The Chaos Weapon Page 21
“I believe it, because you tell me it’s so. But did you also figure out why they left them there?”
“We can only hazard a guess. But it has the right feel about it. We think this is a primary bridge attempting to cross the communications gap that separates the aliens from ourselves. They’ve given us this much understanding preparatory to trying to start a dialogue.”
“A dialogue on what?”
“Peace, Cass. We think they’re trying to sue for peace.”
“After all these years?”
“Don’t forget times have changed. They haven’t won a single engagement since we started our Bogy-finder scheme, and the rate at which they’re losing ships must be stretching their resources close to breaking point.”
“Are we going to respond?”
“We’ve nothing to lose by trying. Before we had their museum we didn’t even know what they looked like, let alone how we might start a conversation. Now we’re cracking the whole mystery open, and Space Force is assembling our own space-museum which we intend leaving in one of their regular patrol routes. This could be a big thing, Cass. Understanding can negate an awful lot of irrational fear—the sort of fear that makes a species start a shooting war when there’s maybe a more peaceful means to achieve the same end.”
“I’ll go along with that,” said Hover. “But I was reflecting on how near we came to missing out on this whole thing. Without the seers we couldn’t have got on top of the aliens for centuries, and without Roamer we’d never have gotten the cooperation of the seers. And if you and Roamer hadn’t …”
“… for want of a nail, the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe, the horse was lost …”
“That’s a quotation, isn’t it?”
“And even more apt now we have Chaos techniques to allow us to explore causal chains. And speaking of Chaos, I think we’re going to have a visit from one with a special brand of her own.”
They were sitting in the pleasant garden of Wildheit’s official residence. As Federation Representative on Mayo, Wildheit’s status was nominally that of a planetary ambassador; but his work on behalf of the Sensitives with the Federation, and his masterstroke in introducing the Bogy-finder teams which had so successfully blended the seers’ talents with Federation technology, had placed him as a man of great influence with both communities. Yet for all the prestige, the man was mainly unchanged: it was Mayo itself which had felt the impact of his careful persuasion. No longer were the Sensitives a closed community, and a modest spaceport was even taking shape on the plains across the river.
Through the new archways driven through the old guard-wall they could see right down the slope to the Children’s Place. Around the grassy banks a herd of placid animals filled their stomachs yet were directed with such purpose by the solitary shepherdess that the grass and all the edges of the paths were neatened as they passed. Roamer herself was coming up the walk from the Children’s Place, holding the hand of a diminutive edition of herself. Even from a distance Hover could see that the child had something of Wildheit’s determination added to the wild-eyed promise bestowed by her mother.
“Here’s the one you’ve been waiting for, Cass—little Wanderer Wildheit herself.”
Hover coaxed the bright-eyed child on to his knee, alert to the way she anticipated his every movement even before he had decided on the action for himself.
“I thought you told me,” he said after a while, “that mixed marriages were liable to dispel the seers’ talent-lines by dilution?”
“How’s that for natural perversity, Cass? You won’t be able to see it yet, but Wanderer has so many talent-lines developing that we dare not even look for more. Instead of the dilution we’d expected from crossing bloodlines, the union has actually released some wild talents even the Sensitives hadn’t seen before. For instance …”
Hover held up his hand. “Don’t tell me! Even my inferiority complex is acquiring an inferiority complex. But I just wonder if the two of you have stopped to consider the consequences of what you’ve started here.”
“What do you mean, Cass?”
“When little Wanderer begins to feel her feet, who’ve we left to help protect the rest of the universe?”
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Also by Colin Kapp
Cageworld
1. Search for the Sun (1982) (aka Cageworld)
2. The Lost Worlds of Cronus (1982)
3. The Tyrant of Hades (1982)
4. Star Search (1983)
Other Novels
The Dark Mind (1964) (aka The Transfinite Man)
The Patterns of Chaos (1972)
The Wizard of Anharitte (1973)
Survival Game (1976)
The Chaos Weapon (1977)
Manalone (1977)
The Ion War (1978)
The Timewinders (1980)
Collections
The Unorthodox Engineers (1979)
Colin Kapp (1928 – 2007)
Born in 1928, Colin Kapp was both a British SF author and a worker in electronics, later becoming a freelance consultant in electroplating. His writing career began with the publication of ‘Life Plan’ in New Worlds in November 1958. Kapp is best known for his stories about the Unorthodox Engineers, which gained a modest cult following. He passed away in 2007.
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Colin Kapp 1977
All rights reserved.
The right of Colin Kapp to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2013 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 13378 5
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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