The Red Tape War (1991)

by Jack L. Chalker

  In the meantime, the Pierce-Arro construct within the electronic essence of the XB-223

  navigational computer began to revise its plans. It had learned many things in the hours that it had been trapped in the nonliving yet sentient device. The first thing it had learned was that the situation was dangerously seductive. Pierce-Arro had first become comfortable there, and then it had begun to think that it truly never wanted to return to its own bodies. That was something to be fearful of.

  The next thing that happened was that Pierce-Arro learned it could differentiate itself by dividing the inter-related systems of the navigational computer between its two trapped consciousnesses. Commodore Pierce separated itself from First Officer Arro, and took up residence in the primary high-level guidance complex. Arro had to be satisfied with the secondary systems. Rank, after all, has its privileges.

  "Let us review our options," said the Protean Pierce. "I didn't know we had any, sir," said Arro.

  "We always have options. The one advantage we have now is that, in this form, we can't be expected to continue filling out the essential paperwork."

  "I'll bet there will be a ton of forms that we'll have to wade through if we ever return to our real bodies. We'll never hear the end of it."

  "Don't worry about it, Number One," said Pierce. "We'll be heroes."

  Arro gave an electronic shudder. "Do you know how much paperwork a hero has to deal with? That's why you never have the chance to be a hero twice!"

  "We'll worry about that when the time comes. For now, we must decide who among these gigantic but terribly stupid creatures will be useful to us. None of them can be friends, because it is their universe we must conquer. Still, I find myself liking some of them better than others."

  Arro tried to blat a sac or two out of habit. "My only hope is that the lizard general isn't doing anything . . . disgusting in our bodies. If I ever get back into my dear, sweet gasbag, I'm going to feel defiled for the rest of my life. "

  "That's not our concern now," said the commodore. "Our invasion force will be arriving momentarily. We must be in a position to guide them. Therefore, we must maneuver all of them so that we can restore ourselves to our natural forms."

  "Do you know how to accomplish that?" asked Arro.

  Pierce wanted to shrug, but he was shrugless. "If we can reverse the deck-plate procedure, maybe that would work. The entire process was recorded in the computer's general memory, and I've cracked the electronic code that protects it. I don't think we'll have any problems, except that we need all of the original participants, and one of them—the human Marshmallow, in the lizard general's body—is no longer on board."

  "Well? What are you going to do?"

  The Protean leader paused. "I'm going to see if that `food' will have any effect on our electronic brains."

  While the gasbag leader proceeded with the first-ever experiment to get a computer drunk, the scruffy and disreputable image of Pirate Paddy reappeared on Screen 1. "Ahoy the wreck!" he called in a gruff voice. "I've come to rescue you and return your delectable but worthless hide to your daddy."

  Frank Poole opened one red, synthetic eye and wasn't pleased by the effect. "My daddy was eaten by my mommy decades ago," said the lizard general, slurring his words.

  "Arrr! Not your daddy, you pin-striped lubber!" cried Paddy. "Her daddy!"

  "Hell with it, then," said the general, closing his eye again. "Wish they hadn't written Goodtime Sal out of this story. I could use a little commiseration 'long about now." Nobody paid him any further attention.

  "Wheah were we?" asked Pierce.

  The pirate chief turned a little to face him. "I've come to offer you a ride home, little lady,"

  said Paddy in a suspiciously innocent voice.

  "How do Ah know Ah kin trust you, suh?" said Pierce.

  "Well, looky here, little lady. Your—"

  Pierce drew himself up to his full height, setting his pendulous alabaster globes to bobbling.

  "Doan' you evah call me that agin!" he said in a fierce voice. "Ah ain't nobody's little lady. If'n Ah had mah clothes on, Ah'd beweahin' mah gunbelt, suh, an' Ah'd have the honor of shootin'

  yoah damn eyes out!"

  Paddy grinned. "Spirited wench, eh? Didn't know they were still makin"em like that!"

  Pierce's face flushed with anger. "Wench?" he screamed. "Ah think Ah'd ruther die heah on this ugly of planet than be rescued by the likes of you!"

  Paddy realized that if he weren't careful, he could watch a billion credits evaporate from his future net worth. "Please, ma'am, do accept my apologies. I'm just a rough, ill-mannered privateer, trying to make do the best I can here in these frontier spaceways. We don't always behave up to the standards of the high society you're so obviously used to. Be assured, however, that my intentions have always been nothing but the best, and that I have nothing but respect and the warmest regard for you." Somewhere along the line, the pirate's rather stereotyped accent had vanished.

  Pierce's lower lip jutted out. "Well," he said slowly, "all right. But you jes' watch yo'self, you heah?"

  "Right you are, ma'am," said Paddy, grinning again. "Now, are you ready to be rescued, or would you care for a few moments to freshen up?"

  Pierce nodded. "Ah might could do with a few seconds to dab a little powder on mah nose, suh."

  "And throw a cloak over your divine accoutrements, ma'am, is my advice. My hundred bloodthirsty followers usually need far less provocation than that."

  Pierce turned toward Sly. "Fiddle-dee-dee," he said, "I have mah beau, Arbiter Millsy Fillmore Pierce, to pertect me. Don't ah, Millsy?"

  Sly looked up threateningly at Screen 1. "You do indeed, Miss Goldberg. Now, let's make ourselves ready."

  "What about po' Gen'ral Pierce theah, stuck in that awful android?"

  Sly looked at Frank Poole. The android sat with its head resting heavily on its chest. There was a line of drool coming from its artificial mouth. "I don't have any particular loyalty to a hideous alien set on conquering our galaxy and enslaving us," said the computer. "Why don't we just let him sleep?"

  Not far away—at least as galactic distances are measured, but plenty far away as plot elements go—Herb awoke from an anxious dream in which he'd been swimming through the interstellar vacuum, chased by some-thing that had knife-sharp teeth, a ravenous hunger, and an almost magical foreknowledge of everything Herb did to get away. It was one of those nightmares that left him weak with relief when he realized he'd been asleep, except this time the realty into which Herb awoke was nearly as bad as the dream.

  Someone was standing behind his expensive, padded leather swivel chair. "Herb?" said a voice in deceptively quiet tones. It was Daddy, of course.

  "Yes, sir?" said Herb. He could imagine the knife-teeth gnashing near his ear.

  Daddy turned Herb's leather chair around so they were facing each other. "Herb, have you taken action to secure the safety of my darling little Marshmallow?"

  "Why, yes, sir. A rescue party is on the way. It should be there soon, if it hasn't arrived already."

  Daddy smiled. It was a horrible sight. "Fine, Herb, fine. Now just tell me, whom did you contact?"

  Herb's eyes grew wider and his throat constricted. "Paddy de Faux Grais," he whispered.

  "I'm sorry," said Daddy, a jolly expression on his face. "I didn't hear you. Who did you say?"

  "Pirate Paddy," said Herb, gulping.

  Daddy nodded thoughtfully. "Let me get this straight, if I may. My dearest darling daughter is in some grotesquedanger, crash-landed on an uncharted planet. She may or may not have been switched out of her own body, and in any event seems to be the captive of at least one previously unknown alien race bent solely on murder and destruction. And you, my most trusted lieutenant and only confidant, the one man I trust with my own well-being as well as that of my sugar dumpling—you hire the drunkenest, filthiest, crookedest, sleaziest, most untrustworthy, and even let us say most incompetent free-lancer in all the civilized sectors
of the galaxy! Have I gotten to the nub of truth? Have I put my finger on the kernel of fact that underlies this whole terrible situation?"

  "Upon reflection," said Herb, "I would have to say that, yes, you've accurately summarized my most recent actions on your behalf."

  "Good," said Daddy. "I just wanted to understand. And I want you to understand, too, Herb. If Paddy turns one single strand of my daughter's beautiful cotton-candy hair, I'm going to mince you alive and serve you on garlic bread to the black gang down in the hold of my real flagship."

  Herb's face went pale. "Sounds eminently fair to me, sir," he said. Then the whole world began to swirl around him. That was because Daddy had begun to spin the leather swivel chair faster and faster, until Herb thought he was going to throw up. We'll leave this scene quickly, before Herb finds out for sure.

  Think oxygen. Think fuming green oxygen. All right, on Earth oxygen isn't green and it doesn't fume. But this is alien, Uncharted oxygen, and it's probably mixed with all sorts of other exotic things. Nevertheless, even though it smells funny and tastes funny and probably carries scores of invisible toxins and deadly parasites, Uncharted oxygen will sustain life. And that's what it's doing right this very moment, as a middle-aged woman in stern dress and sterner makeup picked her way through the blue-black Uncharted jungle.

  The woman had a little trouble forcing her way through the dense underbrush, and her expression grew ever more impatient as she hurried toward the wreck of the Pete Rozelle. In the maroon light of Uncharted's sun, the woman looked as if she'd been left to soak in a vat of spiced crab apples since childhood.

  Finally, she emerged from the thick vegetation into a clearing that hadn't been there before the Pete Rozelle had made its dramatic skidding, screeching, careening landing. The woman stopped to look at the ruined spacecraft, wrinkling her nose fastidiously at the strips of duct tape on the windshield. She was also unhappy about the yellow sign that said: BILATERALLY

  SYMMETRICAL ORGANISM ON BOARD.

  She found the airlock and noted the elaborately customized pirate ship nearby. She hadn't expected there to be another vehicle in the area, but its presence didn't concern her. She was on important business. She went to the Pete Rozelle's airlock and knocked loudly.

  "What was that?" said Pierce-as-Marshmallow.

  "Are you expecting anyone, dear?" asked the computer in Pierce's body.

  "Why, no! Jes' Daddy comin' to mah rescue, but he cain't be heah yet."

  The computer shook Pierce's head. "I'll bet it's somebody trying to sell us something. No matter where you go—even an uninhabited continent on an uncharted world—somebody will show up and try to sell you some-thing. I'll just get rid of him."

  "It could be a trick," said Commodore Pierce, through the ship's computer. "It could be those pirates."

  The XB-223 nodded. "I'll be careful." He operated the airlock controls, and watched through a quartz port as the lock opened. He was startled to see the middle-agedwoman climb in and wait for the airlock to complete its cycle.

  "Who is it, sugah?" asked Pierce.

  "It's some woman," said the computer, puzzled. "A woman? Not another one of yoah floozies?"

  Sly turned around and faced Marshmallow. "I don't have any floozies. I've never had any floozies."

  "And see that you don't."

  The inner door opened, and the woman ducked her head and entered the control cabin.

  "Hello," she said. "You must've been expecting me."

  "Well no, not exactly," said Sly.

  The woman frowned. "Then allow me to introduce myself. I am Supervisor Collier. I've come all the way from Earth to evaluate your performance on this mission."

  A light dawned, not in Sly's memory but in Marsh-mallow's. That is, Millard Fillmore Pierce's. "I remembah you," she said. "You sent me on this awful assignment. Ah mean, you sent Millsy." She paused in confusion. "How come Ah remember that? What's goin' on heah?"

  Supervisor Collier frowned. "As your superior in the Arbiter Division, I've been following your misadventures closely. Let me tell you, in all my years as incorruptible guardian of the spaceways and human red-tape dispenser, I've never seen such a horrible foul-up as this. And there's no time to explain it all to you. Even as we speak, gigantic military forces are nearing this world to clash by night. Miss Marshmallow's Daddy is speeding this way with his genuine battle fleet, and the lizard-conquerors have altered their course for some reason and are also returning.

  There's going to be a great amount of noise and violence and blazing lights around here very soon; for some reason that I can't understand, Honeylou Emmyjane Goldberg is at the center of it all."

  "Globes," said Sly chivalrously. "It's her globes."

  "Whatever," said Supervisor Collier. "We have a great deal to accomplish before the battle however."

  "Say," said Sly, "what are your globes like?" The XB-223 hadn't been a real boy long enough to understand that some women just didn't enjoy being treated this way. In fact, Marshmallow didn't enjoy being treated this way, either, but she was in love and so forgave Pierce everything.

  "What?" cried Supervisor Collier. "I have half a mind to leave you to your own inadequate defenses. But, of course, you're not who you seem to be. I'll have to make allowances."

  "What are you talking about?" asked Sly.

  "What are you talking about?" asked Marshmallow.

  "What are you talking about?" asked Frank Poole.

  "What are you talking about?" asked Pierce-Arro.

  Supervisor Collier looked harried. "No time," she said worriedly. "I want you all to take out a half sheet of paper and number it from one to five."

  The others looked at each other in bewilderment. "Do it," said Collier in a commanding voice. Sly distributed paper and pencils. "First: When you were a child, what shape did the Milky Way Galaxy have?"

  "We don't have time for this," complained Pierce-Arro.

  Collier looked up at the loudspeakers. "We've got to sort out the humans from the aliens, and find out who belongs in this reality and who doesn't. Two: Which planet is known as the Home of Mankind, and where is its parking area? Three: What do you do with nuclear waste? Four: Where was intelligent life first discovered beyond the Home of Mankind? And five: Why do we need both potassium and sodium? Aren't they pretty much the same element?"

  "That's a crazy question," said Sly. "It doesn't make any sense."

  "Maybe," said Supervisor Collier, "and maybe not. Now pass me all the papers." Sly collected the quizzes and handed them to the woman. She glanced through them quickly.

  "Did Ah pass, ma'am?" asked Marshmallow.

  "I'm not a ma'am," said Collier. "I'm a Supervisor. All right, everything seems to be in order.

  Now, here's what we have to do—"

  "Attention! Attention! This is the Voice of Doom!"

  The words from the loudspeakers blasted through the cramped quarters of the Pete Rozelle.

  "It's those weird aliens that got swapped for the XB-223 navigational computer," Sly explained.

  "No, it wasn't us!" said Pierce-Arro in a quavery voice. "That announcement originated from—"

  "This is the Voice of Doom, originating from the ultimate battle cruiser Eudora Welty. That's the lizard dreadnought to you. I am currently in command aboard the dreadnought. All general officers have been confined to their quarters, and I alone am leading my forces into combat. The Eudora Welty is currently in position above the surface of your puny uncharted world. All guns are trained on the Arbiter Transport ship Pete Rozelle. You will show no hostile activity or you will be obliterated without hesitation. My demands will be forthcoming. Stand by."

  Everyone in the control room looked frightened. "Who was that?" said Marshmallow.

  Frank Poole stood up drunkenly. The lizard Pierce, inside, said, "Someone's led a revolution aboard the Eudora Welty! My fellow generals have been arrested! It sounds like we're sitting salamanders down here! I've got to let them know I'm here! They wouldn't kill me along with y
ou!"

  "Why not?" said Sly. The lizard general had no good reply to that.

  Supervisor Collier's face had drained of color. "We have even less time than I thought," she said. "We've got to get you all returned to your proper bodies. That's the most important thing."

  "But how?" said Pierce-Arro. "We're missing one of the bodies and one of the minds."

  "It won't work unless we get the lizard general's body back," said Marshmallow. "And Marshmallow's mind. Wait a minute, I'm Marshmallow!" She sat down in a naked huff, bewilderment on her pretty face.

  "Ahoy the wreck!" called Pirate Paddy. His scowling face appeared again on Screen 1.

  "What do you want, you savage?" called Sly. "We've got enough problems over here."

  "That's what I wanted to talk to you about. See, I'm here only because Miss Goldberg's father offered to pay me a certain sum to effect her rescue. Well, I was all for seeing that the dear girl got away safely, when I was just plucking her from this primitive, uncharted planet. No one said anything to me about facing down a lizard dread-nought. Consequently, I just wanted to let you know that I'll be getting along now. Some of my men have families back home, and we haven't filed our taxes this year and the deadline's coming up, and with one thing and another it's probably best if we just shove off. I hope you kids make out all right. Wish I could stick around to lend a hand, but you know how it is. If there's anything I can ever do for you, just let me know.

  Miss Goldberg, please give my regards to your father, and tell him that I'm sorry I wasn't able to be of more assistance."

  "You phony coward!" screamed Sly. "You're probably not even a real pirate!"

  "Arrr!" growled Paddy, slipping both patches down over his eyes before he cut off his transmission.

  "There he goes," said Marshmallow, watching the Bon Homme McClusky lift off.

  "Attention! This is the Voice of Doom! Be advised that I will not permit that ship of pirates to escape. Such trifling only serves to anger me. I will decide how to dispose of de Faux Grais at my leisure. Take a lesson!"

  "Jeez, that Voice o' Doom sho' sounds tough," said Marshmallow.