PART ONE: A Comedy of Terrors

 

To free a man from error is not to deprive him of anything but to give

him something: for the knowledge that a thing is false is a piece of truth.

– Schopenhauer

 

Chapter 1

 

Planet Jaremi Four – Northern Hemisphere

 

Ruth Griszam stood among the downstream ruins, breathing deeply. The morning air smelled of dew. Moldering leaves. To her left, beyond the listless creek and its shell of fog rose a hillside. Ruth watched her companions lurch uphill. Ulf climbed surely, steamrifle slung across his back. Chagrin followed, a blundering scarecrow in rags with an antique carbine over one shoulder, pulling hard at his walking stick. One all-but-useless leg swung pointlessly as he climbed.

They search for food, Ruth thought. So much the worse for whoever they find who has some.

She squinted into a jaundiced sunrise. The implants tugged gently in her cheeks. In the northern sky pink aurora still swirled. She turned south, upstream. Toward the body.

The corpse bobbed face up. One foot had wedged in the crotch of a waterlogged tree. Otherwise it would have just continued downstream. Wading closer, Ruth prodded it with a long stick. Its arms quavered. Yellowed nails pulled free of the fingers, skittering away on the current like beetles’ wings.

Dead for days, Ruth thought. Must’ve gone over the spillway during the night. Its face was black. Distended. Someone had slit the throat. Not Ulf’s work. Ruth shrugged. Just a passing corpse. No big story here. Still, time to do some image-mongering.

Ruth Griszam of Terra, undercover documentarian on assignment among the autochthonous peoples of the Enclave planet Jaremi Four, clocked in for the day.

She subvocalized a nonsense syllable, triggering the cascade of electronic and biological events that would put her online. It began with tingling in her cheeks. Biotech implants started to record the faintest movements of her eye, head, and neck muscles–each glint of neural traffic between her vestibular system and her parietal cortices–for later resynchronization to her visual field. Those who experienced, or poved, her recordings would need that data; uncompensated for, the flittings of her gaze might induce vertigo.

Deep in her skull, a tiny transceiver implant opened a channel to an OmNet satellite overhead. An instant later, Ruth knew the satellite was receiving her. It beamed back sync information. Triggered alternate cortical pathways.

Ruth changed. Normally-dormant areas of her cortex sparked into orderly action. In microseconds, the largest part of her cerebral capacity was devoted to fine-grained control of the muscles in her head, face, and neck. Nerve shunts routed potentially distracting somesthetic information out of her conscious awareness. Blood flow to sense organs increased. An artificial gland released a hormone that canceled her olfactory bulbs’ adaptive capability. The smells of morning assaulted her anew, pungent as the day’s first breath.

Subvocalizing one more nonsense syllable, she went fully into Mode.

Suck, rush, wrench!

For a moment her eyes danced unnaturally. With a familiar effort she drove the “senso shudder” beneath her muscular threshold. Others would see nothing odd about her, save perhaps the preternatural smoothness of her movements. More than anything else, it was this ability to suppress the reflex signs of Mode–to function as a Spectator without looking like one–that separated undercover documentarians like Ruth Griszam from less-accomplished practitioners.

Ruth squatted. The corpse’s eyes were fogged over, the irises black with decay. If she peeked below the veneer of her conscious awareness she could hear the polyphasic verify signal softly humming, assuring her that aboard the relay satellite a senso recorder was registering it all. Her visual field. The breeze brushing her neck. The chilly tug of the water at her calves. The body’s stench. Later, she knew, the journal would be deep-beamed to OmNet Main on Terra. Edited. Catalogued. Repackaged. Distributed to a Galaxy full of humans eager for vicarious adventure.

She was a Spectator. Her job was to observe.

With the smoothness of expanded muscle control, Ruth rose. Ahead of her, the crumbling dam stretched across the valley, a concrete wall honeycombed with cracks. The six-story powerhouse, its empty doors and windows agape like toothless mouths, and beside it the foaming spillway. Along its crest, pitted control wheels accused the brightening sky.

A shot rang out.

Another.

Forjel the artsy establishing pov! Time this corpse disappeared. Then me.

Ruth jammed her stick into the crotch of the fallen tree to free the body’s foot. In a single motion she was up on the bank. She glanced to make sure the body was bobbing downstream. She rolled her trouser legs down over the boots she’d never removed and pulled her fur wrap free of her ammo belt.

Another shot. Closer! Definitely not from the direction Ulf and Chagrin went. Her boots heavy with stream water, Ruth scrambled uphill from cover to cover. Marauders! Panting, she stopped below the twisted stairway that led up inside the powerhouse.

Thin voices could be heard now.

Ruth took the stairs two at a time. She hurled herself through the yawning doorway and onto the powerhouse floor.

Kraa-ak! This steamrifle round was really close.

“Get him!” a male voice shouted. No more than twenty meters away.

Not shooting at me after all. Ruth scurried against a rust-pocked switching cabinet and squinted back through the doorway.

Halfway up the hillside, a man in his late forties spewed from the bushes. He wore fatigue pants and a bulky field jacket. A swollen leather knapsack bounced on his right shoulder.

Another shot. The stranger his lost footing and tumbled downhill, half the distance to the dam. He came up cursing, clutching his left arm just below the shoulder. Red oozed between his fingers.

They winged him, she thought. But who are they? Forjeler, who’s he?

The stranger staggered onto the spalled concrete atop the dam. She lost sight of him. Forjeler, she cursed, I should have strewn bugs!

The stranger’s footfalls slapped along the dam’s edge. Ruth could see him again. He’d stopped dead; from her vantage, his body was perfectly framed through a hole in the powerhouse roof. Frantic, he glanced about. With the spillway ahead of him, he had nowhere to go.

Ruth shriveled behind a turbine housing, watching intensely.

Another shot missed the stranger by centimeters. Recklessly, he hurled himself off the lip of the dam. He landed heavily on the powerhouse roof and tried to roll toward the opening, but the roof failed beneath under his weight. Rotted timbers squealed. In a shower of fragments, he crunched halfway through.

And got stuck.

Well, who says nothing ever happens in the Northland of Jaremi Four? Ruth climbed the turbine housing for a better view. The stranger’s legs and right arm dangled inside. His wounded arm, shoulders and head were still exposed above. After a moment, he pulled himself the rest of the way through and out of sight. He clung to rusty trusswork beneath the roof, catching his breath. Cautiously lowered himself onto an ancient catwalk. It gave beneath his weight more than he liked, so he tossed away his knapsack. It smacked heavily to the powerhouse floor.

Ruth concealed herself again.

The stranger stared down into the powerhouse gallery, registering the fissured stone walls. Ashen light streamed through empty doorways and window openings. Ruined turbines and transformers dotted the debris-strewn floor. Between them were irregular openings; inside some, crumbling stairways led into darkness.

Silently, Ruth reached into a rusted cavity in the turbine housing. She retrieved the steamrifle she’d hidden there.

The stranger stepped off a half-ruined staircase onto the powerhouse floor.

Now!

Ruth clambered atop the turbine. Water spewed from her boots.

Her steamrifle was centered on his chest.

The stranger frowned. “That doesn’t work.”

Ammunition hadn’t been manufactured for decades; Jaremians often fired warning shots so strangers could know their weapons functioned. Ruth lowered the rifle barrel slightly. At least he could see all the winkies flashing green. “I’ll fire a demo shot,” she hissed, “if you don’t mind whoever’s out there knowing you’re in here.”

The stranger decided not to call her bluff. Up went his hands, the right one all the way, the left one less so.

“You accept that this rifle works,” she said coldly. “Also accept that I know how to use it.”

“I have no doubt.”

She frowned toward the open doorway. “Why are they after you?

“Why does anyone shoot at anyone? Maybe they liked my knapsack. Fucking marauders.”

She peered at his wounded arm. “You’re bleeding.”

He gawked at her boots. Creek water puddled around them. “You’re dripping.”

Listen! Hoarse shouts. Quick footfalls along the dam top.

The stranger wanted to hide. He glanced nervously at Ruth’s rifle.

“They can’t see in,” she told him. “It’s too dark compared to outside.”

“They might’ve seen me fall.”

Ruth stood motionless.

“They’ll come here looking,” he warned.

She kept the steamrifle centered on him.

“Let me put this in perspective,” the stranger hissed, exasperated. “Those are the bad guys. I’m a college professor.”

“A ... what?”

He shrugged. “All right, a former college professor.”

Still she made no sign.

He dropped his hands in an imploring gesture. “Fucking hell, woman–”

She poked the steamrifle forward.

He stopped talking. But he didn’t raise his hands again.

Through the yawning doorway, Ruth saw the first pursuer. Clad in leather, improvised chain mail, and necklaces of teeth, the haggard marauder burst from cover halfway up the hillside. Seeing nothing, he melted back into the brush.

I can’t face off with this stranger much longer, Ruth thought. I have a feeling I can trust him. And what the sfelb, maybe it’s a story. She clambered off the turbine housing and waved with the steamrifle toward one of the openings in the powerhouse floor. “Okay. Go.”

He smiled a little. He bolted across the powerhouse and came back with the knapsack, favoring his wounded arm.

Ruth had shouldered the rifle. Deftly she drew one pistol. Her fur wrap fell open, she knew he’d spot the butt of another gun jammed into her belt. A flight of dusty concrete stairs dropped away inside a floor aperture, heading deep into the powerhouse. Ruth gestured with the pistol. “Down you go. Hurry.”

They descended into a warren of tunnels that once had serviced turbines. Circling a fractured column, she waved him down another flight of stairs.

“Stop here,” she ordered at the next landing. She moved close to him, pressing the pistol into his chest. “Hold still,” she grated. With her free hand, she reached up and found a dented metal sheet studded with nailed-on scraps of wood and electrical hardware.

The debris-dotted sheet metal was stuck on something.

Two floors up, boots clattered on the access stairway. Marauders, following the stranger’s trail. She turned toward him, exasperated. “I can’t get this cover loose with one hand. Help me pull it out.”

Three-handed, they drew the camouflage hatch across the stairwell opening. It slid closed over their heads.

A casual searcher wouldn’t know the lower levels of the staircase existed.

Below them, the stairs continued to a level that was clearly below the waterline. A lantern’s glow cast weaving patterns on upcurled tiles. “What’s this?” the stranger asked.

“I’m going to ask the questions. And I’ll expect answers.” She gestured with the pistol. “Go.”

Well, well, she thought as she followed her strangely poised prisoner into the subcellar. There’s a definite tale in this somewhere. Today could be worthwhile after all.

Chapter 2

 

Aboard the Galactic Confetory Schooner Bright Hope

 

Glimmering spangles danced in the tactical display. The other ships were shifting to accommodate the new arrival, switching to from a four-point to a five-point attack formation. Captain Laurien Eldridge scratched beside her eye with one of her six virtual arms. “Media and observer ships all properly behind the cordons,” reported Detex Officer Lynn Wachieu. “At point zero-zero-zero, I show no readings.”

“We’re here already?” the Spectator asked. A registered documentarian of some repute, he’d come aboard just before Bright Hope’s departure.

“We are here already.” Eldridge nodded. “Are you having any difficulty, um, seeing this environment?”

The interstellar schooner’s virtual bridge resembled a ceramic desert that had run in a strong wind like soft fudge. Control pylons flowed upward from the featureless, glassy surface as crew members passed. “No difficulty, Fem Captain,” the Spectator answered. “My experients will see and sense it just as you do.”

“Your ... what?”

“My experients.”

“The term is unfamiliar.”

“Spectator jargon. Experients are my audience. You know, those who pov my work.”

“Mm-hmm,” said Eldridge blankly.

The Spectator smiled. “People say they ‘watch’ senso, but there’s so much more to it than that.”

Eldridge nodded dourly. Smiling was not on her agenda today.

“Um, about your appearance ...” the Spectator ventured.

“My extra arms? Or perhaps you mean ...” Eldridge nodded toward Detex officer Lynn Wachieu at her duty station. Wachieu had assumed the form of a hairless spider on a metallic web. Her abdomen was covered with eyes. Additional eyes sprouted from the joints of each limb. “Don’t worry,” Eldridge told the Spectator. “We’re ordinary humans, stationed in locations widely-removed about the ship so no single hostile strike would be likely to engulf us all. We work together inside this virtual environment.”

“But why –” the Spectator blinked as Executive Officer Arla Gavisel passed by below him in the form of a cerulean otter.

“We take the forms we choose,” Eldridge said. “The bridge software accommodates their characteristics. We enjoy more densely textured information–more options for manipulation and control–than natural bodies could accommodate.” With her number-five arm, Eldridge pointed toward Wachieu’s spider form. “Through her eyes and web, Fem Wachieu is processing the maximum amount and types of information her brain can handle. Human senses no longer limit her. It’s like that for each of us.”

The Spectator nodded. “And you chose that goddess form? Nostalgic for Hinduslam?”

“Religion? Me? I’m Gwilyan.” Eldridge shrugged her six arms. “I just have to run a lot of stuff.”

Eldridge and the Spectator stood on an opalescent viewing platform. It arched like a frozen splash five meters above the bridge’s glassy floor. Facing them from similar platforms several meters away were the other three observers assigned to this hastily-organized mission. The folk singer wore uncured leather and clutched an Ordhian lute. The bridge maintained his actual appearance, as he’d be performing shortly. On the next platform physicist Anvek Pazgha appeared as a hovering nebula spangled with a dozen prominent stars. Virtual consoles surrounded her, the controls for the experimental stardrive that had been mated so hurriedly, so incompletely, with Bright Hope’s other systems.

Above the final platform floated the enigmatic presence known only as the VIP. This mysterious personage had been whisked aboard at the last minute under the highest security clearances and on the direct orders of the Privy High Council. It was mute testimony to the VIP’s importance that he, she, or it had been permitted to designate no virtual image at all. Nobody had had the authority to assign one. The VIP appeared only as a formless, edgeless blob of purest black. To view the blob was to feel tugged to leap into its cheerless center. There are good reasons, Eldridge thought, why few are permitted to enter a virtual bridge displaying nothing at all.

“Message coming in,” Wachieu called.

Before Eldridge, a small viewsphere opened. It showed the captain of Alekko, the flagship. Alekko kept an oceanic theme on its bridge; the fleet commander appeared as an armored anglerfish with body plates the color of a ripe carrot. “Welcome to the anticipation fleet, Captain Eldridge,” the anglerfish said.

“Thank you, fleet commander. Our systems are eight-by-eight greens.”

“Very well. We will reduce our comm traffic to clear bandwidth for your transmission. Alekko out.”

The Spectator nodded toward Eldridge. “Perhaps we could review once more what will happen.”

“We’re all feeling a bit under-briefed here,” Eldridge rumbled. A tactical display rippled into the air in front of them. She pointed out the ships one by one. “That one’s us. Here, the superdreadnought Alekko. The destroyer Spindrift. The weapons platform AD-1601. And the light cruiser KC-1714. The ships occupy the points of a tetrahedron at whose center the Tuezi will appear.”

“Point zero-zero-zero,” said the Spectator, indicating the center of the polygon.

Eldridge nodded somberly.

A signal buzzed in the Spectator’s mind. “We go live in one minute.”

Eldridge gestured toward the VIP on the opposite platform. “A reminder–our VIP guest may not be seen.”

“That’s all arranged,” said the Spectator. “I will just ignore him ... her?”

Eldridge shrugged.

“If, um, it gets into my field of view, the editors back at OmNet will just strip it out. You know, paste some background over it.”

Eldridge’s eyebrows pricked up. “I thought this was a live ‘cast.”

“Oh, replacing part of the visual field in real time is no problem any more. It’s done often – though a savvy experient can usually see the edges.”

“T minus fifteen!” Executive Officer Gavisel brayed.

“Control crew!” Eldridge called. “This will be your last break before T minus zero. At ease, three minutes.”

“Stand by,” the Spectator subvocalized to the folk singer. Her nod indicated that she was hearing the verify signal three-by-three greens. “Three, two ...”

The ‘cast began with music. Plaintive chords cascaded from the folk singer’s lute. He was the foremost interpreter of Ordhian ballads, and this was the saddest of them all:

Tuezi, Tuezi, Tuezi

Chant the haunted space folk

The handful who have heard one push through!

Hear that sound in your ‘phones,

Bid farewell to your homes;

All their lands,

All their skies,

All you knew.

Below, Executive Officer Arla Gavisel bared blue teeth. Like every Arkhetil, she was a bitter atheist. “You know what he’s singing, don’t you?” she hissed to Wachieu. “It’s a forjeling hymn! This is no place for that.”

Wachieu frowned, to the degree a spider could. “Everyone knows where you stand, Arla. For me, religious feeling comes naturally at a time like this.”

A moment before, the VIP hadn’t been among them. Now he, she, or it was. “You seem profoundly distressed, Fem Wachieu,” the VIP said.

“My people have feared the Tuezi for millennia,” Wachieu explained. (She hailed from Ordh.) “Those things make my hair stand on end. Or would, if I had hair.”

“You’re seasoned officers,” the VIP said measuredly, “yet the terror you experience at the approach of the Tuezi seems visceral, pre-rational–almost unfiltered by thought.”

Our VIP must be a Terran, Gavisel realized. Their world had entered the Galactic Confetory only recently; Terrans often had difficulty in understanding the deep imprint the Tuezi threat had left on Galactic culture. Forjeling Terra should never have been let into the Confetory as a full memberworld!

The folk singer continued:

The stars swim and shimmer

Where soon comes a’rippling

A platform devoid of all grace.

A vast grotesque island, swollen and quiet.

Now passes a moment.

Then soulless, it raises its shields,

Its pestilent errand begun.

Atop their shared platform, the Spectator gave Eldridge a subvocal cue. Linking several sets of fingers, the captain launched into the speech the High Privy Council’s flacks had written for her. “Homs and fems across the Galaxy, this is Captain Laurien Eldridge, speaking to you from the bridge of the schooner Bright Hope. We are pleased to join this anticipation fleet. Our experimental Pazgha drive has enabled us to come from Pastrick Yards in just under six days–a journey that would take any other craft four weeks.” As coached, Eldridge paused for an eight count. Let those who wish to cheer enjoy their interval to do so. “This innovative technology will soon cut interstellar transit times by more than a factor of four. It is the creation of Dr. Anvek Pazgha, who has joined us in the bridge today.” Eldridge waved two or three hands toward Dr. Pazgha.

With inhuman smoothness, the Spectator twisted at neck and waist to regard Pazgha’s nebular form. After a proper interval, he turreted back toward Eldridge.

“Bright Hope was chosen as the Pazgha drive testbed because it has a medium-sized hull, far too large for earlier prototype high-speed drives. Though normally unarmed, Bright Hope was fitted with a standard weapons battery for this Tuezi anticipation mission.” Behind Eldridge from the Spectator’s vantage, a tactical readout filled the sky. In it, a wireframe tetrahedron slowly wheeled, a ship at each of its five points. “Most of us know the story of the Tuezi too well. The Tuezi are uninhabited robot platforms, interstellar genocide machines created by some unknown but advanced race. Though no one knows for certain, we presume the Tuezi were designed as weapons in some unimaginable war. Their makers may live in the past, the future, or simply very far away–another mystery. Nor does anyone know why the makers chose to scatter Tuezi, perhaps by the millions, across the Galaxy and throughout time.”

The folk singer crooned:

No plan, no desire

No mercy, no pause.

No one knows where it came from, or when.

“But we know what happens when a Tuezi appears,” Eldridge said grimly. “At the moment of transfer, it is vulnerable. Just a fraction of a second later, it raises almost impenetrable shields, proceeds to a nearby planetary system, and rains down destruction.”

Choosing random its planet

Raining fire, denudes it

Unleashing hot fury below.

Some planets are sundered

Others just scorched.

When victims survive

They envy the dead.

Eldridge resumed her narrative as the folk singer strummed sadly. “As mysteriously as it came, having devastated a star system, the device destroys itself in an explosion so potent that not a scrap of wreckage remains for our scientists to learn from.”

All at once it is over

Tuezi turns back its fire

Within its invuln’rable hull.

What naught else could harm

Explodes sudden in spasm

The blinding hot cruel light of hope.

The song ended on a prolonged high note. At its end the folk singer stood, spent. Tears trickled down his cheeks.

“The folk singer has performed a classic Ordhian ballad, rich in stoic resignation,” Eldridge declared. “Until fifty-three years ago, that ballad captured human helplessness before the Tuezi. The hideous platforms came where, and when, they pleased. All anyone could do was console the survivors, if any, help in the cleanup, and hope against hope that the next time such a machine appeared, it would not be in the skies of one’s own homeworld.

“Fifty-three years ago, at the age of eighteen, the child prodigy Fram Galbior solved the mathematics of how Tuezi strikes are distributed through space and time. Since then, his equilibrational calculus has enabled each of the eight known Tuezi emergences to be predicted. Knowing where and when a Tuezi will appear, we simply surround the spot with ships.” Flickering green lines came alive in the display behind Eldridge. They indicated each ship’s line of fire. “When the Tuezi comes through, we’re waiting. Before it powers up and raises shields, we blow it to sfelb.”

Eldridge stepped toward the Spectator for emphasis. “According to Galbior’s calculations, today’s will be the only Tuezi strike my generation is likely to see. Of the hundreds of trillions of humans in the Confetory, only the four thousand men and women of this anticipation fleet will participate in its destruction. We know the stakes. Let our aim be true.”

The Spectator ended transmission. One could tell he was no field operative; he trembled visibly as he dropped out of Mode. “Very good, Fem Captain,” he said.

“Have you a moment, Captain?” the VIP purred, abruptly behind her.

“My orders are always to have time for you. Still, brevity would be appreciated.”

“Understood. Now, Captain, do you mean to say that every Tuezi emergence since Fram Galbior published his equations has been correctly predicted?”

“Every known emergence,” Eldridge corrected. “Perhaps Tuezi pop up every week in the Andromeda galaxy. But in the space patrolled by the PeaceForce, over fifty-three years we have never missed a Tuezi strike. And we’ve never had a false alarm. Galbior has predicted exactly when and where each would push through.”

“That is impressive,” the VIP agreed.

“Two minutes, thirty seconds,” cried Wachieu from her crater.

“All personnel, maximum readiness,” called Captain Eldridge.

“Contact!” cried Wachieu. “I have contact.”

Shuddering, the Spectator signed back on.

“Let’s hear it,” Eldridge ordered.

There it was: the expected–but dreaded–sound of emergence. Tuezi. Tuezi. Tuezi. A sine wave of pulsing static flanging in and out, a waveform rolling endlessly over itself: an audio signature unlike any other.

Galactics had known and dreaded that sound for generations. The sound sparked a feeling like sharpened fingernails dragging along her back. From the inside.

Tuezi. Tuezi. Tuezi.

The folk singer launched into the final verse of his ballad, the one he’d saved for this moment:

Like the indrawing, outrolling sea

It sizzles, it whooshes

With a rush slightly sibilant

That sound signifies only death.

Tuezi. Tuezi. Tuezi. By means Galactic science had never unraveled, the robot marauder was being wrenched from its native time and place. Being sent here. Now.

“Optical disturbances!” Wachieu cried.

The tactical display transmuted into a visible-light view of starry space at point zero-zero-zero.

The starfield was swimming.

Tuezi. Tuezi. Tuezi. Whatever power it was that was forcing the Tuezi through, it bubbled space. Profoundly refracted visible light.

“You are looking at a parcel of space twenty kilometers wide, centered on point zero-zero-zero,” Eldridge told the Spectator. “If our Tuezi is of conventional design, it will just about fill the sphere.”

Tuezi. Tuezi. Tuezi.

“Fem Wachieu, accuracy!” called Eldridge.

“Pre-emergence phenomena are on schedule to the picosecond. Position is exactly centered on point zero-zero-zero, to the nanometer. If there is any deviation from Hom Galbior’s predictions, it’s too small for ship’s susceptors to register in real time.”

On his platform, the VIP bobbed inscrutably. Is he, she, or it nodding? Eldridge wondered.

Tuezi. Tuezi. Tuezi.

Eldridge consulted a display that boiled from the bridge floor. Our gunnery, such as it is, is five-by-five. To the mighty volleys of the real fighting ships, Bright Hope will add its few extra terawatts–all for politics’ sake. “Countdown, please, Hom Wachieu,” Eldridge said aloud.

“Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven.”

One by one, Wachieu shut down her susceptor arrays. Some of them were already useless, pegged by the phenomena attending the Tuezi’s emergence. Others would be blinded by what was to follow. Only the susceptors required to probe the Tuezi or to record its destruction would be left operational.

“Six. Five. Four.”

Others had urgent datacrawls to watch, or subsystems to monitor. Paradoxically, at this critical moment Executive Officer Gavisel found herself with no pressing tasks. So she fixed one otterly eye–and the gaze of about half the susceptors under her personal control–on the enigmatic blackness of the VIP. Now we’ll see.

“Three. Two. One,” Wachieu called. “Emergence.”

One instant, the Spectator had been watching the stars swim. The next, the vision sphere was full from edge to edge with the threatening bulk of the Tuezi.

It was complex, wholly without grace, a hodgepodge of modules and platforms and haphazard weapon tubes. A jagged-edged icosahedron sixteen kilometers across. All those impressions came to the Spectator in a gestalten flash. They had to, for the Tuezi was only there for a fiftieth of a second. His next impression, persisting maybe a half second, was of the Tuezi being riven by some two hundred weapon beams from the ships of the anticipation group. Explosions cancered across its surface. The Spectator got a flash of some huge, V-shaped structure hurling off components, juddering free against a background of detonations. Then the attacking beams found the Tuezi’s power core. The vision sphere overflowed with fierce radiance. That was the image that endured.

“Destruction complete,” cried Wachieu.

“Weapons operated nominally,” reported Gavisel. She broke away from the giddy round of celebration as soon as she could. She asked the bridge for privacy. A sheath of bridge floor material obligingly arched over her and her “eyes-only” displays. Gavisel began reviewing the slow-motion recordings she’d made while the Tuezi died. Her probes had not focused out into space, but on the VIP.

Gavisel knew virtual imaging equipment like that in Bright Hope’s battle bridge was designed to respond to each user’s rank and personality. Eminent individuals usually had inner logos. Virtual environments would display those logos by default unless commanded not to–as Gavisel herself had when she chose her otter persona.

In his, her, or its arrogance, the VIP had chosen to display nothing at all, an option the equipment was designed to discourage. The VIP must concentrate continuously to keep that unfriendly empty blob on display. Gavisel hoped that when the Tuezi died, if only for a moment, the VIP’s guard might have wavered.

There! I was right. For about a tenth of a second, just as the Tuezi exploded, the VIP’s obsidian shield had broken down. The bridge equipment had almost had time to finish constructing the VIP’s personal logo when he, she, or it had regained control and forced the blackness back.

Gavisel scrolled forward and back through the moment. Selected the clearest freeze frame. Assigned a bank of thought engines to clarify the image.

Under their prodding, the logo became complete. A low red hat with an enormous brim, from which flowed coiled burgundy ropes. Twin waterfalls of fabric tassels. An elaborately-decorated shield, behind which stood an ornamented, double-barred metallic cross. All on a field of red. Gavisel leaned closer. Let out as soft a whistle as could reasonably be expected of a ruby squid. What the sfelb is this? she wondered. “Art history module,” she ordered the thought engine. “Identify genre.”

Quickly the thought engine threaded categories and sub-categories. “Heraldry. Terran. Roman Catholic through Universal Catholic Church. Papal States through Vatican City through planet Vatican.”

Of course, Gavisel thought. I’d never recognize the trappings of a Terran church. “Explicate imagery.”

“The heraldic achievements–in plain language, the coat of arms–of a cardinal, an ecclesiastical officer second only to the pope. The hat is a galero, emblematic of what is called the “cardinalatial dignity.” The tassels, or fiocchi, are traditional adornments of the galero. Since the Church revived ecclesiastical heraldry about one hundred fifty years ago, each cardinal has been granted his own unique personal herald. The most personal elements appear on the shield.”

Mystery solved, Gavisel thought with a grim satisfaction. Now all that stood between her and the VIP’s identity was a quick scan of any public database of ecclesiastical logos. But even as Gavisel savored her glee, it turned sour. By solving this mystery, she recognized, I have merely peeled back a single layer. In so doing, she’d revealed a deeper conundrum. A Catholic cardinal. On this ship. With a high security clearance. On such a crucial mission! In reason’s name, why?

“What the sfelb!” It was Eldridge.

Gavisel whirled. New banks of instruments stretched toward her from the bridge floor. They told her the same maddening thing her own eyes reported.

As if he, she, or it were never there, the VIP had vanished. Not just from the virtual bridge – the VIP was gone from the ship altogether.