“You’re a nasty, evil man,” Mina Gelmann informed the Chakan, “you should only go color-blind and mistake cockroach pellets for strawberries!”
“And you are a senile old woman. What is the matter with you people? Don’t any of you have any sense? This is not a vid entertainment.”
Follingston-Heath looked distinctly skittish. “Really, I think we should give it up. Wal’s right. We’ve gotten ourselves involved in something way beyond us. I don’t know about the rest of you but I … I’d like to get back to the Village. Back to my apartment.”
Gelmann was staring at him. “Wesley, this isn’t like you.”
“Mina, we could get killed.”
Hawkins’s gaze had narrowed. He glared back at Shimoda, who reluctantly let him go. The smaller man straightened his clothes and gazed thoughtfully at his tall nemesis of many years and arguments. They’d never been worse than friendly enemies.
“Wesley, you’re not a soldier.”
Follingston-Heath looked at him sharply. “Whatever do you mean, Wal?”
“I mean,” said Hawkins, striding across the sand to confront the other man, “that you’re not retired from the Victoria League military forces. I bet you were never in the Victoria League military forces. The kind of officer you’ve always claimed to be wouldn’t be talking like you’re talking now.” His tone was uncharacteristically gentle. “We’re all your friends here, Wes, no matter who you are or what you were. This is a good time for a little truth. Might be the last time.”
Looking around, Follingston-Heath saw that his best friends in the world were staring at him expectantly. He maintained the pose a moment longer, loath even at the last to give it up. Then he slumped. “Okay. It’s true. Oh, I’m from Hampstead V all right. But Wal’s got it. My name is Wesley, but just plain Wesley Heath. No Follingston. And I was in the military.” He seemed to straighten a little. “I just never rose higher than corporal.
“It wasn’t what you’d call a distinguished field career. I worked in information storage, basic retrieval and cleaning. Got to read a lot of military history, strategy, like that. The one thing I wanted was to retire to Earth someday. But I couldn’t do that as a … a librarian’s assistant. So I invented the Right Honorable Colonel Wesley Follingston-Heath and managed to annex some appropriate credentials and records. Wasn’t easy, believe me.
“Once I slipped into the persona, well, it was simple enough to keep it going. I’ve enjoyed being Colonel Wesley Follingston-Heath. It’s a lot better than being plain old Wes Heath.” He looked beaten. “I’m sorry. If you’d seen what my life was like, you might understand better.”
“That’s all right, Wesley.” Gelmann came over and put an arm around him, squeezing comfortingly. “You shouldn’t worry, we like you just fine for who you are, not what you weren’t.”
“I may even like you better,” said Shimoda.
“The same thoughts here.” Iranaputra walked over and shook Heath’s hand firmly. Behind them gentle wavelets continued to caress the glaucescent beach.
“I don’t mean to bring this touching tableau to a crashing halt,” said Hawkins steadily, “but nobody’s gonna get the opportunity to expand on this heartrending rendezvous of truth if we don’t decide to do the sensible thing pretty quick.”
Gelmann kept her arm around Heath. He ventured a faltering smile, his gaze traveling from Shimoda, to Iranaputra, and eventually to Hawkins.
“I’m sorry I was so hard on you so many times, old chap. But you were such a damnably good target.”
“A librarian.” Hawkins flung sand toward the rippling sea. “And the rest of us prize suckers.”
“I said I was sorry. I can’t be anything else.”
“Hell.” Hawkins looked at the ground. “Forget it. You’re a damn good checkers player. Damn good.”
Heath sighed. “It was fun while it lasted, don’t you know.”
“So was this, but it is over.” Iranaputra turned to regard the sea. “I did not think when I agreed to help out the kitchen supervisor with a recalcitrant piece of machinery that it would lead to this.”
“The Chakans.” Hawkins eyed the Autothor. “I wonder if the bastards mean what they say when they claim they’ll let us go.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Heath. “We’ve no choice.”
“Ah,” the Autothor blurted unexpectedly, “so that’s it!” Everyone flinched as it soared ceilingward, emitting a miniature sonic boom and exploding in size until it had tripled, quadrupled its dimensions. As those below gaped, its color deepened, becoming a richer, purer shade of blue, until it had taken on the aspect of a turquoise sun dominating the pseudo-sky overhead. The perpetual sunset over the artificial ocean went from pink and gold to blue and gold while the azure effulgence turned the grains of emerald sand underfoot an exquisite blue-green, so that the beach seemed suddenly paved with a billion tiny aquamarines.
Gelmann slid down her Autothor-manufactured sunshades while her companions scrambled to slip their own in place. “Well, aren’t you the sudden show-off. What’s going on?”
The now massive, throbbing blue ellipse blazed ebulliently. “I have just reintegrated a critical portion of memory. It is not precisely a revelation, but temporality has become demonstrably less confusing!”
“Wow,” Hawkins muttered diffidently. “I’m so excited.”
The Autothor spun madly, throwing off splinters of galvanic turquoise. “It is, it is! I am, I am!”
Shimoda had to use a hand to shield his eyes in spite of the protection afforded by his shades. “Am what?” he shouted skyward.
“I remember my designer’s purpose. I recall what I was built for. I remember what I am.”
“We’re so pleased for you,” the sardonic Hawkins yelled. “But is it going to do us any good?”
“I think so.” Still whirling wildly, the blue ellipse plummeted exuberantly toward the water. Its voice had fallen an octave. “I am … a warship! See?”
The holomagic image reappeared. Once again they saw the four Chaka craft hovering in formation alongside the bulk of the Drex vessel. One launched something from its underside. An intense beam of coherent purplish light erupted from a blister in the artifact’s side. It intercepted the launched object, which promptly exploded in a brief but intense fireball.
“That is very interesting.” Iranaputra was talking as much to himself as to his friends. “A laser of such amplitude is of course impossible. So it cannot be a laser.”
The serving robot was squatting on its treads. All four arms were busily engaged in the construction of an impressively detailed sand castle. “Obviously it’s beyond your comprehension. As all of this is.”
“I have succeeded in reactivating a small portion of my armory,” the Autothor proclaimed. “I shall now attempt to dissuade the impolite from additional assaults upon our person.”
Instantly space outside the Drex vessel was filled with multiple types of energy beam, neutron-compacted explosives, hot plasma, shaped charges traveling just below tachyspeed, molecular bond disrupters, and for good measure, a half dozen spatially circumscribed thermonuclear implosion bombs. Subsequent to this understated overreaction and as soon as their watering eyes managed to refocus, Iranaputra and his companions could see that the four Chakan hostiles which had been threatening them a moment earlier had been reduced to a few drifting clouds of hot metallic gas, several amorphous blobs of rapidly cooling metal, and two cartons of service regulation Chakan military underwear which had perversely managed to survive the otherwise utter annihilation.
“Gee,” Gelmann murmured into the stunned silence which followed the ravening devastation, “I don’t think they’ll be bothering us anymore, I shouldn’t need to point out.”
