Blade of p’Na

by L. Neil Smith

  Eichra Oren gave me a look. “No kidding.”

  I was somewhat surprised not to see any other flyers. This version of Earth is a populous world, although most of its sapient inhabitants take their oxygen through gills. Nevertheless, there are certain kinds of transactions that are better conducted face-to-face, and certain sights that beg to be seen in person. Not that we would be seeing any of them on this particular excursion, but I was now considering future possibilities.

  There is a truly Grand Canyon (I looked it up) near the west edge of the Northwest Continent, and a formidable system of waterfalls in the east. Herds of triceratopsoids, originally imported from another branch of probability as frozen zygotes, blacken the prairie between them.

  They’re delicious, and don’t taste at all like chicken.

  Takeoff had been a bit noisy, but as soon as we were outside the atmosphere—ninety-nine percent of it, anyway—our flight was very nearly silent. Eichra Oren had once been to the Moon, he said. I had never flown so high before, myself, and never left the continent of my birth. Now, despite the fact that it was the middle of the morning, I could see stars shining overhead, and the sky was black. I thought I saw a satellite go by, relaying billions of implant messages. Clouds obscured most of the planet below, but it looked clear where we were headed.

  Eichra Oren sat stiffly, eyes straight ahead, hands on his knees, tapping one heel on the deckplate, then the other. No, he wasn’t a nervous flyer. He was always like this before a potential assessment, never afraid of any fight that he might find himself pulled into, but of being wrong. Of ruining lives. I’d have been worried if he were not. I think he was still unsettled, too, about the business with the hyenoid…

  “By what name are you called?” Eichra Oren had asked the beast, his language growing formal as he fully assumed the role of debt assessor. He stood over it, imperious, with his formidable sword drawn.

  “I have no name,” the creature said. “My makers called me Unit 9422YIU. If my legs were free, you could see it branded into my belly.”

  Something, some emotion, passed across Eichra Oren’s eyes. The idea of marking a sapient being that way was uniquely repulsive. He nodded calmly. “You claim that you are not a natural sapient but a cyberorganism, and I believe you, Unit 9422YIU. It is clear that your makers left you little choice regarding who you would be and what you would do. They share the responsibility for what you became and what you did with your life. They made you a dealer of death and, however inadvertently, gave you full awareness of it, without any ability to control it. I gather that they made the ultimate restitution for their error.”

  Between the plastic bindings, the edges of the creature’s mouth twitched as it attempted to bare its teeth. “I relished killing them, debt assessor. And they were only the first of many that I killed afterward.”

  “That is as it may be,” Eichra Oren told the assassin. “Little can be done about your animal nature. You are a mutant hyena, genetically designed, gestated, born, and bred for nothing more than bloodshed. But I know of certain individuals—careful technicians—who can help you comb the contradictions out of your implanted sapience, and that, in turn, can control the organic part of your being. But only if that is what you truly wish. No one will force it on you against your will.”

  “You give me a choice?” asked the beast, as if it were a new idea.

  “Perhaps your first. You can choose to live as a sapient being, to exchange the products of your hands and mind for what you require to survive and prosper. Or you can continue to subsist at the involuntary expenditure of other people’s lives and eventually die at the hands of an intended victim. This is not a threat, just a forecast. Regardless, you will pay the hotel for the physical damages you have wrought and I will keep your weapon, although, of course, nobody will stop you from acquiring another. Even evildoers have a fundamental right to self-defense.”

  “I don’t think I want to be an evildoer any more. I’ve already killed—”

  “Then as a debt assessor of the p’Nan school,” Eichra Oren hurried to interrupt; what he didn’t know, he couldn’t bring the creature to task for. “I set you this penance. Do not confess to me, or to anybody else, how many you have killed. Instead, save as many lives as you have taken, and I will consider the accounts balanced. Take up your old ways again, Unit 9422YIU, and I will search you out and put you down.”

  “I will do as you say.” And the boss could discern, from his long, painful training by the School of p’Na, that the thing was telling the truth.

  “Make certain that you do,” he replied. “And one more thing…”

  “Yes? What is it?”

  Eichra Oren gave his sword a flashy whirl and neatly cut the creature free. A second swipe of the blade-tip unmuzzled it. Wisely, it stayed put. “Unit 9422YIU is no kind of name for a free and sapient being.

  “Therefore, from this day forward, you will be known as…Bob.”

  I put on some “traveling music”, something I’d first heard on one of those interworld braincasts. The lead line of the chorus translated as ‘Welcome to the Hotel California,’ whatever a california was, and told an eerie tale about a hostel that, once you checked in, you could never leave. I liked it best for the powerful instrument duet near the end. After that, it was something about a building burning down near a lake.

  It took less time to cross the Lesser Ocean than it had to drive to Lanternlight. Eichra Oren communicated with somebody on the other side who gave our flyer directions. She changed course slightly, and we landed vertically on a numbered space amidst other flyers like our own.

  I’d never set foot on another continent before. When I did, it didn’t feel a bit different at all. I was sure there was a lesson of some kind to be learned from that, but I don’t have any idea what it was.

  People—mostly humans and dinosauroids, all of them wearing protective coveralls—advanced toward us in a beat-up looking and equipment-laden hovertruck. Arriving, they fastened all sorts of cables and hoses to our flyer and exchanged information with my boss. We walked to a low building where a veek stood waiting for us on its skirt.

  We spent another hour driving. The veek took us as far as it could (it seemed old and battered and didn’t have an AI) through countryside about as densely populated as it is where we live, a healthy mixture of open spaces, residences and businesses. Entities of various species were driving, walking, children were playing on lawns and in parks. Here and there, the atmosphere smelled especially good—Eichra Oren was still too concentrated to notice—but I deeply regretted not having sufficient time on this expedition to sample some of the local eateries.

  In the end, we ran out of road, which didn’t impede our veek, but a while later, the trees were too close together, so we left it and continued on foot. Eichra Oren had a nice walking stick he’d brought, made from the same wooden ivory as the floor at home, but he didn’t immediately need it. The path started dry, uncluttered, and relatively level. The day was a splendid one and he’d brought water for both of us.

  The path soon became a trail and the walking stick came into use. We discovered what we were looking for toward the end of a miniature valley, where the land began rising and the meadow below gave way to increasingly thick-growing trees, either aspen or birch, I’m not sure which.

  You’d think a dog would know more about trees.

  We seemed to be following a natural firebreak, where perhaps an avalanche, a decade or so ago, had taken out trees from the top of the hill down to the meadow in a swath a hundred feet wide. About halfway up the leaf-littered slope, and to one side, stood a little log cabin, perhaps two hundred years old, on a foundation of cemented stones, of which there were plenty, around and about, and made from the trees that had been cut to clear enough space for it. On the roof, a trickle of smoke was coming from a blackened tin chimney with a conical top. The roof seemed to be made from rough greyed shingles of the same wood.

  We heard our quarry long before we saw him. Th
e music echoed from hillside to hillside and could be heard two miles away. Meerltchirt of the Fronzeln Zirnaath, a golden jumping spider of about half my size, sat on the steps of the cabin’s weathered porch, playing a banjo. The path had become steep, and the altitude a bit more than he was accustomed to, so Eichra Oren had to take several deep breaths before he could speak.

  He pronounced the prodigal bridegroom’s name. The banjo-playing stopped. “Yes,” the spider said, “I am Meerltchirt. And you are Eichra Oren.”

  “And Sam,” said the boss.

  “And Sam. No need to tell me why you’re here. Shaalara sent you. Have I committed a moral breach, somehow, for which I must now make compensation?”

  He’d asked the question. He had the formula down precisely, although there are many other words that state the case just as properly.

  Eichra Oren shook his head. “Not that I know of, Meerltchirt. No formal contract was mentioned, not to me, at least, and an individual always has the right to change his mind, especially if it will save his life.”

  “I see,” said the spider, setting the banjo aside. “The tune is called ‘Liberty’ if you’re curious,” he told us. “From your homeworld, Eichra Oren.” I felt a twinge of regret. The music had been very appealing.

  It reminded me somehow of Misterthoggosh, who had turned out not quite as unsympathetic toward the people of Eichra Oren’s native world as he wanted us to believe. At some point in our recent conversation, he had played a bit of music for us, imported from that branch of reality.

  “‘Bethena’,” he had pronounced. “Over a century old, and the work of a young fellow named Scott Joplin. The generic form is known as a ‘waltz’, although this one is rhythmically unusual. You will find the piece, although it is quite brief and deceptively simple, by turns contemplative, melancholy, pensive, ultimately triumphant in a quiet way.”

  As we listened, the monster waved his tentacles around in time to the music. I’m no expert, but I had to admit it was something of an intellectual and emotional achievement, that went somewhere I’d never known existed, and took me with it. And these people had succumbed to collectivism?

  “It was, in many ways, the high point of their civilization,” said our host. “It was just before a devastating worldwide war that crushed their creative spirit—or at least deformed it badly. Listen to this one.”

  The rhythmic pattern of this one was different, exotic, but, like “Bethena”, divided into several distinct movements, and containing many of the same emotional elements, explored in just a few short minutes.

  “It is called ‘Solace’,” Misterthoggosh declared. “Also by Joplin. The form is called a ‘tango’, although this one is fairly profoundly syncopated.”

  “Meaning?”

  “That the accent, or stress has been shifted, so that the emphasis is on beats that are normally unaccented. Don’t analyze it, just enjoy it.”

  When ‘Solace’ had run its painfully lovely course, the great mollusc played something called ‘Ragtime Dance’, maybe to show us that this Joplin character was capable of writing something upbeat. It was as simple and as complex as the others, but it made you want to laugh, somehow.

  “My favorite,” he said. “This is just one mode of expression, of which humans have perfected many, possibly thousands. They make music better than any species I know. Yet their planet is in a state of constant warfare, with all the accompanying political and economic disruption. Presently, they are on the brink of extinction. Although it goes against my every ethical principle, I wish I could prevent that. The loss to all of us—this music alone—would be unbearably tragic.”

  The old softie.

  Rising, Meerltchirt turned toward the weathered cabin door. “Will you come in, please? I’ve made a stew that you two should find as satisfying as I do. Rabbit and squirrel—I didn’t bite them, I shot them with my crossbow, instead—and various vegetables that grow wild all around the place. I’m only interested in the broth, of course.”

  “That would be pleasant,” said Eichra Oren. “Shall I bring your banjo?”

  “Please. I believe I’ll leave it here for the next occupant.”

  Which told us that he meant to come back with us. She’s going to eat him, I thought, all her promises to the contrary notwithstanding. She’s going to eat him and he knows it perfectly well. She’s going to eat him and he will welcome it because he loves her. It’s in the genes.

  But the stew was very good.

  And the flight home was endured in silence.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Nightcrawlers

  EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, EICHRA OREN AND I WERE awakened by someone parked in our driveway, insistently and incessantly sounding their veek’s klaxon. On a shelf, my sympathetic sponge (not the same as a singing sponge), one of the stranger features offered up by nautiloid civilization, was still the same as I had been last night, road-weary, cranky and tired, but within a few minutes the sponge was my old self again.

  Of course it hadn’t shared the better part of a stoneware gallon jug of hand-made corn whiskey with a p’Nan debt assessor and a runaway bridegroom.

  The boss entered the office at the same moment I did, yawning and stretching, strapping his swordbelt around the tunic he’d slept in. Nothing—well, practically nothing, anyway—will make you ache the next morning like a long journey sitting down. We’d had two of them. I was wishing I had a sword, myself—not to mention the hands to swing it with—as the noise continued. I told the house to make us coffee, hot and black, as we stepped outside to see what the racket was all about.

  It was so bright outside that it hurt my teeth. Out there on the driveway, standing next to her cute little sky-blue Nombismocwen hover sportsveek, was Lornis Adubudu, practically jumping up and down with excitement. Her Talapoin, Mio, by contrast, perched in the back of the passenger seat indolently examining his fingernails and yawning. As we came out the door and she saw us, she told her veek to stop honking and ran directly to the boss, throwing her arms around him.

  “Surprise!” she cried. “Wait’ll you see what I have for you!”

  Dressed the way she was, in tight little velour shorts and a well-filled, filmy, not-quite-transparent top—just above her sandaled right foot, she wore an anklet of gold chain—it was pretty obvious what she had for Eichra Oren this morning if he’d been inclined to accept it, but at the moment she was probably referring to something else.

  As annoyed as we both were with Lornis, I had to admit that she was a highly decorative thing to behold, even this early in the day. Her auburn hair, no more than a couple of inches long and slightly…well, roughened-looking, framed her lovely face perfectly. Her amber eyes, lit now by the newly-risen sun, spoke of fire and deep passion—and of child-like enthusiasm for whatever had brought her to our doorstep.

  She almost made me wish I were a humanoid.

  She took one of Eichra Oren’s hands, pulling him toward her veek. “Your mother told me you’ve been hunting for—‘aliens’,” she said. “Aliens. Well, Sweetie, I think I may have something you’ll want to see!”

  At the word “aliens” Lornis no longer had to drag him along. He was at the veek before she was, starting to climb in, but she stopped him.

  “No, no—let me explain, Eichra Oren! You see, I went out in my flower garden just before sunrise this morning to get nightcrawlers, so I could go fishing later today with my father. This—” The girl stretched ornamentally, reaching into the back seat of the open-topped road machine. “This is what I was using. I got it out of my garden shed.”

  I’d seen something like it before. What she had hauled out of the veek was a t-handled, wooden-shafted, fork-ended device about four feet long, that used high-voltage electricity to bring the worms up from underground.

  “I heard a noise, and then I saw one of these ‘aliens’ of yours, rummaging through the other end of my toolshed and guess I sort of impulsively kind of stabbed it in the backside with my ‘nightcrawler persuader’, kn
ocking the thing right out.” In any lesser society, we wouldn’t have been able to watch the action she was describing. In ours, we got to see everything she’d seen, and it was pretty funny stuff.

  With a dramatic flourish, she opened the cargo trunk to show us what lay inside. It was a Gray, one of the flatworm people, one (there had been another at the museum) with a little visored cap, wearing a gray coverall and tied up hand and foot with gray all-purpose tape. Very tastefully coordinated, I thought. Lornis had stuffed the thing into the trunk of her veek, and now presented it to my boss proudly, as a present. I suspected that it might be H. gracilis courting behavior.

  Eichra Oren bent down and stared the organism in what served as its face. There was no visible mouth or nose, no visible ears. Only those terrible eyes that looked like holes burned in a blanket with a cigar. “Do you speak my language?” he asked it. “Can you speak at all?”

  There was no response. It didn’t even blink. I wasn’t sure if it could.

  To Lornis: “What do you suppose it was looking for in your shed?”

  Lornis shrugged. “I’ve no idea. No idea at all. It’s kind of big—the shed, I mean—and it’s been practically empty since my dad moved out to a place of his own and took all of the stuff he stored there. What I’m keeping in it now are some garden tools and various related supplies, a stack of old clay pots, and an ancient automowing machine.”

  “I have a thought,” I said, and I did. It was a good one. “Boss, if you and Lornis will bring that thing in the house? I’m going to go find something I think will help us. Mio, come with me, I need your fingers.”

  Mio looked to his mistress, who nodded, and the two of us went ahead into the house. I indicated a drawer in Eichra Oren’s desk I wanted opened, and the Talapoin obliged, letting me see what he saw inside, via implant. It was almost like having a symbiote of my very own.

  It was getting to be an attractive thought, although it would probably take the Elders seven or eight millennia to get used to the idea.