Barrington Bayley - The Zen Gun

Hesper, who with Archier had been listening in silence, gasped. “Is that what happened?”

“I don’t understand this,” Archier said. “There is no actual bond between gravitating bodies.”

“Strictly speaking you are right: gravitation is a screening effect. So I speak loosely. What the gun really did was to render Earth and the moon gravitationally transparent to one another.”

The kosho resumed his story. “You will recall that after the fleet entered the region effected by the rent a number of persons vanished. Among them were myself, Pout and these two boys. We were instantaneously transported to the surface of a planet, the same, I think, that the fleet was headed for. I will not dwell on what took place there. Suffice to say that at last I procured the zen gun from Pout, and I was able to remedy the damage done by my fellow kosho . I used the gun to close up the rent.”

“So if you’re telling the truth we don’t have that to worry about anymore.” Gruwert growled. “Good.”

“You never did. The rent would have closed up by itself, after a while. Another problem was inadvertently solved, however. As the rent closed, the entities that had come through it withdrew. But first they restored everything to the condition in which they found it. Everything they had dismembered they put together, everything they had moved they put back, in the twinkling of an eye. Those of us from this ship were put back on this ship, mended in body if not in mind.”

“The fleet has moved light years since you were taken,” Hesper said in puzzlement. “If you were put back where you were before, it would be into the void.”

Ikematsu gave his faint smile. “Evidently you have scant knowledge of physics. ‘Place’ as a physical reality applies only to material objects, not to empty space. This flagship is the ‘place’ from which we were taken, and it does not matter how it has altered its relationship with other places in the interim. Star Force’s intermat system,” he added casually, “works on the same principle.”

“Then where is the zen gun now?” Archier asked.

Ikematsu’s head turned. He was looking to the door. Pout had suddenly appeared there. He walked with a tired slouch, head down, arms hanging, as the ape in him had taken over completely. Blinking, he stumbled into the room, swayed, then leaned against a wall.

With him was a boy of about eight who seemed to have been pushing Pout ahead of him. On seeing Gruwert, the boy saluted self-consciously. “The chimera you ordered brought here, Admiral. We found him trying to hide in a clothes store. I, er, don’t think he’s very well.”

Feeling uneasy, Archier said. “That’s all. Go now. At once.”

As the boy left, Ikematsu answered Archier’s question. “The gun was not on me when I reappeared aboard the flagship. I reason that it, too, must have returned to its point of departure. I surmise that Pout has it.”

“ SMO Archier! ” Gruwert roared. “Get that gun!”

As if in a trance, Archier found himself moving towards the chimera, who suddenly flung up his arms to ward him off.

“No gun, no gun! Pout has no gun!”

“Look to see what you have in your bib, Pout,” Ikematsu said gently.

Blankly Pout stared at him. Then, trembling, he dipped his hand in his garment. It came out holding the zen gun.

“No gun!” he screamed. “No gun!” In terror he flung it from him. It clattered to the floor.

Archier picked it up as it fell to his feet. He turned it over in his hand. It looked so ordinary, so unfinished. How much was he to believe of the kosho ’s tale? It was extraordinary, but well within the bounds of possibility. What else could explain the behaviour of Earth’s moon for instance?

If the kosho really had woven this and other happenings into a concocted story, then he really was uncommonly inventive. Gruwert, at any rate, gave the tale credence. After only a brief glance at the weapon Archier was examining, he was calling for his bodyguard.

Ikematsu shook his head warningly, “Your stoat is asleep. I dealt with him earlier. You face me alone.”

Gruwert shook with agitation. He knew how dangerous an adversary the kosho could be, even unarmed. He moved so as to put himself between Ikematsu and the door. “SMO,” he ordered quickly, “get out of here fast and take that gun to safety. I’ll hold this kosho back.”

“No!” Hesper shrieked. “Don’t let the pigs have it, or it’s slavery forever!”

Archier froze, only vaguely aware that Hesper was moving towards him. His mind was filling with images. A vision of Axaline, the place where they were going. He knew full well what Gruwert intended. Nuke a city here, beam a continent there. And then demand tribute. The slightest resistance and…

Then, too, there was Escoria. Hesper’s home sector. She claimed the fleet had nuked the moving teaching cities on Earth. Archier no longer disbelieved it. It would be just like Gruwert to arrange it behind his back.

And what a score he would settle with the sector as a whole, when they next went there!

“Give me that gun!” It was Gruwert’s voice, and it was distorted with passion, with rage at Archier’s lack of response. Even as he spoke, the pig charged. He bowled Archier over, reaching for the gun with his snout. Automatically Archier tried to keep the gun from the animal’s reach. The smell of the pig was all over him. He felt bristly hide against his skin frantic trotters scrambling and trampling on his limbs and body.

Then Hesper was with him, helping him struggle against the bulging, vigorous mass of lard. Somehow she hauled him from underneath Gruwert, who lost his balance and went sprawling on his side.

Archier staggered to Ikematsu. He pressed the gun into his hand. “ You take it,” he gasped. “Do whatever you can!”

Gruwert, snorting and squealing, trotters sliding on the floor raised himself. Furiously he turned to face the kosho , backing off to charge him as he has Archier.

Before he could launch himself Ikematsu’s hand swept up. He spread two fingers, pointing them directly at the pig’s two eyes.

“Sleep.”

And Gruwert stood there, as motionless as a statue, his eyes open but unseeing.

As she joined Archier Hesper was breathing heavily. She stared down at the pig. “What’s wrong with him?” she whispered.

“I have hypnotised him,” Ikematsu said simply.

With a look of intent concentration on his face, he was pressing the setting studs in a complicated sequence. “The die is cast,” he said to Archier. “You have made your decision: you have committed treason against the pigs’ Empire. Now we must all leave.”

“There’s no way off this ship for us,” Archier said, “unless you know of one.”

“Does not this gun reach into the Simplex? Have not the scientists always assured us that access to the Simplex means instantaneous travel to anywhere in our universe? Well, they are right.”

Again the kosho ’s faint smile. He had finished what he was doing with the zen gun. He pointed the muzzle at each of his companions in turn, pressing the trigger stud each time.

The transition was without interval of time. Archier found himself standing on grassland in gathering dusk. The ground rose to a summit about a mile away, where he would see a building perched in outline against the darkening sky.

He was accustomed to using the intermat and so was not shocked or disoriented by the sudden change in surroundings, except that the air smelled unpleasantly bland and odourless. There were none of the additives he was used to, both on board ship and in the atmospheres of Diadem planets.