Jack Chalker: Priam's Lens

She turned purple at that, but could only manage, “Oh, my God!”

“But she’s so young,” Kat noted when informed of who one of their visitors was.

“I think it’s been a lot longer for us here on Helena than it was for them up there,” Gene responded. He looked at the Marine. “Jeez, Fenitucci! Not enough time to age one whit but enough time to somehow pick up a direct commission? You’re a lieutenant now?”

She nodded. “For service above and beyond. You’d be an admiral if you’d have made it back.”

“So what the hell did you do other than be a pain in my butt for a time?”

She grinned. “You aren’t the only one who can ride the keel,” she noted. “Commander Park got the idea. You were on one side of the Odysseus, and they knew it, and I was on the other side and they didn’t because they only picked up your signal and figured that every time they spotted me I was a ghost echo of your suit.”

“Huh? You mean you were along all the time?”

“Sure. Only while you went inside and joined the club, I stayed outside, nice and sedated, until we rendezvoused with the Dutchman. Then I detached and went over to his ship. He never suspected a thing. The moment your little party took off, the Hucamarea came through the gate. He tried to activate weapons and blow the joint, but I’d had a full week to play with and interface with his systems. It was a souped-up ship, but it was still a damned tug, Orion class, a real antique. I had no problems accessing and reprogramming some key areas. The only thing I didn’t figure on was how nutty he really was. I barely got off that tub before he blew it and himself and whatever crew he had to kingdom come.”

Harker sighed. “So you still don’t know who he was?”

“Oh, we know. I had that from his data banks early on. His name—his real name—was Akim Tamsheh. He was about as Dutch as Colonel N’Gana. But he had a lot in common with the old Dutchman of legend, and he apparently knew the legend from the old opera, or so the old lady told us later. In the early days of the Titan invasion, it seemed he was a tug captain on some backwater planet and then the white ships started showing up. He panicked, cut and ran, and disappeared. That was why we couldn’t trace him. All his records were lost as well in that early takeover. Seems he left his wife and two kids on that world when he chickened out. You can guess the rest.”

Harker sighed. “I think I see. What a shame. Still, without his pirate crew of gutsy looters like Jastrow, we wouldn’t have been able to free this world. I guess that brings up the big question. We’ve been here a long time. I don’t know how long—we don’t have seasons to speak of, and there’s no particular reason or means of keeping time here except your basic rock sundial like that one we made over there. So I don’t know how long it’s been. A long time.”

“Three years, four months for me, a tad over twenty-seven years for the two of you,” she told him. “We’ve had a lot of cleanup to do, and a lot of scouting. We’re still in the risky business of going behind Titan lines and laying more targeting genholes. It’ll probably take until I’m older than you are before it’s finished. It’s not without cost, either. Word of what we’re doing hasn’t outpaced us yet, but it does appear that they’re catching on. It’s not like we can put the Priam bolts on ships like laser cannon. Turns out they aren’t bolts of energy at all, they’re cracks in the universe! Even so, building more control rooms and intercepting more exchanges from that thing, whatever and wherever it is out there, is giving us an edge. We’ve failed on a few other worlds, and we’ve—well, some worlds weren’t as well targeted. It’s going to be long and nasty, and the weapon, in the end, won’t be decisive. What it did do was give us back Helena and a dozen other worlds so far, each one of which they developed differently, it seems, except for the flowers that we still haven’t figured out yet. You kill that energy net they set up, the flowers die. Not much left to study.”

“I know. So they may yet come back?”

“They could. We’re gonna try like hell not to let ’em. Besides, now that we have something that does work, we have leads on other things that maybe aren’t so draconian. The thing is, I’m not sure we’re ever going to be able to contact them, speak to them, figure out what the hell they really think they’re doing. Even if we’re not winning, we’ve stopped losing. That’s thanks to you, Harker. You and Kat, here, and the others.”

Kat cleared her throat nervously, “Lieutenant—the main thing is, we don’t want us, or our children and grand-children, to be some kind of specimens here. Social research and bringing the surviving primitives back into the bosom of civilization. This is our world now. We have a right to develop it our way. Otherwise we’ll go right back to doing to ourselves and others just what the Titans were doing to us. Some things we could use. Some versions of modem medicine. Some ways to restore some of the cultural heritage, at least in stories, songs, and legends. That kind of thing. But colonial administrators, social scientists, geneticists, and, God save us, missionaries—no.”

Fenitucci sighed. “We’ll do what we can. At least this world was a private holding. The Karas, Melcouri, and Sotoropolis families still have power and position, and can exercise a claim. If they can keep it out, they will.”

“You must also carry back to the people of Colonel N’Gana, Sergeant Mogutu, and even poor Hamille the story of their bravery and dedication,” Kat told her. “Many soldiers die obscure and meaningless deaths, I know, but they did not. They died for something, and they succeeded in what they set out to do. They gave their lives so we could, well, not lose. They deserve to be recognized for that.”

“We’ll take the oral histories down,” Fenitucci promised them. “And we’ll carry your own wishes to the First Families of Helena. That’s all I can promise.” She looked over at Curly, lounging nearby, and at several of the other young men with rippling muscles and substantial proportions in other areas. “Hell, I might even drop back for a bit when I get some time off,” she told them. “Be kind of interesting to go native for a few weeks here. There are some real possibilities. Besides, it seems, thanks to you, that my reputation’s already preceded me anyway.”

Harker looked sheepish. “Hey, there are only so many stories I could tell…”

As the shadows grew long and the sun began to touch the distant mountains, the two marines headed back to their shuttle, got in, and prepared to depart. They had reports to file, contacts to make, and, as military personnel, perhaps battles left to fight.

As they lifted off, they circled the small coastal village one last time.

“Treasure,” Barbara Fenitucci muttered.

“Ma’am?”

“Nothing. I was just looking at folks one step from the cavemen who live in the open and age at twice the going rate and even though it’s not my idea of how to do it, I can’t shake the idea that I’ve just spoken with some of the richest human beings left around. What do you think, Assad?”

The sergeant shrugged. “I think I want a gourmet meal, the finest wines, in climate-controlled splendor. And for now I’d settle for a soak in a spa bath.”

Fenitucci laughed. “God!” she wondered. “I wonder what my legend’s gonna be like with those people in another fifty years.”

“You think they’ll let them alone?”

“For a while,” she replied. “But, eventually, it’ll be irresistible to the powers that be to meddle. We never learn, we humans. That’s why God sends plagues, pestilence, and occasional Titan invaders to kick our asses and make us think for a while. But we forget. We always forget. Maybe it’s the way things work in the universe?”