The Medusa Encounter Read online

  the cloud-dwelling messengers where they live . . .

  great world. The chariot-riders left this inscription . . .

  their great work. They await the reawakening . . .

  of waiting at the great world. . . .

  Then all will be well.

  Blake listened to these broken fragments of odd speech with increasing stupefaction, until the final words startled him from his trance. “All will be well?” he blurted.

  “The untranslated terms are proper names, of course—possibly names of individuals, certainly the names of stars and planets, including, I’m confident, Earth, Venus, Mars, and the sun,” Forster said. “And of course the Bronze Age terms—chariots and stadia and so forth—were the closest equivalents the Venus texts could provide for the original words of the plaque. Their meaning is easy enough to guess.”

  “It really said ‘All will be well’?” Blake repeated.

  But Forster was still happily expounding: “Trains or cars, perhaps even vessels of some sort—but not ships, there were perfectly good words for that—and miles or kilometers, some unit of measurement. That sort of thing.”

  Blake recovered enough to realize the commander was signaling him with a look. Forster doesn’t know.

  “ ‘Salt world’ isn’t a Bronze Age term, is it?” the commander remarked coolly, inviting Forster to go on.

  “No, but they obviously intended ‘ocean world.’ Dissolved salts may have interested them as much as water. For whatever reason. Historical, perhaps.” Forster had obviously anticipated the question. “Consider that we call galaxies galaxies. If one were to translate that word without the necessary context, one might wonder about the etymology of a term such as ‘milkies.’ ”

  “Especially if one weren’t a mammal,” Blake said.

  “Hmm, yes.” Forster eyed him from under a gingery brow.

  “And the ‘great world’ . . . ?” prompted the commander.

  “Is Jupiter,” Forster said triumphantly.

  Blake tried again. “Your translation renders the last phrase as, ‘Then all will be well.’ ”

  “Yes?” Forster frowned at Blake, an inquisitive frown.

  “ ‘All will be well’ is one of the mottos of the people who stole the Martian plaque,” Blake said. “The same people who tried to kill you.”

  Forster looked at the commander, and comprehension dawned. “Ah, this is why you wanted me to meet Mr. Redfield.”

  “Uh, why I wanted Redfield to meet you.” It wasn’t a contradiction, exactly, and since tea arrived at that moment, along with a bottle of Laphroaig, Forster’s favorite, the commander was saved the trouble of explaining himself more fully.

  “Remember the star maps I looked at in the Athanasian Society?” It was twilight. Blake and the commander were walking across the grass toward the white Space Board helicopter that had brought them to Granite Lodge.

  “You mean the one you stole from the Louvre?”

  “There were others; they already had them. What they had in common was a particular planetary alignment.”

  The commander raised a grizzled eyebrow.

  “The common alignments correspond to a date,” Blake said.

  “Yes?”

  “Which seems to correspond to the scheduled rendezvous of Kon-Tiki with Jupiter.”

  “What do you make of it?”

  “You already know something’s going to happen on Jupiter?” Blake asked, curious.

  “So we were taught. We prophetae.”

  “What’s between you and Forster?”

  “He’s got a research scheme; I offered to pull what strings I could. No more questions, Redfield, I’m about to shake your hand goodbye for the last time . . . unless you tell me otherwise.”

  “Where’s Ellen now?” Blake asked.

  “I swear I wish I knew,” said the commander.

  “All right,” Blake said quietly. “I’m with you.”

  XIII

  As the foothills grew rapidly closer, Holly Singh recovered control from the autopilot of her quick little Dragonfly helicopter and manually guided its swift, silent ascent of the terraced ridges. A macadam road and a shining pair of tracks wound like coiling pythons beneath the open craft. An antique train was tortuously making the same ascent, puffing white steam into the mountain air.

  Singh nodded toward the bright green terraces that fell away below like so many stairsteps. “Tea plantations. Darjeeling grows the world’s best, of its type. So we like to think.”

  The helicopter crested the ridge at 2,500 meters. The Himalayas, hidden behind the ridges until now, sprang forward in the crystal air. Sparta’s breath caught at the sight of the glacier-hung peaks, thrusting like broken glass into the dark blue sky. Katchenjunga, second highest mountain on Earth, dominated all the others; still seventy kilometers away, it nevertheless towered above the darting helicopter, in perspective so starkly carved as to seem close enough to touch.

  Suddenly they were buzzing a town, which clung to the crest of the ridge and spilled down its sides. The helicopter flitted over green lawns and old trees, past stone church towers.

  “The English—including a round dozen of my great-great-grandparents—developed Darjeeling as a retreat from the heat of the plains,” Singh said. “That’s why half the buildings look like they were transplanted from the British Isles. See that one, the one that looks like an Edinburgh church? It was a movie house for a few decades. Half the rest of the town could be in Tibet. A colony of Tibetans settled here after fleeing China in the mid-20th century. What remains, including the marketplace, is pure India. We’ve tried to preserve it pretty much as it was a century ago.”

  The helicopter skimmed along the ridge, past the town.

  Singh noticed the direction of Sparta’s gaze and smiled. “Mountain people spend a lot of time praying, one way and another.” The barren heights were prickled with poles carrying prayer flags, pale banners hanging limp in the still air.

  The helicopter flew on until a broad green lawn opened before it, bordered with massive oaks and chestnut trees. For the merest fragment of a second Sparta searched her eidetic memory: there was something familiar about this wide lawn, these brooding trees, the snowy Himalayas above the cloud-filled valleys beyond.

  “Howard Falcon landed a balloon here,” she said.

  “Indeed, Howard landed here many times,” said Holly Singh. “Howard’s roots in India are almost as deep as mine. Although none of his very proper British ancestors ever went native.” Her mood seemed genuinely cheerful, as if the sharp mountain air had refreshed her. “You must have seen this view in one of the documentaries they made about him. When he was trying to raise money to build the Queen Elizabeth, Howard’s favorite trick for winning friends and influencing people was to take them up in his fusion-powered hot air balloon—they’d leave from Srinagar and stay aloft for several days, drifting the length of the Himalayas and landing here—right where we’re setting down.”

  The helicopter settled gently to the grass. Back among the trees Sparta glimpsed a white house with wide verandas and broad eaves, flanked by enormous flowering rhododendrons—bushes as big as trees, holdovers from the last age of dinosaurs.

  “And whenever Howard touched down we’d invite our neighbors over and wine and dine and flatter his guests.” Singh unstrapped her harness and stepped lightly from the helicopter. Sparta tugged her duffel from behind the seat and followed, her shoes sinking into the springy sod.

  “No party for us tonight, I’m afraid,” said Singh. “Just a quiet dinner at home.”

  On the broad lawn, two peacocks carefully picked their steps, displaying enormous fans of blue and green plumes to the peahens that wandered on the lawn. High in a towering cedar, Sparta saw a plumed white egret. To their left, the snow-clad mountains were turning ruddy in the evening light.

  The two women walked toward the big house, the doctor in her riding outfit, the policewoman in her trim blue uniform. A tall man in puttees and jacket hurr
ied across the lawn toward them, stopping a few meters away and inclining his turbaned head.

  “Good evening, madame.”

  “Good evening, Ran. Will you see to the helicopter, please? And take the inspector’s valise to her room.”

  “At once.”

  Sparta handed the tall Sikh her duffel. His nod was as sharp as a military salute.

  “I’ll take you to your quarters later, Inspector,” said Singh. “There’s something I want to show you before it gets dark.”

  Sparta followed Singh into the cool shadowed aisles beneath the chestnut trees. Through the neat rows of old trees and decorative bushes she saw other white buildings. A few people moved slowly in the courtyard they enclosed, heads down, showing little interest in their surroundings.

  “My mother’s paternal grandfather—his father having made his fortune in tea—established this place as a tuberculosis sanatorium,” said Singh. “Now that tuberculosis is a thing of the past, we treat neurological disorders here . . . those we can. Despite all the progress I spoke about before, some mysteries are beyond us. Though we do try to provide a good home for the people we can’t help.”

  Singh turned off the gravel path and led the way past tall hedges of fragrant camellia. It did not take Sparta’s specialized senses to anticipate what they were coming to next; the smell of animals grew stronger with each step.

  “My grandfather established this menagerie, which my father agreed to maintain when he married my mother.” She smiled. “Dowry arrangements could be rather complex in the old days. I have renovated it and added to the professional staff. Now it is used for research purposes.”

  Low masonry barns stood among the trees. Sparta identified the sharp smell of cats coming from one, the ripe odor of ungulates from another, and a dry, autumnal whiff of reptile from a third. In a four-story-high wrought iron cage she saw wings flap as an eagle momentarily silhouetted itself against the darkening sky.

  “Many rare species from the subcontinent are represented here. You are welcome to spend as much time here as you like, tomorrow”—Singh was leading her past the aviary toward another open structure—“but this evening . . .”

  Monkeys and lemurs leaped and screamed in their segregated cages. Singh led Sparta to the end of the row, to the largest cage.

  The design was simple and familiar: a floor of sloping concrete several feet below ground level, edged with a system of drains for easy flushing, and a hatch in the corner leading to the long stone barn that backed all the primate cages.

  Less familiar were the aluminum struts and spars that crisscrossed the cage, from a couple of meters above the floor all the way to its high roof.

  “Is that from the Queen Elizabeth?” Sparta asked.

  “It’s a piece of the mock-up we used for training the chimps. The training was done at the center in Ramnagar, but I salvaged this bit and had it installed here.”

  Sparta would have asked why, but she had already surmised the answer.

  Singh looked in the direction of the rear hatch and called sharply, “Steg! Holly is here.”

  For a moment nothing happened. The air was filled with the hoots and cries of the other primates. Then a timid face, brown eyes wide and thin lips parted in apprehension, peered out of the shadows.

  “Steg! Holly is here. Holly wants to say hello.”

  The animal hesitated several seconds before slowly emerging from hiding. It swung up onto the nearest of the aluminum spars and sat there, studying Sparta intently.

  Sparta knew the face well—that of the terrified chimp Howard Falcon had met face to face during the Queen’s last moments. Apparently Falcon’s order—“Boss—boss—go!”—had saved this one’s life after all, although not those of the others.

  “Every time I look a chimpanzee in the face, I’m reminded that this is my closest evolutionary relative,” said Singh. “I think it is safe to say that none of us understand in a fundamental, cellular, molecular way, why chimps don’t look and behave just as we do. After more than a century of sophisticated research we still don’t fully understand why we and they have different shapes—although we recognize the utility of the differences—and we still don’t understand why we and they can become infected by the same viruses but not get sick in the same ways. We don’t understand how humans can read and write and talk in complex sentences, and they, in their natural state, can’t. In genetic terms we are so nearly identical that probably only we humans ourselves could tell the difference.” Singh turned slightly toward Sparta, again favoring her with that thin smile. “I doubt that an alien, some visitor from another star, would be able to make the distinction at all—not on biochemical grounds, or at least not without very sophisticated instruments. Which suggests that vast evolutionary differences may be achieved by the subtlest physical adjustments.”

  “If they are the right adjustments,” Sparta said, so quietly she might have whispered it.

  Singh’s eyes widened a fraction of a millimeter before she turned her attention back to the reluctant chimpanzee. “Steg! Come say hello to Holly.”

  Steg crept slowly toward them. He was a fully grown male chimpanzee in the peak years of maturity, with muscles that bulged and rippled beneath his glossy black coat. He outweighed Sparta herself by ten kilos or more. Yet his eyes were dull, his gaze unfocused.

  Halfway across, Steg staggered and caught himself on the narrow beam. He froze in place, then seemed almost visibly to steel his nerve, willing himself to continue; his eyes never left Holly Singh’s face as he resumed his slow progress toward her.

  Finally he caught the wire mesh of the cage in both his leathery hands.

  “Say hello to Holly.” Singh’s voice was clear but intimate.

  Steg’s lips parted in a pained grimace, and a rasping sound came out of his throat. “Bbbbbb . . . bah, bah . . .”

  “That’s good, Steg. That’s very good.” Singh reached through the mesh and gave his head a quick scratch. His dark scalp hair was divided by a wide, mottled scar of bare white flesh. She slipped her hand into her jacket pocket and withdrew a chunk of something brown and crumbly.

  Steg released his grip on the wire mesh with apparent effort, pulling the fingers of his left hand away one by one, then reached for the food preparation. He shoved it greedily into his mouth and began to chew. Once his mouth was full and his heavy jaw muscles were grinding away, he risked a wide, sidelong gaze at Sparta, his dark pupils rimmed with yellow, his curiosity pathetically mingled with fear.

  “He can’t speak,” said Sparta.

  “Not anymore. Nor understand, except a few simple commands, the earliest he learned. And as you saw, his motor functions are impaired. Neuro-chips can’t help destruction of brain tissue that massive.” Singh sighed. “Mentally, Steg is roughly equivalent to a one-year-old infant. But not as playful. Not as confident.”

  Sparta looked up at the rigging that suggested the interior of the vanished Queen Elizabeth IV. “Doesn’t this setting have painful associations for him?”

  “On the contrary. He and the others spent the happiest days of their lives in such a setting.” Singh lightly stroked the knuckles of Steg’s right hand, which still clung to the cage. “Goodbye, Steg. Holly will come again.”

  Steg said nothing. He watched them as they walked away.

  The light had gone from the sky. Their footsteps crunched the gravel along a barely visible path outlined by low, dimly glowing light fixtures.

  “Howard Falcon knew about my work with enhanced chimpanzees from the start,” Singh said. “It came up naturally in the course of all those social affairs he precipitated with his ballooning. Indeed, it was his rather casual suggestion that put ICEP on the track to success, although I doubt if he would remember that today. He was always too busy with other matters to take a really personal interest.”

  “Why was he interested in ICEP at all?” Sparta asked.

  “He knew the basics. Normal chimps are superior to humans in almost every physical way. With
one or two important exceptions, of course. An adult chimp is quicker and stronger than the quickest and strongest human gymnast, although we are better made for running and throwing—and we have a quantum advantage, not only over chimps but over just about every other living thing, in the construction of our hands. Nevertheless, there was no reason to believe that suitably engineered chimpanzees couldn’t join human beings as fully conscious partners, in enterprises of mutual benefit to both.”

  “Such as the operation of airships?”

  “The Queen Elizabeth IV was already under construction when Howard casually mentioned the idea to me. I think I surprised him when I took it seriously. Thanks to him, his sponsors readily saw the advantage in supplementing the human crew with intelligent chimpanzees who could handle much of the rigging work inside that vast, open craft. Howard once compared it to a flying cathedral.”

  “Handle the rigging? Handle the dangerous work, in other words,” Sparta said.

  “Dangerous to us, not to them.” Singh’s dark eyes shone in the shadowed night. “Ethical considerations were always important, Inspector, whatever doubts you may entertain on that score. We were not creating a race of slaves. Runs of experiments in the mock-up indicated that chimpanzees were not only comfortable in the Queen’s environment but were actually quite happy up there among the spars and rigging. There was not a single near-injury to any chimp during the preliminary tests—some of which were quite strenuous. And those were ordinary lab animals.”

  The women came out of the trees, into the open grassy field.

  Sparta halted and looked up, considering the night.

  Overhead the stars were like fluorescent plankton, four or five thousand of them visible to the ordinary eye in this clear atmosphere, a hundred times that number visible to Sparta’s more sensitive eye. To the northwest the glacier-draped mountains—the raw young edges of continental collision—were avatars of the grinding upheavals that had continually reshaped the surface of the spinning Earth.

  After a moment she turned to Holly Singh. “Does Falcon ever come to visit Steg?”