Far-out Show (9781465735829)

by Hanna, Thomas

  “We can’t rule that out,” Icetop agreed. He glanced at Yelpam and they exchanged small nods but let on no more.

  “Part of his resume that got him selected as a contestant was his claim to be a master of adaptation and even deception so he can wing it, doing what the situation calls for with whatever is on hand even though unexpected and not planned in advance,” Eroder said. “That sounds like a good description of what’s happening here today.”

  “When we get the interference under control so we can get through to them we should have the home office check on his background,” Molten suggested.

  “That’s being done. I’ve had questions about him since he landed down there,” Eroder said. “I’m waiting for the reply.”

  A musical tone sounded. Eroder brought up Svenly and Venrik in the program edit room on the view-screen. Those two were excitedly pushing buttons even as they spoke.

  “New and glorious development,” Venrik said. “The interference from the planet below us stopped and we’re getting a rush of upload from Wilburps. His material storage units were so full he was about to start recording over the oldest stuff.”

  The view from that room tilted up to show Eroder on part of the view-screen, Hasley and Feedle in their office on another part. So everyone was getting this news simultaneously.

  “Can we see where they are right now?” Hasley asked.

  “We can see the place but with no lead up to it we have no idea what we’re looking at,” Svenly said. “Check it out.”

  The view-screen divided into four areas. The edit room techs in one quadrant; the producers in their office on a second; the continuous feed image from Wilburps of the shopping center parking lot with Nerber and Krinkle standing outside the car; and the scene at the park with Adam and Edith at the taxi, then Edith and Reggie shouting at one another, the last as seen by Wilburps from the back seat of Krinkle’s car.

  “Wow!” Lacrat said as he watched the two feeds from the planet. “I can hardly wait to see the complete upload. This looks like it should be great show material. The audience will love it if we see inhabitants fight.”

  “That’s Nerber with the inhabitant he met immediately before the interference started,” Svenly pointed out to everyone.

  “In fact that’s the device we think causes the interference beside Wilburps there inside that unit, whatever it is,” Venrik said. “Oh, I see from the stored feed that must be some kind of a conveyance to go from place to place. We need to check for their name for that in the inhabitant lexicon we’re accumulating. Wait on it – it’s called a car. No, maybe an auto. A rattle trap? We’ll decipher it but it may take some work. Their talk-talk can have more than one word for things. If that doesn’t prove that they’re inferior to us what could?”

  “It’s exciting to have more material but it’s also disturbing to see that the inhabitants are so aggressive and not nearly as predictable as we expected,” Hasley said. “This means Nerber and his zerpy are in more danger than I wanted to believe when he has to deal with inhabitants.”

  “So sib sog,” Feedle said. “We’re getting material we can use and nothing else...”

  Hasley cut them out of the communication link.

  Lacrat noted the looks that Eroder and the three mechanical techs exchanged but no one said anything.

  Wilburps’s signature logo marked the end of the upload of stored material and that screen sector blanked.

  Soon Krinkle leaned into the car and turned the jammer back on. The continuous feed image promptly deteriorated into snow.

  “Ending with the confirmation that the inhabitant’s device is the source of the interference,” Molten noted.

  “Encouraging us to not only figure out how to end its effects on our systems, but to learn how it works so we can use that technique when we want to assure the privacy of our messages,” Icetop said.

  “We’re working on both parts of that,” Yelpam said. “Shut it off or sidestep it. Bring it aboard to use ourselves or at least learn how it’s programmed. See, we’re very busy guys.”

  “There’s also another important bit in that scene,” Lacrat said. “The inhabitant turned off his device to allow Wilburps to send us what he had stored up. That means this inhabitant didn’t take Nerber prisoner, he’s working with him and must know what the zerpy is doing.”

  “To what end?” Yelpam asked. “What are their agendas?”

  “More questions that will surely make a difference to how things work out but that we have no more than wild guesses about for now and no clear path to finding the answers. Another day in the intergalactic entertainment show production business.”

  “It’s possible that Nerber has cleverly tricked him into letting Wilburps work. Maybe Nerber’s way smarter than we’ve given him credit for,” Lacrat said.

  Molten stared at a monitor as he called quietly, “There’s another change in the situation but only a partial one.”

  “For better or worse?” Eroder asked as he looked at the monitor.

  “For different,” Molten replied. “The mystery zerpy is active again. It’s sending signals.”

  “Quick, while it’s detached from the ship, eject it,” Lacrat urged.

  “It didn’t let go or even loosen its grip,” Eroder said as he keyed in commands and watched the responses. “Now I realize why it attached where it did too. The wiring to all the ship’s systems come together inside that wall section. That’s one of the few spots in the whole ship where it can tap into all the systems to monitor and insert commands into all the systems. For its purposes that’s the perfect place so it has almost welded itself on there. Clever design.”

  “That puts us back at risk of obliteration at the whim of those far away,” Lacrat said.

  “Until we find its secrets and do get rid of it,” Icetop said. “Techs are often at our best when faced with challenges.”

  “It’d be more reassuring if this trip didn’t present us with so many of them all at once. And non-lethal ones in case we can’t solve them in time,” Yelpam noted without letting his emotions about that distract him from the technical tasks at hand.

  Chapter 37

  Biccup stood at the transport room podium, his fingers flying across the control console. He muttered to himself, “It’s at least good that I detected that problem. It won’t stay fixed. It’s like some source outside the ship tried but failed to activate this system but messed it up in the process. Maybe enough that it won’t work right. I’m fixing the changes however they happened as fast as I can since we might need to bring Nerber up fast at any moment. Since there’s nothing down there that I’m authorized to test it on, for now I can only hope this fixes it. I hope that for Nerber’s sake and for mine. If this won’t bring them up I get all the blame, not the faulty equipment or those who started the process knowing things weren’t reliable.”

  * * *

  Hasley, Feedle, and Lacrat got comfortable in their chairs in the producers’ office. Hasley brought up Svenly on a screen and Wilburps's view of Nerber hiding in the tool shed on another as Wilburps said, “I am not programmed to be helpful at a time like this.”

  Nerber said, “No, the producers want the contestants to deal with all the problems on their own. That's what the audience wants to watch. The harder and more gruesome things are the better. But if I'm stuck on this planet I have to think about what is best for me. Maybe I should even turn you off so you can't be secretly sending all this without telling me, Wilburps. Are you doing that?”

  “I am not aware that I am sending any signals to the producers except when you tell me to but I remind you that my wiring would allow that without my control centers knowing.”

  “I am a trained zerpy engineer so I know for more truly certain that you can. Fampfuzzle! What is the point of going on when I am a failure, not a hero, to the citizens of Ormelex?”

  Feedle freeze-framed the recording.

  Lacrat observed, “Fear is definitely eating him up but it's not making him good
show material now.”

  “We're only guessing about how much danger he's for truly in,” Hasley said. “We're learning more all the time that indicates these inhabitants have more advanced technologies than we thought based on our analysis of out-of-date intercepts from here.”

  “We can't rely on any of what we knew officially and that, despite disclaimers, was not sure beyond doubt,” Feedle agreed.

  “Not about what we thought we knew about the inhabitants but we're clear on how strongly the governors feel about how critical it is to not allow any of us or our equipment to be examined closely by the inhabitants who could learn from it though,” Lacrat said.

  “The self-destruct devices in the ship and in each of us... Oh.” Hasley stopped in mid-sentence and mid-thought.

  Svenly assured him, “It's okay, everyone on the crew knows about those. We're not thrilled to be at the mercy of the A.D.U. bosses who can send a signal from far, far away and do away with us as nuisance evidence to be swept into the trash but we live with the idea for now.”

  “For now? What do you know that I don't?” Lacrat asked.

  Svenly looked around and shrugged, then said, “Some techs are examining the ship and the things they implanted in us to see how those are protected and how they'd be triggered. Techs are always big on undoing things that other techs have devised.”

  “Have they made progress?” Feedle asked.

  “Yeah. It's not all worked out but I hear they've made major steps,” Svenly admitted. “Don't write off going boom on some far away guy's say-so just yet but don't think it's inevitable either.”

  “Knowing that makes me feel better,” Lacrat was happy to say. “More reason to convince the A.D.U. and Peepees that for at least a little bit longer we're still too valuable to sacrifice to cover their losses.”

  “Do you believe they'd send those signals?” Hasley asked.

  “Why not?” Feedle responded. “They have big insurance policies on us and nothing would be left that the insurance adjusters could examine to prove they destroyed us. They wouldn’t look at anything more than the interference-filled recordings the company would present as the only evidence of what happened. Even that’s only if the governors would allow a significant investigation since they have an important interest in this. Oh yes, those insurance policies would be paid off.”

  “So we are insured. We suspected as much but didn't know for sure,” Svenly said.

  “We're not supposed to know it so don't talk about that openly where your conversations are being secretly recorded by one group or another,” Hasley cautioned.

  “The Peepees would miss us but they're not sentimental. They'll love the next big audience pacifying moneymakers in our place in a tiny part of a bimpledop,” Feedle said with a shrug.

  “In case you haven't thought about it, the way things are right now, nothing gets seen by the home audience without going through systems controlled by the Peepees,” Svenly pointed out.

  “What's your point?” Lacrat asked.

  “That for practical purposes we're expendable since we're ciphers who can't rally the support of the masses to protect us,” Feedle said. “We're at the mercy of the Peepees since we can't get any uncensored messages to the mass audience. Therefore we need to maintain their interest in us while we walk the thin line between scaring them off by getting them to think we're a lost cause and making ourselves invaluable to them by generating audience-fixating tension about our fate.”

  Svenly nodded agreement. “That says it nicely in a small package, Feedle. That's why you're successful as a producer.”

  “We have to work on our strategy,” Lacrat said.

  “Keeping the realities in mind,” Hasley urged.

  Venrik touched a button on his console which caused a musical tone to sound in the producers’ office. Then he glanced up and said, “Oh, right. You’re already tuned to us. This news made me lose track. We received some responses from home that needed extensive cleaning before we could understand them because of the interference we don’t understand. Those are ready so I’m transmitting them to you now.”

  “Can’t you just tell us what they say?” Feedle grumbled. “You make it sound like they contain secrets.”

  “On your explicit order I’ll do that on this open channel, Feedle. Nerber isn’t who he claimed to be. His application information doesn’t check out,” Svenly said. “Now everyone on board can speculate about what that means and what a great job you guys did screening applicants.”

  “Everyone might as well know the full report,” Venrik said. “The Bang-Boom home office can’t find anything about Nerber except that he’s a fake because he doesn’t officially exist. It turns out that he was sort of pushed to the head of the line of possible contestants because guys with some influence put maybe not so subtle pressure behind him.”

  “Guys assumed to have ties to the governors or to various useful business groups,” Svenly said. “Officially those pressures had no effect but, in light of what’s happened, what we don’t know about the guy but it seems we should, it all seems suspicious. Who is he and what did those guys expect him to do or not do?”

  “One particularly interesting but maybe also worrying bit is that the worker at the home office assigned to search for anything about the guy we know as Nerber triggered a warning from the governors’ office about trying to search restricted data bases,” Venrik told them.

  “That wasn’t unexpected really, what was surprising was how fast the warning came,” Svenly noted. “As if everything our guy was doing was being monitored minute by minute and they wanted to turn her away before she could spend even a short time searching those records. It makes you wonder who’s the most paranoid group – and who should be even more so.”

  Hasley and Feedle focused their attention on the text now on the small console monitor while Lacrat, blocked from ready access to that by the chairs of the others for now, asked, “Exactly what do they mean he’s not who he says he is?”

  “His background doesn’t check out. No family ever lived at the address he listed. There is no record of him attending the training center he put down - and no official record of his hatch,” Svenly answered.

  “Not even an official listing of his name on the charts,” Venrik added. “The government records don’t confirm there is any living individual named Nerber on the planet.”

  Lacrat considered that for a moment, then asked, “So what? He might have stuff in his past he prefers to keep private. What difference does it make to us who he really is?”

  “Directly it shouldn’t change anything,” Hasley said now that he was finished reading the report on the monitor. “It raises warnings though that he may not be as compliant as we have him pegged for.”

  “He means Nerber may not be as much of a dupe as your plans called for,” Svenly said. Then she added cynically, “Oops, wasn’t I supposed to mention that so openly?”

  Feedle glared at her on the screen but said nothing. Those two had never liked one another and each knew that given the chance each would let bad things befall the other so they had no illusions and usually didn’t bother playing up to one another.

  “Maybe we can say his lies could disqualify him from the show so we wouldn’t have to give him any reward but can still use the material,” Hasley mused aloud as he plotted. “I’ll have the lawyers explore that possibility.”

  “Assuming he’s not more valuable to us as the winner and our buddy when we get back there and see how things have worked out,” Lacrat said.

  “Of course. Successful producers always hold off on decisions as long as possible to see how things actually work out rather than how they hoped or planned for,” Hasley agreed.

  Nerber appeared on another screen section where he was talking with Krinkle in the gazebo, audio off. Venrik said, “You might be very interested in this latest development. Nerber met this inhabitant who's the most interesting one so far. One who seems to realize Nerber's not one of them - and to be okay
, even thrilled, with that thought. Then this interference caused by that guy’s device started.”

  “Which we already know is a problem so is there any change in the situation?” Lacrat asked.

  Feedle grumbled, “I’m not against punishing that inhabitant for making us worry or work hard if we can do that to him without too much trouble to ourselves. They want to be afraid of us so I say let’s justify their worries.”

  “Don't panic quite yet,” Venrik said as he tapped buttons and the screen image cleared enough to show a blurry image of Nerber standing by Krinkle's car wondering how to get in. “I finally discovered that the earth device doesn't totally disrupt the visual signals when we use our older uncorrected translation system. We have to do some filtering and that delays us finding out what’s going on but with that restriction we're back in contact. The sound part is still intolerable though. We’re working on that. Fortunately zerpies don’t mind noise, they only analyze signal frequencies and amplitudes.”

  “We respect you techs,” Hasley gushed. “This is so great. We know what's happening so we can leave Nerber in place as long as it's safe but we have the perfect excuse for not sending any of it home from now on. The earth inhabitant made us do it.”

  “This one seems like he wants to plot with Nerber and protect him,” Feedle said looking at the image of Krinkle. “I'd love to transport him up and take him with us if we’re not going to do anything nasty to him to make him an example to distress the others but that's too risky.”

  “Maybe we could just interview him for a while, then send him back down,” Lacrat suggested.

  “Tempting, but no can do,” Hasley said firmly. “We have to be ready to leave the area soon and in a hurry since masses of inhabitants and their official groups seem determined to find and destroy us.”

  “Biccup signals that he’s standing by. Do you want him to bring Nerber and the zerpy up now?” Venrik asked.

  “No, since you’ve partly solved the interference problem and he doesn’t seem to be in immediate danger let’s see what happened next,” Hasley said.