Brightsuit MacBear

  “What?” Mac sat up straight, awake. “You mean in that whole pile of junk of yours, you don’t have any telecom equipment?”

  The lamviin’s furry covering undulated, the Sodde Lydfan equivalent of a shrug. “Why should I have required it? I am, to my certain knowledge, the one representative of my species here at present upon Majesty, as much an alien to most Earthians as are the taflak. Rather more so, I daresay. What’s more, I’d planned—and still do, for that matter, thanks to recent events—to be on the move.”

  The boy leaned forward. “But what if you needed something, Pemot, like your own kind of food or medical help?”

  “I’ve no elaborate requirements. Supplies least of all, having suffered an heroic course of anti-allergic carapacial infusions on Sodde Lydfe before coming—my insides still itch where they can’t be scratched, whenever I think about it—and being able to ingest taflak victuals without ill effect.”

  Mac shook his head, wishing he’d taken similar precautions. To this point, he’d been nibbling on Pemot’s civilized supplies and a few things he’d brought from home himself. It might get pretty hungry here on Majesty before this was over.

  “At my uncle’s advice,” the lamviin continued, “I replenished my crop with brand-new, oversized stones—corundum, a trifle expensive, but worth it—before coming here, since this, I anticipated, would constitute the greatest difficulty on a vegetation-covered planet. And were I to experience, say, a medical emergency…well, in the first place, no one within several light years knows how to help me. And, in the second, it is, shall we say, in the nature of lamviin anatomy and physiology that injuries sufficient to injure us are, in most instances, fatal.”

  “Well,” Mac admitted at last, “it sure looks like I owe you an apology. If you don’t need something, even a ’com, it’s just so much dead weight. In fact, you seem to have thought of everything—unlike a certain party I could name. I guess it’s time I started learning things from you, like you suggested.”

  Pemot lifted a hand and placed it on the boy’s shoulder. “Take courage, stout heart, considering the exigencies involved, you seem to have done well enough.”

  “Compared to what?”

  “Well, you’ve your smartsuit, which will protect you from environmental harm of various kinds and even effect some limited cures, should you happen to fall ill.”

  “Yeah,” he answered, “provided it isn’t too old and beat-up to work right.”

  “We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it. You did think to bring a few things in your kit bag.”

  “You can only go so far”—Mac chuckled, thinking about the haste with which he’d left—“on Lion’s Milk bars, Doublejuice gum, and maximum strength Bufferin-9, though.”

  “And you’ve your father’s pistol—which ought to be considerable comfort.”

  “If I knew how to work it—don’t look at me like that, I never even knew it existed before yesterday.”

  “Well—” Pemot was astonished to encounter a human being who didn’t know how to operate a gun. “We’ll see to it, given the first opportunity that presents itself.”

  “Yeah, well you can start by telling me how it works—and whether or not it’s loaded.”

  “Dear me, I’ll give it my best, by all means. What sort of weapon is it, anyway?”

  Mac leaned over to snag the briefcase. He opened it and extracted the weapon.

  “It says here, right on the barrel: Borchert & Graham, Ltd., Tempe, Ariz., N.A.C.—M247 Five Megawatt Plasma Pistol Rev. 2.3—Before Using Gun Read Warnings in Instruction Manual. Except I didn’t find any. What’s plasma?”

  “Someone, my dear fellow, has neglected your education. Plasma’s a fourth phase of matter, as in: solid, liquid, gas, plasma. I caution you, I’m no physicist. And it seems peculiar to be explaining this to someone born into the culture which taught me and mine, but there you are. Subjected to temperature so extreme even the word no longer means what it did, atoms disassociate—molecules are unable to form—and lose their electrons, acquiring a positive charge which is used, like a handle, to concentrate and direct them.

  “Do you, er, follow that?”

  Mac didn’t answer.

  He’d fallen asleep.

  Mac pushed the door curtain aside and emerged into the sunlight, where Pemot seemed to be talking to himself.

  “Well, that, I believe, does it. I can’t take everything, but I never intended—yes?”

  “How are we going to travel with all of that?”

  Mac pointed to the pile of possessions, as tall as its owner, heaped up on a transparent plastic ground cloth in front of the taflak dwelling Pemot had occupied.

  “All of what?” Pemot protested, sounding hurt. “There isn’t that much of it, is there?”

  Some justice could be seen in the complaints of both sides. The lamviin had managed to compress what had seemed an entire hut full of equipment into just a few large bundles. Pemot reached down to the platform, and pulled a ring. With a loud hissing noise, his belongings rose a few inches from the ground, supported by the hollow plastic boat shape which Mac had mistaken for a tarpaulin.

  “It’s a sand-sled,” Pemot explained, “the basic design being long in use among my people—although this inflatable version represents a new Confederate wrinkle—and if it works on sand, it ought to work even better on moss, don’t you think?”

  Mac was skeptical.

  “Have you actually tried it?”

  Together, they went back into the hut, where the boy’s bags were still waiting for him and where the lamviin wanted to collect one or two more things, himself.

  “Well, no. Thus far it’s been possible to hovercraft from village to village, and—” Pemot looked up from his packing. One of the taflak was at the door, and, even to Mac, who knew next to nothing about the fuzzy creatures, it seemed upset and excited. It chirped and whistled at the lamviin while the human boy waited. Pemot’s fur began to bristle, and Mac knew it was something serious.

  Being trilaterally symmetrical and possessing the faculties of vision and speech in a full, three-hundred-sixty-degree circle about his fur-covered body, the lamviin didn’t turn to address Mac, but it was clear his attention had been refocused.

  “Something’s coming, something they want us to see.”

  Mac nodded and followed the two aliens through the door.

  Outside, it seemed the entire village was straining to look upward and toward the horizon. Mac and Pemot, in identical unconscious gestures, shielded their eyes and peered into the distance but saw nothing. It appeared the single ocular of the taflak was superior either to human or Sodde Lydfan vision.

  Then—

  “Ku Emfypriisu Pah, what do you suppose that is?”

  Mac squinted until his eyes watered. He was rewarded with the sight of what at first appeared to be a large, slow-moving bird approaching the village. As it neared, the boy changed his mind. The bird’s wings were stationary and transparent, as was its body, once it had come close enough for him to see.

  It was an aircraft, silent and transparent.

  “It’s a museum piece, Pemot, some of your First Wave colonists, coming to pay a visit.”

  “If so, it would be most unprecedented. I gather the first Majestan colonists left Earth, wishing to have as little to do with other ‘races’—insignificant morphological variations within your own species—as possible. Thus they’ve never associated with—I say, what are they about in that contrivance?”

  Mac shook his head, and began to laugh. “Why, they’re pedaling, Pemot. If I hadn’t seen it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it. That’s why we didn’t hear it coming. The plane’s powered like a bicycle.”

  Mac was correct. He and the others could see now that the aircraft’s occupants had their feet in stirrups, cranking a long chain which drove a pair of big, transparent, slow-moving propellors at the rear of the machine. As it neared the village, the huge control surfaces tilted, and the aircraft’s altitude diminished
from the several hundred feet at which it had first been seen to a few dozen.

  “Are they planning to visit us?” the lamviin asked. “Where are they going to land that thing?”

  “How should I know? It sure looks fragile.”

  In another few moments, it was over the village.

  “I say, not First Wavers—those are chimpanzees at the pedals, aren’t they? What do you—MacBear!”

  Mac shoved Pemot behind the hut. A chill had gone down his spine as he caught a glint of metal.

  “Not just at the pedals—they also have guns!”

  Mac had just gotten the words out, when the sizzle of plasma pistols filled the air, joined, a fraction of a second later, by the alarmed whistling of hundreds of taflak. This stopped as the aircraft turned and made another pass. This time, in addition to their pistol fire, the pilots dropped flame-topped containers which broke, splashing destruction everywhere. Several of the huts began to burn, along with the platform itself, releasing thick, greasy smoke into the air. The natives were blue streaks, diving off into the concealing Sea of Leaves.

  “Ku sro Fedsudoh Siidyto, so have we!”

  Several ear-shattering reports followed: Pemot had drawn the small weapon he carried, held it with two of his hands against the side of the hut they were hiding behind, and, with the third, fired several times at the muscle-powered aircraft as it made a second turn. Instead of the brilliant balls of plasma the boy had expected, the lamviin was shooting old-fashioned bullets!

  Mac didn’t wait to see the result, but dived into the lamviin’s hut, one of the majority still intact, and went to his briefcase. Snapping it open, he seized the heavy belt, pulled the Borchert & Graham from it, and ran out back to his friend’s side.

  The flames were spreading.

  Several of the larger taflak had returned from the moss surrounding the village, broken out spear throwers, and were hurling slim, deadly projectiles with all their might toward the airplane. To their dismay, their spears were falling short.

  “I don’t know if this thing’ll work, but—” Mac wrapped both hands around the oversized grip, lifted the heavy, tapered barrel into the sky, brought the front sight up between the ears of the rear, and centered them on the aircraft, as yet undamaged by Pemot’s return fire.

  He pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  He turned to the lamviin. “Do you know how to work this thing?”

  “I—yeep! Lad sro mabo al Pah, point that artillery piece some other direction! Try that lever—no, this one. It looks like a safety to me, or a power switch.”

  Mac followed Pemot’s instructions. What he assumed was a pilot lamp under the rear sight gave off a dull glow. A faint hum could be heard from somewhere inside the mechanism.

  Several more chemical-powered gun blasts assaulted the boy’s ears. Pemot had at last managed to connect with the aircraft. Small holes had appeared in its forward-mounted control surfaces. Meanwhile, its occupants had stopped shooting, seemed to be having trouble turning or had decided to turn the other way.

  Sighting along the barrel, Mac observed, “I’ll bet they didn’t expect us to defend ourselves!”

  A ball of plasma, glaring like a miniature sun and impossible to look at, flashed past them and hit the platform, which burst into flame a few feet away.

  Pemot ducked—too late, for the shot had missed him by at least six feet. “Do you call this defending ourselves?”

  Mac’s hands, wrapped around the pistol, had begun to shake. He took a deep breath—trying not to choke on the smoke which enveloped them—and squeezed the trigger.

  A pale beam of reddish light reached out toward the aircraft, followed by a belch. A sickly yellow blob of energy wabbled along the beam and glanced off the plane. Anticlimactic as it was, it was enough. One wing caught fire and began to burn. Its occupants furious at the pedals, the machine turned away from the village, trailing smoke, and sank lower with every few feet of distance it gained.

  Both the boy and the lamviin heard it hit the moss with a faint crunch, some distant yelling, and—

  “Yeeeegh!”

  Mac turned to Pemot.

  Pemot turned to Mac.

  They both spoke at the same time.

  “Can-can.”

  The boy grinned, and, from the texture of the lamviin’s fur, guessed Pemot was grinning back. All at once, the lamviin’s fur drooped. He examined his pistol and reholstered it.

  “Dear me, I’m afraid, in my haste to bring the taflak the benefits of civilization, that I’ve gone rather too far. I’d forgotten that any radio receiver, unless measures are taken to prevent it, is also a radio transmitter.”

  Watching Pemot, Mac remembered to switch the Borchert & Graham off. He slid it into its holster—a little surprised to discover he’d brought the entire rig with him—then shrugging, slung the belt around his waist and, with some initial clumsiness, fastened the buckle. He felt as if he’d gained twenty pounds.

  “And somebody homed in on it?”

  “I believe so.” The lamviin blinked. “And because peace has reigned upon Majesty since the taflak, long ago, demonstrated to the First Wave that they may not be attacked with impunity, somebody who in all probability doesn’t want us to pursue Dalmeon Geanar.”

  “Somebody,” Mac offered, “whose name we won’t mention, but whose middle initials are the Hooded Seven?”

  Chapter XII: Middle C

  The plasma gun and firebomb attack on the taflak village didn’t delay Mac and Pemot long.

  They’d already been prepared to go, for the most part, and their belongings were undamaged by the ill-fated and futile aerial assault. Also, they felt the sooner they left, the safer the Majestan friends they left behind would be. Since he understood the language, Pemot took care of the farewells.

  These, given the nature of their hosts, were somewhat lengthy. The taflak, like many sapients at a similar point of development, tended to hold ceremonies on any excuse. Mac made good use of the time, however, since, at some point during the battle, his subconscious mind had put his previous experience in the moss together with the sight of Pemot’s sand-sled, and given birth to an idea.

  Receiving permission from the lamviin, he spent the hour Pemot was away fussing with sheet plastic and plastic-covered wire. Soon, wearing the “moss-shoes” he’d “invented,” with his father’s pistol heavy about his waist, his bags consolidated and strapped onto his back by the handle straps, Mac preceded the lamviin down the ramp and was about to step off into—or, he hoped, onto—the moss, when a whistle shrilled behind them, and Pemot touched the boy on the arm.

  “A moment, if you please, MacBear.”

  The abbreviated name seemed to have stuck, at least in the lamviin’s vocabulary. This suited Mac well enough—as did the delay Pemot had requested of him. The boy didn’t altogether trust his invention and wasn’t anxious to try it out. Shrugging, he shuffled his feet around one another until he could see what this latest delay was all about. As he did, a large taflak form came hurtling toward them down the ramp, tentacle-over-tentacle, as usual passing its spear thrower and bundle of spears to itself in a blur of motion.

  The taflak screeched to a halt and had a brief ear-splitting conversation with the lamviin.

  “This is—well, let’s call him ‘Middle C,’ shall we? Nothing like his real name, of course. He and his, er, brother were the ones who first found you.”

  “And rescued me from the can-can.”

  Mac shuddered, thinking about the pair of chimpanzees who’d gone down in the muscle-powered airplane. He looked down at his moss-shoes. They seemed ridiculous, and he wished he’d spent the time learning more about the plasma gun.

  “Tell him I’m much obliged.”

  “Indeed, I shall.”

  When Pemot had finished with the translation, Mac stretched out a hand to the taflak. Thanks to the existence of an identical custom he’d learned from the Sodde Lydfan scientist, Middle C transferred the spears he car
ried to his free tentacle and returned the honor, along with an enthusiastic whistle.

  Given the awkward position he’d been carried in, the excitement at the practical-joke boiling pot, followed by his exhausted collapse, last night’s talk with Pemot in the darkness, and the surface-to-air battle this morning, Mac was enjoying his first real chance to inspect one of the aliens—no, he corrected himself, he and Pemot were the aliens here on Majesty—at rest and up close.

  “At rest” was the more important of the two considerations, for, left to themselves, the taflak were seldom found in such a state. They were, most often, a blur of motion, and their preferred method of travel was the one Mac had already observed, cartwheeling from tentacle to tentacle, which may have been the only kind of travel that made sense on the surface of the Sea of Leaves and a great way to get around, but made the taflak difficult to examine in any detail.

  Just as mankind’s remote ancestors (typified by starfish or sea urchins) had been constructed on a five-sided plan, from which bilaterality had later evolved, these creatures displayed an underlying trilateral symmetry, but had, in recent geological history, begun evolving into something approaching the human arrangement. In this rare, motionless state, they tended to balance on one of their three appendages, each resembling a woolly but close-trimmed splay-tipped elephant’s trunk, with the other two, used for manipulation, stretched out and upward, making the entire creature look something like a round-bellied letter Y.

  The great transparent taflak eye, transfixing the entire creature, could see backward, forward, and to all sides at once—a biological necessity on the perilous planet. Being large and symmetrical, Mac had already seen it, although he’d missed the faint lace-work of blood vessels (at least he thought that was what they were), thin nervous and supportive connections visible through its ultra-transparent fluid between the black-surfaced ball floating in the center, constituting pupil, retina, and brain, the velvety surrounding flesh, the three peripheral tentacles, and the vital organs contained in their bases.

  Where the high-pitched whistling and chirping talk came from, Mac never did discover.