Kharl Zisk followed Bai through a maze of dim corridors, descending into the bowels of the Temple. They passed no one but a few droids, each absorbed in some cryptic task. At that hour, most werewolves were prowling the Underworld’s streets.
Everywhere lay heaps of refuse—some unrecognizable, all revolting: human bones, rotting fish, wrecked synths, stacks of musty old books, shattered glass, splintered containers, bloody rags. The refuse crawled with fat worms and pale maggots, sniffing and creeping through the muck. The stench felt alive—palpable, suffocating, omnipresent. Only the Devil knew how Bai could navigate this labyrinth so confidently. Zisk watched the Minister striding a dozen meters ahead and quickened his pace, eager to avoid Bai’s biting wit. That slimy man delighted in humiliating him… in reminding him of his minor role in the Great Plan.
“Here we are, doctor!” Bai finally announced, flashing a mocking smile from the shadows. He pressed a hidden control, and a crack opened in the wall.
A shaft of light cut into the dusty corridor, and Zisk stepped after him into a laboratory. Along the right wall stood a row of transparent tanks glowing with violet light—stasis chambers—seven. Six were filled; the last one was empty at the room’s center.
Zisk found himself staring at the first two tanks. Inside floated what might have been human adolescents—a boy and a girl—no taller than a foot, soft and fleshy like living creatures but with glassy, crystalline eyes. Dolls or living beings? The murky fluid obscured their faint movements, making it impossible to tell.
“They’re growing day by day,” Bai said behind him.
“Are they… clones?”
“Clones? Oh no, doctor, don’t disappoint me. I thought you’d recognize true alchemy when you saw it. These are homunculi. The stasis fluid contains Bajorian lice sperm, the blood of a virgin k’rell, and fresh nawpaq manure…”
Zisk nodded quickly, eager to avoid Bai’s sarcasm.
“And this one?” Bai asked. “Come now, doctor—impress me.”
They moved past two more tanks. One appeared to contain a human hand with far too many fingers. Another held a pair of gill-like organs floating in pale blue liquid. In the next tank, only a mottled mass of reddish ganglia showed through the murk before Bai’s impatience cut short Zisk’s inspection.
They stopped at the second-to-last occupied tank. Zisk frowned, wondering why Bai found it so significant. Inside floated what was clearly a human clone—a trivial, almost unimpressive specimen. Pale skin, a ridiculous mustache, the look of a minor bureaucrat from some forgotten backwater. Hardly the sort of person the Apostles would replace with a double.
“Who is he?” Zisk ventured.
“You truly don’t recognize him?”
“Well, to be honest…”
“He’s one of us—a werewolf—though at first glance you wouldn’t think so. Awake, he makes quite a different impression, especially when he begins one of his famous speeches. In his day—20th-century, pre-Expansion Earth—people were mad about him…”
Zisk’s hair stood on end. He swore softly, unable to form a coherent sentence.
“It’s… impossible! How did you even manage? His body was burned, the remains scattered and destroyed. Yes, I’ve heard the rumors… for years, people whispered his followers had preserved a blood sample, but I always thought it a myth.”
“And that’s exactly what it was,” Bai said. “We reconstructed the DNA from a half-burned bone fragment. One of us was on the team exhuming his remains for an old Terran government. Terrified of their own shadows, they tried to keep those bones from becoming a symbol.”
“The Zha’nkhaij…” Zisk whispered reverently. “…or nearly. The closest attempt at a pure werewolf before modern genetic engineering.”
“That’s right,” Bai confirmed. “Our ancestors failed—but only just. This time, everything will proceed as planned. Thirty-five years ago, we used a fragment of those lycanthropic genes to create ten thousand Zha’nkhaij candidates. We had them adopted into carefully chosen families—middle-class, living quietly on marginal planets, at least one parent an Apostle. We expected many to self-destruct before thirty, and so it happened. Now only a few remain. But the Zha’nkhaij is among them…”
Zisk listened, his anxiety rising. For the first time, he was hearing the Apostles’ deepest secrets. But instead of feeling honored, he was afraid. Holunder Bai trusted no one. So why such candor? Why such detail about the Plan? He initially considered probing Bai’s mind to glimpse his intentions—but he thought better of it. Bai’s psi-capacity was formidable. He would be caught.
“…the werewolves’ Black Messiah,” Bai was saying. “He will marry the heir to the throne… and become the rightful Galactic Emperor.”
So, tell me—what’s your plan? It’s not the first time I’ve heard this talk about good and evil… especially from people who’ve had a few drinks. But when it comes to the crunch, everybody flinches.”
“Sorry to contradict you, but you’re the only one who’s been drinking so far. Besides, first I will find out more about their plot… then think of a countermove.”
Kyle grinned.
“Right, I thought so. There’s never enough information, is there? Always more time needed, while the chatter goes on.”
“Oh, please!” Twiglet was starting to lose her patience. “If you’re so smart—and in such a hurry to act—why don’t you take us to the Halo on your ship? We can pay, of course.”
“To the Halo? That’s why you wanted to hire the Aranui?” He shook his head. “I told you already: you’re nuts.”
“Why? Afraid you won’t make it? Or maybe your ship can’t—”
Stung, Kyle leaned forward, locking eyes with her.
“My ship works just fine. I could take you to the Halo in my sleep. That’s not the problem.”
“Oh, really? Then what?” Twiglet pressed.
Kyle snorted and rolled his eyes.
“Come on… do you even realize? I’d have to run some numbers, but it’s got to be a twenty-day journey. At least. It’ll cost you an arm and a leg. Why don’t you catch a liner? Sure, it’ll take a few months, but it’d be cheaper…”
“Two months? Then you’re the one who doesn’t realize. In two months, it might be too late. I can offer you fifty-seven hundred credits. That’s all I have.”
“Aha! That’s not even enough to cover fuel.”
He shifted in his chair, suddenly uncomfortable. Twiglet noticed his gaze drifting toward the synth girl.
“And just for argument… why do you want to go to the Halo?”
“To reach the Holroyd Society Headquarters. It’s the organization I told you about. I want my old job back—if they’ll let me. And if I succeed, I will try to predict the werewolves’ next move… plan a counterattack. That’s what I do best. It’s the only way to fight them.”
Kyle was silent for a moment.
“Damn, I must be crazy,” he muttered. “I don’t care about werewolves and don’t even believe half the stuff you’ve told me. Still…”
Twiglet held her breath. She hoped he’d say yes. With what little money they had, it would be nearly impossible to find a less involved pilot. And taking a liner was out of the question—the planet they were headed for wasn’t even on the charts.
“Still…” Kyle said again, clearing his throat, “Ahem… how much did you say you could pay?”
“Fifty-seven hundred.”
“Hm. Considering I’m doing it for Aral and Weema too… Fine. We’ll make it do.”
The mahjit sighed in relief.
“What…?” the doctor blurted, then immediately regretted it. “I… I’m sorry, Your Excellency, but I… know the princess. Very well. I’m her personal physician, after all. How do we persuade her to marry the Zha’nkhaij? She’s a troublemaker and… ahem… I fear she has doubts about Lord Chang.”
“My dear doctor…” Bai teased him. “You’re rather naïve for a werewolf! Why do you think we needed that neurophysiological print? We’ve already created a synth—a perfect double—programmed to obey every order from us, including taking a fancy to the Zha’nkhaij. The execution of the heir to the throne had been arranged, but unfortunately… Flamsteed, that idiot, interfered and nearly ruined the Plan.”
“Flamsteed? Doctor Bjarne Flamsteed? I know him well—we were at college together: applied bioengineering, 637 G.E., if I remember correctly.”
“That’s right,” the Minister replied. He moved to the last occupied tank and added, “Come, doctor. I’m going to show you the highlights of my collection.”
The thing floating in the nutritive solution was unmistakably human, though reduced to its lowest terms. Flayed, internal organs exposed, limbs amputated, eyes removed, the brain bristled with cortical probes and shunt pins, ready for questioning.
Holunder Bai touched a few icons on the console. A shudder ran through what had once been a man.
“Hello, Flamsteed!” Bai chirped. “How are you doing today? Feeling great?”
Flamsteed spoke, though even his tongue had been cut out. A speech synthesizer translated his brain waves, and from the speaker came an electronic voice that froze Dr. Zisk’s blood.
“Hello, Bai. You know, I think I’m doing better than you. When the Chancellor realizes what a miserable scumbag you are—incapable of completing the Plan—your life will be worthless.”
Bai laughed and turned to the doctor.
“This moron keeps trying—he hopes I’ll get angry enough to kill him. He still hasn’t figured out I won’t do him that favor. I like him too much as he is. The poor idiot has werewolf blood, though he let his human side prevail. Too bad for us… We underestimated him, and a couple of days before the exchange, he let the synth escape and destroyed all existing copies of the print.”
“Oh no…” Zisk muttered.
“You understand now, doctor? That’s why I need your help again. You must get me another print. Quickly. I’ve been trying to avoid Lord Chang lately, but I can almost feel his fangs on my neck. The Chancellor says I should have guessed Flamsteed was a traitor. After all, he’d always been reluctant to cooperate until we took his daughter to ‘convince’ him. Still, I believe this blockhead remained fairly reliable almost until the end, when he realized he no longer had anything to lose.”
Bai addressed Flamsteed again.
“What do you think, quack? You must have guessed I was enjoying your sweet little girl. I raped her as long as I felt like it, and the more she screamed, the more fun I had. Once, she freaked me out so much that I ripped her throat. I was really sorry, you bet! I could see nothing wrong with fucking her a little bit longer…”
A cacophony of sobs and broken sentences filled the lab. The Minister hastened to turn a knob, and suddenly the room fell still.
“Do as I told you, Dr. Zisk,” he ordered coldly. “As you may have noticed, one of the stasis chambers is still empty…”
“Oh, Captain, I don’t know how to thank you! I’ll do whatever it takes to ensure the Holroyd Council pays your full fee.”
“You’d better. So… when are we leaving?”
“As soon as possible, even though… there’s a little problem.”
“What problem?”
“That planet—the one we’re headed for—is far outside the normal trade routes. For security reasons, each Holroyd agent only knows one of the three coordinates needed to locate it. I know the x-coordinate. Someone living on the first level knows the y-coordinate. And…”
“Oh no… Aral knew the z.”
“That’s right,” Twiglet confirmed.
“Oh. And you call this a ‘little’ problem? Anyway… you’re the scientist—what do you plan to do?”
“Well, if we’re lucky, Aral wrote the coordinate somewhere so he wouldn’t forget it. But where? In my opinion, there are several possibilities…”
She raised her stubby, clawed fingers and began ticking them off.
“One: the coordinate might be stored in Aral’s personal datapad. Though I doubt it—he wasn’t that stupid. Besides, it’d be a terrible idea to go rummaging through that apartment again.
“Two: it might be saved in a password-protected file on a standalone device—maybe at home.
“Three: the z-coordinate could be in the CCSF Cloud.”
“In any case, we’re screwed,” Kyle concluded. “This doesn’t sound like a very efficient system. What happens if one of your agents dies of natural causes?”
“There are alternative ways to contact Headquarters,” Twiglet admitted, “but I’d rather not use them. I’d have to send a coded message, wait for it to be forwarded by a series of intermediaries… but doing so would reveal my current location. Too risky—especially if, as I suspect, the Society has been infiltrated by werewolves.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know,” Twiglet said honestly. “Finding that coordinate would be a joke if I still had my hyperneural probe. But I lost it… along with my house.”
“Maybe I could try…” Shirl interjected.
“Really? You have a cyberspace master-key?”
“I don’t know,” Shirl replied, “but it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve managed to—”
“What generation are you?”
“Ah, forget it,” Kyle cut in before she could answer. “Some moron erased her memory. Still, I think she’s telling the truth. A maven assured me she’s got a pretty good brain.”
Those words reignited Twiglet’s curiosity about the synth girl. And that nagging sense of familiarity returned—she was increasingly convinced she’d seen her somewhere before. If only she could remember where…
“Very well, Shirl. Show us what you can do,” she finally said.
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