Wild Cards [02] Aces High by George R.R. Martin Page B

strange solitary sort, enigmatic and uncommunicative; and twenty-three years in orbit, locked in the close confines of his singleship with nothing to occupy him but meditation and monitoring, had only made the nymph stranger still-but of course that was why he had been chosen out of all those the Master Trader might have pegged when the Opportunity came this way so long ago, in the human year 1952, to observe the results of the Takisian grand experiment. Unbidden, the memories came. The vast Network starship had circled the little green planet all that summer, finding little of interest. The native civilization was promising, but scarcely more advanced than it had been on their previous visit a few centuries earlier. And the vaunted Takisian virus, the wild card, seemed to have produced great numbers of freaks, cripples, and monsters. But the Master Trader liked to cover all bets, so when the Opportunity departed, it leftt behind two observers: the Embe in orbit, and a xenologist on the surface. It amused the Master Trader to hide his agent in plain sight, on the streets of the world's greatest city. And for Jhubben, who had signed a lifetime service contract for the chance to travel to distant worlds, it was a rare chance to dot important work.
    Still, until this moment there had always been the knowledge that someday the Opportunity would return, that someday he would know starflight again, and perhaps even return to the glaciers and ice cities of Glabber, beneath its wan red sun. The Embe nymph had never quite been a friend, yet Ekkedme had been something just as important. They had shared a past. Only Jube had known the Embe was there, watching, listening; only Ekkedme had known that Jube the Walrus, joker newsboy was really Jhubben, a xenologist from Glabber. The nymph had been a link to his past, to his homeworld and his people, to the Opportunity and the Network itself, to its one-hundred-thirty-seven member species spread across a thousand-odd worlds.
    Jube looked at the new watch his friends had given him. It was past two. The message had been received just before eight. He had never used a singularity shifter himself-it was an Embe device, still experimental, powered by a mini-black hole and capable of functioning as a stasis field, a teleportation device, even a power source, but fantastically expensive, its secrets zealously guarded by the Network. He did not pretend to understand its workings, but it should have brought Ekkedme here, where Jhubben could help him. If the shifter had malfunctioned, the Embe might have teleported into airless space, or the bottom of the ocean, or . . . well, anywhere within range.
    He shook his massive head. What could he do? If Ekkedme was still alive, he would make his way here. Jube was powerless to help him. Meanwhile, he had a more urgent problem: something, or someone, had discovered, attacked, and destroyed the singleship. The humans had neither the technology nor the motives. Whoever was responsible was clearly no friend of the Network, and if they were aware of his existence, they might be coming after him as well. Jube found himself wishing that he hadn't just given away his weapon to Doughboy.
    He watched the Embe's last transmission one last time in the hopes of finding a clue to the unknown enemy. There was nothing, except . . . "The Mother!" Ekkedme had said.
    What was that? Some Embe religious invocation, or was his colleague actually calling on the female who had hatched him? Jube spent the next few hours floating in his tub, thinking. He did not savor those thoughts, yet the logic was inescapable. The Network had many enemies, within and without, but only one truly powerful rival in this sector of space, and only one that might be violently disgruntled to find Earth under observation: a species so like and so unlike the humans, imperious and aloof, racist, implacably bloody-minded, and capable of most any atrocity, to judge from what they'd done on Earth, and what