I went back to my hotel to get changed. As I walked by reception I saw Feng talking to the girl behind the counter. He gave her a card, which she swiped into a computer and handed him the card and a key. The sly bastard was taking lessons. He went in the direction of the humproom without turning around. He hadn't seen me.
Just to make sure I was right, I hurried upstairs, got changed and sat in the lobby from where I could see the reception counter. Sure enough, a few minutes later he handed in his key and went towards the bar. He had a faraway look in his eyes.
I gave him a couple of minutes to settle down, got a beer at the bar and sat at his table.
"Fancy seeing you here," I said instead of a greeting. "Was your lesson any good?"
"You didn't think I was going to miss out on that? Did you?" Feng didn't seem in the slightest embarrassed at having been caught.
"I thought it might go against your sexual persuasion."
"What are you talking about, you dumb prick? I'm not a queer. I'm as straight as you are."
"What have you been doing for sex then all these years?"
"Look Frank, not everyone who runs around with tits and in a dress in this place is a poofter in drag. You can get a straight fuck, if you know where to go."
"This is better discussed in a safer place. Shall we go for lunch at the Chinese joint? There are some things I have to tell you anyway."
***
Half an hour later we were in a private room in Feng's favourite restaurant. I told him about the tests and about Dr. Patel's DNA profile.
"Pretty much as we thought. The big picture still doesn't make any sense though."
"What are you driving at?"
"The cities don't make sense. From what I've seen, these things were not built by a space faring nation. Even by our standards, the level of technology used to construct and operate them is fairly primitive. They were certainly not built by the creatures who created these magnificent spacecraft that guard the planet. The Oktonians haven't built the cities either, they aren't evolved enough. That leaves the humans who live there. Technically they would have been able to, but there aren't enough of them to build things of that size, and what for? They don't need cities that big. Whoever built these things must have numbered in the millions, billions perhaps. So where are they? There seems to be an entire race missing. Whatever happened to these people must have been fairly recent, or the cities and their machines would be in worse shape than they are; say in the last two hundred years or so."
"How can an entire race go missing that quickly? There is no sign they were wiped out in a war or by an epidemic. There are no bombed buildings and no skeletons lying around from what I've seen. If it was as recent as you say there should be."
"I've thought about that. Say, if someone introduced a race specific virus or bacterium that made people sick. Not very sick, something of the nature of a cold perhaps, but left them in its wake sterile. That could wipe out a whole race in the space of a generation. Things would go on as before. People would grow old and die. They would get buried or cremated according to custom, until there were too few left to do much. The last ones you might still find in places because there was no one left to bury them, but there wouldn't be all that many. Genocide on a massive scale with few things left over to tell what happened there. They possibly never knew they had been attacked."
"A people who can build spaceships like the ones in orbit might well be able to do something like this. The question is ... why? And why hasn't the planet been invaded by now?"
"Maybe they cannot live on the planet. Perhaps they aren't oxygen breathers."
"That could explain a few things. I doubt it though. Why go to that much trouble if you can't live there? No Feng, I don't think that's it."
"Have you got a better explanation?"
"Take these huge warships of theirs. You're an engineer. Can you tell me why anyone in his right mind would build a fucker that size? Given the same technology, you could build hundreds of smaller vessels with the same amount of material. Against that many smaller ships those monsters wouldn't stand a chance in a fight. Some would get through and blow that big bastard right out of the sky."
"I can see your point, but where does that get us?"
"Look, Feng. We've been told they are warships and are there to protect their neck of the woods. We have always accepted that. No one has ever seen them fire a shot though I'm sure they are capable of it. Their mere size keeps opposing forces at bay. In other words we are scared of what they may contain."
"If they aren't warships, what are they then?"
"Transporters perhaps. The only reason I can think of to build a monster that size is to transport a lot of people. We know of eight of these vessels. There maybe more. Four of the ones we know about are always in orbit, four are out on patrol. They take turns. Depending on how long their journey took to get here they would hold about two hundred thousand people each, plus support gear. That gives us around one and a half million colonists plus the crews. With me so far?"
"Yes, go on."
"They send an advance party to deal with the locals. When the big ships arrive there are ready made, undamaged cities and a mass of docile slaves all waiting for them. The perfect conquest. They ferry the colonists to the surface, the crews stay on board. Now something unexpected happens. Those lovely bugs who sterilised the original inhabitants have mutated and now affect the colonists in the same way. They would have found out within months they were in trouble. They quarantine the crews on the ships. One generation later only the crews and their offspring are left, perhaps with nowhere to go."
