for a moment, and was about to volunteer an answer when 462ahw got tired of waiting.
"Seem to recall that Demck wants room without humans to work. Inquire whether you recall same thing. Think that if we bring a human who knows commonspeak, Demck can explain job to human, and *they* can keep other humans away. Think that human who knows both commonspeak and native tongue would do better job at keeping other humans away. Not have to jump out of bushes yelling like morons anymore. Think that would be a good idea. Wonder whether you agree."
Olec thought for a few moments, before 462ahw came to his decision. "Tell you to bring human." He turned to Vicki. "Ask if you come voluntarily, or Olec have to immobilize you again." Vicki decided to come voluntarily.
He swung his gaze about, trying to figure out how he'd come to be lying there. He didn't have to look far, and discovered Zoe lying next to him asleep. "Hey! Wake up!" he called, nudging her as gently as the circumstances allowed. She started awake almost instantly, scared for only a moment before she realized that they were in no danger.
"What happened?" he asked, desperate for any information he could find. She rubbed sleep out of her eyes and began telling him what had happened. Evidently, while he had been trying to carry Cressida out of danger, a second creature had appeared. This one had been different from the Medusa, and her description made it sound like a large insect, perhaps a millipede. It carried what she called an "energy weapon," which was what was evidently responsible for the wound on his back. By her account, he was lucky to be alive.
She'd carried him about 500 meters away, before she realized that the creatures weren't pursuing them. She'd made sure that he was still breathing, and then simply collapsed in exhaustion. She had no idea what had happened to the mule.
Troilus considered their dilemma. They'd lost all of their supplies, their transport (*and Cressida*). Delphi was still over a week's travel away. Athens was closer, and he had a few friends there that would be sympathetic to his plight, but he was still reluctant to travel without any provisions or protection. He didn't know how proficient Zoe would be with a sword, but he wasn't willing to bet his life that she was the best swordswoman on the Peloponesus. His back still throbbed, another variable that he'd have to factor into his decision.
Ultimately, it wasn't safe to stay out in the wilderness for any length of time. He and Zoe would eventually have to make the trip either back home to Corinth, or forward to Athens. It wasn't safe to travel at night. He made his decision. They'd spend the night here, then set out to Athens at dawn.
"Get some sleep," he told Zoe. "I'll keep watch until dawn, and then we'll start moving." The girl nodded, and rested her head upon the patch of grass where she'd been sleeping earlier. Within a few moments, Troilus heard her breathing deepen and become regular, indicating that she'd fallen asleep.
It was only now, with his course of action sure and those under his command out of immediate danger, that his thoughts turned to his wife, and he wept openly.
"Well?" she asked, wanting to keep the call as brief as possible.
"Mission accomplished. Bromley and Nohara don't suspect a thing."
"Neither does Ibbotson. I'll pass on the information. Good job."
"Zoe" smiled her elfin smile, and disconnected the call.
"Suit yourself," Olec declared. It was then that she spied an object laying on the main work table. Curiosity got the better of her, and she crossed to the table and picked it up, all the while keeping an eye on her prisoner.
It was a metallic cylinder, about a foot and a half long and three inches wide. At one end, it flared into a circular knob about six inches in diameter. The end of the knob was pattered with a pair of interlocking triangles.
462ahw noticed her interest and commented. "Informed that's the results of Demck's first dive."
Olec nodded. "So this is what we're here for." She examined the metal a little closer. "Could be platinum."
He felt a bit of a kinship with the woman. They'd both seen so much that was beyond their wildest dreams - but he'd got to keep his memories. He didn't need anyone messing about inside his skull to recall a large chunk of his life.
He sighed. No one had been hurt, he reminded himself, and the information in this crystal could mean so much to the homeworld. The possibility for so much scientific advancement, all bound inside a single woman's mind. How could they not take that opportunity?
*No,* he thought. *Not bound inside her mind. Now it's in the crystal, too.* He activated his long-range communicator (cleverly disguised as a palmtop computer) and prepared to deliver his status report to the home office.
A few moments later, the image of his superior rezzed into existence a few inches above the palmtop's display. "Well?" she asked.
"I've got the information, and I'm ready for transport."
"The Seren?"
Ibbotson winced. "She seems to be holding up her end of the bargain. She's been a bit careless in dealing with the subject, but there doesn't appear to be any major problem. I certainly don't trust her, but I've told you that before, Director."
"Indeed you have. Transport is on the way. Good work, Turlough."
TO BE CONTINUED.