Z-Sting Read online

  His mind drifted to the Sinitic Ten Commandments which still exercised a certain amount of religious restraint in Erth-Westernized portions of the galaxy such as Erth and Centauri, and which found original counterparts on far more distant planets. “Thou shalt not bear false witness”—but it added, “against thy neighbor.” There was no flat-out prohibition against lying or double-dealing, as long as you didn’t thereby put your neighbor on a hot spot. And yet he found all lying and double-dealing unworthy, self-soiling, even when it was aesthetically amusing. Was the commandment too restricted?

  On a later religious level, the Jesuitist exaltation of two isolated and obscure passages out of Leviticus and Deuteronomy took care of it: Love God—and love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus had added that everyone is one’s neighbor. And if you mislead somebody by lying to him, there must be some hurt that you are doing him.

  Or consider a secular parallel, five centuries old at most: John Dewey, emended and enriched three centuries later by Nike Pan. Evil is distortion, interruption, or destruction of possibilities for long-range self-educational growth. Killing sort of does this. Lying more subtly does this . . .

  So Croyd had avoided lying, and thus far he had avoided killing; but now he was deeply mired in doubledealing, and he didn’t like it—not even against Ziska—not even for the sake of the good of Erth.

  Nevertheless, was he not justified?

  Or was he? In seeking to prevent this human tampering with the cosmic Zeitgeist, was he perhaps running counter to an Epoch-Spirit which of its own contexture was influencing men to attack itself? Whether he would bring off the counter-attack by sooth or by fraud, would the Zeitgeist tolerate his meddling? Was he perhaps even fencing with some form of divine will?

  Nonsense! The Zeitgeist is only the contemporaneous contexture of the Weltgeist which is completely impersonal and possesses no will. It is neither pro-human nor anti-human by discretion, it is merely whatever it may turn out to be. As for individual humans, it exalts them or ruins them impersonally, depending on how they happen to meld with the Zeitgeist contexture. All this occurs merely as hyperfine psychological interaction, not by any choosing of the volitionless Weltgeist.

  Perhaps it is the seemingly hopeless pervasiveness of the Zeitgeist which engenders in a man the Existentialist frame of mind, so that if a man be atheistic or agnostic he simply denies that life has intelligible meaning, or if he be theistic he slips into praising God for any condition of the Zeitgeist whatsoever.

  But it is alternately possible, If a man choose to believe in what epistemologically he cannot know, to seek a star (as Plato and Pan metaphored), or to resolve on a goal (as Dewey and Pan pragmatized), that is beyond the Weltgeist and higher than the Zeitgeist, having even perhaps (for all one can know) personal responsiveness; and, without repudiating the Zeitgeist, to melt diffusely through the Zeitgeist in an intercommunicant spindle gradient between oneself and the star. Through this means, one may gain the strength, patience, sensitivity, and relative clarity to influence the Epoch-Spirit while respecting the spirit: to influence, not necessarily with direct human influence, but just through this melting-through gradient.

  For the Zeitgeist, not being personal, does not mind being influenced; nor, being without discretion, is a particular Zeitgeist wrong or right per se. But (and here Thoth slipped into feminine semi-personalization) like a fury does the Zeitgeist retaliate on him who attacks her; and like a possessive mother does she absorb him who gives in to her. And yet she can be gentle to one who quietly infuses her with sympathetic new contexturing: perhaps, even, she will allow herself to be inflected, and in time she may begin to change for him . . .

  But not for a lie!

  His face firmed. His father had forged a primitive empire of justice on a long-dead planet without recourse to a single lie or double-deal; and that was on a planet contaminated by injustice and violence. Necessarily violence had been part of his father’s method; but there was some justification for this, since his father had represented and indeed had constituted the State countering violent enemies of society. His father had never been sneak-violent, but instead he had always announced his threat and fought on equal or inferior terms. Besides, for his father there had been no recourse other than violence to combat violence. Whereas for Croyd . . .

  He was on his feet, gripping a stanchion with a hard fist, slowly beating the stanchion with the other fist, frowning. Croyd had other recourse. It might not be sufficient; nevertheless it was other recourse . . .

  The fist that was gripping the stanchion was his left fist. It drew his attention to his cutichron. Nearly 1530 hours: they must be warping into Moonbase. The braking change in acceleration could not be noticed behind the inertial shield . . .

  Croyd gripped the stanchion with the other fist also, and he asserted aloud: “My father, sir, with the added resources that I have, I shall be as bold as you were with the limited resources that you had. And that way I shall become your peer, if I can.” He thought about that. He grinned a little and added; “Do you buy it?”

  There was no answer, of course; but he was satisfied by the answer that he thought he would have gotten had reply been possible.

  Already his airtight cabin was being filled by carbon monoxide intentionally introduced through the airfeed.

  Coming groggy-conscious with a sense of near suffocation, Croyd comprehended that he was in uptime hovering on the marge of actuality, had lain here without breathing until nearly his limit. Semi-stuporous, he was about to rescue himself by plopping down into organized now, but some wispy intuition stopped him. Turning inward upon himself, he concentrated on his new steatopygous recirculation procedure: it wasn’t efficient, but it did bring him back to sharp consciousness.

  And then he grasped that his airtight cabin was filled with carbon monoxide, presumably introduced through the airfeed. He watched the perishing molecules, he knew what they would have done to him; and he knew also that Ziska’s biochemists would have no difficulty in assigning heart failure as the cause of death. Only, in a swooning survival reflex, Croyd had uptimed a bit—just enough so that he now lay perilously close to the forward bulkhead of his cabin, corresponding to the spaceplace which the moving frigate’s cabin had occupied.

  The monoxide settled all questions about Ziska. Had he been loyal either to Mare Stellarum or to Marta rather than merely to himself, Ziska would not have attempted to murder a possible spy; instead, he would have kept Croyd alive for interrogation. Croyd had been attacked because Croyd personally was dangerous to Ziska personally.

  An international constellation facing ruin and multiple human insanity because of some kind of bureaucratic mistake—and Ziska had to play one-upmanship!

  Croyd waited no longer. Arising and space-drifting aft to compensate, he uptimed to the moment, hours before, when the aide had brought him back to this cabin; and bypassing his own uptime body, he followed the aide out again. Downtiming to just short of actuality, he awaited hatch opening, debouched on to Moonbase, and lost himself. In a lavatory stall he returned fully into actuality and breathed again.

  They would be looking for him aboard ship, not having found his body after the gassing; but he thought he could chance it in the present. Departing the lavatory, he strolled with deliberation through corridors and doors and down ramps until he found himself in the nearest approach to open non-air that Moonbase could offer an unhelmeted wayfarer—namely, the crystal-domed taxi stand.

  Here he hailed down a cab and mentioned a destination. The computer-cabbie responded cautiously: “For that destination, suitable ID is required.” Croyd gave it his 6-P Hertz card. “Yessir!” barked the computer; and the taxi took off.

  6-P was going to get him to his experimental station via logical computer, but it wasn’t going to get him into the station past imaginative Mare Stellarum inspectors. Nevertheless he made it all right by staying just beneath actuality’s surface through the hut with the secret entrance to the underground laboratory. There he re
entered actuality and said softly: “Croyd here.”

  Clarifying the confusion caused by his facial youthening during four days’ absence took a few minutes; but then, convinced, they helped him into the control seat of his cockeyed hypertelecom that somehow worked. He spent a quarter-hour checking it out, and then he was ready for his program:

  Marta on Nereid at 1800. Then Herod on Rab . . .

  It was now, however, only 1730: Marta would not be ready. This gave him time to catch Marana aboard the Mazurka. Quitting his ivisiradio, he moved to the underground visicom which scrambled messages so efficiently that to Moonbase monitors they sounded like routine equipment checks, while to listeners like Marana they sounded quite different.

  Marana joined his ship by scouter at 1123 hours on 22 May, well ahead of the 1200 terminus of his shore leave. The commander went instantly and busily into preparation details for executing the tempopattern scansion of Senevendia—a procedure which could be completed, he estimated, in about four hours, this city being a great deal smaller than Chihattan.

  At 1251—all members of his crew having reported in, some with help—he took his ship out and commenced the scansion. During more than four hours, Dana Marana excluded the emotional trouble of departed Keri by paying acute attention to the tempopattern of her city and his. But all need for his duty-attention was done by 1715, and thoughts of Keri began to crowd in. Dana was not used to the idea of an insoluble problem.

  He quit the bridge for his cabin. En route, he encountered his exec, a freckled pug-nosed redhair. Lieutenant-Commander Mulcahy asserted: “Dana, you are dreamy.”

  “That approach,” declared Marana, “earns you a drink, Pete. How are you on potato whiskey?”

  In the captain’s cabin they nosed the stuff. Marana queried: “How was your leave, Pete?”

  “Hot. How was yours? I know—dreamy.”

  Marana took a slug and frowned into the glass.

  Mulcahy leaned forward. “Is there something deep?” Marana looked up, smiling somewhat helplessly. “If I said I was in love, would you believe it?”

  “No stuff! You going back?”

  Marana went wholly serious. “Dunno,” he told the whiskey . . .

  The phone chimed. Marana took it where he sat, with a two-tone whistle. Switchboard said: “Secret scramble.” Marana frowned. Mulcahy arose and left the cabin and closed the door. Marana went to his desk and switched on visiphone and inserted the earpiece.

  Croyd appeared in the viewplate, clear but motionless, waiting the necessary 1•27 seconds while the connect signal went from Erth to Moon, seeming to continue motionless and soundless during the 1•27 seconds while his responding motion and voice returned from Moon to Erth: this was ordinary laser-rekamatics at 300,000 kilometers per second. Suddenly exploding into mouth motion and voice, Croyd crisped: “Marana, I’m on Moon, at our installation.”

  “Very good, sir. Go ahead.”

  “How many patterns do you have complete?”

  “Chihattan of course, and completing Senevendia City.” Marana was finding it normal to wait seconds between transmission and reply. On the moon, Croyd was fretting, already spoiled by his instantaneous method which he could not now use with Marana . . .

  The Croyd reply now came through: “As soon as Senevendia is done, get out of there. You might take Moskov next. Keep this top secret, Marana. COMCORD has gone berserk—and the target is Senevendia, and I think the effects may be worse than standard.”

  Not hearing Marana’s “Why?” for nearly six seconds because of Dana’s paralysis before he yelled it, Croyd sensed some kind of trouble. He replied: “I don’t know why, but I have a crazy hunch that Senevendia rigged it, which means there’s a lot more to it—”

  Marana went taut, and then he rose right out of his seat. Croyd complained: “Marana, all I can see is your belly!”

  He heard Marana groaning at him: “My God, how much of an ass can a fleet commander be? She’s Keri Andhra—Andhra, get it? The Chancellor’s daughter—I just woke up! She knew, all the damn time, and that was why—”

  Dana’s pinched face came back into view as the commander sank again into his seat. “Croyd—I wanted you to be at our wedding.”

  Croyd blurted: “You and the Chancellor’s daughter were going to be—”

  Dana jerked his head away: “Aa—” He turned back to Croyd, blazing: “She’s trying to commit some sort of psychic suicide with her father! Croyd, do you have any idea why he would do a thing like this?”

  “Marana, he’s the prize paranoid of two star-systems, and that’s what gave me the hunch. But my hunch may be dead wrong, so forget it until you hear more. Just go at that Moskov pattern—”

  Marana went belligerent. “Why do I have to get Moskov?”

  When Croyd heard it, he looked a bit disturbed; and then he responded oddly but firmly. “I don’t entirely understand my hunch about Chancellor Andhra, but I think it’s right. Even less do I understand my hunch about these tempopatterns, but I think Moskov is right. Please don’t ask, because I can’t answer intelligibly yet. These are educated hunches, Marana—there’s nothing mystical about them, they are subliminal associations in a brain which has served me well for a good long time, and I have to trust them—”

  Marana snapped back so fast that Croyd was interrupted by his answer, which meant that Marana hadn’t waited for the finish by at least a clause or two. “The hell with old men’s hunches! Give me permission to go back there and get her out!”

  Dana awaited the reply in agony. It came stern. “Permission denied. You go sample Moskov. Then get Paris, then London, then Peking, in that order, if I don’t call you—but I think you’ll hear from me off Moskov.”

  Marana had composed himself outwardly, and inwardly he had recognized his own unkind gaucherie; his feeling was unchanged, but he commanded himself to handle it differently. He said, very steady: “I was angry, I did not mean it about your age—actually you look younger for some reason, and I fully trust your mental vigor. But I cannot say forcefully enough that I must find and rescue Miss Andhra.”

  Croyd went deadly. “Commander Marana, this is an order. Stay with the scanning mission. As yet I can’t tell you positively why. But I can tell you negatively why to stay out of Senevendia. Want to listen?”

  Marana’s eyes were wild, and the rest of his face was dead. “No,” he said dully.

  “Because,” Croyd told him, “if you are in Senevendia when it hits, both you and your girl will get it. But if you do your job away from Senevendia, perhaps it won’t hit.”

  Tears drowned Marana’s eyes. “By Krishna, he screamed, slamming his desk with a mighty fist, “what kind of logic is that?”

  Croyd answered with gentle firmness. “I think it is good logic because of a connection that you don’t have and I can only intuit. That’s the best I can tell you, Dana—except to remark that just maybe all Erthworld lives or dies on what you do, because of the uncertainties of that ill-tested Z-sting. You have your orders, Commander: execute them. Over and out.”

  With serious doubtings, Croyd cut out from Marana. His cutichron told him that it was rendezvous time with Marta. He hurried to his ivisiradio and concentrated on the task of focusing on Nereid which had no i-ray receiver.

  Actually it was not imperative that he contact her, for he had already projectively implanted in her central nervous system a biopsychic clock (merely a rearrangement of a local section of her own brain) which would cause her to keep youthening herself in his absence. He could not youthen her—she had to do it within herself; but the directive mechanism originated in the thalamus and immediately extended itself to the midbrain as the coordinative-powering agency, below the level of consciousness; and this mechanism he had started, and he thought it would work alone. Having blazed the trail with difficulty in his own body system, he felt that the methods learned could work more efficiently in another.

  Nevertheless a contact or two would be good psychology—and not entirely sham, because th
ere was a possibility that he could speed up matters with his i-rays if he could effectively contact her with them at all.

  The moment of this possible rendezvous had been set for 1800 hours daily: he might come through, he had told her. She was to be somewhere on Moonside of Nereid. At just this hour on this day, the Sea of Serenity and Nereid were en face with each other, with no known intervening bodies larger than a dust mote. Excepting only the World Union artificial astronomical satellites Velos in Jupiter orbit, Miros in Mars orbit, and Heros orbiting Erth a neat 900,000 kilometers out: these had always maintained themselves in a direct line between Neptune and Erth since their launchings in 2419, but their diameter of thirteen meters each was too small to be a problem now, and besides, they were transparent, components and shells. (He reminded himself wryly that the functions of these satellites were Union secrets which Croyd had not penetrated, having been dead.) Now he calculated that the best place of rendezvous for Marta would be the solarium of her secondary office in the major governmental complex of Nereid.

  Neptune came into large focus on the gross viewscreen. A few more seconds of adjustment brought Nereid into screen-filling close-up. Abandoning the viewscreen, Croyd fitted over his eyes a set of opaque goggles wired in to the visual, and now it was as though he were floating in space just off Nereid all over again; but still with both hands he had to fiddle blind with instruments in order to improve his control. (An early refinement would have to be a helmet which would allow him to experience distant targets by direct encephalography . . .)

  So peering and fiddling, subjectively he came in on Nereid’s governmental complex, and then on the Chairman’s solarium, and then close on Marta within. The image was not perfect, it was about like an early snowy television picture: he had nailed her, he guessed, with around a million point-rays (each ray being more of a splash than a dot)—which was pretty good for a raw hit, considering that even a receiver instrument at this distance would have gathered in only around thirty million from this crude transmitter.