Suddenly the invisible raspy blanket scraped across the upper half of my body. From the waist down I was still tangled; from the waist up, free. Trina remained totally wrapped up.
Urg moved in front of us, and in both Etzan sign and voice language slowly sounded out, "Arrrrre yoooooouuu prrrrooooottttoooooo-saaaaaaapieeeeeent?"
These words came out of their translator box, a bright red glowing sphere on a tripod.
"Galalalalalalalalaaaallllaaalllla urmph gurg," I said.
The translator box hummed and clicked; colored lights flashed.
"Galalalalalalalalaaaallllaaalllla urmph gurg," it said in perfectly rendered Etzan.
Hurg and Urg traded glances. Eight hands fluttered in confusion.
"Do you understand me?" tried Urg again, more gamely.
I bugged my eyes, twitched about, and began to drool. "Urrp leevy squeeeowly!" I shouted.
"Urrp leevy squeeeowly!" the translator box repeated after a short delay.
I began to pound my hand against my head, while staring around wildly. Smack smack smack.
"Arrf tooloddle urrrg twally!" I screamed.
The translator was getting into it. “Arrf tooloddle urrrg twally!" it screamed.
"Hopeless trash-heads," grunted Urg. "Not worth the trouble of transport. No bounty at all. Drat!"
Hurg pulled a tool from his belt. Slightly bigger than his spidery hand. Multi-barreled. Pointy.
Uh oh.
"Should I put them out of their misery? It might be kinder than letting nature take its inevitable course."
"Assuredly. Even though we are Etzans, we are not without compassion. Let's take a few samples first, though." Urg pulled out a recognizable laser scalpel. "Maybe a brain, heart, or some such?"
I couldn't help but notice that my various body parts had become very popular of late. So far no one had actually gotten one, but according to the Law of Averages, my luck had to run out soon. Then again, perhaps my luck had already run out, only I hadn't yet found out about it.
"Later, Urg. I want to proceed with the Claiming. I am feeling very photogenic right now."
I didn't know an Etzan could blanch. They can, and it is not pretty. Urg blanched and then some. "But Hurg - you did the last one! It's my turn!"
Hurg crossed his four arms. They made an impressive mound of elbows. "No, it's my turn because the last one was a gas giant! Why do I always get the gas giants? It's not fair! I never get to do a real planet!"
Urg was rocking his head in the Etzan expression of disagreement. His neck muscles were strong and bulging, for Etzans spent much of their existence disagreeing. "Look, we made this deal at the outset. We alternate. Every other planet! And this one is my turn!"
It's not going to matter, guys, I thought. You're not getting back to that loathsome orbiting slimeball called Etz. You're headed for a spacewreck.
"My turn!"
"My turn!"
"No!"
"Yes!"
"No!"
"Yes!"
This went on for a while, and I began to get a headache. I turned towards the forest, pointed, and screamed, eyes wide with unmistakable interspecies horror.
The Etzans looked at me for only a moment - my terrified expression and outstretched arm spoke in any language. Then they whirled to see, crossing the valley a few hundred meters away, what I had just seen. A wooly mammoth.
The Etzans' taste for bickering was exceeded only by their lust for acquisition. Although they couldn't take the mammoth, they could record and sample it, which would earn them larger commissions.
"Come on, Urg!" said Hurg, as he scrambled at the tangler projectors. "Get all the tanglers! That thing's big!"
"But what about-" two hands pointed at us, while two other perched truculently on the Etzan version of hips.
"Let them go. Very uninteresting, obviously not intelligent. No commission! But with all the tanglers, we can catch that thing. And maybe get a megafauna bonus."
"I agree," said Urg in a shocked tone.
Hurg froze. "What did you say," he replied, eyes wide in suspicion. Etzans did not agree. Ever. It simply did not happen.
"Never mind," said Urg. The tangler fields pulled off us and the Etzans raced away, tangler projectors cradled in their four hands. Their spindly legs churned, their pot bellies jiggled. The mammoth waltzed along, unconcerned.
Trina and I fought our stiff, sore muscles to rise. "Why do you always act so weird around aliens," she muttered.
"It works," I pointed out.
"Only sort of. And only if you call being back to Square One working. We're here, but there's still not a thing we can do."
"Not true at all," I said, watching the Etzans race away. "I have . . . an idea."
Trina did an excellent impression of being shocked. "Diz, dear, where would you get such a thing?"
"I got it from . . . myself," I answered cryptically but truthfully. I'd thought of it, but the sight of my future self had helped. After all, knowing me, I wouldn't have come back in time if there were no point. So there was a solution. And, also knowing me, I would have cheated and told myself about it, to save the communal us some work. But I hadn't, which could only mean one thing: No, not that there was no solution. It could only mean that the solution was obvious, and that I had told myself about. So it was, and so I had. For it was right before my eyes, and all over me. The new me had been filthy, yes, but nevertheless slightly cleaner than this me. And there had been his - my - comment about getting cleaned up.
"Give me your boots," I said.
She flushed. "A foot fetish? Now? Kinky! I like it! But not here. Let's go find some privacy."
"No, not that, at least not now," I said, pulling mine off. "Quickly!" I scraped a mound of bright orange Boffian soil up from the crevassed sole. Trina suddenly understood - bright gal - and did the same. Suddenly mankind's last hope lay in dirty boots and muddy laundry. We collected madly.
She handed her handful to me, and pulled our filthy jumpsuits from the skin bag. She quickly peeled and scraped off more of the noxious orange substance, while I collected more from our hair and bodies, hunting out the choicest, slimiest, orangest morsels.
"Years of advanced temporal physics, to play with mud," she mused.
I finished collecting, and sculpted my horde into a clump while she did the same. "Ready?"
A distant shout announced the capture of the mammoth.
"Here." She handed me her glob.
I set them down next to the two Sacred Clods the Etzans had prepared. One of our new ones was too big, the other too small. I traded the Boffian soil around. Then I swapped our orangey lumps for the Sacred Clods, which I sent on their Sacred Ways far out into the field.
"Now what?" Trina asked, looking around the site with a hungry stare. She had the urge for destruction and mayhem. What a gal!
"Now we beat it," I said.
"Oh no we don't. We've got a golden opportunity to create some serious havoc here. Let's take it." Her eyes glittered.
"No."
"You can't be serious! That little dirt clod swaperoo isn't our whole plan, is it? That's mighty thin!"
I was pulling her by the arm. In a quick flash, she threw me. I gasped like a fish for a moment, then caught my breath. "Trina dearest, thin is more than we could have hoped for. Now let's get out of here."
"They're coming back," Ned said to me.
"Ned says they're coming back," I repeated. It turned out to be a lie, but it was a helpful one.
"Oh! You!" Trina groaned, and helped me up.
From another perch on the ridge - not the one at which we'd been so neatly snared, that site having too many bad connotations - we watched the Etzans study their trapped mammoth with gleeful precision, clipping hair and vidding and taking samples before finally returning to camp.
They didn't seem to mind that we were gone, or even to notice. They scurried about, making preparations, then stopped, facing each other with all eight arms gesticulating wildly. They looked
like a single quadrupedal, bi-cranial octopus.
Ned asked me to cock my head a little bit, as somewhere in some cluttered auditory signal control room he struggled to sift signal from noise.
"Hmmpph," he finally chortled. "They're arguing."
"What a surprise."
"About who will do the claim, and the layout of the Ritual."
I repeated the news for Trina, and we watched the argument progress.
"How on earth, pardon the expression," Trina marveled after half an hour, "did these Etzans ever evolve and survive?"
"There's hope for humans yet," I agreed.
Finally Hurg and Urg resolved their differences, or at least came as close to that impossible goal as they could hope. One of them moved behind the hovercam; the other entered the ship.
The one behind the camera - it looked like Urg, but Urg looked so much like Hurg that it could well have been Hurg and not Urg - was using two of his hands to manipulate a tiny control held in a third hand. The fourth rested on his head.
Smoke projectors hidden around the site began to vent steamy vapor. A few swipes of a laser pen added a fresh layer of crispy black to the landing area; all the artifacts of the campsite had been skillfully removed from the camera's view. I suddenly recognized the site; it was the spitting image of what I had seen - would see - on a grainy vid in Admiral Fairchile's quarters. But now I saw that what looked like an impromptu, unrehearsed claiming ceremony was in fact meticulously choreographed and planned. A big fake. A phony. Special effects.
Steam roiled; the earth looked freshly scorched. Smoke rose.
The hatch lowered; Hurg - I think it was Hurg - came down the ramp. I watched with the strangest sense of deja vu, for technically I had not seen this, but would see it. Proto vu, maybe. The unmistakable sensation that I was going to see this again.
Just as I recalled, Hurg clumsily feigned surprise and pretended to investigate the site. Behind the camera Urg was waving and shouting, no doubt adding his directorial input. Hurg ignored him, and seemed to slow his pace.
That explained the clumsy wandering and the insolent camera panning. Spite.
Hurg reached to the ground and picked up two objects. The not-so-Sacred Clods. One, as the Ceremony demanded, he ritually threw over his shoulder. The other he carefully placed in the locked and coded clearsteel sample canister, which he made sure to keep as much in the camera's eye as his own twisted mug. The vid had to record the identifying marks, and secured lock, on the canister.
Next Hurg pulled the flag from beneath his arm. He planted it firmly in the ground; with a bright flash and a puff of smoke - all wholly unnecessary and done only for dramatic effect - the pole extended and the Etzan flag unfurled. Two Etzan heads, in profile, butted against each other on a burnt orange background. The Earth wind tugged at it, dejected.
In the background, the mammoth struggled up and ambled across the valley floor, making no effort to avoid the Etzans, apparently none the wiser for its experience. No wonder you're extinct, I muttered under my breath as it crossed the camera's field of view.
Hurg raised all four arms, and one leg, in the Salute of Claiming, which signified the close connection between claimer and claimed. Then he turned and walked back towards the ship.
Urg tracked him, then lowered the camera, recovered the flag, and followed him up the ramp. From the way his arms were swinging and gesturing, he had a few complaints with how the ceremony had proceeded.
He too vanished into the ship. Almost before the hatch had shut, the repellers burst into life and the ship hurtled upward, leaving a long furrow of explosive rototilling in its wake. Trina and I ducked as dirt and leaves and debris rained down on us.
The Etzans vanished into a tiny silver speck and then were nothing at all.
Trina looked at me skeptically. "I'm not sure that's going to work."
"Me neither. How do we get back?"
Trina eyed the sun. "I'd say my time estimate was pretty close. The Time Oscillator transport pod ought to be showing up any time now."
"You still want to go back?"
She shrugged. "Why not?"
With a hollow pop, a shimmeringly translucent blue pod appeared.
"Right on schedule," Trina said.
You might think that the second time you get squirted across the millennia it would be easier. You might think you get used to it. You might think it becomes easier, once you have some experience, to bear all those indescribably awkward sensations.
You would be wrong. It was actually no worse than the first time, I'm sure, but since I was expecting it to be better, when it wasn't it turned out to be a rather unpleasant surprise, and so it actually seemed worse.
We suffered timelessly in the purple fuzz while outside the world blurred. Empires rose and fell and were forgotten. Great battles were waged. Duels were fought. Great love was sought, and found, and gotten tired of, and found again in a younger model.
We appeared in the Admiral's briefing chamber - or rather, it appeared around us, from our perspective. The Admiral was there, as was a small contingent of armed Space Marines. Perhaps most important of all was Dr. Primer Ought, the Fist's chief scientist.
The Admiral didn't seem surprised to see us pop into existence, filthy, dressed in skins, and stinking.
"Ah, right on time," he said. "Nice work, Trina."
Nice work Trina! After all my efforts! There is no justice!
"So everything went according to plan?" he asked kindly.
"Plan? We'll talk about your plan later!" I yelled.
"Now Court, calm down," Trina said.
"You," I pointed a finger at my dear old murderous Uncle, "and you," another impaling pointer aimed at Dr. Ought, "sent us all the way to Boff when you have your very own Time Oscillator!"
Admiral Fairchile and Dr. Ought traded a weighty glance.
"Er, no we don't," the Admiral said.
I marched up to him, baring my teeth in a way that nicely complemented my prehistoric leopard cloak. The Space Marines tensed and stood ready when I reached under my spotted cover, but I was only fanning a little eau de dead animal at my Uncle. He grimaced. So did the Marines. In the scrubbed, cleansed, and purified air of the Bigger Than Yours, my garments were especially ripe. So was I, no doubt, what with the dirt of two planets crusted on me. I was a walking exhibit of ambulatory sedimentation.
"Well?" I hissed at Dr. Ought.
His pale blue eyes were watery beneath the thick lenses he insisted on wearing despite modern corneal molding techniques. "Quite right. We don't."
"Liars-"
"No one calls me a liar!" boomed the Admiral.
"I used your machine. We - us - saw me doing it. I was wearing these skins. I had these marks. Which means I'm about to use it. I have to. Or else the entire time continuum is in danger."
The Admiral's eyes shot towards Trina, his eyebrows waggling upwards like curious caterpillars climbing the smooth mountain of his skull.
"All true," she murmured.
Why o why was her word better than mine? Why was she impeccable, and I a mere rogue? Nature, I supposed. Or maybe nurture. Or maybe both.
The Admiral gathered himself up, puffing out his medal-covered chest. "No one," he boomed, "calls me a liar-"
"Liar," I cut in.
"-except when I am one! But don't push your luck," he warned.
Dr. Ought leaned over and whispered in his ear. The Admiral frowned, then nodded.
"Any such device would be Ultra Top Really Secret! You couldn't know about it!"
"But I do," I explained patiently. "I used it. I need to use it."
"Maybe later!" tried the Admiral.
"Now," I shouted, maneuvering him into a headlock.
"Later," he screamed again, followed by, "My Zot you stink. By the way, later is an order."
I tightened my grip. "Now! Or the mission fails!"
The Admiral could change horses quickly in midstream, when necessary. "New orders: Now!" he yelled.
I let him up, and was already aiming a kick at Dr. Ought's bony posterior. "Let's go!"
"Go!" screamed the Admiral. "You cheated," he muttered in a hurt tone, rubbing his kinked neck. Of course I had, but so had he. We always did.
Dr. Ought took off at a dead sprint, as if the Admiral's lung blast had filled his canvas. He led me through a long tunnel of armored and coded doors, until we finally arrived at his dingy keep, a cluttered lab.
In a corner I found a battered old grav sled, laden with old tools. It looked vaguely familiar, more so after I had cleared it off.
"I thought this might be here," I said, while rubbing my ribs where the Admiral had elbowed me.
"That is an old unit," Dr. Ought warned. "It probably can't even hold a charge."
"I'll take the chance," I said confidently. "Again."
"No no no," Ned whispered in despair. "No more flying!"
"Hurry!" Trina barked. The present was advancing at its inexorable unstoppable rate. Once it passed the Galactic Court Hearing, it would be too late.
Dr. Ought gestured at a small alcove inside a huge building of a machine. It was much larger than the Time Oscillator of the Ohs Ohs. "You stand there," he said. "But I must warn you - this machine may not work. It is not quite finished, and highly experimental."
"Give him the coordinates, Trina," I replied.
She spat them out as if she'd been chipmunking them in her cheek. I mounted the small platform, already atop the sled.
"Don't activate the anti-grav field until you arrive," Dr. Ought warned. "That would play hell with all this," he said, waving vaguely at the wall of machinery. "No telling what would happen."
"Go," I said.
Dr. Ought took a deep breath. "Are you sure about this?"
I thought about everything that had happened over the last few days. "Do it anyway."
He did.
I popped into a cool blue sky, bright above and dark below. I was instantly falling, and luckily grabbed onto the sled handles. I powered it up, and found myself just over the top of an oddly patchwork balloon. From above it was so lumpen I could hardly believe it was capable of flight. I regarded it with a bit of nostalgia, for just moments before it had been a lost and decayed pile of ancient fabric.
The Blue Marble Gambit Page 23