In Arafuria, the transport taxied to Hangar XI on the Science Commission's compound in the UKSB. The transport was a colorless stealth war glider covered in organic armor. Zoa had ordered the transport because of the cargo, but there was no interference pre-flight or in-flight. Piercing New Continent airspace had been surprisingly uneventful. Zoa was told by the air controller that the international aviation control board had cleared its airspace for her.
Pryor Leighton, the ITAN ambassador to the Holland-Tchey, arrived at the Science Commission shortly after Zoa. He settled his residence, which was divided from the main Holland-Tchey facility by strategic landscaping and daunting security measures. Leighton's staff grew considerably meanwhile-- six days elapsed in short but chaotic fashion. The ambassador's staff now included ITAN science ministers, a coterie of ITAN military brass, and liaisons to the governments of the UKSB, Brianovia, and Aiglentina, the so-called superpowers.
Leighton's conferences ran until all hours, driven by updates from international intelligence, to which the Holland-Tchey hierarchy was politely made privy.
Leighton believed, as did his cronies, that if the Commission hierarchy wished, then she, they, and the entire Holland-Tchey delegation, would vanish off world, thereby abandoning Leighton and his planet to its folly.
Zoa knew better.
Early in the morning of the seventh day after her return from Volodya, Zoa found herself at the tail of a procession through a corridor of the inner sanctum of the Commission's ultra-secure Human Research Center. The name of the connecting air-locked laboratories and halls and conferral rooms was printed in her native tongue, represented by a single character that the humans could not read. In Zoa's language, the character resonated at many levels.
When humans visited the security areas, they were told that they were entering the labs. All the work areas at the Arafuria Science Commission were called "labs." Humans were told nothing about the laboratories' designation, their purpose. If the humans insisted on possessing the information, the Commission would take its research outside gravity, or worse, abandon its research and the humans altogether. ITAN tolerated the shielded doings of the facility as a third-world human might a toothache.
Now Leighton strolled the colorless corridor beside Her Excellency, the head of the delegation. Leighton was a slender, pale-skinned man in his early sixties. He had a heavy, coifed head of darkened gray hair. The shade of his hair was supposed to make Her Excellency respect his relative seniority in the affairs of humans, when in fact Her Excellency was painfully aware that on her world a being of sixty years was adolescent.
In contrast to the ambassador's pale gray suit, Her Excellency wore a single drape of black silk. The drape produced a high collar and long sleeves. The only part of Her Excellency visible outside the drape was her high head with its light brown skin and wavy spillage of black hair. Telepathic, Zoa was aware that Leighton found Her Excellency profoundly attractive. Syrinx, too, was aware. She was one hundred and eighty years old.
Leighton gave Syrinx his briefing. "At present, we have no intelligence on the position, dead or alive, of John Manegold."
Syrinx wrinkled her brow, indicating deep interest in the news. "That is unfortunate. He was a prisoner in the custody of security personnel. Why they failed to tag him eludes us."
Leighton turned his head to gaze into the black crystal of a laboratory window. He did not want to show his distress.
"The advanced governments of our world, Your Excellency, use prisoner tagging for just this reason. We are not dealing with a member country, unfortunately. Volodya undoubtedly messed up."
"Undoubtedly."
They paused at an air lock. Zoa-- and her fellows --were treated to a telepathic wave of disgust from Syrinx, who regarded Leighton sternly. The human staffers accompanying Leighton shifted uncomfortably, aware of the stakes.
The air lock opened.
They pressed on. The lock sealed behind them. They were in a tight, windowless chamber with rows of blue and red panels. The panels hummed. Meanwhile, a voice explained in Solonian, Ollano, and Aiglentine that a sterilization process had begun.
Presently, the panels dimmed.
The forward air lock unsealed with a pneumatic thump.
The group stepped into another corridor.
Leighton said, "Our intelligence channels are wide open."
"You have driven your quarry deep into the ground," Syrinx criticized.
"The ground is not that deep." Leighton attempted confidence. "We will find the weapon."
"Let me show you something."
Syrinx stopped in front of a black crystal window. She emitted a psychic tone. The lab's security system acknowledged her command and the window's protective shield dissolved.
Leighton found himself on a balcony over an austere, white chamber. In the chamber far below him was a broad examination table. The table was metal or some kind of alloy fitted with arm, wrist, waist, leg, and ankle restraints. The restraints were similar to devices used to pin condemned UKSB prisoners as they received lethal injections. Leighton observed a young man naked and restrained on the examination table under a bank of severe lights. The young man was quite dead, though the mechanism of death eluded Leighton. The man was dark-haired, physically fit. His nationality was undetermined.
Leighton cleared his throat. What was a human doing in a Holland-Tchey facility? Did the aliens kill the man? Had matters advanced to the point at which the aliens were running their own manhunt? How was he to react to the realization that the Holland-Tchey were dragging humans off the streets?
He collected himself. "I am afraid I don't understand what I am looking at, Your Excellency."
Syrinx released another inaudible, psychic tone. Data appeared in Solonian on a holographic screen in front of Leighton.
The ambassador shifted to focus.
Syrinx said, "Your species went through a period noted as the Purge. You are familiar with it."
Leighton squinted at the screen, which shifted as he reached the bottom to the next page. When he wanted to revisit a previous page, the screen changed automatically.
Syrinx sent a command to the system. The window took on a faintly green aspect. Leighton recognized that a filter had been added. He took his eye off the data screen and gazed deeply into the chamber.
"Lady of Light, what is that?"
Syrinx gestured to the data screen. "The item to which you are referring arrived seven days ago. At that time, the man had three wounds by projectile arms."
Leighton felt his gut clench. "Oh, no."
"This human is dead, Ambassador, as you understand the term. He was dead seven days ago."
"Then what is that?"
"Let me tell you what we did, first. We performed surgical techniques on the corpse. Dead tissue responds predictably, Ambassador. I do not think the terms dead and living apply to this man as they apply to you and to me."
Leighton stared at her in horror.
Syrinx smiled faintly, surprising Zoa. Zoa disapproved of this briefing. She had more or less promised Rambach that this would not occur. But then she had no idea what the Commission would do once it took her reports to heart.
"Ambassador, you are looked at a living entity."
Leighton screwed his head around to gape below at the examination table.
Ambassador, you are looked at a living entity.
She was not referring to the human, of course, but to the irregular, disjointed coalescence of light pricks. The pricks of light, like tiny, glowing dust particles, hovered above the corpse. Using the alien filter, the light swirls were as visible as the table. Leighton saw that the light swirls were in constant rotation in and out of the corpse.
"Does it-- is it one life form or many?"
"We cannot answer that."
Leighton experienced his greatest moment of disorientation. "You don't know?"
"No, we do not."
His knees felt weak. "Is it, are they communicating?"
"Not in any conventional or unconventional manner that we understand. There is no reason to believe we"-- she inserted the name of her species in her native language, a complicated series of sounds beyond human vocal ability --"lack the means to communicate. We have concluded it has no desire to communicate."
"Can you destroy it?"
Syrinx shook her head. "We do not know."
Leighton suddenly felt less like a schoolboy in a lecture hall. He felt like he had something to offer. "During the Purge, we found that all such aberrant life forms were vulnerable to fire."
Syrinx looked at him, her expression thoughtful. "Fire."
"You have found our curse, a demian." He filled his lungs, dramatically. "What their kind did to us, back then. Your Excellency, you cannot imagine. Our survival depended on the Purge. Thank the Lady they were too hateful to breed--" Leighton had a sobering, altogether dreadful thought. "The connection between John Valten Manegold and this thing, I, uh--"
Syrinx lowered her voice. "The Manegold is a terrorist of the most extreme sort. Finding the body of John Manegold is paramount."
Leighton jerked a nod. "I understand."
* * *
Zoa waited until the humans disappeared back into the air lock and Syrinx, seemingly gripped by the vision in the observation room, raised her slender hand.
Zoa glided forward. She trained her gaze on Syrinx's profile, which was not inappropriate. Avoiding the chamber was in Zoa's best interest. Her responses were at a lower energy center than usual, a place her species called the physical body. At this level, she was all instinct, blowing hot and cold with emotion. She needed focus.
Syrinx, her mouth a taut line, communicated telepathically. It's not a symbiot. She referred to the second, incorporeal being in the chamber as though it was a single life form. We did a fair job with tissue regeneration on this Rambach. If his heart were beating right now, he would sit up and wave. Oh, yes, except that we removed oxygen from the room.
Zoa responded without speaking. Yes, Excellency.
-- Do you know why we removed oxygen from the room?
-- To study the second life form's reaction.
-- Precisely. The second life form did nothing.
-- Yes, Excellency.
-- We sent in a technician with liquid fire. The second life form did nothing. We gave our technician a disrupter. Nothing. It's not a symbiot, as I said. How can it be if the man is dead and the life form is unaffected?
-- Perhaps it is affected in a manner we do not understand.
-- An understatement. It stays with the body, but does not react when the body is threatened. I agree the one thing we lack is understanding. A life form we have not seen before ...
Zoa thought, It has no wave pattern.
-- Incorrect. It has no detectable wave pattern. Therefore, we are not able to net or disrupt it, or even block its telepathy, if it has such. For what we know, the entity knows our thoughts. For what we know, the entity could leave the human, the chamber, this facility, and do as it wishes. Recall, my dear, the early millennia of our evolution, when we knelt to a deity of energy. If I were living then, I would say that I was looking at a particle of the creatrix.
Zoa shuddered. But Syrinx was thoughtful, grounded, and of course correct. It might be prudent to lower our disruption net and allow Rambach's consciousness to find his body.
-- Why should we do that?
-- Excellency, we know that the entity will not talk to us. Rambach can and is willing to talk to me.
-- Next Chapter
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