Chapter Eight

“It is by death that life is known,” the Abbod said. “Without the eternal presence of death there can be no awareness, no ascendancy of consciousness, no withdrawal from the gridded symbols into the void-without-background.”

—ROYALI’s Religion for Everyone, Conversations with the Abbod

They called it the Sheleb Incident, Stetson noted, and were happy that the I-A suffered only one casualty. He thought of this as his scout cruiser brought the casualty back to Marak. A conversation with the casualty kept coming back to him.

“Senior fieldmen last about half as long as the juniors. Very high mortality.”

Stetson uttered a convoluted Prjado curse.

The medics said there was no hope of saving the field agent rescued from Sheleb. The man was alive only by an extremely limited definition. The life and the definition depended entirely upon the womblike crechepod which had taken over most of his vital functions.

Stetson’s ship stood starkly in the morning light of Marak Central/Medical Receiving, the casualty still aboard waiting for hospital pickup. A label on the crechepod identified the disrupted flesh inside as having belonged to an identity called Lewis Orne. His picture in the attached folder showed a blocky, heavy-muscled redhead with off-center features and the hard flesh of a heavy planet native. The flesh in the pod bore little resemblance to the photo, but even in the flaccid repose of demideath, Orne’s unguent-smeared body radiated a bizarre aura.

Whenever he moved close to the pod, Stetson sensed power within it and cursed himself for going soft and metaphysical. He had no theory system to explain the feeling, thus dismissed it with a notation in his mind to consult the Psi Branch of the I-A just in case. Likely nothing in it… but just in case.

There’d be a Psi officer at the medical center.

A crew from the medical center took delivery on the crechepod and Orne as soon as they got port clearance. Stetson, moving in his own shock and grief, resented the way the medical crew worked with such casual and cold efficiency. They obviously accepted the patient more as a curiosity than anything else. The crew chief, signing the manifest, noted that Orne had lost one eye, all the hair on that side of his head—the left side as noted in the pod manifest—had suffered complete loss of lung function, kidney function, five inches of the right femur, three fingers of the left hand, about one hundred square centimeters of skin on back and thigh, the entire left kneecap and a section of jawbone and teeth on the left side.

The pod instruments showed that Orne had been in terminal shock for a bit over one hundred and ninety elapsed hours.

“Why’d you bother with the pod?” a medic asked.

“Because he’s alive!”

The medic pointed to an indicator on the pod. “This patient’s vital tone is too low to permit operative replacement of damaged organs or the energy drain for regrowth. He’ll live for a while because of the pod, but…” And the medic shrugged.

“But he is alive,” Stetson insisted.

“And we can always pray for a miracle,” the medic said.

Stetson glared at the man, wondering if that had been a sneering remark, but the medic was staring into the pod through the tiny observation port.

The medic straightened presently, shook his head. “We’ll do what we can, of course,” he said.

They shifted the pod to a hospital flitter then and skimmed off toward one of the gray monoliths which ringed the field.

Stetson returned to his cruiser’s office, an added droop to his shoulders that accentuated his usual slouching stance. His overlarge features were drawn into ridges of sorrow. He slumped into his desk chair, looked out the open port beside him. Some four hundred meters below, the scurrying beetlelike activity of the main port sent up discordant roarings and clatterings. Two rows of other scout cruisers stood in lines just outside the medical receiving area—gleaming red and black needles. Part of the buzzing activity down there would be ground control getting ready to shift his cruiser into that waiting array of ships.

How many of them stopped first in this area to offload casualties? Stetson wondered.

It bothered him that he didn’t possess this information. He stared at the other ships without really seeing them, seeing only the dangling flesh, the red gaps in Orne’s body as it had been when they transferred him from Sheleb’s battered soil to the crechepod.

He thought: It always happens on some routine assignment. We had nothing but a casual suspicion about Sheleb—the fact that only women held high office. A simple, unexplained fact and I lose one of my best agents.

He sighed, turned to his desk and began composing the report: “The militant core on the planet Sheleb has been eliminated. (Bloody mess, that!) Occupation force on the ground. (Orne’s right about occupation forces: For every good they do, they create an evil!) No further danger to Galactic peace expected from this source. (What can a shattered and demoralized population do?)

“Reason for Operation: (Bloody stupidity!) R&R—after two months of contact with Sheleb—failed to detect signs of militancy.

“Major indicators: (The whole damn spectrum!)

“1.) A ruling caste restricted to women.

“2.) Disparity between numbers and activities of males and females far beyond the Lutig norm!

“3.) The full secrecy/hierarchy/control/security syndrome.

“Senior Field Agent Lewis Orne found that the ruling caste was controlling the sex of offspring at conception (see details attached) and had raised a male slave army to maintain its rule. The R&R agent had been drained of information, replaced with a double and killed. Arms constructed on the basis of that treachery caused critical injuries to Senior Field Agent Orne. He is not expected to survive. I am hereby recommending that Orne receive the Galaxy Medal and that his name be added to the Roll of Honor.”

Stetson pushed the report aside. That was enough for ComGo. The commander of galactic operations never went beyond the raw details. The fine print would be for his aides to digest and that could come later. Stetson punched his call box for Orne’s service record, set himself to the task he most detested: notifying next of kin. He studied the record, pursing his lips. “Home Planet: Chargon. Notify in case of accident or death: Mrs. Victoria Orne, mother.”

He scanned through the record, reluctant to send the hated message. Orne had enlisted in the Federation Marines at age seventeen standard (a runaway from home) and his mother had given post-enlistment consent. Two years later: scholarship transfer to Uni-Galacta, the R&R school here on Marak. Five years of school, one R&R field assignment under his belt, and he had been drafted into the I-A for brilliant detection of militancy on Hamal. Two years later—a crechepod!

Abruptly, Stetson hurled the service record at the gray metal wall across from him; then he got up, brought the record back to his desk. There were tears in his eyes. He flipped the proper communications switch, dictated the notification to Central Secretarial, ordered it transmitted Priority One. He went groundside then and got drunk on Hochar brandy, Orne’s favorite drink.

The next morning there was a reply from Chargon: “Lewis Orne’s mother too ill to be notified or to travel. Sisters being notified. Please ask Mrs. Ipscott Bullone of Marak, wife of the High Commissioner, to take over for family.” It was signed: “Madrena Orne Standish, sister.”

With some misgivings, Stetson called the Residency for Ipscott Bullone, leader of the majority party in the Federation Assembly. Mrs. Bullone took the call with blank screen. There was a sound of running water in the background.

Stetson stared into the grayness swimming in his desk screen. He always disliked blank screens. His head ached from the Hochar brandy and his stomach kept insisting this was an idiot call. There had to be a mistake.

A baritone husk of a voice came from the speaker beside the screen: “This is Polly Bullone.”

Telling his stomach to shut up, Stetson introduced himself, relayed the Chargon message.

“Victoria’s boy dying? Here? Oh, the poor thing! And Madrena’s back on Chargon—the election. Oh, yes, of course. I’ll get right over to the hospital.”

Stetson signed off with thanks, broke the contact. He leaned back in his chair, puzzled. The High Commissioner’s wife! He felt stunned. Something didn’t track here. He recalled it then: The First Contact! Hamal! A blunderbrain named Andre Bullone!

Using his scrambler, Stetson called for the follow-up report on Hamal, found that Andre Bullone was a nephew of the High Commissioner. Nepotism began on high, obviously. But there was no apparent influence in Orne’s case. A runaway in his teens. Brilliant. Self-motivated. Orne had denied any knowledge of a connection between Andre Bullone and the High Commissioner.

He was telling the truth, Stetson thought. Orne didn’t know about this family connection.

Stetson continued scanning the report. A mess! The nephew had been transferred to a desk job far back in the bureaucracy: report juggler. There was a green check mark beside the transfer notice, indicating pressure from on high.

Now—a family linkup between Orne and the Bullones.

Still puzzled, but unable to see a way through the problem, Stetson scrambled an eyes-only memo to ComGo, then turned to the urgent list atop his work-in-progress file.

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