Shock: who were these people? Who were these people? Who were these—?
“How in the Holy Name of Absolute Authority do you know about the Hamiltonians? We have only recently discovered our past ... I never mentioned ... Rog, do you know where all human beings originally came from?”
Embarrassed silence all around.
“The stork brought them!” Lucille snorted finally.
Rogers grimaced, picked up his pace, trudging forward to take his turn at coercing the animals. He never did explain what praxeology was.
-4-
In the middle of that long, bright night, we came to yet another clearing, indistinguishable from any other that we had encountered. All evening we had been paralleling the same stream I had bathed in before. Since my first sketchy wash, my skin felt loose, as if it were about to fall off in ragged sheets. I itched. It was a form of torture itself.
“Well,” I said casually, presuming on my apparently cordial new acquaintance with these still mysterious individuals. “If there are no objections from anyone, I am going for another long, sandy scrub. That is, if we intend to linger here for that long.” I slid easily off of the straw-slick cart-bed, marveling all over again at how good my leg felt.
Couper helped Rogers guide the wagon under a low-hanging tree. To my surprise, he began unhitching the animals. Searching through the straw, Lucille produced, unwrapped, then unfolded a small mechanical device resembling a portable electric fan. Rogers began sliding the Lieutenant down with my enlisted help. We placed the unconscious man on the ground, propped securely against a boulder. The Lieutenant mumbled, his eyelids fluttering a little, but he went directly back to sleep.
“Only one objection, son.” Couper drew his plasma-gun. My heart skipped, believing that this was the end, until I saw that he was glancing warily about the clearing. He reholstered his little weapon, then began replacing the daytime shade fabric over the animal’s backs. Using a section of flat harness, he slapped each of the beasts on the rump, driving them out of the clearing. “Some peasant is in for a very profitable surprise,” he said. “The objection, Corporal, is that we’re here.”
Lucille had set the odd collapsible device on the same rock which supported the Lieutenant’s slumbering head. She stared at it intently for a moment, then glanced suddenly at me. Almost as if she had been caught doing something naughty, she hastily threw a switch on its base.
“Rapunzel, Rapunzel,” she intoned, “Let down your hair ... ”
I took it for some kind of code, like fighter-pilots use.
“ ... Rapunzel, Rapunzel, this is Lucy Bear!”
The machine spoke: “Cute, Cilly, cute. Are you people ready? We’re running late.” Involuntarily, my eyes lifted skyward, searching for some super-advanced starship coming to pick us up. I almost began to cry. I had believed that I was going to die on this miserable dirty planet.
Couper’s crew gathered round.
“We’re ready, Ev, with two guests,” replied Lucille, “Non-hostile, more or less, and both severely wounded. They’ll need some special arrangements.”
“Congratulations to one and all, then.” the little communicator replied, “and a hearty well-done. Which is how I’ll have ’em waiting for you and your guests, unless they’re vegetarians, or you prefer yours rare. Okay, computer’s got the fix ... it shouldn’t be too much longer ... ”
I found myself straining to hear rocket-thunder, or maybe even the almost supersonic warbling whistle of some weirdly wonderful alien drive. Rogers folded up the communicator, tucking it under one robed arm.
“There it is!” Lucille cried. She pointed. A minuscule spark of utter brilliance, electric blue, had appeared in front of us, about a meter from my nose. It quickly widened into an azure-edged hole—right through the very air in front of us! Through it, impossibly, I could make out a complex metal-plastic interior where the light was softer.
One at a time, they stepped through the hole, avoiding the lower edge.
I helped Couper carry the Lieutenant. Behind us, the azure circle shrank again, to no more than a blinding dot, brighter than Sca’s sun. It disappeared with a pop! Plastic-upholstered benches fronted a circular wall. Above them were curved windows, reaching to a domed ceiling.
Through them glowed the stars, undimmed by atmosphere.
Below, the surface, deeply curved at this altitude, of the planet Sca.
We were in orbit!
“Welcome aboard the Little Tom, my friends,” said a voice I knew from Lucille’s little radio transceiver. “Dinner is about to be served.”
I turned—nearly fainting with surprise—to confront my first real alien: over a meter tall, man-shaped, but completely covered with fur!
Little Tom
“Dinner is about to be served.”
Thus spake the alien monster.
The thing was little, man-shaped, a couple of heads shorter than I am, spindly, almost frail-appearing. It nonetheless spoke with a deep, rumble-toned authority, its humanlike voice seeming to emanate from a wristwatch-sized electronic instrument it wore strapped to its hairy wrist.
Couper bundled the Lieutenant away, mumbling something about “medical stasis”, “Basset coils”, other meaningless arcana. I went on staring helplessly at the non-human pilot, while Rogers, following Lucille’s example, shucked his monkish robes with every indication of relief.
Underneath, each of them was attired in a close-fitting overall of the now-familiar silvery-gray material, sleeves equipped with an inset control panel similar to those on our bandages, only larger, sporting perhaps ten times as many tiny controls. Ev (was that the alien’s real name, or simply one adopted for the convenience of human tongues?) preferred the “summer issue” version: abbreviated sleeves, shortened legs, the gadget-panel situated where his belt-buckle ought to have been.
Each of my new acquaintances was armed, the ubiquitous small plasma gun slung in a highly unmilitary variety of manners: under the arm, at the waist, in separate holsters or pockets integral with the suit.
Almost immediately, Rogers provided further demonstration of the strange garment’s capabilities, intently pushing sleeve-buttons as a rainbow chased itself across its surface, stabilized, settled into a garish green-yellow checkerboard. For some reason, this aesthetic outrage seemed to please him. He looked up, asked Ev, “When do we eat?”
The pilot’s stubby muzzle wrinkled, displaying an intimidating collection of long yellow fangs. “Very likely never, unless you tone down that vomitous tartan of yours. In any case, we’ll wait for the boss.” He flipped a furry thumb in my direction: “So who’s the supernumerary and who’s paying for his room and board, dinner and drinks?”
I kept wishing that he would turn around so I could see whether he had a tail to go with the pelt. I wondered if there was not perhaps a hole through the seat of his pants for it, like a character in a cartoon.
It did not seem polite, however, to ask.
“Ev Williamson, captain of the Little Tom, meet Corporal Whitey O’Thraight, from the planet Vespucci,” Lucille answered before Rogers or I could do more than open our mouths. “He’s an armorer, if we’re to believe him, and an accomplished musician, late of something called the ‘Vespuccian Navy’.” She rolled her eyes ceilingward in mocking disbelief.
“Just add him and his Lieutenant to the Survey Service tab,” said Rogers. “My guess is that the investment will prove to be well worth it.”
“Naval Reserve,” I corrected Lucille stiffly, then, before I could stop myself, I said, “A standing army is the age-old instrument of tyranny.”
“No shit, Corporal,” Lucille said sarcastically. “How about a navy treading water? Two tenth-bits says you learned that in a government school, the ultimate instrument of tyranny.” Before I could summon up a suitably acid comeback, she yawned, “Well, this seminar has been fascinating, but I’m headed for the showers. That mudball down there is more than a mere smartsuit can handle, the remotes don’t tell the half of it. An
d you simply wouldn’t believe that pile of rocks and garbage they call a castle. I’ll be having unsanitary nightmares for a week!”
Without waiting for a reply from any of us, Lucille took a step backward, then seemed to melt into the floor. She vanished without a sound.
There was a chuckle from behind me. “Well don’t just stand there rubber-necking, Admiral,” Williamson seemed to be addressing me. “And don’t take it personally, she treats everybody that way. Gonna be a fine human being someday, if we let her live. C’mon park it somewhere. Can I get you something to drink?” He turned slightly. No tail. I was disappointed.
I picked a spot on the continuous, well-upholstered sofa running completely around the room, beneath the windows. Covered in some warm, supple plastic, it was the only article of furniture in sight. It was embossed with riding-animals like those we had seen on Sca. These were carrying men in broad-brimmed, floppy hats, twirling cables of some kind above their heads as they pursued creatures not unlike those that had pulled the cart. The plastic was darkish tan in color, contrasting with the polished metal window-framing, or the deep, soft-colored carpeting that covered the entire circular floor-space from wall to wall.
“Thanks, er ... Ev. Say, would you mind my asking you a nosy question?”
On Vespucci, we are given to doing even the smallest things with elaborate ceremony, public rituals where the masses mass, officials officiate, where everybody is highly aware that something important is happening—such as laying a new section of sidewalk in a residential area, your tax dollars at work. All this chit-chat seemed incredibly, almost scandalously flippant, informal, considering what was actually transpiring.
It kept coming back to me, over and over again, that I was aboard an authentic alien starship, beginning a perfectly polite, extremely trivial conversation with a genuine Creature from Outer Space! (The Scavians, somehow, I did not count as aliens, perhaps because they had been human enough to torture me.) Who were these people, anyway, who appeared to take my presence among them for granted, as if they made a habit of encountering heretofore unknown human civilizations every day?
“Ask away.” He turned back to face me, amusement in his big brown eyes, as a small section rose from the thickly-carpeted floor behind him, seemingly of its own accord. “Depends on how nosy you make it, Kilroy.”
Kilroy?
Glasses of various types, bottles of different sizes, shapes, and colors, other universal alcoholic paraphernalia nestled in plush lined recesses in the side of the extruded column. A small deep-pile divot rested on its upper surface. The furry bartender fumbled with the drinks.
“Well ...” (I fumbled for an honorific, uncomfortably settling for a given name in its place.) “Geoffrey Couper tells me that he is from a ... from some place called ‘Earth’. I am curious about where you are from, er, what sort of ... person you are.” How the Hamilton do you put a question like that courteously? What species are you, sir?
He paused, what might have been a grin on his face, staring out at the stars for a moment in contemplation. “I suppose you might say I’m from Ceres—the central core city—take a right at Earth and keep going for another hundred megamiles. I’m a Chimpanzee, which means my people are originally from Africa. But then so are yours. Scotch okay, Kilroy?”
Rogers had done something to one of the windows. It had become a mirror in which he was critically examining his garish programmed suit pattern. He glared resentfully over his shoulder at Ev, then gave it up as an incomprehensible difference in tastes. He slumped down on the sofa a few feet away from me, with his arms folded across his chest.
“Chim-pan-zee,” I muttered, getting a feel for the exotic word. All these planets I had never dreamed existed: Earth, Ceres, Africa. “Scotch is fine, whatever it is. I will try anything once. What is a mile?”
“Five thousand of these.” Williamson held his oddly-shaped hands twenty centimeters apart. “Rocks? Water? And what’re you drinking, Rog?”
What did rocks have to do with anything? More importantly, who the devil was Kilroy? The gunsmith looked up from a contemplative study of the boots built into the legs of his—what had she called it?—‘smartsuit’.
“Anything that burns. I’m hitting the showers when Annie Oakley’s done. She wasn’t kidding about conditions planetside—no offense, Whitey.”
“Listen,” I protested. “It is not my planet!”
They both laughed. Aside from an only partially psychosomatic outbreak of furious itching, this second mention of showers in five minutes made me realize that: a) water falling downward; plus b) rear ends adhering to sofas by themselves; must mean that c) we were under acceleration.
A glance through the windows confirmed it spectacularly. Sca was slipping steadily away. I was not heartbroken. I looked at Williamson. The so-called pilot handed me a tiny glass of innocent-looking amber fluid.
I wondered who was driving.
I had been thinking, ever since I had understood the nature of our present location, of asking another question. I had even begun framing it several times, but backed off, partly out of fear of the likeliest answer. Now, with trepidation, I asked, “Can you people take me, take the Lieutenant, home in this machine?” The two gave each other an odd, almost embarrassed look. Williamson blinked. Rogers opened his mouth, then shut it. There followed a long awkward pause I did not much care for.
“Let’s talk about that after we’ve had something to eat.” My head jerked around: Couper rose through the carpet, stepped forward without leaving a hole behind him. His smartsuit had been adjusted to a dull, non-reflective gray with the look of a uniform about it, abetted by a rank of colorful campaign ribbons on his left breast. “How about it, Ev? The Lieutenant is tucked away safely, and Lucille’s right behind me.”
So she was, oozing weirdly out of the floorboards just as Couper himself had done. I remembered the drink that I had not touched, took a big gulp of the “Scotch”. It burned, all right. I gasped, wheezed, started coughing as I watched a sizable portion of the floor in the middle of the room begin to get taller. The carpet-pile on its surface dwindled somehow until there was a smooth, table-like surface it its place. Then, up through that surface, places settings rose, complete with silverware, also substantial servings of food, steaming in their containers.
Who were these people, anyway?
-2-
More drinks were produced as the company politely waited through Rogers’ turn to freshen up. It was loudly hoped that the man would reprogram his suit. We were five for dinner. If there were any more crew aboard the Little Tom, they failed to manifest themselves. Couper paternally headed the irregularly-shaped table, our pilot, the Cerean/African/ Chimpanzee, occupying a seat more or less at the end opposite.
They honored me with the place on Couper’s right, directly across from Lucille. With a thorough shampoo, some imaginative tinkering with the push-buttons of her suit (it now had a somewhat daring neckline—from a Vespuccian point of view, I suppose—and was a medium shade of violet with a single bright diagonal band of green), she looked exactly as she had before: a soldier of whatever kind she was, who happened to be a remarkably beautiful young woman. That is, if you could overlook the pistol she carried slung cross-draw at her left hip.
The women I had known all of my life carried babies there, not guns.
Rogers sat beside me. They heaped their plates as if it had been they, not I, who had been living on Scavian largesse for several weeks; I surprised myself by not being particularly interested in food. The stars outside drifted like faraway cities glimpsed from a high-flying aircraft. What must our velocity be? This had never happened aboard the Asperance. I am not sure it is ever supposed to happen. “Aren’t the stars supposed to bunch together, turn blue, or something?”
“Or something, right enough,” laughed Williamson. “The inertialess field around this ship is thick enough to warp the skyscape out there into a full-color 3D portrait of Lysander Spooner himself, beard and all. What you’re
seeing isn’t even a computer correction, Corporal. It’s a holomural, entitled ... now, let me see, something historical, something literary, I forget. Oh yes! Stardate. Personally, I think it’s very silly, but the passengers always seem to like it. Pass the radishes, please—excuse me—the little red things in that bowl there?”