Vigilant lop-3

by James Alan Gardner

  We got out of the skimmer, Tic, Festina and me. The twilight was quiet — no sign of Oh-God, though he must have heard us land. The E. C. HAULING van was definitely not a stealth vehicle.

  "Odd," Festina murmured. "Where is he?" She looked around and gave the air a sniff. After yesterday’s flirtation with snow, Great St. Caspian had gone back to spring-thaw moist; there might be a touch of fog soon, now that the sun was going down.

  "Maybe he’s hiding," I said in a low voice. "He wouldn’t recognize our vehicle, so he might have decided to play safe."

  "Maybe." She didn’t sound convinced.

  Tic rolled open both his ear-sheaths and stood still, listening. Festina and I held our breaths. After ten seconds, he shook his head. "Nothing. Except that you both have healthy-sounding hearts."

  Festina stepped away from the skimmer so it wasn’t blocking her view of the yard. I did the same, angling off in a different direction. No sign of Oh-God; just the domes, the dirt, the trees.

  "In exploring an alien planet," Festina said softly, "it’s a bad moment when you realize someone isn’t where he should be. Do you search around quietly, even though that might be wasting crucial time? Or do you shout and draw attention to yourself?"

  "What do your Explorer textbooks say?" I asked.

  "Same as always: damned if you do and damned if you don’t." She looked around once more. "Let’s try the quiet approach for a while. And watch each other’s backs."

  Festina led us to the nearer of the two domes. "This is the garage," she whispered to us. "I’ve been here once before. Oh-God set the dome fields to recognize me as a friend." She placed her palm against the dome’s smooth brown surface, and murmured, "House-soul, attend. My name is Festina Ramos: garage access, please."

  The dome field dimpled inward, opened a keyhole perforation, then dilated the hole to a gap wide enough for a person to step through. No light inside… just the spill of dusk through the doorway. "Maybe I should send you in first, Faye," Festina whispered. "If there’s danger, your Peacock will run to the rescue."

  I took a step forward, but she stopped me. "That was a joke. Navy policy says Explorers always take the lead." Bumbler in one hand, stunner in the other, she slipped through the opening into the blackness. Glancing back over her shoulder, she murmured, "One of you keep watch at the door."

  Tic got the jump on me, not to mention a sharp dig of his elbow as he bounced to the door first. "Vigil policy says novice proctors always take the watch," he told me. Then he and Festina disappeared into the dark.

  For three minutes I strained my ears and eyes, reaching out to sense anything I should worry about. Nothing. I worried anyway. When I heard footsteps scuffing toward me from the blackness of the garage, my sight was well enough adjusted to make out the silhouettes of Festina and Tic.

  "Anything?"

  "No." They waited for me to move out of the doorway, then followed me into the yard. The garage’s dome field sealed itself shut behind us, as if an entrance had never existed.

  "The house next," Festina said. Not that the other dome was big enough to deserve the name "house": it was only hut-sized, like my room back in Sallysweet River. The dome field dimpled open for Festina as easily as the garage…

  …and there was Oh-God, lying flat on a cot. A cot with white sheets and white blankets, and his eyes were slack open, and his ear-sheaths, and the smell was the same as the Circus, the shit and the piss and the plague.

  "Hey, Admiral," Oh-God said to Festina in a slurred voice. "I guess this is what ‘expendable’ means."

  Shock. Struck motionless dumb. Yes, I’d been expecting the plague, fearing it, feeling its iciness back in the world… but looking at Oh-God this way still hit me like a punch in the gut. How long had it been since the last time I’d seen him? Three nights. And in that short time he’d gone from fumbly hands to this: slack arms, slack legs, slack face. Too fast, I thought. The plague shouldn’t work that fast.

  My eye automatically began tracking down his body, doing the standard visual inspection of symptoms taught to me by Dads; grading the patient, how close to death? I didn’t get halfway through the quick once-over before I came up with an answer: damned close indeed. Time to get moving.

  On the far side of the room stood a standard food-synthesizing system. "Tic," I said, "check the synthesizer. Make sure it’s linked to the world-soul’s recipe base. If it isn’t, hot-wire a connection. We need to be using the official Demoth formula for olive oil."

  "Tried olive oil," Oh-God mumbled. "Doesn’t work."

  "Not if your synthesizer uses Freep settings," I told him. "You need to download the Demoth database. Come on, Tic, move."

  "My, my, Smallwood," he said, "who’s been imbibing alpha-female hormone?" But he glided across the room, and began to speak to the synthesizer in a low voice. If anyone could talk a witless little food processor into changing its formulas, Tic was our man.

  Festina dropped to her knees beside Oh-God. "Don’t touch," the Freep said blurrily. "You might catch something."

  "Humans are immune," she replied, laying her hand on his forehead. "Ouch," she murmured a moment later. "Got yourself a fever."

  "A fever?" I said. "Pteromic Paralysis doesn’t cause fever."

  "Tell that to my sweat glands," Oh-God grumbled.

  "Considering how cold-blooded all Divian races are," Festina said, "he’s burning up."

  I wanted to touch him, see for myself… but the Peacock would likely stop me. Better to take Festina’s word for it. "Did you catch this from Iranu?" I asked.

  "Yeah, the pus-head. Why didn’t he tell me he was sick?"

  "He probably didn’t know."

  "He kept complaining his foot had fallen asleep. Wanted me to massage it for him." Oh-God drew a raggedy breath. "Pus-head."

  Pus-heads indeed: both Iranu and Oh-God. For anyone on Demoth, mental alarm bells should clang like demons when someone’s foot "falls asleep" and won’t wake up. But they were both Freeps, and not alert to the possibility of plague. "When was this?" I asked. "When did you see Iranu?"

  "A few months back," Oh-God answered. His speech had slurred up more, just in the time we’d been here. I’d never seen the paralysis move so unholy fast. "He hired me to give him a ride — on the hush — from Mummichog up to Sallysweet River."

  Mummichog: flicking the link-seed told me Mummichog was a village on the equatorial coast of Argentia. A dormitory town for maintenance crews who worked the inland oil and gas pipelines. "What was Iranu doing in Mummichog?" I asked.

  "Archaeology crap. That’s all he ever cared about. I’d driven him around before — he came to Demoth once or twice a year — and it was always ‘important archaeological sites.’ He said his old man used to play archaeologist on this planet too. Back before the plague."

  Link-seed gymnastics again. Yes. One of the Freep archaeologists arrested years ago for smuggling out antique bric-a-brac was a Dr. Yasbad Iranu. Kowkow must have been Yasbad’s son. "Did you ever see Iranu carrying old rusty knickknacks?"

  "Sure," Oh-God replied. "But he told me they were just window dressing in case he got caught by Demoth authorities. His father used them for the same thing. Cover for what he’d really found."

  "And what was that?" Festina asked.

  "You think he’d tell me? Not bloody likely. Took me years to learn what little I did."

  "This last time you saw him," I said, "did Iranu go anywhere but Mummichog and Sallysweet River?"

  "Nah. Those were the most important sites, I can tell you that much. Sometimes when he came to Demoth he went other places, but he always kept going back to those two."

  Tic spoke from the far side of the room. "Olive oil’s ready." He held a small plastic cup in his hand.

  I waved him over. Festina lifted Oh-God’s head while Tic put the cup to the man’s lips. Oh-God made a face, as wry as he could with so many muscles puttied out; but he drank and he swallowed. Thank heaven his throat still worked.

  "That should help
," I told him.

  "Didn’t before," he grimaced. "Wipe off my mouth, will you?"

  Festina dabbed with a corner of the bedsheet. Tic took my elbow and drew me away a short distance.

  "His synthesizer was already set to Demoth recipes," Tic said in a low voice. "It didn’t need to be reprogrammed."

  "You mean he’d been drinking our olive oil? And it hadn’t worked?"

  Tic nodded. "Maybe it doesn’t have the same effect on his metabolism. If there’s some crucial ingredient that gets broken down by Freep stomach acids instead of being absorbed…"

  That was one possibility. Neither of us felt like saying, "Suppose Pteromic B thumbs its microbial nose at olive oil. Suppose we’re back at square one with this disease, except that the new breed works a dozen times faster."

  "We have to call an ambulance," I said. "A full emergency team."

  "No other choice," Tic agreed. He fell silent for a moment, then muttered, "Uh-oh."

  "What?"

  "I can’t get the world-soul."

  "But I just downloaded something a minute ago." I closed my eyes and reached out mentally. Protection Central, we need an emergency medical team…

  Like shouting into a pillow. I’d felt the sensation before. "Christ. We’re being jammed again."

  "By whom?"

  I ignored the question. "Festina! Did the dipshits know Oh-God worked for you?"

  "Maybe. It’s no secret we use a lot of retired Explorers."

  "They could have mounted a watch on this place," I said to myself. "In case we showed up."

  "But why?" Tic asked.

  "Because they keep reading secret police reports. They know the Peacock is real, and it’s constantly doing me favors. The Admiralty doesn’t want to believe Sperm-tubes behave like that. It must drive them frothy well insane."

  "Listen," Oh-God said. With his ear-lids slack open, he could hear better than the rest of us.

  For ten seconds, we held our breaths. Then I caught the soft sound of stealth engines descending from the sky.

  BLOOD-DROP ORCHIDS

  "What’s going on?" Oh-God asked. His words were turning so mumbly I could barely understand.

  "Unwelcome guests," I said. "Did you ever have dealings with dipshits?"

  "Those pukes? I got standards, missy. No decent Explorer ever worked for the Admiralty." His gaze shifted over to Festina. "You don’t count."

  "Smallwood!" a man shouted outside the dome. "We know you’re here, Smallwood. We want to talk."

  Christ. It was the Mouth. Who the devil let him out of jail? But then, the Admiralty could afford good lawyers. It could afford bail. It could afford to bribe judges, or make deals with the government behind closed doors. For that matter, it could afford jailbreaks if it was desperate enough to learn how I got a Sperm-tube by the tail.

  "Smallwood! You know we mean business. Come out before things get ugly."

  Festina muttered, "Dipshits must take the same Bad Dialogue course as starship captains." She raised her voice, and called, "This is Admiral Festina Ramos. I order you sailors to stand down."

  "No can do, Admiral," the Mouth yelled. "You aren’t in our chain of command."

  Something hit the dome’s structure field. Maybe a sledgehammer. Maybe something heavier. The dome shivered and rattled like tinsel paper, but held solid.

  "House-soul, attend," Festina said. "Dome field, one-way transparent, looking out."

  The dirt brown color of the dome field started to thin, like smoked glass turning clear. Outside in the compound, Mouth and Muscle stood in tough-guy poses, staring at us… or rather at the blank dome surface, which would still be solid brown from their point of view. The Muscle held a whopping donkey-dick of a gun, one he had to prop over his shoulder to fire. A bazooka? Pity I couldn’t link to the world-soul and look up weapons so illegal not even planetary governments could own one.

  "Don’t worry," Oh-God said weakly. "This dome’s as strong as they come. We can hold out…"

  The bazooka fired. A finger-sized missile burst out of its muzzle, flashed through the air on a belch of smoke, and exploded against the dome’s shell. Boom. By which I mean BOOM. Blazing, blinding white. The dome field shuddered and snapped with electric crackles.

  "No problem," Oh-God said. His voice sounded like gargling.

  Tic moved close to Festina and me. "Even if the dome field holds, we can’t afford to sit out a siege. Oh-God’s condition is plunging by the minute. He won’t last much longer." Tic glanced at the dipshits outside. "Could we just drop the dome and rush them?"

  Festina shook her head. "Look what he’s got," she said, pointing toward Mouth. Twilight made it hard to see, but the man was holding a pair of fist-sized matte silver balls, one in each hand. "Those are stun grenades," Festina told us. "Same principle as a stun-pistol, but with a good wide field of effect. If we try charging, those grenades will drop us in a second."

  "What if one of us sneaks out the back?" I suggested. "Tic flies faster than they can run. If he gets clear of the jamming field, he can call for help."

  "And if they notice him leaving," Festina said, "they drop him with a stun grenade. Then they’ve got a hostage."

  "Do we have another alternative?" Tic asked. "Is it totally naive to throw ourselves on their mercy? For Oh-God’s sake?"

  Damn right, I thought, totally naive. But was it? Yes, the dipshits had been ready to crack open my brain; and I was sure they wouldn’t mind roughing us up, maybe just in revenge for me breaking Mouth’s knee. But would they sit doing butt-nothing and let Oh-God die? That was as good as murder, according to the League of Peoples — the Mouth and Muscle would be branded dangerous non-sentients. Meaning they could never leave Demoth. Meaning if they tried to leave Demoth, their hearts would magically stop the second they got out of our star system.

  Were these men really that devoutly loyal to the High Council? Loyal enough to strand themselves on Demoth for the rest of their lives, running and hiding from local police? Maybe. Or maybe they just didn’t think that far ahead — all thought focused on their brain-blinkered mission and let tomorrow take care of itself.

  Muscle fired his bazooka again. The dome field jumped and crackled, fighting to hold its structure. At the point of impact the field broke into a crazy-quilt zigzag of colors, like a vidscreen with a three-year-old twirling its control knobs. The jaggies only lasted a second, then damped down, as the dome sucked up power to stabilize itself; but any fool could see the future didn’t look rosy.

  "One more blast will do it," Festina muttered. "We’re out of options." She bent and scooped Oh-God from his cot. "Get to the back of the dome," she told us. "When the field collapses, scatter and run. If we spread out fast, maybe we won’t all be in the daze-radius of the grenades."

  They’ll just hunt us down in their skimmer, I thought. Let’s try something else. "House-soul, attend," I snapped. "I’m a friend of Xe. Make a pinhole in the dome’s back wall."

  It shouldn’t have worked; Oh-God hadn’t programmed the house-soul to recognize my voice. Or to obey me, even if it knew who the blazes I was. But a pimple of distortion pustuled up in the dome field like a bubble in glass, then popped to open a pinprick puncture to the outside.

  "Peacock," I said. "Get us out of here."

  One moment there was nothing; then the peacock tube was there, mouth flaring wide in front of me, tapering down to a thread that passed through the pinhole then widened again, wisping up over the trees and off into the twilit sky.

  This time, I reacted faster than Festina — I shoved her into the tube. She had Oh-God in her arms; he hollered, "Oh shi…" as they both vanished, like cartoon figures sucked up by the hose of a vacuum cleaner.

  "You’re next," I told Tic. He looked like he wanted to argue; so I hit him with a beautiful forearm sweep, knocking him clean off his feet and into the Sperm-tail, light as a rag doll.

  Outside in the compound, the bazooka fired again. As the missile struck target, the dome field popped like a soap bu
bble, obliterated by the force of the explosion. With nothing to stop it, the blast kept coming: the fire, the thunder, a hammer of wind slamming me off my feet. The Peacock’s mouth darted forward to catch me… and then I was spilling down its gullet, spun out like yarn from a spinning wheel, thin as a hair and a universe long.

  I don’t remember landing; I must have soaked up enough bazooka blast to black out for a moment. Next thing I knew, Festina was crouched beside me, shaking my shoulder. "Faye. Faye. Come on, Faye, talk to me."

  "How about I say, ‘Ouch.’ "

  "Better than nothing."

  She sat back and gave me the once-over. As much as she could see in the half-gray light. Why was she looking so precious keen at my face? The skin felt tight and tingly, like I’d caught a wicked sunburn: scorch from the explosion. Was that what she was looking at? Or was she just looking at me, her eyes so worried-concerned, full of I don’t know what…

  Let it go. Stick with simple thoughts. Like whether I had any major hurts. No, nothing serious. I could wiggle my fingers. I could wiggle my toes. I just needed to stay flat on my back for a second and catch my breath.

  "Everyone else all right?" I asked.

  "We came through in one piece," she answered. "Oh-God is in terrible shape, but Tic has already called for a med team."

  "Then we’re out of the jamming field?"

  "Well out."

  Something about her voice made me sit up and give my surroundings a good hard stare. The trees overhead were monstrous huge — giants compared to the snow-stunted cactus-pines near Oh-God’s compound. Tallish even when compared to the Vigil’s office tree in Bona-venture. They seemed to stretch forever into the night sky.