Jack Chalker - Priam's Lens

Littlefeet could feel the demons still, even in his awakened state. They, or at least one or more, were not that far away; they were up somewhere in the air. They didn’t seem to be hunting for the camp or even particularly aware of or interested in it, but it was unnerving to have them so close.

If he remembered right, they were somewhere across the river, but what was a river to the Princes of the Air?

There was also something—else. He had no other way to describe it, even in his own thoughts. Later, as the rising sun burned off the fog, they hurried to feed everyone and get everything ready to move out. The warriors were all unnerved by the closeness of the demons the night before. He talked of his new sensation with the other young men. Some had felt it as well; others had no idea what he was talking about.

It was something different. Not demons, but coming from a direction where only demons could possibly be. Those who’d felt it had never felt its like before, and could not explain it, but the sensations of something, somebody new, something present and not of this world, had come from above, from the air, and had faded with the setting of the smaller moon.

“Get Mister Harker a dressing gown, please,” Madame Sotoropolis instructed. The automated systems built into the Odysseus immediately complied, with a small hook running in a track along the ceiling carrying a dark blue gown.

“Thanks for something,” the Navy man grumbled, taking it and putting it on, then tying it off. “You’ll see to my suit?”

“Wouldn’t want to touch it with a five-meter pole,” she responded. “Colonel N’Gana has warned us that such things are not to be trifled with.”

He found some sandals and slipped them on, then emerged from the bathroom of the small suite he now occupied. “Now, you want to tell me when you knew I was there?”

“Well, as I understand, Admiral Krill suspected that someone like you would be there, and this Dutchman confirmed it, that’s all. I must admit I was a bit surprised to find that it was you, even though I am delighted to see you here! We can use someone like you, I suspect.”

He stared at her, all shrouded but still animated, and frowned. “You knew the Navy would send somebody. You deliberately baited me with all those queries for the Dutchman.”

“Let us just say that several of us thought it better to have someone official along. Someone who could give the Navy a pretext to act if need be, or call them off. Like it or not, Mister Harker, you are now the official representative of The Confederacy’s Navy on this trip.”

“Maybe I don’t choose to be.”

“Too late. You already volunteered. Now, come this way, please. I think that you should be brought up to speed as quickly as possible.”

He followed her, still feeling uncomfortable and highly vulnerable but mostly crushed by the idea that his act of bravery was so, well, useless.

“Why didn’t you just request a liaison?” he grumbled.

“Why, dear, you know they would have either ignored us or sent the wrong person. Someone either no good in a fight or only good in a fight, perhaps. But someone who had the nerve to do what you just did—now that is the kind of person we can trust. You may be the best of the lot here, Mister Harker, and we don’t even have to pay you!”

He had a lot of questions; he had nothing but questions at this stage. All that for nothing. And the Dutchman was here and had known he was there. That meant that the Dutchman, or his henchmen, had been there on the base and in the bar all along. And if he knew that, did he also know the codes and signals Harker could use in a pinch? He wondered.

Juanita Krill was taller than he’d thought from the videos and, if anything, thinner. He doubted if she could do much heavy lifting or carrying, but, then, she didn’t have to. She marketed that first-rate brain of hers that could solve all sorts of wonderful ciphers when mated with her specially designed code-breaking and security computers.

She looked up at him from a console, then went back to the screen once again. Her short-cropped wig sat on a small form on the deck. By moving just a bit behind her, he saw that she had a cyberprobe inserted in the slot in the back of her skull. It gave off a low pulsing yellow light, not because it needed the light but because others had to know when it was active in case something went wrong. On the other side of her, on the deck opposite the wig stand, was a simple one-meter-square cube with a handle on it. It, too, was pulsing in rapid time, mirroring the smaller transceiver in her skull.

The fact that she was doing complex analysis inside the computer didn’t seem to interfere with her ability to hold a normal conversation, which was probably the most impressive thing of all. He’d seen people who did computer interfacing on this level who were comatose not only while they were doing it but also for days afterward.

“Come, come, Mister Harker,” she said. “You should know you would never make heads or tails of what you are seeing. I’ll tell you what it is, though, and it is quite disturbing, some of it. It’s the output of the mind of a man who knew he was probably going to die any minute. Fortunately, whoever was stalking him did not get him until he was through. I have experienced a violent death in this manner before and it takes a great deal of work to get it out of your head.”

“This is the Dutchman’s man on Helena?”

“Interestingly, no. It appears that he was another free-lancer or possibly even a civilian operative. The record is unclear. Unfortunately, while he was quite bright, it wasn’t in this technical area. He was more soldier and spy than cyberthief. However, it appears that he couldn’t quite get to the old labs anyway. There has been a collapse in those levels which would require earth-moving equipment to bypass. Needless to say, that is not an option open to us on Helena. There is, however, a potential route using old ventilation shafts that are far too small for us to get through but which another might.”

“That’s the Pooka, I guess.”

“Indeed. The man wasn’t going for this sort of stuff when he was dropped. He was attempting to get modular keys to more conventional but still quite potent weapons that are stored away in vast underground bunkers on Achilles. That was the prize. Instead, he ran into information, apparently old-style written information, that led him instead to the location of the research and control center for the Priam’s Lens project. He knew what he had from the printouts and journals he recovered down there and read later on. Unfortunately, when he tried to get down to the laboratory levels for the data and code blocks, well, he just could not get there. The position is quite dangerous both from the standpoint of the physical plant and because of its close proximity to one of the Titan bases. He didn’t dare to try for more, but he wanted to ensure that the message got out. He had data on where some trickle charge emergency stations might be located and he found one. He got out the information he had using the old planetary emergency channels, without really knowing whether it would be received by anyone. Only the Dutchman was in the area and so only the Dutchman received the signal.”

He nodded. “So, any idea why the Dutchman called in the tiaras family?”

“Not exactly. He will not show himself. We don’t know who or even what he is. However, he can hardly go to the nearest Naval base and say, ‘Hi, I was out in the Occupied Territories near Helena and I received this signal from the ground.’ They would have him. This way, he controls things.”