Jack Chalker: Charon: A Dragon at the Gate

His final, agonized decisions were nonetheless a compromise. First solve the puzzle. Then decide what to do with that solution. What troubled him most was the nature of that decision. He suspected even now that the nature of this alien threat was not as good and evil as he had originally believed.

He sat down at the lab screen and thought a moment “Put up a wide scan of the Lilith organism,” he told the computer.

The screen in front of him lit up and showed a strange enlargement Its closest relative was a virus, yet it was infinitely smaller, an alien abstract design of tiny lines and pits actually able to combine on an atomic level with actual molecules— molecules! It wasn’t a real creature but a few extra chemical ingredients on the end of a molecular formula, extras that somehow didn’t really change what the molecule was but nonetheless controlled it Once organism and molecules were linked, to remove the organism from inorganic molecules was relatively simple—they were always on the end. But in carbon molecules the Warden was not at the end at all but in the middle. Remove the Warden from a carbon chain and the chain fell apart—and so did the individual it helped make up. In much the same way, the synthetics with their odd and unnatural chains attracted the Wardens as carbon molecules did, but while the Wardens wormed their way in, they couldn’t stick. Synthetics disintegrated.

There was an advantage to that, from the Confederacy point of view. It kept the Four Lords and their worlds technologically far behind the Confederacy, and limited their industry to what they could take from their own worlds and from the asteroids and other space junk in the system that the Warden somehow recognized as “natural.” In fact there were no important heavy metals on any of the Diamond worlds; mines on the asteroids and on the moons of the nearest gas giant, Momrath, provided the raw materials for the Warden worlds that could use any machines. Many down there could easily build an interstellar spacecraft, but they didn’t have the materials to do so.

And yet, and yet…

That thing on the screen couldn’t possibly be alive, not in any sense that any biologist understood life. More than that, it didn’t fit, not on the Diamond. The four worlds down there were very different, yes, but every one of them— every one— was composed of logical, rational, carbon-based life. Most of it wasn’t nearly as exotic as life on most planets in and near the Confederacy itself, yet it Was consistent and logically there.

But nowhere was there any sign of anything else like the Warden organism. It didn’t belong there, not on those worlds. It had no dear ancestors, no relatives, no dead ends. In fact, it had no place or reason to evolve down there.

“The remote probes—the ones that preceded the initial landings on all four worlds. Why didn’t those core samples show the Warden?”

“The instruments were not really designed to look for something like it,” the computer replied. “Only after they knew something was there could they find it.

“Mighty poor procedures,” he noted. “The whole idea of an exploration is to find just such new threats as this.”

“If a question has not been asked it will rarely be answered,” the computer responded philosophically. “In other words, nobody can think of everything. Still, why the interest in the old samples? Surely you don’t think the Warden organism itself can be the aliens?”

“No, of course not. It’s an incredibly odd and alien thing, but even in its collective mode it’s hardly capable of a consciousness. You know, there are worlds in our catalogue where this thing wouldn’t really shock me or any of the scientists one bit—but not here. The thing doesn’t fit here. It’s as if an iceberg were suddenly found on a tropical world—it just doesn’t logically belong there.”

“A number of researchers and theorists have noted as much. Some have even theorized an interstellar origin—it arrived, perhaps in a meteorite, and set up housekeeping. That is the prevailing theory.”

He nodded. “But why just on Lilith? Or was it just on Lilith? How do we know we were the carriers to the other three worlds? Perhaps by the time we found the thing all four had already been contaminated, if they were.”

“It has been postulated that the Wardens existed on all four worlds, too,” the computer told him. “Sampling work was taken from a base ship that was actually beyond the life range of the Warden organism. However, since plant life did not disintegrate in the Warden manner it was simply assumed that the Wardens were not yet there.”

“Assumed… I wonder. What about the plant samples from Lilith, then?”

“I just checked on that. The fact is, all vegetation died in the samples from Lilith, but there were a thousand natural explanations and it was not taken as a terrible sign. It wasn’t unusual enough in general surveys of alien worlds, really. Many alien plants are interdependent on organisms and conditions requiring exacting biospheres to survive—a minuscule change in pressure or temperature, for example. Although Lilith’s samples died first, all of the samples died within a period of a day or two at most. This is normal and expected. You cant possibly hope to duplicate every exact condition for totally alien forms of life. Still, your proposition is now beyond proof. All four worlds have the Warden organism.”

“Still, it is an interesting speculation.”

“Why? If the alien-spore theory is correct, and it seems most logical, it might easily hit all four as one. That proves nothing.”

“Maybe not,” he murmured to himself. “Maybe…” He got up and walked forward to the control area. “Who’s in?”

“Charon.”

“Too bad. Most of all I want Medusa now, I think. I’m beginning to think the confirmation of my theories must lie there—and perhaps beyond. I suspect that Charon’s not going to add any new pieces.”

“You’re sure you just aren’t trying to avoid the experience?”

He stopped and looked around quizzically. Was he? He did dread this new experience, it was true, but was he kidding himself, or the computer?

He sat down in the master command chair and adjusted it for maximum comfort. The computer lowered the small probes, which he carefully placed on his head; then the thinking machine that was part of the module itself administered the measured injections and began the master readout.

For a while he floated in a semi-hypnotic fog, but slowly the images started forming in his brain as they had before. Only now they seemed more definite, clearer, more like his own thoughts.

The drugs and small neural probes did their job. His own mind and personality receded, replaced by a similar, yet oddly different pattern.

“The agent is commanded to report,” the computer ordered, sending the command deep into his own mind, a mind no longer quite his own.

Recorders clicked on.

Slowly the man in the chair cleared his throat. He mumbled, groaned, and made odd, disjointed words and sounds as his mind received the data and coded, classified, adjusted, and sorted it all out.

Finally the man began to speak.

After Krega’s talk and a little preparation to put my own affairs in order—this would be a long one—I checked into the Confederacy Security Clinic. I’d been here many times before, of course, but not knowingly for this purpose. Mostly, this was where they programmed you with whatever information you’d need for a mission and where, too, you were “reintegrated.” Naturally, the kind of work I did was often extralegal—a term I prefer to “illegal,” which implies criminal intent—and much of it was simply too hot ever to be known. To avoid such risks, all agents had their own experience of a mission wiped from their minds whenever it involved sensitive matters.