Lensman from rigel, p.6
Lensman From Rigel, page 6
P'Keen and Garner were bewildered. Was this one of the Rigellians on the crew? Impossible. This Rigellian was a fantastic apparition, the likes of which the Klovian and the Ordovik had never seen before. Perhaps it was the newsman?
The barrel body was nearly hidden by yards and yards of soft black fabric, many ends trailing on the floor. The guards were Patrolmen whom they had likewise never seen before.
"Taylu!" the Rigellian projected sharply at the renegade officer. "Congratulations! You've found me!"
"Tregonsee!" said Taylu, flustered by having his question answered before he had asked it. "Yes, I'm looking--was looking--for you! I feared that you--that is--well..."
"Good work," said Tregonsee--and his two staff officers now suddenly recognized him; Rigellians to humanoids nearly always looked alike--"Obviously, our S.I.S. contingency alert plans for a missing V.I.P must work." It came to P'Keen then that Tregonsee was dressed in a gossamer gown of mourning. How had he managed that?
"Excuse me, sirs," P'Keen said in his soft voice, his skinny fingers spread wide in a pleading gesture. "Excuse me, sirs," he repeated mentally. "Do you mind--?" He now was pointing at all the guns. The Patrolman called Taylu still had his DeLameter's muzzle near their midsections, and the guards all had their guns trained on the three of them.
With a thought from Tregonsee, they all holstered their weapons.
"Thanks for the concern, Taylu," said Tregonsee. "These are Garner and P'Keen. You've no doubt heard of them." Taylu opened his mind briefly to introduce himself.
To them, as high level S.I.S. administrators, they were only mildly surprised to have it revealed that Taylu was an operator within the ultra-secret Special Missions Forces.
He was Preekoan, an undercover agent high in the Preekoan royal councils, who, being informed by secret S.I.S. channels that "T" was in extraordinary danger, had evoked the authority of a "danger priority" standing order and acted on his own initiative. The mystery at the hospital had prompted him to board Dronvire with his legitimate credentials. Acting with other S.M.E agents already on board, he had managed to be posted on the honor guard. Once in the chamber, he planned to open all the coffins to confirm the death or uncover an abduction, then to report it to GP-Klovia-HQ-T.
P'Keen and Garner, at the centers of power though they were, marveled at the foresight of Tregonsee and the ingenuity, independence and initiative of the men in the field like Taylu.
"As for these other Patrolmen," Tregonsee said, "they also are some of my secret agents in transit," making quick introductions on a first-name basis.
The two Tregonsee aides found this revelation even more disconcerting. Tregonsee, with his prodigious mind, had apparatuses paralleling apparatuses within his secret organizations, secrets being kept from those who keep the secrets. Even they didn't know all the intricate planning and safeguards instituted by Tregonsee, nor about the complicated security arrangements in case of his disappearance, disability or death. S.I.S. cells were scattered around wherever Tregonsee trod--backup forces, reserves of power, unidentified but all-pervasive. Everybody in the room at that moment was part of his far-flung forces. Agents all!
"Everyone, it seems," the huge Rigellian said, "has been trying to expose our deception or rescue me. All our anonymous agents on board in the process of routine transfers have gotten into the act. Some have acted independently, not aware of the others. Some actually are working secretly on behalf of my own HQ out of Klovia. Hiding in my atmosuit, my mind anesthetized, really shook them up. It was a clever deduction which led them to steal the atmosuit, drag it into the radiation-shielded engine room, find me, and then revive me. So, here I am, out earlier than you planned. The S.I.S. response has been outstanding, so it's time now to move to the next act of our scenario."
"Where did you get the mourning clothes?" Garner asked, no longer able to contain his curiosity. "Was it from that Rigellian news reporter for the joint galactic news services who flitted in from the nearby space liner? I thought I had barred him from this ship."
"No, I improvised them. However, that news reporter is aboard the Dronvire. I overruled you. He's actually the S.M.E sector coordinator, traveling on S.I.S. orders from Klovia, worried like the rest. He made a narrow-Lensed contact with me and I decided he could be useful. He is genuinely a newsman. And, incidentally, he's Taylu's boss, which makes him due for a big surprise when he sees you, Taylu."
"Can you tell us now what the next step is which you've planned around your death deception?" P'Keen asked.
"I'm going to stay conscious, project my ego into Meppy's dead brain cells, and convince all illegal monitors that I'm barely alive, though mortally wounded, being rushed back to Klovia, which ought to make my unit-cluster happy. If the enemy can still use a hyperspatial tube after our new countermeasures, they'll attempt to get to me in my helpless state. If they really want me, that is. They might even be foolish enough to ambush the Dronvire."
"Aren't all sorts of alarming reports reaching Kinnison and the Galactic Council?" Garner asked seriously. "From Taylu and others? Are you sure you want to continue all this chicanery?"
"The highest levels, including Kinnison, are aware, of course, of the true situation," Tregonsee said. "The trouble seems worse than it is. I'm playing a hunch that we are involved in a gargantuan, outrageous conspiracy. My deception is certain to bring at least one halfway-decent inkling. I need only one solid hint. Now let's all get back to doing our routine things and let me get on with acting no longer dead, but dying. I'm proud of you, Taylu, and the rest of you and the whole S.I.S."
After Tregonsee, his "mourning" escort, and Taylu and the other Patrolmen of the "rescue" party had gone from the room, Garner and P'Keen prepared for the visit of the newsman, the undercover Rigellian S.M.E chief. His judicious appearance would give an authentic ring of truth to their cover story. When Garner had climbed back on his stool, P'Keen in position at his side, Commander Lzbert walked in to give them some confidential reports.
"We are scheduled," the commander said, "to rendezvous with Coordinator Kinnison aboard the Dauntless this evening. He's presently en route, picking up the five kidnap victims and others at various points along the way. Even with these pickups, breaking his inertialess flight, a meeting is slated for 1055 hours."
Garner told him of Tregonsee's revival and altered plan, but did not mention the appearances or activities of the secret agents which seemed to infest his ship.
"That may explain the sudden new order from Tregonsee," Lzbert said. "P'Keen, you're relieved as Buyyer's assistant and are no longer on my staff. Incidentally, the ship has been undergoing extensive scanning from every imaginable place and from every imaginable source in the Second Galaxy. I'm not certain we can keep our screens from being badly punctured without our knowing it." Lzbert cocked his head at P'Keen. "I'm talking to you, P'Keen, as one of my ex-officers-- you've got greater natural powers than either of us, so you're not only better protected, you're also more vulnerable. Don't disappoint ol' Lzbert."
"Yes, sir. Not a chance of that, sir!"
"Next then," the commander continued, "there's this thing about Project 2-5-2-6. Tregonsee is urgently requested to act on 2-5-2-6. I'm supposed to transmit his reply to a list of Patrol sections. What do I do?"
"That can wait, commander," Garner said. Both he and P'Keen knew about that project. It concerned the Boskonian planet of Tanse. S.M.E communications had traced a priority call for assistance from one of a pair of its best operators who had infiltrated Tanse officialdom. Tansers were reported as celebrating Tregonsee's death! The death plot, in this case, seemed to be bearing fruit. "Notify all sections that Tregonsee will send them a message at 1130 hours." That should be shortly after their meeting with Kinnison was under way.
"What's my job, commander?" P'Keen asked. "Am I now Captain Garner's assistant?"
"Something like that, P'Keen." Garner was the one who replied, giving a throaty laugh and a smile so large that his meaty face grew deep wrinkles and his eyes were half obscured by his round, upraised cheeks. "Only it's practically the other way round. You're my replacement. You're Tregonsee's new aide-de-camp--whenever I'm absent."
P'Keen registered his shock and pleasure along with his wonderment about the change.
He could feel Lzbert's sincere good wishes and congratulations flooding in on him.
"When you get to the Dauntless, P'Keen, Treg will brief you on your duties. In the absence of Treg's executive officer back at Ultra Prime, whom we're not to contact for a day or two or even a week, you'll also be acting exec."
The Ordovik was unruffled and showed no emotion, except that his pupils grew as large as an owl's in darkness so that almost no whiteness showed. "I'm honored, men. But I don't understand why me."
"I've got to stay with the coffins," Garner explained. "I may have to take that one all the way to Rigel IV. You see, I'll still be seen as Treg's aide-de-camp. I'll be part of the decoy. However, there's an even better reason--you're an Ordovik, and you can sense hyperspatial tubes. That makes you eye tee, it, my skinny friend. You're it."
Garner shook the thin hand. "Now for the SHELL GAME. Treg's the elusive pea. Shell number one is the coffin. Shell number two is the atmosuit. When the coffin was moved out of the palace, Treg was in shell one, simulating death. That seemed right. Treg went into the suit then, shell number two. Meppy, sewn up, cosmetically looking like Treg, went into one. We've made the switch twice so far, just to block any interference from the other plane of existence, on the advice of Worsel and Lalla Kallatra. We've got a deep-space radiation shield around the suit now. Maybe Treg won't be able to give off his after-image aura out of Meppy's coffin. In which case we'll be moving the pea around again. Anyhow, the SHELL GAME continues one way or another until Treg is able to emerge safely in the Dauntless. If anyone can keep in touch with Treg through all these different barriers, it ought to be you, P'Keen."
"One thing I'd like Commander Lzbert to do..." P'Keen hesitated. "Am I now sharing responsibilities with you? Can I give orders?"
"You are and you can," Garner said. "Go ahead. Make your suggestions and give your orders. Just check with me while I'm still around."
"I want you, commander," P'Keen said, "to ask that the Chaplain General immediately join. Kinnison. Then inform everyone, absolutely everyone who could conceivably be interested, that we are awaiting instructions from the Chaplain General before making any religious preparations. I have a terrible, terrible feeling that something is about to go terribly, terribly wrong. Get Dronvire into space immediately. And send those messages immediately. Can you?--Immediately?"
"Immediately," Commander Lzbert said, and true to his word, actually ran out of the room, away from the mental screens, to instruct his pilot house and his signals room.
"What do you feel?" Garner asked, anxiously.
"I don't know. Let me see if Treg can link up with me."
P'Keen knelt by the middle coffin, over Meppy, his head bowed and resting on the polished curved edge. Captain Garner, still playing the part of ADC, sat quietly on the high stool watching. The Ordovik seemed like a spectral figure of death in the uniform of the Patrol, his bony, white fingers pressed against his thin, white face.
P'Keen concentrated on reaching Tregonsee. He reached with all his power, but near as he was to his subject, as close as they were in harmony, as prepared as they were for mental touching, he could not. He did feel, though, a vague and mystic power of the Lens. He recognized, then, the strangeness of his feelings--there was a sense of decay and death--it was Meppy's Lens disintegrating. Somehow its life had continued far longer on its inevitable time track to disintegration and death. No Lens could live after its owner had died, that was the inescapable fact of the living Lens of Arisia. Yet sometimes, for reasons not completely understood, a Lens might be like the last ember of a dead fire, the final throes of life still stirring in the ashes.
The strangeness came from the interaction with the Lens of Tregonsee. That was the reason for the creeping death of Meppy's Lens, perhaps. They were there together, lying side by side in an inner pocket of the suit. The host of one, still living; the host of the other, dead. That was where Meppy's Lens had been placed, untouched by any hands because of the certain knowledge of its power to kill anyone but its own, individual, attuned wearer. And that was where Tregonsee's unworn Lens had been placed, hidden from prying rays and senses, so that none should know that because it lived, then so did Tregonsee. A vibrant Lens would be a dead giveaway, he thought, with macabre humor.
What was the sense of foreboding that he, P'Keen, had? What dreadful calamity was his sensitive soul expecting?
Hour after hour passed with the throbbing of the great ship's engines, driving at ever-multiplying speeds of light at an unutterably fantastic velocity which destroyed all time and space.
When the Dronvire dropped from inertialess flight to its standard intrinsic, P'Keen, for hours in almost a trance, almost hearing Tregonsee, but never quite, was told. It took a strong bolt of thought from Garner to break through to him.
"We're here, P'Keen!" The mental wave was quivering with concern. "We're alone! Dauntless is not here!"
When Kinnison said he would be some place at a certain time, then he would be there, no matter what hell stood in the way. Something had gone wrong.
"Lower the spy-blocks and the mind screens," P'Keen said, his unconsciousness demanding that he give the order. P'Keen knew, with unshakable conviction, that he must always obey his intuition.
A great pressure passed away from his mind. He felt that Tregonsee was silently near him, watching what he was doing.
Then, over thousands and thousands and thousands of light years of distance, as the thought of an S.I.S. agent was reflected back and forth across the galaxies in a millisecond of time, searching on the confidential personal frequency of the S.I.S. head, came the Lensed thought from Rigel IV:
The Federal Government of Rigel IV was about to declare Tregonsee dead by an assassin's bullet. The Rigellian government, a small and simple collection of part time volunteer public servants, understood that such news would throw the whole peace-keeping process into turmoil and stimulate a revival of Boskonian assaults on Civilization. The Rigellian bureaucracy and citizenry didn't really care, but nevertheless they were meeting their responsibilities and were keeping their decision top secret, and requesting the Galactic Coordinator to confirm the death and to release the facts in the best way to minimize the terrible repercussions. To meet religious dogma, the funeral arrangements had to be announced within the next twelve hours.
"Lensman!" This was Tregonsee's own powerful thought radiating out in answer. "Can you stop this? Can you at least delay such a declaration for two days?"
"No, sir," came the faint answer back without pause. "Twelve hours is the limit. Maybe even less."
"What is the source?" Tregonsee asked. "What part of Boskonia is responsible?"
"It is not Boskone, nor is it the Spawn, nor any scoundrel who causes this, sir."
"Who, then? Do you know who does cause this?"
"It is your own unit-cluster, Tregonsee. Both of them made a formal request here on Rigel."
"My unit-cluster? But I am not dead!"
"Their request for clarification was examined, as it must be, under law. When the government looked, it found much rumor. The notice-of-death has been provisionally requested from the Patrol."
Unit-cluster!
Both P'Keen and Garner--who had been drawn into the exchange--were shocked. They had overlooked the unit-cluster! The faked death had even fooled the remaining duo-egos of the three-fold Rigellian id. The dynamics of Rigellian sociology was never fully appreciated by humanoids.
Once in a while I get surprised, came Tregonsee's thought. But never this enormously! Efficiency by Rigel IV bureaucracy! How ironic, that this should happen to me! Mepauhurrat I carefully covered, but not myself, who really didn't need it!
The complicated situation now unveiled could be easily understood when simplistically explained:
Two-thirds of Tregonsee's empathetic soul was now claiming one-third of itself!
The Three-Unit Cluster
The big pea in the SHELL GAME had now been shifted. Tregonsee was back in the coffin in a drug-induced self-hypnotic trance of death-brink. This death-brink was the condition of life-release on the threshold of the next plane of existence, when the soul hovered undecided between true life and true death. This was no mere faking of death, a momentary suspension of the self or a temporary withdrawal of the life-essence into a secret place, alive but hiding. It was Tregonsee's attempt to call the spirits of his other cluster-units in rapport with his--and thus to reassure them and to forestall the problems they were unleashing. He would try this until the Dauntless arrived. Neither P'Keen nor Garner would monitor him, for it was much too tricky and dangerous.
Right after the Lensed message from the contact from Rigel, when Tregonsee had made his decision and had briefed them about Rigellian cluster culture, given them advice, and then had returned to the coffin, P'Keen and Garner had gone to Commander Lzbert's private quarters. There they scrutinized the latest of the many dispatches and confidential reports which increasingly were flowing into Dronvire's signals room. The two Lensmen also were explaining to Lzbert as much as he could be permitted to know of the latest development.
"By all the icy hells of Onion!" Garner was exclaiming, torturing himself again by recalling all details. "Treg knew, but we didn't, so we didn't help!" As for P'Keen, his continued reaction to the discovered flaw in the plan was the constant pressing of his fingers against the pulse beating rapidly at his bony temples.
"The three-unit clusters, commander," Garner said, savagely shaking his head. "That's a detail which can be our undoing. We may have as much a disaster on our hands as though Treg had really been assassinated, if Tregonsee allows his fearlessness to push him too far."
