Legacy - free ebook by James H. Schmitz

JAMES H. SCHMITZ

A Division of Charter Communications Inc. A GROSSET &amp; DUNLAP COMPANY 360 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010...

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LEGACY

Originally published as A TALE OF TWO CLOCKS An ACE Book Cover art by Bob Adragna First Ace printing: May 1979 Printed in U.S.A...

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1

"Does he do that often?" she asked interestedly. "Every other time!" Mihul asserted. She was a tall, lean, muscular slab of a woman, around forty. She gave Trigger a wink behind Plemponi's back. "We keep the chiropractors on stand-by duty when we go riding with Plemp." "Now then! Now then!" Doctor Plemponi said. "You distracted my attention for a moment, that's all. Now, Trigger, the reason we're here is that Mihul told me at our prebreakfast conference you weren't entirely happy at the good old

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2

"If you mean has somebody taken another swing at her, no. But she's all wound up to start swinging herself. She isn't going to do much waiting either." Quillan said thoughtfully, "Hasn't she been that way for quite a while?" "Not like she's been the last few days." Mihul hesitated. "Would it be against security if you told me whether something has happened to her?" "Happened to her?" Quillan repeated cautiously. "To her mind." "What makes you think so?" Mihul frowned at the transmitter. "Trigger

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3

And that would have been unthinkable. Rak did the talking, as on the previous occasions when Trigger had met with this group. The advisory committee simply sat there and watched him. As far as Trigger could figure it, they were present at these sessions only to check Rak if it looked as if he were about to commit some ghastly indiscretion. "We were wondering, Miss Farn," Rak said questioningly, "whether you have the authority to requisition additional University League guards for the Plasmoid Pr

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4

"I'd like to apply for a transfer back to my previous job. The Manon System." "That's your privilege," said Rozan. She half turned, swung a telewriter forward and snapped it into her ComWeb. She glanced out at Trigger's desk. "Your writer's connected, I see. We'll want thumbprint and signature." She slid a form into her telewriter, shifted it twice as Trigger deposited thumbprint and signature and drew it out. "The application will be processed promptly, Argee. Good day." Not a gabby type, that

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5

The man who held Trigger's wrists shifted his grip up her arms, and turned her a little so that she could sit upright on the seat, faced half away from him. She had got only a glimpse of him as he caught her, but he seemed to be wearing the same kind of commercial spacer's uniform as the group which had hustled her into the car. The other man in the car, the driver, sat up front with his back to them. He looked like any ordinary middle-aged civilian. Trigger let her breath out slowly. There was

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6

He gave Trigger a grin. She gave him a tentative smile in return. The Commissioner had introduced him: Heslet Quillan—Major Heslet Quillan, of the Subspace Engineers. For a Subspace Engineer, Trigger had thought skeptically, he was a pretty good grabber. But there was a qualified truce in the room. It would last, at least, until Holati finished his explaining. There was no really good reason not to include Major Quillan in it. "Ah, Puya!" Professor Mantelish exclaimed, advancing on the tray as Q

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7

The burly character who had appeared at the door said diffidently that Professor Mantelish had wanted to be present while his lab equipment was stowed aboard. If the professor didn't mind, things were about that far along. Mantelish excused himself and went off with the messenger. The door closed. Quillan came back to his chair. "We're moving the outfit later tonight," the Commissioner explained. "Mantelish is coming along—plus around eight tons of his lab equipment. Plus his special U-League gu

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8

"But what connection?" she protested. "I know I don't know anything that could do anybody any good!" He shrugged. "I can't figure it either, Trigger girl. But the upshot of it was that I was put in charge of this phase of the general investigation. If there is a connection, it'll come out eventually. In any case, we want to know who's been trying to have you picked up and why." She studied his face with troubled eyes. "That's quite definite, is it?" she asked. "There couldn't possibly still be a

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9

Trigger pulled the dress over her head, tossed it to Mihul and stood in her underwear, looking at her double slip out of her street clothes. They did seem to be a very close match in size and proportions. Watching the shifting play of slim muscles in the long legs and smooth back, Trigger decided the similarity was largely a natural one. The silver-blonde hair was the same, of course. The gray eyes seemed almost identical—and the rest of the face was a little too identical! They must have used a

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10

A great many separate, clearly detailed things seemed to be going on within the next four or five seconds. Mihul swore, scooping the Denton out of its holster. Trigger already had the Yool out, but the gun was unfamiliar; she hesitated. Fascinated, she glanced from the speeding, soaring feather-balls to Mihul, watched the tall woman straighten for an overhead shot, left hand grasping right wrist to steady the lightweight Denton—and in that particular instant Trigger knew exactly what was going t

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11

He stood motionless at the far end of the garden, next to some flowering shrubbery out of which he might have just stepped. He seemed to be peering along the sand path which curved in toward the balcony and vanished beneath it, below the point where Trigger stood. It was sheer fright which immobilized her at first. Because there was not anything really human about that small, squat, manshaped figure. A dwarfish yellow demon he seemed, evil and menacing. The garden, she realized suddenly, might b

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12

"Not until we want them to. Viewer gives you as much privacy as you like. Most of the crowd here just doesn't see much point to privacy. Like those two." Trigger followed his glance. At a tilted angle above them, a matched pair of black-haired, black-gowned young sirens sat at a small table, sipping their drinks, looking languidly around. "Twins," Trigger said. "No," said Quillan. "That's Blent and Company." "Oh?" "Blent's a lady of leisure and somewhat excessively narcissistic tendencies," he e

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13

There were two more calls in the next few minutes, of similar nature. Quillan rebuffed them cheerfully. It was rather flattering in a way. She wondered how so many people in the cocktail lounge happened to know Quillan by name. When the ComWeb reported the fourth caller, it sounded awed. "The name given is the Lady Lyad Ermetyne!" it said. Quillan beamed. "Lyad? Bless her heart! A pleasure. Put her through." A screen shaped itself on the wall mirror to the right. Lyad Ermetyne's face appeared in

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14

Of course he was a biologist. But Trigger kept wondering why Lyad had invited him to dinner. She was positive, for one thing, that Belchik Pluly wasn't at all happy about Balmordan's presence. Dinner was over before the Garth take-off, and they switched themselves back to the mountainside and took other chairs. A red-haired, green-eyed, tanned, sinuous young woman called Flam appeared from time to time to renew brandy glasses and pass iced fruits around. She gave Trigger coolly speculative looks

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15

Quillan sighed. "Certainly," he said. "Guy in space armor." "But what's he doing there?" "Checking something, I suppose." His hand left her shoulder; and, for just a moment, his finger rested lightly across her lips. Trigger glanced up at him. He was walking on beside her, not looking at her. All right, she thought—she could take a hint. But she felt tense and uncomfortable now. Something was going on again, apparently. They turned into the side passage and came up to her cabin. Trigger started

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16

"This one can. Do you get any sensations while holding it?" "Sensations?" She considered. "Nothing particular. It's just like I said the other time—little Repulsive is rather nice to feel." "For you," he said. "I didn't tell you everything." "You rarely do," Trigger remarked. "I'll tell you now," said Holati. "The day after we left, when it started acting very agitated and then very droopy, Mantelish said it might be missing the female touch it had got from you. He was being facetious, I think.

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17

Holati Tate brought her the drink and went on with the details. Trigger and he and a dozen or so of the first group of U-League investigators had been in what was now designated as Section 52 of Harvest Moon. The Commissioner was by himself, checking over some equipment which had been installed in one of the compartments. After a while Doctor Azol joined him and told him Mantelish and the others had gone on to another section. Holati and Azol finished the check-up together and were about to leav

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18

"Well," Trigger said, regarding Brule critically, "I just meant to say that you're getting the least little bit plump here and there, under all that tan. I'll admit it doesn't show yet when you're dressed." Brule smiled tolerantly. In silver swimming trunks and sandals, he was obviously a very handsome hunk of young man, and he knew it. So did Trigger. So did a quartet of predatory young females eyeing them speculatively from a table only twenty feet away. "I've come swimming here quite a bit si

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19

"You didn't have to tell him they'd found some possibles did you?" "He did, unfortunately. He's had those plasmoid detectors of his for about a month, but he didn't happen to think of mentioning them. The reason he was to come back to Manon originally was to sort over the stuff the Fleets have been sending back here. It's as weird a collection of low-grade life-forms as I've ever seen, but not plasmoid. Mantelish went into a temper and wanted to know why the idiots weren't using detectors." "Oh,

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20

"Your investigators could have interfered with the little therapy process in a number of ways. That wouldn't have taught them a thing, so they didn't. But on your third check they found something else. Again it wasn't in the least obtrusive; in someone else they mightn't have given it a second look. But it didn't fit at all with your major personality patterns. You wanted to stay where you were." "Stay where I was?" "In the Manon System." "Oh!" Trigger flushed a little. "Well—" "I know. Let's go

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21

"Not on your ship, First Lady." The light-amber eyes barely narrowed. But Lyad had become, at that moment, very alert. "Why do you think so?" she asked pleasantly. "This room," said Trigger. "You don't gush, I think. What was the business matter?" "In a moment," Lyad said. She smiled again. "Where else might you be?" Trigger thought she could guess. But she didn't intend to. Not out loud. She shrugged. "It's no place I want to be." She settled back a little in her chair. Her right hand brushed t

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22

Silence. Pilli's odor lay heavily all around. Trigger heard her blood drumming in her ears, and, for a second then, she imagined she could feel, like a tangible fog, the body warmth of the monster standing in the dark before her. It wasn't imagination. Something like a smooth, heavy pad of rubber closed around her right wrist and tightened terribly. The Denton went off, two, three, four times before she was jerked violently sideways, flung away, sent stumbling backward against some low piece of

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23

Trigger came out of the ceridim trance hours before Lyad awoke from the stunner blast she'd absorbed. The Commissioner was sitting in a chair beside her bunk, napping. She looked around a moment, feeling very comfortable and secure. This was her personal cabin on Commissioner Tate's ship, the one he referred to as the Big Job, modeled after the long-range patrol ships of the Space Scouts. It wasn't actually very big, but six or seven people could go traveling around in it very comfortably. At th

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24

Quillan flicked on their course screen and superimposed the map Lyad had marked. "Red dot's well inside," he pointed out. "That bit was probably quite solid info." He looked up at her. "Did it bother you much to hear the Devagas have dropped the grab idea and are out to do you in?" Trigger shook her head. "Not really," she said. "Wouldn't make much difference one way or the other, would it?" "Very little." He patted her hand. "Well, they're not going to get you, doll—one way or the other!" Trigg

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25

Trigger darted a glance along the bank. Her clothes were forty feet away, just beside the water. "I'm observing some sort of large, uncouth critter right here!" she said coldly. "What's worse, it's observing me. Turn around!" Quillan sighed. "You're a hard woman, Argee," he said. But he turned. He was carrying a holstered gun, as a matter of fact; but he usually did that nowadays anyway. "This thing," he went on, "is supposed to have a head like a bat, three feet across. It flies." "Very interes

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26

"I have it." Lyad handed it to him. She looked at him with concern. "You don't think—" "It seems possible. We did come in here last night, remember? And we came straight from the lab." "But we had been decontaminated," Lyad said puzzledly. "Don't try to walk in here, Professor!" Trigger warned as he lumbered forward. "We might have to de-electrocute you. The Commissioner will scrape off a sample and hand it out. This stuff—if it's what you think it might be—is poisonous?" "Quite harmless to life

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27

"Because," Lyad said carefully, "112 was aware that 113-A intended to condition Trigger into being its interpreter." Professor Mantelish's jaw dropped. He swung his head toward Trigger. "Is that true?" She nodded. "It's true, all right. We've been working on it, but we haven't got too far along. Tell you later. Go ahead, Lyad." The Devagas, naturally, hadn't acted on the king plasmoid's naive suggestion. Whatever it feared was more than likely to be very useful to them. Instead they made prepara

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28

They discussed what they had seen in subdued voices. Nobody had a plan. They agreed that one thing they could be sure of was that the Vishni Fleet people and any other human beings who might have been on the station when it was turned over to the king plasmoid were no longer alive. Unless, of course, something had been done to them much more drastic than had happened to the Aurora's crew. The ship had passed by the biggest opening, like a low wide black mouth, close enough to make out that it ex

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29

Mantelish's garden in the highland south of Ceyce had a certain renown all over the Hub. It had been donated to the professor twenty-five years ago by the populace of another Federation world. That populace had negligently permitted a hideous pestilence of some kind to be imported, and had been saved in the nick of time by the appropriate pestilence-killer, hastily developed and forwarded to it by Mantelish. In return, a lifetime ambition had been fulfilled for him—his own private botanical gard

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