Again the first Jack's voice rose above the others. "What Master Tommy wishes...." He glanced around the room, and the murmurs died.
On their way to pick up Potter, Sisle blurted: "They stared at us the whole time! What did you do to them?"
"They think I am the chosen one who’ll free them and take them back to Earth. The one they chant about in their rest day ritual. A warrior told me he had heard the story from an artisan who heard it from a farmer. It does me no good to tell them anything else. I thought you’d heard the story."
Her eyes opened wide. "You're the chosen one?"
He shook his head. "No, they believe I'm the chosen one. I’ve nothing to do with what they believe."
At the stable, Potter dropped a dead mouse at Tommy's feet, then jumped into his arms.
When they reached the door to his lord's chamber, Sisle turned to him. "You asked me to promise, and I will. I'll never call you Lord Tommy again."
# # #
Ull called Tommy to the bridge early the following morning. A quick glance through the overhead dome showed a star of a different color in the distance and no reflections from the remains of a destroyed planet.
"We arrived at the edge of the Toblepas system last night," Ull told him. "We planned to proceed with just The People's Hand to the planet, but we have a dilemma."
"Yes?" Tommy asked.
"The ship is held fast in the asteroid. Every time we move the ship the asteroid moves with it."
Tommy burst into laughter. "Another consequence no one considered. The insystem drive in The People's Hand, even the short-range version, works by gravitational attraction. Every nearby object falls into its field."
"We hope," Ull indicated Leegh who was still on the commander's podium, "you might have some idea how to get us out, short of explosives."
Tommy thought for a minute. "I might. Have you disconnected from My Flowing Streams?"
"Yes."
"Was the connecting cable routed from the bottom of the ship?"
"No, from the side."
Tommy ran his hand through his hair then nodded. "Give me an hour, and I think I can have us out of here."
Tommy turned to the intercom and called throughout the lord's portion of the ship. "Seth, this is Tommy. Please meet me in the track control room."
When Tommy arrived, he found a room full of young men standing behind Seth. Seth insisted that he first introduce Tommy to each of his new apprentices before beginning any work. Seth glowed with pride as Tommy shook each man’s hand.
After Seth dismissed his apprentices, Tommy made his request. "We need to shoot at least one small iron object from a track pointing from the rear of the ship. I think one will do, but I haven't done the math."
"Not a missile?" Seth asked.
"Definitely not a missile. We’re in here too tight for that. A ricochet would damage the ship. And a missile might cause quakes that would damage My Flowing Streams."
"Would a meter of iron pipe do?" Seth asked.
"Let's start with half a meter. I'll bypass the part of the program that loads a missile before we try."
Forty-five minutes later, everyone on the ship felt a gentle nudge from below as the rail gun made a small enlargement in the crater below the ship.
A few minutes afterward, Ull called from the bridge. "We are moving. That is enough for now."
"Seth, set this up as an option that can be controlled from the bridge,” Tommy said. “We should only need it when we're docked. I'll make the computer changes if you'll work on a way to load missiles of various sizes."
"Not just the half-meter pipe?"
"No. Come up with some other standard sizes to a maximum of our regular missile. I also have some other ideas I want to work on with you, later."
"Yes, Lord Tommy," Seth said.
# # #
Once free of the asteroid, a short transit brought them ten light seconds from the planet, where they waited for permission to continue using insystem drive. After receiving clearance, The People's Hand proceeded at a leisurely pace to orbit at Toblepas. No one wanted to advertise the new accuracy of the ship's transits. An hour later, Tommy walked down a lander's ramp onto a planet's surface for the first time in at least three years. With him were four warrior guards, a member of the Communications Guild, Leegh, and Sisle. Ull had insisted on the warriors as protection for the group and had objected to Sisle, but Tommy had won the argument. As one of The People, he had the right to take whomever he pleased.
Another group, led by Ull and also including a member of the Communications Guild, landed on the opposite side of the planet. Each group had half the list of parts they needed, to hide, as much as possible, what they sought.
Tommy took a deep breath and looked at the city visible in the distance. He immediately noticed the lack of ammonia always present in the ship, even though the air here wasn't clean. A hint of lubricating oil and burning asphalt, perhaps coming from the smokestacks he saw on the horizon, irritated his eyes. He wiped his face on his shirttail and smiled. Seeing a horizon after years spent in narrow passageways is worth almost any amount of air pollution.
Ull had briefed Tommy about Toblepas the night before. A trading center for nearby starfaring cultures for over five hundred years, the Toblepas business community took pride in the smoothness of its transactions and the quick availability of credit. As their landers brought cargo to this field and others, each consignment would be quickly auctioned and its value added to The People's Hand's account. The credit from the auction would be immediately available to authorized buyers for purchases.
At the bottom of the lander ramp, representatives of the central bank met them and issued credentials. Tommy tried to keep himself from staring at the stick-like creatures as they talked with Leegh. Instead of a torso, head, and neck, the Tobles had a single cylinder of rough ebony, almost like a length of log. Two pairs of multiply articulated legs supported the creatures from two heights, so their trunks tilted upward. On each, a third set of limbs, with several joints, extended to either side. The “arms” ended in a spray of smaller fingers, also with multiple joints. Two pairs of eyes on stalks near the top of their trunks continually moved in all directions, making it difficult to determine the focus of their attention. They wore no clothes, but each had a satchel strapped between the arms and the first set of legs. A vertical mouth, a break in the bark of their rough bark-like skin, became invisible when closed. From these mouths, they spoke the lords' language, indistinguishable from the speech he heard every day.
While Leegh negotiated, Tommy walked away from the ramp until he could see in a full circle. His first impression had been a mistake; the city pressed against the landing everywhere he looked, not just opposite the landing ramp. Narrow skyscrapers rose in the distance like stalks of wheat, robbing their neighbors of sunlight and standing so close together that he couldn’t see room for passage between them. Something about the surface of the skyscrapers caught his eye. The reflections from the sun shifted constantly. What could be causing that?
By the time Leegh, who had visited this planet many times before, led the group to what would have been called a taxi stand on Earth, Leegh and Tommy had access to millions in the local currency using the credentials the bankers had provided.
The Toble driver of their open-topped vehicle spoke enough of the lords' language for them to direct it to their destinations. The Toble had some fluency in all of the languages of the eight cultures that traded here.
As the taxi traveled toward the edge of the landing field, the skyscrapers loomed higher in the sky until Tommy could no longer see their tops. At the same time, the strange reflections from the buildings resolved: thousands of Toble scurried across their faces, climbing into and out of doors like ants. Just above the level of the street, a line of Toble moved in either direction on the sides of buildings, crossing from one building to another on narrow walkways.
At the edge of the field they passed through a gate and joined a moving thro
ng of vehicles darting from intersection to intersection.
When they had taken their seats in the taxi, the driver had lowered a bar across their laps: “For your safety,” the driver had hissed. Now, Tommy gripped that bar with both hands, his knuckles white. He looked at the other human passengers. The warriors’ and Sisle’s faces were stiff, but their tight grip on the bar betrayed them. The artisan made no effort to hide his fear: his face was pasty white, and he had one arm wrapped around the bar. Leegh sat in a special split seat that accommodated her tail. She seemed completely unconcerned, until Tommy noticed that she had the claws of her feet dug into the rug covering the floor.
The Toble driver stood in front, swaying as the vehicle jerked, with two “feet” on the floor, two “feet” holding bars to its left and right, and two “hands” grasping control rods to its front. The only sounds they heard from the street were of engines revving, tires screeching, and breaks squealing. No one honked. No one yelled curses as their taxi was, repeatedly, almost involved in collisions with other vehicles speeding down the narrow streets or with the skyscrapers’ walls, just below the moving lines of “walking” Toble above them.
An image from Earth came into Tommy’s mind: Waterbugs! Waterbugs skating across the surface of the inlet behind my house! They never run into each other, either!
Reaching the city’s thriving electronics and electrical parts district was a relief. Their driver pulled the taxi into a parking garage and then showed them the entrance to an underground mall that stretched along several miles of tunnel. They had no problems finding the items on their list. Leegh knew which stores would have what they needed, and, at each, she made a quick purchase and had the item loaded into the vehicle.
As they shopped, the artisan spoke only to confirm the purchase of the correct item. Sisle and the warriors remained silent.
When they were done, Leegh wanted to go shopping alone and insisted they separate. She took two of the warriors and left Tommy at the lander to do as he pleased.
"I've never seen Leegh in such a hurry," Tommy said, scratching his head "but maybe that's good. Now, we can do some shopping on our own." He turned to the artisan who had remained with them. "Do you want to come along?"
"No, Master Tommy.” The artisan grinned hesitantly. “The ride in that vehicle terrified me. If you don't mind I’ll stay here."
Tommy watched him for a moment. Then he took a deep breath. "Out of curiosity, are you planning on running from the ship? I wouldn't stop you if you are, but I would like to know, so I can turn in the other direction."
Both of the warriors made a deep grumbling noise, and the artisan whitened.
Tommy glared at the warriors. "If I tell you to, you’ll turn in the other direction, too." He looked back to the artisan. "Don't worry. I’d just like to know."
The artisan looked at Tommy's feet, "You don't know?"
"Know what?"
"When an artisan leaves the ship, he's forced to swallow a capsule. The capsule attaches itself in the stomach until released by a device on the ship. If I don't return, they’ll send a signal, and fire will consume my body from within, leaving nothing but ashes."
The air suddenly didn’t seem quite so clean or warm. Tommy swallowed. "I didn't know." He remembered a conversation he’d heard soon after he arrived on the ship. "But I should have. How can you stand what the lords do to you?"
"I wouldn't run, anyway, Master Tommy. My family is on the ship, and what would I do here? Only the Toble can work. I’d soon starve. I'll be here when you come back. You may be sure of it."
Tommy shrugged and led the way to the taxi stand for another vehicle. "Take us to the electronics district," he told the driver. "I have some gadgets I want to buy," he added to no one in particular.
This driver, if anything, made the trip even faster than the first. Tommy decided to hold on and try to enjoy the ride. People paid to ride a roller coaster, after all, and so far he hadn’t seen an accident. Before his kidnapping, he had never been farther than three hundred miles from Atlanta. This was his first visit to another planet!
When they got to the district, Tommy had the taxi driver let them out at one end of the tunnel so they could walk from store to store. He also paid the driver for the rest of the day and asked it to wait.
In the electronics district, he searched for proximity fuses for the missiles he was planning. He also had a list from several guilds for replacement parts.
He'd asked another guildmaster about how things changed on the ship. The guildmaster told him that one of the lords would see something she liked, usually here on Toblepas, and she would buy everything as a unit, leaving the artisans to deal with the mess. Some Nesu had purchased the radar units on the ship that way many years before. The new technology had taken months for the Communications Guild to understand and install.
And, of course, Ull had obtained the computers and Tommy on Earth in the same way.
In each of the shops, the proprietor, always one of the Toble stick people, confronted him silently soon after he entered the store. He quickly understood they knew about Nesu, but humans wandering alone were outside their experience, and they didn't want riffraff. When he spoke in The People's language and showed his credit credentials, money removed all obstacles.
The warriors followed him dutifully. At each store, one waited outside, and one stood inside the door to watch as Tommy dealt with the proprietor. The first few times, Sisle followed him in, but the activity on the tunnel “street” interested her much more than electronics, so he told her to wait with the outside guard. The Nesu didn't allow women off the ship, and her head jerked toward every noise and flash of light.
Then Tommy entered a store he later thought of as The Little Shop of Horrors.
After recognizing Tommy as one of The People, regardless of his appearance, and following a credit check, the proprietor broke the routine. Instead of following him to answer his questions, it leaned closer and hissed through its vertical slit, "I see you are using an old model controller. We have much better models now."
At first Tommy didn't understand what the Toble meant, then he realized two of the creature’s eyes were focused on him, and two were turned toward the Warrior standing at the door.
He means the band around the warrior's neck. "Uh, yes. Perhaps you will show me what you have?"
The Toble led the way deeper into the store, the bottom of the log that was its body waving back and forth between its four legs. "May I see the detonation device you use?" it asked.
The sight of the small cylinder in Tommy’s hand elicited a clicking sound as the two sides of its mouth snapped together. "Those are wasteful." It held up a cylinder little different from Tommy's except for a button on the side. "This model will do everything that will do and also can be aimed at a specific individual. Why destroy all the valuable property near the culprit? It has three clicks instead of two. The first arms the directed beam. The second and third clicks have the same range as the first and second clicks in the one in your hand."
The creature moved to a table covered with metal neck rings. "These offer even more control by administering pain at various levels in addition to the explosive charge. You would need a more sophisticated detonation device of course." Its black fingers displayed a slightly larger cylinder that included a small dial opposite the button. "This detonator has the directed and area features plus pain control. The dial is graduated from zero to ten. With the cylinder's end closed and the dial set to zero, nothing happens. Point the cylinder at a collar wearer and turn up the dial to deliver an increasing amount of pain."
Tommy tasted bile rising into his throat. "Does this work with all species? How is that possible?"
"All of the known species have a nervous system sensitive to electrical stimulus," it hissed.
"Uh," Tommy said. "I don't have authorization to replace our collars or cylinders. I do have an order for several of the devices used to install and remove the collars, and turn them on and off."
"A loss for both of us," the proprietor sizzled. "You would be much happier with the newer models." It led the way to another table. "These are the collar activators appropriate for the older models you are using. I fear they are no longer in production and are expensive."
"Of course," Tommy said. "Does the unit come with instructions?"
"Yes," it said and reached under the table. "I have them in the language of The People."
Tommy took the proffered pages and leafed through them. The devices on the table fitted the collar on the slave and activated the explosive device, or deactivated the explosive device and removed the collar. He read the deactivation and removal process more carefully. The explosive must be deactivated before the collar’s removed! The collar can be worn with no one realizing it's inactive!
Tommy made a quick decision. "I will take four of these. And I have decided to take a few of the new models for testing and presentation to the ship's council. Sixteen will do, I think. And sixteen of the collars and detonators with the pain dial. Of course, I will need an activation device for those, too. Perhaps you will get the larger sale, after all."
The proprietor dipped on its front legs toward Tommy. "Thank you."
"One thing," Tommy said. "When you register this sale, would you list everything in one lump sum as ‘controllers’?"
"I would be pleased to do so," the Toble said. "Now, may I show you our line of shock prods? They are effective for crowd control inside a ship."
Tommy couldn’t repress a shudder. "No thanks. This is enough for now."
With his purchases loaded and companions seated in the vehicle, Tommy leaned forward to the driver. "Some of the other beings I have seen here are vaguely like us. Is there a district specializing in clothing for that species?"
Thirty minutes later, Tommy held clothing in front of Sisle and had her try on what he liked. He bought thirty outfits, mostly too large so that they could be altered. Some were similar to the tunics Sisle already wore and some had pants, which no warrior female or male ever wore. Some included shorts, which from their expressions the two warriors thought were scandalous. He also bought two outfits that would pass for one piece swimsuits. Tommy wanted Sisle to swim.
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