When Harry Met Chunglie Box Set

by Jack Q McNeil

  “I am not a birdform. I am Marshal Harry Ward the 23rd, asking you all to step back and cool off before this escalates.”

  “Your kobo pouch talks nice,” the leader said.

  I slapped him upside the head and he dropped.

  “Chunglie, don’t,” Harry said.

  “He called you a kobo pouch,” I pointed out.

  “Nine of us and two of you,” the leader sneered as he scrambled away. “Seems bad for you.”

  “One of me,” I said. “Leave the marshal out of this.”

  “Worse for you, bug.”

  “Bug? Really? That’s the best you can come up with? No wonder you don’t make it out of this chapter.”

  Harry rolled up her sleeves. That meant she was preparing to fight. “Don’t leave me out of this. You lot are getting on my last nerve,” she said.

  I drew my duckfoot pistol but held it under my body. It is an antipersonnel weapon with five barrels that shoot a wide beam.

  “Scrag him!” the leader shouted, swinging his stave. I fired twice and all but one dropped stunned. He froze, club raised. Looked from his unconscious leader to angry bug with gun. Back to leader. Looked like I chose to spare the thick one.

  “You might want to start running, kid,” I said. “It’s only going to take me a few seconds to reload.”

  Okay, that was a lie. The duckfoot pistol had another fifteen shots in the charge. But he took the hint and ran. Faster than I could keep up. I followed the scent of fear and piss. No more heads poked out of doors. The marshal jogged along behind. We reached a huge tree, with arches between the roots. One arch held a window, another a door. It looked the kind of place Mother used to warn us about when I was a grub. I half expected a mouth full of teeth to push out from between the roots.

  “The scent ends at this door,” I said. The door was a metre high and locked. But there was no shutter on the window. I rapped a claw against the bark. It made a hollow clunk sound.

  “Thought so. Plastic tree.”

  The marshal looked up at the canopy of green above us.

  “But it’s huge,” she said.

  “Top of the line,” I said, zooming in on the leaves. “Probably got the town’s communication system receivers inside the trunk.”

  “Wow.”

  I boosted the gain on my cybernetic ears and listened in.

  “The kid’s telling them how he fought like a squishorn at bay after I used strange alien powers to fell the rest of the gang,” I told the marshal. “He has more imagination than I gave him credit for. Oh-ho, someone is scolding him for telling stories and ordered more people out to look for us.”

  The marshal pinched the bridge of her nose in thought.

  “I repeat, the last thing I want is a shoot-out with these people. Any sign of CASS in there?”

  “Yes, she just offered to return to the city with us. Someone pointed out her existence is against the law?” That puzzled me. I had memorized our laws when I took the deputy job, and there was nothing that made people illegal. They must have had the Queen of Corn’s permission to build the town or her soldiers would have attacked years ago.

  “Are you sure that’s what they said?”

  “I have the best hearing money can buy,” I pointed out. “But it is an odd comment. I lived on the Qoh Modes’ homeworld for years and I don’t remember any cliques or families being outlawed.”

  “We need to find cover, before they find us,” Marshal Harry said, looking around at the low, grassy mounds and fields. “I’d rather talk to cleoroCASS on her own, perhaps talk her into coming with us.”

  “There’s no cover for miles. But we might take them by surprise. This way.” I led the way round the tree, scanning the ground with all my sensors.

  “You know, there’s something familiar about that old lady’s voice? I think I know her from somewhere.”

  “Yeah? From Port City or the Qoh Mode homeworld?”

  “Not sure.”

  There were dozens of smooth round stones placed around the front door. I picked up four to look at.

  “Did you know it’s traditional when a Qoh Mode leaves home to leave a stone on Mother’s doorstop as a minding that they will return.”

  “That’s nice, sort of,” Marshal Harry said. She picked up one, turning it over in her fingers. “They are really smooth and polished.”

  “They cough it up from their crop. More personal that way.”

  Harry dropped the stone.

  “There are over a hundred stones here,” she said. “Are Qoh Mode families usually this big?”

  “No,” I said. “Not usually more than three these days.” I circled out from the tree. “This tree and this mound are the exact centre of the town, and the highest point above sea level.”

  “Even if cleoroCASS is illegal on the homeworld, she is not illegal here,” Marshal Harry said. “The Mother of all Mothers made a simple set of rules unless…”

  “The home world has a caste system, but no one’s existence is illegal.”

  “I think I’ve got it, but if I’m right, we need CASS and her mother back at the office. They’re not safe here. She will give us the leverage to get mapoTHER talking about that trust she set up.”

  “Right…” I circled farther out from the tree until I reached a clump of wild plants in the crease between two mounds. “The Qoh Modes have a long history of being invaded and hunted. If the owner of this home is as valued as she seems, someone may have dug her… Ah-hah.”

  I pulled away a large tuft of grass with dramatic flair, revealing a metal hatch.

  “An escape tunnel.”

  “Digging escape tunnels is a tradition for these people?”

  “Afraid so. Qoh Modes are so tasty that specialist restaurants all over the galaxy are willing to buy the meat, no questions asked.”

  “That’s definitely not legal in this star system.”

  “No, the Mother of All Mothers decreed that if it talks, we cannot eat it.” I unrolled my toolkit and went to work picking the lock.

  “I’m not comfortable with breaking and entering.”

  “We are not breaking anything,” I pointed out, pulling the hatch open. “I’ve picked this lock very carefully. Plus we know a wanted fugitive is in this house.”

  “I know, I know, I’m just…. uncomfortable with it.”

  “We’ve a better chance of talking to CASS without anyone being shot this way.”

  The marshal nodded and followed me in. The tunnel was lined with metal, dry, and well-lit with lights set into the ceiling and floor. But the marshal had to bend double to avoid smacking her head on the roof. We were crawling quietly when I got a message from LB.

  “You are not going to believe this,” he said. I’ve always wondered why people say that. I mean, why tell me something I’m not going to believe?

  “The Assistant Chief Marshal and her Heavy Squad kicked in the warehouse door of the Auld Gowks Consortium. Solved twenty-seven robberies in the past twenty minutes.”

  “Doesn’t hang about, does she?” I said.

  “Has anyone admitted who hired Consortium to shoot up the restaurant?” Marshal Harry asked.

  “Not yet, but the ACM has put one deal on the table,” LB said. “The rest of them are getting life in prison. You know how straightforward the Mother of All Mothers can be. I’m helping go through the paperwork. We may find something there.”

  “Lucky you,” I said. “Nice job indoors, with lots of sitting down.”

  “Not as nice as you think. The ACM is very intimidating up close.”

  “It’s the leather boots and antlers,” Marshal Harry said.

  I flipped messages to silent as I got to the end of the tunnel.

  “Whoever owns this house is wealthy for a Qoh Mode,” I pointed out to the marshal. “This tunnel would cost quite a bit to install.”

  That gave me an idea. I took messenger back off silent and dialled through to LB.

  “See if you can find any mention of the Cornland
s in that paper trail,” I said. “Someone’s spent quite a bit of cash on a town with no name.”

  “Don’t need to look through the Auld Gowks’ paperwork for that,” he said. “You’re not going to believe this.”

  “I’m sure I will. Just tell me.”

  “The town is receiving money from the C BondTrust. 20K a month.”

  “It looks like mapoTHER killed her husband for the money to support this place,” Marshal Harry said, chin tucked to her chest.

  “But you don’t believe it.”

  “Let’s say I am not convinced.”

  “You got anything else?” I asked LB.

  “Not yet. Keep in touch, LB out.”

  The inner door was locked with a keypad. I scanned for alarm systems, passed forward the wire cutters from my third segment, and activated a decryption coder. Handy having fourteen claws sometimes. I snipped the power conduits and plugged the coder into the keypad’s place. The door opened quietly. I pushed my antennae around the door.

  “No one about.”

  There was a basking room beyond the door with the usual heated, shallow pool taking up half the floor and a raised flat area taking up the rest.

  “That’s unusual,” I said as I moved to let the marshal in. “The basking area is usually sandstone, and guests bring their own towels.”

  I led the way around the basking area. It was thickly upholstered in dark green plastic and there were enough heater lamps above the area to grill an egg. The lighting was greenish and dim, and a cylindrical lamp in one corner had molten blobs moving around in it. You always get one of those in the future. The door in the far wall was unlocked. I peeked around it.

  “This is the greeting room,” I waved claws around, “where house guests are met and catered to.”

  The walls were covered in holo-pics of Qoh Mode children. Dozens of them, all different ages and sizes. Along the top of the wall, above a new holo-projector, was a holo-pic of three dozen kids, chests out, tails straight up behind their heads. There were even holo-pics on an inner door. The marshal made a beeline straight for the largest holo-pic.

  “This is it,” she whispered. “This is the key.”

  “Erm, that’s not a key, that’s a photo. Probably her grandkids because Qoh Modes usually only lay one egg at a time.”

  Marshal Harry’s shoulders slumped.

  “Don’t be so literal. Metaphorically, this is the key to the whole mystery. I can feel it.”

  “I sometimes think you have antennae that I don’t. It just looks like a lot of kids to me.”

  The seating around the holo-projector was carved from native rock, with little nests of warm padding. Messages were sewn into the padding: `To the best Nanna in the universe’; ‘To my real mum’; ‘To the only person who gave a shit`.

  “Looks like we’ve broken into the house of a saint,” I whispered. “I’m only hearing two voices, coming from that direction.”

  Cooking smells permeated the air and, as I crept towards a door, I heard CASS talking.

  “Please let me do the cooking?” she said. “It is the least I can do.”

  “I taught you everything you know, girl,” an older voice said. “But I didn’t teach you everything I know.”

  I pulled my flegmatic pistols, shoved the door open, and rocketed in. Two women worked at a table, chopping vegetables. There was a large wood burning stove with a pipe leading out through the ceiling. This place was so traditional, it was practically pre-industrial. The old lady had holo-pic transfers on her belly scales of dozens of kids. Looked like she was the root of a large family tree.

  “Put the knives down,” I ordered. “You two are bound by law as material witnesses, and this house will be sealed until your release. You will accompany me now to the Marshal’s Service office.”

  CASS dropped the knife and raised her hands, but the old lady kept chopping veg. I had a sudden feeling of something gone wrong. Like I was standing on a trapdoor about to drop.

  “I am not leaving my home,” the old lady said. Qoh Modes only put fat down on their tails, and this lady had the fattest tail I had ever seen. I waved the pistols hopefully. She turned and grinned at me. “You going to shoot me, Chunglie, after all the times you saved my life?”

  “lanaTEN?” I dropped the pistols in shock.

  CHAPTER 19

  “lanaTEN,” Marshal Harry repeated, “the most beautiful woman ever hatched?”

  “That’s the one,” lanaTEN cackled. “We don’t get a lot of anti-aging medication around here.”

  “Mamma?” cleoroCASS stared, mouth open. “What are they talking about?”

  The old lady put down her knife and headed for the door.

  “If we’re going to have that conversation, I need a seat.”

  I scooped up my pistols and followed her back to the room of holo-pics. She dropped into what was obviously Mamma’s Chair. It was handmade to fit her form and had more padding than… a small padding factory. She gestured and CASS sat on the floor in front of her chair.

  “When I adopted you all, and moved to this planet,” lanaTEN told cleoroCASS as she caressed her neck, “I changed my name to mamaBEN. I wanted to live a quiet life, away from my history.”

  “At least the history books remember you,” I muttered, trying to get comfy on a chair not designed for my form.

  Marshal Harry was back at the large holo-pic, nose practically touching it as she studied each figure individually.

  “lanaTEN, they can’t all be yours,” I said.

  “Call me mamaBEN, and they are all my children,” she claimed. “I was there when every single one of them was born.”

  “They are all clones,” Marshal Harry announced without looking round. “That one is cruisOVO. There’s berOVO. My cyber suite has recognised a dozen wealthy Qoh Mode faces. There was a fashion a few years ago—even reached Earth. Rich folk cloned themselves so they always had spare parts ready if they had an accident. Didn’t last long before the ethics committees banned the practice.”

  CASS leapt to her feet and got in the marshal’s face.

  “So what if we are clones? We are still people. We have a right to—"

  “You’ll get no argument from me.” Marshal Harry held up her hands. “On Earth, my father led a campaign to have the clones released. He said it was the worst kind of slavery and a perversion of science.”

  “Were the clones released?” CASS asked.

  “No. They were destroyed. That’s what our government called it when they murdered them all.”

  “Most worlds killed their clones,” I pointed out. “So why didn’t that happen on Qoh Modus?”

  “It took all the influence I had left,” mamaBEN admitted. “I shouted comeRIE’s name at every media opportunity and eventually the government gave me the frozen foetuses. With the proviso that we leave the planet and never come back. Suited me. I fought for the freedom of my people only to watch them turn into a bunch of greedy arseholes.”

  “Sometimes,” I admitted, “I’m glad comeRIE didn’t live to see that. He had such optimism for the future of his species.”

  “Look, you two can catch up on old times later,” Marshal Harry said, tapping the holo-pic. “Which one of these is mapoTHER?”

  mamaBEN stared Harry in the face for a long moment.

  “You must have good stuff in you for Chunglie to back you this hard, so I’ll tell you the secret and trust you to keep it.”

  “Mama, no,” cleoroCASS said. “It’s not our secret to give away.”

  “I’ve already guessed she is a clone,” Marshal Harry pointed out. “Which is why she has funnelled money to the town through the C BondTrust. What else is there?”

  “It has nothing to do with cruisOVO’s murders,” cleoroCASS insisted.

  “You don’t know that, love,” mamaBEN interrupted. “We don’t know who killed cruisOVO or why. But I will say it was not mapoTHER. She loves the bones of that man, gods only know why.”

  “No harm in telling me her s
ecret then?”

  mamaBEN walked slowly over to the holo-pic. “My kids were five years old when this was taken. Full of hope and optimism. Life out here ground most of that away.”

  “I am only interested in finding the killer of Mr cruisOVO, and I feel this holo-pic is the key.”

  mamaBEN put her finger on one small figure. It went from 3D to flat. “That is mapoTHER. Most of the kids changed their names to get away from being a clone. She went a bit further.”

  Harry stared from the holo-pic to mamaBEN then back to the holo-pic.

  “You are kidding me.”

  “No. Not at all. I never lied to my kids about their origin. Sometimes, I think that was a mistake.”

  “Right… this puzzle is finally coming together. We need to get this holo-pic, Miss CASS, and mamaBEN to the protection of the marshal’s office as soon as possible.”

  “But the whole town is out looking for you now,” CASS said. “They won’t let you take mamaBEN, but I will go with you. If we leave now.”

  “No,” mamaBEN stated. “You are not going anywhere.”

  “One, I’ve fought a whole town of Qoh Modes before,” I said. “They called it the Last Charge of the Thin Green Tails, because they lost.”

  “That was you?” cleoroCASS said. “But in school they told us it was some kind of robot?”

  “No, it was him,” mamaBEN said. “I was there too.”

  “Two, now that we’ve found you, we can call the marshals to come pick us up.”

  “No,” mamaBEN said again. This brought back arguments around the campfire and the faces of the long dead. Arguments that I lost. “She stays here with her family. Someone was willing to destroy a whole street to get to my baby. She isn’t safe—"

  “Look, we are here for your own good,” Marshal Harry said in her reasonable voice. “Some very dangerous people have been paid to kill Miss CASS, and it’s a fair bet they will try again.”

  A shadow moved across the slit window high up on the wall.

  “We can protect our own,” mamaBEN insisted. “And we have protection from the Queen of Corn’s soldiers.”

  Armoured legs walked passed the window.

  Two people who had never lost an argument, butting heads, was so interesting that I almost lost track of what was happening outside. Almost. I heard cries of alarm and turned up the gain on my sensors.