Blade of p’Na

by L. Neil Smith

  Their food usually has to be alive, something like a rabbit or a chicken—or a puppy or a kitten, I suspect. They bite it and inject it with a paralytic enzyme, then wrap it up in silk, still alive and helpless, and hang it up for later. Spiders don’t have much use for refrigerators or stasis chambers. When dinner time arrives, a second injection, consisting mostly of digestive fluid, dissolves their prey—alive through most of it—from the inside out. Then they suck out their liquefied victim through a tube that’s a part of their mouth machinery.

  It’s really disgusting. Not surprisingly, they regard the way we vertebrates eat—mammals, birds, reptiles—tearing off chunks of flesh, stuffing them down our gullets, with similar shock and horror. I’m no moral relativist, but customs do vary with time, place, and species.

  All the same, it must be awfully nice to have a family that’ll back you up like that. The only family I ever had, the only family I’d ever known, was the human sitting in the seat beside me, and his mom. Guess I can’t really complain about that. I couldn’t think of anything the two of them wouldn’t do for me, or that I wouldn’t do for them. So life was good, after all. And in any event, the boss and I had lots of solid, satisfying detectiving ahead of us—provided I could keep him interested.

  Before long, I had names and contact information for dozens of uncles, aunts, and cousins, as well as forty or fifty siblings, the guy’s mother and father (the old boy being a Fronzeln, and therefore still among the living). I also learned our runaway was a partner in a restaurant designed for the strangest sapients the Elders had ever Appropriated. That, I thought, was going to be a really interesting interview.

  By the time I finished, far away to the south across the Inland Sea, I thought I could make out an extremely thin sliver of blue sky peeking through. The day might be ending, but it was ending nicely. It was a fairly steady, but considerably gentler rain that was falling all around us now, appearing to drive directly into the windshield as if it were falling horizontally, but actually coming at us straight down.

  I’d known what Eichra Oren had in mind, of course, but it was more than a little unsettling to actually see us do it. In no time at all, we skimmed up in front of “Conspiracy Central” a neat, low-lying villa in the extremely popular Antarctican style, stucco-covered adobe under red tile roofs, practically on the beach. For a minute, I thought we’d gone too far, somehow, and had come back to Eneri Relda’s place, which it resembled, although there was more to the Misterthoggosh estate, we knew, both on the shore before us and at the bottom of the nearby water.

  The highway side was as windowless as Eneri Relda’s, but there were no non-functional Lost Continental columns. The heavy bronze door on this side of the place was different from hers, too, with a comical avianoid face in the middle, seemingly cast in high relief. However when Eichra Oren touched the door, the bronze face suddenly came to life.

  “Why did the ornithoid cross the road?” it asked us in a silly voice, making a silly face. I had forgotten how much I detested these things.

  It was a humor door, an item straight from various dinosauroid cultures, a sophisticated recording and playback system, rather than an example of artificial intelligence. It’s said that in dinosauroid universes, at the homes of wealthy individuals, servants were assigned this task in earlier times, but an industrial revolution inevitably brought egalitarianism, and a “servant problem” always followed. It became easier—and considerably cheaper—to rely on devices like this.

  In certain neighborhoods in the handful of cities on this version of the planet, groups of small, naughty boys of various species will run down a line of houses on either side of the street as fast as they can, touching each door they pass until the whole block is babbling to itself.

  Eichra Oren simply gave it what it wanted and said, “I give up.”

  “For some fowl purpose,” it replied. “How many ammonites does it take—”

  “May I help you, gentlebeings?” inquired an entity, opening the door and holding it so the aperture was no more than eight inches wide. Its voice was high and squeaky, and the individual itself was more than six feet tall, with a red-orange crest, and covered with silvery gray scaly feathers—or feathery scales. It stood on very familiar looking silly four-toed feet. Possibly more confusing, the individual standing before us registered with my olfactory lobes as male.

  “Squee-elgia?” I asked. That had been the name of Eneri Relda’s assistant. Bird people, or dinosaur people—either one is about as accurate—had been among the first sapient beings Appropriated by the Elders, about a million years ago. That means they’ve been with the giant nautiloids longest, and many hold administrative positions of the highest trust. Call me a speciesist, they are nature’s born bureaucrats.

  “My sister—I ardently trust nothing unfortunate has befallen her…”

  Eichra Oren: “No, no, my associate was confused. We just saw your sister at Eneri Relda’s villa. I must say, there is a strong family resemblance.”

  The creature struck a pose, back of the wrist on a hip, his hip shot. “Which I assume is your polite way of conveying the assertion that we dinosauroids, as you call us, all look alike to you mammals (while we are far too polite, of course, to call you ‘shrew-spawn’ which, after all, is what you are.) No matter; I am quite thoroughly accustomed to such trivial and passing indignities. I am Aelbraugh Pritsch, administrative assistant to Misterthoggosh. You may call me Aelbraugh Pritsch. And to reiterate, is there something I can do for you?”

  How about dry up and blow away, I was tempted to answer. Not only was this dinosaur-bird thing obnoxious, talking with him was more than a little like trying to hold a conversation with a child’s balloon, held tightly at the nozzle so the air squeals out comically, or with someone who’s been breathing helium. Basically, Aelbraugh Pritsch’s species had converted bird-song into speech, with a mixed degree of success.

  There was next to no cover over this small step into the House of Misterthoggosh. Technically, this was the back door, the servants’ entrance, the beggar’s portal at which we were standing. The wind was blowing again, and from an inconvenient direction. I didn’t envy Eichra Oren a bit in his stylish knee-length tunic. Then I suddenly remembered Lornis’ earlier difficulties with her own tunic in a high wind; somehow, this wasn’t quite the same thing. In the meantime, the boss and I were getting soaked for the second time this very rainy afternoon.

  A trifle frustrated, he turned slightly so that the sword on his hip was more apparent. “I am Eichra Oren, an accredited p’Nan debt assessor. I have reason to believe that your employer may require my services.”

  Which usually only meant one thing.

  “That’s interesting,” observed Aelbraugh Pritsch. “And, I must say, more than a little sad. Has it become customary for a p’Nan debt-assessor such as yourself to seek gainful employment in this manner, by soliciting door-to-door? It would seem, to me at least, to lack a certain gravitas. Perhaps you are less competent than—”

  “Is it customary,” I interrupted, thinking of how ridiculous I’d look once I got dry again, “for a servant to leave his employer’s visitors on the doorstep in the rain?” Maybe I’d go to a groomer tomorrow.

  Maybe I’d just shave it all off. Leave the head so I’d look like a lion.

  “I have my instructions,” said the creature superciliously. “My most estimable employer, Misterthoggosh, is completely unavailable to solicitors of any kind.” If possible, the thing’s voice had become even more annoying—basically, what we were dealing with was a snotty bird butler. Or reptile retainer. “Therefore it cannot be truthfully declared that you are visitors, your visit having been declined. Now please go away.”

  Eichra Oren replied, “Very well. Kindly give him my card—be careful, the edges are very sharp.” In fact, the “card” he slipped from a special case had been fashioned from a thin sheet of the same steel as his assessor’s sword blade, his particulars etched into it with a particle beam. Its razor-sharp e
dges were subtly concave to make the pointy corners even pointier. The whole contrivance was a not-so-subtle reminder that it’s a mistake to give a debt assessor the cold shoulder. The boss also had nice, soft plastic cards, with an animated logo, that he handed out to other people who were more cooperative.

  The dinosauroid took the card on the flat palm of his hand. “Does this, then, constitute a subtle way of announcing the commencement of hostilities?”

  The boss replied, in a tone I recognized as striving for patience, “Not at all, Aelbraugh Pritsch. It is intended to help us to avoid them.”

  The dinosauroid blinked. “Very well, I’ll see Misterthoggosh gets it.”

  “I truly hope,” said Eichra Oren, “that Misterthoggosh does get it, Aelbraugh Pritsch. Better a tiny sliver than the whole sword, right?”

  The dinosaur-bird slammed the bronze door with a great, big “Bongggg!”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Road Warriors

  WE SLOGGED BACK TOWARD THE VEEK BEFORE THE HUMOR door could tell us another ancient joke. The road machine immediately began drying, fluffing, and generally cosseting us again, but I truly wasn’t in the mood.

  Traffic seemed a little heavier than earlier, but the boss, who was driving now, managed to get us turned around safely and headed more or less toward home, where I was looking forward to my warm, dry private quarters, something hot to eat, a stiff drink or two, and a vigorous rubdown, as well as other attentions, lavished upon me by a sweet professional lady—fully human, of course—named Natsromy Ram.

  I started to contact Natsromy, but was interrupted by an incoming call. Suddenly there was a face and voice in my mind—Eichra Oren’s, too, judging from his expression. “I need help,” said the voice with what seemed like unnatural calm. It was Lyn Chow, from the Otherworld Museum. She was looking at herself in some reflective surface. “It’s a break-in. Intruders. I think I’ve killed one but they hurt me. Please hurry.”

  “On the way!” Eichra Oren told her, battling the veek back around the way we’d just come. I wasn’t certain she’d heard him. Her eyes were open, her implants were functioning, but she’d used up the last of her consciousness calling us for help. At least we knew where she was.

  Another few moments and the lights went out. At best, she’d simply closed her eyes. My implants were still detecting a faint carrier wave from hers, but Lyn Chow herself had fallen dead silent. I reran her message through my mind a couple of times to see if I’d missed anything significant.

  “She’s lying on the floor on her left side,” I told him. “You can tell from the way that side of her face is flattened. She’s lying beside some kind of display cabinet. We were seeing her reflected in it.”

  By now, we’d turned off the coastal highway and were winding and twisting generally northward toward the museum, faster than was really wise. There was only the one little veek parked in the lot, which we assumed was Lyn Chow’s. A transparent sliding door in the cylindrical “collar” beneath the great glassy sphere lay at an angle off its tracks.

  Eichra Oren’s tiny pistol was drawn as we went through the broken door. I tried out my best toothy grimace and snarled. It wasn’t very scary. The spiral escalator worked; we went straight to Lyn Chow’s office.

  Where she wasn’t.

  It was oddly dark in the museum. The great faceted sphere housing it had been polarized to black, shutting out the full daylight outside, along with each usually transparent partition. It was somehow like the opposite of a house of mirrors. The only lights I could see burning—until my implant took over and began multiplying photons—were tiny colored pilots on technical consoles here and there. My nose detected a hint of jasmine in the air, mixed unpleasantly with the salty and metallic tang of fresh human blood. I followed the odor as it grew stronger with every step I took. Eichra Oren was a pace or two behind me with his little silver pistol grasped in both hands before him, all of his concentration on the virtual designator projected in his mind.

  I rounded a corner between exhibits and there she was, lying with her back toward us, on her left side, facing the display cabinet we’d seen her reflected in. She was perfectly still, her long, dark, glossy hair spilling onto the floor behind her head, and even tinier than I recalled. There was a pool of blood on the granite floor at her left hip.

  As I approached within a yard, I could hear her heart beating, but before I could warn the boss, she’d turned over and suddenly had some huge, ugly-looking blaster in her right hand, pointing straight at his head.

  “Lyn Chow,” the boss told her calmly. The man has the fastest reflexes of any human being I’ve ever known. Anybody else with a weapon in his hand would have shot her before thinking about it. I’d felt him tense when she’d turned, but then suppress the reflex to fire.

  “It’s us,” I added. “Eichra Oren and Sam. You called us, remember? You’re safe now, please don’t shoot us.” The big black pistol shape in her tiny hand wavered, then fell, with the hand that held it, to the floor.

  Eichra Oren gently examined Lyn Chow as he’d been trained to. I called the emergency service we subscribe to. Five minutes, I was told. I wasn’t absolutely certain she had five minutes. Through the boss’ eyes, I saw she had a single wound, just above and forward of her left hip. It was deep—half stab, half slash, I was guessing a curved blade, eight or nine inches long—and she was bleeding heavily. Without removing it or tearing it further, he bunched up the dress she was wearing and pressed it down with both hands over the hole.

  “Look around,” he told me, keeping his eyes and hands on the unconscious girl. “See what you can find out about whoever did this. Meet the medics at the escalator and don’t let them stomp through any evidence.”

  “You got it, Boss.” I started sniffing around again, and right away picked up a scent that smelled like overcooked fish. It led me to a puddle on the floor a few paces away, where I found two objects, a large, curved fighting knife exactly as I’d imagined it, sharpened on both edges, of a type manufactured in the northeastern-most corner of the continent across the Inland Sea, and a black leather cap with a bill.

  “Hey, Boss,” I asked him via implant. “What kind of weapon does she have over there?” I had a suspicion, but confirmation is always good.

  He didn’t take his hands from where they maintained pressure on her wound, but I could see the thing through his eyes where it lay on the floor a yard away from him. It was of obvious spider manufacture, from the southernmost of the two western continents, made for humanoid hands.

  “A Blackburner,” we both said at once. It was a strange choice for a human female, large, heavy, and absolutely devastating. It sent a beam of odd, crawling energy into the core of one’s assailant, energy that spread throughout the body, somehow disconnecting protons from neutrons, converting complex atoms—carbon, oxygen—into simple hydrogen and helium. The energy from the liberated neutrons usually set off the hydrogen and oxygen which popped! in a momentary blue flash, leaving behind nothing but a puddle of dihydrogen oxide—water.

  It was a true disintegrator. The effect usually stopped at the epidermis, leaving clothes, shoes, and tools scorched but intact. Apparently, except for his little hat, Lyn Chow’s assailant had been naked.

  The emergency service was better than its word, landing its disc-shaped flyer in the parking lot within three minutes of my call. A pair of husky medics appeared at the top of the escalator on this floor.

  I guided them to Lyn Chow and Eichra Oren, avoiding the puddle I had found. They relieved him from his first aid post, temporarily closed the wound with a cyanoacrylate dispenser, covered her, and rolled her onto a stretcher, letting its antigravs raise it to waist level. They’d also hooked her up to some kind of blood-replacing dripper.

  We watched the flyer take off. Eichra Oren had asked one of the emergency guys to stay behind and keep an eye on the museum until we found somebody to repair the door. Then we got into our veek and departed.

  At long last we were back on the hi
ghway headed west, thoughts of home and bolhabaissa filling our minds. I was in the midst of trying to call Natsromy again when, from behind, we both felt a horrific thump!.

  The veek lurched on its cushion of air, gyros roaring, struggling to stabilize itself. My seat grabbed me in its padded arms the instant an object came within a yard of us at this speed, and the wheels, employed ordinarily for climbing steep grades, came down in emergency mode, steering and braking the veek. Behind us, an enormous red road machine roared down upon us for a second, clearly intentional crash.

  Although Eichra Oren wrestled manfully with the steering wheel that had popped up automatically in front of him, the veek took evasive action all by itself, swerving into the seaside eastbound lane toward the shoulder. That was what our attackers had apparently been planning on. A diagonal streak of fire fell from the sky, smashing into the dirt ten feet ahead. We’d slowed a bit quicker than they’d anticipated.

  Eichra Oren was out of the veek in an instant, kneeling beside the skirt, the new toy his mother had given him in both hands. Thanks to its virtual designator, in the boss’ mind’s eye, a bright red line connected the pistol’s glassy muzzle with the target. But no such thing existed in reality. The gun and his brain implant were working together.

  The tiny weapon spoke. For a moment I wondered if I would ever be able to see or hear anything again. The huge road machine pursuing us suddenly had a gaping hole where its left front quarter had been, and began to roll onto it, shredding itself to bits and pieces no bigger than my head on the rough surface of the highway as it turned over and over again, the sounds that it made in self-destruction too hideous to describe.

  Eichra Oren swiveled, and with a second shot, removed the next primitive missile from the air a hundred yards away. A third shot brought down the flyer that had launched it in a shower of metallic confetti. The smoke and flames were short-lived on the choppy gray water.