Yeah, Apt-Counsel, but if you’re his ally, then why aren’t you helping him achieve that deception? Is this another attempt to prove your good faith by helping us—or are you jumping ship, maybe with an eye to eventually courting us as allies, the way you did at the Convocation?
Caine instinctively flinched away from that explanation. If anything, it was too simple, too obvious. But Apt-Counsel’s “observations” had galvanized human anxiety, had focused their attention upon the horrible necessity of ending the war with an act of genocide.
So, behind the first smokescreen of fear, Apt-Counsel might be indirectly trying to once again curry favor with humanity. But that, too, was too easy to foresee. So what was Apt-Counsel trying to achieve, behind both smokescreens, that would benefit the Ktor?
Darzhee Kut was rotating to face Caine, claws raised in appeal. “Riordan, please. I must speak to the Elders.”
I’ve got to intervene, but I’ve got to make sure that I’m not stepping into a trap. With the Ktor, there was always the unseen dagger, the half-lie that wasn’t clear enough to call attention to itself when first uttered. Such as Apt-Counsel’s earlier claim that he only back-shot Caine to prevent the humans from capturing the Arat Kur ships. In retrospect, that was rubbish: when the Ktor had attacked, the radio was already being made available to Darzhee Kut. So eliminating Caine was no longer a military objective when the Ktor attempted it.
Caine’s thoughts snagged on another troubling detail. Apt-Counsel’s attack also removed me before I could intercede in regard to their ground force suicides. So, another way to look at his actions would be this: after the Arat Kur ships were already lost, he was still willing to kill me to make sure that even the planetside Arat Kur died. But why?
One tentative answer offered itself. The Arat Kur suicides and ship scuttlings do have one thing in common. They ensured that human and Arat Kur would share an intense mutual hatred, that they would no longer wish to communicate their thoughts or intents to each other except through weapons of mass destruction.
A reasonable hypothesis, insofar as it explained why Apt-Counsel attacked Caine five months ago. But it did not explain why he would help humans now. Indeed, if the Ktor objective was to keep enmity absolute and war perpetual between the two races, Apt-Counsel was defeating his own purpose. If the Arat Kur were exterminated, there would be no further interspeciate conflict to exploit.
It doesn’t add up. I’m missing something. And Caine felt that as each sliver of a second slipped past, the undeterred momentum was building toward atrocity. I’ve got to do, to say, something, if only to buy some time. He turned toward Sukhinin, unsure what he was going to say, but sure that he had to intervene before—
Ben Hwang’s voice was quiet, just above a whisper, in his left ear. “Caine, do you have a moment?”
Damn. “Not really, Ben. What’s it about?”
“The Ktor.”
“Oh?” “Know thy enemy”—so always take the time to learn about them. Even now. No, particularly now. “Sure.”
Ben gestured toward the reading lounge with a bend of his head, moved in that direction. Caine followed, making an apologetic gesture toward Sukhinin.
Hwang turned to face him as soon as they were in the small lounge. “I’m sorry I didn’t have this sooner. With the push to reverse-engineer and then manufacture the Arat Kur virus—”
“I know. Not much time for the other projects you had going. But we don’t have much time now, either. What do you have on the Ktor, Ben?”
“More mysteries, I’m afraid. I’ve had our three top xenophysiologists and macromolecular chemists working on simulations and biochemical models which would show how the exhausts from the Ktor environmental unit could be produced as the waste products, the ‘exhalations,’ of an ultra-cold-temperature organism.”
“And they’re still stumped.”
“Worse than that. They’ve concluded that, according to the laws of biological heat and energy exchange as we understand them, these gases simply do not fit with any foreseeable model of life based on methane, ammonia, or hydrogen fluorine. And so far as we know, those are the only three low-temperature compounds which are flexible and volatile enough to serve as the building blocks of a subzero, non-carbon-based biochemistry.”
“So what does that mean?”
“It means that either my team is not up to the task, or that these gases aren’t what the Ktor ‘exhale.’ And we know for sure they can’t be the gases they actually ‘inhale.’”
“How?”
“Because that gas mix can’t do the job of transmitting the necessary reactants to a cold-climate organism. The per molecule potential energy of cold weather gases is a great deal lower than those which are predominant in higher temperature regimes. So, according to our models, low-temperature creatures would logically need a very reactant-rich atmosphere, comparatively speaking. Unfortunately, the mix coming out of those oversized hot-water heaters couldn’t sustain a mouse-sized organism.”
Caine nodded, thought. “How confident are you of the team’s abilities?”
“Two were Nobel nominees. The third is a laureate.”
“I see. So, if we assume that your tragically underskilled team isn’t at fault, then all your findings add up to—what?”
“The first mystery.”
“There’s another?”
“Yes.” Hwang’s tone became a little more formal, a little more measured. “We have noted some oddities in Ktoran artifacture.”
“Their artifacture? Where did you find any of their artifacture lying around?”
“It was not lying around. It was embedded in your back.”
Of course. The manipulator arm would be a piece of invaluable forensic data. “Go on. What’s the mystery?”
“Its manner of production. We have subjected all of its components—the metal, plastic, and carbon-composite fittings—to extensive analysis. Everything from gross physical measurement to subatomic scans.”
“And?”
“And the lab studies return normative results on the probable fabrication processes involved in its construction. It’s just lightweight steel, with all the expected amounts of carbon, trace elements, surface annealing and ion-bonding. And atomic analysis shows that the polymers in the plastics are not synthetics. They were clearly derived from natural petroleum products. In other words, fossil fuel deposits.”
Caine frowned. “Wait a minute. If the Ktor come from a world where the life-forms are not carbon-based, then how the hell is it possible for them to have access to fossilized hydrocarbons?”
“That’s just the problem. It shouldn’t be possible, not unless the Ktor decided to go to our kind of environment to mine the components used in the creation of this object. And furthermore, they must have also decided to manufacture the arm there, too.”
“What leads you to that conclusion?”
“Because given the building blocks of life in a cold-climate biochemistry, and the indigenous atmosphere, ores, and temperatures which they imply, we should be observing different trace elements. We should also be detecting telltale signs of the different kinds of manufacturing processes which would be developed by, and used in, environments where the mean temperature is someplace south of minus-eighty Celsius. And to reemphasize your point, there shouldn’t be any fossil fuel deposits on their planets, at least not the carbon-based variety that are used to make plastics.”
“Well, as you said, Ben, they might have simply gone to a world like ours to harvest those resources.”