Z-Sting Read online

“Very sure. And the recorder is still going. Berber, put Ziska on.”

  Dr. Ziska, Minister of Internal Security and second only to Marta in Mare Stellarum power, materialized in the middle of the room, head and shoulders only, the torso tattering like a vignette into nothing. He was dark, longfaced, hard-smile-mouthed, stoop-shouldered, slight. Herod had called him “the most dangerous man in Mare Stellarum—and the most ambitious—and lean-hard, like Cassius or like Caesar.” Ziska’s voice was a hard-soft semi-hissing resonance: “Ziska here, Madame Chairman—in my office. Do you require retinal confirmation?”

  “Do you?”

  “No, Madame.”

  “Then neither do I. What I do require is your report on the frigate Mazurka.”

  “The—frigate Mazurka?” He was undisturbed, merely questioning.

  “From Rab, Ziska, from Rab—remember?”

  ‘That would be External Security, Madame.”

  "External Security did not routinely notify you when a frigate from Rab entered Erth-space on a research mission dealing with tempopatterns?”

  The fixed Ziska smile did not change, but his eyes narrowed. “Madame, there is some point to this questioning. I wish to know the point.”

  “I will state the point when I am ready. For now, we will disconnect while you get yourself aligned on this question. I want everything about the Mazurka right up to the latest report with all the timing details. Get back with me in minutes. Out.”

  Ziska’s image faded. Marta called Berber, ordered a drink for Croyd, then floppily paced, not looking at her challenger . . .

  Ziska came back in, and he was tightly disturbed. “It appears that External Security did pass the matter of the Mazurka to middle echelons of my department. They did not bring this rather minor matter to my personal attention.”

  She froze: “Tempopattern research by Rab in our space? Minor?”

  Croyd sipped, smiling grim. At eighty-six, his great-granddaughter still could put a clever-powerful subordinate through a wringer . . .

  She cut off Ziska’s beginning rejoinder. “Let that go for now. Go on with the activities of this frigate.”

  Ziska was holding cool. “I can tell you now that when last reported, the frigate was continuing her tempopattern scansion of Chihattan. And I agree that the tempopattern aspect is peculiarly interesting to you and to me; I remarked only that my subordinates considered it minor.”

  “When was that last report?”

  Without expression: “The office of my deputy on Nereid received this report at 2021 hours last night.”

  “Oh? What was the hour of the direct observation embodied in this report?”

  He cleared throat faintly, but his reply was solid. “The observation was made at 1030 yesterday morning. However, we both realize that the report then had to be channeled through Moonbase, and of course that four hours are needed for transmission to Nereid.”

  “In the interest of full candor, Ziska, is there anything you would wish to add to those comments about time in transit?”

  Ziska was cold-grim. “I would wish to add that the 1030 observation could have been transmitted to Moon in seconds, and immediate transmission to Nereid could then have reached our offices no later than 1500 yesterday afternoon rather than five and a half hours later, and the priority of this matter admittedly should have been fairly high. We have not done well on this one, Madame; we will be doing better, as on other matters we have done better.”

  “Be sure that you do, Ziska. I remind you that all ministries have been ordered to clear through you as my immediate aide; and this confers upon you rather extensive responsibility for the Mare Stellarum organization. And I am suggesting that this organization, which I have so extensively entrusted to you with your eager consent, is possibly too big—or if not too big, at least too clumsy. If your own ministry was bungling this matter, External Security should have jacked you up; and if External Security did not do so, then you ought to feel answerable. My God, Ziska—between 1030 and 2021, that frigate could have got all the way out here to Nereid!”

  “Madame, the fleet would have—”

  “Intercepted? Notified? Are you sure the fleet would have done? Are you sure you would have known? I am going to tell you something; and if it is true, it means that your organization is clumsy, if it doesn’t mean something worse. I have reason to believe that a few hours ago the Rab frigate was cruising off Nereid. Did you know it?”

  His thin black brows came down hard: “I think it has to be false.”

  “How do I know it is not true? How do I know you do not know that it is true?”

  “Madame, I am not one who likes to be baited.”

  “I am not baiting you. Answer my question.”

  The Ziska face actually managed a faintly rueful smile, and the hands were spread. “Look, Marta, it is perfectly obvious that I can’t answer that complicated question, and I admit that you are catching me with a lot of egg on my face. And yet I cannot believe that a ship from Rab would be cruising off Nereid without my knowledge. May I take a moment to start an immediate check?”

  She drummed fingernails on her chaise longue where she had resumed her seat, but with her feet floored; she was looking up at his disturbed midair image. “Pray do, and we can continue talking while your check takes place.”

  Ziska gazed at her an instant, then again cut audio and turned to give silent orders into his intercom. Turning back to Marta, he said: “The check is in progress. What is there further?”

  “A good deal of possibly great moment. Ziska, don’t you find anything queer about the fact that the Mazurka was assigned to survey megalopolitan tempopatterns?”

  “I beg your pardon?” This time, Croyd thought the Ziska lips had lost a little color.

  Glancing swiftly at Croyd, Marta asserted: “I sense a COMCORD connection. Be good enough to state the present condition of COMCORD.”

  The Ziska eyes narrowed. “Do you perhaps have a guest?”

  Marta frowned—partly, Croyd fudged, because her eyes had made a tactical slip. “That Is my concern.”

  “You should realize that it is also mine.”

  “If I say it is not your concern, it is not.”

  “You choose not to reveal your guest?”

  Croyd reflected that if he had been Marta, he would have sent this Croyd away long ago.

  Ziska, now brow-frowning viciously while his lips held the frozen smile, reached outside the video. “Madame, I have activated my recorder, I want the situation on record before I respond to you. This is Dr. Ziska, speaking at 1819 hours on 21 May 2475 Sol/Centauri Convention, in visicom conversation with Chairman Marta Evans, both of us on Nereid. Chairman Evans, I understand you to insist that I state the present condition of COMCORD, although my statement will be heard by your guest whose identity you will not reveal. Do you affirm this order?”

  Marta said stolidly: “I affirm it. My guest must hear you. But your recorder may not. Disconnect your recorder.”

  His hand went out again: “It is disconnected, there will be no record for me. Well.” He looked down a moment, collecting thoughts. He looked up: “During about two weeks I have been watching a COMCORD imbalance against Senevendia which began at 0•6. Yesterday afternoon the COMCORD central instrumentation showed that this imbalance had grown to 2•1; and as of 1310 hours today, it is holding steady. It is of course not critical, it should subside in the natural course of interconstellational events.”

  Croyd twanged deep inside. Hunch hit! But he got no glow from it.

  Marta was on her feet again. “A—2•1 grievance imbalance? Only four tenths short of critical, only nine tenths short of strike-activation? And you did not inform me?”

  He coughed. “It cannot possibly go critical, and you had given me no orders to inform you, and we are on it. This is entirely a question which the Internal Security Ministry can and should handle.”

  “If your ministry does not handle it rather promptly, COMCORD may activate the Z-effect, and we
will have on our hands an enshrouded Senevendian constellation. By the way, Ziska my trusted all-knowing subordinate—do you know where the Penultimate Trigger and the Z-sting are located?”

  “Since COMCORD cannot possibly go critical, it does not seem pertinent where they may be located—”

  A low bell tone sounded. “Excuse me,” said Ziska; and again he cut audio and listened. His face darkened. He spoke angrily to his intercom; Croyd, who read lips, mentally collected a bet. Convulsively Ziska disconnected his intercom and sat for a moment with his head bowed in thought. Then he turned back to Marta, having mastered himself.

  He asserted blandly: “At least in some of its components, my organization is clumsy. Your mysterious guest, who is doubtless your informant, will be maliciously pleased to learn that the Mazurka was in fact cruising off Nereid between 0230 and 0810 hours this morning. She was cleared by Moonbase to investigate a temporal disturbance pattern originating on Neptune. As of 1258 hours she was fleet-reported off Jupiter en route back to Erth, broadcasting all the way. The Moonbase clearance was reported to my offices here, the report reached us eight hours ago; it had progressed up three echelons and would have reached me in three more relays, whereupon I would have informed you immediately. Corrective reorganizational action by me is indicated and will be taken. Anything else, Madame?"

  Already the thirty-second alarm was bellowing and soldiers were pouring in. Ziska looked bewildered. Marta waved her hand high in the halt signal. “You guys get out of here! she yelled, and snapped off her tattletale recorder. The soldiers retreated in disorder. Croyd, sac gone, sucked ice.

  Sinking onto her chaise longue, Marta looked wearily up at the disconcerted Ziska. “Take your corrective action—and for the love of some god, keep me informed about the COMCORD thing! Out!”

  She disconnected. She ran a hand back through her thin white hair.

  She snapped on the Intercom. “Berber. Find quarters for Mr, Croyd—VIP quarters. And get him to my apartment for dinner at 2000 hours. And arrange the dinner. You get on the phone—he’ll come by himself.”

  She turned to Croyd; terribly distraught, somehow she managed to smile feebly. He was already on his feet. “By 2000 hours, Mr. Croyd,” she uttered, I will again be completely mistress of myself—so watch out. Go away, now.”

  Croyd was shaken by the blunt confirmation of Mare Stellarum’s inefficiency, the ultimate unreliability of COMCORD which after three generations might have somehow gone lethal, and the now-established leadership ignorance as to the loci of the Penultimate Trigger and the Z-sting.

  How could such ignorance be possible? Rather easily, as Herod had discovered and communicated to crestfallen Croyd who long ago had tried to avoid such mishaps in his COMCORD designing. The locations, being super-secret, had been known by the Executive Director and Vice-Director of COMCORD, transiently by others who worked technically with the devices, by the President and Secretary-General of Erthworld, and by the Chairman of Erth’s governing corporation. This knowledge had always been associated with a hypnotic forget-command implanted in each knower, effective as soon as his knowledge was no longer operationally necessary; in the cases of the five top executives, they must forget as soon as they had passed it along to successors. At the governmental change-over in 2430, the hypnotic command had malfunctioned in all five top executives, possibly because of unusual tension: they had forgotten before, rather than after, passing on the information. Somewhere on Erth, someone must know these loci; but evidently that someone was cloaking his knowledge.

  While Croyd showered and dressed for dinner (donning clothes which amusingly were Ziska discards), Croyd’s computer brain, which had regained youth efficiency far ahead of his body, was almost overheating itself; and his adrenalin was juicing his thalamus to scream at him for fast action. In fact, as he knew, hurry would be the worst possible route. Nevertheless, many times his thoughts turned to the ivisiradio installation on Moon: were that at his disposal now, he could instantaneously communicate with Marana aboard the Mazurka—though what he would tell Marana was hard to imagine. Ironically, Marana had chosen to go, of all places, to Senevendia—against which, as Ziska had just reported, a grievance imbalance was developing. And Marana would take shore leave there.

  Just now, however, his action was with Marta . . .

  “How did you do it?” she asked over terminal wine.

  “Do what?”

  “Disappear.”

  “I uptimed.”

  “What’s that?”

  “To put it cheaply, I went into the past, and I returned to actuality at the right moment for a theatrical reentry.”

  Marta mused over her wine. “You are a remarkable old man.”

  “Thank you.”

  “What do you want of me, Croyd?”

  “Shall I ask for money and power?”

  Faintly mocking: “Not women?”

  “The kind that money and power will get, money and power will get me. The kind that money and power won’t get are in any case my problem.”

  Her brows softened slightly. “Is this to you a serious problem?”

  His poker-face did not change. “Not unless I become interested in the latter sort of woman.”

  Her brows softened more. “Have you ever known a woman whom money or power could not get?”

  “At least three.”

  “What about them?”

  “One married another man. Two others died of old age—one after the other.”

  Down came her brows hard. “You pursue old women?”

  “When I first knew them, they were young women.” Marta digested this. Then Marta began to look as though she would have been pale had it not been for the rouge. “Are you—quite old?”

  “Crowding one hundred fifty-two” He overlooked the prior years for reasons of a BuPers identification which overlooked the prior years for reasons of credibility, and for other reasons.

  “You look,” she said slowly, “no older than I—or slightly younger.”

  “Then you should have seen me three weeks ago.”

  “You looked older?”

  “Crowding one hundred fifty-two.”

  She thought a while about that. He refilled their glasses, she did not notice. At length she inquired of her wine “Can you really rejuvenate me?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  "Just as I am rejuvenating myself. The process is accelerating, soon I will be in my middle thirties. I will stop there, it is a good age. Meanwhile I have learned how to project the process.”

  “That’s where I want to be—in my middle thirties. How long would it take?”

  “A few weeks, a few months. It is hard to say. Less than a year, for sure.”

  She looked up warily. “Are there—any special entailments?”

  “No male-female obligations.”

  Flushing, she looked down. “I know that seems a silly question from an old woman. But you say you are getting younger, and you wish to make me younger. Either your proposal is silly, or my question is not silly.”

  “Your question is not silly. But that is not in my mind.

  She looked up to meet his eyes, and hers were hard.

  “Then what are my obligations?”

  “To give me responsible assignments for which I report directly to you.”’

  Marta lit a long cigarette with an expensive old-fashioned match and considered the flame. Blowing it out with exhaled smoke, she stated: “Among the many factors that complicate your proposal, I will mention five. Such an appointment would create personnel jealousies. Your identity, your past, has not been cleared. Responsible assignments are usually dangerous assignments. Responsible assignments require information that not everyone should have. Finally, if you go skylarking, when do you make me young?”

  “Among the many factors that simplify your complications, I will mention five. There is nothing you can ever do that will not create personnel jealousies, so you may as well do this. My identity and my
past are matters of full record at your BuPers, indexed with retinal identifications: take my retinal index, shoot it to Erth, read the record. This afternoon I demonstrated one competency with respect to danger; and I have some others, including just plain nerve-and-muscle stuff. If you want to, you can feed me any necessary secret information with a hypnoformer, associating this input with a timed or situational moment for complete erase and an inhibition against revealing it to any except selected persons. Finally, to make you young, I do not always have to be physically with you, provided only that we set up certain rapport conditions.”

  Marta silently smoked.

  He leaned toward her. “What I want to do is to clear away the cholesterol from your physiology—and at the same time, to clear away the cholesterol from your Mare Stellarum.”

  Marta smoked the cigarette all the way down. Dropping her hands dead, she stared at the table, querying: “What is your connection with the Rab frigate Mazurka?”

  “I was carried aboard as a fourth-class custodian, stores. I was lost off Nereid. That’s how I managed to get out here.”

  “How did you get aboard in the first place?

  “Connections. Herod admires Thoth Evans; I knew Dr. Evans.”

  “You knew—”

  “I think he was your great-grandfather?”

  “He is my great-grandfather. He is alive.”

  “But still in the tank?”

  “As of my latest information, yes.”

  “I understand that he went into the tank in the same year as I.”

  “Possibly. For him it was 2400; I don’t know yet about your tank. Fascinating that both of you have been tanked!”

  “It is a queer sort of linkage between old friends. However, at age 152, I am considerably younger than he.”

  She mused.

  She told him: “As to my five difficulties, you have satisfied me on three. I will now check the fourth, and then we will test the fifth.”

  Her hand flashed into her cleavage, produced a palm-fitting device, aimed it at his right eye, and flooded his retina with light. “Good,” she grunted; “you did not blink. How did you inhibit the blink?”