Green World

by B. V. Larson

  “That is a private matter. You’re not to go around making foul noises and sounds with your mouthparts about it.”

  “I’m sorry, Governess. I truly am. But when I’m being interrogated and tortured and vivisected and all by the Skay… well… I’m probably going to talk. I’m going to talk about everything they might want to know.”

  Nox paced around for about a minute. She was studying the deck and tramping with all those feet. Every now and then she tucked her floppy pouch in, but it kept slipping loose and hanging low again. I kind of figured she was embarrassed about it.

  “Everyone out of the room!” she ordered suddenly.

  The Nairbs and marines looked confused. Two of the marines grabbed me, and they began to drag me from the chamber.

  “No! Not the McGill. Leave it here.”

  “But Governess,” the Nairb prosecutor-guy complained. “This animal is dangerous. He’s an apex predator, and I can’t in good conscience—”

  “Out! All of you! If he kills me, you can tear him apart and revive me.”

  They all shuffled and humped out the door, and Nox and I were left alone. She regarded me the way a snake-trainer looks at a fresh-caught cobra.

  “Now,” she said. “Tell me where you think my youngling is.”

  “That’s pretty obvious. There’s no secret shame in it, Lady Nox. None at all. Every baby has to have a mommy and a daddy. Sometimes that daddy—well, he’ll probably want to see the kid. Right?”

  She glowered at me. “You haven’t answered my question. Where do you think—?”

  “Sateekas has him, of course. Your youngster is a boy, isn’t he? I bet old Sateekas wouldn’t have pulled strings to get partial custody of a baby girl. He’s old-fashioned that way.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  I blinked. “Well, to be honest, it’s just simple logic. I wasn’t even certain until you hauled me in here and as much as admitted everything.”

  Nox paced some more. I could tell I wasn’t making her day.

  “You must keep silent about this, McGill.”

  “Maybe we could arrange that. I’m not a stubborn or gossipy man.”

  “Incorrect. You’re both. Further, I’ve looked into arrangements such as you’ve suggested. A lobotomy should do the trick—it’s not certain, but it’s likely to succeed. However, I’m sure the Skay would notice and suspect we were hiding evidence… There’s no way to evade the thorough nature of their vivisectionists.”

  “Uh… I wasn’t actually suggesting—”

  “Silence. That’s what I want from you most of all. Silence. But first—how did you know Sateekas was the father? Did he tell you out of boastful pride?”

  I blinked a few times. The way I figured it, if he’d been nailing Nox, I thought Sateekas probably would brag about it to a fellow like me. But that hadn’t happened, and claiming that it did wouldn’t buy me anything, so I shook my head.

  “No, Lady. You told me. We talked about this before, back on the Moon. Remember?”

  “I don’t recall identifying the male donor… but never mind. It doesn’t matter. The Skay can’t know of my secret shame. I don’t want Sateekas’ name attached to my offspring if it is at all possible to separate the two.”

  “Yeah? Why’s that? What’s he done other than command a few fleets that got smashed?”

  “His reputation is poor back at Trantor. He doesn’t belong there, and I doubt he’ll ever be allowed to return. He’s doomed to being shuffled from one remote outpost to the next—and I don’t want to share his fate due to association.”

  “Ah, I get it.”

  And I did get it. The Mogwa were committed homebodies. To them, their homeworld Trantor was the only planet in the galaxy worth living on. They didn’t even like to fly around commanding space fleets, much less being stuck out on the frontier in some craptastic province full of rebels. To them, that job was the lowest of the low.

  Naturally, Nox was seeking a way to climb back out of her nasty assignment. Me telling the Skay about her affair with Sateekas would give them a lever over her. She couldn’t have that.

  “The trouble is,” she continued, “we need to send a scapegoat to the Skay. You are very well suited to the role.”

  “You’ve got the right of that. But sir, let me suggest another person to go in my stead.”

  Nox eyed me. “Revenge, eh? You humans are a rough lot. You’ll turn each other in for a scrap of metal, or even electronic bank credits.”

  “Uh… no sir. I just want my freedom. Do you want to hear the name? Do you want to hear about a human who has committed crimes that make my misunderstandings look small in comparison?”

  Nox stopped pacing around and took a step toward me. I could tell I’d intrigued her.

  “Very well. Identify this monster.”

  And so, I gave her the name, and told her where she could find proof of my accusations. An hour later, she agreed to free me.

  “This creature you know as Claver will be found. To reward you for your compliance, I’ll have you returned to Earth. That harness can be recharged and—”

  “Sir? Could you kindly see your way to teleporting me someplace else?”

  “Where?”

  “Zeta Herculis, I believe that’s what it’s called on the star charts. But we call it… Dust World.”

  -60-

  After meeting with the Mogwa queen, or governess, or whatever you might want to call her, I went back to Dust World.

  During my absence, Floramel and the Investigator hadn’t been idle. Far from it. They now had a new body for Etta. She was growing and floating in a tank.

  She was a blob of meat, really, mostly lifeless but a little bit twitchy. I couldn’t see her face, or much else, because of all the slime. The general outline and shape of her looked right… but that wasn’t too much to go on.

  Days passed, and I could hardly sleep some nights for worrying about her.

  In the meantime, Floramel and I rekindled. That wasn’t surprising, what with me hitting on her all the time and her resistance having been weakened. Raash had left her for his home planet, and she didn’t have anyone else. We were both feeling some grief over our recent losses, too. Most important of all, she’d decided I wasn’t responsible for her previous death. All these things served to put her into a more receptive mood.

  We lived in the catacombs for a few weeks while the blob that would hopefully become Etta grew bigger.

  We slept real close to the exit at night. Only the Investigator felt comfortable spending all his time deep in the abandoned warrens. He didn’t care at all about the haunted stone rooms or the gurgling labs. One weird thing was I never saw him sleep—not once the whole time I was there.

  At last, the big morning came. The Investigator wheeled in his battery-jumping machine, which as it turned out was the device he used for inserting mental engrams into an otherwise vegetable-like corpse. He hooked up a bunch of thick wires to our new version of Etta, and I winced as each probe, clamp and needle was put in place.

  “Are you hurting her?” I asked.

  “That’s an interesting question,” the Investigator replied. He paused in his work and stared down into the tank. “Her nerves are being simulated in a negative way, it’s true—but she has no mind yet with which to interpret these signals. Is that pain? I suppose the answer must be philosophical in nature.”

  I didn’t like his response, but I didn’t want any more details, so I squinched up my eyes and shut the hell up.

  The zapping process soon began. It went much the same way as it had gone with Raash—meaning there was a lot of thrashing around and flopping in agony. Sometimes I put my hand into the tank to calm her, but after I got a solid shock or two, I stopped doing that.

  “It’s done,” the Investigator said after a good ten minutes of torturing my little girl. “She is stable. We’ll soon see if all our efforts have been in vain.”

  “Get the stuff out of her nostrils and her throat,” I urged Fl
oramel. “I’ll hold her up.”

  We disconnected her from some tubes and added others. We tried to sit her up. It was like sitting up a ragdoll. We hooked up oxygen and an IV.

  Several long minutes passed as we worked. During that time, she seemed comatose, barely breathing—but then she took a sudden gasping breath.

  A frown crossed my features during this time. “Etta looks… different. Her face is a little off.”

  Floramel didn’t meet my eye. “She’s just swollen. Give her a minute.”

  “Right, right… Hey! She’s awake! Look! She’s awake!”

  “I see it, James.”

  Floramel and I kept working on that girl without taking a break. It took us damn near an hour to get all the tarry mud off and get her onto a gurney. She shivered a bit, despite the heat of Dust World, and so we covered her with a light blanket.

  Floramel ran instruments up and down over Etta. “She’s not regulating her body temperature yet.”

  I nodded, and I saw my baby girl turn her head toward me. Her lips worked, and her face… it looked kind of puffy in places. It was almost like looking at a different person. I hoped that would pass in time.

  Putting my ear down close to her head, I listened closely to her first words: “…I’m going to kill you guys,” she rasped out. “I’m going to kill you all…”

  I laughed.

  “What did she say?”

  “She’s thanking us, and she’s feeling great!” I proclaimed, and I felt a great sense of relief. She was my baby girl, all right. Etta’s first instinct had always been to kill anyone who got in her way.

  Always.

  * * *

  Her puffy face subsided, but the differences didn’t. As the hours rolled by, I realized she wasn’t going to look the same as she had before. They’d used genes they’d pulled from random places—and it showed.

  Still, the overall effect wasn’t awful. Sure, she was a bit shorter than she had been and her face was different—but she was still a human girl. What’s more, she was younger than she had been, and she was in good health. If I had to pass judgment on the changes, I’d even have to say she was a mite prettier than she had been.

  What more could any woman ask for?

  As a precaution, we kept all mirrors and things of a similar nature out of reach. We did this automatically. Floramel and I just exchanged glances, and we hid things, and we didn’t even talk about it.

  At around dawn on the second morning, however, Etta caught on.

  She’d taken a walk down to the lake. Every inhabited valley on Dust World was really a volcanic crater, and they all had lakes in the middle of them. She’d walked down to that lake, and she’d taken a good look at herself.

  Snorting awake, I found my own combat knife was in my face. What’s more, it was shaking a little.

  Etta’s grip was firm, but she was quivering. Her eyes were wild.

  “What did you do, Daddy?” she demanded. “What did you do?”

  “Hey, baby-doll! Good to see you all cleaned up and healthy. Did you sleep well?”

  She pointed over her shoulder. She pointed outside the cavern, toward the lake.

  “I saw myself. I’m not me. My face is wrong, I’m short—I’m not even as strong as I should be… and I’m… I’m kind of girly-looking.”

  I grinned for all I was worth. “That’s right. There have been lots of improvements. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  The knife edged up against my chin. A trickle of blood sprouted there.

  “You should be careful with that thing. Someone might get hurt.”

  She released an angry grunt, and she turned away. I sat up and gently plucked the knife from her fingers. She let me do it, and I breathed easier.

  Squatting down on the dusty, carven rocks, she began to cry. That wasn’t like Etta. She almost never cried. Not even when she broke her bones.

  “Look,” I said, sitting down next to her. “You’re alive. You’re in a slightly different body, sure—but you’re alive. You still have all your memories—don’t you?”

  “I think so.”

  “Okay, good. You were permed, honey. I had to move Heaven and Earth to get you back. You should be thankful.”

  “I am. I’m just upset.”

  I patted her lightly, and she let me. After another ten minutes, she was calm again—but she wasn’t entirely happy.

  After that rough wake-up, we ate breakfast. I chatted and laughed—but it was all an act. Etta moped and wouldn’t meet anyone’s eye.

  Something like an hour later, I heard some squawking going on in the chambers. I trotted inside the cool gloom and looked around. The Investigator was nowhere to be seen, but Floramel and Etta were in the revival chamber with the turd-tanks.

  Etta had a scalpel under Floramel’s chin. Neither of these two ladies looked happy.

  “You’re being irrational and disrespectful,” Floramel told the girl.

  “And you’re going to be dead if you don’t tell me.”

  “Ladies! Ladies!” I said, clapping my big hands so booming reports bounced off all the rocks around us. “Come on, let’s be happy on this joyous day.”

  They didn’t even look at me.

  “Talk,” Etta said. “Talk, or I’ll cut you.”

  “I have nothing to say.”

  Etta jabbed her then. Right in the chest with the scalpel.

  “Oh… shit,” I said, and I raced over to them. I reached to disarm Etta, but she almost evaded me. She kicked out at my ankles, and it hurt bad—but I didn’t go down.

  “I’m disgusted,” she said as I stood over her. “I should have been able to put you down, Dad.”

  “Maybe.” The truth was I’d taught her quite a bit of self-defense over the years. The old Etta—the one with the bigger arms, would have definitely put the hurt on more than this one could. “You can get stronger. It’s just a matter of working out and stuff.”

  Etta sat on the ground and rocked herself. “Who am I?” she asked. “Ask her, Dad. Make her tell you. Who’s genetic material is in my flesh now?”

  “Uh…”

  “It better not be hers. You hear me, Floramel? If you always wanted a baby, or had some other sick dream, you’re going to be sorry!”

  “Honey,” I said, “calm down. Floramel didn’t inject her DNA into your cells. Did you, girl?”

  Floramel was looking kind of guilty. Uh-oh.

  “Tell me you didn’t do that, woman,” I said sternly. “I need to you to tell me that right now.”

  Floramel shook her head. “No. It wasn’t mine.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief, but Etta still wasn’t happy. She launched herself at Floramel. “Who then, you skinny bitch? Who?”

  My daughter was losing it. I had to grab her and pull her off. She shook in my hands, and I don’t mind saying that my privates were crawling in fear.

  But she didn’t attack me. All her sudden rage and hate was focused on Floramel.

  “We didn’t use Floramel’s DNA,” said another voice.

  We all turned toward the entrance. There, in the midst of the archway, the Investigator’s figure stood tall. He walked in calmly, and he looked at each of us in turn. “We had to take drastic action. There were missing parts to the strands—some of the genes wouldn’t transcribe. We took all we could from a human female standard—but I don’t have a full library, you see.”

  “Who am I, then?” Etta cried. “Who?”

  “Someone once came here from Earth. She had a fine mind, and she lived here for a long time. I calculated that her genetics would make a good contribution to the family tree. In the end—I made a choice. Only time will tell if it was a good one or not.”

  “Grandfather,” Etta pleaded. “Just give me a name.”

  “Natasha,” he said at last. “Natasha Elkin. She is now your third parent.”

  -61-

  Now that the old man had said it, I could see it in Etta’s face. My girl was part Natasha. Certain features, the tone of her voic
e… it was just a little off—and it was plain weird.

  “Hah!” I boomed, clapping my big hands together. “Damn, you had us so worried. Natasha? That’s great news! She’s a genius, honey. She could have been your momma six times over anyway.”

  Etta looked kind of stunned. She knew Natasha and liked her, but… to suddenly become blood-related, well, that had to be a shock.

  “Let’s never tell her,” Etta said. “She’s innocent in this. I assume that she didn’t donate her genes voluntarily?”

  The old man shook his head.

  “All right then… I’m trying to come to grips with this. To control my emotions… Daddy, I want to go home to Earth.”

  “Right now?”

  “Yes. Let’s get out of here.”

  I nodded, and gave her a hug. She didn’t want any hugs from Floramel or her grandpa. She didn’t even want to look at them. She just wanted to leave.

  Deciding that might be for the best, I took her with me. We talked to the hogs at the gateway posts in town, and after a bit of wrangling they let us through.

  I knew what the trouble was, but I didn’t tell Etta. She didn’t match her ID. I think the hogs figured I was smuggling a local girl to Earth using a false tapper—but they didn’t outright accuse me of it. Probably it was my rank in Legion Varus that got them to let us slide by.

  Back on Earth, Etta was sullen. She told me she wanted to go down to the labs to check up on things.

  “Uh… maybe we should touch you up a bit, first,” I suggested.

  She looked at me. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, um, don’t you have some make-up, or something? Maybe some platform shoes would be nice.”

  She looked at me in horror. She put her hands up to her new pretty, softened face. “My face… the recognition software… they’ll never let me in!”

  “It’s okay, I’m sure we can reregister or something. We’ll tell everyone you got a face-job.”

  Etta went into a bathroom, and she didn’t come out. After a while, I went in after her. She was staring into a mirror.

  “Hey, honey. Are you okay?”