Green World

by B. V. Larson

  “Thin evidence,” the xeno complained, but Drusus shushed her again.

  “You said she confessed? So it seemed like a negative for her career?”

  “That’s right, Praetor sir. She said as much.”

  Drusus nodded, and he began to pace. Almost everyone there waited, because they were lower rank—but one man didn’t. Praetor Wurtenburger heaved himself up, his gut slapping the table as it went by. “Drusus, this is all very interesting, but I don’t see how it changes anything. How are we going to respond to this investigation?”

  “First of all, McGill must be on hand.”

  I almost groaned aloud. I’d had all kinds of fantasies about slipping out to take a piss and never coming back. After all, I’d done great work. I’d been called upon to know something, but then dodged and given them something else to chew on. That both made me look like a smart hero, and got me out of trouble in one deft stroke.

  More importantly, I had to get back to reviving Etta. It was the only thing I really cared about. The rest of this… well… it was kind of boring.

  “Secondly,” Drusus continued, “we’re going to have to come up with a way to play this new facet. This new tidbit of knowledge. Can we use it to gain leverage over the governor? Can we sway her judgment by whispering about it in one of her… ears?”

  “I don’t see how,” began the xeno, but I’d stopped listening. I’d spied the snack trays, see, and I walked over to them and helped myself. Once my jaws were moving, I pretty much went deaf.

  “—McGill? McGill!”

  “Huh? Oh… sorry, Praetor, sir. I guess I got distracted.”

  “Of course you did. Please, share your views with us.”

  My eyes slid from Drusus to Wurtenburger, then to the disgusted-looking xeno-lady.

  “Uh…” I said.

  Wurtenburger had a fist pressed into his cheek. That meant he was as bored as I was. The xeno was pissed, and she was standing stiffly. That indicated she’d just said something she thought was important, but Drusus wasn’t buying whatever it was she’d said.

  I quickly shaped my response based on these assumptions.

  “Well sir,” I said, “I will bow to the expert in this case. I think this nice xeno-lady knows her stuff.”

  The xeno looked surprised and slightly pleased, but Drusus frowned faintly.

  “You really think we should create a gift for the young Mogwa?” he asked. “You really think Nox will appreciate something like a human fidget-toy?”

  I blinked maybe three times as I absorbed this. The plain truth was I thought I’d just heard the dumbest idea of my very long lifetime.

  “Hmm… well, maybe it would work with some modifications.”

  The xeno’s faint smile slipped, drooping at the corners.

  “Like what?” Drusus asked.

  “The Mogwa… they don’t really play. Not ever. They don’t even understand the concept, as far as I know. I’d say that such a gift would baffle one of their kind.”

  “What then?” the xeno snapped. “What do you suggest, with your vast knowledge of the topic?”

  “I like your idea of a gift. A demonstration of appreciation might be appreciated in turn. But I’d say we have to give her something she’d understand—maybe a demonstration of slave-love is in order.”

  They both stared at me for a few seconds, so I explained the concept. The Mogwa thought quite a lot of themselves. Frequently, they took any form of self-sacrifice on the part of a human as a demonstration of slavering loyalty and devotion. This was even true when to anyone else it would have been obvious that the person performing the act was just trying to evade a dreadful fate.

  I explained this at length, and I ended with my best line. “To the Mogwa, see—it’s all about them. They’re the center of the universe, and we’re less than insects. They’d rather see a dozen planet Earths perish in nuclear fires than stub one of their numerous toes. That’s not out of malice, however—not exactly. They assume everyone else wants the same thing—even a slave race like us.”

  After that, the xeno people and the officers fell to bickering. In the end, Drusus won out. He’d decided that my approach was the best one offered—although he hadn’t indicated yet how he was going to implement my idea.

  After another ninety minutes of hot air filled the room, Drusus finally called for a welcome break. I snuck out and headed for the elevators immediately.

  I almost made it off the floor, but it wasn’t to be. Someone passed by me in the hallway, and they recognized me.

  “McGill?”

  Taking in a deep breath and releasing it slowly, I turned around. It was Station Chief Dross, the lady I’d worked for briefly down at the docks. I was kind of surprised to see her, as most of the dock area had been destroyed in the attacks from Green World. Somehow, she’d escaped all that.

  Despite what I would arguably call good fortune on her part, Chief Dross didn’t look all that happy. She was bewildered and freaked out, if I had to guess by her expression.

  After a second of staring and gaping at her, I figured it out. She was new to visiting with the top brass of Central. She was just a civilian government stooge, after all. She was out of her element. She was tough as nails on the docks, but a mouse on floor four-ninety of the tallest building on Earth.

  “Uh… Chief Dross? What are you doing here?”

  “I was about to ask you the same question. I thought you were a centurion from the legions.”

  “I am that.”

  She looked me up and down, and I could tell she didn’t believe me. I had to be the only person under the rank of primus on this floor.

  “Never mind, then. Sorry to bother you, McGill.”

  That was my chance, and I almost took it. I could turn and stomp away, but I felt a bit sorry for her. After all, I’d help destroy her ships, her friends and her office—all that stuff.

  “Uh… Chief? You going to talk to the brass? Are you part of the briefing?”

  “That’s right. I wasn’t on the docks when the attacks hit initially, but I’m still a witness. They want me to give them a briefing on the enemy and their capabilities.”

  I nodded thoughtfully. “Okay, here’s a suggestion: take a pillow in there with you.”

  “What?”

  “That room is full of the most god-awful, dull-brained crowd of gasbags you could ever meet outside of a nightmare. Your biggest problem will be staying awake. They just brought me in there for about ten sentences, then they talked for ninety long minutes after that. I’m almost wall-eyed after the experience.”

  Her lips perked up at the corners. “That’s funny… and I believe you. Thanks for the encouraging words, McGill.”

  Smiling at each other, we moved to pass each other by, but Dross paused. “Hey, I heard you had a loss of your own in the attacks.”

  It was my turn to look like a drowned cat. “Yes… my daughter.”

  Dross nodded. “I… you know, if you know where to look here at Central, there are intel agencies that keep their own records on people.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes. Detailed personnel files—if you get my meaning. A smart, resourceful person might be able to get ahold of them.”

  Dross turned away after that, and she left me standing in the hallway, staring after her.

  Intel…? Where could I find someone who was inside the intel community?

  -55-

  Finally, at long last, I’d managed to evade the endless meeting. I don’t think they even noticed I was gone, as I’d already said my piece and there were plenty of people lined up for their turn to talk.

  My thoughts immediately went to Etta. I can’t tell you anytime during my overlong existence that I’d felt as worried about a straightforward death. Not even when I’d killed my parents and almost couldn’t get them back—not even then was I as concerned as I was right now. My guess was I was being abused by parental instincts of some kind.

  Accordingly, I rode the elevator down, down, d
own into the belly of Central. My mind kept churning the whole way.

  Intel? Who did I know who knew jack-squat about Intel? When it comes to important connections at Central, I didn’t have many options in this area.

  There was always Galina herself, of course. But she was still a month away on Dominus. Besides, I didn’t think she could help much this time. If she’d been able to help, she would have offered to do so when she first informed me about Etta’s death.

  Drusus was powerful and connected, but he was real busy right now getting ready for a surprise-party full of Galactic guests. He couldn’t be bothered with one midlevel employee’s death. Thousands had died during the attacks from the docks, after all.

  No, I could only think of one person who had the clout and the inclination to help me: Floramel.

  When my security clearance left me stranded in the sub-basements, down around floor negative sixty, I contacted her. She was slow to answer, but she did so at last.

  “James? What’s this about? Why are you even on Earth?”

  “Think about it, Floramel. Think about it real hard. Why do you think I’m here?”

  Her face went blank for a few seconds. She was a technical genius, but her powers of reading emotion and understanding motivations were limited. At last, her face lit up.

  “Ah, this must be about Etta. I’m so sorry for your loss. My thoughts and prays go out to you.”

  These last words were so practiced, so lame, that I almost got mad at her—but I managed to keep calm. Floramel wasn’t the most empathic creature that had ever walked my blue Earth. She’d been raised by squids as an enslaved scientist, and it showed in moments like this.

  “That’s right, I’m talking about Etta. I need your help, girl.”

  She blinked once, a slow motion eye-movement. “You mean… with the arrangements? I would think you’d consult your parents concerning that, James.”

  I gritted my teeth and forced my face to smile. “They don’t even know yet—and I want to keep it that way. I intend to fix this, Floramel.”

  She stared for a few more seconds, but then she looked away. She tapped at a computer screen that I couldn’t see.

  “I just checked. There are no records of Etta’s body scan or her engrams in Central’s data core. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  “Girl… do you know what I had to go through to bring Raash back to you?”

  She hesitated. “I’m grateful for your efforts in that regard, but—”

  “But nothing. This isn’t some coldblooded alien girlfriend of mine. This is my daughter we’re talking about. The girl who’s served you faithfully for damned near a decade.”

  Floramel blinked. “We’re talking about Etta, right?”

  “Dammit girl—yes. We’re talking about Etta. I had to transport your skinny butt all the way out to Dust World to bring Raash back—then what did he do? He got depressed over having blue scales and started killing people, that’s what!”

  “My memory is eidetic, James. I recall all these incidents.”

  “Well then, you know that you owe me, don’t you?”

  Floramel looked evasive for a moment. I could tell she was trying to work out some sort of practical or emotional appeal that would get her off this hook—but there wasn’t any.

  “Yes,” she sighed, “I owe you a debt regarding Raash. But James… I don’t see any way to proceed in this instance. With Raash, you brought me back a perfect copy of his engrams. All we needed was the body.”

  “Right. We can start right there. Here, inside Central, there are intel-spooks who have a copy of those files.”

  Floramel looked surprised. “How would you know that?”

  “A certain Station Chief told me,” I said with exaggerated confidence. Dross was a Station Chief, but she didn’t work for Central. Not directly, anyway.

  “Really? That’s a startling breach of protocols, if true. I’ll have to—”

  “You’ll have to what? Contact the authorities and tell them Raash is a crazy hybrid lizard who should be put down for the good of all?”

  “That wasn’t what I was going to say.”

  “No, but it’s what I’m about to do. Just to make sure all our ducks are in a line, here. Isn’t that what you want?”

  She sighed. “All right. We’re way past rationality and protocol in this instance. How is it that these things always happen when you’re around, James?”

  I laughed. “Lots of people ask that. Where do we start? To find the files, I mean.”

  She thought about it, and I let her. After a moment, her eyes refocused. “We’ll start in the Vault. I’m coming to your location. I’ll escort you down.”

  I waited, and she soon appeared. We walked into the elevators, and we went deep this time. Really deep. Down to floor minus five hundred and then some.

  At last we arrived at the hidden Vaults with all the brains haunting them. We walked into the quiet, gurgling chamber, and Floramel sought out various dead people. We found one named Juan Pujol that was willing to talk to us.

  He didn’t speak English, but to my surprise Floramel shifted right into fluent Spanish. She’d apparently learned it for fun one weekend or another.

  “What’s he saying?” I hissed in her ear for about the tenth time.

  “Shush, James, please.”

  This went on for a good half hour until I got bored. Well… that’s not entirely true. I was bored and off wandering the Vault after less than five minutes. Some of the ghosts, or remnants, or whatever these things could be classified as, eyed me with curiosity. I found one that looked female and was easy on the eyes.

  “Hey there, brain-lady. What’s up?”

  It wasn’t my best conversation starter, but I managed to engage her in a lively talk about current events—but for her, current meant sometime in the 2050s, way before I was born.

  It turned out she was an anti-unification rebel leader named Elizabeth. That kind of floored me. I hadn’t thought this archive had people like her lurking in it—traitors, I mean.

  “Your name is James…” Elizabeth said. “I recall a man named James… I think I was married to him once.”

  “Yeah? Do you miss him?”

  “Not as much as I should. My memories are incomplete, you see. I mostly recall individuals from my spy network and the rebel military.”

  “Uh… oh. I get it.”

  “What do you get?”

  What I now understood was why they’d kept old Elizabeth’s mind around for so long. She seemed to know who was a secret rebel, and who wasn’t. I frowned quietly as I contemplated this. The people who ran Central… well sir, I wanted to feel they were good sorts, but things like this kept getting in the way. It was positively diabolical to maintain part of a lady’s brain just so she could rat on people. Worse, all the people she knew about had probably died a good half a century back.

  “Hey Elizabeth, what’s your fondest wish?”

  “To die, of course. That’s what everyone here wants to do.”

  “Uh… why?”

  She laughed, and it was a haunted sound. The laugh of an unhappy ghost. “Because we’re trapped in a semi-state of life. Some of us don’t know it, or refuse to accept it, but it’s true.”

  “Well, if you want to die so bad, why don’t you just off yourself?”

  “We can’t, James. We don’t have any physical bodies. We’re helpless in these glass jars.”

  “Oh, yeah…”

  We talked for a while longer, until Floramel finally came over to me and plucked at my sleeve. “We’ve got something. Time to go.”

  Floramel turned away, and I looked after her.

  “Good-bye,” Elizabeth said.

  Quietly, I reached around behind her tank. My hand found a lot of hoses. One yank, that’s all that it took. The fluids from Elizabeth’s tank began to piss out slowly on the floor.

  “Good-bye, Elizabeth.”

  Then I turned around and walked out after Floramel.

  -56
-

  Floramel couldn’t figure out why I was in such an all-fired hurry to get out of the Vault level, and I didn’t enlighten her. Sometimes, it was best for people not to know the truth.

  When I managed to get her safely up to around the minus one hundred level and switch elevators, I breathed a sigh of relief.

  Floramel looked at me strangely. “You didn’t know that woman in the Vault… did you?”

  “Heck no. Never met her before today.”

  She nodded. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. I managed to get a passcode from Pujol.”

  “A passcode?”

  “A way to bypass certain restrictions on our access to the datacore.”

  “Oh… that’s what you were asking about down there? How’d you get that out of some ancient ghost?”

  Floramel seemed distracted. She worked her tapper with fast fingers and studied the screen. “He wasn’t just anyone. One distant day, two centuries ago, he caused one country’s invasion of another country to go unchecked. His work helped bring a swift conclusion to a great war.”

  “Really? You’re telling me he’s an intel man?”

  “One of the best in history.”

  “Huh… I guess you never can tell. Why didn’t you ask some friend of yours in Central’s regular spook patrol to help?”

  “Because… I don’t know any of them—and they wouldn’t tell me anything, anyway.”

  “Okay, I get it.”

  Floramel wasn’t the best at making friends. To be honest, it surprised me that she’d been able to get anything useful out of a spy’s ghost. But then, maybe that wasn’t an accident. Maybe old Juan Pujol was as tired of being kept prisoner in the darkest dungeon on Earth as Elizabeth had been. Maybe he had good reasons for helping out someone who wanted to do something that broke the rules.

  The second elevator took us up to the lobby. The doors swished open and four unsmiling hogs with guns were there to greet us.

  I heard a sharp intake of breath from Floramel, and I got the feeling she was about to blow it. She was acting as guilty as a dog with a dead kitten in her mouth.