Cobra - Cobra Strike Part 47

Menssana brought back, in particular the section on the bird we've nicknamed the spookie. What was in there wasn't much-mainly just a brief encounter we had with one near the ship's perimeter. What wasn't there was the strong suspicion I've had ever since then that the spookie is in some degree telepathic."

The word seemed to hang like smoke in the air. Pyre flicked his eyes around the room: at Chrys, who looked troubled; Corwin, Gwen, and Joshua, whose faces appeared to register astonished skepticism; at Justin, whose expression was closed but... interested.

"All my evidence is subjective," Jonny continued, "but let me describe exactly what happened and see what you think."

Carefully, almost as if giving evidence in court, he went on to tell of the spookie watching him from the low bushes; of its agitation when he called others over to see; of its deftly timed, deftly executed break for freedom; and of the mission's failure to locate any more of the species. When he finished there was a long silence.

"Anyone else come to this conclusion?" Gwen asked at last.

"Two or three others are wondering about it," Jonny told her. "Understandably, none of us put it in our official reports, but Chrys and I weren't imagining things out there."

"Um. Doesn't have to be a complete, mind-reading telepathy, does it?" Gwen mused. "With a spookie's brain capacity it shouldn't have the intelligence to handle input like that."

"Dr. Hanford made a similar comment at the time," Chrys said. "We've talked about the possibility the spookies might form some kind of group mind, or that the sense boils down more to a feeling for danger than actual mind-reading."

"I'd vote for the latter," Corwin put in. "A group mind, even if such a thing could exist, shouldn't worry too much about losing one of its cells. In fact, it might deliberately sacrifice a spookie or two to get a look at your weaponry in action."

"Good point," Jonny nodded. "I lean toward the danger-recognition theory myself, though it requires a pretty fine scale to have timed things that well."

"The fine-tuning, at least, could have been coincidental," Corwin suggested.

"Or the whole thing could have been coincidence," Joshua said hesitantly.

"Sorry, Dad, but I don't see anything here that can't be explained away."

"Oh, I agree," Jonny said without rancor. "And if I hadn't been there I'd be treating it with the same healthy skepticism. As a matter of fact, I hope you're right. But one way or the other, we've got to pin this down, and we've got to pin it down fast."

"Why?" Pyre asked. "It seems to me Tacta's fauna is pretty far down the priority stack. What's the big rush for?"

Jonny opened his mouth-but it was Justin who spoke. "Because the Council's about to make a decision on war with Qasama," he said evenly, "and the mojos are related to these spookies. Aren't they."

Jonny nodded, and Pyre felt the blood draining out of his face. "You mean to say we were fighting telepathic birds down there?"

"I don't know," Jonny said. "You were there. You tell me."

Pyre licked his lips briefly, eyes shifting to Justin. The immediate shock was fading and he was able to think.... "No," he said after a minute. "No, they weren't strictly telepathic. They never recognized that we were Cobras, for one thing-never reacted as if I was armed until I started shooting."

"Did you ever see how they reacted to a conventional weapon, though?" Gwen asked.

Pyre nodded. "Outside the ship, the first contact. The team had to leave their lasers in the airlock."

"And Decker," Joshua murmured.

"And Decker," Pyre acknowledged, swallowing with the memory of York's sacrifice.

"In fact, I'd go so far as to say the mojos don't even sense the presence of danger, at least not the way you claim your spookie does. When I climbed up a building at the edge of Sollas that last night I surprised both a Qasaman sentry and his mojo. The bird should at least have been in the air if it felt me coming." He c.o.c.ked an eyebrow at Justin. "You notice anything, one way or the other?"

The young Cobra shrugged. "Only that the group mind thing goes out the window with at least the mojos-none of them learned anything about us no matter how many of their friends we slaughtered." He paused, and a haze of emotional pain seemed to settle over his face. "And... there may be one other thing."

The others sensed it as well, and a silence rich in sympathy descended on the room. It took Justin a couple of tries to get started, but when he finally spoke his voice was steady and flat with suppressed emotion. "You've all read my report, I expect. You know I-well, I panicked while I was being taken underground in Purma. I killed all the mojos and some of the Qasamans in the elevator, and a few minutes later I killed another group in the hallway upstairs. What... what some of you don't know is that I didn't just panic. I literally lost my head when each set of mojos attacked. I don't even remember fighting them off, just sort of coming to with them dead around me."

He stopped, fighting for control... and it was Joshua who spotted the key first.

"It was only when the mojos were attacking you?" he asked. "The Qasamans themselves didn't bother you?"

Justin shook his head. "Not to the same extent. At least not those in the elevator. The others... well, I don't remember killing them, either, I guess. I don't know-maybe I'm just rationalizing for my failure."

"Or maybe you're not," Jonny said grimly. "Almo, did you experience anything like that when you were fighting the mojos?"

Pyre hesitated, thinking back. He wished he could admit to such a thing, for the sake of Justin's self-esteem. If the mojos actually had been fueling the younger man's reaction....

But he had to shake his head. "Sorry, but I'm afraid not," he told Jonny. "On the other hand, I never faced mojos who'd already seen I was dangerous, either.

I was always in a position to target and eliminate them in the first salvo.

Perhaps we could talk to Michael Winward, see what he went through."

Joshua was gazing into s.p.a.ce. "The cities. They're designed for the mojos' benefit. You suppose there's more significance to that than we thought?"

Gwen stirred. "I have to admit I don't understand this 'designed city' bit, especially the lunacy of letting herds of bololins charge up your streets.

Wouldn't it have been simpler to just go out on hunting trips when you wanted to let your mojo breed?"

"Or else set up tarbine aviaries in the cities," Chrys suggested. "I would think it harder to go out and trap wild mojos than to breed tame ones, anyway."

"That would certainly make the most sense," Pyre said.

"a.s.suming," Corwin said quietly, "that the Qasamans were the ones making those decisions."

And there it is, Pyre thought. What all the rest of us are skating around, out in the open at last. He looked around the circle, but superimposed on the view was an unsettling image: a Qasaman as marionette, its strings in the beak of its mojo....

It was Justin who eventually broke the silence. "It's not as simple as the mojos being able to take control of people," he said. "We had mojos all around us that last night and still were able to escape."

Pyre thought back. "Yes," he agreed slowly. "Both outside of Purma and in

Kimmeron's office in Sollas the mojos should have been able to influence me. If they could."

"Maybe they need a longer a.s.sociation with a person," Corwin said. "Or there's a distance or stress factor that inhibits them."

"You're talking degrees now," Chrys spoke up, her voice low. "Does that mean we're all agreed that somehow, on some level, the mojos are influencing events on Qasama?"

There was a brief silence; and, one by one, they nodded. "The cities," Joshua said. "That's the key indicator. They've gone to enormous trouble to duplicate the mojos' natural breeding patterns, even when simpler ways exist. Funny none of us picked up on that before."

"Maybe not," Pyre told him grimly. "Maybe the mojos were able to dampen our curiosity that much, at least."

"Or maybe not," Joshua retorted. "Let's not start giving these birds too many superhuman abilities, all right? They're not even intelligent, remember. I think we humans are all perfectly capable of missing the obvious without any outside help."

The discussion went back and forth for a while before turning to others matters... and so engrossed did they all become that Pyre alone noticed Justin's quiet departure.