Chapter Sixteen
Trust is like quicksand. It can lull you to your death.
—A saying of Lost Earth
At opposite sides of a dual-console machine, two aliens of differing races stood inside a glax tower building in the Hibbil capital city, surrounded by a sea of industrial structures that stretched to the horizons of the planet. The shorter one, a Hibbil with graying black-and-white fur, glanced up at his companion, concealing his own enmity.
This Adurian diplomat was a major irritation.
Whenever VV Uncel wasn’t looking, Pimyt glared at him with red-ember eyes. Then, the moment Uncel looked his way with those oversized insectoid orbs, the little Hibbil was all smiles on his own furry, bearded face, and his eyes had reverted to red dullness. Pimyt knew how disarmingly cute he could look whenever he wanted, like a cuddly Earthian panda bear. He also knew that Adurians didn’t trust Hibbils, and vice versa. The two races were only working together for their own interests, with each side constantly trying to get a leg up on the other. On some occasions the methods were subtle, but most of the time they were not. Even so, racial preservation and advancement had a way of causing each side to overlook the perceived slights committed by the other. The leaders of the two races understood this, and knew they could go farther together than apart.
In other circumstances, and perhaps sometime in the not-too-distant future, Pimyt might eradicate Uncel with shocking suddenness, moving in for the kill in a surprising blur of speed. But for now, they would play this little game together.
It was an Adurian form of entertainment, actually, in which the two of them stood at linked holovid consoles, operating touchpad controls that immersed each of them into a holodrama, shown on a large central screen. The Adurians loved their games of chance and competition, and this one had a couple of twists that rigged it in the Adurian player’s favor. And, though Uncel had taken pains to keep it secret, Pimyt knew that the decisions the Hibbil player made were being sent by hidden telebeam transmitters to an office full of Adurian bureaucrats, where they were further studied, to analyze sincerity and trustworthiness.
Pimyt smiled to himself. As a race, the Adurians were notoriously paranoid. On their homeworld and throughout their foreign operations, everything was under surveillance, and they were quite adept at tech gadgets. But Hibbils were considerably better at devising clever machines and mechanical systems than Adurians, and for every tech system the Adurians had, the Hibbils had one that was superior. It was only in diverse biological and biotech products that the Adurians held the upper hand, particularly in the improvement of lab-pods, which had originally been discovered by Mutati scientists—but not developed very well by them.
This machine could be set to play a variety of games. At the moment, the participants were in a simulated competition of space baseball, with their holo images dressed in uniforms, standing in batters’ boxes on an asteroid. Each of them faced the same tall Vandurian pitcher who threw two balls simultaneously, one with each arm. The first player to hit the tricky pitches, or to get the best hit if both of them connected simultaneously, won the game.
Uncel swung, and missed. “Damn!” he exclaimed.
Smiling to himself, Pimyt hit a line drive that carried into the asteroid belt. His virtual ball kept going and going, and soon it was out of sight. Gleefully, the holo image of the little Hibbil ran and leaped from asteroid to asteroid around the simulated deep-space base path, and finally he came back around to home plate on the original asteroid.
“Going, going, gone!” he shouted, as if he was an announcer describing a long home run. “You lose!”
Uncel had an expression on his face like a man who knew he had been hoodwinked, but couldn’t figure out how. In fact, the Adurian machine had been rigged to give Uncel the advantage, but Pimyt had transmitted an overriding signal into it to give him the edge instead.
“This is impossible,” Uncel said. “You did something to the game, didn’t you?”
“You sound so certain of that, my friend. Why is that, do you suppose?” Pimyt knew why, and saw a look of guilt on the Ambassador’s face. The cheater knew that he had himself been cheated.
“You’re wasting my valuable time,” Uncel snapped. Lifting his head in disdain, he marched to an ascensore and entered it, leaving Pimyt alone in the tower room.
“Pompous ass,” Pimyt muttered under his breath.
Left to himself, he fiddled with the game controls, changing the settings in rapid succession, bringing up a variety of games, some of which he’d never heard of. Many of the diversions involved cards, dice, or balls, while others were animal races, with the players riding on the backs of a selection of alien beasts.
All the while, his thoughts wandered. The little Hibbil led an uncommonly complex life, balancing his various duties, his layers of subterfuge and intrigue. His biography was not linear, and would be impossible for anyone to write accurately without his candid cooperation.
Pimyt was, without doubt, a very important person. And not just in his own estimation.
Though Hibbils did mate, and the vast majority of them enjoyed the company of the opposite sex, he had been involved in very few dalliances in the past, and expected the future to be the same. He was proud of the fact that his libido had no influence on his decision-making processes. Or at least, that he had subdued it enough to make it ancillary.
There had been undeniable temptations, such as the attractive Jimlat dwarf that had caught his eye on the remote, unaligned planet of the same name. He’d never seen a face and figure to match hers. And the way she moved! She had almost derailed his entire career with her charms. Pimyt had made love with her in her apartment, and she’d told him of her own ambitions and dreams, of how she would like to marry him and move to the Hibbil Cluster Worlds.
He had smiled and nodded, and had popped a pill to diminish his passions. Then, when her back was turned, he had strangled her to death, moving against her with a suddenness that she could never have anticipated. It wasn’t that Pimyt liked to kill anyone. He didn’t go out of his way for anything like that. But she had been a distraction, one he could ill afford. He’d done her a favor, actually. Undoubtedly he would have been more brutal with her if he’d really gotten to know her. Especially if—as he thought might happen—he actually fell in love with her.
For someone in Pimyt’s position, with so much riding on his shoulders, he could never allow that to happen. He was responsible for a major portion of the HibAdu plan, and it had to proceed without impediments. He was, in his own estimation, far more important to the cause than the pretentious Adurian Ambassador.
At that moment a telebeam message came in, and he activated his ring to open the connection. A bright red banner opened in the air, a holo image with white lettering on it:
News Bulletin:
HibAdu Coalition makes surprise attacks against all Human and Mutati worlds. Defender Ships proved useless due to sabotaged firing mechanisms on their artillery pieces. We also used signal-blocking devices to muzzle the defenders’ telebeam transmissions, so none of their emergency messages got out. All MPA worlds except for Canopa and Siriki have fallen, and all Mutati worlds except for Dij. Fighting rages for these last three planets.
Grinning from ear to furry ear, Pimyt linked the ring to a panel box on the wall, and transmitted the same banner—in much larger form—into the sky outside the tower building. Tonight, there would be dancing in the streets.
***