Behold a Dark Mirror Read online

  At the spaceport, Nero launched the first copy of the memoirs. Afterwards he sat at the club lounge for a while, allowing time before launching the second shuttle with another copy of the memoirs. He ordered licorice tea—they had some!—and glanced over his hunting license application.

  *

  After three days, he was out of shuttles and ready for the test. So he took it:

  Q: What does a youhup look like? (a) a six-legged canine, (b) a clawed deer, (c) a fifty-kilograms stout ape, (d) a half meter long winged lizard, (e) all of the above, (f) none of the above.

  Youhups were one hundred and ten centimeters tall anthropoid bipeds, according to his book, so (c) was the closest answer.

  Q: Youhups are dangerous because: (a) they eat meat, (b) they attack without provocation, (c) they move in herds, (d) they use tools, (e) all of the above, (f) none of the above.

  (e)—No doubts here.

  Q: How smart are youhups? (a) like an eight-year old child, (b) they have an estimated IQ of 30, (c) they are pretty stupid, (d) not quantified, but very smart, (e) all of the above, (f) none of the above.

  Maybe (a), maybe (d). Try (d).

  Q: How dangerous is it to hunt youhups? (a) not dangerous at all, (b) somewhat dangerous, (c) deadly at all times, (d) very dangerous during mating season, (e) all of the above, (f) none of the above.

  According to the manual he studied, (c) was the answer.

  Q: What weapons are allowed for the hunt? (a) bow and arrows, (b) electrostatic guns, (c) ray guns, (d) slug guns, (e) all of the above, (f) none of the above.

  On this, the manual was repetitive ad nauseam: (f). Youhups were hunted using traps. Weapons were forbidden because if the hunter became hunted and lost the battle, youhups would capture the weapon and use it against the next man who showed up.

  The test went on and on, for pages. Obtaining the license required a score of 95% or better. Nero scored 96%.

  He picked up his belongings, some supplies, and a manual to learn how to set traps. He locked his ceramic gun in the safe of the shuttle and set a course toward the hunting ground.

  *

  Nero landed the shuttle in a thick forest. The vehicle was smaller than the tall growth: once the transponder was shut off, the shuttle would become invisible. If he was injured nobody would be able to find him and bring help—just like Doka.

  Since youhups were smart, they must also be curious: Nero started setting up traps all around the shuttle. The knife he bought worked the softwood of the cuepee trees easily. Cuepee trees made up most of the forest; they resembled poplars, but were taller and had no bark. The wood in their trunks grew harder with age, so the tree trunks were soft at the surface and had a hard core. Branches were the same, on a smaller scale. Nero used branches, limbs, and chunks of softwood tied with ropes to build his traps. By sunset he had rigged seven. Four were rather simple, two were more complex, and one was the next-to-best in his book.

  He was physically exhausted from his construction work, and he had gone through the thirty-hour day with no nap. The evening forest was loud with wild calls and strange noises; he felt threatened by the clatter, being used to the windy silence of Doka. His nostrils had taken in all day the local smells with unceasing surprise: sweet wafts of flowery scents, musty vegetation, decomposing organic remains. He had mixed feelings about locking himself up in the shuttle for the night, yet he dutifully obliged and immediately fell asleep in his bunk.

  He woke up at daybreak, hungry. Even before breakfast, he opened the hatch and looked outside: the air smelled musty; a thin fog was dissipating. For the first time he heard live the youhup's two-tonal call that had given the animals their name. The call was the loudest cry that broke the enchantment of dawn wrapped in silver mist.

  Air indoors was stale and unpleasant, so he left the hatch ajar. In the kitchenette, he grilled a bottlefish steak. He had seen a whole bottlefish on the bench of a merchant and couldn't resist; he enjoyed playing tourist. "It's excellent," the merchant had said, "especially if seasoned with my spice mix."

  So he bought the weird fish with the stumpy body and elongated snout, plus a few grams of spices. He would have loved to cook it outside on a bonfire, but that wouldn't be prudent.

  Something squeaked behind him. He turned to catch a glimpse of fur sneaking into the shuttle. Instantly, he locked the cutlery drawer and grabbed the heaviest pan from among his utensils. The apron still draped over his clothes, he locked the hatch and set out to chase the intruder.

  The living quarters of the shuttle were small with few places to hide, as his guest had found out. Nero walked past a blind corner and the youhup attacked. The meter-tall creature jumped him, making up with momentum what it lacked in mass. They both rolled onto the floor. Nero hit the youhup with the pan, doing little harm. On top of him, the youhup reached for Nero's face and tried to pluck his eyes out. Nero shook his head quickly to make it difficult for the animal to find a grip. Exploiting his greater reach, he retracted his knee, hitting the buttock of the animal hard. The youhup careened through the living quarters, banging hard into a structural bulkhead. The animal tried to stand, confused by the crash. Nero rose, gripped the pan, ran to the youhup and hit the animal in the head, putting no restraint into his effort. The youhup went down. Nero hit it until it stopped moving.

  He sat down panting, appraising the incident. The youhup was small. Nero had gotten away easily, but the attack had been clever. A bigger specimen would be dangerous, and two or more might have been enough to overcome him.

  He walked to the youhup for a closer look: He had seen pictures, but they hadn't prepared him for first contact. This specimen was obviously a male. His fur was glistening taupe, streaked with patches of green and gold. The hair was short, thick, soft, and incredibly clean and well groomed for a wild animal. The body was muscular, with human-like arms and legs. The hands had three fingers and a thumb, and the feet carried blunt spurs at the heels and what looked like a soft hoof, rather than toes. The head was large, out of proportion with the rest of the body, attached without neck. A muzzle below wide eyes protruded from the center of the face. Except for the missing ears, it looked like an angry teddy bear. The teeth in the semi-opened mouth were as sharp as the manual had promised. The tongue was thick, human-like: It looked nimble enough to articulate speech.

  Nero bound arms and legs of the youhup, and tied the animal to a strut, incapacitating it completely. He was too curious to kill it immediately, so he planned to wait until it woke up, deciding to play it by ear afterward. While sitting and staring at his guest, Nero ate his bottlefish without tasting it. Soon after, he practiced his meditation exercise once more, but kept an ear alert to youhup noises.

  Concentration deep enough to trigger disappearance didn’t come easy. Nero needed to approach a state like conscious sleep; he relaxed, concentrated, focused, abandoned his thoughts; his awareness became an empty screen where his mind splashed disconnected images. He felt a growing arousal, like a prelude to a stuporous high; his perception of the physical world became both more acute and more detached. Like lightning in a serene landscape, a vision intruded: He saw in his mind a youhup, which he knew to be a pregnant female, caught in his trap. Anguish at the sight of the animal gripped his heart, mixed with affection akin to love. The strange perception was as distracting as a spray of cold water: he snapped out of his dream, sucked back into reality.

  His captive was waking up, grunting and struggling with the ties. Nero got up and paced to make up his mind on a course of action. He decided to try a gesture of reconciliation by feeding the animal a piece of leftover bottlefish on the tip of a spoon.

  The youhup snarled, sniffed, and bit, severing the wooden spoon without apparent effort, and chewing it with the fish. After that, he started pulling at the ties. Nero offered the youhup another chunk of fish, which was also appreciated.

&nbs
p; The youhup burped and growled, still fighting the ropes. Nero didn't dare to let it loose and was worried about opening the hatch. His dash outdoors last night, building traps alone, had been sheer folly blessed by incredible luck.

  Nero started drawing a picture of what he saw in his dream. He sketched with technique rather than art, then showed the image to the youhup. The creature looked at the sheet, barked to the ceiling and went into a frenzy. So violently did he fight the ties that Nero thought they would break—but they held. Exhausted, his guest hissed a whine, ranting. Nero swore it was crying.

  Nero walked to the cockpit. He pulled a pair of binoculars from the bridge's chest and looked out. Sure enough, there was the animal, exactly as his waking dream had shown him.

  The female had been caught in the best trap, constructed so that any attempt to free the youhup would lead to its death. Allegedly, the hunter would not care about that outcome—and lesser traps were easily escaped if the captive was not alone. The way to free the animal alive, the manual said, was to tug at the net so that the youhup would be raised skyward and clear of the trap in an eyeblink. This meant the body had to move up two meters in less than a fifth of a second: hard for a ground crew, but easy for shuttle boosters.

  Nero decided to try reconciliation measure number two. The jolt would be hard on a pregnant female, but better than certain death. He sat at the console, lifted the shuttle off, and parked it above the trap, levitating it on the landing thrusters. He dropped the tow hook. Muttering and struggling he managed to hang it onto the net. Pushing the thrusters he made the shuttle jump, the net hanging below it; immediately, he landed it in a clearing, jerking sideways so as not to squash his load. Nero moved back to the living quarters and opened the hatch.

  The screams from the wiggling net caught the attention of his guest, which started jerking and tugging. Nero cut the ties binding the animal; the youhup rolled out of the shuttle with arms and legs still partially bound, gnawing at the constraints.

  Next time I’ll go fishing, Nero thought, slamming the hatch shut.

  CHAPTER 17

  Seeo Tissa D'Souza, after arranging with Captain Roxi to send Regalia to Doka in the shortest possible time, teleframed to the headquarters of Hades and Company, leaving the yacht en route. He decided to act as if the information in the broadcast was true, at least on a speculative basis. He shared the information with his personal task force, presenting it as a corporate war game. After much thinking, the best his task force could suggest was to plan for additional capacity to serve lawsuits, which was the specialty of Hades and Company.

  Tissa mourned. The news was so hot—and so useless! We're hammerheads looking for nails, he thought. Regalia came back into his life sometime later when Ensign Matthews knocked at his office.

  "Seeo D'Souza, sir!" Matthews was stiff at attention even in civilian suits.

  "At ease, young man. What's the news?"

  "Regalia is in orbit around Doka, Seeo sir!"

  "Oh, very well. Have you spoken to anyone about this?"

  "No, sir, according to your instructions, sir! Only my name to security and to your secretary, sir!"

  "Please, please, Matthews, stop addressing me with exclamation marks. How did you get here?"

  "I teleframed from Regalia to the closest framepost certified for deep space, then to Earth, and local to here, sir."

  "So it is still a bit of a hassle to jump across light years, isn't it? Are you hungry, tired?"

  "No, sir. The trip took less than two hours."

  "Are you ready to go back?"

  "Well..."

  "Well?" said Tissa.

  "Since I'm here, sir, I wondered if I could, I mean, a few days of shore leave, sir, with due respect, sir!" Matthews snapped to attention, looking at least half a meter above Tissa's head.

  "But of course, of course, how silly of me not to think about it, Matthews. Of course you can have your leave. On one condition."

  "Yes, sir!"

  "You don't know where Regalia is—you don't even know that it exists. You've never heard of Doka. You've never listened to the recording from the beacon. You are a janitor—no, not enough status, let's make it a paralegal with Hades and Company for your whole shore leave. Do you think you can do it?"

  "Yes, sir! Of course, sir!"

  "And no more exclamation marks, please. Good, go now."

  "One more thing, sir, if I'm allowed."

  "Yes?"

  "I need documents, sir, to obey your orders."

  Tissa slapped his forehead. He rang a bell. His secretary came in.

  "Please, Hanna, take care of our new junior paralegal here. He'll tell you what he needs; give him anything he asks—anything at all, on my authorization." Tissa winked at Matthews and slipped out of the office.

  *

  "Nice to see you, sir."

  "Hello, Roxi. Can you land this ship on the planet below us?" Tissa said.

  "Well, sir, Regalia technically can land planetside..."

  "But?"

  "Regulations say a ship the size of Regalia is too big for routine planetside mooring, so we're allowed to land only in a true emergency, and then, quote, only if no substantial and irreparable harm, end quote, will be induced planetside. Regalia will wreak havoc if we land, sir. Chances are she'll make a square kilometer of wasteland."

  "Point one: substantial and irreparable damage. You told me that Doka had a broken ecosystem, so since Doka is already substantially and irreparably damaged, landing will do no worse. Don't you agree?"

  "That's possible, sir."

  "Point two: true emergency. What do you think of the recording the beacon is transmitting? Does it qualify as a true emergency?"

  "A true emergency, sir, implies, quote, immediate danger to human life."

  "Ah, so you agree that there is danger, but you don't think it's immediate."

  "That’s correct, sir."

  "Well, put it this way: If we don't land soon, my beautiful friend in main quarters will die of boredom."

  "I understand, sir. I rely on your influence to get me out of trouble, if trouble should happen."

  "That's a given, Roxi. I'm calling on you first, but the agreement is mutual, of course."

  "Where do we land, sir?" Captain Roxi said.

  "What's down there?"

  "Besides the beacon, there's a way station, a village, and a mine. I took the liberty of running a survey at low power."

  "Good choice. If anyone looks this way, they'll find the beacon first. Well, I assume you have a fresh recollection of the beacon's broadcast. If you were the broadcaster, where would you put the original documents?"

  "Next to the beacon's uplink, so they could be found—if that's the intention. But I wouldn't be there waiting."

  "Sensible choice. So take us down next to the uplink, far enough away so we won't damage it. I want it to keep transmitting."

  Regalia came roaring down gracelessly on her rudimentary landing engines. She was too small to carry a shuttle and too big for landing, so she had to rely on planetside equipment for regular operation—lacking that, she was as clumsy as a musician with boxing gloves.

  Her main engine could not operate in an atmosphere, so Regalia had been built with landing rockets in the form of three small fusion torches; they doubled as deep-space emergency propulsion. Their discharge was clean but scorching.

  Regalia rumbled down loudly enough to break glass panes within kilometers. Ground surface started melting when the tails of her torches were still five hundred meters up. As she landed, her disposable stilts sank for a meter or so in molten dirt before hitting solid ground. They'd be left behind at take-off, forever welded within a glassy silicate that had been Doka's soil.

  After the roar of the torches subsided, the vertical
asset jacks took care of maintaining the ship's balance, allowing time for the stilts to seize in the cooling lava.

  "Ship steady, sir." Roxi said.

  "Very well, let us out then," Tissa demanded.

  "It's not that simple, sir."

  "What now, skipper?"

  "The ground is hot, sir. Very hot—for three hundred meters in every direction. We can spread a coat of very messy insulation foam and take our chances, or wait until the rock cools down."

  "Then we'll wait. How long—half an hour?"

  "More like days, sir."

  "What? Out of the question! Why didn't you tell me before?"

  Roxi looked at Tissa with an expression of innocent bewilderment: Because you didn't ask, Tissa read in his eyes.

  "I'm sorry, sir!" Roxi said. "The foam is supposed to work well enough, but this is also supposed to be an emergency—no allowance for nitpicking.

  "I see."

  "There's a huge storm looming. After the rain, the foam will work better."

  "When is the storm due?"

  "Maybe six hours, sir."

  "Let's wait for the storm, then."

  Tissa walked back to his quarters and drowned his frustration in the arms of the best courtesan in the universe, she who fulfilled his body and stroked his ego in ways Tissa had never experienced with anyone else. When he was sated, Tissa slept until the intercom beeped. He stretched a hand across the satin sheets to activate it.

  "Yes?" Tissa said.

  "The storm hit, sir."

  "Very well, Roxi. I'll be there shortly."

  Tissa caressed the back of his lover, slipped out of the bed, showered, shaved, and put on a fresh set of clothes.