The Zen Gun

9

For the hundredth time Tengu finished checking the circuitry of the intermat kiosk and put his logic probe back in his pocket, his face displaying a now-familiar feeling of aggravation mixed with anxiety. There was nothing wrong either with the switching or with the feetol interface that enwrapped the cubicle and on which the system depended. Of course, he didn’t really know how the intermat worked, and there was one new introduction into the ship’s workings as a whole—the replacement flux unit. It delivered a flux curve that was perfectly normal—but could the old ruined one have added some necessary kink, perhaps? If so he would never find out what it was.

But he didn’t dare tell Ragshok that, Ragshok’s rages could be terrible.

After closing the panel, and as a matter of routine procedure, he tapped out the flagship code from the list beside the touch buttons, and fatalistically pressed GO.

For a blinding instant white light filled the kiosk. He blinked, then realised he was no longer in the same kiosk. The location plate had changed from Claire de Lune to Standard Bearer.

Tengu’s heart went into his mouth. For what reason he could not fathom, it had worked! He was on board the flagship!

Cautiously he pushed open the door. He was acquainted with the luxurious interior of the Claire de Lune, and he had heard of the extravagance of Diadem.

But the sight that met his eyes was far beyond anything he would have anticipated in a ship of war.

Archier took the slight, florid figure who crept from the kiosk and peered down into the salon for a crewman who had sneaked to the ball while on shift. What made him noticeable was that he wore no costume, only a ragged shirt that flapped over stained breeks and was cinched at the waist by a tool belt. No doubt he felt out of place and he deserved a reprimand, but Archier let it go.

He had permitted the victory ball to go ahead despite the seriousness of what lay ahead. The theme of the ball was Nemesis. Like most others, he wore a costume of electrically stiffened fabric that in its unexcited state was gauzy, limp and colourless, but which in answer to the currents flowing from a little generator mat could be pulled and shaped, could be given any variety of hues, translucencies and textures. The human figures that pranced the floor of the salon were an average of twelve foot in height, representing ancient gods of war, glowing warships and weapons of total destruction, giant masks of dread, aggressive abstract shapes. Animals were similarly bedecked, but in a manner adapted to their forms; long shapes worn by the four-footed darted about the ballroom, sometimes fronted with slavering jaws and sometimes playfully crashing into one another.

To the watcher on the mezzanine where the intermat kiosks were placed the pulsing streamers of light that bedecked the salon would also seemed to be joined by a dreadful cacaphony; about a dozen kinds of music were punishing the air at once. The costumed dancers, however, carried sound filters; they could tune into the airs of their taste.

“It’s sick, Admiral! It’s all completely sick!”

The girlish voice belonged to Hesper Positana, the last of the rebels to be captured. He turned and at first thought that in her silver and black uniform she was entering into the spirit of the thing. But her sulky face told otherwise.

She had been railing at Archier at every opportunity since being introduced to him. She should have been on the vessel that had been designated as a prison ship, but having been brought aboard together with the three Earthites, she had been left where she was.

Archier’s painted face smiled at her through the folds of Indra’s cummerbund. “But fun, you’ll agree.”

“Fun?” Hesper gaped at him in outrage. “Admiral, I hardly think fun is the word that should be used when describing the behaviour of imperialists. What have you got here? A celebration of oppression and random violence! Maybe that’s fun for you, but as far as I’m concerned it’s merely vile.”

“I assure you we don’t see ourselves that way.”

“So how do you see the nuke bombs you dropped on Earth, for instance? What need was there for that?”

Archier shook his head, setting the baleful face of Indra swaying. “But no such thing happened.”

“Don’t kid me. I saw the fireballs after we took off.”

Leaning closer so he could make himself heard over the music, Archier said. “You’re placing the blame in the wrong quarter. An insurgent can’t claim to be on the side of peace. What safety can there be without Imperial stability? It’s my duty to maintain it.”

“Huh! The Empire!” Disdainfully Hesper waved at the scene before her. “Just look at it! A pack of degenerates and perverts! Wallowing with animals, with cattle and wild beasts! It’s pathetic!”

“Yes, I know that intelligent animals aren’t allowed into decent society on many of the outer worlds. But is that attitude creditable, or even civilised? All mammals are part of the same family. And the Empire does need their services.”

“We don’t need them in Escoria, not at all. And do you know what, Admiral? Because we have lots of real people, and that’s because we breed. We have lots of children, remember them? Why don’t you try it? Family life’s not so bad.”

She took a deep breath. “But it’s not surprising you’ve forgotten what sex is for when one takes a look at your women, is it? Why are they so hideous? Why would anyone want to make herself look so old?”

Archier smiled again to see how hopelessly provincial Hesper’s outlook was. She had absolutely no comprehension of current fashionable ideas of female beauty.

And now one of the aged faces she despised so much called out to him from within the pulsating flanges of a flashblast projector costume.

“Admiral! Come and dance with me!”

As he swept into the melee, Archier saw a look of jealous puzzlement fleetingly across Hesper’s face.

Not far away Gruwert, his costume switched off, the fabric hanging like rags about his corpulent bristly form, talked earnestly to Pout the chimera.

“So how do you gain your followers?” he asked.

For answer Pout smiled idiotically, his large eyes swivelling mysteriously towards the ceiling.

Gruwert gave an exasperated snuffle. He knew that this amalgam of primates could not be as stupid as he acted. Not to have all those people in tow, most of them apparently much brighter than himself.

These apes always were a shifty lot, he told himself. And that went for the hairless variety, too.

And in a corridor some yards from the room where Gruwert was entertaining Pout, Hako Ikematsu sat cross-legged in the rest position, inasmuch as a kosho could ever be said to rest. His spine was erect, his arms spread in the prescribed position, but his consciousness was not in suspension. He had merely blanked out his thoughts to make himself receptive to the emanations of others.

That way he was able to keep track of the presence of the man-ape chimera. Pout’s mental signature was distinctive: crafty, greedy thoughts in a brew of resentful malevolence that was, Ikematsu recognised, merely the perversion of the love of life that was natural to all mammals, but which in this case had been much ill-used.

Alongside it he sensed another presence, another signature: a sort of thrusting, porcine forcefulness, an impression of rooting, trampling power.

It was the tang of empire.

Chaotic music from the ballroom drifted up the corridor as a door opened at the far end, then was cut off again. Sinbiane and his new friend, a dark-eyed boy of about the same age whose black hair was gathered behind his head in a knot, approached.

“Hello uncle. This is Trixa. He’s on the battle staff here. He works the big guns. I told him you were a great warrior on Earth.”

Ikematsu rose to his feet and smiled down at the boy. “So you fought in the battle they are celebrating?”

“Yes sir,” Trixa told him boldly. “I coordinate eight guns here on the flagship. I helped knock out four of the enemy.” He paused. “Have you killed many people, sir?”

Ikematsu continued smiling. “I have killed no one, young cannoneer.”

, “A true warrior does not kill by his own hand,” Sinbiane intoned to the puzzled boy, “but only by the unavoidable fate of he who is killed.”

Sweating, Tengu found Ragshok in Claire de Lune’s restaurant. He was talking to Morgan and the Salpian engineer, Drue.

“The intermat,” Tengu choked out. “It’s started working!”

Ragshok’s eyes lit up. He licked his lips.

The Salpian had been eating from a plate in rapid gulps. He pushed it away. “It figures! I should have guessed it!”

Tengu stared at him.

“I was just telling the chief what I found out,” the engineer explained. “Whenever this fleet flies in feetol formation, all the bubbles merge into one big bubble. That’s why Imperial fleets are faster than our own ships. For the intermat to work, you must be inside the big bubble too.”

“These Imperials got a lot of tricks up their sleeve,” Morgan said admiringly.

“Let’s see them trick their way out of this one.” Ragshok leaned towards Tengu. “Are you sure it’s working? Have you been through?”

“Sure. To the flagship and back. I spent half an hour there.”

He would have stayed longer, once the smokes in the air got to him. But he had become nervous because of the looks he was getting. Besides, he had wanted to make sure he could get back.

“The flagship, no less,” Ragshok murmured. “What did you find there?”

“It’s weird. There’s some sort of victory dance going on. They call this a warfleet? It’s more like a ride down the Janja.” He was referring to the famous river replete with pleasure boats.

“A celebration. What a time to strike! And, anyway, we have to do it before the fleet comes out of feetol. Did you see many arms about?”

“Nobody was armed that I could see. It looks easier than taking a passenger liner, by far.”

“Okay. It will take an hour or more to get ready to move. Choose some men and reconnoitre the bigger ships, if you can do it discreetly. Make sure it’s the same all over.”

Broodingly Ragshok stared down into the main area of the restaurant from the executive’s balcony he had reserved for himself. They had got the dispenser operating and now everybody came to the restaurant for meals. Like the ship, it was overcrowded, and noisy too. In at least three places brawls were going on.

“We’re going to do it,” he said in a dreamlike voice. “We’re going to seize an Imperial Star Force fleet, one of the greatest instruments of power the galaxy has seen.”

“And then we’re going to rape Diadem,” Morgan finished for him.

“That’s right. The greatest act of pillage in history. It will be just like taking some ripe, defenceless woman—Diadem doesn’t have any defences of its own. There are only the Star Force fleets, and they are out in the Empire.”

“They could soon be recalled,” Drue pointed out.

“Too late. It will be a stand-off: we give them the message, move in and we start blasting worlds.”

“And if they promise the same for Escoria?” Tengu asked softly.

Ragshok’s answer was a ferocious growl. “We let them! What’s it to us? The Empire will fall to pieces and we pick up Diadem as first prize.”

He stood up, pointing to Tengu. “You and Morgan see to the reconnoitre. I’ll round up our team leaders and organise the squads.”

Just then an odd, transient event took place. In the air before him Ragshok seemed to see fine silvery threads, straight as tracks of light and sparkling from end of the restaurant to the other. It was like a linear cobweb being spun just too fast for the eye to catch. But in a second or two the apparition was gone.

“What in the Simplex was that?” he demanded.

When, in the ballroom aboard Standard Bearer, Archier noticed similar threads, this time glinting obliquely from floor to ceiling, he took them for an arranged visual effect, a presage to some extravagance to come. Then word was brought to him. Something unexplained was happening.

He summoned Arctus and made his way to the Command Centre. On the way there they saw the threads again. This time they started at the farther end of the corridor and proceeded at moderate pace down it, looking, he thought, like an array of lines marking the interfaces of metallic crystals. But, before they reached him, they vanished.

In the Command centre he found the white-haired Menshek and a number of ship engineers, including the chief engineer he had questioned earlier over the behaviour of Earth’s moon. Menshek was talking earnestly with the duty officer, a young tiger.

With a spasm of guilt at having such a thought, Archier suddenly found himself wishing some of the engineers could have been human. Animals weren’t at their best when handling the totally unknown.

“These lines that are appearing in the air,” Menshek said to him. “We’re getting the same reports from all over the fleet. In fact we think they’re appearing over a wide region of space. It must be another manifestation from the rent.”

“The instruments showed a very brief interruption in the operation of the engines,” the gorilla chief engineer told him. “That could be serious. But it hasn’t recurred yet.”

“We’re not supposed to be in the affected region yet,” Archier remarked.

“It’s probably spread.”

“Are we close to any stars?”

“Yes sir,” the duty officer informed him gruffly. “We are about to sidestep a system with an inhabited planet, as a matter of fact. We’ll pass within three light-days.”

“We’d best make for it. Our investigation can start there. Decelerate and alter course.”

While the tiger obeyed, quietly speaking instructions, the cobweb lines reappeared. Archier could see now that they emerged from the walls. They gave him the impression of being immensely, immensely long—light-years, at least.

They vanished. “What do you make of it?” Archer asked Menshek. He paused. “Could they be something to do with recession lines?”

“Nothing in our universe could make recession lines visible,” Menshek pointed out. “But did you ever watch Cursom’s book on what other facets might be like? Purely speculative, of course, but the point is they might not consist of three-dimensional realms containing particulate matter, like ours. The ‘flattening’ or collapse of the Simplex might take other forms, well-nigh incomprehensible to our intellects. Specifically, Cursom predicts there will be facets where it’s the recession lines, not the particles they connect, that become the ‘material entities’, while the original particles would play the part of separating locations or end-points. The fundamental unit of such a facet would not be a pointlike particle but a sort of extensible line, no limit being placed on length. Such lines, infinitesimal in themselves, would be able to collect themselves together to form the equivalent of higher structures—atoms, molecules and so forth—but always strictly in parallel. The threads we have seen answer to that description. They might even be living forms.”

“Linear matter,” Archier pondered, while the animals stared, struggling to comprehend. “But could it exist in our kind of space?”

“Perhaps, once it arrived here. Or perhaps their space and ours is intermingling.”

“And if they are intelligent, how would they see us?”

“Ah, that’s a question,” Menshek seemed to find the question intriguing. Briefly he turned to watch the data form in the air as the Fleet Manoeuvres Department did its work. “They would lack our sense of individuality as something existing at a defined place—indeed, they would scarcely understand the notion of ‘place’ as we do. Their equivalent of a single particle might sometimes extend throughout the whole of their spacetime, and it would be the same for larger structures. For them, the concept of ‘being’ would be associated with linear dispersal.

“They might not, yet, have been able to find anything here they can recognise as having material properties.”

Archier sighed fretfully. “I wish Diadem could have sent us a scientist! We’re out of our depth!”

“Have you tried to find any among the passengers?” Menshek asked. “Passengers” was how Star Force crews referred to the inevitable hangers-on aboard ships of the fleets.

“I did put the word out, but you know how reluctant these people are to get involved in anything.”

“Perhaps you should have made it clear what’s involved.”

Archier shook his head. “There’s state security to think of.”

The conversation was interrupted by a sound of tumult from the outside. Snarling softly, the duty officer whirled round as through the door there burst a shouting group of what Archier, because they still wore costume, the bellicose images rearing above those who were human, presumed at first were revellers who had inconsiderately intruded into the working area.

But they were clearly terrified. A lissom-figured young woman, her senile face set into the belly of a writhing, evil-looking Mother Kali, rushed up to him, her woe-begone expression an incongruous contrast.

“Admiral!” she screamed. “They’re coming through the intermats! They’re killing everybody!”

Archier tried to free himself of the clutching arms of both herself and her costume.

“Who?”

“Rebels! Pirates! I don’t know!”

Shucking off its silvery-grey covering that vaguely resembled a feetol shell, an impala trotted up to Archier to paw him nervously. “Savages, Admiral, savages! Do you know what they’re wearing? Animal skins! Do you hear me? Animal skins!”

The impala’s voice broke on a hysterical note.

“Call commando quarters,” Archier ordered the duty officer. “If you find any troops there, tell them to arm themselves. When you’ve done that, check with the rest of the fleet. I’ll go and look into this.”

He ran from the Command Centre and back down the broad passageway that led towards the ballroom. But he soon stopped, his blood freezing. Spilling down the corridor, fleeing from the salon, came a panicking mob, a jostling forest of screaming, multicoloured shapes.

Trying to give himself time to think, he pressed himself against the wall as the crowd surged by. How could this horror have come about? Through the intermats, she had said. And the kiosks in the salon were only one of several sets throughout the big battleship. But how could rebels have gained access to the intermat facility?

Suddenly he remembered the Claire de Lune.

Ragshok was roaring with delight on the mezzanine, clad in a shaggy bearskin coat, the beast’s dead snarl a helmet for his skull, a gun in each hand, while turmoil and the satisfying silent flicker of scangun beams filled the music-blasted area below him.

It was incredible. Star Force, terror of the galaxy, dreaded arm of the hard-faced Empire, and here was its real face: a motley of old women (though they seemed trim of figure, he observed), animals and children, and not one of them with the guts to do anything but run and scream.

It would be different with the commando troops, but there probably weren’t many of those, and then only on a few ships. He was putting two hundred men and women apiece into Standard Bearer and some of the capital ships where he guessed they were stationed. Generally he had to try to take each vessel with only a few dozen.

A sweating Morgan swaggered up in a leather cuirass and tigerskin pants. Ragshok’s people often wore animal-derived clothing; it was a way of expressing one’s ferocity. In this case Ragshok had ordered them to do so, knowing how much it would dismay and outrage the animals who far outnumbered the humans on the fleet. A good many of their hides would be hung out for curing by the end of the day.

“It’s a walkover,” Morgan said.

“It sure is so far,” Ragshok agreed.

To Ikematsu, the change in the mental ambience was instantly obvious. Withdrawing his concentration from the room where Pout and Gruwert conversed, he diffused it, taking in the whole surrounding atmosphere of thought.

The whole ship was in a state of blood-curdling fright, which in the direction of the ballroom was like a thick, clotted mass.

Quickly he spoke to the two boys, pointing down the corridor. “Something bad is happening. Go, and hide yourselves.”

Trixa looked bewildered. Sinbiane, attuned to his uncle’s perceptions, and used to obeying him instantly, tugged at his friend, urging him to run.

A kosho facing danger without his weapons… he truly had let himself be put at a disadvantage, Ikematsu thought wryly; and for a second time, and for the same cause.

Stealth would be called for, until he could obtain new weapons… Gruwert, he thought then, might know where his own armoury was stored. The pig might be prevailed upon to divulge…

As he turned towards the door, it opened and Pout emerged, blinking. Ikematsu’s gaze lit upon him, then upon the two boys running down the corridor, then to the end of the corridor.

Not long previously he had fleetingly observed threadlike lines in the air, barely visible. He had taken them for hallucination, a by-product of his mental concentration on radiated thought. But now, approaching from the far end of the corridor, came what looked like a horizontal grid of glistening metal rods. They seemed to move slowly at first, their tips lurching forward, now some in advance, now others, but suddenly they accelerated. The two running boys were momentarily transfixed, and in the same instant they vanished. Then Pout was touched, and vanished.

The rods speared through Ikematsu. He felt nothing, but from the blackness that enveloped him he knew that he, too, had vanished.